BREAKING: Daily Wire Uncovers MASSIVE Fraud Scandal In Ohio!
Ben Shapiro
0:00 Money is being stolen out of your pocket
0:02 and put into the hands of people defrauding you.
0:05 Not on the margins.
0:06 This is happening at the highest levels of the American government.
0:09 Elon Musk and Nick Searcy opened the door,
0:11 but Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak is
0:13 now busting through that wall like the Kool-Aid Man.
0:17 The Daily Wire is serving up the receipts for widespread fraud,
0:19 which the president and vice president can wipe out entirely.
0:23 Billions of dollars of Medicaid stolen from you, the taxpayer.
0:26 We've seen the equality leering sensors and the suspect
0:30 behavior of thousands taking advantage of state-level programs.
0:33 This is massive fraud that we're uncovering on the federal scale.
0:36 Conservatives have always stood by the notion that government screws things up.
0:39 Democrats build systems where waste, fraud,
0:41 and abuse, that's the feature, not the bug.
0:44 They love stealing money from some and giving it to others,
0:47 all to make people more dependent on the government
0:49 more broadly while blaming the free markets.
0:51 It's disgusting and it has to end.
0:52 We'll get into all the receipts in a moment.
0:54 And speaking of disgusting,
0:56 Tucker Carlson just did a crazy interview with the New York Times
0:58 that proves once and for all he is not remotely on the right.
1:01 And in fact, he now stands with the worst enemies of American ideals.
1:05 Apparently, there's no daylight between these would-be revolutionaries,
1:08 Tucker Carlson and Bernie Sanders and Hasan
1:11 Welcome back to the Ben Shapiro Show.
1:16 [music] The Daily Wire exists to bring you the truth.
1:21 We do that in a lot of ways.
1:23 Got our commentary, our documentaries, our films,
1:25 and not least with our investigative reporting.
1:27 So this week, we have a series of bombshell reports after
1:31 our reporters spent two months investigating
1:33 the extent of welfare fraud in Ohio,
1:35 where billions of dollars have now gone missing down the rat
1:38 hole of government entitlement programs under the guise of home health care.
1:42 Our goal at The Daily Wire is to smash
1:44 the supposedly untouchable pillars of the welfare state.
1:47 It's time to return to true conservatism.
1:49 Truth is the only way to get there.
1:52 So, fraud isn't just happening in the blue cities where you might expect.
1:54 It's happening right under the nose of Republican governors, too.
1:58 In Ohio, for example.
2:00 Think one address, 93 companies, no windows, totally empty, billed to you,
2:05 the American taxpayer, $66 million over the last several years.
2:10 Shell companies, fake billing, fake services,
2:12 covered tracks until this very instant.
2:16 So, Daily Wire has now uncovered via Luke Rosiak and our investigative team,
2:20 Medicaid Millionaires.
2:22 In a piece titled, Medicaid Millionaires Have the Feds
2:25 Pay Immigrants Billions to Hang Out With Their Own Families,
2:27 Luke points out, quote, "Under the guise of healthcare,
2:30 Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid recipients' homes
2:33 to perform homemaking and chores like cooking and cleaning.
2:36 The people performing these personal services
2:38 tasks don't have to be healthcare workers.
2:40 In 2024, Ohio spent a billion dollars on home healthcare.
2:45 So, they literally pay people Medicaid money to go to other
2:49 people's houses to perform homemaking and chores." And as Luke writes,
2:54 the new welfare queens aren't the recipients
2:56 whose low incomes qualify them for poverty programs,
2:58 they're the companies getting rich off of them.
3:01 His overall impression,
3:02 "99% of the facilities I visited had the hallmarks of waste, fraud, or abuse.
3:06 We are talking about alleged criminality at a breathtaking scale.
3:11 So, for example, this here is a picture of 93 offices in Columbus, Ohio.
3:18 It is 6161 Bush Boulevard.
3:22 So, as you can see, all the windows are covered, which is weird.
3:25 Typically, you know, if you have an office,
3:27 you like to have windows because people like
3:29 there to be some light in their office.
3:31 Why would you cover all the windows?
3:32 Well, because there's nothing there.
3:35 According to Luke, what's inside is 93
3:37 different companies signed up to bill Medicaid, each with a tiny office,
3:40 often marked with a sheet of paper proclaiming
3:42 some generic company name ending in Home Health LLC,
3:45 and sometimes another piece of paper claiming
3:47 the employees had just stepped out for a break.
3:49 And again, this building, this address,
3:51 billed taxpayers over $66 million over the last several years.
3:57 And as Luke points out, if you try to track down what exactly is
4:01 happening at any one of these home health care companies,
4:04 what you will find is an endless rabbit hole.
4:06 He says you'll find years of unpaid taxes and debts, sometimes criminal records,
4:10 an astonishing number of LLCs created in other industries,
4:13 as if the millions they are making from Medicaid are just a side gig.
4:18 The government is not and cannot be monitoring
4:20 the people to whom they write million-dollar checks.
4:23 They all share combinations of just a few
4:24 names like Ahmed Muhammad and Muhammad Ahmed.
4:28 And the population of Columbus, Ohio,
4:29 it's the second biggest Somali population outside of Minnesota.
4:34 They spell their own name multiple different ways within a single document.
4:37 Many of them have their birthdays listed as January
4:39 1 because we don't know when they were born.
4:43 Pretty much all of them, according to Luke, are registered voters.
4:45 Wait for it.
4:45 Wait for it.
4:46 For the Democratic Party.
4:48 Not a shock.
4:48 So, the business model is apparently simple.
4:50 A 40-year-old Somali gets paid for spending time
4:52 with and maybe cooking for his own 65-year-old mom.
4:56 Sitting in the middle is one of these thousands of home
4:58 health firms that have an NPI number necessary to bill Medicaid.
5:02 And then the 40-year-old becomes an employee of that company.
5:05 But the only patient is mom.
5:07 There's no way to verify whether he's providing services
5:10 unless his mom is willing to rat him out.
5:13 Maybe he even gives a portion of the pay to mommy
5:15 as a kickback for allowing her social security number to be used.
5:20 Virtually apparently all of these home
5:22 health care companies are owned by foreigners.
5:26 As Luke writes, when we asked what home health care companies did,
5:29 one man threatened, "Journalist, who cares?
5:30 You guys pay my bills?
5:31 I'm going to tell everybody you guys are racist." Yeah, there it is.
5:35 Isn't that nice?
5:36 See, this is the way the magic works.
5:37 To defraud our Medicaid systems, to defraud federal taxpayer dollars,
5:43 and then when somebody comes knocking on the door,
5:45 you just claim that they are a racist.
5:48 Now, as Luke points out, this poverty program is different from others like
5:52 food stamps because it doesn't have a monetary cap.
5:54 It's expense is not decided by politicians,
5:56 but by any doctor willing to sign a form
5:58 saying you could use some help around the home.
6:00 And one doctor can sign a billion of these forms.
6:03 You can bankrupt the state this way.
6:05 Again, this is just part one of our series.
6:07 What's coming tomorrow is so much worse.
6:10 So much worse.
6:10 I mean, already we're talking $66 million in potential
6:13 fraud right here from 93 companies at one address.
6:17 Industrial scale alleged fraud happening right here.
6:20 So, how did we get this information?
6:21 Well, there was a quiet DOJ document drop in February of this year.
6:25 So, again, people were ripping on Elon Musk over DOJ,
6:28 the Department of Governmental Efficiency, well,
6:31 they had a lot of after effects DOJ.
6:32 And one of the things they did is they revealed information
6:35 into the public that allows journalists like Luke and our team,
6:37 our investigative journalists here at Daily Wire,
6:40 which we've been building for a couple of years, to go out and actually dig in.
