Has The Met Gala Finally Gone Too Far?
Ben Shapiro
0:00 The Met Gala is the annual high holy day of the secular left.
0:03 Basically, Democrats descend on the Metropolitan Museum of Art to dress
0:07 in costumes that cost more than the average American's mortgage,
0:10 all while lecturing you about the evils of the 1%.
0:14 It makes you nauseous.
0:15 It always has.
0:16 It always will.
0:17 But, while the champagne was flowing inside, chaos was erupting outside.
0:21 We will look at the commie protesters targeting the event and predictably,
0:24 event chair Jeff Bezos,
0:25 because apparently building a company that revolutionized global
0:28 logistics and provides over a million jobs makes
0:31 you a villain in the eyes of people
0:32 currently using Amazon's livered iPhones to organize their rallies.
0:35 We'll go outfit by outfit.
0:36 We'll pick the very worst dressed.
0:38 Yes, it is worse than you could have imagined.
0:41 Also on the show today,
0:42 we're continuing our deep dive into Luke Rosiak and The Daily
0:45 Wire's shocking investigation into massive Medicare fraud in Ohio.
0:48 Plus, Vivek Ramaswamy joins me to discuss the systemic rot
0:51 in the administrative state and what can be done to stop it.
0:54 And finally, because we all need
0:55 a break from the collapse of Western civilization,
0:57 I will be giving my first reaction
1:00 to the new trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
1:02 All that and more coming up.
1:03 I'm Ben Shapiro.
1:04 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
1:10 Let's talk about a ridiculous thing.
1:11 The Met Gala is one of the most ridiculous things in America.
1:14 It's truly ridiculous.
1:16 The Met Gala is a charity event for the Metropolitan Museum.
1:20 Particularly, they they have a costume museum.
1:22 Jeff Bezos sponsored it this year,
1:24 dropped about 10 million dollars so that he could be a co-host of the Met Gala.
1:28 And it's always ridiculous and stupid.
1:29 It is very, very wealthy people who dress
1:32 up in absurd outfits while decrying their own wealth.
1:38 So, it it it really is incredibly, incredibly dumb.
1:41 But now, in the last few years, we've had people keep trying to invade the Met
1:45 Gala as though they're storming the Bastille in 1789.
1:49 As though if they tackle Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala or something,
1:53 they're overthrowing the system.
1:56 So, we're now cosplaying the on pretty much all sides.
2:00 So, one of the things that happened over at the Met
2:02 Gala last night was a protester attempting to enter the Met Gala.
2:07 The cops had to tackle him.
2:07 Here's what that looked like.
2:14 And again, you see somebody trying to to get in and the cops charging the guy.
2:23 Well, things are going well over in New York.
2:27 Meanwhile, apparently some Met Gala protesters
2:31 decided to place hundreds of bottles
2:32 of pee inside the museum in order to protest Jeff Bezos.
2:36 The good news is that the Metropolitan Museum
2:38 of Art they probably consider that a form of art.
2:39 So, you could just stack those bottles
2:41 of pee and call it an art display, probably.
2:44 And it would do fine.
2:46 But, the the fact that they are very very angry at Jeff
2:48 Bezos for dropping $10 million to sponsor the thing is pretty astonishing.
2:52 In a statement accompanying the latest stunt, the activist collective,
2:56 it's called Everyone Hates Elon,
2:58 an anti-billionaire group funded by roughly a thousand donors worldwide,
3:01 they said, quote, "Amazon founder and oligarch Jeff Bezos just finished his Met
3:05 Gala pre-party at his penthouse and is getting ready for the big night.
3:08 We couldn't let him get away with using
3:09 celebrity and fashion to hide his crimes.
3:11 We're exposing them instead." What are Jeff Bezos's crimes other than being able
3:16 to bring people products and services
3:19 at an incredibly cheap price in extraordinarily mobile fashion?
3:23 What what are what are the crimes?
3:25 Well, the crime is being rich.
3:26 That is the crime.
3:28 We again cos-playing the Marxist revolution in New York City.
3:33 So, commie commie messages were were actually
3:35 projected onto Bezos's New York City apartment.
3:38 Here's what that looked like.
3:40 Shame on you, Jeff Bezos.
3:43 The people that need to be being celebrated
3:45 at the Met Gala are the workers, people like me.
3:50 We deserve that celebration.
3:53 We deserve so much more than we're getting.
3:56 There's power in numbers and there's more of us than there are of you.
4:02 Remember Jeff, ordinary people like myself that helped make you billionaires,
4:08 if we built it, we can tear it down.
4:11 Think about that tonight, okay?
4:13 After that bottle of champagne when you go to bed.
4:16 We're going to keep growing and we're going
4:18 to keep building and we're going to keep
4:19 protesting and we're going to keep marching
4:21 and we're going to keep fighting this dystopian culture.
4:27 We're not stopping.
4:28 We're just getting cranked up.
4:30 Enjoy your damn gala.
4:35 Again, protesting the Met Gala, which again is a bunch of very rich Democrats.
4:39 That's really what it is.
4:40 Like Bezos may have voted Republican in the last election, I don't know.
4:43 But, I will say that disproportionately the Met Gala is
4:46 a bunch of Hollywood Democrats with a gigantic wad of cash.
4:50 It It is kind of amazing that you
4:52 have everyone cosplaying the revolution on all sides.
4:54 My My favorite outfit from the Met Gala,
4:56 by the way, was There's an actress named Sarah Paulson,
4:58 whose worth I believe $12 million and she showed up wearing this monstrosity.
5:02 She was wearing a a bizarre dress,
5:04 but she was wearing dollar bills over her eyes because money
5:09 is blinding her while wearing an expensive dress to the Met Gala.
5:13 Again, these are all Democrats.
5:15 These are all Democrats who are pretending that they
5:16 hate the system that they have benefited from.
5:19 It really is incredible.
5:21 Now, again, I do have to make fun of the the cultural aspect
5:24 of this because every year the outfits
5:25 of the Met Gala are increasingly bizarre and stupid.
5:28 Sam Smith, who used to be just a gay man and has
5:31 now decided that he is a non-binary fat gay man, I guess.
5:34 He showed up dressed as fat gay Maleficent.
5:37 So, that was exciting.
5:39 Here that that's an outfit.
5:42 Listen, I'll admit I'll admit the ostentatious
5:46 display of obnoxious wealth from some of the world's most useless people here
5:51 is enough to turn anybody into a communist.
5:53 Not because communism is good, but because this stuff is ridiculous.
5:57 It is ridiculous, but it is also not an aspect of capitalism per se.
6:01 It's an aspect of decadence.
6:03 That's a different thing.
6:05 Meanwhile, a trans Tony Award winning producer named
6:10 Jordan Roth showed up wearing a creepy sculpture
6:13 wearing like a creepy mannequin over his shoulder
6:16 while he was dressed as as a woman.
6:18 So, they they Oh man, I don't even know what's going on.
6:21 Lena Dunham showed up as a character from Stranger Things who
6:24 is apparently flayed from the inside out by the Mind Flayer.
6:29 I don't know what happened to this dress.
6:30 That's that that's that's that's some scary stuff happening right there.
6:35 Yeah, kind of gruesome.
6:37 I I think my favorite outfit, honestly, was Katy Perry.
6:39 Katy Perry showed up wearing an outfit that was basically a peekaboo mask.
6:44 When I say that, I mean she is literally
6:46 wearing a door on her face that opens and shuts.
6:50 I just can't imagine how excited Justin Trudeau is
6:53 about that, because any 2-year-old would find that amusing.
6:56 So, Justin Trudeau probably every time she closes that door,
6:59 Justin Trudeau's like, "Where did she go?
7:00 Where did she go?" And then Trudeau is like, "Oh my god,
7:02 Katy Perry's back." Which is really That must be exciting for him.
7:08 Or maybe when she gets annoying, he just closes the [laughter]
7:10 He just slowly closes the door on her face.
