The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 280 - A Massive Bombshell Helps Trump

The emphasis on leftist messaging in comic books is killing the appeal of comic books. On Monday, Marvel Comics admitted what those of us who actually read comic books have known all along. The emphasis on "diverse" heroes and villains is killing their appeal. How can Marvel and DC fix this problem? They have to go back to what they do best: make new characters awesome, then worry about whether they re diverse later, or use a historic character to infuse new life into the universe. Or else they'll just keep reinventing classic characters to appease the feelings of social justice warriors. Ben Shapiro argues that it's not racism or sexism that s driving people away from Marvel, it's a feeling of irritation that classic characters are being redrawn and recast in order to assuage feelings of "social justice warriors." Ben Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on Fox News Radio and host of the Daily Wire. He is also a regular contributor to The Daily Wire and the Weekly Standard and has been featured on CNN and the New York Times. He frequently writes for The Weekly Standard, and is a frequent contributor to Playboy and The Hollywood Reporter. Ben Shapiro's new book, "The People's Guide" is out now, which you should definitely check out. If you like what you hear, you'll love Ben Shapiro on the Ben Shapiro show. Check it out! Subscribe to his new podcast, "Ben Shapiro's Truth or Fiction" wherever you get your news and gossip, and let us know what you think of it! and why you should be reading Ben Shapiro s latest book recommendations for your next book recommendation or TV show or movie recommendation. Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro and Ben Shapiro? Thank you for listening, Ben and Ben on the show, right here at Vulture Ben on The Daily Mail? - on Vulture and Vulture. - Vulture's newest issue of Vulture? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts by clicking here. Subscribe at The FiveThirtyEight.co/Ben Shapiro: Subscribe and review Ben on Podchaser. And don't forget to tell a friend about Ben on Insta-ism? . Vulture is a great place to talk all things Ben on this and other things that Ben Shapiro did on the road and more! on The Six Things Ben on Six Things He Read on The Five Things He Said on the Sixteenth?

00:00:00.000 On Monday, Marvel Comics admitted what those of us who actually read comic books have known all along.

00:00:04.000 The emphasis on leftist messaging in comic books is pretty much killing the appeal.

00:00:08.000 David Gabriel is the vice president of sales at Marvel and he said that comic book retailers were reporting a drop-off in interest in the new diversity-oriented comics.

00:00:16.000 He said, quote, What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity.

00:00:19.000 They didn't want female characters out there. 1.00

00:00:20.000 That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not.

00:00:22.000 I don't know if that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales.

00:00:25.000 Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up.

00:00:32.000 Okay, it's not racism and sexism driving people away from Marvel.

00:00:35.000 It's a feeling of irritation that classic characters are being redrawn and recast in order to assuage the feelings of social justice warriors.

00:00:41.000 Iron Man is Tony Stark, he is not Riri Williams.

00:00:44.000 Captain America is Steve Rogers, he is not Sam Wilson.

00:00:47.000 Thor is Thor, not female Thor.

00:00:50.000 Spider-Man is Peter Parket, not Miles Morales.

00:00:52.000 This isn't to say that the comics with Miles Morales aren't good.

00:00:54.000 They're actually really good if you read them.

00:00:56.000 Although the Iron Man series with Riri Williams actually kind of sucked.

00:01:00.000 It's to say that nobody wants to see iconic superheroes recast as completely different people to appease quotas on race and sex.

00:01:07.000 Superheroes are brands.

00:01:08.000 You can't twist those brands without hurting them.

00:01:10.000 When it comes to new superheroes, people are always skeptical, so this poses something of a challenge.

00:01:14.000 How do you better reflect diversity in comics without tanking sales, if that's something you want to do?

00:01:18.000 The answer?

00:01:19.000 You have to make new characters awesome, then worry about whether they're diverse later.

00:01:23.000 Or, use a historic character to infuse new life.

00:01:25.000 So Marvel did the latter.

