With the midterms coming up, you may have noticed that your money might not be used by the corporations that you give your money to for very good purposes. If you're an AT&T customer, you should know that you are also helping to fund CNN. And if you're a T-Mobile customer, your CEO openly advised Democrats on how to beat Trump in the 2020 election. Why not go to Pure Talk instead? Also, your car is now maybe worth more than your house because of supply chain crises and the fact that you have left-wing governments that are telling you that in the future you won't actually be able to get parts for your gas-powered vehicle. That's why you don't want to go to that auto parts shop in order to upkeep your vehicle, you want to make sure that your car stays on the road nearly forever! And the best way to do this is to head on over to RockAuto.com, where you can get all the parts you need for your vehicle and keep it safe and on-the-go. Make sure they know that we sent you by writing Shapiro in there! And I'm here for it, Fox. Well, did you hear about us, Fox? Well, well, you did! Ben Shapiro is in at The Ben Shapiro Show, and he is firing everyone as he pledged to do so. And I am here to do it, as he has been for years, and has been on the past several years. So there are a few things that have been on his mind lately, and I think you'll agree that they need to be fired from the past couple of years, including: Elon Musk, Chuck Schumer, and Jordan Peterson, and John Fetterman, and Jordan Ayatini, and much more. I don't even care about Jordan Peterson. Tweet me what you think about it! Tweet Me! if you agree with me! Timestamps: 1:00 - What do you think of this? 3:30 - What are your thoughts on Jordan Peterson's ban? 4:15 - Is this a good or bad thing? 5: How do I feel about it? 6:20 - Is it a good thing or not? 7: Does it matter? 8:00 9:40 - I don t know what I think it matters? 11:40
00:00:00.000Elon Musk fires the Twitter executive team, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gets caught on a hot mic lamenting the state of Senate races, and John Fetterman gets the hero treatment for falling apart in the biggest debate of his life.
00:00:12.000The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
00:00:20.000Protect your online privacy today at ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
00:00:24.000Well, you may have noticed with the midterms coming up that your money might not be used by the corporations that you give your money to for very good purposes.
00:00:32.000If you're an AT&T customer, you should know that you are also helping to fund CNN because AT&T owns CNN.
00:00:37.000T-Mobile customers, your CEO openly advised Democrats on how to beat Trump.
00:01:24.000Also, you may have noticed that your car is now maybe worth more than your house.
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00:03:06.000Somehow, the Ayatollah Khomeini, he's fine while he's railing about how the Jews should be destroyed.
00:03:11.000But somehow, Jordan Peterson is banned for saying that men cannot be women.
00:03:16.000Twitter's content moderation policies have basically been a weapon on behalf of the left.
00:03:20.000And what it's meant is that everybody has to skirt All of their rules.
00:03:23.000So there are things that you just can't say on Twitter.
00:03:25.000So, for example, when there was controversy over whether ivermectin was a good treatment for COVID-19, you couldn't even claim that ivermectin was a good treatment for COVID-19, even though it did work for a lot of people and is still controversial as to how well ivermectin works.
00:03:37.000You still could not say, even though the evidence showed that widespread masking did not stop the transmission of the virus.
00:03:43.000You weren't allowed to say that vaccines were not effective in stopping the transmission of the virus.
00:03:48.000These are things you were not allowed to say on Twitter.
00:03:49.000And if you said them on Twitter, then you would immediately have your account suspended.
00:03:53.000The number of personal friends that I have who have been suspended from Twitter is incredibly high.
00:03:57.000And we're talking about people who are not wild-eyed people.
00:03:59.000We're talking about people like Dave Rubin.
00:04:01.000We're talking about Babylon Bee, Libs of TikTok, Jordan Peterson.
00:04:04.000All these people have been suspended or banned outright from Twitter.
00:04:08.000Well now Elon Musk is back, he is in charge and he is firing everyone as well he should.
00:04:13.000He said he was going to fire 75% of the staff and frankly I think that's low.
00:04:17.000He needs to go a little bit higher than that because the simple fact of the matter is Twitter is a bloated bureaucracy.
00:04:22.000It's filled with people who had jobs like diversity, equity and inclusion manager.
00:04:48.000There are certain people we don't want to be friends with and we don't want over in our houses because their opinions are just too vile, right?
00:04:52.000You wouldn't want a skinhead Nazi over at your house with your kids because your Overton Window is personally not big enough to encompass that.
00:05:01.000You should not be forced to have that person over at your house.
00:05:04.000And if you own a platform like Twitter, presumably there will be an Overton Window beyond which there are certain opinions that are just too far.
00:05:13.000But those should be as close to the legal line of free speech as humanly possible.
00:05:17.000Meaning that there are certain things that are not protected by free speech in the United States.
00:05:20.000Pornography is really not protected by free speech in the United States.
00:05:23.000And we like to pretend that it is, but historically speaking, it just was not.
00:05:29.000The idea of a violent threat, that is not protected.
00:05:32.000Full-on defamation is not protected by free speech in the United States.
00:05:36.000Well, if you're a platform, what you should try to do is hew as close to the First Amendment line as humanly possible, because indeed, that is what you were created to do.
00:05:43.000If the whole idea of Twitter is that it was a digital town square, then treat it like a digital town square, meaning that it is a neutral forum for discussion.
00:05:50.000And that's going to include crazy people who are over there on the side, standing on an Apple box and shouting at everybody at will.
00:05:55.000The good news is that unlike that town square where that person is noise polluting, In the digital town square, you have a mute button and you have the ability to algorithmically shape what it is that you wish to see.
00:06:05.000And I think that Elon Musk understands this.
00:06:07.000So the hue and cry at Twitter is just insane.
00:06:10.000People at Twitter are weeping openly online.
00:06:12.000You're seeing people from the left, the people in the media, who are just, we're going to abandon Twitter.
00:06:17.000We're going to run screaming from this place.
00:06:25.000Hilariously, she's actually like, you know, I'm, I need to tweet out my substack so people can see my stuff over there.
00:06:29.000Substack is also a free speech platform where a bunch of people Taylor Lauren's hates are, including libs of TikTok, by the way.
00:06:36.000Well now, according to the Associated Press, Musk has taken control of Twitter and ousted the CEO, CFO, and the company's top lawyer, two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night.
00:06:44.000The people wouldn't say if all the paperwork for the deal had been signed or if the deal had been closed.
00:06:47.000They said Musk is in charge of the social media platform he fired, CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Siegel, and Chief Legal Counsel Vijaya Gedi.
00:06:54.000Neither person wanted to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the deal.
00:06:57.000Now, you saw Vijaya Gedi just get absolutely eviscerated on one episode of Joe Rogan.
00:07:03.000Tim Pool just destroyed her on Joe Rogan, right?
00:07:06.000Just asking her about how exactly you make these decisions as to what is bannable and what is not.
00:07:11.000Agrawal has presided over the widespread feeling that Twitter is a forum for the left.
00:07:18.000And if you say anything that violates the most strictly held standards, then you will be banned.
00:07:22.000A few hours after the firing, Musk tweeted, the bird has been freed.
00:07:27.000You know, just from a pure objective level, Musk is a lot of fun.
00:07:30.000I mean, is it okay to say that a billionaire is fun?
00:07:33.000I know that we're supposed to believe that billionaires are very dour or world controlling.
00:07:37.000They'll have to be do-gooders like Bill Gates, who I guess is having fun on the side of his pool house.
00:07:43.000But aside from that, he's supposed to be, you know, a person who's out there to, you know, very serious people.
00:07:50.000I love the fact that Musk is not totally serious.
00:07:52.000I think that is a wonderful, wonderful thing for the world.
00:07:54.000The departures came just hours before a deadline set by a Delaware judge to finalize the deal on Friday.
00:07:58.000She threatened to schedule a trial if no agreement was reached.
00:08:01.000Although they came quickly, the major personnel moves have been widely expected.
00:08:04.000They are almost certainly the first many changes the Tesla CEO will make.
00:08:08.000Must privately clash with Agrawal in April immediately before deciding to make a bid for the company, according to text messages later revealed in court filings.
00:08:14.000About the same time he used Twitter to criticize Gaddy, the company's top lawyer.
00:08:17.000His tweets were followed by a wave of harassment of Gaddy from other Twitter accounts.
00:08:20.000This is one of the garbage lines the media like to use, is that if you tweet about somebody, and then a lot of people don't like what that person said, and they harass that person, that's your fault.
00:08:28.000Hey, as probably one of the most harassed people on Twitter, I've never complained about that because guess what?
00:08:48.000It is called a mute button and I can use it whenever I please.
00:08:52.000For Gady, an 11-year Twitter employee who also heads public policy and safety, the harassment included racist and misogynist attacks, in addition to calls for Musk to fire her.
00:08:59.000On Thursday after she was fired, the harassing tweets lit up once again.
00:09:03.000This notion that you are responsible if you criticize a person and a bunch of other people decide to act in bad fashion against that person, you are then responsible for this?
00:09:11.000This ends political speech in the United States.
00:09:16.000And yes, there are a bunch of people out there who act in stupid fashion and then harass those people.
00:09:20.000Does that mean that you are responsible for the harassment?
00:09:23.000This is the game that the media love to play.
00:09:24.000The media are particularly angry here because you have to understand what the game here was, particularly for the mainstream media when it comes to these big social media platforms like Facebook or like Twitter.
00:09:48.000Then the rise of the Internet happened in the 1990s, particularly the late 1990s, started by Drudge Report.
00:09:54.000Then all of a sudden you had a wide variety of outlets that people could access for their news.
00:09:59.000And I'm old enough to remember the beginnings of the news internet in the late 1990s, early 2000s, when suddenly everybody could get their information from different places.
00:10:08.000And the way that you would access that information typically is you would bookmark like 10 pages and nobody has ever used a bookmark.
00:10:15.000I'm talking about my generation, the Millennials.
00:10:16.000The Millennials, what we would do is we would actually just bookmark like 10 pages.
00:10:20.000You'd go in the morning and you'd check your bookmark for Fox News, your bookmark for Drudge Report, your bookmark for Town Hall or Hot Air.
00:10:29.000Then these big social media platforms sprang up and they started garnering billions of eyeballs.
00:10:34.000And so all of these news outlets started to move their feed onto the social media platforms.
00:10:40.000These became the place where you would access your news.
00:10:42.000So from now on, if you wanted your cultivated news feed, it was much simpler than hitting 10 different bookmarks to just have a cultivated news feed that brought up all the news you otherwise would see.
00:10:51.000And there was some algorithmic programming that allowed you to see some news that maybe you hadn't clicked on before.
00:10:56.000That's the way that the newsfeed work and the same thing was true of Twitter, right?
00:10:58.000You would follow all the accounts of those of those people you were already bookmarking and then you would get the news from Twitter.
00:11:04.000What this allowed is for the possibility because it was all via Facebook or all via Twitter or all via Instagram.
00:11:09.000It allowed for the possibility that all of those major outlets would just turn the spigot and suddenly All the places that you were following would just be silence.
00:11:17.000And suddenly you were getting your news again from the mainstream media.
00:11:21.000All the people that you had been attempting to avoid for 20 years, suddenly you were getting your news from them again.
00:11:25.000You had to hear from the Washington Post or the New York Times.
00:11:28.000You couldn't hear from Daily Wire or from Breitbart or from any of the other right-wing outlets that you normally would follow.
00:11:36.000This was their favorite thing in the entire world.
00:11:38.000They loved it because it reestablished a media monopoly that they had lost with the rise of the internet.
00:11:44.000And naturally, it ticked a lot of people off.
00:11:47.000And one of those people was Elon Musk.
00:11:49.000And you ticked off the wrong billionaire.
00:11:51.000Because it turns out, it's going to be hilarious, because 100 years from now, when the history of the United States is written, an inflection point is going to be Twitter banning the Babylon Bee for a headline about how men are not women.
00:12:03.000That's an actual historical inflection point.
00:12:05.000Because the left got so crazy over their skis on this.
00:12:09.000They got so bullying and vicious to the heads of the social media companies that the heads of the social media companies decided that they were basically going to crack down on anything that violated left-wing scruples.
00:12:20.000I mean, if you actually look at the difference from what Jack Dorsey, the head of Twitter, used to say about free speech to what he started to say about free speech about four years in, five years into his tenure at Twitter.
00:12:30.000You look at the difference between how Mark Zuckerberg used to talk about free speech versus how Mark Zuckerberg talked about free speech just a couple of years later.
00:12:37.000You can see a radical shift that happened.
00:12:39.000Both Dorsey and Zuckerberg used to talk about free speech in exactly the same terms that I'm talking about free speech.
00:12:44.000It should be the broadest possible window that allows for all people to have conversations.
00:12:49.000And if you don't like it, you can turn it off.
00:12:52.000I keep citing the speech that Zuckerberg gave at Georgetown in 2018, I believe, in which he talked about this, right?
00:12:58.000He openly talked about we need to have a broad platform for speech.
00:13:02.000I'm not the great arbiter of what's true and what's not.
00:13:04.000It is not my job to determine what you should see and what you should not see because you're an adult.
00:13:09.000And then, because of all the pressure that was brought to bear in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump, all of these social media companies collapsed.
00:13:14.000Because you started to see Democrats and members of the media start blaming all these social media companies for all the ills of the world.
00:13:20.000Now all these social media companies, which were treated up till then, as wonderful, wonderful things, because after all, these wonderful, wonderful social media companies had allowed for things like the Arab Spring, you remember this, or they'd allowed for the election of Barack Obama.
00:13:31.000Remember all the talk in 2012 was about how genius the Obama team was for manipulating the data via Facebook in order to win re-election.
00:13:46.000So in the aftermath of Trump being elected, which was a world shattering event for the left, they started to push really hard on the social media networks.
00:13:52.000Because it couldn't be that Hillary lost because she was a crap candidate, She must have lost because the social media networks had been penetrated by the Ruskies or the social media networks were too broad minded.
00:14:02.000And, you know, free speech, free speech is a real dangerous thing.
00:14:05.000Free speech could be undermined by free speech.
00:14:08.000And so they started to clamp down and the social media bros, because they were weak, need also started to clamp down.
00:14:16.000Yeah, Dianne Feinstein openly threatening Mark Zuckerberg, senator from California, saying, if you don't regulate yourself, we will regulate you.
00:14:23.000And so Zuckerberg and team would say to these legislators, OK, fine, please regulate us, right?
00:14:27.000Create a system of regulation that makes for an even playing field.
00:14:31.000And Democrats say, no, no, no, it's up to you.
00:15:30.000Musk's changes, according to the Associated Press, will be aimed at increasing Twitter's subscriber base and revenue.
00:15:34.000In the first big move earlier on Thursday, Musk tried to sue the leery Twitter advertisers, saying he's buying the platform to help humanity and doesn't want it to become a free-for-all hellscape.
00:15:42.000The message appears to be aimed at addressing concerns among advertisers that Musk's plans to promote free speech by cutting back on moderating content will open the floodgates to more online toxicity and driveway users.
00:15:52.000Now, again, that is not what's happening with these advertisers.
00:15:55.000These advertisers are not afraid that tons of people are going to stop using Twitter as a service.
00:15:58.000The reality is that Twitter's numbers have been inflated for a very long time.
00:16:02.000There's a small cadre of people who are very active on Twitter.
00:16:04.000They tend to be professionals like me who are in the Twitter space disseminating information.
00:16:09.000The number of people who actively use Twitter, who actively tweet is much smaller than the number of people who are Twitter subscribers, right?
00:16:15.000The number of people who have accounts on Twitter.
00:16:18.000So they're not afraid of mass drop-off.
00:16:20.000What's happening right now is left-wing pressure groups are going to advertisers and saying, you should not advertise on Twitter because we are going to then initiate boycotts against you.
00:16:28.000We'll initiate secondary boycotts against you.
00:16:30.000Now, here's what advertisers should say.
00:17:08.000Musk wrote, quote, the reason I have acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner without resorting to violence.
00:17:18.000He continued, there's currently great danger social media will splinter into far right wing and far left wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.
00:17:25.000That, of course, is correct, because if Twitter continues along the lines that it is continuing, then you are going to see people of the right move to other platforms.
00:17:33.000You are going to see people of the right... You've seen this, by the way, in the video space, right?
00:17:36.000Rumble has become a rather successful company because people fear the predations of YouTube.
00:17:42.000Musk has previously expressed distaste for advertising and Twitter's dependence on it, suggesting more emphasis on other business models like paid subscriptions that won't allow big corporations to dictate policy on how social media operates.
00:17:51.000On Thursday, he assured advertisers he wants Twitter to be the most respected advertising platform in the world.
00:17:57.000Pinar Yildirim, an associate professor of marketing at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says the note is a shift from Musk's position.
00:18:02.000Twitter is unfairly infringing on free speech rights by blocking misinformation or graphic content.
00:18:07.000But it's also a realization that having no content moderation is bad for business.
00:18:10.000Well, he never said there shouldn't be no content moderation.
00:18:12.000He just said that the Overton window that's been created by a bunch of left-wing activists in executive positions at Twitter is not in consonance with good business practice.
00:18:22.000So, Musk, again, making these moves, firing everybody, shows that he intends to radically change the direction of the company, and that is a very good thing for Twitter.
00:18:31.000It is also a very good thing for the world.
00:18:33.000Musk intends to do away with permanent bans on users because he doesn't believe in lifelong prohibitions.
00:18:37.000That means people previously booted off the platform might be allowed to return, a category that would include former President Donald Trump.
00:18:42.000It's unclear if Trump would be allowed back on Twitter in the near term.
00:18:47.000There is no way that Musk takes over and Trump is not going to be allowed back on the platform.
00:18:50.000How would Musk even be able to justify that to himself?
00:18:53.000There's no way that Trump is not going to be allowed to return.
00:18:56.000By the way, the media will celebrate that because Trump is the media's lifeblood.
00:19:00.000The media have been losing money hand over fist since Trump left office, which is why they keep clinging to January 6th and going on Truth Social and finding Trump's random statements.
00:19:09.000The billionaire, according to Bloomberg, will bring immediate disruption to Twitter's operations, in part because many of his ideas for how to change the company are at odds with how it has been run for years.
00:19:16.000He said he wants to ensure free speech on the social network.
00:19:20.000More broadly, Musk's initiatives threatened to undo years of Twitter's efforts to reduce bullying and abuse on the platform.
00:19:25.000Again, that whole shtick, the bullying and abuse, those are very vague terms, because what Twitter has now said is that it is bullying or abuse to say that Elliot Page is a woman.
00:19:49.000Again, they are losing their monopoly.
00:19:50.000They don't like losing their monopoly.
00:19:51.000And so they're going to put extraordinary pressure on advertisers, on Musk, on everybody, to punish Twitter for not reestablishing the monopoly.
00:20:03.000That is precisely what they want to do.
00:20:05.000I don't think that Musk is going to cave to that, nor do I think he should cave to that.
00:20:08.000I think, as always, it is a left-wing toddler tantrum that is happening right now.
00:20:14.000And in the end, advertisers will continue.
00:20:45.000Well, if you own a business, it's been a rough ride right here, and you may have actually overpaid your taxes a couple of years ago.
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00:23:15.000One reason for that became clear in a column by Eric Wemple over at the Washington Post.
00:23:19.000Wemple is kind of an interesting media columnist.
00:23:22.000He's definitely of the left, but he is occasionally an honest journalist.
00:23:26.000He has a piece today titled, James Bennett Was Right.
00:23:28.000James Bennett, of course, was the editor, the op-ed editor over at the New York Times when he ran a piece by Senator Tom Cotton, claiming that in the middle of riot summer 2020, perhaps the federal government should call out the National Guard in order to quell the rioting.
00:23:43.000According to Wemple in the Washington Post, controversy over an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton consumed the New York Times in June 2020 and claimed the job of then-editorial page editor James Bennett.
00:23:51.000Two and a half years later, Bennett has shared some thoughts about the episode and, in particular, the role of Times publisher A.G.
00:23:58.000Quote, he set me on fire and threw me in the garbage and used my reverence for the institution against me, is what Bennett told Ben Smith of Semaphore.
00:24:04.000This is why I was so bewildered for so long after I had felt like all my colleagues treated me like an incompetent fascist.
00:24:11.000Lempel says that might sound like the angst of a guy who's still disgruntled at losing his job.
00:24:18.000He's right about the lessons that linger from his tumultuous final days at the Times.
00:24:22.000Because Bennett came under such heavy scrutiny for even running the Tom Cotton Op-Ed that he was essentially fired from his job and thrown under the bus.
00:24:30.000And here's what Wemple said, this is amazing.
00:24:31.000Quote, his outburst in semaphore furnishes a toehold for reassessing one of the most consequential journalism fights in decades.
00:24:37.000To date, the lesson from the set to that publishing a senator arguing that federal troops could be deployed against riders is unacceptable will forever circumscribe what issues opinion sections are allowed to address.
00:24:46.000It's also long past time to explain why more people who claim to uphold journalism and free expression, including the Eric Wemple blog, didn't speak out then in Bennett's defense.
00:24:59.000That's an unbelievable admission by Eric Wemple.
00:25:03.000We didn't speak out for James Bennett and the fact that he was publishing an op-ed that was purely within the mainstream of American thought.
00:25:09.000In fact, polls showed that a plurality or majority of Americans thought the National Guard, if necessary, could be called out to quell rioting.
00:25:29.000He says, after the cotton op-ed was published, a backlash swiftly combusted.
00:25:34.000The Times staffers at the forefront of the critique, Nicole Hannah-Jones, creator of the Pulitzer Prize winning 1619 Project, tweeted that the paper should have done a news story to push back against cotton ideas, as opposed to, quote, simply giving over our platform to spew dangerous rhetoric.
00:25:45.000Instead, W. Herndon, a national politics reporter, made a similar point, tweeting that, quote, if electeds want to make a provocative argument, let them withstand the questions in context of a news story, not unvarnished and unchecked.
00:25:55.000There were other persuasive broadsides against the decisions to publish Cotton.
00:26:00.000Many times, staffers, however, forwent the rigor of argumentation and tweeted out the following line or something similar to express their disgust.
00:26:06.000Quote, running this puts black New York Times staff in danger.
00:26:09.000The formulation came from the internal group of Black NYT and received the blessing of the News Guild of New York as legally protected speech because it focused on workplace safety.
00:26:18.000The danger tweets, along with a letter from Times employees slamming the op-ed, landed with impact.
00:26:22.000Although Sulzberger initially defended publication as furthering the principle of openness to a range of opinions, he bailed on that posture within hours.
00:26:28.000By the afternoon after publication, the paper had determined that the piece failed to, quote, meet our standards, according to a statement.
00:26:34.000As Sulzberger flip-flopped, an astonishing up-is-down moment unfolded at the paper's upper regions.
00:26:39.000Whereas media elites typically develop arguments to defend work that comes under attack, the opposite scenario played out over the Cotton Op-Ed.
00:26:45.000Top Times officials, according to three sources, scrambled to pulverize the essay in order to vindicate objections rolling in from Twitter.
00:26:52.000A post-publication fact-check was commissioned to comb through the Op-Ed for errors, according to the sources, even though it had undergone fact-checking before publication.
00:26:59.000The paper's standards desk spearheaded work on an editor's note.
00:27:02.000I've written op-eds for the New York Times.
00:27:04.000They make you go through a rigorous and ridiculous fact-check process.
00:27:06.000I mean, it is the most extraordinary extended fact-check process I've ever gone through for any op-ed.
00:27:11.000And my op-ed was just an obit for Rush Limbaugh.
00:27:14.000Deputy Page Editorial Director James Dow, who pushed for publication, spent more than an hour on the phone with a Cotton aide that Thursday night to inventory alleged problems.
00:27:23.000Dow says the aide was pointedly unenthusiastic about the pursuit.
00:27:26.000It sounded like he had a gun to his head and he had to find something, the aide, who is no longer with Cotton's office, told this blog.
00:27:30.000The review did not deliver the factual bloodbath alleged by critics.
00:27:34.000The fact check flagged a misquotation that should have been rendered as a paraphrase.
00:27:37.000It also examined objections to Cotton's claim that cadres of left-wing radicals like Antifa were infiltrating protest marchers to exploit Floyd's death for their own anarchic purposes.
00:27:45.000That topic was the focus of various conflicting official statements and news stories, some of them published by the Times in the run-up to the Cotton op-ed and extending well beyond it.
00:27:53.000The Editor's Note asserted that claims about Antifa have not been substantiated and have been widely questioned.
00:27:57.000Such was the spirit of the Editor's Note, which went heavy on regrets about tone, process, and other squishy considerations, while asserting that the op-ed failed time standards, says Eric Wemple.
00:28:05.000It also claimed that the essay's arguments were, quote, a newsworthy part of the current debate, a line that Dow championed, according to two sources.
00:28:11.000Elsewhere, it said the op-ed should have undergone greater scrutiny, even though at least five opinion editors participated in editing, according to sources.
00:28:18.000Although Bennett said he hadn't read the piece, he was involved in some early decisions about it, including the deletion of a criticism of Hannah Jones.
00:28:24.000So they actually took out a criticism of one of their columnists from the piece.
00:28:32.000Sulzberger seemed disappointed upon being told that the post-publication fact check hadn't punctured the op-ed, according to a source involved in the process.
00:28:38.000The Eric Wemple blog asked the Times for another example of an editor's note apologizing for non-factual issues.
00:28:43.000The Times didn't answer that question, among others.
00:28:45.000The editor's note teed up Bennett's firing, technically resignation, as editorial page director.
00:28:50.000Media coverage of his departure noted, the op-ed was one of several storms under Bennett's management.
00:28:54.000Others included a June 2017 editorial that triggered a defamation lawsuit from Sarah Palin, an anti-Semitic cartoon, and personal fiascos.
00:29:00.000The cotton thing seemed like the final straw, except in hindsight, it wasn't a straw at all.
00:29:04.000In initially sticking up for the Times role in publishing controversial affairs, as Eric Wimple, Sulzberger, had it right.
00:29:09.000Okay, so why exactly didn't anybody in the media actually say this?
00:29:18.000Well, says Eric Wempel, the Twitter chain claiming danger to time staffers suffered from the same journalistic failings leveled at the op-ed.
00:29:24.000It was an exercise in manipulative hyperbole brilliantly calibrated for immediate impact.
00:29:29.000I actually knew what it meant to have a target on your back when you're reporting for the New York Times, Bennett told Smith, because he actually used to report for the New York Times in the Middle East.
00:29:35.000The Eric Wemple blog has asked 30 Times staffers whether they still believe their danger tweets and whether there was any merit in Bennett's retort.
00:29:42.000Not one of them replied with an on-the-record defense.
00:29:45.000Such was the depth of conviction behind a central argument in Le Fair Cotton.
00:29:48.000Our criticism of the Twitter outburst comes 875 days too late.
00:29:52.000Although the hollowness of the internal uproar against Bennett was immediately apparent, we responded with an even-handed critique of the Times flip-flop, not the unapologetic defense of journalism the situation required.
00:30:01.000Our posture was one of cowardice and mid-career risk management.
00:30:04.000Without a doubt, we pile one more regret onto a controversy littered with them.
00:30:07.000So good for Eric Wemple for admitting it.
00:30:09.000But what he was really afraid of, he was afraid of Twitter.
00:30:12.000He was afraid of the Twitter mob, the left-wing Twitter mob that has been left in charge of that service.
00:30:16.000This is why Musk taking over is so good.
00:30:18.000Because finally, finally, the pushback will be allowed.
00:30:22.000I mean, there was great fear on places like Twitter during BLM that if you said things like, rioting is bad, the National Guard should be called.
00:30:33.000That you might be banned from places like Twitter.
00:30:36.000And the media culture that's been created by the left is unbelievably ideologically monopolistic.
00:30:40.000So Musk breaking that is a very, very good thing.
00:30:44.000And that Eric Wemple op-ed is just astonishing.
00:30:45.000And it just shows you how much of our mainstream media Okay, meanwhile, we are about to hit a midterm election in just about a week and a half right here, and Chuck Schumer was caught on a hot mic assessing the state of play.
00:31:32.000in Pennsylvania because of John Fetterman.
00:31:35.000They're in serious trouble in Georgia because, contrary to popular opinion, Raphael Warnock is a terrible candidate for the United States Senate, and he would have lost last time if President Trump had not personally intervened to drive away votes for the Republican candidate in Georgia.
00:31:48.000And right now in Nevada, Adam Laxalt is opening up a not insignificant lead.
00:31:52.000There's a new poll from Trafalgar that shows Laxalt up by four.
00:31:56.000In fact, of the last polls, virtually all of them have Laxalt up.
00:32:01.000And it is fair to say that many of these polls are going to be skewed Democrat, because this has been true for every average polling error that we've seen over the past 10 years, essentially.
00:32:10.000It always tends to oversample Democrats.
00:32:12.000So right now, I'm just reading you the RealClearPolitics polling average in the Senate.
00:32:15.000Fetterman is up 0.3, which means dead heat, which means Oz is up.
00:32:20.000In fact, the latest polls show Oz up by three in the Insider Advantage poll.
00:32:27.000Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire is up apparently only 3.4 in the American, in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
00:32:34.000The last two polls show that race within margin of errors.
00:32:37.000That could be a surprise race, especially because Democrats really intervened to get Don Baldick to be the nominee because Baldick is considered more extreme and they were hoping Maggie Hassan would have an easier run.
00:32:52.000In Arizona, Mark Kelly is within margin of error in every single poll that has been taken right now.
00:32:58.000And it is quite possible that Carrie Lake, who is wildly overperforming that governor's race, partially because she's good on TV and partially because Katie Hobbs is an awful candidate, that she could drag Blake Masters over the finish line in that very tight race.
00:33:12.000Herschel Walker, right now in the polls, He's up.
00:33:15.000There's a Rasmussen poll that has him up five right now, despite all of this, right?
00:33:19.000Despite all of the scandals surrounding Herschel Walker and the fact that perhaps half the population of Georgia is biologically related to Herschel Walker.
00:33:46.000So he is dragging Herschel Walker along with him to victory.
00:33:50.000In Ohio, JD Vance is going to pull away with that race.
00:33:53.000In Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, who was once expected to lose that race, is going to win that race.
00:33:57.000Marco Rubio is blowing out Val Demings in Florida to the desperation of Democrats who have been hoping that Val Demings might overperform there.
00:34:04.000So you can see why Democrats are freaking out.
00:34:06.000And they're freaking out about other races as well.
00:34:08.000I've said that my sleeper pick in this particular midterm election is that Kathy Hochul goes down in New York.
00:34:13.000And you're starting to see the New York Times come around to that position.
00:34:16.000According to the New York Times, as governor's race tightens, a frantic call to action among Democrats.
00:34:20.000You don't need to consult the most recent polls to realize the race for New York governor between Governor Kathy Hochul and Representative Lise Eldon appears to be tightening.
00:34:27.000Just follow the string of Democrats' calls to action this week, says the New York Times, with just 12 days until Election Day.
00:34:31.000Democrats and their allies are mounting a frenzied push to keep HOKL in office, pouring millions of dollars into last-minute ads, staging a whirlwind of campaign rallies to energize their base amid concerns their typically reliable bedrock of Black and Latino voters might not turn out.
00:34:44.000Labor unions have been going into overdrive, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on TV and radio ads to control those voters to turn up for HOKL.
00:34:50.000The HOKL campaign has even turned to former primary adversaries for help, including the Working Families Party.
00:34:57.000HOKL is still leading most of the major polls, With that said, those polls are not particularly encouraging for Kathy Hochul at this point.
00:35:07.000She's up about 6 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, but the last polls were done about 10 days ago, and they had Hochul up somewhere between 4 and 6 points.
00:35:16.000So that race has tightened dramatically.
00:35:18.000And even the New York Times is recognizing the Democrats are having to pour money down the rat hole of that race.
00:35:23.000Recent polls show Zeldin Drawing closer to Hochul, their head-to-head debate went very poorly for Kathy Hochul because she's never actually had to do a major debate for any rational reason.
00:35:33.000Meanwhile, the GOP looks like it's in good shape in Oregon.
00:35:36.000For the first time in 40 years, Oregonians might choose a Republican governor.
00:35:46.000She's drawing an average of 14% in the polls.
00:35:48.000Former Democratic state senator, House Speaker Tina Kotech, and former Statehouse GOP leader Christine Drazen are running evenly at just under 39%.
00:35:55.000Jessica Taylor, an editor at nonpartisan Cook Political Report, says Republicans have a lot of things going their way in this race.
00:36:02.000And one of those things is that Portland is located in Oregon.
00:36:05.000And Oregon might not like how Portland is governed.
00:36:22.000It turns out that major city governance has a rather large impact on how people think the state ought to be governed.
00:36:29.000So it could be that Oregon ends up with a Republican governor, which would, again, be a great shocker, obviously.
00:36:35.000As I mentioned before, Black Democrats are meanwhile very, very upset because it turns out that a bunch of Black female politicians are completely failing in their races and the DCCC and the DCSC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, DSCC, they've been doing Basically, no fundraising in a lot of these races that were supposed to be big wins for black Democratic women.
00:36:56.000Stacey Abrams has spent a ton of money.
00:36:57.000She's getting her ass kicked in Georgia.
00:36:59.000Belle Demings is spending money, but they're not dedicating a lot of money to her because she's getting her ass kicked in Florida.
00:37:04.000Remember, she was supposed to be the great hope for the Democratic Party in Florida.
00:37:08.000She's getting whomped in all the polls.
00:37:11.000The Democratic Senate Majority PAC, a group affiliated with the party leadership and its partners, had spent 10 million bucks since May against Ted Budd in North Carolina.
00:37:19.000And meanwhile, Bud is just running away at the race.
00:37:22.000So, it's fun to watch the precriminations from the Democratic Party.
00:37:26.000Black members of the Democratic Party are like, you're racist, that's why you're not spending money there.
00:37:29.000Far be it from me to defend the Democratic Party against charges of racism, but the reason that they are not spending money in these races is because those candidates are going to lose.
00:37:38.000It is not because the candidates are black.
00:37:39.000All right, coming up, we'll get to John Fetterman, because the Democrats are desperately trying to pull out that race at first.
00:37:46.000Well, folks, I just watched an amazing new three-part series by Jordan Peterson.
00:37:58.000In 2018, marriage rates hit an all-time low in the United States.
00:38:01.000Marriage is on the rocks in the United States, which means the future of the country is on the rocks because the simple fact of the matter is that marriage and family are the bedrock of Western civilization.
00:38:08.000Jordan is trying to restore faith in the institution and he's going to encourage you to both better your marriage if you're already married and get married if you are not married.
00:38:15.000Daily Wire Plus members can watch the first episode of Jordan Peterson's On Marriage with two more episodes coming out soon.
00:38:20.000If you're not yet a member, go to dailywire.com slash Ben, join today.
00:38:23.000Also, in case you missed it, last night was my book club, Ben Shapiro's book club.
00:38:27.000We discussed Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's masterpiece, which basically is the world according to the left.
00:38:55.000John Fetterman, as expected, is falling apart in polling.
00:38:59.000WIC Insights has now a new post-debate poll from Pennsylvania.
00:39:02.000The polling has been limited in the aftermath of the debate.
00:39:05.000All the polling shows that Fetterman has lost ground.
00:39:07.000This poll shows Oz at 47.6 and Fetterman at 45.9.
00:39:11.000Now, there's been some early voting in Pennsylvania.
00:39:12.000This is one of the reasons why early voting is super duper bad.
00:39:17.000Like, I voted early because it is available to me.
00:39:19.000I wish they would change the rules and it would not have been available to me and that you'd have to vote within like three days of the election unless you have some sort of excuse.
00:39:25.000The fact that people are voting months out from an election en masse is really bad, because then there is late-breaking information that might change your vote.
00:39:30.000In fact, one of the Google searches that was most highly trending in the aftermath of that Oz Fetterman debate was, how do I change my vote in Pennsylvania?
00:39:39.000You figure there have been something like 500,000 to 700,000 early votes in Pennsylvania.
00:39:42.000There will be 5 million votes probably in that election.
00:39:45.000The vast majority of people who vote early probably were dedicated partisans.
00:39:48.000Not a lot of independents showing up to vote early.
00:39:51.000What that means is that if the early votes in Pennsylvania are even remotely even, which they seem to be at this point by party ID, then Oz will win that race.
00:40:00.000Now, Democrats are struggling to come up with some sort of rationale for why precisely you should vote for John Fetterman, considering the fact that he is not fully functional.
00:40:36.000And anybody who tells you differently is lying to you and assuming that you are a stupid person.
00:40:41.000But they've come up with another narrative.
00:40:42.000The narrative is now that John Fetterman is a hero.
00:40:46.000See him going on that stage and performing in the worst possible fashion, justifying everybody's fears about his health, justifying everybody's fears about his brain function.
00:40:56.000And Fetterman, he actually grew a third arm to pat himself on the back here, talking about what a hero he is for even going to debate in the first place.
00:41:04.000Going to debate, that is a prereq for being in the Senate.
00:41:08.000And you tried to avoid it for as long as you could.
00:41:10.000The fact is that if Fetterman had avoided the debate, everybody would have understood the exact same thing they understood after watching the debate, which is the man is not fully functional.
00:42:30.000No, and you know, you talk about the liver, the liberty of a statue has never had an inscription inside that said, you know, send your, your tired 100 masses and put them on a bus and turn them into a chief political stunt.