The Ben Shapiro Show - The Ingratitude Trap | Ep. 743

00:00:00.000 A Time Magazine journalist reveals the true motivation behind AOC's rise.

00:00:04.000 Democrats reveal their brutally anti-Israel streak.

00:00:07.000 And we check the mailbag.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 What a long and yet beneficial week.

00:00:18.000 I mean, so this has been a long but great week.

00:00:21.000 If you haven't picked up a copy of my book, The Right Side of History yet, go do it now.

00:00:24.000 It is number one on Amazon.

00:00:25.000 It is number one in nonfiction on Barnes and Noble.

00:00:27.000 So thank you all if you've already picked up a copy of the book.

00:00:31.000 I'm very proud of it.

00:00:31.000 I think that it's a real useful work.

00:00:34.000 And I think it'll be useful for you and your kids and people that you know.

00:00:37.000 So help us keep it number one.

00:00:39.000 Maybe we'll knock on the door of the top of the New York Times list.

00:00:43.000 That list, by the way, is a joke.

00:00:45.000 I can discuss that a little bit later.

00:00:46.000 Before we do any of that, first, let me remind you, you need better underwear. 0.83

00:00:49.000 When men and women upgrade from their shabby, outdated, multi-pack underwear to Tommy John, the most comfortable on the planet, they've got a lot to say about it.

00:00:56.000 Like John, whose only regret is that he didn't try Tommy John earlier.

00:00:59.000 Or Julia, who says that Tommy John is so comfortable she forgets she's wearing them.

00:01:02.000 The point is, men and women all across America are crazy about Tommy John.

00:01:06.000 Both Tommy John men and women's underwear sport a no wedgie guarantee.

00:01:10.000 Would help me in high school.

00:01:11.000 Comfortable stay-put waistbands and a range of fabrics that are luxuriously soft and designed to move with you, not against you.

00:01:16.000 Plus, Tommy John has dress shirts and undershirts that always stay tucked Ridiculously soft loungewear and go anywhere apparel that is versatile enough to go from boardroom to boxing class.

00:01:25.000 For ladies, check out their new Tommy John Air Collection. 1.00

00:01:27.000 Tommy John is so sure you're gonna love the fit and feel.

00:01:30.000 It's all backed by their best pair you'll ever wear or it's free guarantee.

00:01:33.000 That means if you don't love that first pair, you'll get a full refund.

00:01:35.000 Tommy John.

00:01:36.000 No adjustment needed.

00:01:37.000 Hurry over to tommyjohn.com slash ben right now.

00:01:40.000 Get 20% off your first order.

00:01:42.000 That is tommyjohn.com slash ben for 20% off.

00:01:45.000 Again, tommyjohn.com slash ben.

00:01:47.000 How do I know that these underwear are comfortable?

00:01:49.000 Because they are on my tuchus right at this very instant.

00:01:52.000 Tommyjohn.com slash ben for 20% off your first order.

00:01:56.000 All right, so a lot to get to here.

00:01:58.000 Expectation is that the Mueller report could drop as early as today.

00:02:03.000 According to NBC News, President Trump on Friday continued to claim there is no collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, as Washington braces for special counsel Robert Mueller's highly anticipated report.

00:02:14.000 Trump said he has no idea when the report is going to drop.

00:02:17.000 He says, it's all a big hoax.

00:02:19.000 And here's the reality.

00:02:21.000 In all likelihood, this report is not going to contain anything the Democrats can run on.

00:02:25.000 He added that the AG, the Attorney General William Barr, will ultimately make a decision about the report's release.

00:02:30.000 Mueller is supposed to submit the report to Barr at the conclusion of his investigation into the Russian election interference and Trump.

00:02:37.000 Barr is required to notify Congress about Mueller's findings.

00:02:41.000 However, Justice Department regulations do not require Barr to give a comprehensive report to lawmakers.

00:02:46.000 In fact, the report is expected not to be comprehensive.

00:02:49.000 It is expected not to include all sorts of unverified allegations because of current Justice Department regulations.

00:02:56.000 Unlike the Starr investigation, the Justice Department regulations now govern what comes out from the Mueller report.

00:03:03.000 Apparently, they're reporting no more indictments are expected, is according to ABC News.

00:03:07.000 Jonathan Karl reporting, there is no shortage of speculation on the special counsel Robert Mueller's report, much of it totally uninformed.

00:03:14.000 But we don't need to speculate on the scope.

00:03:15.000 The man who appointed Mueller has already given us a potential roadmap on what to expect from the special counsel.

00:03:21.000 The bottom line, do not expect a harsh condemnation of President Trump or any of his associates if they have not been charged with crimes.

00:03:29.000 Why?

00:03:29.000 Because it turns out the prosecutors aren't supposed to just spill their guts into the public unless they are charging you with a crime.

00:03:35.000 It is not their responsibility to inform the public about all of the other various and sundry matters in which you may have been involved.

00:03:42.000 The roadmap comes in the form of a little-noticed 12-page letter written by Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein last June.

00:03:47.000 The much-maligned Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.

00:03:50.000 Trump dislikes him.

00:03:51.000 The letter was written to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley.

00:03:55.000 The letter was in response to Grassley's demands for more information on the special counsel investigation, and it offers a brief history of special counsel investigations.

00:04:02.000 It actually quotes former and future A.G. William Barr, who appointed three special counsels during his time as A.G. under President George H.W. Bush.

00:04:10.000 In the letter, Rosenstein makes it clear he believes the DOJ will not and cannot, without violating longstanding Department of Justice policy, include disparaging or incriminating information about anybody who has not been charged with a crime.

00:04:24.000 So don't expect this thing to be a 500-page Ken Star compendium of details about Donald Trump's private life.

00:04:30.000 Rosenstein wrote, Sources familiar with the investigation believe there are no more indictments coming from the special counsel.

00:04:46.000 Amika Brzezinski was reading this story on air this morning on Morning Joe, and you could see her face collapse.

00:04:51.000 I mean, she was really upset about this, that there were no more indictments expected from the special counsel.

00:04:57.000 If that's all that Mueller's got, This thing has been a giant waste of time.

00:05:01.000 Legitimately.

00:05:02.000 Like, if all he came up with is a bunch of people who lied to the FBI about ancillary matters going to jail for a bunch of random stuff, For very short periods of time, for the most part.

00:05:13.000 If all that came out of this was that they nailed Paul Manafort for being a violator of the Foreign Registration Act, the Foreign Lobbyist Registration Act, and all they got out of this was Michael Cohen and taxi medallions, my goodness, what a waste of America's time and money.

00:05:30.000 Rosenstein is emphatic on this point.

00:05:31.000 He says, in fact, disclosing uncharged allegations against American citizens without a law enforcement need is considered to be a violation of a prosecutor's trust.

00:05:40.000 Which, of course, makes sense.

00:05:40.000 What you don't want is people being tried in the court of public opinion based on information that wasn't strong enough to prosecute in the first place.

00:05:47.000 Later in the letter, Rosenstein says he makes this standard clear to anyone under investigation, even public officials.

00:05:54.000 He says, no matter who an investigation involves, an ordinary citizen, a local or state politician, a campaign official, a foreign agent, an officer of the federal legislative executive or judicial branch, agents and prosecutors are obligated to protect its confidentiality.

00:06:07.000 Now, I know there are a lot of people who are on the left listening to this and they're thinking, wait a second, didn't James Comey come out about Hillary Clinton and give a full explanation of their entire investigation before recommending that she not be indicted?

00:06:18.000 The answer is yes, and that's why James Comey should have been fired at the time.

00:06:21.000 When James Comey came forward and exonerated Hillary Clinton on charges for which she should have been indicted, he should have either shut up and said, no indictment necessary, or he should have come forward and indicted.

00:06:33.000 He split the baby and it ended up costing Hillary Clinton the presidency, at least quite plausibly. 0.81

00:06:38.000 In this letter from last year, Rosenstein directly takes issue with the justification then-FBI Director James Comey used to publicly criticize Hillary Clinton in 2016, even as he decided not to charge her with a crime.

00:06:50.000 At the time, Comey justified the break with longtime DOJ practice as an extraordinary step necessary because of circumstances so unusual they were comparable to a 500-year flood. 0.99

00:06:59.000 That's because Comey was an idiot and terrible at his job. 0.98

00:07:02.000 Rosenstein wrote, it is important for the DOJ to follow established procedures, especially when the stakes are high. 1.00

00:07:08.000 Rosenstein is correct.

00:07:10.000 James Comey, by the way, the reason he did that is because he knew that Hillary Clinton probably should have been indicted.

00:07:16.000 But as testimony now from Lisa Page and Peter Strzok has established, the Obama DOJ crammed down on the FBI that she would not be indicted.

00:07:25.000 And thus, James Comey decided to take it on his own shoulders, the hit.

00:07:29.000 He decided that to preserve the reputation of both the FBI and DOJ, he would come clean with the American public.

00:07:34.000 He did a deep disservice to both Hillary Clinton and the general public in doing what he did.

00:07:39.000 He should have been fired forthwith.

00:07:40.000 But the fact is that the Obama administration wanted him to do that because they figured that it would end up getting Hillary Clinton off the hook, not costing her the presidency.

00:07:48.000 Of course, they ended up figuring wrong.

00:07:51.000 So if the Mueller report drops today, obviously all the presses will stop.

00:07:55.000 It will be the big deal.

00:07:57.000 We will see what is in this thing, presumably pretty quickly, because you assume there's not going to be a long turnaround time between Mueller releasing the report and William Barr condensing that report and releasing it to Congress, in which case it'll be leaked to the public in relatively short order.

00:08:13.000 But this is good for President Trump.

00:08:14.000 This timeline is good for President Trump, assuming there's no deeply damning material in the report.

00:08:19.000 And there is one exception.

00:08:20.000 It is possible that Mueller If he thinks these offenses are impeachable but not criminal, could in fact include a lot of detail in this report simply to justify his time expenditure on this thing.

00:08:30.000 But if it ends up that there's not much here?

00:08:34.000 And we are getting rid of this in March of 2019, not in November of 2020.

00:08:38.000 That is very good news for President Trump.

00:08:41.000 He can then move on and we won't have to hear President Trump fulminate, except that he will rightly say that he is going to be continued to be targeted by the Democratic House for a bunch of investigations that the Mueller investigation has already concluded are unnecessary.

00:08:54.000 That is where this is moving.

00:08:56.000 If it turns out that the Mueller indictments are a big nothing, there are no more indictments.

