The Ben Shapiro Show - Candace Owens Is Evil

00:00:00.000 Sick and evil Candace Owens has now released a trailer for her new series attacking Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk.

00:00:08.000 We'll prepare for President Trump's State of the Union address, and we're going to analyze the top global box office at Wuthering Heights and explore what its perversity actually means for our civilization.

00:00:17.000 But first, everyone knows what the legacy media is going to look like tonight.

00:00:21.000 It'll be somewhat depressing, somewhat dramatic.

00:00:23.000 Caitlin Collins will be a little outrage, but President Trump is going to be making his State of the Union, and you can hang out with us instead.

00:00:30.000 We have our very own State of the Union watch party.

00:00:32.000 It kicks off 8 p.m. Eastern with a live pre-show hosted by Cabot Phillips.

00:00:36.000 We'll get you ready for President Donald Trump's big night, which you can watch right here.

00:00:40.000 And then, once the speech is over, we're just getting started.

00:00:42.000 Stick around for a special edition of Friendly Fire hosted by Moi.

00:00:46.000 Pre-show, State of the Union, Friendly Fire, all in one place.

00:00:49.000 Watch with me, Andrew Clavin, and special guests live tonight at dailywire.com and on the Dailywire Plus app on Roku, Samsung, Apple TV, and everywhere else.

00:00:59.000 Now, I need to take a breath here because what I'm about to discuss is significantly more serious and truly troubling.

00:01:08.000 Candace Owens, as you may have heard me refer at the top of the show, is an evil, twisted human being.

00:01:14.000 Now, the reason I say that today is because Candace has spent the last several months attacking the widow of Charlie Kirk, Erica Kirk.

00:01:22.000 It took her just a few days after Charlie's sick murder in order to start casting aspersions at Turning Point USA, people who worked there all the way up to the highest levels, up to and including Erica Kirk.

00:01:33.000 She was doing that very, very quickly, and she's been doing it for months.

00:01:37.000 I mean, truly for months.

00:01:40.000 Yesterday, she came out with something that she had announced she was doing, which is a series.

00:01:46.000 This is a trailer for a series, a teaser trailer, that is titled Bride of Charlie, which is supposedly now an expose on the evil, nefarious, predatory nature of Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, who, again, was shot in the neck, not by some sort of vast conspiracy involving French intelligence and Egyptian airplanes, but by a trans-loving gay man who is a furry.

00:02:14.000 That is the actual story.

00:02:15.000 And because Candace Owens is either going through the throes of mental illness or because she is a sick human being or both, she has decided that she is going to turn her fire on the widow.

00:02:31.000 Don't believe me?

00:02:32.000 I know.

00:02:32.000 Listen, there are a lot of people who listen to Candace.

00:02:34.000 She has a huge audience.

00:02:37.000 This is what she does.

00:02:38.000 This is who she is.

00:02:40.000 She is a conspiratorial, evil person, because that's who would do something like this: a conspiratorial, evil person.

00:02:48.000 Now, the only reason that I'm playing this trailer is so you understand the extent of the evil that Candace Owens is perpetrating here.

00:02:55.000 Because obviously, I do not wish to promote her propagandistic horror that she is now pushing on a grieving widow with small children.

00:03:05.000 The entire purpose of this is so you understand what Candace Owens is and what she is doing.

00:03:10.000 I have to show you this thing so you understand that I'm not exaggerating, that I'm not making it up, that the thing that I'm saying is a thing Candace is doing, because otherwise it would be kind of unbelievable.

00:03:20.000 I get this all the time with regard to Candace.

00:03:22.000 I get it with regard to other personalities too, but what happened to her?

00:03:25.000 Does she really mean this stuff?

00:03:26.000 Does she mean the kind of stuff that she says?

00:03:29.000 Take her at her word.

00:03:30.000 Here is what she is doing.

00:03:32.000 Here is the trailer for her hot garbage fire of nonsense conspiracy-mongering defecation.

00:03:44.000 Here is the trailer she just released for her series of attacks.

00:03:49.000 It's going to be an entire series of attacks on Erica Kirk.

00:03:52.000 Again, she's been retailing and implying and basically saying out loud a lot of this stuff on her show for months, for months.

00:03:57.000 People cannot claim that they were ignorant that this was happening.

00:04:00.000 They know what was happening and they let it go.

00:04:02.000 We'll get to them in a moment.

00:04:03.000 But here is the trailer that she released yesterday.

00:04:07.000 President Trump says that Kirk has died after he was shot from a nearby building after being shot at Utah Valley University.

00:04:14.000 The great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead.

00:04:19.000 The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.

00:04:25.000 I didn't even get to give him a kiss goodbye.

00:04:28.000 That young man.

00:04:30.000 I forgive him.

00:04:35.000 Take your time.

00:04:38.000 Erica Kirk has been named the new CEO of Turning Point USA.

00:04:42.000 My husband's dead.

00:04:43.000 Like, I'm not trying to be morbid, but he's dead.

00:04:45.000 It's weird to say excited.

00:04:47.000 Describes your husband's funeral as the event of the century.

00:04:51.000 Merch hats.

00:04:53.000 We have 50,000 plus hot orders.

00:04:56.000 Nobody knows why she's out there in a glittering pantsuit in a recreated tent that her husband tragically was murdered in, throwing merch out.

00:05:06.000 Everyone breathe differently.

00:05:07.000 So if someone's acting weird, don't read into that.

00:05:10.000 Zionists, the prime minister of Israel, all lied through their teeth about Charlie Kirk.

00:05:17.000 Her operation was in Constanta, the epicenter of Romania's trafficking scandal.

00:05:23.000 Weird conversations to have with a 15-year-old.

00:05:27.000 I'm going to touch your butt.

00:05:29.000 $8.6 million to their own shell company.

00:05:32.000 What is going on?

00:05:36.000 My aunt used to tell me, never do something that you don't want on the front page of a newspaper.

00:05:48.000 So that's what Candace Owens has been spending her days doing.

00:05:50.000 And millions of people, of course, have been watching her as she's been doing this.

00:05:53.000 Apparently, she is calling Erica Kirk, she has been calling Erica Kirk a lesbian pedophile grooming a 15-year-old.

00:06:00.000 She is suggesting, of course, she has been suggesting for a while that TPUSA was complicit, if not in the murder of Charlie Kirk, then in the cover-up of the murder of Charlie Kirk.

00:06:10.000 This is the stuff that Candace Owens has been doing.

00:06:12.000 Because Candace Owens is a true vampire when it comes to conservatism and the conservative movement.

00:06:20.000 She finds prominent people and then she grifts off of them and then she does more grifting off of them and then she grifts them until she's done grifting them.

00:06:26.000 Then she moves on to the next thing she can grift off of.

00:06:29.000 Truly sick, truly evil.

00:06:31.000 You lack for words.

00:06:32.000 There is a biblical injunction for those of us who actually care about the Bible.

00:06:36.000 There's a biblical injunction in Exodus 22 that you ought not to oppress any widow or orphan.

00:06:43.000 Now, the reason that I focus in on this is because aside from the fact that Candace drives huge numbers through slandering people, truly slandering them.

00:06:55.000 And yes, Erica Kirk absolutely should sue the living hell out of Candace Owens for this sort of stuff.

00:07:01.000 The reason I bring this up is because there's been a wide and vast silence by people who should have spoken out about this months and months and Months ago.

00:07:10.000 In fact, some of us were calling this out from the stage of TPUSA in December.

00:07:15.000 Here's what I had to say about Candace doing exactly this thing.

00:07:18.000 This is back in December.

00:07:19.000 Okay, it is now nearly the end of February.

00:07:21.000 And the same people who I suggested were silent then are silent now.

00:07:28.000 So, if Candace Owens decides to spend every day since the murder of Charlie Kirk casting aspersions at TPUSA and the people who work here who worked with Charlie every single day, His best friends.

00:07:39.000 To cast aspersions at Mikey McCoy and Andrew Colvin and Blake Neff and Tyler Boyer and yes, at Erica Kirk, and to imply or outright claim complicity in a cover-up over Charlie's murder, to spew absolutely baseless trash, implicating everyone from French intelligence to Mossad to members of TPUSA in Charlie's murder or a cover-up in that murder, then we, as people with a microphone, have a moral obligation to call that out by name,

00:08:08.000 Erica Kirk and TPUSA never never, should have put in the never, should have been put in the position to have to defend themselves against such specious and evil attacks, particularly in a time of mourning.

00:08:21.000 And the people who refuse to condemn Candace's truly vicious attacks and some of them are speaking here are guilty of cowardice yes, cowardice.

00:08:36.000 The fact that they have said nothing while Candace has been vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense into the public square for years is just as cowardly.

00:08:45.000 When the signs are there for years on end and people say nothing, and people continue to say nothing today, that's cowardice, obviously.

00:08:52.000 Where are Charlie's friends?

00:08:54.000 Where are Charlie's closest friends?

00:08:57.000 Where are all the people who proclaimed solidarity with Charlie and with Erica today?

00:09:01.000 What are they doing?

00:09:04.000 And for all the people who are watching Candace stitch together a bunch of specious nonsense because they like the gossip of it, because they enjoy the tawdry Maury Povich silliness of it, because they're watching a car crash at the side of the road.

00:09:19.000 Please have some more respect for your own brain than that.

00:09:21.000 Please have some more respect for yourself than that.

00:09:22.000 Truly truly, because what she's doing is evil and when you watch her show she gets paid to do that evil.

00:09:30.000 That is how she is making her money.

00:09:32.000 She is making money off the murder of Charlie Kirk by literally implicating his widow and everyone else at TP USA in that murder and then trying to dig up pseudo dirt on the wife of the person who was murdered.

00:09:47.000 I don't know what to call that other than evil trash.

00:09:50.000 But you are too smart for this.

00:09:52.000 I mean, the fact is that while Candace Owens is obviously good at broadcasting she's very good on camera she happens not to be a particularly smart human being.

00:10:01.000 She just isn't.

00:10:03.000 I'm sorry.

00:10:04.000 I'm sorry to break it to everybody.

00:10:06.000 She is not some sort of magical genius guiding you through the mysteries of life, unpacking for you all of the secrets of how the world really works.

00:10:16.000 She is a grifter who is making money off of you by telling you lies that are unbelievably.

00:10:21.000 Unbelievably stupid, but evocative.

00:10:23.000 In fact, that could be the name of her autobiography, Stupid but Evocative by Candace Owens, except she would pronounce it evocative.

00:10:32.000 Coming up, we'll get to chaos in New York first.

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00:12:49.000 Yesterday in New York City, there's been this gigantic freeze that has beset New York City and the rest of the East Coast.

00:12:59.000 And as you will see, on Washington Square, several NYPD officers responded to a call there and people started hurling snowballs at them.

00:13:10.000 This isn't like playful stuff.

00:13:11.000 They were actually trying to hurt them.

00:13:13.000 They started just hurling objects at the police officers.

00:13:17.000 Every one of these people should be identified and every one of these people should go to jail.

00:13:21.000 Every single one of them.

00:13:23.000 Hurling objects at police officers, assaulting police officers, mobs of people, some of them masked, trying to assault police officers.

00:13:32.000 This is 1970s style disorder in New York City.

00:13:36.000 And yes, it has been prompted and promoted by people like Zorhan Mamdani.

00:13:41.000 The attitude that governance has toward people who are actual hoodlums in the streets has a pretty marked impact on whether or not people act like hoodlums in the streets.

00:13:52.000 Forget about broken windows theory.

00:13:53.000 How about attacking cops theory?

00:13:55.000 You attack a cop, you go to jail.

00:13:58.000 Again, pretty simple stuff.

00:14:00.000 But the rising level of disorder and chaos that we see in the country is a direct result of governance decisions that are being made in blue cities, particularly by the people who run those blue cities.

00:14:12.000 You think it has no impact on how people think of the cops?

00:14:15.000 That Zara Mamdani has spent his entire career prior to being elected mayor of New York, ripping on the cops and suggesting that they are a nefarious force for viciousness.

00:14:24.000 Of course, it has an impact.

00:14:25.000 Every single one of those people pelting the NYPD with snowballs should go to jail.

00:14:30.000 And those are full-grown adults, by the way.

00:14:31.000 You're not talking about misbegotten 15-year-old juvenile delinquents who get frisky with the cops.

00:14:31.000 Those are not kids.

00:14:37.000 You're talking about, look at that video again.

00:14:40.000 You're talking about people who are standing there, the cops arrive, and they just start hurling things at the cops.

00:14:44.000 Jessica Tisch, who is the commissioner of the NYPD, put out a statement: the NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops.

00:14:56.000 I want to be very clear: the behavior depicted is disgraceful and it is criminal.

00:14:59.000 Our detectives are investigating this matter.

00:15:03.000 The PBA called the incident unacceptable and outrageous, according to ABC 7 in New York.

00:15:09.000 The fact that this has become commonplace, this sort of attitude toward the cops has become commonplace, really since 2014 in the country.

00:15:17.000 In 2014, of course, you had the Ferguson riots justified then by the president of the United States.

00:15:23.000 And then it turns out Americans didn't like that.

00:15:25.000 Donald Trump was elected.

00:15:26.000 You saw a reversion to a law and order attitude at the top.

00:15:29.000 And then in 2020, it broke out anew again, but far, far, far larger.

00:15:33.000 And now you have blue cities that are being taken over by effectively defund the police advocates.

00:15:37.000 And those defund the police advocates may then turn around and try to claim that they want to work with the cops, but it's too late.

00:15:43.000 Message received.

00:15:45.000 Message received.

00:15:45.000 Disorder comes from the top.

00:15:47.000 It does not come from the bottom.

00:15:50.000 A disordered government leads to a disordered citizenry.

00:15:55.000 There's a reason that law and order, it's not just law, it's also order, have to be implemented.

00:16:00.000 Speaking of Zorhan Mamdani, Zorhan Mamdani is, who has totally changed the policy in New York City with regard to getting people off the streets in the middle of blizzards, and then a bunch of people have died.

00:16:11.000 He's saying that the people dying, well, it's because they actually died of overdose, not because they are freezing.

00:16:17.000 Well, I mean, I guess you're doing a great job then.

00:16:20.000 Mary uselessness.

00:16:23.000 We have more than 500 homeless outreach workers who have been traversing the five boroughs looking to connect homeless New Yorkers with services and support.

00:16:31.000 And what we've also learned is the tools that were effective over the course of the prolonged cold period, again, a historic period of sub-freezing conditions.

00:16:39.000 Those are ones we've employed from the very first day of our response to this one.

00:16:43.000 I'll give you one example: a number of those New Yorkers who lost their lives.

00:16:47.000 The preliminary indications came that it was from an overdose-related death.

00:16:52.000 Well, you know, what helped is if you had forced those people to go inside, that's what would have really helped.

00:16:57.000 Or maybe if you just didn't let people sleep in the outdoors at all, regardless of the weather, and then people would probably die less often of drug overdose on the street.

00:17:06.000 And Mayor Smarm over there grins at the camera, always.

00:17:12.000 And then through that gritted, smarmy smile, utters the most inane platitudes.

00:17:18.000 Again, New Yorkers, you broke it.

00:17:19.000 You bought it.

00:17:21.000 Unfortunately, the disconnection of the Democrats runs the gamut.

00:17:26.000 James Tallarico is a state representative in Texas who's received outsized media attention because he's sort of the beta ork of this cycle.

00:17:33.000 Every so often, Democrats decide that they're going to win a Senate seat in Texas every couple of years and they run the hot new thing.

00:17:38.000 So they tried beta.

00:17:39.000 You remember Beto?

00:17:40.000 Beto was a representative in the House of Representatives, ran for Senate, got smushed.

00:17:44.000 You remember that he was raising millions and millions of dollars because he betook was going to bring Texas back to the blue, brah.

00:17:53.000 And then that failed.

00:17:54.000 Then he ran for president.

00:17:55.000 And then that also failed, brah.

00:17:56.000 And then he went to the New Mexican desert to eat dirt or something.

00:17:59.000 Well, now they're trying again with James Tallarico, who kind of is basically, he feels like Texan Pete Buddy Judge, kind of.

00:18:09.000 That's kind of the vibe for James Tallarico.

00:18:12.000 He's got the howdy-doody thing going on.

00:18:15.000 Anyway, when he's not appearing on Joe Rogan to receive silly questions, or when he is not appearing on Stephen Colbert to receive silly questions, he is out there suggesting that Americans ought not worry about radical Islam or, say, transgender shootings.

00:18:32.000 They should worry about rich people.

00:18:35.000 Okay, my dude.

00:18:38.000 Trans people are 1% of the population.

00:18:42.000 Muslims are 1% of the population.

00:18:45.000 Undocumented people are 1% of the population.

00:18:48.000 We are focused on the wrong 1%.

00:18:54.000 So I'm just going to point out at this point that murderers represent a very small percentage of the American population.

00:19:03.000 Should we not worry about why is the percentage of the population the relevant categorization here?

00:19:08.000 It's a bizarre contention.

00:19:11.000 I mean, is the contention that if transgenders were 20% of the population that we should worry more about them?

00:19:15.000 Or that if Muslims were 10%, because I feel like he wouldn't say that.

00:19:19.000 I feel like he wouldn't say that if Muslims were 10% of the American population, we should be concerned.

00:19:24.000 By the way, they're like 10% of the New York population.

00:19:28.000 So I really don't think that he's making the argument that he thinks he's making there.

00:19:34.000 I think what we really should worry about are not transgenders per se, but the phenomenon whereby we tell children that boys can be girls and then treat them with hormones and tell them that their mental illness is fixed.

00:19:46.000 That seems to be a problem.

00:19:47.000 It has nothing to do with the percentage of people affected.

00:19:50.000 If a very small percentage of people in the United States believe that they are, in fact, Jack the Ripper, maybe it's only one guy.

00:19:57.000 It feels like telling him he's Jack the Ripper and handing him a knife would also be a bad idea.

00:20:01.000 It turns out bad ideas are bad ideas regardless of the percentage of population they cover.

00:20:05.000 Why are we supposed to quote unquote worry about the 1% being presumably the people who have participated the most in the market, providing goods and services that others wish to obtain?

00:20:15.000 That is how you get rich in a free country.

00:20:17.000 You don't get rich, contrary to popular opinion, by stealing from poor people, because it turns out poor people don't have lots of money.

00:20:23.000 It turns out that in a free country, the way that you get rich is through free exchange of goods and services.

00:20:29.000 And if you do that lots of times and you invent cool new stuff that other people want, you can get real rich in the United States.

00:20:36.000 I love that for James Tallarico, the threat to the American population is that a person who once was not rich is now extremely rich, and that's a threat.

00:20:43.000 But a threat to the population is not a transgender person picking up a gun and shooting up a Catholic school.

00:20:50.000 Like that's okay, my dude.

00:20:53.000 Again, the level of disconnect here is astonishing.

00:20:57.000 And here, you know what?

00:20:58.000 I have to say, again, partial credit to Gavin Newsom.

00:21:01.000 It's funny that I have to say this about Gavin Newsom, who, again, I think Gavin Newsom is the bizarre Patrick Bateman of American politics, shape-shifting in the extreme.

00:21:14.000 But I will say that he at least has his finger on the pulse enough to understand that Americans don't like the left-wing view on transgenderism very much.

00:21:22.000 Here was Gavin Newsom explaining that actually Dems will lose people if they don't address trans athletes.

00:21:27.000 Now, as I pointed out to him directly when I was sitting with him, I think the American people are going to be just as upset when they find out that you would like to trans children and that you think that hormone treatments and surgeries for children are somehow morally justifiable.

00:21:41.000 I feel like Americans care about that even more than boys playing in girls' sports, but Newsom is at least willing to go this far.

00:21:49.000 From a technique, from the prism of purely politics, there's no doubt that the Democratic Party needs to be, dare I say, more culturally normal.

00:22:01.000 I believe that.

00:22:03.000 Less prone to spending disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity, politics, more focused on tabletop issues, things that really matter, the stacking of stress in terms of electricity bills and child care costs and health care and obviously housing costs, and how easily we get trapped in that.

00:22:22.000 How I've fallen prey to that.

00:22:24.000 I mean, here I was way out front on marriage equality.

00:22:27.000 So I understand this from both on the receiving end of this and on the front end of this leading the pack.

00:22:32.000 So I think there has to be some consideration of that.

00:22:35.000 But I think if you can't hold the line on competitive sports, again, sports, there's some nuance in this larger conversation.

00:22:43.000 But competitive metal sports, if we can't find that nuance, I think we're going to lose a lot of people that aren't, we're not going to get invited into larger conversations.

00:22:55.000 Now, again, like it's weird that Gavin Newsom is the somewhat rational person, at least like in very small part, rational person in the Democratic room.

00:23:05.000 But that is how far left the Democratic Party has moved.

00:23:08.000 Speaking of which, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona, who would also like to run for president, he's one name that's not being dropped very often, but he certainly wants it.

00:23:16.000 He's now claiming that ICE detention centers are internment camps.

00:23:19.000 The disconnect in the Democratic Party is a real thing.

00:23:24.000 In Arizona, for example, they just bought a $70 million warehouse, did not even speak to the governor, did not speak to any of the local city council members, which and the Republicans.

00:23:34.000 They're setting up these internment camps.

00:23:36.000 And yet when we asked for very simple things, things that would actually bring trust, security to our communities, they refuse.

00:23:45.000 If Democrats wish to run on ICE detention centers, our internment camps, throw snowballs at the cops and leave the homeless out on the street to freeze.

00:23:53.000 And also billionaires are the real problem.

00:23:55.000 I suppose they can do that.

00:23:56.000 Doesn't seem like the world's smartest strategy to me.

00:23:59.000 Tonight is the State of the Union address.

00:24:01.000 The president of the United States giving his first official State of the Union address last year.

00:24:05.000 I was there, but it wasn't really a State of the Union.

00:24:06.000 It's kind of fake State of the Union.

00:24:08.000 He went for 99 minutes last time, like really, really long.

00:24:11.000 He says he's going to go long this time.

00:24:12.000 When the president says he's going to go long, calf up, man.

00:24:15.000 It's going to be long.

00:24:17.000 I mean, make sure that you hydrate.

00:24:19.000 Make sure that you have some carb packets on hand.

00:24:22.000 When the president decides to go on a stem winder, I mean, I've been at many of his events.

00:24:28.000 I will say, I think the over-under on this thing is like two hours, probably.

00:24:33.000 There's got to be a Calci market for this, like the actual length of the president's speech tonight.

00:24:38.000 I'd be shocked if there is not.

00:24:42.000 There we go.

00:24:43.000 Okay, so the over-under is 100 minutes or above.

00:24:49.000 Apparently, 48% of people believe he's going to go for at least 100 minutes.

00:24:54.000 62%, at least 95 minutes.

00:24:56.000 So the over-under is in hour 40.

00:24:58.000 I say that he tops last year.

00:24:59.000 I think that he has it in his head that he is going to go for it.

00:25:03.000 Calci, by the way, is the sponsor of the show.

00:25:05.000 Joining me on the line on this historic day is Mary Margaret Olihan.

00:25:08.000 Mary Margaret is, of course, our White House correspondent.

00:25:10.000 Mary Margaret, good to talk to you.

00:25:13.000 Hey, Ben, great to be here.

00:25:16.000 So what can we expect from the president's first official State of the Union tonight?

00:25:19.000 Last year, he did a kind of quasi-state of the union.

00:25:22.000 It wasn't officially a state of the union.

00:25:23.000 This is his actual first, second-term State of the Union.

00:25:26.000 So what should we expect tonight?

00:25:28.000 Well, we should expect a long state of the union.

00:25:31.000 Last year, I believe he went 99 minutes.

00:25:33.000 And this year, he's already told us that it's going to be pretty long.

00:25:36.000 So I think we can expect it to be even longer than last year.

00:25:40.000 But what Caroline Levitt and the White House are saying is that this is going to be a celebration of America, of American patriotism, and of all the things the president has done during the first year of his administration.

00:25:51.000 So last year when he spoke, he'd only been in office for a few months.

00:25:55.000 Now he has all of these different accomplishments that he can tout.

00:25:58.000 And you know that he will, especially on the economy, on the border crisis that he has handled effectively, and on the deportations that he continues to do, on his foreign policy wins, making American City safer, those things, and much, much more.

00:26:15.000 He intends to have a number of guests, in my understanding.

00:26:18.000 Melania will also have a few guests.

00:26:20.000 All of these congressmen will have guests.

00:26:22.000 And what I have been told is that these guests are supposed to be American people who showcase the beauty of America, the beauty of our workers, the strength of the American person in general.

00:26:33.000 And all of this will contribute to a spectacle, which, from the Trump administration's perspective, will be one of the most watched speeches of the president's year, if not the next several years.

00:26:44.000 All eyes are on the president.

00:26:46.000 All the cable news channels will be tuned in, which is not something that they always do.

00:26:50.000 So the Trump administration is excited.

00:26:53.000 They know the eyes of the world are watching, and they're planning to take full advantage of that.

00:26:58.000 So, Mary Margaret, the president is famous for not only some surprises that he has dropped during addresses like this in the past, but also for his guest selection, which is always really, really interesting.

00:27:07.000 Do we have any indicators of who he might be inviting on a more specific level?

00:27:12.000 Yeah, so Ben, we can exclusively report here at Daily Wire that President Trump will be bringing Erica Kirk, the widow of the late Charlie Kirk, as his guest to the State of the Union this year.

00:27:23.000 We learned this from the White House that Erica, who, as we know, has taken over as the head of Turning Point USA, she will be attending as the president's guest.

00:27:33.000 And I'm also told by a White House official that Trump plans to talk about the tremendous revival of faith, Christianity, and belief in God and in our country since Charlie's death.

00:27:43.000 We know that across the nation, if not the world, we have seen this amazing spiritual revival, especially young people turning to their faith, turning to God, to Jesus Christ, in an attempt to find solace after Charlie's death and to follow his admonition that the most important thing for any individual is their faith in their God.

00:28:06.000 And I'm also told by the Trump administration that the president plans to firmly reject political violence against our fellow citizens.

00:28:13.000 So he will make a plea to Congress that all Congress members should reject political violence.

00:28:20.000 And this comes only a few days after we heard of yet another incident of apparent political violence against the president when the Secret Service shot and killed a man who is attempting to enter the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, and Palm Beach.

00:28:33.000 I'm told that they're still looking into this.

00:28:36.000 The FBI is still investigating this incident.

00:28:39.000 But this is, I believe, the third or the fourth instance of a man attempting to take the president's life.

00:28:45.000 And it also comes after Charlie's tragic assassination.

00:28:49.000 It comes after multiple shootings by trans-identifying shooters targeting Christian school children.

00:28:55.000 And unfortunately, Ben, most of this violence that we've seen is left-wing violence.

00:28:59.000 So the president's going to take this opportunity to point out to Congress the importance of everyone condemning this type of violence as Erica sits there as his special guest at the State of the Union, which frankly is a huge honor to Erica, particularly coming at a time when she's facing this onslaught of criticism from online commentators, this onslaught of really, frankly, malicious criticism suggesting that she had something to do with her husband's death, that she and her organization are behaving somehow maliciously.

00:29:29.000 So it's really coming at a crucial time for Erica, and it's a huge honor to her, to her family, to Turning Point, and to her deceased husband.

00:29:39.000 So, Mary Margaret, we also know that the president invited the men's hockey team from the Olympics to come, as well as the women's hockey team from the Olympics, both gold medal-winning teams.

00:29:49.000 Do we have any reports on whether the teams are actually going to show up?

00:29:53.000 Yes.

00:29:54.000 As far as I know, the men's hockey team will be coming to the State of the Union.

00:29:58.000 They're excited online.

00:30:00.000 You can see many viral videos of them celebrating their win, talking about how they're looking forward to coming to the state of the union.

00:30:06.000 Not their typical scene, I don't think, but they all say they're excited and they're looking forward to it.

00:30:10.000 The women's hockey team, I believe they graciously declined.

00:30:15.000 The reporting out there says that this was not a political decline.

00:30:19.000 It was just more that they couldn't make it and they weren't going to be able to come.

00:30:22.000 But the men's hockey team will be there.

00:30:25.000 And I'm sure you saw, Ben, there's been some really great footage of them celebrating their win in an incredibly patriotic way.

00:30:31.000 I was just watching a video of them singing the national anthem very boisterously in a club in Miami last night.

00:30:39.000 And they're just having the time of their lives, but in a way that the American public can really appreciate.

00:30:43.000 They are very patriotic, very proud of their country.

00:30:47.000 They seem to really be excited to be the president's guests.

00:30:50.000 And they haven't said one word of criticism to him, which, you know, as an American, I think is really great.

00:30:56.000 I think it's wonderful that we can be celebrating their win in a non-political way.

00:31:01.000 And look forward to hopefully seeing them tonight.

00:31:04.000 Well, Mary Margaret, looking forward to seeing you tonight.

00:31:06.000 We are covering the State of the Union live here at Daily Wire.

00:31:10.000 Mary Margaret will be stopping by, I assume, for some of that friendly fire coverage.

00:31:13.000 You'll get to hear from our host as we cover the state of the union, the president's big speech tonight.

00:31:17.000 Mary Margaret, thanks so much for the coverage and see you in a bit.

00:31:20.000 I'll see you later.

00:31:20.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:31:23.000 The president of the United States does have a heavy lift.

00:31:26.000 He acknowledged yesterday that his poll numbers are not particularly good.

00:31:28.000 That, of course, is true.

00:31:29.000 The latest CNN poll shows that the president is stuck at 32% of Americans now saying that Trump has the right priorities.

00:31:39.000 68% saying that he has not paid enough attention to the country's most important problems.

00:31:44.000 61% say that Trump's policies move the country in the wrong direction.

00:31:48.000 And his job approval rating is stuck at 36%.

00:31:50.000 So pretty bad numbers for the president right now.

00:31:54.000 According to the latest Marist poll, 43% say the state of the union is very strong or strong.

00:32:00.000 57% say not very strong and not strong at all.

00:32:06.000 If you look at the breakdown, obviously Republicans remain very solidly behind the president, but 23% of Republicans say that the state of the nation is not strong, which is not a wonderful number for a Republican president.

00:32:20.000 Usually the president has up in the 90s in terms of his support here.

00:32:26.000 Again, among Republicans, 43% of Republicans think the system of checks and balances in the United States is not functioning effectively, according to that Marist poll.

00:32:37.000 And these poll numbers are grouped fairly solidly.

00:32:40.000 The president is somewhere between 36 and 43%, generally speaking.

00:32:45.000 Washington Post-ABC Ipsos poll has President Trump stuck at a 39% approval rating.

00:32:53.000 Now, the question, of course, is why?

00:32:56.000 And the answer is: there remain a lot of open questions about the economy.

00:33:00.000 People remain extremely nervous about the economy.

00:33:05.000 Not only did the Q4 growth come in low, but there are real and durable fears about AI.

00:33:12.000 I do believe that the president needs to address those fears, explain exactly what the vision of AI for the future looks like.

00:33:18.000 I think a lot of people hear AI and they think my job is on the line.

00:33:23.000 And so the president does need to convene, I think, some sort of roundtable with AI leaders and explain to the American public that AI is going to make your job easier and more productive and that it actually will increase by increasing productivity the value of your take-home wages, as opposed to what I think most people think, which is they're kind of scared of AI.

00:33:39.000 They think that AI is just going to take over everything.

00:33:42.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, It doesn't take too much to cause tumultuous stock moves in a market top-heavy with tech shares and jumpy about the prospects for AI, but nothing underlines the sensitivity of stocks right now, quite like what happened on Monday when one of the factors behind the Dow's 800-point drop was a 7,000-word hypothetical.

00:34:01.000 A viral report by Citrini Research tapped into a new strain of fears about AI, painting a dark portrait of the future in which technological change inspires a race to the bottom in white-collar knowledge work.

00:34:11.000 Concerns of hyperscalers overspending are out.

00:34:13.000 Worries of software industry disruption don't go far enough.

00:34:16.000 The global intelligence crisis is about to hit.

00:34:19.000 Citrini wrote, for the entire entirety of modern economic history, human intelligence has been the scarce input.

00:34:24.000 We are now experiencing the unwind of that premium.

00:34:27.000 And basically, in English, what they are saying is that during the information technology era, people who are smart are the shortage, and those people get paid a lot of money.

00:34:37.000 And then there's a lot of downstream jobs from that.

00:34:39.000 But what happens when everybody becomes smart because of AI?

00:34:42.000 What is now the scarce input?

00:34:44.000 How do people get paid?

00:34:45.000 What do you do that a machine can't?

00:34:47.000 So, number one, there is labor, manual labor that people do.

00:34:50.000 There's care work, healthcare, for example.

00:34:53.000 But I think the thing that's going to be an actual short supply remains a level of intuitive creativity that machines just can't do.

00:35:03.000 And there will be jobs that are created by that.

00:35:05.000 Now, are we in a transitional period where we don't know quite what's going on?

00:35:08.000 And this is why I think the president really should convene a lot of AI optimists and have them put out together a report that suggests what they think the future economy looks like.

00:35:08.000 Yes.

00:35:17.000 What will people actually do for a living?

00:35:19.000 Maybe it's speculative, but the downside right now is speculative.

00:35:23.000 So we're going to have to see, again, how the president addresses that.

00:35:27.000 I think that is sort of the dog that isn't barking yet, at least clearly in the minds of many people with regard to this economy.

00:35:34.000 People are sort of feeling like they're on the precipice of something.

00:35:36.000 They don't know quite what.

00:35:38.000 Meanwhile, the president's continual focus on tariffs is not helping him.

00:35:42.000 That is not a popular policy with the American people.

00:35:44.000 I think it is right not to be a popular policy with the American people.

00:35:47.000 The president, however, keeps talking about how he's going to jack up tariffs.

00:35:50.000 Tariffs are going to make America rich.

00:35:54.000 The reality is that the tariffs that the president has loaded on the economy have not re-triggered manufacturing in the United States.

00:36:01.000 They have not reduced the trade deficit.

00:36:05.000 They may have contributed slightly to inflation.

00:36:09.000 However, the president continuing to talk about it creates serious input problems when it comes to small businesses, businesses that have to determine whether or not they're going to invest in new workers.

00:36:20.000 Where do they spend the money?

00:36:21.000 Are they going to have to pay higher prices for the inputs and their labor?

00:36:24.000 Are they going to have to pay new fees and taxes to the government?

00:36:28.000 That uncertainty is a real blow to the economy.

00:36:31.000 And so President Trump will argue the economy is great and the economy is overall pretty good.

00:36:37.000 But convincing people of a thing they don't feel in their guts is a very, very difficult thing.

00:36:42.000 Now, when it comes to the generic congressional ballot, while the president is currently riding at 40, 39% or so, Republican hopes in Congress seem to be riding at a similar level.

00:36:55.000 That does not mean that Democrats are blowing it out.

00:36:58.000 Right now, in the real core politics polling average, Democrats have about a five-point margin in the generic.

00:37:09.000 That would probably reflect itself in a pickup of some 20 seats, 20 to 25 seats.

00:37:13.000 However, as we've seen in prior midterm cycles, one scandal can turn that into a raging fire.

00:37:21.000 That scandal may be arriving at the door of Republicans thanks to the peccadillos and terrible sexual behavior, allegedly, of Representative Tony Gonzalez of Texas.

00:37:30.000 Tony Gonzalez allegedly had an affair with one Regina Santos Aviles, a former staffer who committed suicide by burning herself to death.

00:37:38.000 In text messages obtained by 24 Sight News, according to MediaIte, Gonzalez asked Santos Aviles to send him a sexy pic and then speculated with her about sexual positions and sexual practices in which he wished to engage.

00:37:52.000 Apparently, he had an affair with her.

00:37:54.000 According to one of her friends, she'd been battling depression ever since her husband found out about the relationship, causing the congressman to abruptly cut her off.

00:38:01.000 They are both married.

00:38:04.000 Other members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, are calling for him to resign.

00:38:07.000 The Speaker of the House has suggested that there ought to be a full investigation before he resigns.

00:38:13.000 It seems to me that he ought to resign because I think that the consequences for Republicans, if he does not, are going to flow upward.

00:38:20.000 This is very much like the Mark Foley scandal in 2006.

00:38:24.000 Republicans were coming off a major electoral victory in 2004.

00:38:27.000 By 2006, Nancy Pelosi was running the Congress in large part because of Republican leadership's response to a sex with a congressional page allegation and scandal surrounding Representative Mark Foley from Florida.

00:38:42.000 And it ended up really hurting the Republicans in the midterms.

00:38:44.000 You could see something similar happening here with regard to Tony Gonzalez.

00:38:49.000 Well, Tony Gonzalez's behavior reflects some perverse views, obviously, about relationships and about sex, which brings us to deconstructing the culture.

00:38:58.000 So my team forced me this week to sit down and watch the new version of Wuthering Heights.

00:39:06.000 I have some pretty marked critiques of this movie, Withering Glutes, because it speaks to the complete and utter degradation of our entire culture, truly.

00:39:17.000 It is a disastrously bad film.

00:39:19.000 My producers originally made me watch this so I could do a YouTube video on it.

00:39:23.000 And I'm actually putting it in the episode because I think it is that important.

00:39:26.000 It speaks to where we are as a civilization and a culture, because there are sort of cultural bellwethers.

00:39:31.000 What are the things that become important?

00:39:33.000 What does it say about a country when the most popular movie that is put out is basically music video pornography and a complete destruction of the underlying cultural value of the original novel and of the 1939 movie?

00:39:48.000 It actually does speak to that.

00:39:50.000 So before all the ladies in the audience or all the people who are listening to the sound of my voice take their girlfriends or wives to see this piece of absolute gutter trash, true trash, I would recommend that they actually sit for a second, head on over to Amazon, and get the original Wuthering Heights, the film with Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

00:40:11.000 It is significantly better in every possible way it is possible for a film to be better.

00:40:15.000 Why?

00:40:16.000 Because the values are better.

00:40:17.000 Okay, so the reason I want to talk about this is because the pornification of our society, a society in which people are not having children, in which people are not even having sex, the complete destruction of true eroticism in our society.

00:40:32.000 That is what is happening with Wuthering Heights.

00:40:35.000 Wuthering Heights, as I say, is basically just BDSM pornography shoveled into a very, very bad version of the kind of quasi-framework of the plot of Wuthering Heights.

00:40:48.000 And the truth is that all of the elements that build a successful society can be found in the ways that societies view marriage and virtue and love and romance.

00:40:58.000 And when that turns into what you see in the new version of the movie, which is basically just lust, materialism versus lust is basically the thrust of the film.

00:41:08.000 No pun intended.

00:41:09.000 When Wuthering Heights becomes withering glutes, then you've basically cooked your society.

00:41:14.000 It is cooked.

00:41:16.000 You want to know why people aren't having children?

00:41:18.000 You want to know why people are having less sex.

00:41:20.000 You want to know why life is actually more pornified and less erotic.

00:41:25.000 This is why.

00:41:26.000 This is why.

00:41:26.000 Okay, so I'm going to get into the actual details of the film for just a second, which, again, a lot of people are going to see it this weekend.

00:41:32.000 And it speaks to the destruction of the relationship between the sexes and what women think of themselves and how they think of sex and romance and how men think of this sort of stuff.

00:41:41.000 So, in order to do that, I sort of have to contrast what a good version of a movie looks like of Wuthering Heights and what a horrible version of a movie looks like.

00:41:49.000 The good version would be the 1939 version, which was written by Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and John Houston.

00:41:56.000 And the terrible version is the Emerald Fennel version.

00:42:01.000 The original Wuthering Heights, the 1939 version, happens to be, again, one of the great movies of all time.

00:42:09.000 It was directed by William Wyler, maybe the greatest director of all time.

00:42:12.000 He also did Best Years of Our Lives and Ben Hur, which shows you the difference in quality.

00:42:17.000 The music makes a huge difference.

00:42:19.000 In 1939, the music was written by Alfred Newman, one of the great scores ever.

00:42:23.000 Truly a great score.

00:42:24.000 I actually want to play a piece of that score here, like the theme from the original Wuthering Heights, so you know what I'm talking about.

00:43:13.000 Here, you have music by some person who does Emerald Fennel scores and Charlie XCX.

00:43:20.000 But the real problem here is the plot difference, and the plot difference underscores really where we are as a culture.

00:43:26.000 Again, I've talked about this in the past, that you can look at movies made in the 1940s and movies made today, and you can see the differentiation in values.

00:43:34.000 To take a perfectly obvious example, in the world of Disney, if you go all the way back to the original Pinocchio, which was made in the 40s, like the beginning of the 40s, the original Pinocchio has the line from Jimmy Cricket, and always let your conscience be your guide.

00:43:50.000 There's a right, there's a wrong, always let your conscience be your guide.

00:43:52.000 Frozen, the most popular Disney movie for this generation, the most famous song from it is No Right, No Wrong, No Rules, I'm Free.

00:44:00.000 Just a complete difference in values.

00:44:02.000 Okay, so in the 1939 version, here's how the plot of Wuthering Heights goes.

00:44:07.000 And it's important to go through the plot synopsis so you understand the differences and why those differences were inserted into the film.

00:44:13.000 So in the 1939 version of Wuthering Heights, which is much more heavily based on the novel, basically you have an estate.

00:44:21.000 It is called Wuthering Heights.

00:44:24.000 It's a perfectly fine place.

00:44:26.000 Everybody's happy.

00:44:27.000 There's a father, Mr. Earnshaw, and he has a couple of kids, Hindley and Kathy.

00:44:32.000 And one day he brings home a foundling, and the foundling is Heathcliff.

00:44:35.000 And he's described in the movie and in the original books as sort of dark and gypsy looking.

00:44:40.000 He's supposed to be a representative of the lower classes.

00:44:43.000 And the father brings him home because he's trying to make the point that you actually have to be charitable toward people in the lower classes because there is an innate equality of human beings.

00:44:52.000 Kathy not only accepts this, she becomes originally best friends with Heathcliff when they're children, and then lovers with Heathcliff.

00:44:59.000 Not like they're having sex or anything in the movie.

00:45:01.000 They're not, but they clearly love one another.

00:45:04.000 So much so that because Heathcliff is abused by the brother, the brother becomes jealous.

00:45:10.000 Hindley, who's the brother, becomes jealous and beats him up and treats him horribly.

00:45:13.000 And when the father dies, he relegates Heathcliff to being a stableboy.

00:45:17.000 It's basically a fairy tale gone wrong.

00:45:19.000 He relegates him to being a stableboy.

00:45:20.000 And Kathy is still in love with him.

00:45:22.000 So this creates the central conflict for Kathy.

00:45:25.000 Her central conflict in the 1939 movie is twofold.

00:45:29.000 First, there's the conflict between love, like passionate love with Heathcliff, who wants to run away with her, and material prosperity, which was historically a very real concern for women, particularly at the time that the book was written back in the 19th century.

00:45:46.000 Because again, if you run away with a guy into the middle of, she says this in the film, if you run away with a guy and you just live on the countryside, that's a very bad life.

00:45:55.000 And so she has to make the decision: does she wish for eternal love with Heathcliff, or does she want to marry the boy next door, basically, who is an upper class, kind of posh, but not a terrible person, who she clearly doesn't love, but will usher her into a world of plenty and material comfort and sort of wealth.

00:46:16.000 That's the decision that she originally has to make.

00:46:18.000 And she tries to solve it a couple of ways in the 39 movie.

00:46:21.000 At the beginning, she tells Heathcliff, why don't you go out into the world, go make your fortune, come back to me.

00:46:25.000 And he says, I can't leave you.

00:46:26.000 I'm not attached to you.

00:46:27.000 If I leave you, I will fall apart.

00:46:30.000 And at one point, he does try to leave and he comes back because he misses her too much.

00:46:34.000 So that's the original conflict.

00:46:36.000 And at a certain point, she's proposed to by the boy next door.

00:46:40.000 And she says to a maid that she wants to accept because to marry Heathcliff would be beneath her.

00:46:48.000 And so she has this sort of two-sided personality with regard to Heathcliff.

00:46:51.000 On the one hand, she loves him deeply and she wants to be with him and she identifies with him.

00:46:56.000 On the other hand, she wants to be, she aspires to be a person of material comfort and wealth and leisure and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:47:04.000 And so she says to the maid, maybe I should marry the guy next door, Lyndon, Edgar Linden, maybe I should do that.

00:47:11.000 And because Heathcliff is beneath me, and Heathcliff happens to be overhearing this, and so he runs away.

00:47:15.000 And so she ends up marrying Linton.

00:47:17.000 And that's the sort of the first conflict.

00:47:20.000 Then you get to the second part of the plot.

00:47:22.000 The second part of the plot is that Heathcliff now comes back.

00:47:26.000 She's married to Linton.

00:47:27.000 And now the conflict is she's still in love with Heathcliff.

00:47:30.000 She has this eternal love with Heathcliff, but virtue is the problem.

00:47:35.000 So again, notice the conflicts here, which are actually real and interesting.

00:47:39.000 The conflict between material comfort versus privation or eternal love, passionate but risky.

00:47:47.000 That's the original conflict.

00:47:49.000 And then it moves into love versus virtue.

00:47:51.000 She's married.

00:47:52.000 And not only is she married, Heathcliff comes back, and Heathcliff decides that as almost a form of emotional revenge against her, he is going to marry Lyndon's sister.

00:48:02.000 And so Isabella, who is also a good character in the 39 movie, she's not a milk soft, she's not ridiculous.

00:48:08.000 She falls in love with Heathcliff, believing that she can make him love her back, which, of course, is untrue.

00:48:16.000 And when that happens, that's when Kathy realizes she's ruined not just herself, but also Heathcliff and goes into sort of a death spiral.

00:48:24.000 And you get this very, very famous last scene in the 1939 film.

00:48:27.000 Here is a couple of minutes of that famous last scene where it looks like Kathy is dying.

00:48:31.000 And here is the incredibly romantic, famous last scene of the movie.

00:48:37.000 Miss Kathy.

00:48:39.000 Oh, my God.

00:48:44.000 She's gone.

00:48:50.000 You've done your last black deed, Heathcliff.

00:48:53.000 Leave this house.

00:48:55.000 She's at peace now in heaven and beyond us.

00:49:00.000 What do they know of heaven or hell, Kathy?

00:49:04.000 Who know nothing of life?

00:49:09.000 Oh, they're praying for you, Kathy.

00:49:15.000 I pray one prayer with them.

00:49:19.000 I repeat till my tongue stiffens.

00:49:22.000 Catherine Ernshaw, may you not rest so long as I live on?

00:49:27.000 I killed you.

00:49:29.000 Haunt me then.

00:49:30.000 Haunt your murderer.

00:49:33.000 I know that ghosts have wandered on the earth.

00:49:36.000 Be with me always.

00:49:38.000 Take any form.

00:49:39.000 Drive me mad.

00:49:42.000 Only do not leave me in this dark alone when I cannot find you.

00:49:48.000 I cannot live without my life.

00:49:52.000 I cannot die without my soul.

00:49:58.000 Oh, my dear.

00:50:05.000 You know, that is what a good version of the film looks like.

00:50:07.000 Why?

00:50:07.000 Because what that film is about is about longing, unfulfilled longing, right?

00:50:12.000 Heathcliff and Kathy never get together.

00:50:14.000 In fact, the only way it is possible for them to get together is in death.

00:50:20.000 One of the things he says to her near the end of the film is, why don't you want to live?

00:50:23.000 And she says, I want to die because she knows the only way out because she's married, the only way out is death.

00:50:28.000 And so she wants to die.

00:50:29.000 And then he wants to die.

00:50:30.000 And he asks her to haunt him.

00:50:33.000 I mean, that's unbelievably romantic stuff, obviously, because these are deep conflicts and they go to the value of virtue because virtue is important.

00:50:40.000 And romance is important.

00:50:44.000 And she apologizes for having been materialistic, for having thrown away love in favor of material comfort.

00:50:51.000 It's deeply moving, right?

00:50:52.000 It's a wonderful, wonderful film.

00:50:54.000 Okay, now, fast forward to 2026 and the new version, Glistening Butts from Emerald Fennel.

00:51:02.000 It is insulting.

00:51:03.000 It is degrading, and it is stupid.

00:51:05.000 Truly, it is a stupid movie.

00:51:07.000 It is stupid in every possible way for it to be stupid.

00:51:10.000 Okay, here, first of all, the plot is changed.

00:51:15.000 Now you have the father bring home Heathcliff.

00:51:19.000 The brother doesn't really exist.

00:51:22.000 So it's just Kathy and Heathcliff in the house.

00:51:25.000 They get together.

00:51:26.000 The father is both kind, but also an abusive drunk, which makes no sense.

00:51:31.000 In the 39 version, the father is good.

00:51:34.000 The brother is the bad guy.

00:51:35.000 Heathcliff comes back and he ends up buying up the brother's gambling debts and taking over Wuthering Heights as a form of revenge on him.

00:51:41.000 There's no brother here.

00:51:41.000 So Heathcliff comes back, he buys it from the dad who took him in as a foundling.

00:51:46.000 So none of the conflict makes any sense.

00:51:49.000 And then the central conflict becomes the conflict not between love and materialism, but between lust and materialism.

00:52:01.000 And one of the kind of key aspects, one of the reasons why she's driven away from Heathcliff, is because he is seen as not only lower class, but also racially different.

00:52:09.000 He's a gypsy.

00:52:11.000 Again, he's described that way in the book and in the 39 film.

00:52:13.000 Here, you have Jacob Alordi, who is as white as white can be, and her new husband, right?

00:52:17.000 The guy who she's going to marry, who's next door, Kathy, now he is a dude of Middle Eastern extraction, which makes zero sense at all.

00:52:27.000 None.

00:52:29.000 So the plot to this point is at least kind of similar.

00:52:33.000 Heathcliff overhears a conversation where she says she's going to marry the guy next door.

00:52:37.000 He runs away.

00:52:38.000 Okay, in the Emerald Fennel modern version.

00:52:41.000 He comes back.

00:52:42.000 So now he comes back.

00:52:44.000 And this is where the conflict is really supposed to play out, right?

00:52:47.000 Except that instead of there being this longing that is barred by virtue, which is where the romance lies, instead now he comes back and they just a lot.

00:52:57.000 Okay, that is what actually happens.

00:53:00.000 He comes back.

00:53:01.000 And instead of virtue being an obstacle to them being together eternally, they actually just get together and screw like rabbits.

00:53:10.000 That is the thing that happens in the film.

00:53:11.000 So all the romantic tension is gone because there is no romance.

00:53:14.000 It's just them screwing.

00:53:15.000 It's just lust.

00:53:17.000 And that's the theme throughout the whole film: lust uber Alice, apparently.

00:53:22.000 But the problem is that then where's the conflict?

00:53:26.000 Where's the conflict?

00:53:27.000 At the beginning, at least you sort of understand, okay, fine.

00:53:29.000 It's kind of lust versus materialism, I guess, kind of, but she has no moral scruples.

00:53:34.000 So why can't she have both?

00:53:36.000 And when he comes back, and instead of them being forced apart by virtue, because virtue no longer exists in 2026, virtue is not of any importance, he comes back and they immediately get together and they start doing the dirty all over the place, like full-scale minutes-long montages of them banging.

00:53:53.000 So, where is the plot tension?

00:53:55.000 It does not exist.

00:53:56.000 There's no plot tension.

00:53:57.000 She's pregnant in the 2026 version with another man's child, with her husband's child.

00:54:03.000 She tells Heathcliff this, and we'll get into the perverseness of all the sexual viewpoints in the movie in a second, because they really are perverse.

00:54:12.000 Instead of this being an obstacle, even to them being together, he says, I'm more turned on by the fact that another man's child is in you, which is like, what?

00:54:20.000 Okay, so you even took away whatever perverse values you have, you even took away the plot tension there.

00:54:25.000 It makes no sense at all.

00:54:27.000 And then she says, Well, I can't be together with you.

00:54:29.000 And so he marries the sister, just as he would in the 39 version, but he overtly tells the sister he is going to abuse her.

00:54:36.000 He says, I'm going to be horrible to you.

00:54:38.000 I hate you.

00:54:39.000 I'm never going to love you.

00:54:40.000 Do you want it?

00:54:42.000 And because she too is a lusty little creature, she says, Absolutely, I want it.

00:54:47.000 Down to the point, as we'll discuss, a full BDSM with him, where he is treating her, I kid you not, as a dog.

00:54:54.000 And then the baby within her dies.

00:54:57.000 She dies of septicemia.

00:54:59.000 She's on the bed, dead, before he even gets back.

00:55:02.000 And that's the end of the film.

00:55:04.000 It's a horror show.

00:55:06.000 And it's a horror show because you got rid of actual love in favor of lust, actual romance in favor of sex, actual virtue in favor of literally nothing.

00:55:16.000 And yes, eroticism.

00:55:17.000 It is not an erotic film.

00:55:19.000 It is not a sexy film.

00:55:20.000 It is not an interesting film.

00:55:22.000 Close-up shots from Wuthering Heights of Thundering Nips do not make up for lack of romance.

00:55:30.000 Particularly, by the way, for women.

00:55:34.000 There's a reason that women read romance novels and men watch pornography because men and women do not think about sex and romance in the same way.

00:55:40.000 Women like there to be a plot.

00:55:42.000 They like there to be an overarching structure of feeling before you get to the sex, which is why you can watch an entire movie from 1939 and it can be erotic without there being any sex or barely any kissing in it.

00:55:57.000 Because the romantic tension is the thing.

00:56:00.000 And in fact, this, by the way, is the way we used to build entire societies.

00:56:03.000 What we used to say is, yes, we know sex is a very important part of life.

00:56:07.000 The human mind is driven toward the forbidden.

00:56:09.000 The libido is driven toward the forbidden.

00:56:12.000 This is true in pretty much every society.

00:56:14.000 And it is a universal of human nature.

00:56:16.000 And therefore, what we do is we take sex and we hide it behind marriage.

00:56:19.000 If you want to get to the forbidden, you have to do this responsible thing, which is why the culmination of every classic comedy is a marriage.

00:56:27.000 Because now you're in the realm of virtue, but you can do the thing that was once forbidden and it's no longer forbidden and it's good and it's plentiful and it's healthy.

00:56:35.000 And instead, what we did is we obliterated as a society everything that was forbidden.

00:56:38.000 All the walls came down.

00:56:40.000 When there's no virtue, there are no walls.

00:56:42.000 There's nothing forbidden.

00:56:43.000 And so if there's nothing forbidden, you have to get wilder and wilder and wilder in search for the new high.

00:56:49.000 It's basically a dopamine drug.

00:56:53.000 That is where we are as a society, which is why apparently the new sexiness of Wuthering Heights slash beckoning abs apparently the new sexiness is just bizarre sexual perversion, which is what actually happens in the film.

00:57:08.000 And again, this is not about prudery.

00:57:10.000 That is just what the film is.

00:57:11.000 So to take a couple of examples from the Emerald Fennel film, Margot Robbie, who is way too old for the part.

00:57:18.000 I'm going to get to the casting in a second because it, again, speaks to where we are as a society.

00:57:24.000 Initially, she is very, very lusty.

00:57:27.000 She realizes she's very lusty for Heathcliff, which makes no sense.

00:57:30.000 She's 36 years old.

00:57:32.000 Okay, Margot Robbie is 36 years old.

00:57:35.000 Even if you were to play this entire plot out, rooted in lust, she's 36.

00:57:41.000 Okay, that makes a big difference.

00:57:44.000 A 36-year-old in lust, like constantly in lust, is kind of just a bizarre spectacle on screen.

00:57:53.000 You understand an 18-year-old, you know, somebody who's coming into the full flowering of maturity, looking for romance, looking for love in the wrong place.

00:57:53.000 It is.

00:58:01.000 You get that.

00:58:02.000 36.

00:58:03.000 I mean, get a job, lady.

00:58:06.000 My wife is two years older than Margot Robbie, and she is a full-fledged doctor who's been married for almost 20 years and has a fifth kid on the way.

00:58:15.000 And Margot Robbie is still cosplaying as a 16-year-old, lust-struck wench masturbating on the hill.

00:58:23.000 I kid you not.

00:58:24.000 That's part of the film.

00:58:27.000 She literally, here are the romance scenes in the film.

00:58:30.000 Okay, this is what is supposed to be romantic.

00:58:32.000 Not again, the longing.

00:58:33.000 The entire basis of Wuthering Heights as a book, as a film, as a piece of art is the longing.

00:58:40.000 If you're going to come down to one thing, it's the longing.

00:58:41.000 It's the forbiddenness of love and the impossibility of it ever truly being fulfilled because of these obstacles.

00:58:47.000 First, the self-made obstacle by Kathy and not going with Heathcliff in the first place.

00:58:51.000 And then the obstacle of actual virtuous institutions that exist for a reason and must be upheld, even at the cost of somebody's happiness.

00:58:59.000 That's where the longing comes in.

00:59:01.000 Obliterate all of that.

00:59:02.000 And what you end up with is just nastiness.

00:59:05.000 Okay, so here are just a few of the scenes in Emerald Fenold's Wuthering Heights.

00:59:10.000 One, there is a scene where Margot Robbie's Kathy ends up in the attic of the barn, which is where Heathcliff sleeps.

00:59:19.000 For some odd reason that we have no idea why, she ends up in the attic of a barn and she's looking down through the slats of the attic and two of the farmhands start going at it.

00:59:27.000 A male and a female.

00:59:28.000 It's like a maid from the house and a farmhand.

00:59:30.000 They start going at it.

00:59:31.000 But they don't just start going at it.

00:59:33.000 He bridles her with a horse bridle.

00:59:35.000 He puts like a bit in her mouth.

00:59:37.000 And she is staring at this lustily from above.

00:59:40.000 And Heathcliff comes up from behind her.

00:59:41.000 Jacob Lordy comes up from behind her, shirtless, and puts his hand around her mouth and another hand around her eyes.

00:59:48.000 So they're watching porn together.

00:59:49.000 They're watching horse porn together.

00:59:52.000 And this is supposed to be sexy and erotic.

00:59:55.000 It's just weird.

00:59:55.000 I don't know about you.

00:59:57.000 There's a scene where she is so overcome with her lust for Heathcliff for the quivering butts.

01:00:05.000 She's so overcome that she goes out onto the hill, which is again, supposed to the hill symbolically is supposed the actual place that Heathcliff and Kathy are supposed to be on the moors is supposed to be an idealized place of romantic heaven.

01:00:19.000 It is not supposed to be the place where you do your guilty pleasures.

01:00:23.000 So she goes out to the hill, again, as a 36-year-old woman, and she starts masturbating.

01:00:28.000 And Heathcliff spots her doing that.

01:00:29.000 And then he comes up to her and starts licking her hands.

01:00:32.000 Not kidding.

01:00:33.000 It's in the film.

01:00:36.000 Then there's a full-scale scene of cookery, right?

01:00:39.000 Where she's pregnant with another dude's baby.

