The Ben Shapiro Show - Eat The Rich! | Ep. 708

00:00:00.000 Spartacus declares for president a new democratic fresh face.

00:00:03.000 So fresh, so face.

00:00:05.000 Proposes an insane tax rate and Republicans pounce.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:15.000 Well, you know Democrats are having a bad week when every headline is about how Republicans are pouncing, like a bunch of cats, hiding in the shadows.

00:00:21.000 We pounce!

00:00:22.000 Well, there'll be a lot of pouncing on today's show, because Democrats, not good at what they do.

00:00:26.000 Also, lots of making fun of Cory Booker coming up, because come on, man, if I can't make fun of Cory Booker, what was I born to do, people?

00:00:33.000 We'll get to all that in just a second.

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00:01:52.000 All right, so I'm very excited because for a long time, I've been eager to see the Kamala Harris versus Cory Booker versus Elizabeth Warren primary.

00:02:01.000 Who will be the most minority candidate?

00:02:04.000 I mean, Elizabeth Warren, as we all know, is 1 1,024th Native American, and Cory Booker is 1 1,024th Spartacus.

00:02:12.000 As you recall, the senator from New Jersey back during the Kavanaugh hearings, he's such a bag of tools, Cory Booker.

00:02:18.000 I mean, like...

00:02:19.000 It's amazing that people take Cory Booker seriously because everything he does is so over-dramatized.

00:02:27.000 I like Senator Ted Cruz.

00:02:28.000 I'm friendly with Senator Ted Cruz.

00:02:29.000 The rap on Senator Cruz back in 2016 when he was running is that everything that he did seemed like it was overthought by a couple of steps.

00:02:37.000 Well, if everything that Cruz did seemed like it was sort of manipulative or overthought during the 2016 campaign, Cory Booker, it's like the guy, it's like the guy writes a script in his head and then he says, you know what?

00:02:49.000 This needs more explosions.

00:02:51.000 And then he rewrites the script in his head and then he does it live.

00:02:54.000 It's amazing.

00:02:55.000 So that's why you have situations like Cory Booker during the Kavanaugh hearing, you will recall.

00:03:00.000 But there was a series of documents about Brett Kavanaugh that were actually released publicly, like the night before Cory Booker did this.

00:03:06.000 Cory Booker then went out and said, I am violating the rules and I may be banned from this Senate committee for violating the rules by releasing these documents, which were released legally yesterday.

00:03:17.000 And then he said, and these documents will show that Brett Kavanaugh is a vicious racist.

00:03:22.000 And the documents showed no such thing.

00:03:24.000 But he said, if ever there was something like an I am Spartacus moment, This is my I am Spartacus moment.

00:03:32.000 Which is like, you're reading the stage direction, dude.

00:03:36.000 Don't read the stage direction.

00:03:37.000 If you want people to call you Spartacus, that's when you have your press guy call up a friendly outlet and say, you know what, call him Spartacus in the press.

00:03:43.000 This is when you do the Donald Trump as John Miller routine.

00:03:46.000 And you call up and you say, this is definitely not Cory Booker.

00:03:49.000 But if it were Cory Booker, he'd be telling you to write a piece about how he's Spartacus.

00:03:53.000 Instead, he just goes out fully publicly and is like, this is my I am Spartacus moment.

00:03:59.000 That's Cory Booker.

00:04:00.000 So, Cory Booker is now running the Faux Sincere campaign. 1.00

00:04:03.000 And if you fall for this, you are a dolt. 1.00

00:04:05.000 You are a dolt. 1.00

00:04:06.000 I mean, I just, I gotta say. 1.00

00:04:07.000 So, Senator Booker, on Thursday, began calling members of Congress and informing them he is running for president.

00:04:12.000 The least surprising announcement since Rosie O'Donnell came out of the closet.

00:04:15.000 He's quietly making overtures to members for support according to three congressional sources.

00:04:19.000 That was yesterday.

00:04:20.000 And then within hours, he had openly announced his intentions.

00:04:23.000 And here is his launch video. 0.55

00:04:26.000 And to say that this thing is overproduced and staged and ridiculous would be understatement by omission.

00:04:34.000 It's incredible. 0.85

00:04:36.000 It's incredible.

00:04:37.000 I'm going to describe it for you if you can't actually see it.

00:04:40.000 You should go and see it.

00:04:42.000 You should subscribe to Daily Wire so you can see all of the clips that we play and see my reaction to them.

00:04:47.000 But this video is just wonderful because basically the theme of the video is Cory Booker is just a boy from Newark.

00:04:54.000 He's a boy from Newark who made good because he's overcome racism and homophobia and sexism and all.

00:04:59.000 He's not gay, by the way.

00:05:00.000 And all these other things.

00:05:01.000 He's overcome everything in life.

00:05:03.000 He was a Newark boy who became mayor of Newark and still lives in Newark.

00:05:08.000 Now, what's hilarious about this video, as you will see, is that his main message is that he was mayor of Newark and grew up in Newark and spent his entire life in Newark.

00:05:18.000 And it sucks just as much as when he was a kid.

00:05:20.000 That's the underlying theme of the video.

00:05:21.000 So he spends his whole life there trying to make things better, supposedly, and nothing is better in Newark.

00:05:26.000 And, by the way, spend some time in Newark, man.

00:05:28.000 That is not a place.

00:05:29.000 No insult to people who have spent their time in Newark.

00:05:32.000 Newark is not one of America's most comfortable cities.

00:05:35.000 Let's just put it that way.

00:05:36.000 And Cory Booker's tenure there didn't do much to help the city of Newark.

00:05:39.000 It's like when Kamala Harris talks about her record in California.

00:05:41.000 And those of us in California are sitting around going, uh, what now?

00:05:45.000 Crime rose while you were the AG, and you were the district attorney in San Francisco, which is now a whole.

00:05:52.000 So, well done.

00:05:53.000 It's amazing how failing upward in politics just seems to be endemic.

00:05:57.000 Like, the worse you do, at least on the Democratic side, At least when Rick Perry ran for president of the United States, he'd been a good governor of Texas.

00:06:05.000 Kamala Harris was an awful AG. 1.00

00:06:06.000 She'd been an awful senator. 1.00

00:06:07.000 She was an awful district attorney in San Francisco. 1.00

00:06:10.000 And now, you've got Cory Booker, who is a garbage mayor of New Jersey, a garbage senator from New Jersey, and now he's going to run for president of the United States. 0.99

00:06:17.000 Being crappy at your job is almost a prerequisite to becoming President of the United States if you are a Democrat. 0.98

00:06:22.000 Like, what did Barack Obama do as Senator in Illinois that radically made Chicago better?

00:06:26.000 Is Chicago way better now than it was, like, when Obama got to Chicago?

00:06:31.000 Not seeing a ton of evidence of that. 0.69

00:06:32.000 Anyway, here is Cory Booker's ridiculous ad.

00:06:36.000 We can build a country where no one is forgotten. 0.88

00:06:40.000 No one is left behind.

00:06:42.000 OK, pause for a second.

00:06:43.000 Sorry.

00:06:44.000 So he so we're going to stop and start this.

00:06:46.000 He says we can build a country where no one is left behind.

00:06:48.000 It's a picture of reams of just homeless people.

00:06:51.000 Like, you've been in government, dude.

00:06:53.000 What have you been doing about this problem?

00:06:54.000 Anything?

00:06:55.000 You got a thing?

00:06:56.000 Also, his dramatic reading is so great.

00:07:00.000 So, over here at The Daily Wire, we have an executable host named Michael Moles.

00:07:04.000 And Michael Moles is a former actor.

00:07:07.000 And when he acts, he sometimes tends to overdo it.

00:07:11.000 That is nothing compared to Cory Booker.

00:07:12.000 I mean, Cory Booker is chewing the scenery like he is a starving man on a desert island.

00:07:18.000 He's chewing that scenery.

00:07:19.000 It's just great.

00:07:20.000 So continue, Mr. Booker.

00:07:21.000 Food on the table, where there are good paying jobs with good benefits in every neighborhood.

00:07:27.000 Where our criminal justice system keeps us safe instead of shuffling more children into cages and coffins.

00:07:35.000 Okay, so can we pause it there for a second?

00:07:37.000 - Leaders on television can feel pride. - And then the picture of him, no kidding. - It's not a matter of can we.

00:07:45.000 It's a matter of do we have the collective will. - Okay, so can we pause it there for a second?

00:07:49.000 I'm just wondering, at what point do we actually get the big screen reveal that this is actually the movie drum line?

