The Ben Shapiro Show


The Democrats’ Last, Best Hope | Ep. 375


Summary

Politico reveals a bombshell new report about the left's treatment of Antifa under President Obama. We will talk about that, as well as President Trump's decision to give a million dollars to Hurricane Harvey victims, and why the left is now desperate for the Russia investigation to pan out, even more desperate than they were before. Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe, Like, and Share for exclusive lessons on how to be, become, and live as a conservative voice in the 21st century. Learn more about your ad choices. Use the promo code: "GPODCAST" to receive 10% off "Your Day Off" when you shop at CVS or other major box stores. You can also become a supporter of the show by becoming a patron patron by visiting bit.ly/support-the-bencast. Ben Shapiro is a writer, comedian, and podcaster. He is the host of the podcast and is a regular contributor to conservative media outlets including The Weekly Standard, The Daily Caller, and Mother Jones. His work has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, The Huffington Post, The Hill, and The New York Post, and many other publications. His music is also available on SoundCloud and is available on the Tune In Network. . His music can be heard on many other streaming platforms including SoundCloud, and his website is . and if you like what you're listening to, you can find Ben Shapiro on Soundcloud, on his Insta- on Insta: , and his podcast is on or on the Podcast on Instapod is , on Podchaser, on it's Insta, and his social media is can be found on Instacademy Insta? using the , Insta is also on Instafeed . Thanks for listening to Ben Shapiro's work? and I hope you like Ben Shapiro s music is appreciated by you! Thank you for listening and share Ben Shapiro! on your comments? on insta I'll be looking out for Ben Shapiro and Ben Shapiro on this podcast on on social media! and Insta on Instagasm on my insta story on Instagrasm If you're looking for a good time, tweet me


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Politico reveals a bombshell new report about the left's treatment of Antifa under President Obama.
00:00:05.000 We will talk about that.
00:00:06.000 We will also be getting to Donald Trump giving a million dollars to Hurricane Harvey victims and why the left is now desperate for the Russia investigation to pan out, even more desperate than they were before.
00:00:16.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:17.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:24.000 Many a thing to talk
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00:01:29.000 So, President Trump, he made a statement yesterday that I was kind of surprised he hadn't done earlier, actually.
00:01:34.000 He said that he was going to give a bunch of money to the Hurricane Harvey victims, which
00:01:52.000 Makes an awful lot of sense.
00:01:53.000 The man's incredibly wealthy.
00:01:55.000 And Sarah Huckabee Sanders made that announcement yesterday, and so here is what Sarah Huckabee Sanders had to say about it.
00:02:00.000 Had a chance to speak directly with the president earlier, and I'm happy to tell you that he would like to join in the efforts that a lot of the people that we've seen across this country do.
00:02:11.000 And he's pledging a million dollars of personal money to the fund, and he's actually asked that I check with the folks in this room
00:02:19.000 Since you are very good at research and have been doing a lot of reporting into the groups and organizations that are best and most effective in helping and providing aid and he'd love some suggestions from the folks here and I'd be happy to take those if any of you have them.
00:02:36.000 Okay, so this is all good stuff.
00:02:37.000 Okay, and it's smart for President Trump to do this, obviously.
00:02:40.000 It's good PR.
00:02:41.000 It makes a lot of sense.
00:02:42.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats are looking at this and they're realizing that Trump's handling of Hurricane Harvey is actually pretty good.
00:02:46.000 Most Americans are going to be pretty happy with how he's handled this natural disaster.
00:02:50.000 It's better, frankly, than I thought he was going to handle a natural disaster.
00:02:53.000 I thought his administration did a better job than I thought that they might do.
00:02:56.000 So, I really have no major complaints with President Trump here.
00:02:58.000 I think that he's doing a pretty good job unifying the country around the Hurricane Harvey victims.
00:03:02.000 Again, easy thing to unify around, but I think that he's done a good job with it.
00:03:06.000 Democrats, however, are still focused on how do we stop Trump?
00:03:09.000 How do we stop the Republicans?
00:03:10.000 And so, the way they're attempting to do this is by painting the Republicans as divisive.
00:03:14.000 Bernie Sanders came out yesterday.
00:03:15.000 He says that he hopes that President Trump stops dividing, and also he hopes that someone
00:03:20.000 That in Houston right now, people don't care whether you're black, or you're white, or you're Latino, or you're gay, or you're straight.
00:03:37.000 People are helping each other, which is what this country is supposed to be about.
00:03:42.000 People in Houston are coming together and hope Trump stops dividing up the American people.
00:03:46.000 Okay, so let's point something out.
00:03:48.000 It's not Trump at this point who's dividing the American people.
00:03:50.000 Trump is responding the way he's supposed to be responding, and it's Sanders who's suggesting the divisions.
00:03:55.000 And when it comes to the divisive rhetoric stuff, when it comes to the idea that Trump is the only one who's engaged in divisive rhetoric, this is not whataboutism, okay?
00:04:02.000 I've been very, very critical of President Trump's rhetoric.
00:04:05.000 I've criticized him for not disassociating himself from the alt-right.
00:04:08.000 I think I've been pretty clear on this for the last two years at this point.
00:04:11.000 That I think a lot of President Trump's rhetoric is designed to divide rather than to unite, and I don't like that part of his rhetoric that it is designed to do that without actually naming an enemy.
00:04:21.000 So I've been clear about that.
00:04:23.000 That said, the idea that the left has proposed that Trump is the divider and they are the great uniters is absolute nonsense.
00:04:28.000 This is a report from Politico, and it's an amazing report that's going to go under-noticed today, which is why we're going to bring attention to it on this, the most popular podcast on the right in America.
00:04:38.000 So here is the story from Politico.
00:04:41.000 They reported on Friday, the federal government has been worrying about the rise of Antifa, this is this leftist quasi-domestic terror group, since early 2016.
00:04:50.000 Not 2017, like most people became aware of Antifa in 2017 when Antifa burned a bunch of crap at a Yiannopoulos speech at Berkeley.
00:04:57.000 But Antifa had been very active in 2016.
00:05:00.000 They had engaged in violent riots in Sacramento.
00:05:03.000 There was a riot in Sacramento
00:05:05.000 We talked to a member of one of the groups that was attending that rally.
00:05:09.000 It was a white supremacist rally.
00:05:10.000 There were a bunch of people who showed up to quote-unquote defend the rights of the white supremacists, and Antifa showed up ready to do violence.
00:05:16.000 When this happened, it was not covered by the media, but that happened in the middle of 2016 in Sacramento at the state capitol.
00:05:24.000 Apparently, the federal government has had reports on Antifa since early 2016, even labeled their activities domestic terrorist violence.
00:05:32.000 Do you remember Obama saying anything about it in 2016?
00:05:34.000 Anything?
00:05:34.000 Did he say one word about Antifa or left-wing violence in 2016?
00:05:38.000 No, I didn't think so.
00:05:38.000 So we've gotten two years of President Trump must disassociate himself from the alt-right and white supremacist violence.
00:05:44.000 Of course, I agree, everyone should have no problem doing that, right or left.
00:05:47.000 But the left, including President Obama, hasn't had to do anything until now, right?
00:05:51.000 Nancy Pelosi gave a statement this week talking about how Antifa was bad.
00:05:55.000 Where were they last year?
00:05:56.000 Why didn't they stop this thing when it was rising?
00:05:59.000 According to Politico, quote, Okay, again, that language.
00:06:01.000 Primary instigators.
00:06:13.000 So the left has played this, though.
00:06:14.000 It's a cycle of violence.
00:06:15.000 It's the white supremacists show up with a brick, and the Antifa people show up with a bat, and they go at each other.
00:06:20.000 It is Antifa that has provoked these clashes, and then a lot of these white supremacist groups, a lot of these alt-right groups show up, and they look for violence as well.