6:44 Luke was able to dive in thanks to those DOJ documents.
6:48 For decades, Medicaid billing data was a black box.
6:50 It's one of the biggest government programs in human history.
6:53 The public could not see a dime of it.
6:55 And DOJ changed all of that in February
6:56 with a quiet data release that a lot of people missed.
6:59 Well, again, this week we're going to reveal
7:01 a lot more about what's going on in Ohio.
7:03 We'll talk about one landlord who owned buildings with 300
7:07 different Medicaid companies that billed the federal government $250 million.
7:12 Dollars.
7:14 I mean, this kind of fraud has consequences.
7:17 And again, it is a feature, not a bug.
7:18 You'd imagine that there would be Democrats out
7:20 there who are upset with this kind of fraud.
7:22 After all, if you're an advocate for a government program,
7:24 you should want every dollar of that taxpayer money
7:27 to go to someone who deserves the taxpayer money.
7:31 But that's not what's happening.
7:31 Democrats are irritated by the fact that people are uncovering this stuff.
7:36 Now, the good news is Ohio is Republican governed.
7:38 Mike DeWine is the governor of Ohio.
7:40 Vivek Ramaswamy is very likely to be the next governor of Ohio.
7:43 And President Trump is on top of this and Vice
7:45 President Vance is heading up the waste, fraud, and abuse policing here.
7:49 So, we are very hopeful that there will be action here, and that's what we need.
7:52 That's what we need.
7:53 We need you to get involved.
7:54 Share that story from dailywire.com.
7:57 It's not paywalled.
7:58 We need to help spread the word and hold
8:00 people who are defrauding the American people to account.
8:02 We need government hearings.
8:04 We need prosecutions.
8:05 We need doors kicked down.
8:07 We need investigations.
8:09 And again, Republican governors, federal officials need to fix this.
8:13 That is what we are working on.
8:14 That is what we are calling for.
8:15 Because true change can be effectuated here by criminal justice.
8:19 And this is a unique time to do it.
8:20 The Trump administration has made policing waste, fraud, and abuse possible.
8:24 This was not going to happen under Democrats.
8:26 It can happen under Republicans,
8:27 but people need to know about the story and they need to get that out there.
8:30 So, head on over to dailywire.com and help spread that story
8:34 and be part of the movement that ends welfare fraud in the country.
8:38 Coming up, Spirit Airlines is now a ghost.
8:41 And guess what?
8:41 People are blaming capitalism rather than government.
8:43 They're getting it wrong.
8:44 Plus, Tucker Carlson does a very,
8:46 very long interview with The New York Times and um there's something wrong.
8:51 We'll get to it.
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10:01 All right.
10:01 Meanwhile, on the economic front, one of the most astonishing features
10:06 of of the way that the left views economics is
10:08 they block the free markets from working and then
10:10 they blame the free markets when something fails.
10:13 So, over the weekend, Spirit Airlines finally gave up the ghost.
10:19 Spirit had entered bankruptcy in August of last
10:23 year for the second time in a year.
10:25 And its executives, according to the Wall Street Journal,
10:27 developed a game plan dubbed Plan Charlie in case
10:29 the company's fortunes could not be turned around.
10:33 So, they tried to negotiate with the federal government.
10:35 They were hoping for a $500 million government bailout
10:38 to the tune of 90% government ownership in Spirit Airlines.
10:42 Okay, I'm just telling you, you know what I don't need to own,
10:44 you don't you don't need to own, you know,
10:45 what taxpayers don't need to own Spirit Airlines.
10:48 That is not the way that failing companies should be bailed out.
10:51 In fact, when companies fail, when they are falling down,
10:53 what should happen is that they find another private buyer.
10:56 They either go bankrupt, they run it into the ground,
10:58 or they merge, or they seek outside funding because, again,
11:02 when it comes to the risk-taking that is necessary in private industry,
11:07 the next step of failure is you have to go
11:09 out and you have to demonstrate a turnaround plan.
11:12 You have to show somebody else that you are willing to make serious changes.
11:16 And then you can bring in new capital, or maybe you can merge.
11:18 The problem, of course,
11:19 is Democrats are responsible for the death of Spirit Airlines
11:23 because Spirit Airlines tried to merge with JetBlue last year,
11:28 and Democrats stopped it.
11:30 Now, Spirit is trying to blame the jet fuel prices for its bankruptcy.
11:36 They're trying to declare that the war
11:37 in Iran is what what the real problem was,
11:39 but that wasn't the real problem because again,
11:41 the other airline companies are not going bankrupt right now.
11:44 Spirit was running a non-solid footing.
11:47 Again, Spirit was famous for very very cheap airline fares.
11:52 Yep.
11:52 But now, what what's happened is
11:53 competition has actually made airline travel better.
11:56 I know, there are a lot of people right now who are ripping on the airlines.
11:58 I get it.
11:59 I travel a lot.
12:00 I traveled coach out to LA yesterday.
12:04 And I got to say, it wasn't the best.
12:06 You know, I was flying JetBlue, but one thing that's happened,
12:09 for example, is JetBlue provides free internet.
12:11 So, it used to be, and still is on some of the airlines,
12:14 that they make you pay for the internet.
12:16 And now, it seems that more and more
12:17 airliners are going to move toward the free model.
12:20 Competition, and more competition in this area, leads to better results.
12:23 Well, JetBlue was trying to buy Spirit.
12:25 They're trying to merge with Spirit.
12:27 That was blocked by Democrats because Democrats have a theory,
12:30 and that theory is if business gets bigger, that is inherently bad.
12:34 So, there are two theories of the antitrust.
12:36 Okay, antitrust is the idea that you can't have a monopoly
12:39 dominating a market cuz then it can set prices wherever it wants.
12:42 So, if you had a grocery store monopoly in your neighborhood, theoretically,
12:45 they could set the price twice what it normally
12:47 would be because you don't have any other choices.
12:50 Now, true monopoly is incredibly rare in the market
12:53 because if the prices tend to skyrocket,
12:55 somebody else wants to get in on that action.
12:57 They open up a grocery store across the street.
13:00 Typically, true monopoly requires government intervention
13:03 on behalf of the of the monopoly, but there's a second theory of the antitrust
13:07 that is not about the consumer at all.
13:09 The first theory of antitrust says,
13:11 you should only police for monopoly when the consumer is harmed.
13:16 And then there's a second theory of the antitrust,
13:18 the Democrat theory, which is if something is big, it is bad.
13:21 That is the theory pursued by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
13:23 So, Elizabeth Warren is now blaming President Trump for Spirit's bankruptcy.
13:28 She put out a tweet saying, "Spiking fuel prices from Trump's war was the nail
13:31 in the coffin for twice bankrupted Spirit Airline.
13:34 For what it's worth, JetBlue merger failed because a judge appointed
13:37 by Ronald Reagan said the deal was illegal.
13:39 Republicans are desperate to shift blame from higher
13:41 costs hitting families." But that's not true.
13:43 And the reality is that there was a block
13:45 by the Biden administration on the merger between JetBlue and Spirit.
13:51 In fact, here she was tweeting back in March
13:54 of 2024 triumphantly that the JetBlue Spirit merger had been ended.
13:59 Quote, "I've warned for months that a JetBlue Spirit Airlines
14:02 merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares."
14:05 The Justice Department and the Department of Transportation were right
14:08 to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation.
14:11 This is a Biden win for flyers.
14:13 So, do you feel like you're winning now?
14:15 There are fewer flights available.
14:16 Do you feel like you're winning?
14:18 By the way, the ex-Secretary of Transportation,
14:20 a man who really, really loves choo-choo trains, Pete Buttigieg,
14:25 who for some reason is considered an elite
14:26 Democratic contender for the presidency after legitimately
14:30 running the trail trains off the rails during
14:32 his tenure at at the Department of Transportation.
