The Ben Shapiro Show - Dave Chappelle Has LOST IT

00:00:00.000 More details on the transgender person who shot members of his family. 1.00

00:00:04.000 Why won't the media cover it?

00:00:05.000 Plus, Dave Chappelle pays tribute to Alex Pretty, that was the activist and agitator who was shot by ICE.

00:00:12.000 And we have the CBS news controversy, Stephen Colbert trying to get himself fired first.

00:00:17.000 If you are the kind of person who checks reviews before you commit, go take a look at the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.

00:00:24.000 And if you scroll episode by episode, something crazy happens.

00:00:26.000 The scores keep on going up.

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00:00:38.000 One request: watch it on the biggest screen you can find.

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00:00:45.000 Episode six of the Pendragon cycle, Rise of the Merlin, premieres tomorrow only on Dailywire Plus.

00:00:50.000 New details are now emerging about the Rhode Island father who murdered his ex-wife and one of their sons.

00:00:57.000 The big story with regard to this particular shooter, of course, he was an identified transgender person.

00:01:03.000 And it turns out there are new details about this shooter.

00:01:07.000 Apparently, this person who was named Robert but called himself Roberta and is 56 years old had inked a large SS symbol on his right arm representing the Schutzstaffel paramilitary organization under Nazi Germany.

00:01:20.000 This is what the picture looks like.

00:01:22.000 Apparently, he was buying a happy birthday balloon with his SS gigantic tattoo.

00:01:29.000 Obviously, you recognize the skull there from also Graham Plattner's chest.

00:01:33.000 That would be the Senate candidate in Maine for the Democratic Party.

00:01:38.000 According to the ADL in Nazi Germany, the death's head was a symbol of one of the branches of the SS whose purpose was to guard the concentration camps.

00:01:45.000 This particular shooter also had a long history of spewing anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric on social media, according to the New York Post.

00:01:53.000 He repeatedly referenced white power and white pride worldwide and also retweeted footage of people doing the Sieg Heil salute.

00:02:01.000 He replied to a video praising Adolf Hitler, saying, really nice, but a bleep, and the bleep would be a slur for Asian person, made that song. 0.82

00:02:10.000 And of course, the night before he shot up an ice hockey rink and killed family members, he had posted with regard to a post from Kevin Sorbo that Sarah McBride is actually a man named Tim McBride.

00:02:24.000 He wrote back, keep bashing us, but do not wonder why we go berserk.

00:02:28.000 Why is this important?

00:02:29.000 It's important because it turns out that the vast majority of the legacy media are not covering this.

00:02:33.000 They're not covering this.

00:02:34.000 Again, only certain ideologically motivated attacks are worthwhile for the New York Times to cover.

00:02:40.000 And when it turns out that there has been a spate of mentally ill transgender people who are killing people, it turns out that the left-wing media, the legacy media, will simply ignore it to the best of its possible ability. 0.91

00:02:52.000 This is point being made by John Nolte over at Breitbart.

00:02:55.000 He says the far left New York Times is as good as spreading disinformation by refusing to report that the alleged Rhode Island ice hockey shooter was a transsexual.

00:03:03.000 The Times printed a story 800 words long.

00:03:05.000 Five so-called reporters were needed. 0.59

00:03:08.000 As close as the time was willing to come was this paragraph: quote, at a later news conference on Monday night, Chief Goncalves said that the shooter's birth name was Robert.

00:03:17.000 She added the person also went by the name of Roberta, but did not provide further explanation.

00:03:22.000 Well, I mean, we are in the middle of a national debate right now about the rise, the shocking rise of violence done by transgender people, people who are self-identified transgender. 1.00

00:03:33.000 So it would seem a little bit relevant that this particular shooting, which was done by a person who was transgender, had had sex reassignment surgeries to no avail because it looks very much like a bulky dude and who was in the middle of a nasty divorce with his wife, who apparently correctly noted that he was narcissistic and had mental problems.

00:03:54.000 When the media ignore this kind of stuff, they are only ignoring it for one reason, and that is that the narrative is more important than the reality.

00:04:00.000 And this speaks to the broader left-wing problem these days.

00:04:02.000 The broader left-wing problem these days is that narrative is more important than reality.

00:04:07.000 And this is true everywhere from the media to celebrity culture to the Democratic Party itself.

00:04:13.000 We get with the big media controversy of the day.

00:04:16.000 That, of course, is occurring at CBS.

00:04:18.000 So, CBS is experiencing all sorts of anger, internal rage.

00:04:25.000 Somebody needs to prescribe some amebrazol over there because everybody's got heartburn.

00:04:30.000 Stephen Colbert is very upset because CBS did an interview with James Tallarico on CBS.

00:04:38.000 And James Tallarico is the probable Senate nominee for the Democrats in Texas.

00:04:44.000 According to the Calci market, 75% of people in that Calci market believe that Tallarico will be the nominee, not Jasmine Crockett.

00:04:52.000 Tallerico has been highly touted by a wide variety of people on the political spectrum, including, of course, Joe Rogan, whose show he appeared on.

00:05:00.000 And CBS spiked the interview.

00:05:02.000 And the reason that they spiked the interview is because they were afraid of the so-called equal time rule.

00:05:08.000 Because the FCC says that, particularly if you are in a Senate primary, for example, that if you provide time to one candidate, you also have to provide time to the other candidate, equal time to the other candidate.

00:05:20.000 And CBS said, we don't want to provide equal time to, say, Jasmine Crockett or some other fringe candidate. 0.99

00:05:25.000 So we're not going to air the interview.

00:05:28.000 Well, Colbert then went on the air and ripped into CBS.

00:05:30.000 At this point, Stephen Colbert wants to be fired.

00:05:33.000 And I assume that at some point he will be fired and they will have to replace him in the job market.

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00:06:54.000 He goes on the air after this interview is spiked, and it was spiked, as we will explore in a moment, for a fairly decent legal reason.

00:07:01.000 And he proceeds to rip into CBS.

00:07:03.000 And by the way, CBS allows this to air.

00:07:07.000 You might have heard of this thing called the equal time rule.

00:07:09.000 Okay, it's an old FCC rule that applies only to radio and broadcast television, not cable or streaming, that says if a show has a candidate on during an election, they have to have all that candidate's opponents on as well.

00:07:21.000 It's the FCC's most time-honored rule, right after no nipples at the Super Bowl. 0.68

00:07:29.000 There's long been an exception for this rule, an exception for news interviews and talk show interviews with politicians.

00:07:37.000 Now, that's crucial.

00:07:39.000 How else were voters supposed to know back in 92 that Bill Clinton sucked at Saxophone?

00:07:44.000 But on January 21st of this year, a letter was released by FCC chairman and smug bowling pin, Brendan Carr.

00:07:53.000 In this letter, Carr said he was thinking about dropping the exception for talk shows because he said some of them were motivated by partisan purposes.