00:07:56.000 Because you'll hear throughout this ad, people drumming.

00:08:00.000 And there's actual video of random people drumming.

00:08:02.000 It's like some white chick in her apartment and she's drumming away and then he's walking through a high school corridor and people are drumming away.

00:08:09.000 I was hoping that maybe he would break into song or maybe he'd just start breakdancing in the middle of the video.

00:08:14.000 Just for entertainment value.

00:08:17.000 But it's like he took all of the cliches and he put them in a cliche nuclear reactor.

00:08:23.000 And out came a cliche nuclear rod that is radioactive, but also extraordinarily powerful.

00:08:30.000 Continue.

00:08:32.000 I believe we do.

00:08:34.000 Together, we will channel our common pain back into our common purpose.

00:08:40.000 Together, America, we will rise.

00:08:45.000 I'm Cory Booker, and I'm running for President of the United States of America.

00:08:50.000 Wow.

00:08:51.000 Wow.

00:08:51.000 So together, we will rise.

00:08:54.000 Yeah, so much excitement.

00:08:56.000 So much fake excitement.

00:08:57.000 It's just, you gotta love it.

00:08:58.000 You gotta love it.

00:08:59.000 It's just spectacular.

00:09:00.000 And here's the thing.

00:09:01.000 He's gonna crowd that lane, right?

00:09:03.000 There's an intersectional lane that he's trying to run in.

00:09:05.000 Now, what's funny about Booker is that when Booker started, his entire pitch is that he actually was the bipartisan Democrat.

00:09:10.000 So you'll recall, if you look back at his career, Jim Garrity does this at National Review, that he started by taking on a Democratic machine in Newark, and he ran in Newark on the platform that I'm not a radical Democrat.

00:09:21.000 He first lost, and then he won.

00:09:23.000 And his big thing when he was mayor of Newark was making these big dramatic announcements, so...

00:09:27.000 In 2010, he joined Chris Christie, who was then the governor of New Jersey, with whom he was very friendly at the time, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the Oprah Winfrey Show to accept an eye-popping gift, $100 million to reform Newark public schools with local philanthropists and others matching it and raising it to $200 million.

00:09:44.000 It was a really good day for Cory Booker.

00:09:46.000 And then you'll recall that as mayor of Newark, he decided that he was going to do like the food stamp test and try to live on supplemental nutrition assistance.

00:09:54.000 Every day for a month, which didn't even make sense because it's supplemental nutrition assistance.

00:09:58.000 It's not supposed to be like the entirety of your income for the entire month.

00:10:02.000 But then when he went to the Senate, he just decided that he was going to give up being bipartisan at all.

00:10:09.000 That was because there was real backlash to him in 2012.

00:10:11.000 People were attacking private equity and Booker fought back against that.

00:10:14.000 Booker said, you know, why are we attacking private equity?

00:10:17.000 He says, we're getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions, and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital.

00:10:26.000 If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support business, to grow business, and this, to me, I'm very uncomfortable with.

00:10:33.000 The last point I'll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides.

00:10:36.000 It's nauseating to the American public.

00:10:38.000 Enough is enough.

00:10:38.000 Stop attacking private equity.

00:10:40.000 And then the Democrats came down on him, and then he flipped.

00:10:43.000 And then he released a video that completely reversed himself.

00:10:46.000 Now, private equity was absolutely terrible.

00:10:49.000 Now, when he left as mayor of Newark, nothing actually had happened in Newark.

00:10:55.000 Here was the New York Times upon him leaving.

00:10:57.000 When snow blanketed this city two Christmases ago, Mayor Cory Booker was celebrated around the nation for personally shoveling out residents who had appealed for help on Twitter.

00:11:05.000 But here, his administration was scorned as streets remained impassable for days because the city had no contract for snow removal.

00:11:12.000 Last spring, Ellen DeGeneres presented Mr. Booker with a superhero costume after he rushed into a burning building to save a neighbor.

00:11:18.000 But Newark had eliminated three fire companies after the mayor's plan to plug a budget hole failed.

00:11:23.000 In recent days, Mr. Booker has made the rounds of the national media with his pledge to live on food stamps for a week, but his constituents do not need to be reminded that six years after the mayor came into office vowing to make Newark a model of urban transformation, their city remains an emblem of poverty.

00:11:38.000 So there he is, like, walking around, doing his, I'm cool, Newark's an awesome place thing.

00:11:43.000 He didn't make it an awesome place.

00:11:44.000 It continued to be Newark.

00:11:47.000 And again, credit to people who live in Newark.

00:11:49.000 They're braver than I. But, come on.

00:11:51.000 Come on. 0.99

00:11:52.000 Cory Booker is a fraud. 1.00

00:11:53.000 He's been a fraud for a long time. 0.99

00:11:55.000 And he is just maintaining his fraudulent status.

00:11:57.000 Doesn't mean he won't get the royal treatment from the media, of course.

00:12:00.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:13:10.000 Now, when I say that Cory Booker is a fraud, I mean that in the most literal sense. 0.91

00:13:13.000 I mean, the man is legitimately a fraud.

00:13:14.000 You'll recall that a few years ago, there was a big controversy because he made up a friend.

00:13:19.000 He made up his Newark friend.

00:13:20.000 Eliana Johnson, who's now a reporter for the Washington Post, at the time writing for National Review, talked about this street character who he'd known, who it turned out was a composite from his life.

00:13:31.000 Here is Eliana Johnson writing about this.

00:13:33.000 this she says the tale is when booker admits he's told a million times according to the newark star ledger ronald rice jr a newark city councilman and booker ally who has known the mayor since 1998 says the t-bone story was a fixture of booker's unsuccessful 2002 mayoral bid against corrupt newark political boss sharp james what exactly was the story t-bone was a drug pusher that the mayor said threatened his life at one turn and sobbed on his shoulder at the next The problem is that T-Bone does not exist.

00:14:02.000 The T-Bone tale never sat right with Rutgers University history professor Clement Price, a Booker supporter who told National Review online he found the mayor's story offensive because it pandered to a stereotype of inner-city black men.

00:14:14.000 T-Bone, Price says, is a southern inflected name.

00:14:16.000 You would expect to run into something or someone named T-Bone in Memphis, Not Newark.

00:14:21.000 So T-Bone, it turns out, is fake.

00:14:24.000 And this is not the first time that bookers lied about things. 0.80

00:14:27.000 But it just shows that the guy is just a fraud.

00:14:29.000 And the media are going to treat him as the second coming.

00:14:32.000 Because they've always treated him as the second coming.

00:14:34.000 Because he does weird, quirky things that the media likes.

00:14:36.000 Like he's a vegan.

00:14:37.000 And he likes to talk about how he gets manicures.

00:14:39.000 All right.

00:14:40.000 So he left his city in shambles. 1.00

00:14:43.000 He's been a garbage senator. 0.99

00:14:44.000 He came into the Senate promising bipartisan cooperation. 1.00

00:14:48.000 And then one of his first moves was to endorse the awful Iran deal.

00:14:51.000 Over the objections of a lot of his own Jewish supporters.

00:14:53.000 Who were very upset with him.

00:14:56.000 So Cory Booker, in the race, just another candidate for you to learn to dislike.

00:15:00.000 Very exciting stuff.

00:15:01.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to promote their most radical proposals.

00:15:06.000 And this is also the problem for Cory Booker.

00:15:08.000 Booker's main appeal, originally, was that he was a guy who could reach across the aisle.

00:15:11.000 But the Democratic Party no longer wants to reach across the aisle.

00:15:14.000 They want to push further and further to the left.

00:15:17.000 And this is why they've endorsed legitimately bad people like Ilhan Omar, the representative from Minnesota.

00:15:23.000 So, she had a couple of viral quotes in the last 48 hours.

00:15:26.000 Viral quote number one, she said that Israel should not exist. 0.98

00:15:29.000 She's an anti-Semite, Ilhan Omar.

00:15:31.000 There's just no doubt about this.

00:15:32.000 I mean, she's associated with people who are terrorist-friendly.

00:15:35.000 She's now calling for the abolition of the only Jewish state on planet Earth.

00:15:39.000 She has suggested that Israel has deceived the world and may Allah lift the veil from people's eyes. 0.56

00:15:44.000 You know, Ilhan Omar is a bad lady. 1.00

00:15:46.000 She's a bad lady. 1.00

00:15:47.000 And here is Ilhan Omar explaining on Yahoo News that Israel really should not exist.

00:15:51.000 It should just stop existing.

