Daily Wire Backstage: Go Buy Ben's Book Edition
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 31 minutes
Words per Minute
219.63968
Summary
Ben Shapiro's new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps is right around the corner, and you don t want to miss it! Join us as we talk about the madness in today s culture, and as we do our best to sell you on Ben s new book.
Transcript
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Hey, Michael Knowles here. The latest episode of Daily Wire Backstage Go Buy Ben's Book Edition
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is right around the corner and you don't want to miss it. Join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan,
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and the God King, Jeremy Boring, as we talk about the madness in today's culture and as we do our
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best to sell you on Ben's new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps. Take a listen.
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Politicians pander to protesters as police persist in preventing perpetual pandemonium
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in Portland, The Pandemic Precipitates Preposterous Presumptions, and Go Buy Ben's Book. This is The
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Daily Wire Backstage. Welcome to The Daily Wire Backstage Go Buy Ben's Book Edition. I'm Jeremy
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Boring, known around these parts as your friendly neighborhood God King, and we're glad that you
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have tuned in. Is America past the point of make up sex? Can Donald Trump claw his way back in the
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polls? Was Portlandia actually a documentary? Ben covers all of this and more in his book,
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How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps. If you don't have one, I've said it twice. Go buy Ben's
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book. I'm joined today, of course, by the man himself, Mr. Ben Shapiro, also by Andrew Klavan and
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Michael Knowles, one of whom has actually written other books, and the other who has outsold both.
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Also, by the lovely Alicia Krause, who is with us via satellite, she'll be taking your questions hot
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off the interwebs and giving us a chance to dazzle you with our answers. Jazz hands. That wasn't even
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in the prompter. I just totally outlived that. Say hi, Alicia. Hi, guys. How are you? It's good to be
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back. And yes, I will be taking those subscriber questions. And how can you ask the questions you
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wonder? Well, you have to be a Daily Wire member, an All Access member to be exact. And if you're not an
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All Access member, then you're definitely missing out. And if you're like me and you like a deal,
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turns out we have one for you. Because All Access members get to participate in our All Access Live,
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where one of the Daily Wire hosts hangs out with you via live stream. It's way better than a corporate
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Zoom, I promise. And All Access members also join us for real-time online Q&A discussions, like the one
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that we're all going to have together after tonight's episode of Backstage. And it will be available on both
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the website and the Daily Wire app. So tune in to get your questions ready. That's once again,
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if you're an All Access member. And if you're not, then head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe
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to get your two, yes, two leftist tears tumblers with that 15% off coupon code backstage right now.
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That's dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use the 15% off coupon code backstage right now and join us for
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the discussion after the show. So I've been trying to figure out, I was on this trip down
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to Texas and someone asked the question, you know, are you an internet celebrity? As people
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will often ask. And I thought about my Twitter following, which has grown, but has still not
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gotten to the goal that I set in life when I was a small child. And my father said, what do you want
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to be when you grow up? And I said, I want to have 100,000 Twitter followers. And he said, your life is
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going to be filled with disappointment, kid. And he was, so far, it turns out that he's right.
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And also, what's Twitter? Don't ruin my story, Ben. But I've been looking for an answer to this
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question. Does my life have any meaning? And then I found Ben's book, How to Destroy America in Three
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Easy Steps. And I realized nothing has meaning. You two could be filled with the kind of optimism
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that I have if you were to read this book. Ben, since I went ahead and named the whole episode after
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your book, tell us just a little bit about it. Let me tell you about this book. So here's the deal.
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The basic thesis of the book is that the battle in the United States right now is not exactly left
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versus right, although it largely mirrors it. It's between people who I call unionists and people
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who I call disintegrationists. Unionists are people who believe that the country ought to remain
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one unified body. And they believe that there are certain ties that bind us together, namely
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philosophy, culture, and history. The philosophy of the American founding that is suggested in the
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Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with inalienable
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rights, protected by a government of limited powers. And that if that government should choose to exceed
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its powers, then it would lose its reason for being. That was the core philosophy of the United
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States. And then that was preserved by a system of checks and balances and federalism created by
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the Constitution. That was the core philosophy. Then there was the core culture of the United
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States, which was a culture that valued social institutions and inculcating virtue like church
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and family, a culture of entrepreneurship and adventure, the culture of the pioneers, people
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who are pushing over Hill and Dale in order to open new vistas in the human experience, a culture
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of tolerance for other people's rights. Even though you may not agree with how I speak,
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you acknowledge that I do have the right to say what I am saying. And also a culture of militant
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defense of those rights, that if the government were to overstep its boundaries, they would get
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a stern warning. And finally, a shared history. The idea that we are all part of the same history,
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the same historic stream, even though American history obviously has victims and villains,
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even though American history has horrible periods, even though American history has significant
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periods in which many people in the United States strayed from founding principle. The actual story of the
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United States is not 1619. The actual story of the United States is 1776. United States was founded
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on true, eternally good principles. And the story of the United States is about how we have attempted
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to fulfill those principles increasingly well over time and extend the promises that were made in the
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Declaration of Independence to more and more human beings over a period of time. So black and white
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Americans are part of that story. Black Americans heroically overcoming Jim Crow and slavery, white
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Americans helping them do so and overcoming their own innate sin in all of this and moving toward those
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founding principles. So that is the unionist philosophy, culture, and history. And all of
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those elements are being disintegrated purposefully by people I call disintegrationists, people who wish
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to see the country fall apart, who believe that America's philosophy is a lie, was a lie when it
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was written. This is openly stated by the members of the 1619 Project. People who believe that all men
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are created equal is actually just a cover for power politics. Because if we treat everybody equally
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under the law, what about people who are not as well off? What about people who are not as well
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situated? We have to have injustice under the law in order to achieve group or social justice. The
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culture of the United States is inherently bad. The culture of adventure and entrepreneurship is
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actually a culture of exploitation and cruelty to others. The culture that says that I have to
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respect your rights is really about me wanting bad people to win. Because if I really didn't want
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those people to win, I wouldn't respect their rights. The culture of valuing social institutions,
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churches are bad because they cram down social values upon you. Family is bad because family is an
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exploitative institution. And finally, the history of the United States is not the story of triumph over
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innate and universal human sin. The story of America is that America was founded in human sin
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and has merely deepened and broadened that sin over time to the point where all the institutions
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of America are so thoroughly corrupted they must be torn down at the root. That is the battle that
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is happening in the United States. It's not quite left-right. There are some liberals who actually
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believe in a lot of the things that I said are unionist. And there are some conservatives who may not
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agree with all the things that I said are unionist. But that, in large scale, is the battle. And we're
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seeing it play out in the streets of Portland, in the streets of Seattle. We're seeing it play out in the
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halls of Congress. We're seeing it play out every day in the mainstream media and in the halls of
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academia. But could you have written something more topical, Ben? I think that's the question
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on everyone's minds. That was good. Nobody needs to buy the book now. You heard the whole thing
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straight from the mouth. And now we'll get on to talk about what's going on in the country,
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which is basically just everything Ben just said. In particular, so I haven't been in the news much
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this week. I've been traveling quite a lot. As God King, I'm Lord of all that I survey. So I thought I
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should go look at some stuff. Turns out a lot of it doesn't belong to me. Really, the title is
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kind of giving me a false sense of self. But on my travels, I wasn't able to be in the news much.
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But every time I did log on to the internet, all I could see was the disintegration of one or another
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American city. And what's going on in Portland the last few days seems to really be the giant story
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that no one's actually allowed to talk about. If I'm near a TV, I don't see anything about Portland.
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If I'm on the internet, it's the only way I hear anything about it. Michael, tell us a little bit
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So everything you think is happening, like if you were to have a fevered nightmare,
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that's what's happening. It's happening in Portland. And there's this big debate now,
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because you've had these insurrectionists in Portland attacking a federal courthouse and other
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places as well. They look like a truly an armed militia. And so federal troops have come in.
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And by troops, I should be more specific. I'm talking about the Department of Homeland Security.
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This has raised a big debate. Should these federal agents be able to come in?
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There's a lot of lies that are going on about this. The left is saying that the federal agents
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have no right to do this. Of course they do. One of the reasons we have DHS in the first place
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is to protect federal property. They're saying that the federal agents are not allowed to go,
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for instance, arrest people who are committing crimes on federal property, but then leave that
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property. That's also not true. It's very clear from U.S. code that they are absolutely allowed
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to pursue those individuals. They're saying that the federal agents are ununiformed. They're not
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saying who they are. That is also not true. They're wearing uniforms. Clearly says they're
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in DHS and they actually have agent numbers. So you can even identify the individual agents.
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So typically a lot of lies from the left and a lot of insurrection that's going on. And the biggest
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lie of all, I think, is they're saying that this is un-American. You know, it's Hitler-esque to send
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in federal troops to put down this insurrection. That is absurd. There is an American history of
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putting down insurrections that goes back to 1787, goes back all the way to Shays' Rebellion.
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And actually, one of the reasons we have our constitution is because the Articles of
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Confederation were not strong enough to efficiently put down that insurrection. And so one of the
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reasons we got the Constitutional Convention right after Shays' Rebellion was in order to beef up that
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power. And fortunately, finally, people are restoring a little bit of order to the streets.
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So what about the politics of it, Drew? It seems to me that the president, slow to act on some of the
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things that have taken place in America's cities during the sort of Black Lives Matter
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riots that have been taking place. Now he is acting. He's sending in federal troops to protect
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federal property. But there's a risk, right? The risk is that going into the election, one risk is
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you look like you've lost control of the country. The other risk is that you look like you're a
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totalitarian, which sort of plays into the narrative that the left has painted of the president
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really since before he even took office. How do you think this shakes out for the president?
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I think the bigger risk is doing nothing, frankly, even though a lot of people on the right are just
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saying, let these cities burn. They're Democrat cities. They're suffering from Democrat policies. Let
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them go. I think that's wrong. Trump has got to show that he's going to do something that he's going
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to take care of the country and not let the cities go. I think this has been one of Trump's best
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weeks. And of course, obviously, it goes unreported because anything Trump does that's positive
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goes unreported. But I think if he can actually he's he's very far back in the polls. And I think
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he knows it. And I think he acted to fire his campaign manager. And right after that,
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he suddenly became a really different candidate. Now we've got the question, you know, the $64,000
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question. Does he have the discipline to maintain doing what he did this week? He suddenly took a new
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tone on the Chinese flu. He suddenly took it seriously. He came out. He was very sober.
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He was very direct. He actually had facts in front of him and he used those facts.
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And he started to move against these cities. You cannot have cities devolving into chaos.
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And if you really want to know whether this is good for Trump or not, all you have to do is look
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at the fact that the minute Trump threatens to act, the mayors and governors suddenly act before he can
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get there. So you suddenly have in Portland, they declare a riot after something like 56 days of
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burning and vandalism and violence. Suddenly it's a riot when Trump says he's going to send in the
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troops. The same thing happened in Seattle with their Chaz. The same thing happened in New York.
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They closed the Chaz that's been open in front of City Hall all this time the minute he threatened.
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So the left knows that this is not a good look for them, but they can blame it on Trump until
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he acts. And the minute he acts, they've got to shut it down. So I think this was a great week for
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Trump. You know, it's always a question with him whether he's just going to blow it all with a
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single tweet. But right this minute, he looks very good.
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So it occurred to me watching the events unfold that you really only have two options, right? You
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can either allow, you can either defend federal property with federal force, or you have to pull
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all of the federal infrastructure out of these cities, which in addition to being practically
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impossible, no one on the left would stand for, right? Like if you just basically said, fine,
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we'll just shut down the Social Security Administration in Portland if we can't send, if you're not going to
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protect it, we're not going to have it be there. If you're not going to do that, Ben, don't you have to
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actually defend this property and defend these employees?
