The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 Students take to the airwaves to push Trump on gun control, Fergie does the worst version of the National Anthem ever, and I saw Black Panther, and I have thoughts.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:14.000 So many things going on.

00:00:16.000 F-E-R-G-I-E-L-I-C-I-O-M-G-W-T-F was that.

00:00:21.000 No one knows.

00:00:22.000 We will play Fergie's worst national anthem of all time.

00:00:24.000 Roseanne Barr can finally emerge from hiding after years of being shuttled off to safe spaces to prevent her being

00:00:31.000 Hit with rotten tomatoes.

00:00:33.000 Fergie has now taken over that role.

00:00:34.000 We'll discuss that.

00:00:35.000 We'll also obviously get to more serious business with regard to the Trump-Russia probe.

00:00:39.000 We'll get to more serious business with regard to the shooting in Parkland.

00:00:43.000 But before we get to any of those things, first, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at Stamps.com.

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00:02:15.000 Okay, so we begin with continuing fallout from the situation in Parkland, Florida.

00:02:20.000 Obviously, there's a horrific

00:02:22.000 Awful, evil event that occurred last week in Parkland, and that's what dominated the news over the weekend.

00:02:27.000 President Trump is apparently now considering whether he is going to push some gun control measures.

00:02:32.000 One of the reasons he's doing that is because the media have launched an all-out emotional assault on gun control.

00:02:38.000 Here is what CNN, Fox News, MSNBC have been doing.

00:02:41.000 They've been covering all of the students from Parkland.

00:02:43.000 They're high school students, and they're speaking out about gun control.

00:02:46.000 So here are some of the students announcing national demonstrations on gun control.

00:02:50.000 Today I'd like to announce that we have an event coming up to have everybody in the nation talking about what we're talking about.

00:02:59.000 And one of the things we've been hearing is that it's not the time yet to talk about gun control.

00:03:04.000 And we respect that.

00:03:05.000 We've lost 17 lives and our community took 17 bullets to the heart.

00:03:09.000 And it's difficult to come back from that.

00:03:11.000 So here's the time that we're going to talk about gun control.

00:03:14.000 March 24th, we have the March for Our Lives, which you can find at Marchforourlives.com, and expect to see us a lot.

00:03:21.000 The March for Our Lives is going to be in every major city, and we are organizing it so students everywhere can beg for our lives.

00:03:28.000 Because at the end of the day, this isn't about the red and blue, the GOP and the Democrats.

00:03:32.000 This is about adults and kids.

00:03:34.000 Now, whom are you going to beg for your life?

00:03:36.000 Are you going to beg Trump for your life, as though Trump could just flip a switch and suddenly these shootings would not happen anymore?

00:03:41.000 There's significant disagreement about the method that should be used in order to militate against these shootings.

00:03:47.000 There's significant and real disagreements on this.

00:03:49.000 I've suggested there ought to be wildly upped security standards at all of these schools, that there ought to be armed guards at virtually every door that you might consider at some of these schools actually putting into place

00:03:59.000 Thank you so much.

00:04:24.000 This idea that it's all about begging, that it's all about if we just cared enough, that all of this would be fine, we'd just agree on everything, that, of course, is not true in the slightest.

00:04:32.000 This, of course, however, is what the left is suggesting.

00:04:35.000 So the same student Cameron Kasky, he says, you're either with us or against us, which is pretty wild language, considering we are all with you.

00:04:40.000 No one wants to see kids get shot.

00:04:42.000 You're either with us or against us.

00:04:44.000 We are losing our lives while the adults are playing around.

00:04:47.000 And we have received endless support from your generation, and we thank everybody for that immensely because

00:04:53.000 We really appreciate it.

00:04:55.000 We don't need you.

00:04:57.000 On March 24th, you are going to be seeing students in every single major city marching, and we have our lives on the line here.

00:05:05.000 And at the end of the day, that is going to be what's bringing us to victory, and to making some sort of right out of this tragedy.

00:05:12.000 I mean, what does victory look like?

00:05:14.000 What does victory look like?

00:05:14.000 That's the real big question, OK?

00:05:16.000 If victory is no more shootings, then we all agree on the definition of victory.

00:05:19.000 If victory is a piece of gun control legislation that may or may not actually help, then we don't agree on what victory for the country looks like.

00:05:26.000 And you can see that some of these students, obviously, they're very politically motivated.

00:05:29.000 That's OK.

00:05:30.000 I mean, they're allowed to have their political motivations.

00:05:32.000 My problem here is the same problem that I have with the country as a whole.

00:05:35.000 The country as a whole

00:05:37.000 takes being on camera as some sort of imprimatur of knowledge, some sort of imprimatur of expertise.

00:05:44.000 And that's really silly.

00:05:45.000 So LeBron James speaks about politics.

00:05:47.000 That's his right.

00:05:47.000 He's allowed to do it.

00:05:48.000 Some of the stuff he says, I think, is not completely wrong.

00:05:50.000 But why would we treat, as a country,

00:05:53.000 His version of politics with more credibility than people who have studied the issues and studied the personalities for a long time?

00:05:59.000 I don't, and I don't think other people should.

00:06:00.000 Why would we take a bunch of high school juniors and say that these are experts on gun policy now?

00:06:05.000 They're not experts on gun policy simply because their school was targeted.

00:06:08.000 These are people who have experienced significant pain, and obviously we all stand with them and mourn with them in that pain.

00:06:13.000 They have it to a far greater degree, I'm sure, than anybody who's far away.

00:06:16.000 But that does not mean that what they are saying on politics has any more legitimacy.

00:06:21.000 Or that it has any more expertise to back it?

00:06:23.000 And yet, there's a reason the media does this, right?

00:06:25.000 After the Boston Marathon attacks, did you see victims of the Boston Marathon attacks on TV every day stumping for a travel ban on Muslims?

00:06:32.000 Of course you didn't.

00:06:32.000 After the Orlando shootings, did you see victims of the Orlando shootings, who were not left-wing, going around and saying, what we need here is a restriction on the number of Muslim immigrants from countries we can't vet?

00:06:43.000 Of course you didn't.

00:06:45.000 The media go out of their way to put people on camera who are sympathetic.

00:06:48.000 This goes all the way back to the Sandy Hook shooting when Piers Morgan was attempting to do this routine and I called him on and on air.

00:06:55.000 It's highly irritating to me and it's intellectually dishonest.

00:06:58.000 But there's a reason that all these kids are being put on TV and to put pressure.

00:07:01.000 The idea, by the way, that a child shall lead them when it comes to politics is silly.

00:07:06.000 The idea that children are experts on policy because they have greater innocence?

00:07:10.000 No, that means that they don't know enough.

00:07:13.000 There's a reason that you don't let 17-year-olds define tax policy, and you shouldn't let 17-year-olds define gun policy either, depending on whether they've actually studied the issue in any significant way.

00:07:24.000 But again, the media have a real interest in trotting out these kids.

00:07:26.000 Here's another student talking about how Trump sickens the student.

00:07:29.000 President Trump, you control the House of Representatives.

00:07:32.000 You control the Senate.

00:07:33.000 And you control the executive.

00:07:34.000 No, he doesn't.

00:07:35.000 You haven't taken a single bill for mental health care or gun control and passed it.

00:07:39.000 And that's pathetic.

00:07:40.000 We've seen a government shutdown.

00:07:42.000 We've seen tax reform.

00:07:43.000 But nothing to save our children's lives.

00:07:46.000 Are you kidding me?

00:07:47.000 You think now is the time to focus on the past and not the future to prevent the death of thousands of other children?

00:07:52.000 You sicken me.

00:07:53.000 Trump sickens him.

00:07:54.000 Okay, well, again, Trump does not control the House.