14:34 Here is Pete Buttigieg in March 2024 talking about
14:38 why they blocked the merger that would have saved Spirit.
14:41 Our department, the Department of Transportation,
14:43 has generally not gotten involved in these merger cases,
14:48 uh but that's changing today.
14:50 It it is so important to make sure that passengers have choices,
14:54 uh that they have access to low fares, that they have access to competition.
14:59 And yet, we've seen less and less and less of that competition over the years.
15:05 Okay, again, the lack of competition is not
15:08 going to be alleviated by things going bankrupt.
15:12 Ridiculous.
15:14 Now, again, th- this is the Democrats' stick.
15:16 The Democrats' stick always and forever is government gets involved in a thing,
15:20 government makes the thing worse, blame capitalism.
15:23 And for people who don't understand
15:25 free markets and don't understand capitalism,
15:27 that's always an easy pitch because we live in a very, very prosperous time.
15:31 We are richer than any human beings in the history of of mankind.
15:35 And so we tend to think that the natural state of things is being rich.
15:39 Again, if you took a person from 1800
15:41 and dropped them into modern American society,
15:43 they would not know what is going on.
15:45 They would think that they dropped into materialist heaven.
15:48 Because you can get anything you want
15:50 at the press of a button delivered to your door
15:52 with a magic device you hold in your hand
15:55 and that thing was sourced from 70 different countries.
15:57 And you can do it affordably.
15:59 I know people talk about affordability and again,
16:01 affordability is a malleable term because
16:04 no one ever considers anything truly affordable, but let's just put it this way.
16:08 Back in 1800, an hour of candle light
16:11 might have cost you several hours of work during
16:13 the day because you had to go get wax or you had to go get whale oil.
16:17 Okay, today, electricity is free.
16:18 You flick on a light and it just stays
16:20 on all day and you don't even think about it.
16:23 Okay, because capitalism makes things better and it makes things cheaper.
16:26 But also because of that, we tend to not understand how capitalism works.
16:30 So, when something fails, we blame {quote} the system.
16:34 But we never allow the system, meaning free markets, credit for the success.
16:38 You want to know why it is cheap to fly coast to coast and it is,
16:42 by the way, comparatively.
16:44 Look at the percentage of income people had to spend on an air ticket in 1960
16:49 versus the percentage of income that you have to spend on an air ticket today.
16:52 Way, way, way, way lower.
16:54 Okay, why?
16:55 Because of competition.
16:56 Why?
16:56 Because of innovation.
16:57 But if a company goes bankrupt, that must be the evil of capitalism.
17:01 Okay, so, the reason that we have to argue
17:03 in favor of capitalism is because if capitalism dies, America dies.
17:07 We lose.
17:08 We lose to our competitors.
17:09 Also, because capitalism is in fact moral.
17:12 And one of the things that I've been
17:14 railing against in the conservative movement for a long
17:16 time is this idea that capitalism and free
17:19 markets can only be defended on a utilitarian basis.
17:23 That free markets and capitalism are only good because of their products.
17:28 And the problem with that argument it's true.
17:30 It's true that capitalism does make things better and it
17:32 does make things cheaper and people innovate and they invent.
17:35 That's all true.
17:35 But, if you don't defend capitalism and free markets on a moral basis,
17:41 you leave room for true grifters and demagogues ranging
17:45 from Tucker Carlson to Bernie Sanders to suggest that true
17:48 morality would be ditching the free markets in favor
17:52 of a centralized governmental system that is fairer in some way.
17:57 See, the true Marxist appeal the appeal of Marxism was
17:59 never that Marxism was going to make life better for people.
18:02 It was that it was going to change men's souls.
18:04 That was always the religious appeal of the Marxist philosophy.
18:07 It is not that you were going to have better stuff cheaper.
18:11 That you were going to be more prosperous.
18:12 That may have been Marx's original theory,
18:14 but it was absolutely wrong and clearly wrong.
18:18 Okay, but undergirding that theory was a different theory.
18:21 That true justice for man springs from the idea
18:24 that a centralized government can provide cosmic justice.
18:27 That free markets are somehow inherently unfair.
18:31 That they are immoral.
18:32 Not that they're not productive, that they are immoral.
18:34 Okay, so you have to make a moral defense of free markets.
18:37 So, here's the moral defense of free
18:38 markets that conservatives should be making.
18:40 First, man is made in the image of God.
18:43 We're all made in the image of God.
18:44 That means we are creative, choosing people with autonomy and power.
18:49 And that means that we have a right
18:50 to the products of our own labor because we are individuals.
18:53 So, if we make something, we own that thing.
18:57 Free markets are rooted in that simple recognition.
18:59 If I own my property, I ought to be able to trade it,
19:02 I ought to be able to dispense with it,
19:04 I ought to be able to invest it as I see fit so
19:06 long as my decisions are not infringing upon the equal rights of other people.
19:10 And finally, free markets are just.
19:12 They are.
19:13 I understand there are a lot of people who believe that free markets
19:16 are unjust cuz some people prosper and some people don't in the same measure.
19:20 But that is a misinterpretation of the concept of justice.
19:23 Justice is not mean that we all have the same result.
19:25 Justice is the proposition, as Aristotle suggested,
19:28 that equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.
19:32 You might be mad at God or nature for not
19:34 making the world the way that you would want it.
19:36 But that's not justice.
19:38 It's arrogance and stupidity and childishness.
19:40 If you're just mad because some people are better at things than you are.
19:44 That's the way the world works.
19:45 LeBron James is better at basketball than I am.
19:47 I am better at talking on camera than LeBron James.
19:49 That's just the way the world is.
19:51 That is a natural state of the world.
19:54 We are all provided equal rights by God,
19:56 but that doesn't mean we all have equal qualities.
19:59 And there is no way for a centralized
20:00 government to rectify that absent some sort
20:03 of Kurt Vonnegut Harrison Bergeron burdening the people
20:07 who actually achieve in order to achieve justice.
20:11 Thomas Sowell points out that justice is
20:13 usually considered a process, not an outcome.
20:15 That's why we have a justice system, for example.
20:18 We're not God that we should just declare
20:20 there should be equality or there should be justice.
20:23 There is a universe, there's a world of real fact,
20:26 and we have to determine whether we are making things worse
20:29 or better when we make a specific change in that system.
20:33 And by the way, free markets actually do promote true
20:35 freedom because I get to value my labor however I choose.
20:38 That's what the pricing system is.
20:40 The pricing system is an aggregation of what I think something is worth and what
20:43 you think something is worth and what
20:45 we all collectively think things are worth.
20:48 Free markets prize diversity in a very, very serious sense.
20:51 They take account of every individual's needs and wants and desires.
20:55 And then they allow for that diversity
20:56 of opinion to emerge on the value of products, goods, and services.
20:59 So, why am I explaining all of this?
21:00 Because what we are watching right now,
21:01 and Spirit Airlines is a great example of this, what
21:03 we are watching right now is an anti-capitalist revolution.
21:08 All right, coming up,
21:08 Tucker Carlson does an entire interview with the New York Times in which it
21:11 becomes clear that he and Hasan they're
21:13 basically the same thing except that Tucker,
21:16 you know, does his show out of a cabin and Hasan does his show
21:18 from Cardi A, but other than that, they they say kind of the same thing.
21:21 First, there's been a lot of talk lately about how
21:23 AI is going to make the world a better place.
21:25 The answer is that's true, probably, but the real question is better for whom?
21:29 Well, it's better for your insurance company,
21:31 which now has the ability to scrape your data and figure out exactly
21:33 how to raise your premiums based on what you've been searching for on WebMD.
