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cover of episode Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

Ep. 2135 - PATRIOTISM IS BACK! The Big Game Review

2025/2/10
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The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Super Bowl commercials showed a significant decrease in "woke" messaging, replaced with a surge in patriotism and a sense of national unity. This shift extended to the national anthem and even the halftime show, indicating a change in the general mood of the country.
  • Reduced woke messaging in Super Bowl commercials
  • Increased patriotism and optimism
  • Jalen Hurts' faith-based statement
  • Brad Pitt's patriotic ad
  • Trump's presence and positive reception
  • PureTalk ad reflecting a desire for affordable wireless services

Shownotes Transcript

Well, folks, that was an awful Super Bowl, but here is the thing. That Super Bowl was also replete with a new mood for the country, and you could feel it right from the outset of the Super Bowl. All the woke was basically gone. The commercials themselves...

had been changed and transmuted. There were a couple of woke commercials, but they're kind of few and far between. The generalized mood of the country is just different. There's an optimism, there's a patriotism to the mood in the country, and you can feel it pretty much everywhere, from the ads to the national anthem to even the fairly terrible halftime show itself. I begin from the beginning. Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles.

Not such congratulations to the city of Philadelphia, which insists on burning itself down every time something happens to Philadelphia that is either good or bad. That's Philadelphia for you, man, the city of brotherly love. But Jalen Hurts is truly a tremendous quarterback, and the Super Bowl winning quarterback had said before the game that he just wants to root himself in Jesus. Again, this is the kind of stuff, just kind of normie American stuff that is quite welcome at this time in history.

I think my faith has always been a part of me where I've always wanted to root myself in that and keep him in the center of my life and everything that I do. And so, you know, through the highs and the lows, he's greater than all of them. And that's something that I can always acknowledge. And in the failed cluster of circumstance, I can always lean on and remember. And so that's something that we all should probably take note of and take lesson of.

By the way, both Jalen Hurts as well as Patrick Mahomes, the losing quarterback, are very grounded guys, it seems. And that is quite a wonderful thing. The Super Bowl kicked off with Brad Pitt doing what is effectively just a patriotic ad about how awesome America is. I mean, it literally starts. The ad literally starts.

with John Hancock signing the Declaration of Independence. Now, listen, do I wish that America had more cultural moments aside from the Super Bowl? The reality is that we're so fragmented as a culture that it's very difficult for us to get together on anything. Super Bowl Sunday has basically become a sort of secular catechism in the United States. But that catechism for many, many years, we should say woke catechism, it was end racism in the end zones. It was

of Lady Gaga shouting about trans people at halftime. And now you have a Super Bowl that is opening with the Declaration of Independence. America is just a little bit back under Donald J. Trump. Here was the opener to the Super Bowl. How did we rise? The only way, together. Again, images from the Civil Rights Movement. At the core of this day and this glorious, chaotic, exasperating experiment that is us.

American flags. As we convene with our circles today. Members of the military. As we witness a piece of our culture play out. Energy, energy, energy! We honor the ways these players compete so their teams might prevail. We've got firefighters, doctors, and nurses, and soldiers. Today, we celebrate the urgency of now, the thrill of what's next, the glory of this game. And we do it as one.

Cowboys carrying an American flag. OK, come on to huddle up. It's time for the Super Bowl. OK, it's basically a Trump ad. It just is. I'm sorry. Cowboys on horses with an American flag in an ad that starts with the founding father signing the Declaration of Independence. That's just a Trump ad. And a lot of these sort of bizarrely anti-American histrionics were just gone.

John Batiste, who's a terrific artist, jazz artist, and he does some really excellent stuff. He performed the national anthem, did a terrific national anthem. Just like a classic national anthem. Like, this is good stuff. Right? No histrionics.

No kneeling. He didn't change the lyrics. Giant American flags, I'm sorry. And then when Trump came on the big screen, giant cheer, giant cheer. By the way, where we were sitting and watching the Super Bowl in Florida with some friends, giant cheer in the room when President Trump came up with Ivanka there.

First regiment, the U.S. Corps of Cadets. And it's like, great. This is great. Normie Americans. Normie America is having a moment, having a comeback. By the way, you heard Trump cheered right there. Trump was very wildly cheered in the stadium when he was shown, when he arrived at the stadium. Here's President Trump. And then they showed Taylor Swift. And like good Americans, America booed Taylor Swift, which was...