7:15 Beyoncé showed up wearing an outfit
7:16 from the Day of the Dead celebration in Coco.
7:20 That's a That's an interesting outfit there from Beyoncé.
7:25 Yeah, that's a that's a lot.
7:27 Teyana Taylor showed up dressed as a Komondor dog.
7:32 I'm not sure what this was here.
7:34 She looks She looks as though she's a straight from 101 Dalmatians.
7:37 And then Cardi B, I think, had probably the worst outfit.
7:41 She apparently has been plagued by tumors on her feet and on her shoulders.
7:45 Which is that that's what that that dress looks like.
7:49 Sad stuff happening.
7:50 Bad Bunny showed up dressed as Joe Biden.
7:53 I wish I mean he aged himself like 40 years and showed up dressed as an old man.
7:59 Yeah, again.
8:00 Ostentatious displays of wealth are not likely to make capitalism popular.
8:05 But let's just remember every single person who is
8:07 doing this is preaching on behalf of the anti-capitalism.
8:12 They preach about the decadence of capitalism
8:14 as they participate in it and foment it.
8:18 Okay, meanwhile in more serious news.
8:20 So yesterday based on our investigation in Ohio,
8:22 the Vice President of the United States put out a tweet
8:25 pledging that he would look into what was going on.
8:28 "Quote, these shocking allegations are true,
8:30 show why the fraud task force work is so important.
8:33 I'm directing the task force to look into it and take immediate
8:36 action to prosecute any fraudsters involved
8:38 and stop all further payments as appropriate.
8:40 So we are already getting action here at Daily Wire.
8:43 This is why we exist not just to, you know, bring you things that entertain you,
8:46 but obviously to change the world in better ways.
8:50 Luke Rosiak, who is our senior investigative reporter over here,
8:52 he has the second part of his large-scale investigative series
8:56 today talking about the extent of Medicaid fraud in Ohio.
9:00 He points out that there are seven
9:01 buildings along East Dublin Granville Road in Columbus,
9:04 Ohio that are filled with hundreds of office suites
9:06 all owned by a company called Cordoba Real Estate.
9:10 Almost every tenant in the building
9:11 bills Medicaid for the impoverished, obviously,
9:14 as a home health care business that provides low-skilled,
9:17 usually non-medical care to elderly or disabled people.
9:20 So basically seems very much like what Nick Schuler was uncovering in Minnesota.
9:25 Essentially, we have these gigantic buildings
9:27 that are filled with home health care providers.
9:29 Completely empty of people because we actually
9:31 have video of Luke walking through the halls.
9:34 Here Here is Luke walking through the halls in an empty
9:39 office building in Ohio that presumably
9:42 millions of dollars are flooding through.
9:45 I noticed that you guys had gotten $10 million in Medicaid.
9:49 Welcome to the United States.
9:50 What exactly goes into a home health care business?
9:55 Huh.
9:56 Home health on Horizon Care.
9:58 There's two.
9:58 Home health on Home.
9:59 Home health is the fastest growing industry in the You guys are racist.
10:02 We don't need you guys.
10:03 You guys are racist people.
10:06 Again, the accusations of racism, him walking through full-on empty buildings.
10:11 Apparently, one Cordoba Road employee said that the government
10:15 actually pays people to take care of their own families.
10:18 This, of course, is the scam according to Luke's reporting.
10:22 The Cordoba Road buildings in Columbus
10:23 house 288 businesses registered with Medicaid.
10:26 Together, they charged taxpayers more than a quarter
10:28 of a billion dollars between 2018 and 2024 in a city where there are only about
10:33 6,200 people who are 75 or older on Medicaid.
10:38 Apparently, at one address,
10:39 there are 80 companies that collectively billed at least $73 million
10:43 to Medicaid and received $23 million from the state of Ohio.
10:48 Again, shocking levels of what appear to be alleged fraud.
10:52 And again, here is Luke talking to one of the employees at Cordoba Road
10:57 who admits the government basically pays you to take care of your own family.
11:00 In the Cordoba office building at 1425 East Dublin Granville Road,
11:05 we finally located a business suite with somebody in it,
11:08 GC Home Health Care LLC.
11:11 Asked how he recruits employees,
11:13 Keith said employees and patients come as a package.
11:16 70% of the employees are just being paid
11:18 to spend time with their own family members.
11:21 The patient, like they have someone in their family
11:25 that has the qualifications to be an aide, CPR and everything.
11:29 So, they They come together, they say, "Yeah, well um [clears throat]
11:33 got uh approval from my doctor.
11:35 After getting a note from the doctor
11:37 vouching for the elders need for personal services.
11:40 The family member of an elderly person isn't set up
11:42 to bill Medicaid so a company stands in the middle.
11:45 I mean we just taking a small cut because you know,
11:48 they pay us and then we pay them for the hours.
11:51 [clears throat] He said the number of hours depends
11:53 on a doctor's recommendation but it's often an hour a day.
11:56 Like do you expect us to take time off work just to take care of those?
12:00 I mean there has to be some sort of benefit.
12:02 I asked him why people wouldn't simply help
12:05 their aging parents with basic tasks out of human decency.
12:08 Well, the government didn't pay you to do it.
12:10 I mean people see that as lucrative so you know, they'll jump on it.
12:14 Again, unbelievable stuff.
12:16 Are you as a taxpayer willing to subsidize
12:18 people to take care of their own aging parents?
12:20 This is crazy towns.
12:22 It's crazy.
12:23 Luke reports that there is one home health care service called
12:27 Omega which charged taxpayers $11 million
12:30 between December 2017 and October 2024.
12:33 Omega was incorporated in 2011 by a person
12:35 named Mohamed Jama a Democratic politician.
12:38 Jama founded a newspaper called the Somali Post,
12:41 also a Somali coffee house and has been affiliated
12:43 with the Somali Education Resource Center which received $6
12:46 million in federal aid in 2023 all on top
12:50 of raising nine kids and working as an engineer.
12:53 When he ran for state Senate as a Democrat in 2024,
12:57 that home health care business was not even mentioned in his profile.
13:01 So you know, it's great.
13:03 We we also get to as taxpayers subsidize people running
13:06 for the state legislature as they clear millions of dollars in cash.
13:11 Joining us on the line, the man who broke this story,
13:13 Luke Rosiak is a senior investigative reporter at The Daily Wire.
13:16 You can follow him on X at Luke Rosiak.
13:18 He's a great follow.
13:19 Luke, thanks for taking the time.
13:20 Really appreciate it.
13:22 Thanks for having me, Ben.
13:25 So the story has already had a gigantic impact locally, federally.
13:28 The VP is committing to an investigation.
13:30 What are the reactions that you've got
13:32 your eye on to your explosive exposé here?
13:36 Yeah, it's funny.
13:37 I mean, we just kind of laid out the bare bones of what we had.
13:40 Part two which just dropped and we've got
13:42 a number of actual details going but J.D.
13:44 Vance right from the beginning said that the task
13:47 force that he's helming with Andrew Ferguson,
13:49 who's a very competent lawyer, um is going to be descending upon Ohio.
13:54 There's been a number of other reactions in the Senate
13:56 including from the chairman of the aging committee and so on.
14:00 Um but, you know, at the center of this is the Medicaid waiver
14:04 program for home health care and in particular what they call personal services,
14:10 which is what I'm calling butlers for Somalis.
14:13 Um Medicaid is supposed to be for medical
14:16 stuff and personal services is just like butlers.
14:19 It's people that go there to help you with whatever you need.
14:21 You can cook, you can clean, um even just conversation and companionship.
14:26 And so, you know, I just got back from Columbus and you
14:29 you can walk through these buildings and there's a whole street of them.
14:32 And you go inside these buildings
14:33 and there's like hundreds of the small businesses.
14:36 Nobody's in almost any of them.
14:38 And they'll have signs that just say that that's
14:40 the service they provide is companionship and conversation.
