00:00Welcome back, America.
00:01We're here with our friend Ben Shapiro, who's in great demand.
00:05I have trouble getting Ben.
00:06He's in great demand and for good reason.
00:09The Ben Shapiro Show, one of the biggest podcasts in the country.
00:13He's the Daily Wire editor emeritus.
00:16He's got a great new film out, of which he's producer, Run, Hide, Fight Infidels.
00:23It's a new movie exclusively on the Daily Wire, and I cannot recommend it enough.
00:28I've seen it.
00:29It's fantastic.
00:30By the way, lots of action-oriented.
00:32I love it.
00:32No PC.
00:33I love that, too.
00:34We can talk about it a little bit later.
00:36You know, Ben, we have this very odd woke right isolationist element.
00:43I won't say within the Republican Party.
00:45They seem to hate the Republican Party.
00:47But they are of a similar mindset, I remember, of the George McGoverns of old,
00:52the similar mindset of the Pat Buchanons of old,
00:55and now of the Marxist-Islamists on the hard left, pushing, pushing for isolationism and so forth.
01:03And yet, when we look at the Fox survey, Iran is a 4% issue with the American people.
01:11So whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn't appear that Iran's going to drive anything one way or another.
01:18What's your take on this?
01:19I think that's exactly right.
01:20Obviously, there is a contingent who would love to see President Trump do poorly in the midterms,
01:24who want Republicans to lose.
01:26Some of these people are openly saying they want Republicans to lose, by the way.
01:29Some of them are openly standing in favor of the pro-terrorism candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed.
01:34So there are some people who are attempting to destroy the Republican Party from within,
01:37in the hopes that they will then be able to sort of take over whatever remains of the Republican Party.
01:42I don't think that it's going to work.
01:44You know, when you look at the Iran issue,
01:47there's one thing that Americans hate more than anything else when it comes to foreign policy.
01:50And it is not foreign conflict.
01:52It is losing.
01:53It is losing.
01:53And the reality is that the president has done yeoman's work in reopening the Strait of Hormuz
01:59and putting the United States in a position to really finish off the Iranian regime
02:03without having to put boots on the ground in Iran.
02:06The president has to, within his capacity, to essentially finish the Iranian economy
02:09with a single bombing sortie over Khark Island or South Pars.
02:12The biggest thing, I think, that is the obstacle right now to just completing that victory
02:18is just a matter of decision making.
02:20Does the president actually believe that a deal is on the table or does he not?
02:23I'm very skeptical the Iranians are ever going to put a worthwhile deal on the table.
02:27But as you say, the American people are significantly less interested in any foreign policy issue
02:32than they are with how things are going here in the United States.
02:36And if the economic numbers continue to boom in the stock market,
02:39if they continue to do well in the unemployment numbers,
02:41if the wages increase to keep up with the inflation and inflation drops,
02:45then Republicans will do fine in the midterms and the rest of the presidency will be a success.
02:49It really is almost that simple.
02:50But I'm hearing the whispers, I think they're telling the president,
02:55they're certainly telling the media, that if we go full bore and finish them off,
03:00and I believe that we can go full bore and finish them off,
03:04that if we do that, the price of fuel will even go higher to $200 a gallon.
03:09Isn't this what the isolationists said when this started?
03:12They didn't say that it would go to $100 a barrel.
03:15They said it would go to $200 a barrel, that we would lose thousands of troops.
03:21Everything they said is false.
03:23And I fear that they're repeating it.
03:26And the Arab countries are all looking out for themselves.
03:30Turkey, of course, has greater, you know, desires about the region and so forth and so on.
03:35If we're going to do America first, and these other countries aren't aligning with us,
03:40to quote the vice president, then why should we listen to them?
03:43Well, let's get it over with.
03:45Well, this is my view.
03:46I mean, I think that the president is on the verge of a world-shaking historic victory in Iran.
03:51And again, the oil prices, yes, they are higher, obviously, than they were before the conflict.
03:54But if you would like for the oil prices to be very high in perpetuity,
03:58please pull out as soon as possible and allow Iran free reign over the Strait of Hormuz
04:01and the Houthis free reign over the Babel Mounded Strait.
04:04And the capacity to hit the east-west pipeline in Saudi Arabia.
04:07That is a great way to ensure that on a permanent basis,
04:09Americans are paying a higher price for oil in the global markets.
04:13So, again, the only way out is through here.
04:16Obviously, the president has hit on this very successful economic strategy for strangling the Iranian economy.
04:21I do think it's going to take a final topple
04:22in order for the Iranian regime to actually change its behavior or fall.
04:26I don't think that it's going to happen through them just giving up the ghost in a form of negotiations.
04:31But as you say, Mark, there is no substitute for victory.
04:34There never has been.
04:36I think you're quite right.
04:37And I think we both agree that what the president has done up to now, as you said, is historic.
04:42What the president has done is actually created the circumstance, the environment, for finishing them off.
04:49And I think this is a very, very big deal.
04:52What he's been able to accomplish so far.
04:54And I think he will finish them off in the end,
04:58because I don't think there's really much else that we can do that will work.
05:07Welcome back, America.
05:08You know, Ben Shapiro, I'm noticing a few of the real rhinos.