21:37 Maybe better for the HR department that can
21:39 quietly filter candidates based on browsing history.
21:41 Probably better for political campaigns that can target you
21:44 based on your personality profile, what you do online.
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22:52 Okay.
22:53 A lot of people have asked over the course of the last several years cuz I've
22:55 been highly critical of Tucker Carlson when I
22:58 I first noticed that Tucker Carlson was going wrong.
23:02 Okay, so Tucker Carlson he um I will say
23:07 that that Tucker Carlson's dislike of capitalism was the first clue.
23:11 The reason I'm bringing this up is because Tucker did a very,
23:14 very long interview with the New York Times over the weekend.
23:17 That has struck a lot of conservatives as odd.
23:19 Didn't strike me as odd because of course I've
23:21 been watching what Tucker's been doing for a while.
23:23 And what he's representative of is a demagogic right that despises free markets
23:28 and meritocracy and believes there need to be
23:30 special carve out rights for particular groups.
23:32 It is the mirror of the grievance party left.
23:35 It's why I have suggested that the horseshoe right
23:38 and the left are basically on the same page.
23:39 They just have different groups they're trying to benefit.
23:42 That essentially their argument is the same.
23:44 American society is a big conspiracy, free markets a gigantic conspiracy,
23:48 constitutional government a gigantic conspiracy that must be broken through.
23:52 There must be a revision of how we
23:54 think about the role of government in our lives.
23:57 And free markets have to be brought to heel.
23:59 The meritocracy is a lie and your suffering
24:01 in your life that's the fault of these vague
24:03 systems and there's a conspiratorial elite who are
24:06 in charge of those systems trying to harm you.
24:09 Now a lot of people are saying that right and they are saying that left.
24:12 But the clues were all there.
24:14 The clues are all there.
24:16 So back in 2018, this is the moment where I
24:19 I first noticed that the Tucker was off the rails.
24:21 So back in 2018 now eight years ago I interviewed Tucker Carlson.
24:26 This is a younger, more innocent Ben Shapiro interviewing Tucker Carlson.
24:30 And uh Tucker was still on Fox at the time and he had written
24:32 a book in which he really ripped on capitalism in some pretty significant ways.
24:37 In this interview by the way he would endorse
24:38 the economic proposals of of say Bernie Sanders openly.
24:42 And I asked him about self-driving cars.
24:47 And one of the things that he said
24:48 about self-driving cars is that he would ban them.
24:50 He said he would ban them because it would save trucker jobs in in the Midwest.
24:56 Okay, which again is a a Luddite perspective.
24:58 The reality is self-driving cars make things
25:01 cheaper for people all over the United States.
25:03 If transportation costs go down, guess what else goes down?
25:05 Your costs.
25:06 Productivity decreases costs because it increases supply.
25:10 Okay, so I asked him in this interview about banning self-driving cars,
25:15 and he said he would.
25:16 But this was the part that really struck me.
25:19 Look, capitalism is the best economic system I can
25:22 think of, I think that anyone's ever thought of.
25:25 That doesn't mean that it's a religion and everything about it is good.
25:28 There's no Nicene Creed of capitalism that I have to buy into.
25:32 What I care about is living in a country where,
25:35 you know, decent people can live happy lives actually.
25:38 And so no, I would say immediately no, are you joking?
25:41 And I maybe would make up some pretext for public consumption like,
25:44 oh, they're dangerous.
25:45 The technology's not quite finished.
25:46 No, no.
25:47 But the truth would be I don't want to put 10 million men out of work because
25:52 you're going to have 10 million dead families
25:54 and the cascading effect from that will wreck your country.
25:56 And now, you'll notice that Tucker even then was
25:59 doing this game where he would say, I love capitalism.
26:00 Capitalism is wonderful.
26:02 I just think that capitalism isn't isn't something we have to adhere
26:05 to, it's something that we can ditch on behalf of the greater good.
26:08 Okay, when the when the exception eats the rule, you don't have a rule.
26:13 If the idea is that the greater good trumps the individual rights of the market,
26:17 there's no limit on that.
26:18 You can use that argument for virtually anything.
26:21 For virtually anything.
26:22 Okay, so this was reflected in Tucker's interview with the New York Times.
26:30 So, Tucker was asked if capitalism is evil.
26:34 And here's what Tucker Carlson had to say about whether capitalism was evil.
26:37 He said this to the New York Times.
26:40 The current system um and I don't know what you would call our economic system.
26:45 Um and I'm often told it's free market capitalism.
26:48 It doesn't bear any resemblance to what I thought free market capitalism was.
26:52 I not sure the name is important except as a way
26:57 to mislead and bully people into being quiet about it.
27:00 But any economic system in which, you know,
27:03 the overwhelming majority of the rewards go
27:07 to an ever shrinking number of people or or proportion of people is
27:13 a doomed system because it makes people revolutionary.
27:15 I saw this in Venezuela,
27:16 which I visited as a child and it was a prosperous kind of first world country,
27:20 beautiful country actually.
27:22 [clears throat] Okay, so the idea first of all that Venezuela was
27:26 a model of capitalism until Hugo Chavez came around is ridiculous.
27:30 They had serious corruption problems in Venezuela well before Hugo Chavez.
27:34 But again, he's not defending capitalism.
27:35 He is ripping capitalism in precisely
27:37 the same terms that leftists rip capitalism.
27:41 And Tucker Carlson is not in any way on the right at this point.
27:45 I mean, here is Hasan with the folks
27:48 at Triggernometry basically saying the same thing.
27:49 That capitalism will inevitably lead to authoritarianism.
27:54 My fear is that that is where capitalism inevitably leads.
28:01 Why?
28:00 If left unaddressed because capitalism is always going to deteriorate.
28:05 It's slowly going to improve material conditions as opposed to feudalism.
28:09 So far better system for sure.
28:10 It's far better than monarchies, right?
28:12 I agree.
28:13 Um but there will come a point where it
28:15 outlives its usefulness and those who own the capital,
28:20 the owners of capital will have to make a decision.
28:23 There's too much instability, there's too much chaos.
28:25 We need to restore order.
28:29 Okay, so again, Tucker Carlson and Hasan saying the exact same thing.
28:34 And here was Tucker Carlson again in this interview with the New York Times
28:37 saying that what we are watching right
28:39 now is a total destruction of economic opportunity.
28:41 Again, this is demagoguery at the highest level.
28:44 This is true demagoguery.
28:45 We have an unemployment rate in this country of under 5%.
28:49 The notion that nobody can get a job is a lie.
28:51 It is a lie that is fostered by people
28:53 who are attempting to destroy free market systems.
28:57 Here is Tucker Carlson again.
28:59 He and Hasan believe the same things about these issues.
29:03 Here he was.
29:06 I had dinner the other night with a bunch of kids from Stanford, really smart.
29:09 They're at Stanford.
29:11 And one of them said, "Oh yeah,
29:12 his best friend just graduated with a degree in computer science last year has
29:15 not been able to find a job." Stanford computer science can't find a job.
29:19 So that's like a window into the total destruction
29:23 of the economic opportunity for young people and the what
29:26 looks to me as a non-economist like the true
29:29 hoarding of capital by a tiny group of people.
29:32 It looks like a very lopsided and unfair
29:35 economic system that is guaranteed to radicalize young people.
29:40 And not just young people, but especially young people.
29:45 Okay, so again, this idea that he cites one Stanford student to say
29:49 that there's a hoarding of capital at the top levels is just Marxist claptrap.
29:54 Okay, yes, AI means that there are obviously transitions in the job market.
29:58 But this idea that this is therefore somehow to be laid at the feet
30:02 of free market capitalism itself what you
30:04 really need is government interventionism, it's insanity.
