House GOP Conference Chair and Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) joined “The Ben Shapiro Show” this evening to discuss Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s doubling down on her comparison between the border crisis and concentration camps, along with Iran’s downing of a U.S. drone Wednesday night. You can listen to the full interview here and see an excerpt of the transcript below:

BEN SHAPIRO: Representative Cheney, while I have you on the phone, obviously the big story of the day is the continued growth in tension in the Middle East, Iran shooting down a United States drone, this coming after Iran allegedly, and apparently by all available evidence, bombed a couple of ships in the Gulf of Oman. President Trump has been sending a little bit of mixed signals today, suggesting that something is coming and then also suggesting that this may have just been a mistake by the Iranian government, the media obviously covering this as though the Trump administration desperately wants to go to war, or is lying us into war, what do you make of the situation in Iran and where is this going?

CHENEY: I do think it’s a very concerning situation, I think you have a lot of people in the media, in politics, in Congress who jump to blame America first, who forget the history, the extent to which the Iranians have been at war with the United States ever since the Ayatollah took over, the Iranian behavior and activity that you’ve seen around the world. They’re the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. The Obama Administration emboldened them, handed them $1.5 billion in cash, and Secretary Kerry traveled the world trying to encourage investment in Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps uses those resources, they use their oil resources, to foment terrorism, to threaten our allies like Israel and others, and to threaten our interests.

It’s a fundamental tenant and backbone of our national security that we will defend freedom of navigation, freedom of the seas and that’s something that administrations of both parties have defended and stood for since probably the beginning of the Republic. What we’re seeing today, what looks to be an IRGC, an Iranian attack on an American drone, is something we do have to take seriously. The attacks on the commercial ships in the Straits of Hormuz, we clearly cannot tolerate that and the Iranians have to understand that that kind of behavior is not behavior that the United States and our allies will allow to go on.

We will keep those shipping lanes open and we will defend our interests and we need to be making sure that we’re working with our allies to do that, but I think the Iranians have got to understand that if they want to be part of the community of nations then we have to ensure they will not pursue a nuclear program and that they certainly will not continue their malign activities throughout the region and around the world.

…

BEN SHAPIRO: AOC, who prevaricates a lot, and says dumb things a lot, who they then treat as worthy of the cover of Rolling Stone as the thought-leader of the Democratic Party and as the fount of wisdom.

CHAIR CHENEY: Yeah, there’s no question that there’s media bias. You cover it more effectively than just about anybody else. It’s something we’ve been dealing with for a long time.

I think what’s going on here is even more, potentially dangerous, and that’s because it surrounds the Holocaust, and what happens is, and we’ve seen it now repeatedly – particularly since January when the Democrats took control in the House – their members say things that are abhorrent, that are appalling, that are anti-Semitic, and then when their leadership refuses to condemn them, or when – as you’ve seen in the case of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and her comments about concentration camps – what happens is they become part of the public discourse.

That view and that perspective somehow becomes acceptable. And I believe, it doesn’t matter what religious faith you are, it is crucially important for all of us at all times to stand up and say look we understand say words have meaning. We understand that particularly with respect to the Holocaust, we have to call evil by its name, and when you act as though there’s something comparable in terms of current U.S. policy, that fundamentally diminishes the evil and the horror of the Holocaust, and we can never allow that kind of discourse to be okay, we can never allow it to be acceptable. I’m very worried that in fact that’s exactly what’s going on. 

And look, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez is essentially the intellectual leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives today. She and her progressive colleagues really seem to be controlling what gets to the floor, controlling what Speaker Pelosi will do, and they’ve got a lot of people running scared. If their leadership won’t stand up to them, then they’re clearly enabling this kind of perspective, this kind of view, this kind of fundamental anti-Semitism.