00:07:56.000 He does not control the Senate.

00:07:57.000 I mean, basic civics education would be useful here.

00:07:59.000 These are independent branches of government, and they have to propose and pass legislation.

00:08:03.000 Democrats would filibuster, presumably, a lot of the legislation Republicans would propose, but Republicans are not going to propose legislation that their base doesn't want and that their voters don't want.

00:08:11.000 This is how a republic works.

00:08:14.000 Again, the reason the media are going back to the well here is because they're attempting to create an impetus for action that there is no political impetus for right now.

00:08:22.000 This is aimed at the public.

00:08:23.000 It's not really aimed at Trump or even the legislators.

00:08:26.000 It's aimed at the general public, the suggestion being that if you disagree with these students and if you don't feel their pain in the same way that they do, and by feel their pain we mean agree with them, then that means that you are obviously an uncaring individual.

00:08:37.000 There was another student doing this routine yesterday.

00:08:40.000 We are going to be the kids that you read about in textbooks.

00:08:43.000 Not because we are going to be another statistic about mass shootings in America, but because, as Justice David said, we are going to be the last mass shooting.

00:08:53.000 Okay, but here's the reality.

00:08:54.000 That's probably not true.

00:08:55.000 And none of the gun control— I mean, it's an unfortunate reality.

00:08:58.000 But none of the gun control measures that are currently being proposed by the Democrats would have stopped what happened in Parkland.

00:09:03.000 I've yet to hear a concrete proposal.

00:09:05.000 Have you heard one?

00:09:05.000 I haven't heard any concrete proposal.

00:09:07.000 None.

00:09:09.000 This piece of crap who shot up the school had smoke grenades on him.

00:09:12.000 We still don't know how he got the smoke grenades.

00:09:14.000 Do you think it would have been impossible for him to go through and shoot all these students with a handgun?

00:09:18.000 That's what the student at Virginia Tech used, used a handgun in that shooting.

00:09:22.000 So blaming the AR-15 is not going to stop these mass shootings.

00:09:26.000 Again, all of this is about generating emotional appeal, not about making a logical appeal.

00:09:31.000 But the real goal here is to get politicians in front of these kids so these people can berate the politicians.

00:09:37.000 So Marco Rubio is falling for this.

00:09:38.000 He's going to go talk to the victims on camera in front of CNN.

00:09:42.000 It's not our job to tell you, Senator Rubio, how to protect us.

00:09:46.000 The fact that we even have to do this is appalling.

00:09:49.000 Our job is to go to school, learn, and not take a bullet.

00:09:54.000 You need to figure this out.

00:09:55.000 That's why you were unfortunately elected.

00:09:58.000 Your job is to protect us, and our blood is on your hands.

00:10:02.000 Okay, again, our blood is on your hands.

00:10:03.000 I mean, only if you think that the government is God and can prevent every single thing, or unless you have a piece of legislation that is backed by evidence and can suggest that there will be no more mass shootings if you pass this piece of legislation.

00:10:14.000 And then we can actually have a conversation.

00:10:16.000 But here's the truth.

00:10:17.000 We know why this shooting took place.

00:10:19.000 We know what failed here.

00:10:20.000 We know what went wrong here.

00:10:22.000 And I'll explain to you in a second what exactly that was.

00:10:24.000 And it was not lack of gun control.

00:10:26.000 I'll explain that in one second.

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00:12:07.000 Okay, so what exactly went wrong in Parkland?

00:12:09.000 We know what went wrong at Parkland.

00:12:11.000 The left insists that the government must have total control over guns in order to stop mass shootings like what happened at Parkland.

00:12:16.000 But we found out that the government won't do that.

00:12:18.000 We found out the FBI knew full well about the shooter in the Parkland, Florida school massacre and did nothing two times.

00:12:24.000 Two, first, they were informed in September that a YouTube user with the shooter's real name said, quote, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.

00:12:30.000 I'm not sure what you need more than that to go and check it out.

00:12:32.000 The FBI didn't even forward it to the field office.

00:12:34.000 They didn't bother to share the information with local authorities.

00:12:37.000 Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that in January, a caller told the FBI specifically about the shooter's, quote, gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.

00:12:48.000 What happened?

00:12:49.000 Nothing.

00:12:50.000 It was ignored.

00:12:50.000 It was not even forwarded to the field office.

00:12:52.000 So when we talk about the government is big enough to save us, the government is big enough to protect us, there are thousands and thousands of people in this country right now who are felons, who have guns, and the government knows about them and is doing nothing.

00:13:04.000 There are thousands of people who are in the mental health roles, and they have guns, and the government is doing nothing about them.

00:13:09.000 And you're telling me that a mass gun confiscation is the way that you're going to take care of this?

00:13:12.000 Or that if we have a march in the streets, that somehow this is going to accomplish the end of this?

00:13:16.000 One of the ways that we could actually militate against this—there are two ways that I would propose, maybe three, that would actually—I can actually name, I think, maybe four things that we could do that would militate against all of this.

00:13:26.000 So, first thing that we could do is the media should stop naming shooters and providing glory to the shooters.

00:13:31.000 When we do this stuff,

00:13:33.000 All we end up doing is promoting this.

00:13:34.000 These are copycat crimes.

00:13:36.000 A huge number of the school shooters are fans of Columbine, have downloaded information about Columbine, become obsessed with school shootings and want to imitate it so they can get their name in the papers.

00:13:45.000 The media should have an agreement all the way through, and we're going to start implementing this at Daily Wire now, I do it on my show, that we're not going to name the shooter.

00:13:51.000 That is something that I think everyone should work on in the media.

00:13:54.000 That's something that we can do firsthand.

00:13:56.000 Second thing, we should have massive security at the schools.

00:13:59.000 Idiotic notion that there is a school-to-prison pipeline is not backed by data.

00:14:04.000 That if you have a bunch of armed guards in the schools, then kids are being arrested for silly crimes and then being sent to prison.

00:14:09.000 It's just not true.

00:14:10.000 The data do not support that.

00:14:11.000 We have a whole article by Hank Barian over at The Daily Wire about this.

00:14:14.000 You can go and check that out.

00:14:15.000 It is not the case.

00:14:17.000 The mental health screenings that are already taking place, there needs to be more transparency.

00:14:22.000 All of this information needs to be transmitted to local authorities.

00:14:25.000 It all needs to be put in the databases.

00:14:26.000 People need to be fired or lose their jobs or lose their careers if they do not enter information that is relevant, and then something terrible happens.

00:14:33.000 Because I promise you, for every school shooting that happens like this where the FBI missed it, there are a hundred other instances where the FBI missed it, but there was no school shooting.

00:14:40.000 If this happened once, this happened a hundred times.

00:14:42.000 We've now had the FBI and the CIA miss things in the San Bernardino shooting, in the Texas shooting, in this shooting, in the Charleston shooting.

00:14:49.000 The government is not doing what they already have the power to do.

00:14:53.000 So that's something that we certainly should be taking a look at.

00:14:56.000 So those are three things right off the bat that we should be looking at.

00:15:00.000 David French has a proposal over at National Review that is called the Gun Violence Restraining Order.

00:15:04.000 And what he suggests, I want to find the actual verbiage, so he says that

00:15:09.000 And what we should do here is we should have GRVOs.

00:15:12.000 He says,

00:15:40.000 It should require petitioners to come forward with clear, convincing, admissible evidence the respondent is a significant danger to himself or others.

00:15:46.000 It should grant the respondent an opportunity to contest the claims against him.

00:15:49.000 In the event of an emergency, an ex parte order—an order granted before a respondent can contest—should be scheduled quickly if there is an ex parte order.

00:15:58.000 The order should lapse after a defined period of time, unless petitioners can come forward with clear and convincing evidence that it should remain in place.

