The Ben Shapiro Show - Of Racism And Forgiveness | Ep. 709

00:00:00.000 Ralph Northam faces down his political mortality, President Trump heads to CBS, and we recap the Super Bowl today on The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:11.000 Alrighty, we do have a lot to get to today.

00:00:13.000 Ralph Northam, the Virginia governor, still in trouble.

00:00:15.000 He's had himself a very bad couple of weeks. 0.89

00:00:18.000 What's weird in the Democratic Party is saying that you want to kill fully formed infants just before they exit the birth canal. 0.92

00:00:24.000 Totally cool. 0.99

00:00:25.000 35-year-old racist Facebook or yearbook photo.

00:00:29.000 Very bad. 0.81

00:00:30.000 Resign.

00:00:30.000 Go away.

00:00:31.000 Hang yourself. 1.00

00:00:32.000 That's our politics right now. 0.99

00:00:34.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

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00:01:50.000 Okay, well, everybody was watching an awful, boring, terrible Super Bowl yesterday, the only saving grace of which was that the greatest quarterback of all time, Tom Brady, won his sixth Super Bowl.

00:02:01.000 While everybody was watching that, Ralph Northam was having an emergency meeting with a bunch of black members of his administration, and I guess that he's gonna try and live this one out. 0.96

00:02:11.000 So, to recap, You may remember Governor Ralph Northam from such things as, kill that fully formed baby in the middle of dilation? 0.89

00:02:19.000 Why sure!

00:02:20.000 Right, that was one of his starring efforts last week.

00:02:23.000 You also may remember him from such wonderful things as, here's a photo of me 35 years ago, either in blackface or a KKK outfit.

00:02:29.000 Now, you know your governorship is in trouble when the question is, which one are you?

00:02:33.000 The one in blackface or the one in the KKK outfit? 0.92

00:02:37.000 That's when you start thinking, well, I've got a bit of a problem here. 0.99

00:02:41.000 Now, in a second, I want to talk about why our standards in politics are just ridiculous.

00:02:46.000 And we really should consider whether or not we are willing to finish people's careers for bad taste mistakes That today look horribly racist, homophobic, bigoted from like three decades ago, whether that is the standard of destroying somebody's career, which means that legitimately we should only elect newborns because those are people who have not sinned in the past, at least to this point. 0.96

00:03:07.000 I mean, at least if we're not going to kill them, according to some Democrats.

00:03:11.000 We'll get to that in a second.

00:03:11.000 But first, let's let's bring you up to date on what is going on with Ralph Northam, who is fighting for his political life and doing so with a scalpel.

00:03:19.000 And also a blunderbuss.

00:03:20.000 So the weekend started with him holding a press conference where he said he apologized for his past actions.

00:03:26.000 He apologized for the racist video.

00:03:28.000 Then things got real weird.

00:03:29.000 So we start with him and his apology.

00:03:31.000 Earlier today, I released a statement apologizing for behavior in my past that falls far short of the standard you set for me when you elected me to be your governor.

00:03:43.000 I believe you deserve to hear directly from me that photo and the racist and offensive attitudes it represents.

00:03:52.000 Does not reflect that person I am today or the way that I have conducted myself as a soldier, a doctor, and a public servant.

00:04:02.000 I am deeply sorry.

00:04:04.000 Okay, now if that had been the extent of his statement, if he had said, listen, 35 years ago, People did really stupid stuff that now we look on and we are horrified by and I look back at that and I'm horrified by it too and it never should have happened and I had honestly forgotten about it because it's 35 years ago but now that somebody's brought it to my attention, really a terrible thing to have done.

00:04:21.000 I'm really sorry about that and I hope that you'll look at my totality of my record and see that this is not who I am, right?

00:04:27.000 That would I think be an appropriate apology and frankly I think that At that point, people should probably let it go, honestly.

00:04:33.000 But that's not what happened.

00:04:35.000 Then Ralph Northam decided, you know what?

00:04:37.000 Time for a second press conference.

00:04:38.000 Now, second press conferences are not like second breakfast from The Hobbit, from J.R.R.

00:04:44.000 Tolkien.

00:04:45.000 Second press conferences are much, much worse.

00:04:48.000 Then the first press conference is almost always.

00:04:50.000 It's hard to think of a situation where a second press conference has actually solidified things and made it better.

00:04:54.000 So here it was Ralph Northam doing a press conference and he decided that while he had apologized for his past actions in that statement you heard one second ago, now he was going to not apologize for that.

00:05:07.000 He was going to apologize for a different time he dressed Apparently he said it's not me in that photo from my yearbook page standing there dressed as a black person or as a KKK member.

00:05:19.000 My favorite statement from the weekend is that it was reported that Northern wanted to hire facial recognition experts to show that it wasn't his face in that photo.

00:05:27.000 How do you get a facial recognition expert to show that it's not you underneath a KKK hood? 0.64

00:05:32.000 Can the facial recognition experts tell what's going on?

00:05:36.000 Under, like, I thought the purpose of having the white sheet over your head, if you're a KKK member, is so that people can't recognize your face.

00:05:42.000 In any case, Ralph Northam said he wanted to do that, apparently.

00:05:46.000 And then, it got even better.

00:05:47.000 So, he said, that wasn't me.

00:05:49.000 That picture was not me.

00:05:50.000 The one from my yearbook page, you know, right above my name.

00:05:53.000 Which, legitimately, is what... I mean, it was in his yearbook page, from medical school.

00:05:57.000 Then he said, no, that wasn't me.

00:05:58.000 But, there was another party that I went to where I dressed up as Michael Jackson.

00:06:02.000 Now, first things first.

00:06:04.000 Let me suggest that if you dress up as random person in blackface to make fun of black people, I don't think it's the same thing as you dressing up as Michael Jackson in 1985 and putting on black makeup to do so.

00:06:16.000 I just don't think it's the exact same thing.

00:06:17.000 I think it's still not great, but I'm not going to pretend that I think that it's mocking in the same way that dressing up as random black person in 1910 is.

00:06:26.000 Context does matter in a lot of this stuff.

00:06:29.000 With that said, again, you know you're in trouble when you have to distinguish for the press.

00:06:33.000 Were you the guy in blackface or the guy in the KKK hood?

00:06:35.000 And then you have to distinguish from that, or was I the guy who took shoe polishes, he's about to explain, shoe polish, and make up your face to look like Michael Jackson circa 1985?

00:06:46.000 So here he was explaining, wasn't me in that yearbook photo, but if there's another photo of me dressed up as Michael Jackson looking like I dressed like a black guy, maybe that's me.

00:06:54.000 In the hours since I made my statement yesterday, I reflected with my family and classmates from the time and affirmed my conclusion that I am not the person in that photo.

00:07:08.000 That same year, I did participate in a dance contest in San Antonio, in which I darkened my face as part of a Michael Jackson costume.

00:07:19.000 I look back now, And regret that I did not understand the harmful legacy of an action like that. 0.77

00:07:25.000 OK, but then it got even more ridiculous. 0.65

00:07:28.000 So a reporter asked him. 0.90

00:07:31.000 You know, Mr. Governor, can you still moonwalk?

00:07:33.000 Because he said that he was in a dance contest.

00:07:36.000 And Northam, who's obviously one of the most intelligent people on the block. 1.00

00:07:39.000 And honestly, one of the most disappointing things about becoming an adult is realizing all the adults are stupid. 1.00

00:07:44.000 Adam Carolla makes this point all the time. 1.00

00:07:46.000 That when you're a kid, you look at all the adults and you say, that person has a nice house.

00:07:51.000 That person has a nice car.

00:07:52.000 That person has clothes and a TV and they can stay up to whatever time they want.

00:07:56.000 They can eat whatever they want.

00:07:57.000 They must be super smart.

00:07:58.000 And then as you grow up, you realize that all the kids who are sitting next to you in class eating their boogers are the adults with whom you're also an adult.

