Jussie Smollett's hate crime story begins to utterly collapse, President Trump prepares to declare a national emergency, and the 2020 Democrats move even further to the left. That s how fast we move here on the Ben Shapiro Show, and we're going to do mailbag questions to go with it. Today's mailbag includes: 1. What do you think about Jussie's story? 2. What would you do if you were in a similar situation? 3. How would you react if someone attacked you? 4. What are your thoughts on the latest developments in Jussie s case? 5. How do you feel about the way that the media handled the story so far? 6. What should we do next? 7. What s next for Jussie and his family? 8. Is it possible that he was targeted by white supremacists? 9. What does he have to do to clear his name? 10. Is he a racist? 11. Does he have a case to answer these questions? 12. Will he ever get a fair trial? 13. What's next for him? 14. How will he get a lawyer? 15. What will he do about this? 16. Is there any chance he s going to get a clear hearing from the FBI? 17. Is this a racist attack on him or not? 18. What is his next step? 19. What can we do about it? Is he going to go to the press about this in the future? And so much more? Have a question for Ben Shapiro? Listen to the full episode? Subscribe to the entire episode? Subscribe to our new show on The Ben Shapiro Podcast? Subscribe and review the show on Apple Podcasts? Subscribe on iTunes! Subscribe on Podcharts? Learn more about your ad choices and other links on the and other great links on our social media platforms? We re listening to us on The Hill by listening to our podcast on The podcast by The Daily Wire? and we re spreading the word about our work on social media and other things like that on The Big Peezy Peeves and other places on The Peece Award? , The Big Reel is on The Root is on It s GONE! Thank Me Out On This Is It On That And This And This Is That And That And The Other?
00:00:00.000Jussie Smollett's hate crime story begins to utterly collapse, President Trump prepares to declare a national emergency, and the 2020 Democrats move even further to the left.
00:00:15.000Man, sometimes there is so much news, it's almost impossible to get through all of it.
00:00:18.000We're going to get through all of it, and we're going to do mailbag questions.
00:00:20.000That's how fast we move here on the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:23.000But first, let's talk about how you can make your business better.
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00:01:35.000Alrighty, so we begin with the shocking but not so shocking news that Jussie Smollett's story seems to be falling apart.
00:01:42.000You will recall Jussie Smollett's story, Mean Streets of Chicago.
00:01:46.000Two AM, goes down for a Subway sandwich, and he leaves his apartment, goes to the Subway, picks up his sandwich, and on the way back, suddenly out of nowhere, he is accosted by two presumably white MAGA fans, who come up to him, somehow identify him from the show Empire, which is weird, and then start yelling the F-word and the N-word at him, at which point they string a noose around his neck, begin kicking him in the ribs, pour bleach on him, And he's only missing from the cameras for like 60 seconds because Chicago has lots of cameras.
00:02:15.000There's a 60-second period where he's missing from the camera.
00:02:17.000When he re-emerges on camera, he's got a clothesline around his neck.
00:02:20.000He's still carrying his Subway sandwich because, as we have discussed before, this is always what you do.
00:02:26.000I mean, if you get in a fight, if somebody is beating the living hell out of you, threatening your life, threatening to noose you, shouting, this is MAGA country while doing so, your first priority Keep the sandwich.
00:02:35.000I mean, honestly, they should hire this guy at Subway.
00:02:38.000That's how much this guy loves Subway.
00:02:40.000I mean, he can take a lickin' and keep on tickin' and carry that Subway sandwich at the same time.
00:02:45.000So, 60 seconds later, he walks back on camera.
00:02:48.000Now he's got clothesline around his neck, and he's carrying his Subway sandwich.
00:02:51.000He strolls right through the lobby of his building, past the doorman, goes upstairs, waits 40 minutes, and then calls the cops.
00:02:56.000At which point, the cops show up, and they say, what happened?
00:02:59.000He's still got the clothesline around his neck at this point, and he says, well, All this stuff happened, and they said, OK, well, can we see your phone?
00:03:05.000Because you claim you were on the phone with your manager at the time.
00:04:24.000Whenever there's a story where every element seems like it's too much, you gotta think to yourself, maybe this is a hoax.
00:04:30.000Unfortunately, there have been lots of racial hoaxes in the past where people claim to have been victimized in a hate crime and it turns out not to be true.
00:04:36.000This one smelled like a hoax from the very beginning.
00:04:38.000Nonetheless, Jussie Smollett was treated with all of the sensitivity due to his claim.
00:04:44.000And specifically, because the media loves to run with the narrative that America is a racist, homophobic place, this became top news across the country, even though the claims didn't make any sense.
00:04:54.000Again, two guys in the dead of night in Chicago, in 10 degree below weather, who watch Empire but also are MAGA fans.
00:05:02.000And we're screaming at Jussie Smollett that night, this is MAGA country in the middle of Chicago, which apparently went 193% against Donald Trump in the last election cycle.
00:05:14.000So it was a very weird story from the beginning.
00:05:16.000That didn't stop the media from jumping all in with both feet.
00:05:18.000Good Morning America featured Jussie Smollett on their show yesterday, where he cried and he acted.
00:06:41.000No, it turns out that we sort of believe that it might not be the truth.
00:06:45.000Because ABC Chicago reported yesterday in a shocking blow, mainstream media hardest hit, that Jussie Smollett was probably not telling the truth about this.
