Ep. 2147 - HUGE: The Washington Post SURRENDERS…To Reality!
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Well, folks, woke leftism is totally on the ropes. The Democrats don't know what to do about this, but their entire centralizing philosophy is on the ropes. We're going to get into all of that today, ranging from the Washington Post to the war in Ukraine to how Democrats are responding to everything that President Trump is doing. But we begin today with the Washington Post. So the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, he's the owner of the Washington Post. He bought it several years ago. And he said at the time he was not going to get involved in the editorial side of the newspapers.

And then the newspaper decided to basically become the repository of the most radical, woke nonsense in all of American media. The Washington Post blew out its credibility more than any other major newspaper in the country. It was the paper of Record. It was the paper of Watergate. It was the paper that broke an enormous number of serious scandals about American government. And instead, it turned into

Basically, Salon.com. It was just Jennifer Rubin whining about how Donald Trump was a mean, bad, mean man. It was Eugene Robinson whining about how America was terrible. It was all the usual suspects just saying the most radical, stupid things. And the Washington Post's subscribership began to seriously dip because they weren't making any of the same sort of smart business moves the New York Times made. The New York Times also became a liberal fan paper, but they also decided to diversify into Wordle.

That did not happen with the Washington Post. The Washington Post simply kept doubling down on the anti-Trump radical leftism and the suggestion that boys weren't just girls. Boys had to be girls. This had to be taught to kids. The idea that all politics could be boiled down to racial and sexual identity. The idea that capitalism was in and of itself bad. Well, there is a new middle in America, and the new middle in America is bad.

fairly pro-free market. It's a middle that doesn't like the idea that the American economy is rigged on behalf of white people or rigged on behalf of men. It's an American middle that believes in the American dream and thus believes in the idea, generally speaking, of capitalism. It's also an American middle that while

fairly liberal about what their neighbors do is not completely liberal about what their neighbors do. Meaning that if their neighbors decide to open a porn shop next door, the answer is no. If their neighbors decide the local public school is going to be teaching genderqueer, the answer is no. That's the new middle in America. I was thinking about this a lot last night about President Trump and the fact that, as I said during the election cycle,

It's not that President Trump is uniquely right-wing. It's that the left in the United States has moved so far away from the center that by occupying the middle, Donald Trump now appears to be right-wing because the left has alienated everybody to the right of MSNBC. So what does that mean? It means that there is now a real market possibility of newspapers like the Washington Post reorienting. Jeff Bezos is by no stretch of the imagination a traditional Republican. He is not somebody who believes in sort of traditional conservative social values.

He's not somebody who, as far as I'm aware, is particularly hawkish on foreign policy. But Jeff Bezos does exist in the business world and in the world of semi-rationality. And so yesterday, Jeff Bezos put out an announcement. His announcement was that he was going to be remaking the Washington Post editorial board. Quote, I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning. I'm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars, personal liberties and free markets.

We'll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job. I am of America and for America and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical. It minimizes coercion and practical. It drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.

I offer David Shipley, whom I greatly admire, the opportunity to lead this new chapter.

I suggested to him that if the answer wasn't hell yes, then it had to be no. After careful consideration, David decided to step away. This is a significant shift, says Jeff Bezos. It won't be easy. It will require 100% commitment. I respect his decision. We'll be searching for a new opinion editor to own this new direction. I'm confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I'm excited for us together to fill that void. Jeff. Okay, so that is a sea change and it is a recognition.

A true recognition that the Washington Post was never one of these places that had a broad spectrum of opinion. The tacit recognition in what Jeff Bezos is saying is, sure, there might have been a time when you could claim that the Washington Post was a place that was sort of a platform for a variety of opinions. Charles Krauthammer and George Will used to write for the Washington Post. And then something changed. And so once the Washington Post became the exclusive preserve of the radical left on matters economic and social,

Once it did that, it was no longer a platform. It was now in the most real sense, a publisher only of the things that the editorial board wanted to publish. And so he says, listen, if that's going to be the way that it is, then I want it to publish things I want. I spent $100 million on this newspaper. I own this newspaper. I get to decide what's in this newspaper. And to this, I say, of course, that's true.

As the co-founder of a rather major publication, we publish the things on our publication that we think are appropriate. And we don't publish the things that we don't feel are appropriate. So you're not going to find pro-abortion positions at the Daily Wire. You're not. You are not going to find pro-communism positions at the Daily Wire. That's not a thing.

You're going to find pro-sex trafficking or pro-pedophilia positions. There are lots of things you're not going to find at the Daily Wire. And what Jeff Bezos is saying is the same thing. He's saying, this is my newspaper. I bought it. I get to run it. And good for him. Good for him. I think that we are exiting the era, and we have exited the era, of quote-unquote objective journalism. And we've now moved toward the realization that there is no such thing. Now, you can make the case that there are, in fact, journalists who do their best to try to remove their personal bias from situations. However...

The notion that writ large, there is a quote unquote objective news media was a lie and is a lie. It is untrue. There's a prism of politics through which the news is refracted at every one of these major publications. Everybody knows the Wall Street Journal editorial page, opts toward the right. And everybody knows the New York Times editorial page, opts toward the left. For Bezos to say, our editorial page is now going to promote economic and social freedom, for example, that's at least a perspective. Now you know who to call when there is a problem.

