The Ben Shapiro Show - How Democrats Chose The Radicals | Ep. 843

00:00:00.000 Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib propagandize on behalf of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic BDS, the media ignore all of their priorities as per our usual arrangement, and President Trump tries to take control on the economy.

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:22.000 Yes, really, an actual good development from Facebook.

00:00:24.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

00:00:26.000 First, geopolitical tensions are rising.

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00:01:50.000 Okay, so, the Democratic Party is deciding right now whether they are going to move in the radical direction or whether they are going to move in the moderate direction.

00:02:01.000 Now, if they wish to win elections, they should obviously move in a moderate direction because Because all they had to do was not be crazy.

00:02:07.000 That's all they had to do.

00:02:08.000 They're running against a president who did not win a majority of the popular vote and whose approval ratings are extraordinarily low on average.

00:02:16.000 All they have to do is not be crazy.

00:02:17.000 And they simply cannot do it, apparently.

00:02:19.000 Instead, the Democrats have decided that the best available policy is to center all of their attention and focus on defending the most radical of their members.

00:02:27.000 That's because that's where they think the passion is.

00:02:29.000 Democrats now believe that they're going to win over the moderates because President Trump is so off-putting.

00:02:34.000 The biggest threat to them is that a bunch of people on the woke left will not show up to vote the same way they didn't show up to vote in 2016.

00:02:40.000 In the Democratic view, the reason that Hillary Clinton lost is because moderates showed up to vote for her and the base did not show up to vote for her. 1.00

00:02:47.000 And there's truth to that.

00:02:49.000 They look forward to 2020 and they say, OK, well, moderates will probably show up to vote for us.

00:02:53.000 We got to get that base out.

00:02:54.000 That means that we are going to center all of our attention on defending the most radical among us.

00:02:59.000 Well, that's making an assumption that may not be in evidence, which is that moderates will certainly swing to the Democratic Party, because remember, moderates voted for Hillary Clinton because they believed, I think wrongly, that Hillary Clinton was a moderate.

00:03:10.000 But if Democrats were to nominate on a presidential level somebody who is radical, Well, that changes the ballgame radically.

00:03:17.000 And the same thing is true in Congress.

00:03:18.000 If it turns out that the Democratic Congress cannot be trusted with power, if it looks to the American people like that Congress is going to perform in radical, polarized, partisan fashion, they will not vote for the Democrats.

00:03:29.000 This is why what you saw at the end of 2018 is pretty important right before the election.

00:03:33.000 About a month and a half out from the election, the Republicans had a significant Generic ballot deficit against the Democrats.

00:03:39.000 They were down 8 to 10 points in the generic ballot.

00:03:41.000 Then the Kavanaugh hearings happened about three weeks out from the election.

00:03:44.000 And those Kavanaugh hearings closed up that gap tighter than a tick.

00:03:48.000 I mean, it was extremely tight all of a sudden.

00:03:50.000 And that's because the more the American people saw of Democrats acting radical, The more they saw of Democrats acting foolishly and badly, the less they wanted to vote for them.

00:04:00.000 And then, of course, a couple weeks before the election, President Trump was sick of being out of the headlines, and he decided he was going to go out and campaign, and that immediately drove the gap wide again.

00:04:09.000 Well, the Democrats have decided that they are going to ignore the possibility that they are alienating people, and instead they are going to focus in on Trump.

00:04:17.000 Trump is the be-all, end-all.

00:04:19.000 It's a risky strategy, for sure.

00:04:22.000 And so what you're seeing right now is this divide inside the Democratic Party.

00:04:26.000 Now, when I say the Democrats are doing this, I don't mean all Democrats.

00:04:29.000 There is this fight going on inside the Democratic Party, and you can see it reflected in the polling in the Democratic primaries.

00:04:35.000 So Joe Biden, for all of the crap that has been tossed his way, for all of the talk about Joe Biden fading and Elizabeth Warren rising, Joe Biden is basically where he was a month ago in the polls.

00:04:45.000 In the overall national polls, he still has an extraordinarily wide lead.

00:04:48.000 He still has a narrow lead in places like New Hampshire.

00:04:51.000 In Iowa, he still has a narrow lead.

00:04:53.000 He has a very wide lead in places like South Carolina.

00:04:55.000 As soon as he gets to the South, where there's a heavy share of black voting, then Joe Biden suddenly jumps into this massive lead because Kamala Harris has no support in the black community and Elizabeth Warren has no support among black voters.

00:05:06.000 There's a brand new poll out from CNN today, and it shows that Joe Biden has actually expanded his edge over the Democratic field.

00:05:13.000 In a new CNN poll, 29% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters say they back former Vice President Biden.

00:05:20.000 That is up 7% compared with the late June CNN survey.

00:05:23.000 No other candidate has made meaningful gains over that time.

00:05:27.000 Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are still stuck in this internecine fight for the socialist left.

00:05:32.000 Bernie Sanders is at 15%, Elizabeth Warren is at 14% according to the CNN poll.

00:05:38.000 The only statistically meaningful change in the candidate standings is a 12-point decline in support for Kamala Harris, who right after the first debate in June was up at 17% and now has dropped all the way back down to 5%.

00:05:52.000 Ouch.

00:05:53.000 Ouch.

00:05:54.000 Tulsi Gabbard.

00:05:55.000 Wow.

00:05:56.000 Turns out that Tulsi Gabbard clocking Kamala Harris into the next count, he basically may have destroyed Kamala Harris as a candidate.

00:06:04.000 The original June CNN poll was conducted in the days immediately following the first round of the DNC debate.

00:06:09.000 Biden's performance was panned and Harris's was praised.

00:06:13.000 Well, now she has dropped all the way back down to Pete Buttigieg levels.

00:06:16.000 Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are exactly where they were before.

00:06:19.000 They may have flip-flopped for one point, and Joe Biden is all the way back up at 29.

00:06:24.000 Biden's advantage in this poll is boosted by stronger support from self-identified Democrats, 31 percent, then from independents, 23 percent, older voters, 34 percent, then younger ones, 23 percent among those under age 45 and from moderate and conservative voters.

00:06:38.000 So he's getting a lot of support among Democrats, older voters and moderate and conservative voters.

00:06:45.000 So that is the fight inside the Democratic Party.

00:06:48.000 Is the newly woke plurality of the Democratic Party in control?

00:06:51.000 Or is it the large segment that supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, that supported Hillary Clinton probably in 2008 against Barack Obama?

00:07:00.000 Those folks, combined with a serious share of the black vote, could propel Joe Biden to victory.

00:07:06.000 So this is a serious infight inside the Democratic Party.

00:07:08.000 And you're starting to see this have ramifications in terms of how the candidates approach policy.

00:07:13.000 So for example, the Washington Post reports today that Democrats are now backing off their once fervent embrace of Medicare for all.

00:07:21.000 So Kamala Harris, among other Democrats, is starting to recognize that running hard to the left, there's no room over there. 1.00

00:07:27.000 Now I've been saying this since the beginning of the primaries.

00:07:29.000 I've been saying that any candidate Who found the spine to run in the face of the progressive woke left in their own party would actually do pretty well, given that they got some sort of media attention.

00:07:40.000 So it wasn't going to help somebody like Michael Bennett, who nobody knew who he was.

00:07:43.000 But when Pete Buttigieg first announced and was acting like a moderate, he started climbing in the polls.

00:07:48.000 Then he started acting like a radical and he declined again in the polls.

00:07:50.000 And he's been stagnant ever since.

00:07:52.000 Well, Kamala Harris is starting to recognize that playing a sort of Mini version of Elizabeth Warren isn't going to work anymore, and she is moving again. 0.87

00:08:01.000 So she's moving her positions up, down, and all around.

00:08:03.000 According to the Washington Post, leaning back on a black leather sofa as her campaign bus rumbled toward Fort Dodge, Kamala Harris tried to explain why she spent months defending a plan to replace private health insurance with Medicare for All, only to switch to a more modest proposal that would allow private insurance to continue after all. 0.99

00:08:20.000 Harris said, I don't think it was any secret I was not entirely comfortable.

00:08:23.000 That's an understatement.

00:08:25.000 I was finally like, I can't make this circle fit into a square.

00:08:27.000 I said, we're going to take hits.

00:08:29.000 People are going to say she's waffling. 0.99

00:08:30.000 It's going to be awful.

00:08:30.000 But she said she decided it was worth it.

00:08:33.000 Actually, what happened is that she thought that all of the political gain was to be made in the Medicare for all space.

00:08:38.000 It turns out that space was crowded.

00:08:39.000 And now she's bumper carring it off of that particular crash and trying to move into Joe Biden's lane.

00:08:45.000 According to the Washington Post, the Democratic Senator from California is hardly alone.

00:08:49.000 The idea of Medicare for All, a unified government health program that would take over the basic function of private insurance, became a liberal litmus test at the outset of the presidential campaign.

00:08:58.000 But in recent months, several of the Democratic hopefuls have shifted their positions or their tone, moderating full-throated endorsement of Medicare for All, adopting ideas for allowing private insurance in some form.

00:09:08.000 Worth noting, Kamala Harris was a co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill.

00:09:11.000 So, for all this, oh, I was well known I was uncomfortable.

00:09:14.000 Was it, though?

00:09:15.000 Was it really?

00:09:16.000 I mean, about the time that you were signing right next to Bernie Sanders on the Medicare for All bill, was it well known that you were uncomfortable with Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill?

00:09:25.000 Don't think so.

00:09:26.000 Neera Tanden, who's a former top aide to Hillary Clinton and president of the Center for American Progress, she says, what I think has happened in the Democratic primary is people recognize that some of the concerns about single-payer are not coming from special interests, but the public.

00:09:39.000 Former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke is doing the same thing.

00:09:44.000 He originally embraced Medicare for All as the best way.

00:09:46.000 He now similarly supports a plan that would preserve the current employer-based insurance system.

00:09:49.000 Okay, so the gap is beginning to open up wide between the progressive left and the so-called moderates in the Democratic Party.

00:09:56.000 And this is being led by Elizabeth Warren, who's again trying to steal away support from Bernie Sanders and also trying to cut into the black level of support for Joe Biden. 0.70

00:10:04.000 She's doing this by attacking Joe Biden's crime policies. 1.00

00:10:07.000 And she's also attacking Kamala Harris's crime policies and Cory Booker's crime policies.

00:10:12.000 So Elizabeth Warren trying to outflank all of them on the left by basically calling Kamala Harris and Joe Biden cops. 1.00

00:10:20.000 The Washington Post reports that Elizabeth Warren said on Tuesday that his president should eliminate the death penalty, end the use of private prisons, curtail the cash bail system, and overhaul the use of presidential pardons.

00:10:31.000 The announcement was Warren's entry into the volatile debate over criminal justice reform, an issue that is resonating especially in the African American community.

00:10:38.000 Now again, I don't know where the Washington Post is getting these numbers that the issue is resonating especially in the black community.

00:10:44.000 If that were true, you'd expect that Donald Trump would have seen a significant uptick in support from the black community, considering that the dude signed into law criminal justice reform.

00:10:53.000 You would also expect that the attacks on Joe Biden by Kamala Harris would have borne some sort of serious repercussions, given her attacks on him over his 1994 crime bill.

00:11:04.000 They have not.

00:11:05.000 So I think that is an assumption that is being made that I'm not seeing a lot of statistical support for is that the black community is deeply enchanted and entranced with the idea of criminal justice reform.

00:11:15.000 Unlike earlier policy announcements, Warren did not hesitate to take implicit but unmistakable aim at policies embraced in the past by her rivals, especially former VP Joe Biden, Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.

00:11:26.000 Well, actually, the system preferences criminal justice pleas over prosecution.

00:11:29.000 Well, actually, the system preferences criminal justice pleas over prosecution.

00:11:42.000 To be real, most people plead out their cases because they are guilty and they know it and they don't want to go to jail for longer by going through the actual burden of a trial.

00:11:51.000 I love this sort of sloganeering.

00:11:53.000 We'll reduce incarceration.

00:11:54.000 So without reducing the levels of crime, you'll reduce incarceration.

00:11:57.000 How?

00:11:58.000 Wouldn't that imply that there will be more criminals on the street?

00:12:01.000 I mean, simply by dint of statistical analysis?

00:12:04.000 And when she says, by changing what we choose to criminalize, well, we've already decriminalized marijuana in the state of California, and we still have a lot of people in prison in the state of California.

00:12:14.000 They've done it in Washington state.

00:12:15.000 They've done it in Colorado.

00:12:16.000 Still a lot of people in prison because it turns out that the vast, vast, vast majority of people In prison in the United States are not in prison for simple drug possession.

00:12:25.000 Many of them are in prison for drug distribution and most of them are still in prison for other crimes.

00:12:30.000 We broke down those statistics in a podcast maybe two weeks ago, three weeks ago.

00:12:35.000 But obviously this is political pandering, and it's Warren attempting to cut into the black base of support by moving radical.

00:12:42.000 And you're seeing the entire Democratic Party now playing this game.

00:12:44.000 And it's not just the presidential candidates, it's the entire Democratic Party trying to have it both ways.

00:12:48.000 Trying to capture the zeitgeist of the radical progressives, while at the same time trying to appeal to moderates.

00:12:54.000 And that's a hard bridge to gap.

00:12:56.000 Now Trump could make it a lot harder for them to gap by not being so off the wall all the time.

00:13:01.000 If Trump appeared to be a steady, calming influence in American politics, then that gap would open wide.

00:13:07.000 We saw this just a month ago, when Nancy Pelosi and AOC looked like they were about to beat each other over the head with claw hammers. 0.96

00:13:13.000 And then Trump jumped in and was like, hold up a second, LEROY JENKINS, and decided that he was just going to bigfoot that entire conversation and become the center of attention.

00:13:22.000 Trump right now is papering over a lot of the internal Democratic gaps.

00:13:26.000 But those gaps do exist, and they are going to widen in the near future.