00:08:05.000 Well, it's the same thing when you look at folks like Ralph Northam. 1.00

00:08:08.000 Honestly, like this guy is the governor of Virginia and he's just an idiot. 1.00

00:08:12.000 He's just an idiot. 1.00

00:08:13.000 And I know people, well, he's a doctor. 1.00

00:08:15.000 That means he can't be stupid. 1.00

00:08:17.000 Why is it that everybody who says doctors can't be stupid also thinks their own doctor's an idiot and won't pay any attention to what they say? 1.00

00:08:23.000 Anyway, Ralph Northam is asked to moonwalk, and it's spectacular. 1.00

00:08:27.000 He looks around for space to moonwalk.

00:08:30.000 He does.

00:08:30.000 He looks around the stage for, like, do I have space to moonwalk here?

00:08:36.000 And then his wife gives him a look like, Ralph, are you insane? 1.00

00:08:40.000 Are you insane? 1.00

00:08:41.000 Like you're in the middle of a scandal about dressing in blackface and you're about to moonwalk your way out of office. 0.99

00:08:49.000 Let's watch it because it's really great.

00:08:51.000 It's good stuff.

00:08:54.000 Yes.

00:08:57.000 That's right.

00:08:58.000 You still able to move on?

00:08:59.000 Oh.

00:09:00.000 He looks around for space to do it.

00:09:03.000 My wife says inappropriate circumstances.

00:09:06.000 My favorite part of that clip is the big grin when he's like, I'm going to do this thing.

00:09:14.000 I'm going to do it.

00:09:15.000 I'm going to moonwalk.

00:09:16.000 And then he gets all disappointed because his wife is like, no, no, just no.

00:09:19.000 Ralph, what are you doing?

00:09:20.000 Don't moonwalk.

00:09:21.000 So maybe this does lend some credibility to the idea that the guy isn't a racist. 1.00

00:09:26.000 He's just an idiot. 1.00

00:09:27.000 Doesn't that lend some credibility to the idea that he's just a moron? 1.00

00:09:30.000 Maybe? 1.00

00:09:30.000 I mean, my goodness. 1.00

00:09:32.000 And then it turns out that back in the day, people called him A slur that was used for black people, I don't know, 50 years ago must have been common, maybe?

00:09:42.000 I don't know.

00:09:43.000 I don't know that much about this particular racial slur.

00:09:45.000 But apparently, his nickname was the racist slur coon man, which is just lovely. 1.00

00:09:50.000 So someone, he's asked about that.

00:09:52.000 He's like, I have no idea why people called me that.

00:09:54.000 Maybe it's because I like to go raccoon hunting or something.

00:09:56.000 Like, okay, all right.

00:09:58.000 Go Ralph Northam.

00:09:59.000 How do you account for one of your nicknames that's listed in the BMI yearbook in 1981, coon man? 0.99

00:10:03.000 What's your explanation for that?

00:10:05.000 My main nickname in high school and in college was goose, because when my voice was changing, I would change an octave.

00:10:15.000 There were two individuals, as best I can relect, at VMI, they were a year ahead of me, that called me Coon Man.

00:10:22.000 I don't know their motives or intent.

00:10:24.000 I know who they are.

00:10:25.000 But that was the extent of that, and it ended up in the yearbook, and I regret that.

00:10:30.000 Yeah, so, OK, fine.

00:10:32.000 All right, fine.

00:10:33.000 Well, let's just point out a couple of things.

00:10:35.000 Number one, the weaponization of racism means that he doesn't get off here.

00:10:39.000 We're going to talk in a second about what our general standards for politicians should be.

00:10:43.000 But the way that racism now works is that it has been completely weaponized, meaning that if somebody does something any time in the past or in the present, they can be even construed as racist.

00:10:54.000 They will be ruined politically.

00:10:56.000 And Ralph Northam was a full-scale participant in this sort of nastiness.

00:11:00.000 He would take comments that were not actually racist, and then he would construe them as racist in order to slander his political opposition in the most vile fashion.

00:11:07.000 And we'll show you that in just one second.

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00:12:21.000 Okay, so as I say, Ralph Northam has been an active participant in the weaponization of the charge of racism against people.

00:12:28.000 If you recall all the way back to the 2016 election, he ran an ad against his opponent, Ed Gillespie, that is one of the most vile ads I have legitimately ever seen in a campaign.

00:12:38.000 It was an ad that showed minority children running away from a guy, a white racist in a truck, with a Gillespie sticker on the back, as though Ed Gillespie was trying to run down small black children in his truck, and Gillespie supporters were the people at Charlottesville. 0.86

00:12:53.000 It was really disgusting. 0.94

00:12:54.000 Here's what that ad sounded like.

00:12:58.000 There are these kids who are running away.

00:12:59.000 There's a, you can see, a confederate flag on the back of a truck.

00:13:03.000 This is a super PAC that ran it on behalf of Northam.

00:13:09.000 Northam never denounced it.

00:13:10.000 There are all these minority kids and they're just kind of running away, running away from this truck with a confederate flag on the back.

00:13:18.000 And on the back of it there's a Gillespie sticker.

00:13:22.000 And now all these kids are running down the street.

00:13:24.000 There's a Muslim kid running.

00:13:25.000 All these kids are running down the street. 0.99

00:13:26.000 Again, here comes the truck trying to run down these children, trying to murder these children.

00:13:30.000 They have a Gillespie sticker on the back of the truck and a Don't Tread On Me license plate on the front.

00:13:36.000 Now remember, this is a super PAC that was associated with Northam.

00:13:38.000 We ran it on his behalf.

00:13:41.000 And then parents wake up to comfort their children and remind them not to vote for Ed Gillespie, paid for by Latino Victory Fund.

00:13:47.000 They say it was not authorized by any candidate, but you never saw Northam come out and condemn the ad.

00:13:51.000 So Northam was an expert at this.

00:13:53.000 He suggested that Ed Gillespie was a racist for having mentioned MS-13, the gang, that was active in Virginia in discussions about illegal immigration.

00:14:01.000 So Gillespie participated full-scale in this sort of stuff.

00:14:04.000 That means that if you make any boo-boo at any time, the knives are going to come out for you.

00:14:08.000 And come out they did.

00:14:09.000 President Trump grabbed a pitchfork and just rammed it directly into Ralph Northam.

00:14:14.000 In the middle of this scandal, President Trump tweeted out, Democrat Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia just stated, I believe that I am not either of the people in that photo.

00:14:23.000 This was 24 hours after apologizing for appearing in the picture and after making the most horrible statement on super late-term abortion.

00:14:31.000 Unforgivable.

00:14:32.000 Now, everybody on the left said, well, you know, you made comments about Charlottesville and all those.

00:14:36.000 That's why Trump is doing this.

00:14:37.000 Because what he is saying is, you guys all call me racist for stuff.

00:14:40.000 Well, when the shoe's on the other foot, I'm not going to hold back.

00:14:42.000 I'm not going to pretend that Ralph Northam gets off easy.

00:14:45.000 Now, here's something amazing.

00:14:46.000 There was a Florida Secretary of State who'd been appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida to fill that position.

00:14:52.000 And there was an old photo of him in blackface from a party in the 1980s, and he resigned within a day.

00:14:59.000 This scandal broke on Friday.

00:15:00.000 It is now Monday.

00:15:01.000 Ralph Northam is still in office.

00:15:03.000 Not only is he still in office, he's now doing something else.

00:15:06.000 And I'm going to explain what that something else he's doing right now is.

00:15:09.000 It's really kind of fascinating.

00:15:10.000 So there is the person who would theoretically replace him were he to step down is Lieutenant Governor.

00:15:18.000 His name is Justin Fairfax.

00:15:20.000 There's an article from a website called Big League Politics.

00:15:23.000 Big League Politics is also the site that originally published the yearbook page of Ralph Northam.

00:15:28.000 We are now learning that the yearbook page of Ralph Northam was probably released by somebody who was angry at him for his stance on abortion.