14:44 Um and so, that's kind of the question that's for for fraud investigators,
14:48 I think there's a lot of leads that that we're going to be providing to them
14:51 and people are going to see in the stories we have rolling out including today.
14:55 Um but, there's also the question of lower-case F fraud,
14:59 which is um some of this may well be legal and it may well be
15:03 very poor policy decisions that our leaders
15:06 have made that allow people to um bill for hanging out with their family members
15:13 or hanging out going to somebody's house to provide
15:16 them with this this um companionship or cleaning
15:20 their house in a way that's totally unverifiable.
15:23 And so I think they're all both fraud questions and I think if if J.D.
15:28 Vance's task force finds that they can't prove with the standard
15:33 that would be required in a court of law,
15:36 then you get to the question of do we just have to get rid of these programs?
15:39 Because maybe we had programs that used to work in a time
15:43 when Americans could be relied on to to be honest.
15:47 That kind of breakdown in situations
15:50 where you import people from low-trust societies.
15:55 So Luke, take us back to the beginning of the story.
15:57 How did you first uncover of fraud?
16:00 And what was it like you know,
16:01 walking through these empty buildings that that supposedly hundreds of millions
16:04 of dollars are being funneled through for home health care?
16:08 Yeah, so DOJ back in February released DOJ working with HHS a database
16:14 of Medicaid spending to the what companies are getting paid by Medicaid.
16:18 And I've been trying to get that for many years because
16:21 when you look at that pie chart of the federal budget,
16:24 so much of it is in Medicaid to the point where a lot of liberals kind
16:28 of mocked DOJ saying there's nothing to even cut
16:31 unless you're going to go for the non-discretionary stuff.
16:33 And so when we can actually see what Medicaid is going to and then
16:37 we find out that it's actually not
16:40 just all like untouchable like doctor's visits.
16:42 It's like very much fair game
16:44 for those that want to make the government more efficient.
16:47 I think that's a huge potential for kind of saving our country
16:52 and it's a huge win for transparency that they did that.
16:55 So I did my computer thing.
16:57 I've been doing data analysis for a long time and I had
16:59 my computer run queries that told me where the really sketchy stuff was.
17:03 And it took me right to a red state, Ohio,
17:06 Columbus and the northeast sector of Columbus which
17:09 turns out to be where all the Somalis live.
17:13 But it's funny because I didn't go say I want to go find Somalis.
17:17 I didn't really tell it anything except tell me where some really
17:19 sketchy money stuff is going on and the data took me right there.
17:23 Um and so I went and I had you know
17:25 a a guy from the Capital Research Center, a great researcher.
17:28 We both did our thing.
17:29 We poured through all the records and then we
17:31 did the kind of what Nick Shurly made famous.
17:35 We saw similar to what he did with the daycares.
17:37 Nobody's there.
17:39 Um and it was very creepy to walk down these long hallways.
17:43 I it looks like aliens abducted people on some day
17:47 at noon like months ago because a lot of them will
17:50 have signs saying we're out to lunch and it's like you
17:52 can tell they've been out to lunch for a long time.
17:54 Uh there's like mail piling up like postmarked from months prior.
17:59 Um So at the end of the day, you know,
18:01 we kind of did the Nick Shurly thing and found the same results in Ohio,
18:04 but then we coupled that with really rigorous database research and we
18:08 went through all these individuals in public records and you know,
18:12 for those that implied that somehow Nick Shurly got
18:14 the story wrong or didn't do a rigorous enough job,
18:17 I can tell you when you speak take two months and you
18:19 look up hundreds of these people and you tell the full story,
18:22 uh it actually makes it worse
18:24 for the for the Medicaid people and the smallies, not better.
18:29 So this is a five-part exposé.
18:31 Obviously today was just part two.
18:33 Do you have any clues as to what's coming?
18:36 Um so, you know, we'll have a person you'll you'll hear an interview
18:42 with me talking to a guy who's been charged 30 times in court,
18:47 all kinds of multiple fraud arrest,
18:48 violence arrest and he's arguing me with me that it's
18:52 totally fine to to run a a Medicaid company.
18:56 Um You know, he says I was just too dumb to know what the law is.
19:00 And so this is what we're dealing with here.
19:02 I mean that's the excuse of these people is I'm I'm really dumb.
19:05 I just didn't even know it was wrong to to to steal and lie constantly.
19:10 Um but there's a lot to go through in in part two.
19:12 There's a tons of different examples from what just dropped.
19:15 Um, that's going to take I think people a while to to to to go through.
19:19 Um, for example, a Democrat politician, um, by the name of Mohamed Jama,
19:24 who ran for uh state Senate with the with the Democrat endorsement in in Ohio,
19:30 um, he founded an $11 million home health care company,
19:35 um, while he was doing other stuff.
19:37 He did it as a side business.
19:39 He didn't even mention it when he ran for office.
19:41 Um, and that's a pattern that we keep seeing here
19:43 is like these people have these businesses on the side.
19:46 I mean, can you imagine making multiple millions
19:49 of dollars and it's not even what you do full-time.
19:51 It's just kind of your [laughter] just like a little side gig.
19:57 Well, Luke, you know, obviously the vice president has responded.
20:00 The state of Ohio, I'd imagine, is going to respond at some level.
20:03 What what are you expecting from from Congress?
20:05 What do you think are the next steps going forward?
20:08 Um, what I'm really interested to see
20:10 is whether they will rescind these Medicaid waivers.
20:13 Um, I spent a a great deal of time
20:16 investigating all these people and keeping track of, well,
20:19 Ahmed Mohamed and how does he relate to Mohamed Ahmed and is
20:23 Abdurazaq Ahmed the brother you know, it goes on and on.
20:26 It's very difficult to track these people cuz they don't even have
20:29 birth They a lot of them don't even know when they were born.
20:32 So, our system is designed to keep track of people based on the idea
20:35 that family members have the same names and you have birth dates and stuff.
20:38 It's very difficult and I put the time
20:40 in and I was able to find some really good stuff,
20:43 but I'm certain that the government is not able
20:45 to do this at scale cuz it's just too laborious.
20:49 And I get the sense that there's whack-a-mole going on and I get
20:52 into this in some of the stories where somebody goes to jail for fraud,
20:56 but pretty soon all of his associates are like popping up
20:59 with like similar assets and it's like are they just moving money around?
21:03 Is it really just uh a game of whack-a-mole to be trying
21:08 to stop fraud when it's going to be really hard to prove.
21:12 At the end of the day, they may not even be punished that severely,
21:14 and somebody else is just going to do it.
21:16 So, I'm interested to see whether they rescind these waivers.
21:20 I think the states are spending this money
21:22 pretty freely because it's the federal money.
21:24 It's other people's money.
21:26 And it's a little unfair, I think,
21:28 for certain states to have waivers like Minnesota and Ohio that let them bill
21:33 federal taxpayers for services that people
21:35 in in in other states don't get to do.
21:39 And I think personal services is one that maybe there's a policy
21:42 solution here rather than than you get at the root of the fraud.
21:46 And you just cut it off, you know,
21:47 at the root and say no more personal services.
21:51 No more butlers for Somalis.
21:53 If you if you have an aging parent and they need help
21:56 cleaning their house once a week or cooking a dinner once a day,
22:01 I think this is what people have done for all of human history.
22:03 You chip in to your family because it's the right thing to do.
22:06 And you don't you don't insist on a government
22:08 paycheck because it's just too easily abused.
22:11 And even when it is abused, it's it's hard to prove fraud because this kind
22:15 of thing happens behind closed doors in private residences.
22:18 And I think we can no longer afford to have programs where proving
22:22 fraud to the standard that's required in court it is is is so hard.
22:27 If there's going to be blatant, what seems like fraud, what seems super sketchy,
22:32 I don't think if anybody was in those buildings that I was in in Columbus,
22:35 they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, this is totally normal.
22:37 Totally normal that this person got $10 million.
22:40 It doesn't pass the sniff test.
22:41 I don't think anybody who saw it, any taxpayer, would agree.
22:44 We may have to look at a policy solution rather
22:47 than just fraud enforcement and just eliminating some of these programs.
22:53 Well, the investigation is a massive win.
22:54 It's the reason why the Daily Wire exists because we don't just deliver stories.
22:58 We deliver actual real investigations that actually
23:00 change the way the United States is run.
23:03 Luke Rosiak, thanks for your amazing work here.
23:05 Give Luke a follow again on X at Luke Rosiak.
23:07 He's one of the best investigative reporters in the country.
23:10 Obviously, we're very glad that he's on our side.
23:12 Luke, thanks for the time.
23:14 Thanks so much, Ben.
23:15 All right, coming up, we'll be joined by Vivek Ramaswamy.
23:17 His primary for Ohio governor is today.
23:19 What would he do to stop all of this fraud?
23:21 Plus, later on in the show,
23:22 we're going to review the new trailer for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
23:25 And we'll get to the latest in Iran.
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24:31 Obviously, a shocking story,
24:32 but we need people who are actually going to correct it.
24:34 Joining me on the line to discuss what comes next is Vivek Ramaswamy.
24:38 He has his Republican primary today in the state of Ohio,
24:41 the likely next governor of Ohio.
24:43 He's an entrepreneur, political commentator, and author, and of course,
24:46 he ran for president in 2024 in the Republican primary.
24:49 Vivek, great to talk to you.
24:51 Good to see you, man.
24:54 So, why don't we talk about, first of all, the state of the primary?
24:56 So, obviously, the primary is today.
24:58 You are widely expected to win.
25:00 What are the expectations for you in terms of sort of percentage?
25:04 Because obviously, there's been a a large-scale movement to suggest
25:07 that that you're not doing as well as you should,
25:09 but the reality is that competitive primaries in Republican Party areas
25:13 and in Ohio have been quite quite common for a very long time.
25:15 So, what are you expecting today?
25:18 Yeah, look.
25:18 I mean, the primaries are usually quite competitive.
25:21 I would say we're cautiously optimistic that we will
25:25 shatter recent norms for what those primary outcomes are.
25:29 If you look at the 2024, 2022 governor and Senate primaries,
25:34 you had competitive primaries where Bernie Moreno and J.D.
25:36 Vance and Mike DeWine were elected.
25:39 You're looking at 40, at most 50% of the vote that went for the Republican.
25:45 Even if you go back to 2018 when Mike DeWine was first elected,
25:48 when someone else was elected to Senate, you see the same thing.
25:51 It's been a ceiling of 40 to 50%.
25:53 So, we'll see what the results come in.
25:55 I don't want to count the chickens before they hatch, Ben,
25:56 but take a look at it tomorrow and or even late tonight.
26:00 And I'm cautiously optimistic that we're
26:02 going to significantly significantly beat that ceiling.
26:06 But, let's see.
26:08 So, obviously, we here at Daily Wire have
26:11 been covering extensively the investigative reporting of Luke Rosiak
26:14 and the rest of our investigative team about what
26:17 appears to be alleged fraud in Ohio, Medicaid fraud.
26:21 Again, we've seen this in a wide variety of states.
26:23 The extent of it in in Ohio appears to be quite shocking.
26:26 Again, what you're looking at is buildings that look largely
26:29 empty with tons of registered businesses that are receiving Medicaid monies.
26:33 You know, what do you make of that and what would
26:35 you do as governor of Ohio to crack down on that?
26:38 So, look.
26:39 I think that the reality is all states, including Ohio,
26:42 I think have turned a blind eye to this level of [clears throat] rampant fraud
26:47 of the welfare system broadly, including Medicaid.
26:50 And it starts, Ben, with enforcing the laws that are already on the books.
26:55 So, you can talk about passing new laws.
26:56 I think that's a reasonable conversation to have.
26:58 But, that requires a legislature that takes time.
27:00 And furthermore, you got to ask the question of what's the point of passing
27:04 new laws if the ones that are
27:05 already on the books aren't being sufficiently enforced?
27:09 So, one of my top priorities is to take
27:11 the egregious cases here of fraud that, you know,
27:14 frankly, your reporting was really intriguing or, you know,
27:16 Daily Wire's reporting was really intriguing to me.
27:19 I wish I could say that it was a shock.
27:21 Compared to what I hear on the ground, unfortunately, it was not a shock.
27:24 But, I appreciate you putting a national spotlight on it in my own home state.
27:28 And I think what that does is it forces those who are in power to be able
27:32 to pay attention to an issue that may have
27:34 been swept under the rug for too long before.
27:37 When I am in power, hopefully for elected,
27:39 we're not going to sweep it under the rug.
27:41 We got to prosecute aggressively.
27:42 And what's the purpose of prosecuting?
27:44 Two purposes.
27:45 First is when someone does something wrong,
27:47 you have to actually punish the person who does the wrong thing.
27:50 But, the second purpose, of course, is deterrence.
27:53 The idea that you're just going to get away with bilking the government.
27:56 And it's not really even bilking the government so much as bilking the taxpayer,
28:00 the ordinary law-abiding American, the ordinary law-abiding Ohioan.
28:04 That's not okay.
28:05 And we have to send that deterrent signal.
28:09 So, in the end, Ben, it's uh as often happens in these things,
28:12 it's not as complicated as it sounds, right?
28:14 This isn't fancy stuff, okay?
28:15 In a modern era of AI,
28:17 you have a toolkit that allows you to spot at aberrant abnormalities
28:21 even more quickly and more reliably than at prior points in human history.
28:26 We have laws on the books.
28:27 In Ohio, we have a Republican state
28:29 that controls all three branches of government.
28:32 This is doable, but it does require a leader
28:34 at the top who's willing to act with a spine decisively.
28:39 And that's why I'm in this.
28:40 I mean, you think about why I sometimes get the question of why am I doing this?
28:45 Which, you know, politics can can be frustrating at times.
28:48 I have to admit.
28:49 Sometimes I have to remind myself why I'm doing this.
28:51 And the reality is I mean, it's not for fame or fortune.
28:55 There's better ways of acquiring those things.
28:56 And And I've been blessed in my life.
28:59 I'm doing this because I know we can get this done.
29:01 This is not complex stuff.
29:03 You know, fixing the waste, fraud,
29:04 and abuse, particularly in the Medicaid system.
29:07 And you think about the analogy
29:08 to that to every other system that's over-bureaucratized,
29:11 which, you know, we're not talking about today, but the public education system,
29:14 how broken that is with the bureaucracy that suppresses the students
29:18 and their achievement and their ability to report that to the public.
29:22 To in a different sense,
29:23 keep legally bilking the public without standing for results.
29:27 You look at the overgrowth of government in every sector,
29:30 from Medicaid to the welfare state to even public education,
29:34 K through 12, higher education, it's a mess.
29:38 And I think what we need now more than ever in Ohio,
29:41 and frankly in states like Ohio across the country,
29:43 are real entrepreneurs who aren't willing to tolerate nonsense,
29:48 who are willing to cut through the nonsense when needed.
29:50 And that's why I'm doing this job cuz I know I can get it done.
29:55 So, Vivek, obviously, you were involved at the beginning with Dozh.
29:59 Our reporting was largely based on some
30:01 of the revelations that came via Dozh because
30:03 a lot of the information that Dozh uncovered
30:05 served as sort of the basis for our investigation.
30:08 Why do you think it is that so many members of government
30:10 at the state and the federal level have brushed all of this under the rug?
30:14 Because you would assume that, you know,
30:16 good-hearted people in government who would like for these programs
30:19 to work efficiently would be unhappy with the fraud,
30:21 but it seems as though they have more
30:22 of an incentive to pretend the fraud isn't happening,
30:24 thus to claim that the programs are working better than they are or something.
30:28 Yeah, so so a couple things there, Ben.