05:12You know, they use that word very loosely.
05:13But real rhinos, which are liberal Republicans, basically.
05:17I notice some of them are starting to peel off.
05:19They're starting to panic.
05:21They're starting to choke rather than stand strong.
05:24Let me ask you a question.
05:25If you're running for Congress, whether it's the House or the Senate,
05:28shouldn't you have the rudimentary capacity to express your principle,
05:33to make the case, to articulate it in plain English?
05:37Isn't there a lot of good that the Republicans can talk about in terms of both the administration's policies,
05:44as well as the bad, that the Democrats are the worst as they've ever been?
05:49I think that's exactly right.
05:51I mean, the thing that I think Republicans, again, need to keep hammering home is,
05:55regardless of what you think of the president, obviously I'm very pro, or the administration, obviously I'm very pro.
06:00But regardless of what you think of that, the only thing that people should really be worried about is,
06:04what's on the other side of that coin?
06:05Do they think that by staying home, the country gets better?
06:08What happens when you have a pro-terrorism candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed,
06:12who actually is in the United States Senate?
06:14What happens when you have a supporter of every radical policy on transing the kids,
06:18like James Tallarico in Texas, sitting in the United States Senate?
06:22What happens when Democrats have majorities in the House and the Senate,
06:24and then use every waking moment in order to target Republicans, Republican legislators,
06:29and members of the administration, and drag down the administration,
06:32and restore woke in a far more radical form than it ever was under Joe Biden?
06:38The great lie I think a lot of Republicans have told themselves is that woke is dead,
06:42that President Trump did such a thorough job of destroying the left,
06:45that they can never recover, they'll never come back.
06:47They are waiting.
06:48They are waiting, and they are watching, and they are ready to pounce.
06:51And in the meantime, while they've been out of power,
06:53they've gotten more radical, not less radical.
06:55They did not moderate in the wake of 2024.
06:57They decided that they were essentially going to negotiate the terms of their own surrender
07:00to the Democratic Socialists.
07:02They were going to turn themselves into the party of Zoran Mamdani,
07:05not turn themselves into the party of Scoop Jackson.
07:07And so this sort of bizarre story that a lot of Republicans have told themselves,
07:11which is that, you know, if we stay home, no big deal.
07:14It's a way to punish the president.
07:15It's a way of punishing yourself, because what you're going to end up with
07:18is a radical Democratic Congress,
07:19and then you're going to put them on the road to a radical Democratic regime in 2028.
07:23And it's not the Constitution on the ballot, too, given what the Democrats have said,
07:26even apart from the DSA.
07:28I mean, they've openly promised they're going to stack the Supreme Court.
07:31They've openly promised to add a couple of new states.
07:33They've openly promised to change the voting procedures,
07:35to essentially mandate ballot harvesting procedures across the country.
07:39And these are first priorities for them.
07:41And so, again, the media are telling a story that Donald Trump is,
07:43quote, unquote, a threat to the republic.
07:45I don't know.
07:46I don't feel like the republic is particularly threatened,
07:47or was during his first term either.
07:49I think that what is significantly more threatening is a Democratic Party
07:52that is pledging systematic change to the way that the country itself works,
07:57breaking the machines that allow the country to work.
07:59Tell us about your movie.
08:01You worked very hard on it.
08:02Your whole team did.
08:03Run, hide, fight infidels.
08:05You're the producer.
08:06I saw it.
08:07It really is a tour de force.
08:10Tell us about it.
08:11Sure.
08:12Well, it's a lot of fun, and it also makes a really important point.
08:14It is the only movie that I think that's been made in the last 20 years, essentially,
08:18that tells the truth about what radical Islam actually does,
08:21but does it in a fun and entertaining way.
08:23First and foremost, it's a really entertaining action flick.
08:26A friend described it as sort of a mashup of Red Dawn,
08:28like a 1980s action flick, with Blazing Saddles.
08:30But it's about essentially an Islamic invasion of an American college campus.
08:35A pro-Hamas student protest is essentially hijacked by actual terrorists,
08:40and they take over this American university and set up a mini-caliphate at the university,
08:44and it takes a group of red-blooded students plus a former military member in order to take them down.
08:49So it's kind of a smash-bang action flick.
08:52But, again, the point of view of the movie is that radical Islam is indeed a real threat,
08:57and the radical Muslims in the film act like actual radical Muslims.
09:00One of the clips that's gone viral is them legitimately kicking a gay person off the top of a building
09:05because that's what would happen if ISIS were to take over an American campus.
09:08Queers for Palestine would end up at the bottom of the building in reality,
09:11and so that's how it ends up in the movie as well.
09:14So where do people go to see it?
09:16So you can head on over to DailyWire.com.
09:18I really appreciate it, Mark.
09:19And they can subscribe.
09:20But right now we've got much more coming.
09:21This is just the first in our sort of entertainment strategy iteration in the new form of Daily Wire.
09:27Well, I really do support independents and others who are using the entertainment genre
09:34to try and get a message out there and try and explain things, particularly the younger people.
09:39I think that's very, very important.
09:41Ben Shapiro, God bless you, my friend.
09:43Be safe.
09:44Take care of yourself.
09:45Thanks so much, Mark.
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