Ben Shapiro Praises Trump for This Bold Move on Israel

President Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel today, a controversial move that undoes decades of U.S. foreign policy.

The decision is part of a plan to shift the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something Trump promised during his 2016 campaign. Moving the embassy is a long process that will take several years, but formally recognizing Israel’s capital is the first step.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro joined Glenn on today’s show to share his perspective on Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: Good friend of the program. Daily Wire host and I think one of the most important men in the conservative movement today is Ben Shapiro. He joins us now. You up in New York, Ben?

BEN: Actually, no, I'm in LA. A little early.

GLENN: Yeah, sorry about that.

BEN: Not at all.

GLENN: Ben, I want to talk to you a little bit about what the president is claiming he's going to do today. And that is announce that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. If he does that, but he's not announcing that, you know, that there is a new embassy -- we're going to ground break on, does it matter? And why?

BEN: So it does matter. It would matter more if he would move the embassy. The reason why it would matter is because that's a permanent statement. For him to say Jerusalem the eternal, undivided capital of Israel, that's stuff that presidential candidates have said before. The Senate itself voted 90-0 back in June that that was the case. So a political statement by the president is important. But it's always revocable. You can have a new president come in and say, while we don't necessarily believe what Trump believed and maybe it's up for negotiation --

GLENN: Yeah.

BEN: -- moving the embassy is more permanent. Yeah.

GLENN: I think it's Obama's Bear Ears monument. The next guy comes in, and it's whatever he wants.

BEN: Yeah, I think that's right. And what I'm hearing from the White House is that the White House is serious about moving the embassy. They're investigating the sites right now. But they're going to have to get it done before the next election, obviously, because you can't expect a Democrat to actually fulfill promises that Democrats have been making for 50 years.

So it's a big move. It's a big announcement. And good for Trump for doing it.

But I would definitely like to see it made more permanent. On the other hand, listen, the president of the United States is saying something that takes moral courage to say, in a time when people refuse to recognize both religious and historic reality on the ground. And that is a grand and good thing. It's definitely a gesture I think that's meaningful.

GLENN: So, Ben, I think you're a religious guy. And those who bless Israel will be blessed. And those who curse Israel will be cursed. I happen to believe that. I believe that we -- we were a country that was founded in part by our desire to restore Israel and to -- to bring Israel back. I think we played a key role to that.

And I've talked to scholars of the Founders who disagreed with me at first, and then went back after a year's worth of research and went, oh, crap. I think you're right. So I think we were blessed because of that path.

I think we'll be blessed because of this. Do you -- do you see it that way at all?

BEN: Yeah, 100 percent. I'm a religious Jew. This means a lot to me as a Jew because Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people. I was explaining it this morning on Fox, that -- in order to understand the value of Jerusalem to Israel, you have to take Washington, DC, and then invest it with godly power and multiply it by a thousand. (inaudible) these things -- literally that we built on a swamp because we didn't want it to be part of any state, Jerusalem was built on a rock because God said so, right? That's the reason Christians care about it. It's the reason Muslims care about it, and it's the reason Jews cared about it a thousand years before Christ. So the idea that it's not the eternal capital is absurd.

As far as whether this is going to be a blessing, I think it will be a blessing because one of the things politically -- just in very practical terms, that I think is necessary here, is if you actually want a real peace negotiation between the Israelis and the Arabs, that has to be premised on some elemental truth.

Israel is not going to give up Jerusalem. Israel is not going to divide Jerusalem. And as soon as the other side recognizes that, as soon as the Arabs recognize that, maybe they can have a negotiation based on reality.

Beyond that, one of the things we're watching in the Middle East is something incredible right now, which is this unintended consequence of Obama's unbelievably crappy foreign policy. There is this new alliance, and pretty strong alliance, now forming the Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia against the Arabians. And for Trump to basically say, listen, I'm just going to get this Jerusalem thing off the table right now with the Israelis. And you're still going to have an alliance. Because it's more important for you to ally against Iran, than smack the Jews about. That's a ground shift in the nature of the relationship and I think something very important.

GLENN: So what do you think is the -- what do you think are the ramifications of this? Do you see any real ramifications?

BEN: Well, I think the Palestinians will try to launch a terror wave. But that's also true in most states.

It -- I think that you'll see some regimes like Saudi Arabia and Jordan have platitudes about how they'll oppose this. But I don't think they'll do anything of any real consequence.

Turkey might try to type in some more supplies to Hamas and the Palestinian authority, which had been operating in a quasi unity government for several years.

But, you know, again this is not the first wave of violence that has hit Israel, not even with regard to Jerusalem. I mean, I wrote an entire piece over at Daily Wire, tracing the history of violence with regard to Jerusalem. The reason that the Muslim world doesn't want to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, because they don't want to recognize Israel as existing. Jerusalem is the heart of Israel. Jerusalem is not Jewish. Neither is Tel Aviv. Neither is Jaffa. Neither is any other Jewish city in Israel. So the recognition of Jerusalem that's an Israeli territory, that may be an ugly truth for a lot of anti-Semitic Muslims, but it is also a truth that is not going to change.

GLENN: So as I was trying to look at this today and put this into perspective, you know, as a lover of history, I look at this and I say, in my lifetime, born in 1964, there are very few things that I would say had real ramifications, eternal ramifications, big ramifications, like the fall of Berlin wall. The defeat of communism.

