The Ben Shapiro Show - The Independent Threat | Ep. 706

00:00:00.000 Democrats panic over independent candidates, Venezuela approaches chaos, and Virginia is now pushing hard left abortion policy.

00:00:07.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:13.000 Man, we have a lot to get to today, a lot in the news.

00:00:16.000 People very angry on the Democratic side of the aisle at Howard Schultz.

00:00:19.000 And quick note, there's a lot of news today out about the supposed wage gap between men and women.

00:00:25.000 Quick shout out to my wife, who stayed up all night long with my daughter. 0.53

00:00:28.000 She has the flu and the cough.

00:00:30.000 And my wife, being an actual feminist, Actually stayed up all night long with my daughter because she is the best wife in the world. 1.00

00:00:36.000 So shout out to you, honey. 0.77

00:00:37.000 I never do that on the show, but you deserve it this morning.

00:00:39.000 We'll get to all of the actual news in just one second.

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00:02:05.000 Democrats are in a state of sheer panic over Howard Schultz, which is amazing.

00:02:10.000 The guy is not exactly lighting up the world with his charisma and good looks.

00:02:14.000 He's not George Clooney, Howard Schultz.

00:02:16.000 He's a former CEO of Starbucks, a large coffee chain that most people have At least mixed feelings about.

00:02:23.000 And yet, he is scaring the devil out of Democrats.

00:02:25.000 I mean, they are scared of him.

00:02:26.000 And they're scared of Michael Bloomberg, too.

00:02:28.000 They're scared more of Shultz than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg has suggested he's going to run as a Democrat in the Democratic primaries.

00:02:33.000 And they figure he's not going to go anywhere in the Democratic primaries.

00:02:36.000 There's just no real chance that he ends up doing anything spectacular there.

00:02:39.000 He's not intersectional enough.

00:02:41.000 He's too moderate.

00:02:41.000 So they figure, OK, we'll get rid of him the same way we got rid of Jim Webb in 2016.

00:02:45.000 He'll just sort of fade out into the distance of his own accord.

00:02:49.000 But somebody running as an independent changes the math pretty radically.

00:02:52.000 And Democrats are really scared of Shultz, which is why you are seeing the virulent reaction to Shultz.

00:02:57.000 I mean, people are angry at him.

00:02:59.000 People are so angry at him that he went on MSNBC this morning and he said, like, I've never seen the vitriol like this, which suggests that, as we in the political business like to say, you're not taking flack unless you are over the target.

00:03:11.000 Well, this has led some members of the media to try to hit Shultz with gotcha questions.

00:03:15.000 So the line of attack on Schultz is going to be that he is a delusional billionaire, that he happens to be extraordinarily rich, and that's the only reason he's considering running.

00:03:23.000 And because he is both delusional and a billionaire, that means he is out of touch.

00:03:27.000 He's out of touch with the common American person.

00:03:29.000 Now, let me just explain at the top.

00:03:31.000 The number of politicians who are really in touch with the common American in Washington, D.C.

00:03:36.000 is zero.

00:03:37.000 There are no politicians in Washington, D.C.

00:03:39.000 that you know or I know who are really in touch with the common man.

00:03:42.000 People who, you know, actually have to scrape to save for a box of Cheerios, for example.

00:03:48.000 The number of Congress people who actually know how much a box of Cheerios costs is zero because they have aides who do all their shopping for them.

00:03:54.000 I mean, Hillary Clinton, as of 2016, had not driven herself anywhere in two decades.

00:03:59.000 And she admitted that.

00:04:00.000 Donald Trump plasters his toilets in gold.

00:04:02.000 The people in our politics who are at the top levels are not people who are scrimping and saving with the coupon saver in order to make the bills that month.

00:04:11.000 And yet, Howard Schultz is the one being dragged across the room for it.

00:04:16.000 So Howard Schultz is on Morning Joe.

00:04:17.000 You'll recall Morning Joe from such special events as, Well now, they're going directly after Howard Schultz.

00:04:26.000 They decided to ask a real gotcha question to Howard Schultz.

00:04:29.000 The question being, how much does a box of Cheerios cost?

00:04:33.000 I will be a leader of the country of all American people that people will trust and admire because I will understand.

00:04:41.000 I have walked in their shoes.

00:04:42.000 I'm on both sides of the equation.

00:04:44.000 I'm somebody who has been, who is successful.

00:04:47.000 I'm somebody who came from the projects and I understand the American people.

00:04:51.000 How much does an 18 ounce box of Cheerios cost?

00:04:55.000 An 18-ounce box of Cheerios?

00:04:57.000 Here's the deal.

00:04:58.000 You ask us.

00:05:02.000 You know, like, budgets for the VA.

00:05:04.000 We're going to ask you questions about Cheerios.

00:05:06.000 I don't eat Cheerios.

00:05:07.000 I'm sorry.

00:05:08.000 Okay, so that is a sure gotcha question.

00:05:11.000 A sheer gotcha question.

00:05:12.000 How much does a box of Cheerios cost?

00:05:14.000 And this is supposed to show that he's out of touch.

00:05:16.000 This is the same routine that the media did with George H.W.

00:05:18.000 Bush in 1991 when they suggested that he didn't know how a supermarket checkout scanner worked, even though he knew perfectly well how a supermarket checkout scanner worked.

00:05:26.000 By the way, there's something ironic about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski grilling Howard Schultz over his lack of being in touch with the common man.

00:05:34.000 I will remind you that Joe and Mika were wed at the National Archives Which, by the way, is illegal.

00:05:39.000 Okay?

00:05:40.000 Except for Joan Mika.

00:05:41.000 No one has ever been wed at the National Archives, which is a government site.

00:05:45.000 They were married at the National Archives, becoming the first couple ever to wed at the National Archives.

00:05:49.000 They became engaged in 2017 during a trip to France.

00:05:52.000 These are common folks.

00:05:54.000 The people standing up for the common man.

00:05:56.000 They're gonna tell you how much it costs in Podunk, Iowa, for a box of Cheerios.

00:06:01.000 But Howard Schultz, that guy over there, he can't.

00:06:03.000 The wedding, by the way, was kept under wraps.

00:06:05.000 It was purposely held on Thanksgiving weekend when Washington movers and shakers were out of town, according to Vanity Fair, which covered the wedding.

00:06:11.000 The ceremony was officiated by Representative Elijah Cummings, another person in touch with the common man, held in the rotunda in front of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights.

00:06:21.000 So yes, I'm sure that these are the people who are going to be the police for the common man.

00:06:25.000 So you can see the ire at Schultz.

00:06:27.000 I mean, people are seriously, seriously angry at Howard Schultz.

00:06:30.000 And the reason that people are angry at Howard Schultz is because Howard Schultz has the temerity to believe that there may be a centrist road to the presidency, or at the very least, that Democrats have swiveled it too far to the left.

00:06:41.000 Nobody on the right is angry at Howard Schultz today.

00:06:43.000 Nobody on the right is upset at Howard Schultz.

00:06:44.000 Now, Howard Schultz may in fact take suburban votes away from Donald Trump in the end, but There are not a lot of Republicans angry at Howard Schultz.

00:06:51.000 Why?

00:06:52.000 Because the more the merrier.

00:06:54.000 I mean, when it comes to people who are running on non-insane platforms, I'm basically glad to see it.

00:06:59.000 I'm not planning to vote for Howard Schultz in the 2020 election.

00:07:03.000 But I do like the idea that there's more than one candidate standing against the idea that we should completely nationalize the healthcare industry, for goodness sake.

00:07:11.000 Nonetheless, Howard Schultz being dragged around by his ear because he's rich.

00:07:15.000 And we're now in a time of open class warfare.

00:07:17.000 If you are rich, Howard Schultz, by the way, did not start off rich.