00:06:53.000Here's ABC 7 Chicago report last night.
00:06:58.000Police are now questioning the two people seen in this surveillance photo.
00:07:04.000Chicago police say there is no evidence the persons of interest were involved in that physical attack described by Smollett.
00:07:10.000Multiple sources are telling Eyewitness News that Smollett and the two men are being questioned by police for staging the attack, allegedly because his character was being written out of the show.
00:07:21.000Now, it is true that Fox came back and they said, oh, we weren't writing Jussie out.
00:07:24.000Jussie was never going to be written out of the show.
00:07:26.000So we have a bunch of conflicting stories.
00:07:28.000But here is what we do know at this point.
00:07:31.000ABC7 Chicago said that Smollett failed to appear for an interview with detectives earlier on Thursday.
00:07:37.000They say that they were investigating whether these two men staged an attack.
00:07:41.000The way that they tracked down these two guys is by going through Jussie Smollett's phone.
00:07:45.000Apparently, the report is, that he had turned over an Excel spreadsheet with a phone log that had deleted certain calls.
00:07:52.000So they compared his actual phone log, which I guess they'd subpoenaed, with the calls that he said he had made, and then they only looked at the ones that he deleted.
00:08:00.000And that's how they tracked down these two guys.
00:08:01.000He had said in that Good Morning America interview, by the way, that those two people in the picture walking down the street, those were definitely, definitely the two guys who attacked him.
00:08:12.000Either he's telling the truth and those are the two guys who attacked him and it turns out they're his friends, or he's not telling the truth and those were not the two guys who attacked him, it was another two guys who attacked him.
00:08:21.000A source briefed on the Smollett investigation confirmed to ABC News that Chicago police are questioning the two persons of interest, one of whom has actually appeared on Empire.
00:08:28.000The law enforcement official also told ABC News that the homes of the persons of interest were raided on Wednesday night.
00:08:33.000Police removed shoes, electronic devices, and any other items they believe could help determine if the two people played any role in the assault.
00:08:40.000Neighbors described a swarm of officers and canine units.
00:08:43.000Jamie Figueroa, a neighbor, said, I was walking in the alley.
00:08:45.000One police car stopped in the alley and they told me to go inside the house.
00:08:48.000But by then, five minutes later, there were like 20 police right here by the door.
00:08:52.000Neighbors said they believe the men who are Nigerian are brothers who grew up in the apartment and have lived there for years.
00:08:56.000Neighbors described them as friendly and possibly bodybuilders and said they have long wanted to be actors.
00:09:01.000Chicago police said they cannot confirm any of those reports.
00:09:06.000Earlier, police said the two persons of interest are not suspects and have not been charged.
00:09:10.000Investigators are only talking with them at this time.
00:09:12.000The two were picked up Wednesday night at O'Hare International Airport.
00:09:16.000And a lawyer who said she was representing the two persons of interest declined to comment on the case as she left Area Central Police Headquarters.
00:09:23.000Chicago police said they were tracking these two people and they were aware of who they were for quite a while.
00:09:27.000So this has led to accusations that Chicago PD, out of fear of being called racist, was slow playing the revelation that this may have been a setup and a hoax.
00:09:42.000This thing happened within a week of Covington High School.
00:09:45.000The entire media leapt to the conclusion that a bunch of white kids had harassed a Native American man on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March for Life.
00:10:06.000It says the media are looking for a narrative.
00:10:08.000The narrative is racist white men do X. That is the narrative the media are looking for.
00:10:12.000They don't require any further evidence.
00:10:13.000Whenever that is the narrative, they're willing to jump on it with both feet.
00:10:16.000It also explains why it is that the media will pay inordinate attention, like truly grand attention, to anti-semitic attacks by white supremacists, but will pay no attention to the vast bevy of anti-semitic attacks taking place in Brooklyn every single weekend, apparently.
00:10:45.000It's because the media are always willing to jump with both feet on any story that backs a claim that America is a racist, terrible place.
00:10:53.000And then they will slowly walk back the claims as it comes out that that's not true.
00:10:58.000We've seen a bunch of these cases recently.
00:10:59.000There was a player, I believe his name was Michael Bennett, for the Seattle Seahawks, and he claimed that the racist police in Las Vegas had physically assaulted him.
00:11:07.000Tape came out, it turns out that he had resisted the police and he had run away from them.
00:11:11.000These sorts of cases do happen, which is why the appropriate thing to do now, in a time where people do fib for media attention, where people do know what the media wants and then spoon-feed those narratives to the media, and where the media are willing to run with those stories, The best thing you can do on any story, it's something that I'm learning, I think everybody is learning, you gotta wait 48 hours for anything.
00:11:35.000If a story seems too good to be true, unless it is confirmed by a wide variety of sources, you have to wait 48 hours.
00:11:42.000Because there is a very good shot that within 48 hours, the entire story will collapse.
00:11:45.000This happens to be true with racial hoaxes, but it's true across a wide variety of stories, as I'll explain in just a second.
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00:12:47.000Alright, so, as we know, it is not just on the matter of racial hoaxes and racial stories that the media are willing to jump with both feet.
00:13:06.000It's not just Michael Brown, hands up, don't shoot.
00:13:09.000It is also with regard to President Trump.
00:13:11.000It's why we have seen multiple false stories about President Trump debunked over the past several years.
00:13:15.000CNN, you'll recall, ran with a story about President Trump suggesting that Donald Trump Jr.
00:13:20.000knew in advance about WikiLeaks leaks, and that he was coordinating in advance about it, and then CNN had to walk back the report.
00:13:27.000McClatchy ran with a report that Michael Cohen was indeed in Prague meeting with Russian agents.
00:13:31.000They never walked that report back, but there's still no evidence to support it.
00:13:35.000Whenever the media leap on a story that seems so spectacular that it backs every aspect of what they want it to back, Your first response should be, hold up a second.
00:14:38.000That's why he said that on Good Morning America.
00:14:39.000That's why he said he was bewildered by people who were asking questions.
00:14:43.000The question really should have been what sane person believed every aspect of that story from the start.
00:14:48.000Now, again, maybe it happened the way he did, but without any evidence, I'm supposed to believe that two MAGA-hatted guys on the streets of Chicago at 2 a.m.
00:14:55.000attacked an Empire actor they identified from the show, wound clothesline around his neck, poured bleach on him, and then allowed him not only to escape with his life, but with his Subway sandwich?
00:15:24.000There's a lot of garbage in this budget deal.
00:15:26.000Conservative Review has a great piece by Daniel Horowitz going through what exactly is in this budget deal.
00:15:36.000He says, I've talked at length before about how I think it violates the very nature of constitutional government to provide massive omnibus packages to the president.
00:15:50.000Every bill was supposed to be designed separately.
00:15:52.000Every bill was supposed to come up for a vote.
00:15:54.000And then the president had the ability to veto.
00:15:57.000The reason that the line item veto even became an issue over the last 30-40 years is because Congress routinely would put together crap sandwiches and then tell the President to either sign the crap sandwich or veto the crap sandwich.
00:16:11.000Well, according to Daniel Horowitz over at CR, who has a really good review of it, he says, less of a wall than even what Democrats agreed to.
00:16:18.000Trump originally demanded $25 billion for the wall.
00:16:20.000Then he negotiated himself down to $5.6 billion.
00:16:23.000Democrats balked and only agreed to $1.6 billion.
00:16:25.000This bill calls it a day at $1.375 billion, enough to construct 55 miles.
00:16:32.000The bill limits the president's ability to construct barriers to just the Rio Grande Valley sector and only bollard fencing, not concrete walls of any kind.
00:16:41.000In fact, this provision is so strong that it's leading people to believe that Trump may not even be able to use a national emergency to overcome it.
00:16:49.000Meaning that if the bill itself restricts the ability to construct barriers to just a particular area, that's actually a solid legal basis for saying the president doesn't have national emergency power to construct wall other places.
00:17:01.000Because the way that we read law in the judiciary is that last in time is first in priority.
00:17:06.000So if Congress passes two bills, one in 1960 and one yesterday, and the one yesterday overrules the one in 1960, then the courts will read it that way.
00:17:15.000So if the National Emergencies Act of 1976 says the president can declare a national emergency and build a wall, which again is even questionable, we'll get to that, but even if it said that, if a bill yesterday came out and said, we will not allow the president to build wall other than in this small area, the bill yesterday trumps the National Emergencies Act of 1976.
00:17:35.000Second thing that's wrong with the budget, according to Daniel Horowitz, liberal local officials will have veto power over the wall.
00:17:42.000He says, it's likely that not a single mile of fence will be built.
00:17:45.000Section 232A of the bill says, prior to use of any funds made available by this act for the construction of physical barriers, the Department of Homeland Security shall confer and reach mutual agreement regarding the design and alignment of physical barriers within that city.
00:17:58.000They have to consult the local elected officials.
00:18:01.000This is why they've limited the wall to the Rio Grande Valley.
00:18:04.000These are the most liberal borders on the, these are the most liberal counties on the borders.
00:18:11.000The bill stipulates such consultations shall continue until September 30th, 2019 and may be extended beyond that date by agreements of the parties and no funds made available in this act should be used for construction while consultations are continuing, which means Trump can't build any wall at least until September and maybe beyond because he has to consult with all of these liberal authorities.
00:18:31.000Third, the bill contains a blatant amnesty for the worst cartel smugglers.
00:18:34.000Section 224A prohibits the deportation of anyone who is sponsoring an unaccompanied minor illegal alien, or who says they might sponsor an unaccompanied minor illegal alien, or lives in a household with an unaccompanied minor illegal alien, or a household that might potentially sponsor an unaccompanied minor illegal alien.
00:18:51.000So we are now using children being trafficked across the border as an excuse not to arrest illegal immigrants in the country who may apply as a sponsor, or anyone in the household applying as a sponsor.
00:19:01.000Jessica Vaughn of the very anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, she says we can call this the MS-13 Household Protection Act of 2019.
00:19:09.000We know that 80% of UAC sponsors, that's unaccompanied children, are in the country illegally.
00:19:14.000The number of people this would protect would reach into the hundreds of thousands if all the potential household or potential household members are counted.
00:19:23.000Fourth, the budget bill contains more funding to manage and induce the invasion rather than to deter it.
00:19:28.000There is no new funding for ICE deportation agents.
