Ep. 2241 - EPSTEIN BOMBSHELL? Plus Stephen Colbert GONE!

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A ton to get to today on Ben Shapiro's show.

So new breaking news in the Jeffrey Epstein Saga, a Wall Street Journal, supposed bombshell plus, the president authorizing the attorney general to go to court and try to unseal some Epstein records.

And Stephen Colbert will be done with his show.

They are firing him.

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Okay, lots of news today.

So we begin with a piece of rather welcome and amusing news.

That is Stephen Colbert will be done in very short order.

So the left is going nuts today because Stephen colbert who has not been funny for solidly a decade i remember when he was a correspondent on the daily show for jon stewart and at that point he was funny and then of course he did the colbert report which was basically just a left-winger trying to mock bill o'reilly and it was intermittently funny and then they made him the late night show host over at cbs and he was awful just truly truly bad at this job well now CBS is announcing that they are done with Stephen Colbert, that apparently, because of the cost of his show and because of his low ratings, they're going to be ending his show in May of 2026.

CBS executives issued a statement, we consider Stephen Colbert's Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire the late show franchise in May of 2026.

So by irreplaceable, they mean like we will get rid of him and never replace him, which is typically not what you mean by irreplaceable.

If I say that my wife is irreplaceable, what I mean is I'm going to stay married to her forever.

I don't mean that I'm going to toss her on the side of the road and never get married again.

They say, we are proud that Stephen called CBS home.

He and the broadcast will be remembered in the pantheon of greats, the great late night television.

Well, I don't think so.

In fact, I don't think he's going to make the top 10, maybe not top, maybe not top 100 late night hosts, if there are even that many.

CBS said, this is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.

It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.

However, however, there are rumors abroad, pushed by Brian Steinberg, over at Variety, that there's growing speculation that Colbert and other programs are under growing scrutiny from executives at Skydance Media, which is slated to acquire Paramount Global, the parent of both CBS and Comedy Central.

And of course, there's been a lot of talk lately about Paramount's settlement with President Trump over his complaints on the cutting of a 60-minutes interview.

And so the blue sky left is going crazy over this.

The blue sky left believes that basically Paramount is firing Colbert in order to help President Trump in some way, which is really an absurd contention given the fact that, again, Stephen Colbert does not have ratings.

His ratings are trash.

He has terrible ratings.

Period.

End of story.

And he has not been funny for, again, years and years and years.

Here he was last night announcing his ouster.

Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night.

Next year will be our last season.

The network will be ending The Late Show in May.

And

yeah, I share your feelings.

It's not just just the end of our show, but it's the end of the late show on CBS.

I'm not being replaced.

This is all just going away.

Okay, and just so you recall what a bad host he is, we cut this moving montage of some of his worst moments.

And I think we should all remember Stephen Colbert's legacy together.

Why should our soldiers be fighting radicals in a civil war in Afghanistan?

We've got our own on Capitol Hill tonight.

This weekend was Father's Day,

and Daddy got just what he wanted.

No one came to Trump's big stupid birthday parade.

Maga sounds for Make America Grass Again.

You attract more skinheads than free road game.

You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head.

In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's holster.

Hmm.

Well, without jokes like that, what will we do?

Well, we'll probably be more amused, and we'll laugh more often, and life will be better.

Because actually, he was quite a terrible host.

Jimmy Kimmel, of course, signed into chat in order to go on his Instagram and write, love you, Stephen, F you, and all your Sheldons, CBS.

Well, I mean, there is the opportunity for ABC to do the funniest thing ever.

You know, listen, when Greg Gutfeld is eating your lunch on a cable network, I just got to tell you, that proves that you're not doing a very good job in late night.

So, again, the media ecosystem is changing rapidly.

The fragmentation of media, meaning the lack of a monopoly or an oligopoly for late late-night TV, for example, the fact that more and more people are cutting the cable and going online for their news and comedy means that these folks are in serious trouble.

And so we bid a not particularly fond farewell to Stephen Colbert.

Don't worry, he'll still be around for almost a whole other year to be terrible and annoying and tell jokes that are not really jokes and have out dancing syringes to push the vax.

He'll still be around for another 10 months.

And then, of course, he'll end up over at MSNBC with a late-night show that has no ratings either.

So, you know, sad news.

Condolences to all the fan of Stephen Colbert.

All the fan of Stephen Colbert.

Alrighty, coming up, Epstein Revelations.

What's new?

Do Americans care?

We'll get into all of that in a moment.

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Okay, meanwhile, the big story of the day is a supposed bombshell from the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

And if nothing burgers were put on a spectrum from really, really, really nothing to like just kind of somewhat nothing, this nothing burger is the greatest nothing burger of nothing burgers.

I've ever nothing burger.

This is a really giant nothing burger.

There is no burger there.

There's not even a bun there.

There's just nothing.

So what exactly is this shocking Wall Street Street Journal story?

According to the Wall Street Journal, it was Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday and Ghelene Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion.

She turned to Epstein's family and friends.

One of them was Donald Trump.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Okay, so let's just begin with this.

Everyone knows that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were friends like a very long time ago.

He was banned from Mar-a-Lago in 2007.

He and Epstein had palled around in the 90s and early 2000s.

And that was true for a lot of people with Jeffrey Epstein.

That is why there are so many prominent people associated with Jeffrey Epstein.

And of course, Trump had talked about this publicly.

It wasn't like a giant secret at the time.

There was that famous quote from President Trump, 2002, New York Magazine profile of Epstein, quoting Trump: I've known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy.

He's a lot of fun to be with.

It is even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do.

And many of them are on the younger side.

No doubt about it.

Jeffrey enjoys his social life.

So if you're going to break a bombshell about the supposed Epstein case, let's just be clear about what the accusation now is, particularly in the online world led by the Tucker Carlsons of the world.

The accusation is that Jeffrey Epstein was a spy for Mossad, who was running a child trafficking ring and then blackmailing the various and sundry famous and rich men who he had trafficked girls to on behalf of Mossad.

That is Tucker's accusation.

There are others who are saying that he works for CIA or that he was freelancing it.

And then that the federal government led by Donald Trump is covering that up.

That is the accusation.

The accusation is that Trump is covering that up and not being transparent.

And that the FBI and DOJ, when they released that letter last week saying that, effectively speaking, there are no third parties that they could charge, that there's no credible evidence that Epstein trafficked to these prominent men or women, these third parties, when they said there was no credible evidence of blackmail or that he was working for a foreign intelligence agency or a domestic intelligence agency.

When the FBI and DOJ said that, that was all part of a broader Trump cover-up.

Now, if you're going to make that accusation, then presumably Trump would have to be covering up something pretty bad, like something pretty dark, right?

If the idea is that Trump were going to be complicit in the most evil of evil things, which is the engagement of child rape and then trafficking and blackmail based on that, and that Trump is covering that up, if you're going to make that claim, which again is something that many of these folks will sort of suggest, imply, spill out there without naming Trump personally.

If they're going to make that claim that Trump is engaged in the cover-up, then presumably he needs to be covering for something that he did that was truly egregious, really, really, really awful.

Like he was on a Jeffrey Epstein tape shtipping a 15-year-old or something, right?

That would be the thing.

That is the accusation.

That is the tacit accusation that

is underlying and undergirding this entire line of reasoning.

So if the Wall Street Journal is going to drop a bombshell about Jeffrey Epstein and Trump, presumably it would have to rise to that level.

It can't just be Jeffrey Epstein and Trump were friends.

and they made lewd jokes together.

Do we know that President Trump makes lewd jokes?

We do.

We know that President Trump makes lewd jokes because he was elected in 2016, just weeks after a bombshell recording of him talking about grabbing women by their genitals.

So yeah, it turns out that Donald Trump makes lewd jokes with people on a fairly regular basis, or at least he used to when he was a little bit younger.

So what is the Wall Street Journal's big expose that had been rumored by Mark Halperin and others all day yesterday and retailed?

Quote,

Pages from the leatherbound album assembled before Epstein was first arrested in 2006.

We should note that as well.

That again, this is before Epstein had been picked up on charges, arrested, or anything like that, like three years before that.

It was 2003, are among the documents examined by Justice Department officials who investigated Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have reviewed the pages.

It's unclear if any of the pages are part of the Trump administration's recent review.

The president's past relationship with Epstein says the Wall Street Journal is at a sensitive moment.

The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the journal, is baudy, like others in the album.

It contains several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker.

A pair of small arcs denote the woman's breasts, and the future president's signature is a squiggly Donald below her waist, mimicking pubic hair.

The letter concludes, Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Um,

okay.

So, just going to point out: number one, there were many, many, many letters in this particular

birthday tribute album to a guy who was shipping everything inside, sight, including Unridge Girls.

Among the people who submitted letters, it ranged from like Leslie Wexner, who we know gave something like $150 million to Epstein for purposes still unspecified, and attorney Alan Zershowitz.

The album also contained a letter from a now-deceased target economist, one of Epstein's report cards from Mark Twain Jr.

High in Brooklyn, and a note from a former assistant that included an acrostic with Epstein's name.

Epstein was Wexner's money manager at the time.

Zershowitz's letter included a mock-up of Vanity Unfair magazine cover with mock headlines like, who was Jack the Ripper?

Was it Jeffrey Epstein?

Okay, so what was the actual note?

Here's what the note said.

Okay, it said, voiceover, there must be more to life than having everything.

And then it's a fake conversation between Trump and Epstein.

Donald, yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is.

Jeffrey, nor will I, since I also know what it is.

Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey, yes, we do come to think of it.

Donald, enigmas never age.

Have you noticed that?

Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.

Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing.

Happy birthday, and may every day be another wonderful secret.

Okay, I'm just going to point out that the chances that Donald Trump personally dictated or wrote this letter are close to zero.

How do I know?

Well, because he used the word enigmas.

By the way, as far as I'm aware, as to the use of the word enigma, and I checked President Trump's Twitter account, because again, that's how he writes.

He has never used the word enigma not a single time from his real Donald Trump account.

Not one single time, as far as I'm aware.

I believe he used the word enigma one time to refer to Ben Carson or something verbally.

But does that sound like like Donald Trump to you?

It does not sound like Donald Trump to me.

I'll just put that out there.

But let's assume for a second.

And by the way, President Trump immediately is denying that he wrote the letter.

Probably he just tasked some sort of secretary with writing a spicy letter to Jeffrey Epstein for his birthday.

The secretary did that, and then Trump signed it, right?

That is the most logical explanation for all of this, that he didn't sit there like personally writing a letter, typing out a letter.

to Jeffrey Epstein or anything like that.

Trump spokeswoman told the journal in 2023, of course, that Trump had banned Epstein from his Mar-a-Lago club at some point in the past without elaborating.

And again, Trump was asked for comment on this.

And Trump immediately said that this was essentially fake news and then threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal.

He then put out a statement saying the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch personally were warned directly by President Donald J.

Trump that the supposed letter they printed by President Trump to Epstein was a fake.

And if they print it, they will be sued.

Mr.

Murdoch stated he would take care of it, obviously, did not have the power to do so.

The editor of Wall Street Journal, Emma Tucker, was told directly by Caroline Levitt and by President Trump that the letter was a fake.

But Emma Tucker doesn't want to hear that.

Instead, they're going with a false, malicious, and defamatory story anyway.

President Trump will be suing the Wall Street Journal News Corp and Mr.

Murdoch shortly.

The press has to learn to be truthful and not rely on sources that probably don't even exist.

President Trump has already beaten George Stephanopoulos, ABC, 60-Minute CBS, and others, and looks forward to suing and holding accountable the once great Wall Street Journal.

It has truly turned out to be a disgusting and filthy rag.

Writing defamatory lies like this shows their desperation to remain relevant.

If there were any truth at all on the Epstein hoax, as it pertains to President Trump, the information would have been revealed by Comey Brennan, Crooked Hillary, and other radical left lunatics years ago.

It certainly would not have sat in a file waiting for Trump to have won three elections.

This is yet another example of fake news.

That last point that he's making there, which is, if there was truly hidden, egregious stuff about Trump in the Epstein files, do you think the Democrats would have sat on that?