00:07:20.000 There's a person who started off, as he says, in the projects, and now he's a very wealthy man.

00:07:24.000 He's a billionaire now.

00:07:25.000 But we have to rip him down because he's very wealthy.

00:07:27.000 People were tweeting out the percentage of money that he gave to charity this year, neglecting, of course, how much he already paid to the federal government in taxes this year.

00:07:37.000 I give a fair amount of money to charity.

00:07:38.000 By percentage of my income, it probably isn't high enough and I'd like to give more next year.

00:07:42.000 It is also true that my effective tax rate is well over 40% because I live in California.

00:07:47.000 The same thing I am sure is true of people like Howard Schultz.

00:07:50.000 In any case, Whenever Howard Schultz says things that are eminently true, like, you can't buy your way to the presidency, people get very angry with him because he's rich.

00:07:58.000 Now, we're going to ignore the fact that Elizabeth Warren has a net worth of somewhere between 10 and 18 million dollars.

00:08:03.000 We're going to ignore the fact that Bernie Sanders is, by any global standard, extraordinarily wealthy.

00:08:07.000 The man owns three homes, including two vacation homes.

00:08:09.000 We're going to pretend that Kamala Harris is not a pretty wealthy woman. 1.00

00:08:14.000 Kamala Harris is worth some money.

00:08:16.000 Howard Schultz, though, he's different.

00:08:18.000 He's different.

00:08:18.000 So here is Meghan McCain going after Howard Schultz and Howard Schultz saying, listen, you can't buy the presidency and the audience booing him.

00:08:26.000 As long as you're a billionaire, you can run for anything.

00:08:27.000 And my problem with politics right now is the influence of money.

00:08:31.000 And no shade at you, but you do have to be a billionaire to run as an independent.

00:08:34.000 That's why Michael Bloomberg's the other example you've given.

00:08:36.000 But you can't buy the presidency.

00:08:38.000 The American people are going to decide.

00:08:40.000 But let me just make one point.

00:08:41.000 Can I make one point?

00:08:46.000 I love that Joy Behar is laughing.

00:08:48.000 Was Barack Obama a super rich guy who bought his way to the presidency?

00:08:51.000 I love all these rich people sitting around on the set of The View.

00:08:54.000 Every person on that set is wealthy.

00:08:56.000 Every single person who is sitting behind that desk on that set is inordinately wealthy.

00:09:00.000 And they're sitting there laughing at the idea that you can't buy the presidency.

00:09:03.000 Here's the reality.

00:09:04.000 You can't buy the presidency.

00:09:05.000 Hillary Clinton spent a fortune on political advertising and she lost.

00:09:10.000 Donald Trump self-funded part of his campaign, but he didn't really buy his way to the presidency.

00:09:14.000 The media handed him an enormous amount of free political coverage.

00:09:19.000 There's this weird idea out there.

00:09:21.000 It's really amazing to me.

00:09:22.000 There's this weird idea that if you spend more money, you are inevitably going to win elections.

00:09:25.000 That is obviously not true.

00:09:27.000 It's simply not true.

00:09:28.000 If you run a good campaign, you can still win elections, even if you are not spending the most money.

00:09:32.000 In fact, with the rise of social media, it is certainly true that spending great amounts of money in the wrong places are not going to help you at all.

00:09:41.000 But here's the reality.

00:09:42.000 People aren't angry at Shultz because he's a billionaire.

00:09:44.000 The reason people are angry at Shultz is because Shultz is saying reasonable things and Democrats aren't allowed to say reasonable things because that humiliates other Democrats who are not saying reasonable things. 0.95

00:09:53.000 So yesterday, here was Howard Shultz slamming Kamala Harris over her idiotic notion that we should nationalize the entire healthcare industry. 1.00

00:10:00.000 He just played Senator Harrison saying she wants to abolish the insurance industry. 0.96

00:10:06.000 That's not correct.

00:10:08.000 That's not American. 0.92

00:10:09.000 What's next?

00:10:10.000 What industry are we going to abolish next?

00:10:12.000 The coffee industry?

00:10:13.000 Okay, and he's exactly right about this, but this is the real reason the Democrats are angry at him.

00:10:17.000 Because he said a reasonable thing.

00:10:19.000 Because he said a reasonable thing.

00:10:22.000 And look, what the Democrats want is they want him to run inside the Democratic primary so that the Radicals can sideline him. 1.00

00:10:27.000 That's what they would like.

00:10:28.000 They would like for there to be only two options on your ballot.

00:10:30.000 Donald Trump and a radical, radical Democrat.

00:10:33.000 Tom Perez is saying as much.

00:10:34.000 Tom Perez is the head of the DNC and he says, you know what?

00:10:37.000 Schultz shouldn't run as an Independent.

00:10:38.000 He should run as a Democrat.

00:10:40.000 So we can sideline him, of course.

00:10:42.000 I have respect for Howard Schultz.

00:10:43.000 If he chooses to get in the race, I hope he gets in, and the Democratic Party will treat him very fairly.

00:10:48.000 Clearly he's saying he's not, though.

00:10:50.000 Well, I tend to agree.

00:10:52.000 Again, Mayor Bloomberg, I think it was, who said, I've studied independent runs, and what an independent run would do in 2020 is simply split the anti-Trump vote and help Donald Trump get re-elected.

00:11:04.000 And Howard Schultz himself said, I'm only going to run if there's a real pathway to victory, as opposed to simply being a spoiler.

00:11:11.000 Okay, well, again, the Democrats are deathly afraid of this because they've tacked too far to the left.

00:11:15.000 They know they've tacked too far to the left, and they're scared.

00:11:18.000 So their real goal here is to have Schultz run inside the Democratic Party so that they can sideline him, right?

00:11:23.000 And that's what they are doing with Michael Bloomberg.

00:11:25.000 We'll get to Bloomberg in just one second.

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00:12:34.000 All right.

00:12:34.000 So the Democrats want to keep the moderates who would run for independent inside the Democratic Party, not because they actually want them there, but because it gives them the ease of sidelining them.

00:12:43.000 Now, Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, who was in favor of a soda tax, most famously, and he's very anti-gun, he's going to run, presumably, inside the Democratic primary.

00:12:54.000 He's saying many of the same things that Schultz is saying, but he's not receiving quite the sameire.

00:12:58.000 So here's Bloomberg yesterday talking about the insanity of the Green New Deal being proposed by Democrats, which would cost them $50 trillion over 10 years, outlaw cars and cut the military in half.

00:13:07.000 Here's Michael Bloomberg taking that apart.

00:13:09.000 I think it's time as a party that we started putting some meat on the bone and laying out exactly how a Green New Deal should, what it should include. 0.59

00:13:18.000 And I believe that that plan should be bold and ambitious and most importantly achievable.

00:13:24.000 I'm a little bit tired of listening to things that are pie in the sky that we never are going to pass or never going to afford.

00:13:31.000 I think it's just disingenuous to promote those things.

00:13:34.000 You've got to do something that's practical.

00:13:36.000 So obviously what he is saying is true.

00:13:38.000 Democrats are not afraid of Bloomberg.

00:13:39.000 Why?

00:13:40.000 Because if somebody is inside the Democratic Party, they can easily be marginalized simply through identity politics.

00:13:45.000 This is the plan for Democrats.

00:13:47.000 Get the moderates in the room and then push them off to the fringes, the moderates, by using identity politics.

00:13:52.000 And you can see this From the most passionate of the members of the Democratic base.

00:13:56.000 So there's a former campaign aide for Alexander Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.

00:14:01.000 And this former campaign aide, whose name is Shaheed, he was, he came forward and he was talking about Howard Schultz.

00:14:08.000 Listen to the tactics that he was using to try and marginalize Howard Schultz.

