The Ben Shapiro Show - The Leftist Quest To Seize Control Of Facebook | Ep. 1348

00:00:00.000 Facebook comes under fire from the Democrat media complex.

00:00:03.000 Joe Biden thinks about minting a $1 trillion coin to avoid the debt ceiling.

00:00:07.000 And Healthline announces men can get pregnant.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

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00:01:27.000 Alrighty, so yesterday saw this big Senate hearing on Facebook, and this is all manufactured.

00:01:32.000 Let's just be clear about this.

00:01:34.000 The new Democrat media complex attack on Facebook is completely manufactured.

00:01:38.000 There are serious questions to be asked about how Facebook nudges you in particular directions.

00:01:42.000 We've talked about that extensively on the show.

00:01:44.000 We've talked about how Facebook's news feed is incredibly biased, how they use certain metrics in order to try and promote legacy media content.

00:01:52.000 and suppress alternative content, which is sort of a newfangled thing because back in 2015, 2016, they really didn't do that.

00:01:59.000 And then there was blowback from the left and Facebook, because like all other major corporations, cowardice is a factor there.

00:02:05.000 Facebook decided that they were going to back off and start making changes to their algorithms to please the Democrat media complex.

00:02:11.000 Well, once you give an inch, they seek to take a mile.

00:02:13.000 And right now, and it's perfectly obvious that what the Democrats want is to just control Facebook.

00:02:19.000 They don't want to destroy it.

00:02:20.000 They want to hijack it and use it for their own purposes.

00:02:22.000 That is the goal.

00:02:23.000 They don't want to set any sort of neutral rules by which Facebook could be held accountable or to which Facebook could adjust.

00:02:30.000 They don't want regulations that are clear and transparent.

00:02:33.000 What the Democrats want at this point is an agency that sits over all social media and then adjudicates on a case-by-case basis whether social media have met the demands of Democrats.

00:02:42.000 That is what they would like.

00:02:43.000 And this is what the media would like as well.

00:02:45.000 Because you have to understand that there is this iron triangle between the Democrats and the media and the social media sphere.

00:02:51.000 And that iron triangle determines what you see.

00:02:53.000 A huge percentage of Americans get their news online.

00:02:56.000 And this is a newfangled thing.

00:02:58.000 This happened over the course of the last 15 years.

00:03:00.000 It used to be.

00:03:01.000 Even online, the way that you got your news is that you went directly to the websites that you like to visit.

00:03:05.000 You would bookmark Breitbart, you'd bookmark Daily Wire, you'd bookmark whatever, CNN, New York Times.

00:03:10.000 You'd bookmark it, you'd go directly to the site.

00:03:12.000 Then Facebook became such a massive source of aggregated eyeballs that news outlets started using Facebook in order to promote their news.

00:03:19.000 Then Facebook started its news feed.

00:03:21.000 So now, it was a one-stop shop.

00:03:23.000 You would go to Facebook to get your news.

00:03:25.000 And Facebook would tailor its algorithms to what you liked to see.

00:03:28.000 So if you were conservative, you were more likely to see links that you were more likely to click on.

00:03:33.000 And that made sense because it was supposed to be the town square and in the town square there were a bunch of newspapers available and you'd go to the kiosk that you actually liked.

00:03:40.000 And Facebook made it convenient by lining up the kiosks you liked near where you were entering the town square.

00:03:45.000 That's effectively how Facebook's newsfeed operated.

00:03:47.000 Democrats saw, however, that Facebook had re-established a distributional monopoly.

00:03:52.000 And now because everyone was getting their news via Facebook, this meant that they could turn off the spigot on people they didn't like.

00:03:58.000 And Facebook decided that in order to please the Democrats, they were going to go ahead and start to do this around the edges and more and more openly.

00:04:06.000 So it started off as sort of a fringe phenomenon and then it became part of their mainstream and how they manipulated the newsfeed.

00:04:11.000 That's a real concern and it's something that I've talked about.

00:04:14.000 But Democrats aren't satisfied with that.

00:04:15.000 What Democrats would like is a standard set by the federal government that is no standard at all.

00:04:20.000 What Democrats actually want is a radically non-equality based standard.

00:04:29.000 They want no neutral standard.

00:04:31.000 They want to just be able to control, essentially what they would like, Democrats, is to appoint somebody like Kara Swisher as the head of a government agency that oversees Facebook and tells Facebook what to do. 0.59

00:04:40.000 That's what they would like to do.

00:04:41.000 They would like to seize the means of distribution.

00:04:43.000 And now, if you did this openly, it would be illegal.

00:04:46.000 If the Democrats were simply to pass a law saying we are going to control Facebook, like top to bottom, that would be illegal.

