The Ben Shapiro Show - So Much Earth-Shattering Bravery | Ep. 572

00:00:00.000 The New York Times takes on the First Amendment, Jim Acosta loves him some Jim Acosta, and we'll talk Supreme Court.

00:00:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:06.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:11.000 I hope you had a wonderfully relaxing weekend.

00:00:13.000 Mine was actually quite nice.

00:00:14.000 I did Mara's show on Friday, Bill Maher's show on Friday.

00:00:17.000 Had a lot of fun.

00:00:17.000 Bill and I had a nice civil conversation about, of all things, Russia and collusion, which was kind of interesting.

00:00:22.000 We'll get to that a little bit later in the show.

00:00:24.000 But first, I want to remind you that we have a special live stream, which is happening today at 7 p.m.

00:00:29.000 Eastern.

00:00:29.000 We are joined by special guest Jordan Peterson to celebrate our Independence Day and lament the fact that we don't actually own Canada.

00:00:35.000 God King Jeremy Boring will host a new edition of Daily Wire backstage with me and Andrew Klavan and the execrable Michael Knowles to look back on our country's birth and look ahead to its future.

00:00:42.000 Subscribers will even be able to write in live questions for us to answer on the air.

00:00:45.000 That is today at 7 p.m.

00:00:47.000 Eastern, 4 p.m.

00:00:47.000 Pacific, with Jordan Peterson.

00:00:49.000 You can find our special livestream on Facebook and YouTube.

00:00:51.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:00:52.000 It's going to be a lot of fun.

00:00:54.000 So be there.

00:00:54.000 Hey, I'm going to be here, so you better be here.

00:00:56.000 I mean, come on, why else am I doing it?

00:00:57.000 OK, so go check that out.

00:00:59.000 Also,

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00:02:23.000 All right.

00:02:25.000 One of the nice things for President Trump is that every time President Trump does a normal thing, the left decides that the world has ended.

00:02:32.000 Really, that the world has gone crazy.

00:02:34.000 And I use as evidence of this the fact that I was on Bill Maher's show on Friday, and I was really more expecting the conversation to surround the things that Bill and I have in common, such as opposition to political correctness and aversion to identity politics.

00:02:47.000 And instead, the entire interview turned into ten minutes about Russia collusion, which

00:02:51.000 Again, if you are obsessed with the Russia collusion story at this point, let me suggest that your priorities are not straight.

00:02:56.000 There's no evidence to suggest right now that President Trump has colluded with Russia during the campaign or afterward.

00:03:02.000 There's just not.

00:03:03.000 If the evidence were there, I would talk about it because I've been very fair about this, but I'm not going to pretend that there's a lot of evidence there.

00:03:09.000 The point is this.

00:03:10.000 The folks on the left have decided that President Trump must be ousted by any means, and they've decided that President Trump represents a great break in America's

00:03:18.000 History.

00:03:19.000 And they believe that America itself is deeply broken.

00:03:21.000 And so now the left has decided the deep American institutions, not Donald Trump, other key American institutions, these institutions must be destroyed as well.

00:03:28.000 They believe the Supreme Court now has to be packed and they need 11 justices on the Supreme Court instead of nine, because maybe that way they can get more liberal Supreme Court justices.

00:03:37.000 They believe that the First Amendment must be overthrown.

00:03:39.000 There's an article in The New York Times.

00:03:41.000 It is 2000 words long.

00:03:42.000 It is not an opinion piece.

00:03:43.000 It is a reported piece from Adam Liptack.

00:03:45.000 Okay, Adam Liptak is one of the reporters who was on A1 of the New York Times over the weekend, and the title of the piece is, How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment.

00:03:54.000 How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment.

00:03:55.000 Now, you may ask yourself, what does that even mean?

00:03:59.000 How do you weaponize the First Amendment?

00:04:01.000 It's a right.

00:04:02.000 How do you weaponize a right?

00:04:04.000 That's like saying that law-abiding citizens weaponized the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment.

00:04:09.000 How do you weaponize that?

00:04:11.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:04:13.000 But the New York Times believes that conservatives have weaponized the First Amendment because they don't like the First Amendment.

00:04:18.000 That's right.

00:04:18.000 The New York Times, a newspaper dedicated, presumably, to the proposition of freedom of the press, a newspaper that was involved in some of the great free speech cases in our nation's history, from the Pentagon Papers case

00:04:29.000 To libel cases in the past.

00:04:31.000 The New York Times now says that the First Amendment has been too broadly construed.

00:04:35.000 That's how far the left has been broken.

00:04:37.000 They believe the First Amendment must be curbed because it is an institution of power.

00:04:41.000 The left is always going on about how the reason the left loses, the reason the left is not victorious, is because the system itself is corrupt.

00:04:47.000 If it weren't for the corrupt system itself, then Marxism would have already taken over the world and everything would be hunky-dory utopia.

00:04:53.000 But in the United States, where freedom reigns, they believe that the freedoms themselves are a threat to the Marxist worldview.

00:05:00.000 And so freedoms themselves must be torn down.

00:05:02.000 These are elements of a hierarchical structure.

00:05:04.000 The First Amendment.

00:05:05.000 You might think when I say freedom of speech, that means anybody can speak.

00:05:08.000 What the left says is what that really means is only powerful people can speak.

00:05:11.000 And that's why we need to crack down on the First Amendment through force of government. 0.98

00:05:15.000 The government has to shut down free speech.

00:05:17.000 To save freedom. 1.00

00:05:18.000 If that makes any sense to you, that's because you're a moron. 1.00

00:05:21.000 So here is the New York Times going on about this. 1.00

00:05:23.000 Here's Adam Liptack.

00:05:23.000 He says, On the final day of the Supreme Court term last week, Justice Elena Kagan sounded an alarm.

00:05:28.000 The Court's five conservative members, citing the First Amendment, had just dealt public unions a devastating blow.

00:05:33.000 The day before, the same majority had used the First Amendment to reject a California law requiring religiously-oriented crisis pregnancy centers to provide women with information about abortion.

00:05:43.000 Conservatives, said Justice Kagan, who is part of the court's four-member liberal wing, were weaponizing the First Amendment.

00:05:48.000 Now, I just want to point out, this is not a court's liberal wing, it's a left wing.

00:05:51.000 Okay, it's a left wing.

00:05:52.000 The difference between liberal and left is that liberals believe that we ought to maintain rights like freedom of speech, even if they believe in more government intervention in the economy.

00:05:59.000 The left believes that all of these rights ought to be subject to the needs of the community.

00:06:04.000 That basically communitarianism is the way that if it violates their precepts of the hierarchy of various power groups, then the First Amendment should be subverted.

00:06:14.000 The New York Times says, Notice how that's worded.

00:06:22.000 The way the New York Times is wording that is not that the free speech agenda that has been promulgated by the court helps conservatives, is that it is the conservative agenda that is using the mask of free speech in order to push itself.

00:06:34.000 Except for the fact that this free speech agenda has nothing to do with conservatism per se.

00:06:38.000 It just has to do with the idea that you should be able to say what you want without the government compelling you.

00:06:43.000 Well, that's a pretty radical take on what exactly the Supreme Court just did.

00:06:46.000 Instead, what the court just did is they said that the government cannot compel you not to spend on elections, that the government cannot compel you to violate your own religious precepts, that the government cannot compel you to

00:07:10.000 Say things you don't want to say or pay money to unions you don't want to join.

00:07:15.000 Why exactly that has to do with a conservative agenda is beyond me.

00:07:18.000 That seems like just a rational freedom agenda.

00:07:20.000 But, you know, this is the New York Times.

00:07:22.000 They say the Citizens United campaign finance case, for instance, was decided on free speech grounds with the five-justice conservative majority ruling that the First Amendment protects unlimited campaign spending by corporations.

00:07:31.000 The government, the majority said, has no business regulating political speech.

00:07:34.000 The dissenters responded that the First Amendment did not require allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace and corrupt democracy. 1.00

00:07:41.000 Well, that's a stupid argument. 0.98

00:07:43.000 The First Amendment does require me to be able to speak as much as I want, and that involves me actually spending money on things. 0.99

00:07:48.000 If the First Amendment did not involve you spending money on free speech, then presumably the government could pass a law saying that corporations are not allowed to spend money on, say, printed materials in the 60 days before an election.

00:07:58.000 You know what's a corporation that spends money on printed materials 60 days before an election?

00:08:02.000 The New York Times.

00:08:03.000 The New York Times.

00:08:05.000 The libertarian position has become dominant on the right on First Amendment issues, says Ilya Shapiro, a lawyer at the Cato Institute.

00:08:13.000 It simply means we should be skeptical of government attempts to regulate speech.

00:08:16.000 That used to be an uncontroversial and non-ideological point.

00:08:19.000 What's now being called the libertarian position on speech was, in 1960s, the liberal position on speech.

00:08:24.000 Which is exactly right.

00:08:26.000 What Ilya Shapiro is saying is, you're calling it right-wing.

00:08:28.000 This used to be the consensus position.

00:08:30.000 And so much of American life has become this.

00:08:32.000 So much of American life is positions that all of America used to hold, and then the left decided it didn't hold anymore, and so the consensus American position is now termed the right-wing position.

00:08:41.000 So, for example, on immigration, the position that we should enforce our borders, the position that perhaps we should actually police the people coming into the country. 0.95

00:08:50.000 That was a widespread, 100% position in America.

00:08:53.000 Then the left decided that it was intolerant, and now that is a right-wing position to say that we should enforce our borders.

00:08:58.000 The same thing on free speech.

00:08:59.000 It was a widely held position across both sides of the aisle that you should be able to say basically what you want.

00:09:04.000 And then the left decided, we don't like that anymore, and so what was left was the right-wing position.

00:09:09.000 But the way that the New York Times posits, the way they pose it, is not that the left threw out the First Amendment.

00:09:16.000 It's that the right decided to cling on to the First Amendment in an unreasonable fashion.

00:09:20.000 Why does the New York Times say that?

00:09:21.000 Well, because they're the New York Times, as Andrew Klavan says in a former newspaper.

00:09:25.000 Here's what the New York Times says.

00:09:30.000 Okay, that's hilarious.

00:09:39.000 So they've decided that they're no longer absolutist on free speech.

00:09:41.000 Instead, they are more sensitive to the bad things that can happen because of free speech, which is a way of saying that we are not going to pay attention to free speech at all.

00:09:48.000 If you trade in the harms that can be inflicted by free speech for free speech itself, free speech is no longer a right.

00:09:55.000 This is like saying that there are certain harms that happen because of the freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

00:10:01.000 The Fourth Amendment prevents the government from coming into your home and simply just checking out everything that's there for the hell of it.

00:10:06.000 Now, are there societal costs to that?

00:10:08.000 Sure, there's a societal cost to that. 0.87

00:10:09.000 It means that not everybody with drugs in their house is going to be seen by the government, for example.

00:10:14.000 Not everybody with an illegal gun in their house is going to be seen by the government.

00:10:17.000 But I'd much rather that a few people have illegal guns or illegal drugs than that the government have a blanket right to come into my home at any time for any reason without actually having to give a rationale.

00:10:27.000 The minute that you start saying that the downside of the right is more important than the right, the right no longer exists.

00:10:34.000 But that's what the left says.

00:10:35.000 The left doesn't like the rights.

00:10:36.000 The left does not like the free speech rights.

00:10:39.000 So liberals were once largely united in fighting to protect sexually explicit materials from government censorship.

00:10:43.000 Now, many on the left see pornography as an assault on women's rights. 0.99

00:10:47.000 In 1977, many liberals supported the right of the American Nazi Party to march among Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois.

00:10:53.000 Far fewer supported the free speech rights of the white nationalists who marched last year in Charlottesville, Virginia.

00:10:57.000 Now, there is a difference, by the way, in these two cases.

00:11:01.000 I will say that there's a solid case to be made, Justice Boruck.

00:11:04.000 Would be, Justice Bork.

00:11:05.000 Judge Robert Bork once made this case.

00:11:07.000 He said the pornography is not protected by the First Amendment.

00:11:09.000 There's a pretty good solid case that the founders never intended for the First Amendment to cover dirty pictures.

00:11:14.000 But there's no question that the founders intended for the First Amendment to cover political speech, which does involve Nazis marching in Skokie.

00:11:20.000 Better First Amendment case, just legally speaking and historically speaking, for bad people marching than for naked pictures in public.

00:11:28.000 But in any case, the New York Times says, says Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia.

00:11:46.000 But the claim that speech was harmless or causally inert was never true, even if it has taken recent events to convince the left of that.

00:11:52.000 The question then is why the left ever believed otherwise.

00:11:54.000 So in other words, they were happy about free speech when it was anti-Vietnam War protests and civil rights and pornography.

00:12:01.000 But the minute that it turns into religious bakers who actually just want to abide by their scruples, then all of a sudden the left is ready to toss out free speech, which is to say the left was never in favor of the right. 0.73

00:12:09.000 They were just in favor of the of the exercise of the right as they saw fit.

00:12:13.000 The left was never in favor of... This is the big problem with the left.

00:12:16.000 The left doesn't believe that you have a right to do anything the left disagrees with.

00:12:20.000 I believe, as a person on the right, that you have the right to do lots of things I disagree with. 0.95

00:12:24.000 You have the right to march in the street with pussy hats. 1.00

00:12:26.000 You have the right to act sexually how you want, basically. 0.99

00:12:30.000 I believe that you have the right to... I actually believe that you have the right to smoke marijuana.

00:12:34.000 I think there are lots of things that I believe have the right to do that I personally find abhorrent.

00:12:39.000 I hate marijuana.

00:12:40.000 I think it smells, and I think the people who smoke it are wasting their time and brain cells.

00:12:43.000 But, because I'm a freedom-believing person, I also believe that there are rights that extend to things I don't like.

00:12:48.000 I think the right to free speech extends to Nazis. 0.89

00:12:50.000 I hate Nazis. 1.00

00:12:50.000 They're awful human beings. 1.00

00:12:52.000 But the right to free speech extends to them.

00:12:54.000 The same thing does not hold true for the left.

00:12:55.000 If you disagree with the left, they want to remove your rights.

00:12:58.000 And that's becoming obvious right now.

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00:14:23.000 So back to the left's perspective on free speech.

00:14:25.000 Really an incredible front page story, A1 in the New York Times, why free speech should no longer apply.

00:14:31.000 According to Catherine McKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, free speech reinforces and amplifies injustice.

00:14:38.000 Free speech makes the world worse.

00:14:40.000 Quote, once a defense of the powerless, the First Amendment over the last hundred years has mainly become a weapon of the powerful.

