The Ben Shapiro Show - Is America Punishing Young Black Boys? | Ep. 500

00:00:00.000 The New York Times touts a new study saying disparities between black and white children are based on racism, President Trump congratulates Putin on his sham election, and Democrats threaten civil war.

00:00:09.000 A lot to get to.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:16.000 So, good morning.

00:00:18.000 At 11.06 Eastern Time, I declared a coup.

00:00:21.000 I am now President of the United States.

00:00:23.000 The current government of the United States has been dissolved in its entirety, and all of them will be replaced by non-corrupt, non-prostitute schtipping people. 1.00

00:00:30.000 This is how this is going to work from here on in.

00:00:32.000 The IRS has been dissolved, and I declare a thumb war as well.

00:00:36.000 We're good to go.

00:00:53.000 We're good to go.

00:01:12.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:01:33.000 Where is your news studio, Mr. Shapiro?

00:01:35.000 Well, my news studio is directly outside the Speaker of the House's office.

00:01:38.000 Actually, this office right here, this magnificent office, festooned with American flags and bust of George Washington just behind these flags, the true American president.

00:01:47.000 This office was apparently the place where President Trump, right after his inauguration, went to sign a bunch of bills and also tweet some stuff.

00:01:53.000 And so it is very important for that reason.

00:01:55.000 I will not

00:01:56.000 I will not suggest what has happened on this desk.

00:01:57.000 I don't know, so I can't speculate.

00:01:59.000 You know, maybe some things have happened.

00:02:00.000 I don't know.

00:02:01.000 I just can't speculate.

00:02:02.000 But later today I'm going to be speaking with the Speaker of the House, which should be an honor and a privilege for him.

00:02:07.000 For me.

00:02:08.000 It'll be great.

00:02:09.000 And I'm looking forward to talking with him.

00:02:11.000 But there's a lot of news that's happening.

00:02:13.000 So, I've been asked by a lot of people to go through a study that was reported yesterday by The New York Times.

00:02:18.000 So, one of the main issues that has come up, cropped up so often in American society these days is, of course, racism.

00:02:24.000 Racism this and racism that, and racial disparities are indicative of the horror of American life.

00:02:29.000 And America's racism problem is what has generated

00:02:32.000 We're good.

00:02:47.000 That's a pretty shocking headline for the New York Times, which usually ends around its headlines.

00:02:52.000 Usually it says something like, data sometimes suggest black people have faced discrimination in certain areas, people say.

00:03:00.000 That's a normal New York Times headline.

00:03:01.000 So this one's a hard-hitting headline.

00:03:03.000 Extensive data shows punishing reach of racism for black boys.

00:03:07.000 So what exactly does the study show?

00:03:09.000 Yeah.

00:03:28.000 Thank you.

00:03:43.000 Young black men lag behind young white men, not because of behavioral differences, not because young black men commit more crimes than young white men on average, or because they have a lower educational background, or because they have single dads, but because of widespread American racism.

00:03:55.000 Here is what the Times reports.

00:03:56.000 Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children.

00:04:07.000 White boys who grow up rich are likely to remain that way. 0.85

00:04:10.000 Black boys raised at the top, however, are more likely to become poor than to stay wealthy in their own adult households. 0.84

00:04:15.000 So what this study's main finding was is that if a black kid, a young black boy, grows up in a rich household in Beverly Hills next to a rich white family in Beverly Hills with a young white boy, that the black boy is more likely to fall into poverty than the white boy, even though they start off in the same area and with the same two-parent family.

00:04:33.000 And so this must obviously be due to racism, right?

00:04:35.000 This is the New York Times' take on the study.

00:04:37.000 According to the Times, quote,

00:04:38.000 We're good.

00:04:46.000 So they're removing all the factors that people would normally suggest contribute to disparities between black income and white income.

00:04:51.000 They're saying even when a rich black kid grows up rich and black with two parents and goes to a good high school and all this stuff, they still have lower outcomes than white folks.

00:05:01.000 And the IQ is not the problem, right? 0.94

00:05:03.000 So there are some people who are racially suggestive, we shall say, who say that maybe this is because black folks have lower IQs on average than white folks.

00:05:11.000 The data is not there to suggest that.

00:05:12.000 The reason the data is not there to suggest that is because the income

00:05:16.000 Outcome right the outcome of income for for black women is exactly the same as for white women who grow up rich So the disparity only exists between young black men and young white men It does not exist between young black women and young white women So if you have a rich black girl who grows up next to a rich white girl They basically are going to have exactly the same income as their life progresses. 0.71

00:05:35.000 So as I acknowledge right the study openly acknowledges that the racism doesn't extend to black women and 0.99

00:05:40.000 So, first of all, this gives the lie to a lot of the intersectional nonsense you hear

00:06:10.000 Thank you. 0.99

00:06:21.000 Because, again, black women happen to be black. 1.00

00:06:23.000 So if black women have the same outcomes as white women when given the same circumstances, wouldn't that suggest that racism is not actually the central problem? 0.91

00:06:30.000 Black women aren't not black just because they're treated well by the surrounding community. 1.00

00:06:36.000 That's a foolish argument. 0.98

00:06:37.000 The study itself says that black women earn slightly more than white women conditional on parent income. 0.98

00:06:42.000 There's little or no gap in wage rates or hours of work between black and white women. 1.00

00:06:46.000 And black women also have a higher college attendance rate than white men, conditional on parental outcome—on parental income, rather.

00:06:53.000 So, immediately, this should give you some serious pause as to the headline that was espoused by The New York Times.

00:06:58.000 Again, The New York Times headline here was, extensive data shows punishing reach of racism for black boys.

00:07:02.000 They're already attributing all of the difference between black boys and white boys to racism, even though that racism apparently just disappears with regard to black women.

00:07:10.000 Which is kind of weird.

00:07:11.000 I immediately should wonder, is racism really the dividing factor here, or is it that black women and black men actually have different perspectives on decision-making processes in higher-income households?

00:07:23.000 Is it possible that young black men and young black women are encouraged to pursue different activities, even in higher-income households, with two parents?

00:07:30.000 I think?

00:07:44.000 Not against black women, not against Hispanics, not against Asians, just against black boys. 1.00

00:07:50.000 And this should make you wonder.

00:07:51.000 It's also worth noting that one of the chief arguments in favor of the notion that blacks suffer under a regime of white privilege when they say that, you know, people like me can't speak on politics because we are a member of a white privileged class and the system was built for us.

00:08:03.000 One of the arguments for white privilege is that black people suffer in the United States today because of a historic wealth gap—that because black people were subject to slavery and Jim Crow, they have less wealth in the families in which they grow up.

00:08:15.000 OK, well, there is that wealth gap, but the study demonstrates that family wealth is actually not an indicator of continued life success for black men.

00:08:22.000 So even when black men are growing up with a tremendous amount of wealth, they're having poorer outcomes in terms of income than white men are. 0.70

00:08:29.000 So that suggests that wealth is actually not the primary differentiating factor between the outcome of people's earning power.

00:08:36.000 So this is the big question of the study.

00:08:37.000 The big question of the study is, are black men failing in a way black women are not because of discrimination, or is it because of differences in behavior?

00:08:44.000 So my suggestion is that it would have something to do with differences in behavior.

00:08:47.000 And the study itself suggests this.

00:08:48.000 This is not the stuff the New York Times wants to cover.

00:08:50.000 It's all buried in the 100-page study that I read yesterday.

00:08:53.000 For example, the study discusses criminal behavior among high-income young black men, but it doesn't actually investigate the possible causal link between criminal behavior and drop in income.

00:09:02.000 So the study says that black men raised in the top 1% of income, people who are millionaires, were as likely to be incarcerated as white men raised in households earning about $36,000 a year.

00:09:13.000 So is that the fault of white racism?

00:09:14.000 That's an amazing statistic.

00:09:15.000 That means that a black kid growing up in a millionaire household is as likely to go to prison as a white kid growing up in a household earning $36,000. 0.65

00:09:23.000 Is that the result of racism, or is that the result of bad individual behavior?

00:09:28.000 Is it really that the police are staking out Beverly Hills for young black men who live in that area and then just arresting them willy-nilly?

00:09:34.000 Or is it possible that criminal rates among young black men, even in upper-income areas, are higher than they are among young black women, for example?

00:09:42.000 And it has nothing to do with race.

00:09:44.000 It has to do instead with certain cultural inculcation, which I'll get to in just a second.

00:09:49.000 In fact, the study itself recognizes that incarceration is not the result of surrounding racism, that those incarceration rates that are elevated for young black men in rich areas are not actually the result of surrounding racism.

00:10:00.000 They say that the relationship between racism in a given area and incarceration rates, quote, is not statistically significant, meaning that young black men are not being arrested just because the cops are a bunch of racists in Beverly Hills.

00:10:10.000 As a sidebar—and this is an important point—high black crime rates do have horrible externalities for innocent young black men. 1.00

00:10:16.000 I want to talk about this in a little bit, because here's the area where racism really sort of does play a role, because I don't think that racism is a completely irrelevant factor, but I don't think it's quite racism, either.

00:10:25.000 I think that it's a form of discrimination that Thomas Sowell talks about, and I'll talk about that in just a second.

00:10:32.000 Other differences between young black men and young black women is that the study indicates that the impact of neighborhood on young black men matters.

00:10:40.000 Young black men do best in neighborhoods with low levels of racism.

00:10:43.000 The study actually, its measurements of racism are really suspect.

00:10:46.000 They use the implicit assessment test, the implicit bias assessment test, which is not a good test.

00:10:51.000 And high levels of fatherhood in the community at large.

00:10:53.000 So, young black boys do better when there are dads in the community.

00:10:56.000 What's interesting is that the study suggests it's not even having black men in the home.

00:11:00.000 It's not even about having a father in the home.

00:11:02.000 It's about are there high levels of black men in the community who can play the father figure role?

00:11:07.000 So that's an interesting thing.

00:11:09.000 More social fabric helps raise boys better, whether they are white or black.

00:11:12.000 But these communities are pretty rare, right?

00:11:14.000 Single motherhood does remain prevalent in the black community, and the study admits, quote, the fraction of low-income black fathers present is most predictive of smaller intergenerational gaps.

00:11:22.000 So again, it's about single motherhood.

00:11:24.000 It is not really about racism.

00:11:26.000 Black boys who grow up in areas with high father presence are also significantly less likely to be incarcerated, which could explain part of the association with higher employment rates.

00:11:34.000 So I will get to the end of this study and a word about discrimination in just a second.

00:11:37.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Indochino.

00:11:41.000 You want to look like James Bond?

00:11:42.000 You want to look like The Thing?

00:11:44.000 Then all you need to do is go over to Indochino.

00:11:46.000 Because the fact is, you can go buy a suit off the rack and it won't look that great on you unless you happen to be a specified size.

00:11:50.000 Or you can have a suit made to order just for you by the folks over at Indochino.

00:11:54.000 They're the world's largest made-to-measure menswear company that makes suits and shirts.

00:11:58.000 They're created to your exact measurements for a great fit.

00:12:01.000 I've been to the Inzo Chino workshop over in Beverly Hills, and it is just fantastic.

00:12:05.000 They allow you to personalize your suit, they allow you to pick how you want the lapels to look, they allow you to pick the color, the lining, everything.

00:12:10.000 It actually is a lot of fun, and not only that, the suit fits fantastically well.

00:12:14.000 Or you can go online and submit your measurements, and they will send it directly to your house, and you have all the same abilities to personalize your suit.

00:12:20.000 Again, you go there, you pick your fabric, you choose your customizations, you submit your measurements, and then you just wait for the custom suit to arrive in a few weeks.

00:12:26.000 It's inzochino.com, and right now, my listeners get any premium Inzo Chino suit

00:12:30.000 We're good.

00:12:38.000 We're good to go.

00:13:02.000 OK, so, back to the study that The New York Times calls a damning indictment of American racism with regard to young black boys.

00:13:08.000 What I have suggested is that the data from the study actually suggests that differentiations between the outcomes for rich young black men and young black women, for example, or young black men and young white men, has little to do with generalized American racism and a lot to do with personal choices that are being made in the black community, even in areas that are more wealthy.

00:13:28.000 So the study tries to attribute to generalized racism a little bit this differentiation between young black men and young white men, even if they are both rich.

00:13:38.000 The study's take on racism is actually its weakest methodologically.

00:13:41.000 It uses that implicit association test, as I suggested.

00:13:44.000 This is the implicit bias test.

00:13:46.000 If you've been in college, they've forced you to take an IAT. 0.98

00:13:48.000 What that is is that stupid test where you're supposed to click on words as black and white faces appear. 0.97

00:13:53.000 And what it's supposed to show is that if you click on negative words, 0.99

00:13:55.000 When a black face appears more quickly than you click on negative words when a white face appears, this is your supposed racism.

00:14:00.000 The problem is that the implicit assessment test actually doesn't measure real-world racism, nor is it even duplicable.

00:14:06.000 If you take the test twice, you can game the system.

00:14:08.000 Right?

00:14:08.000 So you can take the test once, and it'll come up as you're a racist.

00:14:11.000 You take it again, and now you're not a racist anymore.

00:14:13.000 So the test is not actually duplicable.

00:14:15.000 It's not a good measurement.

00:14:16.000 The study itself states that closing the gap between whites and blacks is largely driven by high rates of father presence among low-income blacks,

00:14:23.000 And the study even dismisses—right?

00:14:24.000 This is all the stuff the New York Times didn't report.

00:14:27.000 Right? 0.97

00:14:27.000 The New York Times headline is that America's racist and black boys are suffering. 0.97

00:14:30.000 Here's what the New York Times didn't report.

00:14:31.000 It's a direct quote from the study.

00:14:33.000 So, in other words, the Democrats' favorite methods of closing this gap?

00:14:35.000 They don't do anything.

00:14:48.000 Not only that, forced integration in schools and housing won't do anything either.

00:14:52.000 They'll, quote, "...also likely leave much of the gap in place, since the gap persists even among low-income children raised on the same block."

00:14:59.000 So all of the left's favorite

00:15:01.000 Policy prescriptions that would rise from that shocking headline from the New York Times, the study itself rejects.

00:15:07.000 So what exactly is the difference?

00:15:08.000 So what exactly is the difference between why young black men who are growing up rich with two parent families and young white men growing up the same way have different outcomes?

00:15:16.000 What would explain that?

00:15:17.000 Well, one theory that was put forward by black anthropologist John Ogbu since the 1980s theorized that black children are often penalized socially for acting white.

00:15:27.000 Okay, those aren't my words.

00:15:28.000 Those are the words of Barack Obama.

00:15:29.000 Here's what Barack Obama said in 2004, quote,

00:15:47.000 Barack Obama reiterated this

00:16:02.000 We're good.

00:16:19.000 Are educated black people too white? 0.85

00:16:21.000 This is a serious issue that there are a lot of people who have faced.

00:16:23.000 Larry Elder has talked about this a lot.

00:16:26.000 Thomas Sowell has talked about this.

00:16:27.000 There is a cultural denigration in certain parts of the black community against education.

00:16:31.000 By the way, this exists in certain parts of the white community, as well.

00:16:33.000 In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D.

00:16:35.000 Vance talks specifically about this in impoverished white communities in Appalachia, for example.

00:16:40.000 Communities that value education and that promote education are more likely to have children who value education, promote education, and end up with better life outcomes.

00:16:48.000 The reason that Asians outperform whites is because Chinese American culture and Korean American culture, to take a couple of examples, are heavily focused on education and achievement.

00:16:55.000 This is also true of Jewish Americans who came to the United States dirt poor and tested below average on IQ tests before they acclimated and ended up becoming one of the wealthier subgroups in the United States. 0.98

00:17:06.000 Black children spend significantly less time on homework than any other race of children.

00:17:10.000 Asian children spend significantly more time on homework.

00:17:12.000 That makes a difference.

00:17:13.000 Harvard's Roland Fryer, another black scholar, formalized a particular peer effect, acting white, which potentially contributes to the ongoing puzzle of black underachievement.

00:17:21.000 His suggestion is that you are socially ostracized if you spend too much time studying as a young black male.

00:17:27.000 The New York Times doesn't go into any of that, of course.

00:17:29.000 All they do is they just—they say young black men do worse than young white men.

00:17:33.000 That must be to some greater racist issue.

00:17:35.000 Now, here is where discrimination comes in.

00:17:37.000 I promised you there would be discussion of discrimination.

00:17:39.000 Here is the discussion of discrimination.

00:17:40.000 So, there are three types of discrimination.

00:17:42.000 At the end of the show, I'm going to talk about things I like.

00:17:44.000 I'm going to recommend Thomas Sowell's book.

00:17:46.000 Tony, he has a brand new book out on discrimination.

00:17:47.000 We're going to interview him for the show.

00:17:48.000 Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite thinkers.

00:17:50.000 People have asked me before, if I were not declaring a clue and declaring myself president today, who would I do that for?

00:17:54.000 And I've said that I would do that for Thomas Sowell, who I think is the best thinker in the country.

00:17:58.000 In Thomas Sowell's book, he talks about three separate types of discrimination.

00:18:02.000 And it's important for us to distinguish these things in our mind, so that we are exact when we use words like discrimination.

00:18:08.000 So there are three types.

00:18:09.000 Discrimination type number one is the type of discrimination you use every day.

00:18:13.000 No, you're not a racist.

00:18:14.000 You discriminate between behavioral choices.

00:18:16.000 You decide who is going to be your friend and who is not based on whether somebody will drive you to the airport.

00:18:21.000 You decide whether or not you want to date someone based on whether they are nice to you.

00:18:24.000 You decide whether you want to hire someone based on whether you think they are likely to steal the silverware.

00:18:29.000 You make all of these decisions based on individual data and individual behavior.

00:18:33.000 That's not racism.

00:18:34.000 That's just what we do every day.

00:18:36.000 We're always making these decisions.

00:18:37.000 Our entire day is a series of discriminatory decisions that we make against one particular choice and in favor of another.

00:18:42.000 That's totally innocent discrimination. 0.82

00:18:44.000 This is what Thomas Sowell calls Type 1a discrimination.

00:18:46.000 Then there is Type 2 discrimination.

00:18:48.000 Type 2 discrimination is the absolute, overt, alt-right racism. 0.99

00:18:52.000 Black people are inferior, they're genetically inferior, and therefore, we can't hire them, they shouldn't be allowed into schools, we should live apart from them, etc., etc., right? 1.00

00:18:59.000 That is actual, alt-right discrimination and racism. 0.99

00:19:01.000 That exists, but it's a relatively small amount in the United—it's a very low level in the United States.

00:19:06.000 In fact, I would suggest that racism across the world is much higher than it is in the United States.

00:19:11.000 Then there is the type of discrimination that is somewhere in the middle.

00:19:15.000 This is what Thomas Sowell calls discrimination 1B.

00:19:18.000 So remember, 1A was you discriminating amongst choices.

00:19:21.000 1B is you discriminating about individuals based on group data.

00:19:26.000 So here is the example that Thomas Sowell uses for discrimination 1B.

00:19:30.000 If 40% of people in Group X are alcoholics, and 1% of people in Group Y are alcoholics, an employer may well prefer to hire only people from Group Y for work

00:19:50.000 We're good to go.

00:20:09.000 And we make these sorts of decisions every day, right?

00:20:11.000 Jesse Jackson once said about walking down the street at night, right?

00:20:14.000 Jesse Jackson said, if I'm walking down the street at night and I see a young black man coming at me in a hoodie, I cross the street.

00:20:19.000 Was that Jesse Jackson being racist?

00:20:20.000 Or is that him using group data in order to make a decision about what to do here and now based on a risk assessment?

00:20:27.000 What it really is, is this discrimination 1B.

00:20:28.000 Now, it makes us all a little bit queasy, right?

00:20:30.000 It makes us a little bit uncomfortable, because what we would prefer is that we all see each other as individuals, that we have all the information available.

00:20:36.000 But there are certain legislative efforts in place that actually prevent this.

00:20:40.000 So, for example, President Obama said that he wanted federal employees to never be able to be tested for criminal background checks.

00:20:47.000 He wanted federal contractors not to be able to test for criminality in background checks of employees, because he said too many young black men have gone to prison, and then they won't be able to get a job afterward.

00:20:57.000 Well, the actual effect of that policy is to lower black employment, according to a study in 2001, because what do employers do when they're told that they can't do criminal background checks?

00:21:06.000 Instead of screening out people who are actually criminals or who've had a criminal record, instead of doing that, what they do is they screen out entire populations.

00:21:14.000 They say, okay, the criminal rate in the black community is much higher than the criminal rate in the white community, and this is particularly true among young black males, so I just won't hire young black males because I can't check whether the person's a criminal or not. 0.93

00:21:23.000 I can only use the data at hand.

00:21:25.000 Is that racism?

00:21:27.000 Or is that just the use of group data without any further investiture of time?

00:21:31.000 So there are two things that we can do to stop this sort of discrimination.

00:21:36.000 I'll explain the two things we can do to stop discrimination 1B in just a second, and this is really where I think we should be putting some of our efforts.

00:21:43.000 I need to say thank you to our sponsors over at the USCCA.

00:21:45.000 So, mass shootings, terror attacks that can happen, as we've seen, anytime, anywhere, unfortunately.

00:21:49.000 London, Paris, New York, Vegas, Parkland.

00:21:51.000 After every tragedy, the politicians blame the only people who need the protection the most.

00:21:56.000 Law-abiding people.

00:21:57.000 This is what they do.

00:21:58.000 They're constantly blaming people like me and people like you.

00:22:00.000 You're a gun owner.

00:22:01.000 And they say, well, why don't you just give up your AR? 1.00

00:22:03.000 And then the media show a video of some idiot sawing off the end of their AR and being prosecuted for sawing off the end of their AR and making the gun an illegal weapon. 0.99

00:22:10.000 That is what the media constantly do. 1.00

00:22:11.000 But now, you can actually fight back.

00:22:13.000 You can get the complete Mass Shooting Survival Guide from the USCCA.

00:22:16.000 It is 100% free.

00:22:18.000 You can claim yours for a very limited time at DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:22:21.000 That's DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:22:23.000 And in this guide, you will learn what we really know about mass shootings, how to survive an attack, proven strategies for stopping a shooter, and a whole lot more.

00:22:29.000 Plus, the USCCA does wonderful work in ensuring that you are legally prepared in case, God forbid, you have to pull the trigger on somebody who's attempting to hurt you.

00:22:37.000 Plus, this entire packet comes with a bonus audiobook so you can listen whenever you want as soon as you finish my podcast.

00:22:43.000 You can claim yours in seconds.

00:22:44.000 Right now, it's 100% free.

00:22:46.000 And for a very limited time, you will also get a bonus security checklist for your office, church, or school.

00:22:50.000 Go to defendmyfamilynow.com while you still can.

00:22:52.000 That's defendmyfamilynow.com.

00:22:55.000 Again, defendmyfamilynow.com.

00:22:56.000 USCCA has a bunch of fantastic services they provide to you.

00:22:59.000 Plus, you can get that complete mass shooting survival guide from the USCCA, 100% free.

00:23:04.000 Great folks over there.

00:23:05.000 DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:23:06.000 That's DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:23:07.000 Okay, so back to discrimination.

00:23:09.000 So the reason that this actually plays a role with regard to the study that we're talking about is—let's take my suggestion for just a second—that one of the reasons that we see lower income outcomes—I know it's confusing when I say income outcome.

00:23:22.000 What I mean is lower earnings outcomes for young black men than young white men who grow up in the same cohort.

00:23:28.000 Why exactly do we see that?

00:23:29.000 I'm saying maybe it's individual choices, maybe it's educational disparities brought on by cultural disdain in certain parts of the black community for education, the acting white phenomenon. 0.85

00:23:38.000 There are a bunch of factors that need to be taken into account.

00:23:40.000 The study doesn't actually take into account.

00:23:42.000 But let's start with criminality.

00:23:43.000 So let's suggest that—I mean, the statistics really are stunning—that something like 10 percent of young black men in the top quintile actually have been convicted of a crime. 0.86

00:23:54.000 It's something insane.

00:23:55.000 It's a really, really high number.

00:23:57.000 And let's say that we have all these bans on the books that prevent you from doing federal background checks, criminal background checks on your employees.

00:24:03.000 And so employers start using broad-based discrimination based on data.

00:24:08.000 So they start using group data because they can't use individual data.

00:24:11.000 And that means that innocent young black men are caught up in the court.

00:24:13.000 And just like in the alcoholics case, 60% of the group of people who are considered more alcoholic are not alcoholic, but those people are not being hired because all the taxi company cares about

00:24:23.000 is not hiring any alcoholics, and they've been prevented from screening for DUI background.

00:24:29.000 So there are two ways to prevent this.

00:24:30.000 One is to take away the government disincentive to actually do the research.

00:24:34.000 So get rid of regulations on the books that don't allow you to do criminal background checks.

00:24:39.000 Get rid of the regulations on the books that prevent people in housing from doing criminal background checks.

00:24:43.000 And there's been a serious issue.

00:24:44.000 There have been a lot of local areas that refuse to allow people who own apartment buildings, for example, to do criminal background checks of their potential clients, of potential residents at their house.

00:24:55.000 Well, if I'm renting out my garage, I want to know whether the guy's a criminal or not.

00:24:58.000 And if I'm not allowed to check whether the guy's a criminal, I'm just going to rent—I'm going to rent to the Amish guy down the road, because the criminal rate in the Amish community is really low. 0.98

00:25:05.000 You can actually play this forward, not even with regard to black and white.

00:25:08.000 You can play it forward to any community.

00:25:09.000 The criminal rate in the Amish community is extremely low.

00:25:11.000 If I have a choice between the normal non-Amish white guy and the Amish guy, I will choose the Amish guy every time to occupy my garage. 0.99

00:25:19.000 Is that discrimination or is that a database group decision that has nothing to do with racism?

00:25:22.000 It has to do just with group data that you are now applying.

00:25:26.000 So how do you get past that?

00:25:27.000 Number one, you remove the disincentive.

00:25:28.000 Now you treat people as individuals.

00:25:29.000 You do a criminal background check.

00:25:31.000 Yes, that means that people with a criminal record probably won't get hired.

00:25:34.000 But guess what?

00:25:34.000 It also means that innocent people of the same race or of the same group as the people with the criminal record will get hired.

00:25:40.000 And this is what that 2001 study showed.

00:25:42.000 When you got rid of regulations preventing criminal background checks, more black people were hired. 1.00

00:25:47.000 So every time the left tries to help by preventing employers from gathering information, employers simply use group data, which is a worse kind of data.

00:25:55.000 So that's something that has to change.

00:25:56.000 The second thing that has to change is you need to change the group data.

00:26:00.000 The group data itself has to change.

00:26:01.000 So the criminal rates in the Jewish community when Jews first came over from Eastern Europe in the early 20th century were actually not low.

00:26:06.000 They were quite high.

00:26:08.000 They were quite high in the Italian community when Italian immigrants first came to the United States.

00:26:11.000 In the Irish community, there was a reason where it said no Jews need apply, no Irish need apply, no Italians need apply. 0.59

00:26:16.000 This has been true of virtually every single ethnic group that has ever entered the United States.

00:26:20.000 When they first get here, they are poor and very often admired in crime.

00:26:24.000 And then over the course of generations, the crime stops.

00:26:27.000 Well, if you are going to prevent group data from being used as a basis for Discrimination 1B in Thomas Sowell's modeling, then what you really need to focus on is how do you get that criminal rate down?

00:26:38.000 Now, what the study suggests is the first thing you need to do is ensure that there are fathers in the community.

00:26:43.000 Again, an individual decision.

00:26:44.000 An individual decision having nothing to do with racism.

00:26:47.000 As I've said many times in my speeches on this program, there's not a black man in America who is forced at gunpoint to impregnate a black woman and leave. 0.97

00:26:54.000 Not by white racists. 0.97

00:26:55.000 This has never happened. 0.73

00:26:56.000 Or if it has, then it would be criminal and we'd prosecute it.

00:26:59.000 Individual decision making is usually responsible for even group disparity.

00:27:05.000 Because there are cultural differences, because there are histories, because there are pathologies of poverty—all of this is true.

00:27:10.000 It has nothing to do with race, by the way.

00:27:11.000 Nothing I'm saying here has anything to do with implicit race, right?

00:27:15.000 I mean, this happens among white people.

00:27:16.000 It happens among black people. 0.98

00:27:17.000 It's much more about behavior than about race.

00:27:20.000 So what I would suggest is that if you actually want to get rid of Discrimination 1B and get down to the level where we treat everybody as individuals, take away the bureaucratic and economic incentives to make group decisions, and number two,

00:27:37.000 Okay, so the reason I spent so much time on this is because, number one, I got a lot of emails about this particular study, but number two, because I think that it's indicative of what the media want.

00:27:49.000 The media only quoted a certain segment of the study, right?

00:27:51.000 They said, this shows that racism is responsible for young black boys not succeeding in America, and then

00:27:57.000 It's pretty obvious they didn't even analyze the vast majority of the study, right?

00:28:00.000 That entire section near the end where they say that forced housing integration is not going to work, and forced busing is not going to work, and income redistribution is not going to work, right?

00:28:10.000 All of that was left out by The New York Times.

00:28:12.000 It shows you the media bias when they are in pursuit of a particular agenda.

00:28:15.000 OK, so now I want to talk about a controversy that has broken out over President Trump, of course.

00:28:22.000 Apparently, called up Vladimir Putin, the dictator of Russia, who won an overwhelming election victory, in the least surprising result, since Fidel Castro won an overwhelming election victory.

00:28:32.000 You know, he is a dictator, OK?

00:28:34.000 Russia is a dictatorship.

00:28:36.000 People like dictatorship for reasons I explained on Monday when I talked about romantic nationalism.

00:28:40.000 President Trump made a boo-boo, OK?

00:28:42.000 In the boo-boo, President Trump called up Putin, and he said, congratulations on your magnificent election victory.

00:28:47.000 Here is Trump talking about it.

00:28:49.000 I had a call with President Putin and congratulated him on the victory, his electoral victory.

00:28:56.000 The call had to do also with the fact that we will

00:29:02.000 Probably get together in the not-too-distant future so that we can discuss arms.

00:29:08.000 We can discuss the arms race.

00:29:10.000 As you know, he made a statement that being in an arms race is not a great thing.

00:29:15.000 That was right after the election, one of the first statements he made.

00:29:17.000 And also to discuss Ukraine and Syria and North Korea and various other things.

00:29:25.000 OK, so the part that's troubling is obviously not to talk about the arms race.

00:29:28.000 The part that's troubling is where he says that he congratulated Putin.

00:29:31.000 So, it has now been leaked to the Washington Post that Trump did not follow specific warnings from his national security advisers on Tuesday when he congratulated Putin.

00:29:39.000 There was apparently a section in his briefing materials in all capital letters stating, do not congratulate, according to officials familiar with the call.

00:29:46.000 So, a couple of things.

00:29:47.000 One, people in the White House should not be leaking what's on national security documents to the press.

00:29:51.000 Okay, obviously there's some serious leaks still inside the White House.

00:29:55.000 The fractiousness of the White House is insane.

00:29:57.000 The fact that this stuff is leaking is not good.

00:29:59.000 Second of all, if you want President Trump to do something, never write in capital letters for him not to do something.

00:30:05.000 Okay, because if the President of the United States—he is like my four-year-old daughter, who at this point in her life says whatever the opposite is of what I want her to say.

00:30:14.000 If I want her to stop jumping on her bed, I have to tell her that I want her to continue jumping on her bed. 1.00

00:30:18.000 Never write on a piece of paper, do not congratulate Putin and slide it in front of the president in all capital letters because he's just going to, in his own mind, go, I can congratulate whoever I want.

00:30:27.000 Boom.

00:30:28.000 Roasted.

00:30:29.000 OK, so, you know, should he have congratulated Putin?

00:30:33.000 Of course he shouldn't have congratulated Putin.

00:30:34.000 Putin's a dictator, OK? 1.00

00:30:35.000 It's stupid to congratulate Putin. 1.00

00:30:38.000 And, you know, the defense of it was equally stupid. 1.00

00:30:40.000 Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the spokeswoman for the White House, she said that—you know, she was asked about this, and her answer was rather morally egregious. 0.99

00:30:47.000 Here's what she said.

00:30:49.000 Does the White House believe that the election in Russia was free and fair?

00:30:52.000 Look, in terms of the election, there we're focused on our elections.

00:30:59.000 We don't get to dictate how other countries operate.

00:31:03.000 What we do know is that

00:31:07.000 Putin has been elected in their country, and that's not something that we can dictate to them how they operate.

00:31:14.000 We can only focus on the freeness and the fairness of our election, something we 100% fully support, and something we're going to continue to do everything we can to protect, to make sure bad actors don't have the opportunity to impact them in any way.

00:31:28.000 No, no, no, no.

00:31:31.000 Fail, no, no.

00:31:33.000 W-U-T. 0.98

00:31:34.000 What?

00:31:35.000 OK, that is not accurate in any way.

00:31:36.000 The United States has a long history of criticizing how other countries run their elections when they are dictatorships. 0.91

00:31:41.000 But that said, I'm going to talk a little bit about the media and democratic response, because it is pretty hypocritical.

00:31:46.000 First, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.

00:31:48.000 So for $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to Daily Wire.

00:31:50.000 That means you get the rest of this magnificent show from our brand new offices.

00:31:54.000 We're not calling it the Oval Office.

00:31:55.000 We'll just call it The Corner.

00:31:56.000 But you'll be able to see the rest of the show.

00:31:58.000 I mean, we paid for this place, right?

00:32:00.000 So you may as well be part of it.

00:32:01.000 $9.99 a month, you get that.

00:32:02.000 You get the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live.

00:32:04.000 You get the rest of Michael Moulse's show live.

00:32:05.000 You get to be part of my mailbag on Friday when all of your life questions will be answered.

00:32:08.000 You also get the very best in all beverage vessels, the Leftist Tears hot or cold tumbler.

00:32:13.000 You can enjoy that with your annual subscription, $99 a year, cheaper than the monthly subscription.

00:32:17.000 So get all of those things and all the glories for the annual subscriber price.

00:32:22.000 And if you just want to listen later, go over to iTunes, go over to SoundCloud, go over to YouTube.

00:32:25.000 Make sure that you subscribe.

00:32:26.000 Please leave us a review.

00:32:27.000 We always appreciate it.

00:32:28.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:32:37.000 OK, so, is this a smart thing for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to say? 0.98

00:32:40.000 No, this is a very dumb thing for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to say. 0.85

00:32:43.000 The president should not have congratulated Putin. 0.92

00:32:45.000 Obviously, the president has an unfortunate habit of congratulating dictators on their election after Erdogan, who's the dictator of Turkey, won his election.

00:32:52.000 I'm putting won in scare quotes.

00:32:54.000 Then, you know, Trump congratulated him.

00:32:56.000 He shouldn't have done that. 1.00

00:32:57.000 It's really dumb. 1.00

00:32:58.000 But to pretend this is unique is also to be historically ignorant. 0.99

00:33:01.000 Yeah, President Obama congratulated Nicolás Maduro in 2012, I believe, on his re-election.

00:33:08.000 It was either Hugo Chávez, specifically, or Nicolás Maduro.

00:33:10.000 I can't remember if Chávez was dead at that point.

00:33:12.000 But he congratulated the leadership in Venezuela for its re-election.

00:33:16.000 Venezuela is a communist dictatorship where people are eating dogs.

00:33:19.000 You don't congratulate bad people.

00:33:22.000 Now, this is where I don't like the whataboutism.

00:33:24.000 It was bad when Obama did it, and it's bad when Trump does it.

00:33:26.000 You shouldn't congratulate dictators on rigging elections for their own benefit.

00:33:30.000 It's just not a good thing to do.

00:33:33.000 And I'm constantly surprised by people on my own side of the aisle who had a different standard for Obama than they have for Trump.

00:33:37.000 Well, you know, now it's just Trump politicking and all the rest.

00:33:40.000 Well, so what?

00:33:42.000 So what?

00:33:42.000 There's been a big debate in American foreign policy that I think is not really an honest one.

00:33:46.000 And that is, should morality play a part in our foreign policy?

00:33:49.000 There are people who declare themselves sort of foreign policy realists—this would be folks like Rand Paul—who say morality really shouldn't play a role in American foreign policy.

00:33:56.000 But even that is morality.

00:33:58.000 Right?

00:33:58.000 That is morality.

00:33:58.000 That's a moral statement.

00:33:59.000 Why should America not play a role in other countries?

00:34:02.000 Well, there are a couple of reasons that are suggested.

00:34:04.000 One is it's none of our business what other countries do. 0.99

00:34:05.000 We can't impose ourselves on them.

00:34:07.000 The other is that it costs us too much money and too much time and too much treasure.

00:34:11.000 These arguments are not mutually exclusive, but they also are not identical.

00:34:15.000 You can make the argument that morality should help dictate our foreign policy, but we shouldn't spend money in this particular place.

00:34:21.000 I did that with regard to, for example, the Libyan intervention—or the Syrian intervention, actually.

00:34:27.000 I think you can make fair arguments on either side.

00:34:28.000 But for those who say that morality should not dictate our foreign policy, of course morality does dictate our foreign policy, because the whole rationale for a strong America

00:34:36.000 At home, even, for us existing, is because we are a more moral system.

00:34:39.000 Now, you may say, what strengthens America is not to get entangled in foreign battles.

00:34:43.000 Fine.

00:34:44.000 But that's an argument of utility, not an argument of immorality.

00:34:47.000 Right?

00:34:48.000 You do have a moral stance.

00:34:49.000 I assume that Rand Paul actually doesn't like the Russian dictatorship.

00:34:51.000 I assume that's the case.

00:34:53.000 So, you know, I think that a lot of the talk about morality in foreign policy going out the window because Trump's a foreign policy realist is actually not true.

00:35:01.000 I just think that that's a bit of a fib and a futzing over on the part of the Trump administration.

00:35:06.000 There's a big article over at the Washington Post, again, targeting Cambridge Analytica and talking about how Cambridge Analytica is the root of all evil.

00:35:13.000 We've been following this story all week, because I think this whole thing is a front.

00:35:16.000 I think—it's very rare that I air a quasi-conspiracy theory.

00:35:20.000 I don't think it's a conspiracy theory, because I think that all of it has been basically said.

00:35:23.000 I think that Zuckerberg has not been unclear over at Facebook about what his agenda is.

00:35:28.000 What's happening here is pretty obvious.

00:35:30.000 Cambridge Analytica data mined.

00:35:31.000 OK, there's not an accusation yet they actually did it illegally.

00:35:35.000 The FTC is apparently investigating.

00:35:36.000 If they did something illegal, they'll be prosecuted, and then we can have a scandal.

00:35:39.000 Great.

00:35:40.000 But until now, there's been no allegation of actual illegal activity.

00:35:43.000 There's been allegations that they gathered an enormous amount of Facebook data and then cross-tabulated people's personal preferences with their politics, which is like, OK, whatever.

00:35:51.000 We all do that.

00:35:52.000 Data mining has been in existence in the United States forever.

00:35:54.000 This is true of every business in the United States.

00:35:56.000 We're good to go.

00:36:14.000 The reason that Facebook has moved, as I discussed at length yesterday, ad nauseam yesterday, the reason that Facebook has moved against conservatives is because Zuckerberg is on the left and because the left has pressured Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter and said that you guys are responsible for Trump's election.

00:36:27.000 You need to somehow rejigger your algorithms to prevent those nefarious right-wingers from taking advantage of the situation.

00:36:33.000 Well, the scandal of the day now, today's scandal, is not that they did anything illegal.

00:36:38.000 But instead, that they did research on what presumed Trump voters would like.

00:36:42.000 So, according to Christopher Wiley, who's the pink-haired dude who was the informant to the U.K.

00:36:47.000 Guardian about Cambridge Analytica, Wiley said that both Bannon—Steve Bannon, who's a stockholder in Cambridge Analytica, and Rebecca Mercer,

00:36:55.000 We're good to go.

00:37:18.000 This was well before he became a thing.

00:37:20.000 He wasn't a client or anything.

00:37:22.000 The year before Trump announced his presidential bid, the data firm had already found a high level of alienation among young white Americans with a conservative bent.

00:37:28.000 In focus groups arranged to test messages for the 2014 midterms, these voters responded, according to the Washington Post, these voters responded to calls for building a new wall to block the entry of illegal immigrants, to reforms intending to drain the swamp of Washington's entrenched political community, and to thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called race realism, he recounted.

00:37:47.000 OK, so the first few messages here are utterly anodyne, right?

00:37:50.000 A lot of people want to build the wall.

00:37:51.000 That's not racist.

00:37:52.000 A lot of people want to drain the swamp.

00:37:54.000 Washington is a swamp, even though it's snowing here today.

00:37:57.000 And—but it's the last thing here that I think that the media are jumping on, and that is thinly veiled forms of racism toward African Americans called race realism.

00:38:05.000 So, that's the only reference in this article to race and the crossover to potential Trump voters.

00:38:11.000 Now, I don't have enough data here to actually make a decision as to what exactly was being polled.

00:38:15.000 We just don't know.

00:38:15.000 Was it the actual term race realism?

00:38:17.000 Because race realism is racist, OK?

00:38:19.000 It has been linked to scientific racism.

00:38:21.000 It's the basic idea that distinctions between groups are racially based.

00:38:25.000 Not the argument that I was making with regard to racial differences in outcome being linked to individual decision-making, but racial differences in outcome being linked to racial disparity in biology.

00:38:37.000 That's race realism.

00:38:39.000 If that's actually what was being polled, that's not a good thing.

00:38:41.000 That also doesn't suggest that everybody who's a Trump supporter was a race realist.

00:38:45.000 Or knew that they were endorsing race realist messages.

00:38:49.000 It also doesn't define race realism really specifically in this article.

00:38:51.000 So, I'd like to see a little more data on that before we declare every Trump voter racist, which is really what the Washington Post, it seems like, wants to do here.

00:38:58.000 The firm apparently also tested views of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

00:39:01.000 According to Wiley, the only foreign thing we tested was Putin.

00:39:04.000 It turns out there's a lot of Americans who really like this idea of a really strong authoritarian leader, and people were quite defensive in focus groups of Putin's invasion of Crimea.

00:39:13.000 That, again, is not particularly surprising.

00:39:15.000 There were polls done at the time—open polls, right?

00:39:17.000 This is not Cambridge Analytica's doing.

00:39:18.000 There were open polls about Putin at the time, and there were a lot of conservatives who were responding to how much they disliked Obama by saying that anybody who humiliated Obama on the world stage was suddenly good.

00:39:27.000 It should have been an indicator that tribal politics had taken over. 0.55

00:39:30.000 Vladimir Putin is a very bad guy. 0.91

00:39:32.000 Authoritarian leaders are really bad.

00:39:33.000 The idea that strong and powerful is a synonym for good is undemocratic and un-American.

00:39:39.000 So, this is a fight that I've been fighting for a long time.

00:39:42.000 Again, I think there were tribal tendencies in the last election cycle.

00:39:45.000 I think those tribal tendencies certainly existed on the right.

00:39:47.000 I talked at length about the alt-right in the last election cycle.

00:39:49.000 I talked at length about my fears that there was a perversion of conservative ideas going on toward certain authoritarian endorsements, and also toward a certain level of identity politics based on white solidarity that I really don't like and I think is, again, un-American and anti-constitutional.

00:40:08.000 It also exists on the left, right?

00:40:10.000 Obviously, Barack Obama in 2012, when he was data mining, was data mining specifically toward particular groups, right?

00:40:15.000 He had African Americans for Obama, and he had Jewish Americans for Obama, and gay Americans for Obama, and women for Obama.

00:40:20.000 So, identity politics on the right does exist.

00:40:22.000 It's a problem.

00:40:23.000 I think it's a serious problem.

00:40:24.000 It's something I've been railing against for well on two years here.

00:40:27.000 It's

00:40:45.000 We're good to go.

00:41:06.000 Well, I think we really need to find out whether or not in their conversations with Luck Oil, which is a Russian oil company, whether or not that was really a pretense to use what is called Russian cutouts.

00:41:20.000 And they were, in fact, informing Russia and maybe even working with Russia and the Trump campaign.

00:41:26.000 It all comes back to why all these relationships with Russia?

00:41:32.000 OK, and again, that's really vague, and Speier has no actual allegations to make, but she hopes that if she says Russia, Russia, Russia over again, then everything looks illegitimate.

00:41:39.000 Now, back to the identity politics point.

00:41:41.000 One of the great fears that I had when President Trump was elected—I had three fears when President Trump was elected.

00:41:45.000 Fear number one was that President Trump would be so toxic that he'd sink the Republican agenda, even if he were president.

00:41:50.000 That fear is still on the table.

00:41:51.000 Fear number two that I had about President Trump is that he wouldn't govern as a conservative.

00:41:54.000 So far, that fear has not been realized.

00:41:56.000 The president has governed relatively conservative.

00:41:58.000 And fear number three is that the president would actually become a thought leader for the Republican Party.

00:42:02.000 I don't think that has happened.

00:42:03.000 I don't think that people see President Trump as a thought leader for conservatism.

00:42:07.000 I think the left likes to portray him that way.

00:42:09.000 But I don't think that the vast bulk of conservatives are sitting around wondering what Donald Trump thinks about Russell Kirk.

00:42:14.000 I don't think that that's a thing.

00:42:16.000 And it looks to me like Republicans in Congress are doing a fairly decent job of checking President Trump's worst impulses.

00:42:21.000 So, for example, Senator—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he's been open and obvious about the fact that he doesn't want Trump to fire Robert Mueller, the special investigator.

00:42:30.000 So, for all of Trump's fulminations over Robert Mueller, there's no evidence that anything's going to happen here.

00:42:36.000 Here's what McConnell had to say yesterday.

00:42:38.000 Well, look, I agree with the president's lawyers that Bob Mueller should be allowed to finish his job.

00:42:45.000 I think it was an excellent appointment.

00:42:48.000 I think he will lead.

00:42:49.000 He will go wherever the facts lead him.

00:42:53.000 And I think he will have great credibility.

00:42:57.000 So listen, I think that President Trump still could toxify the Republican brand, but in reality, have Republicans fallen on bended knee to everything Trump wants to do?

00:43:12.000 I think the answer is no.

00:43:13.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:43:15.000 So, things that I like today, I recommended the book earlier.

00:43:19.000 It is fantastic.

00:43:19.000 We're going to have Thomas Sowell on the program in, I think, next week, probably.

00:43:23.000 It's called Discrimination and Disparities.

00:43:26.000 It's a very short book, maybe 145 pages, all about whether statistical disparities are an indicator of discrimination.

00:43:33.000 So it goes right to the heart of what I was discussing at the very beginning of the program.

00:43:35.000 It was Sowell's model that I was talking about when I talked about the three types of discrimination.

00:43:39.000 The book is really well thought out, like everything Sowell writes.

00:43:42.000 Sowell is, I think, the best thinker.

00:43:44.000 Okay, so, the shape of water.

00:43:45.000 This thing won best picture.

00:44:01.000 It is an awful film.

00:44:02.000 So I watched it originally, and I thought it was an awful film.

00:44:04.000 And then it won Best Picture, and I thought, well, I'll give it another shot.

00:44:06.000 Maybe I just missed the point.

00:44:08.000 So I was on a plane to the East Coast, and I watched the movie.

00:44:11.000 Again, all I can say is I wanted to walk off the plane.

00:44:16.000 It is that bad.

00:44:16.000 It is one of the 10 worst movies ever made.

00:44:19.000 This is not an exaggeration. 1.00

00:44:20.000 It is an awful, awful piece of crap. 1.00

00:44:23.000 Good to look at, right? 1.00

00:44:24.000 It's a pretty-looking film. 0.96

00:44:25.000 It is, in fact, about a woman who has sex with a fish, basically, which is real weird.

00:44:30.000 And here is a little bit of the preview, and then I will discuss how the script is basically written by an SJW 10-year-old with a crayon. 0.94

00:44:36.000 I mean, the script is just garbage, but here is what the preview looks like. 0.92

00:44:41.000 She deaf? 1.00

00:44:43.000 Mute, sir.

00:44:43.000 She can hear you.

00:44:45.000 You clean that lab, you get out.

00:44:50.000 This may very well be the most sensitive asset ever to be housed in this facility.

00:44:58.000 You may think that thing looks human.

00:45:01.000 Stands on two legs, right?

00:45:03.000 But we're created in the Lord's image.

00:45:06.000 You don't think that's what the Lord looks like, do you?

00:45:09.000 Okay, so this movie is just... Okay, shut it off.

00:45:13.000 Shut it off.

00:45:13.000 Stop it!

00:45:14.000 Make it stop! 1.00

00:45:14.000 Okay, this movie is so awful in every possible way. 1.00

00:45:18.000 So, every single trope that you could possibly find is in this movie.

00:45:21.000 Right?

00:45:21.000 There is the... All of the... So basically, it's about a woman who is mute, who falls in love with a fish man,

00:45:27.000 from the Black Lagoon, and has to help him escape the clutches of an evil American general and his sidekick, right? 1.00

00:45:33.000 A Bible-believing American sidekick who also happens to be a sexual harasser and abuser, as well as a racist and an anti-gay piece of crap, right? 0.98

00:45:43.000 So, basically, it's every possible trope that the left has ever said about Mike Pence, except they say it about Michael Shannon's character, and he's a villain who just, for no reason, wants to cut open this fish man, this magical fish man. 0.99

00:45:52.000 He doesn't want to research him or have a conversation with him.

00:45:54.000 He wants to cut him open for no reason other than America is a terrible place.

00:45:57.000 And this guy, of course, is trained by the military, and the military is awful.

00:46:00.000 It's legitimately every lefty—it's why I won Best Picture.

00:46:03.000 It's every lefty trope. 0.91

00:46:04.000 The fish man has helped to escape and have sexual pleasure with a human woman, which is, again, very odd. 0.75

00:46:10.000 And all this is aided and abetted by the gay neighbor, right, the generous and wonderful gay neighbor, who is rejected in his advances on a younger man. 0.75

00:46:18.000 And the younger man, I love that they add this in the movie, the younger man is very nice to the gay man until the gay man makes advances, at which point he goes, whoa, buddy. 0.56

00:46:25.000 And then right at that moment in the film, a black couple walks into his diner and the young man acts racist to the black couple.

00:46:31.000 So it's not enough just to say that the guy wasn't into the whole gay thing, right?

00:46:34.000 He's straight.

00:46:34.000 They also have to imply that the only person who would reject a gay man's advances is a racist, right?

00:46:39.000 It's pretty amazing. 1.00

00:46:42.000 So, the bands of untouchables in this movie who help Fish Man escape are a mute woman, who apparently, we learn, spoiler alert, can breathe underwater, and a gay man who's being rejected because he's gay, and a black woman who is put upon by her stupid husband 1.00

00:47:04.000 She's a sassy black lady put upon by her stupid husband. 1.00

00:47:06.000 That's not a cliché at all in the films. 1.00

00:47:09.000 That's not clichéd at all.

00:47:11.000 And this group is also aided by an American scientist who happens to be a Russian spy, a Soviet spy.

00:47:18.000 That's how we know he's good, because he's a Soviet spy. 0.73

00:47:21.000 It's so bad.

00:47:22.000 Everything about this movie is bad.

00:47:23.000 Every line of dialogue rings false.

00:47:25.000 The way that Guillermo del Toro, who wrote the script, basically makes excuses for all of this is because he says that it's a metaphor.

00:47:38.000 So this is the easy way out, right?

00:47:40.000 The easy way out of the conundrum of writing bad movies is to say it's all metaphorical.

00:47:44.000 Don't take it seriously.

00:47:45.000 It's all surreal. 0.98

00:47:46.000 OK, if surreal writing just means you get to write stupid crap that makes no sense and then claim that it's a metaphor, then well done, Guillermo del Toro. 0.99

00:47:53.000 The movie is supremely bad. 0.99

00:47:55.000 Don't bother watching it. 0.99

00:47:57.000 Instead, get a fish tank and don't have sex with the inmates. 0.98

00:47:59.000 All right, so we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more.

00:48:03.000 A little bit later today, we're going to be interviewing the Speaker of the House from this, the office where I have declared my coup.

00:48:08.000 And we will be showing that a little bit later this week.

00:48:11.000 Looking forward to it.

00:48:12.000 We will see you then.

00:48:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:48:13.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:48:18.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:48:20.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:48:22.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:48:24.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:48:26.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:48:27.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:48:29.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:48:30.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:48:33.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 21, 2018

Is America Punishing Young Black Boys? | Ep. 500

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript