Ben Shapiro’s Q&A at UCLA | @YAFTV
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Well, folks, obviously, I'm not live today because it's a Jewish holiday. But earlier this week, I stopped by my alma mater over at UCLA, which had turned into a bit of a trash heap over the course of the last 20 years since I went to school there, including a giant tent encampment that ended with violence over the Gaza war. I wanted you to have a listen to some of the Q&A I did with the students. It was really a lot of fun. And there are some spicy moments. As always, by the way, I do have one rule. This is for every lecture. If you disagree with me on any topic, whatever you want to do, then raise your hand. You go to the front of the line. That's how that works.

Hi, Ben. My name is Colin. I'm a center-left, typically, and I joined YAF recently because I've gotten really sick of the divisiveness in politics. And frankly, what I'd like to know from you is, as a commentator on some of the most contentious issues today, and what can we do as students to bridge this divide? What do you think the answer is? So first of all, thank you so much for coming. Seriously. I mean...

I think that the first way to bridge the divide is actually to have conversations like the one that we're having. And so I appreciate the fact that you're center left and you joined a group that tends toward the right in order to facilitate those conversations. I think that on campus, there are a few different types of folks. There are the folks who are militant leftists. I think that having conversations with many of those people tends to be worse than useless. They've sort of decided what they've decided and you're wasting your time and wasting your breath. You have to decide that based on each individual conversation. Then there are a bunch of people in the middle who just want to have an open conversation. And those are the people that I've,

would focus on. When I was on campus, those are the people I'd like to talk to because their views have not yet been set. And you can have some really good, interesting back and forth about all of this. In terms of generating change on the campus more generally, obviously there are sort of strategic things you can do by going after donors and telling them to pull their money if they're going to engage in go-aheads for tentifadas and such. But I think the other thing that really can be done

is establishing the ground rules. And on campus, I think the ground rules have fallen apart. And some of those ground rules include things like freedom of speech rather than silencing of dissent. Or you don't get to push people around on the quad would be a good way to characterize that rule. And I think there ought to be 70, 80% unity on questions like that. If you can't get the other 20%, well, you know, tough. That's kind of life. Thank you, Ben. Appreciate it.

Good evening, Ben. My name is Alex. Very nice to meet you, sir. So I'm a Roman Catholic, and I know that you've had many conversations with Catholics, such as Bishop Robert Barron and Matt Fradd. And so my question is, how have those conversations impacted your understanding of who Jesus Christ is and the church that he started? Okay, so, I mean, the hat means I'm a Jew, right? So the...

So I always preface any conversation by saying that if you're a Catholic, you should absolutely go to church more often. And also, by the way, if you're a Protestant, you should go to church more often. What the country needs is more people going to church and going to synagogue. It's what the country desperately needs.

As far as my own personal understanding, if we're talking about the divinity of Jesus, my opinion on that hasn't changed because, again, that is sort of one of the foundational tenets of Judaism is that God has never taken human form. But if the question is, you know, what have I learned about Catholicism from any of the people that I'm talking to? I mean, I think that one of the things that Robert Barron, Bishop Barron, does really, really well is he points out the continuity between an enormous number of ideas in the Old Testament and the stuff that Jesus is saying in the New Testament, which is obviously quite true. Much of the stuff that Jesus is saying in the New Testament is

is almost quoted word for word, either from the Old Testament or from places like the book of Jeremiah. And so, you know, the continuity there is why when I say Judeo-Christian, that's not meant as some sort of denigration or watering down of Christianity. That's meant to point to the continuity of Christian ideas with Judaism. Sure. Thank you. I really appreciate your response. And please know that I'm praying for you. God bless you, sir. I appreciate that. Thank you. Good evening, Ben. It's a pleasure to meet you in person.

I know you're not fond of the far right, and you mentioned in the past that you were a target of the far right in 2016. The latest polls show that Trump is polling better among black voters than any previous Republican candidate. However, some black voters I've spoken to are still hesitant to support him, partly because far right groups such as white nationalists like Nick Fuentes seem to rally behind Trump. Why do you think these groups, though small in number, are more drawn to Trump than any past candidate? So, I mean, I will point out that at this point, my understanding is Nick Fuentes is unendorsed Donald Trump.

He actually unendorsed Donald Trump and he suggested to his followers that they campaign against Donald Trump. So that is worth pointing out. And the reason is because Donald Trump happens to be too phylo-Semitic. He's explicitly said this. So I think that there is a reactionary strain that does exist on the right and in reaction to what they see as the –

Thank you.

And I think that, again, because that is a response to the racialism of the left, some of that has ended up on the right. That's not an excuse for it. That's an explanation for it. It's really ugly. It has been largely marginalized on the right. I hope it continues to be marginalized on the right. I've been fighting that battle myself for quite a while. I think it's hideous. I think it's ugly. I think the viewpoint is disgusting. I think it's morally reprehensible and logically idiotic. Thank you, Ben. Have a good day.

