The Ben Shapiro Show - The Epstein Connection

00:00:00.000 Alleged pedophile Jeffrey Epstein heads for jail, NBC outs Mitch McConnell's great-great-grandfather as a slave owner, and we are forced by law to talk about women's soccer for like the 100th consecutive day.

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 I know, I'm excited to talk about women's soccer.

00:00:20.000 Aren't you?

00:00:21.000 I mean, it's just what I love doing every single day, but apparently that's what's in the news, so we'll have to do that.

00:00:25.000 We'll get to that in just a little bit, but the big story of the day continues to be the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein.

00:00:31.000 For folks who have not been following this long-running and horrifying story, Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire financier.

00:00:37.000 It's pretty unclear where he came up with his billions, but the dude is worth a fortune.

00:00:41.000 He also happens to be an alleged pedophile.

00:00:43.000 According to Allie Watkins and Vivian Wang, over the weekend, Federal prosecutors resurrected a federal sex crimes case against billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein by focusing on accusations that he sexually assaulted girls at his mansion in Manhattan more than a decade after a widely criticized plea deal shielded him from similar charges in Florida.

00:01:02.000 Federal prosecutors unsealed the new charges on Monday, accusing Epstein, 66, of running a sex trafficking operation that lured dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, to his Upper East Side home and to a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, according to an indictment.

00:01:14.000 Epstein, who is 66, is accused of engaging in sex acts with minors, some as young as 14 years old, during naked massage sessions, then paying them hundreds of dollars in cash, according to the indictment.

00:01:24.000 He also asked some of the girls to recruit other underage girls.

00:01:27.000 In other words, this guy is one of the worst pieces of crap.

00:01:30.000 In the modern history of the country, he was engaged in sexual trafficking of minors, which is about as bad as it gets.

00:01:37.000 Everyone involved with him should go to jail for extraordinary periods of time, because this is horrifying in every way.

00:01:42.000 The indictment says Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach.

00:01:51.000 Epstein was arrested on Saturday at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after arriving on a private flight from France.

00:01:56.000 Two law enforcement officials said he is charged with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy.

00:02:01.000 He faces a combined maximum sentence of up to 45 years in prison if convicted.

00:02:05.000 Prosecutors are also seeking the forfeiture of Epstein's townhouse on East 71st Street.

00:02:11.000 The new charges, according to the Times, are a revival of a years-long case against Epstein who faced similar accusations involving girls who told the police they were brought to his mansion in South Florida and then assaulted.

00:02:20.000 That case unraveled in 2008 after Epstein was offered a secret plea deal by federal prosecutors, one of whom is now the Secretary of Labor under President Trump.

00:02:29.000 And this is where the case starts to become important for modern politics.

00:02:33.000 There are two aspects of the case that are important for modern politics.

00:02:36.000 Aspect number one, is the involvement of the current Secretary of Labor who is the prosecutor in this case and who cut a really, really sweet plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein that prevented all of the information in the indictments from going public and ended up protecting Jeffrey Epstein in a variety of ways that he served a very soft sentence for what are obviously horrific crimes.

00:02:59.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:04:03.000 Okay, so as I say, there are two reasons why the Epstein scandal is important for today's politics.

00:04:09.000 Reason number one has to do with the Secretary of Labor.

00:04:12.000 Who's name is Alexander Acosta under President Trump.

00:04:15.000 He was a prosecutor in the Epstein case.

00:04:17.000 The second reason is all of the rich and powerful people that Jeffrey Epstein knew and who are now being dragged into the conversation about who knew what, when, who might have been involved because apparently Epstein used to...

00:04:28.000 Traffic these girls to friends.

00:04:30.000 It's one of the allegations.

00:04:31.000 So the Washington Post reports today.

00:04:34.000 The indictment on Monday of Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges has reignited questions about the way Alexander Acosta, now President Trump's Labor Secretary, handled an earlier case against Epstein.

00:04:45.000 That resulted in a minimal sentence.

00:04:47.000 Attorney in Florida in 2007, Acosta negotiated a plea deal that led to two felony solicitation charges and 13 months in county jail for Epstein.

00:04:47.000 As U.S.

00:04:55.000 The billionaire financier was allowed to work from his office for six days a week.

00:04:59.000 Epstein had been facing the possibility of life in prison.

00:05:02.000 Pretty rich deal right there.

00:05:04.000 His alleged victims were not even told about the deal.

00:05:06.000 On Monday, in the indictment issued in federal court in New York, Epstein faced charges resulting from allegations like those in the Florida case.

00:05:14.000 The indictment says that in both New York and Florida, Epstein perpetuated this abuse in similar ways.

00:05:19.000 Acosta, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.

00:05:21.000 Labor Department spokesperson Robert Bazzuto referred questions about Acosta's role in the plea deal to the Justice Department.

00:05:27.000 A Justice Department spokesperson then declined to comment.

00:05:31.000 This was very controversial because the Miami Herald had done a long-running series about exactly what happened here, and it appeared that this was a sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein, who called in favors from friends, who then called in prosecutors.

00:05:43.000 That at least was the allegation made by the newspapers in Florida.

00:05:47.000 Officials at the White House are nervous that Democrats will encourage women allegedly abused by Epstein to testify publicly before Congress, drawing attention to Acosta's work on the plea deal.

00:05:57.000 President Trump right now has no immediate plan to force out or fire Acosta.

00:06:01.000 Like others, officials are speaking on condition of anonymity.

00:06:04.000 A senior White House official said the administration would like to learn the contents of a Justice Department inquiry into Acosta before making any decisions.

00:06:10.000 So there is already a DOJ inquiry.

00:06:13.000 On all of this.

00:06:14.000 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of course, says that Acosta should step down.

00:06:18.000 She's doing so precipitously because we still don't know all of the information, but if it is true that things are as bad as they appear, there's no question that Acosta should step down.

00:06:27.000 I mean, if it turns out that he cut a sweetheart deal on the basis of something corrupt, not only should he step down, he should be disbarred, obviously.

00:06:34.000 Maybe there might be prosecution in the works if corruption was involved.

00:06:38.000 Acosta has not been summoned to testify before Congress specifically on the matter.

00:06:41.000 The only person who asked him about all of this at his confirmation hearing in 2017 was Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

00:06:47.000 Acosta told Kaine that professionals within a prosecutor's office decided on the deal, taking himself out of the negotiations.

00:06:55.000 He said, this wasn't my deal in the first place.

00:06:57.000 Two House Democrats said the party now has more leverage to demand that Acosta testify.

00:07:01.000 Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, he said in the wake of the New York charges, there is resurgent interest in hearing from him about the dual system of justice in Florida.

00:07:09.000 Acosta has some major reckoning to do.

00:07:13.000 Several Republican members of Congress said they supported Acosta or reserving judgment about the Labor Secretary pending the DOJ inquiry at this point.

00:07:21.000 Senator Roy Blunt, he said, if there's more that comes out, I'll be glad to look at it.

00:07:23.000 At this point, I think it's been looked at repeatedly.

00:07:25.000 I think everybody has reached the same conclusion.

00:07:27.000 There is a Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility.

00:07:31.000 They investigate misconduct of department employees.

00:07:33.000 Opened an ethics investigation in February into whether its attorneys committed professional misconduct In pursuing the plea deal in the first place.

00:07:42.000 It is unclear at this point how this is going to result.

00:07:46.000 Acosta's initial handling of the case was widely criticized.

00:07:49.000 He signed off on a deal in which, in exchange for guilty pleas in state court to solicitation, Epstein served a 13-month sentence, registered as a sex offender, and paid restitution to certain victims.

00:07:58.000 The deal was initially sealed, keeping it secret until it was released as part of a 2015 lawsuit.

