Venezuelans rally against dictator Nicolas Maduro, President Trump caves on the State of the Union, and the MAGA Hat Wars continue. Ben Shapiro's take on the latest on the situation in Venezuela, and why some people aren't being asked serious questions about the situation there, even though there's a lot of evidence that the situation is not as bad as people are making it out to be, and that it's not the government shutdown that's the problem, it's what's happening in Venezuela. Ben also explains why Venezuela's opposition to Maduro is so strong and why the West should recognize Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate ruler. And why the other countries in the region are starting to join in the fight against the Venezuelan dictator, and what that means for the future of the country and its future in the world. The Ben Shapiro Show is on all of the social medias, if you search for it, you'll find us. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review and subscribe to our other podcast episodes. If you like what you're listening to, please consider leaving us a five star rating and review our podcast! We'll be looking out for your comments and reviews in the comments section below. Thank you so much for all the support we've gotten so far this week, and we'll see you next week for the next week's episode! Subscribe, review, and a review! Love, Ben Shapiro and all the best of your thoughts and reviews! Peace, love, your continued support, your thoughts, love and words of support, you're amazing! - Ben Shapiro, the Ben Shapiro. XOXO. - The Shapiro Show. "The Ben Shapiro Podcast" - - Sarah, Sarah, the podcasting Queen & the rest of the Crew Sarah's Crew - Thank you, Sarah and the crew at The Root & the Crew at The Forward Project . "Thank you for all your support, Thank you for your support and your support is so much more! - Your continued support is SO MUCH Lending Club" - The Root, Sarah's Backyard Crew? - Sarah and Thank You, Sarah & The Crew is , Sarah and The Crew's Backcountry Crew, The Crew Out? Thank You for all Your Support is So Much Love,
00:00:14.000We're going to get into the latest on Venezuela because it is interesting how certain people, certain fresh faces, aren't being asked serious questions about the situation in Venezuela.
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00:01:36.000The State of the Union, it's not the government shutdown, it's what's happening in Venezuela.
00:01:39.000Literally hundreds of thousands of people marching on the streets of Venezuela.
00:01:44.000I mean, the pictures are just incredible.
00:01:46.000Here's a picture from Caracas, Venezuela, the capital, where hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets in opposition to the evil dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro.
00:01:55.000Maduro, you'll recall, took office after the death of Hugo Chavez, who was also an evil dictator.
00:02:00.000For a long time, the left loved them some Hugo Chavez.
00:02:03.000They thought that Chavez was just wonderful because Chavez used the oil wealth of the country to even out income inequality.
00:02:13.000He's the one who had cured the healthcare system in Venezuela.
00:02:17.000Well, now people there are eating dogs because it turns out that when a bad person gets in charge of a top-down centralized government system, they wreck the country.
00:02:25.000And that happened with Hugo Chavez, and now it's happened with Nicolas Maduro.
00:02:28.000Here's what some of the footage looked like from Caracas, Venezuela.
00:02:43.000People cheering, holding the Venezuelan flag.
00:02:46.000The United States has recognized Nicolas Maduro's opposition, a guy named Juan Guaido, as interim president on Wednesday, leaving Nicolas Maduro ever more isolated as he faces unrest at home and threats from the United States.
00:02:57.000According to Reuters, longstanding leftist allies Bolivia and Cuba are now the only countries in the region to explicitly voice support for Maduro, as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Peru have all backed Guaido.
00:03:11.000The United States and Canada have also recognized Guaido, the 35-year-old leader of Venezuela's opposition-dominated National Assembly, as Venezuela's legitimate ruler.
00:03:20.000Mexico struck a discordant note because the leftist president there, President Andres Manuel López Obrador, said it would not take sides and they branded support for Guaido a violation of sovereignty.
00:03:31.000Okay, so this is breaking down really along two lines.
00:03:34.000One is the line that says, no, Maduro should stay in power and they should negotiate a settlement.
00:03:56.000I'll explain to you in a second how amazing it is that there are folks coming out in quasi-support for Maduro.
00:04:04.000And make no mistake, when you have hundreds of thousands of people who are marching to oppose a military dictatorship instituted from above, and folks are saying, no, we should have a negotiated settlement, it's pretty clear which camp they are in.
00:04:15.000Reuters says the telegenic Guaido declared himself Venezuela's temporary president on Wednesday at a rally that drew hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
00:04:22.000He accused Maduro of usurping power and promised to create a transitional government.
00:04:26.000The diplomatic support for Guaido was a striking move in a region where countries tend to refrain from criticizing each other despite their political differences.