I believe this is one of the biggest events, if they move the capital. I believe this is one of the biggest events of my lifetime.

Would you agree with that?

BEN: It certainly could be. Yeah, it certainly could be. I mean, if they moved the embassy to Jerusalem, then it does set a new groundwork. And it makes it difficult for the United States ever to back off of that. It puts Israelis in charge of their own faith.

I mean, basically Bill Clinton, since Oslo, too many presidents have held that the fate of Israel's future in their hands, as opposed to letting the Israelis hold their own future in their hands. We really shouldn't be part of these negotiations in the first place. I mean, these are bilateral negotiations the United States has very little to do with.

It's an important thing. It's an important moral step. Because -- because the more that we recognize that, number one, we don't get to boss our allies around. And, number two, the more that we recognize that Israel is a force for good for the region, and we understand our own role in the world.

Our role in the world is as a freedom loving country that helps out freedom-loving allies. It's not as, quote, unquote, honest broker (phonetic) between freedom-loving countries and terrorism and tyranny-loving countries. I think that that is going to set American foreign policy on a new tactic that it desperately needed for a long time.

GLENN: So can I be really crass here? And now look at this politically.

You know, the timing is really interesting to me. And, you know, out of all of the people on the stage, you know, out of the 17 candidates, I just did not think he was going to be the guy that would actually come through with this. Because this takes massive stones to do. And you also have to really believe it. And I don't think -- while he has, you know, some Jewish influence in his family now, I don't think that's enough to do something like this. Usually it comes from a religious zeal, that this is right and righteous.

So let me just float this by, Ben, and see what you think. I think -- I think the president is in much more trouble than he wants to let on or anybody on the right wants to let on. Maybe not as much trouble as the left seems to hope for. But he's in real trouble.

And this gives him -- you can only -- you can only pick the bones of the Gorsuch nomination for so long. And this, again, puts him into a situation with a lot of groups. Especially evangelical Christians. Where you kind of put up with a lot of stuff. And kind of defend -- because you're like, look, that just happened. I mean, I don't know who else would have given us that. And it seems to me that it could be a -- a political maneuver to shore up some real fight to the end of the battle supporters. Am I being --

BEN: That's definitely a possibility. I don't want to psycho analyze the president because I think that's a fool's errand. But I also think that the timing of it is interesting. The truth is, I've never seen anything like -- the last two weeks have been so good for conservatives on policy.

GLENN: Yep.

BEN: You know, everything from the tax cuts to the national TARP stuff to Jerusalem. I mean, this is really, like, hard-core good stuff for conservatives.

And at the same time, the rhetoric that is coming out of the administration, like Roy Moore are really a problem.

And I do agree with you, that I think there may be a political attempt to shore this up.

But I will say that everyone that I know who surrounds the president, and I've gotten to know some members of the administration relatively well.

Everyone who surrounds the president, does believe this stuff, the Jerusalem stuff down to their bones. I'm not just talking about Jared and Ivanka. I'm talking about Vice President Pence. The people who are very close to the White House. This is stuff that they -- one of the things -- you're right, of the people on the stage, who pledged to do this, Trump was the person who I didn't trust the most.

But it does show, for all the people that keep saying, on the left, that the Republican Party is, you know, quasi anti-Semitic and all this nonsense, the fact is that I think that Trump was not the only guy on the stage who actually would have done it.

I mean, the fact that he's done it, he gets the credit obviously. But I think Ted Cruz would have done it. I think there's a good shot Marco Rubio would have done it.

I think there a bunch of candidates on the stage -- this has become a very strong issue for Republicans. So in that sense, I think you're right, it's one way of shoring up the base. But I'm not going to detract from the president for doing the moral thing, just because it's political advantageous.

GLENN: Yeah. I don't -- in fact, I want to do the opposite. I think, if he does this -- yeah, if he does this and he moves the embassy, it's one of the bravest moves I've seen probably since Ronald Reagan said that's an evil empire and needs to be destroyed.

BEN: I think that's right. I think that's exactly right. And I think it's very similar to the way the left has responded. The international commotion. Oh, this is going to be so terrible. It's going to lead to World War III. It's going to be a conflagration.

You know what is really going to happen? Countries have interests in the world. Saudi Arabia does not care that much about Jerusalem.

You know how I know that? Last week, the New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia was actually going to the Palestinian and telling them, you guys need to back off this Jerusalem thing and just cut a deal with Jerusalem and be done here. Saudi Arabia has no interest in this.

The Jordanian kingdom has no interest in this. So the idea that they're all going to suddenly stand up on their hind legs because they're so mad that Trump says that Jerusalem is a part of Israel, which it always has and always will be. I think that that's a lot of leftist claptrap.

GLENN: Ben Shapiro. Thank you very much. God bless. Editor-in-chief. DailyWire.com.

BEN: Thanks a lot.

GLENN: 2017. Wow.

Could anything else have happened in 2017? I mean, look at the history. We're going to do -- is it next week or the week after, we'll be doing some shows of just the year end review. Oh, my gosh

STU: I'm hesitant because at the end of 2016, I was like, ugh, let's get this year over with, get to something else. Then 2017 is happening. I'm thinking the same thing. But maybe I shouldn't.

GLENN: I know. Be careful what you wish for.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

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The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

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That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

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Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

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Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

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The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

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All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

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The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

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This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.