Ben Shapiro's new rap collab with anti-woke rapper Tom McDonald has hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and Billboard is freaking out about it. Plus, a new piece from the Washington Post on how Ben Shapiro helped propel multiple songs to the top of the charts this decade, including his own song, Meek Mill's Hiss, and Nicki Minaj's Bad Girl Problem. Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator and political commentator. He is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and has been featured in Rolling Stone, The Daily Wire, and The New York Times. He is also a regular contributor to Rolling Stone and The Daily Caller, and is one of the most well-known conservative thinkers in the country. He has been a frequent guest on CNN and CNN Worldwide, and hosts the radio show "The Ben Shapiro Show" on SiriusXM Radio and is a regular guest on NPR's Morning Mashup with Alex Blumberg. Click here to listen to the full show on the new music video for "Facts" by Tom McDonald featuring Ben Shapiro and Jack Harlow, and check out his new song, "A Spitfire" here on the Pitchfork and Billboard's Hot 97 Radio. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and listen to every other hip hop artist on the air on the Spoken Word Radio Network. and other streaming platforms wherever you get your favorite streaming platforms. You can also become a supporter of the show by becoming a patron through Anchor.fm or Podcoin. Learn more about your ad choices, and get 20% off the first-grade pricing plan through Paypal and VaynerSpeaker. at Paypal.com/VaynerMedia. Use the promo code: to get 10% off your first month of the course, and save $10,000 and get 15% off in the second month for the next month, and 5% off their third month only VIP membership offer when you become a patron gets $50 or more than $35,000 gets $5,000 or $50,000 off the course gets you get VIP access gets 4 months get $4,000, and they get $25, and you get a VIP discount when you upgrade their promo code and they also get a discount on his promo code, VIP gets $24,000 is also gets VIP access to VIP gets 4-AVOOR + VIP gets the VIP discount?
00:00:19.000Billboard is now acknowledging that it's likely to make number one on the Billboard charts,
00:00:23.000which is hysterically funny and they are freaking out about it.
00:00:26.000They put out a piece yesterday over at Billboard.com titled, Next week's Hot 100, Megan Thee Stallion versus Nicki Minaj
00:00:33.000versus Ben Shapiro and they are freaking out.
00:00:36.000Now, let's be clear, the Hot 100 is not actually the list that we are seeking to be number one on.
00:00:41.000The one that we want to be number one on is the digital song sales, which is why you should head on over to iTunes.
00:00:45.000Those are the only sales that are currently being counted in terms of the billboard digital song sales.
00:00:51.000So head on over to iTunes right now if you haven't already bought the song and go do that over there.
00:00:55.000But Billboard is freaking out about this.
00:00:58.000And they're freaking out about this for a very simple reason, which is they've attempted to basically bar people like Tom McDonald from the charts.
00:01:05.000The hip-hop industry is very much infused with left-wing thinking on everything from social politics to drug politics to all the rest of it.
00:01:13.000I mean, we all know what hip hop has brought to the world in terms of sort of its moral compass.
00:01:19.000And that is to say, in large part, not much.
00:01:21.000And so a song like that, which is very much directed the other way, right?
00:01:25.000As Tom McDonald raps in the song, we're not gonna turn your sons into thugs,
00:01:33.000And so Billboard is freaking out about this.
00:01:35.000Billboard put out this piece yesterday saying, yes, really, after right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro
00:01:40.000helped propel multiple songs to number one this decade, including Megan Thee Stallion's own WAP back in 2020.
00:01:45.000With either his endorsement or his disavowal, he's now in pursuit of a Hot 100 topper of his own.
00:01:50.000He even admits as much, on Facts, his collab with anti-woke rapper Tom McDonald.
00:01:54.000As he directs audiences during his own rap verse, again, yes really, all my people download this, let's get a Billboard number one.
00:02:01.000As they point out, we've had no radio support.
00:02:03.000We are not a big corporation that is dedicated to music and manipulating the charts.
00:02:08.000If you actually go look at the charts over at iTunes, what you will see is that Megan Thee Stallion's Hiss, which is the top competitor for that number one slot right now, alongside Nicki Minaj's Bigfoot, Both of those tracks have now been separated into about eight different versions of the track so as to aggregate sales.
00:02:25.000So you have a bunch of versions of the same song over and over and over being pumped
00:02:29.000by these massive corporations in an attempt to prevent Tom's song with me
00:02:34.000from hitting number one on the Billboard chart.
00:02:35.000So go make it happen right now, folks.
00:03:13.000And here is what they write, humorlessly, absolutely humorlessly, because democracy dies in darkness and the Washington Post is in fact the darkness.
00:03:19.000Quote, Ben Shapiro, a right-wing political commentator known for his incendiary takes, just made his rap debut with a Spitfire song called Facts.
00:03:26.000It soared to the number one spot on the iTunes Store, sitting above recent pop and hip-hop hits from the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Justin Timberlake, and Jack Harlow.
00:03:33.000The song, a collaboration between Shapiro and Canadian rap artist Tom McDonald.
00:03:37.000To be fair, Tom is the chief artist. You know, I'm going to keep mentioning
00:03:39.000this because Tom is the one who's actually good at this. OK, and Tom is being overlooked by
00:03:43.000some of the media because of the hysterically funny headline that I'm a rap artist now.
00:03:47.000Tom actually is. In any case, the song is packed with lyrics that take aim at critics, the
00:03:52.000culture wars, the rap genre in general, and call out rap artist Nicki Minaj and Lizzo. By the way,
00:04:14.000In any case, here's the Washington Post not understanding things.
00:04:17.000Quote, being number one appears to be a big deal for Shapiro, who founded the Daily Wire in 2015 and currently hosts his own political podcast and radio show.
00:04:24.000He recently changed his bio on X, formerly Twitter, to read, World's Number One Rapper.
00:04:28.000He titled one of his recent YouTube podcast videos, I Am America's Number One Rapper, in which he played the entire fax music video while praising the success of his song.
00:04:35.000Wait, wait, it's a big deal to be number one?
00:04:38.000As opposed to, you know, all the other people in the music industry who are attempting to be number three.
00:04:44.000I love the Washington- It appears to be a big deal to be number- Yes, that's why you're writing about it!
00:04:49.000That's why you're paying attention to it.
00:04:51.000Like, oh, well, you know, he seems to care about being number one- Oh my- You losers.
00:04:56.000Truly, you losers who refuse to get the joke.
00:05:00.000They say, the song's success mirrors that of other songs that have ties to America's politics, like Jason Aldean's Try That in a Small Town and Oliver Anthony's Rich Men North of Richmond from last summer.
00:05:08.000And then this thing goes on for like hundreds of words, talking in very serious terms about what happened here.
00:05:14.000Quote, Shapiro has a noted history of criticizing rap music and explicit lyrics.
00:05:18.000In 2019, he said on his show, the rap wasn't a real genre of music, igniting a backlash on social media.
00:05:24.000Well, I mean, I said that because I'm a classically trained musician.
00:05:27.000And let me just explain what that means for folks who don't actually understand the difference between, say, rap and hip-hop and classical music.
00:05:33.000To be a classically trained musician means you will spend, in your life, tens of thousands of hours practicing at an instrument so you can play some of the greatest music ever written.
00:05:43.000To be a number one charting billboard rap artist means being featured in a Tom McDonald song Where I rapped for like 30 seconds and my lifelong preparation for that was talking.
00:05:57.000That is not the same thing remotely in kind but again the media are militantly refusing to get the joke and so that makes the joke even funnier of course.
00:06:06.000And we can only hope that at the Grammys we'll receive some sort of recognition for the fact that we are in fact the number one song in America and we need your help today to make sure just to Again, Billboard is basically acknowledging we will be number one on the digital download chart, which is the one that we're aiming for.
00:06:22.000We need your help with that, so head on over to iTunes right now and give us that final push today.
00:06:26.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:06:28.000First, if there is one must-have app on my phone, it's ExpressVPN.
00:06:32.000I know adding an extra step to anything you do every day just sounds like a hassle, but if you knew how easy it was to protect your connection with ExpressVPN, you'd already be doing it.
00:06:39.000ExpressVPN is the easiest way to browse the internet safely and securely without all the hassle you hate about the other VPNs.
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00:07:24.000Head on over to expressvpn.com slash ben to get started.
00:07:27.000Okay, meanwhile, in actual news, in actual news, there's a video that has now gone viral and it is indicative of the chief issue in the 2024 campaign.
00:07:36.000And it's going to remain the chief issue in the 2024 campaign until some other issue takes precedence.
00:07:41.000And there's a long time between now and the election, but right now, the big issue of this campaign and the big issue of our time is human migration.
00:07:47.000Human migration is the big issue of our time.
00:07:48.000It's causing a vast turmoil in European politics.
00:07:54.000It's causing vast turmoil in the United States because it turns out that large swaths of human beings crossing borders willy-nilly causes conflict.
00:08:03.000And so what we are seeing in the United States are the results of that conflict.
00:08:32.000Oh my goodness, so you can see these guys are just jumping, these two cops, like a bunch of them, they're just jumping these two cops, they're beating them down on the streets.
00:08:40.000This has to be, what, 10, 12 illegal immigrants?
00:08:44.000Apparently, police initially busted four of the asylum-seeking thugs.
00:08:51.000I made this documentary about the southern border.
00:08:52.000You should go check it out at dailywire.com because it's a fantastic documentary talking about exactly what is happening.
00:08:57.000To understand what is happening, you have to understand the chief signal thing the Biden administration did is they said, you now have a magic word to get into the United States of America.
00:09:05.000You walk up to the border, you find a border patrol agent, you shout, I fear to go back to my home country.
00:09:39.000And what they really are are criminals who are seeking to participate in criminality.
00:09:43.000According to the New York Post, the footage shows an NYPD officer and lieutenant initially telling the migrants to move along around 8.30 p.m.
00:09:49.000Saturday on West 42nd Street in Manhattan, which of course is like the heart of Manhattan.
00:09:54.000That is before things quickly got rowdy as a scuffle broke out between the cops and a suspect who was wrestled to the ground.
00:09:58.000And then the rest of the illegal immigrants converged on the officers and started beating the hell out of them.
00:10:04.000The video shows the two officers left on the ground as the pack runs east on 42nd Street toward 7th Avenue and gets away, but not for long.
00:10:10.000Police initially busted four of the asylum-seeking thugs identified as Darwin Andres Gomez Izcayl, 19, Kelvin Cervatarocha, 19, Juarez Wilson, 21, and Norman Rivera, 24, adding to the rich diversity of the United States.
00:10:26.000All four were charged with assault and released without bail, according to sources.
00:10:31.000Illegal immigrants on the streets beating the hell out of cops, released without bail.
00:10:35.000A fifth suspect, Yoan Boada, 22, was arrested Monday night and charged with attempted assault of a police officer.
00:10:41.000The Manhattan DA's office say they are still investigating the incident and reviewing additional video of the alleged assault.
00:10:47.000One of the men has two open cases in Manhattan for assault and robbery.
00:10:51.000So he's been arrested twice before, is an illegal immigrant, has not been deported, got arrested again for assaulting a cop, and then got released from jail immediately without bail.
00:11:00.000In November, he allegedly pushed, punched, and bit a Nordstrom Rack employee who caught him lifting a $130 item This is Joe Biden's America.
00:11:09.000This is Joe Biden's immigration policy.
00:11:11.000This is Joe Biden's choice to let people like this into the country.
00:11:14.000He has the law on the books that would allow him to stop all of this.
00:11:16.000officer at the Herald Square Macy's after trying to pull off a robbery with two other
00:11:20.000suspects. So this guy's just a career criminal in the United States pretending he has an
00:11:23.000asylum claim. This is Joe Biden's America.
00:11:26.000This is Joe Biden's immigration policy.
00:11:27.000This is Joe Biden's choice to let people like this into the country.
00:11:31.000He has the law on the books that would allow him to stop all of this.
00:11:37.000This is under Donald Trump's immigration policy.
00:11:40.000People like this would be turned back at the border.
00:11:41.000you They would have been remaining in Mexico, awaiting their asylum hearing.
00:11:47.000The shocking incident is just the latest example of asylum seekers running afoul of the law in the Big Apple, according to the New York Post.
00:11:55.000Again, you should not be shocked by things that are perfectly predictable.
00:11:59.000In fact, as Jan Boada, who's the last one who just got arrested, was leaving Manhattan criminal court without bail, he flipped off the press.
00:12:06.000Literally walks out, flashes two middle fingers at the press as he walks out.
00:12:11.000NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell told reporters you saw the video, reprehensible, they're cowards.
00:12:15.000You have eight people attacking a lieutenant and a cop, running up to them to kick them in the face.
00:12:23.000Meanwhile, this dude is just walking out free, flipping off the press.
00:12:27.000Why are people like this in our country?
00:12:43.000And yet, the wild left has captured the Democratic Party to the extent that they are refusing to say the obvious, which is these people should not be in our country.
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00:14:01.000So Anna Kasparian, who we've had on the show right over at the Young Turks, she made the signal error the other day of actually saying on the air that people like this should be deported.
00:14:22.000It is a privilege to be able to take advantage of our asylum program.
00:14:27.000For this, she's been receiving extraordinary blowback because the somewhat rational left is being completely expelled by the actual radical left.
00:14:40.000And you can see that this battle inside the Democratic Party... Now, I know everybody is sort of giving up the ghost for the moderate Democrats.
00:14:46.000This is a battle that still has to be fought inside the Democratic Party.
00:14:49.000Because the impact of illegal immigration in blue centers is finally starting to be felt.
00:14:55.000Here, for example, is the Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, crying as she announces she's converting a recreation center into a housing facility for illegal immigrants.
00:15:29.000This is going to be used as an emergency shelter for people who are sleeping literally at Logan Airport.
00:15:34.000They're literally sleeping, illegal immigrants, at Logan International Airport.
00:15:38.000The Cass Recreation Center is the center that is going to be used as sort of the overflow center that is going to accommodate 400 people or about 100 families.
00:15:46.000But local members of the community are like, what the hell?
00:15:50.000Why do we have an extraordinary number of illegal immigrants who have now taken over the rec center that we pay our taxes for so that we can use?
00:16:05.000If you think that's a winning message, good luck to you.
00:16:08.000Meanwhile, here is Democratic Denver Mayor Mike Johnson pointing out that the city of Denver is completely filled up.
00:16:15.000That every hotel in the city of Denver has been taken over by illegal immigrants.
00:16:20.000So we've always had a length of stay policy here, which was generally individual adults could stay for 14 days and families could stay for 37 days.
00:16:28.000We paused it for about four to six weeks during very, very cold times in November and December.
00:16:32.000Every hotel room we have in the city of Denver is full.
00:16:34.000We're at 5,000 people in shelter and we have more coming every day.
00:16:37.000I think our city is very close to its breaking point now.
00:16:55.000They're just pretending they don't see it.
00:16:57.000And you can only pretend that reality doesn't exist for so long before even your typical voters start to turn on you.
00:17:03.000And that is what is happening with regard to immigration and Joe Biden, which again, he is losing that issue by leaps and bounds.
00:17:08.000His only response to this is going to be abortion, by the way.
00:17:10.000He's not going to even deal with the immigration issue.
00:17:12.000The immigration issue is just going to simmer the entire year.
00:17:14.000He's instead going to redirect at abortion and try to get suburban women to vote against Donald Trump based on their supposed need for an abortion, despite the fact that suburban women aren't actually having that many abortions in the United States at this point in time.
00:17:26.000The immigration issue for a huge number of Americans is going to continue to grow in size, as well it should.
00:17:32.000By the way, all it would take is, God forbid, one serious terrorist attack by an illegal immigrant crossing America's southern border, which there are countries that are attempting to funnel terrorists across America's southern border, given that it is wide open at this point.
00:17:45.000All it would take is a serious attack to completely shift the nature of American politics, perhaps for a generation.
00:17:52.000Because it turns out that the great promise of America is free markets and security, just in terms of what the government is supposed to provide you.
00:18:01.000Those are the things that America historically has done incredibly well.
00:18:04.000Well, if it feels like both of those things are in danger, that's something that Americans are not going to react well to.
00:18:09.000According to the new Bloomberg swing states poll, The question was, how responsible, if at all, is President Biden for the increase in migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border?
00:18:24.000That, by the way, includes 38% of Democrats who say that Joe Biden is responsible for the huge increase in illegal immigration to the border.
00:18:32.000That includes 59% of Hispanics, 47% of Blacks, as opposed to 36% who say that he is not responsible for all of that.
00:18:40.00052% of Americans trust Donald Trump on immigration, compared to 30% of Americans trusting Joe Biden.
00:18:46.000By the way, on the economy, the numbers are fairly similar.
00:18:48.000On the economy, Trump is trusted by 51% in the swing states versus 33% for Joe Biden.
00:18:54.000So right now, you're seeing some national polling data that's suggesting that Biden has opened up a lead in a head-to-head.
00:19:00.000Quinnipiac University put out a poll yesterday.
00:19:02.000They put out this poll and they show a lead of Biden, a significant lead, a 50 to 44% lead among registered voters in a hypothetical general election matchup.
00:19:09.000Now, there is a difference between registered voters and likely voters.
00:20:03.000Mainly because all of the voting rules are going to shift back to normal and a lot of people are going to be expected to, you know, go to a polling place and actually vote.
00:20:08.000You're not going to get people voting five months in advance of the election by mail.
00:20:13.000Something like 60% of all Democratic voters in the last election cycle voted by mail.
00:20:16.000That is not going to replicate this time.
00:20:19.000So while you're seeing a lot of polls that are starting to emerge nationally, in the states, Donald Trump does, in fact, retain a lead.
00:20:26.000And that lead is going to be durable so long as Joe Biden continues to destroy the situation on the border.
00:20:31.000And he is doing that single-handedly, by the way.
00:20:34.000This is one reason the border deal is on life support.
00:20:36.000If Republicans actually thought that there was a chance that Joe Biden was going to shut down the border, if Joe Biden actually just today came out and said, listen, we're doing remain in Mexico, and we are also going to make sure that if you have an asylum application, that you have to stay in detention until that is adjudicated.
00:20:52.000If Joe Biden made those two changes today, the chance of a border deal would go up significantly.
00:20:57.000Not just because Republicans might then believe that they had something like a credible partner in shutting the border and maintaining a border at all, but also because the political incentives would switch.
00:21:08.000Then it would move from, if there is a compromise on the border that bails Joe Biden out to, If there's a compromise on the border that shifts the law in a direction that we like, that is a cementing of actions that Joe Biden has already taken.
00:21:19.000What Republicans are afraid of is that they are going to sign on to a border deal, and Joe Biden is then going to absolutely screw them in terms of the executive implementation of that deal.
00:21:27.000And they are right to be particularly frightened of that.
00:21:30.000When you see all these Republican senators who are out there right now saying things about the bill, and the bill's so great, and this...
00:21:35.000We have not yet seen the text of the bill.
00:21:38.000I can't adjudicate whether I think the bill is good or tell you whether I think the bill is good until I've actually seen the bill.
00:21:43.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:22:37.000So it is very likely, of course, that the bill is going to go nowhere.
00:22:49.000House Speaker Mike Johnson has used rumors of the bill's contents to pronounce it D-O-A.
00:22:55.000Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma said he's been meeting with Republicans one-on-one to clear up information about the bill.
00:23:01.000Senator Kyrsten Sinema, she says the rumors swirling about what this does and does not do are wrong.
00:23:05.000So the question is, why not just release what the deal is?
00:23:10.000Once we know what the deal is, then we can decide whether or not to give the deal.
00:23:12.000Bottom line, though, is that there's only one person who can bail Joe Biden out of the situation, and it is, in fact, Joe Biden.
00:23:18.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden quickly trying to backfill many of his problems with his own domestic base, particularly among blue-collar white voters.
00:23:26.000That is the constituency, believe it or not, that Joe Biden actually cut into against Donald Trump in 2020.
00:23:31.000Donald Trump overperformed with minorities.
00:23:33.000Donald Trump overperformed in urban areas.
00:23:35.000Donald Trump underperformed with blue-collar white workers in 2020.
00:23:39.000Statistically, he actually underperformed what he'd done in 2016 in 2020.
00:23:44.000I know it's weird to say that, but that actually is the statistical truth.
00:23:47.000Well, a lot of those voters are now turning again back to Donald Trump and away from Joe Biden, which presumably is why Joe Biden is now pretending he cares about East Palestine, Ohio.
00:23:55.000You'll recall that East Palestine, Ohio was a place where there's a major train derailment, there's a toxic spill, and Joe Biden just didn't go there for a year.
00:24:04.000And Pete Buttigieg was on TV talking about why it was necessary for him to take paternity leave to care for his East Palestine.
00:24:12.000who obviously was egregiously physically wounded during the birth of their of their child.
00:24:16.000In any case, Kareem Jean-Pierre is explaining why Joe Biden is visiting East Palestine. The answer
00:24:22.000is that Joe Biden is trying to shore up that sort of rust belt base that he thinks he has here.
00:24:26.000East Palestine, why did the administration decide that things have, I guess, coalesced and
00:24:36.000it's now the time for President Biden to go?
00:24:40.000So the mayor and community leaders invited the president to meet with East Palestine residents and also assess the recovery progress that's been going on for some time now, as you all know.
00:24:54.000And so the president had always said that he would go when it is most helpful to the community.
00:24:59.000And with this invitation, obviously, very recent, and the current status of the recovery, we felt that the time was right again.
00:25:07.000We got an invitation from the mayor and community leaders to come very, very recently.
00:25:13.000And so we are working with them to figure out the best time to do that in February.
00:25:19.000Oh, is that when you received the invitation?
00:25:44.000And because they're so bad, he's trying pretty much everything in the book, which is presumably also why Joe Biden is now attempting to buy off Michigan Muslim voters.
00:25:53.000That is effectively what he is doing right now with all of his idiot talk about the Middle East.
00:25:57.000I gotta say, his Middle Eastern policy has been a complete crap show.
00:26:02.000Since he took office, whether it is reorienting away from Saudi Arabia, reorienting away from Israel, orienting toward Iran, being incredibly conciliatory toward the Ayatollahs, declaring the Houthis a non-terror group, trying to undermine the Saudi regime.
00:26:17.000Like Joe Biden has made nothing but missteps in the Middle East, like over and over and over.
00:26:21.000And now they're looking at maybe doing their biggest misstep of all.
00:26:24.000And the reason that they're doing that is, of course, because Joe Biden's radical base
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00:29:07.000That radical left base does matter to Joe Biden, which is why he keeps massaging the shoulders of people protesting him and shouting about how much they love radical terror groups that murder Jews and rape women and kill babies.
00:29:18.000In fact, how radical are certain parts of the Democratic Party?
00:29:21.000So last night in the House of Representatives, there was a vote.
00:29:23.000The vote was a bill to bar from the United States all Hamas members and anyone involved with the Islamist terror group, October 7th attack on Israel.
00:29:32.000That seems like a pretty obvious one, right?
00:29:34.000Like, you don't get to come to the United States if you are a member of the terrorist group Hamas.
00:29:42.000Or if you were involved in, you know, a direct terror assault that killed 1,200 people and took 240 people into hostage situations, into tunnels.
00:29:52.000If you're involved in that, it seems like you probably shouldn't enter the United States.
00:30:18.000Representative Cori Bush, who when she is not expending allegedly taxpayer dollars to pay off her various relations, is voting in favor of Hamas.
00:30:27.000And Rashida Tlaib, your Democrat from Terror Island over here.
00:30:40.000I don't think Rashida Tlaib is a terrorist.
00:30:41.000Is she declaring herself in total solidarity with Hamas terrorists?
00:30:44.000Because she's saying the quiet part out loud, if so.
00:30:48.000She denounced the bill as another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe.
00:30:56.000I should point out at this point that she says it's a GOP messaging bill.
00:31:09.000So yeah, that's a GOP messaging bill in which 422 people vote one way and she and Cori Bush vote the other.
00:31:15.000By the way, again, you're sort of saying the quiet part out loud.
00:31:17.000If you say we can't discriminate against terrorists because people might think that terrorists are Muslims, Or that it is inciting anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim hatred to discriminate against Hamas?
00:31:56.000They have a piece by a person named Yasmin Abu-Taleb in the Washington Post called, And this entire article is about how terrible Joe Biden is for supporting Israel and its war against Hamas.
00:32:11.000Anaya, like many Arab American and Muslim voters in Dearborn, where Arab Americans make up the majority of the population, you'll remember them doing like a Palestinian march early on, like before even Israeli retaliation for the terror attack, in which there were actual terror flags being flown, is resolved not only to withhold his vote from Biden, but to actively campaign against him.
00:32:27.000Some Michigan Arabs and Muslims have launched an Abandon Biden campaign, part of a broader national movement still getting off the ground, to ensure those in their communities show up to cast their vote, but not for Biden.
00:32:37.000So they're not going to vote for Donald Trump, obviously, because Trump is way more pro-Israel than Joe Biden by every available metric.
00:32:43.000But they are going to yell at Joe Biden, and Joe Biden is very scared of the yelling.
00:32:46.000And so he has decided, apparently, he and his State Department are trying to decide on a new strategy.
00:34:02.000So the State Department is apparently now, according to Barak Ravid, reporting for Axios, the State Department is now being asked by the Secretary of State Tony Blinken to conduct a review and present policy options on possible U.S.
00:34:14.000and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza, according to two U.S.
00:34:26.000The Palestinian Authority does not even govern the West Bank.
00:34:28.000It has the approval of 0% of the Palestinian population.
00:34:31.000My polling data is not zero, but it's very close to zero.
00:34:34.000Which is why Mahmoud Abbas, the 88-year-old kleptocrat, who has stolen billions of dollars from his own people, same thing with Ismail Haniyeh over in Hamas land, who's living at five-star hotels in Qatar, while the rest of his people are living in rubble.
00:34:46.000But the Palestinian Authority, it does not have the approval of its own people.
00:34:49.000Mahmoud Abbas is currently In the, if my math is correct, 19th year of a four-year term.
00:34:56.000The last election that was held was, I believe, 2006 in the West Bank.
00:35:00.000And it was rigged in favor of Mahmoud Abbas so that Hamas would not win.
00:35:04.000And he's still serving as quote-unquote president.
00:35:05.000He also happens to be a Holocaust-denying Jew-hater who has walked away from the table on multiple occasions when presented with a peace deal most recently by Ehud Olmert, the most generous peace deal ever offered to the Palestinians.
00:35:15.000He simply walked away from the table, no counter-offer.
00:35:18.000That is one party in the governing structure of the Palestinian areas.
00:35:27.000Other governing structures, Islamic Jihad, a full-on terror group.
00:36:01.000The Gaza Strip was controlled by Egypt.
00:36:02.000At no point did Egypt try to create a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, and at no point did Jordan try to create a Palestinian state in the West Bank.
00:36:09.000The Arabs don't care about a Palestinian state in any of these areas.
00:36:11.000In fact, they know full well that if a Palestinian state were to be created in these areas, it would immediately be a terrorist state directed at them.
00:36:18.000The Jordanians are not really in favor of an independent Palestinian state governed by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.
00:36:25.000That is a direct threat to the Hashemite regime in Jordan.
00:36:28.000The Egyptians don't want a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip.
00:36:31.000That's why they have a border wall that makes Israel's border wall look like nothing.
00:36:36.000At the so-called Rafah Gate, down the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
00:36:40.000In other words, a Palestinian state, number one, is in no one's interest in the region, literally no one, including the Palestinians, because their governing structure would not exist, it would be garbage, and it would foment terrorism and lead to full-scale war.
00:36:54.000If a Palestinian state were actually to exist, and then they were to attack Israel, Israel would have no humanitarian obligations at all, because now you are at war directly with another sovereign state.
00:37:15.000So saying that you are going to preemptively declare a Palestinian state with no borders, no government representative of the people, no power powerful enough to even govern the areas that are supposedly governed, And no rationale for why this state would somehow make the world a better place, more solid, why this place would be governed in allegiance to anything like fundamentally decent principles, as opposed to just becoming a horrifying Sharia law state, which is what Hamas wants, for example?
00:38:28.000On the list of peoples who deserve a state right now, in the sense that the state will actually not be a threat to Western interests and will not be a full-on fomenting terror state, The Palestinian state idea comes like dead last.
00:38:43.000It's really low on that priority list.
00:38:45.000So why exactly is Joe Biden doing all this?
00:39:15.000Thomas Friedman's entire bag is, what if I travel around and get wined and dined by random regimes, and then write rosy, rose-colored glasses views of these awful regimes?
00:39:25.000He's done it with Iran, he did it with China.
00:39:27.000I'll go all over the place, I'll be wined and dined by these various regimes, and then I'll talk to taxi drivers.
00:39:31.000And those taxi drivers will bestow their wisdom upon me, and then I will go and meet with Joe Biden and help define his foreign policy.
00:39:37.000So he has a piece today titled, A Biden Doctrine for the Middle East is Forming, and it's big.
00:39:42.000So what exactly would this Biden doctrine be?
00:39:45.000He says, on one track would be a strong and resolute stand on Iran, including a robust military retaliation against Iran's proxies and agents in the region in response to the killing of three U.S.
00:39:53.000soldiers at a base in Jordan by a drone apparently launched by a pro-Iranian militia in Iraq.
00:39:57.000Okay, so that hasn't materialized at all.
00:39:58.000There has been no harsh response by the Biden administration to the murder of three American soldiers in Jordan.
00:40:25.000recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would come into being only once Palestinians had developed a set of defined, credible institutions and security capabilities to ensure that this state was viable and that it could never threaten Israel.
00:40:38.000Oh, well, I mean, under those conditions, I'm sure a Palestinian state being pursued right now is definitely going to happen.
00:42:22.000On the third track, according to Thomas Friedman, would be a vastly expanded U.S.
00:42:25.000security alliance with Saudi Arabia, which would also involve Saudi normalization of relations with Israel if the Israeli government is prepared to embrace a diplomatic process leading to a demilitarized Palestinian state led by a transformed Palestinian authority.
00:42:37.000Well, OK, again, when the rainbows fart, when the unicorns fart rainbows, I guess that we're there.
00:42:42.000If the administration can pull this together, a huge if.
00:42:44.000A Biden doctrine could become the biggest strategic realignment in the region since the 1979 Camp David Treaty.
00:42:50.000Well, and if I could somehow solve the problem of cold fusion, energy would be free.
00:42:57.000By the way, what's amazing about Thomas Friedman's idiot plan, which is now being embraced again by the idiot Biden administration.
00:43:02.000I've used the word idiot here a lot, but truly, these people are mentally deficient.
00:43:07.000What's so funny about this is that, you know who pursued two of these three tracks and was successful?
00:43:42.000In other words, the centrality of the Palestinians to anything remotely like peace in the Middle East is not only a lie, it is a pernicious and counterproductive lie.
00:43:51.000But that's exactly what the Biden administration is now embracing.
00:43:53.000Because they are so wedded to their own stupid foreign policy, they can't separate themselves from it, number one.
00:43:57.000And number two, they're getting blackmailed by their own voting base.
00:44:00.000And they don't have the strength of character to recognize that actually not supporting terror regimes in the establishment of a state might be good policy.
00:44:09.000Meanwhile, Elon Musk has come under fire because Elon Musk is not of the left.
00:44:15.000Elon Musk is the most creative entrepreneur of our time by far, which is why he's the richest man in the world.
00:44:21.000He's started a multiplicity of unbelievably interesting companies, ranging from Tesla, which is a great company, to SpaceX, which is, in my opinion, even a greater company.
00:44:30.000He's simply a singular figure in modern Western life.
00:44:34.000He's an incredible figure, which is why people are coming after him.
00:44:38.000He was the entrepreneur who was interesting and fascinating and quirky and all of this stuff until the point he bought Axe.
00:44:44.000As soon as he started making sounds that he liked free speech and wanted to open up The auspices of social media to various alternative opinions, the world came down around his ears.
00:44:56.000And so what we are watching right now is a political bias against Elon Musk turn into a legal bias against Elon Musk.
00:45:03.000The legal system, when we talk about the legal system being perverted, I mean, this is an actual perversion of the legal system.
00:45:08.000So according to Fox Business, a Delaware judge ruled in favor of Tesla investors who sued to challenge a $56 billion pay package for Elon Musk.
