Ep. 2166 - Democrat Launches Verbal ASSAULT on Disabled Texas Governor: “HOT WHEELS”
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Folks, a lot of news breaking today. We'll get to all of it first. If you want more from The Ben Shapiro Show and The Daily Wire, the time has come to become a Daily Wire Plus member. Get member-exclusive shows, ad-free streaming, early access to our new releases. Watch premium films and documentaries you're not going to find anywhere else.

Connect with a community that shares your values, not one that cancels you for them. Watch anywhere, anytime on desktop, mobile, and TV apps. And with new content added every single week, there's always something worth watching. Join the fight right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. Well, the left feels that finally has some room to run after the supposed scandal of a bunch of Trump national security officials who are on a signal chat together and together.

Someone from National Security Advisor Mike Walz's office accidentally invited Jeffrey Goldberg, the excreble editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, into the chat. And there, a conversation ensued all about when and how to strike the Houthis in Yemen.

And people are pretending to be extremely angry about this. When I say people are pretending, what I mean is that there used to be a time, say 15 years ago, when national security breaches based on revelation of classified information would have been a national scandal. And now we have been through this many times and no one has been prosecuted. And so the idea that anyone takes this stuff super seriously at the top level is kind of ridiculous. Of course, I mentioned this yesterday when Hillary Clinton was let off the hook by the FBI, FBI,

And by James Comey. At that point, basically, it was open season on screwing around with the classified information. And so the idea that Americans are sitting around their kitchen tables today saying to themselves, oh, my God, I can't believe that they invited a reporter into a signal chat and then nothing happened and the Houthis got hit with missiles.

I just don't think that that is going to motivate the American public to move away from President Trump. And that is what the evidence, by the way, is showing right now. Harry Enten over on CNN, he says that despite all of the Democratic attempts to paint President Trump as deeply unpopular, the numbers are better for President Trump than literally any time in his political career.

All we talk about is how unpopular Donald Trump is. But in reality, he's basically more popular than he was at any point in term number one and more popular than he was when he won election back in November of 2024. What are we talking about? His net favorable rating right now comes in at minus four points.

Compare that to where he was when he won in November of 2024 when he was at minus seven points or March of 2017 when he was at minus ten points. So when you compare Trump against himself, he's actually closer to the apex than he is to the bottom of the trough.

Okay, that is absolutely right, which means that unless a scandal actually goes to sort of the core of the Trump administration, and by that I mean his actual agenda, not how the agenda is carried out, but the actual agenda itself, it's not going to harm Trump in any serious way. And President Trump knows precisely that. So yesterday there was large-scale controversy over that signal chat. Members of the Trump administration were testifying in Congress and talking about whether classified information was actually revealed.

It was maintained by Tulsi Gabbard, who is the director of national intelligence, that there was no classified information that was revealed. John Ratcliffe of the CIA said the same thing. He said that that chat did not include any real classified information. Tulsi Gabbard suggested that the conversation is under review. Here she was yesterday in front of Congress.

I won't speak to this because it's under review by the National Security Council. Once that review is complete, I'm sure we'll share the results with the committee. What is under review? It's a very simple question. Are you a private phone or an officially issued phone? What could be under review? National Security Council is reviewing all aspects of how this came to be.

how the journalist was inadvertently added to the group chat and what occurred within that chat across the board. Now, again, members of the Trump administration are saying there was no classified material on the chat. The reason that they are saying that is because if there was classified material on the chat, that could theoretically breach actual law. It wouldn't just be an impropriety. It might be a legal problem. And so they're all saying that there was no classified information on the chat. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, says, fine, well, if if

there's no classified information on the chat, then I guess I'm just gonna put everything out there because there had also been a debate over whether there were actual war plans in the chat or whether it was sort of broad ranging discussions, what was gonna happen

the kinds of stuff that you could actually say to each other in text as opposed to in a skiff or in some sort of classified venue. According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump and two of his top intelligence officials denied Tuesday classified materials about military strikes in Yemen were shared by officials on a group chat on a non-government service while Democrats denounced the security breach as both reckless and dangerous. As I mentioned, Gabbard and Ratcliffe said that this did not include classified information. The information was not, in fact, classified. Meanwhile,

The Atlantic has now responded by publishing the rest of the information. They say, fairly enough, if it's not classified, then you'll have no problem with us putting that out there. Jeffrey Goldberg this morning put out a story about this. They had emailed the White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt,

And Levitt had responded, quote, as we've repeatedly stated, there was no classified information transmitted in the group chat. However, as the CIA director and national security advisor have both expressed today, that does not mean we encourage the release of the conversation. This was intended to be an internal private deliberation among high level senior staff and sensitive information was discussed. So for those reasons, yes, we object to the release.

