Trump plans to pull out of Syria, Tucker Carlson is hit with an advertiser boycott, and Michael Flynn gets clocked by a judge. Ben Shapiro's new book, "The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great," is available for pre-order today. He also talks about the best Christmas present you should get for anyone this Christmas, and the best gift you can t wait to get for someone else. Plus, he talks about what to get your friends, family, or significant other, and what you should be doing with your money this holiday season. All that and much more on this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro! Subscribe and comment to stay up to date with what's going on in the world of politics, economics, and pop culture. Enjoy & spread the word to your friends and family about what's coming up in politics, pop culture, and everything else going on around the world. Happy Holidays! -Ben Shapiro's Note: If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! It helps us keep pushing the podcast out there and spreading the word about what we're talking about! If you don't already have an ad-free version of the show, we'll be giving out more episodes like this one in the coming weeks! Subscribe to our new show on Tuesday nights, and other shows like it on the airwaves! Thanks for listening and sharing it on your social media! See linktr.ee/TheBen Shapiro - Ben ShapiroSharing it on social media? Thanks Ben Shapiro on The Right Side Of History Thank you for listening to Ben Shapiro Podcasts and Good Morning America? - Timestamps: 5 Starred? 5 Star Potential? 6 Starred by Ben Shapiro: 7 Starred 8 Starred in Episode 9 Starred Outtro Music: 7 Day of the Week? 8 Day Of The Week: 9 Day of The Good Life? 10 Day of Christmas? 11 Day of Thanksgiving? 12 Day of Thank You'll Have It? 13 Day of My Day? 15 Day of Advent? 16 Day of Rest? 17 Day of Goodness? 18 Day of Silence? 19 Day of Dec? 21 Day of Resistance? 26 Day of Winter?
00:00:35.000America, which is the greatest national experiment in human history, is not going to survive if we abandon the ideas upon which it was built, and that's what the book is about.
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00:02:44.000So, we begin our show today with the breaking news that the President of the United States has decided that it would be worthwhile to pull out of Syria entirely.
00:02:52.000He tweeted this out this morning to the President of the United States.
00:02:55.000to be 13, said, "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, "my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency." Now, have we defeated ISIS in Syria?
00:03:05.000Well, we certainly stopped the formation of a caliphate, but have we defeated them to the extent that we can actually pull out safely without any sort of repercussions?
00:03:12.000The answer to that is pretty obviously no.
00:03:18.000700 prisoners in Syria just over the past short period of time.
00:03:22.000According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Wednesday, Islamic State militants had executed nearly 700 prisoners in nearly two months in eastern Syria.
00:03:30.000The UK-based monitoring group ...said the prisoners were among 1,350 civilians and fighters ISIS had been holding in territory near the Iraqi border.
00:03:38.000The jihadists control a shrinking strip of land east of the Syrian Euphrates River around the town of Hajin, which U.S.-backed forces entered this month.
00:03:45.000The Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish YPG militia, have battled ISIS there for several months with the help of U.S.
00:03:53.000SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Kobani said last week at least 5,000 ISIS fighters remain holed up in the enclave, including many foreigners who appear ready to fight to the death.
00:04:01.000ISIS's self-proclaimed caliphate has crumbled after different offensives across Iraq and Syria, although its fighters still operate in the desert border region on mount attacks.
00:04:19.000We have definitely degraded ISIS's capacity to control strips of territory, but we have not degraded their capacity To the ultimate extent, to destroy lives, to create refugee problems, to reconstitute a caliphate.
00:04:33.000Barack Obama made this exact wrong move in Iraq back in 2010.
00:04:37.000You remember, you were there when President Obama decided to rashly, in the middle of his first term, just like this, rashly withdraw forces from Iraq.
00:04:44.000All that happened was that ISIS ended up invading Iraq and filling the gap.
00:04:48.000According to the Wall Street Journal today, The U.S.
00:04:50.000military is preparing to withdraw its forces from Syria.
00:04:53.000People familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, a move that marks an abrupt reversal of the American military strategy in the Middle East.
00:04:59.000officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin an immediate pullout of American forces from the region where they've been trying to wrap up the campaign against ISIS.
00:05:07.000The Pentagon has an order to move troops out of Syria as quickly as possible, said one U.S.
00:05:12.000military officials have refused to say what a withdrawal timeline could look like, but President Trump wrote on Twitter that he was going to get out of Syria basically now, as we referred to earlier.
00:05:22.000This, by the way, violates President Trump's central principles of foreign policy, which is do not actually telegraph to your opponent what you're about to do.
00:05:28.000Remember, a lot of his foreign policy is based on what he calls strategic unpredictability.
00:05:33.000The idea that you don't know what he's going to do on any given day, and this means that you don't want to piss him off because you may get a missile up your rear, right?
00:05:41.000But when you start telegraphing that we're pulling out as soon as possible, that's exactly, exactly, note for note, what Barack Obama did in Iraq in 2010, 2011.
00:05:49.000The move follows a call last week between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America's Kurdish partners In Syria, Erdogan steadfastly opposes the American partnership with Kurdish forces in Syria that he views as a terrorist force intent on destabilizing Turkey, but the U.S.
00:06:04.000has relied on the Kurds, as we mentioned, as the most effective fighting force in Syria against ISIS.
00:06:09.000Well, this follows hard on the news that apparently the Trump administration was seeking the possible extradition of a cleric named Gulen, who is an opponent of Erdogan's in Turkey, back to Turkey for possible imprisonment and trial.
00:06:22.000If, in fact, the Trump administration is contemplating a warmer relationship with Islamist Turkey, which has repeatedly quashed dissidents, which has arrested something like 100,000 people in the last couple of years, this is all bad news.
00:06:35.000I mean, you don't want Turkey increasing its power.
00:06:39.000You do not want ISIS increasing its power at the expense of the United States moving its troops out.
00:06:45.000You don't want the Kurds to be decimated by the Turks and by ISIS.
00:06:51.000has long sought to reconcile two seemingly incompatible goals the president has sought in Syria.
00:06:55.000On the one hand, says the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump has pushed to withdraw all U.S.
00:06:58.000forces from Syria, where more than 2,000 service members are working alongside Syrian militants to defeat ISIS.
00:07:03.000On the other, he's embraced a strategy that calls for American forces to remain in Syria as a deterrent to Iran's expansive military ambitions.
00:07:11.000military has no authority to battle Iran and Syria.
00:07:13.000Their mission has been to defeat ISIS and ensure the militant group that once controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq is unable to regroup.
00:07:19.000That task is largely complete because ISIS has been cornered.
00:07:22.000Earlier this year, Pentagon said that ISIS controlled less than 2% of the territory it once held in the Middle East.
00:07:28.000And then he said this spring that he wanted to get, President Trump said in the spring, that he wanted to get everybody out.
00:07:34.000But the pullout also comes amid abiding worries about the continued influence of Iran in Syria.
00:07:39.000And again, Turkey is looking to fill that gap.
00:07:42.000And it is unclear whether Turkey is actually going to do the job of checking ISIS or whether they are just there to kill the Kurds.
00:07:48.000Now, this goes to a central question in American foreign policy.
00:07:52.000And that is, what is American foreign policy for?
00:07:55.000What exactly do we do when it comes to American foreign policy?
00:07:58.000Now, the typical answer In the olden days, and by the olden days I mean really in the World War II era, was you stay at home until somebody hits you, then you go in and you wreck them, and then you institute a democracy, right?
00:08:09.000This is what we did in Germany, this is what we did in Japan, and it worked to a certain extent.
00:08:15.000I mean, we had to keep troops there forever.
00:08:17.000I mean, we still have troops and air bases in Germany and Japan.
00:08:21.000We did the same thing in South Korea, right?
00:08:22.000We're going to put American troops there, and we're going to maintain troop presence until there's a safe and secure South Korea.
00:08:28.000Well, the problem is that there are certain parts of the world where this strategy appears not to have particularly taken root.
00:08:34.000Now, it's also true that the time period that we have given this strategy to work has not been all that long.
00:08:40.000It's not going to work in Afghanistan.
00:08:45.00099% of Afghans, of Afghanis, by poll data, support honor killings, for example.
00:08:50.000It's going to be very, very difficult to institute a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan.
00:08:56.000The same has not been quite as true in Iraq, where there have been the first stirrings of Western-style democracy for a while there.
00:09:02.000And if we were to leave troops in the country to basically pacify sectarian violence for a few decades, then probably everything would be okay.
00:09:38.000And that was proved by Vietnam, because during the Vietnam War, If we had just stayed there, there would be a South Vietnamese government that was free today.
00:09:47.000If we had just stayed there in the aftermath of the Paris Peace Accords, instead of pulling out precipitously, there would be a South Vietnamese state today that operates very much along the lines of South Korea.
00:09:56.000But there isn't because we pulled out because the American people do not have the taste to keep troops in harm's way, which is really interesting and a little bit ironic considering that we seem to have more taste for occupation and pacification for long periods of time when we actually had a draft in this country than when we have a volunteer military force, which which is really interesting and a little bit ironic considering that we seem to have The volunteer military force ended post-Vietnam.
00:10:17.000I mean, the non-volunteer military force, the draft, ended post-Vietnam.
00:10:21.000We haven't had a draft since, nor do we intend on reinstituting one.
00:10:25.000And yet the taste for Americans to keep troops in these places is very, very small.
00:10:31.000We don't have the appropriate level, I think, of understanding that American foreign policy does, in fact, require a lot of troops in a lot of different places.
00:10:39.000And it is also true that a lot of people come in from outside of government.
00:10:43.000We had it with Bush in 2000 before 2001, by the way.
00:10:45.000When Bush entered office in 2000, he basically had the same foreign policy program as Obama and Trump, which is let's bring as many troops home as possible.
00:10:52.000We don't need to be the world's policemen.
00:10:54.000Go back and watch the debates in 2000.
00:10:56.000This was the case that George W. Bush was making in 2000.
00:11:00.000It's even the case that Bill Clinton was making to a certain extent in 1996.
00:11:03.000So there has been this foreign policy consensus in rhetoric since the mid-90s in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.
00:11:10.000Without an existential threat, America should bring home everybody within its borders and go back to the way things used to be.
00:11:16.000The truth is America has always had lots of troops in different places.
00:11:19.000That is particularly true in the post-World War II era.
00:11:22.000And then the policy ends up being once all these guys get into office, they recognize that precipitous pulldowns of troops actually end up exacerbating violence and international conflict.
00:11:33.000Barack Obama, again, was an isolationist until he decided he needed to drone everybody in sight because it turns out that in the absence of the United States, something fills the gap.
00:11:41.000There is no such thing as a power vacuum.
00:11:43.000There is just a state that has American influence and a state that does not have American influence.
00:11:48.000Now, none of this is to make the case that the United States should be seeking to, for example, topple the Syrian regime and set up a puppet government, or that we should be sending tens of thousands of troops to Syria.
00:11:57.000If you want to make that case, it has to be made more affirmatively.
00:11:59.000We'd have to have some actual good options on the ground in Syria, which it doesn't seem that we have.
00:12:03.000But at the very least, the sort of muddled through strategy we've been using in Syria has worked in reducing ISIS violence.
00:12:11.000It has worked in reducing ISIS control of territory.
00:12:15.000And if we kept it up for a long enough period of time, it would work in reducing the refugee problem that's occurring from northern Africa, places like Libya, and also places like Syria.
00:12:24.000And that refugee problem does have an impact on the West.
00:12:26.000We've seen it in Europe, where it has tremendous domestic import for a lot of European countries, importing hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East who may not in fact Share the values of the people who live in Europe, who may have a different culture, who may not have any education.
00:12:43.000In other words, in an interconnected world, there are too many externalities to foreign policy to simply assume that when you withdraw the capacity to pacify a country, that nothing bad happens.
00:12:52.000That is the lesson of the last 20 years, and we refuse to learn it, and so we will keep learning it over and over and over again.
00:12:58.000I'm gonna get into more of this in just one second.
00:13:00.000First, let's talk about how comfortable you are down below.
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00:15:13.000All of this was bad, but it didn't manifest.
00:15:15.000It was all clear in 2012, by the way, but the press decided to delay coverage of it until 2013.
00:15:18.000We were all told that ISIS was a JV problem, no one was worried about it until after Barack Obama's re-election.
00:15:24.000You think they're going to do the same thing for President Trump?
00:15:26.000Or do you think that if President Trump goes through with his withdrawal from Syria, and then the violence upticks, and suddenly, you think those beheadings are going to stay out of the press with President Trump as president?
00:15:55.000What I object to is that they're on top of President Trump at every waking moment for everything that he does, pointing out the ramifications of all of his policy prescriptions.
00:16:03.000But as soon as a Democrat enters office, it's like they took ketamine.
00:16:06.000As soon as a Democrat comes into office, it's like they took a date rape drug and now they don't remember anything about how foreign policy is supposed to work or how the policy actually hooks up with anything.
00:16:25.000And when Donald Trump does something and then people die, it's gonna be like, look at President Trump.
00:16:29.000And they're freaking, they're blaming President Trump right now for the death of a seven-year-old child thanks to custody in Border Patrol, even though Border Patrol tried to save the girl.
00:16:39.000They didn't cover for years Barack Obama's, Barack Obama's immigration policy in nearly the same way.
00:16:45.000Let's not say they didn't cover it at all.
00:16:55.000The only solution for Republican presidents is good policy.
00:16:58.000The solution for Democrat presidents is any policy because the Democrats and the media will defend anything and everything.
00:17:03.000Okay, meanwhile, we have another controversy that has broken out regarding Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
00:17:09.000Now, let me preface this controversy by saying this.
00:17:14.000The left has now engaged not in boycotting, but in blacklisting.
00:17:17.000The reason I say they've not engaged in boycotting is because they're not actually boycotting products.
00:17:21.000What the left does is they find somebody they don't like, and then they decide to make a few phone calls to the advertisers on that particular program.
00:17:28.000And the idea is that if they make a few phone calls, then the advertiser will take it as though there has been a mass outpouring of rage at the advertiser for being on the particular program.
00:17:51.000Advertisers go to an advertising agency.
00:17:53.000The advertising agency looks to see where there is unused inventory and how much it costs, and how many viewers they can get for what price.
00:18:00.000And then they go back to the advertiser and they say for X number of dollars, you can reach X number of viewers on the following channels.
00:18:10.000So it's not like the advertisers are sitting there going, I approve this message from Tucker Carlson or I approve this message from Ben Shapiro.
00:18:18.000What the left has done is they have sought to destroy the marketability of political content they do not like by basically blacklisting companies that they by blacklisting the shows and then trying to blackmail the companies into not advertising on those particular programs.
00:18:34.000And let's not pretend that the left is honest about how they do this.
