The Ben Shapiro Show - Does The Super Bowl Matter? | Ep. 468

00:00:00.000 So, I went to the Super Bowl, and I had lots of fun, and I have many thoughts about it.

00:00:03.000 I will give them all over to you.

00:00:04.000 Plus, we will break down the memo.

00:00:06.000 I've now had a chance to read it, peruse it, absorb it.

00:00:09.000 I have many thoughts about that as well.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:17.000 So I will say, I'm a lucky son of a gun.

00:00:19.000 I went to the Super Bowl on Sunday, went down to the Super Bowl yesterday.

00:00:23.000 I'm still exhausted from that because I flew in very early there and then flew very early back so I could do the show today.

00:00:28.000 It's an amazing experience, and believe it or not, that's actually the first football game I've ever been to in person.

00:00:32.000 It's not the first football game I've watched, but I have a feeling the other ones I go to may be somewhat of a letdown in the future, but I have a lot of thoughts.

00:00:38.000 All right, so before we do that, I first want to say thank you to my sponsors over at 1-800-Flowers. 0.97

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00:02:29.000 So, yeah, my wife wasn't that thrilled about me going to the Super Bowl. 0.83

00:02:32.000 But in retrospect, in the end, in the end, she was happy that I went and I had a good time.

00:02:39.000 I brought my father.

00:02:40.000 I went with my business partner, Jeremy.

00:02:43.000 We went with the president of the company, Caleb.

00:02:45.000 And all thanks to Westwood Ones.

00:02:47.000 We want to thank our partners over at Westwood One for giving us the seats because it was pretty incredible.

00:02:51.000 So we were seated up behind the Patriots end zone.

00:02:55.000 And the stadium, first of all, in Minnesota is amazing.

00:02:57.000 It's an amazing stadium.

00:02:59.000 It's just beautiful.

00:03:00.000 I'm sure all those public dollars were put to good use when no one ever travels there again.

00:03:06.000 But it is incredible.

00:03:08.000 It's not a place you want to hang out.

00:03:10.000 In the summer, Minnesota is beautiful.

00:03:11.000 It's a beautiful state.

00:03:12.000 My family used to vacation in Minnesota during the summer.

00:03:14.000 During the winter, it is a hellscape.

00:03:16.000 I mean, we were there yesterday, and it was 15 degrees below zero with the wind chill.

00:03:21.000 And needless to say, I was not prepared for this.

00:03:23.000 So that's why I'm missing an ear at this point, and at least two toes.

00:03:26.000 Lost a frostbite.

00:03:28.000 There are a few things that really struck me about the Super Bowl this year, aside from the fact that it was a phenomenal game and no one knows how to tackle.

00:03:34.000 So those were the two big ones.

00:03:35.000 Great game.

00:03:36.000 No one plays defense.

00:03:37.000 And it's not on Tom Brady, guys.

00:03:38.000 I'm not the biggest Brady fan, although he is the best quarterback of all time, clearly.

00:03:44.000 Still, when you throw three touchdowns, no interceptions, and throw for 508 yards and lose, that's your defense's fault.

00:03:49.000 That's not your fault.

00:03:51.000 Everybody's on Brady about this. 0.99

00:03:52.000 It's ridiculous.

00:03:52.000 But the thing that really struck me, and what was pretty cool about it, is you get in the stadium, it's a bunch of people who hate the other team, right?

00:03:59.000 I mean, the Eagles fans hate the Patriots, and the Patriots fans hate the Eagles, and they have a long record of not liking each other very much.

00:04:07.000 And yet, in the stadium, there was a real feeling of camaraderie among everybody who was actually there.

00:04:11.000 Maybe it's because it was really cold outside and no one wanted to leave.

00:04:13.000 Maybe it's because just being part of an amazing event like that feels really cool.

00:04:17.000 I mean, it's this communal experience, and we're all taking part.

00:04:20.000 We're good to go.

00:04:41.000 It was just a wonderful event.

00:04:42.000 The electricity in the stadium was incredible.

00:04:43.000 I mean, everyone was basically standing for the entire time.

00:04:46.000 I will say, what was one of the funny things is that one of the things people pay attention to at home, because I've watched every other Super Bowl from home, is you pay attention to the halftime show.

00:04:53.000 In the stadium, no one cares.

00:04:55.000 In the stadium, the level of attention paid to the Super Bowl halftime show is relatively nil, right?

00:04:59.000 That's when all the bathrooms fill up and you leave to go out and get a Coke for $1,000.

00:05:04.000 And you can't hear anything because the stadium is set up in such a way.

00:05:07.000 But the actual atmosphere was really cool.

00:05:11.000 And what was super cool is that—and it shows you what the NFL did wrong this season, how they really blew it this season.

00:05:16.000 One of the things the NFL really did wrong this season was they really handled the National Anthem kneeling thing poorly.

00:05:21.000 And the way that you could tell that is because the biggest rounds of applause happened for the National Anthem and for—there's a tribute to Medal of Honor winners.

00:05:28.000 It was patriotism and country, and people felt good about the country.

00:05:32.000 You felt good about the country being in there because, like, this is such an amazing place.

00:05:35.000 It's the most prosperous, rich, free country on the face of the earth, filled with all these celebrities who are going to these stadiums.

00:05:43.000 You can get on a plane and fly in the middle of nowhere and have a game where you bring 67,000 people into the stadium, and you can just do it.

00:05:50.000 Right?

00:05:51.000 You can do that.

00:05:51.000 I mean, it's an amazing, amazing thing.

00:05:53.000 Anyway, I want to show you some of the best moments, I thought.

00:05:55.000 So first of all,

00:05:56.000 We're good to go.

00:06:16.000 My faith in the Lord is everything.

00:06:18.000 I'm a believer in Jesus Christ.

00:06:20.000 That's first and foremost.

00:06:21.000 That's everything.

00:06:22.000 I wouldn't be able to do this game without Him.

00:06:24.000 I don't have the strength to go out here and do this.

00:06:26.000 This is supernatural.

00:06:28.000 But it's also an opportunity to go out there and share what He's done in my life.

00:06:33.000 And it's not about prospering at all.

00:06:34.000 It's about how He's humbled me.

00:06:36.000 In my weaknesses, He made me strong.

00:06:39.000 2 Corinthians 12, 9.

00:06:41.000 Whenever I was at my lowest, that's where my relationship with Christ grew.

00:06:45.000 I mean, that's an amazing, great religious statement.

00:06:47.000 It's something that's always true for Americans at large.

00:06:50.000 Now, you don't have to be a religious person to appreciate this guy's fervor and the fact that he saw God as strengthening him in his darkest moments.

00:06:57.000 That's true for the vast majority of people on planet Earth for most of history.

00:07:00.000 It wasn't just him.

00:07:01.000 Doug Peterson is the coach of the Eagles.

00:07:02.000 Amazing play calling yesterday.

00:07:04.000 I mean, there are a couple of really gutsy play calls.

00:07:06.000 There was a play call where they went for it on fourth down.

00:07:08.000 I think it was fourth and five.

00:07:10.000 And that's when he called the reverse two fulls as a receiver, which is amazing.

00:07:14.000 Here's Doug Peterson thanking Jesus at the award ceremony afterward.

00:07:19.000 How do you explain this, that nine years ago you're coaching in a high school and here you are with this trophy?

00:07:25.000 I can only give the praise to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for giving me this opportunity.