A CIA spokesperson asked to withhold the name of John Ratcliffe's chief of staff, which Ratcliffe had shared in the signal chain because CIA intelligence officers are traditionally not publicly identified. But Ratcliffe had also testified earlier that the officer was not undercover and said it was completely appropriate to share their name in the signal conversation. The Atlantic, for purposes of caution, is refusing to release the name of the officer. Otherwise, the messages are unredacted. So what exactly do the texts say?

Well, at 1144 Eastern Time, this is Saturday morning, the Secretary of Defense posted in the chat, team update, weather is favorable. Just confirm with CENTCOM we are a go for mission launch. And then the Hexeth text continued, 1215 Eastern Time, F-18s launch, first strike package, 1345, 145 Eastern Time, trigger-based F-18 first strike window starts. Target terrorist is at his known location, so should be on time. Also, strike drones launch, MQ-9s.

So Jeffrey Goldberg says, why exactly is this not classified? He says, the signal message shows the U.S. Secretary of Defense texted a group that included a phone number unknown to him at 1144 a.m. This is 31 minutes before the first U.S. warplanes launched in two hours and one minute before the beginning of a period in which a primary target, the Houthi target terrorist was expected to be killed by these American aircraft. If that text had been received by someone hostile to American interests, the Houthis would have had time to prepare for what was meant to be a surprise attack on their strongholds. The consequences for American pilots could have been catastrophic.

The Hegseth text continues, 2-10, more F-18s launch, second strike package, 14-15, 2-15 p.m., strike drones on target. This is when the first bombs will definitely drop, pending earlier trigger-based targets. 3-36, F-18, second strike starts, also for C-based Tomahawks launched, more to follow per timeline. We are currently clean on OPSEC, that is Operational Security Godspeed, to our warriors.

So again, the Atlantic is saying, okay, these texts are obviously supposed to be classified. Why is this happening inside a signal chat? So let's separate the legal issue for a second from the actual national security issue, because there are two real issues here. One is the legal situation. If this was classified information, was it mishandled? If so, is that a violation of criminal law? As we've said,

Usually, violation of criminal law requires some level of intent. This was exactly the standard that was set up for Hillary Clinton in the emails case. If you agree with James Comey on that, that basically you have to have intent to spread classified information. It's not just negligence. It's intent to spread classified information beyond its boundaries. Then you're guilty of some sort of crime. Then obviously there was no intent here. No one meant to include Jeffrey Goldberg on purpose in the middle of the chat, obviously.

So on a legal standard, very difficult to say that this would be violative of law as actually reinterpreted by James Comey and the FBI and pretty much everybody else going forward from that point, which means 15 years ago, maybe a crime today, not so much. And then you reach the question of the political here. Does it look good that this sort of thing happened, that Jeffrey Goldberg was included in this chat? Obviously, it doesn't look good. It was messy and it was a mistake.

However, is it going to damage President Trump? The answer here is no. And the reason the answer here is no is because the strikes went forward, the Houthis were in fact eviscerated, the terrorist was in fact killed, the strikes were in fact successful. And the discussion that was actually had, as I mentioned yesterday, the discussion was quite fascinating because it illuminated differences inside the president's team over foreign policy and showed that both Secretary of Defense Hegseth

and NSA Waltz in particular are very strong defenders of President Trump's peace through strength agenda. This is what Mike Waltz was saying yesterday on national television on Fox News. He said, listen, we're knocking the crap out of the terrorists, which is the central issue here. This journalist, Mr. President, wants the world talking about more hoaxes and this kind of nonsense rather than the freedom that

that you're enabling. And a key part of our sovereignty is open sea lanes and knocking the crap out of terrorists, which is exactly what your team and Pete Hegseth, a good friend and fellow veteran, is leading the charge on. President Trump, for his part, did the right thing. He defended Waltz. And I say it's the right thing here because the idea that Waltz or Hegseth or anyone is going to get fired over this in the wake of the reality about how national security information has been treated.

It's particularly ridiculous in the aftermath of the Afghanistan withdrawal for which no one was fired. So a slap on the wrist is appropriate. A firing is not. Trump's national security team is really, really good. I mean, that's actually the message that you get from the internals of the deliberations. Again, put aside the actual negligence of including Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat. The actual internal deliberations are fascinating, interesting and high level. Here's President Trump defending Waltz.

