Shownotes Transcript
Well, folks, Democrats have what seems to be a somewhat target-rich environment, and they are blowing it yet again. First, you should know, The Daily Wire, you need to be here because it's just news-breaking all the time, and here is where you are going to get the facts straight. You're going to get a conservative perspective.
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that the Democrats are this bad at this. It's just almost unbelievable how terrible Democrats are in this political moment. So let's say that you're a Democrat and you are given a story where the Trump administration, its own DOJ had admitted to making a mistake by deporting a man who had a withholding order on him that he shouldn't be deported to that place.
And the administration looks like they just sort of ignored the withholding order. And then they were told by a court that they needed to facilitate this person's return. And then they didn't do much to facilitate the return. And then they got slapped down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in some pretty brutal language. That'd be a big win for you, right? That's where you would jump on the due process is being denied bad wagon. If it can happen to this guy, we don't even like this guy. But if it can happen to this deportee, then it can happen to anyone. Because once due process is denied to anybody, it can be denied to everyone.
That would be the tactic that you use if you are a Democrat, unless you are these Democrats, in which case you apparently have your head so far up your own butt that you can actually spot polyps in your own colon. That is the only explanation that I have here for why Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled down to El Salvador to try and broker a meeting with Kelmar Abrego-Garcia. Kelmar Abrego-Garcia is an illegal immigrant into the United States.
He had been found to be a proper target of deportation all the way back in 2019, but there was a withholding order placed on him because he claimed that if he were returned to El Salvador, he might be killed.
The federal government suspected back in 2019 that he was in fact a member of MS-13. It turns out that in 2021, his wife filed charges against him. She filed a police report, at the very least, claiming that he had engaged in serious domestic abuse. The Trump administration then deported him despite the withholding order. But there's no doubt that this particular human being is no saint. There are a wide variety of police reports that have him being brought up on charges against
on a wide variety of topics that would lead to his deportation. There are accusations of everything ranging from human trafficking to drug trafficking to association with MS-13. In short, Kilmer Abrego Garcia is not a person who is a particularly sympathetic victim. So if you're trying to separate off the victim from the actual activity of the Trump administration, what you do is you ignore the victim and you focus in on the activity of the Trump administration. That's the smart play. The smart play is to say,
That the Trump administration is violating the law and that's a threat to the Constitution. That'd be the smart play here. And it's not as though Democrats can't do it. They can. Literally yesterday, the federal appeals panel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals released an opinion from Judge Harvey Wilkinson, who is a pretty conservative judge. This is not some sort of far left Obama appointee judge. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan. At one point, he was considered a possibility to be on the Supreme Court during the Bush administration.
Wilkinson released an order yesterday that is absolutely brutal with regard to the government's treatment of Kilmer Abrego Garcia. According to the order, quote, the government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13. Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process. If the government is confident of its position, it should be assured that position will prevail in proceedings to terminate the withholding of removal order. Moreover, the government has conceded that Abrego Garcia was wrongly or mistakenly deported. Why should it not make what was wrong right?
And then this particular panel, again, the opinion by Judge Harvey Wilkinson says the Supreme Court's decision does not allow the government to do essentially nothing. It requires the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador. Facilitation does not permit the admittedly erroneous deportation of an individual to the one country's prisons that the withholding order forbids. And further, to do so in disregard of a court order that the government not so subtly spurns.
Facilitation does not sanction the abrogation of habeas corpus through the transfer of custody to foreign detention centers in the manner attempted here. Allowing all of this would facilitate foreign detention more than it would domestic return. It would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans with diverse views and persuasions have always stood. And the order goes on from there, blasting the Trump administration, talking about how the executive branch seemed to be violating respect for the judiciary,
Quote, the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against each other in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy to which by dint of custom and detachment, we can only sparingly reply. The executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. Right. So Democrats should be jumping all over this. This would be the way to do it.
And in fact, President Trump himself knows that this is a vulnerability, which is why President Trump yesterday was asked in the Oval Office. He was doing a meeting with the Italian Prime Minister, George Maloney, and he was asked by the press about Abrego Garcia. He said, listen, I'm not any part of this Abrego Garcia imprisonment story. I really have nothing to do with it. Well, I'm not involved in it. I'm going to respond by saying you'll have to speak to the lawyers, the DOJ. I've heard many things about him and we'll have to find out
What the truth is. So the problem here is the Democrats aren't exactly focusing on that. Instead of focusing on the rule of law questions, Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland, he decided that actually the smart move would be to fly down to El Salvador and do a photo op with the suspected MS-13 member. This was the bright move. This was the thing that definitely had to happen.
So, Van Hollen shared a photo of himself with Abrego Garcia on X on Thursday. He flew to El Salvador earlier this week to seek a meeting with Abrego Garcia. He said, what I said, my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight, I had that chance. He said he would carry a message back to his wife. Nayib Bukele, who is the president of El Salvador, then tweeted out photos of the senator with Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Again, a suspected MS-13 member, but at the very least has a police record
Accusations of wife beating and all the rest. Bukele tweeted out, Kilmar Abrego Garcia miraculously risen from the death camps and torture, now sipping margaritas with Senator Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador. Well, Bukele then indicated that nothing had changed. Quote, now that he's been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador's custody. So this, of course, is a ridiculous own goal by the Democrats.
Taking pictures with the least sympathetic victims in the world rather than focusing on the rule of law questions is the biggest stupid own goal I have seen this week from the Democrats. I say this week because they're doing it all the time. And the White House immediately jumped on this. They put out a tweet.
Saying we are not the same. And it's a picture of President Trump with Patty Morin, who is the mother of Rachel Morin, a woman who's a mother of five, was raped and murdered by an illegal immigrant. It's a picture of Trump with her mother in the Oval Office treating her sympathetically. Next to a picture of Chris Van Hollen leaning forward and treating sympathetically the likely MS-13 member. Genius level stuff here from Democrats.
And it just shows you the reactivity of our politics, the reactionary nature of our politics. It is simply not possible any longer for people to hold two thoughts at the same time. That maybe Kilmer Abrego Garcia is a bad guy who shouldn't be in the United States. And also due process should be accorded and that law should be followed. Democrats can't handle that. And so they have to valorize the bad guy. They have to valorize Kilmer Abrego Garcia in order to somehow tar President Trump as the bad guy in this particular story. It is political malpractice of the highest order.
Republicans are, of course, going to seize on this. Now, again, the proper solution to this from a legal perspective is likely that if the United States could, if one senator could go down to El Salvador and basically pressure Bukele into allowing an MS-13 suspect to have lunch with the senator at a restaurant, it seems to me that probably the administration can do more to facilitate the release of Abrego Garcia so he can return, get his day in court and then be deported again.
That is with no sympathy for Camargo Garcia, who should not be in our country. Clearly, the fact that Democrats cannot square that circle, the fact that they cannot and apparently have no capacity to simply put aside sympathy for some of the worst people in the world is a pretty amazing fail, like a giant fail. Truly incredible stuff there from the Democrats. And again, they're in an environment where they should be making hay while the sun shines with regards to the Trump administration, because there are a bunch of issues where the Trump administration is particularly vulnerable.
One of those issues obviously remains with regard to the economy. Democrats, you know, I'm not sure exactly what they are doing, but then again, I rarely know what Democrats are doing because they love big government and I dislike big government. But you know what else? I hate big cell phone bills. Peartalk, the cell phone company I use for business every day, is finally challenging the wireless industry and their overpriced cell phone bills. That is correct. Peartalk says, I don't think so, to $100 a month cell phone plans. That's just wasteful. It's irresponsible. Instead, they're offering America's most dependable 5G network at America's most sensible prices.
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Identity theft protection, because your financial identity deserves nothing less. Join now, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK, use promo code Ben, or go to lifelock.com slash Ben for 40% off. Terms apply. So thanks to the tariff war, particularly, the economy is in fact slowing. According to the New York Fed President John Williams, on Fox Business, they are expecting significant economic slowing this year over last year.
I definitely have a view that growth this year is going to be significantly slower than last year, probably somewhat below 1% GDP growth for the year. And unemployment will come up to about 4.5% to 5%. So there's a slower economic outlook. That's not a recession.
OK, so slower economic outlook. It may not be a recession, but it's not going to be great. And that, of course, would be a positive view of the economy. Meanwhile, according to The Wall Street Journal, one of Wall Street's most consistent profit engines is close to breaking down. Even before President Trump's tariff chaos, buyout firms have been struggling to sell their portfolio companies and return money to anxious investors. Now, recession fears and market turmoil have brought dealmaking to a near standstill.
Shares of Apollo Global Management, Blackstone, KKR, and other private equity fund managers are down 20% or more this year, far worse than the S&P 500's sharp losses. The longer that deal logjam lasts, the harder it will be for firms to hand money back to clients like pensions and endowments. So basically, private equity funds are getting absolutely hammered by the uncertainty in the markets.
And right now, the only reason that the markets seem to be sort of roiling but not significantly dropping at this point, the real reason for that is because of uncertainty about what President Trump is going to do next.
The uncertainty inside the Trump administration's economic agenda means that there's still great hope on Wall Street that President Trump is going to drop the China tariffs. He's going to blow giant holes through them, for example, that a bunch of trade deals are going to come down the pike. And President Trump is feeding those hopes. Yesterday, for example, he said that we are going to make a great deal with China. Now, are there any ongoing conversations between the United States and China about the tariffs? What does a great deal look like?
What exactly would China do to assure us that they're not going to steal $600 billion of RIP every single year and spread their tentacles throughout Southeast Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East? Here's President Trump saying that a great deal is coming. We're going to make a deal. We'll have a deal. I think we have a I think we're going to make a very good deal with China. I think I think that you will see we'll make a very good deal with China.
Okay, so the markets, because President Trump is saying this sort of stuff, they're sort of waiting and hoping. There's a lot of hope in the markets these days. The same thing is true with regard to the EU. So President Trump was asked yesterday about making a deal with the European Union and European countries with regard to tariffs. "The United States was ripped off and taken advantage of by every country in the world, practically. I mean, I have to say practically, but just about everyone. That's not going to happen anymore, but we're going to make fair deals."