00:18:37.000Let's not pretend that the left is just seeing stuff they don't like, seeing stuff that is truly inappropriate and terrible, and saying, we can boycott.
00:18:43.000Joy Reid is still on MSNBC after all the things she said years ago.
00:18:47.000But Laura Ingraham was subject to a basic advertiser blacklist because she made a snide comment about David Hogg, a Parkland shooting survivor, who is eminently political.
00:19:00.000Well, it's absurd when it comes to Tucker, too.
00:19:02.000I'll explain why in just a second, but the point here is this.
00:19:05.000There is, an advertiser should know this, there is no actual advertiser backlash when you advertise on a program that half of Americans agree with.
00:19:20.000I ran a company, well it was actually a non-profit, called Truth Revolt.
00:19:23.000It was specifically designed to counter Media Matters.
00:19:25.000Media Matters is a group on the left that astroturfs these quote-unquote boycotts that are not in fact boycotts.
00:19:31.000The reason I'm not calling them boycotts is because no one is not, no one, Is avoiding buying a product from these companies because they advertise on Tucker Carlson.
00:19:39.000IHOP's business, IHOP pulled advertising from Tucker Carlson over the last 48 hours.
00:19:44.000IHOP's business was not in any way threatened by advertising on Tucker Carlson.
00:19:48.000The number of people who are not going to buy pancakes the next day because IHOP was advertising on Tucker Carlson was zero.
00:20:44.000So, when advertisers are forced to disassociate from programs, specifically because the three idiots over at Sleeping Giants are angry at Tucker Carlson, all they're really doing is, in effect, quashing the ability of people to speak politically.
00:20:58.000Now, that's not a violation of the First Amendment, because it's not government action, but it is a violation of the civil discourse that must exist around free speech.
00:21:07.000If you actually want to see an open market for ideas, you have to not target advertisers for broadly advertising across a variety of programs.
00:21:16.000We have advertisers on this program who also advertise on Pod Save America.
00:21:21.000They should reach out to whatever audience they feel the necessity to advertise to.
00:21:26.000Without me calling for a boycott against the advertiser because they advertise on Pod Save America, or without the folks at Pod Save America calling for a boycott against my advertisers, it's insane and it's ridiculous.
00:21:36.000It's even more insane and ridiculous when you look at the media coverage of this sort of stuff, and when you look at the hypocrisy of a left that would be livid if people talked about boycotting their favorites.
00:21:45.000I'm going to get to that in just one second.
00:21:47.000First, let's talk about whether you are more Native American than Elizabeth Warren.
00:23:32.000And you may, in fact, be more than one 1,024th Native American.
00:23:35.000You can find that out at 23andme.com slash Shapiro and then send your results to Senator Warren.
00:23:41.000OK, so the Tucker Carlson controversy.
00:23:44.000With all those preliminaries out of the way, here's what the controversy is about.
00:23:47.000So Tucker is very, very anti-immigration.
00:23:50.000He's not just anti-illegal immigration, he's anti-immigration.
00:23:52.000He thinks that the influx of foreign workers is undermining our wage base.
00:23:57.000He thinks the influx of foreigners into the United States is changing our culture.
00:24:01.000And so he made this comment on Fox News about the immigration crisis from December 13th, him talking about the caravans and people crossing the border illegally.
00:24:11.000Our country's economy is becoming more automated and tech-centered by the day.
00:24:15.000It's obvious that we need more scientists and skilled engineers, but that's not what we're getting.
00:24:19.000Instead, we're getting waves of people with high school educations or less.
00:24:24.000Nice people, no one doubts that, but as an economic matter, this is insane.
00:24:29.000It's indefensible, so nobody even tries to defend it.
00:24:32.000Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this.
00:24:35.000We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.
00:24:43.000Okay, so it was the comment, poorer and dirtier and more divided, that people decided to take out of context.
00:24:49.000One is the way that Schmuck Michael Avenatti read it.
00:24:52.000So Michael Avenatti, who can always be trusted to have the worst take on any possible situation, tweeted out, if an executive or employee at any of the Fox News advertisers called a fellow employee dirtier or poorer, they would rightly be fired.
00:25:38.000What he actually meant, what he actually meant was clarified on his show The next day, right?
00:25:43.000He went on and he said, what I mean is that when people come from places that are poorer and they don't have educations, so naturally our country is now getting poorer because more poor people are entering the country.
00:25:54.000And when he said our country will get dirtier, he didn't mean because it's going to be browner or something.
00:25:58.000What he meant is that a lot of the people who come in who are poorer may not actually be in the habit of keeping their cities clean.
00:26:22.000This is not a bunch of good faith folks who have decided, you know what, I am so offended by that thing that Tucker Carlson just said that now I've decided his advertisers must pay.
00:26:30.000This is a bunch of people who are sitting there waiting for a comment that they can take out of context so that they can then go after people they already don't like.
00:26:50.000If you think that sleeping giants and media matters, or sitting around going, Tucker Carlson, No real opinion on him, but that what he just said is so bad.
00:26:59.000They were sitting there watching every night, waiting for Tucker to say something they could take out of context, and then portray as so egregious that advertisers would need to bail.
00:27:07.000And again, I don't blame the advertisers, because the advertisers are just doing what they've been trained to do, which is if you get 10 complaining phone calls, you escalate it up the management chain, and then you withdraw the advertising, because these advertisers can pay a little bit more money, and they can advertise in other places.
00:27:20.000But what we are watching right now is a blacklisting of conservative shows by a bunch of people on the left and astroturfing of resistance to advertisers that doesn't actually exist.
00:27:30.000If you think somebody's not buying a Bowflex because Bowflex appears on ESPN and MSNBC and CNN and Fox News, you're out of your mind.
00:27:59.000Smile Direct Club has pulled ads from the show.
00:28:02.000Ten, twelve companies, Pacific Life said it would pull ads from the show.
00:28:06.000They said one of our ads appeared on Tucker Carlson's show last night following a segment where Mr. Carlson made a number of statements regarding immigration.
00:28:11.000As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson's statements.
00:28:14.000Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in.
00:28:18.000OK, why do corporations have to take political positions on immigration?
00:28:52.000It is not a legally actionable violation of the First Amendment.
00:28:55.000It is, however, destroying the basic bargain that we all have to hold if we are going to have a market-driven Exchange of ideas.
00:29:02.000Because this is not the market in action.
00:29:04.000This is a bunch of motivated leftists who have decided they're gonna scare the hell out of advertisers with nothing to back it, and a bunch of advertisers who are just playing it risk-averse.
00:29:13.000And advertisers should know that, by the way, for every boycott that is pulled like this, for every attempt to pull from Tucker Carlson's show, there'll be more blowback on them from the right than there would have been blowback on them from the left for being on Tucker's show to begin with.
00:29:26.000Fox News has issued a statement on all of this.
00:29:30.000The statement is, We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the likes of MoveOn.org, Media Matters, and Sleeping Giants.
00:29:37.000Attempts were made last month to bully and terrorize Tucker and his family at their home.
00:29:40.000He is now once again being threatened via Twitter by far-left activist groups with deeply political motives.
00:29:44.000While we do not advocate boycotts, these same groups never target other broadcasters and operate under a grossly hypocritical double standard given their intolerance to all opposing points of view.
00:29:53.000And this, of course, is exactly right.
00:30:49.000Let's talk about not just your First Amendment rights, but your Second Amendment rights that were set up to defend your First Amendment rights.
00:30:53.000You know how strongly I believe in the principle that law-abiding people should own guns?
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00:32:18.000Because next year, there are two more hours of this show a coming.
00:32:21.000And for $9.99 a month, that's the only way you can see those other two hours of the show, unless you happen to be listening to live radio across the country.
00:32:28.000But if you actually want to see it, or if you want to hear it later, then you need to be a subscriber.
00:32:32.000And when you subscribe, you also get to ask us questions when we do things like the conversation today.
00:33:27.000If you actually left this out for Santa, During Christmas, if you left some warm milk out for Santa in the leftist year's hot or cold tumbler, then it would stay warm.
00:34:10.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:34:13.000So the same left that is deeply, deeply concerned with free speech issues, we'll get to that in a second, is also cheering this blacklist that is now being used against Tucker Carlson.
00:34:30.000It's been used against everybody on the right, really everybody.
00:34:32.000They've tried it against Rush Limbaugh, they've tried it against Michael Savage, they've tried it against Mark Levin, they've tried it against Sean Hannity.
00:34:37.000They will always try it against people on the right.
00:34:40.000It's amazing to watch people at CNN who are in the same boat as people at Fox.
00:34:44.000They may not know it because the right is more polite about this stuff, because the right doesn't generally try to pretend that we're going to boycott advertisers.
00:34:51.000But the people at CNN are more than happy to watch their opponents boycott.
00:35:09.000There was an article by a guy named Jack Schaefer over at Politico.
00:35:12.000And Jack Schaefer said, I don't like the organized advertiser boycotts against Bill O'Reilly.
00:35:16.000I don't like the ones against Tucker Carlson.
00:35:19.000And Nate Silver The leftist commentator at FiveThirtyEight and elections analyst, he wrote, This is exactly right.
00:35:24.000Because advertisers will just go to the New York Times, the Daily, which is considered safe content, as opposed to anything with mild controversy associated with it.
00:35:29.000is that only milquetoast both sides and with a pro-corporate bent will be advertising supported if any political content is ad-supported at all.
00:35:36.000This is exactly right because advertisers will just go to the New York Times The Daily, which is considered safe content as opposed to anything with mild controversy associated with it.
00:35:45.000Not even like somebody says something terrible, but mild controversy.
00:35:48.000Then a guy named Norm Ornstein wrote back, This is not a boycott because of political viewpoint.
00:35:59.000And Silver said, he's a leftist, remember, he said, I tend to agree that Tucker is a racist or that he convincingly plays a racist on TV.
00:36:05.000However, I don't want the PR department of Applebee's deciding for us all what's racist versus legitimate, acceptable political speech.
00:36:13.000And then somebody else responded to Nate Silver and said, but they're not really deciding that.
00:36:17.000Consumers are using capitalism as a lever to force them to make a choice.
00:36:20.000I don't particularly care whether their PR departments agree or not, they're just responding to market pressures.
00:36:24.000And Nate Silver said, so they don't have to vet the merit of the claims at all?
00:36:27.000Anytime a vocal minority of consumers organizes a boycott, the advertisers should just pull itself off the show?
00:36:32.000That seems like a bad equilibrium, and one that can and will be gained by people whose politics don't match yours.
00:36:37.000And then the best part of this is Sleeping Giants, who are just terrible people.
00:36:41.000They wrote back to Nate Silver, and they basically accused him of being a corporate shill.
00:36:45.000They said, you are speaking as a publisher, not a citizen.
00:36:47.000If you're a person of color or a member of the LGBTQ community or an immigrant, these companies are literally footing the bill for you to be vilified every week.
00:36:54.000Bigotry should not be deemed political.
00:36:59.000And I'm just old enough, 40, to remember when conservative groups urged boycotts of advertisers and networks who were seen as promoting LGBTQ or other non-traditional lifestyles.
00:37:07.000This strongly influences my views on the subject.
00:37:14.000We need more folks on the left to acknowledge this basic truth, or we are going to end up in a position where advertisers pull out of all political content, and the only political content you're going to be able to find is going to be left-wing political content.
00:37:25.000Which, of course, is the entire goal of this spiel from the very beginning.
00:37:30.000At the outset, this was this is always the goal.
00:37:31.000Meanwhile, the left pretends that they care deeply about free speech.
00:37:34.000So they're very, very upset with what they call anti-BDS laws.
00:37:38.000So there's this case in Texas in which a Muslim woman was basically asked whether she believed in whether she believed in boycotting Israel.
00:37:49.000And then she was not hired based on the fact that she believed in boycotting Israel.
00:37:53.000Here's how The Washington Post reported it.
00:37:55.000Bahaya Amawi, a speech pathologist who has worked as a contractor in a Texas school district for nine years, received a new contract agreement to sign in September for the upcoming school year.
00:38:03.000The agreement asked her to affirm that she did not boycott Israel and assert that she would not while working for the school.
00:38:09.000She was forced to stop working with the district.
00:38:11.000That was based on a law passed by the Republican-held legislature and governor that prohibits state agencies from contracting with companies that boycott Israel.
00:38:19.000She says that this inviolates her right to free speech.
00:38:21.000Now, as you know, I have a very broad view of free speech, and this includes for state employees.
00:38:26.000So, for example, just a couple of weeks ago, I talked about a case in, I believe, South Carolina, where a teacher has now been fired because he was using biological pronouns for a transgender 11-year-old or something like that.
00:38:38.000And he wasn't even using biological pronouns.
00:38:40.000He was just not using pronouns at all.
00:38:42.000And this, of course, was discriminatory and he had to be fired on that basis.
00:38:46.000What I said is that's a violation of free speech.
00:39:22.000The government has all sorts of policies on who it can hire as independent contractors, and it uses those policies to police the sort of political affiliations and perspectives of the people who are contracting.
00:39:34.000But mainly, it doesn't want to pay companies that are then going to violate the government's views on particular subjects.
00:39:38.000So, for example, if a company is doing business with Iran, then there will be a ban.
00:39:44.000First of all, it's illegal to do that under the sanctions, but Even without the sanctions, it is plausible the government would say, we cannot hire this company because this company does business with Iran.
00:39:53.000This is basically the reverse of that.
00:39:54.000This is a company says, we are boycotting Israel, which is anti-Semitic, and the government says, OK, well, then we're not going to contract with you.
00:40:01.000That is not exactly a quash on free speech.
00:40:04.000There's a good article about this today.
00:40:07.000By somebody at Reason Magazine named David Bernstein.
00:40:10.000And he says, there are a lot of things I could say about the law and the lawsuit, but I have some time constraints.
00:40:13.000So I'll just explain why the take repeated ingenuously by reporters apparently too lazy to look up the actual text of the underlying law is wrong.
00:40:20.000Texas has a law banning state entities from contracting with businesses, including sole proprietorships that boycott Israel.
00:40:26.000Pursuant to Section 2270 of the Texas government code, the contractor affirms that it does not currently boycott Israel and will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract pursuant to Section 2270 of Texas government code.
00:40:39.000It's even titled, Prohibition on Contracts with Companies Boycotting Israel.
00:40:44.000So, he says, this is no different analytically than requiring a contractor to pledge that the business does not refuse to hire Muslims or blacks or Jews or veterans or any other state-designated group.
00:40:53.000This is the First Amendment analysis, but the lies are being spread by people who don't really understand the Constitution and reporters who want to suggest that this is some sort of violation of free speech.
00:41:06.000Maybe you still say that this is a bad law.
00:41:08.000Okay, certainly plausible, but you do have to acknowledge that this falls into the category of the government saying we can't contract with X because X does something we don't like.
00:41:15.000It does not fall into the category of we hire an individual to do a job and that individual has opinions that are off the clock.
00:41:25.000And so a lot of hubbub breaking out yesterday over the Michael Flynn hearing.
00:41:31.000Michael Flynn basically was forced to Recant his plea deal with the government because it appears that the that the judge in this case was wildly biased against him and it appeared that if he went forward with his attempt to get a plea deal that the government was basically going to slap him.
00:41:49.000So according to the legal documents, the court learned that no pretrial travel restrictions had been imposed on the case.
00:41:55.000The court imposed travel restrictions on Michael Flynn.
00:41:57.000You remember Michael Flynn Was the president's national security advisor.
00:42:00.000He has been tried and he's pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
00:42:04.000He lied to the FBI about something that was not illegal.
00:42:06.000Talking to Sergey Kislyak as the as the incoming national security advisor.
00:42:11.000He's also been ensnared in a lot of talk about whether he was lobbying for the government of Turkey without revealing that he was actually a lobbyist for the government of Turkey.
00:42:20.000What made things go off the rails yesterday is that the judge went nuts.
00:42:23.000The judge in this particular case went crazy and then tried to call Michael Flynn a traitor, which is pretty astonishing.
00:42:29.000District Judge, Emmett Sullivan, he said, I'm not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense.
00:42:34.000And then he walked through a number of procedural steps to make sure Flynn was pleading guilty because he was guilty and not for any other reason.
00:42:40.000He seemed frustrated with a lot of the arguments Flynn's team was making that basically Flynn had pled guilty to a crime because he'd been Cudgeled into it by the FBI.
00:42:49.000Sullivan had Flynn admit guilt again that he had lied to the FBI and was pleading guilty because he was guilty.
00:42:54.000And then he said the crime is very serious.
00:42:56.000He said that Flynn lied in the White House in the West Wing and he shouldn't minimize the serious offense.
00:43:53.000To call Michael Flynn, a general in the United States military for most of his life, to call him a traitor based on the fact that he had a non-illegal conversation with the Russian ambassador as the incoming NSA, and then lied to the FBI about it, That's not traitorous.
00:44:09.000It's bad to lie to the FBI, but that is not treason.
00:44:11.000Treason is aiding or abetting enemies of the United States at home or abroad.
00:44:16.000That is not what Michael Flynn was doing there, nor is there any evidence that any of that stuff was happening.
00:44:20.000That did not stop reporters from yelling at Sarah Huckabee Sanders and doing the job that Judge Sullivan couldn't do in the press room.
00:44:27.000Here are the reporters yelling at Sarah Huckabee Sanders, shouting at her, saying that Michael Flynn is representative of the treason inherence in the Trump administration.
00:44:58.000They also tried to say that Michael Flynn Was somehow connected with treason inside the Trump administration.
00:45:03.000Again, no evidence of any of that at all.
00:45:05.000The media continue to push the Russia investigation despite the fact that there is no actual evidence that the Russian investigation is going to result in any sort of charges against the president and any sort of charges against anybody around him for moving during the election to work with the Russians in a criminal fashion.
00:45:22.000That's not stopping CNN from bringing up old documents that really are not supremely relevant.
00:45:26.000They revealed a newly obtained document showing that President Trump signed a letter of intent to move forward with negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Russia that apparently was signed and dated October 25, 2015.
00:45:38.000Rudy Giuliani had said that Trump hadn't signed it.
00:45:47.000As we said yesterday, the left is much more focused on the possibility of the election being stolen than they are on the reality of criminal activity.
00:45:55.000If they weren't, they'd be focusing a lot more on Michael Cohen today than the dumb Russia collusion charges, which have yet to be substantiated.
00:46:02.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:46:06.000So, Things that I like, as I mentioned earlier this week, it is Beethoven's birthday this week, so we're doing some Beethoven.
00:47:17.000It was held in Gothenburg in August this year, having been billed as the world's first major music festival for women, non-binary and transgender only.
00:47:25.000But describing the festival as male-free was a violation of anti-discrimination legislation Sweden's discrimination ombudsman has ruled.
00:47:34.000So a female-only music festival has now been ruled sexist.
00:47:40.000Which is fantastic, because this is the standard that the feminists set.
00:47:44.000So fine, now the standard comes back around to you.
00:47:46.000You want to do this whole routine where men can't have a club just for men, because it's discriminatory?
00:47:51.000Women can't have a music festival just for women.
00:47:54.000And, not only that, that's even if you cave to the idea that transgender women are actual women, and a bunch of biological men show up to your festival, you're still being discriminatory.
00:48:03.000press officer, Klaas Lundstedt, said in a statement, it is important to point out what an infringement is.
00:48:09.000These are statements made before the festival, what they wrote on their website.
00:48:12.000Still, we haven't been able to prove that someone would have been discriminated against in connection with the implementation or that someone would have been rejected.
00:48:18.000Lundstedt said nobody suffered damage as a result of statements saying men were not welcome and there will be no penalty for organizers.
00:48:24.000But the festival was billed as being a safe space featuring cis men free artists, security and catering.
00:48:32.000Swedish comedian Emma Knickare came up with the idea for a festival after a huge number of sexual offenses were reported at Brevella, Sweden's biggest music festival, last year.
00:48:40.000No such crimes were reported during statement, which carries pictures of women dancing and celebrating together.
00:48:44.000Lundstedt added, clearly we believe that sexual abuse, especially at festivals, is a serious problem, so we are looking forward to trying to correct this.
00:48:50.000However, it shouldn't happen in a way that violates the law, which their statements in the media and their website do.
00:48:54.000So I love that the... I also love that the assumption here was that all the sexual assault was gender based.
00:49:01.000That men are more likely to assault women, sexually assault women, at a music festival than women are likely to be sexually assaulted in an all-female music festival.
00:49:08.000This might suggest some biological differences between men and women.
00:49:36.000Well, one of my favorite statistics is that in a lot of the Nordic countries in Sweden and Norway and Denmark, that the gender gaps in STEM, in STEM fields has actually grown.
00:49:45.000It's actually widened because it turns out that when women are free to do what they want to do, they don't do the same things that men do, because men and women, not the same.
00:49:53.000Stuff you've known since basically you're a small child, but have been told is not true by idiots.
00:49:58.000OK, time for some things So, a Democrat State Senator yesterday encouraged a Republican aide to kill herself, so that's always good news.
00:50:09.000A New York State Democrat Senator came under intense fire on Tuesday after he urged a Republican aide to kill herself in a now-deleted tweet and then immediately continued attacking her.
00:50:17.000His name is Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn.
00:50:19.000He instructed a New York State Republican Deputy Communications Director named Candace Geob to kill herself after she allegedly exposed Parker appearing to misuse a parking placard.
00:50:29.000So, it said, I got to the bottom of this, the placard is assigned to Senator Parker, however the license number on the placard does not match the vehicle, so either he used it in another car or he gave it to someone else, both of which are not permitted.
00:50:41.000Which is, um, I mean, as Ron Burgundy says, that escalated quickly.
00:50:46.000Parker's horrifying remark came after he attracted attention late last month when he proposed a bill that would require those seeking a firearm permit to consent to having their social media accounts searched for objectionable content.
00:50:56.000So, after saying that social media should be policed, he then tweeted that an aide should kill herself after she said that he was misusing a license plate.
00:51:08.000And then he says Candace is on the wrong side of history for every important issue facing New York State.
00:51:13.000It is amazing the double standard that is held for Democrats.
00:51:15.000So I point out also Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's been tweeting incessantly about fake news this week.
00:51:20.000She's been saying that members of the fake news media have been making up stories about her, such as that she wants to take a self-care break before she begins in Congress.
00:51:29.000I'm all for people taking self-care breaks.
00:51:31.000I know that was a thing, but if she feels like she needs... I mean, she's been busy.
00:52:04.000And you're sitting here going, President Trump says that stuff, and you say that he's responsible for the death of journalists, and AOC says this stuff, and you're like, she's got a point, you know?
00:52:21.000First of all, not a single report about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been recanted by the source that reported it, which is a pretty good indicator that actually she is fibbing about how the news covers her.
00:52:31.000And yet the media allow her to get it.
00:52:32.000Like, when is Brian Stelter going to feature her attacks on the fake news media this Sunday on Reliable Sources?
00:52:38.000Or are we just gonna get a bunch more stories about how she really uses social media to its fullest extent?
00:52:43.000I mean, she does, like, Instagram episodes with her instant pot!
00:52:47.000She's so sophisticated in her use of Twitter!
00:52:50.000The point I'm making here is a double standard exists in the media, and you know it does, and I know it does, and everybody knows it does.
00:52:55.000Okay, speaking of double standards existing in the media, can you imagine if a right-winger sent their beard shavings to a famous artist to make an amulet?
00:53:05.000And this person we're also in charge of a major outlet for free speech?
00:53:09.000Well, you have to imagine no longer, because it turns out that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent beard shavings to Azalea Banks so she could make an amulet to protect him from ISIS.
00:53:19.000If that's not a Mad Libs headline, I don't know what is.
00:53:21.000I mean, that's basically like, fill in these blanks.
00:53:25.000Blank sent blank to blank so she could make him a blank to protect him from blank.
00:53:31.000And you filled that in with Jack Dorsey, beard shavings, Azalea Banks, amulet, and ISIS.
00:53:40.000Apparently the bizarre claim was first mentioned by Banks on Twitter in 2016 when she claimed that Dorsey sent me his hair in an envelope because I was supposed to make him an amulet for protection.
00:53:52.000Ross Dude had an interesting piece over the New York Times about the new paganism that has arisen in America, that we've basically kept all of the religious morality of the past, but we've shifted it into social media frenzies.
00:54:05.000And all we were lacking was a sort of programmatic religious custom stuff.
00:54:12.000A programmatic religious order, right?