The Ben Shapiro Show - Goodbye, Roseanne | Ep. 549

00:00:00.000 Roseanne loses her sitcom after a racist tweet, Kim Kardashian heads to the White House, and we discuss the biggest news story nobody's talking about.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 Oh, and we are very excited to be back in our home studios here in Los Angeles.

00:00:16.000 By the way, if you have not yet gone and bought tickets to our events in Dallas and Phoenix, the tickets are selling out fast.

00:00:21.000 Those happen in August.

00:00:22.000 Go to dailywire.com slash events to check it out before I jump into the news.

00:00:26.000 And plenty of news there is, as always.

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00:01:38.000 I'm not going to say I told you so.

00:01:40.000 I'm not going to say I warned you.

00:01:42.000 I'm not going to say that I was the voice calling out in the wilderness, Roseanne is not a conservative.

00:01:47.000 Don't trust her.

00:01:49.000 Don't follow her.

00:01:50.000 No, don't come back.

00:01:51.000 Stop.

00:01:52.000 I won't say that I said any of those things.

00:01:54.000 I said all of those things, OK?

00:01:56.000 I told you! 1.00

00:01:57.000 OK, Roseanne's a crazy person. 1.00

00:01:58.000 Roseanne's been a crazy person for years. 0.98

00:02:00.000 She ran with Cindy Sheehan on one of these indie party nomination tickets. 0.99

00:02:05.000 She took a picture of herself with a Hitler mustache, putting little cookies in the oven that were supposed to be Jews. 1.00

00:02:11.000 OK, Roseanne is a crazy person. 1.00

00:02:13.000 She's been a crazy person for a long time. 0.99

00:02:15.000 And just because she's a crazy person who happens to like Trump a lot more than some other crazy people, that does not mean that she was ever an ally of conservatives. 0.98

00:02:22.000 Well, she demonstrated why it is bad to embrace volatile celebrities who happen to be crazy just yesterday when she decided it would be a great idea to start tweeting about Valerie Jarrett in the most insane possible way. 0.92

00:02:32.000 So here is what she tweeted about Valerie Jarrett.

00:02:34.000 Valerie Jarrett, of course, was the kind of unsung chief of staff to Barack Obama. 0.95

00:02:40.000 I am not a Valerie Jarrett fan. 0.90

00:02:41.000 I think Valerie Jarrett is an awful person. 1.00

00:02:43.000 But, Valerie Jarrett is also not what Roseanne says she is here.

00:02:47.000 Okay, so Roseanne says, 0.93

00:02:54.000 OK, so number one, that's disgusting.

00:02:58.000 That's horrifying. 1.00

00:03:00.000 You shouldn't be calling black people apes. 0.90

00:03:01.000 I mean, I thought there's basically one rule in the media that you cannot violate if you wish to survive. 0.79

00:03:06.000 And Roseanne Barr took that landmine and jumped on it with both feet. 1.00

00:03:09.000 And then just in case it didn't go off, she jumped on it again with both feet. 0.98

00:03:12.000 So she says she compares Valerie Jarrett to an ape, which is just disgusting and horrifying, especially given the long history in this country of comparing black people to apes, which is just awful and horrifying in every possible way. 0.96

00:03:24.000 And then Roseanne's show is dropped. 1.00

00:03:26.000 So she tweets this, and then her show dies, right?

00:03:28.000 So ABC pulls her show.

00:03:30.000 It was the number one sitcom on television, so they presumably lost some money on this thing.

00:03:34.000 But it wasn't like ABC didn't know that Roseanne was a crazy person when they hired her.

00:03:37.000 They knew the risks involved when they hired her.

00:03:39.000 They bought the ticket.

00:03:40.000 They took the ride.

00:03:41.000 And Roseanne provided them that ride.

00:03:43.000 We'll talk in a second about

00:03:44.000 When it is appropriate for corporations to crack down on so-called free speech.

00:03:49.000 I say so-called because free speech issues are really only implicated when the government is involved.

00:03:52.000 If the government cracks down on your free speech like Tommy Robinson in the UK, as we discussed yesterday, that's a free speech issue.

00:03:58.000 But when it's a private corporation taking a measure to protect its own products, I'm not quite sure it's the same thing.

00:04:04.000 In fact, I'm sure it's not the same thing.

00:04:05.000 In any case, Roseanne tweets this thing out.

00:04:08.000 Her career is over.

00:04:09.000 She's toast.

00:04:10.000 Goodbye to Roseanne.

00:04:11.000 And frankly, from my perspective, a little bit good riddance. 0.96

00:04:14.000 I understand a lot of conservatives were very happy that Roseanne's show did not treat Trump supporters as evil, nasty, terrible people. 0.96

00:04:21.000 The problem is that what Roseanne did just allowed the left to treat all Trump supporters as evil, nasty, terrible people. 0.90

00:04:25.000 Well, Chris Hayes, for example, over on MSNBC, he tweeted this out, this 15. 0.51

00:04:30.000 He tweeted out, quote, Now, he has no basis for saying this. 0.63

00:04:40.000 He has no basis for saying that a significant chunk of President Trump's base thinks that black people are apes or that Valerie Jarrett is a mashup of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.

00:04:48.000 He has no data to support this.

00:04:50.000 But it doesn't matter.

00:04:52.000 Roseanne just provided a crowbar for the left to whack people with, which is really just a wonderful thing to do.

00:04:59.000 And the left jumped on it with alacrity.

00:05:01.000 So Valerie Jarrett, of course, responded, and she responded by ripping into President Trump and talking about everyday racism in America. 1.00

00:05:07.000 I do have to point out that this clip from MSNBC is extraordinary for a couple of reasons.

00:05:13.000 One, I just want you to look at this panel.

00:05:15.000 Okay, look at this panel.

00:05:15.000 So you got Chris Hayes, right, who's the guy sitting right there who just said that Trump's base supports this kind of stuff.

00:05:22.000 And then next to him you have Joy Reid.

00:05:23.000 Okay, Joy Reid is a person who just a couple of weeks ago nearly lost her job because it turns out that she'd written a bunch of posts that were deemed homophobic and offensive and anti-semitic and all this stuff, and she claimed that she didn't write them, and then she claimed that she had amnesia, and she claimed that she was hacked.

00:05:41.000 OK, and Joy Reid is still sitting on the set now talking about the stuff that Roseanne tweeted.

00:05:44.000 So just to be straight here, Roseanne tweets something, loses her job. 0.83

00:05:47.000 Joy Reid tweets stuff that's really gross, not only maintains her job, but gets to sit on set with Valerie Jarrett discussing the evils of Twitter racism. 0.99

00:05:54.000 So there's that.

00:05:55.000 And then sitting next to Valerie Jarrett on the other side,

00:05:58.000 Is Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, the leading race baiter of the last 40 years in the United States, a man who suggested that Jews in New York City were white interlopers, a guy who suggested that they were diamond merchants, a guy who nearly initiated a riot, maybe initiated a riot in Crown Heights in 1991 that ended in the death of an Orthodox Jew. 0.54

00:06:15.000 He said about Orthodox Jews, there's an Orthodox Jew who accidentally hit a black kid with his car.

00:06:19.000 And Al Sharpton said, if they want to fight, why don't they pin on their yarmulkes and come on over to my house? 0.99

00:06:24.000 Al Sharpton, that piece of dreck. 0.98

00:06:25.000 He's a bad guy, Al Sharpton. 0.99

00:06:27.000 That guy is sitting there talking about the evils of Roseanne.

00:06:29.000 So, I do have to point out the media's double standard here.

00:06:32.000 Roseanne should have lost her job for reasons that I will explain in just a second. 1.00

00:06:36.000 First of all, it really should require no explanation.

00:06:38.000 That statement, for a public figure, you lose your job.

00:06:41.000 End of story.

00:06:42.000 But,

00:06:43.000 The media, to refrain from pointing out the double standard when Joy Reid, who tweeted out a bunch of other gross stuff, and Al Sharpton, who is one of the worst race baiters in the history of the United States, at least in modern American history, to have those two people commenting on it with Valerie Jarrett, who was targeted by Roseanne, but also happened to be a member of an administration that was very happy to polarize along the basis of race, it provides a little bit of irony, sitting there alongside Chris Hayes, who says that all Trump supporters are basically Roseanne.

00:07:10.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:11.000 Anyway, here's Valerie Jarrett commenting on the situation. 0.93

00:07:14.000 Well, first of all, I think we have to turn it into a teaching moment.

00:07:17.000 I'm fine.

00:07:18.000 I'm worried about all the people out there who don't have a circle of friends and followers who come right to their defense.

00:07:24.000 The person who's walking down the street, minding their own business, and they see somebody cling to their purse, or want to cross the street.

00:07:30.000 Or every black parent I know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation. 0.82

00:07:35.000 The talk, as we call it.

00:07:37.000 And those, as you say, those ordinary

00:07:40.000 Examples of racism that happen every single day.

00:07:43.000 Okay, so now we get this routine where everybody is Roseanne, where America is replete with Roseannes, where people in their back room are tweeting out crazy stuff like Roseanne. 0.98

00:07:51.000 Roseanne is a crazy person. 1.00

00:07:52.000 Roseanne tweeted out that she was on Ambien and that's why she tweeted this out, which prompted Ambien, in pretty hilarious fashion, to tweet back, 0.65

00:08:01.000 Good for Ambien.

00:08:03.000 And it's true. 0.56

00:08:04.000 Whenever I saw those Ambien commercials, I never saw that butterfly with the KKK hood on it.

00:08:09.000 I never picked up on that. 1.00

00:08:10.000 But Valerie Jarrett suggesting that we are all Roseanne is the stupidest thing in the world. 0.99

00:08:14.000 Roseanne did something bad. 0.99

00:08:15.000 And you know what the effect was?

00:08:16.000 She lost her job.

00:08:17.000 She lost a multi-million dollar job as the top sitcom performer in the United States.

00:08:22.000 And Valerie Jarrett is saying this somehow impugns the entire United States.

00:08:26.000 Somehow this is everyday racism in America.

00:08:28.000 It's not everyday racism in America because if it were everyday racism in America, Roseanne wouldn't have lost her job. 1.00

00:08:33.000 I'm kind of getting sick of this routine where we smear the entire American public and all Trump supporters with the brush of Roseanne Barr.

00:08:40.000 Then Joy Reid comments on Roseanne.

00:08:42.000 Here's Joy Reid, again, a woman who tweeted out a bunch of really nasty stuff like four weeks ago and then recalled that she had amnesia.

00:08:51.000 She literally claimed she had amnesia, which is a plot line that went out of soap operas in the 1980s.

00:08:56.000 She claimed that she had amnesia.

00:08:57.000 She still has a job and she gets to comment on Roseanne Barr. 0.85

00:09:00.000 Here is Joy Reid on MSNBC commenting on it.

00:09:03.000 They see this as no big deal, that this is something that you should be able to say.

00:09:06.000 Why can't you say it?

00:09:07.000 It's just jokes.

00:09:07.000 Why are people taking it to heart?

00:09:10.000 That's part of the problem, is that you have a certain set of people who feel that you should be able to speak this way.

00:09:14.000 And unfortunately, you know, we have a president at the moment who's kind of giving a broad sense of permission to not be politically correct, to speak the way you want, to offend who you want, and that people really shouldn't have a right to say anything about it.

00:09:26.000 Okay, this is all straw man.

00:09:27.000 I didn't see one major conservative commentator yesterday saying Roseanne should have kept her job.

00:09:31.000 Not one.

00:09:32.000 OK, then the number of conservative commentators who said Roseanne should have kept her job, it was relegated to like Jack Posabiak and maybe like Ali, like a couple of guys who are really fringe and aren't considered mainstream right figures in any case.

00:09:43.000 But they're treating it as though the entire right came out swarming in defense of Roseanne Barr.

00:09:48.000 Obviously not true.

00:09:49.000 Obviously not real.

00:09:51.000 But the entire left did come out swarming for Joy Reid, right?

00:09:54.000 So if you're going to tar one movement with the actions of a bad person, you might want to tar the movement with the person they actually defend.

00:10:01.000 So if you want to say that Trump's base is willing to defend his excesses, that I agree with.

00:10:05.000 But if you want to say that Trump's base is willing to defend Roseanne Barr, I don't see Trump's base defending Roseanne Barr today.

00:10:10.000 And the same thing is not true of Joy Reid.

00:10:12.000 The entire left base came out in defense of Joy Reid. 0.96

00:10:14.000 Very few of them wanted Joy Reid to lose her job.

00:10:16.000 The same thing is true of Louis Farrakhan, of Linda Sarsour, of a bunch of people, Keith Ellison, who have associated with the worst kinds, Al Sharpton, you know, terrible, terrible people who have been defended repeatedly by the left.

00:10:27.000 Roseanne Barr lost her job after less than, like, four hours after this tweet came out. 1.00

00:10:32.000 So don't tell me the entire right-wing base is supporting Roseanne Barr.

00:10:35.000 It just ain't true.

00:10:36.000 And Trump isn't even supporting Roseanne Barr.

00:10:39.000 So Al Sharpton, again, the idea the media is going to try Al Sharpton as some sort of great race relations expert is just beyond, it's beyond sickening.

00:10:46.000 Here is Al Sharpton louding the Roseanne cancellation.

00:10:50.000 Roseanne has the right to be a supporter of whatever politics she wants. 1.00

00:10:55.000 But to take this kind of obvious racial rhetoric to compare a learned, respected public service like Valerie Jarrett to an ape, reminds us of all of the history of blacks being called monkeys.

00:11:11.000 And I think that Disney and ABC did the right thing.

00:11:15.000 And I think they've opened the door now to see other things that they're doing.

00:11:19.000 OK, so there you are, Al Sharpton, leading race baiter of our time, commenting on Roseanne, also apparently a race baiter.

00:11:26.000 And one of them still has a job.

00:11:27.000 So it does show you the double standard in the media.

00:11:30.000 In just a second, I want to talk about Van Jones's response to all of this.

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00:13:01.000 Van Jones, too, was sounding off on the Roseanne situation, and he is blaming President Trump for it, obviously, because President Trump—it's amazing.

00:13:09.000 Everybody seems to think that the universe revolves around President Trump, so Roseanne does something bad, and suddenly it has to do with President Trump.

00:13:16.000 I'm not sure what Roseanne has to do with Trump, other than Roseanne was a Trump supporter, but Harvey Weinstein was a Hillary Clinton supporter, and I'm not sure why—if

00:13:24.000 You know, if Hillary were president right now, I do not think you'd see a lot of headlines about Hillary supporter Harvey Weinstein goes on and, you know, is tried for rape.

00:13:32.000 I just don't think that would be the headline.

00:13:33.000 That'd be a little bit fairer.

00:13:35.000 Roseanne was portraying a Trump supporter on TV, but this was always the danger of her portraying a Trump supporter on TV.

00:13:40.000 I mentioned it at the time.

00:13:41.000 I did nearly a full show on it.

00:13:43.000 I talked about how Trump's portrayal of Trump supporters was not helpful to Trump supporters and that when you tether your boat to crazy people, bad things happen.

00:13:51.000 As I said about Kanye West, listen, I'm happy Kanye wants to do the open your mind thing.

00:13:55.000 But live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye.

00:13:57.000 Live by the Roseanne, die by the Roseanne. 0.88

00:13:59.000 Okay, but in any case, here's Van Jones trying to tie Trump to Roseanne as though Trump was somehow using Roseanne as his meat puppet, like he had his hand in the back of her head and was actually manipulating her mouth to call Valerie Jarrett an ape.

00:14:11.000 It could be that this moral collapse inside of our political system, especially inside the White House,

00:14:19.000 Is being counterbalanced now by people in mainstream media, mainstream corporations who say, listen, we don't want to live in a country where, you know, indecent people can be attacked for no reason.

00:14:33.000 I agree it's not a joke and I agree it's not funny.

00:14:39.000 To pretend that Donald Trump is the person who has laid our rhetoric low in American public life is to ignore a lot of American public rhetoric in the last 15 years.

00:14:47.000 I mean, it was Joe Biden who in 2012 was going around saying that Mitt Romney legitimately wanted to put y'all back in chains.

00:14:52.000 It was the Democratic Party

00:14:54.000 Who within the last 10 years was producing videos of Paul Ryan throwing old women off the edge of cliffs with their wheelchairs.

00:15:00.000 So before we go to the Donald Trump destroyed American rhetoric, a sentiment with which I have some agreement, you do have to actually provide the context for that destruction of American rhetoric.

00:15:09.000 And nobody, including Trump, was saying that this kind of stuff was OK.

00:15:14.000 Trump was not saying that any of this stuff was okay.

00:15:16.000 Roseanne Barr, by the way, went back on Twitter later in the evening and started tweeting out more random crazy stuff. 1.00

00:15:21.000 Again, she blamed Ambien, and then she claims that she didn't know that Valerie Jarrett was black. 1.00

00:15:25.000 She said she thought that Valerie Jarrett was white and Jewish, which makes no sense since she accused her of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.95

00:15:31.000 All of which demonstrates that maybe Roseanne Barr is crazy, as I said, repeatedly, over and over. 0.95

00:15:38.000 But now listen, because I'm right.

00:15:41.000 OK, so the reason I say that you should listen is because I'm going to tell you about another celebrity situation inside the Republican Party in just a second.

00:15:48.000 But first, I want to talk a little bit about what should the standards be when people actually get fired?

00:15:53.000 So there were two very different

00:15:56.000 Two very different stories that came out with regard to corporate crackdowns on free speech over the last couple of weeks.

00:16:01.000 Last week we had the big blow up because the NFL bans kneeling during the National Anthem on the sidelines.

00:16:06.000 They said you want to stay in the locker room, go ahead and stay in the locker room.

00:16:08.000 But if you come out of the locker room and they're playing the National Anthem, don't kneel or we're going to fine you.

00:16:13.000 And people went nuts.

00:16:14.000 This is a violation of First Amendment freedoms.

00:16:16.000 This is a violation of the spirit of free speech in America.

00:16:19.000 And, you know, for myself, I'm mildly uncomfortable with the idea that the NFL is going to force people to stand for the anthem. 0.99

00:16:24.000 But, as I said last week, I think that kneeling for the anthem is a stupid, counterproductive, garbage-y thing to do. 0.99

00:16:31.000 It's a general rule. 0.99

00:16:33.000 And I also think that the NFL has a right to defend its product.

00:16:36.000 Well, this week, the Roseanne thing happened, and ABC immediately fired Roseanne, and half the people

00:16:41.000 We're very angry at the NFL for barring people from kneeling.

00:16:44.000 We're very happy with ABC for firing Roseanne.

00:16:47.000 Now, obviously, kneeling for the anthem and calling a black person an ape are not the same thing.

00:16:51.000 Kellen Kaepernick, I will point out, didn't only kneel for the anthem. 0.98

00:16:54.000 He also wore socks that had cops depicted as pigs on them. 0.93

00:16:57.000 So that wasn't exactly a wonderful thing.

00:17:00.000 The broader point is one that needs to be made, and that is, when should we, the American public, be interested in the political pronouncements and racist pronouncements and gross pronouncements of public figures?

00:17:12.000 When should we forgive them?

00:17:13.000 When should we not?

00:17:14.000 When should they be fired by companies and when should they not?

00:17:17.000 And it seems to me that the line of demarcation is when the speech that is being used actually damages the product of the corporation.

00:17:23.000 So here we're not talking

00:17:25.000 About the government getting involved.

00:17:26.000 We're not talking about when the government should crack down on speech.

00:17:28.000 The answer is the government should never crack down on speech.

00:17:30.000 The government should not be arresting Roseanne Barr for saying vile things. 1.00

00:17:33.000 The question is, when can a company fire Roseanne, and when is it right to boycott Roseanne's show, for example?

00:17:39.000 Or when is it right to boycott the NFL, and when can the NFL institute new rules about kneeling?

00:17:43.000 And it seems to me that when the product is connected with the viewpoint, then it is appropriate to initiate a boycott, and it is also appropriate for a corporation to respond in kind to that boycott.

00:17:53.000 So, with regard to the NFL, the product that they produced was a product that included the national anthem on TV.

00:17:59.000 It was part of the game.

00:18:00.000 The NFL is replete with patriotic symbolism.

00:18:02.000 They use it all the time.

00:18:03.000 When I was at the Super Bowl last year, it was fully patriotic, and the video of the Blue Angels fly over the whole thing.

00:18:09.000 So, if that is threatened, and people say, listen, I don't feel the same way about that product as I used to because the product itself has changed, that's not out of the realm of reality or decency.

00:18:19.000 Boycotting the NFL because you don't like people kneeling for the anthem seems to me well within the bounds of normal public discourse.

00:18:25.000 The same thing holds true for Roseanne.

00:18:26.000 Right, Roseanne even more so.

00:18:28.000 Because Roseanne's character is called Roseanne, right?

00:18:30.000 The show is based on Roseanne.

00:18:32.000 So, if Roseanne were playing a completely different character, I think you might even have a more dicey situation. 1.00

00:18:38.000 So Matt Damon says a lot of really stupid things. 0.90

00:18:39.000 I don't boycott Matt Damon's movies, because in Matt Damon's movies, Matt Damon is not playing Matt Damon. 0.98

00:18:43.000 Matt Damon is playing whatever character he's playing on screen. 0.99

00:18:46.000 So the product on screen has nothing to do with the stupid crap Matt Damon says off screen. 0.99

00:18:50.000 Now, if there are people who can't make that connection, if there are people who 0.99

00:18:57.000 That's reasonable, but I think that it's a little bit over the top.

00:19:04.000 The thing about Roseanne is that Roseanne played Roseanne on TV. 1.00

00:19:06.000 Her character was supposed to mirror Roseanne to a certain extent in real life.

00:19:09.000 So for people to say, I don't want to watch a show with a lady who calls a black lady an ape, 0.99

00:19:14.000 I think that's perfectly appropriate, and it's perfectly appropriate for ABC to crack down.

00:19:17.000 Now, here's where it's not appropriate.

00:19:18.000 It's not appropriate when you have somebody like Brendan Eich, who is the CEO of Mozilla Firefox, and Brendan Eich was essentially thrown out of his job because someone initiated a boycott because he had once supported traditional marriage.

00:19:30.000 Because he had once supported traditional marriage.

00:19:32.000 The reason that is inappropriate is because Mozilla Firefox never discriminated against gay people.

00:19:36.000 Mozilla Firefox took no stance on same-sex marriage.

00:19:39.000 Mozilla Firefox's product had nothing to do with same-sex marriage.

00:19:42.000 So it's unreasonable to boycott Mozilla Firefox based on Brendan Eich's personal political beliefs.

00:19:48.000 And it is inappropriate to boycott a church for their beliefs if those beliefs don't actually affect how they treat people.

00:19:55.000 And it is inappropriate to boycott a restaurant for those reasons.

00:19:58.000 So Chick-fil-A, best example.

00:20:00.000 Dan Cathy is the head of Chick-fil-A in favor of traditional marriage.

00:20:03.000 The left launches massive boycotts against Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A, saying, we don't want to shop at that company because that guy doesn't agree with us on same-sex marriage.

00:20:11.000 What does same-sex marriage have to do with a chicken burger?

00:20:14.000 The answer is nothing.

00:20:15.000 The answer is nothing.

00:20:16.000 So in those cases, you're destroying the nature of free speech, the feeling of free speech in the country, when you make everything political.

00:20:22.000 Making everything political is bad for the country, but pretending that everything is not political is just unrealistic.

00:20:28.000 Roseanne did something that impacted the product she was providing. 0.75

00:20:31.000 Kneeling for the anthem.

00:20:33.000 Those are not the same sort of impact, obviously. 0.96

00:20:35.000 Kneeling for the anthem is not nearly as bad as calling a black person an ape.

00:20:39.000 But, insofar as, do the corporations have the right, on a moral level, to fire people for doing this, or to set new rules?

00:20:47.000 The answer, of course, is yes.

00:20:49.000 Now, meanwhile, President Trump has fired back on the on the Roseanne thing.

00:20:54.000 He just couldn't help himself.

00:20:55.000 So he went all of yesterday without commenting on it.

00:20:57.000 And I was like, yes, this is great.

00:20:58.000 You know, Mr. President, just stay out of it.

00:21:00.000 There's no reason for you to get involved.

00:21:02.000 And then he got involved because that's what the president of the United States does.

00:21:05.000 So he tweeted this out.

00:21:06.000 He tweeted out, quote,

00:21:08.000 Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ABC does not tolerate comments like those made by Roseanne Barr.

00:21:15.000 Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the horrible statements made and said about me on ABC.

00:21:21.000 Maybe I just didn't get the call.

00:21:23.000 Only President Trump could make this story about him.

00:21:26.000 Only President Trump could make a story about Roseanne insulting Valerie Jarrett about him.

00:21:31.000 I do want to point out a couple of distinctions here.

00:21:33.000 Okay, listen, I don't think Trump should have commented on this thing in the first place. 0.98

00:21:36.000 I'm going to get to in a second Trump's relationship with celebrity, which I think is just dumb. 1.00

00:21:40.000 But this is, here's why this tweet is stupid. 1.00

00:21:43.000 First, 1.00

00:21:45.000 Valerie Jarrett was called an ape by the main star of Bob Iger's network. 1.00

00:21:50.000 A black person was called an ape by the main star of Bob Iger's network. 0.82

00:21:54.000 He has to call Valerie Jarrett.

00:21:56.000 Donald Trump was called a lot of names on ABC, but he was not called a historically racist name applied to his race.

00:22:03.000 If somebody called him honky on ABC,

00:22:05.000 Then I assume that Bob Iger might have to call him. 1.00

00:22:08.000 But if they were just saying they don't like Donald Trump, or he's an idiot, or he's stupid, or he's garbage, or whatever they were calling Donald Trump, like, that's just part of the public discourse, honestly. 1.00

00:22:15.000 And again, I don't know what any of this has to do with Trump. 1.00

00:22:18.000 Trump's not the victim here.

00:22:20.000 He's the President of the United States.

00:22:22.000 I understand the main point, which is that there's a double standard in the media, and obviously that is true.

00:22:26.000 But the double standard in the media doesn't really extend to Bob Iger having to call Trump every time someone insults him.

00:22:30.000 Plus, I mean, if we're going to talk about insulting people, Donald Trump is like the king of insulting people.

00:22:35.000 Has Donald Trump ever called Ted Cruz to apologize for calling his wife ugly publicly?

00:22:39.000 No. 0.99

00:22:40.000 Did he ever call Alicia Machado and apologize for basically calling her a fatty in the middle of a presidential campaign and suggesting that she had a sex tape? 0.85

00:22:48.000 Did he ever do any of that? 0.70

00:22:49.000 No.

00:22:52.000 You gotta take it if you're gonna dish it out.

00:22:54.000 Like, that's just my general feeling on that particular subject.

00:22:57.000 So, I wanna talk in a second about a big summit at the White House, but first, I wanna say thanks to our sponsors over at Uncharted Supply Company.

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00:24:57.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, I don't know what it is with Republicans and celebrity.

00:25:03.000 That's not true.

00:25:03.000 I do know what it is with Republicans and celebrity.

00:25:05.000 What it is with Republicans and celebrity is that Republicans are so often ripped on by celebrities, you know, out here in Los Angeles, in Hollywood.

00:25:13.000 They spend so much of their day being ripped on by people out here that they get sad.

00:25:19.000 And then when a celebrity comes forward and says, I'm with you, everybody gets super excited.

00:25:24.000 Oh my gosh, that famous person's with me.

00:25:25.000 And it's fairly typical.

00:25:27.000 It's just a human nature thing.

00:25:28.000 Like when I was growing up, I remember that a big hero in the Jewish community, and still is, was Sandy Koufax.

00:25:34.000 Now, Sandy Koufax is not a practicing Jew.

00:25:36.000 Sandy Koufax is not somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about Judaism.

00:25:39.000 Sandy Koufax, I believe, is intermarried.

00:25:41.000 But Sandy Koufax one time took off the day of Yom Kippur in the World Series.

00:25:46.000 And this was a big move because Sandy Koufax is a celebrity.

00:25:49.000 People are very, very taken in by celebrity.

00:25:51.000 The problem is, a lot of celebrities are celebrities for things that have nothing to do with politics.

00:25:55.000 So Rosanna was a celebrity because she's a funny lady who was on a show in the 90s that was actually quite to the left. 0.64

00:26:01.000 And the same thing is true for Kanye West.

00:26:03.000 As I say, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye.

00:26:05.000 I'm very glad that Kanye is saying that people ought to think for themselves, but Kanye is also Kanye, and he is apt to say things from time to time that may not be politically the wisest.

00:26:14.000 You tie yourself to a celebrity, Kid Rock, who knows nothing about politics, and you shouldn't be surprised when he burns you.

00:26:20.000 Hey, Republicans tied themselves to a celebrity in Donald Trump, and most of the things that have burdened them about Donald Trump have come from him being a celebrity, not from him being the president.

00:26:29.000 It's been him playing celebrity apprentice at the White House, or him during the campaign saying celebrity-like things, right?

00:26:34.000 That's where most of the trouble for the Trump administration has come, not in his policy.

00:26:37.000 His policy's been quite good.

00:26:39.000 Well, now Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and the White House, they're inviting over Kim Kardashian.

00:26:45.000 Now, why they would invite Kim Kardashian, I suppose it's because, yay, we have a celebrity, and Kim Kardashian is close to Kanye West, and maybe if we recruit some celebrities, then a lot of people will be warmer toward us, and we're showing that we're reaching across the aisle, and all the rest.

00:27:00.000 Kim Kardashian.

00:27:02.000 OK, let's just say that the risk factor on Kim Kardashian is not low.

00:27:06.000 Kim Kardashian is not a low risk figure.

00:27:08.000 She's not a person who you have to the White House and then you assume that she's going to be a grand spokesperson for your policies. 0.99

00:27:14.000 Now, I understand Democrats could do this and get away with it because they could always hide one celebrity amidst the thousands of other celebrities they had.

00:27:20.000 Democrats are not tied to particular celebrities in the same way that Republicans are.

00:27:23.000 So Hillary Clinton was not tied to Harvey Weinstein in the same way that Donald Trump was sort of tied to Roseanne in this particular case, because Harvey Weinstein was one among thousands of Hollywood celebrities who supported Hillary Clinton.

00:27:34.000 There are like five public celebrities who supported Donald Trump, and so Trump in the public eye is very tied to each of them.

00:27:41.000 Well, now he's having Kim Kardashian to the White House, and he's having Kim Kardashian to the White House to discuss prison reform.

00:27:46.000 Now, I am really Luke Cold on prison reform.

00:27:50.000 I am not in love with a lot of the talk about prison reform, the reason being that it seems to me that the policy has not been clarified.

00:27:58.000 In many cases, the prison reform they're talking about involves letting people out of prison too early, and the recidivism rate among those prisoners is like 75% over the course of the next five years.

00:28:07.000 So, letting people out of prison so they can go back in prison seems not to make a lot of sense to me.

00:28:11.000 Now, what people have said is, we're taking fewer people into American prisons and the crime rates aren't rising.

00:28:16.000 Right, because we still have a lot of people in prison. 1.00

00:28:18.000 But if you let more people out of prison, the crime rates rise.

00:28:20.000 We've seen this in the state of California.

00:28:21.000 In the state of California, Jerry Brown has let thousands of prisoners out of prison early on prison furloughs, and the crime rates have gone up relatively dramatically in most urban areas in the state of California over the last several years.

00:28:32.000 Instead of building new prisons, he decided to release those people back to county level, and then those county level prisoners were released into the general public, and it's been quite a disaster.

00:28:41.000 Well, now the White House is going to have Kim Kardashian over there to talk about prison reform, and apparently she is interested in pushing for the release 0.92

00:28:54.000 We're good to go.

00:29:16.000 And she's being treated as though she's a wronged innocent.

00:29:18.000 If you look at the left-wing press today, a lot of it is all about how Alice Johnson is a wronged innocent who ought to be released from prison because now she's older and she's wiser and she's a sweet, nice old lady and we ought to let her out.

00:29:30.000 Well, I mean, she was sentenced for a reason.

00:29:32.000 She was given life in prison.

00:29:33.000 The reason that she was given life in prison is because Alice Johnson committed some pretty terrible crimes. 1.00

00:29:39.000 And she's never admitted to committing these terrible crimes, by the way.

00:29:42.000 I love this.

00:29:43.000 CNN printed a piece from her in early May, and the editor's note said this.

00:29:47.000 So that makes it sound like Alice Johnson was smoking dope in her backyard, and the police came in, and they arrested her, and then they gave her 20 years in prison.

00:30:00.000 That is not what happened.

00:30:01.000 According to Alice Johnson, that is what happened.

00:30:03.000 And according to Alice Johnson, she says,

00:30:25.000 And then she's written some plays, and she's supposedly made herself into a better human being. 0.79

00:30:32.000 And all of this, she says, I'll tell you the rest of Alice Johnson's tragic saga in just one moment.

00:30:35.000 But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Policy Genius.

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00:31:58.000 So I'm going to tell you the rest of Alice Johnson's story and why it is that all the talk about her being released from prison seems a little bit

00:32:06.000 Like a fib in just a second.

00:32:07.000 First, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com.

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00:33:20.000 So to return to our story, as you recall, Kim Kardashian, the Trump administration, they are all pushing for Alice Johnson to be released from prison.

00:33:28.000 Again, there is a problem here.

00:33:29.000 The problem is that Alice Johnson actually committed a pretty dire crime. 0.81

00:33:33.000 She says she did not.

00:33:33.000 She says, After almost two decades together and a tumultuous relationship, my husband and I divorced in 1989.

00:33:38.000 It was during this time my life began to spiral out of control.

00:33:41.000 I lost my job and then my youngest son was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.

00:33:45.000 No mother should have to bury her child. 0.99

00:33:46.000 This weight was unbelievable and it was a burden I couldn't sustain.

00:33:49.000 I made some very poor decisions out of desperation.

00:33:51.000 I want this part to be clear.

00:33:52.000 I acknowledge that I have done wrong.

00:33:54.000 I made the biggest mistake of my life to make ends meet and got involved with people selling drugs.

00:33:58.000 This is a road I never dreamed of entering down.

00:34:00.000 I became what is known as a telephone mule, passing messages between distributors and sellers.

00:34:04.000 I participated in a drug conspiracy and I was wrong.

00:34:06.000 Okay, so that makes it sound like she made some phone calls, right?

00:34:09.000 If you just read that story, she made a few phone calls.

00:34:11.000 If you read it, the left-wing press, then that's all that she did.

00:34:14.000 Here is the actual AP story from when Alice Johnson was sentenced.

00:34:18.000 OK, this is from 1997, quote, A 41-year-old Memphis woman was sentenced to life in prison for leading a multi-million dollar drug ring that dealt in tons of cocaine from 1991 to 1994.

00:34:30.000 Alice Marie Johnson was, quote, the quintessential entrepreneur, said U.S.

00:34:34.000 District Judge Julia Gibbons as she pronounced sentence on Friday.

00:34:37.000 And clearly the impact of 2000 to 3000 kilograms of cocaine in this community is very significant.

00:34:43.000 Johnson was tried last year on cocaine conspiracy and money laundering charges, along with Curtis McDonald and Jerleen McNeil.

00:34:48.000 During the trial, evidence showed an operation with Texas-based Colombian drug dealers and their Memphis connections trading tons of cocaine for millions of dollars in cash.

00:34:57.000 McDonald was sentenced earlier this month to life in prison for his part in the cocaine conspiracy and money laundering operation.

00:35:03.000 McNeil received a 19-year sentence.

00:35:06.000 So, no, this was not like she was just sitting on the corner selling some pot.

00:35:09.000 She was running thousands of pounds of cocaine from a Colombian-based drug cartel. 0.94

00:35:16.000 You're not going to get that in the press.

00:35:18.000 All of which is to say, maybe you want to release her from prison.

00:35:21.000 Maybe you want to parole her.

00:35:21.000 Maybe you think that she's done her time.

00:35:23.000 She's been in prison since 1997, so she's been there for 21 years at this point.

00:35:27.000 Maybe you think that she should be released into the general public.

00:35:29.000 That's fine.

00:35:29.000 I don't know why you would do it based on Kim Kardashian's recommendation.

00:35:32.000 And I don't know why you would take celebrities seriously on these issues in the first place, since they're not experts on these issues in the first place.

00:35:38.000 It irritated the living hell out of me when Barack Obama had George Clooney in to talk about Middle Eastern policy, and it drives me nuts when the Trump administration has Kim Kardashian in to discuss prison reform.

00:35:49.000 I'm sorry.

00:35:50.000 There is no level of expertise that Kim Kardashian or George Clooney seem to have.

00:35:54.000 It's one thing if you want to talk to Amal Clooney.

00:35:55.000 Amal Clooney apparently actually has some expertise.

00:35:58.000 She used to work at the UN.

00:35:59.000 But you want to talk to people who actually know what they are talking about.

00:36:02.000 I am not sure what Kim Kardashian has expertise on other than branding.

00:36:05.000 She's great at branding. 1.00

00:36:07.000 No question.

00:36:08.000 She makes emojis.

00:36:09.000 So there's that.

00:36:10.000 So I guess if there's an emoji summit at the White House, then we can have Kim Kardashian in.

00:36:14.000 I hate celebrity worship.

00:36:16.000 It drives me up a wall.

00:36:17.000 I've lived my entire life in L.A.

00:36:18.000 surrounded by people who worship celebrity. 1.00

00:36:20.000 It is so stupid, I cannot even tell you. 1.00

00:36:22.000 Most celebrities do not know what they are talking about. 1.00

00:36:24.000 Most celebrities are not politically aware.

00:36:28.000 Most celebrities are, at best, tangentially involved with politics.

00:36:31.000 But because they're famous, we think they know everything.

00:36:33.000 The halo effect in the human psyche is really an amazing thing.

00:36:38.000 It really is an amazing thing.

00:36:40.000 The halo effect, which suggests that because somebody is good at one thing, this means they are good at all things.

00:36:45.000 It's pretty amazing.

00:36:47.000 So we think that because somebody is beautiful, this means they're smart.

00:36:49.000 Or because they are rich, it also means that they are wise.

00:36:52.000 Okay, none of this is true. 1.00

00:36:53.000 You can be rich and stupid. 1.00

00:36:54.000 You can be beautiful and stupid. 1.00

00:36:56.000 You can be smart and ugly. 1.00

00:36:57.000 All of these things can be true at once. 1.00

00:36:59.000 Or he can be rich, and stupid, and ugly, right? 1.00

00:37:02.000 Any combination of these factors is possible. 0.99

00:37:04.000 But, because human beings tend to worship at the altar of fame, they say, okay, I see that guy, I know that person, that person must know what they're talking about, so Kim Kardashian must obviously know what she is talking about.

00:37:15.000 Kim Kardashian, I don't know why you would think she knows what she is, what she's talking about.

00:37:20.000 I just wouldn't know.

00:37:20.000 Meanwhile, while we're having summits at the White House,

00:37:23.000 While we're having summits at the White House on prison reform, while we're spending time on prison reform at the White House with Kim Kardashian, and spending our time talking about the situation regarding Roseanne, it turns out that 5,000 people died in Puerto Rico.

00:37:40.000 Did you know that?

00:37:41.000 Were you aware of this?

00:37:42.000 Okay, like, this is an actual thing.

00:37:43.000 So we were told that it was a couple of dozen people who died in Hurricane Maria.

00:37:48.000 Turns out not.

00:37:48.000 According to the Washington Post, Miliana Montañez cradled her mother's head as she lay dying on the floor of her bedroom here, gasping for air and pleading for help.

00:37:55.000 There was nothing her family could do.

00:37:57.000 It took 20 minutes to find cellular reception to make a 911 call.

00:38:00.000 Inoperative traffic signals slowed down the ambulance struggling to reach their neighborhood through crippling congestion.

00:38:05.000 More than eight months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island's slow recovery has been marked by a persistent lack of water, a faltering power grid, and a lack of essential services, all imperiling the lives of many residents, especially the infirm and those in remote areas hardest hit in September.

00:38:20.000 The New Harvest study, published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, estimates that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, making the storm far deadlier than previously thought.

00:38:32.000 Official estimates have placed the number of dead at 64, a count that has drawn sharp criticism from experts, so they're only off by a factor of 70.

00:38:39.000 Whoops.

00:38:40.000 The Harvard findings indicate that healthcare disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts, and the study criticized Puerto Rico's methods for counting the dead and its lack of transparency in sharing information as detrimental to planning for future natural disasters.

00:38:54.000 The authors called for patients, communities, and doctors to develop contingency plans for such disasters.

00:39:00.000 More people were killed by Hurricane Maria according to this Harvard study than were killed in 9-11 by a factor of about 50%.

00:39:08.000 And yet nobody is talking about that today.

00:39:10.000 We are all too busy talking about Kim Kardashian at the White House and the fact that Roseanne said something racist and mean to Valerie Jarrett.

00:39:15.000 Maybe our priorities in this country are a little bit screwed up.

00:39:18.000 Researchers in the mainland United States and Puerto Rico, led by scientists at the Harvard T.H.

00:39:22.000 Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, calculated the number of deaths by surveying almost 3,300 randomly chosen households across the island and comparing the estimated post-hurricane death rate to the mortality rate for the year before.

00:39:35.000 Their surveys indicated the mortality rate was 14.3 deaths per 1,000 residents from September 20th through December 31st, 2017.

00:39:43.000 A lot of people have died because the government has done a terrible job of restoring what they need to in Puerto Rico.

00:39:47.000 And that is both the fault of the federal government and it is also the fault of the local government

00:40:05.000 Okay, well I'm sure that they do, but...

00:40:21.000 Again, our priorities in this country really need to change.

00:40:23.000 We are attracted to the shiny bauble.

00:40:25.000 Celebrity attracts us to the shiny bauble.

00:40:27.000 And listen, we all like discussing the cultural issues because we can all have an opinion.

00:40:31.000 But these are the areas where government really needs to be good at things.

00:40:33.000 And government is just not good at these things.

00:40:35.000 And it seems to me we should be spending an awful lot more time talking about bipartisan failures to help alleviate the problems in Puerto Rico than we should be talking about Kim Kardashian's priorities with regard to a woman who's been in jail for 20 years for trafficking in thousands of pounds of cocaine.

00:40:51.000 Or Roseanne Barr's mean comments about Valerie Jarrett.

00:40:54.000 Okay, so we just won't have a revived Roseanne sitcom next year.

00:40:57.000 Seems to me like that's less important as a general matter than the number of people who died in Puerto Rico because of this hurricane.

00:41:02.000 Okay, well, in just a second I want to talk a little bit

00:41:06.000 This ordeal has been designed to cause an incredible amount of strain

00:41:36.000 On my family.

00:41:38.000 Millions of dollars of mounting legal bills.

00:41:42.000 Endless personal attacks designed to cause maximum damage to family and friends.

00:41:50.000 And it's clear that for the forces that oppose us, there is no end in sight.

00:41:57.000 I cannot allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty

00:42:04.000 To the people that I love.

00:42:06.000 Okay, so he should have gotten out of here a lot earlier.

00:42:08.000 What took him months to do it?

00:42:10.000 There's this feeling in American politics right now that the longer you hold on, the better the chance that you're going to survive, right?

00:42:15.000 Al Franken announced that he was going to resign and then he had to resign very quickly.

00:42:18.000 If he had held on for a few more weeks, he'd probably still be in the United States Senate.

00:42:21.000 Eric Greitens felt like if he somehow was able to hold on, then he would be able to retain his job despite all of the allegations that have been made against him.

00:42:30.000 The charges against him are still pending and they may be refiled.

00:42:33.000 All of which is to show there was a lot of talk in the aftermath of President Trump's election about the change in the mindset of the American people.

00:42:39.000 That the American people were willing to go along with anything politicians were willing to do so long as those politicians gave them what they wanted.

00:42:47.000 I don't think that's actually true.

00:42:49.000 I think that President Trump is, in many ways, a one-off.

00:42:51.000 I think President Trump won the presidency because Hillary Clinton was deeply unpalatable to a huge number of Americans.

00:42:58.000 And because of that, they were willing to look the other way a little bit at his excesses.

00:43:02.000 But if you ask most Americans, do they actually like the accesses of President Trump?

00:43:06.000 They would say no.

00:43:08.000 Do they like how President Trump treats women?

00:43:09.000 The answer probably for most Republicans is no.

00:43:12.000 Does that mean they don't like his policies?

00:43:14.000 It doesn't mean that either.

00:43:15.000 But they see Donald Trump as a tool.

00:43:16.000 Now, here's the way that it works in politics.

00:43:18.000 The more power you have, the more you are able to get away with.

00:43:21.000 This is an unfortunate truth, again, about human nature.

00:43:24.000 If you are a dog catcher, you can get away with nothing because we can easily replace you. 0.98

00:43:27.000 We can easily replace you with something else.

00:43:29.000 Well, the truth is that you can easily replace the president with the vice president, but in terms of his cultural impact, in terms of his appeal, in terms of the damage that he can do on a cultural level, that is certainly not true for President Trump, who's a much more powerful cultural figure than Vice President Pence, for example.

00:43:44.000 So as you elevate the amount of power somebody has, we are willing as human beings to allow those people to get away with more things.

00:43:51.000 But that willingness is not infinite.

00:43:53.000 And so Eric Reitens, who's just a governor of Missouri and who can be easily replaced by another Republican for governor of Missouri, which is what will happen, he can go away without having a significant impact on the Republicans in the state or the conservative agenda in the state.

00:44:05.000 The same is not really true for President Trump in a lot of ways, and so that's why there have been so many people who have been willing to kind of brush off President Trump's excesses in a way that they wouldn't be willing to for Eric Reitens.

00:44:15.000 Is that right?

00:44:16.000 It probably isn't right.

00:44:17.000 Is it realistic?

00:44:18.000 Yeah, that's realistic.

00:44:19.000 I mean, that's just the way that the human mind works.

00:44:21.000 Now, speaking of the presidential race coming up in 2020, good news for Democrats.

00:44:25.000 Bernie Sanders is there to split your party again.

00:44:27.000 A former Bernie Sanders spokesperson says, don't worry, he's going to run again in 2020.

00:44:32.000 Will voters get another chance to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020?

00:44:36.000 Well, voters in Vermont certainly will coming up in November.

00:44:39.000 Nationally, you know, he is considering another run for the presidency and, you know, when the time comes, I think we'll have an answer to that.

00:44:47.000 But right now, he's still considering it. 0.65

00:44:49.000 He'd be a fool not to run in 2020, considering how splintered the Democratic Party is.

00:44:53.000 He actually has a serious shot at winning the nomination in 2020. 0.97

00:44:55.000 Now, it's hard to capture the magic twice, as Ross Perot learned in 1996.

00:44:59.000 That said, who's going to be out there against him?

00:45:01.000 Kamala Harris?

00:45:03.000 Kamala Harris isn't going to take votes away from Bernie Sanders. 1.00

00:45:05.000 Elizabeth Warren?

00:45:05.000 She's not going to take votes away from Bernie Sanders.

00:45:07.000 Bernie Sanders has 30% of the Democratic Party base locked down behind him, and that's enough to win.

00:45:12.000 He could run a very Trump-like primary campaign in 2020 and seize the nomination that way.

00:45:17.000 Unless Democrats rally around a Joe Biden-esque figure.

00:45:20.000 So Bernie Sanders is a serious threat for the nomination.

00:45:23.000 So we could, in fact, get a Trump-Sanders race in 2020.

00:45:27.000 And wouldn't that be something?

00:45:28.000 My goodness.

00:45:29.000 So much pudding.

00:45:30.000 So much pudding.

00:45:31.000 So we can all look forward to that.

00:45:33.000 Oh, happy, happy day. 0.99

00:45:34.000 Our politics can get even dumber. 0.92

00:45:36.000 That'll be just awesome. 0.56

00:45:37.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate.

00:45:40.000 So, things I like.

00:45:41.000 So there's a book by a guy named Gary Salmorsan.

00:45:45.000 Gary Salmorsan is a great favorite of my new brother-in-law.

00:45:47.000 I was out of town over the weekend because my sister got married and Gary Salmorsan was at the wedding.

00:45:53.000 He is a really terrific thinker and a great literary analyst.

00:45:57.000 And he has a book called Anna Karenina in our time seeing more wisely.

00:45:59.000 So you sort of have to have read Anna Karenina in order to get the book.

00:46:02.000 So go out and buy a copy of Anna Karenina and when you're done reading it, come back in six months and then read this book.

00:46:08.000 But Anna Karenina, of course, one of the great novels in the history of mankind.

00:46:12.000 And this book is really about how people misread Anna Karenina.

00:46:15.000 As a story of failed female empowerment, when what the story really is about is about failure to abide by commitment, attempts to hide from your true nature, attempts to find romantic love in place of affectionate love.

00:46:28.000 And it's got some really deep thoughts on the human condition that are not necessarily completely apparent from reading Anna Karenina.

00:46:35.000 When you read Anna Karenina, people tend to read it as sort of a bad, not a bad romance novel, but as an over,

00:46:41.000 Overly long romance novel with Anna Karenina, who's having an affair, and then she kills herself at the end by throwing herself under the train.

00:46:47.000 200 years later, spoiler alert.

00:46:48.000 But the story is really not about that.

00:46:52.000 That ignores at least two-thirds of the actual plot and the other characters in the story.

00:46:58.000 Like all Tolstoy novels, Anna Karenina is sprawling.

00:47:00.000 I mean, really sprawling.

00:47:01.000 Covers a lot of ground.

00:47:02.000 But Gary Solomonsen does a wonderful job of weaving all those strands back together, so go check it out.

00:47:06.000 Anna Karenina in our time.

00:47:08.000 It's really a fun read if you're into literature.

00:47:11.000 Time for some things that I hate.

00:47:16.000 So, I just have to feel really bad for this dude.

00:47:18.000 So, this is a picture of a dude who was crushed a couple thousand years ago.

00:47:23.000 So, Pompeii, right?

00:47:25.000 Remember this big volcano?

00:47:26.000 This guy escaped the volcano, then a giant rock fell on his head.

00:47:29.000 So, yesterday his body was discovered.

00:47:32.000 He had the second worst day after Roseanne, yesterday, this guy.

00:47:36.000 So that's just, you know, and the good news for him is he will live on in meme history forever, given the nature of those pictures.

00:47:45.000 Oh no.

00:47:48.000 We're good to go.

00:48:05.000 I had a chance to meet with Nikki Haley.

00:48:07.000 So I actually got to meet my spirit animal.

00:48:09.000 So the world did not implode when I met my spirit animal, Nikki Haley, at the UN.

00:48:13.000 I did, in fact, meet the UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, and I met her son, who's an awesome kid, Nalen, who listens to the show.

00:48:19.000 And it was great.

00:48:20.000 It was a blast.

00:48:21.000 So I just wanted to give a shout out to Ambassador Haley, as well as mostly Nalen, who's a really great kid and really politically active and doing great work out there.

00:48:30.000 And that was a blast.

00:48:31.000 That was that was really cool.

00:48:32.000 Just wanted to just want to note that.

00:48:33.000 OK, now back to things I hate.

00:48:35.000 So that was enough liking things.

00:48:36.000 So back to things I hate.

00:48:37.000 So there was a video. 0.94

00:48:39.000 That was going around the Internet of this black woman ranting at a Jewish man on a subway. 0.99

00:48:44.000 OK, this was going around the Internet because it's really quite incredible.

00:48:48.000 That tweeted out said this is what it's like to be on the subway in New York.

00:48:51.000 Here is a little bit of the video.

00:48:53.000 You said I'm being racist, so you tell me what I'm being racist towards.

00:48:57.000 Because you're Jewish, and I said if a Jewish family got on here, somebody would have got up. 1.00

00:49:03.000 That is not a racist statement.

00:49:05.000 That is a factual statement.

00:49:07.000 No, no, we're different.

00:49:09.000 Understand that.

00:49:10.000 No, we are different.

00:49:12.000 You know why?

00:49:13.000 Because your people treat my people different in our community. 1.00

00:49:18.000 The f*** you talking about? 0.99

00:49:21.000 You treat us different in our community! 0.99

00:49:24.000 You don't even rent to us! 0.99

00:49:26.000 What the f*** are you talking about? 0.98

00:49:28.000 Okay, so here's what happened in this video. 0.99

00:49:29.000 Okay, this is a pretty crazy video.

00:49:31.000 What happened in this video is a black woman got on the subway with three kids, and nobody stood up for her. 0.98

00:49:38.000 And this guy, this Jewish guy, was already standing.

00:49:40.000 And a second black woman started chiding the people in the subway for not standing up for the black woman. 0.69

00:49:44.000 Then she said, if this were a Jewish family getting on, you'd stand up. 0.99

00:49:47.000 Which she has no evidence for.

00:49:49.000 My guess is that people wouldn't stand up.

00:49:50.000 I've been on subways with Jewish families where people don't stand up, okay? 1.00

00:49:53.000 This happens all the time.

00:49:54.000 People in New York are incredibly rude.

00:49:55.000 Sorry to break it to you, but that's your reputation. 0.95

00:49:58.000 And so this Jewish guy says, well, that's kind of racist.

00:50:00.000 Like, why are you saying that they'd stand up for a Jewish family but not for a black family? 0.98

00:50:03.000 And then she says, no, Jews are racist because you won't rent to us. 0.92

00:50:06.000 And then he says, well, why don't you stop talking about groups and just talk about you, like, as an individual. 0.97

00:50:10.000 Talk about you and me.

00:50:11.000 And he says, well, we're not the same.

00:50:12.000 We're not individuals.

00:50:14.000 So there are a couple of notes that I have about this video.

00:50:16.000 So note number one is people say vile things all the time, and very few people are willing to stand up and say something.

00:50:22.000 Good for this Jewish guy for saying something when this lady started ranting in racist fashion about Jews. 1.00

00:50:28.000 Second of all, where are all the other people on the subway?

00:50:30.000 So while all this is going on, apparently people still don't stand up to actually get up and let the kids sit down.

00:50:35.000 And second of all, nobody on the subway actually says to the lady, listen, calm down. 0.98

00:50:39.000 This has nothing to do with group politics or racism.

00:50:42.000 Maybe you should cut that out.

00:50:44.000 And when people stop acting out of decency and start acting out of a sense of entitlement, things get really ugly.

00:50:52.000 And when people sit there and allow it to go forward, things get even uglier.

00:50:56.000 There's this great movie, and I'm trying to remember.

00:50:59.000 I've recommended it on the show before.

00:51:02.000 It takes place on a subway.

00:51:06.000 It takes place on a New York subway.

00:51:07.000 It's called The Incident.

00:51:08.000 That's what it's called.

00:51:09.000 And it has this big cast.

00:51:10.000 There's Beau Bridges, and Ruby Dee, and Jack Guilford, and Ed McMahon, and Brock Peters, and Thelma Ritter, and Jan Sterling.

00:51:16.000 And the basic premise of the film is that these two criminals get onto a subway car and then start harassing one by one the passengers on the car, and people are not able to stand up to them.

00:51:30.000 The only person who's willing to stand up to them is Beau Bridges, who plays a soldier on the car.

00:51:33.000 Things have not changed since 1967.

00:51:34.000 Okay, the same thing is happening on subways today, because again, it is human nature.

00:51:39.000 I've talked a lot about human nature today, but it is indeed human nature for a lot of folks to believe that they're better off if they just sit there and allow bad things to happen in front of them.

00:51:49.000 Okay, final thing that I hate.

00:51:51.000 Trevor Noah

00:51:52.000 Who, as I've said, has been in a running gun battle with Samantha Bee, and Amy Schumer is on this list, and Lena Dunham is also on this list for least funny person in America.

00:52:01.000 So Trevor Noah was on CNN.

00:52:02.000 Again, amazing how CNN will give Trevor Noah all sorts of room to run with regard to his political viewpoints, even though he's just a comedian, of course.

00:52:09.000 And he comes out, he says, Trump is ripe for comedy and Obama is not.

00:52:12.000 That's why we make fun of Trump all the time.

00:52:15.000 It cannot be more apparent.

00:52:18.000 One is ripe for comedy.

00:52:20.000 For instance, Donald Trump has left no contradiction unturned.

00:52:26.000 That's his thing.

00:52:27.000 Donald Trump is a gift to every level of comedy.

00:52:30.000 If you want to apply comedy or satire at the lowest level, Donald Trump is ripe for that.

00:52:35.000 You don't have to dig deeper.

00:52:36.000 But if you do dig deeper, you will get more from him as well.

00:52:39.000 You know, Obama was, like many politicians, a water table that is buried far beneath the surface.

00:52:47.000 So to get to the right joke and the right piece of satire that would really illuminate what Obama was doing, you had to dig through so many layers and work through the weeds to get to the water table of jokes.

00:52:58.000 No, so this is actually not true.

00:52:59.000 Okay, so here's the truth about comedy.

00:53:01.000 Trump is an inherently funnier person than Barack Obama, no question.

00:53:04.000 I mean, the guy's funny.

00:53:05.000 Like, the whole thing's hilarious.

00:53:06.000 Like, the day he was elected, the night he was elected, there's a tape of me laughing for two straight minutes when someone calls him President Donald Trump, because it's just funny.

00:53:12.000 The whole situation is hilarious.

00:53:14.000 In terms of what you can get better comedy out of, the truth is the easy comedy is not always the best comedy.

00:53:19.000 And you're seeing this on SNL, where they're going for low-hanging fruit and they're failing on a routine basis.

00:53:23.000 Where Alec Baldwin, his impression of Donald Trump is not particularly funny because he doesn't like Donald Trump.

00:53:28.000 Because it's too easy to kind of mock Donald Trump for being Donald Trump.

00:53:33.000 The truth is that the pretensions of Barack Obama were ripe for comedy. 0.85

00:53:36.000 Barack Obama was the most pretentious 0.98

00:53:39.000 Jerk in the Oval Office in a long time. 0.99

00:53:42.000 A guy who really thought he was above it all.

00:53:43.000 He thought he was this sort of Jesus-esque figure, and he really wasn't.

00:53:47.000 He was a selfie-stick president.

00:53:49.000 There was a lot of potential for comedy there.

00:53:51.000 It's just that folks on the left don't think Barack Obama is funny because they see him the same way Obama sees himself.

00:53:55.000 That was the big problem.

00:53:56.000 Obama saw himself as this grand, unifying, Jesus-esque figure, and so did the people in Hollywood.

00:54:01.000 So they saw no way to make a joke.

00:54:02.000 You can't make a joke about Jesus when you believe in him, right?

00:54:04.000 So the same thing is true for Barack Obama.

00:54:07.000 Not true of Trump.

00:54:08.000 They don't like Trump.

00:54:08.000 But that means that their comedy ain't all that funny about Trump.

00:54:11.000 It's usually them just making a face into camera and look how stupid Trump is. 1.00

00:54:14.000 That's not inherently funny. 1.00

00:54:15.000 What's inherently funny is the ridiculous... 0.97

00:54:19.000 I am above it nature of Barack Obama. 0.94

00:54:21.000 They could have been played for laughs if any of these people bothered to actually make a move in that direction.

00:54:25.000 They weren't ever going to make that move.

00:54:28.000 It's, you know, again, I think very silly that the comedic world has suddenly rediscovered its funny bone as soon as Trump became president.

00:54:35.000 There's plenty to laugh at in the Obama administration, for sure.

00:54:38.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest.

00:54:40.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:41.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:46.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:54:51.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:54:56.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:54:57.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:54:59.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:55:01.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:55:03.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 30, 2018

Goodbye, Roseanne | Ep. 549

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