The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 2504 - One Year Since Charlie Kirk’s Murder... What The Hell Happened?!

0:00Hi Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately though, Mint's story is better. Every plan $15 a month, even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a try at MintMobile.com slash switch. Up from payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 month plan required, $15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees extra. Initial plan for money greater than 50 gigabytes means slow when network is busy, see terms. We'll get to more on this in just one second. First, you know, 20 years ago, and a lot has happened in my life. I was 22 years old. I was not yet married. And now, just think back over the past 20 years, wife, five kids, big business, all of it. Well, 20 years of long time, simply safe is now celebrating 20 years. Again, most companies don't make it that long unless they're actually solving a real problem. When you're picking a security system for your home, while you're looking for a piece of mine, the goal is not to obsess over your security. The goal is to never have to think about it again. And that's what I like about simply safe. Most home security systems are designed for after something goes wrong.

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2:01Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai slash wire today. One year ago today, our friend Charlie Kirk was brutally murdered live on camera while debating public policy at a public university. He was shot in the neck. He blood out in front of all of us. Well, remember it. His murderer was a militant gay man in a relationship with a trans for the motives were perfectly clear and the evidence was perfectly clear. What should have happened next was just as clear. Political reunification on the right around some core principles united opposition to left wing violence. Maybe religious revival. None of that really ended up happening. In a moment, we'll discuss what did happen. However, everything broke and how we can help put it back together. We'll also be joined by TPUSA spokesman and recall it as well as Victor Davis Hansen. This is the Ben Shapiro show. So as I said, one year ago today, Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood in front of the entire world. Obviously I knew Charlie from the time he was 18 years old. Anybody who knew Charlie for any length of time was sort of astonished by his level of energy,

3:02by his stick to itiveness, by the fact that he was willing to run through pretty much any wall. First time I met Charlie is I've talked about who's 18. We are an event together down at the breakers in Palm Beach. And I remember turning to Jeremy Boring and saying that guy is going to end up being head of the RNC. And then of course, he founded TPUSA which ended up being probably more important than the RNC in the end. And Charlie for a long time, we didn't agree on everything. A lot of those disagreements were public. We varied on matters ranging from economics to foreign policy. But obviously Charlie was a lifelong conservative. Charlie was also a bridge builder. When Charlie was shot, I was at a breakfast in Los Angeles. My security team as I've talked about pretty extensively told me what had happened. I went online. I started seeing the videos. Once you saw the videos, it was pretty clear that it was unlikely Charlie would survive. My security team was talking to Charlie's security team. It turns out once they were already at the hospital and they were keeping my security team informed. Because obviously this is what security teams for high profile individuals do in the sort of space found out.

4:07Basically the same time as everybody else that Charlie had died. And again, all of America basically went into mourning. People on the right, good-hearted people on the left, people in the middle, they'll recognize that whatever their political disagreements were with Charlie. Correct. Charlie had been a person who spent his entire life just doing political debate publicly and then bridge building privately. That's what Charlie was doing. And we're now a year out. And I have to say that I think whatever expectations we all had of what was going to happen next, we're largely thwarted. And what's truly incredible about that is that they were largely thwarted around Erica Kirk, his wife. Because there were people who decided that it was deeply imperative to destroy Erica as he can being and destroy TPSA as an organization for their own nefarious political purposes. Well, Erica this week had a piece over at The New York Times talking about what she's learned about her grief in the year since. It's September 11th, 2025, the day after my husband, Charlie Kirk,

5:09was shot and killed. The past 24 hours feel like a fever dream as I land in Phoenix from Utah and return home. I get out of the car, my kids run into my arms, they have no idea where I was or what I was doing. They care only that I'm home. As I walk to the front door, there's a tightening in my chest. I don't recognize. Is this what grief feels like? I sit on the couch where Charlie sat two nights ago, watching the cubs with our kids. I feel wave building inside me. I know it's about to crash, which is talking with Usha Vance about all of this. She discussed this publicly before. She and I talked about this as well briefly when I saw her a few days after the assassination in Phoenix that Usha had told her just get through the next 15 minutes. She says, when you lose someone you love, it's easy to struggle to understand God's plan. One of the hardest tests of our faith occurs when bad things happen. True faith means accepting we won't get every answer and finding peace in that. I've seen extraordinary good born out of something unimaginably evil. I've watched people return to faith and rose, reconcile with their families and forgive old wounds because of Charlie. I know my husband is in heaven, but I ache for him to be here. Still, I can stand and say without a shadow of doubt that God is good.

6:12She says, one day, maybe when you lose to expect it, you'll start to see that those 15 minutes, the next 15 minutes hold more than just grief. The grief is there always, but so is the beautiful gift of life. Again, the fact that Erica has had to go through all of this while simultaneously heading up TPUS. I say, go through all of this. I don't just mean the grief. I mean the insane desire by some to destroy her or to destroy TPUS. It's an astonishing thing and demonstrates the moral limits of many people in the so-called conservative movement, who were never really part of the conservative movement who are out for themselves and who wish to tear down rather than to build up. Again, who was behind it was perfectly obvious pretty much immediately. The minute that I had heard that Charlie had been shot, it was pretty obvious to me that the person who shot him was likely to be a part of the radical trans movement. Charlie was not wildly offensive to a huge variety of people. Is the truth. He said some controversial things from time to time on matters ranging from criminal justice to the nature of Islam.

7:14But the people who always see most agitated about Charlie Kirk were radical trans activists, because as I said at the time, there's a permission structure for violence that is implicit in the trans radical ideology. The basic idea is that if you say a man is a man and a woman is a woman, you are quote unquote erasing them. You're creating a trans genocide or threat to them. And so it was not a tremendous shock that Tyler Robinson ended up being the murderer. There's perfectly obvious security footage of Tyler Robinson on campus that day. Here are some of that footage. Do you believe he recognized who that person is? Yes. Who is that? I believe that is Tyler Robinson. Where does he go from there? He adds out of the parking garage on foot into the campus. And actually goes to the quad area of the campus. That time he makes contact with some representatives from TPUSA. By quad area. Sorry, the Ampitheater is what I previously referred it to.

