“America Deserved 9/11”: Dem Heart Throb Goes Mainstream

At Walmart, we're helping our associates build meaningful careers. One way we're doing that, investing $1 billion in training and education. Last year, more than 100,000 associates earned promotions. Combined with benefits like 401K matching and paid parental leave, we're proving that Walmart isn't just a place to work, it's a place to grow. Learn more at walmart.com slash grow at Walmart. This episode is brought to you by San Pellegrino Chau. A gift from Italy to your home. San Pellegrino Chau is a flavored sparkling water made with real fruit juice, finished with a pinch of Sicilian salt for a perfectly balanced taste. So which flavor will you choose? Peach, lime, blood orange, cherry, or maybe the all-new limoncello. Crafted in Italy with zero grams of added sugar, San Pellegrino Chow. Buy it now. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills. But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-1 plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes. Me slow when network is busy. See terms.

From the heart of our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., backed by the trusted voices of Team Fox, a clear, fresh voice cutting through the noise to tell the truth. It's Guy Benson with Guy Benson. It is Thursday, April 23rd, 26. I'm Guy Benson. Welcome everyone to Guy Benson. I'm your host, a political analyst here at Fox News, and a senior columnist at the Washington Examiner. And we are together for three hours every weekday between 3 and 6 p.m. Eastern. And then the show becomes a podcast on demand for free every evening, including, by the way, bonus Guy Benson on the weekends. We encourage you to check that out as well. Guy Benson.com, Fox Newspodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcast. You can watch me tonight on the bottom line, Fox Business, around 630 Eastern. Looking forward to some TV duties. I was on Fox and Friends on the news channel this morning. You can, of course, as I just alluded to, read my columns and pieces at the Washington Examiner, just submitted a new one for tomorrow as well. If you would like to reach us here at the show, GBS at Fox.com, I think we'll probably do a mailbag segment. soon, maybe even tomorrow. GBS at fox.com, whatever's on your mind. You can follow us on social at Guy Benson. Follow me as well if you'd like at Guy Benson. Great lineup for you today, starting later this hour with Rich Lowry, who's the editor of National Review. We'll talk to him about politics of the day, including some new developments involving this guy, Hasan Piker, that we've talked about quite a bit. Now, once again being platformed and sort of celebrated in the New York Times, we'll get Rich's take on that and beyond. Mark Dubowitz is CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And he has been a keen observer of the Iran conflict. I want to get his take on where things stand, on the blockade, on negotiations, on the ceasefire, all of it. And then from a more sort of... I guess diplomatic background, Katie McFarland, who has advised four presidential administrations in her career. I want to talk to her not only about Iran, but also the relationship. afraid at the moment that the U.S. is experiencing with a number of our European and NATO allies. That has really made me rather frustrated, to put it mildly. I wonder what KT. has to say about it because she's been at it a while. She's been through various seasons of American diplomacy. How does she view this one, this moment? I'm looking forward to that conversation. Plus, there's a soundbite that I think you need to hear.

It was offered on a podcast by a guy named James Carville. If you've followed politics for a long time, you know exactly who I'm talking about. If you're newer to politics or younger, that might be a name that you're not super familiar with. His nickname is the Ragen Cajun. He's an old school and getting long in the tooth, Democratic, operative, and strategist of like the Clinton mold. He said something. about his view on what his party needs to do next time they have power. And I think we need to listen to it, take it seriously, and talk about it in some depth. That's coming up in our final hour today here on the show. As we begin, I want to talk about something that happened out in California last night. There was a gubernatorial debate. It was on another network, and it featured, I believe it was five candidates, and they've got this jungle primary situation. So all of the leading candidates over a certain threshold were included. So you've got left-wingers and Republicans on the same stage in something of a free-for-all. It's not a Democrat primary where it's only the lefties arguing amongst themselves in, like, you know, different shades of gray. from the center left all the way out into like Kami land and then a separate Republican debate. No, they're just, if you qualified, if you're in that top echelon, you were on that stage. And what we saw was a number of interesting exchanges. There are some polls, by the way, I will remind you, as we've mentioned this in recent memory, couple polls, including one that was just put out there by the California Democratic Party, although pardon me wonders, were they putting that out there in order? to start to kind of crack skulls, so to speak, to do what they need to do. The polls showed, as have, in fairness, a few others, public polls recently, that in the jungle primary, there are two Republicans in this race, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, who were in first and second place. And the way that the primary system works out there in the jungle primary is the top two vote getters. regardless of party, advanced to the general election. So, for example, when Kamala Harris won her Senate seat, whenever that was, was it roughly 2018, I want to say out in California? I might be off by a cycle. Kamala Harris that year was up against a fellow Democrat, a Hispanic female member of the House, if I'm not mistaken, who... was not a very serious candidate, and so Kamala Harris rather easily won that race. I think her opponent dabbed at one point during a debate. And there's just this screenshot of Kamala Harris looking across the stage like, what are you doing? So that was a dem-on-dem general election for the U.S. Senate, and if polls like this were to actually play out, and we're now getting what? Little over a month away from that primary, if somehow Hilton and Chad Bianco came in first or second place, you know, switch them either spot, you would have an all-Republican general election for governor, which obviously is, A, amazing, hilarious, all of that to think about, and B, catastrophic for Democrats out there. They can't let it happen. So now the Democratic Party is like, oh, look, here's our poll. It shows because there are too many Democrats running.

The Republicans might lock us out of the general election. We need to consolidate Katie or whomever. I know that the calls are growing for Katie Porter, who is just a grotesque individual in terms of the way that she treats people, and there's lots of evidence to that effect, and her ideologies warped and all of that. They are really going to try to force... as many people out of this race as possible to ensure that at least one Democrat makes it through to the general election. And they have until early June to do it. I suspect that they will. But in the meantime, they're all still battling it out. And there was this debate last night. And there were a few clips I wanted to play for you because this is, I think, illustrative of the problems that California faces. Because... You have a single party state controlled by one ideology. It's not just one political party where there's a lot of moderates. It is one leftist ideology that has a stranglehold on California. And they are indeed strangling California in a lot of important ways to the point that foreshadowing later in the show, 20-30 census is not going to be kind to states like California. And I just want to give you an example. Homelessness has been such a problem in California. And Gavin Newsom actually, even going back to his days as mayor of San Francisco, has purported to care very much about the homeless problem and he's going to solve it. He just needs money, money, money to do it. And his now years and years and probably decade or two long crusade to fix homelessness has been an absolute abject failure. I saw there was a California state audit in 2024 showing tens of billions of dollars spent combating homelessness. And homelessness has gone up in that state in the same time period. hard to describe more of a failure than that. It actually goes to how money is spent generally in places like California. The idea is more money equals solution. Just spend it and spend it and spend it and spend it. And it goes to these NGOs and these people. And a lot of it, by the way, is stolen. It goes to fraud. And every so often there'll be a scandal or an indictment about that. I think the industrial scale fraud in places like this, we have barely scratched the surface. What we know is they are spending shocking amounts of money for terrible results. And I saw some press release from Gavin Newsom trying to pretend that like one form of homelessness is down by this percentage. Big picture, it has been unequivocally a failure. So the question was posed to the people who want to succeed Gavin Newsom to come next. He's been governor for a long time. He's got higher ambitions. He's wrecked the state and now wants a chance at the whole country. Who's going to be the next governor of this state? The question was asked to this panel of candidates. How would you grade Gavin Newsom on homelessness, on the issue of handling homelessness? Listen to Cut 21.

You have 60 seconds. I'm a notoriously tough grader, but I would probably give him a B on homelessness. I don't think this has been an easy problem to solve, but I do give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem. Wow, by the way, I'd love to be in your class, Katie, if you get a B for what Gavin Newsom's done on homelessness. My goodness, of course it's an F. It shames our state the situation with homelessness. That was Steve Hilton, one of the Republicans, formerly a Fox News weekend host, that British accent, with that witty comeback. I'd love to have you as a teacher if you got a B for this, Katie Porter. He says, of course, it's an F. How could it be anything other than an F? If you take and spend all this money and the problem gets worse. And notice she gives him a B, I'm a tough grader, I don't think so, tough grader on your staff maybe, Katie, and your husband by certain accounts. But not here. A gentleman's B for the governor, Gavin Newsom, on homelessness despite the outcomes. And I think the real money line there is I give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem. How can you not notice the problem when it's everywhere? And you've got to mean, think of the poop map. Sorry to be crude, but the poop map when Ron DeSantis debated Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis pulled out the poop map in San Francisco, Gavin Newsom's home state with all the human feces all over the city. You don't get credit for calling attention to the problem, especially if you've been calling attention to the problem for years and spending a lot of confiscated money. to combat the problem and it gets worse. It exacerbates. You don't get a B for that. But in the mind of Katie Porter, you do. What about Xavier Becerra? Former Congressman, former HHS Secretary of the United States under Biden. He was given that job admittedly because of the color of his skin. He had no experience. He was a disastrous HHS secretary during a pandemic, by the way. They just needed a Latino. They're like, all right, that guy. He's got. Good hair, good last name. Sounds Hispanic. Put him in there. And then they leaked undermining him for four years because he was so bad. His own administration was throwing him under the bus, but he wouldn't resign and they wouldn't fire him because no one would ever get fired by Joe Biden. Anyway, he's now running, of course, for governor of California, his home state. And with Eric Swalwell out for various reasons that we're now familiar with, he is. Back in the upper echelon of candidates, Pissera is. He's right up there now. What is his grade on homelessness for Gavin Newsom? Cut 22. What grade does he get on homelessness? And what, if anything, would you do differently? You have 60 seconds. Frank, I would say that the governor has made efforts. We've seen him come down to Los Angeles, actually go out and try to clean some of these streets. On effort, I would give him an A. Oh, look at these great efforts. He's even come to Los Angeles to try to do some cleaning. Would that be a photo op? On effort, I'd give him an A, A for effort, B from Katie Porter, you cannot improve a place if abject failures are given thumbs up by people who want the next gig, who want the job next. Oh.