00:16:05.000 So this would be something that we could all agree on across the board.

00:16:08.000 These seem like reasonable gun control measures to me.

00:16:10.000 And they're not just gun control measures, they're societal control measures in the sense that they are restrictions we place on ourselves in order to try and tamp down the possibility of violence here.

00:16:21.000 Unfortunately, we're not going to have real conversations about all of this.

00:16:24.000 We're just going to shout at each other about how we don't care enough.

00:16:27.000 And chief among those people shouting is, of course, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

00:16:30.000 So Neil deGrasse Tyson is very angry when people talk about praying for the victims or praying for the families of the victims.

00:16:35.000 He says, quote,

00:16:44.000 Okay, evidence gathered from all over the world, from many locations across thousands of years, indicates that no religious person in history has ever claimed that prayer stops people from shooting other people.

00:16:54.000 There's not a religious person in America who actually believes that if I pray, school shootings will end.

00:16:59.000 Nobody thinks that.

00:17:01.000 But the left is fully intent on using school shootings as a club to wield against their favorite political enemies.

00:17:07.000 Steven Pinker, whose book I'm going to talk about a little bit in Things I Hate, I talked about his Things I Like last week, and then I actually had a chance to read it, so now I'm going to talk about Things I Don't Like about it, but Steven Pinker is a psychologist over at Harvard, and he was talking about atheism on MSNBC, and suggesting that we should quit it with all of the religion talk, because obviously God doesn't exist.

00:17:28.000 I don't.

00:17:46.000 Okay, so this is the problem of theodicy?

00:17:58.000 Okay, theodicy is the problem that has been literally considered thousands of times by thousands of different religious thinkers.

00:18:03.000 Why would a good God allow bad things to happen?

00:18:05.000 I do love it when people who are on the atheist left simply declare that the problem of theodicy is unsolvable and therefore God doesn't exist.

00:18:11.000 As though their mind is God's mind.

00:18:13.000 Bad things happen, therefore God doesn't exist.

00:18:16.000 If you're using a school shooting to make the case against God, let me suggest that your priorities are misplaced.

00:18:21.000 One of the things that can help here might be a society that takes virtue more seriously, that inculcates manhood more seriously, as opposed to a society of atomized individuals who apparently have no responsibility for one another.

00:18:33.000 Maybe that's where we should start when we have these societal discussions.

00:18:37.000 But again, it's all taking advantage—Bernie Sanders taking advantage of the gun control debate in order to push his agenda, even though Bernie Sanders' voting right on guns is actually a lot softer than a lot of other Democrats.

00:18:46.000 Of course we have to make it harder for people to be able to purchase weapons.

00:18:49.000 We have people now who are on terrorist watch lists who can purchase a weapon.

00:18:57.000 Does this make any sense to anybody?

00:18:59.000 Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it's more important to protect the children of this country than to antagonize the NRA.

00:19:06.000 Are they prepared to do that?

00:19:07.000 I surely hope they are.

00:19:08.000 Weird, I mean, because Bernie Sanders has said this, quote, And yet there's no proposal there.

00:19:11.000 There's just casting aspersions at people with whom he disagrees.

00:19:13.000 Which is quite gross.

00:19:29.000 Again, all of this is silly.

00:19:30.000 And you see John Kasich doing the same thing.

00:19:32.000 John Kasich, one of the more gutless politicians of my lifetime, the governor of Ohio, who had a pretty pro-gun record when he was in Congress, and had a pretty pro-gun record as governor of Ohio, now, of course, he's coming out and saying we should ban AR-15s.

00:19:44.000 Why should we ban AR-15s?

00:19:45.000 Let's hear some of the worst logic we're going to hear today from the insufferable John Kasich.

00:19:49.000 I said, if all of a sudden you couldn't buy an AR-15, what would you lose?

00:19:53.000 Would you feel as though your Second Amendment's rights would be eroded because you couldn't buy a goddarn AR-15?

00:20:00.000 These are the things that have to be looked at, and action has to happen before, and look, you're never gonna fix all of this, but common sense gun laws make sense.

00:20:10.000 Okay, common sense, well that, I've never heard circular logic like that before.

00:20:14.000 Common sense gun laws make sense.

00:20:16.000 Thank you, definitionally idiotic human.

00:20:21.000 The question is, what is a common-sense gun law?

00:20:22.000 How about an evidence-backed gun proposal?

00:20:24.000 How about that?

00:20:25.000 Say an evidence-backed gun proposal makes sense.

00:20:27.000 Not common-sense gun laws.

00:20:28.000 Common sense is very often the last reserve of people who don't actually want to do the fieldwork of having to look up the evidence.

00:20:34.000 Common sense.

00:20:36.000 When people say common sense isn't so common, that's because common sense would actually involve you looking at the evidence and then making a policy proposal based on it.

00:20:42.000 By the way, the verbiage here is so stupid.

00:20:44.000 The idea that, you know, here he is saying, if I can't buy an AR-15, do I feel like my Second Amendment gun rights have been violated?

00:20:52.000 Well, if I didn't have to listen to John Kasich, would I feel like my First Amendment rights have been violated?

00:20:56.000 Actually, yes.

00:20:57.000 I don't like John Kasich.

00:20:58.000 But if I couldn't listen to John Kasich, my First Amendment rights would be being violated.

00:21:01.000 I have a right to hear what he has to say.

00:21:03.000 What we like and what we don't is not the measure of a right.

00:21:06.000 What we like and what we don't is a measure of preference.

00:21:09.000 A question of right is what I have a right to do and what I have a right to have.

00:21:13.000 I don't have to take advantage of that right in order for that right to exist.

00:21:16.000 I have a right to sleep with as many people as I want to in the United States.

00:21:20.000 I'm not going to do that.

00:21:21.000 I don't like people who do do that.

00:21:25.000 But I have a right to do that?

00:21:26.000 I have lots of rights in the United States that I don't take advantage of.

00:21:29.000 John Kasich apparently thinks that if the calibration of reduction of a right does not affect me, then somehow it's not a reduction of a right.

00:21:40.000 That, of course, is completely evidence-less and foolish.

00:21:43.000 But that's the nature of this debate.

00:21:44.000 Evidence-less and foolish is, I think, what it comes down to in the end.

00:21:48.000 As we continue here, we're going to talk about Trump-Russia, and the Mueller—Robert Mueller brought down an indictment on Friday that does some serious damage to the Democrats' claims that he was colluding with Russia.

00:21:59.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.

00:22:00.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at MyPatriotSupply.

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00:23:23.000 Okay, so, quick update on Trump-Mueller stuff.

00:23:26.000 So, the Trump-Mueller investigation.

00:23:28.000 continues to unspool.

00:23:30.000 And it is not providing the sort of evidence that Democrats would wish that it would provide.

00:23:34.000 On Friday, the Mueller investigation's grand jury indicted 13 Russians associated with election meddling.

00:23:39.000 But that was not the real headline.

00:23:40.000 The real headline is that among all of this activity, nothing all that serious seems to have occurred.

00:23:47.000 I'm just going to be frank about this.

00:23:47.000 It doesn't look like any of this weighed anything having to do with the election.

00:23:51.000 None of this looks particularly damaging.

00:23:53.000 And beyond that,

00:23:54.000 None of it had to do with the Trump campaign apparently knowing about what was going on with Russia at all.

00:24:00.000 The indictment targets 13 Russian nationals, three Russian entities the government says were utilizing, quote, information warfare during the election cycle.

00:24:07.000 According to the indictment, these people, quote, supported the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald Trump and worked on disparaging Hillary Clinton.

00:24:14.000 But after Trump's election, according to the same indictment, quote, defendants and their co-conspirators used false U.S.

00:24:18.000 personas to organize and coordinate other false U.S.

00:24:21.000 personas to organize and coordinate U.S.

00:24:24.000 political rallies protesting the results of the 2016 presidential election.

00:24:27.000 And one of those rallies actually included a Trump is not my president rally held on November 12, 2016.

00:24:33.000 So in other words, it was the Russians trying to make trouble during the election, not necessarily backing Trump.

00:24:38.000 Per se.

00:24:39.000 So what about election coordination with the Trump campaign?

00:24:42.000 Here's what the indictment says.

00:24:43.000 Folks, that's not collusion.

00:24:44.000 Collusion, you actually have to know who you're talking to.

00:24:46.000 I don't understand the argument that this is collusion.

00:24:48.000 If I were to call up the Trump campaign and say, I want to do a rally for you in Texas, and they say, sounds great, let's do a rally in Texas.

00:25:07.000 And I'm not Russian, then it's not collusion.

00:25:09.000 If I'm Russian and I say, let's go do a rally in Texas, and they don't know that I'm a Russian agent, then how is it collusion?

00:25:15.000 It's only collusion if they know they're forwarding the agenda of the Kremlin.

00:25:19.000 If the Kremlin's agenda is the Trump victory, that's not Trump's fault.

00:25:23.000 Trump's victory is his own agenda.

00:25:25.000 The logic that you did something and it happens to be coincident with something the Russians wanted, not that you coordinated with Russia and that's collusion still, that logic does not hold.

00:25:34.000 So what exactly did all of these organizations do?

00:25:36.000 They created, quote, certain fictitious U.S.

00:25:38.000 personas into leaders of public opinion in the United States.

00:25:41.000 Like what?

00:25:42.000 They created thematic group pages including Blacktivist, Secured Borders, and Army of Jesus, and they created Twitter accounts like 10GOP, which ended up with more than 100,000 followers.

00:25:51.000 By the way, that's the extent of what they did, that they created one Twitter account that was successful and had 100,000 followers.

00:25:56.000 You know how many people have accounts with 100,000 followers?

00:25:58.000 A lot.

00:26:00.000 You know how many people have accounts with over a million followers?

00:26:02.000 Not all that many.

00:26:03.000 I have about 1.2 million followers right now.

00:26:05.000 If the Russians really wanted to pour resources into Twitter, you'd figure they would get one account that was really, really influential.

00:26:10.000 100,000 followers is not all that influential.

00:26:13.000 So who did they support?

00:26:15.000 They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.

00:26:25.000 They encouraged U.S.

00:26:26.000 minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S.

00:26:28.000 presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S.

00:26:30.000 presidential candidate.

00:26:31.000 So pushing for Jill Stein and against Hillary Clinton.

00:26:33.000 It sounds like they didn't like Hillary very much.

00:26:35.000 It sounds like it was more anti-Hillary than pro-Trump, per se.

00:26:38.000 But regardless, there is no evidence of actual Trump-Russia collusion in these indictments.

00:26:43.000 Now, could there be evidence that appears later?

00:26:46.000 Sure, but we're still waiting to see some.

00:26:48.000 Rick Gates is a member of the Trump campaign who's now going to be indicted.

00:26:51.000 Looks like he's going to be indicted on charges having nothing to do with Trump.

00:26:54.000 Looks like it has to do with corrupt activities with regard to Ukraine and Paul Manafort.

00:26:59.000 So thus far, we've had zero evidence that the Trump campaign actively colluded with the Russians.

00:27:04.000 The best that they can do is say there was intense collude.

00:27:06.000 That would be the meeting between Donald Trump Jr.

00:27:09.000 and Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and the exchange that Trump Jr.

00:27:14.000 had with a friend of his in Russia, who was saying the Russian government wants to help out.

00:27:19.000 So intense collude is not a crime.

00:27:21.000 Actual collusion is probably not a crime, actually, depending on how exactly it went down.

00:27:25.000 But the story we've been told for over a year is that the Russians skewed the election to Hillary Clinton, and then the evidence they provide for this is really scanty.

00:27:34.000 Like putting up memes on Facebook that have 15 shares?

00:27:37.000 Putting up dumb memes that have 100 shares on Twitter?

00:27:41.000 One Twitter account that's successful enough to have 100,000 followers?

00:27:43.000 That's it?

00:27:44.000 So Trump, rightly, comes out and starts blasting away against the Democrats for all of the Trump-Russia stuff in an epic tweetstorm.

00:27:51.000 He says, Russia started their anti-U.S.

00:27:52.000 campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for president.

00:27:57.000 The results of the election were not impacted.

00:27:59.000 The Trump campaign did nothing wrong.

00:28:01.000 No collusion.

00:28:02.000 Fact check, true.

00:28:03.000 And then he says, Again, fact check, true.

00:28:18.000 As Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein stated at the press conference, quote, there's no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.

00:28:26.000 There's no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election.

00:28:30.000 Check.

00:28:31.000 True.

00:28:31.000 And he continues, funny how the fake news media doesn't want to say that Russian group was, sorry, was formed in 2014 long before my run for president.

00:28:41.000 Maybe they knew I was going to run even though I didn't know.

00:28:45.000 First of all, a lot of the fake news media did—fact check, false—the fake news media did actually point out that this interference started in 2014.

00:28:51.000 And then he says, Fact check, true.

00:29:01.000 So, all of this is true.

00:29:02.000 This is very sad.

00:29:03.000 Now, here's where he goes off the rails.

00:29:04.000 Here's where Trump cannot help but be Trump, and it's not good.

00:29:08.000 He tweets, quote, This is stupid.

00:29:10.000 This is counterproductive.

00:29:10.000 This is very dumb.

00:29:11.000 That last comment there?

00:29:26.000 The FBI agents responsible for stopping the school shooting were not the FBI agents who are investigating Trump-Russia collusion.

00:29:32.000 That is a very, very stupid comment.

00:29:34.000 It's a comment that—linking those two issues is really gross and nasty and vulgar, and Trump never should have done it.

00:29:41.000 Then he said, quote, I never said Russia did not meddle in the election.

00:29:43.000 I said it may be Russia or China or another country or group or maybe a 400-pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer.

00:29:48.000 The Russian hoax was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

00:29:51.000 It never did.

00:29:52.000 Well, that's really not true either.

00:29:54.000 The president said over and over and over that he doesn't really believe that Russia meddled in the election.

00:29:58.000 He said that Vladimir Putin keeps telling him, and he sees no reason not to believe him, that Russia didn't meddle in the election.

00:30:03.000 He's expressed his doubts about Russian meddling a thousand times.

00:30:06.000 But with all of this said, you know, the president can't help himself.

00:30:08.000 He gets on Twitter.

00:30:09.000 He says silly things.

00:30:10.000 It's what he does for a living, aside from being president.

00:30:13.000 But with all of that said,

00:30:16.000 The basic notion promoted by the Trump-Mueller investigation, the new allegations put out by the Mueller investigation, it basically suggests that Trump is not wrong here.

00:30:27.000 There's never been a lot of strong evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, and the media that keep trying to push this story are going to have some real trouble if they continue to push this story.

00:30:38.000 Trump can be as dumb as he wants on Twitter, and he will, but that has nothing to do with the underlying accusation made by the media

00:30:44.000 Which is that Hillary Clinton didn't lose the election, the Russians won it for Trump.

00:30:47.000 There is no evidence of that whatsoever.

00:30:49.000 Any suggestion to the contrary is evidence-free.

00:30:52.000 OK, so in just a second, we're going to get to sports and politics, because I need to play for you the worst rendition of the national anthem in human history.

00:31:01.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:31:26.000 How great is it?

00:31:27.000 It has the power of invisibility.

00:31:29.000 That's how great it is.

00:31:30.000 It has its own cloaking device.

00:31:32.000 It was produced in Wakanda.

00:31:34.000 It was made from vibranium.

00:31:35.000 And it is spectacular.

00:31:37.000 It is just that good.

00:31:38.000 So you can check that out with a $99 annual subscription fee.

00:31:42.000 Thanks to Jess for forgetting the cup.

00:31:43.000 Really appreciate that.

00:31:45.000 Right under the bus goes Jess, and you will be able to enjoy all the glories of our Leftist Heroes Hot and Cold Tumblr when you get the annual subscription.

00:31:55.000 Also, if you just want to listen later to the rest of the show, go over to iTunes, SoundCloud, YouTube, Google Play, Stitcher, any of those.

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00:32:04.000 We are one of the largest podcasts in the United States, and we are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast in the United States.

00:32:14.000 So I do want to talk sports and politics, but in order for me to lead this off, I do have to discuss the worst National Anthem in the history of National Anthems.

00:32:21.000 This, of course, was from Fergie, who gave the National Anthem a black eye.

00:32:26.000 Get it?

00:32:27.000 Get it?

00:32:27.000 She gave it a black eye.

00:32:28.000 Fergie?

00:32:29.000 Yeah, F-E-R-G-I-E.

00:32:30.000 I'm going to make the joke again in case you missed it the first time, because it's so good.

00:32:33.000 F-E-R-G-I-E-L-I-C-I-O-M-G-W-T-F.

00:32:36.000 Here it is Fergie singing the worst national anthem of all time.

00:32:39.000 Watch the reactions of the NBA players who are listening to her.

00:32:42.000 Kneeling would have done less dishonor to the anthem than the way that Fergie sang this national anthem.

00:32:46.000 It's just horrifying.

00:32:51.000 I'm never going to cut it, man.

00:32:52.000 I'm just going to let it play.

00:32:53.000 It's so good.

00:32:54.000 What in the world?

00:33:09.000 Look at Steph Curry, he's like, what is going on, man?

00:33:13.000 Everybody is trying so hard not to laugh at this.

00:33:24.000 Look at LeBron trying to hold in the laugh.

00:33:31.000 He's really trying hard there.

00:33:37.000 It comes to a point in this clap where the entire crowd actually starts laughing.

00:33:40.000 We have to wait at least until we get Draymond Green's reaction.

00:33:50.000 Oh no!

00:33:51.000 And she's a terrible singer too.

00:34:03.000 Oh no.

00:34:05.000 Oh no!

00:34:10.000 Oh!

00:34:12.000 Okay, watch Draymond here.

00:34:13.000 He's the best.

00:34:14.000 Wait till we get to Draymond Green.

00:34:17.000 It's so good.

00:34:30.000 You can hear the crowd laughing because it's so terrible.

00:34:34.000 Jimmy Kimmel can't hold it in.

00:34:36.000 Jimmy and I are on the same side here.

00:34:39.000 What the hell is this?

00:34:41.000 Oh, so great.

00:34:43.000 Okay.

00:34:45.000 Everybody's laughing now.

00:34:46.000 They can't hold it in.

00:34:49.000 Oh, the capper is so good.

00:34:55.000 Oh, no.

00:34:55.000 Oh.

00:35:02.000 What in the world?

00:35:06.000 I think we can all come together around Fergie is awful.

00:35:08.000 Oh my goodness.

00:35:09.000 That is just hot garbage.

00:35:11.000 Roseanne Barr finally gets off the Schneid because of Fergie.

00:35:15.000 Wow.

00:35:16.000 Wow.

00:35:16.000 Carl Lewis off the Schneid.

00:35:18.000 If you haven't seen them sing the anthem, by the way, go to YouTube and look it up.

00:35:20.000 Pretty spectacular.

00:35:22.000 Yeah.

00:35:23.000 How about this?

00:35:23.000 How about we just sing the National Anthem like it was supposed to be sung as opposed to Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday to JFK while having sex with him?

00:35:31.000 How about we don't do that with the National Anthem?

00:35:33.000 Because that was not good.

00:35:36.000 Wow.

00:35:36.000 Okay, now, the sports community has decided that it is imperative that they all speak up on politics.

00:35:40.000 Very, very important that if you are good at basketball, that you speak up on politics.

00:35:46.000 It's fine.

00:35:46.000 You want to speak up on politics?

00:35:47.000 Everyone in the United States has the right and the capacity to speak up on politics.

00:35:51.000 Whether we should respect your opinion is another question.

00:35:53.000 Lots of people have very dumb opinions.

00:35:55.000 So among those who have very stupid opinions is Adam Rippon.

00:35:58.000 So Adam Rippon is an ice skater.

00:36:00.000 And he says that, quote, I'm not like a gay icon or America's gay sweetheart.

00:36:05.000 I'm just America's sweetheart, and I'm just an icon.

00:36:07.000 So Milo Yiannopoulos coming back as an ice skater there.

00:36:10.000 He finished 10th.

00:36:14.000 Like 10th.

00:36:15.000 Okay, you know who finished 10th in the NFL last year?

00:36:18.000 It was the Atlanta Falcons with a 10-6 record.

00:36:20.000 The Jacksonville Jaguars also were 10-6.

00:36:23.000 This does not make you an icon.

00:36:24.000 If you finish 10th, that does not make you an icon.

00:36:26.000 But the media are so perverse that they actually moved to give Adam Rippon

00:36:31.000 A job as a commentator after finishing 10th at the Olympics.

00:36:35.000 Can you name the person who finished 10th at the last Olympics?

00:36:37.000 You can't!

00:36:38.000 You know why?

00:36:38.000 Because they're not an icon!

00:36:40.000 Definitionally, you finish 10th at the Olympics, you're not an icon.

00:36:43.000 So NBC briefly hired him to serve as a correspondent for the rest of the 2018 games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.

00:36:50.000 He's one of the first openly gay athletes to compete at the Olympics.

00:36:53.000 And he won a bronze medal for figure skating at some point, I guess.

00:36:57.000 Will work for NBC as a correspondent on TV, digital, and social media.

00:37:01.000 The only reason they're even talking about having him— First of all, anyone who thinks that he's a gay icon in figure skating, guys,

00:37:13.000 Have you watched the figure skating coverage at all?

00:37:16.000 I haven't.

00:37:17.000 But if you have, then you've seen Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir.

00:37:20.000 Johnny Weir is dressed like Lady Gaga every day, commentating on this.

00:37:26.000 That guy is ten times as gay as Adam Rippon.

00:37:28.000 Or at least if you're talking about gay stereotypes, he's stereotypically gay, much more than Adam Rippon.

00:37:35.000 He's a gay icon.

00:37:36.000 Johnny Weir is much more of a gay icon than Adam Rippon, but Adam Rippon

00:37:39.000 Ripped on Mike Pence, and therefore he's a gay icon now for some odd reason.

00:37:44.000 The media wish to prop up these cultural figures because they think that the American people actually listen to them.

00:37:48.000 The American people don't listen to them.

00:37:50.000 Other people who the American people don't really care about hearing from on politics as a general rule, LeBron James.

00:37:55.000 So LeBron James can say whatever he wants on politics.

00:37:57.000 Laura Ingraham, when she said, shut up and play basketball?

00:38:00.000 Now LeBron James can say whatever dumb thing he wants.

00:38:01.000 That's his prerogative.

00:38:03.000 But LeBron James responded to Laura Ingraham, and so now we're going to have a LeBron James-Laura Ingraham fight for no apparent reason, which is just awesome for the culture.

00:38:09.000 Here's LeBron.

00:38:10.000 I would definitely not shut up and dribble.