00:04:54.000 And the reason it would be illegal is number one, it would be a seizure of private property without just compensation.

00:04:58.000 And number two...

00:04:59.000 You cannot actually control distribution of speech in that way.

00:05:02.000 The First Amendment prevents that sort of stuff.

00:05:04.000 So Democrats are seeking to find another way of doing that.

00:05:07.000 And so what they are claiming, as they always claim, is that Facebook is doing grave harm.

00:05:11.000 Grave harm.

00:05:11.000 Now, there are certain things that could be done to prevent Facebook from discriminating on the basis of politics.

00:05:16.000 We've talked about those things in the past.

00:05:18.000 Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was intended to provide a broader spectrum of political viewpoints online.

00:05:26.000 Originally, there were liability concerns with anybody who allowed third-party posters to put material up on the internet.

00:05:33.000 So any comments section of a website, you could be held liable for whatever got put up in a comment section.

00:05:38.000 Section 230 said you're not liable for third-party content that is posted on your site.

00:05:42.000 And then there was a legal case in which one of these major websites was sort of cultivating the content that it put up, mainly to try and prevent pornography and spam.

00:05:51.000 They were sued because the argument was now they're cultivating the content, so they're responsible for the content.

00:05:55.000 They were sued and they lost.

00:05:58.000 And then the federal government stepped in and said, OK, that's not really right.

00:06:00.000 We should be allowing people who cultivate content at least to get rid of pornography, for example, or spam.

00:06:05.000 We shouldn't make them liable for the other content that's on their site.

00:06:09.000 This is how sites like Facebook are able to remove pornography, remove violent material, remove spam.

00:06:14.000 Without being subjected to the same legal regimen of liability that, for example, Daily Wire's editorial page is subjected to.

00:06:22.000 And then Facebook started to move beyond that and actually censor content and nudge people in particular directions.

00:06:28.000 The best way of correcting that would be to change Section 230 to remove the catch-all provision.

00:06:32.000 To just say, okay, Facebook is allowed to remove pornography, obscenity, violent content, but they're not allowed to just remove things on the basis of politics alone.

00:06:39.000 And if they do start doing that, Now they look more like the New York Times or the Daily Wire in terms of the liability they undergo.

00:06:45.000 Okay, that's the right-wing point of view on Facebook.

00:06:47.000 The left-wing point of view on Facebook is that Facebook is bad, not because it doesn't allow enough content, but because it allows too much content.

00:06:54.000 The left-wing viewpoint on Facebook is that Facebook is such a dominant place for people to get their information that they can grab it and they can use it to their own advantage.

00:07:03.000 And Democrats and the media have become experts in this inside-outside game they now play with corporations, where somebody inside a corporation, a staffer at a corporation, gains access to confidential material, and then goes and quote-unquote leaks it.

00:07:16.000 They're a whistleblower, right?

00:07:17.000 Even though the information is not illegal.

00:07:19.000 They take that information that is confidential, and then they put it out there in the public sphere with the help of the media that have an agenda.

00:07:25.000 The media push it, Democrats hold hearings on it, and then all of them threaten all of these social media companies into doing what they want.

00:07:32.000 They essentially make Facebook into an agent of the Democratic Party by threatening them with legislation or regulatory oversight if they don't do what the Democratic Party wants.

00:07:42.000 This is incredibly dangerous stuff, whether we are talking about the free speech area or whether we're talking about business areas.

00:07:48.000 If the Democratic Party is doing the same thing with regard to major corporations, which they are, you have a whistleblower at a major corporation.

00:07:53.000 The whistleblower will report that a corporation is doing nothing illegal.

00:07:57.000 That's something the Democrats don't like.

00:07:58.000 The media then blow it up into a major issue.

00:08:00.000 The Democrats then hold hearings and they say, we will regulate you and we will come after you and we'll find a way to punish your business unless, unless you do what we want.

00:08:08.000 And so they turn private organizations, private businesses into agents of the Democratic Party by using the power of government to threaten.

00:08:16.000 Even though if the government actually went forward and passed legislation along these lines, there's a good shot it would be unconstitutional.

00:08:22.000 So we'll get to how this is expressing itself with regard to Facebook.

00:08:24.000 And it's super dangerous because if you think that there ought to be a level playing field when it comes to your access to information, that this is the core liberty that the First Amendment was seeking to protect, Democrats doing this with social media is unbelievably dangerous.

00:08:37.000 They're attempting to reestablish the media monopoly, media oligopoly, that they held for 50 years before the rise of the Internet.

00:08:44.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:09:52.000 Okay, so.

00:09:53.000 The new push against Facebook, which remember this is like their third push against Facebook since 2016.

