The Ben Shapiro Show - The Blindness Of The Pro-Abortion Media | Ep. 1519

00:00:00.000 The Washington Post accidentally promotes a pro-life message in an article meant to rip Texas's anti-abortion law.

00:00:05.000 The Navy pushes alternative pronouns.

00:00:08.000 And Joe Biden gets ticked when asked about the Joe session.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:11.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

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00:00:23.000 Slash, Ben, we'll get to all the news in just a moment.

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00:01:30.000 Well, it is always amazing when the left just can't hear itself.

00:01:34.000 This happens a lot in politics.

00:01:35.000 It's not just a left-wing problem.

00:01:36.000 It's also a right-wing problem.

00:01:37.000 Very often people in politics will say a thing and it's as though the words that come out of their face hole does not reach their ear holes.

00:01:44.000 And when they do that, it's always very telling because you can see that if they had just an ounce of understanding, if they had an ounce of introspection, they would understand that their positions are just not correct, but they don't. And so instead, they end up accidentally promoting a cause that they actually virulently oppose. A great case in point of this is the Washington Post today. So the Washington Post is a wildly pro-abortion newspaper. This is a paper that spends its days trying to tear into any state that has

00:02:12.000 the temerity to try to ban abortion.

00:02:15.000 It suggests that pro-choice positions are pro-woman positions, that there is nothing wrong at all, There's an article in the Washington Post today that I really think is just a perfect, wonderful example of how people can't hear themselves when they talk about politics.

00:02:28.000 The article is titled, This Texas Teen Wanted an Abortion. 0.81

00:02:31.000 She now has twins.

00:02:33.000 The article is meant to be a rip on Texas's anti-abortion law, which created this kind of strange and interesting legal workaround whereby they didn't actually make abortion illegal.

00:02:43.000 They just said that you could sue anybody.

00:02:44.000 A third party could sue anybody who is participating in an abortion other than the woman's. 0.59

00:02:49.000 You could sue the doctor who is participating in an abortion.

00:02:52.000 And this didn't create a state cause of action.

00:02:54.000 So that meant that it wasn't a law that could be struck down by the Supreme Court, at least not temporarily.

00:02:59.000 This was the most effective anti-abortion law in America prior to whatever the Supreme Court is about to do with Roe versus Wade.

00:03:05.000 So again, this article is by a person named Carolyn Kitchener, and it's called, This Texas teen wanted an abortion.

00:03:10.000 Now, right off the bat, right off the bat, The article is doing the reverse of what it wants to do.

00:03:10.000 She now has twins.

00:03:16.000 It wants to suggest that this woman is somehow a victim.

00:03:20.000 But the problem is, the minute you say that she actually had the babies, the babies now exist in the mind of the reader.

00:03:25.000 And so that is going to necessarily force you to ask the question, would it have been better if those babies had been killed? 0.80

00:03:30.000 As soon as the babies exist as an object for you to actually think about, The argument is now over because the entire pro-abortion argument revolves around the idea that we have to remain ignorant.

00:03:42.000 We have to have sort of a Rawlsian veil of ignorance placed over our eyes in which we pretend that babies have no interest in life prior to when we pay attention to them.

00:03:51.000 At the minute that we take off our sunglasses, we go, oh look, a baby.

00:03:54.000 Then all of a sudden the baby has an interest in life.

00:03:56.000 But the minute that you actually note that there is a baby there, Now, all of a sudden, all of your petty concerns seem rather secondary, don't they?

00:04:02.000 So right there in the title, this Texas teen wanted an abortion.

00:04:04.000 She now has twins.

00:04:05.000 The conclusion of that statement, she now has twins, completely invalidates everything that came before that.

00:04:10.000 Because the twins exist.

00:04:11.000 And here's the thing.

00:04:12.000 They always existed from the point of conception.

00:04:15.000 These were human lives with potential.

00:04:17.000 And that's the entire theme of the article.

00:04:19.000 The entire theme of the article is supposed to be about how terrible this woman's life is. 0.97

00:04:22.000 But it cannot outweigh the simple fact that there are now living human baby girl twins Who are alive because this woman was not able to kill her babies.

00:04:30.000 So here's the article, and I think it really is telling.

00:04:33.000 Brooke Alexander turned off her breast pump at 6.04 p.m. 0.76

00:04:35.000 and brought two fresh bottles of milk over to the bed, where her three-month-old twins lay flat on their backs, red-faced and crying.

00:04:40.000 Running on four hours of sleep, the 18-year-old tried to feed both babies at once, holding Kendall in her arms while she tried to get Olivia to feed herself.

00:04:46.000 Her bottle propped up by a pillow, but the bottle kept slipping and the baby kept wailing.

00:04:50.000 And Brooke's boyfriend, Billy High, wouldn't be home for another five hours.

00:04:53.000 Please, fussy girl, Brooke whispered. 0.99

00:04:55.000 She peeked outside the room, just big enough for a full-size mattress, and realized she'd barely seen the sun all day.

00:05:00.000 The windows were covered by blankets, pinned up with thumbtacks to keep the room cool.

00:05:03.000 Brooke rarely ventured into the rest of the house.

00:05:05.000 Billy's dad had taken them in when her mom kicked them out, and she didn't want to get in his way.

00:05:10.000 The hours without Billy were always the hardest.

00:05:12.000 She knew he had to go, as they relied entirely on the $9.75 an hour he made working the line at Freebird's World Burrito.

00:05:17.000 But she tortured herself, imagining all the girls he might be meeting.

00:05:20.000 And she wished she had somewhere to go to.

00:05:22.000 Okay, so, again, this is supposed to be, she's so miserable, things are, it's so terrible. 0.99

00:05:26.000 Man, wouldn't she be living the free and happy life if she had just been able to kill these babies in the womb? 1.00

00:05:31.000 And as we'll see in this article, this perspective completely falls apart on contact with reality.

00:05:36.000 Brooke found out she was pregnant late on the night of August 29th, two days before the Texas Heartbeat Act banned abortions once an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity around six weeks of pregnancy.

00:05:45.000 It was the most restrictive abortion law to take effect in the United States in nearly 50 years.

00:05:48.000 For many Texans who have needed abortions since September, the law has been a major inconvenience, forcing them to drive hundreds of miles and pay hundreds of dollars for a legal procedure they once could have had at home.

00:05:58.000 But not everyone has been able to leave the state.

00:06:00.000 Some people couldn't take time off from work or afford gas, while others faced with a long journey decided to stay pregnant. 1.00

00:06:04.000 Nearly 10 months into the Texas law, they've started having the babies they never planned to carry to term.

00:06:09.000 Texas offers a glimpse of what much of the country would face if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade this summer, as has been widely expected since a leaked draft opinion circulated last month.

00:06:17.000 I do love the way that the Washington Post is pitching this thing, right?

00:06:19.000 You can see they're setting this up to be an anti-life article.

00:06:21.000 It's going to be a pro-abortion article.

00:06:22.000 together, creating vast abortion deserts that will push many into parenthood.

00:06:26.000 Now, I do love the way that the Washington Post is pitching this thing, right?

00:06:29.000 You can see they're setting this up to be an anti-life article.

00:06:33.000 It's going to be a pro-abortion article.

00:06:35.000 You can see it, right?

00:06:36.000 It's going to be an abortion desert. 1.00

00:06:38.000 Now, you might say, you might call that a pro-life garden where babies are actually born.

00:06:41.000 But no, it's an abortion desert, right, where no person can obtain abortion.

00:06:45.000 People will be pushed into parenthood.

00:06:46.000 Now, you might be saying to yourself, wait a second, aren't the vast majority of people who are going to bear their babies to turn?

00:06:56.000 Yes, you would be correct.

00:07:00.000 But again, the Washington Post is setting up this article to be a rebuttal to all pro-life positions.

00:07:04.000 And as we'll see, it completely fails on all fronts.

00:07:07.000 Sometimes Brooke imagined her life if she hadn't got pregnant and if Texas hadn't banned abortion just days after she decided she wanted one. 0.80

00:07:07.000 Here we go. 0.80

00:07:13.000 She would have been in school, rushing from class to her shift at Texas Roadhouse, eyes on a real estate license that would finally get her out She pictured an apartment in Austin and enough money for a trip to Hawaii, where she would swim with dolphins in water so clear she could see her toes.

00:07:27.000 Okay, so, now you've got her priorities, right?

00:07:29.000 These would have been her alternative priorities if she hadn't actually had her children and then brought them to birth and raised them. 1.00

00:07:37.000 So, on the one hand, two living babies.

00:07:40.000 On the other, trip to Hawaii, hanging with the dolphins.

00:07:43.000 You can see that this is starting to fall apart real quickly for the Washington Post.

00:07:47.000 When both babies finally started eating, Brooke took out her phone and restarted the timer that had been running almost continuously since the day they were born.

00:07:53.000 She had two and a half hours until they'd have to eat again.

00:07:55.000 Now, I love how the Washington Post treats, like, the basics of parenthood as though this is impossible.

00:08:00.000 So, for literally tens of thousands of years, human beings have been doing this sort of stuff.

00:08:05.000 For all of my babies, we have three, With the help of God, we'll have more.

00:08:10.000 With all of our babies, we have to do this sort of stuff.

00:08:12.000 So treating everyday acts of parenting as though this is a massively undoable burden...

00:08:18.000 This can only be written by a media reporter living in one of the blue cities where abortions are more common than births.

00:08:24.000 Because for the rest of the world, this is just what we call living a normal life with small children.

00:08:29.000 This is what it's like to raise a baby.

00:08:30.000 Brooke and Billy first met at the downtown skate park with a big group of friends one clear night in May of last year.

00:08:35.000 They didn't talk that first day, but Brooke noticed how effortlessly Billy dropped into the quarter pipe the way his blonde hair flipped out from underneath his red beanie.

00:08:41.000 She followed him on Instagram.

00:08:42.000 Her stomach did a little dance when she saw that he followed her back.

00:08:45.000 Soon they were spending almost every day together, throwing themselves into the Gulf of Mexico waves on Padre Island, watching the sun set over the pier.

00:08:51.000 At the skate park, he'd help her do the tricks she'd been scared to try alone.

00:08:55.000 Pinky promised me he'll do it, he'd say, all blue eyes and dimples as she peeked over the edge of the ramp. 0.97

00:08:59.000 Once he hooked her little finger, there was no backing down.

00:09:01.000 Billie was different from the other guys Brooke knew.

00:09:03.000 He held her hand in public and introduced her to her dad.

00:09:05.000 When she took him to the mall, he grinned each time she stepped out of the dressing room, telling her how good she looked in each new crop top she tried on.

00:09:11.000 He made her feel pretty.

00:09:12.000 I wasn't used to feeling that, Brooke said.

00:09:13.000 Brooke took the pregnancy test at 11 o'clock on a hot night at the tail end of the summer.

00:09:17.000 When the two pink lines appeared, she looked over at Billy, then slid onto the bathroom floor, finally connecting the signs she'd ignored for weeks.

00:09:23.000 The nausea she'd chalk up to food poisoning.

00:09:25.000 The two missed periods.

00:09:26.000 That moment a few weeks back when Billy put a hand on her stomach and asked if she was sure she wasn't pregnant.

00:09:30.000 So the two missed periods would have been the dead giveaway.

00:09:33.000 Right there.

00:09:34.000 Leaving Billie in her bedroom with the pregnancy test, Brooke grabbed her keys and drove to her best friend's house, where they sat on the bed and examined her options.

00:09:40.000 She could always get an abortion, she told him. 0.88

00:09:42.000 Then he reminded her of something she vaguely remembered seeing on Twitter.

00:09:45.000 A new law was scheduled to take effect September 1.

00:09:47.000 Brooke had 48 hours.

00:09:48.000 The abortion clinic in South Texas, two and a half hours from Corpus Christi, had no open slots the next two days, with patients across the state racing to get into clinics before the law came down.

00:09:56.000 So first of all, there's something appropriately dystopian about the idea that there is one place where you can still kill your baby in the nearby area, and it's just swamps.

00:10:04.000 Like, people are just, we gotta kill our baby today. 0.93

00:10:06.000 Like, now's the day.

00:10:07.000 When Brooke called, the woman on the end of the line offered the names and addresses of clinics in New Mexico a 13-hour drive from Corpus Christi.

00:10:13.000 In the meantime, the woman said, Brooke could get an ultrasound somewhere nearby. 0.98

00:10:16.000 If she was under six weeks, they could still see her.

00:10:18.000 We're going to see how far along it is, Brooke texted her dad, Jeremy Alexander, later that night.

00:10:22.000 See if abortion is an option.

00:10:23.000 What's the cutoff date, he asked.

00:10:24.000 They just passed a law today, she responded in the early hours of September 1st, referring to the ban that had just taken effect.

00:10:29.000 What the effing odds?

00:10:30.000 I believe it's six weeks.

00:10:33.000 Fingers crossed, four question marks, her dad said. 0.99

00:10:36.000 But first of all, there's something deeply wrong with the, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the baby is small enough that you can still kill it.

00:10:43.000 This article is not going in the way the Washington Post wants it to go and it gets worse.

00:10:46.000 Brooke found a place that would perform an ultrasound on short notice and scheduled an appointment for 9am.

00:10:51.000 The Washington Post continues, and I'm reading this at length because again, I think that it's important to notice that when the euphemisms slip away with regard to abortion, once the babies actually come into the picture, the pro-choice position completely collapses.

00:11:03.000 It just disintegrates.

00:11:05.000 The Washington Post writes, Whenever a new client walks into the pregnancy center of the Coastal Bend, they're asked to fill out a form.

00:11:11.000 After all the usual questions of name, date of birth, marital status comes the one that most interests the staff.

00:11:15.000 If you are pregnant, what are your intentions?

00:11:17.000 From there, the team sorts each client into one of three groups.

00:11:20.000 If they're planning to have the baby, LTC, likely to carry.

00:11:23.000 If they're on the fence, AV, abortion vulnerable.

00:11:25.000 If they're planning to get an abortion, AM, abortion minded. 1.00

00:11:28.000 The pregnancy center of the Coastal Bend, which advertises itself as the number one source of abortion information in the region, is one of thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States, anti-abortion organizations that are often religiously affiliated.

00:11:40.000 When Brooke showed up with her mom for her appointment, she had no idea she'd walked into a facility designed to dissuade people from getting abortions. 0.90

00:11:45.000 Oh, these are the bad guys in the piece.

00:11:47.000 As we will see, they're not the bad guys.

00:11:49.000 The entire moral narrative that the Washington Post is telling right here, it does not hold.

00:11:54.000 Brooke also didn't know how much significance her form held for the staff.

00:11:57.000 By signaling she wanted an abortion, she became their first AM of the Texas Heartbeat Act. 0.64

00:12:01.000 Brooke heard about the center from her mom's friend, who knew she needed an ultrasound.

00:12:05.000 This place offered them free.

00:12:06.000 Brooke felt a sense of calm, sitting in the waiting room lulled by its decorative throw pillows and soft watercolors of ocean scenes.

00:12:11.000 But behind the scenes lurked the lady who wants her to have her baby. 1.00

00:12:14.000 Oh no.

00:12:16.000 The advocate assigned to her case, Angie Arnholdt, had been counseling abortion-minded clients at the pregnancy center for a year.

00:12:21.000 While many of the center volunteers signed up only to talk to LTCs to have happy conversations about the babies their clients couldn't wait to have, Arnholdt, a 61-year-old who wears a gold cross around her neck, fell called to do what she could to help women make a good decision, she later told the Washington Post.

00:12:38.000 Back in the consultation room, Brooke told Arnholdt all the reasons she wanted to get an abortion. 0.97

00:12:43.000 She had just enrolled in real estate classes at community college, which would be her first time back in a classroom since she dropped out of high school three years earlier at 15.

00:12:51.000 She and Billy had been dating only three months.

00:12:52.000 OK, so again, the priorities we now have from Brooke, if she gets the abortion.

00:12:57.000 I've dropped out of high school at 15.

00:12:58.000 I'm going to go back and take a real estate class at the community college.

00:13:02.000 Also, maybe eventually I'll be able to save up enough money so I can swim with the dolphins in Hawaii.

00:13:06.000 On the other end of this, you have two innocent human babies.

00:13:11.000 I'm failing to see the moral balance here.

00:13:14.000 Sitting across from Brooke and her mom, Arnholdt opened a woman's right to know, an anti-abortion booklet distributed by the state of Texas.

00:13:19.000 Flipping to a page titled abortion risks, the first risk listed was death.

00:13:23.000 As Brooke listened to Arnholdt's warnings of depression, nausea, cramping, breast cancer, and infertility, she tried to stay calm, reminding herself women get abortions all the time.

00:13:29.000 Still, Brooke couldn't help fixating on some of the words Arnholdt used.

00:13:32.000 Vacuum suction, heavy bleeding, punctured uterus.

00:13:35.000 And then the Washington Post adds, serious complications from abortion are rare, etc, etc, etc.

00:13:39.000 They never point out that the vast majority of women in the United States who give birth and go all the way through the process of pregnancy, they have a recovery period and then they're fine.

00:13:47.000 Starting to panic, Brooke looked over at her mom. 0.99

00:13:50.000 When she found out Brooke was pregnant, Terry Thomas told her daughter to get an abortion. 1.00

00:13:53.000 While she was a devout Christian going to church a few times a week and twice on Sundays, she had her own views on this particular issue.

00:13:58.000 Well, I mean, I feel like there's some play in the joints here.

00:14:03.000 Thomas had her first kid at 20, she said, just as she was transferring out of community college with hopes of starting law school.

00:14:08.000 If the timing had been different, she said, she might have been a prosecutor.

00:14:10.000 Instead, she hopped from one retail job to another, bath and body works to Walgreens to Home Depot.

00:14:15.000 Growing up, Brooke said, she bounced back and forth between her mom's house and her dad's, depending on who was the more stable parent.

00:14:20.000 At the time, her happiest years as a kid were spent with her dad on a tree-lined street with a ping pong table in the garage and a trampoline in the backyard.

00:14:26.000 But then Brooke's dad started using cocaine.

00:14:29.000 Well, Alexander had been sober for a few years now.

00:14:31.000 Back then, he couldn't kick the habit.

00:14:32.000 Around the time he stopped paying all the rent and sewage started backing up in the toilets, Brooke moved back in with her mom.

00:14:36.000 With her mom, Brooke always felt like she was tiptoeing.

00:14:39.000 If Brooke forgot to turn off the lights or do the dishes, Thomas would start yelling.

00:14:42.000 Thomas felt she had every right to respond that way because she was a hen in her hen house.

00:14:46.000 Arnholdt, okay, so again, now we're not just making the Washington Post the case for one generation of abortion, we're making the case for two generations of abortion.

00:14:53.000 Apparently, Brooke should have not been born, because then mom might have been a prosecutor, and dad, who apparently turned into a cocaine addict, what, would not have been a cocaine addict or something?

00:15:02.000 Of course, Brooke would then not exist, and none of this would be a moral issue at all.

00:15:07.000 Arnold ushered Brooke into the ultrasound room, where Brooke undressed from the waist down and laid back on an examination table, looking up at a large flat-screen TV.

00:15:14.000 As the ultrasound technician pressed the probe into her stomach slathered with gel, Brooke willed the screen to show a fetus without a heartbeat.

00:15:20.000 The technician gasped.

00:15:21.000 It was twins, and they were 12 weeks along.

00:15:24.000 We'll get some more on this incredible Washington Post article in just one minute.

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00:16:41.000 Okay, so, this is where the article takes a wild left turn.

00:16:44.000 Or should I say a wild right turn?

00:16:46.000 Because now, the babies are real.

00:16:48.000 And once the babies are real to people, it is impossible to argue for their killing.

00:16:52.000 And now it becomes impossible to argue in favor of their killing.

00:16:56.000 So, again, the notion that all of this is a matter of moral apathy lasts precisely as long as you pretend that the baby doesn't exist.

00:17:04.000 But in the article, once the baby exists, now the Washington Post is in trouble because they can't talk their way out of this one.

00:17:09.000 And by the way, by the time you're talking about a baby that is 12 weeks old, you're talking about skin and fingernails beginning to grow, you're talking about the changes triggered by hormones to make the external sex organs appear, not sex assigned at birth, like actual biological sex, the kidneys are making urine, like this is a very mature baby at 12 weeks along.

00:17:28.000 Are you sure, Brooke said?

00:17:29.000 Oh my god, oh my god.

00:17:30.000 Thomas recalled saying as she jumped up and down, this is a miracle from the Lord!

00:17:34.000 We are having these babies!

00:17:36.000 Which is the normal human reaction to, oh my god, you have twins and they are 12 weeks old and they are healthy and they are growing inside you.

00:17:42.000 Brooke felt like she was floating above herself, watching the scene blow.

00:17:44.000 Her mom was calling the twins my babies, promising Brooke she would take care of everything as the ultrasound technician told her how much she loved being a twin.

00:17:51.000 If she really tried, Brooke thought she could make it to New Mexico.

00:17:53.000 Her older brother would probably lend her the money to get there.

00:17:55.000 But she couldn't stop staring at the pulsing yellow line on the ultrasound screen.

00:17:59.000 She wondered if her babies had heartbeats, as these women said they did, was aborting them murder?

00:18:05.000 These are the questions that become unavoidable the minute you get past the euphemisms, and the Washington Post made the mistake.

00:18:10.000 They got past the euphemisms.

00:18:11.000 It's a problem.

00:18:12.000 Eventually, Arnholdt turned to Brooke and asked whether she'd be keeping them, and Brooke heard herself saying yes.

00:18:18.000 And then it talks about the pregnancy and how she and her boyfriend formed a plan in which she would join the Air Force as soon as he graduated from high school.

00:18:26.000 Apparently this would be bad, right?

00:18:28.000 In the Washington Post view, it would be very bad if he joined the Air Force.

00:18:30.000 By the way, his actual alternative to joining the Air Force was apparently that he was going to hang out at the skate park.

00:18:35.000 I kid you not.

00:18:36.000 So, in other words, these babies didn't just get to live, they also created a plan whereby mommy marries daddy, daddy drops being a bum at the skate park and actually goes to the Air Force and becomes a responsible human being, and mommy ends up married with kids.

00:18:52.000 I fail to see how this is the horrific ending to the story that the Washington Post had sort of promised here.

00:18:59.000 This is Apparently, she drops out of real estate school.

00:19:04.000 But again, she dropped out of high school at 15.

00:19:06.000 So, I don't find that particular, like, to blame that on the babies alone, or blame that on the pregnancy, seems a little bit off.

00:19:15.000 But here is the conclusion of the article, because this is the part that really is amazing.

00:19:19.000 Okay, because it talks about what exactly she ended up doing.

00:19:24.000 It says, three weeks later, the baby stayed home while Brooke and Billy drove to the courthouse.

00:19:28.000 Billy was about to leave for a five-month stint in basic training and technical school.

00:19:32.000 For Brooke to qualify for military benefits, they had to get married. 1.00

00:19:35.000 Oh, no!

00:19:35.000 You mean forming a nuclear family in which dad is around to help take care of the babies?

00:19:39.000 No!

00:19:40.000 This is the worst of all possible worlds.

00:19:42.000 At 11 o'clock on a Monday morning, they walked into a courtroom with an American flag behind the bench.

00:19:46.000 Brooke in a flowery sundress, Billy in jeans.

00:19:48.000 She'd looked around for white dresses on Amazon but couldn't justify the 30 bucks. 0.98

00:19:51.000 She was terrified she'd run out of money while Billy was away.

00:19:54.000 The loneliness scared her, too.

00:19:56.000 She kept imagining the long nights alone in Billy's house, trying to calm two crying babies without him.

00:20:00.000 He wouldn't have his phone at basic training.

00:20:01.000 She would hear from him mostly through letters.

00:20:03.000 She knew she'd have to manage that little voice in the back of her head.

00:20:05.000 What if he changed his mind about their life together?

00:20:07.000 Standing with Billy in front of the Justice of the Peace, Brooke told herself that one day they'd have their love story moment.

00:20:12.000 She'd walk down the aisle in a wedding gown.

00:20:13.000 Their friends and family would cry and cheer as she and Billy publicly declared how much they meant to each other.

00:20:17.000 I, Brooke Alexander, take thee, Billy High, to be my wedded husband, she repeated.

00:20:21.000 If it wasn't for the Texas law, Brooke Knutson might not be standing here. 1.00

00:20:24.000 And this is the conclusion of the Washington Post, and the fact that the Washington Post thinks that this moral balance, what they're about to do, the balancing act they're about to do...

00:20:32.000 is even remotely close to equal on both sides demonstrates the perverse morality of the pro-abortion movement.

00:20:40.000 If it weren't for the Texas law, Brooke knew she might not be standing here.

