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The Dan Bongino Show
BREAKING: Trump Goes To 'War' In Chicago | Episode 121
00:58:52
President Trump has sent ICE to Chicago and 'Operation Midway Blitz' is underway. Also another alleged Trump letter to Epstein surfaces.
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Hey everybody. Welcome to Vince on a Tuesday. Holy cow. It is great to have you with us. The President of the United States is going to war in Chicago, in Boston and all of these horribly run American cities. You know, to restore some normalcy to them. I've got the updates on all of that. Also joining us on the program today, Ben Shapiro. You know him as the co founder at the Daily Wire, as the host of the Ben Shapiro Show. He, he stops by the program, we'll chat with him about everything going on in our country. A lot to get to today. As always. Great to have you with us. The best audience anywhere. I want to thank our great sponsors, American Financing. American Financing. Great. So supportive of this show. If you've been living on credit cards just to cover groceries or gas or bills, you know those interest rates are brutal, right? Why keep paying 20% or more to the banks when you could call my friends at American Financing. They have mortgage rates in the fives and, and they're showing people every day how to keep more of your hard earned money in your pocket and out of the hands of those awful credit card companies. Right now American Financing is helping homeowners save an average of $800 a month by using their home equity to wipe out high interest debt. There's no upfront fees, no obligation, just a 10 minute call to a salary based mortgage consultant. And here's the kicker. If you start today, you could delay two mortgage payments putting even more cash in your hands to right away. So don't wait. Don't wait. Call American financing now at 888-879-6460. That's 888-879-6450americanfinancing.net Vince that's americanfinancing.net Vince. NMLS number 182334 nmlsconsumeraccess.org APR for rates and the fives start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 888-879-6480 for details about credit costs and terms. Well, yes indeed. Happy second Monday. Who says that? 95 shot. I don't know. Happy second. I don't know if I like that. I'm not sure I like that at all actually. No, it is good to have you with us today on a Tuesday. The President over the weekend indicated that it was time to go to war in Chicago. Chicago's about to find out why it's called the Department of War. He posted a pretty funny meme to social media over the weekend. Of course the Left lost its mind. They went apoplectic about this. The emotional incontinence of the left is. Well, it's everywhere, but sometimes it's distilled into one. Yamiche Alcindor, she's a crazy left wing reporter and she confronted the President of the United States this weekend about this. You're gonna go to war with Chicago. Here's President Trump smacking her into the earth. Cut five. Take a look. Why would the Department of Defense. Listen. Be quiet. Listen. You don't listen. You never listen. That's why you're second grade. We're not going to war. We're going to clean up our cities. We're going to clean them up so they don't kill five people every weekend. That's not war, that's common sense. You don't listen. You never listen. That's why you're second rate. The President says we're going to war for common sense, which is great. Look, here's the way. I would like the government to go to war on my behalf, to do something that benefits my country. I know that's a novel idea in Washington. I know that's a crazy idea. Can you imagine the military serving the American interest, taking out cartel members who are killing Americans by the hundreds of thousands every year. Could you imagine something like that happening? That would be crazy. Well, that's exactly what the President is doing. Killing off the cartel members and then getting the National Guard involved to go into America's cities and. To stop the crime. To stop the crime. And that brings us to yesterday, where the President of the United States began Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. Now, in Chicago, you've got Mayor Brandon Johnson. You know, 6% approval rating. I heard 5% recently. Maybe it's 5% now. I'm sure it's going lower. Least popular BJ in America, Brandon Johnson, completely out of control. This guy definitely is in a game of fantasy land. He pretends like everything's fine in Chicago. Everything's fine. There's no crime problem here. We don't need the President to come in. All we need is more money for social services and stuff. It's like the last thing we need is more law enforcement, which is kind of a very crazy thing to say, especially for a guy who apparently. Have you seen this at all? Apparently. This dude has 150 police officers on the taxpayer dime defending him. Check out this press conference from July. Look at this. July of this year, a reporter asks him, hey, are you going to give up your security detail? 150 of Chicago's finest are defending this guy. And. And Brandon Johnson does not disabuse this dude of the notion wants. Take a listen. And your wife Stacey, be willing to cut your security detail from 150 sworn police officers and put those police officers back on the street where they can protect real Chicagoans. So we're very proud of the work.
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That we're doing collectively to ensure that.
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Our police officers have the resources that they need.
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As I've said repeatedly, it's policing and affordable housing. It's policing and youth employment. It's policing and mental and behavioral.
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Are you listening to this? 150 people protect this guy. 150. It's not at his private expense. He's not digging into his own pockets for this. He's not hiring a private security force. He's taking taxpayer money, stealing it. And instead of making the city safer, he's making himself safer. He's surrounded by. That's a wall of human beings. If you have 150 people defending you, you're defended by a wall that's built out of humans. That's what Brandon Johnson is doing. It is madness. It is complete madness. And it's also a crystal clear sign that he feels unsafe in that city. Why would a mayor need 150 cops protecting him? It's because he feels so completely unsafe in that city because of all of the criminality that he needs to be protected from the damage that he has wrought on everybody else. What other explanation could you possibly have for it? And so there's a way out of this. You don't need 150 cops defending you, dude. You don't need 150 salaries, 150 pensions, 150 sidearms, 150 sets of handcuffs. You don't need 150 of everything to defend the mayor of Chicago. All you need to do is protect the city of Chicago. You protect the city. Guess who else benefits? That would be you. That would be you. But like a Democrat, the only person he's interested in protecting is himself. You know, this reminds me in a very distant and much smaller way, but again, it reminds me of. Remember Mayor Pete Boot? Edge. Edge. Remember that guy, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana? The. They called him Pothole Pete. You know why? Because in the city, he had the city maintenance workers come to his street to fill potholes. History didn't even need to be repaved. It was fine. They repaved the street in front of his home. And yet the rest of South Bend was covered in potholes that he didn't get addressed Pothole Pete, because in the end, it's about him. What could I do with this job to benefit me? That's what Mayor Brandon Johnson's doing. He's not trying to help the people of Chicago. He's helping himself. He's helping himself at their expense, both at the expense of the lives of the people of Chicago and the expense of taxpayers in Chicago who are paying for 150 cops to protect that idiot. So that's Brandon Johnson. So that's what's happening with the mayor. Here's what's happening now with Operation Midway Blitz. President Trump is now enforcing immigration laws in Chicago at an increased level. ICE agents are pouring into the Windy City to pick up illegals in an area that's been just a sanctuary for this kind of lawlessness. Here's Griff Jenkins over on FOX describing the arrests already taking place as of Monday morning.
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The surge has begun. You can see the new ICE vehicles on the streets here in Chicago. We're just outside the Cook County Courthouse. But that surge is part of the ICE led Operation Midway Blitz that they say is in honor of a beautiful young Chicago woman, Katie Abraham, who was killed by an illegal alien drunk driver back in January of this year. And while we are getting reaction from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin who says that this blitz won't make Chicagoans safer, let me show you this video. Early this morning I was out with one of ice's teams and we arrested this individual. His name is Juan Gaspar and He is a 43 year old illegal alien from Mexico. He has been convicted in 2024 of forcibly sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13. He was taken, as you can see here, without incident. But this is all part of the exact sort of violent criminal illegal alien that that the ICE operations hope to bring in, apprehend and ultimately deport.
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That guy was convicted of forcibly sexually assaulting a child and he's free in the city of Chicago. That is an illegal alien allowed to just run roughshod over the city by people like Brandon Johnson and JB Pritzker who don't give a damn about the well being of that community. They don't give a damn about the people of Chicago. If they're letting people who have sexually assaulted, who have raped children back out on the streets. They're not even supposed to be here. Illegal aliens. How much more of a sign do you need that these people have contempt for the governed? They hate the people who live in that city. That's the message they send with that. So Trump to the rescue. Operation Midway Blitz. They've arrested that guy. They should execute that guy. They've arrested that guy and now the move is to deport as many people as they can, who they take into custody like this. This needs to be done desperately. Now there's complaints going on. The Democrats are complaining about it. The very Democrats who sold out their own state are complaining about it. The Chicago mayor, according to CBS News, says the city received no notice ahead of the Homeland Security's Operation Midway Blitz announcement. Oh, they didn't tell us. Why would we tell you? You're a part of the criminal enterprise that made this happen. We don't alert the criminal conspiracy that we're about to begin enforcing the law. Sorry. And also, let's be honest about this, the President did routinely suggest to J.B. pritzker that he needed to request support. Request support. Request support. The mayor of Chicago, please ask me for help. I will send help. They refused. They cartoonishly, theatrically, obstinately refused. They just raised double barrel middle fingers to the President of the United States and says, nope, we're gonna continue to allow Chicago to be a hellscape. The President said, nope, no, we're not. I'm going in. The Department of Homeland Security said it's moving forward with the ramped up immigration enforcement in Chicago this week in an effort dubbed Operation Midway Blit. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says the city, quote, received no notice of any enhanced immigration action ahead of the announcement. This ICE operation will target the criminal illegals who flock to Chicago and Illinois. They knew Governor Pritzker and his sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them to roam free in American streets. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the operation is going to target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens in Chicago. No indication how long this operation's gonna last, but they're going in. They're going in. The department said the mission is being done in honor of Katie Abraham, who was killed in a drunk driving hit and run crash that happened in Urbana, about 130 miles south of Chicago earlier this year. Her friend, 20 year old Chloe Poultson also died in the crash. The driver was a 29 year old called Julio Cucul Bolt, a citizen of Guatemala who authorities caught in Texas days after the crash. They believe he was trying to flee to Mexico. He's now in custody in Illinois. Awful. In a post on X, Governor J.B. pritzker accused the Trump administration of failing to communicate or coordinate their immigration enforcement effort with state and local leaders. This is a lie. All they do is lie to you. The president didn't, quote, fail to coordinate anything. The president asked for your help. You refused to give it. So now he's acting without you. Screw you, JB Pritzker. You hate the people of your state and the president loves them. The president ran on an obligation to serve the American people. And yes, Illinois is a part of the United States of America. And yes, it will be rescued from this scourge that you've allowed to fester. J.B. pritzker, Brandon Johnson. So that's the move in Chicago. On the move, the president. That's good. Like to see more criminal enforcement there, not just for illegal aliens, but to stop all of the horrific murders that are taking place in that city. That would be ideal. Also, more action happening in Boston this week. So in addition to Operation Midway Blitz that we get in Chicago, also this week, we get Operation Patriot 2.0. Now, the reason it's 2.0 is because we've already seen Operation Patriot now known 1.0. I guess that's where we had all of this immigration enforcement in Boston. And that's where the Boston Mayor, Michelle Wu, who compares ICE agents to Nazis, went absolutely crazy that the Trump administration was enforcing the law. Well, sorry, toots, it's happening again. Here's the Trump administration's Operation Patriot 2.0 as covered in the local media. Cut three, take a look.
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So the Department of Homeland Security is now launching what they call Operation Patriot 2.0. This is a new initiative where the be really cracking down on undocumented immigrants throughout the state of Massachusetts. Now, this was just released in an report this weekend. The DHS says that Boston Mayor Michelle wu's sanctuary city policies have created a public safety threat. Last Thursday, the Department of justice filed a lawsuit against the city of Boston, Mayor Wu and Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox claiming they are breaking the law by refusing to assist with immigration enforcement.
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So Boston has been a complete disaster as well. And they keep hiding very dangerous illegal aliens from custody. And it's enough. It's enough. Operation Patriot 2.0 is on. It's underway in Massachusetts. They're trying to remove every public safety threat that's an illegal alien that's there that all been released by these radical left politicians back into the community. And we believe that great American city Boston needs to be rescued from this scourge. So the president also sending people in there. Not the only city where things like this are taking place. Not the only cities. Chicago and Boston. We're seeing increased enforcement action we're also seeing it in New Orleans in Louisiana. An amazing, amazing photo out of New Orleans, Louisiana. Have you guys seen this? Look at the illegal alien that the Trump administration has just taken into custody. Check out this pint sized predator, as the New York Post calls him. Look, look at that tiny little criminal. Are you seeing this? This is. For those of you watching rumble.com. vince, I'm gonna try and give you an estimate on the height of this dude. Let's assume for a moment that the police officer he's standing next to is six feet tall. Well, if he's six feet tall, how tall is this little guy? He's. What is he, he's, what is he, 3ft tall? They could have, they didn't need handcuffs for him. They could have used a twist tie from a Wonder Bread bag to keep that guy in custody. That's unreal. Look at this dude. Now, while his stature is comical, his crimes are not at all. According to ice New Orleans, Cristian Soto Galliano, a citizen of, of Guatemala is his name. His criminal history includes a conviction for indecent behavior with a juvenile and he was sentenced to two years in prison. We stand ready to face any challenge, big or small. This is amazing. So they've arrested this tiny little terror and he's taken into custody and hopefully we get him out of the country. You know, we don't have to trebuchet that one. We could slingshot him. That's a, that's a. Does the ICE agent get the pot of gold for, for having captured this guy at the end of this? Curious, I don't know, what's the reward for, for catching this dude? What a weirdo. The guy, the guy's like smiling on camera. The, that little pedophile. He's, he's smiling on camera having been captured. So there you go. That's what's happening. New Orleans. They're doing a good job. Now, having said all that, I gotta tell you in a moment how the Supreme Court just stepped in to make the President's life easier to capture all of these illegals in America's cities. Remember, they were trying to do it in Los Angeles and a crazy federal judge got in the way. Well, the Supreme Court stepped in yesterday and they had something to say about this. And the President, boy, he really liked it. I've got more ahead on that subject than a lot more ahead on the program. Also, Ben Shapiro is just minutes away. It's all ahead on this edition of. Vince, thank you as always for joining us here. Hey, you Know you already know the name. Blackout Coffee. Blackout Coffee. It's right here in my cup. Love me some Blackout Coffee. Proudly the official coffee of all of us here at Silverlock. Let me take a sip. Mm. Yeah, that's right. I'm reminded of what the reason for that is. It's delicious and it's bold, unapologetic. America first coffee roasted fresh right here in the United States. Not grocery store junk. Blackout coffee delivers rich, high quality roasts that actually taste like freedom. And now you can set it and you can forget it. With auto refill and recurring delivery, this means no more running out, no more watered down backups. Just your favorite roast delivered fresh on your schedule. Pick your favorite roast, how often you want it delivered, and not only do you get a discount, but you also get double the rewards and and free shipping to your doorstep. Blackout coffee is very, very good. I'm telling you, I've got more beans on the way to the house right now and I can't wait for every cup of coffee it produces. Next for me. You're gonna love it too. Go to blackoutcoffee.com Vince use the code Vince. That's V I, N C E. And get 20% off your first order. Whether you're into bold, dark roasts, flavored coffee, or even instant, blackout has got your back. Real coffee, no compromise. Blackoutcoffee.com Vince get yours now. All right. Thank you to Blackout Coffee for supporting the show. Hey, one other thing. I routinely forget this. I'm so content dedicated that I forget some of the office keeping that. I should be doing one basic thing that I want to just remind people of. If you're watching us live on rumble. Rumble.comvince1 first and foremost, would you gently tap the like button? No. No smashing the like button here. I don't know why people do that. Smash the like button. You can't smash it. It's a computer, it's expensive, or it's your phone. Will you just gently tap it, please? For us, the other piece is, if you're watching live on Rumble, would you also subscribe to the channel while you're here? I know not everybody. Mostly, I think we have subscribers who are consuming this, but occasionally people stumble across it. They're watching it. If you're liking what you're seeing and you want to see more of it, please click subscribe. And then also, obviously, the podcast, if you happen to be listening to this because some friend told you about it or you searched for a topic and you found us. Thank you for that. Please subscribe. We've got a lot of good stuff going on here. Really is the best audience in media, and I'd really love for you to be a part of it. So thank you for that. Okay, let's see. Yeah. Thank you. You don't crush the button. Masrid says crush the button. Don't crush the button. Be gentle with that button. That button does good things. Thank you for that. Fafo 45 and 47 says that they just click it. Thank you. Just touch it. Just touch it. What's the problem with that? All right. Hey, thank you, guys. I really appreciate that. Okay. The President had a big win with the Supremes yesterday. No, not the music group, the Supreme Court. He won with the Supreme Court yesterday. Look, he's been trying to square away our immigration problem all across the country, and that includes in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has a nightmare of a problem going on in terms of immigration. They've had illegal immigration for a while. The reality, of course, is, like, California is a warning sign for the rest of the country. Constantly, kind of all the worst stuff befalls California before it gets to the rest of us. So you kind of always keep your guard up for what's happening in California, just so you have a sense of what doom lies ahead for the rest of us. And in one of the ways things that have been terrible in California is the illegal immigration problem has been out of control for years, spurred on by the left for a million different reasons. One, for cheap labor, two, to pad the Electoral College, three, to pad congressional districts, four, no doubt to have fraudulent voting involved as well. And also you've got an illegal immigration industry that funds all of the elected Democrats there who thus look the other way on illegal immigration. They won't support federal immigration enforcement. They will encourage riots in cities like la. So it's just become a complete nightmare because of, as always, the left. And so the Trump administration has been going into la, and we've seen it throughout the year, and doing immigration enforcement operations. So they say, okay, fine, you're not gonna cooperate with us, we're going in. And so they keep going in. They're going into various locations and Home Depots and work sites, and they're taking illegal aliens into custody and they're getting them out of the country. Now, that mission was kind of put on ice for a little bit by a US District judge called Maame Awusi Mensah Frimpong, great Irish name, who imposed the limits, the press say, in July after she found that the administration likely violated the Fourth Amendment by stopping people without reasonable suspicion. So the Trump administration was blockaded from being able to do the job that we expect them to do as federal taxpayers. It's in federal law that they can do this job. And this judge with an impronounceable name came along and said, no, you're not allowed to do that. Well, it made its way to the Supreme Court yesterday. Just in terms of the basics of this, can the administration continue to do this? And the upside is that the court ruled on partisan lines that, yes, the President of the United States can definitely do this. And it was Brett Kavanaugh who wrote an opinion on the subject yesterday saying that, okay, although ethnicity alone is not enough to justify a stop, you can include a combination of factors. You can consider what he says are the totality of the circumstances. So if you have an extremely high number and percentage of illegal aliens in the area, then that's a factor. If they gather in the same locations every day to seek work, that's a factor. If they're working in certain kinds of jobs like day labor or landscaping or agriculture or construction, that's a factor. And that if many of the people who are there illegally, as documented, are from Mexico or Central America, and they don't speak English, then it is okay to be on the lookout for exactly the suspects that fit that description. So all of that in Brett Kavanaugh's description, taken together, constitutes a reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States. So, yes, the Trump administration can stop people and question them if they have a mountain of evidence to support that. This character fits exactly the type that would be here illegally. So God bless Brett Kavanaugh. One, for being on the court, and two, for saying the truth out loud, which is the thing that gets you in the most trouble, isn't it? And then there's the left. The lefties on the Supreme Court yesterday freaked the hell out about this, and that includes Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Here's the Hill's coverage of it. Justice Sotomayor on Monday blasted the Supreme Court's decision to lift restrictions, blasted the Court's decision you shouldn't do that based on criteria like speaking Spanish or working in a certain profession, calling the ruling unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation's constitutional guarantees. Quote, we should not live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and, and appears to work a low wage job. I'm sorry, what? We shouldn't use a combination of factors to lead to law enforcement just Simply asking questions. Of course we should. What is this insanity? That's another way of Sotomayor saying we shouldn't enforce the law. If we enforce the law, it violates the Constitution. No, idiot, no, it doesn't. She said. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent. Your constitutional freedoms are not being lost. People who are not American, who are here illegally are being picked up, and your constitutional freedoms are being protected by this. What effect does rampant illegal immigration have on a country? Well, let's see. The social safety net becomes very weighed down by people who are drawing from it, who have not paid into it, who don't deserve it. American citizenship is treated as disposable, and the value of your existence is watered down to nothing by the fact that we've basically said anybody can come pouring in and in fact, the government's going to help it. The value of your vote is diminished when the left gets to use illegal aliens as just warm bodies to pad congressional districts and Electoral college votes in states where they want to get more Democrat power. So you tell me how that's protecting my constitutional rights. How is that, in the words of the fourteenth Amendment, equal protection under the law? It's not. It's actually a total violation of my constitutional rights. It's a complete upending of the power I'm supposed to have over the system in which I live. This is so crazy to me. They use the words of the Constitution as a weapon against you in order to deprive you of your constitutional liberties, your constitutional rights, your country that you're supposed to have some say over. Idiotic. So that's the position of all of the lefties on the court. All of the declared lefties, anyway. Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all joining in on that idiotic, imbecilic, Sotomayor interpretation of events. Meanwhile, Justice Kavanaugh comes in and says, no, no, no, guys, it's fine. You can't just merely ethnically profile somebody. But if you're gonna consider all of the factors for a suspect, like where are they going to work? Are there high concentrations of illegal aliens in that industry? Do they even speak the language? What countries are they coming from? A sensible person does that. That's not bigoted. That's just practical. It's common sense. And so the Trump administration gets to continue at pace. The effect of this is, not only can the Trump administration continue to have fulsome immigration enforcement in a place like Los Angeles, they can do it all across the country. So that ruling came down yesterday on the same day that we get these major announcements about enforcing immigration law in Boston and enforcing immigration law in Chicago. It's a huge green light for the Trump administration to keep doing the job that they were elected on. I love it. All right. More ahead in just a moment. I've gotta get to what's going on. Well, we've got a lot to get to. One, we've got Ben Shapiro coming up in just a second. I can't wait to talk to Ben. I want to talk to him about some breaking news that we hear this morning. Apparently Israel has struck Doha, Qatar. They've taken out some of the leadership of Hamas this morning. That is the breaking news. We'll get Ben's reaction to that. And also, of course, we'll talk about the problems we have close to home, which are criminals who've been arrested 14 times boarding trains and then stabbing innocent people in the neck to death. What can be done to stop all of this? That's all ahead. Ben Shapiro joins us in a moment. Hey, but first, when inflation jumps, when you hear the national debt is over $37 trillion, man, that's staggering. You ever think to yourself, well, maybe now would be a good time to buy some gold? That's a smart thought because look, if it's as a hedge against inflation or just for sensible diversification, Birch Gold Group believes that every American should own physical gold and they do want to make it easy for you. So easy until September 30th if you are a first time gold buyer, Birchgold is offering a rebate of up to $10,000 in free metals on qualifying purchases. To claim eligibility and to start the process, request your information kit now. Just Text Vince to 989-898/ Birch Gold can help you roll an existing IRA or a 401k into an IRA in gold and you're still eligible for a rebate and free metals of up to $10,000. This makes right now the perfect, the prime opportunity for you to make it your first time to buy gold. Take advantage of a rebate up to $10,000 when you buy by September 30th. Just text my name, Vince to 989898. That's it. Vince to 989898. Claim your eligibility today. Message and data rates apply. Thank you to Burchgold, great sponsor of this program. They have a great service. You should take them up on it. Also want to thank everybody over at Brickhouse Nutrition for being great sponsors of this program as well. Doctors Call it weight cycling. Have you heard of this weight cycling? Half of Americans do this. Pretty straightforward. Weight cycling is when you lose 10 or so pounds and then you gain it back. This stuff is rough because if you keep doing that, you're at risk of diabetes, liver damage, heart attack, stroke, serious health issues. Bottom line, most people need help to stop that weight cycling and here's a great way to do that. Non prescription Lean by Brickhouse Nutrition. It was created by doctors and Lean is an oral supplement, not a GLP one. Injectable it's studied ingredients target weight loss in three very powerful ways. Lean helps maintain healthy blood sugar, helps you control appetite and cravings, helps burn fat by converting it into energy. And if you're tired of losing weight and then gaining it back, add Lean by Brickhouse Nutrition to your diet and your exercise lifestyle. Get 20% off when you enter Vince@takelean.com that's code Vinceakelean.com these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease and it's not a substitute or alternative for care from a healthcare provider. Thank you Brickhouse Nutrition for being awesome. All right, joining us right now, I'm happy to say the Daily Wire co founder is here. He's the host of the Ben Shapiro show, also the author of a brand new book, Lions and Scavengers. Great to have with us, Ben Shapiro. Now. Ben, thanks for joining us on the program today, sir.
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Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
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I do want to get your reaction to the breaking news this morning because minutes before we started our broadcast today, I see the news out of Qatar, Qatar, whatever you want to call it, that the IDF has confirmed that they just struck Hamas targets. Of course, Hamas leadership, people know much of them live in Qatar just struck Hamas leadership, killing who the media describe as Hamas's top negotiator in these hostage negotiations. What are we to make of this strike? What does it tell us about the state of this war?
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Well, I mean, I think what it says is that Hamas turned down the president's proposals. The president put forward a very clear proposal which was that all hostages ought to be released and then the United States would effectively guarantee an honest negotiation going forward about disarming Hamas and moving into the next stage of rebuilding in the Gaza Strip. Hamas had announced hours ago actually that they had rejected that deal. And the president of the United States said pretty clearly there will be consequences if that happens. Now, Israel says that they initiated this operation by themselves, that they will Take full responsibility for the operation. I find it very difficult to believe that Israel would have done this without the Trump administration knowing in some way that something like this was coming. And the fact of the matter is that Qatar has never been an honest broker in these negotiations from the very outset. The idea that Qatar, which has acted effectively as a tool of Iran throughout a number of these negotiations, has directly funneled billions of dollars to Hamas. Like directly funneled billions of dollars to Hamas that houses Hamas's top officials. I mean, remember that it was actually when Israel struck Ismail Haniyeh in Iran that he was vacationing, essentially he was on a trip from Qatar. So Qatar has been hosting people at the Four Seasons in Qatar for years. Israel basically said, listen, we are, we are at the end of this negotiation. Gaza City is imminent. The full scale invasion of Gaza City and take over Gaza City is imminent. And so this is sort of the last ditch attempt. If you aren't going to negotiate, then this is the final stage of the war. And the final stage of the war means that if you are a top member of Hamas and you refuse to turn over hostages, disarm, go into exile, turn over the Gaza Strip to a non terrorist force, well then you're not going to be immune just because you're sitting in Qatar while you're doing it.
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It definitely conveys there's no safe haven for Hamas leadership. Do you think that this will induce Hamas into doing anything? I mean, killing their leadership like this and saying, hey, you're not safe anywhere you go. Will the hostages be released? Is that possible?
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I mean, I think that that question remains open. I don't think that Hamas has an interest ever in releasing the hostages because the minute the hostages are released, basically that's their last bargaining chip and they know that their time is marked. So do I think that this is intended to get Hamas to release the hostages? Not particularly. I think that it was intended to convey to Hamas that either you're going to release the hostages or your entire top leadership will die. And then it's up to you what you do next. Because obviously every other attempt to wheedle, bargain and come up with some sort of negotiated settlement with Hamas has been unsuccessful. So at the end, if it's a war, it's a war and the terrorist leaders are gonna die.
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A
Okay, let's move back. Let's move back home. Obviously processing some of that breaking news this morning in Charlotte, North Carolina this past week we get video footage of a horrific August 22nd murder where a 14 time arrested schizophrenic violent person gets onto a train behind a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte and then just stabs her right in the neck, executes her in cold blood. That video shocking the conscience of decent people across our country. But decent doesn't include the legacy media. They've ignored this. And to the extent that they've covered it at all, they've treated it as a Republican's pounce story. What do you think the lessons are, the big lessons from this event and where we should go from here?
- [35:54]
D
Well, I mean, I think there are multiple big lessons. Number one is we do not actually have an over policing crisis in the United States. We have an under policing crisis in the United States, and we have an under prosecuting crisis in the United States where we release people onto the streets who are clearly dangerous to themselves and others. People who are schizophrenic, mentally ill, violent, with long criminal histories, with gigantic rap sheets. And that needs to stop. And when the President of the United States says that and Democrats somehow take the other side of that argument, that is not only a political loser, that is a moral loser. Two is the racial angle to this, which really has less to do with race and more to do with the legacy media's take on race. So the reality is that I don't think you're gonna find a lot of Americans who are making the claim that because the perpetrator in this case was black and the victim was white, that what this really all is about is, you know, innate racial characteristics. Only, only true racists believe that. What, what people do believe is that the legacy media is covering this up because the legacy media is afraid that if they mention that violent crime rates in the black community are higher than violent crime rates in the white community, or that interracial crime, black on white per capita, is significantly more common than white on black crime, then the legacy media is afraid that will debunk their entire narrative about the world, which is of course that America is systemically racist and that black people are inherently the victims of that systemic racism. And I think people are done with that. I think the American people are tired of this. They're tired of the media pretending that crimes don't exist when the racial characteristics don't fit their narrative. And they're tired of ignoring baseline realities, which is that violent crime rates, black on white, are significantly higher than violent crime rates the other way around. And that's not because of race, that's because of a bunch of other factors that contribute.
- [37:31]
A
And so I think it's probably a Combination of a couple things. One of them is that they're suppressing the news around this and lying by omission, of course. But the other piece is like maybe the media thinks that it's so commonplace to have a black assailant hurt a white victim that they treat it like some sort of dog bites man story, that they just ignore it entirely. Oh, it's not that crazy because it happens all the time. Either one is a, is a disastrous conclusion because it's the media either accepting this rampant violence or suppressing it in order to advance a racial agenda.
- [38:01]
D
Yeah, and I really do think it's the latter. I do not think that they are just believing that this is so common we're not going to cover it. I think that what they really believe is that if they accurately cover the race of suspects in crimes, that too many Americans are vulnerable to racism or falling into racism. And so they have to program the American people that they are never to look in terms of race if it's a black assailant and a white victim, but they're always to look in terms of racism if the races are reversed.
- [38:26]
A
Well, to what extent are they just held hostage by their political coalition too? Because there's this contention that cops are murdering black Americans, unarmed black Americans, wantonly across the country. And as you know, and we've all discussed, the data don't support that in any way. But there is this kind of this house of cards that's been built and the last thing the press wants to be a part of is kicking it over.
- [38:49]
D
I think that's exactly right. I mean, if you look at polls of liberal Americans, they believe something on the order of 10,000 black people are being killed by the police every single year. And the answer is unarmed black men killed by the police every year numbers less than 10 across a country of 340 million people. Which is pretty astonishing actually. The narrative is all that matters to the legacy media. And this goes back decades. I mean, we've known this for years that legacy media was will omit the race of suspects if the race does not match up with their priors. They will not report stories like this if the race does not match up. And if it's Daniel Penney who is putting in a suppression hold and accidentally killing a homeless schizophrenic who's legitimately violently threatening people in a subway in New York City. It's a national news story for six months and all we hear about is the deep and abiding systemic racism of the United States.
- [39:35]
A
Yes. So the Daniel Penney story is a story of imposing consequences on the Good Samaritan. And then there's also the element of we are living in a society with increasingly lower trust. So when I watched the video of that awful murder in Charlotte, one of the things I was struck by in addition to the horror of the killing is the reaction of the people on the train. People seemed very unlikely to respond. In fact, they didn't want to get involved. They saw a man with a dripping bloody arm walking past them, ripping off his hoodie. And not one person was asking, are you okay? What's going on? There was no assessment whatsoever. People tried to just keep their heads down, down. What is happening? How did we get here?
- [40:14]
D
I mean, I think that the crackdown on Good Samaritans is certainly a part of it, but also we as the American people, we have a right to expect that the police are gonna protect us from this sort of things. And so we're just not prepared for it. I mean, if you talk to members of police or members of the military, the thing that they will always tell you is that you can't sort of just react in a crisis. You have to train so that you do react in a crisis. And the American people, I mean, listen, we live in the safest society in the history of the world. And so the vast majority of us have never had to confront an actual honest to God murderer with blood dripping knife. And so the sort of instinctive, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna do something about it, that, that may exist in, in some people, but it doesn't exist in a lot of people. And, and so you really do have to have somebody like Daniel Penny, who actively was trained in circumstances like that to actually do that. So I can't blame the people on the, on the subway too much for, for their lack of reaction because they're probably figuring that he's gonna stab them next and nobody will, will do anything about it. But what that goes to is that if you are going to claim a monopoly on the use of force, which is what the police do, they have a monopoly on legitimate use of force. You have to be there to actually stop the criminals. And the criminals have to go away for a very, very long time and not come out again because otherwise you will have to say to the population, listen, you guys gotta train for this possibility. You have to train for the possibility that every time you get on a light rail that somebody is gonna get stabbed and you're gonna have to step in.
- [41:32]
A
Yeah, and also, by the way, it's another reminder that kids should get off the screens and get out and play a sport, join the military, do something constructive with your life outside of the phone. Because you never know what life is going to bring you, including horrific moments like that. You just have to be conditioned to respond to everything. Let me ask you about your book, Lions and Scavengers. You've sold a bunch of number one New York Times bestselling books. Congratulations on that. Tell me about Lions and Scavengers, the true Story of America. What is this about?
- [41:59]
D
So essentially, the book posits that there is a part of all of us that is a lion and part that's a scavenger. The lion is the part of us that believes that we have a moral duty in the world, that we have to get up in the morning, confront our problems and act. And then there's the scavenger part of us that says that basically all of our problems are the fault of some unspecified, shadowy system. And the only thing left to do is to rip down all of the systems that make America great, prosperous, secure and free. And it's not just internal to every human being, it's civilizational. So what you see is inside the United States, there are groups of people who are more lion like people who actually get up in the morning. They want to innovate and risk, take and build families and go to church. And then you have people who see all of those institutions as a threat to them personally, and they get together specifically in order to rip down all those institutions. A good example politically would be Zoran Mamdani in New York, who believes that private property, bad. Free, free minds, bad. Equal rule of the law, bad.
- [42:49]
A
Right.
- [42:49]
D
All these things need to be ripped down because they are creating external victims. And you are seeing across the west, scavengers on the march. And it does explain in the book really why this bizarre coalition, this melange of people who really don't belong together, are all together. The most kind of obvious example being Queers for Palestine. I think everybody has been asking themselves, why is there a group called Queers for Palestine? It's bizarre, right? Queers in Palestine get thrown off buildings. That's not a thing. Except that the only thing these two groups hold in common meaning pro Hamasniks and radical left wing LGBT plus activists. What they really hold in common is just hatred for the civilization, a belief that they are marginalized by the core values of our civilization and that that civilization needs to be torn out root and branch. And so if lions don't stand up and defend their civilization and say, listen, you know, you're marginal members of the community for a reason, because you reject our values.
- [43:39]
A
Yes.
- [43:39]
D
And we are not going to allow you to rip down the institutions and systems of belief that have upheld our country, then we will fall and we'll deserve to fall.
- [43:47]
A
How much do you think a belief in God distinguishes these two groups?
- [43:51]
D
I think that a belief in God is huge. I don't know that everyone who is a lion has to have a belief in God. But I think that the underlying moral system that lions rely upon is a faith based system, because there is no such thing as a morally absolutist system. In the absence of a faith assumption, you can't be a secular atheist and have a real basis for a moral system. The real is ought problem. If you don't have a higher value system that says, for example, that human beings have innate worth, that human beings have creative power in the universe, that human beings have a free capacity to choose and ought to make choices in a moral direction. Those are all faith contentions that you can't just arrive at by sitting there and logicing it out to yourself. I think there are a lot of secular humanists who think that they've done that, but they ignore the fact that essentially they're just running off the fumes of biblical values.
- [44:38]
A
Yeah, no, that's a smart point. So this idea of building something and also tearing down other things, tearing down established systems, I find myself, and maybe you feel this way occasionally, that I'm torn a little bit between both worlds. I don't feel like a scavenger. I'm not trying to feed off somebody else's success. But I do feel like there are institutions that deserve a wrecking ball. We lived through Covid and we watched a health establishment absolutely violate civil liberties like crazy without any reasonable predicate, except for enhancing government power. And I thought, man, I really wanna tear that down. I hate everything about that. We've watched a justice system that's turned its weapons against people who committed no crimes. They turned their weapons against people singing church hymns outside of abortion mills and parents attending school board meetings. And I thought, man, that's a system I really want to tear down. How do you draw those distinctions? Because it does feel like occasionally these institutions reach levels that you're like, man, you deserve the wrecking ball.
- [45:35]
D
Yeah, so I totally agree with this and I think that that is an evidence based decision. I think the thing that distinguishes lions from scavengers when it comes to institutions is whether there is good evidence that an institution is so thoroughly corrupt that it's leading to bad consequences. And you can specifically point to the things that institution has done and why that institution is unsavable. And I do think that lions also seek to build replacement institutions or at least find good answers. It's not enough to just wreck the cdc, for example. You actually have to replace the CDC with something that works. It's not enough to just say, well, the DOJ is thoroughly wrecked, and so we just won't have a doj. The idea is that you actually have to fix the doj. You have to bring in people who are going to uphold those standards, or you have to change the standards that they actually make sense. This is the difference that G.K. chesterton talks about between people who are conservative and people who aren't. I mean, if a non conservative walks across a field, his famous example goes and sees a fence and doesn't understand why the fence is there, the non conservative immediately begins uprooting the fence. The conservative looks at the fence, doesn't understand why it's there, and says, before I rip up the fence, I need to find out why the fence is here. That doesn't mean the conservative will never rip up the fence. It does mean that the conservative needs to understand why the fence needs to be ripped up and what's gonna replace the fence once it's gone.
- [46:43]
A
Yes, or maybe we'll install a big, beautiful gate, as the President might say. Yeah. No, it is amazing. And just to watch kind of all this happening, there are people around us who consider themselves like, accelerationists, like they've just decided we're giving up on society. It feels like that's kind of the left's impulse. It's like, how much chaos can we possibly induce? And then if people are fighting amongst themselves, then we can be the beneficiary. We can grow power unto ourselves. Oftentimes, it's the government. This is like, this is the Bernie Sanders school of thought, the Zoran Mamdani school of thought, that, hey, as long as everybody's miserable, they're gonna be looking for external saviors. And that can be me.
- [47:20]
D
That's exactly right. When systems completely break down, people look for a great leader to fix everything and to centralize all power and to fix all of their problems. And the truth is that politics cannot fix all of your problems. The best a politician can do in a free country is remove obstacles to your success. A politician cannot make you succeed. And if a politician is making you Succeed, there's a good shot he's doing it at somebody else's expense. And so this is something that the left really is looking at. Unfortunately. I think there's a part of the right actually that is doing some of this stuff too, replacing things. Like the argument about the CDC would be that there's a difference between saying don't trust the experts, which I think is totally true. We should be very skeptical of people who claim that expertise gives them the authority to do whatever they want. But if you replace that with trust the non experts, that is a completely different proposition. And the answer should be no. You don't trust the experts, and you also don't trust the non experts. You don't actually trust anybody. You skeptically approach evidentiary questions and look for good answers. And if you're not doing that, then you are participating in just tearing things down with no replacement.
- [48:18]
A
Well, that's right. I mean, that's why every time I hear RFK Jr talking and he uses the phrase gold standard science to refer to what they should be doing. I agree enthusiastically. That's exactly what I want. And I want as much transparency as possible as to how they reach those decisions. I don't want the dude with the pentagram outfit running, you know, immunology or whatever, and he's the monkeypox czar for Biden. That's completely crazy. And I love how the media is pretending like he's the arbiter of what is scientific.
- [48:44]
D
Exactly. And I also think that when you get rid of Mpox guy with the, with the BDSM gear, then we probably should not replace him with, you know, hobo George who has some thoughts on medicine. Right. We should replace him with, you know, people like Jay Bhattacharya at NIH and Marty Makary over at fda. We actually have very well qualified people inside the administration who are rooting what they're doing in gold plated science.
- [49:06]
A
I love. All right, well, the book is Lions and Scavengers. The author of the man that you're seeing and hearing right here, Ben Shapiro. Sir, thanks for your time today. Appreciate you.
- [49:14]
D
Thanks so much.
- [49:15]
A
There he is. Ben, thank you for that. Yeah, the monkeypox guy. Isn't that wild? The monkeypox guy? I still can't believe that he survived the Trump administration for seven months. It's hard to get rid of that monkeypox, I'll tell you what. Okay, what else do we have for you today? I've got quite a few things. I've always got a lot for you. Speaking of what we were just chatting about that awful murder in Charlotte, North Carolina. Think about that guy, that criminal. He was in touch with police 14 times, 14 times he was arrested and then he commits a homicide against this poor girl. And for a second, if I can dwell on the girl too this Arena Zarutska, Irina Zarutska is a Ukrainian refugee. And I'm gonna make an observation. I've heard others make it so I'll just rampantly give credit to everybody who has made it, but she's a Ukrainian refugee. Have you noticed that none of the Ukrainian flag people are sharing her story? That there's no serious concern or consideration for the Ukrainian refugee who escaped the war from any of the people with Ukrainian flags in their bios? Have you noticed that maybe, just maybe, the people with the Ukrainian flags in their bios never really meant it to begin with. It was always just like some sort of marker of. I'm with the Democrats because the position of the Democrats is we have to ignore her death. So they're dutifully doing it. The Ukrainian flag people are ignoring her. And she comes to America, she thinks it's a first world country, she thinks she'll be okay. And of course she's not. She gets killed. The guy who killed her arrested 14 times. And one thing we know for certain about all of these killers is that they typically have a lot of contact with the law. A lot of them here is in 2023. My friend Amber Duke just reminded me of this yesterday. So I want to share this with you. Here's the Former D.C. police Chief Robert Conti in 2023, frustrated by all of the homicides that were taking place in the city at that time. Now down dramatically thanks to President Trump. That's a huge thing, but tons of murder happening at the time. And the police chief said, you understand what's common about these murderers, They've been arrested a lot before they commit murder. Take a look at the D.C. police chief cut six.
- [51:40]
E
What we gotta do if we really wanna see homicides go down is keep bad guys with guns in jail. Because when they in jail they can't be in committ shooting people. So when people talk about what we going to do different or what we should do different, what we need to do different, that's the thing that we need to do different. We need to keep violent people in jail. Right now the average homicide suspect, the average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide. That is a problem. That is a problem.
- [52:12]
A
The average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide. We need to keep violent people in jail. How many more signs do you need that this person is a scourge upon the community? And I'll remind you, as a statistical matter, if you are just arresting the people who are committing the crimes over and over again and keeping them off the streets, you fundamentally take care of the crime problem. Criminality at its core is done by a very small subset of people who are over and over and over and over and over again. If you address that, you instantly fix so much of the crime problem here in the United States. And you don't get a situation where this poor girl gets stabbed in the neck in Charlotte because that guy would have never been on the street again. Fourteen arrests, one involuntary commitment that only lasted two weeks for his schizophrenia. That guy should not have been released at all. At all. And so there's a really clear lesson here that none of this should be happening at all. Now, I have one other thing that I want to address with you specifically, and it relates to the fact that we've got a lot of cities in the country that are run by Democrats that have Republican governors in their states. Now, the media has made a big show of why isn't Trump sending the National Guard into these Republican led states. They have high crime rates. And we've talked about this. When they refer to places like Tennessee, Memphis, for instance, we're talking specifically about the city of Memphis, which has a mayor who's a Democrat. So it's not about the red state and its governance. It's about the mayor and the city leadership who are Democrats, who are allowing that crime to run out of control. So should the president go into every one of these very violent cities? The answer to that question is resounding yes, it's a resounding yes, we absolutely should go in. And so I've got a call out today for the Republican governors. If you have a violent Democrat run city in your state, you should be asking the president to send in the National Guard. You should be mobilizing your own National Guard. You should be asking for federal assistance today. Now, why would you do that? Well, the answer is because you love the people of your state. If you have a city that has crazy homicide rates, you should answer the call to help them. It doesn't matter the Democrats are running into the ground. It becomes then your job to step in and say that you're a governor of the state, do your job and ask the president for all the help in the world. You can possibly ask for. Look on the right, if we want to make a case against J.B. pritzker, which we can easily make because he's a scumbag who's turned down help for a city like Chicago over and over, one way to further that case is for Republican governors to do the right thing to reach out to the President for support. So look, the Governor of Mississippi is Tate Reeves. Republican Governor Tate Reeves. The city of Jackson, Mississippi has a Democrat mayor by the name of John Horn. The homicide rate in Jackson is 78 per 100,000 people. That's the highest in the United States among large cities. Jackson, Mississippi. Governor Reeves should be working directly with the President to stop the crime in a Democrat run city. And he should do that today. In Alabama, K. Ivey is the Republican governor. Birmingham, Alabama is a Democrat run city. The mayor there is Randall Woodfin. The homicide rate there is 59 per 100,000. That's the second highest nationally of this category. St. Louis, Missouri is in a similar situation. The mayor there, Kara Spencer. The homicide rate there is 50 per 100,000. The governor is Mike Kehoe. He's a Republican governor Kehoe could reach out to the President and ask for assistance to help bring St. Louis, Missouri to peace, which is what we need. As I mentioned, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is there. He's the Republican. The Mayor of Memphis is Paul Young. That city has a huge homicide problem. This is where Republicans can work together to address a Democrat made disaster in Memphis, Tennessee. And then there's Louisiana. That's where Jeff Landry, the Republican Governor, runs the state. We're already watching as the President is enforcing immigration law in New Orleans and arresting midgets, which was nice of him to do, but I'd like to see the criminal enforcement expanded in New Orleans. This is where the Republican governor of that state can work directly with the President of the United States to make this happen. Somebody asks in the chat, Strawberry Blonde asks, why haven't they done it already? Good question. Why haven't you done it already? It is critical not just that we help Chicago and D.C. those are big cities and they desperately need it, but that we help every one of these cities across the country. I don't care who's in charge. If you've got a massive crime problem in your city, we need to stop it. These are our fellow Americans we're talking about. And if you want to build, let me just ask you, forget the human life element for a moment, although that's impossible to forget. Just think about the pure politics of all of this. If you want to build a political party that is deserving of majority, just huge support for generations to come, serve well the needs of the people even in places that don't vote for you, go into the Democrat cities, fix the problems the Democrats have created, and let's make America great again. It can be done. I know it's a big job. It can be done. And I'd like to see some of these Republican governors step up to the plate to make it happen. As always, great to have you with us on this program. If this is your first time with us or if you've been here a bunch and you haven't subscribed yet, please subscribe. Please gently tap like on the like button wherever you're getting us, hopefully. Rumble.com Vince for the video version. I've got the big national radio show coming up today, the Vince Show. You can find your local listing at thevinchshow. Com. Also, you can watch us live on rumble. Rumble.com Vince, it's always great to have you with us. Another big show for you tomorrow coming up.