00:04:33.000Criticism of Maduro has grown in recent years as his government has sidelined the National Assembly, held widely questioned elections, and overseen an economic crisis that has forced millions of Venezuelans to flee, mostly to other South American countries.
00:04:46.000At the same time, because of all of this, right-leaning governments in South America have risen to power in places like Brazil, because the fact is you can only run on somebody else's money for so long.
00:04:55.000The same thing has happened in Argentina.
00:04:58.000President Trump has reiterated that all options are on the table.
00:05:01.000His administration signaled potential new sanctions against Venezuela's vital oil sector.
00:05:07.000So who is opposing the move to get rid of Maduro?
00:05:11.000So Vladimir Putin is coming out against this move in Venezuela.
00:05:15.000So Russia is saying that the United States should not intervene militarily in Venezuela.
00:05:20.000By the way, nobody's talked about military intervention in Venezuela.
00:05:24.000As of yet, and nobody is really seriously discussing that, we're talking about new economic sanctions at this point, and again, providing whatever resources to the opposition are necessary.
00:05:32.000That's not really a military intervention.
00:05:34.000Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself interim president on Wednesday, as we have said.
00:05:39.000Violence has flared during big protests across Venezuela.
00:05:41.000When they mean violence has flared, what they mean is that Maduro's forces are now attacking the protesters.
00:05:47.000In an interview with Russian journal International Affairs published on Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow would stand with Venezuela to protect its sovereignty and the principle of non-interference in its domestic affairs.
00:05:59.000Weird that Russia would do that because I seem to recall Russia invading a sovereign neighbor specifically on the basis that their domestic affairs were not properly in order.
00:06:06.000Russia invaded Crimea and they also invaded Georgia on specifically this basis.
00:06:10.000So in other words, Russia is completely full of it as per their usual arrangement.
00:06:21.000We consider that would be a catastrophic scenario that would shake the foundations of the development model which we see in Latin America.
00:06:26.000There is no development model in Venezuela.
00:06:29.000The development model in Venezuela is to grab all the resources, centralize them in Nicolas Maduro, pass them out to his friends, supporters, and military allies, and destroy the people of Venezuela.
00:06:41.000That was the program of Hugo Chavez as well when it turned out that centralizing resources and his populist top-down government was going to fail.
00:06:49.000When it became clear that you can't just make a country prosperous by grabbing all its wealth and redistributing it, Hugo Chavez simply started paying off all of his political allies to keep himself in power.
00:06:58.000And this has been true for legitimately years.
00:07:01.000Now what's amazing about this is that you would assume that some of the folks who are sort of Friendly toward the Maduro regime in the United States, some folks in the Democratic Party would be asked about such things.
00:07:12.000You might assume that Michael Moore, who has come out in favor of Hugo Chavez years ago, would be asked about such things.
00:07:19.000I think, for example, it might be worthwhile to ask Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the fresh face of the Democratic Party, about this thing.
00:07:26.000Well, she was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America until the last five minutes.
00:07:31.000She was a member, I believe, of the DSA as of May 2016, when they called on President Obama and the U.S.
00:07:37.000Congress to end unjust sanctions against Venezuela.
00:07:41.000Quote, this kind of dishonest and cynical behavior is an embarrassment to all good people in the United States.
00:07:46.000For DSA, a group of activists committed to fighting for socialism and democracy in the U.S. and around the world, it is especially repulsive.
00:07:53.000We therefore state our solidarity with the people of Venezuela and call on our own government to stop its illegal, unjust interference with Venezuela, specifically to repeal these terrible laws and reverse this dishonest executive order, statistically.
00:08:04.000They're ripping on Obama for being too harsh on Venezuela, the DSA, while AOC was purportedly a member.
00:08:10.000And so we're sort of all waiting with bated breath.
00:08:34.000With respect to Senator Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin came out in favor of Maduro's opponent.
00:08:39.000Rochanna tweeted, with respect to Senator Durbin, the U.S. should not anoint the leader of the opposition in Venezuela during an internal polarized conflict.
00:08:46.000Let us support Uruguay, Mexico and the Vatican's efforts for a negotiated settlement and end sanctions that are making the hyperinflation worse.
00:08:53.000In other words, he is coming out in favor of the Maduro regime.
00:08:58.000If you are coming out in favor of a negotiated settlement that removes sanctions and leaves Maduro in power, then you are coming out in favor of the Maduro regime.
00:09:05.000Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her only comment so far has been to retweet that.
00:09:09.000Now, when I point that out, there are a bunch of folks on the left who say, well, that's taking her out of context.
00:09:18.000I think there's only one way to interpret that, and that is as undercutting the democratic opposition in Venezuela.
00:09:24.000Because right now is the time to move.