00:14:12.000 Regardless of the third party thing, I think it tells you way more about what white male billionaires think about themselves, that they should be in charge. 0.79

00:14:19.000 And I think in this moment in time where you have all these working class people of all backgrounds who've been hurt by the Trump administration, to put another white male billionaire who thinks the deficit is the biggest crisis in the country, that is ridiculous given where the electorate is at.

00:14:34.000 I think Ocasio-Cortez, one of the reasons she's popular is because she's a working class person from the Bronx. 1.00

00:14:38.000 We need to see more leaders like that. 0.55

00:14:39.000 Okay, so Waleed Shaheed is making the case inside the Democratic Party, and this is precisely the reason why Howard Schultz should never run inside the Democratic Party.

00:14:46.000 Because the rip on him is going to be that he's too rich and too white. 0.75

00:14:49.000 Neither of which is an argument, both of which are emotional appeals to identity politics and tribal polarization.

00:14:56.000 That's what this is.

00:14:57.000 If you're Howard Schultz, you're a nut to run inside the Democratic Party. 1.00

00:15:00.000 If you're Michael Bloomberg, you are crazy to run inside the Democratic Party. 0.97

00:15:03.000 You will be marginalized so quickly it will make your head spin because you're rich and you're not a member of a minority group that matters. 0.96

00:15:08.000 Michael Bloomberg's Jewish, but that's not a minority group that matters.

00:15:11.000 You have to have a certain shade of skin, a hue of skin, in order for you to be taken seriously as a minority inside the Democratic Party these days.

00:15:19.000 Now, the reason that all of this matters is because what Democrats really want to avoid is having to moderate their positions.

00:15:27.000 Yesterday, Kamala Harris had to do just that. 1.00

00:15:29.000 So, we talked about yesterday on the program, Kamala Harris did a CNN town hall in which she simply spit out that she wanted to get rid of all private health insurance in the country. 1.00

00:15:37.000 Two-thirds of Americans are on some form of private health insurance.

00:15:40.000 And virtually the entire system rests on private health insurance, employer-guaranteed health insurance, employer benefits.

00:15:47.000 Kamala Harris said she just wanted to do away with all of it.

00:15:49.000 Well, yesterday, she had to backtrack it.

00:15:51.000 Now, this was really funny because she went out in front, right?

00:15:54.000 She said, okay, let's get rid of all private health insurance. 0.98

00:15:56.000 And then you saw potential contenders like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

00:16:01.000 You saw him come forward and say, yeah, I agree.

00:16:03.000 I agree with Kamala Harris.

00:16:05.000 Yeah, I want to do that too.

00:16:06.000 And then she just slowly backed away, leaving Sherrod Brown standing there, holding the bag of flaming dog poop that is nationalized healthcare.

00:16:14.000 So over the last 24 hours, she has backtracked.

00:16:17.000 You'll recall that she said on CNN's town hall, quote, I believe the solution, and I actually feel very strongly about this, is that we need to have Medicare for all.

00:16:24.000 That's just the bottom line.

00:16:25.000 Now, first of all, we should note, what they're actually talking about is not Medicare for all.

00:16:29.000 They're talking about Medicaid for all, which is the sort of poverty-based government program that exists for the very poor in this country, and that shows really not a lot of evidence of having any sort of serious impact on the health outcomes of Americans.

00:16:43.000 Jake Tapper pointed out that if you like your insurance, you wouldn't get to keep it.

00:16:47.000 And Harris said, let's eliminate all of that.

00:16:48.000 Let's move on.

00:16:50.000 Well, now, Harris is backtracking.

00:16:52.000 CNN reports, as the furor grew, a Harris advisor on Tuesday signaled that the candidate would also be open to the more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the industry being floated by other congressional Democrats.

00:17:03.000 It represents a compromised position that risks angering Medicare for All proponents, who view eliminating private health insurance as key to enacting their comprehensive reform.

00:17:13.000 Her national press secretary, Ian Sams, told CNN, Medicare for All is the plan she believes will solve the problem and get all Americans covered, period.

00:17:20.000 She has co-sponsored other pieces of legislation that she sees as a path to getting us there, but this is the plan she is running on.

00:17:26.000 All of this happened after a bunch of Democrats came out and said, uh, this is a bad idea.

00:17:31.000 We have many people in our constituency who like their health care plans.

00:17:35.000 Senator Dick Durbin, who is a pretty radical guy himself from Illinois, even this was too radical for him.

00:17:39.000 He said it would take a mighty transition to move from where we are to that.

00:17:43.000 What most of us said we would support is a Medicare-type plan, a not-for-profit public plan that is available for everyone.

00:17:48.000 Tim Kaine of Virginia, former VP candidate under Hillary Clinton, one of the most ill-fated political decisions of all time, he said, I'm not going to say you have to give it up.

00:17:55.000 I think the idea is to offer a nonprofit insurance plan as an option.

00:17:59.000 Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is no moderate, she pushed back on Harris.

00:18:02.000 She said, I'm not there.

00:18:04.000 So it's amazing to watch as she has to backtrack.

00:18:07.000 By the way, Bernie Sanders will now nuke her. 1.00

00:18:09.000 As well he should.

00:18:11.000 This is Bernie's idea.

00:18:12.000 And Bernie should come forward and he should say, Kamala Harris said she would support Medicare for all, but now she's weak-kneed and she's backing off that plan.

00:18:21.000 The only true solution is to have the kind of healthcare they have in Cuba, and also for me to sit and sing Soviet anthems shirtless.

00:18:29.000 Which is actually a thing that he's now on tape doing from like the 1980s during his honeymoon.

00:18:34.000 No joke.

00:18:35.000 So, Kamala Harris had to back off all this stuff. 1.00

00:18:37.000 Why?

00:18:37.000 Because her positions are actually unpopular.

00:18:39.000 The only way for an unpopular position to win when it comes to presidential politics is to pit it against a more unpopular politician.

00:18:46.000 Democrats want Kamala Harris's program, but they want to lie about it, and they have to lie about it, if there is an alternative.

00:18:52.000 Shultz is the alternative to that, and that is what is scaring the devil out of them.

00:18:55.000 So they are attempting what's amazing is they're treating him as though he's a typical Democrat.

00:18:59.000 And more more than that, they are treating him the same way they treat any political opponent.

00:19:04.000 If you think that the Democrats hate President Trump especially.

00:19:07.000 They do, a little bit more than other folks.

00:19:10.000 But anyone who opposes their radical agenda, they attack in exactly the same way. 0.99

00:19:15.000 Donald Trump, according to the left, a member of the KKK, racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. 0.97

00:19:19.000 Now, we are getting the exact same attacks on Howard Schultz, a liberal. 0.98

00:19:24.000 And this is my favorite attack of the day.

00:19:26.000 This one comes courtesy of the Daily Beast.

00:19:29.000 And Sam Stein, who is a Daily Beast reporter, formerly of Huffington Post, he tweeted this out.

00:19:35.000 The Starbucks music store under Schultz's tenure was unbelievably, painfully white. 0.98

00:19:42.000 I'm not kidding you.

00:19:42.000 They're now going through the musical selections at the Starbucks music store.

00:19:46.000 You'll recall that Starbucks used to have these, they may still, have these CD racks where they sell various CDs.

00:19:53.000 You mean a Seattle-based coffee firm put out white people music?

00:19:59.000 Unbelievable. 0.88

00:20:00.000 Shocking.

00:20:00.000 You mean a firm from like the center of the grunge world and alternative rock put out a bunch of white people alternative rock music?

00:20:08.000 That's crazy!

00:20:09.000 But this is disqualifying, obviously, if the CDs that you could buy in Starbucks, not forced upon you, but that you had the option to buy, were by disproportionately white artists from Seattle. 0.97

00:20:19.000 This means that Howard Schultz is a brutal racist. 0.80

00:20:23.000 Here is what it says over at the Daily Beast. 0.98

00:20:25.000 I kid you not.