00:20:42.000 She'd probably be studying for her next exam, while Billie mastered some new tricks on the quarter pipe. 0.92

00:20:47.000 She liked to think they'd still be together, spending their money on movie tickets and Whataburger instead of diapers and baby wipes.

00:20:53.000 Yes, a life worth envying.

00:20:55.000 She would be studying for a real estate exam and Billy would be bumming it up in the skate park.

00:21:00.000 And maybe they'd still be together and maybe not.

00:21:03.000 And they'd be going to Whataburger.

00:21:05.000 She told herself that alternate life didn't matter anymore.

00:21:08.000 Because this is true.

00:21:09.000 She had two babies she loved more than anything in the world.

00:21:11.000 I do, she said, tears in her eyes.

00:21:13.000 Brooke pulled out her phone once they finished the ceremony.

00:21:15.000 One hour, 15 minutes.

00:21:16.000 Time to grab some lunch and head home.

00:21:17.000 The babies would be hungry.

00:21:19.000 Yup.

00:21:21.000 Okay, so that is the most pro-life article in recorded memory. 0.99

00:21:25.000 And it is all courtesy to a Washington Post that somehow can't understand that the minute you make babies real in people's minds, the minute you make human life real in people's minds, all of the other concerns go away and they all look petty and stupid, by the way. 1.00

00:21:37.000 They all look dumb. 0.99

00:21:39.000 I'm sorry, the life, and it's all inherent in the photo. 0.99

00:21:42.000 Okay, the photo on that article is a photo of her with both babies in front of her. 0.55

00:21:47.000 And then we're supposed to believe that her alternative life, maybe, maybe one day she gets a real estate license, maybe she's able to see her toes in the Pacific Ocean or something. 0.73

00:21:55.000 But that outweighs the two living babies that are sitting right there in front of her.

00:22:00.000 The pro-choice movement, when faced with, you know, actual non-euphemisms, it completely falls apart.

00:22:06.000 If you want something that's not going to fall apart, I'll tell you about a t-shirt that's not going to fall apart.

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00:22:22.000 Cuts Clothing is the best.

00:22:24.000 Cuts Clothing has spent years perfecting men's t-shirts, taking the look good, feel good motto to a whole new level.

00:22:29.000 Right out of college, Cuts founder and CEO Stephen Borelli got a job at an agency with a casual dress code.

00:22:33.000 In his first week, he was told that his t-shirt was too athleisure-y.

00:22:36.000 So he searched all over for a better t-shirt.

00:22:38.000 Couldn't find one.

00:22:39.000 So he made one himself.

00:22:40.000 I love my Cuts clothing.

00:22:41.000 So they've got everything from the Henleys to the Polos to the long sleeves.

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00:23:07.000 Get 15% off your first order by going to cutsclothing.com slash ben at c-u-t-s clothing dot com slash ben cutsclothing.com slash ben.

00:23:15.000 Now, by the way, this is true for most of the principles of the hardcore social left.

00:23:20.000 When the principles of the hardcore social left meet the light of day, they are self-refuting.

00:23:25.000 This is true all over the place.

00:23:28.000 And this is true when it comes to, for example, LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, Pride Month. 0.93

00:23:34.000 All of the arguments that are made with regard to, for example, teaching this stuff to kids, they're self-refuting.

00:23:39.000 So, for example, you have a video that's been making the rounds on the internet of a teacher talking about coming out to his four- to five-year-olds.

00:23:46.000 I say his because this is a biological male.

00:23:49.000 I only use biological pronouns on this show because self-defined pronouns mean nothing.

00:23:54.000 Because self-defined words mean nothing.

00:23:56.000 You don't get to have your own English language.

00:23:58.000 That's not the way this works.

00:23:59.000 So, on TikTok, you know, courtesy of Libs of TikTok, of course, Here is a preschool teacher talking about how he came out as trans to the kids.

00:24:11.000 Because these are people seeking validation from children.

00:24:13.000 And you tell me if this is not self-refuting.

00:24:16.000 I finally decided to come out to my kids.

00:24:18.000 And my kids are older, they're four and five.

00:24:20.000 And the way that I did it is just read them a book about this teddy bear that kind of comes out as a trans girl.

00:24:27.000 And it's really nice and it's very simple.

00:24:29.000 They understood it right away.

00:24:31.000 And I think what made me cry the most was that afterwards, like, I kind of looked at them and there was just this silence in the room and I just thought like, oh my God, now they see me as a totally different person.

00:24:40.000 And before this, they loved me.

00:24:42.000 I was such a, you know, one of their favorite teachers and it felt so good to have that.

00:24:47.000 And I think that's one of the biggest fears I had is that as soon as they found out about me, they would lose all love for me.

00:24:53.000 And then one of my kids breaks the silence and she gets up and she just is like, she just hugs me.

00:24:59.000 Okay, I have a question.

00:25:01.000 Is that not self-refuting?

00:25:02.000 You have a biological male with, once again, a voice deeper than mine, talking about how he has revealed himself as a female to small children and crying over his validation at the hands of small children.

00:25:17.000 You're saying the quiet part out loud, guys, which is that this is not about the care and health of kids. 0.94

00:25:22.000 It is about you validating yourselves by going to a bunch of kids who are too ignorant to know better and confusing them about gender and sexuality. 0.91

00:25:31.000 Really, it's about you. 0.93

00:25:32.000 It's not about the kids.

00:25:34.000 And this is why one of the most Orwellian lies that we've seen when it comes to LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign ampersand tilde. 0.91

00:25:40.000 One of the great lies that we've seen is that this is about the protection of children.

00:25:43.000 It is not about the protection of children.

00:25:44.000 It's about you validating your own lifestyle in the eyes of children so that you can bring up a new generation of people who will not approvingly at whatever you decide to do.

00:25:52.000 It isn't about the kids, it's about you.

00:25:54.000 Because kids need boundaries, and they need to understand the wisdom of the ages that has been passed down about the biological difference between men and women, and about the different gender roles, yes, that are evolutionarily attendant to that biology.

00:26:07.000 Those are important things for kids to know.

00:26:09.000 And you want to obliterate all that, not because you care about the mental and physical well-being of children, but because you wish to harm those things on your own behalf.

00:26:16.000 And this is now extended all the way up into the precinct of our most cherished institutions here in the United States, which is why the Washington Free Beacon has now revealed the Navy doing full-on educational sessions in preschool style to members of the military about the use of preferred pronouns.

00:26:33.000 Now, I ask you, does this look like a military that's going to win a war?

00:26:37.000 You think the Chinese are quaking in their boots at this?

00:26:40.000 Also, what exactly is your recruitment directed at?

00:26:43.000 Seriously.

00:26:44.000 It used to be that the military recruitment efforts were directed, typically, at young militant males, who would then redirect that testosterone-laced energy into war with our enemies.

00:26:53.000 That's what most militaries are based on, not just the American military.

00:26:56.000 They're heavily male for a reason. 1.00

00:26:57.000 They're heavily young for a reason.

00:26:59.000 Young males tend to be more aggressive and violent than other forms of humanity.

00:27:03.000 And here we are trying to suggest that not only does gender not matter, we should obliterate the gender binary in favor of the military of the United States being used as a social engineering tool, which is not going to bode well for the future effectiveness of the United States military or recruitment efforts.

00:27:20.000 Let's say that you are a My name is Johnny, and I use he, him pronouns.

00:27:23.000 in patriotic young man, loves the American flag, interested in fighting for the military, which by the way has been the traditional description of recruits in the military.

00:27:31.000 You think that you're gonna go into a military that seems to prize the trans flag above the American flag?

00:27:36.000 You think that that's going to be a real priority for you?

00:27:39.000 Let's see how the recruitment efforts go over the next few years.

00:27:41.000 So here's this video from the Navy, from the Navy.

00:27:44.000 My name is Johnny and I use he, him pronouns.

00:27:48.000 Hi, and I'm Conchie and I use she, her pronouns.

00:27:50.000 And we're here to talk about pronouns.

00:27:53.000 What is a pronoun?

00:27:54.000 A pronoun is how we identify ourselves, apart from our name, and it's also how people refer to us in conversations.

00:28:01.000 Using the right pronouns is a really simple way to affirm someone's identity.

00:28:06.000 It is a signal of acceptance and respect.

00:28:09.000 If it's a signal of acceptance and respect, how do we go about creating a safe space for everybody?

00:28:16.000 I wasn't aware that the military was about creating a safe space for everybody.

00:28:19.000 I thought it was about creating an unsafe space for our enemies, mainly.

00:28:22.000 But apparently that is no longer a priority in the United States Navy.

00:28:26.000 This is madness.

00:28:28.000 I'm sorry, it's madness.

00:28:29.000 And this is not a slur on anybody who's currently serving in the military or who will serve in the military, far from it.

00:28:33.000 It's saying that when you design military policy around social engineering of far-left issues, it is self-defeating and perfectly obviously self-defeating.

00:28:41.000 You have a man here who is explaining that he is he him wearing a rainbow sweatshirt and a woman who is wearing some sort of lettering with the trans flag coloring explaining to members of the United States Navy why it is important to create a safe space for everyone in use of pronouns.

00:28:58.000 Yes, it seems like our society is in the best of hands.

00:29:02.000 Meanwhile, speaking of self-defeating, Megan Rapinoe, who has made a name for herself by being one of the most privileged people on planet Earth, namely a woman who makes her living actually playing a sport that no one watches except once every four years during the World Cup when we are forced to watch by the media, which has decided to make women's soccer the most important thing in America.

00:29:21.000 Megan Rapinoe, who also sued US soccer along with her her teammates for pay discrimination despite the fact that they voluntarily signed a contract based on certain levels of pay.

00:29:34.000 And so she came out the other day and she said, quote, I am 100% supportive of trans inclusion.

00:29:39.000 People do not know very much about it.

00:29:41.000 We're missing almost everything.

00:29:42.000 Frankly, I think what a lot of people know is versions of the rights talking points because they're very loud.

00:29:46.000 They're very consistent and they're relentless, says Megan Rapinoe.

00:29:50.000 So I have a question. 0.98

00:29:51.000 If Megan Rapinoe is so much in favor of trans inclusiveness in women's sports, why don't we just obliterate the women's category altogether and you can get your asses kicked by a bunch of under 14 boys from the Dallas Football Club? 1.00

00:30:02.000 Which is precisely what happens to the U.S. 0.98

00:30:03.000 women's soccer team.

00:30:04.000 Like, they practice with junior high boys in the women's soccer team.

00:30:08.000 That is not a slur against women playing soccer. 1.00

00:30:10.000 That is to point out that if you obliterate gender distinctions between male and female and pretend they don't matter at all, but then you reap the benefit of being a female soccer player, you don't get to have it both ways.

00:30:21.000 The culture battle in the United States right now is predicated on people pretending not to see the stuff that is directly in front of their face.

00:30:26.000 Pretending not to see the fact that, for example, a human life in the womb is a human life in the womb.

00:30:30.000 Pretending not to see that males and females are different.

00:30:33.000 Pretending not to see that when adults are preying on four- and five-year-old children to validate their own feelings of sexual identity, that that is a problem.

00:30:40.000 Refusing to see that when the military makes its central core value, quote-unquote celebration and acceptance of identity, that cuts directly against what a military is supposed to be, namely a giant break things machine.

00:30:52.000 And then it turns out that when we see the actual evidence of that in front of our eyes, there's a pretty significant backlash.

00:30:59.000 And the left can't stop pushing it.

00:31:00.000 Even the areas of unity, the left can't stop it.

00:31:00.000 They can't.

00:31:03.000 So, for example, one area where there should be unity, right, where the left and the right should be able to come together, is on the celebration of Juneteenth.

00:31:10.000 I'm not against the celebration of Juneteenth.

00:31:11.000 I'm fine with Juneteenth.

00:31:12.000 I think Juneteenth is good.

00:31:13.000 I think a national holiday in the United States celebrating the end of slavery is a good thing.

00:31:17.000 And using Juneteenth, which was a holiday that predominantly was celebrated in Texas when Texas slaves found out that they were free, slavery didn't officially end until the passage The 13th Amendment.

00:31:30.000 And so there were still a couple of states, I believe it was Kansas and New Jersey, actually, where slavery was still legal until like December of 1865.

00:31:36.000 But the Juneteenth celebrations, you know, latching onto the Juneteenth celebrations that already existed in parts of America and using that as the date to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States, one of the great signal, wonderful moments in American history.

00:31:50.000 That's a that's a purely good thing.

00:31:51.000 I don't have any problem with that at all, because the United States is a country Where hundreds of thousands of white people died in order to free black slaves.

00:31:59.000 We should remember that.

00:32:01.000 That is an important thing.

00:32:03.000 Okay, but the left can't just stop there.

00:32:05.000 They can't just say, okay, we all agree, slavery was bad, wonderful thing, the United States ended it. 0.94

00:32:08.000 Instead, they've decided to make Juneteenth and its celebration a referendum on the evils of America, which is ridiculous.

00:32:14.000 It should be about the goodness of America.

00:32:17.000 It should be about the fulfillment of the promise of the 4th of July, the extension of that to all citizens, right?

00:32:21.000 That's what Frederick Douglass would have said when he spoke about why 4th of July, he didn't feel perfectly included in that before the freeing of the slaves.

00:32:29.000 What he was saying is that the promises of the 4th of July are universal, and we need to fulfill those.

00:32:33.000 But the left can't help themselves, and so everything turns into a culture war battle, and they sometimes just let it slip, and it's really ugly.

00:32:39.000 So, for example, you have Sarah Haines on ABC saying that Juneteenth is a more authentic celebration of American freedom than the 4th of July.

00:32:46.000 Now, let's be real about this.

00:32:47.000 Until five years ago, very few people in the United States, outside of the black community and in certain states that celebrated Juneteenth, had ever heard of Juneteenth.

00:32:55.000 And the reason for that is because most people believed that the Civil War innately meant that now 4th of July included black Americans.

00:33:02.000 Because once you're an American citizen, you celebrate the 4th of July.

00:33:05.000 That was the basic idea.

00:33:05.000 You are now integrated into the American bargain.

00:33:08.000 So the notion that Juneteenth overcomes the 4th of July rather than adumbrating the 4th of July is incorrect.

00:33:12.000 But the left has to posit these two in direct opposition to one another in order to maintain that the American flag is still bad.

00:33:18.000 So here is Sarah Haines on The View making this case.

00:33:21.000 Ever since I learned about Juneteenth, which wasn't as young as you probably did or anyone else, I learned a few years ago, and I was like, how did I not know about this, that we were celebrating Fourth of July, which was freedom of America, when freedom of American people didn't happen until Juneteenth.

00:33:37.000 So in some ways, the celebration feels more authentic on Juneteenth.

00:33:43.000 More authentic than the 4th of July?

00:33:45.000 Well, no.

00:33:46.000 How about as authentic as the 4th of July?

00:33:49.000 Or as an additional holiday to the 4th?

00:33:50.000 Like, Sunny Hostin goes even further because the left, again, they can't help themselves.

00:33:54.000 And she brags about her family not celebrating the 4th of July.

00:33:57.000 So what?

00:33:57.000 Which is amazing.

00:33:59.000 You didn't believe that black Americans were included in the bargain of America until Juneteenth?

00:34:04.000 I don't remember Barack Obama even mentioning Juneteenth as President of the United States.

00:34:08.000 This is something that came up in the course of the last three years on a national level.

00:34:13.000 I love what I'm hearing, because I remember years ago, even on this show, Whoopi and I were talking about it.

00:34:18.000 And I said, my family never celebrated July 4th.

00:34:23.000 And it was met with so much shock.

00:34:25.000 And it was because my father was a student of history, my mother a student of history.

00:34:30.000 And my father taught me very early on what Frederick Douglass' what I thought was a famous speech, what is the 4th of July to the slave?

00:34:38.000 Because it was not freedom to black people. 0.98

00:34:43.000 Okay, again, you don't have to posit these things as mutually exclusive or anti-unity, but the left feels the necessity to do that. 0.83

00:34:53.000 And it's ugly and it's wrong.

00:34:54.000 Okay, in just one second, we're going to get to the latest on the economy.

00:34:57.000 Joe Biden is blundering around in Delaware, making a mockery of himself.

00:35:00.000 Meanwhile, the economy is sinking into the mud.

00:35:02.000 Did anyone think like a couple of years ago that inflation would be in 8% range or that fuel prices would get into the like $6, $7, $8 range?

00:35:11.000 According to leading industry sources, grocery stores across the United States are now worried about food shortages.

00:35:15.000 As a result of this crisis, survival food is actually really, really important.

00:35:19.000 Everybody should have this for any sort.

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00:36:19.000 Okay, folks, over the weekend, swimming's world governing body voted to ban biological males from competing in women's swimming competitions.

00:36:26.000 I know, it took like a long time for them to come to that conclusion, but it seems as though the pushback is finally happening.

00:36:31.000 Sanity might be making a comeback, but if it is, that is in no small part thanks to Matt Walsh's groundbreaking film, What Is A Woman, the number one documentary in America.

00:36:38.000 It is the most talked about documentary in the country.

00:36:41.000 It's now surpassed over 5,000 ratings on Rotten Tomatoes with an audience score of 97%.

00:36:46.000 By the way, still no official ratings on Rotten Tomatoes because that's the way they roll.

00:36:49.000 What Is A Woman is also a soon-to-be best-selling book.

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00:36:53.000 Big things are happening here at The Daily Wear.

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00:37:10.000 And we are building the future we want to see.

00:37:13.000 We've decided we're going to take $100 million into making non-woke kids programming.

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00:37:44.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:37:48.000 Meanwhile, as the culture wars in the United States grow more polarized, the economy continues to sink into the mud.

00:37:59.000 So Joe Biden is still hanging out in Delaware and falling off bikes and stuff and then walking along the beach and hopping on invisible pogo sticks and doing the things a normal president does, you know.

00:38:07.000 And he was walking on beach.

00:38:09.000 And a reporter made the giant mistake of asking him about the fact that his economy has slipped into recession for no reason other than his own crappy policy.

00:38:17.000 And he immediately launched into attacks on the press.

00:38:21.000 If Donald Trump had attacked the press this way, it would be an attack on our free press.

00:38:24.000 It'd be a violation of the Constitution.

00:38:26.000 Joe Biden's like, I hate you guys.

00:38:29.000 And then he just falls over like, oh my God, what a hero.

00:38:31.000 Here's the president of the United States.

00:38:37.000 Not the majority of them are saying that.

00:38:38.000 Come on, don't make things up, okay?

00:38:41.000 Now you sound like a Republican politician.

00:38:42.000 I'm joking.

00:38:43.000 That was a joke.

00:38:45.000 Put all kidding aside.

00:38:47.000 No, I don't think it is.

00:38:48.000 I was talking to Larry Summers this morning.

00:38:52.000 And there's nothing inevitable about a recession. 1.00

00:38:56.000 You're a liar and a dog pony McShow face. 0.99

00:39:00.000 It's just a joke, guys. 1.00

00:39:01.000 Just joking.

00:39:04.000 So here's the problem.

00:39:05.000 Right now, the stock market is likely to go down a significant amount more.

00:39:08.000 According to virtually all sources, Morgan Stanley is now saying that a recession would take the S&P 500 another 15 to 20% lower.

00:39:15.000 This makes sense.

00:39:16.000 As I suggested the other day, right now, the price-equity ratio was way out of line on stocks.

00:39:21.000 Basically, the price of stock was not reflecting the underlying earnings of a company.

00:39:25.000 The price-earnings ratio.

00:39:27.000 The earnings of these companies is likely to go down as the market starts to crater and that means the price is going to come down too.

00:39:34.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, another week of whipsaw stock trading has many investors wondering how much further markets will fall.

00:39:39.000 If history is any guide, the sell-off might still be in its early stages.

00:39:42.000 Investors have often blamed the Federal Reserve for market routes.

00:39:44.000 It turns out the Fed has often had a hand in market turnarounds as well.

00:39:47.000 Going back to 1950, the S&P 500 has sold off at least 15% on 17 occasions, according to research from Vicky Chang, global markets strategist at Goldman Sachs.

00:39:56.000 On 11 of those 17 occasions, the stock market managed to bottom out only around the time the Fed shifted toward loosening monetary policy again.

00:40:03.000 Right now, the Fed is not talking about loosening monetary policy until mid-2023, probably.

00:40:08.000 Getting to that point may be painful, says the Wall Street Journal.

00:40:10.000 The S&P 500 has fallen 23% in 2022, marking its worst start to a year since 1932.

00:40:15.000 The index declined 5.8% last week, and the Fed is only just getting started.

00:40:19.000 After approving its largest interest rate increase since 1994 on Wednesday, the central bank signaled it tends to raise rates several more times this year so it can tamp down inflation.

00:40:29.000 So what it looks like right now is that a bunch of companies are about to have a bad earnings quarter.

00:40:34.000 And that means that the price on the stock is going to continue to dump.

00:40:37.000 And that means you can expect the stock market to continue to decline even further.

00:40:41.000 Meanwhile, the federal government continues to try to pour money into an inflation ridden economy.

00:40:47.000 The Wall Street Journal points out, remember all that infrastructure money, that great big, great infrastructure bill that Joe Biden was pushing?

00:40:53.000 All that money is starting to come online.

00:40:55.000 The problem is we're in the middle of an inflationary cycles.

00:40:56.000 We're now shoving a trillion dollars into infrastructure at a time when we already have inflated prices on everything.

00:41:04.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, construction projects across the United States are running short on labor just as $1 trillion in federal infrastructure money starts to kick in, leading companies to get creative in their quest to attract and retain workers.

00:41:14.000 Well, what's actually going to happen is you're going to see wages increase because more money is being shoved into the system.

00:41:18.000 You have a limited supply of labor, which means higher wages, which means higher prices, which means more inflation.

00:41:24.000 Historically low U.S.

00:41:25.000 unemployment, economic rebound from COVID-19, about $600 billion in transportation-specific funding expected from the roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law have combined to exacerbate existing employee shortages in the construction industry.

00:41:38.000 Yay! 0.99

00:41:38.000 More inflation on your homework and on your roads and on everything. 0.99

00:41:43.000 Associated General Contractors of America, which represents more than 27,000 construction companies, said publicly funded transportation projects are routinely coming in at least 20% higher than government officials anticipated because of added labor costs.

00:41:55.000 Oh goody, goody gumdrops. 0.53

00:41:56.000 So again, Joe Biden's policy here just stinks.

00:41:59.000 And honestly, Joe Biden can't seem to decide whether to just roll with the punch and say this is all good, or whether to Actually notice reality and realize this is all quite bad for Americans.

00:42:10.000 So Joe Biden was asked about, for example, the skyrocketing price of gas and oil, and he then proceeded to cite his mother, which is always a good time.

00:42:19.000 Whenever he starts citing his parents, things are good.

00:42:22.000 I'll never get over the fact that one of his favorite stories that his father told him in like 1950, that two dudes making out on a street corner in Scranton, Pennsylvania, That's what loves look like, Joey.

00:42:32.000 And now he's gonna cite his mom to the proposition that your oil price is being too high.

00:42:36.000 Your gas price is being too high.

00:42:37.000 It's a good thing.

00:42:39.000 We have a chance here to make a fundamental turn toward renewable energy.

00:42:44.000 Electric vehicles.

00:42:45.000 And not just electric vehicles, but across the board.

00:42:48.000 And that's something we should be... My team is going to be sitting down with the CEOs of the major oil companies this week and try to get an explanation of how they justify making $35 billion in the first quarter.

00:43:02.000 Are you planning to sit down with oil and gas CEOs, Mr. President?

00:43:04.000 No.

00:43:05.000 Why is that, sir?

00:43:06.000 Because my team is going to do that.

00:43:08.000 Okay, but you did that with retailers and logistics companies and consumer companies.

00:43:12.000 Because I had it already done.

00:43:14.000 He's so bad.

00:43:15.000 He's so bad.

00:43:16.000 He started off that statement, by the way, by saying, my mother always said that bad things, good things come.

00:43:21.000 Well, I hope that that is true of the 2022 election. 0.96

00:43:23.000 This is a crappy administration.

00:43:24.000 I hope it's true of 2024 because what follows this has to be better. 0.91

00:43:28.000 So Joe Biden.

00:43:30.000 He's there saying that he's thinking about getting rid of the gas tax.

00:43:33.000 So I'm wondering, which is it?

00:43:35.000 Do you like the gas tax because it's forcing us all toward green energy, which is what he's saying there?

00:43:38.000 Or are you gonna yell at the oil companies to produce more energy?

00:43:42.000 He has no good answer for any of that.

00:43:44.000 Then he's asked deliberately about the gas tax.

00:43:46.000 And he's like, well, I don't know, maybe I'll suspend it.

00:43:48.000 Wait a second, I thought you liked the gas tax.

00:43:49.000 Which is it?

00:43:50.000 Are you on the side of the Greens?

00:43:51.000 Or are you on the side of the people who actually need to fill up their tanks so they can get to work, Mr. President?

00:43:57.000 Mr. President, are you considering a pause on the federal gas tax?

00:43:59.000 Mr. President, we know that you're considering it, and Secretary Gellman spoke about it yesterday.

00:44:04.000 Yes, I'm considering it.

00:44:05.000 How soon can we expect a decision?

00:44:07.000 Well, I hope I have a decision based on data I'm looking for by the end of the week.

00:44:14.000 Do you think we are in a recession?

00:44:16.000 Well, for a lot of people we are.

00:44:17.000 There's no question about that.

00:44:18.000 Meanwhile, this is still a guy who refuses to acknowledge there's even a recession.

00:44:21.000 And James Clyburn isn't refusing to acknowledge that.

00:44:23.000 A Democrat from South Carolina who helped promote Joe Biden to the presidency, he says, yeah, if you can't afford to buy gas, we're in a recession already, which happens to be a fairly good description of the everyday life of most Americans right now.

00:44:33.000 Do you think we are in a recession?

00:44:35.000 Well, for a lot of people, we are.

00:44:39.000 There's no question about that.

00:44:41.000 If you can't afford to buy gasoline, you are in a recession.

00:44:46.000 The investor class in this country is not losing any money.

00:44:51.000 Individuals, yes.

00:44:53.000 But as a class, investors are still making money.

00:44:57.000 Corporate execs are making plenty of money.

00:45:01.000 Mm-hmm.

00:45:02.000 So he is right about that, but Joe Biden refuses to acknowledge it.

00:45:05.000 The good news is that Joe Biden is so with it that his family is literally dragging him away from reporters.

00:45:09.000 So that's what happened to end this little tete-a-tete on the beach with the media yesterday.

00:45:15.000 One of the things that you may recall that I initiated was the international flat tax.

00:45:20.000 We got 140-some nations to sign on to.

00:45:26.000 I'm coming.

00:45:27.000 Deploy the family to drag Grandpa away.

00:45:30.000 Oh, Grandpa, it's time to go.

00:45:31.000 out there.

00:45:39.000 We got to feed you some pudding, Grandpa.

00:45:41.000 Let's get you out of here, Grandpa.

00:45:42.000 Let's get you out of here before you blow this any further. 1.00

00:45:44.000 By the way, the actual reason why our gas prices are really high is because all the oil refineries are closing.

00:45:49.000 Why do you think they keep closing?

00:45:50.000 The answer is because you've cut off all of the investment portals for actually building new refineries or keeping them running.

00:45:56.000 The Washington Post is even reporting that today.

00:45:59.000 This is the result of the ideological policies of the left meeting the hard ground of reality.

00:46:06.000 So let's talk about that for a second.

00:46:07.000 The simple fact is that when the left has a choice between actual pragmatic policy and ideology, they're choosing ideology.

00:46:14.000 The Washington Post reports today, oil refineries are making a windfall.

00:46:18.000 Why do they keep closing?

00:46:20.000 And the answer is it explodes so many leftist myths.

00:46:22.000 So one of the leftist myths is that corporations never look down the line, that they're always concerned just about the profits today.

00:46:27.000 That is incorrect.

00:46:28.000 That is incorrect.

00:46:29.000 The reason it's incorrect is because you have to look down the line at where you're going to put your dollars for the future.

00:46:34.000 And oil refineries are a perfect example of this.

00:46:36.000 Right now, gas is at all time high prices.

00:46:38.000 Oil refineries could be making bank, but they're still shutting down.

00:46:42.000 Why?

00:46:42.000 According to the Washington Post, oil refineries across the country are being retired and converted to other uses as owners balk at making costly upgrades.

00:46:50.000 And America's pivot away from fossil fuels leaves their future uncertain.

00:46:53.000 The downsizing comes despite painfully high gas prices and as demand globally ramps up amid sanctions on gas and diesel produced in Russia, the third biggest petroleum refinery in the world behind the U.S.

00:47:02.000 and China.

00:47:03.000 Five refineries have shut down in the United States in just the past two years.

00:47:06.000 Reducing the nation's refining capacity by about 5%, eliminating more than 1 million barrels of fuel per day from the market.

00:47:13.000 Thus, the remaining facilities are straining to meet demand.

00:47:16.000 Yet even at this lucrative moment for what's left of the refining industry, a White House desperate to bring down gas prices is having little success.

00:47:22.000 Persuading owners to expand operations, more closures are imminent.

00:47:27.000 The companies are unmoved by Joe Biden's threats.

00:47:29.000 The profits follow years of heavy losses in many facilities after demand plunged during the pandemic.

00:47:33.000 Unpredictable shifts in oil markets had created a challenging business climate before that.

00:47:37.000 Even at this moment of windfall refinery earnings, when the profit margin on each barrel of oil processed Why would investors sink their money into an industry that Joe Biden is deliberately attempting to kill?

00:47:45.000 He can yell at them about why they don't ramp up production.

00:47:47.000 They fear the profits are short-lived.

00:47:49.000 The administration's environmental priorities, as well as rising public and corporate concern about climate change, would make many refineries obsolete in the not too distant future.

00:47:57.000 And there you have it.

00:47:58.000 There you have it.

00:47:59.000 Why would investors sink their money into an industry that Joe Biden is deliberately attempting to kill?

00:48:03.000 He can yell at them about why they don't ramp up production.

00:48:05.000 They're not going to ramp up production when they know that their industry is going to be dead within 18 months if Joe Biden actually has a choice about it.

00:48:11.000 As the Washington Post points out, building and upgrading the mammoth structures is a messy, expensive undertaking that can drag on for longer than a decade, strain the finances of even the biggest fossil fuel giants, and run the risk of getting abandoned before the investment is returned.

00:48:24.000 Chevron CEO Michael Wirth said in an interview in the Washington Post quote, I don't think you're ever going to see a refinery built again in America.

00:48:30.000 It's been 50 years since we built a new one.

00:48:32.000 In a country where the policy environment is trying to reduce demand for these products, you're not going to find companies to put billions and billions of dollars into this.

00:48:39.000 Correct.

00:48:40.000 This is right!

00:48:41.000 Which again, puts the lie to the entire leftist idea that you need ESG overseers sitting on the board of every company so that short-term profits don't become the enemy of long-term economic health of a company.

00:48:53.000 No, these guys know what the policy circumstances are and they are not going to spend on what the left would call dirty energy if the left is going to be in charge racking them across the coals.

00:49:04.000 Raking them across the coals?

00:49:04.000 They're not going to do that.

00:49:07.000 And again, they're not really hiding the ball here.

00:49:08.000 I mean, Eugene Robinson has an insane piece today at the Washington Post talking about regulating carbon as a toxic substance in order to reduce carbon emissions.

00:49:18.000 He says, because of human activity, there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 4 million years.

00:49:23.000 We've increased the concentration of that heat trapping gas by a full 50% since the Industrial Revolution.

00:49:27.000 Last year's carbon emissions of 36.3 billion tons set a new record.

00:49:31.000 There's your status report on the battle against climate change.

00:49:33.000 By any scientific measure, we're losing.

00:49:36.000 Yet we have to find a way to snatch an acceptable victory from the closing jaws of defeat.

00:49:40.000 What does he suggest?

00:49:42.000 He says that they should use the EPA to regulate carbon under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

00:49:48.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:49:49.000 The EPA doesn't have the power to do this.

00:49:51.000 In fact, there's a Supreme Court decision that's likely to come down that specifically talks about this.

00:49:56.000 But, Eugene Robinson wants to simply use a three-letter agency staffed by career bureaucrats to kill the energy industry in the United States by regulating carbon, which, um, last I checked is, I mean, you breathe it out, right?

00:50:10.000 I mean, like, that's what comes out of your body after you breathe in oxygen.

00:50:13.000 Carbon dioxide comes out of your body.

00:50:15.000 He wants to regulate that as a toxic substance via the EPA.

00:50:18.000 And then you wonder why you're going to have a hard time getting people to actually invest in the building of new refineries, why you can't ramp up production.

00:50:24.000 That would be the reason.

00:50:25.000 And all of this is part and parcel of a broader problem in global politics right now.

00:50:30.000 And that broader problem is a failure of the false consensus.

00:50:33.000 I talked about this a little bit yesterday.

00:50:35.000 But right now, you have an elite class that lies, and they lie on a regular basis.

00:50:39.000 So, they offer you a bunch of self-contradictory notions.

00:50:43.000 They say, for example, we are in favor of free market capitalism.

00:50:45.000 Also, you have Klaus Schwab out there saying, we need to construct a market that's going to be the best for everyone.

00:50:50.000 Including our stakeholders.

00:50:52.000 And if that means great redistribution, and if it means subsidies, and if it means we control everything, that's how we do free market.

00:51:00.000 And a lot of people are looking at that and going, okay.

00:51:02.000 On the right, they're looking at that and saying, no, you don't like free markets.

00:51:04.000 You're lying.

00:51:05.000 You're using the free markets to maintain control.

00:51:07.000 And on the left, you see them saying the same thing.

00:51:09.000 They're saying, okay, well, if you want top-down centralized control, why are you allowing the free markets to even exist?

00:51:13.000 Is that just to enrich your buddies?

00:51:15.000 That false consensus is breaking down and it's exacerbated by the fact that you have companies like BlackRock that have decided to endorse this sort of stuff.

00:51:23.000 Fascinating article over at the Wall Street Journal today talking about how BlackRock is basically now using the auspices of free markets in order to cram down centralized governance.

00:51:33.000 And it's something our friend Vivek Ramaswamy has talked about.

00:51:35.000 This is why he is forming a fund deliberately mirroring BlackRock's trades, but without the ESG crap.

00:51:41.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, BlackRock casts votes on tens of thousands of proxy proposals a year.

00:51:45.000 The responsibility rests with a team of about 70.

00:51:48.000 Millions of people are invested in the stock market through BlackRock's index tracking funds.

00:51:51.000 As these passive investments have grown in popularity, so have the firm's stakes in 13,000 companies worldwide.

00:51:57.000 So has the cloud of BlackRock's investment stewardship team.

00:51:59.000 The tiny group of analysts, BlackRock has about 18,400 employees all told, looks after the interests of investors in the firm's $4.6 trillion worth of passive funds.

00:52:10.000 In other words, BlackRock is investing more money into the market?

00:52:15.000 They are managing more money in the market than the budget of the entire United States government was as of about three years ago.

00:52:21.000 That means weighing in on matters as varied as executive compensation, climate change, and abortion access.

00:52:26.000 Chief executives jockey for time on analyst calendars.

00:52:28.000 They have the power to unseat directors and upend corporate decision-making.

00:52:31.000 The team last year engaged with 2,300 companies via emails, phone calls, and meetings, and ultimately voted on 165,000 proposals at 17,000 shareholder meetings.

00:52:40.000 It can feel like a lot of power sometimes, said a former investment stewardship team analyst.

00:52:44.000 BlackRock's growth and the way it has sought to wield its influence has rankled corporate executives, particularly those in the oil and gas industry.

00:52:50.000 BlackRock's stewardship team voted in favor of 47% of environmental and social shareholder proposals last year.

00:52:56.000 Its support helped an activist investor win board seats at the oil giant ExxonMobil.

00:53:01.000 If a bunch of new emperors, they're the people who vote the shares in the index funds, said Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett's business partner.

00:53:08.000 A group of Republican senators last month introduced a bill calling for individual investors in passive funds to have the option to vote their shares, a movement to curb the power of BlackRock and its ilk.

00:53:18.000 Vanguard and State Street Corp, BlackRock's two biggest rivals, also have small stewardship teams.

00:53:23.000 Both of them are wildly to the left.

00:53:25.000 Vanguard has 60 analysts who basically control how all of this money is invested and what sort of conditions they wish to cram down on a vast variety of companies.

00:53:34.000 State Street has maybe 12.

00:53:36.000 BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink has said he wants to get to a place where all individual investors can vote their own shares.

00:53:41.000 The firm has given that option to institutional investors that control some $2.3 trillion in assets.

00:53:46.000 Investors representing about a quarter of that sum have taken the company up on the offer.

00:53:50.000 But that doesn't mean that those institutional investors are not then doing the same thing.

00:53:55.000 All of this plays an especially important role for index fund investors because they don't have the option to sell holdings in companies that aren't performing as expected.

00:54:03.000 The analysts range in seniority.

00:54:05.000 Their average tenure is 15 years.

00:54:06.000 Some are fresh out of college.

00:54:07.000 They have a bunch of woke college students who are now determining how $4 trillion of assets get invested in companies and what they wish to cram down on those companies.

00:54:16.000 Each stewardship analyst is assigned to cover a specific industry, says the Wall Street Journal.

00:54:19.000 They dissect company proxy reports and third-party research, including ESG ratings—that's environmental, social governance, left-wing ratings—from MSCI, Inc., and corporate governance transparency scores from the Nonprofit Center for Political Accountability.

00:54:32.000 Analysts also conduct their own research.

00:54:36.000 Activist investors looking to shake up a company's board sometimes pitch the stewardship team directly.

00:54:40.000 In some cases, they introduce their director candidates to members of the stewardship team in person or, since the start of the pandemic, privately.

00:54:48.000 Again, this means that basically you have a group of quasi-elites who lie to you.

00:54:53.000 They say they're in favor of free markets, and then they cut directly against the free market interests of the companies in which they invest, instead seeking to cram down their particular politics.

00:55:01.000 And when people notice, they get angry.

00:55:02.000 On the right, they get angry because this ain't the free market.

00:55:04.000 And on the left, they get angry because they say, okay, if we're going to have centralized governance, why are we making your friends rich?

00:55:08.000 That's just on economics.

00:55:10.000 On cultural affairs, the equivalent is where you have a bunch of people in positions of power who pay lip service to belief in God and Judeo-Christian values and then tell you they need to cram down woke pronoun education in the Navy.

00:55:21.000 And a lot of people on the left go, so why are you bothering to pay lip service in God? 0.99

00:55:23.000 Just cut that crap out. 0.98

00:55:25.000 And people on the right go, you obviously don't believe in God, which is why you're doing this thing in the first place. 0.99

00:55:29.000 And then you wonder why politics is polarized?

00:55:31.000 It's because basically you have a group of elites, college-educated, white, liberal elites, who have decided that they are going to have the baby.

00:55:38.000 They're going to use the auspices of free markets, which are incredibly powerful, in order to control things.

00:55:43.000 And you have a bunch of people who are also going to use the auspices of sort of populist language about morality in order to pretend that they are moderate when they are not, in fact, moderate.

00:55:52.000 And increasingly, people are seeing through this veil.

00:55:54.000 And when that breaks down, things get uglier.

00:55:57.000 This is why the Elites, as a class, need to grow a humility organ. 0.90

00:56:04.000 They need to actually grow some humility.

00:56:07.000 They need to recognize that the free markets do not exist for them to manipulate.

00:56:11.000 That Judeo-Christian values and that tradition handed down over the course of thousands of years is not theirs to pervert, simply for political gain.

00:56:18.000 And if they try to do that, what they are likely to get is an increased polarization in American politics, which is precisely what you're seeing.

00:56:24.000 I for one don't actually think that's a bad thing.

00:56:26.000 I think that people seeing through the charade is actually a wonderful thing.

00:56:30.000 Because for too long you have a bunch of people who lie about what it is that they do for a living.

00:56:35.000 Where they're activists on behalf of their own moral code, while wielding the tools that actually make civilizations powerful.

00:56:43.000 You don't get to control the levers of power that are built on certain fundamental premises while tearing away at the premises.

00:56:50.000 You don't get to do that.

00:56:51.000 I think more and more people are waking up to that day after day.

00:56:53.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with additional content.

00:56:56.000 In the meantime, go check out one of our newest podcasts, Morning Wire.

00:56:58.000 On today's episode, they report on the growing crisis American farmers face amid skyrocketing costs.

00:57:02.000 That episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:57:06.000 Make sure to tune in.

00:57:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:07.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:08.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Bradford Carrington, Executive Producer Jeremy Boren, Supervising Producer Mathis Glover, Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky, Associate Producer Savannah Dominguez-Morris, Editor Adam Sajevitz, Audio Mixer Mike Karamina, Hair and Makeup Artist in Wardrobe Fabiola Christina, Production Coordinator Jessica Grant.

00:57:33.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:57:35.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:57:38.000 John Bickley here, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief.

00:57:41.000 Wake up every morning with our show, Morning Wire, where we bring you all the news that you need to know in 15 minutes or less.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 21, 2022

The Blindness Of The Pro-Abortion Media | Ep. 1519

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