30:30 And it's worth I mean, I'm not going to just give you
30:31 the standard talking points you can read about anywhere.
30:34 Okay, I'm going to give you some specifics from where I sit.
30:38 I think there's an incentive failure in the way that states
30:41 deal with the federal government as it relates to Medicaid.
30:44 And this is important to understand, okay?
30:46 As you said, it's well-intentioned people producing
30:49 outcomes that are not well in that are
30:51 not really doing well by the by the people who are supposed to serve.
30:54 Why is the question?
30:56 So, this incentive failure is important.
30:58 Where if a given state today cracked down on this waste, fraud, and abuse, okay?
31:04 Cracks down on Medicaid over expenditures.
31:06 And you could talk about uppercase F for fraud,
31:09 and there's also lowercase F for fraud,
31:11 which is to say maybe technically legal but it doesn't
31:13 comport with anyone's sense of who should be getting these dollars.
31:17 The problem is the state that does that heavy lifting, okay?
31:20 The equivalent of a Dojo at a state, say.
31:22 If you did that, you as a state don't really get to keep most of those dollars.
31:28 What instead happens is you get
31:30 fewer pass-through payments from the federal government.
31:33 So, that is a broken incentive system.
31:35 So, so for people aren't familiar how this works,
31:37 it's like you get reimbursed for your expenses,
31:40 almost all of them from the federal government.
31:42 So, if you cut those expenses, but you're losing the reimbursement,
31:46 then you as a state, let's say you're a governor of the state,
31:49 say, "Okay, well, I got other competing priorities because I
31:52 would rather look after some other priority in my state.
31:55 This is going to make me less popular giving free
31:57 government money away to people who could be voting for me,
32:01 but in return the federal government is still the backstop anyway,
32:05 why bother?" So, I think that incentive failure needs to change.
32:08 And one of the things that I intend to do when I'm governor,
32:11 my first 2 years, remember, will be President Trump's last 2 years as president.
32:16 I have great relationships with many members of the cabinet,
32:18 with President Trump, of course.
32:19 And and you know, Dr.
32:20 Oz and I have had great conversations,
32:22 including in potential visits we've talked about to Ohio,
32:26 to think about how we're able to change that game.
32:28 To be able to say, I mean,
32:29 having having been It's a lot of these insights came to me
32:32 from the 2 and 1/2 months that I did co-head Dojo,
32:34 we need to fix those incentive structures, just like you would in a business,
32:38 where if somebody is running a given
32:39 division of a business generates greater profitability,
32:43 you want that person to be rewarded for it.
32:45 I'd say the same thing with respect to the states,
32:48 that, you know, from the federal government,
32:49 if you're saving the federal government the money,
32:52 you also as a state should participate in a greater portion of those savings.
32:56 So, that'll be something that I'm definitely going to work on when I'm governor,
32:59 and I'm confident that with a friendly administration,
33:02 we'll be able to we'll be able to deliver common-sense solutions.
33:05 The other issue, Ben, is just human nature.
33:06 I mean, at the end of the day,
33:07 if someone's grown dependent on the federal welfare state,
33:12 most politicians are afraid to touch that.
33:14 And the reality is that goes for, for calling a spade a spade,
33:18 Republicans and Democrats alike.
33:20 Democrats have been worse in this respect,
33:21 but a lot of Republicans prefer to talk
33:24 about or change the subject to other issues.
33:26 And at some point as a country, we're going to have to reckon with this.
33:29 We've got a $37 trillion national debt and growing.
33:32 Our children, our their generation,
33:35 are not going to be able to sustain the brunt of this level of federal spending.
33:40 And you look at how the the creep scope,
33:43 the the scope creep of these programs, from welfare to SNAP to Medicaid,
33:48 often now finding their way to individuals who were
33:51 never intended to be the beneficiaries of those programs.
33:54 That's not only bad for the federal budget, not only bad for state budgets,
33:58 it's in the long run also bad for the very
34:01 people who are supposedly the recipients of those dollars.
34:05 That's what's driving the epidemic of purposelessness,
34:08 of depression, anxiety, a loss of meaning.
34:11 When you ultimately aren't working and are permanently dependent on Uncle Sam,
34:15 that actually reduces your own sense of agency, too.
34:19 And this should be something that conservatives
34:21 are concerned with, conservatives are talking about.
34:24 And and I think it's really important
34:26 that we restore a direction in the Republican Party
34:29 and in the conservative movement that confronts these issues
34:32 head-on rather than changing the topic to, you know,
34:36 pandering about how we're going to create a different kind of nanny state.
34:39 I don't want that.
34:40 And so, I'm hoping that this is a message that will
34:43 not only help save Ohio from a lot of this waste, fraud,
34:46 and abuse, but we use the waste, fraud, and abuse as a jumping off point to say
34:51 that we're also going to focus on empowerment.
34:54 How do we put that money back
34:55 in your pocket in the form of lower property taxes,
34:57 lower income taxes, lower capital gains taxes
35:00 that attract higher-paying jobs to our state,
35:03 that ensure more of our young people
35:05 graduating from high schools and from universities,
35:07 then can get those high-paying jobs so they don't
35:10 have to be dependent on SNAP or welfare or Medicaid.
35:14 That's the way we should be building our country back,
35:17 and I think we will be in Ohio,
35:19 we're going to set an example, and that that is why I'm in this.
35:22 I know we can get this done.
35:24 It does take somebody who understands how this stuff works,
35:27 understands how incentives work, understands how to manage a bureaucracy.
35:31 One of the things I learned while running a business,
35:33 Ben, is you know, there's Oftentimes,
35:36 if the right person is not a good fit for the job,
35:38 you got to make that decision and remove them from that job.
35:41 And a lot of people who run
35:43 these government bureaucracies are reluctant to do that.
35:45 President Trump's pretty good at it.
35:47 I like that about him,
35:48 and it's the way I'm going to lead Ohio is if you have people
35:50 who are running these massive bureaucracies underneath
35:53 them who are not willing to take action,
35:56 we're going to remove them from their jobs and put in place people
35:58 who are willing to do the job that the public hires them to do.
36:02 And, you know, the most basic step to the point of what
36:05 we're talking about today starts with prosecuting the obvious waste, fraud,
36:09 and abuse that belongs the the dollars that are
36:12 being built belong in the pockets of actual law-abiding Ohioans,
36:16 and that's what I'm going to deliver.
36:20 Well, that is Vivek Ramaswamy.
36:22 He, of course, is running for governor of Ohio.
36:24 The primary is today, May 5th,
36:26 so make sure that if you're voting in Ohio, you got to vote for him.
36:28 He's running a very brave race, by the way.
36:30 He's taking on a lot of these sort of grievance
36:32 party politics that we've talked about a lot on the show.
36:34 Vivek, I wanted to ask you about that.
36:37 You know, the the fact is that you have delved
36:39 into areas that a lot of politicians have feared to delve into.
36:42 You have called out these sort of horseshoe
36:44 right and the and the left for undercutting Americanism,
36:47 for undercutting American exceptionalism.
36:49 That that's a risky business.
36:51 I mean, because the fact is
36:51 that obviously you're running in a competitive primary.
36:53 You're also running in a very competitive state.
36:55 I mean, the Ohio governor's race is not
36:56 a runaway race for Republicans in this election cycle.
36:59 You know, what what effect do you think that the sort of grievance party is
37:02 going to have on our politics going forward if it isn't if it isn't stopped?
37:08 Well, look, I I'd encourage you to take a look
37:10 at the Ohio primary results tonight or tomorrow morning,
37:13 Ben, and tell your audience about it when they're out.
37:15 I'm actually really curious as well,
37:17 because if you look at the person who's running against me in this race,
37:21 it's a guy who put up a YouTube video saying that he was
37:24 worried that AI was not highlighting enough of the good qualities of Hitler.
37:28 He claims that I can't be the governor
37:30 of Ohio because I'm an Indian, not an American,
37:33 despite the fact that I'm born and raised in Cincinnati,
37:36 Ohio, and I'm raising my kids in Ohio.
