The Ben Shapiro Show - Practicality vs. Moral Character? | Ep. 839

00:00:00.000 Trump stays silent as Hong Kong faces down Chinese authoritarianism, the bond yields invert, and somebody allegedly shoots up an ice facility.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:09.000 Oh, man, a lot to get to today and not very much of it good news, but we will get through all of it together.

00:00:19.000 Don't worry.

00:00:20.000 It's a normal day just like any other and together we will soldier through.

00:00:23.000 We'll get to all of that in just one second.

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00:01:42.000 Alrighty, so.

00:01:44.000 The stock market is down again today.

00:01:46.000 It is down again on fears about the future of the trade war, on slowdowns in the German economy, on slowdowns in the Chinese economy, particularly in the Chinese manufacturing sector.

00:01:57.000 As of this morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped over 400 points.

00:02:01.000 It was down nearly 2%.

00:02:03.000 The NASDAQ was down nearly 2%.

00:02:05.000 A lot of uncertainty about the markets.

00:02:07.000 And a lot of that is being triggered also by the fact that the main yield curve had just inverted.

00:02:12.000 This is the first time this has happened since 2007.

00:02:14.000 The last three times that the yields curve has inverted, that has prefaced a recession.

00:02:20.000 So people are getting really worried at this point.

00:02:23.000 According to CNBC.com, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note broke below the two-year rate early on Wednesday, an odd bond market phenomenon that has been a reliable, albeit early, indicator for economic recessions.

00:02:34.000 The yield on U.S.

00:02:35.000 30-year bonds fell to an all-time low, dropping past its prior record, notched in summer of 2016.

00:02:41.000 The moves show increasing worries about the global economy as investors rush into safe havens.

00:02:46.000 And normally what you would expect is that you get a lower yield on short-term bonds than you do on long-term bonds.

00:02:51.000 And that just makes perfect sense.

00:02:52.000 I mean, the fact is that you are going to want more in return for storing your money with the government for 30 years than you'd want for storing your money with the government for five.

00:02:59.000 But when people have very little hope for the future of the stock market or alternative investments, the yield in the near term starts to drop on bonds.

00:03:07.000 People start to run to bonds as safe haven.

00:03:09.000 The yield starts to drop on short-term bonds and it continues to remain at the level it was for long-term bonds.

00:03:14.000 And that's when the yield curve so-called inverts.

00:03:16.000 That is a sign of deep...

00:03:20.000 and surprising mistrust in the strength of the global economy at this point.

00:03:25.000 Early on Wednesday, the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was at 1.623% below the two-year yield at 1.634%.

00:03:33.000 In practice, that means that investors are better compensated for loaning the U.S. over two years than they are for loaning for 10 years.

00:03:39.000 Again, that's because they don't want to loan for two years, right?

00:03:43.000 So the government has to incentivize them to loan for two years by offering them higher rates.

00:03:48.000 So this is not a good sign for the economy.

00:03:51.000 And this comes in the midst of a lot of trade tension between the United States and China.

00:03:55.000 That trade tension has been ratcheted up by the Trump administration, not for national security reasons purportedly, but for economic reasons.

00:04:02.000 So President Trump came into office on the back of a promise to restore some sort of trade balance between the United States and China.

00:04:09.000 As it turns out, the tariffs that he has imposed have actually exacerbated the trade imbalance between the United States and China.

00:04:15.000 They've not made things all that much better, and they have resulted in less Chinese investment in U.S.

00:04:20.000 assets because, after all, why would China invest in U.S.

00:04:23.000 assets in the middle of a tariff war?

00:04:25.000 So what we've seen is a slowdown in particular sectors of the economy, agriculture being the chief one, but also in manufacturing in the United States.

00:04:33.000 And this came before the hubbub between China and Hong Kong.

00:04:37.000 So just a few weeks ago, well, rather a couple of months ago, this controversy broke into the open regarding Hong Kong, which wanted to reassert some of its Long-standing rights against the Chinese government.

00:04:50.000 When the British government left Hong Kong and made a deal with China, the idea was that Hong Kong was still going to retain a heavy degree of independence.

00:04:56.000 China has repeatedly violated that.

00:04:58.000 The people of Hong Kong are sick of it.

00:05:00.000 And millions of them have been chanting in the streets, marching in the streets, carrying American flags, calling for more civil liberties and more freedom.

00:05:07.000 And China has responded with a crackdown.

00:05:09.000 And now the only question is how harsh that crackdown is going to be.

00:05:13.000 According to the New York Times, as of yesterday, anti-government protesters clashed with Hong Kong riot police on Tuesday, crippling the airport for the second straight day, targeting a potent symbol of the city's position as a global center of commerce and finance that is essential to China.

00:05:27.000 The mass protests have forced the airport to suspend check-ins, creating long delays for passengers and forcing airlines to cancel hundreds of flights over the past two days.

00:05:35.000 After a chaotic night, check-ins resumed on Wednesday morning.

00:05:38.000 The airport warned that flights would be rescheduled.

00:05:40.000 Hong Kong's flagship carrier said there would be a further flight disruption at short notice.

00:05:44.000 The protests at the airport have been deeply tactical, as the largely leaderless movement strikes at the vital economic artery, according to The New York Times.

00:05:52.000 Hong Kong International Airport, which opened in 1998, a year after China reclaimed the territory from Britain, serves as a gateway to the rest of Asia.

00:05:59.000 Sleek and well-run, the airport accommodates nearly 75 million passengers per year.

00:06:04.000 Protesters are trying to intensify pressure on the government, which has refused to meet their demands.

00:06:08.000 After earlier efforts to occupy local roads, shopping malls, and parks failed to produce concessions, they decided to shift their efforts to a more global stage.

00:06:15.000 And there, the protesters are handing out pamphlets in different languages explaining their position.

00:06:21.000 The protesters say their other tactics are not working and that other countries aren't paying attention to any of this.

00:06:26.000 Clashes began late Tuesday evening after a group of demonstrators attacked a man they accused of being a mainland Chinese police officer impersonating a protester, which would not be surprising.

00:06:35.000 The Chinese have apparently been attempting to infiltrate some of the protests.

00:06:39.000 And as medics and police tried to evacuate him in an ambulance, protesters blocked a road outside the department hall.

00:06:46.000 The departure hall, rather.

00:06:47.000 Here is what that actually looked like.

00:06:48.000 here, then began running after demonstrators, wrestling some to the ground.

00:06:52.000 A group of protesters inside surrounded a police officer, taking his baton and then beating him with it.

00:06:56.000 And they were treated after he pulled a gun.

00:06:59.000 Here is what that actually looked like.

00:07:01.000 Hong Kong protests really did get violent.

00:07:03.000 It started to get quite ugly.

00:07:12.000 It could have gotten a lot uglier if this police officer had pulled his gun and shot somebody.

00:07:18.000 Right now, the Chinese government is trying to portray the protesters who have been nearly entirely peaceful as rioters.

00:07:25.000 They've been trying to portray them as rabble-rousers who are trying to stand up to the Chinese government in illegal ways.