And the left is absolutely losing it. So as stated, Washington Post opinion section editor David Shipley resigned, suggesting, of course, that this is not what he wanted to stand for. Meanwhile, Post chief economics reporter Jeff Stein posted, quote, massive encroachment by Jeff Bezos into the Washington Post opinion section today makes clear dissenting views will not be published or tolerated there. Well, I mean, that's not his responsibility. It's his job to run the paper as he sees fit. He owns it.

And turnabout is fair play here, gang. I'm old enough to remember when Twitter was owned by Jack Dorsey and when conservatives said that the standards that were being applied were unfair and that even the standards that Twitter said it was applying were not the standards they were actually applying. People on the left said, well, then build your own. And then Elon Musk bought it. And now they're whining about it. The same thing is true here.

And when people complained about the editorial direction of the Washington Post, the left said, well, you know, you don't own the Washington Post. You don't like it. Build your own. So we here at The Daily Wire, we did build our own. OK, but so Jeff Bezos coming around and saying, OK, well, now I'm going to run this thing the way I want to run this thing. That is not only laudable. It is useful. It is highly useful because let's just be transparent about this. Now, the Washington Post has a direction. The New York Times always had a direction. It was the lie that killed the mainstream media. It was the lie that killed the legacy media.

Jeff Stein, however, the chief economics reporter said, quote, I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage. But if Bezos tries interfering with the news side, I will be quitting immediately and letting you know. Wow, what a hero. What an absolute hero. Now, again, Bezos says he's not going to interfere on the news side of the business.

And I will suggest that the sort of hard line, bright line division between news and opinion is not quite so bright. Again, I think we're more honest about this at Daily Wire. Our news pages lean conservative. Everything is refracted through a system of values. That's us being honest, not us being dishonest. Well, the ex-Washington Post editor, Marty Barron, who of course presided over the spotlight scandal that was uncovered by the Washington Post, he went after Jeff Bezos, attacked him for it. He put out a statement saying,

suggesting that it was just terrible. He said he was sad and disgusted. He said, Again, trying to preserve the lie. It was never for all of America. The Washington Post was never for all of America. It was a left-wing rag for decades.

Barron said, Bezos himself has done personal liberties a disservice by cravenly yielding to a president who shows no respect for liberty, one who aims to use the power of government to bully, threaten, punish, and crush anyone who's not in his camp, especially the press.

And then he said, there's no doubt in my mind he's doing this out of fear of the consequences for his other business interests, Amazon, the source of his wealth, and Blue Origin, which represents his lifelong passion for space exploration. He has prioritized those commercial interests over the Post. He's betraying the Post's longstanding principles to do so. So first of all, if that's true, that would be terrible, right? You don't want actual journalism, conservative or leftist, being held hostage by any president. And it defeats the purpose of journalism. It defeats the purpose of opinion journalism, too.

However, there is no evidence to suggest that this is, in fact, the case. And the accusation, by the way, that anybody who does anything non-leftist is motivated by money, I know this is a favorite of people on the left. I know this is a favorite. It's so funny. The people on the left who claim they are least about money, they love money. All they think about is money. All they think about is, quote, unquote, income inequality. They never think about the poor. They only think about income inequality.

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben. Also, as you all know, the Holy Land is under threat of attack every single day. In fact, this morning, there was another car ramming attack in Israel, surrounded by enemies who vowed never to stop until Israel has been destroyed, while still recovering and rebuilding from the devastating October 7th attacks

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The same people who claim that the people who are in favor of free markets are greedy are the people who spend all day trying to figure out how to pry money out of people who have actually earned it. So when you see Marty Baron suggesting the only possible reason Jeff Bezos, you know, one of the richest people on earth would be doing this is for money.

No, my dude, that is not what is happening here. It is not. Bernie Sanders, of course, one of the greediest leeches in American society, put out a tweet saying, quote, this is what oligarch ownership of the media looks like. The second richest guy in the world, Bezos, owns the Washington Post. He has now declared the editorial page of that paper is going Trump right wing. Surprise, Mr. Musk agrees. We must support independent media. Question, it is independent media. Bezos is the owner. It's not owned by the government. Independent media typically means media that is not owned

by, you know, the government. That's typically what it means. Also, nothing in Bezos' note actually says that it's going to be pro-Trump. You can be very pro-free market and very pro-liberty, and you can object to some of the things that Trump is doing. The notion that these two things are coincident is because the left has so lost the plot. It's simply saying you like capitalism and free markets and liberty. Apparently, this now makes you Trump-coded.

Well, that's your fault, gang. Not anybody else's. Good for Jeff Bezos. I hope he puts his money where his mouth is. I hope that he actually starts hiring columnists. You know, it'd be great. Seriously, it'd be great if somebody at one of the major newspapers voted for Trump. That would be great. I'm not sure I can name a single op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Washington Post, who voted for Trump. Maybe at the New York Times, Ross Douthat voted for Trump. Maybe. No one else did.

