The Ben Shapiro Show - FIGHT NIGHT #3: The Battle For Second Place

00:00:00.000 Republicans are on a giant losing streak.

00:00:02.000 They're on a losing streak for two main reasons.

00:00:04.000 First, Republicans have disconnected themselves from data.

00:00:07.000 Second, Republicans have embraced the performative over the substantive.

00:00:11.000 First, the Republican disconnection.

00:00:13.000 Feedback is the only way to course correct when you're doing anything in life wrong.

00:00:16.000 If you refuse to adjust to the data you receive when you take an action, you're likely to continue making the same mistakes over and over and over.

00:00:23.000 And yet Republicans have decided that data are our enemy.

00:00:27.000 Not that data ought to be questioned and examined and taken with a grain of salt, all of which is true.

00:00:31.000 Republicans have entirely obliterated the feedback mechanism.

00:00:34.000 Republicans very often seem to believe that the echo chambers that we've created are some sort of reality.

00:00:39.000 That the Republican perspective represents a sort of silent majority.

00:00:42.000 That the more extreme the rhetoric expressed, the less public support received, the more silent the majority.

00:00:47.000 The problem isn't disconnection, it's that nobody will express their support for the Republican position, which is what they actually believe.

00:00:54.000 Now, That may be true on certain issues.

00:00:56.000 The Parents' Right Movement is a great example, a broiling undercurrent of dissatisfaction that broke out into the open in Virginia in 2021 that polls weren't quite capturing.

00:01:05.000 But it isn't true overall.

00:01:06.000 Republicans have now created an unfalsifiable thesis.

00:01:09.000 When we do something that's kind of unpopular, it's probably actually still popular because polling doesn't matter.

00:01:14.000 And as it turns out, the other form of data feedback, elections, those don't matter either.

00:01:19.000 That attitude has been reinforced over and over again by Donald Trump.

00:01:22.000 Because Trump won in 2016, despite the data, Republicans correctly inferred there were systemic problems with the data.

00:01:29.000 And that was true in 2016.

00:01:30.000 But then, Republicans concluded that all data were not merely to be taken with a grain of salt, they could be disregarded entirely.

00:01:37.000 And that was particularly true with regard to Trump.

00:01:39.000 If Trump won, it was because the data were wrong.

00:01:42.000 And if he lost, the data were still wrong and he had won.

00:01:45.000 When Trump won in 2016, it's because the data weren't to be trusted, which was true.

00:01:49.000 And when Trump lost in 2020, it's because the elections weren't to be trusted.

00:01:53.000 This is why Trump can keep getting away with losing.

00:01:55.000 The Republican Party is the de facto party of Donald Trump's leadership until somebody else wrests it away from him.

00:01:59.000 That's how politics works.

00:02:01.000 Under that leadership, Republicans have won one election, and they have lost five.

00:02:05.000 Trump's favored candidates have fared uniquely poorly.

00:02:08.000 His chosen RNC chair, Rana Romney McDaniel, has presided over an unprecedented losing streak.

00:02:13.000 The problem isn't primarily the data itself.

00:02:15.000 The problem is the Republican belief that data no longer can even be used as an important input in the political system.

00:02:21.000 That's reason number one that Republicans are losing.

00:02:24.000 Then there's reason number two.

00:02:26.000 Republicans are so frustrated with our institutions that politics has become largely performative.

00:02:31.000 As Yuval Levin has pointed out, our institutions used to shape our leadership class.

00:02:35.000 You went to Congress in order to become a Congressperson.

00:02:38.000 You would learn how to do Congress.

00:02:40.000 You became President.

00:02:41.000 Then you were shaped by the office.

00:02:42.000 You grew into the office.

00:02:44.000 Instead, our institutions have now become platforms for more notoriety.

00:02:48.000 That dynamic is reinforced by a commentariat that cheers words and pays very little attention to actions.

00:02:53.000 Saying the right thing, or forget the right thing, the most militant thing, is deemed more important than actually doing the right thing.

00:02:59.000 We've been told by our commentary class that the thing Republicans lack is courage, willpower, than what we have here, is a Nietzschean struggle between the Dionysian power of the strong and the vast underclass that hem in our strunk like bull leaders.

00:03:12.000 But that's not really how politics works.

00:03:14.000 Politics is rarely about a lack of willpower.

00:03:17.000 Most of politics is about knowing where the levers are and how to work them.

00:03:20.000 Occasionally you got a willpower issue, but a lot of the time it's not about willpower.

00:03:24.000 It's about incentive structure.

00:03:26.000 But Republicans seem to enjoy the losing these days.

00:03:28.000 They've despaired of ever winning again because the odds are so stacked against them.

00:03:32.000 They feel that even if they win, they're still going to lose.

00:03:34.000 The deep state will fight them.

00:03:35.000 The media will destroy them.

00:03:37.000 And here's the thing.

00:03:38.000 Republicans aren't wrong about any of that.

00:03:40.000 But the answer to that is competence.

00:03:42.000 Not raging, not screaming, not all-caps tweets.

00:03:45.000 Republicans seem to have forgotten that, which is why we treat candidates who make LOUD NOISES the same way we treat candidates who actually do things.

00:03:53.000 And since LOUD NOISES matter most, and as it kind of turns out, most Americans don't really love LOUD NOISES, the problem of performative politics feeds right back into the first problem, the Republican disregard for the feedback loop.

00:04:05.000 In fact, Republicans often treat unpopularity as a measure of virtue.

00:04:10.000 The more people hate you, the more right you must be.

00:04:12.000 Again, that can be true on occasion, but it's a really bad rule of thumb.

00:04:16.000 So, what can Republicans do to win again?

00:04:18.000 Well, first, they can start to look at the data again and course correct.

00:04:22.000 If Americans keep saying over and over and over again in five straight elections that they don't like something, perhaps Republicans ought to take some note.

00:04:30.000 Perhaps they ought to attribute that, not to nefarious forces that they can't control, but to the things that they can, so they can do something about it.

00:04:37.000 Their messaging, their strategy, their unwillingness to stick and move.

00:04:41.000 Second, Republicans can start to do things rather than just to say things.

00:04:45.000 The answer to charges of malevolence, of evil, which is Democrats' favorite charge. 1.00

00:04:49.000 Republicans are always either corrupt, stupid, or evil, and they love the evil argument the most. 1.00

00:04:54.000 The answer to that charge is over-performance on behalf of the American people. 1.00

00:04:58.000 The answer to charges of incompetence, which is Democrats' second favorite charge, is uber-competence.

00:05:03.000 Be good at your job.

00:05:04.000 This is what Republicans should be looking for in their presidential candidates, especially because Joe Biden is incompetent.

00:05:10.000 Now, Donald Trump is way ahead of the rest of the Republican field, like way ahead, 40 points ahead.

00:05:14.000 He embodies both of these Republican problems to a T. He disregards all the data.

00:05:18.000 That, by the way, can be one of his charms.

00:05:20.000 He ignores the lags and he does what he wants. 0.99

00:05:22.000 Sometimes that's fantastic because everybody is wrong and he's right.

00:05:25.000 But the problem is that if you apply that rule consistently as a rule of thumb, that's a strategy that actually makes defeat more likely.

00:05:32.000 And then second of all, Trump is the most performative politician in American history, which is why so many people dislike him.

00:05:39.000 Trump could theoretically learn from the data.

00:05:41.000 He could embrace his own record because he actually did a good job as president, rather than the performative aspect of his personality.

00:05:46.000 That seems really unlikely, which means that Republicans should, at the very least, take a look at the other candidates on the table.

00:05:52.000 That's what the third Republican debate night was supposed to be about.

00:05:55.000 We'll jump into that debate night in just one second.

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00:07:01.000 Okay, so...

00:07:02.000 Jumping into the debate last night, again, I will just point out that Democrats are basing their entire electoral strategy for Joe Biden around Donald Trump being the nominee.

00:07:10.000 Now, they're doing so because the data suggests that Donald Trump is likely going to be the nominee, but they're also doing so because they were able to beat Donald Trump with a dead man in 2020.

00:07:17.000 And what they figure is, yeah, he's a dead man with a bad record, but he's still dead.

00:07:22.000 And Republicans are going to ignore the data, and Republicans are going to be performative, and that's going to allow Joe Biden to retreat to the basement while Donald Trump takes center stage.

00:07:29.000 And so the entire Democratic campaign is going to be rooted in, completely, The wildness of Donald Trump.

00:07:36.000 You can see that.

00:07:36.000 Hillary Clinton, for example, yesterday, she was on The View, still peeved over the fact that she lost to Donald Trump, which, again, God's justice never sleeps.

00:07:43.000 And one of the things that I see in American politics over and over and over again is that everybody kind of gets what they deserve in the end.

00:07:49.000 Hillary Clinton lusted after power her entire life. 1.00

00:07:52.000 And then she almost handpicked her opponent.

00:07:54.000 And then her handpicked opponent, the second most unpopular figure in modern American history, politically, defeated her.

00:08:01.000 So I mean, she got what she deserved.

00:08:03.000 That lady will never be president. 1.00

00:08:04.000 But Hillary's tactic here is the Democratic tactic writ small. 1.00

00:08:09.000 Here she is explaining why Trump is bad and this is why Biden has to remain president.

00:08:15.000 What, in your view, would happen if he were to be reelected?

00:08:19.000 Oh, I can't even I can't even think that because I think it would be the end of our country as we know it.

00:08:26.000 And I don't say that lightly.

00:08:27.000 You know, I hated losing, and I especially hated losing to him, because I had seen so many warning signals during the campaign.

00:08:35.000 But I immediately said, look, we have to give him a chance.

00:08:38.000 We've got to support, you know, the president we have.

00:08:42.000 And I meant it.

00:08:43.000 And I tried really hard.

00:08:44.000 And then, literally, from his inauguration on, it was nothing but, you know, accusing people of things, making up facts, denying the size of the crowd at his own inauguration.

00:08:56.000 Everything that I worried about, I saw unfolding.

00:08:59.000 And so, I think that he'd be even worse now.

00:09:05.000 And then she compared him to Hitler.

00:09:07.000 That's going to be the Democratic campaign.

00:09:08.000 The question is whether Trump is going to swivel away from that and say, listen, I was uber-competent.

00:09:13.000 Look at my presidency.

00:09:14.000 The stuff I did when I was president.

00:09:15.000 Booming economy.

00:09:16.000 Peace in the Middle East.

00:09:18.000 A harsh crackdown on Russian aggression.

00:09:21.000 All those things, really good.

00:09:23.000 Is he going to run that campaign or is he going to steer directly into this thing with people cheering him?

00:09:28.000 That's going to be the question.

00:09:29.000 And that's the question for Republicans.

00:09:30.000 And this is probably why Republicans, you know, might want to take a look at some other candidates.

00:09:34.000 Now, by the polling data, let's be real about this.

00:09:36.000 The debate last night, the third Republican debate, was the undercard debate.

00:09:40.000 Trump has been able to fly over the rest of the field.

00:09:42.000 The entire Republican field right now, if it were a Star Wars cover, is the cover of Empire Strikes Back.

00:09:47.000 A bunch of action in the foreground and giant Darth Vader in the background.

00:09:51.000 Donald Trump is just looming over the entire field like a huge character in a movie poster and the rest of the field is like fighting with each other in the foreground.

00:09:59.000 That is what this looks like.

00:10:01.000 With that said, should we take a look at some of the other candidates?

00:10:03.000 We should, not only because it is worthwhile looking at all the candidates, but also because it teaches us something about how Republicans are approaching matters of politics in general and what the flaws are.

00:10:14.000 The debate opened last night with the intros from each candidate.

00:10:19.000 The candidates who were the most vocal last night, it really was kind of a three-person debate.

00:10:22.000 There were a couple people on stage who nobody cares about, Chris Christie and Tim Scott.

00:10:26.000 The other three people on stage are Ron DeSantis, who's been basically holding position since the beginning of this race.

00:10:31.000 He hasn't grown his share of the vote in any measurable way.

00:10:35.000 He's basically been fairly stable since approximately June, July of 2023.

00:10:40.000 Since July of this year, he's been stuck at like 17%.

00:10:45.000 He's still stuck at like 17%.

00:10:47.000 Nikki Haley is the person who has seen some growth.

00:10:49.000 She started off kind of linked with the rest of the field.

00:10:51.000 She has now popped to about 14% in the Iowa caucuses, for example.

00:10:57.000 And then you have Vivek Ramaswamy, who is still stuck down at 4-5%, but is very, very loud.

00:11:01.000 He's the loud noises guy in this particular race. 1.00

00:11:04.000 Trump, by the way, is still up on the rest of the field by like 30-40 points.

00:11:08.000 In the national polling average, it goes Trump 58, DeSantis 15, Haley 9, Ramaswamy 4, and then everybody else is below 3.

00:11:16.000 Okay, so here is Ron DeSantis.

00:11:17.000 Now, again, as I say, I've said this before, I think that of the candidates available on the stage, Ron DeSantis is the best nominee.

00:11:24.000 Why?

00:11:24.000 Because he's actually competent at his job.

00:11:26.000 He can point out successes in Florida, and he can say, I did the thing.

00:11:30.000 I did the thing is a pretty good campaign slogan.

00:11:33.000 I did it, right?

00:11:34.000 I made my state better.

00:11:35.000 I made my state stronger.

00:11:36.000 That's a pretty good campaign slogan.

00:11:38.000 So that's basically what DeSantis was doing last night.

00:11:39.000 Here he was.

00:11:41.000 Now if you look where we are now, it's a lot different than we were in 2016.

00:11:45.000 And Donald Trump's a lot different guy than he was in 2016.

00:11:48.000 He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance.

00:11:54.000 He should explain why he didn't have Mexico pay for the border wall.

00:11:58.000 He should explain why he racked up so much debt.

00:12:01.000 He should explain why he didn't drain the swamp.

00:12:03.000 And he said Republicans were going to get tired of winning.

00:12:06.000 Well, we saw last night, I'm sick of Republicans losing in Florida.

00:12:11.000 I showed how it's done!

00:12:13.000 One year ago here, we want a historic victory, including a massive landslide right here in Miami-Dade County.

00:12:22.000 Right, so DeSantis' campaign is basically debunking the second problem Republicans have.

00:12:27.000 If problem number one was ignoring the data, problem number two was performative over substance.

00:12:31.000 So DeSantis has posed himself as the substance guy.

00:12:34.000 In one second, we're going to get to Nikki Haley's introductory statement first.

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00:13:42.000 Okay, so DeSantis introduces himself as the guy who gets things done.

00:13:45.000 Nikki Haley, she introduces herself as sort of the person who is taking data into account.

00:13:50.000 That is really her shtick, right?

00:13:51.000 Her shtick is, I'm looking at the polling.

00:13:54.000 I'm adjusting based on the polling.

00:13:55.000 If you look at the polling, I'm very durable in a lot of the swing states, right?

00:13:58.000 So she's trying to go after Republican mistake number one, there's no feedback loop. 0.99

00:14:03.000 So she's saying there is a feedback loop.

00:14:04.000 I'm paying attention to the feedback loop.

00:14:05.000 And that is why you ought to vote for me, right?

00:14:08.000 So DeSantis is taking on prong two.

00:14:10.000 I do the thing.

00:14:11.000 Haley is taking on prong one.

00:14:12.000 I look at the data.

00:14:14.000 So here she was last night introducing herself.

00:14:18.000 You know, everybody wants to talk about President Trump.

00:14:20.000 Well, I can talk about President Trump.

00:14:22.000 I can tell you that I think he was the right president at the right time.

00:14:25.000 I don't think he's the right president now.

00:14:28.000 I think that he put us $8 trillion in debt, and our kids are never going to forgive us for that.

00:14:33.000 I think the fact that he used to be right on Ukraine and foreign issues, now he's getting weak in the knees and trying to be friendly again.

00:14:40.000 I think that we've got to go back to the fact that we can't live in the past.

00:14:44.000 We can't live in other headlines.

00:14:46.000 We've got to start focusing on what's going to make America strong and proud.

00:14:52.000 Again, she's the, I see the data, I see what people want, and I'm gonna give it to them.

00:14:56.000 And then finally, you have Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:14:58.000 Vivek's shtick is ignoring both of those two rules, right?

00:15:01.000 The data don't really matter very much, and the performative is all there is.

00:15:05.000 That is the Vivek Ramaswamy story.

00:15:07.000 I say that because Vivek has shifted his position on every single issue in this campaign.

00:15:11.000 Multiple times.

00:15:12.000 But, he knows what the base likes to hear.

00:15:15.000 Vivek Ramaswamy is the guy.

00:15:16.000 He's basically a Tucker Carlson tweet come to flesh.

00:15:19.000 Made flesh.

00:15:20.000 And you could see it last night.

00:15:22.000 Now, again, I don't disagree with virtually anything that Vivek is saying here.

00:15:26.000 I just wonder what exactly Vivek's strategy is here for, you know, winning a presidential election.

00:15:30.000 So, his critiques are right, and then he has no prescription, which is the essence.

00:15:35.000 It really is the essence of performative politics.

00:15:37.000 The essence of performative politics, Bernie Sanders does it on the left, is there are so many problems.

00:15:42.000 Let me tell you about all the problems.

00:15:43.000 There are so many problems, and I hate those problems.

00:15:45.000 They're really bad problems. 1.00

00:15:46.000 Those problems suck, man. 0.99

00:15:47.000 I hate those problems. 0.99

00:15:48.000 Man, I wish somebody would do something about those problems like me.

00:15:51.000 That's effectively what Vivek was doing last night.

00:15:55.000 Now again, I kind of loved this.

00:15:56.000 When he did this, I will admit, like, again, I'm a conservative.

00:15:59.000 I have a guttural, visceral hatred of legacy media. 1.00

00:16:03.000 I think they are garbage, I think they are liars, and I think they deserve every bit of scorn that has been heaped upon them in recent years. 0.99

00:16:10.000 I also recognize this has nothing to do with winning an election. 1.00

00:16:12.000 This has to do with sort of appealing to the online base.

00:16:15.000 So here's Vivek last night.

00:16:17.000 I think there's something deeper going on in the Republican Party here.

00:16:20.000 And I am upset about what happened last night. 0.98

00:16:23.000 We've become a party of losers at the end of the day. 0.98

00:16:26.000 We as a cancer to the Republican establishment. 0.98

00:16:28.000 Let's speak the truth.

00:16:30.000 I mean, since Ronald McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018.

00:16:36.000 2020.

00:16:36.000 2022, no red wave that never came.

00:16:39.000 We got trounced last night in 2023.

00:16:42.000 And I think that we have to have accountability in our party.

00:16:45.000 For that matter, Ron, if you want to come on stage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters in the eye and tell them you resign.

00:16:51.000 I will turn over my yield my time to you.

00:16:54.000 And frankly, look, the people they're cheering for losing in the Republican Party.

00:16:57.000 Think about who's moderating this debate.

00:16:59.000 This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk.

00:17:03.000 We'd have ten times the viewership asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about and bringing more people into our party.

00:17:09.000 Do you think the Democrats, and we've got Christian Welker here, do you think the Democrats would actually hire Greg Gutfeld to host a Democratic debate?

00:17:18.000 They wouldn't do it.

00:17:19.000 And so the fact of the matter is, I mean, Kristen, I'm going to use this time, because this is actually about you in the media and the corrupt media establishment.

00:17:25.000 Ask you the Trump-Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on this network for years.

00:17:30.000 Was that real?

00:17:31.000 Or was that Hillary Clinton made up disinformation? 0.85

00:17:34.000 Answer the question.

00:17:35.000 Go.

00:17:35.000 This is how we get our country back.

00:17:42.000 We need accountability because this media rigged the 2016 election, they rigged the 2020 election with the Hunter Biden laptop story, and they're going to rig this election.

00:17:50.000 Your time is up.

00:17:51.000 Let me turn to the governor.

00:17:52.000 Okay, so what he says, that entire critique, again, the critique is largely correct.

00:17:58.000 By the way, when he mentions Rana Rami McDaniel losing her job, which I've been calling for, for what, a year at this point?

00:18:02.000 A year and a half?

00:18:04.000 When he says that, he's not wrong.

00:18:06.000 We should point out, by the way, the reason that Rana Rami McDaniel did not lose her job is because she was supported by Wade Ford and Donald Trump.

00:18:12.000 That is why she's still in her job at the RNC. 0.99

00:18:14.000 And then when he says that there should be a debate moderated by Tucker, Joe Rogan, and Elon Musk, that's sort of a slightly weird take, given that the only one of those figures who actually has voted Republican any time in the recent past, I assume, is Tucker.

00:18:26.000 And Tucker is, shall we say, controversial on foreign policy inside Republican halls.

00:18:30.000 If you're really gonna do that, you'd need an actual diverse base of sort of ideological people.

00:18:34.000 In any case, the disconnect is between what he says at the beginning, the critique, and then him saying at the end, This is how we get our country back.

00:18:43.000 What, by criticizing the media?

00:18:44.000 I mean, like, again, I'm in that business.

00:18:46.000 I'm up for it.

00:18:47.000 I'm just wondering, is that really?

00:18:49.000 Like, if we elect you president, Vivek Ramaswamy, is your chief goal going to be criticizing the media?

00:18:53.000 I noticed Trump did that a lot and then he lost.

00:18:56.000 So, actually, what you're actually going to need here at some point is to take stock of the first two problems.

00:19:02.000 Data matters.

00:19:04.000 And performative politics is not going to be the solution.

00:19:07.000 Okay, then the debate moved on to foreign policy, and this was sort of fascinating.

00:19:11.000 There's sort of a tripartite division inside the Republican Party over foreign policy.

00:19:16.000 You've got the very hawkish sort of neocon position, represented by Nikki Haley, and then you have the sort of middle-of-the-road position presented by Ron DeSantis, and then you have the sort of full-scale quasi-isolationist position presented by Vivek Ramaswamy.

00:19:30.000 And these are interesting debates, they really are.

00:19:33.000 The reality is that I think that the Republican Party, to its great discredit, cares very little at this point about policy debates.

00:19:38.000 Because the reality is, we don't know which side of that debate Trump is on.

00:19:41.000 When Trump was actually president, he was kind of a neocon.

00:19:43.000 And then when he's talking about foreign policy, he sounds like Pavay.

00:19:47.000 And then he sometimes looks like he's kind of all over the place.

00:19:49.000 So I'm not sure that policy is actually what the Republican Party is about, but it was an interesting debate.

00:19:53.000 We'll get to that momentarily.

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00:20:55.000 Okay, so. 0.96

00:20:57.000 I would be telling Bibi, finish the job once and for all with these butchers, Hamas. 1.00

00:21:02.000 Both DeSantis and Haley sort of mirrored the same perspective, which is that Hamas needs 0.99

00:21:05.000 to get mashed, which of course is correct.

00:21:07.000 Here is DeSantis last night. 0.63

00:21:08.000 I would be telling BB, finish the job once and for all with these butchers, Hamas. 1.00

00:21:15.000 They're terrorists. 1.00

00:21:16.000 They're massacring innocent people. 1.00

00:21:19.000 They would wipe every Jew off the globe if they could. 1.00

00:21:23.000 He cannot live with that threat right by his country.

00:21:27.000 Hamas should release every hostage and they should unconditionally surrender. 0.64

00:21:31.000 I'm sick of hearing the media, I'm sick of hearing other people blame Israel just for defending itself.

00:21:37.000 We will stand with Israel in word and in deed, in public and in private.

00:21:41.000 And I can tell you, as governor, I actually did something about it.

00:21:45.000 Okay, so again, that's his pitch.

00:21:47.000 His pitch is, I did something about it.

00:21:48.000 That's always DeSantis' pitch.

00:21:50.000 And then you got Ramaswamy.

00:21:52.000 So again, Vivek, he's just like a series of Twitter impulses that are made real.

00:21:58.000 So here he was talking about Israel, and then he suddenly swivels and talks about the American border.

00:22:03.000 I'm a big fan of solidifying the American border.

00:22:06.000 I've been calling for the American border to be closed for years and years and years.

00:22:09.000 In fact, as long as I can remember talking about the immigration debate, I've talked about the fact that the southern border has been basically unprotected.

00:22:15.000 I don't have any idea what that has to do with Israel destroying Hamas, but here was Vivek Ramaswamy trying to connect the two with the implication being that basically cut Israel loose in the face of all its enemies because we need to protect the border or something, which again, two disconnected issues.

00:22:29.000 America can walk and chew gum at the same time as it turns out.

00:22:32.000 The founding vision of Israel was based on the idea that they don't want to depend on anybody else's sympathy or direction in defending themselves.

00:22:40.000 So what I would tell Bibi is that Israel has the right and the responsibility to defend itself.

00:22:47.000 I would tell him to smoke those terrorists on his southern border, and then I'll tell him as President of the United States, I'll be smoking the terrorists on our southern border. 0.87

00:22:55.000 That's his responsibility. 0.98

00:22:56.000 This is our responsibility.

00:22:59.000 Okay, that is a complete evasion of the question as to what level of material support you wish to provide to Israel, which is the actual question in that debate.

00:23:07.000 And then Ramaswamy went even further.

00:23:08.000 Again, performative.

00:23:10.000 Performative, performative.

00:23:11.000 Vivek does not want to be president.

00:23:12.000 He has no intention of being president.

00:23:13.000 Vivek wants to run for Senate from Ohio, or he wants to run for a podcast, or he wants to be in Trump's cabinet.

00:23:18.000 One of those things.

00:23:19.000 But here he was last night going off on Ukraine.

00:23:22.000 And again, I think that a lot of the criticisms of Ukraine's corruption are absolutely true. 1.00

00:23:27.000 Ukraine does have serious corruption problems.

00:23:28.000 It has had serious corruption problems for as long as Ukraine has been in the post-Soviet era.

00:23:33.000 With that said, this is some pretty wild stuff here from Vivek.

00:23:39.000 Ukraine is not a paragon of democracy.

00:23:41.000 This is a country that has banned 11 opposition parties.

00:23:44.000 It has consolidated all media into one state TV media arm.

00:23:48.000 That's not democratic.

00:23:49.000 It has threatened not to hold elections this year unless the U.S.

00:23:52.000 forks over more money.

00:23:53.000 That is not democratic.

00:23:55.000 It has celebrated a Nazi in its ranks, the comedian in cargo pants, a man called Zelensky, doing it in their own ranks. 0.77

00:24:00.000 That is not democratic.

00:24:02.000 More facts for you that you won't hear from the mainstream in either party or the mainstream media.

00:24:07.000 The regions of Ukraine that are occupied by Russia right now, in the Donbas, Luhansk, Donetsk, these are Russian-speaking regions that have not even been part of Ukraine since 2014, that other people probably couldn't name those provinces for you.

00:24:22.000 Those are the hard facts.

00:24:24.000 And so to frame this as some kind of battle between good versus evil, don't buy it.

00:24:31.000 Okay, that is a wild foreign policy stance.

00:24:34.000 I mean, again, Ukraine is indeed very corrupt. 0.52

00:24:38.000 I have many, many problems with the Ukrainian government.

00:24:42.000 When he says that Ukraine is basically honeycombed with Nazis, in terms of its upper ranks, the government is honeycombed with Nazis, and calls Zelensky the comedian in cargo pants, and when he talks about how the occupied regions of Ukraine, Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, that these are Russian-speaking regions, and therefore what?

00:25:01.000 That Russia had a right to seize those regions in the first place? 0.85

00:25:05.000 Or when he suggests it's not a battle between good and evil?

00:25:07.000 Well, I mean, both sides don't have to be purely good in order for a particular battle to be between good and evil.

00:25:12.000 And it turns out the invasion of a sovereign country in an attempt to depose the entire country's government on behalf of the most vicious dictator in the region, that's kind of not great.

00:25:24.000 That's kind of not great.

00:25:25.000 But again, Vivek, this is all performative.

00:25:27.000 It's just performative.

00:25:28.000 This is not an actual American foreign policy.

00:25:29.000 No one thinks it is.

00:25:32.000 Here's Nikki Haley taking him to task over this.

00:25:34.000 I am telling you, Putin and President Xi are salivating at the thought that someone like that could become president.

00:25:41.000 First thing I'll tell you is, we all remember what that thug did when he invaded Ukraine. 0.60

00:25:48.000 We all know that half a million people have died because of Putin.

00:25:53.000 That's the basic line that Haley took against Ramaswamy.

00:25:56.000 And this turned into even more performative.

00:25:58.000 Basically anything that Vivek touched in the debate last night became performative.

00:26:01.000 And this is, it's interesting just on sort of a political level to watch the gap between Vivek and the rest of the field.

00:26:10.000 Vivek is playing the politics of performance art.

00:26:12.000 And other people in the field are really not.

00:26:15.000 DeSantis and Haley both would like to be president.

00:26:17.000 Again, I think that they're going to bumper car each other out.

00:26:19.000 I think that the logic of the election suggests that if Haley were able to gain enough credibility that she knocked out DeSantis, a lot of his support would then go to Trump and then the election is well and truly over.

00:26:27.000 It may be over anyway, but if Haley were to knock out DeSantis, again, his 20% does not go to Haley.

00:26:33.000 His 20%, 10% of it goes to Haley and 10% of it goes to Trump and the election's over.

00:26:37.000 If Haley gets knocked out, presumably nearly all of her support goes to DeSantis because a lot of her support base is rooted in not particularly warm feeling toward Trump.

00:26:47.000 Whatever you think of that internal logic, the sort of gap between DeSantis and Haley on the one hand, who actually have been governors, who actually do things on occasion, and Vivek is really, really wide.

00:26:58.000 And you can see this.

00:27:00.000 I mean, last night, Vivek and Haley were going at each other with hammer and tongs. 0.97

00:27:05.000 He threw out some insults about her wearing heels, and then he made an implication that DeSantis wore heels, which is just kind of very online kind of garbage.

00:27:14.000 But then, he went even further and he went after Nikki Haley's daughter. 0.71

00:27:20.000 Is this... Guys, are we even serious here?

00:27:22.000 Here we go.

00:27:24.000 Well, I want to laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't answer your question, which is about looking at families in the eye.

00:27:29.000 In the last debate, she made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time.

00:27:35.000 So you might want to take care of your family first.

00:27:37.000 Leave my daughter out of your voice. 1.00

00:27:40.000 The next generation of Americans are using it. 0.88

00:27:43.000 And that's actually the point.

00:27:45.000 You have her supporters propping her up.

00:27:47.000 That's fine.

00:27:48.000 Here's the truth.

00:27:49.000 The easy answer is actually to say that we're just going to ban one app.

00:27:52.000 We got to go further. 0.95

00:27:54.000 So you have the candidates calling each other scum and all the rest of this sort of stuff, like, is that what Republicans want? 0.92

00:28:00.000 I mean, at a certain point, Republicans are gonna have to make a choice. 0.94

00:28:01.000 It turns out the American people don't actually love the performative.

00:28:04.000 If there is one message from this debate and from all of politics for the last several years, it's that performative politics only works when you are running against Hillary Clinton.

00:28:12.000 That is the only time it works.

00:28:13.000 I'm sorry, maybe the outlier here is not Trump.

00:28:15.000 Maybe the outlier here is Hillary. 1.00

00:28:17.000 Is that Hillary was such a Damn dislikable politician, and everyone hated her for very good reason, that literally any performative politician could score points off of her. 1.00

00:28:25.000 From Barack Obama in 2008, to Bernie Sanders in 2016, to Donald Trump in 2016. 0.94

00:28:31.000 But that's not actually a case for performative politics as a mode of getting things done.

00:28:37.000 So back to the original message.

00:28:39.000 If Trump is the nominee, or whoever is the nominee, but assume that it's Trump for a second, He's going to have to go back to the drawing board and he's going to have to actually think about what do the data tell him?

00:28:49.000 What do the data tell him?

00:28:50.000 Because he did lose in 2020 and I would like to see him not lose if he's the nominee in 2024.

00:28:55.000 And he's going to have to go back to what is his record?

00:28:57.000 What did he do?

00:28:58.000 What will he do from here on in?

00:29:00.000 Not the performative, the actual material.

00:29:02.000 Okay, in just one second. 0.99

00:29:04.000 Again, I didn't like a lot of what Vic said last night, but what he said about the media is 100% true, and the media are absolute hot, disgusting garbage. 0.99

00:29:11.000 I mean, like, they are just a dumpster fire of horror. 0.99

00:29:13.000 I'll explain why I say that, particularly in just one second.

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00:30:20.000 Well, meanwhile, as I've said, when Vivek criticizes the media, honestly?

00:30:24.000 I disagree with Vivek on many, many things, but when it comes to his criticisms of the press, they are, if anything, not actually strong enough.

00:30:32.000 So, for example, over in the Middle East, Hamas's friends in the press have now hit upon a new strategy.

00:30:37.000 They're now claiming that Israel is targeting journalists.

00:30:39.000 According to the Washington Post, quote, for weeks, hundreds of locally based journalists in the Gaza Strip have provided the world with intimate views of the devastation on Palestinian lives and homes while trying to find ways to survive themselves and keep their families safe.

00:30:51.000 Yes, we are told journalists in Gaza are under assault.

00:30:54.000 And it's the journalists who are telling us this.

00:30:56.000 But there is another story here.

00:30:58.000 It's another far more nefarious story.

00:31:00.000 And here's the real story.

00:31:01.000 It goes like this.

00:31:03.000 Journalists in the Gaza Strip are typically propagandists for Hamas.

00:31:06.000 That's how they got in.

00:31:07.000 That's why they've been allowed to operate.

00:31:08.000 Hamas deliberately places these pseudo-journalists in areas designed to shield Hamas military resources.

00:31:15.000 That's how it goes over there.

00:31:16.000 Yesterday, Honest Reporting, which is a 501c3 website dedicated to uncovering prejudice in journalism, ran a pretty damned shocking story.

00:31:24.000 They reported that during the October 7th massacre of 1,400 Israelis and the kidnapping of another 240, Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters, so-called stringers for the major wire service, were present.

00:31:37.000 A stringer is an independent contractor, a person who sort of on an individual case-by-case basis is used as a person who does journalism for a particular journalistic outlet.

00:31:46.000 That presence could only have occurred with prior coordination with Hamas.

00:31:50.000 So you had quote-unquote journalists who are actually just members, adjunct members of Hamas taking photos of atrocities and then the AP and Reuters and CNN all using them as quote-unquote journalists.

00:32:02.000 As the honest reporting says, four names appear on AP's photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7th.

00:32:07.000 Hassan Esleya, Yousef Massoud, Ali Mahmoud, and Khatem Ali.

00:32:12.000 Here's a picture of one of them, Hassan Esleya.

00:32:15.000 As you can see, he is being kissed by an elderly gentleman.

00:32:19.000 That elderly gentleman is Yahya Sinwar.

00:32:21.000 He is the military leader of Hamas and he is the mastermind behind October 7th. 0.99

00:32:27.000 This is a journalist for CNN.

00:32:29.000 There's a person that CNN decided was actually good, right?

00:32:34.000 CNN decided they would pay this person for his footage.

00:32:36.000 Footage also shows Islaya standing in front of a burning tank during October 7th.

00:32:41.000 As you can see, he's wearing no press vest, no press marking of any sort.

00:32:44.000 He's not a member of the press.

00:32:46.000 He's a Hamas fellow traveler.

00:32:48.000 And he's taking video of it, just like a Hamas member would. 0.87

00:32:50.000 They all had GoPros on, right?

00:32:52.000 Here he is in the middle of a Hamas massacre.

00:32:56.000 This is a journalist.

00:32:57.000 This is a person that CNN calls a stringer journalist for CNN.

00:33:01.000 CNN, when they were informed that they had apparently hired Yahya Sinwar's best friend, released the following statement, quote, While we have not at this time found reason to doubt the journalistic accuracy of the work he has done for us, we have decided to suspend all ties with him.

00:33:13.000 No reason to doubt his journalistic accuracy.

00:33:15.000 I mean, other than the fact that he is, you know, a terrorist supporter and all, and literally had to know, by the way, that the terror attack was going to happen.

00:33:22.000 Otherwise, why was he there?

00:33:23.000 Journalists don't just stand around on the Gaza border.

00:33:26.000 The only reason, quote unquote, journalists are there is because they're in league with Hamas.

00:33:30.000 If there's a surprise attack on a particular site, and journalists are there, it's because the journalists knew about that in advance.

00:33:37.000 The other three pseudo-journalists were there as well, prepared to take pictures of Hamas's atrocities.

00:33:42.000 And then, the wire services paid them for it, and gave them photo credits.

00:33:46.000 Now, this, unfortunately, is nothing new.

00:33:47.000 The quote-unquote journalists stationed in Gaza either work directly for Hamas or under the thumb of Hamas.

00:33:53.000 All the way back in 2014, the Times of Israel reported that journalists had been questioned and threatened by Hamas.

00:33:57.000 Photographers who took pictures Hamas didn't like had their cameras confiscated and were kicked out of the Gaza Strip.

00:34:02.000 The Washington Post reported in the same year that al-Shifa Hospital had, quote, become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders who can be seen in the hallways and offices.

00:34:11.000 The Middle East correspondent for the Wall Street Journal actually wrote on Twitter at the time that Hamas used al-Shifa as a safe place to see media, but then they inexplicably removed the post.

00:34:20.000 When I say inexplicably, we know exactly why they removed the post.

00:34:22.000 If the post had remained, they'd have been kicked out of the Gaza Strip.

00:34:25.000 One French reporter printed a story about being threatened by Hamas and then had to remove the story for his own safety.

00:34:31.000 Now these reporters are all claiming that if Israel hits the Al-Shifa Hospital, it's not a military site, despite the fact they have all reported over the course of a decade that this is in fact a military site used as a prop front by Hamas.

00:34:42.000 So, when you see journalism from the Gaza Strip, just understand, there are no free journalists in Gaza.

00:34:48.000 Either the journalists are living under Hamas' thumb and doing their work, or they work directly with Hamas.

00:34:54.000 As one Spanish reporter said, quote, we saw the Hamas men hiding behind civilians, but had we dared point the cameras at them, they would have opened fire at us and killed us.

00:35:01.000 So, here's a big question for you.

00:35:03.000 Would, quote-unquote, journalistic outlets like the AP and Reuters use stringers associated with, say, white supremacist groups in order to take pictures at Charlottesville?

00:35:11.000 Let's say that there were a KKK fellow traveler who showed up at that big march in Charlottesville taking pictures.

00:35:16.000 Would the AP have just used them as a stringer? 0.91

00:35:19.000 Or are they only willing to use stringers who associate openly with terrorists and voice their support for Hitler so long as they hate Jews and are Islamic radicals?

00:35:27.000 What moral culpability do the AP and Reuters and CNN bear for printing the propaganda of Hamas and its minions?

00:35:34.000 The answer is they bear an awful lot of responsibility.

00:35:36.000 They are making the world a lot more dangerous.

00:35:39.000 They are promoting Hamas's propaganda, and that, of course, is prolonging the war. 0.83

00:35:43.000 As usual, that reality is obscured via projection.

00:35:46.000 So, it is Hamas threatening journalists, but we're supposed to believe that it's Israel threatening journalists.

00:35:51.000 Projection is the name of the game in this conflict.

00:35:53.000 Always. 1.00

00:35:54.000 It's why we see idiots or moral perverts playing silly semantic games obviously meant to tar Israel with the crimes of its enemies. 1.00

00:36:00.000 We see morons making vague statements about opposing genocide from all sides, which is a bit like saying after you watch OJ Simpson butcher his ex-wife, and then you watch the police arrest him, that you are against violence from both OJ Simpson and the police on all sides. 1.00

00:36:11.000 You gotta watch out for that cruel, horrific violence. 0.99

00:36:14.000 Only one side in this conflict is pursuing genocide.

00:36:17.000 It is not Israel. 1.00

00:36:18.000 Any implication to the contrary is either idiocy or evil. 1.00

00:36:21.000 It's why we see idiots or moral perverts attempting to deflect from Hamas's crimes with talk about Israel's treatment of Arabs. 1.00

00:36:27.000 In Israel, despite the fact that 20% of Israel's population is Arab, that any Jew who wanders into Gaza or Jenin will be summarily murdered. 1.00

00:36:34.000 That's why we see idiots or moral perverts pointing to civilian casualties in Gaza and murdered civilians in Israeli villages and pretending that these are somehow exactly the same thing. 0.98

00:36:43.000 The value of every human life is absolutely infinite. 0.99

00:36:46.000 That does not mean that the causes of every death are equivalent.

00:36:49.000 For Israel's enemies and for Hamas's most ardent advocates, every single thing is projection.

00:36:54.000 And the press are certainly Israel's enemies, which is why they will hire supposed journalists who work directly with and for Hamas. 0.76

00:37:01.000 In just one second, we'll get to the impact of this pathetic moral equivocation and the media's malfeasance here, which is despicable.

00:37:08.000 We'll get to that in one second.

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00:38:44.000 Okay, meanwhile.

00:38:45.000 Okay, the wages of the evil press coverage, and really is evil.

00:38:48.000 I mean, there's video of that quote-unquote journalist for CNN literally riding on the back of a motorcycle carrying a grenade during October 7.

00:38:56.000 That is a terrorist that CNN basically hired to take pictures.

00:38:59.000 That sort of propagandistic nonsense has an effect.

00:39:02.000 The moral equivocation, the projection, has an impact.

00:39:06.000 The impact is people who literally believe that it is morally acceptable to stand with Hamas.

00:39:11.000 This is why you see congressional staffers walking out of Congress to demand a ceasefire yesterday.

00:39:16.000 Here's what that looked like.

00:39:19.000 We are congressional staffers on Capitol Hill and we are no longer comfortable being silent.

00:39:27.000 We were horrified by the brutal October 7th attacks on Israeli civilians and we are horrified by the overwhelming response by the Israeli government that has killed thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

00:39:43.000 Our constituents are pleading for a ceasefire And we are the staffers answering their calls every day.

00:39:51.000 Most of our bosses on Capitol Hill are not listening to the people they represent.

00:39:57.000 We demand our leaders speak up, call for a ceasefire, a release of all hostages, and an immediate de-escalation now.

00:40:06.000 We are gathered here today to mourn the loss of every single beautiful and innocent life.

00:40:14.000 We join now in a moment of silence An interfaith prayer for those who fear God.

00:40:21.000 They're not, they're not.

00:40:22.000 Give me a break.

00:40:22.000 Okay, by the way, you can tell that these are people who don't actually stand by the courage of their convictions because they won't take off their masks.

00:40:27.000 The reason that they're wearing masks, and this is now happening, I was at University of Wisconsin and some schmuck got up wearing a mask to ask a really dumb question about AI-generated images that the Israelis were putting out or some such nonsense. 0.98

00:40:38.000 And the reason they're hiding their faces is because they should be ashamed of the positions they're taking. 0.97

00:40:42.000 By the way, their congresspeople know exactly who they are.

00:40:44.000 You know who your staffers are in Congress. 0.99

00:40:46.000 If you're still employing morons who are doing the propaganda work of Hamas, you might want to think about whether that's a good idea or not. 0.99

00:40:53.000 Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted the House Judiciary Committee on free speech. 0.98

00:40:58.000 Again, what lends these people the moral credibility is the media.

00:41:01.000 Hamas is playing a game.

00:41:02.000 The game is, if they can get the media to parrot their propaganda, they can push for a ceasefire.

00:41:07.000 There's only one party that wants a ceasefire here, and it's the party that's losing.

00:41:10.000 That would be Hamas. 0.98

00:41:11.000 Say, here was the disruption yesterday.

00:41:14.000 Thank you, Chairman Jordan, Ranking Member Nadler, and members of the committee.

00:41:22.000 Committee will be in order.

00:41:26.000 Committee will be in order.

00:41:26.000 These sorts of disturbances are happening all the time.

00:41:29.000 All the time.

00:41:32.000 I love when they say, this guy is a scientist, pro-Palestinians does not equal anti-Semitism.

00:41:36.000 Well, no, it's being pro-Hamas that equals anti-Semitism, and that's exactly what you're doing. 0.54

00:41:39.000 That distinction between pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas has been utterly obliterated by the movement in favor of Hamas.

00:41:45.000 How many of these protesters are willing to say that Hamas should surrender?

00:41:48.000 The answer, of course, is zero.

00:41:50.000 Zero.

00:41:50.000 They do not exist.

00:41:51.000 Where are they?

00:41:52.000 They won't say it.

00:41:53.000 Why won't they say it?

00:41:54.000 Because if they did, then they would have to admit that Israel is right. 1.00

00:41:58.000 And they can't do that.

00:41:59.000 They have to admit that Israel has a reason to exist. 0.99

00:42:01.000 They can't do that either.

00:42:02.000 They will never, ever admit that Hamas ought to surrender.

00:42:06.000 Instead, what they'll do is you'll say things like, is Hamas a terrorist group?

00:42:08.000 And they'll go, Hamas is a terrorist group and Israel is evil.

00:42:10.000 Okay, that false moral equivocation is the entire design.

00:42:14.000 They don't have to prove.

00:42:15.000 This has been the game all along.

00:42:17.000 For those who wish to see the Jewish state destroyed, the game all along has never been to prove that Palestinian authority, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, that these are in any way good, liberty-seeking organizations, or even that the Palestinian people who are in Gaza or in Jenin That those people desperately want Western-style liberty and democracy.

00:42:34.000 They don't.

00:42:35.000 There's no polling to suggest they do.

00:42:37.000 Zero.

00:42:38.000 That is an evidence-free proposition.

00:42:40.000 They never make that case.

00:42:41.000 Instead, what they do is say, sure, we'll condemn terrorism, but the real terrorists are the Israelis. 0.96

00:42:45.000 That's the game that they like to play.

00:42:47.000 And then, that allows them to engage in whatever sort of evil they want to engage in.

00:42:52.000 You saw this at Concordia University last night.

00:42:54.000 Here's one student where the mask is just off.

00:42:56.000 Here she is screaming what she really thinks, which is, this is about the Jews.

00:42:59.000 She's screaming, you effing K word. 1.00

00:43:12.000 And then here are students at Concordia University who are trying to rip up an Israeli flag and starting a physical altercation over it.

00:43:21.000 That's not the only physical altercation.

00:43:22.000 This is gonna get worse, by the way.

00:43:24.000 Last night, there were pro-Hamas protesters who attacked people outside a showing of a film that was compiled from all the GoPro cameras from the Hamas terrorists.

00:43:33.000 Israel put together this film.

00:43:34.000 They've been showing it to journalists, but they're doing it in secret.

00:43:36.000 Why?

00:43:37.000 Because it's so astonishingly awful that it simply cannot be released to the public.

00:43:42.000 So what did ProComas protesters do?

00:43:44.000 They started trying to beat people up outside the showing at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

00:43:48.000 I know it well.

00:43:48.000 I went to high school literally next door.

00:43:50.000 I used to be in the Museum of Tolerance pretty much every day.

00:43:52.000 They would, like, do you know how insane, insanely evil and perverse you have to be to beat people up outside a showing of atrocities that were pursued by a terrorist group?

00:44:02.000 But that's exactly what happened last night.

00:44:03.000 night. Here they were.

00:44:04.000 As Gal Gadot was showing this thing, and apparently the best way to do PR for

00:44:32.000 your own side is to beat up people who are seeking to learn about what Hamas 0.78

00:44:35.000 did the the other day.

00:44:37.000 And the moral equivalence, the moral equivocation that has been promoted by the media here is absolutely vile.

00:44:42.000 It's absolutely vile, and it is what is causing a prolonging of the conflict.

00:44:45.000 It's what Hamas is hoping for. 0.87

00:44:47.000 In the same way that the Viet Cong hoped that the media would do their dirty work and eventually undercut American support for the war in Vietnam, Hamas is hoping that the media do their dirty work and eventually undercut support for Israel. 0.69

00:44:56.000 That is their entire goal.

00:44:58.000 Meanwhile, the American administration is already sort of making overtures to the bad guys based on this moral equivalence nonsense.

00:45:05.000 What they're doing is they're trying to now distinguish between Hamas and the rest of everything going on in the Middle East.

00:45:10.000 Well, the Palestinian people, they hate Hamas.

00:45:12.000 Now again, I wish.

00:45:14.000 I really wish.

00:45:15.000 I wish that the Palestinian people hated Hamas so much they overthrew them and actually put in place a government that wanted to build things instead of bomb things.

00:45:21.000 That would be amazing.

00:45:22.000 It ain't true.

00:45:23.000 I'm sorry, it ain't.

00:45:24.000 The same thing happens to be true with regard to the West Bank, Judea and Samaria.

00:45:29.000 The fact is that people in Jenin are not looking to an elect to elect a San Francisco mayor.

00:45:33.000 They're looking to an elect Another terrorist government, which is why there was an assassination attempt on Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, the other day.

00:45:41.000 Mahmoud Abbas, by the way, is a Holocaust denier who actively pays terrorists.

00:45:44.000 It is a part of Palestinian Authority law that anyone who kills a Jew, their family, gets a stipend.

00:45:51.000 They get a stipend from the Palestinian Authority, paid for in large part by your taxpayer dollars.

00:45:56.000 I mean, like, where is the evidence?

00:45:58.000 But if you can craft in your own mind this bizarre false narrative, then this allows you to provide some sort of middle ground between evil and not evil, right?

00:46:09.000 Which is what so many people are looking for.

00:46:10.000 This is why there's now an open debate that is broken out over what happens in Gaza after all of this is over.

00:46:17.000 So Israel has said that there's going to need to be some form of military occupation of Gaza.

00:46:23.000 Obviously, that's true in the same way that if there's a massive crime outbreak in a major city anywhere in the West, police are going to need to go in and they're going to stay there for quite a while.

00:46:30.000 That's just the way that it works.

00:46:32.000 But Tony Blinken is saying, no, no, no, we can't have that.

00:46:34.000 We can't have that.

00:46:35.000 Instead, their preferred solution is unified Palestinian Authority rule in Gaza and the West Bank. 0.72

00:46:40.000 I'm sorry, that's ridiculous. 0.84

00:46:42.000 The reason that's how do I know that's ridiculous? 0.68

00:46:43.000 The Palestinian Authority barely even governs Judea and Samaria.

00:46:46.000 The last time the Palestinian authorities put up for election in 2005-2006 in the Gaza Strip, not only did they lose, they were then summarily murdered by Hamas.

00:46:56.000 They lost the election and then Hamas killed all of them.

00:46:58.000 The reason, again, that Mahmoud Abbas has not held an election in anywhere in the Palestinian occupied areas.

00:47:06.000 He's not held an election since 2008.

00:47:07.000 Why?

00:47:08.000 He is afraid he will lose because the population is extremely radicalized.

00:47:11.000 That is just a reality.

00:47:13.000 You can try to walk your way through this, but that happens to be the case.

00:47:18.000 Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking out on the conflict as he wraps G7 talks in Japan.

00:47:25.000 No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends.

00:47:28.000 No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza.

00:47:32.000 No reduction in the territory of Gaza.

00:47:35.000 We must also ensure no terrorist threats can emanate from the West Bank.

00:47:40.000 Okay, well, in order for that to happen, guess what?

00:47:42.000 Israel is going to have to actually retain military presence in all of these areas.

00:47:47.000 But because the press lie about this sort of stuff, because they pretend that Israel is somehow the equivalent of its enemies, that's how you end up with the solution that Israel shouldn't be in these areas to retain actual security.

00:47:58.000 And it is a lie.

00:47:59.000 Believe it or not, there's an actual good piece at CNN.com.

00:48:01.000 I know, I was shocked by it also.

00:48:02.000 By a guy named John Spencer.

00:48:04.000 He's Chief of Urban Warfare Studies at Modern War Institute at West Point and co-director of the Modern War Institute's Urban Warfare Project.

00:48:12.000 And here's what he wrote.

00:48:13.000 He said, quote, all war is hell.

00:48:15.000 All war is killing and destruction.

00:48:16.000 And historically, civilians are inordinately the innocent victims of war.

00:48:19.000 Urban warfare is a unique type of hell, not just for soldiers who face assaults from a million windows or deep tunnels below them, but especially for civilians.

00:48:26.000 Noncombatants have accounted for 90 percent of casualties per international humanitarian experts in the modern wars that have occurred in populated urban areas like Mosul or Raqqa, even when a Western power like the United States is leading or supporting the campaign.

00:48:37.000 The destruction and suffering, he says, as awful as they are, don't automatically constitute war crimes.

00:48:42.000 Otherwise, nearly any military action in a populated area would violate the laws of armed conflict, rules distilled from a complicated patchwork of international treaties, court rulings, and historic conventions.

00:48:51.000 Scenes of devastation, like Israel's strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza earlier this week, quickly spark accusations Israel is engaging in war crimes, but war crimes must be assessed on the evidence and the standards of armed conflict, not a quick glimpse at the harrowing aftermath of an attack.

00:49:05.000 He says, I have seen nothing.

00:49:07.000 That shows that Israeli defense forces are not following the laws of wars in Gaza.

00:49:11.000 Particularly when the charges that the IDF is committing war crimes so often come too quickly for there to have been an examination of the factors that determine whether an attack and the resulting civilian casualties are lawful.

00:49:20.000 The factors that need to be assessed are the major dimensions of most commonly agreed to international humanitarian law principles.

00:49:25.000 Military necessity, proportionality, distinction, humanity, and honor.

00:49:30.000 Israel has pledged to obey international law.

00:49:33.000 Proportionality is a requirement to take into account how much civilian harm is anticipated in comparison to the expected concrete and direct military advantage according to UN protocols.

00:49:41.000 In other words, a high civilian death count in Jabalia could potentially be considered legal under international law so long as the military objective is of high value.

00:49:51.000 The Israeli Defense Forces said the intended target in that case was a senior Hamas commander who oversaw all military operations in northern Gaza, neutralizing him as an objective that most likely clears the proportional bar.

00:50:02.000 He says that, frankly, the IDF has been implementing, and in some cases going beyond, many of the best practices developed to minimize the harm of civilians in similar large-scale urban battles.

00:50:11.000 These IDF practices include calling everyone in a building to alert them of a pending airstrike and giving them time to evacuate, a tactic I've never seen elsewhere anywhere in my decades of experience, as it also notifies the enemy of the attack, and sometimes even dropping small munitions on top of a building to provide additional warning.

00:50:25.000 They've been conducting multiple weeks of requests that civilians evacuate certain parts of Gaza using multimedia broadcasts, texts, and flyer drops.

00:50:31.000 They've provided routes that will not be targeted, so civilians have paths to non-combat areas.

00:50:35.000 Though there have been some tragic reports that Palestinians from northern Gaza, who have relocated to the south, were subsequently killed as the war rages throughout the Strip.

00:50:43.000 When Hamas uses a hospital, school, or mosque for military purpose, it can lose its protected status and become a legal military target.

00:50:49.000 Israel must still make clear attempts to get as many civilians out as possible, but the sites don't need to be clear of civilians before being attacked.

00:50:58.000 So again, this is a military expert who's saying Israel is not violating the laws of war, but that's not what the media say.

00:51:02.000 The media, in all of their wisdom, all these morons who've never spent five minutes examining military strategy or even international law accusing Israel of war crimes, and the goal there is to do the work of Hamas, to do the propaganda of Hamas, to do the projection that Hamas wants people to do.

00:51:18.000 What is that going to end with? 0.93

00:51:19.000 Well, if the media got their way, it would end with Hamas still in power. 0.63

00:51:22.000 If the media got their way, it would end with more people dead in the long run.

00:51:24.000 Because it turns out that when you protect terrorists, they become more plentiful.

00:51:28.000 It turns out that hope is the actual soil from which terrorism grows, not despair.

00:51:32.000 One of the great lies of the media is that it is despair that breeds terrorism.

00:51:35.000 That is absolutely untrue.

00:51:37.000 It is hope, immediate hope, that what you are doing is going to make a difference that breeds terrorism.

00:51:42.000 That's why people do it.

00:51:45.000 And the media are providing that hope by propagating the lies of Hamas and contracting with actual terrorists who are shooting film when they're not shooting Israeli civilians.

00:51:55.000 All righty, coming up we'll be joined by Senator Ted Cruz.

00:51:57.000 He has a brand new book out.

00:51:58.000 In order to hear that, you have to be a subscriber.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 09, 2023

FIGHT NIGHT #3: The Battle For Second Place

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