Iranian forces attack the American embassy in Iraq, anti-Semitic attacks become commonplace in New York City, and Democrats continue to push impeachment. Happy New Year! I'm Ben Shapiro. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by Express VPN. Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.org. Great thing to do in the new year, y'all! Hope that you had a wonderful Christmas, if you were able to take a vacation, and a wonderful Hanukkah. Happy new year. Ben Shapiro And we're back, and you know what that means? It's time for an international emergency! In this episode, Ben discusses the situation in Iraq and Iran, and how the U.S. should respond. He also talks about isolationism, and the role of the United States in the world, and why isolationism is a symptom of the 1930s and 40s, not a cause of World War II. And he reminds us of Pearl Harbor and the impact it had on the American people's perception of the time in the lead-up to that event. Thanks for listening, and Happy Holidays! Ben Subscribe to the show and share it with your friends and family! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Like, comment and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform? Share this episode on social media so you can be notified when new episodes are available. Be sure to leave us your thoughts and reviews are featured on the show on the next episode of the Ben Shapiro's new podcast, "The Ben Shapiro Podcasts Podcast! and we'll be listening to Ben Shapiro on his podcast "The Dark Side of the Street" on The Dark Side Of This Is It Podcasts and other things like that on The Huffington Post and other places that Ben Shapiro does that on his Podcasts on The Hill? on PODCAST on Reddit, and other stuff like that! on his Insta story on his insta story, and more. on Insta , and more on this is a link on his profile on is a post on Instagasm on that , and so on, . Thank you, Ben Shapiro is a fellow in this podcast on this podcast, on this Podcasts? and a review on , on this podcast
00:00:33.000It's time for an international emergency!
00:00:36.000So, over in Iraq, things have been degrading and degrading fairly quickly.
00:00:39.000That is because the government of Iraq has always been torn between the sectarian divide, Sunni and Shia.
00:00:44.000This has been true for a very long time.
00:00:46.000In the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's fall and the disbanding of the Iraqi military, sectarian violence obviously started to take root in Iraq.
00:00:54.000In recent years, there was an attempt by the United States to help bring together a government that would both fight off ISIS and that would resist Iran.
00:01:00.000That has proved to be harder than expected, simply because Iran's influence in the region has tremendously, tremendously grown.
00:01:06.000And that is in large part thanks to the fact that the Obama administration decided to basically make room for the Iranians.
00:01:11.000And now you're seeing all these members of the media, all these members of the left, who are suggesting that it's President Trump's fault that Iranian terrorists attempted to storm the U.S.
00:01:21.000embassy over the last three or four days.
00:01:24.000They're trying to suggest that this is because of Trump's harsh policy on Iran.
00:01:27.000No, this is because when you appease a power like Iran, their power grows and they are able to stage events like this one.
00:01:34.000And this is two very different views of foreign policy and it's something that we ought to take note of because there is this tendency inside the right to be isolationist as well.
00:01:41.000And these views of foreign policy, one suggests that the role of the United States in the world should be basically we stay within our own borders, we wait to be hit, if we are hit, then we lash out in sort of quick fashion, and then we retreat back inside our own borders, and that the outside world has nothing to do with us.
00:01:56.000And this was America's foreign policy for large swaths of time, up until the beginning of the 20th century, essentially.
00:02:02.000And then there's the other view, which is that the world has become a very, very small place.
00:02:05.000And what that means is that when things happen abroad, eventually they are going to end up as being threats to the United States.
00:02:13.000military, one of the goals of American foreign policy is to quash threats before they occur.
00:02:18.000It's to make sure that we can minimize the possibility of risk growing.
00:02:21.000And so to take an example, There were two views that were prevalent in the United States in the 1930s in the lead up to World War II, and none of this is meant to suggest that we're about to go to war with Iran, which we are not.
00:02:31.000Okay, but there were two views in the 1930s in the lead up to World War II.
00:02:34.000View number one was the old sort of isolationist view, and this was predominant in the United States.
00:02:39.000It was the view of the Republican Party.
00:02:42.000It was the view of populists like Father Coughlin.
00:02:44.000It was the view of many people who suggested that the United States basically had no role in the world.
00:02:49.000If there was chaos over in Europe, well, that was the Europe problem.
00:02:52.000If there is chaos over between Japan and China, that was really a Japan and China problem.
00:03:06.000Now, what's interesting about the reaction of the United States to Pearl Harbor is that we immediately got our back up and we recognized that our role in the world had to change.
00:03:14.000Because the fact is this, the United States pretty easily could have come to some sort of accommodation with the Japanese that would have allowed them to maximize their regional power even after Pearl Harbor.
00:03:23.000In fact, it's possible that's what the Japanese government thought was going to happen, is that the United States was not going to go to full-scale war with Japan, even after Pearl Harbor, because isolationist sentiment was so strong.
00:03:33.000And so they felt like, okay, well, if we hit them, then maybe they'll back off.
00:03:38.000The United States got its back up, and instead, the United States ends up defeating Japan and occupying Japan for the next 80 years.
00:03:43.000The United States does the same thing with regard to Germany.
00:03:46.000America's role in the world fundamentally changes because we recognize after World War II that there is no more of this We can retreat within our own borders and everybody will leave us alone.
00:03:56.000Well, that has only become worse over time.
00:03:57.000And every so often, we're reminded of this.
00:03:59.000In 9-11, we were reminded that we can leave the Middle East alone.
00:04:02.000We can basically have a light footprint in the Middle East.
00:04:05.000We can say that that region of the world has not much to do with us.
00:04:08.000And that will not stop terrorists from hating us and wanting to attack us and wanting to kill American citizens.
00:04:13.000And again, there are two ways of viewing America's military response to events like this.
00:04:16.000One is that in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, which killed On the order of 2,000 Americans, that in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, America then entered a war in which 200,000 Americans were killed, right, in World War II.
00:04:32.000In some ways, I think there are some isolationists who would argue yes.
00:04:34.000Pat Buchanan, for example, has sort of argued yes.
00:04:37.000The same thing has happened in the aftermath of 9-11.
00:04:39.000There's the argument that was made that, yes, they killed 3,000 of our citizens, but then we've been involved in wars that have killed more American troops than that.
00:04:47.000More American troops have died in those wars.
00:04:49.000But this fundamentally misstates the role of the American military and the role of America in the world.
00:04:53.000And that is the American military people sign up.
00:04:55.000Particularly now, it's a volunteer military.
00:04:57.000These are heroes who are signing up to defend America's freedom.
00:05:06.000And to treat them as children, to treat our soldiers, as the left likes to do, as sort of pawns in political games, where anytime somebody says we need to use troops to defend our embassy in Baghdad, for example, then the left says, well, how many troops are you willing to put at risk?
00:05:20.000Listen, that's a fine question, but it's not a fine question if you do it every single time we talk about using military force in defense of American assets abroad.
00:05:29.000So we have to decide is what we want America's role in the world to be, and also we have to be realistic about the fact that if America retreats from certain areas of the world, other forces take over.
00:05:37.000If Iran takes over Iraq, if Iran takes over Syria, if Iran takes over Lebanon, if Iran takes over Yemen, that has significant ramifications for America's foreign policy, not just in terms of the economy and shutting down the Straits of Hormuz, but in terms of actual Security policy.
00:05:52.000The fact is the Iranian government is the chief sponsor of worldwide terror on planet Earth right now.
00:05:57.000If the Iranians take over the region, that maximizes Russian aggression, Russian power, which has ramifications for Europe.
00:06:04.000If the Chinese are working with the Russians and with the Iranians, then it maximizes Chinese power at the expense of American power in the world.
00:06:11.000Economics is not a zero-sum game, but foreign policy, to a certain extent, is, in fact, a zero-sum game.
00:06:16.000And when America pulls back, it is not that this becomes a vacuum, it's that that vacuum is very quickly filled.
00:06:21.000So there are going to be people who today, tomorrow, as we come back into the new year, argue that all of this is happening in Iraq because the United States ought to take a more isolationist view toward the world, that all this is happening with regard to China and Russia.
00:06:33.000If we just leave them alone, they'll leave us alone.
00:06:37.000The reality is that if we leave all this stuff alone, all we are doing is emboldening America's enemies to grow stronger.
00:06:43.000And then when conflict does occur, we are facing down a much stronger enemy.
00:06:47.000Right now, one of the things that is occurring from sort of the old Obama acolytes, they're saying, well, if we had just left Iran alone, if we just continued to pay off Iran, well, then Iran wouldn't be as violent right now with America.
00:07:00.000I mean, Iran is responsible for the deaths of literally thousands of American service people in Iraq.
00:07:04.000So the Iranians have not been our friend for quite a while, going all the way back to the mullahs in 1979.
00:07:10.000But there's this case that's being made by the Obama contention that if we had just paid them off, everything would have been fine, and it's Trump's harsh stand against the Iranians that is causing them to get violent.
00:07:18.000Okay, go back to 1940 and the Munich Accords, and think to yourself, or 1939 and the Munich Accords, 38, the Munich Accords, and think to yourself, What would have happened if after the Munich Accords, but before Hitler violates the Munich Accords, Churchill is elected?
00:07:36.000And then Churchill takes a very strong stand, and then Hitler starts attacking the countries surrounding him.
00:07:41.000Isn't it true that people on the left would then have blamed Churchill and his strong stand against the Germans for provoking?
00:07:49.000Appeasement looks good until the point at which the appeaser is stepped on.
00:07:53.000The problem is if people foresee that and they elect somebody who's no longer going to appease, it's easy for people on the left and for isolationists too to suggest that it's the intransigence of strong-willed people standing up against evil that is the cause of the evil being evil.
00:08:09.000The Iranian government has been evil for 40 years.
00:08:12.000The German government was evil before Churchill was elected and before Churchill took over and the Chamberlain government collapsed.
00:08:20.000Evil doesn't need an excuse to be evil.
00:08:22.000We'll get into what's actually occurring here and why President Trump is doing the right thing in Iran and what foreign policy ought to look like there.
00:08:32.000No one wants an open conflict with Iran.
00:08:34.000There are things we can do short of that open conflict to stop them from Pursuing this aggressive policy in the region and putting more Americans at risk and creating a stronger Iran to be used against their own citizens and more importantly against America's other allies around the Middle East and America herself.
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00:10:24.000There's the Iraqi outlet of Hezbollah.
00:10:25.000It's sponsored by the Iranian Quds Force, which is a wing of their Revolutionary Guard.
00:10:30.000Hezbollah Has thousands of rockets pointed at Israel and Lebanon.
00:10:34.000Hezbollah has a significant role in the conflict in Syria.
00:10:37.000Hezbollah is one of the worst terrorist groups on the planet.
00:10:39.000It is labeled as such by the American State Department and by an increasing number of European countries.
00:10:44.000And if the Europeans label somebody from the Middle East a terrorist, then it's a fairly good shot that they're an actual terrorist group.
00:10:53.000After a second day of tense protests at the American embassy in Baghdad, thousands of pro-Iranian demonstrators dispersed on Wednesday, ending a siege that had trapped American diplomats in the embassy compound overnight, winding down a potentially explosive crisis for the Trump administration.
00:11:06.000The demonstrators had swarmed outside the embassy, chanting "death to America." The New York Times, by the way, originally termed these people mourners, which shows you where their heads are at.
00:11:15.000What exactly were they supposedly mourning?
00:11:17.000They were mourning the fact that the United States had attacked Hezbollah encampments in Syria and Iraq, because these are places from which Hezbollah fighters have been going out and trying to kill Americans and American allies.
00:11:29.000In contrast to Tuesday, when some demonstrators forced their way into the compound and set some of the outbuildings on fire.
00:11:56.000But then it was that the United States attacked some terror bases, and then they were like, oh man, I'm so pissed off.
00:12:00.000Until this, I was just like your nice normal terrorist.
00:12:03.000I wasn't gonna like go burn an embassy or something, but now that you killed my terrorist friends, now I'm like a super, really giant angry terrorist, and I'm gonna go burn crap.
00:12:12.000Alternatively, these were terrorists who were looking for an excuse to go and do something bad.
00:12:17.000And so they stormed the embassy, the outer walls of the embassy, and this forced Americans inside the embassy, the American military, to fire tear gas into the crowd.
00:12:28.000When the demonstrators reached the roof of the Bernd Reception building on Wednesday, American security forces, including Marine reinforcements sent by the Pentagon the day before, fired tear gas to drive them back.
00:12:38.000And you can see from the video, I mean, these are people who are arriving with battering rams and weapons.
00:12:55.000The full withdrawal came after leaders of the Iranian-backed militias who had organized the demonstration called on the crowd to leave and most gradually drifted away on foot or drove off in trucks.
00:13:05.000The leaders later announced that their agreement to withdraw was conditioned on a commitment from Iraq's Prime Minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, to move ahead with legislation to force American troops to withdraw from Iraq.
00:13:13.000So Mahdi had been protested by thousands of Iraqi citizens who said that he's in thrall to the Iranians.
00:13:18.000Now Mahdi's caught between Iraq and a hard place, basically.
00:13:29.000Meanwhile, he has a vast Sunni population as well.
00:13:33.000The Shia want the Americans to leave so that Iran can help overrun Iraq.
00:13:36.000The Sunnis want the Americans to stay so that America can help protect them against the Iranians.
00:13:41.000Now, if you're American, you're going, what role do we have in all of this?
00:13:45.000Well, the role is to basically keep the peace, and the reason you need to keep the peace is because if the Iranians overrun Iraq, then they now run all territory between Afghanistan and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.
00:13:56.000They now run everything, basically, ranging all the way as far east as parts of Afghanistan, and then all the way as far west as Lebanon, and as far south as Yemen.
00:14:06.000And by the way, working in coordination with the Russians and the Chinese.
00:14:09.000So if you worry about America's place in the world, about our foreign policy, about the possibility of a major war breaking out, here's the thing.
00:14:15.000War breaks out for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons is when your enemies think they are stronger than you, and they take advantage of that strength.
00:14:22.000Right now, America's enemies recognize that America does not want to go to war with anybody, and so they are pushing at the borders.
00:14:56.000Iran's ability to deploy militias to blockade American diplomats inside the embassy for most of two days made clear how much power they wield within the Iraqi government.
00:15:03.000According to the American government, the Iraqi government didn't do enough at the very beginning to defend America's embassy in Iraq, that sovereign American territory.
00:15:10.000According to the New York Times, despite a 16-year American effort to establish a government friendlier to Western interests, at a cost of more than $1 trillion and 5,000 American lives, Iraq's leaders lined up in opposition to the American airstrikes, and its security forces allowed the militias to reach the American diplomatic compound.
00:15:25.000Okay, that is not because the government is anti-American.
00:15:28.000It's because the government is in thrall to the Iranians, and that is because America has lessened its footprint in Iraq.
00:15:33.000And so if you're in Iraq, and you're betting on the future of the country, who do you think has more staying power, the Iranians or the Americans?
00:15:39.000If America really showed, listen, we're not going anywhere, we're going to stay here until this thing is locked down, we're at least going to provide you the help you need until this thing is locked down against Iran, then the Iraqi government would probably be a lot more forthcoming in terms of the resources they provide to the American government.
00:15:53.000That's what the American government is saying, by the way.
00:15:57.000It is also true that consistent American unwillingness to confront the Iranian aggression over the past year and a half The Iranians firing on ships in the Straits of Hormuz.
00:16:07.000The Iranians shooting down an American drone.
00:16:09.000America basically doing very little except passing a few sanctions.
00:16:12.000The Iranians are pushing where they think that it's mush.
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00:18:06.000So the media immediately starts saying, well, this is Trump's Benghazi.
00:18:10.000What's ironic about this is that the same media declared that Benghazi was not a problem in the first place.
00:18:13.000And they kept saying the Obama administration handled it brilliantly while Barack Obama was off partying and people were dying at the Benghazi embassy in Libya in 2012.
00:18:21.000And Hillary Clinton was lying that this was completely unexpected and was a protest that went awry in response to a YouTube video when it was in fact a terror assault and that her state department had turned down security requests.
00:18:34.000Right, then the media kept saying there was no scandal in Benghazi, like none at all.
00:18:36.000There was no cover-up, there was no scandal.
00:18:38.000It wasn't Susan Rice and the Obama administration repeatedly lying to the American people, which they did.
00:18:42.000Well, now you got MSNBC's Joy Reid, who says, this is Trump's Benghazi!
00:18:46.000Well, but I thought that Obama's Benghazi wasn't really a big deal.
00:18:48.000I mean, we had journalists literally making fun of quote-unquote, Benghazi conspiracy theories.
00:18:52.000Anyway, Joy Reid tweeted out, as Trump's Benghazi unfolds in Iraq, Okay, well, I'm glad to see that you guys came around on Benghazi was a bad thing, so that's exciting.
00:19:02.000President Trump came out, he said, uh, guys, this ain't gonna be a Benghazi, because guess what?
00:19:43.000A precipitous withdrawal would drive terrorism.
00:19:45.000It would drive the rise of our enemies.
00:19:46.000Again, you will hear calls on the isolationist right for exactly that sort of withdrawal, suggesting that now would be a great time to get out.
00:19:53.000Well, again, that is a short-term view.
00:19:55.000See, the nice thing about being an isolationist is the counterfactual is always very useful to you.
00:19:59.000Because the fact is, most presidents are not willing to let America's assets wither on the vine.
00:20:04.000They're not willing to let America's enemies run roughshod over swaths of the globe and then strengthen themselves.
00:20:11.000So it's easy to point to costs that have already occurred and say, those costs didn't have to occur.
00:20:15.000But the counterfactual, which is, okay, what if America just withdrew?
00:20:19.000And all of these countries got stronger and then started launching terror attacks?
00:20:22.000And started launching economic attacks?
00:20:24.000Because that doesn't occur, because of actions like President Trump's.
00:20:27.000Well, then that leaves the isolationist with the argument that the costs that actually were incurred were bad.
00:20:33.000The counterfactual is always a lot easier than the actual real-time costs of things that are being done right now.
00:20:39.000Army's 82nd Airborne Division's Alert Brigade has been issued orders to deploy rapidly to Kuwait amid the unrest in Baghdad, three U.S.
00:20:46.000defense officials told Fox News on Tuesday.
00:20:48.000At least 750 paratroopers are set to deploy to the region immediately, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
00:20:55.000The alert brigade of roughly 4,000 paratroopers known as the Division Ready Brigade has been told to prepare for a possible deployment in the days ahead after hundreds of Iranian-backed militiamen tried to storm the U.S.
00:21:52.000And as you saw the president say today, we will continue to hold the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable wherever we find their malign activity, and we'll make sure we have the resources to do so.
00:22:02.000Okay, now if you're the Iranians, all you want to do is maintain the pressure.
00:22:05.000Long enough that a Democrat is elected, at which point the United States presumably would go back to trying to bribe the Iranians into, what, peace?
00:22:14.000That is a thing that's not going to happen.
00:22:16.000By the way, there are protests against the Iranian influence on the Iraqi government.
00:22:19.000They're just not being covered by the media.
00:22:20.000That's another point that Mike Pompeo was making.
00:22:23.000Meanwhile, Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, says that Iran or its proxy forces may be planning further strikes on American interests in the Middle East, and the U.S.
00:22:29.000is prepared to take preemptive military action if it gets sufficient warning.
00:22:33.000According to Esper, He said the game has changed.
00:22:36.000We're prepared to do what is necessary to defend our personnel and our interests and our partners in the region.
00:22:40.000Now listen, no one wants a full-scale war with the Iranians.
00:22:43.000But you know who doesn't want a full-scale war the most?
00:22:46.000Because if there's a full-scale war, the first people to die are the mullahs.
00:22:49.000If this thing goes to full-scale war, the first people who have their heads come right off their bodies are the mullahs in Iran, and they know it.
00:22:54.000So what they're doing right now is they're pushing, and they're pushing, and they're pushing, and they're oppressing their own population, and they're launching low-level terror assaults, and they're doing all of this in the hopes that they will drive America out of the Middle East in the same way that the North Vietnamese, that the Viet Cong drove the United States out of Vietnam, and that allowed for a spread of communist tyranny in that region.
00:23:13.000They're looking for the same thing to happen here.
00:23:15.000The difference is that President Trump is president right now, and the chances that he's going to pull out precipitously are extremely, extremely low, as well they should be.
00:23:24.000There are things the United States can do beyond economic sanctions, by the way, and striking terror bases is one of those things.
00:23:29.000Hitting at Hezbollah is one of those things, and that can be done with pretty much zero cost from the air, which is one of the reasons you saw these demonstrators, quote unquote, from the New York Times.
00:23:38.000These demonstrators descending on the embassy is because America did strike a series of terrorist encampments and it was very successful.
00:23:45.000The United States does have an interest in ensuring safety and security for America and her allies and her interests in the region.
00:23:54.000It'll be interesting to see how these arguments play out because Trump does have this sort of isolationist streak, but he is also not somebody who's going to run away from all of this.
00:24:02.000Meanwhile, watching the, watching the Obama administration sycophants like Ben Rhodes come out and talk about how terrible Trump is is just a reminder how awful Obama was.
00:24:13.000The fact is Iran has been emboldened in the region because of the Obama administration.
00:24:17.000Trump tweeted out, this is not a warning, it is a threat.
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00:26:07.000Okay, meanwhile, North Korea is upping the ante as well.
00:26:11.000No president goes through their first term without being tested a little bit.
00:26:16.000President Trump's strategy on North Korea has been almost precisely the opposite of his strategy on Iran.
00:26:22.000His strategy on Iran has been to push the mullahs, to box them in, to cut off their economic lifelines, to weaken them from within.
00:26:30.000That's largely been successful, which is why you are seeing the Iranian government lash out in every direction as they desperately attempt to fend off the protests that have been rolling throughout their country for the last, what, six to nine months?
00:26:43.000In North Korea, the United States has taken the opposite, the sort of opposite tack, and that has been to try and woo Kim Jong-un personally.
00:26:52.000I've thought that it's been a waste of time.
00:26:54.000North Korea is showing each and every day that they're not a trustworthy partner.
00:26:59.000According to Emily Zanotti writing over at Daily Wire, North Korea now says it has a new strategic weapon and Kim Jong-un plans to deploy it soon.
00:27:07.000According to the Associated Press, North Korea says it has a new strategic weapon that will stun the world with shocking action.
00:27:13.000North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un plans to deploy the weapon soon as a way of challenging the U.S.' 's nuclear weapons superiority.
00:27:20.000Kim Jong-un appears to be using this as a bargaining chip in stalled trade talks with the Trump administration.
00:27:26.000This is always the tactic of the North Koreans, which is to threaten action, fire missiles, basically fuss until you get what you want, create a situation, and then suggest that it can be resolved only by America cutting a check.
00:27:37.000It has not worked to the benefit of the United States or to the benefit of the people of North Korea for decades at this point.
00:27:42.000Why it would work with Iran is beyond me.
00:27:44.000The left wants to see the North Korean model applied to Iran.
00:27:46.000It's funny to watch the media on all this.
00:27:48.000Because Trump is taking this really bifurcated approach to Iran versus North Korea, They won't endorse either strategy.
00:27:55.000So when Trump takes this very soft tack with North Korea...
00:27:59.000Which at least is mildly more justified than it would be with Iran, simply because Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet, and North Korea already does, which means that you have to treat them with a little bit more care than you would with regard to Iran.
00:28:12.000But when it comes to North Korea, the media's like, oh, look at this Trump, he's sycophantically kissing ass with North Korea.
00:28:17.000And then when it comes to Iran, where President Trump is taking a very harsh line, they're like, why isn't he sycophantically kissing ass of the Mullahs, like Barack Obama did?
00:28:27.000Either you treat America's enemies with harshness, and it's peace through strength, and it's you set up barriers and rules, or it's none of the above.
00:28:42.000The AP reports that that Unn says he will soon reveal a new strategic weapon to the world as it bolsters its nuclear deterrent in the face of quote-unquote gangster-like U.S.
00:28:53.000The Trump administration has been trying to negotiate with North Korea for years.
00:28:55.000President Trump sees an inked deal with the rogue communist nation as a potential hallmark of his term.
00:29:00.000Just a few short years ago, Trump did manage to secure an anti-proliferation treaty with North Korea, halting, at the time, North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and development of ICBMs, but North Korea has not actually abided by any of those agreements.
00:29:13.000President Trump dismissed the threat in North Korea.
00:29:14.000He said, no, no, no, we're getting along great, which of course is not true.
00:30:12.000Okay, meanwhile, over in New York City, attacks on Jews continue apace.
00:30:17.000We saw over the Christmas vacation, over the Hanukkah, the winter vacation, we saw an attack during Hanukkah at a house that was next to a shul in Brooklyn.
00:30:27.000It was an attack on... a machete attack by a guy who'd been let out of jail early.
00:30:55.000You can see that here's a Jew just being chased down in the middle of the street and beaten up, held to the ground and punched.
00:31:01.000You can see that, I mean, this sort of stuff is happening pretty much every day.
00:31:04.000And it's overtly religious Jews that are being targeted disproportionately by people who happen to be minority.
00:31:10.000It doesn't mean that they're doing it because they're minority, but it is worthwhile noting this is one of the reasons the media is not covering it.
00:31:15.000There's a Jewish boy walking down the street, a Jewish man walking down the street getting clocked from behind by a young person of color, it appears.
00:31:24.000The only reason that race is relevant in this conversation is because the media specifically only talk about anti-Semitic attacks when they are white supremacists.
00:31:30.000The reason they're not talking about these anti-Semitic attacks is because they're not against secularized Jews with left-wing values.
00:31:36.000They're against religious Orthodox Jews in New York City and they are being perpetrated by members of the intersectional hierarchy.
00:31:41.000That is the reason why the media refuses to cover all of this.
00:31:44.000The New York Times admitted as much back in 2018 when they said that even though there was a massive spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the city, it's been ongoing for years at this point, they said that they had failed to cover it because it, quote, refuses to conform to an easy narrative with a single ideological enemy.
00:31:59.000The fact is the media refused to take this stuff seriously, specifically because of the nature of the victims, religious Jews who do not hold left-wing values, and the nature of the victimizers, disproportionately young minority males.
00:32:13.000He was talking with Barry Weiss and Jane Koston.
00:32:16.000And here's Jake explaining correctly that the media response definitely would have been different if white supremacists had committed this Hanukkah attack.
00:32:22.000This is kind of a sensitive question, but do you think the reaction by politicians and the media would be any different if these recent anti-Semitic attacks had been committed by white supremacists instead of who they were committed by?
00:32:37.000And the reason for that is because it took a man walking in with a machete the size of a broomstick for there to be any public outrage during the holiday of Hanukkah.
00:32:50.000It is also true that the Jersey City attack disappeared from mainstream newspapers.
00:32:53.000And not only that, it was covered by mainstream newspapers as a response to gentrification, with Jews coming in and offering to buy apartments from black folks in Jersey City.
00:33:01.000And the fact is, the media only cover anti-Semitism when it is convenient to their narrative.
00:33:05.000But anti-Semitism comes from a wide variety of sources, including, disproportionately, in terms of opinion, Black Americans are disproportionately anti-Semitic compared to other racial subgroups of Americans according to the Anti-Defamation League.
00:33:18.000Again, only relevant because what you are seeing in New York City is disproportionately the attacks taking place from members of minority communities.
00:33:28.000If this were a white supremacist thing, the media would be covering it because it is uncomfortable to talk about the fact that there is disproportionate anti-Semitism among African Americans in the United States.
00:33:39.000Armin Rosen wrote for Tablet Magazine back in July 2019 about the Jew hatred in New York, correctly noted, quote, that the victims are most outwardly identifiable, i.e.
00:33:47.000religious rather than secularized Jews.
00:33:49.000The perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic.
00:33:54.000The media, therefore, does not want to cover all of this because this cuts directly against the supposed alliance of intersectionality in which all minority groups are allied against the white superstructure.
00:34:04.000The left just ignores the wrong type of anti-Semitism.
00:34:07.000And so the same media that will derive great joy from suggesting that President Trump, the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States, is actually an anti-Semite.
00:34:17.000The same media that will pretend that President Trump's executive order for campus, designed to protect Jews in the same way that it protects blacks on American campuses, are actually anti-Semitic.
00:34:26.000Well, we'll suggest that it is perfectly wrong to cover the fact that Barack Obama sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years while Jeremiah Wright spewed anti-Semitism.
00:34:43.000He made pilgrimage to Al Sharpton, an actual anti-Semite.
00:34:47.000Who's involved in the incitement, allegedly involved in the incitement, of two separate anti-Semitic riots in New York City, and who now has a show on MSNBC.
00:34:56.000So yes, the identity of the victims matters, and so does the identity of the victimizers.
00:35:01.000The same commentators who will police Republicans for mentioning George Soros.
00:35:04.000So if you say George Soros is a nefarious force in American politics, which by the way, he is.
00:35:09.000He does some very bad things in American politics.
00:35:11.000Then they'll say, oh, that's anti-semitism if you mention George Soros.
00:35:15.000If, by the way, you mention anything about right-wing Jewish donors, if you mention something about Sheldon Adelson, then obviously that's not anti-semitic.
00:35:23.000That's just you critiquing money in politics.
00:35:24.000But if you do it about George Soros, it's anti-semitic.
00:35:27.000And then they'll just excuse open anti-semitism from Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
00:35:32.000By the way, the statement that I made about disproportionate anti-semitism inside the black community that's supported by a consistent polling done by the Anti-Defamation League every single year.
00:35:41.000If you're not going to call out anti-semitism whenever you see it, you're doing it wrong.
00:35:45.000But the media are not interested in doing it because for them it's just a tool.
00:35:49.000And this latest spate of anti-semitic attacks in New York is a perfect example of this.
00:35:52.000I'll get to more of that in just a second.
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00:36:59.000Okay, we can get to more of the anti-Semitism in New York City.
00:37:02.000We'll also get to impeachment and the 2020 race where Bernie Sanders is showing some life despite the fact That he basically been declared dead just a couple of months ago.
00:37:11.000We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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00:38:19.000Okay, so the issue of anti-Semitism, again, being treated as a political football by the left because this is what the political left enjoys doing, apparently.
00:38:34.000CNN's Sam Vinegrad blamed President Trump for the situation in New York.
00:38:39.000She tried to excuse Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, and Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York.
00:38:43.000And she blamed President Trump in the process for the fact that Bill de Blasio, who claimed that there was no anti-Semitic problem, like five weeks ago, after that Jersey City attack, he suggested, well, now anti-Semitism has reached the doorstep of New York City.
00:38:56.000No, it's been there for a very long time.
00:38:58.000You just don't care about it because it's coming in a form that you wish not to recognize.
00:39:02.000Andrew Cuomo, who came out and said, well, this is just, it has to do with the general tone and tenor of politics in our country, trying to blame Trump for something happening in his own state.
00:39:10.000Here's CNN's Sam Vinograd doing the same thing.
00:39:14.000government address the lessons of countering extremism in really a strategic way, and I do not understand why.
00:39:21.000President Trump has the authority and the ability to call together a whole-of-government approach on this issue, and he has failed to do so while concurrently, unfortunately, really propagating some anti-Semitic narratives.
00:39:36.000Oh, so you see, somehow, I guess the people who are beating up Jews in Williamsburg are actually Trump supporters.
00:39:42.000I'll be honest with you, really did not see that coming.
00:39:45.000Probably the pair of goons who flashed a knife, according to the New York Post, as they yelled, hey, Jew boy, at a Brooklyn teen over the weekend, spewing that hate at a 17-year-old victim walking on Avenue O near 8th Street.
00:39:55.000Apparently, that was probably a bunch of white supremacists.
00:39:59.000By the way, not a single incident in New York City has been linked to white supremacy, but obviously this has to do with President Trump.
00:40:06.000Demonstrating, once again, that the left doesn't care about antisemitism, depending on the source.
00:40:09.000Jay Michelson wrote a piece over at the Daily Beast, where he tried to explain that left-wing antisemitism is basically fine, because the reality is that left-wing antisemitism is rooted in reality, where right-wing white supremacist antisemitism is rooted in mere conspiracy theorizing.
00:40:22.000Really, this is what this idiot wrote.
00:40:26.000He says, this combination of baseless hatred, he's talking about the conspiracy theorizing in the Jersey City community among some people about Jews selling organs and gentrification.
00:40:37.000He says, this combination of baseless hatred and socioeconomic grievance stands in stark contrast to the wordy theoretical manifestos of white supremacist anti-semitism.
00:40:46.000And while some attackers cite conspiracy theories similar to the ones on the nationalist right, such as the Black Hebrew Israelite doctrines noted above, the social context and relationships to power are utterly different.
00:40:55.000While conspiracy mongering exists on the left and the right, there is no left-wing or African-American equivalent of President Trump, who is freely traded in anti-Semitic stereotypes, sometimes in a joking way.
00:41:07.000After all, the notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan may be the leader of the Nation of Islam, but Trump is the leader of the free world.
00:41:12.000And then he just blames Trump for all of this.
00:41:14.000Literally, the Democratic Party, this year, or last year rather, excused the anti-Semitism of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and made them part of the squad and elevated them.
00:41:23.000Literally, last year, Pete Buttigieg made pilgrimage to Al Sharpton.
00:41:45.000Except for every functional, sentient human being with a prefrontal cortex.
00:41:49.000According to the New York Post, suspects arrested in last week's spree of eight anti-Semitic attacks are quickly being released right back into the neighborhoods they terrorized thanks to bail reform legislation, which doesn't even take effect until January 1st.
00:42:01.000The most recent case of revolving-door justice came Saturday morning with the release, with no bail, of a woman charged with punching and cursing at three Orthodox women ages 22, 26, and 31 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, at dawn the day before.
00:42:14.000The accused assailant, Tiffany Harris, was hauled in handcuffs before a Brooklyn judge on 21 menacing harassment and attempted assault charges.
00:42:30.000As she stood before a judge in Brooklyn criminal court with a hood to a navy blue jacket over her head, Harris was in familiar territory.
00:42:36.000She still has an open harassment and assault case on the Brooklyn docket from November.
00:42:40.000Last month, she was sentenced to no jail time for felony criminal mischief in Manhattan.
00:42:45.000She has completely failed to show up for court appearances.
00:42:47.000But Brooklyn prosecutors didn't even bother requesting bail on Saturday, given that the reform law approved in April technically doesn't take effect until January 1st.
00:42:55.000The de Blasio administration has made it clear we all need to get in compliance with bail reform now.
00:43:00.000So you can't even hold these people on bail who are committing crimes.
00:43:05.000Harris broke into a grin when approached by a reporter.
00:43:14.000But welcome to left-wing governance, which is ruining major American cities across the country.
00:43:18.000Meanwhile, there was another act of violence that took the headlines for five seconds, because once again, it did not fit the media's narrative, and that was this attack At a Texas church that happened over the holidays.
00:43:31.000Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal, a streaming video of the Sunday church service in Texas at which a parishioner gunned down a shooter is rallying those who support making it easier for private citizens to bear arms.
00:43:40.000Gun rights advocates have long argued that if more citizens have guns, they can defend themselves and others in the event of a shooting.
00:43:45.000On Sunday morning, this is that last Sunday, a gunman opened fire at West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement near Fort Worth.
00:43:51.000He killed two people before a parishioner who was part of a volunteer security force fatally shot him.
00:43:56.000And you can actually see this happen in the video.
00:43:58.000You can see the shooter who arrives on scene, starts shooting at people, and a bunch of people in the crowd pull out guns, and a security officer puts down the shooter and shoots the shooter.
00:44:11.000There are people on the left who are tweeting, yeah, but the real threat was that there were people in the audience who didn't really know what to do with their guns and were unlicensed with their guns.
00:44:31.000That's what would have been happening there.
00:44:35.000Everyone who wishes to protect themselves and their community should become a responsible gun owner.
00:44:39.000They should know how to use, they should coordinate with the authorities, they should do all appropriate things to defend themselves.
00:44:44.000By the way, speaking of idiocy, again, the U.S.
00:44:47.000criminal justice system is broken, but not in terms of keeping people in jail too long all the time.
00:44:53.000Sometimes it's broken in terms of this revolving door that we have with crime.
00:44:56.000It turns out that the man who fatally shot two people at the White Settlement Church before being killed by church security, ...had a long criminal history and was described by his ex-wife as battling a demon and not nice to anyone.
00:45:07.000The shooter was identified on Monday morning by two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.
00:45:11.000NBC5 has learned that his criminal past included charges of assault, theft, arson, and possession of an illegal weapon in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Jersey.
00:45:26.000You set up a revolving door for criminals and then you're shocked when it turns out that the criminals go and do terrible things.
00:45:31.000Meanwhile, with all of this happening, with all this turmoil internationally and domestically, the Democrats are focused laser-like on impeachment.
00:45:38.000They continue to move forward with impeachment, although Nancy Pelosi still has not set forth a timeline as to when she will convey the impeachment charges to the Senate.
00:45:45.000Remember that impeachment was passed in the House, but she has not actually passed that on to the Senate.
00:45:49.000There's an interesting legal debate going on right now over whether Mitch McConnell actually needs that.
00:45:52.000There's nothing in the Constitution that suggests that Nancy Pelosi Number one is compelled to hand over the impeachment charges to McConnell, but there's nothing also that says that McConnell can't hold a separate trial on the basis of those impeachment charges.
00:46:06.000They're public, after all, and then just acquit.
00:46:09.000So there's a debate over whether McConnell should do that right now or whether he should just point at Pelosi and say the reason she's holding this back is because she knows what's going to happen next.
00:46:18.000Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani continues to militate in favor of his own testimony, which is presumably the worst idea that ever happened.
00:46:23.000He was at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, suggesting that he would love to testify, which would be the worst possible idea because Rudy Giuliani is not his own best witness.
00:46:59.000We get to have a generalized referendum on Trump in just about 11 months here.
00:47:03.000Okay, it is fast approaching the election.
00:47:05.000Most Americans, in the end, want this to be decided by the American people.
00:47:08.000They do not want this to be decided by Nancy Pelosi and crew.
00:47:11.000They do not think that whatever are the allegations rise to the level of getting rid of a sitting president.
00:47:16.000The only people who are in favor of all of this are people like Linda Ronstadt, who came out on CNN and explained to Anderson Cooper, who is busy getting brutally drunk on New Year's Eve.
00:47:26.000I mean, just going wild on New Year's Eve with Anderson.
00:47:30.000It confuses me as to why CNN thinks that this is good broadcasting or a good idea.
00:47:33.000You're a news network and you have your anchors making absolute mockeries of themselves on national TV.
00:47:38.000Do they think that it makes them seem fun?
00:47:40.000Or does it make it seem like they might be out of touch with their actual jobs?
00:47:45.000You call yourself the most trusted name in news, you get James Earl Jones to do the voiceover, and then you got Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon getting blackout drunk on national TV.
00:47:53.000Anyway, here's Linda Ronstadt over the weekend explaining that President Trump is the new Hitler.
00:47:57.000There were a lot of chances that Hitler rose to power.
00:47:59.000There were a lot of chances to stop him, and they didn't speak out.
00:48:02.000And the industrial complex thought that they could control him once they got him in office, and of course he was not controllable.
00:48:08.000By the time he got established, he put his own people in place and, you know, stacked the courts and did what he had to do to consolidate his power.
00:48:15.000If you read the history, you won't be surprised.
00:48:35.000Like a huge percentage of the American population is Hispanic.
00:48:38.000Nobody's being rounded up and put in boxcars.
00:48:40.000This is so insulting and so stupid, but if you feel like this is who Trump is, of course you're pushing for impeachment, despite the fact that you don't actually have the evidence for this.
00:48:47.000Meanwhile, the Democrats are basically hoping that they can peel off a couple of Republican senators to cut against McConnell and drive for a quote-unquote more even-handed impeachment effort, impeachment trial in the Senate.
00:49:07.000I think it's premature to decide who should be called until we see the evidence that is presented and get the answers to the questions that we senators can submit through the Chief Justice to both sides.
00:49:23.000What I don't understand is why the House, having issued subpoenas to Secretary Pompeo, for example, Did not seek to enforce those subpoenas in court and instead rushed to get the articles of impeachment passed before Christmas and yet have not transmitted them to us in the Senate.
00:49:47.000Okay, so people are reading this as Susan Collins somehow cutting against McConnell.
00:50:25.000Like, we got them nothing but Star Wars gifts for Hanukkah, and they could not be happier.
00:50:29.000Honestly, I wish that the world were not such a terrible place, particularly in social media, so I could post videos of my kids, because it is adorable.
00:50:35.000I have the best video of my three-year-old son, who's very into Empire Strikes Back.
00:50:40.000I know, maybe a little old for him, but he gets it, he likes it.
00:50:42.000And there are many videos of me turning to him now and saying, no, I am your father.
00:50:49.000And him saying, that's not true, that's impossible.
00:50:52.000And me saying, search your feelings, you know it to be true.
00:51:18.000So there were two things they could have done originally.
00:51:20.000I have to preface my take on Rise of Skywalker with the other two movies because it doesn't work as a standalone film, nor is it really meant to.
00:51:27.000This film, Rise of Skywalker, was designed specifically to retcon, meaning to go back in time and change the fact that Force Awakens and Last Jedi ever happened.
00:51:37.000It basically revises the entire story in a much more satisfying way.
00:51:41.000So here was my original take on this new trilogy.
00:51:45.000There are two ways that Disney could have gone.
00:51:46.000Disney, number one, could have recast the entire Original Return of the Jedi, they could have recast somebody as Luke, recast somebody as Leia, recast somebody as Han.
00:51:58.000They could have recast the entire cast, and then they could have just picked up where Return of the Jedi left off with the Admiral Thrawn series, which if you've read any of the Star Wars books, yes I have, then that's actually a really good storyline.
00:52:08.000And they could have just picked up where they left off and moved on into the future that way.
00:52:11.000And you would have gotten all of their new adventures.
00:52:14.000Alternatively, they could have landed the Star Wars universe in like a different place.
00:52:17.000And they're actually doing this on Disney Plus with The Mandalorian, which is kind of great, right?
00:52:24.000They could have gone back and they could have used some of these characters and put them somewhere else in the Star Wars universe.
00:52:29.000So Disney actually has done this with a couple of their other series, right?
00:52:33.000Star Wars Clone Wars they did this with and also Star Wars Rebels.
00:52:35.000And some of that stuff is really pretty fantastic.
00:52:38.000They could have done any of those things.
00:52:39.000Instead, what they chose to do was split the baby.
00:52:41.000We'll introduce new characters, but we will live off the nostalgia for the first films.
00:52:46.000And the reason you can't do that is because if you're nostalgic for the first films, you don't want to see bad things happen to your favorite childhood characters.
00:52:56.000No one wants to see Han Solo die at the hands of his son like a loser divorced dad after leaving Leia alone for 20 years and flying around the galaxy smoking pot with Chewie and the Millennium Falcon.
00:53:07.000And that's what happens in Force Awakens.
00:53:09.000No one wants to see Luke, who is this hero who goes from being a whiny teenager to being this mature Jedi, who is able to control himself to save his father.
00:53:17.000Nobody wants to see Luke become a misanthrope who milks aliens on a foreign planet while whining about his life and disparaging the Jedi tradition.
00:53:26.000So the new series basically took all of your favorite characters, your favorite old characters, and proceeded to ruin them except for Leia because Kathleen Kennedy has this feminist streak where the only characters who are allowed to be competent or good are apparently the female characters.