They leaked his IRS files, for goodness sake.

You think they would have sat on that?

The answer, of course, is no.

They would not have sat on that.

Okay, so is the note real?

Is the the note fake?

Okay, so let me just say, personal belief, I think the note is probably at the very least not written by him.

And the reason, again, I think that is it doesn't, it doesn't accord with anything that we know about how President Trump writes.

But let's say that it's real.

And

you mean that we knew for years that he was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, that Jeffrey Epstein himself, himself, is on tape talking about how he was close friends with Donald Trump back in the day, and that Trump basically was dating Melania at the time that they were on his plane and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

This is when he did tapes with Michael Wolf in August 2017.

By the way, again, there's still 15 hours of tapes of Epstein with Steve Bannon, which have never been released.

So release the tapes, Steve.

But

what exactly is the great shocker here?

I mean, there are pictures of Trump with Melania, with Jeffrey Epstein and Glenn Maxwell.

What is the revelation here?

And the answer is there is no revelation here.

There is nothing new here.

Donald Trump sent a bawdy joke to Jeffrey Epstein about young women.

He literally said it out loud in a 2002 New York magazine profile.

This is the thing about President Trump.

Ain't a lot hidden about President Trump.

We know pretty much everything about President Trump.

He has been one of the most public people in the history of the world for about half a century at this point.

So the Wall Street Journal is going after him with this, like, this is what you've got.

This is the hit.

Already coming up.

How much do Americans actually care about the Epstein stuff?

We'll get into the polling data.

Plus, President Trump actually winning victories and the Democrats continuing to spin off into insanity.

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The vice president, J.D.

Vance, put out a statement about this.

He said, forgive my language, but this story is complete and utter bull.

The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed for publishing it.

Where is the letter?

Would you be shocked to learn they never showed it to us before publishing it?

Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?

Doesn't it violate some rule of journalistic ethics to publish a letter like this without showing it to the victim of the hit piece?

Will the people who have bought into every hoax against President Trump show an ounce of skepticism before buying into this bizarre story?

I mean,

J.D.

Vance is right.

Vice President is right.

In any case,

what does this amount to?

In the end, it amounts to virtually nothing.

Now, President Trump, for his part, has come out and said, fine, you know, I'm going to try and release everything that I can, which again.

would have been the proper response at the beginning.

This is what A.G.

Bondi should have done from the outset.

I was critical of the Attorney General from the outset for the rollout of the story, not for the conclusion the FBI and DOJ drew.

As I've said, all I know is the public information and what I've been told by sources inside the federal government who have seen a lot more of the information than I have and what we've been told publicly by the president, the vice president, head of the FBI, deputy director of the FBI, AG, right?

That's the stuff that I know and that's the stuff that you know.

And all the rest is rank speculation.

But the way this should have been retailed is you come out, you answer all the questions, you say, here are the reasons we can't release more information because say, for example, the Epstein tapes are actually not tapes inside Epstein bedrooms.

Those don't exist according to Ellen Dershowitz.

They're just child pornography, which the FBI is not going to put up.

That there is no quote-unquote Epstein list.

He didn't keep a giant list of people he was blackmailing.

And there's no evidence of actual blackmail,

according to the FBI and DOJ.

And so we can't release you evidence that doesn't exist of a crime that we can't charge.

We'll release what we can, and we will file a petition to a court to get them to release whatever a court will allow.

Because again, there are rules and procedures in all of this.

As well, there should be, by the way, there should be rules and procedures at the FBI and DOJ with regard to the kinds of information they release publicly.

After all, the FBI and DOJ are law enforcement agencies.

That is what they are.

And it is not just their job to prosecute crime.

That is certainly their chief job.

It is also to ensure that innocent people don't get completely smeared.

by fictitious evidence based on their investigations.

That is one of the reasons they will release redacted files, for example.

So President Trump put out a statement yesterday based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein.

I've asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent grand jury testimony subject to court approval.

This scam perpetuated by the Democrats should end right now.

And again, the scam he's talking about is the push by Democrats to suggest he's engaged in a gigantic cover-up.

The Attorney General then responded, President Trump, we are ready to move the court tomorrow to unseal the grand jury transcripts.

Now, realistically, is that going to happen?

The answer is probably not.

The court gets to make the final determination on what gets released, and the court would have to have a pretty significant overriding interest in releasing grand jury testimony, which is usually kept sealed specifically because a grand jury may decide not to indict, or it may be that much of the testimony to a grand jury is found to be non-credible, which is apparently some of the thing that's happening here.

And so if it's just a list of people, for example, who traveled on Jeffrey Epstein's plane, and then they're now going to be smeared for the rest of their lives as pedophiles, then perhaps the court has an interest in not unsealing that sort of stuff.

Those would be the sorts of interests the court has to to take into account.

All the people who are claiming that the FBI and DOJ should just release into the public gigantic spates of files on all of this without regard to, for example, the names of the victims, which could be a problem, or without regard to the fact that, again, Jeffrey Epstein associated with an extraordinary number of people because this is the way he did his business.

As I said when I analyzed this last week, it appears to me based on his financial record and the fact that he's been accused of stealing money, essentially, by people like Leon Black, that there's a very good shot that what Epstein actually was doing was hobnobbing with the rich and famous in order to get them to give him money for investments or some other purpose.

This looks a lot like a financial crime, not just like a sex trafficking crime.

And so you have to follow the evidence wherever it leads.

What gets released into the public has to follow particular federal procedures and protocols that apply to every criminal case.

So President Trump is saying, we'll go to the court.

We will ask.

The court will do what the court does.

As far as a special counsel, there have been calls for a special counsel.

I'm not a big fan of special counsels in general because typically their remit tends to expand over time and become self-justifying.

That's exactly what happened with the Robert Mueller investigation, where Robert Mueller started off with a relatively small investigation and then tens of millions of dollars later ended up with basically nothing, an empty bag after the media ran with that story for full-on three years.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board put out a piece talking about a special counsel, and they say the latest MAGA idea on the Jeffrey Epstein files is that there should be a special counsel appointed to investigate because AG Pam Bondi is now part of the deep state or something.