00:09:58.000 Right after 2016, there's a push against Facebook on the Russian disinformation front.

00:10:02.000 Ah, Facebook needs to crack down on foreign actors manipulating US elections.

00:10:07.000 The reality, as I've said before, is that the amount of actual Russian manipulation during the 2016 election via Facebook was minimal, statistically speaking.

00:10:14.000 Then there was the push in 2018-2019 that there was too much generalized misinformation being put out there and Facebook needed to crack down on it.

00:10:21.000 And Facebook reacted both times.

00:10:24.000 By trying to placate the Democrats.

00:10:26.000 In 2018-2019, the Democratic Party demanded that Facebook create some sort of answerability for quote-unquote misinformation, right?

00:10:34.000 They shifted from disinformation in 2016 and 2017 to misinformation in 2018-2019.

00:10:40.000 And that's when Facebook started to institute fact-checking regimes that were designed to downgrade conservative content and to upgrade legacy media content because the fact-checkers themselves very often were working for the legacy media.

00:10:52.000 Hey, now we have reached the third stage.

00:10:53.000 This is the third iteration of the attack on Facebook.

00:10:56.000 And this iteration is, Facebook is just bad.

00:10:58.000 Facebook is bad because of what they do.

00:11:00.000 So, there's this Facebook quote-unquote whistleblower.

00:11:02.000 I say quote-unquote whistleblower because she's not blowing the whistle on anything. 0.98

00:11:06.000 She literally is revealing no new information that people did not know.

00:11:09.000 Like, is it information that teenage girls using Instagram may not make them mentally healthier?

00:11:14.000 So by self-polling data, many teenage girls say that Instagram, like 42% say Instagram makes their life better and only 15-20% say it makes their life worse.

00:11:22.000 But like, let's face it, pretty much every fashion show ever has made teenage girls' lives worse.

00:11:29.000 Teenage girls... 0.94

00:11:31.000 Coordinating online and viewing pictures of beautiful people and feeling envy and a certain level of bodily discomfort by looking at other pictures.

00:11:43.000 And this is true for Facebook, it's true for Twitter.

00:11:45.000 Anytime teenage girls are comparing themselves to some sort of ideal, this is not good for mental health.

00:11:49.000 Frankly, online very often it's not good for mental health, period.

00:11:51.000 And that's true for boys and girls.

00:11:53.000 So nothing new is being revealed by the quote-unquote whistleblower.

00:11:55.000 She's a democratic activist.

00:11:57.000 So, her name is Frances Hogan.

00:12:07.000 When I say she's a Democratic activist, what I mean is that it's pretty damned clear she's a Democratic activist.

00:12:12.000 According to the Daily Wire, she has a record of donations to far-left Democrats and a history of raising issues about purported bias while at previous employers.

00:12:19.000 She's working with Democratic operatives to roll out her complaint.

00:12:22.000 She has the same lawyers as the anonymous Ukraine whistleblower, whose allegations led to Donald Trump's impeachment, but who reportedly turned out to be then-Vice President Joe Biden's top advisor in the country.

00:12:32.000 So, she is a long-time radical leftist.

00:12:36.000 On January 13, 2020, for example, she gave money to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 0.96

00:12:40.000 She's made more than 20 federal campaign contributions since 2016, all of which have gone to Democrats, according to the FEC.

00:12:47.000 She was invited to testify by the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security, chaired by radical leftist Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

00:12:58.000 The lawyers that she has are from a group called Whistleblower Aid.

00:13:02.000 The group was founded by Mark Zaid, who previously represented the national security official who alleged Donald Trump inappropriately pressed the Ukraine president on a phone call to investigate whether Joe Biden pressed the country to drop an investigation into Burisma.

00:13:17.000 Hogan's case is pretty obviously being pushed by a raft of people who have been involved with the Democratic Party.

00:13:25.000 The public relations firm of former Obama aide Bill Burton, a company called Bryce and Gillette, is providing Hogan with strategic communications device, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

00:13:35.000 Jen Psaki, by the way, worked for Bryce and Gillette as a senior advisor until September 2020.

00:13:39.000 But the Center for Humane Technology is one of her clients, according to ethics filings obtained by the Daily Wire.

00:13:44.000 So this lady is really, really well-entrenched with the Democratic bureaucracy. 1.00

00:13:49.000 So again, the game is this.

00:13:50.000 Find a quote-unquote whistleblower.

00:13:52.000 The whistleblower doesn't blow the whistle on anything.

00:13:53.000 They just say a bunch of stuff Democrats like.

00:13:55.000 Democrats bring the Facebook whistleblower forward.

00:13:57.000 They have her say a bunch of stuff we already knew, but in tones of high dudgeon.

