Ep. 2465 - JD Vance Joins Joe Rogan. And It Isn’t Good. At All.

Ben Shapiro

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A candidate who sees America as a cancerous force in the world and would like a weaker, less muscular America on the world stage. A candidate who embraces conspiratorial nonsense about systems that place the American dream supposedly beyond our reach. And I hate that crap. It's why I've been a lifelong conservative. So here's what I would not like a Republican who sounds like a Democrat. I don't want a socialistic big government. I don't want economic policies that could come straight from Bernie Sanders. I don't want a foreign policy that sounds like Ro Khanna or a conspiratorial view of the American meritocracy that reads like Zoran Mandani. I don't think if a Republican takes those positions, he's likely to win either. So why am I worried about that. Well, because yesterday I Watched Vice President J.D. vance on Joe Rogan's show. Let's just say I have some concerns. I'll explain in a moment. This is the Ben Shapiro Show. So yesterday, Vice President Vance appeared on Joe Rogan's show. And as always, the VP is charming and he's articulate. I. I've met him. And the Vice President is a very nice person. He's genial, he's funny. Obviously super talented. You don't end up Vice President of the United States in your early 40s without being a very talented person. Usha, his wife, is a delightful person. But now it's time to get down to brass tacks. Would we like a Republican Party that is essentially a horseshoe Democratic Party? I'm asking because that's kind of what the VP sounded like on Joe Rogan. I'm not sure what he's doing now. Listen, I want the Democrats to lose, not because I don't share their jersey, but because I do not share their fundamental principles. So I'm looking to support candidates who, number one, actually oppose Democratic policies and two, can also win. So first, opposing Democratic policies, left wing policies. So yesterday on Joe Rogan's show, the Vice President made a strong case against free markets and meritocracy. He talked about the necessity of bold, intrusive government interventionism. He made the case for an isolationist foreign policy and relied on a bunch of straw men to do it. And he promoted a conspiratorial view of the world that undermines the meritocracy. Yeah, I find that weird and concerning. Now, let's start from the basics again. I'm a conservative. I have always been a conservative. I have not evolved my views. I have not changed my fundamental principles. I'm not evolving on my views or changing my fundamental principles because they are based on extremely basic fundamental truths about politics and human nature. When it comes to the world of American politics, there are essentially two fundamental truths upon which our republic is built. One is built into the Declaration of Independence and the other is built into the Constitution. The one that's built into the Declaration of Independence is this. Human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. And those rights include freedom of thought and freedom of speech and freedom of religious practice and the right to private property. All of those things are, in turn outgrowths of a fundamental biblical truth that we're made in the image of God, we're imbued with souls, that we are creative and choosing beings, governments are instituted by the governed in order to protect those rights that we have as ensouled human beings. That's fundamental truth number one. And then there's fundamental truth number two. Human beings are not inherently good. We are at best a mixed bag. James Madison famously writes about this in Federalist 51 in the Federalist Papers he says, quote, it may be a reflection on human nature that such devices, checks and balances, should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government over which men are to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this. If you have to first enable the government to control the governed and the next place oblige it control itself. A dependence on the people, says Madison, is no doubt the primary control on the government. But experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. What does he mean by that? He means human beings are flawed. Therefore, if you give government total power, you will end up with a flawed human being in charge. And if you give the government no power, then you will end up with anarchy. So conservatives look at these two fundamental truths and they come up with a few key propositions that apply in the political realm. Here are a few of those key propositions. Human beings have a right to economic freedom and private property. This means that your goods and your services and your work and your labor, they are yours. You get to choose what to do with them, because again, you are a creative being made in the image of God. Impositions by the collective on those rights had better come with a proportionate return. That's the basis in the constitution of the so called takings clause. That's the one that says that the government can only take private property from you if they give you just compensation. Free markets are not just a utilitarian concern. We don't like free markets just because they work. We like free markets because they are rooted in human nature, in the basic way that human beings work. And they are in fact protected by our system of government. There's a reason the founders were fond of both Adam Smith and John Locke. And yet another proposition. The world is filled with nefarious people pretending that there is some sort of family of nations, that we're all best friends, that naturally we all believe the good things. That is specious and it is foolish. Our system, the American system, is in fact superior. Our civilization is in fact superior. And our Interests ought to be paramount not just because we look out for ourselves in the way that, say, the Greeks or the French do, but because America is indeed an exceptional place. And when it comes to our foreign policy, we ought to keep our own counsel and we ought to see our enemies clearly. Naivete is dangerous, Alex. Alexander Hamilton wrote about this in Federalist 6. He says, has it not, on the contrary, invariably been found that momentary passions and immediate interest have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility or justice? Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue. What he means by this is human beings aren't perfect. You gotta look at your enemies with clear eyes. And finally, traditional conservatives are highly skeptical of unevidenced conspiracy theories. Why? Well, because we believe in the meritocracy. And conspiracy views of life are usually excuses for demoralization on the individual level. Right. If you can't run your own life, somebody else is running it. Well, that's an excuse for you not to do the thing you're supposed to do. It's also an excuse for tyrannical consolidation of power by evil people in order to crush these unevidenced conspiracies. It's a big conspiracy of the elite. Give me power, I'll centralize it, and then I'll use it against all those people in order to free you of the conspiracy. Again, conservatives believe in a meritocracy, that a free system, a good free system, rewards the people who deserve it. Conspiratorial slop is the theory that the only people who are successful are. Have rigged the game. And generally the people who buy into those conspiracies want to overturn all the systems that actually make meritocracy possible in the first place? Okay, so again, I want to sum those principles up because as we'll get to, they are in controversy. So if you are conservative, you ought to generally believe one, in private property and free markets, not just because of utilitarian concerns by, but morally, because free markets are good and private property is good. There are exceptions, of course, but that is the general rule. Two, you ought to believe in a realist but moral foreign policy, that America has moral interests in the world, but also be realistic about the fact the world is not a kind place. And third, you ought to Believe if you're a conservative in responsibility and duty. And yes, the meritocracy. And one of the big enemies of all of that is baseless conspiracy theorizing. So here's the thing. If I want a big intrusive, anti free markets government or a foreign policy rooted in both moral relativism and weakness, if I want baseless conspiracy slop, I can just vote Democrat. But of course, that's why I don't vote Democrat, because I oppose those things. And listen, I hope the vice president opposes those things, too. That's why I'm concerned about the stuff he said on Joe Rogan. This is the front runner for the Republican nomination in 2028. I'm also concerned about the stuff that he has written in his book because I've read his book yesterday, and Joe Rogan, vice president did not sound very conservative. The vice president seems to want to beat the Democrats by joining them in a lot of key ways. That may sound like a smart strategy as we'll discuss in a moment, we'll look at the stats. I do not think it is. Maybe it's about being cool yesterday and Joe Rogan, the VP had this to say.

