Trump's trip to Texas, the Nashville statement, and Nancy Pelosi's high heels. Plus, I'll explain why the media loves it when politicians go on trips like this, and why it makes them look like they're doing something good. Shout out to our sponsor, Enzo Chino, for making great custom suits for the President! Thanks to Enzo and his team for all the work they've done to make these suits, and thanks to everyone who's been helping out with the relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. You can support Enzo's efforts by becoming a patron patron of his company EnzoChino. They make quality, high-fashion suits that look great on everyone, including the President, on every level. If you like what you're getting, you can get them for under $379 with free shipping and free shipping. Use promo code SHOPSHOP to get 20% off your first purchase when you enter the Promo Code SHOP with discount code SHIPPING. It's a great way to support the cause, and we'll make sure you get the best quality suits to look good and feel good in no time at all of your local boutiques! You'll also get free shipping, free fittings, and everything you need to look your best in the best possible way! Thanks again for supporting the cause! Ben Shapiro's Weekly Newsletter! - subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show! Subscribe to The Weekly Shirts! and become a Friend of the Show! Subscribe to our new episodes every Tuesday morning. Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about Ben Shapiro and his new book recommendations, The Best Thing I'm I've ever heard of? Subscribe for a chance to win a copy of The New York Times bestselling book I'm reading and more! Learn more at Ben Shapiro s new book: The Most Beautiful Thing I've Ever Gave Me A Book Recommendation? by Ben Shapiro? Subscribe and review it on Amazon Prime Day - The Best of Ben Shapiro, the podcast I'll be giving you'll be getting an ad-free version of The Most Influenster? and much more! Subscribe for less than $50 and get exclusive VIP access to Ben Shapiro will be getting a discount on his next book out in the next episode, coming out in paperback and more? I'll also be giving out an ad free version of the book I've reviewed in next week!
00:01:07.000I don't wear it that often because, you know, vests, but it's pretty cool and it fits perfectly because that's what Enzo Chino is in the business of doing.
00:01:14.000You can either go over to one of their showrooms in some major cities or you can go over to enzochino.com and shop online.
00:01:20.000You pick your fabric, you choose your customizations from lapels to pleats to jacket linings, you submit your measurements online, then you place your order
00:02:24.000When George W. Bush did a flyover of Hurricane Katrina back in 2006, 2007, then the media went nuts.
00:02:31.000How dare George W. Bush do such a thing?
00:02:34.000How could George W. Bush not actually land in New Orleans and take care of business on the ground?
00:02:41.000Like, I always thought this was stupid because I'm not sure exactly
00:02:45.000Why it is, sorry it's 2005, I'm not sure why it is that George W. Bush, like what was he going to do on the ground?
00:02:50.000Was he going to like get out and start bailing?
00:02:52.000Was he going to go to a homeless shelter and start handing out food in a way that no other two human hands on the planet could do?
00:02:58.000It seems like a massive distraction to me.
00:03:00.000Whenever a president does this it seems like a distraction.
00:03:02.000When Obama wanted to do this during Hurricane Sandy and then Chris Christie hosted him in New Jersey, I'm not a big fan of this whole the president has to go there like he's the king.
00:03:10.000Like he's the emperor and he must land and now he will bring order to a chaotic situation.
00:03:13.000Like did anyone feel more secure that Trump went?
00:04:15.000And he's wearing his USA hat because that's what he does.
00:04:17.000And Melania, all the focus is on Melania in terms of a lot of the optics.
00:04:21.000So the first focus was on the fact that when she was leaving the White House she was wearing heels.
00:04:26.000Okay, so, she then changed on the plane, and she was wearing sneakers when she got there, which makes some sense, but why do we care about her shoes again?
00:05:42.000Is the job getting done or is the job not getting done?
00:05:45.000And then, what they really jumped on is he shows up at, basically, it looks like a truck yard in Corpus Christi, and he starts sort of pitching himself as a public figure.
00:06:52.000Like, that's what we're gonna nitpick over now?
00:06:54.000He's doing a good job with the response, but that's what we're gonna nitpick over?
00:06:57.000And then, they double down because Trump also said that this is all about, you know, how it's gonna be, that he wants people to be able to congratulate each other when this is over on their response.
00:07:53.000Trump, you see, wasn't empathetic enough.
00:07:54.000Here's a little montage cut by our own Robert Krejcik over at Daily Wire of all the members of the media focusing in on just the horrific nature of Trump's statements.
00:08:09.000And briefly, did Donald Trump have his empathy moment today?
00:08:39.000But has he ever been exposed to a situation?
00:08:42.000And Jim, those words there show that the president is still very much learning on the job in terms of empathy, learning on the job in terms of how to react and relate to the individuals here who are, you know, responding.
00:08:56.000The human element seemed to be absent outside of the self-congratulatory gestures of the press conference.
00:09:04.000It seems to me it's just concerned about optics.
00:11:10.000I want to be able to offer my help and support in the most productive way possible, not through just words, but also action.
00:11:15.000What I found to be the most profound during the visit was not only the strength and resilience of the people of Texas, but the compassion and sense of community that has taken over the state.
00:11:22.000My thoughts and prayers continue to be with the people of Texas and Louisiana.
00:11:25.000That seems rather empathetic to me, but the overall drive for empathy I think is actually a serious political problem for a couple of reasons, and I'll explain those in just one second.
00:11:34.000But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at stamps.com.
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00:12:10.000I use stamps.com because we here at the office mail things all the time and there's no reason for us to constantly be running over to a mail shop.
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00:13:06.000So, they've already tried stupid with Trump, and it's only gotten them so far.
00:13:10.000Corrupt, they're still trying, and it's only gotten them so far.
00:13:13.000So now, in this situation where he's demonstrated neither stupidity nor corruption, they have to go to their third prong, which is he's evil.
00:13:18.000He actually doesn't empathize with the people who are in harm's way.
00:13:34.000He may be a buffoon sometimes, but is that what you're seeing here?
00:13:36.000Because that's not what I'm seeing here.
00:13:37.000And the media are obviously attempting to exaggerate the case and make the case that he's a meanie, a big meanie, even though he's doing the job, and specifically because he's doing the job.
00:13:51.000As I've referenced before, empathy in politics leads you to have empathy for the person who's directly in front of you, without looking at the broader cause.
00:13:58.000So empathy leads you to a situation like Hurricane Sandy, where after Hurricane Sandy, Democrats in Congress decided they wanted to load up the Hurricane Sandy funding with a bunch of pork.
00:14:16.000Because they were using empathy as an excuse to be corrupt.
00:14:19.000So, we empathize with the people who are harmed by Hurricane Sandy, and therefore, it is very, very important that we load up as much pork into this bill as possible and pass something.
00:14:28.000And if you don't do it, then you lack empathy.
00:14:33.000Empathy leads you to focus on the specific beneficiary of a policy as opposed to the disparate and diffuse group of individuals who are hurt by a given policy.
00:14:42.000So, in this particular case, listen, we have FEMA, we have a state government, we have local governments, and they're all doing their job, but the idea here from the Democrats is that empathy really has to come down to how much money is Trump going to spend.
00:14:54.000Not does the job get done, but we can measure empathy in dollars.
00:14:57.000We can measure empathy in dollars, which is sort of an amazing thing for Democrats to say, considering the people who give charity in this country happen to be mostly Republican.
00:15:05.000The average amount of charity coming out of Republican households is much higher than it is coming out of Democratic households, but then we're called selfish.
00:15:12.000If you're going to measure empathy in money, I would suggest you start with charity.
00:15:15.000But for Democrats, what they really mean is that if you're truly empathetic, you're ready to sign a check to the government because the government can cure all your problems if you just give your cash to the government.
00:15:24.000So, for instance, I saw a headline today that was talking about school lunches in Houston.
00:15:28.000Apparently, the local government is now saying that they want to provide free school lunches to all the kids in Houston for 2017-2018.
00:16:03.000You can tell where a lot of the left's priorities lie.
00:16:07.000Linda Sarsour has now put out a tweet calling for people to donate to what she's calling the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund.
00:16:12.000The Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund is apparently and reportedly a political organizing committee that is designed toward lobbying the government.
00:16:20.000charity that goes directly to victims.
00:16:22.000It is instead a social organizing force to get people to lobby the government to give more money to the victims of Hurricane Harvey and to, in particular, minority groups who are harmed by Hurricane Harvey.
00:16:31.000It just demonstrates where the left's head is at in all of this.
00:16:34.000So, second reason why I don't like the empathy argument is that the empathy argument suggests that you are somehow a better person if you spend more money.
00:16:43.000Empathy is really a stand-in for cash.
00:16:45.000Empathy is just a politically savvy maneuver by Democrats in order for them to claim that you're not empathetic enough if you don't want to give them what they want.
00:16:52.000They're like this all the time, right?
00:16:53.000This is what I said to Piers Morgan about gun control.
00:16:55.000His implication was, if I didn't want gun control, it's because I wasn't empathetic enough.
00:16:59.000For Democrats, you can measure the level of your effectiveness by the level of your empathy.
00:17:03.000I don't measure effectiveness by empathy.
00:17:06.000I measure effectiveness by effectiveness.
00:17:41.000Oh, if only he'd sh— There is something to the idea that if you go into a chaotic situation, and rather than demonstrating that you care, you demonstrate that you're in control, that's actually more useful.
00:17:53.000If I were a victim of some sort of natural disaster, what I wouldn't care very much about is a politician coming in and giving me a hug or my wife a hug.
00:18:39.000One of my favorite things about that clip of the people shouting about Trump, about the Jeff Zeleny at CNN talking about Trump being non-empathetic, one of my favorite things is the guy in the background shouting CNN fake news as this happens.
00:19:40.000You also, if you get the annual subscription, you get this, the very greatest in all beverage vessels, leftist here's hot or cold daily wire tumbler.
00:20:13.000We are the largest and fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:20:23.000Alrighty, so, let's talk a little bit about what Hurricane Katrina does in terms of reinforcing reality.
00:20:30.000One of the reasons I think people like disaster fiction, one of the reasons I think people like to watch movies like The Hunger Games, is because we have an innate sense that when we are in crisis, our true identity shines forth.
00:20:41.000That when crisis strikes, people go back to the basics.
00:20:44.000And that's what you're seeing in Hurricane Katrina.
00:20:46.000I talked about that in Hurricane Harvey.
00:20:49.000As I talked about a couple of days ago, I think that what you're seeing in terms of people helping each other out, that is the innate sense of Americans.
00:20:55.000I think that people all over the world want to help each other out in times of disaster.
00:20:58.000But there is something else that I think is worth noting.
00:21:00.000And that is that there have been a couple of pictures that I think people find really moving and I think they're moving for a reason.
00:21:06.000There's one picture in particular that I thought was very moving.
00:21:08.000It's a picture of a man holding a woman holding a child.
00:21:11.000He's trying to bring her out of the flood and he's holding the woman and she's holding the child.
00:21:15.000The fact is that gender roles are relatively well defined in biology and the reason for that is because the diversity of the gender role is a great thing.
00:21:24.000It's so funny, the left is very into diversity, except when it comes to actual gender roles, then all of a sudden they suggest that these are all arbitrary and meaningless.
00:21:31.000But the fact is that when disaster strikes, it is largely men who are charging into situations to try and save women and children and other people.
00:21:39.000A society that is not built on men trying to help each other will be built on men trying to destroy each other.
00:21:45.000Male gender roles that are all about men protecting, that's a good thing.
00:21:49.000That's something we ought to be cheering.
00:21:51.000And you see some people who are very upset when you say this.
00:22:01.000But, if a man is not protective, if we have a society of men who are not protective, they will instead be destructive.
00:22:07.000This is just how, from the time boys are little boys, they are either building with blocks or they are destroying the blocks that they just built.
00:22:13.000These are the two things that they do.
00:22:15.000Men are built for protection or they are built for destruction.
00:22:18.000And when you see disaster strike, what you see is a lot of heroic men charging into the line of fire, and that's a good thing.
00:22:22.000And what you see is a lot of heroic women protecting their children.
00:22:25.000You see a lot of heroic women whose first priority is to protect their kids.
00:22:28.000And you see that kids are treated as kids.
00:23:34.000And leftists suggesting that children are capable of making their own decisions about sexual orientation and gender identity.
00:23:41.000All of this is an overriding of the innate biological good diversity between men, women, and children that truly does exist.
00:23:51.000Speaking of all of that, I want to talk a little bit about the Nashville Statement.
00:23:55.000For people who don't know what the Nashville Statement is, the evangelical community has brought out something called the Nashville Statement on Friday, August 25th.
00:24:04.000The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission jointly hosted a gathering of Christian leaders in Nashville.
00:24:10.000They wanted to finalize and approve the Nashville Statement in the hope of providing a biblically faithful standard.
00:24:18.000And the Nashville Statement has made a lot of fuss.
00:24:20.000There are a lot of people on the left who are very deeply upset with the Nashville Statement because the Nashville Statement does something terrible.
00:24:26.000It reinforces all of biblical Christianity's views about sexuality.
00:24:32.000It's always really weird and curious to me that so many folks on the left are confused whenever Christians believe in the gospel, whenever Jews believe in the Bible.
00:25:05.000Like, read Grover Goes to School and you'll be more informed about the Bible than you currently are, clearly, because this is insanity.
00:25:10.000Okay, so, here's what the National Statement says.
00:25:13.000This is not to suggest that public policy has to reflect the National Statement, but public policy does have to reflect protection for people who are religious and believe in the National Statement.
00:25:22.000That is something public policy does have to do.
00:25:25.000You don't have to agree with the National Statement, but for you to try and hijack somebody else's religion is ridiculous.
00:25:29.000It's like every time the Pope comes out and says abortion's bad, and the left goes, oh darn it, we thought this time he was really gonna come around on this.
00:25:36.000Or when the Pope says same-sex marriage is not something the Catholic Church believes in, and the left goes, we were this close.
00:25:42.000That's been Catholic doctrine since the very beginning.
00:25:44.000So the National Statement affirms that God has designed marriage to be covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman and his husband and wife.
00:25:52.000If this comes as a shock to you, it's because you're stupid.
00:25:55.000And they deny that God has designed marriage to be homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous, and they deny marriage is a mere human contract rather than covenant made with God.
00:26:03.000I agree with all of this, by the way, on a personal level.
00:26:05.000Again, this doesn't reflect public policy.
00:26:07.000I think the government should get completely out of the business of marriage.
00:26:10.000I agree, it is a covenant made before God.
00:26:12.000I don't know what government has to do with a covenant made before God.
00:26:15.000Article 2 says, we affirm that God's revealed will for all people is chastity outside of marriage and fidelity within marriage.
00:26:28.000The idea that just because you want to do something doesn't mean you get to do something, or that it's justified.
00:26:42.000They say we affirm that God created Adam and Eve, the first human beings in his own image, equal before God as persons, and distinct as male and female, and deny that the divinely ordained differences between male and female rendered them unequal in dignity or worth.
00:26:59.000They say we affirm the differences between male and female reproductive structures are integral to God's design for self-conception as male or female.
00:27:05.000So in other words, gender is not independent of sex.
00:27:24.000And they say they deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God's holy purposes in creation and redemption.
00:27:32.000Okay, again, this is traditional Christian worldview.
00:27:34.000This is not suggesting that you're... Here's where I have a slight difference.
00:27:39.000You know, if you conceive of yourself as homosexual or transgender, in my view, that's your business.
00:28:02.000But, to suggest that this isn't in line with Christian thinking for the last couple thousand years is just asinine.
00:28:10.000Everything they say here, in other words, is totally within bounds of Christianity, and yet the left is super mad, because the left is super mad that there are people who disagree with them.
00:28:18.000Tolerance and diversity for the left end at my religious observance.
00:28:23.000That's when tolerance and diversity end, which is why government has a job protecting religious diversity.
00:28:28.000It's why government has a job saying, you don't get to encroach on me, and I don't get to encroach on you.
00:28:33.000But this idea that you get to encroach on me because you don't like what I'm doing, okay, that's fascism.
00:28:36.000And the left's hatred for the national statement demonstrates, like, I don't understand why they even care.
00:28:42.000As I've said this a thousand times, whether I consider your behavior sinful or not is completely irrelevant to you.
00:28:52.000But the left does care because deep down what the left wants when it comes to social issues is legitimacy, moral legitimacy for their viewpoint.
00:29:00.000They can't get it from the church so they look to government to quash the church and then look to government as the sort of absolver of all of their sexual feelings.
00:29:23.000It says, Our democracy has no room for inciting violence or endangering the public, no matter the ideology of those who commit such acts.
00:29:30.000The violent actions of people calling themselves Antifa in Berkeley this weekend deserve unequivocal condemnation and the perpetrator should be arrested and prosecuted.
00:29:39.000In California, as across all of our great nation, we have deep reverence for the constitutional right to peaceful dissent and free speech.
00:29:46.000Nonviolence is fundamental to that right.
00:29:48.000Let us use this sad event to reaffirm that we must never fight hate with hate, and to remember the values of peace, openness, and justice that represent the best of America.
00:30:54.000I don't know about you, but virtually all concerts release tickets months in advance.
00:31:00.000Okay, the idea that you're going to release tickets, I guess maybe two weeks in, they're now talking about next week releasing tickets, giving people like a week and a half to sign up.
00:31:07.000We already have nearly 2,000 people who have signed up through yaf.org for the event itself, and we're going to try and translate those over to tickets at Berkeley.
00:31:18.000Apparently, they're now trying to require that YAF and the college Republicans tell everybody that if you want to pick up your ticket, you have to come the day before, before 5 p.m.
00:31:29.000That they won't mail them out, that they won't print them out, that instead you have to physically come there the day before, before 5 p.m.
00:31:35.000Does that sound like they're trying to throw up a roadblock to filling out the auditorium?
00:31:40.000I've never heard of a public event where you have to arrive the day before in person to pick up your tickets.
00:31:45.000Have you ever heard of something like this, Mathis?
00:31:46.000I've never heard of something like this.
00:31:48.000I mean, if every ticketing system in America and around the world allows you to print out your ticket at home, allows you to pick up your ticket at the box office the day of,
00:31:56.000This is total madness and it's obvious that they're trying to throw up obstacles at this point.
00:32:00.000Please, if you have a chance, go over to yaf.org and register for the event and they have the information for Berkeley's administration.
00:32:07.000They should be let know by you that this is unacceptable.
00:32:10.000All we want to do is go and have an event talking about free speech and Antifa and the alt-right and Black Lives Matter and social justice warriors and hit on all these hot-button issues in a
00:32:24.000And exercising those free speech rights is made difficult even by the people who pledged to uphold them over at Berkeley, which is really quite astounding.
00:32:31.000So, I would hope that Berkeley does its job and releases the tickets ASAP and forthwith because I know that there are literally thousands of people who want to show up.
00:32:39.000Okay, time for things I like, and then we'll do some things I hate, and then we'll do a little bit of Bible talk.
00:32:43.000We've been doing a little bit of philosophy this week.
00:32:46.000Another book on philosophy that was held near and dear by a lot of the early conservatives in the country was Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.
00:32:55.000One of the great differences between some of the founders was how they felt about the French Revolution.
00:32:58.000Some people, like John Adams, saw the French Revolution as dangerous, which it was.
00:33:03.000Some people, like Thomas Jefferson, initially loved the French Revolution and thought that this was the overthrow of the old order,
00:33:08.000And something new would be built in its place.
00:33:10.000Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.
00:33:12.000Burke was a supporter of the American Revolution.
00:33:15.000And Burke was a believer in representative democracy, not direct democracy.
00:33:20.000His book, Reflections on the Revolution of France, basically predicts what is going to happen in the revolution and why it's going to fall apart.
00:33:28.000Right he was, because it did fall apart.
00:33:33.000The difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution was based on the idea that human beings are endowed by their creators with certain inalienable rights, and that government is enshrined and empowered in order to protect those individual rights.
00:33:50.000The French Revolution was based on the idea
00:33:52.000That all rights spring from government and the community, and therefore the community has the ability to overrule individual rights in any situation where it sees fit to do so.
00:34:02.000Brook points that out, and he points out the value of respecting tradition, particularly, if you don't know what it is, there's a... I think it's Robert Frost who says this, but I'm not sure, who says that the... No, I'm sorry, it's Chesterton, who makes the argument out of fences.
00:34:18.000You know, the difference between a conservative and a leftist is that a conservative sees a fence in the middle of a field and says to himself, I don't know why that fence is there.
00:34:26.000Maybe I should find out why that fence is there before removing it.
00:34:28.000A leftist sees a fence in the middle of the field and says, there's no reason for this fence to be here.
00:34:41.000So, there's been a lot of talk about Colin Kaepernick, a crappy quarterback for the 49ers, kneeling for the National Anthem, and now there are a bunch of people on the horrifyingly bad Cleveland Browns who kneel for the National Anthem.
00:34:51.000Good for a Cowboys QB, Dak Prescott, who was asked specifically about kneeling for the National Anthem.
00:35:04.000Why do you feel the need to not participate in that?
00:35:07.000I mean, it's bigger than I think some of us think.
00:35:11.000I mean, it's just important for me to go out there, hand over my heart, represent our country, just be thankful and not take anything I've been given, and then it's my freedom for granted.
00:35:29.000But if you're going to fight the national anthem, all the unifying features of the country themselves, then you're undermining those unifying features.
00:35:40.000This stuff does make a difference, folks.
00:35:41.000If that seems shallow, that I don't root for Colin Kaepernick because I think that his views on America are negative and destructive, but I do root for Dak Prescott because I think that his views on politics are good, maybe your solution ought to be removing politics from sports altogether.
00:35:57.000But as long as politics is going to be infused into sports, then I'm going to root for guys like Dak Prescott, who seems like a much better human being than Colin Kaepernick, at least so far, as his views on the country are concerned.
00:36:05.000Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:36:12.000So, Kathy Griffin has been out of the news for a few months, ever since she did a photo shoot at which she held up the mock-up of a bloody head, bloody decapitated head of President Trump.
00:36:22.000She hasn't been in the news, so she's decided it's time to get back in the news, this time by reneging on her apology, which just demonstrates why fake apologies are stupid in the first place.
00:37:17.000I get that comedy is about pushing the boundaries and being politically incorrect, and that's fine.
00:37:22.000But do you not agree that that picture, holding up a severed head, I know it's a mask covered in tomato sauce, but do you not accept that was a little bit over the line?
00:37:36.000Stop acting like my little picture is more important than talking about the actual atrocities that the President of the United States is committing.
00:37:45.000Okay, what atrocities involve the President of the United States holding up the bloodied, severed head of his political enemies?
00:38:25.000Kathy Griffin, I think, is completely irrelevant, but it does demonstrate that when people on the left decide that it is imperative to make headlines by ripping Trump and then apologize for it later, the apology is completely false.
00:38:38.000There are lots of people on this network and others who don't look like me who are harder on this president and who say disparaging things about this president but he doesn't get as upset with them as he does with me.
00:39:09.000The idea that Trump is only upset with Don Lemon because Don Lemon is black is just ridiculous.
00:39:12.000Trump is one of the most petty human beings on the planet.
00:39:15.000The idea that he's not upset with white people who are mad at him or women who are mad at him.
00:39:20.000I mean, Don Lemon hasn't gotten half of what Megyn Kelly got just during the election cycle.
00:39:23.000And if you're going to talk about people who have been targeted because they didn't like Trump, there are a number of people who have been very critical of Trump.
00:39:31.000I mean, he's going after sitting senators in his own party.
00:39:34.000He's going after Jeff Flake, who's a senator of his own party.
00:39:52.000A lot of people are all over the CNN... I just said something about a CNN host that was negative.
00:39:55.000Now I'm gonna say something about a CNN reporter that is actually not.
00:39:58.000So a lot of people are all over the CNN reporter.
00:40:01.000She's on the ground during Hurricane Harvey.
00:40:03.000And she's being asked about, and she asks a hurricane victim about the situation on the ground, and the hurricane victim really goes after her on camera.
00:40:11.000A lot of the right was overjoyed with this.
00:40:14.000Let me introduce you to Danielle here.
00:40:30.000We did the white flags and everything and nobody came.
00:40:33.000But then somebody had called the phone after we decided to leave the house and we had walked to the gas station with the kids and then they had called and came and picked us up.
00:40:41.000But we had been there like five days with no food and no lights and nobody came.
00:41:04.000But y'all sitting here, y'all trying to interview people during their worst times.
00:41:07.000Like, that's not the smartest thing to do.
00:41:09.000Like, people are really breaking down, and y'all sitting here with cameras and microphones trying to ask us what the f*** is wrong with us.
00:41:16.000And you're really trying to understand with the microphone still in my face, with me shivering cold, with my kids wet, and you still putting a microphone in my face.
00:41:51.000The fact is that if the media were not covering Hurricane Harvey, the amount of charity flowing into funds to help people with Hurricane Harvey would be much lower.
00:41:59.000It is media coverage that drives people's empathy.
00:42:01.000Okay, you want to talk about empathy as cash?
00:42:21.000I think it's unfair to CNN's coverage.
00:42:23.000Okay, a little bit of Bible talk before we part ways.
00:42:25.000So every Wednesday, we do a little bit of Bible talk here on The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:42:30.000And we talk specifically about the sections from the prophets this year, because last year we went through the entirety of the Old Testament, first five books of Moses, so now we are doing some of the prophets.
00:42:40.000So this is from this week's Haftorah, which is the section of the prophets corresponding to the section of the Bible that we read every week.
00:42:49.000This is from the book of Isaiah, and this is from Isaiah 54,
00:42:52.000It says, For this is to me as the waters of Noah, as I swore that the waters of Noah shall never again pass over the earth, so have I sworn neither to be wroth with you nor to rebuke you.
00:43:12.000Okay, so I thought that this was a good biblical reading for a time when so many people have been evacuated from their homes in what, I mean, frankly, looks like biblical scale flooding.
00:43:21.000I mean, this is just incredible stuff.
00:43:31.000You can never talk about why God allows tragedy to happen because we just don't know.
00:43:35.000There are certain limits to human understanding.
00:43:37.000But what God is assuring us here through Isaiah is the idea that the status quo for nature, the status quo for a world without God, is a world of chaos and a world of disaster and a world of badness.
00:44:12.000That without God's protection, nature would overtake us is true.
00:44:15.000That's what it means when... It doesn't say God is actively punishing you with storms here.
00:44:18.000What it says is that God has withdrawn his face.
00:44:21.000And I'm not speaking to this particular storm because I can't get inside God's head.
00:44:24.000What I am saying is that with all the storms, physical, material, spiritual, that we undergo in this life,
00:44:31.000Sometimes that is God just shading his countenance.
00:44:34.000And that's why it's important for us to recognize and seek him out.
00:44:37.000The closer we draw to God doesn't mean that we're going to be protected from disaster.
00:44:41.000I'm not a preacher of prosperity gospel.
00:44:43.000I don't believe that belief in God and faith in God is going to protect you from bad things that happen.
00:44:47.000But it is going to allow you to have more faith that God's countenance is hidden and will reveal itself again.
00:44:53.000And that's what this is talking about.
00:44:54.000Not that God is never going to hide his countenance.
00:44:56.000Not that there aren't going to be times when you don't understand what God is doing because I don't understand what God is doing in Texas right now and neither does anybody else.
00:45:02.000But understand that God's face will emerge once again and that God is there even when he's hiding himself.
00:45:10.000Even when we don't know what he's doing, he's still there, and that eventually God's light will shine again, and I think it will shine again on the people of Texas, and I think they're showing tremendous fortitude and tremendous strength in the face of a brutal period.
00:45:24.000All of our thoughts and prayers, and yes, our charity goes out to the people in Texas right now.
00:45:28.000Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest updates.