Florida's recount continues to be fuddled, Jim Acosta wins a great victory, and we check the mailbag. Plus, the latest on the latest from Florida on the recount and what s going to happen with the recount in the future, and much, much more! Ben Shapiro is on The Ben Shapiro Show, wherever you get your news and information, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, you won't want to miss this! Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, leave us a rating and review, and be sure to subscribe on your favorite streaming platform so you never miss an episode. Enjoy & Retweet! -Ben Shapiro Subscribe, Like, Share, and Retweet Ben Shapiro's new book, is out now! If you like what you hear, share it with a friend or become a supporter of Ben Shapiro s work, and share it on your social media accounts! Thank you Ben Shapiro for the book review, review, or subscribe to our new podcast, and spread the word to your friends and family about what he's writing about! . Thanks Ben Shapiro and his amazing work! Also, don't forget to tell a friend about Ben Shapiro on his new book: if you're a writer, tweet him and tell him what you think about what you're listening to him on his podcast! or his book review or review him about it on Insta- or send him your thoughts on it! and he'll get a shoutout on the next episode of his next episode! :) linktr.ee&t=a&ref=a=1p& tag=8&q=3&qid=7q&q&a=8q&s=4q&he=1s=2 Thank Ben Shapiro & the rest of the podcast is Also check out the book, he'll read it out! Thanks, Ben Shapiro and we'll see you next week! ! Timestamps: 7:00s 7: 8:30s 9:15s 11:40s 12:30 s 13:00 s 15:40 s 16: 17:20s=3s=1 18:00 19:15 s=2c3s 21:15 22:40 27:10s
00:00:07.000Well, Jim Acosta wins a big victory against the Trump administration, which means he is going to bust into that next press conference like the Kool-Aid man right through the wall.
00:01:52.000We'll just keep recounting this sucker for like the next 25 years.
00:01:56.000And by that point, all the candidates may have Now let's be straight about this.
00:02:00.000Ron DeSantis will be the governor of Florida.
00:02:01.000Florida will just be taken off the board as an actual electoral entity in the United States.
00:02:05.000The current status is that Florida has now ordered the first ever statewide hand recount as the legal fights continue, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
00:02:14.000Ron DeSantis will be the governor of Florida.
00:02:16.000Rick Scott will be the senator from Florida.
00:02:18.000The margins are too big to be made up in a recount.
00:02:21.000Typically, the only time a recount has been reversed in a statewide race is when the margins are less than 500 votes.
00:02:26.000In this particular case, Rick Scott is up by several thousand votes, and the same thing is true for Ron DeSantis.
00:02:31.000That is not stopping Democrats, however, from claiming that the election has been stolen from them.
00:02:35.000So you remember just a couple of days ago, we were hearing about President Trump.
00:02:39.000That guy undermining electoral integrity.
00:02:41.000Well, right now, Democrats know they've lost in Florida, and they still won't acknowledge they've lost in Florida because they want to pretend that voter suppression is happening.
00:02:49.000According to TampaBay.com, an unprecedented statewide hand recount is now underway in the Sunshine State, further extending a high-stakes partisan battle over every last vote in Florida's crucial U.S.
00:03:00.000Following a five-day machine recount of the more than 8.3 million votes cast in the November 6th elections, Secretary of State Ken Detzner ordered hand recounts Thursday afternoon in the race between U.S.
00:03:09.000Senator Bill Nelson and Governor Rick Scott, and also the race for Agriculture Commissioner between Nicole Nicky Freed and Matt Caldwell.
00:03:16.000The order gives canvassing boards in the state's 67 counties three days to pour over thousands of ballots that were rejected by machines because of overvotes, where a voter appears to have chosen more than one candidate in a race, or undervotes, in which a voter appears to have skipped a race altogether.
00:03:30.000With the help of state guidelines, the canvassing boards, which are allowed to enlist the help of volunteers, will try to determine how those voters intend to vote.
00:03:37.000I have a basic problem with this idea that we're gonna look at the ballots and then try to determine how you might have wanted to vote, or where you crossed out, where you filled in one, and then you crossed it out, and then you filled in another.
00:04:19.000A Times Herald analysis of state and county data showed the number could be between 35,000 and 118,000.
00:04:24.000Again, if you don't know how to vote, this is your problem.
00:04:28.000But having a bunch of people sit there and look into their own heart to determine how you voted, and it turns out the people looking into their hearts are typically Democrats, this is a problem.
00:04:37.000The determination on how those ballots were cast could go a long way toward deciding whether Nelson is re-elected or Scott ascends from governor to U.S.
00:04:45.000Florida law requires machine recount for any race decided by one half of one percentage point or less.
00:04:50.000All three races, this would be the agricultural race, the gubernatorial race, and the Senate race, all three races were within the margins when election supervisors submitted their unofficial results Saturday to the state.
00:05:04.000Why am I so suspicious of the process?
00:05:06.000Because Democrats are, in fact, attempting to cheat.
00:05:09.000They are, in fact, attempting to cheat.
00:05:10.000Now, as you know, for the last week and a half, I've been very skeptical about claims of voter fraud, because the evidence of voter fraud is not particularly widespread in the United States.
00:05:18.000The idea people are going and voting twice, illegal immigrants voting, right?