00:01:27.000 With Black Panther, they hired Ta-Nehisi Coates to write the comic, which immediately became a big bestseller for them this year.

00:01:32.000 The comic, by the way, is actually unreadably bad, but at least Marvel tried doing diversity the right way here. 0.68

00:01:37.000 In the DC Universe, Harley Quinn, who was a marginal character 20 years ago, is now a major bestseller because she's interesting, not because Batman had to become Batwoman.

00:01:45.000 But the comic book industry keeps attempting to slam its constituents over the head with social justice messaging.

00:01:51.000 And that's actually killing the quality of comics.

00:01:53.000 See, for example, Batman, Advocate for Trayvon Martin, or Captain America, Illegal Immigration Defender, both of which happened last year.

00:01:59.000 Turning iconic characters into avatars of social justice actually kills sales.

00:02:03.000 It's throwback comics doing most of the heavy lifting at this point.

00:02:06.000 Marvel and DC should take note that it's not American racism driving that choice.

00:02:10.000 It's Americans' discontent with the left's willingness to sacrifice quality,

00:02:14.000 and legacy for leftist politics.

00:02:16.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:02:17.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:02:22.000 All right, so we're gonna get to the big breaking news that is happening right now in just a second.

00:02:26.000 Something that is really bad for the Obama administration and pretty good for Team Trump.

00:02:30.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:02:31.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our advertisers over at Texture.

00:02:35.000 So, if you're somebody who is addicted to information, if you're an information addict like I am, if you love magazines, if you love reading, if you spend every waking hour reading, Texture is for you.

00:02:43.000 It is an app that you download and it allows you to subscribe basically to up to 200 magazines with one subscription fee.

00:02:52.000 Basically, you pay in, it's like $9.99 a month, and you get over 200 free magazines.

00:02:58.000 But if you sign up right now at texture.com slash ben, you get a 14-day free trial.

00:03:01.000 So you get to check it out, you get the back issues, and again, they're offering that 14-day free trial.

00:03:06.000 I use it for Reader's Digest, we use it also for Sports Illustrated.

00:03:09.000 They have an entire list of magazines, New Yorker, Time, the Atlantic, Vanity Fair.

00:03:13.000 If you like long-form journalism, it is perfect for you.

00:03:15.000 You get them all in one app.

00:03:17.000 So you go to texture.com slash ben that's texture.com slash ben and it means they're never gonna be bored again basically you're sitting there with your phone and you go to your texture app you open it up you see what's the latest and it is just fantastic again $9.99 a month you get over 200 magazines and you can try for free for 14 days see if you like it go to texture.com slash ben to check it out it is entirely digital and it is the easiest way to feed

00:03:41.000 Okay, so the big story of the morning was late-breaking.

00:03:42.000 It actually broke a little bit over the weekend, but now it's been confirmed from Eli Lake at Bloomberg.

00:03:46.000 So originally it was broken with Mike Cernovich,

00:03:59.000 For some reason, the White House is now funneling stories to Mike Cernovich, which makes very little sense because he has very little credibility.

00:04:05.000 But Eli Lake then confirmed it, and so did Maggie Haberman over at the New York Times.

00:04:08.000 They actually did the legwork.

00:04:09.000 So, Eli Lake of Bloomberg has now reported that Barack Obama's National Security Advisor, Susan Rice,

00:04:15.000 Repeatedly, requested information from the intel community on members of the Trump transition team and campaign, unmasking them to an audience beyond the intel community in the process.

00:04:24.000 Now normally, when you get a raw intel feed, and you're a member of the political branches, they basically black out all of the people who are American citizens caught up in the intel.

00:04:34.000 So let's say you're listening to the Russian embassy.

00:04:36.000 And they are talking to Mike Flynn.

00:04:38.000 The intel, when it is provided to people like Susan Rice, will say, Russian ambassador was talking to U.S.

00:04:44.000 Citizen One.

00:04:45.000 Right?

00:04:45.000 It'll just black it out, because it's not important if there's no crime being committed for people to know who this is, because they're afraid of exactly this sort of thing.

00:04:52.000 The whole point of masking is to prevent the dissemination of information about innocent Americans who are not actually doing anything criminal.

00:04:58.000 So, what happened is that apparently, according to Lake, in February, the National Security Council Senior Director for Intelligence, Elliot Cohen Watnick,

00:05:06.000 discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S.

00:05:09.000 persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities.

00:05:12.000 He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's Office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

00:05:21.000 The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations, primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also, in some cases, direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials.

00:05:33.000 One U.S.

00:05:34.000 official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition, such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters, and plans for the incoming administration.

00:05:46.000 Now just last month Susan Rice was on TV and she denied she knew anything

00:05:49.000 About members of the Trump transition team being caught up in incidental intelligence gathering.

00:05:53.000 That now appears to be a lie.

00:05:55.000 As Eli Lake also points out, the revelation that Rice requested the documents would also help explain why House Intel Chair Devin Nunes went to the White House a couple of weeks ago.

00:06:04.000 Because he could only see the logs of what Rice was doing, not from Congress.

00:06:08.000 He actually had to go to the White House to do that because that's where she used to work.

00:06:11.000 It would also explain why Adam Schiff, the Democrat on the House Intel Committee, basically has now gone silent over the weekend after seeing those documents at the White House.

00:06:19.000 This is a huge story for the Trump White House.

00:06:21.000 Now, does it mean that Trump was right to say that he was wiretapped by the Obama administration?

00:06:26.000 No, there's still no evidence that he was wiretapped by the Obama administration.

00:06:28.000 There is, however, tremendous evidence now, and it is building day by day, that the Obama administration was seeking to compile all of the intelligence information in which the Trump team was incidentally swept up, and then disseminated it broadly, which led to it being leaked.

00:06:43.000 That is a scandal.

00:06:44.000 That is the Obama administration targeting Trump team officials.

00:06:47.000 That is the Obama administration, without any sort of evidence of nefarious activity, targeting the Trump team.

00:06:51.000 They're not doing it specifically by saying we're going to plant a wire in Trump's office, which is the next step, but it is them saying we have a higher level of suspicion and we're going to unmask Trump team members in the process, which is truly a big story.

00:07:03.000 It's a really big story, actually.

00:07:05.000 And the media have been ignoring that story in favor of focusing in on Team Trump, which is really silly.

00:07:12.000 Because again, we have no evidence on Trump-Russia.

00:07:15.000 We have no evidence that Obama wiretapped Trump.

00:07:19.000 What we do have evidence of, again, and I'm being very specific about this because I want to be truthful and I want to be clear.

00:07:24.000 I, unlike so many others in this field, I actually care about what is true and what the facts are.

00:07:29.000 As opposed to what backs a particular narrative.

00:07:31.000 So Trump's narrative that Obama was wiretapping him or surveilling him, that is not true.

00:07:35.000 He was not being wiretapped or surveilled in targeted fashion.

00:07:38.000 He was being targeted, in targeted fashion, by Susan Rice, according to this report, the National Security Advisor under Obama, who is always the fall person, right?

00:07:46.000 She's always the person they trot out to do the dirty work because she's an Obama loyalist. 1.00

00:07:50.000 She was, in fact, unmasking all of the Trump team officials by going to the intel community and requesting raw intelligence be provided to her

00:07:58.000 And then disseminating that apparently broadly, it was widely dispersed across the government.

00:08:02.000 That meant lots of people knew that Mike Flynn was talking.

00:08:05.000 That's number one.

00:08:06.000 And then number two,

00:08:31.000 If Team Trump knew about this, and apparently the White House General Counsel's Office knew about it, why didn't they just declassify this information and blow it out there?

00:08:39.000 Why instead try to get it to Nunes?

00:08:41.000 Why instead try to funnel it through House Intel?

00:08:43.000 Maybe the idea here is that they knew that they had their trust compromised with the American people?

00:08:47.000 And that if they trotted this out, everybody would accuse them of bias, so instead they tried to funnel it out through the House Intelligence Committee?

00:08:53.000 Maybe that's what's going on?

00:08:54.000 But that's a question that has yet to be answered.

00:08:56.000 And then, of course, the last question is a small one, but an annoying one, which is, why in the world is the Trump administration trying to leak information to places like InfoWars and ZeroHedge and Cernovich?

00:09:05.000 ZeroHedge is actually much better than InfoWars and Cernovich.

00:09:08.000 Why are they using them as the outlets, as opposed to, you know, if you're gonna leak, then leak to outlets that have a higher level of public trust.

00:09:14.000 I mean, forget about what I think of those outlets.

00:09:16.000 Those are not outlets with a high level of public trust.

00:09:18.000 If you're gonna leak, leak to somebody like Eli Lake, who actually has a level of public trust.

00:09:23.000 Well, all of this is leading the Democrats to sheer panic, because they do not actually have anything here.

00:09:28.000 It's kind of fascinating.

00:09:30.000 The left keeps focusing in on Trump-Russia, and Adam Schiff, Representative Schiff, he basically admitted, we've got nothing.

00:09:36.000 I mean, there's no hard evidence linking Trump to Russian collusion.

00:09:39.000 Whether or not there was collusion among members of the Trump campaign or surrounding the Trump campaign, Trump advisors, can you say definitively that there was collusion?

00:09:50.000 There were people affiliated with the Trump campaign who were working with Russians to time the release of damaging information about Hillary Clinton that had been hacked either from John Podesta or the DNC?

00:10:04.000 I don't think we can say anything definitively at this point.

00:10:07.000 We are still at the very early stage of the investigation.

00:10:11.000 The only thing I can say is that it would be irresponsible for us not to get to the bottom of this.

00:10:16.000 We really need to find out exactly what the Russians did, because one of the most important conclusions that the intelligence community reached is that they are going to do this again to the United States. 0.62

00:10:26.000 They're doing it already in Europe.

00:10:29.000 So we can say, you know, conclusively, this is something that needs to be thoroughly investigated, but it's way premature to be reaching conclusions.

00:10:40.000 And basically there he's saying, no, we don't have any evidence of this whatsoever, so what exactly are you going to do about it?

00:10:45.000 I mean, the left has nothing here.

00:10:47.000 They have nothing here.

00:10:48.000 And Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's been bashed around a lot for not being a particularly great surrogate, she's exactly right when she says the media are talking about something of which there is very little evidence at this point.

00:10:56.000 The media constantly wants to talk about something that doesn't exist instead of something that does.

00:11:01.000 We have spent the last couple of months doing major policy initiatives and rollouts in the forms of executive order, rolling back regulations, creating an environment

00:11:13.000 So in any case, the Democrats are panicking over all of this, and so their language is becoming more and more extreme.

00:11:36.000 Excuse me on all of this.

00:11:37.000 So you have the Newark mayor who's now coming out and he's trying to say that Trump is like a slave catcher, right?

00:11:43.000 They're just getting more and more extreme because they're panicking, which is weird.

00:11:46.000 They shouldn't be panicking.

00:11:47.000 Trump's approval ratings are like 35% right now, but

00:11:51.000 Well, I think that

00:12:11.000 Dem targeting sanctuary cities is a way for them to tell mayors and other folks around the country, one, that they're sticking to what I think is a very unconstitutional and un-American policy, and trying to intimidate us into being what I've called fugitive slave catchers, to run around and do their bidding in our cities.