00:09:26.000Right now is not the time to say, oh, well, you know, negotiated settlement, Maduro has a point, we can't interfere, let's remove the sanctions.
00:09:34.000Weird that she and Russia have the exact same position on this.
00:09:40.000And this is the same thing you hear from the left when AOC is parlaying with all the folks who want to boycott Israel, and then folks on the left say, no, no, no, she doesn't support boycott of Israel, she just hangs out with all those folks and forwards their agenda.
00:09:53.000Okay, how about a straight question that she's forced to answer by the media?
00:09:58.000Asked repeatedly, do you think Nicolas Maduro must go now?
00:10:16.000But nobody on the left will be asked these questions, despite longtime support for Hugo Chavez on the populist left.
00:10:21.000Remember Oliver Stone traveling down to do a movie about Hugo Chavez and his greatness.
00:10:27.000It's also worthwhile remembering that Venezuela's government is just one of the most evil governments on planet Earth.
00:10:34.000So this notion that you're supposed to negotiate with Nicolás Maduro, and you're supposed to undercut the protesters by not recognizing the National Assembly-led opposition, is insane.
00:10:43.000Amnesty International, a left-wing outfit, if ever there was one, Amnesty International says that the Venezuelan government is responsible for the worst human rights crisis in its history.
00:10:57.000The organization claimed that several human rights abuses had taken place in the South American country, including the use of lethal force against the most vulnerable in its society.
00:11:05.000It said that 8,292 extrajudicial executions had taken place between 2015 and 2017, so over 8,000 murders of people who didn't agree with the regime between 2015 and 2017.
00:11:15.000It found that 22% of all homicides in 2016 were at the hands of security officials.
00:11:23.000It found that the levels of economic insecurity in the country were at 87%.
00:11:28.00087% of Venezuelans were living in abject poverty.
00:11:32.000There was a 65% increase in maternal mortality and a 30% increase in infant mortality.
00:11:38.000Venezuelan authorities have publicly stated that killing people in the context of security operations is a successful practice.
00:11:45.000Since 2014, 2.3 million people have fled Venezuela.
00:11:50.000But don't worry, AOC thinks a negotiated settlement with Maduro is going to do the trick.
00:11:53.000Yeah, but it has nothing to do with her support for Venezuela's democratic socialism.
00:11:58.000We'll get to more of this in a second.
00:11:59.000First, let me remind you, you want to make your business better this year?
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00:13:06.000It's been a terribly run country for years.
00:13:08.000I know that the left wants to suggest that this is just since Chavez died or the late years of Hugo Chavez.
00:13:14.000It's been terribly run since the late 90s, when Hugo Chavez's government decided to nationalize all of the oil industry, redistribute the wealth, put that company in the hands of his best friends in the government, centralize all power, move all the dissenters out of the military.
00:13:30.000If you take a look at Chavez's record, you see people on the left praising him for reducing poverty in Latin America.
00:14:23.000That's because of the idiotic Marxist notion known as dependency theory.
00:14:26.000Dependency theory is this idea that if you are a state like Venezuela, you're a country like Venezuela, and you are importing goods, You are dependent on those goods.
00:14:37.000So you have to raise tariffs to extraordinary levels so that you can create homegrown industry.
00:14:41.000The only problem is your consumers can't afford any of that stuff, and so you end up impoverishing your country.
00:14:47.000The only thing Venezuela was exporting, the only thing, was oil.
00:14:51.000So when the oil prices dropped, catastrophe.
00:14:54.000The Chavez government crippled private businesses and national industry through expropriations and nationalizations.
00:14:59.000They expropriated or nationalized various sectors, including aluminum, cement, gold, iron, steel, farming, transportation, electricity, food production, banking, paper, and the media.
00:15:08.000The number of private companies and industry dropped from 14,000 in 1998 to 9,000 in 2011.
00:15:13.000No one in their right mind would build a factory in Venezuela because it was going to be nationalized, expropriated, and stolen by the government of Venezuela.
00:15:24.000In 2011, Latin America enjoyed a record of more than $150 billion in foreign investment, with Brazil receiving $67 billion.
00:15:31.000Venezuela's neighbor Colombia received $13 billion.
00:15:33.000Venezuela, a country rich in natural resources and human labor, received only $5 billion.
00:15:40.000The Venezuelan currency has been a mess because it turns out that when you borrow enormous quantities of money in order for you to pay off all of your friends and supporters, well, somebody is going to want that money back, and then you have to inflate your way out of it.
00:15:52.000The Bolivar Fuerte lost two-thirds of its value since it was launched in 2008.
00:15:58.000It was launched in 2008 because of a previous devaluation of the currency.
00:16:03.000Prices in Venezuela went up by 23% per year for more than 10 years as of 2011.
00:16:09.000Imagine, right now in the United States, we have an inflation rate in prices of maybe 2-3% per year on average.
00:16:18.000Imagine that everything you buy went up 20% every year.
00:16:21.000So within five years, the price of everything had doubled.
00:16:24.000That's what was going on in Venezuela.
00:16:26.000And of course, Venezuela became unbelievably violent because not only were there local police forces and extrajudicial gangs supported by the government killing people, but they weren't policing actual crime.
00:16:37.000The murder rate per 100,000 citizens went from 25 in 1999 to 45 in 2011.
00:16:46.000In the same period of time, violence has dropped pretty much everywhere else on the planet, but not in Venezuela.
00:16:51.000So when you hear the left was defending Venezuela for years on end, I mean really defending them, and then now it's collapsing, I feel like we should go back and we should have to ask all these folks who defended Venezuela why we should let them run the American economy.
00:17:03.000We should have to ask folks like AOC what her perspective is on Venezuela.
00:17:20.000But the notion here is that if you are on the left and you support a radical regime that is socialistic in nature, and then it fails, you have nothing to apologize for.
00:17:28.000And this has been the most crucial aspect of the left's continuing momentum for the last hundred years, is that they never have to apologize for supporting regimes that end in failure, tragedy, and human destruction.
00:17:40.000The left was heavily supportive of the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, even as millions of people were being slaughtered.
00:17:48.000The left, in America, was heavily supportive of Cuba when Castro took power.
00:18:11.000After a little while, this stuff becomes uncomfortable for the left, and then they move on to the next country.
00:18:15.000They'll have their country of the future.
00:18:17.000Venezuela during the 90s and the early 2000s was the country of the future.
00:18:20.000Well, now it's the country of the past.
00:18:22.000And it's interesting to see how folks on the left are reacting to all of this.
00:18:26.000Again, if you are satisfied, if you are satisfied with AOC's answer on all of this, let me suggest that you and the media, you firefighters, are not doing your jobs, which is just a massive shock.
00:18:37.000I know I'm shocked that you're not doing your jobs.
00:18:40.000I'm shocked that you're not going and asking Bernie Sanders about Venezuela and his perspective on Maduro.
00:18:46.000Now a lot of these folks on the hard left are going to hide behind non-interventionism.
00:19:26.000We're suggesting a continuation of exactly the same policies that have brought hundreds of thousands of people into the street with massive public support to depose one of the worst regimes on the planet.
00:19:35.000And if you don't support that, if you think the solution to this is to leave Maduro in power and to undercut those protesters, I don't know what to tell you, because let me tell you what the next step is.
00:19:45.000If there is a negotiated settlement, and Maduro is left in power, and the military, which is run by Maduro, is left in power, the next thing that will happen is the world will turn its eyes away, and then a bunch of people will get slaughtered.
00:19:56.000Because that is exactly the same thing that has happened in Turkey.
00:19:59.000In Turkey, there was an attempt, a failed coup attempt, against Erdogan, who is an Islamist dictator.
00:20:50.000First, let's talk about your online security and privacy.
00:20:53.000So, as a public figure, I am constantly worried about being hacked or spied on.
00:20:56.000I don't want my emails compromised or my credit card number or online banking password stolen, but that does happen to hundreds of millions of people every single year.
00:22:29.000Maybe I'll counter-program the State of the Union address.
00:22:32.000Well, now President Trump has basically caved.
00:22:34.000He says, as the shutdown was going on, he just tweeted this out, as the shutdown was going on, Nancy Pelosi asked me to give the State of the Union address.
00:22:46.000I will do the address when the shutdown is over.
00:22:48.000I am not looking for an alternative venue for the State of the Union address because there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition, and importance of the House chamber.
00:22:56.000I look forward to giving a great State of the Union address in the near future.
00:23:00.000So what that means is that if he caves and then has to give a State of the Union address after caving to Democrats, it's going to be humiliating for him.
00:23:07.000So either it means he's doubling down on his position with regard to the government shutdown, or it means that the government shutdown ends ignominiously with him taking some sort of executive action to redirect funds from one area to another area.
00:23:19.000Whatever it is, not a great look for the president.
00:23:22.000As I suggested, he should have counter-programmed this thing.
00:23:24.000He should have simply said, OK, well, you know, you don't want to have me to the Congress because you don't want me pointing directly at you and saying that this is your fault, Nancy Pelosi.
00:23:31.000Well, instead, I'm just going to go down to the border and I'm going to say that this is your fault because, in fact, it is your fault.
00:23:37.000The president of the United States has come out with several proposals for changing the math here.
00:23:42.000But those proposals have been met with complete Complete apathy and indifference by the Democratic Party.
00:23:50.000Now, as the shutdown continues, things are in fact getting worse and worse.
00:23:53.000You know, in the early days of a shutdown, the good lesson to be learned is that a lot of the essential services that we, the non-essential services that we think we can't live without, we can actually live without.
00:24:03.000But as the shutdown continues, and essential personnel, you know, folks in the TSA, folks in the Department of Defense, as those folks, Department of Homeland Security, don't get their checks, Then things get ugly very quickly.
00:24:14.000Air controllers, air traffic controllers, they're saying, listen, we got a lot of folks retiring.
00:24:18.000And those folks have no interest in staying employed if they're not going to get paid.
00:24:24.000And the president can't simply order new hires when there's no money coming into the federal government and no spending taking place on the federal government level.
00:24:32.000So, things are going to get worse and worse.
00:24:34.000Folks are, in fact, showing up at food lines because they don't actually have money, because they're not getting their checks.
00:24:43.000So, let's not pretend that the government shutdown isn't a bad thing.
00:24:54.000Which, again, necessitates the president getting on his horse and going around the country telling Americans why exactly the government is currently shut down.
00:25:03.000Right now, Democrats have come up with a counter.
00:25:05.000So, according to the Associated Press, House Democrats, feeling pressure to display their vision for border security, are preparing a package that would ignore President Trump's demand for $5.7 billion for a wall with Mexico, and would instead pay for other areas aimed at protecting the border.
00:25:20.000Because they're willing to spend a bunch of money on border security, but not on the fencing.
00:25:24.000As I said before, I think the solution to the government shutdown is pretty easy.
00:25:27.000That is, President Trump should say, listen, I know you guys hate me.
00:25:31.000I know that you guys don't want to give me a victory.
00:25:33.000And I know that you're pretending that we don't need a border fence because you think that I'm doing something deeply wrong because I am Trump.
00:25:44.000I want you to delegate $5 billion to border security to be allotted as the people in border control see fit.
00:25:51.000We will let an impartial panel of border control specialists who work for border control, who work for ICE, and who work for immigration naturalization, we will let all the border patrol agents decide where the money goes.
00:26:06.000So it's not up to me, it's not me saying I need the wall, it's border patrol deciding where the money goes.
00:26:09.000And then Democrats can say, okay, we didn't give him his wall, we gave the money to border patrol for them to use it where they best see fit.
00:26:15.000And then if it turns out it's a wall, Trump gets his win.
00:26:18.000And Democrats can say, we didn't give him the win.
00:26:24.000In essence, kick all the responsibility over to Border Patrol.
00:26:26.000That seems like not a terrible idea to me.
00:26:29.000Democrats are instead saying, sure, we'll do border security, but we won't give Trump anything that he wants.
00:26:34.000As the government slogged through a record 33rd day of its partial shutdown on Wednesday, details of Democrats' border security plan and its costs remain to work in progress, according to the AP, though some said it might match Trump's $5.7 billion figure.
00:26:45.000Party leaders said it would include money for scanning devices and other technological tools for improving security at ports of entry and along the boundary, plus funds for more border agents and immigration judges.
00:26:55.000If his $5.7 billion is about border security, then we see ourselves fulfilling that request, only doing it with what I like to call using a smart wall, said No.
00:27:03.0003 House Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.
00:27:07.000Again, listen, I don't know that Trump is a border expert.
00:27:10.000I certainly know that House Democrats are not border experts because they haven't really cared very deeply about border security for quite a while.
00:28:01.000The answer, of course, is that it is, in fact, a very cynical ploy.
00:28:05.000Well, the shutdown, according to polling data, again, is hurting President Trump with the general public.
00:28:09.000Just 34% of Americans like his performance as president, according to this latest Associated Press poll.
00:28:15.0006 in 10 assign a great deal of responsibility to him for the shutdown, around double the share currently blaming Democrats.
00:28:21.000There's a Senate GOP bill that would temporarily shield from deportation 700,000 DREAMers, and in return, Trump would get his border security wall.
00:28:30.000Democrats have objected to other provisions in that same bill because they're saying there are poison pills in there.
00:28:35.000OK, again, this is where the negotiations should start.
00:28:37.000But there is no negotiation that is currently taking place.
00:28:41.000There are a couple of proposals that have been floated out there.
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00:30:49.000Also, when you subscribe over at YouTube, iTunes, you get access to our Sunday specials, you can ask me questions, all sorts of great stuff.
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00:31:09.000All righty, so some of the new proposals that are being floated in order to end this government shutdown.
00:31:18.000According to Axios, Republican senators, including James Lankford of Oklahoma, have advocated for a particular idea.
00:31:26.000Give a path to green cards to the 700,000 current DACA recipients.
00:31:29.000So it's not just that they have a three-year stay of execution in terms of the deportation, but they actually would have a path to green cards so they could stay permanently.
00:31:38.000Jared Kushner has been relaying this idea to his colleagues in the White House.
00:31:42.000Nobody thinks that the Trump current offer is going to pass.
00:31:45.000Seven Democratic senators are needed to pass any package at this point.
00:31:49.000A Republican senator involved in the immigration debate said that Kushner actually wants to go big, but senators are saying that if you throw green cards on the table, then this falls apart immediately.
00:31:59.000There are not enough senators on the Republican side of the aisle who are willing to go along with this.
00:32:06.000So, we will see whether this is something that is actually being pushed.
00:32:09.000It seems like not, which is probably right.
00:32:12.000Bottom line is, extra pressure, extra pressure.
00:32:15.000This is where you need the president to get out there on the campaign trail and do his job.
00:32:19.000This is, honestly, the president has a couple of jobs.
00:32:22.000One is to govern, and the other, or to at least enforce the existing law, and the other is to go out there and make the case to the American people.
00:33:32.000Because when you remove all the other factors, when you remove the fact that these kids were not being racist, that they were not mocking the guy, that they were not being violent to the guy, what does this come down to in the end?
00:33:42.000It's that the MAGA hat is inherently triggering.
00:33:44.000That if you wear a MAGA hat, then you deserve anything you get.
00:33:48.000The media can destroy you simply for wearing a red hat.
00:33:52.000I don't like, as somebody who wears funny hats on a daily basis, I am not interested in a country where you can be targeted based simply on the message that your hat conveys.
00:34:02.000Particularly when people are taking away a message that you are not conveying with the hat, right?
00:34:07.000There are certain hats that convey messages, right?
00:34:08.000Like, my yarmulke conveys the fact that I'm an orthodox Jew that comes along with a set of values.
00:34:14.000A MAGA hat comes along with a set of values too, but the set of values that is being conveyed is not necessarily the set of values that is being interpreted.
00:34:22.000There is in fact a gap when it comes to the MAGA hat.
00:34:24.000A lot of people wearing the MAGA hat are saying a couple of things.
00:34:43.000But the message that a lot of people take away from the MAGA hat is the worst things about President Trump.
00:34:49.000The same thing happens in a normal conversation about President Trump.
00:34:51.000If you say, I support President Trump, you're a Republican, you say, I support President Trump, what people on the left take away from that is you're a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
00:34:58.000Now, to be fair, if you had said, I support George W. Bush, the left would have taken away that you're a racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, because this is generally many on the left's takeaway for being even remotely right-wing on any issue, is that you're this.
00:35:10.000But the MAGA hat conveys it in spades to a lot of people on the left.
00:35:15.000So, here is a CNN commentator explaining the real reason all this happened.
00:35:18.000It's because the kids were wearing MAGA hats.
00:35:20.000And MAGA hats are just like KKK hoods.
00:35:22.000I kid you not, this was a thing set on national television.
00:35:25.000Forget Donald Trump for a moment and just think about the symbol of that red hat.
00:35:29.000When I see the Make America Great Again hat now, Chris, I am triggered.
00:35:58.000Because what she's actually saying there is not that Donald Trump is a KKK member so people support him because of that.
00:36:03.000She's saying that his very policies are KKK-like.
00:36:06.000So any Republican who supports his administration's policies, which, by and large, have been traditionally conservative, is basically a KKK member.
00:36:15.000Well, it's that sort of language that leads people to put on the MAGA hat.
00:36:33.000Okay, so, in the middle of that election cycle, I traveled to University of Michigan to give a speech.
00:36:38.000And a bunch of the students in the University of Michigan College Republicans and Young America's Foundation had gone around campus and they had written Trump's Make America Great Again slogan on the ground in chalk.
00:36:50.000A bunch of folks on the left had been so triggered by this that they went around crossing it out, complaining, suggesting that it was racist to write Trump's name on the ground.
00:37:00.000So when I went to University of Michigan, I, a non-Trump supporter in 2016, went to the chalkboard and wrote Trump 2016 on the chalkboard.
00:38:05.000Nick Sandman, who I've met, by the way, very nice kid, a student at Covington Catholic, says he was a silent bystander in viral video, but his MAGA hat spoke for him.
00:38:17.000You wear the MAGA hat, means you hate Native Americans.
00:38:35.000It suggests that maybe you voted Republican or would like to in the next election cycle.
00:38:39.000Or maybe it suggests that you're sick of Republicans being maligned.
00:38:44.000But according to the left, it sends the message that you are all terrible things to all people, so if you even wear the hat, you deserve all the things that fall upon you.
00:38:51.000Here's what Noah Berlatsky, schmuck, writes.
00:38:54.000Before he encountered Omaha elder Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial, Covington High School student Nick Sandman had already taken steps to provoke and insult people of color.
00:39:12.000Sandman's face went viral over the weekend when footage began circulating of him and his classmates at the Lincoln Memorial.
00:39:17.000The moment has become something of a political Rorschach test that also raises thorny questions about the way various perspectives become amplified and even weaponized on social media, sometimes without the benefit of important facts.
00:40:07.000But the clip that rocketed across social media depicts a smiling Sandman standing toe-to-toe with Phillips as the latter beat a drum and sang a traditional prayer song.
00:41:05.000But it's also true that kids wear Trump regalia or invoke Trump's name in order to bully and insult immigrants, Muslims, black people, Jews, Hispanics, or members of any of the other marginalized groups who Trump himself regularly attacks.
00:41:19.000Or, alternatively, they're wearing the MAGA hat because you, Noah Berlatsky, are a jerk.
00:41:23.000And they want to show you that they can wear whatever hat they please because you're a jerk.
00:41:28.000Okay, there is something transgressive about wearing a MAGA hat.
00:41:31.000But what it's really about is people being sick of being called deplorables, being sick of being called bad people, being sick of being called anti-Semitic, and racist, and bigots, and sexist, and homophobe, just because you disagree with them.
00:41:44.000That's why Trump won the nomination, that's why he won the presidency, is because he was a giant middle finger to all of those people.
00:41:50.000And wearing the MAGA hat is a giant middle finger to all of those people too.
00:41:53.000But resisting the overreach of the left is not the same thing as endorsing racism, It's just, this is inane.
00:42:01.000But this isn't the only, honestly, this isn't the only article like this today.
00:42:04.000There's another article from Father Edward Beck over at CNN.
00:42:07.000Maga hats don't belong on a Catholic school trip.
00:42:11.000Weird, you know what I don't think belongs on a Catholic school trip?
00:42:13.000Meeting with Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who is a Catholic all in favor of murdering babies in the womb up to point of birth.
00:42:21.000By the way, important side note, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo came out today, he says, you know what?
00:42:25.000In consonance with Catholic law and religious thinking, I want to fight the death penalty.
00:42:30.000So lethal injections for nine-month-old babies, not for people who murder babies.
00:42:47.000The priority is no MAGA hats for Catholics.
00:42:49.000In a recent tweet of mine that went viral, I made three simple points about the now infamous Covington Boys incident in Washington, D.C., writes Father Edward Beck.
00:43:19.000But here is the part where I'd say, Any hat donned should have had the school name or a logo identifying them as participants in the March for Life event, not a hat with a logo that may suggest stances not in accord with the mission statement of their school.
00:43:30.000The Catholic Church's pro-life teaching encompasses a panoply of issues such as abortion, immigration, capital punishment, the environment and climate change, sex trafficking, and the inequitable distribution of the world's resources.
00:43:43.000So, in other words, you can't wear a MAGA hat to a pro-life event for what has been practically the most pro-life administration in recent American history.
00:43:50.000You can't wear a MAGA hat because that might conflict with other parts of the pro-life Catholic message, like we have to redistribute resources?
00:45:22.000Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than any other ism, but it is a wild beast, and if not tamed, it can chew up a lot of people along the way.
00:45:40.000Okay, so here's the problem with what he's saying.
00:45:42.000So what I like is that Bono is actually defending the free market system which has created more wealth than any system in the history of humanity.
00:45:47.000When he says that capitalism is amoral, that is not true.
00:45:50.000Free markets are inherently moral because free markets assume at their root that you as an individual have rights and have duties.
00:45:56.000Free markets assume that you are a person of worth and that therefore you have charge of your own labor, you have charge of your own product, you have charge of how to dispense with that labor and that product.
00:46:07.000The free market is about individual freedom.
00:46:52.000Of course it doesn't mean that, but neither does socialism.
00:46:54.000Socialism means that the best people never win.
00:46:56.000It means that the people who would normally succeed in a free market are often condemned to penury because there's somebody who knows better at the centralized government level.
00:47:05.000That's the one we should keep our eye on.
00:47:07.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:47:12.000All righty, so Kate Hudson is now doing the trendy thing.
00:47:15.000I love when we get to learn how actresses are raising their children, because that's who I would look to to raise my kids, are people who read lines for other people.
00:47:24.000So Kate Hudson is embracing a genderless approach when it comes to raising daughter Rani Rose, the 39-year-old actress who welcomed her first child with boyfriend Danny Fujikawa in October, recently opened up about her parenting style with three-month-old Rani in a new interview with AOL.
00:47:38.000First of all, You can't raise your kid gendered at three months old.
00:47:41.000Because kids poop, and they vomit, and they eat.
00:47:44.000That's all they do at three months old.
00:47:45.000So I'm not sure what this would involve.
00:47:47.000Like, realistically speaking, you treat a girl baby and a boy baby exactly the same when they are three months old, except for the manner in which you wipe their butts.
00:47:54.000Legitimately, that's the only difference.
00:47:59.000I'll also note that there is something highly irritating about rich, famous people who are having babies with people with whom they are not married.
00:48:14.000Wouldn't you want your parents to actually be locked into raising the child?
00:48:18.000But parents matter more than kids when it comes to Hollywood.
00:48:21.000How you feel about your own life as an individual in Hollywood is more important than how your child is insured a biological father and mother raising them in Hollywood.
00:48:29.000When asked if she does anything differently when it comes to parenting a girl compared to boys, Hudson explained to the outlet that having a daughter doesn't really change my approach, but there's definitely a difference.
00:48:37.000I think you just raise your kids individually regardless, like a genderless approach.
00:48:40.000We still don't know what she's going to identify as.
00:48:43.000Well, you called her a she, so that's a good indicator right there.
00:48:47.000This asinine, utterly unscientific, hard differentiation between we don't know what gender she's going to be, it's It's as though people are picking a career.
00:48:58.000We don't know whether she wants to be an engineer or whether she wants to be a painter.
00:49:02.000And so we're going to raise her with all available options in front of her.
00:49:04.000We don't know whether she's going to identify as a girl or as a boy, so we leave all available options in front of her.
00:49:30.000We should definitely go to her for parenting advice.
00:49:32.000She has a bunch of different kids from a bunch of different men.
00:49:34.000I'm sure that's working out fantastic for the kids.
00:49:36.000I'm sure there is no psychological damage whatsoever from her having shacked up with a bunch of different dudes and had a bunch of different kids by a bunch of different dudes.
00:49:43.000Because after all, she's rich and in Hollywood.
00:50:10.000Now, I do find comfort in the fact that in the long run of history, all of this nonsense will be wiped away because reality and biology do win out when it comes to sex.
00:50:19.000All of the people who are raising their kids genderless, the only real issue I have with this is the damage done to the kid.
00:50:24.000It does damage kids when you deliberately confuse them about their sex.
00:50:31.000Reinforcing basic truths about the world is a useful thing.
00:50:34.000And it is far more psychologically damaging to a child to tell them that you don't know whether they're a boy or a girl.
00:50:41.000You're going to have to take your cues from your three-year-old.
00:50:43.000Honestly, it's more damaging to them in the long run to repeat that sort of messaging than it is to let them play outside by themselves for a little while.
00:50:52.000I'm sure Kate Hudson has security full-time on her kids, but it seems like security might want to protect her kids from her, because this is just silliness of the highest order.
00:51:03.000So, the USC student government is now trying to prevent conservative speakers after I spoke there last year.
00:51:09.000Last October, I spoke there in front of a couple thousand students.
00:51:11.000Now the student government, Senator Megan Lane and Senate aide Adenike McKinday have justified a new bylaw amendment Okay, it's a piece of amendment that would prevent conservatives from being invited to campus.
00:51:21.000They claim Ben Shapiro's campus president incited undue violence on the day of his presentation.
00:51:26.000By the way, there was no violence the day of my presentation.
00:51:30.000The proposed amendment points out there is no process for review or scrutiny of speakers invited by student organizations.
00:51:36.000The amendment proposes speakers be subject to a special guest approval if the event is ticketed, expected to have an audience of over 100 people, if the student's safety is at risk, or if substantial security is required.
00:51:48.000Three reasons are given for students petitioning speakers, including persons who have accepted endorsements from hate organizations.
00:51:54.000So they say that the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a radical left group that labels everything on the right hateful, that they should decide whether somebody can speak at a campus.
00:52:04.000They recently had to settle with Majid Nawaz and his Quilliam Foundation for falsely labeling the foundation as anti-Muslim extremists, by the way.
00:52:12.000The other two grounds for petitioning speakers are those who are publicly supported members of hate organizations, or those, quote, on record as having publicly incited, supported, or explicitly encouraged violence or harassment.