J.D. Vance

Republicans still fundamentally have a cool problem, right? There's something more charismatic, more cool about the Democrats as opposed to the right. And so you said something about there are too many dorks or something on the right.

Joe Rogan

There's a lot of dorks.

J.D. Vance

You know, fair, I'd say there's a lot of dorks.

Joe Rogan

There's a lot of dorks on the left, too. But it's a different kind of dork.

J.D. Vance

It's a different kind of dork. But the point is that there's something like, okay, if you're a pop star, you're a rock star, you're an actor, you're in all these cultural centers, you're more likely to be left than right. And so I think that a lot of young people who are attracted to these population centers, they sort of move along with the prevailing culture. I think that's. That's one thing that's going on.

Ben Shapiro

Okay, but here's the thing. Truth is often uncool. Truth requires you to say the hard things and to do the right thing. And it turns out there's kind of an attraction in that. There's something cool in just sticking by your guns. So I'll be honest. I don't. I'm not sure how the vice president wants to be cool. If coolness means just warming over some Bernie Sanders ism and heating up a side of Obama ism and spicing it up with some conspiracy theorizing. Gotta say, I'm not into it, but unfortunately, unfortunately, that is largely what the Vice President spouted on Joe Rogan's show yesterday. Now, maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe I am possible. I don't think so because I've also read the Vice President's book. In a second we'll get to the Vice President's book because it gives you a good window into his worldview. When it comes to my worldview, a big one. Don't waste time and don't waste money. This is like actually very important to me and this is why I love Pure Talk. 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They got the same Tower network as the big guys. The coverage is excellent. The price has literally never been better. Literally never. So now would be the moment for you to make that switch. Head on over to PureTalk.com Shapiro to get started right now. So the Vice President's new book, which is all about his sort of religious journey, the biggest theme in the book is not really about his religious journey. That's obviously a big theme of the book, but the biggest theme that kind of undergirds the book because it's a contrast from his old book, Hillbilly Elegy, is his militant dislike of the meritocracy. Now again, that's weird because of course JD Vance became famous as the guy who praised the American meritocracy. In Hillbilly Elegy, they made a movie of it. He warned People about conspiracy theories and a victim mentality that deprives you of agency. But in his new book, he reverses himself. It turns out in his new book, the vice president argues that meritocracy is basically a lie. He argues for an infusion of Catholic integralism into our policy. Basically, we should impose the views of Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Navarre, on our economic policy, on our foreign policy. In many ways. And some of the stuff that he says in this book is like, over and over, the meritocracy just comes in for a beating. Again, he's not arguing that America is not a meritocracy. He's arguing the meritocracy itself is a spiritual failure. Now, again, this is a category error. A meritocracy just means that those with merit ought to rise. It does not mean that you will find spiritual fulfillment in your increased material circumstances. A government is not capable of providing you spiritual fulfillment. If you are looking for God's fulfillment via the grace of government, I would humbly submit you are looking in the wrong place. In the first place, the American meritocracy is what has made us the most powerful, prosperous and free country in the history of the world. Ripping into the meritocracy because you find it spiritually unfulfilling is certainly a bizarre view. But that's exactly what the VP does in his new book. So he writes, for example, the meritocracy had made alluring promises, but had failed to reckon with the big questions. I wasn't aware that the meritocracy is supposed to reckon with the question of your relationship with God. That's not what it's built to do. This is like criticizing a hammer for not being a screwdriver. The vice president writes in his book. The meritocracy had focused my mind on the crude and superficial credentials, careers, money, these things might have been necessary, but they could never form the basis of a truly good life. Who made the argument they could? I've been a religious person my entire life. Essentially. My parents became full scale orthodox when I was 11. So since childhood, I've been a very religious person. The meritocracy is wonderful. It has nothing to do with me going to synagogue. The vice president goes on, he says Ayn Rand's message, the celebration of aspirations and achievements, the refusal to accept excuses, would reorient my entire life in subtle and ultimately destructive ways. So, in other words, if you celebrate aspiration and achievement, if you refuse to accept excuses, that apparently is destructive. He says it's one thing to celebrate achievement, it's something else to build your life around it. Okay, again, that's fine for a spiritual journey. It is a bad guide for government policy if meritocracy is the enemy. If meritocracy empties you out of spiritual fulfillment, then again I think that you are geared toward a government policy that's going to look a lot more left wing than it looks like traditional conservatism. Again, if the problem here is that the meritocracy didn't give JD Vance personal fulfillment, that wasn't its job. He became rich and famous because he is smart and because he is clever and because he is glib and all of those things. But if your idea is that the failure of the meritocracy to provide you spiritual fulfillment is a failure of the meritocracy and you need government in order to fix all those problems, you got a problem. And this is the kind of stuff that the Vice President was pushing on Joe Rogan. So Joe Rogan essentially makes the case that what we have to do is we have to essentially get involved in promoting the lie that capitalism rigs of the system and then we have to promote a sort of democratic socialism because if we don't, then we'll get full scale socialism. Okay, look, I mean, the answer to that is no. You could just call out the lie. The system is not in fact rigged. And by the way, if we want to talk about rigged systems, probably if we're going to look for people who are rigging supposed free markets to their own benefit, we probably should be looking to the political class which is constantly getting rich off of its own connections. But I don't see the Vice President doing that too much. Here's the Vice President yesterday with Joe Rogan.

