Ep. 2154 - Stephen A. Smith ATTACKS Me!
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Well, folks, we have a ton to get to today on the show. Stephen A. Smith attacking yours truly over claiming that Derek Chauvin should be pardoned by President Trump on federal charges. We'll get into the possibility of a recession. President Trump is not ruling one out and we'll get into the chaos in Syria. First, the media would love you to believe that President Trump is a criminal and that Elon is unhinged and all of the rest. Here's the truth.

There's a lot of winning that is happening right now. The left's flies are unraveling and their narrative is crumbling and the tears are falling. And that's why The Daily Wire is here to cut through the noise and bring you the facts that others won't. Uncensored ad-free daily shows, investigative journalism, live chats, breaking news first, no filter, no corporate leash, and no nonsense. The Daily Wire is where the real story lives. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join the fight.

today. So a lot of people have been asking why we're focused in here at the Men's Bureau Show on the pardon of Derek Chauvin. After all, he's convicted on both federal charges as well as state charges. Well, there are a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that there is a likelihood he serves less time if you relieve the federal charges. The reason for that is because while federal inmates can earn good time credit that reduces sentences, that happens at a much lower rate than it happens at the state level.

So when you're talking about Derek Chauvin's concurrent sentences, he has about a 22 and a half year sentence on state charges and 21 on federal charges. But under Minnesota state sentencing structure, inmates usually serve about two thirds of their sentence behind bars and one third under supervised release. So he would serve like 15 years of the 22 and a half year state sentence in actual confinement under the state charges. So you'd get less time in jail is the short answer. But the other answer is that when you believe a person who is not guilty is languishing in prison,

That is the time when the president of the United States ought to either commute a sentence or pardon. That is like the perfect example. And as we're going to lay out over the course of coming weeks, I'm going to lay out in full detail why I believe that Derek Chauvin is not guilty in the killing of George Floyd.

That is the real reason, because it is immoral to allow people who you believe are innocent to languish in prison. This should not be a particularly arguable issue. And just because that person was made into the face of American racism based on literally zero evidence that has been provided that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd based on race, Derek Chauvin was made the face of American racism before his trial. Every media outlet in the country decided he was guilty. The governor of Minnesota decided he was guilty. The mayor of Minneapolis decided he was guilty.

The presidential candidates on the left side of the aisle at that time was Joe Biden, decided he was guilty. And it was very necessary for the jury to convict him in order for an entire narrative structure to be created. And that was wrong. OK, well, there are many people who object to all this. One of those people is Stephen A. Smith. Bizarrely enough, Stephen A. Smith, who is a loudmouth jackass on ESPN. That's what he does. And when I say loudmouth, I mean the man does not have a volume that goes below eight on the Spinal Tap Scale.

I'm not sure that there is such a thing as a normal Stephen A. Smith voice. And I say this as a longtime watcher of ESPN. Every time Stephen A. Smith comes on the TV, you got to turn down your volume significantly. So Stephen A. Smith is very angry that I've suggested that Derek Chauvin ought to be pardoned. And here he was on his show trying to explain. Would you have taken that position if George Floyd was a Jewish person? A white Jewish person? If a black cop...

had his knee on a white Jewish person for over nine minutes, Ben Shapiro, would you have called for that individual to be pardoned? Okay, so first of all, let's start with this. I don't know why he believes that it would be important, even for his stupid example, for it to be a quote unquote white Jewish person.

As opposed to just a Jewish person, right? His claim is that I am a tribal identitarian and thus I would be very fine with the prosecution of a cop wrongfully if a Jew died under the knee of that cop, even if the cop was not responsible. If the fact patterns were exactly the same, but George Floyd had been named Harold Bernstein or something and the cop was named George Floyd was a black guy.

That is intensely stupid. It's intensely stupid for a variety of reasons. Why don't we begin with the first? This would not have been a national news story if that were the case. The reason this entire story was national news is because of the race of the people involved. In fact, when black people were routinely beating up Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, it was covered up by the New York Times. It was not a national story. The reality is that this was made a national story specifically because the media had a pre-existing narrative of race in America, and this fulfilled their narrative even if the facts didn't match.

Two, if in fact the facts had matched and let's say that this is a Jewish person, a Jewish person had been arrested for counterfeiting, for passing counterfeit bills and then had been high on fentanyl and had a preexisting heart condition and then had died under the knee of a cop. Would I have said that the cop was innocent? Yes, because if the cop is innocent, the cop is innocent. That's the way this works.

The race or religion of the pseudo victim is irrelevant to the question of whether this person was in fact murdered or not. Stephen A. Smith is one of the deepest racial identitarians in our society. He does it all the time, all the time. He does it when he talks sports. It happens literally all the time. If you're talking about Nikola Jokic, the greatest center of our generation, he'll talk about how Nikola Jokic should not be included in conversations for MVPs specifically because of his race.

The reason Stephen A. Smith is saying this kind of stuff is because he is projecting. He is projecting a racial conversation where none exists. Here, for example, with Stephen A. Smith, just a couple of years ago, I'm a Celtics fan, so this one sprang to mind. A few years ago, Danny Ainge was the chief of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics.

