Google cracks down on the right. H.R. McMaster under fire from the alt-right. Plus, Chelsea Handler goes full fascist. We ll talk about all that and more on The Ben Shapiro Show. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White.
00:00:17.000First of all, I want to thank you, our audience.
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00:02:20.000Okay, so, tons of things to get to today, as always.
00:02:23.000I want to start with this amazing story out of Google.
00:02:26.000Apparently, a Jerry Maguire-type figure, some rando at Google, decided to put out a 10-page manifesto.
00:02:33.000It's a 10-page manifesto called Google's Ideological Echo Chamber.
00:02:36.000And you can sort of imagine Tom Cruise, as the Google exec, writing out this 10-page manifesto, Xeroxing it, putting it in all of the boxes over at the sports agency, and then getting fired.
00:02:47.000Okay, this guy, he's a random guy who's kept his name anonymous, he wrote this memo called Google's Ideological Echo Chamber and then Google's Vice President of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance, which is the most Orwellian title in history, Danielle Brown, issued her own memo.
00:03:01.000So I want to go through this memo because the left has claimed
00:03:06.000How dare this individual human being put out this memo?
00:03:10.000Now, what's hilarious is Gizmodo, which is a lefty site, they say it's just humiliating to Google that someone would put out a document pointing out that perhaps Google's pay disparity between men and women is not due to discrimination.
00:03:21.000It's due to women working fewer hours or taking different jobs.
00:03:23.000Maybe it's due to the fact that fewer women are hired in tech because there are fewer women at the upper end of the bell curve in terms of performance in tech.
00:03:33.000You know, perhaps it's because that's the memo says.
00:03:36.000And Gizmodo was very angry at the memo, so when they put up the memo, they omitted all of the charts and links that were included in the memo.
00:04:32.000It says, when addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions.
00:04:38.000If we can't have an honest discussion about this, we can never truly solve the problem.
00:04:42.000Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber.
00:04:51.000And then he goes on to explain why it is that men are being paid differently than women at Google and why the employment is different.
00:04:56.000And one of the things that he talks about is something that Lawrence Summers, the former president of Harvard, who was ousted for mentioning this little fact that nobody wants to talk about, is the bell curve when it comes to distributions regarding math and science.
00:05:08.000So when it comes to men versus women, there are brain differences on average between men and women.
00:05:12.000There are individual women who outperform men.
00:05:14.000There are individual men who outperform women.
00:05:32.000So it looks something like this, right?
00:05:34.000And what that means is that there are a lot of women who are close to the average.
00:05:37.000There are a lot of women who are just below average.
00:05:39.000A lot of women who are just above average.
00:05:41.000But when you get to the tails, the tails are very skinny.
00:05:43.000Because that means that when you get to the very, very upper echelon of performance, and the very, very lower echelons of performance, there are not a lot of women there, right?
00:05:52.000So the men, it's a shallower bell curve.
00:05:54.000So what you end up with is something that looks a little bit more like that.
00:05:57.000So what that means is that there are fewer men in the middle.
00:05:59.000The average score might be very close to the same, but there are fewer men that are actually close to the middle, and there are a lot more men at the top end.
00:06:05.000So if the tail of that bell curve is thicker for men and thinner for women, that means that if you were just to take a cross section of the bell curve all the way out here at the extremes of performance, in terms of really high performance or really low performance, you're going to get a lot more men than you are women.
00:06:18.000For every woman, there will be several men.
00:06:20.000Okay, so when you're talking about a top company like Google, that means that on average you will probably get more male applicants than female applicants who meet your minimum standards.
00:07:02.000Has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety.
00:07:05.000But shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
00:07:08.000So now he's making my point, the one I make on campus all the time.
00:07:10.000Whenever you talk about psychological safety, and you suggest that differences of opinion are unsafe, what you are really doing is shutting down people who disagree with you.
00:07:18.000If you are going to equate words and violence, then you're going to end up in this uncomfortable area where somebody else's words are violence to you.
00:07:27.000This author says, And then he says, So this is the case against affirmative action and diversity screening.
00:07:50.000And then he talks about Google's biases.
00:07:52.000He says, And then he goes through left biases.
00:07:53.000And he actually is taking this, I believe, from Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind.
00:07:56.000So all of this is well substantiated, okay?
00:08:22.000And then he says, neither side is 100% correct.
00:08:24.000Both viewpoints are necessary for a functioning society, or in this case, company.
00:08:28.000And then he says, Google's left bias has created a politically correct monoculture that maintains its hold by shaming dissenters into silence.
00:08:34.000This silence removes any checks against encroaching extremist and authoritarian policies.
00:08:39.000This is one of the reasons a lot of people have suspected that Google biases its search results against conservative outcomes.
00:08:46.000And they may not even know they're doing it.
00:08:48.000They may think that they are just doing what is just and right.
00:08:51.000But if everyone there thinks the same way, then you end up biasing your search results.
00:08:54.000If you're YouTube, you end up banning particular videos or restricting particular videos that ought not be restricted.
00:08:59.000Then he goes through the facts, this particular memo author.
00:09:04.000But, what this guy says, I assume it's a guy, he says, at Google, we are regularly told that implicit, unconscious, and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership.
00:09:13.000So first of all, implicit bias tests do not work.
00:09:19.000There is no actual connection in the social science data between implicit bias, you know, those tests they give you when you're in university, where you click on a black face and a bad word, or a white face and a bad word at different rates that shows that you're a racist,
00:09:32.000There's no statistical significance to them.
00:09:34.000They're non-replicable, so you can take the test twice and get it right the second time and get it wrong the first time.
00:09:38.000That's not how any test is supposed to work, right?
00:09:41.000Every test that works, you have the same results if you take it twice.
00:09:43.000Okay, but again, this is used by the left as a club to beat people, and it's like, we can't tell that you're actually racist, but we can suggest that you're racist because of implicit bias, right?
00:11:02.000Women are not as much driven by all of that, which is why men go into dangerous jobs for higher pay.
00:11:07.000Things like coal mining and garbage collection and firefighting and suffer 93% of work-related deaths.
00:11:13.000And then he talks about non-discriminatory ways to reduce the gender gap.
00:11:16.000He actually says, okay, so here are some solutions.
00:11:17.000If we want more women, then what we should do is we should show, we should make software engineering more people-oriented with pair programming, so that empathy matters a little bit more.
00:11:29.000He says that women on average look for more work-life balance, so maybe we should start biasing toward part-time work instead of full-time work.
00:11:35.000And he says that feminism has made great progress in freeing women from female gender roles, but men are still tied to the male gender role.
00:11:41.000Maybe if we allow men to get out of that, then that will help a little bit.
00:11:45.000But that does not mean that we should have diversity candidates.
00:11:47.000It does not mean that we should lower the standards for admission to Google.
00:11:50.000It does not mean that we should create illegal discrimination at Google.
00:12:10.000We should have honest discussions about costs and benefits of the diversity program.
00:12:14.000Again, we should stop with the microaggressions.
00:12:16.000His microaggression training incorrectly and dangerously equates speech with violence, is not backed by evidence, and reconsider making unconscious bias training mandatory for promo committees.
00:12:25.000Again, all of this is fine, moderate, true.
00:12:30.000There's really not a huge problem here.
00:12:32.000Everything that he's saying is well substantiated.
00:12:34.000There are links to all of the various studies.
00:12:36.000Christina Hoff Summers, who's a feminist scholar and who spends all of her time studying this stuff, basically signs off on this entire memo.
00:12:43.000And I want to tell you what Google's response to that has been, because it's really incredible.
00:12:46.000But before we get to that, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Zeal.
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00:14:38.000Okay, so, how does Google respond to this eminently reasonable and practical suggestion that maybe they should examine their own biases with regard to hiring and firing and elevations and the good of the company?
00:14:50.000So, they send out their Orwellian Vice President of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance, Danielle Brown, to issue this statement, quote, Googlers, I'm Danielle, Google's brand new VP of Diversity, Integrity, and Governance.
00:15:02.000I started just a couple of weeks ago, and I had hoped to take another week or so to get the lay of the land before introducing myself to y'all.
00:15:08.000But, given the heated debate we've seen for over the past few days, I feel compelled to say a few words.
00:15:14.000Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google.
00:15:25.000And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender.
00:16:28.000Okay, so, diversity and inclusion, except for how you're sending a letter specifically saying that this guy's views are out of bounds and he must be burned!
00:16:43.000We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we will continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul.
00:16:51.000As Ari Balog said in his internal G Plus post, quote, building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are and the right thing to do.
00:17:01.000Google has taken a strong stand on this issue by releasing its demographic data and creating a company-wide OKR on diversity and inclusion.
00:17:22.000Us, you know, taking your eyes and propping them open while we show you montages set to Beethoven's Ninth, that might be uncomfortable for you as we re-educate you.
00:17:31.000I'm sorry if it's uncomfortable when Chairman Mao takes you out to re-educate you in the ways of communism.
00:17:38.000I'm sorry if that's a little uncomfortable.
00:17:40.000It's only because you're so narrow-minded and we have to broaden your mind by force.
00:18:07.000I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable for you.
00:18:09.000You know, it's just a change that you've had to undergo, but I'm really, really sorry if you find this a little bit irritating or uncomfortable.
00:18:47.000That discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our code of conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.
00:19:34.000You should stop being an ideological fascist, okay?
00:19:37.000If you want to provide some alternative evidence that rebuts the presumptions created in this memo, you can do it, but you are just making this guy's point.
00:19:44.000This guy's entire point is that you're a bunch of fascists who can't tolerate dissent with regard to obvious, obvious sociological and scientific facts.
00:19:55.000And then you wonder why society at large is so screwed up.
00:19:57.000This is one of the reasons society is so screwed up, because you have the quote-unquote great science advocates bashing the quote-unquote science deniers over things that are actually scientific.
00:21:06.000In fact, there are rumors that this is what led to the War of the Five Kings in Game of Thrones, that they discovered this buried
00:21:13.000In a cave, and they uncovered the leftist year's hot or cold mug, and the Targaryens simply could not allow the Baratheons to continue to maintain it any longer, and thus, they began a war.
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00:21:33.000Also, right now, as I said earlier in the show, we are number two in all of iTunes.
00:21:38.000Our podcast is number two in all of iTunes, number one in news and politics.
00:21:41.000So keep the subscription and the reviews coming.
00:21:43.000Maybe we can get up to number one, which would be super cool.
00:21:45.000I would then, you know, have an excuse to take my wife out to dinner, which would be happy for her and sad for me.
00:22:09.000So, speaking of the fascist tendencies of the hard left, Chelsea Handler, who is now, she was a second-level bad comic, and now she's elevated herself to a first-level bad comic.
00:22:19.000She is now up there with Trevor Noah and Amy Schumer.
00:22:22.000Lena Dunham is sort of a comedian, I guess?
00:22:24.000But Trevor Noah and Amy Schumer, the top three now are Trevor Noah, Amy Schumer,
00:22:30.000And Chelsea Handler in the pantheon of unbelievably crappy leftist comics.
00:22:34.000I would have put W. Camo Bell on there.
00:22:38.000He's really awful, but he's not as offensively awful as these others are, so he remains a second tier.
00:23:05.000I don't think that you should make that illegal.
00:23:06.000I think that you should use social shaming to fight back against that sort of symbolism.
00:23:12.000According to the government, a probe on suspicion of using the symbols of anti-constitutional organizations was opened against the two Chinese men aged 36 and 49, obviously a couple of morons.
00:23:21.000They paid $58 fines and they were released.
00:23:25.000This, however, was not enough for alleged comedian Chelsea Handler, who promptly tweeted this out, quote,
00:25:25.000I think Pax is Vietnamese, um, and, uh,
00:25:28.000So, let's see, Vivian, sorry, I don't mean to take so much time on the podcast looking stuff up online, but I want to make sure that I get this right.
00:25:35.000So, Pax, I believe, is Vietnamese, and Maddox is from Battambang, which I'm not sure where that is.
00:26:13.000I want to go through all that because I think that it's more important to the society than the latest Trump news, but let's get to the latest Trump news.
00:26:19.000So, the latest in Trump news is that President Trump is on vacation for 17 days and that means that H.R.
00:26:24.000McMaster and General Mattis and John Kelly are not standing next to him taking his phone away from him and hiding it under the seat cushions and playing warm or cold with him with the phone.
00:26:33.000So he found his iPhone, he discovered the passcode, and now he's tweeting again about the fake news and this and that.
00:26:38.000He's got his phone again, but the bigger problem for him is that on Friday it was announced that the special prosecutor, Rod Rosenstein, well actually, I'm sorry, Mueller, Robert Mueller, impaneled a grand jury.
00:26:53.000And that means that they are going to be issuing subpoenas about documents, they'll be issuing subpoenas to human beings to testify about Trump-Russia collusion, about financial matters, and all of the rest.
00:27:04.000Rod Rosenstein came out, and he obviously is trying to keep his job in the Trump administration,
00:27:08.000Does the fact that a prosecutor takes a case to a grand jury, what does that say about the likelihood of indictments?
00:27:21.000Chris, you're right that I'm not going to comment on the case.
00:27:24.000I'm not going to comment about whether Director Mueller has or hasn't opened a grand jury.
00:27:28.000You know, you read a lot about criminal investigations in the media, and some of those stories are false.
00:27:33.000We just don't comment on investigations.
00:27:35.000That's important for a number of reasons.
00:27:36.000First of all, we don't want to disparage anybody who may be a subject in an investigation.
00:27:40.000Number two, we don't want to interfere with the investigation.
00:27:43.000But I'm asking you a different question.
00:27:44.000What does it say when a prosecutor takes a case
00:27:48.000In general, Chris, it doesn't tell you anything about the likelihood of indictments because we conduct investigations and we make a determination at some point in the course of the investigation about whether charges are appropriate.
00:28:01.000Okay, what he's saying here is obviously true.
00:28:03.000And it's good that he's saying it, because I think that it is important, because the entire left is jumping to conclusions about this.
00:28:08.000The right is jumping to conclusions, too, and the conclusions they're jumping to is that Mueller has impaneled a grand jury to get Trump, that all he cares about now is getting Trump.
00:28:16.000Alan Dershowitz, who obviously knows a fair bit about jury selection, considering that he was involved in the jury selection for the OJ trial, he says that Mueller looks like he's stacking the grand jury against Trump.
00:28:26.000...has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable
00:28:32.000I think it's a tactical move designed to send a message that if the prosecutor decides to prosecute
00:28:59.000You will have a real advantage with the jury pool where the case will be held, provided there is jurisdiction as Columbia, and there would be generally jurisdiction almost anywhere.
00:29:12.000Okay, so, you know, he's suggesting that the reason they paddled a grand jury in D.C.
00:29:16.000as opposed to in Iowa is because they want this grand jury to start bringing charges as soon as possible against Trump.
00:29:21.000That's not out of the realm of possibility, and I respect Dershowitz's take on this.
00:29:25.000Maxine Waters said he was a racist because how dare he suggest that race on the grand jury means something.
00:29:32.000And, you know, again, she doesn't know what she's talking about because the fact is that
00:29:36.000When you are looking at juries, when you're looking at jury selection, of course the race comes into account of the people because you make assumptions about, on average, black people are going to vote Democrat more likely than white people are going to vote Democrat.
00:29:46.000So the chances that you're going to get a black juror on the grand jury who is anti-Trump is higher, just statistically speaking.
00:29:51.000You know, all of this is a danger to Trump and it's a problem for Trump.
00:29:56.000The response from the Trump administration
00:30:15.000And let me just say something else about Russia.
00:30:16.000The president took on a new tack in West Virginia speaking about this the other night.
00:30:20.000He told the people there and around the country that those who are pushing this phony, fabricated Russian investigation are cheating you, the voters, out of what you clearly said you want.
00:30:32.000You want a new and different direction.
00:30:34.000You don't want the same fake policies.
00:31:04.000Okay, and then she goes on to say that Trump is not going to commit to not firing the special investigator if he gets too close to something, to prosecuting if Trump doesn't like it.
00:31:33.000And in fact, Ty Cobb... Well, hold on.
00:31:36.000I'm not the president's lawyer here, but I will tell you as his counselor, he is not discussing that.
00:31:41.000Okay, so she refuses about eight times in that clip to say that Mueller won't be fired.
00:31:44.000So what we have here is a situation where there is obviously a witch hunt going on from the left with regard to President Trump.
00:31:52.000I don't know that Mueller is engaged in that witch hunt yet.
00:31:54.000I think that it's a little much to say that Mueller is obviously out to get the president at this point.
00:31:58.000I don't know on the basis of the grand jury.
00:32:01.000We'll have to see on the basis of the indictment.
00:32:02.000If there's some indictment brought, we'll have to look at the material in the indictment and determine whether this fit within the scope of the investigation or whether it was actually just a reach by Mueller.
00:32:11.000I can't prejudge the product that I haven't seen based on rumors that are coming out that are unsubstantiated on this side.
00:32:17.000But what you have on the right is a jump to Mueller's bad, gotta be fired.
00:32:22.000Mueller is going to take out Trump, and then once he takes out Trump, then we're gonna have to take out Mike Pence.
00:32:26.000That's what Maxine Waters, this nutjob, the most corrupt woman in Congress, she says that once we finish with Trump, now we have to step up and go after Mike Pence, too.
00:32:35.000Now, remember, remember, what they are hoping, what the Democrats are hoping is that they win back Congress in 2018, and then they move to impeach Trump and impeach Pence, okay?
00:32:43.000Because how does the line of succession go, gang?
00:32:46.000Remember, it goes, President, Vice President, Speaker of the House,
00:32:51.000So if they were actually able to impeach Trump and Pence, they won't be able to because they won't have enough votes in the Senate.
00:32:57.000But if theoretically they were able to do so, if there was some sort of wipeout and Republicans lost the House and Senate, you could end up with President Nancy Pelosi.
00:33:05.000If that's not incentive to go out and vote in 2018, I don't know what is.
00:33:09.000Here is Maxine Waters making the case.
00:33:11.000You've said that Vice President Pence is already planning his inauguration.
00:33:16.000Is that a joke or do you really mean that?
00:33:37.000Okay, so I do love that this crazy old bat is doing the, we have to go after Putin, we have to go after Pence, we have to go after Newt Gingrich, Randos, just everybody out there.
00:33:47.000So the left is suggesting that this is the end of the world, Trump is done.
00:33:50.000The right is scared that Trump might be done because of Mueller.
00:33:53.000Again, not enough evidence on any of this, but it is opening up gaps inside the Republican Party itself.
00:33:59.000A report in the New York Times over the weekend that people like Mike Pence are now looking to step up for 2020, that Ben Sasse is visiting Iowa, that John Kasich, God help us, is visiting Iowa.
00:34:10.000Oh God no, please God no, not John Kasich.
00:34:13.000He's coming out and campaigning against Trump now.
00:34:16.000There are a couple of splits in the Republican Party that are worth talking about because they continue after the election.
00:34:20.000One is the split between the right and the so-called moderates, and the second is the split between people who don't care about Trump's behavior and people who do care about Trump's behavior.
00:34:29.000I think that you can be right-wing and care about Trump's behavior.
00:34:36.000You can be moderate and not care about Trump's behavior, and that's where Jared and Ivanka are, presumably.
00:34:42.000And then you can be moderate and care about Trump's behavior, and that's where John Kasich is.
00:34:45.000The bottom line is that just because John Kasich says that he wants to run against Trump in 2020, which is what he's going to do, does not mean that the right is going to move with John Kasich, or the moderates are going to move with John Kasich, because this is the weird thing, okay?
00:34:59.000Trump is both moderate on politics, he's not particularly right-wing, he's much closer to John Kasich on politics than to Ted Cruz, and he doesn't care about behavior, not like John Kasich, but like a lot of the right-wingers.
00:35:09.000So he's got the attitude of a hardcore right-winger with regard to the media, for example, but he's got the policies that are much closer to John Kasich's.
00:35:16.000So when John Kasich says, well, you know, I'm going to run against him, like on what basis, aside from being a wadded piece of, a wadded piece of receipt in my pocket that went through the wash three times?
00:35:25.000Here is Raisin in the Sun, John Kasich.
00:35:28.000What John Hickenlooper and I are doing at the present is he's going to have his staff and my staff, and we've had preliminary conversations because John and I are becoming friends, and they're going to sit down and they're going to look at the differences.
00:35:41.000And one of the problems is that there are some in the Democratic Party that think the whole system needs to be changed at once, and there are some in the Republican Party that say, look, let's let the market work to drive down health care costs, but we're going to have to make a commitment, a serious, significant commitment to those people who are left behind.
00:36:00.000So I think Democrats are going to have to get to the point where they say, let's let the market work, give people more choice, bring down the cost of health insurance,
00:36:08.000And Republicans are going to have to admit that there's going to be a group of people out there who are going to need help.
00:36:14.000These are some philosophical differences between the parties, but if you have a good spirit and you understand that... Just go away, just go away, just go away, okay?
00:36:22.000I'll just talk about primarying a sitting Republican president.
00:36:26.000Basically, if you primary a Republican president,
00:36:28.000Even if you were to win the nomination, you're going to lose the general.
00:36:31.000There's never been a primary challenger who has, number one, won.
00:36:36.000You've had situations like 1968 where the president drops out, like LBJ dropped out in 1968, but then his successor, Hubert Humphrey, goes on to lose to Richard Nixon.
00:36:45.000If Trump is so bad that he ends up being primaried and losing, the chances that he becomes president are virtually nil.
00:36:50.000So, Republicans are with Trump, boom or bust, come 2020, to the extent that they want to win a national election, unless things become so dire and so desperate that Trump is just an utter disaster all the way through, and they have no choice.
00:37:02.000So these splits on the right are reopening in the wake of Trump not being good at his job.
00:37:06.000What's funny about all of this is, again, in the areas where Trump is not public, in the areas where Trump is not involved, his administration is going fine.
00:37:13.000Okay, so there is a story that just came out five minutes ago that says that Donald Trump's administration has now cut 11,000 federal jobs.
00:37:23.00011,000 of them in the last six months.
00:37:25.000That's the first reverse in federal employment that's happened in a long time.
00:38:09.000So Howard Dean, he comes out and he's ripping the Bernie Sanders wing of the party at the same time they need the Bernie Sanders wing of the party to win.
00:38:16.000There has always been a section of the left, which I call the whiny party.
00:38:24.000The party that doesn't really want to win.
00:38:27.000And if they go down swinging purely, then that's fine.
00:38:31.000Well, the problem with that is it leaves behind the people who really need their help.
00:38:35.000If we're going to have a single payer, or Medicare for all, or whatever we're going to have in health care that covers every American, as every other industrialized country has,
00:38:45.000And people who sit out or crank on some candidate because they did this or that and it wasn't to their purity test are basically turning their back on the very people they pretend to represent.
00:38:56.000I just want to point out to dispossessed Republicans that the same sort of splits that are happening inside the right are happening inside the left.
00:39:02.000Jerry Brown, who's the delusional governor of California, he thinks that they're going to swing left and the Democrats are going to have a broad victory.
00:39:08.000By the way, Jerry Brown still wants to run for president.
00:39:23.000When Lyndon Johnson won overwhelmingly against Goldwater, people were writing, and I read it at the time, that the Republican Party was gone.
00:39:36.000So the nature of our business is that swing of the pendulum, and it's definitely already swinging back toward a non-Republican kind of future.
00:39:47.000We hope, based on general trends, that we'll win.
00:39:50.000We don't really have an affirmative case for why we should.
00:39:52.000And also, I don't know where I am, why I'm here, who you are, why I'm talking, or I think I peed myself.
00:40:04.000Okay, so, bottom line is there is chaos inside both parties.
00:40:07.000To suggest otherwise is to be ignorant of how the Republican Party is working and also how the Democratic Party is working.
00:40:12.000That means a realignment is happening, but I don't think the realignment is inside the Republican Party or inside the Democratic Party.
00:40:18.000I think the realignment is largely a bunch of people who are dispossessed with both parties and are just looking for people who are reasonable to follow or vote for in any case.
00:40:26.000Okay, time for some things I like and some things I hate.
00:40:31.000First of all, I want to thank again Joe Rogan for having me on last week.
00:40:34.000It was a really fantastic thing and Joe is great.
00:40:36.000I thought the conversation was really good.
00:40:37.000If you haven't, you should go over and check out...
00:40:40.000The podcast that I did with Joe last week, a really good conversation, like two and a half hours, two hours forty.
00:40:45.000And we went through a number of topics, everything from environmentalism to transgenderism to free speech.
00:40:51.000And I think that when I talk about this sort of new center that's forming, I don't think it's a center in terms of political outcome.
00:40:57.000I think it's a center in terms of people who actually want to hear reasoned argument and reasoned debate, as opposed to a bunch of people who just get on your TV and talk about Republican versus Democrat all the time.
00:41:32.000It's called Darkness at Noon by Arthur Kessler.
00:41:47.000And it's all about a really Trotsky figure who was part of the Russian Revolution and now has been imprisoned and is awaiting the carrying out of his death sentence and sort of the thoughts that are going through his head, him becoming disillusioned with the cause he spent his entire life fighting for.
00:42:03.000Really dark, really terrific, short, very short read, very readable, Darkness at Noon by Arthur Kessler.
00:42:09.000They tried to make a movie, I think, at one point, but it's more of a psychological novel than anything else, so it doesn't really lend itself to moviemaking as much as it does for a read, but it's a great kind of almost forgotten classic, Darkness at Noon.
00:42:21.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:42:30.000So, Kellyanne Conway was asked on one of the Sunday shows about President Trump's transgenders in the military bans.
00:42:36.000You recall a couple of weeks ago that Donald Trump tweeted out, almost seemingly out of nowhere, that transgenders would no longer be allowed in the military.
00:42:43.000And there are people like me who said, I generally agree with the policy, but
00:42:47.000I would like to see General Mattis lay it out.
00:42:53.000I want to see them lay it out in the most free and full fashion so that we can have a good open debate about it and see what the rationales are.
00:43:00.000And Kellyanne Conway has asked, okay, so Trump tweeted this.
00:43:03.000Was the military even aware that he was doing this?
00:43:07.000Just did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, did the defense secretary, did the commandant of the Coast Guard, did the other service chiefs sign off on that policy on that tweet before the president sent it out?
00:43:19.000I can't answer that, because I wasn't in the room when they discussed it with him, and I certainly aren't on the National Security Council.
00:43:26.000But I will tell you, having spoken with the President directly about this, and having been involved a little bit in the discussions, that the President had consulted for quite a while with different stakeholders, including his generals.
00:43:38.000What he says in the tweet is absolutely true.
00:43:40.000He consulted with generals and others about this issue.
00:43:43.000Okay, so again, here is the problem, and I said this at the time.
00:43:47.000How you do things is just as important as what you do.
00:43:50.000If you do it wrong, you end up actually backfiring.
00:43:52.000So what's happened now is the Pentagon has said, we have had no specific instruction from the White House.
00:43:56.000We are not carrying out anything without any sort of plan or specific instruction.
00:43:59.000So Trump just tweeted something out, toxified it in the public discourse, and then threw it on his military, which promptly ignores it.
00:44:05.000This is not how policy ought to be done.
00:44:07.000If Trump wants good policy implemented,
00:44:09.000He should do the same thing he's doing with regulations and with employment.
00:44:11.000He should just let his chiefs take care of it.
00:44:30.000Kayleigh McEnany, who's been a pro-Trump member of the Trump campaign, she was on CNN, and now she's no longer on CNN, and she popped up on something they're calling Trump TV, which is from the White House, apparently, and it is donaldjtrump.com, and it is her bringing you real news, not fake news, real news.
00:44:59.000The July jobs report added a better-than-expected 209,000 jobs.
00:45:05.000Overall, since the president took office, President Trump has created more than 1 million jobs.
00:45:10.000The unemployment rate is at a 16-year low and consumer confidence is at a 16-year high, all while the Dow Jones continues to break records.
00:45:19.000President Trump has clearly steered the economy back in the right direction.
00:45:58.000But I think that, you know, having it openly sponsored by the White House is a little bit much.
00:46:04.000Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest news.
00:46:06.000Again, make sure that you leave us, go subscribe, leave us a review, and make sure also that you give a listen to Michael Knowles' brand new show.