00:38:14.000 I would definitely not do that.

00:38:16.000 I mean too much to society.

00:38:20.000 I mean too much to the youth.

00:38:21.000 I mean too much to so many kids that feel like they don't have

00:38:27.000 They don't have a way out and they need someone to help lead them out of the situation they're in.

00:38:33.000 And that's why I would not just shut up and dribble because I mean too much to.

00:38:38.000 My two boys here, their best friend right here, my daughter that's at home, my wife, my family, and all these other kids that look up to me for inspiration.

00:38:48.000 Okay, that's his prerogative.

00:38:49.000 That's his prerogative.

00:38:51.000 And it is worth pointing out.

00:38:52.000 People were saying this is a race thing.

00:38:54.000 Joy Reid came out and she said that it's just that Laura Ingraham wanted to slam a black guy.

00:38:58.000 That's why Laura Ingraham did this.

00:38:59.000 Yeah, this is ignorant.

00:39:00.000 Here's what Joy Reid had to say.

00:39:02.000 There is this extent to which Fox News has decided that the grist for the ratings mill is black people.

00:39:09.000 Black NFL players, black NBA players.

00:39:11.000 I mean, you had Eminem make a music video attacking Donald Trump.

00:39:16.000 That's not interesting to them.

00:39:18.000 And the grist is always black and brown people because they know what it sells.

00:39:21.000 And yet you have Laura Ingraham taking such umbrage and saying,

00:39:25.000 Oh, how dare you say my words were racist?

00:39:27.000 Her words weren't racist.

00:39:28.000 She wrote an entire book.

00:39:30.000 It was a New York Times bestseller called Shut Up and Sing about the Dixie Chicks.

00:39:33.000 The Dixie Chicks, last I checked, are the whitest people on planet Earth.

00:39:36.000 And she wrote an entire book about how people who are in the music business should shut up and sing.

00:39:41.000 This has been Laura's shtick for a very, very long time.

00:39:44.000 Let's at least be honest about the critiques that we're making of people.

00:39:47.000 If you think that Laura Ingraham shouldn't have said that LeBron James should shut up and dribble because you think that everyone has a right to speak, that's fine.

00:39:52.000 But if you want to say that that's a racist thing, Laura Ingraham's been saying this about every celebrity that she can find for the last 15 to 20 years.

00:39:58.000 I know, I was there.

00:40:00.000 But Joy Reid wants to say it's a racial thing.

00:40:02.000 Also, the idea that Fox News is somehow ignoring the Eminem music video.

00:40:06.000 They covered the Eminem—I was on Fox & Friends, I think, the morning they covered it.

00:40:09.000 They've covered the Eminem music video over and over and over again.

00:40:12.000 Then they covered the Snoop Dogg music video.

00:40:14.000 One of the reasons that they keep covering, quote-unquote, black folks in athletics is because it's a lot of black folks in athletics who are becoming very political these days.

00:40:23.000 Because they think that Trump is racially biased and they think Trump's a racist and all the rest of it.

00:40:27.000 The vast majority of players who are kneeling for the anthem in the NFL were black.

00:40:31.000 The vast majority of players in the NBA who are wearing Black Lives Matter t-shirts were black.

00:40:35.000 Because the vast majority of players in the NBA are black.

00:40:38.000 It's not that Fox News is... This attempt to graft racial issues onto what are really political issues, I don't like very much.

00:40:46.000 Another note about LeBron, when LeBron says, I'm too important to people not to speak up,

00:40:51.000 That may be true.

00:40:51.000 There are a lot of people who find LeBron James very important and they want to hear from him.

00:40:54.000 That may be true in the same way that it was true for Muhammad Ali.

00:40:57.000 I don't like making sports figures into political figures because I don't think they know very much about politics as a general rule.

00:41:03.000 The mistake that Laura Ingraham made here was suggesting, if she made a mistake, was suggesting that

00:41:10.000 Innately, LeBron James is not capable of talking about politics because he's a basketball player, as opposed to he doesn't know what he's talking about, therefore we shouldn't pay any attention to him.

00:41:18.000 The problem isn't LeBron speaking out.

00:41:20.000 The problem is a society that takes celebrities seriously on politics.

00:41:22.000 How do I know that our society takes celebrities seriously on politics?

00:41:25.000 The President of the United States is Donald J. Trump.

00:41:28.000 Okay, yes, we take our celebrities seriously on politics.

00:41:31.000 It's true on the right, and it's true on the left.

00:41:32.000 You can't critique LeBron for speaking out on politics if you were willing to vote for Kid Rock in the U.S.

00:41:37.000 Senate race in Michigan.

00:41:38.000 You can't talk about how you don't like celebrities talking about politics if you are excited every time Clint Eastwood makes a political statement.

00:41:45.000 It doesn't work for one side and not for the other.

00:41:48.000 And on the left, you can't whine about Donald Trump as a celebrity.

00:41:50.000 What does he know about politics?

00:41:51.000 If every time a celebrity comes forward like Lena Dunham whining about abortion, you take her super seriously because she writes a terrible show on HBO.

00:41:59.000 Either we're going to have to judge people based on their expertise, or we're going to have this whole other ancillary set of gauges that we use for determining legitimacy.

00:42:09.000 How close were they to a situation?

00:42:09.000 So we'll use sympathy.

00:42:11.000 How close were they to a situation that affected them?

00:42:13.000 Or we'll use celebrity as a marker of decency and genius.

00:42:16.000 Or we could say, well, does this person know anything about what they're talking about?

00:42:20.000 And if the answer is no, then maybe we shouldn't, as a people,

00:42:24.000 Take them particularly seriously.

00:42:25.000 Maybe Adam Rippon's take on politics is not particularly relevant because Adam Rippon doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.

00:42:29.000 He went on national television and suggested that the Vice President of the United States is for gay conversion therapy, which is factually false.

00:42:36.000 Maybe we shouldn't offer him a slot on ice skating coverage so he can do his politicking at NBC.

00:42:43.000 By the way, they withdrew the offer apparently after there was some blowback.

00:42:47.000 The reason that people are up in arms about sports and politics is because there's been a whole set of media elites who have decided that sports figures and cultural figures have something deep to say.

00:42:57.000 And you see it every time there's one of these controversies, and a bunch of people come out and say, where's Taylor Swift on this issue?

00:43:02.000 Where's Taylor Swift been on Me Too?

00:43:04.000 Where's Taylor Swift been on the Pussyhats?

00:43:06.000 Who cares where Taylor Swift has been on any of this?

00:43:09.000 She writes poppy teen beat songs.

00:43:12.000 Who cares?

00:43:13.000 Why does it matter where she is on this?

00:43:15.000 Why would I possibly care what a boxer has to say about this stuff, unless the boxer's actually spent some time learning about the political issues at issue?

00:43:23.000 There are boxers, by the way, who have spent time on politics.

00:43:25.000 I mean, is it Vladimir Klitschko, the heavyweight?

00:43:27.000 Or his brother, who is very involved in Ukrainian politics?

00:43:31.000 But the mark of expertise should not be how many cameras are on you on an ancillary thing.

00:43:35.000 The mark of expertise should be whether you actually know what the hell you're talking about.

00:43:38.000 Jennifer Lawrence, by the way, says she's taking off time from acting to save our democracy.

00:43:43.000 So she apparently thinks the Hunger Games is a real thing.

00:43:46.000 She's going to go get her bow and arrow and run out there.

00:43:49.000 If the previews for Red Sparrow are any indicator, then I think we've all been blessed by her decision.

00:43:53.000 But, Jennifer Lawrence, why are we paying attention to her on politics?

00:43:56.000 Who cares what Jennifer Lawrence has to say on politics?

00:43:58.000 The answer is, no one should, because she doesn't know what she's talking about.

00:44:01.000 But we all will, because celebrity now dominates the roost.

00:44:04.000 Okay, time for some things I like, some things I hate, and then we'll get to a Federalist paper.

00:44:10.000 We're good to go.

00:44:32.000 Is it a good movie?

00:44:33.000 The answer is yes, I think it's a good movie.

00:44:34.000 I think it's a well-made movie.

00:44:35.000 I think it's compelling.

00:44:36.000 I found the characters interesting.

00:44:38.000 I thought the story moved.

00:44:40.000 I liked the movie.

00:44:41.000 I thought that it was better than most of the Marvel movies that I've seen recently.

00:44:43.000 I think it would probably fall, I said top three, it would probably fall top five for me in terms of the Marvel films.

00:44:49.000 I think, what, have they made 17 of them now?

00:44:50.000 They made a bunch of them.

00:44:52.000 We're good to go.

00:45:14.000 It's well made.

00:45:15.000 The acting across the board is really good, except for Forrest Whitaker, bizarrely, who plays the same character in every film now.

00:45:20.000 So Forrest Whitaker has basically become the guy he played in Rogue One, and he's like that in every single science fiction film.

00:45:24.000 He's kind of like Jeff Goldblum that way.

00:45:26.000 When you cast Forrest Whitaker, you know you're getting Forrest Whitaker.

00:45:28.000 You're not going to get really a performance.

00:45:30.000 But everybody else in the film is great.

00:45:32.000 Michael B. Jordan steals the film as the villain, Killmonger.

00:45:36.000 Tell me something.

00:46:04.000 It's a third world country.

00:46:06.000 Textiles, shepherds, cool outfits.

00:46:09.000 All the front.

00:46:10.000 Explorers have searched for it.

00:46:15.000 Called it El Dorado.

00:46:16.000 They looked for it in South America.

00:46:20.000 But it was in Africa.

00:46:31.000 Okay, so the movie's good.

00:46:33.000 Andy Serkis, by the way, is terrific in the film, and they should have him in more films where he's not CGI'd as a monkey or something.

00:46:40.000 He's quite a good actor, and I really enjoyed him in the film.

00:46:42.000 He's a crazy guy.

00:46:44.000 Okay, so I analyzed it as a film.

00:46:47.000 Very enjoyable.

00:46:49.000 Very good movie.

00:46:49.000 Okay, now.

00:46:51.000 The politics.

00:46:51.000 So, before I go any further, I want to point something out.

00:46:54.000 I did not politicize this film.

00:46:56.000 You politicized this film, media.

00:46:57.000 It was you guys who made this into a big issue.

00:46:59.000 I'm going to read you some of the headlines from the New York Times.

00:47:01.000 These are the headlines from the New York Times about this film in the last two weeks alone.

00:47:21.000 Hey, people last week were saying I was very upset that there was this movie being made.

00:47:24.000 No, I don't care whether the movie is made.

00:47:26.000 It was a good movie.

00:47:27.000 I enjoyed it.

00:47:28.000 What I care about is that the media are treating this as some sort of glorious moment, like this is a very, very important cultural moment.

00:47:33.000 It's not a very important cultural moment.

00:47:35.000 I'm sorry, it isn't.

00:47:36.000 There have been blockbusters with black leads, black comic book characters in films, including Nick Fury, hit movies primarily about black people for years, critically acclaimed movies about black people for years.

00:47:44.000 In the last five years, I think, 12 Years a Slave and Moonlight both won, both about black people.

00:47:49.000 So the idea that Americans are not willing to go see a movie with primarily black people, like, what are you talking about?

00:47:54.000 I just don't see the evidence for any of that.

00:47:56.000 And there's this kind of virtue signaling that's now going around, people saying they love the movie a little more than they do because they want to prove that they went to see a movie with black people and liked it.

00:48:06.000 I think that's really dumb.

00:48:07.000 The movie's good.

00:48:08.000 Is it Citizen Kane?

00:48:09.000 No, it's not Citizen Kane.

00:48:10.000 Is it a very good Marvel movie?

00:48:11.000 Sure.

00:48:12.000 Okay.

00:48:13.000 The politics didn't go beyond that, though.

00:48:15.000 So it's not just it's important for black kids to see a black superhero, which I find a dubious measure.

00:48:20.000 I don't think it's important for white kids to see a white superhero.

00:48:22.000 I think it's fine for white kids to see a black superhero, like Black Panther.

00:48:25.000 I think it's fine for black kids to see a white superhero.

00:48:27.000 I don't care.

00:48:27.000 It makes no difference to me.

00:48:29.000 But there's something beyond that.

00:48:30.000 So, Carvel Wallace wrote this in the New York Times, quote,

00:48:44.000 And then he said also in this article that there's a video posted to Twitter in December which has since gone viral.

00:48:49.000 Three young men seen fawning over the Black Panther poster at a movie theater.

00:48:52.000 One jokingly embraces the poster while another asks rhetorically, this is what white people get to feel like all the time?

00:48:57.000 There's laughter before someone says as though delivering the punchline to the most painful joke ever told, I would love this country too.

00:49:02.000 Except nobody's ever gone to see a Captain America movie and said, wow, look, a movie with a white hero.

00:49:07.000 I'm so excited, he's white.

00:49:09.000 Nobody does that in America.

00:49:10.000 That's not a thing.

00:49:11.000 And they certainly don't go to a movie and say, wow, look, a movie with all white people and all the black people are bad, because that would be a racist movie.

00:49:18.000 That would be Birth of a Nation.

00:49:19.000 That's bad.

00:49:21.000 No, this is not true.

00:49:22.000 OK, so what are the politics that are actually in the movie?

00:49:24.000 I didn't politicize it.

00:49:24.000 You politicized it.

00:49:25.000 So now I have to break down the politics.

00:49:27.000 Sorry I have to do that.

00:49:28.000 Shouldn't ruin your experience of the film.

00:49:29.000 It's a good film.

00:49:30.000 OK, so here's what's good.

00:49:32.000 Martin Luther King defeats Malcolm X. So, there are two main characters in the film.

00:49:36.000 One is T'Challa, who is a stolid Chadwick Boseman, and one, and he sort of plays the MLK figure, he's taking over for Wakanda.

00:49:42.000 So I have to explain the plot of the film, so spoilers ahead.

00:49:45.000 If you don't want to hear the spoilers, tune out now.

00:49:47.000 Here are the spoilers.

00:49:48.000 So,

00:49:49.000 There's a fictional kingdom that does not exist, because the entire—none of this exists, right?

00:49:53.000 It's a Marvel universe.

00:49:53.000 But we're going to pretend that it does exist for purposes of this conversation, because when you analyze the politics of a film and the messages that are being promoted by the film, you have to take it on its own terms.

00:50:01.000 So, here is what's going on.

00:50:04.000 There is a country called Wakanda.

00:50:05.000 Wakanda was hit with a meteorite that is filled with vibranium.

00:50:08.000 Vibranium is basically unobtainium.

00:50:09.000 It is the greatest metal that has ever been created.

00:50:11.000 It can heal spinal wounds.

00:50:12.000 It can give you visions of your forefathers.

00:50:15.000 It can do anything, vibranium.

00:50:16.000 It's just unbelievably cool crap.

00:50:18.000 And it can turn your entire civilization, apparently, so long as there are no white people in your civilization, it can turn your entire civilization into a fully westernized, fully liberal place with gay rights and women running the military and women running all the science, running all the science institutions.

00:50:34.000 And all this.

00:50:35.000 Outside cultural influences don't matter.

00:50:37.000 All that matters in this universe is that a big meteorite landed right here and that there were no white people to ruin it.

00:50:42.000 That's pretty much the premise of Wakanda.