00:14:01.000 And then the Democrats threaten Facebook with vague regulation.

00:14:05.000 And what they really want is to set up a governmental quote-unquote oversight body that is designed not to promote any sort of neutral standard that the government could be held to or that could subject the government to lawsuit, for example.

00:14:19.000 Instead, they just want to have like a specialist who sits over a business.

00:14:22.000 They want to have a shadow CEO at the governmental level.

00:14:26.000 That's the goal.

00:14:26.000 So here is Frances Hogan saying this, right?

00:14:29.000 She specifically asked, OK, if Facebook's a monopoly, why don't we break it up?

00:14:33.000 Is that your contention?

00:14:34.000 She says, no, no, no, I don't want them to be broken up.

00:14:36.000 I want heavy regulations.

00:14:37.000 And really what I want is a government agency that sits on top of them.

00:14:40.000 And Mark Zuckerberg has to have a boss appointed by the Democratic Party.

00:14:43.000 I'm actually against the breaking up of Facebook because even looking inside of just Facebook itself, not even Facebook and Instagram, you see the problems of engagement based ranking repeat themselves.

00:14:54.000 So the problems here are about the design of algorithms, of AI, and the idea that AI is not intelligent.

00:15:00.000 I also believe there needs to be a dedicated oversight body, because right now the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what's happening inside of Facebook, are people who, you know, grew up inside of Facebook or Pinterest or another social media company.

00:15:16.000 And there needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like this.

00:15:23.000 And have a place to work on things like regulation, to bring that information out to the oversight boards that have the right to do oversight.

00:15:32.000 What a self-sacrificial whistleblower!

00:15:34.000 She's literally saying, leave Facebook intact, leave it huge, leave it dominant, let it retain market share, and put me in charge of it.

00:15:42.000 Understand that's what she's saying.

00:15:43.000 She's saying there ought to be a regulatory home where someone like me, a quote-unquote whistleblower, can leave Facebook.

00:15:49.000 I was just a product manager, right?

00:15:50.000 They have thousands of product managers.

00:15:52.000 I could be a product manager, but instead of being a product manager, I'll be Mark Zuckerberg's boss.

00:15:56.000 Via the Democratic Party in a regulatory oversight body where I could work, right?

00:16:00.000 She literally says that.

00:16:01.000 She literally says I could leave Facebook and then I could move over to the regulatory side and then I could tell Mark Zuckerberg what to do.

00:16:08.000 Understand this is what Democrats want.

00:16:10.000 This is not about being anti-Facebook.

00:16:12.000 It's about being very pro-Facebook so long as Democrats can run it.

00:16:16.000 They don't like the idea of Facebook being independently run even though Facebook does a lot of the things Democrats want.

00:16:22.000 But this is the point.

00:16:23.000 This is true for business as well. 0.92

00:16:25.000 Democrats, when it comes to this sort of stuff, they are economically fascist.

00:16:32.000 Economic fascism is corporatism.

00:16:34.000 It's essentially the idea.

00:16:36.000 That the federal government should essentially control businesses top-down in a very detailed manner.

00:16:43.000 And that if these businesses work hand-in-glove with the government, then we leave them alone. 0.84

00:16:46.000 Everybody else who doesn't work with the government, those people are screwed.

00:16:48.000 But if you work with the government, we'll leave you alone, we'll let you retain your market share, but we will essentially control every aspect of how you run your business.

00:16:56.000 This sort of corporatist mentality is obviously on display here.

00:17:01.000 And it's why Democrats are pushing this.

00:17:02.000 There is nothing new.

00:17:04.000 She didn't say anything new.

00:17:05.000 Now, the way that Democrats have to justify taking control of Facebook is to claim that Facebook is quote-unquote promoting violence.

00:17:11.000 I remember there was an attempt to do this with Parler as well, which is why Amazon Web Services knocked Parler offline in the immediate aftermath of January 6th.

00:17:18.000 So, this Facebook whistleblower, Hogan, she says that Facebook is going to lead to genocide.

00:17:25.000 My fear is that without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning.

00:17:32.000 What we saw in Myanmar and are now seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it.

00:17:43.000 Congress can change the rules that Facebook plays by and stop the many harms it is now causing.

00:17:49.000 We now know the truth about Facebook's destructive impact. 0.60

00:17:54.000 Okay, this is just, I'm sorry, it's top-down censorious bullcrap.

00:17:59.000 It turns out that genocide and human polarization and people treating each other terribly has been a feature of human life since as long as human beings have been on planet Earth.

00:18:07.000 It is not Facebook, which is simply a place where people gather and talk with each other, that is causing polarization, or that is causing genocide.

00:18:14.000 It is people who do these things.