37:39 It's an embodiment of what the Twitter lab creates in the real world.
37:43 And and it's frankly disappointing.
37:45 A lot of the policies sound socialist,
37:48 just like my other opponent in the Democrat race
37:50 is also a socialist opponent I'm going to face.
37:53 And so I I oppose that form of grievance-driven identitarian socialism,
37:58 whether it emerges on the left, like for example, in the candidate who
38:01 I'm running against in the general election,
38:03 or whether it emerges on the so-called right,
38:06 and I can't even call it the right because it's not really conservative at all,
38:09 but the so-called right, which is what my primary election has been defined by.
38:13 So, to your question about what impact is
38:14 this going to have on the politics of the future,
38:17 I think that's where my my primary will be will be pretty telling.
38:20 To be able to say, "Okay, I told you,
38:21 you know, historically the Republican front runner,
38:24 the person who wins the primary,
38:25 gets between 35 and 50% of the vote in competitive Republican primaries in Ohio.
38:30 You know, let's see how I do." And I think that that will be a leading
38:32 indicator of where the future direction of the actual
38:36 voter base is for the Republican Party,
38:39 which may or may not be I think it probably is going
38:41 to be very different from the loudest voices you hear on some,
38:46 you know, sick corner of the internet.
38:49 So, we'll see.
38:50 But, I don't for me, I think that the reason I'm doing it is
38:52 if I was entering politics as a career, right?
38:55 This was my way of collecting a paycheck
38:57 and securing a comfortable life for my family, I wouldn't be doing any of that.
39:01 Of course, it's not not exactly what a, you know,
39:04 standard political playbook would tell you is the talking
39:06 points you're supposed to bring to a campaign these days.
39:09 If it were, you'd see other Republicans doing it and they're not.
39:12 So, that's that's the reality, but I'm not in this for that reason.
39:16 I would rather I really am committed to winning this election,
39:20 but if I had to choose, I would rather speak the truth and convey my beliefs
39:24 and lose an election rather than to win by saying some,
39:27 you know, fake canned talking point.
39:29 And I think we're going to win by actually speaking the truth,
39:32 but that's what I'm committed to.
39:34 You know, my parents came to this country
39:36 half a century ago with nothing to their name.
39:38 My dad worked for a five-figure salary at GE in Evendale,
39:41 Ohio for almost his entire career.
39:44 My mom took care of nursing home patients
39:46 and worked at the VA in Cincinnati as a psychiatrist.
39:49 They couldn't afford private schools.
39:50 I went to public schools through eighth grade.
39:52 They saved up.
39:53 I was able to go to Catholic private high school.
39:56 Now, I founded multi-billion dollar companies.
39:57 I mean, two different one is Roivant,
39:59 it's a 20-plus billion-dollar business listed on the Nasdaq.
40:02 Chapter is a multi-billion dollar fast-growing company, both of which I founded.
40:06 One I led as a CEO, several others as well.
40:09 My opponent, my Democratic opponent, daily accuses me of being a billionaire.
40:13 It's probably one of the few true things that she says.
40:16 But, I wasn't born a billionaire.
40:17 I wasn't born a millionaire.
40:18 I wasn't born in anything air.
40:20 I was born in heir to nothing, actually, literally.
40:23 But what I love and what I'm so grateful
40:26 to is a country that allowed me to achieve
40:28 those things and God willing be in a position
40:31 to lead the state where I was born and raised.
40:33 That story is only possible in the United States of America.
40:38 And I am so grateful to this state and to this country
40:41 for giving me those opportunities that I feel a moral duty
40:44 to revive that American dream where we teach our kids that number
40:50 one factor that determines what you achieve in life is you.
40:55 That was the lesson of my upbringing.
40:56 It's not the billionaires.
40:58 It's not the white people.
40:59 It's not the black people.
41:01 It's not the patriarchy.
41:02 It's not the Jews.
41:03 It's not the foreigners.
41:04 It's none of those things.
41:06 It is you.
41:07 That's what the American dream is built on.
41:09 That's what I'm running this campaign on.
41:12 It's a tough message at times to deliver.
41:13 It's not one that lands well on everyone's ears.
41:18 But at a certain level I don't care.
41:19 That's the truth and that's what I'm going to give
41:21 you and I'm going to give it to you because
41:23 I'm grateful to this country and I think that is
41:25 what is going to be required to save this country.
41:28 And you know, I think the red team, blue team stuff it's fine,
41:33 you know, it's the way it parts of politics works,
41:35 but I think that there's a deeper project we're going to have to undertake
41:39 in this country to revive the spirit
41:42 of that American dream from a culture of victimhood,
41:45 from the popularity of socialism in the many
41:48 in the many avatars in which it shows up today.
41:51 That's hard work ahead and I believe biased, obviously,
41:56 but I believe that my winning this election in Ohio
42:00 will help us take a step forward as a country, as the former Rust Belt,
42:07 as a state in the direction of economic empowerment,
42:10 in the direction of educational achievement, in the direction of, dare I say,
42:15 reviving that American dream that people like
42:18 you and me have lived in this country.
42:20 And if we do that in in one little state in the heart of the country,
42:24 happens to be the sixth or seventh largest state in our economy,
42:27 I think it'll be a good step for our country and I'm working on it every day.
42:32 You can go check out Vivek's campaign at vivekforohio.com.
42:35 Vivek Ramaswamy, thanks so much for taking the time, really appreciate it.
42:38 Good to see, man.
42:40 And again, that is a very fraught seat, the governor's seat in Ohio.
42:44 That's a very close election.
42:46 The Calsi odds over there, again, Calsi is one of our sponsors,
42:50 in the Ohio governor's race, it's basically 50/50.
42:52 That is a toss-up seat for the Ohio governor's race.
42:55 And so, backing Vivek would be a strong
42:58 move in favor of Republican governance, obviously,
43:01 in a state that has gone red, but used to be a lot more purple.
43:05 And meanwhile, the permission structures for violence
43:08 that have been fomented by the left continue apace.
43:12 According to Politico, on Monday,
43:14 an episode unfolded in late afternoon when plainclothes
43:17 officers determined that a person had a gun, apparently, near the White House.
43:22 The man exchanged fire with officers while trying to flee the area,
43:25 according to the deputy director of the Secret Service.
43:27 A weapon was recovered from the man.
43:29 Unclear what the intentions were.
43:31 Apparently, the vice president's motorcade drove through
43:33 the area not long before the shooting occurred.
43:37 This is obviously scary stuff.
43:39 We are seeing increasing threats to politicians.
43:41 And again, the glorification of acts of violence is a huge part of the problem.
43:46 Talked about permission structures for violence that have been created,
43:49 ideologies that suggest you must do violence
43:51 in order to save the country from fascism.
43:55 Well, now it turns out that those gigantic fires in Los Angeles,
43:59 the catastrophic Palisades fire,
44:02 were allegedly set by one person named Jonathan Rinderknecht,
44:06 who was apparently obsessed, according to the New York Post,
44:09 with the accused healthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione.
44:13 He had routinely searched "free Luigi"
44:15 and "let's take down all the billionaires" online.
44:19 So, he did billions of dollars in damage, destroyed people's lives,
44:22 all based on the idea that violence against people who are rich is somehow good.
44:28 Apparently, this person, the alleged arsonist,
44:32 was an Uber driver and he ranted to customers about Luigi Mangione's arrest.
44:37 According to prosecutors,
44:39 many of the defendant's Uber passengers on December 31st,
44:41 2024 and January 1st, 2025 described the defendant as angry,
44:45 intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being pissed off at the world,
44:49 and Luigi Mangione, capitalism, and vigilantism.
44:53 Anti-capitalism, anti-institutionalism, these have a consequences.
44:58 And when you celebrate people who do violence, this is what you end up with.
45:03 Incredibly enough, the left refuses to stop doing this.
