The Ben Shapiro Show - May 01, 2017


Ep. 293 - Fascists Win In Berkeley

Topics
fascism ESPN politics
Hosted by
Ben Shapiro
Mentioned
Ann Coulter Antifa Donald Trump Sally Cohen Jerry Brown Bob Beckel Lauren Southern Caitlyn Jenner Ronald Reagan Jason Strasioso Kevin Blackistone Andrew Greenwood Anthony Bourdain Keith Olbermann Nicholas Dirks Gavin McInnes Jesse Aragorn Max Kellerman Michael Smith Jeremy Boring and 13 more
Ep. 292 - Should We Train Three-Year-Olds To Be Boys And Girls? Ep. 295 - Can Trump Focus On What Matters?

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

219.32

Word count

4,869

Sentence count

330

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

28

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of President Trump's release of a tax reform outline, CNN's Sally Cohen takes to Twitter to explain her take on the prospective legislation. She tweets, This is not how taxes work. And then she suggests that rich Americans paying less taxes somehow amounts to reallocation of resources from the middle class to those in the top tax bracket. Is this class warfare, or is it class envy? And what does it mean for the rest of us to pay taxes on the rich? Ben Shapiro explains why the rich aren't actually paying for the whole operation, and why we actually have the most progressive federal tax system among all 24 countries. Plus, a look at the rise of fascism in the United States and why Ann Coulter is right off the bat about this. Guests: Ann Coulter, Ann Coulter. Ben Shapiro, The Rise of Fascism in the U.S. and the Fascism at Berkeley. Thanks to our sponsor, Lyft. Lyft is a ride-sharing app that does the safest and cleanest possible way to get from point A to point B in the safest possible fashion. They are the best, cleanest, safest ride sharing app you can get in the best possible fashion, and they do it in a way that makes you less likely to get a ticked off guy who wants to beat you off of a bat off by your back. Make sure you use Lyft to get free rides up to 10 bucks each ride. That s a $30 value when you use the service. You can t get more than $10 each ride up to $30 by using the promo code SHAPIRO. Shout out of Shapiro. . ShapIRO is a deal that gives you three free rides, up to a maximum of $30 each ride, and you can tip $30. That's a better ride, you get a better chance of getting a better seat at the best experience in the ride sharing service in the world. That s $30, you can t ask for $30 more than that, you re gonna get more of that, right there, you ll get $30 of free rides and you re getting $30 up to tip $10, $30 to tip up to get the best of it. so you re not gonna get it, right in the most of it, you won t have to pay for it, they re not going to get that, are you gonna get that?

Transcript

Transcripts from "The Ben Shapiro Show" are sourced from the Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool. Explore them interactively here.
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 In the wake of President Trump's release of a tax reform outline, CNN's Sally Cohen took to Twitter to explain her take on the prospective legislation.
00:00:07.000 She tweeted,
00:00:15.000 This is not how taxes work.
00:00:16.000 There is a basic inconsistency here for Cohn.
00:00:19.000 She's correct that higher taxes on a relatively small percentage of the middle class via reduction of tax deductions would involve government taking more money from those affected.
00:00:26.000 But she then suggests that rich Americans paying less taxes somehow amounts to reallocation of resources from the middle class to those in the top tax bracket.
00:00:35.000 So in other words, taxation is theft when it's applied to those who aren't in the top quintile of income earners, but for those rich folks, taxation is an expected tribute to be paid to the government.
00:00:43.000 Here is the question.
00:00:44.000 At what income cutoff does taxation become good?
00:00:47.000 Cohn doesn't say.
00:00:48.000 But this is pure illogical class warfare.
00:00:50.000 When told this on Twitter, Cohn responded that she didn't appreciate mansplaining.
00:00:54.000 She wrote,
00:01:00.000 Cohen also ignores the fact that the rich pay the overwhelming majority of net taxes in the United States.
00:01:05.000 According to the Tax Foundation, in 2014, 35% of Americans paid no income tax.
00:01:10.000 Those earning more than $250,000 paid 55% of the entire income tax burden.
00:01:12.000 The top 20% of earners paid 84% of all income tax, according to the Tax Policy Center.
00:01:21.000 According to the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office report on distribution of taxes in 2013, the top 1% of households paid 34% of their income to federal taxes.
00:01:30.000 The middle 20% paid just 12.8%.
00:01:32.000 The top quintile of income households paid an average of $57,700 into federal tax coffers in 2013 when you include any wealth transfers they were paid by the federal government.
00:01:43.000 The fourth highest quintile paid $2,600.
00:01:44.000 The middle quintile actually made $7,800 from the feds.
00:01:48.000 And the second lowest quintile made $12,000.
00:01:49.000 The lowest quintile made $8,800.
00:01:51.000 Bottom line, according to the American Enterprise Institute, the highest income quintile is financing 96% of the entire system of transfer payments to the bottom 60% and funding the operation of the federal government.
00:02:04.000 So no.
00:02:05.000 The rich aren't undertaxed.
00:02:06.000 They're paying for the whole operation.
00:02:07.000 We actually have the most progressive federal tax system among all OECD 24 countries.
00:02:12.000 But keep banging that drum, Sally.
00:02:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:02:15.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:02:20.000 So after that auspicious start, we'll jump right in in just a second talking about what's going on with Ann Coulter and the rise of fascism in the United States.
00:02:26.000 I feel like I have a particularly good window on this since I've actually been at the center of some of these camp-it-riot-type events.
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00:03:54.000 Okay, so the big issue of the day, obviously,
00:03:56.000 Is what's been happening in Berkeley.
00:03:57.000 So, a couple of points you made about this right off the bat.
00:04:00.000 First off, Ann does not have any obligation to go to Berkeley.
00:04:04.000 So if I were Ann Coulter, would I go to Berkeley?
00:04:07.000 Maybe, I would seriously consider it, but I would also consider the possibility that I wouldn't actually want to be shot in the face.
00:04:12.000 And that's the problem here, is that, you know, I've been at the center of some of these incidents, but Antifa, which is now
00:04:18.000 Prominent in Berkeley.
00:04:20.000 They actually engage in physical violence.
00:04:21.000 We had on two guests in the last week talking about the sort of violence they engage in.
00:04:25.000 We had on Bay Stickman and we had on Lauren Southern talking about the violence that is now occurring in Berkeley with Antifa at the head of it.
00:04:32.000 That is a different thing than a lot of these students.
00:04:34.000 So we had a lot of students who made trouble when I was at Cal State Los Angeles.
00:04:37.000 There was a near riot there.
00:04:38.000 Some people got beat up in the crowd.
00:04:40.000 But it wasn't anything like what you're seeing at Berkeley with the blood flowing and people throwing sticks of dynamite and such into the crowd.
00:04:45.000 That's a new thing.
00:04:47.000 And I don't blame Anne for not wanting to die in the middle of Berkeley.
00:04:51.000 You know, I think that there's a strong case that she should go anyway with a bullhorn, but it's totally up to her and I'm not gonna rip her for that.
00:04:58.000 By the same token...
00:04:59.000 I am certainly not going to rip Young America's foundation.
00:05:01.000 Full disclosure, I work with them all the time.
00:05:03.000 I'm not going to rip Young America's foundation for doing what they're supposed to do in this situation, which is protect their students.
00:05:08.000 It is not Young America's foundation's fault that the police are refusing to defend the free speech rights of people participating at University of California, Berkeley.
00:05:18.000 YAF has legal liability.
00:05:20.000 If YAF were to go there and then some of their students were to get hurt,
00:05:22.000 There's a possibility that Yaf gets sued, and Yaf can't have that because they're a 501c3 organization.
00:05:28.000 They have an obligation to protect their students.
00:05:30.000 Yaf was not anti the event, Yaf was pro the event.
00:05:32.000 It was Yaf backing the event all the way down the line until it was made clear that the police were going to let Antifa run roughshod over the people who were going to show up.
00:05:40.000 I know that Yaf stands by its people because Yaf stood by me when DePaul threatened to arrest me.
00:05:43.000 Yaf stood by me when CSULA threatened to cancel my event.
00:05:46.000 We walked right into it anyway.
00:05:48.000 So this idea that's being promulgated by some sort of anti-YAF folks on Twitter, that YAF is weak on this stuff, it's just not true.
00:05:54.000 YAF filed a lawsuit alongside me against Cal State LA.
00:05:56.000 They filed a lawsuit alongside Ann Coulter against the University of Berkeley system. 0.96
00:06:00.000 The idea that they have some sort of obligation to push their students to go to an event where the students are going to get hurt, that seems to me foolish.
00:06:09.000 If the students want to go, the students are free to go. 0.52
00:06:10.000 They're adults. 0.68
00:06:11.000 But, you know, putting it on YAF is silly.
00:06:13.000 There's really only one group to blame here.
00:06:15.000 Two groups to blame.
00:06:16.000 Antifa, obviously, because they are fascists, and they are fascists who engage in violence for political reasons.
00:06:21.000 But the bigger problem here is bigger than Antifa.
00:06:23.000 It's a bigger problem than Antifa.
00:06:25.000 In the 1960s, when rioters basically took over University of California at Berkeley, the governor was Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard.
00:06:33.000 He called in the National Guard, and they literally marched into Berkeley, took over the place, and tamped down whatever violence was taking place.
00:06:39.000 They kicked people out of the public buildings they had occupied.
00:06:43.000 Where the hell is Jerry Brown, the governor of the state of California?
00:06:46.000 What is the mayor of Berkeley doing?
00:06:48.000 And the answer is that they are all standing by and letting their brown shirts do the work.
00:06:53.000 This is a common thing in fascist tyrannies.
00:06:57.000 You let the sort of wild men go and do the violent stuff, and then you have your police stand by.
00:07:02.000 The comparison is not full, but it is just a demonstration of how fascism works.
00:07:08.000 During Kristallnacht in Germany, it was not actually the police forces overall that were going out and burning down synagogues and beating up Jews.
00:07:16.000 For the most part, it was members of the Brownshirts, which is a sort of paramilitary organization, who were going around doing all this stuff and the police were told to back off and let it happen.
00:07:24.000 This is what fascist dictatorships do.
00:07:25.000 They don't want to have all of the violence on their own head.
00:07:28.000 They don't want to be blamed for all the violence.
00:07:29.000 So instead what they do is they activate people like Antifa.
00:07:32.000 They let Antifa go out there and burn things and threaten people and hit people with sticks and club people.
00:07:37.000 And stab people, and throw dynamite at people, and then they tell the cops back off and let them do it. 0.99
00:07:41.000 Okay, that is just as fascist as the fascists who are actually participating in this nonsense. 0.99
00:07:46.000 And it is really quite frightening. 0.97
00:07:48.000 It's very frightening.
00:07:50.000 It's very scary, and it is totally inappropriate, obviously, and it is violative of the First Amendment.
00:07:55.000 Again, this idea that Berkeley is putting out there that we can't guarantee safety, let me ask a question.
00:07:59.000 If Ta-Nehisi Coates, this left-wing radical who's become a public intellectual on the left, if Ta-Nehisi Coates were to speak at Berkeley, and a bunch of white supremacists were to show up, you know, the phantom Trump supporters who are all the neo-Nazi Trump supporters the media worries about, supposedly,
00:08:13.000 Let's say they were all to show up at once, and they were going to protest Ta-Nehisi Coates in a violent way.
00:08:17.000 Do you think Berkeley would tell the cops to stand down, or do you think they tell them to charge in there, batons waving, and do you think that Jerry Brown would call out the National Guard?
00:08:25.000 Obviously Jerry Brown would call out the National Guard.
00:08:27.000 Of course he would.
00:08:28.000 But that's not what the university is doing.
00:08:30.000 Instead, the university says, quote, this university's Nicholas Dirks, who's the university's chancellor, he says, this university has two non-negotiable commitments.
00:08:39.000 One to free speech, the other to the safety of our campus, community members, their guests, and the public.
00:08:43.000 In that context, we cannot ignore or deny what is a new reality.
00:08:47.000 Groups and individuals from the extreme ends of the political spectrum have made it clear their readiness and intention to utilize violent tactics in support or in protest of certain speakers at UC Berkeley.
00:08:57.000 We cannot wish away or pretend these threats do not exist.
00:09:01.000 Okay, no one is saying that you should wish away or pretend the threats don't exist.
00:09:03.000 We're saying you should counter the threats.
00:09:04.000 That is your job.
00:09:05.000 You are the- as the university chancellor.
00:09:07.000 You have a UCPD.
00:09:09.000 I know, I went to UCLA.
00:09:10.000 You have a UCPD.
00:09:12.000 Use the UCPD.
00:09:13.000 Coordinate with the Berkeley police.
00:09:14.000 The cops who are there, I guarantee you, are not sympathetic to Antifa.
00:09:18.000 They're not sitting there going, oh well, I'm just going to sit here and let Antifa do what they're doing. 0.92
00:09:22.000 This is a political move by people at the top to allow all of this crap to happen.
00:09:25.000 And this has become a trend across the country in violent situations and non-violent situations. 0.89
00:09:30.000 At Middlebury College, not one student, not one, has been suspended or expelled for physically assaulting a professor, a left-wing professor who ended up with a concussion.
00:09:38.000 Not one.
00:09:39.000 When I was at University of Wisconsin, a bunch of protesters took over the front of the stage.
00:09:43.000 Nonviolent protesters.
00:09:45.000 I thought it was ridiculous and funny, but they held up the entire thing for like 20 minutes.
00:09:50.000 And I said to the cops, why don't you just move them out?
00:09:53.000 They don't have a right to do this.
00:09:54.000 Why don't you just move them on out?
00:09:56.000 And they said, well, we've been told by the administration that if we move these people out, we will also have to shut down the event.
00:10:02.000 In other words, it is up to the protesters to be nice people, and if they're not nice people, the cops won't do anything about it.
00:10:07.000 This has become common across the country. 0.97
00:10:08.000 University administrators who are too cowardly, who are too pathetic, who are too fascistic, to shut down people who want to destroy free speech. 0.97
00:10:16.000 And it is not equivalent when you say a protester doesn't have the right to shut down a full free speech event. 0.99
00:10:20.000 That is not the equivalent of shutting down a free speech event.
00:10:23.000 These two things are not equal.
00:10:24.000 When I say a protester who tries to take over an event, assault people,
00:10:27.000 Prevent people from hearing speech?
00:10:29.000 That is not the same as the speaker themselves.
00:10:31.000 I'm fine with protesters who want to protest and not disturb the events.
00:10:34.000 I'm fine with protesters yelling at me every so often.
00:10:36.000 I don't care.
00:10:37.000 That's First Amendment stuff.
00:10:38.000 But when you have people who shut down events, when you have people who threaten violence like Antifa, it is your obligation as a police force, it is your obligation as governor of the state of California or mayor of Berkeley or...
00:10:48.000 P.D.
00:10:48.000 chief.
00:10:49.000 It is your obligation to protect the liberty of people.
00:10:52.000 Okay?
00:10:52.000 The police are not just there to protect your life.
00:10:54.000 The police are also there to protect your liberty.
00:10:57.000 And this idea that the university gets a violent threat and all of a sudden they're going to shut down the right.
00:11:01.000 Again, they're just using the violent protesters as a proxy for they don't want this event to go forward.
00:11:06.000 This is political bias.
00:11:07.000 They should be sued and they should lose.
00:11:09.000 And the university said it was impossible for the police department to simply step in and stop violent confrontations.
00:11:15.000 They said this is a university, not a battlefield.
00:11:18.000 Well, if you want it to be not a battlefield, then perhaps you should actually have defense.
00:11:22.000 This idea that you can just declare it's a university, not a battlefield, that's not what Antifa thinks.
00:11:27.000 They've already made it a battlefield.
00:11:28.000 In fact, there's a map going around that Antifa has put out of various sites.
00:11:31.000 I guess that Gavin McInnes and Lauren Southern are supposed to speak in place of Anne today or tomorrow.
00:11:37.000 And the Antifa people have put out like a full military map of the area.
00:11:41.000 It is not up to Berkeley whether this place is a battlefield.
00:11:44.000 It is a battlefield because Antifa has made it a battlefield.
00:11:46.000 If you want it to be a free and open place of learning, it is your job with my taxpayer dollars, I'm a California taxpayer, it is your job with my taxpayer dollars to defend freedom.
00:11:55.000 And the fact that they're not doing it is ridiculous. 0.88
00:11:57.000 The police chief, Andrew Greenwood, he told the Berkeley City Council, I believe that's the same city council that voted to impeach Donald Trump because this is how crazy they are. 0.57
00:12:06.000 He said, intervention requires a major commitment of resources, a significant use of force, and carries with it the strong likelihood of harming those who are not committing a crime.
00:12:15.000 Why does it carry with it the strong likelihood of harming those who are not committing a crime?
00:12:18.000 Why?
00:12:20.000 I hope that it requires a major commitment of resources and a significant use of force. 0.98
00:12:23.000 I hope that you clobber these Antifa people who are actual fascists who are participating in violence. 0.83
00:12:27.000 Police have an obligation to maintain law and order. 0.96
00:12:30.000 And we've seen all over the United States that left-wingers do not care about violence so long as it springs from the left.
00:12:35.000 We saw the mayor of Baltimore say that she wanted to provide safe spaces for people to riot in Baltimore.
00:12:42.000 They're burning down businesses and she was talking about safe spaces.
00:12:45.000 Now we see the same thing at Berkeley.
00:12:46.000 Have you ever seen, not in my lifetime at least, have you ever seen a right-wing mayor say that he's fine with violence in the streets so long as it promotes right-wing causes?
00:12:55.000 Have you seen that?
00:12:57.000 I haven't seen that.
00:12:58.000 Certainly not in modern history.
00:13:00.000 And yet the left is doing this on a routine basis.
00:13:02.000 The left is doing it over and over and over again.
00:13:05.000 This is an assault on free speech, and everybody, right, left, and center, should be calling it an assault on free speech.
00:13:10.000 It doesn't matter what you think of Ann Coulter.
00:13:11.000 That's completely irrelevant.
00:13:12.000 But according to the left, all that matters is that they don't like Ann Coulter.
00:13:15.000 So Bob Beckel, the living troll on Fox News's The Five, he came out and he was ripping on Ann Coulter as though it was Coulter's fault that all this was happening.
00:13:24.000 Why can't the university protect Ann Coulter?
00:13:26.000 I mean, they have the money, they have the manpower.
00:13:29.000 Why can't they do it, Bob?
00:13:30.000 Well, first of all, let me just say how disappointed I am in all of you suggesting that this is something to do with the Democrats and liberals.
00:13:38.000 These are anarchists who are coming in from around the country who have nothing to do with the Democratic Party.
00:13:42.000 Howard Dean is an anarchist in himself.
00:13:45.000 Oh, really?
00:13:45.000 He was the former head of the Democratic National Committee.
00:13:49.000 I know, I know.
00:13:49.000 It was a short-lived situation.
00:13:54.000 The reason I'm for Ann Coulter speaking is she has a right to speak, number one, and every time she opens her mouth, it drives away more people.
00:14:01.000 She's becoming more and more irrelevant, so she does something like this to get a lot of attention.
00:14:05.000 This is the woman who said, America has been graced by a Christian God that Donald Trump is president.
00:14:11.000 That wasn't all. 0.99
00:14:12.000 She called Marco Rubio a rapist.
00:14:15.000 At least Beckel is standing up for Coulter's right to speak, but there are people on the left who haven't been.
00:14:20.000 The ACLU is even standing up for a right to speak, but the people in power aren't, and that's the only thing that matters.
00:14:24.000 So, I guess good for Bob Beckel in one sense, but it is just ridiculous, it is ridiculous that so many members of the administration, the mayor of Berkeley, that they are going to allow this to go ahead. 0.95
00:14:37.000 It's really disgusting. 0.91
00:14:39.000 Apparently Berkeley's mayor, he called out, I love this, he called out Ann Coulter for stoking possible violence.
00:14:45.000 So Mayor Jesse Ereguin, I don't know how to pronounce his name, he said, Berkeley's about the free exchange of ideas, but that's not what's happening.
00:14:51.000 So I think going forward, we are going to need to have a more visible police presence at these incidents and intervene.
00:14:56.000 Ya think? 1.00
00:14:56.000 Ya think, you idiot? 1.00
00:14:57.000 But he blamed Ann Coulter for all of this. 1.00
00:14:59.000 He said that it's Ann Coulter and Milo who are causing this. 0.98
00:15:01.000 Again, this is the same argument as her skirt was short, therefore she was asking to be raped. 1.00
00:15:05.000 It's the exact same argument, and it is truly disgusting, and this had better come under control, or people are gonna pay the price with their lives. 0.99
00:15:11.000 People are going to get killed.
00:15:12.000 And I hope it's not me, because I'm the one speaking on campus more often than not.
00:15:14.000 So, it's really disturbing to me personally.
00:15:17.000 Now, before I go on on this, I want to talk about ESPN.
00:15:19.000 I want to talk about Obamacare repeal.
00:15:22.000 I want to talk about taxes and trade, and there's a lot to get to today before we get to the mailbag.
00:15:26.000 But before we do that, I want to say thank you to our advertisers over at seeso.com.
00:15:30.000 S-E-E-S-O dot com. 0.99
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00:17:11.000 Exclusively to dailywire.com for the rest of the show.
00:17:14.000 I want to talk a little bit about what's going on at ESPN.
00:17:16.000 So ESPN fired a hundred people yesterday.
00:17:19.000 And there's a lot of big names they fired yesterday.
00:17:21.000 They fired a bunch of people who I enjoy watching.
00:17:24.000 NFL reporter Ed Werder was fired.
00:17:26.000 NFL analyst Trent Dilfer was fired.
00:17:28.000 MLB writer Jason Stark was fired.
00:17:30.000 The entire NHL reporting team was fired. 0.88
00:17:32.000 And yet, and yet, total buffoons like Max Kellerman still on the air.
00:17:37.000 All the guests from around the horn still on the air. 0.91
00:17:40.000 We definitely need Kevin Blackistone telling us how the National Anthem is a war anthem.
00:17:44.000 He actually said that on Around the Horn.
00:17:45.000 We still need him to opine on the virtues of Caitlyn Jenner, who hasn't been athletically relevant for my entire lifetime.
00:17:51.000 But we have to get rid of, you know, the actual people who report sports.
00:17:54.000 This is because ESPN has made a conscious decision, it's the same decision the Democrats made in 2012, that they are going for a new demographic.
00:17:59.000 That's really what this is about, and no one wants to talk about it, so I'm going to tell you the truth about what ESPN is doing.
00:18:04.000 ESPN has made a conscious decision that they are going to program leftist politics
00:18:08.000 Because they believe that their growing demographic base, the people who are watching sports more, particularly sports like the NBA, are black and Hispanic.
00:18:14.000 And so they think that if they put on more hosts who are black and Hispanic and left, then they are going to gain more black and Hispanic viewership, and they don't seem to care that they are losing a lot of viewers who are conservative in the process.
00:18:26.000 This is why the NHL is going, right?
00:18:28.000 The overwhelming majority of people who watch the NHL are white.
00:18:30.000 The disproportionate percentage of people who watch the NBA is black, according to the Nielsen statistics, and they've decided the NBA is more important than the NHL.
00:18:42.000 The NBA is a lot bigger than the NHL, but you could do both.
00:18:45.000 I mean, if you're a sports network, you just cover the highlights, and you tell me what I need to know in the news.
00:18:48.000 That's why I used to watch SportsCenter, because it was clever, and it was witty, and because people were funny.
00:18:53.000 It was back in the day when Keith Olbermann didn't feel the need to talk politics and it was just it was interesting and fun to watch.
00:18:58.000 I used to get up at six o'clock in the morning when I was a kid to watch SportsCenter every morning.
00:19:03.000 Every morning I'd get up at 6 a.m.
00:19:04.000 to watch SportsCenter because that's how much I loved ESPN and that's how much I loved SportsCenter and they've decided to absolutely destroy it.
00:19:10.000 They've decided it's more important to hire Jameel Hill and Michael Smith for a million bucks a year in order to babble about Donald Trump than it is to actually have reporters
00:19:19.000 Like, as I say, Jason Stark, who's a fantastic reporter for Major League Baseball.
00:19:24.000 It's really terrible.
00:19:24.000 ESPN's public editor said that the network would continue to push politics.
00:19:28.000 They said, the desire to throw a boundary between sports culture and politics is a fool's errand.
00:19:33.000 The volume of non-sports content within ESPN's empire has increased significantly in recent years.
00:19:37.000 Some of that has been driven by the athletes ESPN covers who have, in recent years, begun to speak more forcefully about societal and political issues.
00:19:43.000 You wanna know why they're doing that?
00:19:44.000 Because ESPN covers them when they do it.
00:19:46.000 So to pretend that it's the athletes who just suddenly decided to speak politically is nonsense.
00:19:50.000 Athletes were speaking politically 30 years ago.
00:19:52.000 As this guy, as he acknowledges, the difference is that ESPN has now decided to make socially active athletes the heroes of their little morality plays.
00:20:01.000 And there are those of us, like me, who just want to watch the baseball.
00:20:05.000 All I want to do is watch MLB Network now.
00:20:07.000 I'd rather watch MLB Network and watch Kevin Millar talk about nonsense about baseball.
00:20:13.000 If I want to watch politics, I'll watch politics.
00:20:15.000 If I want to watch baseball, I'll watch baseball.
00:20:16.000 I don't need your take on Caitlyn Jenner's heroism and transgenderism in the Olympics.
00:20:21.000 I don't need it.
00:20:22.000 And this idea that ESPN is just going to keep preaching politics?
00:20:25.000 Good.
00:20:25.000 I hope everyone keeps cutting the cable.
00:20:27.000 I hope that people keep tuning out.
00:20:28.000 There are two ways that ESPN makes money.
00:20:30.000 One way is from cable subscription fees.
00:20:31.000 The other way is from advertising.
00:20:32.000 Their ratings have been plummeting.
00:20:34.000 They should plummet.
00:20:35.000 People are cutting the cord because the technology is changing and no one feels the need to subscribe to cable anymore.
00:20:40.000 I used to subscribe to cable specifically for ESPN.
00:20:43.000 And I'm going to unsubscribe from cable this week because there's nothing for me to watch on ESPN anymore because I have nothing to watch on ESPN.
00:20:50.000 On the day before, they cut 100 of these reporters.
00:20:53.000 On the day before they did that, they ran a piece on ESPN.com titled, Five Poets on the New Feminism.
00:20:59.000 On ESPN.com, you think I want to read five poets on the new feminism? 0.99
00:21:04.000 I won't even read it if it appears at Jezebel.
00:21:06.000 I'm not going to read it if it appears at Everyday Feminism. 1.00
00:21:09.000 And I love Everyday Feminism because it's hilarious. 1.00
00:21:11.000 But I'm certainly not going to read it if it appears at ESPN.com.
00:21:15.000 Again, the left has infused every aspect of culture with politics, and they shouldn't be surprised when the backlash is to infuse politics with culture, which is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is the President of the United States.
00:21:25.000 Well, I want to talk a little bit more about all of that, and then I want to get to the politics of the day.
00:21:28.000 Obamacare repeal, and taxes, and trade, and the border.
00:21:31.000 I want to get to all of that, plus the mailbag, but you have to go over to dailywire.com for that.
00:21:34.000 You can subscribe for $8 a month over at dailywire.com, become an annual subscriber, and you get a free copy of Jeremy Boring's The Arroyo fictional film set on the southern border action...
00:21:45.000 Action story, kind of a new-fangled western set on the southern border about the property of a rancher being used as a thoroughfare for trafficking drugs and human beings.
00:21:53.000 It's basically why we need the Trump wall, the movie.
00:21:56.000 So go check out The Arroyo, but you do that by becoming an annual subscriber over at Daily Wire, or you can subscribe over at Apple Podcasts, iTunes, SoundCloud, and when you do, make sure that you leave us a rating, make sure that you leave us a comment, we always appreciate it, and we are the largest conservative podcast in the nation.