The Ben Shapiro Show - Bari The Hatchet | Ep. 1052

00:00:00.000 Barry Weiss quits the New York Times and sets fire to the building on her way out.

00:00:03.000 Andrew Sullivan exits New York Magazine and the editor sounds off.

00:00:07.000 And Andrew Cuomo slams AOC.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:11.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:14.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:18.000 Protect your data from prying eyes at expressvpn.com.

00:00:23.000 You may have noticed, things are kind of uncertain, right?

00:00:25.000 It looked like we were reopening the economy and then out here in California, Governor Newsom was like, we're going to stop that right now.

00:00:30.000 No more of the reopening of the economy.

00:00:32.000 It seems like there's COVID upticks here, but what exactly is going to happen next?

00:00:35.000 Is the vaccine out?

00:00:36.000 the hell knows. Nobody knows anything. That is the theme of this year 2020. Nobody knows bleep, which is why you should probably buy diversified at least a little bit into precious metals. The market has come a long way since COVID-19 hit.

00:00:47.000 It is still down over 8% for the year. Gold is up 18% this year. Why? Well, because people diversified and also because people recognize that uncertainty is not really great for your bank account. Birch Gold is the place to go if you are interested in diversifying into precious metals. Birch Gold has an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, hundreds of five star reviews. They have the precious metal experts that will hold your hand, walk you through the transitioning of one of your eligible IRAs or 401ks into an IRA in gold or silver if that's something you are interested in.

00:01:13.000 It's still in election year.

00:01:14.000 We're seeing a massive resurgence in COVID-19.

00:01:16.000 Unemployment is still extremely high.

00:01:17.000 Lots of uncertainty out there.

00:01:18.000 Diversifying into precious metals is the smart thing to do.

00:01:21.000 Text Ben to 474747.

00:01:23.000 When you open an IRA in precious metals before July 31st, you get a signed copy of my book, The Right Side of History, for free.

00:01:29.000 Again, text my name, Ben, to 474747, and hook up with the precious metal experts I trust.

00:01:35.000 Text Ben to 474747, then ask all your questions, and then invest with Birch Gold.

00:01:40.000 Okay, so.

00:01:41.000 We'll give you the brief news update, because there's a lot of news out there today before we even get to everything related to the complete meltdown over at the New York Times, the meltdown in mainstream media, and the complete redefinition of the media itself, which is a pretty damned big story.

00:01:55.000 We'll get to that in a second.

00:01:56.000 But first, a couple of pieces of rather large-scale news.

00:01:58.000 First, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, according to CNBC, was hospitalized Tuesday for a possible infection.

00:02:04.000 She's been in and out of the hospital for at least two, three years at this point.

00:02:07.000 She's now 87 years old.

00:02:09.000 She received treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore after experiencing fever and chills.

00:02:13.000 She underwent a procedure to clean a bile duct stent and will stay in the hospital for a few days.

00:02:17.000 According to her spokesperson, the justice is resting comfortably and will stay in the hospital for a few days to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment.

00:02:25.000 In January, she was cancer-free after undergoing treatment for what was likely pancreatic cancer.

00:02:29.000 Last year, the year before, she had treatment for cancer on her lungs.

00:02:32.000 So, it's been a health mess for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 1.00

00:02:35.000 Obviously, everybody praying for her health, although some of us would like to see her step down voluntarily from the Supreme Court because Two things can be true at once.

00:02:42.000 I want her to be healthy, and also I think she's a terrible justice, but certainly the writers of 2020 have Trump season five.

00:02:49.000 They've really decided to pull out all the stops here.

00:02:51.000 If you can just imagine a Supreme Court vacancy, which, you know, God forbid it should happen through something bad happening to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but if she were to step down for any reason, for any reason, if there is a Supreme Court vacancy in this election year, oh my God, the hellish riots that will occur as a result of replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg with Amy Coney Barrett, for example, would just be insane.

00:03:09.000 Meanwhile, we've been watching this COVID uptick and the re-lockdown of California.

00:03:13.000 So, Los Angeles is completely locked down again.

00:03:16.000 Virtually all businesses have been shuttered.

00:03:18.000 You're still allowed to eat outdoors, but that's pretty much it.

00:03:20.000 All indoor businesses have been shut down, including hair salons, including restaurants, including pretty much everything.

00:03:26.000 Like, all the things have been shut down across the state of California, and LA announced that they would not be reopening the schools in August.

00:03:33.000 So basically, you're going to be learning from home again, which is really a sop to the teachers' union because the data on students and how healthy they are and how much COVID affects them, it is pretty non-conflicting when it comes to the health of the students.

00:03:46.000 The real problem with opening schools is teachers and administrators, which is why the suggestion that I've made, and my friend Jon Podhoretz over at the Commentary Magazine podcast made it, and so I'm going to copy him.

00:03:55.000 I think it's a good idea.

00:03:56.000 We bring the kids back.

00:03:57.000 And if you have older teachers who are incapable of being in the classroom for health reasons, then you have them Zoom in.

00:04:03.000 But the idea that all these kids are going to stay home and then they're going to be able to do Zoom classes is just completely insane.

00:04:08.000 So LA has completely shut it down.

00:04:10.000 San Diego apparently shut it down as well.

00:04:11.000 Orange County, on the other hand, says that they are going to attempt to reopen.

00:04:16.000 So I have good news and I have bad news.

00:04:19.000 So which one you want first?

00:04:21.000 I'll give you the good news first, because I think that you're getting enough of the bad news from the media.

00:04:24.000 And frankly, I think the media are overplaying some of the bad news.

00:04:27.000 They're implying that we are in exactly the same place we were back in April or March, that we are about to see this New York-type surge across the country that overwhelms the healthcare system.

00:04:36.000 The data on that is extremely limited.

00:04:38.000 It does not look at this point as though Florida is going to be overwhelmed.

00:04:40.000 It does not look as though Texas is going to be overwhelmed.

00:04:42.000 It doesn't look as though California is going to be overwhelmed.

00:04:45.000 It looks instead as though there has been a surge in positive tests, although that may be plateauing.

00:04:51.000 And it is also true that the identification of the positives is a lot higher than it was back in March or April.

00:04:59.000 It is likely that we were actually wildly under-identifying positive cases back in March or April.

00:05:03.000 We are now running, in like a six-day period, seven-day period, as many tests for COVID-19 as we ran in all of 2017, 2018, and 2019 combined for the flu.

00:05:13.000 In like a seven day period.

00:05:14.000 That's how many tests we are running across the country.

00:05:15.000 Now, that's good.

00:05:16.000 I mean, it means that we're identifying the cases.

00:05:18.000 It also means that we are getting a better picture of the actual infection fatality rate.

00:05:22.000 You know, how many people have it versus how many people are dying.

00:05:24.000 And that's why even as you see the numbers rising from last week, as far as the number of people dying, and that is a trailing indicator, usually it's anywhere from two weeks to a month trailing indicator.

00:05:33.000 Those numbers, in proportion to the number of cases, have actually been declining.