00:08:02.000 Well, sir, you're chairman of the FCC, so FCCU.

00:08:10.000 Okay, so by the way, Brendan Carr is right.

00:08:13.000 Stephen Colbert obviously is motivated by partisan purposes.

00:08:16.000 When was the last time he had a major Republican guest?

00:08:20.000 Can you name it?

00:08:21.000 Truly.

00:08:22.000 When has he invited on a major Republican guest?

00:08:25.000 And treated that person, by the way, if he did, with the same sort of kid gloves with which he treats Democrats.

00:08:31.000 Every day on the Stephen Colbert show is basically an ad for some Democrat or other.

00:08:36.000 It is just MS Now, but with some bad jokes.

00:08:41.000 Well, CBS responded by saying the late show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Representative James Tallarico.

00:08:48.000 The show has provided legal guidance that the broadcast could trigger the FCC equal time rule for two other candidates, including Representative Jasmine Crockett, and presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.

00:08:59.000 The late show decided to present the interview through its YouTube channel with on-air promotion on the broadcast rather than potentially providing the equal time options.

00:09:07.000 So first, Colbert and team sort of tried to retail the lie that they would not allow, that the FCC had overtly banned CBS from airing the interview.

00:09:17.000 That is not true.

00:09:18.000 Then he tried to retail the lie that CBS banned the interview with Tallarico because what, they were afraid of Tallarico and they were saying that if he aired it with Tallarico, then presumably he would also have to have on a Republican like a John Cornyn or a Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race.

00:09:31.000 That is not what the equal time rule says.

00:09:32.000 They're in the middle of a primary season.

00:09:34.000 He would have had to have on another Democrat, Representative Jasmine Crockett. 1.00

00:09:38.000 And the late show itself, like the producers, decided not to promote that interview on the air because then they would have to do the same for other Democrats.

00:09:47.000 For what it's worth, for what it's worth, Tallarico is basically just straight Pete Buttigieg.

00:09:53.000 That is his entire shtick, down to the pastor Pete routine.

00:09:57.000 So one of the most irritating facets of the Pete Budigedge for president campaign, if you can remember back that far, since every day in American politics is now charted in dog years, if you remember the Pete Buttigieg presidential run, the thing that irritated me most is when he would cite the Bible to say completely non-biblical things, where he would suddenly turn into your world's worst Sunday school teacher, explaining to you that the Bible has nothing to say about issues ranging from same-sex marriage to abortion,

00:10:24.000 and that basically it's just a social justice document drafted by the Democratic National Committee.

00:10:28.000 Well, now James Tallarico is doing the same exact thing.

00:10:31.000 He's out there claiming that you're a bad Christian if you believe that, for example, same-sex marriage is non-biblical.

00:10:38.000 For the record, same-sex marriage is non-biblical.

00:10:40.000 There are many books of the Bible that reference this, not least of which is Leviticus.

00:10:46.000 But here is James Tallarico trying to do the pastor Pete routine.

00:10:51.000 Jesus gave us two commandments, love God and love neighbor.

00:10:55.000 And there was no exception to that second commandment.

00:10:58.000 Love thy neighbor regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation.

00:11:06.000 And it's why I have fought so hard for the separation of church and state in the state capitol in Texas.

00:11:14.000 I'm sorry, when Democrats try to retail their own religiosity on the basis of Jesus apparently was a post-religious figure who is in favor of secular humanism.

00:11:25.000 I may not be a New Testament expert, but it seems to me that Jesus was, in his human form, a Jew growing up under biblical law, and that Jesus then, as the creator of Christianity, proceeded to suggest that people ought to follow the precepts of Christianity rather exclusively.

00:11:46.000 I feel like it's a rather non-controversial take on the Bible.

00:11:49.000 But the shtick that Democrats do where they can't just say, listen, they don't do the old school Bill Clinton routine.

00:11:54.000 It's amazing how far Democrats have moved in my lifetime.

00:11:57.000 Democrats used to do this routine where they would say, sure, the Bible says that abortion is bad, that Christianity says abortion is bad, long-standing, several thousand-year-old doctrine that abortion is not a good, and that same-sex marriage is not a thing, and that homosexual activity is a sin, right?

00:12:12.000 Like these are long-standing religious traditions, but we have separation of church and state.

00:12:17.000 And so, in terms of public policy, I don't make public policy on the basis of biblical law because this is not a theocracy.

00:12:23.000 That used to be the Democratic stance, which I think is weak when it comes to trying to make peace with Christians, but at least is arguable.

00:12:32.000 The new Democratic stance is that the Bible is somehow a document that greenlights same-sex marriage and encourages abortion.

00:12:40.000 And that if you truly were a Christian, you would be in favor of all these things.

00:12:44.000 When Tallarico says, love thy neighbor means love thy neighbor regardless of immigration status or sexual orientation, when the Bible says that, what it means is that you are supposed to love thy neighbor as thyself, but you are not supposed to love his sin.

00:12:59.000 In fact, you are not supposed to place a stumbling block in front of the blind, another biblical injunction, which is commonly presumed to mean that you are not supposed to allow your neighbor to go without redress if he is sinning.

00:13:12.000 You're supposed to warn him.

00:13:13.000 That is a biblical injunction to warn your neighbor if he is sinning.

00:13:18.000 But again, it's all about the virtue signaling for the Democrats.

00:13:21.000 And so back to CBS again.

00:13:22.000 What's happening at CBS right now is an attempt to basically scuttle the ownership change at CBS and also to go after Barry Weiss at CBS News.

00:13:31.000 It is all a virtue signaling point.

00:13:32.000 It has nothing to do with reality.

00:13:35.000 Democratic lawmakers, for their part, are suggesting they're now going to investigate CBS.

00:13:43.000 Representative Darren Soto of Florida accused Brendan Carr of blocking Democratic candidates as part of his reign on unlawful censorship, vowing a reckoning is coming and including an investigation of this outrage by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

00:13:56.000 Woo-hoo, the vaunted House Energy and Commerce Committee, an investigation?

00:14:01.000 By the way, it just shows you what Democrats are going to do with Congress if they happen to win in 2026, which is shut everything down.

00:14:06.000 I mean, basically, it's going to be investigations out the wazoo.

00:14:09.000 Nothing will happen ever again.

00:14:10.000 Meanwhile, Anderson Cooper is doing the same routine.

00:14:13.000 So he is leaving at 60 Minutes.

00:14:14.000 He actually was given an offer by CBS News to remain, but apparently he is turning that down.

00:14:21.000 You would assume the reason he's turning that down is his sort of a soft slap at Barry Weiss and her takeover of CBS News.

00:14:30.000 He put out a statement, quote, being a correspondent at 60 Minutes has been one of the highlights of my career.

00:14:34.000 I got to tell amazing stories and work with some of the best producers, editors, and camera crews in the business.

00:14:39.000 For nearly 20 years, I've been able to balance my jobs at CNN and CBS, but I have little kids now and I want to spend as much time with them as possible while they want to spend time with me.

00:14:47.000 So I imagine that sometime in the near future, he will come out with his ringing critique of Barry Weiss and the Ellisons.

00:14:55.000 And it is all about the virtue signaling for the Democrats.

00:14:58.000 It is not about reality.

00:14:59.000 Speaking of which, Dave Chappelle has become increasingly unfunny, which is sad to say because Dave Chappelle is unbelievably talented.

00:15:06.000 If you watch some of his earlier specials, he's an amazing storyteller.

00:15:10.000 I'm not sure that there has ever been a comedian who has as good a story, just a pure storyteller as Dave Chappelle.

00:15:16.000 But increasingly, he's sort of just steering into left-wing wokeness and jokes that are predicated on the idea that he is a rebel for saying things that are essentially in the DNC charter.

00:15:29.000 Well, over the last 48 hours, Dave Chappelle decided that it would be worthwhile to lay flowers at a memorial for anti-ICE activist Alex Predi.

00:15:37.000 He visited the Alex Predi Memorial over in Minnesota, did Dave Chappelle.

00:15:44.000 Here we go.

00:15:50.000 Cameras are following him.

00:15:51.000 There he is delivering his flowers.

00:15:51.000 A lot of cameras there.

00:15:56.000 Now, of course, he is doing this for the cameras, Dave Chappelle.

00:15:59.000 Clearly, when you're a person as famous as Dave Chappelle, you are doing this for a reason.

00:16:05.000 And the goal here, of course, is to serve as a critique of the Trump administration and their immigration policy.

00:16:13.000 So why is he doing that?

00:16:14.000 The answer, of course, is to signal.

00:16:16.000 It is a virtue signal to his liberal audience that he is one of them.

00:16:19.000 He's not the first comedian who had been sort of given soft treatment by the right who has done this.

00:16:23.000 Bill Burr, of course, has done this repeatedly.

00:16:25.000 Bill Burr made the fatal career mistake of becoming somewhat popular on the right to center rights.

00:16:32.000 And then he decided he had to swivel hard left in order to show all of his friends where he really stood.

00:16:36.000 Chappelle is doing some of the same stuff.

00:16:38.000 The reason I find this hypocritical and ridiculous, of course, is that when it comes to, say, immigration issues, Dave Chappelle standing up against ICE for tossing illegal immigrants, kind of a fascinating take from a dude who in 2022, quite famously, rebelled against his HOA because they were going to build some affordable housing in the general area.

00:16:59.000 He showed up at a village council meeting in Ohio to protest the construction of a residential community on a 52-acre plot just north of his house and proceeded to basically yell at everybody at the city council.

00:17:11.000 So you want to see NIMBYism in action? 0.55

00:17:13.000 NIMBYism in action is illegal immigration, broad scale.

00:17:17.000 I should stop enforcing it, but never should you ever build affordable housing within general eyesight of my home.

00:17:27.000 Dave Chappelle attended a public hearing in the Ohio village he lives in to oppose a housing development plan.

00:17:33.000 So at the meeting, Dave threatened to pull a restaurant and comedy club he plans to build in the town of Yellow Springs.

00:17:39.000 If the proposal, which included affordable housing, went through, let's watch.

00:17:44.000 I cannot believe you would make me audition for you.

00:17:48.000 You look like clowns.

00:17:50.000 I am not muffling.

00:17:52.000 I will take it all off the table.

00:17:54.000 That's all.

00:17:54.000 Thank you.

00:17:57.000 So, yes, that one.

00:17:59.000 I mean, NIMBYism at its finest.

00:18:01.000 But unfortunately, this has become the essence of the Democratic Party from, again, the media to celebrity culture to the party itself.

00:18:08.000 Celebrity culture, by the way, Spike Lee made a fool of himself.

00:18:12.000 One of the most overrated directors in modern American history, Spike Lee.

00:18:16.000 He went to the Intuit Dome in Southern California for the NBA All-Star Game, and he decided that he was going to wear a pro-Palestinian look, a shirt that was based on the Palestinian Kathiya, as well as a purse, which I'm sure would be well received in the Gaza Strip, a purse, a man purse, with a strap with the Palestinian flag upon it.

00:18:37.000 Why did he do that?

00:18:39.000 Well, the reason that he did that is because for the first time, an Israeli player actually made the all-star game, a guy named Denny Avdia, who plays for the Portland Trailblazers.

00:18:48.000 And so Spike Lee was obviously, I mean, what a schmuck.

00:18:51.000 Seriously, a dude from a country that you're not fond of makes an all-star game and you decide that you have to protest it.

00:18:57.000 But this is who the Democrats are.

00:18:59.000 Now, Spike Lee, if he is going to spend his time critiquing other countries, maybe he should spend some time in some of the worst parts of the world so he could be a little bit more grateful for Western civilization.

00:19:09.000 But while he's traveling to those terrible parts of the world, perhaps he should protect his internet activity the way you should when you travel with, you know what I'm going to say, ExpressVPN.

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00:20:19.000 I keep saying this on a broad level, but it happens to be true.

00:20:21.000 So the New York Times just did a focus group on the Democratic Party among Democrats.

00:20:29.000 And people were asked, what word would you use to describe the Democratic Party?

00:20:34.000 People said, sold out, afraid, paralyzed.

00:20:37.000 So the focus group was 13 Democratic voters.

00:20:40.000 And according to the New York Times, participants in our group weren't unclear about what the party stands for, the greater good and the protection of civil rights, but many also expressed dissatisfaction with a lack of resolve this past year during shutdown fights, as well as more broadly.

00:20:53.000 Even recognizing that there isn't always much Democrats can do out of power, people wanted more action and more aggression, especially if and when Democrats take power again.

00:21:02.000 In particular, they wanted candidates who were young, progressive, and from a more modest or working class background with clear and simple messages.

00:21:08.000 As for the Democrats who are standing out to these people, Jasmine Crockett, Pete Budijej, Zorhan Mamdani, Gavin Newsom, many of them are ones who have made a point in appearing in combative media environments.

00:21:19.000 So, bottom line is: what Democrats want at this point, what the Democratic base wants at this point, is people who shout at the walls.

00:21:26.000 They want people who virtue signal.

00:21:28.000 Whenever you spot an uptick in the supply of a product, you should also look for an uptick in the demand for that product.

00:21:34.000 And the reason that you are seeing performative outrage from Democrats across the spectrum in the elected sphere and in celebrity culture is because they feel that this is what the people want from them.

00:21:46.000 Democratic voters are frustrated with the dominance of President Trump.

00:21:50.000 And so they are interested in politicians who are going to channel that anger and that outrage, apparently, in the dumbest possible ways.

00:21:58.000 Not only that, it turns out that the people who are outrage programmed are the ones who are going to vote in primaries and fund a lot of the Democratic projects, which is why the Democratic Party systemically has a problem where it can't moderate.

00:22:12.000 Alicia Nieves has a piece over at Compact magazine called Why the Democratic Party Can't Moderate.

00:22:19.000 And she points out that the Democratic Party structurally has a major problem.

00:22:22.000 Quote: Because the state Democratic Party does not centralize candidate funding, candidates must build their own donor networks.

00:22:28.000 That means seeking support from national progressive organizations and PACs that have the resources to fill the gap.

00:22:34.000 To access this funding, my candidate and I spent hours completing detailed questionnaires that functioned as ideological purity tests.

00:22:40.000 The answers determined whether we would receive money and how much.

00:22:43.000 It also required us to place their organizational logos on the campaign's websites and display their form endorsement on social media channels.

00:22:49.000 This meant adopting positions and messaging crafted by outside groups, often centered on abortion rights, LGBTQ issues, or national cultural debates that were not the dominant concerns of district voters.

00:23:00.000 Our district, writes Alicia Nievs, covering large portions of San Antonio's South Side, home to a working-class, socially conservative Hispanic population that was focused on jobs, public safety, and affordability.

00:23:12.000 This is a major problem for the Democrats.

00:23:13.000 By the way, it's a problem for the Republicans too, as I think will become apparent in coming years.

00:23:18.000 The truth is that the political parties have never been weaker.

00:23:21.000 And because they are weak, you have outside interest groups that are basically dictating the speed and tenor with which positions are adopted.

00:23:28.000 And that's how you have normally fringe players like, say, Azoran Mondani becoming mayor of New York.

00:23:34.000 Your Azorin Mondani update, by the way, Democrats are very warm on Zoran Mondani these days.

00:23:39.000 Well, he has just announced a $127 billion budget proposal, $127 billion.

00:23:48.000 So, how exactly is he going to pay for all that?

00:23:51.000 You know where this is going.

00:23:52.000 You know where it's going.

00:23:53.000 Yep, he's going to raise your taxes.

00:23:56.000 These are the kinds of reserves that what we would rather do is ensure that they remain as they are so that the city can be on firm financial footing.

00:24:04.000 However, in order to get to this point of closing the gap on both this fiscal year and the next fiscal year, we are forced to raid the Rainy Day Fund, the Retiree Health Benefits Trust Reserve, and to increase property taxes across these other years.

00:24:19.000 So remember that time that he said he was going to reduce the rents?

00:24:22.000 So he's going to reduce the rents by increasing the rents.

00:24:24.000 Because guess what happens when you increase property taxes?

00:24:26.000 What do you think happens?

00:24:28.000 That's right.

00:24:28.000 The rents go up.

00:24:30.000 Yes.

00:24:31.000 Well done once again, Democratic Socialists of America.

00:24:34.000 You've lowered the prices by raising the prices.

00:24:34.000 You've done it.

00:24:37.000 By the way, how much money is he spending?

00:24:39.000 Well, by way of contrast, in 2001, Rudy Giuliani's budget was $38.5 billion, and his revenue was $38.5 billion.

00:24:48.000 Fast forward to 2014 under communist Bill de Blasio, the budget was $72.7 billion, revenue was $73 billion.

00:24:56.000 Eric Adams dramatically increased the budget, $118 billion, revenue, $119 billion as of 2025.

00:25:02.000 And now Mamdani is raising it again, $127 billion.

00:25:05.000 His revenue projected creates a $5.4 billion gap.

00:25:10.000 So how is he going to fix that supposed crisis?

00:25:12.000 Again, a crisis that exists only because of his insane overspending, a property tax hike on everybody, and forcing the state to fill in the gap if they don't want to see the property taxes hiked.

00:25:22.000 So he's basically trying to blackmail the state government to push a wealth tax in order to avoid him property taxing everybody in New York.

00:25:29.000 Congrats to New Yorkers.

00:25:31.000 You have done a wonderful job of absolutely screwing yourselves.

00:25:34.000 Just well done.

00:25:35.000 Truly well done.

00:25:38.000 The 9.5% property tax hike would affect all owners and indirectly all renters.

00:25:43.000 He also announced that he would be drawing down his rainy day fund and his retiree health trust.

00:25:48.000 Oh, you geniuses, you.

00:25:50.000 You've done it again.

00:25:53.000 People get what they deserve in politics, and New York City is no exception.

00:25:58.000 Joining me on the line is Jason Riley.

00:26:00.000 He's a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

00:26:04.000 His new book, The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed, is available right now.

00:26:09.000 Jason, thanks so much for the time.

00:26:10.000 Really appreciate it.

00:26:12.000 Thanks for having me.

00:26:14.000 So obviously, Jesse Jackson passed away over the course of the last couple of days.

00:26:20.000 His legacy has been treated as an unvarnished good, mostly by the legacy media.

00:26:26.000 There's some on the right who have obviously been critical of his legacy.

00:26:28.000 You've been following Jesse Jackson and his career for a very long time.

00:26:31.000 What do you make of Jesse Jackson?

00:26:33.000 Obviously, we're trying to be respectful because the man just passed away, but what was his legacy?

00:26:39.000 Well, it's complicated, Ben, because it starts out in the 1960s.

00:26:45.000 He's one of the youngest allies of Martin Luther King, and that's really how he got a start.

00:26:50.000 And then, of course, you have the years in which he ran for president, 1984, 1988.

00:26:56.000 And he did inspire a lot of black people to become more politically engaged.

00:27:01.000 I was in high school in 1988, and I recall a lot of black friends who volunteered for his campaign and so forth.

00:27:09.000 And we're very excited to see a viable black presidential candidate.

00:27:14.000 But the reason his legacy is so complicated, Ben, is because after that, he really turned to what I'd have to call racial hustling.

00:27:24.000 And that is his other legacy.

00:27:26.000 He began an organization that essentially went around shaking down businesses in particular and Wall Street businesses, especially for money.

00:27:36.000 They would pay him to go away.

00:27:39.000 He would criticize them until they paid up, and then he would go away and move on to the next company.

00:27:46.000 And he became a very wealthy man doing this over the years, over the decades.

00:27:53.000 And that, unfortunately, is one of his legacies.

00:27:55.000 And the reason it's unfortunate is because when one of the most prominent black people in the country is known as a shakedown artist, it's not particularly helpful to other blacks in terms of their image among other people in the country.

00:28:11.000 And that is what I think is one of the reasons his legacy is so complicated.

00:28:16.000 And he had been a controversial, obviously, even in the circles that Martin Luther King traveled in from very early on, because he had been telling stories out of school about how he had been the person cradling Martin Luther King when he died after he'd been shot.

00:28:28.000 It turned out that he was actually downstairs and he wasn't, he was in the building, but he wasn't actually the person who was cradling Martin Luther King at the time.

00:28:35.000 That was a big controversy at the time when he was the person in charge of Operation Breadbasket, which was a program that was started by Martin Luther King Jr. in order to achieve more minority hiring with businesses that heretofore had not been hiring enough black people.

00:28:48.000 There were allegations that there was some financial impropriety there.

00:28:52.000 And of course, he also brought Al Sharpton to the public scene in 1969 when he actually hired him to direct Operation Breadbasket.

00:29:01.000 So there have been some questions about Jesse Jackson going back a pretty long time.

00:29:05.000 Oh, yes, absolutely.

00:29:06.000 And you're right.

00:29:07.000 It starts right there with the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, where Ralph Abernathy, another lieutenant and really mentor of Martin Luther King, disputed Jesse Jackson's account of what happened on that day.

00:29:22.000 So it does go back a long ways.

00:29:24.000 He was someone who was known as a self-aggrandizer, a big self-promoter.

00:29:29.000 And you mentioned L. Sharpton and some others there.

00:29:31.000 And that's another part of his legacy.

00:29:34.000 I say that Jesse Jackson was one of the leading figures in what became a sort of racial grievance industry in this country.

00:29:43.000 Sharpton also epitomized this.

00:29:45.000 They made a lot of money blaming all black problems on white people, on white racism, and really doing things that helped themselves personally rather than blacks broadly, as King had.

00:29:57.000 I mean, it's easy to tell you what Martin Luther King's legacy is.

00:30:01.000 I mean, it's the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

00:30:04.000 It's the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

00:30:06.000 But what is Sharpton's legacy?

00:30:08.000 What is Jesse Jackson's legacy?

00:30:10.000 That's much, much more difficult.

00:30:12.000 The other thing that Jackson epitomized is really all that went wrong with the civil rights leadership starting in the 1960s.

00:30:22.000 King and his generation was all about colorblindness.

00:30:26.000 It was about equal opportunity.

00:30:30.000 Jackson transformed this into racial preferences, special treatment, not equal treatment, special treatment.

00:30:38.000 And in doing so, black civil rights leaders lost a lot of allies that they previously had.

00:30:45.000 Jewish organizations among them had been side by side marching with King and so forth.

00:30:50.000 But when the shift moved to special treatment instead of equal treatment, a lot of these former allies says, we can no longer stand with you on this.

00:30:59.000 And Jackson was part of that generation that led that shift in emphasis.

00:31:04.000 And it's unfortunate because what Jackson and others thought was necessary was more black political power per se, particularly after the Voting Rights Act passed.

00:31:13.000 They thought that all of these racial gaps in this country would be closed if we could just get more of our own people in office, more black elected officials.

00:31:22.000 That was part of his presidential run.

00:31:24.000 That was also part of Obama's presidential run later.

00:31:27.000 And we found out today, we know from experience that the problems that ail the black community are not necessarily going to be solved by a black president or by more black elected officials.

00:31:40.000 We've had black people running large cities with large black populations for decades now.

00:31:45.000 But if you look at Marion Berry's Washington, D.C., or Coleman Young's Detroit, or Sharp James's Newark or David Dinkins' New York and on and on and on, what you see in many cases is the black poor becoming more impoverished on the watch of these black mayors and governors and senators and congressmen and so forth.

00:32:05.000 So that is not necessarily what is going to fix what ails the black community. 1.00

00:32:10.000 I've long said that black people need much more a black man in the home than they do a black man in the White House.

00:32:17.000 And I think Obama's presidency proved that to be the case.

00:32:20.000 But what really got that ball running, I think, was Jesse Jackson's runs for president back in the 1980s, where he put out there this idea that what black people really need is more black political power in this country, and that will solve these problems.

00:32:36.000 One of the things that really is sort of fascinating about Jackson's career and the transformations politically that you're mentioning is that running as a person who wanted sort of economic redistributionism, which is something that obviously MLK Jr. is very much in favor of, right?

00:32:49.000 Those of us who are on the right love the individualistic message of MLK Jr., but we're not necessarily fond of his idea of how much government should intervene in the economy.

00:32:57.000 But that was transformed by people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton into, as you mentioned, a sort of racial grievance industry.

00:33:04.000 And that manifested itself in Jackson and in Sharpton in a fair bit of anti-Jewish baiting that happened largely in the 1980s and early 1990s.

00:33:12.000 Famously, Jesse Jackson was caught on tape in 1984 using slurs with regards to New York, with regard to Jews.

00:33:17.000 And you mentioned the sort of distancing that happened between the Jewish community and the black community as a result.

00:33:22.000 And I think one of the things that's fascinating about our modern politics is how the Democratic Party seems to have almost embraced the grievance-based politics of a Jesse Jackson circa 1984 or 1988 over the redistributionism that was actually preached by many of the civil rights leaders in the 1960s.

00:33:39.000 They moved away from the sort of class-based argument that was being made on the left by a lot of racial civil rights leaders, and they moved toward a more race-based consciousness that has now infused the entire Democratic Party and really torn apart the country in some pretty dark ways.

00:33:56.000 And as I say, your Jacksons and Sharptons led the charge here. 0.80

00:33:56.000 Absolutely. 0.80

00:34:00.000 And it's been very lucrative.

00:34:02.000 I think that's one of the reasons it's been sustained for so long.

00:34:07.000 You can make a very good living in this country if you're a black person who goes around blaming all problems in the black community on white people.

00:34:15.000 Black politicians use this to get people to the polls. 0.83

00:34:19.000 You know, Jim Crow 2.0, voter ID laws, it's all the same. 0.90

00:34:24.000 Nothing's changed.

00:34:25.000 That's been the message coming out of the black left for a long, long time. 1.00

00:34:30.000 I'm more optimistic that it's starting to work less and less, Ben.

00:34:34.000 I don't think that it has the resonance that it once did.

00:34:38.000 Even organizations like Black Lives Matter, I think, have lost a lot of credibility with the general public by playing from the songbook that was written largely by the Jesse Jacksons out there.

00:34:50.000 So I'm optimistic that it isn't working as well.

00:34:53.000 You're right, it is divisive.

00:34:56.000 And also, it doesn't help black people broadly.

00:34:59.000 I mean, what the civil rights leadership needed to focus on after those tremendous gains, the Civil Rights Act of 64 and the Voting Rights Act of 65, were preparing the black underclass in particular to take advantage of these opportunities.

00:35:14.000 That means developing attitudes that are conducive to upward mobility in terms of attitudes towards school, attitudes towards the rule of law and crime, attitudes towards marriage and raising children and so forth.

00:35:28.000 These are sort of cultural transformations that had to take place.

00:35:31.000 And instead, I think the black community and the black leadership, I should say, in particular, took their eye off the ball and started pulling all of their eggs in this basket of seeking more political power per se as the answer to these problems. 1.00

00:35:45.000 And we've learned the hard way that that was simply the wrong way to go.

00:35:50.000 My name is Jason Riley, Senior Fellow at Manhattan Institute and columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

00:35:54.000 Go check out his book, The Affirmative Action Myth, Why Blacks Don't Need Racial Preferences to Succeed. 0.93

00:35:58.000 Jason, thanks so much for the time and the insight.

00:36:01.000 Thank you.

00:36:02.000 Meanwhile, again, because the Democratic Party is dominated by radicals, they can't disconnect from their own radicalism on immigration either.

00:36:08.000 You've seen them try to make some moves toward this, saying that President Trump is right about closing the border, that Joe Biden went too far and all the rest.

00:36:15.000 But the reality is that when forced to the mat, Democrats will always come out in favor of sanctuary cities and soft on the border policies.

00:36:23.000 Philadelphia Mayor Sherelle Parker was asked a basic question yesterday about sanctuary cities.

00:36:27.000 She couldn't even answer that.

00:36:29.000 What does the term sanctuary city mean to you, Mayor?

00:36:34.000 What I want to tell you about Philadelphia, and this is extremely important, that you, Claudia Vargas, have been provided an answer to the question that you just asked from our city solicitor.

00:36:54.000 Philadelphia, that means the chief lawyer for the city of Philadelphia.

00:36:58.000 Renee Garcia is our city solicitor.

00:37:02.000 And what we are, the term we use to describe our city, is that we are a welcoming city.

00:37:11.000 Oh, it's a welcoming city, a welcoming city for the drug addicts down in Kensington, by the way, which is just go view the episode that we did, Divided States of Biden, where we went to Kensington, which sort of an outlying area of Philadelphia.

00:37:25.000 They're doing an amazing job being welcoming, and it's not going amazing.

00:37:30.000 Contrast that with the adult in the room, Marco Rubio, Secretary Rubio, he was asked about throwing people out of the country who are undermining American interests.

00:37:38.000 And he said, yeah, those people should go.

00:37:40.000 I've said this repeatedly.

00:37:42.000 I don't know why it's so hard for some to comprehend it.

00:37:44.000 So let me repeat it again.

00:37:45.000 A visa, no one's entitled to a visa.

00:37:47.000 There is no constitutional right to a visa.

00:37:50.000 A visa is a permission to enter our country as a visitor.

00:37:50.000 Okay.

00:37:54.000 If you enter our country as a visitor and as a visitor in our country, be it a student, a tourist, a journalist, whatever you want to be, and you undertake activities that are against the national interest and national security of the United States, we will take away your visa.

00:38:08.000 In fact, if we knew you were going to do it, we probably wouldn't have given you your visa.

00:38:13.000 Yep.

00:38:14.000 It turns out that adult governance is the thing that is necessary.

00:38:14.000 Yep.

00:38:18.000 Adult governance would be a really, really good thing.

00:38:21.000 Speaking of which, the Trump administration right now is not in good order with the American people.

00:38:25.000 Okay, those are just the polls.

00:38:26.000 I regret to inform you that the president is not polling particularly well.

00:38:30.000 Right now, his approval ratings are not good.

00:38:32.000 I wish they were.

00:38:33.000 They are not.

00:38:35.000 His job approval rating, according to Real Clear Polling right now, is clocking in, on average, at probably the lowest point of either presidency.

00:38:42.000 He's down at about the 40% range.

00:38:45.000 The latest polls from Morning Consult have him down at 43% with 55% disapproving.

00:38:50.000 Reuters Ipsos has him at 38.60, which is a terrible split, obviously.

00:38:54.000 The Economist YouGov has him at minus 12.

00:38:57.000 These are not good numbers.

00:38:58.000 And I've suggested before that I think one of the reasons his numbers are not good is because the people who are out there representing him will not give us a break.

00:39:05.000 All Americans want is adult governance.

00:39:07.000 They're looking at the Democratic Party.

00:39:08.000 They still see a party of open borders.

00:39:11.000 Still see a party of Stephen Colbert's.

00:39:14.000 They still see a party that is promoting the idea that men can be women.

00:39:18.000 They refuse to let that stuff go.

00:39:20.000 And so all they're asking from the Trump administration is good, steady policymaking that makes their lives better.

00:39:26.000 In other words, a quieter administration.

00:39:29.000 I bring this up because even the stuff that's kind of like dumb online, who cares stuff, it does shape how you think about people.

00:39:35.000 It just does.

00:39:37.000 And if the sort of clown act by members of the Trump administration goes over well on X, to the brains of people who have broken brains largely, X is a place of broken brains.

00:39:49.000 That doesn't necessarily mean it's going to speak to the rest of America.

00:39:52.000 So two things can be true at once.

00:39:53.000 One, stuff that's really funny happens on X every single day.

00:39:57.000 And two, that is not the way you program an administration if you are looking for broad-scale popularity and success.

00:40:03.000 Being too online is a problem.

00:40:05.000 So this brings us to an ad that was put out yesterday by the RFK Maha Department of Health and Human Services.

00:40:14.000 And again, listen, I understand it's meant to be funny.

00:40:16.000 And to a certain extent, I think that it's, I mean, it's very memeable.

00:40:21.000 It was obviously meant to be cheesy.

00:40:23.000 This isn't a rip completely with regard to RFK Jr. or Kid Rock or even the social media team.

00:40:29.000 This would be good social media if we were not talking about the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

00:40:35.000 But here we go.

00:40:41.000 So for those who can't see, they are apparently in some sort of club.

00:40:45.000 And this is Rock Out Workout with some very cheesy VHS graphics and eagles and such.

00:40:51.000 And then Kid Rock decides to take off his shirt, which I'm not sure anybody needed.

00:40:57.000 And then you have RFK, who's about to go do the same.

00:41:02.000 And here have RFK doing some bicep curls. 0.98

00:41:04.000 And then you have both him and Kid Rock doing some tricep extensions.

00:41:17.000 And then you have them both in the sauna with Kid Rock doing push-ups in the background.

00:41:24.000 And then both of them riding an exercise genie from like 1982 in your grandmother's basement.

00:41:29.000 And then you have RFK in jeans getting into an ice bath in jeans.

00:41:36.000 He's apparently a Tobias Fionke, never nude.

00:41:39.000 And then he says, where's Kid Rock?

00:41:40.000 And Kid Rock is in the jacuzzi.

00:41:41.000 And RFK Jr. is looking at him skeptically.

00:41:43.000 And there's Kid Rock.

00:41:45.000 And now they're going to play pickleball.

00:41:57.000 And then they are drinking whole milk.

00:41:59.000 It does a body good.

00:42:04.000 Drinking whole milk and going in ice baths with their jeans.

00:42:07.000 And then it says, make America healthy again.

00:42:09.000 Now, again, is that the sort of thing that is programmed to go viral?

00:42:12.000 Is it funny?

00:42:12.000 Sure.

00:42:13.000 Sure.

00:42:13.000 I mean, I laughed when I first saw it.

00:42:14.000 I laughed.

00:42:16.000 And it's meant to be poking fun at itself and all the rest of it.

00:42:18.000 That's fine.

00:42:20.000 However, if you wish to be seen as a serious administration and not as a joke, then this sort of thing is not super duper helpful.

00:42:26.000 It just isn't.

00:42:27.000 And the biggest problem for President Trump and the Trump administration is that the policy has been 90% good and the rollout has been 85% bad.

00:42:35.000 And that's a huge problem.

00:42:37.000 It just is.

00:42:39.000 Now, to be fair to RFK, RFK has the highest approval ratings of pretty much any cabinet secretary, mainly because he's focused on things that people actually care about, like human health.

00:42:48.000 With that said, it does speak to a fundamental lack of seriousness that sometimes characterizes the administration, ranging from Christy Noam at the Department of Homeland Security to Pam Bondi in the AG's office.

00:42:59.000 Again, there are two parties in this country, and Democrats being bad at their jobs and being unpopular does not mean that they won't win an election.

00:43:05.000 It doesn't.

00:43:07.000 If you look at the generic congressional ballot right now, Democrats are up solidly in the generic congressional ballot with all of the problems I've stated about them, with their radicalism, with their lack of a program, with their unpopularity.

00:43:18.000 The latest economist YouGov poll has Democrats up seven in the generic congressional ballot.

00:43:23.000 Now, again, maybe we can listen, we can cheerlead, we can pretend along, we can suggest the polls mean nothing, or we could try to course correct.

00:43:31.000 And I think that as conservatives, it would be a worthwhile idea to course correct if you don't want to see Democrats in control of Congress.

00:43:37.000 It's a very narrow Congress in the first place right now.

00:43:40.000 Joining me online is Buck Sexton.

00:43:41.000 Of course, you know him from the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton show Nationally Syndicated all across the country and the host of the podcast, Buck Brief, where he discusses the news.

00:43:49.000 He now has a brand new book out.

00:43:51.000 It is called Manufacturing Delusion, How the Left Uses Brainwashing Indoctrination and Propaganda Against You.

00:43:55.000 Buck, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:43:57.000 Congrats on the book.

00:43:57.000 Really appreciate it.

00:43:59.000 Oh, man, Ben, thank you so much for having me.

00:44:02.000 Great to see you.

00:44:04.000 So let's talk about the subject of your book, how people engage in mass delusion, which seems more and more common these days.

00:44:11.000 Obviously, you're a former CIA analyst.

00:44:13.000 And so you've looked into how movements co-op people's brains.

00:44:17.000 What are the sort of tactics that we ought to look for?

00:44:18.000 And what are some of the historical parallels?

00:44:21.000 So, no, it's so important, Ben.

00:44:23.000 I take the position, it's actually a thesis in the opening of the book, that mass delusion and mass hysteria, these are, and you can consider them to be essentially the same thing.

00:44:35.000 It's the biggest threat that we face as human beings today.

00:44:38.000 It's actually not, as you know, climate change.

00:44:41.000 It's not these things that we're led to believe are going to tear us all apart and we're all going to starve to death or any of these things.

00:44:46.000 It's actually human beings going insane in crowds and then only regaining their senses one by one, as Mackie wrote a long time ago.

00:44:55.000 So when I was in the CIA, I was in the counterterrorism center for much of the time.

00:45:00.000 I actually moved around a little bit.

00:45:01.000 And so we dealt with radicalization.

00:45:03.000 And so I opened the book in a place where it was my first CIA mission, which was in Nigeria, which I had never really talked about before because at the time it was definitely classified because we were looking for what seemed to be the opening phase of radicalization in a part of that country that would eventually become Boko Haram.

00:45:23.000 I mean, that's the short version of the much longer story.

00:45:26.000 And so that was my first experience personally with being in a place where we were trying to track almost like a virus of the mind, radicalization.

00:45:37.000 And I realized as I went through some other missions in Iraq, Afghanistan, dealing with jihadist, I mean, very specifically jihadist radicalization, that there's also, there's a playbook.

00:45:48.000 There are similarities.

00:45:49.000 And if you go back to really the origins of mind control as something of not just a science, but a political science, something practiced by regimes, you go to the people that did it in the most extreme way.

00:46:01.000 Stalin, the Soviets, Maoist China.

00:46:04.000 And there are variations on a theme, if you will.

00:46:08.000 So I break it down into conditioning, sort of Pavlovian conditioning, and then I get into something called Menticide, which is actually from a psychiatrist who debriefed Nazis in the Second World War.

00:46:20.000 And he was Dutch.

00:46:21.000 His name was Juice Mirlu, talking about the breakdown process.

00:46:24.000 And then I get into brainwashing, which I know you have a great book, Ben.

00:46:27.000 I read it years ago, Brainwashed about Hollywood.

00:46:30.000 But the brainwashing process as it was practiced and very kind of industrialized and mechanically and specifically in Maoist China, then some cult stuff with indoctrination.

00:46:43.000 And then we get into just propaganda, which is more media, AI, how this is all going to change the future.

00:46:48.000 So I kind of take it, it's not meant to be necessarily historical as a timeline, but it becomes that because that's the origins of and the progression of mind control.

00:46:59.000 But the reason I care about it is because of COVID and because of what like and because of people thinking that BLM needs to be marching in the streets because thousands and thousands of black men are killed.

00:47:09.000 Like these are crazy ideas.

00:47:11.000 And I know you're dealing with this on your show all the time that are mainstream.

00:47:15.000 In fact, they're a mandatory belief among Democrats.

00:47:19.000 So what are the most common tactics you're seeing?

00:47:22.000 I mean, obviously you're tracing the history of this sort of thing and a variety of tactics that have been used in order to create these sorts of delusions.

00:47:28.000 What are the most common tactics that you're seeing these days?

00:47:30.000 What are the ones that you're a common citizen?

00:47:31.000 You're just spending a little bit of time on X, but you're not immersed, but you should look out for this sort of stuff because you can get sucked in.

00:47:38.000 Oh, well, there's, for example, I mentioned Menticide, so mind killing from Mirliu. 0.99

00:47:43.000 And he's sort of the godfather, if you will, of that school of analysis for mind control.

00:47:49.000 Because again, there's a lot of crossover with really approaches to these things.

00:47:52.000 And with brainwashing, there is Robert Lifton did a whole series of studies on how they broke down and then reprogrammed the minds of people in Maoist China, Cultural Revolution.

00:48:04.000 You know that history very well.

00:48:06.000 But attack tactics specifically, for example, in menticide, confusion and degradation.

00:48:11.000 And I take that to the transgender issue today, where so much of this is rooted in confusing, of course, the individual who is the transgender person, but also everyone around them.

00:48:25.000 How are you allowed to speak about this?

00:48:27.000 What really is this issue?

00:48:29.000 Is it an issue?

00:48:30.000 Is it only an issue because we're talking about it?

00:48:32.000 I mean, you've seen this so many times.

00:48:34.000 This happens.

00:48:35.000 It's not happening.

00:48:36.000 It's only happening a little bit.

00:48:37.000 It's a good thing that it's happening.

00:48:38.000 These are all tactics of confusion in the public discourse that are meant to undermine people's ability, I think, to see through.

00:48:46.000 And this is really truly out of the playbook, to see through what's going on.

00:48:49.000 And then degradation.

00:48:51.000 So confusion and degradation, degradation, meaning say that a man can or say that a woman can have a penis.

00:48:56.000 I mean, say things that are fundamentally, obviously untrue, even if you don't believe it, being forced to mouth the preferred slogans of the regime has the effect of undermining your ability to resist mind control, undermining being kind of brought into the mass hysteria-led herd.

00:49:16.000 And so that's those are two very specific ones within this, the menticide framework.

00:49:22.000 And then in brainwashing, another one, for example, false confession.

00:49:26.000 Ben, as you know, and this was used by the Soviets too, one of the things they love to do is the bend the knee. 0.50

00:49:32.000 Like, did you, you know, you, you deadnamed somebody?

00:49:35.000 And again, on the transgender thing, you can do this on a whole range of things, or, you know, you said something that was in some way racially offensive that you didn't mean to.

00:49:43.000 You, for a time, were supposed to go out and profess how deeply sorry you were to everybody, even if you didn't think you did anything wrong.

00:49:52.000 Because again, that is degrading and undermining and part of the process of rewiring your thinking and changing your thinking so that you'll fall within this framework that they're building of this is how you think about it.

00:50:04.000 This is how you act.

00:50:07.000 So the book is manufacturing delusion.

00:50:09.000 Buck, what's the best way for people to stand up to this sort of stuff?

00:50:12.000 Because we are inundated now through our phones more than any time probably in human history with these sorts of tactics.

00:50:17.000 You don't even know they're being used against you.

00:50:20.000 And in a time where institutional trust is really low, it becomes actually extremely easy for people to fall into beliefs and delusions because an anti-establishment orientation, which very often is proper, can be directed in some pretty negative ways.

00:50:35.000 Well, that's absolutely true.

00:50:37.000 You're seeing this with the rise of, and I would say, Ben, an expectation that you, you know, meaning anyone who's following events, believes whatever the conspiracy theory of the moment may be.

00:50:51.000 In fact, you cannot be trusted in the online discourse these days unless you're somebody who goes, oh, that crazy conspiracy, that's got to be true, right?

00:50:59.000 As long as it's anti-establishment or in some way, like breaking from whatever the dominant paradigm may be.

00:51:05.000 And I think a lot of people are taking advantage of this.

00:51:08.000 Political movements, podcasters, a whole range of folks are deciding that their move right now is to take a point of view that is just contrary to fact, but somehow because it is subversive, it's inherently more honest or they present it as inherently more honest.

00:51:25.000 And you mentioned also in the defense against this, when you see the way that technology is moving so rapidly right now, such that people are able to create more and more effective deep fakes, whatever you want to call them, and to use those to shift the narrative, we're going to get to a point, Ben, very soon, if we're not already there, where people will just say, oh, no, that's AI.

00:51:51.000 And you'll say, well, no, it's not.

00:51:53.000 Well, maybe it is, right?

00:51:54.000 And these are all subtle ways to try to shape narratives toward things that are false.

00:52:00.000 And in terms of the defense of this, because that's something very important I thought about the whole time, like, why didn't I, why didn't you, why didn't so many people just fall hook, line, and sinker for COVID stuff, for example, or some of the COVID stuff, you know, Fauci on masks and all this other nonsense that ended up happening.

00:52:18.000 And it's, you just have to not live by lies to borrow from Souls and Eats.

00:52:22.000 And every time someone's lying to you or lying about something or wants you to lie, you have to just say, no, there's a problem here.

00:52:28.000 And if you take that mindset in whether it's someone pushing a conspiracy theory on you or trying to get you to mouth the preferred slogans of the regime, whether it's on transgender issues or climate change or Black Lives Matter or whatever it may be, Trump worked with Russia to hack into the voting machines in 2020.

00:52:45.000 These are all, or 2016, these are all crazy ideas that have caught on dramatically in certain quarters.

00:52:52.000 The second that someone is lying to you, you have to recognize that there's a problem.

00:52:55.000 There's no good, I'm lying to you for your own benefit stuff when it comes to these large narratives and these understandings of the world around us.

00:53:03.000 So, but it's going to get harder.

00:53:05.000 And I'm very honest about that in the book.

00:53:06.000 It's going to get more and more difficult.

00:53:07.000 And I think that this is something that people, hopefully, that's why they'll get the book.

00:53:11.000 They'll see.

00:53:12.000 Because again, I break down in each chapter, there's specifics about the tactics, the repetition, the things that are done, fire hose of falsehood.

00:53:19.000 I mean, you know, there's a whole book, right?

00:53:21.000 So people can go see how I lay these things out.

00:53:24.000 But I think also familiarity with them, Ben, is a very useful part of the defense against falling into this kind of thought reform, as the Maoists would call it, or brainwashing, as I think we call it much more readily here.

00:53:40.000 Well, the book, again, is Manufacturing Delusion.

00:53:42.000 The author is Buck Sexton.

00:53:43.000 Buck, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:53:44.000 And again, congrats on the book.

00:53:46.000 Thanks so much, Ben.

00:53:47.000 Good to see you.

00:53:49.000 Coming up, the show continues for our members.

00:53:49.000 All righty, folks.

00:53:51.000 We'll get to a federal judge who is now suggesting that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, you remember that guy, cannot be redetained by immigration authorities, rogue judges doing their worst.

00:54:00.000 Meanwhile, President Trump mobilizing more resources to the Middle East to face down Iran. 0.91

00:54:05.000 We'll get to all of that in a moment, but you can only see that if you're a member.

00:54:09.000 So head on over to DailyWire Plus right now, become a member and use Coach Shiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:54:15.000 click that link in the description and join us.

00:54:17.000 Okay.

00:54:32.000 No, not even close.

00:54:33.000 Two, three, whatever.

00:54:35.000 You know what?

00:54:36.000 Two, four, three, six, four.

00:54:45.000 I cannot believe we're back here again, Ben.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 18, 2026

Dave Chappelle Has LOST IT

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