Tucker Responds to Ben Shapiro’s Latest Comments

0:00 Remaining on the topic of the neocons trying to push Trump not to settle

0:03 this deal to to instead go nuclear on Iran and take it next level.

0:08 I mean, no one's openly calling for a nuclear bomb.

0:10 That was a figure of speech, but you and I both know has called

0:13 for that has called for nuclear strikes on Iran.

0:18 That's true.

0:18 Okay, I stand corrected.

0:20 Um, here's Ben Shapiro on Tuesday.

0:22 Sat 3.

0:23 The easiest move for the United States to make

0:25 right now would be to just blow up Kar Island.

0:29 Car Island, you could do an amphibious operation there.

0:32 It's it's a lot riskier.

0:33 Or you could just blow it up and that means that Iran has no

0:35 refinery capacity and that means their economy

0:37 is basically sunk for the foreseeable future.

0:40 There are a lot of things that we can do.

0:41 We could blow up Kar Island.

0:42 We could hit other energy resources inside the country.

0:44 We could take down another layer of the IRGC.

0:47 We'll probably have to do at some point another kinetic action against missile

0:51 facilities that have been uncovered over the course of the last few weeks.

0:54 But anybody who believes at this point that Iran

0:55 is winning this war is missing the boat.

0:57 I mean, totally missing the boat.

1:01 I mean, this is just an example of the pressure

1:03 that Trump is under from Shapiro, Levvin, I'm sure,

1:07 Lindsey Graham, Mark Tissson, General Jack Keane, Rupert Murdoch,

1:12 and many, many others to pedal to the metal.

1:16 Do not settle.

1:17 Don't settle with a 14-point deal.

1:18 Don't settle at all.

1:20 keep going militarily until there's nothing left of the people who used

1:24 to be in charge in Iran or even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,

1:28 which as I point out is tens of thousands strong.

1:31 You wonder where the pressure is coming from.

1:33 I mean, those are clearly the spokesman for the coalition applying pressure,

1:37 but they're not in themselves powerful figures.

1:41 I mean, Mark Levin has almost no viewers.

1:43 Ben Shapiro is going out of business.

1:45 No one.

1:45 You look at his videos on his website, Tucker, on like his YouTube channel.

1:48 Each one has like 500 views.

1:51 Well, exactly.

1:51 I mean, these are the this is the outer fringe of the outer fringe.

1:55 Nobody watches this stuff.

1:57 There's no audience for this.

1:58 There's no constituency for it.

2:00 This is totally divorced from the actual problems Americans face.

2:03 It's it's hurting our country measurably.

2:06 $6 gasoline is the result of these policies.

2:10 These are the people who got us in the Iraq war.

2:11 Like, nobody is for this.

2:13 And these are not major figures in American media.

2:16 They're tiny.

2:16 I mean, your average porn video has a thousand

2:20 more views than any of these people get.

2:23 So, they're a joke.

2:25 I don't think these are the people applying the pressure.

2:27 I do think this is coming from donors.

2:29 I think it's coming from Miriam Madson and Paul Singer and the people

2:32 who are huge players in Republican politics because they fund it.

2:36 They fund them a lot of it.

2:38 Maybe a plurality, possibly a majority of it, all of it.

2:41 Not just at the federal level, but also state level.

2:43 They're the ones funding the opposition to Thomas

2:46 Massie in a Republican primary in Kentucky.

2:49 $10 million.

2:50 So these are people who have a huge influence over American politics.

2:53 And they're acting on behalf of the government of Israel,

2:55 not on behalf of all Israelis, much less all Jews in the world.

2:59 Hardly.

2:59 They want you to believe that.

3:00 It's a lie.

3:02 Plenty of Jews hate them for good reason.

3:04 But they're acting on behalf of the Netanyahu

3:07 government on behalf of foreign power.

3:10 And I do think that's where the influence is coming.

3:12 Like Mark Leavvin, Trump does not take Mark Levin seriously.

3:16 Nobody likes Mark Leavvin.

3:17 Ben Shapiro.

3:19 He I don't think he knows Trump.

3:20 He's always hated Trump.

3:21 Trump doesn't like him.

3:22 These people are just irrelevant.

3:24 They're a sideshow.

3:25 Miriam Adlesen is not irrelevant.

3:27 Paul Singer is not irrelevant.

3:29 These are ser Paul you give Trump $200 million and you get his attention.