00:14:46.000 It's not a weapon at all.

00:14:48.000 It says the government can't impose on you.

00:14:50.000 This is the difference between how the left sees rights and how the right sees rights.

00:14:53.000 The right sees rights as things the government cannot touch.

00:14:56.000 Inalienable rights that preexist in government.

00:14:58.000 The left sees rights as things the government gives to you.

00:15:01.000 And therefore, if it's bad for you, the government can take it away from you.

00:15:05.000 So if free speech is bad for you, the government can take it away.

00:15:08.000 The right says, no, you can't do that.

00:15:09.000 The right says, that right pre-existed government.

00:15:11.000 I didn't give up that right to government when government was formed.

00:15:13.000 The government exists to protect those rights.

00:15:15.000 The left says, no, no, no, you didn't have any rights.

00:15:17.000 Then the government gave you the right to free speech.

00:15:19.000 So if it's bad for the community, well, then the idea here is that we can take it away from you using the power of government.

00:15:26.000 McKinnon says, legally, what was, toward the beginning of the 20th century, a shield for radicals, artists, activists, socialists, and pacifists, the excluded and the dispossessed, has become a sword for authoritarians, racists and misogynists, Nazis and Klansmen, pornographers, and corporations buying election.

00:15:41.000 In other words, get rid of free speech, because the people I don't like are using it.

00:15:45.000 And there's a long discussion of Robert Bork and the sort of development of free speech litigation and free speech trends.

00:15:55.000 And they say the right turn has been pronounced under Chief Justice Roberts.

00:15:58.000 The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a larger share of First Amendment cases concerning conservative speech than earlier courts had.

00:16:03.000 According to a study prepared for The Times, it is ruled in favor of conservative speech at a higher rate than liberal speech as compared to earlier courts.

00:16:10.000 The court's docket reflects something new and distinctive about the Roberts courts.

00:16:13.000 According to the study, the Roberts court, more than any modern court, has trained its sight on speech protecting conservative values.

00:16:19.000 Only the current court has resolved a higher fraction of disputes challenging the suppression of conservative rather than liberal expression.

00:16:25.000 Well, the reason for that is because there is very little suppression of liberal expression in today's America.

00:16:29.000 You can say whatever you want.

00:16:31.000 Those cases were already decided.

00:16:32.000 The real crackdowns that are happening right now are crackdowns from the left on the right with regard to First Amendment issues.

00:16:39.000 But the left says that we should crack down on the First Amendment.

00:16:41.000 The radicalization of the left is an ongoing story that really is absurd.

00:16:45.000 And in just a second, I want to discuss that ongoing radicalization.

00:16:49.000 First, I want to talk a little bit about the media.

00:16:51.000 So the media, the same media who are saying that the First Amendment should be quashed for everybody they don't like, see themselves as First Amendment warriors.

00:16:57.000 So Jim Acosta over at CNN, who loves him some Jim Acosta.

00:17:00.000 I mean, that dude loves Jim Acosta.

00:17:02.000 Get you somebody who loves you the way Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.

00:17:06.000 I mean, really.

00:17:07.000 He's the White House reporter for CNN.

00:17:11.000 And over the weekend, right before the weekend, he decided it would be a worthwhile thing to shout at President Trump.

00:17:15.000 So he's standing in the back of the room shouting at President Trump, and then he posted video of himself shouting at President Trump as though Trump has some sort of obvious obligation to answer Jim Acosta shouting from the back of a room.

00:17:25.000 Now, do I care that Jim Acosta shouts at President Trump?

00:17:27.000 No.

00:17:27.000 I didn't care when a writer at the Daily Caller, Neil Monroe, shouted at President Obama.

00:17:31.000 So it'd be rather hypocritical of me to care that Jim Acosta's shouting at Trump.

00:17:34.000 But it just goes to show you how, when it was a right-winger like Neil Monroe, and it was the end of the world that he shouted a question to Barack Obama, Jim Acosta does it, and he's a hero.

00:17:43.000 So Jim Acosta shouts at President Trump.

00:17:45.000 He's shouting at him because there was a shooting in a newsroom last week, and the media tried to pin it on President Trump when it had nothing to do with President Trump.

00:17:51.000 Jim Acosta shouting at the president.

00:17:53.000 Mr. President, will you stop calling us the enemy of the people, sir?

00:17:57.000 Will you stop calling the press the enemy of the people, sir?

00:18:02.000 I like the guy turning around and shushing him.

00:18:06.000 So there's a guy right in front of him, turning around and shushing him.

00:18:09.000 And then Jim Acosta gives a look to the camera like, I am so brave for saying that.

00:18:13.000 Look at these brave eyes.

00:18:17.000 So brave.

00:18:17.000 Okay, so Fox News says, well, you know, that was kind of inappropriate.

00:18:21.000 Well, all right, I don't really care about the inappropriate of it.

00:18:23.000 It doesn't make a huge difference to me.

00:18:25.000 But the part of it that's hilarious is that Jim Acosta then suggests that Fox News is a threat to free speech, basically.

00:18:31.000 Jim Acosta goes on Reliable Sources with Brian Stalter, a show I've appeared on, and Brian has him on for basically the entire hour.

00:18:38.000 I think he had him on for this long segment, which is an empty hour.

00:18:40.000 I mean, Jim Acosta, not a lot going on upstairs with Jim Acosta.

00:18:43.000 And this is really, really funny.

00:18:45.000 So first he starts off by saying, Fox News is only angry at me because they need someone to attack.

00:18:49.000 Well, no, I'm not really angry at you as much as bemused by you, Jim Acosta.

00:18:54.000 I'm not angry at Jim Acosta because I don't think he's worthy of my anger.

00:18:57.000 But I am bemused by the fact that Jim Acosta thinks he's such an important human.

00:19:01.000 And I love that CNN now does the navel-gazing routine where Jim Acosta is a hero for having shouted out a question and being shushed by a bald guy in front of him at the White House.

00:19:10.000 So here's Brian Stelter questioning him.

00:19:12.000 The president, Fox News, they don't have Barack Obama around anymore.

00:19:15.000 They don't have Hillary Clinton, although the president goes after Hillary Clinton a lot, so does Fox News.

00:19:19.000 And so we've sort of replaced Obama and Hillary. 0.79

00:19:23.000 They need somebody to attack, and I think that we've sort of filled that role.

00:19:28.000 Okay, so yeah, that must be it.

00:19:30.000 It must be that they're attacking you because they don't have Obama to kick around anymore. 0.94

00:19:33.000 Or maybe they're attacking you, Jim Acosta, because you're a highly irritating human.

00:19:37.000 And to show how irritating you are, this is the best thing ever.

00:19:39.000 So Acosta's on with Stelter, and he's asked about shouting at the president.

00:19:43.000 Listen to the amount of just drooling self-aggrandizement in which Jim Acosta engages.

00:19:50.000 It's so phenomenal.

00:19:51.000 Here we go.

00:19:53.000 Now, of course, if they're not going to take our questions, we have to find opportunities to ask those questions, and that means... Kind of like Sam Donaldson did decades ago.

00:20:00.000 That's right.

00:20:01.000 And listen, if they want to send me to hell, I'll still be shouting at the devil.

00:20:05.000 What?

00:20:06.000 What now? 0.90

00:20:07.000 If you want to send me to hell, I'll be shouting, look how brave I am!

00:20:11.000 So brave! 1.00

00:20:12.000 Send me to hell, I'll shout at the devil. 1.00

00:20:14.000 And then the devil will fart on you. 1.00

00:20:15.000 Like, what does that even mean? 0.99

00:20:17.000 Send me to hell and I'll shout at the devil?

00:20:19.000 Yes, I'm so brave and I am so tough. 0.63

00:20:21.000 We are so much journalism-ing!

00:20:23.000 Wow!

00:20:24.000 Bravery!

00:20:25.000 Ooh! 0.96

00:20:26.000 Now, the big question is, why Jim Acosta wasn't shouting at the devil when it was the devil he liked, right?

00:20:30.000 Why wasn't he shouting at Barack Obama when it was somebody that he liked? 0.98

00:20:33.000 And the answer is that Jim Acosta wasn't shouting at him because he was busy asking him kiss-ass questions.

00:20:38.000 And the media, the same media who say the First Amendment should be curbed, right? 0.65

00:20:40.000 The New York Times saying the First Amendment should be curbed for you, you know, the commenter, the little person.

00:20:45.000 It should be expanded for the press to the extent that we have to force Donald Trump to answer every question Jim Acosta might have because Jim Acosta is a brave man who shouts at the devil in hell, you drag me down to Hades, you put me on that boat,

00:20:57.000 You send me across the River Styx, I'll face down the devil, stare him in his beady little eyes, and then we will have a face-to-face conversation, me and Mr. Scratch.

00:21:08.000 Jim Acosta.

00:21:09.000 But, you know, when it comes to the common person, then of course if you're a religious baker, then we have to force you to do what we want. 0.87

00:21:15.000 Or if you are a person who wants to give money in an election cycle, we have to force you to do it.

00:21:19.000 If you're not a member of a union, we have to force you to pay money to a union.

00:21:22.000 The double standard for people in the press who believe free speech should apply to them but should apply to nobody else is pretty astonishing.

00:21:27.000 Now, speaking of radicalization of the Democratic Party,

00:21:30.000 What we've been watching in real time is a massive radicalization of the Democratic Party.

00:21:34.000 So right now, the person who is receiving all sorts of plaudits, of course, is this woman.

00:21:41.000 I always forget her first name.

00:21:42.000 Alexandria.

00:21:43.000 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:21:46.000 And the reason I forget her name is because I don't think she's all that important, but the media are playing her as though she's deeply important.

00:21:50.000 This, of course, is the 28-year-old former bartender who defeated Joe Crowley, who is a 58-year-old possible successor to Nancy Pelosi as House Minority Leader.

00:22:03.000 Anastasia, or Alexandria Cortez, Ocasio-Cortez, she defeated him.

00:22:09.000 We'll talk about her in just a second.

00:22:10.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Policy Genius.

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00:23:24.000 The radicalization of the Democratic Party continues apace.

00:23:27.000 Alexandria Ostasio-Cortez, at some point I'll actually learn her name well enough that I don't have to pause when saying it because the media have turned her into such a ubiquitous figure.

00:23:35.000 She is leading the way.

00:23:36.000 She is leading the way.

00:23:37.000 And she is an actual card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

00:23:41.000 This is a party that has about 37,000 members.

00:23:43.000 This is supposed to be a massive movement in the United States, the DSA.

00:23:47.000 They're riding across the land.

00:23:50.000 They're taking over America, the DSA, with all 37,000 of their members.

00:23:54.000 OK, by contrast, I have, I think, 30 times that number of people who follow me on Twitter.

00:24:00.000 Okay, so that's not a big membership.

00:24:02.000 So that's not a huge membership.

00:24:03.000 But it is an increasingly important membership because the Democrats themselves have embraced the principles of the Democratic Socialists of America.

00:24:09.000 Or at least they're using them as the vanguard.

00:24:11.000 The DSA is basically the Tea Party of the left.

00:24:14.000 So we thought Occupy was going to be the Tea Party of the left.

00:24:16.000 Occupy has sort of morphed into the DSA.

00:24:19.000 And the DSA has all of these newfangled figures who are going to push the new America.

00:24:25.000 They're going to push the new America. 0.81

00:24:26.000 And what exactly is their agenda?

00:24:27.000 Well, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America

00:24:30.000 They tweeted out what their agenda is.

00:24:32.000 Here's what it looks like.

00:24:33.000 Abolish profit.

00:24:34.000 Abolish prisons.

00:24:35.000 Abolish cash bail.

00:24:37.000 Abolish borders.

00:24:38.000 Abolish ICE.

00:24:40.000 Good luck with that.

00:24:41.000 Yeah, you go ahead and you try that.

00:24:44.000 Abolish profit, tweeted presumably from an iPhone.

00:24:47.000 Abolish prisons, tweeted while you're not being assaulted by a prisoner.

00:24:50.000 Abolish borders, tweeted from a country called America, where you have to actually be vetted to get in.

00:24:56.000 So this is their actual agenda.

00:24:57.000 And this is the agenda the Democrats are now embracing.

00:24:59.000 Kirsten Gillibrand over the weekend said that she no longer wants ICE to be a thing.

00:25:04.000 So if you think the DSA isn't becoming a thing, you're wrong.

00:25:06.000 It is becoming a thing.

00:25:07.000 Here's Kirsten Gillibrand, the most malleable member of the U.S. 1.00

00:25:09.000 Senate.

00:25:10.000 Remember, when she joined the U.S.

00:25:11.000 Senate, she was pro-gun and only quasi-pro-choice.

00:25:15.000 And now Kristen Gillibrand has turned into a radical left-winger because she wants to run for president as the Hillary Clinton younger clone. 1.00

00:25:22.000 So here she is talking about dumping Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

00:25:25.000 She doesn't have any substitute for ICE.

00:25:27.000 She doesn't say, well, let's just start a new branch outside the Homeland Security Department.

00:25:30.000 She just says, let's dump ICE, which, man, it is amazing how fast the radicals on the left are being mainstreamed into the Democratic Party.

00:25:38.000 We should protect families that need our help, and that is not what ICE is doing today.

00:25:41.000 And that's why I believe you should get rid of it, start over, reimagine it, and build something that actually works.

00:25:47.000 What does that even mean?

00:25:49.000 What does it mean to reimagine it?

00:25:50.000 Like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory reimagine it?

00:25:53.000 Like Dr. Seuss's Imaginarium?

00:25:55.000 Like we're going to sit around, we're going to blue sky about how to take care of the borders?

00:25:59.000 You need somebody who actually wants to police the border. 1.00

00:26:03.000 You idiot. 1.00

00:26:04.000 Okay, so Kirsten Gillibrand making a fool of herself. 1.00

00:26:06.000 And then Elizabeth Warren doing the same thing.

00:26:07.000 So, Elizabeth Warren, when she first entered the Senate, she was not considered the radical that she is now.

00:26:12.000 She'd written a book, a very famous book, about what she called the two-income trap.

00:26:17.000 That basically America had lowered its standard of living in certain ways because both parents were now expected to work, which was considered by many conservatives kind of an interesting argument because it was basically suggesting that maybe a one-parent family income would be better, that maybe one of the parents should stay home and we should build society around that.

00:26:33.000 So there were a lot of family-oriented conservatives who actually liked Elizabeth Warren's book way back when. 0.98

00:26:37.000 Well, now Elizabeth Warren is a full-scale Kirsten Gillibrand idiot. 1.00

00:26:40.000 And so she has decided that she also is against ICE. 0.98

00:26:43.000 This is the new thing.

