Ep. 2209 - Elon’s Farewell and Trump’s Tariff War Dead?
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Alrighty, folks, as you can see, I'm not broadcasting from the studio right now. I'm actually in a room in the presidential complex in Budapest, Hungary. I just finished interviewing Prime Minister Viktor Orban. That interview is going to be available in very, very short order. Plus, tomorrow's show is going to be a speech that I'm giving here in Hungary in just a few hours, complete with Q&A and

and all the rest. Just a quick warning, we have lots of content that will emerge next Monday, Tuesday. I am off next Monday, Tuesday because of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. That is the one where the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai. But as to the actual news of the day, I didn't want to leave you hanging. We have a bunch of news that we recorded just before we left for the airport yesterday, but also a bunch of news broke while we were on the plane. So here is the big news of the day. The big news of the day is that the Court of International Trade, which is a court that nobody has ever heard of,

blocked President Trump's tariffs in a sweeping ruling, according to Reuters, that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from U.S. trading partners. The court essentially suggested that the law under which the president of the United States was declaring these tariffs was not, in fact, capable of carrying those tariffs because the

Essentially, the president used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the IEPA. It gives the president the power to regulate imports during certain emergency situations, according to CBS News. But those emergency situations do not actually extend to things like, you know, a trade deficit.

Big trade deficits do not amount to a national emergency. And that's what the court found. And the court isn't wrong here. If the president actually wants to do tariffs, there are other legal mechanisms, presumably, that he will pursue. But this should be in the purview of Congress. It always should have been in the purview of Congress. You don't want any president being able to unilaterally simply decide that there are massive tariffs across the board on all of America's trading partners. You just don't want that. OK, that is not the balance of powers that was envisioned by the Constitution, by the founders, by the framers.

That is not what they wanted. It's not something that I want either. And whether you like the tariffs or you don't like the tariffs is actually sort of irrelevant to the question of whether the president ought to have the unilateral ability to do as President Trump did on Liberation Day and simply declare a 46% tariff on Vietnam or 145% tariff on China, like the Congress should have to sign in at some point. Now, does this mean that all the tariffs are going to go away permanently? No. The markets spiked on the news of all of this.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures market immediately jumped significantly and then came back down to earth a little bit as the markets realized, oh, wait a second, it may be, in fact, that President Trump is still going to be able to do some of these tariffs. According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration has already said it will appeal the ruling. Trade experts and lawyers say it has a variety of other legal avenues to prosecute the trade war that are unaffected by Wednesday's decision. Deborah Elms, who's head of trade policy at the Singapore-based Henrik Foundation, said

says this is just one more bump in the tariff road that we're going to be on for as long as President Trump remains in office. He loves tariffs. He loves the idea of being able to impose them at will. I don't think he's going to give that up particularly easily.

Now, the judgment undermines the legal basis for the reciprocal tariffs that are the centerpiece of President Trump's effort to rein in the trade deficit. The court also shot down special levies of 20% that were imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China, supposedly based on national emergency rooted in the fentanyl crisis. Now, theoretically, you can make the case that we should put tariffs on Mexico and declare a national emergency on the basis of fentanyl. You could at least make a colorable case for that. You could never make a colorable case that that was the case with Canada.

The United States last year, in terms of fentanyl, seized something like 50 pounds of fentanyl the entire year at the border. So the idea there was a national emergency that merited a 20% tariff on Canada originally, that, of course, was far exceeding the scope of authority originally presented to the President of the United States by that act in 1977. Now, there's still a bunch of other tariffs that are going to be on the books.

So the court's decision does not impact 25% levies that have been placed on steel, aluminum, and cars because those levies were imposed using alternative legal avenues, not the national emergency situation. Those are conventional avenues. Those are known as Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs. The president does have the ability to actually do tariffs under that sort of power, but they're usually used for specific sectors. It's not blanket across the board, giant tariffs on entire countries, for example, in

So again, the markets were pretty happy about that, immediately speaking. Does this mean the end of President Trump's trade war? No. It does mean that the president, again, does not have the unilateral ability by declaring a national emergency simply to impose gigantic tariff regimes across the board. And that actually is a good thing. I mean, listen, as a person who believes that we should be drawing closer trade relations with our allies and that the shot across the bow, if it was meant to get them to the table, that still exists.

The fact is that the economic damage and the uncertainty wrought by the tariff war on our allies, again, I fully believe that we should be gradually ramping up tariffs on China, reshoring manufacturing away from China, making closer trade alliances with countries that are more aligned with us, ranging from Vietnam to India, for example. All of that would be good. I don't like the tariff policy, but that is actually a side point here. It turns out that whether you are a fan of the president or not a fan of the current president,

The balance of power that was drawn in the Constitution should be something that we like. That is something that we want, because I promise you that the next time a Democrat takes office, that same exact national emergency power will be used for something that you don't like. That is the way this typically works. And so, you know, again, I'm not going to say that the court was wrong here. I don't think the court was wrong here. President Trump will appeal it. He will find other ways to pursue a trade policy that is more effective.

legally obtainable, shall we say. Meanwhile, the other big news of the day, after we stopped covering the news yesterday, was that Elon Musk has now officially left the Trump administration after what the Washington Post calls a contentious tenure. But this is unfair to Elon. OK, let's just put it out there that what Elon did here is actually politically heroic, like actually really heroic. This is the richest man on Earth who took time away from his gigantic companies ranging from XAI to

to Tesla, to SpaceX, simply to come in and try to cut waste, fraud, and abuse at the governmental level for no pay.

and at massive financial cost to him because many people got very angry at him and started targeting his companies. So Elon deserves a gigantic round of applause for even getting Americans to talk about cut-ins to the federal government. Elon took time away from his chief goal here, which was, of course, to grow his companies in order to pursue something on behalf of the country that actually is self-sacrificial by Elon Musk. He did not get richer over the course of the last several months.

He got markedly poorer over the course of the last several months, if you count his stock holdings as his wealth base. Because, again, the stocks went down in places like Tesla. The stocks have not been kind to Elon Musk's companies. He really took the hit here. President Trump thanked Elon Musk for it. Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform that his scheduled time as a special government employee had come to an end.

He's not permitted to work more than 130 days in a 365 day period. It prevents him from having to do financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules. In the post, Musk thanked Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending and said Doge's mission will only strengthen over time. Now, again, we will see how much it has strengthened over time.

In order for that really to effectuate, the president of the United States does have to send a rescission letter requesting that all of the cuts that the executive branch is currently making under Doge become permanent at the congressional level. President Trump hasn't done that yet. Presumably, he will do that sometime soon. So again, Elon Musk, he's taken an enormous amount of crap

But the reality is that what he did here was a rare act of political altruism. He wasn't running for office here. He didn't get anything out of this. He received nothing but downside, and he took the hit. So good for Elon Musk. Really, thanks to Elon Musk. Okay, now, there was other news yesterday, but we covered it yesterday, so I'm going to be in a different outfit in the studio. If you can see it visually, here's the rest of the show.

Folks, we have a ton coming up on today's show. We'll get into WNBA controversy over racism. Yeah, I know. We're going to actually talk about the WNBA. Plus, we're going to break down the latest on the economy with a Harvard conservative.

Professor Anne-Megan Kelly stops by to talk Diddy Watch. But first, this Friday night, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, we fire up the cameras, dim the lights, and make at least three people in legal very nervous. Adam Carolla is here to help me weaponize negativity. Jordan Peterson drops a recommendation that briefly unhinges the entire production team. And Savvy electrocutes me in the name of entertainment. There's mailbag mayhem, unvetted content, and enough off-the-rails production choices to qualify as a cry for help. If that sounds like a mistake, that's because it most certainly is.

Ben After Dark, episode three, only on DW Plus, only for members. Well, folks, the left has a real problem in the United States. They've spent the last several decades talking about how racism is an endemic problem in American life. And there's a problem with that problem, which is there's not enough racism for them. They require instances of racism in order to support the idea that every maldistribution of outcome is, in fact,

rooted in racism and white supremacy. And so they're constantly looking for their latest racial conflagration. It has to be a white on black racial conflagration, obviously, because white supremacy and white privilege and all the rest. The latest iteration of this comes courtesy of the WNBA. So it is amazing to be discussing the WNBA like seriously at the top of the show, because let's face it, the last time anyone cared about the WNBA was when Brittany Griner, who will arise in a moment, was actually freed from captivity in Russia after having brought

marijuana product into Russia, genius move, and then being essentially kidnapped by the Russian government. And then we had to trade an arms dealer for her. I will say that based on some of her late comments, I'm not sure that we got the better end of that particular deal. In any case,

The WNBA entered into an investigation over the course of the past couple of weeks because there were allegations that fans were being racist during a game between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever. And yes, I should get points for knowing the names of both of those teams. The Indiana Fever is, of course, the team of Kaitlyn Clark, who's the only player in the WNBA who seems to matter right now. And the Chicago Sky are the team of Angel Reese, who is sort of her arch nemesis.

and has been since her college days. We'll get to more on this in just one second. First, a lot of good work is being done by the administration on the economy, trying to get regulations in order, but there's a ton of instability. And while the Trump administration tries to stabilize the country's economy, it is difficult for them to consider everybody's individual personal finances.

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Pure Talk, if it's good enough for my very important phone calls, it's good enough for you as well. It's awesome. Go check them out. PureTalk.com slash Shapiro. So the allegations arose after there was a foul by Caitlin Clark on Angel Reese. It was called a flagrant. If you watch the video, it's pretty clearly not a flagrant foul just by any basketball standard. Basically, Angel Reese goes up for a layup and Caitlin Clark doesn't clothesline or anything, kind of grabs her and Angel Reese falls over. And there were allegations that people in the stands were then being racist. So

The league immediately launched an investigation into these alleged racist comments.

And the WNBA had responded with the statement confirming the investigation, quote, the WNBA strongly condemns racism, hate, and discrimination in all forms. They have no place in our league or in society. We are aware of the allegations and are looking into the matter now. There was no evidence at the time that any of this was true. And given the fact that cell phones are ubiquitous and that everybody now tapes everybody else saying anything racist, the chances that this actually happened in real life were extremely, extremely low, especially at like a WNBA game. Okay.

Who are the white supremacists showing up at a WNBA game? Seriously, the white privileged folks were like, you know what? We don't like black people and we're super white nationalist. So we're going to a WNBA game. What is the crossover between those two circles? There's like no crossover in that Venn diagram. It didn't matter. Caitlin Clark was then forced to go out there and make a statement. And every time Caitlin Clark makes one of these statements,

Blink if you need help, Caitlin. Here she was after the game saying that there's no place for racism in the game.

There's no place for that in our game. There's no place for that in society. And, you know, certainly we want every person that comes into our arena, whether player, whether fan, to have a great experience. So I appreciate the league doing that. I appreciate, you know, the Fever organization has been at the forefront of that since, you know, really day one and what they're doing. So we'll, you know, hopefully the investigation, we'll leave that up to them to find anything and take the proper action if so. Well, I mean, she needed to say that because if she hadn't said that, then you would have thought that the WNBA was just filled with deep,

and abiding racism, obviously. And of course, this is not the first time that Caitlin Clark has been forced to go to the camera and then speak the words, say the thing. So not all that long ago, 2024, December, she came out and she had to acknowledge her own white privilege. Now, can we be clear about this? If Caitlin Clark were not in the WNBA, we would not be talking about the WNBA. She is the only ticket draw in the WNBA. A large percentage of all tickets sold in the WNBA are so people can watch Caitlin Clark

play basketball. No one cares about Angel Reese. She'd be drawing flies if she were playing not against Caitlin Clark on the court right now. Angel Reese has basically become the Bill Lane beer to Caitlin Clark's Larry Bird, essentially. That is where we now are.

Well, here was Caitlin Clark back in December acknowledging her white privilege because there were so many players in the WNBA who were getting angry that people are out watching Caitlin Clark. Really, this is a thing inside the WNBA. There are a bunch of players in the WNBA who are angry that Caitlin Clark is bringing notoriety to their sport. Their idea is why didn't people watch the WNBA before? The answer is because Caitlin Clark is uniquely talented and yes, uniquely appealing.

And is some of that based on race? Well, I mean, there are other white players in the WNBA who don't have remotely this kind of following. So I really don't think that that's the reason. She was a wildly popular player when she was in college. Was that also based on her race or based on the fact that she was hitting threes like an NBA player? Well, back in December, she actually had to issue a statement

in which she suggested that there's an element of white privilege in her stardom. Quote, I feel like I've earned every single thing that's happened to me over the course of my career, but I also grew up a fan of this league from a very young age. My favorite player was Maya Moore. I knew what this league was about. She said, like I said, the WNBA has only been around 25 plus years.

Only, by the way. And they've never earned a profit until like this very moment, maybe. I know there's been so many amazing black women that have been in this league and continuing to uplift them, I think is very important. That's something I'm aware of, is what she told Time Magazine. She said, I want to say I've earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege. A lot of these players in the league that have been really good have been black players. This league has kind of been built on them. The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it's very important.

I have to try to continue to change that, she added. The more we can elevate black women, that's going to be a beautiful thing. Now, hilariously enough, her presence in the league is elevating many of the black players around her who nobody knew about until five minutes ago. But she's been the one who has been targeted by so many people in the WNBA. And in fact, there are entire compilations of people basically laying hard fouls on Caitlyn Clark last season, putting her in danger of actually getting hurt. In fact, she recently was hurt

And it turns out that a bunch of fans are very unhappy about it and have decided that they are interested in essentially boycotting the entire WNBA over it. According to Total Pro Sports, there are a bunch of fans who are suggesting that the WNBA's failure to protect Clark, specifically because Clark is white and many of the players fouling her are black, that that is in and of itself a problem and racist. So...

Again, there actually is some racism in the WNBA, but it's directed the opposite way. And that's the stuff you're not allowed to talk about. So I mentioned that we would speak about Brittany Griner. Brittany Griner was caught on tape during a game with the Indiana Fever, dropping racial slurs against Caitlin Clark and pretty obviously doing so. And it doesn't take a lot of genius to lip read Brittany Griner, whose voice, by the way, is about as low as mine is.

calling her trash and an effing white girl. Now, of course, if Caitlyn Clark had ever suggested the same in reverse, using black as opposed to white in that sentence, that'd be the end of her WNBA career. But Brittany Griner is going strong. It's totally fine. Meanwhile, a former WNBA champ has actually come out and suggested that it's racism to talk about people hard fouling Caitlyn Clark.

Like, we can talk about, you know, people getting fouled. I just showed you my tooth getting knocked out. Like, that's been a part of the game. The game has always been physical. I can tell you the amount of times I was left with bloody lips and eyes. I have bruises all over my body, even from the game last night. You can see bruises on my elbow from last night. Like, this is a part of the game. So, like, if I'm just going to be frank, like, it's all bulls**t. What it is is racism.

Oh, so that's racism now. So the way that it works is if no racism happens in the stands, the WNBA does a full investigation. If there are hard fouls on Caitlin Clark every night and Brittany Griner is using slurs like pretty openly against Caitlin Clark, then it's racism to even pay attention to any of that. You see, everything has to end in racism. If you were to create a flow chart, what it would look like is

something racist didn't happen, therefore investigate racism or something maybe racist happened, but it was against a white person. You mentioning this is also probably racism against black people. If you want to get people never to watch the WNBA, this is an amazing way to do it. Truly an amazing way to do it. Because if the league is going to be rooted in this sort of nastiness with regard to it's only real star, good luck to them. And we'll see what the viewership is like in the WNBA.

