In the wake of President Trump's release of a tax reform outline, CNN's Sally Cohen takes to Twitter to explain her take on the prospective legislation. She tweets, This is not how taxes work. And then she suggests that rich Americans paying less taxes somehow amounts to reallocation of resources from the middle class to those in the top tax bracket. Is this class warfare, or is it class envy? And what does it mean for the rest of us to pay taxes on the rich? Ben Shapiro explains why the rich aren't actually paying for the whole operation, and why we actually have the most progressive federal tax system among all 24 countries. Plus, a look at the rise of fascism in the United States and why Ann Coulter is right off the bat about this. Guests: Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter. Ben Shapiro, The Rise of Fascism in the U.S. and the Fascism at Berkeley. Thanks to our sponsor, Lyft. Lyft is a ride-sharing app that does the safest and cleanest possible way to get from point A to point B in the safest possible fashion. They are the best, cleanest, safest ride sharing app you can get in the best possible fashion, and they do it in a way that makes you less likely to get a ticked off guy who wants to beat you off of a bat off by your back. Make sure you use Lyft to get free rides up to 10 bucks each ride. That s a $30 value when you use the service. You can t get more than $10 each ride up to $30 by using the promo code SHAPIRO. Shout out of Shapiro. . ShapIRO is a deal that gives you three free rides, up to a maximum of $30 each ride, and you can tip $30. That's a better ride, you get a better chance of getting a better seat at the best experience in the ride sharing service in the world. That s $30, you can t ask for $30 more than that, you re gonna get more of that, right there, you ll get $30 of free rides and you re getting $30 up to tip $10, $30 to tip up to get the best of it. so you re not gonna get it, right in the most of it, you won t have to pay for it, they re not going to get that, are you gonna get that?
00:00:00.000In the wake of President Trump's release of a tax reform outline, CNN's Sally Cohen took to Twitter to explain her take on the prospective legislation.
00:00:16.000There is a basic inconsistency here for Cohn.
00:00:19.000She's correct that higher taxes on a relatively small percentage of the middle class via reduction of tax deductions would involve government taking more money from those affected.
00:00:26.000But she then suggests that rich Americans paying less taxes somehow amounts to reallocation of resources from the middle class to those in the top tax bracket.
00:00:35.000So in other words, taxation is theft when it's applied to those who aren't in the top quintile of income earners, but for those rich folks, taxation is an expected tribute to be paid to the government.
00:01:00.000Cohen also ignores the fact that the rich pay the overwhelming majority of net taxes in the United States.
00:01:05.000According to the Tax Foundation, in 2014, 35% of Americans paid no income tax.
00:01:10.000Those earning more than $250,000 paid 55% of the entire income tax burden.
00:01:12.000The top 20% of earners paid 84% of all income tax, according to the Tax Policy Center.
00:01:21.000According to the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office report on distribution of taxes in 2013, the top 1% of households paid 34% of their income to federal taxes.
00:01:32.000The top quintile of income households paid an average of $57,700 into federal tax coffers in 2013 when you include any wealth transfers they were paid by the federal government.
00:01:51.000Bottom line, according to the American Enterprise Institute, the highest income quintile is financing 96% of the entire system of transfer payments to the bottom 60% and funding the operation of the federal government.
00:02:20.000So after that auspicious start, we'll jump right in in just a second talking about what's going on with Ann Coulter and the rise of fascism in the United States.
00:02:26.000I feel like I have a particularly good window on this since I've actually been at the center of some of these camp-it-riot-type events.
00:02:33.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Lyft.
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00:02:45.000As I've said many times on the program before, my wife comes back very often, very late at night from working as a doctor.
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00:03:36.000Again, they are the safest, they are the best, they are the cleanest, and you can tip people in the app so they also have the happiest drivers, which means that you're less likely to get a ticked off guy who wants to beat you up because he's angry at the wages that he's been making.
00:04:20.000They actually engage in physical violence.
00:04:21.000We had on two guests in the last week talking about the sort of violence they engage in.
00:04:25.000We had on Bay Stickman and we had on Lauren Southern talking about the violence that is now occurring in Berkeley with Antifa at the head of it.
