The Ben Shapiro Show - Starbucks Now | Ep. 521

00:00:00.000 Starbucks is in serious trouble and we will go through the case.

00:00:03.000 Plus, President Trump reaches out to North Korea and Democrats try to take Ted Cruz's seat in Texas.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:08.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 As always, it is a busy news day, and I have a lot to talk about, particularly with regard to the Starbucks fiasco.

00:00:19.000 I just hate how the media covered these racial incidents without actually waiting to hear all the facts, without waiting to see if there's any additional evidence.

00:00:28.000 The immediate jump to conclusions is pretty astonishing.

00:00:30.000 We'll get to all of that in just a second.

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00:02:07.000 Because there was apparently an incident in which two black guys were at a Philadelphia Starbucks and sat down, and the manager asked them if they wanted to buy anything, and they said no.

00:02:16.000 And according to them, at this point, she called the police.

00:02:18.000 According to her, they continuously refused to leave.

00:02:21.000 They were just loitering.

00:02:24.000 And she called the police.

00:02:25.000 The police came.

00:02:25.000 The police apparently asked these guys to leave.

00:02:27.000 The guys refused over and over, at which point the police arrested them.

00:02:29.000 So Starbucks has, of course, apologized for the incident.

00:02:32.000 The woman in question has not been fired.

00:02:34.000 She apparently no longer works at this store.

00:02:36.000 Which makes me a little suspicious.

00:02:38.000 It does make me a little suspicious.

00:02:39.000 It makes me a little suspicious that Starbucks didn't just fire the lady.

00:02:42.000 If they actually thought that there was a deeply racist incident that had happened, you would imagine that they would get rid of the lady for simple legal reasons. 1.00

00:02:48.000 Having this woman hanging around, if she actually was participant in a racial incident, seems like really stupid, stupid policy. 0.99

00:02:56.000 But Starbucks didn't get rid of her, which leads me to believe there might be a little bit more to the story. 0.99

00:02:59.000 So, today I want to go through the media hubbub

00:03:02.000 about all of this, and I want to ask a few simple questions that are all answerable.

00:03:06.000 This is not truthoring.

00:03:07.000 I'm not saying I don't believe these guys' story.

00:03:09.000 I'm just saying that I want to see the evidence on all sides, and I don't think that that's unreasonable.

00:03:14.000 So, for example, the guys go on Good Morning America, the two black fellows go on Good Morning America, and they are being given national coverage for an incident in which they were threatened with arrest for apparently sitting in a Starbucks for no reason.

00:03:26.000 And the tape was originally taken by a couple of different people who were at the Starbucks.

00:03:32.000 And who claimed that they saw this racial incident unfold when the guys asked to use the bathroom.

00:03:36.000 They were told they couldn't use the bathroom because they hadn't bought anything and then they refused to buy something.

00:03:39.000 And the manager, whose name is Holly, apparently called the police for loitering.

00:03:43.000 So here is a little bit of the of the ABC News exclusive interview with these two guys.

00:03:49.000 Now, again,

00:03:50.000 I have to point out that this is being wildly overblown.

00:03:53.000 The lady is presumably being punished.

00:03:55.000 The Starbucks has apologized.

00:03:56.000 They're shutting down their entire company for a day to teach about implicit bias. 0.93

00:04:01.000 I'll discuss implicit bias and how stupid implicit bias assessment tests are in just a second, and why implicit bias training is completely useless from a social science perspective.

00:04:09.000 I'll talk about that in just a few minutes here.

00:04:11.000 But important to note, Kyle Smith has a good point in National Review.

00:04:14.000 There are 238,000 employees of Starbucks.

00:04:18.000 Let's assume that everything that's said here is right. 0.77

00:04:20.000 Let's assume that this manager, this manager at the Starbucks was a brutal, horrible, Bull Connor type racist.

00:04:27.000 Would that implicate everyone who works for Starbucks?

00:04:30.000 Kyle Smith points out 238,000 people is like the entire population of the city of Richmond.

00:04:35.000 If someone killed somebody in the city of Richmond, would you say, listen, I'm never traveling to Richmond again, I'm gonna boycott Richmond?

00:04:40.000 Would you force the entire population of Richmond to go and get implicit bias training?

00:04:44.000 Or would you say, that's a bad person?

00:04:47.000 So first of all, this is an individual issue at the very most.

00:04:50.000 And second of all, we're not even sure if it's an individual issue yet because, as I'm going to point out, there are cameras in the store.

00:04:56.000 This is an amazing thing.

00:04:57.000 I'm amazed nobody's asked this before.

00:04:58.000 I've been asking this for the last couple of days.

00:05:01.000 Every Starbucks I've ever been in has cameras.

00:05:03.000 Thank you.

00:05:22.000 Telling people not to use the wrong pronouns.

00:05:24.000 And yet this one is supposed to be the great racist in the whole story.

00:05:27.000 She still has not publicly revealed herself or told her side of the story.

00:05:30.000 But in any case, I asked a couple of my listeners and one of my Twitter followers if they could go take a look at the Starbucks itself to see if there were a bunch of cameras there.

00:05:38.000 It turns out that from the pictures she took, there are no less than four cameras in the establishment.

00:05:43.000 And yet we have seen no camera tape from any of this.

00:05:45.000 The only reason I'm breaking this down this way, folks, is because it's a national story.

00:05:49.000 Otherwise, I wouldn't care because when the I'll give you an example.

00:05:53.000 There's a story from Applebee's.

00:05:54.000 There's an there's an Applebee's.

00:05:56.000 I believe that it was in Wisconsin.

00:05:58.000 And just back in February, it was Missouri.

00:06:00.000 Rather, Applebee's fired three employees at a Missouri mall based restaurant back in February that it determined were involved in the racial profiling of two African-American customers whom they falsely accused of skipping out without paying their bill.

00:06:11.000 The restaurant chain also apologized for the February 9th incident at the Independence, Missouri eatery.

00:06:15.000 The apology comes after one of the diners, Alexis Brisson, posted a video of her encounter with employees from her cell phone and commented on the incident on Facebook.

00:06:23.000 The restaurant in the Independence Center Mall was temporarily closed, and the video showed a restaurant staffer, a police officer, and a security guard talking to two women, one of whom was crying uncontrollably and had been estimated viewed 3 million times.

00:06:35.000 The company said that it regretted the incident, and the manager, the server, and another employee were fired.

00:06:39.000 This is an incident where I'm not questioning what happened because the company fired the employees.

00:06:44.000 The company not only admitted what had happened, the company then fired the employees.

00:06:47.000 And apparently, this is a much more clear-cut case where the police were called on these particular women who were accused of walking out on their bill, but they did not walk out without paying their bill.

