The Ben Shapiro Show - CNN's Hour Of Anti-Gun Hate | Ep. 481

00:00:00.000 President Trump meets shooting victims and CNN runs one of the worst town halls on gun control I have ever seen in my life.

00:00:06.000 It's truly egregious.

00:00:07.000 Orwellian two minutes of hate stuff.

00:00:10.000 I'll go through all of it.

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:17.000 We have a lot to get to today.

00:00:18.000 We're gonna spend a lot of time with the CNN town hall that took place last night, moderated by Jake Tapper.

00:00:22.000 I think Jake is a pretty good journalist, but I think that this did not do him any credit.

00:00:25.000 I thought that the CNN special last night, which featured all of these shooting survivors asking questions of Marco Rubio, really

00:00:34.000 We're good to go.

00:00:52.000 Asking questions of and being asked questions by shooting survivors.

00:00:55.000 One of those events was good.

00:00:56.000 One of those events, not so much.

00:00:57.000 I'll explain all of this.

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00:01:53.000 Alright, so, we begin today, now at the CNN Town Hall, we'll get to that in just a few minutes, but with an actual useful thing.

00:01:59.000 Okay, this useful thing happened at the White House yesterday.

00:02:02.000 So, at the White House yesterday, the President of the United States had a bunch of people in who'd been shooting victims, family of shooting victims, some people from Parkland, Florida, some people from Sandy Hook, some people from other mass shootings that have taken place around the country.

00:02:16.000 And he had a listening session with them.

00:02:17.000 Now, Trump was mocked by the media because he was holding a piece of paper during this with notes on it, and one of the notes said, I hear you.

00:02:23.000 And so the idea was, oh, well, I guess he's being coached to hear people.

00:02:26.000 But, you know, President Trump actually is quite good in these sorts of situations.

00:02:30.000 And I think to everyone's surprise, they expected him to get angry or, in knee-jerk fashion, argue with folks.

00:02:36.000 He didn't do that.

00:02:36.000 He sat there and he took it.

00:02:38.000 He took it on the chin from a lot of people who were very upset.

00:02:40.000 It was a wide variety of perspectives.

00:02:42.000 So the media were very upset with this because they want all town halls to basically be people who are shooting victims or shooting victims' family or friends.

00:02:51.000 They want those people to all be pro-gun control fanatics who go up there and yell at politicians.

00:02:56.000 That's what it was on CNN last night.

00:02:58.000 So they were very upset that the White House had a variety of perspectives.

00:03:01.000 So they had some people who are pro-gun control, some people who thought that school safety and armed guards were the solution.

00:03:06.000 But that wide variety of perspectives was actually useful.

00:03:09.000 And again, it demonstrated something that the left does not want you to believe.

00:03:11.000 I've been saying this now since the Parkland shooting.

00:03:13.000 I've been saying it more than that for five years.

00:03:16.000 Since the Piers Morgan interview I did on CNN after the Sandy Hook shooting, the left media, so many people in the left media, wish you to believe that people who own guns, people who care about Second Amendment rights, people who want to protect their families, that these are people who don't care if children are shot.

00:03:31.000 That they just don't care enough.

00:03:32.000 If they truly cared enough, then they'd agree with the gun control agenda.

00:03:36.000 Well, Trump yesterday showed that he cared, and that's what made the media so angry about this event.

00:03:41.000 I think it was a useful event.

00:03:42.000 I think that it was an event that had class.

00:03:43.000 I think it was an event that had dignity.

00:03:45.000 And I think that it was an event that, again, demonstrated that we are all in this together.

00:03:49.000 This is the thing that's missing.

00:03:50.000 The media are trying to drive us apart.

00:03:52.000 There are a bunch of folks on the anti-gun left who are trying to suggest, because this is the only way they can find to push their unpopular agenda, they're trying to suggest that anyone who disagrees with them is morally bereft.

00:04:02.000 Those people have moral shortcomings.

00:04:04.000 The truth is, we're all neighbors.

00:04:05.000 We all mourn when we see things like what happened in Parkland.

00:04:08.000 We all want to stop that stuff. 0.99

00:04:09.000 I want the shooter to fry in hell. 1.00

00:04:11.000 You do too. 1.00

00:04:12.000 Everyone's on the same page with this. 1.00

00:04:13.000 Except for the people who wish to believe that their political opponents are actually scum of the earth, pieces of crap, 0.99

00:04:19.000 Okay, so at the White House yesterday, there were a bunch of folks who spoke. 1.00

00:04:22.000 One of them was a Parkland father named Andrew Pollack.

00:04:24.000 He was a Trump supporter.

00:04:25.000 There was a famous picture of him going around during the actual massacre.

00:04:28.000 He was driving around trying to find his daughter who'd been murdered in the shooting.

00:04:44.000 He was wearing a Trump 2020 t-shirt.

00:04:46.000 He was at the White House, and here's what he had to say to President Trump about losing his daughter.

00:04:49.000 It's not about gun laws right now.

00:04:51.000 That's another fight, another battle.

00:04:54.000 Let's fix the schools, and then you guys can battle it out whatever you want.

00:04:58.000 But we need our children safe, Monday, tomorrow, whatever day it is.

00:05:01.000 Your kids are going to go to school.

00:05:03.000 You think everyone's kids are safe?

00:05:06.000 I didn't think it was going to happen to me.

00:05:08.000 If I knew that, I would have been at the school every day if I knew it was that dangerous.

00:05:14.000 It's enough.

00:05:14.000 Let's get together, work with the President, and fix the schools.

00:05:18.000 Okay, well, working with the President is something Democrats don't want to do, and they don't want to give him credit for moving on the issue at all, even though he tweeted out this morning that he wants better background checks, and that he wants to ban bump stocks, and that he wants to raise the age of rifle purchase until 21.

00:05:32.000 That last measure is one that I can understand if you're also going to raise the age of consent to 21 in terms of joining the military or voting, but it seems to me that we can't grant rights piecemeal to people.

00:05:41.000 We can't say you have the right to vote, but not the right to drink or the right to bear arms.

00:05:45.000 It doesn't work like that in the United States.

00:05:46.000 Rights are generally granted when you reach the point of maturity.

00:05:49.000 Or at the point of adulthood.

00:05:51.000 In any case, this guy was not given, this father was not given the sort of credibility and respect that the media normally grants to shooting victims and fathers.

00:05:59.000 They haven't had this fellow on CNN every single day.

00:06:02.000 They have had the students on every single day because obviously there's an agenda here and the agenda is put on young people specifically so you can't argue with them.

00:06:09.000 This is the goal.

00:06:10.000 Here's the game, how it's played.

00:06:11.000 So, a student is at a facility where somebody is shot.