I don't think he should apologize. I think he's doing his best. It's equipment and technology that's not perfect.

and probably he won't be using it again, at least not in the very near future. - Well, President Trump is defending Mike Waltz as he should. Meanwhile, other things that you should be doing, you should be protecting your data. Well, tax season is upon us. While we may be weary of numbers, some deserve our immediate attention. $16.5 billion in IRS refunds flagged for potential identity fraud last year. Identity theft tax fraud surged by an alarming 20% in 2024 alone, affecting thousands of unsuspecting Americans.

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Okay, now, Democrats, of course, are jumping all over this, and they are pretending that this is a deep breach of national security. Again, it is very difficult for Democrats to have a leg to stand on here, considering their past treatment of classified information ranging from Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden. The bottom line is neither party takes this stuff particularly seriously at this point. Should both parties take it more seriously? Absolutely. Sure.

Is it something that anyone takes seriously at this point, especially when it's kind of no harm, no foul? The answer is going to be no going forward here. Democrats who are trying to seize on this as sort of their moment in time to make hay, they're making a very large tactical mistake, I think, because, again, most Americans don't care about this. Most Americans don't really understand why this is such a major issue other than somebody got messy in the signal chat.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia ripped into John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, and Tulsi Gabbard, DNI, over the carelessness and incompetence and all the rest of this. I can just say this. If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired. I think this is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information.

That this is not a one off or a first time error. So, again, this is this sort of outsized outrage is kind of rich coming from these people. John Ossoff, the senator from Georgia, who is not long for the Senate, by the way, went after John Ratcliffe and said, oh, this is totally so unprofessional, just terrible. You guys had literally a person who is dead as president of the United States for several years and you covered it up.

That wasn't a huge mistake. They characterized it as a mistake. This is utterly unprofessional. There's been no apology. There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error.

Okay, I'm sorry. From these people, I'm just not willing to hear it. I'm not. I'm not. It's ridiculous. Susan Rice, who is national security advisor under Barack Obama, said this is just terrible. Just absolutely, absolutely awful. Ambassador Rice, putting your national security advisor hat back on, your reaction to this report? It's stunning. It's likely the biggest national security debacle that any professional can remember.

So that's the biggest national security debacle anyone can remember. I don't know. Again, I remember when you were a part of the Biden administration, like a top domestic policy advisor to the Biden administration that presided over the collapse of Afghanistan, among other things. So, yeah, I can remember much worse debacles than this. Now, is this great? Absolutely not. Is this something that you would recommend? No. Is it on the order of.

a complete destruction of Western presence in Afghanistan and turning over the country to the Taliban or say doing nothing when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine twice, once. And again, Susan Rice was there for all of this. She was there for the invasion of Ukraine in 2014 by the Russians and she did nothing. And then she was there for the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And again, totally ineffective. So I'm noticing like a lot of problems with the idea that this is where you draw the line.

It's such a procedural approach to government sin. Well, the procedures were not done. Again, I agree. The procedures were not done. That's really bad. Slap on the wrist is appropriate. Public humiliations for all. Does that amount to a fireable offense in this era? The answer, of course, is no. That, of course, is really silly. Trump is not going to fire and he shouldn't fire these people.

The reality is that many of the people who are gunning for members of the administration, it's interesting which members of the administration they are particularly gunning for, right? They're gunning for Waltz because Waltz included Goldberg in the chat in the first place, but also because Waltz happens to be a hawkish backer of Trump's peace through strength. They're gunning for Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who again is the hawkish backer of peace through strength. I mean, again, if you read the chat, what's fascinating about the chat, as I mentioned yesterday, is that the most responsible and intelligent commentators on foreign policy in the chat are Waltz and Hegseth.

It's not particularly close. They're the two most informed, most reasoned people in the chat about what should be done about the Houthis. For example, I do not think it is a coincidence that many of both the isolationists on the right and the Obama foreign policy pseudo-realists on the left are gunning for Hegseth and Waltz. I don't think that is merely about the handling of classified information because there are a lot of people on that chat. So not everybody was on that chat and no one else is being gunned for, which is rather curious, shall we say.

In the end, it is left to Jasmine Crockett, the new hot leader of the Democrat Party. And she's sort of the fresh-faced AOC. AOC's still out there. She's now a veteran. But Jasmine Crockett is trying to steal her thunder. This is the congresswoman from Texas, the incredibly voluble congresswoman from Texas, who was left to sum up the real problem that happened in the Signal Chat.