00:15:52.000 When I see Israel Institute law that recognizes it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it and we still uphold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle because I know that if You know, we see that in any other society.

00:16:20.000 We would criticize it.

00:16:22.000 We would call it out.

00:16:23.000 We do that to Iran. 1.00

00:16:24.000 We do that to any other place that sort of upholds its religion. 1.00

00:16:28.000 She's a crazy person. 1.00

00:16:30.000 I mean, what she's saying here is patently false. 1.00

00:16:32.000 It is patently false.

00:16:33.000 The reason that we criticize Iran is not because it is a state that has Islam as its official religion. 0.96

00:16:39.000 The reason that we criticize Iran is because Iran is a repressive dictatorship that murders gay people, imprisons dissidents, and prevents people from freely exercising their religion. 0.90

00:16:47.000 Israel doesn't do any of those things. 0.94

00:16:49.000 There are many states, by the way, in Eastern Europe that have Christianity as their official religion.

00:16:53.000 The idea that an internal Jewish state law that says that Judaism is the official state religion of the Jewish state, that this isn't in any way controversial in a country where Christians are free to live, work, and prosper.

00:17:07.000 Muslims are freer in Israel than they are in any Muslim country on planet Earth. 0.69

00:17:11.000 That you can compare that to Iran.

00:17:13.000 And this lady is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 0.90

00:17:16.000 She's on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

00:17:17.000 That's where they put her. 0.74

00:17:19.000 The Democrat, but they're not radical.

00:17:20.000 She also said, Ilhan Omar, that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's proposal to tax the super wealthy, people who make above, what was it, 70, about $10 million a year, to tax them at 70%, she said that doesn't go far enough.

00:17:33.000 Here was her explanation of what she thinks the tax code should be.

00:17:36.000 There are a few things that we can do.

00:17:39.000 One of them is that we could increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our community.

00:17:50.000 So 70 percent, 80 percent.

00:17:51.000 We've had it as high as 90 percent.

00:17:54.000 I think what picks up for a lot of people is taxing the rich up to 80, 90 percent or 70.

00:18:01.000 One percent must pay their fair share.

00:18:03.000 Okay, the 1%.

00:18:04.000 Let me explain something.

00:18:05.000 The 1% are not people making $10 million or above per year.

00:18:08.000 They're people making about $400,000 per year as a couple.

00:18:11.000 And she's talking about now taxing them at 90%.

00:18:13.000 At 90%.

00:18:15.000 And by the way, if you think the Democrats are going to stop there, you're totally wrong.

00:18:18.000 I mean, they're not going to stop there because the truth is there just isn't enough income From that group, to support any of the programs they're talking about.

00:18:26.000 As I've said repeatedly on the program, if you want Denmark-type socialism, you have to have Denmark-type tax rates.

00:18:31.000 And that means 60% taxation, leaving aside the VAT tax, on people who are making like 60 grand and above.

00:18:38.000 Because we're going to spend even more than Denmark on these programs.

00:18:41.000 So this is just, it's just madness.

00:18:43.000 The Democrats have gone completely radical on all this, and that's why Cory Booker can't run as old Cory Booker.

00:18:48.000 He can't run as the bipartisan guy who is going to reach across the aisle.

00:18:52.000 No one in his party wants that.

00:18:54.000 Even his opening campaign ad, which is purportedly about unity, all that's going to go by the wayside. 0.79

00:18:58.000 It's going to be about who can punch Republicans more strongly in the mouth.

00:19:02.000 And Democrats now have to engage in this sort of self-delusion where they are actually moderate.

00:19:07.000 It's pretty amazing.

00:19:08.000 The leader in self-delusion in the country right now is Paul Krugman.

00:19:11.000 Now, Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize, not for economics generally, I mean, because economics is an entire field.

00:19:17.000 He won a Nobel Prize for his trade theory stuff.

00:19:19.000 His trade theory stuff is quite good, Paul Krugman. 0.99

00:19:21.000 On everything else, the man is a dunce. 1.00

00:19:23.000 And when it comes to politics, he's particularly ridiculous. 0.99

00:19:26.000 So he has an article today ripping on Howard Schultz, which has become the stock in trade for the entire left-wing media. 0.97

00:19:31.000 Howard Schultz is the bad guy.

00:19:33.000 Howard Schultz is a bad guy because he's a centrist.

00:19:35.000 We don't need centrists right now.

00:19:37.000 Here's what Paul Krugman writes, trying to convince himself almost that Democrats are not in fact radical.

00:19:42.000 He says, Why is American politics so dysfunctional?

00:19:45.000 Whatever the deeper roots of our distress, the proximate cause is ideological extremism.

00:19:50.000 Powerful factions are committed to false views of the world, regardless of the evidence.

00:19:54.000 Notice that I said factions, plural.

00:19:56.000 There's no question that the most disruptive, dangerous extremists are on the right.

00:20:00.000 Well, I mean, there is a fair bit of question about that, considering that Democrats are now talking about overthrowing the entire American healthcare system, overthrowing the entire American transportation system, and restructuring the entire American economy. 1.00

00:20:11.000 If I had to make a bet, I would say those people are slightly more dangerous than Donald Trump tweeting stupid crap from the White House. 0.99

00:20:18.000 He says, but there's another faction whose obsessions and refusal to face reality have also done a great deal of harm. 1.00

00:20:23.000 But I'm not talking about the left.

00:20:25.000 Shocker.

00:20:25.000 It turns out that there are factions that are bad, but not the left.

00:20:28.000 The left is not a bad faction.

00:20:30.000 Radical leftists are virtually non-existent in American politics.

00:20:33.000 This is Paul Krugman writing this.

00:20:34.000 A radical leftist.

00:20:35.000 Radical leftists are virtually non-existent in American politics.

00:20:38.000 Can you think of any prominent figure who wants to move up, move to the left of say, Denmark?

00:20:44.000 Denmark is pretty far left, dude.

00:20:47.000 Denmark, as I just mentioned, has tax rates that are unbelievably exorbitant on people who are lower middle class.

00:20:53.000 What are you even talking about?

00:20:55.000 But I guess when you reshift the entire framework of politics so that suddenly Denmark becomes middle of the road, alright, I mean, I guess it's a thing you can do.

00:21:02.000 He says he's really worried about fanatical centrists.

00:21:05.000 Fanatical centrists.

00:21:07.000 He says, First, there's an obsession with public debt.

00:21:09.000 This obsession might have made some sense back in 2010, when some feared a Greek-style crisis, although even then I could have told you that such fears were misplaced.

00:21:16.000 In fact, I did.

00:21:17.000 Right?

00:21:17.000 You also said the internet would not be a thing in the economy, Paul Krugman.

00:21:19.000 So, if we're going to go back to your record of predictions...

00:21:22.000 There's been some good and there's been some bad.

00:21:24.000 He says, in any case, however, eight years have passed since Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson predicted a fiscal crisis within two years unless their calls for spending cuts were heeded, yet U.S.

00:21:32.000 borrowing costs remained at historical lows.

00:21:35.000 And then he says that anybody who thinks that the debt is a problem is crazy.

00:21:38.000 That's crazy.

00:21:39.000 It's not crazy to say that you want a Green New Deal that would cost $50 trillion over 10 years.

00:21:44.000 It is crazy, however.

00:21:45.000 It is totally crazy to say that the national debt is a problem.

00:21:49.000 And then he continues along these lines.

00:21:51.000 He says, And he's not alone in saying things like that.

00:21:54.000 to any proposal that would ease the lives of ordinary Americans.

00:21:57.000 Universal health coverage said Schultz would be free healthcare for all, which the country cannot afford.

00:22:01.000 And he's not alone in saying things like that.

00:22:03.000 A few days ago, Michael Bloomberg declared that extending Medicare to everyone, as Kamala Harris suggests, would bankrupt us for a very long time.

00:22:10.000 Now, single payer healthcare actually called Medicare, hasn't bankrupted Canada.

00:22:14.000 In fact, every advanced country besides America has some form of universal health coverage and manages to afford it.

00:22:19.000 First of all, America does have a basic form of universal health coverage.

00:22:22.000 It is basically Medicaid.

00:22:24.000 It is Medicaid and emergency room forced care.

00:22:27.000 Right, so the idea that people are dying on the streets in America is simply a left lie.

00:22:32.000 It is also true the vast majority of spending on health care in the United States is done in the private sector by people who voluntarily pay into the private sector.

00:22:40.000 The United States spends something on the order of 60, I believe it was 60 trillion dollars a year?

00:22:46.000 I'll have to look this up.

00:22:47.000 Sorry, it would be 60 trillion dollars over the next decade that America could be expected to spend on healthcare.

00:22:54.000 Obviously not 60 trillion a year.

00:22:56.000 60 trillion over the next decade that we could be expected to spend on healthcare.

00:23:00.000 About 28 trillion dollars of that was expected to be public and about 32 trillion was expected to be private.

00:23:07.000 Okay, so that means that a lot of the spending that's being done is voluntary spending by people who are freely alienating their money in return for quicker health care.

00:23:15.000 But according to Paul Krugman, it is not radical at all to say you're going to completely abolish one-fourth of the American industry.

00:23:21.000 So, radical centrists are the real problem.

00:23:24.000 He says, where does the fanaticism of the centrists come from?

00:23:27.000 Sheer vanity.

00:23:28.000 Both pundits and plutocrats like to imagine themselves as superior beings, standing above the political fray.

00:23:33.000 I mean, does Paul Krugman own a mirror?

00:23:36.000 Somebody.

00:23:37.000 We need a government program to buy Paul Krugman a mirror.

00:23:39.000 If we tax everybody one cent, we can buy him a magnificent mirror.

00:23:43.000 They want to think of themselves as standing tall against extremism right and left, yet the reality of American politics is asymmetric polarization.

00:23:50.000 Extremism on the right is a powerful political force, while extremism on the left isn't.

00:23:55.000 The answer, for centrists, is retreating into a fantasy world, almost as hermetic as the right-wing Fox News bubble.

00:24:02.000 In this fantasy world, social democrats like Harris or Warren are portrayed as the second coming of Hugo Chavez, so that taking what is actually a conservative position can be represented as a brave defense of moderation.

00:24:11.000 So now Howard Schultz is an out-and-out conservative.

00:24:13.000 So in order to defend the extremism of their own cause, Howard Schultz becomes a conservative and Ilhan Omar becomes a moderate.

00:24:20.000 Pretty amazing stuff.

00:24:20.000 But this is how the media generally have treated the extremism of the Democrats.

00:24:24.000 So, what's hilarious over the last week?

00:24:27.000 Is that we have seen in the last week Kamala Harris embrace Medicare for all, abolishing private health insurance, and then run screaming from it. 1.00

00:24:33.000 We have seen Democrats embrace murder of the unborn up to point of birth, including dilation, according to Kathy Tran, the state senator in Virginia, the state delegate in Virginia.

00:24:44.000 We have seen Democrats embrace tax rates that would make Hugo Chavez extraordinarily happy.

00:24:49.000 I mean, 90% on the top 1%.

00:24:50.000 That's a pretty solid tax rate right there from Ilhan Omar and company.

00:24:55.000 And yet the way that the media have covered these things is always Republicans pounce.

00:25:00.000 It's an amazing thing.

00:25:01.000 I've never seen, I really have never seen a bevy of headlines.

00:25:04.000 Whenever Republicans make a mistake, it's never Democrats pounce as Republicans, as Republicans reel.

00:25:10.000 It's never Democrats pouncing.

00:25:12.000 But Republicans pounce has become such a meme that people on the right know that as soon as Democrats do something bad, there will be a bevy of articles about Republicans pouncing.

00:25:20.000 So here is an actual headline from the Washington Post.

00:25:24.000 I kid you not.

00:25:25.000 I'm reading it straight.

00:25:26.000 I'm not making it up, okay?

00:25:27.000 Okay, quote, "Republican sees on liberal positions to paint Democrats as radical." Do you mean we quote them?

00:25:36.000 Like we play clips of them?

00:25:37.000 Like on places like this show?

00:25:38.000 and then we say they're radical because they're like, you know, radical?

00:25:41.000 It's by Matt Visor.

00:25:42.000 Senator Kamala Harris is raising the possibility of eliminating private health insurance.

00:25:46.000 Senator Elizabeth Warren and other prominent Democrats are floating new and far-reaching plans to tax the wealthy.

00:25:51.000 In Virginia, Governor Ralph Northam voiced support for state legislation that would reduce restrictions on late-term abortions.

00:25:57.000 Democrats, after two years largely spent simply opposing everything President Trump advocated, are defining themselves lately in ways Republicans are seizing on to portray them as far outside the American mainstream.

00:26:09.000 Well, the Those Republicans, dastardly Republicans, suggesting that these positions are outside the mainstream, what if there were, you know, like some poll data?

00:26:18.000 Well, let's assume maybe there were companies that did polls about these issues, and then we could actually determine whether these were extreme positions, for example.

00:26:28.000 Oh wait, there are.

00:26:30.000 When people are told that Medicare for All would raise their taxes, only 26% of Americans support that.

00:26:36.000 When Americans are asked about whether they would ban all semi-automatic weapons, as Kamala Harris suggested, only 40% of Americans back that.

00:26:44.000 When Americans are asked whether they support the ability to abort a baby at dilation, 81% of Americans oppose.

00:26:52.000 Yes, these numbers are available.

00:26:55.000 But no, it's Republicans pouncing.

00:26:56.000 It's all about the pouncing. 0.98

00:26:57.000 Republicans are like the bobcat.

00:26:59.000 They're just gonna pounce on you. 0.92

00:27:00.000 That's their thing.

00:27:02.000 I love it.

00:27:02.000 That's not the only one.

00:27:04.000 New York Times doing exactly the same thing.

00:27:06.000 Trump, Pence, lead GOP seizure of late-term abortion as a potent 2020 issue.

00:27:12.000 They seized it.

00:27:13.000 The GOP seized it.

00:27:14.000 Okay, you know what's a way that the Republicans couldn't have actually seized on the issue?

00:27:19.000 Is if Democrats hadn't tried to pass bills in Vermont, Virginia, and New York, and Rhode Island in the last week, trying to say that late-term abortion was an affirmative good. 0.75

00:27:28.000 Then there wouldn't have been anything like... Let's say the Republicans tried to seize on Democratic support for murdering all people above the age of 80.

00:27:37.000 It would be hard for them to seize on that because Democrats haven't actually made that proposal.

00:27:41.000 It would be hard to seize on it.

00:27:43.000 But whenever a... This is the Andrew Clavin rule of the media.

00:27:46.000 Whenever a Democrat screws something up, the story is the Republican reaction.

00:27:50.000 Whenever a Republican screws something up, the story is the Republican screwing something up.

00:27:53.000 But no, don't worry.

00:27:54.000 There is no bias in the media, Virginia.

00:27:56.000 Don't worry.

00:27:57.000 No bias in the media whatsoever.

00:27:59.000 They are just even-handed truth-tellers seeking to be firefighters, bringing you the realities of life. 0.96

00:28:06.000 By the way, it is worth noting here that for all of the talk from people like Paul Krugman and folks in the Democratic mainstream about the realism of their proposals taking crises like climate change super seriously and all of this, as soon as you dig beneath the surface, you realize that even their more mainstream positions are actually pretty radical and pretty dumb. 0.69

00:28:25.000 I'll explain in just a second when it comes to climate change.

00:28:28.000 First, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:28:45.000 So the Sunday special becomes the Saturday special.

00:28:48.000 I didn't film it on Shabbos.

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00:29:16.000 The leftist here is hot or cold tumbler.

00:29:18.000 It is magnificent.

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00:29:30.000 Leave us a nice review because that's the kind of person you are.

00:29:32.000 You're nice.

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00:29:34.000 Do that right now.

00:29:35.000 I'm waiting.

00:29:35.000 Okay, we'll wait.

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00:29:37.000 Good, great.

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00:29:38.000 And, you know, thanks.

00:29:42.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:29:46.000 Man, I'm glad it's a Friday.

00:29:53.000 Anyway, so China's coal plants, this is great.

00:29:56.000 So Democrats have been saying that climate change is something we have to take so seriously, we have to hamper and destroy the entire fiscal stability of the United States.

00:30:05.000 Worth noting, by the way, that despite all of the talk about the American economy slowing down, U.S.

00:30:10.000 employers added 304,000 jobs in January.

00:30:12.000 So the worries about the economy may be overstated.

00:30:16.000 We'll find out.

00:30:17.000 But Democrats are firmly convinced that climate change is the most pressing issue on the agenda.

00:30:21.000 This is what all of the Democrats say.

00:30:22.000 If you ask them, what is the existential threat to the United States?

00:30:25.000 They will not say China.

00:30:26.000 They will not say Russia.

00:30:27.000 They will not say Islamic extremism.

00:30:29.000 What they will say is climate change to a person.

00:30:32.000 And what they suggest is that America radically restructure our economy in a green new deal.

00:30:37.000 Yay! 0.99

00:30:38.000 We're going to abolish the driving of private cars.

00:30:41.000 We are going to cut our military in half.

00:30:43.000 We're going to radically restructure all of the tax brackets.

00:30:46.000 Weird how all of their solutions to climate change sound exactly like their ideal fiscal proposals just in a vacuum.

00:30:52.000 Weird how those things line up.

00:30:54.000 Wow.

00:30:55.000 But there's one problem.

00:30:57.000 It turns out that all of the highfalutin talk about how the United States has not done its share to fight climate change is ignoring the fact that the vast majority of emissions are not coming from the United States on an absolute basis.

00:31:07.000 The vast majority of emissions are coming from China because China has a billion people and they're emitting without any regulations upon them. 0.98

00:31:13.000 Despite the fact that they signed on to the much vaunted Paris Accords.

00:31:16.000 You remember the Paris Accords?

00:31:17.000 Donald Trump pulled out of it and the world was supposed to end.

00:31:20.000 We were all going to die.

00:31:23.000 Well, it turns out we didn't sign the Paris Accords and we lowered emissions more than any industrialized country last year.

00:31:29.000 And China did sign the Paris Accords and they didn't lower emissions at all.

00:31:33.000 Samini Sengupta writing for the New York Times, China, the world's coal juggernaut, has continued to produce more methane emissions from its coal mines despite its pledge to curb the planet-warming pollutant, according to new research.

00:31:46.000 In a paper published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers concluded that China had failed to meet its own government regulations requiring coal mines to rapidly reduce methane emissions, at least in the five years after 2010, when the regulations were passed.

00:32:00.000 It matters because coal is the world's dirtiest fossil fuel and China is, by far, the largest producer in the world.

00:32:05.000 Coal accounts for 40% of electricity generation globally and an even higher share in China, which has abundant coal resources and more than 4 million workers employed in the coal sector.

00:32:15.000 Scientists and policymakers agree that the world will have to quit coal to have any hope of averting catastrophic climate change.

00:32:22.000 How quickly China can do that, therefore, is crucial.

00:32:25.000 The Chinese government in 2010 required a state-run coal sector to reduce methane emissions by putting the gas to use, or by capturing methane from mines and flaring it, which is still polluting, but not as much as releasing the gas into the atmosphere, according to researchers.

00:32:37.000 It required that 6.2 million tons of methane produced from coal mining be put to use by 2015.

00:32:43.000 An examination of satellite data collected between 2010 and 2015 painted a different picture.

00:32:48.000 Not only were the reductions not made, but Chinese methane emissions actually increased by 1.2 million tons per year during the five-year period.

00:32:57.000 What?

00:32:58.000 A communist dictatorship pledging to help the environment in order to shame Western countries into doing the same and then cheating?

00:33:06.000 You mean communists lie?

00:33:09.000 You mean communist dictatorships that have giant gulags don't care if they pollute at the expense of people other places in the world?

00:33:15.000 That's crazy!

00:33:17.000 But they're good because they're on the left!

00:33:19.000 I mean, Thomas Friedman, I was assured by Thomas Friedman that if we had just run America as a one-party autocracy, that would have been even better than a one-party democracy.

00:33:29.000 Because if the one-party autocracy is run by the geniuses like the people in China, the world would be better off. 0.97

00:33:35.000 Obviously, the solution to this is we have to tax the 1%.

00:33:37.000 The solution to the Chinese government just radically increasing their methane emissions, we have to tax the 1% in this country. 1.00

00:33:44.000 That is the only way.

00:33:46.000 Not only that, we should probably have a wealth tax.

00:33:49.000 Not only that, we should probably boycott Israel. 0.99

00:33:51.000 You know what?

00:33:52.000 We should just do a bunch of things that have nothing to do with methane emissions, but we will pretend that they have everything to do with methane emissions while the other people who signed on to the Paris Accords and lied about what they were going to do continue to pollute.

00:34:04.000 Clearly, that's the solution.

00:34:06.000 It's our fault.

00:34:07.000 Of course.

00:34:07.000 I mean, come on.

00:34:08.000 We're America.

00:34:09.000 It's obviously our fault.

00:34:11.000 It's just amazing that this continues to be portrayed as some sort of moderation.

00:34:17.000 Just incredible stuff from the Democratic Party on a routine basis.

00:34:21.000 Speaking of incredible stuff from the Democratic Party, you remember that time that everybody said that Donald Trump was a pawn of the Russians?

00:34:27.000 You remember Hillary Clinton accusing Donald Trump of being a puppet?

00:34:30.000 And Trump going, I'm not the puppet, you're the puppet, Pinocchio.

00:34:33.000 Remember that?

00:34:34.000 It was great.

00:34:35.000 Well, now it turns out that the United States, being a puppet of Vladimir Putin, is withdrawing from a nuclear arms control treaty because of ongoing violations by the Russians.

00:34:44.000 The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has been central to limiting the kinds of nuclear weapons both countries can deploy.

00:34:49.000 Without it, experts fear there will be a new nuclear arms race.

00:34:53.000 Except that these experts are doltish enough to fail to recognize that the Russian government has been violating the INF for legitimately decades.

00:35:00.000 Pompeo said, Pompeo first announced the U.S.

00:35:01.000 The agreement is so brazenly disregarded and our security so openly threatened, we must respond.

00:35:06.000 Pompeo first announced the U.S. intention to withdraw in December, giving Russia a 60-day window to come back into compliance.

00:35:12.000 That window runs out on Saturday. - Okay.

00:35:16.000 Withdrawal now requires an additional six-month window, according to the treaty's terms.

00:35:21.000 U.S.

00:35:21.000 officials have also been concerned about China's growing military prowess, as China is not a party to the Cold War pact.

00:35:26.000 Officials worry that puts the U.S.

00:35:28.000 at a military disadvantage, although the real reason that they're doing this is because the Russians are violating the treaty.

00:35:34.000 So, all of the puppetry in which apparently Putin is engaged has resulted in the United States building up its nuclear arms in order to counter the violations of the Russians.

00:35:43.000 So... Amazing.

00:35:46.000 So much... So much puppetry.

00:35:49.000 Obviously Donald Trump was a plant of the Russians, and he was put in office by Vladimir Putin specifically so that he could kill Russians in Syria, arm the Ukrainians with deadly weaponry, raise sanctions, for the most part, and also pull out of an intermediate nuclear forces treaty that allows the United States to build up its nuclear arsenal. 0.68

00:36:07.000 Clearly that's why they put him in power, to do stuff like that.

00:36:09.000 I mean, no question, right?

00:36:12.000 I guess we'll still keep going with this Trump is a puppet of the Russians until Trump is out of office.

00:36:16.000 That's the plan because none of this has to do with anything remotely resembling reality.

00:36:22.000 Oh well.

00:36:23.000 Okay.

00:36:23.000 Meanwhile, let's get to the mailbag because it's been a long week.

00:36:27.000 So let's mailbag it up.

00:36:28.000 Here we go.

00:36:29.000 So, let's see.

00:36:30.000 Courtney says, When I was 25, I was newly married.

00:36:32.000 So I got married when I was 24 and my wife was 20.

00:36:34.000 We're about three and a half years apart, if you do that math.

00:36:36.000 And what advice would you give your 25-year-old self or just some advice for 25-year-olds in today's world?

00:36:40.000 Sincerely, one of your biggest fans.

00:36:42.000 When I was 25, I was newly married.

00:36:45.000 So I got married when I was 24 and my wife was 20, we're about three and a half years apart, if you do that math.

00:36:51.000 And when you're 25, honestly, I think it's a rule.

00:36:56.000 Anytime you're young, What makes you a better person is taking on more responsibility, not shirking responsibility.

00:37:01.000 Taking on the burdens of responsibility for another human being makes you stronger.

00:37:05.000 It makes you better.

00:37:06.000 It makes you have to engage with your best self.

00:37:10.000 Getting married was a life-changing experience for me in a variety of ways, but the first thing that it does is it makes you realize that your decisions have impact on people who are not you.

00:37:18.000 When you're just a kid, you don't worry about the impact that your decisions have on your parents.

00:37:22.000 Now that I'm a parent, you realize how much parents have to deal with the consequences of their children's decision.

00:37:27.000 But when you're a kid, you think, oh, my parent's an adult.

00:37:29.000 My parent can handle it.

00:37:30.000 They're older.

00:37:31.000 Once you get married, you realize that your decisions don't just impact you, they impact others.

00:37:35.000 And this makes you a more virtuous person.

00:37:37.000 So, when you're 25, my first suggestion is seek responsibility, don't shirk responsibility.

00:37:42.000 That would be, I think, the first thing that pops to mind.

00:37:45.000 The other thing is that when you're young, you should be risk-seeking when it comes to career.

00:37:50.000 What I mean by that is now is a good time for you to try and determine what it is that you love to do, you think makes a difference, and that you're good at.

00:37:56.000 That is the confluence of factors that make for a good career experience.

00:37:59.000 Find the thing that you are good at, the thing that you love to do, and the thing that other people will pay you to do and makes a difference.

00:38:07.000 So making a difference, good at it, people will pay you for it.

00:38:10.000 Those are the three things.

00:38:12.000 When I was 25, I'd been working at a law firm, and I worked there for about 10 months.

00:38:17.000 It was, you know, not a great experience.

00:38:19.000 I didn't love it.

00:38:19.000 It was a major law firm.

00:38:21.000 It was during the middle of the real estate downturn.

00:38:22.000 It was a real estate contract law firm.

00:38:24.000 It was a transactional law firm.

00:38:25.000 So I was sitting in my beautiful office in Century City, looking out at the ocean every day for like seven hours a day.

00:38:31.000 Well, I couldn't bill any hours because there was no work coming in.

00:38:34.000 I despised it.

00:38:35.000 I hated it.

00:38:35.000 And I was making a really good salary doing it.

00:38:38.000 And I decided, you know what?

00:38:39.000 I'm newly married.

00:38:40.000 We're still young.

00:38:41.000 We can afford a little bit of a hit.

00:38:43.000 So if I'm ever going to change career paths, now's the time to do it.

00:38:46.000 So I quit.

00:38:46.000 After 10 months, I had a mortgage.

00:38:47.000 I had a wife.

00:38:48.000 And we decided that I was going to take a job for one-third the pay, doing legal work and also learning the production side of the radio industry.

00:38:56.000 Because this is a good time for you to learn.

00:38:58.000 It's a good time for you to jump.

00:38:59.000 And I did that.

00:39:00.000 It changed my career path entirely.

00:39:03.000 I mean, maybe I would be a partner at a law firm right now if I had not done that.

00:39:07.000 But I'm much happier with what I'm doing now.

00:39:08.000 So, 25 is a great age.

00:39:10.000 Harrison says hi, Ben.

00:39:11.000 Milton Friedman commonly referred to inflation as the hidden tax because it pushes people's income into higher and higher tax brackets.

00:39:17.000 He concluded that the only way to effectively get a tax cut is to cut government spending, because any tax cut that did not cut spending would ultimately lead to inflation.

00:39:24.000 Do you agree with this analysis, and do you think Republicans will ever tackle government spending?

00:39:28.000 Thank you.

00:39:28.000 So yes, I agree with Milton Friedman's analysis.

00:39:31.000 I think that that is correct.

00:39:32.000 I think that if you continue to spend, then eventually you're going to have to increase taxes, or you're going to have to inflate the currency to pay off the debt.

00:39:38.000 That you have incurred in order to make that spending happen.

00:39:41.000 So that, of course, is true.

00:39:43.000 I think that everyone is going to have to tackle government spending when the rubber meets the road.

00:39:49.000 I mean, even the Europeans have had to tackle government spending because at a certain point austerity measures are necessary.

00:39:54.000 You can't indefinitely pay bills with other people's money.

00:39:57.000 Emily says, Ben, could you provide some recommended reading on intersectionality and where it came from and why it's become so popular?

00:40:03.000 I sure could.

00:40:03.000 I have a new book with an entire section on intersectionality.

00:40:06.000 You can go check it out at Amazon or at Barnes & Noble.

00:40:09.000 The Right Side of History, that is coming out in March.

00:40:12.000 I have sort of a long explanation of the roots of intersectionality.

00:40:16.000 You can also read the papers of Kimberly Crenshaw, who's the person who came up with intersectionality.

00:40:19.000 So, a couple things about intersectionality.

00:40:22.000 A friend of mine recently, on the left, sent me a paper by Kimberly Crenshaw about intersectionality in a legal journal.

00:40:28.000 And the paper isn't actually bad, right?

00:40:30.000 What the paper actually suggests, and this is true, is that if you are going to take into account discrimination based on a variety of factors, there are cases in which factors stack up on top of one another.

00:40:39.000 So, for example, there could be a case, in this paper by Kimberly Crenshaw, she specifically talked, she's the person who founded the phrase, the term intersectionality.

00:40:48.000 In the paper, she talks about a case where a black woman was discriminated on the basis of both her race and her sex, but because there was no law that said that the aggregate of those two factors was, could be a protected class, therefore she was left out of the law.

00:41:02.000 Okay, that's a fair argument.

00:41:03.000 I can see a situation in which a black woman is treated as lesser than a white woman. 0.96

00:41:09.000 So in other words, she's treated lesser than a man because she's a woman, but also treated lesser than a white woman because she's black, right? 0.99

00:41:14.000 You can see that sort of hierarchy in a discriminatory setting.

00:41:18.000 The problem is that drawing the broad conclusion that simply by membership in a group, you are therefore victimized by necessity.

00:41:26.000 It's not a baseline assumption.

00:41:27.000 It's that we will ignore your personal experience and simply dictate that America is bad to people like you without reference to what you have done personally.

00:41:36.000 That is, in essence, a form of racism.

00:41:38.000 So, there's a great new book out by Noah Rothman.

00:41:41.000 I recommended it earlier this week.

00:41:42.000 It's called Unjust.

00:41:43.000 It's all about social justice and it has a long explanation of intersectionality.

00:41:47.000 I would check that out as well.

00:41:49.000 But I was making this point to somebody yesterday about intersectionality and the real problem with it.

00:41:53.000 Again, the idea of intersectionality is that we're all members of groups and these groups have been treated disparately in American history, which is obviously true.

00:42:00.000 But that does not answer the question of what that means for us now.

00:42:04.000 Should we look to your personal experience and your personal experience of discrimination?

00:42:08.000 Or should we simply assume that your membership in the group means that you have been discriminated against in some way and therefore your opinion should be valued more highly when it comes to critiquing the United States and our hierarchies of power?

00:42:19.000 It's that latter contention that is actually racist identity politics.

00:42:23.000 That latter contention is racist identity politics.

00:42:25.000 Thomas Sowell, the economist, has an interesting breakdown of discrimination that I found quite useful.

00:42:29.000 He says that there are basically three types of discrimination.

00:42:32.000 There's discrimination that we all find utterly benign.

00:42:35.000 That would be discrimination between, do I want a hamburger or do I want a fish filet today?

00:42:39.000 Right?

00:42:40.000 That, we discriminate.

00:42:41.000 If you have discriminating tastes, This does not mean you are a bad person.

00:42:44.000 It means that you made a choice.

00:42:46.000 That's the kind of discrimination that no one cares about.

00:42:48.000 Then there is open discrimination. 0.94

00:42:50.000 There's, there's, you're a black person, therefore you're lesser. 1.00

00:42:53.000 That is racism. 0.92

00:42:54.000 That is discrimination.

00:42:54.000 Everybody finds that abhorrent of good, of good faith.

00:42:57.000 Then there is the case of situ, there are situations in which you have no information about a person other than their group membership.

00:43:04.000 So for example, You're walking down the street of a neighborhood.

00:43:09.000 In that neighborhood, the black crime rate is higher than the white crime rate. 0.99

00:43:12.000 And you're walking down the street at 2 a.m. 0.88

00:43:14.000 And you're walking down the street and there's identical, identically dressed black guy on one side of the street and white guy on the other side of the street.

00:43:21.000 And you cross over to the side where the white guy is because the black crime rate in the city is higher than the white crime rate. 0.97

00:43:26.000 Are you a racist? 0.91

00:43:27.000 Thomas Sowell says no.

00:43:28.000 What you are is a person who is using risk assessment based on the only data that is available to you.

00:43:33.000 Racism would be if you know that the black guy walking down the street is dressed in a medical outfit because he's from Johns Hopkins and the white guy on the other side of the street is smoking crack. 0.92

00:43:42.000 If you then move over to the white guy side of the street, then you're a racist.

00:43:45.000 In other words, you can only use the best data that is available to you.

00:43:49.000 And our job should be to try and drill down so we get to the individual data.

00:43:52.000 Well, intersectionality is the same sort of problem.

00:43:55.000 OK, so if you were to say that in a vacuum, all you have about information about these two people, one is white and one is black, you don't know anything else about them.

00:44:03.000 Can you say that they probably had different experiences in America?

00:44:08.000 Yeah, I think it's fair to say that they probably had different experiences in America because being black comes with certain burdens that being white has not had, historically speaking.

00:44:16.000 We could probably assume, for example, without any other evidence, that you have a history of less wealth in your family because of historic discrimination against black folks.

00:44:23.000 Uncontroversial.

00:44:25.000 Here's where intersectionality goes wrong.

00:44:26.000 Intersectionality suggests that even if you know now that that black kid is Colin Powell's son, and you know that that white kid is some kid who grew up in rural Appalachia with a single mom, that you can still assume that that white kid is somehow privileged by his race, and that black kid is somehow a victim because of his race.

00:44:42.000 Now, you are actively encouraging discrimination.

00:44:45.000 And that's where intersectionality has gone. 0.79

00:44:47.000 And it's ugly, and it's gross.

00:44:50.000 Once you start using group identity as a substitute for information that you have about individual decision-making, once you say that every disparity can automatically be attributed to discrimination because discrimination is obviously so endemic that it overcomes any other factor, now you have engaged in something truly ugly.

00:45:06.000 You're seeing this right now with Howard Schultz.

00:45:08.000 Howard Schultz grew up Jewish in a family where his father apparently beat him and was a truck driver and was unemployed.

00:45:14.000 They were on welfare.

00:45:15.000 They were living in public housing.

00:45:18.000 He made something of himself and he became the head of an $84 billion corporation that he started from a coffee shop in Seattle.

00:45:23.000 Amazing American success story.

00:45:25.000 He is now being accused of having experienced white privilege and even Jewish privilege because his culture emphasizes education, for example.

00:45:33.000 So we are going to value his group identity over his individual story?

00:45:36.000 That's the essence of racism.

00:45:37.000 It is.

00:45:38.000 It's the essence of the bad kind of discrimination Thomas Sowell talks about.

00:45:42.000 Alrighty, a couple more questions.

00:45:44.000 Lee says, Dear Ben, wanted to know your opinion on mediums.

00:45:47.000 I used to think all psychics are frauds, but one of my mom's friends, who's a medium, said my dad, who died 10 years before when I was 14, wanted to speak to me.

00:45:53.000 I've rarely talked to her before, and at the time I was going through a really rough time in college with heavy drinking, depression, and losing out on a girl I had feelings for.

00:45:59.000 Yet somehow, she knew everything happening, even though I told no one at the time, and that changed my opinion on the subject.

00:46:05.000 Curious to know what your thoughts are.

00:46:07.000 So my thoughts are that I think all psychics are frauds.

00:46:10.000 I think there's no hard data to suggest that psychics are not frauds.

00:46:15.000 I think that they tend to use outside indicators or, say, vague things that you can fit into What you think your story is, they'll say, you're having trouble with a romantic partner, aren't you?

00:46:26.000 That fits like 90% of people.

00:46:29.000 They're like, oh my god, how'd they know that?

00:46:30.000 How'd they know that I'm having trouble with my romantic partner?

00:46:33.000 That I have unrequited love?

00:46:35.000 Okay, easy guess.

00:46:36.000 You don't have a wedding ring on your finger, so unrequited love, and you are unhappy, which is probably why you're there, right?

00:46:44.000 They can use pretty good outside indicators.

00:46:46.000 They're good at this.

00:46:48.000 I think psychics are frauds, because again, I have no evidence to the contrary.

00:46:52.000 Rick says, Hey Ben, the other day you said that Switzerland has the best healthcare system right now.

00:46:56.000 After looking over the particulars, it looks a lot like Obamacare, because of the mandate and some subsidies.

00:47:00.000 This is correct.

00:47:00.000 It does look a lot like Obamacare.

00:47:02.000 Why do you like that system, since it resembles Obamacare?

00:47:05.000 You've also said that for the US to allow the purchase of health insurance over state lines, but a plan in Montana won't pay the rate that doctors in LA or New York charge.

00:47:12.000 Your thoughts?

00:47:12.000 Well, you want to be able to have competition across state lines, and you're right that a health care plan in Montana is probably not going to be something that people in California buy, but a health care plan in South Dakota might be something that people in Montana want to buy.

00:47:24.000 The prices differentiate.

00:47:26.000 I might want to buy a New York health plan to cover people in California.

00:47:29.000 You should be able to have competition across state lines.

00:47:32.000 As far as Switzerland looking a lot like Obamacare, that's correct.

00:47:34.000 Okay, the idea of the individual mandate itself I find to be a violation of basic principles of liberty.

00:47:41.000 I don't think that the government should be able to force me to buy something that is for my own care.

00:47:46.000 When you buy car insurance, it's to protect the other guy on the road.

00:47:48.000 When you buy health insurance, it's to protect you.

00:47:50.000 It's not the government's role to tell me what I have to purchase for my own good.

00:47:54.000 I find that to be tyrannical.

00:47:56.000 What I have said is that in terms of efficacy, if that's all you're looking at, Switzerland has a pretty nice system.

00:48:04.000 Okay, Switzerland, but that violates certain core principles.

00:48:07.000 And also, I'm saying if you're looking at mixed systems, nobody's actually ever tried a pretty libertarian system in which the free market tends to predominate, regulations are extraordinarily low, and people can buy healthcare simply by walking into the doctor and plopping down a $100 bill.

00:48:26.000 Okay, one more and then we will move on.

00:48:29.000 Let's see... Stan says, how are you doing, Ben?

00:48:32.000 I know that you and your wife are happily married, but hypothetically, if she were to be unfaithful to you, how would you handle the situation?

00:48:37.000 Is adultery a legit reason to divorce someone?

00:48:39.000 I know in the Bible it says, till death do us part, but I think cheating is a horrible act, even if the person did it once.

00:48:44.000 I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

00:48:45.000 Thanks and happy belated birthday.

00:48:46.000 So, you know, I...

00:48:48.000 This is a complex topic, actually.

00:48:50.000 So, on a sin level, obviously, adultery is not only divorceable, if you're going to do it biblically, it's death penalty worthy, right?

00:48:57.000 It is one of the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery, and it is indeed grounds for divorce in Judaism.

00:49:02.000 What would I do if, God forbid, my wife did that? 1.00

00:49:05.000 Thankfully, this is not even a thinkable hypothetical, but if I were married to somebody who cheated on me and I already had kids, honestly, I think I would probably do my best to keep the marriage together for the sake of the kids so long as she was still a good mother.

00:49:16.000 Because after you have kids, the math changes.

00:49:18.000 If I was just married to a woman, no kids, and she cheated on me, I'm out like that. 1.00

00:49:21.000 If I have kids, that does change the math pretty radically.

00:49:24.000 You have to do something to make sure that the kids still have their mom around, if she's a good mom.

00:49:28.000 If she's a bad mom, then it's a different story.

00:49:30.000 But divorce has impacts on people beyond you.

00:49:33.000 This goes back to sort of the first question in the mailbag.

00:49:35.000 As you have responsibilities to other people, the incentive structure changes and the math changes.

00:49:40.000 I will also say that not all adulteries are equally damaging to a marriage, I think, is somewhat fair to say, meaning that I think that all adultery is evil.

00:49:50.000 I think it's a great cruelty.

00:49:51.000 I think it's a diminishment of your soul, and it is a violation of your responsibilities as a human being.

00:49:57.000 It creates a breach in human virtue that is nearly irreparable.

00:50:02.000 I will say that I think there's a difference between a man having a long-standing affair with a woman, not his wife, and a man who has a drunken one-night fling at a hotel in Iowa.

00:50:09.000 I don't think that's quite the same thing.

00:50:11.000 And I think that's true because men treat sex as a disposable thing, and emotional affairs can be a lot more damaging to marriages than even one-night stands, for example.

00:50:22.000 But that's getting more complex than the topic requires.

00:50:24.000 Again, it depends on where you're situated.

00:50:26.000 It depends on your relationship with your spouse.

00:50:30.000 That's sort of the basic answer.

00:50:31.000 Alright, time for a thing I like and then a couple of things that I hate.

00:50:35.000 So, things I like today.

00:50:37.000 Ashton Kutcher posted a powerful pro-life video.

00:50:39.000 I don't know that Ashton Kutcher is pro-life, but this video certainly is pro-life.

00:50:42.000 It's testimony of a man with Down syndrome who is testifying in front of Congress.

00:50:47.000 And he talked about how eugenic murder of the unborn is extraordinarily dangerous.

00:50:52.000 Here is a little bit of that video posted by Ashton Kutcher.

00:50:54.000 Good for him.

00:50:55.000 I am a man with Down syndrome and my life is worth living.

00:51:01.000 Sadly, across the world, a notion is being sold that maybe we don't need research concerning Down syndrome.

00:51:16.000 Some people say prenatal screens will identify Down syndrome In the womb, in those parentheses, will just be terminated.

00:51:32.000 It's hard for me to sit here and say those words.

00:51:41.000 I completely, I completely understand that the people pushing this particular final solution are saying that That people like me should not exist.

00:51:57.000 Of course this is true.

00:51:58.000 And the fact is that one of the chief reasons that people say that abortion ought to be legal is to dispose of people with Down syndrome.

00:52:04.000 This is one of the things people will say.

00:52:05.000 They'll say, what if the baby is disabled?

00:52:07.000 What if the baby is disabled?

00:52:08.000 Is this guy's life not worth living?

00:52:09.000 Is he worth less than a person who is fully abled? 1.00

00:52:12.000 The same folks who will go crazy in social justice fashion if you use phrases like tone-deaf.

00:52:18.000 I'm not kidding.

00:52:18.000 There was a social justice warrior online today who used the phrase tone-deaf and then she apologized because she felt that it might offend people who are deaf.

00:52:26.000 I wonder what her position is on choosing abortion for a kid who would be born with Down syndrome or with some other sort of disability.

00:52:34.000 The utter disdain that so many folks on the pro-choice left have for people who are disabled, as long as they're in the womb, is pretty astonishing.

00:52:41.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:52:48.000 So I think I'm actually going to do only one thing I hate.

00:52:50.000 So I discussed this yesterday on my radio show, and if you subscribed to the last two hours of the show, you'd already know this.

00:52:56.000 You'd already know this.

00:52:56.000 But if you didn't, I'm going to explain it again.

00:52:59.000 Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said something completely insane yesterday.

00:53:02.000 She was talking about the so-called Paycheck Fairness Act, which bars employers, it would bar employers from asking potential employees what they were paid at their last job.

00:53:11.000 Now listen, if you go in for an interview, you don't have to tell your employer that, right?

00:53:14.000 If the potential employer says, what were you paying?

00:53:15.000 You say, listen, I want to negotiate not on the basis of what I was last paid, but on what I think I'm worth to you.

00:53:21.000 You can still do that.

00:53:22.000 Everyone has the ability to do that.

00:53:23.000 It's a free country.

00:53:24.000 She wants to bar people from asking that question.

00:53:27.000 Are we also not supposed to ask employment history?

00:53:29.000 Are we supposed to not ask for recommendations?

00:53:30.000 Like, what are we not supposed to ask about? 0.97

00:53:32.000 That wasn't the dumbest thing Ocasio-Cortez said. 1.00

00:53:34.000 The dumbest thing she said was this. 0.98

00:53:36.000 I'm so happy that the Paycheck Fairness Act addresses, among many things, two very critical ones. 0.99

00:53:42.000 One is that we cannot ask for salary history and pay people depending on their salary history anymore.

00:53:51.000 Anymore.

00:53:53.000 Because it is time that we pay people what they are worth and not how little they are desperate enough to accept.

00:54:01.000 That last comment, that's absolutely insane.

00:54:04.000 When she says it's time to pay people what they are worth and not what they are willing to accept.

00:54:08.000 Read a book.

00:54:09.000 Read a book, okay?

00:54:11.000 Or go to the grocery store.

00:54:12.000 Who decides what something is worth?

00:54:14.000 What are you worth?

00:54:15.000 What is this pen worth?

00:54:17.000 What is this cup worth?

00:54:18.000 Hey, it's worth whatever you're willing to pay for it.

00:54:20.000 That's how markets work.

00:54:21.000 And the way that we determine what we think things ought to be worth is we look at the aggregate of information that amounts to a price.

00:54:28.000 A price is simply an aggregate number that is put on how much demand there is for a particular product and how much supply there is of that particular product.

00:54:36.000 So if it's very difficult to produce a product, and so there are only three of them, and there's high demand for it, the prices will be very high.

00:54:41.000 If it's very easy to produce a product, and there's very little demand for it, you can produce a million of them, but there are only three people who want it, the price will be extraordinarily low, close to free.

00:54:51.000 All of that makes perfect sense.

00:54:52.000 What you can't have is people who sit at the top of the pyramid, who go, you know what?

00:54:56.000 I think that that first product that there are only three of, it's really important.

00:55:00.000 So the real price of it should be super cheap.

00:55:03.000 I don't care what you think the price should be.

00:55:05.000 That is not a reflection of reality.

00:55:07.000 I think that pigs should be able to fly.

00:55:09.000 That would be great.

00:55:09.000 I don't know why, but it seems like it could be fun.

00:55:12.000 And that doesn't make any sense.

00:55:13.000 It doesn't matter what you think things should be.

00:55:16.000 The Soviet Union tried this.

00:55:17.000 They tried to literally control the price of every single element of Soviet society.

00:55:21.000 And it turns out that was a giant fail, because there's no way to centralize knowledge that is greater than the knowledge of the entirety of the human race as to their own interests, aspirations, and desires for products, goods, and services.

00:55:33.000 It is a fundamental rejection of free markets to suggest that you know what the proper price of a thing should be better than the market knows.

00:55:40.000 In fact, you know better than the person who's accepting the wage.

00:55:44.000 This is why when people on the left say, well, there should be a $15 minimum wage.

00:55:46.000 It's like, okay, well, you're pulling that directly from your colon.

00:55:50.000 I'm wondering why you think there should be a $15 minimum wage.

00:55:53.000 For which job?

00:55:54.000 And as opposed to what?

00:55:55.000 They say, well, it should be more than $7.25.

00:55:57.000 How do you know?

00:55:58.000 Are you the person accepting $7.25?

00:56:01.000 Are you the person paying the $7.25?

00:56:02.000 Do you even know those people?

00:56:04.000 What are you even talking about?

00:56:06.000 What people tend to do is they tend to do this.

00:56:10.000 It's an actual psychological phenomenon where they root into a price that already exists and then they pretend they know better than that price.

00:56:16.000 So they will say, you know, a box of Cheerios, it turns out costs $4.79 at a California Ralphs.

00:56:22.000 But it shouldn't cost $4.79.

00:56:22.000 It should cost $3.

00:56:25.000 Now, what they're doing there is they're saying, it seems like $4.79 is too expensive, so it would be better if it cost $3.

00:56:32.000 But what if the actual price of the box of Cheerios was $50?

00:56:34.000 Then they would say, well, it seems too expensive.

00:56:36.000 I think the price of a box of Cheerios should be $40.

00:56:39.000 Because they're just hooking into the information they have and then discounting it based on some vague sense of unease.

00:56:45.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:56:46.000 Prices are a reflection of the aggregate knowledge of the human race. 1.00

00:56:50.000 Your perception of what a price should be is a sum of the aggregate stupidity of you. 1.00

00:56:55.000 That's it. 1.00

00:56:56.000 But AOC thinks that should dictate.

00:56:57.000 If you think AOC, whose great life experience consists of winning a mildly contested primary in New York City, and also having poor drinks, if you think that she knows more than the entire human race about the price of goods, services, wages, and labor, Then, I don't know what to tell you.

00:57:16.000 Go live in AOC land, man, because that place will be bankrupt so fast, it will make your head swim.

00:57:21.000 There will be no production of products, there will be no goods, there will be no services.

00:57:23.000 There will be a bunch of people who think that life is fair while they sit and play in the mud.

00:57:27.000 That's basically what you will have.

00:57:29.000 Because that's what the USSR ended up being. 0.88

00:57:30.000 Alright, well, as you can see, I'm dying here, so we're gonna leave.

00:57:34.000 And I'll be back here a little bit later, after I have sufficiently recovered.

00:57:37.000 After I've gone and had a nice swig from the Leftist Tears hot or cold tumbler and have been re-infused with energy and health, then I will be back for two live hours later.

00:57:46.000 This is why you should subscribe.

00:57:47.000 Go check it out.

00:57:47.000 If not, we will see you here Monday.

00:57:48.000 Have a wonderful weekend.

00:57:49.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:50.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:55.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:58:05.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.

00:58:11.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 01, 2019

Eat The Rich! | Ep. 708

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