00:06:28.000 But the ones who are instigating this largely are Antifa.
00:06:32.000 That's not according to me, that's according to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
00:06:35.000 They were blamed by authorities for attacks on the police, government, and political institutions, along with symbols of the capitalist system, racism, social injustice, and fascism, according to a confidential 2016 joint intelligence assessment by the DHS and the FBI.
00:06:48.000 The violence ratcheted up as President Trump's campaign swung into full gear.
00:06:52.000 The FBI noted violence by Antifa in Texas, Oregon, California.
00:06:56.000 Law enforcement put particular focus on a white supremacist rally in Sacramento.
00:07:00.000 At their Sacramento rally, Antifa protesters came looking for violence and, quote, engaged in several activities indicating proficiency in pre-operational planning, to include organizing carpools, to travel from different locations, raising bail money in preparation for arrests, counter-surveilling law enforcement using three-man scout teams, using handheld radios for communication, coordinating the event via social media, according to the DHS.
00:07:21.000 That's planning.
00:07:23.000 That's planning.
00:07:23.000 This isn't just spontaneous violence.
00:07:25.000 This is people on handheld radios warning each other when the cops are showing up.
00:07:29.000 They've raised bail money in anticipation of arrests.
00:07:31.000 They were organizing carpools to get to and from places.
00:07:34.000 They were organizing how to get weapons.
00:07:37.000 The FBI and DHS issued a report in April 2016 openly saying that Antifa was prepping for violence.
00:07:43.000 New Jersey law enforcement reportedly stated that Antifa had cropped up in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Philly.
00:07:49.000 Shockingly, some members of Antifa, quote, have gone overseas to train and fight with fellow anarchist organizations.
00:07:55.000 Okay, sounds like a terrorist hell.
00:07:56.000 Going overseas to train and fight with anarchist organizations.
00:07:59.000 So, here is the question.
00:08:01.000 This was happening in the middle of 2016.
00:08:03.000 Where the hell was President Obama?
00:08:06.000 He had the violence in Charlottesville.
00:08:07.000 President Trump was asked repeatedly, as well he should have been, to denounce this violence.
00:08:11.000 And he did repeatedly denounce the violence.
00:08:13.000 And then he said there was violence on both sides and the media went nuts over that particular statement.
00:08:17.000 There was a lot more in the press conference that was bad, but that was correct.
00:08:20.000 There was violence on both sides and Antifa was causing a lot of it.
00:08:24.000 Where was Obama for a year?
00:08:26.000 Anytime there was a violent incident, Obama tended to downplay the violence and instead talk about the underlying root causes of the violence.
00:08:34.000 And he got away with it.
00:08:36.000 Remember, in April 2009, it's amazing the double standard that holds for the right and the left, okay?
00:08:39.000 So there's this report that comes out from the FBI and DHS, April 2016, talking about the violence of Antifa.
00:08:46.000 Flashback before that seven years, okay?
00:08:48.000 It's now April 2009, shortly after Obama takes office, and the Department of Homeland Security, under the auspices of Janet Napolitano, who's now in charge of the University of California system, issued a report saying that white right-wing extremism was on the rise, labeling anti-abortion, anti-immigration groups a suspect.
00:09:05.000 The report specifically called out the prospect of lone wolf terrorism from those who agreed with quote-unquote right-wing viewpoints.
00:09:11.000 The report was really vague, but the Obama administration stood by it.
00:09:15.000 So, how about his apparently very specific report regarding Antifa from the year of the election?
00:09:20.000 Not a word from the Obama administration.
00:09:22.000 We're only finding out about it a year and a half after it happened.
00:09:25.000 A year and a half.
00:09:26.000 And let's contrast the language of that 2009 memo with the language of the Obama administration regarding political violence.
00:09:32.000 The 2009 memo about right-wing violence, it says, quote, debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment.
00:09:42.000 But in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.
00:09:49.000 Has the potential to turn violent?
00:09:51.000 What does that even mean?
00:09:52.000 Has the potential to turn violent?
00:09:53.000 That's vague, but the Obama administration stood by it.
00:09:56.000 But when left-wing rhetoric actually turned violent, what did Obama do?
00:10:01.000 He said, oh, the violence is bad, but they do have some grievances, don't they?
00:10:04.000 I'm speaking specifically about President Obama's speech in July 2016 after a black radical parroting Black Lives Matter talking points went out and murdered five police officers and wounded seven others in Dallas.
00:10:15.000 The officers were protecting a Black Lives Matter march at the time.
00:10:18.000 Obama actually spent an inordinate amount of time echoing BLM's message at their funeral service.
00:10:23.000 At their funeral service.
00:10:24.000 Imagine if President Trump had actually gone out after Charlottesville and he had said, and he sort of did do this to a certain extent, the media went nuts.
00:10:33.000 You remember that he went out and he said, listen, this violence is terrible, but confederate statues...
00:10:39.000 There's a legit argument to be had over Confederate statues.
00:10:41.000 The media went completely nuts.
00:10:42.000 Here's what Obama said at the funeral for people who were murdered by a Black Lives Matter supporter, a black radical who is echoing the talking points of Black Lives Matter.
00:10:50.000 Here's what he said, quote, We know that bias remains.
00:10:53.000 We know it, whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent.
00:10:58.000 We've all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point.
00:11:01.000 We've heard at it.
00:11:02.000 We've heard it at times in our homes.
00:11:04.000 If we're honest, perhaps we've heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts.
00:11:08.000 And then he talks about how the cops were a bunch of racists.
00:11:11.000 Amazing, the treatment, okay?
00:11:12.000 But not one peep about Antifa, not one peep about Antifa.
00:11:15.000 I want to talk a little bit more about that, and how the Democrats are really split now between their radicals and their moderates, and their only hope left is getting President Trump and how they hope to do that.
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00:12:42.000 Okay, so again,
00:12:44.000 The left needs to be asked.
00:12:45.000 Every Democrat needs to be asked about Antifa at this point.
00:12:48.000 They should have been asked about it a year ago.
00:12:49.000 They should have been grilled about it a year ago.
00:12:50.000 They should have been grilled about it after what happened in Sacramento.
00:12:53.000 But the media was too ensconced in its narrative of Antifa as Normandy fighters to actually go out and fight violence.
00:13:01.000 That's despicable.
00:13:02.000 That's truly despicable.
00:13:03.000 And you can see the split that's happening now inside the Democratic Party between the so-called Moderates and the Radicals.
00:13:09.000 The Radicals are still saying, well, Antifa has a point.
00:13:12.000 They're not so bad.
00:13:14.000 And the Moderates, who are now being led by Nancy Pelosi, of all people, they're saying Antifa's really bad.
00:13:18.000 If the Democrats don't come together around this, I think it's indicative of a broader split inside the Democratic Party.
00:13:23.000 The far left of the Democratic Party is even further left than Bernie Sanders.
00:13:26.000 They're moving left at an increasingly rapid pace.
00:13:29.000 The Democratic Party has split.
00:13:31.000 And the old school Hillary Clinton, quote unquote, moderate Democratic Party, which was never moderate.
00:13:37.000 They're being left in the wake.
00:13:38.000 Even Bernie Sanders is now being seen increasingly as a guy who's not radical enough.
00:13:43.000 I've never seen a party move this far to one extreme this fast, and you can see it happening in real time.
00:13:48.000 Antifa's accelerating that.
00:13:50.000 Trump is certainly accelerating that.
00:13:51.000 The left's hatred for Trump is driving them off the rails.
00:13:54.000 Every Democrat should now be asked, will you denounce Antifa?
00:13:57.000 Will he denounce them?
00:13:58.000 I think Martheeson has a great piece at Washington Post, and it is interesting.
00:14:02.000 It's fascinating how white supremacists who get violent, white supremacists who get violent, they are seen as the ultimate evil.
00:14:10.000 Totally fair.
00:14:10.000 They are an ultimate evil.
00:14:12.000 Left-wing extremists who get violent, you know, I'm talking about communists and anarchists, they're seen as somehow superior to Nazis.
00:14:19.000 Which is weird to me.
00:14:20.000 I mean, the communists were responsible for a couple hundred million deaths over the course of the last century.
00:14:26.000 As Mark Thiessen said, I'm not sure why it is that somebody who gets violent in American streets carrying the flag of Stalin is better than somebody who gets violent in American streets carrying the flag of Hitler.
00:14:35.000 These both seem like terrible people.
00:14:37.000 There is a moral equivalence there, and I think that's right.
00:14:41.000 Communism is an ideology that is just as evil as Nazism in its own way.
00:14:46.000 It's not racist the way that Nazism was, but it is certainly classist.
00:14:49.000 I mean, these are people who suggested that people who are bourgeois be murdered.
00:14:54.000 You could separate people based on class.
00:14:55.000 It's funny how both of these groups seem to center when it comes down to it.
00:14:59.000 They both come down on the same side when it comes to the Jewish question.
00:15:01.000 Neither of them really liked the Jews very much.
00:15:03.000 Stalin wasn't really fond and neither was Hitler.
00:15:05.000 But it is amazing how we in the United States, we've taken the sort of sanguine view of communism in a way that we never have with Nazism.
00:15:14.000 Even though they were both at the time cheered by by Democrats at the time the the Nazi movement was seen as sort of a proto-fascist Or fascist proto forerunner of a more sophisticated movement that eventually could be used for good by a lot of people Including some mainstays of the Democratic Party back in the day.
00:15:32.000 So again, the only point to be made here is
00:15:35.000 Is that we ought to be looking at the violence on both sides and condemning it and condemning the ideology that underlies it, but instead what we're seeing is some people on the left condemning the violence, not all, and very few people on the left condemning the ideology at all, whereas everybody on the right who has any brain at all is condemning white supremacists in the alt-right.
00:15:53.000 Okay, so what does this mean?
00:15:55.000 Democrats have to know this stuff doesn't make them popular.
00:15:57.000 The Antifa stuff is not going to make them popular.
00:15:59.000 It's not going to make them well-loved.
00:16:00.000 It makes them seem extreme and crazy because they're being extreme and crazy.
00:16:03.000 And so instead, what they are focusing in on is their final hope.
00:16:07.000 The last hope.
00:16:09.000 Their very last hope of all.
00:16:11.000 We're good to go.
00:16:28.000 This is from yesterday from Joseph Wolfson.
00:16:32.000 The team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly collaborating with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in its ongoing investigation.
00:16:38.000 According to a new report from Politico, Mueller's team and Schneiderman's office have been in contact in recent weeks exchanging information and evidence on former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his financial transactions.
00:16:49.000 Anonymous sources familiar with the collaboration have said they're potentially building a criminal case, possibly for money laundering, but no decision has been made whether or not charges will be filed.
00:16:58.000 Nothing is imminent, one source told Politico.
00:17:01.000 As Politico reports, Schneiderman could potentially provide Mueller additional leverage to get Manafort to cooperate with his investigation, noting that President Trump does not have pardoning power over state crime.
00:17:10.000 So here is the difficulty here.
00:17:12.000 So everybody has been talking about Trump can always just pardon anybody who is convicted or anybody who's indicted.
00:17:18.000 Not true.
00:17:34.000 Paul Manafort, who as I've said before, is pretty corrupt, and then use those state charges as a way to get Manafort to flip on Trump.
00:17:41.000 That could be what's happening here.
00:17:43.000 You have Schneiderman charge Manafort in state court, and then say, we'll drop those charges if you testify against Trump, and Trump can't pardon Manafort and just get out of that conundrum.
00:17:52.000 That'd be very clever by Mueller if that's what he intends on doing.
00:17:55.000 But it's very dangerous for President Trump, obviously, because sitting around waiting to have your former campaign chair indicted at the state level and then see where that ends up is a very dangerous game.
00:18:07.000 A lot of people are suggesting that based on this, Trump should fire Mueller.
00:18:11.000 That would be the biggest disaster of all.
00:18:12.000 Right now, there's a game of chicken going on.
00:18:13.000 Mueller's going as far as he can, almost daring Trump to fire him.
00:18:16.000 If Trump fires him, all hell will break loose.
00:18:18.000 It's going to be very difficult for Republicans to stand up
00:18:21.000 In the face of President Trump firing the special investigator who's looking into election corruption.
00:18:26.000 That's not the only story involving Mueller today.
00:18:29.000 According to Betsy Woodruff from the Daily Beast, special counsel Bob Mueller has teamed up with the IRS.
00:18:34.000 According to sources familiar with his investigation into alleged Russian election interference, his probe has enlisted the help of agents from the IRS's criminal investigations unit.
00:18:43.000 This unit, known as CI, is one of the federal government's most tight-knit, specialized, secretive investigative entities.
00:18:49.000 It has 2,500 agents, focusing exclusively on financial crime, including tax evasion and money laundering.
00:18:57.000 The IRS does have access to Trump's tax returns.
00:19:00.000 Potential financial crimes are a central part of Mueller's probes.
00:19:03.000 That is part of the thing.
00:19:04.000 Trump has said in the past that that would be the red line for him, as if Mueller started looking into financial dealings of his family, and Mueller said, screw that, I'm looking wherever I please.
00:19:14.000 There is a problem too, which is that Trump has not actually staffed up the IRS.
00:19:19.000 Right?
00:19:19.000 Trump has not actually staffed up the IRS.
00:19:21.000 This is according to the Daily Beast.
00:19:23.000 The team-up between the IRS and Mueller probe could come with political complications.
00:19:27.000 Mueller has already taken some criticism for the number of Democratic donors on his team.
00:19:31.000 Those critiques intensified yesterday after the announcement about Schneiderman.
00:19:35.000 Also, it is pretty clear that Trump has not filled out a lot of the senior positions at these particular, at these particular agencies.
00:19:43.000 Trump has not yet named his pick to run the tax division, which is a post that requires Senate confirmation, and also a post which could help out Mueller in his investigation.
00:19:51.000 So right now, an Obama appointee is filling the slot that can work with Mueller to give him the information.
00:19:58.000 So Mueller can get all the dirt that he wants right now.
00:20:01.000 Trump has put himself in this situation because, remember, it was Trump's activity regarding James Comey.
00:20:06.000 It was his dragging in of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that led to the appointment of the special counsel in the first place.
00:20:12.000 Now if he fires the special counsel, it'll look like a cover-up.
00:20:15.000 So it's a full-scale problem for President Trump at this point.
00:20:18.000 A lot of people saying, well he should just fire people and get it over with, and that way they can't have grounds to impeach him.
00:20:24.000 Again, impeachment is a political grounds.
00:20:26.000 I think his best move here is to wait it out.
00:20:29.000 And I honestly think that he's actually innocent of the Russia collusion.
00:20:33.000 I don't think that Trump himself was colluding with Russia.
00:20:35.000 I think that there is a possibility that Manafort was working with the Russians because Manafort's always worked with the Russians.
00:20:41.000 I think there's the possibility that Flynn was doing so.
00:20:43.000 But the idea that Trump knew about it is a whole different thing.
00:20:46.000 So you could easily see a scenario where Trump's underlings go down and it looks more like Iran-Contra than it looks like Watergate.
00:20:52.000 It looks a lot more like somebody underneath Trump goes down than like the president himself goes down.
00:20:57.000 That's why I'm saying that I don't think Trump should fire Mueller.
00:20:58.000 But what Mueller is doing is obviously provocative.
00:21:01.000 What Mueller is doing is obviously aggressive.
00:21:03.000 And so he must think that he's got something.
00:21:05.000 The Democrats obviously are just ecstatic about this.
00:21:08.000 MSNBC's Mark Halperin, he says Mueller is a ruthless opponent and is not afraid of President Trump.
00:21:13.000 Mueller is a cyborg with a head, a heart, and a brain.
00:21:16.000 He's a relentless opponent.
00:21:18.000 And one of the underappreciated aspects of how he's building this operation, I think, is his ability, because of his vast experience,
00:21:37.000 Thank you.
00:21:52.000 Thank you.
00:22:21.000 Okay, so you can see the excitement from the media and all this, and we'll talk a little bit more about the excitement from some fake news people, like actual fake news people in just a second.
00:22:28.000 But first, I want to say thank you to the sponsors over at Tides of History.
00:22:32.000 This is a brand new podcast.
00:22:33.000 It is just fantastic.
00:22:35.000 Google Tides of History for more information.
00:22:37.000 Okay, so what is it?
00:22:38.000 It's all about why we have states, countries, taxes, wars, all of these institutions
00:22:42.000 Go back hundreds and hundreds of years.
00:22:44.000 When did globalization start?
00:22:46.000 Why does practically every government on earth follow the same basic organization?
00:22:49.000 Wondery has a new podcast from PhD historian Patrick Wyman.
00:22:52.000 He also happens to be an MMA analyst, by the way.
00:22:54.000 It's called Tides of History and it answers these questions.
00:22:57.000 He looks at the time periods covering the fall of Rome and the rise of the early modern empire, so about 1350 to 1650.
00:23:02.000 He talks about the roots of the modern world, where all of these socio-cultural structures we interact with came from, why do we have states?
00:23:10.000 All of these questions can be traced back to this particular period.
00:23:12.000 It's really entertaining.
00:23:13.000 He breaks down what could be dry history into really fascinating stuff.
00:23:16.000 If you love learning, and I do, then you need to go check out Tides of History, Wondery's new podcast, Tides of History.
00:23:22.000 Really fantastic.
00:23:22.000 Go listen to the first episode on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts and Google Tides of History for more information.
00:23:28.000 I do highly recommend the podcast.
00:23:30.000 It really is quite good.
00:23:31.000 I like listening to other people's podcasts.
00:23:33.000 I recommended one yesterday.
00:23:34.000 This is the one that I recommend today.
00:23:36.000 Tides of History.
00:23:38.000 I would recommend it, by the way, whether or not they were a sponsor, because it is that good.
00:23:40.000 It's a very, very good podcast.
00:23:41.000 Tides of History.
00:23:42.000 Go check it out over at Wondery or any other place that you can get your podcast.
00:23:47.000 Okay, so...
00:23:48.000 I want to talk some more about all of this.
00:23:51.000 Plus, I want to get to the mailbag.
00:23:52.000 But for all of that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com right now and become a subscriber.
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00:25:02.000 Okay, so the Democrats are obviously ecstatic about these new developments in Mueller.
00:25:07.000 They're placing all their hope in Mueller.
00:25:08.000 I don't think Mueller is going to give them what they want.
00:25:10.000 I don't think this is going to come down to some major indictment of President Trump or even anyone who is super close to him, but you can see the excitement on the left.
00:25:18.000 They're so excited.
00:25:19.000 They think that finally there will be a magic bullet.
00:25:20.000 Okay, when you are relegating to hoping that a magic bullet is going to take out the president, I mean literally, when you are relegated to hope, I shouldn't say magic bullet, in association with presidents because that's actually a thing with JFK, but
00:25:31.000 When you're relegated to hoping that something bad is going to take the president out, like just some random event is going to take the president out, some random story, then you're in serious trouble.
00:25:41.000 I know this because there are a lot of people on the right who are attempting to push the birther story back in 2012, hoping that suddenly there would be evidence that Obama was not actually eligible for office and then you'd have to leave office.
00:25:53.000 I don't know.
00:26:08.000 Maybe there will be a deus ex machina that something will come from the sky and knock Obama out.
00:26:13.000 You can see the Democrats doing the same thing with the Mueller investigation right now.
00:26:16.000 Dan Rather, who is the very definition of fake news, he came out yesterday and he spoke about Hurricane Vladimir.
00:26:24.000 The Putin story is going to take out Trump.
00:26:26.000 And what you're seeing, time after time, is a president who is, within himself, seized with fear.
00:26:34.000 And that's going to be, you know, a political hurricane is out there at sea for him.
00:26:39.000 We'll call it Hurricane Vladimir, if you will, the whole Russian thing.
00:26:42.000 It's still pretty far out at sea.
00:26:45.000 But each day, and tonight we saw it again with the two things you reported, the draft reporting from Politico and the Financial Times,
00:26:52.000 This hurricane, this political hurricane, it's still far out at sea.
00:26:56.000 It's building in intensity.
00:26:57.000 You can say, well, it was category 1, it's gone to category 2.
00:27:01.000 It's approaching category 4.
00:27:03.000 Don't want to stretch that metaphor too far.
00:27:07.000 Nothing says classy quite like in the middle of a Category 4 hurricane hitting the mainland United States, likening a political scandal to a hurricane that's going to take out the President of the United States.
00:27:16.000 Just very classy stuff from a guy who lost his job in 2004 for legitimately making up a document or pushing a forged document about President Bush.
00:27:24.000 He thought, this is the irony, he thought in 2004 that that was going to be the magic
00:27:28.000 The magic bullet that ended up destroying the Bush presidency, that he was going to release this letter about Bush going AWOL.
00:27:35.000 It turned out that was fake.
00:27:36.000 Virtually anytime somebody says, I have the magic tape, I have the magic thing that's going to take out the president, only once, only once in American history, really, has there been some sort of magic document, magic tapes that ended up taking down a president.
00:27:49.000 It was Nixon.
00:27:50.000 And so everybody wants to go back to that model.
00:27:52.000 That was something that was unique in American history.
00:27:56.000 I don't think you're going to see something like that again in the near future.
00:27:59.000 But you can see that the hopes of the Democrats are riding on this thing.
00:28:01.000 Keith Olbermann is saying the same thing.
00:28:03.000 He says, everyone in the cabinet is going to be impeached.
00:28:05.000 Not only is Trump going to be impeached, everyone's going to be impeached.
00:28:08.000 Here's Keith Olbermann broadcasting from his mother's basement.
00:28:10.000 Republican senators and congressmen finally speaking out against Trump on Charlottesville, on Arpaio, on the response to Hurricane Harvey, on the Secretary of the Treasury watching the eclipse while standing next to 200 billion dollars in gold, on the military transgender ban, the daughter of the Secretary of the Interior herself a veteran calling for his impeachment over that, a website run by a Republican research firm noting with scorn that in one month Trump had attacked nearly one out of every seven Republican senators.
00:28:40.000 The little tendrils are popping up through the soil, so well fertilized by seven months of this administration and the president of bulls**t. Roger Stone's insurrection may in fact be coming to pass, except it will be non-violent, and when it is over, it will not be good news for Stone or his fellow travelers.
00:28:59.000 And when it ends, there will not be Trump.
00:29:04.000 See, this is the great hope.
00:29:05.000 There will not be Trump.
00:29:07.000 I say it very seriously, just like I used to say en fuego back on SportsCenter back in the day.
00:29:13.000 This is the great hope.
00:29:15.000 Okay, again, if you're banking on this hope and you're on the left, let me recommend that you get a better program, stop associating with Antifa, and start providing some solutions to the American people.
00:29:23.000 It turns out that Republicans suck at their jobs.
00:29:24.000 The only consolation is that Democrats are even worse at theirs.
00:29:27.000 They're even worse than theirs.
00:29:28.000 Democrats are now, CNN is now so desperate about Trump that they're legitimately attempting to push their own presidential candidates.
00:29:36.000 It's an amazing thing.
00:29:37.000 I was watching yesterday at the gym, CNN was on the TV, and again, I was not, I was in the middle of working out so I couldn't go up and just throw things at the TV, but
00:29:45.000 They decided to have on John Kasich and I think it's John Hickenlooper.
00:29:50.000 I can never remember Hickenlooper's first name.
00:29:51.000 He's the governor of Colorado.
00:29:53.000 Yeah, it's John Hickenlooper.
00:29:56.000 And they were both on with Brianna Keillor from CNN and Keillor actually presented to them
00:30:02.000 They're presenting their joint health care plan.
00:30:04.000 It's going nowhere because no one cares what these guys have to say because John Kasich is a watered-up piece of paper you stuck in your poppocat and it went through the wash.
00:30:10.000 And John Hickenlooper is like a slightly weirder version of Gary Johnson.
00:30:15.000 And so they're both sitting there and CNN actually proposes to them on the air that they should run a joint candidacy for president, a bipartisan candidacy for president.
00:30:25.000 God, no.
00:30:27.000 We whipped up a little something.
00:30:29.000 For what?
00:30:30.000 Running for what?
00:30:31.000 Not Dog Catcher.
00:30:32.000 What is it we're running for?
00:30:34.000 Well, you know, the big White House.
00:30:36.000 So, we whipped up a little something.
00:30:38.000 It's just a little poster just to give you a taste of what it would look like.
00:30:43.000 So, I don't know, isn't that a little enticing, Governor Kasich?
00:30:47.000 And then Kasich went on to avoid the question.
00:30:50.000 He said, you know, I'd have to talk to my wife about that.
00:30:53.000 And the only reason they're even proposing these stupid health care plans is because they want to run together or they want, like, would anyone take John Hickenlooper seriously as a human running for president?
00:31:03.000 I mean, look at the guy.
00:31:04.000 You really think that's going to be a thing?
00:31:06.000 The loop.
00:31:07.000 Loop de loop, 2020.
00:31:09.000 Like, that's gonna be a thing.
00:31:09.000 Kasich tried to run last time and stayed in long enough to get Donald Trump nominated.
00:31:13.000 And everyone dislikes him because he's a jerk.
00:31:16.000 I mean, I've been told.
00:31:17.000 I've been informed on very good information that his father is a mailman, but that's about all that I know to recommend him.
00:31:23.000 But this is how desperate the media are.
00:31:24.000 Now they're trying to push Kasich, Hickenlooper as an alternative to the awful crappy 2020 Trump-Kamala Harris race that is sure to come.
00:31:32.000 Okay, so with all that happening, Trump this morning tweets out that he's basically been targeted by forces beyond his control.
00:31:41.000 The truth is that there is some of that happening.
00:31:44.000 There's now a story out that transcripts reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee reveal that FBI Director James Comey had decided months before the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton concluded that he would not recommend criminal prosecution.
00:31:55.000 GOP Chairman Grassley, Senator Lindsey Graham, they all requested all the records related to Comey's firing.
00:32:01.000 In the transcript, the FBI's Principal Deputy General Counsel of National Security and Cyber Law, Tricia Anderson, told the Office of Special Counsel that Comey had drafted a statement in early May that he would later give in July 2016 that legally exonerated Hillary Clinton.
00:32:16.000 So he already decided he was going to exonerate Hillary Clinton long before FBI agents finished their work.
00:32:22.000 That'd be good enough reason to fire him right there.
00:32:24.000 Comey was always a bad FBI director, and that is just more evidence of it.
00:32:28.000 So when Trump says that he's been victimized by a system that's in place, clearly that's the case.
00:32:33.000 And that, by the way, will be his defense to anything that Mueller comes up with, which is why I say it's not necessary to fire Mueller, because I don't think that there are going to be enough Republicans who even jump on board, as long as it seems that
00:32:42.000 His investigation has been compromised in any way.
00:32:44.000 I don't think Trump has tons to fear from it.
00:32:46.000 I actually really don't.
00:32:47.000 I think there'll be a lot of bad headlines, but I don't think that he gets impeached over anything that Mueller has to bring, unless it clearly implicates the president directly.
00:32:53.000 Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then we'll do some mailbags.
00:32:56.000 So, things I like.
00:32:58.000 We've been doing philosophy all week.
00:32:59.000 So, this is one of my favorite philosophical books, as you probably could have guessed.
00:33:03.000 Machiavelli's The Prince.
00:33:05.000 So, this is a book that has gotten a very bad rap.
00:33:08.000 It's short.
00:33:08.000 It's very readable.
00:33:10.000 It's fascinating.
00:33:11.000 Written by Niccolo Machiavelli from back during the Renaissance in Italy.
00:33:17.000 And he was trying to get a job, basically.
00:33:19.000 I believe it was at the Borgias.
00:33:21.000 And he was trying to make it clear to them how he thought they should govern.
00:33:25.000 He was trying to give his own book of little political advice.
00:33:28.000 People identify Machiavelli as this evil, sinister guy who's trying to manipulate circumstances.
00:33:34.000 He was actually a proponent of what he called VirtĂą.
00:33:37.000 VirtĂą is like virtue, but it doesn't mean saints who sacrifice themselves, necessarily.
00:33:42.000 VirtĂą, according to Machiavelli, means a certain quality of manliness that allows you to uphold the principles for which you stand.
00:33:47.000 So VirtĂą isn't just the values that you hold, it's how you go about defending those values, and sometimes that requires a certain degree of ruthlessness
00:33:55.000 This is the handbook, obviously, on political ruthlessness.
00:33:58.000 Every political science major has read it, as every political science major should.
00:34:01.000 It is very readable.
00:34:02.000 It's very readable.
00:34:03.000 So I tried to recommend philosophy that's readable, which is why I'm not recommending Hegel or Kant.
00:34:07.000 But Machiavelli is very readable.
00:34:09.000 The Prince, it's a terrific book, and it's a very short read.
00:34:13.000 Again, it's like 120 pages, very short.
00:34:15.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:34:23.000 Things that I hate today.
00:34:24.000 I'm going to show you two police videos.
00:34:25.000 I hate both of these police videos, but I want to explain why I think the media jumps on one a lot more than they jump on the other.
00:34:32.000 So there's one police video that comes courtesy of this department.
00:34:37.000 I believe this is in Georgia.
00:34:38.000 There's a police officer and he pulls over a woman.
00:34:40.000 And she won't get out of her car.
00:34:42.000 It's in Cobb County, Georgia.
00:34:44.000 She won't get out of it.
00:34:44.000 This was back in July 2016.
00:34:45.000 It just broke, I think, yesterday.
00:34:47.000 And she won't get out of her car.
00:34:49.000 And she says, and he says, why don't you take your phone?
00:34:51.000 I'm arresting you.
00:34:52.000 Why don't you take your phone and call up your, and I want you to call up your boyfriend or something to let them know that you need to be bailed out.
00:35:00.000 And she says, I don't want to take my hands off the steering wheel because I've seen all the videos.
00:35:04.000 I've seen all the videos and apparently she's a drunk driver and she was drunk and kind of belligerent and wouldn't get out of her car or anything and so the cop jokingly says, well you got nothing to worry about because we only shoot black people.
00:35:15.000 Right, okay, so, idiot, idiot, idiot.
00:35:19.000 Terrible thing to say, obviously.
00:35:21.000 But, does he mean it literally?
00:35:22.000 I mean, I'll let you watch the tape.
00:35:23.000 It doesn't seem to me that he means, yes, we literally go around every day shooting black people.
00:35:26.000 It sounds to me like he's got a drunk woman in the car who's being an idiot, and he thinks he's joking with her to try and get her off her guard, and so he says this stupid thing sarcastically, like, you got nothing to worry about, we shoot black people, ha ha ha ha ha.
00:35:38.000 Right, the same way that Steven Crowder and I make Jewish jokes?
00:35:40.000 Right, he's making a joke about how cops are racist.
00:35:42.000 That seems to me what this actually is.
00:35:44.000 He got fired over it.
00:35:45.000 Here's the actual tape.
00:35:47.000 Go ahead and call it down.
00:35:48.000 I'm going to take you to jail, and I'm going to impound the car.
00:35:51.000 Before that, can you please let me know?
00:35:54.000 No.
00:35:54.000 I can't call them if you don't open the door.
00:35:56.000 Why can't you?
00:35:57.000 Because I will not put my... Use your phone.
00:35:59.000 It's in your lap right there.
00:36:00.000 Okay, I just don't want to put my hands down.
00:36:04.000 I'm really sorry.
00:36:05.000 I'm just... It's just really long.
00:36:06.000 No, no, no.
00:36:07.000 I've just seen way too many videos of cops.
00:36:09.000 But you're not black.
00:36:12.000 Remember, we only kill black people.
00:36:13.000 Yeah, we only kill black people, right?
00:36:15.000 Okay, the right at the end is the dead giveaway that he's being sarcastic, but it doesn't matter.
00:36:21.000 Obviously you can't say this sort of thing because that's asinine, but he ends up being fired and this is supposed to be some sort of indication that the police know they're institutionally racist.
00:36:31.000 I guess you can read it that way.
00:36:32.000 That's not how I read it.
00:36:32.000 I mean it seems to me pretty obvious from the tape that what the guy is doing is the lady says I've looked at all these videos and he's saying yeah you've looked at the videos I know we're all terrible but we only kill black people even according to the videos so you know get out of the car.
00:36:44.000 Right?
00:36:45.000 I don't
00:37:02.000 And this is a video of a woman named Alex Wubbles.
00:37:05.000 She is a nurse.
00:37:07.000 And there is a... I have to give the backstory.
00:37:08.000 There was a driver who was trying to get away from the cops.
00:37:12.000 He was speeding in his truck trying to get away from the cops.
00:37:14.000 He crossed over the median line and he went... he plowed headlong into a Mack truck.
00:37:19.000 He was badly burned.
00:37:19.000 He was in a coma, basically.
00:37:21.000 And the cops come in.
00:37:22.000 They're trying to absolve the other driver in the crash.
00:37:24.000 They come into the hospital and they say, we want to take his blood.
00:37:27.000 Okay, it is illegal under Supreme Court precedent from 2016 to take somebody's blood without any sort of probable cause, without a search warrant, or without the permission of the person.
00:37:37.000 Person's unconscious, and there's no search warrant.
00:37:39.000 So the nurse says, listen, you know, I may like you, but I can't let you take the guy's blood because that's illegal.
00:37:44.000 Okay, they arrest her, and they brutalize her in the process.
00:37:47.000 Here's the actual tape.
00:37:49.000 Okay.
00:37:50.000 No, we're done.
00:37:51.000 We're done.
00:37:51.000 You're under arrest.
00:37:52.000 We're done.
00:37:53.000 You're not alright!
00:38:01.000 Hey.
00:38:01.000 Hey!
00:38:12.000 So they arrest her over nothing.
00:38:15.000 She was never charged with a crime.
00:38:16.000 They handcuffed her.
00:38:17.000 They dragged her out physically.
00:38:18.000 Okay, she was the one who was obeying the law.
00:38:20.000 The cop wasn't.
00:38:21.000 And here's the point of why I'm contrasting and comparing these videos.
00:38:26.000 Most cop bad action has little or nothing to do with racism.
00:38:31.000 It has to do with cops just being crappy at their jobs.
00:38:33.000 Just like most of the things you do in your daily job have nothing to do with racism.
00:38:37.000 If you do it wrong, it has to do with you being bad at your job.
00:38:39.000 And if it happens, there's a black person in front of you and you're bad at your job, you might be accused of racism.
00:38:43.000 The same thing happens with cops.
00:38:45.000 Okay, Adam Carolla makes this point all the time and I think that he's exactly right.
00:38:48.000 If you're a black person getting pulled over by a cop and the cop was a jerk, he might immediately assume that it was because he was black.
00:38:53.000 But being a white person who's pulled over by a cop, he knows that it's just because some cops are jerks.
00:38:58.000 Right?
00:38:58.000 I think that's a perfectly understandable perspective.
00:39:00.000 And when you're a member of a minority group, that is the tendency.
00:39:03.000 You know, my father, my grandfather, I remember growing up, there'd be times where somebody would be a jerk, and my dad would say, the guy's probably an anti-Semite.
00:39:10.000 And I'd say, Dad, it probably isn't because he's an anti-Semite, it's probably just because he's an a-hole.
00:39:14.000 Right?
00:39:14.000 You know?
00:39:15.000 They're like, Dad, that happens.
00:39:16.000 Like, people are jerks.
00:39:17.000 I think that you're a jerk is a better explainer 95% of the time than you're a racist.
00:39:22.000 And so even the guy in the first tape, it seems to me he's acting out of ignorance, stupidity, incompetence.
00:39:28.000 He had 28, by the way, the evidence for that is that he had 28 years on the police force before he was fired, not a single instance in which he was accused of racism.
00:39:34.000 So, you know, that seems to me better evidence than that tape of sarcasm.
00:39:38.000 But the point here is that bad police action, we would be better off talking about when police exceed their mandate, when police are brutal, when police get out over what they are supposed to be doing, when police exceed
00:39:52.000 The use of force.
00:39:53.000 And when they do all those things, that seems to me a better explanation of police behavior than just blaming endemic institutional racism.
00:40:01.000 I mean, Alex Webbles is white.
00:40:02.000 They didn't stop the Salt Lake City cop from dragging her out for no reason.
00:40:05.000 And if she'd been black, what would the headline have been?
00:40:07.000 If Alex Webbles had been a black lady, the headline would have been completely different, right?
00:40:10.000 When a white officer drags a black woman out of the ER, Black Lives Matters would have been marching.
00:40:15.000 We would have been told that this was just unacceptable racism from the Salt Lake City Police Department.
00:40:20.000 And we hear the same thing whenever there's a death.
00:40:22.000 I remember out here in Los Angeles, in Orange County, there was a homeless white guy named Kelly Thomas, and he was beaten to death.
00:40:28.000 He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
00:40:30.000 He was beaten to death on the streets of Fulton, California by a bunch of cops.
00:40:33.000 He was white.
00:40:34.000 If he'd been black, that would have been a national story.
00:40:36.000 It was like Rodney King level.
00:40:37.000 I mean, it was worse than Rodney King because he actually died, Kelly Thomas.
00:40:40.000 And he actually didn't do as much wrong as Rodney King.
00:40:43.000 And it wasn't a national headline in the same way because he was white.
00:40:47.000 Again, I think the same cops who beat Rodney King beat Kelly Thomas.
00:40:51.000 And I think they're both wrong, but that's a different kind of wrong than racism necessarily.
00:40:55.000 Okay, time to do a little bit of mailbag.
00:41:01.000 Who do you want to see sit on the Iron Throne at the end of Game of Thrones?
00:41:06.000 So, I mean, my personal preference would be to sew Rob's head back onto his neck and make him king.
00:41:12.000 I was a big Rob fan and it was very sad to me when they knocked him off.
00:41:16.000 I do like the theory, it's not right, but I like the theory that Ned Stark is still alive.
00:41:19.000 I think that's hilarious.
00:41:20.000 That he switched places with Jaqen H'ghar in the jail at the end of season one.
00:41:26.000 Uh, of the players who are left on the board in the Iron Throne, as I've said before, my heart says I would love to see Tormund and Brienne with their giant children bestriding the world.
00:41:35.000 I think Tormund would be a good king because he's not interested in ruling anybody else.
00:41:39.000 But I think that in all likelihood he'll end up being a council of advisors and a democracy and blah blah blah.
00:41:45.000 Okay, Janet says,
00:41:46.000 Well, I think that the first step that we can take is when kids are young, model great marriages for them.
00:42:03.000 Model great marriages for them.
00:42:04.000 TV is modeling why it's great to be single, and it's all a lie, okay?
00:42:07.000 How many single people do you know who are really happy about being single?
00:42:11.000 Like, ecstatic about being single?
00:42:13.000 Not that they're happy, they can be happy, but I mean, just like, about that aspect of their life.
00:42:16.000 They're like, yeah, you know what?
00:42:17.000 I love being single.
00:42:18.000 Okay, other than a few guys who like to cat around, there are not very many people in the United States who are like, yeah, I love being single.
00:42:24.000 A lot of people living together, a lot of people have girlfriends, but they don't get married because pop culture has told them that marriage is a patriarchal institution in which people are miserable, and they fall out of love with each other, and blah blah blah blah blah.
00:42:35.000 The best thing you can do.
00:42:36.000 For your kids.
00:42:51.000 Make you unhappier in some ways, but a lot happier in other ways.
00:42:54.000 That's a different question though.
00:42:56.000 Kids, it's really fascinating how Western civilization has made kids into dogs and dogs into kids, but that's a different question than marriage itself.
00:43:04.000 Marriage itself is still an amazing institution and it is the lifelong commitment of somebody to you and knowing that you're going to be able to grow with that person the rest of your life.
00:43:12.000 Is a very different thing than the idea that you have sex with random partners you get together with and blah.
00:43:17.000 You know, I think that's garbage.
00:43:20.000 So Nathan, I don't, I should.
00:43:22.000 This is one area where I come up short in my own religious observance and I am moving toward it.
00:43:27.000 I met with my financial planner the other day and we were going to start laying out some money toward that goal.
00:43:34.000 What is your position on right-to-work laws, and what is your prediction for the future right-to-work laws in America?
00:43:40.000 So right-to-work laws are great.
00:43:41.000 Right-to-work laws basically state, for those who don't know, that there are a lot of laws on the books in places like California, there was in Wisconsin, there is in Ohio, that if you want to work for the police department, or the fire department, or the teachers, you have to be unionized.
00:43:54.000 You have to work for the teachers' union.
00:43:55.000 So you can't actually be employed by the state of California as a full-time teacher without being a member of the teachers' union.
00:44:01.000 That's nonsense, it's garbage, it's collusion, it should be illegal.
00:44:05.000 Right-to-work laws basically say that you do not have to be a member of any union in order for you to work, and also that they can't confiscate your wages.
00:44:12.000 I mean, the unions have the government so sewn up.
00:44:14.000 There's a great book called Shadow Bosses by a friend of mine named Mallory Factor and his wife Elizabeth about this.
00:44:19.000 There are a bunch of states that actually remove, the state will do this, when they pay a paycheck to a teacher in California, they actively remove your union fee out of your paycheck and give it to the union.
00:44:30.000 The union's a private organization.
00:44:32.000 That's insane.
00:44:33.000 That's like if I went to all of my employees and I said, listen, we have a charity fund over here, and we're going to use that charity fund for a bunch of nice things.
00:44:41.000 And you have to give to the charity fund.
00:44:42.000 And then the state says, okay, well, when we collect your taxes, we're going to take out a little extra and give it to your employer.
00:44:49.000 It's totally nuts that this is how it works.
00:44:51.000 Right-to-work laws are a good thing and ought to be pushed.
00:44:54.000 Well, they haven't lost any teeth yet, so I haven't actually had to have that conversation.
00:44:59.000 I see nothing wrong with kids believing in the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus.
00:45:04.000 Life will disabuse you of all sorts of notions later, but I think it's kind of charming.
00:45:08.000 I think it's kind of charming.
00:45:09.000 And kids figure it out pretty fast.
00:45:10.000 I mean, the fact is, the kids know that it's really Mommy and Daddy, but they like the mythology of it.
00:45:15.000 It's fun.
00:45:18.000 Thanks, Taylor.
00:45:21.000 So, I've divided mine on red light traffic cameras.
00:45:23.000 The part of me that is annoyed with getting tickets hates them.
00:45:26.000 The part of me that says that the law should be equally applied likes them.
00:45:28.000 So, the question is whether red light traffic cameras actually capture dangerous activity or whether these are just prophylactic rules that they are enforcing.
00:45:38.000 There are times when somebody is going through the intersection and it's the very last second and you're going through red light and there's no one there.
00:45:45.000 Is that somebody who deserves a $200 ticket the same way that somebody who runs a red light in the middle of somebody else's green light deserves a ticket?
00:45:52.000 I'm not sure.
00:45:53.000 I'm not sure.
00:45:53.000 Like, there's some judgment calls to this.
00:45:56.000 But if you want an equally enforced traffic law, I think that it makes sense.
00:45:58.000 If you want a safer—presumably, if you want a safer—
00:46:05.000 Let's put it this way.
00:46:08.000 Red light traffic cameras are a much better idea than hiring cops to sit around your intersections instead of policing actual crime.
00:46:14.000 This has been a pet peeve of mine with the police for years.
00:46:16.000 It has nothing to do with the officers.
00:46:18.000 I mean, the other day I was pulled over right near the office a couple months ago.
00:46:21.000 I was pulled over near the office and I said to the police officer, thanks for everything else you do.
00:46:26.000 And he kind of smiled and nodded at me and said, yeah, this is ridiculous, because they'd set up one of these speed traps and they had, I think, four motorcycle cops and three squad cars just on the side street over here to catch people who were making illegal rights.
00:46:41.000 And it's like, OK, we got crime in the city, like real crime in the city.
00:46:44.000 Even the cops don't want to be doing that.
00:46:46.000 Dana says, Hey Ben, what's the best way to get over a heartbreak?
00:46:49.000 The best way to get over a heartbreak is to get back out there, not to sit around moping about it.
00:46:53.000 If you sit around moping about it, then all you're doing is you are engaging in giving the control of your feelings over to somebody else.
00:47:02.000 That's always a mistake.
00:47:03.000 You are in control of your own feelings.
00:47:04.000 You're a rational human being.
00:47:05.000 Do not give control of your feelings over to someone else.
00:47:09.000 That empowers them.
00:47:09.000 It does not empower you.
00:47:12.000 Not to get all Marcus Aurelius stoic on you, but the fact is that it is up to you how you decide to treat the circumstances that surround you.
00:47:19.000 If you get dumped, if you have a heartbreak, then I would suggest that you move on as best you can in as quick a manner as you can.
00:47:28.000 Don't do this routine where it's like, well, if I just sit around, everything will eventually sort itself out.
00:47:32.000 It won't.
00:47:33.000 Why do you believe what happened to the Republican Party?
00:47:38.000 Well, Emanuel, it sort of depends on whether the Republican Party goes along with everything Trump is willing to do.
00:47:44.000 So let's say worst case scenario.
00:47:45.000 Worst case scenario is that there's a direct letter from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin saying, Vlad, I need some help.
00:47:51.000 You got any information on Hillary Clinton?
00:47:52.000 And Vlad writing back saying, Yes, Donald.
00:47:55.000 We have some information on Hillary Clinton.
00:47:57.000 Here it is.
00:47:58.000 Enjoy.
00:47:59.000 We would like to see you elected.
00:48:01.000 And Trump writes back saying, Thanks.
00:48:02.000 Love it.
00:48:04.000 Also, you can have Crimea.
00:48:05.000 Right?
00:48:06.000 Let's say that's the worst case scenario.
00:48:07.000 Okay, so if that happens and the Republicans sit around and don't impeach him, then they end up going down with him.
00:48:12.000 If they separate off from him, they don't as much.
00:48:14.000 Remember...
00:48:15.000 A lot of Republicans were getting ready to vote for impeachment for Richard Nixon when he resigned.
00:48:19.000 It seemed like a disaster for the Republican Party.
00:48:22.000 And Nixon resigns in, what, 75, I think?
00:48:26.000 And by the time it's over, like six years later, is Ronald Reagan.
00:48:29.000 So the idea that it was the end of the world when that happened, it was 74 when Nixon resigned, August 74 when Nixon resigned.
00:48:41.000 Gerald Ford fills out his term.
00:48:42.000 There's one term of Democrats and then you go right back to Ronald Reagan.
00:48:45.000 So it doesn't kill the party to have a president who's a failure.
00:48:48.000 It does kill the party to have a party that endorses the failure.
00:48:50.000 Megan says, what's your number one tip for conservatives in college?
00:48:54.000 Number one tip for conservatives in college is keep your head down and be...
00:48:59.000 Be specific about the points that you choose to make.
00:49:01.000 Don't always go into every argument guns-a-blazing.
00:49:05.000 Understand what the purpose of the argument is.
00:49:08.000 Brendan says, I want to know what your stance on cussing is.
00:49:10.000 I know on other podcasts you have a much more colorful language than on your show, but I'd like to know how you feel about cussing in regular life.
00:49:14.000 Thanks, Brendan.
00:49:15.000 Well, I think you shouldn't do it in front of kids.
00:49:17.000 I think it's impolite.
00:49:18.000 I don't think that it is a moral failing in any serious way.
00:49:21.000 This is where I differ from a lot of other religious people.
00:49:24.000 I may be wrong.
00:49:25.000 I'm fully willing to listen to that.
00:49:27.000 I think that there are times when the use of particular language is necessary and appropriate.
00:49:32.000 I think everybody does over curse.
00:49:34.000 But I don't think that it's a deep abiding problem in society.
00:49:38.000 Let's put it this way.
00:49:40.000 I think that the overuse of the F-word by everyone now, like when I was growing up no one used the F-word ever.
00:49:44.000 It was just a thing.
00:49:45.000 You didn't use the F-word.
00:49:46.000 Now everyone uses the F-word.
00:49:47.000 I think it is a laxity in moral standards that has led to the laxity in language.
00:49:53.000 But I think that if you're a person who drops the occasional F-bomb when you're frustrated and you're in the car alone, do I think that this makes you a lesser human being?
00:50:00.000 No, I don't.
00:50:00.000 I think that that's
00:50:01.000 Psychological studies have actually shown that when you drop an f-bomb, it actually helps alleviate pain and anger when you're in the car alone by yourself.
00:50:07.000 Like if you stub your toe and you yell the f-word, don't do it in front of kids, don't do it in front of other people, but if you do, it'll probably make you feel better than if you just didn't.
00:50:15.000 Daniel says...
00:50:17.000 Do you have any sort of special show plan for when you surpass Oprah and the iTunes ratings?
00:50:21.000 I don't have any special show plan.
00:50:23.000 You'll get a normal show.
00:50:24.000 You will not get a car, and you will not get a car, and you will not get a car, and none of you will get a car.
00:50:28.000 Go get your own damn car and get a job.
00:50:30.000 Foxamillion Sandwich writes, is cereal a soup?
00:50:34.000 No, cereal is not a soup.
00:50:36.000 I have two things for soup.
00:50:37.000 There are a bunch of things that people think are soup that I think are not soup.
00:50:39.000 Okay, so number one, soup has to be hot.
00:50:42.000 I know this is controversial.
00:50:43.000 I know a lot of people think that you can have cold soup.
00:50:45.000 Nonsense.
00:50:45.000 There is no such thing as cold soup.
00:50:46.000 That's called garbage.
00:50:48.000 Okay, no one should be eating cold soup.
00:50:50.000 Second, soup has to be cooked.
00:50:52.000 Okay, when you make a vegetable puree and it hasn't been cooked, or you make a fruit puree, that's called a smoothie.
00:50:57.000 Okay, a fruit smoothie is a puree.
00:50:59.000 When you give me a bowl and it's just chopped up fruit,
00:51:01.000 No, it's not a soup.
00:51:20.000 During the show, we only ever see you sitting behind a desk.
00:51:22.000 I must know.
00:51:23.000 Have you ever done an episode without wearing pants?
00:51:24.000 Would you ever consider it?
00:51:25.000 We wouldn't be able to see anyway.
00:51:27.000 Well, first of all, Andrew, you might be lying.
00:51:29.000 You might be able to see me.
00:51:30.000 I just don't know, and that would be really sick and perverse of you to get me to take my pants off just for that purpose.
00:51:34.000 How dare you?
00:51:35.000 Second of all, uh, I was implored to wear shorts the other day because it was 101 th- It was like 197 degrees in the studio.
00:51:41.000 It was really hot two days ago.
00:51:43.000 Uh, I came in in pants anyway.
00:51:45.000 Um, this is the difference between me and Michael Molls and Andrew Klavan.
00:51:48.000 I came in in pants.
00:51:49.000 Andrew Clavin came in in pants, Michael Mowles came in naked, and then stripped off a layer of skin so he could be more naked.
00:51:54.000 That's just who Michael Mowles is.
00:51:56.000 John, final question, he says, Sounds like a delightful book.
00:52:10.000 This brings me to my question.
00:52:12.000 When do you think is the optimal time to broach the birds and bees conversation with kids?
00:52:15.000 Do you think this is also the time to bring up LGBT issues or is that a separate discussion?
00:52:19.000 It is a separate discussion.
00:52:21.000 The birds and the bees is about human reproduction.
00:52:22.000 It's not about sexual pleasure.
00:52:24.000 The birds and the bees is about what you do to make babies.
00:52:26.000 Okay, because that is how the universe continues to operate.
00:52:29.000 That's how the world continues to function.
00:52:30.000 If that doesn't happen, humanity ends.
00:52:32.000 What you do to make yourself feel good on your genitals is a different discussion than what is the purpose of marriage and procreation.
00:52:39.000 It is.
00:52:40.000 It's a different thing.
00:52:40.000 Like, I remember when my dad gave me the birds and the bees talk.
00:52:43.000 He literally sat down with an anatomy book and he said, here's how everything works.
00:52:47.000 And if you have any questions, come to me and I'm happy to explain it to you.
00:52:50.000 And that worked out great.
00:52:52.000 I asked my dad any questions that I had.
00:52:54.000 And we were never shy in our house about talking about the way that sex works.
00:52:58.000 And so, you know, I think that being open with your child about how things work is the best.
00:53:02.000 These issues will make themselves apparent anyway.
00:53:04.000 I don't think it's like you have to sit around and wonder, when do I tell my kid this?
00:53:07.000 Your kid will come to you with questions if you're open about these issues.
00:53:09.000 Your kid will come to you with questions and ask the questions and you'll be given the opportunity to talk about them but you should think in advance about how you want to talk about these issues because there are moral issues embedded in the sexual pleasure question that are not embedded in how does sexual reproduction work questions and that's a separate conversation for my money.
00:53:25.000 I don't think they're the same thing.
00:53:26.000 Uh, at all.
00:53:27.000 And I think conflating the two is one of the things society has done that's actually quite awful.
00:53:31.000 It's conflating the value of sex with the value of physical pleasure.
00:53:35.000 I don't think that that is the entire thing.
00:53:37.000 And I think making the two identical has been a real disservice to children throughout the country.
00:53:41.000 Okay, so, we'll be back here next week.
00:53:43.000 We don't have a show on Monday, I believe, because it's Labor Day.
00:53:46.000 So thanks, commies.
00:53:47.000 Uh, appreciate it.
00:53:48.000 We will be back on Tuesday, and we will have all of the news for you then.
00:53:52.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:53:52.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.