00:20:26.000 Over 21 years, Starbucks released and sold 262 records using Discogs.com.

00:20:31.000 A good percentage of these were compilations like Music for Little Hipsters or British Folk.

00:20:35.000 The single artist albums, though, are overwhelmingly from white musicians, according to a review by the Daily Beast.

00:20:42.000 The only living black artists we could find among the 262 Starbucks releases were Herbie Hancock, Mary J. Blige, Sly and the Family Stone, Al Green, Ben and Eve singer Angelique Kidjo, and jazz trio Soul Live.

00:20:54.000 Blige is the youngest among those.

00:20:55.000 She's 48 years old.

00:20:57.000 Ah, obvious racism.

00:20:59.000 Racism!

00:21:01.000 It must be stopped!

00:21:02.000 Because you could only buy mostly white people music at a mostly white people coffee shop based in a mostly white people area.

00:21:09.000 Wow.

00:21:10.000 Obviously, we have to stop this guy.

00:21:12.000 I mean, if we don't stop him, he's gonna put you all back in chains.

00:21:15.000 That's how this is gonna go.

00:21:18.000 The Democrats have only one strategy when it comes to marginalizing their opposition.

00:21:21.000 It can't be that their positions are bad.

00:21:23.000 Because the Democratic positions are one hell of a lot worse.

00:21:26.000 The position, instead, has to be the same as it always is. 1.00

00:21:29.000 Racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe. 1.00

00:21:30.000 That gets tired really quickly, and that's why anyone who has a moderate position would be so unbelievably stupid to run inside the Democratic Party right now. 1.00

00:21:39.000 Like, why would you? 0.99

00:21:40.000 They're just gonna destroy you based not on your positions, but based on your race, based on your sex, and based on your wealth status, based on your income line.

00:21:48.000 Okay, in just a second, I'm gonna talk about the increased radicalism of Democrats at the state level on the issue of Abortion Plus, a real hit job that's been put out On a black professor at Harvard University. 0.68

00:22:00.000 It's really kind of fascinating.

00:22:02.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

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00:23:32.000 All right.

00:23:33.000 Meanwhile, The Democrats are moving in an increasingly radical direction when it comes to abortion.

00:23:39.000 And it's frightening.

00:23:40.000 Honestly, it's frightening.

00:23:41.000 We're now living in a world where the Democrats have decided to full-scale embrace the most extreme version of pro-abortion law.

00:23:48.000 There used to be a time when Democrats were in favor of safe, legal, and rare.

00:23:52.000 That is not a thing anymore.

00:23:53.000 Safe, legal, and rare is not a thing for Democrats.

00:23:55.000 The only thing they care about now is the ability to kill babies up to point of birth.

00:23:59.000 And this is not an exaggeration.

00:24:00.000 This is a basic, obvious truth.

00:24:02.000 I'm not the one who's even saying it.

00:24:04.000 There's a Virginia bill that is now set to legalize abortion all the way to point of birth.

00:24:09.000 It was introduced by Democratic Delegate Kathy Tran in Virginia.

00:24:12.000 When questioned about the bill on Monday by a Republican delegate named Todd Gilbert, the Virginia House Majority Leader acknowledged it would allow abortion even at the very end of pregnancy when a woman was going into labor.

00:24:22.000 So the woman is going into labor at 37 weeks of pregnancy, and you can plunge a knife into the back of the baby's head and kill it under this bill.

00:24:30.000 Okay, here's this lady acknowledging exactly that. 0.99

00:24:33.000 It's pretty astonishing.

00:24:34.000 How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman? 0.83

00:24:43.000 Or physical health.

00:24:44.000 Okay.

00:24:45.000 Okay.

00:24:45.000 I'm talking about the mental health.

00:24:47.000 So, I mean, through the third trimester.

00:24:49.000 The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.

00:24:52.000 Okay.

00:24:52.000 But to the end of the third trimester?

00:24:54.000 Yep.

00:24:54.000 I don't think we have a limit in the bill.

00:24:56.000 So, where it's obvious that a woman is about to give birth.

00:24:59.000 She has physical signs that she is about to give a birth.

00:25:03.000 Would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified? 1.00

00:25:08.000 She's dilating.

00:25:10.000 My bill would allow that, yes.

00:25:11.000 This is infanticide.

00:25:13.000 There's another way to put it.

00:25:13.000 That is infanticide.

00:25:15.000 If you believe that the 10 centimeters between the dilation of the cervix and the exit of the separate human being from the womb is all that defines humanity, you are insane.

00:25:25.000 This is full-scale support of infanticide, and it's now being backed by Virginia Democrats.

00:25:30.000 Virginia Democrats, not New York Democrats, not California Democrats, not Massachusetts Democrats.

00:25:34.000 Virginia Democrats.

00:25:36.000 In New York, this has already become legal.

00:25:39.000 There are, I believe, seven states where you can now abort a baby all the way up to point of birth.

00:25:45.000 I mean, this is utterly uncontroversial stuff.

00:25:47.000 We're not talking about a fertilized embryo.

00:25:52.000 We're not talking about an egg that was fertilized three days ago and whether or not you should be able to get a morning after pill.

00:25:57.000 Okay, what we are talking about now is a fully formed human baby.

00:26:00.000 In every aspect.

00:26:01.000 Every aspect of this baby is completely formed.

00:26:03.000 This is infanticide.

00:26:04.000 This is human sacrifice to Molech. 1.00

00:26:06.000 I mean, this is like biblically enjoined.

00:26:09.000 And the only reason I cite the Bible is because the Bible was enjoining actual child sacrifice. 0.78

00:26:13.000 This is actual child sacrifice.

00:26:15.000 If, for the mental health of the woman, you believe that you can cut a baby apart in the womb that is fully alive, This is insane.

00:26:23.000 But this is how far the Democratic Party has moved.

00:26:25.000 In order to fight back against Republicans who say that life should be preserved, the position Democrats have taken is that the end of life is to be celebrated.

00:26:33.000 The ending of a life that is not your own, even, is to be celebrated.

00:26:37.000 And it's not just in Virginia.

00:26:39.000 The Rhode Island governor has now signaled that she is willing to go forward with all of this.

00:26:44.000 According to Michael Bilger over at LifeNews.com, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, who is purportedly Catholic, she is pushing a radical pro-abortion bill. 0.91

00:26:54.000 The legislation would legalize abortions for basically any reason up to birth.

00:26:59.000 A state house committee is expected to vote on the bill as of today.

00:27:02.000 Earlier this month, Raimondo promised to support the pro-abortion bill in her State of the State address.

00:27:09.000 According to NBC10, she said, This is a war on human life, and this is, in fact, a war on religious practice.

00:27:21.000 Let's be clear about the next step here.

00:27:22.000 It's not just about the killing of the unborn, which should be gross and horrifying enough.

00:27:27.000 What this is going to result in is the states telling doctors that they must perform these abortions or lose their medical license. 1.00

00:27:33.000 This is where this is going.

00:27:35.000 Obamacare contraceptive mandates were already moving in this direction.

00:27:38.000 There was already, even in the state of California, you're allowed right now to refer out to other providers who provide an abortion, but I believe you must do so.

00:27:46.000 I believe that you're supposed to, I want to check the law in the state of California, but last I checked, I believe that the law in the state of California is if you're a religious practitioner, if you are an OBGYN in the state of California who doesn't perform abortions, And a woman comes in and says, I want an abortion. 0.71

00:28:01.000 You must, by law, refer her to somebody who will provide that abortion, I believe. 0.88

00:28:06.000 If it's not that way, it soon will be, because that is what Democrats want.

00:28:09.000 Democrats are radical on these issues.

00:28:11.000 This is not in line with what the American people want, but the affect of American politics is now resulting in substantive change.