30:09 Again, Hasan says the exact same thing.
30:11 Here he was saying that profit seekers criticize him, right?
30:15 It's the profit seekers, the profiteers,
30:17 the people who are who are, you know, hoarding the capital.
30:19 And this is just pure Marxist language from Tucker,
30:22 which is why he and Hasan are again holding hands here.
30:27 I am the danger.
30:28 We are the danger and I need them to understand this.
30:32 Uh we're dangerous to the corporate bottom line.
30:34 We're dangerous to profit seekers and that's the only thing
30:38 that our politicians and many in the media care about right now.
30:41 So in some respects, they are correct.
30:43 Uh the danger is uh what might happen
30:46 to to profit seekers who want to paywall healthcare.
30:50 And I don't mean like uh you know,
30:51 divine retribution or or punishment of any sort.
30:54 I mean the worst punishment of all, uh where they can no longer uh
30:59 they can no longer justify multi-million dollar salaries.
31:02 Um I am a danger to those who seek profit
31:05 and put the interests of profit over the interests of people.
31:08 And that's precisely the reason why they attack people like myself.
31:14 And the interests of profit over the interests of people.
31:15 This is the same thing that Tucker is saying.
31:17 Here is Tucker in this New York Times interview
31:18 saying that banks have an incentive to foment conflicts.
31:22 This is conspiratorial horse I mean, truly,
31:24 this idea that the folks at Citibank are
31:26 sitting there being like, "Yes, let's do war.
31:29 Let's do war." Banks have zero incentive to foment conflict.
31:34 In fact, banks lose money typically during wars
31:38 because it turns out that the government gets very,
31:40 very into the business of how banks run and then tries to seize their capital.
31:44 Anyway, here is Tucker.
31:47 For most Americans, people who are born here, black, white, Hispanic,
31:51 Asian, doesn't matter, of any race, the real concerns are economic.
31:54 And I do think that certain forces, the banks, people loaning the money,
32:02 have a real incentive to foment
32:06 dissent within the population against each other.
32:08 Fight amongst yourselves,
32:09 while we can continue you 25% interest on your credit card.
32:14 I mean, again, this is it's indistinguishable from a sand piper.
32:16 The banks have an interest in what?
32:18 The BLM riots?
32:20 The banks have an interest in destruction of property?
32:22 What the hell is he talking about?
32:24 Again, the left and the right here are
32:25 on the same page because in the end, what they hate, what they cannot stand,
32:29 is the idea of a free market system that rests on individual freedom.
32:32 They want to restructure it in line with their own preferences.
32:36 I mean, Bernie Sanders' view on AI is
32:39 basically the same as Tucker Carlson's view on AI,
32:41 which is the same thing by the way as the Chinese view
32:44 on AI because China is trying to destroy us on the AI front.
32:47 They're trying to outcompete us.
32:48 Bernie Sanders, over the past couple of weeks,
32:51 hosted a panel with literal members
32:53 of Chinese universities on AI safety and governance.
32:57 And at that panel, he said, quote, "The richest,
32:59 most powerful people in the world are
33:01 now building a bullet train with no brakes.
33:03 They acknowledge they don't have the stunts or the looks.
33:05 They don't know where it's headed.
33:08 We need to cooperate.
33:08 We need dialogue." Again,
33:10 the reason that Bernie and all the rest of these characters are ripping
33:15 on AI is not because they have
33:17 some sort of principled stand against AI excesses.
33:20 I think we all agree that AI is scary
33:23 because we don't know quite what to make of it.
33:24 That is not the same thing as what Bernie is doing,
33:27 which is literally aligning with the Chinese government on this matter.
33:33 And here is Bernie on the AI moratorium.
33:37 If scientists who are Nobel Prize winners,
33:41 guys who have gotten the Turing Award,
33:43 which is the major award given to people in computer science,
33:46 if they say to you that humanity is in danger,
33:51 do you think you might want to do something about it?
33:53 Or am I missing something?
33:54 You tell me.
33:55 So, no, I that it's the percentages are also someone's Oh,
33:59 there's only a 10% chance humanity is destroyed.
34:01 I said, "Well, I don't like those odds." Only a 10% chance?
34:05 [laughter] Come on.
34:06 I'm I know.
34:09 And the anti-capitalists over at Pod Save America,
34:11 and Bernie Sanders, and Tucker all on the same page.
34:13 And where does this end up?
34:14 This ends up with the grievance party.
34:15 Like a true grievance party, a third party that is rooted in grievance.
34:19 Here is Tucker Carlson in his interview with the New
34:21 York Times saying that he wants a new party, basically.
34:25 A new party that is isolationist on foreign policy,
34:29 that is restrictionist on immigration,
34:30 and that is interventionist in the economy.
34:32 You might call it a national socialist party.
34:34 Here is Tucker Carlson.
34:37 You know, you can't just put a new coat of paint
34:39 or fresh drywall on these structures because they are ridden with rot.
34:44 Okay?
34:45 So, I would like to see them repaired.
34:47 That would be the simplest solution.
34:49 I don't think that's likely to happen.
34:50 So, of course, I would be thrilled to to see
34:55 the rise of a party that represented the majority of Americans.
34:59 Again, Hassan said the same exact thing.
35:01 Here he was with former Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush of BLM
35:05 fame saying they're not going to vote for the Democrats.
35:07 Again, it's it's all the same thing.
35:08 It's all the same thing.
35:09 It's an insurgent effort to overthrow American meritocracy.
35:13 That's all it is.
35:15 Here we go.
35:17 For far too long, we've been told, "You have to vote for harm reduction.
35:21 We all know the Republicans are corrupt.
35:24 We all know that they're monsters.
35:26 They're racist.
35:26 They traffic in hatred." But, we are here to say,
35:31 "We are no longer going to vote for do-nothing Democrats, EITHER.
35:35 WE'RE VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS with a purpose." [cheering]
35:42 Now again, all of this is rooted in a broader conspiracy theory.
35:45 Because here's the thing.
35:46 Most Americans understand, because they are not ungrateful,
35:50 that America is a unique and incredible place.
35:52 That our free markets make us awesome.
35:54 That our Constitution means we have freedoms no one else on Earth has.
35:57 That the greatest privilege in life is to be born in America.
36:00 It's an unbelievable privilege.
36:02 And so, you have to come up
36:03 with a conspiracy theory that suggests actually you've been gaslit.
36:07 Actually, you are a victim of false consciousness.
36:09 Actually, the institutions have been brainwashing
36:11 you and are routinely betraying you.
36:14 And Tucker and Hassan they're on the same team here.
36:17 This is why during this New York Times interview, it's insane, by the way.
36:20 Tucker Carlson, who apparently pretends that he's
36:23 a friend to TPUSA and Erica Kirk, is literally out there sowing doubts about
36:27 the FBI's investigation into Charlie Kirk's murder.
36:32 This is not the activity of a friend.
36:33 This is an activity of a leech.
36:35 Here is Tucker Carlson.
36:38 My concern more broadly is about the investigation into Charlie's murder,
36:43 which was short-circuited by the FBI, and I'd like to know why.
36:47 And I I don't care to be screamed at for asking that question.
36:51 It's a legitimate question, and we know that.
36:53 Um I know that for a bunch of reasons,
36:55 but uh the public knows it because Joe Kent said it out loud and explained it.
37:01 He's the head of the National Counterterrorism Center.
37:02 He's in Odenai, and he was told by the FBI that he could not investigate it.
37:08 And as a friend of Charlie's,
37:11 I'm not going to be intimidated into saying the following,
37:14 which is on what grounds would you do that?
37:16 I'm not saying the guy who's been arrested didn't pull the trigger.
37:20 I'm not There's been no trial.