01:00:42.000 And she literally, he literally says to her, that turns me on more.

01:00:45.000 It makes me want you more.

01:00:47.000 And now, I don't know about you.

01:00:48.000 That is not a natural emotion.

01:00:50.000 The number of men I know who are deeply turned on by the idea that another man's baby is in the woman that they are having sex with, that is not, let's just say that is unnatural.

01:01:03.000 Then there is the relationship between Heathcliff and Isabella, who is the sister, where he literally has sex with her while telling her that he does not like her, is not interested in her, and is thinking of another woman.

01:01:15.000 Now, call me crazy.

01:01:17.000 Don't think there are that many women who would be turned on by a man telling them they're thinking of another woman while they do it.

01:01:24.000 Call me, call me nuts.

01:01:25.000 I think that that's probably uncommon.

01:01:28.000 And then by the end of the film, he literally has her on a leash like a dog.

01:01:32.000 I mean, you talk about degrading to women.

01:01:34.000 This movie is so degrading to women.

01:01:36.000 I can't believe a woman made it, honestly.

01:01:38.000 It is the most degrading shit for women, maybe I've ever seen on film.

01:01:41.000 It's insulting.

01:01:42.000 It's disgusting.

01:01:44.000 Heathcliff literally has her on a leash, a dog leash, and she is barking like a dog.

01:01:48.000 And he takes food and he stuffs it in her mouth with his hand, like she's an animal.

01:01:53.000 And she quote unquote loves it.

01:01:56.000 Something is wrong.

01:01:58.000 Something is wrong, not just with the filmmaker, but with a society that laps this stuff up and then calls it some form of eroticism and sexiness.

01:02:06.000 Again, we are a society that has more pornography than ever, more bizarre sexual fetishes than ever, and less eroticism, less romance, and actually significantly less sex than ever.

01:02:19.000 We are becoming quickly in the West a society of sterility, a sort of brave new world society.

01:02:26.000 And again, this goes back to the age point.

01:02:28.000 So when I say that the casting is all wrong, I mean it is all wrong.

01:02:32.000 In order for this story to make any sense, the whole thing has to be rooted in Kathy's immaturity.

01:02:38.000 She's 17, 18 years old.

01:02:39.000 She doesn't know what to do.

01:02:40.000 She's torn between the lure of a materialist lifestyle where she can be in comfort.

01:02:46.000 She doesn't have to live the sort of terrible lifestyle she's led in poverty.

01:02:51.000 And so she's drawn to it and her kind of wild passion for Heathcliff.

01:02:55.000 That is supposed to be the basis of the story.

01:02:58.000 That only works for an 18-year-old girl, which is why in the original book, she's 18.

01:03:03.000 And even if you're going to play it a little bit older, as they did in the 39 version, Merle Oberon, when she played this part, was 28.

01:03:09.000 And she looks like she's about 24, 25.

01:03:11.000 She looks younger than she is.

01:03:14.000 Lawrence Olivier plays Heathcliff.

01:03:16.000 He's 32 when they made this movie.

01:03:18.000 And that's important too.

01:03:19.000 The man needs to have a dominant emotional position vis-à-vis the woman.

01:03:23.000 He can't look as though he's just whimpering and whining the whole movie.

01:03:26.000 If he looks like that, he's utterly uninteresting.

01:03:28.000 You do not understand for the life of you in the new version why she's interested in Heathcliff.

01:03:33.000 There's nothing about him that's rebellious or interesting.

01:03:36.000 There's nothing about him that bespeaks a sort of inner masculinity.

01:03:39.000 He's just a mewling, whining, tall guy who's good looking.

01:03:43.000 That's it.

01:03:44.000 And when he shows up, he has a pirate earring, which is exciting, apparently.

01:03:47.000 Margot Robbie is horribly miscast here.

01:03:49.000 And half the time she's playing Harley Quinn.

01:03:51.000 I don't know what she is playing at.

01:03:53.000 She makes a spectacle of herself on the screen.

01:03:56.000 Jacob Belordi is basically given nothing to do other than stand there and look tall.

01:04:01.000 And then every so often say something really kind of on the nose.

01:04:05.000 And again, bizarrely unsexy.

01:04:07.000 There's one point where she is saying, I don't want to be with you.

01:04:10.000 And he says, well, that was your tongue in my mouth just a minute ago.

01:04:14.000 Actual dialogue written by an actual human.

01:04:18.000 Super hot.

01:04:20.000 Again, none of the casting makes sense.

01:04:22.000 Originally, the person that Kathy marries in the 39 version is played by David Niven, 29 years old, charming, very seeable as an aristocrat, who kind of has an unpleasant eye cast at the lower classes.

01:04:41.000 Here, it's played by a guy named Shahzad Latif, who is 37 and also Middle Eastern, which makes no sense.

01:04:49.000 Because again, the racial component was originally part of the book and the original movie.

01:04:53.000 So what does all this mean?

01:04:54.000 I know I've taken a while to sort of go through this film.

01:04:56.000 Why?

01:04:57.000 Because when you have signal moments in our culture, they're really important.

01:05:00.000 A lot more kids, a lot more young people, a lot more people generally are going to watch the new version of Wuthering Heights and take that as some sort of referendum on what romance is.

01:05:10.000 And that impacts how they think about relations between men and women, how they think about things that are very important in life, like sex.

01:05:17.000 And like marriage.

01:05:19.000 And without any of the original values that undergird the book and the original movie, none of it makes any plot sense.

01:05:28.000 And it just turns into what Emerald Fennell has made, which is a pretty bad music video involving BDSM animalistic sex.

01:05:35.000 And if that's the direction our society is moving, if that's the thing that is supposed to be so sexy and so hot, that says something not just about the quality of our filmmaking, which has radically declined.

01:05:45.000 I'll admit, there are points in this movie that made me overtly laugh because Emerald Fennell, because Emerald Fennels is a director, is trying to do stylized the whole time.

01:05:52.000 There's one scene where a person dies of alcoholism.

01:05:55.000 And because she's trying to be stylistically interesting, she literally puts him in a blank room.

01:06:00.000 There's nothing in the room except for two gigantic piles of empty bottles that are just piled up toward the ceiling.

01:06:06.000 It's ridiculous.

01:06:07.000 The whole movie is ridiculous.

01:06:09.000 Any reviewer who pretends to like it is lying to you.

01:06:13.000 And again, something is wrong in our society that can only be healed by a return to actual understanding of how men work, how women work, how romance works, how sex works, what is the proper role of sex in a human life, what is the proper role of virtue in a human life, what is the proper role of marriage.

01:06:31.000 That contrast in value is the thing.

01:06:34.000 I would be embarrassed, embarrassed to show the Emerald Fennel version here to, for example, my children at any age.

01:06:44.000 It is an embarrassing film.

01:06:46.000 The values of it are embarrassing.

01:06:47.000 And by the way, it is so much less romantic than the 39 version.

01:06:50.000 It is not even close.

01:06:52.000 It is not even close.

01:06:54.000 Any man who has ever truly romanced a woman knows that when you're talking about movies that are aphrodisiacs, the best aphrodisiac is Pride and Prejudice.

01:07:03.000 Because men and women are not the same.

01:07:05.000 And treating them as the same and pretending that, you know, Margot Robbie randomly doing Jacob Alorty in a field for five seconds over a Charlie XCX score is the apotheosis of what women are looking for in a man is silly.

01:07:25.000 And not only silly, it's degrading to the society as a whole.

01:07:29.000 So it's not just an embarrassing film.

01:07:31.000 Zero stars out of four.

01:07:33.000 It again, I'll say it again.

01:07:34.000 It says something about why our civilization is in serious, serious trouble, really.

01:07:38.000 It sounds like an exaggeration.

01:07:39.000 It's not.

01:07:39.000 When the most successful cultural products of our time are infused with horrifyingly bad values, it says something more about our values than it does about the quality of our filmmaking, even.

01:07:50.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

01:07:53.000 We will get to the latest on Epstein, a couple of arrests, not here, but abroad.

01:07:57.000 And also Hollywood Celebs sounding off about President Trump.

01:08:00.000 Again, remember, in order to watch you, you have to be a member.

01:08:02.000 If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro.

01:08:04.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

01:08:06.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

01:08:08.000 Okay, no not even close Two, three.

01:08:25.000 Whatever.

01:08:26.000 You know what?

01:08:27.000 One, two, three, four.

01:08:35.000 I cannot believe we're back here again, Ben.

01:08:38.000 If the Ben Shapiro shows a mom, then Ben After Dark is a cool mom.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 24, 2026

Candace Owens Is Evil

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