Truly, truly idiocy. Now, the reason this is important is because it's part of a broader rubric, the whole kind of diversity, equity, inclusion rubric that the left has embraced. That, of course, is part and parcel of a broader worldview that suggests that all inequality and outcome is due to inequality in the system, that the system itself is racist. There's a kind of shocking story that has emerged via News Nation about the Biden administration pointing out

That News Nation has spoken with a whistleblower from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about loan forgiveness policies under the Biden administration. This whistleblower discussed the passage of the American Rescue Act and how there's a section of that act that provided loan relief specifically for socially disadvantaged farmers. It was supposed to be based on social disadvantage would be based on economics, presumably.

And the American Rescue Act, which passed by a Democratic majority in Congress, allowed the Secretary of Agriculture to, quote, provide payment in an amount up to 120% of the outstanding indebtedness of each socially disadvantaged farmer. The socially disadvantaged farmer was defined by the act on a racial basis, which I have no idea how that's even legal. So farmers then sued and they said this is race-based and violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. And then the judge found that this was an actual constitutional harm and it didn't matter.

In the end, the Biden administration just went ahead and did the affirmative action anyway. Here's the whistleblower discussing. It was to pay off anyone who wasn't a white male's loan. That was the only qualification for this loan forgiveness. And what was the reaction? So it was really silent. They were trying to keep this hushed because of the obvious implications of race-based loan forgiveness.

Again, if you're wondering why Trump, this would be the reason why Trump. This is the reason why Trump, because people in America innately understand that it is wrong to give people loans specifically based on their race. And it's illegal to do that. And they also understand that these sort of broader complaints that American society is racist when they watch your league more is totally crazy. As long as the left keeps operating.

beneath this broader philosophy, they are going to lose. They are going to continue to lose pretty clearly. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, folks, we are seeing something truly disturbing. Anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world and sadly right here in the United States. Jewish schools are being targeted. Synagogues threatened. Families living in fear. It's something that many of us hope we wouldn't see again in our lifetime. And let me say, silence,

is not really a great option here. It's a good moment to take a stand. That's why I want to tell you about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, or IFCJ. They're on the front lines providing real help where it's needed most. They're giving food and shelter to Jewish families under threat, building bomb shelters for children, helping survivors of hate rebuild their lives. They don't

Thank you.

when it counts. Every dollar helps. Don't wait. Be the difference. Visit benforthefellowship.org. Again, that's benforthefellowship.org. They're doing amazing work on the ground in the Holy Land. Go check them out right now and help out. benforthefellowship.org. That's benforthefellowship.org. Also, when we started Daily Wire, it felt like we had to figure everything out with minimal help. Editorial guidelines, studio setup, production schedule, branding. It was overwhelming. New decisions were needed daily. Finding that one tool that simplifies everything when starting a business

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So meanwhile, speaking of idiots, Gavin Newsom on Tuesday welcomed a decision by school athletics groups to expand the number of high school athletes eligible to compete in a track and field meet. That came after a strong showing by a transgender student, which drew anger and a threat of funding cuts from President Trump. So there were new rules that have now been set out by the California Interscholastic Federation.

athletes who are identified at birth as female and fell one spot short of making the cut for the upcoming statewide championship at qualifying meets around the state will now be allowed to compete. So basically they're changing. They're still allowing the boys to run against the girls. They're just allowing one more girl to also race. That does not solve the problem. That does not solve the problem. And the fact that Gavin Newsom appears to think that it solves the problem is totally crazy. Of course, it shouldn't require some sort of insane pilot program to get a slot that you should have earned in the first place.

So, you know, the fact, again, that Gavin Newsom and the left, they keep trying to square the circle. There is no there is no circle to square here. You can't do this. A boy should not be racing against girls, obviously. But the left cannot let go of this. They cannot let go of this. And it's one of the reasons why they continue to be wildly unpopular and make everything they touch unpopular as well. Meanwhile, controversy continues over these who called a big, beautiful bill.

It has now passed the House, obviously, by a very slim margin. It has moved on to the Senate. Some senators, we discussed with Senator Ron Johnson, for example, why he is opposed to the House version of the Big Beautiful Bill. He says that's because we should be going back to 2019 spending levels. Why in the world are we maintaining Biden's spending levels in the middle of all this? Here was Senator Johnson yesterday.

Again, like Senator Scott, I support President Trump. We want to see him succeed. We want to see America succeed. But I ran in 2010 as part of the Tea Party movement because we were mortgaging our children's future. Back then, we experienced our first deficits in excess of a trillion dollars under Obama, but we were $14 trillion in debt. Now we're approaching $37 trillion in debt. And as Senator Scott said, over the next 10 years, we'll be approaching $60 trillion.

And of course, he's not wrong about any of this, Senator Johnson. One of the other critics of the bill is Elon Musk. So Elon has basically removed himself from the federal government at this point. He's no longer overseeing Doge. And he did an interview with CBS Sunday Morning talking about this, ripping into the big, beautiful bill, saying this thing just spends too much money, which, of course, it does. It spends less money than Democrats would have. It doesn't mean that it's actually making enough cuts, obviously. You know, I was like disappointed to see the massive...

spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along. I mean, like, everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion.

Okay, and I don't think that Elon is wrong on any of this. I mean, the reality is that the bill may be the best that you can do in the moment, given the extraordinarily fractious caucus that Republicans have. But to pretend that we are in any significant way bending the cost curve in any sort of real way that we are solving the national debt, obviously, that's not the case. Now, to be fair to the proponents of the big, beautiful bill,

The sort of explanation that we are radically increasing the debt by maintaining current tax levels and then making some future cuts to Biden programs. Again, it all depends on where you're using the basis of comparison. So if you say that this quote unquote explodes the debt, what you mean is that in the absence of this bill, tax rates would increase. And so if tax rates increased, then you would get additional revenues into the government. So even if you maintain Biden levels of spending, there'd be more revenue into the government. Okay, more of your money being taken.

If you are measuring this against the possibility of the tax base basically staying the same, the tax rates stay the same, then it cuts from where we normally would be under Biden. So it sort of depends on what you're using as your baseline. There's a point that's been made by Stephen Miller that if you use the latter as the baseline, namely you're assuming the tax cuts are permanent, then it actually is a cutting instrument. It cuts from where Biden's spending actually would be otherwise.

But regardless, does it solve our debt crisis? Does it get us toward solving the debt crisis? Not really. And Musk also has complaints about how Doge was handled inside the White House, by the way. He sort of suggests that every time a bad thing happened, Doge got blamed for it. And again, I don't think he's wrong about this. I don't think it's coming from inside the White House. I don't think that's President Trump's fault. President Trump was a big fan of Doge, obviously. But

If President Trump wants the cuts that Doge made to actually become permanent, he needs to actually submit a rescission letter to Congress asking them to make those cuts permanent. He suggested in an interview with The Washington Post, quote, Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything. So like something bad would happen anywhere, we would get blamed for it, even if we had nothing to do with it. And again, I don't think that that's wrong. He said that people were burning Teslas going after him personally. That obviously is true.

And so to that extent, Elon deserves an enormous amount of credit. I mean, he literally put his own net wealth on the line in order to try and do things that he thought were very important. And he did the best that he could, given the constraints that he was provided. Again, you're not going to find trillions in waste, fraud and abuse inside the federal government, but he certainly found tens of billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. He deserves enormous credit for all of that.

Now, where exactly does that put us economically speaking, just on a generalized level? Joining us on the line to discuss is a conservative, a rare conservative professor at Harvard University, Kenneth Rogoff, who also has a brand new book out titled Our Dollar, Your Problem, an insider's view of seven turbulent decades of global finance and the road ahead. Professor, thanks so much for joining the show. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

So there's a lot to talk about, obviously, in the markets and in the world of finance right now. Why don't we start with the so-called big, beautiful bill? There's been a lot of talk on the right side of the aisle about the necessity of maintaining current tax rates, not allowing those to rise. There's a lot of heartburn on the right side of the aisle as well about the amount of spending that is in the bill, the unwillingness of Republicans or Democrats to go back to 2019 levels of spending. How big a problem should we perceive the American debt and

deficit to be and how urgent is that problem? I think it's a problem people have been talking about for decades, but we're in a different moment now. The debt has risen a lot. It was 30% of income in 1980, 60% in 2005, more than 120% now, and interest rates have gone up. And when you're a big debtor and the US government is the world's biggest debtor and interest rates go up,

you have a problem. I mean, our interest bills have been really piling up. So I think we've hit this moment that was coming. You know, I can't tell you when things are going to go off the rails, but they're certainly getting there. And the most disappointing thing in the big, beautiful bill is that it's so big. I never thought anyone would beat out Biden's deficits in peacetime.

I just hadn't imagined it. And here we are, we're still in peacetime and the deficit's gonna be even bigger than the records he said, at least that's the forecast I'm seeing.

So when we look at what that means for the future of America's economy, obviously, we are watching as people rush away from American bonds that they're not trusting that we're going to pay back our debt outside of inflating the currency in some way. And the reality is that at some point here, there are only a few choices. One is inflate the currency. The other is radically increase taxes. And the third is serious austerity measures.

with regard to many of the social programs that nobody actually wants to touch. It seems to me that just politically, the most likely outcome is going to be some form of inflation because people don't like high taxes and they don't like austerity. What do you make of that? Totally. I don't see the American people being willing to accept an adjustment until we've been through another round of inflation as big or bigger than the last one.

There are other options to kind of try to temporize by forcing the insurance companies, the pension funds, the banks to hold debt. Japan has stuffed government debt into every orifice of its financial sector. The Europeans have done that. But believe me, that's not good for growth. You don't have money for innovation. So there aren't a lot of pleasant alternatives. I mean, there's some things like raising the retirement age.

I think we're the only big country besides France not to do that, which would help. When we look at sort of what that means for the ability of America to raise debt out into the future, there's been a lot of talk about the dollar as the world's reserve currency. And you talk about this at length in your book, Our Dollar, Your Problem. The dollar, of course, is basically the thing that allows us to raise this extraordinary amount of debt and sell our debt at these really low rates, just historically speaking, to finance all of this.

Now, I've had a lot of concern about the reality of the dollar as sort of wavering in terms of the world currency. It used to be 80 percent of the global foreign exchange reserves. Now it's down to about 60 percent of the global foreign exchange reserves. You talk about in your book the fact that there isn't really like an amazing replacement for the dollar right now, including the Chinese currency. You make some points with regard to China that I think are quite fascinating. Do you see China as a rising power capable of replacing the United States in this

particular moment? Well, what are the big threats to the dollar as the world's reserve currency? Well, I don't see China replacing the United States as a power, but the US dollar had sort of colonized the whole world as the communist countries

became free and integrated into the global economy, Africa, Asia, the dollar took over. We never took back Europe, which we had after World War II, the dollar, and they have their own currency now. But now that's somewhat in retreat. The Chinese

see what we did to Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They see the sanctions. They see that we took the Russian central bank's money. We don't call it a default, but let's be serious here. And they have

The Russians had 300 to $350 billion. They have by my count, $2 trillion. They're thinking about it. So are other countries. So it isn't so much that we're going to use the renminbi, that's the Chinese currency in New York, or even the Euro, but they might not be using the dollars as much in street markets in Africa and using it for trade the rest of the world.

That'll push up our interest rates because it lowers the demand. That will weaken our ability to put on sanctions such as it is. That will lessen our ability to see into what other countries are doing, which right now are dominance in finance. Everything goes through the dollar. Gives our NSA and our CIA this information that's just fantastic. That'll diminish.

And when we look at the possibility of all that happening, that stuff is exacerbated by the fact that we are now in giant trade wars with pretty much everybody, because one of the things that facilitates the use of the dollar in commerce is the United States being involved in commerce. And as we withdraw from being the sort of global hegemon militarily, as we

attempt to draw bilateral trade deals, but with countries where we're going to elevate our tariffs against them to try to reshore manufacturing in some way. How does that impact the dollar as the world's reserve currency and America's sort of strength on the world stage?

Yeah, I mean, I do teach at Harvard, but I'm one of the 3% of faculty, maybe it's 6% who identify as conservative. I by no means think that everything Donald Trump does is wrong. The tariff policy, I just don't understand it. It seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, the uncertainty, the chaos.

And the market seemed like, "Oh, it's just going to go away. He's going to calm down." Is he? I mean, even if he says, "Okay, just kidding. In a year, if somebody gets him mad, how do we know it doesn't come back?" So I think that policy has been incomprehensible and I think undermining his presidency.

One of the things that many people in sort of the Trump arena are talking a lot about these days is crypto as a possibility, as sort of a hedge against the erosion of the dollar, the possibility of crypto being a safer store of value, sort of like digital gold. One of the points that you make

in your book is the idea that if crypto ever actually became a rival to the dollar, the first thing the government would do is actually prevent it from becoming a rival to the dollar. And governments all over the world are not going to allow there to be a separate safe store of value that actually be used beyond a safe store that could be used in actual commerce on a regular basis.

No, that's exactly right. It is used and will be used in the underground economy, tax evasion, arms dealing, human trafficking, drug trade. We're not able to stop that now. We're not going to be able to stop it. But we're not going to let it be used in place of the dollar in the legal economy that would have catastrophic effects on government finances and lots of other things. There are people in the crypto world who says, "You can't touch us. It's immune. It's resistant."

That's naive because yes, Bitcoin, let's just say you can't touch Bitcoin itself. There's this whole infrastructure around it, the so-called exchanges, Coinbase is a famous example. They're just banks. You put Bitcoin in an exchange like Coinbase, the way you'd put dollars in a bank.

And the government could, if it wanted, regulate it. It puzzles me that the Trump administration said, let's not. Let's deregulate this. Let's not do anything.

And of course, that's going to lead to a crisis just like it does in other banking systems. And because we're having pension funds hold it and ordinary people hold it, this time when we have a crisis, it could be a lot bigger thing and affecting the whole economy and not just contained in the crypto world.

I mean, there are people inside sort of the crypto worlds who are looking for rational regulation. I think one of the great dangers to crypto, and again, I'm a fan of crypto. I own some Bitcoin. I own some Ethereum. I invest in a crypto trading firm. I like crypto. But one of the things that I'm actually quite fearful of is the fact there are so many people in the crypto space who are so warm with the Trump administration in a deregulatory environment that if the economy were to take a tumble,

that the reaction to this would be to basically wipe as much out of crypto as humanly possible in sort of a political reversion.

No, that's absolutely right. What's going to happen after a big crisis where there wasn't enough regulation? Just like what happened after the global financial crisis, they overregulated. They're going to overregulate crypto in response to this. And there are ways that can go forward. We could get into stablecoins, for example, I think, have a future. And I'm saying Bitcoin doesn't, but you need some guardrails of this whole thing. There needs to be much more, not less.

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Thank you.

This is Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Watch parenting. They

Available exclusively on Daily Wire Plus. We're dealing with misbehaviors with our son. Our 13-year-old throws tantrums. Our son turned to some substance abuse. Go to dailywireplus.com today.

So one of the big questions all of this actually bears is what happens in terms of American productivity in the economy. So there's been a lot of talk about the idea that basically we're now a slow growth economy, that we may be a slow growth economy out into the future. And then there are people who have this sort of deus ex machina view of what AI is going to do to productivity growth in the United States.

My own view of that is that AI is unbelievable, but the adoption of AI in sort of everybody's regular life and its adoption in industry, it takes a little bit longer for the adoption of new technology to actually adhere than people tend to think. The internet was working by the mid-90s. It probably took until the mid-2000s at a minimum for the internet to really start making a massive difference.

in everybody's economic life. So what does that mean for American productivity? Should we be expecting 2% increased GDP year on year? Do you think AI is transformative? What do you think comes next? - Well, I'm with you that it's transformative, but the pace of it's much slower. I'd also throw in there that the social disruption could make globalization seem like nothing. So we don't really know where it's going.

This is maybe hyperbolic, but I worry a little bit that we're going to be so dependent on AI to produce growth, to pay our debt, that we won't regulate AI to try to provide guardrails there too, because we need it to grow so fast. But in general,

course ai is the future i was a professional chess player in my youth i have seen god when i see ai but it took decades it took decades and so i don't see why it wouldn't be the same and everything else

So if you were making policy for the Trump administration right now and you were trying to, you know, grow us out of grow us out of our debt problem, you know, let's let's take some some parameters as reality. So, for example, we're not restructuring Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in any serious way. Those are your parameters.

So now you're screwed. So putting aside those, what growth oriented policies? I'm sorry, I just put in place all of the roadblocks that prevent anybody from doing anything, which is, of course, a big problem. But assuming all of that, what do you do, Professor Rogoff, what do you do to spur growth in the moment aside from things like tax cuts? What regulations do you look at? Where do you see areas of growth in the American economy?

Well, there are fantastic areas of growth in the American economy that's still there. Although I think some of these tariffs and trade wars could undermine that. Let's not forget about the fact that our university system has been a magnet for the best and the brightest in the whole world coming here, not just going to university, staying here, founding companies. It's been a big part of our growth. It always has been. And if we taper that off, that's not good.

But I mean, well, get rid of the tariff wars would be the first thing. But if you're going to take, say, raising the age of Social Security off the table, which so far, it's been a third rail and France hasn't done it. But just think about it. France is really the only other big country that hasn't done it. I mean, that's sort of a simple thing you can do. And you should do those things first.

Maybe we could find some way to get the deficit down to 3% or 2% instead of 7% and see if that stabilized things a bit. And as you said, there's some of the Biden era programs that they're being very slow to phase out that maybe they need to do faster. I mean, the biggest problem I think you face as a Republican president, the biggest problem you face as a Democratic president, you're not

going to be in power possibly in a few years. So you make all these changes and then the other side comes in and does the opposite. So we live in this world where centrists, which I view myself as, but who knows what that means, they don't exist.

And so it's very hard to solve our problems. I think we're going to have to have a crisis. I think our debt problem is going to lead to a crisis. That's going to catalyze the political change. The crisis will be inflation. I don't want to say we're going to walk away from our debt. Great for sales of my book if we do that, but I'm not counting on that.

I think we're going to have another inflation crisis, and this time it's going to be more painful. Last time, people gave the Fed a pass on it. If you look at inflation expectations, they've gone up, but they haven't gone hysterical. I think next time they won't, and interest rates will go up and we'll have to adjust.

Everybody else in the world does it. I mean, we have done it less than anybody else in the world's done it. We don't have to go crazy, but you have to make some moves in the right direction. So it's very disappointing that the big, beautiful bill actually looks like they'll have a higher deficit. If you'd asked me to bet on that back in January, that didn't even occur to me.

So, you know, I'm not going to ask you to be held to your crystal ball here, but I talked to a lot of investors, obviously. Everybody is sort of in this bizarre mode where they're excited but nervous and nervous but excited, where every time President Trump makes a positive economic signal, then the markets spike. Every time he makes a negative economic signal, the markets dump.

The thing that I've been looking at is the sort of delta between where the markets would be if he had not done a lot of this stuff and where we are right now. So instead of just looking at, you know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 44,000 when he took office and now it's at 43,000. So it's really not that big a deal. The way that I'm looking at it is,

Probably the Dow Jones Industrial Average should be at 47 or 48,000 if we had not done a lot of this stuff as opposed to where it's sitting right now. Because of so many investors, we're sort of holding dry powder, not knowing what the next day brings and all of this sort of uncertainty, which is its own form of economic uncertainty.

I mean, it obviously puts a cap on people's capacity to grow because of all of that. And when people ask me what I think the future of the economy is, if I had to ballpark recession or no recession inside the next three years, say during the rest of President Trump's term, I just it sounds wishy washy. I would say at least at least a 50 percent probability that there's a fairly serious recession sometime in the next three years. Where do you put that probability?

So I've been using two years. I did an interview back in January where I said that and people said, you're crazy, it's going to be the greatest thing ever. But I think when you overheat the economy, which is what we're doing, that at some point, the Fed, it's going to be raising interest rates and raising interest rates.

It's raising interest rates because that's where the market is driving it. It's not because it's wanting to be the economy to crash. I think the odds of a recession are well over 50% or significant slowdown to be wishy-washy about it. But yeah, I think that'll happen. I think the odds of having a big inflation in my book, I said five to seven years, maybe I'd say under four years now. Interest rates will go up and can President Trump stay on the heat?

Well, the book is Our Dollar, Your Problem. It's Professor Kenneth Rogoff. You should definitely read it because it is a fascinating history of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, but also just currency exchange, debt problems. What you need to know is in this book. Professor Rogoff, really appreciate the time. Thank you so much for having me, Ben, and good luck with the rest of the year for all of us.

Meanwhile, the foreign policy of the United States appears to be at least a little bit discombobulated at this point. So Russia continues to strengthen its talk about its own imperialistic image.

Unbelievably enough, Joseph Stalin has now returned to Moscow's ornate subway stations. So I look forward to other commentators traveling there to talk about the beauty of the subway stations featuring actual honest-to-God Stalin. In any case, the New York Times reports a new statue was unveiled by the authorities this month showing Stalin gazing sagely into the distance, flanked by adoring workers and children holding out flowers to him.

A replica of one that was removed in 1966 during a de-Stalinization campaign. The new relief quickly became an attraction with people leaving flowers, stopping to pose for pictures, including with their children or just watching pensively. The sculpture is part of the gradual rehabilitation of a brutal leader who still has the power to divide Russians 72 years after his death. The Kremlin has revived parts of his legacy and its efforts to recast Russia's history as a series of glorious triumphs that it is determined to continue in Ukraine.

Well, that's absolutely horrifying, considering that Stalin is responsible for the death of legitimately millions of people in Ukraine under the Holodomor, as well as hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Terror from 1936 to 1938. So that's great. Things are going really well with Vladimir Putin and company.

The Trump administration's approach to Putin remains unclear at this point. We can hope that they are shifting toward a more hawkish view of what needs to happen with regard to Ukraine. Meanwhile, Germany is starting to step up, according to The Wall Street Journal. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday that they will step up financial and military aid. They say they will maintain and expand their military support to Ukraine, and the two countries will start a joint program to produce long-range weapons that Kiev can use against Russian targets.

He said, this is the start of a new form of military-industrial cooperation between our two countries and one that has huge potential. Well, Germany is in fairly decent fiscal shape, so they certainly have the capacity to spend more in places like Ukraine. The question is whether they actually can provide the military materiel necessary to withstand a Russian assault. Kiev has long been calling on Berlin to supply it with the Taurus long-range missiles. They can destroy targets over 300 miles away. Again, the goal would be to actually go after critical infrastructure inside Russia itself.

