The Ben Shapiro Show - Islamist Terror Hits New York -- Again | Ep. 408

00:00:00.000 Another Islamic terror attack in New York, plus the Democrat and President Trump respond, and civil war controversy.

00:00:06.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 A horrific terror attack yesterday in New York City.

00:00:15.000 An Islamic terrorist runs a truck into a bike path and injures 21 people, kills at least eight of them.

00:00:23.000 I think everyone else is seriously wounded, but none in danger of death.

00:00:28.000 Uh, worst terror attack in the United States since last month when we had, uh, at least a mass shooting.

00:00:33.000 That was not necessarily a terror attack.

00:00:34.000 This is the worst terror attack in the United States, uh, for at least, uh, several months.

00:00:39.000 And there's a lot to say about it.

00:00:41.000 Also about what we could do to stop terror attacks like this, if anything.

00:00:44.000 And I have a bit of a more skeptical take than I think a lot of conservative commentators do today.

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00:02:04.000 Okay, so...

00:02:06.000 The attack itself was horrendous.

00:02:09.000 Here is what we know about the suspect.

00:02:10.000 The New York terror attack suspect's name is Saifullo Khabib... I want to pronounce this correctly, but I'm not going to.

00:02:16.000 Khabib Yulevich Saipov.

00:02:19.000 And he is a Muslim.

00:02:21.000 He did this in the name of ISIS, according to John Miller, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism.

00:02:26.000 Saipov had been planning the attack for a number of weeks, according to Miller, and appeared to have followed ISIS instructions as to how to carry out such attacks.

00:02:33.000 As soon as a truck ran into a bunch of people, he had to figure that this was an Islamic terror attack, simply because that's been the mode of operation for, it's been modus operandi for 1.00

00:02:42.000 ISIS for years now.

00:02:44.000 They started it in Jerusalem.

00:02:45.000 They carried it over into Nice, France.

00:02:47.000 They did it at the Berlin Christmas market.

00:02:49.000 They've done it in London.

00:02:50.000 So ramming trucks into groups of civilians has been an ISIS staple for a while now.

00:02:56.000 He said that a handwritten note in Arabic found near the scene had both symbols and words, but the gist was that the Islamic State would endure forever.

00:03:01.000 This, of course, is not true, since the Islamic State no longer really even endures.

00:03:05.000 So this is the deadliest terror attack in New York City since 9-11.

00:03:09.000 One of the guys is 29 and he plowed into bicyclists and pedestrians just blocks away from the World Trade Center on Tuesday afternoon.

00:03:15.000 Here's some video of the aftermath.

00:03:38.000 Just horrific.

00:03:39.000 We've blurred out some of the bodies here.

00:03:40.000 That's why you're not seeing more.

00:03:42.000 But it's just a horrific aftermath.

00:03:44.000 Six victims killed instantly.

00:03:45.000 Two others died later on the way to the hospital.

00:03:47.000 More than a dozen trying to recover.

00:03:49.000 Bill de Blasio, of course, came out and said this was an act of terror.

00:03:52.000 And he said it was a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them.

00:03:59.000 Here is some video of the suspect, actually, who is... Well, actually, we can play de Blasio.

00:04:04.000 Here's what de Blasio had to say about it.

00:04:05.000 It's a very painful day in our city.

00:04:12.000 Let me be clear, based on the information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror, aimed at innocent civilians.

00:04:25.000 Aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them.

00:04:40.000 And he was carrying, I guess, a paintball gun.

00:04:42.000 The idea here is that he was attempting to provoke death by cop.

00:04:44.000 He wanted to make the police think that he was going to shoot them, and so he was carrying around these guns.

00:04:50.000 Obviously, he did not have more weapons on him, which is definitely a good thing.

00:04:54.000 There are people like Nick Kristof yesterday saying, well, that's because of gun control in New York City.

00:04:59.000 Well, no, it really isn't. 0.96

00:05:00.000 If you're willing to get in a car and run over people, the idea that you can't drive upstate, grab some guns, drive back downstate, and run around New York City shooting people seems kind of ridiculous.

00:05:08.000 In any case, here's some video of the suspect yesterday. 0.72

00:05:10.000 He sprinted towards the group of kids.

00:05:13.000 Towards the group of kids?

00:05:15.000 That's what I saw, yeah.

00:05:17.000 And about how long did this take place?

00:05:19.000 How long were you watching him for?

00:05:21.000 I was watching him for about maybe 20 seconds before I had to just run back in just for my own safety.

00:05:29.000 Right, and you say they looked real, but could you tell, could you hear if any kind of rounds of ammunition were coming out of his gun or you couldn't tell?

00:05:38.000 I did not hear any shots and I didn't see him fire at anybody.

00:05:55.000 This has obviously provoked a bunch of media firestorm, and it's provoked some response from the President of the United States.

00:06:02.000 I want to talk about the response from the media and the response from the President of the United States, and I think that we ought to be as objective as we possibly can in looking at these responses.

00:06:11.000 Objectively speaking, the response from the media is always quite awful on all of this, and I think that we ought to start there.

00:06:17.000 Here are some of the headlines that you saw yesterday.

00:06:19.000 So you're going to see a couple of headlines.

00:06:21.000 One is from Fox News, and the other is from CNN, and you'll see the difference immediately.

00:06:25.000 The headline from Fox News was,

00:06:27.000 Again, one of those runaway trucks, you know, they just go off on their own.

00:06:31.000 It's very weird how that happens.

00:06:48.000 Leaving out the whole Allahu Akbar routine.

00:06:51.000 Instead, they just say that, again, a truck went off on its own and committed these egregious acts of terrorism.

00:06:57.000 We have to be careful of our runaway truck population because obviously those trucks cannot be trusted.

00:07:02.000 Anyone in a Ford F-150, beware, your truck may turn on you.

00:07:05.000 And then CNN ran this chyron in the middle of this after the Allahu Akbar information came out.

00:07:10.000 It said, Witnesses, suspect was yelling, God is great in Arabic.