J.D. Vance

Does the socialism thing scare me? Yes. Is it the wrong solution? Yes. But one thing I try to persuade my fellow Republicans of is socialism is the alternative. If we don't have a pathway to give people a sense that the system is not rigged and that the American dream is attainable, that's like our job. That's what we have to do. I'm not saying Rome was built in a day. It's not going to be easy. Easy to undo some of these economic trends. But man, we ran the experiment. We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy and allowing Wall street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable line goes up asset. And what has that Done. It's created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism. You have to fix that problem.

Ben Shapiro

I mean, let's be real about this. Young people in America have always been attracted to left wing economic policy. That is not some sort of giant shock when the Vice President gives credence to all of the strawmen and lies of the socialists that America has offshored all of our jobs. Not true. That America's services economy is some sort of gigantic failure. Not true. That America's economy is some sort of rigged system in which no one can get ahead. Not true. When you keep giving credence to that and then you say we have to, we must, we the government, we must step in and convince people the system is not rigged. I don't know how that sounds any different than Gavin Newsom, frankly. I mean, here's Gavin Newsom just the other day.

J.D. Vance

Something's fundamentally broken here. And that wealth is creating power, power locking in rules and regulations, locking everybody else out. You can't play in the margins anymore. We can't fail more efficiently. Certainly nostalgia is not working. I would argue socialism not going to work. But capitalism as we know it doesn't work either.

Ben Shapiro

Okay, if J.D. vance and Gavin Newsom are saying the same thing, that is a problem. And of course the Vice President, Andrew Rogan also suggested not only the Room, Novarum, that encyclical ought to be the guide for America's economic policy, but also that AI tech developers, they're actually today's robber barons. Which is again kind of strange from a guy who made a name for himself by hanging out with the folks in Silicon Valley. Here's the Vice President, he said the

J.D. Vance

main issue if you go back to the Industrial Revolution, is that there was a lot of demand for workers, but the inequality in the country got completely out of whack. Like this is the era of the robber barons. And then the robber barons in both Europe and the United States led to fascism, it led to communism again, to this point about giving people an option. If you don't give them a good option, then it leads to fascism and communism. Now there's this fascinating encyclical written by Pope Leo xiii. I'll send it to you. It's one of the best things that I think has ever been written by a Christian leader where it's written in the late 19th century. And the basic argument of it is that in the age of industrial churn, there has to be a middle way between six year olds working on the factory floor and socialism. And part of that solution is to give workers a sort of say in what's going on, give normal people some power in this system. And I think that's the thing we have to figure out with AI now,

Ben Shapiro

again, this sort of lie, that technological advancement immiserates the workers, that income inequality, wealth inequality, these are the problem. It just. It's not distinguishable from what Bernie Sanders says it isn't. I wish it were. 60% of our people have been paycheck to paycheck. And one guy, Elon Musk, owns more

J.D. Vance

wealth than the bottom 53% of American households. Think maybe that might be an issue that we should be talking about.

Ben Shapiro

And again, in J.D. vance's book Communion, he quotes over and over Ririm Navarro. This is supposed to be the sort of basis for what he thinks of as American economic policy. He writes in his book, the Pope also lays out a vision of society where the state protects the vulnerable, guarantees a just wage for laborers, and ensures that working people have sufficient rest from labor not for vicious indulgence, but so they can focus on higher matters such as their religious and familial obligations. Well, I mean, I should point out at this point, Ruim Navarro is not an American founding document. And it is kind of strange, just politically speaking, to be quoting Rerum Navarrem as the basis for some sort of American economic philosophy. The Vice president in his book does bash the Reformation meaning, like Protestantism arising, saying that it's a tragedy the Christian church is so divided in modern times. That is a strange move. It's a strange electoral move. Bernie Sanders plus the Pope is a pretty narrow constituency. And of course the Vice President writes at length in his book about the shortcomings of free markets. I think the most kind of astonishing portion of his book is this portion where he talks about traveling to Japan. He writes this the first and only time I ever visited Japan. I read a bunch of articles by economists about Japan's stagnant economy's. Japan's economy has been stagnant since the 90s. This is just a reality. Economists broadly agreed that something had gone terribly wrong with Japanese economic policy, though they disagreed about what should be done. After about two hours in Tokyo, I realized that the dire predictions of the expert class had nothing in common with the actual Japan. I saw children seemingly no more than five years old rode the subway without fear, and the public bathrooms in the subway stations were cleaner than the member bathrooms in the United States Senate. Public transportation ran perfectly on time. Meanwhile, the Japanese had apparently perfected the art of cuisine, writes the vice President, have you ever gone to a grocery store and gotten an excellent batch of strawberries or blueberries? In Japan, every fruit tasted like the best strawberry you've ever eaten, even the most expired pack in a small convenience store. If you're focused on GDP, a $6 pint of Japanese strawberries is no different. A $6 pint of American strawberries, if you're focused on dollars and cents, each contributes equally to the economic indicators. But if everyone in Japan eats better strawberries than everyone in America, the economic indicators have failed to measure something meaningful. And again, he, he, he writes an entire chapter about how economics is. Is pretty stupid. Now, that particular paragraph is kind of insane. It's insane for a variety of reasons, including the fact that actually Japan is pretty famous for its strawberry industry. They have a cultivated luxury strawberry industry in Japan. Like, instead of bringing people flowers, when you go over to dinner, very often you bring a box of strawberries. Because Japan has perfected certain methodologies of actually growing strawberries. It would be more expensive to ship that over to the United States. And there are explanations for why things cost what they do. It is also true that Japan's economy has been stagnating for decades. But the sort of disdain that the Vice President has for economics, broadly speaking, because he has vague and unspecified desires for things that are not measured by gdp, that is a cheap and easy way of avoiding having to make real political decisions about costs and benefits. And in his book, he suggests that Christians don't care about lower taxes for global corporations or institutional investors. They may even have been actively hostile to those things. He praises Sean o', Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union. In his book, he says, quote, some GOP donors complained he sounded like a socialist. I thought Sean's arguments echoed a lot of the themes from traditional Christian social teaching. Again, this is, this is warmed over Sanders ism. I wish it were not. It is what it is. Alrighty. Coming up, we'll get to the Vice President on his foreign policy. See, a lot of us didn't like the terms and conditions of the mou. And I think the Vice President was surprised that we actually read the terms and conditions of the Memorandum of Understanding. Mainly because nobody actually reads those things. Right. Actually, when you're online and you have to sign something in order to get access to another thing, you just scroll right to the bottom, you sign it, you're done. Well, here's the problem that gets you in trouble. I'm excited to talk to you about one of today's sponsors. Super sure. If you're the owner, CFO or HR manager of a company with more than 25 employees. Here are the Spark Notes. 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In his book, he writes at length about his view that essentially global foreign policy, particularly since the 1990s, were rotten. Quote, the fruits of your leadership are pointless wars of choice and declining life expectancy in your own country. Perhaps your life's work was for naught. He rips on Ukraine. He sort of avoids criticizing Russia. In his book, he saves his most ardent rage for George W. Bush. In his book on Joe Rogan, he pushes again a bizarrely conciliatory policy toward Iran. And he sets up a series of straw men that he then sets on fire in order to promote the Memorandum of Understanding that he himself negotiated and then defended. Now let me point out day one of the mou, I said it was a bad deal. Why? Cuz it's a bad deal. You know who agreed with me? 68% of Americans who thought the MOU was poorly negotiated in a bad deal. But the Vice President, in order to defend his bad deal and his bizarre view of foreign policy in which Iran is, you know, a potential friendly and the Pakistanis are friendlies and the Qataris are friendlies, and they're all friendlies, but also Israel manipulates our foreign policy. In order for the Vice president to back that, he has to set up a series of straw men and then set them aflame. So on Joe Rogan, he suggests that the people criticizing the MOU have no alternative.

J.D. Vance

The people who are like you cannot negotiate with the Iranians. The reason why that's fundamentally idiotic is because so long as you have Some person who's willing to fire off a few cheap drones. You're going to have some ship captains who say, no, no, no, we're not willing to do this, so we gotta kind of use all tools at our disposal. The military is one tool, but diplomacy is another tool. And I'm very frustrated by the Americans and frankly by people in other countries who are like, you cannot negotiate with the Iranians. Well, then what is your proposal to get people to stop shooting at ships in the Strait of Hormuz? You can bomb them, you can take away their radar, you can take away some of their drones and some of their missiles, but it's just too easy. Easy to fire at ships in the straits.

Ben Shapiro

Okay, so I would like to point out at this point, no one says you can't negotiate with the bad guys. The question is what kind of bad deal you cut with the bad guys. And the. And the sort of refuge of every bad argument when it comes to cutting a bad deal is to suggest there's no alternative to cutting the bad deal. Barack Obama did this in 2015 when he was promoting what Donald Trump has called the worst deal in history. For all the objections of Prime Minister Netanyahu, or for that matter, some of the Republican leadership that's already spoken, none of them have presented to me or the American people a better alternative. And this is always the shtick, by the way. I have presented about a thousand alternatives on this show to the bad mou, and they include just walking away, which is still better than a bad mou. Maintaining the blockade, walking away, keeping the sanctions on was a better answer than the mou. And as we'll get to, when it comes to the mou, you know who sank the mou? Wasn't me. I was critical of the mou. I thought the mou's trash, cuz it is. But the reason I thought it was trash is cuz I think that the Iranian government is a government of tyrannical, theocratic thugs. And I had full faith that they would break the agreement in short order, which they did. It was the Iranians who tossed the MOU in the garbage. But of course, the Vice President set up again a series of straw men that are essentially indistinguishable in many ways from the kinds of policy that would be promoted by radicals in the Democratic Party. So, J.D. vance, for example, suggested that we should vote. We should not be in favor of any sort of regime change or collapse in Iran, because then the Iranian people would all flee the country and they're all terrorists. Which again, like this is just an incredibly ignorant take on Iran.

J.D. Vance

What is in our interest? How is it in the United States interest to have 94 million desperate people flooding into Europe, flooding into the United States, to have, you know, sort of the terrorist infrastructure that can get established when you fan terrorists all over the world. We've run this experiment before.