They showed her on the Superdome screen and people were like, no, none of this. President Trump, by the way, couldn't resist it. He actually put up a post on Truth Social about it in which he said, quote, the only one that had a tougher night than the Kansas City Chiefs was Taylor Swift. She got booed out of the stadium. MAGA is very unforgiving. It's pretty, pretty American, pretty, pretty awesome. Gotta love it.

President Trump did meet with the victims and first responders in the terrorist attack in New Orleans, which disappeared from the headlines real quick. Remember that ISIS terror attack that killed more than a dozen people in New Orleans and just disappeared from the headlines because we know who did it and we're not allowed to talk about who did it because if we talk about who did it, that might raise some serious issues about things like immigration or our policies toward radical Muslim countries, for example. Well, President Trump did go down to the field and meet with the victims and first responders on the field before the game. Thank you.

President Trump just down on the field meeting everybody. Knowing President Trump, having met President Trump several times, President Trump, when it comes to these sorts of situations, is really good. He's really good in person with people. He knows how to work a room. He's a real bro. You know, like that.

There was that feel to it. It just all felt so normal, didn't it? You didn't feel like you were waiting to be sucker punched. Every time you'd watch the Super Bowl, basically since Barack Obama became president, you were just waiting to be sucker punched by some left wing messaging that had to be drilled directly into your brain. And that just wasn't there. Just wasn't there. There was a feeling that you could just kind of comfortably watch the game and it would be fine.

The Secret Service did a Super Bowl ad as well. Very patriotic ad. Again, patriotism was the theme of the day because patriotism is now cool. Here's the Secret Service ad. America was founded on an idea of freedom. Lincoln and George Washington. America's always stepped forward in time of need throughout our short but powerful history. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for us. Okay, rockets, moon. We've been there for all of you. Ronald Reagan.

And the Secret Service informing President Bush about 9-11. This is directed by Michael Bay, by the way. There's the picture of President Trump nearly being assassinated.

By the way, that's the actual way that you recruit people to do things like this. We played just last week, U.S. Army ad that actually shows the army being the army. And here's a Secret Service ad showing the Secret Service doing important and cool stuff and linking it to American history in unashamed fashion. This is Trump's America. It just is.

A spirit of normalcy and freedom is descending on the country once more. And this country was founded on freedom, of course. Freedom from a country that forced us to buy their overpriced tea and then tried blockading us when we dumped their tea in the ocean. Had that work out for you, England? Well, it's time to throw your overpriced big wireless contract overboard as well. You don't need to pay $100 a month just to get a free phone. Pure Talk, my cell phone company, says no to inflated prices. With a qualifying plan, you can choose an iPhone 14 or a Samsung Galaxy for $0. And yes, $0 is a good deal.

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And then there were the ads. So I think the most indicative ad of where we are culturally is the Bud Light ad. So Bud Light has been apologizing for nigh on two years for having Dylan Mulvaney on a can, for basically deciding to wipe out its entire brand equity by having a man pretending to be a woman as an influencer for Bud Light. And Bud Light got clocked so hard it destroyed the brand. Well, now the way that they have come up with

To reinvigorate their brand is to go as bro as humanly possible. They're just going to do like man stuff. So they're going to go get Shane Gillis to be in a commercial with Post Malone about a cul-de-sac party involving Peyton Manning. That is Bud Light's idea of how to buy it back. And again, there's no question they're trying to buy it back here. There's no doubt. So many of these brands steer directly into the woke.

And it didn't work for them. It actually backlashed on them. And now they're all trying to buy back. Bud Light is a great indicator of how this is going. You want to go fishing tomorrow? I got a colonoscopy tomorrow. Fellas, I accidentally threw a lame party. Okay, Ted. They're on their way. They're here. You call this a party? Cul-de-sac party. Launch. Launch. Here's our metaphor for an invitation. Is that our leaf blower? Party at the 7th.

You are cordially invited to the end of the cold sex life. This is incredible. Your mower smokes meat? Oh, a smoker cuts grass. Hell yeah. I spent most of my money on this. New rig? Fully custom. How many Bud Lights can you fit in that puppy? As many Bud Lights as it takes. A lot of Bud Lights. It's a cul-de-sac. It's popular. Bill, get off the boat. The HOA's already breathing down my neck. Don't take it.

And this is corporate America. Nature is healing. Nature is... Now, that didn't mean that all the ads understood the assignment. So, for example, Nike did an ad for women.