00:45:17.000The decision dares to boldly go where no man has gone before, or at least where no Delaware court has tread, the opinion states.
00:45:22.000The collection of features characterizing Musk's relationship with Tesla and its directors gave him enormous influence over Tesla.
00:45:28.000In her ruling, the judge said, quote, the plaintiff is entitled to rescission, meaning that the shareholders of Tesla sued to basically claw back.
00:45:43.000She directed the two parties to confer on a final form of order to implement her decision and submit a joint letter identifying all issues including fees that need to be addressed to bring the matter to conclusion at the trial level.
00:45:54.000She added that Tesla was, quote, unable to prove that the stockholder vote was fully informed because the proxy statement inaccurately described key directors as independent and misleadingly omitted details about the process.
00:46:03.000Now, the problem is that the pay package that Musk negotiated with Tesla was widely derided at the time as basically empty verbiage that would never materialize because effectively speaking, Musk deferred all compensation to a future pay package tied to the increase in the stock valuation of Tesla plus earnings.
00:46:26.000And everybody knew about it because it was the most widely remarked upon CEO.
00:46:32.000This is the most widely remarked upon CEO pay package literally in human history.
00:46:39.000So Tesla's agreement with Musk is the largest compensation ever provided to an executive.
00:46:42.000It's a major factor in making him one of the world's wealthiest individuals.
00:46:45.000So what happened is that he wasn't guaranteed any salary.
00:46:48.000This is commented upon by Andrew Ross Sorkin back in 2018.
00:46:53.000And here's what he wrote just to make clear what the judge is doing.
00:46:55.000The judge just hates Musk and so has decided to screw him.
00:46:57.000But here's what actually happened here.
00:46:59.000Quote, Tesla's Elon Musk may have the boldest pay plan in corporate history.
00:47:02.000For the last several years, there's been speculation about Elon Musk's future at Tesla and whether he would step down as chief executive in the next year or two.
00:47:09.000Mr. Musk stoked that speculation as far back as five years ago, when he said he wanted to stay through the introduction of the Model 3.
00:47:15.000And then in 2014, he said, I'll have to see, you know, how things are going at that point.
00:47:19.000With the success of Musk's various other endeavors like SpaceX, it was only natural that investors would expect that the model for Robert Downey Jr.' 's Tony Stark might move on to a different role at Tesla.
00:47:28.000Well, it's four years later, and Musk has now decided to stay.
00:48:27.000So Elon Musk, at a time when the company was valuated in the public markets, at $60 billion, signed a contract saying, I only get my pay package if I hit 10, if I hit 11x, basically.
00:48:39.000If I take The current value of Tesla and multiply it by 11, then I get this pay package.
00:48:44.000Now, if you're a shareholder, like, that's a great deal.
00:48:47.000Because if we hit that, I'm happy to pay him.
00:48:49.000And if we don't hit that, then we don't pay him.
00:49:20.000Tesla set a dozen targets, each $50 billion more than next, starting at $100 billion, then $150, then $200, all the way on to $650 billion.
00:49:27.000Also, the company set a dozen revenue and adjusted profit goals.
00:49:31.000Musk would receive 1.68 million shares, or about 1% of the company, only after he reaches milestones for both.
00:49:37.000But, as Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote at the time, this is 2018, to put these numbers in perspective, Tesla is only worth about $59 billion today.
00:49:45.000If Musk were somehow able to increase the value of Tesla to $650 billion, a figure many experts would contend is laughably impossible, and would make Tesla one of the five largest companies in the U.S.
00:49:54.000based on current valuations, his stock award could be worth as much as $55 billion.
00:50:01.000Musk's critics, actually at the time, complained that it was a publicity stunt, that there was no way he'd reach any of these numbers, and so the whole point of the exercise was to suggest that Tesla was bigger than it was.
00:50:12.000It's impossible for him to manipulate the system, said Andrew Ross Sorkin, by trying to prop up the stock price for a temporary period, because even once his shares vest, he has to hold them for five years before he can sell them.
00:50:22.000So he can't actually, like, get the shares that are worth $56 billion and then immediately turn around and sell them and undercut the value of the company.
00:50:41.000If you take a risk, and you benefit from that risk by benefiting all the shareholders to the extent that everybody who bought in at 20, this is a person who owned, the person who started this owned nine shares of Tesla.
00:51:10.000And just demonstrates, once again, there are members of the judiciary who do not give any craps about property rights or the rule of law.
00:51:17.000Okay, in just one second, we'll get to social media hearings on the Hill, which, again, it's fascinating to see the sort of coalition that's built against big tech.
00:51:27.000From the right, the critique makes sense.
00:51:29.000From the left, the critique is really bad.
00:51:30.000If you're not a member, become a member.