I couldn't be more excited to be here today because the golden age of America is just beginning. Man, I gotta tell you, if the past few years have been in a bad mood, and if you've watched my show, I'm usually in a bad mood. But I'm in a pretty good mood right now. Now this is all happening because President Trump is a force.
He is a historic force. He is the historic force of our age. He was the man standing between the United States and stagnation and surrender, and President Trump stood, and he was indicted, and he stood, and he was shot, and he stood, and America stood with him. We stood with him.
You see in America? I really believe that America right now is divided between what I like to call the lions and the scavengers. Lions are people who want to build things. People who are productive.
People like people in this room. People who believe they have the power to choose and to act in the world, and that they have duties in this world. Duties given to them by God, duty to family, to community, to country, and to themselves to be the best that they can be. Lions believe that merit, watch a triumph, and then there are the scavengers, and they've been in charge for a while.
The scavengers believe that if you fail, it's probably somebody else's fault. They believe that all the systems that allow for success for merit to drive that those systems are broken and must be wholly destroyed. Well, they were on the rise. For nearly four years, they were on the rise, and now the scavengers are on the run.
They are in retreat, and that is thanks to you, that is thanks to President Trump. And that's also thanks to Charlie Kirk and Turning Point, which has done such extraordinary, extraordinary work. I actually met Charlie Kirk when he was 18 years old. He was younger than many of the people who are currently in this room.
And Charlie was going around a conference in Florida, in Palm Beach, Florida, looking for donors for Turning Point. I remember Turning Point, my business partner, Jeremy Boring, saying, that guy is going to be the head of the RNC one day. And instead, Charlie built his own RNC. It's astonishing.
So I want to talk today a little bit about why I am so hopeful. The reason that I am hopeful is because Donald Trump and the American people are about to make our economy dynamic again. Donald Trump and the American people are about to make America's position in the world unquestioned again. And Donald Trump is about to make the American dream possible again with the American people.
So let's talk about the economy for a second. There's a whole school of thought out there that just wants to punish success. I believe that innovation is a sin. I believe that people like Elon Musk, by building rockets, is doing something deeply wrong.
That Elon Musk, by building Tesla, is doing something deeply wrong. He has committed the great sin, which is to earn. His great sin is that he created great companies. That's a huge sin in their view.
But here's the thing. Businesses hate that sort of thing. So you end up with stagnation. You end up with inflation.
You end up with lack of creativity. All of that is about to end. President Trump is a businessman, which means there's only one thing in life. I'll know this.
The President Trump cares about. There's only one thing. Winning. That is all he cares about.
A lot of people think that's wrong. He cares about one thing. Winning. And he cares about winning for the American people.
That means unleashing the power of free markets. Free markets have been maligned in this country. They've been treated as something wrong, as sort of a man-made system that's jiggered in order to harm certain people at the expense of others. And that is false.
Free markets are merit. Free markets are justice. Free markets are innovation and they are dynamism. Free markets.
Are what's going to make all these young people rich one day. That's what free markets are going to do. The scavengers believe that the government's job to establish cosmic justice. That because all human beings are created equal before God, but not equal in our qualities.
I'm not going to be playing with bronjans in basketball anytime soon. And by the same token, I've read more books than LeBron James, which is the same more than one book. That because of the happens, scavengers believe that cosmic justice must be established above. The outcomes should be the same for everyone.
That is truly unjust. It is tyranny. It is evil. It requires discrimination.
And it requires cruelty. Free markets that say the opposite. They say that you get to invest in yourself. That you get to take those risks.
That you rise or fall on your own merit. They also say that you have to do something for someone else before you get anything else in return. I've said before, the free markets are a form of forced altruism and that's right. Nothing is owed to you.
You're not just given things in a free market. You produce. You make things. Life gets better.
And one of the magical things about free markets, free markets, are the opposite of socialism and stagnation that the left likes to talk about. Socialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC career, useless people, absolutely useless leeches on the asset society. These people, they can turn gold into sand. They can turn prosperity into failure.
Free markets turn sand almost literally into gold. Imagine the fact that everything on planet earth, everything in your cell phone, everything in your company, everything in Elon Musk rockets, has been present on planet earth since the caveman. Everything in your own has been present on planet earth since the caveman. What change?
