The Ben Shapiro Show - June 30, 2017


Government-Run Healthcare Does Kill People | Ep. 330


Episode Stats

Length

27 minutes

Words per Minute

206.08696

Word Count

5,609

Sentence Count

349

Misogynist Sentences

6

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary

10-month-old Charlie Gard is a terminally ill baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights, an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one, which determined that, while his parents wanted to take him to the U.S. for a long-shot, potentially life-saving treatment, they couldn t. Instead, the court ruled that the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie. What was the court s justification? Charlie had to die with dignity. That s the new dignity: to live with pain. That s a far cry from the Hippocratic Oath, which says, "I will neither poison, nor do I do so to anybody when asked to do so." So in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who aren t even terminal. People who suffer from depression or anorexia. That's a better way to die than to die with pain, right? That's the math: Better to die, than to live in dignity. And why shouldn't it be devalued? Why should it be a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved in spite of suffering? But that notion has been stripped away in favor of a secularist standard of healthy living, which is not a solution to suffering? But that's a poison? Why not? by Tufts University, which teaches us that death is a poison. when it comes to living with dignity and so we can be free of pain not a poison a poison to do a better life or a better than we can do better than that by a better thing that s a better to die so that we can live with a better day better than a better world than we do better . And why not to do better in life than we should be better than the other in which we should do better, better than is better than I do better? that's the new ? What do you think about it? , not better than this I ll tell you what the difference between a poison, right than a poison that I ve been taught by Tuft and a poison in the original Hippocratic oath what s a poison I ve learned in class do I think you ll do better to do ?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You've probably never heard of Charlie Gard.
00:00:02.000 He's a terminally ill, 10-month-old baby who has now been sentenced to death by the European Court on Human Rights, an Orwellian organization if ever there has been one, which determined that while his parents wanted to take him to the United States for a long-shot, potentially life-saving treatment, they couldn't.
00:00:16.000 Instead, the court ruled, the great Ormond Street Hospital for Children would withdraw all life support, killing Charlie.
00:00:22.000 What was the court's justification?
00:00:23.000 Charlie had to quote-unquote, die with dignity.
00:00:26.000 You see, Charlie suffers from a mitochondrial disease that destroys the muscles in the brain.
00:00:30.000 There was no available treatment in the United Kingdom, and so Charlie's parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates,
00:00:34.000 Raise $1.6 million to fly him to the U.S.
00:00:37.000 for an experimental treatment.
00:00:38.000 But the hospital argued that the treatment wouldn't help Charlie and would prolong his suffering, and that they knew better than the parents who had to suffer through his illness and care for him every single day.
00:00:47.000 Thus, the hospital argued that it would be in Charlie's best interest to die.
00:00:51.000 UK courts agreed.
00:00:52.000 The guards then appealed to the EU, and now the court has ruled against them, with the ECHR, that's the European Commission on Human Rights, stating, quote,
00:01:08.000 The hospital issued its own perverse statement.
00:01:10.000 They said, quote, Despite the hospital's statement that it would not immediately change the standard of care, his parents now report that the hospital will withdraw life support tomorrow.
00:01:18.000 His parents announced, quote,
00:01:36.000 We begged them to give us the weekend.
00:01:37.000 Friends and family wanted to come and see Charlie for the last time, but now there isn't even time for that.
00:01:42.000 Doctors said they would not rush to turn off his ventilator, but we are being rushed.
00:01:45.000 Not only are we not allowed to take our son to an expert hospital to save his life, we also can't choose how or when our son dies.
00:01:51.000 There are several levels to the perversity here.
00:01:53.000 First, for all the talk of the evils of the American system of health care, at least we promote freedom of choice and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford.
00:02:02.000 As the doctor who offered experimental treatment said in court, if Charlie had been ill at any institution in the United States, they would immediately have begun the treatment.
00:02:10.000 But in the UK, a socialized medicine country where individual needs come second to the preservation of the system, there is less concern with parental rights.
00:02:17.000 In the US, we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator.
00:02:26.000 In the UK, they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it is better to kill the child than keep it alive.
00:02:34.000 Well, this case became a court proceeding.
00:02:35.000 Every single day, the National Health Service, the NHS, makes decisions about how to ration care.
00:02:40.000 Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can't afford it, but that's what happens all the time under socialized medicine.
00:02:47.000 The difference being, it's not about you not being able to afford it, it's about the government not being able to afford it.
00:02:51.000 And you do not even have the capacity to raise the money to fund the care yourself.
00:02:55.000 Second, a government-run system breeds a shift in control.
00:02:58.000 In the US, the case of Charlie Gard is a major scandal.
00:03:01.000 In the EU, it's apparently no big deal.
00:03:03.000 That's because we in the United States like to think that we control our lives and that as parents, our priorities matter than those of random doctors who don't raise our kids.
00:03:11.000 But once you give up control of your life and death decisions to an impersonal government, it is nearly impossible
00:03:17.000 to take back that control.
00:03:18.000 This case could have been easy.
00:03:19.000 The hospital could have released the child back to the parents.
00:03:22.000 The hospital didn't do it because it believed that it had the final say.
00:03:25.000 And why shouldn't it?
00:03:26.000 It always has the final say under the NHS system.
00:03:29.000 Third, allowing the government to control the value of life means devaluing life.
00:03:33.000 It has been a fundamental hallmark of Western civilization that life ought to be preserved, in spite of pain, in spite of suffering, that death is not a solution to suffering.
00:03:41.000 But that notion has now been stripped away in favor of a secularist standard of healthy living, and so in Europe, euthanasia is now available to people who aren't even terminal.
00:03:49.000 People who suffer from depression or anorexia.
00:03:51.000 Better to die with dignity than live with pain.
00:03:53.000 That's the new math.
00:03:54.000 That's a far cry from the original Hippocratic Oath, which overtly stated, neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.
00:04:02.000 Or even the Tufts Medical School version, which is usually used in the United States, which states, quote, above all, I must not play at God.
00:04:08.000 Those who value life want to keep choices about their life in their hands, rather than turning such control over to an impersonal government bureaucracy that guarantees you coverage it chooses for you.
00:04:19.000 Charlie Gard's story isn't just a travesty of justice and an insult to decency.
00:04:23.000 It's a warning for people who think that bureaucracies are as interested in preserving your health care as you are.
00:04:28.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:04:29.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:04:35.000 It's just a heartbreaking story, and I want to talk a little bit more about the Charlie Gard story in a second.
00:04:38.000 Plus, President Trump on Twitter again, saying stuff, CNN imploding, all sorts of fun coming up.
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00:06:15.000 Okay, well, the life issue is near and dear to my heart, as you know, if you've watched the program at all or seen any of my videos on YouTube.
00:06:22.000 I'm actually in Wisconsin right now, broadcasting from the road, because I was the keynote speaker at the National Rights to Life Convention, and there is a sickness that has taken hold on the left.
00:06:31.000 That's right.
00:06:47.000 Just because somebody is suffering does not mean that their life is meaningless or valueless.
00:06:51.000 This becomes particularly an issue when the person can't speak for themselves, as with this kid.
00:06:56.000 As a sort of libertarian person, I morally don't believe in assisted suicide, but as a libertarian, I sort of understand the position, at least.
00:07:05.000 The notion that if you are terminally ill and you're going to die anyway, that you may want to pull the plug.
00:07:11.000 It's not something I agree with morally, and I don't think that the government should be involved in sponsoring it, but I certainly don't agree with the idea here, which is that if this baby was not going to have quality of life that you like, and you I mean the court, if you don't like that quality of life, but the parents want to preserve the life,
00:07:26.000 I don't see how you are able to trump their capacity to attempt to save their own child.
00:07:30.000 It's just, it's just plain evil.
00:07:32.000 And you can hear the suffering of the parents.
00:07:33.000 Here's what the parents had to say just a couple of months ago about the government attempting to stop them from bringing... This is not even a matter of them asking the, the NHS to cover the cost.
00:07:41.000 They're saying, we'll cover the cost ourselves.
00:07:42.000 Just give us back our kids so we can leave.
00:07:44.000 And the NHS basically said, no.
00:07:46.000 Here is, uh, here's the, the parents of this poor, this poor child.
00:07:50.000 What, what, what happens now?
00:07:52.000 Well, we're gonna try and appeal.
00:07:54.000 This is soon.
00:07:56.000 Just waiting to find out in where we can.
00:07:59.000 Is there a time scale that you have to adhere to to make that appeal?
00:08:05.000 Yeah, it was three weeks, but it's now kind of a week's pass since two weeks today.
00:08:09.000 That must be very difficult, Chris, to get your head around doing anything like that when you must be feeling so devastated about what happened at the end of that court case.
00:08:19.000 I still haven't got my head around it.
00:08:20.000 It was a week ago and I'm still, you know, I can't sleep, I can't eat.
00:08:24.000 I still can't get my head around why we're not allowed to take our boy for treatment he so desperately needs.
00:08:32.000 And just to get clear, Chris, you've raised money, you have funds, you could pay for the transportation to the United States, yeah?
00:08:42.000 And you're prepared to do that?
00:08:43.000 Yeah.
00:08:44.000 The reason that the judges decided that that should not be the case is that the medical opinion is that this would be too stressful and too painful for your son.
00:08:55.000 Is that right?
00:08:56.000 But that's what they're saying.
00:08:58.000 We totally disagree with that.
00:09:00.000 He's probably the most stable baby in there.
00:09:04.000 He's not in pain.
00:09:05.000 He's not suffering because if he was suffering and he was in pain, we wouldn't sit by his bed and watch him suffer.
00:09:12.000 So the harshness of all of this is partly that you're not asking for anyone else to pay for this.
00:09:20.000 Right?
00:09:21.000 So you're just being denied the physical transportation.
00:09:25.000 Yeah.
00:09:26.000 Okay, this is what is truly incredible about all of this, and this is why, again, there is a basic rift when it comes to the quote-unquote right to health care.
00:09:34.000 People on the right say you have the right to obtain health care for which you are willing to pay, and that gives you the ability to make choices about your own health care.
00:09:41.000 The left says you have the right to obtain health care regardless of ability to pay, but then says, okay, well, the people who are actually gonna pay for you get to make the decisions.
00:09:49.000 The bottom line is, in life,
00:09:50.000 Whoever controls the dollars makes the call.
00:09:53.000 Okay, when it comes to your own health care, if you control the dollars, you make the call.
00:09:56.000 And if the government controls the dollars, the government makes the call.
00:09:59.000 And so in this particular case, you know, there have been situations like this in the United States, like Terri Schiavo, but even that was a little bit different because Schiavo was an adult and they were trying to figure out what her wishes would have been as an adult.
00:10:11.000 In the United States, it was not a matter of willingness to pay or the people who obviously have control over the situation, the parents, making a case.
00:10:20.000 What the guards are going through may be specific to their child, but socialized medicine is all about somebody else making a decision for you, how long you ought to wait in line for a surgery, what sort of treatment you ought to get, what sort of treatment is best for you.
00:10:31.000 In the United States, we don't do that.
00:10:33.000 So when people say you spend a lot of money, yeah, we spend a lot of money because we choose to spend a lot of that money, and that's okay.
00:10:39.000 We do a big ideas section at the end of the show now, and at the end of the show today, I'm going to talk about supply and demand in healthcare, because I think people need to understand how this works.
00:10:46.000 We'll get to that in a little bit, but before we do that,
00:10:49.000 The other big news of the day, because everything is stupid, is President Trump decides that it is imperative that he go off on Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough.
00:10:57.000 So, as I mentioned yesterday, the only people who benefit
00:11:01.000 From the media fight with Trump are the media and Trump.
00:11:03.000 The American people don't benefit from this in any way.
00:11:06.000 And because there's such a reactionary feeling on both sides, because Trump supporters are not, well at least a lot, a lot of Trump supporters are not even interested in forwarding his policy goals.
00:11:16.000 They're more interested in him slapping the left.
00:11:19.000 Whatever he does that slaps the left is seen as an ultimate good, even if it's actually counterproductive to pushing his agenda.
00:11:24.000 And on the left,
00:11:25.000 They're so, the same exact thing.
00:11:26.000 They're so interested in seeing the media slap Trump that it doesn't matter if it undermines their own credibility, at least they're slapping Trump and Trump is mean and bad.
00:11:33.000 So, Mika Brzezinski was on with Joe Scarborough this morning and she said something about Trump's tiny hands.
00:11:38.000 She made some crack about Trump's tiny hands.
00:11:40.000 Now, he's the most powerful man on planet Earth.
00:11:42.000 He's one of the richest men on planet Earth.
00:11:44.000 You would think that President Trump could handle, you know, somebody being mildly insulting or very insulting.
00:11:50.000 I mean, this is part of the job.
00:11:52.000 It's part of the gig.
00:11:52.000 But President Trump then took to Twitter, and he tweeted out, quote, and this is a direct quote from his Twitter, this is the President of the United States, not Donald Trump candidate, not Donald Trump reality star, the most powerful man on planet Earth, and a job that used to, you know, we on the right used to say, why isn't Barack Obama wearing his jacket in the Oval Office?
00:12:09.000 Why is he putting his shoes on the desk in the Oval Office?
00:12:11.000 Hey, this is the guy in the Oval Office now.
00:12:13.000 Quote.
00:12:31.000 Okay, first of all, terrible story, dude.
00:12:33.000 I mean, like, that's a really crappy story, but... So there are a bunch of people on the right who find this just absolutely hysterically funny, because it's funny anytime anybody on the left gets slapped, even if this is just the Three Stooges, and it's Larry, Curly, and Mo pulling each other's hair and poking each other in the eyes.
00:12:48.000 This isn't my favorite Trump insult.
00:12:49.000 Trump has had insults that I think are much better than this.
00:12:53.000 He has a very short thesaurus of insults.
00:12:54.000 Low IQ, crazy, psycho, low energy...
00:12:59.000 Short, you know, like he has this, it's like 11 insults and he just rotates them.
00:13:05.000 But in any case, people were going after Trump and they're very upset with Trump because Trump was talking about her bleeding from her facelift, which is utterly irrelevant to any of this stuff.
00:13:14.000 And now to be fair, to be fair, as I say,
00:13:20.000 It is true that the media have been targeting Trump.
00:13:26.000 It is fair that it is true that Mika Brzezinski was going after President Trump on his appearance, on his hands.
00:13:32.000 And so it's not totally unfair for him to strike back, except for the fact that she's a news commentator and he's the President of the United States.
00:13:38.000 Now, on the right, I think people on the left have to understand why people on the right respond to Trump by basically pooh-poohing some of this stuff.
00:13:45.000 Not because it's right, because it isn't right, okay?
00:13:46.000 I don't think this should be pooh-poohed.
00:13:48.000 I think it's stupid.
00:13:48.000 I think when the right pooh-poohs this kind of stuff, they're actually undercutting their own credibility.
00:13:52.000 There's not a single person in America who thinks less of Mika Brzezinski because Donald Trump tweeted about her facelift.
00:13:57.000 And no one who is not already in Trump's camp cares about that sort of stuff, but
00:14:02.000 Again, when you talk about the polarization in the country right now, people on the right view Trump's shtick.
00:14:07.000 People on the right view Trump's shtick the same way that people on the left view Samantha Bee.
00:14:11.000 So Samantha Bee is utterly unfunny.
00:14:12.000 If you're on the right and you watch Samantha Bee, you think, how does this woman make a living?
00:14:16.000 She is just awful.
00:14:17.000 She's gauche, and nasty, and vulgar, and the left just swoons for her.
00:14:22.000 They love her.
00:14:23.000 Why?
00:14:23.000 Because it's not that she has to tell the truth.
00:14:25.000 She doesn't.
00:14:26.000 She just has to slap Trump.
00:14:27.000 So here's an example.
00:14:28.000 She's slapping Paul Ryan last night on her show.
00:14:30.000 I mean, this is vulgar and crude, and the left celebrates this kind of stuff all the time.
00:14:34.000 Most people like Medicaid, including Republican people.
00:14:38.000 Who the hell asked you to gut it by sending it to the states and capping its growth rate?
00:14:43.000 Medicaid.
00:14:44.000 Sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate.
00:14:48.000 We've been dreaming of this since I've been around.
00:14:50.000 Since you and I were drinking at a keg.
00:14:54.000 I've been thinking about this for a long time.
00:14:59.000 Oh yeah, while most college guys in the 90s were fantasizing about Pamela Anderson, Paul Ryan was jerking it to thoughts of poor people losing healthcare to pay for tax credit.
00:15:08.000 Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
00:15:33.000 It is plainly rather immoral for the President of the United States to be tweeting about people's bloody facelift in order to humiliate them because they don't like him in the media.
00:15:43.000 It's not a good thing to do.
00:15:44.000 I mean, is it fair to say that that's not a good thing to do?
00:15:46.000 Are we allowed to say that anymore?
00:15:47.000 Nonetheless, because everybody... It's now a slap fight, okay?
00:15:50.000 All of politics is a slap fight.
00:15:51.000 The cause, you know, I used to stand for the cause.
00:15:54.000 The cause was things like pro-life.
00:15:56.000 The cause was things like lower taxes and smaller government and less regulation and more power over your own life.
00:16:02.000 That was the cause.
00:16:02.000 Now the cause is everybody slapping each other like Kramer and like Seinfeld and Costanza.
00:16:10.000 They're just sitting around.
00:16:11.000 It's like Napoleon Dynamite having a slap fight.
00:16:13.000 Ooh, Napoleon Dynamite got in a slap.
00:16:15.000 That's what it is now.
00:16:16.000 And you can hear the glee, right?
00:16:18.000 I mean, so Sarah Huckabee Sanders goes out there in the media and she says, well, of course Trump said this because he always slaps back.
00:16:23.000 He's got to slap back.
00:16:24.000 I mean, what do you want him not to slap people?
00:16:26.000 Come on!
00:16:27.000 Look, I don't think that the president's ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn't push back.
00:16:34.000 There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just to him, but to, frankly, everyone around him.
00:16:41.000 People on that show have personally attacked me many times.
00:16:43.000 This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media and the liberal elites within the media or Hollywood or anywhere else.
00:16:54.000 Okay, this is the routine.
00:16:55.000 B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b
00:17:20.000 I am a big fan of evidence-based insults, okay?
00:17:23.000 So if you're gonna insult someone, you have to have some evidence to back it up, and the evidence has to go to the issue at hand, okay?
00:17:29.000 Like, if you're having an argument about politics and then you just say about somebody, well, you're fat, this is not helpful and it doesn't forward your agenda in any way.
00:17:36.000 It just looks petty and silly and ridiculous, and that's why the media is going nuts and they're having fun with this whole thing today and calling him a sexist.
00:17:44.000 The right is saying, yeah, Trump was mean to Brzezinski.
00:17:46.000 Who the hell cares about Mika Brzezinski except for Donald Trump?
00:17:49.000 Nobody watches that show.
00:17:52.000 Nobody, realistically speaking, watches that much cable news.
00:17:56.000 Get the highest ranked cable news shows, get like 2 million viewers a night.
00:18:00.000 There are 330 million people in the country.
00:18:03.000 And yet, we're supposed to think that this is the form of winning, is slapping Mika Brzezinski over her facelift.
00:18:08.000 I mean, like, really?
00:18:09.000 Really?
00:18:10.000 It's just a waste of time.
00:18:11.000 Now, again, on the left side of the aisle, they're trying to use this to give themselves the moral high ground, and they don't deserve the moral high ground, because they're slapping Trump every chance they get in exactly the same way.
00:18:19.000 They're just going out and using the stupidest possible
00:18:24.000 Reasons to slap Trump and making things up.
00:18:26.000 I mean, this is amazing.
00:18:28.000 So, CNN did an entire segment a couple of nights ago talking about refugee children from Syria and having Elmo explain it, right?
00:18:35.000 I mean, yes.
00:18:36.000 No, there's no media bias, Virginia.
00:18:38.000 Elmo just regularly appears on CNN to explain the issues of the day.
00:18:41.000 Here's tape of that.
00:18:43.000 Elmo, can I just start by asking you, because I know you went to visit a refugee camp in Jordan, right?
00:18:48.000 Yes.
00:18:48.000 Back in February?
00:18:49.000 Yes.
00:18:50.000 What was it like?
00:18:51.000 It was really wonderful.
00:18:53.000 Elmo and Miss Sherry went to Jordan together.
00:18:55.000 We did.
00:18:56.000 And it was really wonderful because Elmo got to meet a lot of new friends.
00:19:00.000 A lot of new friends.
00:19:00.000 And did you find that the Syrian little girls and little boys were a lot like your friends here in America?
00:19:05.000 Yeah, they really were.
00:19:06.000 It was very interesting because they like to play and learn, just like Elmo and all of his friends at Sesame Street.
00:19:13.000 And they loved Elmo.
00:19:14.000 They loved meeting Elmo.
00:19:17.000 Oh my god.
00:19:19.000 And then you wonder why we think there's media bias?
00:19:21.000 So CNN is trying to restore its credibility.
00:19:22.000 Here is a headline that CNN ran yesterday.
00:19:25.000 It was an actual headline that they ran yesterday.
00:19:29.000 Obama's jeans game gets stronger.
00:19:33.000 Yes, really.
00:19:34.000 That's a headline that they wrote.
00:19:35.000 So while they're busy doing all of this useless crap and then proclaiming themselves the most important people on earth for checking the president of the United States, and then Trump slaps them back with crap about facelifts, all of this is stupid.
00:19:46.000 All of this is distraction.
00:19:47.000 Now, the right is, there's some people on the right who are using this as an excuse to kill CNN, right?
00:19:52.000 So Sean Hannity is leading the charge on this.
00:19:54.000 He says, it's time to put CNN underground.
00:19:56.000 We're going to kill CNN finally.
00:19:57.000 We're going to kill the beast.
00:19:58.000 Here we go.
00:19:59.000 But first, let me explain how one of the biggest anti-Trump networks has lost all their credibility and can no longer be trusted by you, the American people.
00:20:10.000 Now, at this point, we should put CNN, six feet, you see right there, underground for repeatedly spreading lies, propaganda, black helicopter, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, and for viciously trying to take down this president.
00:20:25.000 Now, let's just look at some of the network's many controversies and scandals.
00:20:30.000 It's true.
00:20:31.000 I've talked as much as Sean has about CNN's bias.
00:20:34.000 CNN is wildly biased to the left.
00:20:36.000 When Sean does this routine where he acts as though CNN only became biased in the last five minutes, only now have they destroyed their credibility.
00:20:42.000 They've been destroying their credibility for years.
00:20:44.000 Again, you can find tape of me on YouTube saying that they were basically a propaganda ally for Hamas during the Gaza war three years ago.
00:20:49.000 So this is nothing new.
00:20:51.000 I mean, this has been happening my entire adult life at the very least, but there's a sort of opportunism where Sean is saying, okay, let's use this opportunity to put CNN underground and we'll just, and we'll just throw away whatever news they report at the same time.
00:21:05.000 Again, is any of this designed toward getting at the truth?
00:21:08.000 Or is this more designed at partisan bickering and let's take out our political opposition?
00:21:13.000 That matters because if it's designed to get at the truth, then it's worthwhile.
00:21:16.000 You know, debunking media bias is useful if you're attempting to get at the truth.
00:21:20.000 Debunking the entire media outlet because you hate them and want them to lose, that's a slightly different thing.
00:21:27.000 Well, I want to talk a little bit more about that, and I want to talk about the media's insane response to all of this.
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00:22:35.000 Okay, so the media have responded to, CNN has responded to Trump being anti-media and to Hannity being anti-media by doing what they do best, playing the victim.
00:22:46.000 So one of the most irritating facts about the way that Trump and the media play off each other is the media claim they're the victim, so we're justified in slapping Trump.
00:22:54.000 And then Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders say Trump is the victim, and so they're justified in slapping Mika across her facelifted head or whatever.
00:23:01.000 So Brian Stelter yesterday on CNN, he said that anti-journalist rhetoric is on the rise and people are going to die.
00:23:07.000 I told you a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, okay, when there was that shooting in Virginia by Bernie Sanders supporting loon bag who hated Donald Trump, I said, be very careful that you don't start labeling all rhetoric you don't like potentially violence provoking because the left will use that logic.
00:23:22.000 Maybe they will anyway, but you can at least argue honestly against it if you don't use it yourself.
00:23:27.000 Don't use the logic that rhetoric causes violence unless there's an open call for violence, because otherwise you are just basically trying to rule out all rhetoric.
00:23:35.000 Whatever I think about Trump's stupid tweets, I don't think that they are causing violence against journalists, but that's not what Stalter is saying.
00:23:40.000 He says, people on the left, right, and in-between who are pro-journalism recognize that most journalists try to be fair and right.
00:23:46.000 And then he continues, but there's an alternative view.
00:23:48.000 Popular and partisan websites and social media that is straight-up anti-journalism.
00:23:52.000 These activists and commentators don't promote accountability, they promote resentment.
00:23:57.000 And hatred.
00:23:58.000 Some of this anti-journalism spin isn't about eradicating bias or improving news coverage.
00:24:01.000 It's about trying to stamp out reporting altogether.
00:24:04.000 So I generally disagree with this.
00:24:06.000 I think most of the people who comment on media bias are not attempting to stamp out the media altogether.
00:24:11.000 But there is a grain of truth to the idea that if you spend time promoting the Seth Rich conspiracy and then you turn around and you say CNN has to be put six feet under because they are all fake news,
00:24:21.000 Are you a truth teller or are you just somebody who's attempting to play a partisan game?
00:24:26.000 Now, the left uses that kernel of truth.
00:24:27.000 There are some people on the right who are more anti, just anti all journalistic outlets that ever say anything bad about Trump.
00:24:33.000 They're trying to use that grain of truth and turn that into, there's a real threat to us.
00:24:37.000 Okay, there is no real threat to the press.
00:24:39.000 There isn't, okay?
00:24:41.000 This is not to say there couldn't be a nut job out there who is inflamed and goes and shoots a journalist, but this is true in political rhetoric all the time.
00:24:48.000 I mean, there's a reason I travel with security.
00:24:51.000 But what the left is trying to do is they're trying to say, we are on the verge because we covered Trump badly.
00:24:56.000 And then Trump is mean to us.
00:24:57.000 And then Trump says nasty things about us.
00:24:59.000 We are on the verge of a fascist takeover here in the United States.
00:25:02.000 So Chris Hayes at MSNBC, he puts on the Rachel Maddow glasses and he says, Trump is going to quash the press.
00:25:07.000 That's the next thing.
00:25:07.000 It's going to quash the press.
00:25:11.000 Okay, just to break that down for a moment.
00:25:12.000 First, Amazon does not own The Washington Post.
00:25:15.000 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos does.
00:25:17.000 Second, there are no internet taxes.
00:25:19.000 Amazon is now, however, collecting state sales tax nationwide.
00:25:24.000 But President Trump's tweet goes beyond attacking The Washington Post as fake news, something he did as recently as yesterday.
00:25:29.000 The president is very explicitly linking a complaint about a media entity to a threat, or at least implied threat, against the corporation associated with it.
00:25:37.000 He did this as a candidate, too, during an October speech.
00:25:40.000 He followed up a string of complaints about the media with this.
00:25:45.000 Amazon, which, through its ownership, controls the Washington Post, should be paying massive taxes.
00:25:53.000 Okay, so we talked about this yesterday, and we talked about how silly this was, but Trump is not actually quashing the press.
00:25:58.000 There has been no active move.
00:26:01.000 by President Trump to do anything remotely resembling quashing the press.
00:26:05.000 He's limited press access in ways that Obama limited.
00:26:07.000 Maybe he's done it a little bit more.
00:26:09.000 And that's not good.
00:26:09.000 I've criticized it.
00:26:10.000 But this idea that the First Amendment is under siege, that the press are all at threat of some sort of grand government crackdown, haven't seen one shred of that.
00:26:18.000 In fact, they seem pretty loud to me.
00:26:19.000 We'll talk a little bit more about this and what the left is trying to do in building this narrative.
00:26:23.000 But
00:26:24.000 For that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.
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00:26:39.000 So, lots of good stuff happening over at Daily Wire.
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