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00:01:50.000Okay, well, everybody was watching an awful, boring, terrible Super Bowl yesterday, the only saving grace of which was that the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, won his sixth Super Bowl.
00:02:01.000While everybody was watching that, Ralph Northam was having an emergency meeting with a bunch of black members of his administration, and I guess that he's gonna try and live this one out.
00:02:11.000So, to recap, You may remember Governor Ralph Northam from such things as, kill that fully formed baby in the middle of dilation?
00:02:20.000Right, that was one of his starring efforts last week.
00:02:23.000You also may remember him from such wonderful things as, here's a photo of me 35 years ago, either in blackface or a KKK outfit.
00:02:29.000Now, you know your governorship is in trouble when the question is, which one are you?
00:02:33.000The one in blackface or the one in the KKK outfit?
00:02:37.000That's when you start thinking, well, I've got a bit of a problem here.
00:02:41.000Now, in a second, I want to talk about why our standards in politics are just ridiculous.
00:02:46.000And we really should consider whether or not we are willing to finish people's careers for bad taste mistakes That today look horribly racist, homophobic, bigoted from like three decades ago, whether that is the standard of destroying somebody's career, which means that legitimately we should only elect newborns because those are people who have not sinned in the past, at least to this point.
00:03:07.000I mean, at least if we're not going to kill them, according to some Democrats.
00:03:11.000But first, let's let's bring you up to date on what is going on with Ralph Northam, who is fighting for his political life and doing so with a scalpel.
00:03:31.000Earlier today, I released a statement apologizing for behavior in my past that falls far short of the standard you set for me when you elected me to be your governor.
00:03:43.000I believe you deserve to hear directly from me that photo and the racist and offensive attitudes it represents.
00:03:52.000Does not reflect that person I am today or the way that I have conducted myself as a soldier, a doctor, and a public servant.
00:04:04.000Okay, now if that had been the extent of his statement, if he had said, listen, 35 years ago, People did really stupid stuff that now we look on and we are horrified by and I look back at that and I'm horrified by it too and it never should have happened and I had honestly forgotten about it because it's 35 years ago but now that somebody's brought it to my attention, really a terrible thing to have done.
00:04:21.000I'm really sorry about that and I hope that you'll look at my totality of my record and see that this is not who I am, right?
00:04:27.000That would I think be an appropriate apology and frankly I think that At that point, people should probably let it go, honestly.
00:04:45.000Second press conferences are much, much worse.
00:04:48.000Then the first press conference is almost always.
00:04:50.000It's hard to think of a situation where a second press conference has actually solidified things and made it better.
00:04:54.000So here it was Ralph Northam doing a press conference and he decided that while he had apologized for his past actions in that statement you heard one second ago, now he was going to not apologize for that.
00:05:07.000He was going to apologize for a different time he dressed Apparently he said it's not me in that photo from my yearbook page standing there dressed as a black person or as a KKK member.
00:05:19.000My favorite statement from the weekend is that it was reported that Northern wanted to hire facial recognition experts to show that it wasn't his face in that photo.
00:05:27.000How do you get a facial recognition expert to show that it's not you underneath a KKK hood?
00:05:32.000Can the facial recognition experts tell what's going on?
00:05:36.000Under, like, I thought the purpose of having the white sheet over your head, if you're a KKK member, is so that people can't recognize your face.
00:05:42.000In any case, Ralph Northam said he wanted to do that, apparently.
00:06:04.000Let me suggest that if you dress up as random person in blackface to make fun of black people, I don't think it's the same thing as you dressing up as Michael Jackson in 1985 and putting on black makeup to do so.
00:06:16.000I just don't think it's the exact same thing.
00:06:17.000I think it's still not great, but I'm not going to pretend that I think that it's mocking in the same way that dressing up as random black person in 1910 is.
00:06:26.000Context does matter in a lot of this stuff.
00:06:29.000With that said, again, you know you're in trouble when you have to distinguish for the press.
00:06:33.000Were you the guy in blackface or the guy in the KKK hood?
00:06:35.000And then you have to distinguish from that, or was I the guy who took shoe polishes, he's about to explain, shoe polish, and make up your face to look like Michael Jackson circa 1985?
00:06:46.000So here he was explaining, wasn't me in that yearbook photo, but if there's another photo of me dressed up as Michael Jackson looking like I dressed like a black guy, maybe that's me.
00:06:54.000In the hours since I made my statement yesterday, I reflected with my family and classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion that I am not the person in that photo.
00:07:08.000That same year, I did participate in a dance contest in San Antonio, in which I darkened my face as part of a Michael Jackson costume.
00:07:19.000I look back now, And regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that.
00:07:25.000OK, but then it got even more ridiculous.
00:07:58.000And then as you grow up, you realize that all the kids who are sitting next to you in class eating their boogers are the adults with whom you're also an adult.
00:08:05.000Well, it's the same thing when you look at folks like Ralph Northam.
00:08:08.000Honestly, like this guy is the governor of Virginia and he's just an idiot.