Okay, so what do those fair deals look like? Nobody really knows at this point. And the pain is going to start to be felt fairly quickly. I'm talking to manufacturers in the United States, distributors in the United States. The tariff cost is quite real, and it's particularly real for businesses that are at the margin. Giant businesses might be able to shift their shipping facilities and their manufacturing facilities to other countries that aren't getting hammered with the China tariffs. But small guys are not going to be able to do that same sort of thing.
So Tim Cook can broker a deal with the White House to get Apple out of the tariff storm. This is the problem with tariff regimes, that very often the way to avoid the real downside cost of the tariff regimes is the biggest companies pay their lobbyists to go into Washington, D.C. and exempt them from the exact regime that's supposed to punish the Chinese. The reality is if you actually want to punish the Chinese, then you do have to hit Apple because Apple manufactures an enormous amount of product over in China.
But Cook was able to broker a sort of detente with the Trump administration, according to The Washington Post. Cook spoke to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week about the potential impact of the tariffs on iPhone prices. Cook spoke to other senior officials in the White House as well.
He refrained from publicly criticizing the president or his policies on national TV, as many other executives have over the past several weeks. And by the end of the week, the Trump administration agreed to exempt from import duties electronic products Apple produces in China that also granted reprieve to other firms like HP and Dell. Trump did so despite the recommendations of senior White House aide Peter Navarro, who wanted all of those tariffs to remain in place. And so Apple stock was sort of held up by all of that.
The problem is that these tariffs are going to bite. So you either have to be willing to take the pain or you have to be willing to blow giant holes in it. There really is no third choice. China, for its part, by the way, continues to take a very strong stance against the United States. President Xi Jinping, dictator of China, he has spent the last week visiting various countries in Southeast Asia in an attempt to draw them closer to him.
One of the things that President Trump would have to do if he wished to actually win a trade war with China is not just cut China off from U.S. markets, but get other countries to make common cause with the United States in cutting China off from their markets. You actually have to isolate China. Otherwise, if you have countries that are triangulating with China, well, then China is hurt and the United States is hurt, but neither is sort of crippled in a serious enough fashion to stop Chinese growth and Chinese ambition. So Xi has now visited Vietnam, visited Malaysia,
visiting Cambodia, and all of these are also manufacturing hubs and distribution hubs. So what you easily could have is a situation which China draws closer to these countries, manufactures, sends to Vietnam, Vietnam slaps a Vietnam label on it, comes to the United States anyway, and thus sanctions are avoided. This has always been a very real problem with international trade schemes and tariffs placed on one country. How do you stop that sort of stuff from happening, especially because China is willing to cheat on all of these sorts of matters?
So what would we actually need to do to reshore? Well, the answer is we would need time and we need to do it gradually. And most of all, what we'd really need to do is get rid of the regulatory schemes in the United States that make it difficult for people to build in the United States. Now, all this talk about tariffs, how other countries have treated us unfairly, we have treated ourselves unfairly. We have treated our own manufacturers unfairly. We've made it very difficult for people to do business in the manufacturing sector in the United States. Good Peace in the Wall Street Journal today by Sham Sankar and Julia Diamond.
Sham Sankar, of course, has been a guest on this program. He's chief technology officer of Palantir Technologies. Diamond is a partner at Allen & Company. And they point out that nearly half of generic active pharmaceutical ingredients consumed in the United States originate in China.
In the past decade, the number of U.S. factories producing active pharmaceutical ingredients has fallen by more than 60%, largely because of state-subsidized foreign competition in China, which means America relies on drugstores primarily or even exclusively from overseas. More than 90% of antibiotics and antivirals have no U.S. producers. Nearly half of all generic active pharmaceutical ingredients consumed in the United States originate in China. More than 100 are only sourced in China. So what exactly should be done?
According to Sankar and Diamond, the government can build incentive structures that make it financially attractive and fast to make pharmaceuticals in America. No single incentive, tariffs included, is powerful enough on its own to onshore production. Instead, policymakers have to use a lot of tools to stimulate greater investment in U.S. production. There's plenty they could do. Most of it has to do with tax benefits as well as deregulation. Serious investment paired with technology and policy can catalyze a health reformation, they say. But that sort of stuff takes time. The problem is there ain't no time.
Meanwhile, the polling shows that while Americans are very hard on China, as they should be, and believe that China has screwed the United States on trade, as they have, most Americans also understand that if these tariffs go forward, as they are currently constructed, Americans are going to get absolutely hammered in terms of their ability to buy in terms of their own businesses. Brand new poll out from Pew Research Center, and what they find is that in total, the
A significant majority of Americans or plurality of Americans rather believe that China mostly benefits from trade with the United States. There's some 25% who believe that both benefit. Bottom line is that even Democrats are split on that particular question where Americans are not split on whether the tariffs will have a bad effect or a good effect on them. According to this poll, 52% of Americans believe that the tariffs will have a bad effect on the United States.
53% believe that they will have a bad effect on them personally. Only 24% say that the tariffs will have a good effect on the United States. Only 10% believe the tariffs will have a positive effect for them personally. Those are not the kind of numbers that you need to sustain a trade war that has not been properly explained.
