The Ben Shapiro Show - The Great Censorship Debate | Ep. 773

00:00:00.000 Facebook, Bars, Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos, Democrats continue to smear Attorney General William Barr, and we check the mailbag.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:07.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:09.000 Man, a lot to get to today.

00:00:15.000 We'll jump into all of it momentarily.

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00:01:21.000 Alrighty, so the big story of the day, to begin, is the situation with regard to the United States economy.

00:01:28.000 We'll get to the censorship on Facebook in just one second.

00:01:30.000 But the U.S.

00:01:32.000 economy created 263,000 jobs in April.

00:01:36.000 Unemployment has now fallen to its lowest rate since 1969.

00:01:39.000 Since 1969.

00:01:41.000 So the economy continues to boom.

00:01:43.000 For all the talk about President Trump and his volatility and President Trump and President Trump and President Trump, the fact is President Trump's policies have made businesses feel comfortable.

00:01:52.000 His regulatory policies have made them feel as though they are not going to be targeted.

00:01:55.000 The fact that Republicans still control the Senate provides a check on Democratic excesses.

00:01:59.000 So businesses are looking at all of this and they are saying, OK, well, for the foreseeable future, let's keep pumping money into the system.

00:02:06.000 For the foreseeable, let's hire up.

00:02:08.000 This is a good time for the economy.

00:02:09.000 Let's make this thing happen.

00:02:11.000 The economy generated a stronger-than-expected 263,000 new jobs in April, helping to drive down the unemployment rate to a 49-year low of 3.6%.

00:02:18.000 The increase in new jobs easily topped the 217,000 market watch forecast.

00:02:25.000 The jobless rate slid from 3.8% in March to hit the lowest level since December of 1969.

00:02:29.000 Economists consider Anything below a 4% unemployment rate in the United States to effectively be full employment.

00:02:36.000 The average wage paid to American workers rose 6 cents, or 0.2%, to $27.77 an hour.

00:02:42.000 Now, I want to, again, emphasize that wage.

00:02:46.000 $27.77 an hour.

00:02:47.000 We keep hearing from the left that a $15 minimum wage is necessary.

00:02:50.000 The average wage in the United States is more than $12 more than that.

00:02:54.000 The number of people who are surviving on minimum wage is extraordinarily low overall.

00:02:59.000 The 12-month rate of hourly wage gains was unchanged at 3.2 percent.

00:03:03.000 Hours worked each week fell 0.1 hour in April to 34.4.

00:03:08.000 So, for all the talk about how Americans are being deeply overworked, if people are working less than 35 hours a week on average, it is hard to make the case that they are being desperately overworked.

00:03:19.000 Less than 35 hours a week, on average, and wages are increasing, means that people aren't being worked harder for less pay, it means they are making more pay for working fewer hours.

00:03:29.000 35 hours a week is 7 hours a day.

00:03:30.000 Okay, some simple math will tell you this.

00:03:32.000 This does not mean that people are slaving away in a wage-slave economy, the way the Democrats seem to be suggesting.

00:03:40.000 The government revised the increase in new jobs in March to $189,000 from a preliminary $196,000.

00:03:43.000 February's gain was raised to $56,000 from $33,000, which means that the past months have also seen higher increases in jobs than normal.

00:03:47.000 was raised to 56,000 from 33,000, which means that the past months have also seen higher increases in jobs than normal.

00:03:56.000 The economy is still going great guns.

00:03:58.000 President Trump's economy, he doesn't get full credit for the economy Obama didn't.

00:04:02.000 But, he does get credit for not quashing the economy.

00:04:06.000 President Obama got blame for the slowest recovery in American history, and the economy continues to boom.

00:04:11.000 So, this is very good news for President Trump.

00:04:13.000 As I've said, if the economy continues to be good, and if President Trump keeps his mouth shut, then he will have a significant shot of being able to win a general election, re-election bid.

00:04:24.000 And if you look at the polls right now, it's fascinating.

00:04:26.000 If you look at the polls right now, what you are seeing is that the various Democrats running against President Trump are not running in the mid-50s.

00:04:32.000 You would expect, given President Trump's approval rating, that all of these polls would have Trump at 42%, the same as his approval rating.

00:04:39.000 But his approval rating does not match up with the number of people who say they will vote for him.

00:04:44.000 His approval rating hangs around in the low 40s.

00:04:46.000 The number of people who say that they will vote for him is always hanging about 45 to 47%.

00:04:52.000 In fact, the only candidate in this new CNN poll, this is amazing, this new CNN poll, the only candidate who drives Trump down to his approval rating in terms of his public support for voting is Beto.

00:05:04.000 Really, this new poll from CNN has Beto at 52 and Trump at 42.

00:05:11.000 It's pretty hilarious, actually.

00:05:12.000 So it has Bernie at 50 and Trump at 44, which I think would not be the final result of that election cycle.

00:05:20.000 It has Biden at 51 and Trump at 45, which is the reason that Biden right now is doing so well in the primaries, because Democrats are effectively suggesting that he is the most electable candidate.

00:05:29.000 Pete Buttigieg only at 47% to Trump's 44%.

00:05:33.000 Kamala Harris at 49% to Trump's 45% so they're not winning a majority against the guys unpopular as President Trump.

00:05:39.000 Elizabeth Warren loses to Trump in this poll.

00:05:42.000 So Trump 48, Elizabeth Warren 47. 0.98

00:05:44.000 Naturally this means probably The Democrats will probably nominate Elizabeth Warren.

00:05:49.000 I think that's the way this works.

00:05:50.000 Okay, so that's the latest on the political race.

00:05:52.000 Now, the real big news this morning is not even the economy.

00:05:55.000 All that's huge news.

00:05:56.000 The real big news this morning is that Facebook has now banned a bevy of what the media termed far-right extremists.

00:06:04.000 There's only one problem.

00:06:05.000 Some of the people who are termed far-right extremists are not, in fact, of the right.

00:06:08.000 Okay, so they labeled Louis Farrakhan a far-right leader.

00:06:13.000 The New York Times talked about what happened here, and then we'll get to the media coverage of the actual issue.

00:06:19.000 So, the New York Times originally said that far-right extremists were being banned, and they used that description for Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam and a virulent anti-Semite who's been pictured with virtually everybody in prominent circles on the left.

00:06:35.000 An article for The Atlantic was originally titled, Instagram and Facebook ban far-right extremists.

00:06:40.000 The New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, and the Atlantic all describe Louis Farrakhan as a far-right extremist.

00:06:45.000 Now the reason that this matters I will get to in just one second.

00:06:48.000 So here is the actual story.

00:06:50.000 According to the New York Times, after years of wavering about how to handle the extreme voices populating its platform, Facebook on Thursday evicted seven of its most controversial users, many of whom are conservatives, immediately inflaming the debate about the power and accountability of large technology companies.

00:07:04.000 Now, I think it is worthwhile noting here that the New York Times description, it's funny, As soon as they start describing people who are fringe, like Alex Jones, they start calling them conservatives.

00:07:15.000 That's because, for the press, there is no difference between conservatives and, quote, far-right extremists.

00:07:21.000 According to The Economist, I was alt-right, and then when they corrected it, I was a radical conservative.

00:07:26.000 There's no difference, for the media, between a normal mainstream conservative and Alex Jones.

00:07:31.000 They just don't see any distinction there.

00:07:32.000 And not only that, they also see if somebody is extreme, that person must be far-right.

00:07:38.000 I've never seen any of these newspapers describe anybody, as far as I can recall, as a far-left extremist.

00:07:44.000 Bernie Sanders is an open socialist who used to defend the Soviet Union and talk about the glories of bread lines, and he is the secondary contender in the Democratic primaries right now.

00:07:53.000 The press conflate conservatism with alt-right, and then they conflate not being a wild leftist with being a conservative, and they lump all of that together, and then they say, okay, conservatives are bad.

00:08:06.000 This is how the game is played.

00:08:08.000 The social network said it had barred Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist and founder of InfoWars, from its platform, along with a handful of other extremists.

00:08:15.000 Louis Farrakhan, the outspoken black nationalist minister who has frequently been criticized for his anti-Semitic remarks, was also banned.

00:08:21.000 The Silicon Valley company said these users were disallowed from using Facebook and Instagram under its policies against dangerous individuals and organizations.

00:08:30.000 Now, their statements here is so impermissibly vague.

00:08:34.000 It's so insanely vague.

00:08:36.000 If you're going to ban somebody from your platform, you should have a pretty good reason.

00:08:40.000 You're talking about Facebook, which is the biggest social media platform on planet Earth with billions of users.

00:08:46.000 If you are a platform, you really should have to release a specific statement explaining what this person did wrong, not only so that the person has a right to defend themselves against the charge, which could very well be a smear, but also so that everybody else knows what the rules are.

00:09:02.000 But Facebook is acting like an arbitrary centralized government here, banning people without even... We don't need to give you an excuse why you were banned, you're just banned.

00:09:10.000 Why?

00:09:11.000 Well, because we call you a hateful extremist.

00:09:13.000 Well, what makes somebody a hateful extremist?

00:09:14.000 Facebook has no hard definition, because it's an innately malleable term.

00:09:18.000 A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, quote, we've always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology.