00:08:03.000 In addition, while the Florida investigation initially came to the attention of authorities because of a 14-year-old alleged victim, the only minor Epstein was convicted of soliciting was 16 years old, according to the Washington Post.

00:08:14.000 That age difference eased his obligations to register as a sex offender.

00:08:19.000 In 2011, Acosta, again the Secretary of Labor, wrote a letter seeking to explain his reasoning, saying he faced a year-long assault on the prosecution and prosecutors by an army of legal superstars.

00:08:29.000 He also wrote that defense lawyers investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for personal peccadillos that may provide a basis for disqualification.

00:08:38.000 Again, I think there is going to be a lot more information that comes out right here and we will find out as time goes on.

00:08:44.000 Suffice it to say that with all of this swirling, Acosta should certainly be thinking about whether it is good for the administration for him to remain and whether the Trump administration should have to bear the burden of a case that seems Pretty obviously wrongly negotiated in the first place.

00:08:59.000 That is angle number one.

00:09:01.000 And folks are jumping all over it.

00:09:02.000 Angle number two is that Epstein had a lot of rich and powerful friends with whom he used to hobnob.

00:09:08.000 And two of those friends were Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

00:09:11.000 And so there's all sorts of speculation today that either one of those men is involved in these sorts of sexual activities with women or girls who are underage.

00:09:22.000 And that speculation obviously is based also on the reputation of the two men, both of whom are famous womanizers.

00:09:28.000 According to the Associated Press, Jeffrey Epstein is hobnobbed with some of the world's most powerful people during his jet-setting life.

00:09:34.000 Future President Donald Trump called him a terrific guy.

00:09:36.000 Former President Bill Clinton praised his intellect and philanthropic efforts and was a frequent flyer aboard his private jet.

00:09:42.000 The arrest of the billionaire financier on child sex trafficking charges is raising questions about how much his high-powered associates knew about the hedge fund manager's interactions with underage girls and whether they turned a blind eye to potentially illegal conduct.

00:09:54.000 And of course, it is putting additional scrutiny on Alex Acosta, as we have pointed out.

00:10:00.000 Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House That the president has not talked to Epstein in 10 or 15 years.

00:10:07.000 She said, like everyone else, Trump sees the charges against Epstein is completely unconscionable and obviously criminal.

00:10:12.000 Disgusting.

00:10:14.000 Conway also defended Acosta saying that the the actual perpetrator here is Jeffrey Epstein.

00:10:21.000 The only major comment that has ever been given to date that we know about from Trump about Epstein is a comment to New York Magazine in 2002 in which he said that he had known Epstein for 15 years and praised him as a terrific guy, saying, quote, he's a lot of fun to be with.

00:10:34.000 It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side, which is not a great thing to say about a guy who's an alleged pedophile.

00:10:41.000 No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life.

00:10:44.000 Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten has since distanced Trump from Epstein, telling Politico in 2017 Trump, quote, had no relationship with Mr. Epstein and had no knowledge whatsoever of his conduct.

00:10:57.000 And Trump said he didn't know anything about all of this.

00:10:58.000 Now, that's the Trump of it, and now we get to the Clinton of it.

00:11:01.000 We'll get to that in just one second first.

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00:12:07.000 Okay, so, one of the names mentioned was Donald Trump.

00:12:10.000 And again, there's been no actual accusation that Donald Trump was involved in any of these activities other than he knew Epstein.

00:12:15.000 And so the question becomes, did he know what Epstein was doing?

00:12:19.000 Should he have said something if he did know?

00:12:20.000 But again, we have no evidence of any of that.

00:12:22.000 We just have Trump sort of mouthing off to New York Magazine in 2002, which is yucky, but not exactly indicative that Trump knew that Epstein was trafficking in 14-year-old girls.

00:12:33.000 There's a difference between icky and gross.

00:12:36.000 President Trump has plenty of experience with icky and gross when it comes to his treatment of the ladies.

00:12:40.000 There's a difference between that and knowing that somebody is an actual sex trafficker of underage women.

00:12:45.000 And then, there's Bill Clinton.

00:12:47.000 So Epstein was also an associate of Bill Clinton's, repeatedly lending the former president his jet to travel overseas.

00:12:53.000 Flight logs obtained by Fox News showed the former president took at least 26 trips aboard Epstein's Boeing 727, nicknamed the Lolita Express, from 2001 to 2003.

00:13:03.000 It's never good to ride around on a plane called the Lolita Express, guys.

00:13:06.000 It's always kind of a bad move.

00:13:07.000 That included extended junkets around the world with Epstein, and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including Tatiana, according to the outlet.

00:13:18.000 Clinton told New York Magazine through a spokesman for that same 2002 story, Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of 21st century science.

00:13:29.000 I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service and combating HIV AIDS.

00:13:38.000 Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena said the former president knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.

00:13:50.000 He said in 2002 and 2003, Clinton took four trips on Epstein's plane with multiple stops and that staff and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg.

00:13:57.000 So the claim is that the discrepancy between 26 flights and four trips is that a trip can include multiple flights.

00:14:06.000 And so it was four trips and Secret Service was there.

00:14:09.000 And thus, this was not Clinton flying over to Lolita Island or Sex Slave Island and then participating in the in the proceeds of evil.

00:14:18.000 Yorena said he has not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein's Ranch in New Mexico or his residence in Florida.

00:14:26.000 All of this is extraordinarily ugly, of course, and it does raise questions about whether we have a dual track of justice in the United States for folks who are exorbitantly wealthy.

00:14:36.000 The answer, of course, is yes.

00:14:37.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:14:40.000 So there are also accusations that this story was well-known by the media and that a cover-up basically took place, including by major editors.

00:14:51.000 Over at Democracy Now, which is a far-left website, they did an interview with Vicki Ward, who's an investigative journalist who profiled Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003, in a piece headlined, The Talented Mr. Epstein.

00:15:01.000 The magazine's editor at the time, according to Democracy Now, that editor named Graydon Carter, cut out the testimonies of two young women Epstein allegedly molested, who had spoken to Vicki Ward on the record, one of them underage.

00:15:12.000 Word wrote about what happened with her Epstein reporting for the Daily Beast in an article headline, I tried to warn you about sleazy billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.

00:15:20.000 And here is what she wrote about this, this year.

00:15:25.000 The piece was originally published in 2015, updated as of yesterday.

00:15:30.000 Vicky Ward says, Jeffrey wanted me to tell you that you looked so pretty, the female voice said into my disbelieving ear.

00:15:36.000 It was the fall of 2002.

00:15:38.000 I was pregnant, uncomfortably so, for the first time and with twins.

00:15:41.000 Due the following March, I was besieged by a relentless morning sickness.

00:15:44.000 I was sick in street gutters, onto my desk, at dinner with friends.

00:15:47.000 I suffered severe bloating and water retention.

00:15:49.000 But here was this faux compliment coming, bizarrely and a bit grotesquely, from a woman I hadn't met.

00:15:54.000 A female assistant who worked for one Jeffrey Epstein, a mysterious Gatsby-esque financier, Upon hearing of my assignment, Epstein had invited me to an off-the-record tea at his Upper East Side house, during which I distinctly remember avoiding the finger food, and then had his assistant call to tell me he thought I was pretty.

00:16:15.000 At first, it was the early stages of reporting, I was amused at having been so crassly underestimated for a man who clearly considered himself a sophisticated ladies' man.

00:16:22.000 The only book he'd left out for me to see was a paperback by the Marquis de Sade, That's a hell of a tactic.

00:16:27.000 I thought his journalist seduction technique was a bit like his table manners, in dire need of improvement.

00:16:32.000 If only it had ended there.

00:16:33.000 This was what it had been meant to be.

00:16:35.000 A gossipy piece about a shadowy, slightly sinister, but essentially harmless man who preferred track pants to suits, but somehow lived very large, had wealthy important friends, hung out with models, and shied away from the press.

00:16:44.000 But it didn't.

00:16:45.000 I haven't ever wanted to go back and dwell on that dark time.

00:16:48.000 But then, the latest Epstein scandal broke.

00:16:50.000 This is circa 2015.

00:16:52.000 When Prince Andrew was accused in a Florida court filing of having sex with a 17-year-old girl while she was a sex slave of Epstein's.

00:16:58.000 In the last 48 hours, I've had a journalist from the UK Sun newspaper put herself inside my foyer.

00:17:02.000 I've been inundated with requests for TV interviews.

00:17:05.000 Epstein's old mentor, the convicted fraudster Steven Hoffenberg, recently released from jail after a 20-year sentence, had been pestering me and my agent to write a movie.

00:17:12.000 Separately, Hoffenberg's daughter has gotten in touch, and it's gotten me thinking, there are some injustices maybe only time can right.

00:17:18.000 Perhaps now is the time.

00:17:20.000 And Vicki Ward goes on to talk about how all of this gossip was starting to emerge, how she talked with at least a couple of underage girls who accused Epstein of engaging in criminal activity, and how all of this was basically silenced by Graydon Carter.

00:17:37.000 How Graydon Carter had her cut all of this out of the story.

00:17:41.000 All of this does speak to something deeply ugly about the halls of power in American life, about the reason that there are so many people who are suspicious of exactly how our criminal justice system works.

00:17:59.000 Epstein speaks to all of those things.

00:18:01.000 Epstein speaks to all of those things.

00:18:04.000 And it does go to our perceptions of how justice ought to be done in the United States.

00:18:12.000 It does raise questions about how justice ought to be pursued.

00:18:15.000 Now, that does not mean that people are being over-prosecuted if they are poorer.

00:18:19.000 It does mean that people are being under-prosecuted if they are richer.

00:18:23.000 There's a difference between the two accusations.

00:18:25.000 We'll get to more of that in just one second.

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00:19:33.000 Okay, so let's talk about this dual track of justice.

00:19:35.000 So there's an accusation that's been made by Elizabeth Bruning.

00:19:39.000 Who is a sort of interesting columnist for the Washington Post.

00:19:43.000 And she talks at length very often about her sort of perception of wealth.

00:19:50.000 And what she says about this case is that this is an obvious case of rich people solidarity.

00:19:55.000 That basically rich people decided to overlook all of this because they are rich.

00:20:01.000 And that the best way to read this case is banality of banality of evil.

00:20:07.000 Among rich people who see class solidarity as the thing that really matters.

00:20:14.000 She tweeted out this morning, If you want to see class loyalty transcend partisan divides, just look at who rich liberal politicians hang out with when they think that you aren't paying attention.

00:20:25.000 Well, yes and no.

00:20:27.000 Yes and no.

00:20:27.000 The fact is that rich people do tend to hang out with rich people, just like people who are poor tend to hang out with people who are poor.

00:20:34.000 All the institutions that used to bridge that gap have basically been destroyed in American life.

00:20:38.000 One of the institutions that was chief in bridging that gap was the church, where people don't really check each other's income.

00:20:43.000 I go to a synagogue every Saturday.

00:20:45.000 I really don't know the income of the people I go to synagogue with, nor do I care.

00:20:49.000 Because we're there to participate in the same activity.

00:20:51.000 A lot of these sort of societal building institutions that cross class lines happen in religious contexts.

00:20:58.000 They don't tend to happen in social contexts.

00:21:01.000 These don't tend to happen in educational contexts, per se, because if you go to Yale, chances are that everybody you're going to school with is going to be rich in 10 years.

00:21:09.000 With all of that said, the idea that rich people are backing each other up because they are rich, that is an over-read of the situation.

00:21:16.000 It does mean, however, that they are in contact with other people who are rich and powerful on a regular basis, and Epstein was giving lots of money to various charities, including cancer charities and Harvard University, and this put him in contact with a lot of very rich and powerful people, so when he was in trouble, he could pick up the phone, and a lot of those people were on speed dial.

00:21:33.000 Wealth does come with power.

00:21:34.000 There's no question that that is true.

00:21:36.000 But this is why what happened with Alex Acosta really matters.

00:21:40.000 Because this is where the prosecutors are supposed to say no.

00:21:43.000 This is where the prosecutors are supposed to say, listen, you can hire the best attorneys, you can call all your powerful friends, but we stand for the people.

00:21:51.000 This is why prosecution is not the victim versus the perpetrator.

00:21:55.000 Prosecution is instead the people versus.

00:21:58.000 Every case in state prosecution courts is the people versus.

00:22:02.000 You're supposed to be representing the people of a particular state and that means that you're not supposed to be cutting sweetheart deals.

00:22:08.000 This is why I think what comes out from the DOJ about Acosta's involvement in the sweetheart deal is much more important than all of the people that Epstein was hobnobbing with.

00:22:16.000 If you can't prove that any of those people were actively engaged in sex trafficking, then I think casting aspersions at them that they were quote-unquote probably engaged in sex trafficking is inappropriate.

00:22:26.000 I think that's true whether you're talking about Donald Trump or whether you're talking about Bill Clinton.

00:22:30.000 Like, is it suspicious that all these guys were flying around with Alex Epstein?

00:22:35.000 Or Jeffrey Epstein, rather?

00:22:36.000 Yeah, of course that's suspicious.

00:22:37.000 But does that mean that we can immediately say that these guys were involved in the same sorts of activities?

00:22:42.000 No, it doesn't mean that at all.

00:22:44.000 It turns out that when you're hanging out with rich people all the time, some of those rich people are probably going to be criminals.

00:22:50.000 And that is true no matter which class you are in.

00:22:53.000 Virtually everybody knows somebody who has committed a crime.

00:22:56.000 And when you're very wealthy, And you are a philanthropist and you are trying to buy access for your business, which is basically why Bill Clinton was getting flown around in 2000 to 2003.

00:23:06.000 Well, then presumably you're going to come into contact with a lot of very powerful and corrupt people.

00:23:11.000 So.

00:23:13.000 I would put the Clinton and Trump stuff off to one side, and I would put the Secretary of Labor questions on another page entirely.

00:23:19.000 But suffice it to say, it'll be fascinating to watch as all of this unfolds.

00:23:26.000 Fascinating and horrifying.

00:23:29.000 The real question is whether our state prosecutors are doing their job.

00:23:32.000 That is the only question in the end that really matters here.

00:23:34.000 If there's no evidence that any of these other rich and powerful people were involved in this sort of criminal activity.

00:23:40.000 Okay.

00:23:40.000 Meanwhile, the media doing yeoman's work on behalf of stupid.

00:23:45.000 So if they own stock in Stupid, they are doing a wonderful job.

00:23:48.000 It is so obvious, truly obvious, what many members of the media have as their agenda.

00:23:55.000 So let's take NBC News as an example.

00:23:57.000 So NBC News yesterday launches the most bizarre, stupid story I may have seen in modern American history.

00:24:05.000 And that's saying a lot.

00:24:06.000 They launched a story yesterday from Meet the Press, and the title did this, quote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's great-great-grandfathers owned 14 slaves bringing reparations issue close to home.

00:24:20.000 And then there's a graphic of Mitch McConnell looking somber next to a bunch of text from slave sales from 1859-1860 with the signatures of his great-great-grandfathers.

00:24:37.000 So, this is now news that we are going to go back 160 years and dig up who your great-great-grandfathers were, and then use that to browbeat you into taking a position on slavery reparations that you do not hold.

00:24:51.000 Meet the Press Report's details about McConnell's ancestors, discovered by NBC News through a search of ancestry and census records, came in the wake of recent hearings on reparations before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.

00:25:04.000 Well, it's not quite that that has happened here.

00:25:07.000 Color me a little bit suspicious when it comes to NBC dropping this news.

00:25:11.000 Because immediately after this news drops, I mean immediately, within 24 hours and 12 hours of that news dropping last night, that's not news by the way.

00:25:20.000 Hey, great-great-grandpa did something is not news.

00:25:23.000 It was news in like 1855.

00:25:25.000 It is not news in 2019.

00:25:27.000 Because Mitch McConnell, it turns out he was not alive when his great-great-grandfathers were.

00:25:32.000 In fact, he was not a glint in their eye as of yet.

00:25:35.000 But apparently he is guilty of all of their sins, and this is really what's infusing his opposition to slavery reparations.

00:25:41.000 Obviously, it is the fact that he carries that slave owner blood within him.

00:25:45.000 that is infusing his deep and abiding hatred for slavery reparations because deep within his DNA is buried slaveholding.

00:25:54.000 Now, what makes this kind of weird, what makes that report kind of weird, just in terms of timing, is the fact that literally within 12 hours, Amy McGrath, who ran for Congress in Kentucky just last year, in 2018, announced that she is running against Mitch McConnell.

00:26:09.000 So weird.

00:26:10.000 Within 12 hours of this stupid bit of OPPO research, which is a terrible dumb bit of OPPO research dropping, within 12 hours, he has a challenger.

00:26:18.000 And a challenger who ran in an R-plus-9 district and lost by three?

00:26:23.000 She's gonna get crushed.

00:26:24.000 Okay?

00:26:24.000 The state of Kentucky went for Donald Trump by something like 30 points.

00:26:30.000 So she has no shot at all in this race.

00:26:32.000 The media, nonetheless, are playing this up.

00:26:33.000 They're gonna give her the Beto O'Rourke treatment, Amy McGrath.

00:26:36.000 She is a retired fighter pilot.

00:26:38.000 She also happens to be a person who has called herself the most progressive legislative mind in the state of Kentucky, so good luck with that one.

00:26:46.000 The media are pumping her up, and the way they're doing that is by dredging up information about Mitch McConnell's great-great-great-grandfather.

00:26:56.000 The piece is by Corky Simasco.

00:26:59.000 And here's what the idiotic piece says.

00:27:01.000 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said recently he opposes paying government reparations to the descendants of American slaves, has a family history deeply entwined in the issue.

00:27:10.000 Two of his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners, U.S.

00:27:13.000 Census records show.

00:27:15.000 Two great-great-grandfathers, James McConnell and Richard Daley, owned a total of at least 14 slaves in Limestone County, Alabama, all but two of them female, according to the county's slave schedules in the 1850 and 1860 censuses.

00:27:27.000 The details about McConnell's ancestors discovered by NBC News, the research of ancestry and census records, came in the wake of recent hearings on reparations.

00:27:36.000 McConnell said he was opposed to the idea, arguing it would be hard to figure out whom to compensate.

00:27:41.000 I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, when none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea, he said on June 14th.

00:27:48.000 We've tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation.

00:27:53.000 We've elected an African-American president.

00:27:55.000 NBC News, in several phone calls and emails to McConnell's office, asked if the senator was aware that his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners.

00:28:02.000 The office did not respond to those requests, nor should they, because that's stupid crap.

00:28:08.000 You know, honestly, this is where we're going?

00:28:10.000 We're going to track down everybody's four generations' removed ancestors and determine what crimes they committed?

00:28:17.000 This is how we decide all of this?

00:28:19.000 Now, there's some obvious problems with this particular angle.

00:28:23.000 Namely, that a lot of people you wouldn't expect have slaveholders in the family tree.

00:28:28.000 Take, for example, Kamala Harris.

00:28:30.000 Here's a piece from her father, Donald J. Harris, who's a professor over at Stanford.

00:28:35.000 Quote, My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother, Miss Chrissy, née Christina Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown, who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brownstown, And to my maternal grandfather, my maternal grandmother, Miss Iris.

00:28:52.000 So, it turns out that, you know who else has slaveholder blood running in her veins?

00:28:58.000 Presumably, if we're using the same metrics as Mitch McConnell, is Kamala Harris.

00:29:04.000 But I guess Kamala Harris is off scot-free because she has the right politics.

00:29:06.000 That's how this works.

00:29:07.000 So, a thing for which you are not responsible.

00:29:09.000 We used to have this thing in America where you weren't supposed to judge somebody based on an immutable characteristic.

00:29:15.000 Like their race, for example.

00:29:18.000 The level of melanin in their skin.

00:29:20.000 Based on their ancestry.

00:29:22.000 You weren't supposed to judge people based on that, but apparently you can if they hold the wrong political positions.

00:29:27.000 So Mitch McConnell opposes slavery reparations.

00:29:29.000 He has two great-great-grandfathers who were slaveholders.

00:29:32.000 That's probably why he's doing this.

00:29:34.000 Because he wants to avoid paying $80,000 or something in taxes.

00:29:37.000 That's obviously why Mitch McConnell is doing all of this.

00:29:41.000 And Kamala Harris gets off scot-free because Kamala Harris, of course, while she has slaveholders in the family tree, she's in favor of reparations.

00:29:49.000 That means she's... But this does raise some weird questions.

00:29:52.000 about Barack Obama, who, as it turns out, used to oppose slavery reparations.

00:29:57.000 Like in 2008, he came out and he said openly that he was opposed to slavery reparations.

00:30:03.000 So what do we do with the fact that Barack Obama has, you guessed it, slaveholders in his family tree?

00:30:09.000 And listen to how the Baltimore Sun covered this twist on Obama's family history at the time.

00:30:15.000 This is more appropriate coverage, but here is how the coverage was done about Barack Obama versus NBC News doing it about Mitch McConnell.

00:30:21.000 Quote, Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother was from Kansas, but an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now.

00:30:32.000 It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.

00:30:37.000 The records, which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois Senator or his relatives, were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Adams Wright Wisner, who works at the Library of Congress.

00:30:47.000 The report carries a disclaimer that it is a first draft, one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.

00:30:52.000 According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census, in Nelson County, Kentucky.

00:31:03.000 Oh, so they were next-door neighbors with Mitch McConnell's ancestors.

00:31:05.000 The same records show that one of Obama's great great great great great grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

00:31:11.000 So it turns out that Obama has basically the same family story as Mitch McConnell.

00:31:16.000 And also opposed slavery reparations.

00:31:18.000 But that wasn't why he opposed slavery reparations, obviously, at the time.

00:31:22.000 But for Mitch McConnell it is.

00:31:24.000 The media are so corrupt and so stupid.

00:31:26.000 At least members of the media who cover this kind of stuff is news.

00:31:28.000 The Washington Post covered it too.

00:31:31.000 It's all insipid and it is obviously a smear and obviously a hit job.

00:31:35.000 But this is what so many members of our media are engaged in these days.

00:31:39.000 It truly is gross and stupid.

00:31:41.000 We'll get to more of that in just one second.

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00:32:43.000 Okay, in just a second we're going to get to the Democratic presidential race where the media are doing Incredible work on behalf of candidates they love, and they are hatchet-jobbing everybody else.

00:32:52.000 We'll get to that in a second.

00:32:53.000 First, head on over to dailywire.com for $9.99 a month.

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00:33:21.000 out we are the largest fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation so as is evident from mitch mcconnell and their coverage of mitch mcconnell's ancestors going back four generations and this is now obviously the reason that he feels the way that he feels about a current political issue today i mean it

00:33:45.000 I mean, it's such an astonishingly stupid and perverse and corrupt and sick way of doing politics to go back to something no one can control, namely their ancestry, and then declare that inevitably, based on that ancestry, that is probably why they hold the positions that they do today.

00:34:02.000 It's so divisive and so cruel and so terrible and so inconsistent.

00:34:06.000 And as I say, Barack Obama had slaveholders in the family tree, two of them.

00:34:11.000 Kamala Harris apparently, according to her dad, had slaveholders in the family tree.

00:34:16.000 By the way, I will note also that Snopes did a fact check on the claim that Kamala Harris had slaveholders in the family tree, and they labeled it unknown and suggested that right-wing purveyors of doubt were putting out that information.

00:34:29.000 No, Donald Harris, Kamala Harris's father, put out that information.

00:34:33.000 So, are we to take him at his word, or no?

00:34:36.000 Apparently not, if it does not cut in Kamala Harris' favor.

00:34:39.000 Snopes.com in their fact-checking.

00:34:40.000 Well done, guys.

00:34:41.000 Just really strong stuff.

00:34:44.000 When the media have an agenda, they're willing to push it however they can.

00:34:46.000 Right now, in the 2020 race, their agenda is to knock Joe Biden out.

00:34:49.000 So there are a couple new polls that are out today.

00:34:51.000 Joe Biden is still leading the field, but those polls are obviously narrowing, and that is a problem for Joe Biden.

00:34:57.000 The latest poll is an Emerson poll that is out today, and it...

00:35:02.000 Kind of shows what polls have been showing for the last couple of days.

00:35:05.000 Biden continues to have a substantial lead.

00:35:08.000 He is at 30 percent, according to Emerson.

00:35:10.000 He's at 30, but there are three candidates who are tied at 15.

00:35:14.000 And that's a problem for him, because if he's at 30, they ain't all going to be at 15 by the time these primaries roll around.

00:35:21.000 Pete Buttigieg, by the way, you want to talk about somebody who's been inflated by the media, Buttigieg is it.

00:35:25.000 I mean, Buttigieg raised a fortune, a fortune, and he is Good on the stage.

00:35:30.000 She's a good talker, Pete Buttigieg.

00:35:32.000 I've talked about this before, but he's averaging 5.3% in the polling.

00:35:36.000 I mean, this is not somebody who's cracked double digits in one poll in the last month and a half, as far as I'm aware.

00:35:42.000 In the last several polls, he's at 5, 6, 8, 4, 4, 6, 4.

00:35:44.000 So Pete Buttigieg is really not a top contender.

00:35:49.000 Right now, there are four top contenders in the Democratic Party.

00:35:52.000 Those are Biden, Harris, Sanders, Warren.

00:35:54.000 Harris, Sanders, and Warren are all splitting 45% of the vote.

00:35:58.000 As Sanders continues to recede, what you will probably see is that support bleed over to Elizabeth Warren.

00:36:03.000 And you may start to see Kamala Harris continue to rise if black voters start to bleed over to Harris.

00:36:08.000 So I think that it's a three person race.

00:36:10.000 It may be a two person race between Biden and Harris.

00:36:13.000 If this continues, the two latest polls, Emerson has Biden at 30, and then the other three candidates tied at 15.

00:36:19.000 Politico has Biden at 31, Bernie Sanders at a solid 19, Elizabeth Warren at 13, and Kamala Harris at 14 points.

00:36:28.000 There's a poll out today that showed actually that among 2016 Bernie Sanders voters, Elizabeth Warren was now the favorite candidate, which is sort of Sort of fascinating.

00:36:38.000 In any case, it is obvious that many members of the media want to see Joe Biden go down.

00:36:42.000 They're not interested in Joe Biden being the candidate.

00:36:44.000 So here's a CNN panel saying that Joe Biden is out of touch.

00:36:47.000 He's obviously out of touch.

00:36:48.000 Well, he's certainly out of step with the far left of the party.

00:36:52.000 There's no question about that.

00:36:53.000 And the challenge often for Democrats in these kind of elections is the primary base is further to the left than the general election primary voter and independents.

00:37:04.000 So it's always a hard line to walk if you're really focused on the general election.

00:37:10.000 No different for Biden than anybody else.

00:37:13.000 Okay, so this is going to be the repeated line and Joe Biden is feeling it.

00:37:17.000 So Joe Biden was on CNN last night and she was forced into the position of trying to defend her husband from charges of racism.

00:37:25.000 And this is going to be basically Biden's That is not the position you want to be in if you are Joe Biden defending the plurality of the black vote in the Democratic primaries that you currently hold.

00:37:39.000 Here's Jill Biden trying to explain that Joe Biden is not a racist and there's one glaring absence in this quote that will make itself apparent.

00:37:47.000 I mean, the one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he's a racist.

00:37:51.000 I mean, he got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights.

00:37:56.000 And then to be elected with Barack Obama, and then someone is saying, you know, you're a racist.

00:38:02.000 As soon as I heard those words... Well, they say you're not a racist, but... I know, but as soon as I heard those words, I thought, uh-oh, what's coming next?

00:38:10.000 And I think the American people know Joe Biden.

00:38:14.000 They know his values.

00:38:15.000 They know what he stands for.

00:38:16.000 And they didn't buy it.

00:38:19.000 OK, so Jill says, well, he served with Barack for eight years.

00:38:21.000 Where's Barack?

00:38:22.000 Where is he?

00:38:23.000 Where's Michelle?

00:38:24.000 She wouldn't comment on this.

00:38:26.000 Joe Biden has problems.

00:38:27.000 The same media that is attempting to take down Mitch McConnell.

00:38:30.000 Many of them are very eager to watch Joe Biden burn as long as he's not the nominee.

00:38:33.000 As soon as he becomes the nominee, then, of course, things switch on him.

00:38:38.000 The rest of the Democratic Party continues to run dramatically to the left.

00:38:41.000 Elizabeth Warren So I am.

00:38:43.000 attempting to grab that Bernie Sanders base and successfully wresting away at least double-digit support.

00:38:48.000 Elizabeth Warren reiterated yesterday that she wants to decriminalize border crossing, which would effectively mean that if you cross the border illegally in the United States, you get to remain forever because we would now have no grounds for deportation, absent some other lawbreaking, I assume.

00:39:01.000 Quick yes or no repealing 1325 of immigration.

00:39:05.000 Are you in favor of that?

00:39:06.000 So I am.

00:39:08.000 I think that the whole notion of criminalizing the approach to coming across the border without documentation is not making anybody any safer and that we just need to be in a different position on this.

00:39:28.000 Okay, so Elizabeth Warren's claim there that we need to be in a different position on illegal immigration is a very, very radical claim.

00:39:35.000 And not particularly surprising.

00:39:37.000 Not particularly surprising because Elizabeth Warren is indeed a radical.

00:39:40.000 She's out-raising Bernie Sanders, by the way.

00:39:42.000 In the last quarter, she out-raised Bernie Sanders.

00:39:45.000 $19.1 million she raised in three months.

00:39:46.000 That is not a huge election haul at this point.

00:39:49.000 But it does place her firmly in the top echelon of the Democratic money race, according to the New York Times.

00:39:55.000 She had raised just $6 million in her campaign's first three months, and it had caused some people like me to write her off.

00:40:00.000 And she obviously was not to be written off.

00:40:03.000 Two candidates have reportedly topped $20 million in the second quarter.

00:40:06.000 Pete Buttigieg raised $25 million in the second quarter to be at 5% in the polling, and Joe Biden collected $22 million.

00:40:13.000 Sanders brought in $18 million in the quarter.

00:40:15.000 Kamala Harris really lagging behind at $12 million, although that is going to uptick significantly next quarter.

00:40:21.000 It's not just Elizabeth Warren who is moving radically to the left.

00:40:25.000 Bill de Blasio, who has no shot in this presidential race at all, he came out yesterday and he suggested that he basically wants to stop privatization of education, like no more private schools if he can get away with it.

00:40:36.000 That if he can get away with it, he would like to get rid of public funding for charter schools.