37:21 was obviously handed over by his father.
37:24 Um Do we know that?
37:25 I don't know what I know, because there hasn't been a trial yet.
37:29 I don't know what I know.
37:30 I don't know what I know.
37:30 This This ridiculous game.
37:32 I'm not going to go into the tremendous evil
37:34 of undermining an ongoing prosecution into the murder of Charlie Kirk,
37:37 which actually is an evil thing to do.
37:39 I'm just going to point out the point of what Tucker is doing,
37:41 which of course is to sow doubt in American institutions,
37:43 even the ones that are currently run by Tucker's supposed erstwhile allies.
37:47 It's all part of a broader conspiracy theory
37:49 that the institutions of America are lying to you.
37:52 They're aimed at destroying you.
37:55 Again, he and the Hasan Piker's of the world are holding hands.
37:58 America is inherently corrupt.
37:59 America's systems are inherently evil.
38:01 America's systems need to be torn to the ground.
38:03 Here's Hasan saying the same thing from a different angle.
38:08 America is in its foundation a white supremacist country.
38:12 This is very frustrating for Republicans to hear.
38:14 This is even frustrating for liberals to hear sometimes,
38:16 but it's just the truth.
38:19 Okay.
38:20 And then you get to where it's very clear everybody's holding hands.
38:23 So, if you have a conspiracy theory about the free markets
38:26 that truly they're the invention of a corrupt group of people.
38:30 If your belief is that America's systems are inherently evil,
38:33 they lie to you on behalf of somebody else.
38:36 And then, you look around and say, "Who's successful?
38:39 Who Who are the beneficiaries of this system?" This is
38:42 how you end up with Tucker Carlson and Hasan
38:45 and all the rest of the people trafficking
38:48 in anti-Israel bizarre anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in the same group.
38:53 That is always the outcome of this conspiratorial worldview.
38:56 It is not a feature.
38:57 It is not a bug, it is a feature.
38:58 It is a thing that unify.
39:00 It is the glue that holds everybody together.
39:03 Truly holds everybody together.
39:05 And this is not speculative, right?
39:06 Mehdi Hasan, who is a wild anti-American propagandist,
39:10 he's out there saying that his relatives love Tucker Carlson now.
39:13 I can't imagine why.
39:15 Would that be because Tucker Carlson is upholding
39:17 the virtue of Sharia law in cities around the world?
39:19 Or would it be because he's doing propaganda on behalf of Islam's view of Jesus?
39:24 Or is it because he's doing propaganda
39:26 against Israel every single day of the week?
39:28 Or is it because he is spreading conspiracy theories about
39:31 how nefarious Zionists are in control of the American government?
39:35 Here's Mehdi Hasan, again,
39:36 one of the more despicable people in American public commentary.
39:40 You know, I talk about people who, um, you know,
39:41 are immigrants to the United States taking advantage of the system.
39:44 Here he is praising Tucker Carlson.
39:47 For the people watching at home, um,
39:50 these days Tucker Carlson has a big fan base amongst
39:52 the anti-war left who see him as saying the right stuff,
39:55 trying to stop Trump from illegal wars in Iran.
39:57 And amongst a lot of Muslims and Arab Americans
40:00 who see him now as this great champion of Palestine.
40:02 Uh, wherever I go, literally, Hasan, wherever I go in this country,
40:05 I do a lot of live events, I I do a lot of public events,
40:08 people come up to me What are you going to talk to Carlson?
40:10 When are you going to do an event with Tucker Carlson?
40:11 Why don't you do a collab with Tucker Carlson?
40:13 We love Tucker Carlson.
40:13 Wherever I go, people ask me more about Tucker Carlson,
40:16 even in my own family, than they ask me about my wife and kids.
40:19 Meanwhile, Cenk Uygur is out there also standing for Tucker Carlson.
40:23 Quote, "If your house is on fire and someone comes with a hose,
40:26 you don't ask him about what his policy is on the carried interest loophole,
40:29 you thank him for the help.
40:30 If you hadn't noticed,
40:31 Israel lit our house on fire." And the alliance is very strong and it
40:35 is based again on this idea that somehow a nefarious coterie of outside people,
40:39 Jews, are running the country.
40:42 And here is Tucker Carlson claiming that President Trump is being
40:44 held hostage by Netanyahu and his advocates in the United States,
40:48 who presumably would be pro-Israel Jews and Christian Zionists,
40:50 the people he says he despises most.
40:52 Here he was talking to the New York Times in terms that are
40:54 quite familiar to every anti-Semite in the right wing and on the left.
41:00 This was not a normal decision-making process
41:02 and my strong impression was that Trump
41:05 was more a hostage than than a than a sovereign decision-maker in this.
41:10 Well, so tell me what you're getting at when
41:11 you say the President of the United States,
41:13 the most powerful country in the world, had no choice.
41:16 I don't know what I'm getting at.
41:16 I'm just telling you what I observed.
41:18 He seemed I And that's kind of the question and I'm What I'm really
41:22 fascinated by is the lack of curiosity
41:24 on display into how exactly this happened.
41:27 What are the mechanisms by which a guy who's supposedly sovereign,
41:30 in charge, granted this authority by voters, tens of millions of them,
41:35 can't make a decision in the country's interest or even in his own interest.
41:40 He knew, and I know he knew because I talked to him about it directly,
41:43 that the consequences, potential consequences,
41:46 were profound and profoundly bad, the end of his presidency to start,
41:51 which it I think it has proven to be.
41:52 He knew that.
41:56 I don't even know what I knew.
41:56 I don't even know what I'm saying.
41:57 I don't even know what I'm questioning.
41:59 I'm just asking why people aren't asking the same
42:00 questions I'm asking when there's no evidence of the questions.
42:03 Like is it Okay, this again is a right-left uniting issue.
42:08 At least on the fringes.
42:10 Now, the mainstream of the Democratic Party has been doing the same thing.
42:12 They've also been claiming that Trump was somehow
42:13 argued into the war by the nefarious Jews.
42:16 Now, President Trump, I've noticed, is kind of a headstrong character.
42:19 I've noticed he makes a lot of his own decisions.
42:21 But according to Tucker Carlson and the left,
42:23 the only way this could have happened is if somebody argued it Trump into it,
42:26 and those people probably had suspiciously evil motives.
42:31 He entered a war, got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu.
42:36 Let's be clear about that.
42:38 Because people are offended that Netanyahu's bragging that J.D.
42:42 Vance, the vice president, is reporting to him.
42:45 How about reporting to the United States Congress?
42:47 I mean, this administration has insulted Congress.
42:50 They're more concerned with reporting to people like
42:54 Netanyahu than they are to the American people.
42:56 What are our our country leaders doing?
42:58 They're following Netanyahu.
43:00 The timing of this war was dictated by Bibi Netanyahu.
43:07 But we should never, ever be bullied
43:10 as maybe President Trump was by any other world leader.
43:15 Just ridiculous.
43:16 And by the way, Tucker goes further than that.
43:18 He says that Israel decides the future of the American economy
43:20 and American service members in this interview with the New York Times.
43:25 Israel has that power in our Congress not because we have so many Jews.
43:30 I don't know how many Jews live in the United States,
43:31 fewer than 10 million, I think.
43:33 But because we have tens
43:34 of millions of evangelical Christians who unquestionably
43:38 support Israel because they believe it's their theological duty to do so.
43:42 So, on this question hangs the future of the American
43:46 economy and the lives of American service members.
43:51 The idea that the American economy hinges on the future of Israel is bizarre.
43:56 It's bizarre.
43:57 And but of course, Tucker also thinks that Citibank
43:59 is a bigger threat to the United States than Hamas.
44:01 So, I mean, here we go.
