The Exchanges

Q and forever wars, and, uh, he gave big credit to a, quote, new generation of leaders, including MBS, for building better societies. Ben, what do you think here? What was your take on the trip? Is this the best Trump? Of all the versions of Trump, this did seem to me to be the best version. He seemed really comfortable with This category of leader in this region in particular.

A Oh, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that, right? I mean, he likes MBS. He obviously likes the Emir of Qatar. He likes the folks in UAE. We've known that for a while, and he's really signaling a shift away from the Obama-Biden policy toward a lot of these places where Biden liked to say the word democracy and then immediately divide off from Saudi Arabia on the basis of that and chide MBS. And all this kind of stuff, and then try to cut a deal with Iran, for example, at the same exact time, which of course pisses off the Saudis. Trump is going over there, and he's in deal-making mode, and you can see he's in deal-making mode, and his entire sort of approach to the Middle East is what he said in the speech, commerce above chaos, right? Let's do some business here. And he understands that there are a lot of people in KSA, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and also in Qatar, UAE as well, who are really looking to do business, and I think there are a bunch of strategic aspects of this that are really good. One of them, obviously, is driving these places Away from China. And the more business ties you have with places like Saudi Arabia or Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, the further away they're going to get from China. I think you do have to be careful with Qatar in particular, which has some divided priorities, shall we say. When it comes to terrorism, obviously Qatar, the case they will ma…

AI assessment note: “Oh, for sure. I mean, there's no question about that, right?”

Q I mean, if you put, uh, if you put Tim Cook in charge and he's a supply chain guy, he's gonna do the optimal thing for, for, for that. Ben, your thoughts on it?

A Yeah, I mean, I, I'm with you guys. I'm waiting to see, you know, when are they gonna make something cool again? I mean, I'm just an ignoramus on this stuff, and it's like, the last time I saw something that came out from Apple that was exciting, it's been many years since they brought out anything that excites me as a consumer, yeah. And so I'm looking at that, and then the only headlines I see are Tim Cook trying to cut a deal with the president to, again, sort of shore up his own supply chain. So if he's a supply chain guy, then I guess that that's his mandate, is to shore up the supply chain with the president of the United States. Um, vis-a-vis the, the iPhone. But if that's the best you're gonna do, then I don't know. Things, things don't look great over there from the outside.

AI assessment note: “So if he's a supply chain guy, then I guess that that's his mandate”

Q Probably also something to do with the other, the Democrats, who the Democrats ran. Putting all that aside, if an American, if the America party or another party were able to secure a couple of Senate seats, couple of House seats, could that reverse this trend where maybe the House takes back a little responsibility in your mind, Ben? Is that a, is that a strategy worth pursuing for moderates?

A I, I think that actually this is not going to get solved at the federal level. I think what's actually going to happen is that the federal government is going to lock up and it's going to be essentially rotating elected quasi-dictators, uh, until, until the end of time, except that The American people are going to be unhappy with that, and you're seeing already more authority now, now kind of being taken up by state actors, which is why you're seeing a necessity for things like federal legislation on AI to preempt the states. What you've seen over the course, you saw this during the Biden administration a lot. I moved from California, which is obviously a very left-governed state, to Florida, which is a very right-governed state, but the difference in governance are massive, and you're seeing governors pick up the mantle of saying, okay, well, the federal government is unworkable. They're not doing what we want to do, so we're going to do our own thing down here. We're going to challenge The federal government in a wide variety of ways. And, and I think that's actually the, the proper solution. That's, that's actually a reversion to what the founders wanted in the first place when the federal government was essentially so small that you could walk into the White House and just talk to the president and, and state governments were the ones with the vast majority of authorities. …

AI assessment note: “I think that actually this is not going to get solved at the federal level.”

Q the West, uh, and in their country. Um, do you think we should have deep ties to them, and is, The steel man argument that their relationship with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood acceptable to you, Ben Shapiro, or do you think we should hold the line with them and say, hey, you got to cut off these relationships if you want to have a relationship with the United States?

A I mean, it seems to me that we have a lot more leverage in, in the latter situation, and, and Qatar has obviously been paying some eight billion dollars to have this airbase on its own territory, but then puts restrictions on how the United States can use that sort of airbase. That airbase was previously located In Saudi. And so I, you know, it's my perspective that after October seventh, for example, the United States under Joe Biden should have gone to Qatar, which, which obviously has a deep relationship with Hamas as proven by the release of that American hostage while President Trump was in the Middle East, which was done at the behest of Qatar, that, that probably the United States should have gone to Qatar and said, listen, the airbase goes away unless all the hostages come out and the Hamas leadership goes into exile and you avoid the entire war. So there is leverage that can be exerted. Uh, I, I'm not sure that the leverage is being properly exerted on Qatar. Let's put it this way. I'm much more enthusiastic about the ties that President Trump is fostering with Saudi and UAE than I am the ties that he's fostering with Qatar. I mean, back in 2017, there was nearly a war between Saudi and UAE and Qatar. I mean, that's how bad the relations were back in 2017. And President Trump was on the Saudi-UAE side of that. So, you know, moving, let, let, let, let's just say trust b…

AI assessment note: “we have a lot more leverage in, in the latter situation”

Q What are your thoughts, Ben, on this broadly speaking?

A I mean, I have a general rule. If Bernie Sanders likes a policy, I don't like the policy. And so the, and so when it comes to, when it, when it comes to this particular EO, I mean, the, the real problem here for using MFN status, as President Trump is calling it, is that if we are going to use the kind of tariff tools that President Trump has talked about to even the playing field, it seems to me this is where you actually should put pressure on places like Canada, or Mexico, or the EU, is for them to actually pay their fair share for the drugs that they are getting from the United States, because we're patenting all the drugs over here, and then we're selling it at discount prices to all of these nationalized healthcare systems, And so if you do that with Medicaid, what you'll probably get is number one, a lot of these pharmaceuticals just won't be used by Medicaid. Pharma won't sell it to them. Instead, you'll have to go into the private sector, which means it's going to be more expensive in the private sector than it would have been otherwise. If you're covered by private insurance, your pharma bill is actually going to be higher than it otherwise would be. What we should be doing is getting other countries to pay their fair share, drive up the price on those other places, and then you can actually do something that looks more like an MFN status because you're not artificial…

AI assessment note: “when it comes to this particular EO, I mean, the, the real problem”

Q So you think thoughtful is good, uh, and well thought out, constructed, and communicated. What, what, um, when you talk about this being done right, what do you think's being done wrong? It could be done better, I guess, would be a generous way of saying it. What, what could they communicate better?

A I mean, and not to jump into the, the pile of rakes that is the, the tariff plan, but I, I think that the, I think that the way that the tariff plan was rolled out is about as bad a rollout as you could do. Um, you know, the reason I say that is not just because of my disagreements on the actual policy, I'll either be right or I'll be wrong on that, but the way that it was rolled out with, with very, with, with essentially kind of a surprise announcement, um, I don't mind a surprise announcement if what is then rolled out is not replete with, with sort of contradictory justifications, um, you know, statistics that, that are labeled one thing, but really are not that thing, uh, and, and so it just, it opens itself up to all sorts of critiques from every possible, uh, Side of the, if you want to make the argument, make the full, make the full scale, well-thought argument, and then we can argue over whether it's true or not, but there's, there's four or five different claims that are being simultaneously made about the tariffs. One, they're going to raise revenue. Two, they're going to reshore. Three, that you are going to somehow rejigger the world trading system. Some of these are mutually exclusive. If you're going to, if you're going to reshore, you're not going to raise as much revenue, for example, right? Those two things are mutually exclusive, and they're both being trotte…

AI assessment note: “the way that the tariff plan was rolled out is about as bad a rollout”

Q do solar or maybe clean gas here, drill baby drill, or? Probably some people in the audience are thinking, well, why don't you rich guys pay one percent more taxes and cut the military five percent? And then a little bit of austerity measures on the margin sound like a better strategy. How would you respond to that argument that many people in the audience are probably thinking right now?

A So, I mean, if the numbers added up, that might be plausible, but the numbers just don't add up. I mean, the idea that if you just incrementally increase the top tax bracket, that that's going to pay off the massive national debt that we have racked up or the national deficit that we're racking up every year, the numbers don't add up in any way like that. Uh, and, and when you take a look at energy production, the same thing is true. Solar is not going to be making up for LNG anytime soon. That's for sure true globally. Uh, and you know, when it comes to America's role in the world, which is the biggest thing here, when it, when we talk about cutting the military budget, that always sounds sexy, but the reality is that undergirding things like, for example, the big deals that President Trump is cutting in Saudi and UAE is the giant American air base that we have in Qatar and the ability of the United States to provide the defense mechanisms For those countries. I mean, let's be very clear about what's going on in the Middle East. If the United States did not exist, there's a solid shot that the Saudi monarchy, the Qatar Emirates, and the UAE would not exist in their current form, and you would have something like a Muslim Brotherhood running many of those nations, and so the reality is that always backing American soft power is the threat of American hard power, and this is for…

AI assessment note: “if the numbers added up, that might be plausible, but the numbers just don't add up”

Q answer to that question as well, maybe some reconciliation here between the moderates, MAGA, original, you know, classic GOP, Democrats, and, and the woke lunatics. Like, is there any way out of this? And, and maybe perhaps what we're seeing here with somebody like Antonio, who's a lifelong Democrat, who now is, you know, helping the government, maybe there's some way with data, And logic we can get through this?

A I mean, I, I think that what Antonio is doing here is, is so important specifically for that, because it seems to me there's actually been a fairly wide consensus among the American population for a very long time what to do about immigration, particularly the southern border, which is number one, just stop the illegal immigration at the southern border. After Biden blew that out, a lot of Democrats turned to President Trump specifically because of that issue, and that has been the signal success of the Trump administration among all the other successes. The, the numbers of the border have just Plummeted to almost zero. I mean, the lowest numbers in recorded history, and that is an unmitigated success. And then I think everybody knows that we have to sort of figure out who gets to stay and who gets to go, who's already in the country, and what Antonio is doing by being able to discern who is here and is a net draw on the resources of the American people versus maybe who is a net taxpayer or who's actually contributing, who's a criminal, right? There's always been this bizarre supposition in the, in the political realm that there's no way on a one-to-one level to figure out who is who. You have to treat everybody as a class. Either everybody stays, everybody goes, And the reality is that even the way the Trump administration is doing this by first targeting, say criminal illegal…

AI assessment note: “what Antonio is doing here is, is so important specifically for that”

Q Ben, your thoughts on the two issues. Is trade good for consumers? This is what, you know, I think is on top of everybody's mind, that the whole Trump presidency, and he won in large part due to inflation and Biden economics, and that he was going to reduce inflation, and I think a lot of people believe inflation's about to come roaring back. Your thoughts on the two issues?

A Well, I mean, obviously on a macroeconomic level, I totally agree with Senator Paul, and when it comes to the powers of the presidency, I think that it's pretty extraordinary that we should be able to use the trade deficit As a national emergency sufficient to put down what effectively amounts to a seven hundred billion dollar tax increase on the American people, if you're talking about them paying the price of the tariffs on the other end. Congress, you know, I think that if things get bad enough, there are a bunch of, you know, streams obviously here that cross. One of the big things here is that Congress is up for reelect in a year and a half. And if the Republicans lose Congress in a year and a half, then whatever tricks President Trump is trying to pull in terms of being able to rejigger The rate at which we are paying back our national debt. All that stuff goes by the wayside, because if Democrats win Congress, pretty much everything comes to a crashing home. And there are a lot of Republicans who are in swing districts or in, say, R plus five, R plus 10 districts, who are suddenly going to feel pretty vulnerable. A recession takes everybody with it. It takes Secretary Bessent, it takes the president, it takes J.D. Vance, takes everybody with it. Recessions tend to crush the president who is in power at the time, regardless of what their long-term plan is. When they say s…

AI assessment note: “effectively amounts to a seven hundred billion dollar tax increase on the American people”

Q Yeah. Ben, has it made its way into your workflow at Daily Wire, and are you monitoring this as a business owner with, I think you have a couple hundred employees, and, you know, do you see a bifurcation of the people who use the tools and who don't?

