The Ben Shapiro Show - Getting Satanic At The Grammys | Ep. 1662

00:00:00.000 Joe Biden orders the shoot down of a Chinese spy balloon after it traverses the entire continental United States.

00:00:05.000 Disney Plus goes woker and woker, and we examine the wildest moments from the Grammys.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:18.000 And I know that pretty much no one in my audience listened or watched the Grammys last night.

00:00:23.000 Because we had better things to do.

00:00:25.000 Shampooing our hair.

00:00:28.000 Hanging ourselves.

00:00:28.000 I mean, there are many things that would have been better than watching the Grammys last night.

00:00:32.000 But it is important to note what happens at major cultural events.

00:00:35.000 Largely because it exposes the minds and the souls of the people who produce these events and the people who shape your kids.

00:00:41.000 Because while you may not be listening to the music of Harry Styles, while you may not be engaging with the absurdities of Sam Smith, there's a good shot that your kids are, or that their friends are, or that people in the culture who shape them Are.

00:00:54.000 And that's a real problem.

00:00:55.000 Because, you know, well, we can easily say it's performed of Pearl clutching me, worrying about what they do at the Grammys.

00:01:01.000 They're obviously trying to be provocative.

00:01:02.000 They're trying to be transgressive.

00:01:03.000 You can go all the way back to David Bowie and Madonna. 0.85

00:01:06.000 What we saw last night at the Grammys was actually something that was rather new in kind, because it wasn't just transgressivism in the sense that it was adopting symbols of religion, for example, in order to sort of shame those symbols of religion, the same way that Madonna Sort of tried to cross the virgin whore boundaries in her imagistics.

00:01:24.000 What we saw last night was a full-scale embrace of Satanism on a major American network show.

00:01:30.000 That's an amazing thing.

00:01:31.000 And it's an amazing thing because what it really speaks to in a much deeper way is what Western culture now has to say about evil and the nature of good.

00:01:40.000 Because it is one thing to say that you don't like the structures of religion.

00:01:44.000 It is another thing to full on embrace Satanism.

00:01:47.000 And, you know, people can can say, again, it's just it's just imagery.

00:01:50.000 What are you making a big deal here for?

00:01:52.000 Why?

00:01:52.000 Why do you think this is a big?

00:01:52.000 What?

00:01:54.000 This is the thing the left loves to do.

00:01:55.000 I've talked about it a lot on the show, the face tattoo syndrome.

00:01:58.000 They do something unbelievably transgressive, something that is supposed to be shocking.

00:02:01.000 And then when you are shocked and appalled by it, they say, why are you so shocked?

00:02:03.000 Why are you paying attention to it?

00:02:04.000 Why are you even noticing?

00:02:06.000 We're noticing because you said it's important to do this.

00:02:09.000 It was you.

00:02:09.000 You decided this was an important thing to do.

00:02:11.000 And now we're noticing it.

00:02:13.000 And now we're analyzing why it's an important thing.

00:02:15.000 And it really is an important thing because of course the imagery of Satan is nothing new.

00:02:18.000 The imagery of Satan goes back several thousand years.

00:02:21.000 There are references to Satan in the Hebrew Bible.

00:02:23.000 There are references obviously throughout Christian theology to Satan.

00:02:27.000 But it's the picture of the sort of modern Satan as a good character.

00:02:32.000 That I think is worthy of note here.

00:02:33.000 The reason I'm bringing this up for folks who missed the Grammys, you know, like nearly all of you, is because last night, Sam Smith and a person named Kim Petras did a number in which they full-on embraced Satanism.

00:02:47.000 I mean, full-on embraced Satanism.

00:02:49.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:02:51.000 To sort of set the stage, you have to understand that this is a group of mainstream left-wing cultural icons.

00:02:57.000 Those are the people who are in the room.

00:02:59.000 So mainstream, in fact, that one of the people who actually was brought on to give the the top award was the current president of the United States, Dr. Joe Biden, the greatest doctor of all time, and also the president, because our current president is basically a meat puppet and and does not have the capacity to actually operate in the real world.

00:03:18.000 He cannot even spew words from his face in some sort of coherent fashion.

00:03:22.000 So, Dr. Joe Biden, this is how mainstream the Grammys is.

00:03:25.000 It's not some sort of fringe satanic ritual.

00:03:27.000 It's satanic rituals front and center at a major public event.

00:03:31.000 So the event started off with Trevor Noah, who is one of the least funny people on earth, opening up with a Trump joke.

00:03:38.000 Because why not?

00:03:39.000 Why not?

00:03:40.000 Why would you ever make a joke about the people who are in the room?

00:03:42.000 You're going to make a joke about all the people that you hate, which is all the people who are not in the room, obviously.

00:03:48.000 That album is so fire, it makes Trump want to learn Spanish.

00:03:51.000 That's what it does.

00:03:52.000 This is it, people!

00:03:54.000 Welcome to the Grammys, everybody!

00:03:56.000 Welcome to it!

00:03:57.000 We made it!

00:03:58.000 We're back!

00:04:00.000 And I'm lucky enough to be back as your host tonight.

00:04:03.000 My job is to be your eyes, your ears.

00:04:05.000 I'll be floating around this room.

00:04:07.000 Think of me like a Chinese spy balloon.

00:04:09.000 That's what I'm doing right now.

00:04:10.000 Gathering all the information you want because this is the room.

00:04:13.000 This is the room where it all goes down.

00:04:14.000 Just look around.

00:04:14.000 Look at all the faces.

00:04:15.000 We got the best musicians, the best performers, best producers in the world.

00:04:19.000 Yeah.

00:04:19.000 Every song on TikTok that you hear, there are people who made them.

00:04:24.000 This is them.

00:04:27.000 Okay, and by the way, he is correct.

00:04:29.000 These are the cultural influencers.

00:04:30.000 These are the people who make the culture in which your kids engage.

00:04:35.000 And of course he went on, he praised Harry Styles because Harry Styles is of course the sexiest, androgynous person in the room.

00:04:41.000 Here he was praising Harry Styles for wearing women's underwear.

00:04:44.000 What can you say about this man that hasn't been said, huh?

00:04:47.000 Incredible album, mind-blowing tour, what is it, 15-night run at MSG and the Forum, huh?

00:04:53.000 Women throw their panties at this man! 1.00

00:04:55.000 And then he puts them on, and he looks better in them than they do! 0.51

00:04:58.000 Easily the world's sexiest man!

00:05:00.000 Are you kidding?

00:05:01.000 There's no competition!

00:05:02.000 Sex symbol of the globe, especially now that they killed off the green M&M. 1.00

00:05:06.000 No competition.

00:05:07.000 In a second, we're gonna get to the satanic aspect of the Grammys, which ties into a broader sort of Intellectual rubric.

00:05:14.000 First, if we're talking about people who should not be trusted with your kids, we're talking about these people.

00:05:17.000 If we're talking about people who should not be trusted with your data, we're talking about big tech.

00:05:21.000 How would it feel if you were at a coffee shop and you're sitting there and just going through your emails and then you're like, oh, you know, I need to hit the restroom.

00:05:26.000 So you move on over to the restroom, but you leave your laptop on the table.

00:05:28.000 Crucial mistake.

00:05:29.000 You come back and Harry Styles is just browsing for women's underwear on your laptop.

00:05:33.000 You'd feel real bad about yourself.

00:05:35.000 And now you're Inbox is polluted with weird advertising spam.

00:05:38.000 Well, you shouldn't leave your internet activity open to just anyone. 0.75

00:05:41.000 That would be a foolish move.

00:05:42.000 This is why I use ExpressVPN.

00:05:45.000 The simple fact of the matter is there are a lot of engineers who want control of your data.

00:05:48.000 We're talking about big tech that wants control of your data so they can monetize it and they can use it to advertise and make money off of you while they despise you.

00:05:55.000 You have big government that actually works with big tech to grab a hold of that data. 0.77

00:05:59.000 You have hackers who are constantly trying to grab that data.

00:06:00.000 I don't want any of those people to have my data.

00:06:02.000 My data is my own data.

00:06:03.000 This is why I use ExpressVPN.

00:06:05.000 Your ISP can keep the logs of your internet activity.

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00:06:36.000 Alrighty, so.

00:06:38.000 All of this was lead up to the satanic ritual that took place on stage last night.

00:06:44.000 So, the person who performed the satanic ritual is someone we featured in Deconstructing the Culture the other night.

00:06:49.000 And that person is Sam Smith.

00:06:51.000 Sam Smith originally identified as a gay dude, and everybody just kind of shrugged and went, uh, okay.

00:06:55.000 And then he identified as genderfluid, and everybody was like, I don't even know what that means, it's not a real thing.

00:07:00.000 And now he identifies as non-binary, which is also not a real thing.

00:07:04.000 So he is an overweight man prancing around in bizarre costumes and warbling.

00:07:10.000 And he was joined on stage by a person named Kim Petras, who at the time that he became a she, was 16 years old.

00:07:18.000 So excellent parenting job and excellent medical job, Britain.

00:07:22.000 And Kim Petras had sort of been out in the wilderness until Sam Smith brought him back in.

00:07:27.000 And they together created a song called Unholy.

00:07:31.000 So this is two white males.

00:07:35.000 It is a gender non-binary white male who's a male and a trans woman who is a white male celebrating as they win an award for Unholy. 0.77

00:07:47.000 I guess they won last night Best Pop Duo and Group Performance and performed a full-on satanic ritual at the Grammys.

00:07:55.000 I love you so much and this song has been such an incredible, incredible journey for me and Sam has been a supporter of mine for so long.

00:08:04.000 Sam graciously wanted me to accept this award because I'm the first transgender woman to win this award.

00:08:16.000 And I'm so...

00:08:22.000 So much celebration.

00:08:23.000 So much cheering.

00:08:24.000 Thank you.

00:08:27.000 And I just want to thank all the incredible transgender legends before me who kicked these doors open for me so I could be here tonight.

00:08:39.000 Okay, and this brings us to the actual performance.

00:08:42.000 So to understand just how bad the performance was, and what the song Unholy is about, you actually have to see it.

00:08:47.000 So here's what it looked like.

00:08:49.000 Okay, so for those who can't see, this is Kim Petras in a cage surrounded by strippers. 1.00

00:09:10.000 And Sam Smith shows up wearing a Satan hat and is sponsored by Pfizer.

00:09:17.000 So, two on the nose, God.

00:09:20.000 Sorry.

00:09:22.000 Satan, sponsored by Pfizer.

00:09:23.000 Wow, just well done right there.

00:09:25.000 The actual full performance has Sam Smith gallivanting around in a devil costume, wearing like a top hat with devil horns and surrounded by strippers, both male and female is my understanding, or trans.

00:09:37.000 It's all a lot of fun.

00:09:38.000 The lyrics to the song are, Mommy don't know, Daddy's getting hot at the body shop doing something unholy.

00:09:45.000 So that's great.

00:09:47.000 So why is any of this important?

00:09:49.000 Well, it turns out that I think that the iconography with regard to Satan actually kind of is important because it's embedded deep in the Western psyche.

00:09:55.000 What Satan is and what Satan isn't, whether that is good or not.

00:09:57.000 By the way, you know who agrees with this?

00:09:59.000 is Kim Petras, who said, quote, I think a lot of people honestly have kind of labeled what I stand for and what Sam stands for as religiously not cool.

00:10:06.000 I personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it, but slowly realizing it didn't want me to be a part of it.

00:10:11.000 So it's a take on not being able to choose religion and not being able to live the way that people might want you to live, because as a trans person, I'm already not kind of wanted in religion.

00:10:18.000 So we were doing a take on that.

00:10:19.000 And I was kind of hell keeper Kim.

00:10:22.000 So the whole video is flames emerging in the background and people wearing devil uniforms and prancing around in costume and all the rest.

00:10:28.000 So normally, you would just say, OK, this is normal kind of garbage transgressivism on the Grammys, whether it's Madonna lip locking Britney Spears or Britney Spears dancing around with a snake around her, or whether you're talking about Madonna gallivanting around doing silly things in sort of a Madonna in a Virgin Mary outfit during like this sort of thing has a long record.

00:10:47.000 But the full on embrace of Satanism is important in the sense that, again, There are certain icons in Western intellectual history that, how we view them, sort of speaks about what our culture is.

00:10:57.000 And the fact that you have an entire side of the cultural aisle that has now embraced Satan as a symbol, I don't think is by accident.

00:11:05.000 To sort of understand this, I think we have to take a look at how Satan has been perceived over the course of Western civilization for the past couple of centuries.

00:11:13.000 So, way back when, John Milton wrote Paradise Lost.

00:11:18.000 Paradise Lost is still the single best sort of articulation of the Western view of what Satan is.

00:11:24.000 It's sort of a complex view, an interesting view of who Satan is.

00:11:27.000 Satan is not just a malevolent monster.

00:11:31.000 Satan has his own drive. 0.94

00:11:33.000 Satan is somebody who has been cast down from heaven.

00:11:36.000 And Satan has come to be seen by the progressive left, and this has been true for a couple of centuries, as a heroic figure.

00:11:43.000 This is not how John Milton meant for Satan to be interpreted in Paradise Lost.

00:11:46.000 Paradise Lost was written in the 17th century.

00:11:48.000 John Milton was a religious Christian.

00:11:50.000 The way that he wrote Satan, however, inspires many people who don't like religion and who believe that the highest possible good is your individual sense of self-satisfaction.

00:12:02.000 Satan in Paradise Lost very famously says, in my choice to reign is worth ambition though in hell, better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

00:12:09.000 It's the big kind of tagline for Satan in Paradise Lost is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

00:12:14.000 And the whole reason that Satan rebels against God is not because he actually thinks that God is morally wrong.

00:12:19.000 It's because he believes that individual autonomy, that his sense of power, is more important than anything.

00:12:24.000 He rebels against God specifically because God demands good things of him.

00:12:28.000 Not because he thinks that God is demanding bad things of him, but because he recognizes that God stands for a higher morality, something good and true.

00:12:34.000 He rebels against it specifically for that reason.

00:12:38.000 But that rebellion, for large parts of the transgressive mind over the course of the last several centuries, That rebellion is heroic in this view, and that has now become the full-fledged view of so many on the left, and they don't even know that this is the case.

00:12:51.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:14:00.000 Okay, so.

00:14:02.000 Talking about Satan in Paradise Lost.

00:14:03.000 So, again, the vision of Satan in Paradise Lost, and Milton is making Satan the villain, is that it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

00:14:10.000 Namely, individual autonomy, my sense of self-satisfaction, my sense of power, is much more important than any sense of good or true.

00:14:18.000 And one person, a romantic poet, who really bought into the idea that Satan was the good guy in Paradise Lost was Percy Shelley.

00:14:26.000 Percy Shelley, his wife, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

00:14:28.000 Percy Shelley, of course, is a very famous romantic poet.

00:14:30.000 And here is what he wrote about Milton's devil.

00:14:32.000 Quote, Milton's devil as a moral being is far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose, which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture.

00:14:41.000 So what exactly is the purpose of Satan?

00:14:43.000 And when you look at Paradise Lost, what exactly is Satan's purpose?

00:14:47.000 The answer is not that Satan seeks to do something good for others.

00:14:50.000 He explicitly acknowledges he's not doing anything good for others.

00:14:53.000 His purpose is, I refuse to be bossed around.

00:14:55.000 I refuse to abide by standards of good and true that I don't personally enjoy or personally like.

00:15:01.000 I prefer to rule myself than to be ruled by something that is good and true and good for other people.

00:15:08.000 And so in order to see Satan as a sort of hero, what you have to do is see society and its rules and religion and its strictures.

00:15:17.000 As a, as a, a chain upon you.

00:15:19.000 Something you have to wear.

00:15:20.000 And this is exactly what Shelley said.

00:15:22.000 The reason that he really saw Satan as a hero is because he hated religion.

00:15:25.000 He saw the strictures of religion and the rules and roles that are created by religion as inherently bad.

00:15:30.000 He said, religion and morality as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude.

00:15:34.000 The genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God.

00:15:38.000 Your man can read the inscription on his heart.

00:15:40.000 How would morality dressed up in the stiff stays and finery start from her own disgusting image? 1.00

00:15:44.000 Should she look in the mirror of nature?

00:15:47.000 He's talking about how the only thing that you should be answerable to is your own sense of happiness.

00:15:50.000 It sounds incredibly modern.

00:15:52.000 Percy Shelley is writing at the beginning of the 19th century and this sounds really, really modern.

00:15:56.000 He's talking about how the only thing that you should be answerable to is your own sense of happiness.

00:16:00.000 And if that happiness can only be achieved by casting off all societal rules, all responsibilities to other people, all goods that actually achieve good and happy for enormous numbers of people, If the only way to achieve your own sense of happiness in the moment, your own sense of sexual joy in the moment, is to throw away everything else, you throw away everything else.

00:16:19.000 And that's why Satan is the good guy.

00:16:21.000 This is why, for example, Percy Shelley was a big advocate of the idea that all sexual unions between two people should end as soon as some sort of obligation that makes you feel bad about yourself attaches.

00:16:31.000 So he said, quote, If happiness be the object of morality, if all human unions and disunion, if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, Then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties and is naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits.

00:16:51.000 There is nothing immoral in the separation.

00:16:52.000 In other words, marriage is bad because marriage requires you to stick with a person for whom you may not have a joyous feeling at the moment.

00:16:59.000 At the very instant when your pleasurable sensations mitigate at that very instant, You are now allowed to, and not only allowed, you should be obligated by Percy Shelley's moral system to break all the ties that bind, to throw away your morality, throw away your sense of responsibility.

00:17:15.000 And that's what you're seeing at the Grammys. 0.96

00:17:16.000 What you're seeing at the Grammys is the dumbed down, incredibly stupid version of what Percy Shelley is saying in the early 19th century. 0.99

00:17:24.000 He's basically saying that morality, religion, rules, all of that stuff is bad. 0.99

00:17:29.000 True happiness is the thing that lies within.

00:17:31.000 And that's why Satan is the good guy.

00:17:32.000 Satan is good because Satan encourages you to worship yourself.

00:17:36.000 Satan, he wants you to worship him, but the way that you worship him is first you worship yourself.

00:17:41.000 You are basically the conduit for Satan.

00:17:43.000 Worshipping your sense of sexual joy, worshipping your sense of subjective happiness at the expense of everyone else, at the expense of broader standards of morality, or true, or good, or beautiful.

00:17:55.000 If you can do all those things, then Satan is standing right behind that.

00:18:00.000 That's always the case, by the way, that religion is made. 0.97

00:18:02.000 And so what's happened now is that true Satan worshipers, I don't mean people who are like going in the back room and killing chickens or something, but people who worship that idea, they've now embraced it and done so openly instead of holding satanic rituals on national television.

00:18:15.000 And they're out there basically saying, you're right.

00:18:18.000 You're right.

00:18:18.000 You say that my selfishness is backed by Satan.

00:18:21.000 You're right.

00:18:21.000 And you know what?

00:18:22.000 Satan is the guy I like.

00:18:23.000 I'm into it.

00:18:24.000 He's great.

00:18:26.000 Now again, there are people on the left going to say, why are you making a big deal out of this?

00:18:28.000 We're just tweaking you.

00:18:29.000 That's the whole point.

00:18:30.000 We know you're tweaking us.

00:18:31.000 We're aware.

00:18:32.000 We're aware that you're attempting to offend.

00:18:34.000 And it's not that I'm offended as much as I think it is a very, very clear view into who you are if you think that this sort of thing is good.

00:18:43.000 By the way, they think that this is good for children.

00:18:45.000 If you think that this is just directed at adults, you are wrong.

00:18:47.000 It is directly attempting to reach children.

00:18:50.000 Because that's what pop culture does. 0.93

00:18:51.000 Pop culture is popular culture.

00:18:54.000 It's about reaching as many human beings as possible.

00:18:56.000 This is not for a cadre of sort of elite post-grad doctoral dissertation aesthetes.

00:19:03.000 That's not what this is for.

00:19:04.000 This is for popular culture.

00:19:05.000 They know it bleeds down to kids, and they think it's an act of good that it bleeds down to kids.

00:19:09.000 They think that your kids should be indoctrinated in worship of the self, which is the pathway to Satan, and they're fine with that.

00:19:15.000 They want that.

00:19:16.000 The reason they want that is because then they feel liberated.

00:19:19.000 Because, after all, if all the societal strictures go away, then you feel accepted.

00:19:23.000 You feel accepted by all the other selfish people who are mostly concerned with what they feel on the inside.

00:19:28.000 Now with their obligations to others, now with the standards of morality that create a thriving society with social fabric and a sense of belonging, Then they feel amazing about themselves, but only if they can hijack your kids into feeling the same way about themselves that they feel about themselves.

00:19:42.000 And then we'll all have an agreement.

00:19:44.000 You do whatever you do.

00:19:45.000 I'll do whatever I do.

00:19:46.000 And we won't have any sense of social solidarity, except that we all hate the religious people who keep saying this thing about how there's standards of true and right behavior that are good and worth pursuing.

00:19:57.000 That is the goal here.

00:19:58.000 And how mainstream is all this?

00:19:59.000 As I mentioned before, the current president of the United States, Dr. Joe Biden, was at the Grammys.

00:20:03.000 I mean, she's she's there.

00:20:04.000 She is part of this cultural milieu.

00:20:07.000 Ladies and gentlemen, the first lady of the United States, Jill Biden.

00:20:10.000 America!

00:20:12.000 America, America, may God thy glory shine.

00:20:25.000 King of success.

00:20:32.000 His politics is religion, religion is politics, and all of it is worship of the self.

00:20:37.000 .

00:20:38.000 There she is, the greatest of all doctors, Jill Biden. 0.82

00:20:42.000 Not only can she heal a heart attack with an education degree, but also she is there to celebrate along with some of the most transgressive perverts in America. 0.99

00:20:51.000 That is, who are attempting to create culture that will bleed down to your children.

00:20:55.000 That's what she's there for.

00:20:57.000 It's amazing.

00:20:58.000 If the left can say, and a tribute to, you know, right-wing political figures, whatever viewpoints are held by whatever events they attend, when you have people like Joe Biden attending events where there's a full satanic performance, you have to wonder why this has become so acceptable for the first lady of the United States and Ersatz president, because again, the president of the United States is no longer sentient and she's got her hand on his hand signing bills, like Edith Wilson circa 1919.

00:21:25.000 In just one second, we'll get to the broader attempt by our culture to indoctrinate your kids into particular ideological cults.

00:21:31.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:21:32.000 First, it's been a rough few years for business.

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00:22:36.000 Okay.

00:22:36.000 So.

00:22:38.000 If there is a cultural movement to hijack your kids, and it exists in pop culture, it exists in education, it exists in music, it exists in children's entertainment.

00:22:49.000 There's a tweet that went out yesterday that I found particularly kind of evocative of what it is that so many on the left wish to achieve.

00:22:58.000 This is a tweet that went out from a person named Kat Tenbarge.

00:23:02.000 Kat Tenbarge is a self-proclaimed journalist. 0.99

00:23:05.000 She's good at the journalism.

00:23:07.000 And she's a tech and culture reporter for NBC News.

00:23:11.000 Tech and culture reporter.

00:23:12.000 And she suggested that You should not be able to raise your own kids.

00:23:18.000 The state should raise your kids. 0.51

00:23:20.000 Quote, parents can teach sex ed to their kids, unquote.

00:23:23.000 Can parents name every STD and how they're transmitted?

00:23:26.000 Can they teach you how to identify date rape drugs?

00:23:28.000 Can they define pelvic floor?

00:23:30.000 And more importantly, would they?

00:23:32.000 Parents teaching kids backward ideas about sex or not teaching them at all is how we ended up with all these problems.

00:23:38.000 So question, what are the problems she's talking about?

00:23:41.000 Really, which problems are we discussing here?

00:23:43.000 Are we talking about Are we talking about problems of ignorance about pelvic floors, or are we really talking about problems of radically increased teen suicidal ideation, social contagions, and teens identifying as insane sexual and gender categories that do not even exist?

00:23:59.000 Are we talking about a 40% out-of-wedlock birth rate in the United States?

00:24:04.000 Are we talking about a crisis of loneliness and confusion among young people?

00:24:08.000 Because that ain't parents.

00:24:10.000 That is a culture dedicated to those propositions.

00:24:11.000 But the idea from our cultural betters is that you as a parent should be removed from a position of power in your own child's life.

00:24:18.000 You should be removed from a position of teaching morality.

00:24:21.000 There's a reason why left-wing moral theoreticians I've always suggested that the family needs to be broken.

00:24:28.000 Religious community needs to be broken. 1.00

00:24:29.000 The places where you normally imbibed your morality, the places that were the traditional sources of wisdom and knowledge handed down over the course of centuries, they needed to be broken so that the individual could be liberated.

00:24:38.000 And by liberated, we mean chained to the animalistic side of ourselves and freed of any obligation.

00:24:44.000 That's what we actually mean when we say liberated.

00:24:48.000 This notion that the state should be the great teacher of you because the state is going to be amazing at teaching your kids about STDs.

00:24:54.000 That's really the important thing.

00:24:58.000 State advocates have crippled several generations of kids with their perverse morality, suggesting, of course, that sexual pleasure lies at the top of the hierarchical pyramid of values.

00:25:10.000 And yet this is what they dictate.

00:25:12.000 Our cultural betters suggest this.

00:25:13.000 Joe Biden is at the Grammys.

00:25:14.000 You got people in the public school system saying that it is an obligation, an obligation to remove you from any level of moral standing with your kids.

00:25:22.000 In fact, you may be a threat to your kids.

00:25:23.000 This is what lies behind so many attempts by places like the state of California to basically suggest that if a kid goes into school and starts expressing gender confusion, kids should be socially transitioned at school and parents never told because parents are the threat.

00:25:34.000 The state is the savior.

00:25:36.000 They must indoctrinate your kids in their own sense of morality.

00:25:39.000 It's the state, it's the education system in this country.

00:25:43.000 It is pop culture.

00:25:44.000 And it's also even kids TV.

00:25:46.000 And it bleeds down to the view of history.

00:25:47.000 Because remember, in order to erect a monument to the individual selfishness that the left wishes to pursue on a social level, what you have to do is you have to tear down the institutions that currently exist.

00:25:59.000 Those institutions, as we see at the Grammys, include religion.

00:26:02.000 As we see in that tweet, include the power of parents and family.

00:26:05.000 And they also include a belief in your country.

00:26:08.000 Because if all the social glues are dissolved, then we become a bunch of atomized individuals who are wandering around aimlessly and being obsessed with our own sense of personal sexual satisfaction.

00:26:20.000 So one of the ties that binds us, one of the glues that holds us together, is a belief in American history, for example.

00:26:25.000 A belief in nationalism.

00:26:27.000 If you were to go back to, say, 1950 or 1960, or to go into any small town community in the United States that has a level of social coherence, And cohesion?

00:26:36.000 What they'll tell you is a few things hold them together.

00:26:37.000 Family.

00:26:38.000 Religious community.

00:26:40.000 A sense of patriotism for the country.

00:26:43.000 If people can dissolve all of those things at the childhood level, they can finally erect a scaffolding that they have wanted to erect for a very long time.

00:26:49.000 A tower of Babel to the individual self.

00:26:52.000 Part of that, of course, is indoctrinating your kids in a perverse view of American history.

00:26:55.000 So, there's a clip that was going around over the weekend.

00:26:58.000 That was shocking to those who have never really watched Disney Plus or looked at much of the content that is being promoted on Disney Plus.

00:27:07.000 And there's a reason that we here at Daily Wire are dedicating $100 million over the next couple of years to produce children's content.

00:27:13.000 It's coming out in very short order, apparently not fast enough.

00:27:16.000 DW Kids is going to be a thing specifically because we wish to provide your kids a space where they can believe in traditional values and just learn about the world.

00:27:24.000 Because what the left wants to do is prey on your kids and shove into their brains terrible ideas about the country, about morality, about religion, about all the institutions, the intermediate institutions that make life both secure and worth living.

00:27:39.000 And so one of the shows that was doing this on Disney Plus is, of course, The Proud Family.

00:27:44.000 Here is a clip from The Proud Family that was making the rounds over the weekend.

00:27:46.000 It is just false history and nonsense, rage against America being taught to your small kids.

00:27:52.000 This country was built on slavery, which means slaves built this country. 0.96

00:27:57.000 Tilt this land from sea to sea to sea.

00:27:59.000 First there was rice, tobacco, sugarcane.

00:28:01.000 Then Whitney did his thing and Cotton became king.

00:28:03.000 And we were its soldiers, four million strong, fighting for America's freedoms even though we remained America's slaves.

00:28:09.000 Built this country, the descendants of slaves continue to be. 1.00

00:28:12.000 Slaves built this country. 1.00

00:28:14.000 And we, the descendants of slaves in America, have earned reparations for their suffering.

00:28:19.000 And continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in the systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.

00:28:28.000 Slaves built this country. 1.00

00:28:30.000 Not only field hands, but carpenters, mazes.

00:28:33.000 Blacksmiths, musicians.

00:28:34.000 Inventors built cities from Jamestown to New Orleans, Sabanaca, and Washington.

00:28:38.000 40 acres and a mule.

00:28:40.000 We'll take the 40 acres.

00:28:41.000 Keith and Mill, we made your families rich!

00:28:44.000 From the Southern Plantation heirs, to the Northern Bankers, to the New England ship owners, the Founding Fathers, former Presidents, current Senators, the Illuminati, the New World Order, slaves built this country! 0.89

00:28:55.000 We had Tubman, Turner, Frederick D, then they slayed Lincoln, freed the slaves, but slaves were men. 0.89

00:29:00.000 And women. 0.98

00:29:00.000 And only we can free ourselves. 0.98

00:29:02.000 Emancipation is not freedom.

00:29:04.000 Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, public schools feeding private prisons, where we become slaves again.

00:29:10.000 As we celebrate Juneteenth.

00:29:11.000 For the umpteenth time.

00:29:13.000 Our account is still outstanding.

00:29:15.000 Because this country was built on slavery, which means. 0.61

00:29:17.000 Slaves built this country. 1.00

00:29:19.000 And we demand our 40 acres and a mule.

00:29:22.000 Bump that.

00:29:23.000 You can keep the mule.

00:29:24.000 Keep the 40.

00:29:25.000 We're taking our freedom!

00:29:27.000 DUDE!

00:29:29.000 Thank you!

00:29:38.000 That is a false history of the United States. 0.80

00:29:41.000 This is basically just 1619 Project garbage. 0.97

00:29:44.000 It is bled down. 0.79

00:29:44.000 This is always how it works, is that all this garbage starts at the highest level of critical race theory in our universities, then it bleeds down to the people who write your shows, and then it's your kids who are now learning this in their schools, in a dumbed-down version of the 1619 Project, or on The Proud Family on Disney Channel. 0.79

00:29:58.000 First of all, the belief system that America was built on the back of slavery, as opposed to all other cultures ever. 0.86

00:30:04.000 That every institution of the United States is infused with slavery.

00:30:08.000 It's a lie.

00:30:10.000 The belief that it's Southern wealth that generated American prosperity is also a lie.

00:30:14.000 The South was an economic backwater compared to the North.

00:30:17.000 Slavery is actually very bad for the economy, as it turns out, which is what the South found out during the Civil War and the North kicked the hell out of them.

00:30:23.000 The belief system that people today are owed reparations for sins committed against their great, great, great, great, great grandparents And that every ill in American society today is attributable to slavery is an absurdity. 0.96

00:30:37.000 And yet this is the crap that they are now mainlining into your kids' heads through TV and making your kids hate the country. 0.97

00:30:43.000 I mean, I don't know how you emerge from that without your kid thinking our country is evil. 0.98

00:30:47.000 That, of course, is the entire point of that little woke retelling of American history, straight from Nikole Hannah-Jones and Howard Zinn.

00:30:54.000 The idea is America is bad. 0.88

00:30:55.000 The Founding Fathers, they were all evil slaveholders. 0.97

00:30:58.000 Lincoln didn't free the slaves. 0.86

00:31:00.000 Lincoln actually wasn't responsible.

00:31:01.000 We freed ourselves.

00:31:03.000 That might come as a surprise to the, you know, half a million people who died in the Civil War.

00:31:08.000 But again, this basic idea, which is that America is super bad, it's being mainlined.

00:31:14.000 You know who actually is the executive producer for this show, by the way.

00:31:19.000 The person who is involved in the making of this show is a person named LaToya Ravineau.

00:31:24.000 You'll remember LaToya Ravineau.

00:31:26.000 She's the executive producer for Disney Television Animation, and she was caught on tape just a few months ago saying, quote, in my little pocket of proud family Disney TVA, the showrunners were super welcoming to my not at all secret gay agenda.

00:31:39.000 Maybe it was that way in the past, but I guess something must have happened.

00:31:41.000 All the momentum that I felt, that sense of, I don't have to be afraid to have these two characters kiss in the background.

00:31:46.000 I was just, wherever I could, adding queerness. 0.69

00:31:48.000 No one would stop me.

00:31:49.000 No one was trying to stop me.

00:31:51.000 It's all part of a broader rubric, a broader agenda to indoctrinate your kids.

00:31:56.000 This is all part, you know, pretending that these are sort of individual incidents that are sort of cropping up here and there.

00:32:02.000 It's not right.

00:32:03.000 It's part of a broader It's a part of a broader intellectual framework that says the American institutions are bad.

00:32:11.000 Churches are bad.

00:32:12.000 Family is bad.

00:32:14.000 Worship thyself.

00:32:15.000 That's the only thing worth worshiping.

00:32:17.000 And maybe some tribal politics that allow you to gain power as an individual.

00:32:21.000 That's really what everything here is all about.

00:32:23.000 We'll get to Nicole Hannah-Jones bleeding this upward again, you know, back into the intelligentsia in just one second. 0.99

00:32:28.000 First, with everything going on in the world right now, I'm not getting as much sleep as I should.

00:32:32.000 I gotta tell you, last night was just a disaster area.

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00:33:33.000 Also, folks, I've got a timely and important book to share with you today.

00:33:36.000 New York Times best-selling author Heather MacDonald has teamed up with DW Books to bring you a powerful new book, When Race Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives, relevant to a lot of what we're talking about today.

00:33:49.000 Do you believe in fairness and merit?

00:33:50.000 Do you care about the future of our society and the institutions that actually shape it?

00:33:53.000 This book is for you because there are people out there We want to destroy all of those things.

00:33:57.000 When race trumps merit is the name of the book.

00:33:59.000 In it, Heather exposes the dangerous consequences of prioritizing race over merit in all aspects of society.

00:34:05.000 From science, to music, to law enforcement, our institutions are being eroded and destroyed in the name of equity.

00:34:09.000 The book takes a hard look at the impact of the left's pursuit of equity and how it's undermining meritocracy and putting our society at risk.

00:34:14.000 Heather provides a clear and sobering analysis on what is happening and what we can expect if we don't actually act.

00:34:20.000 Heather's done amazing work for years, debunking many of the myths that the left tries to pervade about systemic racism in the United States.

00:34:26.000 If you're interested in understanding the threats of Western civilization and fighting back, do not miss this essential book, When Race Trumps Merit. 0.55

00:34:32.000 It hits shelves April 18th.

00:34:33.000 You can pre-order your copy today at Amazon or wherever books are sold.

00:34:37.000 Also, yesterday, I released a brand new episode of my Sunday special.

00:34:40.000 It features a very special guest, Anna Kasparian.

00:34:42.000 Anna is a really nice person and a fascinating person.

00:34:45.000 She and I disagree on nearly everything from health care reform and labor unions to policies that have been a disaster for the state of California.

00:34:50.000 But it's a fascinating conversation.

00:34:52.000 We discuss our differences.

00:34:53.000 Check out the preview.

00:34:55.000 For Democrats, stop focusing on scaring people about the scary right-wing candidates and offer them real solutions that you're going to fight for.

00:35:06.000 I think that's the only long-lasting winning strategy for Democrats.

00:35:11.000 Are they going to do it?

00:35:12.000 No, because they're captured by the money.

00:35:18.000 This episode is now available to watch on Daily Wire Plus or listen to on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:35:25.000 Well, speaking of the indoctrination of our kids, obviously it's not just happening via The Proud Family on Disney Plus, although that is one reason why we've launched DW Kids.

00:35:32.000 That programming will be available in shorter.

00:35:34.000 It's just a great reason why you should subscribe at dailywireplus.com right now so that You can actually give your kids material that doesn't make them hate their country, or hate their family, or hate their religion, and all of the rest.

00:35:45.000 But it's also happening, obviously, in our institutions of higher learning.

00:35:48.000 It's part of a broader campaign to dissolve the societal glue that binds us together.

00:35:53.000 One of the lead figures in that is, of course, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the wildly over-celebrated pseudo-intellectual who put together the 1619 Project, a pack of lies predicated on the idea that every institution in American society is essentially racist and white supremacist.

00:36:07.000 Over the weekend, she was campaigning again for the 1619 Project because Hulu has gotten its institutional power behind this thing.

00:36:13.000 Again, remember, all the arbiters of culture are on the side of the people who like satanic celebrations at the Grammys.

00:36:19.000 I mean, that's what's happening right here.

00:36:21.000 So here, Hulu, they've dedicated presumably tens of millions of dollars to making a lie-filled project like the 1619 Project, promoted by a huckster like Nikole Hannah-Jones.

00:36:30.000 Here she was promoting this thing on another huckster network, MSNBC.

00:36:34.000 This is your country.

00:36:35.000 This is your native land.

00:36:36.000 You built this country.

00:36:38.000 Your ancestors built this country.

00:36:40.000 And in some ways, it is a very patriotic book, just like the 1619 Project is unintentionally patriotic.

00:36:48.000 Unintentionally patriotic. 0.99

00:36:49.000 By unintentionally patriotic, what she means is her entire project is America sucks. 0.96

00:36:53.000 But the good things about America we're responsible for. 0.92

00:36:55.000 And by we, she means like progressive leftists on racial matters.

00:37:00.000 You weren't doing any such thing.

00:37:01.000 suggested that to oppose critical race theory, which again is the theory that that she essentially purveys in dumbed down fashion, that is a propaganda campaign because true American history is a story of suffering and evil.

00:37:10.000 You weren't doing any such thing.

00:37:12.000 You were saying, let's look at American history in a broader context.

00:37:17.000 Absolutely.

00:37:17.000 So, I mean, we should just call the anti-critical race theory campaign what it is.

00:37:21.000 It's a propaganda campaign, right?

00:37:23.000 It was a stoking division for political gain.

00:37:27.000 Because, obviously, both critical race theory, the actual critical race theory, and the 1619 Project are not talking about individuals.

00:37:35.000 We are talking about systems.

00:37:38.000 Yes, that's the whole point.

00:37:40.000 By the way, stoking hatred for political gain is the name of her autobiography.

00:37:46.000 Nicole Hannah-Jones.

00:37:47.000 What a joke she is. 1.00

00:37:47.000 Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars. 1.00

00:37:50.000 He was on Fox News debunking the 1619 Project over the weekend.

00:37:54.000 Overall, your thought of the book and the Oprah-sponsored series?

00:37:58.000 Well, the book is a shameless compilation of misstatements, misrepresentations of the American past.

00:38:07.000 Like any other historian, I'm in favor of teaching African-American history, but I would like to see it taught accurately and well.

00:38:17.000 All of this bleeds down into actual policy as well.

00:38:20.000 We are swimming in an ocean of left-wing ideology that promotes the dissolution of all the ties that bind us together, obviously.

00:38:28.000 And what that means is that even basic standards of societal decency have been undermined.

00:38:32.000 One of the big projects, for example, of the Biden administration, this is in the very early days of the Biden administration, is in June of 2021, the Biden administration announced that they would like to redo how school discipline is done, to take an example.

00:38:43.000 Why?

00:38:43.000 Well, it turns out that a disproportionate number of kids who are subjected to school discipline, like being suspended or expelled, are black.

00:38:50.000 The reason for that is because unfortunately a disproportionate number of kids who are misbehaving in class in ways that require them to be removed from the classroom are black. 0.93

00:38:58.000 But the Department of Education was not willing to say that. 0.77

00:39:01.000 They didn't even establish any sort of data baseline.

00:39:03.000 Instead the idea was that if there's any disparity between white suspension rates and black suspension rates, well then It must be systemic racism in the mold of Nicole Hannah-Jones or Ibram X. Kendi.

00:39:12.000 Anytime there is a discrepancy, anytime there's a disparity, that means there has been some sort of systemic discrimination.

00:39:17.000 So all the way back in June of 2021, the agency announced that it planned to seek public comment on discipline in school climate and quote, how best to support and build schools capacity to promote positive, inclusive, safe and supportive school climates in a non-discriminatory manner.

00:39:31.000 Again, the idea being that the only way to end discrimination in schools is to make sure that kids don't get expelled or suspended anymore.

00:39:41.000 And what this has led to is an artificial attempt to close racial gaps in suspensions and reduce the use of suspensions in general over the course of the last couple of years.

00:39:53.000 The result has been in many cases that you have kids who are acting horribly in class and who are ruining the educational experience for pretty much everybody else.

00:40:02.000 And even critics of the current disparities will acknowledge that there is no data, like they've not even bothered to gather data on whether the discrepancy is due to a difference in behavior.

00:40:12.000 Brookings Institute had a piece over the weekend talking about it, said, despite positive changes, racial disproportionality in school discipline persists.

00:40:19.000 Why is it so hard to close such gaps? What are we missing?

00:40:21.000 A close look at research articles and policy debates on this topic suggests researchers and policy makers have been almost exclusively focusing on the end result of discipline suspensions.

00:40:29.000 But there's been no attention given to referral and reporting processes.

00:40:33.000 But here's the thing.

00:40:34.000 They say that the data don't even include, like they don't bother to include, how the kids are actually behaving before they are suspended.

00:40:47.000 Quote, it is challenging to tease out the mechanism because researchers almost never observe the underlying student behavior of an infraction.

00:40:54.000 Well, then how can you tell whether it's disparity or discrimination?

00:40:57.000 How can you tell?

00:40:59.000 The reason this has real-world consequences, of course, is because this now bleeds over into media coverage of situations in which school discipline is absolutely necessary.

00:41:06.000 So there was a video that was going around over the weekend, and it is a shocking video that was going around over the weekend, and it showed two kids who are black, they're boys, and they're beating the living hell, I mean really beating the living hell, apparently out of a brother and a sister in Homestead, Florida.

00:41:27.000 Here's a bit of the video, it's really disturbing.

00:41:29.000 It's just boys pummeling.

00:41:42.000 And for 40 seconds, 45 seconds, no adult doing anything.

00:41:46.000 These boys just pummeling this kid.

00:41:48.000 Now, the reason that I bring this up is because there are media headlines that came out.

00:41:52.000 They were very reticent to talk about the race of the people who were involved.

00:41:56.000 Whereas, obviously, if the races were reversed, then that would be a major news story.

00:41:59.000 In fact, there was one particular news story that was making the rounds on the internet, in which they used a stock photo of a kid punching another kid, and the kid punching the other kid was white.

00:42:07.000 According to the WSVN network in South Miami-Dade, Florida, disturbing videos of a school bus beating shows two children, who are brother and sister, being pounded by their peers, prompting the victim's mother to take action.

00:42:18.000 In the bus riding beating, the 9-year-old girl can be seen bent down in her seat as a teen stood over her and delivered a barrage of blows.

00:42:24.000 Another video showed her 10-year-old brother being beaten while on the same school bus.

00:42:27.000 The girl suffered bruises on her head, back, and shoulders, leaving her parents fuming and full of questions about how this could have happened to their children.

00:42:34.000 The victim's father said, at the same time my daughter was getting beaten, the same thing was happening to my son on the other side of the bus.

00:42:39.000 The parents said this is not the first time their daughter and son have been targeted.

00:42:42.000 They said they've been bullied at school since they started in January.

00:42:47.000 The children's mother said, I've been to the school.

00:42:48.000 I've spoken with counselors, principals, assistants, other principals.

00:42:52.000 An assistant principal wrote us and she said, I think it's time you take your kids out of the school.

00:42:55.000 Our kids aren't the problem, said the kid's father.

00:42:58.000 They love to learn.

00:42:58.000 It's sad that something they enjoy is becoming something that they are fearing now.

00:43:02.000 Now they've pulled the kids out of the school.

00:43:06.000 Again, the only thing that should matter is the safety of kids in school.

00:43:09.000 But when equity concerns begin to play a role in how we actually discipline children, we got a major problem on our hands.

00:43:16.000 And that goes to broader perceptions of society, broader ideology, ideological rubrics have an impact on real world situations.

00:43:23.000 This is just one example of that.

00:43:25.000 Meanwhile, in other news over the weekend, the Biden administration finally authorized the shoot down of that Chinese spy balloon.

00:43:25.000 Okay.

00:43:33.000 So as you'll recall, in the middle of last week, it became apparent there was a giant Chinese spy balloon that was floating over Montana. 0.99

00:43:41.000 And many of us were like, just shoot the damn thing down. 0.97

00:43:43.000 There are no people in Montana. 1.00

00:43:43.000 It's in Montana. 1.00

00:43:44.000 Have you ever been in Montana?

00:43:46.000 There's like seven people and 100 cows in Montana.

00:43:49.000 Just shoot it down.

00:43:50.000 This is a perfectly obvious thing to do.

00:43:52.000 And you'll also recall at the time, like on Friday, there are a bunch of people who emerged from the left to say, no, we can't shoot it down.

00:43:58.000 I mean, if Joe Biden isn't shooting it down, that's because he's a very wise man.

00:44:00.000 And as a very wise man, he wouldn't shoot down the balloon.

00:44:04.000 So they brought out retired General Wesley Clark, for example, on Friday.

00:44:07.000 Say, we don't want to destroy the balloon.

00:44:08.000 Why should we?

00:44:09.000 No, we can't destroy the balloon.

00:44:12.000 This is a substantial payload.

00:44:14.000 There's no telling what's in there.

00:44:15.000 This is much bigger than what you have on a normal spy satellite, the kind that we use.

00:44:21.000 This is this is massive stuff.

00:44:23.000 So yes, there was some concern about the bring it down.

00:44:25.000 But I think also, we want to make sure when we bring it down, we bring it down the right way.

00:44:30.000 And we've got the chance to exploit what's there.

00:44:34.000 So we don't want to just smash everything and have nothing but pieces of chips and transistors there.

00:44:40.000 What we want is to take it down in such a way we can go out and grab it, look at what's in there.

00:44:46.000 Maybe there's something to learn from it.

00:44:50.000 Yeah, and the best way to do that is to drop it into the ocean, as it turns out.

00:44:54.000 James Clapper, the pathetic former head of the CIA, he says, you know, I'm inclined to believe the Chinese when they say that this balloon just wandered. 0.98

00:45:00.000 It was a weather balloon that wandered. 0.75

00:45:01.000 Uh-huh.

00:45:02.000 Uh-huh.

00:45:03.000 This guy was the head of the, he was the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence.

00:45:06.000 He also lied to Congress, so there's that.

00:45:09.000 And it seems to continue to drift.

00:45:11.000 So what kind of conversations are happening right now at the Pentagon involving U.S.

00:45:16.000 intelligence agencies as well in the White House?

00:45:20.000 Well, I think for sure the discussion, one item of interest to me, which I'm sure is under discussion, is exactly what is the sensor suite on this balloon?

00:45:34.000 I'm kind of inclined to believe the Chinese that this thing, this errant, had wandered off course. 1.00

00:45:43.000 I think they haven't been entirely forthcoming with what's on it in the way of the sensor suite.

00:45:49.000 Oh, but he believes them that it just sort of, you know, drifted off course.

00:45:52.000 It wasn't intended to do that. 1.00

00:45:54.000 I love it when our intelligence officials are as dumb as James Clyde. 1.00

00:45:57.000 Anyway, Friday, this was the story. 1.00

00:46:00.000 Why?

00:46:00.000 We can't shoot it down.

00:46:01.000 I mean, and all you people, you're warmongers, people who want to shoot it down.

00:46:04.000 So Saturday, the military shot down this thing.

00:46:07.000 They waited for it to drift over the entire continental United States.

00:46:10.000 It went all the way from Montana.

00:46:13.000 All the way across, over South Carolina and out into the ocean.

00:46:17.000 And then, we unleash an F-22 and with one shot, knock down this balloon.

00:46:22.000 Here's what that looked like.

00:46:24.000 Balloon shot down Saturday afternoon by a single missile from an F-22 fighter jet.

00:46:30.000 Here we go!

00:46:31.000 Boom! 0.99

00:46:32.000 Oh my gosh, it's going straight through.

00:46:41.000 America!

00:46:44.000 Flying over several sensitive military sites, US officials tell NBC News they took action to weaken China's surveillance capabilities.

00:46:51.000 So this obviously created a lot of opportunities for fantastic memes.

00:46:56.000 Elon Musk tweeted out, one such meme is a, for those who can't see it, it is a graphic of the movie Up with the giant cluster of balloons in the house and then a giant explosion coming through the balloons.

00:47:10.000 My personal favorite meme to emerge from this was a tweet from the account ChineseSpyBalloon, quote, I have information that will lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton.

00:47:18.000 That joke's never going to get old to me.

00:47:23.000 Anyway, the shift in time is really fascinating because again, on Friday it was like, why would you tell Joe Biden that he's a coward for not shooting down the balloon?

00:47:31.000 We're not going to shoot down the balloon.

00:47:32.000 We can't shoot down the balloon. 0.98

00:47:33.000 Only a fool would want to shoot down the balloon. 0.95

00:47:36.000 And then on Saturday, Joe Biden emerges like a groundhog from his hidey hole to explain that he actually gave the order to shoot it down on Wednesday. 0.99

00:47:43.000 Here it was.

00:47:44.000 Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible.

00:47:49.000 They decided without doing damage to anyone on on the ground.

00:47:54.000 They decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water outside within our within 12 mile limit.

00:48:01.000 They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it and we'll have more to report on this a little later.

00:48:10.000 Thank you.

00:48:11.000 So we went from, how dare you imply that Joe Biden is a coward for not shooting it down, to dark Brandon shot down the balloon in the course of like 24 hours.

00:48:22.000 Just swivel on a dime.

00:48:23.000 So a few things about this.

00:48:24.000 First, he says he gave the order on Wednesday to shoot it down.

00:48:26.000 Why not just come out and say, I've given the order to shoot this thing down.

00:48:29.000 We don't think it's safe right now.

00:48:30.000 We've already jammed all of the signals.

00:48:31.000 So don't worry about it.

00:48:32.000 We're going to shoot it down where it's safe.

00:48:34.000 Why don't you just do that?

00:48:36.000 The answer is, he didn't do that.

00:48:37.000 Are you kidding me?

00:48:38.000 There's no way the president gave an order on Wednesday to shoot the thing down and then just sat around for five days or four days waiting for this thing to drift all the way over every sensitive military installation in the United States and then across the water.

00:48:50.000 It's just nonsense. 1.00

00:48:52.000 It's just garbage. 1.00

00:48:53.000 Even former Obama Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was like, hey, you should have just shot it down. 0.99

00:48:56.000 I'm like, well, what? 1.00

00:48:57.000 This is stupid. 0.98

00:48:59.000 I hope in the future we make clear to China that This kind of incident cannot happen again, and it will not happen again. 0.98

00:49:09.000 That in the future, if we see that kind of balloon, we are going to, if they don't take action to prevent that balloon from entering our airspace, that we will indeed shoot it down much earlier than we did this time around.

00:49:24.000 And I think if I have you straight, you're saying that you think this should have been shot down perhaps over Montana, something like that, maybe over a sparsely populated area.

00:49:33.000 That's where I think before it crossed over the entire, almost the entire continental US.

00:49:39.000 Yeah, that bothered me that it was allowed to transverse the entire country.

00:49:48.000 That's amazing.

00:49:49.000 It's amazing.

00:49:50.000 Look at the map.

00:49:51.000 There's Montana.

00:49:52.000 By the way, we never would have found out about this if it had not been perfectly obvious a giant balloon was hovering over the United States, run by the Chinese Wizard of Oz or something, in Reed Point, Montana.

00:50:03.000 And then it went all the way across the United States, like through Missouri, and then across North Carolina, and then into South Carolina, and then finally we shoot it over the water.

00:50:12.000 And Joe Biden's like, his fans are like, man, this guy's a genius.

00:50:16.000 He's amazing at this.

00:50:17.000 He's just incredible at this.

00:50:20.000 As Tom Cotton says, China tested Joe Biden.

00:50:21.000 He failed dramatically here.

00:50:23.000 That happens to be correct.

00:50:24.000 Here's the senator.

00:50:25.000 What began as a spy balloon has become a trial balloon, testing President Biden's strength and resolve.

00:50:32.000 And unfortunately, the president failed that test.

00:50:36.000 And that's dangerous for the American people.

00:50:38.000 The president was paralyzed for an entire week by a balloon.

00:50:43.000 We should have shot this balloon down over the Aleutian Islands.

00:50:46.000 We should never have allowed it to transit the entire continental United States.

00:50:53.000 Uh, well, yes, obviously.

00:50:55.000 So I mean, listen, everyone understands we should have shot down this balloon before it went across the entire continental United States.

00:51:00.000 But what is really amazing is the attempt by, quote, unnamed defense officials to cover up the extent of this botchery.

00:51:07.000 It's kind of an amazing thing.

00:51:09.000 So over the weekend, unnamed defense officials on a background call, they released the entire transcript of the background call.

00:51:13.000 I'm not sure I've ever seen a lot of stuff like this.

00:51:16.000 Defense officials speaking on background, but the entire text of the call is read out.

00:51:20.000 So you can't actually blame anybody.

00:51:21.000 And here is what they said, quote, PRC government surveillance balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration, and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time.

00:51:32.000 We spoke directly with Chinese officials through multiple channels, but rather than address their intrusion into our airspace, the PRC put out an explanation that lacked any credibility.

00:51:40.000 The PRC has claimed publicly the high altitude balloon operating above the United States is a weather balloon that was blown off course.

00:51:44.000 This is false.

00:51:45.000 This is a PRC surveillance balloon.

00:51:47.000 This surveillance balloon purposefully traversed the United States and Canada.

00:51:50.000 We are confident it was seeking to monitor sensitive military sites.

00:51:53.000 Its route over the United States near many potential sensitive sites contradicts the PRC government's explanation that it was a weather balloon.

00:51:59.000 So it wasn't blown off course.

00:52:00.000 It was going around like all of the sensitive sites in the United States.

00:52:03.000 But here's the thing.

00:52:04.000 They dropped this quote-unquote piece of news, which is that all these weather balloons have been traversing American airspace for a long time. 0.98

00:52:11.000 The reason they dropped that, of course, is to take the focus off of Joe Biden, because if Joe Biden is uniquely incapable of shooting down a damned balloon, then that's a problem for him. 0.66

00:52:20.000 So instead, it's, well, you know, it happened under Trump, too. 0.53

00:52:22.000 It happened under Trump, and this became a talking point for the media.

00:52:24.000 It happened under Trump, too.

00:52:25.000 It kept happening under Trump.

00:52:26.000 And so this is nothing new.

00:52:27.000 Joe Biden is a hero.

00:52:28.000 He's a hero of the republic.

00:52:31.000 Well, there's only one problem with that.

00:52:35.000 Apparently, according to Politico, this information never even made it to Trump.

00:52:39.000 Why?

00:52:39.000 Because what happened is these weather balloons, or these Chinese spy satellite balloons, they basically traversed so quickly and in such small fashion that it never even made it up the chain.

00:52:49.000 That's not the same thing as a balloon sitting and traversing the entire continental United States over the course of a week.

00:52:57.000 That is not the same thing.

00:52:59.000 Five senior Trump administration officials told Politico they were never told of any such incident occurring while they were in office.

00:53:05.000 Trump said this never happened.

00:53:06.000 It would never have happened.

00:53:08.000 A Trump administration national security official said, I'm not aware of a single civilian national security leader from the Trump administration who even heard of this.

00:53:16.000 So the Defense Department is trying to cover for Joe Biden by demanding that we see a similarity between incidents that were so unserious they were never reported up chain.

00:53:25.000 And a giant Chinese spy balloon flying across the entirety of the United States.

00:53:32.000 No, guys, no, but it just shows you the quote unquote deep state, the number of career employees and executive branch agencies who are out there defending people like Joe Biden.

00:53:42.000 It's really astonishing.

00:53:44.000 And this became the talking point of media.

00:53:47.000 The representative Michael Waltz, a House Armed Services Committee member, tweeted on Sunday, the Pentagon had informed him several Chinese balloon incidents had happened in the past few years, including over Florida.

00:53:56.000 According to several Trump administration national security officials, they were never even informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon.

00:54:01.000 The only other similar time an airship appeared with Biden in the White House was last February near Hawaii.

00:54:07.000 But apparently these events were not even discovered in real time.

00:54:10.000 A senior administration official said the events went undetected.

00:54:12.000 So this isn't the same thing at all.

00:54:14.000 So you are trying to create a false perception that a similar thing happened under Trump.

00:54:18.000 What actually happened under Trump?

00:54:20.000 Apparently, the Chinese spy balloons traversed briefly into U.S.

00:54:24.000 airspace over the United States and then went away.

00:54:27.000 And we found about it afterward.

00:54:29.000 How is that in any way similar to Joe Biden knows there is a giant spy balloon hovering above the United States for days at a time, does nothing and then shoots it down when it gets over the water?

00:54:39.000 It's not the same thing at all, but it gave the media their talking point.

00:54:42.000 That's all they need.

00:54:42.000 They're the Praetorian Guard.

00:54:44.000 All they care about is defending Joe Biden.

00:54:45.000 That is their favorite thing in life.

00:54:47.000 By the way, what exactly are these spy balloons doing?

00:54:51.000 Well, it turns out that a few years ago, the United States military was conducting wide area surveillance tests across six Midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons.

00:55:00.000 Apparently, what they do is they essentially provide real-time technology that shows in granular detail, like better than a space satellite, what exactly is happening on the ground.

00:55:11.000 And so that's exactly what China was doing right here.

00:55:14.000 Pete Buttigieg was, of course, deployed to talk about this.

00:55:17.000 Again, I'm not sure why is Pete Buttigieg the Secretary of Transportation?

00:55:21.000 The dude can't even get the railroads running on time.

00:55:25.000 And yet, he is on national TV talking about a Chinese balloon.

00:55:29.000 Shouldn't it be someone from the Defense Department?

00:55:30.000 Like, doesn't anyone work at this administration?

00:55:34.000 Apparently not.

00:55:35.000 So, Pete Buttigieg is deployed.

00:55:36.000 Presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg.

00:55:38.000 And he says, this was handled perfectly appropriately.

00:55:39.000 We did an amazing job.

00:55:42.000 Is it acceptable that there were eight days that the spy balloon was over the United States, then Canada, then again over the United States, from Idaho, Montana, all the way through to the Carolinas for day after day?

00:55:54.000 Well, as the U.S.

00:55:55.000 has communicated, it's not acceptable at all that China sent this object into our airspace.

00:56:01.000 But in terms of how to handle it?

00:56:03.000 That's something that was done based on assessment of the risks, making sure that there was no risk that outweighed the risks in terms of any damage that would come.

00:56:14.000 It was handled appropriately.

00:56:16.000 It was handled appropriately.

00:56:18.000 So Tapper follows up, Jake Tapper on CNN.

00:56:20.000 He's like, so the presumption is that the Chinese got some sort of data out of this thing.

00:56:25.000 Putin's just like, well, I'm just glad nobody was hurt.

00:56:26.000 Well, you just said it was handled appropriately and that the risks and rewards balanced out.

00:56:30.000 So which is it?

00:56:32.000 I do know that when the President gave the order to have this handled, the military gauged the different risks and the different benefits of different approaches, made the decisions that they did, brought this thing down without incident.

00:56:44.000 Right, but the presumption has got to be that the Chinese were able to gather intelligence hovering over the United States for day after day, especially over some of these sensitive sites.

00:56:52.000 I'm sure there's a similar presumption about what spy satellites do.

00:56:55.000 That is well outside of my lane.

00:56:57.000 I'm just glad that nobody was hurt as this thing came down.

00:57:02.000 Oh, well, that is the important thing.

00:57:04.000 It's not about people getting hurt.

00:57:06.000 It's about the president made a cowardly move to allow this thing to float all over the entire United States for like a week.

00:57:13.000 You can try to make these tepid defenses, but it just isn't going to work. 0.99

00:57:17.000 Now the Chinese, for their part, they're acting all offended that we shot down their dumb balloon. 1.00

00:57:21.000 According to ABC, China has expressed its strong dissatisfaction and protest against Washington's decision to shoot down its balloon, accusing it of overreacting and seriously violating international practice. 0.83

00:57:31.000 I didn't realize that shooting down spy balloons is now a violation of international practice.

00:57:36.000 China keeps lying and saying that it's a civilian weather aircraft that blew off course. 0.95

00:57:43.000 But all of this underscores the fact that our relationship with China is very fraught, that China is incredibly aggressive, and that, honestly, they kind of made the president look like a fool here. 0.61

00:57:53.000 I understand that everybody is celebrating that F-22 took down a balloon.

00:57:55.000 It doesn't seem like a fair competition, to be quite honest with you.

00:57:58.000 An F-22 should be able to take down a balloon.

00:58:01.000 But the real question is, why was an F-22 not deployed earlier to take down the balloon? 0.91

00:58:06.000 Before any of this happened and the answer, of course, is that Joe Biden is a weakling. 0.88

00:58:10.000 He's a weakling and he did not make a call. 0.66

00:58:12.000 He did not make a call on Wednesday. 0.85

00:58:13.000 And then the Pentagon said, well, we've got to wait for this thing to cross across 83 states and get all the way across the country and then take a right in Florida and move all the way back down across the Gulf of Mexico.

00:58:23.000 And like we need basically the Chinese need to see every single house in the United States before we shoot this thing down for safety. 1.00

00:58:29.000 I really don't think that's how this thing went.

00:58:32.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:58:35.000 Things I like today.

00:58:37.000 So if you wish to understand the relationship between China and the United States, there's a very good book by a foreign policy scholar named Elizabeth Economy.

00:58:44.000 It is titled The Third Revolution.

00:58:45.000 People ask me for book recommendations all the time.

00:58:47.000 This is, I think, the best book that I've read recently on what Xi Jinping is doing in China.

00:58:53.000 She makes the case that, essentially, Xi is pursuing a reassertion of the state in Chinese political and economic life at home and a more ambitious and expansive role for China abroad, exercising, quote, new levers of influence and power that others will have to learn to exploit and counter to protect and advance their own interests.

00:59:09.000 And she also makes the case that China has taken advantage of the openness of the United States and other market-based liberal democracies to further its economic interests and advance its political and cultural influence.

00:59:18.000 The threat of China is very, very real. 0.98

00:59:20.000 The fact that they are internally weak is actually more of a threat in many ways.

00:59:23.000 If they were internally strong, they might be able to sit there and just wait for time to take care of the problem.

00:59:26.000 The problem is that Xi Jinping has actually weakened his country economically, and that means he's going to have to get more aggressive on the foreign front.

00:59:32.000 And that is something that we should be watching out for.

00:59:35.000 With China being as aggressive as they are, We need to be radically increasing our military buildup, like, right now.

00:59:42.000 Because most of the areas that are most vulnerable happen to be geographically very, very close to China, and here I'm speaking specifically about Taiwan.

00:59:49.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:59:55.000 So this week, things that I hate.

00:59:58.000 The thing that I hate the most about the presidency is the State of the Union address.

01:00:00.000 I hate the State of the Union address.

01:00:01.000 Despise it.

01:00:02.000 It doesn't matter who the president is. 1.00

01:00:03.000 I think it's a monarchical garbage institution. 1.00

01:00:03.000 I hate it. 1.00

01:00:06.000 It's stupid. 1.00

01:00:07.000 I think we should go back to doing it the way that George Washington did. 0.99

01:00:10.000 And George Washington should just send, the president should just send a letter to the Congress and be like, everything's fine.

01:00:16.000 And then we should all move on with our lives.

01:00:19.000 But instead we get this ridiculous Royal spectacle of the president descending amid the cheering legislators, which of course completely reverses the constitutional bargain.

01:00:28.000 The constitutional bargain is that the legislature is supposed to be the powerful branch of government and the president is supposed to be secondary.

01:00:32.000 That's why Article 1 of the Constitution, I'm now educating Joe Biden's judicial picks.

01:00:36.000 Article 1 is about the legislature.

01:00:38.000 Article 2 is about the executive branch.

01:00:41.000 Article 3 is about the judiciary.

01:00:43.000 But the State of the Union address, it's always nonsense.

01:00:46.000 It's always annoying.

01:00:46.000 We have to cover it because a bunch of people watch it and they put it simultaneously on all the networks.

01:00:50.000 And we pretend that the basket of wishlist items that whichever the president is says that those things are going to get done.

01:00:56.000 We try to read the tea leaves as to what the president wants.

01:00:59.000 So Joe Biden is going to presumably make the case that he's doing an amazing job because this is what every president does.

01:01:05.000 And he is going to he's going to list his accomplishments.

01:01:09.000 Pete Buttigieg was being trotted out on the Sunday shows to try and discuss those accomplishments.

01:01:14.000 Here was the failed Secretary of Transportation.

01:01:17.000 He's got a lot of things to tell.

01:01:19.000 Why do you think that it has not penetrated the American public?

01:01:22.000 Well, these things don't sell themselves, and it's one of the reasons I'm really looking forward to that State of the Union address.

01:01:28.000 I will say that there have been so many accomplishments under this administration, it can be difficult to list them in a distilled way.

01:01:37.000 So many accomplishments.

01:01:38.000 So many.

01:01:39.000 Okay, so what are those accomplishments?

01:01:41.000 Presumably, you'll see Joe Biden talking about his magical economy.

01:01:44.000 And he's going to tout the fact that the jobs report from January came in really hot.

01:01:49.000 About half a million jobs or over.

01:01:51.000 Now, there's some statistical play in the numbers.

01:01:52.000 It may be that lower revisions from the last few months kind of got redistributed up into January.

01:01:58.000 You see this every so often.

01:02:00.000 In fact, it's not all that common at the end of the year or the beginning of a new year.

01:02:04.000 There's a bigger problem.

01:02:05.000 So monthly job growth, right?

01:02:07.000 They say it was really, really good last month, but it obviously has been slowing pretty significantly since the end of the pandemic.

01:02:16.000 What's more important is this particular job growth chart.

01:02:19.000 So there is a job growth chart showing where we would be if we had actually kept up with the job growth that was happening in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic.

01:02:32.000 If you look at this chart what you see is a steady upward line in terms of adjusted employment and it's going up it's going up and then we hit the pandemic and it drops off a cliff.

01:02:41.000 It drops from essentially 155 million people employed down to about 130 million people employed.

01:02:49.000 And then there's a fast increase.

01:02:51.000 It looks like what is going to be a V-shaped recovery.

01:02:53.000 It's going to come right back up to that line.

01:02:54.000 It doesn't even come close.

01:02:56.000 Instead, it sort of stops short and then it trails the line by a wide gap.

01:03:00.000 In other words, we have now finally reached the number of jobs that we had before the pandemic that are filled, but we're not even remotely close to where we would have been if we just had a natural continuation of economic growth without the pandemic.

01:03:13.000 And the reason for that, as you can see, the trajectory absolutely changes.

01:03:18.000 As Joe Biden takes office in 2021, you can see the trajectory move from what is a very sharp uptick to a much more gradual uptick in job creation.

01:03:25.000 And that's what we're about to see.

01:03:26.000 We're about to see some economic stagnation.

01:03:29.000 The inflation problem is not yet done.

01:03:31.000 As the Wall Street Journal observes, recent readings on wages and prices have markets increasingly optimistic that inflation can be brought down without a recession.

01:03:38.000 The Federal Reserve would love to agree, but it can't.

01:03:40.000 In its quarter percentage point rate increase on Wednesday, the accompanying statement and Chair Jerome Powell's press conference, the central bank made it clear its views had not changed.

01:03:47.000 Inflation is still too high and will not return to its 2% target without higher interest rates and a weaker labor market.

01:03:51.000 So all that sort of happy talk that you're going to see over the State of the Union, Beto Biden's doing an amazing job, and it's just great.

01:03:57.000 Everything is going to be happy talk.

01:03:58.000 It's all gonna be butterflies and rainbows.

01:04:01.000 That is not what the markets are saying right now.

01:04:03.000 And if they are, it's because, believe it or not, while there is weak market sufficiency, meaning like generalized knowledge in the markets, is gonna beat anybody who's sort of playing games.

01:04:14.000 The reality is that right now people are trying to read tea leaves and those tea leaves are not being read properly.

01:04:19.000 We're about to enter a period of economic stagnation.

01:04:22.000 Put it on the record now, I said this a year and a half ago.

01:04:25.000 is that inflation was not going to be the long-term problem for the United States.

01:04:27.000 Economic stagnation was going to be the long-term problem for the United States.

01:04:31.000 So take all of the happy talk you're going to get over the next couple of days with a grain of salt.

01:04:36.000 In fact, a chunk of salt.

01:04:37.000 In fact, maybe like an actual iceberg made of salt.

01:04:40.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.

01:04:42.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

01:04:43.000 We'll be talking with Peter Abagosian.

01:04:44.000 You'll remember him. 0.98

01:04:45.000 He's the professor who sent a bunch of ridiculous fake headlines to various university journals and they printed them all because the universities are nuts. 0.56

01:04:52.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

01:04:53.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 06, 2023

Getting Satanic At The Grammys | Ep. 1662

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