Innovation, change. Dynamism, change because of nation. Because you've got to keep what you made. Because you've got to sell it.
Because you've got to exchange it. These are the principles of freedom and liberty. Because you own your labor and your own product of your mind, you're able to actually create. You can take the same sand.
It's been on planet earth for all of human existence. And you can turn that into the superconductors that power the military equipment. That power is the American military. The greatest military on the face of the earth.
You can do that because of free markets. And Donald Trump is going to make free markets great again. Donald Trump likes capitalism. Donald Trump is not afraid of business success.
Donald Trump is a businessman. You can see businessmen everywhere are excited about this. I talk with a lot of tech founders and he actually found the big companies in tech. And what they say is this is a new founding.
It's a business founding. You're going to see an explosion of business in this country like nothing I've seen in my lifetime. And then there is foreign policy. President Trump is going to make America strong in the world again.
I had President Trump on a couple of weeks before the election on my show and we were talking about foreign policy. And he said that his foreign policy is pretty obviously peace through strength, pretty clearly. And I'll tell you what he meant by that in a moment. But he summed it up pretty well in his story.
So I threw up a fundraiser for President Trump down in Trump, in Florida, fairly early on in the election cycle. And he and I had a chance to chat. And he was talking about Joe Biden. Now I don't mean to spoil or any other, spoiler alert here.
President Trump is not like Joe Biden. I'm just going to put that out there. He thinks he's not just a bad president. He's not particularly wonderful.
Although I will say I think that you'll probably voted for Donald Trump. And by the way, I know that you'll buy him voted for Donald Trump. There is no question. You see them hanging out?
There is no question. She voted for Donald Trump. Okay. But what President Trump said, we were talking about foreign policy and the war in Ukraine came up.
He said, Ben, Ben, you want to know why? Why? Vladimir never invaded Ukraine when I was president. You want to know?
And I said, yes, Mr. President. I said, well, because I talked to Vladimir. If you've had, if you go into Ukraine, I'm going to buy him the out of you.
And President Trump continued the story. He said, and Vladimir said back to me, no, you and Mr. President. And I said, well, I might.
And then President Trump said, quite correctly, if there is a 5% chance that that is going to happen, you don't do the thing. This is the thing that President Trump knows because he is a man who is credible on foreign policy. He's not like our current dead president. Usually, maybe going up on a dollar bill or something because usually actually the debt to get on dollar bill, Joe Biden has been dead for a while.
So he might make it on to a dollar. In any case, our current president says things like don't. And then the rest of the world just does. Meanwhile, President Trump says that and the rest of the world does, ooh, I don't know, this could get ugly.
When we talk about President Trump's foreign policy, it is not isolationism. He believes in America's first foreign policy. And here's what I think that he means pretty clearly from his foreign policy in his first term. He means three things.
One, America's interests are first. Now, this should be obvious. America's interests are paramount, obviously. This should be the truth.
American citizens come first, right? We're Americans. We come first. It's America.
Welcome to America, right? America first does not mean that America has no interest in the rest of the world. How can they mouth the interest America has in the rest of the world? We have an interest, for example, in saying that Mexico doesn't ship a bunch of fentanyl up through our border.
We have an interest in making sure that China doesn't take control of the trade routes through the Taiwan Strait, for which 92% of world shipping goes. We have an interest in ensuring that China doesn't ship the precursor for fentanyl over to Mexico. We have an interest in ensuring that Iran doesn't threaten American allies. We have an interest in all of those things.
Now, that brings us to point two. America's interests have to be carefully calibrated to our investments in them. That doesn't mean that every solution is the same. So there are lots of bad things happening all over the world at all times.
If America only has a minor interest in a thing happening on another side of the world, we ought not get involved in that thing. And, firstly, if we do have an interest in the other side of the world or close to home, then not only ought we have to get involved, we ought to do it in the most efficient possible manner, which brings us to point number three. When America's interests are on the table, all measures and means necessary to achieve those interests are on the table. That is why President Trump has been hyper-consistent in his application of foreign policy, contrary to popular left-wing opinion, he's throwing darts at a board or something.
That is not true at all. President Trump wants America's allies to be strong enough to stand on their own. President Trump wants to make sure that America's enemies are in retreat. Why?