8:14So he goes about campus visits the amphitheater area, the courtyard required. Correct. And then what do we see here now? He returns on foot back to the same vehicle. And what time is he returning back to the vehicle? It's about 9.25 AM. Okay. Well, Robinson then ended up turning himself in at the behest of his parents. Here was the testimony on that point. Plus the actual tape of him turning himself in. This was presented at the preliminary hearing. As you can see, he walks in. It's clearly him. Contra fools and corrupting influences. But he's not an idiot. Lance Twigs is Tyler Robinson's boyfriend. And he testified that Robinson had asked him for a Dremel to engrave bullets about a month before. The Dremel that you talked about. You said he had asked for that, is that right? And he told you it was to describe bullets. Yeah. And so did you have a Dremel then?

9:16Yeah. Okay. It was an art like we had a our apartment. We had a section where we kept all our like random tools for household stuff in our like lower basement level pantry. So yeah. Okay. And did you give that to Omar? Tell him what it was. I just told him where it was. Well, again, the evidence is very obvious in this case. The police displayed the photo of Tyler Robinson's rifle. They also displayed photos of Robinson's engrave bullets. The police also displayed photos of Robinson's texts directly on his phone. And of course, the judge ruled that Tyler Robinson's trial could go for the death penalty is indeed on the table. And the motive is not particularly difficult to tell. As Utah County prosecutor Ryan McBride said with the defendant's views of repugnant, it's the positions that Charlie Kirk famously took. So again, it was perfectly obvious who's behind this from the very beginning. So what really should have happened here? What should have happened? Well, I mean, obviously, there should have been a political coming

10:17together at the very least around basic principles of free speech. I mean, this is what Charlie was famous for. I know that there was an entire religious element to what happened after Charlie had been murdered because Charlie spoke often about his open Christianity, which is great. But what Charlie was most famous for was his debates on college campus and the fact that he was a speech advocate. And here was Charlie explaining to a liberal student why he believed in free speech. Sit on a college campus and talk. Because I don't think I'm going to change your mind, not only if you're going to change your mind. So maybe you'll make a point I won't think of. Maybe I'll make a point you'll think of. But also, I'm a big believer that a public and open and sometimes provocative speech is fundamental to a free society. Right? It pushes boundaries, it gets people out of their comfort zone, it makes you live in a less totalitarian moment at least in that instant. Right? So I just think it's really healthy. I think it makes you more human. Right? And you maybe you're like, oh, like that's really stupid. You keep walking. Again, again, people try to portray Charlie as some sort of radical, insane, nasty person that

11:20just never came from him. It just didn't. So what should have happened is of course banding together again is the people who wish to destroy the body politic. Matt Walsh famously tweeted the entire right has to band together. Enough of this infighting bullshit. We're up against demonic forces from the pit of hell. They're killing us in our churches. They tried to kill our president. They killed Charlie. One of our greatest advocates put the personal squabbles aside. Now is not the time. This is existential. We fight for our own existence and the existence of our country. And Matt, of course, called for coming together against political violence. I want to be very clear that we will not back down after this. We will not shrink away or go into hiding. We will not fall silent. We will not walk in fear. We will stand taller and prouder than we ever have. And be louder and bolder than we've ever been. And fight harder than we've ever fought. They think they can kill the movement by killing us. But in the entire history of the world, that strategy has never worked. And it won't work now.

12:21I promise you that. You can kill a man. You can shoot him in the neck on stage. You can spill his blood for the whole world to see. But you cannot kill a cause. Especially when that cause is nothing else but love of God, love of country, love of family. That causes truth. And of course, President Trump spoke similarly. He said it was time to end political violence in the United States. It's a long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year in the most hateful and despicable way possible. For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans. Like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murders and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today.

13:23And it must stop right now. Okay, so again, what should have happened was a bit of a coming together or a major coming together, particularly on the right. What also should have happened was presumably a religious revival. Charlie openly talked a lot about his faith, the importance of his faith, when asked what was most important in his life he said, his faith. If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered? I mean, if I die, everything just goes away. How would you, if you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered? I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith in my life. So obviously after Charlie's assassination, there was what, can best be termed a gigantic religious revival, tent meeting almost for his memorial. I was privileged to be there. I was in the vice president's box. He called and he asked me to be in that box. After I appeared on Fox News that morning, I was attending the memorial anyway. And at that, at that event, Erica got up and of course,

14:23she forgave Tyler Robinson speaking about her faith openly. Father, forgive them for they not know what they do. That man, that young man, I forgive him. Of course, it's an incredibly moving moment. And then the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, got up and gave a speech talking about Charlie's legacy of faith and the importance of the New Testament. One of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this is the following. His deep belief that we were all created every single one of us before the beginning of time by the hands of the God of the universe and all powerful God, who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our creator.

15:25And so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us. And he suffered like men. And he died like a man. But on the third day, he rose unlike any mortal man. And then, and to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds. He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh. And then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return. And he will. And when he returns, because he took on that death, because he carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from him. And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth. And we will all be together. And we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love. Now, again, if what you were looking for is some level of political reunification against political violence, against permission structures for violence,

16:25or even on the right more broadly, if what you were looking for was a religious revival, people returning to church, a principled revival of the social fabric that Charlie actually cared about. What that did require was some borders. It did require borders because people who tear apart that social fabric or people are not part of that movement or people who take advantage of that movement tear apart from the inside. Right, that needs to be stopped. So not long after this, unfortunately, things started to fall apart. And a couple of months later, I spoke at the TPUSA event pretty famously where I said this. Personal feeling is not a substitute for moral judgment. To take again, the Candace Owens situation as an example, friendship with public figures who say or do evil things is not an excuse for silence on the matter. Politics is not the sisterhood of the traveling pants. Politics is about principle and if you're willing to sacrifice basic truth and simple principle in favor of emotional solidarity, you have betrayed your fundamental duty to the American people. If you host a Hitler Apologist, Nazi loving anti-American piece of refuse like Nick Flentes, there's a reason Charlie despised Nick Flentes.

17:27He knew that Nick Flentes is an evil troll and building him up as an act of moral and facility I've ripped into. Among others, Candace Owens and Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson for a very good reason, which was they had decided that the unity of the right was not important. They had decided not only that, but that they were going to humor conspiracism with regard to Erica Kirk and TPUSA, the vice president of the United States, JD Vance. He got up and he said sort of the opposite. He said they don't need to be any ideological borders, no border control for the conservative movement. After Charlie's death, he himself refused to do in life. He invited all of us here.

18:29Charlie invited all of us here for a reason because he believed that each of us, all of us had something worth saying and he trusted all of you to make your own judgment. And we have far more important work to do than canceling each other. We have got to build and president Donald Trump is a builder. Now again, maybe that was tenable if everybody was oriented in the correct direction, but instead, instead of that moment of unity, either political or spiritual, instead what we got was rampant conspiracism promoted by precisely people who were not banished, precisely people who, while they themselves were banishing themselves from the movement, people themselves who were not in fact, in any way treated with any level of skepticism. The ideological border control went away and one of the things that happened was that the moment evolved and it is impossible to tell the story of the last year without talking about this

19:31because that is very much part of the story. TPUSAs will talk about Andrew Colvin in a little while is alive and well, it is thriving, there are lots of great things happening, but the promise of the moment was destroyed. It was and it was destroyed by people like for example Candace Owens who spends and has spent literally the entire year since going after TPUSA and Erica Kirk and promoting wild and sane conspiracism with regard to pretty much everybody up to and including me among others. Here is Candace September 16th of last year, right? Just days after Charlie's murder, after suggesting TPUSA was in on it, suggesting that Erica Kirk herself knew things, there was a cover up going on, here she was. No one and I mean absolutely no one outside of my husband and Erica Kirk has the power to shut me up right now. That's it. And then of course Erica Kirk specifically said, please don't do this in a Candace just refused or in fact Candace went much further than that, she made entire series,

20:32essentially comparing her to the bride of Chuckie and now she says Erica went to the enemy. Same perspective that he held somehow immediately that was something she reversed course on and felt comfortable having them in her home. Okay fine. So right off the bat we're just going why is this in the New York Times? Why is it behind a paywall and why can't you just do anything that feels normal and as Charlie was, I guess you've been honest, it's turning point 2.0, it has nothing to do with turning point 1.0, it's a totally different organization, it's unattainable, you work with the Department of War, you work with the deep state apparatus, you are their emotional asset. We get it, it just feels like you're laying it on thick and like maybe you could have just published a sub stack here that if I'm running your PRH do a sub stack about how you feel, don't put it behind a paywall, what you've learned about grief, okay. Just horrific and of course she was defended and is still defended by Megan Kelly. Here's Megan Kelly, a principal free human being doing just that. I think that Candace Owens is a very, very dodgy witness in this considering she doesn't have a

21:35ton of credibility amongst anyone. Okay but let me just say this in Candace's defense. First of all she's brilliant, Candace is brilliant, I realize she's controversial but she is very smart. I think what happens with people when they get into conspiracy theories is it's never just one, they take the whole parcel of them. She's not hurting the better self but I will say like I have checked more than once because I see this crazy quote and I know her a little and she's a fighter, she's feisty. I have never known her to be some nut job. She's very, very smart. Dr. Carlson of course engaged in precisely the same sort of stuff here. He was laughing at conspiracy theory surrounding Charlie Kirk with Jimmy Dore. Takes the gun apart leaves the screwdriver there, puts it under a towel, spider man's way off the top of a building runs across Candace with the gun, apparently under towel. Nobody sees this. He runs into the woods, puts the gun back together again without the screwdriver. He's a regular man guy, but this guy and then he hides the gun in the backyard of a house owned by Palantir and if you think anything else besides that,

22:36you're a crazy Jew hating conspiracy nut. And of course Jimmy Dore himself would then go on to mock Erica Kirk for her incorrect grieving. This is obviously a setup and you're not allowed to ask questions about it. And if you are, you are attacking a grieving widow. And that's again, when did Jackie O. over say quit looking in stop quit looking into who killed my husband? Never. That's not what happens. And that's not how you grieve, by the way. I remember when my dad died, my mom immediately bought a gold sequined pants outfit, started carrying sparklers around and selling t-shirts and my friends are like, Jimmy, what's with your mom? I'm like, she's grieving. Why did things fall apart? You ask. Well, this of course was a permission structure for the left to do the same. So for a moment, for a brief moment in time, the left had to for a second to announce political violence and pretend that they were upset about Charlie's death. And all that went away. It went away because members of the right decided to make it okay. And so now what do

23:37we got? We get Drusky mocking Erica Kirk mocking Charlie Kirk. Get on your feet. This this clip had almost 200 million views on Exalone. Candace Owens then did a clip laughing about how wonderful this was. Yes. Because they are the ones who mad at most. Okay. That black guy, like, didn't say a single word. And so just takes away the entire scene. Just perfect faces that he's making behind him. This is everybody's feeling. Everybody, for the first time, it's not left or right. It's like everyone's united in feeling this. It feels fake. It feels wrong. They are trying to use this idea of Christianity as a shield. And I was hinting on that again

24:37removing Erica Kirk from the scenario. It was I was noticing all of these women that make videos. They're just caddy. They're just influencers. But they try to find a Bible verse. Like, I'm not actually caddy. I'm this is the Bible verse. Stop doing that. Just stop doing that. I got the amount of projection for Candace Owens. This of course allowed the left to do what they really wanted to, which is mock Charlie's murder. Here's the son Pekr doing this just a couple of weeks ago. Of course, all of which is led to leftists openly celebrating what they're calling the

25:43Kirkiversary on TikTok. So I know the Kirkversaries coming up, which is so exciting. What's everyone drinking for the Kirkversary? We're doing like bloody marries or on this upcoming Kirkversary. If you wasn't a day one hater, get to the back of the room. Who's going to be throwing the Kirkversary functions? Like, I'm trying to get lit, bro. Well, again, this is what happened in America. And when it came to political unity, when it came to political unity, that was never part of this either because it turns out all the exact same people who are promoting conspiracism in same conspiracism, ugly hideousness. All those same exact people are people who have openly declared that they're not part of the movement. It wasn't a matter of people like me saying you're not part of the movement, clearly pointing out the truth. It was they themselves saying they are not part of the movement. Since that day, Tucker Carlson has declared himself no longer part of the GOP.

26:49I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party. Not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do. But at this point, how could you support? How could I or any American voters support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interest of a foreign country above those of its own citizens? It's not possible to vote for people like that that I'm not going to. And I think I voted Republican my entire life. I worked at Fox News. I've CNN MSNBC. I've been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party. I mean, very consistent defender. But there's no defending this because it's immoral. And it's exactly the opposite of what a political party and a democracy is charged with doing, which is representing its own voters, its own citizens, its own nation. And they're not doing that. So no, I'm out. And if I'm out, then I think a lot of other people are out. What happened to the unity? I mean, that's it. Candace Owens, of course, suggested that

27:50satanic Zionists were occupying the White House and Congress needs to move to have the Mad King Trump removed. Tucker called Trump the anti-Christ this year. Megan Kelly declared with Sean Ryan that the GOP had betrayed the American people and that all they had left were Epstein fans. So again, if you wanted the unity to last, if you wanted a spiritual rival, if you wanted all those things, it requires you to draw borders because it turns out those borders will be drawn for you in any case. But here is the thing. As we move forward, because again, it's been a year since Charlie's death. And I say Charlie had a couple of roles. One is that he spoke openly about conservatism in very convincing and excellent ways. And the others that use a bridge builder. As we move forward toward the 26 elections, toward the 28 election, we are trying to bring people together. We are. You know who is here at the RNC? We are. The Daily Wire is here at the RNC for the midterms. You know, it's going to be campaigning with candidates, members of the Daily Wire for the midterms. Who's thinking about the GOP and its future in meaningful and optimistic way? We're doing that here at the Daily Wire. We're doing that. You

28:54know who's not here? Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens. Those are the people who are not here. Because it turns out in the end that if you wish to have a conservative future, you need to actually have a set of conservative principles. And one of those principles is basic truth and decency. And if you don't have those things, you can't build the movement around anything else. You just cannot. It is not possible. And joining me online to discuss how things have been for TPSA and how things will be going forward is Andrew Colvin. He's spokesperson for TPSA. Andrew, thanks so much for the time on what is, of course, a horrifying day. I mean, no one thought that we'd be sitting here on September 10th of 2026 without Charlie. Just your general feelings. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, I was reflecting on September 9th that a year before September 9th, it was a day like any other. And we were just marching forward. And you know, you had no idea that the next day, everybody's lives, especially here, a turning point on the show. We're going to be turned upside down and forever changed. And

29:55yeah, it's a terrible anniversary, the most tragic of anniversaries. And but it's also a day where it's incumbent on us to remember Charlie's life and the beautiful things that he left us as well. So it's like so much in this last year. It's been such a mix of emotions and ups and downs. But we have to keep going forward. That's what Charlie would want. So why don't we start talking a little bit about Eric Einhau. She's been dealing with all this short, beautiful op-ed for the New York Times, about grief recently. And frankly, the amount of just abuse that she's had to take over the course of the last year is just unthinkable to me. It was always unthinkable to me. I can't understand it for the life of me. It makes literally zero sense. It's insane. But she's weathered all of it. How is she holding up? Yeah, thank you for asking about her. She's holding up. You know, she's I think a lot of people will tell you anniversaries are the toughest moment, especially for, you know, a spouse of somebody who has been, who's died, let alone assassinated in such a public way.

30:58I think that's I think it's a hard day for her, you know, I think she understood that she wanted to spend this day privately with her kids and some close friends and family and just be away from the noise and just have a day to remember Charlie. And so God bless her for that. I it's the perfect way for her to do this day, right? I don't know if people expected her to be on stage, the RNC or to, you know, be at some at the UVU event. But no, I think it's the right way for her to do this is to just be private with her family and with her kids. And so, you know, we're we're here at HQ and we're, you know, we've got a bunch of people around and it's it's a it's a good thing. It's it's a they all wanted to be able to express their love and admiration for Charlie. And so, you know, both things can happen at once and I'm I'm really happy with the way the team has come together and you know, everybody morts in their own way. Ben, I it's a very it's a very personal experience, you know, I I tend to not cry publicly. I can't do emotions on command, you know, when I'm working, I'm working. And when I'm in my private time, you know, it's it's a very

32:02solemn day, a very very sober day. But she's doing okay. She's doing it. She's very strong. People have to understand. Erica's faith in God is tremendous and she is she is stronger than people realize. But, you know, that this is this is hard for anybody. So Andrew, obviously, we're one year past Charlie's death. A lot of people were worried that TPSA would fall apart, that basically without, you know, Charlie's unique leadership at the helm, things would go sideways and yet TPSA has only grown. In many ways, it's gotten stronger in the wake of Charlie's assassination. Where is TPSA right now? What do you see as the future of the organization? Yeah, it's it's a question that's actually connected to your last question about Erica. I've been saying this because to me, it was something I always understood, but I realized at some point that the broader audience had no idea. I believe that had Erica not stepped in when she did in that critical moment. I mean, it was so heroic of her. I don't know. It could have been the unraveling of turning point because if you don't understand the inner workings of the organization and the

33:05personalities and the way the different verticals work and the different programs work, I truly believe she was the only person that could have stepped in in that moment and sort of steadied the ship and brought everybody together and rallied the entire team behind what, you know, her leadership. So, you know, and then there's these other critiques about, oh, woman shouldn't be CEO and say, you know, and I frankly, I disagree on a fundamental level. I believe that maybe that's somewhat true, maybe more men, RCOs than women, whatever. But the calling of a woman that is a, you know, a wife and a mom is much different than the calling of a widow, especially of a public person that belonged to the world like Charlie Kirk. And so, I'm just so proud of her leadership and what she's done. And I'm so proud of the team. I look around the team all the time and I say, you guys are my heroes for what you've endured this year, for what you've been able to accomplish under the most extreme, unthinkable circumstances. And yeah, to your point, I mean, our high school chapters have grown almost 200% that continue to grow.

34:07And people don't understand how hard that is, by the way, Ben, you've got to get staff involved, you get to get to get, you know, a core group of students. But then you have to do paperwork, if there's approval process, Charlie's own alma mater took us like three years to get approved. So it's a long process to get these chapters up and running. But these students have been amazing. There were more courageous than ever before. Charlie has made them. I'd turn them. I always joke with the team that Charlie turned these kids into total lions. Like they are fearless. They will not be cowed by attacks, smears, social media, all that stuff. So everything's moving forward on that side. The college chapters are now at over 1500. And Charlie used to say, out loud, I don't think we, I don't think you can get past 1000 because there's just not enough schools where you can gather that core community because you got commuter schools and things like that. Our TPSA faith has gone from 4000 churches in our network to 12,000, which is just incredible. Lucas and the team are doing a great job there. So piece by piece, we have over a million students that are involved in turning point in one way, shape, or form or another. We have over a million small dollar donors now to

35:11the organization. And all of it is just this giant testament to the man that Charlie was, the worthiness of the mission he chose to engage in. And so I just find it remarkable. God's hand of provision, God's faithfulness, even in a political cycle, as well know, where there are a lot of headwinds. Somehow God continues to bless the organization. And yeah, the future is the same. I'm sure you've seen this, but it's one of the annoying parts of my job is that I constantly and indated it with Charlie would have never done that. Or you guys have betrayed what Charlie was and it's like, no, actually, we all, like we're very intimately aware of what Charlie believed in what he wanted and the future. It was all sort of scripted and we had a roadmap, you know, through 2032 if you want to know the truth of it. And obviously it gets vaguer as you get further out and the details fell in as you get close to those dates. But we kind of knew where we're going and we've tried to remain true to that. And so nothing changes. The mission doesn't change. We want the young people to believe in the American dream to have skin in the game. And we want them to

36:15not give into nihilism and cynicism and scapegoating. We want young people to believe in this country. And I believe the opportunity for that has never been bigger. And we intend to do our part. So, you know, Andrew when Charlie was assassinated, I think everyone sort of expected that there would be a couple of things that that happened. One would have been sort of reunification of the right, particularly because it was a political assassination. I mean, Charlie's assassin Tyler Robinson killed him for obviously political reasons. He was a gay man who is in a relationship with the trans furry man. And he was very obvious about his political motivations and killing Charlie. I mean, Charlie obviously was an advocate for the basic idea that there's a difference between men and women. So you would have expected that the right at the very least would come together around that. And you also would have expected that there would be a unity around religious revival, which is something that obviously TPSA pushed very hard in the immediate aftermath of Charlie's assassination, up to and including that extraordinary memorial service that happened in Arizona, where I was privileged to attend with a hundred thousand people coming. And people basically trying to rededicate themselves to things like going to church. And yeah, that was all

37:18kind of a moment to promise. And it feels in many ways as though that moment was in some ways sullied in some ways, you could say stronger, maybe waste it by some people who have attempted to actually fragment that moment and turn the what happened with Charlie into anything else. Obviously, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that I've been the extraordinary levels of conspiracism that have arisen around Charlie's murder is something I know that you and I've talked about this off the air. But I mean, something that you've been dealing with a lot of the Erica's being dealing with that a lot of the organization's been dealing with that a lot to sort of fragmentation around basic fact, the inability to just come to grips with what happened and what should have happened in the aftermath. And this was easy stuff. And we just didn't get to the easy stuff. Where do you think, you know, we go from here and how serious do you think those fractures are? You know, I tend to be a glass half full on this stuff. Now, I maybe six months ago, I wouldn't have been, but I feel better now than I did six months ago. And I think in six months, I'm going to feel even better still. I think the conservative movement and political

38:19movements in general are sort of like a host. And then, you know, you've get you get these pathogens that are introduced. And then it takes a little while for the antibodies to kick in, right? And I think some of this conspiracy stuff just caught everybody off guard. We weren't ready to deal with it. And I think you hit the nail on the head. I think a lot of people just assumed everybody was going to come together and unify. And so everybody was caught off guard by it. I think there was some stuff, you know, it was coming from voices that a lot of people assumed would have been on team, but it turned out they weren't. I think having that clarity now, though, that these people want something different, that they are actually forces that are arrayed against us. It is helpful. The clarity is actually helpful. And I think at the beginning, that was not clear. I think it was muddled. And I think it caused a lot of problems. So my I sort of have this contrarian belief about this. I can't prove any of this. It's just my own personal faith. And my faith does guide me in this. First, I would say, what God is unleashed man cannot stop God. And if, by the way, if God is

39:23omnipotent and all knowing and omnipresent, then God knew that this was going to happen and that God has a plan for this too. And I actually, my belief is that that the purging can actually, you know, you've got to you got to we take the weeds out of a garden, right? Sometimes the purging can be a gift. And I think that those there's many voices that were never really with us to begin with. And sometimes that can be helpful. Now, I'm a big tent guy. I want everybody to come together. I want a coalition that's healthy and that can move forward. But I, but I actually sort of wonder if this isn't we won't look back at this at some point and realize that there was there was a plan and there was God's providential hand still upon this. And I believe that that's the case. So my, my glasses have full. And I do think that there is what will emerge from this is so many more people ask me, what's the legacy of Charlie Kirk? And I said, I'm not going to know for another 40, 50 years. And probably then I won't understand it because there is an I will tell you how I know this because you when you go to college campuses, you speak to turning point students. And I, I called them

40:26lines earlier, you will see that they are the future leaders of this country that are forged out of different stuff than you or I, Ben, they come, they come from a whole different set of, of, you know, base elements that forged informed them. And it is powerful. And I think that the inspiration of Charlie's legacy, his death is going to do something remarkable in so many of their lives. And I truly believe that we're going to have thousands of young people that will lead this country in a, in a great way that we're, we're inspired by Charlie. And so there have been times, I'm sure where we all want to pull our head out or a hair out because it's just, you know, the lack of facts evidence, reason, logic, all that stuff. But I do think that the antibodies are kicking in and, you know, the movement is responding. And I think, you know, better days are ahead. What's Andrew Cole that spokesperson for TPUSA? Obviously a rough day for everybody over at TPUSA, but they're doing extraordinary work and they continue to do extraordinary work. So not only are thoughts and prayers to the team of TPUSA, but also to Erica and folks, obviously TPUSA still needs your contributions. They still need your support. So you're heading over to TPUSA right now and give

41:29generously because they're still doing tremendous work out there. Really appreciate the time, Andrew. And, and, you know, try to try to, we appreciate you holding up. Yeah. Thanks, Ben. I appreciate the time. We get some more on this in a moment. First, I think American to be in condition to believe cell phone services supposed to cost a lot of money. Everything is becoming expensive. So cell phone service to right. Well, here's the thing. You walk into a store and somebody explains like 17 different plans to you starts jabbering at you about credits and upgrades and activation fees. Eventually you lose the world of living. You just hand them a credit card. And this is our system. Pure talk has a simpler proposition. If you think you're paying too much for subpar service, you really should switch to pure talk. In a recent industry survey, PURT-TALK was the only wireless company to receive five stars in every category coverage, support, value, data. And now until the end of this week, PURT-TALK is offering unlimited data for just 15 bucks a month for a first three months. After that, getting limited data for as low as 3499 a month. No contract. Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro. Make the switch to my favorite wireless company. Pure talk. There's a better wireless choice out there. Just 15 bucks a month for your first three months. Now

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43:34get one made just for you? The best place to do that. Helixleap.com slash band for 27% off site wide. During Helix's labor day sale, that's Helixleap.com slash band. I will speaking of the Republican party, what happens next? What's going to happen in 26? What's going to happen in 28? We're joined online by Victor Davis Hansen. He's senior fellow in military history at the Hoover institution at Stanford and the author of the brand new book out a couple of days ago, the counter revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the Maga movement. Victor, thanks so much for taking this time. Really appreciate it. Thank you for having me, Ben. So the book is really about sort of the interregnum, the period between Donald Trump's first term and his second term and the reason why Donald Trump rose again. The main thesis or at least one of the big pieces of your thesis is that the left has completely lost their mind and that pretty much they've played into every narrative that that Trump was spinning about the world because they've lost their mind. Is that fair? What do you make of that assessment? Yeah, I think that's fair at each step of this intense, I don't know, pathological drive to

44:37destroy them. I should say not just politically, but actually physically, mentally, financially, existentially. And that could be defined by the Mar-Lago ray, the Ford law for law fair, criminal trials, the E. Jean Carroll suit, debality in him. This came on top of the two impeachment's, the impeachment's of the private's, all of that. Every time that that happened, that resurrected his career, usually about two or three points in the polls so that after January six where the book starts, you had people like Mitch McConnell said it couldn't happen to a nicer S.O.B. and the Republican establishment was delighted. Puditive polls or surveys said Ron DeSantis was ahead by 20 points. Even his friends distance themselves from him. And then of course the investigations and the acquiment, he was debanked, people deny that, but he was. And his social media accounts were counseled for the most part. He had no means

45:40of communicating. His inner circle was leaking to the press that they were through with him. And then he came back. And so I tried to explain that for the first third or four half of the book. And the reason he came back was there were both internal and externally. Internally, even though he was a septic generic, and he had more energy than his enemies did. And he had he had an anger that he felt that his first term had been successful economically military. And they had robbed him of that. Whether that's, you know, you can say robbed in many ways, but he felt they had done things around fair. Getting the 50, he was very bothered by the 51 intelligence experts right before the debate who said that the laptop is a product of the Russians, etc. So he was on, I don't know if the term was a vengeance, but he was angry and he wanted to be, he sought redemption. And he was going to battle as no matter what. And more importantly,

46:41in this gestation period, before he formally declared his candidacy on November 15th of 2022, he had recalibrated in his mind what his first term was pop, what in it was positive and what was negative. And he felt that people that he had appointed, and he mentioned them. H.R. McMaster, a good friend of mine, I think, is a fine person, smart, Jim Maddeth, Rex Tillers, and Steve Manuchin, they weren't mega people. And they felt that he was inexperienced and dangerous, and it was their duty to interpret his executive orders or directives. Almost to the degree that anonymous remember the New York Times person, so that we're going to block these. And the next time he was going to get loyal people, and the second thing he learned during these winter years were it didn't do any good to wage a political revolution. That he had, this was a counter revolution,

47:42it was going to entail economics, politics, military. So if you're going to get the recruitment up, you got to go out to DEI. If you're going to worry about people are indoctrinated, go after the endowments, go after anti-Semitism, go after free speech rights on the campus. If you're worried about modernist architecture, then try to restore neo-plats go architecture, try to name, if they're going to rename things and you rename things. And don't just close the border, but deport people. So it was an effort, you know, go after NPR, they're not disinterested public entities that deserve our support anymore. So it was an effort the next time and he said this early on that he was going to be a very different president. And that's where we are now, I think. And that's one of the reasons that the acrimony has even increased from the first term. So, you know, the president takes office obviously, I think he has an extraordinarily successful first few months. He's ramming through executive orders. He's putting forward legislation that

48:43ends up being passed. And now the president is riding in the 30s and the approval rating in the mid-June. Prospects don't look particularly good. So why is that happening? And sort of where is the Republican party go from here? Because obviously we're about to enter the post-Trump era. If we lose Congress, if the Republicans lose Congress, then the next couple of years will be eaten up presumably by widespread investigations. That will probably boost Trump politically somewhat in the same way that it has historically, but of course, he can't run for a third term. And so once we are done with the Trump term, it's sort of over. And I'm not sure that anyone, I think there are certain people who are trying to capture the sort of era apparent to energy to Trump. I just don't believe in political era parents. I don't think that popularity is transferable from one politician to another or that anyone can inherit the coalition of the other guy, particularly when it's such a unique figure as president Trump. So it's sort of two questions that I'm asking. One is where do you think that we are right now in sort of the Trump story? And the second is what comes after the Trump story? Are there Republicans cruising for a bruising because the pendulum is swinging so wildly in American politics right now? Yeah. Well, in the larger context, if you look at Clinton in 1994,

49:49or you look at Obama in 2010, or you look at George W. Bush in 2006, or you look at Trump in 2018, or you look at Biden in 2020, it's not that much difference to a few points. So part of it is historical that people vote for some person and they have all these expectations and they can't fulfill them and then they get disenchanted. That's part of it. The second thing is when they took over the Biden disaster, on certain areas, they were very good. They said, we're going to not just stop it, we're going to go back to year zero, or wherever he was when Trump left office. So he's building the wall, he stopped illegal, but he's also deporting three, three million people. He didn't just say, I'm going to stop the defund the police, he put troops in Washington. And he didn't just say, no more,

50:50so we're not going to have any new subsidies for Green New Deal. He overturned them. But with the economy, he said that the 21 aggregate inflation that Biden, he was going to slow with that. And he did. If you look at the first year, it was 1.9, it's below 3%. It's not the 5.2 that Biden averaged over 20 years. But that message was not articulated. So everybody said, well, he lowered, he didn't lower in inpatient, and in fact, he did lower inflation. They're eight, the annual rate. But he didn't enrol. And I think that would have been a herculean effort to get prices back down 20 points. But that was not articulated. So people that fed into the left is narrative that you can afford things. If you look at things like labor participation or percentage of home ownership, they're pretty good. If you look at jobs report, they're pretty good. So what's dragging them down or three things. One, the price of gas and the Iran war and it's up at $100

51:57a barrel. And then they failure to lower prices rather than just lower the rate of inflation. And then the third is they are not articulating what they're doing. They're talking about the socialists, which is salutary, but they should also be saying, these are 10 things that we've done. And they will be reversed if we are subverted or sidetracked. We close the border to zero illegal immigration. We have the lowest crime rate in 70 years. We stopped the green new deal insanity where the largest producer of gas and oil in history. We have really confronted China. NATO is in much better shape than it's ever been thanks to our jaw boning them. Mexico is lowering their trade surplus with them. They're terrified. We're going to clamp down on the cartels if they don't. They've stopped bringing in Chinese below the cost of production,

53:02aluminum, steel to assemble, appliances, cars and dump them here. And we are already taxing, just started taxing remittances back to Mexico. So all of those things he's done and the military, when I he could have said, when I came in here, it was 50,000 recruits short. And within one year, it was 10,000 short. And now we have a surplus of recruits. Those are phenomenal changes, but I don't think you hear about them and I don't hear about them. At least I don't hear about them. One of the big questions that I have about this is that President Trump, what makes him unique political figure is the fact that he is not ideologically driven. He's sort of a pragmatist who picks fruit off the trees. He see fits. Sometimes there's warm in the fruit, and he throws it away. Sometimes it's great and he keeps it. And that's an interesting way to govern. It's very difficult to build a durable movement beyond just the figure that is not rooted in some sort of kind of overall overarching narrative. And President Trump's overarching narrative has

54:02historically been a sort of gut level gut check patriotism, which is fine as far as it goes. But right now that that means that as he shuffles off the political scene in a couple of years, that can be interpreted in about eight different ways. And I think that you're seeing a lot of the fractures inside the Republican Party, obviously rising to the surface, ranging from conspiratorial horseshoe kind of left wing monetary and foreign policy combined with anti-semitism to more classical libertarianism to Reaganism. And they're all kind of fighting within the tent right now about what comes next. So that was sort of the other question. Where do you think this goes next? In the past from here, because again, he is the umbrella that covers everything. But when the umbrella goes away, the rain falls on everyone. Yes. But if you there are sidelines on his football field that he doesn't go out. And so what are those? And they're very different than the traditional the two bushes or the John McCain campaign or the Mitt Rom campaign. And they are there is no such thing as free trade in a globalized world. It has to be free and fair. And we've got it China wants to

55:07destroy us. And they're not going to be asymmetrical with its untrained anymore. I don't think that's that's contrary to most of the prior presidents. I don't think that's going to change. Number one, number two, I don't think you're going to have people in the Republican Party like the Cato Institute and these people saying that we all benefit from illegal immigration. That's just a name illegal. It's immigration. There's no difference in that we need inexpensive cheap labor. I don't think we're going to go back to that. I don't think we're going to go back to going into a country and putting sizable ground troops on the ground. I just don't think politically the Republican Party believes in that. Unless it's an existential war attack. I don't think that any when Mitt Romney ran, he said, I'm open to switchgrass. I'm open to sugar cane. We should be I don't think anybody's going to do that. It's fossil. We need fossil fuels in abundance. And where the world's largest producer and exporter, that's not going to go away. I don't think that people

56:14are going to say we're going to have to, there's problems, but I don't think they're going to say as George W. Bush, let's privatize so security. I think that's off the table. So I could go on, but there's core principles that I don't think any Republican successor would want to tamper with. That said, there are very deep differences between Marco Rubio, let's say, and JD Vance, and they represent different portions of the Republican Party. It seems to me, and I'm not, I talk to people on both sides that maybe Rubio might be able to win over more Vance supporters than Vance supporters would win over Rubio supporters. Rubio said he's not going to run if Vance runs, but that is a transactional statement. It depends on things. I think JD Vance, he's in a unique position

57:16because the traditional role of the Vice President, as you know, is a spy-foward new role. I mean, it's to go out and attack the enemies of the President and be down and dirty if you have to, but you have people in the Republican Party who are saying Donald Trump should be impeached, that El Saeed should beat Mike Rogers. So he hasn't really said that's taboo, and anybody who goes after my President, I'm not going to consider them an oppositional figure. I'm speaking in this particular context of Tucker. So he's flirting with endorsing El Saeed. He said Trump should be removed. I don't know what he meant by that. We have mechanisms to remove a President before election. Does he mean impeached? What does he mean? It's a very dangerous thing to say that. He called me anti-Christ. Yes. When your President has, the first President in history, where the secret service has returned shots at a target, a targeted assassin, four times, twice in Florida, once in Washington, DC, and once in Pennsylvania. And he knows that. So he's

58:22going to have to deal with that at some point. And he's going to have to say, these are good friends of mine, but they have gone over the edge. They've crossed the line, and I cannot endorse them. I cannot talk to them. And that's just the way it's going to be. They don't represent the views of the Republican Party nor the mega-movement, nor Donald Trump. Donald Trump's already done that. In fact, he's done that in his tweets in a way that is unequivocal. I have never seen a President say that a former close confidant who said he was a satanic figure has a low IQ and is a loser. But he said that repeatedly. So that's one problem in the succession. And I don't know. I think that will become a clear tip to Vance. And I said that in the book as things go on. That right now, it sounds like let's not judge anybody. We're a big tent. Something's kind of like the Democrats.

59:23Democrats have a much bigger problem in some ways because these socialists are are absolutely lunatic. And they are not disorganized. And they don't say that we should not that algebra was created by Jews or they don't say stuff like that. They have an agenda. And so and they're serious people. It's more on this in a moment. First, people are pretty good at talking themselves out of starting things. You want to start a business. But it turns out you don't know how to build a website. How does the checkout work? I don't know how to do any of this. Well, you don't have to know how to do any of this because there's somebody who does. That's Shopify. They know how to do it. The technical stuff doesn't have to be the reason you never start a business. Shopify gives you templates and AI tools to get a great looking store running quickly. No coding required. And once somebody actually wants to give you money, Shopify checkout makes that part easy too. Returning customers can have their information saved and checkout in a single click. And that's the advantage. Shopify handles the infrastructure so you can spend your time on the thing that actually matters. Building the business. If you're ready to hear the of your first tale today, head on

1:00:24over to Shopify.com slash Shapiro and start your free trial today. That's right. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash Shapiro that is Shopify.com slash Shapiro again, Shopify.com slash Shapiro. Make your business stronger. Make it better. We'll use it here at DailyWare ourselves. Try it. You'll get addicted. It's awesome. Shopify.com slash Shapiro that's Shopify.com slash Shapiro for the free trial. The other thing that he has to realize, if you don't say something, the people like Marjorie Taylor, Green or Thomas Massey get emboldened and then they're going to try to be more and more and more provocative. They escalate it so they force you. I hope you understand that. They're forcing him to be in an untenable position. They're basically saying, we're going to say crazy that you're going to have to brand them as your own or we're out of here. They are pushing him and there are no friends of him because they are trying to embarrass him, I think, when Tucker says certain things. When you get on your podcast as I watch yesterday and you have a potter who says

1:01:31that Algebra was applying those adjuice conspiracy against the goi and Algebra is the fundamental element of all advanced mathematics and physics. We wouldn't exist with any of these appearances we're using without it. He doesn't want to endorse that so he's going to have to separate himself. Then on the message itself, I don't see any difference in foreign policy. They keep saying we're against forever wars or endless wars but this tragic is losing 18 people are and we've spent about 70 billion compared to the misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan 20 years, 10 years, 7,500 killed, four to five trillion. The benefit you will crew if there is an overthrow of that government and the whole Middle East will change it really will. It was a calculated gamble. No other president would have done it. They all said they would do it. None of them did. He did it

1:02:35and when people had said your midterms are coming up, you shouldn't do it. He may have been a little naive that he thought it would be like the Maduro overthrow or he may have thought it would have been like the bombing the year before in June of 25 hours but I think finally that's what happens more. They've adopted a strategy now that works. This anaconda strategy and this is a question. I would say there's a 30% chance that the regime could fall in the next 60 days, 30%. That's not good but if it did it would change your question. It would change everything. All of a sudden the people who are saying he's a war monger or a forever wars or he's an ep would say he's the great liberator of our time if Iran is freed so there's a lot of known unknowns. And now final question for you. You'll get the Democratic Party and as you say, they're spiraling off into full scale socialism, America hatred and all the rest with that said,

1:03:36you know, if the president continues to be unpopular, that may not be wildly out of bounds with regard to the midterms but as you lead into the next presidential election cycle, it is historically unprecedented for the vice president, let's say it's JD Vans as the nominee for the vice president to pick up where a president with a very little approval rating left off and then win reelect on the basis of that. If the Democrats pick, I think probably anybody but AOC, where do you put the odds? The Democratic takeover of the White House in 28 if they pick, you know, Gavin Newsom or Westmore or some other figure who's perceived not to be as full blown psychotic as an AOC. I don't see anybody who is not psychotic to tell you the truth. I live in California, it's been entirely wrecked. I mean, is this campaign slogan going to, I'm going to do for the United States what I did for California? It's a complete third world basket case and AOC is not attendable. Elsie, they talk in these grand illusions. Their problem is that we have a mistaken

1:04:40belief that these crazy, down-only mobile 85% white urban creatures who are mad that they nobody appreciates their genius and their degrees hijacked the Democratic Party. But the other day I put down the DSA agenda and then I went back and looked at what the Democrats did prior to the DSA. And you name it. Open borders, masks, amnesty's, record indoors, BLM, say that Antifa's not really, it's just an idea, they're not dangerous, packed the court were for a two new state in the filibuster, abolished the electoral college, all mail-in ballad-een, no IDs, you name it. I can't think of what really happened was the Democratic Party in the last years of the Obama administration, when they hijacked the Swaxon FG, Biden, they were the most radical manifestation we've seen of any government in a hundred years.

1:05:46So what happened was that the DSA came in and said, wow, you guys are identical to us. We can run on your platform, you have all the money, you have all the organization, but you're a bunch of old, funny duties, Schumer, Pelosi, you just lost your step. So we're going to come over and take over, but we're just going to take over your agenda. And that's what they're doing right now. They're running on a Democratic radical agenda and they kind of shut up about, if you're Talleriko, you don't mention the multiple genders, if you're L. C. E. you don't mention you were for Sharia law, and that's what they're doing. But it's all about the economy. And so I think if they're going to have a chance to hold the house, they're going to have to talk about the economy and explain why things are going to get better and why the oil prices are temporary and explaining detail. Venezuela's coming on, Russia will come back, we're increasing production.

1:06:48China has cut back on its use. Gas prices has besieged, said the other day. He's been very articulate, very confident, he's been very good. If people could take that message, all the cabinet and bring it to the American people and say we inherited a 21 percent aggregate inflation and 30 percent on staples like insurance, cars, food, housing, etc. And we got the rate down, but we're not finished yet. We're only half done. You don't want to bring those people back because they're even worse than under Biden. But I don't hear that. I don't really hear that. And you can't say that everything is going great. You can't say the Iran. You can't say about Iran. We just destroy the the military, everything's fine. You have to say we destroy almost all the military, but it's got 93 million people. And it's spent 30 or 40 billion dollars for 50 years and they've hid things all over. So we're going to have some rocky times as they implode and it may take two or three months or four months or five months more and be realistic about it because they're talking about the

1:07:57they're talking about the they're just they're not talking about the denominator. They're saying that we get we got 93 percent of the missiles, but they're not telling me how many missiles there were to begin with. The Israelis say, well, we won and we we we destroyed 12,000, but we think has bala has 170,000, but we don't do that. We don't say this is how we destroyed all these ships, not any, but we don't tell how many ships they had to start with. So they got to be more clear on that it's precise because when once the American people say, when I've had this, well, Victor, he said that the Navy was all destroyed. So why are they hitting tankers the other day? He should have said it's mostly destroyed, but they've got pockets of resistance. They're going to be mopped up. They won't pose a threat, but we've got a destroyer and it will take longer before they collapse. That's all. Well, the book is the counter revolution, the fall and rise of Donald Trump and the maga movement. Victor Davis Hansen is the author. Go check out the book right now. It's a terrific read. Victor Davis Hansen. Thanks so much for joining the program. Really appreciate it.

1:08:57Make your however you've been already coming up. We are going to get into tech, doom, risen people suggesting refugees from anthropic that AI is going to kill all of us and you know who's jumping on that bad wagon. I got to wait till America Abdul also at he says it's time to ban AI pretty much outright. We'll get to all of that, but you have to be a daily wire member for that. So make sure you join up. Become a member. Use coach Shapiro. Check out for two months free. On all annual plans, click that link in the description and join us.