00:07:31.000 According to the Washington Post, after late-night mob scenes marred a demonstration that paralyzed the city's airport, protesters on Wednesday issued apologies, seeking the international public's sympathy and forgiveness, as they fought to regain control over a narrative that seemed to be tilting in Beijing's favor for the first time.

00:07:46.000 The appeals included apologies to the police force and come as struggle over public opinion reaches a climax.

00:07:51.000 While Hong Kong's protest movement has become steadily radicalized and fractured, the Chinese government is ramping up its own propaganda effort in state media and on social networks, attempting to discredit and deflate a movement that to this point enjoyed wide support across Hong Kong society.

00:08:06.000 The Chinese government is now labeling the protesters rioters, and they say that they are asking for self-destruction.

00:08:14.000 Military vehicles have been mobbing, have been massing nearby.

00:08:19.000 President Trump tweeted that out yesterday.

00:08:21.000 He said our intelligence has informed us that the Chinese government is moving troops to the border with Hong Kong.

00:08:26.000 Everyone should be calm and safe.

00:08:28.000 Meanwhile, the city's embattled leader, Carrie Lam, told the news media on Friday the law-breaking activities in the name of freedom were damaging the rule of law and that the Asian financial hub's recovery from anti-government protests could take a long time.

00:08:38.000 So this could be used as an excuse for even more of a crackdown on the people of Hong Kong.

00:08:45.000 Now, what you would want here is for the United States to take a strong position.

00:08:50.000 And the fact is that if we have a Tiananmen Square type event here, the United States is going to have to take strong trade action.

00:08:55.000 And President Trump has not been shy about talking about taking that sort of action, except now.

00:09:00.000 In the very recent past, meaning in the last 48 hours, he seems to be backing off all of that.

00:09:06.000 And he seems to be backing off all of that because he's finally realizing that his tariffs hurt the American economy.

00:09:10.000 Now, as I've been saying for months, the only way for the president to make the case for his tariffs is to make them on national security grounds.

00:09:16.000 You cannot make a case for a tariff on economic grounds.

00:09:19.000 Tariffs do not help the domestic economy.

00:09:22.000 They are attacks on American citizens. 0.70

00:09:24.000 They hurt consumers.

00:09:25.000 President Trump finally recognizing this as Christmas approaches and as the economy seems to be possibly tipping into recession, certainly into economic slowdown.

00:09:35.000 The New York Times reports, that yesterday, President Trump unexpectedly put off new tariffs on many Chinese goods, including cell phones, laptop computers, and toys, until after the start of the Christmas shopping season, acknowledging the effect that his protracted trade war with Beijing could have on Americans.

00:09:49.000 So Trump has been fibbing to you the entire time with regard to tariffs.

00:09:52.000 He said that trade wars were easy to win and good for the economy.

00:09:56.000 Neither of those is true.

00:09:57.000 It turns out that Beijing does not care about its billion citizens nearly as much as Trump cares about the domestic economy here in the United States.

00:10:03.000 What's more, Trump said that it would be good for the economy?

00:10:07.000 No.

00:10:07.000 Tariffs are a tax on American citizens.

00:10:10.000 They hurt American consumers.

00:10:12.000 And Trump is now acknowledging that.

00:10:14.000 So to fail to recognize that Trump is now switching his position on this would be dishonest.

00:10:18.000 Trump pushed a 10% tariff on some imports to December 15th, excluded others from it entirely, while facing mounting pressure from business and consumer groups over the harm they say the trade conflict is doing.

00:10:30.000 Trump explained, quote, just in case they might have an impact on people, what we've done is delayed it so that they won't be relevant for the Christmas shopping season.

00:10:39.000 That is a full scale acknowledgement by Trump that tariffs hurt American consumers.

00:10:45.000 Trump is frustrated that negotiations have failed to yield an agreement.

00:10:48.000 He said on August 1st, the U.S.

00:10:50.000 would impose a 10% tariff on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports September 1st.

00:10:55.000 That would be in addition to a 25% tariff already imposed on $250 billion of Chinese goods.

00:11:00.000 Well, Trump painted himself into a corner.

00:11:01.000 I mean, that's really what happened here.

00:11:03.000 Trump painted himself into a corner.

00:11:06.000 And now with the economy on the brink of a slowdown, This has put President Trump in a very difficult position.

00:11:13.000 It's put him in a position where, if he takes a strong stand against China, it could in fact damage his re-election prospects in a serious way.

00:11:21.000 And so, in a time when we should be ratcheting up the possibility of economic sanctions, we are actually ratcheting down the possibility of economic sanctions.

00:11:28.000 Whereas before, when we should have been negotiating a trade deal, we shouldn't have exited the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we should have renegotiated it.

00:11:34.000 It was a mistake to exit TPP, which is a trade deal directed against the economic strength of China in Asia.

00:11:41.000 All the lies about the TPP, that it was good for China, is a lie.

00:11:44.000 TPP was designed explicitly as a counterbalance to Chinese infiltration economically in the region.

00:11:51.000 You know, in a time when we should have been looking for a trade deal, we were searching instead for trade conflict in a time when we should be ratcheting up trade conflict as a as an effect of trying to help the Hong Kong protesters.

00:12:02.000 We're not doing any of that.

00:12:03.000 And so this has led President Trump to this bizarre kind of halfway position on Hong Kong.

00:12:09.000 So in the last 24 hours, he's tweeted out, quote, As usual, China said they were going to be buying big from our great American farmers.

00:12:15.000 So far, they have not done what they said.

00:12:17.000 Maybe this will be different.

00:12:19.000 I don't know what the hell that means.

00:12:20.000 And then he added, quote, "Many are blaming me and the United States for the problems going on in Hong Kong.

00:12:25.000 I can't imagine why." Again, Trump is not responsible for what's going on in Hong Kong, but this would be a time for him to stand up for freedom in an area of the world that deserves it, had negotiated for it, and now is not receiving it from what is a geopolitical enemy of the United States, China, stealing our technology, building rival 5G networks that attempt stealing our technology, building rival 5G networks that attempt to provide a counter balance to the 5G networks we are building right now.

00:12:49.000 We are in a second Cold War with the Chinese. 1.00

00:12:52.000 It will stay cold, we can all hope, but the fact is that the Chinese are an expansionist power And they have been, both militarily and technologically. 1.00

00:13:01.000 They're doing so at the expense of the United States, and the United States, if we're gonna take harsh action against China, you need to make the case. 0.66

00:13:08.000 Now, Trump has converted, he keeps making this sort of weird case where Xi Jinping is his best friend, and we're great, we're gonna negotiate a deal together, and then at the same time, the Chinese keep jacking us, and the Chinese are the worst, and they're cheating us, and they're stealing our manufacturing jobs.

00:13:21.000 Explain what it is you are doing, President Trump, if you want the American people to be with you.

00:13:27.000 And especially, again, in the midst of a time when there are protesters in the streets in Hong Kong who may be mowed down by the Chinese government in the very near future, this would be a time for you to stand up and say, this is why we have been putting tariffs on China. 0.96

00:13:40.000 It's because of crap like this that we've been putting tariffs on China. 0.75

00:13:43.000 And as JFK put it, we will bear any burden in the name of liberty. 0.98

00:13:47.000 And I'm sorry, but getting slightly more expensive goods from China in the name of liberty doesn't seem like all that much of a burden to bear to help the people of Hong Kong who are flying the American flag while they are protesting for their freedom.