00:12:32.000 And if we refuse to do that, then it makes it difficult for them to continue their policy because they don't have the resources

00:12:38.000 The desperation is setting in. 0.98

00:12:44.000 That is pathetic, okay? 0.98

00:12:45.000 The fact is that illegal immigrants are not slaves in the United States who are attempting to escape bondage, which is against both God's law and man's law, okay? 0.98

00:12:52.000 The idea that people who are coming into the country illegally and we don't know who they are, that you shouldn't be helping out the feds to figure out who they are...

00:12:59.000 That's just absurd.

00:13:00.000 But this is the, this is the language that is escalating now.

00:13:02.000 The Democrats think that because Trump won, their answer is to escalate their language.

00:13:06.000 They don't understand that the reason that Trump won, I just spent some time in Pennsylvania, and I just spent some time in Indiana, and I just spent, I'm spending time now in Florida.

00:13:14.000 The reason that Trump won is because there was a whole group of people in America who feel like they were forgotten by the Democrats because the Democrats were too focused on inflammatory language dividing American from American.

00:13:23.000 To worry about their jobs, to worry about their lives.

00:13:25.000 That's the reason why Trump won.

00:13:27.000 But the Democrats are thinking, they're looking at Trump and instead of seeing that Trump appealed to a certain number of people who felt forgotten by the Democrats, instead they think that Trump won because Trump was loud.

00:13:37.000 And so they're just getting louder.

00:13:38.000 So here's Nancy Pelosi getting even louder and more obnoxious. 1.00

00:13:41.000 Well, it's always been Paul Ryan's agenda.

00:13:44.000 If you look at the Ryan budget of the last couple of congresses before now, you will see that the agenda... When did Donald Trump sign on to that?

00:13:53.000 I think when he decided to become the nominee of the party.

00:13:57.000 Bought into the deconstruction of government, the radical right-wing agenda.

00:14:03.000 I don't even know if Donald Trump will go as far as the Republicans in Congress.

00:14:07.000 People say, well how long will it take for the Republicans in Congress to say enough Donald Trump?

00:14:12.000 I said don't wait for that because their agenda is very similar to his.

00:14:17.000 If you look at their budget over the last few years, if you look at their

00:14:22.000 Opposition to anything to do with the environment, climate change, and the rest.

00:14:26.000 If you look at their anti-woman agenda, LGBT agenda, you name it, they've been there.

00:14:33.000 Okay, so, again, getting more and more extreme in the rhetoric.

00:14:35.000 Now, what this may help them do, what this may help them do is win back the House.

00:14:39.000 So, Nancy Pelosi did this in the aftermath of Bush winning in 2004. 1.00

00:14:42.000 After 2004, she got more and more extreme.

00:14:45.000 And right now, Trump is cruising for a bruising in the House.

00:14:48.000 He's probably going to keep the Senate because there are too many Democratic seats up for play. 0.76

00:14:51.000 But in 2018, the House races do not look good for Republicans.

00:14:55.000 Right now, when the president of the United States is below 40%, the chances that he's going to retain the House become lower and lower.

00:15:02.000 But again, the Democrats are just going to get more extreme in their language.

00:15:05.000 That's not going to help defeat Trump.

00:15:07.000 It is going to help drive his approval ratings down.

00:15:09.000 Tom Perez did the same thing.

00:15:10.000 He's the chair of the DNC.

00:15:12.000 We'll play him in just a second.

00:15:13.000 But first,

00:15:14.000 I want to say thank you to our advertisers over at Zeal.com.

00:15:17.000 So, one of my favorite services, I've used it, my wife has used it, my parents have used it, my parents-in-law have used it, my sister has used it.

00:15:24.000 Zeal.com is all about massage on demand.

00:15:27.000 So, if you need a massage because your back is screwed up or because you're stressed out and you really want to treat yourself, Zeal.com is the way to do it.

00:15:34.000 You go over to Zeal.com and use promo code BEN and if you use that promo code BEN, you get $25 off your first massage.

00:15:40.000 They're all licensed massage therapists.

00:15:42.000 They check you to make sure that you're not some sort of creeper.

00:15:44.000 We're good to go.

00:16:06.000 Zeel.com.

00:16:08.000 Make sure you hit that promo code.

00:16:10.000 Add promo code to Ben to use that checkout.

00:16:12.000 At Zeel.com, you get $25 off your first in-home, on-demand massage.

00:16:16.000 They have 8,000 masseuses across the nation.

00:16:18.000 Again, I've personally used this, so has my wife, so have many members of my family.

00:16:22.000 They've all been ecstatic over the quality of the massages.

00:16:24.000 My mother-in-law was really particularly happy with me, which worked out great for me because, hey, mother-in-law.

00:16:29.000 So, you're definitely, it's a great present for somebody.

00:16:32.000 It's great for yourself.

00:16:33.000 And it's really a lot less expensive than trying to do it the sort of traditional massage way, plus much more convenient they come to you as opposed to you having to go sit in a lobby somewhere and wait for your appointment to come up.

00:16:43.000 Okay, so Tom Perez is the head of the DNC and he, like Nancy Pelosi, like this Newark mayor, he thinks that the way Democrats are gonna win is by mirroring Trump's rhetoric rather than mirroring Trump's positioning with regard to blue-collar workers.

00:16:56.000 So here's Tom Perez ranting about the GOP.

00:16:58.000 January 20th was undeniably an important day in this country, but January 21st was far more important!

00:17:18.000 March in New York.

00:17:19.000 March in Los Angeles.

00:17:22.000 March in Topeka.

00:17:23.000 March in Paris.

00:17:25.000 March all over the world and say, Donald Trump, you don't stand for our values.

00:17:30.000 That's what they said.

00:17:32.000 Donald Trump, you didn't win this election.

00:17:35.000 And then he starts cursing as well.

00:17:37.000 Now a lot of people on the right have been saying, oh, how dare he curse.

00:17:40.000 Donald Trump's the president.

00:17:41.000 We don't get to say how dare he curse anymore.

00:17:43.000 Okay, that cat is long out of the bag.

00:17:45.000 But it does demonstrate that the Democrats, as always, take exactly the wrong lessons out of their loss.

00:17:51.000 Instead of figuring out that they need to appeal to the same people that Trump won away from the Obama acolyte, they instead have decided to double down on his sort of rhetoric.

00:17:59.000 As we continue here, I want to talk about Donald Trump's credibility, what Donald Trump is doing right, what Donald Trump is doing wrong, and now what an opportunity he has and how he needs to push it forward.

00:18:08.000 But for that, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com right now and become a subscriber.

00:18:12.000 $8 a month will get you that subscription.

00:18:14.000 You get access to the rest of the show.

00:18:16.000 You can watch it live.

00:18:17.000 You're also going to be able to get access to the Shapiro store, which I keep promising is coming, but it actually is.

00:18:23.000 Right now, if you're an annual subscriber, you get a free signed copy of Michael Mull's best-selling book, Reasons to Vote Democrat, a comprehensive guide, the most thorough guide to voting Democrat.

00:18:31.000 There is also makes a great gag gift.

00:18:33.000 That is if you get the annual subscribership.

00:18:36.000 But it is great to be a member at Daily Wire, because not only do you get my show live, you also get Clavin's show live, plus you can be part of the mailbag, which we are doing on Thursday.

00:18:44.000 So go over there and become a member, or listen later at iTunes and SoundCloud for the rest of the show.

00:18:50.000 If you listen there, make sure that you leave a review, because we always do appreciate it.

00:18:54.000 Tonight I'm speaking at University of Florida, by the way, so you should be able to watch it.

00:18:57.000 I think we're live streaming it over at dailywire.com.

00:18:59.000 Check that out.

00:19:00.000 In the meantime, we are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 06, 2017

Ep. 280 - A Massive Bombshell Helps Trump

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript