The media go nuts over a meme of President Trump giving a medal of honor to a dog in Minnesota, and the left celebrates censorship. Ben Shapiro explains why the mainstream media is like Amelia Bedelia and takes every joke they're told extremely literally. Plus, a story about a dog named Conan who was killed by an Islamic terrorist, and why the Daily Wire is the best at fact checking fake news. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVpn.org/ProtectYourOnline Privacy. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers Use the promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase when you enter the Promethean Club discount code: PODCAST at checkout. All other promo codes include PODCOIN and PODCASTS. Our ad-free version of the show is available in Kindle, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover, and Hardcover. We post polls, too! Send your voice messages to sws@whatiwatchedtonight.co.uk and we'll get them on the show. Thanks for listening and spreading the word to your friends about our show! Thanks also to our sponsor, ExpressVPN! If you like the show, please consider pledging your support! Subscribe to our new sponsor, Pillow Talk! and tell a friend about the show on your favorite streaming platform. We'll be giving you guys a discount code and a chance to win a VIP membership! Thanks again next week for a chance at VIP access to our newest ad-only version of our newest episode of The Daily Wire podcast, Big Fish. and more! The best of the podcast! - Big Fish! Big Fish is giving out $10,000 to a new ad-less version of The Big Fish in the next episode of Big Fish only gets $5 more than $50,000 in total get $5,000 and get $50 off their first month, and they get $25,000 off the second place gets 5,000, they get a VIP discount when they also get a second place promo code they also gets $4,000 gets a discount on the VIP discount, too get VIP access gets 4-place get $4-choice gets 4,000 MBPROMO AND they get VIP PROMOTION AND VIP gets VIP PROGONE AND VIP access?
00:00:37.000The mainstream media have been doing this routine where they act like Amelia Bedelia, where every time somebody on the right tells a joke, they take it extremely literally.
00:00:44.000So if you don't remember the Amelia Bedelia books from when you were a kid, or from when your kids were kids, well, the Amelia Bedelia books, there's a series of books about a character named Amelia Bedelia who is basically a maid who took everything extremely literally, and every idiom she would take Extremely literally.
00:01:01.000So for example, there's a book called Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia and her boss told her to bake a date cake and so she literally went over to the calendar and she cut out a bunch of dates and then baked it into a cake, right?
00:01:11.000Or she would have an instruction in one of her books And says, dust the furniture.
00:01:16.000And so she would go and she would find dust, dusting powder in the bathroom, and then she would dust it all over the furniture.
00:02:10.000People could have taken that seriously.
00:02:12.000People could have taken that seriously.
00:02:13.000When the Babylon Bee said to draw the drapes, we sat down and we drew an actual picture of the drapes.
00:02:19.000Or you would get Allie Stuckey, my friend from the Blaze TV.
00:02:23.000And Allie would do one of the fake interviews with, like, AOC.
00:02:27.000The same exact sort of interview that people on Comedy Central do all the time, where they cut themselves into interviews with people who they would never get to book on their show.
00:02:35.000And Allie would say things, and AOC would look ridiculous, and it was obviously satire.
00:02:39.000It was obviously meant to make fun of AOC and the fact that AOC knows nothing about policy.
00:02:43.000And the media fact-checked Allie Stuckey.
00:02:53.000Okay, well, the latest iteration of this stupidity comes courtesy of none other than our wonderful social media team over at The Daily Wire.
00:03:01.000So, first of all, shout out to our social media team at The Daily Wire.
00:03:08.000They're really, really good at what they do.
00:03:10.000So, all this week, Americans have been celebrating the heroism of a dog whose name has now been declassified as Conan, which is just the best.
00:03:18.000So this dog, Conan, is a very, very good doggie.
00:03:22.000This doggie went into a cave after al-Baghdadi.
00:03:27.000Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, and was ready to take down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and scared Baghdadi so much that he promptly blew himself up, just incinerated himself.
00:03:36.000Unfortunately, he took children with him because he was an evil piece of murderous terrorist scum.
00:03:40.000Okay, but Conan was in the cave, and Conan was slightly wounded, and now Conan is back in service.
00:03:45.000And so everybody was celebrating the heroism of this dog.
00:04:04.000And, as you know, if you've been listening to my show at all, I am not a huge dog fan.
00:04:09.000I'm growing warmer toward dogs over time.
00:04:11.000My children are twisting me into a fan of dogs.
00:04:14.000But I will say that Conan is really making me want a dog.
00:04:17.000I said as soon as Conan was wounded that if Conan needed an owner, I would be happy to become a dog person and adopt Conan because this is the best doggie.
00:04:24.000Okay, so the Daily Wire social media team, who listen to the show and then very often create memes that are kind of drawn from the general themes of the show, they put out A meme.
00:04:34.000And the meme was a picture of President Trump awarding the Medal of Pawner to the dog.
00:04:41.000And so they took a picture of President Trump awarding a Medal of Honor to an American hero named James McLaughlin, who is credited with saving the lives of 10 men in a battle in Vietnam.
00:04:52.000And this photo had nothing to do with McLaughlin.
00:06:27.000So, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and USA Today, and pretty much everybody else, covers this as though it's actual news, and as though it's a scandal.
00:06:36.000Not just that President Trump tweeted out a meme, but that it's a real scandal.
00:06:40.000Here is the headline from the intrepid reporters at the New York Times.
00:06:43.000They put two of their finest on it, Neeraj Chokshi and Karen Schraig.
00:06:46.000Okay, their headline is, Trump Tweets Faked Photo of Hero Dog Getting a Medal.
00:07:17.000Okay, the New York Times reports it this way.
00:07:20.000President Trump on Wednesday shared an altered photograph of himself placing a medal around the neck of the dog injured in the raid last weekend that led to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State's leader.
00:08:01.000Okay, then they continue along this- the image, which bears a watermark for a social media account for the conservative news site The Daily Wire, appeared to be an altered version of a 2017 Associated Press photograph.
00:08:11.000In the original, Mr. Trump is seen awarding a Medal of Honor to James McLaughlin, a retired Army medic who is credited with saving the lives of 10 men during the war in Vietnam.
00:08:20.000And then they quote President Trump talking about how wonderful the dog is.
00:08:23.000And then they talk about McLaughlin and suggest that Trump is trying to deride the veteran who was simply in that photo, right?
00:08:48.000McLaughlin was called up by the New York Times.
00:08:50.000In a phone interview on Wednesday, McLaughlin, 73, who had not seen the image before a reporter sent it to him, said that he interpreted it as Mr. Trump recognizing the dog's heroism.
00:08:58.000He certainly was not offended, and laughed when he compared the two images.
00:09:14.000You have to be wrong in the head to be offended by all of this.
00:09:18.000And McLaughlin said, after all, Medal of Honor recipients accept on behalf of their entire teams, especially those that did not return from battle, and canines have long been part of war efforts.
00:09:26.000He said this recognizes the dog as part of that team of brave people.
00:09:30.000McLaughlin said he had worked with a dog in Vietnam who helped detect enemy activity during missions.
00:09:34.000They are very courageous, he said, of military canines.
00:10:10.000You want to send them in the mail, but you don't feel like taking all that stuff, putting it in the backyard car, schlepping it to the post office.
00:10:14.000Post office is great, but who wants to spend the time and the effort and the energy?
00:10:19.000Instead, you could do all of this from home and get all the amazing services of the U.S.
00:10:23.000Postal Service directly from your computer.
00:10:27.000I mean, this is why the internet was invented, folks.
00:10:29.000Stamps.com allows you, whether you're a small office sending invoices, or an online seller shipping out products, or a warehouse sending thousands of packages a day, Stamps allows you to handle it all with ease.
00:10:38.000Stamps.com allows you to use your computer to print official U.S.
00:10:41.000postage 24-7, any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send it, Once your mail is ready, you just hand it to your mail carrier or you drop it in a mailbox.
00:11:03.000My promo code SHAPIRO allows you to get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and the digital scale, which is an awesome deal.
00:12:04.000Then it says, In a somber White House ceremony in July 2017, President Trump draped the Medal of Honor around the neck of James McLaughlin.
00:12:11.000He was credited with saving the lives of 10 men in a brutal, days-long battle in Vietnam, and Trump told the former Army medic that, On Wednesday, Trump posted a photo of that moment with McLaughlin's image replaced by that of a dog.
00:12:24.000The distinctive star of the medal was replaced with a paw print.
00:12:27.000Trump and the Pentagon declined to release the dog's name, but the canine has since become a social media sensation after Trump tweeted a photo of the dog on Monday.
00:12:35.000Since then, the dog has been a feature of countless memes.
00:12:37.000It also collided with a real-world moment after the conservative site Daily Wire tweeted the image Tuesday with McLaughlin removed.
00:12:43.000A watermark for the site appears in Trump's tweet, but it is a cropped version that removes the attribution of the source photo, which is the Associated Press.
00:12:50.000That's because the source photo has now been dramatically altered.
00:12:52.000The source photo did not include a dog or a medal of pawnery, you idiots.
00:12:57.000This is how memes work on the interwebs.
00:13:00.000That would have indicated it began as a legitimate news photo, raising the question of whether Trump or a staffer knew McLaughlin had been edited out.
00:13:08.000Okay, so I'm pretty fairly certain that Trump knew he had not actually awarded the Medal of Honor to a dog.
00:13:13.000I'm fairly certain that Trump knew this.
00:13:15.000Now, even if you thought that Trump may have forgotten that he awarded the Medal of Honor to a dog, I feel like he would have known that it wasn't real once he looked and saw a Medal of Pawner.
00:13:38.000Jeremy Boring, the Chief Operating Officer at the Daily Wire, dismissed emailed questions about whether the altered photo originated from his publication.