00:13:31.000 I'll explain how this is happening on a congressional level in just one second.

00:13:35.000 First, let's talk about big tech, particularly Twitter.

00:13:39.000 There are a lot of these big tech companies, we'll discuss one actually in a little while, that I think is attempting to make some good moves.

00:13:44.000 But there are a lot of big tech companies that are not particularly friendly to conservatives.

00:13:47.000 Twitter, my personal bugaboo.

00:13:50.000 A company that not only is not friendly to conservatives and throws them off the platform, some of them without any actual proper explanation, but decides what trends in obviously biased ways.

00:13:59.000 Well, if you can't trust certain elements in Silicon Valley to treat conservatives fairly, how can you trust them to handle your privacy and personal online data?

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00:15:03.000 Okay, so as I say, this battle between the woke progressives, and I keep saying woke because woke is sort of an internally used term in progressive circles to denote people who have the right views on issues and then link them with racial views.

00:15:17.000 That is the idea that wokeness results from identifying race at the center of American life, intersectional politics at the center of American life.

00:15:27.000 That's what I mean when I talk about the woke progressives versus sort of the moderate Democrats, so-called moderate Democrats.

00:15:33.000 You're seeing this play out in real time in Congress.

00:15:35.000 So, if the Democratic Party were smart, they would be featuring people like Representative Abigail Spanberger. 0.91

00:15:40.000 So you've never heard of Representative Abigail Spanberger.

00:15:43.000 Why?

00:15:43.000 Because she's a moderate from Virginia.

00:15:45.000 And Democrats don't want to feature her, which makes very little sense considering that Representative Spanberger is exactly the sort of candidate that Democrats need in order to win a majority.

00:15:54.000 Now, Nancy Pelosi knows this.

00:15:56.000 Which is why Nancy Pelosi has openly stated in the past that all of those purple districts are the ones she has to worry about.

00:16:01.000 Not Ilhan Omar's district, not Rashida Tlaib's district.

00:16:03.000 Those are pure blue districts.

00:16:05.000 Not AOC's district.

00:16:07.000 But Spanberger is getting clocked on all sides for the crime of being a moderate in the Democratic Party.

00:16:13.000 According to the Washington Post, at the end of another long week in Congress, Representative Abigail Spanberger poured herself a cup of coffee and waited in her D.C. 0.99

00:16:20.000 apartment for her family to arrive from their home outside Richmond.

00:16:23.000 She felt satisfied with the job well done.

00:16:25.000 Then she looked at Twitter.

00:16:26.000 The Democrats saw liberals lashing out at moderates like herself for approving $4.6 billion in emergency aid for migrants at the southern border, a deal they said did little to rein in the Trump administration's immigration policies.

00:16:38.000 Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin accused lawmakers like Spanberger of being part of a child abuse caucus.

00:16:44.000 The chief of staff for AOC said their vote would enable a racist system.

00:16:49.000 On Facebook, Spanberger was labeled too late and clueless.

00:16:51.000 Twitter, by the way, is a massive bubble that has very little impact on real-world thinking, which is why members of the media who spend an enormous time on Twitter seem to think that that's real life.

00:17:01.000 That is not how people actually think, which is why Spanberger is much more important to Democrats in real-world time than are Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, but that's not how the Democrats are treating them.

00:17:11.000 Spanberger was stunned it was the first time the freshman congresswoman could not make sense of what was happening.

00:17:15.000 Reflecting on the late June episode, Spanberger said she learned a hard lesson she did not anticipate in 2018 when she unseated Republican Dave Brat and helped Democrats win the House majority.

00:17:25.000 Sometimes your biggest foes will be in your own party.

00:17:28.000 In the eight months Spanberger has served in Congress, she's been a lawmaker in the middle. 0.98

00:17:32.000 She comes from a historically Republican district that just five years ago replaced Eric Cantor with someone more conservative, but she won last year in large part thanks to left-leaning groups like the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County.

00:17:42.000 She beat Bratt by just two points.

00:17:44.000 She's a district Democrats need to keep. 1.00

00:17:45.000 Doesn't matter.

00:17:46.000 Democrats are attacking her.

00:17:47.000 She says, That week showed me that for some people, ideology matters more than putting food in the mouth of a child, and that was stunning to me.

00:17:54.000 Now, if you are Donald Trump, if you are a Republican looking forward to 2020, then maybe you celebrate the fact that Spanberger is being ousted by her own party.

00:18:04.000 But if you are just an American who cares less about partisan politics than you do about the future of a two-party system, you want people like Spanberger to win.

00:18:13.000 Not the C, but you want her to defeat her more left-leaning colleagues in Congress. 1.00

00:18:17.000 You want two viable parties that are centered around where the American people are, not a party that is running wildly to the left, far away from the American public, and simply winning on the basis of Republican unpopularity.

00:18:30.000 Right?

00:18:31.000 Spanberger is somebody that I would like to see in a leadership position in the Democratic Party, and I think most reasonable people would, not Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

00:18:39.000 And again, I don't even want to see her in Congress.

00:18:40.000 I want to see a Republican in Congress.

00:18:42.000 I like Dave Brat.

00:18:42.000 I'd like to see Dave Brat back in Congress.

00:18:44.000 But if you are going to choose between Democrats, that choice does have ramifications.

00:18:49.000 So there's a theory among Republicans that it's better for Democrats, it's good for Democrats to polarize and centralize around the Elizabeth Warrens and around the Ilhan Omars and the Rashida Tlaibs and the AOCs and the Ayanna Pressleys.

00:19:00.000 And that's good because the American people look at that and then vote Republican.

00:19:03.000 That's a dangerous game.

00:19:05.000 I would much rather have a choice between the Republican Party and a more reasonable Democratic Party, because that means that the backstop of Republicans losing isn't insanity.

00:19:15.000 I don't want a choice between Republican and insane.

00:19:18.000 That's a bad choice. 0.92

00:19:19.000 Because while it may mean that Republicans win more often, it also means that when they lose, insane is in charge.

00:19:24.000 And that is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

00:19:26.000 And that is what we are seeing with the Democratic Party rallying around Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

00:19:32.000 So Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are still being championed by the top members of the Democratic Party at this point.

00:19:39.000 And that is insane.

00:19:39.000 And members of the media, by the way.

00:19:42.000 Let's do a quick thought exercise.

00:19:43.000 We did a little bit yesterday on the radio show.

00:19:45.000 Let's do a quick thought exercise.

00:19:47.000 Imagine for a second that you had two white Republican congressmen.

00:19:51.000 And they planned a trip to Israel in conjunction with an organization that had run pieces quoting anti-Semitic myths about Jews imbibing Christian blood for Passover matzah, that republished a neo-Nazi article decrying the Jew-controlled entertainment media, that suggested that terrorists who murder Israeli children should be honored.

00:20:08.000 Imagine they're white Republican congresspeople for a second.

00:20:11.000 Do you think that might be a story?

00:20:13.000 What if those two sitting white Republican congressmen tweeted out a cartoon from a cartoonist so anti-semitic he won second prize at Iran's Holocaust denial cartoon contest?

00:20:23.000 Imagine that these two white Republican congressmen had themselves engaged in open anti-semitic slurs ranging from a suggestion that Israel supporters in America suffer from dual loyalty to the accusation that Israel hypnotizes the world to the suggestion that it's all about the Benjamins, American support for Israel.

00:20:39.000 Imagine these two white Republican congressmen had expressed support for terrorists like Razmia Odeb Imagine that both congresspeople had a long history of associations with open anti-Semites who hate Jews.

00:20:50.000 And finally, imagine that both white Republican members of Congress were calling for a complete cutoff of aid to Israel, as well as boycott, divestment, and sanctions from Israel, and demanded entry to Israel.

00:20:59.000 Do you think the story might be the beliefs of the two white Republican congressmen, or would it be how mean Israel is to these people in not allowing them to come?

00:21:07.000 We all know the answer to this.

00:21:08.000 If we were talking about Steve King and Pat Buchanan, you know, as a representative, then this would be the story.

00:21:15.000 The story would be their evil, terrible, horrible, no good, very bad beliefs. 0.94

00:21:18.000 However, make these members of Congress Females of color who are Muslim. 0.95

00:21:24.000 And suddenly the math completely shifts.

00:21:26.000 And we are not allowed to talk about any of this.

00:21:28.000 There is no mainstream media coverage of any of these things.

00:21:31.000 And if there is mainstream media coverage, it's about how audacious these women are. 1.00

00:21:35.000 How they are raising issues that haven't been thought of before.

00:21:37.000 You know, issues like whether Jews drink Christian blood.

00:21:40.000 I mean, that is literally what the group that was sponsoring their trip has put on their website.

00:21:45.000 This is where the Democrats are.

00:21:47.000 They will defend anything that these women do. 1.00

00:21:50.000 And they will do so if it means justifying full-on terrorism and anti-Semitism.

00:21:54.000 This became fairly clear yesterday when Rich Lowry of National Review was on CNN with Peter Beinart, representative Hamas. 1.00

00:22:02.000 On CNN.

00:22:02.000 So Peter Beinart writes for a bunch of publications, including the New Republic and the Nation.

00:22:08.000 Peter Beinart has always been a representative of the pro-Hamas position in the Israel-Hamas, Israel-Palestinian debate.

00:22:17.000 He has never seen an action by Israel that he finds appropriate. 0.89

00:22:20.000 He has always justified, and he justified terrorism yesterday on CNN, I mean on national television, in order to defend Omar and Tlaib.

00:22:28.000 This is how far the left is willing to go to defend these women, specifically because they're trying to, again, grab hold of the passionate base in full knowledge that they are alienating moderates in the process.

00:22:39.000 Here's Beinart being insane.

00:22:41.000 Palestinians don't have to be saints in order to deserve the basic rights that all of us take for granted, right? 0.66

00:22:48.000 Mifta has said things that I disagree with.

00:22:50.000 They made an anti-Semitic statement that they apologized for.

00:22:52.000 These are strong supporters of the BDS movement.

00:22:55.000 They are not honest brokers.

00:22:57.000 We wouldn't afford a white nationalist organization the leeway that Peter is giving this organization.

00:23:04.000 Oh, they're not saints.

00:23:06.000 This is an anti-Semitic.

00:23:07.000 Okay, then this prompted Beinart to actually start justifying terrorism.

00:23:11.000 civilians and children.

00:23:12.000 And no matter what you think of the dispute between the Palestinians and Israel, that is an illegitimate tactic that no one should associate with advocates of.

00:23:22.000 Okay.

00:23:22.000 And this prompted Bainar to actually start justifying terrorism.

00:23:25.000 He loses it and he starts justifying terrorism on national TV.

00:23:27.000 Hannah Neshrawe has devoted her life as a nonviolent activist to opposing an oppression, which none of us does not accord with the values that any of us believe in as Americans.

00:23:38.000 So she doesn't control her own organization and what it publishes? 1.00

00:23:41.000 Rich, why don't you try spending a little bit of time focusing on the fact that almost $4 billion of U.S. aid is used to put children in detention.

00:23:48.000 You're the one distracting from the issue.

00:23:50.000 I'm asking you.

00:23:50.000 No, no, no.

00:23:51.000 This is the issue.

00:23:51.000 You're distracting from the issue because National Review just as National Review defended apartheid and just as you defended segregation, you now defend Israel's oppression of Palestinian basic rights.

00:24:02.000 It's a tradition for you guys.

00:24:03.000 Okay.

00:24:03.000 Then Bainar went even further and he suggested that terrorism may be justified by the fact that Israel is oppressive.

00:24:09.000 And this is what, this is what Beinart has been saying for years.

00:24:12.000 I mean, I've been on CNN talking with Peter Beinart and I've said openly that this guy represents the Hamas position. 0.99

00:24:18.000 He's doing all of that because, and increasingly so are members of the Democratic Party, in order to try and make the case that Omar and Tlaib are not out of bounds.

00:24:26.000 Beinart then tried to defend himself and he said, today I was asked if I support Palestinian suicide bombers. 0.97

00:24:31.000 God forbid, a friend was killed by one, but, but, How's their butt at the end of that statement? 0.98

00:24:38.000 But Palestinians don't forfeit their rights because some in their midst pursue them in an immoral way. 0.98

00:24:43.000 Mandela and Malcolm X endorsed violence, didn't make their oppression okay.

00:24:47.000 So we're now comparing Nelson Mandela to Mifta and Palestinian terrorists?

00:24:53.000 All of this to defend the evils and the horrible viewpoints and the anti-Semitism of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

00:25:00.000 In a second, we'll get to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

00:25:03.000 So Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

00:25:05.000 Well, the press conference yesterday and in this press conference, they make a bunch of anti-Semitic statements and the Democratic Party, again, backing them to the hilt because this is the game in the Democratic Party.

00:25:17.000 They will defend their radicals.

00:25:19.000 Under nearly every circumstance, without even asking as to whether their viewpoints are radical.

00:25:23.000 Here's Rashida Tlaib comparing Israel to South Africa, despite the fact that Arabs and Muslims in Israel can vote, hold positions in the Knesset, are members of the Israeli Supreme Court, that Arabic is an official language in Israel, despite the fact that Arab Muslims in Israel are treated better than they are anywhere in the Arab Muslim world.

00:25:40.000 Does not matter.

00:25:40.000 Rashida Tlaib ripping on Israel, calling it an apartheid state.

00:25:43.000 History does have a habit of repeating itself.

00:25:47.000 I learned this week that a former member of Congress, Congressman Charles C. Diggs, Jr.

00:25:55.000 Was denied entry into apartheid South Africa in 1972.

00:26:01.000 He was also the representative for the 13th congressional district in Michigan.

00:26:06.000 I was born and raised in the beautiful Detroit where many of my African American teachers taught me about the realities of oppression and justice and the need to speak up and take action.

00:26:17.000 Calling Israel an apartheid state is obviously anti-semitic because it is not an apartheid state.

00:26:22.000 And it is, of course, singling out Israel in a way that Rashida Tlaib would never single out anybody else.

00:26:27.000 And Ilhan Omar made this perfectly obvious.

00:26:31.000 She actually called for an end to aid to Israel.

00:26:33.000 I can't imagine why Israel didn't let her in.

00:26:35.000 She's literally calling for an end to aid to Israel and a boycott of the state of Israel.

00:26:38.000 I can't imagine why they didn't allow her in to propagandize on behalf of Israel's destruction. 0.96

00:26:42.000 We give Israel more than $3 million in aid every year.

00:26:48.000 This is predicated on their being an important ally in the region and the only democracy in the Middle East.

00:26:59.000 We must be asking, as Israel's ally, the Netanyahu government stop the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and ensure full rights for Palestinians if we are to give them aid.

00:27:17.000 Okay, like she wants to give Israel aid, and like they're an ally.

00:27:20.000 Okay, let me be frank about this.

00:27:22.000 Benjamin Netanyahu put a unilateral settlement freeze in place two years ago, and none of these people cared one iota about it.

00:27:28.000 This is all a lie.

00:27:29.000 Ilhan Omar.

00:27:31.000 Rashida Tlaib, they want Israel destroyed.

00:27:33.000 And they're obvious about this, and they're so disingenuous about it as well. 0.73

00:27:37.000 Again, the idea that she is a secret ally of Israel is insane. 0.99

00:27:40.000 You have to be a nutty person to believe this sort of nonsense. 0.96

00:27:43.000 And she tried her intersectional appeal. 0.98

00:27:45.000 She tried to say, you know, people keep calling me an anti-Semite.

00:27:47.000 I don't know why, even though I just tried to campaign with a group that has pushed the blood libel.

00:27:52.000 Sure, I don't know why people keep calling me an anti-Semite.

00:27:54.000 You know what this is?

00:27:55.000 This is all about Trump trying to separate Muslims from Jews. 0.99

00:27:58.000 I would go more with it is you being a radical Jew hater.

00:28:03.000 I got into a little bit of a spat with Ilhan Omar on Twitter yesterday, because the folks at Media Matters doing their usual solid work took me out of context on something.

00:28:12.000 I tweeted about it. 0.95

00:28:12.000 Ilhan Omar then tweeted that I was both a fool and hateful, to which I tweeted back, well, you know, I must have hypnotized the world using my Benjamins. 0.95

00:28:21.000 But in any case, Ilhan Omar tries this intersectional approach where she's not an anti-Semite. 0.96

00:28:25.000 It's just the Trump administration trying to separate off the Jews and the Muslims. 0.90

00:28:29.000 This is this is insanity. 0.68

00:28:31.000 We know Donald Trump would love nothing more than to use this issue to pit Muslims and Jewish Americans against each other. 0.85

00:28:41.000 The Muslim community and the Jewish community are being othered. 1.00

00:28:45.000 And made into the boogeyman by this administration.

00:28:50.000 But as we will hear today, people of all different faiths are coming together to speak up against the status quo in the region.

00:29:01.000 I'm grateful for the solidarity shown by this.

00:29:04.000 This is the myth.

00:29:05.000 This is the myth that Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party tell themselves.

00:29:08.000 The myth they tell themselves that there is such a thing as an intersectional coalition and they're all on each other's side and they all oppose Trump.

00:29:13.000 And that's what will hold them together.

00:29:15.000 In the end, that coalition will fall apart.

00:29:16.000 It will break apart on the shoals of its own identity politics.

00:29:20.000 The fact is this, Ilhan Omar, she don't like the Jews very much.

00:29:23.000 And it is obvious from all of her behavior and everything that she says that this is the case. 0.99

00:29:26.000 And then she brings in token Jews from Jewish Voice for Peace, which is a pathetic anti-Israel, anti-Jewish organization. 0.97

00:29:33.000 And then she talks about how pro-Jewish. 0.99

00:29:36.000 It's insanity.

00:29:38.000 The idea is that hatred of Trump will hold that coalition together.

00:29:41.000 It will until it doesn't.

00:29:42.000 It will until it doesn't.

00:29:44.000 And it's one of the reasons why it is incumbent on President Trump to actually, as president, try and embolden the decent people still left in the Democratic Party, and there are many of them, to stand up against the hatred inside their own party.

00:29:56.000 It's funny, I hear from Democrats all the time, like, why won't Republicans denounce people inside their own party who say bad things?

00:30:01.000 If you've ever listened to this show, you know that I do it on a regular basis.

00:30:05.000 You know that I've denounced people up to and including President Trump repeatedly for things that they have said.

00:30:10.000 You know that I maxed out to Kevin Feenstra, Steve King's opponent in Iowa, right, out of my own pocket, and I've encouraged, Kevin Feenstra's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, in large part because I have had Kevin Feenstra on my show, because I think that Steve King needs to be ousted from Congress.

00:30:26.000 People in the Republican Party are doing a much better job of standing up to people inside their own party.

00:30:30.000 Democrats are rallying around Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

00:30:32.000 They're not even asking the question, oh, weird that they would be rallying with groups that want the destruction of the state of Israel and openly celebrate terrorism.

00:30:40.000 Very weird, very odd.

00:30:41.000 We mustn't pay attention to it because, after all, the heart and soul, the scheidenfreude, the zeitgeist, not scheidenfreude, the zeitgeist of the time suggests that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are in the ascendancy.

00:30:52.000 And I don't think it's in the long term or even medium term interest of the country for the Democrats to rally around their worst members any more than I think any more than I think Democrats should should root for Republicans to rally around their worst members so that they can nut pick and then use the worst Republicans in order to suggest that that is the entire Republican Party.

00:31:10.000 Okay, in just a second, I want to get to an actual good development from Facebook.

00:31:13.000 Really, believe it or not.

00:31:14.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:31:15.000 First, folks, The Daily Wire has somehow managed to turn four years old.

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00:32:33.000 You may have noticed that on social media, our good friends over at Media Matter are spending an inordinate amount of time trying to target this show.

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00:33:39.000 We're the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:33:42.000 All righty.

00:33:51.000 So let's talk about Facebook doing something right.

00:33:53.000 Okay, so Facebook actually did something right.

00:33:57.000 Senator John Kyle was brought in by Facebook to investigate claims that Facebook has an anti-conservative bias.

00:34:03.000 And I have had suspicions over the past few years, particularly in 2018, there was a Facebook algorithmic change that really hurt conservative sites in a serious way.

00:34:12.000 And it turns out that there are serious concerns.

00:34:15.000 That there are serious concerns with regard to Facebook's bias.

00:34:19.000 But it appears that Facebook, unlike a lot of the other big tech companies, is taking those concerns seriously.

00:34:24.000 And we here on the Ben Shapiro Show like to give credit to people when they do the right things, even as we like to clock them when they do the wrong things.

00:34:29.000 So good for Facebook.

00:34:30.000 So Senator John Kyle, the Republican, former Republican Senator from Arizona, he was brought in with Covington and Burling to do a full-scale investigation into this.

00:34:39.000 And here is what they found.

00:34:42.000 He says we cast a wide net using a broad definition of conservative in order to capture for this report the concerns raised by all types of conservatives.

00:34:49.000 Conservative is an imprecise term.

00:34:51.000 For our purposes, it includes political conservatives, people of Orthodox religious views, libertarians, pro-lifers, traditionalists, Republicans, and free speech advocates.

00:34:59.000 As an initial step, we identified key conservative organizations, individuals, and lawmakers who either use study or have the potential to regulate Facebook.

00:35:07.000 Since May 2018, we have interviewed approximately 133 of them.

00:35:10.000 We presented our preliminary findings to Facebook in early August 2018, and then they conducted follow-up interviews.

00:35:15.000 So here is what they found.

00:35:16.000 Here is what this internal study over at Facebook, led by Senator John Kyle, found.

00:35:20.000 And this is a good study that is attempting to do the right thing.

00:35:23.000 All of big tech should take note.

00:35:25.000 Twitter, particularly, should take note because that continues to run like a garbage heap.

00:35:29.000 Okay, but Facebook is actually trying to do the right thing here.

00:35:31.000 So here is what they found.

00:35:32.000 There were six categories of concerns.

00:35:35.000 All of these are legit.

00:35:36.000 Okay, content distribution and algorithms.

00:35:39.000 In order to sort through the thousands of posts that Facebook users could potentially encounter on a given day, Facebook deploys a variety of mechanisms to prioritize the content most relevant to each individual user.

00:35:49.000 Conservatives fear that these mechanisms prioritize content in ways that suppress their viewpoints.

00:35:54.000 Interviewees voiced three general concerns on this front.

00:35:56.000 First, the January 2018 newsfeed algorithm change.

00:36:00.000 I talked about this at the time.

00:36:01.000 In January 2018, Facebook changed its content ranking algorithm to favor content that a given user's friends and family comment on and share, as well as news from quote-unquote broadly trusted sources.

00:36:13.000 People on the right were very concerned at Facebook's definition of broadly trusted sources, as well we should have been.

00:36:19.000 This is correct.

00:36:19.000 Clickbait and spam.

00:36:21.000 Also, Facebook made a concerted effort to deprioritize clickbait and spam.

00:36:25.000 Interviewees generally supported this goal, but found Facebook's policies for doing so too opaque.

00:36:29.000 Again, that is a correct critique of Facebook, that Facebook was prioritizing as spam headlines that didn't read like a boring headline from the New York Times.

00:36:37.000 Finally, fact-checking in false news.

00:36:39.000 Interviewees expressed significant concerns about Facebook's efforts to combat what the company refers to as false news.

00:36:45.000 In particular, interviewees pointed to examples of instances when some of the third-party fact-checkers utilized by Facebook at various times, Snopes, PolitiFact, FactCheck.org, AP, which are certified by the Poynter Institute, an entity that owns PolitiFact, have skewed to the ideological left.

00:37:00.000 We note that Facebook has accepted fact-checkers affiliated with conservative publishers, including the Daily Caller's fact-checking unit, once it was approved by Poynter.

00:37:08.000 Now, as I have said for a long time, using left-wing Facebook fact-checking sites as a proxy for actual fact-checks is nonsense.

00:37:17.000 PolitiFact is wildly biased to the left.

00:37:19.000 Snopes tries to debunk the Babylon Bee every five minutes.

00:37:22.000 Using them as a proxy for fact-checking sites is nonsense, and there are no fact-checking sites on the right.

00:37:27.000 The Daily Caller has one.

00:37:28.000 The Weekly Standard used to have one, but then it stopped being operational.

00:37:32.000 And so what Facebook needs to do is either form their own independent fact-checking group that includes Republicans and conservatives and libertarians, or they need to work with conservative groups to come up with alternatives to PolitiFact and Snopes and FactCheck, because otherwise, just by absence of right-wing fact-checking organizations, left-wing fact-checking organizations become a club to wield against conservative media.

00:37:52.000 Okay, so those are three of the concerns.

00:37:54.000 Other concerns were content policies.

00:37:56.000 Hate speech designations, for example.

00:37:58.000 Interviewees' concerns stemmed both from the notion of having a hate speech policy in the first place and from unfair labeling of certain speech as hate speech.

00:38:06.000 Interviewees pointed out the highly subjective nature of determining what constitutes hate, an assessment that may be subject to the biases of content reviewers.

00:38:14.000 Also, Facebook prohibits the use of the platform by terrorist groups and hate organizations, and it is unclear exactly how the hate organization designation is made, especially considering that Facebook had been perceived to rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a garbage left-wing hit group.

00:38:32.000 So, same sort of issue as the fact-checking group.

00:38:34.000 And then finally, there were other content policies that a lot of conservatives were worried about.

00:38:39.000 They believed that Facebook's community standards were disproportionately affecting conservative content, particularly pro-life, socially conservative, religious content, because Facebook would constantly flag conservative content.

00:38:51.000 So, Facebook is now responding, and they're changing some of their policies.

00:38:55.000 They're changing some of their policies.

00:38:57.000 So they are changing their content enforcement policies.

00:39:02.000 Again, this is good for Facebook.

00:39:04.000 Again, we should give them credit when they're moving in the right direction.

00:39:06.000 They're going to specifically try to fight back against badly flagged content.

00:39:14.000 They're going to create the ability to appeal decisions.

00:39:19.000 They're going to change their political ad requirements.

00:39:23.000 So this is good.

00:39:24.000 They're adding to transparency.

00:39:25.000 So let's talk about some of the things that Facebook is actually going to do.

00:39:28.000 So, they're going to help users understand why they do or do not see certain content in their newsfeeds.

00:39:32.000 This is all you can ask from a big tech company is that they be more transparent about what they are doing.

00:39:36.000 Facebook introduced Why Am I Seeing This post to help users understand why they see certain content.

00:39:42.000 They are going to provide explanations of the newsfeed rankings.

00:39:46.000 Facebook has really not clarified its community standards and newsfeed ranking, but now the company says that they want to do so.

00:39:53.000 They also want to give people ways to control their newsfeed so that you are not going to be controlled by the great minds over at Facebook.

00:40:01.000 They want to make enforcement actions against pages more transparent so people know exactly why they are being flagged, why their posts are being treated as bad policy.

00:40:10.000 And they're going to share more details on exactly how they create their community standards.

00:40:15.000 So this is all.

00:40:16.000 Transparency is a good thing.

00:40:16.000 They're creating an oversight board for content decisions.

00:40:19.000 They will issue kind of quasi-judicial decisions on how they are controlling content.

00:40:27.000 And they're going to include a conservative feedback in that process as well as a public comment period.

00:40:32.000 They're going to ensure that that oversight board has viewpoint diversity.

00:40:36.000 They're going to create an appeals process.

00:40:37.000 If you get flagged, then you can now appeal it.

00:40:40.000 And they're going to increase staffing so that publications can reach out to Facebook more directly.

00:40:44.000 They're also going to change their advertising policies.

00:40:46.000 One of the big complaints is that Facebook had banned any ad that had pictures of fetuses or born human babies, premature, that were pro-life.

00:40:57.000 And now they are changing those content policies.

00:41:00.000 Facebook has historically prohibited advertisements showing medical tubes connected to the human body.

00:41:05.000 That policy resulted in the rejection of pro-life ads.

00:41:07.000 They are changing that now.

00:41:09.000 So again, is this a final answer for all of Facebook's problems?

00:41:12.000 No.

00:41:12.000 But good for Facebook for taking this seriously.

00:41:15.000 Really good for them for taking it seriously.

00:41:16.000 And conservatives should say that.

00:41:18.000 Conservatives should come out and they should say when Facebook does something right, when Big Tech does the right thing, they should be praised.

00:41:24.000 This encourages them to do the right thing, guys.

00:41:26.000 And I understand there is now sort of a cottage industry and beating up on Facebook particularly, but beating up on all of Big Tech?

00:41:33.000 And I think that a lot of the time Big Tech deserves it.

00:41:35.000 I've beaten up Big Tech my share.

00:41:37.000 But it is because some of these companies are better than others at dealing with the criticism that they should be praised when they actually deal with it in the right way.

00:41:45.000 Now, we'll keep an eye on Facebook and make sure that they actually implement some of these solutions, that they continue to evolve in their pursuit of solutions here, but good for them.

00:41:54.000 And don't trust anybody on the left who is trying to make common cause with people on the right to regulate Facebook.

00:41:59.000 I do not think Elizabeth Warren has the same priorities on Facebook as Josh Hawley.

00:42:03.000 I really don't think so.

00:42:05.000 So be very careful before you call for government regulation of big tech, when as it turns out, a lot of the big tech companies are actually seeking to, not a lot, some of the big tech companies are seeking to fix some of their internal problems.

00:42:18.000 So again, good for Facebook.

00:42:20.000 Okay.

00:42:20.000 Meanwhile, meanwhile, the big story yesterday out of New York is that the officer in the Eric Garner case was fired.

00:42:29.000 That officer, his name is Daniel Pantaleo.

00:42:33.000 He was fired after it has now been five years since the death of Eric Garner, and that was tragic.

00:42:38.000 I mean, Eric Garner was distributing loosies, loose cigarettes, on the streets in New York.

00:42:42.000 He resisted arrest.

00:42:43.000 He was put in a suppression hold, and then he didn't die because his windpipe was crushed or because he was choked to death.

00:42:48.000 He died because the physical stress of being put in that hold Triggered his asthma.

00:42:54.000 He was 395 pounds, had pre-existing conditions.

00:42:56.000 He had an enlarged heart that was twice normal size, and he died effectively of asthma and heart attack on the way to the hospital.

00:43:02.000 The officer in that case was targeted by the media as an example of race-based policing.

00:43:07.000 Now, if you want to make the case that that law shouldn't have been on the books, I'm with you.

00:43:11.000 If you want to make the case that the police have been empowered to aggressively pursue minor crimes that should not be in fact crimes, that's not the police's fault.

00:43:18.000 That's the legislature's fault.

00:43:19.000 That's the city council's fault in New York City.

00:43:22.000 When you attack cigarettes at insane rates, and then people start a black market for cigarettes, and then you empower the police to go enforce that, the police are going to do what they're supposed to do.

00:43:30.000 Instead, that turned into a whole racial narrative, and this particular officer got caught up in it, never mind the fact that he was ordered by his lieutenant to suppress Eric Garner, who was in fact resisting arrest, never mind there were black officers on the scene, never mind that Eric Garner The United States Department of Justice, absent and unwilling to act, even to come to any decision, for five long years.

00:43:49.000 his job and he has to be fired.

00:43:50.000 And then we all have to celebrate Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was knocked by the left for not having fired Pantelio.

00:43:55.000 He said today we saw justice done.

00:43:57.000 United States Department of Justice absent and unwilling to act even to come to any decision for five long years.

00:44:08.000 But today we have finally seen justice done.

00:44:16.000 Today we saw the NYPD's own disciplinary process act fairly and impartially. - Thank you.

00:44:27.000 Okay, so that is not the process acting fairly and impartially in reality.

00:44:31.000 This was a railroading of an officer.

00:44:35.000 Again, I don't know that the officer acted entirely appropriately, but this is certainly not a fireable offense, okay?

00:44:42.000 Using a suppression hold on a person who is resisting arrest, and the person dies because the person happens to have pre-existing medical conditions.

00:44:49.000 Not because you intended to kill him, not because you acted in reckless and irresponsible fashion knowing it would kill him, but firing the guy over this?

00:44:56.000 It's pretty clear that this was a political process.

00:44:58.000 Even the NYPD commissioner admitted.

00:44:59.000 He said, listen, if I was a police officer today, I'd be very, very angry at me.

00:45:04.000 I've been a cop a long time.

00:45:06.000 And if I was still a cop, I'd probably be mad at me.

00:45:11.000 I would.

00:45:13.000 You're not looking out for us.

00:45:15.000 But I am.

00:45:17.000 It's my responsibility as police commissioner to look out for the city and certainly to look out for the New York City police officers.

00:45:25.000 They took this job to make a difference.

00:45:28.000 And you all know the city's been transformed.

00:45:31.000 Had a lot of help.

00:45:33.000 But it's the cops out there right now and the thousands that have come before us that continue to make this city safe.

00:45:39.000 I know some NYPD officers.

00:45:41.000 I can guarantee you that they do not feel comfortable that if they do their jobs, they're going to be backed up by the political forces at work in New York City.

00:45:47.000 It's the same thing in Los Angeles.

00:45:49.000 It's the same thing in most of our major cities.

00:45:50.000 The political forces always have an interest in throwing officers under the bus.

00:45:55.000 I mean, again, there's this revisionist history that has set in around this particular case, but it is important to recognize what exactly happened here.

00:46:02.000 Barry Latzer had a piece in City Journal back in September of 2017 talking about what exactly happened.

00:46:07.000 He said, context is everything here.

00:46:09.000 The Garner case became a cause celeb because Garner was black and Pantaleo was white, and the death fit a media narrative about interracial law enforcement confrontations.

00:46:16.000 But the facts of the Garner case demonstrate the incident bears little resemblance to such characterization.

00:46:21.000 An NYPD lieutenant erected Pantaleo and his partner to arrest Garner, so charges that the officer singled him out because of his race are nonsense.

00:46:28.000 The arrest order was issued because that part of Staten Island near the ferry docks was the subject of repeated complaints about illegal street vendors, diverting customers from shops, and even selling drugs.

00:46:38.000 Garner had had at least three previous encounters with police just that year.

00:46:41.000 He'd been arrested twice and given a warning.

00:46:43.000 At the time of the fatal incident, he was free on bail for offenses including selling untaxed cigarettes, driving without a license, marijuana possession, and impersonation.

00:46:51.000 The case against Pantelio rests on the supposed chokehold he used to make the arrest.

00:46:55.000 He never sought to choke Garner to death or even injure him.

00:46:57.000 He was doing his job taking the resisting man to the ground, as NYPD regulations provide.

00:47:02.000 Had Garner been cooperative, as the officers requested, the confrontation never would have happened.

00:47:07.000 Garner resisted when the police tried to grab his flailing arms.

00:47:09.000 He says, every time you see me, you want to mess with me.

00:47:11.000 I'm tired of it.

00:47:12.000 It stops today.

00:47:13.000 Pantaleo put his forearm around Garner's neck and twisted him to the ground, probably the simplest way of subduing a man of Garner's girth.

00:47:19.000 Pantaleo then held Garner's head down to the sidewalk.

00:47:21.000 The neck hold, characterized by the medical examiner's office as a choke hold, lasted 15 seconds.

00:47:26.000 Pantaleo released it once Garner was down on the sidewalk.

00:47:29.000 And that is when it became clear that Garner was actually having a serious problem breathing.

00:47:33.000 He said, I can't breathe because he was suffering from asthma.

00:47:38.000 Apparently, people didn't even think that he was being abused.

00:47:41.000 There were supervising officers at the scene, including a black police sergeant.

00:47:43.000 They didn't really believe even that he was in medical distress, because they didn't see how he could be, given the treatment that he just received.

00:47:49.000 Here's the reality.

00:47:49.000 If Eric Garner had not had pre-existing medical conditions, not only is this not a national news story, the NYPD dismisses all charges against Pantaleo.

00:47:57.000 So, again, this is an example of how politics tends to infuse situations with import that they do not carry.

00:48:05.000 I don't mean that it's not important when a person dies after being put in a suppression hold by police for 15 seconds.

00:48:12.000 Of course, that's important to the family.

00:48:13.000 Of course, we should always try to keep a tight leash on how the police act with regard to civilians.

00:48:20.000 Of course, of course, of course.

00:48:21.000 But the question is, in this case, Did Pantelio, who was not prosecuted, who the DOJ investigated for five years, deserve to lose his job at NYPD over political posturing by Bill de Blasio and the NYPD commissioner?

00:48:34.000 I don't understand how you're not going to get blowback from police officers and why you're not going to get another Ferguson effect.

00:48:39.000 Police officers saying, I'm not going to go and do these things you want me to do because every time I do, you guys undercut us.

00:48:46.000 We're playing a dangerous game here.

00:48:47.000 When we make the Police's ability to do their job, subject to political whims.

00:48:54.000 I don't mean, again, the subject to common standards of decency.

00:48:58.000 I mean political whims, meaning this, again, this case would not have been a national story if Pantelio were not white, or if Eric Garner were white.

00:49:06.000 It was made a national story by the media for a particular racial narrative, and now it costs Pantelio his job, and if you're a police officer in the NYPD, I'm not sure how much trust you can have in the political processes above you.

00:49:17.000 I'm not just saying that for me.

00:49:18.000 I think that it's pretty clear from the officers I talk to that they feel the same way.

00:49:21.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:49:24.000 So, things that I like today.

00:49:27.000 Matt Best is a former member of the military and he is also a former Army Ranger.

00:49:34.000 He's also one of the founders of our sponsors of our Black Rifle Coffee.

00:49:40.000 Which is, by the way, the best coffee on the market.

00:49:42.000 And he's also an awesome dude.

00:49:43.000 I mean, just a really great dude.

00:49:44.000 He has a great book out called Thank You For My Service, obviously a play on Thank You For Your Service.

00:49:49.000 Thank You For My Service, because he says that it changed his life, it made his life inestimably better.

00:49:54.000 He wants to prove every day, he says, that, in the book, he wants to prove that not all members of the military are sort of these Hollywood characters who are suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, that not every member of the military is a broken man.

00:50:09.000 He's leading a successful, rich life, and his book, Thank You For My Service, is well worth reading, so you can go check that out.

00:50:14.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:50:16.000 Okay, so, you remember that time, like a week and a half ago, when Chris Cuomo got into an altercation with somebody in public?

00:50:25.000 I said at the time, I don't blame Chris Cuomo for getting into an altercation with somebody in public.

00:50:30.000 The person was harassing him in public.

00:50:32.000 The online attitude has now spilled over into real life.

00:50:36.000 The online attitude, which is that you dunk on people and you yell at people and you act like an ass to people, has now spilled over into real life, where people are confronting each other publicly just to show their disdain for one another. 0.96

00:50:46.000 And it's gross. 0.93

00:50:47.000 And that's true whether it's the right or the left.

00:50:48.000 It's happened to me a couple of times in the last three weeks.

00:50:50.000 It's in front of my family. 0.86

00:50:52.000 It's really inappropriate, and it's disgusting, and I don't blame Cuomo for getting kicked. 0.97

00:50:56.000 I do blame Cuomo for suggesting idiotically that somebody calling him Fredo is the same thing as calling somebody the N-word, or that Fredo is, in fact, a racial slur. 0.97

00:51:04.000 It is a specific reference to a movie character who is seen as a weak younger brother. 0.96

00:51:04.000 It is not. 0.96

00:51:08.000 Well, one of the ways that you don't actually get rid of that stereotype of you as a weak younger brother is to have your older brother come out and defend you.

00:51:15.000 So, Andrew Cuomo, Chris's brother, came out yesterday on the radio, and he said, no, no, no, this was a racial slur, and I'm coming out in defense of my younger brother Fredo.

00:51:24.000 It fuels the hate.

00:51:27.000 Italian-Americans are not mafia.

00:51:29.000 They're not mafia.

00:51:31.000 The Godfather movie, don't you dare, don't you dare liken my family to the family you saw in The Godfather or The Sopranos.

00:51:44.000 Mario Cuomo lived with those rumors of the mafia.

00:51:49.000 They hurt him.

00:51:50.000 They scarred him.

00:51:51.000 Every Italian lives with it. 1.00

00:51:54.000 Really?

00:51:55.000 I know a lot of Italians.

00:51:57.000 Most of them, I don't think, walk around being like, yeah, everybody keeps seeing me as a character from The Godfather.

00:52:01.000 I can't stand it.

00:52:02.000 Also, my favorite part of this is, don't you dare.

00:52:05.000 Don't you dare.

00:52:07.000 Or what?

00:52:08.000 Or what?

00:52:09.000 Like, what?

00:52:11.000 I don't want to appear like a mafioso, so I'm going to defend my brother by threatening you. 0.98

00:52:16.000 Well done, Andrew Cuomo.

00:52:17.000 Just really strong, strong stuff.

00:52:19.000 Don't you ever take sides against the family again.

00:52:21.000 That's where we are. 0.99

00:52:25.000 Every day, again, that running gun battle for dumbest Cuomo brother continues apace. 0.97

00:52:29.000 And it appears from that clip that Andrew took the lead just for a brief moment in time.

00:52:33.000 Okay, we will be back here later today with two additional hours of content.

00:52:36.000 We will see you then.

00:52:36.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:37.000 Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:52:46.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:52:48.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:52:50.000 Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:52:52.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:52:54.000 And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:56.000 Edited by Adam Sievitz.

00:52:58.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:53:00.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:53:02.000 Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:53:04.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:53:06.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 20, 2019

How Democrats Chose The Radicals | Ep. 843

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