00:18:16.000 And her suggestion is, well, if we just controlled the distribution of information top down via the government, which has never been bad, right?

00:18:23.000 I mean, the government has never been used to polarize people.

00:18:26.000 The government would never ever seize control of the means of distribution of information and start promoting propaganda on behalf of one political party that affected how people vote and how people think.

00:18:35.000 They would never do that.

00:18:37.000 I mean, sure, they did it like in the last election, like the whole last month of the election when they just sort of downgraded all conservative traffic via social media, under pressure from Democrats, and also got rid of openly true stories like the Hunter Biden laptop story a month before the election.

00:18:49.000 But they would never do that.

00:18:51.000 These are the good people.

00:18:52.000 We have to stop Facebook.

00:18:53.000 We have to stop social media.

00:18:54.000 This is very reminiscent of the basic democratic argument that is often brought up that rights themselves are dangerous because rights can be abused.

00:19:01.000 Therefore, the government should get rid of the rights.

00:19:04.000 You see this with regard to, for example, hate speech laws that Democrats are constantly pushing.

00:19:09.000 The notion that hate speech must be policed, right?

00:19:12.000 Because some people could say bad things, therefore, the First Amendment ought to be curbed.

00:19:16.000 It's a very popular view on college campuses, and now it's being extended into the corporate sphere.

00:19:22.000 Now, as I say, it's not as though this lady is saying anything new.

00:19:26.000 She's not saying anything new.

00:19:28.000 According to Reason.com, And thanks to Hogan and the Wall Street Journal reporting, we know that Facebook attempted to survey teen users on how platforms were impacting their mental health.

00:19:37.000 Unsurprisingly, the findings were not entirely encouraging.

00:19:39.000 One in five respondents said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves.

00:19:43.000 Teens already struggling with mental illness said the platform was giving them a harder time.

00:19:47.000 But something like 40% said Instagram made them feel better about themselves.

00:19:52.000 Ostensibly, says Reason, the problem with Instagram is that it promotes social competition, the race for likes and comments among users posting artificial filtered images of themselves, which may exacerbate body image issues.

00:20:01.000 Of course, there's nothing new about this because glossy magazines have been doing this for literal decades.

00:20:07.000 The achievement here, as Reason says, is one of self-branding because Hogan did not tell us anything new about all of this.

00:20:13.000 Like anything.

00:20:14.000 As Mike Solana points out, quote, among teenagers in a state of mental crisis, how many are struggling with their family?

00:20:19.000 How many are struggling with their friend group or their crush?

00:20:21.000 How many are struggling in a classroom?

00:20:22.000 To the question of does high school make you want to kill yourself, how many suicidal teenagers would answer yes emphatically?

00:20:28.000 All of them?

00:20:29.000 Next question.

00:20:30.000 When are we dragging the Secretary of Education in front of Congress to explain why he hasn't solved depression?

00:20:36.000 Okay, again, this is really just a Trojan horse for an attempt to grab control.

00:20:40.000 That's all this is.

00:20:43.000 For his part, Mark Zuckerberg has responded.

00:20:46.000 He put up a Facebook post and he said that he found the criticisms non-compelling.

00:20:53.000 He said, quote, First, the SEV that took down all of our services yesterday was the worst outage that we've had in years.

00:20:59.000 He talked about the service outage that happened with regard to Facebook.

00:21:02.000 He says, second, now that today's testimony is over, I wanted to reflect on the public debate we're in.

00:21:06.000 I'm sure many of you have found the recent coverage hard to read because it doesn't reflect the company we know.

00:21:10.000 We care deeply about issues like safety, well-being, and mental health.

00:21:12.000 It's difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives.

00:21:16.000 At the most basic level, I think most of us just don't recognize the false picture of the company that's being painted.

00:21:20.000 Many of the claims don't make sense, says Zuckerberg.

00:21:22.000 If we wanted to ignore research, why would we create an industry-leading research program to understand these important issues in the first place?

00:21:28.000 If we didn't care about fighting harmful content, why would we employ so many more people dedicated to this than any other company in our space?

00:21:33.000 Even ones that are larger than we are?

00:21:35.000 If we wanted to hide our results, why would we have established an industry-leading standard for transparency and reporting?

00:21:40.000 And if social media were as responsible for polarizing society as some people claim, why are we still seeing polarization increase in the U.S.

00:21:46.000 while it stays flat or declines in many countries with just as heavy a use of social media Around the world.

00:21:52.000 We'll get to more of Mark Zuckerberg's response to the accusations of the quote-unquote fake whistleblower from Facebook in just one second.

00:21:59.000 First, let us talk about the benefits of cryptocurrency.

