The Ben Shapiro Show - The Exploitation Of January 6 | Ep. 1404

00:00:00.000 Democrats obsess over January 6th in order to promote changing all the rules.

00:00:04.000 Joe Biden doesn't know whether to lock down harder or leave people alone.

00:00:07.000 And Patton Oswalt throws Dave Chappelle under the bus.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:17.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:22.000 Slash Ben will get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:30.000 Alrighty, so, the Democrats, the media, they are all revved up this week in preparation for Thursday because Thursday, of course, is the one-year anniversary of the biggest event, the signal event in American history, January 6th, the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of the planet.

00:01:45.000 Now, listen, you don't have to downplay the evils of January 6th in order to recognize that what January 6th was was a really bad aberration.

00:01:53.000 I mean, the imagery of January 6th was quite terrible.

00:01:55.000 You had Americans who were storming the Capitol building.

00:01:57.000 You had people beating up police officers with poles.

00:02:00.000 You had a woman who was shot to death while trying to break through a window to get to Congress.

00:02:03.000 People had people in the halls of the Capitol baying for Mike Pence.

00:02:06.000 And none of that is good.

00:02:07.000 All of that is really bad.

00:02:08.000 And a lot of those folks were acting because they were emotionally revved up by President Trump's Prevarications over the prior two months about how the election was stolen, it was all election fraud, how he was the rightful president, how Mike Pence could somehow illegally shift the votes in the election or not count votes in the election and throw the entire process into chaos and then continue Trump in the presidency.

00:02:29.000 None of that was true.

00:02:31.000 So, you don't have to downplay the evils of January 6th in order to recognize what the left is now doing with January 6th is absurd.

00:02:37.000 The left has declared that January 6th is the be-all end-all.

00:02:40.000 It is the only thing that matters in human history.

00:02:43.000 And it only matters because if there's an emergency, if there's an ongoing emergency, this means that they can take emergency power in the same way that the left used COVID in order to grab control and never relinquish it of every aspect of American life in major American cities like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago.

00:02:59.000 In exactly the same way, the left is now suggesting that January 6th is not a bad thing that happened, a horrible thing that was perpetrated by people who are now in jail.

00:03:10.000 And that was revved up by a president who's no longer president.

00:03:13.000 No.

00:03:13.000 Instead, they have to say January 6th is every day.

00:03:15.000 That was literally the name of an editorial from the New York Times yesterday.

00:03:19.000 January 6th is every day.

00:03:20.000 Every day is January 6th.

00:03:21.000 Well, no, it's not.

00:03:22.000 But the reason they have to say that is because if there's an ongoing threat to democracy each and every day, if that threat is ongoing, continuous, never ending, that means the only way to fight back against that is to seize control of all the levers of power.

00:03:36.000 Just as they did with COVID.

00:03:37.000 If there's an ongoing emergency, we must have emergency power.

00:03:40.000 If there's an ongoing electoral emergency, we must have emergency electoral power.

00:03:43.000 Now, here is the thing.

00:03:45.000 January 6th, the riot at the Capitol building, That was really not even quite unprecedented.

00:03:51.000 I know that we've all sort of memory hold what happened in 2017, but over 200 people were arrested in Washington, D.C.

00:03:58.000 when Trump was inaugurated in 2017.

00:04:00.000 I mean, there were burning cop cars, 3,000 members of local, state, federal law enforcement backed by 5,000 National Guard members and police officers from as far away as New Jersey patrolled the streets.

00:04:11.000 This is according to the NBC News report from the time.

00:04:16.000 Acting Police Chief Peter Newsham said that by around 6.30 p.m.

00:04:18.000 Eastern Time, things had calmed down, but authorities were still monitoring several groups.

00:04:22.000 At the same time, police were preparing for the Women's March on Washington.

00:04:25.000 It was expected to draw 200,000 protesters.

00:04:28.000 And people started calling themselves the Resistance, in an ode to the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation, literally right away.

00:04:37.000 And you know what?

00:04:38.000 Democracy didn't end.

00:04:39.000 Democracy continued.

00:04:41.000 Some of these criminals went to jail.

00:04:42.000 Many of these criminals did not.

00:04:44.000 But 200 people were in fact arrested on inauguration day 2017.

00:04:49.000 Nobody remembers that because it got memory hold in the same way that the congressional baseball attack got memory hold because the perpetrator of that attack was a was a hardcore Democrat who supported Bernie Sanders.

00:04:58.000 In the same way that we've now memory hold the murder of a bunch of white people by a black driver in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

00:05:05.000 In the same way that we've memory hold a Black Lives Matter supporter murdering six police officers in Dallas in 2016.

00:05:11.000 Anytime there's a perpetrator who's of the left, it gets memory hold.

00:05:14.000 Anytime there's a perpetrator who is purportedly of the right, then it becomes a signal moment in American history.

00:05:21.000 And January 6th is just the latest evidence of this.

00:05:23.000 Why?

00:05:23.000 Because, well, the left can't use any of the other moments that I talked about.

00:05:27.000 The left can't use the fact that there were 200 people who were arrested in 2017, and that windows were being smashed.

00:05:32.000 The left can't use the fact that there was $5 billion in uninsured property damage, probably, that was done during summer 2020 over the George Floyd protests slash riots.

00:05:43.000 I can't use any of that, but they can use January 6th.

00:05:46.000 They can pretend that January 6th is some sort of turning point in American history, that it is a constant, ever-present threat, that the laws that have been attempted to be passed in various states around the country are a true threat to democracy.

00:05:59.000 So what they will typically do when they have this discussion is they will bring up bills that didn't even pass.

00:06:02.000 They'll bring up bills that, for example, allow for election results to be thrown out.

00:06:06.000 They never talk about the bills that do pass, like the bill in Georgia that passed and then was made the subject of Major League Baseball pulling the All-Star game from Georgia.

00:06:15.000 You remember this?

00:06:16.000 That bill loosened some of the voting restrictions on, for example, early voting.

00:06:21.000 That bill was not unprecedented in any way, but it was treated as unprecedented.

00:06:25.000 Because again, the goal here is not to prevent another January 6th.

00:06:30.000 The goal here is to prevent another election.

00:06:33.000 The goal here is to make it more difficult to run a free, fair, and honest election.

00:06:38.000 And it doesn't require you to sympathize with the cause of the January 6th rioters to say this.

00:06:43.000 All you have to have are eyes.

00:06:46.000 All you have to have are ears.

00:06:47.000 These Democrats are not hiding the ball here.

00:06:48.000 They're making very clear that they seek to exploit January 6th in order to press forward their agenda.

00:06:53.000 As always, Agenda Uber Alice.

00:06:56.000 And we'll get to more on this in just one second first.

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00:08:05.000 Okay, so.

00:08:06.000 And the Democrats, of course, are making clear that they are tying January 6th to 2022, the midterms.

00:08:13.000 The fact is, the Democrats know they're going to get skunked in the midterms unless they change the rules.

00:08:16.000 And so the rules have to be changed.

00:08:18.000 And the way that they seek to change the rules is with a couple of bills.

00:08:20.000 They originally had the For the People Act.

00:08:23.000 That completely fell apart because it had no support.

00:08:25.000 Then they started trying to push forward the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, that is Senate Bill 4, HR Bill 4.

00:08:34.000 So that particular act is designed to vastly expand federal oversight of state and local elections via use of the Voting Rights Act.

00:08:43.000 The suggestion being that without any evidence of actual racist intent, if there is quote-unquote disparate impact in redistricting, for example, the federal government will now have to oversee that.

00:08:55.000 There's not a lot of Republican support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, because there shouldn't be.

00:09:00.000 Hans von Spakovsky, who writes for Heritage Foundation, has a very good breakdown of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and exactly what it would do.

00:09:07.000 He says the stated purpose is to prevent racial discrimination, but it would force racial gerrymandering, make race the predominant factor in the election process, advance the partisan interests of one political party, and prevent common-sense election reforms like voter ID.

00:09:18.000 It would also change Section 3 from requiring a show of intentional discrimination to allow other violations of the VRA to count toward triggering pre-clearance coverage.

00:09:27.000 In other words, normally it was under the Voting Rights Act, which was passed in 1965.

00:09:32.000 The idea was that there were a bunch of southern states that were going to gerrymander black voters out of any ability to have any impact on elections. 0.85

00:09:40.000 And so the Voting Rights Act said that particular states have to go through a pre-clearance process with the federal government to demonstrate that they were not in fact acting in racially discriminatory ways.

00:09:49.000 Then there was a Supreme Court decision a couple of years ago that said it's now been 50 years since the Voting Rights Act, and so we don't need to do this anymore because there's not evidence that there's a dramatic attempt in Southern states particularly to quash the black vote.

00:10:02.000 Okay, well, that basically the act here would be an attempt to undo that Supreme Court decision and again make it the DOJ's prerogative to draw districts.

00:10:13.000 So if you want Merrick Garland drawing districts, then this is the bill for you.

00:10:17.000 Of course, the DOJ has a history of filing unwarranted objections under Section 5 based on its bias in favor of liberal advocacy groups.

00:10:23.000 And that bias has not changed, of course.

00:10:26.000 So, that is one of the acts that the Democrats are seeking to move forward.

00:10:30.000 There's another act that the Democrats are seeking to move forward as well that does something similar.

00:10:37.000 That is an attempt to put into place all sorts of ballot restrictions preventing voter ID from being implemented, encouraging ballot harvesting, all the rest of it.

00:10:48.000 But they don't have support for it.

00:10:49.000 So what they're trying to do is cudgel Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema into killing the filibuster in order so that the support will then happen.

00:10:58.000 If they kill this filibuster, then presumably they can get it done with 50 votes plus Kamala Harris. 0.58

00:11:01.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:11:02.000 If you're Manchin or Sinema, you really have no incentive to kill the filibuster.

00:11:06.000 The reason you have no incentive to kill the filibuster is because then you're actually going to be held to account.

00:11:10.000 See, the filibuster protects Sinema and Manchin.

00:11:13.000 The filibuster, these are two Blue senators from red or purple states, right?

00:11:18.000 Arizona is a purple state and West Virginia is a bright red state.

00:11:22.000 The filibuster protects Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema because they can vote in favor of Democratic proposals on the actual floor.

00:11:29.000 And then they can not have that have any consequence because the filibuster kills it and they never have to vote for anything controversial.

00:11:35.000 If they kill the filibuster, suddenly they're held to account by their own Democratic Party base and or Republican voters who don't like how they vote.

00:11:41.000 So there's no interest for Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema in killing the filibuster.

00:11:45.000 So Democrats have tried to create selective kills of the filibuster.

00:11:49.000 What they're trying to do is encourage Manchin and Sinema to kill the filibuster only on bills where Manchin and Sinema really, really like the bill.

00:11:55.000 But Manchin and Sinema, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to do that because once they've opened the door, then the question becomes, why don't they just do that for everything?

00:12:03.000 According to Politico, today, a group of Democrats, including Raphael Warnock of Georgia, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, began meeting with Joe Manchin to design a modified version of H.R.

00:12:13.000 1 that all 50 Democrats could back.

00:12:16.000 They came up with this Freedom to Vote Act.

00:12:18.000 It is a massive reform bill addressing voting rights, election integrity, campaign finance, and gerrymandering, but it is more tailored to address problems of electoral subversion, like removing election officials without cause that became apparent after 2020.

00:12:29.000 Manchin shopped the bill to Republicans.

00:12:31.000 Nobody joined up.

00:12:33.000 So they were now talking about nuking the filibuster.

00:12:36.000 That is very, very unlikely.

00:12:37.000 It is unlikely that they're going to nuke the filibuster, especially because the Republicans do have an alternative.

00:12:42.000 The Republican alternative has been pushed by folks like Yuval Levin over at American Enterprise Institute.

00:12:47.000 The Republican alternative is basically to prevent some of the worst sort of election bill abuses that could theoretically be put forward, like simply throwing away votes, right, in favor of a reform to the Electoral Count Act.

00:13:03.000 That the Electoral Count Act was the bill that was misinterpreted by some legal advisors to President Trump in order to suggest that Mike Pence could simply throw out electoral votes and then change the certification of the election?

00:13:16.000 That's really not what the ECA says.

00:13:18.000 We talked about it at length back during December and January.

00:13:21.000 The Electoral Count Act of 1887 does not allow the Vice President of the United States to simply throw out votes that have been state certified.

00:13:28.000 Yuval Levin says it could be clarified.

00:13:31.000 He says that some Republicans insist the process of counting and certifying the votes in some states was corrupt in 2020.

00:13:36.000 There's no evidence to support specific claims on this front, or greater care and transparency about post-election administration would serve us well regardless and could render such claims easier to test and refute in ways that would build public confidence.

00:13:48.000 Reforms focused on these themes would be a more productive path than what we've seen so far, which are efforts focused mostly on voting itself, on who can cast a ballot, when, and by what means.

00:13:57.000 If we take both parties' most high-minded arguments at face value, they're worried about problems that barely exist.

00:14:01.000 It's easier than ever to vote.

00:14:03.000 Registration has gotten much simpler, so Democrats complaining that there is an attempt to crack down on voting, they're just lying.

00:14:08.000 It's not true.

00:14:09.000 Voter turnout is at historic highs.

00:14:10.000 Black and white voting rates now rise and fall together.

00:14:13.000 Meanwhile, voter fraud is vanishingly rare as well.

00:14:15.000 The most thorough database of cases, maintained by one of the staunchest conservative defenders of election integrity, suggests a rate of fraud so low it could not meaningfully affect outcomes.

00:14:24.000 So what exactly could be done?

00:14:26.000 Well, theoretically, they should turn to narrowly tailored legislation, says Yuval Levin, focused on post-election administration.

00:14:32.000 Such a bill could, for example, limit the ability of state officials to remove local election administrators without cause and prohibit the harassment of election workers.

00:14:40.000 It could mandate a mechanism for post-election audits while requiring a clear standard for rendering election results final.

00:14:46.000 It could modernize and simplify the ECA.

00:14:49.000 Some of those ideas were included in the Freedom to Vote Act, which is the Democratic Joe Manchin joined bill.

00:14:56.000 But that bill also includes a bunch of other stuff, like campaign finance, redistricting, and make it unacceptable. 0.60

00:15:01.000 So they could narrow it down.

00:15:02.000 So that will probably be Mitch McConnell's return offer to the Democrats, and Democrats will turn it down because they don't care about that.

00:15:08.000 Democrats aren't interested in shoring up the Electoral Account Act.

00:15:11.000 Democrats are interested in completely revising the way we do voting in this country.

00:15:14.000 Why?

00:15:15.000 Well, because if they don't, then they're going to lose.

00:15:17.000 Representative Ted Lieu of California makes this particularly clear.

00:15:20.000 He said yesterday that the 2022 midterms are going to decide democracy.

00:15:23.000 Well, if you actually believe this, then why not change all the rules?

00:15:26.000 If you change all the rules, then presumably you won't lose as badly.

00:15:30.000 Democracy itself is on the ballot this November.

00:15:33.000 147 Republicans voted to not certify the Electoral College results.

00:15:39.000 And more than a year later, not a single one of them can identify who allegedly stole the election, nor explain how it was done.

00:15:47.000 And that's because the election was not stolen.

00:15:49.000 Donald Trump got crushed in the popular vote.

00:15:53.000 He lost the Electoral College.

00:15:55.000 And what we see are Republican legislators trying to nullify the vote instead of adhering to our democracy.

00:16:02.000 Okay, so his idea is what if we completely revise the rules for how this stuff is done?

00:16:05.000 Because if we don't do that, then they're so in order for them to we have to stop them from stealing elections by stealing elections is the basic idea here.

00:16:12.000 We have to burn the Republican, like small R Republican village in order to save the small D Democratic village. If you want to save democracy, you have to end democracy. You have to kill the filibuster. You have to redo how all the voting is done. By the way, it was five seconds ago the Democrats were defending the filibuster. Here was Chuck Schumer just a few years back talking about how eliminating the filibuster would be doomsday for democracy. This is 2005. The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the founding fathers

00:16:40.000 called the cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber stamp of dictatorship.

00:16:47.000 We will not let them.

00:16:50.000 They want, because they can't get their way on every judge, to change the rules in midstream.

00:16:58.000 To wash away 200 years of history.

00:17:01.000 They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don't get your way, you change the rules.

00:17:08.000 Are we going to let them?

00:17:11.000 It'll be a doomsday for democracy if we do.

00:17:14.000 I mean, I wish that Chuck Schumer today met this Chuck Schumer from the past.

00:17:19.000 It would be very interesting to watch as they stare at each other, confused, because everything that he's... Chuck Schumer is just at war with his old self.

00:17:26.000 Because again, when it comes to politics, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

00:17:30.000 You're all for killing the filibuster when it favors you, and you're all for keeping the filibuster when it favors you.

00:17:35.000 And it's death for democracy whenever you don't get your way.

00:17:38.000 Okay, that's really what this January 6th stuff is about.

00:17:41.000 It was, by the way, within 24 hours of January 6th.

00:17:44.000 We'll get to that in one second.

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00:18:51.000 Alright, so again, the basic idea here is that January 6th is an excuse for everything that we want to do.

00:18:57.000 Ever.

00:18:58.000 And forever.

00:19:00.000 Because Republicans are founts of misinformation, therefore we have to have social media shutting them down.

00:19:04.000 Representative Pramila Jayapal, by the way, she says that this should become a thing.

00:19:07.000 That Twitter and Facebook should just shut down anyone who disagrees with her because, again, threat to democracy.

00:19:12.000 It's always some deep threat that requires basic freedoms to be curbed.

00:19:17.000 It's no secret that our social media companies have been part of their algorithms promoting disinformation.

00:19:24.000 And I think that these steps are important, but frankly, a little too little and a little too late.

00:19:33.000 The reality is, it's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:19:35.000 All over Twitter, social media, Facebook, all of these companies have been using algorithms that are just about clickbait, not about truth.

00:19:44.000 And so if we are going to take on the disinformation that's out there, the big lie, and everything else that goes with it, then yes, this is a part of it, but it's got to be much, much more.

00:19:57.000 We have to crack down on the First Amendment in order to save the First Amendment.

00:20:00.000 We have to crack down on your ability to vote with a certain amount of certainty in order to save voting.

00:20:09.000 It's amazing how often they use this logic.

00:20:12.000 In fact, we have to curb all of the traditional institutions of American democracy in order to save American democracy, according to Professor Jedediah Britton-Purdy, a professor of constitutional law at Columbia.

00:20:21.000 He has a piece in the New York Times called, The Republican Party is succeeding because we are not a true democracy.

00:20:27.000 Oh, so when you win, it's a democracy, and when you lose, it's not a true democracy.

00:20:31.000 I kind of see how this is working.

00:20:33.000 The January 6th attack would not have happened in a genuine democracy, says Britton-Purdy.

00:20:39.000 Really?

00:20:40.000 Because I feel like the entire summer of 2020, before Trump and January 6th, before any of that happened, attacks on federal courthouses in Portland, massive riots across the United States, like dozens if not hundreds of riots across the United States.

00:20:58.000 It wouldn't have happened in... So you explain to me, when exactly was there a genuine democracy in the United States and no violence involved ever?

00:21:07.000 What was that period exactly?

00:21:09.000 says Professor Britton Purdy.

00:21:11.000 The attack was the most acute symptom of the political crisis that Donald Trump incited by refusing to admit defeat in the 2020 election.

00:21:16.000 But the roots of the crisis run deep into the undemocratic features of our constitutional system.

00:21:23.000 At a basic level, today's Republican Party succeeds only because the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court all tilt in its favor.

00:21:29.000 That system has handed conservatives a 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court, despite the fact that only one Republican has won the presidential popular vote after 1988.

00:21:37.000 A party doesn't have to persuade majorities, it has the best vision for the country.

00:21:40.000 It only has to persuade a selective minority that the other side is a mortal threat.

00:21:44.000 Its grasp on power may be too tenuous for the party to govern effectively, but it has offered conservatives a fine perch to weaken economic and environmental regulation, appoint conservative judges, and launch attacks on the democratic system itself.

00:21:55.000 In a more democratic system, says this professor of constitutional law, the Republican Party's extreme elements would have been sent packing long before they stormed the Capitol because they couldn't muster enough votes to win a national election.

00:22:06.000 Instead, they have perfected minority rule as a path to political success. 0.75

00:22:10.000 An anti-democratic system has bred an anti-democratic party.

00:22:13.000 The remedy is to democratize our so-called democracy.

00:22:16.000 Yes, pure majoritarianism.

00:22:19.000 What the founders call mob rule will certainly make things much better.

00:22:22.000 Because when the mob rules, nothing bad ever happens.

00:22:25.000 When you have just a pure majority cramming down its opinions on the minority, without any sort of hampering mechanisms, then only good comes from that, as we know from none of world history ever.

00:22:39.000 This is the basic idea for the Democrats.

00:22:41.000 If we just go to pure majoritarianism, then it'll be good.

00:22:44.000 By the way, if they start to lose in a pure majoritarian state, like let's say that the next Republican presidential candidate in 2024 wins a popular vote, then we'll be back to, well, what systems are broken here that could have allowed this to possibly happen?

00:22:58.000 Again, January 6th is all about exploitation.

00:23:01.000 It was never about January 6th purely.

00:23:03.000 And that is the problem.

00:23:04.000 If it had been just about January 6th, we all would have agreed.

00:23:07.000 If it's about the exploitation, then we all ought to not agree because it is really, really kind of gross to use a A horrible riot on January 6th.

00:23:18.000 Not nearly as horrible in terms of property damage or loss of life as anything that happened in 2020, by the way.

00:23:23.000 But a horrible image for the United States to use that as an excuse to batter away traditional institutions like the filibuster, as well as the state control over voting rights, in order to shore up your chances in 2022.

00:23:37.000 That seems like much more of a threat to democracy than 200 droogs invading the Capitol building, getting themselves arrested and thrown in jail. 1.00

00:23:43.000 Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get into the latest on America's COVID response, which is just completely chaotic and insane.

00:23:51.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:25:00.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden is trying to happy talk his way through a bunch of horrible policy decisions.

00:25:06.000 So he said yesterday that we are entering 2022 in great economic condition, which is a shock to everybody who's looking around going, hold up, aren't half the companies in America about to be hit with a vaccine mandate by you? And.

00:25:20.000 And isn't the economy slowing?

00:25:22.000 And aren't we experiencing still supply chain problems and inflation?

00:25:25.000 Here's Joe Biden trying to happy talk his way through this one.

00:25:28.000 Before we begin, I want to say a word about where our economy stands today.

00:25:34.000 We're entering 2022 in a position of a unique economic strength.

00:25:39.000 Six million new jobs, a record number for a new president been created since January last.

00:25:46.000 Unemployment is down to 4.2%.

00:25:49.000 Three years ahead of predictions.

00:25:51.000 New small business applications are up over 30% compared with before the pandemic.

00:25:58.000 And the fastest growth in America in nearly 40 years.

00:26:03.000 Um, so here is the thing.

00:26:05.000 Nobody actually believes that the economy is growing the way that it should be growing right now. 0.68

00:26:08.000 No one actually believed that, which is why that old dullard's approval ratings are down in like the low 40s.

00:26:14.000 That is why. 0.96

00:26:15.000 While he sits in a fake Oval Office with a bunch of projected snow behind him.

00:26:18.000 Very exciting stuff from the President of the United States.

00:26:20.000 By the way, he does have excuses for why all the failures, and the answer is it's everybody else's fault.

00:26:24.000 I will say, I am highly amused by the new democratic line that companies have only now discovered the possibility of economic self-interest.

00:26:32.000 So the entirety of free market economics is based on the idea that human beings are self-interested.

00:26:37.000 In fact, that is the basis of much of classical liberal thought generally.

00:26:41.000 Whether you're a conservative or a classical liberal, the basis of a lot of political thought over the course of the last several centuries has been the idea that human beings are motivated by self-interest.

00:26:49.000 But apparently, all these companies only discovered self-interest the moment that inflation began to rise.

00:26:55.000 So it's not that inflation is rising across the economy because this guy poured money on a raging fire of inflation already.

00:27:02.000 It's not because of that.

00:27:03.000 It's because meat companies suddenly got greedy.

00:27:06.000 Honestly, if you believe this, you deserve a person like Joe Biden as your president.

00:27:10.000 If you believe this, you should have a president whose neurons stopped firing a couple of decades ago.

00:27:15.000 Here is Joe Biden trying to explain why it is that meat prices are rising.

00:27:19.000 His answer is that suddenly the beef companies got greedy, as opposed to, you know, his bad economic policy.

00:27:25.000 Four big corporations control more than half the markets in beef, pork, and poultry.

00:27:32.000 These middlemen that they buy from, farmers and ranchers, and sell the processed product to grocery stores.

00:27:44.000 That's the way it works.

00:27:46.000 Without meaningful competition, farmers and ranchers don't get to choose who they sell to.

00:27:52.000 Or put another way, our farmers and ranchers have to pay whatever these four big companies say they have to pay, by and large.

00:28:01.000 But that's only half of it.

00:28:03.000 These companies can use their position as middlemen to overcharge grocery stores and ultimately families.

00:28:09.000 Okay, so it's amazing.

00:28:10.000 So every time there is a shortage, it is not the government that is to blame.

00:28:14.000 It is the meat companies.

00:28:17.000 Right?

00:28:17.000 It's the meat companies.

00:28:18.000 So until now, the meat companies were totally altruistic, and they were fine, and they were never greedy or self-interested.

00:28:22.000 And then suddenly, as inflation began to rise, it was all the meat companies.

00:28:25.000 He uses exactly the same language that Bernie Sanders uses about the banks.

00:28:28.000 Everybody just gets greedy randomly as soon as Democrats need an excuse for why their policies are failing.

00:28:33.000 It's the evil, evil meat companies, of course.

00:28:36.000 It's the evil meat companies.

00:28:37.000 It's not your centralized government top-down approach to how distribution ought to be done and how taxation and redistribution ought to be pursued.

00:28:46.000 It's pretty incredible stuff.

00:28:48.000 It's no wonder that America is currently suffering from all sorts of economic uncertainty, despite the fact that we should be booming at this point in unprecedented fashion.

00:28:56.000 Meanwhile, major companies around the United States are implementing Joe Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

00:29:02.000 Those companies are likely to get slammed with labor shortages, because if you actually fire all your workers who won't get the vax, because they have natural immunity, many of them, then you're going to end up with labor shortage.

00:29:13.000 Right now, there's a lot of talk about hospital shortages.

00:29:16.000 The reality is that the hospitals are not inundated with cases, like hospitalized cases with COVID, in the same way they were during the Delta surge.

00:29:22.000 That's because Delta is much more serious than Omicron.

00:29:25.000 But there are shortages anyway.

00:29:26.000 One of the reasons that there are shortages is because, as has been widely reported, many hospitals have been laying people off who are not vaxxed.

00:29:34.000 And the same thing is about to happen across the economy.

00:29:37.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Starbucks is now requiring U.S.

00:29:41.000 employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular testing, one of the first large restaurant chains to take such a step ahead of potential federal vax mandates for large employers.

00:29:50.000 Starbucks said on Monday workers in its U.S.

00:29:51.000 cafes, offices and manufacturing plants must be vaccinated by February 9th or get tested weekly.

00:29:56.000 Workers who choose testing must have a pharmacist or doctor administer it instead of taking one at home.

00:30:01.000 Workers will need to themselves obtain and cover any cost for the test, the company said in a message to U.S.

00:30:06.000 stores.

00:30:07.000 So the company's not going to cover the test.

00:30:08.000 You're going to cover the cost of the test.

00:30:10.000 So given the fact that tests are in extraordinarily low supply right now, it could cost you hundreds, like more than you're making at Starbucks, in order to test yourself to work at Starbucks, which means unemployment.

00:30:21.000 U.S.

00:30:22.000 workers must disclose their vaccination status by January 10th, according to Starbucks.

00:30:27.000 Starbucks COO John Culver wrote in a message to employees last week.

00:30:30.000 He understands workers have a range of views on vaccination, but he said Starbucks is strongly encouraging all workers to get vaccinated, particularly as the Omicron variant spreads.

00:30:39.000 Last month, the federal appellate court reinstated the Biden administration rules that require businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly for COVID-19.

00:30:47.000 The Supreme Court is going to hear oral arguments early this month, possibly late this week.

00:30:53.000 On this particular and we have already submitted amicus briefs.

00:30:58.000 We are the first major American company to sue the Biden administration, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:31:04.000 We urge you to head on over to our petition over at dailywire.com slash do not comply.

00:31:10.000 Please sign our petition against the Biden vaccine mandates.

00:31:13.000 We have over a million signatures on that.

00:31:16.000 Well, as companies start to do this, it's just going to exacerbate a labor shortage that is already driving up wages, which is driving up prices, which is driving up inflation.

00:31:24.000 And here is the thing.

00:31:26.000 All of these VAX mandates were originally designed not just to protect you against the virus.

00:31:31.000 They were designed to protect you from infecting your neighbors.

00:31:33.000 But as we all know, pretty much everybody you know is getting a breakthrough case of Omicron right now.

00:31:39.000 And so the spread is not being prevented by the vaccines.

00:31:42.000 It may be mitigated to a certain extent, although we have no statistical idea what the differential is between the vaxed getting Omicron and the unvaxed getting Omicron.

00:31:50.000 What we do know is that the vaxed are responding in better fashion to Omicron than the unvaxed, although Omicron generally is less dangerous than Delta.

00:31:58.000 However, if the basic idea of the VAX mandate is we have to create a safe workplace where you're not going to get COVID, which is the idea behind the OSHA VAX mandate, well, the VAX doesn't prevent you from getting COVID.

00:32:09.000 It prevents you from dying from COVID and being hospitalized.

00:32:11.000 I'm a big VAX fan.

00:32:13.000 But that's not the idea here.

00:32:14.000 The idea is that OSHA can prevent externalities.

00:32:18.000 There's no VAX mandate that OSHA could cram down that only protects you against death.

00:32:22.000 So, for example, Let's say that there were a vax that prevented you from dying of the flu, but did not prevent transmission of the flu.

00:32:30.000 OSHA would have really no business cramming down a vax mandate on that basis.

00:32:34.000 Because again, it's about the externalities.

00:32:35.000 It's about creating a quote-unquote safe workplace.

00:32:38.000 So if you're still passing it, and you're vaccinated, that sort of defeats the purpose of the vax mandate, does it not?

00:32:44.000 At least when it comes to transmission, which is what OSHA is involved in.

00:32:48.000 All of this is going to lead to pretty massive economic standstills.

00:32:54.000 Bunch of economic hiccups.

00:32:55.000 By the way, in Canada, they're already shutting down everything again.

00:32:57.000 I mean, it's crazy over there in Canada.

00:33:00.000 My friend Jordan Peterson has been tweeting about it.

00:33:02.000 Apparently, Ontario is now in full lockdown.

00:33:04.000 Restrictions include delaying in-person learning at schools, shutting down gyms, indoor dining, reducing capacity for retail to 50%.

00:33:11.000 And by the way, I'm just wondering at this point, why exactly are we doing this?

00:33:16.000 Like, where is the evidence that we are seeing a massive increase in COVID death?

00:33:21.000 New York State, right now, is experiencing... New York State, on average, is experiencing a seven-day rolling average of 91 deaths per day from COVID.

00:33:33.000 That is up very, very slightly from a month ago.

00:33:37.000 Despite the fact that the cases have absolutely skyrocketed.

00:33:39.000 The same thing is true in pretty much every state.

00:33:41.000 If you look at Washington, D.C.

00:33:43.000 Washington, D.C.' 's COVID death rate... They're running deaths in Washington, D.C.

00:33:49.000 One.

00:33:49.000 That is the seven-day rolling average of death.

00:33:52.000 You know what it was, like, several months ago?

00:33:54.000 One.

00:33:54.000 Okay, despite the fact that the case rate is extraordinary in Washington, D.C.

00:34:01.000 So they're continuing to promote these lockdown policies in places like Washington, D.C., and Joe Biden is promoting all that, and then we're supposed to wonder why exactly the economy is stalling out?

00:34:13.000 By the way, meanwhile, Joe Biden has been involving himself in seizing all of the monoclonal antibodies.

00:34:18.000 He's federalizing all monoclonal antibody distribution so that he can pass them out to his friends.

00:34:24.000 That, of course, is pretty bad policy, but not a particular shock.

00:34:27.000 It's also true, by the way, that now Omicron is spreading throughout Congress.

00:34:32.000 Congress is heavily vaccinated at this point.

00:34:36.000 The number of New Yorkers who have been hospitalized with coronavirus infections topped about 9,500 on Monday.

00:34:41.000 That surpassed the peak reached during last year's winter wave, but that's the number of New Yorkers who have hospitalized with coronavirus, not necessarily from coronavirus, as by the way, Anthony Fauci says, because there are a lot of people who are going to hospitals and then they're being diagnosed with COVID while they're in the hospital already.

00:34:57.000 The basic idea that hospitalizations And that hospitalizations with COVID and from COVID are exactly the same thing is patently untrue, given the fact that you are now being asymptomatically tested for COVID.

00:35:11.000 Beyond that, the FDA is now authorizing COVID vaccine boosters for 12 to 15-year-olds.

00:35:16.000 There's no evidence that 12 to 15-year-olds need vaccine boosters.

00:35:20.000 I mean, again, the total number of kids who have died from COVID to this point in the pandemic, people under the age of 18, is still under 700.

00:35:28.000 More kids die of drowning in a given year than have died of COVID over the course of two years.

00:35:32.000 And now they're authorizing boosters for 12 to 15 year olds?

00:35:36.000 Like everyone, let's say everyone is getting Omicron.

00:35:39.000 Every single human.

00:35:40.000 Whether they got vaxxed or whether they didn't get vaxxed.

00:35:41.000 Again, you should get vaxxed.

00:35:43.000 And the reason you should get vaxxed is because then you won't be hospitalized or die from COVID.

00:35:48.000 Omicron is not nearly as dangerous as Delta, but theoretically, you could still die from it.

00:35:52.000 You're much more likely to die from it if you're unvaxxed.

00:35:54.000 I've been talking with hospital administrators around the country.

00:35:56.000 What they say is that the hospitalizations that they are seeing are generally among the unvaxxed with Omicron.

00:36:04.000 But that does not mean that everybody isn't going to get COVID.

00:36:06.000 Everyone's going to get COVID at this point.

00:36:08.000 For example, yesterday, The View announced that Whoopi Goldberg had COVID, so they had to do the entire show remote.

00:36:12.000 Whoopi is triple vaxxed, I believe.

00:36:14.000 As you can see, we're back in boxes and doing the show remotely, hopefully for just a week.

00:36:20.000 I'm praying that it's just a week, but you never know, because this Omicron thing is all over the place, all over the place.

00:36:28.000 Why am I here instead of Whoopi?

00:36:29.000 Well, Whoopi unfortunately tested positive over the break, but she'll be back probably next week.

00:36:37.000 But since she's vaxxed and boosted, her symptoms have been very, very mild.

00:36:42.000 But we're, you know, being super cautious here at The View.

00:36:45.000 We'll be checking with her soon, so you'll see what we do.

00:36:48.000 By the way, the lockdown fanatics are not stopping any time in here.

00:36:51.000 Randi Weingarten, the worst actor in American public life, she came out yesterday and she says that she wants students five plus to be forced to vax in order for them to go back to school. 0.87

00:37:02.000 In terms of vaccines, I think what Gavin Newsom did in California is really the best model, which is that the semester after they go from emergency use to full authorization and the FDA has done everything that they need to do, that's what California has said.

00:37:22.000 That is the semester that they become mandatory.

00:37:26.000 And you support that nationally?

00:37:28.000 And I personally support that.

00:37:31.000 The union hasn't taken a position on that.

00:37:33.000 Okay, but the union will take a position on that because teachers had a great year.

00:37:36.000 OK, let's be the great heroes of our society.

00:37:39.000 There are some teachers who really wanted to teach.

00:37:41.000 This is not about the teachers, the teachers unions, the great heroes of our society.

00:37:44.000 They spent the last year being able to teach from home, telling people to print out stuff on their non-existent printers.

00:37:48.000 A lot of people don't necessarily have printers.

00:37:50.000 Teaching on Zoom, kids lost a full year of school and the teachers still got paid.

00:37:55.000 So they're happy to continue this as long as possible.

00:37:57.000 Michael Osterholm, who is an advisor to the Biden administration, he's saying schools should shut down again.

00:38:03.000 Right now we're seeing school districts all across the United States that are seeing hundreds and hundreds of teachers out sick, bus drivers, support staff.

00:38:11.000 How can you have a school run when you have this viral blizzard shutting down many of those in your educational system?

00:38:18.000 So we're going to have to be flexible for the next three to five weeks as we work through this Omicron crisis and realize that we may not be able to open schools, not because we don't want to, we want to, but you can't do it when you don't have people.

00:38:32.000 No, you don't want to.

00:38:33.000 You don't want to because you know why you don't have people?

00:38:35.000 Because you're testing the asymptomatic. 0.59

00:38:37.000 That is one reason.

00:38:38.000 Also, because you're not allowing people to go back to school after just five days.

00:38:41.000 You want people to test it.

00:38:43.000 Because you continue to maintain this pandemic is going to end society when it is not.

00:38:47.000 You could just be realistic.

00:38:49.000 Now, by the way, the left does not want to be realistic.

00:38:51.000 Okay, because here's the thing.

00:38:53.000 Even some of the hawks are starting to become very realistic about this, right?

00:38:57.000 Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the FDA, he says, we'll be done with this in a month.

00:39:00.000 This is correct.

00:39:03.000 I think certainly the February time frame is appropriate in terms of when we're going to pass through this Omicron wave across the United States.

00:39:10.000 Now, this is a big country.

00:39:11.000 This will affect different parts of the country at different points in time.

00:39:14.000 But if the UK is any guide, London's already peaking.

00:39:17.000 If South Africa is any guide, this is about a two-month epidemic wave from start to finish.

00:39:22.000 And so parts of the country that were affected earlier, like New York, probably are going to start to peak in the next two weeks.

00:39:28.000 Other parts within the next four weeks.

00:39:30.000 So I think certainly by the end of February, we will be through this.

00:39:33.000 But no, it's panic, panic, panic, panic.

00:39:34.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:39:36.000 First, let's talk about the fact you don't want to go to the auto parts store because why would you ever want to go to the auto parts store?

00:39:40.000 You stand in line, you finally get to the front of the line, you ask, what parts do I need for my car?

00:39:44.000 And then he asks you a bunch of questions you don't know the answer to.

00:39:46.000 Finally, he checks in the back, they don't have the part, we can order it and we can upcharge you 40%.

00:39:51.000 Or you could just do this on the interwebs like everything else you do.

00:39:55.000 They have access to rockauto.com.

00:39:55.000 You have computers.

00:39:57.000 Why don't you just go check it out?

00:39:58.000 Why would you choose to spend 30%, 50%, 100% more for the exact same auto parts at a chain store or a new car dealership?

00:40:05.000 Rockauto.com is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.

00:40:09.000 Go to rockauto.com, shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.

00:40:13.000 They've got everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet.

00:40:17.000 Whether it's your classic or daily driver, get everything you need in a few easy clicks, delivered directly to your door.

00:40:22.000 The rockauto.com catalog, it's unique, it's remarkably easy to navigate.

00:40:25.000 You can quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brand's specifications and prices you prefer.

00:40:29.000 Best of all, prices at rockauto.com, they are always reliably low.

00:40:32.000 They are the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.

00:40:34.000 Why spend up to twice as much for the same parts?

00:40:36.000 We've got amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need, rockauto.com.

00:40:41.000 Write Shapiro in there, how did you hear about us box?

00:40:43.000 So they know that we sent you.

00:40:45.000 Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get to the complete lack of realism among the lockdown fanatics first.

00:40:51.000 I'm so excited about this.

00:40:52.000 So, you have New Year's resolutions.

00:40:54.000 One of those is you're going to read more this year, right?

00:40:56.000 Well, I'm going to help you because I want to read with you.

00:40:58.000 We have a brand new book club.

00:41:00.000 Okay, our brand new book club every month.

00:41:02.000 We're going to go through a classic and I'm going to be talking with you about it once a month.

00:41:06.000 I'm going to recommend a book.

00:41:07.000 It has cultural significance.

00:41:09.000 Not just kind of the fancy pants new books with the woke values or political books, but like actual classic literature.

00:41:14.000 This is great for adults, high school students, college students.

00:41:18.000 Become the best version of yourself by reading the books that should be on your list.

00:41:22.000 Maybe the stuff that you never read back in high school.

00:41:24.000 Read it along with me.

00:41:25.000 When you join the book club, you'll get access to my personal notes and analysis of the books.

00:41:28.000 And then, on the third Thursday of each month, I will join DailyWire members online for an in-depth lecture and discussion of each book.

00:41:35.000 Don't let this year go by without investing time in yourself.

00:41:38.000 Go to thirdthursdaybookclub.com.

00:41:41.000 That is T-H-I-R-D, thirdthursdaybookclub.com.

00:41:46.000 We'll send you this month's book recommendation, some of the materials you will need to participate in the members-only discussion on Thursday, January 20th.

00:41:52.000 That is thirdthursdaybookclub.com.

00:41:55.000 I'm super pumped about this.

00:41:56.000 Like, I've been pushing this behind the scenes for a couple of years, and I can't wait to hang out with you guys and talk books.

00:42:00.000 It's my favorite thing to do.

00:42:01.000 Thirdthursdaybookclub.com to join me.

00:42:04.000 Also, as you know, The Daily Wire led the charge to sue the Biden administration over the vaccine mandates.

00:42:08.000 Now we've taken it all the way to the Supreme Court.

00:42:10.000 This Friday, the Supreme Court is going to convene to hear arguments on the legality and constitutionality of the mandate.

00:42:16.000 That means this week is a big week in our fight against medical tyranny.

00:42:20.000 We have over a million signatures on our Do Not Comply petition currently.

00:42:23.000 You need to help us.

00:42:24.000 Before Friday, help send the message loud and clear.

00:42:26.000 Head on over to dailywire.com slash do not comply right now.

00:42:29.000 We're counting on you to help us stop the VAX mandate.

00:42:32.000 You are listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:42:35.000 All right, so the lockdown fanatics, they continue to fail to recognize reality.

00:42:45.000 So Max Boot, who's just completely lost his mind over Trump, right?

00:42:50.000 He used to be, like, some of his books, he had a book on guerrilla warfare that's actually quite good.

00:42:53.000 Some of his military histories are really interesting.

00:42:56.000 But Max Boot, unfortunately, has lost his ever-loving mind.

00:42:58.000 He has a piece today in the Washington Post, targeting yours truly, titled, Omicron doesn't vindicate right-wingers who refuse to take the coronavirus seriously.

00:43:05.000 So first of all, let me just start here.

00:43:07.000 Who didn't take the coronavirus seriously?

00:43:09.000 Like, who?

00:43:10.000 I am one of the foremost proponents of vaccination on the American right.

00:43:14.000 I have been since literally the day the vaccines were available and long before.

00:43:18.000 Even at the beginning of the pandemic, I suggested, actually, even all the way until vaccines were available, that masking up around people who were vulnerable was not a bad idea, and that if you were vulnerable, you should be masking up.

00:43:29.000 So I was not even anti-mask until the vaccines were available, then the vaccines were available, and then I said we were done.

00:43:34.000 Okay, well, that happens to be following the data.

00:43:36.000 According to Max Boot, this makes me some sort of anti-vax person who refused to take COVID seriously.

00:43:43.000 Because, of course, taking COVID seriously, according to the left, means doing everything they say you should do when they say you should do it.

00:43:48.000 That's what it means to take COVID seriously.

00:43:50.000 So here's Max Boot today.

00:43:51.000 When it comes to dealing with COVID-19, as with most things, I've been pretty cautious.

00:43:55.000 I dined outdoors last winter, shivering in the cold because indoor dining was too dangerous.

00:44:00.000 I held off going to theaters and concerts for a year.

00:44:03.000 I got my vaccination shots, three of them so far, as soon as they were available.

00:44:06.000 I always wear a mask when in stores.

00:44:08.000 So why did I risk a family trip to France over the holidays, despite record numbers of COVID cases in both France and the United States?

00:44:14.000 Because this isn't 2020 anymore.

00:44:15.000 While Omicron is more ubiquitous than previous versions of the coronavirus, it appears to be less severe.

00:44:20.000 It penetrates the upper airways, but not the lungs.

00:44:22.000 Moreover, booster shots provide strong protection against infection and even better protection against hospitalization.

00:44:28.000 Okay, that's fine.

00:44:30.000 I agree.

00:44:31.000 But here's where he goes wrong.

00:44:33.000 So he says...

00:44:35.000 Public health recommendations change as the nature of the threat changes.

00:44:38.000 Well, this is not right, okay?

00:44:40.000 The public health apparatus has not changed its recommendations as the threat change.

00:44:45.000 They've been bouncing around like a ping pong ball depending on what the Biden administration wants for them.

00:44:48.000 Sometimes it's lockdown, sometimes it's masking, sometimes it is no masking.

00:44:51.000 Sometimes the schools should be open, sometimes they should not be open.

00:44:54.000 Sometimes we should be deeply fearful of Omicron and we should count cases.

00:44:57.000 Sometimes we should stop counting the cases.

00:44:59.000 It all depends on what is politically convenient.

00:45:02.000 And at no point was there a suggestion by the public health establishment that maybe you should treat the virus differently based on your age or prior health condition, or that maybe you should just be left alone to make your own decisions.

00:45:13.000 Because that's all the government could do.

00:45:15.000 So anyway, here's Max Boot.

00:45:16.000 Again, he's going to blame me for the pandemic, which is good times. 0.71

00:45:19.000 He says, Host Ben Shapiro posted a lengthy Twitter thread claiming that once it became clear that COVID was not in fact a pagan god visiting vengeance on the unwashed Trump voters alone, the media and Democrats are now willing to admit the following, and went on to list various assertions such as the death rate is comparable to the flu, and we have to take into account societal needs, not just spread prevention, and we should not shut down society.

00:45:40.000 Shapiro triumphantly concluded that Omicron had vindicated those of us who, quote, have been saying all this for months, and most of it since May 2020.

00:45:47.000 We chose data and freedom.

00:45:48.000 You chose alarmism and unearned moral superiority.

00:45:51.000 Now, the reason that I said in the tweet thread that many of us have been saying this for months and most of it since May 2020 is because not all of it applied in May 2020, right?

00:45:59.000 It did not have the death rate of the flu in May 2020.

00:46:01.000 It does have the death rate of the flu once you are vaccinated.

00:46:05.000 And Omicron seems to have about the death rate of the flu generally, right?

00:46:09.000 Somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:46:11.000 But, says Max Boot, this is nonsense on stilt.

00:46:13.000 It would be more accurate to say that Shapiro and company chose populist ideology while the rest of us chose science.

00:46:18.000 It takes only minimal scientific literacy, after all, to realize that two very different versions of the same disease call for two very different responses.

00:46:24.000 Okay, so he's just building a straw man here and then burning it.

00:46:27.000 He says one of the main reasons that people haven't gotten vaccinated and worn masks regularly is so many people are listening to right-wing agitators like Ben Shapiro, who champion a misguided idea of medical freedom.

00:46:37.000 Shapiro's media company, The Daily Wire, even sued to stop President Biden's well-warranted vaccination mandate for companies with more than 100 employees.

00:46:45.000 Okay, so in other words, I'm bad because even though I recommended vaccinations, I've said that everyone who's an adult in my family has been vaxxed multiple times.

00:46:54.000 My wife's been boosted.

00:46:55.000 My parents have been boosted.

00:46:56.000 I've been vaxxed.

00:46:58.000 That doesn't matter, according to Max Boot, because after all, I'm not embracing the craziest version of his reality.

00:47:03.000 By the way, what does he actually recommend, Max Boot?

00:47:06.000 He says, our original alarm was not unwarranted.

00:47:09.000 We need more masks and vaccine mandates, including a vaccination requirement for domestic air travel.

00:47:15.000 Okay, so he says he's pro-data.

00:47:16.000 You're not pro-data.

00:47:16.000 No, you're not.

00:47:17.000 Show me, show me the necessity for vaccination requirements for domestic air travel.

00:47:22.000 One iota of data that this is either necessary or that it will be effective.

00:47:26.000 Show me that it will be effective in preventing spread and transmission.

00:47:29.000 Show me!

00:47:31.000 Show me also why you get to decide for somebody else whether they need to get vaccinated when this thing is still widely transmissible and you are not preventing the transmission by getting, you are not obliviating transmission by getting the vax.

00:47:45.000 Explain.

00:47:46.000 The bottom line is some people are wedded to the panic and they will never stop the panic because the panic makes them feel moral and better about themselves.

00:47:54.000 Now, in reality, there are those of us who continue to live in freedom.

00:47:58.000 So to my home state of Florida, Ron DeSantis continues to be a 2024 leading contender because the left cannot stop itself.

00:48:04.000 They just cannot stop themselves.

00:48:06.000 After Joe Biden fled Washington, D.C.

00:48:09.000 to Delaware, after announcing that it was up to the states to handle COVID, after spending his entire presidential campaign saying he would shut down COVID, he was like, peace out, guys.

00:48:16.000 And then he just sort of wobbled out to Delaware where he walked down the beach alone wearing a mask.

00:48:21.000 Well, he did that, and then the media didn't ask, where is Joe Biden going and why isn't he handling this?

00:48:25.000 Instead, they're like, where is Ron DeSantis?

00:48:26.000 Well, it turns out that Ron DeSantis was caring for his wife, that he was dealing with the fact that his wife had cancer and he was accompanying her to treatments.

00:48:34.000 This makes Ron DeSantis super bad.

00:48:36.000 Here was Ron DeSantis yesterday pointing out, yeah, I was going to my wife's cancer treatment.

00:48:40.000 Joe Biden was on a beach.

00:48:41.000 Why wasn't anybody asking where he was?

00:48:43.000 I think they're like, Oh my God, he's on vacation.

00:48:46.000 And I'm like, you know, and I just looked at my wife.

00:48:48.000 I'm like, you know, going to the hospital with you is not a vacation for you.

00:48:53.000 I know that.

00:48:54.000 And it's not a vacay.

00:48:55.000 I mean, this is something that as a husband, I think that I should be doing.

00:48:58.000 I've accompanied her to all her chemotherapy treatments and she's there for a long time.

00:49:02.000 I mean, you know, I'm there most of the time.

00:49:05.000 But it's a draining thing.

00:49:07.000 When she's done with it, you know, it's not something that's great to see.

00:49:13.000 And so I just think a lot of people, particularly people that have gone through breast cancer treatments, the notion that that would be considered a vacation I think is offensive to a lot of those folks.

00:49:23.000 Okay, so the media decided to target Ron DeSantis because they didn't want to target Joe Biden, of course. 0.99

00:49:28.000 And then, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, my home state, the best governor in America, He says, you know, I've noticed that a lot of you and your lockdown friends are coming down to Florida to vacation because you're a bunch of hypocritical, ridiculous people. 0.99

00:49:40.000 Here he is talking about that. 0.95

00:49:43.000 I mean, look, I think if you if I had a dollar for every lockdown politician who decided to escape to Florida over the last two years, I'd be a pretty doggone wealthy man, let me tell you.

00:49:56.000 I mean, congresspeople, mayors, governors, I mean, you name it.

00:50:01.000 And it's interesting, though, the reception that some of these folks will get in Florida, because I think a lot of Floridians say, wait a minute, you're bashing us because we're not doing your draconian policies, and yet we're the first place you want to flee to, to basically to be able to enjoy life.

00:50:18.000 And so I'm not surprised to see that continue to happen.

00:50:23.000 By the way, Ron DeSantis, again, the chief of the Non-Panic Coalition.

00:50:27.000 Why don't we deal with this with treatment that saves lives and is useful?

00:50:31.000 That guy who's been pilloried by the media while Andrew Cuomo was upheld by the media. 0.99

00:50:35.000 He was killing all the olds when not grabbing ass in New York. 0.98

00:50:38.000 Ron DeSantis, again, he points out that it's Joe Biden who's now attempting to centralize all of the monoclonal antibodies. 0.99

00:50:45.000 It was Ron DeSantis who was talking up monoclonals months ago when the entire mainstream media was saying that he was a fool for doing so.

00:50:53.000 We have the ability and we will immediately turn on additional sites as soon as the federal government gives us a supply.

00:51:00.000 We will do an additional site here in Broward County.

00:51:03.000 We'll do an additional site in Miami-Dade.

00:51:05.000 We'll do an additional site in Palm Beach County.

00:51:08.000 We'll do an additional site in Central Florida.

00:51:10.000 And we also have the capacity to increase of the existing footprint, which we do have a good existing footprint.

00:51:18.000 And we have the ability to add five to ten more sites as the demand may be, but that is all contingent on the federal government sending the doses that we need.

00:51:30.000 OK, well, the federal government, Joe Biden, probably won't allow that, because if Joe Biden were to allow people to have the monoclonals, then then they might actually get treated and then we couldn't have a crisis anymore.

00:51:39.000 OK, so I want to make one final cultural note that I'd be remiss if I didn't point out.

00:51:44.000 OK, this story is just it.

00:51:46.000 It is so demonstrative of everything that the left has become.

00:51:50.000 It truly is an amazing thing. 0.96

00:51:52.000 So Patton Oswalt is a wild leftist crazy person.

00:51:56.000 He is a stand-up comic who is most famous for voicing The Rat in Ratatouille. 0.72

00:52:02.000 And he is still doing some stand-up kind of stuff.

00:52:06.000 Again, everything that he does is wildly to the left, Patton Oswalt.

00:52:10.000 So, on New Year's Eve, he was doing a comedy club and in the comedy club next door was Dave Chappelle.

00:52:17.000 And so he took a picture with Dave Chappelle.

00:52:19.000 And he put up a post on Instagram and said, finished my set at McCaw Hall and got a text from Dave Chappelle.

00:52:23.000 Come over to the arena.

00:52:24.000 He's performing it next door into a guest set.

00:52:26.000 Why not?

00:52:27.000 I waved goodbye to this hell year with a genius I started comedy with 34 years ago.

00:52:30.000 He works in arena like he's talking to one person and charming their skin off.

00:52:33.000 Anyway, I ended the year with a real friend and a deep laugh.

00:52:35.000 Can't ask for much more.

00:52:37.000 Oh, that's a nice way to end the year.

00:52:39.000 There's only one problem, of course.

00:52:41.000 Padden Oswalt is of the left, and Dave Chappelle has offended the alphabet people, as he likes to say.

00:52:47.000 He's offended the trans activists who have suggested that he's a very, very bad, evil, bad man for noting that men and women exist.

00:52:56.000 So, Patton Oswalt then had to reverse himself. 0.98

00:52:59.000 Because cowards don't get killed, they get their friends killed. 0.97

00:53:01.000 Cowards are the people who ensure that their friends are the ones thrown under the bus. 0.99

00:53:05.000 In fact, they help with throwing under the bus. 0.82

00:53:06.000 I hope that Dave Chappelle goes to war with Patton Oswalt.

00:53:08.000 I desperately hope it.

00:53:09.000 Because Patton Oswalt deserves it.

00:53:11.000 So he put up a picture that I just have to describe for you for a moment.

00:53:15.000 It is a picture of Patton Oswalt sitting in front of a yellow legal pad.

00:53:22.000 His headphones plugged into his phone, staring at himself in the mirror, or at least looking down, and then the pictures of him in a mirror because he's really, you know, he's doing some introspection.

00:53:37.000 So the utter narcissism, a picture of him with another image of him in the mirror, both of whom are staring down at the pad of paper where they're writing their forced apology, malice, I saw a friend I hadn't seen in a long time this New Year's Eve.

00:53:57.000 We've known each other since we're teens.

00:53:58.000 He's a fellow comedian, the funniest I've ever met.

00:54:01.000 I wanted to post a pic and an Instagram story about it, so I did.

00:54:04.000 The friend is Dave Chappelle.

00:54:05.000 34 years we've been friends.

00:54:07.000 He's refocused and refined ideas a lot of us took and settled about race and history and life on planet Earth and spun them around with a phrase or a punchline.

00:54:13.000 We've done bad and good gigs, open mics and TV tapings.

00:54:16.000 But we also 100% disagree about transgender rights and representation.

00:54:20.000 I support trans people's rights, anyone's rights, to live safely in the world as their fullest selves.

00:54:25.000 For all the things he's helped me evolve on, I'll always disagree with where he stands now on transgender issues.

00:54:31.000 But I also don't believe a seeker like him is done evolving, learning, You know someone that long, see the struggles and changes, it's impossible to cut them off.

00:54:38.000 Impossible not to be hopeful and open and cheer them on.

00:54:40.000 Also, I've been carrying a lot of guilt about friends I've cut off, who had views with which I couldn't agree, or changed in ways I couldn't live with.

00:54:46.000 Sometimes I wonder, did I and others cutting them off make them dig their heels in deeper, fuel their ignorance with a nitro boost of resentment and spite?

00:54:54.000 I'm an LGBTQ plus IA open bracket closed bracket tilde Little, little equals sign, ally.

00:55:04.000 I'm a loyal friend.

00:55:05.000 There's a friction in those traits that I need to reconcile myself and not let cause feels of betrayal in anyone else.

00:55:11.000 And I'm sorry, truly sorry, that I didn't consider the hurt this would cause or the depth of that hurt.

00:55:15.000 I've been messaging a lot on IG today, and the back and forth has really helped guide me in the writing of this.

00:55:20.000 I naively deleted a lot of posts in the comment thread, critical ones from LGBTQ writers and bleep posts by TERF anti-trans orcs looking for clicks and giggles.

00:55:27.000 I wanted a nice comment thread about to pick with my friend.

00:55:31.000 Oh, isn't that nice?

00:55:37.000 But he's not really talking about the growth of himself.

00:55:40.000 Most of that post is about how Dave Chappelle needs to grow and change.

00:55:43.000 And the only reason he's staying friends with Dave Chappelle is because he hopes that Dave Chappelle will one day come to embrace his own views.

00:55:49.000 So this is not him saying, I can embrace a friend who disagrees with me on this issue.

00:55:53.000 This is him saying the only reason I embrace this friend is because one day he will embrace my views on this issue, which, by the way, is the opposite of friendship.

00:56:01.000 Okay, if the idea is that you can only be friends with people who agree with you on everything, or people who you believe that you will eventually convince to agree with you on everything, that does not seem like somebody that should be friends with you.

00:56:14.000 Because what if ten years from now they look around and Dave Chappelle still feels the same way that he does today?

00:56:17.000 Because by the way, Dave Chappelle is correct.

00:56:20.000 Is Patton Oswalt then gonna cut him off?

00:56:22.000 Right now, his excuse is, I still think I can make a difference with Dave.

00:56:24.000 I can save Dave.

00:56:26.000 I can make Dave an LGBTQ+, I-A, open, carrot, British pound sign, ampersand, ally.

00:56:35.000 And because of that, I'm still gonna be friends with Dave.

00:56:37.000 But if he can't, well, then isn't he obligated to throw Dave under the bus?

00:56:42.000 And isn't that really what he's doing right now?

00:56:44.000 He's saying that the reason that he's friends with Dave is because he's superior to Dave.

00:56:48.000 This is so much of the virtue signaling, right?

00:56:50.000 It is all about, for people like Patton Oswalt, it is all about signaling to everyone that they are better than you.

00:56:55.000 He's so introspective.

00:56:56.000 He's so thoughtful.

00:56:57.000 He's so wonderful, right? 1.00

00:56:59.000 He's right on the issues, and he's broad-minded enough to know that his stupid friend doesn't believe what he believes, and that one day his stupid friend may come to believe what he believes. 1.00

00:57:08.000 And that's why he's sorry that he took a picture with that friend and didn't note in there that his friend also is a bigot, a vicious, wild bigot. 1.00

00:57:15.000 But he should still be friends with him. 0.98

00:57:18.000 Man, I hope that Dave Chappelle just wrecks him, because no one deserves it more than the rat man, Patton Oswalt. 0.98

00:57:24.000 My goodness. 0.90

00:57:24.000 Alrighty, we will be back here later today with an additional hour of content. 0.90

00:57:27.000 In the meantime, go check out our newest podcast, Morning Wire.

00:57:30.000 Today's episode, they discuss U.S.

00:57:32.000 population growth reaching record lows.

00:57:33.000 Also, the reasons behind Joe Rogan joining the new social media site, Getter.

00:57:37.000 That episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:57:41.000 Make sure to tune in.

00:57:42.000 Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:57:42.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:43.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Eliot Felt.

00:57:51.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:57:53.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

00:57:55.000 And our production manager is Pavel Lydowsky.

00:57:58.000 Associate producer, Bradford Carrington.

00:58:00.000 Editing is by Adam Saievitz.

00:58:01.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:58:03.000 Hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.

00:58:05.000 Production assistant, Jessica Crand.

00:58:07.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:58:09.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:58:13.000 John Bickley here, Daily Wire editor-in-chief.

00:58:16.000 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 - January 04, 2022

The Exploitation Of January 6 | Ep. 1404

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