00:08:17.000Why is it that everybody who says doctors can't be stupid also thinks their own doctor's an idiot and won't pay any attention to what they say?
00:08:23.000Anyway, Ralph Northam is asked to moonwalk, and it's spectacular.
00:08:27.000He looks around for space to moonwalk.
00:09:32.000And then it turns out that back in the day, people called him A slur that was used for black people, I don't know, 50 years ago must have been common, maybe?
00:10:33.000Well, let's just point out a couple of things.
00:10:35.000Number one, the weaponization of racism means that he doesn't get off here.
00:10:39.000We're going to talk in a second about what our general standards for politicians should be.
00:10:43.000But the way that racism now works is that it has been completely weaponized, meaning that if somebody does something any time in the past or in the present, they can be even construed as racist.
00:10:56.000And Ralph Northam was a full-scale participant in this sort of nastiness.
00:11:00.000He would take comments that were not actually racist, and then he would construe them as racist in order to slander his political opposition in the most vile fashion.
00:11:07.000And we'll show you that in just one second.
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00:12:21.000Okay, so as I say, Ralph Northam has been an active participant in the weaponization of the charge of racism against people.
00:12:28.000If you recall all the way back to the 2016 election, he ran an ad against his opponent, Ed Gillespie, that is one of the most vile ads I have legitimately ever seen in a campaign.
00:12:38.000It was an ad that showed minority children running away from a guy, a white racist in a truck, with a Gillespie sticker on the back, as though Ed Gillespie was trying to run down small black children in his truck, and Gillespie supporters were the people at Charlottesville.
00:13:53.000He suggested that Ed Gillespie was a racist for having mentioned MS-13, the gang, that was active in Virginia in discussions about illegal immigration.
00:14:01.000So Gillespie participated full-scale in this sort of stuff.
00:14:04.000That means that if you make any boo-boo at any time, the knives are going to come out for you.
00:14:09.000President Trump grabbed a pitchfork and just rammed it directly into Ralph Northam.
00:14:14.000In the middle of this scandal, President Trump tweeted out, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.
00:14:23.000This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on super late-term abortion.
00:15:20.000There's an article from a website called Big League Politics.
00:15:23.000Big League Politics is also the site that originally published the yearbook page of Ralph Northam.
00:15:28.000We are now learning that the yearbook page of Ralph Northam was probably released by somebody who was angry at him for his stance on abortion.
00:15:37.000Motives don't really matter in terms of who releases it, it's just how people react to the page.
00:15:42.000So, Big League Politics released an article about an allegation regarding Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.
00:15:49.000And the allegation was an allegation that was put up on, I believe, Facebook by a woman who suggested that years ago, in 2004, there was an aide at the DNC who sexually assaulted her.
00:16:04.000And she said that this person And she said that this person then went on to become a statewide candidate for office and eventually would be taking a big step up in politics.
00:16:15.000The actual statement posted by a woman named Adria Scharf by Vanessa Tyson is the name of the woman.
00:16:21.000She wrote, So, this allegation has been out for several months, and Big League Politics published the allegation.
00:16:24.000in Boston in 2004 by a campaign staffer.
00:16:26.000You spend the next 13 years trying to forget it ever happened.
00:16:28.000Until one day you find out he's the Democratic candidate for a statewide office in a state some 3,000 miles away, and he wins that election in November 2017.
00:16:35.000Then, by strange horrible luck, it seems increasingly likely he'll get a very big promotion.
00:16:40.000So this allegation has been out for several months, and Big League Politics published the allegation.
00:16:46.000Now, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has released a statement about it.
00:16:50.000The statement says, Tonight, an online publication released a false and unsubstantiated allegation against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.
00:16:58.000Lieutenant Governor Fairfax has an outstanding and well-earned reputation for treating people with dignity and respect.
00:17:03.000He has never assaulted anyone, ever, in any way, shape, or form.
00:17:06.000The person reported to be making this false allegation first approached the Washington Post, one of the nation's most prominent newspapers, more than a year ago, around the time of the lieutenant governor's historic inauguration.
00:17:15.000The Post carefully investigated the claim for several months.
00:17:18.000After being presented with facts consistent with the lieutenant governor's denial of the allegation, the absence of any evidence corroborating the allegation, and significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, The Post made the considered decision not to publish the story.
00:17:30.000Okay, so this has led to accusations that the Washington Post spiked the story on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.
00:17:39.000Now, I'll talk in one second about whether in fact that allegation is justified.
00:17:44.000Suffice it to say, there are grave suspicions today that Lieutenant Governor Fairfax is being victimized by leaks from Northam's office, that basically Northam, in an attempt to save himself, is saying, well, don't look at my black lieutenant governor and say that that guy is ready to be governor because there's this still hanging out there.
00:18:00.000So if that's the case, if it is true that Ralph Northam's office is going after his lieutenant governor, that's playing some real heavy-handed hardball right there.
00:18:12.000As to the allegation that the Washington Post spiked this, one thing that both the Northam story and the Fairfax story are revealing is the insane double standard that exists with regard to allegations.
00:18:28.000Because it was uncorroborated, there was no supporting evidence, and there were significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, according to Lieutenant Governor Fairfax's office.
00:18:37.000All of which seems like a pretty good reason not to publish a story.
00:18:40.000Except that I'm old enough to remember when the Washington Post and every other major media outlet in the country ran with allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that had significant red flags and inconsistencies, that had no corroborating evidence, and that were blatantly denied by Brett Kavanaugh.
00:18:55.000And it became the subject of a full-scale judicial hearing with Democrats slandering the man as a possible gang rapist.
00:19:02.000I remember when they ran with all of these allegations and Michael Avenatti was coming forward and suggesting that he had evidence that Brett Kavanaugh might in fact have participated in gang rape and Kamala Harris, the new Democratic presidential candidate, was sitting up there implying the exact same thing.
00:19:26.000Those same people were not willing to run with an allegation, were willing to run with an allegation against Brett Kavanaugh that was very close to similar.
00:19:35.000So that's pretty, that is pretty telling about the media.
00:19:38.000By the way, the media, I do have to make a side note here.
00:19:41.000I don't know if you watched the Super Bowl yesterday.
00:19:42.000If you did, I'm sorry for the hours that you wasted watching the Super Bowl.
00:19:46.000The Washington Post ran an ad in the middle of the Super Bowl, the same Washington Post that did not run the allegations against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, which Again, I'm okay with if you actually had that standard consistently.
00:19:57.000They spent something like 5.25 million dollars to run an ad in the middle of the Super Bowl talking about how democracy dies in darkness.
00:20:04.000How many reporter salaries could that have paid?
00:20:07.000I do love that the Washington Post, they're like, you know what we could do to really restore our reputation as a journalistic entity?
00:20:12.000What we could do is hire an actor to talk about how awesome we are, and we'll glom off of Tom Hanks's When we go off to war.
00:21:17.000Listen, I'm in favor of journalism, and it says Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness.
00:21:22.000I'm all in favor of journalism, but the back-patting, self-congratulatory nature of the Washington Post, patting itself on the back for journalism, Well, at the same time, having such blatant doubled standards in so much of the reporting is pretty galling to a lot of Americans.
00:21:35.000And honestly, it ought to be galling to a lot of Americans.
00:21:37.000There's some other problems with that ad.
00:21:38.000I'm going to explain what those problems are with that ad in just one second.
00:21:41.000Then we'll get to the wide and very democratic reaction to the Northam allegations and the yearbook page and the whole deal.
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00:23:34.000This Washington Post ad, a couple of quick notes on the Washington Post ad that ran during the Super Bowl.
00:23:40.000Notice that when they say, when the nation is in grave danger, and then they show a picture of Oklahoma City.
00:23:45.000Now, I'm old enough to remember another event that put our nation in grave danger and led to us getting involved in two wars.
00:23:50.000That would've been 9-11, but I guess we're not allowed to show pictures of 9-11 on TV, lest it be offensive.
00:23:54.000Also, they say, journalists who have died for their profession, and then they show Jamal Khashoggi.
00:23:59.000Jamal Khashoggi was an opinion writer For many outlets, including the Washington Post, he also happened to be closely aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.
00:24:07.000So while the Saudi government should obviously not have murdered Jamal Khashoggi, I'm not going to put him in the same category as I put other journalists or murdered for their journalism.
00:24:16.000Also, I gotta say, like the idea that journalists in the United States are wildly in danger all the time, That the Washington Post is sort of promoting here is obviously not true.
00:24:24.000All of the people who were killed in that particular ad are people who were killed abroad in foreign countries.
00:24:31.000Also, I would note that the Washington Post, which sort of suggests that American journalism is constantly in danger, Like, thousands of journalists have been arrested in Turkey, journalists are routinely killed in Russia, in China, and this sort of stuff is pretty common.
00:25:05.000So, Terry McAuliffe, who's a former Virginia governor and deeply involved in Democratic Party politics, he says he has no indication that Northam has been a racist.
00:25:14.000And he says, maybe we should probably let this guy go.
00:25:16.000I know that the Ralph Northam you know, in your words, is a good man.
00:26:17.000Democrats think Trump should resign, but Northam shouldn't resign?
00:26:19.000They're going to have to explain that one.
00:26:21.000Now, the Democrats who are running for president have universally called for him to step down.
00:26:25.000So Hillary Clinton, who may or may not run for president, she says that Northam should go.
00:26:28.000You got Kamala Harris, who says that Northam should go.
00:26:30.000You got Cory Booker, who says that Northam should go.
00:26:32.000You got Julian Castro, Julian Castro, who is running for president but no one cares.
00:26:36.000And he says that Northam should resign as well.
00:26:38.000I'm happy that at least he has apologized and that he recognizes that what he did was wrong.
00:26:47.000And I do think, of course, that there's the opportunity to Uh, understand and accept his apology, but I also believe that that's separate and apart from him continuing in a position of trust and authority, which is the governor's office.
00:27:04.000Well, you know, this kind of breakdown does demonstrate what the Democratic Party leadership thinks of their own base.
00:27:11.000So a lot of Democrats on a day-to-day level are going, listen, if our new standard is that anything bad you did in the past means that you're out of office, there will be no one left standing.
00:27:18.000And then there are the people who are running for office who are saying, well, I have to somehow go back to the base, and I have to explain to them why Ralph Northam should stay, and I'm just not going to do that.
00:27:28.000It's kind of fascinating to see the divide, because here is the truth.
00:27:32.000The Democratic Party honchos are correct.
00:27:34.000If our standard, if our standard is that stuff that you did 35 years ago that was construed as racist now, but was construed as maybe just irreverent or controversial then, is now the subject of you losing your career, there are gonna be a lot of people out of jobs very, very quickly.
00:27:49.000Robert A. George is a member of the New York Daily News editorial board, black guy.
00:27:54.000And the reason I mention his race is because of the thread that we're about to read.
00:27:57.000I think it's worthwhile going through this thread that he put up on Twitter because I think this is the most nuanced take on the Ralph Northam issue that I've heard.
00:28:04.000I think it's also the most accurate take on the Ralph Northam issue that I've heard.
00:28:07.000says he says after much fun at northam's expense a serious thought a few tweets have run along the lines of even in the south 35 years ago everyone knew that wearing a clan outfit or blackface was racist having been in college myself at the time i started nodding but then i pause everyone knew that this type of behavior is racist That means Northam must have been racist.
00:28:25.000He admits in his Friday statement that what he did was racist.
00:28:28.000It means his partner in crime was racist.
00:28:30.000But there was a compiler slash editor of the yearbook, right?
00:28:33.000That supposedly reasonable person accepted Northam's photo and let it go, right?
00:28:40.000My point here is that either everyone knew this was something really ugly and racist or they were doing something that they bizarrely thought was funny and no one stopped to think, oh, it's funny but really ugly and maybe we shouldn't do it.
00:28:50.000He says the 2020 hindsight we have now that everyone knew that something you didn't do might not have been as strong back then.
00:28:57.000In other words, If you think now that everything bad, like, now it's very easy to look at that photo and go, obvious racism, gross, get out of office.
00:29:08.000But is that how people thought of it back then?
00:29:26.000Seniors would be auctioned to odd jobs for the winning bidders.
00:29:29.000Yeah, yeah, already you're thinking, what the hell?
00:29:30.000In fairness, this was a school which studies Greek and Latin classics, so it's theoretically possible to do a Greek or Roman-style slave auction.
00:29:37.000Even so, I approached the planners and said, tread carefully.
00:29:39.000I didn't hear about it anymore, so I assumed it got dropped.
00:29:42.000Instead, I awoke to find posters declaring, welcome to 1865, it's a real live slave auction.
00:29:49.000There were quite a few other white friends, including other seniors, who were stunned.
00:29:53.000There was an African-American underclassman who I'd become friends with who came up to me and whatever the 1985 version of what the bleep was.
00:30:00.000I put together a strongly worded letter.
00:30:02.000No, seriously, it was an open letter to the student body.
00:30:04.000Got it co-signed with a couple dozen other people, infuriated, stuffed copies in mailboxes.
00:30:09.000A day or so later, the fundraiser was canceled.
00:30:12.000My African-American pal and I had a tense discussion with the organizers.
00:30:15.000We cleared the air, and it should be noted I'm friendly with them to this day.
00:30:19.000I don't consider them racist then or now.
00:30:20.000It was an insensitive action, but an ultimately learning moment.
00:30:23.000In the days that followed, I felt out of sorts.
00:30:25.000Even though I had many friends who had my back and immediately supported me in whatever I wanted to do in response, I was still feeling alone, wondering if I did the right thing.
00:31:24.000In a second, I'm going to explain why it's exactly right, and why a little bit of grace might go a long way in our politics, or we can keep destroying each other because it's convenient to do so.
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00:32:43.000OK, I have a few more thoughts on the Ralph Northam controversy, and then I want to get to the latest on Jussie Smollett and my situation over at Grand Canyon University, which is getting all weird.
00:32:53.000But for all that, you're going to have to go subscribe over at Daily Wire.
00:32:55.000To get the rest of this show live, dailywire.com.
00:32:58.000To get two additional hours of me every day.
00:33:02.000We are in that hot kitchen, slaving over the stove, working our fingers to the bone in all other form of metaphor for how hard we're working.
00:34:01.000We're the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:34:05.000So we have completely obliterated, and this is the point I think Robert A. George is making, we have completely obliterated any distinction between racially insensitive or racial jokes or stuff that's sort of uncomfortable and out and out racism. we have completely obliterated any distinction between racially insensitive or And we have obliterated that distinction going retroactively.
00:34:28.000If you watch Blazing Saddles, people make this joke all the time, but it's true.
00:34:30.000If you watch Blazing Saddles now, there's no way in hell that movie ever gets made.
00:34:34.000There are KKK jokes, there are jokes about black folks, there are jokes about Jews, there are jokes about everything in that movie.
00:34:39.000You're not allowed to tell any of those jokes now.
00:34:41.000Mel Brooks would never have a career now.
00:34:42.000You simply cannot tell an offensive joke.
00:34:45.000And I'm not sure that the country is significantly better for that.
00:34:54.000But it does, I will say that I think a sense of humor, an ability to kind of look aside when people are acting like jackasses is better for your soul and better for the country than the sort of search for microaggressions that we have today.
00:35:09.000Now, there is a happy medium, which is people could not be jerks, and also we could be a little bit less, we could also be a little bit less sensitive about things.
00:35:15.000I think that's actually where we should be, meaning that not all of those bad jokes ought to be told, right?
00:35:20.000We should be, like, I'm not a fan of racial jokes, for example.
00:35:23.000I don't think that people should tell racial jokes.
00:35:25.000I also think that if people do tell racial jokes, we are better served as a society, not by trying to destroy their lives, but by people kind of going, okay, that guy's being a jerk, that guy's being in a bleep.
00:35:35.000I think that this newfound crusade that we have to destroy people based on stuff they did 30 years ago, particularly, is really bad.
00:35:43.000Now, I think that there's a case to be made that if somebody does something now that's really bad, that there should be immediate repercussions for that.
00:35:51.000But the world that we are building, in which we dig up somebody's old high school or medical school yearbook, and then, free of context, we say, well, everyone knew it was bad then.
00:36:01.000As Robert A. George says, I am not sure that is the case.
00:36:05.000I think that it is certainly possible that some people knew that it was bad then, or it's possible people were ignorant, they weren't surrounded by people who knew better, they didn't have good conversations with folks who were more aware of the problematic nature of some of this stuff.
00:36:18.000And so, instead of attributing this to racial malice, like Ralph Northam was a night rider or something, maybe he's just an idiot.
00:36:25.000Maybe he was a racially insensitive idiot.
00:36:27.000And maybe, if he'd been confronted about it, he would have apologized at the time.
00:36:31.000How many times have you done something offensive in your life, and been confronted about it, and then you apologized because you realized you had just offended somebody?
00:36:38.000I'm sure that's happened to you many times.
00:36:40.000How would you like it if nobody said anything for 20 years and then they brought it up and said, now we're going to take away your career from you?
00:36:45.000I think that that's going to make for a really ugly America.
00:36:48.000It already is making for a really ugly America.
00:36:50.000I was discussing this with some friends over the weekend.
00:36:52.000Again, none of this is to excuse Ralph Northam dressing in blackface or in a KKK outfit or any of this.
00:36:56.000I think all of that stuff is really egregious, but we're not discussing the egregious nature of that, except insofar as to say that on the spectrum of egregious behavior that should finish your career decades into the future, this one lies on the margin.
00:37:08.000Really, if you're talking about things that should finish your career, I would say actual membership in the KKK like Robert Byrd, that probably should finish your career and not make you the conscience of the Senate for 50 years.
00:37:17.000I think if you kill a woman by driving off a bridge with her in the backseat, that probably should finish your career, not lead to a presidential run in 1980 and a lionization as the lion of the Senate.
00:37:27.000That stuff probably is bad enough that it should finish your career.
00:37:30.000Dressing up in a racist fashion in a yearbook in 1985, I'm not sure that that should finish your career 34 years in the future.
00:37:39.000I'm just not sure that that lies there.
00:37:41.000There are gradations here as to what should finish your career.
00:37:46.000There are three ways that we deal with bad stuff that we've done in our past.
00:37:50.000And as a culture, we've become a very confessional culture.
00:37:52.000So there are three ways to deal with bad stuff that we've done in our past.
00:37:55.000Way number one is that we beat everybody to the punch.
00:37:57.000This is the Barack Obama strategy for dealing with bad stuff you've done.
00:38:01.000So if you're Barack Obama, and you're running for president, or you're thinking of running for political office, and you know That back in your high school days, you did cocaine and maybe handed out some to your friends.
00:38:12.000What you do is you write in your autobiography, I did a little blow.
00:38:22.000So that's way number one is the confessional culture.
00:38:24.000You preemptively declare all of your sins.
00:38:26.000Now, this specifically works well for people who are in the political business.
00:38:30.000So if you are Ralph Northam and you knew you were going straight from medical school into politics, you would have done this like immediately upon exiting medical school.
00:38:36.000You would have said, oh my God, that yearbook was terrible.
00:38:38.000I bear my soul terrible for the nation.
00:38:41.000So that's option number one is the preemptive, the preemptive confession.
00:38:45.000And that's what we prefer in our confessional culture.
00:38:48.000In a second, I'm going to give you the other two options.
00:38:51.000Option number two, when it comes to bad behavior.
00:39:39.000My entire life has been a repudiation of that, so I really need to go back and relive that and rip that scab open now that I've worked hard to move on with my life.
00:39:48.000Now, again, it depends on the nature of the sin as to whether this is morally okay or not.
00:39:52.000Like, you kill a person, probably you should confess that.
00:39:54.000But you dressed up in a yearbook for your medical school 34 years ago, and then you spent 30 years caring for minority children in your pediatrics clinic?
00:40:04.000And now you're working on Minority Kids Daily, what do you have to do?
00:40:07.000Post a giant poster, like, in the waiting room of your clinic?
00:40:35.000So possibility number one is the confessional.
00:40:37.000Possibility number two is you try to forget it and move beyond it.
00:40:40.000And then if somebody raises it, then you apologize for it.
00:40:42.000And then there's possibility number three, which is somebody raises the issue and then you double down on it.
00:40:48.000Because here's the problem with option number two.
00:40:51.000If you take option number two, somebody brings it up, 34 years ago, you dressed in racist fashion in a yearbook, 34 years ago, and you say, you know what?
00:41:00.000You're right, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that.
00:41:01.000The follow-up question from badly motivated people always is, so why didn't you apologize before?
00:41:07.000Why didn't you take option number one?
00:41:09.000Why didn't you go out there and do a dashboard confessional?
00:41:11.000Why didn't you go out there and write a full-on Facebook post about it so that we could have cast you out before any of this started?
00:41:17.000We could have ruined your life preemptively because here's the dirty little secret.
00:41:20.000For a lot of folks, if they had done this sort of confessional culture thing, if Ralph Northam had done this before the primaries, that would have finished his career.
00:41:53.000And his answer was, well, for 30 years, I've been trying to live down the shame of having done that and trying to move beyond that, but that's not enough for people.
00:42:00.000So then it turns into, okay, I'm gonna double down.
00:42:02.000What this leads to is a politics where your best characteristic as a politician is having no shame at all.
00:42:09.000That you don't care about the bad stuff you did in the past.
00:42:11.000And if somebody brings it up to you, then you just, instead of apologizing, you just say, yeah, F you.
00:42:37.000People bring stuff up to him and he just says, whatever, I don't care.
00:42:41.000So what you're going to get is more politicians like that.
00:42:43.000You're going to get more politicians who don't have a sense of shame, who don't have a sense of guilt, Who say, you know what, screw this entire system because you're being dishonest.
00:42:53.000I think a lot of people in politics on every side are being wildly dishonest when they bring up old material to club people to death with.
00:42:59.000I've been pretty consistent about this.
00:43:00.000Whether we are talking about film directors, where people go and dig through their old tweets, or Kevin Hart, where people are digging up through his old tweets trying to destroy him.
00:43:08.000This is an ugly society we've created for ourselves in social media.
00:43:12.000Honestly, there are just people who are lucky that cell phones did not exist 40 years ago.
00:43:18.000Because now, everything that you do is captured on camera.
00:43:21.000So everybody is very wary of what they do on camera.
00:43:25.000But, the only thing with Ralph Northam, honestly, the only thing that happened to Ralph Northam is that there was a camera present when he did this.
00:43:31.000You know how many politicians probably dressed in blackface over the last 35 years dressed up as Michael Jackson or O.J.
00:43:36.000Simpson or something for a Halloween party?
00:43:39.000If there were cameras present at all of those places, do you know how many politicians there would be from the Baby Boomer generation?
00:43:50.000Our choice is, we can either see these things in the context of a less sensitive time, which has good aspects and bad aspects.
00:43:56.000Less sensitive means that people are less offended all the time.
00:43:59.000It also means that people do more insensitive things, which is bad.
00:44:02.000Right, what I would like is for people to be more sensitive, but also more sensitive to others and less sensitive toward their own feelings.
00:44:10.000Is that your soul, in the Jewish prayers we say this every morning, your soul is like dust to your enemies, but by the same token, you try to be kind to people and non-offensive to other people.
00:44:20.000With all of that said, we live in a political culture where you are supposed to cast your opponents in the worst possible light at all times, and if that means going back into the past, digging up stuff, and then forcing them into a corner and beating them, then you do it.
00:44:33.000So, there's no grace, there's no forgiveness, there's no seeing people in the best possible light, there's no attempt to see people as the totality of a group of characteristics.
00:44:41.000Instead it's, you did this one bad thing back, way back, A long time ago when, honestly, people were more ignorant and people weren't as sensitive.
00:44:51.000And now we're going to destroy you for it.
00:44:53.000I don't know that we can have a politics that operates along these lines.
00:44:56.000I'm not sure who survives these politics other than people who we have deemed immune for intersectional reasons.
00:45:02.000And there are a group of people who have deemed immune for intersectional reasons, that if you apologize for your own privilege, or if you happen to be a member of an intersectional group that has been historically victimized, you can say whatever you want.
00:45:13.000So you can be an anti-Semite if you are a black candidate for office who hangs out with Louis Farrakhan.
00:45:20.000And if you are Rashida Tlaib and you're Muslim, then you can be anti-Semitic as you want to be.
00:45:25.000But it doesn't matter, because you're intersectional.
00:45:33.000It means a worse politics for the country as a general rule.
00:45:36.000And none of this is defense of Ralph Northam's yearbook page.
00:45:39.000What it is is a call for us to look, I think, into our own hearts and decide what kind of politics we would like to have on an ongoing basis.
00:45:45.000A politics that involves at least a little bit of forgiveness or a politics of pure, unadulterated justice with 20-20 hindsight where everybody has had to be perfect forever.
00:45:55.000And if not, then we will go ahead and rip them down off their pedestal and beat them to death.
00:46:00.000Alrighty, let's get to some things I like and then we'll do some things that I hate.
00:46:05.000Over the weekend, I've been reading a lot of sports because I just need distraction from politics these days.
00:46:09.000I'm just annoyed by the political scene, I'll be honest with you.
00:46:11.000And so I've been reading a lot of sports books.
00:46:13.000If you're into sports books, this is one of the great sports books of the recent past.
00:46:16.000Jack McCallum, longtime columnist for Sports Illustrated, he wrote a book right after the 1992 Olympics called Dream Team, all about the USA basketball team, which was, you know, the greatest conglomeration of basketball talent ever put on one court.
00:46:29.000It was Bird and Magic and Jordan and Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and David Robinson and just an amazing bevy of talent.
00:46:38.000It's it's gossipy and it's it's about Honestly, like an aspirational, it gives you an aspirational feeling about the country and about our ability to get along with each other despite our differences.
00:46:58.000has a fascinating piece today, it's hilarious, called The Nature of Sex.
00:47:03.000And Andrew Sullivan is a gay man, and his basic contention is that if you try to separate out sex from gender, in essence you're going to be reading out the gay and lesbian movement.
00:47:13.000Because if you say that sex and gender are entirely disconnected, and that a biological man can actually be a woman, then a lesbian should be able to be with a biological man who is in fact a woman.
00:47:26.000And a lot of lesbians are going, well, hold up a second.
00:47:28.000Like, that's not something I'm interested in.
00:47:29.000Like, if this is a biological dude with all the biological appendages and he calls himself a woman, I'm not attracted to that.
00:47:35.000And you can't call me a transphobe because of that.
00:47:39.000The new move in kind of radical trans circles is to say that Caitlyn Jenner not only is a woman, but always was a woman.
00:47:46.000And therefore, if you were a lesbian, you should have been attracted to Caitlyn Jenner back when Caitlyn Jenner was fully attached to all of his original parts.
00:47:55.000So Andrew Sullivan has a long piece about this today, talking about how the destruction of biological sex actually destroys lesbian and gay rights.
00:48:04.000He says, the core disagreement, it seems to me, is whether a trans woman is right to say that she has always been a woman, it was born female, and is indistinguishable from and interchangeable with biological women.
00:48:13.000He says, most of us find this argument hard to swallow entirely.
00:48:16.000We may accept that Caitlyn Jenner, who came out as a woman in 2015, always understood herself as a woman and see the psychological conviction as sincere and to be respected.
00:48:24.000But we also see a difference between someone who lived her life as a man for decades under the full influence of male chromosomes and testosterone and who is socially accepted as male and then transitioned and a woman to whom none of these apply.
00:48:36.000Okay, but he's being ripped up and down for all of this, and it's hilarious.
00:48:41.000It's why the attempt to... It's why the attempt to link together LGBT doesn't make any sense.
00:49:41.000The Daily Beast, though, had a full piece before the Super Bowl, and it was titled, I kid you not, Tom Brady's New England Patriots are Team MAGA, whether they like it or not.
00:49:52.000They said their star quarterback, coach, and owner all supported Trump.
00:49:55.000But that's not the only thing that makes the Super Bowl-bound Patriots the preferred team of white nationalists.
00:50:01.000You're doing it wrong, Corbin Smith of the Daily Beast.
00:50:47.000So the media, I love the media in the sense that they're terrible.
00:50:51.000So, Jussie Smollett, you'll remember this story from last week.
00:50:55.000The suggestion was that he'd been walking down the mean streets of Chicago at 2 a.m., coming back from a subway, and he was carrying a sub sandwich, and two guys who are two guys two white guys came out of the woodwork one threw a rope around his neck and then they started shouting this is maga country while they beat him up well now it turns out that a couple of problems okay a couple of problems
00:51:19.000according to rafer weigel of fox 32 in chicago the he apparently was missing from the tape for a minute when he was missing from the tape When he re-entered the tape, he had a noose strung around his neck.
00:51:32.000But he didn't call the police for 40 minutes.
00:51:34.000Also, when he came back into the tape, he was still carrying his Subway sandwich.
00:51:39.000Which is weird, like normally when you're assaulted and someone pours bleach on you and puts a noose around your neck and shouts, this is MAGA country and breaks your rib, which was his original contention.
00:51:47.000When that happens, I mean, you really must love Subway sandwiches, right?
00:51:50.000Like you must be super into that sandwich.
00:51:52.000Like if you're getting your ass kicked by a bunch of, by a couple of racists on Chicago street in 20 degree below weather at 2 a.m.
00:51:58.000and they're breaking your rib and you still hang on to that Subway sandwich, man, you are either hungry or you love Subway sandwiches for some perverse reason.
00:52:06.000I was bruised, but my ribs were not cracked.
00:52:08.000Jussie Smollett did some sort of concert and there he talked about his courage and the headline from all of the media outlets were how courageous Jussie Smollett was.
00:52:14.000Nobody has yet asked him straight questions about like all the inconsistencies in his story.
00:52:19.000But at least we know he's very brave because he performed in a concert and talked about how he had been mischaracterized.
00:52:26.000I was bruised, but my ribs were not cracked.
00:52:41.000and Chicago cleared me to perform, but said to take care, obviously.
00:52:47.000And above all, I fought the f*** back.
00:52:50.000Okay, well, again, like, some details would be good.
00:52:53.000I like that he has to read the statement off a card.
00:52:55.000He can't just say it, which is always the sign that you're not trying to be legally careful, is that you're reading off an actual printed note card at a concert.
00:53:02.000In any case, we still don't know all the details.
00:53:04.000Maybe it happened just the way he said it did, but I don't think that it's irrelevant to ask questions about how this thing went down, considering, again, there have been a lot of inconsistencies in his story, and he wouldn't turn his cell phone over to the police.
00:53:35.000We wanted to take a moment to address Grand Canyon University's decision to cancel a speaking engagement on campus by Ben Shapiro.
00:53:41.000We believe in many of the things that Ben Shapiro speaks about and stands for, including his support for ideals that grow out of traditional Judeo-Christian values and a belief in a free market economy.
00:53:50.000Our decision to cancel Shapiro's speaking engagement is not a reflection of his ideologies or the values he represents, but rather a desire to focus on opportunities that bring people together.
00:53:59.000To understand that decision, one has to first understand the university's history and culture that has been created on our campus.
00:54:05.000As a private interdenominational Christian institution, Grand Canyon University's core beliefs are rooted in biblical truths and outlined in our doctrinal statement and ethical position statement.
00:54:14.000These foundational documents, inspired in large part by the Nicene Creed, articulate our commitment to the full inspiration of scripture and provide clarity, unity, and alignment across the university on matters of ethics and morality.
00:54:25.000And then they talk about their very diverse student body and their ability to offer education to all socioeconomic classes.
00:54:32.000And they talk about their culture and how kind they are.
00:54:35.000They say, in short, it has created a unique and united community where no matter their political differences, people come together as one to make a difference in the world around them.
00:54:43.000Today, we live in a very divided America.
00:54:46.000The current high volume of rhetoric has not led to community building or problem solving.
00:54:49.000Grand Canyon University, rather than engage in this type of rhetoric, has instead worked to bring people together and build partnerships to renovate our inner city community.
00:54:56.000And then they talk about all of the wonderful things they've done for the inner city community.
00:55:00.000As a university, we encourage thoughtful discussions and rational dialogue in our classrooms about the issues affecting our societies, and we encourage students to put greater emphasis on actions that produce positive change in our society.
00:55:12.000They say, based on the response we've received from some within the Grand Canyon community regarding the decision involving such high-profile speakers as Ben Shapiro, we've obviously disappointed and offended some of you.
00:55:21.000We know that if we had made a different decision, we would have disappointed and offended others within the same community.
00:55:25.000It was not our intent to disappoint or offend anyone.
00:55:28.000It was rather to use our position as a Christian university to bring unity to a community that sits amidst a country that is extremely divided and can't seem to find a path forward toward unity.
00:55:56.000Obviously, what happened here is that a couple of motivated professors at GCU decided that they were going to speak up to the administration, and the administration caved to them, or a couple of students.
00:56:05.000Apparently, according to reporting, people were upset about my position on DACA, which doesn't even make any sense.
00:56:11.000I mean, people who listen to the show know I'm actually libertarian on immigration, as long as it is not raising the crime rates, as long as people are not coming here to use welfare, and as long as there are not assimilation problems with citizenship.
00:56:22.000And yet, apparently, even a whiff of controversy was enough for GCU to run screaming for the Hills.
00:56:45.000Apparently, she had a wonderful conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, the ridiculous, disgusting, anti-Semitic piece of filth who runs the Labour Party in Britain.
00:56:53.000He said, great to speak to AOC on the phone this evening and hear firsthand how she's challenging the status quo.
00:56:57.000Let's build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet.
00:57:03.000And then AOC tweeted, it was an honor to share such a lovely and wide reaching conversation with you, Jeremy Corbyn.
00:57:11.000Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity, and justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race, and identity, both at home and abroad.
00:57:20.000Is it possible that the modern Democratic Party has a serious problem with allowing anti-Semitism to flourish inside its ranks?
00:57:26.000I think that that's pretty obvious at this point.
00:57:27.000And we're going to continue to pretend that they are tolerant and open and diverse, when in fact, many on the radical left are precisely the opposite.
00:57:34.000And AOC's association with one of the worst people in the West, Jeremy Corbyn, is just the latest indicator of that.
00:57:41.000Alrighty, so we'll be back here a little bit later today with all the updates.
00:57:44.000We have a couple of more hours of programming coming up later with all the updates and prep for the State of the Union address.
00:57:48.000Be there, or we'll see you here tomorrow in prep for the State of the Union.
00:57:58.000The 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.
00:58:08.000Edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.
00:58:14.000The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.