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Well, of course. I mean, under federal code, you do have to defend this property. It is the
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responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security to do so. They have the power to call
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from other agencies through the General Services Administration, other people to serve in this
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battle against people who are, as Michael rightly noted, insurrectionists. The fact that this is
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controversial at all is a testament to how much our media are just damned liars. I mean, they are just
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damned liars. I've been very hesitant to talk about the media as the enemy of the people,
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mainly because I just don't like the phrase. I don't like the phrase enemy of the people because
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it brings up Stalinist sort of associations. But the way that the media have acted over the
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past few months is just disgusting. I mean, the mask is now completely off. If you thought it had
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slipped some with Kavanaugh and slipped more with the Covington Catholic kids, it is just gone at this
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point. I cannot trust a single narrative, not one, that is being fed to me by the media. If you
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listen to the media right now, Portland is entirely peaceful and the only people who are creating chaos
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are the federal agents who are actually members of the Gestapo. Everything in Chicago is hunky-dory,
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except that President Trump is threatening to go in there specifically because Lori Lightfoot is
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black and a woman. Everything in New York is absolutely fine. The only reason that you're
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seeing any sort of uptick in violence is just because Trump is president, not because they've
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decided to absolutely castrate the NYPD. If you listen to the media on COVID, everything that's bad
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that's happening is the fault of Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Doug Ducey in Florida,
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Texas, and Arizona, respectively, or Trump, more broadly speaking, California just ceases to exist.
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Also, apparently Trump is at fault for the second wave that we are now seeing in Spain,
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in France, in Japan. Apparently Trump is in charge of the entire world. Literally every narrative that
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has been trotted out over the past several weeks is not just a little bit wrong. It's not just a
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little wrong. It is overtly false. It is overtly false. I'm amazed that the media think they can get
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away with this. And so far they have. I mean, that's the sad truth is that when you have this
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blanket wall tsunami, I think that I felt this way after 2006. I remember after 2004,
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there was this feeling with Republicans after Bush beat Kerry that we're never going to lose again.
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And finally, the power of the mainstream media with Dan Rather collapsing in on himself like a dying,
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crazy, drunk old star, that he was basically going, that was the end of the mainstream media.
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Their power had been broken. The back had been broken. And then in 2008, it felt like, oh no,
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the media is still there. Then Trump wins. And then Republicans again are like, well,
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it looks like the power of the media is broken. And now it doesn't feel like that at all again.
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And it feels like there is just this vast tsunami-like unified wave that has been rushing over
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informationally the American population. And the best case I can see is not even about Trump. It's
00:14:36.740
about the approval ratings in Florida, Texas, and Arizona. Ducey, DeSantis, and Abbott are all
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underwater. Gavin Newsom is still at 58% in the state of California, despite experiencing a surge
00:14:45.280
exactly the same size as the other states and not having opened in the first place.
00:14:50.040
You know, the most interesting person in the country to me right now is Kayleigh McEnany.
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I call her the species girl because she's a hot blonde who rips men's spines out with her tongue.
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But I think what makes her so fascinating to me is that she is incredibly prepared. She knows
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exactly how to go after that. She's kind of like you wish that she would use Trump,
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be a ventriloquist for Trump, like Trump would open his mouth.
00:15:14.540
Exactly, exactly. She is doing everything that one wishes that a George W. Bush or a Donald Trump,
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who are not exactly articulate, you wish that they would do. And the media is attacking her
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for telling the truth and being prepared. They're attacking her for having effective notes. They're
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attacking her for using tabs in her notebooks so she can find things. Today, I think it was today,
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it may have been yesterday, she actually showed a movie, a video of what was actually happening in
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Portland, and they cut it off. It's like, please don't interrupt us while we're lying.
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And I think that if she can do what she can do, if she will actually accomplish what she wants to
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accomplish, she could be a very, very powerful weapon. Because Ben, I couldn't agree with Ben
00:15:56.180
more about this. This is an amazing, amazing desertion of any journalistic ethos by journalists.
00:16:03.920
Yeah. I want to talk about that. You know, today, the number two podcast in the country
00:16:07.500
is this podcast by the New York Times, hosted by a white woman, by the way, suggesting that the
00:16:12.740
problem with American public education is white parents. So the fact that the media has gone all
00:16:18.240
in for activism, I think, is one of the most important stories happening in the country.
00:16:22.060
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slash backstage. Hey there, Alicia. What you reading? Oh, just this book. I think it's by this guy we all
00:18:57.640
know named Ben Shapiro. How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps. Ben, I really only wish that
00:19:03.320
you'd written this a lot faster so I would have had something to read during COVID. I took up needle
00:19:06.900
pointing instead and really getting to my eyesight. Anyway, you should go buy Ben's book right now.
00:19:12.980
Apparently, though, you only get a signed copy if you, you know, co-host his live signing
00:19:17.220
because this one's not signed to me. But anyway, this is also a reminder to join our most exclusive
00:19:23.140
membership tier so you can ask questions of the guys and I will give them all the questions and
00:19:27.800
you will get their pithy answers throughout backstage tonight. With that all access membership
00:19:31.820
tier, you can also join us for the live online Q&A discussion that's right after this episode of
00:19:36.740
backstage. That's 15% off a coupon using backstage right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe. The
00:19:43.020
coupon code is backstage to ask questions during backstage. Ask us questions after backstage and
00:19:48.580
get not one but two tumblers. Okay, first question. Ben, you ready to roll? First of all, it's a
00:19:53.740
little insulting to me. I'm just going to get this off my chest. You all have, when you do your shows,
00:19:58.340
you all get to use your own name as the promo code. So it's like, promo code Shapiro. Oh, K-L-A-V-A
00:20:04.640
and there are no E's in Clavin. However, Knowles does say, I've never listened to shows. I can only assume
00:20:09.120
he has one. But anytime I'm around, it's either still Shapiro for some reason, giving me absolutely no
00:20:15.040
credit. Or it's the generic backstage. Why can't we have promo code God King or promo code Jeremy's
00:20:20.080
great? Or promo code, could somebody give Jeremy a little more money? I don't know. I don't like it.
00:20:24.680
Listen, it's hard enough to be a grifter. To be a grifter and not get paid for it is the absolutely
00:20:30.620
worst thing imaginable. What a waste of time. Let's take some questions. So do you want to take the
00:20:36.120
first question, Jeremy, so you don't feel like a grifter? Can I toss it to Ben, who we really know is
00:20:39.860
the boss? Wow, that hurt. But yeah, better give it to Ben. Okay. He's looking
00:20:45.020
right at me. I mean, he did. He's looking right at me and he did leave me an unsigned book in the
00:20:48.920
studio to talk about. So, all right, Ben, is America's position on the UN Security Council
00:20:54.360
reason enough to stay in the UN or should we pull out of the UN immediately? No, we should,
00:20:58.880
we should pull out of the UN immediately. We should neutron bomb the building and salt the earth.
00:21:02.780
The UN is a horrific organization, always was a horrific organization. If you look at the origins of
00:21:07.640
the UN, it basically Stalin insisted that the USSR have a veto on the Security Council, which ended
00:21:13.380
any and all possibility that there would ever be anything good that ever came out of the UN.
00:21:17.440
The UN has literally done, you can count the number of good things the UN has done probably
00:21:21.240
on one hand and maybe on like three fingers. It's really incredible what a useless and awful
00:21:26.560
organization the United Nations is. All you have to do, obviously, is look at what they pass in the
00:21:30.540
General Assembly where every single resolution is about Israel and they're not condemning the
00:21:33.520
United States. All you have to do is look at the UN Human Rights Council, which is staffed by great
00:21:37.240
nations like Iran and Sudan. All you have to do is look at the fact that every time they can steal
00:21:42.240
money and use it to enrich a local despot, they absolutely do it. The UN is garbage. We should
00:21:46.940
have a League of Democracies instead, or we should just have a bunch of bilateral agreements. Frankly,
00:21:50.920
I think the President Trump's approach to alliance is in many ways closer. You're never going to hear
00:21:56.620
me say again. You ready for this, guys? His view on alliance is actually closer to the Washingtonian
00:22:00.680
view of alliance than many of the people who have been promoting the sort of we're all friends and
00:22:07.780
neighbors routine for a very long time. Trump's view of alliance is basically you're friends with the
00:22:11.580
people you're friends with, and you're not friends with the people you're not friends with. And
00:22:14.280
that's exactly what Washington says in his farewell address. It seems to me that we've strayed far
00:22:17.580
from that, and the UN is the formalization of straying exactly from Washingtonian principle.
00:22:21.580
Ben, I agree. I've been waiting for you to say that Donald Trump reminds us of George Washington
00:22:25.820
for many years now, and I'm glad that we agree.
00:22:28.340
No, that's right. He also has false teeth and...
00:22:38.240
Sorry, I thought Michael was going to go on, but you know, okay.
00:22:40.720
Okay, it kind of petered out. Just like all of our shows, it just sort of came to a sliding
00:22:47.060
This next question is for the Michael Knowles, you know, illustrious author himself. Will
00:22:51.260
Republicans have to lose in 2020, you think, in order to win big in 2024? I think that's for
00:22:55.880
not just the White House, but the House and the Senate.
00:22:58.000
No, you don't win by losing. You don't. You cannot win by losing. Sometimes people,
00:23:02.800
we get very clever about this, and we say like, okay, well, I'm going to lose this race,
00:23:06.600
but then I'm going to win it this way 10 years from now. And that's just not how it works.
00:23:09.900
You're going to lose. I mean, sometimes it's inevitable that you lose, but you have to try
00:23:13.800
to win because politics moves on. Politics is about eternal principles applied to constantly
00:23:19.960
changing circumstances. And so in those circumstances, you can't predict what it's
00:23:24.040
going to look like. Forget four or eight years from now, you can't predict what it's going to
00:23:27.440
look like in three months. If the election were held today, I think a lot of people think President
00:23:31.180
Trump would lose. But who knows? Who knows what's going to happen over the next 100 days?
00:23:34.940
So no, you got to win. You got to try to win. And if you lose, which is going to happen eventually,
00:23:39.520
then you got to regroup and try to win the next time.
00:23:42.560
All right, Drew, this question is for you. It's kind of a two-part question. Part one is,
00:23:45.940
should schools that teach the 1619 Project lose their federal funding? And what curriculum can
00:23:54.240
That's a great question. And yes, A, yes, I think that you should not be a public school
00:23:58.740
teaching 1619. It's not true. I mean, that's the first thing. It's not true. Plus, it's anti-American.
00:24:04.740
If you can't teach your children to love the country you're in and what's beautiful about it,
00:24:07.920
what's great about it, instead teaching it that it's inherently evil, I cannot see how that is in
00:24:13.620
any way an education. What we need, what we need is a history of freedom. We need to follow the train
00:24:19.320
of freedom through Western history so that that really takes us from Greece to Rome to the formation of
00:24:24.740
Europe and to America. It's an idea. You know, it's the idea that really lights up Western history,
00:24:29.940
makes it different than everybody else. And really, it shows you, you can trace then when it falls off,
00:24:35.400
why it falls off, when it surges, when it rises, and what keeps it alive. And I've always thought
00:24:40.320
that the history that hasn't been written, and I'm just not equipped to write it, unfortunately,
00:24:44.160
is a history of freedom, a history of how this idea has stayed alive. Really, all we have are Lord
00:24:49.280
Acton's letters, which kind of are interesting, but they're just not the same thing as having
00:24:54.260
a textbook that traces this idea. And that's what I think we should be doing on the right. And of
00:24:58.780
course, we never do anything on the right to fix the culture, but that would be one of the things,
00:25:02.760
a project that I think we should be fronting and paying for.
00:25:06.480
All right, Jeremy, the God King, not that many people, I mean, actually, they follow you on
00:25:10.080
Twitter. They're one of the hundred thousand people who do follow you on Twitter. They probably
00:25:13.040
know that you're a big baseball fan and that you usually take the whole Daily Wire crew to see a
00:25:16.820
Dodgers game once a year on the anniversary. But with that in mind, what do you think about the
00:25:21.480
guys at the MLB caving to the woke mob and promoting these players kneeling?
00:25:26.200
Yeah, well, first of all, it's one of the horrible things that's happened is the loss of sports.
00:25:31.620
You know, the point of sport is that it allows us to work out our sort of baser instincts. You know,
00:25:37.500
everybody is a little bit tribalistic. Everybody's a little bit jingoistic. And what sports allow us
00:25:41.800
to do is root, root, root for the home team in an environment where the struggle has no meaning
00:25:47.400
beyond a sort of local regional pride. This is why I sometimes argue with Ben. He's obviously a big
00:25:53.560
White Sox fan. And sometimes when we go to Dodger Stadium, he'll wear his White Sox cap. And I'll
00:25:57.480
say to him, you know, it actually is important that we root for the home team. Like, it's good.
00:26:02.180
It's fine when we have a team that we love from afar.
00:26:05.000
But then I'd be rooting for Los Angeles. And Los Angeles is a bag of garbage, dude.
00:26:08.240
They would have taken it all this year if they were actually baseball anymore. They've got such a
00:26:13.060
great team. But it's just the case that that's part of what sports are supposed to be. That's why
00:26:16.820
team sports provide something that boxing or like the Red Bull kind of individualistic sports don't
00:26:22.600
actually provide. You know, I like to watch UFC or I like to watch sometimes the extreme stuff from
00:26:28.100
Red Bull. But you can't root for that. You're not a part of that. They don't represent your community.
00:26:31.840
They don't represent your, they don't represent your, they're not your team. You know, they're not
00:26:36.560
in any way representative of you. You're supporting them in what they do. When we support a baseball team,
00:26:41.560
they represent in some way us. And if the Dodgers are a terrible bag of garbage, then that's because
00:26:49.100
Ben has chosen to be part of a bag of garbage community. Or his parents did. I don't know.
00:26:56.800
All of that to say, the loss of sports right now in our country is going to have a real impact.
00:27:03.120
It's one of the few things left in our social fabric that would bring us together in, you know,
00:27:08.140
a sort of shared struggle, a shared, a shared celebration. That's what sports is for. We don't
00:27:14.140
have that now. Obviously, they've made them political. COVID is also part of this. They've
00:27:17.840
destroyed sports. Apparently, the one place where you can't be in an outdoor environment,
00:27:23.580
shouting is at a sports arena. Anywhere, if you're in a town square, you can do it. But if you're in a
00:27:29.400
sports arena, you will definitely get the COVIDs. I think it's a huge mistake to insert the kind of
00:27:35.260
politics in it the way that the owners are right now. My hope is that they will lose enormous
00:27:40.440
amounts of cash as a result. I think that that's what's going to happen. I suspect that people will
00:27:45.800
just turn it off. That's not what people watch sports for. I may be wrong because the entire
00:27:49.760
country is shut down. It may be that we're so desperate for any kind of distraction that people
00:27:54.100
will go ahead and watch sports sort of in spite of this. That's not what I hope happens. I hope they
00:27:58.560
lose 40% of their ratings and are forced to correct because we need them to correct because we need
00:28:04.540
sports. Listen, I'm blind in one eye. I'm horribly uncoordinated. I've humiliated myself at almost
00:28:10.920
every sport that's popular among America's youth. Nevertheless, I think sports are incredibly
00:28:16.060
important. I think that the entire idea of sport, sometimes people will say, America puts too much
00:28:20.980
emphasis on sports and not enough emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Right, but we invent
00:28:26.800
everything. We have the military that defends democracy and freedom all across the globe,
00:28:32.700
and we're the greatest economy in the history of the world. Our love of sport and the fact that
00:28:37.960
we inculcate love of sport into our children is part of the reason for our success because sports
00:28:43.160
actually teach you the values of capitalism. They teach you that hard work, that perseverance,
00:28:48.420
that overcoming adversity can lead to success. They teach you that you can't rely on rigged rules.
00:28:54.300
You have to, at the end of the day, rely on yourself and on your team. That is an important part of
00:29:00.360
what we teach our kids. I think that it's an enormous loss if it continues down the path that
00:29:05.320
it's going right now. Can we stop on this topic for a second? Yes, please. Because it really is
00:29:08.640
devastating for those of us who are like major, major baseball fans. So I am a diehard Chicago
00:29:14.240
White Sox fan. I wrote an entire book about the Chicago White Sox 2005 championship season with my
00:29:18.220
father. Both of us have united over baseball. Singular championship season. Singular. Well,
00:29:22.700
they had one. Well, it was all the way back in 1918, though, 1917, actually. But the basic kind of
00:29:29.660
destruction of all common areas of American life is so horrifying. And it's happening everywhere,
00:29:35.600
right? I mean, it's not just sports. It's happening in entertainment. It's happening that
00:29:38.960
basically it is now dictated to you that when you buy an HVAC part, you have to make sure that the CEO
00:29:44.140
of the HVAC company agrees with you on politics. You have to make sure that the head of Goya
00:29:48.400
agrees with you about Donald Trump, even if he's already done a different press conference with
00:29:52.420
Barack Obama just a few years beforehand. Everybody has to agree on everything. And the corporations,
00:29:57.360
I mean, I'm going to sound like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren right now. The corporations
00:29:59.880
are to blame for this. Corporations have not stood up for principle. Corporations have decided that the
00:30:03.900
easiest way out is to cave to the woke mob. And they can make a quick buck by caving to the woke mob
00:30:07.660
because there are enough conservatives who aren't going to boycott them that they feel like they can just
00:30:11.700
grease the squeakiest wheel and get away with it. And it really is short sighted. It's quite
00:30:16.380
disgusting. And again, when, when they, when, when MLB decides that they're going to put out like
00:30:21.080
this vague Morgan Freeman, social justice statement, where he talks about Tim Robbins going through 500
00:30:26.000
yards of foul smelling stench, like you can't believe. And everybody's kneeling and it's all about
00:30:31.060
empathy and equality. And the statement, by the way, meant nothing. I mean, if you actually listen to
00:30:34.820
what Morgan Freeman said, it made no sense at all. Like it really didn't make any sense. But
00:30:39.000
the, the basic notion here, they knelt the footage that you're seeing right now is the,
00:30:43.060
is the nationals and the Yankees both kneeling before the national anthem. And this was their
00:30:46.460
compromise, right? We're not going to kneel during the national anthem because that might be perceived
00:30:49.720
as disrespectful. Instead, we'll kneel before the national anthem to signify that America is
00:30:54.160
systemically racist. I don't feel particularly respected now as, as a member of the systemically
00:30:59.340
racist American public, apparently, and systemically a racist American system. I don't feel
00:31:03.520
particularly not insulted by a group of largely diverse millionaires and 10 millionaires telling
00:31:10.400
me how racist the American system is. And if we don't buy that, then what? We're not patriotic.
00:31:14.660
What? We're not, we're not allowed to watch sport. The corporate owners who are doing this kind of
00:31:18.220
stuff, they don't understand that they're cutting off their nose to spite their face and they're
00:31:20.780
ruining the country in the process. And it's, it's gone everywhere, right? Because if you even say
00:31:24.400
this, that's political. If you say you don't like politics and sports, now you're being political
00:31:28.080
and you trend on Twitter for saying, I like my sports without politics. Even though, as my friend
00:31:31.820
Clay Travis says the root of the word sport, the etymology is disport from the French,
00:31:36.060
meaning literally distraction. The whole point of sports is to distract you from real life.
00:31:40.260
There's plenty of crap happening in real life. When I turn on a game, the last thing I want to see
00:31:43.300
is a bunch of vague social justice messaging that is semantically overloaded and could mean
00:31:47.520
everything from support black lives matter as an organization to America systemically racist,
00:31:51.040
to the completely inarguable principle that black people matter, which of course they do.
00:31:54.520
You know, this is a very good point. We, we obviously don't want these kinds of partisan
00:31:58.340
distractions, but there, there is, I would push back and say a political element to sports going
00:32:03.460
all the way back to ancient Greece. And it's a very basic one. And the basic political element
00:32:08.420
is patriotism. Sports have always been patriotic. They've been about celebrating as Jeremy says,
00:32:14.200
the home team or celebrating your country. And one of the virtues that they inculcate among all the
00:32:19.400
others that, that Jeremy, you mentioned is loyalty, loyalty to your teammates. If you're playing the
00:32:24.740
sport, loyalty to the home team. If you're going out and watching the sport, loyalty to your country,
00:32:29.160
when you stand up for the national anthem. And Ben, as you say, the common areas of American life
00:32:34.680
have been completely eroded. If we cannot even recognize one another as fellow Americans,
00:32:40.000
if we cannot even agree on the star spangled banner, there is nothing left. That is the most
00:32:46.300
basic level of American unity and solidarity. So much for that loyalty. By the way, Anthony Fauci can't
00:32:51.940
throw, right? I mean, we've established this, right? I mean, I feel bad for him. He's 80,
00:32:55.300
but he's the one who chose to get out there on the mound. I get to make fun of you if you throw
00:32:57.820
that out as the first pitch, right? Yeah. I'm just going to say that if you're ever invited to
00:33:02.020
throw out the first pitch at any baseball game, just say no. Just don't do it. Yeah. If you didn't
00:33:06.140
play college ball, do not get up there and try to throw it out. W threw it out, right? W. He
00:33:11.060
thrown a baseball team. One assumes he had thrown a baseball a few times in his day. If you get the
00:33:17.160
opportunity, Ben Shapiro or Michael Knowles or Andrew Klavan. But even Donald Trump has a good
00:33:21.620
throwing motion. Internet celebrity. Well, yeah, he's never exercised. I feel like I'm
00:33:24.980
praising Trump so much this episode. If you had never exercised, you could throw out a baseball
00:33:28.520
too. You keep picking these guys. That's true. No, he does have all his life force.
00:33:32.220
He has all his life force and therefore he's able to. I want to talk, speaking of life force,
00:33:36.400
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00:33:49.380
couldn't be more simple. They gave me all these opportunities to compare prices and I even ran
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and sure enough, Policy Genius gave me better opportunities. There is more now that I can
00:34:04.260
reveal. Since we last spoke, my wife got that. I went ahead and got a policy on my wife because I
00:34:10.300
actually thought it's a little bit unfair that she now gets to root for my demise. I should also be
00:34:15.680
able to celebrate the idea that she indeed is mortal. And even though the likelihood is based
00:34:20.160
on every statistic from that men will die before their wives, even when that man in question isn't
00:34:26.340
an asshole like me, even with all of that, it's still, there's an off chance that she could go
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00:35:28.400
making it very efficient. Now, most qualified applicants can actually complete the medical requirement over
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00:35:39.020
having children, especially when you have dependents, especially when you have other people who you need
00:35:42.480
to provide for. The loss of a loved one is a terrible enough thing. Don't put people in a position
00:35:47.680
of not only having to mourn for you, but also have to worry about how they're going to meet those basic
00:35:52.240
needs when you could have taken it upon yourself to do the responsible thing and provide them with life
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life insurance right. So, before we went to break, we were talking, Drew, about this idea of the media
00:36:24.260
having completely taken off the mask, as Ben said, and revealing that they're partisan activists. I referenced
00:36:28.800
this podcast, this second biggest podcast in the country today in which the New York Times says that
00:36:35.020
the problem with education in America is white parents. Of course, this comes right on the heels
00:36:39.740
of the 1619 Project and some great reporting done by the Daily Wire discovered that the New York Times
00:36:45.240
spent over $3 million promoting the 1619 Project and was able to obscure the specifics of how they spent
00:36:50.840
that money. Just three ads from the 1619 Project. Just three individual ads by exploiting a protection that
00:36:55.420
was afforded them because they're not activists, because they're supposed to be straight journalists.
00:36:59.640
Of course, then they behave as activists. The very fact that they're printing curricula now to put
00:37:06.420
into elementary, junior high, high schools, doesn't this evidence that they aren't, in fact,
00:37:12.480
journalistic institutions anymore at all? I mean, are we really seeing not only sort of the reveal,
00:37:18.940
but aren't we seeing a shift happen where these organizations are now directly engaging in
00:37:24.000
politics in a way that maybe has not been the case in the post-war consensus?