00:19:31.000It does add another $40 million for the Alternatives to Detention program, which moves asylum seekers to facilities in the interior of the country where they're usually released.
00:19:40.000And finally, it doubles low-skilled workers.
00:19:42.000It doubles the number of H-2B non-agricultural, unskilled seasonal workers who will continue to be a public charge on America, according to Daniel Horowitz.
00:19:49.000That's just a cursory glance through the bill.
00:19:51.000So there's a bunch of problems with the bill itself.
00:19:53.000Now, the assumption was that President Trump would sign this bad bill, and then he would declare a national emergency.
00:19:59.000According to ABC today, the president is going to declare some $8 billion for border walls.
00:20:07.000The Daily Mail, actually, is reporting that by declaring a national emergency, it's going to allow him to spend $8 billion building his wall after signing that bill to avoid a government shutdown.
00:20:16.000The White House confirmed Thursday the president will sign a bipartisan spending deal to avoid another government shutdown, but will declare the national emergency in an effort to procure funds to build a border wall.
00:20:25.000Trump will hold an event in the White House Rose Garden about the border at 10 a.m.
00:20:29.000He's expected to sign both the funding bill and the paperwork for his executive actions.
00:20:34.000Well, there's some problems with the National Emergency Declaration.
00:20:37.000Number one, we have to make sure that he doesn't limit himself in the budget bill itself to not being able to do any of the stuff he's talking about, as I mentioned.
00:20:44.000But number two, it is really unclear whether a National Emergency Declaration allows the President of the United States to mobilize the military in a non-emergency, non-military situation to build the border wall.
00:21:09.0002293 as possible justifications, but section 2808 states that during a national emergency that requires the use of the armed forces, the president can reallocate defense funds to undertake military construction projects.
00:21:19.000No threat posed by undocumented immigration requires the use of the armed forces.
00:21:23.000ICE, border patrol, these are not the armed forces.
00:21:25.000So it's hard to see why a wall would be necessary to support such use.
00:21:28.000Also, it turns out that immigration law is actually not War time power.
00:21:33.000Immigration law is domestic law enforcement.
00:21:36.000Section 2293 only applies to a war or emergency that requires or may require use of the armed forces.
00:21:42.000We've never used the armed forces with regard to stopping things at the border except in rare rare occasions.
00:21:48.000Another federal law allows the military to condemn property for various purposes like fortifications, but funding has to be appropriated by Congress to that purpose.
00:21:55.000As I said yesterday, the best provision of law for the president is the provision of law 10 U.S.C.
00:22:02.000284 that suggests that the president can declare certain drug corridors and then build fencing along those drug corridors.
00:22:08.000But the idea that he has some widespread national emergency power, and he's not actually expanding current national emergency power, I think is foolhardy and opens the door to precedent.
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00:23:35.000I think it will be held up in court until at the very earliest, late 2020.
00:23:39.000Even if it is not held up in court, even if border wall fencing is allowed to be built, it will be on a small portion of the border.
00:23:46.000It is quite possible that the budget deal itself obviates the legal capacity to build more wall under a national emergency declaration, as I talked about a little bit earlier.
00:24:06.000It turns out that using eminent domain as an executive power without congressional authorization, declaring a national emergency on the basis of failed domestic negotiations, that that is a bad precedent.
00:24:18.000How do we know it's a bad precedent to set?
00:24:19.000Because you can see the gleam in Nancy Pelosi's eye when she discusses the kind of national emergencies she would like to declare if she had the power to do so.
00:24:27.000Here's Nancy Pelosi's reaction to the national emergency declaration.
00:24:31.000It's important to note that when the president declares this emergency, first of all, It's not an emergency, what's happening at the border.
00:24:40.000The president has tried to sell a bill of goods to Americans.
00:24:44.000The president is doing an enran about Congress, about the power of the purse.
00:24:48.000You've heard me say over and over again, Article I, the legislative branch, the power of the purse, the power to declare war, many other powers listed in the Constitution, and, of course, the responsibility to have oversight.
00:25:04.000So the president is doing an enran around that.
00:25:07.000You want to talk about a national emergency?
00:25:08.000Let's talk about today, the one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of...
00:25:15.000Okay, now, you can see her get excited when she starts talking about this.
00:25:22.000Is Nancy Pelosi a wild hypocrite when it comes to legislative power versus executive branch power?
00:25:35.000And this is one of the big problems with, honestly, the founders did not believe that party politics would end up trumping the interests of each particular branch.
00:25:45.000The founders, if you go back and read the Federalist Papers, the founders believed that the legislature would be zealous in guarding its own powers.
00:25:50.000It wouldn't be interested in allowing the executive branch to continue expanding its own powers.
00:25:55.000Thanks to the rise of administrative government, backed by Democrats and allowed by Republicans over the last century, since Woodrow Wilson, the executive branch has spun out of control.
00:26:03.000Most lawmaking does not happen at the legislative level.
00:26:09.000Affectuation of law happens inside the executive branch.
00:26:12.000Congress is becoming a vestigial organ.
00:26:15.000And the only time that Congress is not a vestigial organ is when there is actually a gridlock.
00:26:20.000When Democrats control Congress and a Republican controls the presidency or vice versa.
00:26:24.000When one party controls both the legislature and the White House, then executive power tends to increase because nobody in the legislative branch of the party of the president is going to object to the president.