00:53:38.000Okay, so that was the critique of this trilogy.
00:53:42.000They basically took all of my favorite characters from my childhood and they wrecked them so that they could promote a bunch of characters who sucked.
00:53:48.000Okay, Rey was a terrible character because you didn't know, not only you didn't know where she came from, but she was amazing at everything right off the bat, right?
00:53:54.000This was the biggest critique of the first part of this trilogy.
00:53:57.000The biggest critique was that Rey, who had not trained in the Force for half a second, was suddenly unbelievably good at it.
00:54:03.000And Ben Solo, right, Kylo Ren, who is Leia's kid with Han, Who's been training with the force since childhood can be overtaken in a lightsaber battle by somebody who picked up a lightsaber half a second ago.
00:54:17.000And everybody who watched the series knew it was stupid.
00:54:19.000Meanwhile, you had Poe, who was utterly incompetent.
00:54:22.000They tried to create kind of a new Han Solo character.
00:54:24.000The difference is that Han Solo in Empire Strikes Back, the entire story of Empire Strikes Back, is Han Solo demonstrating that he is wildly competent at a lot of things.
00:54:32.000The entire Poe Dameron story is the dude is wildly incompetent until he's suddenly promoted to the head of the Rebel Alliance.
00:54:43.000Nothing happens to him for the next three movies.
00:54:45.000So all of the new characters are completely boring, random.
00:54:49.000They should have killed Finn in Last Jedi.
00:54:52.000When he makes that heroic run, they should have killed him off.
00:54:54.000They probably should have killed Poe in Last Jedi.
00:54:57.000They should have had him pull the Admiral Holdo maneuver.
00:55:00.000Instead, they bring in Laura Dern to wear weird hair and do a lightspeed trick.
00:55:04.000That, by the way, if anybody could have figured that one out, they could have blown up the Death Star that way, like in Star Wars New Hope as well as Return of the Jedi.
00:55:14.000All of this is preface to say I hated Force Awakens and I hated Last Jedi.
00:55:18.000Rise of Skywalker is an attempt to buy all of that back.
00:55:22.000And understanding that this trilogy never should have happened, and understanding all the flaws of Force Awakens and Last Jedi, now you understand why I liked Rise of Skywalker.
00:55:31.000Because they attempt to correct as many of these problems as they can while apologizing for the series ever existing.
00:55:45.000Like the film, it's not a spoiler to say, the film opens with the Millennium Falcon lightspeed jumping, which just turns it into like a silly prop.
00:57:03.000So Han Solo comes back and he talks with Kylo and he basically woos Kylo back to the light side of the force.
00:57:10.000You find out that Leia, who uses the force in new and bizarre ways in Last Jedi that Like, she literally pulls herself back into a ship after being blasted out into space.
00:57:19.000And you're like, where the hell did that come from?
00:57:30.000In the books, she actually is trained as a Jedi by Luke.
00:57:31.000And that she decided not to become a Jedi at the last minute because she foresaw, using the Force, that if she became a Jedi, then her lightsaber would be used to kill Ben.
00:57:41.000And then the biggest retcon of all, the one that actually matters, and that answers why Rey is cool.
00:57:46.000Right, it answers the biggest question, why is Rey even a thing?
00:57:48.000And the answer is, because she's Palpatine's granddaughter.
00:57:51.000Which is fantastic, okay, that's a great reveal.
00:57:53.000That's great, because the most underrated force ability person in the Star Wars series, because everyone's focused on Anakin Skywalker, on Vader, on Luke, on Leia, on Yoda, on Obi-Wan, Nobody's focused on the fact that Palpatine's an unbelievable badass with the Force, right?
00:58:07.000Palpatine is so strong in the Force that he basically defeats Yoda.
00:58:11.000He is able to conceal his identity as the emperor for three movies.
00:58:16.000He's able to turn Anakin to the dark side.
00:58:25.000They bring in all the old musical cues.
00:58:27.000They bring in all of the old stuff, which is the stuff that I like.
00:58:30.000So if you're a nostalgia person, right, if you're pissed at this series because you feel like it ruined your childhood, then this movie was an attempt to restore that.
00:58:37.000It was an attempt to make Han cool again.
00:59:02.000The callback scene where they find the old Death Star from Return of the Jedi, and Rey has to confront herself, which is another callback to Empire.
00:59:09.000And then when they're playing the old musical cues, all that stuff is great.
00:59:12.000What they do with Kylo Ren, bringing him back to the light side is pretty great.
00:59:16.000J.J. Abrams does a great job in setting up a good reveal.
00:59:19.000So for several movies, you've been seeing basically Kylo and Rey force Skyping one another.
00:59:27.000In this movie, they can actually sword fight sort of telepathically, but it has real world ramifications.
00:59:32.000One is in one place, one is in the other place, and they're having these lightsaber battles, but it actually has physical ramifications in the places where they're having the lightsaber battles.
00:59:40.000And so that ends with a really fantastic reveal.
00:59:51.000Finn and Poe continue to be disposable.
00:59:53.000All the other fringe characters end up being disposable.
00:59:56.000There is this lesbian moment that's been much talked about, because at the very end of the movie, they show a lesbian couple kissing, and it's obviously Disney trying to shoehorn in the, okay, glad we know you're there.
01:00:04.000It's very silly, and it's very- it's sort of like that moment at the end of- of The Avengers, Infinity War, where all the females land in one part of the battlefield, and you're like, okay, really?
01:00:28.000But overall, the critics are savaging this film.
01:00:32.000All it tells you about critics, all you need to know is they gave The Last Jedi like 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and they gave this one like 53%.
01:02:00.000Abrams for at least trying to go back and un-ruin everything that he ruined in Force Awakens that Rian Johnson then proceeded to wreck in Last Jedi.
01:02:08.000Okay, I know I went on a long time about Star Wars, but guess what, Toph?
01:02:14.000We're going to start the new year on an upbeat note.
01:02:16.000We're not going to do things I hate because I just took forever talking about Star Wars.
01:02:19.000But suffice to say, if you like the old Star Wars, you should totally, you should totally see this one.
01:02:24.000It is definitely better than the last two in the series and everybody who's ripping on it didn't understand why the last two sucked.
01:02:29.000Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content, including all of your election updates, Bernie Sanders raising tons of money, where we are in the polls, Joe Biden stepping in it again.
01:02:38.000We'll get to all that two hours later today.