Just you have to shake your head. This is California lefty politics. Now, there was also a question about these driver's licenses for illegal immigrants. And this has become a national issue because unfortunately there have been a lot of fatal accidents around the country. And it turns out the person behind the wheel of these big rigs in the country illegally, doesn't speak English, can't read the road signs. This has become a real problem. And some of these licenses are, in fact, issued, of course. out in the state of California. And this came up. Tom Steyer, the left-wing billionaire, who is, according to some polls, the leading candidate, he was asked about it, and he launched into a whole answer about prosecuting ICE for racial discrimination and racial profiling, which he was going on and on, thundering about how it's illegal and all this stuff. The question was about... English proficiency for truck drivers and he's going off on ice and wanting to slap handcuffs on federal officers and wanting a big legal defense fund for people who have been, quote, kidnapped by ICE. That was his answer. Then you had Katie Porter and her answer. I want you to hear this. I'll play it for you. Let's take a quick break. We'll come right back. This is what might be next in California. Could things actually maybe get worse than Gavin Newsom? I think they might. It's Guy Benson. We're just underway on this Thursday. Keep it here. In the swamp, not of the swamp. Guy Benson. Have you ever stopped and thought about what's actually powering your day, the coffee you made this morning, the drive you took to get here, even the device you're listening on it? I'm Tanner Faust, and that's exactly the kind of thing we're going to talk about on the energy tailgate, a podcast from Chevron. I'll be your host inviting guests to discuss big energy topics and what they mean for everyday life. all from the tailgate of our truck. This is the energy tailgate.

Should the CHP be giving English proficiency test to truck drivers? And if not, would U.S. governor push back against the Trump administration on this policy? You have 60 seconds. I would definitely push back on the Trump administration, and again, a reckless policy. I would make sure that that officer understands that he cannot discriminate against any driver without having a basis to do so. And let's stop with this whole racism thing and racial profiling and all of this garbage. We have to get over this. You either violated the law or you didn't. End of consequence. End of story. Consequences for bad behavior. The right answer here is clearly to hold the DMV accountable for ensuring that every driver on our roadway meets the qualifications for the license that they have. That's the appropriate entity to do this. All right, we're back on Guy Benson. Some sound bites from last night's debate in California. The last one was Matt Mahan, Mahan, Mahan. The mayor of San Jose, who's like a fairly sensible center-left Democrat. The middle answer, Chad Bianco, one of the Republicans, saying, like, enough of all the race baiting. You either violated the law or you didn't. Get over all this, like, racial garbage. And then the first answer there was Xavier Becerra. saying that, oh, yes, you would definitely push back on the Trump administration on a reckless policy. Now, this is about whether California should make sure that people driving trucks are proficient in English. That's the question. And I know that there's some controversy about a stop involving an officer. This is like the news hook. But because there is this problem about people who can't speak and read English. Some of whom are not in the country legally, driving big trucks all over the country being licensed commercially in states like California. I think it is a useful shortcut question like, is this a serious person or an insane person? Katie Porter has asked about this. What do you think about making sure that English proficiency is enforced for truck drivers? Her answer cut 26. I would absolutely fight the Trump administration because the job of the California governor is to protect Californians. And right now, that includes protecting them from Donald Trump. Protecting Californians also includes enforcing traffic laws. And we've seen sometimes a need for oversight in California. For example, we have seen that the Department of Motor Vehicles was not enforcing rules around DUIs and drivers who had convictions for that. I am stunned that Mr. Chad Bianco would say to black and brown Californians and immigrants who are being terrorized and racially profiled that you have to get over racism. That's her takeaway. And obviously she goes straight to Trump. Surprise, surprise. Look out, California. It might get worse. Rich Lowry coming up next. This is going to be an extremely busy month. I have to watch 104 soccer games. Follow the pregame, the post game, yell useless opinions at the TV. It's a lot. So I knew that when it comes to screening for colon cancer, the choice was clear. The Coligard Plus test. It can be used at home and can only take 15 minutes, so I can do it during halftime and not miss any action. If you are 45 or older and at average risk, ask your healthcare provider about screening for colon cancer with the Coligard test. You can also request a prescription at coligart.com.

Talking about the issues you care about, Guy Benson. We're back here on Guy Benson. Guy Benson.com is our online home, podcast free every day. With us now is Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, at Rich Lowry on social. Rich, always good to have you here. Thanks for having me. So the New York Times has once again platformed one Hasan Piker. He who has said in context that America deserved 9-11, that the Soviet should have won the Cold War, that he has no patriotism for America, that he admires the Chinese Communist Party, that the Butchers of Hamas are a thousand times better than Israel. I could go on and on, and we will hear. But the Times said, here's a guy we should definitely interview again. And they've given him. op-ed space before they've done glowing profiles of him and now this is a podcast interview him and this other leftist being interviewed in very sort of polite terms about among other things assassinations of business executives that Hasan Piker uh... things are problematic including Brian Thompson, who was the CEO of a health care company, Rich, as we all know, before he was gunned down in cold blood on the street in New York City, allegedly at the hands of a young man who is in custody and has something of a cult following among some on the dirtbag left. And Hasan Piker, in the New York Times interview, was asked about that murder, and here's how we talked about it in Cut 39. Engels wrote about the concept of social murder. And Brian Thompson as the United Health Care CEO. was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder, the systematized forms of violence, the structural violence of poverty, the for-profit paywalled system of health care in this country, and the consequences of that are... tremendous amounts of pain, tremendous amounts of violence, tremendous amounts of deaths. And that was a fascinating story from, for me, because America is very draconian about crime and punishment. They're very black and white on this issue. And yet, because of the pervasive pain that the private health care system... had created for the average American, I saw so many people immediately understand why this death had taken place. Why this death had taken place, a very interesting passive way of talking about a murder, while that was actually the term that he attached to the victim.

Brian Thompson, a social murderer because of the for-profit pain-causing health care system, private health care system in this country, even though there's a huge sprawling public health care system as well. And we see all sorts of extreme pain and agony and abuses in government-run health care systems just north of our border and across the ocean rich. I won't get into a whole health care debate here. But that was... Some rationalization of a murder euphemized as a death taking place, the victim of whom, the victim rather of which Hasan Piker described as a social murderer. This is just like being put out there by the New York Times. I don't really think that there are any guardrails left in our politics, on the left at least. Yeah, they really love this guy, as you point out. It's been on multiple podcasts and positive pieces and growing profiles from the times of this guy. Now, he did say later in the interview guy that he wouldn't himself kill, assassinate a health care executive. So at least there's that. But this notion of social murder is perverse. What angles was talking about is poverty. Poverty is bad. Poverty makes people unhealthy. It leads to early deaths. All that's true, but it's not murder. One, two, you should. establish a system that is best suited to reducing poverty, which is actually the one we have in the United States. Finally, as you point out, government-run health care would deny people care. That's how it works. That's how it decreases costs. So if someone's hurt by that and millions of people would be, and say Elizabeth Warren is HHS secretary, would it be to be justified just gunning her down on Massachusetts Avenue? Obviously not. This is hideously immoral and perverse. I want to just on that point, Rich, highlight an exchange that then happened on Twitter featuring this guy, Hasan Piker. So there was a story about this interview that Hasan Piker gave in the New York Times. And the tweet said in a New York Times interview, Hasan Piker says that many, quote, understand the killing of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson because Thompson himself was guilty of social murder. Okay, so that's the initial tweet. a conservative quote tweeted that reacting to it saying if someone kills Hasan Piker i won't support it but i'll understand it because Hasan Piker is guilty of yada yada yada so literally rich taking Hasan Piker's own language and standard and applying it to Hasan Piker himself and Hasan Piker apparently oblivious To this point that was being made, using his own words and standards against him, leapt into the conversation with extreme umbrage, saying this Israel lover wants another Israel critic murdered. What else is new? He's very, very upset that someone is calling for his murder, which is not what this guy did. This guy is only using Hasan Piker's own creepy language. And applying it to him. And I guess Hasan Piker is like not bright enough to understand that. But boy, that really upset him, Rich. Maybe we shouldn't be justifying people's murders. How about that, Hassan?

Yeah, so it's one thing to explain why people are complete morons about this and celebrated the murderer. But you can explain it and then say, but the murderer is horrible and these people are morons. That's not what he did. He obviously had a great degree of sympathy with this point of view if he doesn't actually share it itself. And then the hypocrisy, you know, no one should be killed in our country, but if it's thrown back at him. He's so upset. By the way, he's a member of the elite. He has something like, I think, a $2.7 million house in Los Angeles. If death is okay, another thing that Hasan Piker and others are saying in his pocket, why wouldn't he, why wouldn't he be fine to victimize him? Someone should go rob his house right now and take some nice stuff that they need, right? So it's kind of play, pretend play revolutionary. thought that these people were engaged in. You know, stealing lemons from Whole Foods and fantasizing about stealing from the loo, which, by the way, as a government institution or bank robberies, Piper said we should have more bank robberies. But whatever came around to them, they'd be appalled and feel victimized. We don't want it to come around to them, but it's not good for anyone. It's not good for them. Yeah, no, I think they're kind of just like doing this whole play-acting thing to some extent, but they're extremely influential at a lot of people follow and listen. So they might be sort of intellectually larping as these radicals and the things that he says really are extremely radical. And by the way, I'm not even sure that it's fair to describe his thoughts on the healthcare CEO murder as at least having some sympathy. If you look at some of the rants he's gone on, supporting like... murderous communist regimes supporting murderous terrorist organizations saying that we deserve 9-11. At one point, he suggested someone should go murder a sitting senator, I believe is Rick Scott of Florida. He talked about the streets needing to run red with the blood of the rich and that sort of thing. I think this guy is staked out a pretty clearly pro political violence position. And then the New York Times invites him in for this yet another. friendly interview and the headline by the way on the piece that accompanied this interview was the rich don't play by the rules so why should i and you're right they're talking a lot about stealing they're big into theft the question in the interview asked would you steal from the louv he says yes then there's this other leftist there with him Tolentino and was like very much in favor of it. Hasan Piker chimes back in. I think it's cool. We got to get back to cool crimes like bank robberies. Would you steal from Whole Foods? This other woman says yes, and I have. She brags that she has stolen from companies. And then in comes Hasan Piker to explain why it's a good thing. He's like, well, actually, if you think about it, I'm in favor of stealing from big corporations. That is a direct quote. I am pro stealing from big corporations because they steal quite a bit from their workers. And he says all the theft is actually already, you know, factored into the bottom line. They are building not just justifications.

