The Ben Shapiro Show - Congress Will Be Fun! | Ep. 660

00:00:00.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes her presence known, big democratic cities engage in big crony capitalism, and the Mueller investigation heats up again.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:15.000 Well, brand new faces in brand new places we get to watch as the incoming Congress comes in and, you know, participates in some shenanigans.

00:00:22.000 We will talk about all of that plus the Mueller investigation and a non-shocking report on a global warming research report that it turns out was being skewed in a particular direction.

00:00:33.000 I will let you guess that direction.

00:00:34.000 But first, let's talk about your finances.

00:00:37.000 So, Dems have retaken the House.

00:00:39.000 Obviously, that is not going to be great for the economy.

00:00:41.000 They're going to be involved in attempting new regulations.

00:00:44.000 They're going to be shutting down the attempts to make the tax cuts permanent.

00:00:47.000 They're going to be doing an awful lot of things that aren't going to be great for the business climate in the country right now.

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00:02:07.000 Okay, so the assumption going into the new Democratic-controlled Congress is that things were going to be pretty terrible.

00:02:14.000 And I think that assumption holds fairly true.

00:02:16.000 I think that Democrats are going to launch an endless round of investigations into everything Trump-related, the vast majority of which will not only be irrelevant but counterproductive.

00:02:24.000 I think that the Democrats are going to hold up the business of government for ridiculous proposals like massive carbon taxes, for example.

00:02:34.000 I think Democrats are going to be just as bad at governance as they ever were back when they were in control of the House from 2006 to 2010.

00:02:40.000 And Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House again.

00:02:42.000 But there is going to be some fun Democratic infighting, or at least there are indicators that there may be some fun Democratic infighting.

00:02:48.000 That was the early indication anyway.

00:02:49.000 So Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, who is the progressive leftist darling beloved of the radical members of the base, She went to a sit-in outside Speaker Pelosi's office.

00:03:01.000 And I want to show you that I think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while she doesn't know squat about economics, while she doesn't understand politics in a very basic way, she is a canny young politician. 1.00

00:03:12.000 She's a lot cannier than she's being given credit for. 1.00

00:03:15.000 And the reason I say this is because the headlines that emerged from this situation yesterday in Congress are not actually consonant with what happened yesterday in Congress.

00:03:23.000 So there's this big sit-in outside Speaker Pelosi's office.

00:03:25.000 There are a bunch of people who are protesting, saying they want a new subcommittee formed on climate change that has the power to push legislation.

00:03:32.000 And Ocasio-Cortez shows up at this big sit-in outside.

00:03:35.000 It gets all sorts of press.

00:03:36.000 I want you all to know how proud I am of each and every single one of you for putting yourselves and your bodies and everything on the line to make sure that we save our planet, our generation, and our future.

00:03:52.000 It's so incredibly important.

00:03:55.000 Okay, so everybody was saying, well, look at her. 0.86

00:03:58.000 She's really going there to stand up to Nancy Pelosi and really push Nancy Pelosi hard from the left. 0.98

00:04:04.000 Well, this is much more of an inside-outside game.

00:04:08.000 Excuse me.

00:04:08.000 This is much more of an inside-outside game.

00:04:10.000 What we are watching instead is Nancy Pelosi pretending to be the moderate, and then Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez getting to be the person who pulls Nancy Pelosi in the radical left direction.

00:04:20.000 It's a good piece of politicking, I will say.

00:04:22.000 Nancy Pelosi then issued a statement saying, we are inspired by the energy and activism of the many young activists and advocates leading the way in the climate crisis, which threatens the health, economic security and futures of all of our communities.

00:04:32.000 I have recommended to my House Democratic colleagues that we reinstate the select committee to address the climate crisis.

00:04:39.000 House Democrats ran on and won on our bold campaign for a $1 trillion investment in our infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient to the climate crisis while creating 16 million new good-paying jobs across the country.

00:04:49.000 We welcome the presence of these activists.

00:04:51.000 We strongly urge the Capitol Police to allow them to organize and participate in our democracy.

00:04:55.000 In other words, Nancy Pelosi was fine with this protest. 0.99

00:04:58.000 She wasn't standing up to the protest.

00:04:59.000 It wasn't that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was there to actually Press Nancy Pelosi.

00:05:04.000 In fact, right after this happened, she walked out and she talked about how wonderful Nancy Pelosi was.

00:05:09.000 She said, really, what I'm here to do is to support the folks who are here.

00:05:12.000 And she talked about how much she admired Nancy Pelosi.

00:05:15.000 This is a point that Alaa Pandit was making over at Hot Air.

00:05:19.000 So, I think that this is a bit of good politicking from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, it turns out, is quite good at this.

00:05:26.000 Yesterday, she had an entire Instagram in which she walked around her new digs over at the Capitol building, and she took pictures, and she showed how there are tunnels underneath Congress, which are pretty cool, and she talked about how it felt like being at Hogwarts, and all of this is hip and young and cool. 0.98

00:05:42.000 This is something that Republicans should be worried about, is that if folks like Alexander Ocasio-Cortez turn out not to just be a bunch of babbling morons when it comes to economics, but they actually can take that babbling idiocy and then apply it with some serious politicking, that is a problem. 0.95

00:05:59.000 Again, I think that Ocasio-Cortez is canny and clever in how she has deployed her resources here. 1.00

00:06:04.000 So, for example, she was making a big fuss last week about how she doesn't have the ability to rent a house in Washington, D.C. 1.00

00:06:11.000 Well, then she filed her financial disclosure reports.

00:06:13.000 It turns out that she has something like $15,000.

00:06:17.000 $15,000 in her savings, in her checking account as of April, and she has something like $50,000 in stocks and bonds in her savings account, which means that, yes, she actually does have the ability to rent an apartment in Washington, D.C.

00:06:31.000 As often happens with a lot of candidates, there's a, there's a Great amount of posturing about how they stand with the working folks, but when it turns out that those problems don't actually apply to them, they just sort of fib about it.

00:06:42.000 And that seems to be the case with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well.

00:06:45.000 Now, on the climate change point, there's a big story out today that is going to get very little play beyond the original story in the Washington Post.

00:06:53.000 The Washington Post did cover it, but it's not going to be covered very much beyond that in, for example, the nightly news.

00:06:58.000 The story is this with regard to global warming.

00:07:01.000 A major study that claimed the oceans were warming much faster than previously thought was apparently baseless.

00:07:07.000 There were key errors in the study.

00:07:08.000 This is according to Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis over at the Washington Post.

00:07:12.000 And this does beg a question, which is, why is it that every single time there's an error in a climate change study, it tends to benefit people who say that climate change is a catastrophe?

00:07:21.000 When was the last time there was an error in a climate change study in which people said, you know what?

00:07:25.000 It turns out that we underestimated the amount of climate change that was going to happen.

00:07:29.000 I can't think of a single time, yet how many times has the climate change community overstated the amount of damage that climate change is going to do?

00:07:38.000 Routinely.

00:07:39.000 The modeling has always been off on the heavier side.

00:07:42.000 It's never been off on the lighter side.

00:07:44.000 The reason this matters is because economic intervention attempts to skew the economy of the United States or the global economy on the basis of global warming would cost trillions and trillions of dollars.

00:07:54.000 It would cost people lives.

00:07:55.000 It really would.

00:07:56.000 In developing countries particularly where they actually need carbon-based fuels in order to survive.

00:08:00.000 It would severely crimp quality of life in Western countries as well.

00:08:04.000 In order for you to make a claim that ought to happen, you really should have to make a claim that something dire is in the works.

00:08:10.000 But the climate change community, instead of actually substantiating that with the best available research, it turns out that they've skewed the research at every available turn.

00:08:18.000 And again, I'm not somebody who believes that climate change isn't happening.

00:08:21.000 I think climate change is happening.