00:26:44.000 Say you're against ICE.

00:26:45.000 Let's be clear about this.

00:26:46.000 Americans are not in favor of this position.

00:26:49.000 70% of Americans think ICE ought to exist and that we ought to be enforcing our borders.

00:26:52.000 This is a 70-30 issue for Republicans.

00:26:54.000 But it is a 70-30 issue among Democrats that ICE should be abolished.

00:26:58.000 So everybody is now swiveling to take care of their radical base, hoping they'll win 2020 primaries.

00:27:03.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren doing the same thing as Kirsten Gillibrand, all of them now mirroring the Democratic Socialists of America.

00:27:09.000 The president's deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom, starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and

00:27:29.000 What does that even mean?

00:27:30.000 Something that reflects our morality?

00:27:32.000 What is that?

00:27:33.000 I can't even imagine what that would be.

00:27:35.000 Replacing ICE is literally a police force.

00:27:38.000 That's what it does.

00:27:38.000 It is there to police the borders.

00:27:40.000 What is she even talking about?

00:27:41.000 But the radicalism in the Democratic Party now runs deep.

00:27:44.000 They've decided they're going to swivel to the Bernie Sanders left in order to rev up the base.

00:27:48.000 So Maxine Waters, she disowns 0.98

00:27:50.000 Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer saying that they will do anything to protect their leadership.

00:27:54.000 What we need to be is more radical.

00:27:55.000 This is anti-Maxine, a lady who a week ago was saying that people should be mobbed at gas stations and driven out of public life. 1.00

00:28:02.000 I was surprised that Chuck Schumer, you know, reached into the other house to do that.

00:28:07.000 I've not quite seen that done before, but one of the things I recognize, being an elected official, is in the final analysis, you know, leadership like Chuck Schumer's will do anything that they think is necessary to protect their leadership.

00:28:22.000 So she's saying that Chuck Schumer is only being civil because he's trying to protect his leadership.

00:28:26.000 The reality is that Maxine Waters has been a radical her entire career. 0.98

00:28:29.000 She used to call the Los Angeles riots the L.A.

00:28:31.000 rebellion, the L.A.

00:28:32.000 uprising.

00:28:33.000 Well, it's happening.

00:28:34.000 73 people died in those riots, and she was out there cheering it on.

00:28:37.000 Maxine Waters is the worst that the United States Congress has to offer, and she is being seen as a charming figure on the left. 1.00

00:28:43.000 And she says the people want us to be confrontational.

00:28:45.000 The only people who want confrontation in American society right now are the far left.

00:28:48.000 The people on the hardcore base of the left.

00:28:50.000 Here she is again on Joy Reid's Exscribble show on MSNBC. 0.98

00:28:55.000 People do want to see us be stronger and more forceful and to confront them on these policies.

00:29:01.000 And I'm hopeful that even Democrats haven't seen the kind of outpouring of protests, over 700 incidences of protests this weekend.

00:29:12.000 Seeing that, they will be more forceful, more confrontational, and more prepared to push back on this administration.

00:29:20.000 So people should be more confrontational.

00:29:21.000 That's what America needs, more confrontation.

00:29:23.000 So abolish ICE, embrace democratic socialism, and confront people in the streets.

00:29:28.000 This is the new Democratic Party.

00:29:29.000 This is what Trump has driven them to.

00:29:31.000 They really believe that they're going to remake the world in their image this way.

00:29:34.000 And it's pretty incredible.

00:29:36.000 It's pretty incredible.

00:29:37.000 We're going to go a little bit further in this direction.

00:29:39.000 I want to talk about the movement of the mainstream toward Maxine Waters and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and all the rest of us.

00:29:48.000 Plus, I want to talk a little bit about

00:29:49.000 Whether democratic socialism actually works, because there are a lot of myths that are floating around about democratic socialism, in just a second.

00:29:55.000 First, I want to talk about your loans.

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00:30:01.000 The problem is the interest rates are astronomical.

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00:30:05.000 This is how people ruin their lives.

00:30:07.000 But people still need money, and that's why you need to talk to my friends over at Lending Club.

00:30:10.000 You can consolidate your debt or pay off credit cards with one fixed monthly payment.

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00:30:48.000 Okay, so I want to talk more

00:31:07.000 We're good to go.

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00:32:11.000 So here's the problem.

00:32:12.000 As the Democrats move more radical, people are going so crazy that even people who used to be supposedly conservative, although not all that conservative, have been echoing some of the more extreme rhetoric of the left.

00:32:23.000 See, America is on a pendulum, and it swings side to side.

00:32:26.000 Barack Obama was a radical guy, and now it has swiveled to President Trump, who is a very strong conservative in office.

00:32:31.000 Okay, that means that when the pendulum swings back, it's going to swing back to the Democratic Party.

00:32:35.000 Well, if the Democratic Party is a party of democratic socialism, meaning it's just a socialist party, then what you're going to see is an exacerbation of the conflict that is driving America into the ground right now.

00:32:46.000 It's really ugly stuff.

00:32:47.000 Jennifer Rubin, who used to be a sane person, but apparently not anymore.

00:32:50.000 I met her at Bill Maher.

00:32:52.000 She was in the green room.

00:32:53.000 I said hello.

00:32:54.000 She seems like a perfectly nice lady, except that she says crazy things now. 1.00

00:32:57.000 She says that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, that she should be made to feel uncomfortable in public places.

00:33:02.000 This is the kind of country she wants now.

00:33:04.000 Sarah Huckabee has no right to live a life of no fuss, no muss, after lying to the press, after inciting against the press. 1.00

00:33:13.000 These people should be made uncomfortable, and I think that's a life sentence, frankly.

00:33:18.000 It's a life sentence to be made uncomfortable?

00:33:20.000 Like, that's it?

00:33:20.000 Really?

00:33:21.000 That's what we're gonna do?

00:33:22.000 So, okay, I assume that the same applies to Jen Rubin, then.

00:33:24.000 So, if Jen Rubin is out eating at a restaurant, I think that her political perspective is obnoxious, and I encourage people to harass her at restaurants, then, presumably, that's totally fine with her. 0.99

00:33:33.000 Because, after all, this is the new politics.

00:33:35.000 This sort of polarization is really quite terrible for the country.

00:33:38.000 There's a piece in the New York Times talking about the embrace of full-scale socialism by the Democrats, by Michelle Goldberg, talking about the fact that this woman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, knocked off Joe Crowley in a primary vote in New York, and Summer Lee, who's 30, and Sarah Inamorato,

00:33:54.000 Talk of popular control of the means of production is anathema to many older Democrats, even very liberal ones, right?

00:33:59.000 Because they have a memory and they remember what it was like in the Soviet Union.

00:34:02.000 They remember that Cuba is still a place. 0.95

00:34:04.000 They remember that North Korea is garbage, that when the government controls the means of production, terrible things generally happen. 0.95

00:34:23.000 But younger Democrats believe that the only way to counter President Trump is to counter the entire system. 0.98

00:34:29.000 This is the pitch that the left has been making.

00:34:30.000 It's not a pitch in favor of their own program and the success of it.

00:34:33.000 It's a program in favor of... It's a pitch in favor...

00:34:37.000 of a replacement of the entire hierarchy with something brand new.

00:34:40.000 Trump is the product of this hierarchy.

00:34:42.000 And if the hierarchy can be destroyed, if the First Amendment can be destroyed, if the Second Amendment can be destroyed, and a private property can be destroyed, then we will no longer have to suffer with Trump.

00:34:50.000 It's not that Trump is a product of a broken civility in our politics.

00:34:55.000 Which, it really more is.

00:34:56.000 It's not that President Trump is the product of an increasing polarization in our politics.

00:35:00.000 It's not that President Trump is a backlash to the hardcore leftism of the left.

00:35:03.000 It's that President Trump is himself a product of the evil American system, and that system must be torn out root and branch.

00:35:08.000 Michelle Goldberg, who's a friend of these socialists, she says,

00:35:11.000 We're good to go!

00:35:35.000 And this is the entire issue for the Democrats.

00:35:37.000 The agenda of the DSA is utterly insane.

00:35:39.000 Nationalized healthcare.

00:35:40.000 Guaranteed housing.

00:35:41.000 Guaranteed government jobs.

00:35:42.000 All that would bankrupt the United States in five seconds.

00:35:45.000 The Democratic Party is happy to embrace that crowd because so long as they can wield that crowd like a club against President Trump, they're happy to do it.

00:35:52.000 Meanwhile, I love this, Goldberg says,

00:36:08.000 So right now, socialists are on the rise.

00:36:11.000 There are more candidates like Ocasio-Cortez out there.

00:36:13.000 The Democrats should welcome them.

00:36:14.000 It means their youth and zeal and willingness to do the work of rebuilding the party as a neighborhood institution.

00:36:19.000 And they're coming, whether the party's leadership likes it or not.

00:36:22.000 My favorite part of the article is where Michelle Goldberg suggests that all of these socialists are very kind to one another.

00:36:27.000 She says,

00:36:29.000 On some days that public schools are closed, the DSA's Socialist Feminist Committee puts on all-day events with childcare and free lunches.

00:36:35.000 Like several other chapters, the Pittsburgh DSA holds clinics, where members change people's burned-out car brake lights for free, helping them avoid unnecessary police run-ins while making inroads into the community.

00:36:45.000 A local mechanic named Metal Mary helped train them.

00:36:48.000 Here's the problem.

00:36:49.000 All that comes to an end the minute the socialists take over government.

00:36:51.000 Because there is no reason, there is no rationale whatsoever, for them to actually do community outreach the minute that the government can do all of it.

00:36:59.000 It's just a delight.

00:37:00.000 Now, let's talk for a second about the appeal of democratic socialism, because what you hear from the left is that democratic socialism is what exists in places like Denmark and Sweden.

00:37:08.000 That is real socialism.

00:37:10.000 There's only one problem.

00:37:11.000 None of this is true.

00:37:12.000 Nima Sanandanji, who writes for The Stream, he has a very good piece about myths regarding

00:37:18.000 Nordic socialism.

00:37:19.000 He's an author and researcher.

00:37:20.000 He holds a PhD from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and conducted research at the University of Cambridge.

00:37:27.000 And he has a great piece about why it is that so many people think that democratic socialist republics are the ones that are really succeeding when in reality they're succeeding in spite of their socialism.

00:37:36.000 So here's what he says.

00:37:53.000 Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen says after seeing his country held up as an example in the American presidential debate, he told students in a 2015 speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, quote,

00:38:13.000 When it comes to areas such as business regulations, trade policy, investment freedom, vouchers in the provision of education, elderly care and healthcare, and partial privatization of retirement savings, Nordic countries are among the most free market in the world.

00:38:24.000 Hey, Nordic countries did not become rich by relying on socialism.

00:38:27.000 Sweden is the only Nordic country that actually experimented with socialism in the 70s and 80s.

00:38:32.000 And instead, it destroyed Sweden's economy.

00:38:36.000 From 1970 to 1991, Social Democrats tried to introduce this form of planned economy into the country, and Sweden's growth rate fell to the second lowest among Western European countries after being among the highest.

00:38:48.000 Also, there are a lot of people who say, well, look at Sweden and Denmark and Norway.

00:38:52.000 Look at their wonderful, wonderful lifespans and low child mortality.

00:38:55.000 There's only one problem.

00:38:57.000 Their low child mortality and lifespans pre-existed the socialist attempts to remake their economy.

00:39:03.000 In 1960, the tax rate in Denmark was 25% of GDP, lower than 27% in the US at the time.

00:39:09.000 And all of their outcomes were just the same or higher than they are now.

00:39:13.000 The top 10 countries with the longest lifespan in 1960, when these were all capitalist, Norway, Iceland, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland.

00:39:20.000 It's exactly the same now.

00:39:22.000 Except that they've actually dropped a little bit.

00:39:24.000 And they had low child mortality rates, too.

00:39:26.000 And finally, important to note, that if you're talking about why Denmark does better, Sweden does better, Scandinavian Americans do better, Scandinavia does better, important to note, all of these groups, when they come to America, do better in the United States than they do back in their home countries.

00:39:39.000 So in Denmark,

00:39:40.000 Danish Americans actually do better in America than they do in Denmark.

00:39:44.000 So all of the talk about how all of these countries are thriving because of socialism just isn't true.

00:39:49.000 Now, the reason I say this, the reason that I bring all this up is because of something that is quite hilarious.

00:39:56.000 All of these millennial socialists are not socialists.

00:39:58.000 All of these millennial socialists grew up in the lap of luxury.

00:40:01.000 They grew up in capitalist luxury.

00:40:03.000 And the same thing is true in all these Nordic countries.

00:40:06.000 All these Nordic countries became wealthy because they embraced free markets and capitalism.

00:40:10.000 All of these countries in Scandinavia, all of them were among the free-trading companies, the most free-trading companies and countries in the 17th century, going all the way back, really, to the 15th and 16th centuries.

00:40:23.000 So this idea that it was socialism that made these countries rich is just absurd.

00:40:26.000 What it really was, was socialism redistributing all of the gains that had been made in capitalism.

00:40:31.000 And all of these countries, including Denmark, still have very free markets when it comes to attraction of business, they just have incredibly high tax rates that tamp down the growth of individual industry.

00:40:41.000 The reason that I bring this up is because this Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez has become this big star now, right?

00:40:47.000 This 28-year-old star from New York.

00:40:49.000 It turns out that she has been living off the benefits and excesses of capitalism for her entire life.

00:40:55.000 She grew up in Westchester County, okay?

00:40:56.000 She didn't grow up impoverished in government housing. 0.63

00:41:00.000 She doesn't really have a working class background.

00:41:03.000 This is from the Daily Mail.

00:41:05.000 The hardscrawled biography of Democrat congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been called into question after the revelation that she grew up mostly in wealthy Westchester County.

00:41:13.000 Though Ocasio-Cortez, 28, was born in and currently lives in the Bronx, county land records show her late father, Sergio Cortez Roman, bought a quaint three bedroom in Yorktown Heights, New York in 1991 when she was about two.

00:41:25.000 But her biography says, Yeah, except she grew up in Westchester County.

00:41:40.000 She said that she was a girl from the Bronx.

00:41:42.000 She's refused comment on all of this.

00:41:43.000 It's not to say that she's wildly wealthy, but she grew up in a nice middle-class family.

00:41:48.000 Her father, who died tragically from lung cancer in 2008, was an architect and CEO of Kirshenbaum & Ocasio-Roman Architects, PC, which focused on remodeling and renovations.

