The Ben Shapiro Show - August 29, 2023


Democrats Blame Republicans For Latest White Supremacist Shooting Spree


Episode Stats

Length

47 minutes

Words per Minute

198.9496

Word Count

9,407

Sentence Count

657

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary

A new poll shows that even Democrats think that President Joe Biden is old and confused, and that former President Donald Trump is corrupt and dishonest. Is this a good or bad sign for Joe Biden's chances in the 2020 election? And what does it mean for his chances of defeating Donald Trump in the midterms in 2020 if he does lose to the Republican challenger? Today's episode is brought to you by the Daily Caller and the Center for Public Affairs Research, and edited by Alex Blumberg and Sarah Abdurrahman. Please take a few minutes to fill out this brief survey, and share it with a friend or colleague who needs to know the truth about what's going on with Joe Biden. Thanks to everyone for all your support, stay tuned for more episodes like this one in the coming weeks! - The Daily Caller and The Weekly Standard Subscribe to our new bi-weekly political news show, The Sabato s Crystal Ball, wherever you get your news and analysis, and stay up to date on all things politics and politics! Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your friends and family! If you like what you hear, share it on your social media, and tell a friend about what you're listening to this podcast! Timestamps: Rate/subscribe in iTunes and tag us on Apple Podcasts! Rate, review, comment and subscribe to our other podcast episodes! We'll be looking out for more stories like this in next week's New York Times bestselling book, The Dark Side of the Hill by Tom Pizzagate, The New York Sun, The Vagrant, The People s Guide to the White House, The Real Deal, and much more! Subscribe on Podchaser, The Other Side Of The White House Podcasts by Tomahawks, The Oval Office, The Ringer, The Daily Mail, and The Independent Journalist, The Independent, The Huffington Post, and the New York Post, The Irish Spectacle, The Athletic, The Nation, The Hustler, The Root, The Cut, The Atlantic, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Hollywood Reporter, The Economist, The PodCastle, The Harvard Spectacular, The Hill, The Telegraph, The Pizzarelli Report, The Vogue, and so much more. - Subscribe to The Weekly Beast, The Squeak, The Foyster, The View From Hell, The Gay Life, The Republic, and more!


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So people really, really, really are not interested in a Joe Biden-Donald Trump matchup for 2024 by every available poll, and yet that is likely, beyond likely at this point, to be the actual matchup going into the 2024 election.
00:00:13.000 And by the polling data, people really don't like either one of these candidates.
00:00:17.000 According to the Associated Press, President Joe Biden is old and confused.
00:00:21.000 Former President Donald Trump is corrupt and dishonest.
00:00:23.000 Those are among the top terms American Jews when they're asked to describe the Democrat in the White House and Republicans' best position to face him in next year's election.
00:00:31.000 There's a new poll from the Associated Press and ORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
00:00:36.000 For Biden, the largest share of U.S.
00:00:37.000 adults mentioned his age.
00:00:39.000 At 80, Biden is just three years older than Trump, but he also looks like he's half dead.
00:00:43.000 Trump, meanwhile, has been eliciting words like corrupt and crooked, 15%.
00:00:49.000 Bad and other negative comments, about 11%.
00:00:51.000 Liar and dishonest, 8%.
00:00:53.000 About 8% offered generally positive comments, like good.
00:00:57.000 So the general breakdown here is that when it comes to Joe Biden, 26% of respondents used words like old or outdated to describe Biden.
00:01:05.000 Another 15% mentioned things like slow or confused.
00:01:08.000 Another 10% gave generally negative comments about the president.
00:01:12.000 6% used words like corrupt and crooked.
00:01:14.000 Only 6% offered words like president and leader and 5% like strong and capable.
00:01:19.000 Even among Democrats, 28% mentioned his age, significantly higher than leadership or strength and capability.
00:01:25.000 Trump's negative comments, according to the AP, center not on age, but on his moral standing and conduct, along with things like loudmouth, which was 6% and angry, crazy and dangerous 6%, narcissist 6%, 5% used words like strong and capable.
00:01:40.000 62% of Americans say they have an unfavorable opinion of Trump, which is not a good recipe for winning an election.
00:01:44.000 52% say the same thing about Joe Biden.
00:01:46.000 Also not an amazing stat for winning an election.
00:01:49.000 So once again, we are going to run a couple of very, very unpopular people against one another in the odd belief by both sides that the other guy is way more unpopular than their own guy and therefore your own guy really doesn't matter and you cannot lose.
00:02:01.000 Well, here's the problem for Joe Biden.
00:02:03.000 Joe Biden can lose.
00:02:04.000 So if Joe Biden were somehow to lose to Donald Trump, it would be the single worst defeat for Democrats of my lifetime.
00:02:10.000 Like worse than 2016 when Trump beat Hillary Clinton because nobody actually thought Trump was going to win that one.
00:02:15.000 But now everybody understands that Trump can win that one.
00:02:17.000 So if Biden somehow loses to Donald Trump post January 6th, post his 2020 defeat, post all the rest of this stuff, that'd be the single most humiliating defeat for Democrats in my lifetime and probably ever.
00:02:28.000 Which means that Joe Biden's in a little bit of trouble here.
00:02:31.000 I mean, if you look at the RealClearPolitics polling average in the Trump versus Biden race, and again, it's very early, so it's not as though it is definitely going to be Trump versus Biden, but you have to look at the frontrunners for both parties right now.
00:02:42.000 Right now, Joe Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average is up just one percentage point.
00:02:47.000 Just one.
00:02:48.000 According to Emerson, Trump is actually up two points, 46 to 44.
00:02:51.000 Now, do I believe that it's actually quite that close?
00:02:55.000 I don't.
00:02:56.000 The reason being when you look under the top line of these stats, very often what you're seeing, for example, there's a stat yesterday that came out that showed Joe Biden just 61% minority support.
00:03:03.000 That is not going to be the actual number when the election comes around.
00:03:06.000 No Democrat has won less than 70% of minority support for probably four decades.
00:03:11.000 But with that said, is this election too close for comfort for Joe Biden?
00:03:15.000 You bet.
00:03:17.000 Karina Jean-Pierre was asked about this polling data showing that even Democrats think that Joe Biden is old, slow, and not with it.
00:03:22.000 Here's her answer.
00:03:24.000 Look, I appreciate the question.
00:03:26.000 he can continue to do the job at his advanced age and kind of allay some of those concerns?
00:03:31.000 I mean, look, I appreciate the question. I get it often, as you know. And what I would say,
00:03:38.000 and I've said this many times and many of my colleagues have said this, the president says
00:03:42.000 this, if you watch him, if you've seen what he's done in the last two years, this is a president
00:03:47.000 has had a historic administration in just two years.
00:03:50.000 If you look at the 13.5, more than 13.5 million jobs that he's been able to create, if you look at how he's been able to turn the economy around so that it works for middle class Americans.
00:04:03.000 Yeah, so avoid the question.
00:04:04.000 Avoid the question, because you can't say he's obviously vigorous, because that's obviously untrue.
00:04:08.000 She's pointing to, quote unquote, the accomplishments.
00:04:10.000 Well, the truth is that that's going to matter as much for Joe Biden as Donald Trump's accomplishments mattered for him in 2020.
00:04:16.000 Donald Trump could have pointed to all the amazing things he did over the course of the first three years of his administration before 2020.
00:04:21.000 And he did some of that.
00:04:22.000 But in the end, people Yeah, basically voted in a referendum on Donald Trump as a human.
00:04:27.000 And the same thing is going to happen to Joe Biden.
00:04:30.000 And while she's out there saying that Joe Biden is with it, everything is fine, Joe Biden is like coughing into his hands and shaking hands with people and getting weirdly close with teenagers and just being a generalized elderly weirdo.
00:04:40.000 There he goes, coughing into his hands.
00:04:51.000 He keeps coughing over and over and over.
00:04:52.000 And then he just keeps, you know, shaking hands with the folks.
00:04:57.000 We're all supposed to be very worried about COVID, by the way.
00:04:59.000 That's something else that we'll get into in just one second.
00:05:02.000 Meanwhile, the Hunter questions are not going away.
00:05:04.000 The White House is going to continue to ignore them.
00:05:05.000 Corinne Jean-Pierre, she was asked about Hunter Biden again, because remember, the plea deal broke down, which means that now presumably there should be an investigation into where Hunter Biden got all of his foreign money and whether he violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
00:05:17.000 And if there's anybody worth their salt in this prosecutor's office, which, you know, we will see, I have doubts, then they have to ask the pretty obvious question, which is, he was selling access to Joe.
00:05:27.000 What kind of access was that?
00:05:29.000 Well, Corinne Jean-Pierre isn't going to answer that question.
00:05:32.000 The Secret Service is paying $16,000 a month now to stage near Hunter Biden in Malibu.
00:05:37.000 Who's paying for that?
00:05:38.000 That's a question for the Secret Service.
00:05:40.000 Okay.
00:05:40.000 Hunter Biden is reportedly selling art to pay for his $15,800 a month rent in Malibu.
00:05:48.000 How can you guarantee that people are not going to be buying this art to gain favor with the president?
00:05:54.000 That is a question for Hunter Biden and his representatives.
00:05:57.000 I hear your question.
00:05:58.000 I'm not going to get involved in this.
00:06:00.000 We know that one of our buyers got a job from the Biden administration.
00:06:04.000 Can you guarantee that there is no quid pro quo?
00:06:06.000 I hear your question. I'm not going to get involved in this.
00:06:09.000 That is a question for Hunter Biden's representatives.
00:06:13.000 No, it isn't!
00:06:14.000 It's a question for Joe.
00:06:15.000 So they're just going to continue to not answer questions about Joe Biden being too old for the job and decrepit and bad at it.
00:06:20.000 They're not going to answer any questions about the fact that Hunter Biden is pretty obviously money laundering.
00:06:25.000 I mean, it's pretty... When you are selling paintings for $500,000 a piece, and the people who buy those paintings are magically getting appointments to daddy's administration, that's a little weird, is it not?
00:06:35.000 A little bit weird, but you won't answer any questions about that.
00:06:37.000 And it's going to get worse for Joe Biden before it gets better.
00:06:40.000 Kevin McCarthy apparently is going to launch an impeachment inquiry in September, according to Breitbart.
00:06:45.000 McCarthy has initiated strategies to open a sweeping impeachment inquiry into Biden to
00:06:49.000 uncover the depth of his involvement in his family's foreign dealings, according to multiple
00:06:52.000 Republican sources, they told CNN. McCarthy previously demanded that Biden come clean
00:06:55.000 about his involvement. The president has continued to stonewall and lie about his
00:06:58.000 family's business over 16 times, according to the House Oversight Committee. None of this is
00:07:03.000 going away. And by the way, September is next month.
00:07:07.000 Like, we are in the middle of it right now.
00:07:08.000 We're about to hit, in just a few days, all of this.
00:07:12.000 So none of this is very good for Joe Biden.
00:07:15.000 And so he is pulling out some old standbys, strategically speaking.
00:07:18.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.
00:07:21.000 You've probably had a hard go of it if you've been a small business owner since COVID.
00:07:25.000 It's been pretty rough.
00:07:26.000 I mean, between the federal government and state governments shutting you down, restricting you, taxing you, and all the rest.
00:07:31.000 And you probably spent too much money on your taxes.
00:07:33.000 Well, if you could get some of that money back, why would you not go for it?
00:07:35.000 Innovation Refunds has been helping small businesses that qualify get a business payroll tax refund through the Employee Retention Credit, or ERC.
00:07:42.000 The ERC is a tax refund for businesses that kept employees on payroll for parts of 2020 and 2021.
00:07:47.000 If you own a business with more than 5 employees, you could have money waiting to be claimed.
00:07:51.000 The ERC tax filing is complex.
00:07:52.000 Innovation Refunds is dedicated to helping business owners navigate that process.
00:07:56.000 Their survey research shows a large number of small businesses that had from 5 to 500 full-time employees in 2020 or 2021 might be eligible for an ERC tax deduction.
00:08:04.000 Qualifying for the ERC goes beyond the sales decline.
00:08:07.000 If your business faced challenges to growth it would have had without pandemic government orders, it could be eligible for a substantial refund as well.
00:08:13.000 Innovation Refunds doesn't do tax or legal advice.
00:08:15.000 They work with an independent network of tax professionals.
00:08:17.000 They share information with them to evaluate and process your claims.
00:08:19.000 Head on over to innovationrefunds.com to determine eligibility.
00:08:22.000 If you qualify, you could be on your way to receiving cash for your business.
00:08:25.000 There's no upfront charge.
00:08:26.000 They don't get paid unless you get paid.
00:08:27.000 Nothing to lose.
00:08:28.000 Go to innovationrefunds.com or dial 1-843-REFUNDS.
00:08:31.000 That's innovationrefunds.com or Okay, so when cursed by an unpopular candidate, Democrats go back to the well.
00:08:42.000 And in that playbook over the past several years, they've had two big plays.
00:08:46.000 Play number one, all of our opponents are racists.
00:08:49.000 So they're now attempting to use this playbook with regard to this horrific shooting in Jacksonville.
00:08:54.000 Where a a person who's on like a 72-hour mental hold a couple of years ago so obviously somebody with with some pretty significant emotional problems and also happened to be a neo-nazi like put a bunch of swastikas on his gun and then went to a dollar general and shot three black people.
00:09:09.000 Horrifying story.
00:09:10.000 Ron DeSantis showed up in town in order to pay tribute to those people and pledge to help out the local community and all of the rest.
00:09:18.000 And the Democrats and the media immediately spun this into yet another story of evil Republican white racists.
00:09:23.000 So it was people like Ron DeSantis who caused some nutjob to pull the trigger on black people.
00:09:28.000 Steve Peoples, who is the chief political reporter for the AP.
00:09:31.000 He should be fired for this tweet, honestly.
00:09:33.000 Like, if they have any level of objectivity whatsoever, he should be fired for this tweet.
00:09:36.000 Okay, this is absurd coverage.
00:09:38.000 That's absurd coverage.
00:09:38.000 ACP issued a travel advisory this spring warning black people to use extreme care of traveling to
00:09:42.000 Florida. Just three months later, DeSantis is leading his state through the aftermath of a
00:09:45.000 racist attack that left three African-Americans dead. Black leaders in Florida and across the
00:09:49.000 nation say they're outraged by his actions and rhetoric ahead of the shooting. My story with
00:09:53.000 Brendan Farrington. Okay, this is absurd coverage. That's absurd coverage. So because Ron DeSantis
00:09:58.000 and his school board said that they were going to put together an educational curriculum free
00:10:03.000 of critical race theory, which is not in fact history.
00:10:06.000 It is a bunch of anti-American propaganda.
00:10:09.000 And because they did that, apparently there was a neo-Nazi who shot three black people in the state of Florida.
00:10:14.000 And Ron DeSantis is responsible for that, according to Steve Peoples and the Associated Press, which is an insane take.
00:10:20.000 But it is also the take that Democrats are going to start using.
00:10:24.000 So here is the NAACP Jacksonville president Isaiah Rumlin saying that the white supremacy in Florida is palpable, that's why you see Trump flags.
00:10:33.000 So any state in America that voted for Trump apparently is a hellhole for black people.
00:10:39.000 Jacksonville specifically is a breeding ground of neo-Nazism, that they have been tracking this and seeing this.
00:10:46.000 I mean, what can you tell me and tell us about the climate there in Jacksonville with these hate groups?
00:10:56.000 I think the federal government and the Justice Department are going to have to do a better job in exercising exactly where these hate groups exist.
00:11:08.000 I mean, we see these Confederate signs, we see the Trump signs constantly on our streets.
00:11:17.000 Okay, that is amazing.
00:11:30.000 So if you see a Trump flag, anybody who voted for Trump or who has supported Trump is obviously a racist, right?
00:11:35.000 This is how Joe Biden is going to run.
00:11:37.000 Whether it's against DeSantis or whether it is against Trump, the rip is always and forever going to be that if you are not in line with Joe Biden's political priorities or the political priorities of the left, then you must be in favor of black people getting shot.
00:11:49.000 Charlemagne the God, who is some sort of podcast host, don't really know his show particularly well.
00:11:54.000 I think he's at the Breakfast Club.
00:11:55.000 Is that Charlemagne?
00:11:56.000 Anyway, he also is doing this routine, suggesting that Ron DeSantis fueled the anti-blackness.
00:12:01.000 Now, do they have any evidence of this?
00:12:02.000 Of course not, but they don't need evidence.
00:12:03.000 They just need the accusation.
00:12:06.000 I hate using woke terms like anti-anything, but yeah, Ron DeSantis has absolutely fueled a lot of anti-blackness in Florida.
00:12:14.000 So yeah, he deserves a lot of that smoke.
00:12:16.000 He deserves a lot of that smoke.
00:12:17.000 It was Ron DeSantis who's responsible for all this.
00:12:20.000 So I have a question.
00:12:20.000 When a crap load of black people get shot every weekend in Chicago, who's fueling that?
00:12:26.000 Who's fueling that?
00:12:27.000 Do we talk about that?
00:12:28.000 No, we shouldn't.
00:12:29.000 We probably shouldn't talk about any of that.
00:12:31.000 Because some black people getting shot is useful for the media narrative.
00:12:35.000 And some black people getting shot is not useful for the media narrative.
00:12:38.000 So we only cover the shootings that are useful for a manufactured media narrative.
00:12:42.000 Where, by the way, we're on the right side of this.
00:12:44.000 I mean, again, name me, the mainstream politician anywhere in America.
00:12:48.000 Who is in favor of black people randomly getting shot on the basis of race.
00:12:52.000 It's totally an insane accusation, but again, it plays back into how Joe Biden hopes to win an outsized share of minority voters, particularly black voters.
00:12:59.000 We'll get into that momentarily.
00:13:00.000 First, have you ever craved a nice barbecue meal with the family?
00:13:03.000 I use the barbecue like all the time.
00:13:05.000 I head on out there in the evenings, fire it up.
00:13:07.000 There's nothing worse than you start to fire up that barbecue and your propane tank is empty.
00:13:11.000 It sucks.
00:13:11.000 This is where Cinch comes in to save the day.
00:13:13.000 Cinch is a propane grill tank home delivery service.
00:13:16.000 They deliver propane tanks directly to your door on your schedule.
00:13:18.000 They don't require any long-term commitment or subscription.
00:13:20.000 Plus, delivery is completely contact-free.
00:13:22.000 You're not gonna have to wait around at home.
00:13:24.000 Track the order on the Cinch app from anywhere.
00:13:27.000 Whether you're grilling for dinner, camping with your family, or lighting up your patio heaters on a cold night, Cinch's propane delivery service ensures you have the fuel you need to make the most of every single moment.
00:13:35.000 Go to cinch.com or download the Cinch app.
00:13:38.000 Use promo code SHAPIRO.
00:13:39.000 Get your first tank exchange for just $10.
00:13:40.000 That's C-Y-N-C-H dot com.
00:13:43.000 Promo code SHAPIRO.
00:13:44.000 They make it super simple.
00:13:45.000 Again, there's nothing worse than you're firing up that grill, and you look at the propane tank, and it's empty, and now you gotta wait, like, Half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, drive out, see if they even have a propane tank.
00:13:55.000 Don't do that.
00:13:55.000 Go to Cinch.
00:13:56.000 There's a limited time offer.
00:13:57.000 You must live within a Cinch service area to redeem it.
00:13:59.000 Visit cinch.com slash offer for details.
00:14:02.000 OK, so again, this all ties into Joe Biden's reelect effort.
00:14:06.000 So yesterday he spent an awful lot of time sounding off about white supremacy as the greatest threat to the American homeland, which I got to tell you, White supremacy is tremendously evil.
00:14:17.000 I know because I receive an enormous number of death threats from people who are white supremacists because I'm an orthodox Jew.
00:14:23.000 And the FBI has literally arrested people who are white supremacists for threatening my family.
00:14:28.000 Also, the notion that the greatest terrorist threat to America is isolated white supremacists is lunacy.
00:14:37.000 In terms of what the federal government can, like, what exactly is the federal government also supposed to do about that, presumably?
00:14:44.000 This is all tied into a broader agenda item for Biden, as we'll see in a moment.
00:14:50.000 The intelligence community is determined, the U.S.
00:14:52.000 intelligence community is determined that domestic terrorism rooted in white supremacy is the greatest terrorist threat we face in the whole world.
00:15:00.000 The greatest threat.
00:15:02.000 Okay, by the way, he was also jabbering about his history with civil rights, which is a little bit more checkered than he likes to make it out to be.
00:15:09.000 But here he was jabbering nonsensically about how he got Strom Thurmond to vote for the Civil Rights Act, which is weird since he was 21 when the Civil Rights Act passed.
00:15:17.000 And Strom Thurmond, I believe, delivered the longest filibuster to date against the Civil Rights Act at the time.
00:15:21.000 So, strange story here from an addled old man.
00:15:26.000 I thought things had changed.
00:15:27.000 I was able to literally, not figuratively, talk Strom Thurmond into voting for the Civil Rights Act before he died.
00:15:35.000 And I thought, well, maybe there's real progress.
00:15:38.000 But hate never dies.
00:15:40.000 It just hides.
00:15:43.000 I don't know what he's talking about, but all of this is tied into the broader Biden agenda of equity in everything.
00:15:49.000 So here's top Biden advisor, Steve Benjamin, yesterday.
00:15:52.000 He's a senior advisor and director of the Office of Public Engagement, talking about how equity is at the center of everything the Biden administration does.
00:15:57.000 When they say equity, what they really mean is racial preferences.
00:16:01.000 The administration has, since day one, since the president signed his first executive order on making sure that everything we've done is focused on equity in this administration.
00:16:13.000 It's, um, yeah.
00:16:14.000 So that's part of the broader agenda item.
00:16:15.000 Now, the real answer to what happened in Jacksonville actually comes courtesy of a Democratic Jacksonville councilwoman named Jacoby Pittman.
00:16:22.000 We talked about her yesterday.