And again, this sort of ridiculous over-the-top feminist crap where it's like, oh, all of America thinks women can't succeed. America is pushing women down. Oh, it's so terrible. The future bunch of female athletes who are defying stereotypes, doing things people, particularly men, tell them they can't do. Oh, it felt really bored and it felt really tired. But there's one thing that is unique about this Women for Nike ad. Two years ago, there'd be a bunch of dudes in it.

They're a bunch of trans dudes. Leia Thomas would have been in this ad two years ago. Now it's a bunch of actual, you know, human women. So here was the ridiculous Nike ad. By the way, I was watching this game with a couple of my kids, with a couple of my nieces. So we had like three girls between the ages of 10 and 13 in the room. They laughed out loud at this ad. They thought it was so stupid. Seriously. Because the entire idea...

That they're telling you not to do, so do it. The girls are like, what are they, what? Here we go. You can't be emotional, so be emotional. You can't take credit. You can't speak up. You can't be so ambitious. You can't break records. You can't have any fun. You can't make demands. You can't be proud. You can't keep score. You can't stand out. Whatever you do, you can't win. Oh, man. So win. Yes, clearly women are victims and put upon...

My daughter and my nieces, they were saying these slogans like, they say, they tell you, you can't win. So when they tell you, you can't stick your head directly in the toilet bowl. So stick your head directly. Such stupid nonsense. That wasn't the only stupid nonsense. The NFL also in an attempt to reach out to you want to talk about a bunch of marketing geniuses who do not understand women. Women are not watching football because women want to play football.

Women are watching football because Taylor Swift is on the TV and it's a cultural event. That's why women are watching the Super Bowl, because it's a giant cultural event. They're not interested in women playing football. In fact, there would be little worse to watch than women playing football. But the NFL didn't add that's supposed to be based on a bunch of high school movies where a black high school girl is apparently better at football than all the boys. Just ridiculous. Let's settle this once and for all.

Your best guy? Girl. Whatever. Versus our best guy. The Brad. Not the Brad. I'm Brad. I can read. And they're playing flag football. And this girl approaches the guy and she dekes him. He completely misses her.

Okay, okay, that's what I'm talking about. There she is. Now she's avoiding tackles by all the boys. Okay, now in the real version of this commercial, and then it says leave the pass behind. And there she is playing female flag football. And apparently this is a sport that some people play, and there are fans in the stands. Let's make girls flag football a varsity sport in all 50 states. Yeah, man.

Yeah, with packed stands. By the way, like the idea, why couldn't you just make that case without her playing against the guys? In real life, of course, the minute that a girl tries to play varsity football with any varsity high school boy, the pieces of her are in the fifth row of the stands. Like, that's just not the way human physiology works. But it's okay. The vast majority of the ads were, you know, kind of benign, right?

or patriotic. And again, the general feeling was just a feeling of this kind of normie comfort land. And that's fine. Then there was the halftime show. And my review of the halftime show, you know, so Kendrick Lamar is a human. Kendrick Lamar is a human who hates another human named Drake. Apparently they have a feud. And Kendrick Lamar, because of this feud, put together a song called Not Like Us. This person has won a Pulitzer Prize, a Pulitzer Prize for Kendrick Lamar.

Which, I gotta say, worst Pulitzer Prize since what, Rent? That is a bad Pulitzer Prize. And in this song, which is essentially a diss track about Drake liking underage people sexually, this is what was at the Super Bowl. And my basic Super Bowl halftime review is, actually, it's a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent. The only problem is, I can't understand a word you're saying.

But I just say this. Good luck. Live in peace. I have no idea what he was saying. I don't think anyone knew what he was saying unless he knew the song previously. There was no great dancing. There was no great music. It was about as meh as humanly possible. I suppose if you're a Kendrick Lamar fan, then this is your bag. But if you're not, if this is like your introduction to Kendrick Lamar, I'm just wondering why. Just why? Here we go.

I hear you like I'm young. You bet I ever go to cell block one.

And now he's just walking around. He's walking around and people are dancing in the background. He's trying to strike a chord and it's probably a minor.

Okay, so the entire stadium knew the lyrics because he's a very famous person because Americans apparently have no taste musically. I know I'm a musical snob. I like Bach, Beethoven, and I've said that rap is not a form of music before becoming a number one billboard charting rap artist because I said pretty much anybody could rap and then I went out and proved it. But in any case, apparently that was a big deal because the lyric is that

Drake was trying to strike a chord, a minor, right? Like, cause, cause like a minor, cause he has sex with, and then he calls him a pedo in the song. So, um, all right, I guess if that's your, if that's your thing, congrats to you. I guess I'm getting old or either that, or I like good music. One of those two things. In any case, overall a terrible Superbowl game, but there is a, there's a feeling of peace and comfort that has come across the country and the media are not knowing how to deal with it. They just don't.

The normie revolution is here. How do we know? Because the polling shows it. So President Trump is currently riding in the approval ratings, according to CBS, at 53%. 53% for President Trump.

According to the media, he's doing all these crazy, insane, radical, unthinkable things. He's at 53% approval rating. That is the highest approval rating Donald Trump has ever had ever in his entire political career. 53%. Why? Because he's doing the things he promised he would do. And by the way, the age breakdown here is astonishing.

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For those above the age of 65, he's a 50-50. For those aged 45 to 64, he is at a 56% approval rating plus 12. For those aged 30 to 44, he's at 50 to 48 plus four. Here's the crazy one. Aged 18 to 29, 55% approval rating for President Trump. For those aged 18 to 29,

You hear that ringing alarm bell? You hear that giant klaxon that is sounding for democratic hopes and dreams? 18 to 29, America's young people, 18 to 29, have a 55% approval rating for President Trump. Why? Because he's counterculture. The left was so dominant culturally that the counterculture became this kind of 1980s era, classic patriotism, American pie and motherhood version of America.

And now if you're a rebel, if you want to be one of the cool kids, put on the red hat. It's rebellious. Now, now this was coming for a while because the left was so censorious, so over the top, so just frankly annoying that everyone got annoyed with them. That's how you end up with a 10% plus 10 approval rating for President Trump among people 18 to 29.

By the way, among white voters, he's at a 61% approval rating. Among black voters, he's at a 33% approval rating, which sounds terrible until you realize that pretty much every Republican rides at like a 10% approval rating. 33% approval rating among black voters. Among Hispanic voters, he's at a 49% approval rating in the CBS News poll. That's insane. These are wild numbers for President Trump.

Why? Well, because people perceive President Trump to be moving with alacrity to keep his promises. Again, I think the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has helped Trump so insanely much. Joe Biden was a dead person who apparently didn't like many of the things about the country and farmed out all of his policymaking to his wokest advisors and then was unable to stay awake most of the day. Meanwhile, President Trump is the opposite. According to that new CBS News poll,

Here's the percentage of 18 to 29-year-olds. I mean, these are young Americans, okay? 18 to 29. 71% of people 18 to 29 describe Trump as tough. 65% describe him as energetic. 63% describe him as effective. And 62% describe him as focused. These are young people. 58% describe him as competent. Only 35% describe him as compassionate. Because guess what? Compassionate went out with Joe Biden in the sense that fake compassion is the brand of the Democratic Party.

And maybe Americans are tired of that stuff. Maybe what Americans want are some hard truths, some realities, and some normalcy. 70% of all Americans say that Trump is doing what he promised in the campaign, including 68% of Hispanics and 58% of black Americans. That's crazy. These are insane numbers. Insane. By the way, 59% of Americans approve of President Trump's program to find and deport immigrants who are in the United States illegally.

That includes a majority of every single age group. That includes 66% of whites, 49% of blacks, and 49% of Hispanics. It includes, by the way, 23% of Democrats and 59% of independents. President Trump has never had better numbers than this ever.

And some of that is due to President Trump. Obviously, he's a once in a generation unique talent. Clearly, he's a historic figure. And the stuff that he's doing right now is going to make him one of the most seminal figures in American history. Truly what he's been doing over the course of the first 20 days. We are 20 days in the first 20 days of his administration alone is making him one of the most important presidents of our lifetime. And it's not particularly close, actually.

If you were going to rank important presidents of my lifetime, so I was born during the Reagan administration. So you probably still have to put Reagan on top because the Cold War ended because of Reagan and the entire American economy was reshifted because of Ronald Reagan. But after that, it's basically Reagan, Obama and Trump. And Trump is erasing so much of what Obama was able to do in destroying many important facets of the country. You have to put Trump above Obama at this point.

which is amazing. So you're talking about the two most seminal presidents of the last 50 years in America are Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. I mean, that's what you'd have to say this early on. Now, again, we're super early. We have to see where all of this goes, but President Trump is moving. He's moving fast and he really is not taking any prisoners. So President Trump did a pre-Super Bowl show

He, unlike Joe Biden, who avoided it because he couldn't actually carry on a conversation, his face hole no longer moved properly. President Trump is perfectly alive and willing to talk. Here he was during the pre-Super Bowl show saying you can feel the country taking on new life. You know, you are going to be

the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. It's a big day for America, always is. What made you want to do it? Well, first of all, I'm very surprised to hear that. I would have assumed many presidents came. But I think just the spirit of the country, the country's taken on a whole new life. I thought it would be a good thing for the country to have the president be at the game. It's an iconic day. It's an iconic day. It's going to be a great game, two great teams. And let's see what happens.

Yeah, again, President Trump is a happy camper and there's a new mood in President Trump. And during his first administration, I think he was so frustrated, properly so, that his administration was being thwarted at every turn by legal idiocies, the Mueller investigation, various impeachments. You could feel the frustration rolling off him in ways. You don't get that from President Trump. There is a calm about President Trump that is unique. And that means that he's actually incredibly, incredibly focused.

So President Trump spoke about the trade deficit during this pre-Super Bowl show. He said, one of the reasons that we're not rich is because other countries have been taking advantage of us.

If all goes to plan, when do you think families will be able to feel prices going down, groceries, energy, or are you kind of saying to them, hang on, inflation may get worse until it gets better? No, I think we're going to become a rich nation. Look, we're not that rich right now. We owe $36 trillion. That's because we let all these nations take advantage of us.

Same thing like 200 billion with Canada. We owe 300. We have a deficit with Mexico of 350 billion dollars. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to let that happen.

Okay, now, I think he's wrong about trade deficits. Okay, trade deficits are not a thing. Again, you have a trade deficit with your grocery store. You have a trade deficit with everyone with whom you actually do business. If you buy a product from Amazon, you have a trade deficit with Amazon. However, he is right that other countries, particularly China, have taken advantage of the United States. They've taken advantage of our free trade systems, of our free speech systems.

Whether we are talking about them taking advantage of free speech by using propagandistic information gathering spyware like TikTok, or whether we're talking about China taking advantage of our free trade systems in order to essentially steal our intellectual property and subsidize slave labor in their own country.

Those are things that have taken advantage of the American laborer and have destroyed some swaths of the American economy. That happens to be true. While President Trump was on the plane to the Super Bowl and he signed an EO, a proclamation for the Gulf of America, which again, I love this kind of stuff. Here's President Trump on Air Force One signing an executive order about the Gulf of America.

Wow, he did that well. Make America Great Again, right? That's what we care about. Okay, here we go.

He's having too much fun. He's having too much fun. Huffington Post was bothering President Trump on Air Force One about a tweet by J.D. Vance, which we'll get to in a moment. And President Trump couldn't help but dunk on Huffington Post. Vice President suggested that if the Supreme Court rules in a way that you don't like, they can just enforce it by themselves. Do you agree with that? I don't know even what you're talking about. Neither do you. Who are you with? HuffPost. Who? HuffPost. No wonder.

I thought they died. Are they still around? I haven't read them in years. I thought they died. There's a dunking heart on Huffington Post over there. Now, President Trump did have some substantive comments as well while he was on the plane. So over the weekend, there were three Israeli hostages who were released by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of murderous terrorists released by Israel. The hostages were essentially held in tunnels for over a year.

emaciated and starved. It appears that the people who were most affected by the so-called starvation in Gaza were not the Palestinians. It, in fact, turns out to have been the hostages who were being purposefully starved by the Palestinians, by Hamas.

President Trump said that he saw the pictures. I mean, the situation there is absolutely horrifying. One of the people who came out of the tunnels who was released, he was unaware, he'd been made unaware for over a year that his wife and children had been murdered by Hamas. And so during his actual statement, he said he was looking forward to seeing his wife and his kids who were already dead, been dead for a year. In any case, here's President Trump speaking about this. I watched the hostages come back today and they looked like Holocaust survivors. They were...

in horrible condition. They were emaciated. It looked like many years ago, the Holocaust survivors. And

I don't know how much longer we can take that when I watch that. I know we have a deal where we're supposed to get they dribble in and keep dribbling in, but they are in really bad shape. They have been treated brutally, horribly. Even the ones that came out earlier, they were in a little bit better shape, but mentally they were treated so badly. Who could take that? You know, at some point, we're going to lose our patience.

When I see that scene that I saw today with people coming out of helicopters and airplanes that are emaciated, that look like they haven't had a meal in a month. No reason for that. And I don't know how much longer we can take it. President Trump is not Joe Biden. By the way, speaking of aid to Hamas, it has been revealed that USAID, which is the agency that the Musk Doge is going through and cutting, USAID,

is responsible for providing $230 million in funding in just November 2024 alone to Gaza. Since October 7th, the U.S. taxpayer has spent, get ready for this, $2.1 billion on Gaza, shipping supposed humanitarian and economic recovery aid into an area occupied by a terrorist group holding American hostages.

No wonder Americans don't like USAID. Bill Hagerty, the senator from Tennessee, he says, listen, the appetite for killing USAID in Congress is quite real. Do you expect Congress to actually authorize the president to dismantle and consolidate USAID? I think there's a tremendous appetite to do it again, Margaret, because what we want to see is alignment of our programs with America's national security interest. USAID has been out of control.

I've demanded accountability from AID. They've refused it. As an appropriator, I've asked them to be very clear about, for example, their role funding Hamas in Gaza. They would not comply. They will not tell us what they do. Now that we start to find out some of the programs that AID has been funding, if you think about it, sex change operations in Guatemala, LGBTQ programs in Serbia. This is ridiculous. This is so beyond the pale. The U.S. government does not fund sex change operations or fund Hamas. You know that, though.

No, they absolutely fund Hamas. If you are sending billions of dollars into the Gaza Strip, absolutely 100% they're funding Hamas. There's no question about this. Meanwhile, Mike Walz, who is the National Security Advisor, he said, listen, we understand that USAID, the aid officials have had their own agenda for a very long time and they're funneling money, American taxpayer money, to absolute trash.

Is foreign aid vital to the nation's national security? When foreign aid is aligned with U.S. objectives and U.S. objectives meet the president's objectives as commander in chief, then it is. But that is not the case. Many of these senior aid officials have their own agenda, have gone their own direction. And these programs, many of which are no longer authorized by Congress, just seem to continue in perpetuity.

By the way, it is worth noting the cuts to USAID are highly popular with Americans. Americans do not like spending their money on this trash. All right, coming up, we're going to get to what else Doge is going to cut. Democrats having mental breakdowns over a tweet by J.D. Vance and Elon Musk.

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It says it has identified and cut more than $1 billion in spending in the first three weeks. Now, again, $1 billion is a lot of money in regular people money. In government money, it really is not much at all, and they're going to have to dig a lot deeper, and they intend on doing so. More than half of the cost savings Doge says it has found is related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but Doge says

is going to push for far larger cuts via the General Services Administration, which manages government buildings and commercial real estate to identify which leases can be canceled or let lapse, looking for underused office space and ways to consolidate as well. Other massive parts of the budget obviously include major embedded costs, things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the defense budget,

Musk's group so far is targeting a subset of programs in those buckets, but Musk has signaled he thinks there are much bigger savings elsewhere in the budget that his group is now shifting its attention to. So Medicare and Medicaid's contracting and payments system, they're now going through that looking for evidence of fraud. There's massive fraud in those systems. Now, again, is any of this going to heal America's underlying debt problem? No, it isn't. And the reason that it's not is because the biggest drivers of the debt are these giant entitlement programs that nobody is going to touch. However,

If you want Americans to be in the mood to cut, you first have to identify the actual giant, obviously wasteful programs. And the way that the media are fighting back against this, pretty amazing. So for example, the New York Times has a piece titled, For Stunned Federal Workers, Sleeplessness, Anger, and Tears. One thing lost in the Trump administration's war on the federal bureaucracy is the collective voice of the employees, but some have begun to speak out. In the words of Vice President J.D. Vance, I don't care, Margaret.

I'm sorry, you work at the pleasure of the taxpayer. You do not have a cush job for life. And if you work for USAID, where they're blowing billions of dollars on some of the worst trash in humanity, then I think probably you should lose your job.

But according to the New York Times, we're supposed to feel terrible for federal employees who lose their jobs doing jobs that wouldn't exist in the private sector. And the rest of us actually have to be answerable to a bottom line. The beautiful thing about being a taxpayer employee is that you never have to be answerable to a profit and loss statement. You never have to generate actual revenue. No return is necessary. All you need to do is demonstrate that you are a member of a preferred coterie that the federal government wishes to pay.

But the New York Times is trying to gin up the sympathy. Quote, one was fired by email at 1247 a.m. Another wept with colleagues as security escorted her from her office. A third frantically tried to fill a prescription after she got a 24-hour notice that her health care was ending. I mean, well, did they deserve to lose their job or not? If they don't, bring them back. If they do, get rid of them. I don't understand why the feelings of the dismissed are supposed to be the chief factor. Like, is all of the government just a giant welfare program or what?

Because I was told that these people were supposed to be good-hearted employees of the state, servants of the people and the public interest. And, well, again, Democrats are panicking about all of this. For example, Senator Chris Murphy, who is just terrible, senator from Connecticut, he says that we are watching the worst constitutional crisis since Watergate. No, not even remotely closed, my dude.

I think this is the most serious constitutional crisis the country has faced. Certainly since Watergate, the president is attempting to seize control of power and for corrupt purposes. The president wants to be able to decide how and where money is spent so that he can reward his political friends, he can punish his political enemies. That is the evisceration of democracy. You stand that next to the wholesale endorsement of political violence,

with the pardons given to every single January 6th rioter, including the most violent, who beat police officers over the head with baseball bats. And you can see what he's trying to do here. He is trying to crush his opposition by making them afraid of losing federal funding, by making them afraid of physical violence.

That's ridiculous. Make them afraid of his. That's what does Chris Murphy fear for his life? Really? I've had 24 seven secured enemy for years. Why? Well, because there are a wide variety of people who have threatened my life. Does Chris Murphy get that on the regular from, you know, people who are watching meet the press? Is that a thing? Is he getting that from President Trump?

Here's what's actually happening. As I've said before, there is a giant pipeline of cash that flows from the federal government to all of Chris Murphy's friends. And Trump and Doge are walking in and they're ending that giant pipeline of cash. And he's mad about it. Not only that, the federal government was using its pressure tactics in order to get private industry to do its dirty work from social media to corporate heads who are embracing dumbassery like ESG and DEI. And now...

The Trump administration is coming in and saying, you don't have to do any of that anymore. In fact, it's illegal if you discriminate on the basis of race. And companies are reacting to that. They're reacting by getting rid of all of these bad policies. And somehow that's fascism. First fascist takeover in human history to reduce the size and scope of government. Never heard of anything like it. Meanwhile, Ilhan Omar, who can't even abide by immigration law when it comes to her brother, allegedly, is now saying that Trump has decided he won't abide by the Constitution.

Oh, my God. Ilhan Omar. The fact that this joke of a human is somehow considered a leading light in the Democratic Party, that's one of the reasons the Democratic Party is currently riding at 31% approval rating.

What we are witnessing is a constitutional crisis. We are seeing an executive branch that has decided that they are no longer going to abide by the Constitution in honoring Congress's role in the creation of the agencies, in their role in deciding where money is allocated.

And so the only recourse we have since our congressional leadership, the speaker, will not stop the executive is through the judiciary. So this is going to be the plan. The plan is rely on the judiciary. Now, that's pretty hysterical, considering that the Democratic Party five seconds ago was talking about packing the Supreme Court. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic Party were openly talking about packing the Supreme Court.

Joe Biden tried to tweet an amendment into the Constitution on his last day in office. He literally tried to say that there was a constitutional amendment that he had now magically declared the Equal Rights Amendment, which had not, in fact, been in any way ratified by the states. And he tried to tweet it into the Constitution. This is a dude who openly acknowledged that he was attempting to defy the Supreme Court on relieving student loan debt. But now they're relying on the courts.

Again, the rules just never apply in the same way to Democrats. It's amazing. But the New York Times has found that this is the strategy. Quote, more than 40 lawsuits filed in recent days by state attorneys general, unions and nonprofits seek to erect a bulwark in the federal courts against President Trump's blitzkrieg of executive actions that have upended much of the federal government and challenged the Constitution's system of checks and balances.

Unlike the opening of Mr. Trump's first term in 2017, little significant resistance to his second term has arisen in the streets, the halls of Congress, or within his own Republican Party. For now, at least lawyers say the judicial branch may be it. The courts really are the front line, said Sky Perryman, chief executive of Democracy Forward.