00:37:28.600
Yeah, it's the Trump effect in a lot of ways, because Donald Trump hasn't caused any of this
00:37:33.460
to happen. He simply lanced the boil. I mean, it really was this bad. Everybody has this myth that
00:37:40.020
suddenly with Donald Trump, the journalistic community lost it. But that's not true. You go back
00:37:45.200
to George W. Bush. He was Hitler every day. Every word he said was a scandal. And the system is,
00:37:50.240
as I explain often, the system is not each individual story. It is to create an attitude,
00:37:55.860
an atmosphere of chaos so that when something actually happens, like Hurricane Katrina or the
00:38:01.340
Chinese flu, suddenly you think like, oh, yeah, it really has been chaotic all this time. It's really
00:38:06.040
been a disaster. So all that's happened now is the full reveal. And it's not just journalism. It really
00:38:12.240
is across our institutions. We have let our institutions get hollowed out. I mean, we have
00:38:17.020
a legislature that doesn't legislate. We have a court system that does legislate. We have journalists
00:38:23.520
that don't cover anything, academies that don't teach. And I think this is a genuinely serious
00:38:28.160
problem. And it's one of the reasons you should probably buy this book. By the way, I want to say
00:38:33.640
I want to say I saw this title, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, and I thought I was going to
00:38:37.220
open up and say, oh, my God, it's a cookbook. It's not for that. No, but I mean, I think this is we
00:38:44.420
are actually seeing something quite, quite serious, which is the hollowness of our institutions. And as
00:38:51.140
long as Trump is there, everybody can sort of point to him and say, oh, look, this is the problem. But
00:38:55.660
it's just not so. I mean, Trump is an effect of this. And the press, our entertainment system,
00:39:02.320
all of this has been hollowed out for years. I've been talking about it for years. And suddenly,
00:39:07.920
suddenly my phone starts ringing and people say, you know, gee, what are we supposed to do about
00:39:12.360
this? And I say, well, about 20 years ago, you're supposed to start building, you know,
00:39:16.060
news agencies. You're supposed to start building movie studios. You're supposed to start building
00:39:20.740
academies and teaching institutions. And look, the right has not done this. And the right,
00:39:26.740
one of the reasons the right has not done this is because I think our philosophy has been emptied out
00:39:31.080
by fusionism, by basically saying we're going to put together libertarians, religious people,
00:39:36.320
and capitalism. And it all kind of comes, it's all sort of been about money. I mean,
00:39:40.520
all we've ever said to people is like the pursuit of happiness is about money. Capitalism is the
00:39:44.880
greatest thing ever. And now one of the things that Ben was talking about, about the fact that
00:39:49.220
corporations are signing on to this racist, Marxist, disgusting Black Lives Matter philosophy,
00:39:55.380
it shows you that capitalism won't save you. You've got to start with the values. It has to start
00:39:59.440
with the values. And unless we become a values party or a values movement, we can't stop this
00:40:05.540
because we have no message. Until we have a message, we can't do the messaging. And I think
00:40:10.440
that it really is a problem that has finally just kind of come open, like I said, like a boil being
00:40:15.160
lanced. I think that I'm a little bit more pro-capitalism. I may be the last...
00:40:20.280
I actually think there's a slightly nuanced distinction that I would make. I think one of the problems
00:40:25.580
that happens with the right is that we don't profit off of the culture at all. And so we
00:40:32.880
abandon the culture entire. If you go to... If you ask why do conservative billionaires not fund film
00:40:40.140
or music or technology? It's another... Conservatives famously don't get involved in any major way in
00:40:45.960
technology. The answer, I think, is because conservatives tend to be fairly conservative
00:40:51.160
in their approach. And therefore, rich conservatives tend to be people who got rich through very
00:40:56.700
conservative practices. So for example, while I was in the DFW area over the last week,
00:41:03.160
there's so much real estate wealth. There's so much energy wealth that goes on in those places,
00:41:08.320
right? I mean, famously, if you make your money in real estate or in energy or in oil,
00:41:14.400
you're in Texas. And think about how those guys make their money. If you make your money in real
00:41:18.080
estate, you can put on a spreadsheet the steps to allow you to prosper over time. You could start
00:41:24.000
now with very little money in your own bank account. And you could build your way to being
00:41:28.940
an extraordinarily wealthy person in a very meat and potatoes, very predictable, one step in front
00:41:33.520
of the other way. And so if you become a very wealthy, conservative real estate person, you probably
00:41:39.860
have spreadsheets that tell you, if I increase the rental rates in my skyscraper by 10% over the
00:41:47.900
next three years, I'll be able to afford to do a remodel of the entire structure, which will allow
00:41:52.740
me to increase my rate by 20% over the three years after that, which will allow me to buy a second
00:41:57.320
skyscraper. And if I raise my rent 10% over the next three years there, I can do a renovation,
00:42:01.540
which will allow me to... And they can, very one step in front of the other, see these ways to build
00:42:05.860
wealth. With the exception of wildcatting, a lot of the energy industry functions the same way.
00:42:11.580
If we frack this many wells, there's a ratio to understand. And so you might make two, three,
00:42:18.060
four, five, $20 billion in those businesses, but you always know what the next thing to do with your
00:42:23.760
money is. If you make a billion dollars in real estate, you put the billion dollars back into
00:42:29.140
real estate so that you can make $2 billion. Now, imagine that you're that guy. You know what to do
00:42:34.640
with every dollar that comes your way and how to turn that into another dollar, how to turn that into
00:42:38.900
a better downtown in your community. Let's don't pretend it's just money. How to turn that into
00:42:43.340
better jobs for the people in your community and all the things that come with that kind of growth.
00:42:47.540
And now a kid walks into your office with a backpack and he says, hey, dude. Nobody calls me dude. He
00:42:54.020
says, yeah, man, listen, I built this app. What's an app? Well, it's this thing on the computer. I built
00:43:00.200
this website and basically I put up a bunch of pictures of hot chicks from my college and I let people
00:43:06.320
vote with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. And if the chick gets a thumbs up, then she moves to the
00:43:11.280
second ranking and more people can vote on her. Please give me $10 million. I think I could grow
00:43:15.420
this into something where people can really talk to each other, man. You'd be like, how did you get
00:43:20.660
in here? And you would kick that kid out of your office and you wouldn't even know 15 years later
00:43:26.060
that he's worth $75 billion and that that app that he built for voting on how hot chicks are became the
00:43:32.820
most important communication platform ever devised in the history of man. Because you knew meat and
00:43:40.000
potatoes, how to take your money and put it into the next thing. So we now imagine some beatnik kid
00:43:45.980
walks into your office with a backpack and he's got an idea for how he can tell a story that's kind of
00:43:51.880
funny. And he thinks maybe people will laugh. And he tells you a couple of jokes that he wrote into
00:43:55.680
scene three about a bong hit. And you're like, what on earth? But it turns out that guy goes on to be
00:44:00.700
Adam Sandler or something. And he creates one of the most profitable film franchises or film
00:44:06.280
companies in modern Hollywood. He has a deal with Sony for years. He's the most popular film producer
00:44:12.460
on Netflix for a number of years. In other words, there's nothing in the experience of the kind of
00:44:17.160
people who have excess cash on the right to help them understand why they should back these cultural
00:44:21.580
plays. Meanwhile, guys who made their money in technology, like Silicon Valley guys, they see money
00:44:27.560
completely differently. They make a billion dollars and there is no next apartment building
00:44:32.060
to buy. There is no community in which they have invested in. They didn't pick downtown Fort Worth
00:44:37.260
to be the place where they were going to build and grow. They made their money in these very abstract
00:44:41.060
ways. And so they're willing to take bets on other people who think abstractly. I think that there is
00:44:46.080
just a culture. It's funny, a cultural difference for how the culture is perceived from people who made
00:44:51.900
their money in abstract ways and people who made their money by renovating apartment buildings.
00:44:55.920
You know, I have to tell you, I have to tell you why it's not that I disagree with what you're
00:45:00.340
saying, but I think that you're seeing something you're saying that something is built into the
00:45:03.980
system. And I think that it's, it's actually a matter of values. This is one of the reasons you
00:45:08.160
and I always disagree about Ayn Rand, who I just hate. And I think that if you take the value,
00:45:13.620
if you put values first, you can have capitalism and it will be the wonderful machine that it is
00:45:19.220
for raising everybody up. But if you don't put the values for, you know, when, when Jesus said,
00:45:22.640
you can't serve God and mammon, he wasn't just whistling Dixie, which would have been racist.
00:45:26.560
He was actually, he was actually saying, you have to put some, one thing before the other.
00:45:32.520
And I think the thing is when we see, when we see Amazon sending me on my webpage saying,
00:45:38.220
oh, if you like the collected poetry of William Wordsworth, you might like white fragility. And you
00:45:42.480
think like, I'm sorry, what he, he has got to be making a calculation that somehow that's going
00:45:47.480
to help him financially down the road. And he may be right. When Oprah takes the 1619 project,
00:45:53.520
that's an Ayn Randian success. I mean, that's everything that Ayn Rand supports, except that
00:45:58.200
it's destructive of the country. If you don't put the values first, if you don't put the values above
00:46:02.440
the money, and we have, we fail to preach this as conservatives. If you don't put the values above
00:46:06.700
the money, you really hollow out what capitalism is. And you have China basically, where they have
00:46:13.560
Well, I think that there is a problem that you're diagnosing, but I think that I'm not sure I agree
00:46:18.200
with the exact diagnosis. So I totally agree that conservatives have failed to talk about
00:46:22.420
values in markets. They've talked about the value of markets, but not values in markets. And that
00:46:26.380
makes a huge difference. The, as soon as conservatives made the moves to talk in terms of utilitarianism,
00:46:32.240
they lost. Conservatives are not utilitarians. As soon as conservatives started to say, the reason
00:46:36.680
that markets are good is because they produce prosperity and wealth. It was over because it's so easy
00:46:41.440
for somebody else to say, right, but prosperity and good for whom, right? How about this group?
00:46:45.540
This group's been left behind. Why can't we just capture the value of the market? And then we can
00:46:49.440
turn it and twist it and we can do X, Y, or Z with it, right? This is the sort of language that both
00:46:53.940
Tucker Carlson uses on the right about markets, right? Markets are just a mechanism and we can chain
00:46:57.860
them to anything we want. So why don't we chain them to things that we like? And Elizabeth Warren,
00:47:01.260
who will say things like, the markets are just a mule that you can hitch to your wagon and it will take
00:47:05.460
you exactly where you want to go. The point of markets, and this is something that I've been focused on for a
00:47:09.180
very long time. The reason that markets are good is because markets are a reflection of a truth about
00:47:13.720
human nature was that human beings are free and deserve to own their own labor. And so people
00:47:18.400
have asked me, okay, so what if a market was less efficient than a fascist economic system? I would
00:47:22.100
still believe in the market. I would still believe in the market because I think that there's an
00:47:25.300
inherent goods, the belief that human beings own their own labor, that they are individuals created
00:47:29.300
in the image of God. And as Locke argued, if you're an individual created in the image of God and you mix
00:47:33.060
your labor with the earth, you then own that labor. That is an inherent good. And that is not reliant
00:47:37.260
on the effect of the capitalist enterprise. It just turns out that this also happens to create
00:47:42.160
the most wealth in the history of humanity. But you have to argue that people actually own their
00:47:45.380
own labor and that they ought to own their own labor as a moral matter, not as a utilitarian matter.
00:47:50.320
So I think reading values in capitalism and opposition is incorrect, except in that people
00:47:55.760
have started to discuss capitalism only in utilitarian terms. And very often when they speak about capitalism
00:48:01.380
in utilitarian terms, they don't mean long-term utilitarian terms, right? The problem with Ayn Rand is she
00:48:05.480
assumes that everybody who engages in capitalism is going to think more than five minutes down the
00:48:09.960
road. She assumes that people are going to forego the immediate profit margin that is to be found
00:48:14.900
in doing the wrong thing in order to preserve the system that is going to... Ayn Rand actually does
00:48:19.800
assume that there is a value that you are assuming in your own life, your ownership of your own
00:48:23.720
living, right? This is why as much as I disagree with her sort of values on capitalism when applied to
00:48:28.620
your personal life and your treatment of family, when she talks about selfishness is a value,
00:48:33.440
what she really means is that you ought to own your own labor. There is a value in owning your
00:48:37.680
own labor. There is something good in the creative human spirit, right? That is a value-laden argument
00:48:41.780
and that's been left behind by a lot of the people who tend to speak about capitalism purely as a
00:48:45.380
utilitarian creator of wealth. But there's also this issue, I mean, Ben, I agree with you exactly on
00:48:49.280
the utilitarian point and Drew, I agree with you on this point that you need values. We've made this
00:48:54.100
mistake, especially Republicans have, you know, at Republican fundraisers for the last 30, 40 years,
00:48:59.280
which is that the Republican party fundraiser speech was always schizophrenic. It began with,
00:49:05.000
we need to maintain strong communities and family values and conserve all of our wonderful rituals
00:49:09.680
and traditions. And by the way, we need to destroy all of that for creative destruction that is
00:49:14.200
constantly ever progressing and is always making people move all over the place and not even just
00:49:18.920
all around the country, but all around the globe. Isn't that great? We're all going to make a lot more
00:49:21.980
money. And the latter part of that argument undercuts the very values that you're talking about at the
00:49:28.040
beginning. So I agree entirely, Ben, that you need to make a moral argument for not just markets,
00:49:33.760
but for so many other facets of our economic system. But you also, you have to begin with
00:49:39.740
the human person, what we want, an authentic politics, which since ancient Greece means a lot
00:49:45.200
of people coming together and deciding how we want to live, debating ethical questions, ranking our
00:49:49.600
priorities. And only then will you be able to even have an economic system that doesn't completely
00:49:54.980
undercut itself as we're seeing right now with the woke companies who are chopping off at the knees,
00:50:00.260
the very country that allowed these markets to flourish.
00:50:02.200
So, yeah, I think it's possible. I mean, I always make the moral argument for capitalism. I agree with
00:50:07.700
you a hundred percent on that, Ben, but you're, you're looking at it from one side, which is if
00:50:12.300
fascism worked better, was more efficient than capitalism, would fascism be all right? And of course,
00:50:16.620
the answer is no. But if capitalism starts to sell fascism and make a bundle, would that be all
00:50:21.120
right? And the answer is also no. I think when, when, uh, when you're using corporations, for
00:50:26.000
instance, when you have corporations that are silencing free speech, that are cutting down free
00:50:29.740
speech, to me, that is a value that actually supersedes all kinds of capitalist rules. If your company is in
00:50:36.520
any way harming the right of Americans to speak freely in an effective way, your company's got to go.
00:50:41.900
Your company should be just shut down. You know, your rights, if you don't start with the fact that
00:50:45.760
your rights come from God, then there's always going to be different kinds of power centers that
00:50:50.080
can take away those rights. And I think those rights have to be defended because they are holy,
00:50:54.760
because they come from a source outside our, ourselves and capitalism. Listen, again, I'm a
00:50:59.980
total capitalist, but capitalism has to rest on that pedestal. It can't create that pedestal itself.
00:51:07.280
And if you want to defend that pedestal, you need to go talk to our friends
00:51:10.100
manufacturing. When the founders created the constitution, so beautiful.
00:51:18.560
Listen, I'm the true capitalist. You all give a lot of lip service to it. I'm the only one who
00:51:22.660
makes sure you all get paid. When the founders crafted the constitution, the first thing they did
00:51:26.800
was make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their
00:51:30.700
government. The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech
00:51:35.060
and their own persons with force. You know how strongly each of us here believes in these
00:51:39.300
principles. Every one of us here, a gun owner and owning a rifle in particular is an awesome
00:51:44.860
responsibility. Building rifles is no different. Bravo Company Manufacturing, BCM, built a professional
00:51:49.760
grade product, which is built to combat standards. That's because BCM believes that the same level of
00:51:54.720
protection should be provided to every single American, regardless of whether or not you're a
00:51:58.740
private citizen or a professional. People at BCM assume that when a rifle leaves their shop,
00:52:03.140
it will be used in a life or death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer,
00:52:07.340
or a soldier overseas. With that in mind, every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and
00:52:11.720
tested by Americans. The people at BCM feel it's their moral responsibility as Americans to provide
00:52:17.220
tools that will not fail the end user when it's not just a paper target, but someone coming to do
00:52:22.020
them harm. BCM also knows that making a reliable, life-saving tool is only half the story. The company
00:52:27.860
also works with leading instructors of marksmanship from top levels of America's special operations
00:52:32.760
forces, from Marine Corps force reconnaissance to U.S. Army special operations forces,
00:52:37.100
connecting them with other Americans. These top instructors teach the skills necessary to defend
00:52:41.380
yourself, your family, or others. We love the guys over at Bravo Company Manufacturing. They make a great
00:52:46.760
product, and they actually do believe it's based on the values, as Drew was saying. They make a great
00:52:53.080
product. They're great in the marketplace, but they also believe that that product serves the ideals
00:52:58.520
that are ensconced in the Second Amendment to the Constitution. Bravo Company Manufacturing, Ben.
00:53:03.440
To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to bravocompanymfg.com. You can
00:53:07.700
discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news. That is bravocompanymfg.com.
00:53:12.260
If you need more convincing, find out even more about BCM and the amazing people who make their
00:53:15.940
products at youtube.com slash bravocompanyusa. Here, we imitate masculinity by having men smoke cigars.
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There, they just do masculinity by making firearms.
00:53:25.460
And smoking cigars. YouTube.com slash bravocompanyusa or bravocompanymfg.com.
00:53:32.560
Does that code work for people that work at the company? Just asking for someone.
00:53:36.560
Alrighty. Reminder to join our most exclusive membership tier. Are you like me? You like
00:53:41.780
exclusive things? Well, turns out, even at the Daily Wire, we have a very exclusive membership tier.
00:53:46.800
It's our all-access tier, and you can join us for a live online Q&A discussion right after this
00:53:52.500
episode of Backstage using that code that Jeremy doesn't love because it doesn't have his name in
00:53:56.520
it. Backstage. It's the name of his show, though. And that code will get you 15% off using the code
00:54:02.300
Backstage with two tumblers. So dailywire.com slash subscribe. Code Backstage for 15% off for the
00:54:08.940
very exclusive all-access membership. Go and do it now because we still have time to ask the guys your
00:54:14.620
questions and get answers from them. First question goes to Ben Shapiro, New York Times.
00:54:18.240
I just want to say, I mean, I know it's our show. It's just that you guys also have your show. That's
00:54:23.960
the problem. It's my show. I guess in a way they're all my show. Yeah, you're the executive
00:54:29.540
producer of all of the shows. I mean, your name pops up on every single one. Oh, that's something.
00:54:34.480
Yeah, there you go. The men behind the curtain. All right, Ben, how would you handle the concentration
00:54:39.280
camp situation in China? And should there be more sanctions from the United States? And when is the
00:54:44.300
world really morally culpable without taking direct intervention? And why hasn't more action been
00:54:49.240
taken? It's like a four-part question, but I think it's a really good one. Yeah, that was a lot. So
00:54:52.900
when it comes to when is a country responsible for taking a direct humanitarian intervention,
00:54:57.680
my general rule of thumb is if the risk is low and the benefit is high, then you should do it.
00:55:02.900
The risk obviously is not low. If you're going to talk about bombing China over this,
00:55:06.240
then the question becomes, are you really willing to basically start World War III
00:55:09.480
at this point in time? And the answer there is no for pretty much everybody involved. I mean,
00:55:15.080
China is the world's most populous country. Is India now? Has India passed them? China may be
00:55:19.120
the second most populous country on planet Earth. In any case, a billion people over in China with an
00:55:23.040
incredibly large army and significant capacity to do Americans harm. Starting a war with China would
00:55:28.680
be a mistake. Does that mean that you have to abandon people to their fate? Absolutely not. We should be
00:55:32.380
engaging with the Chinese government exactly the way we engage with the USSR, which is to say we should cut
00:55:37.000
them off at the knees economically. We should recognize them for exactly the threat they are
00:55:40.940
globally speaking. They are an evil dictatorship, a full on evil dictatorship, not merely for what
00:55:46.000
they're doing to the Uyghurs, shaving heads and sending people on trains to concentration camps where
00:55:49.800
they force them into slave labor and or sterilize them. But what they've done to Hong Kong in subjecting
00:55:54.340
a free people to the predations of absolute communistic tyranny and the rest of the world shrugging
00:55:59.280
and yawning is an unbelievable chastisement of the idea that the West was ever willing to stand up for
00:56:04.180
the freedom of anybody in that region. And the next people who are going to take it directly on
00:56:08.380
the nose of the folks over in Taiwan, which is why the United States should immediately recognize
00:56:12.140
Taiwan as an independent country. They shouldn't wait more than five seconds. China ain't going to
00:56:15.780
start a shooting war over it. It might get mad at us. Tough. The United States should immediately
00:56:19.180
declare Taiwan a sovereign country. No more of this two systems, one country nonsense that China insists
00:56:25.060
upon. The United States should immediately sanction pretty much any business that is currently run by
00:56:31.320
the Chinese government. And if the United States wants to take measures to prevent people from
00:56:34.760
doing business with China, I'm not against it. I mean, right now, the problem is that you have a
00:56:38.260
collective action problem, which is that if businesses don't do business with China, they're
00:56:41.520
immediately undercut by other businesses that do do businesses with China. But that is exactly why
00:56:45.420
governments should get involved and they should be sanctioning China on a full scale. One of the great
00:56:49.200
mistakes, I think, in history, and maybe it was excusable at the time because we were at war with the
00:56:53.680
Soviet Union. But one of the great mistakes, in my view, was the opening of China. The idea that economics was ever
00:56:58.020
going to overcome values has been thoroughly rebuked by the presence of Chinese dictatorship,
00:57:02.640
which has strengthened, become more powerful, become more deep, more tyrannical, with the advent
00:57:08.180
of more capitalism. They've just taken all the spoils of a state-run, basically, fascist economy,
00:57:14.760
and then they've dumped it into their own dictatorship. The entire Western world should be united against
00:57:19.080
China right now. Whether they will or not is anybody's guess, but as the leaders of the free world,
00:57:22.900
it seems to me that we should be doing whatever we can to make it known to the Chinese economically
00:57:26.760
that we are simply not going to abide by their intellectual property theft, their human rights
00:57:30.640
predations, and their expansionism. All right, next question is for Jeremy. This is a pretty
00:57:35.960
interesting take, too. It says that we've seen this week, I know that you guys have seen that poll
00:57:39.240
that Frank Luntz and others have tweeted out that shows that 62 percent of Americans are afraid to share
00:57:43.760
their political views. But does this mean that the recent polls showing that Trump is down double
00:57:48.660
digits are then meaningless? So I'm not one who believes that we can just write off polls as
00:57:54.040
meaningless. Very often when conservatives say, well, the polls were wrong, the polls actually
00:57:58.300
weren't that wrong. You know, we like to say the polls showed that Hillary Clinton was going to win
00:58:04.000
in 2016, but she did win more votes in 2016. And basically by the same numbers that the polls
00:58:09.820
said that she would, the polls were very useful at helping understand human behavior. They were not
00:58:14.320
very good at specifying what was going to happen in some of the Midwestern states, which came down to
00:58:19.600
some fairly, very small and very anomalous things that occurred that allowed Trump to win. Listen,
00:58:25.060
I'm not saying he didn't win fair and square based on the system we have. He did. What I'm saying is
00:58:29.760
that the polls also were not wildly wrong about what the outcome was going to be in terms of the
00:58:33.840
human voting behavior at that time. That said, one other thing, there is no silent majority of
00:58:40.080
conservatives. There's this sort of idea hearkening back to Nixon that there's this silent majority
00:58:44.260
that all think the way that we do is going to rise up. It's very comforting, I think,
00:58:48.100
for conservatives to believe that. But it is not true. The left has won. Their opinions are the
00:58:55.700
more popular opinions by and large in the country, in particular among the young. If the election were
00:59:00.800
held today and only millennials were able to vote, Donald Trump would probably win zero states. At
00:59:06.500
most, he would win one state. And lest you roll your eyes and say, oh, who cares what the millennials
00:59:11.500
think? You're wrong about who millennials are. Michael Knowles is a millennial. The 20-year-old
00:59:16.220
that you just hired to work at your factory or the 16-year-old kid who you're still trying to get
00:59:22.020
out the front door. You got a couple more years of raising them. They aren't millennials. They're a
00:59:25.240
whole new generation that's coming up behind the millennials. The millennials are closer to 40 by and
00:59:30.200
large than they are to 20. And they are, for the first time in our history, the largest voting
00:59:36.580
demographic in the country. So the idea that you could have the largest voting demographic in the entire
00:59:42.860
country utterly despise everything that we believe, and yet somehow we're still a silent
00:59:48.520
majority and secretly everybody agrees with us, it's absurd. And it's going to be cold comfort when
00:59:55.680
to tell ourselves, oh, well, there's still a silent majority. They just didn't show up to vote
00:59:59.780
when we start getting pummeled in elections. Instead, we better stop lying to ourselves and do something
01:00:04.900
about the problem. So with those two caveats in mind, are there a lot more people who agree with us
01:00:12.100
than are willing to admit it? Of course. Are you out of your mind? You could lose everything by
01:00:16.060
agreeing with us on even the most benign topics. Men are not women, right? Men are not women is
01:00:22.620
bannable, boycottable in our society today. Even more benign things than that, saying I agree that
01:00:29.460
Black Lives Matter, but I don't agree with Black Lives Matter, would cost most people working in most
01:00:35.540
companies in this country today to lose their job. So you bet your rear end, there are a lot of
01:00:41.540
people afraid they should be afraid to speak their mind. I want to, though, tell you what I think the
01:00:46.500
answer is and not just leave you with a sort of despair. You know, Ben said that the government
01:00:51.640
needs to get involved in China because one of the good things that capitalism does is it creates
01:00:57.360
competition and competition creates efficiencies. We produce a wonderful tumbler, the leftist here's
01:01:03.760
hot or cold tumbler. The leftist here's hot or cold tumbler is manufactured in China. You might say,
01:01:08.900
why don't you manufacture it in America? Because there are zero companies in the United States of
01:01:14.280
America that manufacture still tumblers. It's not that it's more expensive to do it here. It is that
01:01:20.840
it is not possible to do it here. We've looked into it. Maybe we've missed one and somebody will correct
01:01:26.260
me to our ability to search it out. Trade with China has been going on now for over 50 years. There
01:01:33.480
are consequences of that change. We have moved a lot of our manufacturing overseas and I know some of you
01:01:38.760
are going to write in pissed off at me now and say, you're a hypocrite for buying your tumblers in
01:01:43.580
China. And you're going to type to me, of course, on your iPhone, which was also made in China or your
01:01:48.840
Android, which was made in China or your laptop, which was made in China. And I'm going to ignore
01:01:53.120
you because you're only actually proving the fact that manufacturing happens in China.
01:01:58.140
China. You don't stop that by Daily Wire saying, we're going to start a tumbler company. There's
01:02:05.080
no reason why we, you would need to make millions of tumblers. We purchased tens of thousands of
01:02:11.200
tumblers. We can't start a tumbler factory. Someone should start a tumbler factory and they will do so
01:02:16.620
when there's incentive for them to do, when they can do it competitively, when they won't lose by doing
01:02:21.800
it. One thing that I've discovered is everybody says that they want to buy American until they see the
01:02:26.400
price tag for buying American. And then everybody just buys China or buys India.
01:02:30.680
Jeremy, this happened. My wife said at the beginning of all the craziness with China,
01:02:34.720
you know, even before the pandemic, how they're cheating on the trade is, she said, we're just
01:02:37.800
going to buy American. I said, okay, that's fine. Buy dresses, buy shoes, buy American. There are only,
01:02:42.540
as you say, like three companies that do this. And even they get a lot of their stuff from China,
01:02:46.980
but the price, I'm actually willing to pay it. I am actually like, I am stubbornly American enough to
01:02:53.500
pay for it, but it's not just 20% more. It's like three X. Like it is so much more expensive.
01:02:59.480
So we looked at what it would take to actually manufacture the tumbler and our cost on manufacturing
01:03:04.640
the tumbler wouldn't be three X. It would be 20 X. If we were to manufacture the tumblers directly
01:03:10.660
and the machines that we would have to install in order to do it are themselves made in China.
01:03:16.520
So the only way that you deal with a problem like this is to take some sort of collective action
01:03:20.900
where the people who do what we don't want aren't the ones who succeed at the expense of the people
01:03:25.820
who try to do the thing that we do want. This is why capitalism actually does. There is a value
01:03:30.680
component to capitalism, which is that competition makes it to where the people who do the best make
01:03:39.020
the most. And when you start interfering with that in a bad way, I think you create some perverse
01:03:42.660
incentives. The same thing holds true though, on this question of the silent majority, the people
01:03:47.140
who are afraid to speak out. It is a collective action problem. If every single person in America
01:03:52.420
today who thinks that it is egregious that major league baseball is kneeling and condemning our
01:03:58.660
society before the game would just turn off the game. A hundred percent of us, you would see change.
01:04:03.920
If every one of us who is afraid that we might lose our job for speaking mainstream, traditionally
01:04:09.020
middle of the road, American opinions, like for example, segregation is bad. Equal justice under the
01:04:17.160
law is good. Hard work is not only for white people, which the Smithsonian literally said last week,
01:04:23.660
hard work is a white value that is, or the nuclear family is only a white value system. If we would all
01:04:29.700
just say bull crap, men are men, women are women, everybody can and should work hard. Black people are
01:04:34.880
not inferior or superior to white people. They're just people who should be held to the same set of
01:04:39.660
standards. Yes, some people are born in circumstances that are worse than others. Some of those people
01:04:45.280
are black. Some of those people are white. Some people are born with circumstances that are better
01:04:48.640
than others. And some of those people are black and some of those people are white. And the best we can
01:04:52.460
do is make a fair society and leave each other the hell alone. If we would all say that, they couldn't
01:04:57.140
fire all of us at the same time. The problem is we don't. And then we let one or two brave suckers
01:05:04.160
stick their necks out and they lose their jobs. And we all go, well, I wish somebody would stand up
01:05:09.480
to the left. And we go hide in the corner. It's a collective action issue. When the day comes that
01:05:15.400
we're all willing to stand up, they will have to stop, even if we're not the majority. A significant
01:05:21.540
plurality is enough to put a stop to this. And rant. Next question for Andrew. All right. Drew,
01:05:29.540
this comes from a Daily Wire all access subscriber, by the way. That's why they get to ask you a
01:05:33.940
question. And they say that they've been rereading 1984. And is it not so very concerning how similar
01:05:39.340
the structures that seem to be being built currently are to the structures and the procedures
01:05:43.820
of this fictional book? Drew, you didn't write 1984. No, I did actually. I used a different name
01:05:51.340
then. But no, listen, 1984 is a perfect description of Soviet Russia. And of course, the left always works
01:05:58.920
the same way. It has to work the same way. If you don't have, you know, the thing about it is,
01:06:02.720
there actually is a moral order. There actually is moral truth and spiritual truths. And in order
01:06:08.380
to erase these things, you have to erase every form of logic and information that can be, that is
01:06:14.420
available to people. It's not enough. It's not enough to lie to people. You have to stop people
01:06:18.720
from telling the truth. That's why you have cancel culture. There's no reason to have cancel culture
01:06:22.960
if you're right, if you're actually telling the truth. So everything in 1984, the famous scene in
01:06:29.060
1984, where they torture Winston Smith, and they say to him, it's not the two and two is four. It's
01:06:34.880
not the two and two is five. It's the two and two is whatever the party says it is. That's the system
01:06:40.560
that you have to install in order to overcome reality. And so whenever you have a movement like
01:06:46.620
Black Lives Matter, like Antifa, like anything that comes from the far left, that is actually in opposition
01:06:52.800
to reality. Those same systems for silencing the truth, for silencing people's, even their own
01:06:58.540
thought processes have to come into play. 1984 is prophetic. You know, they always used to say that
01:07:03.940
he got it wrong in 1984 and it was Brave New World that got it right. But no, I think the two of them
01:07:09.340
hopscotch over each other. Brave New World is a technological tyranny. But 1984 is the face of tyranny
01:07:15.300
in a technological world. And it always will be, and it will always remain. And when you look at what's
01:07:20.400
happening in our media, when Ben talks about the media, that's 1984. That's exactly what we're
01:07:25.420
talking about. When you talk about cancel culture, that is 1984. I wish people would read it because
01:07:30.460
it is an absolute exact and precise case study of this kind of tyranny. By the way, here I will again
01:07:37.220
stump for a movie that everybody should go watch right now. If you're looking for a good piece of
01:07:40.120
entertainment that really does have excellent values and has something to say, go check out the movie
01:07:45.260
Mr. Jones on Amazon. You should go rent it. It is the story of Gareth Jones, who is the
01:07:50.160
journalist who uncovered the Ukrainian Haladomar. And the villain in the piece is Walter Durante,
01:07:54.600
who is portrayed clear-eyed as the villain. I'm astonished. New York Times reporter. Yeah, I'm amazed
01:07:59.880
the movie was ever made. It's really clear-eyed and accurate and worth the watch. Well, you know,
01:08:04.360
speaking of the New York Times and 1984, when we were talking about that podcast, Jeremy, earlier,
01:08:09.680
that basically said the whole problem in American education is white people. Yeah. I reacted to that
01:08:14.980
jokingly and I said, yeah, white people are terrible and every other kind of person is better
01:08:19.460
and they're better particularly because of the color of their skin. Hashtag anti-racism. And
01:08:24.600
you know, obviously a little bit of a joke, except it actually makes sense from within the framework of
01:08:29.840
the New York Times and the left, because what they have defined racism as is anything white people do,
01:08:35.380
right? They say all white people are racist and racism is exclusively white. So you can't be any other
01:08:40.920
kind of color or ethnicity and, and be racist because blah, blah, blah. I don't know, because
01:08:46.160
they've come up with some definition of that. And so it, it, it actually does make sense that you have
01:08:50.920
to just say that white people are the problem for everything. If you live in a world where the,
01:08:55.120
the definition of words is not what it was today. It's not what it was yesterday. It's not even what
01:09:00.800
it will be tomorrow. The definition of words is what the party says it is. And where can we read that?
01:09:06.360
You read that in the New York Times and every other cultural institution the left took over.
01:09:09.620
Yeah. Michael, this question is for you. If you could construct an art to preserve man's
01:09:15.000
greatest works of art and literature, what would be the first three things that you'd put in there
01:09:19.900
after the Bible? Of course. After the Bible, it would be Dante. It would really be Inferno,
01:09:26.040
Purgatory and Paradise. The three parts of Dante's Divine Comedy. Or if you get rid of that,
01:09:30.360
I would do Dante and then I would do Shakespeare. And then I would do, I don't know, let's throw like a
01:09:36.000
Coravaggio in there just because- How to Destroy America in three easy steps.
01:09:40.700
I like left it hanging there for you, dude. It was so obvious. Like, just pick it up and be like,
01:09:45.980
here you go. Is that not in Dante's Divine Comedy? That was the fourth canticle of Dante's. You know,
01:09:52.380
I am rereading Dante right now. Man, that guy- You don't say. I am. I love, I actually haven't
01:09:57.180
really read it in 10 years. God, you're a douchebag. It is. It's so great. It's, well,
01:10:01.800
no, but this time, Ben, I'm reading it in English. So I haven't done that before. And I, you know,
01:10:05.580
initially was in the Italian, of course. And- You read the Milton in the Italian.
01:10:10.400
It's so great. Like, I, this is the thing that drives me the craziest about how the left has
01:10:14.580
destroyed education is it's not even that they teach us just stupid nonsense, like, you know,
01:10:19.540
feminist dance theory or all these other kinds of crazy things. It's what they don't teach you
01:10:25.220
because the whole point of education is you're supposed to get to enjoy all of these great
01:10:29.980
works of your civilization that you, you are simply not exposed to anymore. And even at like top
01:10:35.260
colleges, you, if you get an English degree, you're no longer required to read Shakespeare.
01:10:39.780
And so I think actually after the educational institutions completely deteriorate, we are
01:10:44.900
going to have to go to that desert island and I hope we bring good books.
01:10:48.780
All right. This question comes from a Daily Wire subscriber, also All Access,
01:10:53.100
which don't forget to use that code for 15% off backstage and two tumblers that are made in
01:10:58.220
China, apparently. Who knew? But Ben, this question is where- I mean, it says right on a
01:11:03.140
made in China. I mean, we weren't really hiding it. Ben, where should this Daily Wire subscriber
01:11:09.580
get all of their COVID news? I mean, other than the Daily Wire. So there are a couple of websites
01:11:13.920
that are, that are really worth checking out. There's one called COVID in Markets. It's run by a guy
01:11:16.940
named David Bonson who writes for National Review. And every day he puts together kind of the most
01:11:20.580
relevant charts with regard to COVID. And it really is as objective as objective can be.
01:11:23.980
He looks at the data with a skeptical eye. He is not alarmist in any way, but he is realistic about
01:11:30.280
sort of where things stand. He'll look internationally as well as domestically. So that's very good.
01:11:33.880
In terms of mainstream media, frankly, there's the Washington Post Health 202 blog is actually quite
01:11:38.020
good and shockingly nonpartisan in a way that the rest of the newspaper just is not. The political
01:11:43.760
pages cover COVID, which is insane. The political pages should not cover COVID. Only the health pages
01:11:47.820
really should cover COVID because it's a health issue. And that's why you see kind of idiot
01:11:51.420
reporters who don't know the first thing about even the coverage of epidemiology pretending they
01:11:56.440
know what they're talking about. But those would be a couple of really good sources. There are a
01:12:01.460
couple of people on Twitter who are sort of skeptics that I sort of balance with people who are not as
01:12:04.660
skeptical. I'll say something controversial. I'll take a look at Alex Berenson. I'll take a look at
01:12:09.100
Aaron Gann. I'll take a look at Younone Weiss. These are all three people who are kind of skeptical
01:12:14.140
of the mainstream media narrative on this stuff. But then I will also follow people like Scott
01:12:18.320
Gottlieb from the FDA. I'll try it. One of the big problems here is that there are no experts on a
01:12:23.240
brand new pandemic. So when people say, listen to the experts, no one is an expert on a thing that
01:12:27.100
has never happened before. It is impossible to be an expert on that, which means that we basically
01:12:31.120
what we've been left with is a piece of expertise that is not expertise at all. Stay away from other
01:12:34.740
people. Don't breathe on them. Wear a mask if you're going to be in close proximity to them and wash your
01:12:39.840
hands a lot. Okay. Which is all crap that we knew in 1918, right? Literally nothing has changed
01:12:43.740
except that we pretend that we know things that we absolutely don't know. And then we blame Trump
01:12:47.280
for all the things that we don't know. Trump is the God of the gaps for so many of these reporters.
01:12:51.460
It really is amazing, right? They're constantly talking about religious people. Well, you know,
01:12:54.720
in the areas where science doesn't have an answer yet, you say, oh, there's where God is. Well,
01:12:58.300
that's exactly what they do with Trump, right? Once the science has made clear that lockdowns
01:13:02.420
may not have worked all that great. Once the science makes clear that California does one thing
01:13:06.160
and Massachusetts does another, New York does another, and Florida and Texas, they all do different
01:13:09.760
things. And yet the result seems kind of similar. So we don't actually know what the hell is going on.
01:13:12.800
To New York where everybody died. Well, yeah, that's different. That's because
01:13:15.020
Andrew Cuomo is a horrible, but the, but the, the go-to is a God of the gaps. You don't know
01:13:20.100
what's happening. Trump, right? It's unbelievable. The religious fervor with which they dedicate their,
01:13:24.300
their lives to sussing out the various doctrinal intricacies of Trump's mind. When, as we all know,
01:13:31.080
it ain't that intricate guys. So like it really isn't. By the way, just quick note on this. I know it's
01:13:35.960
off topic. Have you been following Andrew Cuomo and his fast and his fascist quest to outlaw buffalo wings?
01:13:41.900
Well, making restaurant serve sandwiches, everything that they say about Trump and COVID,
01:13:47.380
that he's a fascist, that he, that he's incompetent, that he's running everything into the ground,
01:13:51.020
that he's micromanaging and that he wants to control your life. Every single one of those
01:13:54.340
things is true about Andrew Cuomo, except 83,000 times more, including the number of deaths. And
01:13:59.800
Andrew Cuomo is building fricking paper mache mountains of the dead. And then standing in front
01:14:06.540
of them, like Richard Dreyfuss with a fork in front of a giant sculpture of Devil's Tower,
01:14:10.540
explaining to people that he has actually saved thousands of lives. How that, that guy has a 60,
01:14:15.860
70% approval rating in New York. I don't want to hear about how New Yorkers are smart anymore. I just
01:14:19.080
don't. I'm not willing to hear it anymore. You've blown your opportunity to prove to me how smart you
01:14:22.380
are by telling me that Andrew Cuomo is a good governor and Bill de Blasio is a good mayor. What the
01:14:25.960
hell is wrong. Come on. Two months ago, you know, California has taken COVID more seriously than
01:14:30.340
many places. Two months ago, though, if you walk around my neighborhood in the evening,
01:14:33.780
out walking a chief executive dog, Jasper here, you would see that most people had a mask, but they
01:14:39.120
weren't wearing a mask. Why were they not wearing the mask? Because they were outside and it was 90
01:14:43.340
degrees and they were walking. And they would go out of their way to avoid you, you know, and everybody
01:14:48.460
gave each other a wide berth. Today, you walk out on the streets, everyone is wearing a mask. Why?
01:14:53.800
What's the reason? The answer is the same as why Cuomo has a 65% approval rating. It's because
01:15:02.580
COVID has become decidedly political. And the mask, it's not a mask against getting COVID. It's a mask
01:15:10.300
of being in any way perceived to be rejecting the narrative that you must believe in order to be a
01:15:17.340
virtuous person. And so you will see people jogging in the now 90 degree Sherman Oaks heat wearing masks.
01:15:23.160
It's not to keep them safe from the virus. It's to keep them safe from the mob. And that's why
01:15:28.640
that's the same reason Cuomo, it doesn't matter how many people die on Cuomo's watch. Cuomo has been
01:15:33.040
determined by the party to be the great responder to the pandemic. And therefore, he is no data required.
01:15:42.740
All right. This question is about health care. Speaking of COVID, somebody wants to know broadly,
01:15:46.720
how can we improve the system? And is it possible to unlink insurance from work or create privatization
01:15:52.640
to encourage better competition like across state lines, et cetera? This question is for Ben.
01:15:58.960
Well, okay. So let me put down the popcorn for just a second here. So here's the deal.
01:16:04.560
It didn't seem like it was going to be a Ben question.
01:16:06.140
Right. I mean, I just answered one like one second ago. Anyway, this around the horn has really
01:16:10.100
stopped dead. So the answer is it is actually quite difficult to de-link employment and insurance at
01:16:16.600
this point in time, simply because so many people are dependent on it. If you threw people back on
01:16:20.300
their own personal insurance, people would freak the hell out. They would lose their minds, even
01:16:24.200
though that is really the only step that could be taken to really heavily privatize the insurance
01:16:28.120
industry and link your level of cost with your level of risk, which is what is necessary in order
01:16:32.760
to have a transparent and functional market. So with that said, there are certain things you can do
01:16:37.380
around the edges to make the markets more efficient. You can certainly remove a lot of
01:16:40.280
the regulations that are placed on insurance companies, which are, by the way, not earning
01:16:43.720
money hand over fist. This idea that insurance companies are just raking it in is not true.
01:16:47.540
That is a 2% industry at best. That's like a good year for the health insurance industry is they
01:16:51.240
make a 2% margin. They're not raking it in to the tune of billions and billions. If they are raking it
01:16:55.560
in, the reason they're raking it in is because the government is subsidizing them, which is one of the
01:16:59.360
reasons that so many insurance companies actually supported Obamacare, because in the short term,
01:17:02.620
it mandated that people buy insurance, which meant that the insurance companies in the short term made a lot of
01:17:06.540
money, even though on the back end, they were going to lose a lot of money when Obamacare's
01:17:09.760
regulations started to kick in. And all of a sudden, you have to cover all these people with
01:17:12.780
preexisting conditions who'd never joined before. There are certain things you can do that Avic Roy
01:17:18.120
has talked about this over at the Apothecary and the Forbes blog. He's written full studies on what
01:17:22.680
could be done to make health markets more efficient. Getting rid of regulations on state lines would be
01:17:28.160
an easy one. Getting rid of a lot of the regulations with regard to how insurance is done would be an easy
01:17:32.300
one. If you actually want to make health insurance cheaper, then what you have to do is get
01:17:36.480
rid of all the provisions that nobody is willing to do politically, namely preexisting conditions.
01:17:40.380
Health insurance is never going to be cheap so long as it's not insurance at all. If I'm insuring
01:17:45.200
myself and I already have a disease, that's not insurance. That is me buying the same coverage at
01:17:50.360
a discount. In the same way that if I set my house on fire and then buy insurance, that's not me buying
01:17:55.880
insurance against the fire. That is me attempting to game the system by having the insurance company
01:17:59.880
pay for the damages that I have already incurred.
01:18:02.700
You're stealing from all the people who are actually paying the whole time.
01:18:05.320
Right. And that's not true for people with preexisting conditions who are just desperate
01:18:07.680
to get care, obviously. But what we're talking about here is how you lower costs. So the
01:18:11.680
framework I always use in discussing health insurance is very easy. You can have two of
01:18:15.280
the following three. You cannot have all three. You can either have a universal system or you
01:18:18.540
can have a quality system or you can have a cheap system. You cannot have all three of
01:18:21.400
those. There's no such thing as a universal quality cheap system. They do not exist. If you
01:18:25.160
want a universal system that is quality, it will be expensive. If you want a universal
01:18:28.380
system that is cheap, it's going to lack in quality. If you want a cheap system that has good
01:18:32.040
quality, it is probably not going to be universal. Andrew, is it possible for you to name a member
01:18:37.380
of the media or just in general that's a liberal that you follow or read that actually has some
01:18:42.120
well thought out arguments that make you think about their perspective? Is that one for me?
01:18:46.860
Andrew. Oh, you know, that's that's a really good question. I read the New York Times every
01:18:51.920
single morning and it has become consistently it is consistently gone from being a fair statement of
01:18:59.640
what the left believes to being crazy land. I mean, you really feel I always I always call the op-ed
01:19:04.220
page knucklehead row, but it's almost more like an asylum at this point. And when I think of like
01:19:09.440
liberals who are thoughtful, I can't when I think of liberals who are thoughtful, I'm now thinking of
01:19:16.160
conservatives. I'm thinking of conservatives who are a little bit more to the center center. I think
01:19:22.180
I live a little bit more in the center in most things. And I think that almost, you know, a long time
01:19:27.240
ago, Lionel Trilling, the famous literary critic, said that there is no such thing as an intellectual
01:19:32.080
conservative movement. Conservatism is just a kind of emotional gesture. I think that's true of the
01:19:38.020
left now. I don't think that there is an intellectual left. I think that there is only an intellectual
01:19:42.240
right, which goes from middle of the road guys to the far right. And I think that this is where the
01:19:48.020
debates are happening. It's where the where nobody's afraid to speak. I mean, I always say, you know,
01:19:52.300
I said to Barry Weiss when she left the New York Times, I said, you know, you're you're on the wrong
01:19:56.320
side. You know, I keep saying this to all these people. You know, you're on the wrong side. Barry Weiss
01:20:01.080
would be an example of a thoughtful of a thoughtful person who considers himself liberal that I do read.
01:20:07.540
My sister, Caitlin Flanagan, is a very fine writer who frequently says really interesting things. And she
01:20:12.700
tends to trend toward the left a little bit. There are these people, but they are fighting a system that really
01:20:18.160
wants to shut them up. So if you want to go to places where you can argue with things, if you
01:20:22.340
want to live in the sort of Dave Rubin world where we're all talking to each other, you really have
01:20:26.780
to be on the right. This is where the conversations are taking place. Quick note here. So I want to
01:20:30.520
just say about that Harper's Weekly letter. So there's Harper's Weekly letter where a bunch of people
01:20:33.720
who are sort of liberal minded said we're done with cancel culture. And there wasn't a single Trump
01:20:37.360
voter on that list. I'm very happy that that letter exists. And until one member of that group is
01:20:42.760
willing to have a conversation publicly with a person who did vote for Trump, it means nothing.
01:20:46.640
Okay. Because, because that entire, that entire statement was designed to open the Overton window
01:20:51.560
just enough for them. In other words, like we want to escape the cancel culture ourselves,
01:20:56.220
but how many of us are willing to actually cry? Now here's the truth. I know a lot of people on
01:20:59.840
that list and I know some of them are willing to have those conversations, but that letter is only
01:21:03.360
going to matter when that letter includes people ranging from Noam Chomsky to people like you drew
01:21:08.620
and ranging from people like Ann Applebaum to people like Knowles and ranging from people like
01:21:12.940
Thomas Chatterton Williams to people like Jeremy, right? That's the only time that's going to matter
01:21:16.380
because either there's going to be an alliance built between the old school liberals who are
01:21:19.820
not hardcore leftists and people on the right who are committed to free speech, or there will be no
01:21:24.220
alliance at all. And the left is just going to eat this entire, this entire steak piece by piece.
01:21:27.840
You know, on this point of the, where to look in the apparatus of the mainstream media,
01:21:33.100
I don't think there is any place to look. I mean, you met like, I love Caitlin Flanagan and a couple
01:21:37.840
other people, but I don't think that's really where you look. I think the interesting far left even stuff
01:21:44.100
and certainly right-wing stuff you see is on Twitter. It's on these accounts that are named,
01:21:50.200
they're like puns on old philosophers or there are other kind of meany kinds of names. And you know,
01:21:55.540
you can actually find some accounts there that are anonymous because if these, even the leftists,
01:22:00.040
if they say things that are contrary to the approved views of, you know, the liberal establishment,
01:22:04.760
they'll get killed. So they, you know, they, they hide their, their names. You can find some
01:22:10.360
interesting debates happening there. But you know, as you mentioned, Ben, these people are so
01:22:14.380
afraid to even come out and speak to anyone who may have voted for Trump. They're so afraid that
01:22:18.800
those, those conversations, unfortunately right now often have to happen anonymously.
01:22:23.360
I just want to point one thing out about that Harper's letter too, which is really interesting
01:22:27.480
that it, it started out with this big kind of liberal throat clearing about how the right is so much
01:22:32.980
worse, but we're going down this wrong road. And there was a line in there saying,
01:22:36.460
we know that the right is, is, is really the censor, uh, censorious side. Yeah. And every time
01:22:42.120
I see them make that statement, I think name one time, name one place where right-wingers censor
01:22:47.420
people, just please, where they cancel people, where they get people fired. It is really impossible.
01:22:52.120
And this, I feel this way about Trump too. I love, by the way, Ben, I got to tell you, I love
01:22:55.900
Trump of the gaps. I think that that is the only original thing anybody said about Donald Trump
01:22:59.780
the last year. But I think every time I hear that Trump is a unique threat to our way of life,
01:23:04.880
I think name one thing, name a thing he's done. And the New York times, as Barry White said,
01:23:09.760
when you read their op-ed section, it's one op-ed after another saying, what a terrible threat to
01:23:14.300
our way of life is Donald Trump. And I think, okay, name a specific thing. And they never can.
01:23:18.680
It's, it really is amazing. And that the reason for that is they don't listen to anybody but
01:23:22.660
themselves. Well, and that people like Barry and people like we've got, I won't name them for
01:23:29.560
this unfair. Many of our friends who are part of the either intellectual dark web movement or
01:23:34.380
the sort of online moderate centrist, self-described centrist movement. Even they,
01:23:42.020
they're like people who used to be Republicans but call themselves libertarians because maybe they
01:23:46.120
wouldn't get made fun of at work. This movement is a group of people who cannot acknowledge even
01:23:50.840
to themselves that both sides aren't equally bad. The only way that they're able to criticize
01:23:56.720
the left at all is if they first denounce the right. And I, and I don't actually, I will say,
01:24:04.360
I don't think they're just doing it. Barry's letter didn't do that. So to be fair,
01:24:06.860
Barry's letter didn't. But the Harper letter certainly did. And I don't think that they're
01:24:12.600
just posturing in their own minds. They are just posturing, but I'm sure that in their minds,
01:24:17.520
they've actually carved out some way in which they believe that that's true because they're still
01:24:22.500
looking at a right that doesn't exist. And, and many of you, Michael and I were actually talking
01:24:27.120
about this before the show about, uh, uh, someone with whom we're all friendly who the, the right
01:24:33.180
they denounce is not the right that actually exists. They don't know what people on the right
01:24:37.720
actually believe. And so they want to say things like, well, you know, yes, on, on the extreme end
01:24:43.440
of the left, uh, you've got people who are tearing down statues and calling for segregation,
01:24:48.380
but you know, on the extreme side of the right, you guys have a lot of people who want to tear
01:24:52.240
down statues, uh, and go back to segregation too. And you're like, well, no, that's not on the
01:24:57.120
extreme side of the left. That's on the very mainstream side of the left. Uh, like literally
01:25:01.340
not one person in Congress will denounce either of those ideas if they're a Democrat. And on the
01:25:05.960
right, there is no one in the Republican party in Congress who wouldn't denounce anyone who
01:25:11.900
believed that. And they look at you like you're crazy. Like, well, that can't be true because in my
01:25:16.300
mind, that's what the right is. It's very comforting to believe that if there's sort of equal
01:25:21.180
evil on both sides or they're both the problem, but it just ain't the case. Sorry. Sorry, folks.
01:25:25.980
And you know, the, the funny thing is, is when people get red pilled, they first get red pilled
01:25:29.660
and they start to associate with, uh, conservatives. The first thing they say is, gee, people are so
01:25:34.620
nice. And when you consider the four of us, if they're saying that about us, people on the left
01:25:39.020
must be awful. No, but this is all, that's exactly right. Because every time I was on Joe Rogan's
01:25:44.320
show this week, and I'm very friendly with Joe. I think Joe's a great guy. We have a lot of fun
01:25:47.240
together. And all the comments are like, I didn't know that, that Shapiro was such a nice guy. He's
01:25:51.440
such a human being. And it's like, I'm the exact same human being on my show as I was on Joe's
01:25:54.820
show. It's just that nobody on the left really wants to have an open conversation. If they do,
01:25:59.440
it's extraordinarily rare, but they actually want is to browbeat people or not to have them on at all.
01:26:03.980
Right. That's, that's really the goal. And it's, it's really, it's quite disheartening because
01:26:08.540
I really believe that if there is to be a, a future for the country that lies in rights,
01:26:13.020
there is going to have to be a liberal part of the country that stands up on its hind legs and says,
01:26:18.140
I would rather associate with these people. I disagree with about nearly everything when it
01:26:21.400
comes to policy, then you people with whom I agree with on policy about a lot of things,
01:26:25.760
but you guys want to tear down the entire system. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to give
01:26:29.300
away my rights just because you and I both agree that America should move toward a more progressive
01:26:33.320
tax system. Like that's not something I'm willing to do until liberals are willing to actually cross
01:26:37.060
that aisle and shake a few hands and reckon more than anything, just recognize that we're human
01:26:41.220
beings too on this side. I mean, it's what I've said a thousand times. It's the happy birthday
01:26:44.240
problem. Every time I have a birthday, I will get 20 texts from people who are on the left inside
01:26:48.240
mainstream leftist organizations with whom I am friendly, who I've offered a public shoulder to
01:26:52.980
when they have been ripped on, right? I'm the guy out there defending fricking Matt Iglesias,
01:26:56.500
who I've called the Ralph Wiggum of the internet. When he's being assaulted by the, by the members of
01:27:00.580
his own publication, I'm out there defending Matt Iglesias. I'll get bunch of, I'll get, you know,
01:27:04.160
letters from inside major organizations on the left, happy birthday. And then on Twitter, nothing because the minute you
01:27:09.940
acknowledge that people on the right are human beings, then you have, you have humanized them
01:27:13.260
and you must never, ever humanize anybody on the right. It's more important not to humanize anybody
01:27:16.560
on the right than to preserve the rights for everybody. Yeah, that's right. And we all know
01:27:20.560
that Ben's really a robot and he just put on a different mask when he went on Joe Rogan. It was a
01:27:24.460
very enjoyable interview, by the way. I finally get to curse. I mean, with Joe, it's almost, it's in the
01:27:29.200
water or the DMT or whatever it is. It takes you a while to warm up though. Like the first 10 minutes,
01:27:32.420
you're like the effing. And then you like eventually got there. Eventually you're dragged down into,
01:27:37.840
into Joe's world. That's the way that that works. Speaking of being dragged down, Michael,
01:27:43.360
do you think that Ghislaine Maxwell will make it to testify and other thoughts?
01:27:49.320
I was under the impression she had already committed suicide in the future. What day is it? Is it not?
01:27:55.180
No, it's what you're right. I'm sorry. The Clintons haven't scheduled that until at least next Monday.
01:27:59.460
I actually do think, I mean, all, all sort of Clinton, Epstein didn't kill himself jokes aside.
01:28:03.720
I do think she probably will make it because if, if this woman ends up dead in her jail cell,
01:28:12.860
like the conspiracy theorists will take, they will march on Washington. They will take over the
01:28:18.000
country because by the way, it will be evidence of a conspiracy. So you can't call it a conspiracy
01:28:21.440
theory anymore. It seems as though she's already cooperating with the feds. It seems that she's
01:28:26.200
given up some names, which I'm sure will remain redacted, you know, for, for the near future because
01:28:31.360
they, uh, you know, implicate so many powerful people around the world. But, but this, this is
01:28:36.080
the, like the real problem. I don't particularly care about Ghislaine Maxwell in particular,
01:28:39.620
but on this issue generally, the left is always, and some people on the right complain about
01:28:43.740
conspiracy theorists. Why are there, and you know, the left will even label sort of mainstream ideas,
01:28:48.960
conspiracy theories, but they never ask themselves, why do conspiracy theories take hold? They take
01:28:54.240
hold because we have no faith in our institutions, in the media, in the administrative government,
01:28:59.420
and we have no faith in them because they have squandered that faith. They have squandered
01:29:04.600
that credibility. You can't believe what you read on the papers or see on cable news. And you,
01:29:09.380
you see obvious incidents of incompetence or corruption in the federal government or, or very
01:29:14.880
often both. So, you know, I, I, I'm sort of sick of hearing the left complain about the conspiracy
01:29:20.100
theorists, uh, quit, quit creating the breeding ground on which those, uh, conspiracies crop.
01:29:26.620
Also Jeffrey Epstein didn't kill himself, man. I mean, come on. I have said a lot of warm words
01:29:33.040
about president Trump. He, he made it into the same sentence as Washington in the same sentence
01:29:36.880
as God for me on this very podcast. Let me just say it's real weird that he went into a press
01:29:41.380
conference and wished Ghislaine Maxwell the best. I love, I don't know what, of course you loved it.
01:29:46.720
What other answer was he going to give? Was he supposed to, I hope she fries in hell. She was
01:29:50.060
procuring underage prostitutes for overage men. Like, how about that? That'd be a good answer.
01:29:54.460
No presumption of innocence. What the heck? We need, we need due process even for, uh, the madam
01:29:59.220
of the most notorious monster that we've seen in the last 30 years. Listen, I think that if we
01:30:05.240
can't even agree on whether or not Donald Trump was right to, to approve of Maxwell, then it's
01:30:10.580
probably time to call this show off and engage in our inner, uh, uh, internet. Yeah. Well, we have
01:30:16.700
no unionist tendencies left. Uh, go buy Ben's book. That was the name of the episode. And it's also a
01:30:22.040
good note on which to conclude. Also become an all access member. If you're not already
01:30:26.160
one, you can keep hanging out with us right now over yonder at dailywire.com where we'll
01:30:31.260
be taking even more questions. If you haven't been over to one of these because you're not
01:30:34.880
an all access member, you're really missing out. We answer, I think it's fair to say a
01:30:39.680
hundred questions probably get answered, uh, during the course of this, uh, all access discussion
01:30:43.980
that we're going to go. 92 by Ben. Cause he types so fast, but the rest of us get in there.
01:30:47.680
Yeah. Yeah. Come over and see us. Thanks for hanging out with us and we will see you
01:30:59.680
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