for murder, which is extra bad, but also for petty theft and other forms of crime and saying that not only are they excusable, but they're, in fact, good. And in this woman's case, in fact, something she has done herself. This is what, like, high-level intellectual discourse now that the New York Times feels like is worthy of its audience? Interesting. I just can't tell you. The lemons is not the worst part of this conversation that we just hit on. But I just found that so repellent. It is so fundamental to morality. You don't take things that aren't yours. If I'm in a grocery store buying a lot of stuff and the clerk misses something, I pointed out. Please charge me for this because it's not mine. If your child steals a lemon from the whole foods, you punish the child severely. Actually, Tyker mentioned how his dad punished him severely for stealing a friend's Pokemon cards. That is the normal human... reaction. And this woman goes on, this is how perverse it is. Near the end, she says, she's asked, you know, what things should be legal and what should. And she's like, wow, it's hard to answer because there's so many things that are so terrible that are legal in this country. Like, I get an iced coffee and a plastic cup, and that's terrible. Yep. But something that should be legal, probably like blowing up pipelines. No, she literally in the same paragraph, Rich. She said that. getting an iced coffee in a plastic cup is basically criminal and therefore things like domestic terrorism are justified i'm just sort of like wondering is there an outer limit is there a left edge that supposedly respectable institutions like the New York Times or the Democratic Party, like are there any guardrails on the left at all? Because I'm just trying to think, here is someone in Hasan Piker who has said out loud, we deserved. He wouldn't say we because he hates the country, but the United States deserved 9-11. And he's campaigned with people who are, in some cases, like explicitly. pro-terrorism or terrorism sympathetic, and he is himself. And Democrats are like, throwing their arms open, asking him to come campaign with them, and the New York Times has him on in various forms frequently. I just, I can't imagine, for example, his equivalent of a, you know, right-wing neo-Nazi type person being given, like, a contracted Fox News, for example. It would be a massive scandal. We would never do it. Yes. And yet...

This is now like, you know, the Obama Podbrose have this guy on, and he's very much in the mainstream, and it feels like the reason I talk about Hasan Piker so much, and I prefer not to, I am just very worried that the opposition party for now, and at some point they won't be the opposition party, a party in power in this country, is becoming the party of Hasan Piker. Yeah, so it's a little bit like the New York Post having a podcast with Nick Volenta. It's right. hosting a friendly conversation with Nick Fuentes. That would never happen, right? But this is a guy who's supporting a form of terrorism, clearly, and is friendly to Talitarianism, said bad thing the Soviet Union fell. He said Mao is a great leader. That's just that kind of person. He might exist in the right-wing, the equivalent and the right-wing podcast sphere, but he's not a respectable figure. He's not welcomed. by mainstream outlets. And here in the New York Times, because it basically shares that point of view, or these shares the idea that our system is deeply corrupt, so these are at least things thinking, worth thinking about, they'll have someone like that on. It's outrageous. Yeah, I think the Wall Street Journal is actually the good comparison here, the parallel. If they were like, oh, here for our seventh interview with Nick Fuentes, Nick Fuentes reflects on why it's okay to steal from Jews and perhaps violence against blacks is underscored. Is that something that you can imagine being accepted? That is what we are living through right now already with this guy in the New York Times and some of these other entities. Rich, I do want to ask you about a few other stories very quickly. The SPLC indictments and the revelation that apparently they were. giving millions of dollars to these hardcore hate groups that they were ostensibly fighting against. It's their whole raise on debtor to raise money and go do this. They're saying they were just paid informants. There was nothing wrong with that, but they don't do it anymore and won't do it ever again. But some of the people that were getting lots of money are actually leaders in these hate groups. I'll leave the legal side to legal experts, but the whole thing is extremely strange and creepy. For SPLC, which is an organization I've held in low regard for a very long time, but your reaction to these revelations. Well, it's highly embarrassing, obviously, and these were leaders. They weren't just foot soldiers, or they weren't just a friend of a friend who might hear something about what these organizations were doing. There are people who are presidents and chairmen and imperial wizards, and I don't know a lot about the economics of the clan, but I imagine being an imperial wizard is not a very lucrative. position. So if you're getting $300,000 over the course of several years from the SPLC, that very well might keep you in the racism business. And a sign that they're kind of working both sides of the fence here, some of the people they were funding actually showed up on their hate list. It's perverse, makes no sense, clearly corrupt and wrong. They've implicitly admitted it by stopping this, whether they're guilty of a crime. I'm a little skeptical. I think they'll have defenses, illegal defenses of this, but

But it's a shameful practice. Yeah, I mean, it should certainly put them out of business just based on what they were doing. And can you imagine being a good faith donor to them thinking that you're fighting hate when, in fact, you're funding it so they can then point to it and denounce it and put it on the map and ask for more money? Wow. I mean, what... What a grift, to put it mildly. Rich Lowry, we've got to leave it there for now. Check out one of Rich's latest pieces, which is San Francisco's latest radical experiment. They're actually enforcing some laws, if you can believe it. And it's going better as a result, something that we've talked about recently. Check that out at national review.com. And Rich is a syndicated columnist as well. Rich, always enjoy it. Thank you. Thanks, Guy. We'll be right back after this short break. Miss a minute. Miss a lot. Guy Benson. With the all-new Dynasty Blueprint in EA Sports College Football 27, you can build your program by earning Dynasty points to spend on NIL, staff, and more. But the fun doesn't end at graduation. With the EA Sports MVP bundle, get College Football 27, Madden, NFL 27, plus deluxe edition rewards in both games. Make your rise with the MVP bundle, available now at EA.com. Rated E for everyone with mild lyrics, user interact, and in-game purchases, includes random items, conditions, and restrictions apply. See the link for more info.

Back here on Guy Benson, there's some reports that there could be a deal in the works to try to save, quote-unquote, spirit airlines, the discount airline that charges you for, like, everything short of bathroom breaks. The rescue package, according to an online report, it's being reported out, that the Trump administration is working on could give the U.S. government an option to own a large chunk of the company of the carrier once it emerges from bankruptcy. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas saying this is an absolutely terrible idea. I agree with him. Cruz writes, the TARP corporate bailouts were a huge mistake, and the government doesn't know a damn thing about running a failed budget airline, parentheses, that the Biden administration killed. We've now seen this a few times. I think Trump likes this idea of taking American companies that are going down the tubes and saying, well, we're actually going to take a stake, a government stake in you, which is not exactly something that I'm... fond of at all as a conservative. And I know sometimes there has been an argument made like, oh, well, this is actually important for this reason when it comes to national security, skeptical of those arguments still. But that certainly doesn't apply to spirit freaking airlines. No thank you. Taxpayers should have no part of this. This is not a way to run a government. And I do not like seeing any administration. doing this sort of thing, especially one that's a Republican administration. No thank you. It's a hard no from me. When we come back, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the latest out of Iran, really important conversation right on the horizon. Keep it here.

Need a laptop that's built to perform and designed to last all day? Select Windows 11 PCs starting at 49999 are now at Best Buy. Learn more at Best Buy.com. Best Buy. Imagine that. Generation of Conservative Talk. Right here, right now. Fair, fun, and backed by the trusted voices and reporting resources of Fox News. Fox News. You're listening to Guy Benson. And now, here's your host, Guy Benson. It's a new hour here on Guy Benson. Thursday edition, thanks for tuning in. Guy Benson.com, the website here, podcast, always free when the show is over. Catch me this evening on the bottom line, 630 or so Eastern Time Fox Business Network. Fox News Alert. Dow shedding 180 points at the closing bell today, finishing the day at 49,309 as the seesaw continues over Iran and oil prices and jitters. Meanwhile, a lot of the polling, not looking good at all for Trump and the Republicans at the moment, heading into the midterms, something that we will keep a close eye on because the numbers that are coming out, especially in the last couple of days, very ugly for the GOP. That being said, let's talk about the mission in Iran and where things stand with Mark Dubowitz, who is CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks, Guy. I honored to be on. I want to start with this. There was a little controversy, and we addressed it earlier in the week, wherein a sitting Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, from Connecticut, had tweeted the word awesome. in response to amplifying a report that there were a bunch of ships getting through our naval blockade against the Iranian regime. He then came out and clarified that he was just being sarcastic. Other people's... Other people had noted his sort of sorted history of boosting the regime in certain ways, but at the very least, he was sharing what appeared to be misinformation, disinformation from the regime, sarcasm or not aside. Well, then the next day, the Financial Times put out a story that, again, purported to show that, yes, that the naval blockade was being breached somewhat regularly by dozens of vessels, and that story was shared excitedly across social media. And then CENTCOM had to put out a whole statement denying it, saying over the past 24 hours, media reports have alleged that several commercial ships evaded the blockade. And they went on to say, these reports are inaccurate and they gave more details. You reacted to that, noting that you were puzzled.

why the news media keeps making these errors that always seem to redound to the benefit of Iran's narrative and never to Americas. Do you have a theory on why that might be, Mark? Guy, it's puzzling. I mean, I don't understand. You're a U.S. senator. You're an American journalist. At the end of the day, you may have your political differences with President Trump and the Republicans, but surely you'd be rooting for the United States or America over the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has spent 47 years killing, torturing, maiming, and kidnapping thousands of Americans. So I'm just not sure why the media just keeps getting... the fact's wrong, except to say that there's a narrative, and a narrative is always the Islamic Republic of Iran is winning, and Donald Trump's America is losing. And I think that's because people have Trump derangement syndrome, or they have a political agenda that certainly eclipses their patriotism or their desire to see America prevail over this terrorist state. Yeah, they want... failure. There's a failure narrative seated from moment one. I'm sure some of it's coming from, you know, foreign entities, but some of it is just good old natural. partisan tribalism here in the United States where a journalist and others and elected officials and commentators, etc., they see basically an unsubstantiated report or rumor that looks bad for the U.S. war effort, and they get very excited about it because that means Donald Trump is failing and they can pile on, and they don't even bother to pause to wait and see if the report is correct. And in this case, there's a few other prominent examples that could come to mind. They are incorrect statements, quite possibly enemy disinformation put out there. And sorry, I trust CENTCOM coming out and saying this is not happening. Unless there's reason to believe, Mark, and you cover this very closely, you're very well-sourced in that world. Is there any reason to believe that our Pentagon is lying and that this blockade is leaking like a sieve? I think there's no reason to believe that. I mean, whatever you think of... President Trump, when your politics lie, that the men and women of the U.S. military are people of great patriotism and great honesty. And particularly, I mean, General Kane, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Bradley Cooper, who is the Sencom commander. These are men who've served in uniform for decades. And, I mean, Sencom will, you know, admit when facts are wrong, but it's... a good chunk of its time, not only fighting the Islamic Republic of Iran militarily, but fighting what you mentioned guy, which is this...

informational warfare campaign that Iran is running very successfully in the West, in Western media and in Western political circles. And it's not just in the United States, it's all of the world. Give the regime in Iran it's due. They can't fight militarily, but they are very adept at understanding the factors and fissures within our democracy and working to intensify those in ways that help them win narrative wars. Well, it's a shame that there is You talk about supply and demand that there's so much demand for even made up bad news about our military campaign against this Islam-Fascist regime. Even if you don't care about the U.S. and even if you hate Donald Trump and don't think much of our military, at least you might pretend to care about the people of Iran, tens of thousands of whom were slaughtered in the streets just recently as they were trying to rise up against these awful... demons that have run the regime for so long. And now we're down to like the C and D team because the A and B teams at the top have been largely killed in this supposed failure. And I don't even want to call it that sarcastically because it has been such a spectacular success in so many ways. And yet there is a question, Mark, about what is now realistic if we want to end this in a way that can be described? Totally honestly, as a success without it going on and on indefinitely month after month. And I wonder what you make of this ceasefire. I'm a little skeptical that it's going to do any good. I wonder what you make of all the rumors about what Iran might be willing to agree to or not. I'm not sure who would be doing the agreeing to and whether they can be trusted even if they mean it to implement it. As I hear these reports from General Keene and others that there's lots of military targets that we still have on our list, I'm just wondering, is there a way to just end the ceasefire, do the remaining bombing that we have to, and then put a bow on things in a way that is not perfect, and, you know, the regime will be shaky, and maybe they'll get overthrown from within at some point, but we can at least walk away saying we have... achieved our core objectives and whatever happens next, we'll be keeping a close eye on. I just wonder, that was a lot to throw at you. What's a realistic endgame here? Well, I think the endgame was defined by President Trump on February 28th when he announced major military operations and that the core objectives are to severely degrade the war-making capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and that is missile, nuclear. Navy Air Force, right? I mean, you know, since the beginning of time, it has always been a very well-understood military objective that you need to weaken your enemy and you need to destroy that enemy's ability to protect power and to threaten you. And I think the United States military has done a superb job working very closely with our Israeli ally, which has really flown peer-to-peer. It's Air Force with our Air Force. It's probably supplied about 70% of the intelligence for targeting. that's been used in this campaign. And I don't think we've ever gone a war, even in World War II, when the Brits were an effective but junior partner with a country that is able to actually operate it peer to peer. So the two forces have done devastating damage to Iran's nuclear program and war-making capability. We've also put a huge squeeze on the Iranian economy. It's cost the regime about $300 billion in direct damage. Every day that goes by, Guy.

It's costing another half billion dollars because of Trump's counter blockade. It's really brilliant stroke where he responded to the Iranian blockade by basically cutting off Iran's access to its ports in the street and not being able to export its oil to China or import the key commodities and goods and needs to power its economy. So it is leaving a demolished enemy. Now, even if that enemy remains standing, I think President Trump has said, The Iranian people now have an opportunity to take back their country. The vast majority, 85, 90% of Iranians despise the regime. They've been on the streets repeatedly six, seven times in the past 20 years. I have no doubt they're coming back. And I think it is... both pragmatically and morally incumbent upon us to provide maximum support to Iranians to take back their country. That doesn't mean American boots on the ground. It means Iranian boots on the ground. Those millions of Iranians who want to bring down the Islamic Republic. But, Mark, in terms of it, we only have about a minute and a half left, sorry to jump in, but like. It seems like the core objectives we've kind of done. So are we done? Can we just be like, all right, it's over? Or do you think there's a little bit more work to be done in terms of bombing more of their assets? And then we can say, all right, they are, you know, they're devastated. They're set way back. Maybe keep the blockade in place to squeeze them economically. And if they get serious about real talks, you know, we're open to those. I just wonder, do you think that? the bombing is over, or is there still a little bit of work that can be done before, you know, a victory, a meaningful victory can be declared, and this thing can be either wound down or ended? Well, according to Sancom, they've taken out 70 to 80 percent of the targets, which means 20 to 30 percent remaining. I think most of those targets are missiles. and launchers and missile production capabilities, which we don't want them to reconstitute because that represents a deadly threat to U.S. embassy around the region, to U.S. allies, to U.S. forces, and ultimately, they're trying to build an intercontinent a ballistic missile to threaten the American homeland. So I think that is remaining targets. There's still some nuclear targets like Pickax Mountain, which is buried underground, which we need to do something about, either through negotiations or through military action. But, yeah, I mean, I think another week or two of bombing. And I think President Trump has hinted at this. If there are hard men stand in the way of a negotiated deal. Yeah, he's going to be like, all right, ceasefire over and just unleash the hounds one more time. Mark, let's keep in touch on this. I really value your insight, your analysis online. We'll have you back. Mark Dubowitz of FDD on Guy Benson. With that, we'll be right back. Thanks, Mark. New Talk for a New Generation, Guy Benson.

This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market's summer fruit fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic, and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt. Build a grazing board with fresh fruit, prosciutto, and artisanal cheese. Then fire up the grill with no antibiotics ever proteins and fresh produce. Savor the season. Shop summer fruit fest at Whole Foods Market. I'm Guy Benson. We are back. I saw a tweet on X today. You can follow me, Guy Benson. And it sort of stopped me in my tracks. And it was put out there by an online book club that describes itself as fast-growing and devoted to the studying and preservation of the great texts of Western civilization. Great. Here's the tweet. Insane to think this is a real SAT exam question. Attention spans are now so bad that some quote-unquote reading passages are just 24 words. We are becoming an illiterate society. Why is nobody talking about this? I would quibble real quick. I don't think we're becoming illiterate. I think we're becoming, in some ways, post-literate with no attention span, which may devolve into a form of illiteracy and certainly ignorance. But this is apparently a real SAT question. I took the SATs. I remember it well. That whole process, high stakes, wanted to get a certain score to get into my dream school, which I did, by the way. It's not to brag. I remember my score and all of that. We won't get into it. It's on a 1600 scale for a long time. Then they went up to 2,400. I guess it's now back to 1600 last I heard. There's also the ACT, much more prevalent in the Midwest and the South. But there have been at least reports and rumors and conversations about the watering down of these standards within the standardized tests. And I'm sure it's been true. We're seeing reduced standards all over the place. Decline is a choice. And our society, in far too many cases, is making that choice. We're choosing it. But I didn't realize it was necessarily this bad. So this is one of the reading passages that you remember this. You had to read. And then they'd ask you questions about it's like reading comprehension and then some like critical thinking. related questions. Here it is. It's labeled question 11. The following text is from David Barclay Moore's 22 novel, Holler of the Fireflies. The narrator has just arrived at summer camp, which is far away from his home. And then here's the text. This is the reading passage. This place was different than I thought it would be. I'd never been somewhere like this before. I did feel scared, but also excited. Here's the question on this SAT question, which is administered I'll remind you to like high school juniors. According to the text, how does the narrator feel about being at summer camp? A, overjoyed, B, peaceful, C, scared and excited, or D, angry and jealous. It's a three-sentence passage.

One of which is, I did feel scared, but also excited, which is not exactly high literature to begin with. And then answer C, which is the correct answer, ladies and gentlemen, scared and excited verbatim. That's your answer. That is on the SAT. And I understand that there are some easy gimmies and then some harder questions, which is how the SAT has always been. I tweeted like, can this possibly be real? Come on. And in fact, there are free SAT practice tests, someone that I know who's involved with working with teenagers, said that she actually did this with them just to kind of see how it was going. It's been a long time since she did an SAT or ACT. So she's like, yeah, let me just check in on the SAT. And she said with no prep, zero studying, she scored far better on the current test than she did back when she took it years and years ago when she was actively preparing for it. She said all the questions about reading comprehension and reading passages were profoundly short. She's like, yep, some questions are harder. Some are supposed to be easy as a baseline. But overall, they've, as she put it, nerfed the SAT. I'm still just sort of astounded that that's an SAT question. I mean, the sliding toward the abyss is... Rather real, I would say, in the education space, and we've got to reverse it. And I'm open to the idea that this was just like a very beginning, simple, simple question. But the fact that that's even on there, for a high school student, three sentences, and then the verbatim answer, like, as option C, for that to even be the easy question on the SAT. That should be the easy question for, like, a second grader. Anyway, I was just thinking back to my own days of SAT studying and preparation and stress and all of that. And it does seem like we are a far cry from those days. And now I feel like I'm being the old crotchety back in my day. But back in my day, yes, the SATs were not a complete joke. And now I wonder if someone's scoring, you know, a perfect score on these tests, is that... as impressive as it once was. I'm definitely not sure about that anymore. Maybe I'll have to go and download one of these practice tests and see how I do. Maybe I would totally ace it. Probably not on the math. I think my math skills have almost certainly atrophied because I had to really prepare on the math side of it because that does not come naturally to me. So I probably boot that one pretty badly. But the verbal side? Yeah. I think this question, question number 11, it's labeled, suggests that it might be fairly easy to do well on this portion of the test these days. Okay, little rant over. I'll stop yelling at the cloud, but it's a cloud that's a standardized test. So it kind of matters about our standards and proficiencies as a society. Just saying, we'll take a break. We'll come right back. KT. McFarland is here when we return.

Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswinshop.com with code FNRadio 20. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31st, 2026. Must be 21 order to order. Please drink responsibly. Guy Benson, sponsored by Previgin. Previgin, made for your brain. Half time here on Guy Benson on this Thursday. Thank you for tuning in. Guy Benson.com. Podcast is free every day on demand. Bonus Guy Benson on the weekends as well. With us now, KT. McFarland, former Trump Deputy National Security Advisor. She's worked under four Republican presidential administrations. KT., great to have you. It's a pleasure. Thank you, Guy. So there was a report earlier this afternoon that Iran's parliamentary speaker, and it's not exactly anything close to a democracy, but they do have some sort of legislative body. And the speaker in that body has reportedly resigned from the negotiation team with the U.S. following, this is according to Channel 12 in Israel, intervention from the IRGC. And then we just saw a short time ago simultaneous... public statements from two members of the negotiating team, the foreign minister and the Speaker of Parliament, same guy, saying that everything's fine, insisting that everyone is unified. They may protest too much here, KT. It seems like things are a mess on the Iranian side. Yeah, they're unraveling. And it's to be expected that they're unraveling, right? We've eliminated the top tier of their leadership in the military, in the civilian leadership, and the clerical leadership. And now we're at the second tier, third tier. And I think that what's happened is that we now see what's been going on all along, which is that it's a military dictatorship, that the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, which owns probably 60, 70 percent of the Iranian economy, something like 70 percent of the Iranian oil. that they're like a mafia gang that controls a lot of the Iranian industry, that they're really, the guys in the guns are calling the shots, not the guys in the suits. So what does that mean? Because on one level, is it better to be dealing with a military dictatorship where people might be more in it for self-preservation power money than they are for hardcore theocratic reasons, which may be less? negotiable like less flexible morally or is the IRGC so hardcore so evil that that's worse if they're the ones who are really still left pulling the strings and you're trying to deal with them Well, we don't know. And that's why I think the important thing that President Trump has done is put so much economic pressure. You know, we always knew that when I was in a Reagan administration, the Iranians tried to shut down the straight-of-form moves. That's always been their last move on the chessboard, but it's not our last move. And so when they shut down the straight-of-form moves and everyone said, oh, gosh, this is terrible oil prices are going to go up.

Castelline prices are going out. President Trump's in political trouble. All of the European economies and the Chinese economy are all in bad trouble. You know, yes, but then President Trump waited patiently until the Strait of Formuz was closed and then imposed the blockade. And he was able to do the blockade because we already had so many ships and an armada to probably three-carrier strike groups in the region. So we had the capability of doing that. Now, who's in charge, who's negotiating, who's speaking for whom? Only time will tell, but what it shows to me is whoever is in charge, and I do think it's been the IRGC for a long time, that if they're willing to do all the things that I've just said with their position at the straight of removes, can you imagine how they would help hell the world hostage if they had nuclear weapons? Oh, yeah, totally. I think that is one of, if not the number one key point in all of this. That being said, I'm trying to understand what the value is. in these negotiations and agreeing to a ceasefire and then extending the ceasefire in order to get some sort of, you know, unified response or counteroff or whatever, if they are at each other's throats and there were reports just days ago, the economists had this, that the Pakistani mediators were trying to like calm down intensive volcanic infighting within the Iranian delegation itself. If that's the shambolic state that they're in. Does it make sense for the U.S. to be negotiating with whatever that is? Because even if they reach a deal that seems satisfactory to us, can they actually get it done or will other factions over there block the implementation of something that's agreed to? I guess the question is, isn't there a case to say, you guys clearly have not been brought to heal yet? And so the bombing resumes and the blockade continues for another few weeks. And then we'll maybe talk down the line. You know, yes, I think there's a lot to be said to the – who's favors time, right? Where is the clock going? Now, a lot of people would say to you, oh, well, President Trump's going to be in so much trouble because gasoline prices are going to go up so high and we have an election coming up. He's going to have a terrible time. He's going to be wiped out. He's going to lose everything at the midterms. On the other hand, if you look at the economy of Iran lately, they don't have much time at all. They are on the precipice of being squeezed to the point that they have no choice but to make major, major concessions? Here's why. So Iran... Something like $250 billion, million dollars goes into Iran every day of consumer goods that are going into Iran. Either consumer goods or things that they need for their manufacturing. That's not happening. Those ships are not going in. Also, the ships that are taking oil that historically take oil from Iran and then go out into the world, Iran makes about $250 million a day of revenue. That's not happening. So Iran is losing, let's say, $3 billion a week. They don't have huge reserves. So they start running out of money to run their government. And then the real time squeeze for them is the actual oil itself. So oil comes out of the ground in a well. It goes in a pipeline. The pipeline goes across from mainland Iran onto Karg Island in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz, where under normal circumstances, that pipeline puts the oil in the empty tanker, which gets filled and goes on its merry way. That's not happening. There are no empty tankers there.

they're not getting through the blockade. And any tankers that have oil in them, they're not getting through the blockade either. So what starts happening in the whole production system is it gets backed up. It's not easy. You can't just flip the switch and turn off the well without enormous damage to the wells. You can't stop the pipeline without enormous damage. John Casamatidis, who was in the oil distribution business, he said the last time there was a major crisis with oil. Canada, with Canadians at that time, were selling it for $3 a barrel because they knew that they had to get the oil out of their pipelines and had to put it somewhere, and they would sell it for just about any price. So if Iran is in that desperate a situation in a week's time, say, that their whole entire energy industry, their oil industry, upon which they get all of their economy is based, ceases to exist and would take 10 years to rebuild, I think they're going to be pretty desperate to cut a deal. Let me ask you about our alliances. I've been very critical of some, quote-unquote, allied countries. Let me give a positive word about one that is being really helpful, actually. You may have seen these reports. The Ukrainians who now have a lot of experience and know-how when it comes to drone warfare, both offensive and defensive. The Iranian drones have done some damage to some of our... facilities and aircraft in that region over the course of this war. And the Ukrainians are now reportedly engaged in helping the U.S. training on drone technology and... actively coming to our aid on that front. So Bravo to Ukraine, behaving like an ally. Of course, they have a vested interest in our support as well, given the enemy that they face in that ongoing war. But they're acting like an ally here and helping us, and Volodymyr Zelensky's called out Iran and their drone program and the alliance that the Mullahs have, and to an extent, still have with Russia. And you've seen a lot of sort of awkward silence from the Europeans. who love to fly their Ukrainian flags and wag their finger at us about Ukraine. And here's the Ukrainian leader blasting Iran and Europe, for the most part, being totally useless at best in this war effort against the death to America regime. So you've got the Ukrainians on one hand. And on the other hand, you just have numerous NATO allies who are... Again, at best, doing nothing and being useless, but at worst, being actively unhelpful. The French now apparently warning that they're going to sanction the Israelis, our partners in all of this. Spain, not letting us use their airspace, just like the French, not letting us use our own bases. We are the security partner, the senior security partner in this alliance. The Spanish are... extra laggards on all of this and not living up to their obligations. And then when we need the bare minimum from them, they're not giving it to us. Is there a real problem ahead for NATO? Not just in Donald Trump's mind, but in the minds of a lot of American foreign policymakers because I don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There's a lot of really good allies in NATO and maybe voters can make some better decisions over in Europe. But right now, as a longtime NATO fan, I'm pretty disgusted with certain members of the alliance.

And you study this state craft and alliances for a very long time, KT. I wonder how you're feeling and what you make of all of this. I guess I'm kind of stunned. I'm stunned and I shouldn't be stunned. You know, I mean, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan went to Margaret Thatcher and went to the Europeans and said, don't buy Russian oil. Don't buy Russian natural gas. Don't build these pipelines. Donald Trump said don't become dependent upon Russia. It's going to be a political liability for you. So what happens when the Ukraine war starts? Do you think the Europeans then said, okay, we're going to sacrifice so we won't buy Iranian. I mean, we won't buy Russian? No, they brought Russian war. They made it possible for Russia to continue to fight in Ukraine. They paid for Russia to have the money to pay for the war. So that's their first hypocrisy. And then they complained to the United States that we weren't doing enough. And so here they are, having now been a position where they've made deliberate decisions for the last 20 years to deindustrialize, right? They have no economic growth. They may have energy in their own countries. Britain has, you know, the North Sea oil. Britain is sitting on one of the greatest shale deposits in the world. They won't use it for all their green agenda issues. So they have no economic growth. So they've deindustrialized. They don't make things anymore that anybody wants to buy. They've demilitarized. They don't have any military equipment. They could defend themselves. They can't defend themselves in the Gulf. And they don't even have a defense industrial base so that they can ramp up quickly. And yet... That extreme vulnerability, they never even took the steps to defend themselves. And now they have the audacity to complain to the United States that, hey, wait a minute, you need to open this straight. You need to absolutely protect us. Oh, but we're not going to help. We're not going to do anything. It's all your problem, your fault. They'll, in fact, impede and, you know, jeer from the sidelines. It's not just what they're saying, but as you point out, we can't even use the airspace to overfly aircraft. We can't even go on a basis of America built with our money to refuel our aircraft. So I think when the Iran war is over, and I think it will be over within five, six weeks at the most, then I think there should be a real serious reassessment of our situation with Europe. And it's possible that maybe what the United States looks at, instead of being Eurocentric, will be Western Hemisphere-centric. We will focus on the country's nearest to us, most important to us, for our trade and our security, and make them the center of our universe, not the old capitals of Europe, who really have been freeloading for a long time and now complain, do nothing but complain, gripe, and well, I won't use the words. Yeah, I know what you mean. And look, you look at an actual superb ally militarily and in terms of intelligence, and that's Israel. And much of Europe hates them. Much of the American left hates them as well. You have the Arab world also on board with us being much more helpful almost across the board compared to what we're seeing out of Europe. And again, I'm not here just to dump on Europe and say, all right, forget about it. The transatlantic partnership is dead. I don't think that's true. But there does seem like there has to be some kind of reckoning. I don't understand. I went through some of the chapter and verse on Spain in particular. How can they get away with not meeting their obligations to NATO? And then just have the audacity to be this aggressively awful about us when we're trying to do something. Why do they get to be in NATO? If there are requirements that they don't meet, why do they stay? And what's the point for us to stay? Those are questions that I didn't think I'd be asking any time in the near future. And yet here I am asking them, Katie, because I'm pretty fed up with not all, but several of these countries, sadly, including the Brits, right now.

And I think you're right to point out, we have new allies now. We have new allies to Gulf Arabs. If you and I had this conversation two years ago, and we would say, well, the Gulf Arabs are going to align with Israel and the United States against Iran. We would have all laughed. Well, the Gulf Arabs have never supported Israel. Now they do. That's a new alliance structure. A lot of that is because of President Trump's own diplomacy and economic diplomacy starting in his first term. But, you know, the old rules are done. The World Chess Board is changing. 2006 is going to go down to the year that everything changed, whether it's in the U.S. relationship with Europe, whether it's what's happening right now in the Middle East, whether it's trade with China. All of those things are going to change. And the good old always kept the peace for 70 years. We should keep doing what we've always done. No, I just think that we now are going to have a major reassessment. We do not have infinite resources. So Europeans can afford to protect themselves. choose not to. It's about time they're forced to. Yeah, I did see a report today that the Germans say that they're going to really ramp up their military by 2039. So that's fairly distant, but yeah, I guess it's good to have goals and it's better than the alternative like we're seeing in Spain. But that, if that's a bright spot by 2039, again, I think that underscores part of the issue here. KT. McFarland, former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Trump. She's worked for four American presidents across her career. Katie, as always, thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you. When we come back, a fact check. Next. A fresh perspective on the topics of the day. It's Guy Benson. Back on Guy Benson. Headline from the Texas Tribune. Immigrants with DACA were protected from deportation. But since Trump's return, the government has arrested nearly 300 DACA recipients, including 75, in Texas. So these would be the so-called Dreamers. And I am very sympathetic to the plight of the Dreamers. People brought to the U.S. as young children. Through no fault of their own, right? They were not making the decisions. Adults brought them here. They've only known this country. And so I kind of like the idea of saying, if you stick around and play by the rules, we can give you a path to legal status at least to stay here and not punish you for the sins of your parents. Now, I also get that that turns on a magnet and incentivizes certain behaviors, which we have to discourage by other policies, such as shutting down the border, which President Trump has done. Now you've got to keep it shut. But just for that population, I've always been sympathetic to the dreamers, even if I think there was an abuse of power and overreach by President Obama in setting up DACA the way that he did. This is a group that I think is seen most favorably among the American public. And I get that. If you want... to engender sympathy among Americans for a particular population of illegal immigrants, it would be the dreamers near or at the top of the list. So I understand why you would want to highlight the apparently very disturbing development that under the Trump administration over the last year plus, a few hundred of them have been arrested for potential deportation because under DACA, they're supposed to be shielded from that sort of thing.

But then you have to actually look at the fine print and the details, which is what the Texas Tribune leaves out of this social media post. They want people thinking, oh my gosh, they're rounding up the dreamers. Isn't that mean-spirited and awful and against the overall ethos that we have in this country? By the way, 300, nearly 300, it's not even that's like 270 or so, across the whole country, isn't that many. That was the first little red flag in my thinking like, that's actually awfully low, 75 in the entire state of Texas. So while they are blasting this out, blowing their bugle, look at this emergency, our colleague Bill Malugian swoops in with a fact check, furnished by the Department of Homeland Security and their own statistics. Would you know, would you believe? That 92% of those arrested, the 270 who were arrested, who are DACA recipients, the Dreamers, 92% of them have, wait for it, criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. I'm all for the Dreamers. If you play by the rules, you're on some thin ice, you've got to respect our laws. If you want this arrangement to remain palatable to most Americans, I'm among those most Americans. If you're now getting convicted of crimes and committing crimes, the deal is off. And it is not outrageous to be arresting DACA recipients who are committing crimes representing 92% of the population mentioned in this. tear-jurker sob story-minded headline. The fine print matters a lot, and the media often tries to obscure information like this. Thank you, Bill, for that reality check. Final hour of Guy Benson coming up next, I want to play you a soundbite that I find very disturbing about the future of our politics from a famous political pundit. We'll tell you all about it coming up.

Raise your glass to Guy Benson Happy Hour. Brought to you by the Finnish Long Drink. Finland's most popular alcoholic beverage is taking America by storm. Visit thelongdrink.com. And now, here's Guy Benson. It's the happy hour here on Guy Benson, our final hour of three on this Thursday edition of the program. Grateful to you for listening. Thank you for that every day. Guy Benson.com is our website. The podcast is free on a daily basis on demand, including bonus Guy Benson on the weekends. This radio hour brought to you by the finish long drink. It's so good. Very refreshing. It is alcoholic, so please drink responsibly. 21 plus only the longdrink.com. Catch me tonight on the bottom line, FBN, coming up in the next hour. I was on Fox and Friends this morning, so a long day at the proverbial office here, but we love to see it. So catch you there before we do it all again tomorrow. Well, as we enter this final hour, I want to address something. That I think is important, and it plays into the conversation we've been having now for weeks, frankly, really months, actually, at this point. But intensively, over the last couple of days, as it pertains to Virginia and the gerrymandering power grab scheme from the Democrats. And you might say, all right, guy, you've had your say already on Virginia. We get it. Most of us don't live in Virginia. Why do we keep hammering away at this? And the answer is, the microcosm situation in Virginia is coming to a state or a country near you if the left gets its way. I think about Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, who, based on the polling, is very likely to become Speaker of the House in a matter of months, his overall approach to politics as articulated by him. is, quote, maximum warfare everywhere all the time. He was talking about this in regard to gerrymandering and power grabs. And if Republicans retaliate for the Democrats retaliation, for the Republicans retaliation, for whatever it is on redistricting. And if you missed my lengthy monologue on that yesterday, please go back in the middle hour. Catch it at Guy Benson's show.com. I think it gives a lot of important context. I won't rehash it here. But Hakeem Jeffries was basically warning if Florida Republicans move forward with their thoughts, their plan, their potential idea. to redraw the map in their state, to add Republican seats, they will be fought aggressively with this mindset, maximum warfare everywhere all the time. And the thing is, it does not pertain exclusively to redistricting. And I would just note here that if the Supreme Court, as expected, alters the...

Voting Rights Act and the implications of that law when it comes to districts, especially in the South, there will be negative ramifications for the left, for the Democrats when it comes to seats in the House. That will be the natural outgrowth of such a ruling. And if and when, the U.S. Census Bureau does not royally screw up their job in 2030 like they did in 2020. And if you think I'm picking on them, then yes, you're right, actually. They deserve to be picked on. They have one major job every 10 years, and they admitted that they blew it in around a dozen states. And that really ended up disproportionately benefiting blue states and harming red states. So Republicans were... Stripped, robbed, deprived, whatever word you want to use of, let's say, on average, the range that I've seen from the experts is six to ten, let's call it eight. Eight house seats, eight electoral votes. If those errors get corrected, plus the expected reapportionment because so many people have been fleeing these deep blue places because they don't work. They don't function. The left loves to congratulate itself for being so progressive and so. kind, and so go down the list. Compassionate, right? Virtuous. And they do all of these things and implement all these policies, and a lot of it is straight up nuts. A lot of it is also well-intentioned, at least some of it is, and it just doesn't work. And we have this 50-state patchwork, the laboratories of democracy, as they were called, and still are. People vote and move with their feet, with their pocketbook, with the best interests of themselves and their families in mind. And they are flowing out of blue places into red places because those latter places are more affordable and better run and safer. And you go down the list. And the left can yell and scream about how that's not really true. Well, I mean, the results are the results. And because of that, you're going to see a major reapportionment where red states, all of the experts, expect this. Red states are going to gain a bunch of seats and electoral votes. And blue states are going to lose them. These are consequences. And so long as the Census Bureau doesn't unintentionally or otherwise get it badly wrong again, even if they're like kind of in the ballpark, Democrats could be in for a world of hurt in a matter of just a few years because of the failure of their own governance, which I would say is very well deserved, richly earned. But as Democrats are wont to do, as leftists. often do because they view power and control as their birthright. And any system, and I've talked about this before, any system they perceive as standing in the way of that birthright, of that power that they deserve to wield over people, any institution, any person, you name it, they will polarize that person, attack them relentlessly, try to delegitimize that person, weaponize the law against them. You go down the list.

Which is why you see all of this anti-institution, really extremism, starting to permeate the left. They don't like the electoral college because they feel like it might be an impediment to their power. Let's abolish the electoral college. They don't like the U.S. Senate because that's unfairly putting guardrails on their power. Well, let's abolish the Senate too, or at least the filibuster when we're in charge. We'll use it all the time when we're not, but when we're in charge, let's get rid of it. Supreme Court, big one right now. We've had a couple authors on this show recently on the court. Molly Hemingway, Sarah Isger, recommend both of their books. The left is engaged in a multi-year project to delegitimize the court and quote-unquote reform it to bend it to its will or stack it with their own people. These are dangerous people and dangerous ideas, not Democrats writ large, not your average person out on the street who tends to vote blue, but the activist donor political class, the professional left and that hardcore sort of mobilized army, including these militias that they send after ICE, that whole blob, extremely dangerous. And the amazing thing is they are willing to trample over any norm and crush any institution or completely uprooted from its original purpose for their own power. That's the real reason. But they will say it is done for democracy because everything that they dislike is a threat to democracy and therefore they must step in for democracy, for fairness, whatever slogans they think will poll well. They will use even too profoundly undemocratic and certainly counter to our republic ends. They don't care about that. They care about their power. We saw a very clear example of that this week in Virginia, playing out over months, the landslide of propaganda, and the ultimate result of winning by two or three points. The electorate actually moving substantially to the right from 2025 and even 2024 in Virginia, but because they got their bare, bare majority, they're now going to undo their high-minded pro-democracy, gerrymandering ban, and put in a high-minded pro-democracy, massive gerrymander that reduces Republican representation in a 48% Republican state-ish to 9% of the seats, one out of 11. imposed by 51 or so percent, almost all of them residing in one part of the state. And they did so after denying they were going to. The leader of the party in the state said, Governor Abigail Spanberger, then candidate, said she wasn't going to pursue this, wasn't going to do it. The answer is no. We have a gerrymandering ban, which is good. No plans to do it. And then the very first bill that she signed was to. put the wheels in motion in order to do it. And they strong-armed it through by the skin of their teeth, even though they held an overwhelming advantage on the money, spend, the propaganda, all of it. And they didn't do it to tweak a little bit saying, well, Missouri added a seat here, or Ohio added a seat there. No, they weren't going to go to like seven.

to four or even eight to three. It's 10 to 1, as brazen as possible. Believe me, if they could figure out 11-0, they'd do it. They just literally couldn't mathematically make that work in a state like Virginia, so they haven't. They've locked out Republicans totally from any congressional power in multi-seat states where possible, and there are quite a few of those, actually. Maximum warfare everywhere all the time, which brings us... Beyond just Virginia or any of the other states where you've seen these hardcore gerrymanders from Democrats from the past, right, from regularly scheduled gerrymandering to mid-decade retaliatory, they would say, gerrymandering. It spans the gamut from Illinois and Maryland all the way up to Virginia and California. And then when you think about the national level, let's play a soundbite. from James Carville, who was just on a podcast just a few days ago. This is James Carville, an old Clintonite, sort of pragmatic, victory-minded Democrat operative. He has in fact scolded the hardcore left in the party and in the country several times, not because he necessarily has some profound ideological disagreement with them, but because it's always about, in his mind, winning. So if they're being too radical, too counterproductive to the overall cause of power, then he'll slap him down. And he'll do so angrily from time to time. But I think even old Rageon Cajun, James Carville, old school dem, right? This is not Hasan Piker. This is someone who you would think stands for a Democrat Party that's very different. than pikerization and the hardcore left being ascendant and doing crazy things. This is James Carville recognizing where the wind is blowing. He wets his finger, puts it up in the wind and says, all right, this is where we're going. And so he has now officially doubled down on a position that I think is chilling. And I'm going to play that audio for you as soon as we come back. On Guy Benson, stay tuned. Always fresh, always fair. Guy Benson. It is Guy Benson. Happy hour. We're back. So before the break, I was teasing this soundbite from James Carp. Old school Clintonite Democrat who sees where things are headed in his party. And he is now just embracing the radicalism. He would like Democrats to win back power, kind of by any means necessary, lie to voters, say whatever you have to say. And then, once you have the power, take moves in defense of democracy, of course, to lock out your opposition permanently and completely remake key institutions in this country to add a death grip of left-wing power. Listen from this podcast interview. This was days ago to James Carville Cut 34. If the Democrats were in the presidency in both houses and Congress, I think on day one, they should make Puerto Rico, D.C. estate, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. Fuck it, eat our dust. The only way to fight this is don't run on it, don't talk about it, just do it. She's okay, we got 54 senators and we got 13 court numbers. Thank you. Goodbye.

Because you're not going to get a fair shake any kind of way in this system. 18% of the United States elects 52 senators. Well, you're not going to make it equitable, but you'll make it better by Adam, Puerto Rico and D.C. So you're not going to get a fair shake, he says, under the system. It's amazing. Democrats have had the presidency many times in recent memory. For a long time, they dominated Congress. It's gone back and forth recently. But because they don't have all the power that they want at the moment, and they want to make sure that they don't have this feeling of not having that power in the future, here's James Carville saying, in order to get a fair shake, if the Democrats win everything back, presidency, both houses of Congress, day one, he said, make Puerto Rico and D.C. into states, and he says it explicitly. You want 54 senators, sort of like locked in. And they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. So the current 6 to 3 right-leaning majority, although as Sarah Isgir pointed out to us, it's actually very complex and the outcomes aren't always just partisan or ideological at all. But that right-leaning majority, unlike many decades of left-leaning or left-wing majorities, by the way, over the last, let's say, century, that was fine. The institution wasn't broken then because they were getting what they wanted. But now, this majority forged over many years of winning elections, seats coming up, confirmation processes, a lot, by the way, of unilateral escalations by Democrats in the confirmation wars, overcoming that, building this majority. Now you've got someone like Carville, and he's definitely not alone. If he's saying it, this is becoming a mainstream view in his party. That's the point. That's what you need to understand here. If he's saying it, brace for it. This may not be some crazy, kooky fever swamp idea anymore. They want to come in. Day one, he says, add four seats. Six to three. Oh, yeah, make it seven to six. Banana Republic, country ruining stuff is what we're talking about. And then notice the attitude he has in this. Sort of self-righteous, angry, and also easy, breezy. Eff it, he says. Eat our dust, just like we're going to do it. And then, crucially, don't run on it, don't talk about it, just do it. That is an acknowledgement that he understands the American people would not be on board for this kind of extremism and breaking the country this way. They wouldn't want that. That might risk the Democrats assuming and accumulating the power that they want and would need to do these things. So don't run on it, he says. He urges them. Don't even talk about it. You just win and then you do it. Which reminds me again of Virginia. And the about-face bait and switch from Abigail Spanberger on that power grab. That's the localized version of what James Carville is talking about on a vast national scale. And it means explicitly misleading voters. Don't run on it. Don't tell people what your intentions are. Just get in there and go all the way to try to lock these people out of power by adding states and therefore Senate seats. That's the whole reason. And just adding some seats to the Supreme Court.

to regain a progressive majority in the blink of an eye. Democrats, in their current iteration, getting advice like this, are unworthy of unchecked power in this country, which is why the midterms matter. I don't think they're going to go well for Republicans, but you can mitigate and minimize the damage, in my view, because Dem's getting the trifecta again, even by a thread. might very well result in exactly what some of them are now talking about openly, understanding that they're all going to maybe wink, hold hands, say nice things like affordability, and then who knows what's coming next. That's why these elections are upcoming this year and beyond. I don't want to get overly dramatic about it. Not every election is the most important election, flight 93 election, all of that. But what they're talking about is calamitous. It's fine if they win some things. Checks and balances are okay. If they get it all, understand what that could mean. Don't take my word for it. Listen to James. He's supposedly an old school kind of moderate Democrat. That's what's so alarming. More of Guy Benson after this.

Talking about the issues you care about. Guy Benson. In our first hour today, we recap part of the gubernatorial debate out in California. As you may imagine, it was wacky, some really awful ideas. Could that place actually get worse? It could with worse leadership. Here's some of my thoughts about that debate out on the left coast from earlier. What we saw was a number of interesting exchanges. There are some polls, by the way, I will remind you, as we've mentioned this in... recent memory, couple polls, including one that was just put out there by the California Democratic Party, although pardon me wonders, were they putting that out there in order to start to kind of crack skull, so to speak, to do what they need to do. The polls showed, as have, in fairness, a few others, public polls recently, that in the jungle primary, there are two Republicans in this race, Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, who were in first and second place. And the way that the primary system works out there in the jungle primary is the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advanced to the general election. So, for example, when Kamala Harris won her Senate seat, whenever that was, was it roughly 2018, I want to say, out in California? I might be off by a cycle. Kamala Harris that year was up against a fellow Democrat, a Hispanic female member of the House, if I'm not mistaken. who was not a very serious candidate, and so Kamala Harris rather easily won that race. And I think her opponent dabbed at one point during a debate. And there's just this screenshot of Kamala Harris looking across the stage like, what are you doing? So that was a dem-on-dem general election for the U.S. Senate. And if polls like this were to actually play out, and we're now getting what? Little over a month away from that primary, if somehow Hilton and Chad Bianco came in first or second place, you know, switch them either spot, you would have an all-Republican general election for governor, which obviously is, A, amazing, hilarious, all of that to think about, and B, catastrophic for Democrats out there. They can't let it happen. So now the Democratic Party is like, oh, look, here's our poll. It shows because there are too many Democrats running. Wink, hint. The Republicans might lock us out of the general election. We need to consolidate Katie or whomever. I know that the calls are growing for Katie Porter, who is just a grotesque individual in terms of the way that she treats people, and there's lots of evidence to that effect, and her ideology is warped and all of that. They are really going to try to force... as many people out of this race as possible to ensure that at least one Democrat makes it through to the general election. And they have until early June to do it. I suspect that they will. But in the meantime, they're all still battling it out. And there was this debate last night. And there were a few clips I wanted to play for you because this is, I think, illustrative of the problems that California faces. Because... You have a single party state controlled by one ideology. It's not just one political party where there's a lot of moderates. It is one leftist ideology that has a stranglehold on California. And they are indeed strangling California in a lot of important ways to the point that foreshadowing later in the show, 20-30 census is not going to be kind to states like California.

And I just want to give you an example. Homelessness has been such a problem in California. And Gavin Newsom actually, even going back to his days as mayor of San Francisco, has purported to care very much about the homeless problem and he's going to solve it. He just needs money, money, money to do it. And his now years and years and probably decade or two long crusade to fix homelessness has been an absolute abject failure. I saw there was a California state audit in 2024 showing tens of billions of dollars spent combating homelessness and homelessness has gone up in that state in the same time period. Hard to describe more of a failure than that. It actually goes to how money is spent generally in places like California. The idea is more money equals solution. Just spend it and spend it and spend it and it goes to these NGOs and these people and a lot of it, by the way, is stolen, goes to fraud and every so often there'll be a scandal or an indictment about that. I think the industrial scale fraud in places like this, we have barely scratched the surface. What we know is they are spending shocking amounts of money for terrible results. And I saw some press release from Gavin Newsom trying to pretend that, like, one form of homelessness is down by this percentage. Big picture, it has been unequivocally a failure. So the question was posed to the people who want to succeed Gavin Newsom to come next. He's been governor for a long time. He's got higher ambitions. He's wrecked the state and now wants a chance at the whole country. Who's going to be the next governor of this state? The question was asked to this panel of candidates. How would you grade Gavin Newsom on homelessness, on the issue of handling homelessness? Listen to Cut 21. You have 60 seconds. I'm a notoriously tough grader, but I would probably give him a B on homelessness. I don't think this has been an easy problem to solve, but I do give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem. Well, by the way, I'd love to be in your class, Katie, if you get a B for what Gavin Newsom's done on homelessness, my goodness, of course it's an F. It shames our state the situation with homelessness. That was Steve Hilton, one of the Republicans, formerly a Fox News weekend host, that British accent, with that witty comeback. I'd love to have you as a teacher if you got a B for this, Katie Porter. He says, of course, it's an F. How could it be anything other than an F? If you take and spend all this money and the problem gets worse. And notice she gives him a B, I'm a tough grader, I don't think so, tough grader on your staff maybe, Katie, and your husband by certain accounts. But not here. A gentleman's B for the governor, Gavin Newsom, on homelessness, despite the outcomes. And...

I think the real money line there is I give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem. How can you not notice the problem when it's everywhere? If you miss the whole opening monologue or anything that happened on today's show, luckily for you, there's a free podcast for that, no charge at all, every day on demand, including bonus Guy Benson on the weekends, guybenson show.com, foxnewspodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, the home stretch. A very vanishingly rare, weird thing happened in a major league baseball game. And I'm so confused by that outcome. We'll talk about that. Plus, an update from vacation via cookie. I'm not sure if she knows we're doing this, but oh, well, we are. That's next. America is listening to Guy Benson. And now. it's time for your favorite segment of the day. Home stretch. It's basically the only segment I'm on, so I've declared it the audience's favorite segment. Guy Benson. Home stretch, Thursday edition, Guy Benson, Guy Benson.com, podcast always free. Bonus Guy Benson on the weekends. Catch me on the bottom line coming up next hour on Fox Business Network. So this clip has gone viral on social media, and it's been served to me several times as a sports fan. Something very, very unusual happened during an A's Mariners game. Just this week, a line drive off the bat of the A's player, formerly the Oakland A's. Now I believe they're temporarily in Sacramento and then moving eventually to Vegas. I think that's the plan. But the A's hitter, lines went up the middle, and the ball kind of just disappears. Here's what it sounded like on the TV broadcast in Seattle, 41.

back to the pitcher. Gilbert able to catch it. Wow. Well, it caught him, if we're being honest. He hit that ball into the jersey. And what's going to happen is Cortez is going to first. And Lingaleers, I believe we'll head to second base. I mean, this was a rocket right back at Logan Gilbert. I've never seen anything like that. The ball, the batted ball, was hit so hard up the middle, and the pitcher, Logan Gilbert, was at such an angle that the ball snuck into his uniform, like lodged between his uniform and his torso. That's where the ball ended up inside the shirt, inside the jersey. And what I didn't understand was why they were awarding the batter first base. Because I was thinking, isn't that an out? He kind of caught it. It was actually a funny line by the color commentator saying, well, the ball actually caught him, but the ball never hit the ground. So how's that not a catch and an out? And so I was wondering, like, for example, if, let's say, an outfielder lost his glove for some reason and was racing to catch a ball and used his hat to catch it, would that count? And I looked up the major league rule, and in fact, nope, that would not be allowed. Dead ball. And the batter slash runner is awarded, in some cases you're awarded third base. It's an illegal play. So that batted ball into the jersey, dead ball, and they counted it as a singular, awarded him first base. But there's a pretty heated argument about whether or not that should count as an out. I had never seen that. Apparently it's happened at least once before, but you think of the millions of pitches. in baseball over the years. It is so rare for something like that to happen. So many things have to align, and they did. And then the umpires, I guess, got it right. They certainly know the rules better than I do. But the online fan community very much having it out about whether or not that should be an out. Part of me kind of feels like that should be an out. The ball was inadvertently caught. Catch the ball with your bare hand. It's an out. With the glove, it's an out. But with your jersey, it's not an out. Why? With your hat, it's not an out? Why? Anyway, I guess they got the call right. Maybe they can debate the rules, but it is what it is. Really weird, though. And I like that kind of quirky thing. You can watch baseball for your whole life. This is why baseball is so great. And I'm not just saying that because the Yankees have already won their series against Boston right now. Baseball is great because you can watch that game for your whole life, be in the ballpark or watching on TV or listening on the radio, and experience something that you have never witnessed before. In this case, pretty funny as well. Speaking of entertaining, we're on day four of the current... Cookie vacation. Unclear when her next one's going to be. I know she's got several coming up. She always does. But this is a full week-long one where she's not even denying that she's on it. Hopefully she did enter this into the system, which she has apparently rarely done in the past, which is not allowed. She didn't know that, but she was doing it. But she's told the whole country that she's on vacation. She's down in the Caribbean.

Turks and Kekos, as she gave us the preview. She was very worried about alligators or crocodiles. No reports on that front yet. But she did send a little video to Dylan, an update on how the vacation was going. Dylan set the scene for us. What are we about to hear? So what we are about to hear is a video of Cookie and her family. at dinner at this resort. And there appears to be some sort of like karaoke or cover artists singing. Live entertainment of some sort. Yes, exactly. Live entertainment. Cookie starts singing along and I encourage the audience to picture. Her daughter, just looking so unbelievably embarrassed at her mom, singing along, and then Cookie asks if she wants to dance and Megan gives her answer. So that's a little bit of the premise of what this video is. Okay. And I'm seeing, I've not seen this yet. I've not heard the audio. It's 30 seconds long, which seems long. And I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, that we're about to subject you to half a minute of whatever this is going to be. But here is a dispatch from Cookies' vacation, cut 42. Get ready for Mexico. All night, love. All night. Oh, no. I want to go dance? No, a big no there. Cookie went from singing part of the chorus to it sounded like morphing into the backup singers there for a moment. Honestly, I was expecting worse. I don't know, I was expecting maybe a few more cocktails to have been consumed. And that was not nearly as loud in terms of singing along, quote, singing along that I have even heard personally from Christine. So that was fairly tame. And then of course, Megan just mortified as a... tween girl with her mom singing out loud at the dinner table very much did not want to go dance. Dylan, did Christine send that to you with the purpose of airing it? Or are you just taking the initiative, making an executive decision that that is making it on the show? Well, you know what? She's not here right now. That's true. That makes you the senior producer. I'm the de facto senior producer. So no, she didn't. She actually... She actually sent me that video with the caption, She is No Fun, L.O.L. referring to her own daughter. And I have made the senior producer a decision to play that audio. That's right. What time was that video sent out of curiosity? Was that? So it's from the night before. She sent it at 8.45 a.m. And there's no time change between hearing Turks and Kekos. Okay. So she did not send that, presumably.

after a few mama's juices because it was breakfast time. Well, I mean, she may have recorded it. I mean, I'm just, I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt on that one. She recorded it the night before, I'm sure, after some cocktail action, and then waited, slept, woke up, saw it, sent it to you. So she couldn't come back and accuse us of like playing something that she had maybe. sent under the influence with impaired judgment. This was breakfast time the next day. So yeah, I stand by and I think it's the right call. You also mentioned quickly that she was getting somewhat agitated over a car rental situation. Yeah. This is all a part of the same conversation. She was talking about their plans for the day as a family in Turks and Caicos. And she said, I'm begging Bobby to let us rent a car today to drive around the island. But the only rule I have is that I drive. In parentheses, the steering wheel is on the right side. And I replied, you're never going to get that car. And she said. And they drive on the opposite side of the road of us. Bobby said, I would be putting lives at risk. Oh, wow. Yes. I said prayers up for your family. The whole island is at risk, actually. That's right. No, I think she would be like, oh, this is the other side of the road. She'd put on her British accent. She's like, oh, hello, gavna. Oi, I'm driving. And then it would become eventually. A Jamaican pirate, of course, and it would end with that car wrapped around a tree. So we don't want any injuries. We don't want any loss of life. I hope Bobby won that one. It was just a no. Like, I would not even rent the car to drive around the island at all. It would be the easiest, fastest no in the history of humanity if Christine's demand was to be behind the wheel. I wouldn't let her be behind the wheel on the right side. of the lane like under normal circumstances i will not be driven by christine period her disoriented and of course she panics too so if she got slightly confused in traffic she would panic oh it's just it's A disaster waiting to happen. So if Christine makes it back from this vacation, if she survives to her very next vacation, I'm sure very soon, it's because Bobby said no to this. Bobby, I hope the right decision has been made for everyone's sake. And with that, we've got to run. It's already Friday tomorrow here on Guy Benson. A great program in store for you then. We will talk to you in 21 hours, same time, same place right here. Have a great night.

A burst pipe. A dead water heater. The AC calling it quits. Who do you call? HomeServe is an easy way to handle unexpected home repairs. With plans covering stuff basic homeowners insurance usually won't. Instead of scrambling for a contractor, you make one call to get the repair process started. Join the millions of customers who trust homeserve right now. Go to homeserve.com slash podcast for 50% less your first year. That's homeserv.com slash podcast. Savings compared to renewal price void in Florida. Listen to this show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music with your prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.