Sorry. Hi, Ben. Thank you for showing up. Throughout your speech, you talk about how you feel that Western civilization is being threatened by all these forces that you mentioned.

In my view, the greatest threat towards Western civilization isn't what random professors are teaching kids, but climate change. As you see that we have all these hurricanes. I'm from Texas, and I can tell you for sure that in the last couple of years, in the summers, it's been significantly hotter since when I was a small child. I don't even go outside between...

May and September anymore. And so why is fighting climate change inconsistent with conservatism? Why can't we not have conservatism with carbon taxes and pushing solar and wind and nuclear? Why do we need oil and gas to be conservative? Okay, so I think that there are really two questions when it comes to climate change. One is the question of climate change itself, and then one is the solutions that are proposed for climate change. When it comes to climate change itself, there are some

open questions as to exactly the extent to which anthropogenic climate change is the cause of climate change. So when I say that, I don't I personally believe that the climate is changing. That doesn't mean that every weather event is attributable to climate change, because actually there were fewer hurricanes up until like the last month in the Gulf this year than there have been in years past. It was really baffling a lot of climatologists and you can't mix it. It's always funny whenever you talk about climate change.

If there's a real cold snap, somebody on the right will go, "See, climate change isn't happening." And then everybody on the left will go, "Hey, weather is not climate." And then there'll be a hurricane and everybody on the left will go, "Hey, the climate's changing.

And it'd be like, well, hold up a second. Is weather climate or is it not climate? You're going to have to pick one. If the idea is that the average temperature on planet Earth, as measured by available statistics from, say, the IPCC, has been marginally increasing over the course of years and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future, then we get to question number two. Okay, so I think that the first one, which leaves open a bunch of questions, does...

Ask what happens next. It's the what happens next where things start to get a little bit crazy. Because what the left has suggested very often is taking measures that completely quash the American economy in the name of a change that will be incremental at best. If the United States, for example, were to hold by the commitments of the Kyoto Protocols, then the United States would be responsible for destroying essentially its own economy and would marginally change over the course of the next century climate change because it turns out that the climate is global. And so China is still polluting all

A lot, a lot. It turns out that American emissions have actually been headed in the right direction for the past decade or so, while Chinese emissions have been headed in the wrong direction because when countries economically developed, carbon based fossil fuels are really, really efficient. So the answers on a conservative side to climate change, if this is something that is deeply concerning, are really twofold. One, there's a great litmus test as to whether somebody is serious about climate change. You mentioned it. So you get included in the good group. That's nuclear.

If somebody on the left refuses to consider nuclear as a solution to climate change, they're not serious. They're just lying and they want to restructure the global economy. So if you say nuclear is a great thing, new nuclear facilities should be built as an alternative to many of the dirtier fossil fuels that are being used to power the electric grid, for example. Then you get to the question of what else can be done. Carbon taxes tend not to be particularly effective on a global scale.

All you end up doing is penalizing your own consumers in the United States and really harming the economy, taking away jobs in favor of places like India or China that are still developing. And if you're a developing country, do you think the people in developing Africa care deeply about climate change or are they just trying not to burn dung for fuel? Well, you just have like an adjusted border tax. So if China is using coal, you just tax the imports that use coal. That's what like the European Union is doing.

And it's been wildly ineffective at getting China to actually lower its coal usage, for example. So it has not been an effective approach. The truth is, human beings are really, really bad at mitigation and really, really good at adaptation. And so...

And so, yeah, I think there will be new innovations that actually are significantly more effective than what's come along right now. Hopefully, there will be better innovation in places like solar and wind to bring the price per kilowatt down so that it's more competitive. Right now, the solutions that are being proposed are so blunderbuss and large in their effect that they outweigh the actual impact of climate change, financially speaking. It's not me saying that. William Nordhaus has made that claim on the Nobel Prize in Economics a few years back for making –

Quite similar claims. It's a book called Climate Casino worth checking out. All right. Thank you so much.

Hi, Ben. It's nice to see you. I'm a first-time voter, and speaking as a conservative in deeply blue California, I was more interested in seeing what you had to say about the electoral college because I find it difficult, even as a conservative, to argue for a system that basically invalidates millions of California Republicans or Texas Democrats or New York Republicans.

So I just wanted to hear if you favored a national popular vote system, something like that, and get your thoughts on that. So I don't favor a national popular vote system because it's never going to be implemented, and I don't know why people are wasting their breath and time on it. I mean, that's the real answer. I mean, there are a lot of things that you could do de novo, right? If you were going to start over the United States, would you have a national popular vote system?

Or would you have an electoral college? And the answer is, well, when the United States began, it was a compendium of states and those states had to get together and create a system. And so states with a more sparse population were simply not willing to hand over the power of a national popular vote to big cities like Boston at the time or New York City at the time.

And so, you know, all these sort of attempts to retcon the Electoral College. I mean, there have been states, by the way, that actually have divvied up their Electoral College vote by popular vote. I mean, all states can do that. If California wants to do that, I'd be more than happy if they would. That would be great. I would love it if California didn't take 50-odd electoral votes every election cycle. That'd be awesome. But, and there are, in fact, a number of states that have sort of bound together and have committed that if...