00:40:41.000 Many of which have been the most successful schools in his own area of New York.

00:40:44.000 Bill de Blasio going full commie here.

00:40:46.000 Alright everyone, I'm gonna be blunt with you.

00:40:50.000 I am angry about the state of public education in America.

00:40:55.000 I am angry about the fact that you are disrespected on a regular basis in this country despite doing such important work.

00:41:03.000 I am angry about the privatizers.

00:41:07.000 I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need, public education.

00:41:11.000 I know we're not supposed to be saying hate.

00:41:14.000 Our teachers taught us not to.

00:41:16.000 I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.

00:41:19.000 OK, so that is, again, where the Democratic Party is.

00:41:22.000 If that's where the Democratic Party is and that's where the media are, then Joe Biden has some serious trouble on his hands.

00:41:27.000 The good news for Joe Biden is that now there's another candidate in the race who's going to draw significant support.

00:41:31.000 I'm talking, of course, about Tom Steyer, the billionaire.

00:41:34.000 Now, I know we lost Eric Swalwell yesterday, and that's really sad because we are all Eric Swalwell.

00:41:38.000 Eric Swalwell dropped out.

00:41:40.000 He is out.

00:41:41.000 His campaign lasted a grand total of 91 days.

00:41:44.000 But it felt like longer than that, frankly, because every moment Eric Swalwell was on stage was an eternity.

00:41:50.000 But now we have a new candidate jumping in.

00:41:51.000 It's just what we need.

00:41:52.000 It's Tom Steyer, who's already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on quixotic campaigns to fight climate change while flying around in his private jet.

00:42:01.000 Tom Steyer is now going to spend another $100 million, presumably running for president on the basis of he likes the environment.

00:42:07.000 And he launched a campaign ad in which he trotted out, apparently he raided Beto O'Rourke's wardrobe.

00:42:13.000 He went and he got a pair of faded jeans and a blue shirt and then he like rented a ranch that he looks like a man of the people.

00:42:20.000 He's out there ranching with his billions of dollars.

00:42:23.000 Here is Tom Steyer's bizarre, strange ad launching his presidential campaign which will garner presumably the support of his immediate family.

00:42:33.000 I think what people believe is that the system has left them.

00:42:36.000 I think people believe that the corporations have bought the democracy, that the politicians don't care about or respect them, don't put them first, are not working for them, but are actually working for the people who have rigged the system.

00:42:50.000 We've got to take the corporate control out of our politics.

00:42:54.000 All these issues go away when you take away the paid opposition from corporations who make trillions of extra dollars by controlling our political system.

00:43:07.000 What do we care about?

00:43:08.000 We care about proving the world and handing it on to the next generation in ways that they can lead better lives.

00:43:14.000 He is so inspiring.

00:43:16.000 And by inspiring, I mean, I'm almost falling asleep watching this.

00:43:19.000 I can't, I can't wait.

00:43:20.000 I mean, so glad that there is just like a random line high-fiving people.

00:43:24.000 What's hilarious about that particular shot right there is that it is obvious that this line is not there for him, right?

00:43:29.000 It's obviously a gay pride parade.

00:43:30.000 And he just kind of shows up and is high-fiving people.

00:43:32.000 It's like, they're all here for me!

00:43:34.000 And they're all looking in the other direction.

00:43:36.000 And there he is just high-fiving randos.

00:43:37.000 And they're like, we have no idea who you are or why you are here.

00:43:43.000 Really, really spectacular stuff.

00:43:46.000 Good job there, Tom Seyer.

00:43:48.000 So I'm glad.

00:43:49.000 We needed more people in this particular Democratic race.

00:43:52.000 It is very important that we have more candidates.

00:43:54.000 Without more candidates, what exactly were we going to do?

00:43:57.000 So, Tom Steyer, Godspeed to you, sir.

00:44:01.000 Godspeed.

00:44:02.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, Kirsten Gillibrand is still hanging out over there, and I think she'll exit the race pretty soon.

00:44:09.000 I don't think that Kirsten Gillibrand can last very much longer, despite the fact that the Washington Post is trying to pump her up with a piece called, Why America is Ignoring Kirsten Gillibrand.

00:44:18.000 It's a very easy answer, because she's the worst.

00:44:21.000 Four-word answer.

00:44:23.000 Because she's the worst, that's why.

00:44:24.000 According to the Washington Post, the ignoring of Kirsten Gillibrand is happening because she is boring.

00:44:29.000 It says, in 2019, this is by Anna Peel, in 2019, it's unforgivable for a presidential candidate to be boring.

00:44:35.000 Maybe that's our loss.

00:44:37.000 The problem is not that she's boring.

00:44:38.000 The problem is she's held every position on every issue, that she is grating beyond all imagination, and that she will not stop being Kirsten Gillibrand.

00:44:48.000 You can't watch a clip of Kirsten Gillibrand without understanding why everybody is ignoring her.

00:44:52.000 Here's Kirsten Gillibrand explaining that it should be better than Joe Biden would be to take on Donald Trump.

00:44:57.000 Do you think that Joe Biden waited too long to apologize?

00:45:01.000 You know, that's not for me to decide.

00:45:03.000 I just know why I'm running.

00:45:04.000 And I think I'm the better candidate to take on President Trump.

00:45:08.000 Because my history is I take on the fights that other people don't.

00:45:11.000 I've stood up to the Pentagon twice.

00:45:13.000 First over the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

00:45:15.000 And then over sexual violence in the military.

00:45:18.000 I stood up to my party when they're wrong.

00:45:19.000 And you have to be able to stand up to fight for what's right, even when it's hard.

00:45:23.000 Especially when it's hard.

00:45:24.000 And that's why I'm the best candidate to take on President Trump and to govern this country moving forward.

00:45:29.000 Why are people ignoring her?

00:45:30.000 Because she's eminently ignorable.

00:45:32.000 Unlike Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, she's eminently ignorable.

00:45:34.000 That is why she's being ignored.

00:45:36.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then a bevy, a cornucopia of things that I hate.

00:45:40.000 You know, you come back from vacation.

00:45:42.000 There's a lot to hate.

00:45:43.000 And so we've got to do some things that I hate.

00:45:44.000 So, things that I like.

00:45:46.000 Over the vacation, I was getting up very, very early and making my kids breakfast because they decided it would be fun to wake up at 5.45 every single morning.

00:45:54.000 And so I would wake up, and they would sit there, and they would read books, and I would watch TV, frankly.

00:46:01.000 And cook breakfast for them.

00:46:03.000 And one of the movies that I watched while I was doing this was a movie called The Standoff at Sparrow Creek.

00:46:07.000 It got very little attention.

00:46:08.000 I don't even think it was in theaters.

00:46:09.000 I'm pretty sure it was only available on demand.

00:46:12.000 The basic premise of the film is that there is a militia group that receives a call that a militia member has shot up a bunch of police officers, and then they gather together because they're afraid that the police are gonna come after them, even though they're not responsible, and they realize that, at least they think, one of them committed this crime.

00:46:30.000 The movie is a really, really good, tight, kind of black box thriller.

00:46:35.000 One of the things that I really enjoy are movies that can be done basically with no budget, and this is a movie that was done with no budget, and you can tell it was done with no budget.

00:46:44.000 I also tend to like claustrophobic movies, movies that are written... You really have to write a great movie in order to make it work within the confines of a couple of sets.

00:46:55.000 So, for example, 8 Cloverfield Lane.

00:46:58.000 The first three quarters of that film is just phenomenal.

00:47:01.000 It's just phenomenal, because it's all taking place with about three characters, four characters, in, I think it's three characters, in a very small space.

00:47:08.000 This is done with basically five characters, six characters, in a very small space.

00:47:13.000 So it's about these guys trying to figure out which one of them did it.

00:47:15.000 Should they turn them over to the police?

00:47:18.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:47:20.000 About 30 minutes ago, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of people.

00:47:23.000 It was a cop's room.

00:47:24.000 A cop in a casket.

00:47:25.000 A cop in attendance.

00:47:27.000 He got away.

00:47:27.000 Who?

00:47:28.000 Shooter.

00:47:29.000 They're saying the shooter was a militia man.

00:47:29.000 Shooter got away.

00:47:32.000 Contact the other militias nearby.

00:47:33.000 Tell them we didn't do it.

00:47:34.000 Okay, so now, the remaining cops and the inevitable military reinforcements are searching for... Us.

00:47:46.000 We should get rid of anything that can link us to a shooting.

00:47:52.000 One's missing.

00:47:57.000 Who's got it?

00:47:58.000 Okay, it's an actor's showcase.

00:48:00.000 It really is quite good.

00:48:01.000 It got very mixed reviews, I think mainly because it doesn't take the militia with the sort of lightheartedness, I think, that the media wish to treat militia groups with, like it treats the characters seriously.

00:48:14.000 It does point out that many of them are What Hillary Clinton would call deplorables, not like Donald Trump voters, but actually like one is a former white supremacist and all of this.

00:48:24.000 But it's it's got some really interesting twists and turns.

00:48:27.000 Go check it out.

00:48:28.000 The standoff at Sparrow Creek.

00:48:29.000 OK, time for some things that I hate.

00:48:34.000 OK, so thing that I hate, number one, there is this new trend.

00:48:37.000 I don't know why young people are apparently incredibly stupid.

00:48:41.000 There's a new trend of people who are who are destroying products that are on the shelves at supermarkets simply out of pure nihilism.

00:48:50.000 It feels like soft core clockwork orange.

00:48:53.000 Basically, people just running around And doing things to hurt other people for no discernible purpose.

00:49:00.000 One of these videos was making the rounds on Twitter yesterday.

00:49:02.000 A young fellow who is apparently opening up an Arizona iced tea, spitting in it.

00:49:07.000 It's disgusting.

00:49:08.000 And then closing it back up and putting it back on the shelf and smiling about it.

00:49:11.000 What a delightful, delightful human being.

00:49:14.000 I can only hope that that person is captured and then goes to jail.

00:49:17.000 There's an article over at the New York Times today by a person named Farrah Stockman says a man licked a carton of ice cream for a viral internet challenge.

00:49:24.000 Now he's in jail.

00:49:26.000 Says it started with a video of a teenage girl licking a carton of Blue Bell ice cream in a store and then putting it back on the shelf.

00:49:31.000 The video, which went viral under the hashtag Ice Cream Challenge, grossed out a nation and struck fear in the hearts of ice cream lovers everywhere.

00:49:38.000 In fact, actually, I saw a picture yesterday of a freezer that had been locked up like you would lock up razors at a grocery store.

00:49:47.000 I've been locked up with a sign saying that you needed help to open the freezer because of this idiocy.

00:49:51.000 Now the authorities and store owners across the country are wrestling with how to stop a series of copycat videos made by people committing the same crime.

00:49:57.000 Investigators in East Texas, where the first video originated, tracked down the girl but turned the case over to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department because she's a minor.

00:50:05.000 Then, on Saturday, the police in Louisiana arrested a man who posted a video on Facebook of himself licking a carton of ice cream in a supermarket, even though he produced a receipt showing he actually purchased the ice cream afterward.

00:50:15.000 Laniece Lloyd Martin III, a 36-year-old unemployed man, has been in jail ever since.

00:50:20.000 Lonnie Cavalier, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office in Assumption Parish, said Mr. Martin appeared surprised to be arrested.

00:50:27.000 Mr. Cavalier said he didn't feel like he had done anything wrong.

00:50:29.000 His explanation was, all I wanted to do was be famous, and I paid for the ice cream.

00:50:34.000 But Martin was charged with criminal mischief for tampering with a product before he had purchased it, and with unlawful posting of criminal activity for notoriety and publicity.

00:50:42.000 It is indeed criminal activity to make it appear as though you are stealing somebody's product, and then buy the product.

00:50:50.000 There's one thing, like, I'll be in the supermarket with my kids, and my kids want to open something, and I know I'm about to buy it, so I just hand it to my kids and they eat it.

00:50:56.000 I don't take it and put it back on the shelf, put it on video, and then go and buy it to create the perception that my kids have defaced product at a store, which can help drive down business at the store.

00:51:06.000 Martin will spend at least four nights in jail awaiting his bail hearing, as he should.

00:51:09.000 In Louisiana, the authorities have 72 hours to bring suspects before a judge, but because of the July 4th holiday, the clock didn't start ticking until Monday.

00:51:17.000 France Borghardt, a defense lawyer, said the authorities appeared to be trying to make an example out of Mr. Martin in an effort to put a stop to the flurry of ice cream licking incidents.

00:51:26.000 This is a highly aggressive arrest based on a seldom-used statute that is constitutionally questionable, said Mr. Borghardt.

00:51:32.000 He said that the charges were questionable because it was unclear whether Martin had committed a crime.

00:51:37.000 He said it criminalizes speech.

00:51:38.000 Okay, it is not speech to lick ice cream and put it back on the shelf and tape it.

00:51:42.000 That is not speech.

00:51:43.000 That is not a form of protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

00:51:47.000 My God, people.

00:51:49.000 But there is something deeper going on, and it is in that quote.

00:51:52.000 It is in that quote.

00:51:54.000 That quote is that this person wanted to be famous.

00:51:56.000 All I wanted to do was be famous, and I paid for the ice cream.

00:52:00.000 If all you want to do in life is be famous, and you don't care whether it's for doing something stupid or doing something notorious, Then you will earn fame and you should earn ignominy.

00:52:10.000 But there is a there's a soullessness to people who are doing this kind of stuff.

00:52:14.000 Now, is this supremely prevalent?

00:52:16.000 No, it's not.

00:52:17.000 It's not.

00:52:18.000 But the fact that this stuff is being imitated at all, there are copycatters who are out there doing this sort of stuff.

00:52:24.000 Should be disturbing to anyone.

00:52:27.000 And it shouldn't be laughed off as, well, you know, this is just something young people do.

00:52:31.000 First of all, it's actually dangerous, right?

00:52:31.000 It's stupid.

00:52:33.000 I don't know what kind of diseases people have when they're putting their mouths in other people's food and then putting it back on the shelf.

00:52:40.000 And it's dangerous for businesses because now you've created the perception that any package of ice cream that I open may in fact be defaced.

00:52:46.000 But beyond that, what is going on in the heads of people who are so concerned about fame that they forget about basic duty?

00:52:53.000 I'm working on a manuscript right now that is tentatively titled Rights and Duties, all about the fact that we have spent so much time in America focusing on rights that we spend very little time focusing on duties.

00:53:04.000 And the flip side of rights are duties.

00:53:07.000 Your right to free speech is protected by my duty not to inhibit your free speech.

00:53:13.000 Your right to property is protected by my duty not to violate your property rights, right?

00:53:20.000 Every right has a concomitant duty.

00:53:23.000 And we've spent a lot of time in this country not focusing on the virtues that have to be instilled in a population in order to protect rights.

00:53:30.000 If you want rights to be protected, like true rights, the right to do what you want, then we also have to have a population that is not going to let liberty descend into licentiousness.

00:53:39.000 We have to have a population that is not going to allow a perception of you can do whatever you want to devolve into, I can do whatever I want, even if it harms other people, or even if it's bad for me, or even if it's bad generally.

00:53:53.000 I'm in favor of a government that stays out of everybody's business, that I get to swing my fist around until I hit you in the nose.

00:53:58.000 But I don't want a society of people swinging their fists around because there will lead to more bloody noses.

00:54:04.000 The fact that there are more people who are doing bad things, even if it's not hurting other people, eventually, the argument is, and I think it's correct, that will lead to more people doing bad things that do hurt other people.

00:54:14.000 That doesn't mean the government should come in and regulate people waving their fists around without hurting anybody else.

00:54:19.000 It does mean that we should be inculcating a culture where we disdain this sort of stuff.

00:54:24.000 That we should be inculcating a culture where we look at how people act, and we do make judgments, social judgments, about how they act.

00:54:31.000 Now we have created this bizarre ersatz virtue, this weird ersatz virtue, where virtue lies in being yourself.

00:54:40.000 And being yourself is the measure of all things.

00:54:41.000 Being authentic is the measure of all things.

00:54:45.000 Your duty lies to yourself.

00:54:46.000 It doesn't lie to others.

00:54:48.000 True duty lies in fulfilling your own desires and longings.

00:54:51.000 It doesn't lie in your duty to society or the common good or others.

00:54:56.000 And this has led to an argument that's been made by a lot of conservatives, including my friend Sourabh Amari over at the New York Post.

00:55:01.000 And his argument has been that liberalism itself, that liberty and liberalism, the idea of a small government liberalism, That that inevitably could lead to a licentiousness that undermines liberality itself.

00:55:15.000 It undermines your rights because as people start to act worse and worse, people want more and more government regulation.

00:55:20.000 I think that there is something to that argument, but I think that the balance was struck by the founders who said we have to have strong social institutions that inculcate virtue and morality and decency in people.

00:55:30.000 John Adams's quote about this, which I still think is the best quote on this, where he said that our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

00:55:38.000 That's correct.

00:55:39.000 That is, in its heart, correct.

00:55:41.000 If you want to live in a society with others, you have to have a common framework of responsibility.

00:55:46.000 That doesn't have to be crammed down by government.

00:55:48.000 That has to be voluntarily undertaken by people who care about each other enough that they don't go around licking ice cream and putting it back on the shelves.

00:55:54.000 So I understand this is a deep read on what is obviously a stupid juvenile prank, but there is A seething, a roiling feeling that you owe nothing to anybody in your society unless the government orders you to do it.

00:56:09.000 And that's very dangerous because then the government becomes the be-all end-all, number one.

00:56:13.000 And number two, it makes you a worse person.

00:56:15.000 Because the stuff that makes you a better person is exercising your free will, exercising your free choice to help others and live in a society where you are doing good for somebody else, as opposed to trying to get famous and be notorious for doing something, anything.

00:56:32.000 As we, again, start to measure ourselves...

00:56:35.000 By our beliefs about ourselves, not by beliefs of others, we become worse.

00:56:41.000 The self-esteem movement has been something terrible for the United States.

00:56:45.000 There's this notion that was put out in the 1950s, 1960s, that self-esteem was the reason that crime was occurring.

00:56:52.000 That the rise in crime was tied to low self-esteem.

00:56:54.000 All we had to do was boost self-esteem in order to lower crime rates.

00:56:57.000 If we wanted less bad behavior, we needed to boost self-esteem.

00:56:59.000 It turns out that precisely the opposite is true.

00:57:01.000 Sociopaths have extraordinarily high self-esteem.

00:57:05.000 Self-esteem is not, in any market way, tied to whether you're a criminal or not.

00:57:08.000 In fact, lower self-esteem, a feeling that you have not achieved enough, is very often tied to achievement.

00:57:13.000 Amy Chu, so-called Tigermon professor over at Yale, she's talked about the idea that cultures that actually inculcate a feeling of shame for lack of achievement tend to be more successful.

00:57:24.000 That self-esteem is not part of the equation.

00:57:26.000 That earned self-esteem is important.

00:57:28.000 Earned achievement is important.

00:57:31.000 And that you can earn that self-esteem in a number of ways, including helping out other people in your community.

00:57:37.000 But in a society that has disdained shame, in a society that says that shame is no longer good or right, that shame itself is part of the problem, that true virtue lies in disdaining shame.

00:57:50.000 That when people say to you, you're doing something wrong, maybe you should think about how you're acting, your first reaction should be, screw you, I'm being me.

00:57:58.000 A society that disdains that is building a society of people whose only judge of morality is how many Twitter followers they have, or how many Facebook followers they have, or how many Instagram views they have.

00:58:11.000 And that's going to lead to depression.

00:58:13.000 It is going to lead to a feeling of worthlessness.

00:58:15.000 You know why?

00:58:15.000 Because this is worthless.

00:58:17.000 It's worthless.

00:58:19.000 Why does any of that matter?

00:58:21.000 Why would fame, without any regard for the reason for your fame, be something worth pursuing?

00:58:28.000 Especially here, it's not gonna make the guy rich.

00:58:29.000 It's not like he's gonna get any ancillary benefits from being famous.

00:58:34.000 It's almost like people who are writing their names underneath, graffitying their names on a subway station in order to feel as though they have left their mark.

00:58:45.000 There are a couple of ways to leave your mark in real ways in the world.

00:58:48.000 One is to be incredibly destructive, and one is to be incredibly creative.

00:58:53.000 To help other people, to be part of that social fabric, to rebuild communities.

00:58:58.000 The individualistic atomism that's been promoted by social liberalism in our culture is really dangerous stuff.

00:59:04.000 And we tend to think of it as fulfillment and freedom.

00:59:08.000 But the idea of freedom was always tied to the notion that we were going to take care of each other on a voluntaristic basis.

00:59:14.000 We were going to build together.

00:59:16.000 That we didn't need government to tell us what to do.

00:59:18.000 We took pride in the fact that we could get together and build things.

00:59:22.000 That doesn't mean we were perfect, but it does mean the mentality was better than the mentality is now.

00:59:27.000 The mentality now is, if the government doesn't prohibit it, then I am allowed to do it, nay, it is promoted that I do it.

00:59:33.000 The government is tasked with inculcating its own peculiar sense of what is right and what is wrong.

00:59:38.000 But you are not only under no obligation to do that, you are basically prohibited from even enacting your private morality in public with others on a voluntary basis.

00:59:48.000 And that leads to a generation of people who really are kind of lost.

00:59:52.000 That's what I'm seeing out there, and I think that it's It's dangerous.

00:59:57.000 We need a return to virtue.

00:59:59.000 Virtue is not a word that gets said a lot anymore, but we need to talk about virtue, and we need to talk about duty, and I'm not talking about the government imposing it from above.

01:00:06.000 In fact, the reason that I want virtue and duty to return is so that we don't have to have a government imposing all of this stuff from above.

01:00:13.000 If liberty turns into licentiousness, licentiousness pretty clearly and obviously turns into tyranny.

01:00:19.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with a lot more content, two additional hours.

01:00:23.000 We'll see you then.

01:00:24.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:00:24.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:00:30.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

01:00:33.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

01:00:34.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:00:36.000 Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.

01:00:38.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

01:00:40.000 And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.

01:00:43.000 Edited by Adam Sievitz.

01:00:44.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

01:00:46.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:00:48.000 Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.

01:00:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:00:52.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

01:00:55.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

01:00:58.000 Alleged crapstain Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested again for allegedly raping and pimping allegedly underage girls, like the alleged scumbag he allegedly is.

01:01:07.000 As a result, Epstein's Wikipedia entry is being rewritten to edit out Epstein's good pal Bill Clinton, And Labor Secretary Alex Acosta is being set up as the sole scapegoat because Acosta provides a tenuous connection between Epstein and Donald Trump.

01:01:21.000 The coverage of this story is going to reveal who among journalists and politicians cares about the truth and who only cares about preserving Democrat power.

01:01:30.000 We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 09, 2019

The Epstein Connection | Ep. 813

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