Ep. 1991 - Is It Too Late To Stop World War III?
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Is it too late to stop World War III? When you look around the globe, you see a bunch of conflagrations. Obviously, you have the massive war in Ukraine. You have the fight that's happening in the Middle East between Israel and pretty much every extremist Muslim in the region. You have burgeoning conflict in China and Taiwan. Is it too late to stop the possibility of a World War III from breaking out? There's a columnist named Richard Overy who's writing for The Telegraph in the UK this weekend. He's a historian, and he posits three particular types of

World War III that could break out. Number one, he says, imagine that the Iranian government announces it has developed a nuclear bomb and threatens to use it on Israel. The United States reacts with the threat of military intervention as it did in 1991 and 2003 in Iraq. Iran signals it will not tolerate a third Gulf War and looks for allies. American forces massed to enter Iran, which orders national mobilization. Russia, China, and North Korea express their support for Iran. Washington expands its intervention force, bringing in a British conscription.

The Third World War begins with an exchange of nuclear fire. Or picture this. Chinese frustration over the status of Taiwan prompts a buildup of invasion forces. The United States is preoccupied with its own domestic political crisis. Japan anxiously watches the exchange of harsh words between China and Taiwan, wondering whether to intervene. And eventually, China tries something, siding with North Korea and Russia.

Or a possible different kind of conflict, a growing division between the Democratic West and authoritarian states across Eurasia, in which there is some sort of space-based attack that takes out communication systems in the West. The West attributes it to the East, and suddenly you have a world war. Now,

What Richard Overy suggests is that we are looking in the wrong place. We need to look at the human penchant for war. How exactly do we stop the human penchant for war? But trying to change human nature is generally a giant fail. The reality is that when it comes to foreign policy, aggression thrives where strength is absent.

Aggression thrives where strength is absent. A vacuum of power begs for some sort of intervention, usually by a more hostile power. Each of the scenarios that is spelled out here by Richard Overy are scenarios in which the West demonstrates its weakness because the reality is that Iran gaining a nuclear weapon, for example, that would be the legacy of West that has mollycoddled Iran since the Iranian revolution of 1979. The possibility of a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would be because the West failed to

despite their attempt, integrate China into the world system, believing ridiculously that globalized economics would suddenly make China into a moderate power or the possibility of an attack by some sort of Eastern power on the communication satellites of the West, which would provoke a war. The only reason that would happen is if there was a misperception of the possibility of Western response.

When aggressive powers around the world see weak Western powers, that is when they act. And what we have in the West over the course of the last several generations, particularly since the end of the Cold War, is a West that does not know what it stands for and that is internally divided and raging against itself.

This is coming to the fore in many places around the world. It's especially coming to the fore, actually not in the United States right now, although it is, but in Europe, where you are starting to see right-wing parties on the rise and so-called centrist and left-wing parties are freaking out about it. The reason those right-wing parties are on the rise is because the center-left in Europe has basically forgotten why exactly those nations exist in the first place. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is an excellent symptom of this.

So he warned on Monday, a victory for either the far left or the far right in this month's snap election could spark civil war. Again, the prelude to civil war within countries usually is people talking about civil war because the reality is that until that becomes clear,

an actual ensconced thought in people's head. Nobody actually thinks about it. That's why in the United States, I've chided politicians on both the right and the left when they talk about the possibility of a civil war in the United States. First of all, it ain't going to happen. But number two, when you talk about that, you make things significantly worse. Right now, it is Emmanuel Macron who's talking like that in an attempt to scare people into voting for him. He says the far right's answer to insecurity, quote, reduces people to their religion or their origin and therefore pushes people toward civil war.

Or maybe it is centrist policy in France, left-wing policy on immigration, that has brought in a bunch of people who do not care about Frenchness, who do not care about westernization, who are very much involved in destroying, on the basis of multiculturalism, the common values that were once held in places like France. And that internal division is presaging the possibility of broader conflict. In other words, when the West is perceived as weak and internally divided, that is when attacks on the West tend to increase.

It's not just true for the West. It's true everywhere. Whenever there is a perception of weakness, the enemies of a country that is internally divided tend to take advantage of that situation. By contrast, when the West is internally united and when the West has the moral stomach to look at its enemies and recognize that it is not concessions that its enemies generally want, it is not niceties, and very often it is just an iron wall

That if there is, in fact, a loss of hope among America's enemies, among the West's enemies, that is better for America than attempting again to massage and mollycoddle America's enemies. When the West realizes that America's enemies tend to back down because as it turns out, America is the strongest military force in the history of the world. Bar none. The West right now is militarily superior to all competitors, including Russia and including China.

but is the West's lack of focus, lack of vision that is leading to the possibility of an outbreak of a World War III. We'll get to more on this in one second. First, Saudi Arabia recently ended its 50-year petrodollar deal with the United States that has the potential to weaken the U.S. dollar. Since 1974, Saudi Arabia has sold oil solely in U.S. dollars. That was huge for our global economic dominance.

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And

The entire idea of peace through strength is not that you fight everywhere. It's that you fight nowhere because everyone is afraid to challenge you. President Trump once expressed it to me this way. We were talking at a fundraiser and he was talking about Ukraine and Russia. And President Trump said, you want to know the reason why Vladimir Putin never attacked Ukraine? It's because I told him, Vlad, Vlad, if you attack Ukraine, I will bomb the out of you. And Vladimir Putin looked at me and said, no, you won't, Mr. President. I said, well, I might.

And then President Trump added, if there's a 5% chance the United States is going to bomb the beep out of you, you don't do it. That is accurate. It turns out that a show of strength very often dissuades the bad guys from trying things. This is why it is so extraordinarily destructive and terrible that in the United States, we have internal divisions that allow for fans of terrorist groups to wander the streets, beating people up.

A country that is worth its salt does not stand for this sort of thing on an ideological level. Now, the reality is that the Democratic Party has fallen into a trap of believing, at least on its more radical front, that the United States is inherently bad, that the United States owes an apology to the rest of the world. As I recall, this really began...

During the Bush administration, John Kerry did some of this, suggesting that America was a nefarious force in the world. And that really accelerated with Barack Obama, who campaigned on the basis that America was aerating villages and bombing civilians in Afghanistan, which was a slander, a gross slander against American troops in Afghanistan. And then in his first act as president, he went on an apology tour around the Middle East, proclaiming that Western interventionism around the world was some sort of net bad. He was apologizing to Muslim dictators all over the world at the very beginning of his presidency.

And that has now become baked into the Democratic cake. It is gaining steam on the left. Joe Biden is falling for it. And you can see the symptoms now breaking out on American streets. That is not a problem for Israel, which is an internally cohesive society, for example, when you're talking about Hamas. It's a problem for America. It's a problem for the West. When you have 300,000 Hamas supporting terrible people marching in London, that is a problem for London.

When you have people in the United States who are showing up outside synagogues and beating people up because they're attempting to get in to go to some sort of real estate conference, which is what happened in Los Angeles over the weekend, that is a problem for the United States. That's not particularly a problem for Israel. Well, that is, in fact, what happened over the weekend. According to the Wall Street Journal, pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with pro-Israeli demonstrators and blocked access to an L.A. synagogue Sunday in a violent episode condemned by President Biden and other leaders as anti-Semitic.

Well, I mean, it is. If you're standing outside a synagogue to block people from going into the synagogue because you don't like Israel, imagine that the roles were reversed for just a moment. There was a terrorist attack somewhere and people started chanting outside of mosques and blocking people from getting in. What do you think the media reaction would be?

Dozens of protesters shoved, punched, and yelled at each other near the Adas Torah Synagogue in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, an area with a sizable Jewish population. We used to live in Los Angeles. Obviously, I know this area incredibly well. Pico-Robertson is very Jewish, and it is very observant. A lot of kosher restaurants in this exact area. Bunch of shuls. Bunch of schools. The pro-Palestinian protesters were blocking access to the synagogue, according to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. And you can see the video. Here are pro-Khomas protesters who are blocking entrance to the shul. Apparently, according to people who were there, including Noah Pollack,

The police officers were stationed outside the synagogue, the Adas Torah synagogue. They were stationed outside of it. And the Hamas protesters were behind them, like between the cops and the entrance. So instead of trying to secure the entryway for Jews who wanted to go to synagogue for this real estate conference or whatever, they actually were protecting the Hamas protesters. Jews were forced to go into the back door of the synagogue in Los Angeles. Here's what some of that video looks like. Come on, come on, come on.

You can see Hamas protesters who are running around with poles and keffiyahs. Again, my family and I used to eat here all the time. They're like blocking off the street, like fully blocking off the street here. And then they're attacking people. Some of them are holding a woman on the ground and physically assaulting her. Daniel Greenfield was covering this for Front Page Magnet. And then you see people who are hitting each other, of course, because it turns out that if the police aren't going to do anything, people are going to defend themselves. And all of this begins with protests outside of Eshul.

Here is a woman who is being held to the ground by a pro-Kamaz protester. So Daniel Greenfield, who's a writer for Front Page Mag, is 30 minutes after Kamaz supporters first set up their operation outside an L.A. synagogue. They maced their first Jew and the L.A. police did nothing. And by the way, this is not on the LAPD. The LAPD, I know many members of the LAPD. They're excellent people. These are directives that are coming down from the top. They're coming from the top of the LAPD and the mayor's office.

Not until an hour into the terrorist rally outside a synagogue did the LAPD finally step in, pushing back masked jihad supporters in keffiyeh terror scarves from the entrance of Congregation Adas Torah, which they had occupied.

Then the mob, chanting calls for intifada and destruction of Israel, moved outward to target two smaller synagogues attended by Persian Jewish refugees from Islamic terror in Iran. Billions of us will come and kill you, a heavily accented Middle Eastern man in a keffiyeh unprompted laughed at me as I walked up. Only dozens had actually shown up, but they made up for it with bullhorns, robotic chants, and assaults in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood. So remember Charlottesville.

Remember that time that there are a bunch of white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville and President Trump suggested not that there were good people among the Nazis, but that when it came to the debate over the removal of Confederate moderate monuments, there were good people on both sides. And then he condemned the neo-Nazis and then the entire media covered it as though he had made excuses. In fact, that incident was supposedly so morally egregious because Donald Trump didn't say enough that Joe Biden said he got into the 2020 presidential race because of Charlottesville.

Well, pretty much every weekend, there is now a Charlottesville across the country with pro-Khama supporters who are Democrats. That's the only reason why Joe Biden is humoring them. Going to Jewish areas, chanting outside synagogues, going to Jewish businesses, chanting outside Jewish businesses, trying to hold up traffic, sometimes getting involved in physical assault. Already one Jew was killed in Los Angeles for the great crime of being pro-Israel who smashed over the head with a bullhorn.

And the reality is that this is not a problem for Israel or for the Jews alone. This is a problem for the United States. People who are wandering around the United States wearing terror scarves, chanting slogans on behalf of Hamas is a problem for the United States. I'd like to talk to you about a new book, full time work in the meaning of life by David Bonson.

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According to Daniel Greenfield, the LAPD had allowed the terrorist supporters to take over the entire sidewalk, leaving only a thin lane for attendees to walk through to get inside. The LAPD did little to interfere with the terrorist supporters, but did block Jewish counter protesters from reaching their own synagogue. The police also did nothing as clumps of mass Hamas supporters broke away from the synagogue and began confronting, threatening and attacking Jewish community members on the street. And this is really nothing new. Unfortunately, we saw this at UCLA as well. The statement from Joe Biden is utterly lacking.

So Joe Biden put up a statement saying, quote, I'm appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, anti-Semitic and un-American. Americans have a right to peaceful protest, but blocking access to a house of worship and engaging in violence is never acceptable. So I have a question. Let's say that this were back in Charlottesville and Donald Trump had put up that statement that he was appalled by the scenes in Charlottesville, intimidating congregants.

non-white supremacists is dangerous and unconscionable. Americans have a right to peaceful protest, but blocking access to people is wrong. Would that have been deemed enough? Or would there have to be some remark about the ideology, the evil ideology of the people who are actually doing this terrible activity? Joe Biden only is willing to comment on the excesses of the protesters, but never on the content of the protest itself, which is quite fascinating because you know if it were about white supremacy, he wouldn't stop there. It would be all about the evil of the cause.

But the problem is that for Joe Biden and Democrats, because inherently they believe that the West is some sort of imperialist, colonialist power, or at least they're afraid of people who do. They won't say a word about the cause itself. They'll just say, don't do bad things. I don't like bad things. Bad things are bad. How about bad ideologies? Are bad ideologies bad? Or so long as those people are likely to vote for you, are those bad ideologies good?

Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles did the same thing. She released a statement saying today's violence in the Pico Robertson neighborhood today was abhorrent. Blocking access to a place of worship is unacceptable. I've called on LAPD to provide additional patrols in the Pico Robertson community as well as outside of houses of worship throughout the city. I'll be meeting with Chief Choi tomorrow to further discuss the safety of Angelenos.

Now, you notice that entire paragraph? I could read that whole thing and you'd have no idea that this was Muslims attacking Jews. None. Zero. It doesn't mention synagogues. It doesn't mention Khamas. It doesn't mention Jews. It doesn't mention any of those things. It's just random houses of worship randomly being attacked. Who knows? It could be anything. Then she says, I want to be clear. L.A. will not be a harbor for anti-Semitism and violence. Uh-huh. Sure. Sure it won't be.

Meanwhile, localities all over the United States are releasing pro-Khamas protesters who violated the law during the university uprising of 2024, the Tentafada. Again, this has become a popular cause on the left. It is just that simple. This is why you see people like the child of Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck wearing a free Palestine shirt. Like what does their kid have anything to do with this? She's got the watermelon shirt, which is supposed to be the Palestinian flag because it's a green, white and red.

But the entire, look at that, that's the entire state of Israel, not the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria, the entire state of Israel. This is a cause celeb on the left, the destruction of the state of Israel. And it is considered perfectly fine so long as you don't beat up too many Jews in the process. Calling for the, you know, extirpation of 7 million Jews living in Israel, totally fine.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Garner joining along in our ignorant celebrity class. They're a good reflection of sort of the ignoramuses on the left generally. So here is Jennifer Garner looking a little rough here. She is drumming confusedly with people who are wearing free Palestine gear on a drum that has keffiyehs on it. She's getting enthusiastic about that drumming now. And never, never before have I rooted for Jennifer Lopez and the Ben Affleck controversy. But now I'm beginning to.

So again, solid stuff there from Jennifer Garner. Really, really, really good stuff. Now, again, all of this is because the left refuses to dissociate from a full ideology that suggests that a meritocracy is bad. Understand that the modern leftist hatred of Israel is simply a hatred of merit. That's all it is. Israel has spent every year since 1948 building up a successful state, a state that has something like $57,000 in terms of per capita GDP.

Meanwhile, the United States and its allies have poured billions of dollars, tens of billions of dollars into places like the Gaza Strip, into the Palestinian areas of Judea and Samaria. And in return, the West has been given hundreds of miles of terror tunnels and the wild popularity of Hamas. Now, the Western left suggests that that's because of exploitation and evil on the part of the people who spent their time actually building a successful state. This mirrors, of course, the leftist prescription when it comes to inequality in the West.

Don't look to the individual action or the individual actor. Don't look to ideology. Look instead to the successful and blame them. It's obviously their fault. This is the philosophy of intersectionality in the West. If you are a member of a less successful group on any level, that means that the society itself has victimized you. And that particularly breaks down in terms of race. And so when you extend that to the Middle East, the Jews are the white people and the Palestinians are the brown people, as Cori Bush and AOC keep proclaiming.

And all of this sort of stuff continues to be promoted by the Biden administration, which refuses to understand the stakes of any sort of ideological conflict here. So Tony Blinken is apparently now warning Yoav Galant, the defense minister of Israel, calling on him to avoid further escalation on the Lebanon border, which is truly amazing. Because if you want further escalation on the Lebanon border, tell Israel to back off. He's below has already taken weakness as a sign that they should move forward. As always, as I say, power abhors a vacuum.

And when Western powers leave a vacuum, terrible powers inhabit that vacuum. Israel has not been strong on its northern border. Its northern border has been largely abandoned. There are 100,000 Jews in Israel who are not living on the northern border. They're living at hotels in the middle of Israel paid for by the Israeli government while their homes are destroyed.

By Hezbollah rockets. And meanwhile, Tony Blinken is telling Israel it better be careful with that terrorist group in its north, as opposed to what the United States should be doing, which is going to the Lebanese government. Lebanon is an actual state with an actual government. The United States should be using its leverage to go to Beirut and tell them, hey, listen, guys, we can't control the Israelis. The Israelis are a separate government.

And, you know, if they go, that's kind of your fault. You probably should get Hezbollah to pull up 10 miles from the border. But instead, the United States continues to put pressure on Israel in the benighted belief that somehow pressuring Western powers to cave to terrorists is a big win for the West in some way.

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Each mattress order comes with two free dream pillows. That's $150 value. Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben. The sale is not going to last long. helixsleep.com slash Ben. With Helix, better sleep starts right now. According to the Times of Israel, Secretary of State Blinken urged Israel to take additional steps to protect humanitarian workers and ensure the delivery of aid throughout Gaza during his meeting with visiting Defense Minister Yoav Galant earlier today, according to the State Department. Apparently, the pair discussed ongoing efforts to secure a hostage ceasefire deal.

This is amazing. Arab and Israeli officials said these were complicated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim on Sunday. He was only interested in implementing part of the deal before resuming military operations in Gaza. Well, yes, because he wishes to extirpate Hamas. And this, again, goes to the weakness of the West. True weakness. Richard Hanania has a very good column over to Substack talking about the weakness of the West when it comes to fighting terrorism. And he points out that there are a few different models of how exactly you fight evil ideologies.

Because one of the big claims that Israel can't defeat Hamas on an ideological level, that the more bombs you drop, the more people are radicalized. Hanania points out what he proclaims to be three different models of how you defeat an ideology. Model number one is what he calls the lose hope model.

which is that as the military crackdown grows greater, as it becomes clear that Israel is not going to cave, people lose hope and they realize that it turns out that their incessant hatred is not getting them anywhere. That, by the way, is the exact model that the United States pursued in, say, Germany or Japan during World War II. So that's always funny when you hear commentators say, what are you just going to bomb your way and military your way to extirpating an ideology? And it turns out that sometimes, yes,

Sometimes, actually, you have to do that or you have to militarily occupy an area or you have to completely rejigger the education system. It turns out, you know who understands this? John Fetterman, who's the weird hero of the moment. So Senator Fetterman did an interview with The New Yorker. He was asked by The New Yorker, quote,

What he saw for the end of the war would be Hamas's dismantling or something else. He said, I do think it's a fact that when you have that kind of an evil or that kind of a movement that came out of a society, whether it was Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or the Confederacy right here in the South, that kind of movement has to be destroyed into submission. He says the kind of society that gave birth to it now has to reach a point where it has to turn its back to these kinds of uses and pursuits.

Correct. That'd be the quote unquote lose hope model that Richard Hanani posits. And he is right. Then there's the linear model, which is that people don't really hate Israel that much. It's just that when Israel gets mean, then they hit Israel more or they start off not hating Israel at all. And then Israel is mean. And then it just sort of extends. The fact of the matter is people who generally hate the West. It does not have to do at this point in history with oppression. It has to do with a simple wish to exterminate the ideologies of the West.

And the reality is that, for example, Hamasistan and the Gaza Strip in Judea and Samaria, the levels of support for terrorist groups are in the 75 to 90 percent range. Nothing Israel does is going to increase that because there's nowhere for it to increase to. And this happens to be true again in general with regard to foreign policy. Weakness in the West is not what got rid of communism in the East. Weakness in the West is not what got rid of Nazism in the East, in Germany, in

It didn't get rid of imperial Shintoism in Japan. That is not how that works. And yet the West continues to cave, cave and cave and subsidize its own destruction. So the United States has been one of the chief sponsors of the United Nations, of course, for 80 years at this point.

And now there's a lawsuit against the UN Relief and Works Agency, which is a UN agency that is specifically designed for the Palestinians. And it basically is just a branch of Hamas at this point. Many of the people who work for the UNRWA actively work for Hamas. This is why you see weapons that are being hidden in UNRWA schools and hospitals. Well, now they're being sued by victims of October 7th.

About 100 Israeli plaintiffs are seeking unspecified financial damages. They claim the UNRWA is liable because it helped fund Hamas. They're actually claiming that about a billion dollars passed from the UNRWA through to Hamas employees. For years, the UNRWA sent millions of dollars every month to Gaza to pay employees and support hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure, according to a new lawsuit. That money was wired from New York to the West Bank, where financial institutions loaded some of that cash onto trucks to be driven to Gaza.

In other words, you got to pay for that. I got to pay for that. I can't think of a better example of Western weakness than that. Again, you want to know how World War III starts? It starts with Western weakness. That is where it starts. One of the reasons why Donald Trump needs to be president of the United States again, because he does on an innate level understand that Western weakness breeds contempt. It breeds contempt.

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Which brings us to the debate. So a lot of controversy now breaking out over the moderators in this debate. That is not a particular shock. We're only a couple of days away from the debate. It is my view that Donald Trump should not have immediately accepted the Joe Biden offer to debate without actually negotiating over who the moderators would be. With that said, attacking the moderators is very often a popular debate strategy. And in this particular case, it'll be worth it. He's got Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. They are obviously very much oriented against him.

Jake Tapper clearly does not like Donald Trump. Here is a montage of Jake referencing Trump's Hitlerian language over time. But again, this sort of idea that Trump is a Hitler-like figure is one of the dumbest diminishments of history in the media. It's truly stupid that Donald Trump, we found out what he looks like as president. And the answer is he says weird stuff. And then he pursues really, really solid policy that, for example, doesn't set the world on fire.

But the media are obsessed with this idea that Trump is actually secretly orange Hitler. And it's just, it's so dumb. It really is such, it's historic reductionism in an extraordinary way. Here is Jake Tapper. The dehumanizing rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.

is once again alive and well on a national political stage. This time, of course, in the United States. Donald Trump, a couple times over the weekend, referred to immigrants from South America, Africa, and Asia. He did not mention Europe. South America, Africa, and Asia as, quote, poisoning the blood of our country, which it's not hyperbole. That does very directly echo Adolf Hitler's language before World War II. If we were to open up a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf...

you would find the Nazi leader describing the mixing of non-Germans with Germans as poisoning. There's really no other way to say it. Donald Trump's language mirrors this directly. Yeah, this is one of the moderators, obviously. Meanwhile, Dana Bash is the other moderator. So CNN's Casey Hunt had on Trump surrogate Carolyn Leavitt, and they had a bit of a fisticuffs. It broke out into a brawl because Carolyn Leavitt pointed out these moderators are very much oriented against Donald Trump. And Casey Hunt got mad at this.

So it takes someone five minutes to Google Jake Tapper, Donald Trump, to see that Jake Tapper has consistently... Ma'am, we're going to stop this interview if you're going to keep attacking my colleagues. Ma'am, I'm going to stop this interview if you continue to attack my colleagues. I would like to talk about Joe Biden and Donald Trump who worked for him. If you are here to speak on his behalf, I am willing to have this conversation.

I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past. Now, I'm sorry, guys, we're going to come back out to the panel. Caroline, thank you very much for your time. You are welcome to come back at any point. She is welcome to come back and speak about Donald Trump. OK, but why aren't you allowed to talk about the moderators? I'm super I'm super confused. I mean, the moderators are obviously an issue. They've been an issue in every presidential debate of my lifetime.

Speaking of Casey Hunt, I mean, this is not somebody who doesn't have a political dog in the fight. Here she was just a couple of years ago mocking Rand Paul after he got pummeled by a neighbor. Details today on the incident that left Senator Rand Paul with six broken ribs. This might be one of my favorite stories, although, of course, we don't want to. Clearly, Senator Paul is still struggling.

Mm hmm. Don't worry, there's no bias in the media. The View was very happy about this about this battle of wits between Casey Hunt and Carolyn Leavitt. They, of course, are very happy because they understand, as does everyone else, the moderators are very much the left.

The presidential debate of 2024 is airing on CNN on Thursday, but already it's mired in controversy after you know whose campaign press secretary was yanked from the network this morning. Take a look. What do you expect from Joe Biden?

Well, first of all, it's to take someone five minutes to Google Jake Tapper, Donald Trump to see that Jake Tapper has consistently- Ma'am, we're gonna stop this interview if you're gonna keep attacking my colleagues. President Trump to Adolf Hitler. Ma'am, I'm gonna stop this interview if you continue to attack my colleagues. I would like to talk about Joe Biden and Donald Trump who you work for. I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past. Now, as for this debate, the expectation for- Okay, I'm sorry guys, we're gonna come back out to the panel. Caroline, thank you very much for your time.

That was so good. That was so good? Well, of course. Of course they think it's so good because they think the debate is stacked against Donald Trump and they are very happy about it. CNN put out a statement, quote, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well-respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined.

They have extensive experience moderating major political debates, including CNN's Republican presidential primary debate this cycle. There are no two people better equipped to co-moderate a substantial and fact-based discussion. Sure. Yeah, that's what that's going to be. A debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is going to be a substantial and fact-based discussion. Well, that would be to my shock and surprise. And we look forward to the debate on June 27th in Atlanta.

Sure. All right. Well, in a second, we're going to get to more on the actual debate. What's it going to be about? And where does the race stand first this Thursday night? As you know, you have a unique opportunity to watch the presidential debate with commentary that actually makes sense. Here's the deal. Daily Wire Plus is simulcasting the entire debate. But let's be honest, you need more than just the candidates rhetoric. That's why we're hosting a special live Daily Wire backstage. We absolutely cannot miss bring you live unfiltered commentary from the best minds in conservative media.

I mean, me, of course. You'll also get real-time analysis from me, Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring. We're kicking things off 8.30 p.m. Eastern time with a pre-show that will arm you with the context you need to cut through the political noise. During the debate, we'll break down every claim, every policy point, and yes, every leftist talking point the moderators inevitably slip in. And because we believe in giving you the full story, we're not stopping when the debate ends. Our post-show recap will dissect what all this means for the future of the country. This isn't just political coverage.

There's political coverage done right. No spin, no fluff, just facts and logic. Look, if you want to truly understand the implications of this debate, you need to experience it.

with me and everybody else. Watch it all live on Daily Wire backstage Thursday night, starting 8.30 p.m. Eastern over at Daily Wire Plus. And meanwhile, the debate prep is ongoing. Joe Biden, who has no time to do a press conference about violence against Jews across the country from members of his own party and their advocates, you know, like Jamal Bowman over in New York, where a big primary is taking place today. Again, if you are in New York's 16th congressional district, I urge you to go if you can vote in the primary and vote for George Latimer because Jamal Bowman is a trash heap.

Well, Joe Biden is off in Camp David, presumably sleeping, eating Denny's and prepping for debate.

According to the New York Times, a Camp David, a movie theater and an airplane hangar have been outfitted with lights and production equipment to create a mock debate stage. So I guess that means that they have to actually recreate the debate optics. So Joe Biden knows where he is when he steps on stage. At least 16 current and former aides summoned from Washington and Wilmington whiz back and forth on golf courts to join President Biden in strategy sessions. Biden is entering his fifth day of preparations at the presidential retreat in the woods of Northern Maryland for Thursday's debate against Donald Trump.

Both candidates are out of practice as debaters. Biden's top advisors, including Ron Klain, are aware of the missteps incumbents have made in the past. They'll be working to position Biden not only as a president in the midst of a reelection campaign, but as a fighter who can counterpunch on the fly. The rust factor is real, said David Axelrod. Neither of these guys is accustomed to having someone a few feet away grilling them with no deference. They're trying to game out exactly which attacks Trump might launch at Biden, which policies of his Trump could try to undermine, how they can best keep the president focused on landing an argument and striking a character and policy contrast with Trump.

Apparently, the person playing the role of Trump is Bob Bauer, Biden's personal attorney. The actual Trump has engaged in something that resembles a more streamlined debate preparation process than in past years. He's doing policy discussions, but he says that he's relying on his experiences as a campaigner to guide him when he takes the stage across from Biden. Trump, for his part, says that Joe Biden should certainly do a drug test. And he also tweeted out that he would do one as well. Here he was talking about it.

Can't find his way off the stage, can't put two sentences together, although he has agreed to debate, so I don't know, maybe they know something. He's going to be so jacked up for those debates, you watch. I just want to debate this guy, but, you know, and I'm going to demand a drug test too, by the way. I am. No, I really am. I don't want him coming in like the State of the Union. He was high as a kite. I said, is that Joe up there, a beautiful robe? And by the end of the evening, he's like, well...

It was exhausted, right? Now we're going to demand a drug test. Okay, so at least he's increasing expectations, which is the thing that he has to do. Donald Trump's big mistake in the run-up to this debate would be to lower the bar to Joe Biden to can he stay alive during the debate. As I've said many times, Joe Biden will show up. He will be awake. He will drain the blood of a small child in the back room after sniffing her hair. And then he will be on stage, presumably half awake. About 45 minutes in, he'll start to get a little drowsy.

The biggest thing that Trump has to do is just point out policy failing after policy failing. And every time Biden tries to redirect to 2020 or 2021, Trump should just say to him, look, Joe, I'm not obsessed with the past, but you are. Why can't we talk about your presidency? You stink at this. I mean, that's legitimately the entire debate.

Are people going to vote on the basis of what's happening in 2024? Or are they going to vote based on their thoughts about 2020, 2021? That's the whole ball of wax. Well, the Democrats are trying sort of a last gasp gambit, which is weird because it's June. And that is they're just going to talk abortion. Now, the problem for them is that Donald Trump has actually taken a politically smart tack on abortion. It's a tack with which I, in principled fashion, disagree. I'm a full pro-lifer. Donald Trump has never been a full pro-lifer.

But Donald Trump has taken the position that this is a state's issue, that Florida should do Florida and New York should do New York and California should do California. He has not, in fact, taken a position on something like a federal abortion ban. So this leaves Democrats in the peculiar position of having to argue that Donald Trump is actually an extremist on abortion. And they're doing so by assuming that the American people are incredibly stupid.

They're attempting to assume that the American people don't understand what Roe versus Wade means. Maybe it'll work. Maybe. There are a lot of dumb people out there. Roe versus Wade did not ban abortion. Roe versus Wade just said that the Supreme Court would not prevent state laws on abortion because it's none of the federal government's business. Certainly not the judiciary under the Constitution of the United States. But here is Kamala Harris trying the abortion argument. Trump has not denied, much less shown remorse.

for his actions. Instead, he proudly takes credit for overturning Rome. My fellow Americans in a court of law, that would be called an admission in the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America. Donald Trump is guilty. So Kamala Harris, bad vice presidential candidate, but this is their last gasp.

Apparently, Joe Biden also thinks this. He is tweeting incessantly about Roe versus Wade today. I mean, he's not tweeting anything. His aides are tweeting for him. He tweeted out, Donald Trump doesn't have a clue about the power of women. He's about to find out, said the 81-year-old white man. The power of women. And then he voted, a vote for Trump, he tweeted, a vote for Trump is a vote for a national abortion ban. No, it isn't. Like on, I wish. Don't sell me past the sale, my dude. Like, I was already voting for him. You don't have to make me vote for him further. But that's actually not Donald Trump's position.

And this is part of the problem for Joe Biden. He's actually more of an extremist than his opponents in this race. That is a serious problem for him. Okay, meanwhile, in other news,

Julian Assange has apparently now cut a plea deal. So Julian Assange is the WikiLeaks founder. You remember that he had been prosecuted years ago. He's been in a wide variety of legal battles for a long time because WikiLeaks is effectively a laundering operation on behalf of those who violate classified information laws in the United States. The question was, how do you actually prosecute Assange? So as you know, I'm no Assange fan. I think that Assange does not have the interests of the United States at heart or the interests of the West at heart generally.

I think that many of the things he's done have effectively helped places like Russia and China. The question about the prosecution of Assange is sort of a different one. And that is on what legal basis do you prosecute Assange? Because there are a lot of journalists who have published classified information before. Does this immediately make them liable for criminal activity? The way the federal government has tried to get around that is by suggesting that Assange himself tried to supply passwords to Chelsea Manning. You remember Chelsea Manning? Nay, Bradley Manning.

who was breaking into classified information and supplying it unredacted to Julian Assange, who was releasing a lot of it unredacted, damaging the United States, putting American assets at risk abroad. So the attempt to go after Assange was based on the idea that he was actively facilitating the leaking of the classified information. He wasn't just sort of a passive recipient of it. He was actively working with Manning. But now...

He has cut a deal to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act in exchange for a five-year prison sentence. Under the agreement, he'll be freed, having already served that time while in British custody. The deal brings an abrupt end to an extraordinary legal saga, according to The New York Times, that has raised novel issues of national security, press freedom, politics, and diplomacy. Apparently, he is going to settle down in Australia at this point. A lot of people on the right are very upset at Joe Biden for having cut this deal and his DOJ for having cut this deal.

WikiLeaks said Assange was granted bail by a UK court on Monday and then boarded a plane at London's Stansted Airport and left the UK. So again, if so, another aspect of weakness from Joe Biden, obviously, if you're worried about the leaking of classified material. He's been a controversial figure for a very, very long time. You know, two things can be true at once, as always. You want answerability for everything.

the American government. You want the American government to hold itself to particular standards. Also, there does have to be classified information in national security, or it does put American soldiers and assets abroad at risk. Julian Assange violated all of those precepts. Julian Assange likely committed criminal acts. The deal brings to a sort of quiet ending, a very, very long legal saga.

But he is now free and he will apparently head on over to Australia to, I assume, go back to leaking American national security secrets. So we'll see how that works out for the United States. Meanwhile, speaking of the administrative state, a shocking story today broken by Jesse Singel over at a Substack. This is not even remotely a right wing source. Jesse is center left on virtually all of his politics.

He reports today, when the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's Standards of Care version 8 was released in September 2022, a very strange thing happened. WPATH removed references to minimum age requirements for various medical interventions, describing the changes as a correction in a notice that now reads weirdly, this correction notice has been removed, as it referred to a previous version of this article, which was published in error. The SOC 8 was supposed to have been created via something called the Delphi process,

But thanks to a rather remarkable document just unsealed, one of the many American lawsuits over youth gender medicine in this lawsuit, we now have a potential explanation for why the age guidelines were moved. Direct pressure from Assistant Secretary for Health of the Department of Health and Human Services, wait for it, Admiral Rachel Levine, a dude who masquerades as a lady for purposes of being an admiral.

The document is titled Appendix A to Supplemental Expert Report of James Cantor, Ph.D. In it, Cantor, a Canadian sex researcher, critic of youth gender medicine and frequent expert witness on behalf of those attempting to ban or restrict it, claims, quote, Assistant Secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine strongly pressured WPATH leadership to rush the development and issuance of SOCH8 in order to assist with administration political strategy. And then there are a bunch of documents that are included in the legal filing, including

A document that says, quote, I've just spoken to Admiral Levine today, who, as always, is extremely supportive of the SOC 8, but is very eager for its release so as to ensure integration in the U.S. health policies of the Biden administration. So let's crack on with the job. So in other words, Levine decided to ignore all the science.

and suggest that transgender quote-unquote medicine, which is the mutilation and drugging of young children, is totally good and decided to launder that into the WPATH report so it could be reverse adopted by the United States government. You wonder why so many people don't trust the experts or Tussians? The reason would be crap like this. Admiral Rachel Levine is no more qualified to make a decision like this than the neighborhood stray cat.

It is an absurdity to suggest that it does no damage to small children to trans the kids. But we have members of our government who are doing precisely that. Get to more on this in a moment. First, you know what's dumb? The rules of this first presidential debate. Like they all favor Joe Biden. Very, very bad rules. But you know what's not dumb? Getting life insurance. Getting life insurance will give you peace of mind knowing if something were to happen to you, your family could cover their expenses while they get back on their feet. Policy Genius is the country's leading online insurance marketplace. It makes choosing the right policy for your family easy and quick.

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Meanwhile, in accordance with the Biden administration plan to greatly weaken America, China continues to get stronger. According to the Wall Street Journal, there's a new space race, this time between the United States and China. On Tuesday, China took an important step forward. A Chinese spacecraft touched down on the grasslands in China's inner Mongolia region, carrying the first ever rock samples from the far side of the moon. A scientific breakthrough in itself, the success also advanced China's plan to put astronauts on the moon by 2030 and build a lunar base by 2035. Such momentum is worrying American space officials and lawmakers who have their own ambitions to build moonwalks.

moon bases. The goal now is to build permanent human outposts on the most strategic locations on the moon, the lunar South Pole. Some U.S. officials fear China is planning a land grab on the moon. Remember that time that Newt Gingrich was laughed out of court for suggesting that we ought to go ahead and do this? Well, China is just going ahead with it. The Biden administration, meanwhile, is laser focused on trying to build internet boxes that don't work in the United States. The beauty of being a tyranny is that you can mobilize enormous resources for specific projects.

That's particularly true in the face of an America that is distracted by stupidity. Also, China is apparently undermining America's diplomatic efforts, of course. According to the Wall Street Journal, in November last year, President Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed to boost engagement between ordinary Chinese and Americans. Instead, says Nicholas Burns, Washington's ambassador in Beijing, China has actively undermined those ties, interrogating and intimidating citizens who attend U.S. organized events in China, ramping up restrictions on the embassy's social media posts, whipping up anti-American sentiment.

Burns said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, they say they're in favor of reconnecting our two populations, but they're taking dramatic steps to make it impossible. Burns also took aim at Beijing for what he described as efforts to stir up anti-American sentiment domestically, saying he was particularly concerned about the recent stabbing of four Iowa college instructors in northeastern China. Relations between the U.S. and China appear to be stabilizing after a November summit in San Francisco between Xi and Biden.

Secretary of State Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, all these people are going to China. But when we talk stabilization under Joe Biden, understand that just means concession. And under the surface, China is just doing what it can in aggressive fashion. Burns has tallied 61 public events since November in which China's Ministry of State Security or other government bodies pressured Chinese citizens not to go to American diplomatic activities in China or attempted to intimidate those who did attend. Beijing is also making it harder for Chinese students to attend U.S. universities.

Roughly half of participants chosen for U.S. funded exchange programs have pulled out over the past couple of years. Again, none of this is a surprise. China is an aggressive power. Joe Biden is a weakling and China is getting aggressive every day as it has to because, again, their window is closing. The thing is that in the long run, that means that China will be weak. But in the short run, it means they have to get very aggressive very quickly. And you see Xi Jinping moving toward doing that sort of thing.

So the United States in the long term has tremendous advantages over China, but China in the short term better move quickly or their window of opportunity closes. All right, folks, in just a second, we're going to jump into the vaunted Ben Shapiro show mailbag, but you can only access that if you're a member. If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.