The Ben Shapiro Show - Five Lessons For 2024

00:00:00.000 It's our last broadcast of the year, so I wanted to do some summing up of 2023 and some lessons moving forward for 2024.

00:00:08.000 Overall, 2023 was a pretty meh year.

00:00:10.000 Meh in the sense that our politics has only gotten more ugly, in the sense that the economy has continued to plod along at best, in the sense that foreign policy is now a complete dumpster fire.

00:00:19.000 I had predicted the beginning of the year like a 90% bad year.

00:00:22.000 I came in a little low, it was like 96%, so I'm predicting for 2024 like 99% bad, just to be safe.

00:00:25.000 Nonetheless, There's some lessons for all of us to learn and remember from 2023.

00:00:33.000 Lesson number one.

00:00:34.000 When people say they are coming for your kids, you should listen. 1.00

00:00:38.000 In July 2021, the San Francisco Gay Men's Choir sang a uniquely honest song in an attempt to slap at social conservatives.

00:00:44.000 The choir created and posted a song in which they said they were, quote, coming for your children.

00:00:49.000 Here's what this creepy song sounded like.

00:00:52.000 We'll convert your children. 0.98

00:00:55.000 Someone's got to teach them not to hate.

00:00:57.000 We're coming for them.

00:01:00.000 We're coming for your children.

00:01:05.000 Well, that was true, of course.

00:01:09.000 Radical progressives believe the only way to create a better world is to rip children away from their parents ideologically, to indoctrinate them in the ways of left-wing social change, to turn them into little activists bent on exploding their parents' values.

00:01:23.000 That's how you create a better world.

00:01:25.000 Those progressives have They're not new.

00:01:27.000 They've spent generations taking over the schools, the media, the entertainment industry.

00:01:32.000 It's the reason why, as we discussed earlier this week, a new Harvard-Harris poll shows 79% of people aged 18 to 24 in the United States believe that, quote, white people are oppressors and non-white people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment.

00:01:49.000 It's why 67% of those same young people believe that, quote, Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors.

00:01:56.000 If you're wondering just why hundreds of thousands of young people, Western leftists, are in the streets chanting for Hamas, that would be the reason why. 0.86

00:02:05.000 If we're also wondering just why 20% of all young people now consider themselves LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, that is also why generations of children have been hijacked into a neo-Marxist binary of oppressor versus oppressed.

00:02:18.000 And it is always better to identify as the oppressed than the oppressor, makes you feel a lot better, and it gives you unending power to do anything you want.

00:02:25.000 After all, if you are the oppressed, you can do whatever you want to the oppressor to free yourself and liberate yourself.

00:02:30.000 Recruiters for this perverse ideology start really young.

00:02:33.000 Really, really young.

00:02:35.000 That is why this week, Cocomelon Lane on Netflix featured two gay dads teaching their son to put on a skirt and a tiara in the name of self-fulfillment. 0.89

00:02:43.000 Here's what that looked like.

00:02:45.000 You learn to get up and dance.

00:02:48.000 How about you break out those moves?

00:02:51.000 For your two biggest fans If you're not sure what to choose

00:03:03.000 Think about all the things you like to do Just be you.

00:03:09.000 Just be me?

00:03:09.000 Yup!

00:03:09.000 Just be you.

00:03:10.000 Yup! 0.99

00:03:10.000 When you're trying to decide, think about all the things you like to do. 0.99

00:03:18.000 Just be you.

00:03:20.000 Just be me!

00:03:21.000 For context, Coco Melon's YouTube channel has 170 million subscribers and 173 billion views.

00:03:28.000 So yes, the producers of the most watched children's content in human history are coming for your kids too, teaching them gender fluidity and exploding the idea of the traditional family structure.

00:03:39.000 Whether it's the educational system, whether it's the media, whether it's entertainment, there are a lot of people who want to change how your children think.

00:03:47.000 So that's lesson number one.

00:03:48.000 They're coming for your kids, and you should do something about it.

00:03:51.000 One of the reasons why we here at Daily Wire built an entire streaming network called BentKey so you can put your kids in front of children's programming that doesn't wreck their lives, that actually reflects your values.

00:04:01.000 By the way, it makes a great Christmas gift while I'm pitching it.

00:04:03.000 Head on over to bentkey.com right now.

00:04:06.000 Okay, lesson number two from 2023.

00:04:09.000 There are a lot of people who do not think like you.

00:04:13.000 This is something Westerners have a really tough time with.

00:04:15.000 A lot of Enlightenment philosophy is based on the idea that everybody is basically the same.

00:04:20.000 All the same.

00:04:20.000 Now, obviously, we are all equal in the eyes of God.

00:04:23.000 We all have innate human value, but we certainly do not think the same.

00:04:27.000 And the Enlightenment idea that every single person wants the same things at root, that every single person, regardless of culture, regardless of education, regardless of how they are brought up, thinks sort of the same things, That is a lie. 1.00

00:04:40.000 And it's a stupid lie. 1.00

00:04:41.000 And it's a really dangerous lie. 1.00

00:04:44.000 In 2023, Hamas slaughtered children in their cribs, burned them alive, raped women in front of their husbands, and then killed them or dragged them off to Gaza after shooting their husbands in the head.

00:04:54.000 And an entire cadre of Westerners thought, well, it's probably because they were victimized in some way.

00:04:58.000 Something must have happened to drive them to that.

00:05:00.000 Because after all, who would do that?

00:05:02.000 This is why, in this current conflict between Israel and Hamas, when Hamas takes its own children and uses them as human shields, The West, at least the leftist West, decides that it must be Israel's fault somehow, because after all, the people of Hamas, they must think the same way that Western leftists do. 0.69

00:05:18.000 They must be driven to this sort of thing.

00:05:20.000 Well, there's another possibility, and that's because Hamas does not think like you.

00:05:24.000 They don't have your priorities.

00:05:25.000 They actually don't care about their children in the same way that you do, or at least in the way that you think that they should.

00:05:31.000 They have different priorities than you, which is why they are fine with burning babies alive in their cribs. 0.99

00:05:36.000 And here's the thing. 0.99

00:05:37.000 Pretending that people are all thinking like you will get you killed.

00:05:42.000 People do not all want the same thing.

00:05:44.000 They don't all want freedom.

00:05:46.000 Freedom does not beat in the breast of every human being, as George W. Bush once foolishly said.

00:05:51.000 That is not reality.

00:05:52.000 There are a lot of people who prize, for example, religious fealty over freedom.

00:05:56.000 There are a lot of people There are a lot of people who prize a lot of different things in ways that you don't prize and that's why you have to understand who they are in order to deal with them realistically.

00:06:08.000 This means that we must be realistic about our enemies on the foreign front, obviously.

00:06:13.000 Jobs are not going to solve the problems that you have with Hamas or Hezbollah. 1.00

00:06:18.000 Appeasement is not going to solve the problems you have with the Chinese government.

00:06:22.000 Being realistic about your enemies.

00:06:24.000 Reading what they teach their kids.

00:06:26.000 Reading what they themselves think.

00:06:28.000 That is the best way to understand them rather than simply projecting your own thoughts onto them and then assuming that if something makes them angry, it must be you.

00:06:36.000 But it's not just being realistic about our enemies on the foreign front.

00:06:38.000 It also means we have to be realistic about many of the people who live with us, fellow Americans, fellow Westerners, many of whom also don't want the same things that you do.

00:06:47.000 And what that really means is that we're going to have to have some extremely serious discussions in this country about what holds us all together.

00:06:55.000 As the country feels like it's fraying, as it feels like it's coming apart, we're gonna have to figure out what do we hold in common?

00:07:00.000 Because if it turns out that people don't think like you in the country that you live in, You have a serious problem, a very serious problem.

00:07:07.000 We'll get to more on that in just one second.

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00:08:13.000 Okay.

00:08:15.000 When you take a look at the problem of people in the country who don't think like you, we're gonna have to start thinking pretty seriously about what holds us together.

00:08:22.000 Now, the very notion of free speech is not it.

00:08:24.000 Because it turns out that free speech, it's an important principle, but it also does not speak to what kind of speech is good.

00:08:33.000 A room in which any opinion is held is indeed a room that theoretically has a common value, namely that any opinion should be allowed to be held, but that is not enough to build a society upon.

00:08:42.000 You have to have a common vision of the good.

00:08:44.000 So what exactly is going to hold us together?

00:08:45.000 Is it the Constitution and rule of law?

00:08:47.000 Well, it feels like that's falling apart pretty quickly right now when you have the Colorado State Supreme Court that is basically overthrowing the Constitution and the rule of law in order to bar Donald Trump from the ballot.

00:08:56.000 Is it gonna be the rule of law from the White House?

00:08:58.000 Well, not while they're promoting the violation of law with illegal executive orders and the DOJ being militarized against political opponents.

00:09:07.000 And as we'll discuss in a minute, there's gonna be a backlash to that that's gonna be just as ugly.

00:09:11.000 What else holds us together?

00:09:12.000 How about property rights?

00:09:13.000 Well, a lot of the country right now does not believe in property rights.

00:09:17.000 By the way, back to free speech.

00:09:19.000 A huge percentage of the country doesn't actually believe in free speech principles at all.

00:09:22.000 They believe that people who disagree with them mainline political opponents.

00:09:25.000 Forget about fringy people. 0.73

00:09:27.000 Mainline political opponents should be silenced.

00:09:29.000 We live in a country in which college campuses will kick you off the campus for saying that men are men and women are women, and then the college presidents will go testify in front of Congress, simultaneously, about how it requires context to truly understand in a serious way whether or not calling for genocide of Jews is bad.

00:09:47.000 How about freedom of religion?

00:09:48.000 That used to be something that held us together.

00:09:50.000 Well now, there are states that are actively targeting religious practice.

00:09:54.000 And as our institutions wane, which was the glue that held us together, because we all used to go to church or synagogue together, we used to have common events, a common culture, what's going to hold us together then?

00:10:04.000 Lesson number three.

00:10:05.000 Weakness breeds aggression.

00:10:07.000 We found this one out good and hard this year.

00:10:10.000 If America and the West go to sleep on our enemies, our enemies take advantage.

00:10:15.000 There's this bizarre notion that has become quite prevalent on the left and on the right, that if America just goes to sleep and retreats into itself, the rest of the world stays exactly the way that it was one moment ago. 1.00

00:10:24.000 And that's really, really stupid. 0.99

00:10:25.000 It's not true. 1.00

00:10:27.000 If America abandons the world, the world becomes significantly worse.

00:10:30.000 And that has real spillover for the United States.

00:10:33.000 Not just in terms of bad things happening all over the world, because you can always close your eyes and pretend it doesn't affect you, it's happening very far away, but also in terms of how you live your life.

00:10:41.000 The economy, which you do rely upon, gets a lot worse.

00:10:45.000 Your safety becomes a lot more tenuous when it turns out there are a lot more people around your borders who hate your guts.

00:10:52.000 If you go to sleep on your enemies, they take advantage.

00:10:55.000 That's been clear since Joe Biden decided to ignominiously and cowardly fashion run away from Afghanistan and hand over the country to 7th century barbarians.

00:11:06.000 It's also true, by the way, in Ukraine, the reality is that thanks to Barack Obama and prior presidents, including George W. Bush, basically doing very little when Russia invaded Georgia, when Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbass, It turns out that that encouraged Russia to invade Ukraine.

00:11:23.000 There's been a lot of talk about how Western militants created Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

00:11:27.000 Now, Western weakness created Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

00:11:30.000 Because if Russia actually felt they were going to get clocked in severe fashion and lose the war, they wouldn't have entered the war.

00:11:35.000 This is what deterrence is based on.

00:11:38.000 As always, there are basically two strategies when it comes to preemptively preventing a war.

00:11:42.000 One is appeasement and the other is deterrence.

00:11:44.000 Those are the only two strategies available.

00:11:46.000 There really is no third.

00:11:47.000 Not when it comes to intransigent enemies who don't like the way that you live and have fundamental disagreements about how the world order should be structured.

00:11:54.000 When it comes to those countries, only two options.

00:11:56.000 Appeasement, deterrence.

00:11:57.000 There is no third.

00:11:59.000 Isolation is generally a form of appeasement.

00:12:01.000 Deterrence is where nobody walks across that border because they're afraid that they're gonna get clocked into next Monday.

00:12:08.000 Well, when you run away from the world, the world becomes worse.

00:12:11.000 This is true in the Gaza Strip.

00:12:12.000 Both Israel and the United States were weak with Palestinian terrorism.

00:12:16.000 Both Israel and the United States decided that Hamas could basically be contained and dealt with.

00:12:21.000 Both Israel and the United States were easy with the Palestinian Authority.

00:12:24.000 They relied on technology.

00:12:26.000 They relied on the idea that forcing Israel into concessions to its terrorist enemies would somehow buy peace.

00:12:30.000 Appeasement would be the preemptive anti-war strategy. 0.78

00:12:34.000 Rather than deterrence.

00:12:35.000 And it turns out that broke down.

00:12:37.000 And it failed.

00:12:38.000 And that bred massive aggression.

00:12:40.000 And it's breeding more aggression right now.

00:12:42.000 For example, a much more aggressive Iran in the Middle East. 0.96

00:12:46.000 The Obama administration spent years appeasing the Iranians.

00:12:50.000 The Trump administration pushed back.

00:12:52.000 The Biden administration went back to appeasing the Iranians, and the first thing they did was get militants on literally every border they have via every single proxy group that they have, from Hamas to Hezbollah in the north of Israel to the Houthis. 0.69

00:13:04.000 Here, in fact, is a video that the Houthis just released championing their own militants in taking over ships from the Red Sea.

00:13:13.000 Here's what that video looks like.

00:13:17.000 As you can see, these are ships with Houthi flags and Palestinian flags.

00:13:20.000 And they say, O Palestine, we have come with steadfastness and bravery.

00:13:24.000 The strength of God is within us.

00:13:27.000 After Taha and his family, O Palestine, we have come. 1.00

00:13:31.000 Remember, this is a country with $700 GDP per capita.

00:13:34.000 Very poor country.

00:13:35.000 They developed all these resources specifically to kill people and take over shipping lanes.

00:13:39.000 The Axis of Al-Quds is coming. 1.00

00:13:42.000 O misguided masses, The fulfillment of the promise of the hereafter and triumph of the message.

00:13:49.000 Again, they don't think like you.

00:13:51.000 The axis of Al-Quds is coming. 1.00

00:13:53.000 Al-Quds is a reference to Iran.

00:13:55.000 O misguided masses, the fulfillment of the promise of the hereafter and the triumph of the message. 0.80

00:13:59.000 And again, it's just a bunch of ragtag pirates in kind of crappy boats with some machine guns. 0.73

00:14:05.000 And it's a very well produced video.

00:14:07.000 I will say they did a good job with their drone footage.

00:14:09.000 Here's the problem.

00:14:11.000 If the West doesn't blow them out of the water, you're going to get even more aggression.

00:14:15.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:15:09.000 Every time a mom sees her baby on ultrasound, it's going to radically increase the chance that that baby Okay, again, when it comes to weakness, it breeds aggression. 1.00

00:15:21.000 Weakness in the Red Sea is going to breed aggression from China. 0.93

00:15:24.000 China's already making noises about the possibility of taking Taiwan.

00:15:27.000 I would say that if things keep going the way that they are, I would say there's better than a 50-50 shot that China attempts to make a more aggressive move against Taiwan.

00:15:34.000 For example, attempting to blockade Taiwan and daring the West to break that blockade at the risk of getting into a direct war with China.

00:15:41.000 and at the risk of China shutting down the Taiwan Strait or creating such trouble in the South China Sea that the world economy absolutely tanks in advance of an election.

00:15:49.000 You could certainly see China doing that while Joe Biden is president because they see that he is weak.

00:15:54.000 They see, just as well as everyone else does, that San Francisco is literally a cesspool filled with human feces until the Chinese president shows up, at which point the dictator gets to see clean streets and they clean up the streets for him. 0.98

00:16:05.000 Appeasement to China is going to breed more aggression. 0.59

00:16:08.000 This is also true, by the way, with regard to immigration.

00:16:11.000 Weakness on our southern border means lots and lots of people are taking advantage, which is why the Biden administration has been seen by illegal immigrants the world over as a patsy.

00:16:21.000 It's why you see people chanting Joe Biden's name as they approach the southern border.

00:16:24.000 It's why you are seeing hundreds of thousands of people arriving at the southern border every month.

00:16:30.000 Unprecedented levels.

00:16:31.000 Waves of illegal immigrants. 1.00

00:16:34.000 Other forms of weakness include multiculturalism. 0.92

00:16:37.000 Multiculturalism being the idea that there is no advanced versus non-advanced culture.

00:16:42.000 There is no better or worse culture.

00:16:43.000 That all cultures exist in a sort of lukewarm miasma of mediocrity.

00:16:49.000 You can't distinguish between them.

00:16:51.000 You shouldn't discriminate between cultures.

00:16:53.000 But if you don't stand up for your own culture, you end up importing extraordinary numbers of people who actually hate your culture and undermine your culture.

00:17:00.000 It breeds aggression.

00:17:02.000 Conversely, strength means facing actual, hard realities.

00:17:06.000 It means not backing down on your principles, even when that cost is insanely high.

00:17:10.000 This is why it's so important that, for example, the West not cave just because war is ugly.

00:17:15.000 Of course war is ugly.

00:17:16.000 I'll give you an example of what bravery actually looks like, because this is just an astonishing story.

00:17:21.000 Last week we covered what has been the worst story of the war for the Israelis after October 7th, which was there were three hostages who were taken by Hamas and its civilian allies into the Gaza Strip and these three hostages somehow got loose.

00:17:35.000 And they put up a sign in Hebrew that said, we are hostages.

00:17:38.000 They apparently were free for three days or so.

00:17:42.000 And then they tried to surrender to the Israeli troops.

00:17:44.000 They were bare chested and they were carrying white flags.

00:17:47.000 And the Israeli troops thought that they were probably terrorists because that looks like a trap.

00:17:51.000 This was not an area where hostages are supposed to be roaming free.

00:17:54.000 Israel had been dealing with booby traps and bombs on bodies for a very long time in this war.

00:18:00.000 And so the Israeli troops, the IDF, shot these three hostages by accident and killed them.

00:18:05.000 Horrific story.

00:18:06.000 I want to read you this letter, because this is the kind of bravery it takes to actually win wars against intransigent and evil enemies.

00:18:11.000 So there's a woman named Iris Chaim.

00:18:14.000 She's the mother of one of the hostages who was killed by the IDF, Yotam Chaim.

00:18:19.000 And she sent this message to the Israeli soldiers from that tragic incident.

00:18:22.000 I'm going to translate it.

00:18:25.000 Beret Iris Chaim. 0.78

00:18:25.000 She says, hello, this is Iris Chaim. 0.78

00:18:28.000 I'm Yotam's mother.

00:18:31.000 I wanted to tell you that I love you very much, and that I'm sending you my hugs from afar.

00:18:35.000 I know that everything that happened is not your fault at all.

00:18:40.000 It's no one's fault, except for Hamas. 1.00

00:18:44.000 Know that you are doing the greatest thing in the world that could happen, that could help us.

00:18:49.000 The people of Israel and all of us need you to stay healthy.

00:18:54.000 Don't hesitate, even for a moment if you see a terrorist.

00:18:59.000 Do not think to yourself that you killed a hostage deliberately.

00:19:05.000 You need to protect yourself, because that's the only way you can protect us.

00:19:07.000 At the first opportunity, you are invited to come to our home.

00:19:11.000 Anyone who can come to our home.

00:19:14.000 We want to see you with our own eyes, to hug you, and tell you that you did everything you could, as much as it hurts to say it was the right thing.

00:19:21.000 Not one of us judges you.

00:19:22.000 Not one of us are angry at you.

00:19:26.000 That's astonishing strength.

00:19:27.000 And that's the actual kind of strength it takes to defeat people who fundamentally wish to make the world an incredibly horrible place.

00:19:36.000 In just one second, we're going to get to the fourth lesson of 2023.

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00:20:41.000 Okay, so we've talked about the first three lessons of 2023.

00:20:45.000 First, when people say they're coming for your kids, you should listen and do something about it.

00:20:47.000 Two, lots of people don't actually think like you.

00:20:49.000 And three, weakness breeds aggression.

00:20:52.000 Now, lesson four, what goes around comes around always and forever.

00:20:57.000 If you do something to somebody else politically in the United States, the chances are extremely high that that is going to come back to haunt you.

00:21:05.000 So when it comes to domestic politics, Democrats seem to be under the weird impression that playing with legal fire has no consequences.

00:21:11.000 That is a lie. 1.00

00:21:12.000 It is an incredibly stupid lie. 1.00

00:21:15.000 The prosecutions of Donald J. Trump, which are going to carry well into next year throughout the election cycle, four separate prosecutions, three of which are entirely spurious. 1.00

00:21:24.000 The New York prosecution of Donald Trump.

00:21:26.000 The Washington D.C.

00:21:27.000 prosecution of Donald Trump.

00:21:29.000 The Georgia prosecution of Donald Trump.

00:21:31.000 All of those are deliberate misreads of the law and obvious misreads of the law.

00:21:35.000 They are stretches.

00:21:36.000 Not only are they stretches, there's now an attempt to push them before the elections.

00:21:40.000 The trial actually happens before the election so as to theoretically convict Donald Trump before the election to affect the election.

00:21:45.000 The fourth case, which is the classified documents case down in Florida, Just by the statute, Trump violated the statute.

00:21:51.000 Also, it happens to be that Hillary Clinton violated the same exact statute and no one cared.

00:21:55.000 And no one did anything.

00:21:56.000 In fact, James Comey specifically went out of his way to change the nature of the law to let her off the hook.

00:22:01.000 So all of that wrapped together looks like a political prosecution of Trump.

00:22:06.000 And Trump has been making the case that the system is weaponized against him.

00:22:09.000 And then the cherry was put on top of that particular sundae by the Colorado State Supreme Court this week, which announced that Donald Trump could simply be removed from the ballot in primaries and the general election as a quote-unquote insurrectionist, despite the fact that there is no definition of insurrectionist in law that Donald Trump has not been convicted of or tried for insurrection.

00:22:28.000 Even the cases in which he is currently tried do not allege violation of insurrection law.

00:22:33.000 The attempt to turn Donald Trump into the test case for this is totally insane.

00:22:40.000 Furthermore, when you issue executive orders that move well beyond the Constitution, when you, Joe Biden, decide that you're going to use OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Hazards Administration, to cram down vaccines on 80 million Americans in violation of law, when you use your pen in order to simply relieve student loan debt, When you do those things, you are setting the stage for precisely the reverse to be done to you.

00:23:07.000 If you wish for Republicans to abide by the law, you can't break the law.

00:23:11.000 If you wish for Republicans not to abuse executive power, you cannot abuse executive power.

00:23:16.000 Once you open Pandora's box, the box is now open.

00:23:19.000 And the box is open because Republicans seem to think that if bad Democratic behavior justifies Republican reactionary bad behavior, that's also totally fine.

00:23:28.000 So things are going to get worse because then Democrats are going to take whatever Republicans add on to the bad behavior and then they're going to add on to that bad behavior.

00:23:35.000 So if Democrats.

00:23:38.000 Decide that they're going to try to take down Trump post-2016 with a series of lies.

00:23:43.000 That justifies Donald Trump lying about the law with regard to the 2020 election and suggesting that the Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence, had the unilateral ability to simply throw out certified votes.

00:23:54.000 And that then justifies Democrats reacting by abusing the law to bar Trump from the ballot overtly or to prosecute him politically to stop him.

00:24:02.000 All of which will then justify Donald Trump denying the election results in 2024 if he loses.

00:24:09.000 All of which will then justify riots and prosecutions.

00:24:12.000 We can see precisely where all of this is going.

00:24:14.000 The endless cycle of reactionary politics can only be stopped if somebody decides not to be a reactionary and to be reasonable and to stop.

00:24:22.000 That is the only way.

00:24:24.000 But it's not just one side.

00:24:25.000 Both sides have to stop.

00:24:27.000 Because otherwise, one side is unilaterally disarming.

00:24:30.000 And herein lies the problem with our modern politics.

00:24:32.000 There is no consensus that both sides need to stop this.

00:24:36.000 There are too many Democrats who are out there celebrating barring Donald Trump from the ballot.

00:24:40.000 There are too many Democrats who are out there celebrating the political prosecutions of Donald Trump.

00:24:45.000 There are too many Democrats who are perfectly willing to watch Joe Biden be dictatorial in his presidency because he's a member of their party.

00:24:53.000 And all that's gonna justify is similar but more action from the other side, which will justify similar but more action from the other side.

00:24:59.000 The nature of American politics is incredibly reactionary at this point in time.

00:25:03.000 What you really need is for both sides to go weapons down, all of which goes back to the second lesson, which is we better find some common ground pretty damned quickly or things are going to get really ugly really fast, a lot uglier even than they are right now, which is why 2024 is shaping up to just be a dumpster fire.

00:25:17.000 Okay, finally, lesson number five from 2023.

00:25:21.000 Incompetence has consequences.

00:25:24.000 This is true for everyone.

00:25:26.000 Incompetence rules the roost.

00:25:28.000 We are now in a race to the bottom.

00:25:30.000 Now on the left, that incompetence is coming from the fact that the meritocracy is seen as an imposition of power.

00:25:38.000 That somehow, if you are good at things and you are successful, that's not because you're good at things, it's because you exploited someone.

00:25:43.000 And so the best thing that we can do is get rid of the meritocracy and then ignore the incompetence.

00:25:48.000 The incompetence has now bled through to every area of our government. 0.98

00:25:52.000 Joe Biden is incompetent. 1.00

00:25:53.000 I mean, he is mentally incompetent at this point. 1.00

00:25:56.000 I mean, here is video of Joe Biden, literally yesterday, randomly shuffling into curtains. 0.95

00:26:03.000 I'm telling you, like the joke from Shane Gillis about him being a Roomba is just true. 0.99

00:26:07.000 It's not even a joke anymore.

00:26:09.000 Here was Joe Biden finishing his speech and not knowing where to go because he is not

00:26:12.000 he is non compos mentis.

00:26:20.000 There he is.

00:26:20.000 He turned around.

00:26:21.000 He doesn't know where to go.

00:26:22.000 He's just going to randomly smiling.

00:26:24.000 No one knows where.

00:26:25.000 Where is he going?

00:26:26.000 So random dude has to pop out from behind the curtain to give him some sort of direction as to where he is supposed to go.

00:26:32.000 Where am I going?

00:26:33.000 Still don't know where I'm going.

00:26:34.000 No, Joe, you're going the wrong way.

00:26:36.000 Oh, oh, that way.

00:26:38.000 OK, trying to motor on over here.

00:26:41.000 Moving at the speed of light.

00:26:43.000 Joe Biden, not competent.

00:26:46.000 There's a reason he's in the 30s in approval rating. 0.91

00:26:48.000 Even less competent, Kamala Harris, who was picked because she is incompetent. 1.00

00:26:52.000 She was not picked for being excellent at her job. 0.85

00:26:54.000 She's picked despite being crappy at her job because she is a DEI candidate. 0.94

00:26:58.000 She is a candidate who's selected specifically by Joe Biden because she is a black woman, not because she was good at her job. 0.98

00:27:04.000 She ran one of the most incompetent presidential campaigns of all time. 1.00

00:27:08.000 She dropped out before her home state in an open primary. 0.70

00:27:13.000 That's crazy.

00:27:14.000 Alejandro Mayorkas, our Homeland Security Secretary, wildly incompetent, leaving the border fully open while maintaining that it is actually closed.

00:27:22.000 Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, who loves choo-choo trains.

00:27:27.000 That dude took off for like a couple of months and no one even noticed, then he came back and none of the planes land on time and trains are blowing up.

00:27:34.000 The levels of incompetence are astonishing. 0.98

00:27:36.000 Democrats in the Senate are wildly incompetent. 0.99

00:27:39.000 Democrats in the House are even more incompetent. 0.99

00:27:41.000 They can't even find it in their maimed hearts to somehow condemn the anti-Semitism of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. 0.94

00:27:48.000 But don't worry, it is not just Democrats. 0.99

00:27:50.000 Republicans are also incompetent. 0.97

00:27:52.000 Republicans in Congress have decided to engage in an idiotic race to the bottom, ousting a Speaker of the House this year for no apparent reason to replace him with a person who's just fine, Mike Johnson, but who is now incentivized by the exact same structure so they will pass the exact same bills, except that they're probably going to lose Kevin McCarthy's seat. 0.99

00:28:08.000 So just really smart stuff happening right here. 0.95

00:28:11.000 Incompetence has been wildly rewarded on all sides of the political aisle because there is something.

00:28:16.000 A really sick seed that has been buried in the American body politic in the ground and it's borne ugly fruit.

00:28:22.000 And that seed is that if you fail, your failure is someone else's fault.

00:28:27.000 This is true in terms of our agencies.

00:28:29.000 Our agencies are wildly incompetent on the state level, as evidenced by the Maui fire, where the state agencies not only did not do their environmental work, they then didn't even sound the alarms properly to let people get the hell out when everything was on fire.

00:28:42.000 Our institutions are incompetent.

00:28:44.000 It's not just government. 0.96

00:28:45.000 Our institutions are incompetent. 0.99

00:28:47.000 Our churches are wildly incompetent. 0.94

00:28:49.000 They're filled with people who are abandoning eternal values. 1.00

00:28:51.000 The only reason you go to church, they're abandoning those eternal values in this bizarre push to fill the pews with left-wingers who don't actually worship God, but worship a weird lawn sign that's multicolored and says dumb crap like, water is wet. 0.97

00:29:07.000 The amount of incompetence throughout every element of our society is truly a problem, especially because when people are faced with incompetence, they get mad. 0.94

00:29:15.000 Now, the normal reaction would be get mad at the incompetence and then put competent people in power.

00:29:19.000 But we've forbidden that because we've created an entire ideology that bars getting rid of the incompetent people.

00:29:24.000 Take, for example, our universities.

00:29:26.000 The best example of the day, this is an amazing, it's a wonderful story, so Claudine Gay, who is the president of Harvard, she of course has come under fire recently because she went in front of Congress and she made an ass of herself because she was asked whether in fact calling for the genocide of Jews was violative of Harvard student policy.

00:29:42.000 The answer is yes, we shouldn't be calling for the genocide of Jews. 0.85

00:29:46.000 Now, if she had said, we love free speech here, and then Harvard actually did love free speech, that might be an argument, but they don't love free speech at Harvard, they suck at free speech at Harvard. 0.82

00:29:54.000 So what she really meant is, you can call for the genocide of Jews, but pretty much no other group. 0.96

00:29:58.000 Well, this then led to the opening of Claudine Gay's past, and it turns out that she is a garbage scholar who has plagiarized in dozens of instances.

00:30:08.000 According to the New York Times, Harvard University, in the face of mounting questions over possible plagiarism in the scholarly work of its president, Claudine Gay, said on Wednesday it had found two additional instances of insufficient citation in her work.

00:30:20.000 Those issues were found in Dr. Gay's 1997 doctoral dissertation, in which Harvard said it had found two examples of what they called, this is amazing language.

00:30:27.000 You know what, you ready for some incompetence covering right here?

00:30:30.000 Get ready for this language.

00:30:31.000 It's not plagiarism, folks.

00:30:32.000 It is, quote, duplicative language without appropriate attribution.

00:30:37.000 Oh, you mean plagiarism.

00:30:40.000 That's literally the definition of plagiarism.

00:30:43.000 It's amazing!

00:30:45.000 Literally, the definition of the word plagiarism is, quote, the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.

00:30:53.000 Here's what Harvard is now calling this practice.

00:30:56.000 They're now calling this practice, again, the phrase was duplicative language without appropriate attribution.

00:31:03.000 Oh, you mean copying someone's language without citing them, which is stealing their language, which is plagiarism.

00:31:09.000 But they can't get rid of Cloudy and Gay, because you see, Cloudy and Gay is a black woman. 1.00

00:31:13.000 The first black woman president in the history of Harvard. 0.99

00:31:15.000 Mediocrity and incompetence must be rewarded. 0.98

00:31:18.000 Endlessly.

00:31:19.000 And those who call out mediocrity and failure, those people are really the people to blame.

00:31:26.000 So the comment of the year on this particular topic comes courtesy of a person I actually had for contracts when I was at Harvard Law School, Charles Freed.

00:31:34.000 Is Professor Freed when I was there?

00:31:36.000 He was old then, so he's really old now.

00:31:38.000 Charles Freed, I mean, this is such an amazing quote.

00:31:43.000 He worked for Reagan, he was a solicitor general under Reagan, so he was one of the supposed conservatives at the law school, but he was never particularly conservative.

00:31:50.000 He was always middle of the road, politically, at best.

00:31:53.000 Here's what he said, quote, it's part of this extreme right-wing attack

00:31:56.000 on elite institutions.

00:31:58.000 The obvious point is to make it look as if there is a woke double standard

00:32:01.000 at elite institutions.

00:32:02.000 And then he says this, here's the comment, quote, if it came from some other quarter,

00:32:06.000 I might be granting it some credence, but not from these people.

00:32:10.000 you That's right.

00:32:12.000 If you point out the incompetence, but you're of the wrong political persuasion, if you're Chris Ruffo, and you point out the plagiarism, or if you are Aaron Siberian, and you point out the plagiarism, then Charles Freed won't even take it under advisement.

00:32:26.000 Because again, the precious must be protected.

00:32:29.000 It is more important to protect your ideological leanings than it is to protect any level of meritocracy.

00:32:36.000 In fact, we've built entire edifices of ideology to excuse incompetence and failure.

00:32:42.000 On both sides, we now find conspiracy theories to undermine the basic idea of merit.

00:32:47.000 On the left, if you're failing, it's because, as stated before, you're victimized by the white oppressors.

00:32:50.000 And this is a prevalent ideology, particularly among young people.

00:32:53.000 79% of people 18 to 24 agree with that. 0.98

00:32:54.000 That if you fail, If you suck at life, that's not because you've made bad decisions, it's because you're being victimized by some evil cadre of people in the back room who are screwing you. 0.97

00:33:07.000 On the right, if you are failing, it's also, shockingly, because of a cadre of evil people in the back room who are screwing you. 0.98

00:33:14.000 Maybe it's the hedge fund managers.

00:33:15.000 Maybe it's the people who love free markets.

00:33:18.000 And maybe it's people who want to maximize profits instead of, you know, turning this all over to a bunch of government bureaucrats for government subsidization of particular electoral cliques.

00:33:28.000 Understand that the theory of populism, which is, effectively speaking, that your own failures are not under your own control ever, ever, ever.

00:33:37.000 That's modern populism, at least.

00:33:38.000 Doesn't have to be that way, but that's what it is right now.

00:33:41.000 That theory breeds more incompetence.

00:33:44.000 It makes the world worse.

00:33:45.000 More people fail.

00:33:46.000 And then because more people fail, the beauty is that it's a completely unfalsifiable system in theory.

00:33:51.000 As more people fail, the answer is not, oh, maybe we got this wrong.

00:33:55.000 Maybe we ought to promote merit.

00:33:56.000 It becomes, well, that conspiracy theory, man, that must be true.

00:34:00.000 That conspiracy is so strong.

00:34:02.000 And then, because you believe that conspiracy, you don't get confident at things, and then you fail more.

00:34:06.000 And then you're like, oh man, every year it's getting worse.

00:34:09.000 Here's the reality.

00:34:10.000 The meritocracy is the great American idea.

00:34:14.000 The meritocracy, the idea that if you work hard, and if you are smart, and if you make good moral decisions, you will succeed.

00:34:20.000 That is a unique, Western, beautiful idea.

00:34:23.000 It is the best idea, maybe the best idea in all of human history, because what it suggests is that if you make the right decisions, you can create positive externalities for everybody else.

00:34:33.000 See, competence creates great externalities for everybody.

00:34:36.000 It makes the world better for everyone.

00:34:38.000 Elon Musk being competent at building cars makes better cars for you. 0.82

00:34:42.000 Elon Musk sucking at building cars would be really bad.

00:34:45.000 And the same thing is true in every single job.

00:34:47.000 It is true in every area of life.

00:34:49.000 We need competence in our government.

00:34:50.000 We need competence in our institutions.

00:34:52.000 If we don't get competence, things are likely to get worse and worse.

00:34:55.000 And then people will blame, ironically, the system and call for more control by people who still have not actually shown any competence in these areas.

00:35:05.000 So what does all this add up to?

00:35:07.000 It adds up to 2024.

00:35:09.000 Unless these trends are reversed, unless these lessons are learned and people start to get it through their heads, that meritocracy matters and incompetence should not be rewarded.

00:35:20.000 That perhaps we should seek common ground at least with regard to baseline American principles instead of ripping each other apart.

00:35:26.000 That weakness breeds aggression.

00:35:28.000 That there are lots of people worldwide and domestically who don't think like you.

00:35:31.000 And that there are people who actually wish to pervert the minds of everyone.

00:35:33.000 Unless we actually get real about the world in other words.

00:35:35.000 That's the real short story here.

00:35:37.000 Unless we get real about the world.

00:35:39.000 We're not just gonna get 2023 again.

00:35:41.000 We're gonna get way worse.

00:35:44.000 2024?

00:35:45.000 I don't mean to be doom and gloom heading into Christmas.

00:35:48.000 But uh...

00:35:50.000 Dude.

00:35:51.000 Okay, in just one second, speaking of what's coming our way, we'll get to the latest on the 2024 election first.

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00:38:16.000 Okay, meanwhile.

00:38:17.000 Alrighty, speaking of the 2024 election cycle, um, it's gonna get worse, like, all the way across the board.

00:38:22.000 Particularly because, again, Joe Biden is wildly underperforming.

00:38:26.000 Indicators that Joe Biden is wildly underperforming.

00:38:28.000 So Oprah Winfrey, who is a longtime Democrat devotee, I mean, she she campaigned with Barack Obama.

00:38:33.000 I believe she endorsed Joe Biden last time around.

00:38:36.000 She was asked if she endorses Biden this time around, and she's like, I'm going to walk slowly away.

00:38:40.000 Bye.

00:38:42.000 Oprah, are you supporting the president again in 2024?

00:38:46.000 I'm just here to celebrate this event.

00:38:48.000 How does this compare to your other accomplishments in your career?

00:38:53.000 Well, this is one I never even imagined.

00:38:55.000 You know, this is what I never even imagined.

00:38:58.000 Well, bye.

00:38:59.000 See you later.

00:39:00.000 I love that she won't answer the election.

00:39:02.000 She's like, I'm just I'm just here to sell.

00:39:04.000 Bye.

00:39:05.000 Yeah, when Oprah Winfrey can't get on board with like, of course I hate Donald Trump.

00:39:08.000 I love Joe Biden.

00:39:09.000 Like Oprah Winfrey is a Democrat, obviously. 0.52

00:39:11.000 And even she is not on board.

00:39:14.000 Meanwhile, even Joe Biden's supposed successes are now turning to failure.

00:39:17.000 We mentioned those student loan payments that he illegally decided to approve and then got struck down by the Supreme Court.

00:39:23.000 Well, now they're back.

00:39:24.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, as millions of student loan borrowers make payments this year for the first time since 2020, many are grappling with maddening bureaucratic problems.

00:39:32.000 Borrowers subscribing, Waiting on hold for hours, trying and failing to get answers from their loan servicers.

00:39:37.000 Some receive inaccurate or conflicting information about amounts owed and the status of their loans.

00:39:41.000 Others heard barely anything at all, only to be hit with surprise bills.

00:39:45.000 The logistical morass, which comes less than a year before the 2024 election, has complicated Joe Biden's efforts to ensure that voters credit him for slashing student debt.

00:39:52.000 Biden's initial plan to cancel up to 20 grand in federal student loan debt for people making less than $125,000 a year was struck down by the Supreme Court in June.

00:40:00.000 But that didn't stop Joe Biden.

00:40:02.000 Since then, the administration advanced narrower loan relief.

00:40:05.000 They wiped away $132 billion in debt for 3.6 million borrowers.

00:40:09.000 And just keep going with the illegality, but it turns out that even that is a bleep show.

00:40:14.000 Meanwhile, even the Education Department is noting the risks associated with transferring loans and messing around with all of this.

00:40:20.000 The Education Department says these borrowers are returning to a student loan system that is midstream and making fundamental reforms to student loan servicing and borrower benefits.

00:40:29.000 So it's a mess.

00:40:31.000 It's not going to be great for all those people who are relying on Joe Biden.

00:40:33.000 It turns out that when you lie to people and then people discover the lies, they're not particularly happy with you.

00:40:38.000 Meanwhile, Jerome Powell is sowing confusion over at the Federal Reserve.

00:40:42.000 Again, according to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was asked at a recent gathering what he does for fun.

00:40:48.000 He said, quote, for me, a really big party is a really good inflation report, but it doesn't matter because right now it's unclear exactly what the hell the Fed is going to do.

00:40:57.000 Officials last week didn't rule out higher rates, but Jerome Powell ignited a market rally when he volunteered that some officials described their own rate cut outlooks, even if that wasn't a central focus.

00:41:06.000 So, it's unclear what exactly is coming out from the Fed.

00:41:09.000 The markets believe that the Fed is going to lower the rates again.

00:41:12.000 The Fed has not made clear whether it's going to leave them or even increase the rates if the inflation continues the way that it has.

00:41:19.000 All of this is leading to serious uncertainty.

00:41:23.000 Interest rates could still be quite restrictive even if we adjust policy by lowering rates three times next year, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly pointed out in an interview on Monday.

00:41:33.000 Also, it's unclear exactly whether the interest rates are going to stay up.

00:41:38.000 In the fives for a while to come.

00:41:40.000 So if Joe Biden is hoping for the Fed to completely save him next year, that doesn't look like that's likely to happen.

00:41:44.000 So he is down to his last resort, which always and forever is that democracy is a threat if you allow Donald Trump to be reelected.

00:41:52.000 That is the final case that all of these people are going to make.

00:41:55.000 It's gonna be nothing but threats to democracy from here to the election.

00:42:00.000 This is presumably why Jack Smith continues to push forward an obviously politically motivated prosecution in Washington, D.C.

00:42:07.000 So on Thursday, Smith filed a response to a motion by Trump.

00:42:12.000 They had filed demanding the court wait until a lower appeals court rules on the issue of presidential immunity.

00:42:18.000 They want to slow down the process.

00:42:19.000 The longer the process takes, the longer it takes to get past the election.

00:42:22.000 Smith wants to speed up the process.

00:42:24.000 What exactly is his excuse?

00:42:26.000 He says the public interest in a prompt resolution of this case favors an immediate definitive decision by this court.

00:42:31.000 The charges here are of the utmost gravity.

00:42:33.000 This case involves criminal charges against a former president based on his actions while in office.

00:42:37.000 Not just any actions, alleged acts to perpetuate himself in power by frustrating the constitutionally prescribed process for certifying the lawful winner of an election.

00:42:46.000 The nation has a compelling interest in a decision on respondents claim of immunity from these charges and if they are to be tried a resolution by conviction or acquittal without undue delay.

00:42:56.000 So why Why?

00:42:58.000 I mean, these trials take years very often.

00:43:01.000 What is the big rush?

00:43:02.000 And we all know the big rush.

00:43:04.000 The big rush is for Jack Smith to get a conviction in under the wire so as to damage Donald Trump's presidential chances in 2024.

00:43:10.000 So, in other words, get ready for things to get really hot and really upsetting next year.

00:43:15.000 2024 is gonna be an election year.

00:43:17.000 Election years are usually exciting.

00:43:19.000 There's gonna be the frisson of violence in the streets.

00:43:23.000 That is going to be a thing that just Man, I'm glad I live in Florida and not California is all I can say to that one.

00:43:30.000 Okay, in just one second, we'll get to the latest from Prague.

00:43:35.000 There was a horrific mass shooting in Prague yesterday.

00:43:38.000 We'll get to that in just one second, but first, a majority of Gen Z supports left-wing policies like open borders, even socialism.

00:43:45.000 If we don't reach them and change their minds, the country we know and love will be lost.

00:43:48.000 PragerU is the leading non-profit when it comes to influencing young people.

00:43:51.000 We've been working here At the Daily Wire with PragerU for literally years.

00:43:54.000 We used to share office space with them in Los Angeles.

00:43:57.000 Jeremy Boring was very much involved in the drafting and the animation of many of the very early PragerU videos.

00:44:04.000 I've been friends with Dennis going back, I don't know, 20 years at this point.

00:44:07.000 PragerU's educational, entertaining, pro-American videos meet young people where they are online and open their minds to the truth.

00:44:13.000 But they need your help.

00:44:14.000 Go to PragerU.com.

00:44:15.000 Make a tax-deductible donation.

00:44:17.000 Whatever you give right now will be tripled and have three times the impact.

00:44:20.000 Donate $10, it triples to $30.

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00:44:25.000 No fees, no subscriptions.

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00:44:28.000 Contrary to what the left says, PragerU is not funded by a handful of billionaires.

00:44:31.000 It is funded by people just like you.

00:44:33.000 In order to keep making great content, reaching millions of people, and changing minds, PragerU needs your help.

00:44:38.000 So go give them help.

00:44:39.000 It's the end of the year.

00:44:40.000 It's a great time to do something good.

00:44:41.000 Go to PragerU.com and donate today.

00:44:44.000 Meanwhile, horrific story out of Prague.

00:44:46.000 At least 15 people are reported dead, shot by a gunman from a balcony at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Prague on Thursday.

00:44:54.000 The gunman was reported by local media to have fallen off the roof, according to Breitbart.

00:44:59.000 The mass shooter was eliminated.

00:45:00.000 They said there were several dead and dozens of injured around that Faculty of Arts building at the University of Prague.

00:45:05.000 Apparently, the presumed shooter had been interested in Killing as many people as possible in a school shooting.

00:45:11.000 Apparently was obsessed with school shootings all around the world.

00:45:15.000 He apparently shot his father earlier in the day in a small village outside of Prague.

00:45:20.000 Police attempted to find the 24-year-old afterward.

00:45:22.000 They discovered that he was scheduled to give a lecture at the university on Thursday afternoon.

00:45:27.000 Instead, he had what sounded like a machine gun, if you hear the sounds, and he decided to open fire on random innocent people.

00:45:38.000 Apparently he was a history student with a history of psychological problems.

00:45:43.000 It's an absolutely terrible story, obviously.

00:45:46.000 The Czech Republic happens to be a place with significant gun control.

00:45:49.000 Very, very strong gun control in Prague.

00:45:52.000 There was not much that really could be done to stop him, so he apparently had free reign with a viewpoint above the areas that he was shooting at.

00:46:02.000 Students were trying to hide on the balconies.

00:46:03.000 It was taking place on a high story of a building.

00:46:07.000 You can see pictures of him on the high story of the building

00:46:08.000 and students were attempting to cling to the ledge itself.

00:46:12.000 Apparently one of the people actually fell from the ledge and was killed in the fall.

00:46:16.000 It's a horrific, horrific story.

00:46:19.000 It's just terrible stuff.

00:46:24.000 It's a reminder that evil exists pretty much everywhere.

00:46:27.000 And once again, it's a reminder that mass shootings, despite what the press will tell you,

00:46:31.000 is not an America only problem.

00:46:33.000 It is a problem anywhere you have people who are mentally ill and have serious psychological problems and violent psychological problems, and you can't obtain guns.

00:46:42.000 It is still possible to obtain guns even in places with significant gun control, and there was no one there who could stop this guy because no one there had a gun in response.

00:46:50.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Israel-Hamas war continues.

00:46:55.000 Revelations every single day about the extent to which Hamas was honeycombed throughout the Gaza Strip, including at the hospitals.

00:47:01.000 In fact, Israel released a video of the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital admitting that he was a Hamas commander.

00:47:07.000 Remember, he was the director of a hospital admitting that he was a Hamas commander.

00:47:11.000 Here he was doing just that under interrogation.

00:47:16.000 He said, what's your full name?

00:47:17.000 Ahmed Mohamed Hassan Al-Qalout.

00:47:20.000 What's your nickname?

00:47:22.000 Abu Hassan.

00:47:25.000 What's your current position?

00:47:27.000 Manager of the hospital.

00:47:29.000 Manager of the Kamal Adnan Hospital.

00:47:33.000 When did you join Hamas?

00:47:34.000 2010.

00:47:35.000 When was the last time you did military training?

00:47:38.000 2010.

00:47:40.000 What is your rank in Hamas?

00:47:45.000 I'm mid-rank.

00:47:46.000 That's parallel to Brigadier General.

00:47:49.000 Describe how Hamas uses your hospital to hide military activities.

00:47:54.000 Those who are hidden officially, which were coordinated, that I know about, according to rank, they are the senior political officials.

00:48:01.000 They are the seniors, the military and civilian officials.

00:48:06.000 They had rooms, which they hid in, at the hospital desk.

00:48:11.000 They stayed there ten days, then they changed places, to a different place, and then they left the hospital.

00:48:16.000 So, yes, of course they were hiding in the hospital.

00:48:19.000 And of course, the leadership of these hospitals knew they were hiding in the hospitals, and yet all those leaders of the hospitals have been quoted by the media as excellent sources on the human rights violations that are happening in and around the hospital due to the Israelis. 0.92

00:48:31.000 It's absolutely insane.

00:48:33.000 I mean, truly crazy.

00:48:36.000 Meanwhile, you can always count on small-minded bigots like Joy Reid at MSNBC to completely miss the point by comparing what is going on in Gaza to Rwanda and Darfur, you know, places where actual genocides were attempted As opposed to very specific military operations that have, according to Israel, killed upwards of 8,000 members of Hamas out of the 20,000 dead so far.

00:48:59.000 And by the way, a huge number of the people who are not in that 8,000 number are Hamas fellow travelers who are hanging out with Hamas.

00:49:06.000 Israel has been more precise in its targeting than any army in modern history, but Joy Reid is comparing this to Darfur and Rwanda.

00:49:15.000 President Biden has hitched the global credibility of America to the moral credibility of Benjamin Netanyahu.

00:49:22.000 Yeah.

00:49:22.000 And that's just a disaster for us around the world.

00:49:25.000 I think of Darfur, I think of Rwanda, I think of previous cases in which the United States sort of watched seemingly helplessly as people died by the hundreds of thousands.

00:49:34.000 And so, you know, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo.

00:49:37.000 But in this case, unlike those cases, this feels like this is us doing it.

00:49:42.000 The human misery is being funded by the United States taxpayers, yet it doesn't seem that U.S.

00:49:47.000 public opinion has any impact.

00:49:49.000 Well, that's right.

00:49:49.000 I think U.S.

00:49:50.000 public opinion, it's important to note, has shifted a lot on this issue and I think is in a different place than the American political establishment is on this.

00:49:57.000 That, of course, is a former U.S.

00:49:59.000 State Department official who left the State Department because the State Department refused to acquiesce to his pro-Hamas viewpoints.

00:50:04.000 Meanwhile, I'm gonna end today's show, at least for the non-paying members, with the feel-good guy of the year.

00:50:11.000 If there's only one good story that came out of 2023, it's the transformation of John Fetterman into a raging moderate.

00:50:17.000 Again, it's an amazing story.

00:50:20.000 We here are having a little bit of Fettermania.

00:50:22.000 Here's what John Fetterman said.

00:50:24.000 He said, with regard to left-wing purity tests, he said, it's just a place where I'm not.

00:50:29.000 I don't feel I've left the label of progressive.

00:50:31.000 It's just more that it's left me.

00:50:32.000 I'm not critical of someone as a progressive.

00:50:34.000 I believe different things.

00:50:37.000 He says that a lot of people have warped minds on Israel.

00:50:40.000 He says, I do find it confusing where the very left progressives in America don't seem to want to support the only progressive nation in the region that really embraces the same kind of values I would expect we would want as a society.

00:50:50.000 Again, Jon Fetterman, the shock of the year.

00:50:53.000 And we have more positive shocks in the coming year.

00:50:56.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

00:50:58.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:50:59.000 We're going to be getting into the most bizarre defense of a sex tape maybe ever.

00:51:04.000 So you have to become a member for that.

00:51:05.000 Become a member.

00:51:06.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:51:06.000 Check out for two months free on all the annual plans.

00:51:08.000 Click that link in the description and join us.

00:51:10.000 Here's also your reminder that while we are not going to be having live shows next week, we have tons of great content that's going to be coming out every day on this channel.

00:51:18.000 So you're going to want to look out for that.

00:51:20.000 It's a bunch of fun stuff that we planned just for you for the break.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 22, 2023

Five Lessons For 2024

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