Ep. 2197 - A China DEAL…PLUS A $400 Million Jet From Qatar?!
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Alrighty, folks, just a fire hose of news over the weekend. President Trump cutting a brand new tariff deal with China, and it's turning the markets around. Plus, Idan Alexander, the last remaining American hostage in Gaza, released by Hamas at the behest of the Trump administration. Of course, I know the Alexander family will talk about that. Plus...

All about that Qatari jet, that $400 million Qatari plane that they want to give to President Trump and his presidential library. First, the news moves fast. Bad news moves fastest of all. Every day, it gets harder to tell what's real, what's manufactured to control and discourage us. The world doesn't need more noise. It needs more facts. That's why starting today, we are giving you more of The Ben Shapiro Show. Actually, two times more of The Ben Shapiro Show. That's right. We are making the show longer. Twice the analysis, twice the fact. Join in at dailywire.com slash subscribe.

Lots and lots of news. We begin with the biggest news, the most impactful news, which is, of course, that the U.S. and China have now apparently agreed to slash tariffs on one another. This is a deal reached by Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, who's been looking for an off ramp with regard to these extraordinarily high tariffs that he said just last week were unsustainable with regard to China. Now, there will still be tariffs on China. China will still have tariffs on American product.

But we are starting to move toward what looks like a significantly more rational trade policy with the rest of the world. So yes, we have still significantly raised tariffs on the rest of the world. That 10% flat rate tariff still exists on the rest of the world. Now, the 125 to 145% tariffs that were placed

On the Chinese, those have been lowered. According to the Wall Street Journal, after weekend talks in Geneva, President Trump's reciprocal tariff on China will fall to 10% from 125%, so essentially the same as the tariffs that we currently have on, say, England or any other country. A separate 20% tariff the president imposed over what he described as China's role in the fentanyl trade is going to remain. So presumably that means really it's not a 10% tariff, it's a 30% tariff, which again, looks more rational.

As I said from the beginning, when it came to tariffing China, going after China as an actual geopolitical opponent is necessary. This is the thing that President Trump did in term one that was absolutely necessary. And everybody seemed to buy into on the right and left in the United States. I've talked to many, many Democrats who have acknowledged that Trump was right to reset the table with regard to China. So attempting to box China in with regard to trade

attempting to create a divide in the world such that third party countries move toward the United States and away from China. That is a good thing. Reshoring critical industries away from China toward third parties or toward the United States is a very good thing. But if you're going to do this, you need to do it in rational fashion. That means gradually escalating tariffs on China such that manufacturers actually have time to move out of China before the door is slammed shut on them.

You actually need to reshore critical supply chains like rare earth minerals in order to ensure that we aren't just deprived of the things that we need in the United States in order to compete with China. You need to cut better trade deals with everybody around China so that they don't orient toward China and away from us. And you need to build up the US Navy. We didn't do any of those things. We just sort of ran into the room, threw 145% tariff on the table and ran out of the room while simultaneously slapping other countries with a rubber chicken. It turns out that was not exactly a great trade policy. The good news is,

As I have said all along with President Trump, President Trump lives in the world of reality. If the headlines are bad, he responds. If the stock market doesn't seem to be doing what he wants it to do, he responds. So long as good information penetrates whatever echo chambers around him, he will in fact respond to incentives. It's one of the things that made him a successful president in term one.

It's the thing that will make him a successful president in term two. He might start off with a bad idea from, say, Peter Navarro. But if it turns out that that bad idea has real world ramifications that damages presidency, then he moves away from that bad idea. That's what's happening with regard to China. So, again, the tariffs aren't going away with regard to China, but they are being dramatically lowered with regard to China. Beijing is going to cut its own retaliatory levies on U.S. goods to 10 percent from 125 percent.

The U.S. says that the reductions are going to last for 90 days while the talks continue. But let's be real about this. They're not going away. Whenever President Trump says that there's going to be a break in the tariff regime, the idea they're going to snap back in 90 days to 125, 145 percent. Again, the Treasury Secretary said last week that was unsustainable. So it's not going to be sustained. We're not going back to those tariff rates. Now, again, this is this is starting to look much more like a rational trade policy. The markets, of course, spiked because tariffs.

everybody in the markets was looking for some sort of off-ramp here. They're trying to figure out exactly what President Trump is doing on trade. Now, I think the markets are spiking a little bit much. What I mean there is that the markets are a momentum-driven instrument. The markets are now trading higher than they were after Liberation Day.

So Liberation Day, you recall, April 2nd, that is when President Trump announced this giant tariff regime on the rest of the globe combined. And the markets dropped dramatically. The Dow was trading about 43,000. Well, now the markets are trading up around where they were before.

That seems to me a weird calibration based on momentum. And the reason I say that is because if you were to just look at the trade policy before Liberation Day and the trade policy after Liberation Day, the idea that those trade policies are identical and therefore the markets should be identical. Obviously, that's not true. There are a bunch of 10 percent tariffs that now exist that didn't exist before. There are still heavy levies against Chinese goods that didn't exist that now exist.

So the markets are going to recalibrate. It'll probably end up lower, if I had to guess, than it is right now. But clearly, the markets are moving toward more sanguinity, and they should be, because President Trump has been pushing deregulation at the same time he's pushing this. He's been pushing forward that big, beautiful tax bill. We'll get to the tax bill a little bit later on in the show, where the negotiations stand. He's floated some good ideas. He's floated some bad ideas with regard to this tax bill. However,

This is also going to lead to the possibility of things like Fed rate cuts. So the Federal Reserve has been holding off on cutting the interest rates because of fears of inflation. If President Trump does not continue with this massive tariff regime, the chances of inflation are going to drop. If the chances of inflation drop, then you could see a lowering of the interest rates, which means more liquidity in the markets. It means cheaper mortgages. It means the economy continues to kind of truck along.

Right now, according to traders, there's a 57% chance the Federal Reserve holds rates steady through its next two meetings, which was up from 40% as of Friday. However, as the markets adjust, I think that you will see that people are going to start betting on the idea that the Federal Reserve theoretically could, in fact, cut the rates if, again, there is more momentum in this direction.

I think, again, that what happened here is that reality set in. President Trump understood the reality and he responded to the reality, which is good. You want a president who actually responds to realities. In this way, the president that President Trump actually most resembles in the recent past is actually Bill Clinton. So Bill Clinton in 1993, 94, pushed forward Hillary care, got absolutely shellacked and then moved to the right and governed as a sort of centrist for the rest of his term. He did welfare reform, for example. He did criminal justice reform bills. He had an actual surplus.

President Trump is much more pragmatic. He's kind of Clintonian in the way that he is pragmatic in his politics, as opposed to ideologically driven the way, say, Barack Obama or Joe Biden was. And I think one of the reasons President Trump is looking for an off ramp here is because he's starting to see the incoming wall of the hurricane. As I said before, there was a hurricane headed for American shores. Economically speaking, that hurricane came in the form of a giant cascade of empty ships that were arriving at American ports.

And that was going to create serious supply chain problems. President Trump doesn't like that. And so he is now acting in order to prevent that from effectuating, from becoming a reality. And to more on this in a moment. First, Peartalk says, I don't think so. It's $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices.