So where's the United States on this remains totally unclear. The same holds true, by the way, with regard to the Iran negotiations. President Trump keeps putting out sort of warm statements about the Iran negotiations. Apparently, according to Reuters, Iran is is suggesting that they might pause their enrichment negotiations.

If the United States recognizes their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, which of course is ridiculous. Why exactly would we recognize their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes? The whole goal of that would be so that they can then ramp up their enrichment for quote unquote civilian purposes and then break out. And two months later, they have a nuke. That is the entire goal of that. Like, why are we, what precisely is the incentive structure that causes the United States to sign on to a deal like that? Why not just keep the maximum pressure on?

Really, what do you get? Their word that they're pausing it? How long is the pause that you are talking about? Isn't that pause just going to, I mean, presumably this would mean the end of sanctions, by the way. Iranian sources suggest that any temporary suspension of the enrichment, even temporary, would require the United States to then release assets to the government of Iran. Why would we do that? What exactly is the, what is the goal there? Just to get a name on a piece of paper? First of all, once again, this is where the Senate should step in, seriously.

Like it turns out the treaties, I know it's become non-practiced, but it turns out that the Senate does have treaty power, just as the JCPOA should have been approved by the Senate of the United States and was not. Anything that's done here should be approved by the Senate of the United States, because what appears to be shaping up, if it's anything like what the Iranians are offering, is in fact a bad deal. It is just JCPOA 2.0. So we'll find out what happens there.

Meanwhile, the United States' efforts in ensuring that humanitarian aid does get into the Gaza Strip, those actually have been effective.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been showing up in the Gaza Strip in line preparing to actually get the food that they want. In fact, they're even breaking into Hamas-held warehouses that are holding things like flour. It appears that Hamas' stranglehold on the Gaza Strip may be breaking at this point. And there's been some talk of a possibility of another hostage release. So we'll keep you up to date on those sorts of negotiations. Meanwhile...

RFK Jr. has now ended COVID-19 recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women in terms of vaccines. He is right about that. The idea that you require as a child a COVID vaccine is, it was always a sketchy proposition at best. Well, joining us on the line to discuss all of this is, of course, friends of the show, Dr. Marty McCary, who is the commissioner for the FDA. Dr. McCary, great to see you. Good to be with you, Ben.

So let's talk about the new standards with regard to the COVID vaccine. Obviously, you and I talked about this a lot during the actual rollout of the COVID vaccine. Much of the data that was presented to the public was not actually rooted in data. There was a lot of talk at the very beginning about how the COVID vaccine was going to prevent transmission of the disease, which it actually did not do a particularly good job of doing, at least with regard to Omicron and the later variants. What is the new guidance from the FDA? What is the new standard for the FDA with regard to the COVID vaccine?

Well, Ben, there's been two camps that have evolved in the scientific community about the COVID booster strategy, giving people a booster in perpetuity every year. One camp has said, we need some clinical trial data. We need to know that it's still necessary, that it works, that people should take it, that there are benefits.

The other camp is the blind camp. That is, the FDA should put on blinders and just rubber stamp new vaccines that create new proteins in the body every year in perpetuity. So a young baby today would get 80 COVID shots in her average 80-year lifespan.

And so we are clearly in the science camp. That is, we believe in evidence-based medicine and common sense. And we're saying to the companies that are bringing products to us now to be stamped every year with an approval that we'd like to see some clinical data. And so that is where we are. And I think that's where the American people are. Remember, 85% of healthcare workers said no to the last COVID booster in the last COVID season.

Now, there are a lot of people who are suggesting that because of the FDA's new approach to all of this, somehow people who need COVID shots are not going to be able to get them. That because the FDA is essentially pushing for the idea that COVID shots are mainly applicable to the people that, again, you and I were talking about this when it was happening, to people who are at high risk and seniors or the people who are, again, most at risk of COVID in general, that somehow this will deprive people who need the shot of the shot. What do you make of that critique?

Well, that's not true. There are COVID vaccines on the market. We had approved the Novavax vaccine, which is a traditional vaccine that does not use mRNA and is designed for COVID. A lot of people who have concerns about vaccine injury from mRNA COVID shots

have preferred the Novavax vaccine. It's on the market while we're saying that the indication that is the official label is for high risk people, people with severe immunosuppression and other high risk cases where doctors are using their discretion, they're still on the market. And certainly somebody can take it off label at their own discretion, but it's not something that we recommend. So the broader question is,

do we need the government recommending which Americans get the vaccine and which Americans do not? And if we are going to be doing that, we want to make it based on evidence. So we have a label that is consistent with where we think the evidence and the common sense best supports the use.

Well, again, a lot of this raises questions about the conduct of the Biden administration, particularly during the rollout of the vaccine. And now that you're actually in the seat, what sort of information do you think should have been presented to the American public? I know that there's been a sort of Senate investigation that's ongoing into what the public knew when the public knew it about things like myocarditis resulting allegedly from the use of the vaccine. What should the Biden administration have been doing differently? What did they do wrong during the original rollout of the vaccines?

Well, Ben, I've learned a lot about what's been going on at the FDA as I've looked under the hood. And yes, you're correct that the agency sat on myocarditis complication data from the mRNA COVID vaccines. And so that was deeply troubling. A lot of myocarditis cases, maybe thousands, could have been prevented had people had good information or modified the vaccine strategy or recognized natural immunity.

So there's a lot of stuff that we're learning. So we're trying to create a transparent process. I do think the vaccine-injured community deserves better answers than they were given over the last four years. Those studies will take some time.

But I think we have to be honest. We have to be impeccably honest. And that's why we went ahead and published our COVID vaccine regulation framework for boosters in the New England Journal of Medicine. I've done, I think, 50 interviews in the eight weeks I've been commissioner. We're trying to let people know what we're thinking and give the companies an early heads up ahead of the vaccine schedule and manufacturing timeframe.

Now, meanwhile, obviously a lot of controversy has arisen because of RFK Jr.'s running of HHS. And people have been asking questions about where focus ought to be in terms of trying to discern the causes of disease, something that obviously RFK Jr. has been putting tremendous focus on, Secretary Kennedy. When we talk about that, the biggest and most controversial one is all the discussions of autism. What is the FDA doing to look into that? Yeah, the secretary has controversially said

sometimes suggested a link between vaccines and autism. What do you make of that? Well, first of all, the secretary is asking questions that people in America are asking, and I think they deserve better answers than they've been given. The NIH has been entirely focused on

on genetic bases for diseases. And so they've created a culture within the U.S. academic community that kind of the gene is the reason for a lot of our health problems. The gene can fix a lot of our health problems. Well, we have to study genetic science, but we also have to study food and microplastics and pesticides and seed oils. And 70% of the diet of children that is ultra processed and all these chemicals in our food supply that are banned

in Europe and other places. So we are seeing a new agenda now to take a look at everything. And that's the Maha report that came out last week. The secretary has commissioned a study of root causes of autism. The NIH is conducting that. At the NIH, we're supporting it by curating databases that we think are useful for adverse event reporting instead of these clunky systems like VAERS, where people report

vaccine complications of myocarditis or a death from the COVID vaccine. And nobody really looks at it. And then we tell the public, well, we can't make anything of it because it's self-reported data. Well, you created a clunky database that you're then saying we can't use. So what are we doing? So we're curating good national electronic health record data with millions of records de-identified where we can do good adverse event reporting.

Well, that, of course, is the brand new commissioner of the FDA, Marty McCary. Dr. McCary, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate your hard work on all of this. Good to see you, Ben. Thanks. All righty. Meanwhile, in lighter news or heavier news, depending on how seriously you take celebrity trials, Diddy Watch continues apace. Some of the witnesses in the case are now going out and speaking to the media.

One of the big questions for all the witnesses is why didn't you do anything about all this terrible stuff in the first place? And the answer for most of them is that they actually just thought everything was hunky dory because I guess this is just de rigueur in celebrity land. There is a male escort who worked with Diddy who is called the Punisher. I believe that's what this person's name was. The Punisher was pretty cute. I just, I can't believe this. Anyway, the Punisher Hayes

He was on CNN, because this is the world in which we now live, explaining why he didn't actually come forward with any of this stuff. There was always pressure in terms of being disposable, because obviously I'm there to create something, like a scene, to create an environment. So at times where there was sexual pressure, you know, because it's out of my norm, I did have a feeling of, okay, I'm one person.

you know, scenario where if I don't perform in the right way, if I don't create the right ambiance, then maybe I won't get called back. But that's the most pressure that I had. There was no indication of... I really believe they were just a happy couple and this was a sexual fetish that they had.

Hmm. Well, I mean, there are no signs. There are no signs whatsoever. Joining us on the line is the host of the Megyn Kelly show, of course, Megyn Kelly. And Megyn, thanks so much for taking the time to explain to me

What is the Diddy case? Why should we care? And my general take has been I'm not sure why what we are watching is not just an expose of Diddy being a terrible person and his girlfriend also kind of being a bad person as opposed to sex trafficking. What are the charges and how does what we're watching actually justify the charges?

Well, the central theory of the case is that Diddy's long-term girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, and others were not participating in his weird sex romps voluntarily, but were essentially coerced into them by threats and or force by Diddy, who had this weird obsession with bizarre sex involving sex workers, tons of baby oil, and lots of lube. If I hear that word one more time from reporters I respect and like.

It's just so jarring. In any event, um,

I used to think that the sex trafficking revolved solely around the sex workers who they definitely have proven he used regularly. But I was corrected on that by a source close to the case that the theory is that the girlfriends themselves were being sex trafficked. Because while they may or may not have been voluntarily participating in some of these so called freak offs, in many of them they were doing it just because they were being threatened by combs.

either threatened with a beating or threatened with the exposure of sex tape that he had made of them while they'd been doing earlier freak offs. And that's really where the prosecution is going to make sex trafficking thing. There's no question they've proven transportation of prostitutes. They've got that. And each one of those is potentially a 10 year sentence.

So he's definitely looking at some very serious jail time on the least of the serious charges, which I just think they've proven six ways from Sunday. And then there's the big claim, which is Rico, rocketeering conspiracy. And for that, you have to prove that somebody is basically running a crime organization, that he lives in crime. He regularly engages in crime with the help of those around him.

And to prove Rico, you only need two predicate acts. So two acts of crime. The prosecutors have spent this trial so far. We're in week two or beginning of week three by proving multiple. I mean, multiple. They opened the case with that infamous videotape from the Intercontinental in L.A. of Diddy beating Cassie Ventura outside in that hallway and then dragging her back into the hotel room. Right there, you've got assault, battery and kidnapping evidence.

And there's been multiple testimony introduced of him beating her several times. Right now they're in the midst of trying to prove that he blew up or tried to. Kid Cudi's car, this is another singer.

who testified himself about how Diddy and he were seeing the same woman, this Cassie Ventura, the star witness. He didn't realize that she was still with Diddy. But when Diddy found out, he went over to his assistant's, Diddy's assistant's house. She just left the witness stand saying, her name is Capricorn Clark. She said he came, he was brandishing a gun. He said, get dressed, get in the car. We're

as a reference to Kid Cudi, that she did get in the car with him. There was a security guard too. They went to Kid Cudi's house. He wasn't at home, but that Diddy broke in. We had testimony earlier from Kid Cudi saying, hey, my house was broken into on that day. And my Christmas gifts, this was right before Christmas, had been opened up. My security cameras had been moved and my dog was locked in a room. And I saw a black Escalade that I thought was Diddy's

there at some point that day. And we just had testimony from LA authorities saying they traced that black Escalade back to Bad Boys Records, which is Diddy's company. Then later,

Kid Cudi said his Porsche got blown up. Somebody cut a huge hole in the top of it and threw a Molotov cocktail in there. And today we've seen an LA fire department guy testifying to what kind of Molotov cocktail it was, exactly what kind. It was a malt liquor bottle. I mean, you can't make it up. It's just like the details that have come out. Let me get it exactly. What kind of bottle was used? Jimenez, Old English 800 malt liquor. And the wick,

a designer type of scarf, silky. In my opinion, this was targeted. So that's just one of the predicate acts they're trying to show. Did he commit it? They're not charging these as separate crimes. It's just individual acts of alleged criminality as part of the overall racketeering conspiracy. So what exactly is his defense? Just that he's a jerk and everybody knows he's a jerk and he does terrible things, but everybody sort of consented to the terrible things. Is that essentially the essence of his defense?

Yeah. I mean, he hasn't really responded so well on the Kid Cudi allegations other than you can't prove it. You know, they elicited testimony from Kid Cudi that when he eventually confronted Diddy, Diddy denied doing it. Did he do it? Did he did not do it? Did he says, and

And so that's gonna be his defense there. But it's just devastating for the defense that the prosecution opened with that videotape because we all saw it. And Diddy does not deny that is him on that tape beating Cassie Ventura. And it's gone in undisputed that that was in the middle of a freak off, one of these so-called sex romps that lasted days.

And whether she consented at the beginning or didn't, she clearly was not consenting to stay there any longer. And anyone with eyes can see that on the tape.

And he physically beat her, I mean, openly in the hallway of the Intercontinental. Imagine what he's capable of behind closed doors and dragged her back into the room. That's great evidence for the prosecution's case that she was not there by consent, that there was a freak off going on inside. And they've had staff reports that support Cassie's testimony that it was a freak off happening at that moment. People who had to clean up the room after the fact confirmed her report.

So, I mean, that right there lends so much credibility to her report that while, yeah, sometimes I wanted to do it, I didn't always want to do it. The defense is introducing evidence like emails from her saying, I love the freak-offs. I can't wait to do a freak-off now and look forward to our next freak-off. And evidence that she paid the sex workers for the freak-offs and invited the sex workers. She called some service called Cowboys for...

What was the word? I can't remember. Cowboys for cuties or something like that. These are services that are out there, Ben Shapiro. I'm innocent. I feel like a child here. They'll show up at your house and they'll sex traffic for you or sex work for you.

And so she was the one running hurt on that, on all of that. Diddy didn't have the direct interaction with them, but he would sit there and watch these sex romps. So the defense is trying to show she was a willing participant. They also elicited testimony from her that one of the reasons she didn't leave, because the relationship went from, I think, 03 to 04.

18, 15 years, was she enjoyed the lifestyle. She loved the cars and she loved the boats and she loved the ditty lifestyle. They're trying to style her as like a money-grubbing glommer who was totally fine with all these sex romps. She wasn't trafficked by anybody. And she's only got regrets after the fact now because things blew up. And they're also painting her as just a jealous woman that he...

The main source of their arguments wasn't sex trafficking or these freak-offs. It was her jealousy over a woman named Gina who was supposed to testify as victim number three but has absconded. She's had second thoughts about testifying, and now she will not testify. Though, Ben, she did give an interview to a YouTuber a couple of years ago,

At least the New York Times is reporting that the woman who appeared on this YouTube feed is Gina, victim three, not independently confirmed by yours truly. And in that interview, she talks about how he beat her, he kicked her in the stomach, her, Gina, that he made her get at least two abortions. I mean, you hear these testimonials and you hate it.

P. Diddy, you hate Sean Combs. And that's what's happening with the jury, I guarantee you. He's sitting there in a little gray sweater with his little polo shirt folded over underneath. He's got reading glasses on. He's got gray hair now. He actually showed up on day one with a Bible. And he wants them to believe he's this Bible sweater wearing cashmere little old man.

And yet you hear these testimonials and you really look forward to whatever is happening to him in prison happening for years to come.

So this is going to be the, you know, problem for the defense that we're really growing to loathe him progressively every day. But that doesn't necessarily mean these are crimes. So one of the big sort of open questions about all of this that a lot of people have kind of trended toward conspiracism on is why it took so long for any of these prosecutions to be brought, because a lot of these predicate offenses are taking place over the course of decades. Everybody who's famous apparently went to his white parties and some of these people took part in these freak offs. And it does, I think that

There's two possible theories. One is that there's some sort of conspiracy that he was working with law enforcement to create tapes or whatever. And the other theory is that in Hollywood, actually, the line between just being some of the worst people on planet Earth and criminal activity is really thin. And you can get away with an awful lot of crap in Hollywood until the point that you can't. Which one of those do you think is more explanatory?

The latter. I believe the latter. Let me give you an example, Ben. Recently, it was brought to my attention that Beyonce is using videotape of yours truly at every single one of her concerts. She's on a tour right now. So she's decided to use some videotape of me pointing out that country music's been around for a long time before she got into it, and she's not the be-all, end-all. She's very focused on me and this one line of commentary.

What has she said about Diddy? Where's her commentary about that disgusting pervert with whom she and her gross husband were best friends? Because I've seen plenty of pictures of them celebrating together and at Diddy's parties. Gee, she didn't have a moment to spare a word for him.

So, yeah, it runs deep, the rot in this community. And I do think that these people are extremely well connected. I mean, Alan Dershowitz was on our show today talking about how in the Epstein cases, he knows firsthand, he knows of multiple men's names that have not yet hit the press who should be coming under the microscope as victims.

not victims, perpetrators of the sex trafficking that Epstein was perpetrating. But we don't know their names. And he was saying, why not? Why not even under the Trump DOJ? Don't we know their names? And the same question bears asking in the Diddy case, because these people are very well connected. They've got a lot of money. And let's just take a look at that videotape that we talked about a moment ago. Where was that videotape? Well, Diddy paid somebody at the hotel, we believe a security guard, not the one who

Who videotaped it after he was called to the scene immediately. Because that guy was like, I'm not taking your 100 grand, but I am going to take out my phone and videotape the hotel videotape.

So I've got it on my phone and my own belief is that that's how it got leaked to CNN years later. And that's why we have a record of it because the testimony was that somebody at the hotel deleted it when he got back to work the following Monday, poof, it was gone. And I'll venture to say so as did his $100,000 that he offered to the first guy unsuccessfully. So how he walks around with this Gucci bag full of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cash that the average person would have a difficult time resisting that.

And let's not kid ourselves, federal officials and state officials can be bought off too. So I think it's actually very likely that whether it was explicit or implicit, Diddy persuaded many federal officials or other officials to look the other way. And now they have to keep the secret because they're complicit. They've been bought off. And I don't know that we'll ever know the full extent because I for one will say I was very disappointed in the results of both the Epstein raids and the Diddy raids. The Diddy raids that of these two properties only resulted in like

Tons of lube, back to that word, tons of baby oil, the high heels and provocative clothing, and various guns and gun parts, which could be nefarious. Some of them have the serial numbers scraped off or not because he is a celebrity who I'm sure is under threat. And therefore, it's not surprising that there would be guns on his property. So where's

The money stuff. You know, where are the tapes showing everybody else who was at these parties, whether it's an Epstein party or a Diddy party? That I cannot answer. And so one of the questions that arises just on sort of a moral level that I wanted to get your take on is the question of capitalization.

cassie ventura and some of the women who were willing participants at least some of the time in this sort of stuff you know this does you know raise the sort of broader societal question of if there are abusive men and people know about these abusive men what obligation should women have do women have if these guys are doing criminal things like beating the crap out of them in hallways to actually go to the cops and stop this sort of behavior because obviously these guys are not just a threat to them they're a threat to plenty of other people what do you make of that question

I mean, I do think it's your moral obligation, irrespective of what the woman says. It's just like knowing that your neighbor beats his wife, but she doesn't call the cops on him. I'd call the cops on my neighbor in a heartbeat, heartbeat.

I'd have zero qualms about calling the cops on him if he were doing that. By the way, my neighbor's lovely and is not beating his wife. But yeah, I do think it's a question of morality. You have no legal obligation to do it, but you definitely have a moral obligation to do it. And whether the victim participates in the investigation is really the problem of law enforcement. And we've seen that in case after case where victims do call the cops and complain and then will not cooperate with the investigation once it gets going because they don't actually want to go through this.

And they're afraid nine times out of 10 of their abuser. And they know they're gonna get it even worse when they're behind closed doors with him again. Now, in the case of Cassandra Ventura, I have to say, I have a lot of empathy for that woman. She was not like an Amber Heard. She was very sweet on the stand. I mean, she was almost nine months pregnant. She was about to give birth. And she just seemed like a meek, weak, sad person.

She's been suffering from suicidal ideations long past breaking up with Diddy. I mean, he met her when she was 19 years old and he was 17 or 18 years older than she was. He was Diddy. He was huge in the music industry. She was an ingenue hoping to make it as a singer. He could give her everything. She had nothing. He made her over. He made her a star. He controlled everything about her life when she was very young.

And there's been testimony they really did fall in love. She was absolutely stunning to look at. I mean, one of the most gorgeous people you've ever set eyes upon.

And she trusted him. She loved him and she trusted him. And he started to exploit her slowly with these weird sex romps that were sold to her as like, oh, this is how you'll show me that you love me. Oh, I know it's weird, but I really love it. Will you please do it for me? I mean, there are a lot of women who have been sucked in by that kind of messaging by someone more powerful and older. He had her call him pop-pop because she had a grandpa she loved and she called him pop-pop like I did.

And he exploited the name she had for her grandpa and called her baby girl and had her call him pop-up, which is just one of the weird pieces of...

the dynamic between the two of them. So I easily could understand how this young girl got pulled into his web. And then it's very, very difficult. Much as we'd love to say as women, you know, on the first blow, I'd be out. It wouldn't take more than one backhand for me to run from him to the cops. I've known many, many powerful women. I interviewed one at NBC who was one of the first women on board at Apple, uh,

who helped invent Siri and was like a high up executive there who was getting beaten, she said, by her husband. And she was one of the ones who wouldn't cooperate with the investigation once the cops got involved. Like it can happen even if you're very savvy, very smart and very accomplished. And it can certainly happen to somebody who gets involved with somebody age 19. So I do want the audience to understand this is not an Amber Heard situation. She did not walk off the stand and you were like, oh my God.

I think most people were like, oh my God, he's a monster. And this poor girl, while she does have some texts and emails suggesting it was not all involuntary,

The prosecution doesn't have to show that. If they just show some of these freak-offs were not under her will. She said he forced her to do one with a urinary tract infection. Like, absolutely no woman would do that voluntarily. Like, that is somebody who's being coerced or feels like she cannot say no. So I think he's heading for a conviction, Ben. Well, that's Megyn Kelly. You can check out all of her analysis on a wide variety of issues, including ones like this over at The Megyn Kelly Show. Megyn, really appreciate the time and the insight. Anytime.

Alrighty, folks, the show's continuing for our members right now. We have updates on Andrew Tate. Yes. Wait, wait, wait, wait. He didn't cure brain cancer. He was charged with more sexual crimes. I know. I too am shocked. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click the link in the description and join us.