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Speaker 5When Dolly Parton died, the entire country went into mourning. Left and right, pretty much everybody. And there's a reason for that. Dolly Parton coded country. She coded Christian. She coded optimism. She coded entertainment. She did not. She did not code political. And she refused to engage in that way. And this made her perhaps the most popular figure in America. We are never going to get another Dolly Parton because Hollywood will not allow it. And Jelly Roll just proved it. We get to Jelly Roll swiveling hard to the left. Zoran Mamdani lamenting the death of a murderer. And new data showing that trans violence, unbelievably, comes from trans ideology. This is The Ben Shapiro Show. All right, so Jimmy Kimmel has taken a couple of weeks off and his substitute hosts are somehow even worse than Jimmy Kimmel. I did not know that that was possible, but apparently it is. First, there was Rosie O'Donnell, who returned from Ireland to wear hideous outfits and sing about the president's penis. And then Jelly Roll showed up. And Jelly Roll, you know him as the country singer who has shed a lot of pounds, like a lot of pounds, like 300 pounds or so. He showed up to host Jimmy Kimmel. And there, he decided to do the obligatory mea culpa for his prior cultural conservatism by ripping into the president of the United States. There was Jelly Roll on Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 6Well, Mr. President, from one fat pig to another, take it from me that physical fitness is very important. And trust me, you'll be happy to see your penis again.
Speaker 5I mean, I don't know who the writers are on this. It's not good. Well, then he came back and did another show. And he defended his Trump jokes while he was on Jimmy Kimmel. Jelly Roll.
Speaker 6Now, let's be honest for a second. Any U.S. president should be able to handle a few jokes, right? They should also be able to handle gas prices, health care, and the occasional international conflict. Look, y'all, I get it that some people are mad at me for goofing on Trump. But if you wanted me to make jokes about Kamala Harris, you should have voted for her.
Speaker 5Okay, so, what is Jelly Roll doing here? What is he doing? The answer is that in Hollywood, you no longer can just be Johnny Carson, where you make jokes about all the different sides. And you can no longer be Dolly Parton, where you make jokes about kind of neither of the sides. You just can't do that anymore. You must repeat the left-wing nostrums. There reaches a point in your career, you have to make a choice. Are you going to double down on the bass? Are you going to keep dancing with the gal that brought you? Or are you going to swivel hard? Or are you going to swivel hard into the cultural leftism and try to expand that bass? This has been happening in the music industry for probably two to three decades at this point. And it's one of the reasons why our cultural milieu has been completely fragmented. It's why there are no big stars anymore. It's why no one can open a movie. It's why there are very few crossover stars, even in the musical arena at this point. And Jelly Roll is just a great example of this. Remember, Jelly Roll didn't just code conservative. He was very openly, very openly Christian, very openly pretty conservative. His history, kind of like Dolly Parton's in the sense that he's a rags to riches story. He was born Jason Bradley to Ford in Nashville in 1984, according to Entertainment Tonight. And he ended up in jail before he even graduated high school. He was imprisoned at age 14. He welcomed his first child while he was still behind bars. And then when he got out of jail and he had had his daughter, he decided to pursue his GED. And then he tried his hand at the music business in 2003. He started out in hip hop. With his first release. And then he made a pivot to country and rock. And he ended up in the Grand Ole Opry stage in November of 2021. And then he, of course, turned into a sort of national phenomenon. But along the way, not just coding country and coding down home, he also coded very hard Christian. And so in 2026, he won the best contemporary country album. And here is his speech.
Speaker 6First of all, Jesus, I hear you. And I am listening, Lord. I am listening, Lord. Second of all, I want to thank my beautiful wife. I would have never changed my life without you. I'd have ended up dead or in jail. I'd have killed myself if it wasn't for you and Jesus. I thank you for that. That's why I wrote this album. I didn't think I had a chance, y'all. There was days that I thought the darkest things. I was a horrible human. There was a moment in my life that all I had was a Bible this big and a radio the same size and a six by eight foot cell. And I believed that those two things could change my life. I believed that music had the power to change my life. And God had the power. The power to change my life. And I want to tell y'all right now, Jesus is for everybody. Jesus is not owned by one political party.
Speaker 7Jesus is not owned by no music label. Jesus is Jesus. And anybody can have a relationship with him.
Speaker 5Okay, so again, this is how Jelly Roll coded. Right? He coded, again, very, very, very faith-based. Here was Jelly Roll preaching gospel after hearing a rendition of his song. I prayed this morning.
Speaker 6I said, God, give me an opportunity to talk about you. I said, God, I said, night one was great, but I didn't get to live in my purpose yet, God. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you.
Speaker 7You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you.
Speaker 5You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you.
Speaker 7You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you.
Speaker 5You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. You called me here to talk about you. with. All right, coming up, we'll get to some other stars who made the switch, who changed their politics in pursuit of the cash. But when we talk about your cash, here's the thing. Every day, your cash gets less valuable, thanks to the federal government, which is constantly inflating the currency. And here is something that you don't know about your retirement money. You can actually hold certain physical gold and silver inside a self-directed IRA. This isn't the new loophole. Federal law has permitted certain precious metals in IRAs for decades. Depending on your retirement account, you may be able to move qualified IRA or 401k assets into a self-directed precious metals IRA through a properly executed rollover without triggering current taxes or early withdrawal penalties. You know, whenever you think about retirement, you're offered a bunch of different options, but you probably don't know about this one. If you want to explore that particular option, Golden Crest Metals can walk you through the entire process. They help with setting up the self-directed account, coordinating the rollover, selecting eligible metals, and arranging secure storage. A preferred custodian is in trust group with secure IRA storage available at Delaware Depository. Golden Crest is a boutique precious metals firm built around transparent pricing, liquid products, and straightforward service. And right now, my listeners can get a free investor kit, a free portfolio review with no obligation, and up to $25,000 in free silver on qualifying purchases. Text the word Ben to Metals at 63825. You can also speak to somebody. Just call 888-429-3999. Or visit goldencrestmetals.com slash Ben again. That's goldencrestmetals.com slash Ben. So Taylor Swift is the most successful example of somebody who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to someone who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to someone who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to someone who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to someone who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to someone who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to someone who went from a Dolly Parton type figure to somebody who's pretty overtly political. So you remember, for years and years and years, there was speculation on the right that Taylor Swift was secretly conservative because she started off in sort of country and the gospel area. And very early on at 22, she said, listen, people don't want to hear my politics. This sounds like something Dolly Parton would say.
Speaker 8Here she was when she was 22. I just figure I'm a 22-year-old singer. And I don't know if people really want to hear my political views. I think they just kind of want to hear me sing songs about breakups.
Speaker 9Part of the fabric of being a country artist is don't force your politics on people. Let people live their lives.
Speaker 5Okay, but then within a few years, she realized that this is not where the money was. This is not what would allow her to have crossover stardom. So she did a documentary for Netflix in which she pretty openly started pushing left-wing social values because her silence was too deafening. She needed to have that. Crossover appeal to the left. And listen, it's made her more rich. It's made her more famous, made the most powerful star on planet Earth. But that is the price of admission. The price of admission in today's day and age is you must repeat, particularly on social issues, the nostrums that the left is pushing. You must. Here is Taylor Swift back in 2020 talking about how
Speaker 10Christian values support abortion. It's really basic human rights and it's right and wrong at this point. And I can't see another commercial. And see her disguising these policies behind the words Tennessee Christian values. Those aren't Tennessee Christian values. I live in Tennessee. I am Christian. That's not what we stand for. I need to do this. I need you to just, I need you to forgive me for doing it because I'm doing it.
Speaker 5And of course, she did the same thing in 2020 when she was pushing LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign politics years late. She had a very forced, I believe that same year, a gay rights anthem that came out about 10 years after the issue was even relevant because again, she had to say the thing. It was really important for her to say the thing because the cultural left in Hollywood will only allow you to become a gigantic crossover star if you say things that the left wants you to say. Here she was in 2020.
Speaker 11I'm really, really grateful for this. This is so amazing. I want to say thank you to anyone who had a hand in deciding that I should deserve this. And mostly I want to say thank you to the fans for giving me a platform to make music and to be vocal about the things that I think are right and wrong. I just believe very firmly that everyone should be able to live out their love story without fear of discrimination. And the way for that to happen is for us to continue to keep pushing governments to put protections in place for members of the LGBTQ community. And I promise
Speaker 5to always advocate for that. Again, say the words, say the words. And again, she's not the first to do it. Katy Perry actually did this originally. She originally started singing Christian music and she was known by her birth name, which was Katie Hudson at the time. And then it turns out that she couldn't sell copies. She had a Christian album and it sold a couple hundred copies, the label closed. So she adopted the stage name Katy Perry. And then her first big hit was about experimenting with lesbianism, of course. And then she became an Obama surrogate. And now she's dating Justin Trudeau and all of that. In other words, this is not rare. This is de rigueur. What you're watching with Jelly Roll is the way that you do things. In Hollywood, you cannot even mildly code conservatives. Be overtly liberal. If you're Sidney Sweeney and you're not overtly conservative, you are just kind of apolitical. And you kind of code a little conservative because you're a pretty white girl. And because you have like a little bit of a country feel to you. And because you once registered Republican, this means that you are a target in Hollywood. If you are Chris Pratt and you're a huge star and you've never said anything remotely offensive, but you're openly Christian and you don't go to an LGBTQ party. Plus minus divided by sign progress, pride, flag, church. Then X will come after you incessantly for years on end. If you're a gal, get out. And you just happen to be Israeli and pro-Israel. You will get blacklisted in Hollywood. That's the way that it works. If you're Mark Ruffalo and pretty overtly anti-Semitic, you'll never stop working because if you are of the left, then you will never stop working. This is the way that it works in Hollywood. Now, that doesn't mean this is going to work for Jelly Roll. That is Jelly Roll makes the turn to the left. He's going to become more popular. And more famous. There's a mixed record in sort of the country arena