00:06:16.000 And the student sees something terrible.

00:06:17.000 And we all grieve with the student.

00:06:19.000 And so we all say, we grieve with you.

00:06:20.000 And the student says, well, if you really grieved with me, you'd do what I wanted.

00:06:22.000 And we say, well, you know, we can disagree on policy and still grieve with you.

00:06:25.000 And then the media say, how dare you criticize this young person who's only showing the courage of their convictions?

00:06:31.000 As I have said one million times at this point, you can always show the courage of your convictions.

00:06:35.000 It doesn't demonstrate necessarily the wiseness of your convictions.

00:06:38.000 Now, I was getting a little flack yesterday because I wrote a column for National Review talking about how being young does not confer evidentiary expertise on you.

00:06:47.000 That being a person who's suffered doesn't

00:06:51.000 Right, I was.

00:06:57.000 And I was being criticized like an adult when I was 17.

00:06:59.000 Which is the way that it should work.

00:07:01.000 17 year olds should speak.

00:07:02.000 They should be involved in politics.

00:07:03.000 A lot of my fans are 17.

00:07:04.000 I want them to be involved in politics.

00:07:06.000 That's great.

00:07:07.000 But understand, when you enter the political arena, your arguments are going to be cause for controversy.

00:07:13.000 And that doesn't go away just because you're young or just because you went through something truly, truly awful.

00:07:18.000 Okay, that wasn't the only Parkland survivor or family member to be at the White House.

00:07:23.000 There was a wide variety of perspectives.

00:07:24.000 As I say, there were people there who were very critical of Trump on guns.

00:07:26.000 One of them was a Parkland survivor who told Trump that he didn't think that people should be able to buy weapons of war.

00:07:34.000 I was reading today that a person 20 years old walked into a store and bought an AR-15 in five minutes with an expired ID.

00:07:43.000 How is it that easy to buy this type of weapon?

00:07:46.000 Okay, that's Samuel.

00:07:47.000 Zaph, one of the problems here is that what he's saying is not true.

00:07:50.000 I talked about this yesterday.

00:07:51.000 Chris Cuomo put out a tweet about a story that was false, in which a guy claimed that he was able to purchase an AR-15 without showing ID, and that he was able to do so in five minutes without a federal background check.

00:08:02.000 That story was not true, as we pointed out.

00:08:03.000 Even in the story, the guy was turned away from the gun store when he couldn't show ID and didn't want to go through a federal background check.

00:08:09.000 It shows you the impact of the media and how their coverage skews people's perspectives on how easy it is to get guns.

00:08:15.000 It's an enormous number of stories about how we need to ban machine guns.

00:08:18.000 Machine guns have been effectively banned in the United States since the 1980s.

00:08:22.000 Machine guns have been in very small circulation in the United States for decades at this point.

00:08:28.000 There are people who say that we should have mental health background checks.

00:08:30.000 We do have mental health background checks in the United States.

00:08:32.000 We need to make the system more transparent.

00:08:34.000 We need to make the reporting better.

00:08:36.000 38 states in the United States report less than 80% of the people who shouldn't have guns to their full federal background checklist.

00:08:43.000 But that's a problem with the law enforcement structure, not a problem with the capacity of the law itself.

00:08:49.000 The law itself is a lot stricter than people think it is with regard to purchasing weapons on the federal level.

00:08:53.000 So Trump answers all of these survivors and friends and family, and he talks about a couple of things that he would like to do.

00:09:00.000 One of his proposals is that we should arm 20% of teachers who are actually qualified to carry weapons in the classroom.

00:09:06.000 So let's say you had 20% of your teaching force, because that's pretty much the number.

00:09:11.000 If these cowards knew that the school was, you know, well-guarded from the standpoint of having pretty much professionals with great training, I think they wouldn't go into the school to start off with.

00:09:23.000 I think it could very well solve your problem.

00:09:25.000 Okay, so a lot of people were very upset about this.

00:09:27.000 How dare he say that he was going to arm 20% of teachers?

00:09:30.000 Now, what the media did is they lied.

00:09:32.000 They said that he wanted to arm all teachers.

00:09:34.000 He did not say he wanted to arm all teachers.

00:09:35.000 He said, if you're qualified, he was specifically, it turns out, singling out ex-vets, military members, police.

00:09:42.000 I'm not sure it's the best solution.

00:09:43.000 I think armed security guards are a better solution in uniform on campus, you know, deterring people from committing crimes.

00:09:49.000 But the media lied about what he said and then blew it up to epic proportions.

00:09:53.000 In just a second, we'll talk about the impact of what Trump did, and then we'll get to what was just an egregious media display of bias,

00:10:01.000 There was a lot of immorality going on last night on CNN.

00:10:03.000 Again, this is not to say that victims should not be able to speak out.

00:10:07.000 They should speak out.

00:10:08.000 It's not to say that victims should not be on TV.

00:10:10.000 That's fine with me, if they're on TV.

00:10:12.000 What it is to say is that CNN, other outlets like CNN, only have big town halls in liberal areas with shooting victims.

00:10:20.000 They would never have, for example, a full town hall with, case in point, they would never have a full town hall with people who are victims of illegal immigrant crime in Phoenix, Arizona.

00:10:30.000 Sean Hannity might, but you'd never see that on CNN on their quote-unquote objective news shows.

00:10:34.000 But Sean is not an objective reporter.

00:10:36.000 He says that openly.

00:10:38.000 But CNN claims to be objective, and therein lies the problem.

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00:12:30.000 Okay, so...

00:12:31.000 Last night, I get home from my long day in Washington, D.C., and I flip on CNN, because everybody on Twitter is talking about this town hall.

00:12:39.000 Now, I knew that this town hall was going to go wildly wrong from the start, because CNN has an agenda here.

00:12:45.000 And I know they were claiming that it's just students who are asking questions, but people at CNN are journalists.

00:12:50.000 They know what a loaded question sounds like.

00:12:53.000 A loaded question is, when did you stop beating your wife, Senator?

00:12:56.000 That's a loaded question.

00:12:57.000 That was the entirety of the town hall last night.

00:12:59.000 So the people who were there, it was Senators from Florida.

00:13:03.000 So it was Senator Marco Rubio and the Democratic Senator from Florida, whose name is Bill Nelson.

00:13:12.000 So he's been the Senator there since 2001.

00:13:14.000 They were both there.

00:13:14.000 Dana Lash from the NRA showed up as well.

00:13:17.000 And this turned into basically a hootenanny.

00:13:20.000 It was a bunch of people in the crowd, hundreds of people in the crowd from the Broward County area.

00:13:25.000 And then number one, important to note, Broward County, Democratic area, very left area, voted for Hillary Clinton in a state that went red for Donald Trump.