That if a majority of states in terms of the Electoral College sign on, they've signed on to a pledge that if the popular vote goes one way, they'll vote in favor of that popular vote. So theoretically, that could pass without some sort of constitutional amendment. But as far as sort of the principled argument for the Electoral College, the idea that it acts as sort of a bulwark or manufactures a greater level of consent in a very split population –

I hear the arguments on both sides. I don't find the argument against the national popular vote wildly unconvincing, per se. I just think it's a complete useless waste of time because how are you going to do it? Like, explain. It's like saying, let's get rid of the United States Senate. Okay, talk to Wyoming and see how that goes for you. All right, thank you so much. Hi, Ben. My name is Tammy. I'm a liberal. Well, thanks for coming. Pronouns she, her. I know that might give you trouble. It doesn't. I can speak English. Thank you. So...

I appreciated what you said about the coalition of losers who hate the Western values. I'd like to add Donald Trump and his supporters to that club. So...

Guys, go easy on him. Go easy on him. He's sensitive. I'm curious. Let's hear it. Okay, go for it. So Donald Trump's conduct was knowingly criminal. Criminal and knowingly criminal, not only on January 6th, but in the lead up to January 6th with the false elector scheme. You, on a previous podcast with Lex Friedman, said, admitting that he was testing the boundaries of our constitutional system. And the only reason that he didn't get away with it, because the guardrails held, is

So let me explain why. So...

So you point out two reasons that factors have changed, presumably since 2021. The factor that you first cited was the Supreme Court ruling in which you suggest that the president has immunity, sort of blanket immunity. First of all, it's not what the Supreme Court decision says. What the Supreme Court decision actually does is it establishes three categories of executive action.

One is an unprotected category of executive action. Let's say the president side-sides somebody with his automobile. Is he now free of manslaughter charges? No, that's not protected executive action. He doesn't have immunity for that. That's not inside the constitutional boundaries. Then there is stuff that is clearly protected executive action. Say Barack Obama droning Anwar al-Awlaki.

He gives an order to the military. He has the capacity to do that in his capacity as commander in chief. That's clearly protected. And then there's a big gray area. That's stuff where, say, the president of the United States gives an illegal order to somebody in the executive branch. And then the question is not, does he get automatic immunity? He does not get automatic immunity. Then you are able to show that he actually that that would be a threat that he'd have to show that would be a threat to the constitutional order not to stop him. So precisely the reverse would have been true for Donald Trump in 2021. If he'd gotten away with it, that would have been a threat.

to the constitutional order in my view. So that would not have withstood claims of executive immunity, which is why this was remanded back to the DC court of appeals where Judge Chutkan is then going to make a decision as to which of those claims still hold from Jack Smith. So that's the actual legal case, okay? Putting on my lawyer hat, that's the actual legal case. Then you make a second contention with regard to President Trump, which is,

What it was, it was the it was the Supreme Court case. And remind me what your second contention was. The second one was now he's going to surround himself with the VP. Yeah. So the Electoral Count Reform Act did pass early on in the Biden administration that wildly restricts the ability of the vice president to do anything as a constitutional duty now to certify the state vote and the state legislature certifies that vote. So Congress can't actually hold that up. So the guardrails were actually made stronger in the wake of 2021. See, the thing is about President Trump in 2021 and January 6th, I didn't like any of that.

I'm one of the few conservative commentators who said, I really didn't like any of what he was saying between November 6th and January 6th. I thought that it was wrong. I thought that he was making specious legal claims and all of the rest. Okay, with that said...

Here's the beauty of our Constitution and its guardrails. It was set up for people who tried to do the kinds of things that Donald Trump did. What it was not set up for was people gutting the institutions and then wearing them around his skin suits. So, for example, the Biden administration trying to use OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to cram down vaccine mandates on 80 million Americans. Or, for example...

Or, for example, the Biden administration actually mobilizing the Department of Justice against political opposition. It's always funny to me to hear people on the left suggest that Donald Trump is going to do that when he actually did not do that while he was president. But Joe Biden actually has under his attempt to do that. He tried to get the DOJ to file charges against Hillary Clinton. That is that is untrue. If he if he if he actually said he was going to do that in 2020 in 2016 and then he never did that.

That is not true. He was unable to do that. It's not the same. No, he didn't actually even try to do that. Jeff Sessions, Jeff Sessions turned him down on many things. He didn't even make an effort to investigate Hillary Clinton under the DOJ. It's a critique actually many Republicans have of Donald Trump.

Who wished that Hillary Clinton had been prosecuted. May I turn back to something you said about the core powers of the executive power related to immunity? So you yourself said that using drones, using the military is a core part of the executive branch and therefore is covered by immunity. Depends on the function of the military. So if you were to use the, if I were to order SEAL Team 6 to say, kill my political opponent, that would not be protected. And the way you know that's not protected, by the way, is because Joe Biden has not used SEAL Team 6 to kill Donald Trump. If that's the case, then why didn't Chief Justice Roberts address that when that specifically

was brought up in the immunity case. Because Justice Roberts has a philosophy of judicial restraint that means that he likes to kick stuff back to the lower courts until it matures. That's part of his judicial philosophy. I disagree with it, by the way. So I think you should have spoken up on it. I mean, Justice Roberts is quite famous for leaving things ambiguous and then kicking them back to the lower courts where the legal term is ripened and then come back to the Supreme Court. Thank you. I want to make sure other people have time, but thank you for your time.

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Lumen will provide you with actionable tips to help you stay on top of your health. If you want to take the next step in improving your health, head on over to lumen.me/shapiro to get 15% off your Lumen. That's L-U-M-E-N dot M-E. Use Shapiro for 15% off your purchase. Greetings, Mr. Shapiro. I am born and raised here in Los Angeles, California. A current student here at UCLA. I'm a junior. And I wanted to ask you a question regarding your stance on something a little more relating IR, international relations.

Given that Israel is fighting a war to preserve its self-determination while faced with an existential crisis, I can't help but ignore the fact that we see dictatorships, military dictatorships like the Al-Zarbaljan waging a war of aggression against a peaceful democracy like Armenia, forcing 120,000 Christian Armenians to flee the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, formerly known as Artsakh.

How do you feel about Israel being a democratic country itself, supporting a military dictatorship that is pushing people out of their homes? So I'm not fond of Israel's position with regard to Azerbaijan and Armenia, actually with regard to Nagorno-Karabakh. It's a little bit complicated only in the sense that Azerbaijan has been more aligned with the West and Armenia has been, in terms of international relations, kind of weirdly aligned with Iran. And so that's complicated a lot of the factors on the ground. But

obviously, you know, the situation in Grona Karabakh is really, really horrifying. And I think everyone would prefer, you know, some form of ceasefire and a permanent settlement of borders there as well. Frankly, I wish Armenia were on the other side of Iran, and then that would solve a lot of the problems. I wish for the same exact thing. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

What went next here? Hi, Ben. My name's Navir. Quick question. Do you think America should take in more refugees to save lives? And when I mean refugees, I mean people who are in some form of immediate or semi-immediate danger. So I think that the United States should do so if they have no other option and if those people are warm toward American values.

So I think those two things are sort of prerequisites. The second one, actually, I think is more of a prerequisite. I don't think that every let's put this way. I don't think anyone has a right to come to the United States simply because they're suffering in their home country. That's why one of the policies that, for example, the Trump administration was attempting to pursue with regard to people in the Northern Triangle was that people would first have to attempt to apply for citizenship in waystation countries before they got to the United States. It's not like you're suffering in your home country. Now you get the pick of the litter until you come to the United States.

With that said, obviously, if somebody – the United States is filled with tons of groups of refugees from countries that were dictatorships who love America, want America to be stronger. Here you can name a bevy of different groups. You can talk about the Vietnamese boat people. You can talk about Cuban-Americans. You can talk about Venezuelan-Americans. Tons and tons of refugee groups from horrifying circumstances.

who come here and make the country better, that doesn't mean that the United States doesn't have the moral obligation to vet everybody who's coming in and determine whether it's good for the country for them to enter. But if we have the capability to take in more people, why shouldn't we? Because each life is equal. So capability is not quite the same thing as the purpose of the country. The United States has the capability of probably absorbing the entire population of South America, just in terms of our actual economic output. But that doesn't mean that we have a moral obligation

to do that to the citizenry of the United States. Any country is a country of its citizens. The first duty is to the citizens of the country. And then you can talk about what strengthens the country.

And who should be allowed to come in? Again, I'm not anti-immigration. I'm actually quite pro-immigration. I just think that when an immigrant comes to the United States, one of the things that's happened that's quite unfortunate over the course of American history is that the actual math with regard to why people immigrate to the United States has changed. So when my great-grandparents on both sides came to the United States in the early 20th century, there were no welfare programs, for example. What did that mean? That meant they left a place that was actually more secure and came to a place that was economically less secure for the opportunity.

That meant automatically they weren't, for example, going to be a net drain on taxpayer resources. And it also meant that my great-grandparents, when they got here, immediately learned English so that they could integrate into the economy. When you change those incentives by providing all sorts of welfare programs and social security nets and safety nets for people, that's not even a rip on the people. That's just a change in the incentive structure. And so it broadens the pool of applicants to enter. So you have to be more discriminating in who enters. Right.

All right. Final thing about this question. Do you think America should have taken in the people who are refugees of Nazi Germany during 1930s and 1940s? I think those people were so they shouldn't have taken in the Frankfurt School and they should have taken in a huge number of Jews who were then turned away and murdered in the European death camps because those people were explicitly fleeing Nazi Germany because they didn't like the system of Nazi Germany. And I think they would have made excellent Americans. All right, cool. Thank you so much.

Good evening, Ben. So when I was in the back of the line there, someone came up to me and said, do you disagree? I said, yes. So I got moved to the front of the line, which is awesome. And also all the people who were in front of me who mentioned that they disagreed with your reaction was, thank you so much for coming. We're here to bridge the gap. So, yay, we're bridging the gap. That's awesome. But throughout your speech,

You've referred to the coalition of losers and you sell leftist tears mugs. And I'm pretty sure below that it doesn't say asterisk leftist that I love to have conversations with. That seems like a contradiction to me. Tell me why I'm wrong. Okay. The reason you're wrong is because I explicitly, so this is a conversation inside the daily wires. So what would be on the leftist tears mug?

The original proposal was liberal tears mug. And I said it will not be liberal tears mug because I know many good-hearted liberals who disagree with me on tax policy. It will be leftist tears mug. And the distinction that I make between a leftist and a liberal is that leftists are people who believe in all the principles that I've espoused with regard to what I would call losers and also tend to believe in the shutting down of open and public debate along those lines through top-down auspices. So I do make a distinction between liberals and leftists. That's specifically why I don't use – you'll notice in all of my speeches I never use the word liberal.

I never do it when I'm labeling when I'm labeling a particular viewpoint. I never label it liberal because, again, I have many people who I am friends with who are liberals. I mean, I'm very friendly with Bill Maher, for example. Bill Maher and I disagree on a wide variety of topics. Bill is a liberal. He's certainly not a leftist. He's very much in favor of free speech, open conversation. And he believes in basic American values, like, for example, property rights and freedom of speech and freedom of worship. That's something that a cadre of the left really does not believe.

And so I try to make that distinction pretty handily. My guess is if you're here and you're having a conversation, I'd label you a liberal, not a leftist. So no bridging the gap with leftists. They don't get to bridge the gap. Zero, no. Nope, nope, none, nope. Thank you. Thanks.

Hey, Ben. So my question is about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I was watching a Norman Finkelstein video some time ago, about a year ago, where I'm still waiting for you to debate him, by the way, if that ever happens. But you previously said before that the Khartoum Resolution, or the three no's, no peace, no negotiation, no resolution, was issued before the Six Days War, implying that the Arabs provoked the war with that doctrine, etc. Whereas it's widely accepted that the doctrine was issued

in September, months after that Six Days War. - No, actually I didn't say that about the Khartoum Resolution. When I said the PLO was formed before the Six Day War, it was formed in 1964, and the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded to liberate Palestine, as the name might imply. You might also know that before the Six Day War, Palestine would have just been what would be inside Green Line Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization then became the Palestinian Authority. So I've actually not referenced the Khartoum Resolution

with regard to that timeline. But the foundation of the Palestine Liberation Organization when the West Bank was in the control of Jordan and the Gaza Strip was in the control of Egypt is excellent, excellent evidence that the actual Palestine seeking to be liberated was not, in fact, Jerusalem, which at the time was occupied by the Jordanians, or the Gaza Strip, which at the time was occupied by the Egyptians. It was, in fact, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Thank you, Ben. I'm a Christian. I go to Biola University in La Mirada, California. Yay!

I want to ask you, as an American Jew, how can you continue to condone the actions of the Israeli government, condoned by the U.S. government, in

in the Gaza Strip where over 40,000 people have died including Palestinians and Israelis and large numbers of children and civilians. How can you continue to condone those actions? Okay, so, okay, hold on. I want to correct you. I don't just condone the actions of the Israeli Defense Force and the Israeli government. I celebrate and laud them. I'm not morally apathetic about what's happening.

On October 7th, Hamas launched the most deadly war on Jews since the Holocaust. They killed 1,200 innocent people. They took 250 hostages. A hundred of them are still being held hostage. I know members of families of hostages who are still being held American citizens.

Hamas could end this war today by surrendering. They've chosen not to surrender. Instead, they spend billions of dollars building terror tunnels below civilian areas. It is not incumbent on the Israeli government to surrender just because terrorists are evil enough to hide behind civilians. The Israeli government has gone through such extraordinary efforts not to kill civilians that it has managed the best civilian to terrorist kill ratio in the history of urban warfare, and it is not close.

I personally know soldiers who have gone door to door in the Gaza Strip who have risked their own lives to prevent civilian death. Israel has complete and utter air superiority over the Gaza Strip. Turns out that Hamas doesn't have an air force. They just had a series of tunnels where they hid all their leadership while their people suffered after their people voted for them. And then they effectively established a dictatorship over the course of the last 20 years. Israel, with their complete air superiority, certainly would have had the ability to commit full scale human atrocities,

had they wanted to. They have complete air superiority. They could have used F-35s and simply turned the place into a parking lot. They did not, in fact, do that. They moved vast scales of population. In fact, believe it or not, there have been more births in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of this war than there have been deaths in the Gaza Strip from the war itself. That is a very poor way to conduct a genocide.

Israel is being more meticulous in the conduct of this war than any army in human history and certainly than the United States Army and its vast role in the history of urban combat. That is uncontested. What is Israel supposed to do? Simply say that you get to play tag? You take Israeli citizens...

You kill 1,200 people. You hide behind a baby. You hide behind a civilian. And now Israel has to preemptively surrender. That is a great way to make sure that terrorists always win. What Israel has done ought to be celebrated by the Western world because they've demonstrated that if terrorists decide to launch a war they cannot win, they will be eviscerated from the face of the earth as they ought to be. Do you not want a ceasefire now? I do not want a ceasefire until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are back. I want...

And you know how that could happen? It could have happened October 6th. There was a ceasefire on October 6th. And then there wasn't a ceasefire starting on October 7th. And there could have been a ceasefire again on October 8th, even after all of the death. If Hamas had surrendered its top leadership to international justice, if it had released all of its hostages, and if it had turned over its rulership of the Gaza Strip to some sort of decent body that wouldn't have reinstalled terrorism at the top of the food chain.

I mean, what exactly is the excuse for Hezbollah getting involved in the war? Hezbollah isn't even in Israel. Hezbollah has nothing to do with Israeli territory. And they've been launching 8,000 rockets between October 7th and now. Now it's more like 12,000 or 13,000 rockets, hundreds of them every week. What is the justification for that? There is only one way to defeat terrorism, and that is to win. You do not win wars with ceasefires. You do not win wars by losing.

In your speech, you mentioned that there are scavengers who like to tear down and there are lions who like to build up. Are there not some institutions we ought to tear down in society, potentially like the Israeli Defense Force?

I think it would be an act of the gravest evil to even make that contention simply because the Israeli Defense Force stands between 7.5 million Jews in Israel and complete slaughter. And by the way, over 2 million Arabs and complete slaughter who are citizens...

Of the state of Israel. The only security and peace in the region right now is being guaranteed by the Israeli military. That is the only force standing between that region and continued chaos. The destruction of the IDF is the destruction of Israel. That means a genocide, a true genocide. The thing that everybody likes to ignore in the Middle East while they're claiming genocide and while they are claiming apartheid is that there's only one area in that specific area that is free of one ethnicity and religion. And it is, quote unquote, Palestine, which has zero Jews living in it.

If you drive through the West Bank, there are giant red signs. If you drive into the Palestinian Authority area saying Jews are not allowed in here. And if you drive there without the permission of the Israeli government as a Jew, you will be killed. If you're a Palestinian and you accidentally make your way into Israel, nothing will happen to you. You will go back to Nablus in the evening. If you make it through the checkpoint accidentally, you're dead.

You'll go back. And if you're a Jew and you accidentally drive into Ramallah, you will not emerge alive. That is not, if we are talking about which force here is a force for good and which force here is a force for evil, there is no question what the distinction is. If we're going to talk about institutions that ought to be torn down, we should start with the legacy media, which seems to have radically misinformed you.

Hi, Ben. My name is Mateen. I'm the YAF Chapter Chairman at Golden West College, California. I was born and raised in Iran. I became a proud U.S. citizen last year. Awesome. And you have a slick vest. Look at that vest. Thank you. So I was going to ask you, why didn't Israel just go in and wipe out the Hamas terrorists a week after the attack? And then these...

Gender-bending cosplay terrorists would have forgotten about it by now if they did that. So the truth is that Israel has been, again, extraordinarily meticulous in the prosecution of this particular war, whether it is the shipping in of legitimately hundreds of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid into a region where the civilian population largely supports Hamas or whether you're talking about how they prosecute this war on an individual level.

They've been incredibly thorough. They're continuing to be incredibly thorough. I think everyone is frustrated the war didn't move faster. Part of that was because the United States was forcing the Israelis to slow walk it. The Biden administration has been egregious in its prosecution of the war. Their attempt to push Israel, for example, not to go into Rafah is one of the most obvious and stupid blunders in the history of modern American foreign policy. This war would have ended very quickly if the United States had been under the if Donald Trump had been president. First of all, I don't think that would happen. And number two, it would have been solved very quickly.

And the reason for that is very simple. If Donald Trump had been president on October 8th, Donald Trump would have said publicly, the Israeli military will get all the help they need to completely eviscerate Hamas and establish some form of working order in the Gaza Strip. If Hezbollah crosses that line, we are going to give Israel everything it needs to pummel Hezbollah into the ground. And we're removing our air brace from Qatar until they unless Qatar actually facilitates the exit of all the hostages currently being held by Hamas.

I have a simple request. So when you're talking about Iran, please make sure to separate our people from the... Yes, yes, yes, yes. From the rotten Islamic Republic. I agree. They are destroying our country. The Iranian government is evil and the people of Iran are incredible. They're awesome. Truly. Thank you.

Hi, Ben. My husband and I are huge fans of you. We listen to you every day. And I wanted to let you know that you actually inspired us to start our own podcast about politics in California called The California Conversation. So thank you for that. You're so happy about that. That seems like a really depressing podcast. I'm a very optimistic person.

My question to you is someone with over 2,000 podcast episodes, what's your advice to someone with so far just 12 on shaping the culture, pushing forward conservative values, and making positive change? And then also, could I give you my card on where to find the podcast so that you can stay informed on California politics as well? Well, I appreciate that. I think I have security people around the room, so you can definitely hand it to one of them. As far as advice for people who want to get involved, again, it sounds like you're using your skill set to the best of your ability. My...

Chief piece of advice for anybody who's starting a business is that marketing is 80% of your cost. So whatever you've dedicated to content, now take that and multiply it by four and then make that your marketing budget. That's true for any business, by the way. That's not just true for podcasting or for a media business. If you're starting a shoe company, the vast majority of your budget comes in marketing because unless people are aware of your show, you're just not going to know. And there's only so much you can do through sort of organic marketing and word of mouth. So that'd be like my top recommend for as far as like structuring a podcast.

What I find is for all you aspiring hosts out there, everybody has sort of their fallback thing that they like to do, which is when your computer freezes or when it glitches, what do you talk about now? Where do you go? So for me, I always go to information, right? So I love information. I love data. It's the thing that I enmesh myself in all the time. I read like somewhere between...

four and six books a week. And so because of that, I'm constantly like, I freeze up. I start going to, okay, let's do a disquisition on the history of a particular topic. Some people, it's anger. Some people say, okay, I'm going to rant. Now it's my rant time. Some people, it's funny. So find that comfortable place for you and you're only going to get that with reps, with doing that a lot of times. Great. Thank you so much. Thanks. Hi, Ben. Given that we're both wearing the Jew hat that helps us control the weather...

I think it's clear why me or you would want to support Israel or why someone who's Ukrainian would want to support Ukraine. But how would you make the argument to someone who's purely pro-American and an isolationist on why we should be giving billions of dollars to foreign aid, especially now that we're over $1.5 trillion of debt in America? Sure. So there's sort of...

There are a few arguments. So argument number one is the realistic benefit that you get from having allies in the world. So the fact is that the United States military, for example, has described Israel as America's best aircraft carrier in the Middle East. It's a giant aircraft carrier for American values and intel. The United States gets an enormous amount of Middle Eastern intel from the Israelis. I mean, you can see how good Mossad is, by the way. Like, how amazing is Mossad? I mean...

I've already told people that for Purim, which is for those of you who don't know, it's like Jewish Halloween. I'm planning on my family dressing up as Avi's beeper emporium for Halloween. But the amount of the amount of intel that the United States receives while working with the Israelis is very high. Also, the United States does have a military tech arrangement with Israel, where Israel is amazing at developing innovative new tech. And then the United States does get a window into a lot of that newly developed tech.

and it ends up in a lot of American military technology. Beyond that, the United States does want a counterweight to, say, Iran in the region, because Iran threatening its neighbors is really bad for global oil supply. Iran being nuclear is a threat to Saudi Arabia. So there are actual real politic reasons to be interested in these things.

Like, this is why I'm interested in Ukraine. It's not particularly because of democracy versus dictatorship argument. It's because I think that Russia takes positions adversarial to those of the United States throughout the world, ranging from Asia to Africa to the Middle East. And I think that anything that bleeds Russia is actually quite good for the United States.

And so that war, Ukraine withstanding Russian predation, which would then push up against NATO's borders completely, I think is a very good thing, even though I'm pushing for an off-ramp to the war that would basically solidify the borders where they currently are. So argument number one, sort of a real politic argument.

Argument number two is that it's a lot cheaper, it turns out, to do prevention than it is to do filling the gap once the gap has emerged. So there's this weird idea in sort of isolationist circles that if the United States withdraws from an area, then that area just sort of sits there and nothing happens. And nothing could be further from the truth. When the United States withdraws from the world, generally our enemies tend to fill the gap. This is particularly true, for example, when it comes to the freedom of the seas. Every product that you own has been a beneficiary of the freedom of the seas guaranteed by the United States Navy and its allies.

And so if the United States were to withdraw from, say, the South China Sea because it costs too much money or not care about Taiwan, the consequences for your actual daily life would be disastrous. If China were to simply take Taiwan and destroy TSMC or TSMC would destroy itself, basically every single electronic device you own would be kaput. You couldn't get a new iPhone. You couldn't get anything. It would all be gone. So it turns out, again, that foreign policy abhors a vacuum. And so there is a lot to the idea that having powerful allies is an excellent strategy.

This is where I like to tell my favorite Donald Trump story. So President, I did a fundraiser for President Trump maybe three months ago at this point, four months ago. And he's talking about Ukraine and Russia. He says, Ben, Ben, you know, the reason, you want to know the reason why Russia never invaded Ukraine while I was the president? The reason is because I called up Vlad and I said, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, do not attack Ukraine. If you attack Ukraine, I will bomb the shit out of you.

And Vlad said to me, Mr. President, no, you won't. And I said, well, I might. And it turns out, well, I might is a really, really good foreign policy. Thank you. Thanks. Hi, Ben.

Hope you're doing well. So I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but earlier this morning, Students Justice for Palestine at UCLA and Jewish Voices for Peace set up a Sukkot Sukkah for solidarity, which is very interesting because they even put it under a tree, which violates the laws of Kashrut. But very Jewish. They're very, very Jewish. These people. Very Jewish. That's my favorite thing about Jewish Voices for Peace. The only thing that's true in that title is of or for.

As we're here right now, they just turned that sukkah into another encampment. And... Are they going to take it down like Motechag, or they're just going to leave it up, or what? Really big question. Jewish insider joke. That means, like, after the holiday. So my question for you is what your thoughts on this is, and what you think that UCLA administration should do about it. They're schmucks, and they should expel them. If you violate the rules... Is he...

If you violate the rules of the time, manner, and place restrictions, then you should be expelled. This is quite simple. And we all know that that would be the case if these were white supremacists who set up their white supremacy hut in the middle of campus. They would be thrown out of the university immediately. They would be gone. And everyone knows it. So when these schmucks decide that they're going to set up their dumb fake sukkah in the middle of campus where fake Jews can go to celebrate fake Sukkot...

And they do that in violation of time, place, and manner restrictions that would be... You know how many rules YAF had to abide by in order to get this to happen? You know what insane loops YAF had to do in order for us to just sit in a room and for me to talk to you all peacefully and nice-like?

It was insane. It's still insane. Look how many police officers are here. I mean, schmucks set up like a hut in the middle of campus. That's not even Kosh or Lechag. And suddenly we're supposed to take them seriously. Like, you know, at University of Florida, when Ben Sasse was president and he said when the encampments went up, he said, listen, we have rules. If you follow the rules, you can protest. You can say whatever you want. The minute you don't follow those rules, you're expelled. And you know what? Nobody broke the rules anymore. This is super simple stuff. Thank you so much. This will be the last question of the evening. Sorry.

Hi, Ben. My name is Jonathan. I came all the way here from USC, where I am co-president of the Jewish Law Students Association. Yeah, thank you. Guys, guys, don't make fun of him. He has to actually live near USC. Oh, it's terrible. This is such a better neighborhood. I've also worked this summer at the Brandeis Center doing hostile environment cases against all these anti-Semitic universities. And so...

I've heard all these horror stories. And on behalf of Jewish students at USC here and everywhere, I really want to thank you for fighting the good fight and for fighting for us. Thank you so much. Now, all this said, so I do have one question. So recognizing that the two biggest obstacles to peace are Hamas and the Palestinian Authority,

My question is long-term, while recognizing probably peace won't happen now,

Do you support a one-state solution or a two-state solution? If you support a two-state solution, then what do you do about the fact that there are so many Israelis living intertwined with Palestinians in the West Bank? And if you support a one-state solution, how do you propose integrating large numbers of people who have no desire to be or to live around the Israelis? So the realistic solution is sort of neither. The realistic solution is actually for Israel to treat

the Palestinian areas of the West Bank sort of like the United States treats Puerto Rico, meaning like it has home rule but no vote in the presidential election. So the reason for that is because there is no body that is going to emerge electorally from the Palestinian people right now by any available poll that is not going to be opposed just definitionally to the existence of the state of Israel, which means that you can't have a state in control of, for example, its own borders, its own military that is juxtaposed with Israel. So that's an impossibility. And I don't see that changing anytime soon without generalization

generations of re-education away from that, and then the emergence of a moderate Palestinian faction that seems not to have emerged any time over the course of the last four generations. So that seems a little utopian to me. So what that actually means, and by the way, this would be in fact the best situation for the Palestinians, would be

that the Israelis provide an additional continued security in the West Bank. They continue to maintain an anti-terror presence in the West Bank, greater economic investments in places like Nablus and Jenin in these areas to build up the economy of these places.

And they just don't get a vote in the national election in Israel. And then you want to call that home rule? Call it home rule. You want to call that a two-state solution? Call that whatever you want. But that's the actual thing that is going to emerge from all this because Israel cannot hand over security operations to any sort of domestic homegrown force in these areas. And Israel also is not going to dissolve itself

on the basis of some sort of vague idea that magically the vote creates moderation in people, which clearly it doesn't. Last time there was an election held in the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas was about 40, and now he's like 90. And we are now in the 18th year of the four-year Hamas electoral reign from 2006. So again, there are no solutions. There's only security. There are no solutions. There's only security, I think would be the best way to put it. And that's going to manifest...

In only one way, and that means continued Israeli security presence in these regions, along with increased investment and takeover of the educational system to maybe sometime in the future provide a pathway toward a moderate Palestinian governance. In the meantime, you can have local governance in these areas without giving them foreign policy governance, which would be a disaster for the state of Israel and for the Middle East more broadly. Thank you, Ben. Thank you. All righty, folks. Is that it? We done?

We are done. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming out.