Then y'all want to come at us and act like people of color are the problem or that women are the problem? Like, baby, you probably need a good black woman in the room who can check you and tell you that, first of all, you shouldn't be doing this on Signal or anything else.

Yeah, that was the problem. There's no black woman in the room. That would have solved everything. Thank you, Jasmine. That wasn't even the dumbest thing she said yesterday. So meanwhile, you wonder why President Trump continues to ride high? Like there can be botchery at Doge. There can be mistakes made in signal chats and all the rest of it.

However, the Democrats are completely lost. They're in the wilderness right now because their leaders are people like Representative Jasmine Crockett. They're attempting to show that they are, in fact, the resistance. And they think that the way that you show you're the resistance is by cursing a lot and by saying deeply insulting, terrible things. So Jasmine Crockett, this is hilarious. She was at the Human Rights Campaign, which is all about equality. It's about LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign.

And it's supposedly about marginalized people. And she proceeds to drop this insane line. Because we in these hot Texas streets, honey. Y'all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. About him and that mess, honey. So that is that is some very, very,

inspiring talk there. They're in the hot ass streets with the Hot Wheels governor because he's a hot ass mess, according to Jasmine Crockett. Now, there are a few problems with this. Number one, Jasmine Crockett grew up in a rather privileged precinct of St. Louis, and so she's cosplaying this sort of attitude. But beyond that, when she refers to Governor Greg Abbott as Hot Wheels, she is literally insulting a person who is in a wheelchair, who is a paraplegic,

She's insulting a paraplegic for being in a wheelchair by calling him Hot Wheels. And she is being laughed at and cheered by the members of the Human Rights Campaign, which is all about supposedly the inclusion of marginalized people. I don't think that you're about the inclusion of marginalized people, guys. I actually don't. I have doubts that that is your actual political agenda. And Jasmine Crockett then tried to walk this back because it turns out that it's actually not a great thing to insult the disabled.

and to characterize them as, quote unquote, hot wheels. So she tried to walk this back. She tried to pretend she wasn't talking about the fact that Governor Abbott of Texas is a paraplegic.

She wrote on X, quote, I wasn't thinking about the governor's condition. I was thinking about the planes, trains and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by black mayors, deliberately stoking tension and fear among the most vulnerable. Literally, the next line I said was that he was a hot ass mess referencing his terrible policies. At no point did I mention or allude to his condition. So I'm even more appalled that the very people who unequivocally support Trump, a man known for racially insensitive nicknames and mocking those with disabilities, are now outraged. Now, do you remember at that time?

that Trump supposedly made fun of a journalist who had a condition. And it actually was not him making fun of the journalist who had the condition. It's the same weird hand motions he does whenever he's talking about someone he thinks is stupid and weak. And then they played it as though this particular journalist was being mocked by Trump and became a national news story. She literally called a paraplegic Hot Wheels. And now she's claiming the reason she called Greg Abbott Hot Wheels is not because he is in a wheelchair. It is because he is sending migrants on airplanes to

to various cities led by black mayors. I don't think that that's what you meant. And the reason I don't think that that's what she meant is because it turns out that in 2021, she liked a post referencing Governor Abbott as Hot Wheels, which was before the migrant transfers. Oopsie daisy. That was uncovered by the Washington Free Beacon, which of course is tremendous reporting. So

This, of course, has generated angst and antagonism in the House of Representatives, which has basically descended. Much of the House of Representatives is staffed by good, responsible people who actually care about their constituents. And then there is, in fact, a contingent of the House of Representatives that is basically Jerry Springer running for various gubernatorial seats. That is what the House of Representatives has become in large part.

It is filled with some of the dullest knives in the drawer, for sure. That includes Representative Ayanna Pressley, who is now complaining about the Trump administration for, wait for it, being too white. Look, I don't want us to lose sight of what is actually happening here. Let's not revise what's happening. The Trump cabinet is on track to be one of the whitest cabinets in modern history.

And when the government is given unchecked authority, civil rights are often the first to be sacrificed. Oh boy, this is what you got. You got the cabinet's too white and a Hot Wheels governor. These are your leaders, Democrats. You chose your fighters. Well, Democrats have chosen a bunch of idiot leaders and people who actually reflect some of the worst in humanity and back that. Well, that worst of humanity still exists and threatens people all over the globe.

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And I think that many, many people in the country, there's a whole Democratic campaign right now, which is, do you regret your vote for Trump? And the answer so far seems to be absolutely not for the vast majority of people who voted for Trump. And the reason for that is because the specter of Democrat rule is just that scary. Why? Well, because one of the ousted members of the squad, Ayanna Pressley, as I've mentioned before, is the Ringo Starr of the squad. They're far left radical progressives in Congress led by AOC.