00:06:58.000 They actually were trying to pay their bill.

00:07:00.000 According to the Facebook post, about an hour into dinner, these two women were accused of ordering food the day before and leaving without paying their bill.

00:07:07.000 And then it turns out that these were not the same two women.

00:07:09.000 So the employees were fired.

00:07:11.000 Okay, so that's an easy one to prove, right?

00:07:12.000 There's either evidence that they were there the day before or they weren't there the day before, right?

00:07:16.000 It turns out the employees were all wrong and they were all fired.

00:07:18.000 So in that particular case, I'm not saying show me the tape.

00:07:20.000 In this particular case, I'm saying show me the tape because there is a little bit of countervailing evidence.

00:07:24.000 And you're going to see the countervailing evidence here.

00:07:26.000 So I want to play you the account of the two men who are on Good Morning America.

00:07:30.000 Again, this is now a national incident, even though it's at best one person at a Starbucks in Philadelphia.

00:07:34.000 Important to point out that this this manager, Holly. 0.96

00:07:38.000 She's working at a Starbucks in Philadelphia. 0.73

00:07:40.000 Philadelphia is 42% black. 0.95

00:07:43.000 If you really think that Holly has not dealt for the past year with any black customers or that she's a wild racist who's discriminating against black customers, it's weird that everything was fine for a year in a 42% black city where presumably a lot of the customers are black.

00:07:55.000 And again, as I say, one of my listeners, I talked about this yesterday on the program, one of my listeners knows Holly, has been there and has seen her deal with black customers and has never seen any inkling of anything like this, but

00:08:05.000 All right, here's the account of the two men on Good Morning America.

00:08:08.000 And I'm going to show you, this even conflicts with the police accounting of what happened.

00:08:11.000 I want to show you also how the media treat this.

00:08:13.000 So Robin Roberts is the one doing the interview on ABC News' Good Morning America.

00:08:17.000 Here it is.

00:08:18.000 Dante, you both walk in, you get a table.

00:08:22.000 Rashaun, how long was it before you asked to use the restroom?

00:08:26.000 Immediately, as soon as I walked in.

00:08:29.000 And she stated that they were for paying customers only.

00:08:32.000 What happened next?

00:08:35.000 Um, we're at the table.

00:08:37.000 We sit down.

00:08:37.000 We're just talking amongst each other.

00:08:40.000 Um, she then comes from around the register, asks, you know, walks up to us, asks if, uh, you know, she can help us with anything.

00:08:49.000 Can we start with some drinks or water or something like that?

00:08:52.000 You know, for when we have bottles of water with us.

00:08:55.000 So, you know, we're fine.

00:08:56.000 We're just waiting for a meeting.

00:08:57.000 We'll be out really quick, type thing.

00:09:00.000 According to 9-1-1 accounts, a call was placed at 4-37 approximately two minutes after you arrived to 9-1-1.

00:09:10.000 What did you think when you saw police arrive, Dante?

00:09:13.000 You can't be here for us.

00:09:15.000 OK, so let's pause it there for one second.

00:09:16.000 So first thing to note here is when she says that they arrived at 435 and then the call happened at 437.

00:09:24.000 How does she know what time they got there?

00:09:26.000 Right.

00:09:26.000 I mean, she's not revealing how she knows that because presumably she'd either have to have testimony from Starbucks itself.

00:09:31.000 She'd have to have access to tape.

00:09:33.000 She'd have to have witnesses who said 435, or these guys told her they got there at 435, and at 437, this woman made a call.

00:09:39.000 We just don't know the answer.

00:09:40.000 Now, this is one of the areas where a tape could obviously clear this up.

00:09:42.000 You'd see them walk in, there'd be a timestamp on the tape, you'd know whether this is true or not.

00:09:46.000 According to the police, this is not what happened, right?

00:09:48.000 If you actually listen to what the police officer said, right, it's not, it doesn't match up with what these two guys are saying.

00:09:53.000 So these two guys are saying that they walked in, they sat down, they asked to use the restroom, they were declined because they did not buy anything, they were asked if they wanted to buy anything, and then they refused to leave.

00:10:03.000 Because they're waiting for somebody.

00:10:05.000 Okay, that's their story.

00:10:06.000 Now here is the police officer's story.

00:10:08.000 So here's the police chief in Philadelphia, who is black, and he is telling the story of what happened according to the police.

00:10:17.000 When the call was initially made, the Starbucks employees had told the males that they were going to call police, and they said, go ahead and call police, we don't care.

00:10:25.000 So police get there and they're confronted by the same type of attitude.

00:10:28.000 And repeatedly are told that they're not leaving.

00:10:31.000 In fact, there's some alleged rhetoric about, you don't know what you're doing.

00:10:35.000 You're only a $45,000 a year employee or something to that regard.

00:10:39.000 And so because these individuals refuse to leave, because Starbucks actually called, the police did not just happen upon this event.

00:10:48.000 They did not just walk into Starbucks to get coffee.

00:10:51.000 They were called there for a service.

00:10:53.000 And that service had to do with pulling a disturbance, a disturbance that had to do with trespassing.

00:10:59.000 So, I need to underscore the fact that these males were arrested.

00:11:04.000 When they were arrested, they were taken out essentially without incident.

00:11:07.000 There was no harm done to them.

00:11:09.000 But after being transported to the police district in the area, the officers, after processing paperwork, discovered that Starbucks no longer was interested in processing.

00:11:19.000 Okay, so listen to the police.

00:11:20.000 So what the police chief says is when they arrived, they asked these men, do you want to leave?

00:11:24.000 And the guy said, no, we're not leaving.

00:11:25.000 And apparently at one point they said, we don't care, go ahead and arrest us.

00:11:29.000 This is not the same story the media are telling, right?

00:11:31.000 The media are telling a story where these two guys walk in, they're in no trouble at all, they're just sitting there, and then they're arrested for no reason after being incredibly polite to the police officers.

00:11:39.000 The police themselves are saying that's not what happened.

00:11:41.000 We don't have the story of Holly the manager.

00:11:42.000 We don't have any of the tape footage, right?

00:11:44.000 Again, there are four cameras in the establishment, from what I can see from these pictures, that are being sent publicly on social media.

00:11:49.000 And it's been confirmed by a couple of people.

00:11:51.000 And yet, the media are running this as though this is a Bull Connor Jim Crow story.

00:11:56.000 I'm going to explain in a second why this really isn't even that.

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00:13:06.000 Okay, so.

00:13:07.000 Let's discuss for a second why Starbucks has this policy about loitering in the first place. 0.95

00:13:11.000 So the impression here is that Starbucks employee just decides randomly, these two black guys gotta go, don't like them, they're black. 0.98

00:13:18.000 That's the story that we're being told on national television by Good Morning America. 0.89

00:13:21.000 Again, facts being stated without any real verification.