00:08:23.000 I think the majority of it is due to human interaction with the climate, but I do not think that that necessarily means we have a catastrophe on our hands that requires a complete rewriting of the economy in a socialist direction, which seems to be the actual goal of a lot of these folks.

00:08:36.000 Here's the story from the Washington Post, quote.

00:08:38.000 Scientists believe a major study that claimed the Earth's oceans are warming faster than previously thought now say their work contained inadvertent errors that made their conclusions seem more certain than they actually are.

00:08:49.000 Shocker.

00:08:50.000 Two weeks after the high-profile study was published in the journal Nature, its authors have submitted corrections to the publication.

00:08:56.000 The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, home to several of the researchers involved, also noted the problems in the scientists' work and corrected a news release on its website, which previously had asserted that the study detailed how the Earth's oceans have absorbed 60% more heat than previously thought.

00:09:13.000 Unfortunately, we made mistakes here, said Ralph Keeling, a climate scientist at Scripps who was a co-author of the study.

00:09:18.000 I think the main lesson is that you work as fast as you can to fix mistakes when you find them.

00:09:22.000 Well, the other main lesson is that when you find data that are too good to be true in a political direction that you like, maybe you should take a second look at the data itself.

00:09:31.000 This tends to happen a lot in the scientific community.

00:09:33.000 Studies that back a leftist point of view are ballyhooed.

00:09:36.000 They are talked about as though they have proven the case of the left.

00:09:40.000 When in fact, sometimes the data is just not right.

00:09:42.000 The central problem, according to Keeling, came in how the researchers dealt with the uncertainty in their measurements.

00:09:47.000 As a result, the findings suffer from too much doubt to definitively support the paper's conclusion about how much heat the oceans have absorbed over time.

00:09:55.000 The central conclusion of the study, that oceans are retaining ever more energy as more heat is being trapped within Earth's climate system each year, is in line with other studies that have drawn similar conclusions.

00:10:04.000 And it hasn't changed much despite the errors, but Keeling said the authors' miscalculations mean there's a much larger margin of error in the findings, which means researchers can weigh in with less certainty than they thought.

00:10:14.000 And this has been one of the other factors in looking at climate change.

00:10:17.000 If you look at the IPCC report that recently came out, you know, a month ago, that IPCC report Specifically talked about the levels of uncertainty with regard to the level of climate change that was occurring or the level of damage that would occur because of climate change.

00:10:30.000 But nobody ever talks about level of certainty.

00:10:32.000 They never talk about margins of error.

00:10:34.000 Instead, they treat the bottom line finding as though it is writ in stone.

00:10:39.000 As though it is 100% certain.

00:10:41.000 And that simply is not true.

00:10:43.000 The study's lead author was Laurie Resplandy of Princeton University.

00:10:46.000 Other researchers were with the institutions in China, Paris, Germany, the U.S.

00:10:50.000 National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

00:10:55.000 Nature said, maintaining the accuracy of the scientific record is of primary importance to us as publishers, and we recognize our responsibility to correct errors in papers that we have published.

00:11:04.000 And listen, they should correct errors.

00:11:06.000 Good on them.

00:11:06.000 But the original study suggested that the amount of heat that was being absorbed by the oceans was very high probability, 60% above what they thought, which meant there'd be less time than originally thought to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and it drew considerable media attention.

00:11:21.000 But then it turns out that there's a major problem with the research.

00:11:24.000 There's a Britain-based researcher named Nicholas Lewis, and he said, so far as I can see, their method vastly underestimates the uncertainty, as well as biasing up significantly, nearly 30%, the central estimate.

00:11:36.000 This is basically just some guy in Britain who happens to know what he's talking about who blogged about it.

00:11:41.000 Very often the climate change community has simply dismissed such concerns out of hand.

00:11:44.000 How could we possibly take seriously people who blog for a living as opposed to the great majority of scientists who agree with us?

00:11:52.000 The skewing of science for political purposes is extraordinarily dangerous stuff.

00:11:55.000 Especially because it does have ramifications for what we do in our everyday lives.

00:12:00.000 It has ramifications for regulation and legislation.

00:12:02.000 And it's not just happening in terms of climate change.

00:12:05.000 It's also happening in terms of gender.

00:12:06.000 And we'll get to that in just one second.

00:12:08.000 But first!

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00:13:15.000 Okay.

00:13:16.000 Other areas in which the left has been skewing science in order to reach particular political conclusions.

00:13:21.000 This is an amazing, amazing story.

00:13:22.000 This one's out of Berkeley.

00:13:23.000 So, we talked about, a couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration making a determination that for purposes of federal contracting, for purposes of interpretation of federal law at the executive level, That male and female mean biological male and female does not mean transgender male or female.

00:13:42.000 Doesn't mean people who identify one way or another.

00:13:44.000 It means that we are going to identify you by your actual sex.

00:13:47.000 We're not going to use the made-up term gender in order to skew things and say that you're a woman when you're actually a biological male. 0.90

00:13:53.000 And the entire left went nuts.

00:13:54.000 How dare they say this? 0.89

00:13:55.000 There was a full article in the New York Times suggesting that sex doesn't even exist.

00:13:58.000 Forget gender. 0.99

00:13:59.000 Sex is a spectrum, which is nonsense. 0.86

00:14:01.000 Sex is not a spectrum.

00:14:02.000 The dichotomous nature of human sex is the reason that we can procreate.

00:14:08.000 Were it not for the fact that there are two sexes and not eleven, it would be very difficult for humankind to actually have descendants. 1.00

00:14:17.000 Well, the problem with bad science is that it creates bad social results.

00:14:21.000 And here's one example.

00:14:22.000 A Christian student senator, this is according to Cassie Dillon over at Daily Wire, a Christian student senator at the University of California, Berkeley is now being ousted from her position after abstaining, abstaining from a resolution that condemns the Trump administration for considering narrowing the definition of gender.

00:14:38.000 I'm not kidding you.

00:14:39.000 Abstaining.

00:14:40.000 So the student senator, a Christian, refused to vote along with a resolution that condemned the Trump administration for saying men are men and women are women, and now the student senator is going to lose her position.

00:14:51.000 The resolution was introduced on October 31st.

00:14:53.000 In response, Isabella Chao gave a statement explaining why she could not vote on the resolution because of her Christian beliefs.

00:14:58.000 She says, As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles conflict with what is good, right, and true.

00:15:22.000 I believe that God created male and female at the beginning of time and designed for marriage between one man and one woman.

00:15:28.000 For me, to love another person does not mean that I silently concur when at the bottom of my heart, I do not believe that your choices are right or best for you as an individual.

00:15:36.000 After lengthy conversations with many of my community leaders and advisors, I've chosen to abstain from voting on these bills tonight.

00:15:43.000 The resolution condemned the proposed Title IX changes that limited gender identity to physical sex.

00:15:49.000 The party of which Chao is a member of Student Action then cut ties with her, claiming there are inconsistencies between her beliefs and the party, including perspectives on reproductive health and wellness resources.

00:15:59.000 Sustaining was simply too much.

00:16:01.000 And, of course, she got called a bigot. 0.87

00:16:03.000 In just a second, I want to talk more about how bad science results in bad public policy.

00:16:20.000 This is a very obvious case.

00:16:21.000 I mean, it's really astonishing.

00:16:23.000 Again, a Christian student who was ousted from her seat in the Berkeley Student Senate for having the temerity to say, I'm a Christian.

00:16:30.000 I can't vote for this thing because it violates my values.

00:16:32.000 And so she abstained.

00:16:33.000 She didn't vote against it.

00:16:35.000 And thus she was labeled a bigot. 1.00

00:16:36.000 Teddy Lake, again, the student senator who introduced the resolution, he said, I cannot fathom the amount of cognitive dissonance required to make a statement as disingenuous and harmful as the one Senator Chow made tonight.

00:16:47.000 The contradictions present in her speech are frankly disturbing and irreconcilable.

00:16:50.000 Perhaps what most offends me, though, is Senator Chow's outrageous ass that we as a Senate class respect her beliefs as she does our.

00:16:56.000 Why is that outrageous? 0.95

00:16:59.000 And the answer is it's not outrageous.

00:17:01.000 But when you believe that your view is fact and everybody else's view is just an opinion, then you get to crack down on them.

00:17:09.000 Teddy Lake says, to that end, I'd like to clarify that what Senator Chao expressed tonight were not beliefs at all.

00:17:14.000 They were not beliefs at all.

00:17:16.000 They were hateful prejudices that deserve nothing less than the strongest condemnation for myself, my community, and my colleagues.

00:17:22.000 I have no obligation to entertain or engage with individuals who deny my right to exist loudly and proudly as a member of the LGBTQ plus community.

00:17:29.000 And well, this particular student senator never did any of that.

00:17:33.000 But again, when you back political opinion with bad science, you end up believing that your opinions are fact, and therefore can be crammed down on anybody else, and their opinions are not opinions, but in fact, simply hateful, knee-jerk prejudice.

00:17:45.000 Chao then sent an op-ed to the school newspaper, the Daily Cal, but that op-ed was rejected, because it reinforces her original statement, which they deemed a utilized rhetoric that is homophobic and transphobic by the Daily Cal's standards.

00:17:58.000 Pretty astonishing.

00:17:59.000 The Queer Alliance Resource Center condemned Chao and called for her resignation.

00:18:03.000 At the Senate meeting last week, students protested, hundreds, and even had a large banner that said, Senator Chao resign now.

00:18:09.000 Pretty astonishing stuff.

00:18:11.000 Pretty astonishing stuff.

00:18:12.000 Chow gave the Daily Wire a statement that for me and the church here at Berkeley, free speech is an issue that has been highlighted, but is not the primary issue at stake here.

00:18:19.000 As one of my staffers put it, this is people issue, people who feel hurt and unable to reconcile how the traditional Christian worldview can profess to love LGBTQ individuals while disagreeing with their lifestyles and the promotion of their identities.

00:18:30.000 Even if the church continues to be misunderstood and slandered, our responsibility is not to shout our beliefs loudly above the noise, but to emulate the unconditional love and truth of Jesus.

00:18:38.000 So obviously, this is a hateful, terrible person.

00:18:42.000 And we know so because science.

00:18:44.000 Speaking of which, I do love this story.

00:18:48.000 This is the best story of the day, or worst story of the day, depending on how you define it.

00:18:55.000 Apparently, there is a situation that has now arisen in which a school has punished a male teacher for refusing to watch a naked girl in the boys' locker room.

00:19:07.000 What does that mean?

00:19:08.000 Well, it means that, again, bad signs with regard to sex and gender lead to pretty terrible public policy ramifications.

00:19:15.000 In this particular case, a Florida school district, this is going to be Joy Pullman over at The Federalist, a Florida school district allowed a self-described transgender female student regular access to the boys' locker room with no advance warning to the boys or their parents.

00:19:30.000 Which again, if a boy walked into the girl's locker room and didn't proclaim himself a female, then we would understand that this would be sexual harassment at the very least.

00:19:38.000 A transgender boy, meaning a woman, a girl, walks into a locker room without telling the other guys first, and that's not a problem at all.

00:19:45.000 And if guys are uncomfortable, then that's their fault for being uncomfortable.

00:19:49.000 Yeah, that's not imposing on anybody.

00:19:50.000 The first time this girl walked in, she caught boys literally with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl, said a complaint letter to Pasco County School District from Liberty Council, a pro bono constitutional law firm.

00:20:04.000 School administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change and ordered a male PE teacher to supervise the potentially undressed girl in the Chasco Middle School locker room, the letter says, when he refused to knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress.

00:20:22.000 Administrators told him, quote, he will be transferred to another school as discipline for not doing your job in the locker room.

00:20:29.000 So now we are forcing male P.E. 0.68

00:20:31.000 teachers to view undressed girls who say they are boys.

00:20:36.000 When we all know that if a male P.E.

00:20:37.000 teacher looked at an undressed girl in the locker room who did not believe she was a boy, he would be fired and possibly prosecuted.

00:20:45.000 But now, this has to be forced.

00:20:47.000 Crammed down the throats of people who don't want to engage in conduct they believe would be unbecoming to their job and would cause serious problems with sexual harassment, for example.

00:20:56.000 Bad science leads to bad results.

00:20:58.000 Identifying science with your opinion also leads to bad results, whether we are talking about climate change or whether we are talking about gender studies or any of the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:21:07.000 Well, in just a second, I want to talk about the great irony of Democrats who apparently Well, I hope it's not imminent.

00:21:13.000 Today is talking about how terrible big corporations are, how they rip people off, how they harm the little guy.

00:21:19.000 And then they bribe those corporations as fast as they possibly can.

00:21:22.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.

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00:22:26.000 You'd make sure that you had life insurance all locked up.

00:22:28.000 Go to policygenius.com, and again, get those quotes and apply in minutes.

00:22:32.000 It's the easy way to compare and buy life insurance.

00:22:34.000 Okay, so, Democrats like Bill de Blasio, who spend their entire careers ripping on corporations.

00:22:39.000 Corporations?

00:22:39.000 Bad.

00:22:40.000 Business?

00:22:41.000 Bad.

00:22:41.000 Government?

00:22:42.000 Good.

00:22:43.000 Well, it turns out that in New York, And Virginia.

00:22:47.000 Democrats are more than happy to dump piles of money, just oodles of money, on top of big corporations like Amazon.

00:22:55.000 On Tuesday, Amazon announced, as we talked about yesterday, that it would split its much-ballyhooed HQ to its headquarters, too, between two cities, New York and Crystal City, an area just outside Washington, D.C.

00:23:05.000 Now, lest you think that Crystal City is actually a beautiful city made of crystal, it is not.

00:23:09.000 It is a pile of cement warehouses.

00:23:10.000 So it's basically like if Emerald City were made of Formica.

00:23:14.000 New York is obviously heavy Democratic territory.

00:23:17.000 The headquarters will be located in Queens, and the congressperson there is Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, so good luck to everyone involved.

00:23:23.000 Northern Virginia is a similarly Democratic area, and the governor there As a Democrat, of course.

00:23:29.000 So what goodies did Democrats give Jeff Bezos and Amazon for the privilege of hosting their new headquarters?

00:23:34.000 Well, the state of Virginia is going to give Amazon some $573 million.

00:23:39.000 Million dollars to produce 25,000 jobs.

00:23:42.000 Arlington will give Amazon $23 million over 15 years.

00:23:45.000 As Garrity points out, Arlington is actually raising taxes in order to pay Amazon to locate there.

00:23:51.000 Now, I want to be clear, Virginia is giving Amazon tax breaks. 0.95

00:23:54.000 It's not the same thing as them just dumping money on Amazon, but they're giving them all sorts of goodies, including the ability to have prior notice of FOIA requests regarding government documents related to Amazon, which is pretty incredible.

00:24:07.000 Meanwhile, New York opened its goodie bag as well.

00:24:10.000 Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is Thick as a block of wood, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is fond of dropping groundhogs, they grinned through the announcement that the state would give Amazon some $2 billion in tax credits and other incentives.

00:24:23.000 They received direct incentives, direct incentives, meaning cash, of $1.525 billion for creating 25,000 jobs, an average of $61,000 per job created.

00:24:34.000 The New York Times also reports the state also offered a capital grant to the company that could total as much as $500 million, right?

00:24:41.000 That's taxpayer dollars going to Amazon so that Amazon can build new offices.

00:24:45.000 It will also apply for additional incentives through existing city programs available to any company.

00:24:49.000 Tax experts said these programs could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:24:54.000 Both New York and Washington, D.C.

00:24:55.000 can expect rising housing prices, strained public services, and additional tax dollars spent on Amazon.

00:25:01.000 Now, listen.

00:25:02.000 There is no bigger Amazon booster on planet Earth than I. I'm one of the first, probably, I think, 1,000 Prime members.

00:25:07.000 I am a huge Amazon fan.

00:25:09.000 I love what they do.

00:25:10.000 I'm an Amazon defender.

00:25:12.000 But...

00:25:13.000 This is not capitalism.

00:25:14.000 This is not the free market at work.

00:25:16.000 This is the government giving subsidies and goodies to a company to draw them to a particular area.

00:25:21.000 And as I mentioned yesterday, there's a great irony in the folks who are in New York and D.C., these major Democrats, New York and Virginia.

00:25:30.000 These folks talking about how big business is terrible and needs to be regulated and taxed.

00:25:34.000 But then, when we want to bring some jobs to town, we need to get rid of the regulations and we need to get rid of the taxes.

00:25:38.000 I said, well guys, you know what would be a great way to draw lots of business to your town would be to get rid of these regulations and taxes for everyone.

00:25:47.000 Crony capitalism is indeed alive and well in democratic areas like New York and Northern Virginia.

00:25:53.000 This used to be called corruption, right?

00:25:54.000 This used to just be called corruption.

00:25:56.000 Or at the very least, it was considered economic fascism.

00:25:59.000 If you go back to the actual fascist system of economics under both the Mussolini Italian system and the Nazi German system, if you look at how they ran economics, it was basically the government subsidizing particular firms with taxpayer dollars and giving them all sorts of goodies and freedom from regulation in return for those companies doing good things for a particular administration or for the government itself.

00:26:23.000 This is the same sort of economics.

00:26:24.000 It's kind of hilarious that these Democrats who spend all their days decrying corruption of corporations, you know, they have the whole entire Occupy Wall Street movement, they pretend that this is like Amazon's fault.

00:26:35.000 This isn't Amazon's fault.

00:26:36.000 This is the government's fault for deciding to go out of its way to pay Amazon to do things.

00:26:41.000 If the government were not a giant grab bag of cash, Amazon would have no capacity to grab the cash. 0.90

00:26:46.000 Now this did lead to a little bit of confusion yesterday on the right, because Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, we talked about yesterday, tweeted out that Amazon is a billion dollar company and it shouldn't receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks.

00:26:58.000 And a lot of people on there are like, yay!

00:27:00.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

00:27:01.000 Woo! 0.99

00:27:02.000 She's on our side.

00:27:03.000 Well, in the same way that Occupy Wall Street was not on our side, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not on our side.

00:27:08.000 It's not that Democrats, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, want less government intervention in the economy.

00:27:13.000 Far from it.

00:27:13.000 She wants the government to actually take over particular industries.

00:27:17.000 And she's not even against crony capitalism.

00:27:20.000 She's very much in favor of it when it favors firms that she likes. 1.00

00:27:23.000 She just doesn't like Amazon. 1.00

00:27:25.000 Philip Wegman of the Washington Examiner points out that Ocasio-Cortez, her website explicitly calls for, quote, the electrification of vehicles, sustainable home heating, distributed rooftop solar generation, and the conversion of the power grid to zero emissions energy sources, all of which can only be attempted through massive subsidies and taxes.

00:27:42.000 And so what we have here, this is one of those areas where the Democrats and the Republicans are not that far apart except in the size and the scope of the giveaways.

00:27:50.000 When it comes to Democrats, they want to extend the Amazon model to all of their favorite businesses and sectors.

00:27:56.000 Republicans only want to extend the Amazon model to a few of their favorite business and sectors.

00:27:59.000 So President Trump likes to do this for the steel sector, for example.

00:28:03.000 And President Trump likes to do this for the auto sector.

00:28:05.000 He wants to do it for the auto sector.

00:28:08.000 Here's the problem.

00:28:09.000 Government do-goodism means taking money from some people and giving it to others.

00:28:13.000 That is not what we call Pareto-optimal efficiency.

00:28:17.000 Pareto-optimality is an economic term meaning any distribution of resources that leaves everybody better off and no one worse off.

00:28:23.000 So, if you and I make a trade, goods for services, I have money, I need you to do my plumbing for me, I give you the money, you give me the plumbing services, we are now both better off.

00:28:31.000 This is Pareto-optimal, right?

00:28:33.000 This has created an optimal situation.

00:28:36.000 But anything that is not Pareto optimal means you are taking from someone and giving to somebody else, and that is killing efficiency in the process.

00:28:43.000 Both Republicans and Democrats engage in this, and it's really an ugly thing.

00:28:47.000 It's an ugly thing, and it's, frankly, an unconstitutional thing.

00:28:50.000 It has nothing to do with the powers of the federal government, and when it comes to state governments doing the same, generally, the original state constitutions were not designed to actually fulfill all of the- to do all of these things.

00:29:02.000 Well, meanwhile, President Trump is apparently considering yet another shakeup of his administration.

00:29:06.000 A lot of chaos in the West Wing these days.

00:29:09.000 He apparently is going to remove Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christian Nielsen, and is looking at possible replacements for John Kelly as well, and those include Nick Ayers, who is Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff.

00:29:21.000 Really good guy, Nick Ayers.

00:29:22.000 He'd make a terrific Chief of Staff.

00:29:24.000 John Kelly has been, shall we say, less than great in the Chief of Staff position in the Trump administration.

00:29:29.000 He's caused a lot of friction and a lot of conflict inside the West Wing.

00:29:33.000 He is not particularly politically astute, and the great lie that came about when he was originally appointed Chief of Staff Was that he was going to be excellent at sort of keeping everybody in line.

00:29:45.000 That obviously has been wildly untrue.

00:29:48.000 Nobody has been kept in line by John Kelly.

00:29:49.000 Instead, he sort of has an agenda all his own, and that has created some friction.

00:29:54.000 The White House has not responded to a request for comment on the timeline, but it would be sort of shocking if there isn't a major shakeup inside the administration.

00:30:01.000 Right now.

00:30:03.000 I think the shake-up in the administration is going to happen pretty soon.

00:30:07.000 Every shake-up that's happened so far, by the way, has actually made the administration better.

00:30:10.000 So I'm not opposed to the shake-up in the administration, but sometimes how it's done is uncomfortable.

00:30:15.000 For example, yesterday, the First Lady Melania Trump asked that the White House sever ties with Deputy National Security Advisor Mira Ricardel, a spokesman for the First Lady's office said on Tuesday.

00:30:25.000 Kind of rare for the First Lady's office to issue public statements ripping staffers, but she said it is the position of the office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in the White House. 0.91

00:30:35.000 Which is, owie!

00:30:37.000 That's a top staffer to John Bolton.

00:30:40.000 So that is, again, lending a feeling of chaos to the West Wing that they just don't need right now.

00:30:47.000 In a second, I want to talk about the latest in the Mueller indictments and all the rest.

00:30:52.000 I also want to talk about the media's complete failure to do its job on a variety of issues.

00:31:00.000 But first, let's talk about how you can protect your online security.

00:31:03.000 Well, look, as a public figure, I'm constantly in fear that I will be hacked or threatened online, spied on.

00:31:10.000 I don't want my emails compromised, my credit card number or online banking password stolen, but it happens to millions of people every single year.

00:31:16.000 So how can you protect yourself?

00:31:17.000 Well, the company I trust to defend my online security and privacy is ExpressVPN.

00:31:21.000 ExpressVPN secures and anonymizes your connection by encrypting 100% of your network data, hiding your IP address.

00:31:26.000 That means nobody can record or access your online activity.

00:31:29.000 Download ExpressVPN on your computer or smartphone, and then use the internet just the way you normally would.

00:31:34.000 You click one button in your ExpressVPN app, and you are now protected.

00:31:37.000 ExpressVPN is great for accessing content from anywhere with VPN locations in 94 countries and blazing fast speeds as well.

00:31:44.000 So go check them out right now.

00:31:46.000 The nice folks at ExpressVPN have extended special pricing of less than $7 per month to all my fans.

00:31:51.000 So visit expressvpn.com slash Ben to claim your discount.

00:31:54.000 Again, that is expressvpn.com slash Ben to learn more.

00:31:58.000 You want to keep all your online activity safe.

00:32:00.000 You don't need people up in your business.

00:32:03.000 ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

00:32:05.000 There's no- That's the reason why it's rated the world's number one VPN service for internet users.

00:32:09.000 ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.

00:32:11.000 Okay, well.

00:32:12.000 We're going to get into the Mueller indictments and the latest on that.

00:32:14.000 Plus, we have some real goodies in things I like and things I hate today.

00:32:18.000 But first!

00:32:18.000 You're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:32:21.000 When you do, you get the rest of this show live, you get the rest of the Andrew Klavan show live, the rest of the Michael Molls show live.

00:32:26.000 Also, you get access to our Sunday specials, the complete version of our Sunday specials.

00:32:30.000 This week's Sunday special features former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who's just a fantastic person and a really clever, canny, and intellectually fascinating politician.

00:32:43.000 Here is a little bit of what that looks like.

00:32:45.000 Hi, I'm Stephen Harper, 22nd Prime Minister of Canada.

00:32:47.000 Join me on The Ben Shapiro Show this week, where we discuss a lot of controversial issues.

00:32:53.000 Donald Trump, trade, immigration, and my new book right here, right now, Politics and Leadership in the Age of Disruption.

00:33:01.000 A lot of good stuff in that interview.

00:33:02.000 You're going to want to go check that out.

00:33:03.000 We have all sorts of goodies.

00:33:04.000 Another Kingdom you get early access to.

00:33:06.000 You want to hear Michael Mowles read to you.

00:33:08.000 And you want to watch amazing art, go check out Another Kingdom.

00:33:11.000 But you can only do that by subscribing.

00:33:13.000 Also, make sure that if you are in Pittsburgh tonight, we are speaking, and this is my final speech.

00:33:18.000 this year on the YAF Speaking Tour.

00:33:20.000 We're at the University of Pittsburgh tonight, 6.30 p.m.

00:33:22.000 Eastern.

00:33:22.000 You can catch The Last Stop.

00:33:24.000 We're going to be talking about a wide variety of issues, as always.

00:33:26.000 We will do our famed Q&A, and I will be speaking specifically about right-wing and mostly left-wing anti-Semitism.

00:33:33.000 Bring a friend, bring great questions, bring a jacket, because it is indeed freezing out here.

00:33:37.000 Honestly, I'm from California.

00:33:38.000 This is unpleasant.

00:33:39.000 Hope to catch you there!

00:33:41.000 Make sure that you show up.

00:33:42.000 Also go follow us over at YouTube or iTunes.

00:33:44.000 Make sure you leave us a review.

00:33:46.000 It always helps us.

00:33:46.000 We have the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:33:49.000 So meanwhile, President Trump, even as he experiences some chaos in the West Wing, we are awaiting news from the Mueller investigation.

00:34:06.000 A couple of things to be made clear.

00:34:07.000 One, President Trump has not obstructed the Mueller investigation.

00:34:10.000 That is obvious.

00:34:11.000 If he had obstructed the Mueller investigation, they would know in the White House what's going on.

00:34:14.000 They don't know in the White House what is going on, even though the Mueller investigation is taking place under the auspices of the Department of Justice.

00:34:22.000 Bloomberg is reporting that new indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference are expected this week.

00:34:28.000 CBS says that, citing multiple people with knowledge of the investigation.

00:34:31.000 One of the people claiming that they will be indicted is conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, who made his name a few years back, claiming that he had proof that President Obama was in fact born in Kenya, which he was not.

00:34:43.000 He told viewers of his YouTube livestream broadcast on Monday he'd been cooperating with the inquiry since receiving a subpoena from FBI agents at his home in August.

00:34:51.000 He said he expects to be indicted for some form or other of giving false information in the probe, despite doing everything he could to cooperate.

00:34:58.000 He said the possible charges arose related to Roger Stone, who of course is close friends with the Trump campaign, and Roger Stone had ties with Russia and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

00:35:08.000 Of course, his lawyer, David Gray, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment as of Monday night.

00:35:12.000 Because it turns out, you know what's a really bad idea?

00:35:14.000 Going in public and then talking about your status as a possible indictment target from the FBI.

00:35:20.000 That's always not the smartest thing to do, just as a lawyer. 0.95

00:35:23.000 First rule of being a client to a lawyer, shut your face. 0.82

00:35:27.000 Don't go out and say things. 1.00

00:35:28.000 Really, really dumb. 0.98

00:35:30.000 Any new indictments would come amid recent turmoil at the Justice Department. 0.97

00:35:33.000 Of course, the Democrats are looking forward to trying to claim that Matt Whitaker, the new acting AG, is obstructing justice and preventing indictments from coming down.

00:35:41.000 Meanwhile, President Trump is apparently going to answer written Russia probe questions this week.

00:35:47.000 This is according to Reuters.

00:35:48.000 President Trump is expected to provide written answers to questions from the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election as soon as this week.

00:35:57.000 The questions apparently relate only to Moscow's involvement in the election, not obstruction, which is good for Trump because the fact is that Trump doesn't actually, there's no proof and there's been no evidence, That Trump himself was involved in Russian efforts to interfere in the American election.

00:36:14.000 The obstruction stuff would be a lot tougher for him, because obviously it would be targeting him particularly, even though, as I say, I think obstruction at this point, there's no evidence for it either, and it would be baseless.

00:36:23.000 Among the topics covered is that June 2016 meeting between the President's son, Donald Trump Jr., other members of the Trump campaign team, and a group of Russians, according to the source.

00:36:32.000 That, of course, is not particularly shocking.

00:36:33.000 that has always been the big sore thumb in this entire investigation for the Trump campaign, was that June 2016 meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. released emails publicly showing that he had said to a Russian friend of his with connections to the Russian government that he would be interested in hearing what a Russian-connected lawyer had to say was that June 2016 meeting in which Donald Trump Jr. released emails publicly showing Rudy Giuliani declined to comment.

00:36:55.000 So did Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel.

00:36:58.000 Trump's lawyers have been negotiating with Mueller's team since last year over whether he's actually going to sit for an interview.

00:37:02.000 The question still has not been settled, the source said, on Tuesday.

00:37:06.000 So we will see how all of this shakes out.

00:37:09.000 I really don't think that there's going to be an indictment brought against Trump or anyone in his inner circle.

00:37:15.000 I think there's a lot of talk going around right now about Donald Trump Jr. fearing that he will be indicted for some Until we actually see the evidence and see the indictment, we're not going to know the answer to that.

00:37:27.000 However, if this entire debacle, I mean, if this entire investigation comes down to nothing, These screams will never cease to be heard across the land from the anchors over at CNN, from the left, which has fully expected for now two years that Trump would basically be deposed from office by the FBI for Russian interference in the election.

00:37:49.000 And the thing about all of that is it's been a complete waste of time.

00:37:51.000 Imagine if the Democrats, instead of spending the last two years whining about Russian interference in the election, And again, I think that Russian interference in the election is a terrible thing.

00:38:00.000 The Russians should be stopped from doing it. 1.00

00:38:02.000 But instead of them suggesting that Trump is an illegitimate president because he worked hand-in-glove with the Russians, imagine if they just spent the last couple of years focusing in on President Trump's other myriad foibles.

00:38:12.000 They did enough to win what will end up being a wave election in the House, and by the time all the votes are counted, Republicans will have lost nearly 40 seats in the House in this last election cycle.

00:38:22.000 It turns out that President Trump has a lot of vulnerabilities.

00:38:24.000 But if Democrats want to distract themselves with myth stories about how Hillary Clinton actually won the election, and it was the Russians, the evil, nefarious Russians who stole from Hillary Clinton, I mean, I guess that they can do that.

00:38:37.000 It just seems wildly counterproductive to me.

00:38:40.000 It doesn't seem like a smart electoral strategy.

00:38:44.000 But, you know, this is what the media do.

00:38:46.000 And speaking of what the media do, In just one second, I want to get to a new poll showing that Americans are really quite unhappy with the media, and for quite good reason.

00:38:55.000 Here is the poll.

00:38:57.000 So there's a poll out today, and what it shows is from Zogby Analytics.

00:39:02.000 It says that 72% of Americans believe the media is dividing Americans and spreading hate.

00:39:08.000 Which, I don't know where the other 28% have been, but that obviously is true. 1.00

00:39:12.000 According to Zogby, 47% of Americans strongly agree that the mainstream media has played a major role in dividing Americans along racial, gender, and political lines, which has led to a spread of hatred and misunderstanding among some people.

00:39:24.000 And 25% somewhat agree, and 13% somewhat disagree, 16% strongly disagree.

00:39:31.000 So that means that a huge number of Americans rightly believe, correctly believe, that this is, that the media have done an incredible job dividing America.

00:39:41.000 And that's largely because the media have done an incredible job dividing America.

00:39:44.000 I mean, they have Al Sharpton out there proclaiming that Trump has declared war on minorities.

00:39:48.000 Al Sharpton, a guy whose involvement in the 1991 Crown Heights riots We are ready for action, because we are under an administration that has declared war on us, and we want to know whose side everybody's on.

00:40:02.000 down and a few people were murdered.

00:40:04.000 This guy is being trotted out by the left.

00:40:05.000 I mean, the guy still has a show on MSNBC and he's talking about how Trump has declared war on minorities.

00:40:09.000 We are ready for action because we are under the administration that has declared war on us and we want to know whose side everybody's on.

00:40:21.000 Am I right?

00:40:22.000 Okay, so there's Al Sharpton.

00:40:25.000 Again, not divisive, President Trump, divisive.

00:40:29.000 The media, treating Planned Parenthood as non-divisive.

00:40:32.000 So the media, CBS this morning, had on the new head of Planned Parenthood, with the caption, the doctor's in.

00:40:40.000 Well, the doctor's in the womb killing the baby is what the doctor is in.

00:40:43.000 But, this woman's name is Leanna Wen.

00:40:46.000 Listen to the... I mean, this is the most softball interview in history for a woman who will be overseeing the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of unborn children every year. 1.00

00:40:54.000 Here she is being given the royal carpet treatment from the CBS This Morning crew.

00:40:59.000 Well, this is deeply personal to me.

00:41:01.000 I was a patient in Planned Parenthood, and so was my mother and my sister, just like one in five women in America.

00:41:07.000 And as a doctor, I am proud to lead our organization as we deliver life-saving care to two and a half million people every year.

00:41:15.000 And what I want to do is to shape the future for my son, Eli.

00:41:19.000 And it's a future where all people are treated the same, that all people have the right to health care, and where it's a society where we trust women.

00:41:31.000 Abortion is so nice and so happy, according to the media. 0.84

00:41:34.000 But don't worry, Trump's dividing the nation, not the media.

00:41:36.000 You know, this extends to college campuses, this sort of mentality.

00:41:39.000 Who's dividing the nation?

00:41:40.000 It's very funny.

00:41:41.000 There's a letter that was put out suggesting yesterday, I spoke at the Ohio State University yesterday, and there's a letter that was put out by an Antifa-associated group, in which the Antifa-associated group Basically suggested that I was divisive.

00:41:55.000 They spelled divisive D-E-V-I Which is not how you spell the word divisive.

00:42:00.000 So I'm mostly divisive in my insistence on proper spelling in any case Antifa said that I was divisive and then they showed up And then they showed up outside the lecture, and the lecture was not disturbed, so they have every right to do this, obviously, and fine, if they want to do this, go for it.

00:42:14.000 They showed up outside the lecture where they chanted F. Ben Shapiro, and also chanted John McCain's dead and Reagan's dead.

00:42:22.000 Really nice folks, these members of Antifa.

00:42:24.000 There's a journalist, kind of a YouTube journalist named Fleckus, who showed up at the rally outside and asked a few pointed questions to members of this rally.

00:42:35.000 Hey guys, it's Floodgates.

00:42:35.000 This week we're at Ohio State University for a YAF speech.

00:42:38.000 Ben Shapiro's here, and these college kids are not happy about it.

00:42:41.000 We're gonna see what's going on.

00:42:43.000 Are you guys for or against Ben?

00:42:45.000 Against Ben.

00:42:45.000 Do you think he should speak tonight or no?

00:42:47.000 No.

00:42:48.000 Not at all.

00:42:49.000 About free speech and the Constitution, how does it work?

00:42:52.000 That's a good point, but he shouldn't be allowed to have free speech if he's gonna preach the kinds of things that he preaches.

00:42:58.000 Well, what are some of the things that you're talking about, though?

00:43:03.000 I don't know what he said specifically.

00:43:05.000 Do you know any quotes or anything?

00:43:07.000 I don't know what he said specifically.

00:43:08.000 I just don't agree with his platform.

00:43:10.000 Are you for or against Ben?

00:43:12.000 Against Ben Shapiro.

00:43:14.000 Against Ben?

00:43:14.000 Yep.

00:43:15.000 I'm against Ben Shapiro because, uh, I mean... Does he have the right to speak under the Constitution, you think?

00:43:23.000 Shut Shapiro down!

00:43:32.000 Shut Shabiro down! 1.00

00:43:34.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:43:35.000 Shut Shabiro down! 1.00

00:43:37.000 Shut Shabiro down! 1.00

00:43:38.000 That works for me.

00:43:39.000 So solid stuff from the protesters.

00:43:43.000 They're not the one, but I'm the one who's divisive.

00:43:45.000 I love this.

00:43:45.000 This is an email that was posted by the Moral Scholars Program Student Advisory Council.

00:43:49.000 They said, Shapiro's rhetoric has the potential to threaten the emotional and mental safety of much of the campus community.

00:43:55.000 They said that, apparently, one of the complaints is that no one should address a person by the pronouns they've chosen for themselves, which is not something I've ever said, actually.

00:44:03.000 What I say instead is that you cannot force me.

00:44:05.000 Listen, I'm not saying Trump isn't divisive.

00:44:07.000 He is.

00:44:07.000 That is not a thing that happens in a free country.

00:44:11.000 But I'm the divisive one.

00:44:13.000 Again, and when it comes to people who are divisive, I think that the media has a lot.

00:44:17.000 Listen, I'm not saying Trump isn't divisive.

00:44:19.000 He is.

00:44:20.000 But the media are extraordinarily divisive.

00:44:22.000 The people on campus who are divisive are not people like me.

00:44:25.000 The fact that one side is being called divisive while the other side's divisiveness is being ignored is kind of a problem.

00:44:31.000 Okay, well time for a couple of things that I like and then a couple of things that I hate.

00:44:36.000 So, things that I like today.

00:44:38.000 So last week I had the opportunity to sit down with Oren Kass in advance of his new book.

00:44:42.000 He has a new book out and it's called The Once and Future Worker.

00:44:45.000 It's a really interesting and I think useful book.

00:44:49.000 He and I have some significant disagreements on policy but Oren is one of the better thinkers in the conservative movement right now and one of the better thinkers overall.

00:44:56.000 He's a guy who actually is trying to address some of the problems of folks who are living in towns where jobs are being lost, where people are being left behind and here's what that interview sounded like.

00:45:07.000 So here we are for Things I Like Today.

00:45:08.000 I really wanted to talk with Oren Kass.

00:45:10.000 He's the author of The Once and Future Worker, which is just a fantastic book.

00:45:13.000 Now, as folks know when they listen to or watch the show, I never have guests on the program, like ever, ever, ever.

00:45:18.000 Oren is the first guest I've had in months.

00:45:20.000 And the reason for that is because Oren is not only one of the most intelligent commentators on the right, he's somebody who's actually thought through a lot of deep policy wonkish issues having to do with the future of the economy.

00:45:30.000 Oren, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:45:31.000 Thank you.

00:45:31.000 I'm glad we had a chair for me.

00:45:33.000 Exactly.

00:45:33.000 So the premise of The Once and Future Worker is that the kind of focus on free trade, globalization, free markets, all of that is fine, but it is missing the central point of that human beings need labor in order to feel meaning.

00:45:48.000 I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit.

00:45:50.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:45:51.000 You know, I think most of how we do economic policy, whether you're left of center or right of center, is just focused on consumer welfare.

00:45:58.000 How do we get enough stuff to people, and how do we make sure the amount of stuff you can buy keeps going up over time?

00:46:05.000 And that's important.

00:46:06.000 I don't want to minimize that, but what it leaves out is that people don't care only, or even mostly, about how much stuff they get.

00:46:13.000 It turns out that people care a tremendous amount about their ability to be a productive contributor, to have work that's meaningful to them, to be able to support a family, to be able to pass those values on to kids.

00:46:27.000 And when all you focus on is the consumer side, when you say more free trade is always better, no matter what it does to our industry, when you say it doesn't really matter if people are losing their jobs, we can write them a bigger check, expand the safety net.

00:46:41.000 You lose that.

00:46:42.000 And I think that's what we've seen in America.

00:46:44.000 We've gotten lots of GDP growth.

00:46:46.000 We keep expanding the safety net.

00:46:48.000 And yet on the things that really matter, community strength, family formation, mobility and opportunity for kids, that's not coming along with it.

00:46:58.000 And I think it's because we've lost that focus on work.

00:47:00.000 Now, on that last point, do you think that there's a possible reverse correlation, meaning that we actually lost meaning in churches and communities, and then when the economic loss hollowed the rest of it out, then we see this sort of broad depression across the country?

00:47:12.000 Or do you think it's the lack of jobs that leads to the decay of the social fabric?

00:47:16.000 In other words, does the decay of the social fabric predate the loss of jobs, or is it the loss of jobs that creates decay of the social fabric?

00:47:21.000 I think it goes both ways.

00:47:22.000 I think there have certainly been a lot of trends, especially since the 1960s, that are contributing to the decay of the social fabric, and they compound each other.

00:47:31.000 I think when you lose some of those other very values-oriented things, you lose people's commitment to working in some cases.

00:47:38.000 But I think it runs the other way also.

00:47:40.000 I think work really is foundational.

00:47:44.000 Two values transmission, two people's engagement and commitment to their communities.

00:47:49.000 We know from very good social science research that it is incredibly important to family formation, especially for men.

00:47:55.000 It's really important to family stability, especially for men.

00:47:58.000 And it's really important to the outcomes that children have.

00:48:01.000 So I think it's one of the key pieces.

00:48:04.000 And and especially importantly, if we're talking about kind of policy, what do we do?

00:48:08.000 I think it's the one where we can actually have effect.

00:48:11.000 I don't think we're going to Have a bunch of policy reforms that get people back into churches or that, you know, have those kinds of effects.

00:48:18.000 I do think we can really do a lot more on the policy front to build a labor market that's going to work for everybody.

00:48:24.000 Now, for conservatives, some of this sounds pretty scary just from the top, simply because, you know, we had Tucker Carlson on the Sunday Special a few weeks ago and Tucker was saying things like, well, in order to preserve jobs, let's just outlaw automated driving.

00:48:35.000 And Bernie Sanders has basically said, we need to regulate the economy, chain up the economy, make the economy work for us, and we'll tame the power of the savage beast and make it work for these jobs.

00:48:45.000 Whereas the traditional sort of libertarian view of economics is that jobs are a byproduct of consumerism, that it's essentially supply side, not demand side.

00:48:54.000 So with that being the case, where do you draw the line as to what is the policy balance?

00:49:00.000 I mean, are we looking at regulation of the economy?

00:49:01.000 Are we looking at tamping down free trade?

00:49:03.000 Where are the limitations that we're talking about collectively putting on the economy that scare the daylights out of people like me?

00:49:09.000 No, I think that's exactly the question.

00:49:10.000 And as you just said, the options that we have on the table that most people are talking about are either, let's just kind of keep doing what we're doing and do more redistribution, or let's somehow kind of regulate and force the market to be what we want it to.

00:49:25.000 And we know that that latter one, let's just yell at the market until we get something we like, doesn't work.

00:49:29.000 You get worse outcomes.

00:49:31.000 But I think what's really important to recognize, and where libertarianism and conservatism actually depart a little bit, Is that the labor market or any market, it's just a neutral thing.

00:49:43.000 A market's outcomes aren't inherently good or bad.

00:49:46.000 They're just reflecting the conditions that they're operating in.

00:49:50.000 And if you're a libertarian, you look at a market outcome and you say, whatever it is, it's good.

00:49:54.000 Per se, we like the market outcome as the desired result.

00:49:59.000 I think conservatism is a little bit more nuanced than that and says markets are a fantastic mechanism.

00:50:04.000 They protect freedom and choice.

00:50:06.000 They promote competition.

00:50:08.000 But if a market's landing in a place that's bad for society, that's not maintaining our social endowments, then that's a problem.

00:50:16.000 And the labor market is not like other markets, because the labor market is about people.

00:50:21.000 We can't be indifferent to where the labor market lands.

00:50:25.000 If where the labor market is landing is in a place where a lot of people don't have work, or a lot of regions can't find ways to stay viable, we can't say, well, that's the efficient solution.

00:50:34.000 We have to say, that's not good enough.

00:50:37.000 Um, but we don't say that's not good enough and therefore yell at it.

00:50:41.000 We have to take a step back and say, what are the conditions that are causing it to land here?

00:50:46.000 And how can we change those conditions in ways that would move it somewhere else?

00:50:50.000 So can you give me a couple examples of that?

00:50:52.000 Because again, it seems like it's pretty easy to run into sort of Bernie land here, um, where, you know, yelling at the market turns into actual regulation of the market or turns into high tariffs or, or a variety of Yeah, sure.

00:51:04.000 So one example is education.

00:51:05.000 And recognizing that the way that we train people as they are growing up is crucial to who can work and what kind of work they can do in the market.

00:51:11.000 redistributionist measures that would actually help. - Yeah, sure.

00:51:15.000 So one example is education.

00:51:18.000 And recognizing that the way that we train people as they are growing up is crucial to who can work and what kind of work they can do in the market.

00:51:27.000 Our education system today is focused entirely toward producing college graduates.

00:51:33.000 Our high schools are essentially now college prep academies.

00:51:36.000 We push people into college.

00:51:37.000 We massively subsidize keeping them there.

00:51:40.000 And yet, less than one in five people actually go smoothly high school, college, career.

00:51:46.000 Everyone else falls out somewhere along the way.

00:51:47.000 And if all you care about is getting economic growth, you could say, well, look, as long as those people who make it through are productive enough, we're going to be able to make everybody happy.

00:51:56.000 But what if we actually care about is those folks who are falling out along the way, the people who are barely completing high school, most people still won't complete a community college degree in this country.

00:52:08.000 If the question is, how can we make sure that they are productive and can support families also, you would do education differently.

00:52:14.000 You would say a much bigger focus in our high schools needs to be on people who aren't headed toward college, on getting people ready to be in the job market, giving them technical skills, actually getting them on the job and learning what it means to have a job.

00:52:27.000 A lot of the money that we spend subsidizing college would be much better spent subsidizing first jobs for people, getting them into the workforce.

00:52:35.000 Making employers want to invest in their training.

00:52:37.000 And so that's not picking winners and losers in the economy.

00:52:41.000 That's not Bernie Sanders style, you know, I order you to pay X amount.

00:52:47.000 That's saying if we want a labor market that works for more people, what are we doing to equip people to succeed in the labor market?

00:52:54.000 Well, folks, if you're interested in a book that is filled not just with problems, but with actual attempts at solutions, the book is The Once and Future Worker.

00:53:01.000 Oren Kass is the author, one of the best thinkers in America right now.

00:53:04.000 Oren, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:53:05.000 I really appreciate it.

00:53:06.000 Thank you.

00:53:06.000 Really appreciate it, too.

00:53:08.000 So what makes Oren really interesting is that, you know, he and I disagree, I think, on a fundamental level about what the labor market is for and the goods and bads of the labor market, but he's actually attempting to come up with some solutions in an open public forum with open public debate, and good for him for doing that.

00:53:22.000 Okay, time for a couple of quick things that I hate.

00:53:29.000 So as I suggested yesterday, the media were going to wildly miscover everything that is currently happening with regard to the Gaza Strip in Israel.

00:53:36.000 There were 400 rockets that fell yesterday in Israel.

00:53:39.000 No state worth its salt would stand for this sort of thing without significant Blowback and that significant blowback has not even come I mean Benjamin Netanyahu just had his defense minister resign on him Because the defense minister said that Netanyahu wasn't doing enough to defend the state of Israel the New York Times however because the New York Times New York Times is that it's like boxing They they their explainers are garbage the New York Times explainer of what just happened in Israel and Gaza Doesn't mention that Hamas is a designated terrorist organization 0.50

00:54:08.000 Which seems to be, like, you know, the key to the whole thing.

00:54:11.000 They don't mention the number of rockets that were fired at Israeli civilians, which is a thing that is the entire story.

00:54:17.000 So they don't mention that it's Hamas, and they don't mention the number of rockets, which is the only reason we are having the conversation at all.

00:54:22.000 Once again, and when it comes to the media's willingness to Go along with radical Muslim anti-Semitism because it fits into intersectional theory. 0.83

00:54:31.000 It's really quite gross. 0.96

00:54:31.000 I'm going to talk about this a lot at University of Pittsburgh tonight, but I think that it bears more repeating because it's pretty ridiculous on its face. 0.96

00:54:40.000 Other things that I hate today. 0.52

00:54:41.000 So this is just a terrible story.

00:54:43.000 Obviously, There's been a lot of media focus on a group of high school students in Baraboo, Wisconsin, who are holding up what appears to be a Nazi salute.

00:54:53.000 This is Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC talking about it.

00:54:56.000 I think it has a graphic of the actual photo.

00:54:58.000 There's the photo.

00:54:59.000 Okay, so the actual photo is a bunch of kids, some of whom seem to be holding up their right hand in a Nazi salute.

00:55:06.000 One kid in the front row is giving the, kind of, the OK sign, which has been interpreted as a white supremacist sign because 4chan white supremacists decided they were going to actually, you know, turn it into that.

00:55:17.000 So, there's debate over what exactly this photo shows.

00:55:20.000 So, the media have suggested that this is all these kids joining in a Nazi salute.

00:55:25.000 The photo, the photographer, he says that this was as innocent as the boys and girls going to the prom.

00:55:32.000 Gus' son, he's the photographer.

00:55:35.000 His son is one of the teens in the photo and he is a retired teacher.

00:55:39.000 He said he told the teens to wave goodbye heading off to the prom for the picture taken in May on the steps of the Souk County Courthouse.

00:55:46.000 One of the teens in the image, Jordan Blue, contradicted that account.

00:55:49.000 He says that Gust instructed the group of mostly white men to pose that way.

00:55:53.000 He said, I felt upset, unsafe, disappointed and scared.

00:55:55.000 I felt unsafe because I go to school with them.

00:55:57.000 I don't believe in what they represented and the symbol they shared.

00:55:59.000 They knew it was wrong, but they still did it.

00:56:01.000 So we don't actually know what happened in this photo at this time.

00:56:04.000 This group of overwhelmingly and nearly, indeed it appears to be universally, white kids in Upper Wisconsin throwing the Nazi salute.

00:56:14.000 Some kids are not, some are.

00:56:16.000 You know, until we actually hear all the facts, it's hard to say all these kids are actual Nazi sympathizers.

00:56:21.000 Here's where I think this is.

00:56:22.000 Here's where I think this is. 1.00

00:56:23.000 I think that people are idiots. 1.00

00:56:25.000 I think people do idiotic things a lot. 1.00

00:56:26.000 I don't think these kids are actual white supremacists. 1.00

00:56:28.000 I think that these kids have a lot to learn about throwing Nazi signs in a civilized society and what that means to folks. 0.56

00:56:36.000 You know, that that is actually a bad thing to do, that even when you do it parodically, you know, even when you're doing it as a joke, that it actually means something, and that it's a problem, and that you shouldn't be doing it, and that it's inherently offensive to throw a Nazi salute.

00:56:48.000 This is not a thing that should really be joked about.

00:56:52.000 However, do I really think that these kids are like going in the back room and they're lighting up the tiki torches for Richard Spencer or something?

00:56:57.000 No, I don't.

00:56:58.000 I think that probably what happened here is that both things were true.

00:57:01.000 My guess is that the photographer said to them, guys, wave like you're about to go to prom right now.

00:57:05.000 And then one of the kids said to the other kids, well, man, it looks like we're doing a Nazi salute.

00:57:08.000 And then the kids were like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

00:57:10.000 And they started doing that, right?

00:57:12.000 That would be my guess based on no evidence whatsoever.

00:57:15.000 But Is it true that people are ignorant of history? 0.75

00:57:18.000 Yes, it is true that people are ignorant of history. 1.00

00:57:20.000 Is it true that high school kids are stupid? 1.00

00:57:22.000 Yes, it is true that high school kids are stupid. 1.00

00:57:24.000 Is it also true that we in this country are going crazy over issues that should not raise to this level? 1.00

00:57:30.000 That this should not be a national issue when some high school students do a dumb thing that involves no violence against anybody?

00:57:37.000 You know, I think it's overblown. 0.99

00:57:39.000 I think that as a person who's not fond of Nazis, right, I think that this is overblown, and while these kids need better education, I'm not sure why this is being featured on national news broadcasts when a local high school has a bunch of students who are 17 years old who are morons. 0.98

00:57:54.000 Like, why is that a thing? 0.94

00:57:56.000 And when the story hasn't even been fully fleshed out yet, when basically it's a couple of competing stories about what exactly happened here.

00:58:03.000 Okay, so we will be back here tomorrow, tonight.

00:58:06.000 Again, if you're over near Pittsburgh, we are speaking at the University of Pittsburgh.

00:58:09.000 And when I say we, I mean the Royal We.

00:58:10.000 I am speaking at the University of Pittsburgh.

00:58:13.000 And I'm going to be like an athlete.

00:58:14.000 Ben Shapiro is speaking at the University of Pittsburgh.

00:58:17.000 So you can go check that out tonight.

00:58:19.000 Hope to see you there.

00:58:19.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:58:20.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:58:25.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:58:31.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:58:35.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:58:37.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

00:58:38.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:58:40.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 14, 2018

Congress Will Be Fun! | Ep. 660

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