00:28:20.000 What I mean by this is that the hatred that members of both parties feel for one another is leading to actual policy radicalization.

00:28:28.000 It used to be that people in each party, even though they disagreed with each other, they didn't really hate each other on the deep root level that members of the parties now despise one another.

00:28:39.000 And what that meant is that you would at least grant the basic humanity of the person with whom you were talking.

00:28:46.000 Now, when you have a conversation with somebody, if you ever wish to reach any sort of agreement or even to be in the same room with them, you have to assume good intentions.

00:28:52.000 It's something I've been working on in my own life and in my own career, trying to assume good intentions of people with whom I disagree.

00:28:59.000 But if the other person doesn't assume good intentions on your behalf, if they assume that your positions are driven by animus, that is going to lead them to reject your positions and take the exact polar opposite position.

00:29:10.000 So, for example, if the people on the left with regard to abortion assumed that people who are pro-life simply want to preserve the life of infants, even if they disagree, then maybe they would respond by saying, okay, well, what's a reasonable way to define life?

00:29:24.000 And then we can have an argument over that.

00:29:26.000 I would still be pro-life and I'd still think that the pro-abortion side is wrong, but at least then you can have a conversation that is steeped in science and not steeped in insulting the other side.

00:29:34.000 If, however, pro-choicers believe that pro-lifers simply want to control the bodies of women and are ensconced in a fight to be tyrannical handmaid's tale purveyors, well then their reaction is going to be, well, any attempt to limit abortion access is really about controlling the body of women and we can't have that, so let's just legalize abortion all the way up till birth.

00:29:55.000 In other words, when you start assuming bad faith on the part of the other side, it leads you directly away from moderation.

00:30:00.000 You can see the Democrats doing this with Howard Schultz.

00:30:03.000 And Howard Schultz was one of them until he wasn't.

00:30:06.000 And now that he's not one of them, they're castigating him as badly motivated.

00:30:09.000 Until five minutes ago, Howard Schultz was a good guy.

00:30:11.000 The kind of guy who wasn't gonna put Christmas colors on Starbucks cups, and who was going to ensure that bathrooms would be available to all without purchase in Starbucks stores. 0.94

00:30:19.000 Then, he walked outside the party line, and now he's an evil, rich, white billionaire. 0.98

00:30:25.000 Terrible. 1.00

00:30:25.000 Terrible person now. 1.00

00:30:27.000 Which means all of his positions can be thrown out as well.

00:30:30.000 The reliance of Democrats on the belief in the bad intent of their political opponents, that's what's driving this radicalization right now.

00:30:37.000 So we may think that it's just about, you know, fraying the social fabric, but there are actual policy ramifications to all of this.

00:30:43.000 If you cross the line politically for Democrats, then many folks on the left will immediately assume you are now a bad person, and that means there can be no moderation.

00:30:51.000 There can be no negotiation.

00:30:52.000 It is over.

00:30:54.000 Okay, in just a second, we're gonna talk about where the Republican Party stands in all of this.

00:30:59.000 But first, let's talk about how you make your business better this year.

00:31:02.000 Well, hiring can be pretty time-consuming.

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00:32:04.000 ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire. 0.73

00:32:07.000 Okay, we're going to get to more of the Republican versus Democrat battle and an astonishing story out of Harvard where a prominent black professor is now, I think, being railroaded over really skimpy Me Too charges. 0.75

00:32:20.000 We'll talk about that in just a second.

00:32:21.000 First, You have to go subscribe.

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00:32:28.000 $9.99 a month.

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00:32:46.000 Also, when you subscribe for $99 a year, you get this, the very greatest in all beverage vessels, the leftist tiers, Hot or cold tumbler.

00:32:53.000 Now, you may have noticed that I've been ill lately.

00:32:54.000 Why?

00:32:55.000 Well, because over the weekend, I didn't have my tumbler.

00:32:58.000 I didn't use my tumbler over the weekend.

00:32:59.000 More fool me.

00:33:01.000 If only I had used it, I would have been immune to the disease running rampant through my family.

00:33:05.000 Yes, we all had the flu shot.

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00:33:13.000 Also, a few more announcements.

00:33:14.000 We have a new date and new time.

00:33:15.000 You may have noticed that last night, we did not, in fact, do a daily wire backstage.

00:33:19.000 So if you're waiting with bated breath, Where are my friends?

00:33:22.000 Why are they not here with me?

00:33:24.000 Well, we were all at home relaxing.

00:33:26.000 Next week, we will not be.

00:33:28.000 Our next episode of Daily Wire Backstage has been rescheduled for the evening of February 5th.

00:33:32.000 Nancy Pelosi cancelled our Daily Wire Backstage and then we had to reschedule it for February 5th because that's the State of the Union address. 1.00

00:33:39.000 Daily Wire, Godking, Jeremy Boring, me, Andrew Clavin, the exorable Michael Knowles and his terrible bowtie, and Alicia Krauss will be here discussing all the important issues and of course answering your questions.

00:33:48.000 Will we finally see President Trump deliver the State of the Union?

00:33:51.000 Will he deliver it like a baby?

00:33:52.000 Tune in on Tuesday to find out.

00:33:55.000 As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask questions, so make sure to subscribe today.

00:33:58.000 Also, do not forget my latest book, The Right Side of History.

00:34:01.000 I'm doing the audio read right now, and I am so excited about this book.

00:34:05.000 Like, really, this is the most excited I've ever been about the release of any of my books.

00:34:08.000 I'm really proud of this.

00:34:09.000 I think it's deeply important.

00:34:10.000 I think it's a great primer on what Western civilization is all about and why we need to defend it.

00:34:14.000 I mean, it really is like a 2,500-year history of Western civilization.

00:34:20.000 I like it.

00:34:20.000 I think it's good.

00:34:21.000 It's called The Right Side of History.

00:34:22.000 It's coming out March 19th.

00:34:23.000 You can head over to rightsideofhistorybook.com to pre-order right now.

00:34:28.000 Pre-sales are live.

00:34:29.000 With your help, we'll hit the bestseller list, which would be awesome, because why not hit the bestseller list with something substantive?

00:34:35.000 You know, not like Marie Kondo and bringing you joy and such.

00:34:40.000 Like something that actually is going to teach you about the roots of our civilization.

00:34:42.000 Go check that out.

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00:34:49.000 This Sunday we have on The Amazing Dave Ramsey.

00:34:52.000 This is a great conversation.

00:34:53.000 I can't wait for you to see it.

00:34:54.000 Here's a little bit of a preview.

00:34:56.000 Hey guys, I'm Dave Ramsey.

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00:35:02.000 The Sunday special.

00:35:03.000 Hey, we're going to talk about life, we're going to talk about money.

00:35:06.000 It's rich.

00:35:06.000 Don't miss it.

00:35:07.000 Dave Ramsey's a great guy and you're going to want to be part of that conversation.

00:35:10.000 It was pretty fantastic.

00:35:11.000 So go check out all of those things.

00:35:13.000 So much for you to do.

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00:35:26.000 Except we're carrying around, you know, copies of Dante and the Bible and such.

00:35:29.000 Okay, go check it out.

00:35:30.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the country.

00:35:34.000 So breaking news.

00:35:41.000 Breaking news. 0.99

00:35:42.000 Journalists suck at their jobs. 0.95

00:35:44.000 I have to bring this up because this is legitimately breaking as we are on the air right now. 0.98

00:35:48.000 So you remember yesterday, we discussed a story.

00:35:51.000 This was the story of unfortunate Empire actor Jussie Smollett.

00:35:55.000 Jussie Smollett is black and gay, and he alleged, according to TMZ, that he was walking along the streets of Chicago, the mean streets of Chicago, at 2 a.m.

