The Ben Shapiro Show - Are We About To See War In The Middle East? | Ep. 475

00:00:00.000 We may be looking at war in the Middle East, John Kelly's nightmare is coming true, and Elizabeth Warren speaks to a Native American group. 1.00

00:00:06.000 And it's pretty funny.

00:00:07.000 I'll tell you all about it, Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 So Foca Honta is speaking in front of a Native American group today, sending some serious smoke signals from her wigwam about her future presidential run. 1.00

00:00:21.000 That is not me mocking Native Americans, by the way.

00:00:22.000 That is me mocking Elizabeth Warren's pretensions to be a Native American.

00:00:26.000 She used that nonsense to essentially become a professor at Harvard Law School, apparently. 1.00

00:00:31.000 And now she's trying to use this Native American group as a shield in order to shield herself from accusations that she's a liar about that Native American heritage. 1.00

00:00:40.000 We'll get to all of those things first.

00:00:41.000 I want to say thank you to our sponsors over

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00:01:39.000 Alrighty, so.

00:01:41.000 I do want to get to all of the issues in domestic politics.

00:01:43.000 A shocking new poll that shows Republicans now up in the generic ballot.

00:01:48.000 Like actually up in the generic ballot.

00:01:51.000 That's making a lot of headlines.

00:01:52.000 Elizabeth Warren obviously making headlines.

00:01:54.000 But I want to start today with a story that people are overlooking and that is we may have like a full-scale war in the Middle East.

00:01:59.000 Another one.

00:02:00.000 In the very near future.

00:02:01.000 See, when we decided that we were going to get rid of ISIS, that was a very good thing.

00:02:04.000 But there's been nothing to fill the gap.

00:02:06.000 And so what you're ending up with now is essentially six separate countries who are now involving themselves in a Syrian war.

00:02:12.000 So you've got Iran that's involved in Syria.

00:02:14.000 You've got Israel that's, in response, involved in Syria.

00:02:17.000 You've got the Syrian government involved in Syria.

00:02:18.000 You've got Russia involved in Syria.

00:02:20.000 You've got Turkey involved in Syria.

00:02:21.000 So it's a lot of countries involved in a very small space, all of them fighting for a certain level of supremacy.

00:02:27.000 Of course, the United States is involved there as well.

00:02:30.000 And all this internecine warfare, it could have serious external effects.

00:02:35.000 So, if you missed it, over the last week, there was a major issue in which an Israeli plane was shot down.

00:02:41.000 We talked about this.

00:02:41.000 An Israeli plane was shot down after Israel shot down a drone from Syria.

00:02:45.000 It was an Iranian-made drone. 0.95

00:02:47.000 And Israel shot that down.

00:02:48.000 Israel flew an F-16 over Syrian airspace.

00:02:51.000 That was shot down by a Syrian anti-aircraft missile.

00:02:57.000 Israel said, hey, you're going to shoot down our planes.

00:02:59.000 Here's what we're going to do to you.

00:03:00.000 And they legitimately proceeded to destroy half of the Syrian air force while it was on the ground.

00:03:05.000 Because don't screw with the Israeli military, I think is the main message there.

00:03:11.000 They went in in an air raid, and they destroyed half the Syrian air force on the ground.

00:03:15.000 One of the things this makes clear, by the way, is just how much of a lie it was when Barack Obama said there was nothing we could do in Syria to stop, for example, the gassing of citizens of that country. 0.50

00:03:26.000 Israel, in legitimately an hour, destroyed half the Syrian Air Force.

00:03:29.000 Half of it.

00:03:30.000 If the United States had wanted to, under President Obama, after the original Bashar Assad chemical attack, we could have grounded his entire air force nearly immediately.

00:03:39.000 But that's not the extent of the conflict.

00:03:40.000 At that point, the Syrians basically backed off of Israel and said, OK, we're not interested in doing this right now.

00:03:45.000 But that's really a proxy war, Syria, between Israel and Iran, because Iran is funneling supplies to Hezbollah, a terrorist group in Lebanon, through Syria, and they are moving all of those supplies directly through areas that Israel has been hitting.

00:03:57.000 Meanwhile, there's the Syrian proxy war heating up between the United States and Russia.

00:04:01.000 So, on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported that U.S.

00:04:03.000 and Kurdish forces in Syria had killed 200 fighters, including a bunch of Russians.

00:04:08.000 So, Russia has a bunch of contract mercenary soldiers on the ground over there.

00:04:13.000 And the Russians were fighting on the side of the embattled leader Bashar al-Assad.

00:04:16.000 They attacked a military base in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria on February 7th.

00:04:20.000 Now, there is no congressional authorization for American forces to be in Syria.

00:04:24.000 This is why we actually need, as Rand Paul says, we need congressional authorization.

00:04:28.000 If we're going to be there, then we ought to have Congress authorize it.

00:04:30.000 The American people ought to be clear about what exactly our goals are there.

00:04:34.000 Is it to solidify?

00:04:35.000 Is it to preserve the status quo?

00:04:37.000 Why exactly we're there?

00:04:38.000 Why are men and women in harm's way?

00:04:40.000 Why are we spending our cash there?

00:04:42.000 The Russians, however, actually attacked 0.65

00:04:45.000 A U.S.-run base, essentially.

00:04:47.000 There's a U.S.

00:04:47.000 force station with Syrian Democratic Force troops on a base, and those troops responded with artillery fire and airstrikes, and 200 to 300 Russians were apparently killed.

00:04:58.000 Thank you for having me.

00:05:17.000 However, Major Adrian Rankin-Galloway is a spokesperson for the U.S.

00:05:20.000 Department of Defense.

00:05:21.000 He said officials believed roughly 100 people were killed in the raid, though he said he couldn't speculate about their nationality.

00:05:26.000 Bloomberg reported the number dead was closer to 200.

00:05:28.000 The New York Times said dozens of Russians were believed to be killed.

00:05:32.000 CIA Director Mike Pompeo, this is according to Vox.com, also refused to confirm specifics when asked whether the U.S.

00:05:37.000 was responsible for killing Russian contract soldiers in Syria during a hearing on Tuesday.

00:05:41.000 He said, So, again, in the last week, we've seen Israel take out half of the Syrian Air Force, and we've seen the United States kill something like 100 Russian fighters, apparently.

00:05:57.000 So, all of this is heating up in rather rapid fashion.

00:06:01.000 And meanwhile, on the domestic political scene in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu may be in some trouble.

00:06:06.000 The prime minister of Israel has now been indicted on a couple of counts of bribery.

00:06:11.000 One of those counts essentially suggests that he was accepting gifts from wealthy benefactors in return for advancing their interests.

00:06:20.000 There's another case that suggests that he was trying to strike a deal that would have given him positive coverage in Yediot Aharonot, which is one of the major newspapers in Israel, in exchange for hurting Israel Hayom, which is the free rival to Yediot Aharonot.

00:06:32.000 That one I find a little more suspicious, since the fact is that Israel Hayom is very pro-Netanyahu in the first place, and it is funded by Sheldon Adelson, who's an ally of Bibi's politically.

00:06:42.000 According to the police, in Case 1000, Netanyahu received champagne, cigars, jewelry and clothing by demand and systematically valued at about a million shekels, which is about 280 grand in American dollars.

00:06:52.000 The gifts he received from the Israeli-American Hollywood producer Arnon Milchan increased significantly once Netanyahu was elected prime minister.

00:07:00.000 There is a case to be made against him in the media case.

00:07:03.000 One of the problems in that case is that one of the people testifying against him is a political rival who is a former news guy, Yair Lapid.

00:07:11.000 He is now in the opposition.

00:07:12.000 He was Netanyahu's finance minister in the past, and he has been testifying against Netanyahu.

00:07:17.000 Bottom line is that in order for Netanyahu to step down, he's probably going to have to be convicted.

00:07:21.000 Unclear whether he actually would be convicted in these cases.

00:07:24.000 And right now, with Israel under fire, it's pretty unlikely that Netanyahu is going to step down in the middle of all this.

00:07:29.000 So what we're seeing right now, in other words, is chaos across the region.

00:07:33.000 The Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, the Israelis are all working hand in hand in order to try and stop the impact

00:07:38.000 We're good to go!

00:08:03.000 At least until its latter days.

00:08:04.000 The Trump administration has said a lot of the right things on the Middle East, but they're not actually doing a lot on the Middle East.

00:08:09.000 So whenever there's an uprising in Iran, for example, we say a lot of stuff, but it's not clear that we're actually doing much of anything.

00:08:15.000 In Syria right now, we're doing a few things, but not enough that we're actually seriously involved, and too much to say that we're not involved at all.

00:08:23.000 At a certain point, we're going to have to take a harder position on what exactly we want to see happen in Syria because otherwise the chances of escalation here are increasingly likely.

00:08:31.000 It's increasingly likely that this will end up spiraling out of control.

00:08:34.000 Israel will hit the Syrians. 0.98

00:08:35.000 The Syrians will hit Israel. 1.00

00:08:36.000 Iran will be drawn in. 0.88

00:08:37.000 Israel will go to war with Iran. 0.78

00:08:38.000 A regional war like that would look a lot like World War III.

00:08:41.000 Okay, so,

00:09:02.000 I want to talk a little bit about domestic politics in just a second.

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00:10:27.000 From the domestic political scene, Elizabeth Warren, apparently, is now speaking out about how she is a Native American.

00:10:33.000 So she's speaking to the Native American—or Native Indian Conference of some such or other.

00:10:40.000 I'm not sure what exactly.

00:10:42.000 It was the National Congress of American Indians.

00:10:43.000 That's what it was.

00:10:44.000 She made a surprise appearance at the National Congress of American Indians.

00:10:48.000 And apparently, she was just—she was incredibly great.

00:10:53.000 I mean, she was—

00:10:54.000 She was just full-on regalia.

00:10:56.000 She showed up with the headdress.

00:10:57.000 She showed up with the smoke and peace pipe. 0.92

00:10:59.000 The whole deal.

00:11:00.000 And again, whenever I say things like this, it's not because I'm mocking Native American culture.

00:11:03.000 It's because I'm mocking Elizabeth Warren for appropriating Native American heritage.

00:11:08.000 So here's what she said to the Native American Conference.

00:11:10.000 By all accounts, my mother was a beauty. 0.81

00:11:12.000 I know Elizabeth Warren, by the way, and she is one of the more obnoxious humans on planet Earth. 1.00

00:11:16.000 By all accounts, my mother was a beauty. 0.81

00:11:18.000 She was born in eastern Oklahoma on this exact day, Valentine's Day, in February 14th, 1912.

00:11:23.000 She grew up in the little town of Wetumpka, the kind of girl who would sit for hours by herself playing the piano and singing.

00:11:28.000 My daddy fell head over heels in love with her, but my mother's family was part Native American, and my daddy's parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship.

00:11:35.000 So, in 1932, when my mother was 19 and daddy had just turned 20, they eloped.

00:11:40.000 Okay, so she doesn't provide any evidence, by the way, that she is of Native American heritage at all.

00:11:44.000 Like, none.

00:11:45.000 Like, zero evidence.

00:11:45.000 And then she says, this is my favorite line, She's openly admitting that she's not enrolled in a tribe, that you won't be able to find any of her family members on the Native American rolls.

00:11:59.000 Remember, the record-keeping for Native American heritage is extremely good, right?

00:12:02.000 It is very in-depth, which is why you can have situations where

00:12:06.000 Legitimately, the government will come and take somebody who's a quarter Native American out of their foster home and bring them back to a reservation because of how good the rules are. 1.00

00:12:14.000 Right?

00:12:15.000 But this is the best part.

00:12:15.000 She says, quote,

00:12:22.000 have shaped and reshaped our country right up to the present day.

00:12:25.000 For far too long, your story has been pushed aside to be trotted out only in cartoons and commercials.

00:12:30.000 So I'm here today to make a promise.

00:12:32.000 Each time someone brings up my family's story, I'm going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities.

00:12:37.000 And that last line there, as Alex Griswold says at Free Beacon, that is called using the Native American community as your political human shield.

00:12:45.000 Every time someone calls her foca-hontas,

00:12:47.000 Every time President Trump botches it and calls her Pocahontas, every time that happens, she's simply going to shift it and say, Native Americans are so important.

00:12:55.000 Native American heritage is so important.

00:12:56.000 Never mind the fact that we call her Pocahontas because she's been lying about her Native American heritage. 1.00

00:13:00.000 I mean, she's as Native American as Sean King is black, apparently.

00:13:04.000 The idea that Sean King, by the way, his father was white, his mother was white on the birth certificate.

00:13:09.000 He says that his mom had an affair.

00:13:10.000 There's no evidence that any of this is true.

00:13:13.000 The same thing is true of Elizabeth Warren.

00:13:15.000 She suggests that she is Native American.

00:13:16.000 There is no evidence at all that Elizabeth Warren is Native American.

00:13:19.000 How much of a joke is her Native American heritage? 1.00

00:13:21.000 It's such a joke that Elizabeth Warren used as evidence of her Native American heritage the fact that she had submitted a recipe to a cookbook called, I kid you not, Pow Wow Chow. 0.92

00:13:32.000 That was the name of the cookbook.

00:13:33.000 And the recipe that she actually submitted was a recipe for crab bisque.

00:13:38.000 Which, it turns out, she actually copied from a copy of Good Housekeeping or something.

00:13:42.000 It turns out that crab bisque is not actually a Native American heritage thing, because crabs are not wandering across the fruited plains of Oklahoma, which is where she is from.

00:13:51.000 So, she's a joke.

00:13:54.000 This is what Democrats are going to do.

00:13:55.000 They're going to do the intersectionality pyramid all the way to the bottom, which is just insane.

00:14:00.000 And so, they're struggling.

00:14:01.000 Democrats are struggling right now.

00:14:03.000 There's a poll out right now, a shocking poll, from the Politico Morning Consult survey, right?

00:14:06.000 This is not a survey that is biased toward Republicans.

00:14:09.000 And Republican, it shows generic polls right now among registered voters.

00:14:13.000 39% said they would back the GOP candidate in their district.

00:14:16.000 38% said they would support a Democrat.

00:14:18.000 23% are undecided.

00:14:22.000 So Democrats still have a pretty solid advantage across a variety of polls, according to CNBC.

00:14:26.000 An average of recent generic ballots shows Democrats with about a 7-point lead, according to RealClearPolitics.

00:14:31.000 But that was 13 points at the end of last year, so they've fallen at least 6 points.

00:14:35.000 And there are a couple of outlier polls now that show that the Republicans are actually in the lead or even.

00:14:40.000 So that is a big piece of news.

00:14:42.000 Also, the political consult poll, morning consult poll, it shows a 47% approval rating for President Trump.

00:14:48.000 That's about as good as it's going to get for Trump.

00:14:49.000 Trump's never going to break 50.

00:14:51.000 But 47% is a very solid approval rating for President Trump.

00:14:54.000 So despite the attempts to beat him down over the Rob Porter situation or the bleephole countries remark, it's as I said, everything is baked into the cake except the evidence of how the economy is doing.

00:15:04.000 That is not baked into the cake.

00:15:05.000 All of the character stuff is baked into the cake with Trump.

00:15:08.000 So, for example, there's a story out today that Michael Cohen, who is Trump's lawyer, did in fact pay Stormy Daniels, a porn star, $130,000 out of his own pocket, supposedly out of the goodness of his heart.

00:15:19.000 That Cohen says, quote, neither the Trump Organization nor the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction with Ms.

00:15:24.000 Clifford, that's Stormy Daniels, and neither reimbursed me for my payment, either directly or indirectly.

00:15:30.000 He said the payment to Ms.

00:15:31.000 Clifford was lawful and was not a campaign contribution or a campaign expenditure by anyone.

00:15:36.000 He was asked, by the way, why it was that he had actually just signed a six-figure check to a porn star with whom he had not had personal relations, and he refused to answer those questions.

00:15:45.000 It was just out of charity.

00:15:46.000 He just likes porn stars that much and feels that bad for them.

00:15:48.000 He signs random checks days before the election in the amount of $130,000.

00:15:52.000 Of course, that's a joke. 0.86

00:15:53.000 Of course, it's ridiculous.

00:15:55.000 Cohen is saying this in response to a complaint one group filed with the FEC regarding the payment.

00:16:01.000 He has not confirmed or denied anything with regard to the payment itself.

00:16:05.000 But is this hurting Trump anyway?

00:16:06.000 No, of course.

00:16:06.000 The Stormy Daniels stuff happened two weeks ago and no one cared.

00:16:08.000 Everybody immediately brushed off the fact that the President of the United States, when he was married and his wife had just given birth, was having an affair with a porn star and then dropped $130,000 on her days before the election to keep it quiet.

00:16:20.000 Or at least his lawyer did.

00:16:21.000 Out of the goodness of his heart.

00:16:22.000 Man, I gotta get me one of those lawyers.

00:16:23.000 I gotta get me one of the lawyers who actually signs my gas bill.

00:16:27.000 The lawyer who just says, I love my client so much that out of the goodness of my own heart, I just pay people off.

00:16:32.000 So that doesn't have any impact on Trump.

00:16:34.000 And so Democrats are struggling because the character attacks aren't doing a lot of good for them.

00:16:38.000 They're going to continue to leverage them, of course, but they're so ensconced in the identity politics of what they do that they're having some serious trouble translating that into political victory.

00:16:49.000 And so they have to sort of tell fibs.

00:16:52.000 Now, their best angle of attack here would be that President Trump doesn't care about you.

00:16:57.000 This is always the gap for Republicans.

00:16:59.000 It's a gap for President Trump.

00:17:00.000 President Trump doesn't care about people like you.

00:17:02.000 He's not really trying to help people like you.

00:17:04.000 He's just trying to help his corporate buddies.

00:17:06.000 You know the Bernie Sanders routine.

00:17:07.000 It is shocking to hear that these words are going to come out of my mouth.

00:17:10.000 But Bernie Sanders has the best angle of attack on President Trump.

00:17:13.000 Not Kamala Harris.

00:17:15.000 Not Cory Booker.

00:17:16.000 Not all the people who insist on being offended.

00:17:18.000 Being offended by Trump plays into his shtick.

00:17:20.000 If you are offended by Trump, Trump has won.

00:17:23.000 And if you say that Trump doesn't care about people like you, that is always the most fruitful line of attack against Republicans.

00:17:28.000 But Democrats don't seem to care about that, and so they're continuing on with this intersectional nonsense.

00:17:32.000 So, for example, Senator Bob Menendez from New Jersey.

00:17:35.000 He's going on and on about how Trump doesn't care about immigrants, and we shouldn't use the term chain migration.

00:17:39.000 Again, this is intersectional nonsense.

00:17:41.000 Now, I find it obscene, the phrase chain migration.

00:17:47.000 It is incredibly cruel to those whose ancestors were brought to this country in chains in slavery.

00:17:55.000 It is a dehumanizing element of what is in essence family reunification, which has been the core of American immigration principle for over a century. 0.72

00:18:04.000 The belief that when we have families together, 1.00

00:18:07.000 Okay, so this is absolutely idiotic, obviously. 0.99

00:18:15.000 The term chain migration has nothing to do with slavery. 0.99

00:18:17.000 It was coined in the mid-50s, I believe, or since before then.

00:18:22.000 It has nothing to do with slavery whatsoever.

00:18:23.000 The idea is that chain migration is like a daisy chain, like you're bringing people in in a chain.

00:18:28.000 I think the simplest

00:18:48.000 Okay, so this of course is not true at all.

00:18:49.000 The suggestion that President Trump is enthralled to Russia, the American people are able to discern the fact that Trump refuses to say that Russia interfered in the election because he feels that it is a blot on his victory.

00:19:15.000 They're able to distinguish that from the idea that he is pro-Russia, because obviously his policy has been significantly more hawkish on Russia than, for example, the Obama administration, which pledged flexibility to Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin in 2012, and then gave them exactly that flexibility.

00:19:31.000 By the way, the idea that Trump is somehow avoiding sanctions because he loves Russia, that's not even true.

00:19:35.000 It's not even technically true.

00:19:37.000 According to Noah Rothman, who's no ally of the administration, over at Commentary magazine, quote, And they did.

00:19:52.000 The law also required the administration to provide a report detailing the impact of sanctions on Russia's sovereign debt, which they did.

00:19:58.000 The law provided the administration a 120-day grace period for imposition of new sanctions on unspecified targets if the president can claim those targets have already substantially reduced their business activities in the Russian defense and intelligence sectors.

00:20:10.000 The State Department declared that foreign governments have abandoned planned or announced purchases of several billion dollars in Russian defense acquisitions, therefore satisfying that requirement.

00:20:18.000 So the idea that the Obama—that the Trump administration, rather, has been deliberately avoiding imposing sanctions is just not true.

00:20:24.000 But the Democrats continue to trot this stuff out, and this is why they continue to lose.

00:20:28.000 This is why they have a serious problem on their hands.

00:20:31.000 Okay, in just a second, I want to talk about another serious problem Democrats have, and that is full-on disdain for religion.

00:20:36.000 We'll discuss that in just a second.

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00:22:13.000 Okay.

00:22:15.000 When I talk about the Democrats being at a complete disconnect with the American people, nowhere is this more obvious than when it comes to disdain for religion.

00:22:22.000 So, yesterday on The View, Joy Behar, who is just an insufferable human being, which, again, Joy, have me on your show.

00:22:32.000 I know that's a hell of a pitch. 0.84

00:22:34.000 You're insufferable. 0.93

00:22:34.000 Have me on your show. 0.93

00:22:36.000 Nonetheless, the view, you know, I think they are probably a little afraid to have me on that show, which I would be too if I were their producers.

00:22:42.000 In any case, Joy Behar goes after Mike Pence yesterday in the most disgusting terms about his religious observance. 0.99

00:22:49.000 It's one thing to talk to Jesus.

00:22:52.000 It's another thing when Jesus talks to you.

00:22:54.000 Exactly!

00:22:54.000 Okay, well, that's different.

00:22:57.000 That's different.

00:22:59.000 That's called mental illness, if I'm not correct.

00:23:02.000 No hearing voices.

00:23:04.000 Okay, so just to be straight about how the left views religious people, if you say that you heard the voice of God, what you mean usually—okay, let me just explain.

00:23:12.000 On behalf of religious people everywhere, when you say that you got a message from God, you don't actually mean that God sent you an email.

00:23:18.000 He's not Bruce Almighty.

00:23:20.000 This is not God picks up the phone and calls you.

00:23:23.000 It's not Joan of Arc, you're hearing actual godly voices.

00:23:25.000 What you get is a feeling that perhaps you're acting in consonance with your meaning in the universe.

00:23:30.000 Okay?

00:23:31.000 That you're acting in consonance with what God wants of you, as you can decipher it in His Word.

00:23:36.000 That's what we mean as religious people.

00:23:37.000 We don't mean that we're sitting around and Jesus starts talking to us.

00:23:40.000 Say, ha, this is Jesus.

00:23:42.000 That's not what we mean.

00:23:43.000 I don't know why he has a southern accent either.

00:23:45.000 But the idea that Mike Pence is sitting around in the VP office waiting for Jesus to give him orders is insipid.

00:23:51.000 I will also point out that Joy Behar would be the first person to say that men who say they are women 0.96

00:23:56.000 Do not have a mental illness.

00:23:57.000 So if you're a man and you say you're a woman, you're not mentally ill.

00:23:59.000 If you're a woman and you say you're a man, you're not mentally ill. 0.97

00:24:01.000 But if you're a religious person and you say that you are trying to believe according to the dictates of Jesus and that you feel that you've gotten messages from Christ in your life, that this means that you're a full-on nutso. 0.72

00:24:12.000 It's that sort of disdain for religion that is driving millions of people in the United States away from people like Joy Behar.

00:24:17.000 It's not just Joy Behar.

00:24:19.000 One of the people who's been most irritating about the Olympics is an ice skater named Adam Rippon.

00:24:23.000 He's gay, which wouldn't make a difference, except he has made this the entirety of his identity.

00:24:28.000 And when I say—I mean, like, he's made it his entire public persona. 0.98

00:24:31.000 Not that he's a great ice skater, which apparently he is, but that he is gay and that he hates Mike Pence. 0.97

00:24:35.000 So he apparently was ripping on Pence for being at the Olympics in the first place, suggesting that Mike Pence was for gay conversion therapy. 0.97

00:24:41.000 We talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

00:24:42.000 This is not true.

00:24:43.000 There is no evidence to support it whatsoever.

00:24:45.000 Doesn't matter.

00:24:46.000 He trotted that out.

00:24:46.000 And then when Pence said, you know what?

00:24:48.000 That's not true about me.

00:24:48.000 I'd love to sit down with you.

00:24:50.000 Rippon said, I'll never meet with you.

00:24:51.000 So obviously a very tolerant dude.

00:24:53.000 Well, yesterday he came out and he says, listen, I don't want my Olympic experience to be about Mike Pence, so let's get this straight.

00:24:58.000 You punch Mike Pence in the face rhetorically, and then you run, screaming from the room, and then you say you don't want your Olympic experience to be about Mike Pence? 0.79

00:25:06.000 Because you've implied that religious people all over the United States hate gay folks? 0.81

00:25:09.000 Here is Adam Rippon doing the same routine.

00:25:11.000 I have no problem talking about, you know, what I've said, because I stand by it.

00:25:21.000 But I think right now, the Olympics are about Olympic competition and the athletes involved.

00:25:30.000 And I talked, you know, I talked to you about how I felt before the games.

00:25:36.000 And, you know, it's brought a lot of attention to, you know, and questions to my other teammates.

00:25:42.000 And I don't want to distract from their Olympic experience.

00:25:46.000 And I don't want my Olympic experience to be about my pens.

00:25:51.000 Well, it's a little late for that.

00:25:53.000 It's a little late for that.

00:25:53.000 You rip Mike Pence as a religious bigot, and then you come out and you say, well, I don't want my Olympic experience to be like that.

00:25:59.000 Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to rip Mike Pence as a religious bigot, and by extension, all of the people in America who are evangelical Christians as religious bigots.

00:26:06.000 It's not just that, OK?

00:26:07.000 The culture wars that the left launched brought them Trump.

00:26:11.000 When I say this is how you got Trump, this is how you got Trump.

00:26:13.000 You got a bunch of people in America who feel like they are constantly being set upon and torn to shreds for simply being religious people.

00:26:20.000 Or simply being white, right, in some cases, based on the intersectional politics of the left.

00:26:25.000 Or simply for being in a Midwestern state.

00:26:28.000 There are all these groups that the left has seen as great oppressors in American life.

00:26:33.000 White folks, males, religious people. 0.54

00:26:36.000 And then the left sets upon those people and those people say, well, you know what? 0.98

00:26:39.000 I'm going to vote for that guy who at least doesn't crap on me all the time.

00:26:42.000 But this is what the Democratic Party does.

00:26:43.000 This is what people on the left do on a routine basis.

00:26:45.000 You want to reach out to folks?

00:26:46.000 You want to win elections?

00:26:47.000 Then maybe you ought to stop trying to alienate them with incredibly radical language.

00:26:52.000 And maybe you ought to stop with the fawning media coverage for social issues that are, at best, deeply controversial.

00:26:58.000 So, CNN, for example, has a piece today about this tragic case where parents want custody of their 17-year-old girl.

00:27:07.000 Listen to how CNN covers this.

00:27:08.000 Here's the story.

00:27:09.000 I'll tell you the story.

00:27:10.000 It's a 17-year-old girl.

00:27:11.000 She thinks she's a boy.

00:27:12.000 She's transgender.

00:27:13.000 And so she wants hormone treatment. 1.00

00:27:15.000 And she went and she got some doctors who say that she should have hormone treatment. 1.00

00:27:19.000 And then she tried to have custody handed over to the grandparents. 1.00

00:27:23.000 The parents said, listen, you're going to be 18.

00:27:24.000 When you're 18, we can't do anything to stop you.

00:27:26.000 But when you're 17, not on our watch. 0.90

00:27:28.000 On our watch, you are not going to have surgeries and mutilate your genitals. 0.92

00:27:31.000 You're not going to have surgeries and mutilate your breasts. 0.99

00:27:33.000 We're not going to allow you to have hormone treatment and mutilate your body. 1.00

00:27:36.000 That's not something that we're going to allow you to do because we don't think that that is the best treatment.

00:27:39.000 We don't think that the scientific evidence is there.

00:27:42.000 The scientific evidence on this is at best mixed.

00:27:45.000 It is at best mixed.

00:27:46.000 There are studies that suggest that suicidality, the suicide attempt rate goes down for people who attempt transgender surgery.

00:27:52.000 There's also some evidence that suggests that after a certain period of time, the suicide rate goes back up.

00:27:57.000 So the evidence is just not

00:28:00.000 It's not perfect in any direction.

00:28:01.000 This is not a cure-all by any stretch of the imagination.

00:28:04.000 But here is how this is going down.

00:28:05.000 CNN writes, quote, So notice already how CNN starts calling this girl he.

00:28:08.000 This is a biological woman, and CNN is already calling this girl he in order to bias the case.

00:28:10.000 Because if the parents won't acknowledge it, CNN will.

00:28:28.000 The teen's parents want court authority to stop their child from getting the treatment and therapy that was recommended by his medical team in what it characterizes as a possible life-or-death situation.

00:28:35.000 What makes it a life-or-death situation?

00:28:36.000 Apparently, the teen is suicidal.

00:28:39.000 And they're suggesting that the cure for the suicidality is hormone treatment and or genital disfigurement.

00:28:44.000 That is what this team of medical experts suggest.

00:28:48.000 Well, maybe there's another team of medical experts that suggest differently.

00:28:51.000 The parents could consult a variety of medical experts.

00:28:53.000 But now, courts in the United States are going to talk about this is going to be the next step.

00:28:57.000 You want to talk about culture wars?

00:28:58.000 This is the culture war.

00:28:59.000 The next step is going to be, you have a five-year-old child, and your child says that she is a he, and you say, sweetheart, no you're not. 0.89

00:29:07.000 You're going to outgrow this.

00:29:08.000 You know, we'll go and we'll talk to somebody about this, but you are a girl, and we're going to try and get through this together in the best, most healthy possible way.

00:29:16.000 Courts will be sent in by the left to take your child away from you. 0.96

00:29:19.000 This is the next step.

00:29:20.000 It's already happening in Canada under Bill C-16.

00:29:23.000 This is what they're going to do.

00:29:24.000 According to CNN, the teen was hospitalized in 2016.

00:29:26.000 He had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorder and gender dysphoria, according to court records.

00:29:31.000 This is the key, by the way.

00:29:33.000 This is the reason why the APA's evidence-less reclassification of gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria actually matters.

00:29:40.000 So, gender identity disorder suggests that when you are disordered, right, when you're a male who believes that you're a female, that this is a disorder

00:29:49.000 I don't

00:30:04.000 I don't

00:30:21.000 Non-disordered levels is just not true, right?

00:30:24.000 There's no evidence that the suicide attempt rate in the transgender community post-surgery, or if everybody calls you by your preferred pronoun, goes down to the normal rate of a normal man or a normal woman who does not believe they're a member of the opposite sex.

00:30:36.000 Doesn't matter.

00:30:37.000 The court is probably going to try and take away this kid and give the kid to the grandparents, who apparently are going to go along with the treatment.

00:30:44.000 And they're saying that, apparently, the attorney for the family says, the parents maintain that they love their child and said the child's mother said the child has nothing to fear from her and she wants to have a relationship with her child.

00:30:56.000 She also acknowledged that if the parents are granted custody, they want the child to continue to live with the maternal grandparent, not in an effort to avoid parenting their child, but because they believe that the current living arrangements is in the teen's best interest.

00:31:05.000 But they say this kid is not capable of making a life-altering decision right now.

00:31:09.000 The court is going to disagree, and they're going to say that if they call the kid by the kid's normal name, if they say that the she is a she, then the kid is going to commit suicide.

00:31:17.000 That means that it's on the parents.

00:31:18.000 This is a very dangerous precedent that's being set.

00:31:20.000 It's the reason why we're in the middle of a brutal culture war, and it is—there are political aspects to this that are really—that are really a problem, that are a serious problem.

00:31:28.000 OK, in just a second, I'm going to give you the update on the Rob Porter fallout, because it looks like it's getting worse, not better, for the White House.

00:31:34.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Tracker.

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00:32:33.000 All right, so I want to talk about the fallout from the Rob Porter situation.

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00:34:22.000 So, in some bad news for the White House, Trey Gowdy, the House Oversight Committee chair, or at least a member of the House Oversight Committee, he said that the House Oversight Committee kicked off an investigation into the Trump administration's employment of Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary who resigned last week, and what White House officials knew about domestic abuse allegations against him.

00:34:43.000 So, Gowdy said you can call it official, you can call it unofficial.

00:34:46.000 I'm going to direct questions to the FBI that I expect them to answer.

00:34:49.000 And if they don't answer them, then I'm going to expect a really good reason why.

00:34:54.000 Senior White House officials have been struggling to come up with an answer for exactly how they allowed Rob Porter to get so high up in the administration, despite all of the allegations about spousal abuse.

00:35:04.000 He has two separate ex-wives who allege spousal abuse.

00:35:08.000 Paul Ryan said the White House has to work to improve their vetting system.

00:35:12.000 I don't know how exactly they'll do that.

00:35:13.000 I will leave that to them.

00:35:13.000 But Chairman Gowdy is doing his proper job on oversight.

00:35:16.000 And yes, he did give us a heads up.

00:35:17.000 One of the big problems yesterday is that the FBI Director Chris Wray came out and he said that the timeline that was presented by the White House with regard to Rob Porter was just not true.

00:35:25.000 That basically the White House had known for months, maybe years, about Rob Porter's allegations.

00:35:30.000 They did nothing about it.

00:35:30.000 I can't get into the content of what was briefed.

00:35:33.000 What were they informed?

00:35:35.000 What I can tell you.

00:35:37.000 is that the FBI submitted a partial report on the investigation in question in March and then a completed background investigation in late July that is soon thereafter we received requests for follow-up

00:35:57.000 So, it is pretty obvious that the FBI was continuously updating the White House and the White House did nothing about it.

00:36:03.000 This is all on John Kelly.

00:36:04.000 There have been serious rumors inside and outside the White House that John Kelly is on his way out.

00:36:25.000 The general who was supposed to have brought order to the White House has instead exacerbated the disorder, particularly with regard to this Rob Porter fallout.

00:36:33.000 There was talk yesterday that Gary Cohn, as Breitbart would call him, the globalist Gary Cohn, would take over as Trump's chief of staff, if that were the case.

00:36:40.000 There was even some rumors going around that he might bring back the mooch, which would be the greatest thing on planet Earth. 1.00

00:36:46.000 Please bring back the mooch. 1.00

00:36:46.000 We need a season two. 1.00

00:36:47.000 I mean, come on.

00:36:48.000 Cameo.

00:36:49.000 He was the most beloved guest star in season two of Trump.

00:36:52.000 We're now in season three of Trump.

00:36:54.000 Bring back the mooch! 1.00

00:36:55.000 Come on! 0.61

00:36:55.000 So if the mooch comes back, then things will become wildly more entertaining. 0.61

00:36:59.000 And you can expect that we will get just— I mean, I want entertainment bang for my buck.

00:37:05.000 If we're going to go through all this, it at least better be entertaining.

00:37:07.000 The White House tried to suggest that the FBI director was not contradicting them on their story.

00:37:12.000 This, of course, is not really true.

00:37:13.000 Here's Sarah Huckabee Sanders trying to make that case yesterday. 1.00

00:37:16.000 Look, we explained the process extensively last week.

00:37:20.000 The White House Personnel Security Office, staffed by career officials, received information last year on what they considered to be the final background investigation report in November, but they had not made a final recommendation for adjudication to the White House because the process was still ongoing when Rob Porter resigned.

00:37:38.000 In the view of Personnel Security Office, the FBI's July report required significant additional investigatory fieldwork before Personnel Security Office could begin to evaluate the information for adjudication.

00:37:51.000 As Director Wray said, information was still coming to the White House Personnel Security Office in February.

00:37:58.000 Now, the truth is that the chief of staff's job is essentially to keep the president in line.

00:38:02.000 And unfortunately, it's become a sort of babysitting job, to a certain extent, making sure that Trump is not talked to by some of the worst people, keeping bad influences away from the Oval Office.

00:38:11.000 And Kelly had been doing a good job of that until the whole Rob Porter scandal happened.

00:38:16.000 You do have to ask yourself why it was that Kelly stuck by him.

00:38:18.000 Maybe it's because we all, as human beings, have an individual tendency to pretend that folks that we know aren't really bad people.

00:38:24.000 Like, think of the people in your life.

00:38:26.000 And think of some of the things that they've done.

00:38:27.000 Are all of them universally good people? 1.00

00:38:29.000 I know some people in my life who, if I heard about their stories, and I heard about them secondhand, I'd think, wow, that guy's a jerk. 0.99

00:38:35.000 That guy seems like a bad guy. 0.99

00:38:37.000 But you make provisions for people that you know in your personal life.

00:38:39.000 The problem is, when you're working on a governmental level, you don't have the ability to do that.

00:38:43.000 You don't have the capacity for forgiveness, particularly in a case like this, where

00:38:47.000 You really shouldn't have a capacity for forgiveness in any case when the guy isn't asking for forgiveness where it's apparent that he was fibbing about knocking around women.

00:38:54.000 That's pretty bad.

00:38:55.000 So here's how it's breaking down at the White House, according to Vanity Fair.

00:38:58.000 Apparently, in recent days, Trump has floated a couple of names.

00:39:00.000 White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney and longtime friend Tom Barrack, a real estate developer for White House Chief of Staff.

00:39:05.000 That's just what we need, is somebody with no experience in government coming in and trying to run the White House.

00:39:09.000 Mulvaney at least would know what he's doing.

00:39:11.000 I'm not sure that Barrack would.

00:39:12.000 Barrack has already said that he's not particularly interested.

00:39:16.000 There are apparently other factions that are looking to bring in a new chief of staff.

00:39:21.000 Apparently, Jared and Ivanka Trump want to bring in Gary Cohn.

00:39:25.000 So, last night, three Republicans said that Trump had offered the job to Cohn, but then Trump told Sean Hannity that he'd not chosen Cohn, and that's because Cohn is not a career Republican, right?

00:39:35.000 Cohn is actually kind of a Democrat.

00:39:37.000 Apparently, Sean Hannity was pushing somebody else.

00:39:39.000 Hannity was pushing maybe House Leader Kevin McCarthy, perhaps

00:39:44.000 I'm not sure that it would

00:40:10.000 I'm not sure that it would balance a lot of the competing interests inside the White House.

00:40:13.000 McCarthy apparently is sort of interested, and today he refused to suggest that he would not take the job if you were offered it.

00:40:19.000 A Republican has said that McCarthy is going around saying that the president needs better messaging, which is obviously true.

00:40:25.000 So, a little bit of chaos inside the White House.

00:40:29.000 Apparently, the president made sure last week that Kelly had heard that he called Reince Priebus for advice, which was a way to alienate Kelly and maybe get Kelly to quit.

00:40:40.000 So, all of this is a mess.

00:40:42.000 The mess comes from the top.

00:40:44.000 In this case, the mess comes from Kelly.

00:40:46.000 But the fact that Trump governs by chaos is not a good thing.

00:40:50.000 Kelly really should do this.

00:40:52.000 He should just come out.

00:40:52.000 He should apologize.

00:40:53.000 He should have come clean from the beginning.

00:40:54.000 He should have said, we made a mistake.

00:40:56.000 I gave the benefit of the doubt to somebody who had been vouched for by a lot of top figures.

00:41:00.000 That was a mistake.

00:41:01.000 We should never have done it.

00:41:02.000 Oops.

00:41:03.000 If you had done that, all of this would have blown over in a week.

00:41:05.000 Now instead, we are in week two, week three of all of this.

00:41:09.000 That is not good stuff at all.

00:41:11.000 The administration is going to have to do something to cure the perception that there's serious chaos breaking out inside the administration.

00:41:18.000 Meanwhile, by the way,

00:41:20.000 There are new estimates on Trump's military parade, which is just another distraction.

00:41:24.000 Apparently, Mick Mulvaney says it would cost between $10 million and $30 million.

00:41:27.000 Now, I understand why I'm not into the idea of a military parade on civilian streets that's not celebrating an actual military victory.

00:41:35.000 The last military parade we had in the United States was after the Gulf War.

00:41:40.000 I don't understand why the left is against the anti-military parade.

00:41:42.000 They seem to like North Korean military parades an awful lot, so I'm not sure why they're so opposed to an American military parade.

00:41:47.000 So that apparently is still on the table.

00:41:51.000 Now, does any of this actually affect Trump in the long run?

00:41:54.000 The answer is no.

00:41:55.000 As I suggested before, the Democrats have been unable to capitalize on Trump's unpopularity.

00:42:00.000 Again, he's hitting his high water point now, and that's 47%, which is not super high.

00:42:06.000 So, in order for the Democrats to capitalize on his unpopularity, they're going to have to connect his supposed lack of passion for the American people with their passion for the American people, but that would force them to abandon their intersectionality.

00:42:18.000 They actually have to say, listen, we like Americans more than Trump does. 0.99

00:42:21.000 That's a hard call when you're sending the entire media out to talk about the glories of North Korea and the stupidity of Mike Pence. 1.00

00:42:28.000 It's just not a brilliant move. 1.00

00:42:30.000 Now, if the economy tanks, could Republicans really pay?

00:42:32.000 Sure.

00:42:33.000 Is it possible the polls are overstated?

00:42:34.000 That's possible, too.

00:42:35.000 Yesterday, there was another Republican seat that flipped.

00:42:39.000 I think it was in Florida.

00:42:40.000 Another Republican Senate seat, state Senate seat.

00:42:43.000 That's 36 legislative seats that Republicans have lost since Trump took office.

00:42:46.000 That doesn't have the makings of a wave yet, but it certainly should be a disquieting note for a lot of members of the administration who seem to suggest that nothing terrible is going on and everything's going to be OK.

00:42:56.000 We just don't know at this point.

00:42:58.000 Democrats are struggling for a message.

00:43:00.000 They're also, by the way, barring Bill Clinton.

00:43:01.000 So according to Politico...

00:43:03.000 Democrats are looking to embrace the Me Too moment and rally women to push back on Trump in the midterms.

00:43:08.000 Good luck with that.

00:43:08.000 They tried it with Hillary.

00:43:09.000 And they don't want Bill Clinton anywhere near it.

00:43:11.000 So they're scared of Bill Clinton now.

00:43:12.000 So they're making the same mistake they always made.

00:43:14.000 They're suggesting that Hillary Clinton was a better candidate than Bill Clinton.

00:43:17.000 They're just addicted to the victim politics.

00:43:20.000 They're addicted to the identity politics.

00:43:22.000 It is going to destroy the Democratic Party.

00:43:23.000 It's really a giant failure on their part.

00:43:26.000 Bill Clinton is still, still tremendously much more popular than Hillary Clinton ever was.

00:43:32.000 They're trying to take advantage of the MeToo movement by suggesting that the Trump administration is mean to women, and John Kelly is mean to women, and Trump is mean to women, and all this.

00:43:40.000 That's not how you get people out to the polls.

00:43:42.000 You get people out to the polls by suggesting that the other side is not just morally bad, but effectively bad.

00:43:46.000 And Democrats haven't done that in any real serious way.

00:43:51.000 So this is—none of this is good.

00:43:53.000 By the way,

00:43:55.000 And the White House's story on Porter continues to just fall apart.

00:44:00.000 Late yesterday, there was a report that even after the news of Rob Porter giving his ex-wife a black eye had come out, that he had sat down for an off-the-record meeting with four reporters

00:44:10.000 Brokered by the White House.

00:44:11.000 And the reporters present for the meeting, which included the New York Times' Maggie Haberman, Washington Post's Josh Dowsey, Axios' Jonathan Swan, and Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender, press reported to explain the picture of his wife with the black eye, and he told them what he had told his colleagues, that on vacation in Venice, the two had quarreled over a Venetian glass vase, and that his then-wife had accidentally bruised her eye in the course of that altercation, which happens all the time.

00:44:32.000 The vase just reaches out and touches somebody in the eye.

00:44:35.000 So that's always a big win for them.

00:44:38.000 The administration ought to get past this, but

00:44:40.000 Democrats are not going to be able to take advantage if they keep doing the identity politics routine.

00:44:44.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:44:48.000 So, let's begin with a thing that I like.

00:44:51.000 I've been playing for my daughter.

00:44:52.000 She loves classical music.

00:44:53.000 She will only listen to classical music because I have molded her and I've shaped her.

00:44:58.000 And now she is an elitist, which is exactly what I want her to be when it comes to her musical taste.

00:45:03.000 One of the pieces that she really likes is The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra by Benjamin Britten.

00:45:08.000 This piece is—the reason it's called The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is basically it goes through all of the instruments in the orchestra, and they each play individually throughout the course of the piece.

00:45:16.000 And so she's gotten really good at naming all of the various pieces in the orchestra.

00:45:20.000 She knows the difference between an oboe and a bassoon, which is pretty sophisticated for a just-turned-four-year-old.

00:45:25.000 In any case, here is Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.

00:45:41.000 We're good to go.

00:46:05.000 That's really great.

00:46:06.000 It builds to a tremendous conclusion.

00:46:07.000 It's a really fun piece, so go check that out.

00:46:09.000 It's a great way to educate your kids about the instruments in the orchestra, which, at least if my daughter is any indicator, they really enjoy.

00:46:15.000 OK, other things that I like.

00:46:16.000 So Bill Murray, who is not one of my favorite actors, said something I think that is exactly right, and it is a note for the Democrats.

00:46:22.000 He was talking about identity politics, and here's what he had to say.

00:46:26.000 Make everyone laugh.

00:46:27.000 She's not thinking about being political.

00:46:29.000 She's thinking about what resonates and what is common to all of us.

00:46:33.000 I think that that's harder and harder to do, because people are trying to win their point of view, as opposed to saying, what if I spoke to everyone?

00:46:47.000 My friend who's a great comedy writer, Jim Downey, he's accused of being a right-wing writer, a comedy writer, if there is such a thing.

00:46:54.000 He says, no, no, I just think the way that the Democrats handle things is poor, where they try to pick out little pieces of a population that, well, we represent the Hispanics, we represent the LGBT or something.

00:47:06.000 And they're not speaking to everyone at once.

00:47:08.000 And it's almost demeaning to say, I'm choosing you because you're a splinter group or you're a certain minority group. 1.00

00:47:15.000 There's almost a resentment that somehow you're separated again by a politician.

00:47:19.000 You know, you're my people.

00:47:21.000 I'm in control of you.

00:47:22.000 I represent you.

00:47:24.000 Instead of thinking that each citizen has a right to be respected as a citizen first, someone under the laws of the country.

00:47:32.000 This is exactly right.

00:47:34.000 Bill Murray is not a rabid right-winger.

00:47:36.000 Bill Murray is not a Republican.

00:47:37.000 Bill Murray is a Democrat.

00:47:38.000 The idea that Bill Murray is suggesting to Democrats that they ought to abandon identity politics, that they don't wish to alienate the vast majority of the country, is of course exactly right.

00:47:47.000 Now, will Democrats listen to him? 0.97

00:47:48.000 Of course not, because they're incompetent. 0.98

00:47:50.000 Speaking of which, time for some Things I Hate. 0.82

00:47:56.000 All righty, so, things I hate today.

00:47:58.000 Greg Popovich has become so obnoxious.

00:47:59.000 This is the coach of the San Antonio Spurs and suddenly the great arbiter of American morality. 0.86

00:48:05.000 Here is what he had to say yesterday about America and how racist America is, which is incredible considering that all of the players who play for him, who are black, are making millions and millions and millions of dollars for playing a game.

00:48:16.000 Here's Greg Popovich, nonetheless, talking about what a terrible place America is.

00:48:20.000 Well I think it's pretty obvious. 0.99

00:48:22.000 The league is made up of a lot of black guys.

00:48:28.000 So to honor that and understand it is pretty simplistic.

00:48:35.000 How would you ignore that?

00:48:37.000 But more importantly, you know, we live in a racist country that hasn't figured it out yet.

00:48:43.000 And it's always important to bring attention to it, even if it angers some people.

00:48:49.000 The point is that you have to keep it in front of everybody's nose to understand it still hasn't been taken care of and we have a lot of work to do.

00:48:55.000 So if this is something that Greg Popovich actually believes, then he doesn't understand the nature of America.

00:48:59.000 He doesn't understand the nature of Americans who are shelling out millions of dollars a year to go watch a bunch of black guys play basketball. 0.87

00:49:05.000 In Popovich's words, that's not because they're a bunch of racists.

00:49:09.000 The reason that you know that is because for a long time, the NBA was not integrated.

00:49:13.000 For many years, when racism was much more prevalent in the country, it was a rarity for there to actually be black basketball players.

00:49:18.000 Adolph Rupp, the famous college basketball coach at the University of Kentucky, would not allow black players on his team.

00:49:23.000 That obviously is not the case, and the NBA is a growing concern.

00:49:26.000 If you were to buy a team in any sport right now, your best investment would probably be in the NBA, because Americans are not afraid of black folks.

00:49:33.000 Americans are very much ensconced in black culture and in parts of culture that are influenced by powerful black people. 0.94

00:49:42.000 I think that's a good thing, because I think that black folks contribute an enormous amount to the culture.

00:49:46.000 And I think white folks contribute enormous amounts of the culture.

00:49:49.000 But the fact that Popovich suggested America is a deeply racist place immediately after saying the entire NBA is black and these folks are making millions of dollars, there's a pretty strong disconnect there.

00:49:57.000 OK, so quick Bible note, since it is indeed a Wednesday, we haven't done Bible study in a little while.

00:50:01.000 So I wanted to point this out with regard to preemptive war.

00:50:05.000 So if you're talking about war in the Middle East and the possibility of preemptive war in the Middle East, Israel striking Iran, for example, or the United States taking out Russian mercenaries, there's this idea that

00:50:15.000 A lot of religious people are sort of uncomfortable with preemptive war. 0.88

00:50:18.000 That's somewhat silly.

00:50:21.000 In Exodus 22.1, it specifically talks about the fact that preemptive war is necessary, and preemptive killing can sometimes be necessary, if you can discern the person's rationale for attacking you.

00:50:32.000 So, here's what it says.

00:50:39.000 Meaning that the responsibility for his own death is on his head.

00:50:43.000 And so Rashi, who's the most famous of Jewish commentators, he comments on this, and he says, And this thief has come to kill you because he knows that no one can hold himself back and remain silent when he sees people taking his money.

00:50:51.000 Therefore, the thief has come with the acknowledgement that if the owner of the property were to stand up against him, the owner would kill the thief. 0.93

00:51:08.000 Meaning if someone breaks into your house at night with a clear intent to steal stuff from you and harm you, then you have the ability to kill them.

00:51:14.000 The Torah actually makes a distinction in Exodus between if you are robbed during the day and robbed during the night.

00:51:21.000 But the very next verse says, So in other words, you can't kill him.

00:51:23.000 You have to capture him if he comes during the day.

00:51:24.000 Why? 0.99

00:51:24.000 Because Rashi says, So in other words, if it's obvious that someone is coming to kill you, you should kill them first. 0.99

00:51:28.000 If it's not, then you should try to find a better way. 0.83

00:51:29.000 Obviously, this is true.

00:51:50.000 For all the people who think that the Bible is a pacifist document, the answer is no.

00:51:54.000 All right, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the updates.

00:51:57.000 We'll see you then.

00:51:57.000 Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 14, 2018

Are We About To See War In The Middle East? | Ep. 475

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