Jussie Smollett is arrested for being the perpetrator of his own race hate crime, a Coast Guard lieutenant is arrested after pursuing a massive terror plot, and the world awaits the Mueller Report. We have all the updates on the Jussie smollett case, we have a fantastic update on the AOC scandal, and we now know that AOC lives in a luxury apartment that does not have any affordable housing in it! Why is this a shock? It shouldn t be a shock because Congress is going to Congress. These folks are not great. And this is why I m a big believer in calling a Convention of States where we can propose amendments that could force term limits on Congress and make them balance the budget. We ve got to stop these idiots before it is too late. Join me and my friend Mark Meckler, go to Conventionofstates.org/conventionofstates and sign the petition today! Go check it out right now, Conventionof States! Let s get moving on this thing! Ben Shapiro - The Ben Shapiro Show is a show about politics, culture, and everything else going on in the world today. Enjoy! - Ben Shapiro Subscribe to the show and tell me what you thought of it on the social medias of your feed! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Like, comment and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast provider? - leave us a review on iTunes or wherever else you re listening to this podcast might be listening to it. Thank you! Thank you for listening to our new episodes? - I really really appreciate it. - your rating and reviewing this podcast? I really helps us out! Vaynerday - Thank you very much, I really appreciates it really really helps me out a lot, much more than I can be a lot of people out there can help me out there too much of the place I can spread the word out there? -- Thank you, Ben Shapiro, really appreciate you really really really good day out there, really really appreciating you can do it, really good indeed, really truly appreciate it really good, good day, good night, good morning, really thanks really really truly, truly appreciate you can really appreciate ya really really, really appreciable, really, truly, really means it really means that I really mean it, truly means it, I appreciate it...
00:00:00.000Jussie Smollett is arrested for being the perpetrator of his own race hate crime, a Coast Guard lieutenant is arrested after pursuing a massive terror plot, and the world awaits The Mueller Report.
00:00:41.000And this is why I'm a big believer in calling a convention of states where we the people can propose amendments.
00:00:45.000Yes, amendments that could force, for example, term limits on Congress and make them balance the budget.
00:00:50.000We've got to stop these idiots before it is too late.
00:00:52.000Can you imagine the look On the faces of these congresspeople when they realize that millions of people are getting on board and preparing to kick them out of their forever offices.
00:01:18.000A runaway convention only happens if the left were to participate in the convention of states.
00:01:22.000That is not something that is likely to occur, considering that it is pretty much all people on the right who are interested in shoring up the Constitution against the excesses of the left.
00:01:30.000Join me and my friend Mark Meckler, go to conventionofstates.com slash ben to sign the petition today.
00:01:35.000That is conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:01:37.000Go check it out right now, conventionofstates.com slash ben, and sign the petition.
00:01:43.000Alrighty, so the breaking news this morning.
00:01:46.000Jussie Smollett, the actor from Empire, the guy who told one of the most ridiculous stories in the history of racial hoaxes, he has now been arrested.
00:02:25.000So, Jussie Smollett has now been arrested, and the latest is that Jussie Smollett is really bad at this.
00:02:31.000So, Jussie Smollett, apparently a mediocre actor.
00:02:34.000Mediocre to good actor, from what we've heard.
00:02:37.000It turns out, he's a better actor than a writer.
00:02:39.000So he is not going to get his Writer's Guild card anytime soon.
00:02:42.000The only thing that he wrote properly was the check.
00:02:45.000To the people who are actually supposed to commit the racial hoax.
00:02:48.000Yes, I kid you not, Jussie Smollett personally wrote and signed a check to the two men who then carried out the fake racial beating against Jussie Smollett.
00:02:59.000The only thing that he was missing was a for the hoax notation in the...
00:03:06.000According to CBS Local, accusing him of slapping the city in the face, Chicago police announced Thursday that Empire actor Jussie Smollett had been charged with concocting an attack in Streeterville because he was quote, dissatisfied with his salary.
00:03:48.000This stunt was orchestrated by Smollett because he was dissatisfied with his salary.
00:03:54.000So he concocted a story about being attacked.
00:03:57.000Notice the implicit truth of Smollett's rationale for the attack.
00:04:03.000If it turned out that he got away with it, if he was seen as a victim of a terrible, terrible hate crime hoax, that wasn't a hoax, if he'd been seen as a victim of a hate crime, if he had been able to get away with claiming that two white men found him on a Chicago street, shouted racial and ethnic and stereotypically sexual orientation slurs at him, and then beat him, roped him around the neck, threw bleach on him while shouting, this is MAGA country, Smollett's assumption was it would have raised his salary in Hollywood.
00:04:29.000You know why he was making that assumption?
00:04:32.000It's the only part of anything that Smollett did that is true.
00:04:35.000It is absolutely true that if Jussie Smollett had been seen as the victim of a terrible, terrible hate crime on the mean streets of Chicago at 2 a.m.
00:04:41.000in a Polar Vortex in which he still held on to his Subway sandwich, it is true That his salary would have been increased, he would have gotten movie roles, because this is the way our society works.
00:04:50.000If you are seen to be a victim, then you will earn more money.
00:04:53.000This is why all those folks out there who say, believe all women, or believe all victims, or believe all race crime victims, you can't believe all anyone, because there is, in fact, incentive to lie in today's day and age.
00:05:06.000People keep saying, well, why would such and such lie?
00:05:17.000How about the fact that Jussie Smollett appeared on Good Morning America with Robin Roberts, where she presented him with fawning treatment over a fake race crime.
00:05:26.000There is absolutely incentive in the United States to fake this sort of stuff, which means that you need evidence before you jump on the it-certainly-happened bandwagon, which is what the entire media did.
00:05:37.000Now, as I say, the best part of this is that Smollett actually personally signed the $3,500 check.
00:05:41.000Also, this just demonstrates what President Trump has said before, which is that, obviously, the immigrant community is undercutting the labor base in the United States.
00:05:51.000I mean, obviously, he hired two Nigerian immigrants to perform this hate crime hoax at $3,500.
00:05:56.000I mean, imagine if he'd had to hire domestic labor.
00:06:00.000And imagine if he'd actually gone all the way and he had actually hired, you know, white actors to carry this out.
00:06:07.000Obviously, you know, this just shows that Jussie Smollett was actually complicit in the racist capitalist hierarchy of the United States using his friends and paying them less than market wage in order to perform this race crime hoax.
00:06:21.000Anyway, the Chicago Police Department superintendent, he said he's obviously pissed off.
00:06:26.000And by the way, worth noting, he's a black guy only because we are talking about a race hoax.
00:06:31.000So this is not the Chicago PD targeting Jussie Smollett because they are racist or because they are homophobic.
00:06:36.000Here is the Chicago Police Department superintendent saying Chicago has been painted in a negative light.
00:06:42.000To insinuate and to stage a hate crime of that nature when he knew as a celebrity it would get a lot of attention.
00:06:52.000It makes you wonder what's going through someone's mind to do something like that.
00:06:57.000So, yeah, I saw a couple of parts of it, and I was angered by it, to be quite honest.
00:07:02.000Okay, now what's apparently taking a lot of people off inside the Chicago Police Department is that CPD is treating him with kid gloves even still.
00:07:12.000So apparently, one of the spokespeople for the CPD, a guy named Guglielmi, he said, quote, We want to make this as diplomatic as possible.
00:07:23.000In the end, this is only a class 4 felony.
00:07:35.000Because not only did he stage a racial hoax that captivated the entire nation, not only did he do that, not only did he slander the city of Chicago, not only did he slander Trump supporters, not only did he slander white people more generally, But he also was willing to send other people to jail.
00:07:50.000I mean, this is the part of the story people are missing.
00:07:52.000If he had carried this to its very end, then Jussie Smollett would have been testifying falsely against two white people arrested by the CPD.
00:08:00.000Imagine that the Chicago PD had arrested two white people who were in the area, and Jussie Smollett had then gone and testified that those people were the ones who beat him.
00:08:08.000And they had gone to jail for presumably 20 years, right, for a federal hate crime.
00:10:40.000- If you need somebody, you can talk to me Don Lemon, what a hero.
00:10:48.000And that's what journalism is all about, isn't it?
00:10:51.000Reaching out to people who participate in race crime hoaxes, in hate crime hoaxes, reaching out to them personally, making sure they're okay.
00:12:56.000And he is so good at the objective reporting that he never asked Jussie Smollett a single question because as a black gay man, black gay men who claim that they are victims of obvious hoaxes, we shouldn't ask them questions.
00:13:07.000So last night Don Lemon goes on TV and he's still trying to defend He's still trying to defend Jussie Smollett.
00:13:33.000Legally, if he has to go, whatever he has to serve, if it's jail time, if he has to do probation, if he has to pay, whatever.
00:13:39.000But in the court of public opinion, It matters.
00:13:42.000It matters, and he lost that because of how, and not his fault, maybe people were, I don't know what they were saying to him, maybe because of his representatives, who knows.
00:13:55.000Oh, that was the problem, it was handled poorly.
00:13:57.000Not that he lied to the entire nation, including the Chicago Police Department, about being beaten on a Chicago street in the middle of the night by two white men wearing MAGA caps.
00:15:02.000The problem is not that he hoaxed America.
00:15:04.000The problem is not that he lied about a huge swath of people.
00:15:07.000President Trump just tweeted out a few minutes ago Jesse Smollett, what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments?
00:15:18.000And the president is not wrong about this.
00:15:20.000The president—no, look, should the president be interjecting on these sorts of issues?
00:15:25.000No, the president should not be interjecting on these issues any more than President Obama should have been interjecting on Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown.
00:15:30.000But Trump is not wrong on the actual substance of his comments, which is that this was a massive slander against at least half the country.
00:15:37.000And not only that, it was Jussie Smollett attempting to rip open racial scabs, rip them off, in order so that he could benefit himself and so that he could push a narrative that is absolutely untrue.
00:15:47.000And Don Lemon's main concern is that people are going to be mean to Jussie Smollett.
00:15:52.000Oh wow, what a rough life Jussie Smollett has and had.
00:15:54.000Again, if you want to show me evidence the guy's mentally ill, then we can talk about sympathy for Jussie Smollett.
00:15:59.000Unless you have any evidence he's mentally ill, then he is a piece of human debris.
00:16:04.000You racially hoax like this, and by the way, it is true, that you end up Degrading the accounts of other hate crime survivors and degrading the other stories of crime victims?
00:16:18.000You end up denigrating the Chicago Police Department who are attempting to do their best in a city rife with crime?
00:16:25.000And you are willing to testify to send other people who are innocent to jail?
00:16:29.000Yeah, my sympathy level runs a little low for Jussie Smollett.
00:16:42.000He's not a journalist, he's an intersectional opinion leftist on CNN, and he is portrayed as an objective journalist.
00:16:47.000And then the entire media goes nuts when CNN hires a partisan Republican as one of their political editors, one of their many political editors.
00:16:55.000Yes, because CNN is a bastion of objectivity, with Chris Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo's brother, and Don Lemon on every night just spewing leftist nonsense.
00:17:02.000Here is Don Lemon doing just that last night.
00:17:05.000To certain groups of people, even if they were skeptical, they said, I hope this is not true.
00:17:15.000People are like, oh my God, I hope he's telling the truth.
00:17:18.000And you know why black folk and gay folks say that, because... They're real victims of... Well, because they are real victims of homophobia and of racism, but also because, unfortunately, we tend to all be painted with the same brush when one person does wrong.
00:17:34.000And that's why we always say that when something goes wrong, is we hope the person is not black, we hope the person is not gay.
00:17:40.000And nobody is painting all black people or gay people as hoaxers because Jussie Smollett was a hoaxer.
00:18:05.000Maybe he's not going to hire his personal trainers from the gym for $3,500 and a personalized check to go down to the local hardware store, purchase some rope, bleach, and red hats, and then go out in Chicago at 2 a.m.
00:18:16.000and claim that they're in MAGA country.
00:18:19.000But there will be somebody else who makes a false claim.
00:18:21.000And then when people on the right say, listen, you know, evidence, that might be like a good thing.
00:18:25.000Then the left will say, the only reason you're asking for evidence right now is because you're racist.
00:18:29.000It's because you look at Jussie Smollett's case and now you say that all black people or all gay people are hoaxing.
00:18:35.000And then maybe that one turns out to be a hoax.
00:18:37.000And the media say, well, you know, the real problem here, the real problem here is that now everyone's going to paint all future hate crime victims with the same brush.
00:18:45.000And then it sets it up for the next race crime hoaxer.
00:18:47.000The media are learning exactly the reverse of the lesson they ought to be learning from this.
00:18:51.000The lesson they ought to be learning from this is, hey, maybe we should have waited for evidence on the Jussie Smollett thing instead of just jumping on it with both feet and suggesting that it was inherently believable because we wanted to believe it.
00:19:17.000The real problem is that in the future, people may now ask for more evidence, and that would be them applying racism.
00:19:24.000Because if they ask for more evidence, the only reason they do that is because they think that all black and gay people are just like Jussie Smollett.
00:19:31.000So next time, there's a hoaxer who does the exact same thing or something similar.
00:20:08.000It's because I wanted to believe that it was true, and so I completely botched this one.
00:20:13.000Instead, you're getting all of the Democratic 2020 candidates stealth-deleting their own stuff.
00:20:18.000They're just going back and stealth-deleting their comments, or leaving them up without any further comment.
00:20:22.000You're seeing Democratic candidates come out and say, you know what guys, I need to wait for more information.
00:20:26.000Okay, so you didn't need to wait for more information when it was a sketchy account that was being reported by third-hand sources, but you do need to wait for more information after there is a formal legal arrest of Jussie Smollett.
00:20:37.000That's when you need to wait for more information.
00:20:40.000I noticed, by the way, they're not seeing the same let's wait for information take on this Coast Guard Lieutenant story who's arrested in a terror plot.
00:20:47.000We're gonna get to that in just one second.
00:20:49.000By the way, we shouldn't wait for more information.
00:21:19.000You just answer a few questions and you snap some photos of your hair.
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00:21:26.000It is then shipped right to your door every three months.
00:21:28.000Keeps offers generic versions of the only two FDA-approved hair loss products out there.
00:21:32.000Some of you probably have tried them before, but you've probably never gotten them for this price.
00:21:35.000Keeps is only $10 to $35 a month, plus right now you can get your first month for free, which is a hell of a deal for getting to keep your hair.
00:21:42.000To receive your first month of treatment for free, go to Keeps.com slash Ben.
00:22:11.000Because you don't actually have to wait for more information once somebody has been arrested.
00:22:15.000Once somebody has been arrested, you can say, we'll wait to see the evidence in court, but there's a pretty good indicator that perhaps they did something wrong.
00:22:23.000At the very least, we have to take it a lot more seriously than a random account by a human.
00:22:29.000According to the Associated Press, a Coast Guard lieutenant who was arrested last week is a domestic terrorist who drafted an email discussing biological attacks and had what appeared to be a hit list that included prominent Democrats and media figures, prosecutors said in court papers.
00:22:42.000Christopher Paul Hassan is due to appear Thursday in federal court in Maryland after his arrest on gun and drug offenses.
00:22:47.000Prosecutors say those charges are the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
00:22:51.000Prosecutors say the defendant is a domestic terrorist bent on committing acts dangerous to human life that are intended to affect governmental conduct.
00:22:58.000Apparently, this piece of crap has espoused extremist views for years, and what they mean by this is that he's an actual neo-Nazi.
00:23:05.000Court papers detail a draft email in which he wrote that he was dreaming of a way to kill almost every last person on earth and pondering how he might be able to acquire anthrax and toxins to create botulism or a deadly influenza.
00:23:18.000Also, he sounds... he is a full-on neo-Nazi.
00:23:21.000He sent himself a draft letter in September 2017.
00:23:24.000That he had written to a neo-Nazi leader, identifying himself as a white nationalist for over 30 years, and advocating for focused violence in order to establish a white homeland.
00:23:32.000Apparently, he read portions of a manifesto by the Norwegian mass murderer, Anders Breivik, who is serving a 21-year sentence for killing 77 people in a 2011 rampage.
00:23:43.000By the way, just shows that Norway is a crazy place.
00:23:45.000A 21-year sentence for killing 77 people is insane.
00:23:48.000Also, this garbage human expressed admiration for Russia.
00:23:53.000He said, looking to Russia with hopeful eyes or any land that despises the West's liberalism.
00:24:52.000I will note that the media coverage of this Coast Guard lieutenant has been relatively muted so far.
00:24:57.000The minute there's an email expressing support for President Trump, watch it blow up.
00:25:00.000That's exactly how this is going to work.
00:25:02.000Meanwhile, the other big news of the day is that CNN is reporting that the Mueller report is coming, maybe as early as next week.
00:25:09.000According to CNN, Attorney General Bill Barr is preparing to announce as early as next week the completion of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, with plans for Barr to submit to Congress soon after a summary of Mueller's confidential report, according to people familiar with the plans.
00:25:22.000Now, we've been hearing this for months.
00:25:24.000But it has been widely expected for a while that February was going to be when this thing dropped.
00:25:28.000The preparations are the clearest indication yet that Mueller is nearly done with his almost two-year investigation.
00:25:33.000The precise timing of the announcement is indeed subject to change, says CNN.
00:25:37.000The scope and contours of what Barr will send to Congress remain unclear.
00:25:40.000Also unclear is how long it will take justice officials to prepare what will be submitted to lawmakers.
00:25:46.000It is unclear at this time how much of this will actually be publicly released.
00:25:49.000Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller has to submit a confidential report to the AG at the conclusion of his work.
00:25:55.000The rules do not require it to be shared with Congress or, by extension, the public.
00:25:59.000As Barr has made clear, the Justice Department generally guards against publicizing derogatory information about uncharged individuals.
00:26:08.000The American public deserves to see as much of this as possible because there are too many rumors floating out there about various members of the Trump administration having colluded with Russia and all the rest of this, and that means that putting the report out there as publicly as possible would be good, but the DOJ also has an obligation not to smear people without any intent to charge criminally or without the basis for a criminal charge.
00:26:30.000President Trump, for his part, he says the release of the report is up to his attorney general, which is of course the correct answer.
00:26:41.000That'll be totally up to the new Attorney General.
00:26:43.000He's a tremendous man, a tremendous person who really respects this country and respects the Justice Department, so that'll be totally up to him.
00:26:53.000Now you can see the shift in goalposts taking place on the left.
00:26:56.000Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who's been an ardent advocate of the Russia collusion quasi-scandal, he said on Wednesday that he doesn't even know there's going to be a lot there in the report, that when this is all said and done, the Mueller report may be a giant disappointment.
00:27:10.000Is the Robert Mueller investigation enough?
00:27:14.000If that's the possible scenario that you're looking at and you think that what Andrew McCabe said is a possible scenario, is the Robert Mueller investigation and what's happening in Congress enough?
00:27:25.000I think the hope is that the Mueller investigation will clear the air on this issue once and for all.
00:27:33.000I'm really not sure it will, and the investigation, when completed, could turn out to be quite anticlimactic and not draw a conclusion about that.
00:27:43.000I mean, talk about taking the wind out of their sails.
00:27:45.000After two years of this, and people selling probably thousands of dollars in Robert Mueller gear, you know, keep calm and Robert Mueller and all the rest of this.
00:27:53.000If it turns out that the report is basically a big nothing, if the report turns out to be basically a rehash of what we already know with no criminal filings attached, or if it's not made public in the end, that's going to be a big disappointment for a lot of the folks in the Democratic Party.
00:28:07.000Now, that doesn't mean that all of the problems surrounding President Trump go away once the Mueller report is released.
00:28:12.000Next week, Michael Cohen is set to testify before the House.
00:28:16.000According to the New York Times, Michael Cohen, the president's former personal fixer, has agreed to testify in public next Wednesday before Congress about his work.
00:28:23.000Lawmakers said they would limit the scope of their questioning in deference to the special counsel.
00:28:27.000So they're only going to ask him about his go-between status for paying off, for example, Stormy Daniels, but they're not going to ask him about Trump-Russia collusion matters.
00:28:37.000The reason is they don't want to step on Robert Mueller's toes, and they also don't want to bias people about what exactly was going on in that investigation.
00:28:44.000Mueller has asked that a lot of that material remain confidential.
00:28:47.000The committee's chairman indicated that after consultation with the DOJ and the House Intelligence Committee, Cohen would not be allowed to discuss matters related to Russia, including a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow under scrutiny by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.
00:28:59.000Now, that is really the big issue here.
00:29:02.000I mean, I think that the greatest danger for President Trump in terms of a criminal indictment comes not from the Russia stuff, but from the New York district attorneys who are going after him over supposed campaign finance violations, or the state of New York going after the Trump Foundation, for example.
00:29:18.000That's where most of his legal danger lies.
00:29:20.000But that is not where most of his public relations danger lies.
00:29:22.000If he ends up being prosecuted, for example, over campaign finance violations.
00:29:28.000It's unclear, first of all, that he can be prosecuted while in office.
00:29:45.000I think people don't care about this stuff anymore.
00:29:47.000If it's Russian collusion stuff and they actually have proof, then this is a big issue.
00:29:51.000What you can't do is build up to one ending of the movie and then switch over into an entirely different genre.
00:29:57.000If you build up to the end of an action movie, and suddenly it breaks into music and into musical, people are just confused.
00:30:03.000So if you've built up for three years that Trump and Russia were in cahoots, and that Trump is a tool of Vladimir Putin, and then the ending of the movie is he paid money to a porn star, nobody is gonna buy that switch.
00:30:16.000Okay, in just a second, I want to talk about why socialism seems to be making gains in the United States and why Democrats are not being forced to answer for the crimes of Venezuela, for example.
00:31:10.000We'll be talking about everyone's favorite award show.
00:31:13.000Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, me, Andrew Klavan, the ex-Scribble Michael Moles, and Alicia Krauss will all be here talking culture, Hollywood, and of course, taking your questions.
00:31:20.000We will even be wearing Oscar-appropriate attire.
00:31:24.000As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask those questions, so make sure to subscribe today.
00:31:28.000Also, do not forget, if you are not a Daily Wire subscriber, you are really missing out, because our next Sunday special guest is the fantastic Larry Elder.
00:31:36.000If you're a subscriber, you and only you can watch this episode a full day early.
00:31:40.000Not only that, all upcoming episodes of the Sunday special will be available on Saturday.
00:31:44.000So it becomes the Saturday special just for you.
00:31:46.000Don't worry guys, I'm not violating Sabbath.
00:31:47.000That only works if you're a Daily Wire subscriber.
00:32:03.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
00:32:07.000So one of the beautiful things about being a democratic socialist is that you don't actually have to live up to your own ideals.
00:32:20.000According to Ilana Goodman over at the Washington Examiner, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, fresh face of the Democratic Party, so much freshness, so much insane faceness.
00:32:31.000She recently moved into a luxury apartment complex in Washington, D.C.
00:32:34.000that does not offer the affordable housing units that were a key plank in the New York Congresswoman's campaign platform.
00:33:06.000But you don't get to criticize developers for not building affordable housing when you are living in the house built by those developers that doesn't have affordable housing.
00:33:15.000Ocasio-Cortez's new building, built by leading D.C.
00:33:19.000Smith, is part of a luxury complex whose owners specifically do not offer affordable units under Washington, D.C.' 's Affordable Dwelling Units program.
00:33:33.000Apparently, her new apartment complex is magnificent.
00:33:36.000It offers 100,000 square feet of amenities for its residents.
00:33:39.000These include two private massage rooms with state-of-the-art hydrotherapy beds, men's and women's saunas, a full-scale demonstration kitchen with a wood-fired pizza oven, a 25-meter indoor lap pool, a rooftop infinity pool with panoramic views of the capital, a Peloton cycling studio with over a dozen bikes, and a fireside lounge featuring a Steinway & Sons player piano.
00:33:57.000Also, a PGA-grade golf simulation lounge with a wraparound screen and viewing bar that allows residents to play virtually at dozens of the world's most exclusive golf courses with the touch of a button.
00:35:04.000And this is the beautiful thing about being a socialist, you never have to live up to your own standards.
00:35:08.000Speaking of which, Bernard McSanders, the leading democratic contender in the race right now, Bernie Sanders, he was asked specifically about the situation in Venezuela, where it turns out 1,800 square foot luxury apartments with Peloton cycling classes and wood-fired pizza ovens are not available in Venezuela.
00:35:26.000That's a thing that's happening in Venezuela.
00:35:28.000Bernie Sanders, who lives off the fat of the American land while promoting democratic socialism for everyone else, He was asked specifically about whether Nicolas Maduro, the socialist evil dictator of Venezuela, should go, and here was his answer.
00:35:39.000Do you consider Juan Guaido the legitimate president of Venezuela?
00:35:43.000I think there are serious questions about the recent election.
00:35:48.000There are many people who feel it was a fraudulent election.
00:35:51.000And I think the United States has got to work with the international community to make sure that there is a free and fair election in Venezuela.
00:36:00.000So is Nicolás Maduro a dictator or senator for you?
00:36:05.000I think clearly he has been very, very abusive.
00:36:08.000That is a decision of the Venezuelan people.
00:36:11.000So I think, Jorge, there's got to be a free and fair election.
00:36:17.000Oh, so Nicholas Muir, I'm not going to call him a dictator.
00:36:19.000Of course, that's not a shock, because this is the same guy who wouldn't call Daniel Ortega a dictator, and who said that the USSR had wonderful youth programs.
00:36:53.000There are too many poor people and too many rich people, and we need to take the rich people and cut off their legs and feed them to the poor people.
00:36:59.000That is the only way to achieve true equality in the United States and around the world.
00:37:05.000That's sort of the pitch for socialism.
00:37:07.000And honestly, not a great pitch, because the fact is that all human prosperity over the last 200 years, all, not some, all human prosperity has been driven by free markets and voluntarism.
00:37:26.000I'm not sure that it is the best argument because the fact is that prosperity still exists in nations that don't have these vast social welfare networks because they existed in the United States before there were vast social welfare networks.
00:37:37.000The United States was the fastest growing, most powerful economy on planet Earth before the vast growth of the welfare state under FDR.
00:37:44.000But with all of that said, The fact is that free markets have created all growth in the history of man.
00:37:50.000If you look at the per capita income of human beings since 1800, it is basically a straight line up.
00:38:02.000And that is because of capitalism and free markets.
00:38:04.000So, it's hard to make the case that the reason that we need socialism is because we need more prosperity.
00:38:08.000Because socialism is not about prosperity.
00:38:10.000What it is, is it is a spiritual, it is an actual spiritual phenomenon.
00:38:14.000And that's what this article at the New Republic says.
00:38:17.000They talk about a book by a person named Martin Hagelin called This Life, Secular Faith, and Spiritual Freedom.
00:38:23.000Hagelin puts forward a single sustained picture of the situation we all face, writes the columnist for the New Republic.
00:38:28.000To free ourselves spiritually, he proposes that we adopt what he calls secular faith, a commitment to our finite lives and fragile loves, As the sole site of what matters, the setting for all the stakes of existence.
00:38:38.000Achieving material freedom is a more logistically complex project.
00:38:42.000The only social order compatible with spiritual freedom, says Hagelin, is democratic socialism.
00:38:46.000Only when return on investment ceases to be a measure of value can the polity decide for itself what counts as valuable, what kind of activity should be rewarded and cultivated.
00:38:55.000In other words, the idea here is that there's an actual religious faith that is Marxism.
00:39:01.000That religious faith suggests there is no afterlife, there is no higher spiritual meaning, there is only your material existence on this plane.
00:39:08.000And so we ought to maximize your material existence on this plane with a minimum of work that you don't want to do.
00:39:17.000Basically, this life, this book, attempts to deepen the philosophical dimension and to anchor its commitments in a larger inquiry.
00:39:24.000What kind of political and economic order can do justice to our mortality, to the fact that our lives are all we have?
00:39:31.000The book suggests that we should discard the religious impulse, and we should separate the desire for meaning and community from doctrine and metaphysics.
00:39:50.000The socialist appeal is the idea that we can make transformative decisions that free us from the necessity of doing things other people want.
00:39:59.000Socialism in and of itself is actually a deeply narcissistic philosophy.
00:40:03.000Capitalism is about the idea that I can do what I feel is of value, but if my idea of value does not match your idea of value, I'm not going to earn very much money for it.
00:40:10.000Socialism is about the idea that I should be able to do whatever I want and you should pay me for it.
00:40:14.000And the society should pay me for it, broadly speaking.
00:40:17.000And that is what is likely to create spiritual freedom.
00:40:19.000It's this philosophy that led Nancy Pelosi to suggest a while back that what we needed to do was get rid of private health care insurance because it created what she called a job lock, that it locked you into a job you might not want to do.
00:40:31.000And she said, maybe you want to be an artist and you don't want to be an accountant.
00:40:34.000And the only reason you're an accountant is because you get your medical insurance from being an accountant.
00:40:38.000Well, if we provide you health care, then you could go back to your room in San Francisco, your studio apartment in San Francisco and be a sculptor.
00:40:45.000This is what socialism is attempting to promise you.
00:40:49.000Socialism is attempting to promise you that we can rejigger the economic system so that your subjective perception of value is no longer necessary for that subjective version of value to match up with anybody else's version of what value represents.
00:41:02.000Hagelin says, our economy keeps its participants locked in the realm of necessity for much of their lives, draining away their time in unfree activity.
00:41:09.000By unfree, he means things you don't want to do.
00:41:12.000Now, we in the real world like to think of things we want to do, do not want to do, as responsibilities.
00:41:18.000And if you want to be happy in your job, what you have to do is actually match up three things.
00:41:22.000Things that you want to do, things that other people will pay you to do, and things that you find meaningful.
00:41:26.000If you can find those three things, you'll be happy in your job.
00:41:29.000But, one of those components is doing something that someone else finds valuable.
00:41:33.000This is why I have described capitalism as forced altruism, and I've described socialism as essentially narcissism.
00:41:41.000He says, in the realm of necessity, there is very little opportunity to spend our lives on the things we care for, to devote ourselves to what we think most worthwhile.
00:41:48.000Economic life may be a tapestry of choices, but as long as it directs its participants toward goals they do not believe truly worthwhile, a life of such choice is a grotesque of freedom.
00:41:58.000So, Marxism, in the spiritual case, focuses on two things.
00:42:03.000One, there's no afterlife and no spiritual meaning apart from your economic life.
00:42:07.000And two, if your economic life is all you have, then economic freedom is you exercising the freedom to do whatever you want without consequences.
00:42:14.000That is the spiritual draw of Marxism.
00:42:16.000And this is why Marxism must be directed against Judeo-Christian values.
00:42:19.000Because Judeo-Christian values say, listen, Maybe you're not happy in your job.
00:42:23.000Maybe your job isn't what provides you total meaning every day.
00:42:25.000You know what should provide you total meaning?
00:42:27.000What should provide you total meaning is obeying the morality of a God that matters, and making life better for those around you, and taking responsibility for your family, and broadening and deepening your associations with your religious community.
00:42:41.000Serving God properly is the purpose of religious life.
00:42:43.000This is why non-religious society tends to fall into socialism, because if everything that matters is in the here and the now and the materialistic, then If this is all we get, if all we care, not even afterlife-wise, if all that matters is our economic performance, if that's what we see happiness as, then what we really should be doing is focusing every day on doing what it is that we want, even if it means making mud pies, and then we should force other people to pay us for that.
00:43:07.000And if we can abstract the obligations of other people to pay us for work they don't want, to society at large, if we don't have to look at our neighbor and say, pay me five bucks for making this crappy sculpture, if instead we can say, society makes it possible for all this to happen, if we can magically think like that, if we can think away the problem of going broke on other people's money, Then socialism sounds pretty good.
00:43:30.000The draw of socialism is a materialistic philosophy that suggests that true freedom lies in not being held to account for the decisions that you make and not having to match up your own subjective perceptions of value with somebody else's ideas of value.
00:43:44.000Because in the end, if you cannot be paid for the stupid things that you are doing by somebody else, you're going to have to force that person to do something that they don't want to do.
00:43:53.000Every socialist system inevitably ends in a certain level of force.
00:44:36.000You know, they say that heroism is dead.
00:44:39.000Seventy years ago, young men stormed the beaches of Normandy at risk of their own lives.
00:44:43.000Many of them died in the attempt to free the world of Nazism and fascism.
00:44:47.000Today, Eric Swalwell walks half a block to a different coffee shop so that he doesn't have to participate in doing business with an independent contractor working inside Trump Tower who pays rent to Donald Trump.
00:45:30.000Eugene Robinson has a piece over at the Washington Post called, yes, the Green New Deal is audacious, but we have no choice but to think big.
00:45:36.000Now, as I've said on this program before, I have a basic rule.
00:45:38.000If somebody says an idea is audacious, that is code word for stupid but ambitious.
00:46:38.000I decided I was going to run in front of a moving truck.
00:46:41.000Thinking big, you too can think big in America.
00:46:44.000Since the 14-page resolution was introduced in Congress last week by Senator Ed Markey and Representative AOC, so fresh, so face, critics have been falling over themselves to denounce the Green New Deal's policies as prohibitively expensive, totally unworkable, or somehow Venezuelan.
00:46:58.000If these opponents would stop shouting long enough to actually read the document, they'd see that it's not a compendium of concrete policies at all, but rather a set of goals.
00:47:34.000The Green New Deal seeks to outline a national project for our time, not just a response to a grave environmental threat, but a framework for enhanced growth, opportunity, and fairness.
00:47:43.000The laudable aim is to play offense, not defense.
00:47:45.000I mean, it's like the guy just stacked up cliches.
00:47:48.000In the movie Bull Durham, which I have famously said is an overrated film, but in the movie Bull Durham, there's a great scene where Kevin Costner is trying to inform Tim Robbins about how exactly he needs to act when he gets to the major leagues in his interviews.
00:48:05.000That is this column, except with environmentalism.
00:48:08.000The laudable aim is to play offense, not defense, in the fight to limit climate change.
00:48:13.000Well, aren't you inevitably playing defense when you are fighting against an encroaching, looming disaster?
00:48:18.000He says, we are going to have to wage that battle one way or another.
00:48:21.000Why not do it on our terms before Miami slips underwater and the yet unburned parts of California go up in flames?
00:48:26.000I love this idea that Miami is going to be underwater like in the next two years.
00:48:30.000Does it occur to people that over time human beings are massively capable of adaptation?
00:48:35.000That if you give somebody a hundred years and you tell them, by the way, your house is going to be underwater in a hundred years, what are you going to do about it?
00:48:40.000That maybe they might start making gradual plans to move away from the house that will be underwater in a hundred years.
00:48:45.000The best historical analogy, I love this one.
00:48:48.000The best historical analogy is not the New Deal, but World War II.
00:48:54.000When mobilization of the nation's vast productive capacity not only defeated Germany and Japan, but also generated unprecedented domestic economic growth, hugely expanding middle class.
00:49:03.000World War II did not generate unprecedented domestic economic growth.
00:49:07.000After World War II is when the economic growth happens.
00:49:10.000When you mobilize every military-age male, put them in barracks and feed them rations for four years, it turns out that that is not economic growth.
00:50:40.000Well, if it's an emergency, and if all of us throwing away our cars wouldn't actually stop climate change, and if it really is an emergency, if this is the day after tomorrow, we're all gonna die, if that's the case, then what are you waiting for?
00:50:52.000The real offenders here are China and India.
00:50:54.000And I think it's time that we discuss, let's put the options around the table.
00:50:58.000You guys are talking about World War II, not me.
00:51:01.000You're saying this is like World War II.
00:51:35.000It's too expensive, Naysayer's complains, says Eugene Robinson.
00:51:37.000They point to a clause in the resolution that calls for upgrading all existing buildings in the United States to make them more energy efficient.
00:51:44.000That sounds absurd until you remember the massive blackout drills that took place across the country during World War II.
00:53:03.000Okay, if you say that you understand and accept the conclusions of climate scientists, and then you're like, you know what else I'm gonna do?
00:53:08.000I'm just gonna burn this coal right here, like right over here.
00:53:10.000Like right next to me, I've got a pile of coal.
00:53:52.000Also, the first half of the sentence would be the one that matters.
00:53:55.000They are adding coal-fired power plants.
00:53:58.000If you invest in a lot of green energy, but at the same time you are investing in the carbon-emitting coal plants, You are part of the pro- I love this.
00:54:05.000He's justifying China so that he can claim that the United States ought to shut down all carbon emissions, which would have virtually no measurable impact on the climate over the next century.
00:54:14.000Again, I return to my initial assessment.
00:54:16.000Eugene Robinson is not sufficiently committed to stopping climate change, and neither is anyone else advocating for the Green New Deal.
00:54:22.000If they were truly committed, if they really believe that this is a world-beating World War II problem, it's time.