Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is a bag of tools. He's a loud mouth, he's a bully, and he's an over-the-top narcissist. And he's running for president, and we're going to make fun of him for it. Plus, a Valentine's Day gift that you can't wait to give to someone you care deeply for. Plus, get 20% off your order when you enter promo code SHAPIRO. That is 20% OFF any gift for Valentine s Day at Mrs. Fields, which is a delicious gift no one can resist. Plus you can add a personal touch with a custom message or photo to your purchase, which will make it even more special! Shout out to my good friend, Ben Shapiro for joining me on The Ben Shapiro Show! Subscribe to my new podcast, The Weekly Standard, where I break down what s going on in the world of politics, economics, and pop culture. Subscribe today using our podcast s RSS, iTunes, Stitcher, and Podcoin! Rate/subscribe in Apple Podcasts, and become a supporter of my new show Spartacus! I'll be giving out a special prize every week, a $10 credit when you sign up for my newsletter, Spartacus 2020! If you like what you hear about Spartacus, sign up to Spartacus and I'll give you a shoutout in next week's episode. I'm Spartacus Day! And don't forget to SUBSCRIBE and leave me a review on iTunes! You can also join the Spartacus day and leave a review! if you're looking for more Spartacus and I'm giving you a chance to win a chance at a new book, a copy of Spartacus' new book coming out in the next episode! Thank you Spartacus will be giving me a discount on my new book out next week! It'll be shipping out a review of the book Spartacus is coming out soon! on Tuesday, February 20th! - Ben Shapiro's new book "Spartacus' New York Times bestselling novel "Sparksacus" out on Tuesday! FREE MURDERING MEETING? FREE FASTEST BONUS EPISODE HERE! CHECK OUT THE PODCAST AND MORE! FREE TRAINING AND PRACTICALLY EVERYONE GETTING A PRICING?
00:00:15.000Well, you know Democrats are having a bad week when every headline is about how Republicans are pouncing, like a bunch of cats, hiding in the shadows.
00:00:22.000Well, there'll be a lot of pouncing on today's show, because Democrats, not good at what they do.
00:00:26.000Also, lots of making fun of Cory Booker coming up, because come on, man, if I can't make fun of Cory Booker, what was I born to do, people?
00:00:33.000We'll get to all that in just a second.
00:00:35.000First, if you want to get somebody a great Valentine's Day gift, and you're not gonna go the flowers route, and you don't wanna go the sushi at the gas station route, not gonna say that's happened before, We'll just say that you should be looking at Mrs. Fields.
00:00:47.000For over 40 years, Mrs. Fields has made delicious treats like their signature chocolate chip cookies and melt-in-your-mouth brownies.
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00:01:52.000All right, so I'm very excited because for a long time, I've been eager to see the Kamala Harris versus Cory Booker versus Elizabeth Warren primary.
00:02:01.000Who will be the most minority candidate?
00:02:04.000I mean, Elizabeth Warren, as we all know, is 1 1,024th Native American, and Cory Booker is 1 1,024th Spartacus.
00:02:12.000As you recall, the senator from New Jersey back during the Kavanaugh hearings, he's such a bag of tools, Cory Booker.
00:02:29.000The rap on Senator Cruz back in 2016 when he was running is that everything that he did seemed like it was overthought by a couple of steps.
00:02:37.000Well, if everything that Cruz did seemed like it was sort of manipulative or overthought during the 2016 campaign, Cory Booker, it's like the guy, it's like the guy writes a script in his head and then he says, you know what?
00:02:55.000So that's why you have situations like Cory Booker during the Kavanaugh hearing, you will recall.
00:03:00.000But there was a series of documents about Brett Kavanaugh that were actually released publicly, like the night before Cory Booker did this.
00:03:06.000Cory Booker then went out and said, I am violating the rules and I may be banned from this Senate committee for violating the rules by releasing these documents, which were released legally yesterday.
00:03:17.000And then he said, and these documents will show that Brett Kavanaugh is a vicious racist.
00:03:22.000And the documents showed no such thing.
00:03:24.000But he said, if ever there was something like an I am Spartacus moment, This is my I am Spartacus moment.
00:03:32.000Which is like, you're reading the stage direction, dude.
00:03:37.000If you want people to call you Spartacus, that's when you have your press guy call up a friendly outlet and say, you know what, call him Spartacus in the press.
00:03:43.000This is when you do the Donald Trump as John Miller routine.
00:03:46.000And you call up and you say, this is definitely not Cory Booker.
00:03:49.000But if it were Cory Booker, he'd be telling you to write a piece about how he's Spartacus.
00:03:53.000Instead, he just goes out fully publicly and is like, this is my I am Spartacus moment.
00:05:03.000He was a Newark boy who became mayor of Newark and still lives in Newark.
00:05:08.000Now, what's hilarious about this video, as you will see, is that his main message is that he was mayor of Newark and grew up in Newark and spent his entire life in Newark.
00:05:18.000And it sucks just as much as when he was a kid.
00:05:20.000That's the underlying theme of the video.
00:05:21.000So he spends his whole life there trying to make things better, supposedly, and nothing is better in Newark.
00:05:26.000And, by the way, spend some time in Newark, man.
00:05:53.000It's amazing how failing upward in politics just seems to be endemic.
00:05:57.000Like, the worse you do, at least on the Democratic side, At least when Rick Perry ran for president of the United States, he'd been a good governor of Texas.
00:06:07.000She was an awful district attorney in San Francisco.
00:06:10.000And now, you've got Cory Booker, who is a garbage mayor of New Jersey, a garbage senator from New Jersey, and now he's going to run for president of the United States.
00:06:17.000Being crappy at your job is almost a prerequisite to becoming President of the United States if you are a Democrat.
00:06:22.000Like, what did Barack Obama do as Senator in Illinois that radically made Chicago better?
00:06:26.000Is Chicago way better now than it was, like, when Obama got to Chicago?
00:07:21.000Food on the table, where there are good paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood.
00:07:27.000Where our criminal justice system keeps us safe instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins.
00:07:35.000Okay, so can we pause it there for a second?
00:07:37.000- Leaders on television can feel pride. - And then the picture of him, no kidding. - It's not a matter of can we.
00:07:45.000It's a matter of do we have the collective will. - Okay, so can we pause it there for a second?
00:07:49.000I'm just wondering, at what point do we actually get the big screen reveal that this is actually the movie drum line?
00:07:56.000Because you'll hear throughout this ad, people drumming.
00:08:00.000And there's actual video of random people drumming.
00:08:02.000It's like some white chick in her apartment and she's drumming away and then he's walking through a high school corridor and people are drumming away.
00:08:09.000I was hoping that maybe he would break into song or maybe he'd just start breakdancing in the middle of the video.
00:09:03.000There's an intersectional lane that he's trying to run in.
00:09:05.000Now, what's funny about Booker is that when Booker started, his entire pitch is that he actually was the bipartisan Democrat.
00:09:10.000So you'll recall, if you look back at his career, Jim Garrity does this at National Review, that he started by taking on a Democratic machine in Newark, and he ran in Newark on the platform that I'm not a radical Democrat.
00:09:23.000And his big thing when he was mayor of Newark was making these big dramatic announcements, so...
00:09:27.000In 2010, he joined Chris Christie, who was then the governor of New Jersey, with whom he was very friendly at the time, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the Oprah Winfrey Show to accept an eye-popping gift, $100 million to reform Newark public schools with local philanthropists and others matching it and raising it to $200 million.
00:09:44.000It was a really good day for Cory Booker.
00:09:46.000And then you'll recall that as mayor of Newark, he decided that he was going to do like the food stamp test and try to live on supplemental nutrition assistance.
00:09:54.000Every day for a month, which didn't even make sense because it's supplemental nutrition assistance.
00:09:58.000It's not supposed to be like the entirety of your income for the entire month.
00:10:02.000But then when he went to the Senate, he just decided that he was going to give up being bipartisan at all.
00:10:09.000That was because there was real backlash to him in 2012.
00:10:11.000People were attacking private equity and Booker fought back against that.
00:10:14.000Booker said, you know, why are we attacking private equity?
00:10:17.000He says, we're getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions, and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital.
00:10:26.000If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support business, to grow business, and this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with.
00:10:33.000The last point I'll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides.
00:10:36.000It's nauseating to the American public.
00:10:40.000And then the Democrats came down on him, and then he flipped.
00:10:43.000And then he released a video that completely reversed himself.
00:10:46.000Now, private equity was absolutely terrible.
00:10:49.000Now, when he left as mayor of Newark, nothing actually had happened in Newark.
00:10:55.000Here was the New York Times upon him leaving.
00:10:57.000When snow blanketed this city two Christmases ago, Mayor Cory Booker was celebrated around the nation for personally shoveling out residents who had appealed for help on Twitter.
00:11:05.000But here, his administration was scorned as streets remained impassable for days because the city had no contract for snow removal.
00:11:12.000Last spring, Ellen DeGeneres presented Mr. Booker with a superhero costume after he rushed into a burning building to save a neighbor.
00:11:18.000But Newark had eliminated three fire companies after the mayor's plan to plug a budget hole failed.
00:11:23.000In recent days, Mr. Booker has made the rounds of the national media with his pledge to live on food stamps for a week, but his constituents do not need to be reminded that six years after the mayor came into office vowing to make Newark a model of urban transformation, their city remains an emblem of poverty.
00:11:38.000So there he is, like, walking around, doing his, I'm cool, Newark's an awesome place thing.
00:13:20.000Eliana Johnson, who's now a reporter for the Washington Post, at the time writing for National Review, talked about this street character who he'd known, who it turned out was a composite from his life.
00:13:31.000Here is Eliana Johnson writing about this.
00:13:33.000this she says the tale is when booker admits he's told a million times according to the newark star ledger ronald rice jr a newark city councilman and booker ally who has known the mayor since 1998 says the t-bone story was a fixture of booker's unsuccessful 2002 mayoral bid against corrupt newark political boss sharp james what exactly was the story t-bone was a drug pusher that the mayor said threatened his life at one turn and sobbed on his shoulder at the next The problem is that T-Bone does not exist.
00:14:02.000The T-Bone tale never sat right with Rutgers University history professor Clement Price, a Booker supporter who told National Review online he found the mayor's story offensive because it pandered to a stereotype of inner-city black men.
00:14:14.000T-Bone, Price says, is a southern inflected name.
00:14:16.000You would expect to run into something or someone named T-Bone in Memphis, Not Newark.
00:15:52.000When I see Israel Institute law that recognizes it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it and we still uphold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle because I know that if You know, we see that in any other society.
00:16:33.000The reason that we criticize Iran is not because it is a state that has Islam as its official religion.
00:16:39.000The reason that we criticize Iran is because Iran is a repressive dictatorship that murders gay people, imprisons dissidents, and prevents people from freely exercising their religion.
00:16:47.000Israel doesn't do any of those things.
00:16:49.000There are many states, by the way, in Eastern Europe that have Christianity as their official religion.
00:16:53.000The idea that an internal Jewish state law that says that Judaism is the official state religion of the Jewish state, that this isn't in any way controversial in a country where Christians are free to live, work, and prosper.
00:17:07.000Muslims are freer in Israel than they are in any Muslim country on planet Earth.
00:17:19.000The Democrat, but they're not radical.
00:17:20.000She also said, Ilhan Omar, that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's proposal to tax the super wealthy, people who make above, what was it, 70, about $10 million a year, to tax them at 70%, she said that doesn't go far enough.
00:17:33.000Here was her explanation of what she thinks the tax code should be.
00:17:36.000There are a few things that we can do.
00:17:39.000One of them is that we could increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our community.
00:18:15.000And by the way, if you think the Democrats are going to stop there, you're totally wrong.
00:18:18.000I mean, they're not going to stop there because the truth is there just isn't enough income From that group, to support any of the programs they're talking about.
00:18:26.000As I've said repeatedly on the program, if you want Denmark-type socialism, you have to have Denmark-type tax rates.
00:18:31.000And that means 60% taxation, leaving aside the VAT tax, on people who are making like 60 grand and above.
00:18:38.000Because we're going to spend even more than Denmark on these programs.
00:19:56.000There's no question that the most disruptive, dangerous extremists are on the right.
00:20:00.000Well, I mean, there is a fair bit of question about that, considering that Democrats are now talking about overthrowing the entire American healthcare system, overthrowing the entire American transportation system, and restructuring the entire American economy.
00:20:11.000If I had to make a bet, I would say those people are slightly more dangerous than Donald Trump tweeting stupid crap from the White House.
00:20:18.000He says, but there's another faction whose obsessions and refusal to face reality have also done a great deal of harm.
00:20:55.000But I guess when you reshift the entire framework of politics so that suddenly Denmark becomes middle of the road, alright, I mean, I guess it's a thing you can do.
00:21:02.000He says he's really worried about fanatical centrists.
00:21:07.000He says, First, there's an obsession with public debt.
00:21:09.000This obsession might have made some sense back in 2010, when some feared a Greek-style crisis, although even then I could have told you that such fears were misplaced.
00:21:17.000You also said the internet would not be a thing in the economy, Paul Krugman.
00:21:19.000So, if we're going to go back to your record of predictions...
00:21:22.000There's been some good and there's been some bad.
00:21:24.000He says, in any case, however, eight years have passed since Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson predicted a fiscal crisis within two years unless their calls for spending cuts were heeded, yet U.S.
00:21:32.000borrowing costs remained at historical lows.
00:21:35.000And then he says that anybody who thinks that the debt is a problem is crazy.
00:21:45.000It is totally crazy to say that the national debt is a problem.
00:21:49.000And then he continues along these lines.
00:21:51.000He says, And he's not alone in saying things like that.
00:21:54.000to any proposal that would ease the lives of ordinary Americans.
00:21:57.000Universal health coverage said Schultz would be free healthcare for all, which the country cannot afford.
00:22:01.000And he's not alone in saying things like that.
00:22:03.000A few days ago, Michael Bloomberg declared that extending Medicare to everyone, as Kamala Harris suggests, would bankrupt us for a very long time.
00:22:10.000Now, single payer healthcare actually called Medicare, hasn't bankrupted Canada.
00:22:14.000In fact, every advanced country besides America has some form of universal health coverage and manages to afford it.
00:22:19.000First of all, America does have a basic form of universal health coverage.
00:22:24.000It is Medicaid and emergency room forced care.
00:22:27.000Right, so the idea that people are dying on the streets in America is simply a left lie.
00:22:32.000It is also true the vast majority of spending on health care in the United States is done in the private sector by people who voluntarily pay into the private sector.
00:22:40.000The United States spends something on the order of 60, I believe it was 60 trillion dollars a year?
00:22:56.00060 trillion over the next decade that we could be expected to spend on healthcare.
00:23:00.000About 28 trillion dollars of that was expected to be public and about 32 trillion was expected to be private.
00:23:07.000Okay, so that means that a lot of the spending that's being done is voluntary spending by people who are freely alienating their money in return for quicker health care.
00:23:15.000But according to Paul Krugman, it is not radical at all to say you're going to completely abolish one-fourth of the American industry.
00:23:21.000So, radical centrists are the real problem.
00:23:24.000He says, where does the fanaticism of the centrists come from?
00:23:37.000We need a government program to buy Paul Krugman a mirror.
00:23:39.000If we tax everybody one cent, we can buy him a magnificent mirror.
00:23:43.000They want to think of themselves as standing tall against extremism right and left, yet the reality of American politics is asymmetric polarization.
00:23:50.000Extremism on the right is a powerful political force, while extremism on the left isn't.
00:23:55.000The answer, for centrists, is retreating into a fantasy world, almost as hermetic as the right-wing Fox News bubble.
00:24:02.000In this fantasy world, social democrats like Harris or Warren are portrayed as the second coming of Hugo Chavez, so that taking what is actually a conservative position can be represented as a brave defense of moderation.
00:24:11.000So now Howard Schultz is an out-and-out conservative.
00:24:13.000So in order to defend the extremism of their own cause, Howard Schultz becomes a conservative and Ilhan Omar becomes a moderate.
00:24:20.000But this is how the media generally have treated the extremism of the Democrats.
00:24:24.000So, what's hilarious over the last week?
00:24:27.000Is that we have seen in the last week Kamala Harris embrace Medicare for all, abolishing private health insurance, and then run screaming from it.
00:24:33.000We have seen Democrats embrace murder of the unborn up to point of birth, including dilation, according to Kathy Tran, the state senator in Virginia, the state delegate in Virginia.
00:24:44.000We have seen Democrats embrace tax rates that would make Hugo Chavez extraordinarily happy.
00:25:12.000But Republicans pounce has become such a meme that people on the right know that as soon as Democrats do something bad, there will be a bevy of articles about Republicans pouncing.
00:25:20.000So here is an actual headline from the Washington Post.
00:25:42.000Senator Kamala Harris is raising the possibility of eliminating private health insurance.
00:25:46.000Senator Elizabeth Warren and other prominent Democrats are floating new and far-reaching plans to tax the wealthy.
00:25:51.000In Virginia, Governor Ralph Northam voiced support for state legislation that would reduce restrictions on late-term abortions.
00:25:57.000Democrats, after two years largely spent simply opposing everything President Trump advocated, are defining themselves lately in ways Republicans are seizing on to portray them as far outside the American mainstream.
00:26:09.000Well, the Those Republicans, dastardly Republicans, suggesting that these positions are outside the mainstream, what if there were, you know, like some poll data?
00:26:18.000Well, let's assume maybe there were companies that did polls about these issues, and then we could actually determine whether these were extreme positions, for example.
00:26:30.000When people are told that Medicare for All would raise their taxes, only 26% of Americans support that.
00:26:36.000When Americans are asked about whether they would ban all semi-automatic weapons, as Kamala Harris suggested, only 40% of Americans back that.
00:26:44.000When Americans are asked whether they support the ability to abort a baby at dilation, 81% of Americans oppose.
00:27:14.000Okay, you know what's a way that the Republicans couldn't have actually seized on the issue?
00:27:19.000Is if Democrats hadn't tried to pass bills in Vermont, Virginia, and New York, and Rhode Island in the last week, trying to say that late-term abortion was an affirmative good.
00:27:28.000Then there wouldn't have been anything like... Let's say the Republicans tried to seize on Democratic support for murdering all people above the age of 80.
00:27:37.000It would be hard for them to seize on that because Democrats haven't actually made that proposal.
00:27:59.000They are just even-handed truth-tellers seeking to be firefighters, bringing you the realities of life.
00:28:06.000By the way, it is worth noting here that for all of the talk from people like Paul Krugman and folks in the Democratic mainstream about the realism of their proposals taking crises like climate change super seriously and all of this, as soon as you dig beneath the surface, you realize that even their more mainstream positions are actually pretty radical and pretty dumb.
00:28:25.000I'll explain in just a second when it comes to climate change.
00:28:28.000First, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
00:28:30.000$9.99 a month gets you a subscription.
00:28:32.000Remember, If you're not a Daily Wire subscriber, you are missing out.
00:28:36.000Our next Sunday special guest is none other than the great Dave Ramsey.
00:29:19.000If only that guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail had chosen this, he would still be alive instead of having crumbled into dust.
00:29:53.000Anyway, so China's coal plants, this is great.
00:29:56.000So Democrats have been saying that climate change is something we have to take so seriously, we have to hamper and destroy the entire fiscal stability of the United States.
00:30:05.000Worth noting, by the way, that despite all of the talk about the American economy slowing down, U.S.
00:30:10.000employers added 304,000 jobs in January.
00:30:12.000So the worries about the economy may be overstated.