So, you know, over 50% of the country voted for Trump. It might be nice if the Washington Post actually gave some exposure to those views. That might be good. But this is all part and parcel of a radical sea change that is happening in American politics, again, driven by the Democrats who are totally disconnected from reality. They're all on blue sky, mentally stroking themselves to left-wing idiocy. And then they are surprised that everybody is running screaming away from them. And meanwhile, other big news yesterday, President Trump had his first big cabinet meeting.

Obviously, a lot of famous people in that cabinet. And while the left is really quite exercised about Donald Trump's cabinet, all these people were individually powerhouses in their own right before they joined the cabinet. Trump had a lot of good things to say in this cabinet meeting. He began, of course, with his sort of signal issue, the border. He said, we will be closing the border. He was flanked on one side by his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, and on the other side by Marco Rubio, his secretary of state.

We also have a tremendous support from Border Patrol, from ICE. The ICE agents have been unbelievable. Border Patrol, their leadership at Border Patrol has been incredible.

And they're working very well. And as you know, and I saw you reporting it this morning, actually, we set records on the least number of illegal aliens coming in, migrants coming into our country that we had that we've had in more than 50 years. And we did this all within a period of weeks because we took over a mess.

Okay, so he is right about all of that. President Trump also continues to push forward on the layoffs of large numbers of executive branch employees. He said we could fire up to a million people in the executive branch, about three million who work for the executive branch right now. Those million people that haven't responded, though, Elon, they are on the bubble. You know, I wouldn't say that we're thrilled about it. You know, they haven't responded. Now, maybe they don't exist.

Maybe we're paying people that don't exist. Don't forget, we just got here. This group just got here. But those people are on the bubble, as they say. You know, maybe they're going to be gone. Maybe they're not around. Maybe they have other jobs. Maybe they moved and they're not where they're supposed to be. A lot of things could have happened.

Okay, now, one of the sort of big questions here was whether Elon Musk, who's leading Doge, was going to have a seat at the table because he actually does not have an official governmentally approved position. At this point, the answer is no. He showed up for the cabinet meeting, but he wasn't given a seat at the table with the other secretaries. Here was Elon Musk suggesting that he was essentially President Trump's tech support. I actually just call myself a humble tech support here because this is actually...

As crazy as it sounds, that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing. It is helping fix the government computer systems. Many of these systems are extremely old. They don't communicate. There are a lot of mistakes in the systems. The software doesn't work. So we are actually tech support. It's ironic, but it's true.

So again, Musk acting as sort of an outside actor is the best version of all of this.

Meanwhile, as Politico points out, the layoffs are just getting started. Quote, federal agencies are being ordered to submit plans by mid-March for laying off employees in large-scale reductions in force, an escalation in President Trump's efforts to reshape the federal workforce. According to an Office of Management and Budget and OPM, Office of Personnel Management memo released on Wednesday, quote, pursuant to the president's direction, agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily required functions.

And so they're talking about laying off a bunch of people, as President Trump suggested yesterday. He was left with a government that was bloated, fat and disgusting. Sort of typically colorful language from the president. This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run. I think we had the worst president in the history of our country. He just left office. I think he's a disgrace. What he's done to our country by allowing millions of people to come into our country like that.

and all of the other things, the inflation which he caused because of energy and stupid spending to spend hundreds of millions, trillions and trillions of dollars on the Green News scam, a total scam. I have the best energy people, the best environmental people in the world around this table, and they can't even believe he got away with it.

Meanwhile, other secretaries also spoke up. Secretary of Defense Hegseth, who's excellent. He said that one of the chief goals that he had as secretary of defense was to fully investigate every aspect of the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, one of the most shameful moments in American history. We're doing a complete review of every single aspect of what happened with the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan and plan to have full accountability. It's one of the first things we announced at the Defense Department for that reason, sir. Certainly, General Raisin Kane, who's on his way in,

was not a part of that. Instead, it was a part of leading the effort against ISIS by untying the hands of warfighters and finishing the job properly and then bringing our troops home. So we're taking a very different view, obviously, than the previous administration, and there will be full accountability. Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, all spoke up about President Trump's new proposal for the so-called Golden Cards, which apparently will be wrapped around chocolate bars and stowed all around the United States in various candy shops. But actually, it's like five million bucks and you get a citizenship. Anyway, here is Howard Lutnick explaining.

If we sell, just remember, 200,000, there's a line for EB-5 of 250,000 right now. 200,000 of these gold green cards is $1 trillion to pay down our debt. And that's why the president is doing it, because we are going to balance this budget and we are going to pay off the debt under President Trump.

Now, let's talk about that debt because this is a serious question. The big budget that the House is pushing forward is, in fact, going to add to the national debt. Why is it going to add to the national debt? Well, because by preserving the Trump tax cuts, supposedly there's less tax revenue to the federal government. It's not about the tax cuts. It is about the simple fact that the debt is going to keep going up

and to the right because of our embedded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid programs. That's all. The means-tested welfare programs, things like SNAP and TAMF and all the various other gigantically bloated programs that funnel literally trillions of dollars a year from one segment of society to another segment of society via the American taxpayer dollars and mostly via debt. That is going to eat the American economy. It is. And herein lies a bit of the problem. And here is where I think conservatives ought to be wary.

Not that President Trump isn't doing amazing things. Not that Doge isn't doing useful things. But the systemic underlying problems of American politics are not going to get solved by either party right now. That is just a fact. President Trump yesterday, he was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. He said we're not going to touch them. And we won't. He's right. We're not going to touch them. At the same time, there are consequences to not touching them.

The Press: Can you guarantee that Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security will not be touched? The President: Yeah, I mean, I have said it so many times, you shouldn't be asking me that question. Okay? This will not be read my lips. It won't be read my lips anymore. We're not going to touch it. Now, we are going to look for fraud. I'm sure you're okay with that. Like people that shouldn't be on, people that are illegal aliens and others, criminals in many cases.

And that's with Social Security. We have a lot of people. You see that immediately when you see people that are 200 years old that are being sent checks for Social Security. Some of them are actually being sent checks. So we're tracing that down. And I have a feeling that Pam is going to do a very good job with that. But you have a lot of fraud.

Okay, so no matter how much fraud you identify in these programs, and literally every dollar of fraud should be cut, it ain't even a drop in the bucket compared to the kind of spending America has done. This is a bloated legacy of FDR and LBJ. It is eating the American economy, and it is going to cause a crash in the American economy sometime in the very near future.

Again, one of the things that I've suggested about the Trump administration is that they have to focus laser-like on ensuring increases in productivity, cutting regulations, ensuring ease of economic transaction, right? These are the only things that Trump can do if he's unwilling to touch the actual systemic drivers of America's national debt.

And the reality is that without touching those drivers of America's national debt, the debt's just going to keep going in the wrong direction. So when President Trump says that he's going to balance the budget, that is not a real fiscal possibility. You can't do it without touching any of these big programs. So one of those two things is untrue. I'm going to go with balancing the budget. We want to balance a budget. We want to have a balanced budget within a reasonably short period of time, meaning maybe by next year or the year after, but maybe even sooner than that.

And we're not even going to do zero base budgeting going back to like the 2019 budget. Let's just be real about this. None of this stuff is going to happen. Both parties are going to spend like drunken sailors until austerity measures are forced into place about five years from now. That is actually what's going to happen in the United States. That train is coming down the tracks. Ain't nobody getting in the way of that train because it's politically dangerous to actually try to stop the train right now. So instead, we'll just run right off that cliff.

Well, it's actually one of the things I like least about working in the news industry, you know, actually having to cover the fact that most of our politicians will not do the things we need to do. But there are things I do love about working in the news industry. The thing, like, for example, I get to connect every day with millions of listeners and share these breaking stories and work with incredible talent who are just as passionate about the political sphere as I am. There's nothing quite like the energy and thrill of creating content that not only informs but also resonates with

Thank you.

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Yes, yes, you see. Here at The Daily Wire.

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Meanwhile, again, the big danger to President Trump's presidency would be things like inflation. Inflation is in fact going the wrong way in the United States. Right now, it is not headed in the right direction. The Agriculture Secretary, she suggested yesterday, Brooke Rollins, that they have a five-point plan to bring down the price of eggs. Here's what she had to say. So just this morning, we announced a plan to, first of all, attack the avian flu and how we pull it back out of our poultry producers.

but secondly how we bring the cost of eggs down. So that plan has five parts. The first part is a biosecurity part and what that means is that how do we lock our poultry barns down? How do we ensure that our egg laying chickens aren't getting this disease? Secondly, we're going to work to move much more quickly on repopulating the 160 million birds that have been culled in just the last few months. Third is a deregulation effort that is ensuring that the rural

that have been layered on our producers, our egg producers over the last really four years that we begin to peel those back. The fourth is we're looking to import eggs in the short term. This is just on the cost piece. And then the final more long term is putting significant funds into vaccine and therapeutic research.

Okay, so will this have a massive impact on egg prices? Well, it could have some impact. It's going to have a massive impact if the inflationary pressures continue. Again, we've blown too much money into the American economy, and it appears that's not going to stop anytime soon, despite the relatively high interest rates by sort of historical standards. Now, President Trump did announce yesterday that tariffs are back on the table, although he says that they're not going to be kicked back in place on Canada and Mexico until April 2nd. And if he's using this for leverage, I just want to know what's on the other side of the leverage.

I'm fine with President Trump using tariffs as leverage. He's done it successfully against the country of Colombia, for example, to get them to take deportees. He's done it against Mexico to get Mexico to pledge to put 10,000 troops on the border. All that's fine. What are the deliverables that we can look forward to from Canada and Mexico that would justify the threat of tariffs? That's all. That's all. Because then maybe Canada delivers and we don't have to do the tariffs. The problem with tariffs, folks, trade wars are not good and they are not easy to win, as a matter of fact. And they are not good for inflation.

Because when you restrict supply and demand remains the same, prices go up. This is just basic econ 101. Here's President Trump saying that the tariffs will kick back in place on April 2nd. We've lost millions of people due to fentanyl. It comes mostly from China, but it comes through Mexico and it comes through Canada. And I have to tell you that, you know, on April 2nd, I was going to do it on April 1st, but I'm a little bit superstitious. I made it April 2nd. The tariffs go on.

not all of them, but a lot of them. And I think you're going to see something that's going to be amazing. We've been taken advantage of as a country for a long period of time. We've been tariffed, but we didn't tariff. Okay, now again, reciprocal tariffs as a way of driving down tariffs to get everybody to go weapons down, that's fine with me. But tariffs as sort of an

An America strengthening policy do not have a long and storied history. And if you want the Trump administration to be successful, you need the Trump administration to actually keep the economy humming. You need inflation to come down. It's really important. The other thing you need is no distractions. I've said this over and over and over. What President Trump is doing right now is way too important for there to be stupid distractions. I bring this up because the big distraction of the day

is that Grifters extraordinaire, the Tate brothers, are apparently now arriving in Florida. And this is happening because apparently the Trump administration put significant pressure on the country of Romania to release them from house arrest. Now, I don't need to get into sort of the legal vagaries of what house arrest means in Romania. Does this mean that they're never going to go back to Romania and they won't be prosecuted? There are criminal allegations in Romania. They're under indictment in Romania for allegations of sex trafficking,

One of the allegations apparently includes rape of an underage girl. And like, put all that aside.

Andrew Tate is an American citizen. He was born in the United States. His father was an American citizen. His mom was a British citizen. He's always considered himself more British than American. But the real question is, is it good for America for the Tates to be here? Now, again, that's not a sort of legalistic question as to whether they should be released from house arrest. I have no actual opinion on release from house arrest for American citizens who are accused of sex trafficking in foreign countries. I'll leave that one to the lawyers.

The question is going to be whether it is good for the Trump administration, for example, the Tates to go walking around with all these people who are very closely associated with the Trump administration. My suggestion is no. I'm not sure what the popularity rating there would be. My guess is not particularly high. If you want to give a spate of bad headlines to your opponents, make sure that you put people who are self-professed pimps who literally ran a pornography industry and made millions of dollars off of it, alleged sex traffickers,

Radical Muslims who are self-proclaimed terrorist supporters, including supporters of Hamas, running around the United States with some of your closest allies.

If that sounds like a winning proposition, I'm just wondering, where's the political win there? Forget about the morality of it. OK, the morality of it. I've spoken about the Tate brothers before. I think they're disgusting. I think that they have diagnosed many problems with feminism and they have diagnosed many problems with left wing thought that are easily diagnosable. And then all of their solutions are not just wrong, but prurient and ugly.

The question as to why the Trump administration would expend political capital to do this, that's a bizarre one. And again, if you think that the left-wing press is going to hang this around Trump's neck, you got another thing coming. Apparently, Andrew and Tristan have left the country for the United States. They're supposed to arrive early Thursday morning in southern Florida. Apparently, the Romanian prosecutors said in a news release they're still pursuing criminal investigations against the two British American citizens.

And they said they'd been allowed to leave Romania and had to appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Again, this raises legal questions about when, if they return to Romania at any point. But I really don't care about the Tate brothers. I do care about the effect on the Trump agenda of association between these kind of scumbags and members of the Trump administration.

That does not seem like a particular win in a time when you're going to need political capital to expend on actual serious projects. So from a practical point of view, don't see it. From a moral point of view, I'm just going to say I don't think that America needs more self-professed pimps who hate marriage, believe that impregnating tons of women is the mark of manhood.

who preach support for actual terrorists, have outstanding criminal allegations of sex trafficking with a proud history of pornography distribution.

and make their money today on a grift university that effectively suckers young men into giving them thousands of dollars for basically no return. I don't know. Call me strange. I'm just not sure what the upside is there for anybody involved, and for people who are going to now tout these folks as some sort of heroic characters, which undoubtedly will happen. The right has a massive problem with this. The right has a massive problem with touting grifters as actual heroes now. And this is, this is,

shall we say, not salutary to the goals of actually making America great again. Okay, meanwhile, President Trump is doing something pretty phenomenal with regard to Venezuela. So the president announced yesterday that he'd be terminating the Biden-era oil deal with Venezuela. So Biden, in an attempt to lower oil prices before the election, had essentially given concessions to the Venezuelan government, which is, again, a dictatorship, a socialist dictatorship, in order to get the oil prices down.

supposedly that was contingent on Venezuela being slightly nicer to the United States. Well, the president made the announcement Wednesday afternoon, claiming Venezuela is transporting violent criminals deported from the United States at a rapid pace.

Trump blasted Biden for making the concession agreement with the evil regime of Nicolás Maduro. He said, we are hereby reversing the concessions that crooked Joe Biden gave to Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela on the oil transaction agreement in November 26th, 2022, and also having to do with electoral conditions within Venezuela, which have not been met by the Maduro regime.

So, again, that is a positive. He said the regime has not been transporting the violent criminals they sent back into our country, back to Venezuela at the rapid pace they'd agreed to. I'm therefore ordering the ineffective and unmet Biden concession agreement be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew. Thank you for your attention to this matter. That, of course, is a good move. OK, in just a moment, we'll get to the latest negotiations surrounding Ukraine, an important Supreme Court case. But first, this is the one you don't want to miss.

