A philosopher says humans should kill themselves. Maybe. Maybe not. An 11-year-old drag kid makes a trip to a bar. And Democrats focus once again on Russian interference. But there s a twist. I ll explain it all on this week s episode of The Ben Shapiro Show. Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, Special Guest: Martha McCallum, Fox News Channel's Senior Political Commentator Ben Shapiro's New Book is out! Subscribe to the show to get immediate access to all the latest breaking news and analysis, including breaking news on the government shutdown, breaking headlines, breaking news stories, and much, much more. Use the promo code SHAPIRO for $359 for any premium made-to-measure suit for just $359 and free shipping. That s 50% off the regular price for a made tomeasure premium suit, plus shipping is free! That's $359 at Indochino.com when you enter Promo Code SHAPORO at checkout when you checkout, and you get a 50% discount! Go check it out right now! Shout out to Ben Shapiro for his latest book, The Devil Next Door on Amazon! and find out the title and cover of his new book! What s it all about? Check out the book on Amazon. and get a sneak peek at the cover and title! by clicking here! You'll get all the details on the book, including the title, the cover, and cover! Check it out on the website. You won't want to miss it! . It's coming soon! And don't miss it. Thanks Ben Shapiro! Subscribe and review Ben Shapiro is a great resource for all things political news, tips, tips on how to live up to your best week in 2020! I'll be checking out Ben Shapiro s latest book recommendations, tips for the best of the best in 2020 and much more! Thanks, Ben Shapiro - The Weekly Beast of the Week! - Ben Shapiro. - THE FUTURE of the week: The FASTEST! - The FUTURIST: The Weekly After Show? - Subscribe to get exclusive sneak peek into what s going to be in the new season of The Devil's Next Episode of The Bachelorette? and more!
00:00:43.000Also, before we jump into the news, let me remind you that if you wish to look stylish, it is not enough for you to go to your local department store and then just grab a suit off the rack.
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00:02:03.000Okay, well I want to start today with a piece, a couple of pieces of breaking news.
00:02:07.000Piece of breaking news number one is that President Trump now says that he is not going to, in fact, go through with a government shutdown over the border wall.
00:02:16.000This is according to spokesman, spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.
00:02:20.000The White House, according to the Washington Post, wants to avoid a partial government shutdown and has found other ways to get the border wall President Trump is demanding, according to Sanders.
00:02:28.000Sanders' comments came four days before large portions of the federal government will begin a shutting down unless Congress and Trump reach a funding deal.
00:02:34.000Trump has been demanding $5 billion from Congress for his border wall, which Democrats refuse to give.
00:02:39.000But Sanders told Fox News Channel, we have other ways we can get to that five billion.
00:02:42.000She said, at the end of the day, we don't want to shut down the government.
00:02:46.000Sanders said the White House was exploring other funding sources and believed it could be legally done.
00:02:51.000She says, there are certainly a number of different funding sources we've identified we can use that we can couple with money that would be given through congressional appropriations.
00:02:57.000And that would help us get to that five billion dollars the president needs in order to protect our border.
00:03:01.000OK, well, if that's the case, why hasn't he done it so far?
00:03:03.000I mean, really, if it's that easy, he's been in office for nearly two years at this point, why doesn't he just fund the border wall?
00:03:09.000This was his number one promise to all of his constituents.
00:03:12.000It was his promise to the American people is that border wall was going to get done.
00:03:16.000And he originally promised Mexico was going to pay for it.
00:03:18.000Mexico is not going to pay for it, but at least it was going to get done, right?
00:03:22.000We've replaced some of the border fencing with better border wall, but that's about it.
00:03:26.000So, if President Trump believes he doesn't need a new congressional appropriation, then what exactly has he been waiting for over the past couple of years?
00:03:32.000And if he does believe that he needs that congressional appropriation, then why in the hell is he caving to a Democrat Congress?
00:03:39.000Maybe he wants to do this again when there's a Democrat Senate?
00:03:43.000I mean, when exactly does he want to have this fight?
00:03:47.000There are people who are big Trump boosters, people like Ann Coulter, who are livid over all of this, because she says, listen, he made one promise, and that was this key promise, and now he won't even go up against Nancy Pelosi in the House in order to get it done, or Chuck Schumer in the Senate in order to get it done, or fellow Republicans in order to get it done.
00:04:02.000He's not willing to bear a little bit of pain in order to prevent the vast number of people who are trying to cross that border illegally.
00:04:11.000And it's especially dumb if you're gonna signal like this.
00:04:13.000It just proves that you don't have any... You don't have any bite to back your bark.
00:04:18.000And the fact is, the President of the United States, like, two days ago, went on national television with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and he says, I'll own the shutdown.
00:04:55.000You want to make that case, make that case.
00:04:56.000But that's not the case President Trump has been making.
00:04:58.000So the wall either gets built or this one's on him.
00:05:01.000Because now, he's not only claimed that he's not going to shut down the government, he's not going to fight that way, now he claims he can do it himself.