00:07:31.000 Yes, I mean, there are a lot of people paying attention to that, so there are a few people who made clear that, you know, at the beginning of the season it was all about kneeling for the anthem and now it's all about praying.

00:07:41.000 I mean, at the very end of the game, all the Eagles got together and they actually formed a circle and they prayed with foals, which is pretty amazing.

00:07:48.000 And that wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, the only sort of patriotic and religious point to the evening.

00:07:54.000 During the national anthem, all the players were standing—it was electric.

00:07:57.000 I mean, during the National Anthem, people knew that it was infused with additional meaning because of all the folks who had been kneeling, and people were supremely enthusiastic.

00:08:03.000 Pink did a very good rendition of the National Anthem as well.

00:08:07.000 Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's

00:08:27.000 Yeah.

00:08:31.000 And good for all the players for standing.

00:08:32.000 You know, this is an amazing country.

00:08:34.000 You get to be rich and play football for a living and not have to fight for scraps.

00:08:38.000 I mean, it's an amazing, amazing country, and it's an amazing event.

00:08:41.000 And the level of care that goes into each and everything, like, for example, during the halftime show, and you see all those lights waving in the stands.

00:08:46.000 It's not a bunch of people who are spontaneously taking out their cell phones.

00:08:48.000 They're actual wristbands that have lights that are coordinated to go off at certain times.

00:08:53.000 It's really impressive.

00:08:54.000 I think the biggest round of applause of the night was not even for any of that.

00:08:57.000 The biggest round of applause for the night was the Medal of Honor winner.

00:09:00.000 So right before the game,

00:09:02.000 They paid tribute to Medal of Honor winners.

00:09:03.000 J.J.

00:09:04.000 Watt tweeted this out about the Medal of Honor winners.

00:09:07.000 These were all the Medal of Honor winners who joined on the field together.

00:09:10.000 One of them actually flipped the opening flip of the coin.

00:09:13.000 And it was an amazing moment.

00:09:13.000 I mean, the entire stadium just erupted.

00:09:15.000 It was really terrific.

00:09:16.000 There was another moment later where they paid tribute to the Air Force, and the stadium erupted again.

00:09:21.000 One of the things that football needs to understand and one of the things the NFL needs to understand is that the popularity of the sport is deeply entwined with a good feeling about the country.

00:09:29.000 If you feel bad about the country, it's hard to enjoy sports because you feel like sports are frivolous.

00:09:32.000 If you feel good about the country, then sports are a distraction from the mundane, sure.

00:09:36.000 But they're also a reminder that

00:09:38.000 All of our conflict is really play-acted.

00:09:40.000 And that's not true in politics.

00:09:41.000 In politics, there's a lot of our conflict that's not, that's real.

00:09:44.000 It's about issues that matter and I care deeply about.

00:09:47.000 But it's good for Americans to recognize every once in a while the things that the Super Bowl is for.

00:09:50.000 It's good for us to recognize every once in a while that there are these moments where we have more in common

00:09:56.000 Then we are separated by.

00:09:58.000 So it's amazing the evening that's really about, you know, conflict between two teams is really more about the love for fans for one another.

00:10:04.000 It's really more about the love of country.

00:10:06.000 It was really more about what we are unified in favor of.

00:10:09.000 And that's why it was so entwined with the flag and entwined with the military.

00:10:11.000 And it's why it alienated so many fans when the players started kneeling.

00:10:15.000 Because like, why are you slapping one of the things that makes football great in the face?

00:10:18.000 Why are you doing that?

00:10:20.000 Well actually this isn't a sport that's global, this is an American sport.

00:10:23.000 And it's deeply been intertwined again with American patriotism for a very long time.

00:10:28.000 So in just a second I'm going to show you how things went down in Philadelphia afterward.

00:10:30.000 Because I talk about the power of a community coming together for something good.

00:10:35.000 And now I'm going to show you what happens when things don't go so great.

00:10:38.000 And that's what happened in Philadelphia.

00:10:39.000 But first!

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00:11:41.000 We're good to go.

00:12:02.000 When crowds are united by a common purpose, like they're there to watch a game, but they all understand that they like each other, that there's something to the community feeling, then great things can happen.

00:12:13.000 There's a study that Arthur Brooks over at American Enterprise Institute likes to cite that's really an interesting study, talking about the value of getting together in crowds, the value of meeting people on an individual level.

00:12:22.000 So in 1934, there's a sociologist who did a study

00:12:25.000 Where he took a Chinese couple all around the United States, they went to something like 250 restaurants all around the United States, 250, 200 hotels, and they would walk into the restaurant, they would all be served, they would all be given a room.

00:12:36.000 And then the sociologist, remember this is 1934, calls up all the restaurants and all of the hotels, and he asks the restaurants and the hotels, would you serve a Chinese couple?

00:12:45.000 And all but one said no, we would not.

00:12:48.000 Well, what that means is that people are actually better than you think they are in a vacuum.

00:12:52.000 They're not worse.

00:12:53.000 We tend to think that people are worse than we think they are when we meet them, but that's rarely true.

00:12:57.000 Usually, most of the people who you hate when you meet them, they turn out not to be so bad, and it's why it's important to have these sort of communal events.

00:13:02.000 One of the things that's happened in our culture is we have fewer and fewer of these communal events.

00:13:06.000 The Super Bowl is a communal event because it's a water cooler event, but

00:13:09.000 Most of us get our entertainment choices now through Netflix or Hulu that we cut the cord.

00:13:12.000 I've cut the cord twice, actually, because I got a cable back and then I went back to cutting the cord because it was a waste of money.

00:13:19.000 And that's great.

00:13:19.000 I mean, I love on-demand TV.

00:13:20.000 I'm not willing to give it up.

00:13:21.000 But it does mean that you need to engage with the community.

00:13:23.000 Otherwise, you end up not engaging with anyone.

00:13:25.000 And a polarized, atomized society is one where people dislike each other more.

00:13:29.000 Now, all of that said, I've been talking about sort of the power of community and communal experiences, communal events, a feeling of communal purpose, which I talk about in the book that I'm writing right now.

00:13:37.000 But when communities go wrong, then things can get kind of nasty.

00:13:41.000 So some of the highlights from Philadelphia were not particularly great.

00:13:44.000 Some of them were great.

00:13:45.000 So this one was terrific.

00:13:46.000 There were a couple of music students who opened up their window on the fifth floor of a building and started playing the Fly Eagles Fly Fight song while everybody downstairs was singing.

00:13:54.000 It was pretty cool.

00:13:56.000 Right there.

00:13:57.000 Look at this, from a fifth floor window at the University of the Arts, the Merriam Theater.

00:14:12.000 Don't get any better than that!

00:14:14.000 That's pretty awesome.

00:14:15.000 That was the good.

00:14:16.000 Then there was the bad. 0.99

00:14:18.000 Some dude decided that it would be worthwhile for him to legitimately eat horse crap. 0.97

00:14:22.000 I don't know why this would occur to you, why this would be a thing, unless it was a bet. 0.94

00:14:28.000 And even then, why would you bet on this?

00:14:30.000 You can get diseases from this.

00:14:31.000 But no, this is not good.

00:14:34.000 This is not a good thing.

00:14:41.000 No, don't do it.

00:14:42.000 Oh, no.

00:14:48.000 Okay, we can cut it off there.

00:14:49.000 I don't actually need to see this guy eat the horse dung.

00:14:52.000 Oh, no.

00:14:53.000 Ah!

00:14:54.000 No!

00:14:54.000 Okay, when crowds are there, there can either be good things or there can be bad things.

00:14:57.000 The crowd can either be united toward a communal purpose or it can be united toward urging a moron to eat horse crap off the ground. 0.99

00:15:03.000 And there was a little bit too much of that in Philadelphia last night. 0.99

00:15:06.000 New England Patriots fans can rest assured that although the New England Patriots did not emerge victorious, the city of Philadelphia is apparently smoking wreckage by the morning. 0.97

00:15:16.000 It's just ridiculous. 0.60

00:15:17.000 That wasn't the only bad thing that happened in Philadelphia last night. 0.81

00:15:20.000 I don't want to pretend like everything that happened was bad, but the police were basically saying it was kind of out of control last night.

00:15:24.000 Here is a little montage of people destroying convenience stores, smashing Macy's windows, collapsing and awning.

00:15:28.000 Just joy happening over there.

00:15:39.000 So. 0.96

00:15:49.000 Okay, so these people were on top of the Ritz Hotel awning, and they were doing trust falls off the awning into the crowd because they're stupid, and then too many of them got on top, and then the entire awning collapsed. 0.97

00:15:59.000 So, geniuses at work. 0.92

00:16:02.000 So this is the problem with crowds, right?

00:16:03.000 If you don't have a purpose for the crowd, if the crowd is just there, then the crowd may turn to the most nefarious purpose.

00:16:07.000 It's one of the things that we need to recognize about why religious institutions and social fabric are necessary.

00:16:12.000 I'm not saying Philadelphia doesn't have any of those things.

00:16:14.000 Of course they do.

00:16:15.000 I'm saying the crowd last night, you know the ones that were breaking into looting stores, that was not their communal purpose.

00:16:20.000 It was not to go to church.

00:16:21.000 A crowd that is undirected can go bad very, very quickly.

00:16:24.000 A crowd that is directed cheers for Medal of Honor winners.

00:16:27.000 I don't think the people who make up the crowd are necessarily all that different.

00:16:30.000 I think that it's all about what's in their minds and what's in their heads and what they're there to do.

00:16:34.000 And if you're there to celebrate America and you're there to celebrate the fact that we can have these amazing spectacles and we can afford to go to games like this and we can afford to fly in,

00:16:43.000 Then you'll get a different crowd than the one that wants to break into the convenience store because things are now apparently free. 0.99

00:16:48.000 It also shows how dumb the Democrats are, by the way. 0.99

00:16:50.000 All of this shows how dumb the Democrats are to embrace the destruction of the NFL, which is the national anthem-kneeling thing. 0.99

00:16:56.000 So, Nancy Pelosi yesterday felt the necessity to equate Colin Kaepernick to Rosa Parks, which is just an inane comparison. 0.98

00:17:02.000 Rosa Parks obviously is a victim of segregation. 1.00

00:17:04.000 Colin Kaepernick is the victim of receiving several

00:17:07.000 Tens of millions of dollars worth of money in both advertising and in salary.

00:17:12.000 Nancy Pelosi tweeted out yesterday on the day of the Super Bowl, Rosa Parks proved that sometimes the best way to stand up is to sit down.

00:17:18.000 And that was supposed to be a slap at Trump because Trump had said that we all stand for the national anthem.

00:17:23.000 If this is the way Democrats want to go, they shouldn't be surprised when those of us who like the social fabric rebel at this.

00:17:28.000 We need our symbols.

00:17:29.000 We need our unifying moments.

00:17:31.000 And when you don't give us our symbols, when you don't give us our unifying moments, the country tears apart.

00:17:35.000 Because maybe the only thing holding us together at this point are the symbols.

00:17:38.000 Maybe the only thing holding us together is a vague love of country that has not been boiled down to specific philosophical principles.

00:17:44.000 If so, that's a problem.

00:17:45.000 We need to fill in those gaps.

00:17:47.000 If Democrats take away even the symbols, there's not going to be a lot left on the surface of the social fabric once the root has been eaten away.

00:17:54.000 So that's a serious problem.

00:17:56.000 Meanwhile, speaking of people who are eating away the root of the social fabric, late night over the weekend really outdid itself.

00:18:02.000 So Jimmy Kimmel has been the pace setter.

00:18:04.000 He's the new pope of the left, according to Guy Benson, a good label, I think.

00:18:08.000 And Jimmy Kimmel apparently appeared

00:18:12.000 He apparently appeared at some event for Pod Save America.

00:18:17.000 So last week—remember, I criticized Stephen Colbert for having on Pod Save America after the State of the Union, because Stephen Colbert would never have me on after a State of the Union by a Democrat or a Republican.

00:18:26.000 We have about the same size audience.

00:18:27.000 Jimmy Kimmel obviously had to outdo his compatriot in the leftist terms because he is the new pope.

00:18:33.000 And so he actually said at this event, quote, it just so happens that almost every talk show host is a liberal.

00:18:39.000 And that's because it requires a level of intelligence.

00:18:41.000 So according to Jimmy Kimmel, the reason that he and his fellow talk show hosts are on the left is because they're smart, you see.

00:18:47.000 It's not because they have a certain point of view and they all live in a bubble and they've all lived in big cities most of their lives.

00:18:52.000 It's not because they spend all their time hanging out with other people on the left and never have a dissenting conversation.

00:18:57.000 It's not any of that stuff.

00:18:59.000 It's just because they're so smart, you see.

00:19:01.000 Right? 0.97

00:19:01.000 Because Jimmy Kimmel, like, on a pure IQ test, I'm sure Jimmy Kimmel, a guy who had women feel his crotch on national TV, would outdo me, I think, for example. 0.97

00:19:09.000 I think when it comes to talk show hosts, put Jimmy Kimmel next to Dennis Miller.

00:19:12.000 I'm sure that Jimmy Kimmel wildly outdoes Dennis Miller, a conservative.

00:19:16.000 And there'd be a bunch of people saying, well, isn't he right?

00:19:17.000 Aren't all the talk show hosts on the left?

00:19:19.000 Well, no.

00:19:19.000 The most successful talk show host of the last 35 years was Jay Leno, and Jay Leno is center-right.

00:19:24.000 Jay Leno is a libertarian.

00:19:26.000 So, no. 1.00

00:19:27.000 This is stupidity all the way up. 1.00

00:19:28.000 And it's so smug, and it's so smarmy. 1.00

00:19:30.000 And then you wonder why the culture is being torn apart.

00:19:33.000 Like, Jimmy Fallon showed up at the Super Bowl.

00:19:35.000 And one of the things that happened, I'm not sure if they showed it on TV, they showed it at the game.

00:19:39.000 There's a shot of him, and he kind of made a joke where he spilled water all over himself.

00:19:42.000 And it was charming, and it was funny.

00:19:44.000 And then after the game, Jimmy Kimmel has to join in the race to the political bottom.

00:19:48.000 Like, whatever you think of Trump, you don't have to like Trump.

00:19:51.000 But turning this into—everything has to be a partisan fight.

00:19:54.000 Turning our late-night show hosts into partisan fighters who can't make a joke about Barack Obama for eight years and then can't stop making jokes about Trump.

00:20:01.000 But not even jokes, just nasty riffs.

00:20:03.000 How does that unify the country in any serious way?

00:20:05.000 Serious criticisms of Trump?

00:20:06.000 I'm perfectly willing to hear, although not from the likes of Jimmy Kimmel, who does not know what he's talking about on virtually any issue.

00:20:11.000 We've debunked him a thousand times on this show at this point.

00:20:14.000 Having our late-night show hosts devolve into — take the places of common culture, take the places of common space, and devote those to polarization.

00:20:22.000 It's a huge mistake.

00:20:23.000 I think it's really bad for the culture.

00:20:25.000 Jimmy Fallon is trying to outdo Kimmel because Fallon was beating Kimmel during the election cycle.

00:20:29.000 Kimmel's been beating Fallon lately.

00:20:30.000 So after the show, Fallon put on his glasses and his wig, and he did his Bob Dylan routine.

00:20:36.000 Come athletes with platforms throughout the land Who by taking a knee are taking a stand And before you shout out that they should be banned

00:20:50.000 Listen to what they are saying.

00:20:53.000 Perhaps they'd stand up if you reached out your hand.

00:20:57.000 Well, the times, they are a-changing.

00:21:04.000 Come journalists, writers who report the facts.

00:21:08.000 And brandish your pen to fend off his attacks.

00:21:12.000 Look past what he says and look at how he acts.

00:21:17.000 The fire and fury is raging For his words can hurt, but your words can't fight back New York Times, they aren't a failing

00:21:29.000 So now he's defending the people who are kneeling for the anthem again.

00:21:32.000 That's a social place where we don't need the social fabric ripped.

00:21:35.000 And Jimmy Fallon is louding that.

00:21:37.000 He's saying that that's just a wonderful thing.

00:21:40.000 And then he also crooned, Okay, Jimmy, well, I mean, let's hear it.

00:21:42.000 Who in Hollywood's been harassing women? 0.99

00:21:43.000 I'm sure you know a few.

00:21:44.000 You can name some names.

00:21:55.000 Then come on.

00:21:56.000 Come on, you hang out with all these people. 0.95

00:21:57.000 I'm sure you know at least a couple of guys who are into grabbing women by the behind. 0.99

00:22:01.000 And then in another verse he said, quote, come journalists, writers who report the facts. 0.70

00:22:04.000 First of all, Bob Dylan is so fricking overrated.

00:22:06.000 It's like a cat being run over by a lawnmower. 0.86

00:22:10.000 Bob Dylan.

00:22:11.000 Anyway, he says, come journalists, writers who report the facts and brandish your pens to fend off his attacks.

00:22:16.000 Look past what he says and look at how he acts.

00:22:18.000 The fire and fury is raging for his words can hurt, but your words can fight back.

00:22:21.000 New York Times, they aren't a Phelan.

00:22:24.000 It's just, come on.

00:22:25.000 Again, taking that common space, reducing it to partisan bickering, not smart.

00:22:29.000 I didn't like it when Trump did it about the NFL, by the way.

00:22:31.000 You remember, I said, I agreed with Trump.

00:22:33.000 I still didn't like it when Trump did it with regard to the NFL.

00:22:36.000 I thought that it was needlessly polarizing.

00:22:38.000 I don't like it when the left does it either.

00:22:39.000 We need these common spaces.

00:22:40.000 If we do not have these common spaces where we can come together, I promise you, everyone who's surrounding me, there are a few fans, we took some pictures, nice.

00:22:47.000 But I promise you, the vast majority of people who were there were from New England, which is a left area, or from Philadelphia, which is a left area, and Minnesota, which tends to be a left area.

00:22:58.000 And most of those people disagreed with me.

00:22:59.000 We all got along famously, because we understand there's still a common root that we all hold to.

00:23:03.000 Okay, so in just a second, I'm gonna get to memo talk.

00:23:06.000 Memo fight 2018, the return, the revenge, the grand finale.

00:23:11.000 It's not the grand finale, unfortunately.

00:23:13.000 There's so much more memo fighting to come.

00:23:15.000 I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.com.

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00:24:33.000 I think so.

00:24:45.000 Memo fight 2018.

00:24:48.000 So, Devin Nunes apparently says that he has new memos that are coming.

00:24:51.000 Democrats want to release their own memo.

00:24:52.000 We're just going to have memos up the wazoo.

00:24:54.000 Finding Memo.

00:24:55.000 It's going to be just, it'll just be entrancing.

00:24:58.000 I am super excited about it.

00:24:59.000 But, I finally had a chance, last Friday as you recall, the memo, the text of the memo was actually released in the middle of the show.

00:25:05.000 And so we read through it on the air and you saw my thinking evolving in real time.

00:25:08.000 Now I've had some actual time to gather my thoughts on the Devin Nunes memo.

00:25:13.000 Is it a nothing burger?

00:25:14.000 No, it's not a complete nothing burger.

00:25:15.000 Is it the end of the world?

00:25:17.000 The end of all things?

00:25:18.000 Mad Max?

00:25:19.000 Beyond Thunderdome?

00:25:21.000 It is not.

00:25:21.000 Okay, it is not.

00:25:23.000 Here is the most specific thing that it does.

00:25:25.000 It accuses the FBI of applying for a warrant on Carter Page, who is then a post he's done being a Trump foreign policy advisor.

00:25:34.000 It applied for a warrant on Carter Page, and the FISA application was apparently based on the Steele dossier, which was a Democrat OPPO research document.

00:25:41.000 And the Nunes memo says that the FBI lied about that to the FISA court and didn't inform them that this was in fact funded by the Democrats and was a piece of opposition hit research.

00:25:50.000 And supposedly they did this in an attempt to get Trump.

00:25:53.000 Now, it's the end of that statement that I have a problem with, that they did this in an attempt to get Trump, because it is possible that they thought that they were actually investigating real Russian collusion, even if nothing materializes.

00:26:02.000 Investigations happen all the time.

00:26:04.000 It is also possible that Carter Page is dirty, and they were investigating him.

00:26:07.000 He's been dirty, or at least he's been suspected of being dirty, since 2013.

00:26:10.000 There was a FISA warrant on him in 2014.

00:26:12.000 It is also possible they got overzealous with the warrant.

00:26:15.000 So there are a bunch of assumptions that have to be made in order to get to the worst possible conclusion.

00:26:19.000 So the worst possible conclusion is that in the waning days of the election, the FBI was trying to sink the Trump campaign by ordering a FISA warrant, which never was released, by the way, never leaked, never was released before the election.

00:26:30.000 This is a weird argument.

00:26:31.000 That they were trying to take down Trump from the inside.

00:26:33.000 The deep state was trying to take down Trump from the inside by going after Carter Page with a trumped-up FISA warrant based on the Steele dossier.

00:26:42.000 That's essentially the accusation.

00:26:45.000 Now, it's very possible that it's true, that the FISA application on Page was fatally flawed and driven by prosecutorial aggression.

00:26:51.000 But in order to get to this really deep conspiracy theory, where it was a bunch of people in the FBI trying to take down Trump and trying to

00:26:57.000 Basically manipulate the fact into its Trump-Russia collusion?

00:27:00.000 You have to make a bunch of assumptions.

00:27:01.000 First, you have to assume that there is no there there.

00:27:03.000 Not only that there is no Trump-Russia collusion, but that there was no reasonable suspicion of Trump-Russia collusion.

00:27:08.000 That's the first thing you have to assume.

00:27:10.000 I don't know that that assumption is actually true.

00:27:12.000 I think that in the middle of the campaign, if you were an FBI agent and you saw Donald Trump sending emails to members of the Russian government or people who are close to the Russian government saying, if you can turn over a bunch of information to me and help me from the Russian government, I'm willing to hear it, that might make you somewhat suspicious.

00:27:26.000 If George Papadopoulos, a former Trump aide, had already been lying to the FBI, or was about to lie to the FBI, was already under investigation at that point for apparently shopping intelligence that he'd gotten supposedly from a Russian source about Hillary Clinton,

00:27:40.000 Then maybe there's grounds for suspicion.

00:27:41.000 Even if the suspicion doesn't pan out, this is like saying that every time the cops take out a search warrant, that that's a problem.

00:27:47.000 Even if they don't find anything.

00:27:48.000 Well, not every search warrant comes up with something, right?

00:27:51.000 That's why you have to have a warrant.

00:27:52.000 Probable cause doesn't mean certain cause.

00:27:53.000 It means probable cause.

00:27:54.000 So, you have to first assume that Carter Page never should have been gone after in the first place.

00:27:59.000 I think so.

00:28:15.000 I don't know.

00:28:36.000 That's hard, because Page, again, had been under suspicion for a long time.

00:28:40.000 He advised Gazprom, the Russian official gas authority, in 2013.

00:28:44.000 The Russians attempted to cultivate Page as an intelligence source in that year and stated in intercepted communications that it was obvious he wanted to earn loads of money.

00:28:52.000 There was a FISA warrant taken out against him in 2014.

00:28:54.000 So Page has been on the radar for a very long time.

00:28:57.000 So the idea that it's just beyond insane, beyond nuts, that they would target Carter Page, I don't see the evidence for that.

00:29:04.000 I don't know.

00:29:19.000 And finally, we have to assume that the same supposedly bad actors inside the FBI and DOJ are now staffing the Mueller investigation, and Mueller is infused with that same bias, that he wants to get Trump because he hates Trump, and therefore he's willing to look past all evidence.

00:29:32.000 Now, there's a problem with that, which is that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two most anti-Trump FBI agents from their texts,

00:29:38.000 Peter Strzok was saying in 2017 he didn't see any there there to the Trump-Russia investigation.

00:29:42.000 So to suggest that he was desperately attempting to trump up some sort of information there, the evidence there is really thin.

00:29:48.000 Now, this is not to say there wasn't corruption inside the FBI.

00:29:50.000 There was, but it was with regard to Hillary Clinton.

00:29:53.000 As I've detailed in the last couple of weeks, the corruption on the Hillary investigation is almost unquestioned.

00:29:57.000 The idea of the Obama administration was basically giving soft orders to the rest of the FBI and the DOJ to let Hillary off the hook. 1.00

00:30:03.000 It's pretty obvious from the timeline, Annie McCarthy has done a good job of breaking that down. 0.93

00:30:07.000 But I want to be very careful about what we allege here, so we don't get beyond the facts.

00:30:11.000 If there are additional facts, we can talk about them.

00:30:13.000 So, for example, there's a rumor going around today that there was a second Steele dossier.

00:30:17.000 And this Steele dossier was created when Hillary Clinton basically went to some foreign sources, had them funnel information to the State Department. 0.51

00:30:24.000 The State Department then funneled those foreign sources to

00:30:28.000 Now, the question is whether Steele then took those and went to the FBI.

00:30:30.000 That part of the story isn't clear yet.

00:30:33.000 Then it would look like a pipeline was being set up.

00:30:34.000 But that pipeline already existed, right?

00:30:37.000 I mean, Steele was working for Hillary Clinton, working for Fusion GPS.

00:30:40.000 That wouldn't really be a surprise.

00:30:41.000 The only thing that would make it worse is if it was funneled through the State Department and then to Steele, right?

00:30:46.000 Then it looks like the State Department was being mobilized on behalf of Hillary.

00:30:49.000 That would be a real scandal, and we'll see if that develops, right?

00:30:52.000 It's still a little early for that.

00:30:53.000 Here's my point.

00:30:55.000 I'm willing to change my mind based on the evidence, but I need the evidence to actually be presented.

00:30:59.000 So, so far I haven't seen the evidence yet, because here's what we finally know in sum.

00:31:06.000 Right, we know, at least we suspect, that the FBI and DOJ lied to the FISA court about the grounds for a warrant on Carter Page.

00:31:12.000 That's exactly what Nunes suggests.

00:31:15.000 We know that Steele didn't like Trump.

00:31:17.000 It is controversial as to whether that information was included in the FISA application.

00:31:20.000 It's not completely clear.

00:31:22.000 It's very clear that the Trump-Russia investigation was not predicated on Carter Page, that it was predicated on George Papadopoulos, that was admitted by Nunes.

00:31:29.000 What that means is that there was more to the investigation than just Carter Page, which means that all the talk about firing Mueller based on this is a little bit over the top.

00:31:37.000 Now, Trey Gowdy essentially said this.

00:31:39.000 He said a couple of things.

00:31:39.000 He said, number one, the FISA warrant on Page wouldn't have happened without the Steele dossier.

00:31:43.000 But he also said pretty clearly that the Trump-Russia investigation is not just the Carter-Page warrant.

00:31:49.000 So to end it based on just the Carter-Page warrant, there's not enough evidence for that.

00:31:53.000 Would it have been authorized?

00:31:54.000 Were it not for that dossier?

00:31:56.000 No, it would not have been.

00:31:58.000 How can you say that?

00:31:59.000 Because it was authorized four times by separate judges, right?

00:32:03.000 Right.

00:32:03.000 And the information was in there all four times.

00:32:05.000 Okay, so, you know, the information was there all four times.

00:32:08.000 It's unclear whether by that point some of the information had been checked out.

00:32:11.000 But here's the thing that really bothers me about all of this.

00:32:13.000 Why are we reading them out?

00:32:14.000 Trump can declassify this anytime.

00:32:16.000 He can declassify the actual application anytime he wants.

00:32:19.000 So if he wants to declassify it and then we can all see the truth, then we can see the truth.

00:32:22.000 I want more information at this point.

00:32:24.000 Again, I'm perfectly open to the idea that there is a quote-unquote deep state and that it's against Trump, but I want to see evidence of it.

00:32:29.000 I'm not going to jump on a conspiratorial bandwagon just because it feels good to do so.

00:32:33.000 I want to read into this and determine whether it's malice, or whether it is corruption, or whether it is incompetence.

00:32:38.000 I want to find out whether the FBI really acted in insane ways here, or whether they were just sloppy.

00:32:44.000 And I want to know whether the corruption was about Hillary Clinton, which we already know, or whether it extended to we have to stop Trump, because the evidence for that I think is a lot slimmer.

00:32:51.000 Okay.

00:32:52.000 In just a second, I'm going to continue along these lines.

00:32:54.000 We'll talk a little bit more about what is coming along these lines.

00:32:57.000 Then we will analyze some Super Bowl commercials.

00:32:59.000 We still have a Federalist paper, lots to get to.

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00:33:58.000 So while everything I just said about the memo is true on the basis of evidence, I will say that the Democratic resistance to the memo has been so extreme as to make it suggest that there is something to hide. 0.98

00:34:08.000 That's one of the problems here, is that the Democrats reacted to the Nunes memo not by saying, just put it out there, it's a bunch of crap. 0.89

00:34:14.000 Instead, they decided it was important for them to go nuts over it. 0.96

00:34:17.000 So Adam Schiff was one of the people going nuts over it.

00:34:19.000 He also leaked his own memo probably to the press.

00:34:21.000 He said that

00:34:22.000 This memo could result in an Oklahoma City-style bombing.

00:34:25.000 I mean, this kind of language is not helpful if you're trying to look like you're not bothered by a memo.

00:34:29.000 In the future, the intelligence community is going to be very wary about sharing information with us because they won't trust us to be responsible stewards of it.

00:34:37.000 And sources of information are going to dry up.

00:34:40.000 If you have a neighbor next door who's buying a lot of fertilizer, and it seems odd to you because they don't have a yard, are you going to think twice before calling the FBI?

00:34:49.000 Because if they get a search warrant for your neighbor, and something is politicized, the political winds change, and there's an investigation, your identity is going to be revealed.

00:34:59.000 Because you really can't trust that this is going to be kept confidential anymore. 0.96

00:35:03.000 Okay, this is asinine. 0.92

00:35:04.000 The idea that the intelligence community does not have a legal responsibility to share information with the Congress is insane. 0.94

00:35:10.000 Again, if Democrats want to say that this is going to lead to a bombing...

00:35:13.000 In fact, the media were pushing this line for weeks before the memo actually came out.

00:35:21.000 That's what makes everybody so skeptical.

00:35:22.000 There are two things that make Republicans skeptical and willing to buy into conspiracy theories.

00:35:27.000 One is the feeling that the FBI was acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton, which is actually true.

00:35:31.000 And two is the feeling that the Democrats in the media are desperate to keep the memo from reaching the light.

00:35:36.000 Thank you.

00:35:53.000 President Trump himself comes out and attacks Adam Schiff for leaking.

00:35:56.000 He tweeted this out a little bit earlier today.

00:35:59.000 Little Adam Schiff.

00:36:00.000 We need to find the president some new adjectives, because I think he's now done little for Little Marco, and like a thousand people are Little Adam Schiff.

00:36:07.000 Little Adam Schiff, who is desperate to run for higher office, is one of the biggest liars and leakers in Washington, right up there with Comey, Warner, Brennan, and Clapper.

00:36:15.000 Let's see.

00:36:16.000 Adam leaves closed committee hearings to illegally leak confidential information.

00:36:19.000 Must be stopped.

00:36:21.000 Must be stopped.

00:36:23.000 Okay, so I think that it's true that Adam Schiff is a leaker.

00:36:25.000 I don't know that this is worthwhile for the president to engage.

00:36:28.000 It seems to me the president has already cast enough shadow on this investigation that no matter what happens here, his defenders will have something to hang on to.

00:36:35.000 Engaging in this sort of fight is not useful.

00:36:37.000 It's also, it'd be a good time for the president to go around and talk up the economy a little bit.

00:36:42.000 There's been a drop in the Dow.

00:36:44.000 Over the last couple of days, that equates to over 1,000 points, where we basically erased all the gains made in the month of January in about three days.

00:36:50.000 So the market dropped 666 points on Friday.

00:36:52.000 It's down about 500 points at this point today on Monday.

00:36:55.000 So that is not good stuff.

00:36:56.000 Mr. President, there's more important things to be doing.

00:36:59.000 Meanwhile, if you want to let Devin Nunes go out there and do his thing, let him do his thing.

00:37:02.000 He called Devin Nunes a great American hero.

00:37:04.000 We'll find out.

00:37:05.000 Devin Nunes says there's more coming, by the way.

00:37:06.000 He says there will be more bombshells that will be released.

00:37:09.000 Memos that are going to come out?

00:37:10.000 Are there other memos?

00:37:12.000 You said this was phase one.

00:37:13.000 Yeah, so this completes just the FISA abuse portion of our investigation.

00:37:20.000 We are in the middle of what I call phase two of our investigation, which involves other departments, specifically the State Department and some of the involvement that they had in this.

00:37:29.000 That investigation is ongoing, and we continue to work towards finding answers and asking the right questions to try to get to the bottom of what exactly the State Department was up to in terms of this Russia investigation.

00:37:43.000 So Nunes is obviously using Byron York as his source for leaking information.

00:37:47.000 Byron York over at the Washington Examiner is the guy who reported what I reported earlier, that the State Department had received information via a Hillary compatriot about, I guess, Carter Page, and that that information was then funneled to Christopher Steele.

00:37:59.000 Unclear what happened with that part of the dossier.

00:38:01.000 Use of the State Department as Hillary's personal tool would be no shock whatsoever. 1.00

00:38:04.000 Again, the corruption in the State Department with regard to Hillary Clinton is not a surprise.

00:38:08.000 The corruption in the FBI with regard to Hillary Clinton is not a surprise.

00:38:11.000 We should be very careful.

00:38:12.000 We're tiptoeing in murky waters here.

00:38:15.000 Let's wait for all the evidence to come out, and then we can make some serious calls about it.

00:38:18.000 Okay, time for some things I like, and then we'll do some things I hate, and then we'll get to a Federalist paper.

00:38:23.000 So, things that I like.

00:38:24.000 So, I was on the plane yesterday, as well as today, and yesterday I watched the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

00:38:31.000 Originally, for the first half hour, this thing was headed directly for things I hate.

00:38:35.000 And for the first half hour, I thought, this is just an awful film.

00:38:39.000 Not because the plot is uninteresting, but just because it's one of those films that tries to straddle the borderline between serious and absurd, with touches of funny.

00:38:47.000 And I'm not a big fan of that kind of feel.

00:38:49.000 Like, you don't know whether you're watching a comedy, you don't know whether you're watching a tragedy.

00:38:52.000 The last half of the film gets much better.

00:38:55.000 The performances are universally quite good.

00:38:57.000 The best performance in the film is Woody Harrelson, which is shocking to me because I'm not a Woody Harrelson fan.

00:39:01.000 But Woody Harrelson plays the sheriff in this town.

00:39:03.000 Basically, the plot is this.

00:39:04.000 Woody Harrelson is a sheriff in a small town.

00:39:06.000 Frances McDormand plays the mother of a girl who was killed and raped.

00:39:11.000 And she thinks that the police department has not been doing enough to track down the killers because seven months later and they don't have a suspect.

00:39:16.000 And she puts up these three billboards outside of her, outside of the town, that say that the police department isn't doing enough to track down the killer.

00:39:25.000 Sam Rockwell, who is going to win Best Supporting Actor, plays a sort of racist, nasty cop who, in the end, has sort of a transformation.

00:39:32.000 Here's a little bit of the preview.

00:39:33.000 So long, what you can and cannot say on a billboard.

00:39:36.000 I assume you can't say nothing defamatory and you can't say... Is that right?

00:39:41.000 Or... Amos?

00:39:45.000 I think I'll be all right then.

00:39:47.000 I guess you're Angela Hayes' mother.

00:39:49.000 That's right.

00:39:49.000 I'm Angela Hayes' mother.

00:39:54.000 So, Mildred Hayes, why did you put up these billboards? 1.00

00:39:56.000 My daughter Angela was murdered seven months ago. 0.97

00:39:59.000 It seems to me the police department is too busy torturing black folks to solve actual crime. 0.89

00:40:06.000 Dickson, I'm in the middle of my Easter dinner. 0.99

00:40:10.000 Sorry, kids.

00:40:10.000 I know, Chief, but I think we got kind of a problem.

00:40:16.000 I'd do anything to catch your daughter's killer.

00:40:18.000 I don't think those billboards is very fair.