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00:23:27.000 Okay, so Zuckerberg is responding to the fake Facebook whistleblower.

00:23:31.000 He says...

00:23:32.000 At the heart of these accusations is the idea that we prioritize profit over safety and well-being.

00:23:36.000 That's just not true.

00:23:37.000 For example, one move that has been called into question is when we introduced the Meaningful Social Interactions change to News Feed.

00:23:42.000 This change showed fewer viral videos and more content from friends and family.

00:23:46.000 Which we did knowing it would mean people spent less time on Facebook.

00:23:49.000 But then research suggested it was the right thing for people's well-being.

00:23:52.000 Is that something a company focused on profits over people would do?

00:23:55.000 The argument we deliberately push content that makes people angry for profit is illogical.

00:23:59.000 We make money from ads.

00:24:00.000 Advertisers consistently tell us they don't want their ads next to harmful or angry content.

00:24:04.000 I don't know any tech company that sets out to build products that make people angry or depressed.

00:24:08.000 The moral business and product incentives all point in the opposite direction.

00:24:12.000 But of everything published, says Zuckerberg, I'm particularly focused on the questions raised about our work with kids.

00:24:16.000 I've spent a lot of time reflecting on the kinds of experiences I want my kids and others to have online, and it's very important to me everything we build is safe and good for kids.

00:24:23.000 The reality is young people use technology.

00:24:25.000 Think about how many school-age kids have phones.

00:24:27.000 Now listen, I actually believe that kids very often should not be given phones by their parents.

00:24:31.000 I don't plan on giving my kids any sort of phone with internet access until they basically hit 17, 18 years old.

00:24:36.000 But that's up to parents.

00:24:38.000 Rather than ignoring this, technology companies should build experiences that meet their needs while also keeping them safe, says Zuckerberg.

00:24:43.000 We're deeply committed to doing industry-leading work in this area.

00:24:46.000 A good example of this work is Messenger Kids, which is widely recognized as better and safer than the alternatives.

00:24:52.000 We've also worked on bringing this kind of age-appropriate experience with parental controls for Instagram as well.

00:24:57.000 But given questions about whether that would be better for kids, we've paused that project.

00:25:00.000 Like many of you, I found it difficult to read the mischaracterization of the research into how Instagram affects young people.

00:25:06.000 As we wrote in our newsroom post explaining this, the research actually demonstrated many teens we heard from feel using Instagram helps them when they are struggling with the kinds of hard moments and issues teenagers have always faced.

00:25:16.000 In fact, in 11 of 12 areas on the slide referenced by the Wall Street Journal, including areas like loneliness, anxiety, sadness, and eating issues, more teenage girls who said they struggled with that issue also said Instagram made those difficult times better rather than worse.

00:25:31.000 And then Zuckerberg makes a mistake.

00:25:33.000 He says that we should really let the government get involved.

00:25:35.000 It's similar to balancing other social issues.

00:25:38.000 I don't believe private companies should make all the decisions on their own.

00:25:40.000 That's why we have advocated for updated internet regulations for several years now.

00:25:43.000 I've testified in Congress multiple times.

00:25:45.000 I've asked them to update the regulations.

00:25:46.000 I've written op-eds outlining the areas of regulation we think are most important.

00:25:50.000 We're committed to doing the best work we can, but at some level, the right body to assess trade-offs between social equities is our democratically elected Congress.

00:25:57.000 And what I think Zuckerberg does not understand here is that the goal of the Democrats is never to actually regulate.

00:26:02.000 The goal is not to pass a law.

00:26:04.000 The goal is not to create some sort of standard by which Facebook can be held accountable.

00:26:08.000 The goal is to just control Facebook top down.

00:26:10.000 That is the goal.

00:26:12.000 The goal is to take the biggest companies in America.

00:26:14.000 Whether you're talking about just the pure corporate sector or whether you're talking about social media.

00:26:17.000 And to have Democrats control every aspect of how work works.

00:26:21.000 This is the reason why wokeness has infused corporations.

00:26:23.000 These corporations know that if they please Democrats, Democrats will pat them on the head and call them good little boys and girls and then give them cookies.

00:26:30.000 And when it comes to Facebook, it's not enough for Facebook to try and serve its governmental masters in the Democratic Party.

00:26:37.000 The Democrats understand that Facebook, being a place where billions of eyeballs are gathered, is a heavy threat to their dominance via legacy media.

00:26:46.000 That is the reason we are doing all of this.

00:26:48.000 If there were no Facebook news feed, the Democrats would not care about Facebook.

00:26:52.000 This would not be an issue.

00:26:54.000 The reason that the Democrats care about Facebook is because they want to control the news that you see.

00:26:58.000 They want to control the content you are able to access.