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today at oracle.com slash Shapiro. Now, again, as I say, does this mean that all the tariff wars are over? Does this mean that we are moving toward a more free trade world? No, it means there's still going to be tariff barriers, which is why I think that the stock markets jump today is maybe a little overstated. And as reality sets in, it's going to settle about back where it was maybe a little bit lower than it was before Liberation Day, so-called Liberation Day. Here's Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, saying 10% tariffs remain here. They're not going anywhere.

So we do expect a 10% baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable future. But don't buy the silly arguments that the U.S. consumer pays. Businesses, their job is to try to sell to the American consumer. And domestically produced products are not going to have that tariff.

However, the reason that the markets are in fact optimistic is because, as James McIntosh writes over at The Wall Street Journal, the grownups are in the room. The reason for the giant bounce in the stock market is because Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is now in control of trade policy and presumably in control of regulatory policy and tax policy as well.

So what exactly is Besson still looking for? A deeper reform of the Chinese economy, turning it from a mercantilistic exporter into a consumer and leading to more balanced trade. Now, again, that is going to be hard, but the reality is we are now avoiding the hurricane that was approaching. And I think the economy is responding to that in very good ways. So good for President Trump, good for Treasury Secretary Scott Besson. Meanwhile, in other news, Idan Alexander, who's last remaining alive, American hostage, who'd been taken by Hamas on October 7th, is set to be released today.

It was going to happen sometime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Israel time. The Red Cross, which has been utterly derelict in its treatment of the hostages, meaning it had no contact with any of the hostages for well over a year, is going to be facilitating all of this. Obviously, it's a deeply moving moment that Adon Alexander is coming out as a 21-year-old Israeli-American dual citizen.

And he was kidnapped on October 7th. I, of course, know the Alexander family. I know his parents, Yael and Adi. I know his brother, Roy. In fact, I brought them to the Ohel, to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in New York on October 7th. And I had them meet with President Trump. You can see here, that's his mom, that's his brother. And they're showing President Trump a picture of Idan Alexander. So Idan Alexander is coming out today. The big question is, what did Hamas receive in return? And it appears that Hamas actually received very little.

So this is a good deal by the Trump administration in that sense. It is creating, and again, whenever you have a hostage deal, there's no such thing as a good hostage deal because you are dealing with hostage takers. However, the question is what concessions Hamas received on the other end. There are a lot of rumors about what exactly Hamas received on the other end of releasing Idan Alexander.

Some rumors include the idea that perhaps the United States will now be more amenable to Hamas being a part of the future of governing the Gaza Strip. That would be insane and ridiculous. That would be ridiculous. Hamas took Idan Alexander a hostage in the first place. They took 250 people hostage. A huge number of those people, including babies, were plain out murdered by Hamas.

Hamas can, of course, have no part in the governance of the Gaza Strip. They need to be extirpated from the planet Earth. And the release of Don Alexander doesn't actually change any of that math. There have also been rumors that this is going to lead to a sort of broader ceasefire deal. Maybe, maybe not. The Witkoff plan, Steve Witkoff, of course, is President Trump's special envoy to the Middle East. Steve Witkoff had proposed the possibility of a 45-day or 70-day ceasefire in exchange for 11 more hostages and 18 dead bodies.

That may come to fruition. We'll have to see. There's been talk about humanitarian aid flowing into the Gaza Strip. The reason Hamas wants that is so they can steal all of it. So the question becomes, how is that aid secured? However, we can say it is an unabashed good that Idan Alexander is coming out again. It's an amazing thing for his family. I know the family. I was texting with them yesterday. It's an amazing thing. So good for the Trump administration along those lines. Clearly what Hamas is attempting to do

is basically settle all outstanding business with the United States so as to then create separation between the United States and Israel in Iran negotiations.

That is what is happening with the Houthis as well. It is not a coincidence that as the Houthis are basically forswearing attacks on American shipping and the United States is saying that the United States is no longer going to worry about the Houthis essentially. Now, Hamas is now trying to do the same by releasing the sole living American hostage in the Gaza Strip, trying to basically say that the United States now has no part in that conflict. Well, OK, fine. I mean, if the United States has no part in that conflict, then Israel should just go into what they need to do.

That seems to me a proper solution with regard to the Gaza Strip. Now, the ugliest part, and there is an ugly part to this, is that there are widespread rumors and now news reports that Idan Alexander is going to be flown to Qatar to meet with the Emir of Qatar. This is vile. That's vile. He should, of course, meet with President Trump. He can do so in America. He can do so in Israel. There are plenty of places that Idan Alexander and his family can express their gratitude to President Trump as well they should.

Going to Qatar to meet the Emir of Qatar. Qatar is a terror sponsor country. Qatar is the number one funder of Hamas. It is disgusting to have a hostage who was taken by a group funded by Qatar go to Qatar to thank the Emir of Qatar for his freedom. That's an absurdity on its face if it were to happen.

It is wrong. It should not be facilitated by the United States. Qatar is the sponsor state of Hamas. In fact, if the Trump administration seriously wanted all hostages out of Gaza, they could do so tomorrow simply by telling the Emir of Qatar that the airbase in Qatar is going away and that it'll move to the UAE, which the United States could do. That should have been the approach of the Biden administration on October 8th. They should have said all the hostages come out or the airbase goes away. That's how closely tied together Qatar and Hamas are.

Laid-on Alexander is now 21. Hamas captured him when he was 19 on October 7th, 2023, of course. All of this has some wider ramifications with regard to negotiations in the Middle East. Again, Steve Witkoff continues to say ridiculous things publicly. So Steve Witkoff, again, I do not think he's a good negotiator. I do not think that Steve Witkoff has demonstrated his bona fides along any lines. So far, all of the hostage deals have essentially been ridiculous.

kind of mediocre in the sense that maximum pressure has not been exerted on the bad guys.

Yesterday, Witkoff said, we want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war. Israel is prolonging it despite the fact that we don't see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached. There's currently an opportunity window. We hope Israel and all the mediators will take advantage of. We're putting pressure on all the mediators and doing everything we can to bring the hostages home. It is not Israel's unwillingness to end the war that is leading to hostages being taken. That's like blaming the police for the kidnappers not releasing the hostages.

No, actually, that's up to the kidnappers. Kamas could end the war today. They could have ended the war October 6th. It never had to happen in the first place.

Meanwhile, all of this is part and parcel of broader negotiations happening over the Iranian nuclear program. According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States said it was encouraged by talks with Iran on Sunday after a meeting. But the two sides remain divided on key questions, including whether Tehran will be allowed to enrich its own uranium. Well, I mean, that is the key question. That is not one key question. That is the key question. The United States should have no interest in a deal with Iran where Iran continues to develop nuclear missiles.

That is ridiculous. Anything that allows them the capacity to continue to develop nuclear materials, which can then be tied to their ballistic missile program, is insane. The United States should not be party to that. That is the JCPOA. That is the thing that Donald Trump labeled the worst deal in history. The United States should not be conceding points to the Iranian government. Again, Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arahi met for three hours in the Omani capital of Muscat in their fourth round of negotiations since April 12th.

After the meeting, the U.S. cast the latest talks mediated by Omani officials as positive and said the diplomacy would continue in the near future. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said talks were difficult but useful in better understanding the U.S. position. Now, again, Iran has another goal in these talks. If they can't get a bad deal from the Trump administration, and again, I have faith that President Trump is not going to cut JCPOA Part 2. It would be a rejection of his own legacy.

If Iran has another goal, it is delay. And a delay for Iran is as good as a deal. In October, the JCPOA period ends. At that point, they can simply rush to a bomb. Now, they could just rush to a bomb right now as well. They could simply violate whatever is left of the JCPOA. And they could rush to a bomb. Herein lies the problem. Right now, there is a window of opportunity for anyone who wishes to end the Iranian nuclear program.

That window of opportunity exists because Israel eviscerated a few months back Iran's entire air defense program. So the skies over Iran are totally clear right now. Not only that, but Iran still has not developed retaliatory capacity that would deter action by, say, Israel.

If Iran is capable of standing the Israelis down by negotiating with the United States for prolonged periods of time, that is their win. Simply the negotiations being dragged out over a lengthy period of time is something the Iranians are going for pretty clearly. The two sides are still very far apart on the question of whether Iran gets to retain its nuclear enrichment program. Witkoff has sent mixed messages himself because he has no expertise in any of these issues.

He set out what he called clear U.S. red lines that Iran can't have an enrichment program under a deal, nor should it have any centrifuges which enrich uranium. And then Iran came back and said they would never accept any such terms. President Massoud Peshikian, who, again, is a stand in for the mullahs, said Iran has never sought and will never seek nuclear weapons, but it will not back down from its peaceful nuclear rights. After Sunday's talk, Iraqi said Iran was open to adjusting the amount of enrichment it does and the purity of the material being produced for a limited period as a confidence building measure.

But he said there is no room for discussion about Iran's continued domestic enrichment. So what exactly is Iran giving away that makes Steve Witkoff and company optimistic in any way? Again, this is just so Iran can delay. And if President Trump doesn't want to bomb Iran, which again, he has set out as sort of binary,

There's a third option here, by the way, which is that the United States maintains maximum pressure on Iran. And then Israel goes and attacks the Iranian nuclear facilities. I think that is actually the most likely outcome here if I'm just gaming out the possibilities for the next several months. With all of that said-

All of this ties into broader Middle Eastern negotiations that are happening over everything from the Abraham Accords to the release of hostages to the future of the Gaza Strip to what's happening in Iran. Now, all of this crosses paths, obviously, with President Trump's visit to the Middle East this week. The biggest story in terms of the media coming out this week is a story reported by ABC News, among others, that the Trump administration is now preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar.

It is a $400 million gift available for use by President Trump as new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time, according to the deal, the plane doesn't stay with the United States government. It then moves to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation. According to ABC News, the gift had been expected to be announced when President Trump was on his visit to Qatar. A senior White House official said it's not going to happen in Qatar anymore, presumably thanks to social media blowback.

President Trump put out a statement on Truth Social about the blowback saying, so the fact that the Defense Department is getting a gift free of charge with 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One temporarily in a very public and transparent transaction. So bothers the crooked Democrats. They insist we pay top dollar for the plane. Anybody can do that. The Dems are world class losers. MAGA. So again, the arrangement itself is, shall we say, I believe the technical term, legal term is skeezy.

Sources told ABC News that lawyers for the White House Counsel's Office and the Department of Justice drafted an analysis for the Defense Department, concluding it's legal for the DOD to accept the aircraft as a gift and then later turn it over to the Trump Library. And that somehow does not violate laws against bribery or the Constitution's prohibition on emoluments. The Constitution literally says the U.S. government cannot accept official gifts from any king, prince or foreign state.

Apparently, Attorney General Pam Bondi and the top White House lawyer, David Warrington, concluded it would be legally permissible for the donation of the aircraft to be conditioned on transferring its ownership to Trump's presidential library before the end of his term. And apparently, Pam Bondi, who it should be mentioned at this point was once a National Affairs Registered

Agent acting on behalf of the government of Qatar provided a legal memorandum addressed to the White House Counsel's Office last week after Warrington asked her for advice on the legality of the Pentagon accepting such a donation. We'll get to more on that in a second. First, choosing SimpliSafe for our studio was one of our easiest decisions.

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Let's start off with this. Qatar is not allegedly giving President Trump a $400 million jet flight

Out of the goodness of their sweet little hearts, no matter what special envoy Steve Woodcuff says.

They try to stuff money in pockets in totally bipartisan fashion. Just rewind a few years. While Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, Qatar gave a million dollars to the Clinton Foundation for Bill Clinton's birthday and didn't even bother to inform the State Department as they promised they would do. So again, Qatar will court anyone it thinks will have power, Republican or Democrat. It's an equal opportunity influencer. As long as you can help whitewash their image or smooth over the fact that they are, in fact, the

the world's largest proponents of terrorism on an international scale in terms of PR and in terms of putting money in pockets. Qatar likes to present a modern Western friendly face while shoveling money to Islamic terrorists under the table. This is a regime that has for literally decades funneled billions of dollars into the hands of Hamas,

Hezbollah, the Taliban. We're talking about systematic, ongoing financial support that has strengthened Hamas's grip on Gaza, provided them with the resources and, yes, enabled terror attacks that killed innocent civilians. Doha, which is the capital, their five star hotels are basically a retirement home for Hamas leaders. Qatar has been credibly accused by the Treasury Department, by international watchdogs, by regional allies of allowing financiers, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood to operate within its borders.

This is a country that has repeatedly failed to crack down on terrorist financing, even after being pressured by the United States and its neighbors. In 2017, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, quote, I don't know instances in which Qatar aggressively goes after networks of Hamas, Taliban or al Qaeda.

Qatar has, of course, transferred almost $2 billion to Hamas over the years, which, again, is one of the reasons it's so sick to send Idan Alexander to meet with the emir of Qatar, if that's a thing that ends up happening. Here is the former Saudi foreign minister, again, not Westerner, Saudi foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir, explaining the problems with Qatar. The Qataris, since the mid-90s, have been sponsoring radicals. They have been inciting people.

They have become a base for the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Brotherhood, you have to keep in mind, is what begot us Takfir and Hijrah, which begot us Al-Qaeda, which begot us Al-Nusra. The Qataris allow their senior religious clerics to go on television and justify suicide bombings. That's not acceptable.

The Qataris harbor and shelter terrorists. That's not acceptable. Again, that's the Sauds. So how does Qatar excuse all of this? Well, Qatar simply says they don't actually consider terrorist groups to be, you know, terrorists. Here is the emir of Qatar saying as much back in 2014. No, no, we do recognize extremists. We believe that there are extremes. We believe that they're extremists. And we stop, we don't fund extremists. But there are differences. There are differences that

some countries and some people that any group which comes from Islamic background are terrorists, and we don't accept that. Okay, so some of the groups they don't consider to be terrorists would be, you know, like all the ones we mentioned, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban. Qatar essentially plays both sides of the table. They say they should be given leeway because they're the negotiation point for the West and terrorist groups, but then Qatar helps fund and house those terrorist groups, as well as doing the bidding of Iran. You know who says this, actually? President Trump. There was President Trump on Qatar in June 2017.

The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has historically been a funder of terrorism at a very high level. And in the wake of that conference, nations came together and spoke to me about confronting Qatar over its behavior. So we had a decision to make. Do we take the easy road or do we finally take a hard but necessary action? We have to stop the funding of terrorism.