00:07:14.000 Well, no.

00:07:16.000 The suspect was yelling, Allahu Akbar.

00:07:18.000 And there is a difference, right?

00:07:19.000 Saying God is great in Arabic is toning down a little bit exactly what Allahu Akbar is. 0.88

00:07:24.000 It is the typical kind of thing that is screamed by terrorists as they are in the midst of terror attacks.

00:07:30.000 And there are a lot of people who are obviously upset about that particular Khairon, because the idea here that God is great is the exact equivalent to Allahu Akbar is not true, considering that there's significant... I mean, even in the Islamic community, the idea that the God that is worshipped by Islamic terrorists is the same as the God that is worshipped in Judeo-Christian societies, that's a pretty dicey proposition at best, and so CNN was getting a lot of flack over this, especially since everyone in the Western world knows what Allahu Akbar means now, and they know that it means a radical Islamic terrorist

00:07:59.000 So, you know, this prompted some thoughts from me yesterday about why it is that the media treat this particular terror attack, Islamic terror attacks, in a different way than they treat, for example, white supremacist terror attacks.

00:08:19.000 So we saw a white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville.

00:08:25.000 We saw a guy run a truck exactly like this. 0.97

00:08:27.000 Run a truck into a civilian and kill a civilian in Charlottesville.

00:08:31.000 We've also seen a white supremacist terror attack in South Carolina.

00:08:38.000 I'm trying to remember the city.

00:08:41.000 Where was it in South Carolina?

00:08:42.000 Charleston.

00:08:42.000 It was in Charleston, South Carolina.

00:08:44.000 Dylan Storm Roof murdering a bunch of black folks who are simply attending church because they were black.

00:08:49.000 And the reaction from the media is completely, completely at odds.

00:08:54.000 So let's go through this for just a second.

00:08:56.000 Imagine for a second that a white supremacist had actually driven a truck onto a bike path filled with minority innocents, right? 0.74

00:09:01.000 He went down to Harlem and he was running down black folks in the middle of Harlem, killing eight of them.

00:09:06.000 And imagine the white supremacist had emerged from his truck wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt.

00:09:11.000 Now imagine that the media had leapt to the defense of people flying the Confederate flag

00:09:16.000 Explaining that only a tiny minority of people who actually fly the confederate flag or like the confederate flag engage in any sort of racist violence, which is true.

00:09:23.000 Imagine that all of America's political leaders leapt to the microphones to say the same thing.

00:09:27.000 Confederate flag does not mean terrorist.

00:09:29.000 Confederate flag does not mean white supremacist.

00:09:31.000 Imagine that CNN ran a chyron reading not witnesses suspect was yelling God is great in Arabic, but witnesses suspect was carrying southern version of American flag.

00:09:42.000 Right?

00:09:42.000 Which is what a lot of people consider the confederate flag to be.

00:09:45.000 And let's assume they then hosted panels, assuring audiences that the Confederate flag was not a symbol of racism or bigotry, it was simply a symbol of Southern pride.

00:09:54.000 Can you imagine the media doing any of those things?

00:09:55.000 No, of course not.

00:09:56.000 Because when a white supremacist terror attack occurs, the media's immediate response is to jump to, let's have a national conversation about the Confederate flag.

00:10:05.000 A white supremacist terror attack is obviously an offshoot.

00:10:08.000 It's obviously springing from a broader ideology that can be traced to identity with the Confederate flag.

00:10:16.000 After the Charlottesville terror attack, we had a month-long discussion, months-long discussion, it's still ongoing, about whether to remove Confederate statues.

00:10:23.000 As though anyone who doesn't want to remove Confederate statues is in league with people who are running down innocents in the middle of Charlottesville.

00:10:30.000 So, whenever it's a white supremacist who does this, we immediately link the white supremacist with the ideology of millions of other people who have nothing to do with the ideology, and with symbols that are used by millions of other people in completely different ways.

00:10:42.000 But when it comes to radical Islam, we don't do that at all.

00:10:45.000 When it comes to radical Islam, instead, we jump to something else, right? 1.00

00:10:49.000 We jump to defending Muslims from any association with radical Islam. 0.95

00:10:53.000 I know Jake Tapper, with whom I'm friendly on CNN,

00:10:57.000 Jake was being criticized last night, and I think partly unfairly, but partly fairly.

00:11:02.000 He was being criticized last night because he had said something along the lines of, Allahu Akbar was yelled when this guy jumped out, sometimes said at kind of celebratory occasions, but now said on a terrible occasion.

00:11:14.000 And people were saying, well, would you say the same thing about the Confederate flag?

00:11:16.000 Like, did you say the Confederate flag is sometimes flown at NASCAR stadiums, but now being used as a symbol of hate?

00:11:22.000 And I think that's not a completely unfair critique.

00:11:25.000 I think people are taking it out of context when they said that Tapper said Allahu Akbar is a beautiful phrase.

00:11:29.000 He didn't actually say that.

00:11:30.000 But the idea that he was trying to provide context for Allahu Akbar, and people never in the media try to provide context for, for example, the Confederate flag, or for Confederate statues, it demonstrates the lack of honesty in the media.

00:11:42.000 And it says something deeper about the leftist point of view on America and what America is.

00:11:45.000 I'm going to explain that in just a second, but first,

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00:13:21.000 Okay, so what exactly is driving this disparity between how the media treat Islamic terror attacks and how the media treat white supremacist terror attacks?

00:13:28.000 The answer is the media believe that white supremacist terror attacks are more representative of America at large than they believe, or at least southern Americans or conservative Americans, than they believe that radical Islamic terror attacks are representative of Muslims across the world.

00:13:43.000 This is factually and statistically, it's just mistaken.

00:13:46.000 It's just not true.

00:13:47.000 It's just not true.

00:13:48.000 I mean, the fact is there are more people who have died in white supremacist terror attacks since 9-11 than have died in Islamic terror attacks since 9-11.

00:13:56.000 But that's leaving out 9-11, number one.

00:13:58.000 And that also leaves out the calculation of politically motivated killings on the other side, meaning people from the left who are committing politically motivated killings like you saw in the attempted congressional baseball shooting.

00:14:08.000 In any case,

00:14:10.000 The idea that white supremacism is more closely tied to conservative ideology than radical Islam is tied to Islam itself is bizarre and groundless.

00:14:20.000 And this is what the left believes, right?

00:14:21.000 I mean, this is why they ran an ad two days ago, excuse me, in Virginia, the Latino Victory Fund, ran an ad two days ago in Virginia showing an Ed Gillespie supporter flying a Confederate flag, running down minority children, right?

00:14:32.000 We just saw yesterday what actually is happening.

00:14:34.000 What actually is happening is that a radical Muslim just ran down a bunch of people in New York.

00:14:39.000 But the ad that we saw from Democrats was an ad in which a Gillespie supporter was running down a bunch of minority children with a truck.

00:14:45.000 Because Ed Gillespie supporters are in league with the KKK and white supremacists because they're conservative.

00:14:52.000 We have to be very careful about attributing terrorist ideologies to broader movements.

00:14:57.000 And we're going to have to be pretty careful about that across the board, and we're going to have to be as statistically accurate as possible.

00:15:02.000 I cut a video several years ago in which I talked about how representative is terrorist ideology of broader Islamic ideology, and I used polls to sort of suss out the idea that there are tens of millions of Muslims who believe the same things that a lot of the terrorists believe.

00:15:15.000 Many more Muslims, as a percentage, believe Islamist ideology than conservatives believe white supremacist ideology.

00:15:22.000 And yet, the media treat it as precisely the opposite, and that's why.

00:15:25.000 That also explains the media's reaction to these attacks being an immediate leap to, we have to prevent Islamophobia.

00:15:30.000 Because remember, the bad guys in this scenario are not Muslims, right? 0.99

00:15:34.000 They're not Muslims, and they're not radical. 0.84

00:15:35.000 Radical Islamists may be the bad guys, but they're a tiny offshoot, right? 1.00

00:15:38.000 They're just isolated incidents. 0.99

00:15:39.000 They're lone wolves.

00:15:40.000 They don't represent anything broader.

00:15:42.000 But, 1.00

00:15:43.000 White supremacists do represent something broader, the evil, cruel, conservative white America. 1.00

00:15:48.000 And those are the people we constantly have to be on guard against. 0.98

00:15:51.000 That's why the media are constantly jumping to prevent Islamophobia after there is an Islamic terror attack, even though no mosques are being burned down, there haven't been any riots in the streets, people are not going crazy and beating Muslims up on the streets.

00:16:03.000 The rate of hate crimes against particular religions remains far higher against Jews than it is against Muslims as a general matter across the United States, according to the FBI.

00:16:11.000 But we always have to worry about these hate crimes and we have to worry about Islamophobia after a terror attack because the bad guys that we have to worry about are us.

00:16:19.000 We are the bad guys.

00:16:20.000 This is the media's perspective on this, which is just wrong and immoral.

00:16:23.000 And the disparity between the treatment of white supremacist terror attacks and Islamist terror attacks is quite telling and shows you where the media's heads are at.

00:16:31.000 Now, meanwhile, President Trump and a lot of the right have been immediately jumping to policy prescriptions that have to do with immigration, because it turns out that this guy was a green card holder from Uzbekistan.

00:16:42.000 He came in under the diversity visa program seven years ago.

00:16:44.000 Apparently, there was no real sign that he'd been radicalized.

00:16:47.000 There were some conflicting reports.

00:16:48.000 There were some people who were suggesting

00:16:50.000 I don't think so.

00:17:08.000 But that was late-breaking, right?

00:17:09.000 That was in the last two years.

00:17:10.000 That was not in the first five years that he was in the United States.

00:17:13.000 In fact, Governor Cuomo says that he was radicalized while he was in the United States.

00:17:17.000 He was not radicalized overseas, and then he was sort of an infiltrator who came in through the diversity visa program.

00:17:21.000 Here's what President Trump tweeted, right?

00:17:23.000 What President Trump tweeted was this.

00:17:25.000 He said, Enough.

00:17:31.000 And then he tweeted also along those lines.

00:17:33.000 So, there are people making fun of not in the USA.

00:17:35.000 Obviously, this is Trump making an appeal for his immigration ban on particular Muslim countries.

00:17:48.000 And here is what he tweeted this morning.

00:17:50.000 He tweeted this morning, And then he said, And then he was tweeting at Fox & Friends,

00:18:13.000 Now, it's the sentiment here that I want to talk about for just a second.

00:18:16.000 So, I want to be both intellectually honest and, I think, factually honest about all of this.

00:18:19.000 A couple things have to be pointed out.

00:18:32.000 First of all, I am against the diversity visa program. 1.00

00:18:35.000 I think the diversity visa program is stupid. 1.00

00:18:36.000 I agree with President Trump that a merit-based system on immigration is the best system and the only system we should be using. 0.99

00:18:42.000 We have the capacity as a citizenry to pick the people who we want to join our citizenry.

00:18:46.000 You do not have a right to immigrate to the United States just because you are from Uzbekistan or just because you are from any other country on planet Earth.

00:18:53.000 We get to pick and choose the people who come into the country. 1.00

00:18:55.000 That said, there are some people on the left who are saying, and Chuck Schumer is among them, saying, you know, Trump immediately jumping to politicize this is bad faith.

00:19:03.000 Here is Chuck Schumer saying exactly that.

00:19:05.000 After September 11th, the first thing that President Bush did was invite Senator Clinton and me to the White House, where he pledged to do what was ever in his power to help our city.

00:19:19.000 President Bush,

00:19:20.000 In a moment of national tragedy, understood the meaning of his high office and sought to bring our country together.

00:19:31.000 President Trump, where is your leadership?

00:19:35.000 The contrast between President Bush's actions after 9-11 and President Trump's actions this morning could not be starker.

00:19:46.000 Again, Mr. President, President Trump,

00:19:49.000 Where is your leadership?

00:20:02.000 Instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be bringing us together... Okay, so we can stop it there.

00:20:13.000 Okay, Chuck Schumer is a giant hypocrite, obviously, because he's politicized every tragedy that he can get his grubby mitts on. 0.99

00:20:18.000 I mean, over and over and over again. 1.00

00:20:21.000 Right?

00:20:22.000 He's continued to politicize tragedy repeatedly.

00:20:26.000 Every time there's a mass shooting, for example, Schumer is the first to the mic.

00:20:28.000 So, a month ago, after the Las Vegas rampage, he said, As much as we might hope to, we cannot banish evil from the earth.

00:20:34.000 Congress can't do that.

00:20:35.000 The President can't do that.

00:20:36.000 What Congress can do, what Congress must do, is pass laws to keep our citizens safe.

00:20:39.000 And that starts with guns, especially laws that help prevent guns, especially the most dangerous guns, from falling into the wrong hands.

00:20:46.000 Pelosi did the same thing.

00:20:47.000 Hillary Clinton chimed in with regard to the NRA.

00:20:50.000 You know, it was a bunch of people on the right who scolded the left, as Alaa Pandit points out over at Hot Air, for leaping to half-baked policy fixes.

00:20:58.000 I was one of those people, right?

00:20:59.000 I said, this is not the time to talk about this for a couple of reasons.

00:21:02.000 One, I don't think that in the aftermath of tragedy is the best time to talk policy.

00:21:06.000 The reason being that passions are high and passions don't necessarily make for the best policy.

00:21:10.000 Number two, Las Vegas was actually a unique situation.

00:21:12.000 We didn't know what gun the guy had used, we didn't know how he obtained the gun, we didn't know what his motivations were, we didn't know what fixes would actually have stopped this thing.

00:21:19.000 In this particular case, we knew right away, right within 24 hours, we know who the guy is, we know why he did it, we know how he got in the country, and we know how he obtained his weapon, which is a truck, right?

00:21:27.000 We know all of those things.

00:21:28.000 So it's easier to at least have policy discussions on that basis, but

00:21:32.000 I still think that it is bad policy.

00:21:35.000 It's bad policy.

00:21:36.000 Forget the sort of optics of it.

00:21:37.000 I think it is bad policy to talk about immigration reform in the aftermath of this thing because it's actually not factually supportable.

00:21:46.000 The reason I say this is because when you

00:21:48.000 We're good to go.

00:22:06.000 I totally agree that the idea that we have to have an affirmative action program for particular countries is quite foolish, but if you think that ending the diversity lottery program would have stopped this guy from getting in the country, or that extreme vetting would have stopped this guy from getting in the country, that is not certain at all, especially because this happened in 2010.

00:22:23.000 And if you're going to blame Chuck Schumer for it, that doesn't work either, because as part of the Gang of Eight bill that Chuck Schumer was trying to push in 2013, it would have gotten rid of the diversity visa program.

00:22:32.000 Right?

00:22:33.000 It would have gotten rid of it. 0.97

00:22:34.000 So, you know, Chuck Schumer is a giant hypocrite, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the policy that's being proposed by President Trump as a fix is actually a fix. 0.94

00:22:42.000 And I want to talk a little bit more about that. 0.94

00:22:44.000 Again, I agree with Trump's policy, but I think that we should be careful when we propose a policy that it actually fixes the thing that we say that it's going to fix.

00:22:52.000 Right?

00:22:52.000 The reason that you don't want the diversity visa program is not because we think that it's going to lessen the risk in any tremendous way of terrorists like this one.

00:23:01.000 Because the fact is, this guy could have come through France.

00:23:03.000 He could have come through Britain.

00:23:03.000 I mean, there are Muslims who come through each of those countries.

00:23:06.000 The real issue here is the cultural melting pot and whether people should come into the country at all from particular countries if they don't imbibe American culture.

00:23:17.000 The left has a particular idea about immigration, that you should have a right to immigrate.

00:23:20.000 This is sort of the basis for all of these judicial decisions against the Trump travel ban.

00:23:23.000 I think that's nonsense.

00:23:25.000 But does that have much to do with this terrorist attack?

00:23:27.000 Not really.

00:23:27.000 And I want to explain that in just a second.

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00:25:09.000 Okay, so Ed Morrissey has a very good piece over at Hot Air talking about the manipulation of the agenda in order to push a particular political outcome.

00:25:20.000 So, as Ed mentioned, it's true that Saipov gained entry to the United States through the lottery process.

00:25:26.000 However, Saipov got here in 2010, long before the refugee crisis began in Europe.

00:25:30.000 So, in 2010, no one was talking about refugees from the Middle East because that wasn't a major issue yet.

00:25:36.000 He says, furthermore, these refugees aren't coming from Uzbekistan, a country in Central Asia, but mainly from Syria and North Africa, mainly Libya, right?

00:25:42.000 Trump has proposed his travel ban on a set of countries that does not include Uzbekistan.

00:25:46.000 Uzbekistan does have a terror problem, but extreme vetting probably wouldn't have stopped this guy, and Uzbekistan is not on Trump's travel ban list.

00:25:54.000 Which would suggest that if he actually wants to stop the importation of people who are potential terrorists or who do not jive with American culture, then we ought to have more broad-based travel restrictions, more broad-based immigration restrictions.

00:26:07.000 But again, you know, what Trump is proposing here, it's sort of like when Democrats propose that we should have an assault weapons ban after an assault weapon is not used, a so-called assault weapon is not used at a mass shooting.

00:26:17.000 They ban some sort of unrelated policy, right?

00:26:20.000 We're gonna ban certain magazine sizes that have nothing to do with the efficacy of a mass shooting.

00:26:25.000 If you're going to say that your policy solves a problem, it ought to solve the problem.

00:26:29.000 And as Morrissey points out, the lottery program still requires the normal visa application process.

00:26:34.000 Trump suspended visa and foreign refugee applications from eight countries earlier this year, but Uzbekistan was not on that list.

00:26:40.000 And there's no evidence that Saipov was radicalized in Uzbekistan, then waited seven years and decided to conduct a truck attack

00:26:46.000 That's not the M.O.

00:26:47.000 of a sleeper agent, but more of a recently radicalized impulse attacker.

00:26:50.000 And then as far as Schumer, and again, I want to be objective as possible and bring out as many facts as possible here.

00:26:56.000 The lottery system in question was part of the Immigration Act of 1990 signed by George H.W.

00:27:00.000 Bush in 1990, 20 years before Saipov entered the U.S.

00:27:03.000 That wasn't introduced by Chuck Schumer.

00:27:05.000 It was introduced by Ted Kennedy, who's really to blame for all of this.

00:27:09.000 Schumer didn't join the Senate until 1999.

00:27:11.000 Again, this was a bipartisan move in 1990 to create this Diversity Visa Lottery program.

00:27:16.000 In fact, the Diversity Visa Lottery program was originally designed to make it easier for European immigrants to get in because the Diversity Visa Lottery program was designed to allow countries that didn't have tons of immigration, right, that had under, I think, 50,000 immigrants a year or 60,000 immigrants a year,

00:27:32.000 to the United States to add people who are immigrating.

00:27:35.000 That was designed for places like France, places like Italy.

00:27:38.000 It wasn't really designed for Uzbekistan.

00:27:40.000 And finally, you know, statistically speaking, the diversity visa program admits about 50,000 people a year to the United States and has for almost 30 years, which means that more than a million visas over that period of time have been issued.

00:27:52.000 And Saipov appears to be the only person who's entered through the diversity visa lottery program who's committed a terror act.

00:27:58.000 So the idea that this problem was caused by the diversity visa lottery seems to me wrong.

00:28:05.000 That said, I'm against the diversity visa lottery. 0.98

00:28:07.000 And this is why I think that it's important to have these policy discussions, not in the aftermath of terrorist attacks when everybody is jazzed up, because then we devolve into this particular political battle.

00:28:16.000 One side says, we need to get rid of diversity visa lottery in order to save American lives. 0.72

00:28:20.000 And the other side says,

00:28:21.000 This wouldn't have saved American lives.

00:28:23.000 And the first side says, you don't care enough about saving American lives.

00:28:26.000 And then the second side says, well, you don't care enough about immigrants.

00:28:30.000 That seems to me the same reverse of what we do on gun control after a mass shooting.

00:28:35.000 People on the right say, that's not good policy and it's not going to help.

00:28:38.000 And the left says, you don't care enough about the people who were shot.

00:28:40.000 I don't like this argument on either side.

00:28:42.000 Again, there is a strong case, for the fifth time, there's a strong case that everything Trump is saying about immigration is true in a generalized sense, but suggesting that this would solve the terrorist problem is, I think, setting up an expectation that is not accurate.

00:28:55.000 You know, the sort of Fortress America mentality with regard to protecting the United States

00:29:01.000 There's some truth to it, but I don't think there's a complete truth to it.

00:29:04.000 And again, when you're talking about radicalization of people who are already in the United States, it seems to me that the best way that you can actually fight this is by crushing ISIS overseas and destroying the motivation for people to become terrorists.

00:29:15.000 See, I think this is really the biggest problem.

00:29:17.000 We're constantly looking for ending the means.

00:29:20.000 We're not looking for stopping bad people from becoming bad people.

00:29:22.000 We're looking for ending the means.

00:29:24.000 I'm not sure that that is necessarily going to work. 0.99

00:29:27.000 So, we can kill as many terrorists as possible over there, and we should do that. 0.98

00:29:30.000 We should prevent as many terrorists as possible from entering the country. 0.78

00:29:32.000 That's why you should have a vetting program and...

00:29:35.000 A lot of these visa programs, you know, just on a cultural level.

00:29:38.000 But, what's really going to stop terrorists, the reason terrorists commit terrorist attacks, people think they do it out of despair, right?

00:29:44.000 This is a lefty trope.

00:29:45.000 That the reason that terrorists commit terrorist attacks is out of despair.

00:29:49.000 I don't think that terrorists commit terrorist attacks out of despair.

00:29:51.000 I think terrorists commit terrorist attacks out of hope.

00:29:53.000 They think they're going to win.

00:29:55.000 They think they're going to go to heaven.

00:29:56.000 They think their side is going to be forwarded by them committing these atrocities.

00:30:00.000 Apparently, this human piece of debris was

00:30:03.000 In the hospital last night, bragging about what he'd done and talking about how wonderful all of it was.

00:30:09.000 Right?

00:30:09.000 And talking about how it was just great.

00:30:12.000 Because he's a disgusting human being. 0.81

00:30:13.000 Well, the reason that you didn't have this level of terror attack, you know, before ISIS's rise is because there was no hope that ISIS was going to win. 0.99

00:30:21.000 Crushing ISIS overseas, demonstrating that the might of Islamic terrorism doesn't win you battles, it gets you killed, 0.86

00:30:29.000 That seems to me the best way to defeat this particular scourge.

00:30:32.000 Now, is that going to end all terror attacks?

00:30:33.000 No, it's not going to end all terror attacks.

00:30:34.000 And we should be taking defensive measures.

00:30:36.000 I mean, one of the obvious ones is, and I don't know why they don't have this, they should have bike paths that are basically restricted by these cement medians, right?

00:30:45.000 Israel has that and has had it for a long time.

00:30:47.000 It prevents these trucks from driving into areas where people are running.

00:30:51.000 That seems to me like a relatively smart thing to do.

00:30:53.000 You can put it on sidewalks as well.

00:30:55.000 I know there are parts of New York City, like Times Square actually has these.

00:30:58.000 That seems to me like that's something that might be worthwhile.

00:31:01.000 But again, I just want to recommend that we look at this in the cold light of day.

00:31:05.000 If we're going to make a decision about the Diversity Visa Lottery program, it shouldn't be on the back of this terror attack, which again, is an isolated incident specifically with regard to that program.

00:31:15.000 We should look at it and say, is this good policy or is it bad policy?

00:31:18.000 I think it's bad policy.

00:31:19.000 I think it should go.

00:31:20.000 If we're going to talk about extreme vetting, is that good policy or bad policy?

00:31:23.000 It's good policy, I think that we should do it.

00:31:25.000 I can agree with all of Trump's policies without suggesting that this terror attack be a leverage point for those policies.

00:31:31.000 Trump can win that battle on the merits without getting into the nasty business of trying to suggest that a particular terror attack could have been prevented by this specific policy fix, which I really don't think is accurate.

00:31:43.000 Okay, well, we're going to continue and talk about this.

00:31:45.000 We're also going to do some things I like and some things I hate and some Bible talk.

00:31:48.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:32:07.000 Let's go.

00:32:24.000 A prized possession in every household that owns one.

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00:32:52.000 We are the largest and fastest growing conservative

00:32:54.000 Podcast in the United States.

00:33:01.000 Now with all of that said about why I think it's a mistake to use this terror attack as a leverage point for immigration, I think it is also important to note that because Trump does talk about things like culture, because he does talk about things like immigration generally, this is why he is popular.

00:33:16.000 And the Democrats are falling into a trap if they decide to fight him on this.

00:33:19.000 The Democrats think that they're going to win a battle every time there's a mass shooting and they talk about gun control.

00:33:23.000 They think they've won a public relations battle.

00:33:24.000 Trump thinks he's going to win an immigration battle on this score.

00:33:27.000 He's probably right. 0.98

00:33:28.000 On a political level, it's not stupid what Trump is doing.

00:33:31.000 I think that what Trump is doing on a political level is actually, you know, politically advantageous for him and for his agenda.

00:33:37.000 I just don't like it as a general matter. 0.99

00:33:38.000 But that's not the same thing as saying that what he's doing is stupid. 0.99

00:33:41.000 I don't think that it's stupid. 0.99

00:33:42.000 You know, Trump is sort of reference level, gut response to all of this stuff. 0.85

00:33:50.000 And I think that that is, and I think that that's why he's popular, right?

00:33:54.000 He's popular because people feel like it's only political

00:33:57.000 It's only political correctness that prevents people from speaking about the cultural problems inherent in all of this, right?

00:34:01.000 There's something that unites the two conversations we've had today.

00:34:04.000 The conversation about radical Islam and its relationship to normal Islam and the conversation about immigration.

00:34:11.000 And that is, these are topics that people are afraid to talk about because they are afraid that they are going to be undercut by the general media atmosphere.

00:34:19.000 And this is why Trump won, right?

00:34:20.000 There's a poll out yesterday from Cato Institute.

00:34:24.000 And what that poll basically showed is that a huge percentage of Americans hate political correctness and find it to be stifling.

00:34:30.000 In fact, I think it's 71% of Americans say that they hate political correctness and feel that they can't actually speak out.

00:34:38.000 I think?

00:34:51.000 That is the reason why Trump won.

00:34:53.000 The reason why Trump won, the reason why Trump is going to continue to be popular is because instead of the left responding as I have and saying, listen, you know, the policy prescriptions that you're talking about, we can have a good debate about that, but I don't think that this is either the time or the matter upon which to use that rhetoric, which is what I said about gun control.

00:35:08.000 Instead, they've decided to say we can never discuss this.

00:35:10.000 The only reason you discuss this is because you're Islamophobic. 0.99

00:35:13.000 The only reason you discuss this is because you hate Muslims. 0.97

00:35:16.000 The response to that is what drove Trump.

00:35:17.000 That Cato Institute poll shows, in living color, why Trump won.

00:35:21.000 71% of Americans, according to the poll, believe that political correctness has done more to silence important discussions our society needs to have.

00:35:27.000 That's why Trump explicitly referenced political correctness in his series of tweets.

00:35:31.000 Only 28% of Americans think political correctness has bettered society.

00:35:35.000 And that shows why the left is losing.

00:35:38.000 73% of Americans, of Republicans rather, say that they are more likely to keep their views to themselves.

00:35:45.000 58% of independents say the same thing.

00:35:46.000 They feel silenced.

00:35:47.000 Trump gives them a voice.

00:35:48.000 So even when Trump is using his voice in ways that I don't particularly think are appropriate, he's still doing something that the left refuses to do.

00:35:55.000 Because the left doesn't see any time when we should have this discussion.

00:35:57.000 I'm happy to have a gun control discussion anytime the left wants to, except right after a national tragedy, when they're exploiting that for political gain.

00:36:05.000 I think we should have those discussions.

00:36:06.000 But what I really object to is I've said, I said it during the gun control debate and I'm saying it now.

00:36:10.000 I don't like the association between tragedy and policy.

00:36:13.000 I think it makes for bad policy, right?

00:36:14.000 I think the Department of Homeland Security, which is a bad policy decision, was formed in the aftermath of 9-11 and has done very little to keep the country safer.

00:36:21.000 I think that if we had had one less agency, one less department, we would just be, if it had been part of the Department of Defense, for example,

00:36:29.000 We'd have been just as safe.

00:36:30.000 There are a lot of bad policy decisions that are made on the basis of emotional response to bad things happening.

00:36:35.000 I just don't like that as a general matter.

00:36:37.000 But Trump is willing to talk about these things, and he's constantly willing to talk about these things, and it's the left's willingness to shut down the debate that is driving support for President Trump.

00:36:46.000 Right?

00:36:47.000 This is why I think this poll is sort of telling.

00:36:49.000 Okay.

00:36:50.000 Time for some quick things I like, some things I hate, and then we'll do a little bit of Bible talk.

00:36:53.000 So, things that I like today.

00:36:55.000 So, we've been doing baby books.

00:36:57.000 You know, books you should read as a young parent.

00:37:00.000 There's a good book called Brain Rules for Baby by a guy named John Medina.

00:37:04.000 How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five.

00:37:08.000 And John Medina talks about sort of all of the topics that you would think you need to know about.

00:37:14.000 Like, should you allow your kid to watch TV?

00:37:17.000 How do you handle temper tantrums?

00:37:19.000 How do you teach them impulse control?

00:37:22.000 The best predictors of academic performance.

00:37:25.000 All of these things are in the book.

00:37:27.000 It's a really good way of looking at how to parent your child.

00:37:30.000 And I highly recommend it.

00:37:31.000 Again, the book is Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina.

00:37:35.000 Well worth reading.

00:37:36.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:37:38.000 So, Bernie Sanders, shockingly, said something that I like yesterday.

00:37:41.000 So, a lot of people over the last couple of days have been spending an awful lot of time and effort, particularly in the media, talking about Russian collusion, right?

00:37:48.000 It's the collusion.

00:37:49.000 We have to talk about whether Trump was colluding with Russia.

00:37:53.000 Bernie Sanders has a better handle on what Americans want to hear about than most of the Democratic Party, which is why if Bernie actually runs in 2020, he will present a serious threat to both the Democratic Party and to President Trump in his re-election effort.

00:38:06.000 I'm serious about that. 0.98

00:38:07.000 Bernie's a crazy old man. 1.00

00:38:08.000 He's a loon bag who loves pudding. 1.00

00:38:09.000 You know, all of that's true, but... 0.93

00:38:12.000 Bernie Sanders has a better handle on what the American people care about than most of the mainstream media.

00:38:16.000 Look how upset Seth Meyers is asking Bernie Sanders about the Russia stuff and having Bernie basically shoot it down.

00:38:21.000 I mean, I think we've got to work in two ways.

00:38:24.000 Number one, we have got to take on Trump's attacks against the environment, against women, against Latinos and blacks and people in the gay community.

00:38:37.000 We've got to fight back every day on those issues.

00:38:41.000 But equally important, or more important, we have got to focus on the bread-and-butter issues that mean so much to ordinary Americans.

00:38:50.000 Americans are not staying up every day worrying about Russia's interference in our elections.

00:38:55.000 They're wondering how they're going to be able to send their kids to college.

00:38:58.000 They're worried about how they're going to be able to pay the rent.

00:39:00.000 They're worrying about whether they can afford health care.

00:39:03.000 They're worried about whether their income they make is enough to put food on the table. 0.96

00:39:09.000 Okay, so, you know, I think that this is—the beginning of what he's saying, of course, is stupid, but the very end, when he says that people aren't that concerned about Russia, he's correct about this. 1.00

00:39:17.000 And this is why he is more likely to resonate with more Americans than the Democratic Party, which is constantly focused on Russia, mostly because they are focused on—mostly because they want to justify why Hillary Clinton could possibly have lost this election. 0.75

00:39:31.000 Okay, in other things that I like, this is just breaking now, and I think this is pretty spectacular.

00:39:35.000 Trump is trying to create a name for the tax cut acts that he's trying to pass.

00:39:41.000 This is the scoop.

00:39:41.000 You ready for this?

00:39:42.000 This is amazing.

00:39:42.000 Trump wants to name the tax bill, I kid you not, the Cut, Cut, Cut Act.

00:39:47.000 That's really what he wants to call it, the Cut-Cut-Cut Act.

00:39:50.000 Apparently, Hill leaders disagree.

00:39:52.000 Now, listen, I think that the Cut-Cut-Cut Act, I mean, frankly, it sounds more like a brismilla.

00:39:58.000 It sounds more like a circumcision ceremony than it does like a tax cut thing.

00:40:02.000 But somebody was suggesting the Tax-Cutting-Cut-Face Act of 2017.

00:40:09.000 I think that's pretty spectacular.

00:40:10.000 Listen, Trump has a better idea for branding than the Republican Party.

00:40:13.000 I mean, they'll call it something like the Revitalize the Economy in a Great Way Act, right?

00:40:18.000 Then it'll be some sort of crazy acronym that'll end up being, you know, revitalized.

00:40:23.000 But every one of those letters will have its own word.

00:40:26.000 It'll be the Revitalize the Economy in Virulent

00:40:31.000 And I'm not going to do the entire word of revitalize, it's too long a word, but that's what they would do.

00:40:34.000 So I sort of like the Cut Cut Cut Act, although I do think it does sound like a rabid director trying desperately to prevent a scene from going off the rails, the Cut Cut Cut Act.

00:40:43.000 So, well done, President Trump.

00:40:45.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:40:50.000 So he talked about this a little bit yesterday. 0.96

00:40:52.000 Apparently, John Kelly's a racist.

00:40:53.000 So the left has had enough of John Kelly.

00:40:55.000 The reason they've had enough of John Kelly is because John Kelly actually came out and defended President Trump.

00:40:59.000 They were fine with Kelly when he just looked very exercised and disappointed in President Trump at Charlottesville.

00:41:05.000 But when he's actually out there defending Trump's agenda,

00:41:08.000 Then they're very angry at Kelly.

00:41:10.000 So Kelly said a couple of things in an interview with Laura Ingram that were controversial.

00:41:13.000 First, he said that the Civil War was fought because there was lack of compromise, and he said that there were a lot of people on the southern side who were honorable people.

00:41:21.000 And second, he said some things about China.

00:41:23.000 Now what's amazing to me is that the stuff he said about China, for me, is way worse than the stuff he said about the Civil War.

00:41:28.000 What he said about China is that China seems to be a regime that represents what its people want, which is just insane.

00:41:33.000 I mean, it's a communist regime that represses and oppresses its people.

00:41:36.000 But the thing that the left jumps on—the left agrees with that.

00:41:38.000 The left likes China.

00:41:40.000 So instead, the left jumps on the Civil War stuff.

00:41:42.000 So now you've got CNN's Chris Cuomo basically saying that, you know, Kelly ignored and rationalized bigotry by saying that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

00:41:52.000 Kelly is a respected guy.

00:41:55.000 How he leads men and women, how he has organized his attention to duty.

00:41:59.000 That's all true.

00:42:00.000 I've checked it ten ways from Sunday, it's true.

00:42:03.000 But giving him credit for a political, modulating ethos is false.

00:42:09.000 It's always been false.

00:42:10.000 The idea that he would control the president's political play towards division was always an empty promise, and this is the proof.

00:42:18.000 Listen to what he's saying, and listen to where we've heard it before.

00:42:21.000 You've heard it come out of the president's mouth.

00:42:23.000 Good people on both sides.

00:42:27.000 Crisis of conscience.

00:42:28.000 Think about the monuments in a different way maybe than these people want to take them down.

00:42:33.000 It's bigotry being ignored and rationalized and Kelly is not going to make it better.

00:42:40.000 He's making it the same

00:42:42.000 Or worse.

00:42:42.000 The attacks on Kelly, of course, are now growing in size and scope because the Democrats know and the media know that Kelly is an effective spokesperson for sort of Trumpian philosophy.

00:42:52.000 It is insane to suggest that Kelly is a racist because he said that lack of ability to compromise led to the Civil War.

00:42:59.000 First of all, he didn't even say on which side, right?

00:43:01.000 It was the South's refusal to compromise that led to the Civil War.

00:43:04.000 There are multiple attempts to compromise.

00:43:05.000 There was the Missouri Compromise.

00:43:07.000 There was an attempt, there's the Fugitive Slave Act.

00:43:09.000 There are a bunch of attempts to compromise on the part of Congress, all of which would be compromised with the incredible evil of slavery.

00:43:17.000 I will say that in historical context, I think that it's important to note that, you know, there's this sort of binary view that has now prevailed among people of today, because we all know slavery is evil.

00:43:27.000 There's sort of this binary view that says that anyone who wanted to try and compromise with the South wanted to uphold slavery.

00:43:32.000 That's not true.

00:43:32.000 There were a lot of people who wanted to try and create compromise with the South, hoping that slavery would eventually die out.

00:43:38.000 The real reason the Civil War happened is because the United States was expanding to the West and there were serious concerns about whether slavery was going to expand into the Western states.

00:43:45.000 The Civil War, in the end, turned out to be about abolishing slavery south of the Mason-Dixon line as well.

00:43:51.000 But originally, remember, the Civil War was not about abolishing slavery in South Carolina.

00:43:54.000 It was really about abolishing slavery in places like Kansas and Nebraska.

00:43:59.000 John Brown was fighting wars out in Kansas to try and stop slavery from entering Kansas.

00:44:05.000 So I think there's a little more complexity to the Civil War than boiling it down to simply pro-slavery, anti-slavery.

00:44:11.000 Although that is a good shorthand, I don't think that's the entirety of the matters to discuss in the Civil War.

00:44:17.000 States' rights versus national prerogatives was definitely on the table.

00:44:22.000 To pretend that wasn't on the table is to be ignorant, even if the states' rights were being used in defense of something evil like slavery.

00:44:28.000 Okay, time for a little bit of Bible talk since it is Wednesday.

00:44:30.000 So, I've sort of been picking and choosing from the biblical canon to talk about.

00:44:34.000 So, last week I did sort of the creation of the universe and the Adam and Eve story.

00:44:39.000 Today I'm going to do the Cain and Abel story.

00:44:41.000 So, I thought this was perfectly appropriate for Halloween.

00:44:44.000 So, believe it or not, the Cain and Abel story is about cultural appropriation.

00:44:46.000 Yes, really.

00:44:47.000 It's about cultural appropriation.

00:44:48.000 So, why is that?

00:44:49.000 If you look back in the Bible, what happens in the Cain and Abel story is that both Cain and Abel decide that they are going to

00:44:55.000 Cain has a choice.

00:44:55.000 Cain can either look at that and say, what can I learn from Abel?

00:44:58.000 What did Abel do right that I did wrong?

00:44:59.000 How do I fix this?

00:45:22.000 Or, he can get angry that Abel's sacrifice was accepted and his was not.

00:45:25.000 He can justify to himself that God is unfair, that the universe is unfair.

00:45:29.000 And it can anger him so much that he ends up killing Abel because how dare Abel hold a different standard?

00:45:35.000 The reason this is cultural appropriation is because the whole idea behind most cultural appropriation is not about mocking the culture that you are attempting to appropriate.

00:45:43.000 It's about looking at the cool things that other cultures do and saying, this is a good thing and I want to imitate it.

00:45:48.000 Imitation is how society gets better.

00:45:50.000 It's how your child learns.

00:45:51.000 When you have a three-year-old, the way that your three-year-old, your two-year-old learns is by imitating your behavior.

00:45:56.000 That's why you have to model good behavior.

00:45:58.000 We as adults should be doing the same thing.

00:46:00.000 And so the idea that cultural appropriation is a great evil because I like, you know, your girl and you like hoop earrings and you think they're cool and pretty and so you wear them.

00:46:07.000 And this is some sort of insult?

00:46:09.000 No, what would you rather?

00:46:09.000 That the person hate hoop earrings because they're beautiful but they can't have them?

00:46:13.000 It's really stupidity. 0.99

00:46:15.000 So the idea of appropriating good things that other people do, that's how civilizations get better. 1.00

00:46:20.000 That's how civilizations grow.

00:46:21.000 What destroys civilizations is the refusal to acknowledge that somebody did something in a way that was better than your way, and instead you get angry at it and you attempt to destroy that way.

00:46:30.000 And that's really what the Cain and Abel story is about.

00:46:32.000 It's about Halloween costumes.

00:46:34.000 Not really, but kind of.

00:46:35.000 In any case, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more, and we'll bring you the latest updates on this horrific terror attack in New York City.

00:46:41.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:46:42.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 01, 2017

Islamist Terror Hits New York -- Again | Ep. 408

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