Ben Shapiro

I mean, it definitely would be a problem if you had, say, a regime that was fostering terrorism literally all over the world. That'd be terrible. I mean, that regime already exists. And the idea that 94 million Iranians are terrorists, that of course is quite silly. It is quite silly, but it's a bunch of straw men. And when faced with the fact that his MOU was just a bad deal, the Vice President then fell back on conspiracy, theorizing about how everyone who opposed him is naturally in the pay of the nefarious Israelis. Which is just dummy stuff. I'm sorry, it's stupid, it's dumb. You know who opposed the MoU? Anyone who had an ounce of brain power with regard to how Iran acts in the Middle east and has been acting for full on half a century. It's just silly talk. It's silly talk. Well, here's the Vice President doing some rather conspiratorial silly talk, citing an article, by the way, from Time magazine that was essentially planted by his allies in the first place.

J.D. Vance

I definitely think you have seen this very discreet, extremely well funded campaign to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal. And you know, there was again, there's this Time article that came out yesterday. A friend sent it to me. It's like, worth reading because it lists a bunch of people who have quite literally been paid by a former Trump campaign person who was himself paid by certain elements within the Israeli government. And those people are attacking me viciously for quite literally trying to accomplish the negotiation objective that the President set for the country. So what is their position?

Joe Rogan

Like, they're attacking you how?

J.D. Vance

Oh, it's social media posts. They're leaking to reporters. They're attacking me obsessively saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely.

Ben Shapiro

Keep it going indefinitely. I've argued for bombing Kharg island, bombing South Pars and getting the hell out. So, I mean, there's that. But again, this idea that everyone you don't like is in the pay of your opposition is just silly. That article in Time magazine, by the way, doesn't even say that it was planted by, quote, a senior U.S. official. Who could it be? I don't know. I don't know. It's so mysterious. A senior US Official plants a piece in Time magazine about how there is some sort of paid operation against him. The only person who is named is Trump's former presidential campaign manager and digital guru, guy named Brad Parscale. Brad Parscale is literally registered. I mean, this is not a hidden story. He registered under Farah and he himself denied having been a part of any of this. And by the way, if he had paid anyone to actually go and make those posts, they too would have had to register under Farah. So, again, this is just conspiratorial nonsense. The reality is that the MOU did not die because people in the United States were opposed to the MoU. The MoU died because Iran is Iran. And the people who oppose the MoU oppose the MoU also because Iran is Iran. I mean, Iran has been spending this week unveiling murals of President Trump in a coffin. This is literally a picture from Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Square is on Fox News two days ago.

J.D. Vance

There is a mural of the late Senator Lindsey Graham with devil horns painted on his head. And there's another giant mural of President Trump in a coffin. President Trump was asked yesterday what he thought about these threats toward him. He says he doesn't spend much time thinking about them.

Ben Shapiro

So, again, the vice president attributing opposition to what is a bad MOU to everyone, that he doesn't like being paid by someone else. It's quite reminiscent of the newfound Graham Platner Abdul El Sayed strategy of everyone who doesn't like me is a pack. The President. The vice president would go on to say on Joe Rogan's show that he is not influenced, that people are accusing him of being influenced by Qatar or by. By Tucker Carlson. I don't think the vice President is influenced by. By Qatar. I think that the vice President is very close friends with Tucker Carlson. He's made that absolutely and abundantly clear. Here was the Vice president yesterday on Joe Rogan.

J.D. Vance

People have come after me and say that I'm influenced by Qatar, that I'm influenced by foreign governments, that I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson. And there's just so much bullshit out there when what I'm actually trying to do is accomplish what the President of the United States told me to accomplish, which. Which is a settlement of this, that accomplishes our objectives.

Ben Shapiro

Now, again, when it comes to the Tucker Carlson of all of this, the vice President is obviously and very clearly close To Tucker Carlson, clearly, forever, for the past two years, the Tucker Carlson. By the way, the criticism that the Vice President is leveling at his critics here, I've noticed he has directed not one ounce, not one iota, not one word of criticism in Tucker Carlson, who has called the President of the United States the Antichrist, who has said he wants to start a third party which presumably would run against JD Vance, who has promoted feudalism and Russian propaganda and Iranian propaganda and all the rest. And the Vice President hasn't said a single word about any of that. Which again is kind of strange. Listen, the reason that we are critical of the Vice President on this show in terms of how he has performed his job when it comes to foreign policy is because he didn't do a good job in this negotiation. He did not. Sorry. He went to this negotiation and he said, we love Pakistan. And five minutes later, the Prime Minister of Pakistan was in Iran at the funeral of the Ayatollah, praising Iran. I mean, this is just bad diplomacy. Forget about whether diplomacy should be used. Diplomacy is a. Is a tool in your arsenal. It is not an end in and of itself. When you earn the criticism, you earn the criticism. And trying to blame that on outside nefarious forces is silly. It's just silly and unbecoming.

Jennifer Welch

You about the Pakistani role especially.

Ben Shapiro

Good.

J.D. Vance

We love Pakistan. Thank you.

Ben Shapiro

Pakistan and Iran are two brotherly countries. Our hearts beat together and we will stand together. We shall march together under all circumstances. Okay, so in short, does this sound like peace through strength? It did not to me when he was on Joe Rogan's show. And then finally there was J.D. vance's embrace of conspiracism. Now the Vice President has full scale admitted that he tends to fall down rabbit holes of conspiracy. That's been widely reported. Obviously one of those conspiracies is the idea that everyone who criticized the MOU is in the pay of the nefarious Jews or something. But J.D. vance, he also decided to retail again and again. This is just. Maybe he's trying to appeal to the conspiratorial side of Joe Rogan here. Maybe it's a tactic. Maybe it is. But when J.D. vance goes on Joe Rogan's show and unleashes yet another dumb theory about Jeffrey Epstein. But he says it in the form of the Vice President of the United States claiming connections with the highest levels of American and Israeli intelligence on behalf of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. I have one question. You're the Vice President. Why not release your evidence? Sir? Anytime. Alrighty. Coming up, the vice President of the United States, he's not just doing the sort of conspiracy game around opposition to his pretty bad mou. He's just doing it generally. We'll get to that in a second. But first I need to play a game with you. I'm going to describe a country to you and you're going to tell me what country it is. A small group of resentful radicals seizes power. They go after the family, they go after the church, they flood the streets with criminals, they legalize abortion. They gut the institution of marriage. They persecute anybody who disagrees with them politically. Now, you might think that sounds a lot like 2020America. It kind of does. What I'm actually describing is Russia in 1917. That's the subject of the latest episode of Real History with Matt Walsh, streaming now on Daily Wire. Plus, in this episode, Matt traces the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, rule by rule, and matches each one against what's happening in our country over the last several years. These are sourced and documented accounts. What is unsettling is how, well everything kind of lines up. Watch the episode. Tell me that the same rules that lead to the Russian communist takeover don't sound a lot like what's happening on the streets of American cities today. This is one of the most important episodes Matt has made so far. Go check out the real history of communism today@dailywireplus.com if you're elected to uncover all of this, you're doing a pretty bad job of it. If you have questions on what's going on between Jeffrey Epstein and say, American intelligence, the CIA or Mossad or whatever, if you have questions, there's a person who's very, very high ranking in the United States government with the plenary capacity to gather that information. He exists in the mirror for the vice president. So pushing UN based conspiracy theorizing on Joe Rogan, it is unworthy of the office.

Joe Rogan

Well, most people think he was Mossad.

J.D. Vance

Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country or both. You know, look, he clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence. In fact, one of the interesting story, one of the interesting things the Epstein saga reveals about, and I try to make this point, one of the reasons why I'm always careful and I say there are some elements within the Israeli government who don't like our peace process because there are a lot of elements within the Israeli government that actually do like our Peace process. They recognize that this indefinite campaign is not good for them either. And the Epstein thing is interesting because as much as I know, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu, not a particularly popular person in the United States of America right now, Epstein seemed to be connected to the elements of the Israeli deep state that were left of center. Like, I've always found that fascinating. It wasn't like he was super connected to the right of center of Israeli politics America. He was connected across the board.

Ben Shapiro

Okay. So again, if you're gonna claim connections between Jeffrey Epstein and the highest levels of American and Israeli intelligence, that is a different thing than he was friends with Ehud Barak, the scumbag former prime minister of Israel. Obviously he had connections in high places, but that doesn't mean that he was an agent, which is the thing that Vance is talking. And Vance, by the way, would go on to acknowledge he had no documentary evidence of any of this. No documentary evidence. So I just want to go back for a second. Conservatism has certain fundamental principles. I articulated three of them. That we are generally in favor of private property and free markets. That generally we favor a strength, a peace through strength foreign policy that is rooted in understanding the world is a rough place. That conservatives generally are not in favor of baseless conspiracy theorizing because that undermines the idea that you have capacity in the world to act and duty to act in a particular way. And the vice President goes on Joe Rogan, and he seems to cut against a lot of those things. So I've talked about the vice President's heterodox views, shall we say? The question is what he's doing, politically speaking. Okay. Cause that brings us to question two. I said earlier on, I want two things for my Republican candidate. One, to reflect my principles. And two, I want them to defeat the Democrats. Now, I've talked about the ways in which the vice President is skewing away from a lot of those principles. But the second question is still very alive. Is he likely to beat the Democrats because of this? Maybe it's just a tactic. Maybe it's a tactic. Maybe the idea from the vice President is that he can't be president somehow if he doesn't win over Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson, if he doesn't win them over, if so, this is a very, very foolish tactic. It is a mistake. It is a. It is a political error of cataclysmic proportions. Now, I want to bring up here what is called the Political Tribe profiles from Echelon Insights. Echelon Insights, which Is Kristen Saltz Anderson's group. Excellent polling outfit. They break down the political tribes in the United States into eight political tribes. Into eight political tribes. Okay. On the right you have the loyal right, which represents about 18% of Americans. Staunch conservatives across the social and economic spectrum who also take consistently anti establishment positions. Skews older and male. The Moderate right, that's 13% take right leaning positions on most issues but trust experts, support free trade, are pro gay marriage and believe there are obstacles for women. The new Republican populace. This is where the Vice President seems to be placing himself. Socially to the right, economically to the left. Medicare for all, abortions for none. Rural, heavy, very anti establishment and pessimistic. That represents 6%, count them, 6% of Americans. 11% of Americans are middle American optimists, middle of the road on most issues, pro choice, optimistic about the ability to get ahead through hard work. And then you get to the groups that voted Democrat in the last election cycle. The young in disillusioned, the young female, racially diverse, skeptical of regulation, but for a robust welfare state. And anti establishment, the American institutionalists. These would be firmly pro establishment. A cluster unified by a belief that the system basically works from faith and hard work. Police and the United States economic system. That's about 11% of the population. 10% would be electability. Democrats left leaning on most issues, but diverges from those unpopular left wing positions like defunding the police or trans athletes in sports. And the loyal left, socially and economically liberal, largely pro establishment. Okay, so J.D. van's in the smallest contingent of the American body politic. By this poll, not close. 6%. He's in the 6%. That is where he's aiming. Right socially to the right, economically to the left, rear Navarro and all the rest. That is 6% of the American body politic. And what's more, that 6% tends to alienate the all the other groups that you need in order to cobble together a majority. That 6%. Let's say that you're socially to the right and economically to the left. Okay, well now you've alienated the loyal right, which is economically conservative. You've alienated the moderate right because you're socially conservative. You've alienated the middle American optimists because you are pessimistic, like deeply pessimistic about America. So where are you going to draw your additional support from the young in Dishalusia? Does anyone believe additional that J.D. vance is going to outperform with young female and racially diverse people? Do people think he's going to outperform with American institutionalists, people who believe that the system basically works or electability Democrats. And where does he draw his additional support from? This is political malpractice. Aiming for Joe Rogan as like your bellwether vote is a fool's errand. And here's the thing. Joe Rogan is not conservative. He doesn't pretend to be conservative. Joe Rogan is economically on the left. He voted for Bernie Sanders. He loves conspiracy theories. Obviously he'll have on pretty much any old dumb to jabber about foreign policy so long as that person is promoting a sort of generic Howard Zinn anti American isolationism. But listen, Joe's not running for office. He's entitled to listen to James Talarico on social policy or Tim Dillon on foreign policy if he wants to. Hell, he's entitled to listen to Terrence Howard on math if he feels like it. That's his prerogative. Joe would say he's an entertainer. And of course he's right. But the Vice President is not. For some reason, the Vice President seems to think that his path to the presidency is to unify that anti left base of the Republican Party with a sort of HorseShoe left. The VP seems to think he can sort of abstract a form of Trumpism, a philosophy of Trumpism, and sell that soap back to the same crowd. It's not going to work. J.D. vance is not Trump. Trump didn't win because he had some sort of coherent new economic populist philosophy. Here's the thing about Trump. The gestalt of Trump is extremely anti left. J.D. vance has praised Bernie Sanders and Zoramdani and Ro Khanna. President Trump doesn't like any of those people on policy. The President has been far closer to my policies or traditionally conservative policies than to Tucker Carlson, which is why he and Tucker are on the outs. That's why Tucker is calling him the Antichrist to the deafening silence of the Vice President. Trump won over a lot of people in a lot of groups for a couple of reasons. First, President Trump attracted a lot of disaffected voters because he is just a different cat. He is uniquely transgressive. He is sui generis. He can encompass a wide variety of viewpoints. He's funny, he's outside the box. He's anti establishment. Second, he won over these people because the left lost its mind. They ran Hillary Clinton, a horrible candidate, and then they ran a dead person followed by Kamala Harris. I mean, Donald Trump did not grant the premise to the left. He mocked them openly and the left is mockable and they are beatable, but only if you oppose them. You can't fight the Democrats by basically granting their premise. You're not going to defeat the Democrats by imitating them. That's not a thing. I believe that the Vice President can form his own coalition. I don't think he needs to maintain President Trump's exact coalition. Any politician, by the way, who tries to do that fails. I said this over and over and over. Hillary cannot inherit Barack Obama's coalition. Joe Biden cannot inherit Hillary's coalition. That's not the way this works. The Vice President could put together a people who, a group of people who oppose the left. He can dip into the kind of unique talent that made him such a successful figure. But there are certain things that are not possible. You cannot put together the philosophy of Tucker Carlson and Zara Momdani. Bernie Sanders can't mix all that stuff up and then pretend that that's going to somehow comfortably coexist inside a base that also includes traditional conservatives. Take my philosophy. These are mutually exclusive things. This was one of the issues of contention back in late 2025. I made a case that conservatism is a word with a meaning and that any movement has to have ideological borders. And the president, the Vice President made the case at TPUSA for open borders, essentially.

J.D. Vance

I mean all of you, each and every one. President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self defense defeating purity tests. He says, make America great again because every American is invited. I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform. And I don't really care if some people out there, I'm sure, will have the fake news media denounce me after this speech.

Ben Shapiro

Okay, now I'm just going to point out the job of the Vice President is not to kick people out of his voting base. It is to articulate principles around which we can center. The President has said, make America great again. And then he has a set of impulses that kind of fall under that broader rubric. The Vice President is setting out a series of philosophies and policies that are alienating to some and attractive to others. I think that the smartest thing that the Vice President could do is to actually move back toward traditional conservative principles and to pitch those principles as he runs and tries to define his own coalition. He obviously doesn't think that that's the case. But I will say this. If you pretend that the future of the Republican Party is going to be the policies that say Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson. Like that is a rough road to hoe, both morally as well as electorally. Now, again, I'm not threatening to vote Democrat the way that Tucker has. I'm not threatening to start a third party the way that Tucker has. All I'm saying is if you want a winning coalition, you actually have to root yourself in something. That something cannot be a bunch of warmed over economic, anti free market slop, slathered over with conspiratorial podcast to stand silliness accompanied by sort of side helping of John Mearsheimer foreign policy. That dog's not going to hunt. Because the people who traditionally love that stuff already have the Democratic Party. They already have the Democratic Party, which again, you could see from the Joe Rogan interview. Joe Rogan keeps praising over and over. He's been doing it for months. James Talarico. James Talarico is the Texas Senate candidate for the Democrats who wants to trans the kids, but also quotes the Bible. Here is Joe Rogan praising Talarico.

Joe Rogan

You need to run for president. Yeah, we need someone who's actually a good person.

Ben Shapiro

I mean, with James tal, with, with J.D. vance. Joe Rogan praised James Talarico literally yesterday because he said he liked Talarico's view on not displaying the Ten Commandments in Texas schools. Do you think that Joe Rogan is going to vote for the Catholic integralist adjacent candidate here? Does that seem likely to you?