But White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said Thursday afternoon that Trump would not recommend a special prosecutor.

They say, Mr.

Trump says he wants Ms.

Bondi to put out more information, whatever she thinks is credible, and that's fine, subject to judicial orders and sensitivities to privacy, which is a real concern for accusers and victims.

It's easy for those on the outside to demand more disclosure since they don't have to make those hard calls or be accountable for them.

The unnoble question is is: what would be left after the sensitive materials are scrubbed?

As far as a special counsel, again, the problem is this:

forget about any immediate disclosure of anything new.

The question that MAGA mines want answered would instead get buried for months or more.

Rumor innuendo would reign.

If the special counsel emerged after a year and announced there really wasn't much to see here, would any of the Epstein theorists really be convinced?

Unlikely.

And that, of course, is exactly correct.

And that is also why it is ridiculous that

people like Thomas Massey and Rocana are launching an effort to call on Congress

to force a release of Epstein-related records.

And the FBI and the DOJ actually have to go through protocols and procedures on this sort of stuff.

And I will note that there are many Democrats who seem very invested in the Epstein case very suddenly.

Like had nothing to say about this for years on end, but now are very, very interested.

Are they really interested or would they be fools not to cynically cynically take advantage of a public opportunity?

Well, here's Caroline Levitt saying, listen, we are not doing the special counsel thing.

President Trump is not interested.

Well, the idea was floated from someone in the media to the president.

The president would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case.

That's how he feels.

And as for his discussions with the Attorney General, I'm not sure.

Okay, so as far as the discharge petition, it would tee up a floor vote on legislation, giving Attorney General Pambondi 30 days to release a broad array of files released to Epstein, Glene Maxwell, and other associates.

It would provide for the release of investigative files without regard for any embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.

Now, again, that's typically not how the FBI and DOJ work.

If somebody makes a false accusation in a federal affidavit, for example, about somebody and there's no evidence to support it, the FBI typically will not release that into the public.

Now, the claim is that should be released into the public simply because of interest in the case.

I mean, you can see see the rationale on both sides of this, but those rules are there for a reason.

As far as transparency, Caroline Lovett is saying, why?

What's the claim that Trump has not been transparent?

What exactly is the claim here?

The Attorney General and the FBI, led by Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Cash Patel, these are great patriots, some of the most trusted voices in the Republican Party movement.

It's part of the reason the president appointed him, appointed them to these high law enforcement positions.

And they spent many months going through all of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein, and they concluded what they found in that memo, which they drafted and they released.

And so the president has been transparent.

He has followed through on his promises to the American people.

As far as the claim that this is all a hoax, what is the hoax?

Well, Caroline Lovett explained, the hoax is that people are claiming that Trump is covering something up, which I agree is a hoax.

There's been a lot of discussion about the Epstein files and the president's comments yesterday calling it a hoax.

Can you you clarify which part of the Epstein hoax is the hoax part?

The president is referring to the fact that Democrats have now seized on this as if they ever wanted transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein, which is an asinine suggestion for any Democrat to make.

The Democrats had control of this building, the White House, for four years, and they didn't do a dang thing when it came to transparency in regards to Jeffrey Epstein and his heinous crimes.

She's certainly right about all of that.

She was also asked about whether President Trump has been talking to influencers.

And she says, well, yes, but all these people who are attempting to sort of hijack MAGA, and that is the real thing that's happening here, let's be very clear.

Many of the people who are most exercised over the Epstein thing, many of whom were happy to hobnob with Andrew Tate and the Tate brothers five minutes ago, despite credible accusations of sex trafficking, many of those same people are really upset with the Trump administration for not doing what they wanted on Iran, on Ukraine.

And now they are using this as an excuse to try and seize power inside the MAGA movement away from President Trump.

Well, good luck with that.

Here is Caroline Lovett yesterday.

The president and this team are always in contact with the president's supporters with voices of many kinds on both sides of the aisle.

I think that's part of the reason this president is a great president because he's willing to listen and hear other people's perspectives.

But ultimately, he has led this country, not just over the past six months to historic success, but also through his first four years as president.

And as the leader and the creator of of the MAGA movement, he has led through these perilous times for our country based on instinct and in the best interest of the country.

And as I always say, the American people should trust in President Trump.

Okay, so there are a couple of questions here with regard to how this is impacting the Trump presidency, all of this on an overall level.

One is, do the American people believe that they're getting everything on the Epstein case?

And the answer to that by the polling data is no.

A Reuters-Ipsos poll from earlier this week found 69% of Americans think the government is hiding a list of Epstein's clients.

Now, just because 69% of Americans believe that

an absence of evidence means that there is in fact a thing that is being hidden, just because that's true doesn't mean that their claim is true.

The real question, and the one that President Trump put his finger on at the very beginning of all of this, and it made everybody really mad, but Trump was kind of right.

He said, is this a priority for the American people?

I'm doing like amazing things for the American people right now, says President Trump.

I'm making peace happen in the Middle East through strength.

I'm backing Ukraine against Russia to prevent more Russian predations.

I am taking action to end wars in the Middle East, in Africa, in Eastern Europe.

I'm pushing forward new pieces of legislation.

I'm keeping your taxes low.

I'm doing all sorts of stuff that you want.

And you're asking about Epstein like day in and day out.

How many Americans actually care about this?

And a lot of influencers were very upset with President Trump for saying this because they, of course, are very upset about the Epstein case, Because let's be real about this: a lot of Americans, not statistically a dun, but many Americans are terminally online, like really, really online.

And that doesn't mean their concerns are specious or not real or inauthentic.

But if we're going to talk about how many Americans really think that the Epstein case is like top of agenda for them, the answer is really, really low.

In fact, President Trump in the last CNN poll retains an 88% approval rating among Republicans, which is actually up two points from the last time this was polled before all of the Epstein news.

And how many Americans, how many Republicans say that the Epstein files, the Epstein case is their number one concern, like the thing they care about most?

Let's have Harry Enton review the results.

I mean, on X, all you hear about is the Epstein files.

But how about out in the real public, Republicans who said the top issue was Epstein case?

The answer is one, one, and not 1%.

One respondent.

Okay, one respondent.

And by the way, there were 1,057 respondents to that poll, and there were 306 or 307 registered Republicans in that poll.

One said the Epstein file was their top issue.

One.

You know, that doesn't mean it's not a secondary issue for some people.

But again, his approval rating among Republicans, President Trump's, remains as it ever was, very, very high.

And it shows, and this is a real issue, the massive, incredible, looming gap between the world of X and the real world.

I've been saying for a long time, people need to get out and touch grass.

And what I mean by that is turn off X and go talk to friends, family, people in the real world.

If you go and talk to people in the real world, first of all, the polarization that splits Americans by politics, it's real.

It's not nearly as bad as it is on X.

But beyond that, many of the opinions that are most promulgated on X, the most extreme opinions, most conspiratorial opinions that pick up velocity and virality on X are not reflected by the American body politic.

They just are not.

And politicians who follow the rabbit hole that is X are very likely to find themselves at odds with the American people.

They're very likely to be suckered into believing that X is somehow a representative sample of what Americans think.

And I understand because politicians, everybody acts with whatever data they have.

But what if the input is really crappy?

What if the input that politicians are using to decide whether or not a policy is popular is the same exact input that Grok 4 was using when it started calling itself Mecca Hitler?

What if it turns out that X is being gamed and that a huge number of the big big narratives on X do not match up with the stuff the American people care deeply about?

Now, the media is very online because it's easy to cover the news if you're online and just trolling X.

Much easier to do that than it is to go talk with actual human beings or go find the news for yourself or anything like that.

It's a great shortcut.

And it's a great shortcut for politicians.

It means you don't have to go talk to your constituents.

You just go to X, see what's trending, tweet something out and feel good about yourself.

It is not reflective of the real world.

The amount of media coverage on the Epstein case, the amount of of X coverage and conspiratorial insanity on the Epstein case far outweighs what's happening in the real world.

And this is where President Trump is unique, truly unique.

So you have to understand President Trump's informational diet to understand why he is not being suckered by a lot of this stuff.

President Trump is not on X.

President Trump was never really on X.

What I mean by that is he put stuff out on Twitter, but he was not somebody who's spending all day.

just reading the scroll, doom scrolling on Twitter.

That's not who President Trump is.

His media diet largely consists of cable news and establishment media outlets and the New York Post.

That is the stuff that he is mostly reading.

He literally has his staff print out articles.

He is not sitting there with a computer and browsing the internet or even with his cell phone.

He has his staff print things out for him because he likes to read physical media.

Okay, what does that mean?

What it means is that many of the narratives that quickly gain velocity and then run out of steam, he just go right under his radar.

He doesn't care about them.

And so he actually has a better connection to the real world than many of the people who have been basically brainwormed by X.

And those brainworms are pretty serious and they have a spillover effect.

Now, can those impact real life?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

You can get a conspiracy theory started on X, pick up a ton of velocity, get a bunch of followers, and suddenly find yourself on some of the biggest podcasts in the country.

And now those views are being heard by a bunch of people, particularly young people.

And so my prediction is that you will see more of a connect, this would make sense, between the insanity you see on X and the beliefs of younger generations who are using X or TikTok for their media consumption.

I think that's what you're going to see.

But that does not mean that the normal American just trying to live his or her life, build a family, build a community, have a job, go to church, that those people are deeply, deeply concerned and spending every day trolling the internet for the latest internet outrage about Jeffrey Epstein or anything else.

And this is where President Trump is much more connected to reality than many of his critics on this sort of stuff.

And it's why President Trump is now right to call on Pam Bonte to try to get as much as possible released.

But people who are saying the Epstein, this is going to do deep and lasting damage.

First of all, I think a lot of the people who are saying that are doing so for malicious reasons.

They are doing so because they hope that their own online narratives, which do not prevail in real life on anything from foreign to domestic policy, will somehow get an ear in the White House if they can damage the president with a bunch of false nonsense about the Jeffrey Epstein story.

They're hoping that if they can wield power on that, then they can somehow get back into the presidency on a bunch of foreign policy decisions.

I think that's a losing game.

I think it's a malicious game.

I wish we were being called out more often by some of the people in the orbit of the White House who themselves are close with some of these influencers.

But with all of that said, President Trump, again, much more connected to reality than virtually all of his critics.

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Joining us on the line to discuss this and many other subjects is one of the wisest people in America.

Wisdom is in short supply, Professor Robert George McCormick, Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, Director of Princeton's James Madison Program.

In American Ideals and Institutions, he has a brand new book titled Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth.

Professor, thanks so much for joining the show.

I really appreciate it.

It's a great pleasure, as always, Ben.

Thanks for having me on the show.

So, in your book, you talk about the modern age of feeling.

And I've been talking about this in the context of the disconnect between the world online and the world of reality, that the world online, which promotes narratives, these sort of viral narratives that go very, very hot, people get very passionate about them, and the world of reality, where it turns out most people don't even know about those things or care about those things, that that gap is creating real problems in American life.

And it underscores, I think, what you're talking about, which is an emphasis on short form content that generates emotional reactivity as opposed to the sort of genuine arguments that allow for discussion, agreement, and truth seeking.

Yeah, that certainly is right.

I mean, we had all hoped at the beginning that the internet would give people access to more information, expose people to more perspectives, and that as a result of that, we would all be better off.

We would have a better shot at getting at the truth of things things because we'd have more exposure to more ideas, more arguments, and more or easier access to information.

We wouldn't be stuck with three networks and a handful of newspapers and so forth.

But there has been a dark side to social media, and there's been a dark side to the internet: confusion, short narratives, kind of grotesque emotivism that seems to have gripped the country, especially younger generations, but not exclusively so,

we have to say.

Now, Ben, it's not going away.

The internet's not going away.

Social media are not going away.

So we can't just, you know, wish them away.

We're going to have to reform them.

We're going to have to bring to the internet and bring to social media voices that are actually sane and reasonable and that don't take the shortcuts of appealing to emotion and feeling, but actually provide reliable information, make genuine arguments, do business in what I call the proper currency of intellectual discourse, a currency consisting of reasons and evidence and arguments.

So, Professor, that obviously sounds like a real uphill battle in the moment, given the forces stacked on the other side.

I mean, how do we go about fighting that?

Because this is a real thing that's happening to an enormous number of people.

Conspiracism, for example, is running rife on both sides of the political aisle right now because that is emotionally driven.

I mean, conspiracy theories are typically driven by an appeal to emotion in the absence of fact.

And in fact, the absence of fact is taken as support for the theory.

Absence of evidence is not evidence that your theory is wrong.

It's evidence that your theory is right.

It's just somebody is hiding the actual truth.

That is an emotional argument.

It's not a logical argument.

And there's no actual way to debunk it.

So how do we go to sort of the first principles?

How do we get people to engage their reasoning centers rather than their emotional centers when, in the moment, at least, it feels so much more satisfying to sort of go with the amygdalic response to any event?

Well, let's look at history.

And of course, history is filled with evil and carnage carnage and bad things that we human beings have done to each other.

But let's look at the good moments.

Let's look at when actual progress, real progress, the real thing

has been made, whether it's in overcoming slavery or establishing civil liberty or republican government, whatever it is.

How did those good things happen?

And there's something that we find

as a constant throughout, and that is people who stepped forward to provide models for other people.

Progress has been made when it's genuine progress, and when it has been made in no small measure by the presence of people who became heroes and saints.

They modeled for other people what it means to be a good person, what it means to be a truth seeker, what it means to stand up for Republican government or civil liberty or against slavery or against racism or whatever the evil was of the day that someone needed to stand up against.

It was always hard.

It was always an uphill battle.

It always looked impossible then,

but people will follow the example of leaders, of heroes and saints, of people who make sacrifices and model the kind of behavior that we'd like to see spread abroad in the culture.

So I think part of that, Professor, is the reinstitution of trust in institutions.

And I know that's sort of a strange anti-narrative point these days because there's so much distrust in our institutions.

And I think for so many good reasons.

I think a lot of our institutions were basically hollowed out, emptied out, and then worn around as though they still had institutional legitimacy after they'd already been burned out from the inside.

But how do you rebuild trust in institutions?

Here I'm thinking of not just the American government and the institutions of American government, which, of course, I think that a healthy amount of distrust of American government and its interventions is obviously warranted.

But here I'm talking about even things that are as basic as church.

You know, the lack of trust in institutional churches, for example, the lack of trust even in family structure.

These things have really gone the way of the dodobert.

How do you reinstitute those?

And how long a project is that?

Because

I think one of the disheartening things about this moment is that it takes generations to build up institutional trust, and it takes about one second to destroy it.

That's exactly right.

You've hit the nail on the head here, Ben.

So what is, I think, quite unprecedented, or if it's not entirely unprecedented, it's been a long time since we were in this condition, is the literal collapse of trust in the principal institutions of culture, the institutions that transmit culture to each new generation.

Certainly in my lifetime, in my parents and my grandparents and my great-grandparents' lifetime, trust has never been so low.

But you're right about something else.

The institutions earned that distrust by their own failures.

And you're also right that it's not just the institutions of government.

It's the institutions of journalism.

It's the institutions of religion.

It's more broadly the institutions of culture.

Now, how do you earn it back?

That's a slow and difficult process, but you do it by doing the right thing and doing it for the right reason and doing it when it's hard.

Standing up in the face of mobs, standing up in the face of kind of overwhelming public opinion or the passions of the day.

And again, it requires leadership.

It requires saints and heroes, people who will do the hard stuff.

How long a project is it?

50-year project, maybe even a 100-year project, maybe a 200-year project.

But if we're going to get anywhere, we've got to begin now.

We're beginning at a very, very low point.

Even trust in institutions that have historically had high levels of trust, the judiciary, the military.

Trust has collapsed in these institutions.

And you cannot do without them.

I mean, there's a kind of dream, a kind of anarchist dream that, well, we can do without institutions.

We can live as individuals.

No, it doesn't work that way.

It requires institutions to transmit whatever is good about a culture, to transmit culture to each new generation.

Well, that's Professor Robert George.

His brand new book is Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth.

It is definitely worth the read.

This is everything that he does.

Professor George, really appreciate the time.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be with you again, Ben.

Meanwhile, the president is, in fact, doing things that help the American people.

On Thursday night, Republicans in the House Rules Committee moved to push forward the $9 billion rescission.

The House passed it, and they sent it to President Trump's desk for his signature.

So that means defunding of NPR.

The vote was 216 to 213.

Only two Republicans opposed it.

These rescission moves are excellent.

They are good.

They're cutting a bunch of wasteful government spending, including to, again, publicly funded radio that is just left-wing propaganda.

And that is a perfectly worthwhile and good thing.

It also includes cuts to U.S.

AID, which, of course, is absolutely worthwhile.

Now, again, there's foreign spending that we should do in order to counter Chinese spending.

Chinese, they use their money in order to build their soft power around the globe, ranging from Africa to Latin America.

And sure, we should also use soft power to fight the Chinese in these arenas.

But USAID had basically just become a bankroll for a bunch of left-wing causes.

That's actually particularly clear when you see a new memo released by the Committee on the Judiciary over at the House of Representatives talking about the use of grants, cooperative agreements, or other awards received by the USAID or State Department and given to NGOs in, for example, Israel, where they basically funded a bunch of the protesters in the streets for the years leading up to October 7th.

So essentially, your taxpayer dollars were, here we're not talking about military ideas.

We're talking about literally going to NGOs who were putting hundreds of thousands of people in the streets to protest the government of Israel.

And so that is where much of the money.

was going in USAID is going to not only useless, but counterproductive left-wing agit prop.

So the fact that rescission is going to cut a lot of that is definitely a good thing.

Meanwhile, President Trump is pushing forward the so-called Genius Act.

Apparently, according to Axios, after huddling in Speaker Mike Johnson's office, members of the House Freedom Caucus switched their votes to yes, ending a nearly 10-hour standoff.

House GOP leadership unlocked support for the vote by agreeing to attach one of the key crypto measures, the anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.

That would be to ban the government from having its own cryptocurrency.

Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he spoke with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday about adding the provision to the NDAA.

So the Genius Act, I asked our friends and sponsors over at Perplexity, what exactly is in the Genius Act.

And what it does is it creates a federal regulatory framework for stable coins.

So stable coins are essentially crypto assets that are pegged to the value of the dollar.

Now, they're not necessarily one-to-one.

It's not as though you buy a stable coin and you could turn it in for a dollar.

And this is one of the things the Genius Act was designed to do.

It was designed to put regulations on anything calling itself a stable coin.

Bitcoin is not a stable coin.

Bitcoin is tied essentially to the widespread public adoption of Bitcoin itself.

It's its own currency.

It's its own cryptocurrency.

Stable coins are supposedly tied to the value of the underlying asset.

In this case, for example, the United States dollar.

And so what the Genius Act was designed to do was provide some stability in the stablecoin market and then let a thousand flowers bloom.

You can buy a stable coin that is is worth half a dollar or a stablecoin that is worth a dollar.

According to Perplexity, the main objectives were to impose strict requirements on

stablecoin issuers to ensure that these digital tokens are fully backed by high-quality liquid reserves.

It's designed to prevent the kinds of losses seen during previous crypto crashes and guarantees that holders can actually redeem those coins for cash at any time.

So it turns stable coins into an actual, usable, tradable, and stable commodity.

They're actually stable coins, right?

They're not just cryptos.

They're stable coins.

The other goal was to mandate anti-money laundering compliance, AML, and prohibit risky reserve practices.

It requires all issuers, including those abroad, to obey U.S.

sanctions and AML laws if they do business with U.S.

customers.

So the goal here is to not allow stable coins pegged to the U.S.

dollars to essentially act as a workaround to move into sanctioned areas like, say, Iran or Russia.

It'll also help preserve the U.S.

dollar dominance because the law aims to strengthen the role of the dollar in the global digital economy.

So instead of necessarily buying Bitcoin as a hedge against the dollar, you're now going to buy a stablecoin, which is essentially a crypto version of the dollar.

That is the goal here.

So is that a good thing?

Well, I mean, it's being pushed inside the administration by tech bros like David Sachs.

So my answer here would be yes.

This is a good thing.

It does, in fact, help innovation.

Meanwhile, the White House is preparing an executive order targeting woke AI, and it's outlining the president's vision to win the AI race with China, which, of course, is deeply important.

AI is the technology that is going to be dominating the next several generations of human life at a minimum.

According to the Wall Street Journal, White House officials are preparing an executive order targeting tech companies with what they see as woke artificial intelligence models going after DEI.

The order would dictate that AI companies getting federal contracts be politically neutral and unbiased in their AI models in effort to combat what administration officials see as a liberal bias in some of those models.

And again, this is absolutely true.

There are preset standards that are used by these AIs in order to dictate sort of safety standards.

And the goal here would be to say that you can't have a safety standard on an AI that ignores, for example, basic biological fact, like men exist and women exist, and a man cannot become a woman.

The trend has been troubling AIs are David Sachs and Sriram Krishnan, senior White House policy advisor for AI.

And you'll recall he was involved tangentially.

His name was used in a sort of foolish and I think not particularly productive debate over H-1B visas.

There's an interesting conversation to be had.

I'm not sure why it was about Sriram.

But this move by the White House to make more neutral these AI tools is definitely a good and useful thing.

So President Trump continues to win victories.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to target illegal immigration.

Last night, Caroline Levitt said that any suggestion that there was going to be amnesty for illegal immigrants, that is not a thing.

From my understanding, the White House nor the president has actually read through this legislation.

We've been focused on, of course, the One Big Beautiful bill, which passed, which is another historic accomplishment of this president in record time.

The Genius Act this week, the rescissions package, that's been the focus of the White House.

But the president has made it very clear he will not support amnesty for illegal aliens in any way.

Okay, so again, can't be clearer than that.

By the way, again, the left is going nuts over President Trump's immigration policy, but they are not so sort of voce admitting that many, many illegal immigrants are receiving federal tax benefits, including things like food stamps.

Here's Representative from Ila Jayapol accidentally admitting this.

Yesterday, I was at a food bank in my district talking about the snap cuts, the horrible snap cuts and Medicaid cuts.

And they told me that people are not even showing up to Head Start where they get their food.

They're not showing up to the food banks because they're afraid.

And it's not just undocumented immigrants.

It is people of all legal statuses.

It's undocumented immigrants who have been here for 20 years.

Why, oh, why are Democrats so mistrusted on illegal immigration?

It's a mystery wrapped in, wait for it, an enigma.

No one knows why, why so many people are exercised about illegal immigration, except for the vast majority of American citizens.

The left is terminally online.

I've talked about the right being terminally online.

The left is also terminally online, and it puts them in severe electoral danger.

Alrighty, speaking of terminally online, the Democrats, terminally online, it's a real problem for them.

There is a brand new poll out, and it shows actually that Democrats are down in the congressional generic ballot by five points, which is kind of insane.

I mean, we are 18 months out from the next election cycle, and they are trailing.

They're not in good shape.

And the reason for that is they are wildly unpopular.

This is a point Jake Tapper was making over on CNN.

A brand new CNN poll out today shows the Democrats' favorability among Americans.

It is at its lowest point in the history of CNN's polling back to 1992.

Only 28% of Americans view the Democratic Party favorably.

Those are really terrible numbers, truly awful numbers.

Well, why is that?

Because the Democratic Party is split between the traditionalist Democrats, who seem to be sort of do-nothing Democrats for the base, and the base Democrats who are embracing communism, socialism, and third worldism, which is a move, I will say it's, I'm not sure a lot of Americans are in favor of that move.

Representative Rocana of California, who of course has been a guest on the show, yesterday he came out and endorsed Zorin Mamdani in the New York mayoral race.

I will endorse him.

Look, he's a very charismatic, relatable person, and he spent a lot of time talking about the cost of living in New York and this country and how we address it.

How do we create good-paying jobs?

How do we give people a raise?

How do we make sure that the cost of rent, the cost of child care, the cost of health care comes down?

And that's important for the Democratic Party to start talking about these economic issues.

Well,

you know, if this is the move you want to make, go for it, Democrats.

Like, really, I encourage you to do all of this because you are now endorsing a guy based on his charisma who

has supported the abolition of private property.

That seems like a very weird thing to do in the world's financial hub, New York City, but I guess if you guys want to go with it and then make that the model for national governance, you can try it.

My platform is that every single person should have housing.

And I think faced with these two options,

the system has hundreds of thousands of people unhoused, right?

For what?

And

if there was any system that could guarantee each person housing, whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it, you know, just a statewide housing guarantee, it is preferable to what is going on right now.

So if you could abolish private property, that would be preferable to people living unhoused.

I love when people, they say people living unhoused.

So public housing and homeless shelters are available in all major American cities for people who are destitute.

And we, of course, have welfare programs for people who are destitute.

The vast majority of people who are living on the streets are either mentally ill or drug abusers or both.

It is a serious, real problem in major American cities.

But his solution is to abolish private property, which stands alongside abolish capitalism and also abolish Western civilization because you have to globalize the intifada.

Good luck with this.

When Tim Walls is the moderate in your party, you are in serious trouble.

Here was Tim Walls yesterday saying they need to be more pro-business.

Donald Trump sells snake oil or whatever, but

it's capturing this idea of wealth and being able to be successful, which we as Democrats, we want people to pay their fair share, but why are we against people being successful like that?

We can't be.

Why are we against, we should talk about businesses.

Not all businesses exploit their workers and we get ourselves stuck in that.

Oh, well, how do we lose that?

I mean, why not more of this?

And the answer is because the base doesn't like this very much.

Democratic Representative Josh Godheimer of New Jersey, he is going out against Mamdani.

And this is the tack that the Democrats should be taking, if they had any brains at all.

You'll hear no ambiguity out of my mouth.

We do not need a job-killing socialist.

We don't need a job-killing socialist who wants to raise taxes and supports anti-Semitic rhetoric, right?

In a city with the highest taxes in the country and the largest Jewish population.

That's not what is.

So,

again, if Democrats are smart, this is how they'd move.

Fortunately for Republicans, they apparently are not.

Now, in other news,

the White House released a letter yesterday about President Trump's health condition.

That health condition is apparently a mild but chronic illness related to his age.

He has chronic venous insufficiency, a condition in which the legs have trouble delivering blood back to the heart.

That is why he has some swollen ankles.

Caroline Levitt described the diagnosis yesterday.

The president underwent a comprehensive examination, including diagnostic vascular studies.

Bilateral lower extremity

venous Doppler ultrasounds were performed and revealed chronic venous insufficiency, AB9, and common condition, particularly in individuals over the age of 70.

Importantly, there was no evidence of deep vein thrombosis or arterial disease.

Additionally, recent photos of the president have shown minor bruising on the back of his hand.

This is consistent with minor soft tissue irritation from frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin, which is taken as part of a standard cardiovascular prevention regimen.

This is a well-known and benign side effect of aspirin therapy, and the president remains in excellent health.

So, again, there are people who are trying to claim that the president is unhealthy.

That, of course, is not true.

Now, in other news, speaking of places that actually are unhealthy, I have to say Europe may be cooked.

I mean, truly cooked.

Apparently, the UK has now moved to lower the voting age to 16, to 16 years old.

Have you ever met a 16-year-old?

Have these people ever met a 16-year-old?

I mean, I understand that for liberals who apparently believe that we should all live like we're 16 years old, you know, dependent on someone else with no actual responsibility for our own actions, that sure, why not have 16-year-olds vote?

I mean, they don't have jobs.

They live off somebody else's paycheck.

And that's precisely the kind of people that presumably the left would love voting.

That's not a rip on what 16-year-olds will become, but if you've ever met a 16-year-old, let's just say that the prefrontal cortex is not well-developed enough to withhold the passions of the amygdala.

But here's Kiera Starmer, the clottish Labor Prime Minister of Great Britain, saying that they're going to lower the country's voting age to 16.

I think it's really important that 16 and 17-year-olds olds have the vote because they're old enough to go out to work, they're old enough to pay taxes, so to pay in.

And I think if you pay in,

you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on, which way the government should go.

So I'm really pleased that we're able to bring more young people into our democracy and give them the chance to have a say over how their taxes are going to be paid and what they're going to be used for.

So I'm just going to point out that that's crazy.

That that's crazy.

If the idea is that you pay tax money into the government and therefore you should vote, then, okay, let's take the corollary.

If you don't pay taxes, you shouldn't vote.

Is he up for that?

I feel like not.

I feel like not, because then I think that the voting base would turn the other way.

As far as the idea.

that lots and lots of people in the UK are serving in the military at the age of 16 and 17.

So

it is true that one-third apparently of the UK's army intake was under 18.

16 year olds make up the single largest year group, but that means that like 2,500 to 3,000 16 and 17 year olds are joining the regular armed forces every year.

Like 2,500 to 3,000, according to our sponsors over at Perplexity.

And now if I ask, So how many 16 and 17 year olds are there in the UK?

If the idea is you can serve in the military and like 2,500 to 3,000 of you every year are joining the military, the total number of 16-year-olds estimated in the UK is 741,000.

The estimated number of 17-year-olds is 723,000.

So you're talking about 1.5 million votes, essentially, because 2,500 people joined the military at this age.

I don't think it's about that for the Labor Party.

I think this is about changing the voting base, of course, and making it easier for them to win elections.

A totally.

You're juggling a lot.

Full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family.

And now you're thinking about grad school?

That's not crazy.

That's ambitious.

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Idiotic idea, but we'll see how it works out for them because the UK has been pursuing idiotic idea after idiotic idea day after day after day.

Alrighty, coming up on the Ben Shapiro show, the strangest story of the day, this is just for our members.

Apparently,

the rule of the day is never go to a cold play concert, or at least don't cheat on your wife at a cold play concert, or at least don't get caught on the big screen cheating on your wife at a cold play concert.

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