00:04:32.000That is a different thing than a lot of these students.
00:04:34.000So we had a lot of students who made trouble when I was at Cal State Los Angeles.
00:04:40.000But it wasn't anything like what you're seeing at Berkeley with the blood flowing and people throwing sticks of dynamite and such into the crowd.
00:04:47.000And I don't blame Anne for not wanting to die in the middle of Berkeley.
00:04:51.000You know, I think that there's a strong case that she should go anyway with a bullhorn, but it's totally up to her and I'm not gonna rip her for that.
00:04:59.000I am certainly not going to rip Young America's foundation.
00:05:01.000Full disclosure, I work with them all the time.
00:05:03.000I'm not going to rip Young America's foundation for doing what they're supposed to do in this situation, which is protect their students.
00:05:08.000It is not Young America's foundation's fault that the police are refusing to defend the free speech rights of people participating at University of California, Berkeley.
00:05:20.000If YAF were to go there and then some of their students were to get hurt,
00:05:22.000There's a possibility that Yaf gets sued, and Yaf can't have that because they're a 501c3 organization.
00:05:28.000They have an obligation to protect their students.
00:05:30.000Yaf was not anti the event, Yaf was pro the event.
00:05:32.000It was Yaf backing the event all the way down the line until it was made clear that the police were going to let Antifa run roughshod over the people who were going to show up.
00:05:40.000I know that Yaf stands by its people because Yaf stood by me when DePaul threatened to arrest me.
00:05:43.000Yaf stood by me when CSULA threatened to cancel my event.
00:05:48.000So this idea that's being promulgated by some sort of anti-YAF folks on Twitter, that YAF is weak on this stuff, it's just not true.
00:05:54.000YAF filed a lawsuit alongside me against Cal State LA.
00:05:56.000They filed a lawsuit alongside Ann Coulter against the University of Berkeley system.
00:06:00.000The idea that they have some sort of obligation to push their students to go to an event where the students are going to get hurt, that seems to me foolish.
00:06:09.000If the students want to go, the students are free to go.
00:06:25.000In the 1960s, when rioters basically took over University of California at Berkeley, the governor was Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard.
00:06:33.000He called in the National Guard, and they literally marched into Berkeley, took over the place, and tamped down whatever violence was taking place.
00:06:39.000They kicked people out of the public buildings they had occupied.
00:06:43.000Where the hell is Jerry Brown, the governor of the state of California?
00:06:48.000And the answer is that they are all standing by and letting their brown shirts do the work.
00:06:53.000This is a common thing in fascist tyrannies.
00:06:57.000You let the sort of wild men go and do the violent stuff, and then you have your police stand by.
00:07:02.000The comparison is not full, but it is just a demonstration of how fascism works.
00:07:08.000During Kristallnacht in Germany, it was not actually the police forces overall that were going out and burning down synagogues and beating up Jews.
00:07:16.000For the most part, it was members of the Brownshirts, which is a sort of paramilitary organization, who were going around doing all this stuff and the police were told to back off and let it happen.
00:07:24.000This is what fascist dictatorships do.
00:07:25.000They don't want to have all of the violence on their own head.
00:07:28.000They don't want to be blamed for all the violence.
00:07:29.000So instead what they do is they activate people like Antifa.
00:07:32.000They let Antifa go out there and burn things and threaten people and hit people with sticks and club people.
00:07:37.000And stab people, and throw dynamite at people, and then they tell the cops back off and let them do it.
00:07:41.000Okay, that is just as fascist as the fascists who are actually participating in this nonsense.
00:07:50.000It's very scary, and it is totally inappropriate, obviously, and it is violative of the First Amendment.
00:07:55.000Again, this idea that Berkeley is putting out there that we can't guarantee safety, let me ask a question.
00:07:59.000If Ta-Nehisi Coates, this left-wing radical who's become a public intellectual on the left, if Ta-Nehisi Coates were to speak at Berkeley, and a bunch of white supremacists were to show up, you know, the phantom Trump supporters who are all the neo-Nazi Trump supporters the media worries about, supposedly,
00:08:13.000Let's say they were all to show up at once, and they were going to protest Ta-Nehisi Coates in a violent way.
00:08:17.000Do you think Berkeley would tell the cops to stand down, or do you think they tell them to charge in there, batons waving, and do you think that Jerry Brown would call out the National Guard?
00:08:25.000Obviously Jerry Brown would call out the National Guard.
00:08:28.000But that's not what the university is doing.
00:08:30.000Instead, the university says, quote, this university's Nicholas Dirks, who's the university's chancellor, he says, this university has two non-negotiable commitments.
00:08:39.000One to free speech, the other to the safety of our campus, community members, their guests, and the public.
00:08:43.000In that context, we cannot ignore or deny what is a new reality.
00:08:47.000Groups and individuals from the extreme ends of the political spectrum have made it clear their readiness and intention to utilize violent tactics in support or in protest of certain speakers at UC Berkeley.
00:08:57.000We cannot wish away or pretend these threats do not exist.
00:09:01.000Okay, no one is saying that you should wish away or pretend the threats don't exist.
00:09:03.000We're saying you should counter the threats.
00:09:14.000The cops who are there, I guarantee you, are not sympathetic to Antifa.
00:09:18.000They're not sitting there going, oh well, I'm just going to sit here and let Antifa do what they're doing.
00:09:22.000This is a political move by people at the top to allow all of this crap to happen.
00:09:25.000And this has become a trend across the country in violent situations and non-violent situations.
00:09:30.000At Middlebury College, not one student, not one, has been suspended or expelled for physically assaulting a professor, a left-wing professor who ended up with a concussion.
00:09:56.000And they said, well, we've been told by the administration that if we move these people out, we will also have to shut down the event.
00:10:02.000In other words, it is up to the protesters to be nice people, and if they're not nice people, the cops won't do anything about it.
00:10:07.000This has become common across the country.
00:10:08.000University administrators who are too cowardly, who are too pathetic, who are too fascistic, to shut down people who want to destroy free speech.
00:10:16.000And it is not equivalent when you say a protester doesn't have the right to shut down a full free speech event.
00:10:20.000That is not the equivalent of shutting down a free speech event.
00:10:38.000But when you have people who shut down events, when you have people who threaten violence like Antifa, it is your obligation as a police force, it is your obligation as governor of the state of California or mayor of Berkeley or...
00:11:07.000They should be sued and they should lose.
00:11:09.000And the university said it was impossible for the police department to simply step in and stop violent confrontations.
00:11:15.000They said this is a university, not a battlefield.
00:11:18.000Well, if you want it to be not a battlefield, then perhaps you should actually have defense.
00:11:22.000This idea that you can just declare it's a university, not a battlefield, that's not what Antifa thinks.
00:11:27.000They've already made it a battlefield.
00:11:28.000In fact, there's a map going around that Antifa has put out of various sites.
00:11:31.000I guess that Gavin McInnes and Lauren Southern are supposed to speak in place of Anne today or tomorrow.
00:11:37.000And the Antifa people have put out like a full military map of the area.
00:11:41.000It is not up to Berkeley whether this place is a battlefield.
00:11:44.000It is a battlefield because Antifa has made it a battlefield.
00:11:46.000If you want it to be a free and open place of learning, it is your job with my taxpayer dollars, I'm a California taxpayer, it is your job with my taxpayer dollars to defend freedom.
00:11:55.000And the fact that they're not doing it is ridiculous.
00:11:57.000The police chief, Andrew Greenwood, he told the Berkeley City Council, I believe that's the same city council that voted to impeach Donald Trump because this is how crazy they are.
00:12:06.000He said, intervention requires a major commitment of resources, a significant use of force, and carries with it the strong likelihood of harming those who are not committing a crime.
00:12:15.000Why does it carry with it the strong likelihood of harming those who are not committing a crime?
00:12:20.000I hope that it requires a major commitment of resources and a significant use of force.
00:12:23.000I hope that you clobber these Antifa people who are actual fascists who are participating in violence.
00:12:27.000Police have an obligation to maintain law and order.
00:12:30.000And we've seen all over the United States that left-wingers do not care about violence so long as it springs from the left.
00:12:35.000We saw the mayor of Baltimore say that she wanted to provide safe spaces for people to riot in Baltimore.
00:12:42.000They're burning down businesses and she was talking about safe spaces.
00:12:45.000Now we see the same thing at Berkeley.
00:12:46.000Have you ever seen, not in my lifetime at least, have you ever seen a right-wing mayor say that he's fine with violence in the streets so long as it promotes right-wing causes?
00:13:12.000But according to the left, all that matters is that they don't like Ann Coulter.
00:13:15.000So Bob Beckel, the living troll on Fox News's The Five, he came out and he was ripping on Ann Coulter as though it was Coulter's fault that all this was happening.
00:13:24.000Why can't the university protect Ann Coulter?
00:13:26.000I mean, they have the money, they have the manpower.
00:13:30.000Well, first of all, let me just say how disappointed I am in all of you suggesting that this is something to do with the Democrats and liberals.
00:13:38.000These are anarchists who are coming in from around the country who have nothing to do with the Democratic Party.
00:13:42.000Howard Dean is an anarchist in himself.
00:13:54.000The reason I'm for Ann Coulter speaking is she has a right to speak, number one, and every time she opens her mouth, it drives away more people.
00:14:01.000She's becoming more and more irrelevant, so she does something like this to get a lot of attention.
00:14:05.000This is the woman who said, America has been graced by a Christian God that Donald Trump is president.
00:14:15.000At least Beckel is standing up for Coulter's right to speak, but there are people on the left who haven't been.
00:14:20.000The ACLU is even standing up for a right to speak, but the people in power aren't, and that's the only thing that matters.
00:14:24.000So, I guess good for Bob Beckel in one sense, but it is just ridiculous, it is ridiculous that so many members of the administration, the mayor of Berkeley, that they are going to allow this to go ahead.
00:14:39.000Apparently Berkeley's mayor, he called out, I love this, he called out Ann Coulter for stoking possible violence.
00:14:45.000So Mayor Jesse Ereguin, I don't know how to pronounce his name, he said, Berkeley's about the free exchange of ideas, but that's not what's happening.
00:14:51.000So I think going forward, we are going to need to have a more visible police presence at these incidents and intervene.
00:14:57.000But he blamed Ann Coulter for all of this.
00:14:59.000He said that it's Ann Coulter and Milo who are causing this.
00:15:01.000Again, this is the same argument as her skirt was short, therefore she was asking to be raped.
00:15:05.000It's the exact same argument, and it is truly disgusting, and this had better come under control, or people are gonna pay the price with their lives.
00:15:51.000It's a travel show where the places are real, but the people are definitely not.
00:15:54.000They take you on a comedic journey through America with a travel show parody that has been called a long-awaited gut punch for every Bourdain addict, which is great, because I think Anthony Bourdain is ridiculous and silly, so making fun of him sounds like a lot of fun.
00:16:05.000There are a bunch of other shows that they have as well.
00:17:30.000The entire NHL reporting team was fired.
00:17:32.000And yet, and yet, total buffoons like Max Kellerman still on the air.
00:17:37.000All the guests from around the horn still on the air.
00:17:40.000We definitely need Kevin Blackistone telling us how the National Anthem is a war anthem.
00:17:44.000He actually said that on Around the Horn.
00:17:45.000We still need him to opine on the virtues of Caitlyn Jenner, who hasn't been athletically relevant for my entire lifetime.
00:17:51.000But we have to get rid of, you know, the actual people who report sports.
00:17:54.000This is because ESPN has made a conscious decision, it's the same decision the Democrats made in 2012, that they are going for a new demographic.
00:17:59.000That's really what this is about, and no one wants to talk about it, so I'm going to tell you the truth about what ESPN is doing.
00:18:04.000ESPN has made a conscious decision that they are going to program leftist politics
00:18:08.000Because they believe that their growing demographic base, the people who are watching sports more, particularly sports like the NBA, are black and Hispanic.
00:18:14.000And so they think that if they put on more hosts who are black and Hispanic and left, then they are going to gain more black and Hispanic viewership, and they don't seem to care that they are losing a lot of viewers who are conservative in the process.
00:18:28.000The overwhelming majority of people who watch the NHL are white.
00:18:30.000The disproportionate percentage of people who watch the NBA is black, according to the Nielsen statistics, and they've decided the NBA is more important than the NHL.
00:18:42.000The NBA is a lot bigger than the NHL, but you could do both.
00:18:45.000I mean, if you're a sports network, you just cover the highlights, and you tell me what I need to know in the news.
00:18:48.000That's why I used to watch SportsCenter, because it was clever, and it was witty, and because people were funny.
00:18:53.000It was back in the day when Keith Olbermann didn't feel the need to talk politics and it was just it was interesting and fun to watch.
00:18:58.000I used to get up at six o'clock in the morning when I was a kid to watch SportsCenter every morning.
00:19:04.000to watch SportsCenter because that's how much I loved ESPN and that's how much I loved SportsCenter and they've decided to absolutely destroy it.
00:19:10.000They've decided it's more important to hire Jameel Hill and Michael Smith for a million bucks a year in order to babble about Donald Trump than it is to actually have reporters
00:19:19.000Like, as I say, Jason Stark, who's a fantastic reporter for Major League Baseball.
00:19:24.000ESPN's public editor said that the network would continue to push politics.
00:19:28.000They said, the desire to throw a boundary between sports culture and politics is a fool's errand.
00:19:33.000The volume of non-sports content within ESPN's empire has increased significantly in recent years.
00:19:37.000Some of that has been driven by the athletes ESPN covers who have, in recent years, begun to speak more forcefully about societal and political issues.
00:19:44.000Because ESPN covers them when they do it.
00:19:46.000So to pretend that it's the athletes who just suddenly decided to speak politically is nonsense.
00:19:50.000Athletes were speaking politically 30 years ago.
00:19:52.000As this guy, as he acknowledges, the difference is that ESPN has now decided to make socially active athletes the heroes of their little morality plays.
00:20:01.000And there are those of us, like me, who just want to watch the baseball.
00:20:05.000All I want to do is watch MLB Network now.
00:20:07.000I'd rather watch MLB Network and watch Kevin Millar talk about nonsense about baseball.
00:20:13.000If I want to watch politics, I'll watch politics.
00:20:15.000If I want to watch baseball, I'll watch baseball.
00:20:16.000I don't need your take on Caitlyn Jenner's heroism and transgenderism in the Olympics.
00:20:35.000People are cutting the cord because the technology is changing and no one feels the need to subscribe to cable anymore.
00:20:40.000I used to subscribe to cable specifically for ESPN.
00:20:43.000And I'm going to unsubscribe from cable this week because there's nothing for me to watch on ESPN anymore because I have nothing to watch on ESPN.
00:20:50.000On the day before, they cut 100 of these reporters.
00:20:53.000On the day before they did that, they ran a piece on ESPN.com titled, Five Poets on the New Feminism.
00:20:59.000On ESPN.com, you think I want to read five poets on the new feminism?
00:21:04.000I won't even read it if it appears at Jezebel.
00:21:06.000I'm not going to read it if it appears at Everyday Feminism.
00:21:09.000And I love Everyday Feminism because it's hilarious.
00:21:11.000But I'm certainly not going to read it if it appears at ESPN.com.
00:21:15.000Again, the left has infused every aspect of culture with politics, and they shouldn't be surprised when the backlash is to infuse politics with culture, which is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is the President of the United States.
00:21:25.000Well, I want to talk a little bit more about all of that, and then I want to get to the politics of the day.
00:21:28.000Obamacare repeal, and taxes, and trade, and the border.
00:21:31.000I want to get to all of that, plus the mailbag, but you have to go over to dailywire.com for that.
00:21:34.000You can subscribe for $8 a month over at dailywire.com, become an annual subscriber, and you get a free copy of Jeremy Boring's The Arroyo fictional film set on the southern border action...
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00:21:53.000It's basically why we need the Trump wall, the movie.
00:21:56.000So go check out The Arroyo, but you do that by becoming an annual subscriber over at Daily Wire, or you can subscribe over at Apple Podcasts, iTunes, SoundCloud, and when you do, make sure that you leave us a rating, make sure that you leave us a comment, we always appreciate it, and we are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.