00:13:57.000 But that's not the kind of statement that Trump is making right now.

00:14:00.000 Barack Obama, back in 2009, had the opportunity to stand with protesters against the Iranian regime.

00:14:05.000 And instead, he completely undercut them.

00:14:08.000 And he suggested that it was an Iranian internal problem, and the protesters were mowed down in the streets, and the Iranian government instead got a sweetheart deal from the American government. 0.56

00:14:16.000 It was disgusting.

00:14:18.000 You don't want the same thing from the Trump administration with regard to China, if they should run roughshod over the protesters for human rights and democracy in Hong Kong.

00:14:26.000 Trump's only statement with regard to Hong Kong directly, he said our intelligence has informed us that the Chinese government is moving troops to the border with Hong Kong.

00:14:34.000 Everyone should be calm and safe.

00:14:37.000 That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the protesters' aims here.

00:14:42.000 In fact, it's pretty milquetoast.

00:14:44.000 Trump was elected for his tough talk.

00:14:46.000 Now, in a second, I want to talk about the practicality versus the moral character question in foreign policy, because I understand what President Trump's defenders on this score are going to say.

00:14:55.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:16:18.000 Well, the Hong Kong thing is a very tough situation.

00:16:21.000 Very tough.

00:16:21.000 We'll see what happens, but I'm sure it'll work out.

00:16:23.000 Okay, so President Trump was asked about the Hong Kong situation verbally, and here is what Trump had to say.

00:16:30.000 Okay, so the case for Trump doing this is that he doesn't want to make trade negotiations harder, so the case for Trump doing this is that he doesn't want to make trade negotiations harder, that he's not willing to That practicality overcomes morality.

00:16:56.000 But the fact is that even by Trumpian standards, this is really kind of bizarre and weak.

00:17:02.000 It is not up to Trump's par.

00:17:04.000 Like Trump doesn't even, he doesn't seem to understand necessarily what's even What seems to be in dispute.

00:17:09.000 When he says the Hong Kong thing is a very tough situation, very tough, we'll see what happens, that's sort of his normal Trump pap, well, pablum, the sort of normal Trumpian pap for what he's asked a question that he doesn't really know anything about, and he sort of just mumbles about it.

00:17:23.000 You know, this would be the time when Trump should stand up with the protesters.

00:17:29.000 In fact, his own administration, there are members of his own administration who are being a lot more clear about this.

00:17:33.000 A senior administration official recently told CNBC, quote, freedom of expression and assembly are core values we share with the people of Hong Kong.

00:17:41.000 Those freedoms should be protected.

00:17:43.000 The U.S.

00:17:43.000 firmly rejects the notion that we are sponsoring or inciting the demonstrations.

00:17:46.000 Again, that is sort of splitting the baby a little bit.

00:17:49.000 But what you have seen from Mitch McConnell, what you have seen from Nancy Pelosi, what you've seen across the political aisle is a general support for the protesters.

00:17:55.000 You're not seeing that from the Trump administration.

00:17:57.000 Now, people are going to say, again, that's a practical move by President Trump.

00:18:00.000 What do you expect him to do?

00:18:01.000 Go to war with China or arm the protesters?

00:18:03.000 No one's talking about that.

00:18:05.000 But again, This is a guy who declared a trade war with China on the basis of them supposedly cheating us.

00:18:11.000 Would it not behoove him to make similar threats with regard to them running roughshod over protesters?

00:18:17.000 That if they should trash their own protesters, if they should kill a bunch of protesters, run them over with tanks or something, that the United States will take harsh and appropriate non-military action, economic sanctions action, that we certainly will do, right?

00:18:31.000 Trump is not going to sit still for that. 0.96

00:18:33.000 So wouldn't you want to issue some sort of threat at this point?

00:18:36.000 Issue some sort of form of support for the Hong Kong protesters?

00:18:41.000 Practicality and moral rhetoric do not have to be On opposite sides, Ronald Reagan was able to call the Soviet Union an evil empire even as he was negotiating with them.

00:18:53.000 So this weird notion that you have to either kowtow rhetorically to a country or go to war with them is just not proved by anything in American history.

00:19:00.000 Very often the very people we are negotiating with are the people that we are speaking most harshly about in order to bring them to the table.

00:19:07.000 Trump likes to kind of wheedle people into deals, but his wheedling hasn't produced a deal with North Korea.

00:19:11.000 I understand that everybody is very up on Trump's negotiations with North Korea.

00:19:16.000 They've produced nothing.

00:19:17.000 Literally nothing.

00:19:18.000 Except the legitimization of the North Korean regime.

00:19:22.000 That's it.

00:19:23.000 So before we get into the, this is a masterclass in negotiation, how about we see some good results from one of these negotiations and then you can talk about the masterclass.

00:19:30.000 In fact, the areas where Trump actually has accomplished something with negotiating tactics are the areas where he has been the harshest.

00:19:38.000 With regard to Mexico, for example, he was able to negotiate a quasi-immigration deal with Mexico to keep many illegal immigrants in Mexico, to have them strengthen their own southern border.

00:19:49.000 He did that by threatening them.

00:19:51.000 President Trump is more effective when he is the braggadocious bully that he typically is, not when he is doing the wheedling, glad-handing routine with dictators in Turkey or China or anywhere else on the planet.

00:20:04.000 It's a bad look. 0.63

00:20:06.000 It really is a nasty look.

00:20:09.000 Now, meanwhile, the media continue to push forward the idea that President Trump's rhetoric is inherently awful and violent.

00:20:18.000 This is the narrative that they continue to push. 0.98

00:20:22.000 And it's really kind of ridiculous. 0.98

00:20:25.000 Okay, so listen, when Trump says stuff that I think is disgusting, as I've said many times pretty much every day, I will call it out. 0.97

00:20:33.000 But the media are now running with the idea that he is responsible for acts of violence across the country.

00:20:39.000 And the way they are doing this is by falsifying the statistics.

00:20:42.000 This has become part of the Democratic 2020 pitch.

00:20:44.000 So there's a coordinated pitch between the Democrats 2020 and the media.

00:20:48.000 I'm not saying they're formally coordinating this.

00:20:49.000 I'm saying that the media are a Democratic Party outlet and mainstream media spend an awful lot of time parroting Democratic talking points.

00:20:56.000 So it is no coincidence that even as Democrats argue that Trump is responsible for the El Paso shooting, the media are picking up on that and they are running with it.

00:21:04.000 So, for example, you've got Beto O'Rourke, who's going to deliver a campaign reset speech on Thursday, which is hilarious, right?

00:21:09.000 Beto has been in the race for just a few months.

00:21:11.000 He's already had two campaign resets.

00:21:14.000 Apparently, he's going to deliver his first major written address on Thursday.

00:21:18.000 Well, good for him.

00:21:20.000 As Stephen Miller, not the Stephen Miller from the administration, but another Stephen Miller, put it on Twitter, and I'm playing a sold-out concert in my living room.

00:21:28.000 Like, who cares that Beto O'Rourke making a major campaign speech is like me making a major campaign speech.

