The Ben Shapiro Show - Bezos Like A Boss | Ep. 713

00:00:00.000 Jeff Bezos of Amazon exposes the National Enquirer as a blackmail racket, the Democratic Green New Deal gets off to a bit of a rough start, and we check the mailbag.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 Remember like a thousand years ago, Do you remember a thousand years ago, when President Trump gave the State of the Union Address?

00:00:22.000 You remember that?

00:00:23.000 That was awesome, right?

00:00:24.000 But that was like a thousand years ago, because so much has happened since then, and a lot happened yesterday as well.

00:00:28.000 We'll get to all of it in just one second.

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00:01:41.000 Alrighty.

00:01:42.000 So, the big news of yesterday is that Jeff Bezos went to war, went to war with the National Enquirer.

00:01:48.000 Now, to be perfectly accurate, The National Enquirer first went to war with Jeff Bezos.

00:01:52.000 Now, you'll recall that Jeff Bezos is the owner of both Amazon and the Washington Post, and he has been in a running gun battle with President Trump for legitimately three, four years now over President Trump's politics, President Trump's belief that the Washington Post is a smear machine against him, and so President Trump has reveled in all of the allegations about Jeff Bezos and all of the new information that Bezos was cheating on his wife with his next-door neighbor, and now they're gonna get a divorce and his wife is gonna walk away with $170 billion or something.

00:02:20.000 Well, now it turns out that the National Enquirer was trying to blackmail Bezos.

00:02:25.000 They had obtained photos and text messages of Bezos' crotch, basically, and then they went to Bezos and they said, we'd like for you to stop using the Washington Post to investigate us, or these photos might unfortunately leak.

00:02:39.000 Well, Bezos then just basically said, all right, well, if you want to play this game, here we go.

00:02:45.000 And he just unzipped and put everything on the table.

00:02:47.000 So yesterday, in a very long post for medium.com, he wrote, no thank you, Mr. Pecker.

00:02:53.000 There is something unbelievable about the fact that the owner of the National Enquirer is named Pecker, which led to the headline in the New York Post, as well as the Huffington Post today, Bezos Exposes Pecker, which is a fantastic, fantastic headline.

00:03:07.000 Here is what Jeff Bezos posted.

00:03:09.000 He said, so first of all, just word to the wise, don't blackmail a guy worth $170 billion who also has the capacity to create two-day delivery for anything, right?

00:03:20.000 And has drones, like squads of drones that work for him.

00:03:23.000 It's just going to go very poorly.

00:03:24.000 By the way, it turns out the main distributor for the National Enquirer, owned by Amazon.com.

00:03:29.000 Okay, so here is what he says, Bezos.

00:03:32.000 Something unusual happened to me yesterday.

00:03:34.000 Actually, for me, it wasn't just unusual, it was a first.

00:03:37.000 I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, or at least that's what the top people at the National Enquirer thought.

00:03:42.000 I'm glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing.

00:03:46.000 Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.

00:03:53.000 AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, led by David Pecker, recently entered into an immunity deal with the Department of Justice related to their role in the so-called catch-and-kill process on behalf of President Trump and his election campaign.

00:04:04.000 Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they've taken on behalf of the Saudi government.

00:04:10.000 And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together.

00:04:12.000 After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker's loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia.

00:04:21.000 At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions.

00:04:26.000 That is from an article.

00:04:27.000 From, I believe, the Washington Post.

00:04:29.000 Federal investigators and legitimate media have, of course, suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Inquirer and AMI for political reasons.

00:04:36.000 And yet AMI keeps claiming otherwise.

00:04:37.000 American media emphatically rejects any assertion that its reporting was instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.

00:04:45.000 Of course, legitimate media have been challenging this assertion for a long time.

00:04:49.000 And then he has a list of sources.

00:04:52.000 He says, I didn't know much about most of that a few weeks ago when intimate text messages from me were published in the National Enquirer.

00:04:58.000 I engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by the Enquirer.

00:05:05.000 As it turns out, there are now several independent investigations looking into this matter.

00:05:09.000 To lead my investigation, I retained Gavin DeBecker.

00:05:11.000 I've known Mr. DeBecker for 20 years, his expertise in this arena is excellent, and he's one of the smartest and most capable leaders I know.

00:05:17.000 I asked him to prioritize protecting my time, since I have other things I prefer to work on, and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter.

00:05:24.000 Perks of being a billionaire.

00:05:25.000 Here's a piece of context.

00:05:27.000 My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me.

00:05:30.000 It's unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy.

00:05:36.000 President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets.

00:05:40.000 Also, the post-essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.

00:05:47.000 Back to the story.

00:05:48.000 Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is apoplectic about our investigation.

00:05:53.000 For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.

00:05:57.000 A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker's apoplexy, we were approached verbally at first with an offer.

00:06:02.000 They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn't stop our investigation.

00:06:08.000 My lawyers argued that AMI has no right to publish photos, since any person holds the copyright to their own photos, and since the photos in themselves don't add anything newsworthy.

00:06:16.000 That is the case, by the way, that Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan made against Gawker, and basically bankrupted Gawker.

00:06:22.000 AMI's claim of newsworthiness is that the photos are necessary to show Amazon shareholders that my business judgment is terrible.

00:06:28.000 I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago and drove all the packages to the post office myself.

00:06:32.000 Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people.

00:06:35.000 I will let those results speak for themselves.

00:06:37.000 Okay, back to their threat to publish intimate photos of me.

00:06:39.000 I guess we, me, my lawyers, and Gavin DeBecker, didn't react to the generalized threat with enough fear, so they sent this.

00:06:45.000 And then the chief content officer, he pasted an email from the chief content officer of AMI to the litigation council for DeBecker about Jeff Bezos.

00:06:53.000 And it says, Marty, I am leaving the office for the night.

00:06:56.000 However, in the interest of expediating this situation and with the Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of the Washington Inquirer's initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during your news gathering.

00:07:07.000 In addition to the below the belt selfie, otherwise colloquially known as a bleep pic, the Inquirer obtained a further nine images.

00:07:14.000 And then they described the images, including including images from Bezos to his lover, whose name is Sanchez and pictures of his crotch and all the rest.

00:07:25.000 Bezos says that got my attention, but not in the way they likely hoped.

00:07:28.000 Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a backseat because there's a much more important matter involved here.

00:07:33.000 If, in my position, I can't stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?

00:07:37.000 On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.

00:07:45.000 In the AMI letters I'm making public, you will see the precise details of their extortionate proposal.

00:07:49.000 They will publish the personal photos unless Gavin DeBecker and I make the specific false public statement to the press that we have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.

00:08:02.000 If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they'll say they'll publish the photos and quickly, and there's an associated threat.

00:08:08.000 They'll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from the lie.

00:08:12.000 Be assured, no real journalists ever propose anything like what is happening here.

00:08:16.000 I will not report embarrassing information about you if you do X for me.

00:08:19.000 And if you don't do X quickly, I will report the embarrassing information.

00:08:23.000 Nothing I might write here could tell the National Enquirer's story as eloquently as their own words below, and then he just dumps out all of their emails.

00:08:30.000 So, here is why this is relevant.

00:08:33.000 Number one, AMI was being used as a go-between by President Trump during the campaign to pay off various women.

00:08:39.000 And that, obviously, has been reported on.

00:08:42.000 The dot that has yet to be connected and the one the media are jumping on here is the suggestion that President Trump both hates the Washington Post and used AMI as a go-between.

00:08:49.000 So maybe the reason that AMI was going after Bezos is because Bezos was going after Trump.

00:08:55.000 So basically, AMI was afraid that Bezos was gonna discover some sort of corrupt relationship between the Saudi government and AMI on the one hand and the Saudi government and the Trump administration on the other, and this corrupt triangle colluded together to go after Jeff Bezos, and then AMI tried to blackmail Bezos.

00:09:11.000 To that notion, apparently DeBecker has now been telling reporters that he thinks that Bezos' text message were actually obtained, maybe, by a government source, meaning that the phone wasn't hacked Instead, government data gathering allowed the Trump administration to grab these text messages and then hand them off to AMI.

00:09:29.000 Obviously, if that's true, Trump gets impeached, right?

00:09:31.000 I mean, if that's true, then it's the end of the road for the Trump administration using government resources in order to grab the text messages of your political opposition in the reportorial field.

00:09:41.000 And then blackmail, that would be the end of the line for president, I mean, forget about impeachment, he'd go to jail, right?

00:09:45.000 I mean, that's an actual crime for a variety of reasons.

00:09:48.000 But beyond that, they're trying to now connect dots that have not yet been connected.

00:09:52.000 Nobody really understands why AMI was going after Bezos.

00:09:55.000 It doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:09:56.000 Trump going after Bezos makes sense in the sense that Trump doesn't like Bezos.

00:10:00.000 He rails about him routinely.

00:10:01.000 He calls it the Amazon Washington Post.

00:10:04.000 He's been going after Bezos for years on Twitter.

00:10:07.000 The idea that AMI was blackmailing Bezos to stop reporting about their connection with the Saudi government, were they doing that on their own?

00:10:14.000 If they were doing it on their own, it just demonstrates what we've already known, which is that AMI is basically just a payoff organization and is used by various rich people in order to shut down stories they don't like.

00:10:24.000 Also, they blackmail people, right?

00:10:25.000 This is pretty well known.

00:10:27.000 All of this is going to come out.

00:10:28.000 We're going to find all of this out because remember that David Pecker and AMI You know, I'm a fan of Amazon.

00:10:33.000 I think it's a great company.

00:10:34.000 I was one of the first subscribers to Amazon Prime.

00:10:35.000 I've been a member of Amazon since, like, 1998.

00:10:37.000 the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

00:10:40.000 They are in a plea arrangement by which they are obligated to cooperate with the Southern District of New York.

00:10:45.000 So if you think that all of this is going to stay secret, it is not.

00:10:47.000 I will say this.

00:10:48.000 All credit to Bezos, really.

00:10:49.000 Like, you know, I'm a fan of Amazon.

00:10:52.000 I think it's a great company.

00:10:53.000 I was one of the first subscribers to Amazon Prime.

00:10:55.000 I've been a member of Amazon since like 1998.

00:10:57.000 But putting aside my own business interest in this, journalists blackmailing people, people blackmailing people generally is really disgusting.

00:11:06.000 And trying to suggest that you're going to reveal personal information about someone unless they do what you want is not only a violation of law, it is a breach of basic human decency.

00:11:15.000 So good for Bezos. 0.67

00:11:16.000 I mean, the man can't afford to do it.

00:11:18.000 And honestly, what does he have to lose at this point? 0.98

00:11:19.000 Like, people are gonna see his junk? 0.97

00:11:21.000 What does he care? 0.98

00:11:22.000 He's the richest man on planet Earth.

00:11:24.000 So what?

00:11:25.000 Really? 0.98

00:11:27.000 I assume that he has the same junk everybody else does, and he's feeling the same way. 0.95

00:11:30.000 So, honestly, good for Bezos. 0.93

00:11:31.000 Good for Bezos. 0.92

00:11:32.000 A lot of people today are saying, well, Bezos brought this on himself because he was cheating on his wife.

00:11:36.000 All that's true, right? 0.99

00:11:37.000 All that's true in terms of you shouldn't be sending text messages of your junk to other people. 0.99

00:11:41.000 You shouldn't be cheating on your wife. 0.99

00:11:42.000 All that's true.

00:11:43.000 That is a separate issue from Should personal issues be used by journalistic, purportedly journalistic organizations to blackmail you?

00:11:49.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:11:50.000 So good for Bezos for exposing that.

00:11:52.000 That's good for the country.

00:11:53.000 And frankly, it's good for, it's good for the world.

00:11:55.000 I mean, that is just, it's well done by Jeff Bezos there.

00:11:58.000 All credit to him.

00:11:59.000 All right.

00:12:00.000 In a second, I want to get to the botched rollout of the Green New Deal by the Democrats because it is pretty wonderful. 0.86

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00:13:15.000 All right.

00:13:17.000 Final note on the AMI saga.

00:13:19.000 So AMI has now announced that they are going to do an investigation of themselves.

00:13:25.000 So OJ is going to search for the real killer.

00:13:28.000 That is very exciting stuff from AMI.

00:13:31.000 Obviously, it means nothing, but there are other shoes that are going to drop here.

00:13:35.000 Here's the statement American media made in response to Jeff Bezos.

00:13:38.000 They said, Okay, he's not making claims.

00:13:40.000 that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos.

00:13:42.000 Further, at the time of the recent allegations made by Mr. Bezos, it was in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him.

00:13:49.000 Nonetheless, in light of the nature of the allegations published by Mr. Bezos, the board has convened and determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims.

00:13:55.000 Upon completion of that investigation, the board will take whatever appropriate action is necessary.

00:14:00.000 Okay, he's not making claims.

00:14:02.000 He literally took your emails and published them.

00:14:03.000 That's the whole thing.

00:14:05.000 That's not a claim.

00:14:06.000 That's evidence.

00:14:07.000 So, AMI has got some serious troubles of its own.

00:14:11.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:14:13.000 I am highly amused by the reaction of everyone to AOC's Green New Deal.

00:14:18.000 So if you didn't listen to yesterday's show, you should go back and listen to yesterday's show where I broke down in full detail AOC's Green New Deal.

00:14:24.000 There was a resolution put forward on the floor of the House that was basically a series of aspirational motions about what we should do with the energy industry in the United States.

00:14:33.000 And then AOC had the temerity to put online a six-page summary of all the things the Green New Deal stood for.

00:14:40.000 This was a very bad thing as it turns out, because it turns out that AOC and her team have the combined brainwattage of a kumquat. 1.00

00:14:46.000 It was, I mean, the document is just astonishing.

00:14:49.000 It is one of the worst political documents I have ever seen put together by human hands. 1.00

00:14:53.000 It's, it's incredibly stupid in every, every aspect. 1.00

00:14:57.000 And yet, and yet, it was endorsed by every single top Democrat running for president of the United States. 0.99

00:15:04.000 Cory Booker, Spartacus, he said, excited to join AOC and Senator Ed Markey on a historic Green New Deal resolution to address the peril of climate change and worsening inequality.

00:15:15.000 Our history is a testimony to the achievement of what some think is impossible.

00:15:19.000 We must take bold action now.

00:15:22.000 And then for some reason, people started drumming in the background.

00:15:25.000 Just like in his campaign video.

00:15:26.000 It's real weird.

00:15:27.000 Senator Elizabeth Warren says, if we want to live in a world with clean air and water, we have to take real action to combat climate change now.

00:15:33.000 I'm proud to join AOC and Senator Markey on a Green New Deal resolution to fight for our planet and our kids' futures because I want to paint with all the colors of the wind.

00:15:43.000 Senator Elizabeth Warren.

00:15:45.000 And then you had Kamala Harris, the brilliant newcomer from California who spends her days going after the Knights of Columbus and spends her evenings going after gang rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.

00:15:57.000 She says, I am proud to co-sponsor AOC and Ed Markey's Green New Deal.

00:16:01.000 We must aggressively tackle climate change, which poses an existential threat to our nation.

00:16:05.000 And that wasn't all.

00:16:07.000 There's one more.

00:16:08.000 We also had Kirsten Gillibrand, who said, a Green New Deal is ambitious, it's bold.

00:16:13.000 And I'm co-sponsoring this resolution with AOC and Senator Markey because it's exactly the kind of action it will take to conquer the biggest threat of our lifetime.

00:16:20.000 Also, I'm against the resolution, but I'm also for the resolution.

00:16:23.000 But I'm against the resolution and also for the resolution.

00:16:25.000 Kirsten Gillibrand, with her typical savoir-faire and stolidity in support of her ideals.

00:16:31.000 So all four senators who are currently running for president on the Democratic side endorse the Green New Deal.

00:16:37.000 Bernie Sanders had nothing to say about it.

00:16:39.000 He was busy presumably eating pudding.

00:16:40.000 So all of them endorse this.

00:16:42.000 And none of them apparently have read anything AOC has to say.

00:16:45.000 And what's even more amazing is the media have not asked any of them do they support what's in AOC's actual statement.

00:16:51.000 Remember, AOC sponsored it.

00:16:53.000 Every single one of those tweets mentions AOC because she is the fresh face. 0.83

00:16:57.000 So fresh, so face.

00:16:59.000 None of them have been asked.

00:17:00.000 None of these Senators have been asked about her proposals to, for example, replace all air travel by rail, including presumably from Hawaii, which led Mazie Hirono, the Senator from Hawaii, who is a Democrat, to say, uh, what now?

00:17:11.000 Or is it like, huh?

00:17:13.000 And then the proposal says that we should pay for full benefits, retirement, vacation for anyone unable or unwilling to work She says we should retrofit or replace every building in the United States in the next 10 years.

00:17:27.000 She says that we should get rid of cow farts by getting rid of the internal combustion engine. 0.97

00:17:32.000 All of this was put in writing.

00:17:33.000 We went through the entire document yesterday, like word for word.

00:17:36.000 And it's funny, because then you have the media coverage, which is, don't take her seriously.

00:17:40.000 Don't take her literally.

00:17:41.000 Just take her seriously.

00:17:42.000 We shouldn't take AOC literally.

00:17:43.000 I mean, come on.

00:17:44.000 Come on.

00:17:45.000 Why would you read her words and then say she means the words that she writes?

00:17:50.000 Why would you possibly do that?

00:17:51.000 Here's Politico's headline.

00:17:53.000 The impossible green dream of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:17:57.000 The Green New Deal will never happen the way it's laid out. 0.90

00:17:59.000 And that's also kind of the point.

00:18:03.000 What now?

00:18:05.000 Since when has somebody proposed legislation like, it's not going to work the way they say it will, but that's exactly the point.

00:18:10.000 It's like when you go to a modern art museum and it's just a blank canvas.

00:18:16.000 You're like, what is this?

00:18:17.000 They're like, it's nothing.

00:18:19.000 And you're like, well, then what does it mean?

00:18:20.000 It means nothing.

00:18:21.000 That's the point.

00:18:23.000 Except there's a policy proposal.

00:18:25.000 So, Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico magazine.

00:18:29.000 Let's get real.

00:18:30.000 The United States is not going to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years.

00:18:34.000 The key goal of the Green New Deal resolution unveiled Thursday.

00:18:37.000 More real talk.

00:18:38.000 Americans won't get 100% of its power from zero-emission sources within a decade either.

00:18:43.000 Another audacious Green New Deal goal. 0.67

00:18:44.000 And we're not going to upgrade the energy efficiency of every single building in the country, as the resolution proposes.

00:18:49.000 If we were getting all our energy from zero-emission sources, it wouldn't even make sense to try.

00:18:53.000 But here's one more reality check.

00:18:55.000 None of it matters.

00:18:57.000 The official rollout of the Green New Deal on Thursday was met with a barrage of skepticism from well-intentioned fact-checkers, badly-intentioned climate trolls, and desperate-to-look-savvy pundits, all focusing on the logistical and political impossibilities of transforming the economy as rapidly as the Green New Deal envisions.

00:19:12.000 And they're right.

00:19:13.000 Its goals really do seem impossible to achieve.

00:19:15.000 But they're all missing the point.

00:19:17.000 If anything, they're hoping the Green New Deal's backers make their point, which is that climate change is an unprecedented emergency.

00:19:24.000 Okay, no, that's actually not what happened here.

00:19:26.000 This is basically just a version of Republicans Pounds.

00:19:29.000 That's all this is. 1.00

00:19:31.000 It's a version of AOC put out something so ridiculously stupid that it makes her sound as though she was dropped multiple times on her head as a baby. 0.99

00:19:39.000 I mean, this proposal is so bad, it can only have been written by somebody who is mentally deficient in some way. 1.00

00:19:44.000 It is a seriously ridiculous proposal on its face. 1.00

00:19:48.000 On its face. 1.00

00:19:49.000 No sane person could think otherwise.

00:19:50.000 And so the comeback from the media is, well, you guys are pouncing.

00:19:54.000 Because the real point is to open minds.

00:19:58.000 That's the real point, is to make you think.

00:20:00.000 To make you think.

00:20:01.000 You know, it's a thought, it's a conversation.

00:20:03.000 It wasn't meant seriously.

00:20:05.000 You know, like co-sponsored by six senators and 60 congresspeople.

00:20:09.000 No, it wasn't meant seriously.

00:20:10.000 It was meant to open your mind and broaden your horizons.

00:20:15.000 I'm sorry, this isn't some sort of trip to Europe junior year of college.

00:20:20.000 This is a legislative proposal that envisions redoing the entire United States economy.

00:20:24.000 By the way, If we were to do all the things in this proposal, you know what it would do to climate?

00:20:29.000 Presumably nothing.

00:20:30.000 Seriously, nothing.

00:20:31.000 Because if you actually spec out the impact on climate, if the United States were to achieve full zero emissions, you know what would happen?

00:20:39.000 Over the course of the next century, it would lower the global temperature, according to the IPCC, by something like 0.2 degrees Celsius.

00:20:46.000 Why?

00:20:47.000 Because it turns out that the real threat to the climate, if you believe in climate change, man-made climate change, the real threat to the climate is coming from not industrialized countries at this point, but developing countries like China and India, who have no interest whatsoever in lowering their emissions.

00:21:02.000 So none of it makes any sense. 0.97

00:21:03.000 But that's not the only idiotic media take today. 1.00

00:21:07.000 There's also the New York Times, which can always be counted on to cover for the stupidity of Democrats in their reporting. 1.00

00:21:12.000 We'll get to that in just a second. 0.98

00:21:13.000 First, let's talk About how you protect your internet usage.

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00:22:52.000 Okay, so we read you Politico's take.

00:22:54.000 Here's the New York Times' take.

00:22:55.000 You ready for this? 1.00

00:22:57.000 On this idiotic plan that legitimately says we're going to pay people not to work. 1.00

00:23:00.000 Quote, Liberal Democrats formally call for a Green New Deal, giving substance to a rallying cry. 1.00

00:23:07.000 Now you may be wondering, Did AOC write this piece for the New York Times?

00:23:11.000 No, she didn't actually.

00:23:12.000 It turns out it's written by Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush, both top-notch reporters at the wonderful, incredible New York Times.

00:23:19.000 Listen to how this is covered.

00:23:24.000 With a sweeping resolution intended to redefine the national debate on climate change by calling for the United States to eliminate additional emissions of carbon by 2030.

00:23:32.000 The measure, drafted by freshman representative AOC and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, is intended to answer the demand by the party's restive base for a grand strategy that combats climate change, creates jobs, and offers an affirmative response to the challenge to core party values posed by President Trump.

00:23:48.000 The resolution has more breadth than detail and is so ambitious that Republicans greeted it with derision.

00:23:53.000 Well, no, actually, we greeted it with derision not because it's ambitious, but because it legitimately has no plan for achieving anything that it says it wants to achieve other than completely destroying the United States economy.

00:24:03.000 Other than that, it's great.

00:24:05.000 Its legislative prospects are bleak in the foreseeable future.

00:24:08.000 Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has no plan to bring the resolution in its current form to the floor for a vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

00:24:14.000 Why?

00:24:15.000 Because Nancy Pelosi still has two brain cells to rub together. 1.00

00:24:18.000 But listen to the New York Times.

00:24:20.000 As a blueprint for liberal ambition, it was breathtaking.

00:24:24.000 Imagine the Republicans said, we have a plan.

00:24:26.000 Here's our plan.

00:24:27.000 Full employment for everyone, taxes of zero, and abolition of seven-eighths of the federal government.

00:24:34.000 No details, just that.

00:24:36.000 Do you think they would be talking about how it's breathtakingly ambitious?

00:24:39.000 You think that's where that would go?

00:24:40.000 It's breathtakingly ambitious?

00:24:42.000 Media bias is so... I mean, this is nauseating, nauseating stuff.

00:24:46.000 Nauseating.

00:24:48.000 Now, what's hilarious is that the New York Times suggests that Ms. 0.87

00:24:50.000 Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, is on the wrong side of history.

00:24:52.000 People online yesterday, it was delicious.

00:24:54.000 I mean, it was so delicious, as Neon Taster put it, that it must be fattening.

00:24:58.000 People online, on the left, were suggesting that Nancy Pelosi is now a climate denier because she was not supportive enough of the Green New Deal.

00:25:07.000 But the New York Times reports, Ms.

00:25:09.000 Pelosi is likely mindful of her own past mistakes.

00:25:11.000 A decade ago, she pushed the last major climate change measure hard, an ambitious bill to cap emissions of climate warming pollution. 0.75

00:25:17.000 She got a cap-and-trade measure through the House.

00:25:19.000 The next year, Democrats were swept from power.

00:25:21.000 So now she's afraid, but she's letting her critics on the left know about her own past efforts and saying she's making climate change the flagship issue of her first speakership.

00:25:32.000 Proponents of the Green New Deal insist that Democrats are unified.

00:25:36.000 Ocasio-Cortez said, I think it is a green dream because Pelosi kind of dismissed it yesterday.

00:25:43.000 Pelosi said, well, you know, I'm enthusiastic.

00:25:45.000 Here's what Nancy Pelosi had to say because she again, she's not a complete dolt when it comes to, you know, running the Congress. 1.00

00:25:51.000 Here's what she had to say yesterday about the green dream.

00:25:54.000 Is the Green New Deal proposal a useful baseline?

00:25:56.000 Quite frankly, I haven't seen it, but I do know that it's enthusiastic, and we welcome all the enthusiasms that are out there.

00:26:04.000 The Green New Deal points out the fact that the public is much more aware of the challenge that we face, and that is a good proposal. 1.00

00:26:12.000 This is a very stupid thing. 0.94

00:26:13.000 The public sentiment will help us pass the most bold common denominator, the bold initiatives. 0.99

00:26:20.000 I'm very excited about it all, and I welcome the Green New Deal and any other proposals that people have out there.

00:26:26.000 Okay, what she actually means there is I don't welcome the Green New Deal. 0.99

00:26:29.000 This is a very stupid thing, but I'm going to pretend to be enthusiastic because I don't want people yelling at me. 0.86

00:26:33.000 That's really what she is saying there. 0.98

00:26:36.000 Now, what's hilarious about all of this, what's hilarious about all of this is that AOC can't even keep herself straight on what exactly this necessitates. 0.99

00:26:44.000 So yesterday, yesterday morning, she was asked whether, in fact, this Green New Deal would necessitate massive government intervention.

00:26:52.000 And again, For all the people out there saying that she is savvy and smart, I don't know what to tell you.

00:26:58.000 I really don't.

00:26:59.000 I mean, if you are of the view that AOC is some sort of brilliant newcomer, I'm gonna play you two clips in a row, and you gotta tell me how exactly she's a genius.

00:27:05.000 Here she goes, saying that maybe this might necessitate massive government intervention.

00:27:10.000 As you know, Congresswoman, one reason that people who are politically conservative are skeptical of efforts to combat climate change is that it sounds to them like it requires massive government intervention, which they just don't like.

00:27:22.000 Are you prepared to put on the table that, yes, actually, they're right.

00:27:26.000 What this requires is massive government intervention?

00:27:28.000 It does.

00:27:29.000 It does.

00:27:29.000 Yeah, I have no problem saying that.

00:27:31.000 Fast forward about six hours, here is AOC with Meet the Press' Chuck Todd.

00:27:36.000 One way that the right does try to mischaracterize what we're doing as though it's like some kind of massive government takeover.

00:27:44.000 Obviously what we're trying to do is, well obviously it's not that because what we're trying to do is release the investments from the federal government to mobilize those resources across the country. 0.97

00:27:57.000 You know, in the real world, we call that being a damned liar, right? 0.98

00:28:01.000 I mean, we just call that being a liar. 0.99

00:28:02.000 Like, within six hours, she goes from, sure, it's a massive government intervention, and then after the blowback, she's like, well, no, these Republicans, they're pouncing.

00:28:09.000 They keep characterizing it as a massive government takeover.

00:28:12.000 It's not a massive government takeover.

00:28:13.000 It's a massive government intervention.

00:28:14.000 But, sorry, sorry, I shouldn't say that.

00:28:16.000 It's not a massive government intervention.

00:28:17.000 It's unleashing investment.

00:28:19.000 It's unleashing investment.

00:28:20.000 So we're all supposed to take her seriously. 1.00

00:28:22.000 We're all supposed to pretend she's not a damn liar. 1.00

00:28:24.000 She's a damn liar, because all you have to do is read the words on her own website, which were so stupid that her own campaign had to take them off her website. 1.00

00:28:32.000 She memory-holed her own six-page proposal yesterday. 1.00

00:28:35.000 But we're supposed to believe, according to the media, that it's an act of genius, and also, we are not supposed to ask Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, or Kirsten Gillibrand about any of the details in AOC's proposal.

00:28:45.000 We're not supposed to ask them about that.

00:28:48.000 I very rarely get angry at media bias anymore because it's just a fact of the world.

00:28:52.000 It's just like the sun rising every morning.

00:28:54.000 But it is absolutely stomach-churning how disgusting the media are at their job.

00:28:58.000 I'm talking about the mainstream media who will not ask any one of the top Democratic nominees how they feel about things like partial birth abortion.

00:29:04.000 They won't get an answer, a straight answer from any of the top Democratic nominees about what should happen.

00:29:09.000 With sexual assault allegations against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax in Virginia.

00:29:13.000 They won't ask anyone of these top Democratic nominees if they believe that those unwilling to work should be paid for unwillingness to work, according to AOC's plan.

00:29:21.000 Or why they think AOC's plan is so brilliant.

00:29:23.000 They're not going to be asked about a single detail to abolish Air travel?

00:29:27.000 They're not going to be asked about any of those things.

00:29:29.000 Instead, we'll just get the New York Times assuming that it's a breathtakingly ambitious proposal.

00:29:33.000 And if we look at the details, it's because we are not looking closely enough.

00:29:37.000 It's because we are not looking closely enough.

00:29:38.000 Because if you push away all of the details, if you push away the thickets of details of that six-page proposal, what you get to is a gem, a gem of genius, which is that we should care.

00:29:51.000 What absolute unbelievable horse bleep.

00:29:54.000 Or cow fart.

00:29:56.000 I mean, it's just, it's unreal.

00:29:58.000 It's unreal.

00:29:58.000 We're going to get to more democratic insanity in just a second.

00:30:01.000 Plus, I want to talk about a sad piece of news from the Supreme Court.

00:30:06.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:31:23.000 One of the things that is so...

00:31:29.000 I mean, you feel like you're being gassed by the media.

00:31:31.000 It feels like you're being gaslit.

00:31:32.000 It feels like... The term gaslighting comes from an actual movie called Gaslight, in which a woman basically is driven mad by her husband.

00:31:45.000 And the reason it's called Gaslighting is because what he does to drive her crazy is every evening, he lowers the lights on the lamps, and then he tells her that the lights are not actually lower on the lamps.

00:31:54.000 He lowers the lights on the lamps and then she looks around and she's like, why does it seem dark in here?

00:31:57.000 He says, it seems fine to me.

00:31:59.000 And the whole point is to drive her crazy.

00:32:00.000 That's what the media are doing every single day. 0.94

00:32:03.000 And they are doing it particularly about AOC because they are declaring her the fresh face.

00:32:07.000 They're giving her 20 minutes on MSNBC this morning.

00:32:09.000 They are pitching her.

00:32:10.000 They literally pitched her all day on MSNBC. 1.00

00:32:13.000 They had a running counter on the bottom of their screen saying eight hours until we interview the brilliant, magnificent AOC.

00:32:20.000 They put her on the covers of magazines.

00:32:21.000 How many covers of magazines has Melania Trump done recently? 1.00

00:32:24.000 I mean, forget that.

00:32:25.000 How many covers of magazines has Elise Stefanik, who is a very young Republican Congresswoman, how many has she done? 1.00

00:32:35.000 She was first elected at the age of 30.

00:32:37.000 She's now 34.

00:32:37.000 She's also from New York.

00:32:38.000 Have you ever heard of her?

00:32:39.000 Of course not.

00:32:40.000 But we've been told that AOC is a deeply important figure in Democratic politics. 0.99

00:32:43.000 And then when you comment on how dumb she is, then it's, you're obsessed with her. 0.98

00:32:47.000 Maybe if you guys would, I mean, it's just gaslighting. 0.99

00:32:49.000 It's just basic gaslighting.

00:32:51.000 So Democrats are going to have to own AOC.

00:32:53.000 You got, you broke it.

00:32:54.000 You bought it, guys.

00:32:55.000 You broke it.

00:32:56.000 It's yours now.

00:32:57.000 So you're going to have to own comments like this.

00:32:59.000 Here's AOC yesterday explaining that ICE should be abolished and does not deserve one dime of funding.

00:33:04.000 We're here to say that an agency like ICE, which repeatedly and systematically violates human rights, does not deserve a dime.

00:33:15.000 They do not deserve a dime until they can prove that they are honoring human rights Until they can make a good faith effort to expand and embrace immigrants, until they can prove good faith to an American ideal, they do not deserve any resources for their radical agenda. 0.98

00:33:36.000 Okay, unbelievable.

00:33:38.000 So we're going to abolish ICE, but then she goes even further. 0.96

00:33:40.000 Then she says, you know what?

00:33:41.000 Forget about abolishing ICE.

00:33:42.000 What if we just didn't have a border, basically?

00:33:44.000 What if it turned out that everybody who is descended from Latinos or from Native Americans They can't commit crimes in the United States.

00:33:51.000 Let's just assume everyone in the United States illegally is not actually here illegally because their ancestors were here before we were.

00:33:57.000 So here is, here she is legitimately making the argument we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.

00:34:02.000 Right?

00:34:02.000 Which is a full-on La Raza radical argument.

00:34:04.000 Here she is making that argument yesterday publicly in front of microphones, but we're all supposed to ignore it because we only pay attention when AOC is on the cover of a magazine smiling or when she's dancing on a rooftop. 1.00

00:34:14.000 We don't pay any attention to the dumb crap that falls out of her mouth on a regular basis. 1.00

00:34:18.000 We are standing on native land, and Latino people are descendants of native people, and we cannot be told and criminalized simply for our identity or our status. 0.99

00:34:31.000 Okay, quick note.

00:34:33.000 Latino people are not all descendants of native people. 0.87

00:34:35.000 If by native people she means people who occupied the continental United States.

00:34:39.000 There are lots of Latino people, by the way, who are from, you know, like South and Central America, and whose ancestors came from there.

00:34:45.000 So the notion that everybody coming up from Honduras is actually a descendant of a person who is living in Arizona in 1722 is obviously untrue. 0.68

00:34:53.000 But it's also a dumb argument.

00:34:54.000 We're a sovereign nation. 0.99

00:34:55.000 We have control of our own borders.

00:34:56.000 But according to her, no.

00:34:58.000 Will any of the other Democrats be asked about that?

00:35:00.000 Any of them?

00:35:01.000 Of course not.

00:35:02.000 One of the great annoyances that I have with the way the media cover these things, if a Republican does something bad, every Republican is asked whether they agree or disagree, and is asked to own it or disown it.

00:35:13.000 When a Democrat does something bad, then every Democrat is asked whether they like cheese.

00:35:18.000 Right?

00:35:18.000 Just random questions that have nothing to do with the topic.

00:35:21.000 And there's never any follow-up questions.

00:35:23.000 So yesterday, for example, Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic frontrunner for the 2020 nomination, she was asked about the situation with Justin Fairfax in Virginia, who has now been credibly accused of sexual assault.

00:35:34.000 And she says that the accuser is credible, but she does not call for Fairfax's resignation.

00:35:38.000 Now, the natural follow-up question would be and should be weird, because you thought that Brett Kavanaugh should be disqualified from the Supreme Court by an accusation alone.

00:35:46.000 Does that follow-up question happen?

00:35:48.000 Of course not.

00:35:49.000 I think that the letter written by the woman reads as a credible account, and I think there should be an investigation to get to the bottom of it and determine the facts.

00:36:06.000 Certainly her letter reads as it's quite detailed and suggests that there's credibility there but there needs to be an investigation to determine what exactly happened.

00:36:15.000 Oh, interesting, an investigation.

00:36:17.000 Well, I don't remember you saying that an investigation would be enough to exonerate Kavanaugh.

00:36:21.000 In fact, there was an FBI investigation.

00:36:22.000 It found nothing, and then you still called for him not to be put on the Supreme Court. 0.97

00:36:26.000 So, in other words, lady, you're a liar, but nobody asks you a follow-up question, because that's the way this nonsense works. 0.99

00:36:31.000 Democrats can say whatever stupid garbage they want to say six months ago, and then when they say precisely the opposite, no questions. 0.99

00:36:37.000 AOC can say two opposite things in the course of eight hours, and there will be no follow-up questions. 1.00

00:36:43.000 She can release a proposal so bad that it makes a hamster look like a great legislator. 1.00

00:36:50.000 I mean, that proposal yesterday was so bad.

00:36:53.000 They say that a thousand monkeys typing for a thousand years might eventually be able to type all of Shakespeare in a row.

00:36:59.000 No monkeys would ever be able to create that proposal given an infinite amount of time. 1.00

00:37:05.000 It is too stupid for the animal kingdom, that proposal. 1.00

00:37:08.000 It is just dumb. 1.00

00:37:10.000 Where are you on the issue of paying people who are unwilling to work? 0.99

00:37:12.000 Where are you on the issue of plant a lot of trees?

00:37:13.000 That's what it actually says.

00:37:14.000 It's so maddening.

00:37:15.000 The Democrats openly tweeted, we love this proposal.

00:37:17.000 It's great.

00:37:18.000 And then the proposal comes out.

00:37:20.000 And do the media even ask them, so how do you feel about like abolishing air travel?

00:37:24.000 Where are you on the issue of paying people who are unwilling to work?

00:37:29.000 Where are you on the issue of plant a lot of trees?

00:37:32.000 That's what it actually says.

00:37:33.000 Where are you on cow farts?

00:37:35.000 What a joke.

00:37:36.000 What a joke our media are.

00:37:37.000 I mean, seriously, no one takes them seriously, and they shouldn't take them seriously.

00:37:41.000 All right, you know, let's get to some mailbag, because I need to calm down.

00:37:43.000 So let's do some unrelated stuff for a second.

00:37:46.000 Ay yi yi. 0.99

00:37:48.000 It's absolutely frustrating to see some of the dumbest people in the world say some of the dumbest things and then be feeded as the smartest people in the world by some of the dumbest people in the world. 1.00

00:37:57.000 That's a summary of our current political situation. 1.00

00:37:59.000 All right, so.

00:38:00.000 Mailbag time.

00:38:01.000 David says, Hi Ben, major fan, I really appreciate all the great work you do.

00:38:04.000 I go to UCSD.

00:38:06.000 I had a discussion with my professor regarding unconscious bias and discrimination, and I held that affirmative action policies make generalizations based on race that are unnecessary given accessibility to individual information of applicants.

00:38:16.000 He directed me to a number of sociological studies that seem to demonstrate racial discrimination in employment hiring, with the disparities in response to white and black applicants being statistically significant over the last couple of decades.

00:38:27.000 Well, I can think of some alternative explanations that can explain away some of the relation.

00:38:30.000 The data seemed to be reliable.

00:38:32.000 I was wondering what your opinion was on this sociological research.

00:38:35.000 I don't believe in anti-discrimination laws.

00:38:36.000 I'm libertarian, but I'm not sure I can ignore some of the data.

00:38:39.000 Thanks for all you do.

00:38:40.000 Okay, well, a couple of quick things.

00:38:41.000 First of all, since I don't have the exact studies that you are referring to here, it's hard for me to respond.

00:38:45.000 I don't want to give short shrift to sociological studies that I have not read.

00:38:48.000 I will say this.

00:38:49.000 The sociological studies that are most often cited, things that suggest, for example, That people with black first names get hired less often than people with white first names are ignoring other studies that also suggest that if you use black last names and white last names, there is no discrimination.

00:39:03.000 In other words, what people are discriminating against is an assumption that may or may not be justified about culture and not an assumption about race per se.

00:39:13.000 In other words, if you were to receive an application from a Jewish person and it were to say on the application, Yechezkel, as a first name, And then you were to receive an application from a Jewish person, just a David. 0.69

00:39:25.000 You might treat those two applications differently because Yehezkel probably implies the person keeps Sabbath and is not going to be able to work from Friday night to Saturday night, for example.

00:39:33.000 That's because one is a Hebrew name and one is a name that also applies in English.

00:39:38.000 The same thing can apply to first names.

00:39:39.000 So if that's the study you're talking about, that's my response to that study. 0.97

00:39:42.000 As far as anti-discrimination law, my feeling is that if people are being dumb enough not to hire productive black citizens, then that's a competitive advantage for a lot of businesses that are willing to hire competitive black citizens. 0.84

00:39:53.000 So I'd like to see the sociological studies, frankly, before I analyze them. 0.95

00:39:57.000 Again, I don't want to give short shrift to studies that I haven't read.

00:39:59.000 That's sort of the basic response.

00:40:02.000 And also, again, affirmative action programs would not actually countermand the unwillingness to use individual data.

00:40:09.000 Very often people are using generalized data about groups because they are not allowed to ask about individual data.

00:40:14.000 So, for example, the Obama administration refused to allow federal contractors to ask about prior criminal status for people they were hiring.

00:40:20.000 This led to less black employment.

00:40:22.000 Why?

00:40:23.000 Because a lot of companies were simply using group data on prison statistics instead of individualized data about whether this person went to jail in the absence of individual data.

00:40:32.000 Melissa says, "Mr. Shapiro, my husband and I have very different opinions on how the 2020 election will pan out.

00:40:38.000 I think that the Democrats have been united by such loathing for Trump that they will come out in droves to vote in 2020.

00:40:43.000 My husband thinks that Trump will defy all odds yet again because that's just what he does.

00:40:46.000 What do you think?

00:40:46.000 Well, I'm not a big fan of the, we'll defy all odds in spite of data.

00:40:50.000 Just because, look, there's a 70-30 shot that Hillary was going to win the last election. 1.00

00:40:54.000 That doesn't mean the 30% doesn't exist.

00:40:56.000 70% is not 100%, so it wasn't impossible for Trump to win.

00:40:59.000 It was very unlikely he would win.

00:41:00.000 And in fact, he did buck the odds by losing by 2.5 million votes in the popular vote and then running an extraordinarily narrow gauntlet.

00:41:07.000 To win three separate states by a combined total of 80,000 votes.

00:41:10.000 I think that Trump does have an uphill battle.

00:41:11.000 With that said, could Democrats blow it? 1.00

00:41:13.000 You bet your ass they could blow it. 0.99

00:41:15.000 There's a new poll out today from Optimist that shows that in the national race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, it is Trump 45, Harris 44. 0.99

00:41:24.000 All Democrats had to do was not be bat bleep insane, and they just couldn't do it.

00:41:29.000 They just can't stop themselves. 1.00

00:41:30.000 They are this crazy. 0.96

00:41:32.000 Michael says, Greetings, Mr. Shapiro. 0.87

00:41:33.000 I am writing an essay on common stereotypes of conservatives and how it is harmful to the group.

00:41:37.000 I seek your advice on what you believe are those common stereotypes.

00:41:40.000 Well, there's one that has been put out by Eric Fromm.

00:41:42.000 It's been used for now 60 years, basically suggesting that conservatives are authoritarian, that they have too much respect for authority, and therefore they're big fans of government telling people what to do.

00:41:52.000 That is a lie.

00:41:52.000 Conservatism is about limited government.

00:41:54.000 We have respect for moral authority, but that does not mean that we have lots of respect for governmental authority.

00:41:59.000 Very, very different thing.

00:42:01.000 There are also stereotypes about how conservatives are racist and bigoted and sexist and homophobic.

00:42:05.000 Again, those stereotypes are unjustified by the realities, but it is simply a way for the left to suggest that the politics with which they disagree are ill-motivated as opposed to simple disagreements.

00:42:17.000 Steven says, Hey Ben, what do you do to decompress when you're frustrated?

00:42:20.000 This podcast.

00:42:21.000 Right, this radio show.

00:42:23.000 I yell at people.

00:42:25.000 But really?

00:42:26.000 What do I do?

00:42:26.000 Well, you know, same things everybody else does, presumably.

00:42:29.000 I watch TV, I go home, and I practice violin, I play music.

00:42:32.000 Mostly I play with my kids, that's the best way to decompress.

00:42:35.000 I put down my phone, is honestly the best thing you can do.

00:42:37.000 Like, thank God for Sabbath, because Sabbath is necessary.

00:42:40.000 Ofer says, Hello Ben, have you asked forgiveness from Michael Knowles at Yom Kippur for bullying him for years?

00:42:44.000 No, I pay him.

00:42:46.000 No.

00:42:47.000 He should ask forgiveness for me, considering that his productivity has significantly lacked behind what exactly we pay him.

00:42:53.000 He owes me a constant apology on a daily basis.

00:42:56.000 Stephanie says, Well, I'm not sure that they are socially conservative on abortion.

00:43:00.000 They are socially conservative on same-sex marriage and transgenderism, is what I've seen from the polls.

00:43:06.000 I'm not sure that they are socially conservative on abortion.

00:43:08.000 They are socially conservative on same-sex marriage and transgenderism is what I've seen from the polls.

00:43:12.000 Not sure that's the case on abortion.

00:43:14.000 African-Americans, historically speaking, started to align with the Democratic Party long before the 1960s Civil Rights Act and welfare programs came into effect.

00:43:22.000 They started to do so during the FDR administration, and then they continued to do so over the years as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act moved forward, and mainly as a lot of welfare programs began to come online.

00:43:37.000 Because, why not?

00:43:37.000 I mean, if you're disproportionately receiving government benefits, then why wouldn't you vote for an increase in those government benefits?

00:43:43.000 But, to suggest that that is solely due to the politics of the 1960s is to ignore the trend lines which began in the 1930s of black Americans moving away from the Republican Party and toward the Democratic Party in large numbers.

00:43:55.000 Samuel says, Ben, how do you suggest young people get involved in local politics successfully?

00:43:58.000 Well, get involved in local politics.

00:44:00.000 I mean, here's the nice thing about local politics.

00:44:02.000 No one cares about them.

00:44:04.000 All you have to do, apparently, is win 15,000 votes in a primary and you become the most powerful congressperson in America.

00:44:09.000 Which is what happened to AOC.

00:44:10.000 So local politics can matter, as long as you also are social media savvy.

00:44:15.000 Kemper says, Hey Ben, huge fan.

00:44:16.000 I'm a senior at a private Catholic high school.

00:44:18.000 Today we were discussing poverty and its causes, and I, being an outspoken person, brought up your point for how not to stay poor in the United States and how cultures in cyclical poverty-stricken areas have reinforced these bad habits.

00:44:28.000 My opponents insinuated I was racist and my generalizations were disrespectful to the poor.

00:44:32.000 Any tips on debating this issue and any good sources I could reference?

00:44:35.000 Yes, I always reference the Brookings Institute.

00:44:37.000 The Census Bureau has numbers that prove that this is the case.

00:44:40.000 Every study ever done has shown that single motherhood is linked to intergenerational poverty and crime. 0.98

00:44:45.000 And, again, when people suggest you're a racist, your first response should be, well, you're a jackass because you have no evidence I'm a racist. 0.98

00:44:51.000 You just want to ignore the point of my argument. 0.98

00:44:55.000 It's really a pathetic move by people to say that when you say, you know, people should make responsible decisions to avoid poverty, and then they respond by calling you a racist, that that's somehow okay. 0.98

00:45:04.000 It is not okay, it is nasty, it is gross, and it is unjustifiable. 0.95

00:45:08.000 Let's see, Race says, Hey Ben, as a 17-year-old conservative from Vermont, I was wondering how you think Generation Z will affect voting in the country over time, since for our age we are pretty conservative.

00:45:17.000 I know also many others my age who are secretly conservative.

00:45:19.000 I wonder if you think this would affect polling data.

00:45:21.000 I think over time it will.

00:45:22.000 I think there's a backlash to the PC SJW culture, mainly because they're so boring and annoying.

00:45:27.000 Honestly, are there any less fun people than the SJW class on college campuses and in the media?

00:45:34.000 People who make you feel like you have to look over your shoulder every minute of every day so that you have not offended their shifting moral standards, that apparently do not include killing babies up to point of birth, but do include random microaggressions that they just defined in the last two minutes.

00:45:48.000 David says, hey Ben, thanks for spending more than six hours of your State of the Union Tuesday in front of a camera for our pleasure.

00:45:53.000 Best 99 bucks I've ever spent.

00:45:55.000 Thank you David, appreciate it.

00:45:56.000 I noticed that Trump said in the address his administration was in negotiations with the Taliban.

00:46:00.000 How, if at all, do we reconcile this with the USA's policy we do not negotiate with terrorists?

00:46:04.000 Thanks.

00:46:05.000 I don't think we can, frankly.

00:46:07.000 I think negotiating with the Taliban is a mistake. 0.78

00:46:08.000 I think that we should have gone in and we should have Basically installed a dictator and gotten out, because democracy is not going to flourish in Afghanistan. 1.00

00:46:16.000 Now, you can install a dictator who is friendlier to particular rights that we hold dear.

00:46:20.000 This is the case in, for example, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates.

00:46:24.000 Those areas of the world are dictatorships that have respect for certain basic rights, like freedom of religion, in a way that a lot of democracies, so-called democracies like Hamasistan in the Gaza Strip, obviously do not.

00:46:35.000 Does that mean that's the ideal?

00:46:36.000 No, it's not the ideal, but to pretend that every Culture and every tribal situation is equally prepared for democracy that will end with a neoliberal-style democracy is just foolhardy and untrue.

00:46:47.000 I mean, I'll be honest with this.

00:46:48.000 I paid off my wife's medical school loans as we went.

00:46:50.000 I was already earning.

00:46:51.000 You and your wife manage loans from school.

00:46:52.000 Are there any books you recommend on the subject?

00:46:54.000 Thanks, love the show.

00:46:55.000 I mean, I'll be honest with this.

00:46:56.000 I paid off my wife's medical school loans as we went.

00:46:59.000 I was already earning.

00:46:59.000 I was a little older than she was.

00:47:00.000 So I was already in the workforce and we spent an awful lot of money as we went through with me like paying off her bills we went.

00:47:07.000 So she came out of medical school debt-free.

00:47:09.000 But that is because we were a couple already.

00:47:12.000 As far as taking loans, you know, there are some people like Dave Ramsey who suggest that you shouldn't take loans even for medical school.

00:47:18.000 You should go out and work for a few years, build up your nut, basically, and then go out and spend that on medical schooling.

00:47:24.000 I'm not of the opinion that that is necessary.

00:47:27.000 But, you know, you find the lowest interest loan you can and then don't get behind on the payments.

00:47:31.000 If you have to take a side job, you take a side job.

00:47:33.000 Avery says, I'm a freshman at James Madison University.

00:47:35.000 In multiple classes this year, professors have used the 2008 financial crisis as evidence that the free market must be regulated.

00:47:41.000 They say the conservative governance leading up to the crisis and the deregulation of financial markets directly caused the recession.

00:47:47.000 Is this characterization of events correct?

00:47:49.000 No, it is not correct.

00:47:50.000 Deregulation of the financial markets combined with massive government intervention in the financial markets is what caused this.

00:47:57.000 So the United States does not have a full-scale free market system It has closer to a corporatist system in which government policy skews incentives.

00:48:04.000 So, to take an example, the subprime mortgage crisis that melted down beginning in 2007 and then extending into 2008, that was caused largely by the government guaranteeing loans from particular companies because they wanted more minority homeowners to get into houses at subprime mortgage rates.

00:48:22.000 Subprime mortgages were created for people with poor credit scores who wanted to get into housing.

00:48:28.000 And the government propped this up.

00:48:29.000 The government was happy to back a lot of those loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then all those went belly up.

00:48:36.000 It turns out a lot of people were going bankrupt.

00:48:37.000 Now, what happened is that while there was still demand that was artificially boosted by the federal government, then the basic assumption made by the market forces was, okay, well, let's say we give a loan, a subprime loan, and somebody doesn't pay off the loan.

00:48:50.000 We go back in, we seize the house, we flip it, and then next week we sell it for more.

00:48:53.000 So we don't actually lose money on the deal.

00:48:55.000 That's only true as long as the market keeps going up.

00:48:57.000 So they were slicing and dicing all these subprime mortgages, and they were creating derivative products where they were combining those subprime mortgages with higher value mortgages and then grading all of it A-plus, basically, and selling it on the open market.

00:49:07.000 That's why it had ramifications when all the subprime mortgages melted down into the It took down all of these derivatives with them.

00:49:14.000 Those derivatives had been used in trades by a variety of financial firms, and those financial firms went bankrupt off the back end.

00:49:21.000 So when people say that it was really about Glass-Steagall and hedge funds being able to both invest and also to do banking, it really wasn't about that.

00:49:30.000 It was about the government skewing the incentives and creating a false bubble that eventually burst because people were being told that there was no consequence.

00:49:37.000 If they put out a mortgage to a person who could not pay back the mortgage.

00:49:41.000 It was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all the way that was really involved in causing the subprime mortgage crisis.

00:49:47.000 And then, as far as government interventionism, it is probably true that absent government interventionism, in order to save those financial firms, the fallout from the meltdown is broader and wider.

00:49:57.000 It is also true that maybe if that fallout had been a little bit broader and wider, it would have taken down a lot of the irresponsible financial firms, but Again, the problem with a government-involved system is that the solution very often, unfortunately, to prevent further fallout is more government involvement, which is exactly what happened.

00:50:14.000 Okay, final question.

00:50:16.000 Let's see.

00:50:20.000 Amelia says, Hi Ben.

00:50:21.000 I recently got into an argument with someone regarding the gender pay gap.

00:50:23.000 I told her that the statistics she stated didn't include factors like job choice, hours, etc.

00:50:27.000 Her rebuttal was that further studies were conducted that included these factors and had the same determination.

00:50:31.000 I know this is wrong, but I want solid evidence to prove my point.

00:50:34.000 I'm asking for a few good resources I can turn to for this argument.

00:50:36.000 Well, Heather McDonald has written extensively about this.

00:50:38.000 Christina Hoff Summers has written extensively about this.

00:50:41.000 I do not know of a single study that takes into account Gender, gender inequities in, in job taking, in number of hours worked, in time in the workforce.

00:50:52.000 I don't really, really, I don't know of a single study that takes into account all of those things that suggest that the gender pay gap is, for example, 23 cents on the dollar, which is the, which is the proposal of many of the folks who are pushing this nonsense.

00:51:02.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:51:06.000 So things that I like today.

00:51:07.000 So AOC's Green New Deal proposal is basically the Fyre Festival.

00:51:11.000 It's we're all going to party it up on a beach.

00:51:14.000 How are we going to pay for it?

00:51:15.000 We're not going to pay for it, guys.

00:51:16.000 All you have to think about is your shared prosperity.

00:51:19.000 That's all that matters.

00:51:20.000 That was the pitch of the Fyre Festival.

00:51:22.000 So there's a great documentary over at Netflix on the Fyre Festival, aptly titled Fyre.

00:51:27.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:51:30.000 All these models, like, in the Bahamas. 0.57

00:51:33.000 The most insane festival the world has ever seen.

00:51:36.000 Island getaway turned disaster.

00:51:38.000 It became very barbaric.

00:51:45.000 Just wait until you see what you're getting yourselves into.

00:51:50.000 American rapper Ja Rule is in the Bahamas with his business partner.

00:51:53.000 Billy McFarland.

00:51:54.000 He's an amazing entrepreneur.

00:51:56.000 He can convince anyone of pretty much anything.

00:51:58.000 They just bought an island.

00:51:59.000 Pablo Escobar's island.

00:52:01.000 Oh my God.

00:52:03.000 We're gonna throw a festival, yeah.

00:52:04.000 Within 48 hours.

00:52:08.000 They sold out. 1.00

00:52:08.000 These guys are either completely full of shit or they're the smartest guys in the room. 1.00

00:52:12.000 Ah, well, then there you have it. 1.00

00:52:14.000 The Green New Deal on an island.

00:52:17.000 Basically, everybody ended up living in tents and beating each other up for bottles of Avion water.

00:52:21.000 So it worked out just spectacularly over at the Fyre Festival.

00:52:24.000 Well done, everybody.

00:52:25.000 And I guess we can apply that nationally now.

00:52:27.000 And we will call... Basically, AOC is Billy McFarlane.

00:52:30.000 That, right, hanging out with all the cool people, genius salesperson, also complete fraud.

00:52:36.000 But we're supposed to ignore all that because it's breathtaking in its ambition.

00:52:39.000 You know what else was breathtaking in its ambition?

00:52:41.000 The Fyre Festival.

00:52:43.000 It ended quite poorly.

00:52:44.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:52:50.000 The thing that I hate today.

00:52:52.000 I'm old enough to remember when people like me, meaning me, when people like me Suggested that perhaps John Roberts would be a bad pick for the Supreme Court because he did not have an established record on key issues.

00:53:04.000 And then there were people like me who suggested that Brett Kavanaugh also may not have been the world's best pick for the Supreme Court because his record was a little bit spotty on certain key issues like, for example, abortion.

00:53:15.000 Well, now it turns out that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the left in a key case from Louisiana.

00:53:21.000 According to Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air, he says, say, weren't 5-4 decisions supposed to go the other way now?

00:53:26.000 Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberals on the Supreme Court to issue a stay on a tough new abortion law in Louisiana.

00:53:33.000 It's temporary, but it's curious.

00:53:34.000 A divided Supreme Court stopped Louisiana from enforcing new regulations on abortion clinics in a test of the conservative court's views on abortion rights.

00:53:41.000 The justices said, by a 5-4 vote late Thursday, they will not allow the state to put into effect a law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.

00:53:50.000 Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four liberals in putting a hold on the law pending a full review of the case.

00:53:56.000 And then it turns out that Brett Kavanaugh also wrote in a dissent that the situation was not ripe for the court's scrutiny.

00:54:03.000 He said, between us, the case largely turns on the intensely factual question of whether three doctors can obtain admitting privileges.

00:54:09.000 If we denied the stay, the question could be readily and quickly answered without disturbing the status quo or causing harm to the parties or the affected women and without this court's further involvement at this time.

00:54:19.000 So basically, his logic actually spelled out the same logic as John Roberts, he just dissented.

00:54:26.000 But the bottom line is it looks like Roberts and Kavanaugh are the new swing votes on the Supreme Court and that the replacement of Kennedy with Kavanaugh and the replacement of, I'm trying to remember who went down for Roberts to take over.

00:54:40.000 But in any case, the putting of John, was it Rehnquist?

00:54:44.000 I think it was Rehnquist.

00:54:45.000 Rehnquist going down, Roberts taking over.

00:54:47.000 That did not result in a new right-wing majority on the Supreme Court or even a constitutionalist majority on the Supreme Court.

00:54:53.000 It ended up with two center moderates who are now a new switch.

00:54:57.000 We've got a lot coming up on today's radio show.

00:54:58.000 So well done, everybody.

00:54:59.000 Well done, everybody.

00:55:01.000 So we'll find out the final result of this. 0.74

00:55:03.000 But relying on the Supreme Court to protect all your hopes and dreams when it comes to the pro-life position is a fool's errand. 0.81

00:55:08.000 All right. 0.58

00:55:09.000 Well, we'll be back here later today for two more hours.

00:55:11.000 We've got a lot coming up on today's radio show.

00:55:13.000 You're going to want to subscribe so you can listen or listen live on your radio station, depending on where you live.

00:55:17.000 Go check that out.

00:55:19.000 Otherwise, we will see you here next week.

00:55:20.000 Make sure to tune in for our Sunday special and subscribe so it becomes a Saturday special with Gary Sinise, a world-famous actor and terrific director.

00:55:27.000 Go check that out.

00:55:29.000 We'll see you here on Monday.

00:55:30.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:30.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:55:35.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villarreal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:55:45.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.

00:55:51.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 08, 2019

Bezos Like A Boss | Ep. 713

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