00:50:44.000 And then, Wakanda hides from everybody, but they still have the greatest country ever without any trade.

00:50:49.000 So they have this metal, but the metal magically can grow things and it can make everything super cool.

00:50:53.000 It can be isolationist.

00:50:55.000 You can have a complete state with no outside interference at all.

00:51:00.000 Now, pause.

00:51:01.000 In real life, this doesn't work out for anyone.

00:51:03.000 Japan was the closest thing to this.

00:51:05.000 America basically opened Japan with a couple of gunboats.

00:51:07.000 China was like this.

00:51:08.000 In the 1860s, the United States sent a couple of gunboats into China during the Boxer Rebellion and basically took over, or during the Opium Wars, and basically took over large swaths of China and opened it to trade.

00:51:18.000 So this is not accurate.

00:51:20.000 When you cut yourself off from the outside world, it typically makes you weaker, not stronger.

00:51:24.000 Put that aside.

00:51:25.000 So Wakanda is fantastic.

00:51:26.000 It's the greatest place ever.

00:51:27.000 But Wakanda didn't help out black people around the world when black people were suffering at the hands of white people.

00:51:31.000 So, the king of Wakanda, before T'Challa, was T'Chaka.

00:51:35.000 That's his dad.

00:51:36.000 T'Chaka had a brother.

00:51:37.000 His brother was sent as a spy to Oakland.

00:51:39.000 Why would you send a spy to Oakland?

00:51:41.000 No one knows.

00:51:43.000 What's in Oakland?

00:51:43.000 Were you trying to get the Raiders playbook?

00:51:45.000 There's nothing going on in Oakland that needs spying on.

00:51:47.000 If you're gonna send a spy, you send him to Washington, D.C.

00:51:48.000 Did the Russians spend time sending their spies to help Trump in Oakland?

00:51:51.000 No.

00:51:52.000 Okay, so, that's stupid, but they send him to Oakland, he sends his brother to Oakland, and his brother in Oakland then turns into basically like a Black Panther, like an actual militant guy who says that America—he gives a whole speech about how America is filled with discrimination and how black people in America are essentially living in poverty because the white people have flooded their neighborhoods with drugs and over-policing.

00:52:13.000 There's an actual Black Lives Matter speech in the middle of the film.

00:52:16.000 Okay, then he tries to smuggle some vibranium out to all of these Black Panther-type groups, and T'Chaka has to kill him.

00:52:23.000 So T'Chaka kills his brother.

00:52:25.000 The brother had a son.

00:52:26.000 The brother's son is Michael B. Jordan, who grows up to be Killmonger.

00:52:29.000 His entire agenda is, Wakanda has all of its awesome vibranium, why don't we help out oppressed peoples around the world overthrow their colonialist masters?

00:52:38.000 Okay, that's the premise of the film, and that's the conflict.

00:52:40.000 T'Challa wins, and Killmonger loses.

00:52:44.000 So MLK defeats Killmonger.

00:52:46.000 That's good, right?

00:52:47.000 MLK's program is better than Malcolm X's program.

00:52:49.000 Militant and separatism is not better than integration and the belief that life should get better for everybody.

00:52:56.000 However, the film's real message is that Killmonger is right.

00:53:00.000 It's impossible to watch the film and not feel sympathy for Killmonger because of the way the script is written.

00:53:06.000 That's for a couple reasons.

00:53:07.000 One, Wakanda's incredible.

00:53:09.000 In this film, the United States is garbage for black people.

00:53:11.000 Terrible place to live for black people.

00:53:12.000 Now, again, break to real life.

00:53:14.000 America is the best place on Earth for black people.

00:53:16.000 There is no better place on planet Earth for black people as a group of human beings, just like there is no better place for women or Jews or any place else on planet Earth for anyone than the United States.

00:53:25.000 Just a fact.

00:53:27.000 Measure it in terms of income.

00:53:28.000 Measure it in terms of lifestyle.

00:53:29.000 However you want to do it, America is a fantastic place for black people.

00:53:33.000 That does not justify colonialism, it does not justify slavery, evil things are evil, but that is not the same thing as saying that black people in the United States right now are somehow under the boot of the white supremacist institution, which is sort of the premise of the film.

00:53:47.000 So, the United States in the film is garbage and Wakanda is great.

00:53:50.000 That being the case, Killmonger's actually right.

00:53:52.000 He's suggesting that black people in the United States are oppressed and that the system in the United States is legitimate because of colonialism and slavery, and therefore you have to overthrow that with violence.

00:54:02.000 That seems like not the worst logic.

00:54:05.000 That doesn't seem completely wrong.

00:54:06.000 Now, the reason it's wrong in real life is because colonization can be wrong and unjustifiable, and so can slavery.

00:54:11.000 But the suggestion that the problems of modern-day Africa lie in colonization and slavery, as opposed to a lot of internal problems that have existed for centuries in many places around the world, including in Africa,

00:54:21.000 And that those problems continue today, that's too simplistic.

00:54:25.000 That's too simplistic to blame that on colonization and slavery.

00:54:28.000 Because that's silly.

00:54:31.000 But the message is, the wrong message here, which is that Killmonger is basically correct.

00:54:35.000 There are a couple lines in here that underscore this.

00:54:37.000 One of the people in the film who's sort of the Q figure, as in James Bond, Q. One of the people in the film is the sister of T'Challa, and for no reason at all, she just calls a white guy white boy.

00:54:50.000 I don't know.

00:55:04.000 By the way, the United States, the least colonizing power in the history of great powers.

00:55:08.000 Okay, so some of the stuff that I dislike.

00:55:10.000 There's also some rips against the U.S.

00:55:11.000 military.

00:55:12.000 The solution at the end of the film is apparently not militants, but spending lots of money in the inner city.

00:55:16.000 So T'Challa decides that he's gonna buy up the portion of Oakland.

00:55:21.000 Where his cousin grew up, and he's going to spend a lot of money on STEM technologies or some such.

00:55:27.000 We've tried that.

00:55:28.000 It has not been a giant success.

00:55:29.000 The problem inside a lot of communities, failing communities in the United States, white, black, and green, is lack of fathers, crime rates that are too high, lack of social institutions, not lack of monetary investment.

00:55:40.000 We've spent lots of money on the war on poverty.

00:55:42.000 It has not been particularly effective.

00:55:43.000 There's some mixed messaging on walls.

00:55:45.000 We learned that walls are bad.

00:55:46.000 One of the characters actually said things to T'Challa.

00:55:48.000 He says, we don't need to build walls, we need to build bridges.

00:55:50.000 Except for the fact that the entire Wakandan empire is built because of a wall, and that two of the four people who have entered Wakanda have tried to destroy Wakanda.

00:55:59.000 So that's not a really great immigration program, apparently.

00:56:02.000 But, not every, listen, not everything is, all the messages are bad.

00:56:05.000 It says that women can be great at science, which is fine.

00:56:08.000 It says that, it's good.

00:56:09.000 I mean, great.

00:56:10.000 It says that race is not an obstacle to success, which is true and good.

00:56:14.000 I hope people take away the good messages and not the bad.

00:56:15.000 But there's the full breakdown of that.

00:56:17.000 You know what?

00:56:18.000 We're out of time here, so we're going to have to do our Federalist paper tomorrow.

00:56:20.000 So we'll save our Federalist paper for tomorrow.

00:56:23.000 We do that every week.

00:56:24.000 But you'll just have to come back here tomorrow for that.

00:56:26.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:56:26.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:56:31.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:56:34.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:56:35.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:56:37.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:56:39.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:56:40.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:56:42.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:56:43.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:56:46.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Gun Control Movement Ramps Up | Ep. 478

Summary

Transcript