00:21:33.000 I'm not running, and really neither is he.

00:21:35.000 But apparently he's delivering a major campaign speech, and you can guess exactly what it's about. 0.98

00:21:39.000 It's about how Trump is a horrible, no-good, terrible, very, very bad man.

00:21:43.000 According to NBC News, Former Texas Representative O'Rourke plans to deliver that first major written address on Thursday, offering a reset of his presidential campaign. 0.95

00:21:52.000 The wheels fell off the skateboard bra.

00:21:55.000 A new focus and fresh strategy for going forward in the wake of a mass shooting in O'Rourke's hometown.

00:22:01.000 O'Rourke will recommit to holding President Trump accountable for the state of the country and focus on the stakes of removing a president from office whom he has explicitly linked to the deaths of fellow El Pasoans, according to a senior campaign official.

00:22:13.000 He'll focus heavily on three key issues.

00:22:15.000 Racism, white supremacy, and guns.

00:22:17.000 And plans to propose what the campaign calls new bold solutions.

00:22:20.000 The new bold solutions involve Beto O'Rourke going on TV and talking about these things while waving his hands wildly like a bizarre windmill.

00:22:28.000 That's his solution.

00:22:30.000 But the media are all in on that particular narrative.

00:22:33.000 So Mike Levine reporting, remember this is an opinion piece, reporting for ABC News.

00:22:38.000 He says this.

00:22:39.000 This is the headline.

00:22:40.000 No blame?

00:22:41.000 ABC News finds 36 cases invoking Trump in connection with violence, threats, and alleged assaults.

00:22:47.000 So Trump is responsible for all of the violence and all of the threats and all of these alleged assaults.

00:22:52.000 36 of them.

00:22:53.000 By the way, last I checked, there are like 330 million people in the country.

00:22:57.000 So 36 crimes in which people invoked Trump in a court proceeding?

00:23:02.000 Okay, spare me the wave of Trumpian violence wracking the nation.

00:23:07.000 There's not a lot of evidence for that.

00:23:09.000 And as we'll see from this particular study, the study itself is skewed to achieve a particular result.

00:23:15.000 And you can tell, I mean, this is a case example of media bias.

00:23:18.000 It's pretty stunning.

00:23:20.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:24:52.000 OK, in just one second, we're going to get to.

00:24:56.000 This this insane piece from ABC News accusing President Trump of a wide swath of violence across the country and explore how the media like to bias this particular case again.

00:25:06.000 Trump has raised the temperature in the country.

00:25:07.000 The temperature was already quite hot politically, and Trump Cannot be blamed for these acts of violence any more than Bernie Sanders can be blamed for a congressional baseball shooting.

00:25:16.000 ABC News tries to parse it.

00:25:17.000 I'll explain in just one second.

00:25:19.000 First, you have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:26:05.000 Okay, so this ABC News piece tries to blame President Trump for all kinds of violence.

00:26:18.000 Again, the title of the piece, No Blame, ABC News finds 36 cases invoking Trump in connection with violence, threats, and alleged assault.

00:26:26.000 And here's what the piece says.

00:26:27.000 Again, this is journalism-ing of the highest order.

00:26:28.000 Serious, serious journalism-ing.

00:26:31.000 It says, President Trump has repeatedly refused to accept any responsibility for inciting violence in American communities, dismissing critics who have pointed to his rhetoric as a potential source of inspiration for some citizens acting on even long-held beliefs of bigotry and hate.

00:26:46.000 I think my rhetoric brings people together, he said last week, four days after a 21-year-old allegedly posted an anti-immigrant screed online and then allegedly opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, killing 22 and injuring dozens of others.

00:26:58.000 But a nationwide review conducted by ABC News has identified at least 36 criminal cases where Trump was invoked in direct connection with violent acts, threats of violence, or allegations of assault.

00:27:10.000 Wow, 36 criminal acts in a country of 330 million people in an extraordinarily polarized time?

00:27:18.000 Shocking.

00:27:19.000 But here's where it really gets good.

00:27:21.000 Listen to how they did this analysis.

00:27:22.000 In nine cases, perpetrators hailed Trump in the midst or immediate aftermath of physically attacking innocent victims.

00:27:28.000 Yes, all of that's evil and bad.

00:27:30.000 In another 10 cases, perpetrators cheered or defended Trump while taunting or threatening others.

00:27:35.000 And in another 10 cases, Trump and his rhetoric were cited in court to explain a defendant's violent or threatening behavior.

00:27:41.000 And so those last 10 cases, very often what you see in those cases is a defense counsel trying to make an overt pitch for media attention and sympathy based on their client invoking Trump after the fact.

00:27:52.000 And so I don't trust any of that.

00:27:54.000 If there was no prior evidence that the attack was linked to anything Trump had said or to Trump, if there was no shouting of Trump in the middle of the attack, and then afterward the defense attorney was like, yeah, it was just like Trump, man.

00:28:05.000 It's because of Trump.

00:28:07.000 I don't buy it.

00:28:08.000 I don't buy it.

00:28:09.000 So take that 36 down to 26.

00:28:10.000 Okay, seven cases involved violence or threatening acts perpetrated in defiance of Trump, with many of them targeting Trump's allies in Congress.

00:28:20.000 So that means that really it's not 36, it's 26.

00:28:22.000 And now you're talking about 7 of the 26 are actually threats or violent acts targeting Trump.

00:28:30.000 Okay, but it gets even better.

00:28:33.000 They say the 36 cases identified by ABC News are remarkable in that a link to our president is captured in court documents and police statements under penalty of perjury or contempt.

00:28:42.000 In many cases of assault or threat, charges are never filed.

00:28:45.000 Criminal acts committed by Trump supporters or his detractors have nothing to do with the president.

00:28:49.000 But in 36 cases, court records and police reports indicated some sort of link.

00:28:55.000 And they say, of course, these are mostly hate crimes.

00:28:56.000 These are directed against minority people.

00:29:00.000 This is where it gets really good.

00:29:02.000 While asserting that a fake media coverage is exacerbating divisions in the country, Trump has noted that a fan of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders opened fire on Republican lawmakers playing baseball in a Washington suburb two years ago.

00:29:15.000 Nobody puts Bernie Sanders in the headline with the maniac, Trump said last year.

00:29:18.000 And last week, Trump similarly insisted that the man who fatally shot nine people in Dayton, Ohio, three days earlier, supported Sanders and other liberal causes.

00:29:27.000 But there's no indication either of these shooters mentioned Sanders while launching their attacks.

00:29:31.000 And no charges were ever filed because they were both fatally shot during the assault.

00:29:36.000 Okay, so you are now changing the standards of crime.

00:29:39.000 Okay, so first of all, I agree that the Dayton, Ohio shooter, there's nothing that connects his politics to the shooting so far that we know of.

00:29:46.000 We know that he was on the political left, but we have to be intellectually fair and honest here.

00:29:50.000 There's no indicator that his politics drove the shooting.

00:29:53.000 With that said, The shooting, the congressional baseball shooting was obviously an anti-Trump, pro-Bernie Sanders shooting.

00:29:59.000 I mean, there's just no question about that. 0.97

00:30:01.000 The reason there's no question about that is because the day before he committed the shooting, he posted a bunch of crap on social media about how much he hated Trump and Trump supporters. 0.98

00:30:08.000 And then he went and shot explicitly Republicans. 0.91

00:30:10.000 And here's ABC News trying to contend that that had nothing to do with Bernie Sanders because the guy wasn't shouting, Sanders!

00:30:17.000 as he committed the assault.

00:30:19.000 It's absurd.

00:30:21.000 And then it gets even better.

00:30:23.000 Again, ABC News, really doing serious journalisming here.

00:30:25.000 In conducting its review, ABC News did find several cases where pro-Trump defendants were charged with targeting minorities, or where speculation online suggested the defendants were motivated by Trump.

00:30:35.000 But in those cases, ABC News found no police records, court proceedings, or other direct evidence presenting a definitive link to the president, so those were excluded.

00:30:44.000 So they excluded... Also, ABC News excluded incidents of vandalism.

00:30:50.000 Okay, well, that's kind of a thing because I would say that a huge amount of vandalism across the country right now is anti-Trump vandalism.

00:30:59.000 Also, ABC News excluded several cases of violence from attacks on anti-Trump protesters at Trump rallies to certain assaults on people wearing MAGA hats that did not establish explicit ties to Trump.

00:31:10.000 So just to be straight about this, if somebody attacked somebody at a Trump rally or beat up somebody wearing a MAGA hat, they didn't count that.

00:31:18.000 So basically, you went looking for cases where you could blame Trump, and you found some cases where you could blame Trump.

00:31:22.000 Congratulations, guys.

00:31:24.000 Really, solid stuff.

00:31:26.000 Solid stuff.

00:31:28.000 It's no wonder that so many people on the right buy into Trump's characterization of the media.

00:31:32.000 And again, you're not seeing the media ask the very difficult questions with regard to left-leaning rhetoric, because they agree with the left.

00:31:41.000 So over the last 48 hours, there was an attempted shooting at another ICE office.

00:31:46.000 San Antonio police, according to the National Review, are questioning a man who's suspected of shooting at downtown office buildings occupied by ICE, according to a local CBS affiliate.

00:31:56.000 Police responded to reports of gunshots around 3 a.m.

00:31:59.000 Tuesday morning.

00:31:59.000 The suspect fired at the building from across the street, damaging several windows, according to police.

00:32:04.000 No one was harmed in the incident.

00:32:05.000 Police are investigating whether the shooter intentionally targeted the ICE office.

00:32:09.000 That, of course, comes roughly one month after the most undercovered story of the year, a lone gunman trying to blow up an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, armed with a rifle and throwing incendiary devices at the facility while trying to blow up a propane tank nearby.

00:32:24.000 Here is AOC, by the way, asked whether she regrets the concentration camp language, which was, in fact, explicitly used by the ICE attacker a month ago.

00:32:32.000 And AOC says, no, I don't regret that at all.

00:32:35.000 Not in the slightest.

00:32:37.000 Do you feel on Israel, you said, this administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized and dehumanizing conditions and dying.

00:32:48.000 You got a lot of grief for using the word concentration camps.

00:32:52.000 Do you regret that?

00:32:53.000 Or do you think people misinterpret it?

00:32:55.000 Yeah, well, I think there's a few things at play.

00:32:58.000 One, I don't regret it at all.

00:33:01.000 Okay, so she doesn't regret it at all.

00:33:03.000 Not at all.

00:33:03.000 And nobody's gonna ask real serious follow-up questions linking her to any sort of violence, of course, while the ABC News making sure that there is the narrative that Trump is causing swaths of violence across the country, when in reality, the evidence for that is scanty.

00:33:17.000 And then we'll see the left trying to defend AOC as the brightest and wisest among us.

00:33:22.000 And Bernie Sanders has nothing to do with the congressional baseball shooter, even if Trump is responsible for El Paso or some such silliness like that.

00:33:29.000 Again, this is why people on the right don't trust the media.

00:33:32.000 Another great example of why people on the right don't trust the media.

00:33:34.000 So today there's a big controversy over Ken Cuccinelli.

00:33:36.000 Ken Cuccinelli is the acting U.S.

00:33:40.000 Citizenship and Immigration Services Director, former senatorial candidate in Virginia.

00:33:45.000 And he was on CNN, and he was asked about the immigration policy of the Trump administration, which was recently changed to make it difficult for legal immigrants to stay in the United States if they were on public welfare, which makes perfect sense. 0.96

00:33:57.000 We don't want to admit people who are simply going to live on the dole. 1.00

00:34:01.000 No sovereign country can do that and hope to survive as a sovereign entity.

00:34:05.000 Well, Cuccinelli was asked about that on CNN, and then the media slandered him.

00:34:10.000 Wretched, poor, refuse, right?

00:34:12.000 That's what the poem says America's supposed to stand for.

00:34:14.000 So, what do you think America stands for?

00:34:19.000 Well, of course, that poem was referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class.

00:34:29.000 And it was introduced, it was written one year, one year after the first federal public charge rule was written, that says, and I'll quote it, any person unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge, unquote, would be inadmissible.

00:34:46.000 Okay, so the way that the media cover this is that Cuccinelli is saying that the original poem was written only to apply to European citizens who wanted to immigrate to the United States.

00:34:54.000 That is not what he is saying.

00:34:56.000 What he is referring to is the class-based society that the poem was meant to fight.

00:35:00.000 Meaning that the poem was meant, according to Cuccinelli's interpretation, to specifically target the class-based distinctions that he felt were, that the poet felt were nonsensical in Europe and should not be applied in the United States.

00:35:13.000 I mean, people seem to ignore the part of the poem on the Statue of Liberty.

00:35:17.000 You know, the part with the poor, tired, huddled masses.

00:35:19.000 They seem to be forgetting the phrase, yearning to be free.

00:35:22.000 Yearning to be free is not the same as yearning for free stuff.

00:35:24.000 That's why there were public charge rules that were on the books at the time that the Statue of Liberty was built.

00:35:30.000 And that's the point Cuccinelli is making.

00:35:32.000 Nonetheless, here's the headline.

00:35:33.000 Immigration official Ken Cuccinelli is from USA Today.

00:35:36.000 Statue of Liberty poem refers to immigrants from Europe.

00:35:39.000 He wasn't saying that the only people who can immigrate to the United States are from Europe.

00:35:43.000 He's specifically talking about the literary value and what it's referring to in terms of class-based systems.

00:35:49.000 He's not saying that we can't have immigrants from other places.

00:35:52.000 Beto O'Rourke being the...

00:35:54.000 No, that's not what he's saying.

00:35:56.000 is, tweeted out, this administration finally admitted what we've known all along.

00:35:59.000 They think the Statue of Liberty only applies to white people.

00:36:02.000 No, that's not what he's saying.

00:36:04.000 That's obviously not what he's saying.

00:36:06.000 Josh Marshall, again, dishonest, says, Cuccinelli, that Statue of Liberty poem was about people coming from Europe.

00:36:12.000 Again, it was about the class-based distinctions that we were attempting to eradicate in the United States.

00:36:16.000 That classifying people based on class for purposes of immigration was a mistake, but not based on their inability to take public welfare.

00:36:24.000 Washington Post opinion columnist saying that he said the quiet part out loud and all the rest of this.

00:36:29.000 OK, this is why it's lack of endemic trust that leads to this gap between what people see as practicality and moral character.

00:36:37.000 So for the left, because Donald Trump is Hitler and because everybody on the right is Hitlerian in intent and effect, because of all of that, anything is justified, including lying.

00:36:47.000 We can just falsify the data with regard to Trump creating a swath of violence across the country.

00:36:52.000 We can simply falsify the data about what Ken Cuccinelli actually said.

00:36:55.000 We can simply make things up, because all of that is justified.

00:36:59.000 If you're truly moral, as AOC has said out loud, If you are truly moral, the truth doesn't matter.

00:37:05.000 Only moral truth matters.

00:37:06.000 And that means that you can simply make things up or twist the truth to fit what you are looking for.

00:37:11.000 And I criticized Trump earlier for valuing what he sees as practicality above moral character.

00:37:16.000 I said these things do not have to be in conflict.

00:37:18.000 In fact, moral character can be practical because it lays out the stakes of what is happening.

00:37:25.000 But we seem to have abandoned this.

00:37:27.000 And what that's led to is, on the other side, a willingness to say, OK, well, if you guys aren't playing fair, well, then we're not going to play fair.

00:37:33.000 Practicality now demands that we abandon moral character.

00:37:35.000 Practicality demands that we throw brick bats at you.

00:37:38.000 Practicality demands that we cheer for a person who confronts Chris Cuomo and calls him Fredo in public.

00:37:45.000 Practicality demands that we be as mean as the other side.

00:37:48.000 And it's immoral not to be as mean as the other side.

00:37:51.000 So instead of morality being used in service to practicality, And practicality and morality buttressing one another.

00:37:59.000 Now morality is redefined to meet the needs of practicality.

00:38:03.000 You're seeing it on the left with the media coverage of the Trump administration and you're seeing it on the right with the cheering on of activity that you would never tolerate from people on the left.

00:38:12.000 And again, if you think that politics is simply warfare by other means, then all is fair in love and war.

00:38:17.000 But politics was not supposed to be warfare by other means.

00:38:20.000 Not in a country where we're supposed to share certain types of values.

00:38:24.000 This is not supposed to be the point.

00:38:27.000 It is the reason why, and it's so funny because the left will see this on the right.

00:38:32.000 The left will see on the right people who are religious people who are backing Trump will say, why are they backing Trump? 0.93

00:38:37.000 How could they do this despite Trump's myriad imbecilities and despite the fact that Trump says bad things all the time? 0.58

00:38:43.000 The reason is because the right has made peace with the idea that you guys are fighting a battle and they're not going to be left behind fighting a different battle. 0.97

00:38:51.000 That's why the right is doing this.

00:38:53.000 Now, is that the answer for the country's woes?

00:38:55.000 No, we actually need an armistice.

00:38:57.000 We need both sides to come back to the table and recognize that the practical attempt to take down the other side by any means necessary is really bad for the country.

00:39:06.000 And in a war of all against all, everybody ends up dead.

00:39:09.000 This is a mistake.

00:39:11.000 But I don't know how you expect the people on the right to be the first to go weapons down when it comes to practical support for President Trump.

00:39:19.000 When you guys are unfairly attacking Trump, Trump supporters, as racists and bigots.

00:39:26.000 As I've said a thousand times on the show already, when folks talk about double standards, the alternative to double standards is not a single standard.

00:39:36.000 Double standards are not standards.

00:39:38.000 Double standards are the evisceration of standards.

00:39:42.000 And as we eviscerate all of our standards, there's not a lot that's gonna be left.

00:39:45.000 Okay, gotta give you a quick update on Jeffrey Epstein here. 0.78

00:39:48.000 So Jeffrey Epstein, I mean, this is just ridiculous. 0.96

00:39:50.000 It's ridiculous. 1.00

00:39:51.000 It would make me suspicious, except I always think that people are morons. 1.00

00:39:54.000 I think that politics is veep, it is not house of cards. 0.99

00:39:58.000 So there is a report from the New York Times on Tuesday.

00:40:01.000 Apparently, both guards assigned to protect accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein fell asleep while they were supposed to be protecting him from himself.

00:40:11.000 Both of them.

00:40:13.000 Both fell asleep.

00:40:15.000 How is that even possible?

00:40:16.000 They didn't check on him for three hours.

00:40:19.000 The guards and the warden have now been removed.

00:40:22.000 The two employees were placed on administrative leave.

00:40:24.000 The warden was also reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation.

00:40:28.000 The two staff members apparently went to sleep.

00:40:31.000 And then they falsified the logs.

00:40:34.000 They falsely recorded in a log that they had checked on the financier every 30 minutes as was required.

00:40:40.000 That is a federal crime.

00:40:42.000 In fact, the two people guarding Epstein had been asleep for some or all of the three hours, according to three of the officials.

00:40:48.000 Insane.

00:40:49.000 You wanna give fodder to conspiracy theorists?

00:40:52.000 How about you say both guards simply gave up and went to sleep, and then falsified the logs afterward?

00:40:57.000 Well done, everyone.

00:40:59.000 I think we should trust these folks with our healthcare, don't you?

00:41:01.000 I really think that everybody in government, they're the best.

00:41:03.000 And we should trust them to run our economy.

00:41:05.000 We should trust them to run our healthcare.

00:41:07.000 That's the only way, really, to make everything all better.

00:41:11.000 Unbelievable.

00:41:12.000 Meanwhile, the 2020 Democrats are getting weirder and weirder.

00:41:16.000 Actually, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is now engaging in open conspiracy theorizing.

00:41:20.000 So remember when it was a big deal that Trump did it?

00:41:22.000 Well, de Blasio is now doing it openly.

00:41:24.000 He was on Fox Business on Tuesday.

00:41:26.000 He said it was too convenient.

00:41:28.000 That, that Epstein would commit suicide just as he was about to implicate many other powerful people.

00:41:32.000 He said, quote, this is way too convenient.

00:41:34.000 This makes no sense.

00:41:35.000 He's one of the most prominent prisoners in America at that point.

00:41:38.000 He had either attempted suicide previously or been assaulted.

00:41:41.000 Either way, it's the same reality.

00:41:42.000 He needed to be watched 24 hours a day.

00:41:44.000 He said, I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature, but he said there's no normal explanation for all of this.

00:41:51.000 Well, I mean, I will say that de Blasio does have some experience in getting away with the murder of groundhogs. 1.00

00:41:55.000 So he really has some expertise here.

00:42:00.000 Perhaps we should listen to him. 0.96

00:42:02.000 In other stupidities among the 2020 Democrats, we've got Beto O'Rourke relaunching his campaign with a speech no one cares about. 0.98

00:42:07.000 Bill de Blasio crafting conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein. 0.96

00:42:12.000 And then we have Elizabeth Warren, who suggests that it's time for Walmart employees to be paid like the Walmart heirs. 1.00

00:42:18.000 You know, the founders of Walmart.

00:42:20.000 She tweeted out yesterday, quote, The Walmart heirs make $4 million an hour.

00:42:24.000 A new Walmart associate makes $11 an hour.

00:42:27.000 Walmart is the single biggest employer in America.

00:42:28.000 It is not close.

00:42:28.000 like the Waltons would help level the playing field for working families and rebuild the middle class.

00:42:32.000 Okay, question.

00:42:33.000 When has a new Walmart associate employed 2.2 million people?

00:42:38.000 Walmart is the single biggest employer in America.

00:42:41.000 It is not close.

00:42:42.000 2.2 million people have their jobs through Walmart.

00:42:45.000 Yeah, it seems to me that a new Walmart associate should probably be paid less than the person who bears the entire financial risk for the future of a company that employs 2.2 million people.

00:42:55.000 Seems to me that's probably appropriate.

00:42:58.000 And we here at the Daily Wire got about a little under 100 employees.

00:43:02.000 You know who bears the risk of insuring those people get paid every month?

00:43:05.000 I do.

00:43:06.000 My business partner does.

00:43:08.000 Our investors do.

00:43:09.000 We bear the risk.

00:43:10.000 Should we get paid more for bearing that risk?

00:43:12.000 Yeah, we should probably get paid more for bearing that risk.

00:43:15.000 Elizabeth Warren implying that the guy stocking the shelves at a Walmart should be paid the same as the people who bear the risk for 2.2 million workers.

00:43:23.000 And we should put these folks in charge, honestly.

00:43:25.000 They're the best.

00:43:26.000 They're the smartest.

00:43:27.000 They're the wisest.

00:43:29.000 And then we also have Kamala Harris, who, by the way, is just a dud. 1.00

00:43:33.000 I mean, it is amazing how much of a dud she is politically. 1.00

00:43:37.000 Right now, the latest RealClearPolitics poll average has Joe Biden still with a very wide lead.

00:43:42.000 In the RealClearPolitics poll average for the first time, Elizabeth Warren has now overtaken Bernie Sanders. 0.56

00:43:47.000 It is Joe Biden 30, Warren 19, Sanders 18, Harris all the way down at 8.

00:43:52.000 So Harris has fallen off the map.

00:43:55.000 Warren and Sanders, if they both remain in the race, then Biden clearly wins the nomination on a primary level.

00:44:00.000 But when you look at the primaries, things start to look a little bit more interesting.

00:44:05.000 In Iowa, there have been polls that show Biden up.

00:44:08.000 There was a poll today that actually showed Bernie up in New Hampshire.

00:44:12.000 So Biden is up in Iowa.

00:44:15.000 In New Hampshire, Biden is basically running dead even with Bernie, and Warren is only trailing by a little bit.

00:44:21.000 In South Carolina, Biden retains an extraordinarily wide lead because he has a big lead among black voters.

00:44:27.000 Among white voters, Warren is actually winning in South Carolina.

00:44:30.000 But something like 60% of the primary base in South Carolina is black, and Biden is blowing everybody out among those voters.

00:44:37.000 So Kamala Harris is getting desperate at this point, and she continues to trot out promises that she can't keep. 0.64

00:44:42.000 She says nobody should have to work more than one job in the United States.

00:44:45.000 Nobody should have to work more than one.

00:44:47.000 Okay, sure.

00:44:49.000 You know, I find it very interesting, something about this administration and this president.

00:44:53.000 You know, he's going around crowing about how this economy is doing so well, right?

00:44:58.000 Oh, the economy is great, he says, right?

00:45:01.000 And they refer to the unemployment numbers.

00:45:04.000 Well, yeah, I'm traveling our country.

00:45:06.000 Let me tell you something.

00:45:07.000 Yeah, people are working.

00:45:09.000 They're working two and three jobs.

00:45:12.000 And in our America, we must agree nobody should have to work more than one job to have a roof over their head and food on the table.

00:45:21.000 Okay, well, the fact is that if you had to work more than one job to have a roof over your head or food on the table, you probably shouldn't have taken the job that's not paying you enough.

00:45:29.000 That'd be a you problem. 0.97

00:45:31.000 Also, it is not true that the vast majority of people in the United States are working two jobs.

00:45:34.000 It just is not true.

00:45:35.000 According to the census statistics, a small but steady number of American workers have more than one job because either they need extra income or because they want to gain more experience or explore different interests.

00:45:45.000 There's a recently released U.S.

00:45:47.000 Census Bureau report, and apparently what it found is that approximately 8.3%—this is as of 2013, so it's actually lower now—8.3% of workers had more than one job.

00:45:59.000 That was as of 2013.

00:46:00.000 It's a lot lower now.

00:46:01.000 So this notion that there are just tons and tons of people who are working multiple jobs, it is not really true.

00:46:08.000 It's not actually the reality.

00:46:11.000 In May, 5% of Americans had multiple jobs.

00:46:14.000 That's really what's bringing down the unemployment rate?

00:46:17.000 Is those 5% of workers who have multiple jobs?

00:46:19.000 Okay, for all of the talk about people working at Uber, it's held to that range actually really since 2009.

00:46:28.000 It's always been a very, very low number.

00:46:31.000 So this again is just a lie. 0.97

00:46:33.000 It is also this bizarre idiocy that you can dictate to the economy what the economy ought to do. 0.97

00:46:40.000 Every time everybody tries to dictate to the economy what it ought to do, the economy fights back, because it turns out the aggregate knowledge of the market economy knows more than you do. 0.98

00:46:48.000 I know, shocking.

00:46:50.000 Bernie Sanders starting to get desperate on his own, and he has turned against a new enemy, and that is the media.

00:46:54.000 Now, listen, I actually sympathize with Bernie, because I think that Bernie got the Beto O'Rourke treatment in 2016.

00:46:59.000 The media really pumped him up.

00:47:01.000 They talked about what a wonderful, brilliant, new thinker he was, even though his ideas were from CCNY circa 1932.

00:47:08.000 And he got that.

00:47:10.000 And now they've turned on him because there's a newer, more attractive Bernie in town by the name of Elizabeth Warren, which shows you how old the Democratic Party, that Elizabeth Warren is the newer, more attractive version of Bernie.

00:47:20.000 And she's 70.

00:47:22.000 Bernie Sanders has been going after the media.

00:47:26.000 He's going after Jeff Bezos, sounding a lot like President Trump.

00:47:29.000 He said, so I think Jeff Bezos is on the phone telling the editor of The Washington Post what to do?

00:47:34.000 Absolutely not.

00:47:35.000 It does not work that way.

00:47:37.000 And then he elaborated and he said that nonetheless the media have turned against them.

00:47:42.000 He says, for example, I've been in politics for a few years.

00:47:45.000 You know what?

00:47:46.000 Not one reporter has ever asked me, Bernie, what are you going to do about the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality?

00:47:52.000 Are you going to ask me that?

00:47:54.000 Is that what the part of what the media talks about?

00:47:56.000 Um, yeah, actually, they ask you that all the time, Bernie, because you're on the left and you've gotten kid glove treatment.

00:48:01.000 But I feel bad for Bernie in the sense that, again, he had the knees cut out from under him by people he trusted, which is sad for him.

00:48:10.000 But again, maybe do something productive with your life for the first 80 years of it before you decide to run for president.