00:09:26.000 The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive, and it is what led us to our decision to remove those accounts today.

00:09:33.000 Well, thanks.

00:09:33.000 I now know nothing about your standard.

00:09:35.000 This statement itself has a bunch of problems embedded in it.

00:09:39.000 So they say they've always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate.

00:09:44.000 Okay, well, Alex Jones has been promoting exactly the same sorts of material for years.

00:09:48.000 Only now do you decide that he has to be banned.

00:09:50.000 Milo Yiannopoulos has been promoting the exact same sort of stuff for years.

00:09:53.000 Only now do you decide he has to go.

00:09:55.000 Louis Farrakhan has been calling Jews termites for years.

00:09:58.000 Only now do you decide that he has to go.

00:10:00.000 So what changed?

00:10:01.000 What was the new thing that happened that changed Facebook's opinion on all of this?

00:10:05.000 That's question number one.

00:10:06.000 Question number two.

00:10:08.000 They say that they've banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate.

00:10:14.000 So how about organizations that promote violence against like ISIS?

00:10:18.000 So as my friend Eric Weinstein pointed out, he suggested correctly that he is a supporter of the Peshmerga in Kurdistan fighting ISIS.

00:10:27.000 They're engaged in violence.

00:10:29.000 Does that mean that he is engaged in supporting violence?

00:10:32.000 I mean, you're gonna have to make some distinctions here, I would assume.

00:10:35.000 And then, they conflate violence and hate.

00:10:38.000 Organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, because Alex Jones, so far as I'm aware, has not engaged in violence.

00:10:45.000 Now, if you can show me evidence that he has, like, I do not, I've seen no evidence that Paul Joseph Watson, another person who was banned, mainly because he's the top reporter at InfoWars, I've seen no evidence, at all, that Paul Joseph Watson has engaged in violence.

00:11:00.000 Now, we have to make a distinction between violence and speech.

00:11:03.000 I'll explain in just a second.

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00:12:25.000 Okay, so, back to this statement from Facebook.

00:12:28.000 So, people saying bad things is not the same thing as people issuing calls for, say, murder.

00:12:31.000 organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate so as i say the violence standard is vague and then they're conflating violence and hate so people saying bad things is not the same thing as people issuing calls for say murder i should know this because as news have reported there's a person who was arrested this week for for making violent death threats against jared kushner and donald trump jr and who has made violent death threats against me and against my employees.

00:13:01.000 Okay, this person was engaged in a level of criticism that is not the norm.

00:13:06.000 That's why this person has been arrested right now.

00:13:09.000 And thank you to law enforcement for doing their job.

00:13:10.000 There's a vast difference between that and people who just say bad things about me, who say hateful things about me.

00:13:16.000 And there are plenty of people who say hateful things about me on a regular basis.

00:13:20.000 There is a vast difference between people utilizing their free speech in ways that I don't like.

00:13:25.000 I get hit by more of it than... Listen, I was the number one target of anti-Semitic bile in 2016 according to the Anti-Defamation League.

00:13:31.000 The number one target.

00:13:33.000 I never filed a police report with any of this stuff.

00:13:36.000 I know the difference between people who are spewing hateful garbage at me and people who are actively threatening my life.

00:13:44.000 There's a difference between violence and hate.

00:13:47.000 There's a difference between speech and violence, no matter how much I dislike the speech.

00:13:52.000 So that's a distinction that Facebook seems to be obliterating.

00:13:54.000 And then finally, they have no hard definition as to what is hateful.

00:13:58.000 So this is completely arbitrary.

00:14:00.000 Now it's, okay, well, basically what it feels like is that Facebook came up with a list of people that they wanted to ban who were anti-left.

00:14:07.000 I don't want to say they're on the right because, again, I think that the right is a somewhat confusing term sometimes.

00:14:12.000 When I say the right, generally, I'm talking about conservatives.

00:14:15.000 When the press uses the right, they mean people who are anti-left.

00:14:17.000 I don't think that those are the same category of people.

00:14:19.000 There are a lot of people who are anti-left who also happen to be not conservative and anti-conservative.

00:14:24.000 One group of people who seem to be anti-left but also are not conservative in any way are white supremacists, for example.

00:14:30.000 They are anti-left because they don't like multiculturalism and because they are racial supremacists and all of that.

00:14:37.000 But they're not conservative because they don't believe in limited government.

00:14:40.000 They don't believe in the values of Western civilization.

00:14:42.000 They scorn Judeo-Christian values. 0.89

00:14:44.000 They scorn the idea of freedoms in the Constitution.

00:14:47.000 Those are people who are anti-left, but they are not conservative.

00:14:50.000 The media will consider them right.

00:14:51.000 So, for purposes of the media's terminology, the people who they are banning, many of them, are on the quote-unquote right.

00:14:57.000 They really mean anti-left.

00:14:59.000 Okay, but they kind of threw Louis Farrakhan in there so that they could say, listen, we're not biased here.

00:15:03.000 We're throwing in Louis Farrakhan too.

00:15:05.000 But the fact is, that again, none of these people said anything new that got them banned.

00:15:10.000 Facebook is simply deciding that they want to ask people that they consider hateful.

00:15:13.000 Now, I may even agree with some of the people who they consider hateful.

00:15:17.000 Again, I've been personally targeted by several of the people on this list.

00:15:20.000 But that does not mean that my definition of hate is the definition of hate that is legally applicable.

00:15:27.000 It doesn't mean that my definition of hate should trump everybody else's definition of hate.

00:15:31.000 There really is too much play in the joints here.

00:15:34.000 Now I think that if Facebook wanted to issue rules that say you're not allowed to call people certain names, for example, like you can't call somebody the N-word, like, how about a clear definition of rules?

00:15:43.000 How about that?

00:15:44.000 That's pretty much all that people are asking for, and Facebook refuses to grant that.

00:15:48.000 Instead, they wish to go after people along vague standards, and those standards do not apply equally to everybody.

00:15:55.000 I'll show you in just one second.

00:15:57.000 Okay, so Facebook suggests that they have this constant standard.

00:16:00.000 They say that the process for evaluating potential violators is extensive.

00:16:04.000 It's what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.

00:16:06.000 Facebook's move, says the New York Times, is one of the tech industry's broadest actions to punish high-profile extremists at a time when social media companies are under fire for allowing hateful content and misinformation to spread on their services.

00:16:18.000 It's a politically delicate moment, they say.

00:16:21.000 And then, the only suggestion that we have seen thus far with regard to why many of these people were banned is because many of these people featured shows hosting, for example, Gavin McGinnis.

00:16:34.000 So Facebook found instances of extremism by Alex Jones and others that pushed the company to take action against them, according to the New York Times.

00:16:42.000 For example, Jones last year hosted an Infowars show featuring Gavin McGuinness, a far-right political commentator whom Facebook had designated as a hate figure.

00:16:49.000 Okay, you know who used to host Gavin McGuinness was CRTV.

00:16:52.000 CRTV used to have a show with Gavin McGuinness, now The Blaze TV.

00:16:55.000 Are they going to ban The Blaze TV?

00:16:57.000 Gavin McGuinness has appeared on a wide variety of shows, including Fox News.

00:17:00.000 Does this mean Fox News will now be banned?

00:17:03.000 Yiannopoulos had signaled praise for Gavin McGinnis earlier this year. 0.85

00:17:06.000 By the way, on the spectrum of people who suck, Gavin McGinnis is actually not as crappy as Milo Yiannopoulos, in my personal opinion.

00:17:16.000 But if the idea is anybody who's ever talked to Gavin McGinnis gets thrown out, well then, this is going to create quite a problem for Facebook as well. 0.53

00:17:24.000 Now, the reason it's going to create quite a problem for Facebook and for Instagram, for example, is because one of the people they banned was Louis Farrakhan.

00:17:31.000 Louis Farrakhan is as evil in his views as anybody on the list.

00:17:35.000 I would say more evil in his views than pretty much everyone on the list. 0.73

00:17:39.000 He's probably the most evil of the people who are on this list. 0.90

00:17:41.000 Louis Farrakhan, for years, he's been an open, brutal, blatant anti-Semite who uses genocidal language about Jews. 0.91

00:17:47.000 And Lewis Farrakhan is being pushed today by Snoop Dogg.

00:17:52.000 So, is Instagram and Facebook, are they going to ban Snoop Dogg?

00:17:55.000 Because the fact is that, according to the New York Times, people like Alex Jones are being banned not for stuff that they did, but for featuring Gavin McGinnis.

00:18:02.000 And Milo Yiannopoulos is being banned. 0.98

00:18:04.000 By the way, I think Milo sucks. 1.00

00:18:06.000 Milo is the kind of person... 0.99

00:18:08.000 As a human being, who during the 2016 election, he said that I was insufficiently committed to the cause of preserving whiteness in the United States effectively, and he called me a cuck for this. 0.99

00:18:18.000 And on the day that my son was born, he sent me a picture of a black baby on Twitter because obviously I wanted my wife to have sex with a black man to produce a black child because I was in favor of what? 0.97

00:18:27.000 The racial mixing of the United States or something? 0.99

00:18:29.000 I mean, it's just, it was an insane thing.

00:18:31.000 So Gavin, so, so, Yiannopoulos is bad, on his, on his own merits, but Yiannopoulos is being banned because he signaled praise for Gavin McInnes?

00:18:41.000 Okay, fine, if that's the standard, why is Snoop Dogg still on Facebook and Instagram?

00:18:44.000 Yesterday, he put out an Instagram video in which he actively encouraged people to post videos of Louis Farrakhan on Facebook and on Instagram.

00:18:53.000 This is okay.

00:18:54.000 Snoop Dogg was at the White House, by the way, with Barack Obama.

00:18:57.000 Snoop Dogg is a deeply influential public figure.

00:18:59.000 So, does Snoop Dogg go away?

00:19:01.000 Because if it's killed by association, this is pretty strong association, is it not?

00:19:05.000 What up?

00:19:08.000 If you down with it, like I'm down with it, post your favorite Minister Farrakhan video on your Instagram and Facebook page.

00:19:15.000 Show some love to a real brother.

00:19:18.000 Post it right now.

00:19:19.000 He got footage everywhere.

00:19:21.000 If you ain't got none, snatch it off of YouTube.

00:19:23.000 It's everywhere.

00:19:26.000 Put up some Minister Lewis Farrakhan footage.

00:19:28.000 Show some love.

00:19:29.000 Show what he really be talking about.

00:19:31.000 Educating.

00:19:32.000 Truth.

00:19:34.000 Can't ban all of us.

00:19:36.000 Can't ban all of us.

00:19:37.000 He's a real brother.

00:19:38.000 Okay, so there is Snoop Dogg not just making the case for free speech for Louis Farrakhan, but defending Louis Farrakhan.

00:19:43.000 He's a real brother.

00:19:44.000 Show what he really be talking about.

00:19:45.000 Okay, that... Okay, so you're telling me that Milo is banned or Paul Joseph Watson is banned for... So let me just get this straight.

00:19:53.000 Paul Joseph Watson is banned because he is associated with Alex Jones, who is associated with Gavin McGinnis.

00:19:58.000 Is this the standard Facebook is using now?

00:20:01.000 Okay, you're gonna have to ban Snoop Dogg, right?

00:20:03.000 Snoop Dogg is actively associating with Louis Farrakhan if this is the standard.

00:20:05.000 Now, I don't think any of these people should be banned.

00:20:08.000 And I think that if they are banned, I need a clear standard as to why these people should be banned.

00:20:13.000 Facebook won't even articulate that.

00:20:16.000 I love this.

00:20:16.000 Joan Donovan, the director of Harvard's Technology and Social Change Research Project, who studies online extremism, says, I'm sure they're going to make a slippery slope argument here.

00:20:24.000 No, I'm not making a slippery slope argument.

00:20:25.000 I am making an argument that you do not have clear standards by any stretch of the imagination.

00:20:29.000 I'm not saying you're going after Alex Jones, therefore you'll go after Paul Joseph Watson, therefore you will go after me.

00:20:34.000 That is not the case that I am making.

00:20:36.000 The case I am making is that you have not articulated any standard at all.

00:20:40.000 And so, having not articulated a standard, it's not that I suspect there will be a slippery slope.

00:20:46.000 I am suggesting there is no absolute principle that is being applied here.

00:20:50.000 And I have proof.

00:20:52.000 I have proof that there is no absolute principle being applied here.

00:20:55.000 This proof comes courtesy of Jewish Insider today.

00:20:59.000 Quote, In a letter, Facebook Vice President Joel Kaplan makes clear the site will not remove lies or content that is inaccurate, and that includes denying the Holocaust.

00:21:08.000 So if you are an open Holocaust denier, you will not be removed from Facebook.

00:21:12.000 But, if you once had a conversation with Gavin McGinnis, or said something nice about Gavin McGinnis, not on Facebook, you will be removed from Facebook.

00:21:21.000 Kaplan.

00:21:22.000 Who's the vice president for global public policy at Facebook.

00:21:25.000 He said that Facebook intends to allow Holocaust denial on the platform so long as it doesn't advocate violence against Jewish people in any way.

00:21:31.000 By the way, this is the actual correct perspective.

00:21:33.000 What Kaplan is articulating here should be the perspective.

00:21:36.000 You should be allowed to say whatever you want on places like Facebook so long as you're not advocating for violence.

00:21:41.000 Because there is a stark difference between violence and speech that is unpalatable and gross and terrible.

00:21:48.000 Kaplan says, I want to underscore that Facebook rejects hate.

00:21:50.000 We take down any content that celebrates, defends, or attempts to justify the Holocaust.

00:21:55.000 So let me, let me get this straight.

00:21:56.000 If you deny the Holocaust, if you say it didn't happen, you're cool. 1.00

00:21:59.000 But if you take down, but if you put up content that says the Holocaust was justified, then you're bad. 0.72

00:22:05.000 What does, what does he think Holocaust deniers do?

00:22:07.000 Does he think that Holocaust deniers are just like, no, you know, I just, I have questions about the historicity.

00:22:12.000 Is that really what he thinks that Holocaust denial is?

00:22:14.000 Holocaust denial is a way of downplaying the evil of the Nazis.

00:22:17.000 That's what Holocaust denial is for.

00:22:19.000 Okay, so the same goes for any content that mocks Holocaust victims, accuses victims of lying about atrocities, spews hate, or advocates for violence against Jewish people in any way.

00:22:27.000 So now he's broadening the standard again.

00:22:29.000 But the standard is so inconsistent that, like, my sister has been targeted on Facebook by anti-Semites.

00:22:35.000 She's reported them for years.

00:22:37.000 Okay, nothing has ever happened to any of these people.

00:22:40.000 This is a wildly inconsistent standard.

00:22:43.000 And the media, who are celebrating Facebook for doing this, now they're finally standing up to hate.

00:22:47.000 I have some questions about this media.

00:22:49.000 I have some questions about these free speech firefighting advocates.

00:22:53.000 Because I don't think that that's actually what they are doing here.

00:22:56.000 I don't think that's actually what they are doing here.

00:23:00.000 And again, if we are going to now start banning people for having guests on their program, you know who had Alex Jones on his program?

00:23:05.000 Joe Rogan.

00:23:06.000 So is YouTube and Facebook, are these people going to ban Joe Rogan now?

00:23:08.000 And then because I had Joe Rogan on, are they going to ban me?

00:23:11.000 And then because they had me on, are they gonna ban everyone?

00:23:13.000 Because I've been on pretty much... I mean, like, I've been on with Vox.

00:23:17.000 I mean, this is all nonsense.

00:23:20.000 It's anti-free speech nonsense.

00:23:21.000 And I'll talk about the legality of it in a second, because there are people calling for regulation of Facebook.

00:23:25.000 I'll talk about what that would look like, whether that should be done in a second, but first I want to talk about what the media are doing here, and why I don't trust the media to set a standard for hate, and a standard for what should be banned first.

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00:24:49.000 So, members of the media who suggest that they, they and they alone, have a window into the meaning of hate.

00:24:56.000 I mean, I saw members of the media celebrating this yesterday because they don't like any of the figures on the list.

00:25:01.000 I'm not fond of any of the figures on the list and I've been targeted personally by many of them.

00:25:01.000 Guess what?

00:25:05.000 I keep repeating that because I do not have a stake in these people staying online other than that I like free speech, which seems like a pretty heavy stake.

00:25:14.000 The reason I don't trust the media on this stuff is because the media lie and then they conflate.

00:25:18.000 To the media, as I mentioned earlier, as they labeled Louis Farrakhan, a far-right extremist, there is no such thing as a far-left extremist and everyone on the right is an extremist who ought to be banned.

00:25:29.000 As evidence, I point to the Poynter Institute, a journalism non-profit organization.

00:25:33.000 They put up a list of 515 news websites it identified as unreliable They raised eyebrows this week when it posted that index of what it identified as unreliable news sites.

00:25:44.000 The index came from merging various lists identifying websites purportedly spreading misinformation.

00:25:51.000 The list was compiled by the group's international fact-checking network.

00:25:54.000 It initially included the Washington Examiner.

00:25:58.000 The language on the website called for full boycotts by advertisers of all of these blacklisted sites.

00:26:06.000 And the list included everyone.

00:26:07.000 It included Daily Wire, it included Drudge Report, it included Breitbart, it included Daily Signal from Heritage Foundation, it included the Washington Examiner, it included just an enormous, enormous list of pretty much every site that was to the right of center.

00:26:22.000 Like, all of them were considered unreliable by Poynter.

00:26:26.000 And finally, after blowback, and they were calling for boycotts of these folks, right?

00:26:29.000 This is what the left will do.

00:26:30.000 This is why Media Matters does this.

00:26:32.000 They try to label it the Southern Poverty Law Center.

00:26:34.000 It's all the same.

00:26:35.000 They try to generate the idea that if you are anywhere to the right of center or anti-left in any way, that you ought to be banned, that you are unreliable, and that you ought to be shut down.

00:26:44.000 You ought to be deplatformed, is the way that they put it.

00:26:48.000 And Poynter actually had to pull the list But I promise you, if Poynter had not pulled the list, it would be cited by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

00:26:55.000 Every time they mentioned the Daily Wire in any of their stories, they would say, an organization that Poynter has declared unreliable.

00:27:02.000 They do that with media matters all the time.

00:27:04.000 For years, they were using the Southern Poverty Law Center, a hack-left organization, to smear all right-wing sources.

00:27:10.000 Every time they mentioned PragerU, or Daily Wire, or anybody else, they would say, an organization deemed hateful by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

00:27:19.000 So the media create this echo chamber where everybody who disagrees with them is evil and everybody who agrees with them is good.

00:27:25.000 And you can tell who's evil and who's good by who disagrees with you.

00:27:28.000 Very convenient.

00:27:29.000 Well, on Thursday night, Poynter actually had to pull the list.

00:27:31.000 Their managing editor, Barbara Allen, posted a letter to the editor explaining the decision.

00:27:36.000 Allen wrote that the initial aim of the project was to provide a useful tool for readers to gauge the legitimacy of the information they were consuming.

00:27:43.000 However, she wrote, Soon after we published, we received complaints from those on the list and readers who objected to the inclusion of certain sites and the exclusion of others.

00:27:52.000 We began an audit to test the accuracy and veracity of the list, and while we feel that many of the sites did have a track record of publishing unreliable information, our review found weaknesses in the methodology.

00:28:01.000 We detected inconsistencies between the findings of the original databases that were the sources for the list and our own rendering of the final report.

00:28:09.000 As a result, she wrote that Poynter was removing this unreliable sites list until we are able to provide our audience a more consistent and rigorous set of criteria.

00:28:19.000 Well, there is no consistent and rigorous set of criteria here.

00:28:22.000 One of the things that I always find amusing is that they put together these lists, members of the left do, in which they say that sites are unreliable.

00:28:29.000 How do they determine unreliable?

00:28:30.000 They find a couple of stories that have been wrong over the course of a four-year history, and then they say the site is unreliable.

00:28:35.000 You see this in a lot of these studies.

00:28:37.000 Okay, well, the New York Times blows stories on a pretty routine basis.

00:28:40.000 So does CNN.

00:28:41.000 These are not considered unreliable sources because the vast majority of stories that they print are not factually inaccurate.

00:28:47.000 We here at the Daily Wire post 50 stories a day.

00:28:49.000 We've been doing so for four years.

00:28:50.000 That means that at this point we have posted tens of thousands of stories.

00:28:54.000 It should not be hard to find four or five stories that are unreliable.

00:28:57.000 But that is also true for all these other outlets.

00:28:59.000 What this really comes down to is a subjective method of measuring these sites you don't like and then finding some sort of covering excuse to ban them.

00:29:07.000 It's almost impossible not to read this stuff in this way.

00:29:11.000 So, what should be done about this?

00:29:13.000 So, there's been a lot of talk about the idea of regulating Facebook as a public utility.

00:29:17.000 Now, I don't think that Facebook is a public utility.

00:29:19.000 It's a private company.

00:29:20.000 Facebook is actually begging the United States government to regulate them.

00:29:24.000 Facebook, Twitter, they've been asking members of the government to regulate them.

00:29:27.000 Why?

00:29:28.000 Because they're on the verge of being bankrupted by the European standards on hate speech.

00:29:32.000 So they're caught between sort of a rock and a hard place.

00:29:34.000 In Europe, they don't have the same standards on speech.

00:29:37.000 Because Europe does not respect free speech in the same way that the United States does.

00:29:40.000 One of the reasons the U.S.

00:29:41.000 is better than Europe.

00:29:43.000 The U.S.

00:29:43.000 has better standards on free speech.

00:29:45.000 That is a very, very good thing and you are the beneficiary of it.

00:29:49.000 But what's happening in Europe right now is that the Europeans have set these standards for hate speech and then they are looking at suing or taking down Facebook over quote-unquote hate speech appearing on the platform.

00:30:00.000 So Facebook is now looking for similar regulation from the United States so that they don't have to be eaten alive by the market in the United States.

00:30:07.000 They can blame it on the government of the United States.

00:30:10.000 That's what's actually happening here.

00:30:11.000 Now, there's been a lot of talk about whether they should be regulated because they're effectively a monopoly.

00:30:17.000 I don't think they're effectively a monopoly because I think that there can be competitors to Facebook.

00:30:21.000 I'm not a fan of antitrust law as a general area of law.

00:30:24.000 The only monopolies that I really see are government-guaranteed monopolies.

00:30:28.000 If you are just a company that is very successful in your space and you are not gouging the customer, I don't think that you have a technical monopoly.

00:30:36.000 I tend to be a consumer side advocate when it comes to deciding whether a company's a monopoly.

00:30:40.000 There's sort of two theories of monopoly.

00:30:42.000 One is that if you are the only company in your space, so the supply side, then you are monopoly.

00:30:47.000 The consumer side says, well, who cares if you're the only company in your space, so long as you're not gouging the consumer.

00:30:52.000 If the consumer is getting a better product, that is the purpose of the market.

00:30:55.000 It is the possibility of competition that allows for cheap products to continue being in the marketplace.

00:31:01.000 Two different theories of monopoly.

00:31:03.000 I tend to side with the second theory, which is why I was not in favor of, for example, breaking up Microsoft in the late 90s.

00:31:09.000 The other way of looking at Facebook is to try and try and ration out, to reason out whether they are in fact a platform or a publisher.

00:31:18.000 You've heard me talk about this before.

00:31:20.000 In a second, I'm going to explain legally speaking what that means.

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00:32:13.000 If you're a responsible adult, you should be looking to consolidate your debt and make your life easier.

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00:32:32.000 Alright, in a second we're going to get to the legal status of Facebook.

00:32:35.000 First, you're going to have to go and subscribe.

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00:33:22.000 I take it, seeing that Jessica is wearing a Harvard Law shirt, that she is either a student or an alumnus.

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00:33:56.000 Just listen.

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00:34:03.000 I just know everybody hates it.

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00:34:41.000 All righty, so let's talk for a second about whether Facebook is a platform or a publisher.

00:34:52.000 So, to illustrate the difference between a platform and a publisher, think about the difference between your phone line and dailywire.com, the website that I run.

00:34:59.000 So your phone line, if you are talking on your phone line and you say something terrible, AT&T, Verizon, they are not responsible for what happens on your phone line.

00:35:09.000 None of them are responsible for what happens on your phone line because it's an open platform.

00:35:16.000 My publisher, if I print something that is libelous, we can be sued.

00:35:19.000 If we violate copyright, we can be sued.

00:35:22.000 And now there's a section, 47 U.S.C.

00:35:24.000 230, which is a provision of the Communications Decency Act, which creates an enormous amount of freedom on the Internet.

00:35:28.000 It's a very good provision as a general rule.

00:35:30.000 Section 230, was designed to protect providers or to protect publishers effectively, well, platforms effectively.

00:35:39.000 Section 230 says, quote, no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

00:35:48.000 So in other words, YouTube is not really responsible for you posting a copyright violative video.

00:35:54.000 You are responsible for that.

00:35:56.000 Now, YouTube will take it down because they don't want to be legally liable, but it is you who are responsible for that.

00:36:02.000 The same thing is true on Facebook.

00:36:03.000 If you decide to post something that is a violent threat, Facebook is not responsible for your violent threat.

00:36:07.000 You are responsible for your violent threat, which is appropriate.

00:36:11.000 These are open platforms.

00:36:12.000 Anyone can post virtually anything.

00:36:14.000 And in fact, it is even true Then on DailyWire, the site that I run, we are not responsible for your comments.

00:36:20.000 If we have open threads and you post something that is terrible or libelous, we are not responsible for all that.

00:36:25.000 Now, that changes.

00:36:27.000 All of that should change, logically speaking, if there is no clearly articulated standard by which comments are being removed or by which videos are being removed.

00:36:36.000 In other words, let's say that YouTube decides that they are only going to release videos provided by users that are That are on one topic.

00:36:47.000 And then they just decide that they are going to remove all other topics.

00:36:49.000 That's a clear standard.

00:36:51.000 But now let's say that YouTube is doing what people suspect they are doing, which is demonetizing specific sides of the aisle.

00:36:56.000 That they are taking down videos that violate certain things and not taking down other videos.

00:37:00.000 Let's say that Facebook decides to do that.

00:37:01.000 The question now is do they look more like how I run my website, Daily Wire, where all of my independent contractors, right for me, were responsible for them?

00:37:09.000 Does it look more like that?

00:37:10.000 And we have free contributors, by the way, and we are responsible for their writing.

00:37:13.000 If people write for us, it doesn't matter if we pay them.

00:37:15.000 If we print something, and it goes through the editorial process, and then it goes up, we are responsible for that.

00:37:21.000 Does Facebook look more like that?

00:37:22.000 Or does Facebook look more like an open forum where they're, like, back-policing things on a consistent basis?

00:37:30.000 If there are no standards articulated, there's a good case to be made that Section 230 of the Communications Act should actually, of the Communications Decency Act, should be changed to require that if you are a platform, you should have to have at least a clearly articulated standard for what is removed and what is not.

00:37:46.000 Because otherwise, you're really not acting like a platform.

00:37:48.000 Really, you're acting more like a publisher.

00:37:49.000 Like, I decide on an editorial level what we wish to publish.

00:37:52.000 Well, Facebook, if they have decided that politically motivated concerns are the issue, well, then they look more like us.

00:38:00.000 So, that is what is going on with these sort of vague hate standards.

00:38:04.000 If you have a vague hate standard that is only being applied to one side of the aisle, that would suggest that you are acting more like a publisher than like a platform.

00:38:13.000 And that means that there should be some serious consideration to revising Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

00:38:18.000 Now, the case against that, just to give the other side, is that you don't want government getting involved with regulating websites generally.

00:38:26.000 You don't want the government... Now, I don't think that's what would be happening here.

00:38:29.000 I think that instead what would be happening here is that you are opening up to liability websites that act like publishers.

00:38:36.000 They're not quashing my free speech.

00:38:37.000 I'm the publisher of Daily Wire.

00:38:39.000 They're not quashing my free speech, the fact that we can be sued for libel or for copyright violation.

00:38:44.000 Well, the same case could be made with regard to Facebook.

00:38:46.000 If you're responsible for your material, you're responsible for your material.

00:38:50.000 There's a better thing that could happen here.

00:38:53.000 Facebook is asking for wider regulation than that, by the way.

00:38:55.000 They want the government to actually regulate the speech that can be put on Facebook.

00:38:59.000 But there's a better stance than this, which is, how about a clearly articulated standard that says what you can put up and what you cannot put up on Facebook?

00:39:08.000 How about that?

00:39:09.000 How about like terms of service that aren't impermissibly vague?

00:39:11.000 How about you have to offer an excuse when you ban somebody from your service and so we can all see it and learn from the case study?

00:39:18.000 But these social media companies don't want to do that, and that's why people are so suspicious of what exactly is going on here.

00:39:23.000 And they should be suspicious of what is going on here.

00:39:26.000 Again, if you are a person who has once said a nice thing about Paul Joseph Watson, and you're gonna be banned, or if you're Paul Joseph Watson yourself, right?

00:39:36.000 Paul Joseph Watson, by the way, is not nearly as extreme, just as a human, from what I have seen.

00:39:40.000 He's not nearly as extreme as even Alex Jones, a guy for whom he works.

00:39:44.000 But if Paul Joseph Watson The idea is that Paul Joseph Watson was nice to Gavin McGinnis, Milo Yiannopoulos was nice to Gavin McGinnis, and they can be banned.

00:39:52.000 Again, you're going to have to ask, why is Snoop Dogg still there?

00:39:55.000 Why are half the people in Congress who took pictures with Louis Farrakhan still there?

00:39:59.000 These standards are not being evenly applied because they can't even be articulated.

00:40:02.000 They are not even trying to articulate them, frankly, because they know that they're going to get help from the mainstream media that agrees with them.

00:40:08.000 That's the bottom line.

00:40:09.000 In the end, the New York Times is very happy.

00:40:12.000 A free speech newspaper supposedly is very happy that these social media outlets are throwing people off that they don't like.

00:40:19.000 I don't like a lot of these people either.

00:40:20.000 That doesn't mean that they should be thrown off the platforms.

00:40:23.000 It doesn't.

00:40:24.000 If you don't like what they have to say, I have an easy solution.

00:40:26.000 You don't have to watch them.

00:40:27.000 I have another easy solution.

00:40:29.000 You can yell at them.

00:40:31.000 All of these are appropriate.

00:40:32.000 I don't mean like physically yell at them and disturb events.

00:40:35.000 I mean like you can go online and you can yell at them.

00:40:37.000 I get a lot of it.

00:40:37.000 I know.

00:40:39.000 So, there's that. 0.91

00:40:40.000 Okay, meanwhile, the Democrats continue to proclaim that the Attorney General of the United States, William Barr, is a liar. 1.00

00:40:45.000 A brutal, terrible, evil liar. 0.98

00:40:49.000 So, Nancy Pelosi says that William Barr lied. 0.99

00:40:51.000 What did he lie about?

00:40:52.000 She still cannot name a single lie that William Barr has told.

00:40:54.000 The Attorney General of the United States has fallen under fire.

00:40:57.000 For no apparent reason.

00:40:59.000 He wrote a four-page synopsis of the findings of the Mueller report.

00:41:02.000 Then, within six weeks, he released the entirety of the Mueller report.

00:41:06.000 That's called transparency, folks.

00:41:07.000 That ain't a cover-up.

00:41:08.000 Nonetheless, Democrats are going after William Barr because they wish, they wish, that Robert Mueller had recommended prosecution.

00:41:14.000 He did not.

00:41:15.000 And thus, Democrats say it was William Barr.

00:41:17.000 William Barr was what stood between President Trump and prosecution.

00:41:21.000 As I say, if Mueller wanted to recommend prosecution, he could have.

00:41:24.000 Instead, he abdicated.

00:41:25.000 He handed it over to William Barr.

00:41:27.000 William Barr said no.

00:41:28.000 Appropriately, I've read the report. 0.99

00:41:30.000 But according to Nancy Pelosi, this makes William Barr a political hack and an emissary of evil and a liar. 0.95

00:41:36.000 Now, if she believes that he's a perjurer, she can impeach him anytime. 0.75

00:41:39.000 I don't see her making any serious moves in that direction, do you?

00:41:42.000 Yesterday was quite a day.

00:41:43.000 I really lost sleep last night after watching over and over again the testimony of the Attorney General of the United States.

00:41:51.000 How sad it is.

00:41:53.000 How sad it is for us to see the top law enforcement officer in our country misrepresenting, withholding the truth from the Congress of the United States.

00:42:05.000 The Attorney General of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States.

00:42:12.000 That's a crime.

00:42:13.000 OK, well, she's going to have to explain where the crime is. 0.99

00:42:16.000 I think the Democratic definition of crime is basically crap I don't like. 0.92

00:42:20.000 Well, that ain't a crime, lady. 0.98

00:42:22.000 In a second, we'll get to more on the Democrats attacking William Barr.

00:42:25.000 Okay, so it's not just Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi who is openly suggesting without any evidence at all that William Barr committed perjury, which he did not.

00:42:32.000 It is also Ted Lieu, who is just a terrible congressperson, suggesting that William Barr, the Attorney General, is one of the most dangerous men in the country.

00:42:40.000 Really? 0.89

00:42:41.000 You mean that dorky lawyer is one of the most dangerous men in the country? 1.00

00:42:45.000 For giving you a report that's sitting in front of you, you dolt? 0.99

00:42:49.000 My goodness, here is Ted Lieu making that case. 0.96

00:42:52.000 Attorney General Bill Barr is now one of the most dangerous men in Washington, D.C.

00:42:56.000 for three reasons.

00:42:57.000 First, he intentionally mischaracterized the Mueller report.

00:43:01.000 He was then told by Robert Mueller that he mischaracterized the Mueller report, and instead of apologizing, he doubles down and continues to mislead the American people.

00:43:10.000 Second, today he ignored the will of Congress, oversight responsibilities of Congress, and lawfully issued subpoenas.

00:43:17.000 And third, right now he is suing to eliminate your healthcare coverage.

00:43:22.000 Let's not forget, right now he is suing in court to eliminate pre-existing conditions healthcare coverage.

00:43:28.000 This is just such nonsense.

00:43:29.000 Now here's the reality.

00:43:30.000 Democrats are not going to do anything about William Barr.

00:43:31.000 This is all sound and fury signifying nothing.

00:43:33.000 This is them whining and whining and bitching and moaning because they didn't get what they wanted from Robert Mueller and they can't blame Robert Mueller because they spent several years building him up As the deus ex machina who's going to save us all from President Trump, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York let the cat out of the bag.

00:43:49.000 He said, yeah, we're not jailing Barr.

00:43:51.000 So like all this talk about how we're going to hold him in contempt and then throw him in jail.

00:43:54.000 Yeah, that's not happening.

00:43:55.000 How do you get this thing moving?

00:43:57.000 Do you oppose fines?

00:43:58.000 Do you suggest maybe even, as some have said, jail time for the Attorney General of the United States?

00:44:04.000 Well, jail time is not something that I believe is being seriously contemplated, and look, we're going to continue along the track of trying to find common ground on behalf of the issues that would improve the lives of everyday Americans, while at the same time understanding that there's another lane which is going to require for Congress to hold the administration accountable when it steps over the line, and we're not going to shirk that responsibility either.

00:44:30.000 Okay, well, you know, they're not going to shirk that responsibility, except that there is no responsibility here because they're not going to do anything.

00:44:36.000 They're not interested in doing anything.

00:44:38.000 So all of this is manufactured.

00:44:40.000 Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee is trying to get Robert Mueller there in the wild hope that Robert Mueller will come in and then say, listen, I decided that I couldn't indict because the president's the president, but secretly you guys should impeach him.

00:44:51.000 That's what they want from Robert Mueller.

00:44:52.000 I don't think Robert Mueller is going to give that to them, apparently.

00:44:56.000 NBC News and ABC News are reporting that the committee is now speaking with Mueller's team.

00:45:00.000 When it was previously dealing with the Justice Department, NBC reports that a hearing has not been finalized, a date was not set, but they're apparently negotiating with Mueller to come testify.

00:45:09.000 Well, I mean, the networks, I'm sure, will be happy with the ratings because that's exciting stuff, but we have Mueller's thoughts.

00:45:16.000 In 450 pages, he had things longer than a Tolstoy novel.

00:45:21.000 We have all of his thoughts.

00:45:22.000 He didn't hide them.

00:45:24.000 They haven't been hidden from you.

00:45:25.000 They are publicly available.

00:45:26.000 You can buy a print copy online right now at Amazon. 0.66

00:45:30.000 This is all silly talk.

00:45:32.000 Now the reason I think that Democrats are truly upset about a lot of this stuff is because there are news stories that are coming out pretty much every day now about the lengths to which the Hillary Clinton campaign was interfering with other countries in the election of 2016, the extent to which the intelligence community was intervening with regard to election 2016.

00:45:51.000 There's a story that I've mentioned over the last couple days from the New York Times.

00:45:57.000 In which the New York Times reports that the FBI sent yet another quote-unquote spy, another investigator, posing as an assistant to meet with George Papadopoulos.

00:46:06.000 According to the New York Times, there was a woman who posed as a research assistant.

00:46:12.000 She was actually a government investigator.

00:46:14.000 She went to spy on George Papadopoulos.

00:46:16.000 She said her name was Azra Turk.

00:46:18.000 And this would be a spy being deployed to go talk with a member of the Trump campaign.

00:46:23.000 Trump was never told about any of this.

00:46:25.000 There will be investigations into the extent to which the intelligence community targeted members of the Trump campaign, whether Trump himself should have been told, and whether there was enough of a supportive evidentiary basis to suggest the use of informants and surveillance against people like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

00:46:41.000 That Inspector General report is set to come out, I believe, in June.

00:46:45.000 I think Democrats are fearful of that.

00:46:47.000 I think Democrats are also fearful of new reports like this one that is coming out.

00:46:52.000 According to Fox News, Ukraine's embassy wrote that a Democratic National Committee insider reached out in 2016 seeking dirt on President Trump's team, according to a bombshell new report on Thursday that further fueled Republican allegations that Democrats were the ones improperly colluding with foreign agents during the campaign.

00:47:09.000 Ambassador Valerie Chaley said DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa pushed for Ukraine's then-president Petro Poroshenko to mention Paul Manafort's ties to Ukraine publicly during a visit to the United States and sought detailed financial information on his dealings in the country, according to The Hill.

00:47:24.000 At the time, Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman.

00:47:28.000 Chaley said in a statement, quote, the embassy got to know Miss Chalupa because of her engagement with Ukrainian and other diasporas in Washington, D.C., and not in her DNC capacity.

00:47:36.000 We learned about her DNC involvement later.

00:47:38.000 We were surprised to see Alexandra's interest in Paul Manafort's case.

00:47:41.000 It was her own cause.

00:47:43.000 The embassy representatives unambiguously refused to get involved in any way, as we were convinced that this is a strictly U.S. domestic matter.

00:47:49.000 In other words, it looks like a DNC contractor slash operative was trying to get information for the 2016 campaign on Paul Manafort.

00:47:58.000 Now, again, that's not collusion.

00:47:59.000 It wasn't collusion when Trump Jr.

00:48:01.000 was talking with a Russian lawyer about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.

00:48:04.000 Collusion is a quid pro quo, or the organization of the release of material.

00:48:10.000 But, with that said, is that just as bad as the Trump Tower meeting?

00:48:13.000 I mean, yeah, kinda, right?

00:48:14.000 I mean, it is trying to get information from a foreign source about a domestic political adversary.

00:48:19.000 So, Democrats are in for a rough ride here, I think, and I think that they know it.

00:48:23.000 So, that is probably why they are attempting to misdirect to William Barr.

00:48:27.000 I don't think the next couple of months go real well on the intelligence community.

00:48:30.000 I don't think that they do a lot of wonders for the credibility of the Democratic Party and the intelligence community on any of this stuff.

00:48:39.000 So, that may be why they are trying to misdirect to William Barr or Robert Mueller and all the rest of this stuff.

00:48:43.000 Okay, time for a little bit of mailbag, because it is indeed a Friday.

00:48:47.000 So, We begin with Leia.

00:48:49.000 leah says hey ben a few friends and i are planning a month-long trip for october and at the end of our trip we are planning to visit turkey and lebanon i've traveled all over the world with the exception to the middle east so when they said they wanted to visit i said i'd be on board however i heard you can't enter lebanon if you've been traveling to israel marked on your passport while i've never been there i was curious of the reason for this and what your thoughts are on traveling there and turkey when i'm a strong supporter of israel thanks and love the show so i am not sure what the actual rules are in lebanon i'm not sure what the actual rules are in I know that those rules do apply in places like Saudi Arabia.

00:49:18.000 There are certain countries that refuse to acknowledge the existence of the state of Israel.

00:49:21.000 Don't worry, it's not anti-Semitism to fail to acknowledge a Jewish state that exists.

00:49:25.000 It is merely a form of anti-Zionism, not anti-Semitism at all.

00:49:30.000 Those rules obviously are targeted toward Jews.

00:49:33.000 That is the goal of them.

00:49:35.000 Israel does not have similar rules with any country on planet Earth.

00:49:38.000 It's pretty amazing that all of that is tolerated, but it's soft bigotry of low expectations when it comes to radical Muslim leadership in that part of the world.

00:49:46.000 Kyle says, What is your argument to people that say the economy will crash after Trump because of his Reaganomics-type policies, tax cuts, trade regulations, etc.?

00:49:54.000 Is this a possibility in your mind?

00:49:56.000 Well, number one, there are very few economists who have been consistent in being able to predict economic crashes.

00:50:01.000 This is just a reality of the situation.

00:50:03.000 I think people suspect there will be one in the sometime near future, simply because every eight to ten years in the United States, there is some sort of economic downturn.

00:50:11.000 The last one was in 2008.

00:50:12.000 It's now 2019.

00:50:13.000 So that means that we're probably due, but that's more of like in the earthquakes are coming, feeling that you get sitting on the porch, right?

00:50:21.000 That is not based on any economic criteria.

00:50:24.000 I have no idea why you would say that Reaganomics type policies create recessions when Reaganomics type policies created the greatest peacetime expansion in the history of the United States.

00:50:33.000 The greatest peacetime economics expansion in the history of the United States.

00:50:38.000 Even short-term downturns like Black Monday back in October of, what was it, 1987, Even that was quickly rectified and the economy kept on growing.

00:50:47.000 Even the short-term downturn in 1991 was reversed by the end of 1991.

00:50:51.000 By the time 1992 election came about, the economy was already moving forward again.

00:50:55.000 So, the idea that Reaganomics-type policies is what quashes economic growth.

00:50:59.000 No, what quashes economic growth, downturns are unpredictable.

00:51:02.000 Economic growth, however, is predictably tied to a business climate that is friendly toward business as opposed to a heavy regulatory and tax-based climate That tends to quash growth.

00:51:11.000 That's what we found out from Barack Obama.

00:51:12.000 Keith says Dear Ben.

00:51:14.000 I'd like to be a better influence in defending and spreading conservative ideas.

00:51:17.000 How can an average conservative, such as myself, help change hearts and minds in my daily life?

00:51:21.000 Well, a couple of things.

00:51:22.000 Number one, you have to read and read and read.

00:51:24.000 You really do need to know the issues about which you speak.

00:51:27.000 Second of all, seek commonality and common definition before you start a conversation.

00:51:31.000 The way to have a bad political conversation is for somebody to say something like, you're mean, you're cruel, and then you say, no, I'm not mean and cruel.

00:51:38.000 That's not a conversation, that's an argument.

00:51:40.000 What you have to do is say, I need you to define meanness and cruelty so that we can have a definition of what exactly we are talking about, because I don't believe your definition.

00:51:49.000 If your definition is you just don't like me, well, you know, then we can't have a conversation.

00:51:53.000 If we want to have a conversation, we have to get to commonality of terms.

00:51:57.000 It's funny, I have conversations with folks all the time on a variety of issues, particularly on the other side of the aisle.

00:52:02.000 And to use an example, I just did an interview with, I believe it was Salon, I think?

00:52:08.000 And the reporter over at Salon was extremely antagonistic.

00:52:15.000 The entire interview was basically this person trying to make an argument over... It was not an interview.

00:52:20.000 It was an argument.

00:52:21.000 And you can read the transcript of it.

00:52:22.000 They wouldn't release the audio because it made the reporter look pretty bad.

00:52:24.000 That is my opinion.

00:52:25.000 We asked for the release of the audio.

00:52:27.000 They would not do it.

00:52:28.000 And then I had a similar conversation about my book with Sean Illing at Vox, who happens to be an honest reporter who's read my book and who disagrees with my book.

00:52:36.000 But because we were having a conversation that was productive, he would ask my opinion on something.

00:52:41.000 I would ask him for a clarification of definition.

00:52:43.000 I would respond.

00:52:44.000 He would ask for a clarification of my definitions.

00:52:46.000 He would respond.

00:52:47.000 This is what is called a nice conversation.

00:52:49.000 You can do that.

00:52:50.000 Specifics help conversations move forward.

00:52:52.000 This is true in marriage.

00:52:53.000 It's true in child-rearing.

00:52:54.000 It's true in parenting.

00:52:55.000 It's true in all areas of life.

00:52:57.000 Specificity and clarity is what you should be seeking in conversation if you wish to have a conversation.

00:53:02.000 broad-based terminology about which there is no common understanding, that's how you have an argument.

00:53:08.000 Sarah says, "Ben, what books do you recommend "to learn more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" Well, there's a great book that I've recommended on the show by David Bragg called "Reclaiming Israel's History." It's very short, it's about 200 pages, and that gives you a pretty good background on what you need to know.

00:53:21.000 There's also a book by Eli Bard called "Myths and Facts" that I always recommend, mainly 'cause it's bite-sized.

00:53:25.000 It has a myth and then it will have the fact, and that's like a page long, and it answers most of your questions about it.

00:53:30.000 I'd start with those two books.

00:53:32.000 And then if you want sort of longer form histories, there's a book by Howard Sachar called The History of Zionism that is worth reading.

00:53:38.000 Benjamin Netanyahu actually wrote a great book called The Durable Peace back in the 1990s that talks about the kind of long-term history of Israel and the Palestinians, and more than Israel and the Palestinians, Israel and the Arab world around it, because the Palestinians as a cohesive entity really did not exist as a cohesive entity until the creation of the state of Israel.

00:53:58.000 All the Palestinians. 1.00

00:53:59.000 Palestinian actually referred to Jew, right?

00:54:00.000 The Palestine Post was referring to the Jerusalem Post was referring to Jews.

00:54:05.000 Palestinians as a specific political entity were not created really until 1948 and everybody was considered Syrian.

00:54:11.000 Not to say that they weren't indigenous to the area.

00:54:13.000 There were Palestinians indigenous to the area, but they considered themselves Syrian or Egyptian or Jordanian or Saudi.

00:54:20.000 So it is worth reading all of those books.

00:54:22.000 I can give you more if you're interested.

00:54:24.000 Anthony says, Hey Ben, Is there ever an argument from a conservative side for any implementation of a Keynesian-style economic policy?

00:54:30.000 Also, do you believe we are in a late-stage capitalist system currently?

00:54:34.000 The phrase late-stage capitalist is very irritating because there is either capitalist or there is non-capitalist.

00:54:39.000 The idea that capitalism is moving toward an endgame where it falls apart?

00:54:43.000 That is a Marxist construct that I just don't believe.

00:54:46.000 Marxism suggests that eventually history will end with the seizure of the means of production by the workers.

00:54:53.000 And that has not happened historically. 0.78

00:54:55.000 Instead, what has happened historically is a forcible Seizure of the means of production by governments and then the collapse of that system repeatedly because that system sucks and is terrible for human beings.

00:55:06.000 So I don't really believe in the phrase late-stage capitalist.

00:55:09.000 I believe in economic that there is such a thing as top-down economic fascism or corporatism.

00:55:16.000 That exists, but I don't think that's capitalism.

00:55:18.000 I think people tend to conflate a lot of this terminology.

00:55:20.000 As far as the argument for implementation of a Keynesian style economic policy, which I assume would mean seizure of money from people who are more wealthy, giving it to people who are poorer, So they can start spending that money, that spending is better than saving?

00:55:35.000 No, I disagree with Keynesianism.

00:55:37.000 There's a great book by the author of Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt.

00:55:41.000 It's about a 450-page book that really breaks down Keynes' work at length.

00:55:46.000 It's very detailed.

00:55:47.000 So if you're interested in that, that's available.

00:55:49.000 Richard says, hello, Mr. Shapiro.

00:55:51.000 I've heard several times you say that Congress has subpoena power.

00:55:53.000 Where does it say that in the Constitution?

00:55:54.000 Is it a part of the necessary and proper powers?

00:55:57.000 Well, Congress can pass legislation that allows them to subpoena.

00:56:01.000 Then the other branches have the power to resist a subpoena, and then the judiciary gets to decide whether the subpoena in fact holds.

00:56:07.000 So they have to pass a piece of legislation.

00:56:09.000 You're correct.

00:56:10.000 There's nothing in the Constitution of the United States that specifically refers to subpoena power.

00:56:14.000 But there's no doubt that Congress does have investigative powers under the Constitution.

00:56:19.000 That's how they keep the other branches in check.

00:56:22.000 No.

00:56:23.000 The answer is no.

00:56:31.000 I think Donald Trump would win every primary.

00:56:32.000 He's the incumbent president of the United States.

00:56:34.000 There has yet to be an incumbent president of the United States who loses in the primaries.

00:56:38.000 Even LBJ did not lose in the primaries. 0.89

00:56:40.000 He just came close to losing in a couple early primaries and decided not to run.

00:56:44.000 So that is not the same thing.

00:56:46.000 The strongest primary contenders have never taken out an incumbent president.

00:56:50.000 It's never happened.

00:56:51.000 Okay, let's see.

00:56:52.000 Jackson says, Hey Ben, totally agree with your assessment of endgame.

00:56:54.000 Thank you.

00:56:55.000 Thank you.

00:56:56.000 I appreciate it.

00:56:57.000 Being a huge Marvel fan, I still enjoyed it.

00:56:59.000 Totally fair.

00:57:00.000 I said if you're a Marvel fan, and you're really into it, and you liked the, I guess it was 21 movies leading up to Avengers Endgame, and you're looking for the Easter eggs, and it's all nostalgia for you and fan service, totally fine with that.

00:57:10.000 I personally thought it was bloated.

00:57:12.000 I thought that what they did with the main characters didn't make any sense.

00:57:15.000 I had a lot of critiques of Endgame.

00:57:16.000 Listen, I was just, I wanted to enjoy it the same as everybody else.

00:57:19.000 The thing's gonna make a bajillion dollars.

00:57:21.000 I mean, it's already racked up.

00:57:22.000 I think by the end of first weekend, it had racked up almost $1.5 billion worldwide.

00:57:26.000 I wish I could enjoy it like everybody else.

00:57:28.000 I just have critiques.

00:57:29.000 Jackson says, I was wondering how you would have constructed the final battle.

00:57:33.000 Personally, I would have just had Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America fight Thanos and his generals.

00:57:38.000 Yes, this is correct.

00:57:39.000 The battle at the very end of Avengers Endgame should not have taken place, meaning that it is obvious that Thanos is facing off against them.

00:57:47.000 And, so, as I mentioned in my review of Avengers Endgame yesterday on my show, on the podcast, the biggest problem with Avengers Endgame, one of the big problems, my business partner Jeremy Boring pointed this out, is that the relative powers of the various characters make no sense.

00:58:03.000 So, in the first Avengers Infinity War, Thanos is barely able to hold off just Thor, and he's got the Infinity Gauntlet while he's doing that.

00:58:11.000 And the Infinity Gauntlet is super duper powerful.

00:58:14.000 Well, at the end of Avengers Endgame, spoilers here, okay guys?

00:58:18.000 You're all warned.

00:58:19.000 At the end of Avengers Endgame, Thanos does not have the gauntlet.

00:58:26.000 He's just a big guy.

00:58:27.000 And he's a big guy, and he's holding off simultaneously Thor and Captain America and Iron Man.

00:58:32.000 He's holding all of them off.

00:58:33.000 And Captain America has Thor's hammer.

00:58:35.000 I mean, he's got all these things.

00:58:37.000 Okay, and still Thanos is holding them off without the Infinity Gauntlet?

00:58:42.000 How?

00:58:43.000 How?

00:58:43.000 So you'd have to construct the final battle scene better.

00:58:48.000 Also, there's something inherently a little bit unfair about a three-on-one.

00:58:51.000 So the only way to make that fair is if he does have the Infinity Gauntlet, for example.

00:58:55.000 Also, having Captain Marvel come in and she's able to basically take on Thanos alone.

00:59:01.000 Like, none of these relative power arrangements make any sense.

00:59:04.000 Why is she so much more powerful than Thor, the God of Thunder?

00:59:07.000 Why?

00:59:07.000 Like, none of this... Again, the internal logic doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:59:13.000 I think there is a way to construct it where it makes sense.

00:59:15.000 Where, for example, Tony Stark is wounded.

00:59:18.000 That would make sense.

00:59:19.000 Or Captain America is finally feeling his age.

00:59:22.000 This would make sense.

00:59:24.000 Or you have Thor, who is so broken that he can't fight properly.

00:59:30.000 That would make sense.

00:59:31.000 There are ways to construct this, but I just don't think it was done.

00:59:33.000 It turned into kind of the same big beat-em-up, smash-em-up battle you have at the end of every one of these Marvel movies.

00:59:38.000 William says, hey, Ben.

00:59:40.000 You've said many times on your show you're a huge sports fan.

00:59:42.000 I'm curious what your favorite teams are from the major sports NBA, NFL, and MLB.

00:59:46.000 So number one, NHL should be included in the major sports.

00:59:48.000 Number two, I don't know.

00:59:49.000 I just didn't grow up with hockey.

00:59:51.000 I wish I had, because every time I go to a hockey game, it's awesome.

00:59:54.000 So I am a Blackhawks fan, you know, sort of peripherally, but NBA, NFL, and MLB.

00:59:59.000 NBA, I'm a Celtics fan.

01:00:01.000 I know, I live in Los Angeles, it makes no sense.

01:00:03.000 I'm a Celtics fan because I picked up all of my father's sports allegiances because, like religion, fandom for sports teams is picked up from your parents.

01:00:11.000 This is why my kids will be White Sox fans, even though they are two generations removed from Chicago.

01:00:14.000 So, the NBA, I'm a Celtics fan because my parents went to school in Boston, and the Chicago Bulls really were not a thing when my dad was growing up, so he was a Celtics fan.

01:00:26.000 He's partially a Celtics fan because Red Arbok was the owner of, was the owner slash general manager of the Boston Celtics and was an early integrator of the NBA, for example, was Jewish, etc.

01:00:36.000 The NFL, I'm a Chicago Bears fan, so I picked up all the Chicago allegiances.

01:00:40.000 I know, it's a terrible fate to be a Chicago Bears fan.

01:00:42.000 And Mitch Trubisky, yeah.

01:00:46.000 And MLB, I am a huge Chicago White Sox fan.

01:00:48.000 If you wish to hear my thoughts about the Chicago White Sox, all you have to do is go to Amazon.com.

01:00:52.000 My father and I wrote a full book about the 2005 Chicago White Sox championship season.

01:00:58.000 We traced every single game of the season.

01:01:00.000 And it's a series of letters from me to my dad, and back and forth.

01:01:03.000 It's really a lot of fun.

01:01:03.000 It's called Say It So.

01:01:04.000 You can go check that out at Amazon.com.

01:01:06.000 Yeah, Adil says, hey Ben, question, how would you respond to the argument regarding abortion that in a life and death situation, the life of the mother takes precedence over the unborn baby?

01:01:14.000 Admitting to a certain extent that the two lives are not the equal at that point, unborn versus born, while I myself have a bunch of issues with what is extrapolated from this point, I'm having a hard time discrediting the logic.

01:01:23.000 Well, the logic makes sense that you prefer the life of the mother so long as the baby is not born yet because there is a difference between unborn and born with regard to choice of life.

01:01:35.000 But that does not mean that in a vacuum you can just kill the unborn.

01:01:37.000 This is what people seem to get wrong.

01:01:39.000 You don't actually have to make the argument that an embryo is of the exact same value.

01:01:44.000 You can make the argument, you don't have to make the argument that an embryo is of the exact same value as a 30-year-old person in order to make the argument that an embryo must be preserved.

01:01:54.000 You don't have to make that argument because it is not a choice.

01:01:58.000 The choice is between your inconvenience and the embryo or your wishes and the embryo's existence.

01:02:06.000 That is not the same choice.

01:02:08.000 First, what people do is they create the false choice between the existence of an adult life and an unborn life.

01:02:13.000 And then the next thing that they do is they say that all cases are that choice, which they are not.

01:02:18.000 So it's just bad logic.

01:02:19.000 I don't think you have to accept even the, you don't even have to accept the premise that all life is innately of equal value to, especially, you know, in early stages of, you don't have to accept, you can accept it.

01:02:32.000 Again, you can say an embryo is exactly the same as a fully grown human being, but you don't have to in order to make the argument for the preservation of the embryo.

01:02:39.000 That's historically been the Jewish argument, for example.

01:02:41.000 Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then we'll do a quick thing I hate, and then we'll get out of here.

01:02:46.000 So things I like.

01:02:47.000 So yesterday was Yom HaShoah.

01:02:49.000 I talked at length about Holocaust Remembrance Day, and there's a great video I saw yesterday from El Al, the Israeli national airline.

01:02:59.000 The plane, which is full of Jews who were going to Israel on Yom Hashoah, they were flying over Germany, and a guy, one of the flight attendants, got on the intercom, and he starts telling everybody about how all of his grandparents were slaughtered in the camps.

01:03:18.000 He gets on the intercom and he says, and if they could see now that there is an airplane with a Jewish star flying over Germany.

01:03:26.000 Imagine, I mean, imagine the miracle of that.

01:03:28.000 It really is a miraculous, miraculous thing.

01:03:30.000 How bad was the Holocaust? 0.98

01:03:31.000 The Holocaust was so horrible in terms of human populations that there are still fewer Jews on earth 80 years after the Holocaust than there were before the Holocaust.

01:03:39.000 And so many Jews were murdered.

01:03:40.000 It's an amazing, amazing thing.

01:03:41.000 And then all the people on the plane start singing together and dancing in the aisles.

01:03:45.000 It's pretty, it's pretty amazing.

01:03:46.000 Well, I was asked yesterday by somebody for movies that concern the Holocaust.

01:03:52.000 I mentioned some yesterday.

01:03:53.000 One of the ones that I mentioned that has been wildly underrated, there was a movie, a TV movie that was done about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which is one of the great inspiring stories of Jewish history.

01:04:02.000 A small band of barely armed Jews have been cut off by the outside world, holding up for a month against the mechanization of the German military forces.

01:04:13.000 It is a strong argument, by the way, that people should be armed because armed Jews held off the Nazis for a month.

01:04:20.000 In the middle of complete privation, without proper ammunition, without proper firearms.

01:04:25.000 There's a very good movie called Uprising, as I say.

01:04:27.000 I believe it's only available on DVD.

01:04:28.000 You can order it from Amazon.

01:04:29.000 It's certainly worth the watch.

01:04:31.000 It's quite good.

01:04:32.000 In fact, I find the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising story so important that I'm actually working on a musical about it with my father.

01:04:39.000 My father writes musicals.

01:04:40.000 I wrote the libretto.

01:04:40.000 My dad writes the music.

01:04:42.000 So we're hoping to bring that out, I think, probably sometime next year.

01:04:45.000 In any case, okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

01:04:52.000 So Burger King, all these corporations now feel the need to social justice message.

01:04:57.000 I am a huge advocate of people who have mental illness need to seek help.

01:05:01.000 People who have mental illness need to seek help. 0.97

01:05:03.000 Mental illness runs in my family.

01:05:05.000 People who have a problem need to seek help.

01:05:07.000 They need to find somebody who can help them.

01:05:09.000 Burger King runs a commercial about mental illness and it makes no sense at all.

01:05:13.000 It just doesn't make any sense.

01:05:14.000 So here is Burger King's weird commercial, which, I mean, I guess capitalism for the win, but here is Burger King trying to, I guess, push depression eating?

01:05:21.000 Is that the idea here?

01:05:26.000 Not everybody wakes up happy.

01:05:29.000 Sometimes you feel sad, scared, crappy.

01:05:36.000 All I ask is that you let me feel my way.

01:05:39.000 Feeling blue.

01:05:44.000 Okay, so it's just a bunch of little poetic statements about feelings, and then the chorus is, I just want you to let me feel my way.

01:05:56.000 You can feel your way, okay, but what you really should do if you're depressed and you're down and you're having a problem is you should go see somebody and do something about it.

01:06:03.000 Burger King's eventual solution to all of this is that if we just let you feel however you want to feel, without trying to intervene, And then we give you a bunch of meals that you're gonna eat, so we're gonna let you harden your arteries.

01:06:13.000 That's the proper solution, is for you to feed.

01:06:17.000 Very weird take.

01:06:20.000 Very, very odd take.

01:06:20.000 By the way, for folks who are depressed, one of the greatest methods of trying to fight depression is something called cognitive behavioral therapy, in which the goal is not to let you feel your way, the goal is to try to explain to you how you can intervene in the chain of your own feelings and stop yourself from feeling a way you don't want to feel.

01:06:38.000 Burger King making money off depression eating, and then virtue signaling about it.

01:06:42.000 Welcome to... If there is such a thing as late-stage capitalism, this would be what it would look like.

01:06:47.000 Man.

01:06:48.000 Alright, so, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours.

01:06:50.000 Plus, remember, you should subscribe so you can get the Sunday special a day early.

01:06:53.000 We got Nikki Haley this weekend, so that's pretty awesome stuff.

01:06:56.000 Go check.

01:06:57.000 We have a bunch of big-name guests who are coming up.

01:07:00.000 Also, we have a very special episode that I can't wait to tell you about of the Sunday special coming up next month.

01:07:04.000 It's going to be just fantastic.

01:07:05.000 I've been doing the interviews for it all week.

01:07:07.000 It's so good.

01:07:09.000 We'll get to that.

01:07:09.000 But go subscribe so you get all that stuff.

01:07:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:07:11.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

01:07:14.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

01:07:20.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:07:22.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

01:07:23.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

01:07:25.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

01:07:27.000 Edited by Adam Sajevitz.

01:07:29.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

01:07:30.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:07:32.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

01:07:33.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:07:36.000 Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.

01:07:37.000 Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, Facebook has stepped up its censorship efforts.

01:07:43.000 So we'll discuss the great purge of supposedly dangerous People who all reside, coincidentally I'm sure, on one side of the political spectrum.

01:07:53.000 And we'll also talk about the ethical and legal implications of what they're doing.

01:07:58.000 Also, we're now being told that it is white supremacist to try to be objective.

01:08:04.000 Objectivity is white supremacy.

01:08:06.000 So I want to talk about how the left has made white supremacy into a completely meaningless concept.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 03, 2019

The Great Censorship Debate | Ep. 773

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