00:30:57.000It turns out that all of the highfalutin talk about how the United States has not done its share to fight climate change is ignoring the fact that the vast majority of emissions are not coming from the United States on an absolute basis.
00:31:07.000The vast majority of emissions are coming from China because China has a billion people and they're emitting without any regulations upon them.
00:31:13.000Despite the fact that they signed on to the much vaunted Paris Accords.
00:31:23.000Well, it turns out we didn't sign the Paris Accords and we lowered emissions more than any industrialized country last year.
00:31:29.000And China did sign the Paris Accords and they didn't lower emissions at all.
00:31:33.000Samini Sengupta writing for the New York Times, China, the world's coal juggernaut, has continued to produce more methane emissions from its coal mines despite its pledge to curb the planet-warming pollutant, according to new research.
00:31:46.000In a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers concluded that China had failed to meet its own government regulations requiring coal mines to rapidly reduce methane emissions, at least in the five years after 2010, when the regulations were passed.
00:32:00.000It matters because coal is the world's dirtiest fossil fuel and China is, by far, the largest producer in the world.
00:32:05.000Coal accounts for 40% of electricity generation globally and an even higher share in China, which has abundant coal resources and more than 4 million workers employed in the coal sector.
00:32:15.000Scientists and policymakers agree that the world will have to quit coal to have any hope of averting catastrophic climate change.
00:32:22.000How quickly China can do that, therefore, is crucial.
00:32:25.000The Chinese government in 2010 required a state-run coal sector to reduce methane emissions by putting the gas to use, or by capturing methane from mines and flaring it, which is still polluting, but not as much as releasing the gas into the atmosphere, according to researchers.
00:32:37.000It required that 6.2 million tons of methane produced from coal mining be put to use by 2015.
00:32:43.000An examination of satellite data collected between 2010 and 2015 painted a different picture.
00:32:48.000Not only were the reductions not made, but Chinese methane emissions actually increased by 1.2 million tons per year during the five-year period.
00:33:17.000But they're good because they're on the left!
00:33:19.000I mean, Thomas Friedman, I was assured by Thomas Friedman that if we had just run America as a one-party autocracy, that would have been even better than a one-party democracy.
00:33:29.000Because if the one-party autocracy is run by the geniuses like the people in China, the world would be better off.
00:33:35.000Obviously, the solution to this is we have to tax the 1%.
00:33:37.000The solution to the Chinese government just radically increasing their methane emissions, we have to tax the 1% in this country.
00:33:52.000We should just do a bunch of things that have nothing to do with methane emissions, but we will pretend that they have everything to do with methane emissions while the other people who signed on to the Paris Accords and lied about what they were going to do continue to pollute.
00:34:11.000It's just amazing that this continues to be portrayed as some sort of moderation.
00:34:17.000Just incredible stuff from the Democratic Party on a routine basis.
00:34:21.000Speaking of incredible stuff from the Democratic Party, you remember that time that everybody said that Donald Trump was a pawn of the Russians?
00:34:27.000You remember Hillary Clinton accusing Donald Trump of being a puppet?
00:34:30.000And Trump going, I'm not the puppet, you're the puppet, Pinocchio.
00:34:35.000Well, now it turns out that the United States, being a puppet of Vladimir Putin, is withdrawing from a nuclear arms control treaty because of ongoing violations by the Russians.
00:34:44.000The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has been central to limiting the kinds of nuclear weapons both countries can deploy.
00:34:49.000Without it, experts fear there will be a new nuclear arms race.
00:34:53.000Except that these experts are doltish enough to fail to recognize that the Russian government has been violating the INF for legitimately decades.
00:35:00.000Pompeo said, Pompeo first announced the U.S.
00:35:01.000The agreement is so brazenly disregarded and our security so openly threatened, we must respond.
00:35:06.000Pompeo first announced the U.S. intention to withdraw in December, giving Russia a 60-day window to come back into compliance.
00:35:12.000That window runs out on Saturday. - Okay.
00:35:16.000Withdrawal now requires an additional six-month window, according to the treaty's terms.
00:35:28.000at a military disadvantage, although the real reason that they're doing this is because the Russians are violating the treaty.
00:35:34.000So, all of the puppetry in which apparently Putin is engaged has resulted in the United States building up its nuclear arms in order to counter the violations of the Russians.
00:35:49.000Obviously Donald Trump was a plant of the Russians, and he was put in office by Vladimir Putin specifically so that he could kill Russians in Syria, arm the Ukrainians with deadly weaponry, raise sanctions, for the most part, and also pull out of an intermediate nuclear forces treaty that allows the United States to build up its nuclear arsenal.
00:36:07.000Clearly that's why they put him in power, to do stuff like that.
00:37:06.000It makes you have to engage with your best self.
00:37:10.000Getting married was a life-changing experience for me in a variety of ways, but the first thing that it does is it makes you realize that your decisions have impact on people who are not you.
00:37:18.000When you're just a kid, you don't worry about the impact that your decisions have on your parents.
00:37:22.000Now that I'm a parent, you realize how much parents have to deal with the consequences of their children's decision.
00:37:27.000But when you're a kid, you think, oh, my parent's an adult.
00:37:31.000Once you get married, you realize that your decisions don't just impact you, they impact others.
00:37:35.000And this makes you a more virtuous person.
00:37:37.000So, when you're 25, my first suggestion is seek responsibility, don't shirk responsibility.
00:37:42.000That would be, I think, the first thing that pops to mind.
00:37:45.000The other thing is that when you're young, you should be risk-seeking when it comes to career.
00:37:50.000What I mean by that is now is a good time for you to try and determine what it is that you love to do, you think makes a difference, and that you're good at.
00:37:56.000That is the confluence of factors that make for a good career experience.
00:37:59.000Find the thing that you are good at, the thing that you love to do, and the thing that other people will pay you to do and makes a difference.
00:38:07.000So making a difference, good at it, people will pay you for it.
00:38:48.000And we decided that I was going to take a job for one-third the pay, doing legal work and also learning the production side of the radio industry.
00:38:56.000Because this is a good time for you to learn.
00:39:11.000Milton Friedman commonly referred to inflation as the hidden tax because it pushes people's income into higher and higher tax brackets.
00:39:17.000He concluded that the only way to effectively get a tax cut is to cut government spending, because any tax cut that did not cut spending would ultimately lead to inflation.
00:39:24.000Do you agree with this analysis, and do you think Republicans will ever tackle government spending?
00:39:32.000I think that if you continue to spend, then eventually you're going to have to increase taxes, or you're going to have to inflate the currency to pay off the debt.
00:39:38.000That you have incurred in order to make that spending happen.
00:40:03.000I have a new book with an entire section on intersectionality.
00:40:06.000You can go check it out at Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.
00:40:09.000The Right Side of History, that is coming out in March.
00:40:12.000I have sort of a long explanation of the roots of intersectionality.
00:40:16.000You can also read the papers of Kimberly Crenshaw, who's the person who came up with intersectionality.
00:40:19.000So, a couple things about intersectionality.
00:40:22.000A friend of mine recently, on the left, sent me a paper by Kimberly Crenshaw about intersectionality in a legal journal.
00:40:28.000And the paper isn't actually bad, right?
00:40:30.000What the paper actually suggests, and this is true, is that if you are going to take into account discrimination based on a variety of factors, there are cases in which factors stack up on top of one another.
00:40:39.000So, for example, there could be a case, in this paper by Kimberly Crenshaw, she specifically talked, she's the person who founded the phrase, the term intersectionality.
00:40:48.000In the paper, she talks about a case where a black woman was discriminated on the basis of both her race and her sex, but because there was no law that said that the aggregate of those two factors was, could be a protected class, therefore she was left out of the law.
00:41:03.000I can see a situation in which a black woman is treated as lesser than a white woman.
00:41:09.000So in other words, she's treated lesser than a man because she's a woman, but also treated lesser than a white woman because she's black, right?
00:41:14.000You can see that sort of hierarchy in a discriminatory setting.
00:41:18.000The problem is that drawing the broad conclusion that simply by membership in a group, you are therefore victimized by necessity.
00:41:27.000It's that we will ignore your personal experience and simply dictate that America is bad to people like you without reference to what you have done personally.
00:41:36.000That is, in essence, a form of racism.
00:41:38.000So, there's a great new book out by Noah Rothman.
00:41:49.000But I was making this point to somebody yesterday about intersectionality and the real problem with it.
00:41:53.000Again, the idea of intersectionality is that we're all members of groups and these groups have been treated disparately in American history, which is obviously true.
00:42:00.000But that does not answer the question of what that means for us now.
00:42:04.000Should we look to your personal experience and your personal experience of discrimination?
00:42:08.000Or should we simply assume that your membership in the group means that you have been discriminated against in some way and therefore your opinion should be valued more highly when it comes to critiquing the United States and our hierarchies of power?
00:42:19.000It's that latter contention that is actually racist identity politics.
00:42:23.000That latter contention is racist identity politics.
00:42:25.000Thomas Sowell, the economist, has an interesting breakdown of discrimination that I found quite useful.
00:42:29.000He says that there are basically three types of discrimination.
00:42:32.000There's discrimination that we all find utterly benign.
00:42:35.000That would be discrimination between, do I want a hamburger or do I want a fish filet today?
00:42:54.000Everybody finds that abhorrent of good, of good faith.
00:42:57.000Then there is the case of situ, there are situations in which you have no information about a person other than their group membership.
00:43:04.000So for example, You're walking down the street of a neighborhood.
00:43:09.000In that neighborhood, the black crime rate is higher than the white crime rate.
00:43:12.000And you're walking down the street at 2 a.m.
00:43:14.000And you're walking down the street and there's identical, identically dressed black guy on one side of the street and white guy on the other side of the street.
00:43:21.000And you cross over to the side where the white guy is because the black crime rate in the city is higher than the white crime rate.
00:43:28.000What you are is a person who is using risk assessment based on the only data that is available to you.
00:43:33.000Racism would be if you know that the black guy walking down the street is dressed in a medical outfit because he's from Johns Hopkins and the white guy on the other side of the street is smoking crack.
00:43:42.000If you then move over to the white guy side of the street, then you're a racist.
00:43:45.000In other words, you can only use the best data that is available to you.
00:43:49.000And our job should be to try and drill down so we get to the individual data.
00:43:52.000Well, intersectionality is the same sort of problem.
00:43:55.000OK, so if you were to say that in a vacuum, all you have about information about these two people, one is white and one is black, you don't know anything else about them.
00:44:03.000Can you say that they probably had different experiences in America?
00:44:08.000Yeah, I think it's fair to say that they probably had different experiences in America because being black comes with certain burdens that being white has not had, historically speaking.
00:44:16.000We could probably assume, for example, without any other evidence, that you have a history of less wealth in your family because of historic discrimination against black folks.
00:44:25.000Here's where intersectionality goes wrong.
00:44:26.000Intersectionality suggests that even if you know now that that black kid is Colin Powell's son, and you know that that white kid is some kid who grew up in rural Appalachia with a single mom, that you can still assume that that white kid is somehow privileged by his race, and that black kid is somehow a victim because of his race.
00:44:42.000Now, you are actively encouraging discrimination.
00:44:45.000And that's where intersectionality has gone.
00:44:50.000Once you start using group identity as a substitute for information that you have about individual decision-making, once you say that every disparity can automatically be attributed to discrimination because discrimination is obviously so endemic that it overcomes any other factor, now you have engaged in something truly ugly.
00:45:06.000You're seeing this right now with Howard Schultz.
00:45:08.000Howard Schultz grew up Jewish in a family where his father apparently beat him and was a truck driver and was unemployed.
00:45:25.000He is now being accused of having experienced white privilege and even Jewish privilege because his culture emphasizes education, for example.
00:45:33.000So we are going to value his group identity over his individual story?
00:45:44.000Lee says, Dear Ben, wanted to know your opinion on mediums.
00:45:47.000I used to think all psychics are frauds, but one of my mom's friends, who's a medium, said my dad, who died 10 years before when I was 14, wanted to speak to me.
00:45:53.000I've rarely talked to her before, and at the time I was going through a really rough time in college with heavy drinking, depression, and losing out on a girl I had feelings for.
00:45:59.000Yet somehow, she knew everything happening, even though I told no one at the time, and that changed my opinion on the subject.
00:46:05.000Curious to know what your thoughts are.
00:46:07.000So my thoughts are that I think all psychics are frauds.
00:46:10.000I think there's no hard data to suggest that psychics are not frauds.
00:46:15.000I think that they tend to use outside indicators or, say, vague things that you can fit into What you think your story is, they'll say, you're having trouble with a romantic partner, aren't you?
00:47:02.000Why do you like that system, since it resembles Obamacare?
00:47:05.000You've also said that for the US to allow the purchase of health insurance over state lines, but a plan in Montana won't pay the rate that doctors in LA or New York charge.
00:47:12.000Well, you want to be able to have competition across state lines, and you're right that a health care plan in Montana is probably not going to be something that people in California buy, but a health care plan in South Dakota might be something that people in Montana want to buy.
00:47:56.000What I have said is that in terms of efficacy, if that's all you're looking at, Switzerland has a pretty nice system.
00:48:04.000Okay, Switzerland, but that violates certain core principles.
00:48:07.000And also, I'm saying if you're looking at mixed systems, nobody's actually ever tried a pretty libertarian system in which the free market tends to predominate, regulations are extraordinarily low, and people can buy healthcare simply by walking into the doctor and plopping down a $100 bill.
00:48:26.000Okay, one more and then we will move on.
00:48:29.000Let's see... Stan says, how are you doing, Ben?
00:48:32.000I know that you and your wife are happily married, but hypothetically, if she were to be unfaithful to you, how would you handle the situation?
00:48:37.000Is adultery a legit reason to divorce someone?
00:48:39.000I know in the Bible it says, till death do us part, but I think cheating is a horrible act, even if the person did it once.
00:48:44.000I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
00:48:50.000So, on a sin level, obviously, adultery is not only divorceable, if you're going to do it biblically, it's death penalty worthy, right?
00:48:57.000It is one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery, and it is indeed grounds for divorce in Judaism.
00:49:02.000What would I do if, God forbid, my wife did that?
00:49:05.000Thankfully, this is not even a thinkable hypothetical, but if I were married to somebody who cheated on me and I already had kids, honestly, I think I would probably do my best to keep the marriage together for the sake of the kids so long as she was still a good mother.
00:49:16.000Because after you have kids, the math changes.
00:49:18.000If I was just married to a woman, no kids, and she cheated on me, I'm out like that.
00:49:21.000If I have kids, that does change the math pretty radically.
00:49:24.000You have to do something to make sure that the kids still have their mom around, if she's a good mom.
00:49:28.000If she's a bad mom, then it's a different story.
00:49:30.000But divorce has impacts on people beyond you.
00:49:33.000This goes back to sort of the first question in the mailbag.
00:49:35.000As you have responsibilities to other people, the incentive structure changes and the math changes.
00:49:40.000I will also say that not all adulteries are equally damaging to a marriage, I think, is somewhat fair to say, meaning that I think that all adultery is evil.
00:49:51.000I think it's a diminishment of your soul, and it is a violation of your responsibilities as a human being.
00:49:57.000It creates a breach in human virtue that is nearly irreparable.
00:50:02.000I will say that I think there's a difference between a man having a long-standing affair with a woman, not his wife, and a man who has a drunken one-night fling at a hotel in Iowa.
00:50:09.000I don't think that's quite the same thing.
00:50:11.000And I think that's true because men treat sex as a disposable thing, and emotional affairs can be a lot more damaging to marriages than even one-night stands, for example.
00:50:22.000But that's getting more complex than the topic requires.
00:50:24.000Again, it depends on where you're situated.
00:50:26.000It depends on your relationship with your spouse.
00:50:55.000I am a man with Down syndrome and my life is worth living.
00:51:01.000Sadly, across the world, a notion is being sold that maybe we don't need research concerning Down syndrome.
00:51:16.000Some people say prenatal screens will identify Down syndrome In the womb, in those parentheses, will just be terminated.
00:51:32.000It's hard for me to sit here and say those words.
00:51:41.000I completely, I completely understand that the people pushing this particular final solution are saying that That people like me should not exist.
00:52:18.000There was a social justice warrior online today who used the phrase tone-deaf and then she apologized because she felt that it might offend people who are deaf.
00:52:26.000I wonder what her position is on choosing abortion for a kid who would be born with Down syndrome or with some other sort of disability.
00:52:34.000The utter disdain that so many folks on the pro-choice left have for people who are disabled, as long as they're in the womb, is pretty astonishing.
00:52:41.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:52:48.000So I think I'm actually going to do only one thing I hate.
00:52:50.000So I discussed this yesterday on my radio show, and if you subscribed to the last two hours of the show, you'd already know this.
00:52:56.000But if you didn't, I'm going to explain it again.
00:52:59.000Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said something completely insane yesterday.
00:53:02.000She was talking about the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act, which bars employers, it would bar employers from asking potential employees what they were paid at their last job.
00:53:11.000Now listen, if you go in for an interview, you don't have to tell your employer that, right?
00:53:14.000If the potential employer says, what were you paying?
00:53:15.000You say, listen, I want to negotiate not on the basis of what I was last paid, but on what I think I'm worth to you.
00:54:21.000And the way that we determine what we think things ought to be worth is we look at the aggregate of information that amounts to a price.
00:54:28.000A price is simply an aggregate number that is put on how much demand there is for a particular product and how much supply there is of that particular product.
00:54:36.000So if it's very difficult to produce a product, and so there are only three of them, and there's high demand for it, the prices will be very high.
00:54:41.000If it's very easy to produce a product, and there's very little demand for it, you can produce a million of them, but there are only three people who want it, the price will be extraordinarily low, close to free.
00:55:17.000They tried to literally control the price of every single element of Soviet society.
00:55:21.000And it turns out that was a giant fail, because there's no way to centralize knowledge that is greater than the knowledge of the entirety of the human race as to their own interests, aspirations, and desires for products, goods, and services.
00:55:33.000It is a fundamental rejection of free markets to suggest that you know what the proper price of a thing should be better than the market knows.
00:55:40.000In fact, you know better than the person who's accepting the wage.
00:55:44.000This is why when people on the left say, well, there should be a $15 minimum wage.
00:55:46.000It's like, okay, well, you're pulling that directly from your colon.
00:55:50.000I'm wondering why you think there should be a $15 minimum wage.
00:56:06.000What people tend to do is they tend to do this.
00:56:10.000It's an actual psychological phenomenon where they root into a price that already exists and then they pretend they know better than that price.
00:56:16.000So they will say, you know, a box of Cheerios, it turns out costs $4.79 at a California Ralphs.
00:56:57.000If you think AOC, whose great life experience consists of winning a mildly contested primary in New York City, and also having poor drinks, if you think that she knows more than the entire human race about the price of goods, services, wages, and labor, Then, I don't know what to tell you.
00:57:16.000Go live in AOC land, man, because that place will be bankrupt so fast, it will make your head swim.
00:57:21.000There will be no production of products, there will be no goods, there will be no services.
00:57:23.000There will be a bunch of people who think that life is fair while they sit and play in the mud.
00:57:29.000Because that's what the USSR ended up being.
00:57:30.000Alright, well, as you can see, I'm dying here, so we're gonna leave.
00:57:34.000And I'll be back here a little bit later, after I have sufficiently recovered.
00:57:37.000After I've gone and had a nice swig from the Leftist Tears hot or cold tumbler and have been re-infused with energy and health, then I will be back for two live hours later.
00:57:55.000The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
00:58:05.000Edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.
00:58:11.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.