The Ben Shapiro Show - Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker Bid Keeps Falling Short | Ep. 1639

00:00:00.000 Representative Kevin McCarthy keeps falling short in his bid for House Speaker as the Republican holdouts offer no alternative and Democrats laugh.

00:00:07.000 More Twitter files drop, demonstrating the indirect manipulation of that service by the government and Jordan Peterson falls under the thumb of the Canadian political commissars.

00:00:14.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:15.000 This is the Bench Bureau Show.

00:00:16.000 All righty, well, we are now in the midst of day two of Kevin McCarthy's attempt to become House Speaker.

00:00:27.000 And here's the wonderful thing about politics.

00:00:29.000 If you watch it as a tragedy, it's really sad.

00:00:31.000 But if you watch it as a comedy, it's actually super duper funny.

00:00:34.000 And right now, what is happening?

00:00:36.000 It's funny mainly because the stakes are so low.

00:00:38.000 Let's be real about this.

00:00:40.000 The stakes for the speakership of the House are incredibly low at this point because all the leader of the House basically has to do is say no to most of Joe Biden's proposals.

00:00:48.000 There are certain things that the Speaker of the House, no matter who it is, is not going to do.

00:00:51.000 Those things include an interminable government shutdown with no end.

00:00:54.000 I know that there are some people who think that if you get a conservative enough leader in the Speakership of the House, that person is just never going to sign a check ever again as Speaker of the House.

00:01:02.000 That is not going to happen because that would be political suicide.

00:01:04.000 This has been proven over the course of the last 10 years, repeatedly, overtly, over and over and over again.

00:01:11.000 So that's not going to happen.

00:01:12.000 Then there's the question as to whether Kevin McCarthy is going to surrender more often than another alternative conservative leader.

00:01:17.000 This would posit the presence of another alternative conservative leader.

00:01:21.000 Now, if you could provide me a name, then maybe I'd consider it.

00:01:24.000 Since you can't provide me a name, and since the only viable alternatives have already endorsed Kevin McCarthy, it makes it very difficult to see exactly what the strategy of the people who are holding out on McCarthy is.

00:01:33.000 Now, if they were holding out to gain some sort of procedural Recompense.

00:01:38.000 If they were holding out in order to get some sort of surrender from McCarthy on key issues that matter, that might make sense as well.

00:01:45.000 Last night on his show, for example, Tucker Carlson suggested that Kevin McCarthy should promise to the holdouts that he's going to release all of the material from the January 6th commission.

00:01:53.000 I mean, if that's what they wanted, that'd be totally great.

00:01:53.000 Okay, fine.

00:01:55.000 Sure.

00:01:56.000 I'd love to see the thousands of hours of footage that are being hidden.

00:01:59.000 I would love to see all of the interview context.

00:02:01.000 Why not?

00:02:01.000 Sure.

00:02:02.000 Tucker suggested that, for example, Thomas Massey be given charge of some investigative powers.

00:02:07.000 Okay, sure, why not?

00:02:08.000 But that's not the actual demand.

00:02:09.000 Here is the problem.

00:02:10.000 No one knows what the demands are.

00:02:12.000 I know this because I'm speaking to many congresspeople, like, pretty much every hour now.

00:02:16.000 And what they are saying is that behind closed doors, the people who are making the demands of McCarthy aren't actually making any material demands.

00:02:22.000 They don't even know what they want.

00:02:24.000 What they are enjoying is the spectacle of being at the center of the political conversation, sort of in the same way that the squad on the left side of the aisle enjoys being the spectacle at the center of the political conversation on the left.

00:02:35.000 Well, the problem right now is that all the incentive structures in the Republican Party cut against a cohesive Republican Party because the Republican Party effectively has no power anymore.

00:02:43.000 In a time when political parties had a lot of power over their members, the power to reward and to punish members for sticking with the party or for moving against the party, there are incentive structures in place to ensure a cohesive level Inside the party, this no longer exists.

00:02:57.000 Very often, Congress people are independent enough to basically be running without party.

00:03:02.000 And what that means is that it's going to be very difficult for any coalition to cobble itself together as a majority with this small majority, which is why it really mattered an awful lot in November when Republicans walked away with a very, very small, bare majority, as opposed to walking away with 235 plus seats.

00:03:17.000 There's a lot of attempts by people like Ronna Romney McDaniel, the incompetent head of the RNC, to suggest that there was going to be some sort of Victory for Republicans, because after all, Nancy Pelosi wasn't going to be Speaker of the House.

00:03:28.000 Well, now it seems like there's like half a chance that Hakeem Jeffries could actually be Speaker of the House with a minority in the House.

00:03:34.000 Because here is how this process is currently working.

00:03:36.000 Right now, every single bit of House business is held up because the House Speaker has to be elected.

00:03:40.000 There's been a foregone conclusion for 100 years.

00:03:42.000 For 100 years, there has not been somebody who has been, who's not been elected Speaker of the House on the first ballot.

00:03:49.000 It's been 100 years.

00:03:51.000 So now I guess the idea is that Kevin McCarthy is such a bad man that he can't be the guy who's the Speaker of the House.

00:03:56.000 Instead, we're going to have like multiple ballots.

00:03:57.000 This is going to go on for days or weeks or months with no end in actual sight and no alternative, no viable alternative being put forward.

00:04:05.000 I don't understand the strategy.

00:04:06.000 In any case, the actual way that this process works, you have to get a majority of the members who are currently sitting.

00:04:10.000 What that means is that if you have enough members who abstain, theoretically, you get a majority of the remaining members.

00:04:16.000 You can have a bunch of members vote present, for example, and in doing so remove themselves from the consideration of House Speaker. So right now you need 218 votes out of 435 in order to become House Speaker. If, however, say 100 members decided that they were going to vote present, then you'd need out of 335. So the number would drop pretty dramatically.

00:04:34.000 That is one of the strategies that's being considered right now by some of the Republicans.

00:04:41.000 Apparently McCarthy wants some of the disdaining Republicans to sit out.

00:04:45.000 That is very unlikely.

00:04:46.000 It's very unlikely these 20 Republicans who are voting against McCarthy are going to sit out the election and then sort of passively allow him to become Speaker of the House because what the hell is the point of that?

00:04:56.000 Then there are a couple of other strategies, and these are very risky strategies.

00:04:59.000 So, strategy number one is that you could get the House to vote at the behest of the Republican leadership in favor of changing the rule to elect the Speaker of the House.

00:05:07.000 The way that would happen is instead of being elected by a majority, you could now be elected by a plurality.

00:05:12.000 And now, here is the risk for Republicans.

00:05:14.000 If you could be elected by a plurality, this means that the person who actually won the plurality of the last speakership vote, Hakeem Jeffries, could become Speaker.

00:05:21.000 Because Democrats are unified in support of Hakeem Jeffries.

00:05:24.000 There are 212 votes for Hakeem Jeffries.

00:05:27.000 That's all the Democrats voting in unified fashion for Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House.

00:05:31.000 We'll get to more of the news in just one second.

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00:07:35.000 Yesterday, Kevin McCarthy on the first ballot fell short by 20 of his own party votes.

00:07:41.000 That means out of 222, he got 202.

00:07:44.000 So that means Hakeem Jeffries actually beat Kevin McCarthy in the plurality vote.

00:07:47.000 So if Kevin McCarthy were to basically say, we're changing the rules now by plurality vote, we elect the Speaker of the House.

00:07:53.000 If you'd have to count on 11 Republicans peeling off that 20 and voting in favor of the Republican in order to stop Hakeem Jeffries from becoming Speaker of the House.

00:08:00.000 Now, the problem is some of these Republicans have already said they don't mind if Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker of the House because then they'll just yell at him.

00:08:06.000 And they'll just try to hold up party business because a majority will still be able to vote down whatever Hakeem Jeffries wants.

00:08:11.000 Hakeem Jeffries will be in charge of the committees.

00:08:12.000 But I thought that half the purpose of the Republicans taking over the House of Representatives when they have a minority position in the government, meaning that they don't actually control the Senate or the presidency.

00:08:22.000 I thought that half the purpose was how you staff the committees, the investigative committees, the judiciary committee, and all the way.

00:08:27.000 So you're willing to surrender all that to Hakeem Jeffries because you're pissed at Kevin McCarthy?

00:08:30.000 I don't actually see the strategy here.

00:08:32.000 What is your strategy?

00:08:34.000 Again, you don't have to love Kevin McCarthy in order to ask a very simple question.

00:08:37.000 What is it you are trying to achieve?

00:08:40.000 What is your goal here?

00:08:41.000 I don't feel like this is an irrelevant question.

00:08:43.000 And I understand there are people online who are yelling and screaming.

00:08:45.000 Well, my goal is that I don't like Kevin McCarthy and we need more conservatism and we need we need better.

00:08:50.000 OK, we do need more conservatism.

00:08:51.000 We do need better leadership.

00:08:52.000 Who is it?

00:08:54.000 What's your strategy?

00:08:55.000 See, I can agree with you on many of your goals.

00:08:57.000 And also, I can ask you, what is your strategy?

00:09:00.000 What are you trying to do?

00:09:02.000 What do you seek to accomplish?

00:09:03.000 There are no other candidates who are in the running other than Andy Biggs, who in an internal party poll won 35 votes against Kevin McCarthy's 180 or something.

00:09:13.000 What are you talking about?

00:09:16.000 If there's no strategy, then whatever your goals are really matter very little.

00:09:20.000 It turns out that strategic thinking is the heart of politics.

00:09:23.000 And if you have no strategic thinking, then basically what you're saying is you want to run shouting into a wall over and over again.

00:09:28.000 And the more you run into the wall, the more virtuous you are considered.

00:09:32.000 And I just don't understand it.

00:09:34.000 What concessions are you seeking from McCarthy?

00:09:35.000 He's already attempted to give a bunch of concessions.

00:09:37.000 You could probably pry some more concessions out of him, maybe.

00:09:41.000 But that doesn't even seem like the strategy right now.

00:09:43.000 It just seems the strategy right now is to be very angry about things.

00:09:46.000 And I understand that politics is largely performative now.

00:09:49.000 I understand that the reason that many people go into Congress is because they wish to become famous and because they wish to have a platform for their ideas.

00:09:56.000 And again, I don't even argue with that.

00:09:57.000 You want to go into Congress in order to have a platform for your ideas.

00:09:59.000 You're not there to do the kind of nitty gritty work of the congressperson.

00:10:02.000 The institution used to shape the people inside it.

00:10:05.000 Now people inside the institution use it as a platform.

00:10:07.000 This is the point that Yuval Levin has made, the philosopher from American Enterprise Institute.

00:10:11.000 With all of that said, what are you achieving here?

00:10:15.000 I just failed to understand what exactly it is that you are achieving.

00:10:19.000 So, according to the Wall Street Journal, Kevin McCarthy fell short of winning the House Speaker's gavel in three rounds of voting on Tuesday, leaving the chamber without a leader as a determined block of conservative holdouts refused to relent over longstanding complaints about the direction of the party.

00:10:31.000 Now, here's the problem.

00:10:32.000 What direction of the party?

00:10:33.000 The party has no direction.

00:10:34.000 So what exactly are you, what is the specific complaint?

00:10:39.000 There's some people who have said, for example, that they want Steve Scalise to be put in place.

00:10:43.000 Steve Scalise is marginally more conservative than Kevin McCarthy.

00:10:46.000 I like Steve Scalise.

00:10:46.000 That's fine.

00:10:47.000 Except Steve Scalise ain't running.

00:10:48.000 He don't want the job.

00:10:49.000 By the way, you have to be kind of a nut to want to be Speaker of the House.

00:10:52.000 Let me give you a brief history of the last Republican Speakers of the House.

00:10:56.000 The last Republican Speaker of the House, starting in 1994, When Republicans took over the Congress or Newt Gingrich, he took over in 1994.

00:11:06.000 And then Newt Gingrich, after the 1998 election, he was essentially on his way out after that election because 1998 didn't go the way he wanted.

00:11:14.000 And then he was caught in extramarital affair and all of this.

00:11:16.000 And so Newt Gingrich had to step down.

00:11:18.000 The person who's supposed to succeed him, Bob Livingston, Actually ended up not because he was engaged in an affair of his own.

00:11:24.000 And so he ended up stepping outside of Congress.

00:11:26.000 The person who picked up was Denny Hastert.

00:11:28.000 Denny Hastert was the House Speaker from 2000 until 2006 when the Republicans lost the Congress.

00:11:34.000 He is now in jail for having molested a teenage boy.

00:11:38.000 Then John Boehner took over in 2010 when the Republicans won 60 seats.

00:11:38.000 Great history here.

00:11:43.000 You'll recall that John Boehner was largely hated by the right wing because there was a feeling that he had given in too easily to Barack Obama.

00:11:50.000 He didn't go along with the attempts to shut down the government more strongly.

00:11:54.000 And he had a bad habit of crying in public and looking weak in front of Barack Obama.

00:11:58.000 He didn't look like sort of a stalwart leader.

00:12:00.000 So they decided to defenestrate John Boehner.

00:12:02.000 And John Boehner stepped down in 2016 for no actual reason, right?

00:12:07.000 He stepped down.

00:12:09.000 Just because his party didn't like him.

00:12:11.000 It was October 29, 2015.

00:12:12.000 He was like, fine, you want me to go?

00:12:13.000 I'm out.

00:12:14.000 Until he decided to get out.

00:12:16.000 Paul Ryan had to be forced into the position of House Speaker.

00:12:18.000 He didn't want that position because who the hell wants the head of this fractious caucus? 0.78

00:12:22.000 Very, very difficult to run anything inside the House of Representatives right now.

00:12:27.000 The Republican Party is like herding cats.

00:12:28.000 The Democrats are rank and file, right in line.

00:12:31.000 As much as we like to talk about the squad and the internal battles between Nancy Pelosi and the squad, when it came down to the vote, the squad knew where its bread was buttered.

00:12:37.000 Because Nancy Pelosi still held the purse strings. 0.96

00:12:39.000 She was the one who was raising all the money.

00:12:41.000 She still had the entire party apparatus behind her. 0.98

00:12:43.000 Because the Republican Party has fractured six ways from Sunday, they essentially have no leverage over their own members.

00:12:47.000 Okay, so Paul Ryan takes over in 2015.

00:12:52.000 This was not the intent of the conservatives inside the party, by the way.

00:12:54.000 Many of the conservatives inside the party, they were OK with Ryan on fiscal issues, but they're like, why are you making restructuring of Social Security your number one issue as opposed to a wide variety of other issues?

00:13:04.000 So Paul Ryan was not popular with sort of the rank and file conservative members, but he was the only person who they could actually get to take the job.

00:13:10.000 And they give him all sorts of sort of perks in order to take the job.

00:13:13.000 A lot of control over the way that the agenda was run.

00:13:17.000 In 2018, the Republicans lose the Congress, Nancy Pelosi takes back over, and now we have this battle over Kevin McCarthy, which means the Republican Party has had effectively two somewhat effective speakers of the House over the course of the last 20 years.

00:13:30.000 Newt Gingrich for maybe a term and a half, and then Denny Hastert was a fairly effective House leader from the time that he took over until the time that he lost power in 2006 and was putting aside all of his personal evils.

00:13:40.000 And so, who wants this job?

00:13:42.000 You can't get anyone to take the job.

00:13:44.000 Steve Scalise doesn't want the job.

00:13:45.000 He doesn't.

00:13:46.000 You know who else doesn't want the job?

00:13:48.000 Jim Jordan.

00:13:48.000 So, I really like Jim Jordan.

00:13:49.000 Jim Jordan, representative from Ohio.

00:13:51.000 Dude does not want the job.

00:13:52.000 He wants to be head of the Judiciary Committee.

00:13:54.000 Because that's a much better job, being the head of the Judiciary Committee.

00:13:56.000 Your job is to sit there, and it is to give advice and consent on matters of judicial policy.

00:14:01.000 It is to investigate.

00:14:02.000 You have tremendous investigative power as head of the Judiciary Committee.

00:14:06.000 And all the rest, Jim Jordan endorsed Kevin McCarthy yesterday.

00:14:10.000 Steve Scalise endorsed Kevin McCarthy.

00:14:13.000 Here was Jim Jordan yesterday.

00:14:14.000 He's sort of the great hope of a lot of conservatives to come in and restructure.

00:14:17.000 I like again, really, I know Jim Jordan, super nice guy, really like him, strong conservative, not up for the job.

00:14:24.000 Here's Jim Jordan yesterday endorsing Kevin McCarthy.

00:14:26.000 We should all remember, we should all remember, only about 12,000 people have ever had the opportunity to do what we're doing today.

00:14:37.000 Sit in this body, serve in this Congress.

00:14:39.000 It is a privilege.

00:14:41.000 It is an opportunity.

00:14:43.000 We owe it to them, the American people, the good people of this great country, to step forward, to come together, get a Speaker elected, so we can address these three things.

00:14:53.000 I hope you'll vote for Kevin McCarthy, and that's why I'm proud to nominate him for Speaker of the House.

00:14:59.000 Okay, so and then people like Elise Stefanik, who many were saying, maybe she'll run again.

00:15:05.000 She's not running either.

00:15:06.000 She's not running.

00:15:07.000 Jim Jordan is not running.

00:15:09.000 Steve Scalise is not running.

00:15:10.000 So who is the alternative?

00:15:12.000 You guys keep saying there's an alternative.

00:15:13.000 Who?

00:15:15.000 Bueller?

00:15:15.000 Who?

00:15:18.000 So Chip Roy, again, I really like Chip.

00:15:20.000 I think a good congressperson from Texas.

00:15:21.000 I think he's a very strong conservative.

00:15:23.000 I understand his frustrations at the way that the Republican Party is run.

00:15:26.000 I will tell you one thing.

00:15:27.000 No Speaker of the House is going to guarantee a preemptive government shutdown.

00:15:30.000 No Speaker of the House is going to do that.

00:15:31.000 Many people in the Republican rank and file would like to see that sort of thing.

00:15:35.000 That is a bad strategy.

00:15:36.000 And so what they've been asking of the Speaker of the House is to basically guarantee, for example, that it's going to require a two thirds majority in the House to approve any earmark.

00:15:43.000 That means no legislation ever gets passed again in the House of Representatives.

00:15:46.000 As much as I would love For the pure, unbridled, conservative policy to be the only policy that gets done in Congress?

00:15:52.000 That is not the way that Congress works.

00:15:55.000 That is cruising for an electoral bruising.

00:15:56.000 Republicans have tried this before.

00:15:57.000 It does not work.

00:15:58.000 My job, as a commentator, is to explain sort of pure Republican, conservative thought.

00:16:03.000 More conservative than Republican.

00:16:05.000 It is the job of legislators to bargain.

00:16:07.000 It is the job of legislators to legislate.

00:16:09.000 It is the job of legislators to get the most that they can without losing their seats.

00:16:13.000 That is their job.

00:16:15.000 Running directly into walls is not the job.

00:16:16.000 Anyway, Chip Roy got up yesterday and he endorsed Jim Jordan.

00:16:19.000 But as we've already seen, Jim Jordan endorsed Kevin McCarthy.

00:16:21.000 So what does it matter if you endorse Jim Jordan?

00:16:25.000 I want the tools or I want the leadership to stop the swamp from running over the average American every single day.

00:16:33.000 I'm going to sit here until we figure out how to stop spending money we don't have.

00:16:38.000 And to do that, I'm going to do what I did my very first act as a member of Congress or as a congressman-elect.

00:16:45.000 Okay, so here's the thing.

00:16:51.000 When he says that he wants some sort of solution to stop the spending, well, I mean, I'm all ears.

00:16:59.000 You can move through regular order, and then if the Democrats in the Senate don't move forward with regular order and Joe Biden vetoes the legislation and there's no defense spending and the government shuts down again, who do you think gets blamed?

00:16:59.000 I'm all ears.

00:17:08.000 I understand that Congress holds the purse strings.

00:17:10.000 The question is really for the American public.

00:17:12.000 And there's not even a question about Republican Congress people.

00:17:15.000 They're trying to square a circle.

00:17:16.000 The American public lie when they say they want to cut the spending.

00:17:18.000 This is a big problem.

00:17:20.000 It is a generalized problem with Western welfare states.

00:17:22.000 Everybody says they want to cut the spending.

00:17:24.000 This is true by every poll ever taken.

00:17:25.000 They all say, we'd like to cut the spending.

00:17:27.000 And then you say, on what?

00:17:28.000 And they go, it's a real problem.

00:17:31.000 And that's not a problem that's going to be solved by simply shouting that you'd like to lower the spending.

00:17:36.000 So you have Chip Roy who voted against Kevin McCarthy.

00:17:39.000 Again, I'm not doubting the motives of the people who are voting against Kevin McCarthy.

00:17:43.000 I think their motives are probably quite good.

00:17:44.000 Again, I like Chip Roy.

00:17:47.000 The question that I have is, what is your plan?

00:17:49.000 What is your plan?

00:17:51.000 What's your plan?

00:17:51.000 It's politics.

00:17:53.000 And then Chip Roy suggested that members of the caucus were threatened.

00:17:57.000 They were threatened by Kevin McCarthy and the House leadership that if they didn't vote for McCarthy, they'd be stripped of their committee assignments.

00:18:02.000 Well, I mean, I'm not super shocked by that, considering that that's basically the only leverage that the party has over its members to cudgel them into line.

00:18:10.000 This is what political parties do.

00:18:12.000 And this morning, a group of folks threatened some of us, and they lost votes on that.

00:18:18.000 We're not going to back down until we get in a room and we decide how we're going to be able to stand up and fight for the American people, no matter who the speaker is.

00:18:25.000 Congressman, you just used the word threatened there in the House GOP conference meeting this morning.

00:18:31.000 Can you tell us what happened?

00:18:33.000 Well, it's been public information out there that Mike Rogers threatened to say he's going to kick those of us off of any committees who dared to challenge the coronation of the Speaker.

00:18:42.000 And the reality is, that was a threat, and it was not received well by a lot of people in the room.

00:18:48.000 Well, again, I'm not surprised that there was that threat that was leveraged.

00:18:51.000 I mean, this is what other threats do you have?

00:18:53.000 Not to fund campaigns, not to put you on committees like that's pretty much it.

00:18:56.000 That's the only leverage that the party has over its members.

00:18:58.000 And the answer apparently is that the party has no leverage over its members, which is why the caucus is extremely fractious.

00:19:03.000 Matt Getz is speaking sort of the same language as Chip Roy, suggesting that Kevin McCarthy is a quote unquote swamp creature.

00:19:09.000 I really need a definition of swamp creature.

00:19:12.000 I do, because it just seems like it's a broad catch-all term that means people I don't like.

00:19:16.000 Again, I think pretty much everybody in D.C.

00:19:18.000 is a member of the Swamp.

00:19:19.000 If by member of the Swamp, you mean has voted for bad legislation.

00:19:21.000 Because that's all Congress does, is votes for bad legislation.

00:19:25.000 I would also like to see the size of the federal government shrink dramatically.

00:19:28.000 But unless you have a good plan to get from A to B, shouting about the Swamp is not an actual solution.

00:19:33.000 Donald Trump shouted about the Swamp consistently in 2015-2016.

00:19:36.000 Then he became President of the United States with the Republican Congress and blew out the spending.

00:19:44.000 Those of us who will not be voting for Kevin McCarthy today take no joy in this discomfort that this moment has brought.

00:19:51.000 But if you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put the biggest alligator in charge of the exercise.

00:19:58.000 I'm a Florida man and I know of what I speak.

00:20:01.000 We offered Kevin McCarthy terms last evening that he rejected.

00:20:05.000 We sought a vote in the first quarter of the 118th Congress on term limits.

00:20:09.000 He refused.

00:20:10.000 We wanted a budget from the Republican Study Committee that balances on the floor in the first quarter.

00:20:15.000 He refused.

00:20:16.000 We wanted the border plan that the Texas delegation put together on the floor.

00:20:21.000 He refused.

00:20:23.000 Okay, well, one of the reasons that the Speaker of the House sometimes refuses to bring up legislation that sounds great to me and sounds great to Matt Gaetz is because it doesn't have the votes.

00:20:31.000 You don't bring up policies that don't have the votes if you're the Speaker of the House.

00:20:35.000 It's just a general rule.

00:20:37.000 You have a bare, slim majority.

00:20:38.000 One of the things you generally don't want to do is bring up, by your own party, in the majority, legislation that is not going to get the votes.

00:20:45.000 You don't have the votes for term limits.

00:20:46.000 So why do you bring that up?

00:20:48.000 It's just a matter of pure politics.

00:20:50.000 Again, this all sounds dirty and scurrilous, but that's the job of these people.

00:20:55.000 I can tell you that I'm very much in favor of a balanced budget.

00:20:58.000 I'm in favor of a balanced budget constitutional amendment, for that matter.

00:21:02.000 I'll tell you what's not going to pass.

00:21:03.000 A balanced budget constitutional amendment.

00:21:05.000 It would be foolish for Republicans to bring up a piece of legislation that is overtly not going to pass and is going to be humiliating to the Republican leadership when it turns out that half the Republicans don't vote for it.

00:21:15.000 What is the point of that?

00:21:16.000 Is there any political point other than to humiliate your own party?

00:21:19.000 So Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the other representatives who's voting against McCarthy, he said McCarthy hasn't done enough to stem government spending.

00:21:25.000 He said, quote, we're going bankrupt if we're not already.

00:21:27.000 When we asked what plan he has, he just doesn't have one.

00:21:29.000 OK, so I agree we are going bankrupt.

00:21:31.000 Also, what is your plan?

00:21:33.000 Like if you want some normally when you come to the bargaining table, let's say it's a salary negotiation.

00:21:37.000 You have to have in mind what salary you want.

00:21:41.000 If you come into a salary negotiation and somebody offers you $100,000 and you're like, no, I say, what's your counter?

00:21:46.000 You just say no.

00:21:49.000 What are you going to bargain against yourself?

00:21:52.000 There's no clear, there's no actual clear strategy out here.

00:21:58.000 And here's the thing, many of the people who are voting against Kevin McCarthy are saying they're doing so in the name of the MAGA agenda.

00:22:03.000 You know who's repeatedly endorsed Kevin McCarthy, like over and over and over again?

00:22:07.000 Donald Trump has endorsed Kevin McCarthy over and over again.

00:22:09.000 Including this morning, quote, some really good conversations took place last night.

00:22:12.000 It's now time for all of our great Republican House members to vote for Kevin, close the deal, take the victory and watch crazy Nancy Pelosi fly back home to a very broken California.

00:22:20.000 The only speaker in U.S.

00:22:20.000 history to have lost the House twice.

00:22:22.000 Republicans do not turn a great triumph into a giant and embarrassing defeat.

00:22:25.000 It's time to celebrate.

00:22:26.000 You deserve it.

00:22:26.000 Kevin McCarthy will do a good job and maybe even a great job.

00:22:29.000 Just watch.

00:22:30.000 So we'll see if Kevin, by the way, if Trump doesn't actually have any leverage over these members.

00:22:34.000 Then his position in the party really has waned.

00:22:37.000 If these 20 members can't follow Trump on this one, then it's very unclear exactly who his support base is in 2024.

00:22:44.000 We'll get to more of the news in just one second.

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00:24:51.000 So, how foolish is the strategy? 0.91

00:24:54.000 Okay, so right now, here's what we know about the strategy. 0.85

00:24:56.000 Nothing.

00:24:57.000 We don't know what the strategy is.

00:24:59.000 In fact, we know so little about the strategy that it appears that some of Kevin McCarthy's allies are warning conservatives that they might look across the aisle to find a compromise speaker to gain Democratic votes in order to force these Republicans to vote for McCarthy, right?

00:25:12.000 This is the strategy I was talking about earlier, is that you might have Kevin McCarthy's allies bring up a vote to change the Speaker of the House rules to plurality.

00:25:20.000 Which would create the actual threat that Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader on the minority side of the aisle, becomes Speaker of the House, is how you sort of pry away 11 of those Republican votes to vote in favor of Kevin McCarthy.

00:25:31.000 Now, Democrats could also do that. 0.63

00:25:32.000 They could vote for a plurality vote.

00:25:34.000 What that would do is presumably give the crew that doesn't like McCarthy an out.

00:25:38.000 Because at that point, they said, we don't like McCarthy, but we're not going to do what the Democrats want.

00:25:41.000 And they sort of reversed themselves.

00:25:42.000 So I find it hard to believe the Democrats would be strategically inept enough to call for a vote based on a plurality.

00:25:47.000 They're more than happy to watch Republicans twist in the wind.

00:25:49.000 How bad is this for Republicans? 0.87

00:25:50.000 It's so bad that apparently, according to Semaphore, which is one of these new news outlets, AOC, the irrepressibly idiotic AOC, She told Semaphore that Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar of Arizona approached her separately to ask if Democrats were considering leaving to clear the way for McCarthy, meaning would enough Democrats leave the chamber so that Republicans would then be able to vote McCarthy in with less than 218 votes. 0.88

00:26:17.000 She said some of the Republicans who are holding out were wondering if that was true. 0.87

00:26:19.000 I said, absolutely not.

00:26:22.000 So the question is, were they asking because they want the Democrats to leave so that McCarthy can be elected and then they can say it's not our fault?

00:26:31.000 Is that the goal here?

00:26:32.000 Whatever the goal is, it is pretty obvious what is being achieved, and that is that Democrats are jubilant over this.

00:26:38.000 General rule of thumb in basic party politics.

00:26:40.000 If the other side is jubilant over your activity, what you're doing is probably not super smart.

00:26:45.000 Yesterday, Representative Pete Aguilar of California, he tore into the Republicans, mocked Kevin McCarthy, mocked the Republicans for not being able to get it done.

00:26:52.000 This is the attitude of both the media and Democrats today.

00:26:54.000 So again, if you are somebody who doesn't like the agenda of the left, perhaps you should stop giving them reasons to celebrate.

00:27:00.000 We are unified behind a speaker who is an unapologetic advocate for protecting and expanding our freedoms.

00:27:11.000 He does not traffic in extremism.

00:27:13.000 He does not grovel to or make excuses for a twice impeached so-called former president.

00:27:26.000 He does not make excuses for a twice impeached so-called former president.

00:27:36.000 Madam Clerk, he does not bend a knee to anyone who would seek to undermine our democracy.

00:27:44.000 Of course Democrats are jubilant.

00:27:46.000 They're in the minority.

00:27:47.000 They lost control.

00:27:48.000 And the Republicans are busy fighting with each other.

00:27:50.000 Now, again, does any of this have real high stakes?

00:27:51.000 No.

00:27:51.000 Somebody will be elected Speaker of the House.

00:27:53.000 In the end, it will probably be a Republican.

00:27:55.000 It will probably be Kevin McCarthy.

00:27:56.000 And then we'll all go back to sleep.

00:27:58.000 This does not have widespread consequences.

00:28:00.000 What it does do is it again underscores one of the reasons Republicans did very poorly in the last election cycle. 0.99

00:28:05.000 And one of the reasons Republicans did very poorly in the last election cycle is a general perception that Republicans are incompetent and foolish. 0.97

00:28:12.000 It's not because people like Democrats. 0.98

00:28:13.000 People don't like Joe Biden.

00:28:14.000 People don't like John Fetterman.

00:28:15.000 People don't like Raphael Warnock.

00:28:18.000 People are not in love with Mark Kelly.

00:28:20.000 What happened is that Republicans ran a bunch of candidates who are not particularly good.

00:28:24.000 And there is a generalized feeling among the populace that the Republicans are not capable of making their own breakfast.

00:28:30.000 And when you keep demonstrating over and over again that you're not capable of making your own breakfast, people say, OK, well, I don't like those other guys, but at least they're capable of making their own breakfast.

00:28:37.000 At least they run like a machine.

00:28:41.000 CNN's Anderson Cooper, of course, he was chortling over all of this and using this as an opportunity to jump both feet on Kevin McCarthy's throat.

00:28:49.000 And it's already significant leverage that they've given away to these far-right individuals, and yet they're still not coming over to vote for him, which does suggest that the next Speaker of the House will be Steve Scalise.

00:29:01.000 Yeah, I mean, their goal seems to be wanting to simply humiliate Kevin McCarthy and run him out of town.

00:29:08.000 Mission accomplished.

00:29:09.000 Yeah, mission accomplished so far.

00:29:10.000 But it seems like McCarthy's willingness to be humiliated knows no bounds.

00:29:13.000 No, you're right.

00:29:17.000 I mean, what do you expect him to do, drop out?

00:29:18.000 McCarthy, for his part, says he's not going anywhere.

00:29:20.000 I mean, why would he?

00:29:22.000 Again, the sort of incentive structure here, which is that 20 Republicans are going to control the other 200 Republicans, seems pretty skewed.

00:29:29.000 And again, there's no one else out there who's willing to do it.

00:29:31.000 If Jim Jordan were to step up today and say, I'll be Speaker of the House, my guess is you'd see a bunch of Republicans say, listen, if this ends it, fine, we'll make Jim Jordan Speaker of the House.

00:29:38.000 And I'd be fine with that.

00:29:38.000 I like Jim Jordan.

00:29:40.000 Jim Jordan doesn't want it.

00:29:41.000 Jim Jordan doesn't want any piece of it.

00:29:43.000 Here is Kevin McCarthy yesterday saying he's not going anywhere.

00:29:47.000 Are you going to stay in the race, Leader McCarthy?

00:29:50.000 Yes, I'm not going anywhere.

00:29:52.000 I came into this position and we had less than 200 members.

00:29:55.000 We are now sitting in the majority.

00:29:57.000 We put forth to the American public a commitment to America.

00:30:01.000 There's times we're going to have to argue with our own members if they're looking for only positions for themselves, not for the country.

00:30:10.000 Again, this is, it's just interminable.

00:30:12.000 And it's so, it's such small stakes and it's such foolishness and there's really no upside.

00:30:17.000 So of course, we're going to do this for another several days, probably.

00:30:19.000 I mean, Republicans, great at everything except for, you know, their actual jobs.

00:30:25.000 And meanwhile, Over in the Senate, you can see Mitch McConnell chortling over all of this.

00:30:30.000 And for all those who are very upset with Mitch McConnell for signing on to, for example, the Democrat spending bill that went through at the very end of last year, that $1.7 trillion giant omnibus crap sandwich that Mitch McConnell voted in favor of and many Republicans voted in favor of in the Senate with a Democratic House.

00:30:46.000 The reason that Mitch McConnell said he was doing that, he said, I got my priorities.

00:30:49.000 The real reason he did that is because he felt like the Republican Congress was unable to actually pass a budget.

00:30:54.000 He felt like they were unable to actually do anything, that the leadership was so weak and that the party levers were so failing that there was no way they were going to be able to get together to even put together a piece of legislation that he would then support and then they could send to Joe Biden to get a signature on.

00:31:09.000 Well, I mean, the Republicans in the House are doing a pretty good job of making McConnell look not like a sellout.

00:31:15.000 Which, by the way, it is a sellout move to pass a piece of legislation with the opposite party because you trust your own party in Congress so little.

00:31:22.000 But meanwhile, I mean, your own party in Congress is not looking especially good at their jobs today.

00:31:27.000 I mean, it was Mitch McConnell in November who's pledging that if Republicans took the House, there'd be no more blowout spending.

00:31:31.000 And then he signed a $1.7 trillion blowout spending bill specifically because he didn't trust that Republicans in the House would be able to get their heads out of their out of their colons long enough to actually pass something.

00:31:42.000 If the House becomes Republican, there's no more one party running over us like they did through reconciliation.

00:31:50.000 No more $1.9 trillion spending spree, plus another $750 in August that sent inflation through the roof.

00:32:00.000 That's over.

00:32:04.000 And, you know, it wasn't.

00:32:05.000 And the reason that it wasn't, again, is because the Republican Party is fractious and falling apart.

00:32:09.000 And this is just another excuse for the big spenders to spend.

00:32:12.000 This is the part that's really amazing.

00:32:13.000 You are achieving precisely the opposite of what you seek to achieve.

00:32:16.000 See, here's the thing.

00:32:18.000 If the Kevin McCarthy-led Republican Congress were to propose some sort of big, giant, omnibus spending package not backed by a vast majority of the Republican Party, McCarthy would feel the sting.

00:32:30.000 He could be challenged, by the way.

00:32:31.000 He agreed.

00:32:32.000 He agreed to a change of the rules that would have allowed him to actually be brought into question as Speaker of the House upon the advice and consent of essentially five people.

00:32:44.000 And if five members of the Republican coalition decided to challenge his speakerhood, then he would hear a speaker's challenge, right?

00:32:50.000 He actually agreed to that.

00:32:51.000 He weakened his own durability as Speaker of the House.

00:32:54.000 So if he were to bring to the floor some really, really bad piece of legislation that had the support of, say, 50 Republicans, but all the Democrats, which is presumably what many of these Republicans who don't like McCarthy are afraid of.

00:33:05.000 He would be ousted from his own party leadership position.

00:33:06.000 This is what happened to John Boehner in 2015.

00:33:09.000 And they're trying to weaken the ability of these speakers to preserve their own power.

00:33:14.000 The lack of strategy here is just absolutely astonishing.

00:33:17.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Twitter files continue to be released.

00:33:20.000 Elon Musk took over Twitter and he has been releasing more and more information about the inner workings of Twitter.

00:33:25.000 Some of this stuff is really scary.

00:33:26.000 We'll get to that in just a moment.

00:33:27.000 First, the economy seems as though it is on a razor's edge once again.

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00:34:29.000 Also in 2022, we launched Jeremy's Razors as a joke, but it was an important joke now.

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00:35:06.000 Okay, meanwhile, Elon Musk over at Twitter has been releasing in tranches huge swaths of information about how Twitter was run before he took over.

00:35:13.000 He's released another tranche of Twitter files to Matt Taibbi.

00:35:16.000 The left-wing journalist who is now being considered right-wing simply because he actually is reporting on what Twitter used to do.

00:35:22.000 It turns out that basically Twitter's internal censorship was being done by people who are being manipulated from the outside by the government and the media.

00:35:29.000 This of course is no great shock.

00:35:30.000 This is something that happens in woke corporations all the time.

00:35:33.000 Woke corporations are constantly being manipulated by groups of people in the government and in the media.

00:35:40.000 What happens is that somebody in government will suggest, for example, that a corporation should not be engaging in business in Georgia because of the Georgia voting law.

00:35:47.000 And then media will pick up on this and they will call up members of the corporation and they'll say, why are you engaging in business?

00:35:52.000 And then they'll run a front page story, Coca-Cola engaging in business in Atlanta, Georgia.

00:35:56.000 And then Coca-Cola goes, oh my God, we're on the front page of the newspaper.

00:35:58.000 That's terrible.

00:35:59.000 That's bad publicity.

00:36:00.000 And then they'll immediately talk about how terrible the Georgia voting law is. 1.00

00:36:03.000 This is the way this stupid game works. 1.00

00:36:04.000 And it works for all the woke corporations. 1.00

00:36:06.000 What particularly is bad when it comes to Twitter, because there you're not just talking about a corporation speaking out of turn.

00:36:10.000 You're not just talking about Disney sounding off about the bill that prevents the indoctrination of children on sexual orientation until the age of eight.

00:36:17.000 You're not talking about just a corporation sounding, you're talking about a corporation whose chief job it was to determine who got to speak and who did not.

00:36:24.000 So this gets into very dangerous territory.

00:36:26.000 So here's what Matt Taibbi has released.

00:36:27.000 He says, quote, by 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts.

00:36:35.000 In February 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center, a fledgling analytic intelligence arm of the State Department, went to the media with a report called Russian disinformation apparatus taking advantage of coronavirus concerns.

00:36:47.000 The GEC, again, it's a government agency, flagged accounts as Russian personas and proxies based on criteria like, quote, described the coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon, blaming research conducted at the Wuhan Institute and attributing of the appearance of the virus to the CIA.

00:36:59.000 Well, there's a problem with that, which is that the first two, At least the one that says that research conducted at the Wuhan Institute was responsible for lab leak.

00:37:09.000 That actually may, in fact, be the truth.

00:37:11.000 State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular US-based Zero Hedge, claiming the episode, quote, led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.

00:37:20.000 The GEC still led directly to news stories like the AFP's headline, Russia-linked disinformation campaign led to coronavirus alarm, U.S.

00:37:28.000 says, and a Politico story about how Russian-Chinese-Iranian disinformation narratives echo one another.

00:37:33.000 So basically, they started laundering through the media this message that Twitter was allowing Russian disinformation to shape the COVID narrative.

00:37:41.000 So what did Twitter do?

00:37:43.000 Twitter basically caved.

00:37:46.000 When Clemson's media forensics hub complained Twitter hadn't made a Russia attribution in some time, trust and safety chief at Yoel Roth said it was revelatory of their motives.

00:37:54.000 Roth said, we're happy to work directly with you on this instead of NBC.

00:37:57.000 He tried to convince outside researchers like the Clemson lab to check with them before pushing stories about foreign interference to the media.

00:38:02.000 In other words, he had a bunch of people in the government suggesting that there were Russian bots that were running stories on Twitter.

00:38:07.000 And Twitter actually kind of knew whether they're Russian bots or not.

00:38:10.000 And it didn't matter.

00:38:11.000 The media ran with the story anyway.

00:38:13.000 Twitter was trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to Yoel Roth.

00:38:17.000 Policy Director Carlos Manche said if these folks are like Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them a direct contact with Yoel, they'll want to come back to him again and again.

00:38:27.000 Apparently, the GEC was using intel from other agencies to insert themselves into the content moderation club that included Twitter, Facebook, the FBI, DHS, and others.

00:38:37.000 So, the government, again, was going to the media, they were pushing a story that Twitter was allowing disinformation, and then they were pressuring Twitter to change the status of accounts that were pressing this quote-unquote misinformation.

00:38:53.000 This is exactly what everybody sort of suspected was going on, is that the government was using its power in order to Launder censorship through outlets like Twitter.

00:39:04.000 According to Taibbi, Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee, which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction.

00:39:11.000 Execs rushed to tell Team SSCI they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip.

00:39:17.000 Requests arrived and were escalated from all over, from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, the FBI, DHS, and more.

00:39:23.000 They received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn't like to be banned.

00:39:27.000 So, for example, Democrat and House Intel Committee Chief Adam Schiff, the person who is responsible for much of the Russian actual disinformation about Russian collusion, he actually asked Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry.

00:39:40.000 Twitter declined to honor Schiff's request.

00:39:42.000 They said, we don't do this, but Sperry was later suspended.

00:39:46.000 Twitter honored almost everybody else's requests, even those from the government, including a decision to ban accounts like Rebel Protests and Bricks Media because the GEC identified them as GRU-controlled and linked to the Russian government, respectively.

00:39:57.000 So you wonder why the Hunter Biden stuff happened?

00:39:59.000 One of the reasons the Hunter Biden stuff happened is because Twitter was on edge, having been told by every government agency that everything that was happening was Russian disinformation, and they just kept banning accounts.

00:40:09.000 This is why when people say that Twitter was sort of, it's independent of the government.

00:40:12.000 This is not a First Amendment issue.

00:40:13.000 Twitter's a corporation.

00:40:14.000 They can do whatever they want.

00:40:15.000 And then I noticed that as soon as Elon Musk takes it over and takes it private, then literally that minute, everybody immediately shifts to, we have to publicly regulate Twitter.

00:40:22.000 I mean, this is just bad.

00:40:23.000 We can't have Elon Musk deciding.

00:40:25.000 No, what you actually had was the government deciding in cahoots with the chief leadership at Twitter who could be seen and who could not.

00:40:32.000 One of the things that Tucker suggested last night, that the new Congress, the Republican, McCarthy-led Congress do, is give Thomas Massie the ability to investigate collusion between the FBI and places like Twitter in terms of informational dissemination.

00:40:46.000 That happens to be correct.

00:40:47.000 And it becomes more necessary every single day.

00:40:49.000 Okay, meanwhile, speaking of censorship, Jordan Peterson is now under fire.

00:40:54.000 By apparently members of the College of Psychologists of Ontario.

00:40:58.000 What exactly did Jordan do?

00:40:59.000 Obviously, Jordan Peterson, full disclosure, is a host at Daily Wire Plus.

00:41:05.000 Jordan blasted Canada's commissars and penned a scathing letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Tuesday after a leading association of his fellow psychologists threatened to go after his license to practice clinical psychology over social media criticisms of the nation's far-left government.

00:41:17.000 The College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered the best-selling author and Daily Wire Plus host to undergo social media communications retraining.

00:41:24.000 Ah, the re-education plan.

00:41:26.000 Or face a hearing on the potential suspension of his medical license.

00:41:30.000 Writing to Justin Trudeau, Peterson vowed not to participate.

00:41:33.000 I simply cannot resign myself to the fact that in my lifetime I am required to resort to a public letter to the leader of my country to point out that political criticism has now become such a crime in Canada that if professionals dare engage in such activity, government appointed commissars will threaten their livelihood and present them with the spectacle of denouncement and political disgrace.

00:41:50.000 There is simply and utterly no excuse whatsoever for such a state of affairs in a free country.

00:41:55.000 This of course is just the latest of several investigations launched by the College of psychology with prior complaints having been dismissed.

00:42:03.000 What exactly did Jordan do that was so terrible that now he is being investigated by this ridiculous organization, the College of Psychologists of Ontario?

00:42:10.000 What exactly did he do?

00:42:12.000 Well, he retweeted Conservative Party leader Pierre Polivre.

00:42:15.000 I'm going to screw up his name, but so be it.

00:42:18.000 Blasted Trudeau's former senior aide, Gerald Butt.

00:42:22.000 And he blasted New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, tweeting opposition to a plan by Ottawa police to take custody of the children of trucker convoy protesters.

00:42:29.000 He also told Joe Rogan's podcast audience that accepting radical gender theory is a sign of civilization collapsing and also said that climate change models are unreliable.

00:42:38.000 So apparently this is enough for the college executive director to review the tweets and a transcript from Peterson's appearance on Joe Rogan and determine that this warranted an investigation.

00:42:49.000 The probe has now been expanded to include subsequent social media posts by Peterson, including a made Twitter post in which he said that Sports Illustrated putting plus-size swimsuit model Yumi Nu on the cover was not an example of beauty.

00:43:01.000 All Jordan wrote at that point, you remember this big controversy, he wrote, sorry, not beautiful and no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.

00:43:08.000 He also tweeted that the movie star Ellen Page, who now goes by Elliot Page, is actually a woman.

00:43:16.000 This particular college, by the way, sounds like a private organization.

00:43:18.000 In Canada, that's not the way that it works.

00:43:19.000 The college is a government-regulated association that regulates and has the authority to sanction psychologists ostensibly to protect the health and safety of workers and the public.

00:43:27.000 Peterson charged that the Ontario Professional Organization has been hounding him since 2017.

00:43:30.000 He said, I was never investigated for anything for the 20 years I practiced prior to my emergence on the public scene.

00:43:37.000 But because the college is obligated to probe any written complaint filed against a member, Peterson says that he's been befetted with investigations, many of which were prompted by anonymous calls.

00:43:47.000 One accused him of being transphobic, sexist, and racist for pointing out an article from Crisis Magazine accusing the transgender movement of targeting autistic children.

00:43:56.000 Last year, Peterson was taken to task by the college after telling a scientist who said overpopulation was a threat to the planet that he was free to leave at any point.

00:44:03.000 The college opened an investigation and Jordan declined to cooperate.

00:44:07.000 He said at the time, take whatever steps you deem necessary.

00:44:09.000 I'm simply not going to spend the hours and days required to undergo the unbelievably stressful process necessary to respond to this formally because one of the millions of people who follow me on social media took offense to one thing I said at one point.

00:44:20.000 Now again, one of the reasons that they are targeting Jordan is to shut everybody else up. 0.97

00:44:23.000 Jordan has a big enough platform that it's very unlikely that he's going to end up being banned from the practice of psychology in Canada by the College of Psychologists of Ontario.

00:44:31.000 But the whole point is to shut everybody else up.

00:44:33.000 The people have less of a platform than Jordan. 1.00

00:44:35.000 And this is the point on Twitter as well.

00:44:37.000 It's to intimidate people into silence.

00:44:38.000 You ban a few accounts and then you get everybody else to shut up.

00:44:41.000 This is the goal of the censorship regime.

00:44:44.000 Free speech is the predicate to having an open conversation on any of these important issues.

00:44:48.000 And given the amount that the experts have used their authoritarian power to silence actual useful conversation, it is truly scary that you now have commissars in supposedly Western countries like Canada.

00:45:00.000 This is happening in the UK as well.

00:45:02.000 Cracking down on free speech.

00:45:03.000 You remember that case just a couple of weeks ago from before the new year, in which a woman in the UK was arrested for silently praying outside of an abortion clinic.

00:45:11.000 Literally just standing there.

00:45:12.000 And they asked if she was praying, and she said, maybe in my head, and they arrested her for that.

00:45:18.000 Western civilization cannot abide the authoritarians who now have decided that because they are the elite, they get to control not only how you act and what you do, but also what you see, what you watch, how you think.

00:45:28.000 This is truly scary stuff.

00:45:30.000 Whether it is being laundered through private companies like Twitter, or whether it's being done directly by governments like the government in Canada.

00:45:37.000 And good for Jordan for standing up to it.

00:45:39.000 I'm glad Jordan does this sort of stuff because frankly, if Jordan didn't do it, who else would be left to stand up against this sort of stuff?

00:45:45.000 Especially because so much that we have found out over the course of the last few years demonstrates that we were just not told things that we were we were being barred from having information that was really, really important.

00:45:56.000 So for example, Alysia Finley has a piece in the Wall Street Journal opinion page today.

00:46:00.000 This certainly would have been banned on social media for about two years.

00:46:03.000 Quote, public health experts are sounding the alarm about a new Omicron variant dubbed XBB that is rapidly spreading across the northeast US. Some studies suggest it is as different from the original COVID strain from Wuhan as the 2003 SARS virus.

00:46:15.000 Should Americans be worried?

00:46:17.000 It isn't clear that XBB is any more lethal than any other variant, but its mutations enable it to evade antibodies from prior infection of vaccines, as well as existing monoclonal antibody treatments.

00:46:25.000 Growing evidence also suggests repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fueling the virus's rapid evolution.

00:46:33.000 Now, by the way, if you had mentioned this anywhere along the line here, that when it came to vaccines, that overuse of vaccines actually bottlenecks the process, Because it now means that all of these viruses attempt to evolve to escape the vaccine.

00:46:49.000 If you mention that, this was considered really, really bad.

00:46:52.000 That's just been common medical science for a very long time.

00:46:54.000 But if you mention that online, there was a good shot Twitter was going to bar you for years on end here.

00:46:58.000 Prior to Omicron's emergence in November 2021, there were only four variants of concern according to the Wall Street Journal, Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma.

00:47:04.000 Only Alpha and Delta caused surges of infections globally.

00:47:07.000 Omicron has begotten numerous descendants, many of which have popped up in different regions of the world, curiously bearing some of the same mutations.

00:47:14.000 Under selective evolutionary pressures, the virus appears to have developed mutations that enable it to transmit more easily and escape antibodies elicited by vaccines and prior infection.

00:47:23.000 All of this was perfectly foreseeable, that if you overuse the vaccines, this is what you end up with.

00:47:27.000 And that natural immunity might actually be a better strategy, but you were barred from saying it.

00:47:31.000 This is why it's important to stand up against the censor group that now lies at the heart of all of these governments, as well as their buddies and lackeys over in social media.

00:47:44.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.

00:47:45.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:47:46.000 We'll be getting into Ron DeSantis's new inaugural address.

00:47:50.000 Is it his presidential pitch?

00:47:51.000 If you're not a member, become a member and use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

00:47:56.000 It's a hell of a deal.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 04, 2023

Kevin McCarthy’s Speaker Bid Keeps Falling Short | Ep. 1639

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