If you're going to say that there is no cost, then you have to demonstrate how the cost will not materialize. If you are saying that there is cost, you have to explain what the cost is likely to be to get people to buy into this sort of stuff. Instead, the Trump administration is now focusing on Jerome Powell as though Jerome Powell can bail the Trump administration out of its tariff policy by essentially inflating the currency through lower interest rates.
So yesterday, President Trump threatened Jerome Powell again. Now, Jerome Powell got it totally wrong during the Biden administration. Why? Because he thought that inflation would be transitory. And so he failed to raise the interest rates until it was too late. And by the time he raised the interest rates, inflation was a permanent feature of the American financial landscape. President Trump is basically asking him to do that again. He's basically asking him to lower interest rates in the face of inflationary tariff regimes.
that are weakening the American dollar and making it more likely that Americans have to pay more for the goods and services they consume. So here's President Trump basically trying to get Jerome Powell to bail him out here. Oh, he'll leave. If I ask him to, he'll be out of there. But I don't think he's doing the job. He's too late, always too late, a little slow, and I'm not happy with him. I let him know it, and...
Oh, if I want him out, he'll be out of there real fast. Believe me. Okay, so those sorts of threats are not going to make the market sanguine because what it sounds like there is, forget about Powell. What it sounds like is that President Trump does not want to move off of his tariff stance, which is in fact inflationary, and that he actually wants to sort of backfill that by firing the chair of the Federal Reserve and putting in somebody friendlier to his agenda.
who will lower the interest rates despite the fact that inflation is actually likely going to move the wrong way in the aftermath of the supply chain disruptions that are going to occur because of these tariff regimes. Apparently, President Trump has been thinking about firing Jerome Powell for some time, according to the Wall Street Journal. President Trump has for months privately discussed firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, but he hasn't made a final decision about whether to try to oust him before his term ends next year. Apparently, Trump has spoken with Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor, about potentially firing Powell before that term ends.
and possibly selecting Warsh to be his replacement. Warsh himself says, no, don't do that. He says he should let the Fed chair complete his term without interference.
Especially because if you want to really roil the markets and freak them out, fire Jerome Powell and then substitute somebody else who's just going to, quote unquote, do the bidding of the Trump administration. Make monetary policy subject to the whims of Peter Navarro and the Trump trade team. You want to freak the markets out? That is one amazing way to do that. President Trump accuses Jerome Powell of playing politics.
The only thing that's gone up actually is interest rates because we have a Federal Reserve chairman that is playing politics, somebody that I've never been very fond of actually. But he's playing politics. Interest rates should be down now. They should be coming down. In Europe, as you know, they reduced them I guess seven times. It looks like they're going to reduce them again and again and again. But our guy wants to play cute.
Well, I mean, one of the reasons also that the Europeans are doing that is because they wish to, for example, expend much more money on things like Ukraine, whereas we are not doing that sort of stuff. Scott Besant, who, again, is the voice of reason inside the administration on these issues, apparently has been repeatedly cautioning the White House not to attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. He said that would risk destabilizing financial markets, which, of course, is absolutely true. That, of course, is true. So, by the way, could Trump even fire Jerome Powell?
I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, which is, by the way, the best AI search service just is, does the president have the power to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve? And here's what they say. The president does not have the unilateral power to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve simply because of the policy disagreements or dissatisfaction with monetary decisions. The Federal Reserve Act specifies that members of the Fed's Board of Governors, including the chair, can only be removed for cause.
This phrase has consistently been interpreted to mean reasons such as misconduct, neglect of duty, or malfeasance, not for differences over policy or performance. In 1935, the Supreme Court set a key precedent ruling that members of independent regulatory commissions like the Federal Reserve can't be dismissed by the president at will, but only for cause. However, it'll be interesting to see. The Supreme Court is considering a lot of cases right now about the president's power to fire people at independent agencies. However, can Congress be overruled in this fashion?
Unlikely, unlikely. So it'll be fascinating to see how that plays out in the courts. In the markets, it will not play out well at all. Meanwhile, the instability globally is not relegated to the financial markets. It is also true in terms of foreign policy. So the Ukrainians seem to be doing their best at this point to try and give President Trump what he wants. So there was a lot of talk a few weeks ago about Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, visiting the United States and signing a rare earth mineral deal. You remember, that's why he was there in late February. And then it turned into this
face-off between President Trump, J.D. Vance, and Zelensky in the Oval that got really ugly, and Zelensky ended up being ejected from the White House, and all the rest. You remember all of that. That was all originally over this rare earth minerals deal. And right now, the United States is desperate for a new supply of rare earth minerals because China is cutting off the supply. It's one of the main spigots that China has to control the United States economy and harm the U.S. economy.
Well, yesterday, President Trump announced that, in fact, the rare earth minerals deal was back on the table, that Ukraine would be signing it sometime next week. Here he was in the Oval. Well, we have a minerals deal, which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday, Scott, next Thursday soon. And I assume they're going to live up to the deal. So we'll see. But we have a deal on that. Now, that's that's great. The only way the benefits of that deal materialize
is if Ukraine survives. A deal with a country that no longer exists because Russia has walked all the way through it is not a deal at all. And it ain't going to be no drilling for rare earth minerals in a war zone. That's just not something that's going to happen. And so the precondition to the United States seeing the benefit of the bargain would be some sort of peace or at least a ceasefire brokered between Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. The problem, of course, is that Vladimir Putin has shown zero willingness to this point to come to the table. This is just the fact.