00:41:57.000 He was a small business owner.

00:42:00.000 So, again, the idea that all of these people are living in absolute poverty

00:42:06.000 They originally lived in a planned community in Parkchester, and then they moved out and they got a house.

00:42:11.000 They lived in a planned community of 171 mid-rise brick buildings in the Bronx, and when she was about five, they moved to this house in Westchester County.

00:42:18.000 So we're supposed to believe that she's not the result of capitalism.

00:42:21.000 By the way, she seems to be pretty capitalistic in her own life. 0.84

00:42:23.000 According to the New York Post, Ocasio-Cortez used to work at Flats Fix, which is an East 16th Street taco and tequila bar, and most of her co-workers liked her a lot.

00:42:31.000 But one waitress says that at the end of one night, when Ocasio-Cortez was tending bar at a Cinco de Mayo celebration in 2017, when it came time to split the $560 in tips she'd gotten at the bar, Ocasio-Cortez gave the waitress $50.

00:42:44.000 After the waitress complained to her manager, her take was doubled to $100. 0.98

00:42:48.000 And this waitress says that this says something about her character.

00:42:51.000 So like a lot of socialists, it's all fun and games until it comes time to stick the money in your own pocket.

00:42:56.000 Also, this was pretty funny.

00:42:57.000 So, Ocasio-Cortez was on TV, or actually, she was on Twitter, and she'd been asked about her lipstick, because she wears this bright red lipstick, and she tweeted out, Okay, then it sold out.

00:43:05.000 So, the socialists pitched a capitalistic product, and it sold out. 1.00

00:43:07.000 Because this is still a capitalistic country, and this is all stupidity. 0.99

00:43:22.000 OK, quickly, I want to talk briefly about Supreme Court. 0.99

00:43:25.000 So the Supreme Court, President Trump is talking about what he wants to do with the Supreme Court.

00:43:29.000 And he says that abortion could end up with the states.

00:43:30.000 You could see the overturning of Roe v. Wade from Trump's mouth to God's ears.

00:43:34.000 Here's President Trump talking about it.

00:43:36.000 The Roe v. Wade is probably the one that people are talking about in terms of having an effect.

00:43:44.000 But we'll see what happens.

00:43:46.000 But it could very well end up with states at some point.

00:43:49.000 So, yeah, I mean, I hope he's right.

00:43:51.000 People on the left are going nuts over all of this.

00:43:52.000 They suggest that it's terrible, we can never overturn Roe v. Wade. 1.00

00:43:55.000 One of those people, of course, is the idiot Susan Collins, the senator from Maine. 1.00

00:43:58.000 And I hear she is saying that she won't vote for anyone who demonstrates anti-Roe opinion. 0.99

00:44:03.000 I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law.

00:44:22.000 Okay, so it's established law, according to Susan Collins, except for every bad decision was established law.

00:44:28.000 Plessy v. Ferguson, which said that segregation was legal, was established law for 58 years in the United States before Brown v. Board of Education.

00:44:35.000 A case in the United States that said that same-sex marriage could be made illegal by states?

00:44:39.000 Okay, that was law in the United States for 44 years.

00:44:41.000 Whenever people on the left say precedent, what they really mean is a decision that I like. 0.99

00:44:45.000 Susan Collins is a fool when it comes to Roe v. Wade. 1.00

00:44:47.000 It should be overturned because it's a terrible decision, and I hope that it will be. 0.98

00:44:51.000 OK, so in just a second, we'll do some stuff I like and some stuff that I hate.

00:44:54.000 I have plenty of stuff I like and stuff I hate.

00:44:56.000 So let's jump in.

00:44:57.000 Things I like today.

00:44:58.000 So I already told you about Dan Jones's book on the Plantagenets.

00:45:02.000 He has a sequel to that called The War of the Roses.

00:45:05.000 Really fascinating.

00:45:06.000 If you liked the series The White Queen on Showtime, then check out The War of the Roses.

00:45:12.000 Later on, Star is the White Queen. 0.74

00:45:13.000 But the War of the Roses is really fun to read.

00:45:16.000 If you like British history, it's really enjoyable.

00:45:18.000 So go check that out because we can all use a break from politics every once in a while.

00:45:23.000 Okay, time for a bunch of things that I hate.

00:45:26.000 You ready for a lot of hate?

00:45:26.000 Because here it comes, man.

00:45:32.000 Okay, we begin today with Don Willett.

00:45:34.000 So Don Willett is a court justice.

00:45:38.000 He's a judge on the, I believe, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:45:41.000 And Justice Willett, as he calls himself on Twitter, he stopped tweeting as soon as he was appointed to a federal appellate court.

00:45:47.000 He was on the Texas Supreme Court, and now he's being discussed for a possible Supreme Court.

00:45:51.000 Well, ABC ran an entire piece on why Don Willett should not be allowed on the Supreme Court because of his tweets.

00:45:56.000 They quoted four tweets.

00:45:58.000 Here are the tweets that they quoted.

00:46:00.000 One from Judge Willett saying,

00:46:10.000 They say that this tweet makes it impossible for him to be on the Supreme Court.

00:46:14.000 Or if it's not that one, maybe it's this one.

00:46:15.000 He tweets out, 11-year-old, daddy, why do politicians talk about Eminem's domain?

00:46:20.000 Me, that's Eminem's domain.

00:46:22.000 11-year-old, huh?

00:46:23.000 Me, sorry, you only get one shot.

00:46:26.000 Okay, so he just does dad jokes on Twitter.

00:46:28.000 According to ABC, because Don Willett does dad jokes on Twitter, we should bar him from the Supreme Court.

00:46:33.000 So if you are not a wild leftist, or you do dad jokes on Twitter, that means you cannot be allowed on the Supreme Court.

00:46:39.000 Maybe the left thinks that the Supreme Court is just a tool of policy.

00:46:42.000 Don Willett tweeted this one out.

00:46:43.000 My three favorite chocolates.

00:46:44.000 Positively.

00:46:47.000 It's a picture of three dogs.

00:46:48.000 Dark, white, and milk.

00:46:50.000 Okay, this is what he is not—he can't be allowed on the Supreme Court because he's tweeting out cute pictures of puppies?

00:46:55.000 Maybe you guys are going a little bit overboard on this whole thing.

00:46:58.000 Maybe you're just a little bit overboard on this whole thing.

00:47:00.000 So, well done, ABC.

00:47:02.000 Really vetting the candidates the way they must be vetted.

00:47:05.000 We need to make sure that—he cannot—we cannot have a man who tweets about puppies

00:47:10.000 Okay, time for another thing that I hate.

00:47:14.000 So, LeBron is heading to LA.

00:47:15.000 As a Boston Celtics fan, this saddens me.

00:47:18.000 It also makes me happy in one way, which is that LeBron is no longer in the East.

00:47:21.000 But I will say that LeBron James moving over to the Lakers to try and build another super team,

00:47:26.000 I guess it's good for the NBA because it's a good storyline as opposed to him staying in Cleveland.

00:47:30.000 But can we now all acknowledge that him going back to Cleveland was not something that he was doing for altruistic reasons.

00:47:35.000 It was something that he was doing for career reasons.

00:47:36.000 Because now he's coming out to LA.

00:47:37.000 He wants to make a bunch of Hollywood connections.

00:47:39.000 He's been in a bunch of movies already.

00:47:40.000 That's fine.

00:47:41.000 Listen, I'm in favor of free agency and people being able to move wherever they want.

00:47:44.000 I like job malleability.

00:47:46.000 I like you being able to choose where you want to go.

00:47:48.000 But let's not pretend that he's doing this out of reasons of principle.

00:47:51.000 That he's going to the Lakers out of reasons of principle. 0.91

00:47:53.000 Because that's just silly.

00:47:54.000 He's doing it for the money. 0.74

00:47:55.000 He's doing it for the publicity.

00:47:56.000 That's fine.

00:47:57.000 But, you know, is it something I think that's good for his sports legacy?

00:48:02.000 Probably not particularly.

00:48:03.000 OK.

00:48:04.000 Also.

00:48:06.000 This I have to show you.

00:48:06.000 So Huffington Post is now pitching drag children.

00:48:09.000 This has become a thing.

00:48:10.000 This has become a thing on the left.

00:48:12.000 That there are a bunch of 8 to 10 year old kids, boys, who decide to dress up as drag queens and now are being promoted by their parents and put in the media.

00:48:19.000 So I have a general problem with child actors as just a whole.

00:48:24.000 I think it's a huge mistake for parents to get their children into acting publicly.

00:48:28.000 Because I don't think that children should be exposed to public discourse as a general rule.

00:48:32.000 I think that kids don't know enough about what they want in their own minds.

00:48:35.000 They're not capable of making reasoned decisions.

00:48:37.000 They're not capable of making good decisions.

00:48:39.000 I think it is particularly awful for parents to be exploiting their 10-year-old boys by dressing them up as girls or allowing them to dress up as girls and parade them in front of cameras looking like drag queens because this is somehow good for them. 0.72

00:48:51.000 These are 10-year-olds.

00:48:53.000 You wouldn't allow your 10-year-old to decide whether or not to do his homework that night.

00:48:56.000 Why would you allow him?

00:48:57.000 The hormones haven't even hit at 10 years old. 0.55

00:48:59.000 This kid doesn't know he's gay.

00:49:00.000 He's 10 years old.

00:49:03.000 Unless he had an early-onset puberty, he probably hasn't thought about sex yet.

00:49:07.000 He's 10.

00:49:08.000 But we're supposed to believe that this kid

00:49:11.000 I was born in Pride Month in the year 2007.

00:49:13.000 Gay pride means self-expression to me.

00:49:31.000 Hi, I'm Desmond is Amazing.

00:49:33.000 I'm 10 years old and I'm a drag kid and I live in New York City and I'm an LGBTQ activist and advocate.

00:49:41.000 Stop it for a second.

00:49:42.000 This kid is 10 years old. 0.97

00:49:44.000 How in the hell is this kid an LGBTQ activist? 1.00

00:49:47.000 First of all, 10-year-olds should not be activists about anything. 0.96

00:49:49.000 Anything.

00:49:50.000 The only thing you can fairly make a case for on politics, why 10-year-olds should be activists, is maybe on pro-life issues, just because they're not dead.

00:49:57.000 But even then, I wouldn't use a kid as an activist for pro-life causes, and I love pro-life causes.

00:50:02.000 But to make a kid an activist on sexual matters is perverse.

00:50:06.000 It's actually perverse.

00:50:08.000 If there were an adult who were not this kid's parents who dressed this kid up this way and put this kid in public, you would know that this was something perverse.

00:50:14.000 And that's what Huffington Post is.

00:50:15.000 Huffington Post isn't this kid's parents.

00:50:17.000 But it's just, it's absurd.

00:50:19.000 There's more of this.

00:50:20.000 It's just, it's, as a parent of two children, I cannot imagine doing anything remotely like this to my kid.

00:50:24.000 Even if my kid wanted to dress like this, even if I thought it was okay for my kid to dress like this, putting my kid in front of cameras and playing that as an act of bravery on my part is just disgusting.

00:50:35.000 Drag is a form of expression and being yourself and dressing however you want and looking fierce. 1.00

00:50:42.000 No matter what you're wearing, even if your eyeliner went down and it's like so bad, you still look fierce.

00:50:50.000 My motto is be yourself always, but I like to add this on.

00:50:54.000 No matter what anyone says, and pain hating no one, because they're not as fierce as you.

00:50:57.000 Okay, can we stop for a second again?

00:50:59.000 So that's the end of it, I think.

00:51:00.000 So this kid, notice the use of the word fierce there?

00:51:03.000 Okay, this is because this kid has been culturally indoctrinated into the use of certain terms.

00:51:07.000 Right?

00:51:08.000 Three-year-olds, five-year-olds, ten-year-olds, they don't know the word fierce unless you have been engaged in a particular culture that glorifies a particular set of values.

00:51:16.000 And listen, as a parent, if that's what you want to do and it's not damaging your kid, that's one thing.

00:51:22.000 But to trot this kid out as an activist, as a free-minded activist, is really quite gross.

00:51:27.000 You want to be 18 and do this again?

00:51:28.000 That's your prerogative.

00:51:29.000 You want to be 25 and do this?

00:51:30.000 You want to be an adult and do this?

00:51:32.000 That's your prerogative.

00:51:32.000 This is a parent who decided that they were going to get their kid some attention and decided that they were going to therefore encourage these sorts of tendencies in the kid.

00:51:39.000 You think this kid isn't going to experience a harder life?

00:51:41.000 I'm not even talking about

00:51:43.000 Quote-unquote oppression from from people outside of this kid I'm not even talking about bullying which of course is not appropriate in any case what I am talking about here is that confusing kids about their own sexual identity and gender at the age of 10 and Not attempting to provide them any sort of solid grounding for this stuff before they even hit puberty is not a recipe for mental health just

00:52:05.000 But the entire left would suggest that it's intolerant to say this.

00:52:08.000 The only form of tolerance is to cheer along as a 10-year-old kid is dressed up in drag queen outfits and paraded in front of the drooling media.

00:52:16.000 It really is really quite horrifying.

00:52:18.000 Okay, final thing that I hate for today.

00:52:21.000 So, President Trump has now leaked a draft bill.

00:52:24.000 This new draft bill would declare America's abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules.

00:52:28.000 So, I can't imagine this is going to pass.

00:52:30.000 The bill essentially provides President Trump a license to raise U.S.

00:52:34.000 tariffs at will without congressional consent and international rules be damned.

00:52:37.000 The bill is titled the U.S.

00:52:39.000 Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act.

00:52:41.000 In other words, the U.S.

00:52:41.000 FART Act.

00:52:43.000 Okay, I would give President Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country, most favored nation principle that countries can't set tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements, and bound tariff rates, the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.

00:52:59.000 So it's walking away from our current commitments on tariffs.

00:53:02.000 It's walking away from free trade.

00:53:03.000 It is not President Trump negotiating better trade deals.

00:53:05.000 It is President Trump manipulating tariffs, which is something he likes to do.

00:53:09.000 No way in hell should Congress give him this authority.

00:53:11.000 First of all, it's legislative authority in general.

00:53:13.000 Second of all, I do not trust President Trump with trade authority, given what it is that he has done with trade thus far.

00:53:19.000 Okay, we will be back here tomorrow with all the latest.

00:53:21.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:53:22.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:53:27.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:53:33.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:53:37.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:53:39.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:53:40.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:53:42.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:53:45.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 02, 2018

So Much Earth-Shattering Bravery | Ep. 572

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