00:27:01.000 That is their goal.

00:27:02.000 It's why they're consistently putting pressure on these giant social media companies.

00:27:06.000 The news feed, by the way, represents a tiny slice of Facebook's actual profit.

00:27:12.000 I know this for a fact.

00:27:13.000 The amount of profit and revenue represented by the news feed from Facebook is minute compared to the other areas of revenue.

00:27:22.000 The vast majority of highly trafficked posts on Facebook have nothing to do with the news.

00:27:26.000 Many of them are like cat memes.

00:27:27.000 People sharing silly memes with their friends or ideas with their friends.

00:27:32.000 The reason the Democrats are focused in on the news feed is because that's what they care about.

00:27:36.000 And you can see this in how the media are ecstatic over all of this.

00:27:40.000 Robin Given, the senior critic at large for the Washington Post, has a piece today in the Washington Post titled, The Whistleblower Came to Advocate for Humans Over Algorithms.

00:27:49.000 Facebook needs to be less twitchy.

00:27:50.000 This digital monster that has taught the culture how to overreact and fly off the handle needs to be tamed, regulated, open it up, slow it down, make it more human.

00:27:59.000 A hard intervention is like taking a piece of content off Facebook, taking a user off Facebook.

00:28:03.000 Soft interventions are about making a slightly different choice.

00:28:05.000 To make the platform less viral, less twitchy, said Francis Hogan, the former Facebook employee who testified as a whistleblower.

00:28:13.000 Hogan came to offer testimony about the way in which Facebook's profit strategy makes young people's lives worse.

00:28:18.000 Okay, first of all, I just want to point something out.

00:28:20.000 Whenever people on the left talk about the evils of profit strategy, understand that human beings are driven by ambition.

00:28:26.000 They're driven by what is in their self-interest.

00:28:28.000 And whenever people on the left say profit is bad, profit of course being simply the marginal increase of value The risk that you took and that paid off with regard to giving a profit or with regard to giving a product or service to somebody else.

00:28:42.000 When they say profit is bad, the alternative is the government setting the rules.

00:28:45.000 What are the incentive structures there?

00:28:47.000 The incentive structures there are not about pleasing anybody else.

00:28:50.000 It's about pleasing core constituencies and not pleasing consumers, right?

00:28:55.000 If you seek to get rid of profit, what is going to be the actual driving factor in human behavior?

00:29:01.000 The actual driving factor in human behavior is going to be soft societal approval or levels of power and control that you can utilize over other human beings without having to answer to a feedback loop like the market.

00:29:11.000 The reason that profit motive is good is because it is a feedback loop where you learn what people want and what they don't.

00:29:18.000 The reason that the government is very bad at this stuff is because feedback loops do not exist for the government, particularly in the regulatory sphere.

00:29:24.000 At least you can make the argument that if a legislator does something bad, people can get rid of the legislator.

00:29:29.000 This is not true in the regulatory sphere.

00:29:30.000 So when you hear people ripping on profit motive at Facebook, understand that the alternative is to have governmental actors who are not answerable to you, controlling major areas of your life for their own power and glorification.

00:29:41.000 That is the alternative.

00:29:43.000 And that's exactly what the Washington Post would like.

00:29:46.000 Facebook's technology encourages some of our worst and most dangerous tendencies, says this columnist for the Washington Post.

00:29:52.000 For any senator who wanted to argue that the world would be a better place if Facebook had a smaller footprint, Hogan disagreed.

00:29:58.000 Hogan essentially shrugged off the concern that conservative views were being downgraded, saying that this was a digression.

00:30:06.000 Of course, because Hogan doesn't want conservative views.

00:30:08.000 She doesn't want more speech.

00:30:10.000 She wants less speech.

00:30:11.000 She wants Democrats to control your speech. 1.00

00:30:15.000 The goal here is to prevent people from actually coordinating with one another and talking with one another.

00:30:19.000 This is why Anderson Cooper was gushing on CNN.

00:30:21.000 The overwhelming media love for this whistleblower should be telling you something.

00:30:27.000 Maybe it should be telling you something about self-interest.

00:30:31.000 Facebook likes to say it was built to bring people together.

00:30:34.000 It literally uses those words in promotional material.

00:30:37.000 Well, today it did bring people together.

00:30:39.000 For the first time in a long time, Democratic and Republican members of a Senate Commerce Subcommittee were together, united in their praise of whistleblower Frances Haugen.

00:30:47.000 Now, as you know, she's the former Facebook product manager who leaked tens of thousands of pages of internal documents indicating that Facebook knows the harm that they and Instagram can do But chooses to put clicks, eyeballs, and ad sales ahead of fixing the problem.

