The Ben Shapiro Show - Ep. 39 - John Lennon's 'Imagine' Is The Worst Thing Ever

00:00:00.000 It's Thursday and panic has completely set in among members of the Republican establishment.

00:00:05.000 We'll talk about that.

00:00:06.000 We will also talk about a terrible ad out of Hollywood about gun control, plus things I hate with maybe the thing I hate more than anything else ever in human history.

00:00:16.000 We'll get to all that.

00:00:17.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:18.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:28.000 Okay, so today Donald Trump came out and said that he might run third party again.

00:00:32.000 Now, as you remember, Donald Trump signed a pledge that he would not run third party, but he said at the time that maybe he would run third party if he felt mistreated.

00:00:41.000 The panic has completely set in among the establishment because there's a new poll that's out today and it shows that Donald Trump, after

00:00:47.000 His proposal to ban all Muslim immigration, which we talked about extensively yesterday and the day before.

00:00:51.000 It's a proposal I disagree with, but it's actually very smart politically because it puts all of his opponents on the side of having to argue for Muslim immigration immediately after an Islamic terror attack.

00:01:01.000 It's actually a very smart political move by Trump.

00:01:03.000 He has a lot of smart, instinctual, gut moves.

00:01:06.000 The problem is that they're all gut.

00:01:08.000 He doesn't have any sort of strategy to them.

00:01:10.000 But, Trump in the polls today, CBS New York Times poll, Trump 35% nationally,

00:01:15.000 The next closest competitor, Ted Cruz, at 16%.

00:01:18.000 So he's more than doubling up Ted Cruz.

00:01:21.000 The establishment favorite, Marco Rubio, is stagnant at 9%.

00:01:25.000 He's still in single digits.

00:01:26.000 Jeb Bush, who was the establishment favorite, is at 3. 3%.

00:01:31.000 Got 125 million dollars in the bank, and 3% in the polls.

00:01:35.000 You'd probably like to reverse some of those numbers, but unfortunately for him, he is toast.

00:01:39.000 But, this is the point.

00:01:40.000 Okay, so Trump is saying that he might run third party.

00:01:43.000 I want to talk about the possibility that Donald Trump will run third party, and what that actually means.

00:01:47.000 So, the reason this comes up is because Bill O'Reilly had Donald Trump on last night, and he was asking Donald Trump about the possibility of running third party, given the establishment hatred for him, given the backlash that he's received on his proposal with regard to

00:02:00.000 Muslim immigration.

00:02:01.000 Here's what Donald Trump had to say.

00:02:03.000 Are you going to run on a third-party ticket, thereby handing the election to Hillary Clinton?

00:02:10.000 I think that I will get the delegates.

00:02:12.000 I'm winning in Iowa big.

00:02:14.000 I'm winning in South Carolina.

00:02:15.000 I'm winning in New Hampshire big.

00:02:17.000 If you don't...

00:02:20.000 Okay, and then he says, if you don't, what will you do?

00:02:21.000 And he sort of shies away from the question.

00:02:23.000 And then he was on, I guess, what was this, Michael and Kelly?

00:02:27.000 And Donald Trump did the same routine.

00:02:29.000 He was asked about his third-party appeal, and he explained why he has third-party appeal.

00:02:33.000 Here is the Trumpster.

00:02:34.000 Would you consider to run as a third-party candidate?

00:02:37.000 Well, let me tell you, first of all, I don't want to do that.

00:02:38.000 I'm leading in the polls by, not a little bit, like by 20 and 21 points.

00:02:42.000 A poll just came out.

00:02:43.000 I'm leading in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Texas.

00:02:47.000 I'm leading in Florida against two people.

00:02:49.000 One was a governor, one was a senator.

00:02:51.000 I'm leading every single poll.

00:02:54.000 And nationwide, I'm leading in every one of them.

00:02:56.000 So, obviously, I'm very happy where I am.

00:02:58.000 The people, the Republican Party has been, the people have been phenomenal.

00:03:03.000 The party, I'll let you know about that.

00:03:05.000 I don't get treated fairly, I would certainly consider that.

00:03:08.000 In fact, they did a poll in one of the, I think it was USA Today, where they said 68% of the people that were Republicans would follow Trump if he went independent.

00:03:17.000 I don't want to do that.

00:03:18.000 Number one, when you're leading by 20 and 21 points, you don't do that.

00:03:21.000 A lot of the people that are very critical, people like Jeb Bush who's down being, you know, got nothing going, and a lot of the others that are critical,

00:03:31.000 They're doing very poorly.

00:03:32.000 I mean, they're doing very, very poorly in the polls.

00:03:34.000 Sort of interesting, because Jeb, the other day, was on television.

00:03:38.000 And he said, Donald Trump, maybe I disagree with him, but he is a gifted, gifted politician.

00:03:43.000 I said, oh, why did he say that?

00:03:45.000 That's such a nice thing to say.

00:03:47.000 And then he said it again and again.

00:03:48.000 I said, this is my opponent?

00:03:50.000 And the reality is that something is setting in among the Republican establishment, and that is they don't know what to do with Trump.

00:03:57.000 They have no clue what to do.

00:03:58.000 And the reason they don't know what to do with Trump is because what Trump represents is a couple of things.

00:04:02.000 One is he's a direct response to political correctness.

00:04:04.000 That's what Trump's candidacy is all about.

00:04:06.000 That's why the more outrageous the thing that he says is, the more support that he gets, because his entire spiel is, if I say something and the media don't like it, it's not because the media are right, it's because the media are politically incorrect.

00:04:17.000 So the problem with this is that it's not always true.

00:04:19.000 Sometimes the media are right.

00:04:21.000 Like when they say that Trump's proposal is not smart, this Muslim immigration proposal. 0.97

00:04:25.000 But they don't just say that. 0.96

00:04:26.000 They say that he's a bigot.

00:04:27.000 And then they go too far.

00:04:28.000 And then they label all of his followers bigots.

00:04:30.000 And that's when Trump wins.

00:04:31.000 As we said yesterday, the reason Trump is winning is because the media have gone so far in attacking Trump and his supporters that people react to... All of politics is the game of opposition.

00:04:41.000 People need to understand this is how politics works.

00:04:43.000 Politics is not about voting for Trump.

00:04:45.000 You're voting against Trump's opponents.

00:04:47.000 That's why you're voting for Donald Trump.

00:04:49.000 The reason Trump's supporters back him is because they hate all of the people who hate Donald Trump.

00:04:54.000 Okay, they hate all of the Democrats who hate Donald Trump.

00:04:56.000 They hate the media that despises Donald Trump and wants to call him a racist. 0.65

00:05:00.000 They despise the Republican establishment.

00:05:02.000 Which has done nothing for 20 years to stop the steady encroachment of leftism.

00:05:06.000 20 years?

00:05:06.000 Try 80 years to stop the steady encroachment of leftism with the small gap of Ronald Reagan's presidency in part, but not even in full.

00:05:14.000 And so they look at the Republican Party and they say, all of these idiots... 1.00

00:05:17.000 They hate Donald Trump and they're ripping on Donald Trump. 1.00

00:05:19.000 The enemy of the enemy is my friend.

00:05:21.000 That's basically what it comes down to.

00:05:22.000 So yes, Donald Trump is a celebrity and that of course helps him a lot, but people are maybe predisposed to like Donald Trump, find him funny, find him entertaining.

00:05:30.000 He is.

00:05:30.000 And then when he's attacked, people say, okay, well the people who hate Trump are also the people that I happen to dislike.

00:05:37.000 And so when they attack Trump and say that he's Islamophobic or that he's racist or that he's a bigot, and by extension they say that I'm Islamophobic or racist or bigoted for backing Donald Trump, 0.86

00:05:46.000 Screw all these people, I like Trump even more. 0.98

00:05:48.000 No matter what Trump says, I like him even more because the people who hate Trump, those are the people that I despise. 0.99

00:05:54.000 I despise the GOP establishment, for example, more than I despise Trump.

00:05:58.000 I despise Democrats more than I despise Trump.

00:06:00.000 I hate the media more than I hate Trump.

00:06:02.000 And you're seeing this actually become a sort of line in talk radio and I've said it and I think a lot of other people who are sort of in the grassroots

00:06:12.000 side of the Republican Party definitely have this feel, which is that I think Trump's not conservative.

00:06:16.000 I'm not going to vote for him in a primary.

00:06:18.000 But here is the telltale point.

00:06:20.000 The reason that I know that Trump's opponents are people that I shouldn't listen to is because the same people who hate Trump hate Ted Cruz.

00:06:27.000 The same people who are saying that Donald Trump is not a real conservative, with a few exceptions.

00:06:31.000 There are people like Kevin Williamson at National Review who likes Ted Cruz, for example, but doesn't like Donald Trump.

00:06:36.000 There are some conservatives—I'm one of these people.

00:06:38.000 I think that Trump's a bad candidate.

00:06:39.000 I think that Trump has a lot of flaws.

00:06:41.000 I like Ted Cruz.

00:06:43.000 We are few and far between.

00:06:44.000 The vast majority of people who hate Trump hate Ted Cruz also.

00:06:48.000 And there's no reason why you should hate both of them, right?

00:06:50.000 Because Trump isn't conservative enough.

00:06:52.000 This is what they keep saying.

00:06:52.000 He's not a real conservative.

00:06:54.000 Okay, well, Ted Cruz is the most conservative guy in the field, and yet you're telling us that we can't possibly nominate Ted Cruz.

00:07:01.000 We have to nominate somebody like Marco Rubio.

00:07:03.000 And listen, I don't hate Marco Rubio as a candidate.

00:07:06.000 Marco Rubio is probably my third or fourth choice, but

00:07:09.000 You know, when Marco Rubio is posed as the anti-Ted Cruz or the anti-Donald Trump, people start to go, why is it that all the Jeb people are now moving over to Rubio?

00:07:16.000 I hate those people.

00:07:17.000 And so it turns into, who are the people I hate most?

00:07:20.000 And those people hate Trump, and so I like Trump.

00:07:23.000 Which is why Trump, at the very beginning, I thought that he named his whole campaign in one interview.

00:07:27.000 He was asked why he was whining about media coverage, and he said, I whine and I whine and I whine until I win.

00:07:33.000 That's his campaign.

00:07:34.000 And it works. 0.92

00:07:35.000 Because all the people that he's whining about are people who basically deserve to be smacked.

00:07:40.000 Most of the people that Trump dislikes are people that most Republicans dislike.

00:07:44.000 Now, in that clip where Trump was talking about third-party appeal, it's not true 68% of Republicans would go with Trump.

00:07:50.000 68% of Trump's current supporters would go with Trump.

00:07:53.000 And if you took that number, then what you're really looking at is

00:07:56.000 You know, 70% of 35%, so you're really looking at about 24% of the Republican Party, 23% of the Republican Party, which when you translate it out is about 10% of the entire electorate.

00:08:08.000 10 to 12% of the entire electorate goes with Trump if he goes third party, which is plenty enough to swing the election to Hillary Clinton for sure, right?

00:08:16.000 I mean, 5% would be enough to swing the election, maybe 2% would be enough to swing the election to Hillary Clinton.

00:08:22.000 Now, is this going to happen?

00:08:24.000 Is this going to happen?

00:08:25.000 And before I get to is this going to happen, I want to give you an example of why people like Trump.

00:08:29.000 And again, it's not because of desperate love for Donald Trump.

00:08:33.000 There's a sort of cult of personality that's being built around him, but it's really built on the basis of

00:08:37.000 The cult of I hate the establishment Republicans and all they stand for.

00:08:40.000 I hate the media and I hate Democrats and so I like Trump because Trump says stuff, right?

00:08:45.000 And the reason for this is because, for example, look at Barack Obama attacking Trump.

00:08:49.000 This is where I think that the Democrats may be being somewhat smart.

00:08:52.000 If they want Trump to be the nominee, all they have to do is keep doing what they're doing, attacking Trump with everything they've got.

00:08:57.000 President Obama marked the 150th anniversary of slavery with a speech the other day and I can't think of a president

00:09:04.000 Really, in recent history, who's done less for black people than Barack Obama.

00:09:08.000 But here's Barack Obama talking about the end of slavery, and he uses it as a way to slap Trump as somebody who just doesn't understand racial sensitivity, etc, etc.

00:09:18.000 We condemn ourselves to shackles once more if we fail to answer those who wonder if they're truly equals in their communities or in their justice systems.

00:09:34.000 Or in a job interview.

00:09:40.000 We betray the efforts of the past if we fail to push back against bigotry in all its forms.

00:10:00.000 But we betray our most noble past as well

00:10:04.000 If we were to deny the possibility of movement, the possibility of progress.

00:10:13.000 If we were to let cynicism consume us, and fear overwhelm us.

00:10:25.000 If we lost hope.

00:10:29.000 For however slow, however incomplete,

00:10:33.000 However harshly, loudly, rudely challenged at each point along our journey in America, we can create the change that we seek.

00:10:49.000 And he goes on to basically, that's a very oblique reference to Donald Trump and Donald Trump's ban on Muslim immigrants.

00:10:54.000 You can hear it there.

00:10:55.000 We can't be racist.

00:10:56.000 And Barack Obama makes people's stomachs crawl.

00:10:59.000 I mean, he makes my stomach turn. 0.98

00:11:00.000 When I watch him, he is so cynical and he is such a manipulator. 0.95

00:11:04.000 And when I watch him and I hear him, he doesn't even take radical Islam seriously, telling me that you're racist to take radical Islam seriously or bigoted or Islamophobic. 0.95

00:11:13.000 I think, okay, well, at least Trump takes it seriously.

00:11:17.000 Politics, it's a game of opposition, it's a game of at least.

00:11:20.000 Right?

00:11:20.000 At least this guy doesn't do that.

00:11:22.000 At least this guy doesn't think that.

00:11:24.000 At least this guy isn't Obama.

00:11:25.000 At least this guy takes this stuff seriously.

00:11:27.000 You get that?

00:11:28.000 Martin O'Malley, right?

00:11:29.000 Martin O'Malley's on with Jorge Ramos. 0.98

00:11:30.000 And Jorge Ramos is really quite ridiculous. 0.90

00:11:34.000 He's not a reporter, he's an opinion guy. 0.94

00:11:37.000 And Jorge Ramos has come out in favor this week of a total gun confiscation in the United States.

00:11:41.000 Martin O'Malley, the Democratic presidential candidate who has less support

00:11:45.000 It's very important that all of us push back on Donald Trump's remarks.

00:11:48.000 I mean, the greatest... Look, democracies are very, very susceptible.

00:12:03.000 To these sort of scapegoating appeals, these racist appeals, especially after an attack or in times of economic downturn or stagnant wages.

00:12:13.000 And that's where we are right now.

00:12:14.000 So when Donald Trump says these things, all of us have an obligation to punch back.

00:12:18.000 I'm certainly going to do it.

00:12:20.000 These are the sort of appeals that history has taught us oftentimes precede fascism.

00:12:25.000 Or worse, or just as bad, the plunging of a republic into a security state.

00:12:30.000 We all need to push back on Donald Trump's hateful language. 0.98

00:12:33.000 Okay, he's awful. 0.98

00:12:35.000 I mean, Martin O'Malley is awful. 0.97

00:12:37.000 Okay, you can have a legitimate fear. 0.93

00:12:38.000 He just called everybody who has legitimate fears about radical Islam a racist.

00:12:41.000 That's what that was, and that's how people read it.

00:12:43.000 When you hear that, what you hear is that if you are somebody who takes radical Islam seriously as a global problem, then that's because you're an Islamophobe.

00:12:51.000 Right?

00:12:51.000 And because you're an incipient fascist, and what you really want to do is take rights away from people.

00:12:55.000 Now, I am not a Donald Trump fan. 0.96

00:12:57.000 Again, his Muslim immigration plan is not my plan. 1.00

00:13:01.000 But, at least, he's not Martin O'Malley.

00:13:04.000 And so Donald Trump does well, right?

00:13:05.000 Because at least he's not Martin O'Malley.

00:13:07.000 At least he's not Lindsey Graham, right?

00:13:09.000 Here's the senator from South Carolina, who's currently at negative three percent in the polls.

00:13:13.000 Like, people are actually going out of their way to tell, but they're not even being polled.

00:13:15.000 They're just finding pollsters in the phone book, calling them up to tell them that they hate Lindsey Graham.

00:13:19.000 Here's Lindsey Graham from South Carolina,

00:13:21.000 Doing the same routine.

00:13:22.000 And people are listening.

00:13:23.000 Yeah, we can do it.

00:13:24.000 It's fine.

00:13:40.000 Okay, so everybody looks at Lindsey Graham and they go, okay, well at least Donald Trump isn't Lindsey Graham.

00:13:45.000 Here's this guy who's been telling us for years that open immigration is totally fine, basically.

00:13:49.000 He's been pro-amnesty for decades.

00:13:52.000 And here he is telling us that he takes the threat of Islamic terror more seriously than the guy who says that he doesn't want to let Muslim immigrants into the country.

00:13:59.000 Now, again, I think that it is a problem for our intelligence apparatus for us to ban Muslim immigrants from the country.

00:14:06.000 I think it damages our intelligence apparatus here and abroad.

00:14:09.000 But it doesn't sound good coming from Lindsey Graham.

00:14:11.000 He has no credibility here.

00:14:13.000 And because he has no credibility, people go, well, at least Trump isn't Lindsey Graham, right?

00:14:17.000 Again, there are good arguments against Trump's proposal.

00:14:19.000 For example, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who knows radical Islam better than anybody,

00:14:23.000 She was genuinely mutilated by radical Muslims. 1.00

00:14:25.000 She was forced into a marriage when she was 14 years old.

00:14:28.000 She had to flee to Denmark.

00:14:29.000 She was threatened with death while she was in Denmark by radical Muslims in the West.

00:14:33.000 She had to flee to the United States.

00:14:35.000 Ayaan Hirsi Ali doesn't like Trump's proposal, so obviously she is not a member of the establishment clique that just doesn't like Trump's proposal because they're establishment guys.

00:14:44.000 I mean, here's Ayaan Hirsi Ali explaining why she doesn't think Trump's proposal is right.

00:14:48.000 I think it's a bad idea.

00:14:50.000 I don't think we should do what Trump is saying we do, even if we could do it.

00:14:53.000 I don't think we can, but even if we could do it, I think it's a bad approach.

00:14:57.000 And it creates this false promise where a large number of American voters think that if they elect Trump, that he has the solution to this long-term ideological war.

00:15:12.000 And that's exactly right.

00:15:14.000 I mean, Trump's solution is not really a solution.

00:15:16.000 It is a long-term ideological war with radical Islam.

00:15:18.000 What she's saying is right.

00:15:19.000 The point that I'm making here is that you can oppose Trump's policies for a very good reason.

00:15:23.000 And again, Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows radical Islam better than anybody maybe on Earth.

00:15:26.000 I mean, she is like poster girl for what it is like to be victimized by radical Islam. 0.99

00:15:31.000 But, again,

00:15:34.000 Trump support is coming from a place of opposition.

00:15:36.000 So that begs the question.

00:15:39.000 If all of this opposition manifests itself, what happens if Trump runs third party?

00:15:43.000 Is he going to run third party?

00:15:45.000 So here is my forecast for whether Trump runs third party or not.

00:15:50.000 I think there are really only three scenarios here.

00:15:52.000 Scenario 1 is he wins the nomination outright.

00:15:54.000 Scenario 2 is he loses the nomination outright.

00:15:57.000 Scenario 3 is we get a brokered convention.

00:15:59.000 So Sean Trend over at RealClearPolitics has a piece today in which he evaluates the chances of each of these things happening.

00:16:04.000 He says that the chances that Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio will win are about 15% for each.

00:16:09.000 The chances that Donald Trump wins the nomination are now 20% which is

00:16:13.000 Still top of the field which is kind of surprising because for a long time the conventional wisdom was Rubio's gonna win the nomination Eventually the establishment will get their act together and they'll side behind Rubio at this point by the way I'm not even sure if they got behind Rubio that that would work.

00:16:26.000 I think if they all got behind Rubio

00:16:28.000 There's a good case to be made that all of Huckabee's support ends up going to Ted Cruz, for example, as the field consolidates.

00:16:33.000 There's a good case to be made Santorum's support goes to Ted Cruz.

00:16:36.000 There's a good case to be made that the remaining support for Ben Carson all goes to Ted Cruz.

00:16:40.000 So we're really not looking at a Donald Trump 35 to 16 versus Ted Cruz.

00:16:43.000 We're looking at Donald Trump at 35 and Ted Cruz at more like 25.

00:16:47.000 Right?

00:16:47.000 And if that's the case, if it's a 35-25 race, then even if you give all the rest of the support to Rubio, he's only at 40%.

00:16:54.000 Right, so that means that he's barely ahead.

00:16:56.000 And I don't think it's that easy.

00:16:57.000 So, but, putting all of that aside, so what Trend says is he says the most likely scenario, the most likely scenario, in his view, is that we end up with a brokered convention.

00:17:08.000 For people who don't know what a brokered convention is, we haven't had one in 40 years in the Republican Party.

00:17:11.000 It hasn't happened since 1976.

00:17:14.000 So, the reason for that is because, typically, there's been sort of a baseline agreement that as the primary process played its way out,

00:17:23.000 We would sort of consolidate the field, one person would tend to emerge, and then we'd end up with a nominee.

00:17:28.000 This year we front-loaded all the primaries, and not only did we front-load all the primaries, all of the attempts by the elite establishment Republicans to put their money behind candidates that we were supposed to choose between went totally by the wayside.

00:17:39.000 Trump has completely overturned it.

00:17:41.000 It used to be $100 million in the bank meant something.

00:17:43.000 Now, as I said earlier, $100 million in the bank means that you're at 3% in the national polls if your name is Jeb Bush.

00:17:49.000 So all of the informal attempts to shape the race have failed.

00:17:53.000 There's a complete disconnect between the elites and the grassroots.

00:17:56.000 Well, if we get to a brokered convention, meaning that we end up in a situation where nobody has enough delegates to win the nomination outright,

00:18:03.000 Then we've got a problem.

00:18:04.000 If Trump loses the nomination outright, I don't think he runs third party.

00:18:07.000 If Ted Cruz wins the nomination, or Marco Rubio wins the nomination, I think that Trump basically lends his support and he says, you know, I've had a very important impact on the debate, and we move on.

00:18:16.000 I think if Trump wins the nomination, obviously, yeah, he wins the nomination, so he's not running third party.

00:18:21.000 If we get to a brokered convention, there is no way in hell the establishment will allow Donald Trump to be the nominee.

00:18:28.000 If it gets to a brokered convention, which means that, again, the delegates are split between five, six, seven people, even three people, what you end up with is these sort of backroom deals that happen.

00:18:37.000 Okay, well, I'll give you my delegates if you make me vice president.

00:18:40.000 I'll give you my delegates if you give me this legislative priority that I want.

00:18:44.000 I'll do it if you relieve me of my campaign debt.

00:18:46.000 That's what Hillary Clinton did in 2008 against Barack Obama. 1.00

00:18:49.000 She said, I'll back you, but I want you to help me pay off my campaign debt.

00:18:52.000 All of these deals get kind of cut.

00:18:55.000 In the backroom regardless, but in a brokered convention, that's all it is.

00:18:57.000 It's just a bunch of wheeling and dealing.

00:18:59.000 What do Donald Trump supporters hate most about the Republican Party?

00:19:03.000 Of all the things in life, what do they hate the absolute most?

00:19:06.000 This.

00:19:07.000 The wheeling and the dealing and the backscratching and the idea that there's a Republican Party establishment that is making deals behind our backs to quash our actual desires in elections.

00:19:16.000 If that happens, not only will Trump run third party, but depending on who the nominee is, there are people like me who won't vote for the Republican Party.

00:19:23.000 Let's say it gets to a brokered convention, and let's say that the Republican establishment says, you know what?

00:19:28.000 We tried this Rubio thing, he couldn't even beat Trump.

00:19:31.000 Let's look at, like, Mitt Romney.

00:19:33.000 Let's just draft somebody.

00:19:35.000 Or let's second look at Jeb Bush.

00:19:37.000 If they did that, I would not vote for the Republican Party.

00:19:39.000 I would rather see the Republican Party go down in flames than vote for one of these people that is being presented to us as the only possible alternative to Hillary Clinton. 0.97

00:19:49.000 A lot of people will move over to Trump.

00:19:50.000 You will have a legit third party.

00:19:52.000 So, if things continue the way that they are, the Republican Party has a very, very serious problem on its hands.

00:19:58.000 And so there are a lot of folks on the Republican side who are a little bit in denial about this.

00:20:02.000 You've got people like Charles Krauthammer.

00:20:05.000 Charles Krauthammer says that Trump definitely won't run third party.

00:20:07.000 Here's what Krauthammer had to say about it on Fox News.

00:20:10.000 I suspect, though, that his ego will not... I mean, that would restrain him from running as a third party.

00:20:17.000 Assuming he doesn't win the nomination.

00:20:19.000 Because it's going to be a lot harder than he thinks.

00:20:23.000 And there will be a bar, sort of an invisible bar.

00:20:26.000 And I think that's going to be the Ross Perot number of 19%.

00:20:29.000 I don't think he would come anywhere near that in a general election.

00:20:34.000 And that will be his mark on history, and I don't think he likes to be seen as a loser.

00:20:38.000 The Republican nomination is his shot, and I think that's what he wants to go for.

00:20:43.000 I don't think that's true at all.

00:20:44.000 I think that if Donald Trump ran and got 15% in a general election... I mean, he doesn't know what he's gonna get.

00:20:48.000 Donald Trump is obviously not a risk-averse guy.

00:20:51.000 So he's gonna go in and he... It doesn't matter what he actually would get.

00:20:53.000 It's what he thinks he will get.

00:20:55.000 Right?

00:20:55.000 If Donald Trump thinks he'll get 30% or 40%... I mean, Donald Trump's the guy who goes on national TV and says he's gonna win 100% of the black vote.

00:21:02.000 Why in the world would you think he's going to do a good rational calculation of his own chances as a third-party candidate?

00:21:08.000 Not going to happen.

00:21:09.000 Meanwhile, you've got Rand Paul who's in full-scale denial.

00:21:11.000 Rand Paul is saying, no, these polls aren't even real, right?

00:21:14.000 When I look at these polls, there's no way this Trump mania is real.

00:21:16.000 I just don't buy it.

00:21:17.000 Here's a senator from Kentucky talking about it.

00:21:20.000 I think in fact we've gone too far the other way of really basing election coverage and everything else on polls.

00:21:25.000 We've gone into this Trump mania.

00:21:27.000 I don't think he's going to win.

00:21:28.000 I think really that we've overblown these polls.

00:21:32.000 In reality, many of the people in these polls are not voters.

00:21:35.000 Even the ones of likely voters are showing Trump way ahead.

00:21:37.000 So this is not true.

00:21:39.000 And the last refuge of the desperate candidate is ripping on the polls.

00:21:42.000 Once you've started going to, the polls are all inaccurate, in my own head I've got 70%, you're done.

00:21:47.000 But this is what's happening.

00:21:48.000 So now the Republican Party is so upset about Trump that they've set into the five stages of grief.

00:21:52.000 We've actually, we're now going, we're watching the Republican Party in real time go through the five stages of grief.

00:21:57.000 So it started off with denial.

00:21:59.000 It started off with

00:22:00.000 This can't be happening.

00:22:01.000 Donald Trump's gonna fall.

00:22:03.000 Don't worry, he'll collapse, right?

00:22:04.000 Inevitably.

00:22:05.000 Inevitably, he'll collapse.

00:22:06.000 There'll have to be a point where people turn away from Trump.

00:22:09.000 When that didn't happen, it went to anger. 1.00

00:22:11.000 Look at all these idiot Trumpsters. 1.00

00:22:12.000 Look at these Trumpkins. 1.00

00:22:13.000 These morons who are backing Donald Trump. 1.00

00:22:15.000 God, I hate these people. 1.00

00:22:16.000 They're so stupid. 1.00

00:22:17.000 And what they don't understand is that anger reinforces, again, it brings you back to Donald Trump because all of these people, you call them idiots, they're just going to double down on Donald Trump. 1.00

00:22:26.000 They feel like you attacking them makes you a jerk. 1.00

00:22:28.000 I like Trump even more now because you attacked me. 0.99

00:22:31.000 So they get angry.

00:22:32.000 Then when the anger fails, they go to bargaining.

00:22:33.000 Okay, well, guys, we better get our act together.

00:22:35.000 We need, like Marco Rubio.

00:22:37.000 Let's get behind Marco Rubio.

00:22:38.000 And, you know, maybe we can try and force Christie out or Bush out, but if not, people will probably still come back to us.

00:22:44.000 They start to bargain with reality.

00:22:46.000 When that fails, they move on to depression.

00:22:49.000 And that's where you get the doomsday predictions, right?

00:22:50.000 If Donald Trump is the nominee... Karl Rove did this today.

00:22:53.000 If Donald Trump is the nominee, the Republican Party will lose.

00:22:55.000 And not only will they lose, they will never recover.

00:22:58.000 It will be the end of all things.

00:22:59.000 It'll be 1964 all over again.

00:23:01.000 It'll be like Goldwater except no hope for the future.

00:23:03.000 We're all gonna die.

00:23:04.000 The Earth is gonna sink into the sea.

00:23:06.000 All of that.

00:23:07.000 The depression.

00:23:08.000 And that's setting in.

00:23:08.000 You're starting to see that now.

00:23:10.000 And, again, all of the Trump people just look at that and laugh.

00:23:13.000 Because they say, okay, even if you're right, and the Republican Party goes down the tubes, what do we care?

00:23:16.000 We don't even like the Republican Party! 0.88

00:23:18.000 We find you people terrible!

00:23:19.000 Right?

00:23:20.000 You're the people who are bargaining with Barack Obama.

00:23:22.000 You haven't been able to stop him for eight years now, and you're sitting there telling me that hell in a handbasket's Donald Trump? 0.98

00:23:28.000 You guys are hell in a handbasket, right?

00:23:30.000 So the depression, again, reinforces the support for Trump.

00:23:33.000 And finally, here is the deal.

00:23:34.000 If Donald Trump actually wins the nomination, a lot of these people are going to back Donald Trump.

00:23:39.000 Because there are too many people who have too much money and too much time sunk into the Republican Party for them to just throw over the party structure.

00:23:45.000 The only people willing to throw over the party structure are the people who have nothing invested.

00:23:49.000 The Donald Trump supporters.

00:23:51.000 Which is why if Trump doesn't win the nomination, and it's not taken away from him through the electoral process, if it's taken away from him in some backroom deal, disaster.

00:24:00.000 End of the Republican Party.

00:24:01.000 He is the horseman of the apocalypse for the Republican Party.

00:24:04.000 And you know what?

00:24:04.000 If that happens, the Republican Party has it coming, because they bred Donald Trump.

00:24:08.000 The Republican Party is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.

00:24:12.000 They are responsible for this.

00:24:13.000 By surrendering, by caving to politically correct nonsense for years, they bred a reactionary candidate who's taking advantage of the resentment, and that's what Donald Trump is, and that's why he's so successful.

00:24:24.000 Okay, so now I want to talk about a couple of things that I hate.

00:24:27.000 It is time.

00:24:27.000 We're going to talk about things that I hate now.

00:24:29.000 There are a couple, and I really hate a couple of things today.

00:24:32.000 My hate runs.

00:24:32.000 The hate runs strong with this one.

00:24:35.000 And so I'm going to embrace the hate, which is what we do every day at this time on the program.

00:24:39.000 First of all, something that I like.

00:24:41.000 There's a great book that nobody knows about that you should pick up.

00:24:43.000 It's by a guy named Robert Crichton.

00:24:45.000 No relationship to Michael.

00:24:46.000 And the book is called The Secret of Santa Vittoria.

00:24:48.000 It came out, I believe, in the 50s.

00:24:50.000 Fantastic novel.

00:24:52.000 It's about this Italian town that's occupied by the Nazis, and all they do is produce wine.

00:24:56.000 And the Nazis really want this famous wine in the town, and so the entire town decides to basically create a conspiracy to hide hundreds of thousands of bottles of wine.

00:25:04.000 And it's a really great book.

00:25:06.000 They made a movie with Anthony Quinn that nobody's ever seen, but the book itself is terrific.

00:25:09.000 You can go pick up a copy.

00:25:11.000 Okay, so things that I hate.

00:25:13.000 Let's start with, I'm gonna conclude with the thing I hate more than anything in the universe.

00:25:16.000 Here's something that I hate slightly less than that but still a lot.

00:25:20.000 So I was asked to be on Entertainment Tonight, what's the name of their show?

00:25:25.000 It's not even ET, it's Insider.

00:25:27.000 It's CBS Insider.

00:25:29.000 So I was asked to talk about this particular ad and I was really upset with myself because there was something I really wanted to say and I forgot to say it.

00:25:35.000 And it's about Amy Schumer.

00:25:36.000 Amy Schumer

00:25:38.000 What you're about to see is an ad cut by a bunch of celebrities and then another celebrity named President Obama and they all sit there talking about gun control, how gun control is necessary in the aftermath of San Bernardino and Amy Schumer appears.

00:25:50.000 She's become the gun control poster child for some odd reason because she's Chuck Schumer's

00:25:54.000 We're good to go.

00:26:13.000 They don't really get to tell me that my gun gets to go away.

00:26:16.000 I walked through two separate layers of security to go tape this at CBS, so I'm not gonna sit there and pretend that guns mean nothing.

00:26:23.000 So, here is the ad, and we'll play as much of it as we can handle before I pass out from vomiting.

00:26:29.000 Let's do it!

00:26:30.000 We.

00:26:31.000 Can.

00:26:32.000 Oh, Jennifer Aniston.

00:26:33.000 We.

00:26:34.000 Can.

00:26:34.000 Some guy, I don't know.

00:26:35.000 We can.

00:26:36.000 We.

00:26:37.000 Can.

00:26:39.000 We can end gun violence.

00:26:41.000 We can end gun violence.

00:26:43.000 We can end gun violence.

00:26:44.000 We can end gun violence.

00:26:46.000 When we come together, Americans can do anything.

00:27:05.000 So it's basically just a bunch of people, and I'm firmly convinced the reason the ad was cut this way is because all of these people are only capable of saying one word at a time.

00:27:18.000 They are not capable of stringing together a cohesive thought, and so it just turns into, okay, I can only say one word, so tell me what word to say, and so some lady is looking into the camera, and they have eight takes of her saying can.

00:27:29.000 We're good to go.

00:27:49.000 What I want to know, number one, is why I should give two hoots in hell what all of these celebrities think about anything.

00:27:55.000 I mean, honest to God, my IQ is definitely higher than all the people in this video combined.

00:28:00.000 Like, if you took them all, and I'm not talking the average, I'm talking the combined IQ, my IQ is definitely higher than all of the people in this video, and that's both because I have an extraordinarily high IQ, gang, but also because the people in this video have an extraordinarily low combined IQ.

00:28:14.000 The brainpower in this video could toast a piece of bread very lightly.

00:28:19.000 Maybe.

00:28:20.000 So, and I love when they say things like, if we just care enough, we can end gun violence.

00:28:24.000 Really?

00:28:25.000 How?

00:28:25.000 There's a scene, we have any fans of The Office here?

00:28:29.000 Yeah, so you got a bunch of fans of The Office.

00:28:31.000 You remember that scene where Michael Scott learns that you can declare bankruptcy if you're in debt?

00:28:35.000 And so he walks out into the middle of the office, and he doesn't understand what it is to declare bankruptcy, how it's like an actual legal process, and so he just stands in the middle of the office and he goes, I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!

00:28:48.000 That's what these people are, right?

00:28:50.000 If we just care enough, we can end gun violence.

00:28:52.000 Explain how!

00:28:53.000 Have like a how there.

00:28:54.000 Do you think it's gonna end gun violence when you go to the 100 million gun owners in America with their 300 million guns and you put a gun in their face and say turn over your guns?

00:29:01.000 You think it might increase the violence rate just a little bit?

00:29:05.000 Try telling people in Texas they're gonna have to give up their stash. 0.99

00:29:08.000 This kind of crap goes over well in Los Angeles. 0.99

00:29:10.000 Does not go down in Lubbock. 1.00

00:29:11.000 Okay? 1.00

00:29:12.000 You try this crap in Lubbock and there is blood in the street. 1.00

00:29:15.000 So, all these idiot celebrities, they are, they are idiots. 1.00

00:29:19.000 They are hideous idiots. 1.00

00:29:20.000 And the idea that I'm supposed to care what Amy Schumer thinks about gun control is beyond me. 1.00

00:29:24.000 But it shows that Barack Obama is celebrity first and thinker second.

00:29:29.000 And he also understands how this works. 0.98

00:29:30.000 He gets a bunch of people who are popular to say something really dumb. 0.96

00:29:33.000 And then, the implication, of course, is that if you disagree with their proposals, then you like gun violence. 0.89

00:29:39.000 Right, if you don't agree with it, it's because you're not willing.

00:29:41.000 I'm just not willing to end gun violence.

00:29:43.000 No, I'm willing to end gun violence.

00:29:44.000 I have a few solutions.

00:29:46.000 Okay, have dads stick around in the homes.

00:29:47.000 How about that?

00:29:48.000 Give everybody who is law-abiding a gun and the ability to use it.

00:29:52.000 Give them a concealed carry permit.

00:29:54.000 And also, let's end the culture of violence that predominates particularly in inner cities.

00:29:59.000 Because it turns out in Vermont, you've got a bunch of upper crust people who all own guns.

00:30:03.000 There are no gun laws in Vermont, which is why Bernie Sanders is not anti-gun.

00:30:07.000 And the gun violence rate in Vermont is basically zero.

00:30:10.000 It has the lowest gun violence rate of any state in America, and it has a ton of guns in Vermont.

00:30:15.000 So I actually, I do care about gun violence, I just think that the solution is different than these folks, but the implication is I don't care enough.

00:30:21.000 And if I cared enough, we would all get together and stand in the middle of the Washington Mall and shout, I DECLARE AN END TO GUN VIOLENCE! 0.57

00:30:28.000 And all gun violence across the world would end.

00:30:30.000 Now, in the mode of this, that was something that I hate a lot.

00:30:33.000 Here is the thing you're about to find out, the thing that I hate most in the universe.

00:30:36.000 This is legitimately the thing that I hate more than anything else that has ever been created, at least in the artistic world, and that is John Lennon's Imagine.

00:30:44.000 John Lennon's Imagine is a monstrosity.

00:30:46.000 It's a moral, musical monstrosity. 0.94

00:30:49.000 It is the cave troll.

00:30:51.000 Of all that is good and holy. 0.80

00:30:53.000 I mean, it is the worst thing that ever was created.

00:30:55.000 The reason I'm bringing it up is because two days ago was the anniversary of John Lennon's assassination.

00:30:59.000 Very sad.

00:31:00.000 People shouldn't get killed.

00:31:01.000 And so everybody decided that we're going to replay Imagine.

00:31:04.000 This is the single worst song in human history. 0.98

00:31:08.000 I mean, this sucker makes Justin Bieber look like Beethoven. 0.99

00:31:11.000 This is, it's pretentious, it's garbage-y, the morality that it spouts is just spew, it's moral spew, it's worse than that. 0.99

00:31:19.000 It's actually, it's not just nonsensical, there's a sense to it. 0.95

00:31:22.000 There is a sense, but it's so deeply immoral and deeply evil, and yet it's put over this kind of pretentious, these long pretentious piano chords, and him singing meaningfully, and 0.96

00:31:33.000 Anybody who believes the crap in this song, anybody who believes the crap in this song, you should never have any sort of conversation with them. 0.98

00:31:39.000 It's a waste of your time, it's a waste of your brainpower. 1.00

00:31:42.000 I am not a censor.

00:31:43.000 The song should exist. 0.93

00:31:44.000 But, if I were a censor, I would take every copy of this song, and I would take it to a bonfire, and I would burn it, because it's a sh- it's a terrible song.

00:31:53.000 There's certain words even I won't say here. 0.98

00:31:55.000 It is a garbage- so we'll play a little bit of it, and then I'm gonna take the- the screen that we're showing it on, I'm gonna hurl it through a window. 0.96

00:32:01.000 So let's just- we'll play a little bit of this garbage. 0.97

00:32:11.000 We're good to go. 0.98

00:32:41.000 We're lovers.

00:33:07.000 Pause it for one second.

00:33:08.000 What he just said is the most immoral thing you could possibly say.

00:33:12.000 Imagine all the people living for today.

00:33:14.000 That's basically what we have.

00:33:15.000 Okay?

00:33:16.000 Imagine all the people living for today means you don't plan for the future.

00:33:18.000 It means you don't care about your kids.

00:33:20.000 It means you don't care what happens tomorrow.

00:33:21.000 It means you don't care about anybody else.

00:33:23.000 You just care about you.

00:33:25.000 Okay?

00:33:25.000 This is the most selfish morality possible.

00:33:27.000 If all the people lived just for today, they would screw everything in sight and kill all their enemies.

00:33:32.000 That's what would happen if everybody lived for today, because what happens tomorrow doesn't matter.

00:33:35.000 If there's no punishment, if there's no reward and punishment in this life or any other, then all that matters is what is good for me, right now. 0.94

00:33:41.000 Okay, it's a deeply immoral philosophy that's being preached over this pretentious garbage piano music.

00:33:47.000 I mean, one of the things I hate about the Beatles, honestly, is I actually like trained musicians, and the Beatles can write a melody, there's no question. 0.90

00:33:54.000 They can write a catchy hook.

00:33:55.000 Okay, none of them knew how to read music.

00:33:57.000 Call me an elitist.

00:33:59.000 For me to call you a great musician, you have to know how to read music.

00:34:02.000 Okay, I wouldn't call you a great author if you don't know how to read.

00:34:04.000 Okay, so we'll continue with this because there actually is some substance and depth.

00:34:09.000 I think this is the entire Democratic Party.

00:34:10.000 I think this is the entire American and European left. 0.81

00:34:13.000 I think this is their morality in a nutshell.

00:34:15.000 And I think they believe that it's beautiful and it is the ugliest morality that you could possibly conceive of.

00:34:23.000 No countries.

00:34:33.000 Nothing to kill or die for.

00:34:36.000 That's an important statement.

00:34:37.000 I don't know religion.

00:34:39.000 I don't know religion.

00:34:41.000 It's really God that connects everything.

00:34:59.000 The next stanza there, no religion.

00:35:01.000 Religion is the cause of all the world's ills. 1.00

00:35:02.000 Right. 0.82

00:35:03.000 Communism and atheism murdered a hundred million people in the century he was writing this. 0.99

00:35:07.000 They were busy murdering people in China right as he was writing this garbage. 0.99

00:35:11.000 Okay, this is this is such depraved morality. 1.00

00:35:14.000 There's no countries.

00:35:15.000 There's nothing worth killing or dying for.

00:35:17.000 Really, how about like the torture of children?

00:35:18.000 Is that worth killing or dying for?

00:35:20.000 How about the murder of a hundred million people?

00:35:23.000 Is that worth killing or dying for?

00:35:24.000 Turns out that in your happy-dappy little land here, where everybody is just wonderful and joyous, this assumes a goodness to human nature that just does not exist.

00:35:32.000 The left assumes that all people inherently are good.

00:35:35.000 All people are not inherently good, and anybody who's ever met a child knows this. 1.00

00:35:39.000 Seriously, children are innocent, but they're not good.

00:35:41.000 Everybody assumes that kids are good.

00:35:42.000 Kids are not good.

00:35:43.000 Kids are selfish.

00:35:44.000 I love my daughter.

00:35:45.000 She's wonderful.

00:35:45.000 But she wants what she wants.

00:35:47.000 And if she doesn't get what she wants, she fusses and she cries and she lashes out. 0.53

00:35:50.000 Because she's a kid.

00:35:52.000 Kids are just baby humans.

00:35:53.000 Right?

00:35:54.000 Humans are all like this.

00:35:55.000 Humans are not all good.

00:35:57.000 And they're not all bad.

00:35:58.000 They are capable of both good and bad.

00:35:59.000 But mostly, human beings are not civilized.

00:36:01.000 That's why civilization is necessary for human beings.

00:36:03.000 You have to have cultures.

00:36:05.000 You have to have morality that is taught.

00:36:07.000 If you just left everybody alone in a field,

00:36:09.000 Like in primitive times, everyone would kill each other.

00:36:12.000 The murder rate in primitive societies was enormous.

00:36:15.000 Enormous.

00:36:16.000 And nothing was developed because there was no civilization and there was no religion.

00:36:20.000 It's sort of noble savage nonsense that John Lennon was preaching from the most highly civilized portion of human civilization up to that point in history.

00:36:30.000 It is amazing that all these people live off the fruits of a civilization

00:36:34.000 That is absolutely contrary to their values, and then they suggest that if they just rip away the civilization, then nothing will change.

00:36:40.000 I mean, honestly, I should just dismiss this because the guy married Yoko Ono.

00:36:43.000 I mean, that alone I should dismiss him, but we'll go one more stanza of this before I hurl myself through a window.

00:36:50.000 Let's finish up with John Lennon, imagine on the... What was this?

00:36:54.000 When did he die?

00:36:55.000 John Lennon, 78?

00:36:55.000 Something like that?

00:36:57.000 I don't... It was before my time, but on the anniversary of his death, we're gonna make fun of the worst song ever written, so here we go.

00:37:06.000 Let's go.

00:37:32.000 Ah, here we go.

00:37:33.000 Full-scale commie.

00:37:36.000 And this giant house, by the way. 0.99

00:37:38.000 He's standing in a giant ass house. 0.99

00:37:41.000 No need for greater hunger. 1.00

00:37:50.000 Look at him, man.

00:37:54.000 He's never existed and never will.

00:38:10.000 God, this is so childish.

00:38:11.000 And there's Yoko Ono.

00:38:18.000 So this final push toward no possessions.

00:38:21.000 Honestly, this is actually being promoted by the left today.

00:38:23.000 And there was an article in The Nation yesterday.

00:38:25.000 Yesterday, J.A.

00:38:26.000 Meyerson, writing in The Nation, says we should just abolish private property.

00:38:30.000 We should just get rid of it.

00:38:31.000 Because when the Wampanoag, this tribe, met the Pilgrims, and the Pilgrims had claimed their land, the Indians came across the land and the Pilgrims said to them, this is our land.

00:38:41.000 And the Wampanoag said, wait a second, we don't do that sort of like land ownership thing.

00:38:45.000 And J.A.

00:38:45.000 Meyerson says, well, weren't they right?

00:38:47.000 We still don't have a good reason why we shouldn't just share the land.

00:38:50.000 I have a good reason why we shouldn't share the land.

00:38:52.000 It's called several thousand years of no human development, and then Western civilization.

00:38:57.000 That's why we should not share the land.

00:38:58.000 Private property, private property ownership, the idea of labor, the idea of owning what you produce, is one of the greatest goods ever discovered in the history of civilization.

00:39:06.000 We would all be hunter-gatherer nomad peoples with no history,

00:39:11.000 And we'd all die at 30 if it weren't for human civilization and private property ownership and the incentive that suggests that you own what you produce.

00:39:19.000 But none of this makes any difference to these people.

00:39:21.000 It's deeply immoral, but it's such childish philosophy.

00:39:24.000 And it bleeds all the way down to the kiddies.

00:39:26.000 I mean, this really is something that you would hear from a third grader, but leftists think it's so deep.

00:39:30.000 They think stuff that seven-year-olds say is just the depth of what humankind is.

00:39:35.000 And it really is evil, okay?

00:39:36.000 You should not take your moral advice from small children.

00:39:39.000 You shouldn't, but that's what this is.

00:39:40.000 Okay, when my daughter is five, I expect that I'll probably hear this from her and I'll have to inform her life isn't fair and people do bad things.

00:39:47.000 Right?

00:39:47.000 Those two premises alone destroy everything John Lennon is talking about.

00:39:51.000 Life isn't fair and people do bad crap.

00:39:53.000 And as soon as you acknowledge these two basic facts about the world, none of this makes any sense.

00:39:58.000 But I'm telling you, the entire left buys into this.

00:40:00.000 And this is the happy world that would be if it weren't for us evil Republicans and our evil reality that we bring with us. 0.98

00:40:06.000 It really is quite sickening. 0.89

00:40:09.000 So, that's the thing that I hate for today.

00:40:11.000 The good news is that I think that reality intervenes.

00:40:14.000 Every time this is tried, reality intervenes.

00:40:16.000 That's the good news and the bad news. 1.00

00:40:17.000 Because the bad news is that when reality intervenes, usually tens of millions of people die for stupid garbage like this. 1.00

00:40:25.000 And will, if we allow the left to win. 0.99

00:40:27.000 So, what I'm calling for in the Republican primary is let's consolidate around somebody who is not Donald Trump to stop Donald Trump, but let's do it before we get to some sort of brokered convention with all the elites figuring out for the rest of us.

00:40:38.000 I don't like elites figuring out anything for the rest of us, whether it's John Lennon or Karl Rove.

00:40:42.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:40:43.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 10, 2015

Ep. 39 - John Lennon's 'Imagine' Is The Worst Thing Ever

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