Speaker 1It's finally here. We've been telling you about it for weeks at this point. We have a brand new movie. It is out tonight. It is one of the most pro-Christian, anti-communist movies ever filmed. The gigantic cast. It's precisely what America needs right now. It's so good that even the people that hate us can't dismiss it. So, confession. This film stars Rob Lowe, James Franco, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Cody Smith-McPhee, Brad Dourif, Richard Bray, Camille Hirsch. Huge cast directed by Venice Golden Lion nominee Václav Marhul. The film is out tonight. The reviews are already dropping, and they're pretty stunning. Rod Rehr, who's a reviewer for the Free Press, says, quote, I just finished an advanced copy of Confession out November 11th. Words fail. One of the most philosophically and theologically profound films I've ever seen, and one of the most deeply Christian. David Limbaugh is a Protestant thought leader. He writes, I watched Ben Shapiro's movie Confession today. Oh my gosh, is it fabulous. Here is Father Jason Cherin of the Ukrainian Catholic Church talking about Confession. He saw an advanced copy.
Speaker 2Here's what he had to say. Well, the mark of a good movie is that it is able to make you forget the world for a moment. But the mark of a great movie is its revelation to the viewer of the state of his own soul in this world. For that reason, Confession is a great movie. That a seasoned soul is invigorated by the tension between past failure and present redemption. And that tension is played out, you know, between, you know, in other areas as well, you know, past weakness and present strength, past cowardice, present conviction, you know, past self-preservation of Alexei, the main actor, and present self-sacrifice. That tension is there throughout the movie. And the film respects your mind enough to take you through those struggles without a barrage of, you know, gratuitous stimulation and without having to force feed you all kinds of pre-packaged answers.
Speaker 1Or here's Father Anthony Morad praising Confession. He's Coptic Orthodox.
Speaker 3It was so refreshing to watch a movie that reminds us of who we're supposed to be as human beings. And I think it's a great movie. I think it's a great movie. Where virtues like truth and beauty and honor and integrity and self-respect are highlighted and
Speaker 1promoted. So Christian Toto, who is a reviewer for Hollywood in Toto, he founded his publication specifically because he saw the insane bias of the Hollywood press. He wrote, quote, it's brainy and raw, making the most of its limited setting to tell a grim tale of faith and endurance. Start close-ups, intriguing camera angles, purposeful dances, light and dark. Confession never feels claustrophobic or stale, creatively speaking. It helps that Rob Lowe and James Franco make a dynamite duo, confidently steering this stark two-hander. Their intellectual battles play out like an academic food fight with plenty of literary references for the book nerd in your life. Shapiro leavens the dialogue with sharply observed details and bittersweet notes. Nick Nolte uses that sandpaper voice for a harrowing tale from beyond the prison's walls. Jennifer Jason Leigh snags a meaty sequence to convince Alexi he's choosing the wrong path. Now, even people you would expect to hate the film, like the Hollywood reporter and Slate, have to admit the film's virtues. So the Hollywood reporter praises the director of the film, Václav Marhul, who is in fact a genius. I mean, what he has to do inside of essentially a prison, right? I mean, no exterior shots in the film, basically. Václav did an incredible job with this, and even the Hollywood reporter has to admit it. Quote, director Marhul, whose controversial 2019 film, The Painted Bird, prompted numerous walkouts at the Toronto and Venice film festivals, infuses the film with a suitably gritty, intense tone abetted by cinematography Peter Menzi Jr.'s strikingly harsh visuals. Specific praise for Nick Nolte. They say he plays a Jewish inmate, giving him the opportunity to deliver a harrowing monologue about atrocities he's witnessed. Emile Hirsch plays a former concert pianist with an unnaturally cheerful attitude. Richard Brake, giving the film's most effective performance, plays a hardened, cynical prisoner who coaches Alexi on how to survive. Slate, of course, far left publication. They, I mean, about as begrudging as you could begrudge. Quote, surprisingly, confession actually feels passively like a real movie. And then the reviewer, who kind of liked the film and doesn't want to admit it, like pretty obviously, quote, I'll make my own confession. I enjoyed seeing James Franco on screen again. Broadened out in middle age after his years out of the spotlight, he uses his shifty eyes and bleep-eating grin to good purpose in playing Vladimir, a violent and bitter person whose experience in the trenches, we assume during World War I, has turned him into someone who believes only in power. Franco has always had a treacherous charm. Okay, but let's be real. Let's now be real. The mainstream Hollywood reviewers despise, despise that we are playing in their sandbox. So begin with this. All the major reviewers are reviewing Confession. All of them. For the first time, they have to. The cast is too big. The director is too talented. The movie is frankly too good. But here's the thing. They also have to try to strangle our movie business in the crib. They have to try to strangle anything that tilts conservative in the crib. They must. They are so angry, like so angry we're playing in their sandbox. And in kind of like all of their sandboxes really, because we're not just making film here. We've made film before. What we are doing here is artistic drama with serious themes, with some all-time great performances, with extraordinary direction, with great artistic ability for the whole crew. That is the thing they can't stand. They can't, they cannot allow this. They can't allow this to stand. So I just want to read you, because it's hilarious, how that Hollywood reporter review of the film opened, because it shows you the mentality here. Well, listen, I think Confession is really important, but there's a lot of important, stuff in your life. Some of it right now, I hate to tell you, is moldering out there in the garage, right? It's all of your family memories, the old film reels and the old pictures and all those VHS tapes. Do you have a VCR still? Do you? I don't think so. Well, you've heard me talk about Legacy Box all year. This is the best time to digitize all of those memories right now. Get exclusive early access to their biggest deal of the year, up to 65% off Legacy Box kits with tape transfers for just $9 per tape. Order now. You can still get your memories digitized in time for the holidays. Head on over to LegacyBox.com. slash Shapiro for early access to their best deal of the year. Don't wait. Secure your digitized memories in time for the holidays over at LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro. Again, I've used Legacy Box myself. Did this for my parents as well. And there's something truly incredible about accessing memories that you haven't seen for 20, 30 years, seeing what your parents were like 20 years ago, what you were like 20 years ago, seeing your grandparents. It really is an amazing, amazing thing. Makes you value family even more. Go check them out right now. LegacyBox.com slash Shapiro for early access to their best deal of the year. Okay. This is the opening of the, remember this is a review of a film. Okay. This is not a critique supposedly of my, but here is how the review opens. Quote, reviewing the new movie scripted by Ben Shapiro. I'm tempted to pan it on ideological grounds. The screenwriter after all is the controversial right-wing political commentator who co-founded the Daily Wire. To say that the vast majority of his views are loathsome to me is an understatement. Now, as I'm going to point out in just a second, that's crazy. That's crazy. The Hollywood reporter has never run a review that opens with a critique of the politics of the person who wrote the film or produced the film. That's not a thing. Eli Steele pointed this out on X. He says, this is utterly disqualifying for a film critic. Films are not easy to make. People give their all to bring their talents together, put a vision into the screen. And a curmudgeon critic comes along and spits on all that as he makes the movie about his own politics. Christian Toto says, this is why I started Hollywood in total 12 years ago. Yeah. It's not disqualifying for the film critic. It is required. It is required. It must happen. The Hollywood reviewers at the mainstream publications must do their land acknowledgement. You see, I am bad. We, conservatives, people who don't think like they do. We are bad. All of you are bad. You're bad. You're not allowed in the sandbox. By way of comparison, by the way, it's beyond. By way of comparison, this is a recent Hollywood report review of a documentary about Lenny Reifenstahl. For those who don't know Lenny Reifenstahl, she was literally Hitler's film propagandist. Literally Hitler, right? Not, not analogical Hitler, literally Hitler. Quote, no matter how much we might want to purge the ideology reflected by and reinforced in Lenny Reifenstahl's films from our cultural lives, her aesthetic influence is impossible to escape. Everything stems from the grammar established by Reifenstahl in 1938's Olympia. Just as so much of what we view as the aesthetics of political power finds a template in her 1935 triumph of the will. So again, Lenny Reifenstahl, yeah, I mean, like, you know, not, not great, but I mean, triumph of the will, that's in filmmaking. So again, to the Hollywood reporter, we, it's not just me because anyone who shares any of my views, we are loathsome, loathsome, you know, for being mainstream conservatives and really more for making a quality film that opposes Soviet Marxism and positively represents Christianity. I mean, makes a pretty good film. Us, we are loathsome. Again, this is the same Hollywood that gave a standing ovation to Roman Polanski at the Oscars, who pled guilty to having sex with a 13-year-old girl. The same Hollywood that for decades looked the other way at rapey, rapey Harvey Weinstein and stacked up his Oscars for him. We're the loathsome ones, understand. I mean, this is the way that it works. This is the way that it works. It's the same Hollywood, by the way, that recently reviewed. Paul Thomas, insane left-wing propaganda piece, one battle after another. after another, right? The Hollywood Reporter reviewed it this way, okay? So that movie, if you didn't actually take the time to watch it, which if you wish to save breaths in your life, you should not, that film is basically a film about how there is a white supremacist coalition that rules America, and it can only be thwarted by black revolutionaries or Marxists and also illegal immigrants. And here is what they said about One Battle After Another, quote, it is the rare American film released in these benighted times of ours to be clear and insistent in the target of its anger, its despair, and its prescriptions for what might make things better. Paul Thomas Anderson does not operate with blinkered hope. His movie pays sober reverence to the brutal losses suffered already and to those inevitably to come. The title of the film, One Battle After Another, could be read as an exhaustive lament. It could be a rallying cry too. Don't worry though, don't worry. They're not political. It's just about quality, not politics, right? Or take a look at that Slate review again. So here's a fun tell. So the reviewer there who loves the James Franco is back. Is absolutely astonished that anyone of quality would even associate with us. So the reviewer goes through like multiple paragraphs, trying to figure out why in the world anyone would work with us. And then finally concludes disbelievingly. Could it be because, quote, actors like and or need to work and don't care what they think of their politics? Heaven forfend. Oh no. You mean people might work with people who disagree with you politically sometimes? That's crazy. Now, look, this really isn't anything new. When Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ came out back in 2004, the major critics roundly ripped it. It was the top grossing R-rated film in American history at the time. It did over a billion dollars in box office. I should point out at this point, it currently sits at 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. One Battle After Another is like 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. The Passion of the Christ is at 50% on Rotten Tomatoes because this is how it works. You can't play in their sandbox. The Hollywood Reporter at the time reviewed the film by saying that it contains, quote, near pornographic violence where, quote, flesh is flayed in grotesque detail. Newsweek magazine said the film, quote, plays like the gospel according to the Marquis de Sade. So yeah, it turns out that Hollywood is always offended by anyone who plays in there. But we are so deep in their sandbox at this point. They can't ignore us, which is why they're all reviewing us. So instead, they'll try to stop us. And even there, they can't ignore the fact that the film is not only good, but it has amazing acting and great direction and all the rest of it. They'll do their best. But it's too late for that game. We're already winning. And that is only possible because of you. A filmmaking is a grueling and expensive process. It is a thing that requires capital and it requires people to back your play. And that's why our subscribers make it possible and have made it possible for us to make things like Confession, which again, if you haven't seen it yet, I can't wait for you to see it. We're streaming it live tonight. I'll be with you tonight as we live stream. It should be awesome. Or you can go live to the theater. It's one night only tonight. Still a couple of tickets available for that. You should go check it out. But this is why we need your help. And this is why we need your membership. If you're not a member yet, help us do this because we are in fact winning so much that they are scared. Again, those are the words of fear. And that Hollywood Reporter Review, those are the sentences of a person who is scared of what we are about to do, who must, under all circumstances, say to their friends, no, no, no, don't worry. I hate them. We hate them. So much. We hate them so much. Don't worry. We hate them. Okay. That hatred is quite real. And again, that goes to the theme of the film as well. One of the major themes of the film. And we're pretty far removed from Stalin's Russia here in the United States. We can kind of say what we want. We can say what we feel and all the rest of it. Thank God. But it is not as though countries don't go the wrong way. It is not as though if the censorious left had its way, they wouldn't do all of those things all over again. They're doing it right now. And we commented on this a few months ago. We have another film that is in production called Pawn Shop with some major Hollywood figures. And the town in which we were filming it literally tried to use the power of the government to prevent us from filming. And the mainstream Hollywood press cheered them. They liked it. They wanted it. And all the same people who will pretend not to understand the themes of confession are all the same people who might have been on the wrong side of the table, frankly. That is a very real thing. And that wrong side of the table does exist. Like take France right now. Well, it seems like our critics need to hire some better people because frankly, it seems like they're just sending a bunch of political hacks to do the actual reviewing job. Well, maybe they ought to check out our friends over at Zip Recruiter. They can't do worse than they're currently doing. Zip Recruiter's powerful matching technology helps identify qualified candidates quickly. No wonder Zip Recruiter is the number one rated hiring site based on G2. We here at Daily Wire have been using Zip Recruiter for years to find some of the best people who work here. And Zip Recruiter can do the same for you. Let them. Find the right people for your role, seasonal or otherwise. You can try it for free today at ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire. Again, they have specialized technology that takes the best resumes to the top of the heaps. You're not just sifting through resumes all day. You're not just sifting through the resume from the guy who put out 100 resumes to 100 different companies. It'll save you time and get you the best employees possible. Try it for free today. ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire. Again, that is ZipRecruiter.com slash Daily Wire. There's a reason we've been using it here at Daily Wire ourselves for years. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. So there's a novelist over in France named Michel Hollebecq. Michel Hollebecq most famously wrote a book called Submission. It was a major bestseller over in France. It's quite a fascinating and controversial book. That book posits a Muslim takeover of France, a radical Muslim takeover of France. And it's about a professor who basically, being empty in his life, decides that all the benefits that would accrue to him in converting to Islam, like for example, he can have multiple young wives. That he will be given special slot at the university, all that. He decides to convert to Islam. And so the entire novel is about the emptying out of what it means to be French, a French life, in favor of radical Islam. Well, now Michel Hollebecq has been criminally charged. Why was he criminally charged? Well, because back in 2022, he did an interview and he said some true things about Muslims. So according to Le Monde, French writer Michel Hollebecq was indicted on Tuesday, November 10th, by an investigating judge in Nanterre in the Paris region for quote, complicity and incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence against a group of people on account of their origin or their belonging or not belonging to a particular ethnicity, nation, race or religion. Now again, the fact that's even a crime is insane. Insane. Complicity and incitement to discrimination, hatred or violence. Now again, incitement to violence is a real criminal charge that exists in most jurisdictions. If I tell you, I want you to go kill that guy over there, that's incitement to violence and I can go to jail for that. If however, I say that guy over there is a real jackass. Presumably would be incitement to hatred or discrimination against that guy. That is not a crime in most normal Western jurisdiction. Well, welcome to France where it is a crime. The case dates back to comments made in November 20th, 2022 interview in the magazine Front Populaire. Hollebecq said, quote, when entire territories come under Islamist control, I think acts of resistance will take place. There will be attacks and shootings in mosques and cafes frequented by Muslims, in short, Bataclans in reverse. I believe that the wish of the population with French roots, as the phrase goes, is not for Muslims. But for them to stop stealing from and assaulting them in short for the violence to decrease for them to respect the law and people or another good solution for them to leave. And then when it came to the so-called great replacement theory, right, which suggested that essentially the domestically born population of France was being supplanted by imported populations from the third world, he said, I was very shocked that it was called a theory. It's not a theory. It's a fact. He's talking about the far right writer, Renaud Camus. He said, Camus is a good writer. That's beyond doubt. So he observed a great replacement or to be more precise, the changing ethnic and religious composition of the European population. It's a statistical evidence. So, I mean, put aside the phrase great replacement theory, which suggests that there is sort of a plot to replace certain populations with other populations. What he says there, which is that there is a changing ethnic and religious composition of the European population is absolutely true. Obviously, when he says people basically should assimilate or at least not commit crimes or they should leave. That seems like. Not all that controversial, but in France, it's very controversial. The remarks sparked fierce controversy, according to Le Monde, and led to a book published in May 2023, a few months in my life in which the writer described the hell I went through after the interview's publication. Michelle Olabek says the incriminated remarks have no dimension of incitement, not even implicitly, and therefore fall within the bounds of freedom of opinion and expression. A prophet of doom does not wish for disaster. His place is not in a courtroom, responded his lawyers. But don't worry, he's going to he could go to jail. He go to jail for that. And a West that forgets its values and imports people who hate it. This is where you end up. And by the way, it's happening all over the West. So as frequent listeners of the show might know, or even occasional listeners of the show may know, I think Joe Biden was a truly terrible president, the worst president of the modern era, bar none. But Joe Biden was still an American president. And so it is disgusting that a bunch of students at Trinity attempted to assault Joe Biden yesterday. Here's what that looked like as the Biden, this would be Joe and Hunter, departed Trinity College in Dublin. They're the Bidens trying
Speaker 4to make their way
Speaker 1into their security vehicle. People are throwing objects at the Bidens. He's, of course, shocker, Palestinian flag waving pro pro-Palestinian students in Dublin, trying to chuck milk at them, chuck the objects at them. Now, here's the thing. I don't like Joe Biden at all. I think Joe Biden was a horrible president. president. But you don't get to throw objects at the American president. If your civilization is the kind of civilization that tolerates this kind of trash, there's something deeply wrong with your civilization. But there is something deeply wrong with Western civilization at this point, accepting its own demise. This extends over to Canada, where the Prime Minister Mark Carney says that actually, China is less problematic for Canada than the United States. That's psychotic. That's psychotic. You know, one of the great political sins of my lifetime is that the tariff that President Trump announced right when he was elected basically prevented Pierre Pellievre from becoming Prime Minister of Canada. So instead, we got this, this human Mark Carney saying that there are basically lower risks to partnering with China, a communist authoritarian hellhole than the United States. If this is the way the West is thinking, it's not going to be the West for very long.
Speaker 5Yes, I will be meeting with President Xi Jinping next week at APEC. We will discuss many things. We'll discuss security, situation around the world. We'll discuss our economic partnership, which is something that is deepening, but has clear guardrails in terms of the areas in which we're involved. And I didn't say this in French, but I'll add this in terms of the security risks of our partnership. They are much, much, much, much less than the security risks, for example, of the United States.
Speaker 1What now? What now? The security risks of the US, of the Canadian Chinese partnership is much less than that of the United States. Say what now? This is a West that wants to lose, that wants to lose, that is perfectly willing to give up core values. This is why when people warn of the dangers of the past, yeah, those dangers are sleeping. They're not dead. Meanwhile, Iranian-backed operatives continue to pursue terrorism across the West, in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, of course, you have people in the United States who are perfectly warm toward Iran. The FBI and NYPD have announced, according to the DOJ, an eight-count superseding indictment, charging Mohammed Bakr Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national, Mohsen Mohasheri, an Iranian national, and Mohammed Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national with terrorism-related offenses, for their activities in support of Hezbollah and the IRGC, including their involvement in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks throughout Europe and the United States, and a September 26, 2026 terrorist plot at the British Royal Air Force Base in Fairford, UK. Well, you know, it's one thing for these people to run roughshod through Western civilization. I mean, if Michelle Olabek says mean things, jail with them, to jail them. Well, what's hilarious about this is that the places that are most familiar with true radical Islam, like in its most virulent form, those places have no, they have no compunction about shutting it down. Take, for example, Egypt. So Egypt, which is a dictatorship, but it is a secularist dictatorship. Egypt has now designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist entity, as opposed to the United States, where we elect Muslim Brotherhood adjunct members to the Senate. Egypt permanently designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist entity. Previously, the group's designation was subject to time-limited extensions, including five-year renewals. Also, 35 organizations were added to Egypt's terrorism list. The Cairo Criminal Court ordered the addition of 35 entities and 36 individuals to Egypt's terrorism list for a period of five years. That includes, by the way, the Muslim Association of Britain, the Muslim Association of Switzerland, the Islamic Community in Germany, the European Council for Fatwa and the United Nations Forum. Again, they are tougher on radical Islam in parts of the Muslim world that don't wish to be dominated by it than we are here in the West. The West better wise up. But it seems as though wisdom is still far on the horizon. We are perfectly willing to be undermined by an activist class within that is very often funded from abroad. So let's take, for example, AI and the tremendous hatred of AI data centers that is now built up in the United States. We'll get to more on this in a moment. First, let's talk about something very important. You must have a trust or a will. It's important. Like, as a responsible human being, you have to make sure that actually what you want to happen with your assets, if God forbid something happens, is made clear. Otherwise, it's going to be people you don't know or don't like or the state who is figuring it out. Trust and Will offers affordable attorney-designed estate plans online you can create in just minutes. Their easy-to-use platform helps you create a will or a trust and document your wishes for guardianship, asset distribution, and healthcare planning. Plans are state-specific and tailored to your needs. You can add attorney support, security, and health care planning. You can also create a will or a trust and document your access with trusted contacts and update your plan as your life changes. You plan ahead because your family matters, and this should be a part of that plan. Trust and Will, affordable estate plans, priceless, peace of mind. Head on over to trustandwill.com slash Shapiro, get 20% off. Again, my wife and I, we did this process. We've done the process, and it's really important because now, you know, we know what happens if, God forbid, something bad happens. You should do the same. It's a piece of mental security and a security for your family. Go check them out right off. That's trustandwill.com slash Shapiro. So this is just an astonishingly hilarious and tragic story. More hilarious than tragic, but still. There is a person named Taylor Frazier McCollum. This is a picture of Taylor Frazier McCollum. As you can see, she is a somewhat obese black woman who is standing in front of an empty parking lot, and she's standing in front of a chain-link fence, like a beaten-up chain-link fence, in front of literally an empty parking lot, and she is our hero of the day because what did she do? She stopped. She stopped a data center from being built on this empty parking lot. Our precious empty parking lots must be protected at all costs. It's not you protecting grandma's farm. This is an empty parking lot, but she's protecting it. So NPR reports, quote, again, amazing story. Overgrown grass and weeds seem to stretch into the horizon on nearly 90 acres of empty land in Landover, Maryland. It used to be Landover Mall, but that closed in 2002. The site has been mostly vacant since. In 2024, the developer that built the mall won approval from county planners for a $5 billion data center campus, and word began spreading through the largely black community nearby. Taylor Frazier McCollum said, quote, I was like, oh, hell no. That's a direct quote. She lived less than a mile away from it. A mile away from it. Okay, not like she lived next door, a mile away from it. Why would you want to bring water-polluting, diesel-generating data centers right down the street from where people live, work, and play? It just didn't make sense to me. I'm just going to point out that data centers do not generate diesel. That is not what data centers generate. They generate data. They also don't pollute the water. The question is whether they engage in overwater use, not whether they actually are spilling sewage into the water. So according to this dumbass person, the data centers are polluting the water and generating diesel. By the way, if the data centers are generating diesel, maybe we can get them a pumping, and we can get those prices of diesel down. That seems like a great solution to a couple of our problems. Build the data centers and solve our oil problem. But NPR continues. Unlike a lot of land-use activists trying to protect their homes from threats in their backyards, Frazier McCollum does not own a home. Sorry, we're a civilization of people who are legitimately cutting off their noses to spite their faces. In 2024, she and her young daughter were evicted from their apartment. She was working at a waxing center that cut wages, and she could no longer cover her rent. It was difficult, Frazier McCollum recalled, because that created the ideal life, paying for us to live in this apartment and have our own space, and then to have it taken away, it felt like something that wasn't ever going to end. They moved around and were living in her grandfather's home when she learned about the proposed project less than a mile away. She created a petition that gathered over 25,000 signatures, leading to widely attended protests and culminating in multiple local moratoriums. She was very concerned about the diesel-generating data center on a parking lot that has been empty for 24 years. And then comes the, oh no, if it isn't the consequences of my own actions, part of the article. Oh no. Look, look. It's the thing that I did. Coming back to haunt me. With data centers paused, some in Prince George's County worry about declining tax revenue. Last year, a local Six Flags closed. The NFL's Washington commanders announced plans to return to neighboring Washington, D.C. Thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs. The county faces a budget deficit. She's lost out on work to attend public meetings or knock on doors. She's relied on family for rides and childcare. Her father, Lacey McCollum Jr., sees the data center fight as rooted in civil rights. The civil right to be poor? Is that what we are talking about? Data centers are expensive, unpopular, and could be a tipping point in the midterms. Quote, we're talking about the right to water, the right to clean air, the right to a place to live. That's everybody's fight, right? Lacey McCollum said. The right to a place to live? Is she going to live in the empty parking lot? Is that the plan? Does she have a tent there? What are we even talking about? Her dad says, quote, well, I'm afraid for her. We need those people. We needed Martin Luther King's. We needed the Malcolm X's. People like Taylor, they jump out here so people behind them get to make progress. Some urge her to run for office. She says she wants to pay off her debt and traffic tickets and find a home first. That's where we are in our politics. The homeless lady with back parking tickets, she must be our leader. She must be our leader and lead us directly toward economic stagnation. Our precious cracked parking lots must be protected from those predator corporations coming in with their money and their jobs. and their economic development and their tax tax revenue. This all must end. It must end right now. The time has come for a nation of Taylor Frazier McCollum to rise up. Okay, so as it turns out, as it turns out, Taylor Frazier McCollum is not the most grassroots human. Because you might ask yourself, how did this person find 25,000 people to support the banning of a data center on an empty parking lot? And the answer is, you'll never believe it. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Taylor Frazier McCollum had extensive support from a China-linked group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation. The Marxist-Leninist group is tied to notorious Beijing-based tech mogul Neville Roy Singham, who's been accused of bankrolling an extensive Chinese propaganda network, the PSL, which is based in San Francisco, is funded by and shares staff with Singham's $100 million pro-China Marxist network of activist groups. Now, originally, McCollum started the public petition in June 2020, three months later, the PSL's DC chapter, which calls for the socialist transformation of society, posted a video of McCollum explaining the petition and accusing the developers of the proposed Landover data center of environmental racism. Yes, environmental racism. That building hates black people or something. That video garnered hundreds of thousands of views and caused the number of signatures on McCollum's petition to explode from 180 to more than 20,000. Last week, McCollum delivered remarks at the People Over, Data Center Summit in Baltimore. By the way, again, is she any less homeless than she was before? Nope. Does she still have some back parking tickets? Sure. But the important thing is that she hung out with Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland. She spoke during a panel discussion titled Grassroots Heroes, How Four Activists Achieve Success Against Big Tech on Data Centers. Wonderful, wonderful stuff. And understand, understand, this has never been really about objection to AI. What this is really about for the vast majority of the activist class anyway, not only the vast majority of Americans who've bought into some of this stuff, but the activist class in particular is just hatred of free markets. Hatred of free markets, which is why it is a sin for Jensen Huang to have stripped a Chinese spy. Because as we discussed yesterday on the show, when you provide fodder to your political enemies, they're going to use it on you. Now, Charlemagne the God had some comments about Jensen. As he points out, being smart doesn't make you immune to stupid. This is true.
Speaker 6Being smart doesn't make you insane, represent the temptations you allow to distract you. And leverage represents the risk you take because you think you're too successful to lose. Okay. And none of those things care about how intelligent you are. You can have a PhD and still make terrible decisions. Okay. You could have a billion dollars and still make horrible decisions. You can be the smartest person in every room you walk into and still make a decision that has everybody in that room questioning your common sense. Now, again, all of that is true.
Speaker 1But the real point is that for AOC and the rising socialist class, the goal is to just destroy free markets, right? Her problem with Jensen is not what Jensen did. Her problem is that Jensen exists as a human.
Speaker 7Well, I mean, here's the thing is that when power in our economy and when wealth has concentrated so much that five guys in tuxedos, half of our economy, all you need to do is compromise one of them. We want to suffocate our entire economy.
Speaker 1Again, the goal here is to use a convenient brick bat to break things. That is the entire point. Now, it doesn't help if the Trump administration knew what was going on with Jensen Huang and basically decided to shuffle it off to the side. The New York Times is reporting, that President Trump was told aboard Air Force One in May on route to China that the United States had obtained sensitive intelligence showing that NVIDIA's chief executive was in a relationship with a Chinese spy. The message was apparently delivered by the Secretary of State and National Security Advisor shortly before Jensen Huang joined the presidential trip to Beijing at Trump's invitation. It marked at least the second time in seven months the president had been told of intelligence about Huang's involvement with the woman. Again, this is why, again, these sort of coziness between industry and government is always dangerous and why what Jensen Huang did here is so damaging. It really is. Well, speaking of AI and tech, we're joined online by Janet Kelly. She's CEO of the Alliance for a Better Future, a conservative group working toward AI that strengthens families, empowers workers, reflects great American values. She, of course, is the former Secretary of Health and Human Resources for Governor Glenn Youngkin over in Virginia. Janet, thanks so much for taking the time. Hope you're doing well.
Speaker 8I'm doing great. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1So let's talk about kind of where AI stands. Obviously, AI was a major issue in the midterm elections. The American people seem to have very deep unrest about artificial intelligence. And I think, as I've said before, some of those concerns are justified. Obviously, when it comes to regulatory structures, it's kind of hard to tell from the outset which things are going to be the most threatening. I think one of the things you're focused on are regulations that prevent harms to children and families in particular. But there seems to be a tendency now that's breaking out. I want to get your opinion. I want to get your opinion on this, that we ought to just kill the golden goose. And there's a story that I was talking about a few moments ago in which there was a woman who shut down the building of a data center on an empty parking lot. And this was considered a great triumph by NPR. I mean, she literally, it's a parking lot that's been empty for 24 years. And she was considered some sort of great heroine for doing all of this. The sort of anti-AI that's set in is an economy killer, even if you want responsible regulation.
Speaker 8Sure. Well, we are both pro-innovation and pro-family, of course. And there's what we're hearing from voters, both in this election and even before the election, Ben, was that they want a good balance of innovation and security. They believe in AI. A lot of Americans use AI. They already see how it benefits them. But 91% of Americans think that we need to do more to make it safer. And we saw that coming up in the election. It was tied to things like the Iran war, believe it or not. Those news stories about Iran, using AI to hack into our water systems, are breaking through with the American public. The gas tank phenomenon really hit this year, as you know, where voters would go to the gas tank and feel that economic angst. The same thing's going to happen leading into 2028 when they hear about cyber attacks, when they hear about other job losses that may not even be related to AI. But I agree with you on the power of this tech, Ben. I think that AI can be the most life-saving, life-changing, life-extending technology in the history of the world. And I think that's what we're going to see in the world if it's steered in the right direction. And what voters are saying is, please show us that you're steering it in the right direction between now and 2028.
Speaker 1So, Jenna, when we talk about steering it in the right direction, you know, I, as a pretty free market guy, I tend to trust the market with a lot of things. Obviously, you know, the way that a lot of the AI tech leaders talk about AI, that it's going to kill all of us, Dario Amodi seems to keep saying this, which is always a very weird pitch when you have the heads of tech companies saying, we need to IPO and we need to grow as fast as possible so that we can kill all of you. That is definitely true. That is definitely a weird pitch, I would say to the public, although Dario is kind of a strange guy. I think that the question that arises is, how are we supposed to regulate this sort of stuff? Because one thing that you've seen is an attempt to sort of shut down the mechanisms of production and distribution, right? That'd be going after AI data centers, for example, which has now become sort of popular sport. The other way is to sort of try to regulate the potential impacts of AI, things that AI should not be able to do, for example. How should we go about regulating AI, especially given the fact that most of our Congress people can't use a TI-82 calculator, let alone AI?
Speaker 8Right. That's exactly right. Well, I will refer you to our website and your listeners to our website. We did a seven-page memo. I'm going to reference that that's on our site. Obviously, I can't touch on all of that today. But those exact questions, Ben, are what the Republican Party and conservatives are going to be grappling with between now and 2028. And as you know better than anyone, the election actually started the day after the election. We cannot wait until 2028 to have these conversations. We need to start now. And I just want to say, thank you so much for joining us. We'll see you next time. Thank you for talking more about AI on your show. You are a huge voice and a huge leader in this. A lot of your audience, I don't know if you saw Axios this morning, a lot of your audience is young men. And they listed AI in exit polls as one of their top issues. And so we have to get this right is the bottom line. You're right on kids. There are things that we can do. 93% of Americans don't believe Chabot should be talking to kids about sex or suicide. That would be a really easy thing for Congress to do. And I think that's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good thing for Congress to do. And I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Chabot phenomenon. I won't go into it today, but it is nothing to play around with if you've got kids. 93%, that's an easy issue. On national security, the president created the SI task force back in September. They're doing amazing work. He put a national security head in as chair, which was a very good signal that we're taking this seriously. Just starting with making those accords more permanent, making sure really at the end of the day that humans maintain control over this technology and it is not controlling us. Ben, you're a smart guy. I don't have to tell you. It doesn't take a might happen. As powerful as this technology is, if it's steered in the right direction, it can be equally destructive if steered in the wrong direction. This is not fear-mongering. I love AI. I use it every day. But we've got to make sure that it's steered in the right direction and that humans maintain control over the technology.
Speaker 1Yeah. So, Janet, when we talk about, again, some of the other restrictions that you're talking about, some of these are obviously common sense. As you say, they have wide purchase with the American public. I think one of the things that is sort of undergirding opposition to AI is this feeling that, again, the tech bros keep promoting, which is insane. They keep promoting the idea that basically all jobs are going to be eviscerated and we're all going to be living on universal welfare. Also, make sure that you invest in AI, which I don't even know how they expect that to be a winning PR strategy. It's one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. It also happens not to be true because, again, the history of economics suggests that every new tool that is created creates with it a bevy of new jobs. Yes, the wheelwright loses his job when it turns out that cars are more effective than horses, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a bunch of new jobs that are created. And indeed, it turns out that the- a huge number of new jobs that have been created over the course of the past couple of years have been in things like building out AI infrastructure or actually secondary markets that are created by the supply to those AI data centers or people like you or like me who are using it to make their business more effective, easier, and cheaper for people to actually consume. And so I think that one of the things that populists are going to do, and this is what I think frightens me, is one of the things populists are going to do is they're going to point out the sort of Joseph Schumpeter creative destruction that is attendant on every day. And they're going to point out the sort of new technology. Joseph Schumpeter, the economist, suggested that capitalism is a process of creative destruction. Whenever you create a new product, you're obviously superseding a bunch of older products that are not as good. And the jobs in that product line tend to disappear and are replaced over time, not immediately, but over time with jobs in the new line. The creative destruction aspect of AI is so scary to people that I think that there is a tendency to basically say, we should shut down AI as it stands because otherwise it's going to eliminate my job, the jobs of my friends. How worried should people be? How worried are you? And what is justified in this arena?
Speaker 8Well, listen, a lot of this, as you say, is PR, is the frontier CEOs who are very good technologists and very terrible marketers. I mean, no one is buying what they're selling based on what they're telling the American people. We were going to take your job. Your kids aren't going to be able to find jobs. And even if those jobs were available, they're already addicted and attached to our products because of the last 15 years of social media. And now AI, on top of it, and also the world might end. That's their messaging. No wonder we're in this situation, right? American voters are smart when it comes to not buying that message. It's not just PR, though. And to your point, I think that there are things that the tech industries could do to build trust with the American people on the economic front. Let me tell you, and I completely agree with you. I am so bullish on AI when it comes to the economy. I think a lot of that is fear-mongering. Meaning, it is hard to imagine when you are afraid. We're human beings. When you are afraid, you're not creative, right? It's hard to imagine how it could make you feel better when 42% of Americans are afraid that they're going to lose their job, right? But let me tell you about a couple. And the data shows this out, too. The small business guy that's expanding his business because of AI. I met an 86, 85-year-old woman at the beach the other day, a friend of my mom's. She's getting certified in AI. I'm like, why? She was like, well, I like to do a lot of research. It's not necessarily for my job, but I want to keep in touch with my grandkids. Another one of my daughter's friends. I said, how's your job going? He's like, it's great. They think I'm brilliant because I know how to build dashboards with my agent. I'm like, tell me more. And I said, are you worried about losing your job? He said, no. I can see three other ways that I can hire people my age because they know AI and no one else in my business does. So that's the kind of thing that you're saying. I think it can actually unfortunately been, and this is where I'll get back to politics in a minute, I mean, for a minute, is that the American voter does not trust. We lost so much ground as a party on this election, unfortunately. The Democrats saw this as a winning issue, and now Republicans are going into the 2028 cycle in a trust deficit. 9% more voters trust Democrats on AI than they trust Republicans. This is something all of the regulatory questions that you're asking are the right ones to ask. We're not going to be able to do that. We're not going to solve that today. But everything you're asking, we've got to grapple with as a party over the next few weeks and months, not years, 2028 is now, in order to win the trust of those voters back.
Speaker 1So what would you say to, we mentioned earlier this story about this woman who is photographed in front of an empty parking lot fighting the data centers because she said they would literally generate diesel. That was what she said, that they were going to pollute the water, generate the diesel. Again, the propaganda efforts that have been conducted here are pretty extraordinary. What would you say to somebody who's sort of bought into the that stuff? Well, listen,
Speaker 8I'm not going to shame anyone, right? However, I would say she's pre-informed. If she could envision, have a positivity bias and envision the hope behind what that represents instead of the fear. If the American people, which again, we are not, we are not winning the political and messaging war on AI right now as a party. If that woman, when she saw that data center, she thought of AI and she thought about the small business guy business. If she thought about the medical breakthroughs, whether it's ALS or cancer or early diagnosis that are going to save her life or change her life or extend her life. The friend who got their hearing back, the other friend who got his sight back. It is truly a miraculous technology. Again, the most powerful technology in the history of the world that is going to shape the next 250 years of our country. Right now, instead of that hope, that woman unfortunately is seeing fear and we've got to do a better job, both as an industry, the tech industry has to do a better job. We've got to do a better job of doing a better job of doing a better job of messaging and in actually making their products safer. These cyber hack, again, these cyber hack articles are not in the headlines are not helping right now. And instead of instilling that fear, we've got to, we've got to lead with a message of hope on AI. The Democrats, by the way, Ben picked up on this. They know it's a winning issue. They outspent us nine to one and Republicans really just did not have a message. And so really my message for your listeners or anyone who might like I am is do not sleep on AI. It was the sleeper issue of 2026. It is going to be the main issue or a main issue in 2028 and 2028 starts today. That's Janet Kelly.
Speaker 1She's CEO of the Alliance for a Better Future. You can go check out the group. They're doing really fascinating work. Janet, thanks so much for the time.
Speaker 8Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1Thank you. Now, as we've been discussing, woke 2.0 is economic demagoguery. So woke 1.0 is racial demagoguery, sexual demagoguery, right? That's what we're talking about. That was the thing that we got back in 2020, 2021. The idea that America was a white supremacist system, a patriarchy evil. Well, now Democrats, because again, they think they've discovered the formula and the new formula is capitalism sucks. Capitalism is bad. And so the goal is what if we just kind of chip away at the capitalism until we pour the universal acid of socialism all over it? Representative Summer Lee, who is back in Congress, she says that progressivism is playing the long game. Well, here's the quiet part out loud.
Speaker 9And I think that a lot of us know that our voters don't necessarily align themselves on this left, right binary. That's why you're getting people in deep red districts now who are talking about data centers and AI. They're talking about health care. They're talking about ends in wars. They're talking about so many of the things that progressives have been saying for ever. And they're still trying to draw the conclusion that, well, progressivism didn't win. Well, they're first. And then we build from there. And this cycle, I think, has absolutely shown us that people actually do want bold change.
Speaker 1OK, again, this is what the left is saying. Again, we'll destroy AI. We'll destroy markets. We'll destroy. We'll do it slowly. Right. Well, there are people like Summer Lee, like AOC, who are going to go the one way out in front of the train and wait for the train to catch up to them. But that is the idea. And then you'll have people who basically lie. That'll be like the Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, who's out there saying, don't we're over. Because instead of the culture wars, they're going to do economic warfare. And then they're just going to spoon a bunch of culture war. And once once we've done the economic warfare, we can do the culture war, too.
Speaker 10Yeah, we need a governor who's going to work for you. No more culture wars. Nobody has time or patience or the luxury of culture wars in twenty twenty six. A governor who's going to focus on making sure that the American dream is really then reach back to basics, saving Texas schools, putting money in your pocket. That is my agenda. That is my focus. I'm not doing culture wars. Those those wars are over. The only ones who won in that were the billionaires.
Speaker 1Oh, the billionaires won in the in the culture wars. Well, actually, you guys won in twenty twenty on the basis of culture wars and then you lost. But again, this is all just guys for destruction of the key American institutions like free markets. It's amazing. They swiveled from trans the kids to trans the markets. You just destroy that, like destroy the markets has now become the bipartisan coalitional cause. That's the part that's truly amazing. By the way, she says that she is now going to freeze electricity rates in in Texas. Good luck. According to Reason, she promised during her campaign that if elected, she would direct the Public Utility Commission to freeze the rates residential customers pay until we have laws to ensure that data centers and other high load users pay for themselves. Well, in Texas is a decentralized market, as pointed out by Reason magazine. Retail providers, not regulators, said electricity prices. This means that Hinojosa has very little authority over residential prices. her order would not actually load lower the costs. What they actually mean is that essentially she is going to put enormous pressure on the tech companies and on the data centers. That is the actual, again, destruction in the name of what? Economic redistributionism. That of course is the same thing that is being pushed by Zoran Mamdani. He's now signed a law that gives nonprofits first dibs at buying distressed residential buildings in the Big Apple. Good luck. Okay, so you want to create new housing and he's going to get nonprofits to buy them. Yeah, that's going to be a great developmental strategy. Again, the goal is not to bring down the price of housing. The goal is to end private ownership. That is the entire goal here. The so-called Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, only the second bill that Mamdani has signed in the nearly year since he took office. After the city council quietly resurrected a watered-down version of the bill last month, it will affect 2,100 properties across the five boroughs. The law prevents landlords of primarily rent-stabilized buildings with outstanding housing code violations from listing their properties on the open market. Instead, they have to wait out a 20-day bidding window for qualified nonprofits to express interest in the property and a maximum of 70 days to make an official first offer. So they make you sit on your worthless apartment to sell it to somebody. Instead, you have to sell it to the Zoran Mamdani Islamist Lesbian Center for Housing. That is the plan here. Here's Zoran Mamdani. Zoran Mamdani : How will city
Speaker 11support differ in the context of COPPA in terms of financials for making compelling offers to buildings that are up on the market? First dibs doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to win out. How's the city going to support that?
Speaker 4Zoran Mamdani : Well, I think in the immortal words of Wiz Khalifa, time is money. And we need to ensure that the most responsible stewards of affordable housing are given that opportunity where their conversation is simply with the potential seller of the building. And we've heard from a number of nonprofits over the years that they would have been able to purchase a property were they able to have that kind of a window. Oh. Oh. So you can't
Speaker 1sell your house to a pro- it's the responsible people. Because as we know, the most responsible stewards of capital are nonprofits, which if you've ever worked with a nonprofit, it's one of the most hilarious statements ever made. Truly hilarious. The amounts of waste in nonprofits, most nonprofits is exorbitant. Hey, but don't worry. We've been told, we've been told by very, very reliable sources that Zoran Mamdani is America first. I mean, Tucker Carlson has said this. Zoran Mamdani only cares about America, which is why he is headed to Puerto Rico. Again, Puerto Rico is an American territory. It is not an American state. Here is Zoran Mamdani. Zoran Mamdani : He is headed to Puerto Rico. He is talking about Puerto Rico. He's trying to convert Puerto Rico to socialism. First, I would not
Speaker 12begrudge anyone their questions or their skepticism. And I say that because they have been hearing that very phrase, that very framing for decades. And what is so exciting is to sit across from you as the mayor of the largest city in the country, as someone who's a proud democratic socialist. And what I can do is point at these last 10 months and I can say, this is what it looks like. Zoran Mamdani : When your city is led by a socialist, it looks like delivering universal childcare. It looks like paving 220,000 potholes. It looks like winning the largest labor enforcement action in New York City history. This is what it actually looks like versus this is what it's been described as.
Speaker 1Tucker Carlson : Socialism has been described as, you know, like actual socialism. According to Zoran Mamdani, it's when you have a full scale capitalist city in the Zoran Mamdani : most populous area of the United States. And then you pave a pothole. That's what it is. Tucker Carlson : Folks, they come in with the, with the grin, the smarmy grin. And now the, it's a Mimario mustache and I'm pretty soon start to look like Castro. Okay. Like it is, it is amazing. It is truly amazing. Do not believe a word that this liar says because he is lying and you can tell he's lying as always. The tell is when he's smiling and when he's doing the softer voice, he's doing that. Tucker Carlson : That's when you can tell he's really smiling. Again, ASMR for retarded people. It's a, it's, it's really solid stuff there from Zoran Mamdani. Well, speaking of a people who are not all that bright, Thomas Massey tried to push forward a motion to impeach the secretary of defense of Pete Hegseth yesterday. He remains the sole Republican to vote for it. 211 against it, 204 in favor. Tucker Carlson : Thomas Massey then suggested that he would request a vote for each of the articles separately, because again, Tucker Carlson : he's not going away. He's not, he's going away. He's not going away. I, I, I refuse to leave. I quit. And that's too late, dude. You're ousted. That's what, that's what actually happened right there. Now the vice president put out a statement via Twitter in support of Hegseth. I will say it was an odd statement. He said, has Pete Hegseth committed impeachable crimes? The question is absurd. And the answer is obviously not, which of course is correct. It says like so much of Congress impeachment has become a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policy and the policymaking, et cetera. The irony is that legislators are most angry at Pete on the issues where he's most correct repositioning forces away from Europe and Ukraine and reorganizing the general officer core. This isn't about Iran. This is about the fact that Pete took on the bureaucracy at the Pentagon. Okay. Oh, I am amused by the vice president trying to somehow distinguish Thomas Massey, the sponsor of the legislation who is doing this specifically and solely because Pete Hegseth has participated in the operation against Iran, which again, the vice president wants to make very clear for the 90th time. Tucker Carlson : that he opposes. And don't worry, he's sort of still on Thomas Massey's side. And actually, the real reason that people are going after Hegseth has nothing to, he supports Hegseth, even though he's against the Iran war, he supports Hegseth. Why? Well, because the real reason people are opposing Hegseth is bureaucracy at the Pentagon. Okay. Well, here was the secretary of war yesterday talking about his disagreements with the vice president.
Speaker 13Well, I respect the vice president greatly, and I'm certainly not going to exchange in any finger pointing. And thankfully, politics is not really my thing. I do the department of war and making sure we're prepared and ready. So a lot of people are going to look at the conflict and assess it. And the vice president has been a critical member of the team in every aspect of this. And we're grateful for all the input he's given me personally in our department. And I think going forward, we're going to learn all those lessons and apply them. But I agree with what the president said when he said, hey, if I had to do this all over again, would we do it again? Absolutely. It was done for the right reasons to ensure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon there. As Marco Rubio said, I think quite well, it's not necessarily popular, but it may have been necessary. And that's certainly how I feel it was a necessary undertaking.
Speaker 1Well, join us online to talk about all of this and more divides in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party. Disunity is Brian Kilmeade. He's co-host of Fox and Friends, host of the nationally syndicated Brian Kilmeade show on Fox News Talk. Of course, number one New York Times bestselling author of a bajillion books at this point. His newest book, The United States, is a book that's been published in the United States and the newest one destined again for the New York Times bestseller list is Uniting the States, Six Crucial Moments That Forged the American Miracle. Brian, thanks so much for taking the
Speaker 14time. And Ben, we're number five right now on the list. But after the power of the Ben Shapiro show, I sense I can really knock Sylvester Stallone down a notch because he really hasn't had much success in life. So I feel guilty about that. But if I could, I don't mind beating Michael Douglas, but I do. But I would would actually feel bad about being Sylvester Stallone. But that's the power you have been.
Speaker 1Right. Well, you know, when you're in your next movie, I play Brian Kilmeade, then then that will probably happen. But let's talk. Let's talk about, you know, the book generally is about how the country has been able to come together after fractious moments. Obviously, right now we are in maybe the most fractious moment of the modern era. Politically speaking, it feels like things are sort of coming apart centrifugally because there are a bunch of breaks on the right. There are a bunch of breaks on the left. You know, when you look at the results of last week's election, you know, what do you feel? Are you optimistic about the possibility the country can come back together again and around what principles? I mean, I think you're right.
Speaker 14There's there's these factions used to be right or left. Who's hot? You know, what do we use to debate? How much money for defense? What do we do about health care? You know, social programs. How are you going to bail out Social Security? That used to be the Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush debate. Right. Persian Gulf War was a mistake. Those are the good old days. Now we have a situation where did you see some of the comments since he got elected? He could not even getting elected. He could not disseminate between Iran and Israel on who's a better who's more of an enemy of the U.S. And then you got this guy, Congressman-elect Hamaway, who is a former aide to the blind Sheikh, says, yeah, he can't really decide if we're worse than Iran. We say death to Iran. They say death to America. There's really no difference. We should just talk diplomatically. This guy won an election. So my hope is that people realize the whack jobs that they voted. For and understand the people on the right that have those beliefs aren't really running for office right now. They're the ones that J.D. Vance is soliciting in order to get their approval. But the left is putting them in office. They got the block and they got the squad. But there's such a gap right now because the Republicans did so horrendously in the House that they don't really need either one of them to pass anything. So hopefully America will realize as these people speak out who they elected. And this will be a two-year gap. But maybe people have to see it to understand what they actually put into office. So I am optimistic we'll eventually come to an agreement. together. I do think this Democrats have absolutely no plan for affordability and it's going to become abundantly clear soon. They have no plan. There's not it's not a bad plan. It is no plan. So that's the thing you should give Republicans hope as they continue to bring it in, bring it into the Iran war the right way. How about this thing called winning it? I would like to try that. And then you'll watch everything level out with Trump has been able to do.
Speaker 1Yeah, Brian, one of the things that I think is also sort of astonishing is I'm sure you talk about it in your book as well. But historically, the United States, the people of the United States have been able to identify their foreign enemies. And now it seems like there's a widespread inability to do so. As you mentioned, many members of the Democratic Party no longer consider radical Islam an enemy. A lot of them actually consider it openly an ally. And meanwhile, you know, I think you and I might be the only two people left in the Republican Party who actually understand that Russia is a geopolitical threat to the United States because it has become a sort of bizarre. Talking point on the right that Russia actually isn't so bad. Russia actually is our friend. Now, what do you think is happening? Is that a failure to self-define? And that's reflected in our inability to define who our enemies are.
Speaker 14Yeah, tell that to Latvia. I think it was last night. They all had to run into shelter because it looks like the Russians were breaching their border again. So the Baltic nations get it. Eastern Europeans get it. I do not know what is going on with Republicans and certain than certain people in the podcast world who believe that it's our fault that NATO expanded. Excuse me. These people wanted a shot at freedom. They were scared to death of the reformation of the Soviet Union. They reached out to NATO. And just so everybody knows, NATO is not an offensive threat. They're a defensive alliance to prevent anything happening where Russia wants to reclaim territory. Like, for example, what they're doing, what they did in Georgia, what they took, they've kept those two provinces. And now what they did for the second time in Ukraine, they've gotten. And did you see the stat, Ben? Some Belarus people who are anti-Russian published a stat, 426,000 casualties in four and a half years. That's what they're willing to absorb. And let alone, excuse me, deaths. Those are death certificates. So casualties, near 1.5 million. That's what they're willing to absorb in order to please Vladimir Putin. That guy is as evil as he gets. I understand. You can't get a deal done if you don't say, I hate the Russians and I love the Ukrainians. But I think the president's totally overdone it with giving leeway to Vladimir Putin. And I just think at some point, Putin, I think, embarrassed the president in Alaska. The way he did absolutely nothing after the president took great political risk in having that meeting. And I think there's a danger of him doing it again in the UAE with these meetings again. So I hope they realize that they're going to lose all the binaries in about two months if they continue. But I'm not sure they will. And I just was watching tape roll out just saying that, you know, Yeltsin was promised that we wouldn't move past a certain level. We're not moving on anything. We're giving people freedom. That's all that's happening. People have free governments. We're not moving for a sphere of influence. That's all. The minute they become a democracy or move that way, they become an alliance. They don't become a military
Speaker 1party. You know, Brian, in your book, Uniting the States, Six Crucial Moments That Forged the American Miracle, obviously, one of the major themes is political leadership. And so when we look at sort of what's lacking right now, is this a problem of our education? Is the problem at the population level? What do you think? Or is this just that our leadership class is not producing the kinds of people at the top level who are capable of uniting the country? And maybe that's because we spend so much of our time these days discussing kind of hard nosed interests as opposed to actual American values. Maybe because we don't even agree on what those values are. But I mean, if you look back at the American presidents who are most successful of either party, they're people who spoke in the name of not just American interests, but also in the name of American values. And it's very difficult, I think, to identify at this point from either the right or the left, the last politician, major politician who spoke in sort of raw terms about what it meant for America to have values and what those look like.
Speaker 14I think you broke the key point, and I'll give you an example. In the six moments, crucial moments that made our country, I don't just do war. War is easy. And also, we all know, win battle, why do they fought? I got it. So I include Louisiana Purchase in it. So everyone agreed that New Orleans had to be ours, the mouth of the Mississippi. But the country was divided on whether we should be a big country or not. Jefferson said, I want the whole thing. I want to double the size of the country. I want to go as far west as we can. You know who didn't? Hamilton. Does that mean Hamilton's a bad person? Does that mean Jefferson's a genius? Or vice versa? No. They fought about it. They wanted to make sure we didn't pull off this $15 million purchase. But when it was done, it was done. Over. That's it. We became this country, and thank goodness that Jefferson won out, and we were fortuitous in our timing. So we should continue to fight for things right and left. But when you get things done, you move on. For example, I was watching a debate last night with Laura Ingram and Mark Wayne Mullen and she's for total deportation of every illegal in our country. And maybe you do too in the ideal world. And then I come back to this world and I know it's not possible. And then you see some of the exit polling in the Hispanics and whether you like it or not, they misinterpreted or didn't like when you go and pulling people off the back of landscaping trucks and out of restaurants where they have not committed a crime and threw them out. Now, should they be citizens? No. But is there a compromise there? Would they get extended work visas and a spot? I don't know. I don't know. In order to finish off the wall and keep the deportation policy set and maybe have unanimity when it comes to people who do get asylum and who don't. And this thing called immigration reform, because Trump's going to leave in two years. 50-50 chances. There's not going to be no Republican. Everything that he did is going to be undone. So is it okay for conservatives to say, this is what I want? Is it okay for liberals to say, this is what I want or whatever? It is on the left these days. And this is the best we could get. And my analogy is my other background is sports. You know what the coolest thing to debate was that lit up the phones? Trades. So when you do a trade, well, you got three guys and two draft picks. What do they get in the long run? Well, it didn't really pan out for the Vikings and Cowboys famously with the Hershel Walker trade, but it was great for sports radio. So would we go back to making our shows more about, well, they did a deal on immigration. They did a deal on the deficit. They did a deal on social security. Man, the Republicans gave too much on this. Man, the Democrats, I can't believe they caved like that. That's what I hope we get to. But as conservatives, are people going to say, my guy needs to be primaried. He didn't get everything he wanted. He didn't get what I put him in there for. Well, are we going to get four more tea parties on the right? Are you going to get six more DSAs on the left? So that's what I ask you. Is there enough people that say, okay, like social security is a five alarm fire, right? Do we agree on that? Someone's got to come up with a way to fix it. So are you going to get primary Ben Shapiro if you have a deal where you don't get everything you want?
Speaker 1Yeah. And Brian, I've talked about this with legislators and I've also talked about this with audiences because the truth is that, you know, people who are sort of in our industry and the talking head industry, there's a great incentive to kind of fib to the audience about what's possible. And then the idea is that everyone who doesn't achieve magic is a complete failure and must be ousted. And if all, and I'm the purist, if only they had been stronger in their convictions, then magically we would have gotten everything that we could possibly want. And it turns out what that's a recipe for. And this is true on the other side of the aisle as well. That's a recipe for massive disillusionment by the American public, because you keep telling people that what you want is just around the corner, but you just don't have people in power with sufficient will to do it. And what you need is a, a, you know, a more will power driven political class. Well, the system is not built for that. The system was built directly to create consensus. I mean, I'm sure you talk about it in, in your brand new book, uniting the States, but again, one of the ways that the founders decided to unite the States was to make it so that the national government could only act when there was cohesive and widely approved policy among the States, the whole point of having a house and also a Senate and having a balance of power between the executive and the legislative and the judicial, the whole point was to make it hard to do things absent a gigantic consensus. And instead, because again, people have sort of been convinced. I don't need a consensus. I need 50 plus one. If I get my 50 plus one, I'm going to be able to do it. And so I'm going to be able to do it. And so I'm going to be able to run just roughshod over the other guys to the furthest extent. And if you won't give me that, then it must be because you're some sort of coward or intellectual traitor. If you keep telling people that over and over and over again, what you're going to end up with is disillusionment by of the people in power. And then you'll swing all the way over to the other side and then you'll be disillusioned with them too. So again, for a lot of Republicans who are, you know, having a Pepto Bismol moment about the election, I just, I think it's worthwhile recognizing Democrats are going to disappoint everybody over the course of the next year or two, because, you know, they, they have made a bunch of promises they cannot fulfill. You know, it's interesting.
Speaker 14And I know I'm biased because I think Trump's done a lot of good things, even though I disagree on Russia, obviously. And I think that he should finish the job, should have finished the job in May. And I do think Iran was a move that had to be done by one president until it was an emergency. Then before it became, obviously we had to do it. But having said all that, the thing is he has put the economic programs in place. Yeah. Did he over tariff? Yes. But some of the tariffs didn't work. They led to trade deals. He's done He's about to land Canada, he's about to land Mexico probably within the next three months. Some people think in the next two weeks. So that'll bring all these tariffs, eliminate these tariffs. He uses them as a hedge. He goes and blasts you with tariffs, gets your attention, and he's starting to realign and bring manufacturing back 10 straight months. That's not by accident. So he's doing it. He's drilling where he can. We have broke the fever, that green fever that said if we drive a gas-powered car, the world's going to end. Al Gore should be embarrassed. AOC should be more embarrassed about what they pledged and what didn't come out. So I think that as soon as he gets through the Iran war the right way, you're going to see a lot of these economic policies fall into place quickly. And then people are going to look around and say, who's responsible for it? And it's going to be very clear shortly. What I did not expect is the vice president to jump ship and really separate himself in year two. He's going to be very clear. I think he's going to be very clear. When asked impromptu about the midterm elections, he said, I knew it's not popular, but it doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. And he just went over the danger of Iran. That's what was missing. J.D. could be against it, and that's fine. That's what you're there for, to give a counter-opinion. But to not go and qualify it with this has been a 37-year enemy that this president had the strength to address. That's what I couldn't believe.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, again, I think that your book is a necessary read at this point, uniting the state's six crucial moments that forged the American miracle. It's a reminder that America can come together if we actually come together around some semblance of reality and shared principle. Brian Kilmeade, congrats on the book. Thanks so much for the time.
Speaker 14All right, go get him, Ben Shapiro. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1All righty, folks, the show continues. Now we're going to get to some hubbub inside the Republican caucus. We have a brand new House minority leader. And the Senate minority leader, well, that one stays the same. We'll get into all of that only if you're a Daily Wire member. There has never been a better time to become a Daily Wire member. Today is the day. You can go see Confession right now. It's the movie that everyone, even the people who hate us, is talking about. We're going to have a live view party tonight. You can watch with me. I'll be there. Be in the comments, hanging out with you guys. But again, that only happens when you become a member. And it's because of our members, we're able to make things like Confession. And again, we have more movies coming. We have more hosts coming. We have more documentaries coming. Our pipeline is insane. And you can be a part of making that happen. You can join the fight, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.
Speaker 15Father, I used to feel Christ. I cannot. Feel anything here. They take me out of my bed, and they brought me here, and they tell me nothing. What have I done? Article 58, counter-revolutionary activity. That is all I know. They have to deal with so many enemies of the state, all of whom claim their innocence, who protest.
Speaker 12Who cry. There are no answers here. Other than the ones they put in your mouth.
Speaker 15You'll break. Today is your opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to the people. You'd like to know why I'm here? Of course. But you're already now. Don't you? You must believe in something greater than the party. You will remember your duty. I've told you I know nothing. You growl like a feral animal. You stink of failure. You want me to lie. Still a drunk. Damn you! They all break. Maybe. ♪ ♪
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