Tuesday, March 4th, President Trump addresses Congress, 9 p.m. Eastern, laying out his America First vision, tackling immigration reform, economic revival, national security. We're not going to sit this one out. Join us for Backstage Live at 8.30 p.m. Eastern, our pre-show breakdown with the full crew at The Daily Wire. Then, we'll watch the entire speech together live at Daily Wire Plus. And when Trump is done, we're back with unfiltered, no BS reactions you won't get anywhere else. This is an event shaping America's future, so be there. Watch it all live on Daily Wire Plus this Tuesday night. Subscribe right now at dailywire.com.

Meanwhile, there's a lot of talk about the possible end of the war in Ukraine. Apparently, Vladimir Zelensky is going to show up in the United States and he is going to be holding a meeting with President Trump. According to The Post, President Trump and President Zelensky offer differing expectations on Wednesday for a high-stakes summit later this week. The Ukrainian leader underscored his need for American assurances about Kyiv's future security. The U.S. president stressed the benefits of a deal to reap Ukraine's vast mineral wealth.

Trump said that he and Zelensky would use a hastily arranged meeting at the White House on Friday to finalize that mineral compact his administration has pushed on Kyiv. Now, again, that mineral compact actually is a pretty good deal for Ukraine. It is a mineral compact in which the United States invests in future development of rare earth minerals that have yet to be basically identified in Ukraine. Trump told reporters, quote, my number one thing is to get the war stopped. My number two thing is I don't want to have to pay any more money.

Yeah, well, I mean, that was always his priority. President Trump also said yesterday Ukraine will not be joining NATO. That is not a shock. And the sort of possible membership in NATO that had been dangled before Ukraine for years and years and years, that was bad American policy. If you're not going to do it, then don't threaten it. In any case, here is President Trump saying it yesterday. What concessions would you like to see? Oh, I don't want to tell you right now, but I can tell you that NATO you can forget about. That's been I think that's probably the reason the whole thing started.

And I think, J.D., we can say that. Do you have a statement on that? You've been very much involved. I gave him the beauty. Great. Gave me the hardest question, sir. I mean, look, as the President said, we're not going to do the negotiation in public with the American media. He's going to do it in private with the President of Russia, with the President of Ukraine, and with other leaders. And I think that's how this has to go.

So President Trump did say, I'm not going to make security guarantees beyond very much. We're going to have Europe do that because Europe is their next door neighbor. And so the question is whether the Europeans are actually going to pick up the ball. Keir Starmer is also visiting. He is the Labour left wing prime minister of the UK. He apparently is going to try and convince President Trump to continue to support the war in Ukraine. According to The New York Times, Starmer will face the same balancing act as Emmanuel Macron did without the benefit of years of interactions dating back to 2017.

Unlike Macron, Starmer will arrive in the Oval Office armed with a pledge to increase his country's military spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 into 3% within a decade. And Starmer is going to pare back on Britain's overseas development aid, echoing actually some of what President Trump is doing.

Apparently, Starmer is going to show strong support for Vladimir Zelensky. He's going to tell President Trump that they shouldn't rush into a peace deal with Vladimir Putin that doesn't establish security guarantees for Ukraine. But again, here is the reality. The Europeans can, in fact, take the lead here. If the Europeans say, listen, we're going to keep funding this forever.

Our economy is 10 times the size of Russia's. We're going to keep funding this. We're going to keep making sure that Ukraine has the hardware. And so, you know, we're part of this equation as well. And this negotiation is basically done. What is it they are asking the United States for that Trump is unwilling to do at this point that they can't do themselves? That is sort of the big question going forward. Because realistically speaking, if Russia believes that Europe as a whole is going to continue to fund the war, what Putin is gambling on is that basically the entire West just gets tired and he walks into Kyiv.

But I've yet to see a unified Western belief that that is the next thing that is going to happen right here. Okay, meanwhile, the Supreme Court of the United States is making a couple of fascinating moves. First, yesterday,

John Roberts, chief justice, granted the Trump administration's request to put on hold a lower court order that required it to pay an estimated $2 billion in foreign assistance funds for State Department and U.S. aid projects by midnight on Wednesday. So Roberts is getting tired. Supreme Court is getting very tired of these district court judges who are putting nationwide injunctions on presidential actions, which, of course, is correct. Whether or not the Supreme Court rules with the president in the end,

He's saying, listen, that's up to us. It's not up to random district court judge appointed by Joe Biden to shut down the workings of the American government. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is also now hearing a case about whether, in fact, you can sue for discrimination under anti-discrimination law if you are not a member of a, quote unquote, discreet and insular minority. So there is a case from Ohio that was heard.

where a person named Marlene Ames claims a state agency where she works denied her a promotion and then demoted her because she's heterosexual, instead giving both her old job and the one she had sought to gay people. A federal appeals court in Cincinnati had thrown out Ames' lawsuit

finding she failed to show the background circumstances suggesting the employer was hostile to straight people, a threshold step that wouldn't have been required if the gay employee had claimed discrimination. So in other words, the law did not require you to show, for example, if you're a gay person suing that the entire agency was anti-gay. It just had to show discrimination in this particular case. But the judge in this case said you have to show evidence that the entire agency is anti-straight. But that is stupid.

As Justice Samuel Alito said during oral arguments, that rule was apparently based on an intuition about the way most employers behave. Maybe it was sound at the time, but it's no longer sound today. Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested the case could be resolved easily by, quote, a really short opinion that says discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, whether it's because you're gay or because you're straight, is prohibited. And the rules are the same, whichever way that goes. The double standard that is implicit in so much of our discrimination law has been part and parcel of the left-wing reorientation of the United States for decades.

Christopher Caldwell wrote an amazing book called The Age of Entitlement all about this, about how anti-discrimination law, particularly parts of the Civil Rights Act, completely restructured the way that American law was done, how regulations were done in the United States. Well, that double standard should not apply. If discrimination is wrong in one direction, it is wrong in all directions. It should be that simple. And the Supreme Court looks like it's going to make that clear as well. Well, joining us online to discuss everything going on at the White House is our Daily Wire White House correspondent, Mary Margaret O'Lehan. Mary Margaret, thanks for joining the show.

Thanks for having me, Ben. It's great to be here. So let's talk about a story that Daily Wire actually broke a little bit earlier this week. There was this big confrontation that happened at a governor's meeting with President Trump, in which President Trump basically told the governor of Maine that federal money was going to go away unless they got on board with the executive order saying that men can't play in women's sports. And then a meltdown occurred. Can you detail exactly what this was?

Yes, so on Friday, that was when that governor's meeting was, when President Trump told the governor of Maine to her face that she needed to comply with federal law when it comes to men in women's sports. She didn't like that. She said, we'll see you in court. And Trump told her, yes, we will. And this is an issue, Ben, obviously, where 80 percent of Americans do not want men in women's sports.

It's not a popular issue for Democrats to be pushing. It actually was a major issue in the 2024 election. And for some reason, it continues to be a popular Democratic cause. When it comes to the governor of Maine staff, Maine has very left-leaning Democrat lawmakers. The governor of Maine herself obviously is, but her chief of staff, Jeremy Kennedy,

also is a Democrat who is a former Planned Parenthood worker. He also worked for LGBTQ groups. He's legally married to a man who is also a former worker for Equality Maine, I believe. So he's literally in bed with a Democrat activist.

Now, Jeremy Kennedy over the weekend, I was told by a White House senior official that he had a meltdown when he was having a conversation with the White House senior official about this very incident, about this very law banning men from women's sports. And I was told that he cursed at this White House official and said,

of words that I'm not going to say on air, but basically F-U-U-A-hole and stormed out of the room. Now, the governor of Maine's office has denied this story to me, but I've followed up multiple times. They deny that he cursed, but would not deny that the altercation occurred or that he stormed out of the room. So we're continuing to ask questions on this, but from the looks of it, the Trump administration is really coming after Maine on this issue. They're determined to keep men out of women's sports.

We saw the USDA taking action on this, the Department of Education, and I'm hearing that there's more to come as well. The fallout is obviously going to continue. And meanwhile, the fireworks continue at the White House. So one of the big controversies over the course of the last week or so is the White House Correspondents Association being basically barred from deciding who's in the press pool. For people who don't understand this issue, Mary Margaret, why don't you explain what the press pool is, how it used to be decided, and now what the new sort of regime is?

Yes, so of course I'm a member of the WHCA. I'm allowed to go into the briefing room, ask questions of the president. I'm allowed to attend what they call open press events. Now for the press pool, those are the people that go in the Oval Office. They're able to have much more access to the president and other events at the White House.

A couple days ago, White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt announced that the White House is going to be deciding who's allowed to attend such events or who's allowed to be in the press pool, meaning that new members of the media, or what we call new media like myself, will potentially be allowed in the Oval Office for certain events.

Obviously, Ben, we're delighted to hear that we're going to be able to access the White House in such a manner. We're going to have more access to the president. We're going to have more access to all of these events that we know our audience deeply cares about. But there's been some serious media hysteria over it. Last night, the head of the White House Correspondents Association, Eugene Daniels, announced that he was technically going to blow up the entire system that we have for learning from other reporters what's going on in the White House.

So there's a series of emails that reporters will send out. It's called the Pooler, and they'll send out information to help us understand what's going on in the White House.

Now, not everyone's on board with this. There's even some reporters who are more left leaning that have expressed their concerns about not being able to access this information that we formerly had. So big drama here at the White House today. I know this isn't the end of it, but I have to say, you know, after the last four years of the Biden administration of watching President Biden's very obvious cognitive decline and really not hearing anything

thing about that decline from the White House press corps, I'm a little embarrassed by the media hysteria, in particular when you look at how infrequently President Biden interacted with the media, how infrequently former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on conservative press like my friends Reagan Reese at The Daily Caller, Diana Globova at The New York Post. There was very little access for conservative press and

When President Biden did call on reporters, he often had a picture of the reporter in front of him and the very question they were about to ask. So, you know, more drama on this for sure incoming. But the hysteria, I hope, will also calm down because, frankly, it's a little embarrassing. It is pretty embarrassing, especially considering that the head of the WHCA is now going to go work at MSNBC and was supposedly a representative of the unbiased press pool. Mary Margaret, you're doing a great job over at the White House. We'll check in with you soon. Thanks, Ben.

And meanwhile, the left continues to just be incompetent. Michael Moore is somehow still being trotted out as a moral voice at this point. It's kind of amazing. So apparently, Michael Moore put out a Substack post on Tuesday, and he's making the claim that, effectively speaking,

We need illegal immigrants everywhere because otherwise you're not going to have the people who are going to stop an asteroid on a path to decimate the earth. Quote, who's really being removed by ICE tonight? The child who discovered the cure for cancer in 2046? The ninth grade nerd who would have stopped that asteroid that's going to hit us in 2032?

And then he cited the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, whose dad was born in Syria. He said, we get nothing from that Syrian Muslim who sired a junior, Abdul Fattah, a nothing migrant with a nothing out of wedlock baby, except that nothing baby was soon adopted and given an American name, Steve Jobs. Yes, that Steve Jobs. I'm grateful for that Muslim migrant baby being born here 70 years ago today. Okay, well, I mean, first of all,

Steve Jobs' story is largely about his adoptive family, not about his natural birth. So if you're going to give credit to anybody for Steve Jobs, you really should talk about his adoptive family. That's exactly who Steve Jobs gave the credit to. But if the case is that illegal immigration is somehow similar to legal immigration, I'm just wondering why. Hilariously, in his list of various people who should have been allowed to immigrate because they're making America great, he includes Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, an actual terrorist supporter. He also includes Linda Sarsour,

I don't think you're making the case that you think you're making, Michael. I really, really do not. Meanwhile, at the same time that Michael Moore is trying to make the case for open borders and open immigration, a representative named Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, she is questioning whether Elon Musk is loyal to America. Guys, you're gonna have to pick one lane here. Are you gonna be xenophobes or are you gonna be open borders people? Pick one.

Mr. Musk has just been here 22 years, and he's a citizen of three countries. I always ask myself the question, with the damage he's doing here, when push comes to shove, which country is he loyalty to? South Africa, Canada, or the United States? And he's only been a citizen, I'll say again, 22 years. Only? That's a long time to be a citizen.

22 years. I know American-born citizens who've only been a citizen for 21 years. They're 21 years old. Like, what the? Yeah, you're right. Elon is loyal to Canada. Nailed that one, lady. That's really good. But again, the left has no capacity to stand up to its own radicals. That was made clear yesterday over at Barnard. Barnard College, of course, which is part of Columbia University,

The New York Post reports dozens of keffiyeh-clad anti-Israel protesters took over a building at Barnard College for several hours Wednesday evening, assaulting a school employee while protesting the expulsions of two students who stormed a Columbia University class in January and threw around flyers loaded with hateful rhetoric. Videos circulating online posted by ex-

By Columbia students for justice in Palestine, which is in fact a pro-terror group, showed the mass students lining a hallway in Milbank Hall, the oldest building on campus, beating drums and loudly chanting through the microphones. By the way, they did this on the same exact day that in Israel, a eulogy was being held for the Bibas family. The Bibas family is the mother and two babies who were murdered point blank in cold blood, the babies with the bare hands of Hamas. This is the day that the pro-Palestinian protesters decided to take over Barnard College.

Do you remember our last decision in the position?

I say, Shiri, I love you. I will always love you. Shiri, you're everything to me. Shiri, I'm sorry I couldn't protect you all. If only I had known what would happen, I wouldn't have fired. I think about everything we went through together. There are so many beautiful memories. I remember Ariel and Kefir's birth. Those are the two kids. I miss those times deeply. Chucky, this is Ariel.

Shuki Ariel, you made me into a father. You transformed us into a family. You taught me what truly matters in life and about responsibility. You taught me so much about myself and I want to thank you. So thank you, my beloved. Okay, so the same day that was happening,

These truly evil protesters showed up at Barnard College and took over the hallways in solidarity with pro-Hamas students who were expelled because they are foreign exchange students who actually support terrorism. This led to the Columbia University spokesperson, Christina Miller,

offering concessions to the protesters. Again, the absolute incompetence is not incompetence. They're on the side of the protesters. That's all. They are pro-Khamasniks. Half of these administrators are pro-Khamasniks. Cut the student aid to these universities. Taxpayer dollars should not be flowing to universities that teach pro-terrorism tripe and make room for it. Just gross.

The dean is happy to meet with some representatives from your group, but as she has some conditions and she expects that you'll have some too. So I'm here to kind of report back. She wants the people that she meets with to be unmasked and uncovered. She can offer a listening ear. And that, she says, she feels is about...

what she can offer. So it sounds to me like some of these are not things that you are willing to accept as conditions for meeting with her. If not, I mean if you would like me to take back some counter proposals, I would be fine with doing that.

You ridiculous people just kick them out of the building and then expel the people who are foreign exchange students. It's that simple. But they never will do that because they have to concede to the pro-terror side. They must. It is apparently in their Columbia University contract.

All righty, guys, coming up, we're going to jump into that Vaunted Ben Shapiro Show mailbag. You have to be a subscriber to have your question answered in the mailbag. You should also subscribe because we just have so much awesome stuff. We've got Jordan Peterson stuff, the Gospels, Exodus, Depression, Anxiety. We've got Matt Walsh's big movies. And of course, we have all access live today. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.