44:05 I'm against the idea that Hezbollah and Hamas are at the center
44:08 of our domestic conversation like they're the big problems we face.
44:10 They're not.
44:12 Like they're not a bigger problem than like the behavior of Citibank.
44:14 I'm sorry.
44:15 Credit card debt is a much bigger problem than Hezbollah will ever be.
44:18 So, stop with this.
44:19 Stop with the brainwashing.
44:21 This is bonkers.
44:22 I live here.
44:23 I'm almost 57.
44:24 I've lived here a long time.
44:25 Hamas and Hezbollah, well, they're not getting my endorsement,
44:29 are not relevant to the experience of most Americans.
44:34 Citibank is a bigger threat to Americans than Hamas or Hezbollah.
44:38 I mean, first of all,
44:39 we should start with the question of whether Citibank is actually
44:41 a threat to Americans because it turns out tens of millions
44:44 of Americans actually bank at Citibank and they could not
44:47 take out a credit card from Citibank if they so chose.
44:50 They could do that.
44:51 That doesn't seem Again,
44:52 what Tucker is doing here is suggesting that you are being distracted
44:55 from the evils of American capitalism by foreign
44:58 threats that don't actually exist on behalf,
45:00 presumably, of an nefarious coterie of people who are somehow gaming the system.
45:06 And this is this is left-wing agitprop.
45:07 That's all it is.
45:09 And then Tucker, of course, plays ignorant about everything.
45:11 It's It's the The final point here
45:13 is that he plays ignorant about literally everything.
45:15 So, The New York Times asks Tucker about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
45:19 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a conspiracy tract
45:23 that was written by the Russian secret police in the early 20th century.
45:27 It was trafficked around and became very popular
45:29 in anti-Semitic circles and it claimed that, essentially,
45:32 there were a group of Jews that got together
45:34 on Friday nights and basically decided to control the world.
45:36 It is the most famous anti-Semitic tract ever written.
45:38 Tucker's not a He knows totally what this is.
45:41 But, of course, Tucker claims he has no idea what it is.
45:43 This is always the game.
45:44 Tucker knows He knows a lot.
45:46 He knows He knows more than you.
45:47 He knows so What he knows He doesn't know much,
45:49 but what he knows, and it's always something that he doesn't actually know.
45:52 And then when something comes up that he actually does know,
45:54 his immediate response is, "I don't know anything about that.
45:56 I don't even know what you're talking about.
45:57 What What What is What is a protocol?
46:00 I don't even know." Here we go.
46:02 There is an entire [sighs] um anti-Semitic worldview that has been based
46:09 on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you know, that there is like this cabal
46:13 of powerful Jews that controls the world.
46:17 And you know, that book was written
46:18 in the early uh 20th century, but it you know,
46:21 helped the Nazis and it really has informed a lot
46:25 of the views of many people today that there is you know,
46:29 this very powerful sect of Jewish people
46:32 who want global war and global conflict.
46:35 People are genuinely concerned that it opens the door to this idea
46:41 that has been debunked and has been used in you know,
46:45 absolutely vicious ways to annihilate an entire people.
46:49 I'm not quite sure [snorts] what that means.
46:53 Um let me tell you my concerns.
46:56 My main concern is the destruction of the United States.
46:59 And that is in no way to minimize anyone else's concerns,
47:02 but I have a right to that concern and I will not have my own concerns hijacked.
47:08 I will not submit to being told what my concerns should be.
47:11 I'm an adult man who pays his taxes.
47:12 I have a right to come up with my own hierarchy of concern.
47:18 No one is telling him what his concerns should be.
47:20 He can have whatever concerns he wants.
47:22 It is indeed a free country.
47:23 The question is whether his concerns are justified,
47:25 whether they are based in evidence, or whether they are part of a broader
47:28 conspiracy theory about the evils of the United States.
47:31 By the way, he was asked about Nick Fuentes, of course,
47:33 and he said that Senator Ted Cruz is
47:35 more morally repulsive than the Nazi-standing Nick Fuentes.
47:39 This is This is This guy is supposedly a leader on the right.
47:42 All right.
47:45 Who do you think is more morally repulsive, Ted Cruz
47:49 Who do you think is more morally repulsive?
47:51 Ted Cruz.
47:53 Ted Cruz is a sitting US Senator who has
47:57 called for the killing of people who did nothing wrong.
48:01 Whole populations who advocated for this war.
48:04 Nick Fuentes is like a kid.
48:05 He's like 26 or 70.
48:07 He has no power except his words.
48:10 Here you have a public official who we pay,
48:14 who has actual power, who's voting for things, who's making policy decisions.
48:18 And those decisions would include,
48:20 in fact they are focused on the murder of people who did nothing wrong.
48:23 And yet no one thinks it's a big deal.
48:25 What Well, this is just totally fine.
48:27 I mean, if there's tape of Nick Fuentes saying we should kill
48:29 people because we hate their parents or it's okay to kill children.
48:34 I would love to see the tape cuz that's disgusting.
48:36 Is there a tape of Ted Cruz saying that?
48:38 Based on what the entire US Senate does every single day and no one notices.
48:42 And and Tucker's such a liar.
48:43 He In the end, he's just a liar.
48:45 He's a liar.
48:45 But because here's the thing, you have to believe in a gigantic lie about
48:48 the United States in order to propagate this crap.
48:51 You have to.
48:51 And when I say he's a liar, I mean that in the in the purest possible sense.
48:54 Here was Tucker Carlson literally denying he said
48:57 a thing that he is on tape say.
48:59 So, he was asked by this New York Times reporter
49:01 about that time he suggested that the president was the Antichrist.
49:04 And he says, "I never said that." And she plays him the tape.
49:06 And then he continues to pretend he never said it.
49:08 It's It's unbelievable.
49:11 But I ask because, you know,
49:13 you've been talking on your show about whether Trump is the Antichrist.
49:16 I have not said that.
49:17 On your show the day after Easter, you noted he did not put his hand
49:21 on the Bible during his swearing in ceremony as president.
49:24 You said, and I'm quoting,
49:25 "Maybe he didn't put his hand on the Bible because he affirmatively rejects
49:28 what's inside that book." And then on a recent show you went further saying,
49:32 "Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors,
49:34 mocking the god of gods, and exalting himself above them.
49:38 Could this be the Antichrist?"
49:40 I actually did not say could this be the Antichrist.
49:43 Here's a leader who's mocking the gods of his ancestors,
49:47 mocking the god of gods, and exalting himself above them.
49:52 Could this be the Antichrist?
49:54 Well, who knows?
49:57 Um, I don't know where that comes from, but I know that those words
49:59 never left my lips because I'm not
50:02 sure I fully understand what the Antichrist is, if there's just one.
50:05 I actually tried to understand it.
50:09 understand.
50:09 He and then he hides behind ignorance.
50:11 The thing he literally said.
50:13 And that's just one lie.
50:15 But the bigger lie is the lie that he is propagating.
50:17 It's a lie that the left is also propagating.
50:19 It is a lie that America is a terrible place,
50:21 that is filled with nefarious forces beyond your control.
50:23 They're actually in control of your life and wrecking America.
50:26 And if that view of America prevails,
50:29 then we are in serious, serious, serious trouble.
50:32 Now, meanwhile, the president of the United
50:33 States continues to be a bulwark against stupidity,
50:36 particularly when it comes to the war in Iran,
50:39 the one that that Tucker is decrying as the end of America.
50:42 By the way, there there is no,
50:43 legitimately no argument that what is happening in Iran is the end of America.
50:48 Even if we were to walk away right now,
50:50 it would not be remotely close to the end of America.
50:52 That's insane.
50:55 Okay, the CENTCOM United States Central Command put out a notice this morning
51:01 that the United States is now forcibly attempting to open the Strait of Hormuz.