00:40:21.000 Time it took you to get out here whining like a willoughby.

00:40:24.000 Some other poor girl's probably out there being butchered right now. 1.00

00:40:27.000 We've had two official complaints about those billboards.

00:40:29.000 From who?

00:40:32.000 The story of the film is not tracking down the killer.

00:40:34.000 So this isn't a mystery story about who killed the woman's daughter.

00:40:38.000 The real story is about what exactly Frances McDormand's character is doing because she's so angry that she's taking out her anger in every direction.

00:40:46.000 The whole story is really about anger and the wages of anger and not thinking enough about the consequences of your actions because you're angry.

00:40:53.000 And from that perspective, I think that there's a lot about the film that's quite good.

00:40:57.000 It's a little bit too clever by half.

00:40:58.000 It has situations like that one, where people are just doing things without consequence that make no sense, just in real life.

00:41:03.000 Or Frances McDormand is kicking teenagers in the crotch and nothing happens to her. 1.00

00:41:07.000 I mean, come on. 0.53

00:41:08.000 There are a couple other scenes where, like this one they're about to show, where she's throwing firebombs at things and nothing happens to her.

00:41:15.000 You know, I understand the whole thing is supposed to be a little bit surreal.

00:41:18.000 I guess that's the director's style, or the director-writer's style.

00:41:21.000 Still, it begs... because the mix...

00:41:26.000 We're good to go.

00:41:51.000 Time for some other things that I like.

00:41:54.000 So let's go to some of these Super Bowl commercials.

00:41:56.000 We didn't actually see the Super Bowl commercials inside the Super Bowl.

00:41:58.000 That is the one drawback of watching the thing at the place.

00:42:01.000 I can live without the commercials, so I don't really care that much.

00:42:04.000 But there are a couple of these Super Bowl ads.

00:42:06.000 Some of them are funny, and there's one that's getting all sorts of flack that I want to talk about briefly.

00:42:10.000 So first, a couple of the funny ones.

00:42:12.000 So there's an ad for the NFL, I guess, with Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr.

00:42:20.000 The, uh, from Dirty Dancing.

00:42:21.000 It's pretty funny.

00:42:23.000 Still practicing touchdown celebrations. 0.70

00:42:55.000 So it's ridiculous and it goes on like this for a full minute. 0.74

00:43:03.000 So that's funny stuff. 0.61

00:43:05.000 Another one of the ads that I thought was funny, the Tide ad was pretty good.

00:43:08.000 So this is David Harbour from Stranger Things doing an ad for Tide that looks nothing like an ad for Tide.

00:43:17.000 Yeah, just your typical Super Bowl car ad.

00:43:21.000 Right?

00:43:22.000 Or, a hilarious beer ad.

00:43:27.000 Or, whatever ad this is.

00:43:29.000 Whatever.

00:43:30.000 But, it's a Tide ad.

00:43:34.000 What?

00:43:34.000 It's a Tide ad.

00:43:36.000 What makes it a Tide ad?

00:43:37.000 There are no stains.

00:43:38.000 Look at those clean clothes.

00:43:40.000 What else would this be an ad for?

00:43:42.000 Diamonds?

00:43:44.000 A gift that lasts for a... No, Tide.

00:43:48.000 It's time for a cold refresher.

00:43:51.000 Tied ad.

00:43:52.000 Fall into the sleep of... No.

00:43:54.000 Tied.

00:43:56.000 No.

00:43:57.000 Tied ad.

00:43:58.000 Extreme.

00:43:58.000 No.

00:43:59.000 Tied.

00:44:00.000 Tied!

00:44:00.000 Meet the all-new... No, it's a tied ad.

00:44:03.000 Tied.

00:44:05.000 So, does this make every Super Bowl ad a tied ad?

00:44:11.000 Okay, so that's a very, very smart ad.

00:44:13.000 Okay, it's pretty great.

00:44:14.000 So, well done, Tide.

00:44:16.000 I will say the only thing that can actually fix eating horse bleep is apparently a Tide Pod.

00:44:20.000 So all the people who ate horse bleep yesterday, I'm not recommending you to Tide Pod because that could come with criminal culpability.

00:44:26.000 But if you do,

00:44:28.000 I'll just say I don't think the world would be lessened by your absence.

00:44:32.000 Okay, other ads that are funny.

00:44:33.000 I can't actually vouch for this one.

00:44:35.000 Did you actually see the Amazon ad?

00:44:36.000 Was it any good?

00:44:38.000 So here's the Amazon ad.

00:44:40.000 We'll watch it together in real time and see whether it was any good.

00:45:01.000 Yeah.

00:45:03.000 Alexa, show me a recipe for a grilled cheese sandwich. 1.00

00:45:06.000 Pathetic! 1.00

00:45:07.000 You're 32 years of age and you don't know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich? 1.00

00:45:11.000 Its name is the recipe, you d***head! 0.99

00:45:14.000 Alexa, how far is Mars? 0.99

00:45:16.000 How far is Mars?

00:45:17.000 Well, how am I supposed to know?

00:45:18.000 I've never been there.

00:45:19.000 This guy want to go to Mars.

00:45:21.000 For what?

00:45:22.000 There's not even oxygen there.

00:45:24.000 Alexa, set the mood. 0.98

00:45:26.000 Now setting the mood.

00:45:28.000 You're in the bush. 1.00

00:45:29.000 And you're just so dirty.

00:45:31.000 And so sweaty.

00:45:33.000 Because it's hot in that bush.

00:45:36.000 Alexa, re-bush.

00:45:36.000 Re-reboot.

00:45:37.000 Alexa, play some country music.

00:45:41.000 No, no, Alexa.

00:45:44.000 Country music.

00:45:48.000 Alexa, call Brandon.

00:45:51.000 I'm afraid Brandon is a little tied up.

00:46:00.000 But do let me know if there's anything I can help you with.

00:46:05.000 Okay, that's a funny commercial.

00:46:13.000 Okay, okay.

00:46:14.000 Funny commercial.

00:46:14.000 Okay, here's the one that got all the criticism.

00:46:16.000 So, Dodge Ram did an ad where they featured Martin Luther King Jr.'

00:46:20.000 's voice. 0.99

00:46:20.000 And this drew all sorts of criticism for reasons that I find kind of stupid. 0.99

00:46:25.000 Here's the ad. 0.99

00:46:26.000 It's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

00:46:28.000 speaking from February 4th, 1968, 50 years ago.

00:46:32.000 And here's what he had to say.

00:46:32.000 If you want to be important, wonderful.

00:46:38.000 If you want to be recognized wonderfully, if you want to be great wonderfully, but recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.

00:46:50.000 That's a new definition of greatness.

00:46:54.000 By giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great.

00:47:00.000 You don't have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.

00:47:04.000 You don't have to know the theory of relativity to serve.

00:47:07.000 You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics. 0.63

00:47:21.000 Okay, so this ad got all sorts of crap because it was juxtaposing people serving and the words of Martin Luther King with the Dodge Rams. 0.84

00:47:29.000 People were like, oh my God, how could they use Martin Luther King to sell Dodge Rams? 0.84

00:47:33.000 Okay, number one, I don't really think that that's what the ad is about.

00:47:36.000 Okay, I remember that there was, I think it was GM did an ad with Clint Eastwood a few years ago at the Super Bowl, and the ad was all him talking about how great the country was, and nobody felt like, oh my God, how could they possibly use patriotism to sell product?

00:47:48.000 I didn't see any of the critics of this ad actually noting something.

00:47:51.000 The messages that are being promoted by the ad are good.

00:47:54.000 Put aside the fact that you don't like commercialism.

00:47:56.000 Put aside the fact that you may not like capitalism all that much.

00:47:58.000 The ad is spending millions of dollars to promote an ethos of service to others.

00:48:03.000 That's an amazing thing.

00:48:04.000 They spent probably $15 million on this ad to promote the idea that you should help other people.

00:48:09.000 And if our Dodge Ram can help you help other people, then maybe you should get a Dodge Ram.

00:48:12.000 That's basically what the ad is.

00:48:13.000 And people are losing their minds about this.

00:48:15.000 I just find that utterly insipid.

00:48:16.000 The other thing that people are saying about this is, how could they use Dr. Martin Luther King's words while people like Colin Kaepernick are kneeling?

00:48:22.000 The answer is Dr. Martin Luther King would not be kneeling with Colin Kaepernick because Dr. Martin Luther King understood that his whole job was to hold on to that flag as tightly as he possibly could and say, this flag is mine, too, and therefore I stand for the flag with you.

00:48:36.000 Now you stand for me.

00:48:38.000 That was what he was doing.

00:48:39.000 So again, people who are going after this hat, I didn't really understand that.

00:48:42.000 I thought that it was a little bit over the top.

00:48:44.000 OK, so time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:48:50.000 OK, so a couple things.

00:48:51.000 One, a Colts linebacker was actually killed over the weekend in a DUI.

00:48:55.000 The person who killed him was an illegal immigrant. 1.00

00:48:56.000 The media didn't really report that.

00:48:59.000 His name was Cabrera Gonzalez.

00:49:01.000 His name was, I'm looking for it, Alex Cabrera Gonzalez, 37, drove his truck into an emergency shoulder on the highway and plowed into a rideshare vehicle, killing Edwin Jackson and 54-year-old Jeffrey Monroe.

00:49:13.000 Gonzalez was booked at Marion County Jail.

00:49:15.000 Records show he's wanted for deportation.

00:49:17.000 He was using an alias.

00:49:18.000 His real name, apparently, is Manuel Oregosavala, an illegal alien who had been deported multiple times from the U.S., once in 2007 and once in 2009.

00:49:25.000 So, well done, INS, or ICE.

00:49:28.000 Well done, federal government, which fails to fix the immigration problem over and over and over, another dead American as a result of an illegal immigration problem that you refuse to fix. 0.74

00:49:35.000 So, that, of course, is in a thing that I hate.

00:49:37.000 Other things that I hate.

00:49:38.000 So, in the middle of the Super Bowl, they did a preview for Solo.

00:49:42.000 No, just no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:49:45.000 So here's, we'll show you a little bit of this.

00:49:52.000 I've been running scams on the street since I was 10.

00:49:54.000 I was kicked out of the flight academy.

00:50:08.000 I'm gonna be a pilot.

00:50:10.000 The best in the galaxy.

00:50:16.000 Hey, kid.

00:50:18.000 I'm putting together a crew.

00:50:25.000 You in?

00:50:27.000 That's yes.

00:50:29.000 I might be the only person...

00:50:38.000 Who knows what you really are.

00:50:47.000 What's that?

00:50:53.000 Okay, first of all, no, no synthesizers, please.

00:50:58.000 No synthesizers.

00:50:59.000 Okay, yes, I see.

00:51:00.000 It's the Millennium Falcon.

00:51:01.000 Yes, we've all seen the Millennium Falcon.

00:51:02.000 Okay, so a few things about this preview.

00:51:04.000 So, the iconic use of the Millennium Falcon over and over and over and over again.

00:51:09.000 You can't do it again, right?

00:51:10.000 I mean, you already did the callback in Force Awakens, and that was nice.

00:51:14.000 And now you can't go back to this.

00:51:15.000 Also,

00:51:16.000 Han Solo has the coolest entry in film history, right?

00:51:18.000 His entrance in Star Wars, episode four, is one of the coolest entrances ever.

00:51:22.000 He's literally sitting in a cantina and shoots a guy in the middle of a conversation about how he's a rogue.

00:51:27.000 Okay, that's awesome.

00:51:28.000 And yes, Han shot first.

00:51:29.000 And now, everybody is, now you want the backstory?

00:51:32.000 Like, I don't need the backstory.

00:51:33.000 He was only 31 when he did, I think he was 29, he was a kid when he did Star Wars, episode four.

00:51:40.000 And in the movie, he's supposed to be even younger.

00:51:41.000 He's supposed to be like late 20s.

00:51:43.000 What could have happened to him that was so formative?

00:51:45.000 Also, I'm not seeing the tremendous sense of humor that was sort of necessary in Han Solo.

00:51:51.000 Han's whole thing is that he was cynical, and now they're going to make him—if they make him not cynical, it's going to be so obnoxious.

00:51:55.000 If they make him just an innocent, right, that deep down he's good—we know deep down he's good, but that was the whole discovery of episode four, right?

00:52:02.000 Why are you ruining it?

00:52:03.000 The whole discovery of episode four is that deep down Han Solo's good.

00:52:06.000 He spends the entire time being a rogue, and then he comes back at the end and saves Luke because deep down he's actually a softy.

00:52:11.000 That's the whole point.

00:52:13.000 We're good to go.

00:52:29.000 In Rogue One, none of these characters were in the main film, except for Darth Vader, who appears exactly the way he appears in the main film.

00:52:36.000 So we will see if it is as bad as it looks.

00:52:39.000 Maybe it won't be.

00:52:40.000 I'll go see it anyway because, hey, it's Star Wars, but we'll save our rip on it for actually seeing it.

00:52:44.000 Okay, quick note on Federalist No.

00:52:46.000 14.

00:52:47.000 So every week we do an episode of the Federalist Papers.

00:52:50.000 Federalist No. 0.54

00:52:51.000 14 is by James Madison.

00:52:53.000 This talks about why republics work over large regions.

00:52:56.000 So, Madison writes,

00:53:13.000 The idea here is that a republic can only be as large as the capacity to travel to the central point and then travel back home at relative intervals.

00:53:20.000 That means that you can have the idea of a large republic over time.

00:53:23.000 You can't have the idea of a large democracy.

00:53:25.000 The founders were opposed to direct democracy.

00:53:27.000 They liked the idea of a republic.

00:53:28.000 They also suggested that because the republic was so large, states would have to have extraordinary powers in order to do all the local services that things would need.

00:53:35.000 One of the big problems now is the federal government has overreached so much that it feels like the federal government does most things and the state government does very few.

00:53:42.000 The relationship should be reversed.

00:53:45.000 In fact, James Madison says, Meaning, even if you got rid of state governments, you'd have to reinstate them because somebody has to control the locals.

00:54:04.000 Finally, he gives an inspiring statement that's kind of like what I said about the Super Bowl, except more eloquent.

00:54:09.000 He said,

00:54:24.000 Harken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world, that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors, that it rashly attempts what is impossible to accomplish.

00:54:35.000 Know, my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language, shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys, the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies.

00:54:51.000 We should remember that, whether we're watching the Super Bowl, whether we're arguing politics, or whether we're talking about the American founding.

00:54:56.000 All right, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.

00:54:58.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:59.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 05, 2018

Does The Super Bowl Matter? | Ep. 468

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