00:15:37.000 Motives don't really matter in terms of who releases it, it's just how people react to the page.

00:15:42.000 So, Big League Politics released an article about an allegation regarding Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.

00:15:49.000 And the allegation was an allegation that was put up on, I believe, Facebook by a woman who suggested that years ago, in 2004, there was an aide at the DNC who sexually assaulted her.

00:16:04.000 And she said that this person And she said that this person then went on to become a statewide candidate for office and eventually would be taking a big step up in politics.

00:16:15.000 The actual statement posted by a woman named Adria Scharf by Vanessa Tyson is the name of the woman.

00:16:21.000 She wrote, So, this allegation has been out for several months, and Big League Politics published the allegation.

00:16:24.000 in Boston in 2004 by a campaign staffer.

00:16:26.000 You spend the next 13 years trying to forget it ever happened.

00:16:28.000 Until one day you find out he's the Democratic candidate for a statewide office in a state some 3,000 miles away, and he wins that election in November 2017.

00:16:35.000 Then, by strange horrible luck, it seems increasingly likely he'll get a very big promotion.

00:16:40.000 So this allegation has been out for several months, and Big League Politics published the allegation.

00:16:46.000 Now, Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax has released a statement about it.

00:16:50.000 The statement says, Tonight, an online publication released a false and unsubstantiated allegation against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.

00:16:58.000 Lieutenant Governor Fairfax has an outstanding and well-earned reputation for treating people with dignity and respect.

00:17:03.000 He has never assaulted anyone, ever, in any way, shape, or form.

00:17:06.000 The person reported to be making this false allegation first approached the Washington Post, one of the nation's most prominent newspapers, more than a year ago, around the time of the lieutenant governor's historic inauguration.

00:17:15.000 The Post carefully investigated the claim for several months.

00:17:18.000 After being presented with facts consistent with the lieutenant governor's denial of the allegation, the absence of any evidence corroborating the allegation, and significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, The Post made the considered decision not to publish the story.

00:17:30.000 Okay, so this has led to accusations that the Washington Post spiked the story on behalf of Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax.

00:17:39.000 Now, I'll talk in one second about whether in fact that allegation is justified.

00:17:44.000 Suffice it to say, there are grave suspicions today that Lieutenant Governor Fairfax is being victimized by leaks from Northam's office, that basically Northam, in an attempt to save himself, is saying, well, don't look at my black lieutenant governor and say that that guy is ready to be governor because there's this still hanging out there.

00:18:00.000 So if that's the case, if it is true that Ralph Northam's office is going after his lieutenant governor, that's playing some real heavy-handed hardball right there.

00:18:10.000 I mean, that's some pretty low stuff.

00:18:12.000 As to the allegation that the Washington Post spiked this, one thing that both the Northam story and the Fairfax story are revealing is the insane double standard that exists with regard to allegations.

00:18:21.000 Insane double standard.

00:18:23.000 So, the Washington Post apparently had this information, they had the allegation, and they never published it.

00:18:27.000 Why?

00:18:28.000 Because it was uncorroborated, there was no supporting evidence, and there were significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, according to Lieutenant Governor Fairfax's office.

00:18:37.000 All of which seems like a pretty good reason not to publish a story.

00:18:40.000 Except that I'm old enough to remember when the Washington Post and every other major media outlet in the country ran with allegations by Christine Blasey Ford that had significant red flags and inconsistencies, that had no corroborating evidence, and that were blatantly denied by Brett Kavanaugh.

00:18:55.000 And it became the subject of a full-scale judicial hearing with Democrats slandering the man as a possible gang rapist.

00:19:02.000 I remember when they ran with all of these allegations and Michael Avenatti was coming forward and suggesting that he had evidence that Brett Kavanaugh might in fact have participated in gang rape and Kamala Harris, the new Democratic presidential candidate, was sitting up there implying the exact same thing.

00:19:15.000 People ran with it.

00:19:17.000 So it is worth noting that the same people in the media who say, oh yeah, well, we would never have run with an allegation like that.

00:19:23.000 It was just not substantiated enough.

00:19:26.000 Those same people were not willing to run with an allegation, were willing to run with an allegation against Brett Kavanaugh that was very close to similar.

00:19:35.000 So that's pretty, that is pretty telling about the media.

00:19:38.000 By the way, the media, I do have to make a side note here.

00:19:41.000 I don't know if you watched the Super Bowl yesterday.

00:19:42.000 If you did, I'm sorry for the hours that you wasted watching the Super Bowl.

00:19:46.000 The Washington Post ran an ad in the middle of the Super Bowl, the same Washington Post that did not run the allegations against Lieutenant Governor Fairfax, which Again, I'm okay with if you actually had that standard consistently.

00:19:57.000 They spent something like 5.25 million dollars to run an ad in the middle of the Super Bowl talking about how democracy dies in darkness.

00:20:04.000 How many reporter salaries could that have paid?

00:20:07.000 I do love that the Washington Post, they're like, you know what we could do to really restore our reputation as a journalistic entity?

00:20:12.000 What we could do is hire an actor to talk about how awesome we are, and we'll glom off of Tom Hanks's When we go off to war.

00:20:19.000 When we exercise our rights.

00:20:19.000 When we soar to our greatest heights.

00:20:20.000 When we mourn and pray.

00:20:21.000 Here's a little bit of that Washington Post self-serving ad yesterday during the Super Bowl.

00:20:25.000 When we go off to war.

00:20:27.000 When we exercise our rights.

00:20:31.000 When we soar to our greatest heights.

00:20:36.000 When we mourn and pray.

00:20:41.000 When our neighbors are at risk.

00:20:45.000 When our nation is threatened.

00:20:49.000 There's someone to gather the facts.

00:20:56.000 To bring you the story.

00:20:59.000 no matter the cost.

00:21:01.000 Because knowing empowers us. .

00:21:11.000 Knowing helps us decide.

00:21:14.000 Knowing keeps us free.

00:21:17.000 Listen, I'm in favor of journalism, and it says Washington Post, democracy dies in darkness.

00:21:22.000 I'm all in favor of journalism, but the back-patting, self-congratulatory nature of the Washington Post, patting itself on the back for journalism, Well, at the same time, having such blatant doubled standards in so much of the reporting is pretty galling to a lot of Americans.

00:21:35.000 And honestly, it ought to be galling to a lot of Americans.

00:21:37.000 There's some other problems with that ad.

00:21:38.000 I'm going to explain what those problems are with that ad in just one second.

00:21:41.000 Then we'll get to the wide and very democratic reaction to the Northam allegations and the yearbook page and the whole deal.

00:21:48.000 First, let's talk about how you can make your back feel better.

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00:23:33.000 OK, so.

00:23:34.000 This Washington Post ad, a couple of quick notes on the Washington Post ad that ran during the Super Bowl.

00:23:40.000 Notice that when they say, when the nation is in grave danger, and then they show a picture of Oklahoma City.

00:23:45.000 Now, I'm old enough to remember another event that put our nation in grave danger and led to us getting involved in two wars.

00:23:50.000 That would've been 9-11, but I guess we're not allowed to show pictures of 9-11 on TV, lest it be offensive.

00:23:54.000 Also, they say, journalists who have died for their profession, and then they show Jamal Khashoggi.

00:23:59.000 Jamal Khashoggi was an opinion writer For many outlets, including the Washington Post, he also happened to be closely aligned with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:24:07.000 So while the Saudi government should obviously not have murdered Jamal Khashoggi, I'm not going to put him in the same category as I put other journalists or murdered for their journalism.

00:24:16.000 Also, I gotta say, like the idea that journalists in the United States are wildly in danger all the time, That the Washington Post is sort of promoting here is obviously not true.

00:24:24.000 All of the people who were killed in that particular ad are people who were killed abroad in foreign countries.

00:24:31.000 Also, I would note that the Washington Post, which sort of suggests that American journalism is constantly in danger, Like, thousands of journalists have been arrested in Turkey, journalists are routinely killed in Russia, in China, and this sort of stuff is pretty common.