00:09:00.000 If the Mueller report is essentially an empty bag and Democrats continue to launch investigations into matters already covered by Mueller, Trump is always going to be able to say, listen, he said I didn't obstruct justice.

00:09:12.000 He said I didn't collude with Russia. 0.96

00:09:14.000 And now, you're coming after me for the same exact crap, simply to smear me? 0.98

00:09:19.000 Obviously this is politically motivated. 0.98

00:09:21.000 There is no real serious allegation that I impeded the Mueller investigation at any step along the way.

00:09:26.000 See, this is the thing.

00:09:27.000 All the folks on the left who keep claiming that Trump obstructed justice, there is no actual evidence of Trump obstructing justice.

00:09:34.000 He's tweeted a few times at people like Michael Cohen.

00:09:36.000 That is the closest you can come to an argument that he obstructed justice.

00:09:39.000 It is not like when Bill Clinton legitimately told people to lie to the FBI for him, like directly told people to do this, according to the Star Report, and according to testimony from those people.

00:09:51.000 That's what Bill Clinton was caught up on.

00:09:52.000 There's nothing like that in the Trump case, at least so far as I can remember or see.

00:09:57.000 We've been through a lot of this material.

00:09:59.000 What that means is that if the Democrats continue to press on this score, they're going to be seen as vindictive.

00:10:05.000 They're going to be seen as petty.

00:10:07.000 And they could get caught up in this thing for the next two years as a sort of fan service.

00:10:11.000 It's funny, sometimes you watch movies and the movies have plot lines that make no sense, kind of ancillary plot lines that make no sense.

00:10:18.000 You're like, why don't you just stick to the main plot line?

00:10:20.000 And then you'll hear inevitably, oh, this is fan service.

00:10:22.000 This is particularly true in comic book movies.

00:10:24.000 There's some sort of plot line that nobody cares about.

00:10:26.000 You're like, why is this here?

00:10:27.000 Oh, because it was in the comics.

00:10:29.000 And there's a small group of fans who desperately wanted to see this character from the comics.

00:10:33.000 It's fan service.

00:10:34.000 The Democratic Party has to decide whether it wants to be a fan service party or whether it wants to win the 2020 election.

00:10:40.000 It can't have both. 0.73

00:10:41.000 If the Democrats decide to be a fan service party and spend all of their time launching foolish investigations into President Trump, Trump is rightly going to be able to say, you guys are wasting your time and my money and everybody's money on your dumb investigations instead of focusing in on the issues at hand. 0.81

00:10:56.000 And then his fulmination will actually have some teeth to it. 0.84

00:10:59.000 Him fulminating against Mueller never made any sense.

00:11:01.000 Mueller works for the executive branch.

00:11:03.000 Him fulminating against Jeff Sessions, the AG, didn't make any sense either.

00:11:06.000 Jeff Sessions worked for him and was selected by him.

00:11:08.000 Rod Rosenstein works for President Trump.

00:11:10.000 They're all in the executive branch.

00:11:11.000 But Trump fulminating at Congress, that is a tried, tested, and true strategy for winning re-election.

00:11:18.000 This has been true ever since Harry Truman won re-election in 1948 on the back of arguing that he had to deal with a do-nothing Republican Congress.

00:11:26.000 And he pulled his chestnuts out of the fire against Thomas Dewey.

00:11:29.000 This has been a long-standing, historical, running strategy by presidents.

00:11:34.000 President Obama, by the way, did the same thing in 2012.

00:11:37.000 He said, we were going great guns until 2010, and now we're being obstructed, and I'm running against a do-nothing, useless Congress.

00:11:43.000 And then he won re-election.

00:11:44.000 Trump can do the same thing now.

00:11:45.000 So in a certain way, it could be a blessing in disguise if Democrats decide to investigate him up the wazoo. 0.99

00:11:50.000 Yeah, it'll be a pain in the butt. 0.98

00:11:51.000 Yeah, it's bad for all the people who work for President Trump who are going to have to lawyer up and spend a lot of money to defend themselves against dumb investigations. 0.98

00:11:57.000 But it does give Trump something to run on that is not the Democrats calling him an deplorable human being.

00:12:03.000 In just a second, we will discuss An amazing Time Magazine cover piece about AOC.

00:12:09.000 First, let's talk about how you can make your back and neck feel better.

00:12:13.000 I want to talk about teeter inversion table.

00:12:15.000 It may sound weird.

00:12:16.000 Hanging upside down is actually a great way to decompress the back and joints after a workout and boost recovery.

00:12:21.000 So, you might not think it, but I do work out a lot.

00:12:24.000 Underneath this blazer lies the body of a Greek god.

00:12:27.000 But along with those workouts come a bit of back stress.

00:12:30.000 And that is why I use the Teeter Inversion Table.

00:12:32.000 It's called Inversion Therapy.

00:12:33.000 It uses gravity and your own body weight to decompress the spine and release tension in your shoulders, neck, and joints.

00:12:39.000 Inverting after your workout boosts the recovery process by stretching and elongating your spine and joints, rehydrating the discs, and relaxing tired muscles.

00:12:46.000 Decompressing on a Teeter Inversion Table for just a few minutes a day is a great addition to your daily routine to maintain a healthy back and joints.

00:12:53.000 I love this thing.

00:12:54.000 It is the best inversion table on the market.

00:12:56.000 Over 3 million people have put their trust in Teeter.

00:12:59.000 They've been the best known name in inversion tables since 1981.

00:13:03.000 They're offering a great deal just for my listeners right now.

00:13:05.000 For a limited time, you can get the brand new 2019 Teeter Fitspine Inversion Table Model with bonus accessories and a free pair of Gravity Boots, so you can invert at home or take the boots with you to the gym.

00:13:15.000 And with this deal, you'll get $150 off when you go to teeter.com slash ben.

00:13:19.000 You also get free shipping, free return, 60-day money-back guarantee, so there's no risk to you.

00:13:23.000 Go check it out right now.

00:13:24.000 teeter.com slash ben.

00:13:25.000 That is T-E-E.

00:13:26.000 T-E-R dot com slash Ben and get that new 2019 Teeter fits my inversion table, plus a free pair of gravity boots.

00:13:32.000 All of that with 150 bucks off when you go to Teeter dot com slash Ben, go check them out right now.

00:13:37.000 Make your back feel better today.

00:13:39.000 OK, so as I say, the Democrats are in a bit of trouble if they have staked all of their all of their claim to the presidency on the back of Trump colluded with Russia.

00:13:48.000 And they box themselves in here.

00:13:50.000 They couldn't accept the fact that Trump won the election in the same way that Stacey Abrams in Georgia refuses to accept that she lost her election for governor of Georgia.

00:13:58.000 And now the Democrats are trying to elevate her. 1.00

00:14:01.000 This seems like a failed strategy.

00:14:04.000 It used to be in American politics that if you lost, you went away.

00:14:07.000 The idea was that if you lost, you went away, and we didn't really want to hear from you because we had rejected you.

00:14:11.000 And if you wanted to run again later in some other lane, you did that, right?

00:14:14.000 Mitt Romney.

00:14:15.000 No one wanted to hear from Mitt Romney after he lost in 2012.

00:14:18.000 There wasn't a lot of talk about voter fraud or Mitt Romney being jobbed out of being the President of the United States.

00:14:24.000 He sort of went away, and then the Republican Party moved on, and then he ran for Senate in Utah, and he won!

00:14:29.000 And now we care what he thinks again.

00:14:30.000 But until then, not so much.

00:14:32.000 John Kerry, after he lost in 2004, went away.

00:14:35.000 Al Gore, after he lost in 2000, went away.

00:14:38.000 Now Democrats, after they lose, say that they didn't lose, and then not only don't they go away, they rip on the institutions of American government and suggest that because they didn't really lose, the other person in office is illegitimate.

00:14:50.000 If that's your best shot at president, I just, I literally do not understand the strategy.

00:14:55.000 I legitimately don't understand that strategy.

00:14:57.000 It's not like President Trump doesn't provide them fodder to run on every day, but if they are fully invested in the narrative that Hillary Clinton is the actual president of the United States, and thus, the best attack on President Trump is that he is illegitimate, that sort of stuff does not carry weight with the American public, for whom President Trump has been the legitimate president since his election in 2016.

00:15:17.000 Again, that doesn't mean Democrats aren't going to show up.

00:15:19.000 They will.

00:15:20.000 They don't like President Trump.

00:15:21.000 But if your best shot at Trump is Russian collusion after all of this, Man, what a disappointment you're gonna be to the vast majority of Americans in the upcoming election cycle.

00:15:31.000 Okay, meanwhile, the true star of the Democratic Party, so fresh, so incredibly fresh, and so incredibly phased, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

00:15:41.000 Wow, she is so fresh and so phased.

00:15:43.000 She's on the cover of Time Magazine today.

00:15:44.000 Now, we, here at the Ben Shapiro Show, are obviously obsessed with her because we talk about her when she's on the cover of Time Magazine.

00:15:52.000 Just like we talk about other politicians when they're on the cover of Time Magazine.

00:15:56.000 And just like we cover politicians when Tom Perez calls them the new fresh face of the Democratic Party.

00:16:01.000 But there is an amazing piece by a woman named Charlotte Alter over at Time Magazine.

00:16:07.000 And the piece is a window into the utter ingratitude of an entire generation of people in the United States.

00:16:14.000 I'm talking about people my age, around my age and younger.

00:16:18.000 AOC is only about five years younger than I am.

00:16:21.000 So Charlotte Alter says, change is closer than we think.

00:16:24.000 Inside AOC's unlikely rise.

00:16:27.000 Her piece says, every 10 minutes or so someone knocks on the big wooden door of AOC's office on Capitol Hill.

00:16:32.000 The noise makes staffers stiffen.

00:16:34.000 It's almost always a harmless fan.

00:16:35.000 One of dozens will arrive each day leaving neon-colored post-it notes as devotional offerings.

00:16:40.000 But in her first three months in Congress, they'd say, enough people have threatened to murder Ocasio-Cortez.

00:16:44.000 that Capitol Police trained her staff to perform risk assessment of her visitors.

00:16:48.000 This is the daily reality for America's newest human Rorschach test.

00:16:52.000 Wonder Woman of the left, Wicked Witch of the right, Ocasio-Cortez has become the second most talked about politician in America after the President of the United States.

00:17:00.000 That's not actually true.

00:17:01.000 If you look at the number of Google mentions of AOC, she does follow Joe Biden.

00:17:06.000 She follows, she follows Beto O'Rourke.

00:17:09.000 She follows Bernie Sanders.

00:17:10.000 She follows Nancy Pelosi in many cases, but nevermind.

00:17:13.000 She's very fresh and very face.

00:17:16.000 Now, here's what I love about this.

00:17:18.000 The entire article is about how AOC has lived a suffering life.

00:17:22.000 The entire article is about how AOC understands the plight of young people who are truly suffering in today's America.

00:17:28.000 And yet it contains this line.

00:17:30.000 At the same time, she's a freshman legislator trying to get the hang of her first big full-time job.

00:17:36.000 She's 29 years old.

00:17:37.000 This is her first big full-time job in Congress? 0.85

00:17:41.000 That does not sound like a life of hardship in the United States.

00:17:46.000 Going to Boston University, being given a degree for learning apparently nothing, working at various odd jobs while your parents are upper-middle income, and your first big-time job is in Congress, that doesn't sound like a rags-to-riches story.

00:18:01.000 That sounds like a some-riches-to-more-riches story.

00:18:05.000 And yet, she is a suffering servant.

00:18:07.000 She's a suffering servant, according to Charlotte Alter. 0.91

00:18:09.000 I miss being able to go outside and sweat, she says in her office one day in March, settling into a black leather chair after a long day of subcommittee hearings.

00:18:16.000 She's much smaller than she looks on TV, with a warm but cautious manner.

00:18:21.000 Oh my god, the hagiography.

00:18:22.000 I can't go anywhere in public and just be a person without a lot of people watching everything I do.

00:18:27.000 Oh, poor you.

00:18:29.000 Welcome to the club.

00:18:31.000 And come on, who cares?

00:18:33.000 AOC represents one vision of the Democratic Party's future.

00:18:36.000 She's a young Hispanic woman, three cornerstones of the party's electoral coalition.

00:18:40.000 She's a democratic socialist at a time when confidence in capitalism is declining, especially among progressive millennials.

00:18:48.000 And then this article just goes on to talk about how wonderful she is in every aspect.

00:18:53.000 She's wonderful and caring and decent and terrific.

00:18:57.000 I love this.

00:18:57.000 On Ocasio-Cortez's office bookshelf, near a picture of her late father and a photo of her with a local Girl Scout troop, two books nestled together in uneasy union.

00:19:07.000 One is The Federalist Papers, written mostly by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton and published in 1788.

00:19:12.000 The other is The Uninhabitable Earth, Life After Warming, written by journalist David Wallace-Wells 231 years later.

00:19:20.000 There's a picture of Wonder Woman leaning in one corner of the office and a giant cardboard cutout of Cardi B's face in another.

00:19:26.000 Oh, wow.

00:19:27.000 She's just, she's unbelievable.

00:19:29.000 She's amazing.

00:19:30.000 Now, here is where things become hilarious.

00:19:33.000 They say she was born into a working class family in the Parkchester section of the Bronx.

00:19:37.000 Yeah, her family moved out of there real fast, into a pretty upper-income area of New York.

00:19:42.000 As Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire has pointed out, he grew up in the neighboring county, which was not quite as wealthy.

00:19:47.000 Her dad owned a small architecture company.

00:19:48.000 Her Puerto Rico-born mother cleaned houses.

00:19:50.000 They were deeply rooted in the neighborhood, but also wary of its limitations.

00:19:54.000 Ocasio-Cortez has told friends she learned early on that wearing hoop earrings and the nameplate necklaces was fine in the Bronx, but she wouldn't be taken seriously if she wore them to a job interview.

00:20:02.000 The family moved to the prosperous Westchester County suburb of Yorktown Heights when she was about five.

00:20:08.000 Five.

00:20:09.000 So the first part of that paragraph makes it sound as though she lived her entire life growing up in the Bronx, and then she moved into the upper echelons of American society.

00:20:16.000 Her family moved into a nice area when she was five.

00:20:19.000 Five.

00:20:22.000 She describes herself as a dorky kid who once asked for a microscope for her birthday.

00:20:26.000 Her 2007 high school microbiology project on the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of roundworms won second place in the microbiology category at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

00:20:37.000 She often joined her mom to clean the homes of neighbors, and she wrote her college application essay about two of them helping a man who lost the wife the only way they could, by cleaning out his fridge.

00:20:46.000 She took out student loans to enroll at BU.

00:20:48.000 Wow.

00:20:49.000 I mean, unlike everyone else, she took out loans to go to college.

00:20:51.000 Wow.

00:20:51.000 She really must have been hard up.

00:20:53.000 Graduating in 2011 with a degree in economics and international relations.

00:20:57.000 By the way, she knows nothing about either of those two things.

00:21:00.000 That shows you how crappy our colleges are.

00:21:01.000 Now, the part of this that is really galling is not that Time Magazine put her on its cover.

00:21:06.000 The media have been pushing her since she defeated Joe Crowley with like 15,000 votes in a deep blue area in a plurality Hispanic congressional district.

00:21:19.000 People treat this as though it's a massive shocker.

00:21:21.000 It was only a massive shocker if you weren't following the race all that closely, is sort of the truth. 0.88

00:21:26.000 But regardless, you don't want to diminish her accomplishments.

00:21:29.000 She won 15,000 votes in a heavily blue suburb that was majority or plurality Hispanic against a white guy who was not super popular and didn't spend a lot of time in his home district, reportedly.

00:21:39.000 In any case, Regardless, she won, but she was immediately elevated to the upper echelons of democratic leadership, and the real reason is because she's attractive, and she looks like she's having a good time, and she's kind of fun, and she knows how to use Instagram, and she has an instant pot, and all the rest of this. 0.91

00:21:54.000 But Charlotte Alter, the columnist of Time, is what I actually want to talk about, not AOC.

00:21:59.000 Because she spilled the beans on why it is that millennials think like AOC. 0.93

00:22:05.000 And it is pretty astonishing.

00:22:07.000 It is pretty astonishing and pretty damning.

00:22:08.000 If you're a millennial and you think like AOC because you think like Charlotte Alter, You need to get your head straightened out because you are not being accurate about the state of the world.

00:22:18.000 I'll explain in just one second.

00:22:20.000 First, let's talk about how you keep your home safer.

00:22:22.000 Ring's mission is to make neighborhoods safer.

00:22:24.000 You might already know about their smart video doorbells and cameras that protect millions of people everywhere.

00:22:28.000 Ring helps you stay connected to your home anywhere in the world.

00:22:31.000 So if there's a package delivery or a surprise visitor, you'll get an alert and be able to see, hear, and speak to them all from your phone.

00:22:36.000 That's thanks to HD video and two-way audio features on Ring devices.

00:22:40.000 I have a Ring device on my front door.

00:22:41.000 That means if somebody rings the doorbell, And, you know, they may not be somebody who I'm interested in letting into my house.

00:22:47.000 I can let them know that from 3,000 miles away, and they don't know that I'm not home.

00:22:51.000 Ring is fantastic for monitoring what's going on at your property, at your house.

00:22:57.000 We're at your apartment.

00:22:58.000 As a listener, you now have a special offer on a Ring Starter Kit available right now.

00:23:01.000 There's a video doorbell and a motion-activated floodlight cam, and the Starter Kit has everything you need to start building a ring of security around your home.

00:23:07.000 Just go to ring.com slash ben, that is ring.com slash ben, if you are concerned about your home's security.

00:23:12.000 And let me tell you, if you live in big cities like Los Angeles, if you live in a big city anywhere around the country, You got to be worried about your safety on your property simply because the governing coalitions have done such a poor job of keeping big cities safe from property crime these days.

00:23:26.000 Go to Ring.com slash Ben.

00:23:28.000 Go check them out.

00:23:29.000 Ring.com slash Ben right now.

00:23:32.000 And they have a special offer on the Ring Starter Kit available.

00:23:34.000 So you're going to get some money off.

00:23:35.000 Go check them out.

00:23:36.000 Ring.com slash Ben.

00:23:37.000 OK, so the real story here is not AOC.

00:23:39.000 The real story is the columnist who wrote about her, Charlotte Alter.

00:23:42.000 So Charlotte Alter, has been appearing on all the major media to talk up her big news story about AOC.

00:23:47.000 Yeah, she's the best.

00:23:49.000 So Charlotte Alter suggested that AOC's dominance is inevitable.

00:23:54.000 Inevitable.

00:23:55.000 This is what she suggested.

00:23:56.000 Her assent is inevitable.

00:23:58.000 And honestly, it is in some ways.

00:24:01.000 And the thing about AOC and the reason that she is, I think, tapping into something that is so exciting to some and threatening to others is that she is really bringing us into the politics of the 21st century.

00:24:17.000 She is a 21st century leader trying to tackle 21st century problems in a body that is largely dominated by 20th century thinking.

00:24:25.000 Okay, what the hell is she even talking about?

00:24:27.000 That makes no sense.

00:24:28.000 Why is this person a columnist?

00:24:30.000 Why is this person our reporter?

00:24:31.000 She calls herself a journalist for Time Magazine, just writing these drooling pieces about AOC.

00:24:36.000 And then she says the reason that people are upset at AOC is because they're just jealous. 0.98

00:24:39.000 It's not that AOC is completely ignorant and says dumb things and gets massive media attention. 0.98

00:24:43.000 It's just pure jealousy. 1.00

00:24:45.000 Pure jealousy.

00:24:46.000 Weird, because I don't really feel jealous of her as much as I feel angry at the media for having decided that her ideas are worth airing and defending, despite the fact that they are unintelligible masses of gibberish.

00:24:58.000 Here is Charlotte Alter playing defense as a journalist for AOC.

00:25:02.000 Again, she's a journalist, folks.

00:25:04.000 Don't worry, the media are not biased in any way.

00:25:06.000 There are certainly some Democrats who are a little annoyed that she's getting so much airspace and so many headlines.

00:25:12.000 And they think that she, and they, you know, frankly, I think, seem a little jealous that she's getting so much attention.

00:25:17.000 They would like to be on the cover of Time magazine.

00:25:20.000 But everyone that we spoke to who's worked with her has said that she's kind, she's prepared, she, you know, she shows up, she does her homework.

00:25:28.000 Oh, well, everyone you spoke to, is it?

00:25:31.000 Maybe you might want to broaden that circle out from her immediate family and people she pays.

00:25:35.000 Because if you actually talk to anyone in the Democratic caucus who knows anything, they are all deeply unhappy with the fact that AOC is constantly stepping all over every serious legislative proposal they put out.

00:25:46.000 But that's not even the key here.

00:25:47.000 Here is the key.

00:25:48.000 Charlotte Alter tweets this out.

00:25:50.000 She tweets out, AOC and I were born the same year.

00:25:52.000 Remember, she's a journalist, folks.

00:25:54.000 She's not the official autobiographer.

00:25:56.000 She's not a ghostwriter for AOC.

00:25:57.000 She's a journalist.

00:25:59.000 Quote, AOC and I were born the same year.

00:26:02.000 She was a Dunkaroos kid.

00:26:03.000 I liked Fruit Roll-Ups.

00:26:05.000 People our age have never experienced American prosperity in our adult lives, which is why so many millennials are embracing democratic socialism.

00:26:14.000 You have got to be kidding me.

00:26:18.000 People our age have never experienced American prosperity in our adult lives, You spoiled child. 0.98

00:26:25.000 You spoiled brat. 0.96

00:26:27.000 And AOC, you spoiled child. 1.00

00:26:29.000 You spoiled brat. 0.87

00:26:30.000 AOC writes, yes, and this is not just my story. 0.58

00:26:34.000 This is true of wide swaths of our entire generation who are now poised to become a much more influential civic and electoral bloc as we mature into our 30s and beyond.

00:26:45.000 Wow.

00:26:46.000 Wow.

00:26:46.000 So it's so tough to be a millennial.

00:26:49.000 Well, it's so brutal to be a millennial. 1.00

00:26:51.000 Shut your head. 1.00

00:26:52.000 Honestly, shut your head. 1.00

00:26:53.000 You don't know what the hell you're talking about. 1.00

00:26:54.000 You are living the best life any people have ever lived on planet Earth.

00:26:58.000 You're living in a country where you can say anything you want.

00:27:00.000 You're living in a place where you have more income than anyone in history.

00:27:04.000 With a touch of a button, any product anywhere on Earth will arrive at your door in three days for the cheapest available price.

00:27:10.000 You're living in a world where your chances of starvation are zero, where your chances of homelessness are effectively zero, if you have any sort of social fabric or any money at all.

00:27:19.000 A world in which you live in a nation with 3.8% unemployment and 7 million unfilled jobs.

00:27:26.000 Where your poverty line involves having a microwave, a car, a stove, and a TV.

00:27:33.000 You're whining about poverty?

00:27:35.000 You?

00:27:36.000 Charlotte Alter is whining about poverty? 1.00

00:27:39.000 Really?

00:27:40.000 Okay, Charlotte Alter also tweeted out, in order to understand AOC, you have to look at what she experienced and what she didn't.

00:27:46.000 Red scare, Reaganomics, and prosperous 90s were all before her time.

00:27:50.000 Her adulthood was defined by financial crisis, debt, and climate change.

00:27:53.000 No wonder she and her peers are moving left. 0.97

00:27:57.000 If you think that living in the 2000s and the 2010s is brutal, you're a doof. 0.99

00:28:02.000 You don't know anything about history.

00:28:03.000 You don't know anything about any place else on planet Earth. 1.00

00:28:06.000 You're dumb. 1.00

00:28:07.000 You're ignorant. 1.00

00:28:08.000 I mean, like, I don't mean to be insulting, but I do. 1.00

00:28:11.000 I'm sorry, I do mean to be insulting, because these ideas are laughable.

00:28:15.000 Charlotte Alter complaining about the difficulties of millennials.

00:28:19.000 Let me tell you something about Charlotte Alter, okay?

00:28:21.000 We're gonna talk about, for a second, who this woman is, who is claiming that as a millennial, you have never experienced prosperity.

00:28:27.000 Charlotte Alter was born in 1990.

00:28:28.000 1990, okay?

00:28:30.000 So that means that she is, what, 29 years old?

00:28:33.000 She's the same age as AOC.

00:28:35.000 Her father is Jonathan Alter.

00:28:38.000 He's a columnist for Newsweek and a correspondent for NBC News.

00:28:42.000 He's one of the more famous political commentators of the modern world.

00:28:46.000 Her mother was Emily, executive producer on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central.

00:28:53.000 Her grandmother was the first woman elected to public office in Cook County, Illinois.

00:28:57.000 Her uncle was the CEO of Sony.

00:29:00.000 She went to Harvard University, and then worked at HBO, and now has a show on SiriusXM.

00:29:06.000 Oh, the suffering!

00:29:07.000 Oh, the humanity!

00:29:09.000 Charlotte Alter and her peers, they've never experienced prosperity.

00:29:13.000 Ever.

00:29:14.000 It's just incredible.

00:29:15.000 I mean, what, what unbelie- Listen.

00:29:19.000 I know that there are some people in America who are experiencing poverty.

00:29:22.000 I know there are some people in America who grew up in single-parent households and really had to struggle to get ahead.

00:29:27.000 I know there are some people in America living in areas where the jobs have left.

00:29:31.000 But they're nothing compared to Charlotte Alter.

00:29:32.000 I mean, my goodness.

00:29:34.000 Imagine the difficulty of having to grow up in a house where your mom produces for Comedy Central and your dad is one of the more famous columnists in the West.

00:29:41.000 Just imagine how rough that must be.

00:29:44.000 I weep for her.

00:29:46.000 I weep for her.

00:29:47.000 It's always astonishing to me to watch people who've really had it pretty good in the United States whine about how rough they have it in the United States.

00:29:56.000 Like me, I've had it great in the United States.

00:29:58.000 I don't whine about having it rough because I've had it great, okay?

00:30:01.000 And I grew up in a two-bedroom house in Burbank, California that fits six people.

00:30:07.000 It was like an 1,100-square-foot house.

00:30:08.000 It fits six people.

00:30:09.000 It had one bathroom.

00:30:10.000 I slept in the same bedroom as my three younger sisters until I was 11 years old.

00:30:14.000 And you know what?

00:30:15.000 My life was phenomenal.

00:30:17.000 I had two parents who loved me.

00:30:18.000 I lived in a neighborhood where all of us knew each other.

00:30:20.000 There was a social fabric because America is freaking great.

00:30:24.000 America is terrific.

00:30:25.000 Millennials whining about how rough they have it while chomping down on avocado toast is one of the more obnoxious phenomena of our modern world. 0.99

00:30:33.000 Learn a thing.

00:30:33.000 A thing.

00:30:35.000 In a second, I'm going to show you some charts to demonstrate that it's not just Charlotte Alter's story, that millennials have actually been pretty well off, that they stand on a 3,000-year tradition of a West that has produced prosperity, science, decency, morality, and democracy, and then they sit there and whine about it all day and talk about tearing it down in favor of a socialist utopia that has never existed and will never exist.

00:30:59.000 I'm going to show you the stats that show that Charlotte Alter is not an outlier in terms of being benefited from being in the United States.

00:31:05.000 I have some charts, and facts, and figures, which mean more than Charlotte Alter's tweets about Dunkaroos.

00:31:12.000 By the way, I don't even know why she's suggesting that eating Dunkaroos is some sign of poverty.

00:31:18.000 When I was a kid, that's all I wanted.

00:31:20.000 Dunkaroos, I don't think, were kosher, and I was always looking at the commercials on TV, and I'm like, God, those look fantastic.

00:31:26.000 Cookies that you dip into chocolate dip, and it comes in a package?

00:31:30.000 That's amazing!

00:31:31.000 Hey, in a second, we'll get to all of that.

00:31:32.000 First, I want to mention that you should go over and subscribe over at DailyWire.com.

00:31:37.000 $9.99 a month gets you a subscription to DailyWire.com.

00:31:40.000 $99 a year gets you a subscription.

00:31:42.000 Plus, that's an annual subscription.

00:31:43.000 It's cheaper.

00:31:44.000 Plus, you get this, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumblr.

00:31:46.000 Cast your eyes upon it.

00:31:48.000 It is phenomenal.

00:31:49.000 As a thank you to our DailyWire annual subscribers, we would like to give a shout out to a different subscriber every Friday.

00:31:54.000 Today, Merp at NewTweetWhoDis.

00:31:57.000 We salute you!

00:31:58.000 You can see in this photo that Murp has made three excellent choices.

00:32:01.000 First, he became a Daily Wire annual subscriber.

00:32:04.000 That's how he got a Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:32:06.000 Second, he bought my brand new best-selling book, The Right Side of History, number one on Amazon, number one non-fiction in Barnes & Noble.

00:32:12.000 And finally, he included those two things in a photo with the hashtag, Leftist Tears Tumblr.

00:32:18.000 Murp, if that is your real name.

00:32:21.000 Thank you for being a subscriber.

00:32:22.000 We really appreciate it.

00:32:23.000 Now, if you want a chance at being featured on the show, become a Daily Wire annual subscriber if you're not already one.

00:32:27.000 Post a photo of your Tumblr on Twitter or Instagram.

00:32:30.000 You can even be in the photo if you would like.

00:32:32.000 To become a subscriber, go to dailywire.com, click on the subscribe button at the top of the page, and simply subscribe.

00:32:38.000 You get all sorts of goodies.

00:32:39.000 You get to ask me questions during the additional two hours every day we do of the show behind the paywall that you get to access.

00:32:45.000 You can listen to it on talk radio, or you can get it commercial free on demand by subscribing over at dailywire.com and listen to it at your desk.

00:32:52.000 So go check it out right now.

00:32:54.000 Also, you can ask us questions during the break sometimes.

00:32:56.000 I think we're doing that today.

00:32:57.000 We also give you access to ask questions during the conversation.

00:33:01.000 You just have all sorts of goodies.

00:33:03.000 You get the Sunday specials on Saturday.

00:33:04.000 This week we have Dr. Stephen Meyer, who is a philosopher of science talking about intelligent design, which is really interesting stuff.

00:33:11.000 You get that on Saturday?

00:33:12.000 Go check all of this stuff out over at dailywire.com and make sure to subscribe at YouTube and iTunes as well.

00:33:17.000 Leave us a review, we always appreciate it.

00:33:18.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:33:22.000 Okay, so it's time for me to share with you some actual statistics.

00:33:30.000 Not like AOC, I used to eat Dunkaroos and live in an upper middle class area.

00:33:35.000 What a victim am I?

00:33:36.000 We're going to talk about the spread of products into American households more generally.

00:33:41.000 This is a timeline.

00:33:42.000 If you can see, this is why you should subscribe so you can see.

00:33:45.000 This is a timeline of when products were invented and how long it took for them to be integrated into 100% of household use in the United States.

