The Ben Shapiro Show - Jason Whitlock | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 7

00:00:00.000 And I got a football scholarship that basically changed the course of my life.

00:00:04.000 Took me out of that one-bedroom apartment in the hood, put me on a college campus, and started my career as a journalist.

00:00:19.000 So here we are.

00:00:19.000 It's the Sunday special.

00:00:20.000 My special guest today is Jason Whitlock.

00:00:22.000 He is the host of Fox Sports 1's Speak for Yourself.

00:00:25.000 And we have a lot to get to today.

00:00:27.000 Obviously, sports has been in the news in a major way, and Jason's a really unique thinker.

00:00:30.000 We're going to talk to him for the full hour, as Larry King would put it.

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00:01:47.000 Alrighty, so Jason Whitlock, thanks so much for coming in.

00:01:50.000 I really appreciate it.

00:01:51.000 It's an honor to be here.

00:01:52.000 Really appreciate it.

00:01:53.000 It's a pleasure to see you. 0.96

00:01:53.000 So, Jason, for folks who don't know and who are listening, Jason, I'm just going to get this right out, you're black. 0.96

00:01:58.000 So if you're listening and you couldn't tell, Jason is a black man.

00:02:01.000 And that means that because he does not subscribe to the sort of leftist party platform on a bunch of issues that we're going to be talking about, Jason is the preeminent sports journalist among Uncle Tom.

00:02:10.000 Is that the language they typically use about you?

00:02:13.000 That would be accurate over Twitter and social media.

00:02:15.000 I don't know if my mom and family would agree with that.

00:02:17.000 So let's get into it.

00:02:18.000 Let's start there.

00:02:19.000 Let's start with, you know, what your upbringing is, and then we'll get into politics and sports, because obviously that intersection is becoming incredibly, incredibly popular and powerful right now.

00:02:28.000 So where do you come from?

00:02:29.000 What's your background?

00:02:30.000 I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana.

00:02:34.000 My parents, my dad was a high school dropout, joined the army, came back and became an entrepreneur in the inner city.

00:02:43.000 My mom, high school graduate, factory worker. 0.87

00:02:49.000 They divorced when I was young, four or five years old.

00:02:52.000 I have an older brother.

00:02:53.000 And so me and my brother moved.

00:02:58.000 We lived with my mom initially.

00:03:01.000 Start out in the hood.

00:03:04.000 My mom, our apartment gets broken into when me and my brother on a weekend trip visiting with my dad and his new wife.

00:03:13.000 And my mom didn't tell us at the time, but she was at home when someone broke into our apartment.

00:03:19.000 I don't 0.93

00:03:37.000 Because of her job transfer to Kansas City, Missouri, I move in with my dad, and at this time, my dad is flat on his butt.

00:03:45.000 Me and my dad lived in a 400-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment my senior year of high school.

00:03:51.000 I stayed in there because I was an excellent high school football player, and I got a football scholarship that basically changed the course of my life.

00:03:59.000 Took me out of that one-bedroom apartment in the hood, put me on a college campus, and started my career as a journalist.

00:04:06.000 So how did that work?

00:04:07.000 Which college did you go to and how did you actually get into the sports journalism side of things as opposed to just playing?

00:04:12.000 Ball State University was where I got the football scholarship, about an hour north of Indianapolis.

00:04:18.000 The journalism thing came because when I was a kid, my dad's a huge newspaper reader and huge pacer fan.

00:04:27.000 I was a huge pacer fan, and so I started following the pacers in the newspaper every day.

00:04:32.000 And one day, I ran across a column from Mike Royko outside of the sports section.

00:04:38.000 And I instantly fell in love with Mike Royko.

00:04:42.000 And so that started my passion for newspaper beyond just the sports section.

00:04:49.000 And so when I get to college, originally, I'm signed up to be an accounting major.

00:04:53.000 I get in a math class and say, accounting's not for me.

00:04:58.000 And a friend said, Jason, you read the newspaper every day.

00:05:01.000 You should be a journalist.

00:05:03.000 And my mind immediately went, oh man, I want to be like Mike.

00:05:06.000 And not Jordan, but I want to be like Mike Royko.

00:05:10.000 And ever since then, that was my passion.

00:05:12.000 I switched my major to journalism and I wanted to be the Mike Royko of sports.

00:05:16.000 That's amazing.

00:05:17.000 So how did you get your first job?

00:05:19.000 Where did you go from there?

00:05:21.000 Interesting.

00:05:23.000 I played football at Ball State, and I socialized at Ball State, and I occasionally studied to be the next Mike Royko.

00:05:31.000 So I wasn't really qualified for a full-time job when I graduated from Ball State.

00:05:36.000 I played football.

00:05:37.000 I hadn't done internships like kids did during my era.

00:05:40.000 And so I got a part-time job in Bloomington, Indiana, at $5 an hour, covering high school sports in Bloomington, Indiana, where Indiana University is.

00:05:50.000 And I tell young people this, one of the reasons I was able to take that job at $5 an hour is because I had no responsibility.

00:05:59.000 I didn't have a kid.

00:06:00.000 I wasn't married.

00:06:01.000 There was no responsibility I had, so I could start at the very bottom for very little money.

00:06:07.000 I lived in a one-room efficiency.

00:06:10.000 And I just worked really, really hard from there to move up.

00:06:14.000 And I ended up, I did that for a year.

00:06:17.000 Then I got a job at the Charlotte Observer covering high school sports.

00:06:20.000 And I think I got that job for $403 a week.

00:06:24.000 Again, not a lot of money, but I was passionate.

00:06:26.000 Did that for about 18 months.

00:06:29.000 And then I got a job at the Ann Arbor News in Ann Arbor, Michigan covering the Fab Five basketball team.

00:06:35.000 And that pretty much launched my career.

00:06:38.000 Covered Michigan football and basketball for those two years, and then got a column writing job in 1994 at the Kansas City Star, and that's when I got to start trying to be the Mike Roy Coe of sports.

00:06:50.000 And that's where I first saw you.

00:06:51.000 So I first engaged with your material because I used to get up really early in the morning with my dad on Sunday mornings, and we'd hop in the den, and before any of my sisters were awake, and we'd turn on Sports Reporters on ESPN, and you were a frequent guest on Sports Reporters, one of my favorite guests on Sports Reporters.

00:07:05.000 And there it was that I first saw that you had a different political perspective and a different worldview.

00:07:10.000 So let's talk a little bit about what shaped your worldview, because before we get to what your worldview is and all the ways in which this distinguishes you and why you've taken so much flack for that worldview,

00:07:19.000 What do you think your biggest influences were in terms of worldview?

00:07:21.000 Because you're not really an overtly political guy per se.

00:07:24.000 No, my biggest influences are my grandmother.

00:07:28.000 Mama Lovey was my mom's mom. 0.99

00:07:30.000 She's the greatest human being that's ever existed.

00:07:33.000 She put a religious foundation in me, my brother, my mother, my aunt, everybody.

00:07:41.000 And so I grew up in a little small church in Indianapolis that my mother took us to every Sunday.

00:07:47.000 It was my grandmother's church.

00:07:50.000 So that's probably the most critical piece of what was put in me.

00:07:55.000 And then I would say the second piece is just my parents.

00:07:59.000 In terms of my dad, again, he didn't graduate high school, but he joined the Army after he got in a little bit of trouble.

00:08:09.000 And then when he came back, that's when he got married to my mom and all that.

00:08:13.000 My dad became an entrepreneur because he worked at the Chrysler Motor Company Foundation and he's reading the autobiography of Malcolm X on his lunch break and his supervisor and a couple of coworkers

00:08:27.000 ridiculed and or complained about him reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. And my dad was like, man, I ain't gonna work nowhere where they telling me what I can read.

00:08:35.000 And so he started a barbershop.

00:08:39.000 And then eventually he started a small nightclub, a Black Cheers in the ghetto, because he said, I don't want to work for people.

00:08:45.000 I want to be my own boss.

00:08:47.000 And my dad worked at his bar.

00:08:50.000 Eventually he owned another one called the Masterpiece Lounge.

00:08:53.000 And he worked at that until his death.

00:08:55.000 He built a brand new home in the black community.

00:08:58.000 He carved out happiness for himself here in America.

00:09:04.000 through his own entrepreneurial spirit and what fit his lifestyle.

00:09:08.000 He lived in a black community, he had a business in a black community.

00:09:11.000 His existence was black and relatively happy here in America.

00:09:15.000 My mother, again, factory worker, took a second job to put me and my brother in a safer environment.

00:09:22.000 Went to work every day, one of the most amazing work ethics you'll ever see in any human being, but particularly a woman at that time. 0.99

00:09:30.000 And so,

00:09:32.000 Me and my brother, we just value going to work every day and showing up and being reliable because that's what our parents were.

00:09:40.000 And so those two things and then journalistically just becoming a Mike Royco fan where I read his books and things like that, that kind of shaped my worldview.

00:09:50.000 Mike Royco was not someone that I agreed with.

00:09:56.000 Maybe 50% of the time I agreed with his point of view, but I always thought he was coming from a very honest, real perspective that fit his upbringing.

00:10:05.000 And I just enjoyed it.

00:10:07.000 And so when I moved into journalism, I just kept thinking about Mike Royko, and it's not

00:10:14.000 Whether I agree or disagree with you, are you coming from a real place is what I value the most.

00:10:18.000 Are you being authentic to your upbringing?

00:10:21.000 And so I just think those three things are probably, because right now to this day, I can't tell you what Michael Royco was politically.

00:10:31.000 I don't know.

00:10:32.000 I truly don't know.

00:10:33.000 He's a Democrat, yeah.

00:10:35.000 I know he was very critical of Mayor Daley and the political machine there in Chicago, but I don't know who he voted for. 0.85

00:10:44.000 Maybe I'm an idiot, but I read a lot of his columns, I own a lot of his books, but I don't know. 0.77

00:10:51.000 For me, I think where we'll probably go next is I'm kind of apolitical. 0.98

00:10:55.000 I don't like politics.

00:10:57.000 I've never voted.

00:10:58.000 Troubles my parents.

00:11:00.000 Troubles everybody that knows me.

00:11:01.000 But I just can't stand politics, and I'm skeptical of politicians, their authenticity.

00:11:07.000 But also, just as a journalist, I recognized early on, I don't want anybody to judge me based on my politics.

00:11:15.000 And so I stay out of it for the most part.

00:11:19.000 And so that's why I've never voted.

00:11:24.000 And I also think that if you're listening, if you're tying all the pieces together, I just have a working class point of view.

00:11:31.000 I think there's a lot of people that get involved in the media and think and try to pretend like

00:11:40.000 They're representing the point of view of the underclass, or the lower class, or the working class, and they're really just representing the views of the elite. 0.52

00:11:53.000 So many, and this particularly I think is acute with black journalists, so many of them actually come from the upper class. 0.80

00:12:03.000 That they don't really know how to represent people from the lower class or from the ghetto or the disadvantaged.

00:12:12.000 They don't know how, and so what they're really representing are elitist views and what works for black people of privilege. 0.83

00:12:19.000 And my values all come from a very working class.

00:12:23.000 My father's bar was just working class people.

00:12:27.000 Obviously, my parents, working class people.

00:12:31.000 My grandmother, you know, worked at RCA, just a working class person.

00:12:35.000 So that's what shaped my views.

00:12:37.000 And that ethic of personal responsibility seems to be the one kind of uniting moral value that you tend to espouse, and that brings you into conflict with a lot of the politics that have been infused in sports.

00:12:47.000 I want to jump into that a little bit.

00:12:48.000 Let me stop because I left off a big one.

00:12:51.000 A very big one.

00:12:52.000 Football has shaped my values.

00:12:55.000 And sports have shaped my values.

00:12:58.000 And if you understand anything that's preached in sports, in any team environment, if there's a problem on the team, don't look outside the locker room.

00:13:07.000 Every coach preaches this.

00:13:09.000 We must fix our problems right here within this locker room.

00:13:12.000 Don't blame the refs. 0.96

00:13:14.000 Don't blame fans for not showing up.

00:13:16.000 Don't blame the other team.

00:13:19.000 They cheated or whatever.

00:13:20.000 No, no, no, no, no.

00:13:21.000 Right here, we're going to fix our problems right here.

00:13:24.000 And I just believe in that.

00:13:25.000 So in the last couple of years, that perspective has come back to both make you more prominent and also bite you in the sense that Colin Kaepernick obviously made big headlines with his kneeling on the sidelines routine during the national anthem.

00:13:38.000 And this obviously has become a cause celeb now for a lot of folks on the political left.

00:13:41.000 And obviously, President Trump likes to talk about it a lot.

00:13:44.000 And it's become this very divisive issue.

00:13:45.000 You took the perspective that Kaepernick shouldn't be doing that.

00:13:48.000 And why do you think that is?

00:13:50.000 Because it seems like there are a few different aspects to that.

00:13:52.000 There's the police brutality aspect.

00:13:53.000 There's the national anthem aspect.

00:13:55.000 Where is that coming from?

00:13:56.000 Well, I'll just, and I don't want to denigrate Colin Kaepernick, but he didn't come from where I came from.

00:14:03.000 And he was adopted by a white suburban family.

00:14:07.000 He is of mixed race.

00:14:10.000 I'm not denigrating any of that.

00:14:11.000 I just, it just fits into my point of view that he comes from a privileged background, whether he acknowledges it or not.

00:14:21.000 And his worldview is privileged, and he thinks he's helping disadvantaged and or poor black people with what he's doing, and he's actually not.

00:14:34.000 He created a conversation about the national anthem.

00:14:39.000 Because nothing he did was strategic.

00:14:42.000 Again, he thinks you can affect change with emotion or with some symbolic act that's not well thought out.

00:14:51.000 He doesn't understand that Martin Luther King and the people of the Civil Rights Movement

00:14:55.000 That was a very strategic, executed plan.

00:15:00.000 Rosa Parks wasn't the first person to not give up her seat on the bus.

00:15:04.000 Another woman who had an illegitimate child did it first, but they understood that didn't work well politically, so let's have Rosa do it. 1.00

00:15:14.000 And that will start the bus strike.

00:15:17.000 So I just think Kaepernick has done something that's unplanned.

00:15:21.000 He started a conversation about the National Anthem, not about the issues he's saying he's trying to address.

00:15:27.000 And I think it's because he just doesn't know what he doesn't know.

00:15:31.000 And I see social media feeding his lack of knowledge.

00:15:37.000 And anybody that tries to step in and say, hey, Colin, you're making a mistake here.

00:15:42.000 Colin, there's a better way.

00:15:44.000 If you want to address these issues, there's a better way.

00:15:47.000 Anybody that does that gets shouted down as an Uncle Tom or a coon or someone who doesn't have the interest of black people, when actually we're just trying to say, hey, Kaepernick, what you've done

00:15:59.000 Yes.

00:16:19.000 Who raises a hand and says, well, hold on, Colin, and your supporters, I've actually had a very close relative killed by police brutality.

00:16:30.000 May 2012, Anton Butler, cousin that I helped raise, I paid for his funeral, I shed real tears, killed in Indianapolis.

00:16:42.000 I understand how this happens, and it's not really about police brutality, because they don't understand that America is a capitalistic society.

00:16:54.000 There's no money to be made through police brutality.

00:16:57.000 That costs the government money.

00:17:00.000 Lots of money.

00:17:00.000 There's always a settlement with the family.

00:17:02.000 Millions of dollars.

00:17:03.000 The government is already very motivated to stop police brutality because it's not cost-effective.

00:17:11.000 Mass incarceration is actually a money-making industry.

00:17:15.000 And so what I've tried to explain to black people was like, let's say you want to go conspiratorial. 1.00

00:17:20.000 What the government or business interests actually have is interest in people being politely escorted to prison so they can make money.

00:17:28.000 You know, they got beds to fill and cells and the private penitentiary.

00:17:33.000 They don't need dead people.

00:17:35.000 There's no money to be made. 0.98

00:17:36.000 That's a money loser.

00:17:37.000 And so your argument falls apart.

00:17:40.000 And so if you really understand what makes poor people or anybody vulnerable to the police,

00:17:46.000 It's the mass incarceration issue, but it's also just a society with as many guns as we have.

00:17:56.000 This is going to happen.

00:17:57.000 So I want to talk to you about that in just one second, because there's a bunch of issues to unpack.

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00:19:25.000 Okay.

00:19:26.000 Let's talk about various factors that are playing into some of the stuff that Kaepernick is protesting about.

00:19:31.000 The supposed police brutality or disproportionate shootings of black people by the police.

00:19:37.000 I've spoken about this many times.

00:19:39.000 The statistics just do not support the idea that black folks are being disproportionately shot by the police.

00:19:44.000 In fact, Roland Fryer did a study from Harvard University.

00:19:47.000 He found that, in fact, black people were being statistically undershot by the police, if that's the case.

00:19:53.000 In the in the kind of pantheon of issues that are being experienced by the black community in terms of internal violence and conflicts with the police, my suggestion has always been that if you are going to solve these issues, you have to come at it from the perspective of what you as an individual can do.

00:20:06.000 And from where I sit, it looks to me like in any community, black, white or green, single motherhood and criminal decisions are going to be your leading causes of getting in trouble with the police.

00:20:17.000 And one usually leads to the other.

00:20:18.000 You know, single motherhood is disproportionately associated with high rates of crime, high rates of poverty, and people who are not making criminal decisions tend to have very, far less of a chance to have a run-in with the police.

00:20:30.000 And then I want to talk about your perspective on guns.

00:20:31.000 So first I want to get your thoughts on that.

00:20:34.000 I think you could just stop at single motherhood.

00:20:37.000 I don't think you need to go any further than that.

00:20:39.000 Because what I explain to people all the time, the first policeman that a child should deal with, and is supposed to deal with, are his two parents.

00:20:48.000 They're supposed to police their children. 1.00

00:20:52.000 And so, if you find yourself in a culture where there aren't two policemen called mom and dad, and your children are running out unsupervised into America,

00:21:06.000 And now you're, oh, these policemen who didn't sign up to be their parents aren't treating them the way we want them to be treated.

00:21:14.000 Well, the first abuse is the lack of parenting.

00:21:19.000 That's the issue.

00:21:20.000 And so we have a culture as African Americans where single motherhood is

00:21:30.000 It's prevalent.

00:21:30.000 It's 75% of our kids.

00:21:32.000 And a repercussion of that is going to be our kids are unsupervised and we're asking other people who aren't their parents to supervise them.

00:21:42.000 Don't be shocked when there's abuse.

00:21:45.000 And so when I watched the riots in Baltimore and in Ferguson, all I kept thinking about, look at all these young people.

00:21:53.000 Who has time to, one, be out in the streets like this, but where are the parents?

00:21:59.000 And I'm so upset with the media because

00:22:06.000 It's such an obvious issue that has to be addressed.

00:22:11.000 And if we want, as black people, to move forward, and if we want our society to move forward with black people, we have to address this issue.

00:22:21.000 The destruction of the family is causing much of this chaos, and then to your point, 0.88

00:22:30.000 This narrative that the police are just out here indiscriminately killing black men, it's just bogus and BS, Ben.

00:22:38.000 It doesn't factually hold up to statistics. 0.87

00:22:42.000 There are plenty of examples

00:22:45.000 of the police wrongly killing white people that the media never addresses or never touches because it seems to me they want us racially divided and at each other's throats.

00:22:56.000 It drives ratings, it drives emotion, and people tune in to watch.

00:23:02.000 But it's just not even remotely true.

00:23:05.000 I've seen the videos of other races.

00:23:07.000 And so police sometimes act inappropriately.

00:23:12.000 I'm not making any excuses for them.

00:23:15.000 But again, when you're in a society as heavily armed as ours, and so many messages are sent to you about how dangerous it is in these poor communities or whatever,

00:23:29.000 It's going to lead to mistakes happening.

00:23:32.000 And we can't then demonize all police because some have made mistakes, some do have evil hearts and act inappropriately.

00:23:40.000 We can't demonize them all.

00:23:43.000 It's just, it's just wrong.

00:23:44.000 And there's a book by Jane Levy over at the LA Times for a book called Ghetto Side.

00:23:47.000 And her suggestion was that one of the biggest problems that the black community is having in terms of

00:23:52.000 Elevated

00:24:08.000 What we really need at this point is more of a police presence.

00:24:11.000 What you need is a lowering of the crime rate, and then there just won't be as many run-ins with the police.

00:24:15.000 Because virtually every ethnic group in the United States at one point or another has had high crime rates in the United States, and they've had elevated run-ins with the police as a result.

00:24:24.000 The Italian community in the United States in the early 20th century is a great example of this, where they had elevated crime rates to the point where there were protests about why Italian people were constantly being portrayed as criminals on television and all of this.

00:24:36.000 Crime rates went down.

00:24:36.000 Same thing was true of the Irish and the Germans.

00:24:38.000 It was true early on of the Jews even. 0.88

00:24:40.000 And then the crime rates went down and then the run-ins with the police stopped.

00:24:43.000 So the real question, I guess, is why do you think it is that people who are prominent in culture and in the black community have not taken more of a perspective just saying, okay, well, let's get our own house in order and then we can talk about

00:24:56.000 I blame the media for

00:25:12.000 not allowing people on with common sense to give them a platform.

00:25:19.000 And it's just like we're irresponsible.

00:25:22.000 I get that.

00:25:24.000 And I have mixed feelings about Al Sharpton.

00:25:26.000 I've been critical of Al Sharpton in the past.

00:25:29.000 And much of that criticism stands the test of time.

00:25:32.000 I don't back away from any of it.

00:25:35.000 But I have some modicum of respect for Al Sharpton.

00:25:39.000 But I think it's wrong that we've given him this elevated platform on television and treat him as the spokesman for black America.

00:25:48.000 I just don't think he's earned that.

00:25:50.000 And I think he shot his credibility with Tawana Brawley and other things that a responsible media would say.

00:25:58.000 You know what?

00:25:59.000 We'll have to find a different voice than Al Sharpton.

00:26:01.000 And so, I think the same thing with Atanahisi Coates, is we've anointed him as the spokesman for Black America, and he keeps singing the same note over and over and over again, Black people, anything that happens to you, you're not responsible for.

00:26:19.000 There's these magical white people that are in control of your lives. 1.00

00:26:23.000 And basically, Ta-Nehisi Coates, if you understand his point of view, he's basically arguing white people are God.

00:26:32.000 We should worship them and get on our knees and beg and pray for them to come save us.

00:26:38.000 I just don't believe in that.

00:26:41.000 And most rational people, I don't think, believe in that.

00:26:44.000 You have to take ownership of your own destiny and life.

00:26:49.000 And America has a track record that if you're willing to do that,

00:26:54.000 You'll find some success here.

00:26:56.000 There's just too many examples of it.

00:27:00.000 And I'm not talking about, and I don't want to elevate, but I'm not talking about on my level.

00:27:04.000 I'm just looking at my father, who didn't graduate from high school, who went to the army,

00:27:10.000 Who started a couple of small businesses and managed to take care of himself and find happiness here in America with his friends.

00:27:20.000 His father was married two or three different times.

00:27:22.000 Good looking guy.

00:27:23.000 He had a good life.

00:27:24.000 He enjoyed his life.

00:27:26.000 You can do that here in America, and we're telling people just the opposite, and it's just wrong.

00:27:33.000 So let's talk about the infusion of politics into sports, because you start off as a sports columnist, like writing about sports, and yet now, a lot of your fame, a lot of your notoriety is based around your political viewpoint, because so much of sports has now been infused with politics.

00:27:45.000 Has that changed over time?

00:27:46.000 Maybe I'm too young to remember it, but it seems like when I was a kid, there wasn't quite as much of it as there is now, this kind of complete merger of politics and sports.

00:27:53.000 I think, Ben, if you were young, and so when you say, like, oh, I enjoyed you on the Sports Report, and I followed your work at the Kansas City Star, I don't know if you actually remember, I was already delving into these issues when I was in Kansas City and lacing a lot of my conversation using sports to talk about the rest of society, and that's probably what captured your attention.

00:28:19.000 To me, what has happened is the left has had a well-orchestrated plan to change sports culture.

00:28:28.000 And it's just all coming to fruition and becoming obvious now, because I think the left figured out that, like, sports plays a very critical role in American society.

00:28:38.000 You go back and understand, Jackie Robinson in 1947 was a head of the Civil Rights Movement and actually inspired the Civil Rights Movement.

00:28:47.000 Jesse Owens was the first black man to be celebrated as a national hero in America.

00:28:54.000 When he goes to Berlin and wins, he's the first time America was like, hey, a black man.

00:28:59.000 At Joe Louis and Dr. Mellon.

00:29:00.000 Yes.

00:29:01.000 And so those are critical moments that open doors for black people.

00:29:08.000 And I think the left

00:29:10.000 Coming off of the Muhammad Ali era started putting pieces in place Well, we have if we can influence sports culture and move it left We can move the rest of society to the left and that's what I think we're seeing right now coming to full fruition a lot of people a lot of sports writers and other people have this strong left-wing point of view and Want to turn everything into a racial issue 0.83

00:29:39.000 And I'm watching them right now try to tear down the NFL.

00:29:43.000 Because the NFL...

00:29:46.000 is the biggest representation for the left of toxic masculinity. 0.58

00:29:51.000 Nothing could be more toxically masculine than football.

00:29:54.000 And that's why they're trying to tear it down. 0.97

00:29:56.000 And Colin Kaepernick is just a Trojan horse, a pawn that they're using to bait black athletes and black sports fans into having a problem with the NFL. 0.96

00:30:09.000 They're painting the NFL 0.71

00:30:11.000 As this racist institution, and I'm sitting there going, oh my, there's no institution that has created more black millionaires than the NFL. 0.98

00:30:23.000 And we think it's racist. 0.80

00:30:26.000 And we think it's evil.

00:30:28.000 And then just remove the NFL, just football.

00:30:31.000 Again, I'm from a one-bedroom, 400-square-foot apartment, me and my dad, and football came and took me out of that and put me on a college campus.

00:30:39.000 They do this for black kids all over the country, whether it's Division II, Division I, whatever.

00:30:45.000 And we're attacking football and acting like football is this racist institution.

00:30:50.000 And before this show, I asked these guys I was talking to out in the lobby, I was like, does Hollywood come to the ghetto and get Jason Whitlock?

00:30:59.000 Oh, we want you to be the star of a television show.

00:31:02.000 Let me get you at 18 and move you to this theater school. 0.99

00:31:07.000 That's not what they do.

00:31:08.000 They pick from the elite.

00:31:10.000 And so, as black people, I'm just begging us to understand, what are we doing here?

00:31:15.000 Are we really analyzing the institutions that have been beneficial to us and actually helped the poor?

00:31:22.000 Or are we caught up in some emotional play and being tricked and hoodwinked into attacking the very things that have been beneficial to us?

00:31:31.000 So in just a second, I want to talk about the hijacking of ESPN and Sports Illustrated and so much of other sports media for this particular point of view.

00:31:37.000 First, I need to say thank you to our sponsors over at Indochino.

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00:31:43.000 But even Jason Whitlock would look great in an Indochino suit.

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00:32:45.000 Okay, so Jason, let's talk about

00:32:48.000 The sports media and exactly how it is that they've been facilitating the infiltration of politics into sports.

00:32:55.000 So when I was growing up, I subscribed to Sports Illustrated from basically the time I was 12 to maybe the time I was 27.

00:33:01.000 So 15 years of my life.

00:33:02.000 And every morning I'd wake up and I'd run into the den to watch SportsCenter because this was the communal space.

00:33:08.000 This was the thing you could talk about with anybody at the water cooler.

00:33:11.000 You may not agree on politics, you may not agree on church, you may not agree on life, but you can at least talk about what happened in the basketball game last night.

00:33:17.000 And now I flip on ESPN, and from soup to nuts, the entire thing is MSNBC with footballs.

00:33:22.000 It is just wild left-wing perspectives over and over and over.

00:33:25.000 Anybody who attempts to buck those left-wing perspectives, if you're Chris Broussard, you're immediately outed and thrown out of town.

00:33:33.000 If you're you, then you're called an Uncle Tom by a lot of other folks.

00:33:36.000 If you're somebody who works at ESPN,

00:33:38.000 Even representing mildly right-wing perspective, this is considered absolutely outrageous and out of bounds.

00:33:44.000 I remember I cancelled my Sports Illustrated subscription when they finally put Caitlyn Jenner on the cover, and I thought to myself, listen, Caitlyn Jenner is, you know, a sentient human being, can do whatever Caitlyn Jenner wants to do with his life, and I believe Caitlyn Jenner's a man because biologically he's a man, but

00:33:57.000 Caitlyn Jenner was last athletically relevant when I was not born. 0.71

00:34:00.000 I was born in 1984.

00:34:01.000 Caitlyn Jenner was not athletically relevant when I was born.

00:34:03.000 And now I've got Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of a sports magazine having nothing to do with sports, but just about Caitlyn Jenner.

00:34:09.000 I feel like I'm being programmed here.

00:34:10.000 I feel like there's an attempt to take the things I love and then infuse them with a certain level of messaging with which I radically disagree.

00:34:18.000 Number one, do you think that's true?

00:34:19.000 And number two, why do you think that sports media have been so eager to go along with all of this when it seemed like their boom era is when they were actually focusing on sports, not when they were focusing as much on politics?

00:34:30.000 I don't know if they were eagerly doing this.

00:34:35.000 They've been bullied.

00:34:36.000 And this is why I say this is an orchestrated strategic plan to move sports to the left.

00:34:43.000 I wrote in the Wall Street Journal a couple years ago, a year and a half ago, about Deadspin and Gawker.

00:34:51.000 And they're just bullies.

00:34:53.000 We're good to go.

00:35:13.000 And so there became such a pervasive fear of deadspin, of deadspin criticizing some ESPN decision.

00:35:22.000 And John Skipper, who was the president at that time, and the executives under him, they had these rabbit ears, and their skin was so thin, and they were so tired of the abuse,

00:35:33.000 That they started catering their decision and their point of view to please Deadspin.

00:35:40.000 It sounds crazy that a little blog could have that much power.

00:35:44.000 But I watched it in real time.

00:35:46.000 I worked at ESPN two separate times.

00:35:49.000 The first year, a guy named George Bodenheimer and Mark Shapiro were in charge.

00:35:54.000 And then the second time, John Skipper was in charge.

00:35:57.000 And they're like two different eras.

00:35:59.000 One was, I think, from

00:36:01.000 You know, 2002 maybe to 2007.

00:36:06.000 And in that era, you were allowed to be free-thinking and have whatever point of view you wanted.

00:36:12.000 And then Deadspin came in and executed this 10-year attack on ESPN.

00:36:17.000 And voila, we have what we have now.

00:36:19.000 It's why Curt Schilling gets fired, because they don't want to deal with the attack from Deadspin and the attack from social media and Twitter.

00:36:28.000 And so they've

00:36:30.000 The entire media though, Ben, this isn't just an ESPN thing.

00:36:34.000 I've been trying to explain to people that

00:36:38.000 The cultural and moral center of America, to me, used to be New York, you could argue.

00:36:47.000 And certainly, journalistically, that was the center, New York.

00:36:51.000 It's now San Francisco, because of the social media companies and the tech industry.

00:36:57.000 Everything now is catered, how's it going to land on social media?

00:37:02.000 How's Facebook going to respond?

00:37:03.000 How's Twitter going to respond?

00:37:05.000 How's Google going to respond?

00:37:07.000 And so all of America is being reprogrammed to San Francisco values.

00:37:13.000 These are Silicon Valley based companies with Northern California values that are being imposed on the rest of America.

00:37:22.000 And so the media used to have a liberal, traditional liberal slant out of New York.

00:37:29.000 Now it has a very radicalized, extreme, liberal slant coming out of San Francisco and Northern California.

00:37:38.000 And so ESPN has just been swept up in all of that, from the attacks of Gawker to everybody being interested in clickbait and how things land.

00:37:50.000 Without Twitter, Black Lives Matter couldn't exist.

00:37:55.000 It couldn't exist.

00:37:56.000 No one would buy that narrative.

00:37:59.000 Because, again, the stats speak for themselves.

00:38:01.000 Let's say 700 people get killed by the police this year.

00:38:04.000 I think, statistically, 400 or 500 of them are going to be white people. 0.97

00:38:09.000 200 or 300 of them are going to be black people.

00:38:12.000 I don't know if my math is right. 0.98

00:38:14.000 Unarmed black people killed by the police last year was under 20.

00:38:17.000 Yes.

00:38:20.000 Only on Twitter could that false narrative exist.

00:38:26.000 And it's because if you say something really extreme and left-wing, and say, oh, the police force, the whole thing's just racism, that'll get retweeted and liked.

00:38:38.000 And share it all over social Twitter and social media.

00:38:42.000 And the media is addicted to that.

00:38:44.000 Going viral became the biggest thing in the world.

00:38:47.000 And the easiest way to go viral is to say something very radicalized and left-wing.

00:38:53.000 Be Lina Dunham. 0.99

00:38:55.000 On Twitter, and you're sure to get five million Twitter followers.

00:38:58.000 So how do you think the sports media pull out of this?

00:39:00.000 Or do they pull out of this?

00:39:01.000 Because right now everybody's cutting the cord on ESPN.

00:39:04.000 ESPN is just nosediving.

00:39:06.000 I mean, they've had a serious problem with people not watching their stuff anymore.

00:39:09.000 And it seems like they're doubling down on the worst strategy humanly possible, which is to add just more extraordinarily polarizing content with nobody to even counter the other side.

00:39:19.000 Mike did cut.

00:39:20.000 No, they just rehired Keith Olbermann.

00:39:34.000 I think the market is starting to speak, and I think that their brand has been damaged, because if you understand who sports fans are, they tend to lean a bit more conservative.

00:39:50.000 And so they've irritated the largest segment of the... And so, let's say you're a sports fan, but you're not really political.

00:39:59.000 But if you understand the values taught in sports, they're not political, but they are conservative, the values taught in sports.

00:40:07.000 Again, I go back to what I said earlier.

00:40:10.000 We fix the problems from inside this locker room.

00:40:13.000 We don't blame outsiders.

00:40:15.000 You know, it's a pull yourself up by the bootstraps

00:40:18.000 It's also a meritocracy.

00:40:19.000 You're not getting on the field if you can't play.

00:40:21.000 Yes.

00:40:22.000 And so I think even if you're not political, you're kind of like, well, hold on.

00:40:27.000 Where's all this victimhood coming from?

00:40:29.000 LeBron James is now on TV and at press conferences saying, oh my God. 0.93

00:40:38.000 And I do want to mock it because it was silly.

00:40:41.000 LeBron James on TV, he compared someone allegedly riding on a gate of his $20 million mansion in Brentwood, someone allegedly rode on his garage gate, the N-word.

00:40:56.000 And he analogized that to Emmett Till and Emmett Till's mother sharing the pain of Emmett Till being lynched and assassinated.

00:41:05.000 He analogized that to him having the N-word written on his $20 million mansion out here in Brentwood when he's living at the time in Akron.

00:41:13.000 So a home that he's not in allegedly has the N-word written on it.

00:41:17.000 We never see a picture of it.

00:41:20.000 He says it was on there in the morning, then his staff cleaned it up.

00:41:25.000 He never saw it.

00:41:26.000 His kids weren't there.

00:41:27.000 There was no danger.

00:41:29.000 He analogized it to Emmett Till.

00:41:31.000 And so I'm just a sports fan.

00:41:33.000 People with common sense are like,

00:41:36.000 How?

00:41:37.000 You're living one of the greatest, wealthiest, privileged lives in the history of America.

00:41:44.000 You gotta put him in the top 1,000, I think.

00:41:47.000 I mean, he's worth about a half billion.

00:41:51.000 He's celebrated all over the planet.

00:41:53.000 Anywhere he goes, they rush him in to get seated and gets preferential treatment.

00:41:59.000 And he's on TV.

00:42:01.000 Yeah, if it could happen to me, if someone could write the N-word on my—it could happen.

00:42:05.000 It just doesn't ring true.

00:42:07.000 And I think most sports fans are like, this is bad.

00:42:11.000 Now LeBron James is a victim?

00:42:13.000 So here's one of my theories about what ESPN is doing.

00:42:15.000 So I wrote about this in terms of demographics.

00:42:18.000 So as you say, the sports fan seems to be

00:42:20.000 Slightly to the right because it's a more male audience than female audience for sports. 0.98

00:42:24.000 And so if you were to take a broad demographic of males versus females, males versus females tend to be more right wing just as a general rule.

00:42:30.000 But the way that they're programming on channels like ESPN is they are basically not covering baseball at all.

00:42:35.000 They cut baseball tonight.

00:42:36.000 They're not programming hockey virtually at all.

00:42:38.000 They program a lot of the NFL and a lot of the NBA.

00:42:40.000 And the reason for that, I think, is because when you look at the studies, what the studies tend to show is that minority audiences are spending more hours a day watching

00:42:50.000 ESPN.

00:42:50.000 And they also happen to like basketball more than they like baseball or more than they like hockey.

00:42:54.000 And so it's as though ESPN has decided to instead of broadcasting and go for the broadest possible audience, they've decided to narrow cast and double down on a certain segment of the audience that they are going to.

00:43:04.000 And once you do that, it's sort of a vicious circle in the sense that you have to cater politically to the audience that you've already brought to the party.

00:43:11.000 So you've already said to a lot of white folks who like hockey and baseball, we're not interested in catering to you. 0.78

00:43:15.000 You don't watch as much TV.

00:43:17.000 I think you're right.

00:43:17.000 The only place I would push back is

00:43:36.000 I think black people are being programmed and pushed farther and farther to the left. 1.00

00:43:43.000 If you understand anything about the history of African Americans in this country, we have been the most religious people in the country. 0.92

00:43:54.000 Our values are naturally conservative, the things that we believe in.

00:43:59.000 We're not pro-abortion. 0.82

00:44:02.000 But we have been pushed by the media farther left than our values say we should go.

00:44:11.000 We've chosen politics over our belief in God.

00:44:14.000 I talk with my mother about this all the time.

00:44:18.000 She is, and again, I'm a non-voter.

00:44:20.000 My mother's worked for the Democratic Party, loves Barack Obama, probably give me up for adoption to be Barack's mother.

00:44:28.000 And I say to her all the time, I was like, where's the God?

00:44:32.000 I ask all the time.

00:44:33.000 These policies and things, where's the God in any of this?

00:44:36.000 This is what Mama Lovey, your mama, this is what we stand on.

00:44:42.000 The Democratic Party has become so secular, and the left movement has become so secular, and where they're pushing blacks away from religion and against all the values we were brought up with. 0.64

00:44:55.000 How does this stand to the test of time?

00:44:58.000 When you're going to, because I pay for her to go to these Bible studies, she likes to go to it all.

00:45:01.000 She's a very religious person.

00:45:03.000 How does any of this jibe with what you're learning and all this other stuff?

00:45:08.000 And so, I think

00:45:11.000 They are, I think you're right, they are catering to the basketball and football crowd.

00:45:15.000 They are catering to a people of color crowd.

00:45:19.000 But I also think they're pushing a political point of view on them as well.

00:45:25.000 Because when I look at the Colin Kaepernick thing, they have billions of dollars invested in the NFL.

00:45:34.000 And as a company, you're supporting this Kaepernick thing that's sowing all this bad blood towards the NFL?

00:45:42.000 That's not good business.

00:45:44.000 That's pushing a political ideology down the throats of your viewers, and it's just wrong.

00:45:51.000 So I want to talk to you in a second about the White House and its controversy with the Philadelphia Eagles and all of this.

00:45:56.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at MVMT.

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00:46:33.000 And movement figured out that by selling online, they could actually cut out the middleman and save you a bunch of money, providing the best possible price.

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00:47:34.000 And it seems like, to your not liking politics point, I'm not sure I've ever disliked politics quite as much as I do when I see situations like this, because it seems like if people don't want to show up to the White House, that's their prerogative.

00:47:47.000 Tim Thomas didn't want to show up when Barack Obama was president.

00:47:49.000 I didn't think that was a big deal.

00:47:51.000 And by the same token, President Trump implying that every member who didn't want to show up didn't like the national anthem seemed like that was just not true.

00:47:59.000 What was your take on the whole kind of blow up?

00:48:02.000 I think that as black people, we're way too caught up in Trump.

00:48:10.000 I think that, you know, I spoke at my church I grew up in, my mom's church, my grandmom's church, Mother's Day weekend, I went home, and my message to the congregation was, who are we worshiping, Trump or God?

00:48:26.000 And if you wake up in the morning and turn on MSNBC or CNN to monitor what Trump did last night or this morning, and then you go to bed thinking about or watching TV monitoring Trump, how much time are you spending monitoring God versus Trump?

00:48:45.000 And is Trump your God?

00:48:47.000 Because if all your conversations are, Trump did this or Trump did that, and I, because I'm questioning my mother, I was like, Mom, I've been here four days.

00:48:56.000 Every time you get on the phone, you're talking about Trump.

00:48:59.000 I go, your focus is on Trump.

00:49:02.000 And I'm just like, I think this is inappropriate.

00:49:05.000 Let's focus on God and the good things that are happening.

00:49:08.000 Mama, you're living in a condo that's paid for, a house that I bought.

00:49:12.000 You're living a life that your mother would have dreamed of living in her golden years.

00:49:17.000 You're living it.

00:49:18.000 How can you be focused on so much negativity?

00:49:21.000 How can your conversation be so negative when things are going so good and God has blessed you so well?

00:49:27.000 And so, I look at the football players and I see an emotional response to Trump.

00:49:34.000 Trump is an entertainer. 1.00

00:49:38.000 A goofball. 0.96

00:49:53.000 The NFL has provided them an opportunity to make great wealth, help themselves, help their families. 0.95

00:50:00.000 You have a short window to make this money.

00:50:03.000 Don't let Trump talk you into doing things that are hurting your game, that is irritating a good percentage of your fan base.

00:50:12.000 The national anthem, bickering with the president, these guys

00:50:19.000 They're out of their element trying to carry on a debate with the president.

00:50:25.000 And that's not me trying to belittle them, but they have a short window to make a lot of money that they can use to support the causes that they want to engage in.

00:50:35.000 And so I say to him all the time, or try to say to him, I was like, make the money, take the money and support the cause you want.

00:50:42.000 Don't get caught up in a bickering with President Trump.

00:50:45.000 That's what he does.

00:50:47.000 All the time.

00:50:48.000 He loves it.

00:50:50.000 You're playing into his hands.

00:50:52.000 Don't be emotional, be logical.

00:50:55.000 And think about what works for you in the long run.

00:50:59.000 And so,

00:51:00.000 And then, you're Malcolm Jenkins, the safety for the Philadelphia Eagles, and you seem to be really involved in this movement and have more substantive thoughts.

00:51:10.000 If that's the case, I'd never back away from a chance to engage with someone I disagree with.

00:51:17.000 And if you have access to the president, regardless of who he is, I would have went to the White House and engaged with this man and disagreed with him.

00:51:26.000 is for lack of a better word as it relates to athletes, he's a bit of a groupie.

00:51:30.000 He loves them.

00:51:31.000 He would have engaged with them and debated.

00:51:33.000 That's Kim Kardashian comes in and gets someone released from prison.

00:51:37.000 He loves it!

00:51:38.000 This is who, so he had, Malcolm Jenkins, these guys have a chance to go engage with the president and we're so caught up in this resistance movement.

00:51:46.000 I'm like, do we understand history?

00:51:48.000 Do we think Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King

00:51:52.000 Went to the same church and lived in the same neighborhood and socialized in the same circles.

00:51:58.000 Do we not know who Lyndon Johnson was and the language he used?

00:52:03.000 And again, we can write it all.

00:52:05.000 Well, that's how they talked in the 60s.

00:52:07.000 But it was a very racist language.

00:52:09.000 Martin Luther King engaged with people he disagreed with and changed them.

00:52:15.000 And so the message I gave to my mother's church

00:52:19.000 Was, and I keep trying to say, if you think Trump represents hate,

00:52:27.000 You think more hate or hate towards him is going to cure it?

00:52:31.000 Doesn't the Bible teach us?

00:52:33.000 Hasn't life taught us only love can conquer hate?

00:52:37.000 Only love will work in terms of hate plus hate multiplies hate.

00:52:45.000 Love is the only solution.

00:52:47.000 And so we would be better off trying to inject President Trump with love.

00:52:54.000 Rather than hate.

00:52:55.000 And so that would be my message to the Eagles or anybody.

00:52:59.000 If you really understand, you're gonna catch more flies with honey.

00:53:04.000 It's just, it's an improper approach that seems emotional, seems immature, and just is ineffective.

00:53:15.000 So these are all, I mean I agree with a hell of a lot of what you're saying.

00:53:19.000 A lot of people who are on the left obviously don't, a lot of black folks don't agree with what you're saying.

00:53:23.000 How do you deal with the blowback you've gotten over the years?

00:53:25.000 Because you've gotten a tremendous amount of blowback.

00:53:27.000 About a thousand hit pieces on you have been written.

00:53:30.000 These 10,000-word hit pieces about why you're an Uncle Tom and why you don't believe the right way and why you're a sellout and all this.

00:53:36.000 How do you deal with that on a personal level?

00:53:37.000 I just, I go back to Mama Lovey and the church I grew up in.

00:53:42.000 And if God's on your side, I really don't care.

00:53:45.000 And so, I have a great family that loves me and supports me.

00:53:50.000 I have great friends who love and support me.

00:53:54.000 That these random people that don't know me, I really don't care.

00:53:58.000 And I'm not doing anything all that courageous, but I really do believe the things that I was taught in church. 0.86

00:54:09.000 And so I go, if they would kill and crucify Jesus, 0.99

00:54:15.000 10,000 word hippies on me? 1.00

00:54:18.000 I'm getting off easy.

00:54:20.000 And so, it really just rolls off my back.

00:54:45.000 Are you hopeful for the future, or do you think things are going to continue to deteriorate the way things are going right now?

00:54:51.000 I'm hopeful because we've dealt with worse in this country.

00:54:57.000 And I just rely on my faith, for one.

00:55:00.000 But also, I see signs.

00:55:02.000 I think when Kanye West, for whatever we may think about him, when he goes out on that limb and says, hey man, let's think a little more independently, let's not

00:55:15.000 Let's not demonize the president totally.

00:55:17.000 Let's not demonize people totally.

00:55:20.000 Let's think.

00:55:21.000 Let's try to get beyond our surface-level emotions and feelings.

00:55:27.000 I mean, he's a tastemaker, for lack of a better word.

00:55:30.000 I think that my black friends and the people I interact with on a daily basis,

00:55:43.000 I think there's more and more understanding of where I'm coming from, but just also I see more and more understanding of the failure of being wedded to one political ideology.

00:56:02.000 Four years ago.

00:56:03.000 Hey, look, Black Lives Matter is not what you think.

00:56:06.000 You think it's a pro-black movement. 0.95

00:56:07.000 It's not. 0.96

00:56:08.000 It's funded by communists, and it's a disruptor.

00:56:12.000 And I've tried to explain to people, it's just like, Black Lives Matter to me was Trump's running mate.

00:56:19.000 That more than almost anything that I can point to, Black Lives Matter helped Trump get elected.

00:56:25.000 And I try to explain, and people are now starting to get that and understand it.

00:56:31.000 And so, yeah, I am hopeful that there's an awakening because I think, look, if the unemployment rate keeps coming down and just the facts, I'll say this, when President Obama got elected,

00:56:47.000 I had a conservative white female friend who used to make all these dramatic predictions about what was going to happen when president, and I would just be calling BS on all of it.

00:56:58.000 Oh my God, terrorists are going to attack.

00:57:00.000 I was like, are you kidding me?

00:57:03.000 And none of it came true.

00:57:04.000 And a lot of her most biggest fears never came true under president.

00:57:09.000 And I think

00:57:11.000 The same thing's gonna happen with President Trump.

00:57:14.000 That a lot of these biggish, outlandish fears that people have just aren't gonna come true.

00:57:22.000 And that's not me saying that President Trump is going to be a great president.

00:57:28.000 I don't think, you know, I don't think it's healthy to have a reality TV star as the president, and someone who tweets like that.

00:57:38.000 I don't think that's a good thing.

00:57:40.000 But I don't think the worst fears are going to come true, and people are just going to have to deal with the reality.

00:57:47.000 Because, listen, I've tried to, and I don't want to come off, I don't want to,

00:57:52.000 I don't care how it lands.

00:57:53.000 I said to my mother back early on with the Trump thing, and just keeping it a thousand percent real with her, I was like,

00:58:03.000 How is Trump and some of his abrasive, outlandish statements and particularly his sexual impriority, how's that any different than your brother, Uncle John, who we love, I worship?

00:58:17.000 How's he any different?

00:58:18.000 That's the Uncle John.

00:58:20.000 Uncle John and President Trump would have been drinking buddies and out chasing it together, right?

00:58:27.000 So I just can't go there.

00:58:29.000 I just can't.

00:58:30.000 I can't.

00:58:31.000 I know people that 0.86

00:58:34.000 I think the same way as Trump, but they're black. 1.00

00:58:38.000 They're outlandish. 0.99

00:58:39.000 They're over the top. 1.00

00:58:41.000 A lot of things they say are stupid, but they're good people. 0.99

00:58:45.000 And my dad, and God rest his soul, my dad was prejudiced. 1.00

00:58:50.000 He did not like white people.

00:58:52.000 But you know what trumped his bigotry?

00:58:55.000 He wanted to be a good person.

00:58:57.000 So anybody that came into his bar, any person he encountered, he met them with respect.

00:59:09.000 Because awful things happened to my dad along racial lines as a kid that made him very bitter.

00:59:15.000 But I never saw him mistreat anyone.

00:59:17.000 Ever.

00:59:17.000 Because that was more important than whatever bigotry he held within him.

00:59:22.000 And I try to explain to people that I know a lot of people with inappropriate thoughts and ideas.

00:59:31.000 But not all of those, they don't control all their behavior.

00:59:35.000 There's other things they have that may trump their bigotry or whatever.

00:59:40.000 Being a good person, being religious, wanting to be right with God. 0.98

00:59:45.000 can trump a lot of the stupid thoughts we have and that's why when I hear people try to disavow religion or beat up religion or whatever and look the church clearly isn't perfect and has made a lot of mistakes but I've just seen too much and know too much and know when my parents divorced and my mother's single mother in the 70s raising two black boys 0.97

01:00:10.000 I know what God and the church did for her to get her through. 0.98

01:00:14.000 And so, yeah, I'm hopeful.

01:00:17.000 Well, Jason Whitlock, thank you so much for stopping by.

01:00:19.000 It really is a pleasure to have you here.

01:00:21.000 And I'm so glad that we could bring you to our audience, which may not have heard a lot of your stuff.

01:00:24.000 You check Jason Whitlock out over at Fox Sports 1.

01:00:27.000 He's just awesome.

01:00:28.000 Thanks so much for stopping by.

01:00:28.000 I really appreciate it.

01:00:29.000 Thank you, Ben.

01:00:36.000 The Ben Shapiro Show's Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay, Executive Producer Jeremy Boring, Associate Producers Mathis Glover and Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jeswa Alvera, and title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

01:00:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show's Sunday Special is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

01:00:54.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 24, 2018

Jason Whitlock | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 7

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