00:24:45.000 Let's stand with those people.

00:24:47.000 I'm not sure the Washington Post necessarily measures up, except for their foreign correspondents who obviously do.

00:24:51.000 Okay, so, the Democratic reaction to the Ralph Northam thing has been kind of interesting.

00:24:57.000 Basically, everybody who's in sort of day-to-day Democratic politics says, let Northam go.

00:25:01.000 And everybody who's running for president says, Northam should resign.

00:25:04.000 That's the way this breaks down.

00:25:05.000 So, Terry McAuliffe, who's a former Virginia governor and deeply involved in Democratic Party politics, he says he has no indication that Northam has been a racist.

00:25:14.000 And he says, maybe we should probably let this guy go.

00:25:16.000 I know that the Ralph Northam you know, in your words, is a good man.

00:25:21.000 But has he also been a racist?

00:25:25.000 I have zero indication of that.

00:25:27.000 As I say, family doctor, had military service, had been a state senator, ran for lieutenant governor.

00:25:34.000 Ralph was always at my side.

00:25:36.000 So I can't answer it, Jake.

00:25:38.000 I'm telling you, I'm heartbroken.

00:25:39.000 Okay, so, I mean, the answer is, has he ever been a racist?

00:25:42.000 Well, I mean, it depends.

00:25:43.000 Do you think that that photo means that he is absolutely a racist?

00:25:46.000 And then you see Howard Dean.

00:25:47.000 Howard Dean, who's also not running for president, former head of the DNC.

00:25:50.000 He says, Republicans have no morals at all.

00:25:52.000 So he tries to turn it on Republicans that a Democratic governor was just caught with his hand in the blackface jar. 0.97

00:25:58.000 Republicans, you know, they have no morals at all.

00:26:02.000 I mean, you know, the Republicans are happy to ask Ralph Northam to resign.

00:26:06.000 They have a much worse guy who's heading their party. 0.99

00:26:11.000 It's ridiculous. 0.94

00:26:12.000 Okay, so he's saying, of course, because Trump is worse than Northam, that means that Trump should resign or Northam shouldn't resign. 0.96

00:26:17.000 I'm confused.

00:26:17.000 Democrats think Trump should resign, but Northam shouldn't resign?

00:26:19.000 They're going to have to explain that one.

00:26:21.000 Now, the Democrats who are running for president have universally called for him to step down.

00:26:25.000 So Hillary Clinton, who may or may not run for president, she says that Northam should go.

00:26:28.000 You got Kamala Harris, who says that Northam should go.

00:26:30.000 You got Cory Booker, who says that Northam should go.

00:26:32.000 You got Julian Castro, Julian Castro, who is running for president but no one cares.

00:26:36.000 And he says that Northam should resign as well.

00:26:38.000 I'm happy that at least he has apologized and that he recognizes that what he did was wrong.

00:26:47.000 And I do think, of course, that there's the opportunity to Uh, understand and accept his apology, but I also believe that that's separate and apart from him continuing in a position of trust and authority, which is the governor's office.

00:27:02.000 So I hope that he does resign.

00:27:04.000 Well, you know, this kind of breakdown does demonstrate what the Democratic Party leadership thinks of their own base.

00:27:11.000 So a lot of Democrats on a day-to-day level are going, listen, if our new standard is that anything bad you did in the past means that you're out of office, there will be no one left standing.

00:27:18.000 And then there are the people who are running for office who are saying, well, I have to somehow go back to the base, and I have to explain to them why Ralph Northam should stay, and I'm just not going to do that.

00:27:28.000 It's kind of fascinating to see the divide, because here is the truth.

00:27:32.000 The Democratic Party honchos are correct. 0.75

00:27:34.000 If our standard, if our standard is that stuff that you did 35 years ago that was construed as racist now, but was construed as maybe just irreverent or controversial then, is now the subject of you losing your career, there are gonna be a lot of people out of jobs very, very quickly.

00:27:49.000 Robert A. George is a member of the New York Daily News editorial board, black guy.

00:27:54.000 And the reason I mention his race is because of the thread that we're about to read.

00:27:57.000 I think it's worthwhile going through this thread that he put up on Twitter because I think this is the most nuanced take on the Ralph Northam issue that I've heard.

00:28:04.000 I think it's also the most accurate take on the Ralph Northam issue that I've heard.

00:28:07.000 Here's what he says.

00:28:07.000 says he says after much fun at northam's expense a serious thought a few tweets have run along the lines of even in the south 35 years ago everyone knew that wearing a clan outfit or blackface was racist having been in college myself at the time i started nodding but then i pause everyone knew that this type of behavior is racist That means Northam must have been racist.

00:28:25.000 He admits in his Friday statement that what he did was racist.

00:28:28.000 It means his partner in crime was racist.

00:28:30.000 But there was a compiler slash editor of the yearbook, right?

00:28:33.000 That supposedly reasonable person accepted Northam's photo and let it go, right?

00:28:37.000 Was there a faculty advisor?

00:28:38.000 Did that person approve it too?

00:28:40.000 My point here is that either everyone knew this was something really ugly and racist or they were doing something that they bizarrely thought was funny and no one stopped to think, oh, it's funny but really ugly and maybe we shouldn't do it.

00:28:50.000 He says the 2020 hindsight we have now that everyone knew that something you didn't do might not have been as strong back then.

00:28:57.000 In other words, If you think now that everything bad, like, now it's very easy to look at that photo and go, obvious racism, gross, get out of office.

00:29:08.000 But is that how people thought of it back then?

00:29:10.000 Time, context, it does matter.

00:29:11.000 He says, to make it a bit clearer, a personal anecdote.

00:29:14.000 I went to a small liberal arts college in Maryland below the Mason-Dixon line.

00:29:17.000 Of the student body of 400, I was one of five or six blacks over four plus years.

00:29:21.000 In 1985, senior class leaders bounced around ideas for a fundraiser.

00:29:24.000 They settled upon a slave auction.

00:29:26.000 Seniors would be auctioned to odd jobs for the winning bidders. 0.74

00:29:29.000 Yeah, yeah, already you're thinking, what the hell?

00:29:30.000 In fairness, this was a school which studies Greek and Latin classics, so it's theoretically possible to do a Greek or Roman-style slave auction.

00:29:37.000 Even so, I approached the planners and said, tread carefully.

00:29:39.000 I didn't hear about it anymore, so I assumed it got dropped.

00:29:42.000 Instead, I awoke to find posters declaring, welcome to 1865, it's a real live slave auction.

00:29:46.000 Um, what?

00:29:47.000 I, well, got upset.

00:29:48.000 But here's the thing.

00:29:49.000 There were quite a few other white friends, including other seniors, who were stunned.

00:29:53.000 There was an African-American underclassman who I'd become friends with who came up to me and whatever the 1985 version of what the bleep was.

00:30:00.000 I put together a strongly worded letter.

00:30:02.000 No, seriously, it was an open letter to the student body.

00:30:04.000 Got it co-signed with a couple dozen other people, infuriated, stuffed copies in mailboxes.

00:30:09.000 A day or so later, the fundraiser was canceled.

00:30:11.000 Yes, there were bruised feelings.

00:30:12.000 My African-American pal and I had a tense discussion with the organizers.

00:30:15.000 We cleared the air, and it should be noted I'm friendly with them to this day.

00:30:19.000 I don't consider them racist then or now.

00:30:20.000 It was an insensitive action, but an ultimately learning moment.

00:30:23.000 In the days that followed, I felt out of sorts.

00:30:25.000 Even though I had many friends who had my back and immediately supported me in whatever I wanted to do in response, I was still feeling alone, wondering if I did the right thing.

00:30:32.000 Then something happened.

00:30:33.000 The auditorium attendant, African American, like the entire grounds crew, Jimmy, came up to me.

00:30:37.000 I chatted with him over the years as I had a work-study job in the dining hall.

00:30:41.000 He said to me, Thank you for speaking up about that.

00:30:43.000 These kids, they just don't know.

00:30:44.000 It had quite the impact.

00:30:45.000 These kids just don't know.

00:30:47.000 In truth, I was a kid myself.

00:30:49.000 I didn't know.

00:30:49.000 Irritated as I was with the class leaders who ignored my cautionary heads up.

00:30:52.000 In fact, this was bigger than me.

00:30:54.000 Bigger than them.

00:30:55.000 Other eyes were watching.

00:30:56.000 So beware the everyone-knew-such-and-such-was-racist-in-1985 trope.

00:31:00.000 Ralph Northam is a few years older than I am.

00:31:02.000 He should have known better.

00:31:03.000 But so should several other people involved in getting that photo into the yearbook.

00:31:06.000 Hey kids, it wasn't a selfie.

00:31:08.000 The definition of racism isn't as set in stone as we might like.

00:31:10.000 The spectrum of racially insensitive or microaggression to out-and-out racism is, to use an in-vogue phrase, fluid.

00:31:17.000 Some get it right away.

00:31:18.000 Others?

00:31:18.000 They just don't know.

00:31:20.000 Okay, this is, of course, exactly right.

00:31:23.000 This is exactly right.

00:31:24.000 In a second, I'm going to explain why it's exactly right, and why a little bit of grace might go a long way in our politics, or we can keep destroying each other because it's convenient to do so.

00:31:32.000 First, let's talk about your sleep quality.

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00:32:43.000 OK, I have a few more thoughts on the Ralph Northam controversy, and then I want to get to the latest on Jussie Smollett and my situation over at Grand Canyon University, which is getting all weird.

00:32:53.000 But for all that, you're going to have to go subscribe over at Daily Wire.

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00:33:46.000 We had a great Sunday special this week with Dave Ramsey.

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00:34:01.000 We're the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:34:05.000 So we have completely obliterated, and this is the point I think Robert A. George is making, we have completely obliterated any distinction between racially insensitive or racial jokes or stuff that's sort of uncomfortable and out and out racism. we have completely obliterated any distinction between racially insensitive or And we have obliterated that distinction going retroactively.

00:34:28.000 If you watch Blazing Saddles, people make this joke all the time, but it's true. 0.99

00:34:30.000 If you watch Blazing Saddles now, there's no way in hell that movie ever gets made.

00:34:34.000 There are KKK jokes, there are jokes about black folks, there are jokes about Jews, there are jokes about everything in that movie.

00:34:39.000 You're not allowed to tell any of those jokes now.

00:34:41.000 Mel Brooks would never have a career now.

00:34:42.000 You simply cannot tell an offensive joke.

00:34:45.000 And I'm not sure that the country is significantly better for that.

00:34:47.000 Honestly.

00:34:48.000 Like, as a Jew, there are a lot of Jewish jokes out there. 0.99

00:34:51.000 A lot of nasty, vicious Jewish jokes. 0.95

00:34:54.000 But it does, I will say that I think a sense of humor, an ability to kind of look aside when people are acting like jackasses is better for your soul and better for the country than the sort of search for microaggressions that we have today. 0.98

00:35:09.000 Now, there is a happy medium, which is people could not be jerks, and also we could be a little bit less, we could also be a little bit less sensitive about things.

00:35:15.000 I think that's actually where we should be, meaning that not all of those bad jokes ought to be told, right?

00:35:20.000 We should be, like, I'm not a fan of racial jokes, for example.

00:35:23.000 I don't think that people should tell racial jokes. 0.98

00:35:25.000 I also think that if people do tell racial jokes, we are better served as a society, not by trying to destroy their lives, but by people kind of going, okay, that guy's being a jerk, that guy's being in a bleep. 0.97

00:35:35.000 I think that this newfound crusade that we have to destroy people based on stuff they did 30 years ago, particularly, is really bad. 0.94

00:35:43.000 Now, I think that there's a case to be made that if somebody does something now that's really bad, that there should be immediate repercussions for that.

00:35:51.000 But the world that we are building, in which we dig up somebody's old high school or medical school yearbook, and then, free of context, we say, well, everyone knew it was bad then.

00:36:01.000 As Robert A. George says, I am not sure that is the case.

00:36:04.000 I'm not sure that is the case.

00:36:05.000 I think that it is certainly possible that some people knew that it was bad then, or it's possible people were ignorant, they weren't surrounded by people who knew better, they didn't have good conversations with folks who were more aware of the problematic nature of some of this stuff. 1.00

00:36:18.000 And so, instead of attributing this to racial malice, like Ralph Northam was a night rider or something, maybe he's just an idiot. 1.00

00:36:25.000 Maybe he was a racially insensitive idiot. 1.00

00:36:27.000 And maybe, if he'd been confronted about it, he would have apologized at the time. 1.00

00:36:31.000 How many times have you done something offensive in your life, and been confronted about it, and then you apologized because you realized you had just offended somebody?

00:36:38.000 I'm sure that's happened to you many times.

00:36:40.000 How would you like it if nobody said anything for 20 years and then they brought it up and said, now we're going to take away your career from you?

00:36:45.000 I think that that's going to make for a really ugly America. 0.97

00:36:48.000 It already is making for a really ugly America.

00:36:50.000 I was discussing this with some friends over the weekend.

00:36:52.000 Again, none of this is to excuse Ralph Northam dressing in blackface or in a KKK outfit or any of this.

00:36:56.000 I think all of that stuff is really egregious, but we're not discussing the egregious nature of that, except insofar as to say that on the spectrum of egregious behavior that should finish your career decades into the future, this one lies on the margin.

00:37:08.000 Really, if you're talking about things that should finish your career, I would say actual membership in the KKK like Robert Byrd, that probably should finish your career and not make you the conscience of the Senate for 50 years.

00:37:17.000 I think if you kill a woman by driving off a bridge with her in the backseat, that probably should finish your career, not lead to a presidential run in 1980 and a lionization as the lion of the Senate. 0.84

00:37:27.000 That stuff probably is bad enough that it should finish your career.

00:37:30.000 Dressing up in a racist fashion in a yearbook in 1985, I'm not sure that that should finish your career 34 years in the future.

00:37:39.000 I'm just not sure that that lies there.

00:37:41.000 There are gradations here as to what should finish your career.

00:37:45.000 But here's the thing.

00:37:46.000 There are three ways that we deal with bad stuff that we've done in our past.

00:37:50.000 And as a culture, we've become a very confessional culture.

00:37:52.000 So there are three ways to deal with bad stuff that we've done in our past.

00:37:55.000 Way number one is that we beat everybody to the punch.

00:37:57.000 This is the Barack Obama strategy for dealing with bad stuff you've done.

00:38:01.000 So if you're Barack Obama, and you're running for president, or you're thinking of running for political office, and you know That back in your high school days, you did cocaine and maybe handed out some to your friends.

00:38:12.000 What you do is you write in your autobiography, I did a little blow.

00:38:16.000 I may have done a little cocaine.

00:38:17.000 And then everybody goes, oh, well, you know, he admitted it.

00:38:19.000 He admitted it.

00:38:20.000 He said it was bad.

00:38:20.000 What do you want from him?

00:38:22.000 And then it's off the table.

00:38:22.000 So that's way number one is the confessional culture.

00:38:24.000 You preemptively declare all of your sins.

00:38:26.000 Now, this specifically works well for people who are in the political business.

00:38:30.000 So if you are Ralph Northam and you knew you were going straight from medical school into politics, you would have done this like immediately upon exiting medical school.

00:38:36.000 You would have said, oh my God, that yearbook was terrible.

00:38:38.000 I bear my soul terrible for the nation.

00:38:41.000 So that's option number one is the preemptive, the preemptive confession.

00:38:45.000 And that's what we prefer in our confessional culture.

00:38:48.000 In a second, I'm going to give you the other two options.

00:38:51.000 Option number two, when it comes to bad behavior.

00:38:54.000 Option number two.

00:38:55.000 Is that you just try to forget about it.

00:38:58.000 You try to forget about it.

00:39:00.000 And then when somebody raises it, then you apologize for it.

00:39:03.000 So how many things have you done in your life that you think are really bad?

00:39:06.000 Like really bad, that you're embarrassed of?

00:39:08.000 I would wager that literally every person who is listening to this show right now, journalist, left, right, center, it doesn't matter.

00:39:14.000 All of you have done something in your life that you are embarrassed of and you would not want to be public because it is embarrassing.

00:39:20.000 And so you have a choice.

00:39:22.000 Are you going to post a diary entry about it online today?

00:39:25.000 Or are you just going to say, does anybody even remember me doing that?

00:39:27.000 I hope nobody remembers me doing that because it was really embarrassing.

00:39:30.000 I remember it.

00:39:31.000 I'm embarrassed by it.

00:39:32.000 Bringing it up now creates new issues with my business, with my family.

00:39:36.000 Do I really need to do that?

00:39:38.000 Like, I'm sorry for it.

00:39:39.000 My entire life has been a repudiation of that, so I really need to go back and relive that and rip that scab open now that I've worked hard to move on with my life.

00:39:48.000 Now, again, it depends on the nature of the sin as to whether this is morally okay or not.

00:39:52.000 Like, you kill a person, probably you should confess that.

00:39:54.000 But you dressed up in a yearbook for your medical school 34 years ago, and then you spent 30 years caring for minority children in your pediatrics clinic?

00:40:04.000 And now you're working on Minority Kids Daily, what do you have to do?

00:40:07.000 Post a giant poster, like, in the waiting room of your clinic?

00:40:10.000 Of you, and say, I'm sorry for this?

00:40:13.000 Probably you do what most people do.

00:40:15.000 And you do this on a daily basis with your friends and family.

00:40:17.000 And you do it with your wife, or your husband, with your spouse, with your girlfriend.

00:40:20.000 You do this all the time.

00:40:23.000 You do something to a spouse, and you think, man, that was really bad, maybe I shouldn't have done that.

00:40:27.000 Or maybe she didn't notice.

00:40:29.000 As a human being, it's a tendency.

00:40:30.000 And then if she raises it, you're like, you know what?

00:40:32.000 I shouldn't have done that. 1.00

00:40:32.000 That was stupid. 1.00

00:40:33.000 I'm sorry. 0.99

00:40:34.000 So that's possibility number two.

00:40:35.000 So possibility number one is the confessional.

00:40:37.000 Possibility number two is you try to forget it and move beyond it.

00:40:40.000 And then if somebody raises it, then you apologize for it.

00:40:42.000 And then there's possibility number three, which is somebody raises the issue and then you double down on it.

00:40:48.000 Because here's the problem with option number two.

00:40:51.000 If you take option number two, somebody brings it up, 34 years ago, you dressed in racist fashion in a yearbook, 34 years ago, and you say, you know what?

00:41:00.000 You're right, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that.

00:41:01.000 The follow-up question from badly motivated people always is, so why didn't you apologize before?

00:41:07.000 Why didn't you take option number one?

00:41:09.000 Why didn't you go out there and do a dashboard confessional?

00:41:11.000 Why didn't you go out there and write a full-on Facebook post about it so that we could have cast you out before any of this started?

00:41:17.000 We could have ruined your life preemptively because here's the dirty little secret.

00:41:20.000 For a lot of folks, if they had done this sort of confessional culture thing, if Ralph Northam had done this before the primaries, that would have finished his career.

00:41:26.000 So he felt, okay, you know what?

00:41:27.000 I'm not going to talk about it because it's not an important characterizer of who I am as a person, so I'm not going to talk about it.

00:41:34.000 Then it gets raised, and now he has two options.

00:41:37.000 One is, he tried it both ways.

00:41:38.000 You can actually see him try option one and option three here.

00:41:40.000 He tried it, number one.

00:41:42.000 You can see, sorry, he tried option two and option three.

00:41:45.000 He said, okay, you brought it up, I'm gonna apologize for it.

00:41:48.000 And then people jumped on him and said, why didn't you do this before?

00:41:50.000 What's wrong with you?

00:41:51.000 Where were you for 30 years on this?

00:41:53.000 And his answer was, well, for 30 years, I've been trying to live down the shame of having done that and trying to move beyond that, but that's not enough for people.

00:42:00.000 So then it turns into, okay, I'm gonna double down.

00:42:02.000 What this leads to is a politics where your best characteristic as a politician is having no shame at all.

00:42:09.000 That you don't care about the bad stuff you did in the past.

00:42:11.000 And if somebody brings it up to you, then you just, instead of apologizing, you just say, yeah, F you.

00:42:15.000 I don't care.

00:42:16.000 Whatever.

00:42:16.000 Whatever, man.

00:42:17.000 You want to make a big deal about it?

00:42:19.000 Float your boat.

00:42:20.000 Right?

00:42:20.000 That's why Donald Trump is very successful in politics.

00:42:23.000 Because he takes option three all the time.

00:42:25.000 Option three is always double down, which means he never gets asked the follow-up question to option number two.

00:42:32.000 He never gets asked the follow-up question, well, why didn't you do this earlier?

00:42:34.000 Why didn't you apologize earlier?

00:42:35.000 Because he never apologizes.

00:42:37.000 People bring stuff up to him and he just says, whatever, I don't care.

00:42:41.000 So what you're going to get is more politicians like that.

00:42:43.000 You're going to get more politicians who don't have a sense of shame, who don't have a sense of guilt, Who say, you know what, screw this entire system because you're being dishonest.

00:42:52.000 And here's the truth.

00:42:53.000 I think a lot of people in politics on every side are being wildly dishonest when they bring up old material to club people to death with.

00:42:59.000 I've been pretty consistent about this.

00:43:00.000 Whether we are talking about film directors, where people go and dig through their old tweets, or Kevin Hart, where people are digging up through his old tweets trying to destroy him.

00:43:08.000 This is an ugly society we've created for ourselves in social media.

00:43:12.000 Honestly, there are just people who are lucky that cell phones did not exist 40 years ago.

00:43:18.000 Because now, everything that you do is captured on camera.

00:43:21.000 So everybody is very wary of what they do on camera.

00:43:25.000 But, the only thing with Ralph Northam, honestly, the only thing that happened to Ralph Northam is that there was a camera present when he did this.

00:43:31.000 You know how many politicians probably dressed in blackface over the last 35 years dressed up as Michael Jackson or O.J.

00:43:36.000 Simpson or something for a Halloween party?

00:43:39.000 If there were cameras present at all of those places, do you know how many politicians there would be from the Baby Boomer generation?

00:43:44.000 Zero.

00:43:46.000 Legitimately zero.

00:43:47.000 So, here's your choice, Americans.

00:43:49.000 Here's our choice.

00:43:50.000 Our choice is, we can either see these things in the context of a less sensitive time, which has good aspects and bad aspects.

00:43:56.000 Less sensitive means that people are less offended all the time.

00:43:59.000 It also means that people do more insensitive things, which is bad.

00:44:02.000 Right, what I would like is for people to be more sensitive, but also more sensitive to others and less sensitive toward their own feelings.

00:44:08.000 Like that would be the ideal.

00:44:10.000 Is that your soul, in the Jewish prayers we say this every morning, your soul is like dust to your enemies, but by the same token, you try to be kind to people and non-offensive to other people.

00:44:20.000 With all of that said, we live in a political culture where you are supposed to cast your opponents in the worst possible light at all times, and if that means going back into the past, digging up stuff, and then forcing them into a corner and beating them, then you do it.

00:44:33.000 Then you do it.

00:44:33.000 So, there's no grace, there's no forgiveness, there's no seeing people in the best possible light, there's no attempt to see people as the totality of a group of characteristics.

00:44:41.000 Instead it's, you did this one bad thing back, way back, A long time ago when, honestly, people were more ignorant and people weren't as sensitive. 0.79

00:44:51.000 And now we're going to destroy you for it.

00:44:53.000 I don't know that we can have a politics that operates along these lines.

00:44:56.000 I'm not sure who survives these politics other than people who we have deemed immune for intersectional reasons.

00:45:02.000 And there are a group of people who have deemed immune for intersectional reasons, that if you apologize for your own privilege, or if you happen to be a member of an intersectional group that has been historically victimized, you can say whatever you want.

00:45:13.000 So you can be an anti-Semite if you are a black candidate for office who hangs out with Louis Farrakhan.

00:45:20.000 And if you are Rashida Tlaib and you're Muslim, then you can be anti-Semitic as you want to be. 0.89

00:45:25.000 But it doesn't matter, because you're intersectional.

00:45:29.000 It's all of this is incoherent.

00:45:31.000 It's divisive.

00:45:32.000 It's ugly.

00:45:33.000 It means a worse politics for the country as a general rule.

00:45:36.000 And none of this is defense of Ralph Northam's yearbook page.

00:45:39.000 What it is is a call for us to look, I think, into our own hearts and decide what kind of politics we would like to have on an ongoing basis.

00:45:45.000 A politics that involves at least a little bit of forgiveness or a politics of pure, unadulterated justice with 20-20 hindsight where everybody has had to be perfect forever. 0.98

00:45:55.000 And if not, then we will go ahead and rip them down off their pedestal and beat them to death.

00:46:00.000 Alrighty, let's get to some things I like and then we'll do some things that I hate. 0.98

00:46:04.000 So, things that I like.

00:46:05.000 Over the weekend, I've been reading a lot of sports because I just need distraction from politics these days.

00:46:09.000 I'm just annoyed by the political scene, I'll be honest with you.

00:46:11.000 And so I've been reading a lot of sports books.

00:46:13.000 If you're into sports books, this is one of the great sports books of the recent past.

00:46:16.000 Jack McCallum, longtime columnist for Sports Illustrated, he wrote a book right after the 1992 Olympics called Dream Team, all about the USA basketball team, which was, you know, the greatest conglomeration of basketball talent ever put on one court.

00:46:29.000 It was Bird and Magic and Jordan and Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing and David Robinson and just an amazing bevy of talent.

00:46:36.000 And the book itself is a lot of fun.

00:46:38.000 It's it's gossipy and it's it's about Honestly, like an aspirational, it gives you an aspirational feeling about the country and about our ability to get along with each other despite our differences.

00:46:47.000 So it's well worth reading.

00:46:48.000 Go check it out.

00:46:49.000 Dream Team by Jack McCallum.

00:46:51.000 That one is a lot of fun.

00:46:52.000 I think that you will enjoy it.

00:46:54.000 Okay, other things that I like.

00:46:56.000 So Andrew Sullivan.

00:46:58.000 has a fascinating piece today, it's hilarious, called The Nature of Sex.

00:47:03.000 And Andrew Sullivan is a gay man, and his basic contention is that if you try to separate out sex from gender, in essence you're going to be reading out the gay and lesbian movement.

00:47:13.000 Because if you say that sex and gender are entirely disconnected, and that a biological man can actually be a woman, then a lesbian should be able to be with a biological man who is in fact a woman. 0.56

00:47:26.000 And a lot of lesbians are going, well, hold up a second. 1.00

00:47:28.000 Like, that's not something I'm interested in.

00:47:29.000 Like, if this is a biological dude with all the biological appendages and he calls himself a woman, I'm not attracted to that. 0.85

00:47:35.000 And you can't call me a transphobe because of that.

00:47:38.000 And yet that's exactly what's happening, right?

00:47:39.000 The new move in kind of radical trans circles is to say that Caitlyn Jenner not only is a woman, but always was a woman.

00:47:46.000 And therefore, if you were a lesbian, you should have been attracted to Caitlyn Jenner back when Caitlyn Jenner was fully attached to all of his original parts. 0.95

00:47:55.000 So Andrew Sullivan has a long piece about this today, talking about how the destruction of biological sex actually destroys lesbian and gay rights.

00:48:04.000 He says, the core disagreement, it seems to me, is whether a trans woman is right to say that she has always been a woman, it was born female, and is indistinguishable from and interchangeable with biological women.

00:48:13.000 He says, most of us find this argument hard to swallow entirely.

00:48:16.000 We may accept that Caitlyn Jenner, who came out as a woman in 2015, always understood herself as a woman and see the psychological conviction as sincere and to be respected.

00:48:24.000 But we also see a difference between someone who lived her life as a man for decades under the full influence of male chromosomes and testosterone and who is socially accepted as male and then transitioned and a woman to whom none of these apply.

00:48:36.000 Okay, but he's being ripped up and down for all of this, and it's hilarious.

00:48:41.000 It's why the attempt to... It's why the attempt to link together LGBT doesn't make any sense. 0.99

00:48:48.000 Right?

00:48:49.000 LGB are all sexual orientations. 1.00

00:48:51.000 T is a sexual identity.

00:48:54.000 That's not the same thing.

00:48:55.000 And these aspects of the LGBT movement are finding themselves in conflict.

00:48:58.000 Now what's hilarious about all of this is that, of course, it's just as true of straight people.

00:49:02.000 I like that it took a gay man to point out that, by the way, I may not be attracted to biological women. 0.75

00:49:09.000 Well, why is it that straight people have been saying, right, there's differences between men and women.

00:49:13.000 Everybody's like, ah, those straight people with their sexism.

00:49:16.000 And then gay people say like, oh, okay, I guess that's true. 1.00

00:49:19.000 So that's kind of hilarious.

00:49:20.000 So you can go read the piece by Andrew Sullivan.

00:49:22.000 It is somewhat telling about the state of our politics in the nation at this point.

00:49:25.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:49:31.000 So many things to hate today.

00:49:32.000 So first of all, I will point out that the Super Bowl stunk.

00:49:34.000 It was terrible.

00:49:35.000 The only redeeming quality of the Super Bowl is the Tom Brady one.

00:49:38.000 Yes, I rooted for greatness.

00:49:39.000 Sorry.

00:49:40.000 Sue me.

00:49:41.000 The Daily Beast, though, had a full piece before the Super Bowl, and it was titled, I kid you not, Tom Brady's New England Patriots are Team MAGA, whether they like it or not.

00:49:52.000 They said their star quarterback, coach, and owner all supported Trump.

00:49:55.000 But that's not the only thing that makes the Super Bowl-bound Patriots the preferred team of white nationalists.

00:50:01.000 You're doing it wrong, Corbin Smith of the Daily Beast.

00:50:04.000 Learn to code.

00:50:05.000 My goodness.

00:50:06.000 So this is the new thing, is that the Patriots are the team of white nationalists.

00:50:11.000 Alright.

00:50:12.000 Now if that's the direction you're gonna go.

00:50:14.000 The worst tweet I saw yesterday was from the Krasenstein brothers, who are just hilarious examples of strange humans. 0.96

00:50:20.000 And one of them tweeted out, while other people are shouting, let's go Patriots, or let's go Rams, I'm shouting, let's go Robert Mueller.

00:50:28.000 And it's like, okay, are you like watching this alone from your padded cell, the Super Bowl?

00:50:33.000 Like you're just in a straitjacket screaming at the walls, let's go Mueller!

00:50:36.000 While Tom Brady drives down the field, throwing passes to Julian Edelman. 0.99

00:50:41.000 If you've let politics take over your life to this extent, I would suggest that you may be nuts. 0.97

00:50:45.000 Okay, other things that I hate today. 0.87

00:50:47.000 So the media, I love the media in the sense that they're terrible.

00:50:51.000 So, Jussie Smollett, you'll remember this story from last week.

00:50:55.000 The suggestion was that he'd been walking down the mean streets of Chicago at 2 a.m., coming back from a subway, and he was carrying a sub sandwich, and two guys who are two guys two white guys came out of the woodwork one threw a rope around his neck and then they started shouting this is maga country while they beat him up well now it turns out that a couple of problems okay a couple of problems

00:51:19.000 according to rafer weigel of fox 32 in chicago the he apparently was missing from the tape for a minute when he was missing from the tape When he re-entered the tape, he had a noose strung around his neck.

00:51:32.000 But he didn't call the police for 40 minutes.

00:51:34.000 Also, when he came back into the tape, he was still carrying his Subway sandwich.

00:51:39.000 Which is weird, like normally when you're assaulted and someone pours bleach on you and puts a noose around your neck and shouts, this is MAGA country and breaks your rib, which was his original contention.

00:51:47.000 When that happens, I mean, you really must love Subway sandwiches, right?

00:51:50.000 Like you must be super into that sandwich. 0.99

00:51:52.000 Like if you're getting your ass kicked by a bunch of, by a couple of racists on Chicago street in 20 degree below weather at 2 a.m. 0.99

00:51:58.000 and they're breaking your rib and you still hang on to that Subway sandwich, man, you are either hungry or you love Subway sandwiches for some perverse reason. 0.99

00:52:06.000 I was bruised, but my ribs were not cracked.

00:52:08.000 Jussie Smollett did some sort of concert and there he talked about his courage and the headline from all of the media outlets were how courageous Jussie Smollett was.

00:52:14.000 Nobody has yet asked him straight questions about like all the inconsistencies in his story.

00:52:19.000 But at least we know he's very brave because he performed in a concert and talked about how he had been mischaracterized.

00:52:26.000 I was bruised, but my ribs were not cracked.

00:52:29.000 They were not broken.

00:52:30.000 I went to the doctor immediately.

00:52:35.000 Frank Datson drove me.

00:52:36.000 I was not hospitalized.

00:52:40.000 Both my doctors in L.A.

00:52:41.000 and Chicago cleared me to perform, but said to take care, obviously.

00:52:47.000 And above all, I fought the f*** back.

00:52:50.000 Okay, well, again, like, some details would be good. 0.89

00:52:53.000 I like that he has to read the statement off a card.

00:52:55.000 He can't just say it, which is always the sign that you're not trying to be legally careful, is that you're reading off an actual printed note card at a concert.

00:53:02.000 In any case, we still don't know all the details.

00:53:04.000 Maybe it happened just the way he said it did, but I don't think that it's irrelevant to ask questions about how this thing went down, considering, again, there have been a lot of inconsistencies in his story, and he wouldn't turn his cell phone over to the police.

00:53:14.000 So, a few things.

00:53:15.000 Okay, other things that I hate today.

00:53:17.000 So, Grand Canyon University cancelled a speaking engagement that had been scheduled for me in a couple of months.

00:53:25.000 And they cancelled it because I'm apparently a very scary human.

00:53:29.000 And they put out an incredibly long statement about why they cancelled my speech there.

00:53:34.000 Here's what they said.

00:53:35.000 We wanted to take a moment to address Grand Canyon University's decision to cancel a speaking engagement on campus by Ben Shapiro.

00:53:41.000 We believe in many of the things that Ben Shapiro speaks about and stands for, including his support for ideals that grow out of traditional Judeo-Christian values and a belief in a free market economy.

00:53:50.000 Our decision to cancel Shapiro's speaking engagement is not a reflection of his ideologies or the values he represents, but rather a desire to focus on opportunities that bring people together.

00:53:59.000 To understand that decision, one has to first understand the university's history and culture that has been created on our campus.

00:54:05.000 As a private interdenominational Christian institution, Grand Canyon University's core beliefs are rooted in biblical truths and outlined in our doctrinal statement and ethical position statement.

00:54:14.000 These foundational documents, inspired in large part by the Nicene Creed, articulate our commitment to the full inspiration of scripture and provide clarity, unity, and alignment across the university on matters of ethics and morality.

00:54:25.000 And then they talk about their very diverse student body and their ability to offer education to all socioeconomic classes.

00:54:32.000 And they talk about their culture and how kind they are.

00:54:35.000 They say, in short, it has created a unique and united community where no matter their political differences, people come together as one to make a difference in the world around them.

00:54:43.000 Today, we live in a very divided America.

00:54:46.000 The current high volume of rhetoric has not led to community building or problem solving.

00:54:49.000 Grand Canyon University, rather than engage in this type of rhetoric, has instead worked to bring people together and build partnerships to renovate our inner city community.

00:54:56.000 And then they talk about all of the wonderful things they've done for the inner city community.

00:55:00.000 As a university, we encourage thoughtful discussions and rational dialogue in our classrooms about the issues affecting our societies, and we encourage students to put greater emphasis on actions that produce positive change in our society.

00:55:12.000 They say, based on the response we've received from some within the Grand Canyon community regarding the decision involving such high-profile speakers as Ben Shapiro, we've obviously disappointed and offended some of you.

00:55:21.000 We know that if we had made a different decision, we would have disappointed and offended others within the same community.

00:55:25.000 It was not our intent to disappoint or offend anyone.

00:55:28.000 It was rather to use our position as a Christian university to bring unity to a community that sits amidst a country that is extremely divided and can't seem to find a path forward toward unity.

00:55:38.000 That's a pretty weak statement.

00:55:40.000 Sorry to break it to you, GCU, but if you are seeking unity, probably the worst way to go about that is to simply ban debating voices.

00:55:48.000 To ban dissenting voices.

00:55:51.000 My events are unfailingly polite.

00:55:53.000 Go watch my events.

00:55:54.000 They're incredibly polite.

00:55:56.000 Obviously, what happened here is that a couple of motivated professors at GCU decided that they were going to speak up to the administration, and the administration caved to them, or a couple of students.

00:56:05.000 Apparently, according to reporting, people were upset about my position on DACA, which doesn't even make any sense.

00:56:10.000 Honest to goodness.

00:56:11.000 I mean, people who listen to the show know I'm actually libertarian on immigration, as long as it is not raising the crime rates, as long as people are not coming here to use welfare, and as long as there are not assimilation problems with citizenship.

00:56:22.000 And yet, apparently, even a whiff of controversy was enough for GCU to run screaming for the Hills.

00:56:28.000 So, well done there.

00:56:29.000 Well done there.

00:56:30.000 Meanwhile, I wonder if they would reject somebody from the left who was in any way controversial.

00:56:36.000 Speaking of which, final thing that I hate for today.

00:56:39.000 Fresh face of the Democratic Party.

00:56:41.000 So fresh.

00:56:42.000 So face.

00:56:42.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:56:45.000 Apparently, she had a wonderful conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, the ridiculous, disgusting, anti-Semitic piece of filth who runs the Labour Party in Britain. 0.98

00:56:53.000 He said, great to speak to AOC on the phone this evening and hear firsthand how she's challenging the status quo. 0.99

00:56:57.000 Let's build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet. 0.98

00:57:03.000 And then AOC tweeted, it was an honor to share such a lovely and wide reaching conversation with you, Jeremy Corbyn.

00:57:11.000 Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity, and justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race, and identity, both at home and abroad.

00:57:20.000 Is it possible that the modern Democratic Party has a serious problem with allowing anti-Semitism to flourish inside its ranks?

00:57:26.000 I think that that's pretty obvious at this point.

00:57:27.000 And we're going to continue to pretend that they are tolerant and open and diverse, when in fact, many on the radical left are precisely the opposite.

00:57:34.000 And AOC's association with one of the worst people in the West, Jeremy Corbyn, is just the latest indicator of that.

00:57:41.000 Alrighty, so we'll be back here a little bit later today with all the updates.

00:57:44.000 We have a couple of more hours of programming coming up later with all the updates and prep for the State of the Union address.

00:57:48.000 Be there, or we'll see you here tomorrow in prep for the State of the Union.

00:57:52.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:52.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:58.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:58:08.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Karamina, hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.

00:58:14.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 04, 2019

Of Racism And Forgiveness | Ep. 709

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