A Yeah, I mean, it's definitely bleeding into workflow in terms of, you know, being able to gather information obviously very quickly, or even using some editing tools via AI. We put out Jeremy's Razor commercial two months ago that was entirely AI, and it still had the kind of AI slop feel to it a little bit, but it, but it was, it was doing a thing, and it was obviously a lot cheaper than having to shoot something, but I kind of wanted to, you know, again, I'm the dumb guy in this part of the conversation, for sure, in many conversations, but I just have a general question, which is, Do you think that the productivity gains are going to bleed over fast enough to justify the investment? I mean, that's like the dumb guy question, right?

AI assessment note: “it's definitely bleeding into workflow in terms of, you know, being able to gather information”

Q Will MBS sign it? And Trump sort of alluded, hey, they're going to do it in their own time. What's holding it up in your mind? And if they, if and when they do sign it, what impact would it have on the region? Then number two, your thoughts on this Qatar plane kerfluffle and the media sort of obsessing over it. Are they over indexing on it or not?

A So as far as the Abraham Accords, you know, again, I think that this is a, it is a shift in tone for president Trump. Abraham Accords was considered sort of his signal foreign policy. Accomplishment during term one. And it is my belief that if he'd been reelected in 2020 by February 2021, I think Saudi would have been in the Abraham Accords. Obviously, one of the obstacles continues to be the war in Gaza, what actually ends up emerging there. But one, ironically, one of the things that actually has undermined the kind of incentive for Saudi to join the Abraham Accords is Israel's complete devastation of all of the proxies of Iran. So one of the things that was driving Saudi and Israel together was the fact that there was this really giant threat in Iran. And so now it appears, it could be at least plausibly read, that one of the reasons why President Trump is selling a hundred and fifty billion dollars worth of military hardware to KSA is to provide a defensive barrier against Iran, while assuming that maybe Iran does end up going nuclear. So, you know, what happens with Iran does have serious ramifications for the possibility of an Abraham Accord, including Saudi Arabia. That seems like it's more distant than it was a couple of years ago, and it may take more time than I think that Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and the Trump administration would like it to be. As far as, as far …

AI assessment note: “As far as the plain kerfuffle, on my show, I said that it looks skeezy”

Q is we're, we're gonna have robots to do this. Ben, uh, you know, if I run for president, I'm one of the few people here on the pod who can, uh, my position's gonna be build three new cities with five million homes in each because, you know, starter homes, families can't buy starter homes. You ever consider running for office? And if you did, what would be your platform?

A I mean, it'd be pretty horrifying to run for office. It seems like a terrible job. And I think the age to run for president is now in your seventies. So I have like three decades to consider it. But, you know, if I were gonna run, I would be running on the basic idea that in this country, the only thing that you are promised is, is the adventure. And, and I'm not gonna make you promises that, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm not gonna make you promises that I can't keep about how I'm gonna fix your life, because the truth is, I really can't. All I can do is help get the obstacles out of the way so you can fix your life and you can make your life better, and I can help break the institutions that have a stranglehold On, on your future. And, and there, when you're talking about electricians and plumbers, the truth is that we have set up an enormous con game that is our higher education system, particularly in the liberal arts subsidized by the taxpayer. When most jobs that, that we're talking about right here do not require a college degree. There's so many things that, that the Trump administration should be doing and is doing that again, that are great, that they could break the stranglehold on some of these things that allow for more opportunity. But I think the thing that people really You know, the, the thing that I would say that I, I really think that maybe no other politicia…

AI assessment note: “if I were gonna run, I would be running on the basic idea that”

Q you could include those in it. But yeah, it's, it's hard, it's a hard bet to settle, but I think people believe it's not gonna generate a massive amount of revenue. The relationship with China and this sort of changing Concept of consumerism. You think that's a possibility for America? Or do Americans just want cheap stuff on Amazon and an unlimited number of Amazon boxes in their recycle bin?

A I mean, I'm not sure that's how consumers have ever thought about this sort of stuff. I mean, you know, I remember when I was younger, there was, you know, a lot of talk about made in America cars. You know, buy made in American. And that just kind of failed because it turns out that the American cars just weren't as good as the stuff that you could get elsewhere. And it turns out that Americans are both producers and consumers. And yeah, it's, it's, it's easy to say don't buy cheap crap from China, but it turns out a lot of stuff that actually is not all that cheap also was manufactured in China. Hopefully now it'll be manufactured in Vietnam or, or manufactured in India or in other third party countries. The idea that we're going to be, you know, reshoring all that stuff to the United States. We're not going to be making t-shirts in the United States. That's not a thing. Um, but you know, I, I do think that right now my read is that We, it's too early to tell. Meaning that, this, this just reminds me of the old Yiddish joke, where the couple isn't getting along, so they go to the rabbi, and they say, what do we do, rabbi? He says, I want you to bring a chicken into your house. They bring the chicken into their house, and still isn't working, and they go back to the rabbi, he says, I want you to bring a cow into your house. They bring a cow into their house, and they say, it s…

AI assessment note: “The idea that we're going to be, you know, reshoring all that stuff to the United States”

Q but outside of that, Is there some rationale here when we have the lowest unemployment of our lifetime, and everybody wants to come here, you know, to immigrate to this country, to doing these tariffs and trying to create jobs here that we don't necessarily need? We have too much employment right now in the market and not enough bodies to fill all the open job wrecks where you're going.

A Well, I mean, I think one of the things that's really fascinating is the, the kind of difference in messaging that you hear between the Treasury Secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the Commerce Secretary, And the president. I mean, they're, they're all messaging kind of different things. I think Secretary Besant is making the strongest case for, for what's being done with this sort of long-term, what's, what does reordering look like? And, and even there, I'm, I'm still lacking clarity on what a reordered world trade relationship actually, what is the end of the rainbow there? What does that actually look like when all is said and done? So that I can kind of grasp exactly what that, what he wants that to look like. Um, well, I think that, you know, Secretary Lutnik seems to actually just like tariffs and President Trump seems to have a picture in his head When it comes to factories, that we're going to, you know, revitalize the steel mills, that we're going to be, we're going to be doing the kinds of jobs that we did back in the 19 fifties. It's sort of a nostalgia that, that, that President Trump has in sort of his own mind about these sorts of jobs that, by the way, nobody in modern life actually wants to work at. If, if you were to work at a Ford factory in 1953 in a non-air-conditioned factory, riveting for a living, you would actually be quite unhappy. And, and you should be ve…

AI assessment note: “President Trump seems to have a picture in his head When it comes to factories”

Q I've, I've spent a lot of time in the region, maybe four or five trips in the last couple years, Last couple times I was there, women doing business, dancing, music, and now there's alcohol in the kingdom in some select locations. There's a casino coming to UAE. We're actually seeing maybe this strategy of less judgment, more engagement, actually result in more modernization. So what's your take on this?

A I mean, I think that one of the things that's happened in the media coverage of President Trump's speech is, is this sort of false binary that isn't really what's going on. So it was sort of posited as Neoconism versus isolationism, and he mentioned both of those sorts of concepts in his speech, but the reality is that I think we should be careful about how we define these terms. What we really mean is that Wilsonian interventionism has been completely rejected by the American people and by President Trump. President Trump is saying that we are not going to go into these, like, to pretend that President Trump is being isolationist is obviously not true. I mean, he's literally cutting trillion dollar deals with foreign countries and traveling there and making common bonds with them. It's the opposite of isolationism. In a lot of ways. It's a realism, right? He's a foreign policy realist who wants to make deals where he can make deals, and he wants to make the best deal for America.

AI assessment note: “one of the things that's happened in the media coverage of President Trump's speech”