00:36:03.000 when suddenly, out of nowhere, this is according to TMZ, 0.83

00:36:07.000 They say a friend of Smollett said this, or somebody close to Smollett, which probably means Smollett, that this person, Smollett reported, that he was walking down those mean streets of Chicago when suddenly two white men emerged from the shadows carrying a noose and bleach, proceeded to throw the noose around his neck, proceeded to call him the N-word and also the F-word for gay people, pour bleach all over him, and then shout at him that this was MAGA country.

00:36:36.000 In Chicago, at 2am, in 60 degree below freezing weather.

00:36:43.000 They were just like hanging out on the street waiting for an obscure actor from a show that is, I'm sure, highly popular among the MAGA crowd.

00:36:50.000 By the way, I do love the implication that the people in MAGA country, that their favorite show is Empire.

00:36:57.000 No.

00:36:57.000 Okay, no.

00:36:59.000 I mean, if the implication is that MAGA people are racist, I'm pretty sure they're not tuning into Empire every single week to find Jussie Smollett.

00:37:06.000 In any case, this guy alleges this.

00:37:08.000 And then Chicago PD says, um, okay, well, in the original report, we didn't have any evidence.

00:37:13.000 And so, and then the story gets weirder.

00:37:15.000 Apparently, they just sort of let him go after bringing a noose and bleach.

00:37:19.000 And yelling at him that this was MAGA country.

00:37:22.000 They allegedly broke a rib, and then he somehow got out of there, and he didn't call an ambulance, and he didn't call for the police to actually pursue anyone.

00:37:30.000 He just sort of sauntered over to the hospital.

00:37:31.000 He drove himself to the hospital, and then he reported something to police.

00:37:36.000 Now, I don't know what happened, and you don't know what happened, but neither do the police know what happened.

00:37:40.000 The original report from the police is that Smollett had not told them about the MAGA country comment.

00:37:45.000 Only TMZ had it.

00:37:46.000 TMZ stood by its report.

00:37:47.000 Then later, the Chicago PD backtracked, and they said, oh yeah, we called up Smollett, and we asked him about it, and he said, oh yeah, that happened, by the way.

00:37:54.000 Which, I mean, if I had to speculate, that sounds a lot like somebody who told a story to TMZ that was a lot more sensational than the story he told the police.

00:38:02.000 Because the original story he told the police did not have the race of the suspects or the MAGA country comment.

00:38:07.000 Which is just, I got mugged on the streets of Chicago.

00:38:09.000 Which is like everyone in Chicago.

00:38:11.000 Pretty much every day.

00:38:13.000 But the story he told to TMZ is a lot more salacious.

00:38:16.000 So, he tells that story, or somebody tells that story to TMZ.

00:38:20.000 The Chicago PD don't get that story.

00:38:21.000 Then they call for follow-up and he says, oh yeah, by the way, they were white and they were shouting MAGA country.

00:38:25.000 So all of this is weird.

00:38:27.000 Now here is what the Chicago PD are reporting.

00:38:29.000 This is according to the Associated Press.

00:38:32.000 Chicago police say they've reviewed hundreds of hours of footage from downtown surveillance cameras, but haven't found footage yet of the alleged attack on Empire actor Jussie Smollett.

00:38:42.000 Weird.

00:38:44.000 How weird!

00:38:45.000 The department said in a news release late Tuesday that detectives reviewed footage from privately owned cameras near where Smollett says he was attacked and will broaden their search by reviewing footage from traffic cameras and public bus cameras.

00:38:56.000 Smollett told police he was walking downtown near the Chicago River at about 2 a.m.

00:38:59.000 on Tuesday when two masked men hurled racial and homophobic slurs at him, beat him, threw an unknown substance on him, and put a rope around his neck.

00:39:07.000 The 36-year-old actor, who is black and gay and plays the gay character Jamal Lyon on the Fox television show, took himself to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment.

00:39:15.000 Empire is shot in Chicago and is currently in production.

00:39:17.000 By the way, the police said that they had tape of him leaving the store where he was shopping at 2 a.m., but no tape of what happened just outside the store.

00:39:25.000 So they've reviewed hundreds of hours of tape, and they come up with nothing.

00:39:30.000 Nada.

00:39:31.000 Weird.

00:39:32.000 So maybe this happened just the way this guy said it happened.

00:39:34.000 Maybe.

00:39:35.000 Or maybe this was a story that was too good to be true, and the media jumped on it, and they decided to make it a national issue without any evidence, and none supportable by the police.

00:39:44.000 Now, you know what would have been good?

00:39:46.000 If the journalists had simply waited for all the facts to come out.

00:39:50.000 The headlines yesterday from the media were things like Empire actor beaten and victimized by slurs and by MAGA fans.

00:40:01.000 That was like the TMZ headline mentioned the MAGA thing.

00:40:05.000 And then there was no backtrack.

00:40:07.000 What it should have said is actor says blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

00:40:09.000 Then it's true.

00:40:10.000 But pretty amazing stuff.

00:40:14.000 Pretty amazing stuff.

00:40:14.000 So, well done, journalists.

00:40:17.000 As always, you have made clear your narrative structure.

00:40:21.000 Just, well done.

00:40:22.000 We'll wait for all the details to come out.

00:40:23.000 Maybe it all happened the way this guy said it went down.

00:40:26.000 So far, there's no evidence.

00:40:27.000 And I think that all of the questions that were being asked about this story initially still remain kind of puzzling.

00:40:32.000 This is Chicago.

00:40:33.000 Who runs around Chicago going this is MAGA country?

00:40:37.000 111% of people in Chicago voted against Donald Trump in 2016.

00:40:42.000 I mean, I can't think of a place that is less MAGA country than downtown Chicago.

00:40:46.000 Legitimately.

00:40:48.000 What the?

00:40:49.000 Okay.

00:40:49.000 So.

00:40:50.000 That's that.

00:40:51.000 Meanwhile, Republicans are having their own problems.

00:40:53.000 So Texas Republicans are reporting that come 2020, they are afraid they're going to lose the state.

00:40:57.000 They should be afraid they're going to lose the state, given Beto O'Rourke's very strong showing against Ted Cruz in the last senatorial election.

00:41:04.000 Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey has delivered a message to the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, GOP donors, and activists in the state.

00:41:11.000 Nationally, Republican operatives and donors have historically taken Texas for granted.

00:41:15.000 They've directed their financial and organizational muscle to more competitive regions.

00:41:19.000 This is according to the Washington Examiner.

00:41:22.000 Separately, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who's up for re-election next year, has spoken with the new RNC co-chairman, Tommy Hicks, about concerns that Trump could actually lose the state.

00:41:32.000 Texas is the election.

00:41:34.000 I mean, if Trump loses Texas, the election is over.

00:41:36.000 Of course, if Trump loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, or Michigan and Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, then he loses the election as well.

00:41:44.000 The president really has a narrow path here to 270.

00:41:47.000 If he loses Texas, he's done.

00:41:49.000 And if Republicans lose Texas in a 2020 election matchup, that does not bode well for the future of the Republican Party in the country.

00:41:55.000 I mean, Texas is about as red a state as it is possible to have. 0.87

00:41:59.000 Now listen, they had some structural disadvantages in 2016.

00:42:02.000 They got blown out in the suburbs.

00:42:04.000 Trump is deeply unpopular in the suburbs.

00:42:06.000 Republicans are going to have to face some basic facts when it comes to Trump 2020.

00:42:09.000 They're going to have to face the fact that Donald Trump does not actually have a massive group of people who are secretly hiding in the shadows and who are going to emerge to vote for him.

00:42:19.000 That is not what happened in 2016.

00:42:20.000 It wasn't a bunch of people who lied to pollsters.

00:42:23.000 What happened in 2016 is everybody on the left thought Hillary was going to win and everybody on the left didn't like her.

00:42:29.000 So they didn't show up.

00:42:30.000 And Donald Trump won because they didn't show up.