Joe Rogan

I had James Talarico on the podcast and one of the things that I think he has a really good point about, even though I know you're Catholic and you're very religious, putting the Ten Commandments in schools, I don't think is the right way to do it. And this is a guy, Talarico, who was in seminary and is very Christian. He just thinks that even though he believes in the Ten Commandments, if you're just only representing the Christian faith in these schools, you're forcing your religion into other people's lives and that this is going to push people away from Christianity rather than encourage them to pursue it

Ben Shapiro

strategically. Gang, if you're aiming for the crossover vote between the people who love James Talarico and voted for Donald Trump, you're looking for love in all the wrong places. That ain't gonna do it. And here's the thing. The reason I'm exercised about this is not merely because of the principle. It's also because beating the Democrats is really important. They need to lose because they just keep getting more and more and more extreme, the mainstream Democrats are embracing the commies. They've just been eaten by the commies. There was a House Democratic resolution. It was, it was actually promoted by Thomas Massie, the bewilderingly insane Republican who's been ousted in a primary to defund all military aid to Israel. It was voted for by one Republican. That's not a sentiment that has a lot of traffic inside the Republican Party. A majority of Democrats in the House who voted voted in favor of defunding all military aid, digital 103 of them, because immorality on both the foreign and domestic front had become a litmus test for radical Democrats and the normie Democrats. The people who are supposed to be moderate are just accepting this. They're swallowing it whole because they too are trying to look for love in all the wrong places. Andy Beshear will be the first person eaten by the dsa. Here he was with Katie Couric saying that the Democratic Socialist of America. You know, these communists, the big problem with that, you know what, there's really nothing wrong with them. They're just too passionate. They're just too passionate.

J.D. Vance

Many who are, who are running under

Ben Shapiro

the democratic socialist brand or the progressive

J.D. Vance

brand are making their case with just extreme passion. They are convincing voters that they will work as hard as they can. And that's what voters are asking for right now.

Ben Shapiro

They just want the extreme passion of the Communists. John Fetterman, again, the last sane Democrat, he said yesterday, why exactly are you embracing the commies? Like, what is your thing here?

Joe Rogan

For me, what you're afraid of is defined by what you won't criticize or won't call out. And I'm always going to call out people that are. They're not. Again, they're not Democrats. In fact, some of them aren't even socialists. They've actually self identified as communist. You know, I'm not sure why there's more outrage within the party. And they will refuse to acknowledge or say, well, I haven't been paying attention to that race so much for all those.

Ben Shapiro

I mean, again, he is right about this. The fact that Democrats continue to make room for the psychos, they will be embracing every psychotic position they possibly can by the end of this election cycle. And certainly going into 2028, if you are perceived as too moderate, you got nothing. You got nothing. You're gonna get outflanked and outflanked dramatically. And they just keep going crazier and crazier. Again, many of the faces in their beloved media ecosystem seem more Insane every day. So Jennifer Welch again. I will never understand how a person like Jennifer Welch has an audience. Mainly because she's awful on camera. Truly awful. I speak as someone who's not particularly amazing on camera. Jennifer Welch makes me look like Lawrence Olivier. My goodness. Jennifer Welch was on her show ripping into homeschooling. This, this is where the Democratic Party is going, attacking the homeschoolers.

Jennifer Welch

They are incapable of critically thinking. They're incapable of deduction skills. And what pisses me off about this the most is how many parents project a script onto their kids. I'm a dumbass, so therefore I'm going to make sure you're a dumbass. I'm a idiot. I made D's. As our caller said Ellie, she, you know, the people, the dumbest people she knew in college were homeschooling their kids. And so this is trickle down stupidity. This is MAGA on steroids. This is Maha, this is trad wife. This is unvaxxed and unjacked and all that.

Ben Shapiro

These people, these folks. First of all, homeschoolers generally outperform public school students. Second of all, this bizarre hatred for parents schooling their own children and extraordinary faith in the public school system which is failing all over the country in a wide variety of areas, is pretty astonishing. But don't worry, the hatred doesn't stop there. Welch has a co host, that co host name is Angie Sullivan, who says she does not trust parents who want to be with their children.

Angie Sullivan

You would not believe how many people in Bible study homeschool their kids. And I, and you just think, I worry about that. And then you see those witness booklets or whatever they're called that the Duggars use and they're like top out at eighth grade. I mean, I just think homeschooling is a bad idea. From soup to nuts. I don't care if you're a nuclear physicist. I think it's just weird as that you want your kids around you all day, every day and all night. And just the socialization, for me personally it was that I would have gotten up on my hands and knees and strapped them to my back and crawled to get them to school every day just to get them where I wasn't. So I don't trust somebody that wants to be with their kids 24 7. I think a lot of dumb people do it because it's just easier. And that's a concern.

Ben Shapiro

Homeschooling is absolutely 100% not easier, not easier at all. Okay, this lady is crazy. This is a crazy thing. To say, first of all, you don't trust parents who want to be with their kids. What is, what is wrong with you? Seriously, what is wrong with you? Do adults need a break from their kids sometimes? Sure. Do good parents want to be with their kids a lot? Absolutely. And I'm confused. You don't trust somebody who wants to be with their kids. You just trust somebody who wants to be with other people's kids. That's your pitch? My goodness. And the Democrats will embrace all this sort of stuff they do. So when I say that I want the Democrats to lose, it's cuz I want them to lose. But I don't just want them to lose in name, I want them to lose in policy. I don't want any of the policies that the Democrats are pushing. I don't want to a weak foreign policy and I don't want a hatred of free market economics that is being propped up by a bunch of lies about how income inequality damn all of us to the loss of the American dream and all this slop. I'm not interested in a bunch of conspiracy theorizing about how the American dream is dead and you can't get ahead and therefore all the meritocracy itself must be ground under. I don't want that. I don't want it from Democrats, I don't want it from Republicans. And listen, it may be because the world's imperfect that we have a bunch of imperfect choices in the future in presidential. Sure. I mean people very rarely get what they want in politics. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't call it out when we see it because it is both bad strategy and bad principle. Alrighty folks. Coming up, we're going to jump into the mailbag. We're going to answer some of your questions in just a second. But you have to be a subscriber in order for that to happen. Become member Use code Shapiro Checkout for two months free on all annual plans. You can click that link in the description and join us.