00:26:36.000So what you're seeing right now is Republicans who would certainly object if Barack Obama tried to do something like this.
00:26:41.000They would take legislative action to stop him.
00:26:44.000Right now, Republicans are making sounds like they don't like President Trump doing what he's doing, but are they actually going to stop him?
00:26:52.000Something like 10 Republicans have come out in the Senate and said they don't like this thing.
00:26:55.000How many Republicans would be saying they don't like this thing if Barack Obama were declaring a national emergency to build wind farms?
00:27:02.000Everybody in the Congress, right, they would all say this is absurd, you can't declare a national emergency to do this sort of thing, this is a legislative process.
00:27:10.000If Barack Obama were doing that, Nancy Pelosi would be talking about the wonders of the executive branch.
00:27:15.000The founders didn't understand, or they didn't foresee, that party politics would be so strong as to actually trump the interests, the governmental interests of the various branches.
00:27:25.000It would be more important whether the president was of your party than whether the legislature was having its authority usurped.
00:27:41.000The rise of executive branch power has been everlasting and continuous throughout the course of the last century.
00:27:48.000And we are seeing the effects of it now as the president of both parties, doesn't matter the party, continues to usurp more and more power from the legislature.
00:27:56.000If you think it's a good precedent, wait until there's a democratic president, guys.
00:27:59.000And don't give me the, well, Democrats are going to break the rules anyway, so Republicans should break the rules also.
00:28:04.000If you use that logic, honestly, if you really believe that the Democrats are going to break every rule to effectuate their policies, just declare Trump dictator and be done with it.
00:28:11.000It's an argument that proves too much.
00:28:13.000We do still have certain constitutional and legal norms in this country that both parties do hew to for the most part, which is why it's a problem when people stray from those principles.
00:28:23.000If you believe that when Democrats take power, they're going to declare the next president a dictator, then you should be calling for President Trump to simply override the Constitution and seize power now so as to prevent a left-wing dictatorship.
00:28:36.000I think the constitutional norms still prevail.
00:28:38.000Call me foolish, call me optimistic, but those constitutional norms, despite gradual encroachments of power, have largely prevailed over the past couple of hundred years in the United States.
00:28:47.000Okay, meanwhile, Democrats proving themselves incompetent once again as Amazon pulls out of New York City.
00:28:52.000According to the New York Times, Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expensive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from lawmakers, progressive activists, and union leaders who contended that a tech giant did not deserve $3 billion in government incentives.
00:29:06.000The vast majority of those incentives, by the way, were tax breaks.
00:29:10.000Now, I've said before, I don't believe in giveaways to specific companies.
00:29:15.000I think that if you want to have a good working environment, you want to bring business into your state or city, lower the tax rate for everyone.
00:29:20.000Don't give special giveaways to certain sized companies or to certain big companies that you want to bring into town.
00:29:27.000With that said, was New York going to lose money by giving tax breaks?
00:29:31.000No, they were not going to lose money by giving tax breaks.
00:29:33.000They were going to gain money by bringing a giant business into Queens that was going to bring some 25,000 jobs with it.
00:29:39.000Nonetheless, people on the left do not understand basic economics, and so they were very pleased with their own genius here.
00:30:11.000I mean, three hours of me every single day.
00:30:15.000Two more hours of me later in the day.
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00:32:17.000So Amazon was getting mostly tax breaks to come to New York City.
00:32:21.000There were certain cash grants that they were getting because they qualified under already applicable law in New York for these cash grants, which they shouldn't have these cash grant programs.
00:32:30.000But leftists were very angry because they don't like Amazon.
00:32:32.000The reason they don't like Amazon is because Amazon is big and Amazon is successful and Amazon provides jobs.
00:33:00.000It was mostly white people who are too prissy to have Amazon move in.
00:33:04.000You know, the hipsters, like, oh no, Walmart's coming to town, the mom-and-pop store's gonna go out of business, as opposed to everyone else who's like, great, Walmart's coming to town, jobs, cheap stuff.
00:33:15.000So AOC, who, believe it or not, has an economics either major or minor, still unclear on this, from Boston University, which means that Boston University should be shut down until we know what the hell is going on.
00:33:26.000AOC explained her excitement at thrusting out a company from her district that would bring some 25,000 jobs to her district.
00:33:49.000I mean, it shows that everyday Americans still have the power to organize and fight for their communities, and they can have more say in this country than the richest man in the world.
00:34:03.000We could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to.
00:35:20.000It's the equivalent of me walking into a pizza store with a coupon that says $5 off, and I show it to the guy at the counter, and it was a $20 pizza, and now it's a $15 pizza.
00:36:29.000Because Amazon, if Amazon really cared about New York, they'd pay whatever tax we laid on them.
00:36:36.000The New York Times has a piece today from some moronic columnist suggesting that New York just won a victory over Amazon.
00:36:43.000See, when you offer incentives to a giant company to come to your city and provide jobs, and then you throw them out, that's not actually a victory.
00:36:51.000You're no better off than when you started.
00:36:55.000But the beautiful thing about being on the left is that nothing you ever say has to make any sense.
00:37:42.000So she tweeted out about Amazon, quote, Amazon, one of the wealthiest companies on the planet, just walked away from billions in taxpayer bribes, All because some elected officials in New York aren't sucking up to them enough.
00:37:58.000How long will we allow giant corporations to hold our democracy hostage?
00:38:24.000She was a progressive for sure, but she was not a complete nutjob.
00:38:26.000To suggest that this is Amazon's fault because New York wouldn't suck up to them enough?
00:38:32.000Like, it's not sucking up to provide a good business climate, but I guess it is if you're pandering for that left-wing Bernie Sanders vote.
00:38:37.000Which brings us to Bernard McJay Sanders.
00:38:42.000That is the Soviet national anthem for those keeping track at home.
00:38:51.000So, Senator Bernie... He loves that song, by the way.
00:38:53.000He sings it shirtless in the Soviet Union, the whole deal.
00:38:55.000Senator Bernie Sanders reached out to Representative Ilhan Omar on Tuesday to offer his support and amid criticism from both Democrats and Republicans that the progressive freshman lawmaker trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes on Twitter.
00:39:08.000Remember that time that Steve King lost his committee assignments from Republicans and everybody ran screaming away from him with their hair on fire?
00:39:14.000Ilhan Omar says anti-semitic things every five seconds, as we discussed on the podcast yesterday, and Bernie Sanders bear hugs her.
00:39:21.000Because this is what the progressive left has become.
00:40:29.000Beto O'Rourke, he did a rally next to President Trump the other day, and he talked about the border.
00:40:35.000And while talking about the border, he said that walls are bad and walls kill people, which led Representative Dan Crenshaw to say, well, dude, do you want to tear down all those walls?
00:40:44.000And Beto owned it, like a bro, like a dude.
00:40:48.000Here he is saying, yeah, man, I'll tear down that wall, because Something.
00:41:21.000One of your Democratic frontrunners saying that he would tear down an actual border wall that exists and has lowered the levels of illegal immigration.
00:41:29.000And he says that people in his city would vote to tear down that border wall also.
00:41:36.000Okay, on to Senator Kamala Harris, the narc from California.
00:41:40.000So Kamala Harris has herself an interesting week.
00:41:49.000She is promoting an anti-lynching bill, which of course is fine.
00:41:52.000You know, I'm very much in favor of the anti-lynching bill.
00:41:55.000The anti-lynching bill basically just strengthens federal crime against lynching, which is fine.
00:42:01.000I mean, lynching isn't taking place on a regular basis, but sure, good, okay.
00:42:04.000Although, it seems to me it maybe should be a state crime instead of a federal crime, but alright.
00:42:09.000So she spoke about that a little bit yesterday.
00:42:11.000She also happens to be dominating the social media primary.
00:42:14.000So according to Mediaite and a report from Axios, when it comes to the social media attention, when it comes to interactions, it looks like Kamala Harris is winning.
00:42:25.000So Instagram interactions, Harris has 8.3 million.
00:42:28.000Bernie Sanders comes in at second with 4.6 million, Warren at 2 million.
00:43:25.000The senator from New Jersey, he has a couple of problems.
00:43:28.000Number one, he also pushed this anti-lynching bill, but then he said about the anti-lynching bill that we need an anti-lynching bill because of Jussie Smollett's story.
00:45:19.000And all the way down at 1 percent, below Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is Kirsten Gillibrand.
00:45:27.000She is currently tied with Marianne Williamson, the spiritual guru for Oprah.
00:45:32.000So, Kirsten Gillibrand having some failure to launch.
00:45:34.000So, right now, if you have to look at all of those candidates, Kamala Harris is the person who is the strongest among the candidates.
00:45:41.000Beto is really steering left in a pretty radical fashion.
00:45:45.000I promise you, when he was running for Senate in Texas, he was not running on the, let's dissolve the border with Mexico platform.
00:45:52.000Turns out Texans probably wouldn't have liked that very much.
00:45:54.000Now he's running on that platform because he's trying to cut off Kamala Harris's appeal to millennials.
00:45:59.000So if you had to break down the various lanes in the Democratic Party primary, basically you've got the African-American lane, these are the lanes put out by 538, the African-American lane, Kamala Harris, gonna own that lane, is the presumption.
00:46:11.000The Millennial lane, Beto is gonna own that lane.
00:46:14.000There's the progressive lane that will be split between Sanders and Warren and Beto and maybe Kamala a little bit.
00:46:20.000The mainstream lane that would presumably be split if we're just talking about current candidates.
00:46:24.000The mainstream lane would be split between Kamala Harris and maybe Beto.
00:46:30.000So right now it looks like a two-person race in terms of Kamala Harris and Beto.
00:46:33.000I think Bernie Sanders has passed his prime.
00:46:35.000I think that Elizabeth Warren is toast as well.
00:46:39.000She's fading away like a smoke signal off into the horizon.
00:46:41.000So, right now, it's Beto versus Kamala, unless Joe Biden jumps in, which will get interesting, and then we'll have to come up with some theme song for him as well.
00:46:50.000So we'll get to, we'll do that when he jumps in.
00:46:53.000I promise you, we need more theme songs because there are one million candidates running.
00:46:56.000Okay, time for a couple entries in the mailbag.
00:47:37.000I have a sneaking fondness for Saul, who I feel is one of the more interesting characters in biblical literature because he obviously suffered from manic depression, and you can see that in the literature.
00:47:46.000And he was somebody who was trying to do his best but was limited by his own flaws, so he's almost a Shakespearean tragic character.
00:47:53.000The character of Phineas is an interesting character as well.
00:47:56.000Phineas, of course, was famous for his zealotry.
00:47:59.000You'll recall that in the book of Midbar, in the book of Numbers, Phineas, there's a situation where somebody's committing an open sin and Phineas takes up a spear and goes and kills that person out of zealousness.
00:48:11.000And there's a whole argument in Jewish law about when you can do this and when you can't.
00:48:17.000Joshua says, Hi Ben, I'm currently applying to medical school and I'm shocked by how new science has pervaded the entire process.
00:48:22.000When studying for the MCAT, I learned that the official AAMC, the company that makes the test, prep materials and practice exams, essentially guaranteed a question stating that gender has no biological basis.
00:48:32.000The vast majority of secondary applications to school had a checkbox for if I identified as part of the LGBTQ community.
00:48:38.000Well, I think keeping your head down is probably the smart move.
00:48:54.000The question is, what is the purpose of the conversation?
00:48:56.000If the purpose of the conversation is to tell the truth and to speak your opinion, say what you want.
00:49:01.000But I assume that there are lots of areas of American practice in medicine where you might have political disagreements.
00:49:07.000For example, if you're asked a question about how abortion is done, and you say, listen, I don't think I need to know that because I'm a religious person, I'm not going to perform an abortion.
00:49:16.000Is that answer calibrated to get you to your goal?
00:49:21.000You do have to play some games when it comes to American professional life, and that's unfortunate.
00:49:25.000It is also a demonstration that we should have accredited medical schools that don't participate in this kind of garbage.
00:49:30.000The fact that the scientific establishment has been taken over by politically correct, anti-scientific nonsense It's really devastating.
00:49:36.000It's devastating to watch as objective science is tossed out in favor of subjective silliness that is pumped into medical institutions by politically motivated actors.
00:49:47.000Nathan says there are several studies in the academic literature detailing the correlation between perceived discrimination and the health of an individual.
00:49:53.000In addition, there is no doubt in my mind that actual discrimination is negatively correlated to health.
00:49:57.000This led me to wonder about the effects that identity politics and intersectionality have had on the health of Americans, especially in the minority community.
00:50:03.000But I couldn't find a study that looked at all three.
00:50:05.000Actual discrimination, perceived discrimination, and health at the same time.
00:50:09.000That said, can you point to anything that has correlated perceived discrimination with negative health, while also determining the accuracy of the group's perceptions?
00:50:15.000This is a fantastic question, and it's a question I have asked repeatedly.
00:50:18.000So there are a lot of studies in the recent past about how black women die in childbirth more often, have more unhealthy babies, and the suggestion has been made that this is the result of systemic discrimination.
00:50:30.000I have real doubts that the medical establishment is severely undercovering black women who are in labor or pregnant.
00:50:37.000When there are higher maternal mortality rates, higher baby mortality rates in the black community, those things are largely linked to birth weight, and birth weight is largely linked to living style, what you eat and such.
00:50:47.000If you're younger, if you're a teenager when you have a baby, you tend to have low birth weight problems.
00:50:51.000But, the studies also tend to show that women who perceive discrimination are more likely to suffer stress, and therefore to suffer pregnancy-related complications.
00:51:01.000The question that no one has ever been able to verify or ask is how much of the perceived discrimination is real.
00:51:06.000Now here I bring up a very famous statement by Adam Carolla that I think is true.
00:51:10.000I'm not saying that people are hallucinating racism.
00:51:13.000I'm saying that there's lots of action in life every day that can either be perceived as people being stupid or perceived as actual discrimination.
00:51:20.000So, when I was growing up, for example, my dad had a tendency, when I was much younger, I think he's grown out of it now, but when I was much younger, my dad had a tendency where if he saw somebody mistreat a Jew for some reason, he would immediately assume that it was anti-Semitism.
00:51:33.000And I would say, well, maybe it's not anti-Semitism, maybe it's the person just being a jerk.
00:51:37.000He says, listen, if I were a black person driving down the highway and I were pulled over by the cops, I would immediately assume it was racial profiling.
00:51:46.000Maybe it's just a cop being a jerk or a bad guy because it turns out that lots of white people get pulled over for no reason by the cops.
00:51:52.000Or maybe it turns out that I am not correctly perceiving my own activity and I actually did violate the law.
00:51:59.000There's really no way, except for cases like murder, where there's a documented effect, to look at racial discrimination in, for example, the criminal justice system.
00:52:08.000The only way to match up police discrimination would be to match up, for example, the number of calls to the police describing purpose of a particular race to the number of arrests that are made by the police of a particular race.
00:52:21.000It turns out those percentages match up exactly.
00:52:23.000In other words, perception of human beings is notoriously unreliable, and studies that take as their basis that perceived discrimination equals actual discrimination are likely to be off by maybe an order of magnitude.
00:52:35.000I mean, it's a real social science problem.
00:52:37.000Gregory says, Hey Ben, while talking with my lady over some Sherry's berries yesterday, I had to eat some too.
00:52:50.000As we discussed the idea of possibly taking a vacation.
00:52:53.000We both put out some ideas, but couldn't really decide what is the best place for your money.
00:52:56.000Where do you believe stateside or overseas is the first place a young couple should spend some time to experience something different and maybe learn something new?
00:53:07.000The place that I thought was coolest that I had visited outside of Israel, which I have some religious reasons for thinking is pretty awesome.
00:53:13.000If you're a religious person, Israel is unbelievable.
00:53:15.000If you're a person who likes history and is a Christian or a Jew or Muslim, frankly, Israel is an amazing place to visit, an incredible place to visit.
00:53:24.000If you are If you're a Catholic, if you love history, if you love culture, if you love art, I love Italy.
00:53:42.000If you're just looking for a place to chill out, Hawaii is still the best place on Earth.
00:53:45.000I am very glad the United States annexed it simply so I could vacation there.
00:53:48.000Personal selfishness coming into play right there.
00:53:51.000But Hawaii is fantastic, and if you don't want to learn anything, you just want a vacation, Then you go check out Hawaii.
00:54:00.000I find this to be untrue, but in your opinion, what would you say are some of the biggest threats in America?
00:54:05.000The biggest threat in America is people not understanding the American bargain and believing that America is all about guaranteeing you free stuff rather than free dumb.
00:54:13.000That is the biggest threat to America.
00:54:14.000It's Americans who don't understand our own history, who don't care about our own history, who are intolerant of other people's opinions, who believe that they should be able to use the government as a club to compel people to do what they want.
00:54:23.000That is the biggest danger to America.
00:54:25.000The biggest dangers to America are from within.
00:54:26.000They don't have to do with a giant tsunami that's going to hit the coast.
00:54:29.000They don't even have to do with terrorism.
00:54:30.000They have to do with the American Republic losing sight of its own way.
00:54:33.000I wrote an entire book about this, The Right Side of History.
00:54:41.000Marcus says, Ben, I recently had a discussion with my cousin who just got back from South Korea about universal health care and its downfalls.
00:54:46.000She mentioned that surprisingly, it has been very successful out there.
00:54:48.000She said it was much more effective and expedient than when she went to doctors here in the States.
00:54:52.000Have you read or seen anything regarding their system or have any input on the validity of its effectiveness?
00:54:56.000I don't know enough about the South Korean system.
00:54:58.000I have been looking at the United States healthcare system in some detail over the past couple of weeks because I really want to know more about how it compares and contrasts with other healthcare systems around the world.
00:55:06.000The truth is the United States does have a heavily subsidized public sector healthcare system.
00:55:11.00049% of all healthcare spending in the United States is done by the government.
00:55:15.000About 66% of people in the United States are covered by employer-provided health care insurance.
00:55:20.000Market incentives are largely skewed by Medicaid and Medicare.
00:55:23.000But one area in which the United States is head and shoulders above everyone else.
00:55:27.000There are a couple of places in which the United States is head and shoulders above every other health care system on planet Earth.
00:55:35.000If you have cancer, you have a grave disease, you don't want to be anywhere else.
00:55:38.000You want to be in the place where you can get convenient care, And pay for it.
00:55:42.000You don't want to be in a system where you have to wait online and they have rationed care for specialists and there aren't enough specialists because they're not being paid enough.
00:55:48.000The United States is still number one with a bullet, by a long way, in terms of survival five years after diagnosis of cancer.
00:55:57.000I think in second place is Switzerland, which also has a very privately based healthcare insurance system.
00:56:03.000It just has an individual mandate that is not connected to your employer.
00:56:07.000The United States is all, really where the United States is head and shoulders above everyone else, is also when it comes to the production of new goods and services.
00:56:15.000The United States is responsible for over half of the world's medical patents.
00:56:18.000We are responsible for the vast majorities of new drugs that come onto the market, and we pay a premium for that.
00:56:24.000The reason all these companies are located in the United States is because we don't use the government to cram down prices on these R&D companies.
00:56:30.000So, for all the talk about the United States and how much we spend on healthcare, we also make an enormous amount of money on healthcare.
00:56:36.000The healthcare industry is an enormous growing industry in the United States.
00:56:39.000The entire city of Pittsburgh is basically employed by the healthcare industry, where it used to be coal mining country.
00:56:45.000So, there's some real upsides to the U.S.
00:56:48.000The downsides are that when it comes to emergency care, It's more expensive.
00:56:55.000The downsides are that there's no quote-unquote universal health care coverage, although Medicaid basically provides something close to it.
00:57:01.000But would I take any other system over the United States's?
00:57:26.000I'm just contrasting the United States with, for example, France, which is a system everybody seems to like a lot on the left.
00:57:32.000And again, I think that the reason that I favor this is because I'm a free market person.
00:57:37.000On a moral level, I don't believe that it's my job to pay for your health care.
00:57:40.000I think that I can if I'm charitable, but if we have an incentive system that is so skewed that the government pays for everybody's health care, you're going to get a lot more dependents.
00:57:47.000You're going to get a lot more demands on the health care system and a lot less supply unless you radically raise taxes, which is basically what's happened in Europe.
00:58:33.000Listen, I mean, I'm, I don't want to get arrogant here, but beneath this, this humble exterior lies the body of a Greek God that happens to be a slightly skinnier Greek God.
00:58:44.000I'm not going to be in any bodybuilding competitions.
00:59:09.000This week, we feature a book by Richard Scarry that is so politically incorrect, it will make minds melt for all the parents on the left, which is why they should read it, because it'll be good for them.