00:42:32.000 In 2018, Republicans showed up at better than 2016 levels, and they got blown out by 8.6 points on average across the country.

00:42:41.000 Democrats all showed up.

00:42:44.000 If Republicans want to win in 2020, they have to appeal to those suburban voters.

00:42:48.000 This, by the way, is the real reason that many Republicans are fond of Howard Schultz's candidacy.

00:42:52.000 What they're hoping is that he does, in fact, draw away those suburban voters from the Democrats and split the vote.

00:42:58.000 Trump's support base is pretty solid and it's not going anywhere.

00:43:01.000 Shultz isn't going to carve into that support base.

00:43:04.000 But the other option here is for Trump to do what Democrats should be doing, which is appeal to that suburban vote base.

00:43:11.000 Now, President Trump is a double-down guy.

00:43:12.000 There's a guy who dances with the gal that brung him, not in his personal life, but certainly in politics.

00:43:18.000 He's the guy who, if he believes that his manner of politics won him election, he's not going to change it now.

00:43:24.000 But here is the truth.

00:43:25.000 You do need to change strategies at a certain point. 0.99

00:43:28.000 If you don't change strategies while all the indicators are pointing south, You're being foolish. 0.99

00:43:34.000 And President Trump has an opening. 0.99

00:43:35.000 The Democrats are incredibly radical.

00:43:37.000 All President Trump has to do is be the nicest version of himself.

00:43:40.000 Doesn't mean change himself, but be the nicest version of himself.

00:43:43.000 It's funny, when you talk to folks who know President Trump on a one-to-one level, what they will say is that in person, on a one-to-one level, he is charming, he is generous, he's very nice to people, and then you get him in a group and he changes radically.

00:43:54.000 He wants to dominate, he wants to be the alpha in the room.

00:43:56.000 You know, a softer side to Trump would be such a shock to the American people, I'm not sure the American psyche could stand it.

00:44:03.000 If President Trump had any appeal for suburban voters, he would clean up in 2020.

00:44:06.000 Instead, he's busy alienating the very voters he needs in order to win election.

00:44:12.000 There's an opening for him here, but he's gonna need to take it.

00:44:16.000 Now, one of the big problems here, again, as I mentioned earlier, is that people are so polarized by Trump that they're embracing positions they wouldn't otherwise embrace.

00:44:24.000 And this is particularly true among young people.

00:44:25.000 There's a new poll out from Axios and SurveyMonkey showing that warmth toward socialism has grown particularly amongst the young.

00:44:32.000 This is largely the effect of media coverage, but it is partially the effect of a reaction to President Trump.

00:44:38.000 Some 29% of Republicans aged 18 to 34 said that they are positive toward socialism, toward the word socialism.

00:44:45.000 Which should scare the living daylights out of everyone.

00:44:48.000 One of my concerns about President Trump in 2016 is that Trump would be so polarizing that he would end up smearing a lot of Republican causes with his unpopularity.

00:44:56.000 President Trump needs to do better.

00:44:59.000 He needs to do better.

00:45:00.000 He needs to actually explain issues.

00:45:02.000 And if he can't do it, he needs to shut up and let others do it.

00:45:06.000 This same Axios SurveyMonkey poll shows that 31% of young Republicans say inequality is a bigger problem than over-regulation of the free market.

00:45:15.000 39% of young Republicans want the Feds to do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

00:45:21.000 This is not good news for Republicans.

00:45:23.000 Republicans are trending toward Democratic positions.

00:45:26.000 Independents are trending toward Democratic positions.

00:45:28.000 Now, Democrats are trending too far left.

00:45:30.000 But that doesn't mean that Republicans don't, in fact, have a problem.

00:45:33.000 They do.

00:45:33.000 They're not making the case.

00:45:35.000 And because they're not making the case, they're losing.

00:45:40.000 Let's be real about this.

00:45:40.000 We can yell as much as we want about Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax and Kamala Harris's wild proposals on guns and green new deals and all the rest.

00:45:50.000 If Republicans aren't making an affirmative case for their own belief system, they've got a problem.

00:45:54.000 Look, President Trump is by nature a counterpuncher.

00:45:57.000 And it's useful.

00:45:58.000 That's a useful skill.

00:45:59.000 But when you're the president, you should be a bulldozer.

00:46:02.000 When you're the president, you actually need to be using that bully pulpit.

00:46:05.000 You can't just sit behind—you can't beat Floyd Mayweather.

00:46:08.000 Being a defensive president who's excellent at defending and deflecting punches, again, useful skill, but you better have a right.

00:46:14.000 You better have a heavy right.

00:46:15.000 And so far, President Trump has not had a heavy right when it comes to pushing positions that Republicans care about.

00:46:20.000 He's been getting things done, but getting things done is not enough to shift the country.

00:46:25.000 The president has two jobs.

00:46:26.000 One is to implement policy, and the other is to make the case to the American people about why his policies are best and why his ideology is best.

00:46:33.000 This is why all the talk about having a pragmatic president, a pragmatically minded president, is so much silliness.

00:46:40.000 The most influential presidents in American history have really not been chiefly about policy.

00:46:45.000 They've been chiefly about shifting the way the American people thought.

00:46:47.000 I'm thinking really here of three presidents in the 20th century.

00:46:51.000 Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan.

00:46:53.000 Those were the three presidents who did the most to shift how Americans thought.

00:46:57.000 Barack Obama tried to do that.

00:46:59.000 He didn't really succeed.

00:47:01.000 Donald Trump isn't even trying to do that, and that needs to change immediately.

00:47:04.000 And if he's incapable of educating the American people, he needs to point to people who are capable of educating the American people.

00:47:10.000 Because if the American people aren't educated toward conservative positions, they're not going to embrace those positions.

00:47:17.000 They're just going to embrace whoever is the most magnetic candidate, and then we have cult of personality politics, which is the opposite of what conservatism would recommend.

00:47:24.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:47:27.000 So, things that I like today.

00:47:30.000 There's a great new memoir.

00:47:31.000 It's going to be out by a guy named Saurabh Amari.

00:47:33.000 He is the opinion editor over at the New York Post, formerly of Commentary Magazine.

00:47:37.000 It's a memoir of his journey from being an Iranian Muslim to being a Catholic.

00:47:45.000 The book's called From Fire by Water, My Journey to the Catholic Faith.

00:47:49.000 As you know, I am not a Catholic, I'm not a Christian, I'm an Orthodox Jew.

00:47:53.000 This is a moving book about why it is that Western civilization is based on certain fundamental religious principles, and more importantly, it's a great study in comparative culture.

00:48:02.000 There are a lot of people in the United States who have never studied any culture other than their own, and so they believe that America is bad, because America in a vacuum, you look at all of its flaws and you think, oh, this place, it's got serious problems.

00:48:14.000 And then you look at America as compared to other places on Earth, and you realize this place is pretty fantastic.

00:48:19.000 This place is pretty great.

00:48:21.000 By the way, I felt the same about Los Angeles before I went to Boston.

00:48:24.000 I've lived my entire life in Los Angeles, and I used to think, ah, LA, kind of dingy.

00:48:28.000 People are kind of shallow.

00:48:30.000 You know, LA.

00:48:31.000 And then I went to Boston, where it is winter.

00:48:34.000 Nine months of the year.

00:48:35.000 It's the worst.

00:48:36.000 And I came back to Lima, I'm like, this place is great.

00:48:39.000 Saurabh Mahari's book is basically about that, except with America and other countries.

00:48:44.000 Well worth the read.

00:48:44.000 From Fire by Water, My Journey to the Catholic Faith.

00:48:47.000 Also, it's an amusing, fun read.

00:48:49.000 Quick read.

00:48:49.000 I read it in one sitting.

00:48:50.000 Saurabh Mahari's book.

00:48:51.000 Go pre-order it right now.

00:48:52.000 It's quite good.