Vladimir Putin is lying when he says that he wants peace or that he wants a ceasefire. There has been literally zero evidence that this is the case. And I understand that Steve Witkoff, the supposedly amazing negotiator, is brokering something in Ukraine. I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that Steve Witkoff can negotiate his way on foreign policy out of a paper bag. Seriously, what is he doing?
It's got to be humiliating to the White House. President Trump came into office saying that within 24 hours, he was going to broker a peace treaty or some sort of ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. And no one believed that that was a literal thing, but they thought that it was achievable fairly quickly, especially because President Trump himself had laid out how he was going to do it in broad strokes. And the answer was going to be get the Ukrainians to the table by saying that our support does not last forever. We're not going to do this interminably.
And at the same time, go to the Russians and say, listen, you guys should come to the table because if you don't come to the table, we're going to clock into next week. That is the way you actually get both sides. And you have to provide incentives for both sides to get to the table. You can't just incentivize one side to come to the table and hope for the
The beneficence of Vladimir Putin, who is in fact a brutal dictator who throws people off the third story of buildings like you can't do that and then somehow assume that Vladimir, what would Putin's interest be in coming to the table, seeing the aid from the United States to Ukraine going away, regardless of whether he comes to the table? He may as well just stick it out.
Well, meanwhile, conflict is still continuing around the world. Israel is still under attack. Missile fire has resumed on multiple fronts, Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, all enemies openly seeking Israel's destruction. Well, here in the United States, we don't really imagine what it would be like living under the constant threat of terrorism and rocket attacks day after day, but that is the harsh reality in Israel today. Parents taking their children to school, suddenly having to fall to the ground and lie on top of their small kids, desperately trying to comfort them as sirens blare throughout neighborhoods. The horrific events of October 7th
made painfully clear the next attack against Israel is not theoretical. It is happening right now. We may have precious little time to prepare for what comes next. We must act now before it's too late. That's precisely why I partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to help provide immediate life-saving aid and essential security measures. Your urgently needed gift today will directly help provide critical security essentials that save lives.
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President Trump was asked about reports that China was sending weaponry to Russia, which clearly is happening. China, of course, is backing Russia in this war. China has basically made Russia its oil supplier and proxy state in this war in Ukraine. The same thing is true with regard to North Korea, which has been sending actual honest to God soldiers to Russia to fight in Ukraine. The same thing is true of Iran, which has been sending drone technology to Russia to fight in Ukraine. And all the bad guys are unified on this one. It's the good guys, the people on the other side of the aisle who can't figure it out.
In any case, President Trump was asked about China sending weaponry to Russia and he basically pooh-poohed it. He basically said, well, we don't know that it's happening. - President Zelenskyy has said he has evidence that China is supplying weaponry or ammunition to Russia. Do you have any evidence on those lines? And also he said we could see a minerals deal signed this week. Is that- - Well, we have a minerals deal, which I guess is gonna be signed on Thursday, Scott, next Thursday. - Soon.
And I assume they're going to live up to the deal. So we'll see. But we have a deal on that. No, I have no comment on that. I have no idea. That's his statement, not mine. OK, so again, the sort of
The sort of downplaying of Russian activity, that problem continued at the U.N., where the United States voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution on cooperation with the Council of Europe, not because the United States doesn't want to cooperate with the Council of Europe, but because it included language condemning Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Jonathan Schreier, the acting U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, said, quote, the current resolution repeats statements as to the Russia-Ukraine war that the United States considers unhelpful in advancing the cause of peace.
So what exactly did the resolution say that was so objectionable? Quote, recognizing also that the unprecedented challenges now facing Europe following the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and against Georgia prior to that, and the cessation of the membership of the Russian Federation in the Council of Europe calls for a strengthened cooperation between the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Right. That is the that is the chief thing that is being objected to.
is that it blames Russia for invading surrounding nations, which Russia has repeatedly done for a couple of decades here, and mentions multiple times the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Okay, so I have a question. Has that softer approach to Russia been met with a softer approach by Vladimir Putin, or is he pushing where he believes there is mush? Well, the answer, pretty obviously, is the latter, which led to a breakdown in negotiations yesterday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was attempting to broker some sort of rapprochement
between Russia and Ukraine. He said yesterday that if there is no peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in the short term, then the United States will walk away from the table, which again, Russia's like, okay, don't threaten Russia with a good time. The whole idea here of the United States playing quote unquote honest broker is that it is going to hold both sides to account. If the United States walks away, Russia's going to really feel its oats. Russia's going to believe that the United States is not only cutting off aid, they're cutting off diplomatic pressure on Russia.
Like, where's the threat here? Here's the Secretary of State yesterday. I think it's important to remind everybody that the Ukraine war is a terrible thing, but it's not our war. We didn't start it. The United States has been helping Ukraine over the last three years, and we want it to end.
But it's not our war. I want everyone to understand that. And the reason why I make that point is the president has spent 87 days at the highest level of his government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end. We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not, which is why we're engaging both sides.
OK, well, if it's not possible and we walk away, that is, in fact, enabling the Russians. I should be clear about that. If the United States walks totally away from both negotiations and any sort of military support for Ukraine, which side does that help?
We're not helping the Russians. So who, like, we're not sending the military aid. We're not, like, what exactly is the threat to get the Russians to the table? Peace through strength requires the credible threat of use of economic force, military force, or any other sort of diplomatic action. If you just walk away, who does that benefit? Russia's sitting there going, this is great. Like,
Like we're just, we've been intransigent. And then the threat from the United States is, well, if you don't, if you don't make a deal, if you, Russia, if you won't make a deal, then we are walking away from the deal making table. Russia doesn't want to make a deal. What do they care? That makes them happier than anything. And the Europeans aren't going to step into the breach. I mean, you can't trust the Europeans to do anything right. So listen, maybe the Europeans do. Maybe that's the, maybe that's the end product here is that the United States walks away and the Europeans have to step up and maybe they should, maybe they should.
But if that's the case, we should just recognize this war is going to last a much longer time. If the goal is to get to the end of the war, if that's the actual goal, less killing, end of the war, if you want the rare earth minerals deal to actually materialize into, you know, rare earth minerals, then what you would want is the United States applying our unique capacity in the world to get Russia to the table. That's what you would want. And I'm waiting to see the incredible results
diplomatic leisure domain of Steve Woodcoff and team in this particular area because I have yet to see it. Meanwhile, our White House correspondent, Mary Margaret Olihan, had an opportunity to actually go visit the unveiling of the RFK files with Tulsi Gabbard, the DNI. Here's what that looked like.
Wow.
These are files that have been in boxes, in storage, never scanned before, never reviewed by the public before. And thanks to President Trump's leadership and his executive order, we have had well over 100 people going page by page, scanning them in, all to lead us to this day where the 10,000 pages that have been sitting here are now going to be available online at archives.gov slash archives.
You mentioned that you spoke with RFK Jr. about the release of these files. Is he aware of the developments with these and has interest in looking into these questions as well? His words were, you have to get it all out there. We got to also go into the vault here at the National Archives and see artifacts that many people don't get the opportunity to see related to the death of JFK and also of RFK. So a really fascinating day, and we're excited to share this interview with you.
Joining us on the line to discuss is Mary Margaret Olihan. Welcome to the show. How was that experience? What was that like? Well, good morning, Ben. It was very, very cool. I was not expecting this at all. You know, during Easter week, I was thinking we were winding down, getting ready to go home and see my family. And then I got a call. The director of national intelligence was open to doing an interview with us with the Daily Wire in the National Archives about the release of the RFK files, which no other reporters had seen yet.
And so what an honor to be in there with her and to thumb through these files with her and to look at them, to see these photographs and to hear about what she has found already from these files. She told us that there were no smoking gun in there, but there are some things that are going to leave people wondering whether we have an accurate understanding of that assassination as it has been told to us. So this is huge. The files are now live.
on the National Archives. And we released our videos and our story this morning. And it's just a very, very cool thing to be a part of and to get to see these files myself. And some of these artifacts that are in the National Archives was just so cool. So what were some of the artifacts that you saw in the National Archives? And also, why are those not public at this point?
That's a great question, Ben. And actually, as we were walking through the National Archives, Director Gabbard said that to one of the staff that was walking with us. His name is Jim. And she said, why are these artifacts not open to the public? And he said, I don't really know. That's a good question.
And right then and there, she said, why don't we open it up to the public? And I kind of laughed and said, oh, is this how it works? And she said, yes, that's how this administration works. They move really quickly and they're all about transparency. So some of these artifacts that we saw included the shirt
that Lee Harvey Oswald was wearing when he was shot and killed. That shirt has a bullet hole in it. You can see where the bullet entered the shirt and ultimately killed him. But we also saw some really, really, I would say, unique and exclusive items that are
buried down in the National Archives there, such as some of the bullet casings related to the RFK or the JFK assassinations. We saw the camera that was used to record the JFK assassination. And actually, Ben, I got to hold it. So this was just I'm a little bit of a history nerd. I was nerding out and trying to be professional in this interview. And I told her she was laughing. I said, I'm trying to be a really good reporter here, but I'm so excited that this is all happening.
And I got to see some of these files laying out on the table. I also saw a whole stack of boxes that said MLK files. So I have a feeling that those are about to emerge very soon as well.
So obviously, that's that's huge news. We're going to go through all of that. I'm sure the Internet will tear all of this apart. And, you know, the director of national intelligence has said it'll ask more questions than it will answer, which, of course, you know, these questions are likely to remain unanswered for people who don't feel the answers are sufficient for the rest of time. Meanwhile, the vice president of the United States is heading over to the Vatican this weekend. That was also another story that you were working on.
Yes. So Vice President J.D. Vance is headed to the Vatican today. Actually, I believe he's there. They're a little behind us time wise, but he'll be attending a Good Friday service at St. Peter's Basilica, this beautiful historic basilica in Rome.
And his family will be there throughout the Holy Week weekend into Easter Sunday, I believe. And then they'll be heading to India, I was told, for some meetings that they'll engage in with officials out there before they travel back to the United States. So a jam-packed week. We also know that the Italian prime minister was at the White House yesterday. And I was just reading some of the pool reports from my colleague,
White House reporters who said that when J.D. Vance arrived to meet with Giorgio Melani in Italy today, she said to him, I missed you because she hadn't seen him for about, Seth, maybe 24 hours. So that's a cute little back and forth between them in Italy only this morning. So I'm excited to see how these visits go. And, you know, I'm a Catholic and I'm interested to see and
to watch the vice president's visit in Italy and in Rome as he gets to partake in some of these really special ceremonies, because, you know, this is for many Catholics, that's a dream to be able to attend these these services and masses in Italy, in Rome itself. That's our senior White House reporter, Mary Margaret Olihan. Mary Margaret, hope you have a wonderful Easter weekend and get some rest.
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Meanwhile, the president of the United States made a very strong stand yesterday with regard to the Second Amendment. So there's this horrible shooting that happened at Florida State University. The gunman has been identified. I don't do the names of mass shooters because it gives additional credibility to mass shooters who are interested in notoriety. But this person was the son of a sheriff's deputy who apparently had access to one of her weapons. Again, this appears to be somebody who snapped.
was mentally ill, not a shock. A spokesperson with the Tallahassee Memorial Hospital confirmed to CNN a local hospital received multiple patients with gunshot wounds. At least six patients were transported to the hospital with those gunshot wounds, one in critical condition, others in serious condition as well. CNN did what it usually does. They spoke with somebody who was sheltering at the time, one of the students was on campus, who immediately called for gun control.
Yeah, no, it's no situation that anyone should be dealing with, no matter what. I mean, it's just, that's just, you shouldn't have to think about that when you're going to school trying to get your degree. Because I'm graduating in two weeks. And it's just, I mean, in general, it should not happen to anyone, no matter what. So that's the main takeaway is that, you know, you go to school to get your degree, make friends, make memories. You're not supposed to go to school to experience stuff like this.
Well, obviously, this would normally turn into a giant series of claims by Democrats about how they need gun control. That has been a loser for them for well over a decade at this point. Democrats claiming after every mass shooting that this requires some sort of, quote unquote, assault weapons ban. President Trump was having none of it. Well, he said that what happened was absolutely horrible and he was horrified by it. He said, you know, I'm the president of the United States and I do have to protect the Second Amendment. Well, I'm going to have to look. I'm a big advocate of the Second Amendment. I have been from the beginning. I protected it.
And these things are terrible. But the gun doesn't do the shooting. The people do. It's, you know, a phrase that's used probably too often. So, again, one of the things that President Trump is great for, honestly, is preventing the excesses of the left. It's something that President Trump has two jobs. One is to push the ball forward on a wide variety of measures that conservatives want and that Americans want. The other is to stop the excesses of the left. And normally, Democrats would use this, again,
as a leaping off point for a call for gigantic large-scale arms seizures or for bans on the sale of arms or all the rest. The fact that's not even a discussion is definitely one of the benefits of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is still trying to figure out exactly what it wants to do about Iran.
And Steve Witkoff is leading many of the negotiations with regard to Ukraine, with regard to Iran. There are supposed to be these indirect negotiations happening between the United States and Iran. Iran obviously attempting to slow walk things, open up its economy. What they're trying to do is get the Trump administration to re-embrace a deal that President Trump called the worst deal of all time when he ran for office the first time, which was, of course, the Iran nuclear weapons deal cut by the Obama administration. He literally called that the worst deal. And the Iranians want it back.
Whether Steve Witkoff is willing to stand up to them is another question we'll find out. The administration continues to maintain that it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. The bright red line is that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. That is unacceptable. That's been President Trump's statement from the start. Now,
One could ask if you need enriched uranium at 60 percent for a peaceful program. I I'm I'm not in those negotiations. I don't know what questions will be asked, but that is the bright red line. So what happens in those negotiations and what exactly does that mean for practical negotiations? Because, again,
The bright red line only gets crossed, you know, them getting nuclear weapons once they announce they have a nuclear weapon. And so the question is how you forestall that in the first place. There's a big New York Times article that we talked about yesterday on the show suggesting that Israel had considered a strike and that the United States had said it would not participate in that strike thanks to the intervention of figures in the administration ranging from J.D. Vance to Witkoff. In any case, President Trump was asked about that story yesterday. He said, I didn't wave off the attack. We just have to see how things play out.
I wouldn't say waved off. I'm not in a rush to do it because I think that Iran has a chance to have a great country and to live happily without death. And I'd like to see that. That's my first option. If there's a second option, I think it would be very bad for Iran. And I think Iran is wanting to talk.
So that's President Trump making clear that all options are on the table. As far as whether Iran wants to talk, again, we keep hearing this, that China wants to talk about trade or Iran wants to talk about nuclear weapons or Russia wants to talk about peace. When that stuff starts to materialize, I'll get excited. Until that point, I'm going to assume the worst from geopolitical enemies of the United States, Russia, Iran, and China. That seems like
the intelligent way of dealing with their jabber? Are they willing to actually put skin in the game? If the answer is no, then options become significantly more limited.
Alrighty, meanwhile, on the cultural front, I've been aware, it's a Friday. That means it's time to talk some culture. And I've been made aware of an artist who calls herself Horse Girl. Now, as with all types, oh my God, as with all types of this sort of nonsense, Horse Girl is not spelled like horse girl. It's spelled horse, G-I-I-R, large L, don't know why. This person is also known as Stella Stallion, embodying, that's the character,
Half horse, half human. Not like a centaur. Not like one half is a horse and one half is a human. Like Island of Dr. Moreau kind of stuff. Like muzzle, ears, heart-shaped spot on the face. Horse girl keeps her real identity secret. She calls herself a simple human horse as opposed to a complex human horse.
Horse Girl first entered the spotlight. Why is this relevant? Because this person performed at Coachella and is apparently a thing now. Horse Girl first entered the spotlight in 2022 with the hit song, My Barn, My Rules, which I got to admit is kind of hilarious. Long may big hooves, shiny coats, white ears, so cute, nice hair, good mood. Good mood. Good mood. Good mood. Good mood. Good mood.
So this is creepy and horrifying. Apparently the lyrics to this are long mane, big hoof, shiny coat. What's new? Small ears. So cute. Nice tail. Good mood. I walk. I trot. I lope. I gallop. I want to run till sundown. My barn, my rules, my toys, my tools. Okay. So yeah, it's basically Cole Porter, you know, like very solid stuff right there. Her debut album was called Very Important Pony.
And the original big song on it was called Material Horse, which I guess is a takeoff on Material Girl, like from Madonna, I suppose. This person has 560,000 monthly Spotify listeners. So apparently her musical inspirations include Crazy Frog, Hampton the Hamster, Schnuffle the Bunny, and Whale Composers. I have no idea what any of that means. And thanks to producer Jess for compiling this nightmare. She has performed at many major festivals.
including Coachella Weekend One. Here's her song, Eat, Sleep, Slay. Why? When does the asteroid come? Eat, sleep, slay, repeat. I said eat, sleep, slay, repeat, eat, sleep.
Okay, so it's a lady dressed up as a horse. Cool. Cool, cool. Everything is fine in Western civilization. Things are going really, really well. Probably we should take notes from the Gen Zers. They seem well. They seem very well. She credits her musical passion, if you can call that music, to her upbringing and claims to have been discovered by Whitney Horsten, which is really funny, actually. Quote, I got into it more professionally after we did an annual Harvest Feast Festival and I was discovered by a really, really famous horse, also a singer, Whitney Horsten. I don't...
Is that person really famous? Whitney Hoare. Had you ever heard of that until this moment? Ever since then, I've been galloping around stages. And three years ago, I made the crossover into the human music space a bit little more. It's been very fun. Apparently on tour, she requests kombucha, fresh veggies, dried fruits and nuts, but avoids hay. Quote, the thing with hay is it's a very unhealthy snack. I love hay, but it's like sugar. Same thing. When I'm touring to just have the energy levels, I tend to try and just be a little more on the healthy food side. The hay can come after the tour.
And she is apparently concerned about ketamine shortages affecting those who need it medically, including horses. So she says that because the humans are using the ketamine, the horses don't have the ketamine. Well, I feel like nothing would be lost to human society if Coachella went away. That's sort of my short take there. I have no more on horse girl. And there's not much more I can say on this other than
The sort of lack of spiritual humanity in all of this is quite evident. When human beings want to be animals, that is never a good sign for a civilization. Being human means to actually leave behind the aspects that make you an animal in many ways. And to be a civilized human being is to leave behind the idea that you ought to be like the horses.
Obviously, humans are animals, but we are also insold animals with moral values and duties in the world. And the more we embrace this idea that actually humans and horses the same, the worse it is for humans. Very, very bad. Okay, in other news, other cultural news, apparently a new movie has been announced, a new Star Wars film.
It's directed by Sean Levy, and it comes off the Rise of Skywalker and that entire series, which the Force Awakens series, which was not good. Ryan Gosling is going to be starring in it. It's called Star Wars Starfighter, which, you know, I'm interested. I will admit that sounds interesting to me.
Just a straight story of an X-Wing fighter, for example. But you have to figure out exactly what the universe looks like post Rise of Skywalker. This has always been the problem in the Star Wars universe, that you know what things look like from basically the end of the Republic to the death of the Empire. And that whole world is really interesting. But post the death of the Empire and the New Republic, they've really never known quite where to go with that. The Mandalorian kind of exists in that world a little bit.
But we actually know Mandalorian is before that. So this is so there's actually not much that exists in the world after that. That's interesting because they don't know what that world looks like. As far as Sean Levy, his films, he was a producer on Arrival, which is a good film. He's an executive producer on Stranger Things. He was also a collaborator with Ryan Reynolds by directing Free Guy, The Atom Project and Deadpool and Wolverine, all of which are not good. So, yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know.
Torn. It can't be. Did Kathleen Kennedy greenlight it? That's going to be my, if she greenlit it, then I'm skeptical. If she did not greenlight it, then I'm optimistic. Alrighty, folks, coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. But remember, you have to be a member to actually ask questions and to watch. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapira. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.