00:05:21.000The numbers are just not there to support the idea that voter fraud is widespread in deciding elections.
00:05:26.000However, Democrats are attempting now to engage in voter fraud when they extend the election beyond the election deadline.
00:05:34.000This is from NaplesNews.com, the Naples Daily News, quote.
00:05:38.000A day after Florida's election left top state races too close to call, a Democratic Party leader directed staffers and volunteers to share altered election forms with voters to fix signature problems on absentee ballots after the state's deadline.
00:05:52.000The altered forms surfaced in Broward, Santa Rosa, Citrus, and Okaloosa counties and were reported to federal prosecutors to review for possible election fraud as Florida counties completed a required recount in three top races.
00:06:03.000But an email obtained by the USA Today Network Florida shows that Florida Democrats were organizing a broader statewide effort beyond those counties to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the November 5th deadline.
00:06:16.000In other words, they were voting after the vote was supposed to be in.
00:06:19.000Democratic Party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form known as a cure affidavit that had been modified to include an inaccurate November 8th deadline.
00:06:26.000So the idea was they were they were sending people forms saying, you want to cure your vote?
00:06:30.000You want to make sure that your vote gets counted?
00:06:32.000Well, you have now until November 8th to do that.
00:06:36.000Well, when it comes to absentee ballots, the deadline is November 5th.
00:06:38.000Otherwise, you are supposed to show up at the polls yourself.
00:06:40.000You can only vote absentee by November 5th.
00:06:43.000So now we are extending election deadlines beyond the actual election deadline.
00:06:47.000This is what Democrats were trying to do.
00:06:49.000They claim that all of this was sort of a provisional thing in case courts decided, you know what?
00:06:54.000Maybe we do want to extend the election deadline, but you can't violate election law.
00:07:06.000And we're just going to send that out there and put out an affidavit that says that you voted November 8th when you really voted November 10th.
00:07:13.000We're going to put that out there and maybe courts will say it's OK.
00:07:18.000One Palm Beach Democrat activist said in an interview the idea was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms in hopes of later including them in vote totals if a judge ruled such ballots were allowed.
00:07:31.000Chief Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday voters should have until Saturday to correct signatures on ballots, a move that could open the door for these ballots returned with altered forms to be counted.
00:07:39.000Okay, just because there's a judge who's okaying election fraud does not mean it is not election fraud.
00:07:44.000And election fraud does not necessarily mean that you are casting a vote in fraudulent fashion in the sense that you are voting for another person or voting for a dead person like in Chicago or something.
00:07:54.000If I vote on November 11th for a November 8th election, I am now committing election fraud.
00:08:00.000If I punch a ballot and it's my vote, I didn't vote, and then I go over to the ballot box and just sort of slip it in there, Even after the election is over.
00:08:55.000Because there was a difference in the vote count.
00:08:57.000What happened when they machine recounted?
00:08:59.000It turned out that Rick Scott gained votes in machine recounts.
00:09:02.000Does anyone really believe that if Rick Scott had lost votes in machine recounts in Broward County, that this somehow would not have been counted?
00:09:09.000That they would have submitted it two minutes late?
00:09:14.000All of this really does raise serious questions about the veracity of election results.
00:09:20.000And not only that, over in Georgia, Democrats continue to claim over and over without any evidence that Stacey Abrams should be given now a new election.
00:09:34.000She's losing by 50,000 votes in the state.
00:09:38.000Stacey Abrams now refuses to accept the election results.
00:09:41.000According to the AP, Stacey Abrams' campaign is preparing an unprecedented legal challenge in the unresolved Georgia governor's race that could leave the state's Supreme Court deciding whether to force another round of voting, so they want a new election now.
00:09:53.000The Democrats' long-shot strategy relies on a statute that has never been used Well, who's making those charges of electoral malfeasance?
00:13:14.000So, Allegra Lawrence Hardy is Stacey Abrams' campaign chairwoman.
00:13:18.000She's overseeing a team of almost three dozen lawyers who in the coming days will draft the petition along with a ream of affidavits from voters and would-be voters who say they were disenfranchised.
00:13:44.000Abrams would then decide whether to go to court under a provision of Georgia election law that allows losing candidates to challenge results based on misconduct, fraud, or irregularities sufficient to change or place in doubt the results.
00:13:56.000The legal team is considering all the options.
00:13:57.000The state challenge would be the most drastic.
00:14:00.000Some Democrat legal observers note that she would actually have to pass a pretty high bar in order for her to depend on that statute.
00:14:06.000Kemp's campaign has already shifted into transition mode and they are right to do so.
00:14:11.000Unofficial returns show Kemp with about 50.2% of more than 3.9 million votes, which puts him about 18,000 votes above the threshold required to win by a majority.
00:14:20.000And he's some 53,000 votes ahead of Stacey Abrams.
00:14:23.000There's no way she can make that up in any sort of legitimate way.
00:14:26.000But Democrats are not shy about doing this in an illegitimate way, apparently.
00:14:31.000So, again, if we're going to talk about lack of faith in public institutions, Democrats have been heavily involved in this lack of faith in public institutions.
00:14:40.000We have now heard them rail against the Electoral College, which apparently is illegitimate because Hillary Clinton lost.
00:14:44.000We've heard them rail against the Senate itself because the Senate is somehow illegitimate because Democrats don't run it.
00:14:50.000We've heard them rail against the Supreme Court and talk about packing the Supreme Court because they don't control the Supreme Court in the same way that they once did.
00:14:57.000We have heard them rail about pretty much every aspect of the American electoral system over the last two years, and then meanwhile complain that President Trump is undermining the integrity of America's constitutional system.
00:15:08.000Well, Case 1 in their exhibit is, of course, his treatment of the press, and the latest evidence that they have is a judge who just sided against the White House with regard to Jim Acosta.
00:15:22.000So, as you will recall, Jim Acosta got into a spat with President Trump the day after the midterm elections, in which he basically got up and started railing against President Trump, basically doing an op-ed that Trump was supposed to rebut.
00:15:41.000And then he continued to talk, and then finally Trump walked away from the microphone, which is what he probably should have done before that, and then Acosta handed over the microphone.
00:15:50.000And as I said at the time, if you want to revoke Jim Acosta's press pass on the basis that he was essentially violating the rules of the press corps, then I think that's perfectly appropriate.
00:16:03.000I know a lot of people who work at CNN.
00:16:05.000Virtually all of them think Jim Acosta is a schmuck.
00:16:08.000Par excellence that the guy is just a self-aggrandizing idiot who spends all of his time not reporting but patting himself on the back and then quaffing his hair.
00:16:16.000Nobody even at CNN really likes Jim Acosta very much, but because Trump then revoked his press pass and claimed in the process that he had put his hands on an intern, which is controversial to say the least.
00:16:26.000It looks more to me like there's incidental contact when she goes for the microphone.
00:16:30.000In any case, The Acosta team basically claimed, and CNN claimed, and Fox News backed them in their lawsuit, claimed that this was viewpoint discrimination, that the real reason that Jim Acosta had had his press pass revoked was because Jim Acosta had been engaging in anti-Trump activities by yelling at the president or whatever.
00:16:47.000Now, as I said, I thought that case was kind of weak from Jim Acosta, simply because there are a bunch of other members of the press corps who are similarly anti-Trump, and their press pass has not been revoked.
00:16:56.000April Ryan comes to mind, who's been extraordinarily anti-Trump throughout, but There's a ruling today that came down from Federal Judge Timothy Kelly, who was a Trump appointee, and he was appointed by a 94-2 vote.
00:17:09.000Federal Judge Kelly sided with CNN on Friday morning.
00:17:11.000He ordered the White House to reinstate Jim Acosta's press pass immediately.
00:17:15.000The ruling was an initial victory for CNN in its lawsuit against President Trump and several top aides.
00:17:20.000The suit alleges CNN and Acosta's First and Fifth Amendment rights were being violated by suspension of his press pass.
00:17:26.000Here was Jim Acosta's response, and then I want to get into the actual legalities of this ruling.
00:17:32.000I just want to say something very briefly and that is I want to thank all of my colleagues in the press who supported us this week and I want to thank the judge for the decision he made today and let's go back to work.
00:18:02.000It's not just an ego play by Jim Acosta, this entire thing.
00:18:05.000Again, where he's going to bust into that press room and it's going to be like that scene from Anchorman where all the press corps are fighting each other with pitchforks and he's throwing torches at Sarah Huckabee Sanders or anything.
00:18:15.000He is just, he is the classiest of us.
00:18:18.000Okay, so what exactly did the judge rule?
00:18:21.000What the press are saying that the judge ruled is not actually what the judge ruled.
00:18:24.000So, the implication from CNN is this is a vindication of Jim Acosta's First Amendment rights.
00:18:30.000Well, actually, the First Amendment issue was not actually touched by the judge, Timothy Kelly, in this case.
00:18:36.000He granted a temporary restraining order, which is not a final, actual, it's not actually a final resolution of the issue.
00:18:45.000A government lawyer, James Burnham, had argued in a hearing before Kelly on Wednesday the president was within his rights to ban any reporter from the White House at any time, just as he excludes reporters from interviews in the Oval Office.
00:18:55.000He said Acosta could report on the president just as effectively by watching the president on TV or by calling sources There are two issues at play here.
00:19:01.000Well, there are two issues at play here.
00:19:14.000Issue number one was, is it viewpoint discrimination to ban Jim Acosta?
00:20:29.000And then let me explain that in just one second.
00:20:31.000So, no major precedent was set here because in order for a precedent to have been set here, there would have had to have been a ruling saying that you can't ban anyone from the White House press corps for any reason having to do with any sort of behavior.
00:20:45.000That would have been a major precedent.
00:20:47.000What they said is, we need to know how you came to this decision.
00:20:50.000Since we don't know how you came to this decision, it looks arbitrary and capricious, and therefore a violation of due process.
00:20:58.000Again, I don't think it's the world's strongest ruling.
00:20:59.000I don't think it's the world's weakest ruling.
00:21:01.000But I don't think that, again, it's completely unjustified.
00:21:05.000I think that a stronger rule, and listen, the reason that I'm defending the ruling a little bit here is because there will be a point at some point in the future, whether it is in four years or whether it is in eight years or whether it is in 12 years, when a Democrat is in the White House again.
00:21:18.000And that Democrat will be using the precedent set here to ban reporters from the White House without due process.
00:21:25.000Somebody gets up and asks Kamala Harris a question, God forbid, she's the president, and she says, I don't like that guy, get him out.
00:21:34.000So, would I rather have Jim Acosta making an ass of himself in the press room than have there be a precedent that the White House can ban whoever it pleases?
00:21:49.000Every time Jim Acosta makes a fool of himself, President Trump looks better.
00:21:53.000The press secretary put out a statement that said, Okay, so that's about the right outcome.
00:22:00.000And undoubtedly, there'll be an opportunity to ban Jim Acosta again, because he's not going to abide by any rules of decency in any of this.
00:22:06.000Will the press treat it as a huge deal?
00:22:08.000We'll temporarily reinstate the reporter's hard pass.
00:22:10.000We'll also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future.
00:22:15.000There must be decorum at the White House.
00:22:16.000Okay, so that's about the right outcome.
00:22:18.000And undoubtedly, there'll be an opportunity to ban Jim Acosta again, because he's not going to abide by any rules of decency in any of this.
00:22:29.000Is it good that the White House actually has to show some precedent, some actual process here for banning reporters?
00:22:35.000I think in the long run, it probably is.
00:22:37.000Okay, meanwhile, demonstrating once again that Democrats do not know how to run major cities, New York has been hit by some snow, and it left commuters stranded for up to 12 hours.
00:22:47.000Well, my sister lives in the general New York, New Jersey area, and it was taking people six hours to move a couple of miles, thanks to some snow.
00:22:55.000Which does go to city management and state management.
00:22:58.000It really does, because it's not like they've never had snow in New York before.
00:23:03.000or something, and then everybody's like, oh my god, it's snowing!
00:23:05.000No, it's snowing in New York, which is something that has happened in the past, as in every single year.
00:23:10.000According to weather.com, conditions were improving for most in the Northeast Friday after winter storm Avery left at least 11 dead in accidents blamed on the ice and snow and stranded commuters for up to 12 hours, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands and forcing some students to stay at school overnight.
00:23:26.000Thursday evening's commute became an absolute nightmare for drivers, especially in parts of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
00:23:31.000Traffic sat still for hours on turnpikes and interstates and crawled at a snail's pace when it could move.
00:23:37.000New York drivers reported being stranded for up to seven hours.
00:24:13.000I know I'd heard from my sister who lives in the area that there's a wedding that was scheduled for last night and legitimately six people showed up to the wedding because of all of the weather.
00:24:25.000This does raise some broader questions about whether the real threat in terms of weather is additional heat or whether it is actually additional cold.
00:24:32.000According to CBS Local, despite the snow blitz of 2015, many baby boomers still insist that overall, we don't get the harsh bitter cold and deep snowy winters like we did in the good old days.
00:24:41.000Weather records prove that just isn't the case.
00:24:44.000And despite the ongoing claims that snows are becoming rare and hurting winter sports, this millennium has been a blessing to snow lovers and winter sports enthusiasts.
00:24:51.000Just as the Saffir-Simpson and Fujita scales were devised to categorize hurricanes and tornadoes, the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale was created by Paul Kosin of the National Weather Service to rank high-impact northeast storms.
00:25:03.000The scale has five categories, and the highest category storm has been increasing rapidly.
00:25:09.000This is why you've seen a lot of people, when they talk about climate change, instead of talking about global warming, per se, they start talking instead about climate radicalism, basically.
00:25:20.000So maybe there's a new paradigm, right?
00:25:22.000The Earth may be actually experiencing a major cooling occurrence.
00:25:28.000Arctic temperatures and Arctic ice extent varies in a predictable 60 to 70-year cycle.
00:25:32.000The greatest warming has been happening in the Arctic region.
00:25:34.000That can produce a weaker, less stable jet stream, allowing frigid air to dive further south to mix with the warmer oceans to trigger more potential snow events.
00:25:42.000This is according to Barry Burbank over at Boston CBS Local.
00:25:47.000We simply don't know the effect of all of this.
00:25:49.000But again, this is up to local governments to solve.
00:25:52.000And obviously, they're not doing an appropriate job in doing so.
00:25:56.000OK, meanwhile, there is a there is a An obvious attempt in the Republican caucus to ignore the results of what is now amounting to a blue wave in the House.
00:26:10.000Overall, what we've watched unrolling in slow fashion since the 2018 election is more and more Democratic seats being piled up.
00:26:17.000Orange County, which used to be a Republican stronghold as late as 2016, all of the congressional districts in Orange County, save one, went red in this last election cycle.
00:26:26.000Every single congressional district in Orange County Went blue.
00:26:29.000Some people are attributing that to the influx of Latino immigrants who are coming from areas south of the border.
00:26:37.000And the idea is that because of President Reagan's amnesty and changing demographics in Orange County, that's why you've seen all this, that doesn't explain why Texas has stayed red, even though the demographics of Texas have shifted pretty radically.
00:26:48.000Instead, you have to assume that blue turnout was really high and suburban Republicans are not very fond of President Trump.
00:26:54.000And this is a serious problem for President Trump going forward.
00:26:56.000It's an even more serious problem if Republicans refuse to acknowledge the issue here.
00:27:19.000OK, it's going to be about 40 seats by the time all of this is done.
00:27:21.000The fact is Republicans dramatically underperformed in this election cycle.
00:27:25.000That is particularly true in suburbia.
00:27:26.000What we are watching is that suburban areas across the country are voting very much alike.
00:27:31.000A suburban area in Oklahoma is now voting like a suburban area in California.
00:27:35.000Rural areas in California are voting like rural areas in Georgia.
00:27:38.000And urban areas in Georgia are voting like urban areas in New York.
00:27:41.000So basically, we now have a split in the country that is not necessarily area-driven.
00:27:45.000It's mainly driven by urban, suburban and rural.
00:27:48.000The problem is that suburban folks tend to be a little bit more moderate.
00:27:52.000Suburban folks tend to not just in terms of policy, but in terms of attitude.
00:27:56.000And because they tend to be a little bit more moderate in terms of attitude, they are off put by a lot of the radical rhetoric coming from President Trump.
00:28:02.000The statistics tend to show that a lot of suburban Republicans actually voted for Democrats in the last election cycle, which I think is unthinkable.
00:28:09.000But that's what happened in Arizona, right?
00:28:11.000Kristen Sinema is the new senator from Arizona because 14% of registered Republicans in the state voted for a woman who said in 2003 that she didn't mind if Americans joined the Taliban.
00:28:20.000That is because Kyrsten Sinema actually ran a moderate campaign.
00:28:24.000Kyrsten Sinema said that she would negotiate on the border wall.
00:28:26.000She said that she would not back Chuck Schumer for Senate Majority Leader, although she now is going to do exactly that.
00:28:34.000The fact is, suburban Republicans are being alienated by the Republican Party, and doubling down on what brought us here is not necessarily a recipe for future victory.
00:28:43.000You have to shift and move as you learn more things.
00:28:47.000And right now, the Republicans are not shifting and moving.
00:28:50.000Now, the good news is Democrats aren't shifting or moving either.
00:28:52.000What they should be learning is that moderation would actually be of benefit here.
00:28:56.000But instead, it seems like they are going to continue to shift radically to the left.
00:29:00.000We'll talk about that in just a second.
00:29:01.000Plus, we'll get to an interesting study talking about why young people aren't having as much sex as they used to.
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00:31:43.000So the parties tend to maintain their leadership, which suggests that party leadership is basically in the sway of the base.
00:31:49.000So if they're radicalizing, it's more about the base than it is about the leadership.
00:31:52.000In other words, it's the Democratic base driving Nancy Pelosi and not necessarily the other way around.
00:31:56.000Here's Nancy Pelosi announcing she has overwhelming support to be Speaker.
00:32:00.000I have overwhelming support in my caucus to be Speaker of the House, and certainly we have many, many people in our caucus who could serve in this capacity.
00:32:12.000I happen to think that at this point I'm the best person for that.
00:32:16.000Okay, so she's gonna stick around, and as I said yesterday, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who's going to be one of the kind of new leaders in the House, she is because she's turning out to be a pretty clever politician in her own right.
00:32:26.000Part of that is helped by the fact that Republicans are attacking her in the dumbest possible way.
00:32:30.000There was a tweet yesterday that, I mean, got ratioed in epic fashion.
00:32:33.000For people who don't follow Twitter, a ratioing is when more people comment on your tweet than like your tweet.
00:32:38.000Okay, in this particular case, this tweet received something like 20,000 comments and about a hundred likes.
00:32:44.000Okay, it just got Destroyed in epic fashion.
00:32:47.000Eddie Scarry, who works for the Washington Examiner, he tweeted out a picture of Ocasio-Cortez walking away in the hall.
00:32:54.000He said, Hill staffer sent me this pic of Ocasio-Cortez they took just now.
00:33:22.000You know, a few weeks ago, it was different when she was wearing, like, legitimate thousand dollar jackets while posing on a stoop in the Bronx.
00:33:31.000But, you know, to attack, like, the fact that she's dressed okay while she's walking through Congress is really silly.
00:33:36.000Nonetheless, Ocasio-Cortez is proving herself capable of posturing.
00:33:40.000According to Politico, a fight broke out in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats over climate change as a powerful veteran lawmaker fought with Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other members-elect over the creation of a special panel for climate change.
00:33:53.000New Jersey Representative Frank Pallone, who's the incoming chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, slammed the creation of a new climate panel He said that his committee and other existing panels within the House could take on the issue aggressively.
00:34:04.000But a bunch of other progressive incoming lawmakers fought back.
00:34:07.000They said they ran on the issue, and they needed to start a Green New Deal, and they said that they want a new climate panel.
00:34:16.000But then she's smart enough to say that she never actually fought with him.
00:34:18.000She said, I never had a direct interaction with him today.
00:34:20.000And by direct interaction, I mean I didn't share a conversation.
00:34:23.000I did say hello, and he was very kind.
00:34:24.000So Ocasio-Cortez knows where her bread is buttered with the House leadership, and she continues to pander to that House leadership again.
00:34:31.000She's proving herself to be adept at this.
00:34:33.000So watch out, Republicans, because you need to actually be going after her policies, not her political acumen.
00:34:42.000The only person who has successfully gone after her political acumen sits behind this desk when she suggested that I catcalled her after I said maybe we should have a discussion.
00:34:50.000In any case, another big story out today.
00:34:53.000The Atlantic has a new long piece about why these should be boom times for sex.
00:34:57.000Because the number of Americans who morally disapprove of sex outside of marriage is at an all-time low.
00:35:03.000New cases of HIV are at an all-time low.
00:35:04.000Most women can get birth control for free and the morning after pill without a prescription.
00:35:08.000And yet, and yet, American teenagers and young adults are having less sex.
00:35:12.000To the relief of many parents, educators, and clergy members who care about the health and well-being of young people, teens are launching their sex lives later.
00:35:19.000From 1991 to 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Youth Risk Behavior Survey found the percentage of high school students who'd had intercourse dropped from 54% to 40%, so sex has gone from something most high school students had experienced to something that most haven't.
00:35:35.000And that's not because they're substituting other forms of sex.
00:35:43.000Well, the general answer, honestly, is that pornography has taken over.
00:35:48.000OK, this is the real answer, is that people are staying home.
00:35:51.000People are not getting involved in relationships.
00:35:53.000They're figuring that if we have now disconnected sex from relationships, why bother even hanging out with a person of the opposite sex?
00:36:01.000And the statistics bear this out without getting too graphic.
00:36:06.000No, this is a serious, it's a serious issue because it does lead to later relationships.
00:36:11.000And it's funny that the Atlantic is worried about less sex as opposed to later relationships, but they really should be worried about later relationships.
00:36:19.000I want to explain that for just a second.
00:36:23.000It used to be that sex and relationships were deeply intertwined, right?
00:36:28.000In my life, my sex life and my relationship with my wife were united, right?
00:36:32.000I didn't have sex until I was married to my wife, which used to be at least the traditional standard of morality.
00:36:38.000And that was good because it led people to get married younger and led people to have children younger and start becoming responsible citizens younger.
00:36:46.000And then they were actually having a fair bit of sex because it turns out that married people on average do have more sex than non-married people.
00:36:53.000And then the left said, you know what?
00:36:54.000Let's disconnect sex from relationships.
00:36:56.000Sex doesn't have to be about marriage.
00:37:08.000And then it turned out a couple of things happened.
00:37:10.000One, a lot of women decided that it actually isn't that fulfilling to have random sex with strangers.
00:37:15.000And that they don't actually want just the physical pleasure of sex.
00:37:18.000They actually want emotional connection with people.
00:37:20.000And two, a bunch of young men decided, okay, well, if sex is no longer supposed to be connected with relationships, and if I can get pornography online from the time that I am a kid, then why would I bother with all of this relationship stuff?
00:37:35.000Sex and relationships have to be interconnected, and that was a good deal.
00:37:38.000It was a good deal for men because it made them more responsible, and they got more sex out of it.
00:37:42.000And it was a good deal for women because women got relationships and commitment out of it, and they also got more sex out of it.
00:37:48.000Once you disconnected sex and relationships, there's a natural inclination by men toward promiscuity, but women don't necessarily want to engage in that same promiscuity.
00:37:56.000And if men can simply fantasize, next to their computer every day then it turns out the rates of actual interaction between human beings is going to go down in other words social liberalism has not led to happiness social liberalism has has led to deep unhappiness and deep loneliness and you can see this and there's a great quote from this piece from uh a from a particular scholar saying uh saying basically we hook up because we have no social skills we
00:38:25.000We have no social skills because we hook up.
00:38:29.000People don't know how to get along with other people because the expectation is sex rather than relationships.
00:38:34.000I noticed this in sitcoms maybe 20 years ago.
00:38:38.000Where there's this weird reversal of the polarity when it came to relationships and sex.
00:38:44.000So, if you watch old movies, the idea was that the culmination of the movie would be someone says, I love you, and then you slowly pan to the curtains, right?
00:38:52.000That was always how it worked in the old movies, when you couldn't show sex on the screen.
00:38:56.000Somebody would say, I love you, pan to the curtains.
00:38:59.000Now, you show the full sex scene, and then the next morning, someone awkwardly says, I love you, and then somebody gets offended and leaves.
00:39:06.000Well, that reversal has not been good for men or women, because particularly for women, sex is deeply connected with commitment and emotional intimacy.
00:39:15.000And for men, if you disconnect those things, then it's just a question of how often they can get their rocks off.
00:39:19.000And it turns out it's a lot easier to get your rocks off sitting in your basement, watching porn on your computer.
00:40:55.000What circumstances or events do you think would be severe enough to warrant an execution of the Second Amendment and its true intention as a revolt against government tyranny?
00:41:03.000Well, I know that this is its purpose.
00:41:04.000I've never thought of what would trigger its use in this form.
00:41:08.000Okay, well, I think that, for example, if the government came to confiscate all weapons, that would be a good time to stand up on your hind legs and say, we are not going to allow this to happen.
00:41:19.000If the government were to revoke full-on religious freedom, I think that if you have no other place to run, you try to avoid violence at first blush always.
00:41:27.000But if it turns out there's like a national policy, for example, then you do have to stand up and say, no, I'm not going to.
00:41:32.000I mean, if somebody tried to take away my kid because I was teaching my kid my religious precepts, then I would stand up with my gun and I would say no.
00:41:39.000Elliot says, Well, I think Trump is a unifying factor.
00:41:42.000What you could see, and this is what really hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016, is that Hillary Clinton had a person running from her left who basically split the base.
00:41:48.000left is going to unite with more traditional Democrats against the right in 2020 or whether will they succumb to infighting?
00:41:53.000Well, I think Trump is a unifying factor.
00:41:54.000What you could see, and this is what really hurt Hillary Clinton in 2016, is that Hillary Clinton had a person running from her left who basically split the base.
00:42:03.000A lot of those Sanders voters did not show up for Hillary Clinton.
00:42:06.000I think that is unlikely to happen this time.
00:42:08.000I think it's more likely that the base captures the nomination than that some approved candidate from the top is selected by the Democrats.
00:42:16.000What that means is that they may not run somebody so moderate, but they will run somebody who is more approved by the base.
00:42:21.000I think the possibility of a united Democratic Party that is more radical is better in 2020 than the possibility of a moderate Democratic Party that is split.
00:42:30.000No, I don't think that that's immoral.
00:42:32.000However, I've run into a bit of a hurdle when I take it to the logical conclusion.
00:42:35.000In certain cases, when someone is near death, often even a small pain reliever will assist in the death of a patient.
00:42:39.000Do you believe it would be immoral for a doctor to give a patient who is in a lot of pain and close to death a small pain reliever, knowing that it could kill the patient?
00:42:47.000No, I don't think that that's immoral.
00:42:49.000I think that giving pain relievers to people who are right on the precipice of death in order to relieve pain is one thing.
00:42:58.000I think deliberately killing the patient is another thing.
00:43:01.000There is such a thing as sort of a dual byproduct.
00:43:03.000When you're attempting to alleviate pain and a possible risk of that is death, that's not the same thing as I'm going to, you know, show up.
00:43:12.000You know, shoot chloroform into your veins or something.
00:43:22.000Well, we are a democratic republic, and the reason that we shouldn't really use them interchangeably is because direct democracy would mean that we all vote on every issue.
00:43:31.000Republic means that we have representatives who represent us and that there are checks and balances in the system.
00:43:35.000Direct democracies tend to perish pretty quickly.
00:43:38.000The founders in the Federalist Papers, as we've talked about nearly every week, I would say that every republic is a democracy, but not every democracy is a republic.
00:43:44.000And you're right, we should not be conflating Republican democracy, but democracy can encompass republic in the sense that we are a system wherein the votes of people are counted and policy is based on the votes of those people via our elected representatives.
00:43:58.000So I would say that every republic is a democracy, but not every democracy is a republic.
00:44:56.000Well, you know, I don't actually want to be a comedian because being a comedian means that your job is to be funny all the time.
00:45:12.000I like what I do because it means that when I meet somebody on the street, their first thing isn't, tell me a joke, make me laugh, funny man, right?
00:45:19.000There's less of an obligation for me to be funny.
00:45:21.000The humor in my show sort of just comes out naturally.
00:45:25.000And I think that this is the problem for a lot of comedians who want to be political.
00:45:28.000Once you get political, you are now in my sphere.
00:45:29.000And that means that you have to make good arguments.
00:45:31.000It means you have to back those arguments with evidence.
00:45:33.000If you're Jimmy Kimmel, then you can't just pretend to be a comedian every time it suits you and then be a political commentator at other times.
00:45:39.000I don't pretend to be a comedian, meaning I'm not going to go up against Jimmy Kimmel in a funny contest.
00:46:43.000The question is, can we fight two wars at once?
00:46:46.000The Obama administration said it didn't want to.
00:46:47.000The Obama administration basically said, we no longer need to be an army prepared to fight two wars and on two fronts at once.
00:46:52.000I think that is completely wrongheaded.
00:46:54.000Cat says, Ben, other than Trump toning down his style and rhetoric, what are steps the Republican Party can take to win back the suburban women vote?
00:47:01.000Well, you know, I think that obviously President Trump is the chief factor in driving away the suburban women vote.
00:47:07.000But I think that talking about safety and security, talking about security to suburban women is a good pitch, right?
00:47:15.000It's how Rudy Giuliani became mayor in New York.
00:47:17.000Suburban women, these are the security moms from 2004, they're still deeply concerned about safety, security, crime.
00:47:23.000And these are issues, without being catastrophic about it, these are issues where Democrats are incredibly soft.
00:47:29.000And I think that would be a good way of reaching out to suburban women.
00:47:32.000I think also that suburban women We want to know that their children are going to be protected from the predations of the radical social left.
00:47:41.000And so reminding moms, soccer moms, that they should have autonomy in their own homes and that they will have support from their local community to do so.
00:48:06.000Nate says, you mentioned this week that there isn't, or at least you don't see evidence of a voter fraud on the left.
00:48:12.000I ask with genuine curiosity, does the case with Brenda Snipes not count as full-fledged evidence in that regard?
00:48:16.000Well, as I said earlier on the show, I'm coming closer to suggesting that voter fraud is a serious possibility in Florida when Democrats are sending out forms that are illegally marked in order to drive people to file forms on the on the off chance that a judge decides to rewrite election law.
00:48:31.000So yeah, I'm a lot more skeptical that there's no such thing as quote unquote election fraud after watching all of that.
00:48:37.000Okay, time for a thing that I like, and then we'll do a thing I hate, and then we'll take a weekend.
00:48:43.000And so I was watching the movie Tag on the Plane.
00:48:47.000It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination.
00:48:49.000It's based on a story in the Wall Street Journal a few years back about this group of friends who had basically been playing tag for 30 years.
00:48:55.000And they spend a month every year playing tag, like trying to hide in different places to try and tag each other.
00:49:01.000And the premise of the movie is that there's one guy who has never been tagged.
00:49:04.000And so all of his friends are trying to sort of ambush him and then tag him.
00:50:10.000The parts of the movie that are really funny, basically every sequence where Jeremy Renner is trying to avoid capture by these guys is really funny.
00:50:16.000And you'll get a few laughs out of it.
00:50:18.000Isla Fisher, she plays basically the same part in every movie, so she's the same person that she was in Wedding Crashers, except now she's married to Andy from The Office.
00:50:26.000But the movie is kind of fun, so if you're looking for just a throwaway movie that you get a kick out of, this one goes on the list.
00:50:37.000So first off, William Goldman passed away today, which is too bad.
00:50:40.000At 87 years old, he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and Misery.
00:50:45.000He also was involved, he denied this, but he was definitely involved in writing Good Will Hunting, which Matt Damon and Ben Affleck got all the credit for.
00:50:54.000He wrote a couple of great memoirs about Hollywood, and we'll recommend them specifically next week.
00:50:58.000He also did The Princess Bride, which is everybody's favorite movie from the 1980s.
00:51:02.000So William Goldman, again, one of the great— and really a good analyst of his own screenwriting.
00:51:28.000And we bid a fond farewell to William Goldman.
00:51:31.000In other news that annoys me, there's a story from the New York Times about how Facebook has quote-unquote fought through crisis, and it talks about how evil Facebook is.
00:51:40.000All of this is a precursor to the Democrats trying to pressure Facebook into mirroring Democratic propaganda.
00:51:45.000I mean, this is really what all of this is about.
00:51:47.000And you can spot it in the New York Times piece.
00:51:49.000There's nothing in the piece that suggests that Facebook really did anything wrong during 2015, 2016, 2017.
00:51:55.000And yet the piece is all about how they weren't receptive enough to Democratic complaints and therefore they're evil.
00:52:01.000So, for example, Facebook decided not to censor President Trump in 2015 when he was making comments about Muslims and Mexicans, because they said that this is basically a free speech issue.
00:52:11.000And the New York Times says, this is just terrible.
00:52:14.000So, for example, here's the New York Times.
00:52:15.000They say, Donald Trump ran for president.
00:52:17.000He described Muslim immigrants and refugees as a danger to America in December 2015, posted a statement on Facebook calling for a total and complete shutdown on Muslims entering the United States.
00:52:29.000He asked Sheryl Sandberg and other executives if Mr. Trump had violated Facebook's terms of service.
00:52:33.000But some at Facebook viewed Mr. Trump's 2015 attack on Muslims as an opportunity to finally take a stand against the hate speech coursing through its platform.
00:53:14.000Yeah, right, because that wouldn't have alienated every person in political America.
00:53:19.000Then, the New York Times suggests that Facebook treated Russia as a non-problem, that they sort of made light of the Russian intervention.
00:53:28.000First of all, again, the evidence that Russia actually swung the election via Facebook is ridiculous.
00:53:32.000I remember we reviewed this at the time when the Senate Intelligence Committee put out all the evidence that Russia had acted with malice on Facebook, and they were putting up posts that had like 115 shares.
00:53:48.000Combined total of Russian propaganda that had an impact on the election is probably less than the amount of impact that my Facebook account has on people in maybe a week.
00:54:04.000Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg decided to create a group called Project P for propaganda to study false news on the site, according to people involved in the discussions.
00:54:13.000By January 2017, the group knew that the original team had only scratched the surface of Russian activity on Facebook and pressured to issue a public paper about the findings.
00:54:20.000But Mr. Kaplan and other Facebook executives objected.
00:54:23.000Washington was already reeling from an official finding by American intelligence agencies that Putin had personally ordered an influence campaign aimed at helping elect Mr. Trump.
00:54:31.000If Facebook implicated Russia further, Mr. Kaplan said, Republicans would accuse the company of siding with Democrats.
00:54:36.000And if Facebook pulled down Russians' fake pages, regular Facebook users might also react with outrage at having been deceived.
00:54:42.000His own mother-in-law, Mr. Kaplan said, had followed a Facebook page created by Russian trolls.
00:55:01.000But this entire piece is designed to be about how Facebook somehow favors Republicans, or is too nice to Republicans, which is an insane, insane contention.
00:55:09.000I know because we view the Facebook metrics every day.
00:55:12.000But when Facebook decided to change its metrics, Like a year ago, that every conservative website took a 20 to 30 percent hit in the amount of traffic it was receiving from Facebook, while a lot of left sites were basically left alone.
00:55:26.000But this is all setting a precedent for Democrats to try and regulate Facebook or threaten Facebook with regulation in advance of the 2020 election.