00:05:07.000According to The Washington Post, Sanders' comments come after a series of miscalculations by Republicans in recent days over how to try and get Democrats to sign on to $5 billion to pay for the construction of a wall along the Mexico border.
00:05:18.000Of course, last week, President Trump said he'd be proud to shut down the government over the issue.
00:05:21.000And then on Monday evening, Senate Republicans said they were anticipating a formal proposal from the White House, but that never materialized.
00:05:27.000The White House never promised a 5 p.m.
00:05:51.000And I have very strong personal friends who are in favor of criminal justice reform.
00:05:56.000You know, close political connections who are very much in favor of criminal justice reform, both in the White House and in the Senate as well.
00:06:02.000I'm not in favor of criminal justice reform that simply grants greater power for wardens to let people who they deem nonviolent out of jail.
00:06:10.000The chances that people are going to go back to crime after they've been in jail, particularly federal crime, very high.
00:06:18.000If you want to lower the sentences, then go through a legislative process of lowering the sentences.
00:06:22.000But if the idea is that we're just going to do this through a discretionary process, that ain't going to solve the problem.
00:06:27.000If you want to get rid of mandatory minimums, if you want to rewrite the penalties for particular crimes, do that.
00:06:32.000But what this bill really does, is it says that wardens can adjudicate on basically a case-by-case basis whether somebody is deemed nonviolent, and then if they are deemed nonviolent, then they can be released early.
00:06:44.000Or they can have time that they've already spent in prison count toward the time they've yet to serve.
00:07:14.000And as it turns out, statistically speaking, the Trump administration has deported fewer people than the Obama administration did during the same period in the first couple of years of their administration.
00:07:23.000So for all the talk about border security being ramped up dramatically, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of it.
00:07:28.000And I think that President Trump's constituents have a right to question him about all of this.
00:07:32.000One of the reasons, apparently, that President Trump is afraid of the government shutdown is because the stock market has been dropping precipitously in recent weeks.
00:07:39.000It is now at a loss on the year, over the course of the entire year.
00:07:42.000Trump has attacked the Federal Reserve, but apparently it's rattled him that the stock market has dropped, which it should.
00:07:47.000If the stock market drops too much, and if the economy downturns, not only is he not going to win re-election, he's going to get skunked.
00:07:52.000I mean, the president is not personally particularly popular, but he does have a good economy and people can at least point to his track record of success.
00:07:58.000If the economy takes a downturn, he's got a real problem.
00:08:01.000So, in other words, the stock market, which has taken a dump for a variety of reasons, including the fact that President Trump has decided that tariffs are a good way of making trade policy, The stock market takes a hit, and then President Trump decides that border security is less important than criminal justice reform.
00:08:15.000Again, I've got to question the priorities.
00:08:21.000Now, meanwhile, in other news for the Trump administration, Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security advisor, is about to be sentenced today, or he has been sentenced today, rather.
00:08:31.000A judge began the sentencing for President Trump's former national security advisor, saying he needed to address other issues before deciding the punishment that Flynn should face.
00:08:40.000Both prosecutors and defense attorneys had urged that Flynn face no prison time for his crime, noting he was an early cooperator in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
00:08:50.000We still don't know what Flynn exactly has said here, but in their sentencing submission, Flynn's attorney suggested that he might have been fooled into lying to the FBI because he'd not been warned in advance that doing so is a crime.
00:08:59.000That prompted the judge to request more documents.
00:09:01.000The special counsel's office last week pushed back on the idea Flynn was mistreated.
00:09:05.000As I discussed last week on the program, I am not under the opinion that Flynn was wildly mistreated in a way that other people are not mistreated by the criminal justice system.
00:09:12.000Very often police call you in for some sort of interview, you are not in custody, and then you are not given a lawyer.
00:09:18.000Prosecutors said the court should reject the defendant's attempts to minimize the seriousness of these false statements to the FBI.
00:09:24.000Nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendants to make false statements to the FBI.
00:09:29.000A concession from Flynn could disappoint supporters who for months have advanced the notion that Flynn was wronged, although reluctance to admit guilt could prompt the judge to send Flynn to prison.
00:09:39.000The real issue here is that Flynn's bad activity really has very little to do with Russia.
00:09:45.000For all the talk about him having, you know, connections with Russia, really very little of this has to do with Russia at all.
00:09:51.000The vast majority of his bad activity has to do with his relationship with the Turkish government.
00:09:55.000It was basically paying him as a lobbyist without him registering as a lobbyist.
00:09:59.000I don't think that the Flynn plea is going to result in anything truly nasty for President Trump.
00:10:05.000What's ironic about all of this is that the left has spent just an insane, inordinate amount of time talking about Russia interference in the election, talking about all of Trump's top officials being ensnared in Russia interference, when it turns out that all along the best legal avenues they had for attack on President Trump were the ones that you would have thought you would have had in 2016, right before any of the Russia stuff came up.
00:10:26.000His sort of personal foibles with women.
00:10:41.000Somehow made a casino go bankrupt in Atlantic City, right?
00:10:44.000I mean, there's always been a lot of questions about corrupt practices, but the Russia stuff took forefront because it explained a couple of things for Democrats.
00:10:52.000It demonstrates how, for Democrats, the truth really was secondary to the priority.
00:10:56.000The priority for Democrats in all of this was to delegitimize the election.
00:11:00.000It was not about getting to what crimes Trump may or may not have committed.
00:11:16.000All of the other criminal activity that is now being laid at the feet of President Trump, all of that other activity doesn't explain why Hillary Clinton lost the election.
00:11:26.000Because, as we all know, if Trump had simply come out a week before the election and said, yeah, I stripped Stormy Daniels years ago, no one would have cared.
00:11:33.000Nobody would have cared if he'd said, I pay hush money to women.
00:11:36.000And that's why Democrats weren't focused in on the Michael Cohen stuff.
00:11:39.000It's why they haven't been focused in on the Trump Foundation.
00:11:41.000Because their priority was always delegitimizing the election of 2016.
00:11:45.000In a second, I'm going to talk about another corruption charge now being laid at the feet of the Trump administration.
00:11:50.000And then I want to talk about A story that's kind of shocking about how it was the Democrats were already laying the groundwork for this Trump-stole-the-election narrative very, very early on.
00:11:59.000But first, we need to talk about your Second Amendment rights.
00:12:01.000Now, I know you love your Second Amendment rights just like I do.
00:12:04.000You want to be able to defend yourself.
00:12:49.000Get entered to win your free gun right now.
00:12:51.000The USCCA has a number of fantastic services ranging from legal defense help, in case, God forbid, you have to fire a gun at somebody, to all sorts of advice and classes.
00:13:02.000All sorts of great stuff over at the USCCA.
00:13:13.000Go check them out right now by texting SAFE to 87222.
00:13:16.000Okay, meanwhile, President Trump has agreed now to shut down his embattled personal charity.
00:13:22.000Amid allegations he used it for his personal and political benefit and gave away its remaining money according to New York AG Barbara Underwood.
00:13:28.000She announced this on Tuesday according to the Washington Post.
00:13:31.000Underwood said the Donald J. Trump Foundation is dissolving As her office pursues its lawsuit against the charity, Trump and his three eldest children are also being sued.
00:13:45.000Well, because Donald Trump was basically signing personal checks, according to the allegations, for personal expenditures and then funneling it through the charity.
00:13:54.000Underwood is continuing to seek more than $2.8 million in restitution and has asked a judge to ban the Trumps temporarily from serving on the boards of other New York non-profit organizations.
00:14:04.000Underwood said Tuesday her investigation found a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.
00:14:14.000One of the allegations with regard to the Trump Foundation is that the Trump Foundation basically gave a giant check.
00:14:21.000To a veterans group in the middle of the election cycle and President Trump campaigned on that basis.
00:14:26.000So this was allegedly using charitable contributions for a political purpose is sort of the idea.
00:14:32.000The shuddering comes after the Washington Post documented apparent lapses at the foundation.
00:14:36.000Trump used the charity's money to pay legal settlements for his private business, to purchase art for one of his clubs, to make a prohibited political donation.
00:14:44.000Trump denied he'd done anything wrong, but in 2016 he said he wanted to close the foundation, but the AG blocked the move while they investigated.
00:14:50.000Underwood said the foundation's remaining $1.75 million that are in charity right now would be distributed to other charities approved by her office, as well as a state judge.
00:14:59.000The Trump Foundation was never super impressive.
00:15:01.000It was only about $3.2 million in the bank in 2009, which is pretty small.
00:15:05.000The real estate mogul used other people's donations to build up the foundation's assets.
00:15:09.000The biggest donations came from Vince and Linda McMahon in recent years.
00:15:12.000The post reporting showed that for years, Trump appeared to treat the foundation as a checkbook for gifts that bolstered his interests.
00:15:18.000The largest donation in the foundation's history, a $265,000 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989, appeared to benefit Trump's business.
00:15:25.000It paid to restore a fountain outside Trump's Plaza Hotel.
00:15:29.000The smallest, a $7 foundation gift to the Boy Scouts that same year, appeared to benefit Trump's family.
00:15:33.000It matched the amount required to enroll a boy in the Scouts the year that his son, Donald Trump Jr., was 11.
00:15:38.000The Attorney General's probe turned up evidence that Trump and Donald Trump Jr., Eric Ivanka Trump, all listed as officers of the charity, had not actually attended a board meeting.
00:15:49.000And one of the charity's official treasurers, Allen Weisselberg, told investigators he wasn't even aware that he was on the board.
00:15:55.000At one point, he used the charity's money to make a $25,000 political donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the charity didn't tell the IRS about it.
00:16:03.000Instead, they listed a donation as a gift totally unrelated to a charity in Kansas with a similar name.
00:16:09.000During the 2016 campaign, there was also some issues with coordination between the Foundation and the Trump campaign, for example.
00:16:19.000And there's a large portrait that Trump bought in 2007 for $20,000 using money from the charity.
00:16:24.000We still don't know what happened with exactly that money or with that portrait.
00:16:30.000Well, it's only relevant in the sense that for Democrats, This could have been their line of attack from the very beginning, and it would have been a richer line of attack from the very beginning.
00:16:38.000They could have, January 20th, 2000, 2017, they could have come out and they could have said, listen, President Trump has got a corrupt personal charity, we know that his business has some corruption issues, and we think that he hasn't properly separated off from those businesses, there's corruption going on, we need to investigate all of that.
00:16:57.000That would have been a much richer line of attack, but Democrats didn't do that.
00:17:09.000The latest evidence of this nonsense is they're pushing a report very, very hard that suggests that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube were all working hand-in-glove, basically, with Russian sources in order to manipulate data in the run-up to the election.
00:17:23.000Shira Frankl, Daisuke Wakabayashi, and Kate Conger over at the New York Times report, when lawmakers asked YouTube, a unit of Google, to provide information about Russian manipulation efforts, it did not disclose how many people watched the videos on its site that were created by Russian trolls.
00:17:36.000Facebook did not release the comments its users made when they viewed Russian-generated content.
00:17:40.000And Twitter gave only scattered details about Russian-controlled accounts that spread propaganda there.
00:17:44.000The tech company's foot-dragging was described in a pair of reports the Senate Intelligence Committee published on Monday in what were the most detailed accounts to date about how Russian agents Excuse me.
00:17:52.000First of all, very difficult to tell what is Russian manipulation and what is just Russian citizens posting stuff.
00:17:57.000Google, Twitter and Facebook were described by researchers as having evaded and misrepresented themselves and the extent of Russian activity on their sites.
00:18:03.000The companies were also criticized for not turning over complete sets of data about Russian manipulation in the Senate.
00:18:07.000First of all, very difficult to tell what is Russian manipulation and what is just Russian citizens posting stuff or American citizens posting stuff.
00:18:14.000This report was done with a particular conclusion in mind.
00:18:19.000The conclusion was that the Russians were attempting to throw the election to Trump and successfully accomplish this.
00:18:24.000The studies renewed questions, according to the New York Times, about whether social media companies have withheld data on Russian activity and how willing they really are to address the issue.
00:18:32.000And herein lies the actual Democratic agenda.
00:18:35.000In all of this, from beginning to end, the agenda in the Russian investigation was all about Trump was illegally elected, and two, All of these social media companies need to change their algorithms, need to change how they provide you information, need to prevent you from gathering the information that you want specifically in order so that a Democrat will win in 2020.
00:18:53.000Okay, that's really what's going on here.
00:18:57.000What Democrats want is for social media companies to continue to manipulate the data according to their particular preferences under threat of government largesse.
00:19:04.000Okay, under threat of government pressure.
00:19:17.000If you think that this election was twisted because of Russian propaganda on Facebook, you are out of your mind.
00:19:23.000Even Nate Silver, who is no right-winger, is saying, this is a bunch of crap.
00:19:26.000If you think that Russian memes swung the 2016 election, then you legitimately don't know what you're talking about.
00:19:33.000There's an article in the New York Times today from Michelle Goldberg, who's really not a very good columnist, and she writes about the supposed link between Russian propaganda and the election results, and she talks about the massive impact of Russian propaganda.
00:19:50.000Okay, for those of us who actually know something about internet statistics, we laugh at this.
00:19:58.000Okay, here, let me give you some of these statistics, because if you don't know, these sound big, but they're not.
00:20:02.000Okay, so, According to Michelle Goldberg, Russian propaganda, one of the reports found, had about 187 million engagements on Instagram, reaching at least 20 million users, and 76.5 million engagements on Facebook, reaching 126 million people.
00:20:15.000Approximately 1.4 million people, the report said, engaged with tweets associated with the Internet Research Agency, which is a Russian front group.
00:20:22.000Okay, now those sound like really big numbers, right?
00:23:40.000Yes, of course, and so does the New York Times.
00:23:41.000You think the New York Times doesn't understand internet analytics?
00:23:44.000You think the reporters at the New York Times don't have comparable data from how the New York Times performs on Facebook so that they know what the actual impact of these various Russian Facebook pages was?
00:23:55.000And now they're trying to claim that these Russian Facebook pages, because some of them were front groups that were supposed to appeal to Black Lives Matter folks, that it somehow suppressed black voting in 2016.
00:24:10.000Of course, it didn't suppress black voting in 2016.
00:24:12.000Black voting in 2016 was the highest in any election ever, except for 2012 and 2008, both of which had Barack Obama on the ballot.
00:24:20.000But, again, all the Democrats care about is the narrative.
00:24:23.000If they cared about corruption, they'd care about corruption, but they clearly don't.
00:24:26.000What they actually care about is just the narrative, and the narrative says that Trump somehow corruptly seized the election.
00:24:32.000Okay, meanwhile, we spent a little bit of time on this editorial yesterday, and I felt like I didn't give it the attention it deserved.
00:24:37.000You know, it's very rare on this program that I think to myself the next day, you know, I didn't do a sufficient job the previous day.
00:24:43.000Usually I think to myself, yesterday's show was just spectacular, and today's is even better.
00:24:48.000But yesterday, I felt like I didn't give the full flavor of an editorial that appeared in the New York Times about human extinction, titled, Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?
00:24:57.000The reason I didn't give it full shrift is because it actually speaks to some deeper philosophical points that I think are important.
00:25:04.000Now, I said at the top of the show, That tonight, on Martha MacCallum's show, we're announcing the title of my book and the cover of my book.
00:25:11.000And this editorial is about as good a case for buying my book as you could possibly imagine.
00:25:16.000My book is all about purpose and meaning and why human life matters and why humans are unique and why human life is sacred.
00:25:26.000This editorial in the New York Times that says basically we should all kill ourselves is truly the last gasp of a civilization that has failed to recognize certain eternal truths.
00:25:36.000So, this article was written by a Clemson philosophy professor, who I'm sure is teaching wonderful stuff, named Todd May.
00:25:41.000And he begins by saying that he acknowledges that the experience of humans coming to an end would be a bad thing, or at least it would cause some pain because people dying is painful.
00:25:50.000He's agnostic on the question of whether human beings as a species deserve to die out.
00:25:55.000He says what he's really wondering is whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings.
00:26:00.000His conclusion, it would be a tragedy and it might be a good thing.
00:26:05.000To which my response is, okay dude, like, there are a bunch of bridge overpasses near Clemson, you can just, you know, go there anytime.
00:26:12.000May's reasoning, though, is really interesting.
00:26:14.000So, he argues that human extinction would be tragic because we have a tragic flaw, which is that we have wrecked the Earth, and that would be rectified by our extinction.
00:26:20.000He says humanity is the source of devastation in the lives of conscious animals on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.
00:26:28.000So we're mean to animals, so we should die.
00:26:29.000Well, he recognizes that nature is itself hardly a Valhalla of peace and harmony.
00:26:33.000He says humans are uniquely cruel and destructive, which is a weird case to make.
00:26:38.000Like, we are uniquely productive, and we are also uniquely destructive in the sense that we have greater capacity than animals.
00:26:44.000But we don't, for example, have a generalized habit of cannibalizing our mates, as many insects do.
00:26:50.000We don't generally kill our stepchildren, as many primates do.
00:26:55.000But according to Todd May, we are wrecking the world.
00:26:56.000He says, to make that case, let me start with a claim I think will be at once depressing and upon reflection uncontroversial.
00:27:02.000Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it.
00:27:09.000Okay, I do think that's arguable, by the way.
00:27:11.000The fact is that there are more trees now in the United States than there were before settlers actually settled the United States.
00:27:17.000He says this is happening through at least three means.
00:27:19.000First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems, as the recent article on Yellowstone Park in The Times exemplifies.
00:27:46.000Well, actually, I do think that factory farming is probably going to diminish sometime in the near future as developed countries begin to look again at whether they think that that's a good idea or a bad idea.
00:27:56.000But he says humanity is the source of devastation of the lives of conscious animals on a scale difficult to comprehend.
00:28:01.000He says if this were all there were to the story, there would be no tragedy because the elimination of the human species would be a good thing.
00:28:37.000So it's weird because May doesn't treat up people as members of the animal community, but he does treat us as members of the animal community.
00:28:43.000So we are not members of the animal community because we are capable of making conscious decisions and rational decisions, but then he places our interests on a level with animals.
00:28:53.000So my answer to factory farming is bad is I would like to see more humane conditions for animals, but also people are more important than animals and we can eat animals because we need the protein.
00:29:02.000And his position is, humans and animals are in precisely the same moral plane, but it's bad if humans eat animals.
00:29:10.000May continues by stating that human beings bring... So what's his case that we should survive, maybe?
00:29:15.000His case is that human beings bring an advanced level of reason that can experience wonder, as well as our creation of literature, music, and painting.
00:29:23.000Well, this right here is philosophically incoherent, because if a mass murderer wrote symphonies, for example, he'd still be worth killing, presumably.
00:29:30.000So if we are wrecking the planet, why does it matter that humans are responsible for Beethoven's 9th?
00:29:35.000He says it would be a loss to the world if those practices and experiences ceased to exist, ignoring the fact that there wouldn't be any humans around to enjoy them.
00:29:45.000It's a big rock floating through space.
00:29:48.000I don't think the rocks care if Beethoven's 9th exists or not.
00:29:52.000In the end, there's no real way to justify humanity's murderous existence, as long as you say that humans and animals are equivalent.
00:29:57.000And that is precisely the conclusion at which May arrives in the end.
00:30:00.000I'm going to give you his conclusion in just a second, because it really is astonishing and speaks to the nihilism that undergirds a philosophy that says that human beings are not made in God's image, that human beings are not special, and that human beings do not have a real meaning and purpose in the world other than just to be animals wandering about on a giant rock floating through space.
00:30:17.000We'll get to his punchline in just a second.
00:30:19.000First, let's talk about how you can Find a better health insurance program, how you can get insurance in a better way, and also a way that helps build the social fabric, a way that helps you look out for your neighbor, a way that reinstitutes exactly the sort of Judeo-Christian values that I'm talking about here on the show every single day.
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00:30:55.000Your savings could be more or they could be less, but it could be a lot of money that you could be saving.
00:31:55.000The lovely and talented Alicia Krauss will be hosting and making sure that the exorable Michael Knowles has been murdered and buried in the garden.
00:32:01.000Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by me tomorrow at 5.30 p.m.
00:32:07.000Now, if you actually want to ask questions, though, you have to be a subscriber, which is why you should spend $9.99 a month and become a subscriber.
00:32:12.000What have you been doing all this time?
00:32:13.000You listen to the show every day and you don't subscribe?
00:32:19.000I mean, I know this is a hard sell, but I mean, really, guys, get it going.
00:32:22.000Also, for $99 a year, you get access to the mailbag, you get to see the rest of the show behind the paywall, and come January, you get two additional hours of the show.
00:33:24.000show we are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:33:26.000So here's the conclusion to this deeply nihilistic article in the New York Times about whether humans should go extinct.
00:33:36.000After this guy basically says humans are like animals, and as animals we're really bad animals, he says, So then, how much suffering and death of non-human life would we be willing to countenance to save Shakespeare, our sciences, and so forth?
00:33:47.000Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and non-human animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals.
00:34:50.000He says, there is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase.
00:34:56.000It would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger.
00:34:59.000Moreover, those among us who believe there is such a gap should perhaps become more familiar with the richness of lives of many of our conscious fellow creatures.
00:35:06.000Our own science is revealing that richness to us, ironically giving us a reason to eliminate it along with our own continued existence.
00:35:11.000So basically, if you study the monkeys long enough, then you'll want to kill yourself.
00:35:17.000And then he says, one might ask here whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering.
00:35:24.000Yes, that was the literally first question that appeared to me.
00:35:26.000That a man who writes a piece called, Would Human Extinction Be Okay?
00:35:30.000might want to go grab himself some rope.
00:35:32.000But he says, although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans.
00:35:39.000In other words, I'm not going to kill myself.
00:35:42.000But he says, to demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying.
00:35:49.000In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice.
00:35:57.000The two situations then are not analogous.
00:36:00.000So, in other words, kill all the unborn babies, don't have any more babies, but you don't have to kill yourself.
00:36:05.000Man, I mean, just go hog wild, because in a generation it's all going to be gone anyway, and then it's going to look like Logan's run.
00:36:10.000I mean, the Capitol building is going to be all covered in vines and stuff.
00:36:14.000So, have fun, you, but just don't have any babies.
00:36:25.000And the value system that the left is promoting right now is so nihilistic and so deeply disturbing that it's almost impossible to describe.
00:36:32.000And this is not to suggest that everyone on the left believes this stuff.
00:36:36.000But if you don't believe that human beings are special, if you don't believe we're created in God's image, if you don't believe we have the capacity to reason, if you don't believe that the universe has a rational basis that we can comprehend, if you don't believe any of those things, And yet, you are still living in a way that suggests you believe those things.
00:36:52.000Maybe you ought to examine your first rules, your first values, the stuff that you actually believe way down deep.
00:36:58.000Because I would think a lot of people who consider themselves atheists and agnostics are still making the same assumptions that religious people take for granted because they are in fact religious assumptions about life.
00:37:07.000And those religious assumptions about life extend to the moral sphere.
00:37:11.000So, the idea that you are made in God's image and that you are more than just a body.
00:37:16.000That you are more than just a body and that your autonomy ought to be used for the sake of reason.
00:37:21.000Your autonomy ought to be used for the sake of doing good.
00:37:24.000That's something that's gone completely by the wayside since we are apparently just a ball of synapses.
00:37:29.000And you can see that in the generalized attitude toward what is actual degradation and perversion.
00:37:35.000Okay, what we are about to watch is actual degradation and perversion.
00:37:38.000An 11-year-old boy who's become a very famous drag kid.
00:37:42.000So he's 11 years old and his parents dress him in drag.
00:37:46.000That is, in and of itself, sexualized.
00:37:49.000The idea of dressing up as a girl in midriff-bearing clothes as a young boy is, of course, sexualized.
00:37:58.000This little boy, this poor little kid, who is, in fact, being victimized by his parents because parents get to make decisions for their children.
00:38:04.000I have no tolerance for this garbage that an 11-year-old boy gets to decide whether he wants to appear at a strip bar, at a gay bar, dancing at a strip bar at 11 years old.
00:38:16.000Hey, if a stranger came and took your kid and did this, they'd be prosecuted.
00:38:19.000If a parent does it, then apparently it's okay.
00:38:22.000On December 1st, an 11-year-old boy dressed in drag danced on stage in a sexual manner at a gay bar in Brooklyn, New York, called Three Dollar Bill.
00:38:27.000This is according to Amanda Prestigiacomo over at Daily Wire.
00:38:31.000The child, Desmond Napoles, was dressed as a Gwen Stefani lookalike, full drag makeup, a blonde wig, and crop top included, as he bounced around on stage to no doubt like a girl.
00:40:01.000In just a second, I want to get to a couple of big stories.
00:40:07.000Here's a story with regard to Russian collusion that you're not hearing from the mainstream media today, but is making the rounds in sort of conservative media, and it should be.
00:40:15.000So I said earlier on the show that Democrats are very deeply concerned with The idea that they lost the election in 2016 because of Russian interference.
00:40:25.000How deeply concerned are they over this?
00:40:27.000That they were preemptively concerned over this.
00:40:30.000They were preemptively planning to make a fuss over Russian interference if Hillary were to lose.
00:40:34.000According to Ron Scarborough over at the Washington Times today, British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who wrote the Democrat-financed anti-Trump dossier, said in a court case that he was hired by a Democratic law firm in preparation for Hillary Clinton challenging the results of the 2016 presidential election.
00:40:52.000Christopher Steele, you remember the Steele dossier guy, he is now saying in legal filings that he was hired by Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie in order to gather data that would lead to a conclusion that the election was stolen.
00:41:05.000He said the law firm's Perkins Coie wanted to be in a position to contest the results based on evidence he unearthed on the Trump campaign conspiring with Moscow on election interference.
00:41:13.000His scenario is contained in a sealed August 2nd declaration in a defamation lawsuit brought by three Russian bankers in London.
00:41:18.000The trio's American attorneys filed his answers Tuesday in a libel lawsuit in Washington against Fusion GPS.
00:41:24.000In answers to interrogatories, those are questions asked by the opposing lawyer, Mr. Steele wrote, Fusion's immediate client was law firms Perkins Coie.
00:41:32.000It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity Based on that advice, parties such as the DNC and HFACC could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.
00:41:54.000So in other words, Democrats were already planning In the middle of the election cycle for how they were going to challenge the results of the election should Hillary lose.
00:42:03.000So if Hillary won, they weren't going to talk about Russian interference.
00:42:06.000If she lost, not only were they going to talk about it, they wanted to see if there was a way they could file a legal lawsuit to prevent the election from being legally stamped.
00:42:14.000That's pretty unbelievable stuff, especially from a party and a media that were complaining loudly and every day about how terrible it was that President Trump probably would not accept the results of the election.
00:42:24.000The Democrats were prepared to accept, to challenge the results of the election based on this crappy dossier of which not a single part has yet been substantiated.
00:42:35.000Maybe there's stuff in the Steele dossier that's legit.
00:42:44.000So this is why I say when Democrats talk about the institutions of the United States falling apart, when they talk about how they're going to fix the institutions of the United States gerrymandering, when they talk about how Wisconsin legislature is curbing the power of the incoming governor, oh my goodness, it's a violation of the law of the land.
00:43:01.000No, it is them in one-sided fashion complaining about how the system works.
00:43:06.000It is them in one-sided fashion complaining, whatever they lose.
00:43:09.000And this goes to a bunch of deeper issues about what's going to happen in the next couple of years.
00:43:14.000Because what you're going to hear from Democrats is that President Trump cannot be allowed to be president.
00:43:17.000He must be impeached on the basis of his Cohen campaign finance issues.
00:43:23.000And that's what you're going to hear from them.
00:43:25.000And they're going to say, listen, we want to have an objective standard by which we can judge presidents.
00:43:30.000And if you trust a Democrat with an objective standard when it comes to rules like this, you are making a foolish error.
00:43:37.000Because what Democrats have shown over the last four decades is that they are not trustworthy when it comes to setting an objective standard by which they then later are expected to hold.
00:43:46.000They're very upset about challenging the validity of elections unless Stacey Abrams loses in Georgia or Hillary Clinton loses in 2016.
00:43:53.000Then they're fine with challenging the validity of elections.
00:43:56.000They're very deeply disturbed when a president commits some crime in office, when he suborns perjury.
00:44:02.000Except if it's their president, in which case they don't care at all.
00:44:05.000They're deeply disturbed about gerrymandering unless they're the ones doing the gerrymandering.
00:44:08.000They're deeply disturbed about limiting the power of incoming parties unless they're the ones doing it.
00:44:13.000All of which is to suggest not that there shouldn't be any rules, but that you shouldn't fall for the Democrat trick that suggests that they are actually interested in engaging with you and setting up a new set of rules.
00:44:21.000They have not established a grounded basis for us to trust them in helping to set up a set of rules we can live by.
00:44:28.000And until they show some good faith in that by going after some of their own when something bad happens, no, they don't get the benefit of the doubt in any of this sort of stuff.
00:44:36.000OK, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:44:39.000So things I like today, normally I would do music, but it is in fact a Jewish fast day, which means no music for me.
00:44:45.000So instead, we will be doing the best video ever.
00:45:23.000This guy took a package from my porch, and now he's about to open it in his car.
00:45:26.000But what he doesn't know is this is a custom-built bait package that is recording him on four different cameras, and it's about to unleash a pound of the world's finest glitter, along with some other surprises.
00:46:02.000Okay, this whole making America great again, America's already great when it's filled with people who are willing to spend time punishing criminals by making over the course of six months, handmade stink bombs and glitter.
00:46:13.000Bombs that have the capacity to detape so we can all enjoy that together?
00:46:31.000One of the great things about humanity is that human beings have shown that they are willing to give up affirmative goods in order to punish evildoers.
00:46:38.000There are a bunch of social experiments along these lines.
00:46:41.000They basically suggest that if you are in a game where you can take, let's say that you are given a dollar, and without the other person knowing how much money you have, you can split the dollar with that person.
00:46:54.000So, you can either split it 50-50, or you can take 90 and give them 10, or you can take 95 and give them 5.
00:47:00.000If it's a repeat game, and people find out that one person keeps taking all of the money, And not distributing the money equitably?
00:47:09.000They begin to actively punish the person.
00:47:12.000So everyone will then collude to deny that person any money every time they sit next to him, even if they would normally be looking for a 50-50 split.
00:47:28.000That is some heroic stuff right there.
00:47:30.000Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
00:47:36.000Idris Elba, the actor, who I love Idris Elba, I think he's great, but he says that the Me Too movement is only difficult if you're a man with something to hide.
00:48:06.000You're really depending a lot on the honesty of the police, if that is the case.
00:48:09.000You are depending a lot on the honesty of women with regard to an objective assessment of their Me Too situation, if you believe that you have nothing to lose in these situations.
00:48:19.000And this goes back to the whole women never lie about rape, or women never misconstrue an activity, or women never subjectively remember an event in a way that's not objectively verifiable.
00:48:30.000I mean, if that's actually going to be the standard, then we should believe every accusation about everything.
00:48:33.000Why is sexual assault or sexual misbehavior any different than any other crime?
00:48:37.000Why shouldn't we just believe everybody?
00:48:38.000Every accusation should immediately be believed because people are believable.
00:48:42.000You wouldn't lie about somebody robbing your house.
00:48:44.000You wouldn't lie about somebody stealing your car.
00:48:46.000You wouldn't lie about somebody slandering you.
00:48:48.000We should just believe every accusation.
00:48:50.000The accusation is, in fact, the proof at that point.
00:48:52.000Of course, we don't operate like that because that's incredibly dumb.
00:48:54.000And Indra Selva, I promise you that he is taking precautions in his own personal life so that he does not get hit with a Me Too moment just like every other wealthy, famous person does.
00:49:05.000Really, if you're subjecting yourself to random women coming up to your apartment at random odd hours, without worrying about me too, because, hey, I'm a gentleman.
00:50:13.000Okay, the reason that this is not a great ad is because it assumes a level of personal fealty to the President that is not necessary.
00:50:22.000So, it is, and then there's a bunch of videos of these people saying, thank you President Trump, thank you President Trump, thank you President Trump.
00:50:28.000You know, the beginning of the ad where he says that President Trump has accomplished a lot of stuff?
00:50:33.000But if we are really going to run just a personal loyalty campaign, I hated it when- I don't like cultural personalities in the presidency.
00:50:39.000I don't like it when it comes from the left.
00:50:40.000I don't like it when it comes from the right.
00:50:41.000I am not a fan of this whole, you have to thank President Trump personally for all he's done for you.
00:50:51.000So wouldn't it be better to just say, President Trump has fulfilled his campaign promises, and that's why he needs your support today.
00:50:56.000But this whole, you must say thank you, say thank you, to President Trump.
00:51:02.000Maybe he should say thank you to, you know, his voters, or maybe he should say thank you to his donors, or maybe his donors should just say we want to see him re-elected, but I'm not a fan of this particular tack.
00:51:11.000Okay, a final thing that I hate today.
00:51:14.000So Nicole Wallace says just very silly things on a regular basis over at MSNBC.
00:51:18.000She's talking about President Trump and his attitude toward the Michael Cohen investigation, and she says that criminals are now going to use President Trump as their model.
00:51:28.000Are there criminals out there who will point to the president and say, well, you know, the president's lawyer said he wasn't going to do it.
00:51:51.000The level of myopia that it takes in order to say something like this is really extreme, but it has unfortunately become the mainstream opinion among a lot of quote-unquote journalists on the left.
00:52:00.000Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow to break down all the latest news.