00:13:46.000Okay, this is the part that's totally insane.
00:13:48.000So, Jeremy, who is my longtime business partner and Chief Operating Officer at Daily Wire, Founder, co-founder of Daily Wire.
00:14:03.000It's like right there, in Trump's original tweet.
00:14:06.000But, that, the way that's reported sounds like boring dismissed question.
00:14:10.000Like he wouldn't, we refused, we at the Daily Wire, we were so scared of the question, we refused to answer the question as to whether the altered photo originated from our publication.
00:15:26.000And then it was reported by the Washington Post as, Jeremy dismissed emailed questions about whether, no, he didn't dismiss emailed questions, he dismissed your stupid question.
00:16:17.000I'm gonna get to that in just one second.
00:16:19.000But first, you know, you walk into your home sometimes and you're like, I replaced the furniture, repainted the walls, but something still looks dingy about this place.
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00:16:34.000Going blind shopping is not something that I dream about doing.
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00:17:46.000And then I added, And then I added, I said, so Washington Post asked my business partner, Jeremy Boring, about our Medal of Honor dog meme.
00:17:52.000His glorious response is screen capped below.
00:17:54.000Their report then suggested Jeremy refused to answer questions about the picture.
00:17:58.000Um, no, we think you're being effing insane.
00:18:00.000And then I added, yes, we created the meme.
00:18:20.000So, President Trump then tweets out, thank you Daily Wire, very cute recreation, but the live version of Conan will be leaving the Middle East for the White House sometime next week.
00:19:34.000Like, we definitely need the media to fact-check knock-knock jokes.
00:19:37.000Like, were you aware that when someone tells you a knock-knock joke, they're not actually standing outside your house knocking on the door?
00:20:11.000Okay, and the deeper point here is that what the media are doing and they keep doing this, is they are broadening the scope of what they now consider, quote unquote, disinformation.
00:20:19.000Anything that they don't like, any joke, any meme, any piece of funny satire, they now take seriously, like Amelia Bedelia, specifically so that they can then label the outlet that promotes that content as somehow dealing in misinformation and lies, right?
00:20:38.000As I say, they did it to the Babylon Bee, they've done it to Ali Stuckey over at Blaze TV, and now they're doing it with regard to an obvious meme with a dog receiving the Medal of Pawner.
00:20:49.000And this has real-world ramifications because what the left is doing is they're making a very simple argument that has very large real-world ramifications.
00:20:56.000This is just kind of the outlying stupid case point.
00:20:58.000Okay, but What the left is attempting to do is they're attempting to say that disinformation has so radically skewed the way that the American public views information that the government needs to step in and stop people from exercising the First Amendment.
00:21:11.000We had an article like this by Richard Spangler over a former Time Magazine editor and Obama Administration State Department official.
00:21:20.000We had an article like that from him in the Washington Post just two days ago.
00:21:25.000That happened just a couple of days ago.
00:21:27.000And now you have the media pressuring Facebook and Twitter to shut down free dissemination of speech in the name of shutting down disinformation.
00:21:35.000So what they do is they keep broadening the definition of disinformation to encompass anything they don't like.
00:21:39.000So you have an article in the Washington Post by Charlie Warzel claiming that Breitbart should not be included in Facebook's news feed.
00:21:54.000Snopes Facts checks them all the time.
00:21:55.000And it doesn't matter that Snopes also fact-checks selectively only right-wing outlets, and half the time the Snopes fact-checks are wrong.
00:22:02.000The idea is to create a narrative, and the narrative is that if you see content from a right-wing outlet, that it should be shut down and is not a legitimate exercise of the First Amendment.
00:22:10.000And so you're seeing members of the media I'm old enough to remember when there was a very famous case called New York Times vs. Sullivan.
00:22:16.000And it was all about the rights of the media to print material.
00:22:19.000It was all about slander and libel and the standards for printing material publicly.
00:22:23.000And the New York Times was on the right side of that fight.
00:22:25.000It was about broadening the First Amendment.
00:22:27.000Members of the media used to be very much in favor of broadening the First Amendment.
00:22:50.000And so what you see is this vast push by the left to go after right-wing outlets and say that they are, in fact, fake news, who should be banned because they are disseminating misinformation, or to go after Donald Trump's political campaign and say that Trump's political campaign should not be allowed to post ads because if they post ads, the ads might contain information that the left finds to be false or twisted.
00:23:10.000Because it's called the campaign ad, right?
00:23:15.000Or you'll see them say, well, thanks to Russian interference in the 2016 election, we need to use government to crack down on big tech and prevent the dissemination of information.
00:23:22.000Understand, there's only one type of information that the left truly cares about preventing dissemination of, and that's anything that opposes their agenda.
00:23:30.000Because we're all on the same page when it comes to the Russians disseminating misinformation.
00:25:09.000Okay, so what are the real-world ramifications of all this?
00:25:13.000It's the call by members of the media to shut down dissemination of political information on social media websites.
00:25:19.000It's the call by members of the media and some members of the Obama administration to actually curb the First Amendment and rewrite it.
00:25:26.000And the way, again, that they broaden this out is to go after even stupid examples of quote-unquote fake news, like a meme of the president tweeting out himself giving a fake medal to a dog.
00:25:38.000You just keep broadening this thing out.
00:25:52.000The left is celebrating because they know that they own the means of distribution that are not the main social media platforms.
00:25:57.000Meaning that if you want to get any sort of non-left news, the best places to get that online are places that used to be sort of an online public forum.
00:26:16.000You just know that the political ads are then going to be distributed and disseminated in the form of the New York Times, or CBS, or CNN, or all of the other outlets that you guys have.
00:26:26.000The internet has radically decentralized the methods for disseminating information.
00:26:44.000The goal of the left would be, okay, you know what?
00:26:46.000If we have to ban, like, all political speech on these platforms and force people to not engage in political speech, we can live with that.
00:26:51.000Because if we go back to the old system, we were dominant under the old system.
00:26:56.000The left media were dominant under the old system.
00:26:58.000The New York Times would love nothing better, nothing better, than to shut down the dissemination of information in places like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube.
00:27:05.000They would love nothing better than that.
00:27:18.000They want to be the only game in town.
00:27:20.000And the way you ensure you're the only game in town is you basically make it very difficult for people to disseminate information through publicly available fora.
00:27:27.000So, Twitter went along with the game because Twitter is a horrible outlet run by a guy who is on the very far left and has no principles about free speech, as in none, Jack Dorsey apparently.
00:27:36.000So Twitter said on Wednesday it would ban all political ads, putting a spotlight on the power and veracity of online advertising and ramping up pressure on Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to reverse his hands-off stance.
00:27:47.000Yeah, well, Jack Dorsey's probably also willing to kowtow to the Chinese when it comes to censoring Twitter, so he ain't exactly a free speech warrior.
00:27:54.000Dorsey said political ads, including manipulated videos and the viral spread of misleading information, presented challenges to civic discourse, all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.
00:28:05.000He said he worried the ads had, quote, significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.
00:28:11.000He added he believed the reach of political messages should be earned, not bought.
00:28:15.000Okay, now this is his way of saying, I'm not a real capitalist.
00:28:39.000And not only is it virtue signaling to the left, it is an attempt to appease a left that wishes to see speech narrowed rather than broadened.
00:28:48.000I've seen many political ads for Democrats on Twitter.
00:28:51.000I think a lot of them are steeped in false information.
00:28:54.000Do I think that Twitter should stop running those ads?
00:29:25.000The unions should have more power, and media should have more power.
00:29:28.000So, I shouldn't be able, with my friends, to form a super PAC to put out political advertising information.
00:29:33.000I shouldn't be able to spend my own money to disseminate information.
00:29:36.000Or, for example, buy an ad in the New York Times with my super PAC.
00:29:39.000But, the New York Times should be able to run whatever it wants on its front page over and over and over, and also unions should probably be able to do that.
00:29:45.000All animals are equal except for the pigs.
00:29:47.000This is the way that the left wishes to treat discourse in the United States.
00:29:51.000So of course they're very happy with Twitter shutting this down because they understand that Twitter is never going to shut down leftist political messaging on Twitter.
00:29:57.000Twitter will ban people for saying that a man is not a woman.
00:30:02.000But Twitter will never ban somebody for saying the opposite.
00:30:05.000Twitter will ban political advertising knowing full well that Twitter also tends to promote leftist causes and leftist politicians.
00:30:11.000So of course the left is happy about this.
00:30:13.000But the media is setting this up as a clash of principle.
00:30:16.000It turns out that some of these outlets want more speech and some of these outlets want less speech.
00:30:20.000And it's kind of amazing for Twitter, a supposed free speech outlet, to be curbing political ads in the name of, we're going to fact check it now.
00:30:27.000Who died and appointed you, the great arbiters of truth, over at Twitter?
00:30:32.000You guys are a joke when it comes to arbiting truth over at Twitter.
00:30:35.000I mean, I can't even count the number of false headlines that Twitter has run in its trends over the last nine months about me personally.
00:30:42.000So no, you guys aren't the arbiters of truth.
00:30:43.000You're just a bunch of leftists who are motivated to push a particular point of view.
00:30:49.000And the New York Times is super happy about this.
00:30:51.000And they say Twitter's announcement that it would eliminate political ads starting November 22nd prompted immediate attacks from the right.
00:30:57.000Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump's campaign manager for the 2020 election, said Twitter's decision was a partisan act intended to silence conservatives.
00:31:05.000Democrats, of course, praised Twitter.
00:31:07.000AOC, who is happy to disseminate as much information as humanly possible via her well-followed account, praised Twitter and said if a company cannot or does not wish to run basic fact-checking on paid political advertising, they should not run paid political ads at all.
00:31:21.000How about we run basic fact-checking on your tweets, and then if they don't meet basic fact-checking notions, then you get banned from Twitter.
00:31:48.000Because they know that they always will be able to.
00:31:51.000They say that they... Even Biden's campaign is saying this is ridiculous, right?
00:31:55.000Bill Russo, a spokesman for Joe Biden's campaign, said it was unfortunate to suggest the only way to deal with false claims in political ads was not to run the ads at all, but he added it was encouraging that for once revenue did not win out.
00:32:05.000Ah, so the anti-capitalism outweighed the free speech principle.
00:32:08.000So they were all good with the free speech, you can disseminate what you want, until it turned out that you were paying to put stuff on Twitter.
00:32:14.000Oh, wow, because as we all know, people on Twitter, they don't earn any money for being on Twitter.
00:32:19.000And they don't spend hours being paid to be on Twitter.
00:32:21.000Which, by the way, is what every major media figure does.
00:32:28.000This is all a concerted attempt to shut down the ability to disseminate information by broadening out the fact-checking abilities of the media into areas that are completely false.
00:32:41.000It's gaming the system, in other words.
00:32:43.000And the left is fond of doing it, and now they're trying to leverage it against Facebook.
00:32:46.000And as I say, you get complete anti-free speech fools like Kara Swisher writing pieces on this today at the New York Times.
00:32:53.000Your move, Facebook, is what Kara Swisher writes.
00:32:55.000By the way, the other day she suggested she would like to head up the appeals board over at Facebook so she could determine what stuff to kick off.
00:33:01.000When a conversation with Susan Wojcicki suggested that she would love nothing better, she said, I can't, I understand you can't really do it, but I would love nothing better than to see Ben Shapiro booted from YouTube because my son watches his videos.
00:33:12.000I definitely trust her with free speech.
00:33:14.000I've never suggested that Kara Swisher should lose her job or be booted off social media or be restricted in any way from disseminating her content.
00:33:21.000But this lady is the greatest and wisest among us who is going to dictate how you get your information.
00:33:27.000So it starts off with like these simple, stupid, fringe stories about the media going nuts over a doggy photo, but that's not really what this is about.
00:33:34.000What this is really about is exaggerating the threat of misinformation, assuming that you are a moron who is incapable of assessing your own sources of information, and then saying, well, you know what?
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00:35:31.000As I've been saying this entire show, the left wants to use these social media platforms to shut down information that you want and that you need.
00:35:39.000And this is why you should go subscribe over at DailyWire.
00:35:41.000There are too many people on the left who would like to de-platform Daily Wire, who would like to de-platform me, who would like to de-platform our other hosts.
00:35:48.000They spend every waking moment trying to figure out how they can go after our advertisers, how they can convince social media outlets to dump us.
00:36:18.000If you're a subscriber, you can now access all of our content, including articles and Q&As and all the good stuff, when you just download that app.
00:36:26.000All Access subscribers get the new exclusive discussion features.
00:36:29.000You can talk with me, you can talk with our writers, our other hosts.
00:36:31.000The app is available on Apple and Android, so download it today, become a subscriber, come join the fun.
00:36:35.000Plus, if you subscribe, you also get our fantastic Sunday special on Saturday.
00:36:39.000This week's Sunday special features Peter Robinson, This is a pet peeve of mine.
00:36:43.000We're not allowed to say that our side won the Cold War.
00:37:17.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:37:20.000So Woke's golden chief and censor Kara Swisher has a piece entirely about this today called Your Move, Facebook.
00:37:31.000Twitter will no longer allow political advertising, a move that places Twitter and Jack Dorsey in stark contrast to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
00:37:38.000That's one small step by Jack, one giant leap for tweet kind.
00:37:42.000It's not as significant as a man conquering space.
00:37:44.000Yeah, see, A Man Conquering Space was about achieving something.
00:37:46.000This is about shutting down political speech.
00:37:48.000So, yeah, those aren't the same, it turns out.
00:37:50.000But Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, moonwalked into the digital future on Wednesday with a move that was both unexpected and inevitable.
00:37:57.000In a Twitter thread, of course, he declared that the company would no longer allow political advertising on Twitter globally.
00:38:22.000Tara Swisher has made clear over and over she doesn't want it to stop there.
00:38:26.000To those hoping that Mr. Dorsey would also take action against one of the platform's most famous rules violators, let's make one thing clear.
00:38:32.000Donald Trump can still huff and puff away on his disingenuous digital sousaphone, but his campaign cannot pay to do so.
00:38:38.000Still, it was a bold- See, she wants Trump kicked off Twitter.
00:38:40.000I mean, she's not even hiding the ball here.
00:38:42.000She says, still, it was a bold and epic poke that seemed to aim directly at Mark Zuckerberg since Twitter's announcement came just as Facebook was dropping its current earnings report.
00:38:51.000While Facebook's earnings were spectacular, especially in comparison to Twitter's weaker showing a week ago, the announcement now places Twitter and Dorsey in stark contrast to the social networking giant and its co-founder and CEO.
00:39:03.000Well, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a disastrous series of recent appearances in Washington, D.C., his huge platform would not only keep accepting political ads, but also would allow politicians to lie in them.
00:39:12.000Well, what Zuckerberg said is, it's your job to fact check, and it's my job not to shut down speech.
00:39:20.000Actually, it feels like the best subtweet ever.
00:39:22.000It is yet another example, like last year's widespread deplatforming of conspiracy troll Alex Jones, of social media not only starting to clean itself up, but beginning to understand the major responsibility it has to the well-being of society at large, well beyond just making money.
00:39:39.000You blamed Russian trolls and quote-unquote disinformation instead of yourselves for running a crap candidate.
00:39:43.000You're very angry that Donald Trump is president and now you're going to take it out on all of the outlets and ask them and then demand that they and then push them to de-platform everybody you don't like.
00:39:54.000Your response to losing an election is that you don't like the principles that underlie American elections on a fundamental basis.
00:40:22.000But Friedman says, this is all about money for Zuckerberg, as opposed to Thomas Friedman, who gives all of his salary to charity, who works for the New York Times for free, and just runs around the globe writing bestselling books on his own dime.
00:40:38.000Or alternatively, Mark Zuckerberg has given up an awful lot of profit by not actually allowing his service to be available in China just so he would not have to bow to the Chinese censors.
00:40:48.000I have not heard the same about Twitter.
00:40:56.000Friedman says, yeah, right, as if average American citizens are able to discern the veracity of every political ad after years of being conditioned by responsible journalism to assume the claims aren't just made up.
00:41:09.000Basically, you believe that people can't make decisions on their own about the veracity of information.
00:41:13.000They're all idiots and morons, unlike Thomas Friedman, who's been taken in by regimes including the Iranians and the Chinese, and who wrote a column several years ago suggesting that one-party democracy in China may be more effective than two-party democracy in the United States.
00:41:25.000Thomas Friedman should definitely determine what sort of information you can see.
00:41:46.000It doesn't start with, you know what, we really need to find these sort of Russian bot accounts and shut them down because that's interference by a foreign government.
00:41:53.000It turns very quickly into, we need to stop Trump from running ads.
00:42:11.000This all springs from the same attitude that says that anything that you don't like is dangerous to you, right?
00:42:16.000That any information that you disagree with is, in effect, Russian disinformation.
00:42:21.000That any information that you don't like is in effect incitement.
00:42:23.000We saw that article, as I mentioned again, yesterday from Richard Stengel, that former Obama administration official, who said we should pursue hate speech laws in the United States, the home of the First Amendment, because, hey, people might get offended.
00:42:34.000And this is how you end up with the stupidity over at Stanford.
00:42:36.000So next week, I'm supposed to speak at Stanford University?
00:42:48.000If you disagree, you raise your hand, you go to the front of the line, and then we have a discussion about it.
00:42:52.000And so these are open, free speech events.
00:42:56.000And all of the posters are being vandalized by people on the left.
00:43:00.000And hours after postering in the Nordelpha dorm, the Conservative Club's members, according to Young America's foundation, found their posters removed, with a note from RAs being put in place, quote, We, the Nordelpha staff, care about you and your feelings, your physical and emotional health.
00:43:13.000This is in response to the fact that the lecture is titled, Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings.
00:43:18.000We, the Nordelpha staff, care about you, your feelings, your physical and emotional health.
00:43:22.000This is after taking down the poster for the event.
00:43:25.000It's not next to the poster for the event.
00:43:26.000It's they took down the poster for the event and then they replaced it with a note saying that they care about your feelings.
00:43:34.000Right, so I can't think of a better metaphor than that.
00:43:36.000Taking down the poster that says facts don't care about your feelings and replacing it with a note that says we care about your feelings and we do so so much that we are going to remove material you don't like.
00:43:45.000I say you matter and are welcome here in this space.
00:43:47.000We welcome and center the voices that some may wish to specifically marginalize and target and that we support black people, people of color, non-binary folks.
00:43:55.000LGBTQIA folks, Muslims and Jews, people from diverse backgrounds learning and flourishing together is what makes Stanford and Nordelphia special.
00:44:19.000We're not even going to allow you to see a poster that doesn't even have any political material on it.
00:44:23.000It just says that facts are more important than feelings.
00:44:25.000We're going to replace that with a poster that says, you are a star, lest you be offended in some way.
00:44:31.000The conservative group apparently also attempted the, yeah, chapter over at Stanford, also attempted to enter Stanford's Hispanic-focused dorm, Casa Zapata, where they were met with a mob of screaming leftists who hurled expletives at the chapter members.
00:44:42.000The unhinged leftists blocked the students from entering the dorm and followed them to the next dorm where they intended to poster, encouraging the staff in that building not to let them inside either.
00:44:51.000Stephen Sills is president of the conservative group on campus and said, Homophobia!
00:45:58.000And by the way, the tickets sold out in like five seconds, of course, because people actually still care about free speech in America, although the left is doing its best to shut it down.
00:46:05.000But it's not just the left in the United States, it's also the left in Canada.
00:46:08.000Megan Murphy, who was kicked off of Twitter for the great sin of pointing out that a man is not in fact a woman, she held a lecture in Canada, and this drove the mayor of the town of Toronto, To rip on the library that allowed her to speak.
00:46:21.000The anti-free speech movement on the left, internationally, is strong and growing much, much stronger.
00:46:27.000And it's happening day in and day out because the left doesn't like the results of free speech.
00:46:45.000I have never called for anybody on the left to be platformed for expressing a political viewpoint, even when I think they're twisting the truth.
00:46:50.000Even when I think they're twisting the truth, because it's my job to then re-inform you as to what they are saying wrong.
00:46:55.000And it's their job to fact-check me, right?
00:47:25.000This is why you end up with people tearing down posters at dorms.
00:47:28.000This is why you end up with the Toronto mayor, John Tory, who is now calling on libraries to cancel events.
00:47:33.000From Megan Murphy, a feminist, who says that it's bad for women if men who say they are women are allowed to go into women's dressing places and locker rooms.
00:47:42.000All of this is designed to shut down dissent, to shut down debate.
00:47:48.000By the way, I'm just going to juxtapose really fast the activity of Toronto's mayor with activities that took place in Minnesota last night that apparently have received no actual governmental talk about censorship despite the fact that they basically amount to child abuse.
00:48:01.000So this library in Toronto allowed Megan Murphy to speak.
00:48:04.000About the fact that men are not women.
00:48:06.000Contrast that to a story from Ann Taylor writing at Caffeinated Thoughts who attended an October 17th event at Hennepin Country Library in Minnesota.
00:48:18.000This has become a thing in some major left-leaning cities.
00:48:21.000Apparently, a drag queen showed up wearing nude-colored underwear and proceeded to expose his crotch to the children.
00:48:28.000Quote, We're talking a sleeveless cut-off t-shirt resembling SpongeBob SquarePants with midriff exposed, a pink mini skirt, rainbow ankle socks, a black spiked heels that went above six inches.
00:48:37.000The wig he wore, the drag queen, was mermaid-style crimping in the color of bright orange and the makeup that was far too much under the neon lights.
00:48:44.000The drag queen, quote, strode in suggestively past the children, sitting down in a chair before several preschool-aged girls, with his legs spread wide, exposing his nylon-covered crotch in front of children sitting at eye level.
00:48:55.000We noticed he did this often while reading nervously before the children.
00:48:59.000Taylor says, I initially thought drag queen story hours were a hoax and simply unfathomable until I experienced one myself.
00:49:06.000Apparently there are about 22 kids ranging in age from infant, toddler, and preschool into elementary grades.
00:49:12.000The library is set to host another Drag Queen Story Hour on November 2nd.
00:49:16.000Now listen, I think that libraries should be allowed to host these things.
00:49:20.000I think parents are morons for having their kids there.
00:49:22.000I think that parents are doing an act of deep disservice to their own children by exposing them to sexualized performances at a young age.
00:49:30.000I think that if the library has found a way to desexualize a Drag Queen Story Hour, which I don't see any way to do that, but if you find a way to do that, free speech, more power to you.
00:49:39.000But, the fact that the left wants to shut down Megan Murphy for saying men are not women, but celebrates Drag Queen Story Hour, and then condemns anyone who condemns Drag Queen Story Hour, tells you everything you need to know about the censorious left.
00:49:52.000The Hennepin County Library told The Blaze the program is relatively new and it is unfortunately making mistakes.
00:50:00.000Most storytime performances involve a performer in brilliantly colored costume and theatrical makeup.
00:50:05.000They read books and share songs about characters who are different in some way and who learn to accept and celebrate differences in themselves and others.
00:50:11.000Now again, I think that there are plenty of ways that you could do that.
00:50:13.000You could dress up as a dog and do that, right?
00:50:15.000But instead you're dressing up as what is inevitably and inherently a sexualized performance piece when it comes to drag.
00:51:02.000But the fact that libraries all over America and in Canada are really pushing Drag Queen Story Hour, but mayors of Toronto are coming out and saying, well, you know, we can't have somebody saying a man is not a woman.
00:51:13.000That tells you everything you need to know about the censorious left.
00:51:16.000They're extending this to the social media sphere.
00:51:18.000The goal, once more, shut down the dissemination of information.
00:51:22.000Because when the dissemination of information is equal, it gives a better shot to people who are not in the monopolistic left.
00:51:28.000And the left did have a monopoly on information up until the last 20 years or so.
00:51:32.000My friend and mentor Andrew Breitbart used to say that the internet was the greatest leveling force in the history of media, which is of course why mainstream media wants to bring all of that back in, reign all of that back in.
00:51:43.000It starts with dumb things like fact-checking dogs being given medals by the president, and that's not where it ends.
00:51:49.000Okay, so it's time for a quick thing that I like, and then we'll do a quick thing that I hate.
00:51:57.000This is kind of some fascinating polling.
00:51:59.000So there is some new polling out that shows that President Trump is actually running extremely competitively with the Democrats in this race right now, but with a huge percentage of Americans saying they don't know.
00:52:12.000According to Morning Consult, former VP Joe Biden only leads Trump 41 to 36.
00:52:17.000Basically, Trump is always between 35 and 37% in all of these polls, but A lot of the Democrats have now dropped below him in these polls because people are not sure about these Democrats.
00:52:27.000They're too radical and they're promoting an agenda that nobody likes.
00:52:30.000Bernie Sanders is only up 39-37, which is margin of error.
00:52:33.000Elizabeth Warren is actually down 36-35.
00:52:40.000Now, again, that's a huge percentage of the population that says they don't know, but that gives Trump time to redefine himself and to define the left, which is obviously what he should be doing today.
00:52:50.000He should be spending all of his time doing exactly that.
00:52:53.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:53:01.000Out of Paul Sperry at Real Clear Investigations, he apparently has uncovered the identity of the whistleblower who triggered this whole Trump-Ukraine thing.
00:53:11.000Apparently he has identified the person who's behind all of this.
00:53:15.000Now, let it be said up front, the content of the whistleblower report is in and of itself troubling enough that people should ask questions.
00:53:23.000So it doesn't discredit the actual questions being asked, Who made the report?
00:53:27.000But does this appear like initially an act of partisanship as opposed to an act of good faith?
00:53:33.000Given the identity of the whistleblower, the answer is pretty obviously yes.
00:53:37.000So according to Paul Sperry, the name of the government official fitting the description that has been given is Eric Shiramella.
00:53:43.000And I'm gonna say his name because I don't think that the whistleblower requires anonymity.
00:53:46.000I think that we should know what we need to know about the people who initiated the investigation.
00:53:50.000I don't think anonymity under these circumstances is appropriate.
00:53:52.000The name of the government official fitting the description, Eric Schiramella, has been raised privately in impeachment depositions according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings.
00:53:59.000Presumably, this is Republicans leaking, which is bad, but Democrats have been leaking too, so everybody's leaking, right?
00:54:05.000As well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry.
00:54:10.000Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.
00:54:17.000RealClear Investigations is disclosing the name because of the public's interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office.
00:54:25.000Further, the official's status as a whistleblower is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has some indicia of an arguable political bias in favor of a rival political candidate.
00:54:35.000That's the inspector community, the intelligence community inspector general, who said this originally.
00:54:52.000Further, he left his National Security Council posting in the White House's West Wing in mid-2017 because people were concerned that he was leaking to the media.
00:54:59.000He was then returned to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
00:55:03.000A former NSC official said he was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump.
00:55:07.000Apparently, Shiromela huddled for guidance with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff had recently recruited from the NSC.
00:55:19.000And apparently, Sharmilla also worked with a DNC operative who dug up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, according to former White House colleagues.
00:55:28.000That operative, Alexandra Chalupa, is Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary and led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government.
00:55:35.000He had her in the White House, said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
00:55:40.000Documents confirm that she actually attended at least one White House meeting with Sharmilla in November of 2015.
00:55:47.000So, this has been, you know, this is obviously deeply troubling because it does go to motive, right?
00:55:54.000It looks like basically a person who hated Trump, who was waiting for the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of a problem and then blow it up to epic proportions.
00:56:03.000This wasn't somebody who was like, well, everything's going fine here and, you know, I'm gonna wait for a legit crime in order to make a fuss.
00:56:09.000Instead, it was somebody who apparently was colluding with Adam Schiff in order to Come up with this entire whistleblower allegation.
00:56:17.000It was somebody who was an ardent Joe Biden defender, which is why he found this so inappropriate.
00:56:22.000Now, does this answer all the questions about impeachment?
00:56:25.000It doesn't answer the questions about whether Trump's activity on that call was appropriate, whether Trump was in fact leveraging American taxpayer dollars to specifically go after a 2020 political rival without evidence and without any concern for corruption.
00:56:38.000It doesn't answer those questions and Trump will have to answer those questions, but it's certainly going to lend a lot of credence to Trump's allegation that this entire thing from the beginning was cooked up by a Democrat and somebody inside the quote-unquote deep state who's seeking to selectively leak information to harm Trump.
00:56:52.000Because apparently that's what this guy did according to Paul Sperry reporting for Real Clear Investigation.
00:56:57.000So we'll bring you more on that this afternoon, I am sure, when we get to our two additional hours of content.