Okay, well, how does Qatar combat these allegations? The answer is they spread the money everywhere, everywhere. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, Qatar is by far the single largest donor to American universities since 9-11. By far, it's not close. You want to talk about foreign influence operations? This would be that. They're not doing that because they're so sweet and nice. Why exactly would they sign these giant checks unless they got something in return? Here is the prime minister of Qatar this week.

explaining to the Georgetown Doha campus, yes, Georgetown has a campus in Qatar, that the service of Qatar had to be their guiding light as part of a greater national project on behalf of Qatar. - Since today, he said in Arabic, I urge you to fear God in your conscience and let the service of the nation and its people be your guiding light and maintain your faith in yourselves. In a time where transformations are accelerating and crises are deepening,

From the Gaza tragedy to regional tensions, Qatar reaffirms its commitment to mediation and diplomacy as a means to protect civilians. And credibility is built through continuous action.

Okay, so what exactly is he saying? He says they represent, they're churning out people who work for Qatar. Okay, the greater national project doesn't end at Qatar's borders. Their influence matters. That is why Georgetown University, which has a branch in Doha, just gave a medal to a Qatari royal who praised Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, after October 7th.

Qatar is also the home of Al Jazeera, the pro-terrorism media network that spreads anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic bile across the Middle East. Meanwhile, the Qatar Investment Authority, the QIA, controls, according to the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy, between $500 billion and a trillion dollars in assets. And they use those assets to put themselves in positions of influence. So, for example, in August 2023, the Qatari Sovereign Wealth Fund bought the Park Lane Hotel in New York for $623 million. $623 million.

Okay. The company was owned by Steve Witkoff's company. The company had been in limbo. Park Lane Hotel was in limbo for six years following the attempted seizure of the hotel by the DOJ thanks to corruption charges against one of the original owners, a guy named Lo Take Joe. So when Steve Witkoff says that he really, really likes the Qataris, well, I mean, he does have some warm relations with the Qataris.

I think in the case of the Qataris, they're criticized for not being well-motivated. It's preposterous. They are well-motivated. They're good, decent people. What they want is a mediation that's effective, that gets to a peace goal. And why? Because they're a small nation and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker. Taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, all the rest.

That's not America first. Like, please define America first in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari royals who are behind Al Jazeera. It just isn't America first in any conceivable way. So back to the original question. Is this good for President Trump? Is it good for his agenda? Is it good for draining the swamp and getting things done? The answer is no, it isn't. It isn't. If you want President Trump to succeed, this kind of skeezy stuff needs to stop. And here's the thing. It's already having an impact.

It's already having an impact. Quick example. Last week, the Senate considered a procedural vote on the so-called Genius Act. This is an act that should have had wide bipartisan support. The Genius Act helps deregulate the crypto industry, an area that's vital for America's economic development. As you all know, I'm a big fan of crypto. I own Bitcoins and Ethereum. If you want to watch me explain why crypto is fascinating and useful, check out my YouTube video on the subject.

And I know a ton of people in the crypto industry who've been ecstatic about President Trump's deregulatory approach to the subject, which is awesome. But the bill was shot down last week because at least in part, Democrats said they wouldn't vote for the thing because of President Trump's use of crypto himself. You all remember President Trump launching dollar sign Trump crypto three days before taking office as president. Trump himself announced the Trump crypto on X and Truth Social. He described it as a meme coin, meaning it had no inherent value. It was just there for the kind of bleeps and giggles.

The price spiked to a trading value of nearly $13 billion, making it the 19th most valuable cryptocurrency on planet Earth. And then it proceeded to plummet, like really, really dive. The project allegedly netted people associated with it, meaning the Trump organizations associated with the Trump crypto, some $350 million. 80% of the outstanding supply of that meme coin is still held by insiders.

presumably members of the Trump organization. Overall, according to data shared with CNBC, there were 2 million wallets that bought that Trump meme coin. 764,000 of them lost money. 58 wallets made more than 10 million bucks. And then in April, that Trump meme coin announced that the top 220 holders of the meme coin would be invited to an intimate private dinner with President Trump at his golf club.

The top 25 were invited to a VIP White House tour. According to Bloomberg News, 19 of the top 25 holders of that Trump meme coin that have registered on the website's leaderboard have bought the coins using foreign exchanges that claim to exclude U.S. customers, which means that foreigners are buying a lot of the meme coin and then getting meetings with President Trump, VIP White House tours and all the rest.

This raises the question of influence peddling. If you basically buy a bunch of Trump meme coin and then funnel money to organizations associated with President Trump so that you can have dinner with Trump, that doesn't look great.

Democratic senators, of course, immediately announced that they wanted an ethics probe. They sent a letter saying, quote, this latest action raises grave ethics and legal concerns, including the severe risk that President Trump and other officials may be engaging in pay to play corruption by selling presidential access to individuals or entities to include foreign nationals and corporate actors with vested interest in federal action while personally enriching the president and his family.

It might be overstated, but let's be clear. Some people do seem to be investing in the Trump meme coin for the access. I mean, there is literally a CEO of a company called Freight Technologies that just bought $20 million worth of Trump meme coin, which I got to say is not like the most solid investment. What was the explanation? Quote, we believe the addition of the official Trump tokens are an excellent way to diversify our crypto treasury and also an effective way to advocate for fair, balanced and free trade between Mexico and the United States.

It's like to impact policy. Again, not the least skeezy thing I've ever heard. Now, listen, maybe all of this is overblown. Maybe it's all nonsense. Maybe some of it's not true. And I understand some of it's being reported by legacy media outlets. But again, here is the question. Does any of this help advance the president's agenda? You know, the agenda that we all voted for, the agenda we want to see implemented. Does this make his presidency stronger or weaker?

Now I'm going to repeat again. I don't know whether this activity is criminal in any way, but things do not have to be criminal to hurt the agenda. If you want President Trump's agenda to succeed, taking jets from Qatar is not the way. Taking real estate deals from Qatar is not the way. The largest obstacle to any administration is scandal.

From Watergate to Whitewater, scandal-plagued administrations have a really tough time gathering the political capital necessary to actually effectuate their agenda. And that's why it's unbelievably important that the Trump administration avoid scandal. That is the reason I'm worried about this stuff. Yes, I think inherently it is bad. I do not think this is good. I think if we switch the names to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, we'd all be freaking out on the right.

Let's say if Qatar was giving Joe a $400 million jet for his use at his presidential library after his presidency, or if Hunter launched a crypto firm with the son of Antony Blinken and then launched a series of crypto products in which mysterious strangers, including foreigners, were investing, all while that crypto firm was being regulated by Joe's administration, we'd all have been pretty upset on the right. We might have said that it was worthy of some coverage. Now, as I say, again, it could be all of these reports, all of them. Maybe it's all just a misreading of perfectly innocent business. Sure.

It's possible. But the point is this.

President Trump has enemies all over the place. He has people seeking to take advantage of their proximity to his power. He has media outlets that would love nothing better than to set him up for another impeachment. And I promise you, I promise you, if these issues begin to dog his administration, Republicans will lose Congress. It's that simple. Republicans are this close to losing Congress anyway. And then whatever President Trump hopes to do, whatever agenda we all voted for will be DOA. The investigations will never end. There will be more impeachments. All of that will happen.

The administration's policy is too important for this sort of activity. President Trump promised to drain the swamp. This is not, in fact, draining the swamp. President Trump was elected based on the American people being sick and tired of the swamp, tired of Hunter, tired of the Clintons, tired of the Biden crime family. Why in the world would President Trump be well-served by this sort of vulnerability?

Again, more importantly, why would those of us who voted for him, who gave to his campaign, who stumped for him, campaigned for him, be well served by this? The answer is we aren't. And that's why it needs to stop. Get some more on this in a moment. First, give your family the peace of mind they deserve with Policy Genius Life Insurance. So here's the thing. We're all going to die. I know, bad news. But...

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Check life insurance off your to-do list in no time with Policy Genius. Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro or click the link in the description to compare free life insurance quotes from top companies. See how much you could save. That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. All right, another big economic news. President Trump had announced last week that he had a huge announcement coming. And again, there was a lot that happened over the weekend. There was the China trade deal and there was the Adan Alexander release. And then there was this whole story about the Qatari jet and all that. But

The big story that he was talking about was an executive order designed to lower the price of pharmaceuticals. So here's what he said. He put out a statement on Truth Social says for many years, the world has wondered why prescription drugs and pharmaceuticals in the United States of America were so much higher in price than they were in any other nation, sometimes being five to 10 times more expensive than the same drug manufactured in the exact same laboratory or plant by the same company.

It was always difficult to explain and very embarrassing because, in fact, there was no correct or right answer. The pharmaceutical drug companies would say for years it was research and development costs and that all these costs were and would be for no reason whatsoever borne by the suckers of America alone. Campaign contributions can do wonders, but not with me and not with the Republican Party. We are going to do the right thing, something the Democrats have fought for many years. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that tomorrow morning in the White House at 9 a.m.,

I'll be signing one of the most consequential executive orders in our country's history. Prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices will be reduced almost immediately by 30 to 80%. It will rise throughout the world in order to equalize and for the first time in many years, bring fairness to America. I'll be instituting a most favored nation's policy whereby the United States will pay the same price as the nation that pays the lowest price anywhere in the world. Our country will finally be treated fairly. Our citizens' healthcare costs will be reduced by numbers never even thought of before. Additionally, on top of everything else, the United States will save trillions of dollars

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Make America great again. Okay, so there are a few things he's trying to do here. One is he's trying to find savings in the big, beautiful tax bill that do not require cuts to Medicaid.

And one of the big issues with the quote-unquote big beautiful tax bill is the question of where cuts are coming from that Republican Congress people want to make the tax cuts quote-unquote deficit neutral. And so some of the questions have been, are they coming from Medicaid? And so what he's saying is we're going to lower the price of Medicaid without cuts because we are going to allow Medicaid to basically tie the price that it pays to the pharmaceutical companies for pharmaceuticals to the lowest possible price, like whatever price Sierra Leone is paying or whatever.

Make no mistake, this is a backdoor price control. It is not in any way a free market policy. What we actually should be doing, and this is something that President Trump should be doing with regard to his tariff policy, is forcing other countries to pay a higher price for the medications that are produced in the United States. The way that things currently work is that foreign countries negotiate on behalf of their nationalized healthcare systems with the pharma companies.

And they basically say, we're not going to buy any of these drugs unless we're paying X number of dollars. And that X number of dollars is like 30, 20 percent of what the actual price in a free market system would be. And so American consumers essentially pay the other end of that. American consumers are overpaying because all these other countries are underpaying. And President Trump is totally right that that is absolutely unfair. But the thing to do is to get other countries to pay more.

Other countries should be absorbing more of the cost. We could be using the tariff war that he has waged on pretty much every country in order to get them to more fairly allocate resources for drug purchase from the United States. Because the problem is this. If you artificially destroy whatever profit margins exist for the pharma companies, you just won't get drugs developed. It's that simple. R&D costs a fortune. The vast majority of drugs that are developed in R&D never make it to market. They fail out in phase two, phase three of the FDA trials.

Most never even make phase three. There are billions, literally tens to hundreds of billions of dollars that get spent every year by pharmaceutical companies and other companies in order to develop things that never come to fruition. It's a very high risk. It's very high risk investment product, biotech and pharma.

And that means it needs to be high reward on the other end, because otherwise, why would you sink that much money into the development of these new pharmaceuticals, for example? If you destroy the profit margin, you just won't get R&D. There's a reason that over 50% of all pharma patents are filed in the United States. We're the home of that stuff because they can generate profit in the United States in a way they cannot in the UK or in France, Germany, or Canada. It also means that American consumers bear the brunt of these brand new drugs. Now, over time,

As these patents expire, as generics come on the market, the markets move toward the generics. That is a reality. And so, for example, the idea that Americans wildly overpay for drugs, just generally speaking, Americans wildly overpay for brand new drugs that are cutting edge. That's true. But the truth is the vast majority of medication that we actually consume is not cutting edge brand new R&D drugs. Here, for example, is a chart about what Americans pay for drugs and what this chart shows is

is that 91% of drug purchases in the United States are not for brand name drugs. We pay 422% higher prices for brand name drugs than do other members of the OECD, the other developed countries. However, when it comes to generic drugs, we pay 67% of what gets paid in the OECD.

So when you actually weight the average, what you find is that the United States overall actually pays less for drugs than comparable countries do. We pay more for the cutting edge drugs because those are being produced in the United States and other countries are basically free riding off the back of that. Generic drugs, because we have a free market system, generic drugs are really cheap here compared to generic drugs in, say, Canada or the UK, France or Germany.

And so because the vast majority of drugs we consume are generic drugs and not brand name drugs, that means overall we actually pay less for drugs. So why is it that the United States pharma spending is out of control? The answer is we consume an awful lot of medicine in this country. We consume an enormous amount of medicine.

We are fat. We are out. This is something that obviously the Make America Healthy Again movement has focused in on. We're fat. We eat crap. We don't exercise. And then we try to heal ourself on the back end with drugs. So we take many, many more drugs than people who are living in Canada, France, UK, Germany.

Now, what do you do about that 422% overage when it comes to brand name pharmaceuticals? The answer is you force other countries to pay their fair share. This is where a tariff war and pressure really should be exerted, is getting the UK not to lowball American pharma. Make the UK tie its prices to America's free market prices.

Why should they get to free ride off the back of the American consumer? So what is President Trump doing instead? He's saying that Medicaid should tie its price to what the UK is paying. What is that actually going to do? Well, number one, it means many cutting edge pharmaceuticals simply will just not be available through Medicaid because Medicaid can't pay for it. You see this, by the way, all the time in Medicaid. You see that that many doctors, for example, don't take Medicaid because the reimbursement rates are too low.

Many of them will take cash only or private only because the Medicaid reimbursement rates are too low. So you can see that happening with pharma. You need a cutting edge drug and Medicaid just won't provide it because the price is too low. And big pharma is like, no, you know what? We can't we can't afford to give it to you at that price. Even if Medicaid does, in fact, provide for that drug, they get that drug from big pharma. All that means is that the now higher prices to compensate for the lower prices for Medicaid get squeezed into the private sector.

So it's not that the pharmaceutical companies are going to quote unquote make less profit, that they're greedy pharmaceutical companies and they're just stashing away cash in the back room and all this kind of, that's not true. It's not true. That's not how big pharma works at all. What will actually happen is that people who have private insurance will pay more for their insurance premiums and insurance companies will pay significantly more on the other end.

So this attempt to quote unquote lower prices in the aggregate, it's not going to lower prices. In the aggregate, it may lower prices on the available drugs for Medicaid, but it will increase prices for everybody in the private sector. And with regards to sort of the overall reduction of prices, there's no way to do that without also destroying the R&D. There's a point that the Wall Street Journal actually made last week. They pointed out that drugs accounted for less than 4% of Medicaid spending, $21.2 billion in 2023. The feds spent 10 times more on hospital payments

Even if Republicans required drug makers to give away medicines to Medicaid, savings would not actually amount to what Republicans need in terms of this tax bill. They need $880 billion in savings. Trying to wring more money out of drug makers might cause some companies to stop participating in Medicaid, as we've discussed. This is the Wall Street Journal. Patients would then suffer from less access to novel treatments as they do in countries with socialized health systems that impose price controls. Some drug makers already lose money on medicines they sell to Medicaid. They compensate by raising those prices in the commercial market.

And that is likely to be what the future looks like. And the notion that free market economies, that they don't adjust and move with regard to regulation, it's not true. Pharmaceutical companies cannot just quote unquote charge whatever they want because eventually the patents expire, number one. Number two, there's competition in the marketplace. And so other big pharma companies are trying to encroach on the territory of you discover a new drug and within five minutes, somebody else is trying to discover a new pathway for the new drugs. You can see this with Ozempic.

Right. Ozempic was really, really expensive. And very, very quickly, you're seeing people fill the marketplace for Ozempic with knockoffs, other semi-glutides, people who are attempting now to create oral versions of Ozempic so you don't actually have to take a shot. Like the market does an amazing job of taking what were luxury products and making them available to the common man. This is true everywhere. It's true in medicine, too. Things that you now consider to be absolutely necessary.

baseline medical care, say chemotherapy if you have cancer. That stuff was considered a luxury item way back when because when you first develop this stuff, it's expensive. This is what capitalism does. Capitalism takes luxuries and it makes them available to the common man. I mean, look at your cell phone. Go back and watch Wall Street, a movie made in 1987 by Oliver Stone. It's about one of the richest people on earth, Gordon Gekko. At Gordon Gekko, there's a scene where he's walking around with an unthinkable device on the beach.

An absolutely unthinkably technologically advanced product. He's holding basically a radio to his head. And he's walking around on the beach with a cell phone. And at the time, people must have watched it and go, whoa, that dude is loaded. Look at that. Look at it. He's walking around on a beach, not connected to no wire, just with a cell phone that looks like a shoebox. Wow, look at that. And now, of course, every single person, including the poorest Americans, has a cell phone. Everyone. How did that happen? Didn't happen through government subsidization of cell phones. It happened through free market economics.

If you want better drugs, if you want better treatment, if you want all that, all the people who rip on big pharma are perfectly happy to use products developed by big pharma the minute they get sick. R&D is an absolutely necessary component to lengthening the lifespans and bettering the health of people who really are sick.

And any sort of executive action, first of all, I don't know where in the Constitution it just says that the president gets to randomly do the kinds of things that presidents of both parties are doing right now. I don't. There used to be this thing. It's now a vestigial organ of American government. It used to be called the legislature. You know, you would elect people to Congress and the Senate, and they would make specific policies that were directed at specific outcomes. And then you could vote on them, and you could throw them out of office if you didn't like what they were doing.

Now, apparently, the president of the United States has the power to unilaterally increase prices in the United States with gigantic tariff regimes at the drop of a hat, price control pharmaceuticals, declare national emergencies on everything available. And again, this didn't start with President Trump. I know there are people out there, oh, Trump is breaking the Constitution. As almost always, President Trump is rarely the murderer. He's often the coroner. The system was broken and Trump simply points to the system and says it's broken and then does the same thing Democrats were doing and everybody goes nuts.

We should have been going nuts about this, you know, 100 years ago with the rise of the administrative state under Woodrow Wilson. But now we're feeling the effects of all of that. When the president of the United States can, with a signature, put the R&D part of big pharma on the bankruptcy line, that is a problem. Forget whether you like the policy or not. I don't.

The president should not have the unilateral power to do this. By the way, the same thing holds true with regard to things like the Federal Reserve. The fact that we all sit here waiting day after day for Jerome Powell, one guy to tell us what the interest rates are going to be is psychotic. None of that is how a market ought to work. It is centralized government economics and it is bad. It is not good. And it does not bear, by the way, the same sort of fruit that people want it to bear. People think that that means everything is hunky dory because the president can solve things with one signature.

You know, checks and balances are actually quite a good thing. As a general rule, they are a very good thing. All right. Meanwhile, in other news, there are developments with regard to Ukraine and Russia. So Vladimir Zelensky now says that he is willing to meet with Vladimir Putin. According to The Wall Street Journal, Ukrainian President Zelensky challenged Putin to meet him in Istanbul this week in Turkey after President Trump swung behind the Russian president's offer of talks before a ceasefire. So.

Putin has not declared Zelensky said, I'm willing to accept a 30 day ceasefire. He's said this for weeks and weeks and weeks at this point. Putin has never accepted like a five minute ceasefire. He pretends to, but it's not real. So now Putin said, I'm willing to do face to face negotiations with Zelensky, presumably while the war continues. And Zelensky had said, how about this? How about you declare a 30 day ceasefire? And then we start talking.

And President Trump said, you know what? I just want you at the table. Don't care whether it's a ceasefire or not, even though the ceasefire was originally President Trump's idea. But is it good that Zelensky and Putin are talking? Sure. I mean, the real question is going to be what comes out of the talks. So Zelensky said that he would be waiting for Putin in Turkey on Thursday, raising the stakes amid a flurry of diplomatic exchanges and brinkmanship over the weekend, where both sides sought to balance not making any significant concessions with placating President Trump, who's demanding an end to the three-year war.

Now, Putin originally didn't respond to Zelensky's offer. Again, it goes beyond the scope of Putin's suggestion of reviving peace talks. Trump's support of the Russian president's proposal to switch in his position initially upended European efforts to bring pressure to bear on Russia to halt the war. Trump then over the weekend, he said Ukraine should agree to this immediately. This is after Putin said, let's just get together and talk face to face without any ceasefire. And Trump said on social media that Ukraine should agree to this immediately.

At least they'll be able to determine whether or not a deal is possible. If it's not, European leaders in the U.S. will know where everything stands and can proceed accordingly. Zelensky, who earlier had wanted a truce, a 30-day ceasefire as a condition of the talks, responded immediately. So again, Zelensky is doing the stuff that Trump wants him to do. Let's be clear. Who is doing what Trump wants him to do when it comes to Putin-Zelensky? The answer is Vladimir Zelensky is doing the stuff Trump wants him to do. There's no other way to read this. Trump is calling for things and Zelensky is doing them.

Trump wants a rare earths minerals deal. Zelensky says, sure. President Trump wants a ceasefire, a 30 day ceasefire. Zelensky says, sure. President Trump wants a 30 day ceasefire out the windows. They can negotiate. Zelensky says, sure. And every step of the way, Putin is delaying because Putin is basically gambling that at a certain point, President Trump gets bored and walks away. That's the gamble. And it takes 18 months to two years for European weaponry to actually ship into Ukraine and adjust to

so that Ukraine can defend itself without American input. Here's one of the big problems people don't want to talk about. Again, policy has a long tail. Because we watch politics in real time, we think a policy happens and then immediately it's implemented. That is not how it works. If the United States cuts off aid to Ukraine, it is not as though European arms immediately flow in. Much of the aid that has been provided to Ukraine militarily is only compatible with American ammo, for example. You can't just ship in European ammo to use in American armaments. You can't do it.

It takes a while to replace all of that stuff. There needs to be at least a sort of runway for things to change over there. Putin's assuming the United States will precipitously pull out and it'll look like Afghanistan. That is what happened in Afghanistan, by the way. The United States was providing aerial oversight

for the Afghan government in opposition to the Taliban. The United States pulled all of its air support and the Taliban immediately took over and the Afghan government immediately collapsed. That is what Putin is hoping right now. He's hoping whatever support the United States is providing in terms of intelligence, in terms of ammo, that that goes away. And then the gap is not filled quickly enough by the European Union. That's the gamble that Putin is playing right now. I don't think that President Trump falls for that trap, by the way.

Zelensky put out a statement on social media. He said, there is no point in prolonging the killings. And then he said, I hope this time Putin won't be looking for excuses as to why he can't make it. So he's showing up in Turkey, basically saying, I dare you to show up so we can talk. One day earlier, Putin rebuffed a ceasefire ultimatum from Kiev and its Western allies, instead calling for direct talks. Ukraine and Russia's positions remain far apart. Russia basically wants land ceded to it. It hasn't even won in this battle.

Meanwhile, Putin also would like for Ukraine to unilaterally disarm, no military support, no membership in NATO, all of which are not going to be a starter on the conversation. Russia has been ramping up its offensives, according to Deep State, which is an independent Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group. They said Russia conducted more attacks during the recent three-day ceasefire called by Putin in early May than in the same period the prior month. So we'll see what shakes out in Turkey.

Putin is speaking with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is the dictatorial Islamist leader of Turkey, who's very much aligned with Russia, about his proposed talks in Istanbul starting May 15th. President Erdogan said a comprehensive ceasefire would create the necessary environment for peace talks, but Russia just denied it.

So once again, Russia appears to be stalling for time in all of this. Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas said, you know, it's pretty clear here, Russia's not making a lot of concessions. - You know, there was a 30 day ceasefire called for. Mr. Putin decided to bomb Ukraine on Palm Sunday. He's not making any concessions at all, while Zelensky seems to be making all the concessions. So if, the bottom line is, Putin has to agree to a 30 day ceasefire.

for any peace talks to go forward. And the land that he is asking for is, you know, that even J.D. Vance talked about this and the president, you know, land that Russia has not even occupied in Ukraine. So he has to operate in good faith. We want peace, but not peace at any price. So that's going to be the question. And we'll find out in short order what exactly happens.

Putin is willing to do. My guess is not particularly a lot. And meanwhile, it is amazing to watch as the media and the Democrats ramp up their attacks on John Fetterman. Fetterman, of course, is the very heterodox Democratic senator from Pennsylvania. He's been heterodox with regard to President Trump. He kind of grumpily rejects media attacks that he thinks are unfair against President Trump. He's, of course, been incredibly pro-Israel, shocking everybody who happens to be pro-Israel.

Because, of course, Fetterman was aligned with the sort of far left wing of the Democratic Party when he was running against Mehmet Oz, who is now part of the Trump administration. Well, now Democrats are trying to claim he has mental problems. So the way this works is if you're Joe Biden and you clearly have mental problems and mental disabilities, but you're willing to provide a face for crap Democratic policy, you're totally fine. You're fine. Everything is good. No problems whatsoever. But if you're John Fetterman and you have a stroke in the middle of a race with Mehmet Oz,

And everybody's like, whoa, that seems bad. Democrats are like, he's fine. It's all good. Until the point at which he starts disagreeing with them, at which point it turns out he has a mental problem. Amazing how the politics just seem to dictate whether people think that others have a mental problem or not. It's pretty astonishing, actually. According to Axios,

Senator Fetterman has unnerved aides with his performance in office, with both current and former staff telling Axios he seems uninterested in the day-to-day duties of a senator. First of all, welcome to the Senate, where half the Senate is uninterested in the day-to-day duties of a senator. Have you ever met senators? I've met many senators. Many, many, many senators. The number of them are deeply dedicated to their jobs. Limited, shall we say. Capitol Hill's private concerns over Fetterman exploded into public view over the past week, as longtime critics and former allies piled on with concerns about the senator.

Adam Jentleson, his former chief of staff, said, quote, part of the tragedy here is this is a man who could be leading Democrats out of the wilderness. But I think he's struggling in a way that shouldn't be hidden from the public. What exactly happened? Well, apparently there was an outburst during a meeting with teachers union officials in Washington last week with one of the members of the teachers union crying. And that is, hmm, that's weird. Apparently, according to the Associated Press,

Fetterman began repeating himself and shouting and demanding, why is everybody mad at me? Why does everybody hate me? What did I do? Before slamming his hands on a desk, according to a person briefed on what happened. The staffer was comforted by teachers who themselves were rattled by Fetterman's behavior. Fetterman, for his part, said, basically, there's a hit piece. Asked about the meeting with the teachers union representative, Fetterman said in a statement, they had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration's cuts to our education system.

So, again, the the building momentum is reliant on the fact that he has moved to the right. So there is there are people in the Democratic Party who are now suggesting that there's something deeply wrong with Fetterman. Again, if there is something wrong with Fetterman before, presumably there is something wrong with Fetterman now. However, that is not what changed. What actually changed is not presumably his mental status. He was hospitalized for depression after the stroke. You know that.

The real question is, what changed where Democrats are suddenly panicking? And the answer is that he disagrees with them on some pretty key issues. A Fetterman spokesperson said John expects his staff to disagree with him on things that's normal. Airing out grievances publicly hurts the entire office and puts staff and their work in jeopardy.

So again, interesting to watch what Democrats now consider to be a health problem worth monitoring and what they consider to be not a health problem worth monitoring. The answer is completely dependent, apparently, on the politics of the person that they are concerned about. Meanwhile, controversy brewing over the possible arrest of Democratic members of Congress.

So apparently, according to the New York Post, two Democratic representatives from New Jersey were caught on video storming a Newark immigration detention site last week. One was seen elbowing her way past ICE agents in an alleged bizarre political stunt. North Jersey Representatives Robert Menendez Jr. and LaMonica McIver were among the protesters who turned up demanding the closure of the Delaney Hall Detention Center. It houses criminal illegal migrants with alleged MS-13 gang affiliation who are wanted for crimes ranging from rape to murder. Democrats simply picked the best friends.

Here is some of the video provided Fox News by DHS. And it shows these two Congress people yelling at ICE agents and then assaulting them, essentially. You can see it's a scrum and you can see some of the protesters moving around. You can see members of Congress yelling at yelling at the ICE agents trying to shove their way past the ICE agents. I don't know where they think they're going to.