00:48:52.000 Okay, time for A Thing That I Hate.

00:48:58.000 So a couple of things that I hate.

00:48:59.000 There's a news story out from the Wall Street Journal today talking about how the White House may soon be making concessions to Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris about appointing leftist judges to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

00:49:11.000 Yee-yee-yee.

00:49:12.000 Here is what the Wall Street Journal story says.

00:49:14.000 It says, So, more than a few eyes widened this month when the White House omitted three names from the list of 50 judges Mr. Trump sent back to the Senate.

00:49:20.000 court nominees, he is remaking the federal courts.

00:49:23.000 So, more than a few eyes widened this month when the White House omitted three names from the list of 50 judges Mr. Trump sent back to the Senate.

00:49:30.000 What intrigue gives?

00:49:31.000 The three missing names were Californians nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Two other Ninth Circuit nominees, Eric Miller of Washington and Bridget Bate of Arizona, were re-nominated.

00:49:41.000 But Daniel Collins, Kenneth Lee, and Patrick Bumate were withheld because the White House is negotiating with Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

00:49:49.000 Ms.

00:49:49.000 Feinstein and the White House Counsel's Office have been pen pals on this for some time.

00:49:53.000 In a November letter to new White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Ms.

00:49:57.000 Feinstein and Ms.

00:49:57.000 Harris requested that the White House work with us to reach an agreement on a consensus package of nominees.

00:50:02.000 The Democrats want to pick one name from the White House list, one from their own, and a third consensus nominee.

00:50:07.000 Why in the world would the White House agree with this?

00:50:10.000 Why in the world would they do this?

00:50:11.000 They're suggesting that maybe they're doing this to buy the support for a nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 0.99

00:50:16.000 Are they insane? 0.99

00:50:17.000 Are they insane? 1.00

00:50:18.000 If the White House is doing this, they must be off their rockers. 0.94

00:50:20.000 If they believe that Kamala Harris or Dianne Feinstein will hold by any deal that allows them to vote for a conservative replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, out of their mind.

00:50:27.000 First of all, if Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies in the next two years, there will be riots in this country over the Supreme Court. 0.92

00:50:32.000 There will be, because Democrats are not going to stand for an actual swing vote moving to the right.

00:50:37.000 This is why they're already writing... They're already writing eulogies for her in movies, right?

00:50:43.000 They're already doing movies, like, on the basis of sex, which looks more boring than any movie other than, like, actual drying of paint on film.

00:50:50.000 They're making full hagiographies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the notorious RBG.

00:50:54.000 If she dies while Trump is in office, all hell will break loose.

00:50:57.000 You really think you're gonna count on Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris to come to your aid in this, Mr. President?

00:51:04.000 My goodness. 1.00

00:51:06.000 This would be so stupid. 1.00

00:51:08.000 This is Trump's biggest, it's his biggest accomplishment. 1.00

00:51:11.000 If he blows it, it will be a massive, massive fail.

00:51:14.000 Okay.

00:51:15.000 Meanwhile, another thing that I hate today.

00:51:18.000 So there's a piece today by Stuart Taylor of Real Clear Investigations about the takedown of Roland Fryer Jr.

00:51:24.000 Excuse me.

00:51:24.000 Now I've mentioned Professor Fryer before on the program.

00:51:28.000 He did a study last year all about police violence against black folks.

00:51:32.000 He came up with the conclusion that, in fact, black folks were not shot as often as white folks in similar situations by the police, which was a controversial finding.

00:51:40.000 Well now, Fryer is under fire.

00:51:42.000 Here's what Real Clear Investigations reports.

00:51:45.000 In a December 14, 2018 piece, the New York Times set the stage by noting in its opening sentences that Roland Fryer Jr.

00:51:51.000 had attained tenure at Harvard, received a MacArthur Genius Grant, and won the most prestigious award for a young American economist.

00:51:57.000 In the second paragraph came the takedown, but his rapid ascent has taken a troubling turn.

00:52:02.000 It's Harvard officials review a university investigator's conclusion that Dr. Fryer fostered a work environment hostile to women, one filled with sexual talk and bullying.

00:52:11.000 This article and Harvard's Office for Dispute Resolution have made a near pariah of the youngest black professor ever tenured at Harvard, a man born into poverty who is still much admired among many former female and male subordinates and other people who know him well and who see the attacks on him as tinged with racism and Me Too overreaction.

00:52:27.000 He is also admired among experts for his pioneering scholarship on how best to educate poor and minority children and other racial and gender issues.

00:52:35.000 In an article littered with sins against honest journalism, the Times vastly overstated the criticism of Fryer in a confidential 81-page November report by the Office of Dispute Resolution, which has a staff of 10, 8 women, and 2 men.

00:52:47.000 The report seems subtly and skillfully biased against a man whom ODR branded a sexual harasser for, among other things, the kind of off-color jokes and teasing of both male and female subordinates that more risk-averse bosses avoid.

00:52:58.000 But it at least made clear that Friar 41 has never been accused of making a pass at a subordinate or asking for sex.

00:53:04.000 The 2600 Word Times article did not.

00:53:07.000 So this is a long report about exactly how it is that the ODR at Harvard blew it, and how they overestimated the amount of terrible, terrible things that Fryer did.

00:53:18.000 He denies the most obvious accusations.

00:53:22.000 And yet, that was enough for the New York Times to run this hit piece trying to destroy him.

00:53:27.000 The reason that I think Fryer is being targeted, realistically speaking, is because Fryer is not a deep partisan.

00:53:33.000 You know, Fryer happens to be somebody who performs research that sometimes sides with the left and sometimes sides with the right, but the process has been deeply flawed and deeply unfair because that is the way that it works at these universities.

00:53:45.000 The accusation itself is tantamount to condemnation.

00:53:52.000 It's pretty astonishing.

00:53:53.000 The lawyers for Fryer say that the case has been racially biased as well as procedurally flawed.

00:53:58.000 Fryer wrote to a friend and later shared a letter stating 30 years after watching my father be sentenced to eight years in prison because of a he say she say type encounter with a white woman in Texas with no physical evidence.

00:54:07.000 I am fighting every day to prove I am innocent of allegations that threaten the work I have devoted my life to.

00:54:13.000 Sullivan, who's the lawyer, told me that the Office of Dispute Resolution weighted the credibility of white witnesses far above minority witnesses.

00:54:21.000 The main complaint is against Fryer as white, and that in the absence of real data, the process used racial stereotypes.

00:54:26.000 As an example, he cited the Office of Dispute Resolution's disparagement of the credibility of Tania Devi, who was present for many of the allegedly harassing comments.

00:54:35.000 Insisting she saw no harassment, she spoke very highly of Fryer.

00:54:39.000 Although the investigator in ODR praised the credibility of the complainants, the white roommate, they tended to dismiss Devi's eyewitness recollections of what she saw and heard at the labs.

00:54:49.000 Now, is this racism?

00:54:51.000 Or is this political bias?

00:54:52.000 Whatever it is, it is clear that the sort of kangaroo courts that happen at these universities have no relationship, really no relationship, with due process of law.

00:55:02.000 Me too is fine, but we're actually gonna need evidence of things.

00:55:05.000 So, you know, I think this deserves a full airing.

00:55:10.000 And I think later on the show, when I have a little bit more time later today on the show, we're going to go through the full accusations against Fryer and the takedown because this is well worth discussing.

00:55:18.000 Why it is that on today's college campuses, we are willing to run people out of business simply based on allegations alone without any serious evidence to suggest that the allegations are even damning.

00:55:29.000 All right.

00:55:30.000 Well, we will be back here later today for two more hours.

00:55:32.000 Be there or be square.

00:55:33.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:33.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:55:38.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:55:44.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:55:50.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

00:55:51.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 30, 2019

The Independent Threat | Ep. 706

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