00:05:36.000 So you've been seeing, at the same time, an absolute rise in deaths.

00:05:39.000 So we saw about a thousand yesterday, according to Johns Hopkins, or at least a thousand reported.

00:05:45.000 Again, the reporting procedures here are a little bit confused because sometimes There are people who are backdating, right?

00:05:50.000 They're taking a death from two weeks ago, they realize now it was COVID and now they're reporting it that way.

00:05:55.000 There's a bit of a lag time, in other words.

00:05:56.000 But whatever you say, there has been a surge in deaths over the past week or so.

00:06:00.000 But as a percentage of total infections, the rates have actually gone down.

00:06:04.000 And you've seen a decreasing positivity rate in places like Florida and Texas over the last few days as well.

00:06:09.000 So the notion that we are about to be just overwhelmed with death in the system, The data on that is pretty scanty.

00:06:15.000 In fact, what we might be looking at, and here's the optimist in me, what we might be looking at is, I would hope, a plateauing.

00:06:21.000 Right, what I would hope is a plateauing.

00:06:23.000 And this brings us to piece of possible good news, number one, that is that there is a theory that is out there and it is now being increasingly backed by data from, of all places, Sweden, right?

00:06:33.000 Sweden, the worst country on earth because Sweden didn't really shut down.

00:06:36.000 They sort of allowed people to go out. 0.52

00:06:38.000 They basically allowed young people to go out.

00:06:40.000 They told older people, stay home.

00:06:42.000 And their big mistake was they didn't protect nursing homes very early, but they basically followed the same protocols that Florida did without protecting the nursing homes.

00:06:48.000 They said that if you want to go out, wear a mask, socially distance, but life has to go on.

00:06:53.000 And Sweden was heavily criticized for this.

00:06:55.000 Their deaths per million were compared unfavorably with places like Norway, with places like Denmark that were next door.

00:07:01.000 But Sweden is now seeing an increased number of cases and almost no death.

00:07:06.000 So this has led people to suggest what exactly is going on here, right?

00:07:10.000 I mean, normally you would see increased number of cases and increased number of deaths.

00:07:13.000 So what exactly is going on in Sweden?

00:07:15.000 Well, the data sort of suggests that maybe the herd immunity rate is not 60%.

00:07:21.000 Maybe the herd immunity rate isn't even 40%.

00:07:24.000 Maybe, in fact, the herd immunity rate is like 10 to 20%.

00:07:28.000 Which would explain, by the way, why New York State is not seeing a vast uptick in number of deaths, even as they reopen.

00:07:34.000 It's why New Jersey isn't seeing vast upticks in death once they reopen.

00:07:37.000 In other words, once this thing runs through your population, it's pretty much done.

00:07:40.000 I mean, that would be the great hope here.

00:07:41.000 And that's sort of what you're seeing in Sweden.

00:07:44.000 Now, how could that be?

00:07:45.000 Because normally, herd immunity is 60, 70, 80%.

00:07:48.000 How could it be that herd immunity would be like 10 or 20%?

00:07:50.000 Well, there's something called T-cell immunity.

00:07:53.000 Jim Garrity over at National Review wrote about this yesterday.

00:07:55.000 He says, the Guardian over in the UK has reported on a study by King's College London suggesting that after infection, coronavirus patients could lose their built-in immunity to reinfection fairly quickly.

00:08:04.000 And then in Vox, there's a guy named Clay Ackerley, an internal medicine and primary care physician practicing in Washington, D.C., who described a 50-year-old patient who tested positive, suffered effects of coronavirus, tested negative twice, then tested positive again with more severe symptoms a second time about six weeks later.

00:08:20.000 And there were these worries earlier in the year.

00:08:23.000 But those worries were about South Korea.

00:08:26.000 The South Korean CDC reported that you might be able to be reinfected with all of this.

00:08:30.000 But there's some data that came out from this.

00:08:34.000 And the data that came out from this is that maybe it turns out that this person's immune system, these secondary sort of infections, that that was actually just a reflection of the first infection.

00:08:42.000 That actually, what is happening here is that some people have a pre-existing resistance to coronavirus.

00:08:49.000 So, as Jim Garrity writes, the body's response to a viral infection utilizes both antibodies and T-cells, which you may have heard of in the context of cancer treatments.

00:08:57.000 T-cells are produced in bone marrow, but get their name because they develop in the thymus gland.

00:09:01.000 T-cells are basically the special forces of your immune system, split into two groups.

00:09:05.000 The first, CD8, acts as navy seals of your immune system.

00:09:08.000 They take on infections, virus bacteria, tumors, and, God willing, take them all down.

00:09:12.000 The second category of T-cells, CD4, are the support staff, performing a variety of duties, including the protection of cytokines.

00:09:18.000 Remember, cytokine storms, this is the idea that the body was reacting too fast to COVID-19 and was actually shutting down systems in the body.

00:09:27.000 Our body's production of T-cells slows after puberty and is basically gone by age 65, which is one reason why elderly people are more vulnerable to infection.

00:09:34.000 Well, some new research suggests that bodies with not-so-great antibody levels can still have effective T-cell responses against the virus.

00:09:40.000 In other words, you haven't had it before and you don't actually have to have immunity to the virus.

00:09:44.000 Your T-cells already are able to fight this thing off.

00:09:46.000 The study found that SARS-CoV-19-specific CD8 T-cells were found in about 70% of recovering patients and 100% of patients had COVID-2-specific CD4 T-cells.

00:09:57.000 Importantly, they detected SARS-CoV-2 reactive CD4 plus T-cells in 40 to 60 percent of unexposed individuals, suggesting cross-reactive T-cell recognition between circulating common cold coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.

00:10:10.000 So in other words, if you had a cold in the last couple of years, your T-cells may be prepped for this thing.

00:10:15.000 Because you're cold, it's a coronavirus.

00:10:17.000 This is also a coronavirus.

00:10:18.000 So it is possible that there is a heavy percentage of the population that already has sort of pre-existing immunity.

00:10:23.000 Think of all the zombie movies that you've seen where there's a small percentage of the population that was resistant to the zombie plague and they're the big survivors.

00:10:29.000 Well, what if it turns out that half the population already has a pre-existing resistance to COVID-19?

00:10:35.000 So it's possible that herd immunity is actually a lot closer than a lot of people think.

00:10:40.000 As Jim Garrity suggests, it is reasonable to believe that certain neighborhoods and communities that were particularly hard hit in the early stages of this pandemic may have reached herd immunity or something close to it.

00:10:50.000 We already know that in New York, there is a good amount of data that suggests that herd immunity may have already been reached in particular areas.

00:10:57.000 But it's possible, and this would be the great hope, that you actually don't have to infect 60 to 70% of the population with COVID-19 to achieve something kind of approximating herd immunity.

00:11:06.000 And so what you could see here is that as the infections rise, The death rates continue to fall, but they sort of plateau and then they fall because it turns out that number one, the people who are now being infected are the people who are more healthy.

00:11:17.000 And number two, it may turn out that the infections rise and then they sort of tail off because there are a bunch of people who just maybe they're asymptomatic because their T cells are actually strong enough to fight off the infection.

00:11:27.000 So that is the good news.

00:11:28.000 The bad news, of course, is that we are seeing new hospitalizations across the country.

00:11:32.000 Here's the good news in that.

00:11:34.000 Kind of secondary good news is that the hospitalizations are not lasting as long or having as dire an effect.

00:11:38.000 We have learned how to treat this thing a lot better at hospitals.

00:11:41.000 With that said, the day after California Governor Gavin Newsom shut down a number of business sectors in the state, the L.A.

00:11:46.000 County Department of Public Health confirmed that there were 4,244 new cases and 2,100 people currently hospitalized in L.A.

00:11:52.000 County.

00:11:52.000 2100 people currently hospitalized in LA County.

00:11:56.000 That compared with only about 2600 new COVID-19 cases on Monday.

00:12:00.000 Of the 2100 people currently hospitalized in LA.

00:12:03.000 County, 27% of those are confirmed cases in the ICU, 19% are confirmed cases on ventilators.

00:12:09.000 According to L.A.

00:12:10.000 Mayor Eric Garcetti, there are only 766 hospital beds left for the region's 10 million residents, but again, that is really sort of an exaggeration of the case, because again, it's not like there's millions of hospital beds available and they're all full.

00:12:23.000 To say there are only 766 hospital beds, there is flex capacity, there's ability to send people home who You just don't perform elective surgery on them.

00:12:32.000 Okay, but none of that is great news.

00:12:34.000 Over in Florida, the virus deaths have surged as well.

00:12:38.000 We saw about 132 deaths.

00:12:39.000 The number one state, by the way, in terms of death yesterday was actually not Florida, it was California.

00:12:43.000 California had something like 139.

00:12:45.000 Florida had 132.

00:12:46.000 The question is whether this is still rising or whether this is plateauing.

00:12:52.000 Okay, but another piece of good news, right?

00:12:53.000 So, piece of good news number one is look at Sweden.

00:12:56.000 Okay, everybody was ripping on Sweden.

00:12:57.000 Maybe Sweden is actually showing that we are closer to immunity than we think.

00:13:02.000 Piece of good news number two is that there's some very good news on the vaccine front.

00:13:06.000 Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, who you could say is very hawkish on COVID-19, he says that no matter how you slice it, this is good news.

00:13:12.000 There's an experimental vaccine developed by the NIH and Moderna And key testing of the vaccine is going to start around July 27th, tracking 30,000 people to prove if the shots really work in preventing infections.

00:13:23.000 Tuesday, they announced that they had taken 45 volunteers, they gave them all the vaccine, all 45 developed antibodies.

00:13:31.000 So this would be obviously very good news.

00:13:34.000 That does not mean that we are like a month away from the vaccine, probably means beginning of next year, but that is good news as well.

00:13:40.000 So what does this mean on a practical level?

00:13:43.000 Well, what it means on a practical level is a couple of things.

00:13:46.000 One, it means that we should be optimistic about the next few months, right?

00:13:51.000 It means that we're learning to treat this thing better.

00:13:53.000 It means that there are a couple of things coming down the pike that may change things fairly radically.

00:13:56.000 It means that a vaccine could be coming in the near future, which would obviously be very good.

00:14:02.000 And number two, it means that some of the sort of outsized panic that we are seeing over opening schools, for example, seems a bit exaggerated, shall we say.

00:14:09.000 It seems like some of this is narrative-driven.

00:14:12.000 L.A.

00:14:12.000 is not in immediate danger of being completely overwhelmed the way that New York was.

00:14:16.000 The data don't support that.

00:14:17.000 The data don't support the idea that Houston is going to be overwhelmed by ICUs right now.

00:14:22.000 Or that Florida is going to be overwhelmed.

00:14:24.000 So, should we be cautious?

00:14:26.000 Should we continue to be careful?

00:14:28.000 Of course we should.

00:14:28.000 And by the way, we should all get the flu shot when it comes to this winter, because with hospitals already dealing with COVID, having a secondary strain of flu that really harms a lot of people and fills up hospital beds would be a bad thing as well.

00:14:39.000 But...

00:14:41.000 Is the sort of wild pessimism of the media completely justified given the numbers right now?

00:14:46.000 I don't think so.

00:14:47.000 Again, I'm going to say wait a couple weeks.

00:14:48.000 Remember everybody was saying wait a couple weeks before you start celebrating?

00:14:51.000 And I was like, okay.

00:14:52.000 I'm kind of cautiously optimistic, but okay.

00:14:55.000 Wait a couple weeks before you start going into doom and gloom mode.

00:14:58.000 Wait a couple weeks before you go into everyone's going to die mode because the stats don't actually demonstrate that that is the case right now.

00:15:05.000 What's going to confound the data, by the way, is that you do have renewed lockdowns in certain places in the country, and people are going to attribute any downtick that happens to the renewed lockdown.

00:15:14.000 It's gonna be very hard to make that fit.

00:15:17.000 If there's a plateau over the next week or so, like it'll take at least two to three weeks for us to see any result of a lockdown, right?

00:15:23.000 Everything is sort of delayed by two to three weeks because there's a seven-day infection period and then it takes two to three weeks for somebody to die, God forbid, once they get COVID-19.

00:15:30.000 So if we lock down now and then there's a decline next week, don't attribute it to the lockdown.

00:15:34.000 If there's a lockdown right now and then there's a decline three weeks from now, then you could fairly think that maybe the lockdown has something to do with it.

00:15:41.000 Bottom line, as I've been saying all along, I wish I had better news for you here.

00:15:46.000 Wait for more data.

00:15:47.000 Wait for more data.

00:15:47.000 Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the politics of the day.

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00:17:00.000 Alrighty.

00:17:00.000 So, in other media news, and this is, I think, the broader political narrative that is of import today.

00:17:06.000 You know, we can put aside the COVID-19 stuff for just a second because time will tell who is right and who is wrong on that.

00:17:12.000 One of the nice things about time is that it does reveal truths when it comes to the science.

00:17:17.000 And when people in the media constantly say, follow the science, follow the science, the science is leading in several different directions here.

00:17:22.000 If we're all that clear-cut, I have a feeling we'd all be on the same page.

00:17:25.000 Unfortunately, it is not all that clear-cut and everybody is having to act in the absence of hard information.

00:17:30.000 But when it comes to the media, we now have hard data on exactly who the media are and what exactly the media do.

00:17:35.000 So, full disclosure up front, I consider Barry Weiss a personal friend.

00:17:39.000 I think that she's a very nice lady. 0.54

00:17:41.000 I think that she is a really interesting thinker.

00:17:43.000 She and I disagree on a great deal, but I also know that Barry has basically been savaged from inside the New York Times for years.

00:17:49.000 She's been persona non grata inside the halls in which she works.

00:17:52.000 For literally years at this point, I think it's fair to say that Barry knew that she was living on borrowed time there for at least the last couple of years, ever since she wrote a piece, frankly, on the Intellectual Dark Web, of which I'm a part.

00:18:04.000 I don't believe I was even mentioned in the piece.

00:18:06.000 A lot of other people were.

00:18:06.000 Joe Rogan was mentioned, Jordan Peterson, and others.

00:18:09.000 Barry got a lot of blowback from that, from her fellow staffers at the New York Times, and it never really let up.

00:18:16.000 Okay, so yesterday, Barry quit.

00:18:18.000 And she issued a letter that really does speak to, it's a brilliant letter, Barry's a very good writer.

00:18:23.000 It's a letter that speaks to our media moment.

00:18:26.000 And it speaks to our political age.

00:18:28.000 And there's some really deep truths here that I think have been completely forgotten by our mainstream media who've decided to basically become Teen Vogue.

00:18:35.000 I said yesterday the New York Times should just rename itself Teen Vogue.

00:18:38.000 I really failed to see the difference.

00:18:39.000 They've got Taylor Lorenz reporting on how everything is cake.

00:18:42.000 I'm not kidding, that was an actual report from the New York Times.

00:18:44.000 And she'll take a picture of a cucumber and somebody cuts it and inside it's a cake.

00:18:47.000 Okay, that's over at the New York Times.

00:18:50.000 Or at Teen Vogue.

00:18:51.000 You literally cannot tell the difference between the editorials at Teen Vogue or at the New York Times.

00:18:54.000 Teen Vogue now just prints, like, straight Marxist claptrap, and so does the New York Times.

00:18:58.000 If you remove the mast, then you'd have no idea which is which, particularly on the op-ed page.

00:19:04.000 So Barry, who writes at the op-ed page, but actually was doing fairly good reporting on the op-ed page, because the New York Times simply won't report narratives that it doesn't like, so Barry ends up doing a lot of that reporting over on the op-ed pages.

00:19:15.000 Meanwhile, The New York Times pushes, on their non-op-ed pages, actual op-eds, right?

00:19:20.000 Half of their mainstream news is actually just op-ed stuff.

00:19:24.000 This is why the 1619 Project, which is just a piece of historical propaganda and rewriting and pseudo-history, that's treated as news, but Barry Weiss was on the op-ed page.

00:19:31.000 In any case, here's what Barry writes.

00:19:33.000 She wrote a letter to Pinch Sulzberger, who's the head of the New York Times.

00:19:37.000 And she said this, It is with sadness that I write to tell you I'm resigning from the New York Times.

00:19:41.000 I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago.

00:19:43.000 I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages.

00:19:47.000 First-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others, who would not naturally think of the Times as their home.

00:19:51.000 The reason for this effort was clear.

00:19:53.000 The paper's failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant it didn't have a firm grasp of the country it covers.

00:19:59.000 Dean Beckett and others have admitted as much on various occasions.

00:20:02.000 The priority and opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

00:20:05.000 I was honored to be part of that effort led by James Bennett.

00:20:08.000 I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor.

00:20:11.000 Among those I helped bring to our pages, the Venezuelan dissident, Willy Artiega, the Iranian chess champion, Dorsa Darakshani, and the Hong Kong Christian Democrat, Derek Lam.

00:20:19.000 Also, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Al-Najjad, Zaina Arafat, Elma Baker, Rachel Denhollander, Maddie Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Hying, Randall Kennedy, and then the list goes on and on and on.

00:20:29.000 The lessons that ought to have followed the election.

00:20:31.000 Lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society have not been learned.

00:20:41.000 Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper, that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

00:20:52.000 And this is such a key point.

00:20:53.000 And Barry hits this right on the head.

00:20:55.000 Over at the New York Times, over in the halls of media, over at CNN, at MSNBC, The idea is, and this is all part of the conversation we've been having about cancel culture and the Overton window, that the Overton window is designed to allow a robust debate over what is true and what is not, over what is correct and what isn't, to happen.

00:21:14.000 That's why the Overton window exists.

00:21:17.000 A tyranny of ideology suggests I own the truth, I am the only expositor of the truth, and therefore there is no reason to have debate.

00:21:25.000 There's no reason to get on a stage with two people who have conflicting ideas, because we know who's right and we know who's wrong.

00:21:30.000 And providing that person a platform is simply providing a platform to wrong.

00:21:34.000 You've seen this from many so-called journalists at the New York Times.

00:21:37.000 They'll say, well, why are we providing a false balance between truth and falsehood?

00:21:41.000 Right?

00:21:41.000 Balance isn't we provide a balance between truth and falsehood.

00:21:44.000 Balance is just when we don't know the answer, we provide a balance.

00:21:48.000 Okay, but the New York Times editors now suggest that they know the answers to everything.

00:21:51.000 There's a moral certitude that has taken place, that has taken the place of the general commitment to ideological diversity that originally was allowed because a marketplace of ideas allows the best products to rise forth.

00:22:03.000 But the New York Times, as Barry points out, has decided that that idea no longer holds true.

00:22:08.000 That they know the absolute truth.

00:22:10.000 It turns out, in retrospect, making Nikole Hannah-Jones the effective editor of the New York Times is a terrible idea.

00:22:14.000 You just boil it all down to that.

00:22:17.000 That taking woke progressives, who are essentially activists, and saying to them, you are going to dictate the truth from on high, and we are all going to sit down here.

00:22:26.000 And if we disagree with you, then you get to stomp on us.

00:22:30.000 That is not the way to run any sort of open journalistic enterprise.

00:22:34.000 Barry was a dissenting voice of the New York Times.

00:22:36.000 All dissent had to go away because dissent is not the highest form of patriotism, nor is dissent even allowed in an area where you know the absolute truth.

00:22:45.000 There's a religious aspect to this over at the New York Times and in the mainstream media where they know the gospel truth, and the gospel truth means that everybody else is bound for hell.

00:22:55.000 So, Berry continues along these lines, she says, Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times, but Twitter has become its ultimate editor.

00:23:01.000 As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space.

00:23:07.000 Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions.

00:23:15.000 I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first draft of history.

00:23:18.000 Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing molded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

00:23:24.000 That would be a slap at the 1619 project, obviously, which has decided that history is now malleable and that history can be made and twisted to fit a narrative that is absolutely untrue.

00:23:36.000 Again, every word of this, it's a brilliant letter by Barry, and you can see what the New York Times lost in basically alienating her.

00:23:42.000 Because what happened here is that the editors of the New York Times basically allowed a malice shaming to occur inside their op-ed pages and inside their newsrooms, and then Barry quit.

00:23:51.000 It's exactly the same thing they did to their executive editor of the op-ed page, James Bennett.

00:23:55.000 And they basically allowed the woke staffers to make life so miserable that James Bennett handed in his resignation.

00:24:00.000 That's exactly what happened to Barry.

00:24:01.000 We'll get to more of Barry's quite brilliant letter in just one second.

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00:25:41.000 Okay, so back to Barry Weiss's letter over at the New York Times.

00:25:44.000 So, Barry quit yesterday, and she has this entire letter, and she says, Have made me subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views.

00:25:53.000 They have called me a Nazi and a racist.

00:25:55.000 I've learned to brush off comments about how I'm quote, writing about the Jews again.

00:25:58.000 Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by co-workers.

00:26:02.000 My work and my character are openly demeans on company-wide Slack channels, where masthead editors regularly weigh in.

00:26:07.000 There, some co-workers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be truly inclusive, while others post axe emojis next to my name.

00:26:16.000 Presumably because they want her axed.

00:26:17.000 Still, other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter, with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action.

00:26:24.000 They never are.

00:26:25.000 There are terms for all of this.

00:26:26.000 Unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, constructive discharge.

00:26:29.000 I'm no legal expert, but I know this is wrong.

00:26:31.000 I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behavior to go on inside your company, in full view of the paper's entire staff and the public.

00:26:37.000 And I certainly can't square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage.

00:26:43.000 Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

00:26:48.000 This is Barry Weiss writing to the publisher of the New York Times.

00:26:50.000 Part of me wishes I could say my experience was unique.

00:26:53.000 But the truth is that intellectual curiosity, let alone risk-taking, is now a liability at The Times.

00:26:58.000 Why edit something challenging to our readers or write something bold, only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher when we can assure ourselves of job security and clicks by publishing our 4,000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world?

00:27:11.000 And so self-censorship has become the norm.

00:27:13.000 What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity.

00:27:17.000 If a person's ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized.

00:27:21.000 Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome.

00:27:24.000 Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

00:27:27.000 This, of course, is 100% right.

00:27:29.000 Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble if not fired.

00:27:34.000 If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it.

00:27:40.000 If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground.

00:27:44.000 And if every now and then she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated, and caveated.

00:27:53.000 It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed fell short of our standards.

00:27:58.000 We attached an editor's note on a travel story about Jaffa, that's the Israeli city of Jaffa, shortly after it was published because it, quote, failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa's makeup and its history.

00:28:08.000 But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed's fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

00:28:15.000 The paper of record is more and more, says Barry Weiss, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people.

00:28:23.000 This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its diversity, the doxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned, and the worst case systems in human history include the United States alongside Nazi Germany. 0.77

00:28:35.000 Even now, I'm confident most people at the Times don't hold these views.

00:28:38.000 Yet they are accounted by those who do.

00:28:40.000 Why?

00:28:41.000 Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous.

00:28:43.000 Perhaps because they believe they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm, language, is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes.

00:28:51.000 Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

00:28:57.000 Or perhaps it is because they know that nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits, it puts a target on your back.

00:29:02.000 Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the new McCarthyism that has taken root at the paper of record.

00:29:08.000 All of this bodes ill, says Barry Weiss, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they'll have to do to risk advance in their careers.

00:29:15.000 Rule 1.

00:29:16.000 Speak your mind at your own peril.

00:29:17.000 Rule 2.

00:29:18.000 Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative.

00:29:20.000 Rule 3.

00:29:21.000 Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain.

00:29:24.000 Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you'll be hung out to dry.

00:29:30.000 For these young writers, there is one consolation.

00:29:32.000 As places like the Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate.

00:29:39.000 Opinions that are vital.

00:29:41.000 Debate that is sincere.

00:29:43.000 I hear from these people every day.

00:29:44.000 An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal.

00:29:48.000 It's an American ideal.

00:29:49.000 You said a few years ago.

00:29:50.000 I couldn't agree more.

00:29:51.000 America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

00:29:54.000 Is Barry Weiss writing against the publisher of the New York Times on her way out, just setting fire to the place?

00:29:59.000 None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don't still labor for this newspaper.

00:30:03.000 They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking.

00:30:06.000 I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work, but I can no longer do the work you brought me here to do, the work that Adolph Oaks described in that famous 1896 statement, to make of the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end, to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.

00:30:22.000 Oak's idea is one of the best I've encountered.

00:30:23.000 I've always comforted myself with the notion the best ideas win out.

00:30:26.000 But ideas cannot win on their own.

00:30:28.000 They need a hearing.

00:30:28.000 They need a voice.

00:30:30.000 Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

00:30:32.000 Sincerely, Barry." Okay, so Barry... Look, Barry has been... I know Barry.

00:30:36.000 Barry has been essentially...

00:30:38.000 verbally threatened on the Slack channels of the New York Times for years at this point.

00:30:43.000 People who work at the New York Times have attacked her publicly.

00:30:46.000 Again, I run in publication.

00:30:47.000 If my writers were attacking each other, openly, like in the media, or even back channel, if there were a Slack board where somebody was just getting routinely beaten up, those people would be fired.

00:30:57.000 Okay, that's the way that normally these companies work, but that's not the way these companies work anymore.

00:31:01.000 They're run by the woke staffers and by the editors who are too cowardly to stand up to the woke staffers.

00:31:06.000 They've decided to shut the Overton window in moral certitude that they are right and everybody who disagrees is absolutely wrong.

00:31:13.000 Okay, so Barry is not wrong about her characterization here.

00:31:16.000 And frankly, I don't blame her for leaving.

00:31:17.000 She was under, again, this sort of pressure every single day.

00:31:21.000 Like, all the time.

00:31:22.000 Over at the New York Times, because the New York Times has basically just become a college paper.

00:31:26.000 It's just a college paper at this point.

00:31:28.000 That doesn't mean there aren't great reporters over there.

00:31:30.000 There are some great reporters over there.

00:31:32.000 It does mean the New York Times is now a shadow of what it once was.

00:31:35.000 Although, you do have to ask at a certain point whether the New York Times learned any of its lessons.

00:31:38.000 Over the weekend, I watched a movie called Mr. Jones.

00:31:40.000 Excellent movie, by the way.

00:31:42.000 I should make it a thing I like.

00:31:43.000 It's terrific.

00:31:44.000 It's a movie about the revelation of the Ukrainian Holodomor, which was Stalin basically starving millions of people in Ukraine in order to usurp all of the produce from Ukraine and use it to build whatever he wanted to build.

00:31:57.000 And the mainstream Pulitzer Prize winning reporter from the New York Times was a guy named Walter Durante, who was just a shill for the Soviet regime.

00:32:03.000 The movie really takes this on.

00:32:05.000 And there's a fantastic scene where there is a sort of acolyte of Walter Durante who's talking to the journalist who breaks the story about the Ukrainian famine.

00:32:13.000 And that guy's name is Gareth Jones.

00:32:14.000 And she is telling him that basically you got to crack a few eggs in order to make an omelet.

00:32:19.000 And he says, well, hold up a second.

00:32:20.000 What if you're wrong?

00:32:21.000 Well, she says, we need a better world, but what if you're wrong?

00:32:24.000 And it finally occurs to her that maybe she could be wrong, that any system that requires the breaking of the eggs in this way, maybe she's wrong about the system.

00:32:32.000 Well, over at the New York Times, they have never let go of the certainty that they are right about the system.

00:32:36.000 It's just a new brand of right about the system.

00:32:38.000 Walter Duranty was sure that the communists were right, and so he was willing to overlook the Ukrainian famine. 0.93

00:32:43.000 And now you have a group of people over at the New York Times, the woke staffers, who hate America so much.

00:32:46.000 They hate the American system so much, they wish to tear it down.

00:32:49.000 They believe that it is rooted in racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia.

00:32:52.000 It needs to be torn down, and that is a moral certainty.

00:32:54.000 And that means that if you have to abuse people who disagree with you, you do it.

00:32:58.000 If it means you have to basically passive-aggressively threaten people at your own publication, you go ahead and you do it.

00:33:03.000 Because you have the moral high ground.

00:33:05.000 And it doesn't matter who has to suffer in order to make that happen.

00:33:08.000 It doesn't matter if the Overton window has to shut.

00:33:10.000 The Overton window shouldn't even exist.

00:33:12.000 It shouldn't exist.

00:33:12.000 There is one approved opinion, and it is the only approved opinion.

00:33:17.000 And now, it's not just Barry over at the New York Times that this is happening to.

00:33:20.000 So Andrew Sullivan, a man with whom I have had significant disagreements, remember Andrew Sullivan, who has been interesting on many issues, but also is the same guy who once suggested that Sarah Palin's daughter was not actually her own daughter and all this, right?

00:33:31.000 Like, Andrew Sullivan has kind of a quirky history, but a lot of his writing is really interesting.

00:33:35.000 He writes over at New York Magazine, he's been speaking out about cancel culture, and now he has quit New York Magazine.

00:33:41.000 He announced he's leaving at the end of the week.

00:33:43.000 He said this will be my last week in New York Magazine.

00:33:45.000 I'm sad because the editors I worked with there are among the finest in the country.

00:33:48.000 I'm immensely grateful to them for vastly improving my work.

00:33:50.000 I'm also proud of the essays and columns I wrote at New York Magazine, some of which will be published in a collection of my writings scheduled for next year.

00:33:57.000 The underlying reasons for the split are pretty self-evident.

00:34:01.000 Again, it's pretty obvious exactly what happened here.

00:34:04.000 He felt the same way at New York Magazine that Barry Weiss felt at the New York Times.

00:34:10.000 He wrote about Barry Weiss actually in mid-June and about the general perspective of the New York Times.

00:34:14.000 He said that they have a view of the world with moral clarity but no moral complexity.

00:34:18.000 He's talking about the 1619 Project and the view of people like Nicole Hannah-Jones.

00:34:21.000 So, the New York Magazine editor-in-chief, a guy named David Haskell, responded to Sullivan leaving.

00:34:26.000 And his response is everything.

00:34:28.000 His response is just as important as Barry's letter because it really does demonstrate the thought processes that go on inside the editorial halls of power where cowards surrender to the woke staff who are intent on creating a new hierarchical orthodoxy in thought.

00:34:42.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:34:43.000 First, reminder, my new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, it goes on sale Tuesday, Tuesday, less than a week away, July 21st, 6 p.m.

00:34:51.000 Eastern, 3 p.m.

00:34:52.000 Pacific.

00:34:53.000 We'll be doing a virtual live signing event on the day of release.

00:34:56.000 With your purchase of a signed copy, you can write in a question which may be read and answered as I sign your book live on the air.

00:35:01.000 Ooh, magical.

00:35:03.000 You can pre-order your signed copy and write in your question at dailywire.com slash Ben.

00:35:07.000 The book covers two fundamentally different visions of America.

00:35:09.000 That's what we're talking about right now.

00:35:11.000 One vision is the unifying traditional vision of America, where we say that we have a shared philosophy based on the Declaration of Independence.

00:35:17.000 We have a shared culture, where we respect each other's rights.

00:35:19.000 We have a shared history.

00:35:20.000 We're all part of the same stream of history.

00:35:22.000 None of this ignores the problems with America, but it recognizes America is the greatest nation in the history of the Earth.

00:35:28.000 And then there's a second narrative, a second vision.

00:35:31.000 And that narrative is that America's history is evil, its philosophy is corrupt, and its culture of rights is merely a cover for power.

00:35:38.000 This would be the New York Times 1619 Project, the New York Times Editorial Board, Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility.

00:35:42.000 These are classic examples of the vision I call disintegrationist.

00:35:46.000 Disintegrationists, they're people who want the country to fall apart. 1.00

00:35:48.000 Disintegrationists use weapons like cancel culture, deleting or silencing anyone or anything that disagrees with them to build their whole new world order. 0.97

00:35:55.000 How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps details How the disintegrationist vision has gained the ascendancy.

00:36:01.000 It offers a penetrating view, I think, of our country at this time.

00:36:04.000 And also, it offers the antidote.

00:36:05.000 Simply reading the book is the antidote.

00:36:07.000 Again, that is dailyware.com slash ben to order your signed copy today and join my live signing on Tuesday, July 21st.

00:36:13.000 Now, if you're not already a Daily Wire member, you should also consider getting a reader's pass to dailywire.com.

00:36:17.000 Fantastic value, three bucks a month.

00:36:19.000 When you sign up, you get that first month for only 99 cents.

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00:36:28.000 Medical experts now believe Joe Biden's election will completely cure coronavirus.

00:36:31.000 Well, that'd make it the second thing to cure coronavirus.

00:36:33.000 Kneeling, for woke purposes, also cures coronavirus.

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00:36:45.000 ♪♪ -♪♪ Alrighty, so the letter in response to Andrew Sullivan leaving from David Haskell, who's the editor over at New York Magazine, is everything, right?

00:36:58.000 It is everything, because it's an admission that everything that Barry Weiss says and that Andrew Sullivan says, that our media have basically become just loudspeakers for one point of view, willing to shut out anybody else at the behest of the loudest voices who claim that if you refuse to acquiesce to their requests, then they will destroy you as insufficiently woke, That they are absolutely accurate in that assessment.

00:37:16.000 So here's what David Haskell just wrote.

00:37:18.000 He said, hey everybody, as you may have seen, Andrew Sullivan's last week will be this one, as he finishes the feature we've published in the print magazine and writes a final column.

00:37:25.000 The decision to part ways was mutual. Andrew and I agreed that his editorial project and the magazines, the overlapping in many ways, were no longer the right match for each other.

00:37:33.000 With the news of Andrew's departure, I'd like to share some thoughts about my approach to politics coverage more generally.

00:37:39.000 I'm trying hard to create in this magazine a civil, respectful, intellectually honest face for political debate.

00:37:44.000 I believe there's a way to write from a conservative perspective about some of the most politically charged subjects of American life, while still upholding our values.

00:37:51.000 I also think our magazine in particular has an opportunity to be a place where the liberal project is hashed out, which is to say, not only championed, but also interrogated.

00:37:59.000 Our readers regularly encounter some of the best writing coming from the left, from our politics writers on Intelligencer and The Cut, as well as many of our culture writers on Vulture.

00:38:06.000 Then we also have some writers who share our values, but not always the politics of most of our staff is, to my mind, a credit to the organization and a benefit to the reader.

00:38:13.000 I will continue to push us to publish work that challenges the liberal assumptions of much of our readership.

00:38:18.000 But!

00:38:23.000 But publishing conservative commentary or critiques of liberalism in the left in 2020 is difficult to get right, and thoughtful, well-meaning people can come to different conclusions about it.

00:38:36.000 How to weigh the value of plurality of political opinion against other journalistic and community values?

00:38:41.000 So question, what is the other competing journalistic and community value?

00:38:45.000 And we're not talking about printing neo-Nazi stuff.

00:38:47.000 We're talking about printing... I mean, Andrew Sullivan is at best mildly right-of-center.

00:38:51.000 At best.

00:38:52.000 Okay, the notion that he's a wild-eyed Reagan conservative is just crazy.

00:38:57.000 It's not true.

00:38:58.000 Okay, but Andrew Sullivan is like out of bounds for a New York magazine.

00:39:02.000 Again, that sentence is incredible.

00:39:04.000 How to weigh the value of plurality of political opinion against other journalistic and community values.

00:39:09.000 Whether our current publication does, in fact, create the environment I'm trying to foster.

00:39:12.000 That vague, mealy-mouthed language is safetyism.

00:39:15.000 That if you print something, it's damaging to others.

00:39:18.000 So, just to be straight, There are a group of people on the left who believe that Barry Weiss, writing about the IDW, or me on a college campus talking about abortion, this is threatening the safety of others.

00:39:28.000 Whereas, if you go to one of my lectures and you burn crap outside, not threatening to others, or if you go on the Slack channel at the New York Times and you tweet Barry Weiss's name next to axe emojis, that's not threatening.

00:39:39.000 Safetyism is the idea that anything somebody says you disagree with makes you unsafe. 0.96

00:39:45.000 But the same people who are claiming that Barry is whining too much and Andrew Sullivan is complaining too much about the hostile work environment and all this, these are the same idiots who are suggesting we need to rename master bedrooms because master bedrooms are reminiscent of slavery even though they have nothing to do with anything.

00:40:02.000 So this New York Magazine editor says, What to think of certain writers in particular? 0.95

00:40:06.000 I understand.

00:40:07.000 Some of the staff comes down differently than I do on these subjects.

00:40:09.000 I'm grateful for their private and direct feedback, as opposed to on Twitter, which is a terrible place to litigate anything.

00:40:15.000 So that is his acknowledgement that people on the inside over at New York Magazine were yelling at him and now he's going to cave to them.

00:40:20.000 So that is the nature of our media at this point.

00:40:24.000 And it's been heard far and wide.

00:40:26.000 And we're now living in a culture in which people are being forced to lose their jobs for like the most ridiculous reasons.

00:40:33.000 Now, let me make clear.

00:40:34.000 There are reasons why in the media.

00:40:36.000 You should lose your job.

00:40:38.000 I'm not saying that there is no such thing as the Overton window or that there is no opinion that is outside the Overton window.

00:40:44.000 I'm not saying that there aren't opinions for which the blowback is absolutely merited.

00:40:48.000 I mean, I absolutely think that there is such a thing as an opinion that is so clearly horrible and wrong that even granting it a platform, you doing it, I'm not saying you should be the platform from a general public, Listen, there's an Overton window at Daily Wire.

00:41:08.000 I don't print everything at the Daily Wire because we have a set of values, and if you don't abide by our values, I'm not printing it.

00:41:13.000 But we are openly partisan.

00:41:15.000 We are openly conservative.

00:41:16.000 And I'm not saying that if you're the Atlantic, that there aren't things that the Atlantic doesn't have a right to basically reject, right?

00:41:22.000 Or that the New York Times doesn't have a right to reject.

00:41:24.000 If Richard Spencer writes a piece about how white supremacy ought to rule the day, I don't think the New York Times has an obligation to print that.

00:41:31.000 I don't think, for example, that ViacomCBS has an obligation to continue to employ Nick Cannon.

00:41:35.000 After Nick Cannon went on a podcast and talked about the JUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU I'd worked as executive producer and chairman of Teen Nick, a spinoff of the network Nickelodeon geared toward teenagers.

00:41:51.000 He'd also been a host and executive producer of the MTV comedy Wild Night Out.

00:41:55.000 A Viacom CBS spokesperson said in a statement the company categorically denounced all forms of anti-Semitism because, basically, Nick Cannon went on Twitter and suggested that the true Hebrews were black people.

00:42:06.000 He's essentially parroting the nonsense from black Hebrew Israelites. 1.00

00:42:10.000 And he also suggested that Jews control business, is my understanding. 0.83

00:42:14.000 He said, in an interview with The Washington, he said, apparently, so Kenan was interviewing a rapper named Richard Griffin.

00:42:22.000 known as Professor Griff.

00:42:24.000 Griffin left the hip-hop group Public Enemy in 1989 after he said in an interview, Speaking to Canon, Griffin doubled down on his past remarks about Jewish people on the music and media industries.

00:42:31.000 were responsible for the majority of wickedness that goes on across the globe.

00:42:35.000 Speaking to Canon, Griffin doubled down on his past remarks about Jewish people on the music and media industries.

00:42:40.000 And Griffin said, I'm hated now because I told the truth.

00:42:42.000 And Canon said, you're speaking facts.

00:42:44.000 There's no reason to be scared of anything when you're speaking the truth. 0.98

00:42:47.000 He also said it was a shame that Louis Farrakhan had been silenced on Facebook, despite the fact that Louis Farrakhan is, of course, a brutal, vicious anti-Semite who's compared Jews to cockroaches. 0.90

00:42:56.000 Cannon said in the podcast, I find myself wanting to debate the idea of banking conspiracies about Jews. 0.78

00:43:02.000 He says, it gets real wishy-washy and unclear to me when we give so much power to the theys and the theys then turn into Illuminati, the Zionists, the Rothschilds. 0.58

00:43:10.000 And then he said, you can't be anti-Semitic when we are the Semitic people.

00:43:12.000 That's our birthright.

00:43:13.000 So if that's truly our birthright, there's no hate involved.

00:43:14.000 Now, can ViacomCBS fire Nick Cannon over that?

00:43:18.000 Sure.

00:43:18.000 I mean, by the way, I defended the right of, and it was very controversial at the time, I defended the right of CBS to let go Roseanne Barr after Roseanne Barr tweeted out racist stuff about Valerie Jarrett, right?

00:43:27.000 Because the bottom line is that when new information is added to the stew of a person's public profile, it has to do with his actual ability to perform his job.

00:43:36.000 And when that new information is so vastly outside the window of normal discourse, then there can be blowback.

00:43:42.000 So I'm not arguing there can't be blowback.

00:43:44.000 I'm just arguing that what the left has done is they've expanded the definition of outside the Overton window such that the Overton window is a pinpoint.

00:43:51.000 It's a pinpoint, right?

00:43:52.000 If you don't agree with the writings of Ta-Nehisi Coates, you're outside the Overton window.

00:43:56.000 And it really is that simple.

00:43:57.000 There's like a few key litmus tests.

00:43:59.000 And if you don't fulfill those litmus tests, then you are cast out.

00:44:02.000 Okay, any system that lumps together in the we-should-be-able-to-cast-them-out category, Andrew Sullivan, Barry Weiss, and Nick Cannon is a bad system of thought.

00:44:10.000 It's a bad system of thought.

00:44:12.000 And that is the system that we are creating right now.

00:44:14.000 I'm not saying you can't draw lines.

00:44:16.000 I'm saying that where the left is seeking to draw lines is basically around that pinprick of thought that they agree with.

00:44:22.000 How do you know this?

00:44:23.000 Okay, the worst case of cancel culture that I've seen in recent memory.

00:44:26.000 This is amazing.

00:44:27.000 So this one is from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

00:44:30.000 According to Reason Magazine, until last week, Gary Gerles was Senior Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

00:44:37.000 He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster.

00:44:44.000 Gary's removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable, read the petition.

00:44:48.000 Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?

00:44:58.000 This accusation is a pretty serious one.

00:45:00.000 So what exactly did he do?

00:45:02.000 Their sole complaint is that he allegedly concluded a presentation on how to diversify the museum's holdings by saying, quote, don't worry, we'll definitely still continue to collect white artists.

00:45:12.000 That's the whole thing.

00:45:14.000 He said we're gonna try and purchase art from people who are not white to diversify our holdings.

00:45:17.000 Also, we'll still buy some art from white people.

00:45:19.000 Because white people still make some good art. 0.91

00:45:20.000 Okay, he was forced to resign his job.

00:45:24.000 He was forced to resign his job over this.

00:45:27.000 That's utterly insane.

00:45:30.000 He actually said this.

00:45:30.000 He said, I do not believe I have ever said it is important to collect the art of white men.

00:45:34.000 I have said it is important that we do not exclude consideration of the art of white men. 0.93

00:45:37.000 That in and of itself was considered so far outside the Overton window, this guy lost his job at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

00:45:43.000 Okay, this is utterly crazy.

00:45:45.000 It's just crazy.

00:45:47.000 This is the world that we are building right now.

00:45:50.000 Another case over the weekend.

00:45:53.000 Hank Barron reporting for Daily Wire.

00:45:55.000 On Monday, a Seattle business owner issued a public apology for her dreadlocks after she was vilified on social media.

00:46:01.000 Rachel Marshall, founder of Rachel's Ginger Beer in Seattle, responded on Instagram to critics who viewed her dreadlocks as cultural appropriation.

00:46:08.000 One critic wrote, Seattle, we gotta talk.

00:46:10.000 This person owns a particular business here in Seattle with multiple locations.

00:46:13.000 She's a white woman with dreadlocks and allegedly gives her product to cops for free. 1.00

00:46:18.000 It has always confused me.

00:46:19.000 We have seen this woman speak and cozy up regularly with other people in the community and no one has confronted her about her choice to willfully appropriate black hairstyling.

00:46:29.000 We aren't in a post-racial utopia.

00:46:30.000 There's no federal law to protect black people from being penalized for their natural or protective hairstyling.

00:46:36.000 Hell, we're still trying to convince everyone black lives matter. 1.00

00:46:39.000 These kind of posts forced her to then write, No, it isn't.

00:46:48.000 No, it's not.

00:46:49.000 It's a hairstyle, gang.

00:46:51.000 It wasn't that she made her hair into a swastika or something.

00:46:54.000 She was wearing dreads.

00:46:56.000 Like, this is insane.

00:46:57.000 It's completely crazy.

00:46:59.000 She says, it's clear I've been stubbornly resistant.

00:47:01.000 I sincerely apologize to those I hurt.

00:47:03.000 I'm deeply sorry for the pain I caused members of the African-American community who have been and still are discriminated against and mistreated for having dreadlocks.

00:47:10.000 And I'm so sorry it took so long to admit and address my mistake.

00:47:12.000 I have an appointment to remove my dreadlocks.

00:47:14.000 More broadly, I'm committed to earnestly listening to and from the voices and lived experiences different from my own.

00:47:20.000 I never want to cause any harm.

00:47:22.000 The argument about harm has now expanded dramatically, obviously.

00:47:27.000 Harm is anything I don't like.

00:47:29.000 And non-harm is anything that I want to cancel.

00:47:32.000 That is how the definitions have shifted incredibly, incredibly wildly.

00:47:36.000 This is really, really dangerous stuff for the country.

00:47:39.000 There is a priesthood here that gets to determine what is acceptable and what is not.

00:47:44.000 And those standards don't have to even be connected remotely with anything realistic.

00:47:48.000 It's just whatever the woke bosses say today.

00:47:51.000 And everybody attempts to avoid their scorn.

00:47:53.000 They attempt to avoid the eye of Ra.

00:47:55.000 In the end, there's only two ways this goes.

00:47:57.000 One, you surrender.

00:47:58.000 And you surrender because you don't want to be a guillotine.

00:48:00.000 Or two, there is indeed a mass cultural uprising at exactly this sort of nonsense.

00:48:04.000 And that mass cultural uprising has to happen right the hell now.

00:48:07.000 It has to happen right now.

00:48:08.000 It has to happen yesterday.

00:48:09.000 So good for Barry Weiss.

00:48:11.000 Good for Andrew Sullivan.

00:48:12.000 Good for those 153 center-left people who wrote for Harper's.

00:48:15.000 And welcome to the club, guys.

00:48:16.000 And you gotta recognize something, okay?

00:48:18.000 In solidarity lies power.

00:48:19.000 So you may not like me, and I may not like your viewpoints.

00:48:22.000 The difference is, I've been fighting for your right to speak what you've had to say for years. 0.92

00:48:25.000 So it's about damn time that we all get together and recognize that while we may disagree on a wide variety of issues, on this we agree. 0.97

00:48:32.000 The Overton window has been closed too far by people who are ideological fascists. 0.98

00:48:36.000 They wish to shut down debate.

00:48:38.000 That is their goal.

00:48:39.000 The liberals and the classical liberals are on the same side of this particular debate.

00:48:43.000 Otherwise, there will be no debate, and the people who end up winning are the people who are just willing to utilize power in whatever convenient fashion they can.

00:48:53.000 Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.

00:48:56.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.

00:48:57.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:48:57.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:49:03.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, assistant director Pavel Lydowsky, technical producer Austin Stevens, playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan, associate producer Katie Swinnerton, edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

00:49:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:49:27.000 You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.

00:49:31.000 I think there are enough of those already out there.

00:49:33.000 We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.

00:49:38.000 So my main focuses are life, family, faith.

00:49:42.000 Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 15, 2020

Bari The Hatchet | Ep. 1052

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