Because anything else wouldn't be America winning, and President Trump wants America to win. Okay. And then there's the American Dream. Now, the American Dream has sort of been perverted in the United States over the course of the last few decades, but I think it's a pretty obvious dream.
It's a dream to get married, to have kids, to be able to live in a community that worships the God that you love, to be able to build a business that you want to build and make that business successful and hire other people, to give charity, to stand up for your country. These are all the things that are elements of the American Dream. They're always the American Dream. And yet, we were told that the American Dream is weird.
We were told that all of this was weird. I've never seen a bigger political misstep than the entire Democrat media human center committee declaring that JD Vance was weird. Okay. The vice president elect is the least weird person I have ever personally met.
That is the most bizarre statement. They tried it out. The human inflatable Tim Walz to flail his arms like he said a car lot off the side of a freeway and pretend it was masculinity when apparently he has no bones in his wrists. And somehow he wasn't weird.
They tried it out Doug Emhoff who, you know, may or may not have assaulted his next girlfriends. A question that the media were totally uninterested in investigating. Of course. They tried out Doug Emhoff.
I personally are teaching him. I'm from everybody in the Biden order. I hate Doug Emhoff the most. He drops it up a wall.
He drops it up a wall. Doug Emhoff represents Judaism. Like, Tom Bin Laden represents Christianity. Okay.
In any case, they tried out these guys and they're like, this is the new masculinity. And JD Vance, that weirdo with his picture of perfect family and his beautiful wife and his nice kids living in a nice house, having grown up in really, really horrifying circumstances. He should read his great book, He'll Billie Allergy. And then having built companies going through gay law school, he's the apotheosis of what the American Dream looks like, the vice president of the like.
And something like that guy's weird. Here's the thing. We are now in the middle of a normy revolution. It turns out a lot of us are normies.
A lot of us just want a quiet, good life where we build things and we get to engage in the greatest economy in the history of the world. We get to live secure in our own place of residence. We don't have to worry about walking out on the street and being physically assaulted by someone. Okay.
These are all very, very normal desires and very normal dreams. And that's the American Dream. And the left had lost it in so many ways. They left it lost it in so many ways.
Now, I remember I was in Los Angeles. I grew up in LA. I was in Los Angeles fairly recently. I left LA because LA is turning into a complete donkey.
It's just horrifying. And I went back. We went out with some friends. I go down the street with my wife and we have our 24-7 security, which we need unfortunately.
On the other side of the street, our friends go. They go out three cars down, a car pulls up right in front of them, three guys jump out of the car and immediately rob my friend and his wife. This happened in a very nice area of Los Angeles. This is not normal.
So the left kept saying Donald Trump. He's not normal. Here's the thing. The America he stands for is normal.
The America he stands for is good. The America he stands for is great because it is good. So that's why I'm in a good mood. Because we're actually winning.
But here's the thing, winning requires constant work. One of the questions that my business partner and I constantly ask ourselves when it comes to the success of Daily Wire. And thank God, it's been unbelievably successful. One of the questions that Jeremy Boring and Caleb Robinson and I will ask ourselves.
Are we good at this or is everyone else not very good at this? And the same question should be asked in politics on a constant basis. Are we really good at this or are the other guys just really crappy at this? Now, let's be real.
The other guys are super crappy at this. Okay, they literally ran a corpse. And then when it turned out that everybody found out he was a corpse because he died on stage with President Trump. They then decided to swap him out for a potato of a human.
A person who was physically incapable of uttering coherent sentences. And so I think the question we have to ask ourselves is how do we retain the momentum? And the answer is we do the right things. We do all the things that President Trump has already promised he's going to do.
And here's the thing I think he's going to do all those things because President Trump keeps his promises. Now I've talked about this before. My evolution, I have evolved on President Trump. As many people in this room know, in 2016 I didn't vote for either candidate because I didn't know if President Trump was going to be conservative.
And I said at the time I doubted that he would. And then right away he nominated Justice Gorsuch and I put on a MAGA hat like one month into his presidency. And then in 2020, obviously I backed him and I supported him and I voted for him. And in 2024 I backed him, I gave money to his campaign, I fundraised for him, I campaigned in six states, I went with him personally to an October 7 tribute.
And that's not because I'm doing anything great, it's because he is doing something great. And if we back him and if he does the right things, which I think he will, I believe he will, I actually know he will. If he does those things, then he is totally correct. America will be great again.
The great American comeback is on. A new golden age is just beginning. Hi Ben, I appreciate all the work you've done with the Daily Wine Everything. You're a great guy Ben.
Look at this guy, great question. So my question for you is when you talk about Trump's and his economy policy, I think the biggest thing that I hear all my friends and everyone talk about is tariffs. So if what Trump says on tariffs really is so true, you know, like 60% on China and just 50% based, the biggest I can think of in front of researchers from 1828 when they passed 50% tariff policy. So do you think Trump's right in his tariff policy and if so, why hasn't any president proposed something similar?
Okay, so he's asking about Donald Trump's tariff policy. Here's what I think. I'm going to go back to my original statement about Donald Trump and the economy. Donald Trump cares about one thing that is winning.
Okay, what that means is that if tariffs aren't in fact inflationary, if they aren't in fact a problem, then he is not going to do them. But the tariffs are really designed, not because tariffs are like fun and games. Tariffs are designed for President Trump as leverage. There's no one in the history of American politics who has used leverage better than President Trump.
He uses tariffs as a way of threatening countries to do what he wants. But it's a great story, so I'm going to tell it anyway. Okay, so this is the story I never heard before. Here's the story.
President Trump's meeting with Justin Trudeau, who may or may not be Fidel Castro's son. In any case, by the way, he's not going to be Fidel Castro's son. Anyway, he's meeting with Justin Trudeau apparently during the first administration. And he is asking for a bunch of things, right, for Canada to do.
And Trudeau doesn't want to give all of them. So Trump says to people, bring Justin here, bring Justin to me. So apparently they sit across from one another. And Trudeau is talking with the president and President Trump says, Justin, I want you to tell me if there's one thing I could do tomorrow, it's completely wreck the Canadian economy, what would it be?
And Trudeau goes, well, I mean, Mr. President, there are a lot of things that are very powerful country, but if you tear up our cars, it would be really, really bad. And Trump goes, Justin, I want to teach you a lesson. The first thing not to do in a negotiation is answer the question, if you could do one thing to destroy me, what would it be?
So of course, President Trump, I don't care about Canada, I don't care about America. So I'm going to tear up all your cars and let's give me what you want. You got what you wanted. Okay, that's how I think President Trump thinks about tariffs.
Hey, Ben, super easy fun question. After your review of Wicked and hearing you were a musical theater enthusiast as well, I got to know what your favorite musical theater performance is. Well, I'm sorry, this is the last part of the question. What's your favorite musical theater performance?
Oh, it's my favorite musical theater performance. Man, guys, I'm straight. I'm just going to put that out there right now. I have four kids as proof of this act.
Okay, but my favorite musical theater performance, so I will say the most brilliant musical I've written is Sweetie Todd. My personal favorite musical is 1776. Every year when I was a kid, I dressed up as John Adams from the musical 1776. For the parents in the room, for Halloween, not just on a daily basis.
For all the parents in the room, if you want to show your kids something super patriotic for July 4, they'll show them the original musical 1776. Hey, Ben. I found Western PA near Butler. What was your first reaction when you heard Trump was shot?
Oh, man. So, I mean, my first reaction is it was actually on a Shabbat, right? It was Saturday for me, so I couldn't actually check the news. My security came to me and they said the president's been shot and I said, well, is he alive, right?
I mean, you got to leave with the news, right? Leave with, he's alive, but he's been shot. My first reaction was that God clearly wanted Donald Trump to be president. I'm dead serious because there's no way to watch that take.
There's just no way. And see what happens. See how close we came to the president's brains being slattered on a stage on national television and not think that God physically reached his hand down into the world and took President Trump's head and went, that was literally my first time. I was actually scared the hell out of me, but in a certain way it was sort of comforting because when you see an open miracle, which is what I actually think that was, there's no way that shot you missed.
When I see it, and that's, you know, obviously it's a tragedy. There are people who are killed and archindolences go to the families and we get money to the families. Hey, but when you see something like that, an open miracle like that, the first thing you have to think is God's hand is present in the world. And for whatever reason, God's hand is on Donald Trump.