So again, judicial orders have been issued in nine federal court cases, include ending automatic citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil. There was a hold put on that. Transferring transgender female inmates to male-only prisons, meaning men to male-only prisons. Potentially exposing identities of FBI personnel who investigated January 6th. Pushing federal workers to accept deferred resignation. There are a bunch of judges, local judges,

who have essentially put nationwide stays on federal policy. I don't understand how that works, just judicially. I don't understand how a local judge can issue a nationwide injunction. It seems like a bizarre standard for federal law. So J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, put out a controversial tweet on this matter. He said, quote,

If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general and how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power. Now, there are two ways to read this, the way that J.D. Vance actually meant it and the way that the left is immediately taking this. What he is saying is that if the judiciary declared something to be illegal that was actually legal, it would not have the force of law. So, for example, if the judiciary simply declared that the First Amendment did not cover political speech,

You'd be obligated to ignore the judiciary because the judiciary would be wrong. They don't actually have the power, for example, to say, the judiciary, that let's say Congress declares war and the president goes to war. The judiciary can't then say the war is illegal under the Constitution. That's not the way that it works. They don't have that power. In other words, he's saying the judiciary's power is bounded. And now the left is interpreting that to mean that there are no boundaries that can be placed by the judiciary at all, which is, of course, not what J.D. Vance is saying.

The left has gone nuts over all of this. They've suggested that J.D. Vance is attempting to overthrow the boundaries of the Constitution itself. That is not true. Every branch has its own constitutional duty. The constitutional duty of the executive is not alleviated by the rulings of the Supreme Court if the Supreme Court rules wrongly. That is J.D. Vance's entire point.

But again, Democrats have to try and claim intermittently that this is a threat to the republic. Now, meanwhile, what do people actually see as a threat to the republic? Mainly the crazy of the left. You may be asking yourself, if Donald Trump is so dangerous, if J.D. Vance is so, if all of this is so dangerous, why does Donald Trump currently have the highest approval rating of his entire political life? Why? And the answer is partially because of Trump, but largely because the left continues to be insane. So for example, Chris Hayes over the weekend, he spent the weekend doubling down on the idea that,

children should be guaranteed sex transition. Like, good luck with this, guys. These are your intellectuals. But I also think at the same time, there is a message of what I would call like,

common sense patriotic pluralism. That is a majority message, which is like, if some father and mother have health care for their kid lined up who's trans, just stay the f*** out of their business. Like, let them make that decision. That's their decision to make.

Okay, good luck with this. You get big clap seals from the Bill Maher audience, but it is not exactly going to go amazing for you. Bill Maher knows this, by the way. So one of his guests was very upset over the weekend at the end of the end racism signs of the Super Bowl, like in the end zone. She was like, why did they remove the end racism signs at the Super Bowl? And Bill Maher's like, because they were stupid. That's why.

I noticed that at the Super Bowl there for the first time in, I think, four years now, the Trump administration is making them take away end racism, which they had written in the end zone. Right. And when I say why, it just seems silly. I mean, do it or not to do it. Why get rid of it? Oh, I could tell you why. I know, but it's just like it was stupid to begin with. Let me ask you, who is it for?

And if you're a racist and you see end racism in the end zone, you're going to stop being a racist? And this is the entire point. The left continues to be unbelievably stupid all the way through, consistently and always. Meanwhile, Jasmine Crockett, who again is apparently now in a running gun battle with Maisie Hirono for dumbest person in the United States Congress. She said over the weekend that under Donald Trump, people of color will be rounded up. But why are they losing? I can't I can't imagine. It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma.

I do believe that fear is truly warranted in the sense that people of color are just going to be rounded up. I mean, this is this. I mean, we've we've lived it, especially as black folk in this country. Right. Like it's the racial profiling. And so whether you're a U.S. citizen, whether you are here as a DACA recipient, whether you are undocumented, whether you are naturalized, whatever your situation is,

I think that if you can be mistaken for being a brown, right, that you should be concerned because there is nothing that is tatted on anybody's head that says I'm undocumented or I'm a citizen. Right. Well, I mean, you don't need a face tattoo saying I'm undocumented for ice to check your immigration status and find out whether, in fact, you are here in the country illegally. Right.

That is why, for example, we all have IDs and social security numbers here in the United States. Why are they losing? No one knows. All right, coming up, we'll get into Elon Musk, who's now sounding off in really, really strong fashion about the deep and abiding racism in South Africa against whites. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.