51:05 Quote, "US Navy guided missile destroyers are currently operating in the Arabian
51:09 Gulf after transiting the Strait of Hormuz in support of Project Freedom.
51:12 American forces are actively assisting efforts
51:14 to restore transit for commercial shipping.
51:16 As a first step, two US flag merchant vessels have successfully transited
51:19 through the Strait of Hormuz and are safely headed on their journey." Okay,
51:22 so if the United States opens the Strait of Hormuz,
51:24 and the only thing that remains closed is Iran's capacity to ship oil out,
51:29 they've got a massive problem.
51:30 Because again, their leverage point is the idea
51:32 they could blackmail the United States into basically
51:36 ending our conflict with them without them giving
51:38 up anything by shutting off the Strait of Hormuz.
51:41 President Trump is not having any of it.
51:43 Here he was saying, "Listen, if we have to, we'll strike again.
51:48 What circumstances did you use to start military strikes on targets?
51:52 Well, I don't want to say that.
51:53 I mean, I can't tell that to a reporter.
51:55 If they misbehave, if they do something bad,
51:58 but uh right now we'll see, but it's a possibility that could happen, certainly.
52:08 Well, I mean, again, the president,
52:10 I have to give him extraordinary credit here.
52:13 What he's doing right now is an act of of tremendous political bravery.
52:15 The polls, by the way, are very negative on the war.
52:18 Not a shock.
52:18 The polls are very negative on everything.
52:20 Okay, this is what happens.
52:21 When people look at one number
52:22 in isolation without looking at the other numbers, they think that, for example,
52:26 the president's approval ratings are low because of the war.
52:29 Okay, the reality is the president's approval
52:30 ratings are low across the board right now,
52:33 and that is because of people's dyspepsia with the economy.
52:36 Right now, he's got a 34% approval rating on the economy.
52:38 He's got a 33% approval rating on the war.
52:40 He's got a 45% approval rating on the border.
52:42 What happens is if a politician starts to hit an unpopular period,
52:46 everything that he does gets unpopular.
52:48 But, that doesn't mean that what he's doing isn't brave.
52:51 What he's doing is incredibly brave.
52:54 His point is that we can blast the hell out of Iran, or we can make a deal.
52:58 He would prefer a deal, but he's not going to walk away with an American L,
53:03 which is, again, very different from pretty much
53:05 all the presidents we've had in recent history.
53:10 What kind of options?
53:10 How would it look different?
53:12 options.
53:12 I mean, do we want to go and just
53:13 blast the hell out of them and finish him forever,
53:17 or do we want to try and make a deal?
53:19 I mean, those are the options.
53:20 Do you want to go blast the hell out of him and finish him forever?
53:24 On a human basis, I'd prefer not, but that's the option.
53:29 Okay, meanwhile, the Secretary of the Treasury,
53:31 who has been operating with extraordinary
53:34 precision with regard to the Iranian economy,
53:36 he points out that they are basically running out of money.
53:38 They they are having to shut down oil refineries because they
53:42 don't have a way of shipping their oil out of the country.
53:44 They're running out of money to pay their guys, the IRGC,
53:47 which means the regime has a serious problem on its hand.
53:49 And remember, grabbing the Strait of Hormuz was not an exercise of power,
53:53 it was an exercise of desperation.
53:55 Shutting off the Strait of Hormuz alienated every country
53:57 in the region and most of the countries of Asia as well.
54:00 And if they somehow lose control of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranians,
54:04 if they can no longer control the flow in and out of the Strait of Hormuz,
54:07 except that their oil is being stopped, then what leverage do they have left?
54:11 Especially if the United States goes after
54:13 the remainder of their ballistic missile facilities,
54:15 something that, for example, the UAE and Saudi Arabia would love to see happen.
54:19 Here's Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.
54:23 And I can tell you that we we are supplicating
54:27 the regime and they are not able to pay their soldiers.
54:32 This is a real economic blockade and it is
54:36 an all parts of government, all hands on deck.
54:39 It is the blockade that our great navy is doing.
54:43 No ships are getting through and we have up the pressure
54:47 on anyone trying to remit money into Iran to help the IRGC.
54:55 And they are corrupt institution.
54:57 They've been stealing from the Iranian people for years.
54:59 They have money offshore.
55:01 We've tracked that down.
55:02 We will continue to track that down and we're going to preserve
55:05 those assets for the Iranian people on the other side of this conflict.
55:11 Yeah, again, what the president is doing right now is likely to be successful.
55:14 Okay, so time for a thing I like and a thing that I hate.
55:16 So, I know that people like Tucker Carlson has suggested
55:19 that the great villain of World War was not Adolf Hitler, you know,
55:22 the person who started World War II and was responsible
55:25 for death of legitimately tens of millions of human beings,
55:28 that actually the great villain of World War was Winston Churchill,
55:30 the leader of Great Britain during World War II.
55:34 This, of course, is historically ignorant and ridiculous on its face.
55:37 So, I've been going through and re-reading
55:38 Churchill's six-volume history of the Second World War,
55:42 and there's some good reminders for our time,
55:44 mainly because they are eternal lessons.
55:46 Quote, "Delight in smooth-sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts,
55:50 genuine love of peace, and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation.
55:54 The utter devotion of the liberals to sentiment apart from reality,
55:57 though free from wickedness or evil design,
55:59 played a definite part in the unleashing upon
56:01 the world of horrors and miseries." As Churchill points out,
56:05 "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed,
56:08 if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly,
56:10 you may come to the moment when you will have to fight
56:12 with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival.
56:15 There may even be a worse case.
56:16 You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory because it is
56:18 better to perish than to live as slaves."
56:21 And the point being that starry-eyed anti-Americanism,
56:27 anti-Westernism is not a solve for people who want to destroy you,
56:31 ranging from China to Russia to Iran to the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany.
56:37 And one more thing that I like,
56:39 we'll end on an upbeat note before we get to the subscriber member block.
56:44 Okay, so it is May the 4th, so May the 4th be with you,
56:48 as we who like Star Wars are fond of saying.
56:50 There is a brand new trailer for The Mandalorian and Grogu,
56:53 which is one of the successful spin-off
56:55 properties under sort of the Kathleen Kennedy universe.
56:59 This is the Pedro Pascal series that is now being
57:03 made into a movie about Baby Yoda and The Mandalorian.
57:06 Here we go.
57:11 We've all heard stories of the Mandalorian bounty hunter and a child.
57:20 I only hunt Imperial war criminals.
57:22 I'll take out every bad guy in your deck of cards.
57:31 This isn't about revenge.
57:32 It's about preventing another war.
57:38 Up and maybe beyond.
57:39 Okay.
57:40 Before going into harm's way, check your armor first.
57:46 We're protecting everything [music] the rebellion fought for.
57:50 Good luck.
57:52 Yeah, that's Okay, I'm into it.
57:58 I I strap in.
57:59 I'll take my kids to watch this.
58:06 Listen, I'm a Star Wars fan,
58:07 so this is this is a thing that I will check out for sure.
58:09 Okay, we don't have to watch the rest of it, but this is cool.
58:11 Okay, I'm into it.
58:12 I like it.
58:13 Okay, it's got the AT-AT's.
58:15 It's got the land speeders.
58:16 I'm there.
58:17 So, may the fourth be with you.
58:19 All righty, the show continues for our members right now.
58:22 We're going to get into Zorn Amund Johnnie
58:25 and his take on protesters clashing with ICE in New York.
58:29 Again, third worldism is a real thing.
58:30 It's happening inside the United States.
58:32 Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
58:34 If you're not a member, become a member.
58:35 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.
58:37 Click that link in the description and join us.