Well, I actually have a much more difficult question unfortunately. If President Trump coming in, how do you think he'll support Israel's war against Hezbollah and all their enemies and how do you think that will go? Okay, so I think that President Trump, when it comes to the war that Israel is currently waging against Hezbollah, waging against Hamas, as I say, President Trump's metric is winning. Okay, and because he wants America's allies to win and Israel is an American ally, I think that he will stop slow walking aids the Israelis so they can finish the war and finish it fast.
He's expressed this many times over. This, by the way, would be the proper solution given that Hamas is an evil terrorist group that is currently holding four American citizens hostage and Hezbollah has killed literally hundreds of American citizens and around his killed thousands of American citizens. Now, I don't think that President Trump wants to have you involved in the Middle East. In fact, I know he doesn't.
But this is the beautiful thing about having strong allies when you actually allow them to do the things they have to do. They win. And what Israel is doing right now is winning. And that is a good thing.
It is a good thing for the world that Israel is winning. I have a kind of controversial question. Who do you believe the greatest pound per pound fighter of all time is? I'm sorry, the greatest pound per pound, pound per pound fighter of all time.
Oh, wow, the greatest pound per pound for a boxer of all time. I mean, strong case for a sugar rain runner. Strong case for, I'm rocking my hand, obviously I'm not going to be a referee, but I didn't really fight that many fighters. But I'm not trying to be people into boxing arcana, so we'll leave it at that.
So my name is Sam. One issue that I'm seeing here that I don't think is getting enough attention is the fact that India and Pakistan and various other countries like that are getting billions and billions of dollars from scanning Americans through robocalls and scam calls. And I really don't think it's getting enough attention. And what can we do about that?
I mean, I think first of all, when it comes to powers like India, certainly we can use economic leverage to get a crackdown on those sorts of activities. And I would hope that the President does a lot of those things. I think that he will. I also think that when it comes to the intelligence community, the intelligence community can do and gather information about the criminals currently perpetrating this sort of stuff, which is why, for example, Tulsi Gabbard should be approved.
Tulsi and I. Hello, Mr. Shapiro. My name is Ian O'Neill.
First of all, I want to thank Mr. Kirk and you because I used to be deep blue in my ideology and I used to be a self-proclaimed socialist. Well, thank you. And my main question to you, Mr.
Shapiro, is do you believe that Generation Z will be the greatest generation of the United States of America? So we're going to find out whether Generation Z will be the next generation. I got a hand. It's my boys and millennials.
We showed up this election cycle. But yes, I think that there's a backlash that's coming strong inside Generation Z. I think right now you're seeing radical polarization inside Generation Z is incredibly polarized. You're either saying blue-haired woke lives or you're saying rock ribbed, maga-hatted republicans.
A lot of that tends to be gender-gapped, but I do think that as the left continues to follow this pathway into nothingness. And as people get older and as they start to get married and start to pursue actual purpose in the world, they will become more conservative. So I think there's every opportunity to do that. Thanks to organizations like Turning Point and the hard work that people in this room have done.
I want to get to that question, but there's a girl over here who really wants to ask a question. So, okay. Talk about then possibly implementing Bible teachings in public schools as a Jew. Okay, so the question was how do I feel about people implementing Bible teaching in schools as a Jew?
It should. So, the Bible is the seminal documents Western civilization. You literally cannot be literate without knowing the Bible. The fact that everyone is treating the Bible as just sort of another document or is just a religious text misses the entire point which is that all of America is built on Biblical values, all of it.
Hi, I was just very curious. Given your stance on setting money to like Eastern Europe with Ukraine, why are you such a proponent for setting money to the Middle East? So the truth is that I'm very much in favor of sending money where I think it will be useful. So the big problem with sending money to Ukraine right now is that the Europeans really should be paying their freight and also that you have an off-ramp in Ukraine.
I'm actually not a proponent, for example. I'll completely cutting off Ukraine if it means Land or Putin walking from Kiev. And actually President Trump has said something very similar. What he wants is for the Europeans to actually pay their freight.
He wants the Europeans to stop their spending. When it comes to the situation in Middle East, I've said a thousand times and I will continue to say, Israel should get off of American aid as soon as humanly possible. They're in the middle of an existential war right now and so now would be a particularly poor time to do it given the fact that President Biden has slow-walked the aid. But having talked not only to American legislators but also to a number of members of the Israeli government, the only thing I say to them is it is good for you and it is much better for America for you to get the hell off of American aid, stop being on American aid.