Well, one of the ousted members of the squad, Cori Bush, Representative Cori Bush, she admitted what the Democrats were going to do next if they gained power. And this is terrifying. Remember, the investment kept going down, down, down. And we were like, no, because we need this investment. We need, like you said, the money that was that was more money for lead pipes than what we had. It was three trillion dollars.

Did it start at 3.9 and go down or did it? We were at, I thought we were at 10 and then it went down to six and then down to three, then it went down to 1.7, I believe. They were going to shoot for $10 trillion, $10 trillion in that climate deal. If they'd unified control of government, they would do it again.

No wonder people are still resonating to President Trump's message. Speaking of which, President Trump signed a couple of consequential executive orders yesterday. He signed an executive order, according to Politico, seeking to change how elections are administered across the country, especially rules related to citizenship and mail-in voting.

The Trump order asserts that federal law requires all states to reject ballots not received by Election Day, directing the Justice Department to take all necessary action to enforce that requirement. That, of course, makes perfect sense because it's very difficult to determine. You can try to do it based on postmark, theoretically. But how exactly are you going to determine quickly and easily how an election was conducted if people are still having their votes counted five days after the election?

The trust and veracity of the American electoral system is deeply undermined by this idea that you can receive a ballot three days after an election and still count it. In Florida, we know the election results literally day up, like within an hour, because they pre-count all of the mail-in ballots, and then they add on day of voting, and then they're done, which is the way it should be done across the country.

President Trump's order asserts that federal law requires states to reject ballots not received by Election Day, directing the Justice Department to take all necessary action. Across the country, states have wide latitude to administer elections differently. None allow votes to be counted if they are cast after Election Day. Some accept absentee ballots after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Many others require ballots to be in possession of election officials by the time the polls close.

For example, in Florida, a ballot must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day. In California, a ballot must be postmarked on Election Day but can arrive up to seven days later. Again, which is incredibly messy. The executive order also requires the Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency, to add proof of citizenship to the National Voter Registration Form. States are required to accept that national form under federal law. They can still create their own voter registration forms. But if you're going to use the federal voter registration form, you should have to show that you're a citizen. That does not seem particularly controversial.

This bizarre idea that has been put forward by so many people that impoverished citizens can't show proof of their citizenship is insane and ridiculous. You have to show proof of your citizenship every time you drive a car. What do you think a driver's license is? There are lots of poor people in America who are able to drive or able to buy alcohol using an ID. It actually is not all that difficult. This is an 80-20 issue, and Democrats find themselves on the wrong side of it. President Trump also signed an executive order

directing the FBI to immediately declassify files concerning the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. As Fox News reports, the agency probe launched in 2016 was seeking information on the Trump campaign. It was deeply corrupt, the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. It was rooted in a false report that was basically crafted out of whole cloth by Fusion GPS, a firm that was hired via Perkins Coie by Hillary Clinton in order to

whip the Steele dossier into existence. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation also included impropriety, including the improper surveillance of Carter Page, a member of sort of the Trump foreign policy team, although a very low level one. President Trump is declassifying all those files saying, you might want to go through this stuff if you're talking about government corruption.

This memorandum requires the immediate declassification of all FBI files relating to the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. This was obviously one of the instances of the weaponization of law enforcement, powers of prosecution against you and others. We believe that it's long past time for the American people to have a full and complete understanding of what exactly is in those files. Which gives the media the right to go in and

Go and check it. You probably won't bother because you're not going to like what you see. But this was total weaponization. It's a disgrace. It never happened in this country. But now you'll be able to see for yourselves. All declassified.

Okay, so as he says, you probably won't like what you're going to see. And that's right. Then the media are not going to look into these files because the files show exactly what was going on during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which again is one of the most deeply corrupt investigations in modern American history. No one was fired for that one, by the way.

I'll point out as well. Meanwhile, the Republicans on the Hill are moving steadily toward their one big, beautiful bill. According to Politico, congressional GOP leaders are coalescing behind President Trump's demand that their massive party line bill include a debt limit increase. Senate Republicans are seeing if they have the votes to make it happen. Those plans were cemented during a White House meeting on Tuesday with the senior Republicans in both chambers, top tax writers, and Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said his conference still needed to make a final decision.

In order to get that strategy going, President Trump will need to force several key Senate GOP hardliners to get behind it. Again, the goal here would be to be able to increase the spending limit under President Trump, which is the thing that he wants. It is likely that this will be achieved by President Trump.