And Brad Stevens was elevated to fill his position. Now, it turns out Brad Stevens is a really, really good president of basketball operations. How do we know this? Well, the Celtics won an NBA championship last year. And he's been one of the most successful NBA executives in all the NBA over the course of his tenure. But Stephen A. Smith was firmly convinced the only reason that Brad Stevens had been elevated is because of his race. It's moments like this where I get on people's nerve, particularly white America,

and the NBA community specifically, because I point out it's beautiful to be a white guy. It's just beautiful. You know, a question mark as a coach in some people's eyes, including in Boston, but somehow, some way you moving upstairs. By the way, worth noting that his it's beautiful to be a white guy in America has not precluded Stephen A. Smith.

from a $100 million five-year contract for ESPN, a failing network where the ratings are going down. The reason that Stephen A. Smith is exercised over the George Floyd situation is specifically because of a racial narrative that is not predicated on facts. And then he's projecting that into me being some sort of racist for suggesting that the racial narrative should not predominate. This is the whole reason that Black Lives Matter was such a mistake and such a fail, because it was racializing of a question that was not in fact racial.

And this is, again, it's just more evidence that what I'm saying about Chauvin is true, that the reason that Derek Chauvin is in prison right now is because he was the wrong race and George Floyd was the wrong race. And because of that, Derek Chauvin is in prison right now. Because here's the dirty little secret. It never would have been a national news story if the races had been reversed or if both people had been white or if both people had been black. It would not have been a national news story. And that means that the officer would have been assessed on the facts of the situation rather than on the racial narrative people like Stephen A. Smith were propagating.

Meanwhile, again, this is part and parcel of a broader left wing failure when it comes to narrative. The left wing narrative has failed on so many fronts. Senator Alyssa Slotkin, who is from Michigan and she was supposed to be the Trump response. Well, she said, listen, we're on our heels. And she's right. The Democrats are on their heels because in pretty much every narrative area, they're on their heels.

I don't think it's a secret that Democrats have been on their heels since Trump won the election. Right. I don't think that's something hidden. And I think it's on us to be clear about not only leadership and there's lots of leaders in both parties, but also a strategy.

Right. And I think that's something that as Trump has been successful in flooding the zone and just like every day, 15 things happening, we are still finding our footing. And I think you can't get better until you admit you have a have a problem. So she will not admit the problem. However, she was asked about the fact that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California,

is moving away from the men should play in women's sports routine. And she won't even address it. So you can't say that you admit you have a problem, but then did not admit what the problem is.

But for me, it's like, let the local community figure this out, right? In Michigan, we have a process in place where if someone who's born a boy wants to play in women's sports, you have to get a waiver. We've had it happen two times in our entire state. So let the local communities, just like everything with schools, handle that issue. For me, though, I think, you know, this issue is being sort of brought up in order to make sparks and see sparks fly.

Okay, well then it would be very easy for you to avoid the sparks flying by simply saying the obvious thing, which is that boys should not play in girls' sports.

Get some more on that in a moment. First, only two things in life are certain death and taxes. Well, now there is a third certainty. If you're with Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, you could be saving a fortune every month by switching on over to Pure Talk. That's right, Pure Talk, my cell phone company, is cutting the fat from the wireless industry. For just $35 a month, you can get unlimited talk, text, and 15 gigs of data with Hotspot on America's most dependable 5G network. The average family of four saves over $1,000 a year when they switch to Pure Talk. That's real money back in your pocket. Plus, it's

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And so many of them are just doubling down on the most extreme elements of their agenda. So, for example, MSNBC host Melissa Murray asked Representative Al Green, you'll remember him from being ejected during the pseudo State of the Union address, if the Democrats were being too conciliatory with President Trump. Do you think your colleagues in the Democratic Party are being too civil during this time when American rights and freedoms are literally on the line?

Well, thank you for having me. I think we're at a point where we're making decisions as to how we should move forward. I believe that we have to move forward with righteous incivility. This is what we engaged in when we sang "We Shall Overcome" and what I engaged in when I stood and indicated that the president didn't have a mandate to cut Medicaid.

Mm hmm. Yes, they're not. They're not being loud enough. They need righteous incivility. OK, good luck with that now.

There are dangers to the Trump administration. I've been saying this for weeks now. The main danger to the Trump administration is the economy tanking. That is the number one danger to the Trump administration. One of the things that's for sure going to affect the economy is impending talk of a government shutdown. So the government must be funded in very near term or we're going to get a government shutdown. Democrats, of course, are not going to help out with that. Some Republicans are saying that they are willing to undergo a government shutdown immediately.

In order to lower spending, Thomas Massey, again, is sort of the guy who's constantly Leroy Jenkins-ing every sort of fiscal negotiations. Just assume he's a no, always and forever, because he thinks spending is bad. Agree, spending is bad. Also, you're not doing anything useful right now. In any case, this has become a very...

contentious issue on the right side of the aisle. One of the reasonable members of Congress who is in fact a deep fiscal conservative is Representative Chip Roy, who joins us on the line. He, of course, represents Texas's 21st congressional district, one of the strongest fiscal conservatives in Congress. Chip, thanks so much for joining the show. Really appreciate it. Great to be on, Ben. I hope you're well.

So let's talk about this continuing resolution. You know, there I think are several different caucuses, obviously, on the Republican side of government. There are people who will kind of go along with any spending bill. And then there are people like you who are actual fiscal conservatives but wish to live in a world in which reality applies. And then there are a couple of people who I think are more interested in shouting at the wind and

than actually doing anything. So when it comes to this continuing resolution, as one of the most fiscally conservative members of Congress, why should conservatives go along with this continuing resolution? The argument from the sort of shouting against the wind types is, well, we always say we're going to fight to live to fight another day, but we never fight another day. Why on this one aren't we just, you know, fight, fight, fighting? Yeah, Ben, look, I'm not a huge fan of the kick the can down the road continuing resolution as the best form of government, how we fund our government.

But what I do believe is that you've got to figure out how to empower President Trump and Elon to continue to keep the lights on, to carry out Doge, to identify the cuts and the waste that we've been identifying in a mere six weeks, by the way, to add on to what we'd already started doing as fiscal conservatives two years ago through the speaker's fight. You remember with Kevin McCarthy, where we forced a bunch of votes on amendments and started to change this place. Now's our chance to finish the job.

This bill freezes spending. It's actually, I think, a slight reduction. I'm still combing through it. We got it Saturday. I think it's a slight reduction, give or take, but it's a spending freeze. It's less than 100 pages or fewer than 100 pages. It has no earmarks.

It doesn't allow the defense hawks who really wanted a whole bunch more money to screw up the whole process by throwing a bunch of money in it. And then the non-defense Democrats want more money. So this is a win to keep the lights on for six months for Elon. The Democrats have threatened to shut down so they can stop Elon. So this puts them in a box. It's the most fiscally responsible thing we can do at this moment.

But then we'll have to do our job in the appropriations process for this next cycle, which, by the way, this appropriation cycle ends on September 30th. So we've got to get all that passed for FY26 by September. So we should focus on that and then get reconciliation done, which is where we deal with mandatory spending and tax policy. So it's a win. I think the president wants it.

We want it. There's a handful of holdouts who are saying, oh, it's not good enough. Guys, this is a win to free spending and to give them power to continue to find cuts and doge. And I think the reality is that, you know, people in my industry, the sort of conservative media industry, it's always in our interest to claim that it's just insufficient fight on the part of Republicans that leads to all of this stuff, which ignores, of course, all the incentive structures as to how Congress actually works. There are a bunch of Republicans who are in purple districts. There are a bunch of Republicans who are even in blue districts. And

And the fact is that when you have a majority that is as slim as the majority Republicans are currently working with, the idea that under this Congress, you're going to restructure Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. So it's to solve the national debt. I mean, I'm wondering how we're supposed to get from point A to point B. You kind of get the best that you can get. Yeah. And look, and I think and I'm always weary, as you are, it should be. We both should be of the excuses in this town. There's always an excuse not to deliver. What I would push back on people right now is we're delivering.

A spending freeze in an inflationary environment is a huge win. Trust me, we budgeted for a freeze in our budget that we passed out a few weeks ago. If you hold spending flat for four years, for example,

And while the economy is growing and we grow out of it, you save a trillion dollars over 10 years. In other words, freezing spending and doing our job to get tax policy and regulatory policy to allow, for example, Marco Rubio just this morning. There's a report that says they're going to cut 83 percent of the USAID contracts.

So I've got conservatives going, why are we going to fund USAID? Guys, we're not. We've got funding in there, but they're going to stop the contracts so we can get that money. And then Russ Vogt can impound that money through the Office of Management and Budget. We think that's constitutional. We'll have to fight that through the courts. But you've got to give us time. You've got to give the president time. You've got to give Russ Vogt time. You've got to give Elon time. This is a win.

So, Chip, when it comes to impoundment, obviously, as you say, it's going to get hashed out by the courts. If the courts come down the other way on impoundment, then there's been talk that Congress might consider rescission. There might be a move to basically with 51 votes in the Senate, you don't actually have to overcome a filibuster, rescind much of the spending that's being impounded right now. Do you see that as a viable option?

I do. First of all, for your listeners out there, impoundment, I do believe, is constitutional. I think Congress overstepped its bounds in limiting the president's authority as the chief executive to not spend every dollar. There's no constitutional requirement that he has to spend every dollar a certain way. He's the executive. Secondly, if that fails, if the courts kill that, I don't believe they will.

Then in addition to there's rescission authority. Now, we can start rescission, but then that requires 60 votes in the Senate or the White House can send us rescissions. And then it can go through the House and the Senate at a majority vote. Fifty one in the Senate. So they're working on that plan. There are other tools that I'm not going to get into right now. I'm not going to get in front of the administration on some of these things that they can do to carry out spending restraints.

And then finally, in reconciliation, we have the power to do a lot at a 51 vote threshold. That's why we passed the budget, Jody Arrington, to get Medicaid reform and the things that we need to do to save money while people can maintain benefits. But we can save hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars if we do our part in that. So this is all part of the process. Well, Chip, really appreciate the insight. I know that everything is high pitch these days and really appreciate your rational perspective on these things.

Thanks, Ben. God bless you. Appreciate being on. Now, in order for the economy not to tank, you need predictability and you need reliability. I'm not just hearing this from people who are on the left or in the center. I'm hearing this from business people who are on the right. And

And as a business person who is on the right, you know what I want in my economy? I want a sense of predictability. So certain things that President Trump is doing do give that sense of predictability. So, for example, we know there's going to be a move to maintain taxes at current rates. That's great. That means I know exactly what to expect in terms of my taxes. We know that regulations are likely to become less onerous. That's wonderful. I know precisely what to expect.

When it comes to the tariffs, the tariffs are incredibly chaotic. And the way they've been rolled out so far, which is sort of like a hokey pokey, we'll put a tariff in, we'll take a tariff out, we'll put a tariff in and we'll move it all about. Like that particular approach disquiets markets. It means that you don't know whether to invest in a particular contract. If you have inputs from foreign countries, you don't know whether to re-sign that contract. And you also don't know whether you're going to want to sign a domestic contract because maybe the tariff doesn't go into place and now you're paying twice what you otherwise would have paid.