45:06 Like, legitimately refuses to stop doing this.
45:08 So, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is campaigning with Bernie Sanders,
45:13 and he's out there once again claiming that they're fighting fascism.
45:16 If you keep saying that your opponents are fascist without evidence,
45:20 you are contributing to a permission structure for violence.
45:22 That's what this is.
45:23 Here is the Minnesota Attorney General.
45:27 Is anybody Is anybody here TO FIGHT FASCISM?
45:33 I'M HERE TO FIGHT FASCISM.
45:35 I am here to fight me some fascism with you.
45:39 All right?
45:41 Cuz fascism, I ain't got no use for it at all.
45:45 It's really, really getting on my nerves right up in here.
45:51 I mean, obviously, the way that you fight fascism in a fascist
45:54 country is that you have free speech to go and call it fascism.
45:57 That's obviously what's going on.
45:58 But again, this is part and parcel of a left-wing permission
46:02 structure that says that political opposition is somehow an aspect of evil.
46:06 And And the beautiful thing about this is that once you decide
46:10 that your generalized political opposition is in fact the font head of all evil,
46:14 well, then that excuses pretty much anything.
46:17 It excuses anything.
46:18 So, the Minnesota uh the the Michigan Senate candidate for the Democratic Party,
46:23 the likely Senate candidate, is a man named Abdul El-Sayed.
46:25 We've talked about him before.
46:27 He's a terrorist supporter.
46:28 He's a person who said that he would not come out in favor
46:30 of the killing of Ayatollah Khomeini because
46:32 too many of his constituents liked Ayatollah Khomeini.
46:36 Well, he's out there of of course of course he had he had campaigned with Hasan
46:40 And he says that it's totally fine
46:42 to campaign with Hasan because his opponent supports genocide,
46:45 which is a total lie.
46:47 Again, it's actually a double lie.
46:48 First of all, Israel did not commit a genocide in Gaza.
46:51 The population of Gaza has increased since the beginning of the war,
46:54 which is the most unsuccessful genocide in human history, if that is the case.
46:58 And second of all, it is a lie that anyone has called for a genocide.
47:03 But of course, it's all a permission structure to support people
47:06 who are truly terrible like the Hasan Pikers of the world.
47:11 If you're more frustrated by the idea that I would campaign
47:14 with Hasan than you are frustrated by the idea that we
47:16 have backstopped a genocide or that we continue to rob
47:19 people of getting basic health care in their in their country,
47:23 I think you don't understand morals.
47:25 To me, morals are about big things.
47:26 People should have health care.
47:27 We shouldn't kill children.
47:29 Those are to me morals,
47:30 and you need to be able to figure out how to do those things in the world,
47:35 sometimes working with people who don't share your morals.
47:37 And like that's what makes politics hard, but it's not complicated.
47:42 What Again, anything can be justified through this matrix.
47:46 Anything.
47:48 And of course, so can every conspiracy.
47:49 So, Midas Touch is a newly popular left-wing show.
47:54 And one of on hosts is now suggesting that President Trump
47:59 is constructing a ballroom in order to stage a military coup.
48:02 What in the world?
48:04 What in What in the What?
48:06 Huh?
48:06 Okay.
48:09 There is a fear that he ain't leaving.
48:14 And and and that is something to be taken very seriously
48:17 because it you know it almost sounds humorous that he wouldn't.
48:21 But he will and he's he said in a rally speech,
48:24 I'll never forget it that his greatest
48:25 regret was leaving the White House in 2021.
48:28 And he should have just, you know, hunkered down.
48:32 He's building an additional 100,000 square feet to give
48:35 him the opportunity to hunker down this time
48:38 with a military installation below this giant ballroom
48:42 that will clearly never be used for balls.
48:45 Do you worry as some of us do that there is a coup that is on its way?
48:53 The ballroom will be Hitler bunker.
48:55 Is that that that's the basic idea here?
48:57 But but of course then they decry all violence.
48:59 You say that the president is a fascist.
49:01 You say that you're willing to campaign with people who openly support
49:04 terrorism because the Republicans are so terrible and all the rest of this.
49:08 Truly amazing stuff.
49:09 I mean amazing stuff from the left which is of course
49:13 another justificatory structure for how they can back people like Graham Plater,
49:18 the main Senate candidate.
49:20 So Plater of course is the guy with the Totenkopf tattoo.
49:25 Meaning like an SS tattoo on his chest.
49:28 Which doesn't happen by accident.
49:29 You don't just wake up one morning with a death's head tattoo on your chest.
49:32 A giant one by the way.
49:34 People generally know why they get the tattoos they got.
49:38 Also, he has appeared on the podcast
49:40 of neo-Nazis like Stew Peters and all the rest.
49:43 So, you know, he's kind of a bad person, Graham Plater.
49:46 But the entire Democratic Party is is
49:48 now mobilizing behind him because obviously if you
49:51 want to beat the evil evil Republicans you
49:53 have to side with people like Graham Plater.
49:55 Jon Favreau at the Pod Save America crew.
49:57 He put out a tweet saying Graham Plater isn't
49:59 just our best and only chance to beat Susan Collins.
50:02 He's a good decent man who struggled
50:04 and grown and is always trying to do better.
50:06 He has struggled.
50:07 You might call all of this my struggle.
50:11 You might you might you might in fact
50:12 suggest that that he's suffering through Mein Kampf.
50:18 But again this is just insane.
50:20 I'm sorry.
50:20 The the the fact that the left is willing to side with legitimately
50:24 anyone anyone for any purpose to quote unquote stop the fascist right.
50:29 This is how you end up where we are right now.
50:32 And the temperature is really really high.
50:35 Okay, meanwhile in more serious news obviously it it appears
50:39 that that some sort of action may be imminent in Iran.
50:42 President Trump announced yesterday that the United States
50:44 will guide non-sanctioned ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
50:47 This is an amazing move by the president.
50:49 He says countries from all over the world almost all of which are not involved
50:51 in the Middle Eastern dispute going on so
50:53 visibly and violently for all to see have
50:55 asked the United States if we could help free up their ships which are locked
50:58 up in the Strait of Hormuz on something
51:00 which they have absolutely nothing to do with.
51:02 They're merely neutral and innocent bystanders.
51:03 For the good of Iran, the Middle East and the United States we've
51:06 told these countries we'll guide their ships safely
51:08 out of these restricted waterways so they can
51:10 freely and ably get on with their business.
51:14 So what does that mean?
51:15 Well, Pete Hegseth the Secretary of Defense he announced
51:18 today this morning that Iran
51:20 cannot block international waterways indiscriminately.
51:23 Here is what the Secretary of Defense had to say.
51:26 American forces won't need to enter Iranian waters or airspace.
51:29 It's not necessary.
51:31 We're not looking for a fight.
51:34 But Iran also cannot be allowed to block
51:36 innocent countries and their goods from an international waterway.
51:41 Iran is the clear aggressor.
51:44 Harassing civilian vessels, threatening mariners from every nation
51:49 indiscriminately and weaponizing a critical
51:52 choke point for its own financial benefit, at least trying to.
51:58 Well, over the course of the last 24 hours
52:00 the United States did help guide a tanker through the strait,
52:03 a very large Maersk tanker through the strait.
52:06 They're also trying to change the incentive structure so that more tankers
52:09 are willing to go get insurance and then ship through the strait.
52:12 Hicks have announced that Iran had been embarrassed
52:14 by the fact that we are now opening up some lanes.
52:17 Basically, if you think of the Strait of Hormuz as a freeway,
52:19 there are certain lanes that are further from Iran.
52:21 Those lanes are now open and the United States is making sure they remain open.
52:28 Two US commercial ships along with American
52:30 destroyers have already safely transited the strait, showing the lane is clear.
52:36 We know the Iranians are embarrassed by this fact.
52:40 Uh they said they control the strait, they do not.
52:45 Well, this is a major problem for Iran.
