Ben Shapiro talks about the rise of the "Wokeness" religion and how it is replacing religion in America and other countries, and the role that white people are playing in the process. Ben also discusses the growing problem with anti-police brutality protests in China and the Chinese government's response to them, as well as how to deal with them, and why they are a symptom of a larger problem, not a cause, of racism and anti-Americanism in the United States and around the world. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to expressvpn.me/TheBenShannonShow and use coupon code: "ExpressVPN" at checkout to receive 10% off your first month with discount code: BONUS10 at checkout. Thanks to ExpressVPN for sponsoring the show. If you like the show and want to support it, please consider pledging a small monthly or annual recurring monthly fee of $1 or more, which can be as much as $10 or more than $150 per month, plus shipping and handling at ExpressVPN is a great service. You get 20% off the purchase of a VaynerMedia membership when you become a patron! The show is available in Kindle Fire, iBook, Paperback, Hardcover Hardcover, and Audible, and all Audible membership gets you an ad-free version of the show on Audible. All Audible is also available for a limited edition hardcover edition of the book "The Dark Lord edition of The Dark Lord: The Best of the Hardcover edition available for $99.99, including Audible and Kindle Fire HDX, Kindle Firesons, and The Audible Pro, The Goodreads, and Vimeo, and Kindle Paperback Pro, Kindle Pro, and iBook Pro Pro, the Kindle Pro Pro and iWatch, and Aptiv Pro Pro Pro! The Final Draft Pro and Kindle Pro? Learn more about your ad-only version of this podcast on the show is also worksheets, and epsiode, The Final Lord Podcasts. Subscribe to The Ben's new book, "The Besties Podcasts" and more! Subscribe and discusses his new book "Noah's Guide to the world's Most Influential Podcasts: How to be a Good Christian in the 21st Century Goodness Is Good, Not Your Best Friend by Ben Shapiro's Best Friend?
00:00:00.000Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison increases the charges against George Floyd's alleged killer, leftists prepare to blame racism for a COVID-19 uptick, and Drew Brees comes under fire for defending the American flag.
00:00:50.000You have no idea what the standard is from day to day, but that code is brought to you by a priestly caste of really intelligent and woke people who will be able to absolve you of sin so long as you listen to everything they say.
00:01:01.000There is an intermediary between you and wokeness.
00:01:04.000The intermediary is fairly obvious, right?
00:01:07.000It is all the members of the New York Times editorial board.
00:01:09.000It is all the people who tweet angrily on Twitter.
00:01:11.000It is your late night host, but even they have intermediaries.
00:01:14.000They have to call in some of their black friends that we saw on all of the late night TV shows last night in order to interpret blackness for them so that they can absolve themselves of their own white privilege.
00:02:36.000People are filling a God-shaped hole in their hearts with performative virtue signaling.
00:02:41.000And what the virtue signaling is really designed to do in the end is to separate you off from the non-believers.
00:02:47.000It really isn't designed to actually be virtuous.
00:02:50.000It is not that you're doing anything virtuous when you kneel as a white person in front of a black protester and then suggest that America is endemically racist.
00:02:57.000That is not you being a virtuous person.
00:02:59.000That is you actively separating yourself off from people who will not do that.
00:03:02.000It is you suggesting, because you're not actually taking on the sin.
00:03:05.000What you're actually doing is saying, I am not responsible for the sins of the past.
00:03:08.000I am not responsible for any of the bad things going on in society.
00:03:12.000All those other white folks who are not doing this, those are the people who are responsible.
00:03:16.000So it's amazing to watch this blossom and become the state religion of the United States.
00:03:23.000It's obviously the religion in Europe.
00:03:24.000You've seen tens of thousands of people in Europe marching about police brutality in the United States, which is fairly interesting considering that over in Europe, they have a significant problem with, for example, massive anti-Semitism that has led to the mass exodus of Jews from Europe.
00:03:38.000I haven't seen a lot of marches about that in Europe.
00:03:41.000Hong Kong was recently completely taken over by the Chinese government and its millions of citizens subjected to the jackboot of the Chinese government.
00:03:48.000But when it comes to America being bad, that's something we can all agree on.
00:03:51.000Because America, as the leader of Western civilization, that really is the new religion.
00:03:55.000The new religion is that the first article of faith is that America is bad, was bad, will be bad, was rooted in corruption and evil.
00:04:01.000And therefore, if we can all march together about that, we can separate ourselves off from the stench of evil Western civilization, and we can rip on people.
00:04:09.000Now, again, none of this is to argue that marching against police brutality is bad.
00:04:14.000Marching against police brutality is fine.
00:04:17.000But that is not the program that is being promulgated by members of the media.
00:04:21.000It is not the program that is being promulgated by many of the protesters.
00:04:24.000I would say most of the protesters, they're not out there marching about police brutality purely.
00:04:27.000They're out there marching with the assumption that America is systemically and endemically racist, and that American law enforcement is systemically and endemically racist.
00:04:34.000If this were just about police brutality, there wouldn't be any kneeling.
00:04:37.000If this were just about police brutality, there wouldn't be any talk about how America has deep, unextirpated sin that everyone in America is responsible for unless you do all these things that the woke want you to do.
00:04:50.000If this were just about police brutality, we'd all agree.
00:04:52.000As I pointed out yesterday, we all agree on certain fundamental propositions.
00:04:55.000Proposition number one, police brutality is evil.
00:04:59.000Number two, we all agree riding and looting is evil.
00:05:01.000Number three, we all agree individual instances of racism, actual instances of racism, are evil.
00:05:07.000But that's not what these marches are about.
00:05:09.000What these marches have become about is a broader agenda, which is basically suggesting that America at root, root and branch, is very, very, very bad.
00:05:19.000And the media have taken that to the logical extreme by suggesting that rioting and looting are merely an extension of the protests.
00:05:23.000Now, again, do I think all the protesters believe this?
00:05:26.000But I think that the messaging that is being put forth, including the kneeling, the obvious attempt to mimic the message that was put forth by Colin Kaepernick, that is clearly the message that is now being put forth by many of the protesters.
00:05:37.000And that I object to, because if you could split the messages, I'm all for one, I'm not for the other.
00:05:41.000All against police brutality, all against racism, all against the Use of policing in the wrong ways, all of that agreed.
00:05:53.000But if the idea here, and as we'll see, this is the idea.
00:05:56.000If the idea is that if you don't greenlight rioting and looting, that if you say that rioting and looting should be stopped, if you believe that America is actually an incredible, wonderful place, and the story of America is a story of tremendous founding principles and unchallenged Good philosophy that was failed by Americans for centuries.
00:06:15.000But the story of America is the perfection of our behavior in accordance with original ideals.
00:06:19.000So the story of America is America getting better in accordance with founding ideals.
00:06:23.000If you believe that's the case, then you are to be thrown out.
00:06:25.000And as we will see, this is actually what is happening to people, right?
00:06:28.000If you say that America is a good place and the flag is good, you will now be called out as not being sufficiently woke and you will be called racist.
00:06:34.000So we're going to get to all of that in just one second.
00:06:36.000First, I have to bring you some updates.
00:06:37.000on the George Floyd actual criminal case, and it's imperative that people understand the facts of the George Floyd criminal case, because you might need to know what's going to happen next.
00:06:47.000First, have you noticed there might be a little bit of economic uncertainty?
00:06:50.000I don't know about you, but I've been noticing a little bit of economic uncertainty.
00:06:53.000You know, like the 40 million people who are unemployed.
00:06:55.000The fact that we are blowing out the spending at a faster rate than any time in human history.
00:06:59.000In human history, we've spent $7 trillion in the last three months alone, and there will be another round of massive government spending All of this is going to have consequences.
00:07:07.000Things like raised taxes, possible inflation, slow economic recovery.
00:07:13.000But one thing that you should do in order to bet against volatility and make sure that you are basically insured against the ups and downs of the markets and government interventionism, you might want to diversify into precious metals at least a little bit.
00:07:26.000Go talk to my friends right now over at Birchgold.
00:07:28.000If you haven't yet reached out to Birchgold to diversify part of your eligible IRA or 401k into a precious metals IRA, Don't wait for the bottom to fall out again.
00:07:36.000Instead, text Ben to 474747 and when you purchase on or before July 31st, you'll get a free signed copy of my book, The Right Side of History.
00:07:43.000Birchgold will go to work for you and make things super simple.
00:08:01.000During the months of June or July, when you open an IRA in precious metals, you do get a signed copy of my book, The Right Side of History, for free.
00:08:07.000Now, make sure that you actually want to do it.
00:08:18.000Okay, so let's go to the actual fact of the George Floyd prosecution, because it seems to me that the Attorney General of Minnesota is now doing something that is actually legally dangerous.
00:08:30.000If you would like to see the officer in this case go to jail, then you need to charge him with the crime that he committed, and then you need to convict him of that crime.
00:08:38.000One of the great dangers that we have seen in other cases is overcharging.
00:08:42.000People Putting forth a charge that they cannot fulfill.
00:08:46.000So, for example, if there had been an attempt to charge George Zimmerman with manslaughter as opposed to murder, there's a better case that he's probably in jail right now.
00:08:54.000If, however, you're talking about charging somebody with second-degree or first-degree murder when they're obviously guilty of manslaughter or assault, then you can easily see somebody acquitted on a higher charge.
00:09:07.000Now, people don't seem to understand how this works.
00:09:10.000A charge is not your indicator of how seriously you take a crime.
00:09:27.000And so what we have seen in the media and from many of the people online is that they think that because Attorney General Keith Ellison upgraded charges against the former Minneapolis police officer who knelt on George Floyd's neck from third degree murder to second degree murder that this is somehow an indicator that Minnesota is taking this thing more seriously.
00:09:47.000That's really not how criminal law is supposed to work, nor should any of these decisions be driven by people outside the justice system making decisions about how to elevate charges based on public outrage.
00:10:00.000One, it's not equal justice under law.
00:10:02.000But two, it is really, really stupid to change your charges to something you can't prove because of public pressure.
00:10:08.000So yesterday, Keith Ellison, who, by the way, was an awful congressperson, awful congressperson, I mean, openly To the Floyd family, to our beloved community, and to everyone that is watching, I say, George Floyd mattered.
00:10:46.000The very fact that we have filed these charges means that we believe in them.
00:10:50.000But what I do not believe is that one successful prosecution can rectify the hurt and loss that so many people feel.
00:10:59.000So now we are going to continue to perpetuate the narrative that even if the justice system works, the justice system is not working.
00:11:05.000That's what Ellison is saying at the very end, that even if we convict this guy, then that has not alleviated the situation in any real way.
00:11:12.000Magic Johnson is a good indicator of the sort of reaction that the elevation of the charges earned online.
00:11:17.000So Magic Johnson, obviously the former NBA star and now part owner of the L.A. Lakers, says I'm so thrilled that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison amended the police officer who killed George Floyd's charge to second degree from third degree and have then announced the other three Minneapolis officers have been charged with aiding and abetting George Floyd's murder.
00:11:33.000I'm wondering what his legal take is on that, because like he says the work does not stop here.
00:11:51.000And everyone, left, right, and center, should agree that is a bad thing.
00:11:54.000If you can just agitate so that someone is charged with a crime with a higher penalty, that's not how the justice system is supposed to work.
00:12:01.000But The real question is whether they are being charged with the correct crime.
00:12:05.000And the reason I'm talking about this is because if you're a defense lawyer and you look at the case against Derek Chauvin, it is not impossible that Derek Chauvin gets off on this case.
00:12:15.000It is not impossible that he's acquitted.
00:12:17.000In fact, I would say that there's at least a 35% possibility that he's acquitted on these charges.
00:12:22.000And the reason I say that is because of two specific elements.
00:12:26.000One is, that the charges themselves might be overcharged.
00:12:30.000So when you look at what the charges suggest, the differences between second and third degree murder, for example, second degree murder is typically described as you have to have intent to have done it.
00:13:19.000But, according to CNN, under Minnesota law, third-degree murder is defined as causing death of a person by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind without regard for life and without intent to kill.
00:13:33.000But they just elevated it from third degree to second degree.
00:13:36.000According to CNN legal analyst Laura Coates, a former U.S.
00:13:39.000District Attorney for the District of Columbia, she is saying that now the other charges would require that a person plans and willingly carries out a killing or has intention to kill in the spur of the moment.
00:13:54.000Now, the other possibility of second-degree murder is felony murder, is that you're committing a felony, and in the process of the felony, you kill somebody.
00:13:59.000So you're robbing a store, and your gun accidentally goes off and you kill somebody.
00:14:12.000It depends under which charges they're moving.
00:14:14.000If they're going to claim that he had intent to kill Chauvin, that Chauvin had intent to kill Floyd, you could certainly see a jury saying, well, it looks more like he accidentally killed him after doing a very, very bad, terrible, brutal thing.
00:14:25.000And so he's not actually guilty of second degree murder.
00:14:28.000He might be guilty of manslaughter, for example, voluntary manslaughter.
00:14:36.000So that is problem number one with the case.
00:14:40.000Okay, then there is the problem of the other people who are being charged.
00:14:44.000So they're charging the three other officers with aiding and abetting.
00:14:48.000The statute that charges aiding and abetting is you are criminally liable for a crime committed by another if a person intentionally aids, advises, hires, counsels, or conspires with or otherwise procures the other to commit the crime.
00:15:00.000So usually that means like you hired somebody or you're riding in the same car with somebody and you decided to commit the crime together.
00:15:07.000You standing by and not doing anything?
00:15:09.000Not quite as clear under Minnesota law.
00:15:12.000Right, according to legal expert over at the Daily Signal, the three other officers mere presence at the scene or their inaction alone would not be sufficient for aiding and abetting.
00:15:21.000Instead, they would have had to play a knowing role in Chauvin's crime.
00:15:24.000Now, it's possible they get convicted if they quote-unquote did nothing to prevent the offenses committed or the brutal activity.
00:15:30.000Because if you must have known of the activity and made no effort to stop it, then that makes the crime possible.
00:15:37.000You could theoretically make that case, but it's going to be hard to argue aiding and abetting when the officers are just standing there.
00:15:44.000Meaning, were they complicit in the act?
00:15:48.000So again, that's not making the case that they shouldn't be convicted, but it is making the case that you actually want to look at these facts because if you think things are bad right now, wait until a jury acquits the three other officers on charges of aiding and abetting because the legal definition ain't all that clear, or if Derek Chauvin gets off because Ellison overcharged.
00:16:11.000That's why you have to be very specific as a prosecutor in exactly what you are doing.
00:16:15.000Also, if you're the defense lawyer, you have a fairly decent case that this is not second-degree murder, specifically because there are two separate autopsies.
00:16:25.000Now again, There are certain things you could certainly charge her and you could certainly convict for.
00:16:29.000Felony assault would be an obvious one.
00:16:39.000I mean, none of this is to doubt that Chauvin did something brutal and should go to jail.
00:16:42.000The question is, you need to prepare the American public for the facts of the case, because otherwise what you end up with is this miasmatic sense in the atmosphere that Chauvin is going to go to jail for life, and then Ellison overcharges, or the defense puts on a fairly solid case, and he gets off, and then it's the American justice system is racist again.
00:17:15.000The question is, under what circumstances and for what crime?
00:17:18.000Because again, if you overcharge, you end up with an acquittal and things are going to be a lot worse a year from now if there's an acquittal in this case.
00:17:24.000We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
00:17:25.000First, let's talk about the fact that now is a terrible time to go to the post office.
00:17:28.000Like an awful time to go to the post office.
00:17:30.000In fact, you may not even be able to go to the post office right now.
00:17:33.000Do you really want to schlep packages over to the post office and wait in line and brave the wilds of your major city right now?
00:18:31.000That's stamps.com and use Shapiro at the very top of the homepage and you'll get those special deals.
00:18:36.000The four-week trial plus free postage and digital scale.
00:18:38.000No long-term commitment, which is a fantastic, fantastic deal.
00:18:40.000Okay, so the autopsies that came back in the George Floyd case are conflicting.
00:18:48.000So there is the official autopsy that was done by the government medical examiner.
00:18:52.000And it's important here that we note that there are only a few classifications on government documents when it comes to death certificates and autopsies.
00:19:01.000So there's accident, there's natural death, and there's homicide, right?
00:19:05.000There are really only a few different categories that you can put down.
00:19:08.000A homicide does not mean that somebody was murdered or that somebody was killed.
00:19:11.000All it means is that somebody committed an act that ended in death.
00:19:15.000Right, so that doesn't mean that it was the proximate cause of the death.
00:19:24.000It wasn't a lightning strike or something.
00:19:29.000So the mere classification of homicide does not mean that a murder took place.
00:19:33.000So people, you need to understand how the process works if you understand what exactly these documents are saying.
00:19:37.000So the original charging document against Chauvin said, no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.
00:19:46.000Instead, it was a combination of force and health problems contributing to the death.
00:19:51.000In other words, according to the police report, by the way, George Floyd was saying, I can't breathe, before the knee was put on his neck.
00:19:59.000If you are the lawyer, you're going to say, Chauvin did something wrong here, he committed an assault, but he didn't kill him.
00:20:04.000He didn't mean to kill him, he didn't kill him.
00:20:05.000He died because he had fentanyl in his system, because he had some sort of pre-existing condition, and even according to the medical examiner, there was no traumatic asphyxia or strangulation, meaning he wasn't crushing his windpipe.
00:20:19.000He may have exacerbated an underlying health situation like Eric Garner in New York again, but he didn't actually.
00:20:24.000So that's what the defense is going to say.
00:20:25.000Now the independent autopsy says that George Floyd's death was homicide caused by asphyxia due to neck and back compression that led to lack of blood flow to the brain.
00:20:33.000So that is a different autopsy report.
00:20:35.000That's the one that's being done by the family.
00:20:38.000So that is going to be the area in which the defense focuses.
00:20:41.000The reason I'm bringing this all up is because it's very important to understand the facts of the case so that you charge correctly and so that we understand what is going to happen once this gets into a courtroom, because people don't pay attention to any of the details.
00:20:53.000And then they are shocked when things do not go the way they want them to go.
00:20:56.000We saw this with Michael Brown, the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
00:21:00.000The original case, as reported by the media, was Michael Brown was shot in the back with his hands up.
00:21:05.000And it turned out that none of the facts supported any element of that story.
00:21:09.000And then the officer was not, in fact, indicted by a grand jury.
00:21:12.000And people went nuts because the assumption had been from the original media coverage that this was going to turn into that sort of case.
00:21:18.000You saw the same thing with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.
00:21:21.000The original story told by the media was that Trayvon Martin had been stalked and then shot down in cold blood by George Zimmerman.
00:21:27.000And as it turns out, the story was different.
00:21:28.000And so it looked like an overcharge by the prosecutors.
00:21:33.000So focus it, like the media are being irresponsible if they don't tell you all the facts, so that you can urge the prosecutors to actually charge correctly and put this guy in jail for the thing he did, not for a thing that he cannot be proved to have done.
00:21:48.000If you want him in jail, you need the prosecutors to do the right thing, not to overcharge on the basis of people being mad on Twitter and thinking that you are more virtuous for overcharging than you would be for actually appropriately charging in this case.
00:22:00.000Okay, this is a case for putting the person in jail, not a case against putting the person in jail.
00:22:06.000Meanwhile, that's all the underlying facts, because remember, George Floyd is the victim here.
00:22:10.000I mean, George Floyd was at the center of this case.
00:22:12.000I know that's all been forgotten, and I know that everything has become a slogan right now, but it seems to me that if you care about George Floyd and justice for his family, you should want the officer to go to jail, and it seems like the facts of the case are relevant to that particular inquiry.
00:22:22.000Okay, in a second, we're going to get to the narrative, because the narrative has now become utterly stupid, utterly religious in nature.
00:22:27.000The religion of wokeness has taken over in every way.
00:22:32.000First, with everything going on right now, a lot of people are asking if you can even buy life insurance, considering all of the insanity surrounding COVID, considering the rioting and the looting.
00:22:42.000I mean, you can still buy life insurance.
00:22:43.000The best way to do it and do it easily is over at policygenius.com.
00:22:47.000As an insurance marketplace, Policy Genius is in contact with the life insurance companies on their platform every day.
00:22:52.000They're keeping track of all the changes in the market so you don't have to, which means they can get you covered quickly and for the best price.
00:23:55.000But we have now reached the point where a huge swath of Americans are arguing for something different, about which there should be and is widespread disagreement.
00:24:03.000One is the proposition that America is endemically racist and evil, that black people are under existential threat in the United States from police and from white Americans, and the proposition that racism can really be blamed for everything.
00:24:14.000Now, there are a couple of different types of propositions that are all explanatory.
00:24:34.000When it comes to conspiracy theory, everything can be explained by malevolent people behind the scenes pulling the strings.
00:24:39.000This is the sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
00:24:41.000Or, by the way, the idea of institutional racism, that a bunch of white people are sitting behind the scenes and deliberately attempting to harm black people.
00:24:49.000If you're making that argument, you're an idiot.
00:24:51.000There is not some cadre of white people out there who are like, how do we keep black people down today?
00:25:10.000Religion suggests that there is an all-encompassing logic to the universe, and it is provided by God, the creator, who stands behind the logic of the universe.
00:25:19.000The religion of wokeness is a religion.
00:25:21.000It suggests that there is a creator of America, a creator of Western civilization.
00:25:40.000And if you think it can't be explained by racism, it's because you're not going high level enough.
00:25:44.000So take, for example, there's a tweet yesterday, and it is just a perfect example of this religion from Mark Levine.
00:25:50.000And Mark Levine writes, this guy is the chair of New York City Council Health Committee.
00:25:56.000Remember, one second ago, he was saying that you were murdering grandmother if you went outside without a mask.
00:26:01.000Now he says, let's be clear about something.
00:26:03.000If there is a spike in coronavirus cases in the next two weeks, don't blame the protesters, blame racism.
00:26:09.000Ah, racism, the all-purpose god of the gaps for the left.
00:26:13.000You can't explain differentials, you can't explain inequalities, or you're unwilling to say that behavior might be an actual factor in unequal outcomes.
00:26:28.000Let's say that, for example, you suggest that, hey, wait a second, the protesters, they might have higher levels of COVID-19 because they're out there infecting each other.
00:26:36.000And that's, I thought that's bad, right?
00:26:38.000I mean, I thought we opposed that, didn't we?
00:26:43.000You can't blame the protesters, because the protesters are protesting racism.
00:26:46.000So if you just remove one level, then racism is still to blame.
00:26:50.000And this is like the argument that suggests, oh, by the way, you might notice that police officers are having tons and tons of law enforcement encounters with black people.
00:26:58.000And maybe that is the reason for elevated numbers of bad incidents involving police and black people.
00:27:03.000If you're talking about disproportionate numbers of black people being arrested, maybe it's not that the police officers are just rounding up black folks.
00:27:09.000Maybe it's that black people are statistically committing more crimes.
00:27:14.000That 13% of the American population is black, but something like 40-50% of all murders in the United States are committed by black men, and therefore the police are having more encounters with black homicide suspects than they are with white homicide suspects as a percentage of the population.
00:27:29.000Well, then, so that would be an answer to why the police are having these encounters with black people that does not implicate racism.
00:27:36.000So then, if you are a true religious woke person, what you say is, no, no, no, it's still racism.
00:27:42.000Because you see, the institution of the police itself was racist and was instituted as a racist institution.
00:27:47.000And not only that, the difference in human behavior today Between the black man who murders somebody and the white man who murders somebody is attributable to historic racism.
00:27:57.000So the reason that you have these differentials in the first place is because of slavery and Jim Crow.
00:28:01.000So you can always just remove one level and then you get to racism as the bottom line rationale for everything.
00:28:06.000It's the all-important factor in everything and it's the explanatory factor in everything.
00:28:12.000Because when you ask people to nail down exactly how that works, It's nearly impossible.
00:28:17.000But if you refuse to accept that that is the case, then you are a heretic, and you must be outed, and you must be ousted.
00:28:24.000And that is how you end up blaming racism for COVID-19 upticks at rallies with thousands of people protesting, when it is perfectly obvious why you're going to see an uptick if you do see an uptick, and it's because you have thousands of people breathing all over each other, and the virus doesn't care why you're out there protesting.
00:28:41.000So this has become a religion, and you can see the religious aspects of it in the human behavior surrounding it.
00:28:48.000The virtue signaling is not about actual virtue.
00:28:51.000It is about the idea that you are fighting against the heretics.
00:28:53.000You are fighting against the barbarians at the gates who doubt the story.
00:28:58.000So best example ever, this example from Bethesda, Maryland, which is a rich white suburb in Maryland.
00:29:05.000I don't see any of these people sending their kids, busing their kids into inner cities, into impoverished schools with heavy minority populations out of solidarity.
00:29:13.000But what they are willing to do is sit on the ground and then listen and repeat.
00:29:46.000Therefore, you're the one who really carries the communal sin upon you because you are the one continuing to perpetuate racism by not doing this random symbolic act today.
00:30:46.000There's a reason why white liberals are the people who are most likely to defend looting.
00:30:50.000There's a poll out today showing that white college-educated liberals are the people most likely to defend looting.
00:30:54.000Because most Americans don't buy into this crap.
00:30:56.000But if you are a deep devotee of the religion of intersectionality, if you are a deep devotee of the idea that white privilege decides everything in America, Then you are going to defend looting.
00:31:05.000Because you just don't understand the looters, don't you see?
00:31:07.000You don't understand their lived experience.
00:31:09.000And until you understand their lived experience, you can't fight back again.
00:31:15.000Remember, it's not the people making the decision to steal that pair of shoes from Foot Locker.
00:31:19.000Supposedly in memory of George Floyd or some such nonsense that the Floyd family actively, actively says is bad?
00:31:25.000No, it's that racism at a higher level drove people into poverty, and drove them into despair, and drove them into stealing a pair of shoes from the Nike store.
00:31:34.000Even if Nike puts out an ad talking about how bad racism is.
00:31:38.000This is the religion, and the religion must be listened to at all times.
00:31:42.000I'll get to more examples of this, because it's astonishing.
00:31:43.000I mean, it has gone to utterly extraordinary lengths.
00:32:05.000And the religion makes claims that are significantly beyond racism is bad to, you are a racist if you don't do random performative thing I tell you to do today.
00:32:14.000If you do not read these chicken entrails the way I tell you today, you are bad.
00:32:23.000We're gonna get to that in just one second.
00:32:25.000Let's talk about the fact that right now, probably not a great time to go to the local AutoZone.
00:32:30.000Probably you should just shop for that auto part online.
00:32:32.000Also, when you go to the local AutoZone, you're spending too much money.
00:32:35.000It's so much easier than walking into a store and then somebody asking you very specific questions about your car that you don't actually have on you and they give you a generic auto part or they tell you they have to order it anyway.
00:34:32.000The tumblers are overflowing with tears.
00:34:34.000Finally, all AXS members also get the benefits of our other membership tiers.
00:34:38.000That includes the ad-free website experience, access to our live broadcast and show library, access to the show's mailbags, the full three hours of the Ben Shapiro Show, along with dedicated editorials from moi.
00:34:47.000So head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
00:34:56.000Also, Now would be a great time for you to go out and pre-purchase.
00:34:59.000I don't mean to pitch my book on the back of the horror show that we are seeing across the United States right now, but it is extraordinarily relevant.
00:35:06.000I'll admit, when I wrote this book, I wrote this book back in December, January.
00:35:08.000When I wrote this book and then COVID hit, I thought, maybe it's not so relevant.
00:35:13.000The book is called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
00:35:15.000The basic premise of the book is that there is a group of people, I call them disintegrationists because they're interested in the disintegration of the American Union.
00:35:22.000And they are trying to destroy America's philosophy, culture, and history.
00:35:25.000Our shared philosophy of rights under the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
00:35:59.000The evils are part of your history, too, because we're all Americans.
00:36:01.000My book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, is about the destruction of any semblance of unity in the country on the back of a separate narrative that suggests that American philosophy is at root evil, That American history is at root corrupt, and that America's culture of rights is at root an excuse for exploitation.
00:36:37.000The religion of wokeness, it has its priests, and it has its devotees, and it has its proselytizers as well.
00:36:46.000So, the sort of hierarchy, in terms of the Priestley case, are people like the people over at the New York Times.
00:36:53.000So the people over at the New York Times, there was a piece written by the sitting senator, Tom Cotton, from Arkansas, who was a member of the military.
00:37:00.000And he wrote a piece called, Send in the Droogs.
00:37:03.000And it was about the use of the military to stop rioting and looting.
00:37:07.000It has happened repeatedly in American history.
00:37:09.000If you require the National Guard, or you require the military, in order to stop rioting and looting, There is plenty of legal precedent for this.
00:37:15.000The president does have the power under the Insurrection Act to do this.
00:37:37.000As a religious person, I can identify the symbols of religion when they are used.
00:37:40.000If you've ever been on a college campus, there's a thing that people do where if a speaker says something, you're not supposed to clap because it might traumatize somebody.
00:37:54.000And also at their protests, as you saw in that protest from Bethesda, somebody will repeat a slogan or a very, very long sort of encomium, and then you're supposed to repeat it word for word.
00:38:08.000I pledge to you X, Y, and Z in support of the environment, in support of the environment, and transgender lobsters, and transgender lobsters, right?
00:38:16.000That's how it goes on college campuses.
00:38:17.000So the staffers at the New York Times are doing this now.
00:38:23.000And this results in Taylor Lorenz, a reporter for the New York Times, writing, running this puts black New York Times staff in danger, in danger.
00:39:23.000So the New York Times editorial board is not woke enough because they ran a piece, which by the way, the proposition that if we have to use the military to put down the rioting and looting, that we should, that is a proposition that by polling data is supported by somewhere between 6 and 7 in Americans out of 10.
00:39:45.000in Beverly Hills every day, maybe that's worth it.
00:39:49.000So the New York Times has now run a full piece about the New York Times, the New York Times priesthood, the intersectional priesthood, dictating religious terms to the New York Times editorial board.
00:40:00.000The most woke Wellesley graduates who have used, see, everybody thought, I didn't think this because I've spent too much time on college campuses to think this.
00:40:08.000There's a whole group of people, cancel culture doesn't exist.
00:40:10.000Who cares about safe spaces and microaggressions?
00:40:12.000Once they get out in the real world, they're going to see this stuff doesn't work.
00:40:15.000Well, what if they get out in the real world and then they impose that system on everybody else?
00:40:19.000What if it turns out that what starts on college campuses does not end on college campuses?
00:40:24.000If that's what you're seeing at the New York Times today, according to the New York Times, and this would be Mark Tracy reporting, Senators sending the troops op-ed in the Times draws online ire.
00:40:34.000Staff members at the newspaper, including a Pulitzer winner, denounced an opinion essay by Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, calling for a military response to protests.
00:40:42.000The Times has reported on the debate within the administration over whether or not to follow Cotton's suggestion.
00:40:48.000But now you have a bunch of members of the New York Times who are criticizing the New York Times op-ed board.
00:40:53.000By the way, you know what I would do if staffers at my... I run publication.
00:40:58.000If my staffers went online and started ripping me for running an op-ed, and we run a variety of op-eds from the right, many of them disagree with each other.
00:41:05.000If people went online and they started suggesting that I'm putting lives in danger, number one, you should quit.
00:41:09.000If you think that your publication is putting lives in danger or doing something so deeply immoral you cannot work there, you should leave.
00:41:47.000to our readers to show them counter arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.
00:41:50.000We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton's argument painful, even dangerous.
00:41:54.000We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate.
00:41:57.000But this is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.
00:42:01.000Dozens of Times staff members tweeted the same sentence because Nicole Hannah-Jones, correspondent for the New York Times Magazine, who won a Pulitzer Prize for a garbage essay in which she completely botched the history.
00:42:14.000And she continues to botch the history.
00:42:15.000A person who said literally yesterday that rioting and looting is not actually violence.
00:42:36.000I mean, then you want to appeal it to her, maybe.
00:42:39.000The News Guild of New York, a union that represents many times journalists, said in a statement on Wednesday that the op-ed, quote, promotes hate.
00:43:20.000This is where they draw the line, the New York Times.
00:43:22.000They've run op-eds from Vladimir Putin, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
00:43:25.000They've run op-eds in support of communism.
00:43:28.000They've run op-eds from the Chinese government.
00:43:30.000But Tom Cotton says, maybe we should use the military to put down rioting and looting if nothing else suffices, and here's the legal authority to do so.
00:43:36.000And my God, you're endangering everyone.
00:43:39.000This is religious, religious nonsense.
00:43:51.000So after some of the rioting and looting, there were some people who apparently own a building or work for a building owner, and they were trying to clean graffiti off the side of a building.
00:44:00.000Which is what you should do because graffiti is illegal and bad and ugly and terrible.
00:44:05.000Graffiti is defacement of private property.
00:44:08.000So naturally, a woke white woman rolls up and she starts lecturing these women who are cleaning off the graffiti, saying they are racist for cleaning off the graffiti.
00:46:19.000He said, I don't like when people kneel for the national anthem and the American flag.
00:46:22.000Which, by the way, is like a 60-40 proposition in the United States.
00:46:24.000And before Trump, it was like an 80-20 proposition.
00:46:26.000That people were not really very hot on the idea of kneeling for the American flag or the national anthem because those used to be unifying symbols.
00:46:33.000What he's about to say is so utterly uncontroversial that it should go without saying.
00:46:38.000And in fact, if you do say this, then your speech has now become a form of violence.
00:46:43.000And also, if you are silent, you are violent.
00:46:45.000And also, if you do anything we don't like, you are violent.
00:46:48.000So here is Drew Brees saying an uncontroversial thing and then being forced to walk it back by the most woke among us, LeBron James, who had nothing to say about, you know, the Chinese government cracking down on the NBA over one GM in the NBA saying a bad thing about China and Hong Kong.
00:47:04.000And by the way, the bad thing was correct.
00:47:05.000LeBron James comes down on Drew Brees for this.
00:48:54.000Richard Sherman also said he's beyond lost about Drew Brees, beyond lost.
00:48:58.000Guarantee you there were black men fighting alongside your grandfather, but this doesn't seem to be about that.
00:49:02.000That uncomfortable conversation you're trying to avoid by injecting military into a conversation about brutality and equality is part of the problem.
00:49:08.000But what if the Colin Kaepernick protest was wrong?
00:49:10.000What if all of these things are true at the same time?
00:49:12.000Kneeling for the national anthem is wrong.
00:49:13.000Kneeling for the American flag is wrong.
00:49:15.000Police brutality is bad and racism is bad.
00:49:17.000And the American flag does not represent police brutality and racism.
00:49:28.000Because this is how our stupid country works now.
00:49:30.000So Drew Brees was forced to apologize and he put out a statement.
00:49:35.000He said, I would like to apologize to my friends, teammates, the city of New Orleans, the black community, NFL community, and anyone I hurt with my comments yesterday.
00:49:41.000In speaking with some of you, it breaks my heart to know the pain I have caused.
00:49:44.000He literally said, don't kneel for the American flag.
00:49:49.000In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country.
00:49:58.000And then he puts out a bunch of statements about standing against the systematic racial injustice and police brutality and creation of real policy change that will make a difference, condemning the years of oppression that have taken place throughout our black communities and still exists today.
00:50:10.000So now he is repeating the various slogans he's expected to repeat in order so that he can be expiated of his sin.
00:50:18.000You say the American flag is not bad, and that the national anthem is good, and now you have to repeat all of the slogans that you are sent by the PR department over at the New Orleans Saints.
00:50:26.000That's the way this is supposed to work.
00:50:28.000By the way, the Broncos head coach was forced to do the same thing.
00:50:31.000Broncos head coach said, I think that there's minimal.
00:50:34.000He said he thinks that the NFL is a league of meritocracy.
00:50:36.000You earn what you get, you get what you earn.
00:50:38.000He said, I don't see racism at all in the NFL.
00:50:40.000I don't see discrimination in the NFL.
00:50:41.000By the way, huge majority of players in the NFL are black.
00:50:44.000And so he then had to put out a statement saying, after reflecting on my comments and listening to players this morning, I realized what I said regarding racism and discrimination in the NFL was wrong.
00:50:55.000While I have never personally experienced those terrible things firsthand, during my 33 years in the NFL, I understand many players, coaches, and staff have different perspectives.
00:51:01.000I should have been more clear, and I am sorry.
00:51:04.000I look forward to listening to the players both individually and collectively.
00:51:07.000There's a lot of work to be done in the areas of diversity and providing opportunities across the board for I mean, it's just unbelievable.
00:51:13.000We're just gonna force everybody to repeat the same catechism.
00:51:22.000In a second, we're going to get to the virtue signaling by the people who are attempting to demonstrate their bona fides and the lack of clarity in what exactly is being demanded.
00:51:33.000So one of the things I've been saying all along is it seems like there should be some agreement on some of the policy.
00:51:37.000We should be able to agree that we need to more clearly define, for example, qualified immunity.
00:51:40.000So yesterday, On the show, as I was informed by people correctly.
00:51:45.000I misidentified the nature of qualified immunity.
00:51:47.000It does not mean you can't be prosecuted if you are a police officer for doing a bad thing.
00:51:51.000It means that you're immune from civil liability so long as you did something that is quote-unquote within the scope of agency.
00:51:56.000The problem is that the Supreme Court has failed to define scope of agency, so you have a bunch of bad cases where people are doing stuff that's clearly criminal and still cannot be sued for that.
00:52:05.000And by the way, if the individual can't be sued, then the police department ends up suing and the taxpayer ends up on the hook.
00:52:10.000I also suggested that police unions are a problem.
00:52:37.000There's not actual agreement among people on the left, members of the religion, about the actual policies to be pursued.
00:52:43.000There's not actual agreement on this stuff.
00:52:46.000Because the radicals don't want any of that stuff.
00:52:48.000The radicals don't care about that stuff.
00:52:50.000The radicals are openly suggesting that we defund the police.
00:52:55.000So the Black Lives Matter movement will develop an armed branch of peace officers to combat police brutality in black communities during a so-called war on police.
00:53:06.000This is according to an interview with the Daily Mail where BLM New York Chapter Chairman Hawk Newsome describes how the group plans to follow in the footsteps of the Black Panther Party by matching fire with fire when necessary.
00:53:17.000He says, we're talking about defending our communities.
00:53:19.000You know what it's like to see a taser pointed at a 7-year-old?
00:53:21.000You know what it's like to see a 67-year-old black woman pepper sprayed and pushed to the ground?
00:53:25.000We're preparing and training to defend our communities.
00:53:28.000So, he's now talking about arming quote-unquote peace officers, open carrying firearms while patrolling black communities in order to deter police brutality.
00:53:37.000Now listen, if you are abiding by the law in open carrying, Do what you want to do, right?
00:53:42.000I mean, that is fully in consonance with the law.
00:53:45.000If you are suggesting that when a police officer comes to arrest somebody for a crime, that you need people who are going to show up and stop that, that's kind of a problem, is it not?
00:53:53.000And then there's controversy on the left over defunding the police.
00:53:56.000So one of the big slogans that is now gaining steam is defund the police.
00:53:59.000By the way, if you've enjoyed the last week in America, if you've enjoyed your free trial of major cities without police, I urge you to buy the subscription Democrats are offering.
00:54:08.000Because it seems like a really crappy deal.
00:54:11.000It seems like the veneer between civilization and widespread rioting and looting was like this thin, and when you remove the police, it's gone.
00:56:03.000Why is it that we have two completely different standards?
00:56:08.000Okay, I mean, first of all, we don't have two completely different standards for how the police treat people, which is why this person is going to go to jail if Keith Ellison does his job properly.
00:56:15.000So what are some of the other policies that are being put forward?
00:56:17.000Well, Karen Bass also says that we're going to vote for a committee to investigate the possibility of slavery reparations.
00:56:24.000This is a thing that's never going to happen.
00:56:27.000If you believe that you can even identify who ought to receive the slavery reparations and who ought to pay the slavery reparations 170 years later, or that, by the way, if you think that cutting like a $30,000 or $40,000 check to everybody who is a descendant of a slave in the United States is going to end the claim that America is responsible for all inequality, you're wrong.
00:56:48.000Antonio Gizzi Coates admitted as much.
00:56:50.000He wrote a long piece for The Atlantic a couple of years ago, trying to revive the slavery reparations debate, suggesting the case for slavery reparations.
00:56:56.000And he said, well, we could try it, but maybe it won't work.
00:56:59.000Well, then what are you talking about?
00:57:02.000Here is Karen Bass suggesting a policy that's never going to get passed, obviously.
00:57:06.000I've not had a specific conversation with Speaker Pelosi, but I've certainly talked to other members of leadership.
00:57:12.000And being on Judish, where that bill is, I believe that it will move.
00:57:18.000I don't know what will be in the package that the House passes at this point in time.
00:57:23.000I know the broad strokes, and we are looking at that.
00:57:26.000But I do believe that it will be voted on out of committee, and hopefully out of the House, before the session concludes.
00:57:35.000Okay, so then there will be a board that investigates slavery reparations, makes a bunch of vague recommendations, and then doesn't do anything, and then America will be accused of being racist for not passing slavery reparations.
00:57:44.000And if there are slavery reparations, if that ever were to happen, then it will be deemed not enough money to rectify the imbalances of the last 200 years.
00:57:52.000So the broader Black Lives Matter sort of agenda is not any specific policy preference 'cause the BLM agenda, which includes defund the police, is not even popular with many on the left.
00:58:01.000So instead, you sort of have these people who are reverting to the religious.
00:58:07.000The religious is the only thing that unifies this at this point.
00:58:09.000And that religion has certain things that you are supposed to just believe.
00:58:15.000Core beliefs like America is, America's original sin was slavery, but it wasn't just America's original sin.
00:58:21.000Every bad thing that happens now is attributable to America's original sin.
00:58:24.000So here is Barack Obama giving a widely praised speech in the media because everything Barack Obama says is widely praised in the media.
00:58:30.000Here was Obama yesterday saying that Floyd's death is related to America's original sin of slavery.
00:58:35.000How he makes that connection is absolutely beyond me.
00:58:36.000We don't know that Chauvin is a racist.
00:58:38.000We know that he engaged in an act of police brutality.
00:58:40.000We don't know the surrounding circumstances of the arrest.
00:58:44.000We don't know what this has to do with slavery.
00:58:45.000I mean, like, really, this is a pretty major leap, but it's the leap that is, it's the leap of faith that is required of you to believe that the great malevolent god of racism stands behind all events in the United States.
00:58:58.000What has happened over the last several weeks is challenges and structural problems here in the United States have been thrown into high relief.
00:59:14.000They're the result of a long history of slavery and Jim Crow and redlining and institutionalized racism that too often have been the plague, the original sin of our society.
01:00:24.000He shows up at a Black Lives Matter protest in London, and he declares that he might not have a career after the speech, as though there is a bevy of people in Hollywood who are looking to blacklist him for saying the most popular thing you could say in Hollywood, which is that America is bad and racist.
01:00:40.000Imagine it, a nation that is set up with individual families that are thriving, that are healthy, That communicate, that raise their children in love, have a better rate of becoming better human beings.
01:01:41.000It was very important that I hear from Meghan Markle.
01:01:42.000So Meghan Markle is now speaking out because of course silence is violence.
01:01:45.000Here is the Duchess of Sussex speaking out about this issue.
01:01:48.000She is deemed to be one of the case to people who are allowed to speak and you're supposed to listen and repeat everything she says.
01:01:55.000For the past couple of weeks, I've been planning on saying a few words to you for your graduation.
01:02:02.000And as we've all seen over the last week, what is happening in our country and in our state and in our hometown of LA has been absolutely devastating.
01:02:16.000And I realized the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.
01:02:22.000George Floyd's life mattered, and Breonna Taylor's life mattered, and Philando Castile's life mattered, and Tamir Rice's life mattered.
01:02:32.000Okay, we agree about all those things.
01:02:34.000My favorite line there, though, is, the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.
01:02:38.000I feel like Drew Brees said a thing, and then that was the wrong thing to say.
01:02:41.000I feel like it turns out that you guys have a very specific idea of what can be said and what cannot be said under these circumstances.
01:02:46.000And so, what you actually mean by the wrong thing to say is nothing, is that if you say exactly what I want you to say, then we are very happy with you.
01:02:55.000Probably my favorite celebrity take of the last couple days is Ashton Kutcher trying to explain Black Lives Matter and completely botching it in the process.
01:03:13.000When it comes to Black Lives Matter, I think what folks that are writing All Lives Matter need to understand is that for some people, for some people, black lives don't matter at all.
01:04:05.000But again, that's part of the catechism, because every religion also has to have people who are outside the religion, so that you can say that those people are heretics and wrong, and those are the damned, while we who are the initiates will end up in heaven.
01:04:15.000Okay, meanwhile, In other news, the major controversy has broken out over General James Mattis.
01:04:23.000So you remember the Secretary of Defense, he left the Trump administration a couple of years ago in December 2018.
01:04:28.000He left over President Trump's Syria policy.
01:04:31.000That's when President Trump randomly just made an announcement that he was going to withdraw troops from Syria and ended up clearing the way for Turkey to sort of invade northern Syria.
01:04:41.000And Mattis said, I don't like this, and he left.
01:04:42.000Well, now he's put out a statement just ripping Trump up and down.
01:05:09.000He said, I've watched this week's unfolding events, angry and appalled.
01:05:12.000The words equal justice under law are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court.
01:05:15.000This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding.
01:05:18.000It is a wholesome and unifying demand, one that all of us should be able to get behind.
01:05:21.000So if that's all that the protesters were demanding, I'd be behind it like full score, obviously.
01:05:25.000That's not all that they are demanding.
01:05:27.000Even if that's most of what they're demanding, I've said that protesting for that, again, for the two millionth time, I've said, protesting in favor of equal protection of the laws, totally on board.
01:05:38.000Right, I spent the entire first 20 minutes of this particular episode talking about the necessity for properly charging a person so he goes to jail for equal justice under law.
01:06:27.000Okay, then he says, the protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting we live up to our values, our values as people and our values as a nation.
01:06:35.000We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.
01:06:38.000Okay, who are these evil, evil, horrible people?
01:07:02.000When Barack Obama took office, most Americans were quite hopeful about race relations.
01:07:05.000By the time he left office, most Americans were not hopeful about race relations.
01:07:09.000Barack Obama spent years saying the Cambridge police acted stupidly when they did not.
01:07:13.000Suggesting that you don't bring a knife to a gunfight with regards to his political enemies.
01:07:17.000Suggesting the Tea Partiers were terrorists.
01:07:19.000Suggesting that Fox News was a propaganda outlet.
01:07:21.000The President of the United States, Barack Obama, spent years suggesting that every black person is in the same sort of danger as Trayvon Martin, suggesting that the rioters in Ferguson and looters in Ferguson had justification for their rioting and looting because people don't make things up, even though the case regarding Michael Brown was indeed made up.
01:07:39.000The President of the United States deployed his vice president to say that Mitt Romney wanted to put y'all back in chains.
01:07:45.000He suggested that he had a typical white grandmother.
01:07:46.000The grandmother who raised him, by the way, was a typical white person who was subtly racist.
01:07:52.000Barack Obama was a very, very divisive president.
01:07:54.000I know that we're all supposed to pretend that the world started revolving the moment Donald Trump became president, but it's not true.
01:08:08.000He says, we are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.
01:08:11.000We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.
01:08:14.000Well, we didn't when Obama was president, so I'm looking for it.
01:08:17.000He says, this will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens, to past generations that bled to defend our promise, to our children.
01:08:24.000And then he says, instructions given by military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that the Nazi slogan for destroying us was divide and conquer.
01:08:32.000Our American answer is, in union there is strength.
01:08:34.000We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis, confident that we are better than our politics.
01:08:39.000Okay, so I'm wondering who is destroying the Constitution when you literally have complete lawlessness overrunning America's cities and the president invoking a Constitutional Insurrection Act and not even using it, right?
01:08:50.000As far as the idea that divide and conquer was the Nazi slogan while America was in union, there is strength, I'm wondering who exactly feels more unified these days?
01:09:03.000Or is it possible these rifts have been emerging for decades and that the academic mentality of critical theory and critical race studies that suggest that we are all but members of our race, this racial reductionism where Joe Biden tells you you're not actually black if you don't vote for Joe Biden.
01:09:19.000Maybe this divisiveness predates Donald Trump.
01:09:22.000So while I have a lot of respect for General Mattis as a person, I think that this statement is wildly off-base.
01:09:27.000Unfortunately, it's really not good for Trump, right?
01:09:28.000It's very, very bad for President Trump to have his former Secretary of Defense ripping him.
01:10:02.000From the tape, it looks mostly like people are standing there, and then the cops just start clearing them, or the Secret Service starts clearing them, and then they clear the area so Trump can walk out, hold up a Bible, and go back in.
01:10:12.000But the defense secretary says he got roped into it, which is always a great look.
01:10:17.000He says he wasn't aware of the photo op.
01:10:18.000Here is the defense secretary creating some daylight between himself and Trump on this.
01:10:23.000I did know that we were going to the church.
01:10:24.000I was not aware of a photo op was happening.
01:10:26.000Of course, the president drags a large press pool along with him.
01:10:30.000And look, I do everything I can to try to stay apolitical and to try and stay out of situations that may appear political.
01:10:37.000And sometimes I'm successful at doing that, and sometimes I'm not as successful.
01:10:41.000But my aim is to keep the department out of politics, to stay apolitical.
01:10:46.000And that's what I continue to try and do, as well as my leaders here in the department.
01:10:50.000Okay, meanwhile, the Army General Mark Milley, who's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also dragged along for that particular photo op.
01:10:55.000It turns out that this is one of the more major political own goals of modern politics.
01:11:01.000He sent an open letter, an unclassified open letter, to the Chief of Staff of the Army, Commandant of the Marine Corps, Chief of Naval Operations, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Chief of the National Guard, Commandant of the Coast Guard, Chief of Space Operations, and Commanders of the Combatant Commands.
01:11:16.000And his message was, follow the Constitution.
01:11:19.000Right, which should be fairly obvious, but the implication is fairly obvious as well.
01:11:24.000Mark Milley sent out this letter saying, Every member of the U.S. military swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the values embedded within it.
01:11:30.000This document is founded on the essential principle that all men and women are born free and equal and should be treated with respect and dignity.
01:11:36.000It also gives Americans the right to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly.
01:11:38.000We in uniform remain committed to our national values and principles embedded in the Constitution.
01:11:43.000During the current crisis, the National Guard is operating under the authority of state governors to protect lives and property, preserve peace, and ensure public safety and justice.
01:11:50.000As members of the joint force comprised of all races, colors, and creeds, you embody the ideals of our Constitution.
01:11:55.000Please remind all of our troops and leaders we will uphold the values of our nation.
01:11:58.000And then he hand wrote on this piece of paper, we all committed our lives to the idea that is America.
01:12:04.000We will stay true to that oath and the American people.
01:12:08.000So the implication is pretty hard not to read into that.
01:12:10.000He's only sending a letter that restates the obvious because he's attempting to chide Trump pretty clearly.
01:12:17.000So none of that is particularly good for President Trump.
01:12:20.000Trump being at war with his own Chief of Staff of the Joint Chiefs.
01:12:24.000Him being at war with his own Defense Secretary.
01:12:25.000Him being at war with his former Defense Secretary.
01:12:27.000Like his whole goal here was to look tough.
01:12:30.000His whole goal here was to look like he was a law and order guy.
01:12:32.000And having your defense establishment kind of going at you is not a good look.
01:12:36.000Forget about the fact that I think that Mattis is wrong in his particular take on politics.
01:12:44.000An own goal is an own goal, and you have to acknowledge an own goal when it happens.
01:12:47.000There's a reason right now that the polls are not looking good for President Trump.
01:12:54.000He needs to ensure that he runs a much more disciplined campaign, because right now, things are quite ugly for the President in the polling data.
01:13:01.000And before you discount all the polls, recognize that the polls at this point in time did not even have Barack Obama up 8 on Mitt Romney in 2012.
01:13:08.000Right now, the average polling data, at no point was Hillary up eight on Donald Trump, at no point.
01:13:14.000Right now, Joe Biden is in the RealClearPolitics polling average up eight points, and Trump is trailing in virtually every battleground state, according to Fox News polling.
01:13:25.000According to the Fox News polling, Trump is now trailing in Arizona.