00:13:33.000 They voted, I think it was 54 to 46 for Hillary Clinton in that area.

00:13:37.000 And this area of Broward County is apparently pretty left.

00:13:40.000 The sheriff there, a guy named Steve Israel, has been photographed with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

00:13:46.000 So it's a Democrat area.

00:13:48.000 So the shooting took place in a Democrat area and the people there were family and friends of victims.

00:13:52.000 So what you are likely to get when you set this up is obviously emotions running incredibly high and also an agenda that is obviously very clear.

00:14:00.000 And this thing turned into a debacle right from the start with people asking questions that were utterly inappropriate on a moral level.

00:14:07.000 Okay, just because you've suffered something doesn't mean you get to say immoral things.

00:14:11.000 There were kids there who were saying some of the most immoral things that- truly immoral things.

00:14:16.000 So, for example, let's do clip 28.

00:14:18.000 So this is Cameron Kasky.

00:14:19.000 He's one of the students who's been most featured on CNN because obviously they're not going to feature a bunch of students who are right-wing.

00:14:24.000 That wouldn't be a thing.

00:14:25.000 Instead, they're going to feature students who are left-wing.

00:14:28.000 So Cameron Kasky asks

00:14:30.000 Senator Rubio, it's hard to look at you and not look down the barrel of an AR-15 and not look at Nicholas Cruz, but the point is you're here and there are some people who are not.

00:14:55.000 I understand you just went through something.

00:14:57.000 I understand what you went through was difficult and terrible and horrible and no person should have to go through that.

00:15:02.000 I get all of that.

00:15:03.000 That statement is deeply immoral.

00:15:05.000 That is a disgusting statement.

00:15:06.000 Marco Rubio didn't shoot anybody. 0.92

00:15:08.000 Marco Rubio did not walk into a school and mow down children.

00:15:12.000 And Marco Rubio's agenda is not to facilitate the mowing down of children.

00:15:15.000 But again, the left's suggestion here is that everyone who is not on their side must be acting in bad faith.

00:15:20.000 The only people acting in bad faith are the people who say stuff like that.

00:15:24.000 Those are the only people who are acting in bad faith.

00:15:26.000 I mean, the entire night was just an evening of grandstanding by political officials and an evening of throwing around the most immoral, morally charged language by some of the students.

00:15:36.000 And listen, your obligation to be a moral human being and say moral things does not stop when you experience tragedy. 0.96

00:15:41.000 To suggest that Marco Rubio is akin to a school shooter is disgusting. 0.99

00:15:45.000 It's disgusting. 0.99

00:15:46.000 Okay, and I... 0.97

00:15:48.000 I'm not saying that the kid is disgusting. 0.98

00:15:50.000 I'm saying that statement is disgusting. 0.99

00:15:52.000 Because the statement is disgusting. 0.90

00:15:53.000 And again, bad statements.

00:15:54.000 Immoral statements. 0.50

00:15:55.000 They don't become less immoral just because you experienced some pain.

00:15:58.000 And I know that people on the left agree with me.

00:16:00.000 Because if there was a bombing victim, or a family of a bombing victim, or a witness to a bombing... 0.98

00:16:05.000 Who said, let's throw every Muslim in the United States out of the country. 1.00

00:16:08.000 The left would say that's an immoral statement. 0.99

00:16:10.000 And they'd be right.

00:16:10.000 That is an immoral statement.

00:16:11.000 It is an immoral statement to also say that a sitting senator in the United States wants children to die.

00:16:17.000 Wants children to die simply so they can get whatever it is, $9,000 that Rubio got from the National Rifle Association?

00:16:23.000 Okay, that CNN special last night was designed to do one thing, and that was to drive a moral wedge between fellow Americans.

00:16:29.000 Truly, truly despicable.

00:16:30.000 Okay, that was not the limit of it, of course.

00:16:33.000 The Broward County Sheriff, Steve Israel, was there as well, and he was there in his full-scale Democratic capacity.

00:16:38.000 So, let's do a quick flashback.

00:16:40.000 This sheriff, whose department missed 39 separate warnings on this kid.

00:16:45.000 Okay, the shooter, the department was visiting this shooter's home six to seven times a year.

00:16:50.000 If you're an elected official,

00:17:14.000 And you want to keep things the way they are and not do things differently.

00:17:19.000 If you want to keep the gun laws as they are now, you will not get reelected in Broward County.

00:17:28.000 Right, so that guy right there is obviously a political actor with a political agenda, but he was portrayed on CNN as just a sheriff, right?

00:17:34.000 Just a law enforcement official.

00:17:35.000 Okay, the guy's a Democrat, obviously, and he has an agenda, pretty obviously.

00:17:39.000 Nowhere was that clearer than when Dana Lash over at the NRA, who was there, asked the sheriff, OK, so why didn't you stop it?

00:17:46.000 You're the law enforcement body.

00:17:48.000 You were warned.

00:17:49.000 What did you do about it?

00:17:50.000 And the media's response to Dana was, how dare Dana Lash ask Steve Israel something like that?

00:17:54.000 It's one thing to blame Marco Rubio for the shooting.

00:17:56.000 It's another to blame the actual sheriff who's responsible for maintaining the safety and security of the students of Broward County.

00:18:02.000 It's another to say that he blew it.

00:18:04.000 It's one thing to blame gun owners like me all the way across the country in Los Angeles.

00:18:09.000 But to blame, you know, to cast any weary eye upon the sheriff who's responsible for security?

00:18:15.000 How dare Dana Lash? 1.00

00:18:16.000 This is clip 31.

00:18:18.000 Just, again, look at the crowd's response to Dana asking a very solid question here.

00:18:24.000 We need the power to take every firearm they have away from them and bring them to a mental health facility. 0.94

00:18:31.000 Did not meet that standard?

00:18:34.000 39 visits, assaulting students, assaulting parents, taking bullets and knives to school.

00:18:37.000 Did that not meet that standard?

00:18:38.000 Well, which are you speaking about specifically?

00:18:41.000 You seem to know about all 39.

00:18:43.000 Well, I know there's one Florida statute where if he's sending messages threatening to kill people, that right there, under Florida state law.

00:18:53.000 Who did he send the message to kill people to?

00:18:55.000 BuzzFeed, AP, Reuters, Yahoo News, all reported that it was to other students.

00:18:58.000 Who was the victim?

00:19:00.000 It was sent to other students.

00:19:01.000 Dana, Reuters can't be a victim.

00:19:03.000 The only person who could be a victim is an individual.

00:19:04.000 They were reporting this, Sheriff, is what I'm saying.

00:19:06.000 So if an individual was threatened, and it was real, that's a crime.

00:19:10.000 Yes, they were threatened with death.

00:19:12.000 They were threatened that they were going to bleed.

00:19:14.000 They were threatened that they were going to be killed.

00:19:17.000 Well, what's your specific case?

00:19:19.000 And he had already taken bullets and knives to school.

00:19:21.000 He had already assaulted people.

00:19:23.000 He assaulted his parent.

00:19:24.000 He assaulted other students.

00:19:26.000 39 visits.

00:19:27.000 And this was known to the intelligence and law enforcement community.

00:19:32.000 You're saying 39 visits?

00:19:33.000 Now, look, I'm not saying that you can be everywhere at once, but this is what I'm talking about.

00:19:37.000 We have to follow up on these red flags.

00:19:39.000 You're not the litmus test.

00:19:41.000 Okay, and of course the crowd starts turning on Dana for mentioning the fact that when you visit a home 39 times and the guy shoots up a school, maybe you missed something.

00:19:49.000 How many red flags do you have to have?

00:19:51.000 Okay, that seems like a better question to me than, Marco Rubio, you're obviously Satan, what are you doing here? 0.91

00:19:55.000 Why are you Satan? 0.98

00:19:57.000 Why are you Satan?

00:19:58.000 And all of this, of course, was forwarded and nodded on by CNN.

00:20:03.000 I mean, listen to Emma Gonzalez. 1.00

00:20:04.000 Emma Gonzalez is another one of the students who's been featured on CNN a lot.

00:20:07.000 You can always tell which are the students who are pro-gun control because those are the ones whose faces you actually recognize.

00:20:11.000 So when you look at Emma Gonzalez, you'll recognize her face because you saw it on CNN a lot.

00:20:15.000 When you see some of the other students who were not at the CNN town hall for reasons that we will discuss in a second, then what you will see is that you don't recognize their faces because they're not on CNN a lot.

00:20:24.000 So here's Emma Gonzalez, who actually says straight out to Dana Lash that she's going to support Dana Lash's kids better than Dana Lash is.

00:20:31.000 Dana Losh, I want you to know that we will support your two children in a way that we will not.

00:20:36.000 You will not.

00:20:38.000 The shooter at our school obtained weapons that he used on us legally.

00:20:44.000 Do you believe that it should be harder to obtain these semi-automatic weapons and the modifications for these weapons to make them fully automatic like bump stocks?

00:20:54.000 Well, first off, Emma, I want to applaud you for standing up and speaking out.

00:20:58.000 And for anyone who has ever criticized you, or any of these students up here, including people who have been on my side of this issue.

00:21:06.000 Okay, so, good for Dana for not taking the bait there.

00:21:09.000 But, again, what a horrifying statement.

00:21:11.000 I'm gonna defend your children away you won't.

00:21:12.000 I'd like to see Emma Gonzalez name Dana Lash's kids. 0.99

00:21:14.000 She doesn't know Dana's kids.

00:21:16.000 Again, the implication is that Dana must not care about children because Dana doesn't agree with Emma Gonzalez on this issue. 0.99

00:21:21.000 It got worse than that.

00:21:22.000 An audience member actually called Dana Lash a murderer in the middle of this special.

00:21:26.000 Nobody says a word.

00:21:27.000 It's just incredible.

00:21:28.000 This is clip 24.

00:21:29.000 Do you know that it is not federally required for states to actually report people who are prohibited possessors, crazy people, people who are murderers?

00:21:42.000 No?

00:21:43.000 We've been actually talking about that for a long time.

00:21:46.000 Let me answer the question.

00:21:47.000 Let me answer the question.

00:21:48.000 You can shout me down when I'm finished, but let me answer Emma's question.

00:21:52.000 Okay, and you can actually hear in the background audience members shouting at Dana that she's a murderer.

00:21:56.000 If you believe that Marco Rubio's the murderer, if you believe that Dana Lash is the murderer, but if you don't believe that the shooter is responsible for his own actions, and if you believe that 300 million people in the United States have to have their gun rights removed from them instead of us focusing on how to fix this issue, if you think we're all that unsympathetic,

00:22:12.000 Then I would suggest you have a screw loose.

00:22:13.000 You actually do have a problem.

00:22:14.000 Your morality is skewed beyond belief if you think Dana Lash is a murderer or Marco Rubio is equivalent to the man who shot children in the face at a Parkland High School. 0.95

00:22:23.000 Just repulsive.

00:22:24.000 It got even worse than that.

00:22:25.000 That wasn't even the extent of it.

00:22:27.000 So we will discuss the rest of that in just one second.

00:22:32.000 So let's start with

00:22:34.000 Some of the questions that were asked of Senator Rubio.

00:22:36.000 So Senator Rubio, again, he's not the best advocate for the Second Amendment.

00:22:40.000 He's a senator from Florida, which is why he was there.

00:22:42.000 But Senator Rubio has a bad habit of trying to please the crowd that is in front of him.

00:22:47.000 And so during the course of this debate, he kind of moved on a bunch of issues regarding raising the age of buying weapons, as well as the availability of AR-15s and all the rest of this.

00:22:59.000 The questions that were being asked were truly amazing.

00:23:03.000 So this is clip 12.

00:23:04.000 You're going to see the father of one of the murdered students trying to push Rubio to say that guns were the sole reason for the shooting.

00:23:13.000 And Rubio won't go there, and the crowd starts booing him, which again demonstrates the silliness of this.

00:23:17.000 It is true, by the way, that guns were a factor here because the gun was used.

00:23:21.000 Just as in any murder, the murder weapon is a factor.

00:23:23.000 But does that mean it is the sole factor?

00:23:26.000 Of course not. 0.95

00:23:26.000 That's ridiculous. 0.95

00:23:27.000 You and I are now eye to eye. 0.93

00:23:29.000 Because I want to like you.

00:23:31.000 Look at me and tell me guns were the factor in the hunting of our kids in this school this week.

00:23:39.000 And look at me and tell me you accept it and you will work with us to do something about guns.

00:23:46.000 Okay, and then Rubio answers by saying, of course guns were a factor, but they were not the deciding factor, which of course is true. 0.52

00:23:53.000 That of course is true. 0.66

00:23:54.000 And there's a fantastic thread on Twitter.

00:23:57.000 That an actual scholar has written about what exactly it is that mass shooters have in common.

00:24:04.000 And bottom line is it is a large variety of factors.

00:24:06.000 It is not one thing, it is many things.

00:24:08.000 But we can't handle that in the United States.

00:24:10.000 So it always has to come down to one thing.

00:24:11.000 And of course, Marco Rubio has to be browbeaten for being a Second Amendment advocate.

00:24:17.000 It gets even worse than that.

00:24:19.000 Okay, so watch this.

00:24:21.000 This is the clip that is going to be played over and over and over by Second Amendment advocates.

00:24:26.000 You understand, if you are an advocate for gun control, the worst thing you can do right now, in a time when everyone is on the same side regarding the horrors that just happened, the worst thing you can do is claim that those of us who disagree with you are evil and nasty.

00:24:41.000 You're seeing movement.

00:24:42.000 You are.

00:24:42.000 I mean, just a bit of political advice.

00:24:44.000 You are seeing movement from people on the pro-gun side saying we'd be willing to look at certain gun control measures we may not have been willing to look at before.

00:24:52.000 I may not agree with that policy decision on their part, but that is what is happening in real time.

00:24:56.000 Instead of you embracing that, instead of you saying, you obviously want to come to the table, let's see if there are places where we can agree, instead of us all coming to the table on issues that may not have to do with confiscating weaponry, but instead may have to do with securing schools,

00:25:08.000 On those issues, instead of you doing that, you are overtly alienating people who disagree with you.

00:25:14.000 So here is an example of this.

00:25:16.000 So this is clip 30.

00:25:18.000 So Rubio is talking about how the—well, you know, before we get to clip 30, clip 29.

00:25:23.000 Bill Nelson is the Democrat senator, and Bill Nelson mentions at the very beginning how he wants to ban what he calls assault weapons, including the AR-15.

00:25:31.000 Assault weapons, again, have no legal definition.

00:25:34.000 Any rifle could theoretically be an assault weapon, depending on the magazine size, or the color, or the grip, or the shape, or whether there's a sight on it, or any of the rest of this.

00:25:43.000 So Bill Nelson mentions banning the AR-15, and of course there's big applause, because again, this is a stacked town hall.

00:25:47.000 Consent solutions, like getting the assault rifles off the streets.

00:26:01.000 I will point out that when the Democrats brought up an assault weapons ban in 2009, only 38 Democrats voted in favor of it.

00:26:07.000 The entire Senate voted it down overwhelmingly.

00:26:10.000 So Marco Rubio later, he says, listen, that all sounds well and good, right?

00:26:13.000 Getting assault weapons off the streets and all of this.

00:26:15.000 You're talking about banning every semi-automatic gun in the United States, effectively speaking.

00:26:19.000 And listen to the crowd.

00:26:20.000 Start looking at how easy it is to get around it.

00:26:23.000 You would literally have to ban every semi-automatic rifle.

00:26:37.000 Fair enough.

00:26:38.000 Okay, and here's the point, right?

00:26:41.000 If you want to ban all semi-automatic rifles, when he says you have to ban all semi-automatic rifles, for people who don't know what a semi-automatic rifle is, a semi-automatic weapon is just a weapon where when you pull the trigger once, one shot comes out and another round is chambered.

00:26:52.000 That is all a semi-automatic weapon is.

00:26:54.000 It's basically everything except for like a single-action revolver, right?

00:26:57.000 Or a double-action revolver, rather.

00:26:59.000 It's pretty much any gun in the United States is effectively a semi-automatic weapon.

00:27:05.000 Right, old six-shooters are basically semi-automatic weapons.

00:27:08.000 Okay, at least they function like semi-automatic weapons in the sense that one trigger pull means one bullet is fired.

00:27:13.000 And they're talking now about full gun bans, right?

00:27:15.000 Which would also, I assume, have to include full gun confiscation, right?

00:27:19.000 They'd also have to be talking about taking away all of the guns, because it's not enough to ban people from buying new guns, there are too many guns already out there.

00:27:26.000 You can get a hold of a gun if you just go to a private seller, it's not that hard.

00:27:29.000 So you'd have to create a registry, and then you'd have to ban people from selling, and then you'd probably have to confiscate the weapons because you don't want them out there anyway, because how many people already own guns?

00:27:36.000 Now there are 300 million guns in the United States.

00:27:41.000 300 million guns in the United States and 100 million gun owners.

00:27:44.000 What in the world are you talking about?

00:27:45.000 I encourage Democrats to go down this path.

00:27:49.000 This is a campaign ad for the NRA.

00:27:51.000 Okay, that last clip was a campaign ad for the NRA.

00:27:53.000 Now the media last night were going wild over this.

00:27:55.000 Look how Rubio stepped right into that one.

00:27:57.000 He made a proposal and the Democrats cheered it.

00:27:59.000 Alright, go for it.

00:28:01.000 Do it.

00:28:02.000 Do it!

00:28:03.000 I want to see you propose the full repeal of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

00:28:08.000 You need 38 states to do it.

00:28:10.000 You're going to be lucky if you reach 15.

00:28:13.000 Are you out of your minds?

00:28:15.000 But apparently the answer is yes, because look, the reality is there is no solution that is dependent on getting rid of the Second Amendment.

00:28:21.000 It's not going to happen.

00:28:22.000 It's not a reality.

00:28:23.000 You try going down to Texas and confiscating all those weapons, you see how that goes.

00:28:26.000 You want to see a lot of dead people?

00:28:27.000 That's the way you see a lot of dead people, is mass confiscations of weaponry in the United States.

00:28:31.000 Not going to happen.

00:28:32.000 But again, the media are so beside themselves, they feel like their agenda is finally being forwarded.

00:28:36.000 What they don't understand is the only thing that changed today from last night because of the CNN special is a bunch of Republicans went out and bought an AR-15.

00:28:43.000 Last night, I was browsing rifles online.

00:28:46.000 I wasn't browsing rifles because I'm interested in more violence.

00:28:50.000 I'm browsing rifles because I think the Democrats are going to move to try and make it illegal for me to own one.

00:28:54.000 And if I want to protect my family, then I want the gun of my choice to protect my family.

00:28:58.000 Because guess what?

00:28:59.000 I'm not going to mow down children, and I want to be able to stop the bad guy who does want to mow down children.

00:29:04.000 Democrats are shooting themselves right in the foot with this sort of stuff.

00:29:07.000 And worse, they're dividing the country, and that's really what this is about.

00:29:10.000 They're really about trying to get people out to the polls, trying to use this as a wedge issue.

00:29:14.000 They think they can get people really excited.

00:29:16.000 I promise you, all the anti-gun advocates who are so deeply excited about going to the polls, there are a lot more Americans who own guns, know people who own guns, have fired a gun, than people in the United States who have not.

00:29:28.000 Now, listen, I know.

00:29:29.000 I'm from Los Angeles.

00:29:31.000 Nobody in Los Angeles owns a gun.

00:29:32.000 Right?

00:29:33.000 Gun ownership in Los Angeles is very low.

00:29:35.000 People in New York.

00:29:36.000 Not a lot of gun ownership in New York.

00:29:38.000 But get out of the media centers of L.A.

00:29:40.000 and New York, get into the middle of the country, and everybody owns multiple guns.

00:29:45.000 You're talking about a culture war that the left has entered into in an area where it was unnecessary and directly polarizing for no reason, and the media are boosting this because the media have an agenda, and that agenda is to castigate everybody who they disagree with as deplorable.

00:29:58.000 This is just another version of Hillary Clinton's shtick about how everybody on the other side is a deplorable, who's a bad human being. 1.00

00:30:04.000 I hate this more than anything in politics, is the demonization of people who have just basic political disagreements with you as morally evil actors.

00:30:12.000 And yet that is what they are doing day after day after day.

00:30:14.000 It's really gross.

00:30:15.000 They did it again to Rubio last night.

00:30:17.000 A student hammered Marco Rubio on taking NRA donations.

00:30:19.000 Now, let's point something out.

00:30:21.000 Again, this is one of these leftist bugaboos.

00:30:23.000 They do this with regard to Charles Koch, for example.

00:30:25.000 They say, if you take NRA money, this makes you an NRA show.

00:30:28.000 Well, in just a second, I'm going to show you how Marco Rubio answers that charge.

00:30:33.000 But making the NRA into the enemy is, of course, one of the chief goals of the left.

00:30:37.000 So we're going to talk about that in just a second.

00:30:40.000 Plus, an egregious column by E.J.

00:30:42.000 Dionne over at the Washington Post, which we'll get to, and some things I like and things I hate.

00:30:46.000 But first, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:30:48.000 For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to dailywire.com, see the rest of my show live, see the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live, see the rest of Michael Moulse's show live, be part of the mailbag, which we'll be doing tomorrow.

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00:31:23.000 So as I say, the attempt to paint the NRA as the enemy is truly an astonishing one.

00:31:29.000 The left has been trying to do this for years, the NRA as the enemy.

00:31:31.000 Now, I think the NRA is making a mistake.

00:31:33.000 The mistake the NRA is making, Wayne LaPierre, who's the head of the NRA, did a speech today at CPAC, where I'll be speaking a little bit later.

00:31:39.000 And in that speech, he talked about, he really went hard against the Democratic Party.

00:31:43.000 He really said some polarizing things about the nature of the political divide.

00:31:48.000 I don't think that's useful.

00:31:49.000 The whole point of gun ownership in the United States, that does cross party lines.

00:31:53.000 Right now, approval ratings for the NRA are about 80% for Republican, only 9% for Democrats.

00:31:57.000 Just a few years ago, 36% of Democrats approved of the NRA.

00:32:00.000 Now, would it help if the NRA were a little bit less overtly partisan?

00:32:04.000 Sure.

00:32:04.000 Would it also help if the Democrats weren't trying to use the NRA as a club to beat all of their enemies into submission?

00:32:09.000 That would probably help too.

00:32:11.000 Well, as an example of this,

00:32:13.000 One of these students gets up and starts hammering Rubio on taking NRA donations.

00:32:18.000 And Rubio won't commit to not taking NRA donations, because why the hell should he?

00:32:20.000 The NRA is a legal body.

00:32:22.000 He's taken like $9,000 in the last election cycle, like a relative nothing.

00:32:26.000 But they're asking him to disassociate from a fully legal Second Amendment-pushing

00:32:32.000 Senator Rubio, can you tell me right now that you will not accept a single donation from the NRA?

00:33:03.000 So, number one, the positions I hold on these issues of the Second Amendment, I've held since the day I entered office in the city of West Miami as an elected official.

00:33:11.000 Number two, no, the answer to the question is that people buy into my agenda.

00:33:16.000 And I do support the Second Amendment.

00:33:18.000 And I also support the right of you and everyone here to be able to go to school and be safe.

00:33:21.000 And I do support any law that would keep guns out of the hands of a deranged killer.

00:33:26.000 And that's why I support the things that I have stood for and fought for during my time there.

00:33:30.000 More NRA money?

00:33:35.000 That is the wrong way to look.

00:33:36.000 First of all, the answer is people buy into my agenda.

00:33:39.000 You could say no.

00:33:40.000 Number second, well... I... The influence of any group... We're going to be here all night.

00:33:47.000 The influence of these groups comes not from money.

00:33:50.000 The influence comes from the millions of people that agree with the agenda.

00:33:54.000 The millions of Americans that support the NRA and who support gun rights groups.

00:33:59.000 In the name of 17 people, you cannot ask the NRA to keep their money out of your campaign?

00:34:05.000 I think in the name of 17 people, I can pledge to you that I will support any law that will prevent a killer like this from getting a gun.

00:34:14.000 Okay, I mean, look at this.

00:34:15.000 Look at this disgusting display, okay?

00:34:17.000 Again, this is the leading questions that, like, and Tapper's just sitting there.

00:34:20.000 I like Jake, but Jake is just sitting there, and he's allowing this kid to browbeat the senator with a bunch of loaded questions that have nothing, and then he's not even moving to try and quiet the crowd so that Rubio can answer the questions.

00:34:31.000 If you're gonna let the kid just go off like this, which is fine, you wanna do that, that's fine.

00:34:34.000 Rubio put himself there.

00:34:36.000 At least tell the crowd to shut up, okay?

00:34:38.000 At presidential debates, they tell the crowd to shut up all the time.

00:34:41.000 Why is this any different?

00:34:43.000 Why is it different?

00:34:44.000 I understand there are a lot of people in there who suffered, a lot of people who are upset.

00:34:48.000 But if you don't want it to devolve into the Orwellian two minutes of hate, then this is not the way to do it.

00:34:54.000 It's not the way to do it.

00:34:55.000 I mean, Rubio can't even answer the question because people are too busy yelling at him.

00:34:58.000 There's another lady who got up later and tried to lecture Rubio on the Second Amendment. 1.00

00:35:01.000 She completely botched the history of the Second Amendment, didn't understand what it was about, and was cheered by members of the media.

00:35:06.000 Again, this is designed for only one thing, and that is to polarize a debate that requires no polarization.

00:35:12.000 The people who are being disrespected in this debate are not the students. 0.98

00:35:15.000 There are some morons out there who are disrespecting the students and suggesting that the students are paid lackeys. 0.99

00:35:21.000 But that's disrespectful. 1.00

00:35:22.000 So when you suggest that Rubio's a paid lackey of the NRA, aren't you suggesting the same thing?

00:35:27.000 A little common baseline respect would go a long way here.

00:35:30.000 I respect the right of these students to ask the questions.

00:35:32.000 I don't know if the questions are well-informed.

00:35:33.000 I don't think they are.

00:35:34.000 I don't think the questions are all even moral.

00:35:36.000 But they have the right to ask the questions.

00:35:38.000 I support the right of the students to speak up.

00:35:40.000 Doesn't make what they're saying any smarter.

00:35:42.000 I think that's everybody's right in the United States.

00:35:45.000 But if there's one side of this debate that's not being respected, it isn't people like me.

00:35:50.000 I think that the people on the other side care about dead kids.

00:35:52.000 I think that the people who are for gun control do cry, do weep real tears over the deaths of children.

00:36:01.000 I think that they are not bad people.

00:36:02.000 They're my fellow Americans.

00:36:03.000 I think that they are good people who want to stop bad things from happening.

00:36:06.000 You gotta give me the same credit.

00:36:08.000 Gotta give me the same benefit of the doubt.

00:36:10.000 Or you're a bad person because you have no evidence whatsoever that I don't care about kids.

00:36:15.000 I cared about kids before I had them.

00:36:17.000 I have two now.

00:36:17.000 I care about kids even more.

00:36:19.000 The notion that I'm sitting around happy when kids die because the NRA just sold some more guns or some such garbage. 0.99

00:36:26.000 That's exactly what it is. 1.00

00:36:27.000 It is garbage. 0.99

00:36:27.000 So EJ Dionne has an egregiously bad column over at the Washington Post today. 0.99

00:36:32.000 In which he suggests that the people who are not receiving respect are the folks who are in favor of gun control.

00:36:40.000 He says,

00:36:52.000 Well, no, that's not what happens.

00:36:54.000 People who claim that I don't care about dead kids, those are the people who I scorn.

00:36:57.000 He says, Well, the reason people think it's the first step toward confiscation is when you have large crowds of people openly cheering gun confiscation.

00:37:02.000 That would probably be it.

00:37:14.000 He says our task is not to fight for laws to protect innocents, but to demonstrate that we really, honestly, truly, cross our hearts, positively love gun owners, and wouldn't for an instant think anything ill of them.

00:37:22.000 What is odd is that those with extreme pro-gun views, those pushing for new laws to allow people to carry just about anytime, anywhere, are never called upon to model similar empathy toward children killed, the mourning parents left behind, people in urban neighborhoods suffering from violence, or the majority of Americans who don't own guns. 0.93

00:37:38.000 Are you insane?

00:37:39.000 What do you think the last two weeks have been? 0.99

00:37:42.000 The last two weeks have been this.

00:37:43.000 The last two weeks have been everybody on the right being told to sit down and shut up because people who are survivors are speaking now.

00:37:50.000 It's been identity politics of suffering.

00:37:52.000 We've been told that we have to treat every, not just the people, which we should treat with respect, but that we ought to treat everything that comes out of their mouth with an unparalleled level of respect.

00:38:01.000 Now, the great irony in all of this, of course, is that if there are survivors who are not pro-gun control, those people have essentially been marginalized.

00:38:08.000 Now, one of the students is claiming that he was invited to the CNN debate, but then was not allowed to ask a question because he was basically being fed questions by the CNN folks.

00:38:20.000 Which is a pretty astounding accusation.

00:38:23.000 I expected to be able to ask my questions and give my opinion on my questions.

00:38:27.000 But Colton Hobb, a member of the Junior ROTC who shielded classmates in the midst of terror, says he did not get to share his experience.

00:38:36.000 CNN had originally asked me to write a speech and questions and it ended up being all scripted.

00:38:41.000 Colton wrote questions about school safety, suggested using veterans as armed school security guards, but claimed CNN wanted him to ask a scripted question instead, so he decided not to go.

00:38:53.000 I don't think that it's going to get anything accomplished.

00:38:56.000 It's not going to ask the true questions that all the parents and teachers and students have.

00:39:00.000 So CNN denied that this happened.

00:39:01.000 They said, we would never, we would never leak questions at a town hall.

00:39:06.000 You did last time when Donna Brazile, who was then working for the CNN and ended up running the DNC, leaked questions from the CNN town hall to Hillary Clinton.

00:39:13.000 So, yeah, you've done that before.

00:39:15.000 And then they say, we would never script anything.

00:39:17.000 We would never script anything.

00:39:18.000 Now, I don't know if CNN tried to script this student's question.

00:39:20.000 My guess is that the CNN may have said to him, we want you to write down your question on a piece of paper so that we can sort of contain it.

00:39:26.000 But...

00:39:27.000 Apparently, what they said is he wrote sort of a little speech instead of a question.

00:39:32.000 Well, did you watch any of the clips that we just played?

00:39:34.000 Did you watch any of those clips?

00:39:35.000 The students were giving little speeches.

00:39:37.000 Okay, Cameron Kasky was being given minutes at a time to just go after Rubio over and over and over and over.

00:39:43.000 Having one student who thought differently, would that have been the world's most terrible thing?

00:39:47.000 Would that have been just the worst thing in the world?

00:39:49.000 And as Michelle Malkin points out,

00:39:51.000 CNN has done this before, right?

00:39:53.000 They've actually planted people in debates before to ask specific questions.

00:39:57.000 So at a Democratic debate in Vegas in 2007, Wolf Blitzer introduced several citizen questioners as, quote, ordinary people and undecided voters.

00:40:04.000 They later turned out to include a former Arkansas Democratic director of political affairs, the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, and a far-left anti-war activist who'd been quoted in newspapers lambasting Harry Reid.

00:40:14.000 For his failure to pull out of Iraq.

00:40:16.000 So, the media have done this sort of thing before.

00:40:18.000 Do I know that that's what happened here?

00:40:20.000 No, I'm not suggesting that anybody was paid to be there.

00:40:22.000 What I am suggesting is it was a self-selected crowd of people.

00:40:24.000 If you are a right-wing, Second Amendment supporter, you did not go to that town hall last night because you knew it was run by CNN, because you know CNN is out to sandbag gun supporters, and because you know that your view is going to be atypical and you won't get to ask a question.

00:40:38.000 I mean, this thing was about as rigged from the start as it possibly could be, and people there knew it.

00:40:43.000 Okay, people there knew it.

00:40:44.000 Suffice it to say, I know people at CNN who are involved in making this, and who acknowledge, freely, that this thing was rigged for emotion, and was rigged for left-wing views.

00:40:53.000 In Broward County, and it was a bunch of shooting victims who've already been on CNN specifically talking about why they want gun control.

00:40:59.000 This sort of, again, it is painful to me.

00:41:03.000 I mean, I had trouble sleeping last night after watching this, not because I think that in all good conscience I have to support gun control, but because I think that we cannot last as a country.

00:41:13.000 We cannot last as a country if we are going to continue to maintain that people who disagree with us are inherently bad human beings.

00:41:20.000 This cannot stand.

00:41:21.000 This is the one issue where we all agree.

00:41:24.000 The one issue in all of life where we agree is this issue.

00:41:29.000 It's the issue.

00:41:30.000 Don't let kids die.

00:41:31.000 This is the one issue where we're on the same page.

00:41:33.000 And yet, there's this hardcore drive to deploy falsehood about even that.

00:41:41.000 We can't even agree on that now.

00:41:42.000 And you can see the bad faith of the media.

00:41:45.000 An MSNBC host, for example, yesterday went after Governor Rick Scott of Florida because Governor Rick Scott wasn't in his office, a bunch of students showed up, and they wanted to talk with him.

00:41:53.000 And here's what this MSNBC host had to say.

00:41:56.000 The governor is too busy to meet with them today.

00:42:01.000 And as you can see, they have file boxes of paperwork that they want the government to see.

00:42:08.000 They're going to try and drop it off at Hashtag HearTheBills.

00:42:12.000 HearTheBills.

00:42:13.000 They're saying, shame on you.

00:42:15.000 They're chanting that over and over again.

00:42:16.000 OK, there's only one problem here. 0.99

00:42:18.000 We're going to stop this dolt for a second. 1.00

00:42:20.000 OK, that is a lie. 0.98

00:42:21.000 He did not turn them away from his door.

00:42:22.000 He was at the funeral of a shooting victim.

00:42:25.000 And the media covered this as though Rick Scott was barring his door to a bunch of sympathetic survivors.

00:42:29.000 That's not what happened.

00:42:31.000 Doesn't matter.

00:42:32.000 The media have to portray it as though Republicans are uncaring Nazis who don't... who don't...

00:42:37.000 Shed tears over children who are murdered.

00:42:40.000 This sort of media bias is truly gross.

00:42:44.000 NBC News is doing the same thing.

00:42:45.000 Again, if the media want us to actually find solutions, I have a couple of solutions I've been suggesting over the last several days, including we can call on the media, who apparently love their ratings, to stop showing the faces and names of mass shooters.

00:42:58.000 They won't do that, because it might have to sacrifice some ratings and ad dollars if they do that.

00:43:02.000 So instead, they'll keep putting those people on TV, even though studies say that the more you show these folks on TV, the more you're making it likely that the next mass shooter goes out and does a mass shooting.

00:43:10.000 Doesn't matter.

00:43:10.000 The onus is on gun owners, who have nothing to do with any of this.

00:43:13.000 Just incredible.

00:43:14.000 Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things that I hate.

00:43:17.000 So...

00:43:18.000 Things I like today.

00:43:19.000 So a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture, but it should have been.

00:43:23.000 It may be.

00:43:24.000 I think it's one of the best films of the year.

00:43:26.000 Pretty, pretty easily.

00:43:28.000 It's probably in my top four.

00:43:30.000 I would say top four films that I've seen this year.

00:43:32.000 Blade Runner 2049, Dunkirk.

00:43:36.000 The Darkest Hour and The Florida Project.

00:43:39.000 The Florida Project just came out and it's been out for a little while.

00:43:43.000 It's nominated.

00:43:44.000 I think Willem Dafoe is probably going to win Best Supporting Actor this year for Florida Project.

00:43:49.000 It is a very good movie.

00:43:51.000 It's a hard to watch movie.

00:43:51.000 It's not one that you're going to want to buy and watch over and over.

00:43:54.000 But it is really an important... I rarely say it's an important movie, but this is actually, I think, an important movie.

00:43:59.000 The movie is The Florida Project.

00:44:00.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:44:04.000 Okay, I warned you.

00:44:05.000 One drip and you're out.

00:44:06.000 Oh, come on! 0.99

00:44:07.000 Out now.

00:44:08.000 It's gonna melt outside.

00:44:10.000 It's melting inside too.

00:44:11.000 But Bobby... Out.

00:44:14.000 Thank you very much.

00:44:16.000 You're not welcome!

00:44:20.000 Okay, so the entire movie is about this little girl who is living in basically a run-down motel.

00:44:26.000 Willem Dafoe is the manager of the motel, and her mom is a drug addict who later turns to prostitution to make ends meet.

00:44:36.000 The whole thing is about intergenerational cycles of poverty, why they continue.

00:44:41.000 I don't know.

00:44:58.000 Poverty very often does not create values.

00:45:03.000 Values very often creates poverty.

00:45:04.000 That may not be the message they were trying to push with the movie.

00:45:07.000 That's the message that the movie ends up pushing.

00:45:10.000 Anyway, okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:45:13.000 So let's jump right in.

00:45:17.000 Okay, so the first thing that I hate, obviously, look, I've talked about disrespect toward people who are Second Amendment advocates. 0.92

00:45:24.000 One of the stupidest, grossest things that I've seen over the last couple of days are these people who are claiming that Parkland students are crisis actors or paid advocates for a particular political position. 0.98

00:45:33.000 It's just yucky. 1.00

00:45:34.000 It's just gross. 0.99

00:45:35.000 And if you're doing this, you're disgusting. 0.98

00:45:36.000 There's a Parkland student who came out and said, who actually had to come out on national TV and say, I'm not a crisis actor. 0.97

00:45:42.000 Well, of course you're not, but we need to show this.

00:45:45.000 These people saying this is absolutely disturbing, and I'm not an actor in any sense, way, shape, or form.

00:45:51.000 I am the son of a former FBI agent, and that is true.

00:45:55.000 But as such, it is also true that I went to- that I go to Stoneman Douglas High School, and I was a witness to this.

00:46:03.000 I'm not a crisis actor.

00:46:04.000 I'm somebody that had to witness this and live through this, and I continue to have to do that.

00:46:08.000 But I'm also- that- it's just-

00:46:12.000 It's unbelievable to me that these people are even saying this, and the fact that Donald Trump Jr.

00:46:16.000 liked that post is disgusting to me, but it's also false.

00:46:22.000 Okay, so I agree with pretty much everything this kid just said.

00:46:25.000 I disagree with him on everything having to do with gun control.

00:46:27.000 Again, give the kid the credit to say that he has his own viewpoint, even if his viewpoint is wrong, and don't pretend that this stuff is conspiratorial crisis acting.

00:46:34.000 It's just sheer nonsense.

00:46:36.000 Okay, we are out of time because I have to get ready to go do my speech at CPAC.

00:46:39.000 We'll recap that tomorrow.

00:46:40.000 You can probably watch the speech online at CPAC, which is streaming, so go check that out.

00:46:44.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:46:45.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:46:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:46:52.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:46:54.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:46:55.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:46:57.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:46:58.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:47:00.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:47:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:47:05.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 22, 2018

CNN's Hour Of Anti-Gun Hate | Ep. 481

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