I really believe that America needs to stop giving as much aid all over the world to a wide variety of places. Oh, sorry. Yeah, you go in with this. So my name is Kaiser Williams and I've been told that my first name is offensive and that I should be called by my middle name.
Do you take offense to my first name? Why would I possibly take offense to your first name? I mean, it would be real. I already have to turn it out your middle name is Hitler or something.
But no, I think you're not. That's so stupid. There's so many great names to take offense at. Like for example, Cardi B.
Yeah. Can you say it right there? Okay, so the question was who's going to be a Democratic nominee in 2028? I don't know, man.
That bench is looking real thin. The Democratic nominee in 2028. The Democratic nominee in 2028. So let's see who do they have?
They have the mayor of a small town who is gay and likes to choose. People to judge. They compliment not going away. She's talking about running again, which God willing.
I will donate to that primary campaign. I would love to see her try. There's been some talk about J.D. Pritzker who has to be lowered into the Illinois Capitol by Crane.
There's been some talk about the genderless Ken doll that is Gavin Newsom in California. Again, this is, and of course there's the somewhat routinely wasted appearing bartender AOC. It's not an amazing bench. I guess what I'm saying right now.
I have no idea, but none. I'm particularly good. Hi, Ben. My name is Grace Hasmanic and I want to thank you personally for making me a conservative.
I was socialist and an atheist for 10 years and because of you, the people of Dei Wire, I became a Christian and a conservative. My question for you, Ben, is are you concerned like I am that the pendulum will swing in kind in 2028? The Democrats will come back stronger, harder and better than they were in 2024? So yes, the answer is yes.
And I think that everyone in the room should be worried about that, which is why we should work hard to make sure it doesn't happen. I tend to be a warrior and sometimes worry is the first step at actually planning for the counter-measure. The best counter-measure is going to be success. I don't think it's going to happen because I think President Trump is going to have an incredibly successful presidency.
But that does mean a few things. It means, for example, that Congress has to be on the same page as the president. It does mean the Republicans and the president need to work in concert with one another because they have an incredibly slim majority in the House. And as I've said before, when it comes to politics, politics is not just a matter of sheer willpower.
You actually have to have some give and some take and it gets pretty ugly sometimes. There's a lot of sausage that has to be made. Hey, but I do think that this is going to be a really successful presidency and that will be the best comeback to the possibility of a democratic resurgence. I think they suck at everything and I do trust that they will continue to suck at most things.
This will be the last question. Sorry, she's been waiting. This will be the last question as well. Hi Ben.
My name is Rachel. I am from the blue state of Maine. I've been a fan of you for a long time. So this is a dream come true to ask this question and say hello.
My question to you is, as you know, New England was one of those few places in the country that stayed blue this election. So how can we make New England great again? So number one, number one, New Hampshire came very, very close to turning red. That was a very good, that's a very close turn.
However, what I will say is that in deep blue states, right, I was from a deep blue state, I was from California and then I left because it was terrible and I went to Florida, which is an amazing state. And so if you are in a purple state, I think that you can turn that state red. If you're in a blue leaning state, like Virginia, I think there's a possibility that from time to time it will turn red. I think if you're in a deep blue state, you should get your ass out of there and move to a red state.
And the reason I say that is because here's some good news. You want to piece of this because it's really good news. Okay, so they screwed up the 2020 census. Hey, they really did.
They screwed this up. The Biden administration acknowledged they screwed up the 2020 census. If they had done the 2020 census properly, that would have meant that electoral votes would have shifted from New York, Connecticut, Illinois, California to Florida, Texas, Arizona, which means if they had done the census properly in 2020, Trump would have won without winning any of the blue wall states. That means by 2030, Republicans are in a commanding electoral college position.
So come on down. It's great. It's not just one finish with this note, guys. The future of the country is not just president Trump.
The future of the country is in this room. It's on both sides of me. It's these young people here. It's the people who are in the audience who are building the businesses and creating the educational institutions that are building the social fabric of the country.
The future of the country is beginning right now. And 100 years from now, people are going to look back to this inflection point in American history, and they're going to say, well, president Trump was right not just about his own candidacy, but about the American people. The American people, we kick ass. The American people are so great.
And we are making the country great again. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you.