00:33:54.000 So the telephone took essentially a full century from its invention until it was available in 100% of households.

00:34:01.000 By 1970, it was available by about 80% of households.

00:34:06.000 You know, 70 years between invention and its actual acceptance by the vast majority of American households.

00:34:13.000 If you look at electricity, electricity was made available at the beginning of the 20th century.

00:34:18.000 It was not widely available in all American households until you got to about 1945, 1950.

00:34:26.000 That's when it was available in like 80% of American households.

00:34:28.000 The radio was invented in the mid-1920s, and it was available in most American households, and the vast majority anyway, by 1940.

00:34:34.000 Now look at the right side of this chart, the right-hand side of this chart.

00:34:39.000 Every major invention of the modern era, the line from invention to prevalence is essentially straight up.

00:34:48.000 The smartphone was invented shortly after 2000.

00:34:51.000 By 2010, the smartphone was available for more than 50% of the public.

00:34:56.000 And by 2015, it was available to 75% of the public.

00:34:59.000 A 15-year lag period between invention and acceptance by everyone.

00:35:03.000 The digital camera was invented in about 1995.

00:35:05.000 It was already available for pretty much everybody.

00:35:08.000 Everyone had one by 10 years later.

00:35:11.000 So basically, any major product that has been invented since 1970 in the United States has been available to pretty much every American household within 10 to 15 years.

00:35:22.000 And we are whining about this?

00:35:24.000 We are complaining about this?

00:35:26.000 In 1980, I have statistics on consumption and wealth.

00:35:30.000 The consumption per capita in 2015 dollars in 1980 was $19,182.

00:35:32.000 By 2015, it was $38,146.

00:35:33.000 We had doubled our rate of consumption.

00:35:34.000 $19,182.

00:35:36.000 By 2015, it was $38,146.

00:35:40.000 We had doubled our rate of consumption.

00:35:42.000 That doesn't sound like poverty to me.

00:35:44.000 The share of household budget spent on food, clothing, shelter, and utilities went down The share spent on entertainment and recreation went from 8.9% in 1980 to 14.3% in 2015.

00:35:54.000 in 2015 the share spent on entertainment and recreation went from 8.9 percent in 1980 to 14.3 percent in 2015 the average size of a new home went from 1595 square feet in 1980 to 2700 square feet in 2015 in other words um guys things have gotten a lot better and you should stop your whining That's not true for everyone.

00:36:19.000 Listen, if you're an exception, if you're somebody who's really had it hard, you grew up in poverty, obviously this is not true for you, but that's been true for all time.

00:36:25.000 There are people growing up in poverty.

00:36:27.000 AOC is not one of them.

00:36:28.000 To pretend that millennials, as a generation, have it significantly worse off than past generations is to ignore the products that we get to consume now.

00:36:37.000 The people who are middle class now live better than rich people did even 30 years ago.

00:36:42.000 The market capitalization of all listed U.S.

00:36:44.000 firms in consistent 2015 dollars, $3.4 trillion in 1980, $25.1 trillion in 2015.

00:36:46.000 Life expectancy has risen by nearly six years since 1980.

00:36:48.000 The overall death rate has dropped from 1,007 per 100,000 people to 724 per 1,000 people.

00:36:50.000 trillion dollars in 2015.

00:36:52.000 Life expectancy has risen by nearly six years since 1980.

00:36:56.000 The overall death rate has dropped from 1,007 per 100,000 people to 724 per 1,000 people.

00:37:03.000 It has declined the death rate for heart disease, for cancer.

00:37:07.000 For automobile deaths.

00:37:09.000 Dramatically for automobile deaths.

00:37:10.000 For airline deaths.

00:37:11.000 It has gone from 53.9 per 100 billion miles flown to 0.2.

00:37:18.000 Working conditions.

00:37:19.000 We are working fewer hours.

00:37:21.000 Output per work hour has risen.

00:37:22.000 It has essentially doubled in the United States.

00:37:26.000 Employee benefits have increased.

00:37:28.000 Mean retirement age has decreased.

00:37:31.000 Work-related deaths have been sliced by four, by a factor of four.

00:37:39.000 And we're whining about this?

00:37:41.000 We are complaining about this?

00:37:43.000 You've got to be kidding me.

00:37:45.000 The money prices for consumer goods move steadily upwards.

00:37:48.000 Americans' true cost of living is better measured in hours and minutes of work, and that has been moving downward, consistently.

00:37:55.000 So money prices have gone up, but that's because of inflation.

00:37:58.000 But when you look at work hour prices, meaning how much work it takes to buy a particular product, that has been declining steadily since 1900, to all-time lows now.

00:38:06.000 There is falling real cost of everyday products.

00:38:10.000 The iPad, okay, the iPad, when it was introduced in 2010, and now what it costs, it only costs 85% of what it used to.

00:38:17.000 and now what it costs.

00:38:18.000 It only costs 85% of what it used to.

00:38:19.000 A movie costs 74.6% of what it used to.

00:38:23.000 A pizza costs 59% of what it used to.

00:38:28.000 Cheaper products.

00:38:29.000 Better products.

00:38:30.000 And we are complaining about this?

00:38:32.000 This is what is causing socialism?

00:38:33.000 So the answer is it's ingratitude that's causing socialism.

00:38:36.000 It's not real conditions.

00:38:37.000 It's a lot of people like AOC whining about their wonderful upbringing in a fantastic country.

00:38:42.000 Show a little gratitude and maybe you'll stop whining about the system and start focusing on maybe the fact that if you are not succeeding the way you want to, you need to change the decisions that you are making.

00:38:50.000 You are in control of your own life, not some impersonal chaotic forces beyond your control.

00:38:56.000 What we are watching right now is a return to a misunderstanding of civilization.

00:39:01.000 That's what we are watching right now.

00:39:02.000 I'm going to talk about that in just a second.

00:39:03.000 So, what we are watching In essence, in the United States, is a misunderstanding of the system under which we live.

00:39:09.000 We live in a free system.

00:39:11.000 You get to make decisions.

00:39:12.000 That doesn't mean we all start off in the same place.

00:39:14.000 It doesn't mean we all face the same obstacles.

00:39:16.000 We obviously do not.

00:39:17.000 We all grew up with certain advantages and certain disadvantages.

00:39:20.000 Some of those are much greater than others.

00:39:23.000 Some of us grew up incredibly wealthy.

00:39:25.000 Some of us grew up smarter.

00:39:27.000 Some of us have more athletic ability.

00:39:29.000 We all have different capacities and we are all born into different situations.

00:39:33.000 The question is, do we live in a country that is free for you to make decisions and reap the consequences of those decisions?

00:39:39.000 Or is the system, quote-unquote, rigged against you?

00:39:41.000 And if it is, quote-unquote, rigged against you, is that because reality is just reality?

00:39:46.000 Or is it because there's somebody who's actively standing in your way?

00:39:50.000 What I mean by that is that there are certain people who are just going to do better than others in American society.

00:39:54.000 People who are more likely to make good decisions.

00:39:57.000 People who may be smarter, or faster, or bigger, or taller, or more beautiful.

00:40:02.000 That's been true for all of human history, and government is not in a position to rectify these cosmic inequities.

00:40:08.000 The question is, is government actively impeding you from feeling the effect of your own choices?

00:40:13.000 And if it is not, then maybe we ought to examine the choices and discuss how we can make better choices so that we succeed in American society.

00:40:20.000 This is why I dislike populism of both right and left.

00:40:22.000 Populism basically says to people, we'll give you what you want, an excuse.

00:40:26.000 Populism of the right says, well, you know, there are all these factory towns where the jobs have gone away and we lie and we say it's because of China and Mexico, not because of technological development.

00:40:35.000 And then we say, well, we want to make sure that the system isn't quote-unquote rigged against you.

00:40:40.000 And we're going to have to show me which part of the system was rigged and why we wouldn't be better off just saying to folks, listen, let's help you make decisions.

00:40:46.000 If we're going to help you, let's find private charitable ways to help you make decisions that better your life.

00:40:53.000 Here's the truth.

00:40:53.000 In a free country, the decision to better your life is up to you.

00:40:57.000 And that's the country we live in.

00:40:59.000 Because that is the civilization that we founded.

00:41:01.000 The civilization we founded was based on certain fundamental principles.

00:41:04.000 You are not at the mercy of forces around you.

00:41:06.000 You're a free, rational actor, made in the image of God.

00:41:09.000 So are all the people around you.

00:41:11.000 You get to make those decisions and you have a responsibility to make good and moral decisions.

00:41:15.000 To make virtuous decisions.

00:41:16.000 Decisions that make your life better and build the social fabric.

00:41:19.000 This is what my entire book, The Right Side of History, is about.

00:41:23.000 If we reject those fundamental assumptions and we assume that we are in fact just corks bobbing about on the eddies of civilization, and that if we just radically reshifted civilization, then suddenly it would be better for everyone?

00:41:35.000 Any attempt to radically reshift human nature away from freedom and toward oppressiveness from the top down in the name of kind-hearted, smiley-faced, redistributive justice and social justice, all that's going to do is create more misery, which is typically what these systems do.

00:41:52.000 In the long run.

00:41:53.000 Meanwhile, I think it is worthwhile noting the Democratic Party has moved dramatically anti-Israel.

00:41:57.000 Not only did Ilhan Omar win, Ilhan Omar, the anti-Semite, the representative from Minnesota, Not only did she somehow amazingly get the Democratic Party to fold to her, but now the entire Democratic Party is essentially mirroring her position on the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

00:42:14.000 So AIPAC is not a lobbying organization.

00:42:17.000 They do not pay people, okay?

00:42:19.000 They're a lobbying organization in the sense that they bring Congress people to Israel and educate them about the issues.

00:42:26.000 They do not give direct donations to candidates.

00:42:29.000 AIPAC does not.

00:42:30.000 AIPAC is largely considered just a pro-Israel place, and virtually every candidate right, left, and center has spoken at AIPAC, no matter their position, even if that position happens to be an incredibly dovish position on Israel.

00:42:41.000 Barack Obama used to speak there every year, despite the fact that Barack Obama was dramatically anti-Israel in policy.

00:42:47.000 Because he wanted to show, listen, my policy is not driven by anti-Israel animus.

00:42:52.000 Now the Democrats have decided they are not showing up anymore.

00:42:55.000 Ilhan Omar won.

00:42:56.000 How do we know she won?

00:42:57.000 Because she's retweeting people saying she won.

00:42:59.000 Because Ilhan Omar started this whole thing by saying it was Jew money behind American support for Israel and what she really meant was AIPAC.

00:43:06.000 That's the Jew money. 1.00

00:43:08.000 And the Democrats have decided, OK, I guess we'll go along with that.

00:43:11.000 I guess we won't speak at AIPAC anymore.

00:43:12.000 Now, listen, I have never been a big advocate of AIPAC.

00:43:16.000 I think that they are too left wing.

00:43:17.000 I think they haven't taken strong positions on things like the Iran deal.

00:43:20.000 I've been highly critical at times of AIPAC.

00:43:22.000 Go back and look at the record.

00:43:24.000 But for every Democrat to basically say we're not speaking to a pro-Israel group because it would signal to our base that we like Israel is pretty astonishing.

00:43:34.000 Ilhan Omar won.

00:43:36.000 Five, count them, five Democratic candidates say they will not attend the AIPAC policy conference this year, which is an astonishing move considering, again, that all of these people want to win Democratic primaries and Jews vote overwhelmingly Democrat. 0.90

00:43:48.000 Elizabeth Warren says no.

00:43:49.000 Kamala Harris says no.

00:43:50.000 Bernie Sanders says no.

00:43:51.000 Julian Castro says no.

00:43:54.000 South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is also skipping.

00:43:58.000 Apparently Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO, is not going.

00:44:02.000 MoveOn.org condemned AIPAC on Wednesday in a series of tweets.

00:44:06.000 And so they're all now following the lead of MoveOn.org.

00:44:12.000 Of course, AOC and Ilhan Omar have been leading the charge, and it was AOC's Chief of Staff who tweeted out today, What was her courage?

00:44:19.000 She said it was Jew money behind American support of Israel, and then she pointed her finger at AIPAC.

00:44:23.000 Ilhan Omar for showing such courage.

00:44:24.000 What was her courage?

00:44:25.000 She said it was Jew money behind American support of Israel.

00:44:28.000 And then she pointed her finger at AIPAC and the entire left-wing media went, yeah, let's ask some questions about those Jews and their money. 1.00

00:44:35.000 The New York Times ran a headline saying, And now?

00:44:40.000 Listen, we know where the heart of the Democratic Party is.

00:44:43.000 It is no longer with Israel.

00:44:45.000 It is not a pro-Israel party anymore.

00:44:46.000 It is an anti-Israel party.

00:44:47.000 The fact that they won't even go speak, even to share their differences with AIPAC, demonstrates where they stand.

00:44:55.000 Loudly and proudly.

00:44:56.000 These are the fresh faces of the Democratic Party.

00:45:00.000 It's courage now?

00:45:02.000 It's courage?

00:45:03.000 By the way, apparently more Democrats have said that they are not going to go now.

00:45:07.000 It's not just five.

00:45:08.000 Beto O'Rourke also says that he is not going to show up either.

00:45:11.000 So that means that there are six Democratic candidates who say they will not show up at AIPAC because they're afraid of ticking off the anti-Israel and at least partially anti-Semitic base of the Democratic Party.

00:45:22.000 That is pretty astonishing.

00:45:23.000 Meanwhile, President Trump yesterday recognized that the Golan Heights were a part of Israel, which is a good move considering you don't want the Golan Heights, which is a strategically important, valuable asset in the hands of Syria. 0.99

00:45:34.000 It is literally a giant cliff, the Golan Heights, from which Syrian batteries were shelling Israel in 1973.

00:45:40.000 Israel had to expend thousands of lives in order to take the Golan Heights and keep them safe for civilized people in Israel. 0.82

00:45:46.000 Good for the Trump administration.

00:45:48.000 Yet we're told the Trump administration is anti-Semitic, but Ilhan Omar is not.

00:45:52.000 Yeah.

00:45:52.000 Any more lies you want to sell there, press?

00:45:55.000 All right.

00:45:56.000 Time for the mailbag.

00:45:57.000 So it's a Friday.

00:45:58.000 That means that we are obligated morally and logistically to do some mailbag questions.

00:46:02.000 So here we go.

00:46:03.000 George says, Hi Ben.

00:46:04.000 As we all know, the New Zealand Prime Minister announced the country would ban all semi-automatic guns less than a week after the shooting.

00:46:10.000 As a conservative, I'm weary of legislative changes being made in reactionary fashion, but I have difficulties explaining why.

00:46:15.000 Could you maybe explain why reactionary legislative action is bad?

00:46:18.000 Or even maybe why it isn't bad?

00:46:19.000 What are your thoughts?

00:46:20.000 My general thoughts are that reactionary legislation, unless it is driven by a pressing policy need that is backed by evidence, Are bad.

00:46:28.000 Why?

00:46:28.000 Because emotional responses are generally bad.

00:46:30.000 It is your job as a human being to exercise your reason, not your knee-jerk emotional response.

00:46:34.000 And it seems that in the aftermath of tragedy, very often what people do is they say, here's my knee-jerk emotional response.

00:46:40.000 Guy used a gun, get rid of all the guns.

00:46:42.000 And if you don't agree with me, it's because you're a bad person.

00:46:45.000 Because you don't care about what just happened.

00:46:48.000 We saw this with Sandy Hook.

00:46:50.000 In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, that was when Piers Morgan was doing this every night, and I said to him that he was bullying people by suggesting their moral inferiority if they didn't agree with him on gun control.

00:47:00.000 Which of course was true, and effectively ended his career on television.

00:47:03.000 The fact is that too many people in positions of legislative power react to events with character assassination of people who disagree with them on policy.

00:47:12.000 That is not a recipe for good policymaking.

00:47:14.000 If you have good evidentiary policy that has been based on evidence, then you should be putting that forward in non-crisis scenarios.

00:47:20.000 And then if there's a crisis and public attention is on the issue, then you put it forward again.

00:47:24.000 But if the idea is that we are supposed to react in non-reasonable fashion to bad stuff that happens because there's an emotional appeal and we can use it as an emotional club, that's bad policymaking and worse morality.

00:47:35.000 Stephen says, hey, Ben, do you have thoughts on President Trump's executive order to protect free speech on campus?

00:47:41.000 Thanks.

00:47:41.000 And I love your show.

00:47:42.000 Well, Stephen, I'm glad you asked.

00:47:44.000 I do have some thoughts on this.

00:47:45.000 So, President Trump's executive order, I was withholding judgment until I saw the text of it.

00:47:50.000 The text of it is benign.

00:47:52.000 The text of it basically just says that it's essentially advisory.

00:47:56.000 It says to college campuses, unless you take proper procedures to protect free speech, we are going to remove your research funding.

00:48:01.000 But it doesn't go any further into specifics.

00:48:04.000 That effectively means that it's up to the Department of Education to determine whether the First Amendment has been violated in terms of removing public funding from universities that engage in anti-free speech activity.

00:48:15.000 I have a feeling that it's not going to be invoked very often, but just as a sort of advisory opinion, I think it's a good thing, and every administration, Democratic and Republican, should reinforce that idea.

00:48:24.000 By the way, it should be uncontroversial.

00:48:26.000 Barack Obama himself was very hard on colleges that attempted to shut down free speech.

00:48:32.000 I praised him for it at the time.

00:48:33.000 So I'm a traditionalist when it comes to baseball, so I'm not generally in favor of the DH rule.

00:48:37.000 I think it changes the strategic nature of the game.

00:48:40.000 Should the National League adopt the DH rule?

00:48:42.000 So I'm a traditionalist when it comes to baseball, so I'm not generally in favor of the DH rule.

00:48:47.000 I think it changes the strategic nature of the game.

00:48:50.000 I understand the rationale, which is to keep old players from having to play the field.

00:48:53.000 And also you don't lose a position in the batting order.

00:48:57.000 And There are some rule changes I think that would be good.

00:49:00.000 I think that, number one, you should have to pitch to more than one batter if you are a relief pitcher, because it is very irritating to watch seven relief pitchers be brought in to finish one inning.

00:49:10.000 It just wastes a lot of time.

00:49:11.000 Second of all, absolutely there should be a pitch clock.

00:49:14.000 And not only should there be a pitch clock, batters should not be allowed to back out of the box 1,000 times, no more Garciaparra style, and relace their gloves every five seconds.

00:49:23.000 It's ridiculous.

00:49:24.000 As far as the intentional walk, that's a bad rule change.

00:49:26.000 You should have to throw the pitches for the intentional walk.

00:49:28.000 I've seen ball games where somebody throws away the ball on an intentional walk and somebody scores from third base on it.

00:49:34.000 That doesn't waste, really, a lot of time in baseball. 0.99

00:49:37.000 There's some rule changes that are just dumb.

00:49:39.000 The idea that we go to extra innings and you put a runner on second. 0.74

00:49:42.000 Sort of like the football rule that the first person who scores wins. 0.99

00:49:45.000 It's just dumb. 1.00

00:49:45.000 It's silly. 1.00

00:49:46.000 But as a general rule, listen, baseball is one of the healthier sports right now.

00:49:50.000 Baseball, if you had to buy stock in sports right now, you'd buy stock in basketball and you'd buy stock in baseball and you'd sell on football.

00:49:55.000 Noah says, Hey Ben, you often speak about the social fabric and community institutions like churches being there for those in need.

00:50:02.000 If these avenues continue to decline, how can those in need get help?

00:50:05.000 Good question.

00:50:06.000 I'm not sure they can, other than government interventionism, which is why you're seeing an increasing demand for government interventionism.

00:50:12.000 The beautiful thing about being a government interventionist is you intervene with the government in the name of doing good.

00:50:17.000 You crowd out private alternatives, and then you point to the fact that private alternatives have been crowded out to grow government even more.

00:50:24.000 That's what the welfare system generally does. 1.00

00:50:26.000 It reduces private giving because we have less money to give.

00:50:30.000 Yesterday, it was pretty fantastic.

00:50:31.000 It was Purim, which is one of my favorite Jewish holidays.

00:50:34.000 It really just is a time of joy.

00:50:36.000 I told the story of it on yesterday's podcast, so go back and listen to it and things I like.

00:50:40.000 And I was just driving around my local community, which is heavily Orthodox.

00:50:44.000 It's a very Jewish community.

00:50:46.000 And I'm seeing parents walking around on the street with their kids dressed up in costumes.

00:50:51.000 I'm seeing them drop off gift baskets, mishloch manot, at everybody else's house.

00:50:56.000 We ourselves are driving around my car.

00:50:58.000 My kids and I are walking up to front doors and dropping off gift baskets.

00:51:01.000 And you receive, you know, 20, 25 gift baskets just from people in the community who you've had over to your house and who have been over to your house.

00:51:07.000 And you think to yourself, this is what the social fabric looks like.

00:51:10.000 You know if you have a social fabric and you know if you don't.

00:51:12.000 And the reason the social fabric exists is, of course, this is a pretty diverse group of people, diverse jobs, diverse experiences from a variety of countries.

00:51:21.000 And yet we all have a common goal, and that is to worship God in Jewish fashion.

00:51:25.000 And that is a good thing.

00:51:27.000 It builds community.

00:51:28.000 I mean, I turned to my wife last night and we were driving around, I said, This kind of social fabric is really what built the West.

00:51:36.000 It's this kind of social fabric that makes America a terrific place.

00:51:39.000 De Tocqueville talks about this, and it's worthy of emulation and strengthening.

00:51:43.000 Daniel says, Hey Ben, my 13-year-old son Elliot is listening to the podcast with me today.

00:51:46.000 Can you give him a quick shout out?

00:51:48.000 Done.

00:51:49.000 Elliot, sup dude?

00:51:50.000 Alright, let's see.

00:51:51.000 Beatriz says, I think this week you mentioned it was a Jewish fast day, and therefore you could not drink out of the leftist year's tumbler. 0.68

00:51:57.000 That got me thinking.

00:51:57.000 How do you include young children in the celebration of Jewish holidays?

00:52:00.000 Although I am Christian, I think there is value in observing the Jewish holidays with my family.

00:52:04.000 Would love to get your advice on this topic.

00:52:05.000 Thank you.

00:52:05.000 I'm listening from Spain, waiting for your new book to arrive.

00:52:07.000 Well, Beatrice, I really appreciate it.

00:52:09.000 Thank you so much for buying the book.

00:52:10.000 You know, we include... The Jewish holidays are really heavily geared toward kids.

00:52:16.000 Passover, particularly, is very geared toward kids.

00:52:18.000 Famously, the kids ask the four questions, manishtan, aha, laila, that whole thing.

00:52:22.000 The whole goal of that is to get kids involved in the Seder.

00:52:25.000 So you give them projects, you give them assignments.

00:52:27.000 Every Saturday, every Shabbat, my kids have to tell us about the Bible portion of the week, and they learn about it in school.

00:52:34.000 The kids are pretty knowledgeable.

00:52:36.000 My daughter, who's five, knows the entire story of Purim, and she can tell it back to you, and she finds it interesting and entertaining.

00:52:42.000 Jewish holidays really, so many institutions in Judaism are geared toward teaching of children.

00:52:47.000 It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

00:52:48.000 And by the way, I think that Christians should know a lot about Jewish holidays.

00:52:52.000 After all, if you're a Christian, Jesus was a Jew.

00:52:53.000 You should know about the holidays that Jesus celebrated.

00:52:56.000 I mean, the Last Supper was a Pesach. 0.86

00:52:57.000 It was a Pesach dinner.

00:52:58.000 It was a Passover dinner.

00:53:00.000 Paul says, Ben, congratulations on the success of your new book.

00:53:02.000 Can't wait to read it.

00:53:03.000 What are your thoughts on the group of Orthodox Jews who came out in defense of Representative Omar?

00:53:07.000 I assume you're talking about the Neturei Karta. 0.50

00:53:08.000 They're a terrible group of people.

00:53:10.000 They suggest that the state of Israel is a moral abomination. 0.90

00:53:13.000 They've gone and met with the dictators of Iran.

00:53:15.000 They are used as a front group for anti-Semitism by anti-Semites all over the world who hate Jews and find them a convenient face.

00:53:23.000 They're sort of the right-wing version of J Street.

00:53:26.000 It's a front group that is designed in anti-Israel, anti-Jewish way or Jewish voices for peace.

00:53:32.000 And then people who don't like Israel can point to, oh, here are my Jews.

00:53:35.000 These are the Jews I like over here.

00:53:37.000 Kate says, Hey Ben, huge fan of yours.

00:53:39.000 My question is as a pro-life woman and someone who is struggling with fertility problems, I'm curious about your view on in vitro fertilization.

00:53:45.000 From what I've gathered, clinics automatically destroy embryos that don't meet a certain standard.

00:53:49.000 Do you believe this is a form of abortion, and if so, should this be something we talk about as pro-life conservatives in order to be consistent in our views of life at conception?

00:53:55.000 Thank you so much.

00:53:57.000 So I don't know enough about the destruction of embryos.

00:53:58.000 My view is that if you destroy an embryo that is, in fact, a form of abortion, And that's why you should only implant the number of embryos that you are willing to give birth to.

00:54:07.000 And that may be more expensive, but that seems to me the only pro-life way to do it.

00:54:11.000 So I'm not against in vitro in the sense that if you fertilize an egg and then you implant it artificially in a woman's uterus, that that is something terrible. 0.86

00:54:20.000 I don't agree with that, but the destruction of an embryo obviously does raise serious pro-life moral concerns.

00:54:25.000 Jeffrey says, Hi Ben.

00:54:26.000 You have said we should not be prejudiced against people who practice a religion.

00:54:29.000 Does this mean we shouldn't be prejudiced against people who practice a religion that holds very evil views and morals?

00:54:34.000 Can you see a religion that is not acceptable and worthy of being prejudiced against?

00:54:37.000 Well, a religion is a viewpoint.

00:54:38.000 What I mean by you shouldn't be prejudiced against a religion is that religious practice alone should not disqualify you from being seen as holding certain views.

00:54:46.000 So I've said, for example, that wearing hijab does not mean that you are anti-Western or anti-American or anything like that.

00:54:54.000 I wear a funny hat every day.

00:54:55.000 I think that your viewpoint can obviously be held against you, and it depends on your viewpoint.

00:55:00.000 If you are a radical Islamist, that is a religious viewpoint.

00:55:04.000 Radical Islamism is very, very bad. 1.00

00:55:06.000 Radical Islamism is not only fundamentalist, it is anti-woman, and it is anti-Western. 0.99

00:55:12.000 So obviously you can hold that viewpoint against someone just as you would hold communism or socialism against somebody, ideologically speaking.

00:55:19.000 What I mean is that simple religious practice alone cannot be the barrier to being seen as a fully-fledged Westerner, obviously.

00:55:27.000 You should be able to worship however you choose, so long as your ideology itself is not evil.

00:55:33.000 So, again, religious practice generally is not sufficient as a marker to rule people out of line in that way. 0.96

00:55:41.000 Rachel says, Ben, Thursday you talked about how it's unfair to judge Jordan Peterson on being photographed with someone in a dumb shirt.

00:55:47.000 Did this also apply to Obama and Farrakhan, or is this different because we know the views of Farrakhan?

00:55:52.000 Thanks and love the show.

00:55:52.000 Well, obviously, I think it's different because Farrakhan has been a longtime open anti-Semite.

00:55:57.000 Jordan Peterson didn't know this guy.

00:55:58.000 This guy walked up wearing a shirt with a lot of words on it.

00:56:00.000 I assume that Jordan wasn't sitting there scrutinizing his shirt.

00:56:03.000 So that's a different thing.

00:56:05.000 Louis Farrakhan is a very, very famous anti-Semite who has met with pretty much every Democratic member of Congress at this point, or at least a lot of them.

00:56:12.000 So that is a very different thing.

00:56:15.000 Alfredo says, Dear Ben, you often talk about the fresh faces of the Democratic Party.

00:56:20.000 Who, in your opinion, is the future of the Republican Party?

00:56:22.000 Is a run for any type of office in your future?

00:56:24.000 From your fellow California Alfredo.

00:56:27.000 A couple of answers to this one.

00:56:29.000 I obviously have praised Nikki Haley highly in the past.

00:56:32.000 I really like Nikki Haley.

00:56:33.000 I think a lot of the people who ran last time are quite wonderful.

00:56:38.000 I like Ted Cruz.

00:56:38.000 I like Senator Cruz.

00:56:39.000 I like Senator Rubio.

00:56:40.000 I like Representative Dan Crenshaw.

00:56:41.000 I like Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas.

00:56:44.000 I like Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.

00:56:46.000 There are a lot of really good up-and-coming young Republicans who have pretty solid records, and I'm excited about the future of conservatism among a lot of those faces.

00:56:57.000 As far as a run for office in my future, man, you'd have to make a convincing case.

00:57:02.000 I love my job.

00:57:02.000 I have a great life.

00:57:03.000 I get to sit here and be as purist as I want to be.

00:57:06.000 I don't have to travel around, leave my family for weeks at a time.

00:57:08.000 I don't have to fundraise.

00:57:10.000 You'd have to make a really, really strong affirmative case as to why I should run.

00:57:13.000 Thanks.

00:57:13.000 Absolutely.

00:57:14.000 I have a book.

00:57:14.000 Hi, Ben.

00:57:14.000 I'm French and in love with U.S. main values.

00:57:16.000 I understand them a lot more since I follow you.

00:57:18.000 Can you explain the difference between the Anglo-Saxon Enlightenment and the French one?

00:57:21.000 Thanks.

00:57:22.000 Absolutely.

00:57:23.000 I have a book.

00:57:24.000 It's called The Right Side of History.

00:57:25.000 And a large part of that book is dedicated to the difference between the Scottish, English, American Enlightenment and the French Enlightenment.

00:57:34.000 The French Enlightenment saw the Enlightenment as a break between reason and religion.

00:57:38.000 That all the Judeo-Christian values of the past could now be abandoned and we had to build a new morality on the basis of reason alone.

00:57:45.000 The cult of reason was actually an actual worshipped cult in France during the French Revolution.

00:57:50.000 Like they actually went into They actually went into Notre Dame, they ripped out all the crosses, and they put up a statue of something that they called Reason.

00:57:58.000 And then they actually worshipped Reason.

00:58:00.000 This is not a joke.

00:58:01.000 This is something that actually happened during the French Revolution.

00:58:03.000 It was called the Cult of Reason.

00:58:04.000 And then there was the Cult of the Supreme Deity, and that was founded by Robespierre, and that was supposed to be sort of the deist response to the Cult of Reason, but it effectively was the same thing.

00:58:13.000 The fact is that when you withdraw from the fundamental principles that undergird Western civilization in the name of reason, you destroy reason itself.

00:58:21.000 What America understood is that you need a social fabric built on Judeo-Christian values, and that you can reason, but you have to make the fundamental assumptions of Judeo-Christian values, and then use reason in accordance with those.

00:58:32.000 So the fundamental premises themselves should not be questioned, meaning the fact that the universe is an orderly place, the fact that Human beings are made in the unique image of God, and human beings have creative power and free will, and that history is a progression, and that you can impact the world.

00:58:49.000 All of these principles are stuff I talk about in The Right Side of History.

00:58:51.000 The French Revolution dispensed with them.

00:58:53.000 In doing so, they dispensed with individual rights in favor of romantic nationalism.

00:58:57.000 They valued equality of outcome rather than equality of rights, and they did an enormous amount of damage.

00:59:03.000 People, I've heard the critique that my book is anti-Enlightenment. 0.96

00:59:06.000 That is such absolute sheer crap, I can't even believe it. 0.98

00:59:09.000 I mean, you have to be illiterate to believe that. 0.99

00:59:10.000 I'm super pro-Enlightenment.

00:59:12.000 The goal of my book is to explain that the Enlightenment had roots and didn't magically spring into being in 1760, and that we have to recognize those roots or we lose the part of the Enlightenment that is actually worth preserving.

00:59:22.000 Matthew says, Hi Ben.

00:59:23.000 You got me hooked on the Bible.

00:59:24.000 I can't thank you enough for that.

00:59:25.000 You made me rethink my views.

00:59:26.000 I went from being an atheist to a devout Christian.

00:59:28.000 That's fantastic.

00:59:29.000 I've had the Bible read to me carefully twice.

00:59:31.000 I'm amazed at how much I still don't understand.

00:59:33.000 It took me seven hours to read Deuteronomy chapters one and two.

00:59:35.000 Well, then you're reading it correctly.

00:59:36.000 I'm really frustrated with how difficult it is to read the Hebrew and understand it.

00:59:39.000 Are there things that I just won't understand unless I speak Hebrew and read it in Hebrew?

00:59:43.000 What do you recommend I do?

00:59:44.000 Any help would be extremely appreciated.

00:59:46.000 Well, if you want a pretty good translation of the Hebrew, there's a new Bible commentary that is out by Rabbi Soloveitchik that I don't remember if I've recommended it already this week.

00:59:59.000 I think that I have.

01:00:01.000 It's a Bible commentary by Rabbi Joseph Baer Soloveitchik, one of the more famous rabbis of the 20th century.

01:00:07.000 And the translation of the Bible is quite good and it has his commentary below it.

01:00:11.000 So that's a good way to study it, so that you're not just trying to read it straight.

01:00:14.000 Speaking of which, there's another great book by Rabbi Soloveitchik called Halakhic Man, all about why Jews follow Jewish law, why Jewish law matters, even in a world where you think that you have natural law principles.

01:00:26.000 Really, really worth reading.

01:00:28.000 Rabbi Soloveitchik, one of the great thinkers in modern Jewish history.

01:00:32.000 So you can go pick up a copy of Halakhic Man.

01:00:35.000 Alrighty.

01:00:36.000 Okay, let's move to a couple of things that I hate.

01:00:44.000 Okay, so a couple of things.

01:00:45.000 Elizabeth Warren, not understanding things.

01:00:46.000 So Senator Elizabeth Warren, she's running the progressive, populist, left-wing viewpoint, which is shocking, because she started her career as a moderate, talking about economic problems in the United States, the two-income trap, and all the rest of this stuff. 0.89

01:00:58.000 She suggested she was a fan of school vouchers, for example.

01:01:00.000 Now she's abandoned all that, and she claims that she wants to break up Amazon. 1.00

01:01:03.000 But don't worry, guys, it won't hurt anybody in any way, because if one person knows how to run a business, it's the lady who's never done it. 0.95

01:01:09.000 Somebody starts to grow a business in there, then Amazon, Google, Facebook just reaches out and snatches up the business.

01:01:18.000 And that doesn't promote competition.

01:01:21.000 So I think they ought to be broken apart.

01:01:23.000 Run that platform.

01:01:24.000 You can still go online and search for 28 coffee makers that can be delivered in 24 hours.

01:01:31.000 But break that up from the part about running a business that competes on that platform. 0.99

01:01:36.000 Okay, this is so dumb. 1.00

01:01:38.000 It's so unspeakably stupid. 1.00

01:01:39.000 So her suggestion is that you're going to be able to get the same things at the same prices if you increase the cost of production for Amazon. 1.00

01:01:46.000 She says that Amazon shouldn't be able to be vertically integrated, in other words.

01:01:49.000 She wants it so that if you Make coffee makers. 0.94

01:01:52.000 You should not be able to distribute those coffee makers.

01:01:54.000 This is true of legitimately every business in the United States.

01:01:58.000 That you're going to give competitive advantage to the products that you make.

01:02:02.000 So the hell what?

01:02:02.000 That's good for the market.

01:02:03.000 Like if Amazon produces a product and then they have product services, why would I not buy the one that is cheapest and best?

01:02:12.000 The left made the same argument about Microsoft.

01:02:13.000 They're like, oh, you know, it'd be great.

01:02:15.000 Let's break up Microsoft.

01:02:16.000 It's too big.

01:02:16.000 And you know what happened?

01:02:17.000 The product got worse and the price went up.

01:02:19.000 So when Elizabeth Warren says, yeah, by breaking them up and increasing their cost of production, I'm serving the consumer.

01:02:23.000 No, you're not.

01:02:24.000 You're not serving the consumer.

01:02:26.000 You're serving the interests of people who would like to artificially raise the cost of doing business to Amazon.

01:02:31.000 This is the difference between consumer-based antitrust action and production-based antitrust action.

01:02:37.000 Consumer-based looks at the consumer and says, is the consumer being jacked? 0.91

01:02:40.000 If not, shut up.

01:02:41.000 Production side antitrust says the company's too big. 0.99

01:02:46.000 Why?

01:02:47.000 Because I say so.

01:02:48.000 Time to break it up even if it's not hurting the consumer. 0.89

01:02:50.000 That's a bunch of nonsense.

01:02:51.000 That's what Elizabeth Warren engages in pretty regularly. 1.00

01:02:54.000 Other things that I hate.

01:02:55.000 So better!

01:02:57.000 Yeah, dude's rad! 1.00

01:02:59.000 So he has a bad habit of jumping up onto countertops, which is both unsanitary and stupid. 0.99

01:03:03.000 It's like he watched Dead Poets Society one too many times. 0.99

01:03:06.000 He's like, you know what would be great?

01:03:08.000 I'm just gonna find a countertop and jump on it! 0.87

01:03:09.000 That's what I do!

01:03:11.000 I eat New Mexican dirt and I jump on countertops. 0.99

01:03:14.000 Beto! 0.99

01:03:15.000 Skateboarding into your heart, yeah!

01:03:18.000 So here's Beto explaining, we don't need any walls.

01:03:21.000 We don't need any walls in a room filled with walls.

01:03:24.000 We do not need any walls, $30 billion, 2,000 miles long, 30 feet high, that will not be built on the international boundary line, which is the center line of the Rio Grande River.

01:03:36.000 That wall will be built well into the interior, on someone's ranch, someone else's farm, someone else's home.

01:03:43.000 You and I will be forced to take their property to solve a problem that we do not have.

01:03:48.000 Okay, I'm so bored with Beto O'Rourke at this point.

01:03:52.000 Not only is his point not well taken, because if you are to build any sort of barrier, presumably there will be land upon which the barrier must be located, and we should always worry about the extent of government overreach when it comes to eminent domain.

01:04:04.000 Something he, by the way, did not worry very much about when he was a city councilman in El Paso.

01:04:08.000 But Beto O'Rourke's sophomoric ramblings about why walls are unnecessary generally The fact this guy is considered a frontrunner to the Democratic Party shows a certain lack of ideas.

01:04:21.000 Now, it doesn't mean everybody on the left lacks ideas, but the fact that this guy is considered an idea guy.

01:04:24.000 Like, here's the thing.

01:04:25.000 No one considered Trump an idea guy.

01:04:27.000 Like, I can't name the number of people, like, legitimately, who think, wow, Trump, there's a man with ideas.

01:04:32.000 It was more like, Trump, there's a man who's a giant pulsating middle finger to everyone I dislike.

01:04:38.000 That was the appeal of Trump.

01:04:39.000 For Beto, it's like, man, he's a deep thinker.

01:04:41.000 And he's like, yeah, brah, I am a deep thinker.

01:04:44.000 Have you ever wondered?

01:04:45.000 Why, you park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?

01:04:49.000 Have you ever wondered that?

01:04:50.000 Like, really thought about it?

01:04:51.000 Have you ever spent any time thinking about, like, why is it that they put locks on 7-Elevens if they're open for, like, 24 hours a day?

01:05:00.000 Like, what's the point of a lock, yo?

01:05:03.000 That guy.

01:05:05.000 Alright, we'll be back here a little bit later with two more hours of wonderful goodness.

01:05:10.000 You can subscribe right now and you can get that.

01:05:13.000 Or, we'll see you here on Monday.

01:05:15.000 Also, make sure that you pick up a copy of my best-selling book, The Right Side of History, number one on Amazon, number one in non-fiction, at Barnes & Noble, really racing up the sales charts.

01:05:23.000 Thank you so much for supporting it.

01:05:25.000 I think it's an important book.

01:05:26.000 I really, I don't think all of my books are equally important.

01:05:29.000 I do not love all of my children equally.

01:05:30.000 This is the book I love the most.

01:05:31.000 I think it is the most important book I've ever written, so I appreciate you going out and taking a look at it, and we'll see you here a little bit later.

01:05:37.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:05:37.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:05:43.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:05:45.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:05:47.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

01:05:48.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover.

01:05:50.000 And our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

01:05:53.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

01:05:54.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.

01:05:55.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.

01:05:57.000 Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.

01:05:58.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:06:01.000 Copyright, Daily Wire 2019.

01:06:04.000 Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, with all of these very deep ideological divides in our country, are we on the verge of a civil war?

01:06:13.000 What would it look like if we were headed in that direction?

01:06:16.000 What would a civil war look like?

01:06:17.000 We'll try to talk about all that today.

01:06:19.000 Also, how old is too old to be president?

01:06:22.000 Should there be a cap, an age limit on the presidency?

01:06:24.000 And finally, What does it mean to say that the Bible is the inspired word of God?

01:06:29.000 That's what Christians say.

01:06:32.000 But what does it mean practically speaking?

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 22, 2019

The Ingratitude Trap | Ep. 743

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript