Amazon turns heads by selecting New York and Washington, D.C. as its new second headquarters. The Florida recount efforts get uglier, and President Trump goes after the French. Plus, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez finally has a platform to stand on. She Hates Amazon. Which is a weird platform, but we ll get to all of that in just a second. This is the Ben Shapiro Show, and while I love mocking the French as much as the next guy, it's always more entertaining when President Trump does it. We'll get to that in a second, plus, we'll talk about keeping your home safer. Today, over a million people use the amazing Ring Video Doorbell to help protect their homes. So now they are extending that same level of security to the rest of your home with the Ring Floodlight Cam. Save up to $150 off a Ring of Security Kit when you go to ring.me/BenShapiro and get 20% off your first purchase when you enter the discount code: BENSHAPIOFOUNDATION. Ben Shapiro is a writer, comedian, podcaster, and podcaster. His latest novel Other Words For Smoke is out now. He's also a regular contributor on Comedy Central and the New York Times, and he also hosts a podcast called "Ben Shapiro's New York Review." He can be reached at ben.shapiro@cnn.co.ee/benshapio and he's on . And you can become a supporter of Ben Shapiro's new music is also if you're listening to Ben Shapiro on on his podcast, is or can be also on The Anthropology is also on his podcast is on foxy on podcast on is a podcast on "The New York radio show is and is on on y on "instant is his on my podcast? , has a podcast also is , and should go to out on should be on the podcast is that s on it is or is he also is great on , he also does it on he's on that is out is really on this in he does it is all that is terrible, and more ? .
00:00:41.000So now they are extending that same level of security to the rest of your home with the Ring Floodlight Cam.
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00:01:49.000We begin today with the announcement by Amazon that they have found their next headquarters too.
00:01:54.000Now, there was a big year-long search for where they were going to locate their second headquarters.
00:02:00.000One of the reasons, nobody will talk about, that they are trying to start a second headquarters is because the business climate in Seattle has really gone south.
00:02:06.000Amazon is not the first company based in Seattle that has started creating headquarters outside Seattle.
00:02:11.000Boeing famously did this a couple of years ago when they went down to South Carolina with one of their latest plants because doing business in Seattle was too expensive thanks to leftist governance.
00:02:20.000Well, Amazon Had announced like a year ago that they were going to open up a second headquarters.
00:02:26.000Now they've decided that they're going to open a second and third headquarters.
00:02:29.000They're going to split that second headquarters.
00:02:31.000Are they going to locate it in a distressed town in Ohio or Pennsylvania?
00:02:35.000Are they going to restart industry in a part of the country where industry has been falling away?
00:02:42.000They're going to locate it in New York and Washington, D.C.
00:02:44.000So, after all was said and done, they're locating this thing in Crystal City, which is basically a bunch of cement buildings just out of D.C., and they're going to be locating it in Queens, which happens to be the home district of, you guessed it, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
00:02:55.000They've decided to move into According to the Wall Street Journal, New York City and Northern Virginia will be the homes for Amazon's second and third headquarters, according to people familiar with the matter, ending a more than yearlong public contest that started with 238 candidates and ended with a surprise split of its so-called HQ2.
00:03:15.000In other words, they gave the runaround to 240 cities, then picked the two cities everyone figured they would locate in, the one nearest to legislative power and the one nearest to financial power, New York City and Washington, D.C.
00:03:25.000The imminent announcement is expected today, according to People.
00:03:28.000Other cities may also receive major sites, some of the People said.
00:03:31.000So, the second headquarters is divided evenly between New York's Long Island City and Arlington County's Crystal City neighborhoods, which are both located directly across from major city centers.
00:03:41.000They're saying there will be approximately 25,000 employees in each location.
00:03:46.000It is unclear exactly what the deal was.
00:03:49.000Amazon was sort of pitching this publicly so that people could be making overtures to them.
00:03:57.000And it's not clear what either city did, Crystal City or New York City, did to draw Amazon there.
00:04:02.000Suffice it to say, I'm not in favor of business subsidies from government.
00:04:06.000I don't think taxpayers should be subsidizing businesses, just as I don't think that businesses should be taking advantage of taxpayers.
00:04:13.000With all of that said, what really should be happening is all the tax breaks available to major corporations should be available to every business in a particular area.
00:04:21.000If New York thinks it's drawing business by paying off Amazon, wouldn't it be drawing more business by lowering the tax rate on all the businesses already in New York?
00:04:30.000Wouldn't that be a good way to draw more business to New York?
00:04:32.000It's amazing how the logic seems to go out the window when it comes to leftist governance in major cities.
00:04:37.000They're willing to offer all sorts of goodies and incentives and chocolate sweets to various companies to come in, and they will cherry pick the companies they want to come in, but they won't lower the overall tax rate and regulatory burden so that more businesses will just enter naturally.
00:04:52.000In any case, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who's a communist, discussed the Amazon deal Monday night during his weekly television appearance Although he didn't confirm that the city had been officially selected.
00:05:01.000He was hopeful that HQ2 would come to New York City.
00:05:07.000He said, Again, if you really want to make an economic development deal for New York City, you just get rid of a lot of the taxes and regulations and rent controls and all of the idiotic policies Bill de Blasio has followed that have alienated a lot of businesses from New York City and to other places in the country.
00:05:22.000Amazon is also moving to New York in order to face up against Google, because Google is also looking to expand into the city.
00:05:28.000Apparently, Alphabet Inc., which is Google, is going to add office space for more than 12,000 new workers, which is an amount nearly double the search giant's current staffing in the city.
00:05:37.000Amazon had recently been in late-stage negotiations with several locations, including New York, Crystal City, and Dallas.
00:05:44.000Aside from the GHQ 2 decisions, Amazon may also announce other cities have won big projects.
00:05:49.000One of the reasons, by the way, that Amazon is moving to Crystal City is because it is number one, close to DC, and number two, it's close to Jeff Bezos, who's the founder of Amazon.
00:06:19.000The real reason they're moving there is highly educated populations, access to capital, access to regulation, regulatory control, regulatory capture.
00:06:25.000One of the things that people need to know about big business is that big business and capitalism are not identical.
00:06:31.000Big businesses take advantage of whatever profit there is to be had, even at the hands of the government.
00:06:36.000They're not shy about going to the government for help.
00:06:39.000And this is a case in point of Amazon doing just that.
00:06:42.000It's also a case in point of, you know, Amazon's been doing that with regard to food stamps, for example.
00:06:46.000There's been a lot of talk about how many folks who work for Amazon are on food stamps, and people blame Amazon for that.
00:06:51.000Well, the reason that Amazon can pay those people low wages is because food stamps are available.
00:06:57.000And overall, the rip on Amazon, that Amazon is a terrible, terrible employer, is simply not true.
00:07:01.000Well, regardless, so my general points are two.
00:07:05.000One, when business comes to a city, it is good for the city.
00:07:08.000Two, when businesses come to a city because the city is paying the business to come to the city, that is ripping off taxpayers.
00:07:14.000Both of these points can be true at once.
00:07:17.000Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in New York is very, very upset about Amazon moving into her city for one good reason and for mostly bad reasons.
00:07:23.000So here is what she tweeted out today.
00:07:26.000Our favorite congressperson who thinks that I can't call her.
00:07:29.000She says, we've been getting calls and outreach from Queens residents all day about this.
00:07:34.000So first of all, I really, really doubt that the response of Queens to a massive company moving into Queens and bringing 25,000 jobs was outrage.
00:07:45.000I can't name the number of cities that, like, really.
00:07:48.000Really, I don't think any cities exist where people are deeply, deeply outraged overall about major companies moving into their midst.
00:07:55.000Except for the fact that there are a certain group of people who are afraid they won't get jobs from Amazon and are afraid that upward pressures in housing and gentrification are going to push them out.
00:08:04.000I assume those are the people that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about.
00:08:07.000And the reason that all of that is happening is specifically because of policies that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushes.
00:08:13.000The policies that she pushes include rent control, they include wage subsidies, they include heavy regulations of business.
00:08:19.000All of these policies are likely to result in less employment in the area and upward pressure on rents.
00:08:26.000Because Amazon's original headquarters in Seattle has been pressured by just those things.
00:08:30.000Seattle recently tried to pass a head tax on Amazon, trying to tax them for every employee in the city.
00:08:36.000Which is one of the reasons why Amazon is fleeing to other parts of the country, or at least diversifying its labor base across other parts of the country.
00:08:45.000The reason there's been upward rent pressure in Seattle is because of serious Restrictions on the sort of housing that people can build.
00:08:54.000You think developers wouldn't want to build and redevelop in Queens to build new housing as there's upward rent pressure?
00:09:03.000But New York supply can't meet demand because it's almost impossible to build anything there.
00:09:07.000And because heavy rent control regulations have prevented everyone from being able to rent at market prices.
00:09:12.000Which means that people are being forced out of their apartments as apartment owners have started to have started to figure out ways to toss people out.
00:09:20.000Rent control is legitimately the worst policy that you can pursue in an area with upward rent pressure and new employees.
00:09:27.000Here's what Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez tweets, though.
00:09:29.000She says the problem is not all the regulation.
00:09:32.000The problem is not even the tax subsidies.
00:09:46.000And who has, by age 29, not saved enough money to be able to afford two months of rent in Washington, D.C., in expectation of a six-figure salary from the federal government.
00:09:58.000Well, number one, this is the part where I say she's sort of half right.
00:10:00.000The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need more investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.
00:10:09.000Well, number one, this is the part where I say she's sort of half right.
00:10:12.000She's right that Amazon should not be getting all sorts of tax breaks.
00:10:15.000Everybody in New York should be getting all sorts of tax breaks.
00:10:18.000She's wrong here, though, when she suggests that what we really need is more tax dollars poured into the MTA.
00:10:24.000$15 billion a year is spent on the MTA, more than the entire GDP of 70 counties in the United States.
00:10:31.000The MTA is not bankrupt because it's lacking tax dollars.
00:10:34.000The MTA is bankrupt because people are not actually paying what it costs to ride the subway.