00:13:24.000 Again, Robin Roberts saying there's a two minute delay between the time these guys sat down and the time the police were called.

00:13:29.000 You know, again, we don't know.

00:13:31.000 Like, I don't know where that's coming from.

00:13:32.000 Because what you'll see is that the media will report it saying things like, these two men arrived at 435, and then by 437 the police were called.

00:13:41.000 Or they'll say, it has been reported.

00:13:42.000 It has been, by whom?

00:13:44.000 By whom?

00:13:44.000 Okay.

00:13:46.000 Again, I don't want to break this thing down like this is a pruder tape.

00:13:49.000 I don't think it's that important an incident, but the media think it's that important an incident.

00:13:52.000 We wouldn't be talking about this if the media weren't blowing this up into, all of America is implicitly racist, including Starbucks.

00:13:58.000 Right, this is what this is all about.

00:14:00.000 Again, I wasn't questioning the Applebee's incident that happened back in February because that was an actual racial incident and the people involved were fired by the chain, which apologized.

00:14:09.000 Okay, so, obviously, and again, the reason that I asked for substantiating evidence is because we've had too many cases in the past of high-profile incidents like this where it's turned out that the whole story was not being told.

00:14:20.000 I remember Michael Bennett, who's a football player, last year claimed that the Las Vegas Police Department had cracked down on him for racial reasons, and then the tape came out and it turned out the reason they cracked down on him is because he was acting in criminal fashion.

00:14:31.000 So, if tape is available, I like tape.

00:14:34.000 If tape is not available, we have to evaluate the evidence of the people who are talking.

00:14:37.000 But, just as in a police incident, I want to see the body cam footage before I make any sort of judgment, in this particular incident, I don't think it's unreasonable for Starbucks to release footage of exactly what happened here.

00:14:47.000 Now, there are a lot of people who say, well, Starbucks won't release the footage because they know that they're guilty.

00:14:52.000 Okay, it's also possible Starbucks won't release the footage because they know that if they release the footage, then the entire media and the Black Lives Matter movement would suggest that they don't care enough about racism and they're fighting back against these charges because they're racist themselves.

00:15:04.000 It is the way the racial game is played, unfortunately, which is if you provide countervailing evidence to the charge that you are racist, then the media will claim that you are even more of a racist because you're not acknowledging your white privilege and people's different sensory experiences.

00:15:15.000 Okay, but here is the point.

00:15:17.000 Starbucks has had this policy for a very long time.

00:15:19.000 Okay, Starbucks has had this policy with regard to people not using the bathroom for a long time, and they've had controversies about this policy for a very long time.

00:15:26.000 And in just a second, I'm going to bring you that controversy.

00:15:28.000 I'm going to show you that controversy.

00:15:30.000 Okay, so, here is the story.

00:15:31.000 There's another Starbucks in Philadelphia at 13th and Chestnut Streets.

00:15:36.000 This is sent to me by another one of the Ben Shapiro Show listeners.

00:15:38.000 And this is from NBCPhiladelphia.com.

00:15:41.000 This story is dated September 15, 2015.

00:15:44.000 In the wake of a social media post that went viral over the weekend claiming a Starbucks barista denied a uniformed Philadelphia police sergeant access to a restroom at a downtown Philadelphia coffee shop, Starbucks has apologized to the sergeant.

00:15:56.000 The spokesperson for the international coffee shop chain told NBC10 the company personally apologized to the police sergeant for the incident, which happened late last week.

00:16:04.000 The sergeant, according to a Facebook post shared thousands of times, walked into the Starbucks at 13th and Chestnut Streets and asked for the key code to use the restroom.

00:16:11.000 An employee, according to the post, stated in a loud voice that the bathroom is for paying customers only.

00:16:15.000 The post went on to say the sergeant politely requested access again, and the Starbucks employee continued to deny it loudly as customers listened.

00:16:21.000 While she continued loudly to tell me about the bathroom down the street, I was even more astonished that the many customers and other employees said nothing and seemed indifferent.

00:16:28.000 This is the world cops live in anymore, wrote the sergeant, who has declined to comment, saying he didn't anticipate his post would gain such traction.

00:16:33.000 Officer Joe Lightheart, a friend of the sergeant, was one of the first to share the fellow officer's post about the incident.

00:16:38.000 Lightheart says he personally has been to that Starbucks location several times on calls for service, but never as a customer.

00:16:43.000 I didn't intend for it to go viral, Lightheart said, adding that most people who have responded to the post have been supportive.

00:16:47.000 Starbucks wrote in part, quote, This officer apparently was white.

00:16:50.000 There's no indicator that the officer was actually black.

00:17:03.000 And so the idea that the loitering policy is being exclusively used on black people, again, I'm not seeing all of the evidence for this.

00:17:11.000 But the entire point here is to shake down Starbucks.

00:17:14.000 The entire point is to make the entire chain feel that they're responsible for the actions of one employee, even without us even knowing the whole story about the employee.

00:17:20.000 So now Starbucks is going to be giving implicit bias training to all of its employees. 1.00

00:17:24.000 This is deeply stupid. 1.00

00:17:25.000 Implicit bias training is a giant, giant, giant waste of time. 1.00

00:17:28.000 Hillary Clinton, back during the 2017 campaign, talked about how implicit bias was a problem for everyone, not just police.

00:17:34.000 And she said that too many people jump to conclusions about each other.

00:17:38.000 Of course, Senator Cory Booker has talked about implicit bias.

00:17:42.000 Okay, people tend to use what they call the implicit association test as proof of implicit bias. 0.99

00:17:46.000 The implicit association test is a test that you've probably had if you're on a college campus where some idiot sociology professor says, we're going to show you you're a racist. 0.99

00:17:54.000 You don't think you're a racist? 1.00

00:17:55.000 You've never done anything racist? 0.89

00:17:57.000 But secretly, like Freudian unconscious secretly, you're actually a racist.

00:18:00.000 And the way that we can tell this is what we do. 0.97

00:18:03.000 is we show you a black face with some words associated with it and a white face with some words associated with it.

00:18:09.000 If you more quickly identify white faces associated with good words than black faces associated with good words, this means that implicitly you are a racist. 0.51

00:18:16.000 Now there are a bunch of problems.

00:18:18.000 There are a bunch of problems with the IAT.

00:18:20.000 The studies are not particularly reliable.

00:18:21.000 They have a relatively small sample size.

00:18:23.000 They find no significant correlation between implicit bias and behavior in the real world.

00:18:27.000 Texas A&M psychologist Professor Hart Blanton points out that scores on the IAT mean virtually nothing.

00:18:33.000 There's not a single study showing that above and below that cutoff, people differ in any way based on that score.

00:18:38.000 Social psychologist Russell Fazio of Ohio State University says, quote, Even advocates of the IAT, like its creator, Professor

00:18:48.000 We're good to go.

00:19:03.000 Statistics show the correlation between IAT and political preference are stronger than racial preference.

00:19:08.000 And there's good evidence to suggest that the IAT measures in-group, out-group implicit bias rather than racial bias per se.

00:19:13.000 So if you're told which group is your group, you associate good things with that group off the bat.

00:19:19.000 Jesse Singal of New York Magazine.

00:19:21.000 I'm friendly with Jesse.

00:19:22.000 Jesse is not on the right.

00:19:23.000 Jesse is a definitely liberal guy.

00:19:25.000 He's a left guy.

00:19:26.000 He says that the fact that the idea that the IAT predicts behavior in any serious way is not true.

00:19:30.000 He says a pile of scholarly work, some of it published in top psychology journals, and most of it ignored by the media, suggests that the IAT falls far short of the quality control standards normally expected of psychological instruments.

00:19:40.000 The IAT is a noisy, unreliable measure that correlates far too weakly with any real-world outcomes to be used to predict individuals' behavior.

00:19:48.000 And by the way, implicit bias training does nothing either.

00:19:50.000 And so we're now being told that if you train people on implicit bias, that this is going to fix things?

00:20:04.000 Again, the data just is not here.

00:20:06.000 The data is just not here, but nobody needs the data.

00:20:09.000 This is all just an attempt to, again, paint the United States as broadly racist because of one incident that is still under controversy, and for which we have not seen tape.

00:20:16.000 And if you ask for evidence, then people call you racist, because that's the way this works now. 0.95

00:20:19.000 It's just ridiculous. 0.74

00:20:20.000 Like, I got questions from the media for asking for tape. 0.78

00:20:23.000 I asked for tape, and people were like, why are you asking for tape?

00:20:25.000 For the same reason that you ask for tape, when a black guy gets shot by a cop, because you want to see what happened.

00:20:29.000 I mean, why is this even a question?

00:20:31.000 Okay, in just a second, I'm going to talk about President Trump's foreign policy.

00:20:34.000 Some foreign policy achievements may be in the offing, despite media coverage to the contrary.

00:20:39.000 First, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Policy Genius.

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00:21:47.000 Well, all of this hubbub on idiotic social issues continues to plague the United States. 0.98

00:21:52.000 Actual things are happening in terms of foreign policy. 0.98

00:21:55.000 So it's really interesting.

00:21:56.000 There really is no Trump doctrine as of yet.

00:21:58.000 We don't know what the Trump doctrine is.

00:21:59.000 There have been a few attempts to define President Trump's foreign policy.

00:22:02.000 The real truth is that President Trump's foreign policy is ad hoc.

00:22:07.000 He's basically making decisions on the spot.

00:22:09.000 Now, what's interesting about this is that I think that most presidents actually are doing foreign policy on the basis of ad hoc foreign policy.

00:22:15.000 I don't think most of them sit there with a formula.

00:22:17.000 I don't think they sit there with an abacus.

00:22:18.000 I don't think they sit there with an algebraic formula with different variables, and they input different countries and different numbers in.

00:22:24.000 And this concludes whether they ought to use diplomacy, whether they ought to use the CIA, or whether they ought to use military strikes.

00:22:30.000 I don't think that's how it works.

00:22:31.000 I think foreign policy is generally a matter of muddling through for the United States, and it has been since World War II.

00:22:37.000 President Trump makes that obviously clear, because the muddling is so clear just in public, right?

00:22:41.000 I mean, every so often the president just reverses himself on a matter of foreign policy, whereas previous administrations have tried to lay out a coherent reason why they're doing what they're doing, and sometimes that coherent reason is just not coherent.

00:22:54.000 Trump doesn't even bother, right?

00:22:55.000 Trump is obviously just kind of lurching side to side.

00:22:56.000 I don't think that that's a change in kind.

00:22:58.000 I think that it's just a change in the way that that is presented to the world.

00:23:01.000 Now, sometimes that ends well, and sometimes it's kind of weird, right?

00:23:04.000 So in one case right now, there's obviously some controversy about what exactly President Trump is going to do with regard to North Korea.

00:23:12.000 So yesterday, President Trump was doing a press conference with Japan, and he said that we've had talks with North Korea, high-level talks have been taking place with the North Koreans.

00:23:20.000 Well, let's leave it a little bit short of that.

00:23:22.000 But we have had talks at the highest level.

00:23:25.000 And it's going very well, but we'll see what happens.

00:23:28.000 Okay, so we'll have to see how this plays out.

00:23:30.000 A lot of people are very skeptical of the idea that any serious negotiation can take place with the North Koreans.

00:23:35.000 I'm one of those people who's skeptical, because again, I think that the North Koreans have no interest in giving up their nuclear program. 0.90

00:23:40.000 I think this is another shakedown effort.

00:23:42.000 The North Korean government has, for the last 35 years, been routinely firing missiles, doing nuclear tests, doing all this stuff in an effort to pry goodies out of the United States and out of our allies. 0.67

00:23:52.000 They did it under Clinton, they did it under Bush, they did it under Obama, and now they are doing it under President Trump.

00:23:57.000 So I think it's a little premature to celebrate the fact that we are talking with the North Koreans as some sort of grand design to change the face of North Korea. 0.97

00:24:07.000 However, it is important to note that the New York Times is reporting today that North Korea is now removing a major obstacle to U.S.

00:24:12.000 negotiations according to South Korea.

00:24:14.000 It is important to note here also, by the way, that South Korea's government is what they call a sunshine government, meaning that they have attempted to ratchet down tensions with the North Koreans at any possible cost.

00:24:24.000 According to the New York Times, Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader, has removed a key obstacle to negotiations with Washington by no longer demanding that American troops be removed from South Korea as a condition for denuclearizing his country, according to the South's President Moon Jae-in.

00:24:37.000 Okay, this is actually pretty important, because if it is true,

00:24:40.000 We're good to go!

00:25:00.000 All right.

00:25:15.000 Let's do it.

00:25:38.000 One of the serious questions is, what are they going to ask the United States to give up?

00:25:41.000 And the bigger question is, how are we going to verify that they have indeed given things up?

00:25:45.000 Remember, in 1994, the United States signed onto a North Korean nuclear framework agreement that President Clinton claimed was going to end the North Korean nuclear program.

00:25:54.000 It involved the United States giving the North Koreans a light water nuclear reactor so that they could have domestic nuclear energy.

00:26:01.000 And also involved us signing major checks to the North Koreans.

00:26:04.000 It was impossible to verify, and obviously now North Korea has nuclear weapons.

00:26:08.000 It'll be interesting to see if the North Koreans think they can play the United States this way again. 0.96

00:26:13.000 One of the major issues when it comes to negotiations with North Korea is whichever party is in power has an interest in claiming that their deal is going to work.

00:26:19.000 We see this with the Iran deal, right?

00:26:21.000 The Iran deal is a giant fail, but the Democrats still have an interest in claiming that it worked.

00:26:26.000 The Syrian deal, where we were told that Russia was going to remove all chemical weapons from Syria.

00:26:30.000 We were told this was a massive success by everyone on the left, including the New York Times, up until the point when Assad started gassing his citizens again, at which point everybody had to recognize that it was a failure.

00:26:40.000 Every administration and all of their backers have an interest in claiming that every negotiated deal that is cut is a success.

00:26:45.000 But without significant teeth to the actual verification regime, all of these promises mean very, very little.

00:26:52.000 According to Moon, the North Koreans did not present any conditions that the United States could not accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops in South Korea.

00:26:58.000 They only talk about an end to hostilities against their country and about getting security guarantees.

00:27:02.000 It's safe to say the plans for dialogue between North and the United States could proceed because that has been made clear.

00:27:07.000 So, we don't really have a clear plan from the United States as to what we are going to demand in terms of verification standards.

00:27:13.000 North Korea in 2016 demanded the U.S. 0.73

00:27:15.000 stop deploying long-range bombers, submarines, and other nuclear strike capabilities in and around South Korea.

00:27:22.000 You know, it is unclear that the United States is actually going to is actually going to do any of those things.

00:27:26.000 So we will find out what happens here.

00:27:28.000 But there's very little question that this is, you know, somewhat ad hoc, right?

00:27:32.000 I mean, this is all ad hoc foreign policy.

00:27:33.000 And again, I'm not blaming Trump for that, but it does create a certain amount of confusion in terms of world politics.

00:27:39.000 Creating another amount of confusion is the Trump administration approach to Russia.

00:27:42.000 So earlier this week, obviously, there were promises that Russian sanctions were on the way after Russia helped sponsor Syria's governmental chemical attacks on

00:27:51.000 I don't know.

00:28:05.000 There's been nobody tougher on Russia than President Donald Trump.

00:28:10.000 Between building up the military, between creating tremendous vast amounts of oil, we raised billions and billions of dollars extra in NATO.

00:28:21.000 We had a very, very severe, we were talking about it a little while, fight in Syria recently, a month ago.

00:28:30.000 Between our troops and Russian troops, and that's very sad.

00:28:33.000 OK, so this is all true.

00:28:35.000 I mean, what Trump is saying here is true.

00:28:36.000 The problem is when you have conflicting messages coming from President Trump, it obscures the fact that in some of these areas, particularly on Russia, the policy has been pretty harsh.

00:28:44.000 So it is the open chaos of the administration that's a problem for the administration, not the actual policy.

00:28:49.000 And this has long been true.

00:28:51.000 As Kanye West would put it, and did yesterday on Twitter, distraction is the opposite of vision.

00:28:56.000 To which I responded, actually, glaucoma is the opposite of vision.

00:28:58.000 But in any case, the idea that the administration is being very distracting about how it pursues its goals is certainly part of the problem.

00:29:05.000 Now, a lot of that is not on the administration.

00:29:07.000 Obviously, the media have an interest in providing distractions because the economy is doing quite well under President Trump, because there are no major foreign crises under President Trump.

00:29:15.000 They have to make it seem as though there's a greater amount of cast in the administration, even than Trump is creating.

00:29:21.000 And to that end, they've continually promoted James Comey.

00:29:24.000 And they keep pushing Comey, right?

00:29:25.000 They keep saying that James Comey, the former FBI director, has something important to tell us.

00:29:29.000 And then he gets on TV and he has nothing important to tell us.

00:29:31.000 It's a real irritant.

00:29:32.000 It's a real irritant, because every time I see him on TV, I just assume there's nothing important for him to tell us, because he doesn't have anything.

00:29:37.000 It's just the media pushing him.

00:29:39.000 So yesterday, they were pushing him again, and James Comey came out, and I'm not sure why this is any sort of news.

00:29:44.000 He says, I'm not a Republican anymore.

00:29:45.000 James Comey says he's no longer a Republican.

00:29:47.000 Yeah, shock of shocks.

00:29:49.000 In your heart of hearts, do you still consider yourself a Republican?

00:29:53.000 No.

00:29:54.000 The Republican Party has left me and many others.

00:29:59.000 I need no better evidence than their new website, which I think is Lyon Comey maybe, attacking me.

00:30:04.000 I just think they've lost their way and I can't be associated with it.

00:30:09.000 Well, I guess that's the end.

00:30:11.000 I mean, this guy is the master of loyalty.

00:30:13.000 We've been told that this is a duty loyalty guy.

00:30:15.000 I mean, if James Comey can't be a Republican, who can be a Republican?

00:30:19.000 Or maybe James Comey is angry at President Trump, doesn't like President Trump.

00:30:22.000 Listen, I didn't vote for President Trump in 2016.

00:30:24.000 I don't like a lot of things about President Trump.

00:30:27.000 I am still a Republican, and I'm not going to give up the Republican Party to people I disagree with simply because I want to take my ball and go home.

00:30:34.000 Again, they keep trying to claim that James Comey is some sort of

00:30:38.000 We're good to go.

00:31:03.000 For $99 a year, which is cheaper than your monthly subscription, you too can become a member of The Ben Shapiro Show cadre and you will enjoy every moment of it.

00:31:10.000 Plus, if you just want to listen later for free, go over to iTunes, go over to YouTube.

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00:31:22.000 So why is James Comey in the news?

00:31:24.000 The answer is that he shouldn't be.

00:31:26.000 I mean, he doesn't have anything new to say.

00:31:27.000 How do I know this?

00:31:28.000 Because even James Comey is now acknowledging that he doesn't think that Donald Trump is going to fire Robert Mueller.

00:31:33.000 Well, if he doesn't think that Trump is going to fire Robert Mueller—remember, the entire reason James Comey is in the news right now is because James Comey and his allies in the media have been suggesting that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice, that he fired James Comey in order to shut down the Russia investigation.

00:31:46.000 Well, if you were trying to shut down the Russia investigation, presumably, James Comey would be saying, well, you know, it's really knife's edge right now.

00:31:51.000 President Trump's going to fire Mueller.

00:31:52.000 It's just going to show more obstruction.

00:31:54.000 But James Comey can't even say that, because at least he's honest enough to admit this.

00:31:57.000 He says, I don't think Trump's going to fire Mueller.

00:31:59.000 OK, so then why are we talking obstruction?

00:32:01.000 If he's not firing the guy who's investigating him, that doesn't look a lot like obstruction to me.

00:32:04.000 And here's Comey admitting it.

00:32:07.000 What if he fires Mueller?

00:32:08.000 Were you going to be with him?

00:32:09.000 Oh my gosh.

00:32:10.000 These are hypothetical.

00:32:11.000 We're going to be in the streets.

00:32:12.000 Well, I don't think that's going to happen.

00:32:15.000 Oh, you don't?

00:32:16.000 I don't, because it would make no sense for a bunch of reasons.

00:32:20.000 Okay, so again, it would make no sense for a bunch of reasons.

00:32:23.000 He's admitting that he has nothing newsworthy to say here.

00:32:25.000 The only thing that's newsworthy about James Comey is that now he's in a fight with Andrew McCabe, right?

00:32:30.000 So it turns out that Andrew McCabe, who was his former deputy,

00:32:35.000 Okay, so that means that it's now a Comey-McCabe fight.

00:32:47.000 All of this is making the FBI look bad.

00:32:48.000 It's not making Trump look much worse than he already looked.

00:32:51.000 But it is amazing the media continued to trot him out, put him on major shows like The View, and the only person on The View who asks him any tough questions is, of course, Meghan McCain.

00:32:58.000 Meghan McCain did a really good job grilling him the other day.

00:33:01.000 Here she was going after James Comey.

00:33:03.000 I think that maybe J. Edgar Hoover is rolling over in his grave at saying the types of things you're saying and revealing the types of things you're revealing.

00:33:10.000 It doesn't seem like something that the director of the FBI... Why are you laughing?

00:33:15.000 Because J. Edgar, really, he's the wrong guy to bring up.

00:33:19.000 I wonder what dress he's wearing.

00:33:23.000 But he didn't write a tell-all when he left.

00:33:25.000 Did he say that he was a...

00:33:27.000 OK, so she's exactly right here.

00:33:31.000 But again, the media have an interest in promoting stories that are more scandal about Trump.

00:33:35.000 This is their thing. 1.00

00:33:36.000 It's the reason they continue to push the stupid and idiotic claims about Sean Hannity and Michael Cohen. 1.00

00:33:42.000 Remember, Sean Hannity turns out to have been a client of Michael Cohen. 1.00

00:33:44.000 Cohen was, of course, Trump's lawyer.

00:33:46.000 And the media are making this into a major issue, even though it's not a major issue. 1.00

00:33:49.000 Andrew McCarthy over at National Review has a long piece today about why it's idiotic 0.89

00:33:53.000 That Hannity's name was even revealed in open court. 0.85

00:33:55.000 Like, what exactly does Sean Hannity have to do with anything?

00:33:58.000 And yet the media have been running with this story as though it's a major story because distraction is the name of the game.

00:34:02.000 It's so funny.

00:34:03.000 The media accused Donald Trump of distracting with one hand, you know, put the shiny object over here, and then pursuing policies they don't like over here.

00:34:10.000 Well, there's one problem.

00:34:12.000 That's exactly what the media are doing.

00:34:13.000 Right now we're pursuing a nuclear deal with the North Koreans.

00:34:17.000 Right now we are pushing

00:34:19.000 On the economy.

00:34:20.000 Right now we are discussing very controversial measures with regard to Syria and trade.

00:34:25.000 And yet all of our focus is going into James Comey and Michael Cohen.

00:34:29.000 And look how the media are just out of their minds and excited and just jazzed about the Sean Hannity news, which is a big nothing burger.

00:34:35.000 It's a giant nothing burger that Sean Hannity used Michael Cohen as his lawyer or didn't use Michael Cohen as his lawyer.

00:34:41.000 Who cares?

00:34:42.000 Who cares?

00:34:43.000 I mean, Michael Cohen's in legal jeopardy no matter what here.

00:34:46.000 So I don't know what Sean Hannity has to do with anything, but it doesn't matter.

00:34:48.000 The media are going to, particularly CNN and MSNBC, of course, are going to use this as an opportunity to club Fox News.

00:34:53.000 Here's Anderson Cooper doing just that.

00:34:55.000 In the two days that have elapsed since the president's lawyer, Michael Cohen, was forced to reveal in court that the mystery client he tried to keep secret was, in fact, Sean Hannity, the consequences have been swift.

00:35:04.000 Hannity's employer, Fox News, did what any respectable news organization would do when faced with the knowledge that one of its anchors had gone on the air time after time after time to breathlessly report on someone without disclosing his own personal connection to the story.

00:35:16.000 I'm kidding.

00:35:17.000 They don't care.

00:35:18.000 They don't care.

00:35:41.000 Here's where I think it's dangerous.

00:35:42.000 The Nunes memo was a huge ratings boon for Fox.

00:35:45.000 What Donald Trump ended up doing to Christopher Wray, his hand-picked director of the FBI, was, among disgraces, the most disgraceful thing he has done.

00:35:53.000 Correct.

00:35:54.000 Christopher Wray went to Paul Ryan and said, please, for the love of God, don't release the Nunes memo.

00:35:58.000 It's incomplete.

00:35:59.000 It's inaccurate.

00:36:00.000 It brings into question one of the most sacred processes we have, the secret FISA court.

00:36:04.000 And this is why I think we get this wrong.

00:36:06.000 Fox isn't state-run media.

00:36:08.000 The state is run by Fox.

00:36:09.000 Sean Hannity needed that story, and I think he ran the president like an asset, the way people are wondering if the Russians are running the president.

00:36:15.000 Yes, Sean Hannity is running President Trump as an asset.

00:36:18.000 Yeah, this is the real news.

00:36:19.000 Thank you for your news coverage, guys.

00:36:20.000 And then we're supposed to pretend that this is news coverage? 0.82

00:36:22.000 Just ridiculous.

00:36:24.000 Okay, so, meanwhile, is any of this having any impact on the polls?

00:36:27.000 Well, the

00:36:28.000 Evidence tends to show no.

00:36:30.000 So the polls are not as good for Democrats as you would assume they would be.

00:36:33.000 So right now, the smart money is on Democrats still taking the House.

00:36:37.000 But there's a series of new polls that don't seem to be going all that well for Democrats.

00:36:42.000 So according to Julie Kelly over at The Federalist,

00:36:44.000 We're good to go.

00:37:03.000 Thanks to Trump, even independent voters believe Democrats are using the children of illegal immigrants for political purposes rather than legitimately protecting their welfare.

00:37:10.000 I think that might be too pro-Trump point for me, but let's look at the polls.

00:37:13.000 In a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Monday, voter preference in the November election chose a four-point lead for Democrats.

00:37:20.000 47% to 43% among registered voters.

00:37:22.000 That's a drastic drop from a 13-point advantage Democrats had blown out at the end of last year.

00:37:26.000 There is no enthusiasm gap for Democrats.

00:37:29.000 Republicans are now more motivated to vote than Democrats in November.

00:37:32.000 86% of Republicans say they're absolutely or certain to vote this fall, compared to 81% of Democrats.

00:37:37.000 Democrats only hold a six-point lead among independents and among the 18 to 39 voters, so that poll is not particularly good.

00:37:44.000 An NBC News Wall Street Journal poll indicates waning support for Democrats as well.

00:37:48.000 The poll showed a big drop in the percentage of voters who want Democrats to win in order to keep tabs on Trump and the GOP.

00:37:53.000 In October 2017, that number was 46%.

00:37:54.000 Today, it's only 40%.

00:38:06.000 Are all the polls good for Republicans?

00:38:08.000 No, there's a very bad poll today for Ted Cruz.

00:38:11.000 Senator Cruz, who you would think would cruise to re-election, no pun intended, in Texas, is apparently not, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.

00:38:19.000 That poll shows that Cruz and Beto O'Rourke, who's a representative from Texas Democrat, it's a very competitive race now.

00:38:26.000 They're saying that 47% of registered voters in Texas support Cruz, 44% back O'Rourke.

00:38:30.000 That's a 3.6% margin of error for the poll.

00:38:34.000 And President Trump was apparently underwater in Texas with 52% of respondents disapproving of him and 43% approving of his job performance.

00:38:41.000 Cruz's favorability rating shows a pretty polarized response.

00:38:45.000 46% of Texans have a favorable view of the senator.

00:38:48.000 44% have an unfavorable view.

00:38:49.000 Cruz has been trying to fight the perception that he is either anti-Trump or pro-Trump from two various sides, right?

00:38:56.000 The people who are pro-Trump claim that Cruz can never be forgiven for the fact that during the RNC in 2016, he didn't overtly endorse President Trump.

00:39:03.000 And people who are anti-Trump claim that Ted Cruz has bent over for President Trump in a variety of ways, including today, he apparently wrote a profile of President Trump for the Time 100, the most important 100 people in the country.

00:39:14.000 And Cruz wrote the profile of Trump, which is pretty glowing.

00:39:16.000 A lot of people are saying, well, why would he do that?

00:39:19.000 It just looks politically motivated.

00:39:21.000 In any case, the polls are too over the place to declare exactly where this is going to end up, which is, of course, why Democrats are going to try to cheat.

00:39:29.000 Or at least one Democrat is going to try and cheat.

00:39:31.000 Andrew Cuomo in New York has now declared that parolees can vote.

00:39:35.000 This is an amazing thing.

00:39:36.000 So by executive order, Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, declared that now people who are on parole can vote.

00:39:42.000 Hey, so you would ask, how can he possibly do this legally?

00:39:44.000 Wouldn't that require a law?

00:39:46.000 Well, the answer is yes, it would require a law.

00:39:48.000 And the legislature in New York, which is still run by Republicans, says, no, you're not going to pass that law.

00:39:52.000 So Andrew Cuomo just says, I'm going to make sure that 36,000 people who are on parole can now vote.

00:39:56.000 The reason for this, of course, is because he figures all of those people will vote for him in primaries and in a general election.

00:40:01.000 Now imagine if there were a dictator of another country who simply declared that all political prisoners who he was now releasing were going to be able to vote for him.

00:40:08.000 We would say, well, that seems kind of corrupt.

00:40:10.000 Andrew Cuomo went ahead and did that in New York, and no one seems to care.

00:40:14.000 No one seems to care.

00:40:15.000 So we're told the Republicans — Joe Biden, two days ago, said Republicans are trying to suppress voter turnout. 0.89

00:40:20.000 They're trying to keep black people from voting.

00:40:21.000 He has no evidence of this whatsoever. 0.97

00:40:23.000 None.

00:40:24.000 Zero.

00:40:25.000 Zip.

00:40:25.000 Zilch.

00:40:26.000 IDs for voting is not voter suppression.

00:40:28.000 When Republicans say, however, that maybe Democrats want to let illegal immigrants into the country because they want to legalize those immigrants and then have them vote for Democrats, that looks a little better. 0.99

00:40:37.000 That statement looks a little more true today, given the fact that Andrew Cuomo just unilaterally declared that 36,000 people in his state could vote who are on parole.

00:40:44.000 The whole reason, by the way, you're on parole is because we don't trust you to be fully reintegrated back into society, which is the reason we don't allow you to vote generally if you're on parole.

00:40:52.000 So, again, just corruption and corruption.

00:40:55.000 Well done, New York.

00:40:57.000 Andrew Cuomo, one of the worst governors in the country.

00:41:00.000 Okay, so time for a couple of things I like and then a couple of things that I hate.

00:41:06.000 Things that I like today.

00:41:07.000 So I've been watching the series of The Expanse.

00:41:10.000 I've recommended the books of The Expanse before by James S. A. Corey.

00:41:13.000 I think that's his name.

00:41:14.000 But now there is a series of it on Syfy, and the series is quite good.

00:41:18.000 It starts slow by the end of season one and the beginning of season two.

00:41:22.000 It gets really good.

00:41:23.000 It is pretty significantly different from the books, which I've found interesting.

00:41:26.000 I think it's better than the books in a variety of ways.

00:41:28.000 The plotting on TV generally is better than the plotting in books because you can waste a lot of time in books that you can't waste on TV.

00:41:34.000 Anyway, here's a little bit of the preview for season one of The Expanse.

00:41:39.000 May I ask you something?

00:41:39.000 Do you miss Earth?

00:41:45.000 These endless blue skies.

00:41:48.000 Free air everywhere.

00:41:50.000 And open water all the way to the horizon.

00:41:54.000 When you spend your whole life living under a dome, even the idea of an ocean is almost impossible to imagine.

00:42:03.000 They are an entire culture working together to turn a lifeless rock into a garden. 1.00

00:42:10.000 We had a garden, and we paved it.

00:42:13.000 Someday, things gonna change.

00:42:16.000 OK, so the series is actually quite good.

00:42:19.000 And it is from the writers of Children of Men and Iron Man.

00:42:22.000 So it's got good credentials.

00:42:23.000 It looks really good, too.

00:42:24.000 I mean, for a cable series, it looks really tremendous.

00:42:26.000 So check out The Expanse.

00:42:27.000 You can see it, I believe, on Amazon Prime.

00:42:29.000 Amazon Prime, by the way, now has 100 million members.

00:42:31.000 Well done, Amazon Prime.

00:42:32.000 Everybody's whining about these big companies.

00:42:34.000 Amazon Prime makes my life a hell of a lot better.

00:42:36.000 It probably makes your life a hell of a lot better, too.

00:42:37.000 This is why when President Trump rips on Amazon Prime, I'm so annoyed by it.

00:42:41.000 I get any movie I want at the touch of a button.

00:42:43.000 Okay, that's amazing.

00:42:45.000 That's amazing.

00:42:46.000 I can order any product, anywhere, at any time, right?

00:42:48.000 I'm just sitting around, and I remember that I forgot to pick something up from the grocery store.

00:42:51.000 I just order it.

00:42:52.000 Amazon Prime is just unbelievable.

00:42:54.000 Love it.

00:42:54.000 Okay, other things that I like today.

00:42:57.000 So, Laura Ingraham's ratings actually spiked after all of the controversy over David Hogg.

00:43:01.000 You remember there was a ridiculous call to boycott Laura Ingraham because she tweeted out that David Hogg was whining about his college admissions, and then David Hogg said, well, let's boycott them.

00:43:09.000 So, two things.

00:43:10.000 One, David Hogg,

00:43:11.000 Now has called for a boycott of Vanguard, as in the investment fund, because they invest in a couple of gun manufacturers.

00:43:18.000 They have a six billion dollar capitalization.

00:43:21.000 Six billion.

00:43:22.000 OK, anything that you try to boycott from Vanguard is going to be a rounding error.

00:43:24.000 It's just a giant fail. 1.00

00:43:25.000 It's strategically idiotic. 0.99

00:43:27.000 But in any case, it turns out that the boycott on Ingram was also strategically foolish because all of her ratings have spiked. 0.97

00:43:33.000 So according to The Hill, in the three months before the advertiser boycott frenzy, Ingram averaged 2.5 million viewers per night, consistently winning her 10 p.m. 0.74

00:43:40.000 time slot.

00:43:41.000 Then the advertiser controversy got going, and Ingram went on what FNC was a planned vacation.

00:43:46.000 Since Ingram's return a week ago, the show's viewership has jumped to 3 million viewers per night, more than her average before the controversy erupted.

00:43:52.000 Just demonstrating once again that in the real world, when you generate controversy for a show, more people tend to watch it rather than fewer people, particularly if the controversy isn't about something supremely awful that somebody said, which was the case, obviously, with Laura Ingraham.

00:44:05.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:44:11.000 So, speaking of the Parkland Survivors, Time Magazine, again, in their 100 most important people, they have now put the Parkland Survivors, but not all of them.

00:44:18.000 Obviously, my friend Kyle Kasher, the 16-year-old student over at Parkland, he is not included in the Time 100 of important people.

00:44:24.000 It's only the ones that you've already seen.

00:44:25.000 Cameron Kasky and Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg.

00:44:27.000 Those ones are all in there.

00:44:28.000 And who wrote the profile of them?

00:44:30.000 Who else but Barack Obama.

00:44:32.000 No, I'm not kidding.

00:44:33.000 You wonder about media bias?

00:44:35.000 Having the former president of the United States write a glowing profile of a bunch of 17-year-olds because he agrees with their agenda, that might be a little bit of media bias.

00:44:42.000 I remember that a couple of years ago, I think it was Malala Yousafzai, whose profile was written by Hillary Clinton.

00:44:47.000 Time magazine is doing that to promote democratic policies and democratic politicians.

00:44:51.000 Malala Yousafzai is an amazing person.

00:44:52.000 I have no idea why Hillary Clinton should have been writing her profile. 1.00

00:44:56.000 Another thing that's kind of ridiculous is that apparently David and Lauren Hogg, the sister and brother, they've now signed a book deal with Random House, and that book is going to be called Hashtag Never Again.

00:45:06.000 A New Generation Draws the Line, talking about all the things that they've been attempting to do.

00:45:10.000 Finally, they have a book deal, right?

00:45:11.000 I mean, that's good for them.

00:45:12.000 They want to write a book.

00:45:13.000 That's fine.

00:45:14.000 They say they're going to donate some of the proceeds to charity.

00:45:16.000 Good for them.

00:45:17.000 My problem is the title of the book.

00:45:18.000 OK, never again is about the Holocaust.

00:45:21.000 OK, the phrase never again came about after the murder of six million Jews systematically by government.

00:45:27.000 OK, the idea that you're going to equate an evil shooter who killed 17 people

00:45:32.000 And the crisis that that presents for American society, more importantly, that that crisis is going to be equated with the Holocaust, is just insipid.

00:45:39.000 It's just insipid.

00:45:40.000 And the fact that nobody over at Random House thought, hey, maybe we shouldn't compare this to the Holocaust, is really quite absurd.

00:45:46.000 It's really quite absurd on every level.

00:45:49.000 One final thing that I hate.

00:45:50.000 So apparently, there's a new document that's been brought to light according to Breitbart by James Damore's class action lawsuit.

00:45:56.000 James Damore, you'll recall, he's been on the program.

00:45:59.000 He was the guy who was fired from Google for putting out a memo trying to explain a couple of reasons why there may be fewer women than male engineers over at Google.

00:46:07.000 Apparently, there's a document that was brought to light that was drafted by the company's HR department instructing managers of the company on how to be inclusive, and it cautioned managers against rewarding employees for traits, quote, valued by the U.S.

00:46:19.000 white male dominant culture.

00:46:20.000 Okay, what exactly were they supposed to be worried about?

00:46:23.000 Apparently, they were supposed to be worried about meritocracy, winning, avoiding conflict, a belief in objectivity, a colorblind racial frame, urgency, numbers driven, and perfectionism.

00:46:33.000 Right.

00:46:34.000 These are these are the values that are valued by white male dominant culture, because that's just terrible.

00:46:38.000 How could we?

00:46:39.000 I mean, just terrible.

00:46:40.000 But here's what we really need to do.

00:46:41.000 We need to listen, raise up voices, identify multiple viable paths.

00:46:45.000 Everything's a work in progress.

00:46:47.000 Sustainability.

00:46:48.000 Okay, if you run a company on the basis of the non-apparently white male dominant cultural features, your company's gonna fail. 0.58

00:46:55.000 If you're not running a company based on a meritocracy, winning, avoiding conflict, a belief in objectivity, you're going to fail. 0.98

00:47:02.000 Your company is going to suck.

00:47:04.000 And if Google actually ran on the principles it says it runs on, rather than the principles it says it hates, then Google would be bankrupt as well. 0.99

00:47:10.000 But it just goes to show how much social justice narratives now come to dominate the way that so many of these major companies run their business.

00:47:18.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest.

00:47:20.000 I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - April 19, 2018

Starbucks Now | Ep. 521

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