3:33 That's exa ex nicely put.

3:35 That's exactly right.

3:38 Um you mentioned Thomas Massie.

3:40 I know you had him on your show just the other day.

3:42 And amazingly, even though he is incredibly popular in his home state,

3:47 that campaign against him, he revealed to you,

3:50 is working, Trump's trying to primary him.

3:53 He's been against the Trump agenda on a couple of items.

3:56 He usually votes with the Trump agenda,

3:57 but he definitely been outspoken on Epstein uh and on Israel, to name two.

4:03 And now these outside groups like Marionette Ad's money

4:06 uh have swooped in to help try to defeat him.

4:10 And it was news to me cuz I

4:12 hadn't been watching it that carefully that it's working.

4:15 Here's a sound bite from his interview with you yesterday.

4:18 S 14 full-on blowouts in the Republican primary in your district in Kentucky

4:23 and now it's within a couple of points and you could lose.

4:26 Correct.

4:27 And the difference is they have spent $10 million against you.

4:32 Where'd that money come from?

4:33 It's come from billionaires and it 95% of it

4:36 at least 95% has come from the Israeli lobbies.

4:40 the RJC, which is the Republican Jewish Coalition, Apac,

4:44 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Miriam Adles,

4:48 Paul Singer, and John Pollson went together.

4:50 They funded a pack called MAGA Kentucky, which is neither MAGA nor Kentucky.

4:55 So, she's trying to buy a congressional seat

4:57 in Kentucky along with the rest of these groups.

5:00 There's also another interesting faction called Christians United for Israel.

5:05 They're really just another wing of Apac and RJC

5:08 that's been used to co-opt Christians into supporting their position.

5:14 And their position is more war, it's more strife,

5:18 um it's more bombs, it's send more foreign aid.

5:22 And those are the things that I've been voting against.

5:27 So is that it, Tucker?

5:28 Is it just a matter of money?

5:30 She bought and paid for Trump and now he's doing her bidding.

5:32 Oh, there's there's no question about it.

5:34 It's literally that simple.

5:36 I I would say Thomas Massie is not an opponent of the Trump agenda.

5:39 Thomas Massie is one of the very last proponents of the Trump agenda,

5:45 defenders of the Trump agenda.

5:47 The the agenda that Donald Trump ran on a year and a half ago.

5:49 That's what Thomas Massie still believes.

5:52 That's what he votes for.

5:53 That would include transparency, an end to corruption, no more wars.

5:57 Trump ran on these things just the other day.

6:00 I campaigned for him.

6:01 I remember very well.

6:02 And so Massie still believes those things.

6:04 He's never stopped believing them.

6:06 The break came when Massie described how Apac controls members of Congress.

6:11 And I should just say Massie reminds me of you in a way.

6:14 He's never been against Israel at all.

6:16 Massie likes Israel.

6:17 He's certainly not against Jewish people.

6:19 He likes Jewish.

6:20 I mean, there's nothing anti-Semitic or anti-Israel about Thomas Massie.

6:24 He just made the mistake of describing out loud what it's like to have

6:29 a foreign lobby show up in your office and demand that you vote a certain way.

6:32 And he said to them, as he has to all lobbies, foreign and domestic,

6:36 "I'm voting the way I think my constituents want me to vote,

6:38 consistent with my principles,

6:40 and I'm not playing along." And because he said that, Trump's donors

6:44 decided we have to take this guy out because if we don't,

6:47 not that Massie is going to like change the system single-handedly.

6:51 But if we don't take Massie out, if we don't punish him publicly for telling

6:54 the truth about what we're doing, others may follow.

6:56 So as an example to the rest down the line, they have to crush Thomas Massie.

7:01 And then all of these all the goons,

7:04 the paid consultants in Republican politics,

7:07 and all consultants are the same, Republican and Democrat.

7:09 A lot of them are vicious people and they're all only about the money.

7:13 This guy Lassua, who is the head consultant for Donald Trump,

7:19 rather than just work against Massie in the primary,

7:22 he's taking money from these three Israeli lobbyists basically,

7:26 Paulson, Singer, and Aden.

7:29 He starts attacking the guy personally.

7:31 Calls him garbage.

7:33 Garbage.

7:34 Thomas Massie is one of the most decent members of the Congress.

7:37 One of the most honest, sweetteered, kind, totally opposed to hate Christian.

7:43 Called him garbage.

7:44 Then they started attacking his wife, his new wife.

7:46 His wife passed away two years ago.

7:48 He got remarried.

7:49 And the consultants started attacking the guy's wife.

7:52 And then the president attacks his wife.

7:54 It's like why go scorched earth on a man who's done nothing wrong

7:59 other than stay consistent to his own

8:01 principles to the president's own stated policies.

8:05 He's doing the right thing.

8:06 He This is what democracy is supposed to look like.

8:09 A citizen legislator who unbelievable how the president has attacked not

8:13 only uh Massiey's remarage after he lost

8:16 his wife but Joe Kent's uh remarage four years later after his wife was killed.

8:22 I mean, it's insane.

8:23 And killed by who?

8:24 Donald Trump.

8:25 Killed by Donald Trump's administration.

8:28 Joe Kent's wife was killed.

8:30 The mother of his two sons was killed

8:32 as a CI officer in Syria by a suicide bomb.

8:35 What was she doing there?

8:36 She was sent there by the Trump

8:37 administration to fight another one of Israel's wars.

8:40 So, it's a decision that Donald Trump made that got Joe Kent's wife killed.

8:44 That's a fact.

8:45 It's not interpretation.

8:46 It's a fact.

8:47 And now Trump is attacking the guy for getting

8:49 remarried after that wife is killed serving his administration.

8:55 It's it's almost too much.

8:56 Four years later.

8:59 Yes.

8:58 No.

8:58 I mean like not not to be to put too fine a point on it,

9:01 but Donald Trump cheated on his wife Ivana Trump with Mara Maples.

9:07 It was extremely infamous and all over the papers.

9:10 How dare he criticize these honorable men who

9:14 lost their wives for finding love years later.

9:17 It's truly gling.

9:18 It's way below the belt.

9:21 Um but okay, it's it's just one example.

9:24 I mean that this is like the stuff that all of us kind of overlooked

9:27 on Trump for many years because he was he's not a particularly moral man.

9:32 I think we've known that.

9:33 It's just right now he's spiraling because he knows

9:37 Tucker that his numbers are spiraling down the drain.

9:40 He sees what we see.

9:42 It's so bad he can't even come out and attack

9:44 the polls as he normally would because it's every poll.

9:48 He's at the lowest approval rating he's ever been at in the history

9:52 of his two terms across the board on the economy, on this war, on inflation,

9:58 on whether they trust him with white workingclass voters,

10:02 with men, with young voters.

10:04 I mean, of course, he's already lost women

10:06 and so on, but like every single constituency,

10:08 there is one tiny constituency that still seems proTrump,

10:12 and that is the self-described MAGA over 65 Fox News viewers.

10:17 That's it.

10:17 Yep.

10:19 And he knew this was going to happen.

10:21 I mean, Trump didn't want to start this war.

10:24 He he was fully informed about the consequences of it.

10:28 I talked to him about it.

10:29 He had no enthusiasm for it whatsoever.

10:32 He just kept repeating the world's dumbest talking point.

10:34 Do you want Iran to have nuclear weapons?

10:36 Well, no.

10:37 I guess don't care that much.

10:39 Pakistan has them.

10:40 North Korea has them.

10:41 Israel has them.

10:42 A lot of lunatic countries have nuclear weapons.

10:44 I don't want more countries to have nuclear weapons.

10:46 I don't like nuclear weapons.

10:48 On the other hand, is that a priority for me?

10:50 No.

10:50 It's a priority for Israel.

10:52 But he that that was his only line.

10:53 Do you want Iran to have nuclear weapons?

10:55 No.

10:56 Okay.

10:57 But I don't really care.

10:58 And most Americans don't really care.

11:01 What they care about is the condition of their own country.

11:03 And Trump knew that.

11:04 He ran on it three times.

11:06 He actually felt it.

11:07 He knew that he risked his presidency, his legacy,

11:10 the country itself by starting a regime change war with Iran.

11:14 He knew that fact and he did it anyway because he clearly felt he had no choice.

11:19 That is my read from talking to him

11:21 extensively on this topic before the war began.

11:24 And so I think it's incumbent on all of us

11:25 to figure out what exactly was the pressure applied to Trump

11:29 to make him do something he knew was going to hurt

11:32 him and his party and his legacy and his country.

11:36 What what could possibly compel a man to hurt himself?