00:16:23.000 She's the person who got up when DeSantis got booed for visiting Jacksonville and said, listen, bullets don't have parties on them.
00:16:30.000 Absolutely correct.
00:16:31.000 Here she was yesterday saying DeSantis wasn't invited, but there's no reason for him to be booed.
00:16:37.000 The governor was getting heckled and you stood up to essentially quiet those people down.
00:16:43.000 Yet, Councilwoman, there are critics who say that Florida's governor has enacted policies that created an environment that allowed this kind of attack to take place, whether on guns or on race.
00:16:57.000 What's your response to those critics?
00:17:00.000 Well, first of all, let me make myself clear.
00:17:04.000 I had no idea that the governor was coming.
00:17:07.000 And so I just want to make myself clear.
00:17:11.000 I wanted the audience to calm down because I wanted him to sit down And I wanted it to be the event that was for the residents and the community that had come together for unity.
00:17:27.000 That's what that event was about, not the governor.
00:17:33.000 Okay, well, she's right about that.
00:17:35.000 And DeSantis knew that, too.
00:17:36.000 So, I mean, that would be the proper response to, you know, a racial shooting where everybody of any sort of goodwill is on the same side.
00:17:42.000 I mean, again, who is arguing in favor of the shooter in this particular situation?
00:17:46.000 The answer is nobody.
00:17:47.000 But the media have to manufacture some sort of narrative for Joe Biden to run on, and so the narrative of the day is going to be, Republicans are racist.
00:17:53.000 You knew it was going in this direction.
00:17:54.000 Meanwhile, Democrats are actually going to try to run on COVID again.
00:17:59.000 This is starting anew, which is amazing.
00:18:01.000 COVID is such a devastating disease that it arises every election cycle.
00:18:05.000 It's pretty incredible.
00:18:06.000 Yesterday, Corinne Jean-Pierre, she pointed out that we have rising COVID numbers.
00:18:09.000 By the way, those rising COVID numbers are not resulting in mass death across the nation.
00:18:12.000 Those rising COVID numbers are largely resulting in people getting colds.
00:18:15.000 Here she was suggesting people continue to be vaccinated with their 97th booster shot.
00:18:20.000 We are going to encourage Americans to get their updated COVID-19 vaccine in addition to their annual flu shot.
00:18:27.000 Let's not forget that is important for Americans to get.
00:18:30.000 And an RSV immunization for people over 60 and for infants.
00:18:35.000 That is something that we're going to continue to make very clear to Americans across the country.
00:18:42.000 Really?
00:18:43.000 We're doing this routine again?
00:18:44.000 The answer, apparently, is yes.
00:18:46.000 According to CBS News, as doctors warn COVID is on the rise, some Northern California hospitals are bringing back an old COVID-19 requirement, mask mandates.
00:18:54.000 The current spike is being blamed on summer travel with more people staying indoors to avoid the brutal heat.
00:18:58.000 Nowadays, very few people wear masks.
00:19:00.000 But now, apparently, there are a bunch of health facilities that are going to put the masks back in place.
00:19:04.000 In California, you've seen some universities across the country already establishing mask mandates for people to return to school.
00:19:11.000 All this is crazy.
00:19:11.000 Meanwhile, the New York Times is suggesting that in order for schools to reopen, you have to install some sort of clean air apparatus.
00:19:19.000 Quote, on a Sunday afternoon, in a cluttered music room at East High in Denver, two sophomores practiced violin while their music teacher, Keith Oxman, labored over a desk in an adjoining office.
00:19:28.000 The ceiling fans were off to prevent the sheet music from scattering.
00:19:30.000 The windows were sealed shut.
00:19:32.000 East High is Denver's largest high school and among the oldest, and there is no modern ventilation system.
00:19:37.000 Woo-hoo!
00:19:39.000 Wow, the windows wouldn't open?
00:19:41.000 And so the idea here is that we're going to have to spend, you know, probably billions of dollars in order to establish better ventilation systems in schools, lest the children get the COVID.
00:19:50.000 Again, reminder, very, very, very few people under the age of 18 in the United States actually died of COVID by CDC statistics.
00:19:57.000 That is inarguable.
00:20:00.000 They want $200 billion that was included in the American Rescue Plan, another $350 billion allotted to state and local governments.
00:20:07.000 To be used for ventilation in schools.
00:20:09.000 All of this is the predicate to possible future shutdowns.
00:20:13.000 And you can see, by the way, the predicate being set by people like Mehdi Hassan over at MSNBC.
00:20:18.000 So one of the things we know from the pandemic is that it absolutely devastating school.
00:20:21.000 It destroyed school learning.
00:20:23.000 This is Brookings Institute.
00:20:25.000 Brookings Institute, quote, has reached the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns.
00:20:30.000 Academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents.
00:20:33.000 This is from March of 2022.
00:20:35.000 As we outlined in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' academic achievement has been large.
00:20:41.000 We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S.
00:20:46.000 students in grades 3 through 8.
00:20:48.000 Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3 through 8 were 0.2 to 0.27 standard deviations lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019.
00:20:57.000 Reading test scores were down 0.09 to 0.18 standard deviations lower.
00:21:04.000 The math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, including Hurricane Katrina.
00:21:10.000 And test scores increased between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools.
00:21:14.000 But don't worry, Democrats are going to try to talk you into the possibility of more school lockdowns now, apparently.
00:21:19.000 I don't know why they would run on this, but apparently they think that it might be a good strategy.
00:21:22.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.
00:21:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is supported by Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university with a vibrant campus.
00:21:29.000 In beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, that's ranked top 20 in the country according to niche.com.
00:21:33.000 GCU is a missional, Christ-centered university that strives to foster a culture of community, giving, and impact.
00:21:39.000 GCU's goal is to help you develop into a servant leader who makes a difference through finding a purpose and fulfilling God's plan.
00:21:44.000 With 330 academic programs, over 270 online as of June 2023, GCU integrates the free market system with a welcoming Christian worldview into your bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree.
00:21:53.000 You'll have support from your own university counselor who takes a personalized approach to helping you achieve your goals.
00:21:56.000 I've been to GCU.
00:21:57.000 It's gorgeous over there.
00:21:58.000 Go check them out right now.
00:21:59.000 Find your purpose at GCU Grand Canyon University.
00:22:01.000 Private, Christian, affordable.
00:22:02.000 Visit gcu.edu today.
00:22:05.000 Okay, so Mehdi Hassan, he's trying already to pave the groundwork for the possibility of more school shutdowns.
00:22:11.000 Here he was yesterday claiming, it's a myth!
00:22:13.000 It's a myth that there was any problem in the classroom.
00:22:16.000 Today I want to address this thorny and very emotive issue of kids, schools and COVID because we have seen a blatant and bad faith rewriting of history on this issue from a lot of people who should know better.
00:22:29.000 And so I think this today, what you're about to watch.
00:22:32.000 is one of the most important deep dives I've ever done on this show.
00:22:35.000 Because the myths about children and COVID, that kids aren't really harmed by it, that school closures were a massive and avoidable mistake, that they cause learning loss and mental health issues.
00:22:45.000 Those myths, and they are myths, dangerous myths, have endured for so long, become so ingrained, so pervasive, that they're not just something Fox viewers believe.
00:22:55.000 I'm sure many of you watching at home have sadly come to accept many of these myths as true.
00:23:01.000 It's a myth, guys.
00:23:02.000 Everything about the learning loss, not a myth.
00:23:05.000 Or mental health problems with kids who are staying home, not a myth, right?
00:23:08.000 All that's a myth, according to Mehdi Hassan.
00:23:10.000 So get ready for it.
00:23:11.000 As COVID upticks going into the winter, you're gonna watch some Democrats come out again for this sort of thing, which is a hell of a thing to run on.
00:23:17.000 So they're gonna run basically 2020 back.
00:23:19.000 They're gonna run on COVID lockdowns, and they're gonna run on race.
00:23:23.000 Well, good luck to them on that.
00:23:24.000 That does not seem like a winning strategy to me.
00:23:27.000 Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats in the judiciary are doing an amazing job of setting up the calendar in favor of Donald Trump.
00:23:36.000 So apparently, the trial in the January 6th indictment in Washington, D.C.
00:23:40.000 is slated to start on March 4th.
00:23:42.000 That is one day before Super Tuesday.
00:23:45.000 So, uh, that's weird.
00:23:47.000 It's super weird.
00:23:48.000 Trump's allies lambasted the timing of the trial, which U.S.
00:23:50.000 District Judge Tanya Chutkin announced after rejecting both an expedited timeline from Special Counsel Jack Smith and a request from Trump's lawyers to delay the trial until 2026.
00:23:58.000 Ohio Senator J.D.
00:24:00.000 Vance dubbed it straight-up election interference, as you're starting the trial the day before the biggest primary day?
00:24:03.000 It's called Super Tuesday for a reason.
00:24:05.000 It's the biggest day of the primaries.
00:24:06.000 That's when you start the trial?
00:24:09.000 Trump said that he's going to try to appeal on the basis of this.
00:24:13.000 It's not clear if he's going to show up to court.
00:24:15.000 The truth is that this is probably going to boost Trump because if the dynamics of the race so far are a reflection of what's going to happen in the future, every time Trump is targeted in court, it seems to boost him electorally.
00:24:25.000 But if you look at how this calendar is setting up right now, it's pretty wild.
00:24:30.000 Right now you have March 4th, the day before Super Tuesday, for the Trump January 6th trial.
00:24:37.000 And then you have the fraud suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
00:24:41.000 That's going to go to trial this October 2nd.
00:24:43.000 Then you have the defamation lawsuit that is going to go to trial on January 15th, 2024.
00:24:46.000 That is the date of the Iowa Republican Presidential Caucus.
00:24:49.000 You got the hush money criminal case brought by Manhattan D.A.
00:24:52.000 Alvin Bragg.
00:24:53.000 That's the garbage case in Manhattan about Stormy Daniels and such.
00:24:57.000 That's going to go to trial March 25th.
00:24:59.000 That is the middle of the primaries.
00:25:02.000 And then you have the documents case against Trump and two of his aides.
00:25:06.000 That date is set to begin May 20th in Florida.
00:25:10.000 There's a bunch of primaries right around that one, and we don't know when the Georgia case is going to come to trial either.
00:25:15.000 So yeah, I mean, it's just going to be trials from here on in.
00:25:18.000 It's just going to be trials for the rest of the election cycle.
00:25:22.000 President Trump has responded.
00:25:23.000 How do you have an indictment that is based almost entirely on the findings of the January 6th unselect committee on Marxist, fascist, and political hacks, when these same lowlives who have been caught lying for years about Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, FISA, and the fake dossier, and more, purposefully and illegally destroyed and deleted all the evidence, findings, and proof of the January 6th committee?
00:25:39.000 Well, again, that's not going to happen, but he is not wrong to complain about the date.
00:25:49.000 Is any of that going to help Trump in a general election?
00:25:51.000 I keep asking this question because this is the question for Republican primary voters.
00:25:54.000 Not, are you more warm to him now that he's being unfairly targeted by law enforcement?
00:25:57.000 I'm more warm to him if he's being unfairly targeted by law enforcement.
00:26:01.000 But that's really not the question.
00:26:02.000 The question is whether this is going to help Trump in a general election.
00:26:05.000 Trump, meanwhile, is focused laser-like on a rumor about Ron DeSantis.
00:26:09.000 By rumor, we mean R-O-O-M-E-R.
00:26:14.000 I don't even know what's happening right now.
00:26:16.000 He put that out on Truth Social yesterday.
00:26:19.000 I had not heard that rumor.
00:26:20.000 R-O-O-M-E-R.
00:26:21.000 His presidential run is a shambles.
00:26:22.000 His poll numbers have absolutely crashed, putting him third and fourth in some states.
00:26:25.000 We'll be dropping out of the presidential race in order to run in Florida against Rick
00:26:29.000 Scott for Senate.
00:26:30.000 Now, that's an interesting one, isn't it?
00:26:33.000 He put that out on Truth Social yesterday.
00:26:35.000 I had not heard that rumor, R-O-O-M-E-R.
00:26:39.000 I had not, in fact, heard that rumor because it's not true.
00:26:42.000 But, you know, if this is where Republicans choose to nominate, like, this is where you
00:26:46.000 want your focus?
00:26:46.000 I'm Alright, Tim Scott, who I think is going to be out of the race fairly soon because he doesn't have any electricity, he doesn't have any base support, he doesn't have any momentum, but he said something true yesterday.
00:26:56.000 He said, listen, tough and loud is not going to be enough to win a general election.
00:27:00.000 That's true.
00:27:03.000 I think sometimes people mistake decency and kindness for a lack of resolve.
00:27:09.000 Sometimes people confuse fighting with being cruel.
00:27:14.000 Is there a place for a happy warrior in modern day politics?
00:27:19.000 Can you be a rule follower, be fair in your critiques, and still be successful in politics?
00:27:27.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:27:28.000 You can, certainly.
00:27:29.000 As you know, Trey, I grew up in some really tough neighborhoods.
00:27:32.000 You've got to be tough to get out of the neighborhoods that I grew up in.
00:27:35.000 The question I keep asking myself, is tough enough?
00:27:39.000 And for the Republican Party, the answer is really clear.
00:27:42.000 We've lost seven out of the last eight national elections and 2022 was a disaster.
00:27:49.000 If tough and loud was enough, we'd be winning election after election after election.
00:27:56.000 But our results have unfortunately been exactly the opposite.
00:28:02.000 He is right about that, which is why I think actually, again, there are a lot of people who wrote off Governor DeSantis for dead in this national race.
00:28:10.000 I don't see the evidence that he's dead quite yet.
00:28:12.000 The latest polling shows Donald Trump in the Republican nominating race dropping now below 50 percent in some of the numbers.
00:28:18.000 The latest Insider Advantage poll, for example, has Trump at 45 and DeSantis at 18 and nobody else with an even remote spitting distance.
00:28:24.000 There's some other polls that have Trump up near 60.
00:28:27.000 Messenger, Harris X, which has been a poll that's very, very warm toward Trump, currently has Trump at 59 and DeSantis at 14.
00:28:32.000 Overall, Trump is ahead of the field by 40 points.
00:28:34.000 It also happens to be a very fragmented field.
00:28:37.000 But with that said.
00:28:39.000 DeSantis, if what you think is that tough and loud isn't enough, but you do need tough, right?
00:28:44.000 And you do need to be able to kick back, but you also need to be able to govern.
00:28:47.000 DeSantis is going to get an opportunity to show that off this weekend.
00:28:50.000 It's a terrible opportunity, obviously.
00:28:51.000 There's this hurricane that's about to hit the panhandle of Florida.
00:28:55.000 According to the latest reports, that hurricane could come in at possibly a Cat 3.
00:29:01.000 Maybe even a Cat 4.
00:29:06.000 AccuWeather meteorologists are rating Edalia as a three on the real impact scale for hurricanes right now.
00:29:12.000 And officials have issued mandatory evacuation orders for parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough County in Florida because of the life-threatening conditions anticipated.
00:29:19.000 You're gonna see a big storm surge and all the rest.
00:29:22.000 Well, this is one area where DeSantis actually thrives is in handling crisis in his home state.
00:29:26.000 We've seen it before.
00:29:27.000 Here was Governor DeSantis doing his job yesterday talking about the approaching storm.
00:29:32.000 Tropical Storm Idalia continues to gather strength.
00:29:35.000 It will become a hurricane today, and it is forecast to reach landfall as a major hurricane, a Category 3.
00:29:44.000 I think it's important to point out, if we were sitting here three days ago, a lot of people thought it would end up being a tropical storm.
00:29:51.000 Then they said, well, maybe a Category 1.
00:29:53.000 Then yesterday it was, oh, maybe it'll hit Cat 2.
00:29:57.000 Now, there really doesn't seem anything to prevent it from continuing to strengthen.
00:30:02.000 And we've seen this before with something like Hurricane Michael that continued to gather strength.
00:30:07.000 So this is going to be a major impact and Floridians should expect that this storm will be a major Cat 3 plus hurricane.
00:30:18.000 Okay, the truth is that it was DeSantis' crisis leadership during COVID that was really, really excellent.
00:30:22.000 He's gonna give an example of how to do that, I would assume, this week and this weekend.
00:30:26.000 Yesterday, this is also a perfect example of what DeSantis does really, really well.
00:30:30.000 Right, so DeSantis was asked by a reporter about climate change, which is always the go-to for idiot reporters who don't know about hurricanes and how hurricane targets have now expanded because there are a lot more people living in the path of hurricanes and all the rest of it.
00:30:45.000 And they keep suggesting hurricanes are more common because of, again, not a lot of evidence to suggest that.
00:30:50.000 There's some evidence to suggest that the hurricanes may be more powerful now
00:30:54.000 because of the warmer water that they're using to churn, essentially.
00:30:57.000 But here was DeSantis being asked about climate change on the hurricanes, and he knows what he's talking about.
00:31:02.000 This is where DeSantis is a unique character and very fluid.
00:31:05.000 He was true with COVID.
00:31:06.000 I remember the first time I talked with Governor DeSantis, I talked to him when he was a congressperson,
00:31:10.000 but when he was governor, it was in June of 2020.
00:31:13.000 And he called because he wanted to lay out his COVID strategy and his fluency with the numbers
00:31:17.000 was obvious.
00:31:18.000 He had actually spent a lot of time with the data.
00:31:19.000 Here's a perfect example of him knowing things.
00:31:22.000 This is the storm that's really quickly intensifying more than originally planned, and it's going into the Gulf,
00:31:28.000 which many scientists say that it's the warm water contributed by climate change.
00:31:33.000 Climate change is really intensifying these storms.
00:31:36.000 What do you think is contributing to this?
00:31:38.000 Well, I think it's, I mean, you know, unfortunately, I mean, I see a lot of parallels with Hurricane Michael.
00:31:43.000 Hurricane Michael, if you remember, a few days before, we knew there would be a storm.
00:31:48.000 Nobody was saying that it was going to be a Category 5 storm.
00:31:51.000 I mean, that just was not what people were saying.
00:31:54.000 And then it intensified and that it delivered a major, major impact to Northwest Florida that we're still recovering from.
00:32:04.000 Okay, again, he then went into a longer speech going through, like, the history of hurricanes.
00:32:08.000 This is the thing that DeSantis is good at, is the actual governing.
00:32:10.000 Whether that's going to make a difference in the Republican primaries?
00:32:12.000 Unclear.
00:32:13.000 Whether it should?
00:32:14.000 Absolutely.
00:32:14.000 Because you want to win over Democrats and Independents, it turns out being good at your job is one of the things that makes you a better candidate than not being particularly good at your job or not being involved in your job.
00:32:25.000 In just one second, we'll get to some more colorful areas of the 2024 campaign.
00:32:30.000 First, I gotta tell you about something back in like 2013.
00:32:32.000 So back in 2013, I used to do a local radio show.
00:32:34.000 It was like a group radio show in Los Angeles.
00:32:36.000 And one of our first advertisers was a company called GenuCell.
00:32:39.000 And they were making these products for your face.
00:32:42.000 They're making to get rid of like the bags under your eyes and make your skin look younger.
00:32:46.000 And I started using them.
00:32:47.000 My wife started using them.
00:32:48.000 My mom started using them at that time.
00:32:49.000 That was like a decade ago.
00:32:50.000 We've been using them pretty consistently ever since because that's how good the product is.
00:32:54.000 Even when they weren't advertising with the show.
00:32:56.000 Well, when you look in the mirror, do you see the dark spots?
00:32:59.000 Well, they're not going to go away on their own.
00:33:00.000 You need help, the way our family did, from GenuCell's Dark Spot Corrector, here just in time for the summer.
00:33:04.000 The Dark Spot Corrector has not one, but three cutting-edge ingredients.
00:33:07.000 It goes to work fast on sunspots, dark spots, liver spots, even old discoloration, both on your face and your hands.
00:33:12.000 You'll be amazed at how fast you see the results.
00:33:14.000 You can enjoy summer sun, beach, and barbecues without those embarrassing spots.
00:33:17.000 Most importantly, you have nothing to lose because you either see the results or you get your money back, no questions asked.
00:33:22.000 Three of GenuCell's most popular products are included in GenuCell's most popular package for August.
00:33:26.000 Get your GenuCell bags and puffiness serum also included for 70% off retail.
00:33:29.000 Head on over to GenuCell.com slash Shapiro right now.
00:33:32.000 Get your dark spot corrector with the new GenuCell most popular package.
00:33:35.000 Say goodbye to those pesky spots tomorrow.
00:33:37.000 They're offering free shipping, free returns, best luxury skincare you've ever used, all at 70% off.
00:33:42.000 All orders will also include a mystery luxury gift while supplies last.
00:33:44.000 It's a great product.
00:33:45.000 Go check them out right now.
00:33:46.000 Genucel.com slash Shapiro.
00:33:48.000 Also, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, when he joined DailyWirePlus, we decided that we're gonna blow it out, and we did.
00:33:54.000 We have a year of unparalleled output.
00:33:56.000 Tons of Jordan Peterson material over at DailyWirePlus.
00:33:59.000 We have a vast array capturing hundreds of hours of awesome content you're not gonna find anywhere else.
00:34:04.000 Jordan has created thought-provoking works that reshape your perspective on life.
00:34:07.000 Those include Vision and Destiny, Marriage, Dragons, Monsters, and Men.
00:34:11.000 Additionally, you can immerse yourself in discussions that nurture your spiritual side.
00:34:14.000 We're talking Logos and Literacy or Jordan's groundbreaking series on the Book of Exodus.
00:34:17.000 That's only the beginning.
00:34:18.000 We haven't even talked about his lecture series or his extensive archives of lectures and podcasts.
00:34:22.000 He's the absolute compendium of all things Jordan-related.
00:34:25.000 Plus, there's even more new awesome content on the horizon.
00:34:28.000 Lots more coming.
00:34:28.000 Head over to DailyWirePlus right now and subscribe.
00:34:31.000 That's dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:34:34.000 Become a member today.
00:34:35.000 Okay, meanwhile, stupidest story of the day from the campaign trail.
00:34:38.000 Eminem is apparently very angry at Vivek Ramaswamy.
00:34:41.000 Why?
00:34:41.000 Well, because Vivek, as you recall, he's at the Iowa caucuses, and he wrapped his tune on the campaign trail.
00:34:48.000 There's a lot of, like, Vivek is millennial, I believe, just technically speaking, but this is real boomer energy, because Eminem's Lose Yourself, I believe, came out in 2002, so this is a 21-year-old song, which, you know, honestly, is the equivalent at this point of singing a Doobie Brothers song.
00:35:03.000 And here is Vivek on the campaign trail.
00:35:08.000 Look at all the people in Iowa, like, what is happening?
00:35:12.000 One thing you have to say for Vic, at least he's having fun.
00:35:14.000 One thing you have to say for Vic, at least he's having fun.
00:35:30.000 And Kim Reynolds is standing there like, what is happening right now?
00:35:34.000 She's standing on the corner of the stage like, I don't, like, why is this happening?
00:35:37.000 Why is this a thing that's happening?
00:35:41.000 What is happening?
00:35:41.000 That is, that is so, wow.
00:35:43.000 The levels of cringe are just astounding.
00:35:46.000 I know this because I've done a few cringe things in my career.
00:35:48.000 You may have noticed.
00:35:50.000 I believe that in a cringe-off, Vivek wins, hands down.
00:35:53.000 In any case, all of that's fine and all this just stupid campaign tricks, that's all fine.
00:35:58.000 Eminem literally wrote a letter to Vivek Ramaswamy, threatening him with legal action.
00:36:05.000 He sent a letter to Vivek's lawyer, quote, This letter serves as a notice to you, pursuant to BMI
00:36:10.000 music license for political entities or organizations entered into by BMI and Vivek 2024, that BMI has received a
00:36:16.000 communication from Marshall B. Mathers, the third, professionally known as Eminem, objecting to the
00:36:21.000 Vivek Ramaswamy campaign's use of Eminem's musical compositions and requesting that BMI
00:36:24.000 remove all Eminem works from the agreement. So Eminem works are excluded from an
00:36:29.000 agreement.
00:36:29.000 So apparently Vivek's team had an agreement with BMI to use some of their music and M&M wrote to BMI and was like, I don't want that terrible man using my music.
00:36:39.000 You're right.
00:36:39.000 Only, only people who shoot each other and do drugs should be able to use M&M music from now on.
00:36:46.000 I'm just like, I'm, it's so tiresome.
00:36:48.000 Honestly, all these musicians, I am above all, what is M&M above exactly?
00:36:53.000 Seriously, what is Eminem's personal history?
00:36:55.000 They're like, this man, this is a man of moral rectitude, whose music... For God's sake, we use Bach in like, in like, Cheez-It commercials.
00:37:06.000 We literally, the Cheez-It commercials, it wasn't Bach, it was Edvard Grieg.
00:37:09.000 Okay, we use Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for selling like, cat litter.
00:37:15.000 Come on, Eminem.
00:37:17.000 It's just ridiculous, ridiculous crap.
00:37:19.000 Okay, speaking of other ridiculous crap, Pope Francis is a terrible pope.
00:37:23.000 So just gonna put that out there.
00:37:24.000 He's really bad at the poping.
00:37:26.000 Now, I don't have any stake, obviously, in the Catholic doctrine of Pope Francis.
00:37:32.000 I was a big fan of Benedict.
00:37:34.000 I thought Benedict was an excellent pope because I do have a stake as a citizen of the Western world in the Catholic Church actually standing true to its historic religious principles when it comes to morality and ethics because they've shaped billions of people over the course of history.
00:37:47.000 Pope Francis is a liberation theologist, pretty obviously.
00:37:51.000 He is a person with a Marxist orientation toward economics and a real disdain for sort of traditional Catholicism in terms of social areas.
00:38:03.000 I mean, I can't tell you how many times at this point Pope Francis has said something that is in violation of church doctrine historically with regard to, say, divorce or gay marriage or any of that sort of stuff.
00:38:13.000 And then his team comes out, oh, he was misinterpreted.
00:38:15.000 You just don't speak Italian well.
00:38:17.000 Well, at a certain point, you got to imagine that maybe he's just the guy we all kind of think he is, which is why the left is very warm toward Pope Francis.
00:38:25.000 He made a couple of big boo-boos over the last 48 hours.
00:38:28.000 So first, he was speaking by video to a gathering of Roman Catholics in St.
00:38:33.000 Petersburg, and he urged them to follow in the path of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, whom he called rulers of a great enlightened empire of great culture and great humanity.
00:38:42.000 Which is a weird take, since both Peter and Catherine were wild territorial expansionists.
00:38:47.000 It is what they are known for, and they are also the two figures that Vladimir Putin most cites as sort of historical inspirations for his territorial aggressions.
00:38:55.000 This, of course, has ticked off pretty much everybody in Ukraine.
00:38:58.000 Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, called the Pope's words
00:39:02.000 imperialist propaganda, of the kind the Kremlin uses to justify its invasion of Ukraine, quote,
00:39:06.000 it is a shame that Russian great power ideas, which are actually the cause of Russia's chronic
00:39:10.000 aggressiveness, are voiced knowingly or not by the Pope.
00:39:12.000 The leader of Ukraine's Greek Catholic Church, Major Archbishop Sviatolov Shevchuk, said in a
00:39:17.000 statement the Pope's words had caused great pain in the church hierarchy and great disappointment in
00:39:21.000 Ukrainian civil society.
00:39:24.000 The Pope's remarks drew angry reactions on social media from a wide variety of sources.
00:39:30.000 And then, of course, the Vatican tried to walk it back, as they've had to do with Pope Francis multiple times.
00:39:35.000 They rejected suggestions that Pope Francis might have encouraged young Russian Catholics to draw inspiration from historical Russian figures known for imperialistic and expansionist ideas and actions that negatively impacted neighboring populations, including the Ukrainian people.
00:39:48.000 Francis has decried Ukrainian suffering, but he has not condemned Moscow for the war.
00:39:52.000 He's been very careful not to condemn Moscow for the war.
00:39:56.000 And...
00:39:58.000 By the way, it is worthwhile noting that his relationship with the Catholic Church was pretty fraught.
00:40:04.000 Peter the Great.
00:40:05.000 His relationship with the Catholic Church was actually fairly fraught.
00:40:08.000 It was not the easiest relationship.
00:40:11.000 So that is boo-boo number one for the Pope.
00:40:13.000 Boo-boo number two is that apparently the Pope has now blasted the, quote, backwardness of some conservatives in the U.S.
00:40:19.000 Catholic Church, saying they have replaced faith with ideology.
00:40:22.000 He's one to talk.
00:40:22.000 I mean, seriously, honest to God, you want to talk about a Pope who's replaced faith with ideology?
00:40:27.000 He keeps writing encyclicals about how we have to stop hurting Mother Earth while at the same time proclaiming the doctrine of social liberalism in very soft form.
00:40:35.000 France's comments were an acknowledgment of the divisions in the U.S.
00:40:38.000 Catholic Church, which has been split between progressives and conservatives who long found support in the doctrinary papacies of St.
00:40:44.000 John Paul II and Benedict XVI, particularly on issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.
00:40:49.000 Like, even the AP knows.
00:40:50.000 Like, yeah, conservatives liked John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
00:40:54.000 They liked those guys because, you know, they actually hewed to historic Catholic doctrine on morality.
00:40:59.000 This guy, he's creative.
00:41:01.000 When you're Barack Obama's favorite pope, there's something wrong.
00:41:05.000 Many conservatives have blasted France's emphasis on social justice issues, such as the environment and the poor, while branding heretical his opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.
00:41:14.000 Which, um, you know, that used to be called just the doctrine.
00:41:18.000 So, during a meeting, a Portuguese Jesuit told Francis he had suffered during a recent sabbatical year in the United States because he came across many Catholics, including some U.S.
00:41:25.000 bishops, who criticized Francis' tenure papacy as well as today's Jesuits.
00:41:29.000 The 86-year-old Argentine acknowledged his point, saying there was a very strong organized reactionary attitude in the U.S.
00:41:34.000 church, which he called backward.
00:41:36.000 He said, Wait, hold on.
00:41:36.000 When you go backwards, you're disconnecting from the roots of the church?
00:41:39.000 have support. In other words, ideologies replace faith. The vision of the doctrine
00:41:43.000 of the church as a monolith is wrong. When you go backward, you make something
00:41:46.000 closed off, disconnected from the roots of the church. Wait, hold on. When you go
00:41:50.000 backwards, you're disconnecting from the roots of the church? I noticed that when
00:41:53.000 you're reflecting the political priorities of far-left figures in Latin
00:41:57.000 America as well as the United States, you might be moving away from the roots of
00:42:01.000 the church.
00:42:02.000 He says, I want to remind these people backwardness is useless.
00:42:05.000 I got to tell you, like for the Pope to say when he says backwardness, I assume what he means is, you know, the history of his church, which is supposed to be the rock of faith, correct?
00:42:14.000 Again, not a Catholic, but pretty sure that's what it is.
00:42:16.000 They must understand there's a correct evolution in the understanding of questions and faith and morals.
00:42:21.000 Oh, interesting.
00:42:23.000 There's a correct evolution in faith and morals.
00:42:26.000 Which is, he also said it was an honor to be attacked by Americans at some point.
00:42:30.000 So, yeah.
00:42:32.000 By the way, worth noting, the only segments of Catholicism on planet Earth that are growing right now are not left-leaning Catholic churches.
00:42:40.000 They're all right-leaning Catholic churches.
00:42:41.000 They're people who are traditionalist.
00:42:42.000 It's the Latin mass Catholic churches that are still full.
00:42:45.000 It's the ones who are moving softly toward embracing The Pope's own soft embrace of social leftism that are emptying out by the bushel.
00:42:54.000 Because why would you bother going to church on a Sunday if you can hear the same crap on MSNBC?
00:42:58.000 It really is amazing.
00:42:59.000 Okay, time for some quick things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:43:02.000 So, things that I like today.
00:43:03.000 Thomas Sowell, he continues to churn out books.
00:43:06.000 I mean, you want to talk about somebody who is totally with it.
00:43:08.000 Thomas Sowell is currently 93 years old.
00:43:12.000 He's 93.
00:43:12.000 Hey, Joe Biden can't even walk.
00:43:15.000 Joe Biden is 80.
00:43:16.000 Thomas Sowell is 13 years older than Joe Biden.
00:43:20.000 13 years older.
00:43:21.000 And he's still churning out books that are great.
00:43:23.000 So he just put out another one called Social Justice Fallacies.
00:43:25.000 It's a series of essays on the failures of social justice.
00:43:28.000 And he goes into why it is that inequality is not inequity.
00:43:33.000 Why group differences are not always attributable to discrimination.
00:43:36.000 And they're not always attributable to biology either.
00:43:38.000 Sometimes it's due to environment or geography or culture.
00:43:41.000 The book is great.
00:43:43.000 Very clearly thought, as always, from Dr. Searle.
00:43:46.000 Really good stuff.
00:43:47.000 Social Justice Fallacies, Thomas Searle.
00:43:48.000 I literally have, like, in my library, it's all of Thomas Searle's books.
00:43:52.000 Thomas Searle, one of the great thinkers of the last 50 years in the United States, and it is a pleasure whenever he brings out a new book.
00:43:58.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:44:04.000 So, Jake Tapper did an interview with Chris Christie the other day.
00:44:08.000 And Christie has been ripping on other Republicans for saying that in a binary election between Biden and Trump, they would vote for Trump.
00:44:13.000 And Tapper then asked him a question that a lot of people in the left-leaning media are constantly asking, which is, do Republicans have an authoritarian problem?
00:44:22.000 Now, let me first explain.
00:44:24.000 Authoritarianism is not what people in the left media think it is.
00:44:27.000 They think authoritarianism is like Donald Trump tweeting things or Donald Trump making efforts that are then stymied to change the results of an election.
00:44:36.000 There are many forms of authoritarianism.
00:44:38.000 In fact, fascism is an element of both left and right.
00:44:41.000 It is not merely a right-wing thing.
00:44:43.000 Authoritarianism can just as easily be done by a series of executive orders that go outside the Constitution and radically reshift the balance between people and their government.
00:44:50.000 Joe Biden does that with alacrity.
00:44:53.000 Here is Jake Tapper's answer.
00:44:55.000 Jake Tapper asking the question and Chris Christie, who actually, you know, kind of gave not a horrible answer actually here.
00:45:02.000 You do describe the conduct.
00:45:04.000 of Donald Trump trying to overturn the election as reprehensible.
00:45:11.000 You do condemn it.
00:45:12.000 But so many people in your party, and I'm not just talking about people running for president or on Capitol Hill, but I mean voters, Republican voters, don't seem to have a problem with it.
00:45:26.000 And I'm wondering, do you think that your party has an authoritarian problem?
00:45:30.000 That they really honestly don't have a problem with violently trying to stop a free and fair election from going forward?
00:45:42.000 No Jake, I absolutely don't think that we have that problem.
00:45:45.000 I think what we have is a Donald Trump problem.
00:45:47.000 And that right now what's gone on is that people view Donald Trump synonymously with the Republican Party.
00:45:53.000 And that if you oppose Trump, that's somehow favoring Biden.
00:45:57.000 And many Republicans don't want to do that for very obvious reasons.
00:46:03.000 Okay, so, that last part.
00:46:05.000 The rest of it's garbage, but that last part where he says, which is, Donald Trump is seen as synonymous with the Republican Party, and so if you tell people it's either Biden or the Republican Party, of course a lot of people are going to vote Republican.
00:46:14.000 That part is true.
00:46:15.000 But what's insulting to the intelligence is this generalized narrative that the media are constantly drawing, in which they suggest that fascism, or authoritarianism, or tyranny, is an element of the right, and that the left is completely free.
00:46:27.000 That his hands are completely clean.
00:46:28.000 It's obviously not true.
00:46:29.000 In fact, we have a YouTube video, a latest episode in our facts series, talking about whether fascism is right-wing, what are the roots of fascism.
00:46:36.000 The truth is that fascism as an ideology is closer to the American left than it is to the American right.
00:46:43.000 Fascism as an ideology was generalized in response to communism, but it drew from Marxism, it drew from Hegelian politics, it drew from progressive era ideas, which is why many of the early supporters of Mussolini were members of the left.
00:46:56.000 Including people who had worked in the Woodrow Wilson administration, who would go on to work in the FDR administration.
00:47:01.000 So, again, this sort of media lie, which is that the right is universally authoritarian and the left is for freedom, I don't see any evidence of that whatsoever.
00:47:10.000 Okay, in just a second we're going to jump into the mailbag, so head on over to DailyWirePlus and become a member right now.
00:47:15.000 Get your question answered in the mailbag.