I'm not sure what they think they're attempting to achieve here, but they got to make some headlines. That's exciting for them. Meanwhile, the DHS assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, wrote in a statement, members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond a bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and detainees at risk. Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour. This is an evolving situation.

This led, of course, to Tricia McLaughlin explaining that the possibility of arrest is actually still on the table.

There were multiple people arrested. And, Victor, I think that we should let viewers know there will likely be more arrests coming. We actually have body camera footage of some of these members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body slamming a female ICE officer. So we will be showing that to viewers very shortly. You say a video of members of Congress body slamming officers?

ICE officials? That's correct, sir. It's disgusting. Okay, and so if you have that video, are you suggesting that members of Congress will be arrested who were there yesterday? This is an ongoing investigation, and that is definitely on the table. Okay, so we'll find out what happens here. Again, Democrats are picking exactly the wrong angle here. It's truly amazing that...

The Democrats continue to pick the worst allies in the entire world. All they have to do is just be calm and say, listen, the people who are being arrested, they probably should be deported. They require due process. That's all they have to say. That's it. But they can't help themselves. Instead, they're showing up at detention facility. The race for headlines in the social media age drives some of the dumbest behavior humanly possible. It's truly an amazing thing. They really seem to have no clue about how to handle themselves.

Whether it's traveling down to El Salvador to visit Kilmer Abrego Garcia, an accused wife beater, or whether they are talking about showing up at detention facilities for actual criminal illegal aliens accused of rape and then shoving around ICE agents. Like, what are they doing? What in the world are they doing? But we do, in fact, live in the stupidest timeline. Speaking of which...

because we live in the stupidest possible timeline, Kanye West has a new music video. And I feel that we should probably comment on it. So Kanye West, as we all know, has mental issues. I'm not saying this because of his politics. I've been saying that Kanye West has mental issues for years and years and years and years and years. There's nothing new here. Years and years ago, when Kanye West was making inroads with the first Trump administration, I tweeted famously, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye, because he's nuts. And Kanye's mental issues

continue to contribute, I assume, to his bizarre fixation with the Jews. So he now has a new song titled Heil Hitler. So just in case you are still pretending that Kanye West doesn't hate Jews, I'm pretty sure he hates the Jews. I mean, two things can be true at once. One, mental illness. Two, hates the Jews. Both can be true. And in fact, in Kanye West are true. So he's now cut an entire music video. Again, this is all about transgressiveness. It's all about transgressivism.

That's all it is. So many of the people who are parroting the Heil Hitler Kanye West song are doing so because they think it's fun to be transgressive and all rules must be broken because if you're standing up to the narrative, you're doing something brave and amazing. Or maybe you're just being a piece of shit. That's also possible. It turns out that some rules exist for a reason. And like being against Hitler seems to be a, I don't know, call me controversial, call me crazy. Hitler seems bad.

I don't know. I feel like Hitler was not a good person. And I feel like the things he did were bad. If that makes me controversial, if it makes me a censor of some sort, I guess, you know, sure. All right, fine. Now, again, I've not called for Kanye West to be deplatformed from anything. I'm just pointing out.

And many of the people who are very enthusiastic about Kanye West making common cause with people on the right are utterly silent when it comes to his absolutely open shift into Nazism. Many of the people who call him friends and acquaintances and people like, where are they? Do they have anything to say about this or no? It's still about the Jews. Pretty amazing stuff. So here is Kanye West's song, Heil Hitler. See my Twitter, but they don't see how I be feeling. So I became a Nazi, yeah. I'm the villain.

So the actual line is N-word Heil Hitler.

Okay, but it's a hard R with Hitler and it's a no R with the N-word is the way this works. If, by the way, you say the reverse, that means you're a racist and you're banned from polite society. If you say the N-word that ends with an A, but you say Heil Hitler with the hard R, then that means that you're good, transgressive, and interesting to a wide variety of people, apparently, on both right and left. So that's exciting stuff. I'm glad that we've decided to do this as a society. And social media, of course, has exacerbated all of this because transgressive behavior gets clicks, it gets attention.

That, of course, is why Andrew Tate, one of the most vile people in social media, decided that, you know, he's constantly piggybacking on the social media attention whoredom of others. So here he was jumping in a fancy car in UAE, I believe this is, while playing the Kanye West song. Because all the best people are of a piece. He's smoking a cigar and getting into a fancy car paid for by the people that he is allegedly ripping off with Tate University. So that's exciting for all of you.

And he puts on the song and then he starts driving down the street. What a rebel he is. Truly, truly a rebel. This is the kind of...

Now, the social media scene has made the world so much better. By the way, if you think this has no bleed over, why are we paying attention to this? Because social media popularity now translates into mainstream breakthrough. We have seen this. We have seen people who were completely anonymous two years ago, who because of the bizarre algorithmic boosts provided by X and TikTok have now become kind of internet famous. And then they make a breakthrough into actual famous podcasts, for example. And suddenly they're showing up and you're like, who is this person? Why is this person here? And the answer is they got a lot of clicks.

So clicks can translate into some sort of appeal. And we do live in a time where because the left was so censorious, because the left shut the Overton window so unbelievably tight that basically if you didn't agree with Hillary Clinton, you were out there in the wilderness. Because of that, many people on the right, their response was no Overton window at all, meaning all discourse must be treated as equally acceptable and valuable, which of course is stupidity. It's just moral relativism.

n-word heil hitler is not of the same caliber of discussion as say should we raise or lower pharmaceutical prices based on government mandate like what is valuable that the answer is there's not a lot of that again doesn't mean it should be banned doesn't mean it should be censored it does mean that a rational decent people would not be spending an awful lot of time with those sorts of folks promoting that sort of trash but once it starts mainstreaming via social media then all the bad ideas of the past get to come back so that's exciting and

According to a brand new poll out of JL Partners, this is from October of last year, so it's not brand new. According to a poll from October 7th of 2024, people who say Hitler had some good ideas, people who are 18 to 29 years old, 21%, people who are 65 plus, 5%. Why? Well, a few reasons. One, older people are not spending nearly as much time on social media. Two, older people actually do have some wisdom. They're not as stupid as people who are 18 to 29 years old very often.

There is an interesting racial breakdown. Black Americans, over a fifth of them say Hitler had some good ideas. Presumably Kanye is in that category. 19% of Hispanic Americans said the same. Just 9% of white Americans said the same.

So, I don't know, put me on the side of people who say Hitler actually did not have good ideas. His ideas were trash. And the people who support them today are trash. And the people who invoke them today as some sort of progressive strike against the leftist machine. There are so many ways to oppose leftist censorship. Valuable ways to oppose leftist censorship. There are so many things that can be said that the left doesn't want you to say that actually have inherent real value.

And then there are our mentally ill people warbling into a microphone using Auto-Tune. By the way, I hope that whatever Kanye is making off his songs, he's paying a percentage to Auto-Tune because my goodness, Auto-Tune is basically writing his songs for him at this point. I'm so glad that our pop culture has moved in this wonderful, wonderful direction. Exciting stuff.

All right, folks, the show continues for our members right now. We'll be jumping into that vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code ShapiroCheckout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.