52:47 Their number one piece of leverage here was closing the Strait of Hormuz.
52:50 They basically have two pieces of leverage left.
52:52 One is to try and blow up all the oil supplies
52:54 in surrounding countries and the other is the Strait of Hormuz.
52:56 And if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened and the only
52:59 stuff that can't get in or out is Iranian, they have a massive massive problem.
53:02 They can't project power, they don't have a a a working economy.
53:07 President Trump announced yesterday that Iran was taking shots at ships.
53:10 It It is a desperation play at this point that they are taking shots at ships.
53:15 The president says Iran has taken some shots
53:16 at unrelated nations with respect to ship movement.
53:19 Project Freedom including a South Korean cargo ship.
53:22 Perhaps it's time for South Korea to come and join the mission.
53:24 We've shot down seven small boats or as they like to call them fast boats.
53:27 It's all they have left.
53:29 Other than the South Korean ship,
53:30 there has been at this moment no damage going through the strait.
53:34 The CENTCOM Admiral Brad Cooper detailed the nature
53:36 of the Iranian attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.
53:39 Here's what it sounded like.
53:41 The cruise missiles were going after both US Navy ships,
53:44 but mostly after commercial shipping.
53:46 Uh we defended both ourselves and consistent with our commitment,
53:50 we defended all the commercial ships.
53:52 Uh we had uh drone launches of again uh commercial ships,
53:56 all of which were defended against consistent with our commitment.
53:59 And then the small boats were all going against commercial
54:01 ships uh and all were sunk by Apaches and Seahawk helicopters.
54:07 So again, this is a massive move.
54:09 The United States re-opening the strait and ensuring
54:11 that shipping can move through at the same
54:13 time that Iran cannot get its stuff out is disastrous for the economy of Iran.
54:18 This is why Iran has now been attacking UAE.
54:22 I mean the the ceasefire is not a ceasefire from the Iranian side.
54:24 They've not ceased fire.
54:26 According to the Wall Street Journal, the UAE's Defense Ministry said late
54:29 on Monday it intercepted 12 ballistic missiles,
54:32 three cruise missiles, and four drones launched from Iran.
54:34 Again, it's sort of a warning shot.
54:36 What what Iran is mostly worried about at this point is
54:39 that the United States permanently degrades its capacity for economic recovery.
54:43 The easiest move for the United States to make
54:45 right now would be to just blow up Kharg Island.
54:49 Kharg Island and you could do an amphibious operation there.
54:51 It's it's a lot riskier.
54:53 Or you could just blow it up and that means that Iran has no
54:55 refinery capacity and that means their economy
54:57 is basically sunk for the foreseeable future,
55:00 which means the regime has no money to pay its own people.
55:04 Now it seems that the Trump administration would like
55:05 to give Iran one final opportunity before that happens.
55:08 That's what this chokehold is on Iranian resources moving in and out.
55:12 President Trump says it's only a matter of time before their resources run dry,
55:16 before they have to turn off their wells.
55:18 Here's President Trump talking to Hugh Hewitt.
55:22 They have a problem coming up because they have uh it
55:25 it's a very explosive situation in a lot of different ways.
55:29 You know, their oil,
55:30 when you turn off the oil underground and the mechanical, too,
55:34 but underground has a tendency it it in like almost 100%
55:39 of the cases to literally explode and just destroy everything around it.
55:44 And you can never get that oil again.
55:46 In other words, you can get back 30 to 40%
55:49 but it can never be like it is right now.
55:51 It does tremendous damage to the oil system in a country if that happens.
55:56 Now, Mr.
55:57 President, last time you were on They've run out of areas for storage.
56:00 Oh, yeah.
56:01 They say that in 2 weeks, you know, when they talk about time,
56:04 in 2 weeks they're going to have a natural explosion of their oil
56:08 that's going to make it impossible for them to really recover from.
56:14 Okay, the president is not wrong about any of this and and Ron knows
56:17 the time is running short for them
56:19 and that is why they are getting increasingly aggressive.
56:21 Now, again, the United States has a lot of steps that we can take.
56:24 We have a lot of things that we can do.
56:25 We could blow up Kharg Island.
56:26 We could hit other energy resources inside the country.
56:28 We could take down another layer of the IRGC.
56:30 We'll probably have to do at some point another kinetic action against missile
56:34 facilities that have been uncovered over the course of the last few weeks.
56:37 Iran has been digging out these missile launchers
56:40 from underground which actually is not very good for them.
56:43 But anybody who believes at this point that Iran
56:45 is winning this war is missing the boat.
56:47 I mean, totally missing the boat.
56:49 By the way, about 3/4 of Americans,
56:51 according to a Harvard Harris poll that just came out,
56:53 believe that Iran is losing the war.
56:54 So, despite all of the bad information coming out online,
56:58 Americans are not stupid and they are not missing the story.
57:01 Alrighty, folks, time for a thing that I like or maybe don't like.
57:04 I haven't seen this yet.
57:05 So, my my producers have brought out the new trailer for the Odyssey.
57:09 As you all know, I'm a massive fanboy of Christopher Nolan.
57:12 So, let's watch this together and we'll see what I think.
57:16 Tell me what you remember.
57:20 [music] A wife.
57:28 [music] A son.
57:31 And then none.
57:37 [music] We won the war.
57:43 Help me go home.
57:47 Okay, so far so good.
57:49 This is a household waiting for master.
57:55 I want you to choose Yeah, the casting is great.
58:00 [music] If Odysseus came is coming back.
58:01 No, he's not.
58:06 Okay, there's the Cyclops.
58:08 What would he do if he came back here and find all these suitors in his house?
58:14 They're pining for daddy.
58:16 You didn't even know like some sniveling [music] past.
58:21 Who's looking after your wife and son?
58:25 Okay.
58:25 Do you see Good.
58:26 Yeah, Damon Runyon casting.
58:29 I mean your friend [music] And I guess people
58:31 were pissed that they that you said dad there, right?
58:33 Bringing it all.
58:41 Yeah, so I know a lot of people are upset about the casting of Helen of Troy.
58:44 I'm not upset about this.
58:46 These are all mythical characters.
58:49 I need everyone in this party dead.
58:52 Also, I mean, let's be clear.
58:52 Everybody would have looked very, very Greek.
58:54 Nobody would have looked like a like a Nordic person.
58:57 You're a man.
58:58 Matt Damon is not of Greek extraction.
59:03 You cannot control this.
59:05 Okay.
59:05 That world is gone.
59:11 No one could stand between me I'm going to watch the hell out of this.
59:13 I don't understand the problem.
59:15 Use the word dad, that's what we're supposed to be pissed about?
59:17 I kneel at the gods.
59:20 Keep us straight.
59:24 I I this looks great.
59:25 I don't understand.
59:27 I again, maybe again I I'm I will admit Tenet is not a good movie.
59:31 That is the only Christopher Nolan movie I will admit is not a good movie.
59:35 All the other ones are range from great to some of the best movies ever made.
59:39 And so I'm watching this and I understand
59:41 that there are some people again like wow, this is too colloquial.
59:43 He said daddy and dad in the trailer.
59:45 That's ter- Okay, can I just be clear about this?
59:48 Every single language has some sort of diminutive for father.
59:52 Okay, every single one.
59:53 What do you call your father?
59:54 You call him father?
59:55 Probably not.
59:56 You probably call him dad.
59:58 Okay, so I promise you that way back when people were using
1:00:01 a diminutive when they were talking
1:00:02 about their fathers also because that's normal.
1:00:05 Okay, so yeah, that that looks great.
1:00:07 Everybody is whiny.
1:00:08 Stop complaining.
1:00:09 You have an original filmmaker making one of the greatest
1:00:12 stories in human history with a huge budget.
1:00:14 You should just be happy that it's going to hit your screens this year.
1:00:17 I am.
1:00:18 Alrighty, coming up we're going to jump
1:00:19 into the mailbag and take up some of your questions.
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