This sort of uncertainty is not good for the broader business community, which is why you see in the Dow Jones Industrial Average giving up all of the gains since President Trump's election. So President Trump was asked about this over the weekend, and he said that he doesn't need to be clearer on tariffs. Will we have clarity? You'll have a lot, but we may go up with some tariffs. It depends. We may go up. I don't think we'll go down, but we may go up.

And but, you know, they have plenty of clarity. They just use it. That's like almost a soundbite. They always say that we want clarity. Well, that's not a soundbite. That's a reality. And again, I'm supporting President Trump here. I want Trump's economy to boom. And I can say as a business person with hundreds of employees, I want to know what comes next, because that's how I game for how I spend and how I save and how I invest. And that's true for every major or minor business person in the country.

Now, President Trump, to his credit, is being cautious about his predictions. Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary, was on the Sunday shows. He said, don't worry, no recession is coming. And, you know, his mouth to God's ears. Should Americans brace for a recession?

Absolutely not. Anybody who bets against Donald Trump, it's like the same people who thought Donald Trump wasn't a winner a year ago. Donald Trump is a winner. He's going to win for the American people. That's just the way it's going to be. There's going to be no recession in America. Okay, now again, I hope that's true. And I generally believe that that is true.

However, uncertainty is in fact uncertainty. President Trump was asked the same exact question about an hour later. And he said, listen, I'm not gonna make any predictions about the economy, which by the way, is the smart response on this. President Trump has a good feel for this. A smart response is, I don't know what's gonna happen because the problem is if you say there's gonna be no recession and then there is one recessionary quarter, it's all over the TV for the next three years. This is the lesson that should have been learned during the Biden administration when the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve called inflation transitory and it's now four years later and inflation is not transitory.

Are you expecting a recession this year? I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. That's a big thing. And there are always periods of it takes a little time. It takes a little time. But I don't I think it should be great for us. I mean, I think it should be great.

Okay, now again, if the idea here is that we are ratcheting up pressure to then ratchet back down the tariffs, okay, if the idea is that we're trying to pry wins out of other countries, okay, I'm there. If the idea is that tariffs themselves are going to be good for the country, I have yet to see a situation in which that is true that is not from the 19th century. When trade internationally was significantly more limited and spending, by the way, was significantly more limited domestically speaking, as we spoke about last week, the reality is

That while we are subsidizing a lot of businesses elsewhere through global trade in our markets, everybody else is subsidizing our welfare state by buying our bonds. That is a reality. And meanwhile, the question is whether these tariffs are being put on in order to drive, again, an ancillary outcome. It's not about the economy. It's about, for example, fentanyl. That was the case that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was making over the weekend, that this is all about fentanyl.

It really is about fentanyl. It really is. And I think the president obviously wants a strong economy, obviously wants better trade deals as well. But this is about fentanyl and what we can do to stop the cartels from partnering with Chinese officials, laundering money and bringing a poison into our country that is specifically designed to kill the next generation.

Okay. So again, if the idea is let's make Canada arm up the border and militarize the border. All right. Fine. Okay. The problem is that the metrics that are being used, like I want the deliverable because that way you get a win, right? If president Trump says, I want Canada to do X. And if Canada does X, the tariffs go back down. I'm fine with it. But it's not going to happen.

But it's very difficult to make that argument about, for example, fentanyl when you are not saying the thing you want from the Canadians. This is a point that was made by Ambassador Kirsten Hillman. She says, listen, less than 1% of all fentanyl that's being seized coming into the United States is coming from Canada. Last year, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized coming from Canada. Now, you can make the argument that's because we have a wide open border with Canada, but we had a wide open border with Mexico and 22,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the wide open border with Mexico last year under Joe Biden. Here's Kirsten Hillman, the Canadian ambassador to the United States.

Canadians are frustrated with our neighbours, you know, the country that we feel closest to, the country that is partners, allies, often family, that we've gone to war with, that we've died with, that we come to each other's aid. Most recently in L.A., but obviously 9/11, you've come to our aid over the years so many times.

And we feel, Canadians feel, under attack, under economic attack. And that is causing some challenges for sure across Canadian society. Fentanyl is a very serious problem in Canada too.

On some days, we have more deaths per capita than you have here in the United States. So we take this very seriously. It is not a big issue between our two countries. Less than 1% of the fentanyl that is seized in the United States is coming from Canada. But every ounce can kill families and people. So we're taking it very seriously.

Again, if there's a deliverable, great. And force Canada out of the wall to get the deliverable. However, all of this is having an impact on domestic politics in Canada. So if you don't like Justin Trudeau and his party, then why exactly are you doing the things that are going to ensure that they remain in power? So before all this trade war stuff, the runaway winner in the Canadian polling was Pierre Poliev, who's terrific. Pierre Poliev is the leader of the Conservative Party. He's one of the most articulate Conservative leaders of our generation. He's terrific.

And he has now fallen behind in the polling to Mark Carney, who is the leader of the Liberal Party in Canada, who will maintain all of the policies of Justin Trudeau, except without the dumb face. So Mark Carney just won the race to succeed Justin Trudeau as Canada's prime minister. And he vows to win the trade war with the United States and President Donald Trump. He's the former governor of the Canadian Central Bank and Bank of England, according to the BBC. He is a green revolution guy. He's never served in elected office.

His replacement of the minority government means that he is the new leader of the party that is competitive. According to the BBC, the governing liberals have seen a remarkable political turnaround since Trudeau's exit, as Canadians have been galvanized by President Trump's trade threats and support for annexing their country. At the beginning of the year, Pierre Poliev was ahead 20 points in the election polls. Today, he is tied with the liberals. So are you going to get more from Canada with Pierre Poliev as the prime minister than you're going to get...

From Mark, the answer is yes. It turns out that politics has a lot of downstream effect. In the end, listen, I trust President Trump on this stuff because I think in the end, as I've said a thousand times, he's a results driven guy. He said over the weekend, he wants a dynamic economy and a dynamic country. The way to do that is to provide a steady, understandable economy for investors that reduces regulations and taxes. It makes it easier to do business in the country for Americans. That's the way. Here's President Trump.

Well, I want a dynamic country where the private enterprise carries the day, not the government. And I want a strong country militarily. We need that nowadays. You can see that probably better than ever before.

Okay, I agree with him, and I think that that is the way that he's going to move, and if the results are bad, I think he's going to change tack. I'll get to more on this in a moment. First, you know, one of the things I love about working in the news industry is that every day I get to connect with millions of listeners and share breaking stories and work with incredible talent. We're 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 people around the country. If you're doing what you love to do, there's nothing better than being surrounded by people who love it the way that you do.

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Meanwhile, there's been chaos breaking out in Syria since the takeover of HDS. This, of course, is perfectly predictable. HDS is, in fact, a terror group. They're a Sunni Islamist terror group, and they're backed by Turkey. You'll recall that Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy group, had been attacking Israel for decades, and then they escalated their attacks after October 7th. And then Israel, in October of last year, went after Hezbollah and basically defenestrated their entire leadership.

with everything from the Bipa attacks to the attacks killing Hassan Nasrallah and all the rest. And they hit Hezbollah so hard that Hezbollah was no longer able to support, and Iran was really no longer able to support the Assad regime in Syria, which was a terrorist, genocidal regime on its own. There are no good guys in the Syrian fight, except for some of the Druze and the Kurds and the Christians. That is a complete list of all of the good parties in Syria right now, in terms of the domestic parties in Syria.

Turkey intervened on behalf of HTS. HTS basically just ran down the road unopposed and took over the country. And the media decided this was a wonderful, unalloyed wonder, wonderful thing. I said at the time, it was not a good thing for HTS to take over. HTS is in fact a terror group. And I mentioned that there would be some really, really awful downstream effects, including presumably their targeting of Christians. Assad's regime had not been wonderful to Christians. Presumably HTS would be worse.

Well, Israel, knowing that HDS was a terrorist regime, then moved into the south of Syria, the other side of the Mount Hermon region, and they have now formed a basic coalition with many of the Druze in the south who were also afraid of being targeted by HDS. And Israel also proceeded to blow up pretty much every weapons depot in Syria as all this was happening. Israel did that to deny vast stockpiles of weaponry to HDS, a terror group backed again by Turkey. If you don't like HDS, blame Turkey, because that's Turkey. After all this happened to HDS,

has been proclaiming to the rest of the world that it was moderate. It was never moderate. Again, there are salutary effects to Assad falling. One of them was that the Iranian crescent that stretched from Iran through Iraq, through Syria, into Lebanon, and then curved all the way down into Yemen, into the Gaza Strip, and all the rest of that. That was broken. That was a salutary effect. A downside effect is that a bunch of terrorists took over, right? Not a lot of great solutions in the Middle East, as it turns out. Okay, well now, a sort of Alawite solution

Reconstitution took place over the course of the last week. There were some battles that happened between the Alawites who were ethnically associated with the Assad regime and HTS. Battles broke out, and then HTS decided what a great opportunity to slaughter a bunch of Alawites and some Christians along for the ride. And so there are an enormous number of people who were killed over the course of last week. Some thousand people were killed.

The United States put out a statement from the State Department, from Secretary Rubio, quote,

Syria's interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria's minority communities accountable. Okay, the reality is everybody ought to be gaming for the evil of HTS and for the Turks. The Turks are members of NATO. The Turks are the biggest single backers of HTS, bar none. Bar none. That is what is happening right now. And again, it is horrifying. It is unsurprising and it is horrifying. So here is some of the video of what HTS was doing. They're literally making Alawites and apparently some Christians crawl like dogs. They were shooting people. It just, just,

It turns out evil Islamist terrorists are evil in Islamist. So you can see these terrorists who are beating up civilians, presumably Alawites and or Christians. Okay, and they're just beating people up and slapping them and all the rest of this. Again, terrible people, HDS. No question. No question. Okay, so...

This has now led to, again, not blaming Turkey and not blaming HDS, but somehow people blaming American quote unquote neocons or blaming Israel or blaming Jews. OK, there are no Jews in Syria. The only Jews in Syria right now are the Israelis in the south who are literally protecting the Druze from the slaughter of HDS at the request of the Druze, by the way. The Christian community has been targeted in Syria for a decade or more.

The truth is that Syria, which used to be a Christian country, if you go all the way back, Syria was a Christian country. That's why so many of the sites mentioned in the New Testament are in fact in Syria. The Syrian population had already been devastated by Islamic takeover and Islamic rule. They didn't have it great under Bashar Assad. They did better than they had it in, say, Iran. But they didn't have it amazing under Bashar Assad. There were about 1.5 million Christians living in Syria before the Syrian civil war in 2011.

That number is now as few as 300,000 Christians. And the major challenges existed under Assad. The replacement of Assad by HDS was going to be bad for Christians. The attempt to turn this, however, into a story about the evils of the West, as opposed to Assad being an evil dictator who was replaced by people who are completely evil in a different direction.

If your sort of bizarre supposition is that this is because of America as opposed to because the Middle East happens to be a long chain of terrorist tyrannies following one another with different enemies, I don't think that you've been following Middle Eastern history very long. Tucker Carlson has been on tour in the Middle East. He was over hanging out with the leader of Qatar recently.

And in the middle of that, he tweeted out, quote, as predictable as this is, it's still infuriating to see it. For decades, Bashar Assad protected minority religious communities in Syria, including the country's large Christian population. OK, those protections were limited at best, pretty limited, as it turns out. And the downstream effects of Bashar Assad attacking, for example, Kurds, Bashar Assad repressing Kurds.

His people, to the extent that he did, was going to be a blowback that was very bad for many of the people living in the area during the Syrian civil war. To pretend that Assad is somehow completely not responsible for what happened in Syria while he was dictator in Syria is kind of wild. No one in the United States was allowed to notice this. I'm pretty sure actually we were all allowed to notice this. And many people did notice this actually and commented upon it when Assad fell actually. And anyone who did was immediately denounced by neocons as a dangerous extremist.

Barry Weiss declared Tulsi Gabbard monstrous and Assad toady for noticing, but it was true. Well, actually, that is, I disagree with Barry Weiss about Tulsi Gabbard, but actually what she was condemning was the idea that Bashar Assad was an ally of the West, which was something that Tulsi Gabbard was sort of promoting a little bit back in 2011, 2012, 2013.

The weaker Assad was, the more Christians died. During the years that neocons in the West backed the war against Assad, the percentage of Christians in Syria went from 10% to 2%. Now that Assad has been driven from power, many of the remaining Syrian Christians are being slaughtered and their holy places desecrated. Barry Weiss and John Bolton haven't said a word about it, but no one who's paying attention can be surprised it's happening. Neocon projects in the Middle East invariably destroy ancient Christian communities from Iraq to Gaza and in many places in between. Can this be an accident? You wonder. Okay, again, this is a...

bizarre and twisted reading of history at best. I'm not going to attribute motives because that's not something that I like to do. I will say that this is so ahistorical. The idea that chaos in the Middle East has not targeted Christians is ignorant of literally all Christian history in the Middle East. Constantinople was Constantinople before it was Istanbul. The notion that Christians have generally been targeted by neocons in the West in the Middle East is

is a complete reversal of how history actually has worked in this area. I have suspicions as to what Tucker means by quote-unquote neocons, but again, the idea that Christians who can live safely in the Middle East, by the way, in about one country, which is Israel, not a lot of Christians who are living safely in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi. These are not places with large Christian populations. Many of these places are places that Tucker is busy defending this week.

What's going on in Syria, which is a horror show, is not the fault of the Turks who are literally backing the regime that is murdering people, including Christians. It's somehow the fault of the neocon warmongers. It's a wild supposition. But again, this is part and parcel of some of the stuff that Tucker seems to be pushing lately, which again is the idea that.

That all conflict in the Middle East is the fault of an evil cadre of Americans who are pushing conflict in the Middle East. No one in the Middle East apparently has any agency. Iran has no agency. Hezbollah has no agency. Qatar certainly has no agency. The Tucker spent this weekend over in Qatar doing a bit of propaganda work on behalf of the Qatari regime.

And again, this is not an attribution of motive to Tucker. I'm not going to claim. I see some people online claiming Tucker's in the pay of the... Tucker doesn't need their money. I don't think that's right. I think that Tucker's worldview suggests that apparently the only actors in the Middle East who have any agency at all are the United States, Israel, and pretty much no one else, apparently. And so everything bad that happens in the Middle East is the fault of those people, and no one else has any agency at all. So...

Iran has been growing closer and closer to a nuclear weapon. Iran is the chief sponsor of terror, not only in the region, but all over the world. Iran has its tentacles all the way down in South America. Iran's proxies in Hezbollah, the Houthis, all these people have been engaged in terrorism that affects American interests ranging from the Red Sea to the murder of literally thousands of American soldiers in Iraq by Iranian terror supporting groups to the murder of 241 Marines at the U.S. Marine barracks bombing back in the 1980s.

Well, Iran has been growing more and more loud. They are currently holding joint military drills with China and Russia right now. Iran also happens to be super vulnerable. Their nuclear regime could be ended basically today by a single sortie. Despite all of that, President Trump is trying to give them an off ramp, which is the right path, right? He's trying to give them an off ramp. And then if they won't take the off ramp, there has to be a fist inside the velvet glove. Here's President Trump talking about Iran. Now, well, there are two ways Iran can be handled militarily or you make a deal.

I would prefer to make a deal because I'm not looking to hurt Iran. They're great people. I know so many Iranians from this country. Well, not the leadership. No, not the leadership. The people. Very evil people. No, but the people of Iran are great people. But they had a tough regime and they meet and they'd be shot in the streets. I mean, it was a tough it was a tough deal. But I would rather negotiate a deal.

I'm not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily. Okay, so if you can get that deal, great. And if you can't, then there's a threat. So Tucker has decided again that the only two options, and this again is a false binary, the only two options here are either you concede to the Iranian nuclear program or full-scale war with Iran, which again is not a reality. Iran's skies are clear. Right now, a single B-2 sortie would take out their nuclear facilities.

But Tucker tweeted out, Fox News is wall-to-wall with dead-eyed politicians. Again, the sort of bizarre physical description of people that you disagree with is pretty ugly. I'm not a fan of this sort of stuff. Fox News is wall-to-wall with dead-eyed politicians. They're all dead-eyed. If they don't agree with Tucker, you're dead-eyed. Telling you that Iran is a dangerous sponsor of terror. He puts that in scare quotes. Iran is a dangerous sponsor of terror. I literally just named you. Hundreds and thousands of Americans who have been killed by Iranian terror groups.

It says, softening up the base for a war. Again, there is no war with Iran. Nobody wants a war with Iran. Was it a war with Iran when America launched a strike at Qasem Soleimani, killing their military leader? There was not. But what exactly does that phrase mean, and how does it apply to the United States? Here's one measure. Over the past 20 years, how many Americans have been killed by Iran on American soil? Notice that qualifier, on American soil. Well, I mean, an American in Iraq is still an American, as it turns out. So is an American in Lebanon.

Try to find that number and then compare it to the number of Americans killed by drug ODs or suicide or illegal aliens or carjackings, diabetes and the COVID vacs. Still think Iran is the greatest threat. How about we focus on our own country for a minute? And this is, again, a false binary. It turns out that there are, in fact, foreign threats to American interests ranging from shipping in the Red Sea to oil supply coming from the Gulf. And also all the things that he mentioned are really bad. I noticed that for a guy who is very concerned about illegal aliens, carjackings, diabetes and the COVID vacs,

He's spending an awful lot of time in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Russia lately. And this is not an argument in favor of quote-unquote endless war. This is an argument in favor of reality. And living in the realm of reality is a healthier perspective on foreign affairs

than the sort of bizarre melange of claims that are made about dead-eyed people that you disagree with or people who want perennial war. How about argue with the argument as opposed to arguing with the phantom that you are creating in your own mind without ever actually coming to grips with the nature of the argument?

Well, speaking of spending time abroad, Tucker Carlson, of course, was in Qatar, where he was interviewing the prime minister of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. Now, it should be mentioned at this point that Qatar is, in fact, effectively a front state for Iran. They sort of try to play a middle role between the United States and Iran. Whenever there's a negotiation with a terrorist group, it always happens in Qatar. This is where the United States negotiated with the Taliban, sort of America's emissary to the terrorist world. But there's no question that Qatar is, in fact, a front state for Iran.

a maligned force in international politics. They supply literally billions of dollars in funding to Hamas. They've provided literal support to terrorist groups all over the region. They have provided significant financial relief to Iran itself. They have huge ties with Iran because they share a giant oil field

Qatar, for example, over the last few years has transferred almost $2 billion to Hamas. They host Hamas operations. All of their leaders, Hamas' leaders, were in Qatar, obviously. They also have a history of terror financing allegations ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to even ISIL.

There's also an American Air Base in Qatar. So, again, they try to play both sides. It is also worthwhile noting here that Qatar is a major donor to America's universities. So if you don't like America's universities and you think they're trash, one major reason would be Qatar, which has spent, I kid you not, over the course of 2001 to 2021, $4.7 billion on American higher education. Those are donations from a country that has 400,000 citizens.

of almost $5 billion to American universities. So if you don't like the wokeism, you don't like the anti-Americanism at America's universities, it turns out that the money is flowing from Qatar and has been flowing from Qatar for decades at this point.

So here is Tucker Carlson with the prime minister of Qatar. Again, kind of soft peddling Qatar, its ties to terrorism, its malign actions in the region, its partnership with Iran. And he asked, you know, why do people hate you? And of course, it turns out the only reason that people hate Qatar is because it turns out Qatar is so peaceful and wonderful.

Your country has been in the American media sporadically recently, and it's under attack for reasons I don't fully understand. One of the reasons I wanted to come here was to understand why people are mad at you. And I think you've got the biggest overseas U.S. air base right near here. So you're clearly a U.S. ally. But I keep reading reference to Qatar as...

anti-American or pro-Islamist or a threat to the United States somehow. Where do those attacks come from, do you think? Look, as a country, we always want to do the right things. And basically, the right things, not only for our people, but for our people, for our region, and for our friends. And when you are trying to do the right things, sometimes you change your mind

You know, when you hear this kind of criticism. But it wasn't really in our culture because we believe that it serves the real cause behind all these efforts is to bring peace. They're very peaceful. Peace for the people, peace for the region, and peace for our friends. Okay, we can stop it there. Again, the notion that we have an air base in Qatar, therefore Qatar is an ally of the United States. First of all, Tucker said just a few weeks ago, he doesn't even know what an ally is. To Piers Morgan.

Because Chris Morgan asked if Israel was an American ally. He said, I don't even know what an ally is. What is an ally? So apparently Qatar is an ally, but not Israel because he doesn't know what an ally is. Other places, by the way, where American troops are stationed, and we just heard in that tweet from Tucker that apparently if an American dies abroad, an American troop dies abroad in, say, Jordan, an American ally, by the way, or in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, that doesn't count. That doesn't matter if Iran funds their murder. All these things are in conflict.

All these ideas are in conflict with one another. We currently have troops everywhere from Estonia to Lithuania to Turkey. Is Turkey an American ally? None of this holds together. The reason this matters with regard to Qatar is because Qatar, as we say, has been funding enormous, enormous chaos at America's universities. And so one of the things the Trump administration has quite properly been doing is pulling money from universities that are, in fact, not enforcing civil rights law with regard to Jews.

Because it turns out a lot of these major universities are perfectly fine with Jew hatred on their campus in a way that they wouldn't be anti-black hatred or anti-Hispanic hatred or anything else. Now, again, you can argue with the civil rights law on anti-discrimination, and I'll hear that argument. But the notion that Jews are exempt from those civil rights laws while other groups are not is a bizarre one. The Trump administration doesn't take that seriously. And so the Trump administration on Friday said it was pulling $400 million from Columbia University, canceling grants and contracts because of what the government describes as the Ivy League school's failure to squelch anti-Semitism on campus.

So again, when it comes to Middle Eastern politics and all the rest of it, a lot of bad things can be happening simultaneously. That does not mean that America is the bad actor or that actual American allies that, you know, are against terrorism are the bad actors. And thinking in that way tends to facilitate the actions of the actual bad actors, including, yes, Iran, which is not a peace-loving state. An Islamic republic that has murdered thousands of American troops in places like Iraq, spread terrorism all over the region.

And this is not a case for us to go to, quote, a full-scale war, hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground. No one, literally no one is arguing this. No one, zero people. But the sort of propaganda efforts on behalf of Iran or by its allies in Qatar is worth noting at this point in time, at the very least. Now, meanwhile, in dumb news, apparently there's a show called Love is Blind. I've been informed of this show by producers Savvy and Jessica.

Because as you know, this is not my bag. But Love is Blind, there's a major controversy that broke out on this show, Love is Blind. Why? Well, because apparently there's a person named Sarah and there's a person named Ben and they were supposed to get married on Love is Blind. And then it all broke apart at the altar. So we begin this tragic story with their first date on episode two. Ben was raised in a strong Christian household. Sarah was no longer religious.

Ben apparently was upset about the church's stance on LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign issues. And Ben goes to church every week. And so here was one of their first dates or their first date. I grew up in a very strong Christian household. There's a lot of things that I believe about like the Bible and I believe about

You know, the Christian faith. But it's all hard to obviously know for certain. The main thing for me that's really tough about religion is my sister Lisa. She's like my best friend. She's gay. Okay. And she is my absolute number one. Like, she's just...

like the best person ever. And there's so much hypocrisy and I'm not saying all the time because there is good, but for me, I find it really difficult to go to a church and like practice when, you know,

It's like love thy neighbor, but then it's also like LGBT is going to go to hell. And while the priest maybe has sexual allegations. Like, I'm sorry, but no. I hate the word religion. I like using the word faith. Oh, I love. Okay, so like, would you go to Pride weekend? Yeah. No discomfort around that community at all. Okay, so first of all, his fault. Okay.

Like she's making her politics very clear. And at this point he should be out. Okay, so first of all, her politics are psychotic. This bizarre notion that every church that says that homosexual activity is a sin is somehow evil and wrong and terrible. I know this is a left-wing trope.

It's really stupid. It's really stupid. People sin all the time, every day. Every person who's a church or synagogue or even mosque-going person that I know who's very religious understands that people sin all the time. That does not mean that the church has to approve the sin, which is the shtick that she's doing. She can't go to a church that won't approve all of her moral values or her friends' lifestyles. Literally, the nature of religion is to try to set out an objective morality that is true whether you like it or not. But in any case,

Apparently this all culminated at the end of season eight because Sarah decided that she was not in fact going to marry Ben based on his incompatible values. And all I got to say is you both knew this, but honestly, he knew this more.

And, you know, I'm going to go against the grain here. I'm going to say this is actually his fault. She made very clear what her values were very early on. He was sort of hiding the ball. And I have no... She says, yes, I will go to a gay pride parade. I have no discomfort around that community. Well, I mean, she could theoretically take away from that that he's, you know, perfectly fine with all aspects of all of this. Anyway, she breaks up with him at the altar. I just hope I...

made the right decision. Hi, guys. Oh, my goodness. We love you guys, too. We love you. It was a lot, but we're rolling with it. I just want to talk to her. Yeah. Was it, like, the time frame? I mean, I knew the whole time coming into this, the time frame. Like, that's not... Like, I feel like I know him. Like, really. Yeah. Like, I remember...

Like I asked him about like Black Lives Matter and I'm no expert, but like when I asked him about it, he was like, I guess I've never really thought too much about it. That affected me, especially in our own city. Like how could it not? How did it not make you think about something? I asked him too, like what his church's views are and he said he didn't know. And so then I watched a sermon online.

- From his church? - About, yeah, sexual identity. - Okay. - And it was traditional. I told that to Ben. - What is that about it? - It doesn't really have much to say about it, you know? I want him to think about that stuff. - You know, everybody is all in ripping on her.

I'm going to rip on him. I think that he acted like an idiot here. She made her politics very clear. I've said this a thousand times with regard to dating and marriage. Marry somebody who shares your value system because you need to build a life and a family with that person. He knew her value system. He was willing to go along with it anyway. So people are going to say, well, she's being intolerant. No, she's actually being smarter than he is. He should have canceled this early on. He should have been like, nope, we don't share a compatible system of values. I'm out.

Again, I think her values are wrong, but I think that her take, which is our values are incompatible, is not wrong, actually. So it's definitely bizarre. Ben suggested continuing their relationship. Sarah found that disrespectful given the context of the show. She felt that she couldn't commit to marriage. Continuing to date would not be meaningful. She's not wrong. She's not wrong. Ben later stated at the reunion he regretted not having deeper conversations. Okay, well, I mean, again, his fault. Totally his fault.

So I can totally disagree with her politics and also understand that actually the way that she approached this is more correct than the way that he approached all of this. Alrighty, that's enough of that dumb news. Coming up, we'll get into the latest in Ukraine. And very, very hot topic. The Trump administration is making some moves that

Frankly, I'm skeptical that they're going to end with the kind of peace agreement that is going to be durable or lasting if this continues in this way. First, you need to become a Daily Wire subscriber. It's important because we are fighting the fight. Now, there is such a thing as rationality and such a thing as decency. And there are increasingly a few people who actually fight for those things. We try to do that here at Daily Wire.

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