00:10:39.000And every time there's a proposal to raise the subway fee in New York City, everybody cries about it, and then they just toss more taxpayer dollars at it, and then it doesn't get solved.
00:10:48.000And the fact is that the MTA requires higher subway fees.
00:10:52.000I mean, that's just the reality of the situation.
00:10:54.000But she continues, and here's where it gets really bad for Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who does not understand free markets, or even want to understand free markets.
00:11:01.000She says, when we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep.
00:11:05.000And here we get into the full-on socialist, not democratic socialist, socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who wants to control the means of production.
00:11:13.000Because I want a part-time bartender figuring out how Amazon, a billion-dollar company, ought to run its business.
00:11:19.000A company, by the way, with 600,000 employees globally.
00:11:22.000I want Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez determining how exactly Amazon can maintain profit and also ensure employment.
00:11:29.000She says, when we talk about bringing jobs to the community, we need to dig deep.
00:11:33.000Has the company promised to hire in the existing community?
00:11:46.000Okay, number one, the company is going to hire precisely the number of people that it needs to fill particular jobs, because this is how markets work.
00:11:54.000As for the idea that Amazon is going to unionize, Amazon is not going to tolerate unions because Amazon does not need to tolerate unions.
00:12:00.000Amazon, again, employs hundreds of thousands of people.
00:12:05.000And if they were to raise the labor rates, presumably they would also lay some of those people off.
00:12:11.000This is what happens whenever there's a government-enforced attempt to raise wages.
00:12:15.000There's a backlash in terms of employment.
00:12:17.000In a second, I'm going to explain why Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is so wrong here and why, unfortunately, her particular perspective on what government should do with business is not restricted to one side of the aisle.
00:12:30.000We'll talk about that in just one second.
00:12:32.000First, let's talk about what you would do in case of disaster.
00:12:34.000So, over where I live in Los Angeles right now, there are these major wildfires.
00:12:38.000They've caused people to have to evacuate their homes.
00:12:40.000Some folks can't get out to the market.
00:12:42.000Some people don't have access to all the supplies that they need.
00:12:46.000Well, if you were in the path of a disaster, you would certainly be happy to know that you had all of the supplies necessary in order to survive.
00:12:52.000And that's why you need MyPatriotSupply.
00:12:54.000You need a plan for food storage and water filtration when emergencies strike, protection from disaster, survival tools.
00:13:59.000Amazon created 130,000 new jobs last year alone.
00:14:03.000The folks who are on food stamps are mainly part-time workers, and many of them, a huge number of them, are opting to work part-time.
00:14:10.000In the United States, the average hourly wage for a full-time associate in their fulfillment centers, including cash, stock, and incentive bonuses, is over $15 an hour before overtime, in addition to a full benefits package, including health, vision, and dental insurance, retirement, generous parental leave, and skills training for in-demand jobs through their Career Choice program, which has 16,000 participants, according to Amazon.
00:14:31.000So the idea that Amazon is just creating a bunch of crap jobs, this is the new argument that you saw a lot of people make about Walmart for years.
00:14:36.000It was not true about Walmart and it is not true about Amazon either.
00:14:40.000That's not stopping Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez from mouthing off as though she knows what she's talking about when it comes to business.
00:14:45.000She says displacement is not community development.
00:14:48.000So the idea is Amazon is coming in and all these people are going to come in with them and people are going to be displaced.
00:14:53.000Again, residential displacement is a result of rent control and prevention of developers from actually building new buildings and new rental units.
00:15:01.000That is how you, honestly, you want to make sure that people can't afford to live in an area.
00:15:05.000Ensure that there can only be a set number of units for a larger number of people.
00:15:46.000If this idea sounds good to you, then you should think about every coal company in the 1930s and 40s that did have these company towns, and which ended up being wildly restrictive and preventing people from living free lives.
00:16:05.000She ripped on Amazon's job quality now that Amazon is moving to New York City, into Queens, because I'm sure what Amazon really wanted was to be harassed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when they decided to move to Queens.
00:16:50.000I wasn't aware that it's Amazon's job to provide good health care.
00:16:54.000It is their job to provide the incentives that allow people to work for them, including health insurance, if necessary.
00:17:01.000She says it's possible to establish economic partnerships with real opportunities for working families instead of a race to the bottom competition.
00:17:08.000If you think that it's a race to the bottom competition to bring in a company that has 25,000 employees in your area, I don't know what to tell you.
00:17:15.000Chelsea, by the way, says investing in luxury condos is not the same thing as investing in people and families.
00:17:20.000Well, investing in condos is the same thing as investing in people and families because guess who lives in the condos, you moron?
00:17:26.000I mean, legitimately, this is a stupid point.
00:17:29.000Investing in new rental units is one of the ways that you provide housing to people.
00:17:33.000In fact, it is the chief way that you provide housing to people.
00:17:36.000And you know who occupies those luxury condos?
00:17:38.000All of the rich people who otherwise would be living in rent-controlled hovels in Queens.
00:17:43.000She says, Again, the only reason that those people would be shuffled out of the community is due to regulation.
00:17:50.000And finally, she concludes, Okay, well, what's your proposal?
00:18:08.000To force Amazon to pay higher taxes again so they can take all those jobs and leave?
00:18:12.000Right, to ensure that Amazon pays for affordable housing by presumably using the power of government to cram down on them?
00:18:19.000and It's amazing how folks who are in favor of social control of the means of production are suddenly shocked when all of that turns out to be a giant failure.
00:18:30.000Either you want your area to get nicer, which includes bringing in businesses that bring with them jobs and upward mobility and, indeed, upward rent pressures.
00:18:38.000Or you can sit there and you can talk about how you're helping your community when you're actually not helping your community.
00:18:44.000It's truly amazing when folks suggest that gentrification is terrible for a community and then they decry that no jobs are coming to the community.
00:18:54.000If jobs come to the community, it's because crime rates have gone down and because people are moving in who are trying to work at those companies.
00:19:01.000And because economic pressures are moving rents up.
00:19:06.000There is no world in which rents stay the same with high regulations and yet more jobs come into the neighborhood.
00:19:11.000That has never happened in human history because it violates every basic law of human behavior and economics.
00:19:18.000It is amazing, though, to watch the conflict between Alexander Ocasio-Cortez and Bill de Blasio.
00:19:23.000Bill de Blasio, of course, understands that he has to subsidize Amazon to come into New York City in order to overcome the burden of having to work with places like Queens with all of its regulatory burdens.
00:19:35.000The fact is that people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, they like to talk about the Nordic countries and how the Nordic countries are wonderful places to live.
00:19:43.000You know what the Nordic countries don't do?
00:19:45.000Tax their businesses at exorbitant rates.
00:19:47.000The Nordic countries, the reason that their economies are able to work okay is because their economies are largely based on low business regulation and low cost of doing business in those states.
00:19:59.000Where Norway and Denmark and Sweden, where all those countries go off the rails when it comes to their domestic tax rates.
00:20:05.000And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presumably wants those too.
00:20:08.000This is what she'll never tell you, what Bernie Sanders will never tell you.
00:20:11.000If you want to pay for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's program, it's not enough for her just to glom onto Amazon and take away their profit margin.
00:20:19.000In the end, she's going to need to go to people who are middle class in the United States and take away all their money too.
00:20:25.000The tax rates in places like Denmark are 60% for people making above 50, 60 grand a year.
00:20:32.000She's never going to tell you that because what she wants is to be able to tell you you can have everything.
00:20:36.000You can have low tax rates as a middle class person, and you don't have to move out of your rent control department, and you can have a job from Amazon.
00:20:43.000That is not the way any of this works.
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00:22:53.000CNN has now sued President Trump demanding the return of Jim Acosta to the White House because presumably he has some sort of right to be in the White House.
00:22:59.000Now, it is true the federal government is not allowed to engage in viewpoint discrimination.
00:23:03.000So the federal government cannot just decide that they don't want somebody covering the White House because they don't like the guy's viewpoint, right?
00:23:09.000That would be a violation of certain basic First Amendment precepts.
00:23:14.000And there's an argument to be made that President Trump is doing that with Jim Acosta, but that's not really what's happening with Jim Acosta.
00:23:19.000Because the fact is, 95% of the press room hates President Trump.
00:23:23.00095% of the press room agrees with Jim Acosta, and Trump isn't banning any of those people.
00:23:27.000In reality, President Trump banned Jim Acosta because Jim Acosta would not give up his microphone, and instead insisted on holding his microphone, overriding all the other reporters, and yelling at the President of the United States in the middle of a press conference.
00:23:50.000CNN claims the revocation of Acosta's press pass violates the constitutional rights to freedom of the press and due process.
00:23:57.000CNN is asking for an immediate restraining order To return Acosta to the White House, there's no immediate comment from the administration.
00:24:05.000This seems like a sort of bizarre argument, again, because he did violate certain basic rules of the press room.
00:24:12.000When the White House suspended him, it said that it did so because he placed his hands on an intern who was trying to take the microphone from him.
00:24:19.000Really, it was, in my opinion, incidental contact, but CNN is making the claim that this is really about the president doesn't like Acosta, and so he doesn't want Acosta there.
00:24:26.000Again, I think that's a weak argument.
00:24:27.000President Trump hates every member of the press that he can find, including April Ryan, who has not had her press pass revoked in the White House.
00:24:34.000So there are plenty of people in the White House press room who President Trump cannot stand.
00:24:39.000All those people are still attending every single day.
00:24:41.000So the claim by CNN that this is simply about Trump doesn't like Acosta seems far-fetched to me.
00:24:47.000Meanwhile, in other news, It must be pointed out that there are hundreds of rockets a day that are now falling on Israel.
00:24:53.000I'm getting emails from people, videos from people who are legitimately living in their basements.
00:24:58.000They're living in bomb shelters right now across Israel because of hundreds of rockets that are descending from the Gaza Strip.
00:25:04.000Before you say this is because of the quote-unquote occupation, Recognize that for 12 years, Israel has not been present in the Gaza Strip.
00:25:11.000The Gaza Strip is run by a terrorist group called Hamas.
00:25:14.000And that terrorist group has routinely used the Gaza Strip as a staging point for attacks on Israelis.
00:25:19.000They've built terror tunnels to try and kidnap Israelis.
00:25:21.000They've tried to breach the border in order to invade Israeli land.
00:25:24.000They've burned thousands of acres of Israeli lands with kites that have incendiaries attached to them and balloons that have incendiaries attached to them.
00:25:31.000And now they're firing rockets randomly into civilian areas.
00:25:34.000You're not seeing this covered in the media because the media don't care when Jews get killed in Israel.
00:25:41.000The media pretend to care about anti-Semitism in a serious way when Jews get killed in Pittsburgh, because then they can try and blame President Trump, and they can talk about right-wing anti-Semitism, which is a brand of anti-Semitism that does exist.
00:25:52.000When it comes to radical Muslim anti-Semitism, they go completely silent.
00:25:56.000For the same reason that President Obama once said about a radical Islamist attack on a kosher supermarket in France, that it was random.
00:26:02.000It wasn't anti-Semitic, it was a random attack.
00:26:05.000The idea that it is not the same anti-semitism that drives Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians as drives attacks on a shul in Pittsburgh is a bunch of crap.
00:26:15.000And what you're going to see from the press is nothing about the hundreds of rockets falling into the civilian areas of a democratic ally of the United States until Israel fights back, at which point you're going to see the press say, Mighty Israel strikes the poor, quivering Palestinian population.
00:26:31.000And all the Palestinians have to do in the Gaza Strip is elect a government that is not Hamas.
00:26:36.000All they have to do is elect a government that wants to make peace with Israel and then open up their markets and the capital would come flowing in.
00:26:43.000Gaza has some actual nice seaside territory.
00:26:47.000But they're not going to do that because there's an ideological An ideological commitment to the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
00:26:53.000These rockets are not directed at military installations.
00:26:57.000This is an attack on a civilian population, very deliberately, and the media will ignore it up to the point when Israel fights back, at which point they will blame the Jews.
00:27:04.000That is, in and of itself, an aspect of leftist anti-Semitism that manifests itself every time the media covered the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
00:27:14.000Every time that conflict breaks out, the media suggests that Israel is at the top of the power hierarchy, and therefore, Hamas' attacks on Israel are not really anti-Semitic, it's really about power relationships.
00:27:26.000And this is how they cover for radical Muslim anti-Semitism.
00:27:29.000But what we are watching right now, schools being hit, bakeries being hit, and there's 52 Israelis who have gone to hospitals thanks to bombs randomly falling in their midst.
00:27:40.000Again, hundreds of rockets being shot every day.
00:27:42.000I mean, this is the worst it's been in Israel since the 2014 Gaza War.
00:27:46.000It's really been quite awful over there.
00:27:49.000You can see the videos online that will never be covered by the mainstream media.
00:27:52.000There's a pretty heartbreaking video of a dog that had been fatally wounded by a rocket that just fell into a civilian area.
00:27:59.000All of this, again, will be ignored by the global media up until the point at which Israel starts to defend itself, at which point Israel will be condemned for disproportionate force.
00:28:08.000And all of the people on the left, like the J Streets of the world, who will condemn Israel at that point, demonstrate exactly what it is that they are, which is a bunch of anti-Semitic enablers.
00:28:19.000If you're enabling all of this, then you are part of the problem.
00:28:23.000And meanwhile, In other news, over in Florida, the recount process continues to be a complete crap tornado.
00:28:48.000Counting unlawful votes, destroying ballots, sunshine law violations, busted deadlines.
00:28:52.000So many controversies have bedeviled Broward County election supervisor Brenda Snipes, culminating in her office's troubles in the aftermath of Florida's chaotic 2018 elections that her days in office are now numbered, insiders and lawmakers say.
00:29:05.000She was bound by law to start turning in election results within 24 hours of the actual election taking place.
00:29:12.000Instead, it took her a week and then she was suddenly discovering ballots coming in out of nowhere.
00:29:16.000Now that doesn't necessarily mean election fraud took place, but one of the reasons that you want to have these laws on the books in the first place is to fully ensure that election fraud does not take place.
00:29:27.000This is one of the things that we actually care about in the United States.
00:29:30.000It's quite important that we have these laws on the books.
00:29:33.000We want no even appearance of impropriety.
00:29:56.000And it is amusing to watch the positions flip-flop when it comes to Florida and Georgia.
00:30:00.000In Georgia, there are some election problems.
00:30:02.000And suddenly the Democrats are saying that election fraud took place and that they lost there because of election fraud.
00:30:08.000But when Republicans say that they're worried about election fraud in Florida, then all of a sudden it's the end of the Republic.
00:30:14.000It's the end of the world when Republicans talk about the possibility of election fraud in Florida, when Democrats talk about election fraud in Georgia, then all of a sudden it's perfectly legitimate.
00:30:22.000When Democrats talk about how Trump stole the election because of the Russians, perfectly legitimate, not a threat to the democracy in any way.
00:30:27.000When Republicans talk about an actual official, Brenda Snipes, who has a history of destroying ballots and counting unlawful votes, when they talk about maybe that's a problem, then all of a sudden they're delegitimizing election results.
00:33:26.000We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:33:28.000So again, Brenda Snipes is losing support from her fellow Democrats, and she faces the likelihood of a suspension by Governor Rick Scott or Ron DeSantis.
00:33:46.000Senator Marco Rubio said, This is not just the most troubled elections office in the state.
00:33:49.000It's the most troubled elections office in the nation.
00:33:51.000She has shown Brenda Snipes she's incapable of conducting a large, important election in a way that inspires public confidence and trust.
00:33:57.000She's been found to have destroyed ballots in violation of the law, opened absentee ballots early in violation of the law, misprinted ballots have gone out.
00:34:04.000And naturally, she's so incompetent that Democrats are trying to blame Republicans at this point.
00:34:09.000Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC falsely tried to claim that Brenda Snipes was a Republican.
00:34:13.000We should also point out that Brenda Snipes in Broward County is a Republican appointed by former governor, then governor, Jeb Bush.
00:34:21.000So she was put in by a Republican governor after the mess that we all remember from 2000.
00:34:28.000And she's hardly a Democratic official.
00:34:52.000Trying to blame it on the Republicans is not exactly going to help none of this.
00:34:56.000is good for the state of the nation when it comes to elections.
00:34:59.000And by the way, for all the folks in the media who keep claiming that Republicans are throwing elections into doubt, I will remind them that they have been doing this since Donald Trump won election in 2016.
00:35:09.000I will also remind them that over in Arizona, where Martha McSally sadly lost her election bid against insane person Kyrsten Sinema, She has not claimed elections fraud in any way, shape or form.
00:35:19.000She has not claimed elections impropriety.
00:35:22.000She lost the recount and she accepted the results of the recount because there wasn't this sort of elections impropriety.
00:35:28.000This is not stopping Democrats and folks in the media from claiming that Republicans are trying to overthrow democracy by calling for people to actually abide by the law in Florida.
00:35:37.000David Leonhardt, an opinion columnist over at the New York Times, he says, America finally has a pro-democracy movement and it did very well at the polls last week.
00:35:46.000And he talks about measures to reduce gerrymandering and the attempts to finish gerrymandering.
00:35:52.000All of the laws with regard to gerrymandering and voter ID, these are not laws designed to disenfranchise voters.
00:35:58.000Gerrymandering has always been a contentious partisan issue.
00:36:00.000It has never prevented a party from gaining power when there is a sweep.
00:36:05.000The notion that Republicans are standing against democracy.
00:36:09.000It'll be interesting to see how many Democrats start calling for an end to gerrymandering now that Democrats control an enormous number of governorships.
00:36:15.000Suddenly it seems like all of those concerns will simply go by the wayside.
00:36:20.000Meanwhile, Democrats also trying to claim that the White House is cracking down on the Mueller investigation.
00:36:26.000There's a New York Times story out yesterday claiming that the White House is trying to use Matt Whitaker, the new acting Attorney General, to crack down on the Mueller investigation.
00:36:37.000There's not a lot of evidence to suggest that is the case.
00:36:40.000Again, anonymous sources from The New York Times says, people close to Mr. Trump believe he sent Mr. Whitaker to the department in part to limit the fallout from the Mueller investigation.
00:36:47.000White House aides and other people close to Mr. Trump anticipate that Mr. Whitaker will reign in any report summarizing Mr. Mueller's investigation and will not allow the president to be subpoenaed.
00:36:57.000We should investigate, by the way, we should investigate exactly what this language means.
00:37:01.000Quote, people close to Mr. Trump believe he sent Mr. Whitaker to the department in part to limit the fallout from the Mueller investigation, one presidential advisor said.
00:37:09.000Who the hell is that presidential advisor?
00:37:11.000Are they still currently working with the White House?
00:37:23.000But the minute that Matt Whitaker tries to shut down the Mueller investigation, he will immediately be shut down by Congress, and everybody knows it.
00:37:30.000If they actually tried to use Matt Whitaker, the acting attorney general, to shut down the Mueller investigation, come January, the Democrats are in control of Congress.
00:37:37.000You don't think that Robert Mueller will be called to testify in open testimony about Donald Trump if that happens?
00:37:42.000You don't think it would become just another point against Trump in an impeachment hearing on obstruction if he were to use the acting attorney general to shut down the Mueller investigation?
00:37:52.000I don't believe this story at all, but it's not stopping the Democrats from claiming that Donald Trump is on the verge of shutting down the Mueller investigation.
00:38:00.000So all the talk about elections legitimacy, and all the talk about democracy, and all the talk about the process working as the process is supposed to work, it is Democrats who have been continuously claiming that the process didn't work how it was supposed to work in 2016, and who are claiming that President Trump is corruptly keeping his office now without any evidence that that is, in fact, the case.
00:38:27.000The Democratic Party is now split between the moderate Nancy Pelosi wing.
00:38:32.000Yes, I said that phrase, moderate Nancy Pelosi wing.
00:38:35.000And I say moderate not because she's a moderate, but because compared to the intersectional coalition about to take over the Democratic House, she's a quote-unquote moderate.
00:38:43.000So this is the battle, the intersectional coalition and Nancy Pelosi.
00:38:48.000There is a piece by the New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg writing, There is a former NFL linebacker, a climate scientist and a rapper with a Harvard Law degree.
00:39:00.000There's one immigrant from Somalia and another from Ecuador.
00:39:02.000There are two former CIA officials, an Air Force veteran, a former Navy helicopter pilot and a retired Marine commander, all of them women.
00:39:08.000Not to mention a pediatrician and a human rights advocate.
00:39:10.000But these and other newly elected House Democrats arrive in Washington for their orientation this week.
00:39:15.000They will reflect the most diverse, most female freshman class in history.
00:39:18.000The class is ideologically diverse as well.
00:39:21.000And herein lies the problem for Democrats.
00:39:23.000And we're going to get into that problem in just one second.
00:39:27.000So the big problem for Democrats is that their caucus is pretty fractious.
00:39:32.000Half their caucus realizes that there is severe danger in going too far to the left.
00:39:36.000That the Democrats who won, including Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona, who campaigned, is much more of a moderate than she actually is.
00:39:42.000She actually embraced the idea of sending troops down to the border, for example.
00:39:45.000She refused to come out in favor of other Democratic officials in her own state.
00:39:49.000And that's probably why she won in Arizona.
00:39:52.000Moderates won, but the radicals in the Democratic base are suggesting that they want more radicalism.
00:40:07.000In my 2016 book, I analyzed President Barack Obama's victories in the context of the country's changing demographics.
00:40:11.000in Florida and Georgia, but the strategy they followed is still the best strategy for Democrats to win, inspiring, mobilizing, and turning out voters of color and progressive whites.
00:40:21.000In my 2016 book, I analyzed President Barack Obama's victories in the context of the country's changing demographics.
00:40:26.000The implications of the Gilliam and Abrams races are profound, and learning the right lessons from 2018 is key for Democrats as they look ahead to the 2020 elections.
00:40:35.000He says, over the past 20 years, the best performing Democratic candidates in statewide elections in Florida of Georgia have been Mr. Obama, Mr. Gillum, and Ms. Avery.
00:40:44.000Abrams dramatically increased Democratic turnout, garnering more votes than any other Democrat running for any office in the history of Georgia.
00:40:50.000She did turn out heavy Democratic votes.
00:40:54.000If she'd been a moderate Black Democrat in Georgia, then she probably would have won.
00:40:58.000She did not win, because she was not, in fact, a moderate black Democrat, and she was unable to turn out enough suburban votes to bring her victory, even in an election where the Georgia 6th swung to the Democrats.
00:41:07.000So the Democrats are in danger of falling off a cliff with regard to their own radicalism, and that makes some sense.
00:41:14.000That makes some sense, because the Democratic base is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the intersectional coalition built by Barack Obama.
00:41:21.000It is a coalition built by the Obamas.
00:41:24.000And coming from people like Michelle Obama.
00:41:26.000Michelle Obama is an eminently talented person.
00:41:55.000Okay, I love that she's able to say this and get away with it, but imagine if there were a white woman who said about her husband, you know, I have my suspicions when a bunch of black people love my husband.
00:43:24.000And she says that she wants to run for president in 2020.
00:43:26.000I think she has no shot at the nomination in 2020.
00:43:30.000Okay, so are you staying in the Senate, or are you going to run for president?
00:43:33.000Well, I'm obviously very dedicated to serving New Yorkers, but that is a very important moral question that I've been thinking about.
00:43:41.000And I've been thinking about it because, as we said earlier, what President Trump has been putting into this country is so disturbing, so divisive, so dark, that I believe that I've been called to fight as hard as I possibly can to restore that moral integrity, that moral decency.
00:44:00.000Hillary Clinton 2.0, over there, she ain't going anywhere in the primaries, and everybody knows she's going nowhere in the primaries.
00:44:05.000The folks who are going somewhere in the primaries are the folks who gain the love of the radical base, and this is Trump's best shot at victory, is for the Democrats to make an awful, awful mistake.
00:44:14.000Now, he could improve that by doing a better job reaching out to folks, but, you know, that isn't necessarily President Trump's thing.
00:44:21.000So, we'll talk about all that in just a minute.
00:44:24.000Let's do a couple of things that I like, and then a couple of things that I hate.
00:44:57.000Basically, it covers from when William Wallace dies and on.
00:45:00.000So, you remember the end of Braveheart?
00:45:02.000After William Wallace is drawn and quartered, which is an unpleasant way to go, then there is the long shot of the I'm thinking about revenge.
00:46:25.000I mean, I will say that this movie is not for the faint of heart.
00:46:28.000There's a lot of blood, and there's a lot of guts, and I mean, like, actual guts.
00:46:31.000So, if that's your sort of thing, then you'll like Outlaw King.
00:46:34.000If it's not, then you probably will not.
00:46:37.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:46:43.000Okay, so, first thing that I hate, this is just a terrible story.
00:46:47.000A police officer in Chicago allegedly killed a black security guard who was holding down a suspected shooter at a bar he worked for, according to Paul Bois over at Daily Wire.
00:46:54.000According to the Huffington Post, Jamel Roberson, 26, was working early Sunday at Manny's Blue Room, which is a bar in the predominantly black Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois, when a patron who was part of a drunken group that had been kicked out returned with a gun at 4 a.m.
00:47:09.000You normally wouldn't hear that story because it's a Chicago shooting.
00:47:11.000Only mass shootings that occur in non-Chicago are ever covered by the media.
00:47:15.000Armed at the time, Roberson actually did the right thing.
00:47:17.000He grabbed one of the suspected shooters and then held him down and waited for the police to arrive.
00:47:22.000He had somebody on the ground with his knee in his back, with his gun in his back, like, don't move.
00:47:25.000And apparently, allegedly, when the police arrived, an officer with the Midlothian Police Department shot Roberson, who later died at the hospital.
00:47:33.000Witnesses said they did everything to warn the confused officer of Roberson's innocence in the ensuing chaos.
00:47:38.000according to Adam Harris, who's one of the witnesses, he says, just waiting on the police to get there.
00:47:42.000I guess when the police got there, they probably thought he was one of the bad guys because he had his gun on the guy and they shot him.
00:47:57.000Not clear at this point whether it was racially motivated since everybody, security guard and shooters, were black apparently in the situation.
00:48:04.000We don't know the race of the officer either.
00:48:07.000Whatever it is, this is Either a tragic mistake or negligence, whatever it is, it's really bad.
00:48:13.000Obviously, there are too many police officers out there, meaning more than one, who are ill-trained and are quick on the trigger in bad situations.
00:48:22.000And a good man just got killed because of it.
00:48:25.000And that, I think, has more to do with bad police training than it does with racism, although we'll have to wait to see all the facts of this particular case.
00:48:57.000He began in the business in 1939, and he created or co-created An enormous number of characters.
00:49:03.000He's basically responsible for the Marvel Universe.
00:49:07.000His final few years were tumultuous, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
00:49:10.000After Joan, his wife of 69 years, died in July 2017, he sued executives at PAL Entertainment, a company he founded in 2001 to develop film, TV, and video game properties for a billion dollars, alleging fraud, then abruptly dropped the suit weeks later.
00:49:25.000Once people get older, sometimes things get kind of rough.
00:49:27.000But what he's going to be remembered for, obviously, is all the characters that he created and were beloved to teenagers and adults now across the world.
00:49:37.000Lee, by the way, had no rights to the characters he helped to create, and he didn't receive any royalties on them, but he still died an extraordinarily wealthy man, obviously.
00:49:46.000He got a job as a gopher for eight bucks a week at Marvel's predecessor, Timely Comics.
00:49:50.000Two years later, he wrote a two-page story titled The Traitor's Revenge that was used as a text filler to qualify the company for the inexpensive magazine mailing rate, and he used the name Stan Lee, the pen name Stan Lee, because his actual name was Stanley Martin Lieber.
00:50:06.000Pretty great story and obviously I think everybody's thankful to Stan Lee for the characters he created and that we enjoy.
00:50:12.000Okay, other things that I hate, final things that I hate...
00:50:17.000You know, President Trump decided that he would go off on France.
00:50:23.000It's a thing I slightly dislike, I think is fair.
00:50:25.000Now, the president needs to stop feeding his id.
00:50:28.000It's not going to happen, but he needs to stop feeding his id.
00:50:30.000If you don't want to alienate folks, then you shouldn't look like you are responsive to every criticism.
00:50:35.000The president was criticized by Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, while he was over in France.
00:50:40.000And he could have made a speech explaining what nationalism is, what patriotism is, what America stands for.
00:50:46.000It would have been a great opportunity to do that in the aftermath of Macron's statement.
00:50:49.000Instead, he went on Twitter and whined about French wine.
00:50:52.000I kid you not, he said, On trade, France makes excellent wine, but so does the U.S.
00:50:56.000The problem is that France makes it very hard for the U.S. to sell its wines into France and charges big tariffs, whereas the U.S. makes it very easy for French wines and charges very small tariffs.
00:51:08.000I'm fine with the idea that France should lower its tariffs on American wine, but it's weird that this sprang to mind immediately after the French were ripping President Trump.
00:51:16.000I mean, it's just, I don't think that's a big coincidence.
00:51:19.000Also, he then ripped into Macron directly.
00:51:21.000He said, the problem is that Emmanuel suffers from a very low approval rating in France, 26%, and an unemployment rate of almost 10%.
00:51:29.000He was just trying to get onto another subject.
00:51:31.000By the way, there is no country more nationalist than France.
00:52:16.000Again, I'm all for a good French joke about the Germans.
00:52:21.000But with that said, you can't simultaneously say you don't want to pay for NATO anymore and that NATO is not in America's interest and that the EU is not in America's interest and then be upset when the Europeans start to form contingency plans to defend against things like Russia.