00:48:14.000 OK, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:48:16.000 So things that I like today.

00:48:18.000 I'm in the middle of a biography of Ulysses S. Grant by Ron Chernow.

00:48:22.000 There's been this really interesting rethinking.

00:48:25.000 of grant as a president the old story was that grant was super corrupt his his not grant himself but his administration was plagued by corruption and crony capitalism and that he was a really ineffective president and now the revised history basically suggests that grant moving out of the presidency was a horrible thing for the united states because with the end of grant's presidency really ended the reconstruction efforts that could have alleviated jim crow in the south

00:48:50.000 That the radical Republican efforts to reshape the South died with Ulysses S. Grant's presidency and that it was replaced by a willingness to go along to get along with the Jim Crow South. 0.82

00:49:00.000 The book does talk about that.

00:49:01.000 It talks about Grant as a character who's a really fascinating and underrated character because everybody sort of assumes that he was just generic Dolt who sort of stumbled his way as a drunk into being the head of all American forces during the Civil War, of the Union forces during the Civil War.

00:49:16.000 Not true.

00:49:17.000 The biography is very detailed.

00:49:19.000 It's very long.

00:49:20.000 Honestly, his autobiography is shorter and probably better, but the biography is pretty good by Ron Chernow.

00:49:27.000 Grant, it's worth checking out.

00:49:29.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:49:35.000 Okay, so there's been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about the Trump administration weakening the Endangered Species Act.

00:49:43.000 The idea is that the Trump administration is going out there and hunting bald eagles.

00:49:46.000 That somewhere, Trump is going out there with a 223, thinking, you know what?

00:49:49.000 I'm gonna bag me a bird today.

00:49:50.000 Boom, boom, boom.

00:49:52.000 That's not what's going on here.

00:49:54.000 The Endangered Species Act has been too broadly applied, generally speaking.

00:49:58.000 The Endangered Species Act was applied under the Obama administration to apply to areas that once were used by animals but no longer are, or could be used by animals in the future, but are not being used by those animals right now.

00:50:10.000 What that means is that the federal government has been ruling off limits more and more land.

00:50:16.000 There was a piece back in 2013 by David Vitter, Senator from Louisiana, in which he talked about the Obama administration using the Endangered Species Act in order to basically tromp and trample on local authorities and the ability of business people to do their business.

00:50:36.000 He said Obama's policymakers often act nefariously through a tactic called sue and settle.

00:50:40.000 They settle litigation with their allies and environmental groups behind closed doors in a way that advances their far left agenda, blocking out of the process those citizens, states and local governments affected by their decisions and their subsequent rules and regulations.

00:50:53.000 So here's how it works.

00:50:54.000 One or more far-left environmental groups sue the federal government, in this case under the Endangered Species Act, claiming that the government is not satisfying its regulatory obligations.

00:51:03.000 Then the groups and their friends in the administration draft a settlement agreement completely behind closed doors.

00:51:09.000 He says this tactic has led to extreme and abusive actions very near where I live in Louisiana.

00:51:14.000 There, Washington bureaucrats are telling a private landowner his land cannot be used in any commercial way, thus driving its value down to near zero.

00:51:21.000 This is all to protect the dusky gopher frog, a species that's alive and well in Mississippi, but has literally not been spotted in that part of Louisiana for nearly 50 years.

00:51:32.000 So, what is the new Trump ruling that is apparently so terrible?

00:51:36.000 Well, new rules will allow the administration, this is according to the Washington Post, to reduce the amount of habitat set aside for wildlife and remove tools that officials use to predict future harm to species as a result of climate change.

00:51:48.000 So, basically what this new thing does, it says, you're using these estimates of where these species are going to inhabit 50 years from now in order to rule out of use land right now?

00:51:58.000 And we're going to instead look at economic impact on that.

00:52:00.000 We're going to start taking economic impact into account, which should be part of the conversation.

00:52:05.000 Economics is merely the study of trade-offs.

00:52:08.000 And pretending that there are no trade-offs when you ban the use of land to preserve the dusky gopher frog that is in Mississippi, but not in Louisiana, that's a mistake.

00:52:17.000 Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, said the revisions finalized with this rulemaking fit squarely within the President's mandate of easing the regulatory burden on the American public without sacrificing our species protection and recovery goals.

00:52:30.000 Of course, the left is reacting by suggesting that this is an attempt to destroy endangered species.

00:52:37.000 Under the administration's new rules, it would have been nearly impossible to designate the polar bear as threatened in 2010 because of the loss of sea ice in the Arctic, one of the fastest warming areas in the world.

00:52:47.000 Nearly 200,000 square miles of barrier islands in Alaska were listed as critical habitat.

00:52:52.000 Officials relied on climate models to predict how warming would impact polar bear habitat more than 80 years into the future.

00:52:57.000 The new rules called such predictions in doubt and said officials can now only determine impact in what it described vaguely as the foreseeable future.

00:53:05.000 Okay, well, this is true.

00:53:06.000 I'm sorry.

00:53:06.000 This happens to be the case.

00:53:07.000 It happens to be the case that as the projections move further and further out, they are less and less certain with regard to climate change and the impact on species.

00:53:15.000 I remember there was talk about opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and how this was going to drive down the caribou population.

00:53:22.000 Instead, it turns out that the caribou liked the heat from the pipelines, and so they go there to mate.

00:53:25.000 So there are lots more caribou.

00:53:28.000 If all of this were as simple and predictable as environmentalists wish that it were, it would be a lot easier.

00:53:34.000 The new rules limit the area of land that can be protected to help species recover and survive.

00:53:38.000 Currently, land that plants and animals occupy is set aside for their protection in addition to areas they once occupied or might need in the future.

00:53:45.000 Could it get any vaguer than that?

00:53:48.000 Now, critical habitat that is not occupied might not be protected, opening it up for other forms of development.

00:53:55.000 Also, a rule changed stripped-away language that said that the Secretary, the Commerce Secretary and the Interior Secretary, shall make a listing determination solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial information regarding a species status, regardless of cost.

00:54:10.000 Well, now they can look at the economic impact of a listing.

00:54:13.000 Well, that makes a lot more sense.

00:54:14.000 Again, these are trade-offs. 1.00

00:54:16.000 To pretend that trade-offs do not exist is incredibly stupid. 0.99

00:54:19.000 But the way that we are treating this is as though there are no trade-offs. 1.00

00:54:22.000 But this is not Trump saying, okay, go out and hunt the whales.

00:54:26.000 That's the way that the media are covering this.

00:54:28.000 It's Trump saying, free reign on the permafrost and the whales.

00:54:30.000 That is not what this rule does.

00:54:32.000 And that is simply dishonest.

00:54:34.000 Okay, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.

00:54:37.000 Stay tuned, or we'll see you here tomorrow.

00:54:39.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:39.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:44.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.

00:54:47.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:54:49.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:54:51.000 Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:54:53.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:54:55.000 And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.

00:54:57.000 Edited by Adam Sievitz.

00:54:59.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:55:01.000 Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

00:55:03.000 Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.

00:55:05.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:55:07.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2019.

00:55:09.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:55:12.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:55:19.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 14, 2019

Practicality vs. Moral Character? | Ep. 839

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