In an acknowledgment that the gamut of linking a debt ceiling increase to a filibuster-scirting reconciliation measure might not work, Thune has been careful to leave the door open to striking a deal with Democrats to avoid default in the coming months on the debt limit. But many of Thune's members are clamoring to put the debt ceiling hike in the reconciliation bill in order to get all of it done at once because they don't want to actually make concessions to Democrats. So the argument that President Trump is making and that Thune and Johnson presumably are going to be making is false.

You can either negotiate a debt limit hike with Democrats, in which case you have to make concessions to Democrats, or you can stick the debt limit hike in this one big, beautiful bill and then pass it along with everything else. And you don't have to make any deals with Democrats. Thune said, I think that's clearly a preferable outcome. Obviously, the House has it in their version. So we have to determine whether or not the Senate can get on board with that idea. The Senate's blueprint right now does not have that in there. Thune stopped short Tuesday of promising Republicans finally had a plan for addressing the debt limit. He believed there was a consensus that was forming.

Some GOP lawmakers say they may have to strip out the debt limit measure from the massive bill to extend tax cuts if the U.S. approaches the debt limit too early, like before the lawmakers can come to an agreement.

But again, I think that the senators come around. I think it is highly likely that Republicans get their one big, beautiful bill done. And that's a big victory for President Trump. It's absolutely necessary because again, the sort of trade war that's being unleashed on the world is a pressure in the other direction. Trade wars tend to lead to economic stagnation and inflation. The one big, beautiful bill leads to economic certainty. It leads to deregulation in certain areas. It leads to lower taxes. One of these things makes business happy. One of these things makes business more unhappy, right?

And so if you're going to do the tariff thing, then it just makes what's happening on the other end, on the legislative end, that much more important. As the Wall Street Journal reports, barriers to open trade are rising around the world at a pace unseen in decades, a cascade of protectionism that harks back to the isolationist fervor that swept the globe in the 1930s and worsened the Great Depression. It isn't just President Trump's new tariffs.

Even before Trump retook the White House, many countries were increasing trade barriers, often against China. Now those efforts are proliferating as countries brace for a new wave of goods redirected across the globe by the U.S.'s rising tariff shield. The EU said this month it plans to toughen measures to protect its own steel and aluminum producers from imports diverted from the United States by Trump's 25% tariffs on those two metals.

Economists suggest that the world could be heading toward the largest, broadest surge in protectionist activity since the U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which was a large contributing factor in the Great Depression. Now, economists don't think that we're headed toward a Great Depression or anything remotely like that, but the economic slowdown could be significant, which is just one reason why if you're going to do one thing, you certainly have to do the other.

Meanwhile, that is something that the administration is pursuing in terms of deregulation and cuts. Doge continues to be popular with the American people as a general rule. They may not like Elon Musk. They may not like the way that this is being pursued. But the basic idea of going through the government with a red pen and just line-iteming out all of the bad spending ideas is

That's something the American people certainly like. And the Trump administration is coming, I think, to a better version of this, which is a more concerted and targeted version of these cuts. Frank Bisignano, who's the Social Security Administrator nominee for President Trump, who's asked yesterday in the Senate about cutting Social Security staff, said, listen, we're not going to cut half the staff.

But all I'm asking, when you have a system that is not working now, do you think it's a great idea to lay off half of the employees? I don't know. Do I think it's a great idea to lay off half of the employees when a system doesn't work? I think the answer is probably no. So is that going to happen? Probably not. And this exactly is the point.

President Trump, the rest of the administration, they're not big on the bad headlines. And so cutting deeply into necessary areas of government or third rails of government in the case of Social Security, that's not something that President Trump is likely to do. So what you're likely to end up with with this administration is something like Trump won, which is a lot of brash and bold policies where the rough edges are sanded off by the process, which is sort of best of all available worlds in reality. Are you looking for a better quality meat?

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Alrighty, meanwhile, President Trump's agenda at the college level is continuing to bear fruit. So there's been a lot of talk about the supposed crackdown on free speech at Columbia University. That is not what is happening. There is a thing, and it's called the Civil Rights Act. It suggests that you are not allowed to receive federal taxpayer dollars and then engage in discrimination against a wide variety of groups. One of those groups does include Jews. Discrimination against Jews, such as, for example, allowing the setup of gigantic,

riotous mobs in the middle of campus, shutting down buildings, preventing Jews from reaching class. That does amount to discrimination. And everybody would know that if it were a bunch of white students who were stopping black students from going to class, for example. And so the Trump administration cracked down on Columbia and they said, listen, all your federal taxpayer dollars are going to go away unless you actually abide by federal law.

And now Columbia is caving. According to the Wall Street Journal, at the request of the Trump administration, Columbia University interim president Katrina Armstrong publicly reiterated her commitment to implementing changes the school agreed to in negotiations with the federal government. Armstrong released a statement emphasizing her support for the changes after holding weekend meetings with anxious faculty about the deal the school made in government talks over federal funding. Some faculty said they were concerned Armstrong was playing down the changes and presenting mixed messages. She put out a statement saying, quote,

That's because the Trump administration...

forced an agreement that restricted masks, empowered campus police, and appointed a senior vice provost with broad authority to oversee the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies Department, which has been a longtime cancer at the very center of Columbia University. It used to be run by people like Edward Said, who is a wildly anti-Western figure, indoctrinating students day in and day out with the idea that the West was colonialist and evil while its enemies were actually just poor victims and all of their own terrorist activities were the fault of the West.

The Trump administration earlier this month canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts over campus anti-Semitism concerns. But again, you could substitute any sort of discrimination concerns and it would meet the standard required under federal law.

On Friday, Columbia largely agreed to the changes with Armstrong saying, quote, we need to continue to work to restore the public's faith of the fundamental value of higher education for the nation and the longstanding partnership between groundbreaking universities like Columbia and the federal government. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights has lawyers visiting the campus this week, and they're going to investigate this more. By the way, how bad were things on Columbia University's campus?

There's a lawsuit that was filed Monday in Manhattan federal court by six relatives of captives who are being held captive by Hamas or were held captive by Hamas in Gaza. This lawsuit was filed in federal court against Students for Justice in Palestine. Why? Well, because according to this lawsuit, SJP, which again is one of these radical campus groups,

had prior knowledge of the October 7th, 2023 terror attacks. So it wasn't just that SJP puts out anti-American pro-Khamas propaganda, which they certainly do. It is also that SJP, according to this lawsuit, was in full active coordination with Hamas. According to the suit, quote, three minutes before Hamas, this is insane, three minutes before Hamas began its attack on October 7th, Columbia SJP posted on Instagram, quote, we are back.

in an announcement about its first meeting of the semester and urged viewers to, quote, stay tuned. According to the filing, the group's account had been dormant for months before the October 6th posting, which was made a couple of weeks after the start of Columbia's fall 2023 semester.

The plaintiffs accused the group of being part of Hamas's American propaganda arm and the terrorist U.S.-based in-house public relations firm, which has changed form several times to evade criminal and civil liability. According to the suit, Columbia SJP was the leading organizer of pro-Hamas disruptions, encampments, and riots on Columbia's campus, including virulent anti-Semitic protests that harassed and physically intimidated Jewish students and faculty, glorified Hamas, engaged in dangerous premeditated unlawful acts, and

and significantly impaired Columbia University's ability to provide educational services to its students, according to that lawsuit. Again, that is an amazing statement. SJP was suspended by the Ivy League University only in November of 2023, but it simply morphed and its members joined other groups. The lawsuit highlights a toolkit disseminated by National Students for Justice in Palestine October 8th that called on the group's partners and allies to organize a Day of Resistance campaign

and tell its members to sign what was in effect a loyalty pledge to Hamas. By the way, the family's suit names several defendants, including Mahmoud Khalil of Columbia University, apartheid divest. That's the person who's being deported by the Trump administration right now. The suit says those organizations have been only more aggressive and more militant in their efforts to, in coordination with Hamas and National Students for Justice in Palestine, distribute Hamas-created and affiliated propaganda.

So yeah, that is more than Mahmoud Khalil just saying things, as it turns out. Meanwhile, I want to bring you some updates on our campaign for the pardon of Derek Chauvin. So yesterday I appeared on Stephen A. Smith's program, which was a lot of fun. He's a nice guy. We had a good conversation. He's definitely an interesting person, Stephen A. Smith. He's usually quite voluble. I will say that this was a pretty toned down and conciliatory conversation. There are a few particularly interesting points in the conversation. One of them is when I asked Stephen A. Smith,

What could change his mind in the Derek Chauvin case? What new evidence could change his mind? And he basically said the thing out loud that everybody who defends the Derek Chauvin conviction says, which is literally no information could ever change my mind ever under any circumstances because I know what I need to know and I really don't care about all the rest of the information.

Let me ask you this. I mean, if you looked at you, you said before that you didn't look at the autopsy report. You're not taking a lot of time looking at the evidence or the outside. What would it take for you to change your mind on the case? Or is there nothing that could change your mind on the case because you saw the tape, for example? Well, it wouldn't take much. And this is why I said this, because normally I would look at the autopsy reports or whatever. I saw it. I saw people bringing up his arrest record. I saw people bringing up fentanyl in the system. I saw all of these things. And all I could come to been fair or unfair was that.

None of that matters if he wasn't on the ground with a knee on the back of his neck for nine plus minutes. Because I'm looking at a trained police officer who should know better. I looked at the experts who were saying with their trade, there was no reason. And you saw it. I'm sure you saw this. And not to say that you would embrace it with the level of sincerity that others may, because I know the level of skepticism that you look at when you see the news outlets. And by the way, I don't blame you. I'm with you on that. OK, but I would say to you.

Listening to experts talk about how police officers are trained and pointed to the fact that Derek Chauvin had no business being in that position and putting George Floyd in that position, particularly once he was handcuffed and contained. To me, that, along with the ultimate outcome, is all the evidence I need. And that's where we might differ.

Okay, so there's one problem, as I pointed out to Stephen A. Smith there, which is that actually it was a Minneapolis Police Department trained procedure that Derek Chauvin was using that, again, the autopsy report shows no actual damage to George Floyd's trachea, to his neck muscles. There's no bruising. He was claiming that he couldn't breathe before he was even put on the ground. He was obviously in some sort of cardiac event before he was even put on the ground.

He only stops breathing for the last 50 seconds or so of the video. We talked about this all on yesterday's show in episode three of the case for Derek Chauvin. But the real key there from Stephen A. Smith is that it doesn't matter to him what the autopsy shows. It doesn't matter what the extraneous evidence shows. It doesn't matter even if he knew this was a trained procedure. All that matters really is the tape. And that is not a way that we should really pursue questions of criminal justice. We also got into the topic of

of sort of identity and politics as it relates to criminal justice cases. He says, well, you know, what do you say to people who have a lived experience with police? And the point that I was making to him about public policy was, well, we don't make public policy based on lived experience. We make public policy based on data. What about the argument that when we talk about black folks, you can point to data all you want to, and we get that part, but the

Real experiences that we endure from time to time. It's not something that you can necessarily calculate How serious do you take those? Assertions coming from a different from a community whether it's your own mind or anybody else's obviously It's true that we can never fully get into one another shoes. I mean, it's just a reality of the world and that's true beyond race That's just true for individuals you Steven or me as an individual. You can't live in my shoes I can't live in true. We're different people. We live different lives. Yeah, but when it comes to making public policy, I

then the only sort of gauge that you can have really is the data because anecdotal evidence, you can't make public policy for millions of people based on anecdotal evidence because you can't legislate people's feelings. I mean, this is sort of one of my things, you know, when it comes to trying to craft law, for example,

Making law based on the personal feelings of people's quote unquote lived experiences is a bad way to make law that is going to have to be generally applicable because I may have particular feelings about a particular criminal case based on my own personal experiences. But if we do that, then what you end up with is a really high level of tribalism in which it's if your racial identity prevails or my racial identity prevails, really bad things can come from that. And the law is designed to treat people as equal individuals underneath it.

And so, you know, the relevance of lived experience that may play a part in us being able to understand one another as individuals if we're having conversation over dinner or if we're giving advice to each other about our kids. But when it comes to actually making public policy, it's a different thing. Yeah, you got it. And you make a valid point about policy. When you talk about policy, you can't just go by personal experience. It's got to be the numbers. It's got to be the data. I totally get that.

And good for Stephen A. Smith for at least acknowledging that much. Again, it was really interesting and I think calm and reasoned conversation with Stephen A. He invited me on his show. We invite him on our show. I'd love to have him on and discuss everything from politics to his basketball tapes. I think I may agree more with his basketball tapes than his politics.

Actually, particularly on Bronnie James, but we'll have to get into it. Already coming up, the president of the United States is moving towards something like a ceasefire in Ukraine. The United States is making concessions to the Russians along that basis. Plus, we're going to check into the mailbag first. You have to go check out the membership at Daily Wire Plus because that's how you get the rest of the show. We have tons of stuff.

That is there. Tons of stuff that is coming. Everything from Matt Walsh's amazing movies to our all-access library. You get to hang out with me live, to Morning Wire, to upcoming big series like Pendragon. The only way you're going to get all that stuff is to go join Daily Wire Plus right now. If you're not a member, become one. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.