for this. You remember that the Dixie Chicks were a huge band. And then in 2003, Natalie Maines decided to go after George W. Bush in London while she was on stage. And the Dixie Chicks basically had this huge cultural moment and then just fell off. Or Maren Morris. She had a breakout single that was literally called My Church. And then she ended up ostracized after public fights with Jason Aldean's wife over transing the kids. And then she went after Morgan Wallen. And then she came out as a bisexual. Has that been a big boon for her career? Probably not. Or Zach Bryan, who's a Navy vet and pretty red state coded, and he'd praised President Trump. And then in October 2025, he posted a snippet of bad news with anti-ice lyrics about ice busting down doors and the fading of the red, white, and blue. Unclear how that's going to materialize for him. But here's the point. Hollywood's dynamic used to be obvious. The entertainment industry was about protecting your stars. Singers, songwriters, movie stars, athletes. The goal of our entertainment industry was to create marketable stars who were separate from their politics. You did not know that much about the stars. All you knew is what you saw on screen. This is why Dolly Parton was very famous and very rich and very good at what she did. All you saw of Dolly Parton is what she wanted you to see of Dolly Parton. And this is why American stars were transferable throughout the world. This is why the most famous people on planet Earth were all American stars. You didn't know much about their politics at all. You just knew that they were stars. And that's when America was the dominant cultural force on the planet because it was cool people doing cool things. And they weren't kind of regular normies with their dumb politics. And then everything had to be weaponized. The star power had to be weaponized. The entertainment industry had to be weaponized. We had to know every view of all of our stars. And the stars just aren't stars anymore. There won't be any more Dolly Partons because the entertainment industry will not allow there to be any more Dolly Partons. You must say the words. You must. And if you refuse to say the words, then they will treat you as though you're persona non grata. So Jolly Roll made his decision. We'll see how it works out for him. Now, meanwhile, on a slightly more serious topic, Democrats continue to apparently have significantly more sympathy for criminals than they do for normal citizens. Now, to sort of explain why this is, you have to understand that hardcore leftism believes that criminality is basically a malformation of society. That criminals are not people who violate the law in their own interests. Criminals are people who are created by, terrible, evil, broken systems. Michel Foucault, the left-wing philosopher, he suggested that Western societies create criminal classes by grouping the marginalized together, right? Criminals are the ignored underclass of the evil system. A lot of Democrats believe this sort of crap. But the idea is that criminals are not people who are doing bad things to other people and deserve to go to jail. They actually are just results of the evil system. Barack Obama, I've read this, I've read this quote many, many times. And every time I read it, it's just astonishing to me that this man was ever president. For two terms. In Dreams for My Father, which is his first memoir, I believe he has three at this point. In Dreams for My Father, Barack Obama wrote, I know I have seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless, how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi, in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder, alternating as a result of the violence and it does between a dull complacency and when the disorder spills out of its prescribed confines, a steady unthinking application of force of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware is inadequate to the task. I know the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe dooms us all. Okay, so what is he actually saying there? What he's really saying is Western systems are bad. They create marginalized communities. They create terrorism. They create criminality, right? Western systems are to blame for everything. So when somebody kills their neighbor, but they hatch it and then goes to jail, they're not going to be able to to jail. That is the fault of Western capitalism and our prison industrial complex. Now, by contrast, we should note here, if the left likes a system and even people who are not criminals, as long as you oppose the system, you can take them out and shoot them. This is why the left was perfectly willing to go along with Stalin's show trials. And again, why people like Hassan Piker, who has sympathy for pretty much every terrorist and criminal in America, has no sympathy for people who are imprisoned in Cuba or in China. Because if you like the system, then the victims of the system are the bad guys. If you hate the system, then the people who are in prison are the good guys. So in the United States, you can tell who likes the criminals. Zor Mamdani, unbelievably mayor of New York, put out a statement yesterday about a Rikers Island inmate. It turns out this Rikers Island inmate, you know, there's some more information about who this guy was. He said, quote, I am deeply saddened by the death of a New Yorker in city custody at a jail on Rikers Island early this morning. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones as they grieve this loss. We do not yet know the cause of death, but we do know that too many New Yorkers have died on Rikers Island. I love when politicians do this, by the way. I love when they say we don't have enough information to explain why a thing is. But, but we will say the system is broken. James Tallarico did the same thing in the Carmelo Anthony trial. So Carmelo Anthony is pretty obviously guilty of murder. But James Tallarico is going around saying that it was a failure of the system, that Carmelo Anthony went to jail. Why? He literally stabbed a young man in the chest and killed him. But according to James Tallarico, black people are being failed simply by dint of the fact that a black criminal went to jail. And so our mom Donnie is doing the same thing. We have no actual information on the cause of death at Rikers Island, but he is saying the system failed. The Department of Correction and its oversight partners will investigate the circumstances surrounding his death. Our administration is fully committed to the critical work of creating better conditions in our city's jail system and closing Rikers Island as quickly as possible. Of course, this is the same mayor who you'll recall went and watched the World Cup at Rikers with the criminals. Now, who exactly was this inmate? Well,
Speaker 12CBC7 gave you the backstory. Just days ago, two men were stabbed inside. Now, police have arrested and charged the man responsible. Investigators collected two knives looking like meat cleavers outside the laundromat. Police say Woodward stabbed a 45-year-old Jose Miranda in the legs and back, ultimately killing him. Woodward also stabbed another man in the back, leaving him in the hospital. Now, again, I'm not sure.
Speaker 5Exactly why Zoran Mamdani is doing all of this, other than he has a peculiar sympathy for people who, you know, hate the system. The person who died is apparently named Clarence Woodward, 41, and he was arrested in August 2024 after allegedly walking into a Bronx laundromat early one morning, fatally stabbing Jose Miranda with a meat cleaver in an unprovoked attack and wounding another man named Alex Santiago, and he was charged with murder, manslaughter, and assault. An extensive prior record, including multiple stints in state prison for attempted robbery and felony assault. He had roughly two dozen earlier arrests. The cause of death at Rikers still has not been publicly determined. But again, the amount of time that people like Zoran Mamdani and members of the left spend on the supposed victims of our jail system, as opposed to, you know, the citizens who need to be protected from those people, is pretty astonishing. And it goes, once again, to the idea that our system is inherently terrible and corrupt, and therefore people who violate the system are the actual real heroes of the story. Coming up, it is not just the Democrats. It is the Democrats. It is the Democrats. It is the Democrats. The Democrats are soft on crime. They are very, very soft on illegal immigration, of course, which is why Joe Biden left the border open. But here is the thing. If you follow legacy media for years and years and years, you probably didn't even notice that stuff. Because, again, the legacy media have been getting it wrong for a very, very long time. And it turns out social media also gets it wrong. So where do you go for good information, particularly for young people? The answer is PragerU. Millions of students log on every day for five-minute videos on economics, history, faith, and freedom that teach the truth, not what CNN and others want young people to believe. Watching newscasters know bias dressed up as objectivity, just the facts presented in an age appropriate, wholesome, all-American way. But PragerU runs on people like you, not the government, not advertisers who despise you. Give today. Your donation is triple matched. You're doing something great for America. When young people learn truths, they wouldn't learn elsewhere. PragerU is doing that every single day by the millions. Go to PragerU.com slash Daily Wire. That's PragerU.com slash Daily Wire. Again, they've basically been a sister company to Daily Wire since inception. We've been very close. We used to share office space. They're awesome. They do amazing work. Go check them out right now. PragerU.com slash Daily Wire. Give today. Your donation will be triple matched. So Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, again, for some reason thinks he's going to run for president. He's out there saying that on the illegal immigration front, illegal immigration is a fake problem. It's not a real problem. There's no real problem with probably 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants in the country. There's no problem with that at all.
Speaker 13It's totally fine. It's all great. What can and should be done to solve this problem? Well, I guess you first have to identify what the problem is. The problem, according to the Trump administration, is a country that has been invaded, a country that is at risk physically because of the presence of people from other countries. That is a fake problem. That is not a real problem. Nobody likes to hear this. But immigrants, first generation immigrants and undocumented immigrants, both commit crimes at rates lower than natural born Americans, than people that are born here in this country. So if you want to live in a safe community, you are actually better off living in a community with people that just got to the United States of America. Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 5that the key there is the word average on average. But beyond that, the question is why any of the crimes committed by illegal immigrants should be taking place in the United States because they shouldn't be here. They are here illegally. Meanwhile, Abdul El-Sayed, the insane Democratic Senate candidate for Michigan, he's out there saying that ICE isn't working because we had fewer illegals when we had INS. This is nonsensical. INS was literally split between Border Patrol and ICE. That's what happened. What the hell is he talking about? Jesse, Jesse, let me answer the question.
Speaker 14To answer it, how many do we have fewer when we had INS? To your to your answer? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We now have worked a lot better. Abdul, listen, we had twice as many illegals now when we had INS. So to your argument, you have to have the manpower to do it. If you want to do that correlation, we have ICE now and we have far, far more undocumented people. So ICE is clearly not working. It's just shooting like American citizens in the face, in the back of the head. So if you're OK with that, then I guess we just have to agree to disagree.
Speaker 5OK, so pretty impressive stuff there from Abdul El-Sayed. Again, it all comes down to soft on criminality. Again, this is the same Abdul El-Sayed who I may never get over this clip. In discussing the attempted murder of Jewish schoolchildren like toddlers at a preschool in Detroit, suggested that the terrorists who attacked that school was driven by hurt, hurt people, hurt people. Right. What was that hurt? And his brother, who's a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon, was killed by the IDF. This is Abdul El-Sayed. Again, the sympathy for criminality and for terrorism on the left is quite real because that's how much they hate the system. According to people who are hardcore leftists, not kind of your traditional friends, hardcore leftists, criminals are merely victims of an evil system, marginalized and put out to pasture. Here's Abdul El-Sayed basically defending terrorism in effect.
Speaker 14You know, when it comes to Temple Israel, I was profoundly shaken. Many of my friends growing up worship the Temple Israel. Nothing justifies the heinous attack that we saw on Temple Israel. And, you know, I stand in solidarity with my Jewish sisters and brothers for an America that kind of thing never happens again. I also think it's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people. And the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here. And if we stand against violence, we've got to stand against violence, all violence.
Speaker 5Just insane, insane. This is also, by the way, why the left has decided to go easy on, for example, the very obvious phenomenon of trans political violence. That is a thing that is happening. It is very clearly happening. There are actual groups of so-called Zizians who actually organize in this way. Obviously, Charlie Kirk's assassin was a gay, trans-loving, furry man. I mean, like, this is a real thing. And as we discussed when Charlie was assassinated, there are permission structures for violence that are embedded in particular ideologies. If the idea is that you are at risk of total genocidal erasure, and therefore anything is justified in order to protect yourself, this is where you end up. Well, now there is new data pointing this out, a new report from the National Contagion Research Institute, Manhattan Institute, and Rutgers Commission by the Health and Human Services Department says that individuals who support gender-affirming clinical guidelines are significantly more likely to display left-wing authoritarian personality traits and to justify political violence, even when adjusting for general political leanings. Higher scores on gender affirmation beliefs and left-wing authoritarianism were linked to greater willingness to excuse political violence against six specific targets that includes killing Charlie Kirk, killing President Trump, and killing President Biden. President Trump, killing Brian Thompson, who is the UnitedHealthcare CEO, arson of ice buildings, damaging wealthy people's property, and violence against police. Again, left-wing violence is a very real phenomenon because it can always be justified as a rebellion against the system. And here's the thing, this sort of radicalism that exists, again, in a large swath of it, it's not every Democrat, but it is increasingly taking over the Democratic Party. Because if you keep arguing, as the DSA does, the Democratic Socialists of America, over and over, that our systems are so thoroughly corrupted, that we're not going to be able to do anything about it. that they must be torn apart, root and branch. When you argue that, you end up justifying criminality within the system because it is action, quote-unquote, against the system. Now, again, Democrats have no systemic immunity. It's mainstream Democrats. They just try to ignore all this and pretend it's not happening. Debbie Dingell, a representative from Michigan, she was out there saying that she's not going to answer any questions about Hassan Piker. Why not? What's so hard about this? I don't understand. Why can't you just say Hassan Piker is a bag of crap because he is? Why is this difficult? And the answer is, again, the Democrats want to draft off of the energy of this pretty violence-friendly movement.
Speaker 15This election is about what's going to happen when we elect Abdul to the United States Senate. I am done, so don't any reporter ask me again about Hassan Piker. It's not what November is about. The Republicans are trying to make it. They're trying to divide us. And we've got to stop letting them try to divide us.
Speaker 5They're trying to divide us? You divided you. You're the ones who are embracing pro-terrorism mascots like Hassan Piker. It's you. You guys are the ones doing it. You're the ones who nominated Abdul El-Sayed. You don't have to do it. You could not do it. But you are. Now, there's some Democrats who are not on board with this. But, again, they'll talk privately. This is a point Stephen A. Smith was making. It's the Democrats who always want to talk privately. About sort of the excesses of their party. But they never want to talk publicly about it.
Speaker 16I've invited Jasmine Crockett on the show. Crickets. I ain't hear a word. I've invited Kamala Harris on the show. Crickets. I ain't hear a word. Publicly. Privately, Kamala Harris and I already met face-to-face. Over a year ago. Two hours. Everybody brings that up. Michelle Obama has been invited on this show. Haven't heard a word.
Speaker 5Again, a lot of Democrats very, very afraid of getting caught in a position having to actually denounce members of their own supposed ideological movement. They're so shy. Glenn Ivey, for example, was on News Nation. And he was asked about what Democrats are getting wrong. And he just won't answer the question.
Speaker 17What is something your own party is getting wrong right now that you wish more Democrats were willing to admit publicly? What is something your own party is getting wrong right now that you wish more Democrats were willing to admit publicly? What is something your own party is getting wrong right now that you wish more Democrats were willing to admit publicly? What is something your own party is getting wrong right now that you wish more Democrats were willing to admit publicly? What is something your own party is getting wrong right now that you wish more Democrats were willing to admit publicly?
Speaker 18Well, I mean, I think there's there's I've got a number of concerns about what we're doing with respect to. Well, you know, I'm actually OK on that, too. I was going to talk about some of that.
Speaker 17There's a long pause here, Congressman. Nothing. Nothing gives you any sort of like I mean, you talk to these members privately and what they say. And this is both sides of the aisle. What they often say in front of the camera is a lot different than what they say behind the camera. So. So what gives you pause? What are what are they saying?
Speaker 18I think the challenge right now for Democrats and Republicans is sort of what you're touching on right there. The ability to work with people across the aisle or not.
Speaker 5So, again, that's Representative Glenn Ivey. Apparently, Democrats are doing nothing wrong. Nothing at all. Now, again, I think one of the reasons why Democrats are perfectly willing to fellow travel with the radicals is because they are so scared of Republicans. They've decided that Republicans are so inhuman. That they cannot even deal with them. And there's very good data suggesting that Republicans on a regular basis have more contact with Democrats than Democrats do with Republicans. Democrats tend to gather in extremely blue areas and never meet a Republican. And so they have a picture of Republicans that is sort of out of proportion to the reality of life. It's pretty obvious in a conversation between Jon Stewart and Michelle Obama about moving out of New York City and going to New Jersey.
Speaker 19At that time, too, we moved out of the city. So we went through a kind of a strange, I don't know if you guys have ever experienced this, but so when we were in the city, we went, they went to school in Greenwich Village called, a little school called Little Red. Literally, like the school Pete Seeger went to. Every assembly ends with, you know, honey in the rock, feed all the children. We all hold hands and somehow just levitate. You know, it's all just magical. And we moved them out to Jersey. And this was 2015. I remember dropping them off at school. And the first. Bumper sticker I saw was Hillary for prison. And I was like, OK, I don't think honey in the rock is how this thing is is going to go. But.
Speaker 5Now, again, people thinking differently is just a thing. But whenever people on the left identify somebody on the right who thinks differently, it is it is just a shock to them. And the reaction very often is to hunker down with your DSA friends. Now, meanwhile, we're talking about Democrat willingness to. Countenance and even facilitate illegality and criminality. The Trump administration has, in fact, performed some pretty extraordinary feats with regard to illegal immigration. So not only did they shut the southern border literally day one, according to The Daily Wire, the Trump administration has now deported over one million illegal immigrants from the United States. About a third of those were recent border crossers who returned back home, according to new data obtained by The Daily Wire. ICE has deported roughly seven hundred and six thousand of the one million total. CBP has removed around three hundred and six thousand of the one million total. And that does not include the one point four illegal one point four million illegal immigrants who have self-deported, meaning people who realize that they were on short time and we're going to get deported. There was Mark Wayne Mullen, the head of DHS, explaining.
Speaker 20One point four total aliens have been since we've been put in place, have ever volunteered to be deported. Yet we paid for them or we forced them. But as I said, total removals have said, hey, we're leaving the country and did it on themselves was over three million.
Speaker 5Again, that is a good thing. The president doesn't get enough credit for this because of all of the hatred of the president. And also because, again, there are people on the right who are determined to just run down the president on literally everything. And they're not they're not calling balls and strikes. They've just decided the president is bad. So Tucker Carlson, again, is just in the demoralization business. His entire game is to tell you that everything is lost. All is lost in the United States of America. By Al. So you had on Greg Bovino, who is the former commander at large of Border Patrol. Greg Bovino, of course, was a nutty character. We mentioned this at the time. He did a pretty terrible job in Minneapolis. He would do a wide variety of public events at which he would make a mockery of himself, say dumb things, get himself in trouble and all the rest. And then he had to basically be put out of power by Tom Homan, who came in, acted like a professional and locked things down. Well, Greg Bovino is now appearing on Tucker Carlson, where he's making the rather extraordinary claim that there are. One hundred and seven million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Now, if you think that's true, then, of course, everything Trump is doing looks like a drop in the bucket. The real answer is there's probably somewhere between 10 and 15 million illegal immigrants in the United States. One hundred and seven million illegal immigrants. The total population of the U.S. is, I think, three hundred and forty million somewhere. That would mean one out of every three humans, you know, in the United States is an illegal immigrant. Do you think that's true? But again, the Tucker Carlson demoralization hour with Greg Bovino.
Speaker 21Right now in the United States, I've got the number of one hundred and seven million illegal aliens currently residing with impunity, I might add, in the United States. One hundred and seven million, one quarter of the population. We've got three hundred and thirty thousand approximately American citizens at another hundred seven million on to that.
Speaker 5So he's actually making the claim that there are four hundred and fifty million people. Living in the United States and you just didn't notice. Hmm. Sounds not right. The Center for Immigration Studies, by the way, which is a very, very conservative group. They say that the illegal immigration population reached an all time peak of about 15 million. According to census data and BLS data, it sounds a lot more reasonable. According to the DHS's own numbers in twenty twenty five, one hundred and sixty seven thousand aliens with criminal convictions and arrests were deported in two thousand twenty five, two hundred seventy five thousand aliens. Without additional criminal records were deported as well. That's a sixty three percent increase in total deportations from two thousand and twenty four. So that actually is a victory. One of the problems for the Trump administration is when you fix a problem, you don't get credit for it. That's typically the way that it works when you're in power. Once you fix the immigration issue, very difficult to run on the immigration issue. And the Trump administration has, in fact, done a pretty great job in terms of ratcheting. They could always do more. There are always things they can do better. But overall, the numbers are pretty good from the Trump administration here. Now, meanwhile, on foreign policy, the president explained to Al Jazeera on Wednesday that the United States is on the verge of a very big victory against Iran. He said the war will continue for as long as necessary. There's no timetable to resume peace talks with Tehran. The reason for that is because the financial measures that are currently being taken against Iran are actually wildly effective. Top members of Iranian brass are basically admitting as much. They are freaking out. Top members of Iranian brass have been openly saying that they don't have enough oil. That they are that they are basically out of money. They're begging their people at this point not to get out in the streets and rebel. They have apparently put IRGC and Basij on every street corner. Again, the the Iranian regime is pretty openly signaling this stuff at this point. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammed Khalabaf, who is supposed to be the chief negotiator. He said the country is in a full scale economic war. The vice president of Iran, Mohamed Jafar, Kampaneh, said fuel production is insufficient, and because of the U.S. naval blockade, we cannot import it. According to a reporter, Sapir Lipkin, at 12 News in Israel, Iranians say, quote, there is no fuel, no electricity, no work, no money, no water, no hope. Gasoline stations sit closed or draw car lines kilometers long. Regime forces are in the streets. The desire to protest is there, held back by fear of the price. So again, the sanctions have basically put the Iranian regime in extraordinarily tenuous position, and lawmakers are now pressing the Treasury Department to go after Chinese banks, which would cut them off even further. Representative Darren LaHood of Illinois, a member of the House Select Committee on China, said every country complicit in providing an economic lifeline to Iran's terrorist regime, including China, must be held accountable. So the Treasury Department originally did not list Chinese banks on their initial list of sanctioned entities. So there will be additional pushes to actually go harder against China for its support of Iran. Now, meanwhile, the United States has been pretty openly saying to the Russians that they better back off of some of their threats to go after NATO. The Wall Street Journal reports that a surprise visit by the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries. That was Ratcliffe's first publicly known visit to Moscow, and it followed U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to Moscow. And it followed U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin could try to test the resolve of NATO with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years. Now, this prompted Alexander Dugin, who we've talked about, the pseudo-philosopher who masquerades as Vladimir Putin's brain. He's very much on the same page as Vladimir Putin. He said, if he wants us not to escalate, give us Ukraine and we won't. Yeah, no, these are our friends. Remember, Putin is a moderate. I've been told so by all the best people, like, of course, Tucker Carlson, who has yet to encounter anything Russian that he does not like.
Speaker 22Putin very much represented this kind of nationalistic figure who wasn't hostile at all to the West, but also wanted to preserve his own country's traditions and especially
Speaker 23its sovereignty. Well, I think that's really worth saying. I mean, Putin on the spectrum of Russian politics is firmly on the moderate side. I mean, yes, right. And pro-European in his early career was in Europe. Germany is a KGB officer. Famously speaks German. I mean, he's tried to join NATO. So this idea that like he is a Russian nationalist who hates the West on principle or for ideological reasons or whatever is like totally insane. And I do think we're going to see someone like that lead Russia next. There's no doubt in my mind. But where did that why the fixation on lying to us about who Putin is and what that system is? It seems crazy to me.
Speaker 22I mean, this is what the U.S. government does and its allied media institutions do when they want to demonize a foreign leader to justify a war.
Speaker 5So tiresome. Well, in other insane foreign policy news, obviously, I'm sure many of you have already seen the flood footage from Nepal. This footage is astonishingly horrifying. It is really, really, really scary. Basically, a glacier apparently broke free. And cascaded thousands of feet to the valley below. And that displaced enormous amounts of mud and water. It created what's called an ice avalanche. According to the New York Times, the U.S. Geological Survey initially recorded a 4.4 magnitude earthquake in the area around that time. But apparently it was the landslide itself that had caused that. I mean, this is just this is stuff that's out of a of a truly dystopian horror film. You can see people trying to run and just getting obliterated by waves of mud and water. Gigantic. Gigantic walls of waves. And it's very, very difficult to watch. Truly devastating to watch. Satellite images show a vanishing snow cover over the previous day, indicating warmer temperatures that may have melted the glacier and contributed to the ice avalanche. The amount of water in the videos is astounding, according to one of the experts. In order of magnitude bigger than other recent glacial disasters like this, they are not ruling out other possibilities. So obviously, we'll keep an eye on all of that. Meanwhile, the fallout continues from the Meta settlement. As we discussed yesterday, Meta came to a settlement with 29 states to pay something like 17 billion dollars to the states. It's a slush fund and money is going to go to pay a bunch of state expenses. It won't end up back in the hands of anybody who is really damaged by it. The question when it comes to social media is whether social media actually is something that can be used for good or whether it needs to be completely wiped out, particularly for people who are under the age of, say, 17 or 18 years old. I made the case yesterday that social media overall has not been good for America, that maybe, maybe you can re-channel it into helpful boundaries, but I somehow doubt it. Well, joining me online to discuss all of this is Arthur Brooks. He is a professor at Harvard and Vanderbilt, and he's the host of Office Hours with Arthur Brooks and author of The Meaning of Your Life, Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness. Arthur, thanks so much for taking
Speaker 24the time. Really appreciate it. I love being with you. It's nice to see you. How's your life?
Speaker 5Thank God. You know, everything is good. Not getting enough sleep because new baby, but you know, five kids is better than four. So all is well. How are you doing?
Speaker 24I'm fine. Life couldn't be better. It's wonderful. I don't have 25% addition to my kids, but I am getting a constant flow of new grandsons, which is a wonderful thing. As you'll see,
Speaker 5it's the best ever. Well, that's awesome. So let's talk about an actual threat to kids, and that is social media. So there's this big settlement that just came down, Meta, with 29 states, and they're putting a bunch of new restrictions on themselves, supposedly. You're not supposed to be able to log on if you're a minor between 12 and 6 in the morning. You're not supposed to be able to use the app for more than two hours. You're supposed to be able to toggle off the algorithmic feed, which, of course, none of these kids are going to do because the algorithm is providing you exactly what you want. You know, I've made the argument before that social media, there are a lot of areas of tech where I'm very, very pro-tech. I love the fact that we can get things at the push of a button on delivery from Amazon. I love the fact that information is available. I love the fact that we can get things at the push of a button on delivery at my fingertips. If I could hit a red button and make social media disappear right now, I would do it. And it seems to me that all of the measures that are being taken right now are still insufficient and that the best move here would probably be a blanket ban on all social media for people who are minors and much more care in use of social media, even for people who are over the age of majority. What do you make of the settlement and sort of the
Speaker 24provisions that Facebook is putting in place? So there's, as far as I, as far as I can see, and based on my own research, this is both good news and bad news. The good news, of course, is that there are more restrictions and they were voluntarily agreed to by Facebook, by Meta. And, and, you know, Meta is actually doing something that's in the long run going to benefit them, which is actually to make it a little bit safer for young people. And it's moving in the right direction. The bad news is this is basically jackpot justice. I mean, the whole point of, you know, government is to redress, you know, public failure. And I think that's, I think, failures as opposed to letting trial lawyers actually go after it or trial lawyers in the form of AGs actually go after this. And they started off with something like a quadrillion dollar, you know, settlement is what they were looking for. And then it was 200 billion. And now it's 20 billion or whatever it is. And the reason is because this is just money down the government rat hole. That's actually what they want as a result of this. And the good news is that we're moving in the right direction with respect to restrictions. And I think Meta is doing the right thing. And ultimately, I think probably, social media is not something that you're going to want to press the red button on, even if it is now, but it's going to take a while.
Speaker 5So what should people be doing with regard to their kids on a move forward basis? Obviously, Meta is putting in place all these restrictions. Many of the other social media apps have none of these restrictions. Meta obviously doesn't want to be outcompeted by those same social media apps. So they're asking for them to voluntarily do it, which will not happen. There'll be more lawsuits against TikTok and the rest of these companies. I would assume those are in the works right now. What do you think a good settlement would look like in terms of the mental health
Speaker 24of kids? Yeah, I think what a good settlement would look like actually is something along the lines of more age restriction. I think it's actually important to move the age up. I think 16. John Haidt has really come, you probably had him on the show, Jonathan Haidt at New York University, done the best research on this. Gene Twenge at San Diego State as well. And 16 is probably the right age to begin with. Probably 21 is a little bit too old and not quite reasonable. But I think we need to move the age restrictions up and not just do them with the time. The other thing that's really important, and this is what ordinarily happens with new tech advances, is that people learn how to use the technologies. It takes a bunch of years. But I think that one of the most important things that parents can do at the individual level is to restrict the use, especially in the most important hours of the day. Parents need to demand that schools ban devices in schools. And something like 28 states still don't have bans on personal devices. By the way, Ben, the most important hour of the day, that kids in schools not have their phones, is lunchtime. I mean, that's really well documented. And that's when they're most likely to get their phones back, which is insane. This is the most likely case of pulling them away from their friends, which leads to depression, anxiety, et cetera, et cetera. So no devices during school hours. The first hour of the day is critically important for neurocognitive programming. And the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. And then no phones in the bedroom. So those are the basic ideas, the parameters of what parents and school should be doing. And then the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. And then the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. And then the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. And then the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. And then the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. And then the last hour of the day, so that kids can actually get sleep. Until we can actually get the right age restrictions.
Speaker 5So, you know, moving from social media over to AI, they're really kind of two big stories that are happening at the same time. One, of course, is the social media story. And the other is many of those same companies now involved in AI. We are seeing a huge backlash against AI data centers, for example, and people who are, I think, completely misinterpreting what's about to happen next with AI. I have to say the extraordinary dumerism from many of the AI founders, most obviously Bill Gates recently, coming out and basically saying everyone's going to lose their job. We're all going to die, but we're all going to be really rich, but we're all going to die. No one will have to work, but also we all have to work. What do you make of all of this? It seems to me that an enormous amount of this is overblown just because technology ends up being used by human beings. And AI is, to my understanding and my use of it, significantly more like a much more efficient Google search if you're using it for informational purposes. And it performs tasks faster than other sort of things, but it is used more as a service than social media. Social media hacks your brain. I don't think a lot of people are addicted to AI. It's not messing with your dopamine receptors, AI. It's just, it's a service that you use. What do you make of AI and how should America, how should Americans be thinking about it?
Speaker 24Yeah. So I agree with you with respect to the way that we rhetorically have overblown everything and every big new technological advance, whether it's the telephone or the transportation that we now take for granted or the personal computer or the internet, it always starts by promising everything. And then the second wave, so the fad is it promises everything. And then the reactionary panic is it's going to destroy our lives completely now and forever. And then it winds up becoming a tool. And it doesn't make us any happier, but it makes us more efficient is what it comes about, which is by the way, everybody watching us will know that the only thing that makes us happier is faith, family, friendship, and work that serves other people. It has always been that, and it always will. And AI is not going to change that. It can screw it up. However, this is the important thing to keep in mind. AI can make life a lot better if you use it for how to and what tasks and free up your time to do the things that AI can't do. And that's what I'm going to talk about in a little bit. So let's talk a little bit more about what AI can't do, which is mediating your relationships. You will get lonelier and more depressed. And you will, by the way, also get addicted if you try to use it for your friend or for the girlfriend experience, or God forbid, your therapist, because those are actual human interactions that you need. Or your God, can you imagine? And of course, that's how a lot of people will abuse it. We will figure it out. It will be okay. But in the meantime, we actually have to teach each other and lead each
Speaker 5other on how these innovations affect our lives. You know, Arthur, obviously, this seems to me like a very rationalistic approach to AI, but people are not reacting rationally to AI, to tech. It seems like there is a roiling undercurrent beneath a lot of what's going on, just of economic discontent, of concern that is bordering into and sliding over into a sort of envious view of the economy that actually could destroy pretty much everything. And you see this in the reaction to the extraordinary wealth that is being created by AI. And I think that's a really important part of it, that is being created by AI for the people at the top in terms of their stock values, for example. And so the idea is that if you are an AI founder, and if, quote unquote, all the gains go to the top, which is not actually what is going to happen, productivity gains filtered throughout the economy, those gains end up benefiting everybody. This is true of literally every innovation in human history. But there is this sort of political undercurrent that suggests that because always and forever, whenever there's innovation, the people who invent the innovation tend to get rich faster than everybody else, and then everybody else catches up. Because of that, we need to stop that. And then through envy, we're going to end up cutting off our nose to spite our face and making the society poorer as a result.
Speaker 24Right, that's right. And you're making an analogy that's really important for people to understand. The best parallel for AI is not some other tech innovation. AI, the best parallel is capitalism itself, which was completely unknown. But the idea of capitalism, which actually emerged from the Industrial Revolution, it led to urbanization, it led to all sorts of social problems and emptying out farms and villages. And yeah, and so Ned Ludd, which led to the Luddites and his merry band of anti-technology people, were destroying machines and capitalism led to Marxism and all that. And I get it. I get it, the problems early on. But at the end of the day, what capitalism created was the weekend, the 40-hour workweek, and the middle class. And then nothing like that had ever existed before that. And that's where we will wind up. Now, between now and then, we actually need to be very cognizant of the problems that it's creating, and not pretend that it's going to be okay in 30 years, so we shouldn't worry about it right now. That's actually how we should be thinking about it, is this really good thing that's going to make life better, not happier, because that's not how it works. And in the meantime, find ways to, for people who are naturally displaced by the technology and the economic changes, to find ways to make sure that there's a soft landing and a safety net and a retraining scheme for them. We have to be smart about this. Well, that's Arthur Brooks. You can check out
Speaker 5all of his insights over on X, and you can check out his podcast as well. Arthur, thanks so much for the time and the insight. Really appreciate it. I love seeing you. Thanks, Ben. Okay, you think we're done, but we are not, because it turns out that we have more to cover, including an amazing new drug that is now being approved by the FDA. And we've talked about medical innovation in the United States before. This is good news. It turns out there's a lot of amazing things happening. You don't hear about it anywhere because, again, bad news always leads, but lots of great things happening here in the United States if you leave the markets to do their job. First, if you want to watch the rest of the show, if you're not a member, now's the time. Become a member. Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.
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