00:31:04.000 Okay, but there's no way to fix the problem.

00:31:06.000 This is the point that Zuckerberg has made.

00:31:07.000 What problem are you trying to fix?

00:31:09.000 And how would a regulation fix it?

00:31:10.000 No one has proposed anything other than Francis Haugen saying, I should run Fa- literally saying, I should run Facebook.

00:31:16.000 Hey, that's what it comes down to.

00:31:17.000 And the reason that I'm very passionate about this is because I prefer open platforms.

00:31:21.000 My criticism of Facebook is they haven't allowed enough control by the user.

00:31:24.000 They've allowed too much control by the people at the top of Facebook in terms of nudging you.

00:31:30.000 Francis Haugen wants the government to nudge you via the use of Facebook.

00:31:33.000 That is the goal here and the media are into it.

00:31:35.000 They're into it wholeheartedly because they want their monopoly reestablished.

00:31:39.000 This is a selfish plan on part of the media.

00:31:41.000 This is not an unselfish attempt to protect teenage girls.

00:31:43.000 That's not what the media are into.

00:31:44.000 That is not what they care about.

00:31:45.000 What they care about is preventing the dissemination of information that the media oppose.

00:31:50.000 And by the way, the reason that the media, this is a problem of the media's own creation.

00:31:54.000 If they wanted to reestablish faith with the American public, they could stop being dishonest jackasses, but they're not going to stop doing that.

00:31:59.000 So instead, they're going to try and seize control of, again, how you get your news. 0.91

00:32:03.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:33:39.000 Okay, so as I say, the media are fully invested in the bull crap Facebook whistleblower who's not blowing the whistle on anything because they want to leverage their power For control on behalf of Democrats. 0.80

00:33:51.000 That's why you have Alison Camerata who's berating the Facebook employees saying, you allowed the big lie to proliferate. 0.99

00:33:58.000 You allowed it to proliferate.

00:33:59.000 What do you mean you allowed it to proliferate?

00:34:01.000 It's an open platform.

00:34:02.000 Facebook is not responsible for third-party content that's posted on Facebook.

00:34:05.000 That's literally the entire principle of Facebook existing.

00:34:07.000 But according to Alison Camerata, it is Facebook's problem and Facebook's fault if people disagree on election fraud.

00:34:15.000 What about democracy?

00:34:16.000 Does Facebook take any responsibility for what happened on January 6th since it allowed the big election lie propagated by Donald Trump to proliferate on the site?

00:34:28.000 The responsibility for January 6th, I can't be more clear about this than to say the responsibility for January 6th lies with those who broke the law and those in politics and elsewhere who incited them.

00:34:41.000 Okay, the Facebook spokesperson is exactly right.

00:34:45.000 Her name is Bickert.

00:34:46.000 She's exactly correct.

00:34:47.000 But has anyone ever asked CNN, does CNN bear responsibility for the riots that happened last summer when they were allowing the big lie that police across the country are systemically racist to not only proliferate, but fill their news waves for day after day after day, for year after year actually?

00:35:02.000 Does CNN bear responsibility for that?

00:35:04.000 Should we regulate CNN on that?

00:35:05.000 And CNN, by the way, is an editorial, it's an editorial company.

00:35:09.000 Now imagine that CNN weren't an editorial company or just a bunch of people posting stuff.

00:35:14.000 Would they be responsible?

00:35:15.000 Is AT&T responsible for January 6th?

00:35:18.000 Because some people use the phone to talk to each other.

00:35:21.000 The goal here is to take control.

00:35:23.000 It is about control.

00:35:24.000 It is always about control.

00:35:26.000 That's why you have Senator Ed Markey.

00:35:28.000 Who is an out-and-out totalitarian when it comes to governmental control of business.

00:35:33.000 Talking to Francis Haugen and openly threatening Mark Zuckerberg.

00:35:38.000 Here's my message for Mark Zuckerberg.

00:35:41.000 Your time of invading our privacy, promoting toxic content, and preying on children and teens is over.

00:35:51.000 Congress will be taking action.

00:35:54.000 You can work with us or not work with us.

00:35:58.000 But we will not allow your company to harm our children and our families and our democracy any longer.

00:36:07.000 Okay, notice what he says.

00:36:08.000 Our children, our family, and our democracies.

00:36:10.000 First of all, parents have the ability to turn off Facebook and Instagram.

00:36:14.000 Our families.

00:36:15.000 Parents have the ability.

00:36:16.000 Like, this is a parental thing.

00:36:18.000 And then, when it comes to our democracy, this is what Markey's talking about.

00:36:21.000 What harms the democracy, according to Ed Markey, is the First Amendment.

00:36:24.000 What harms the democracy is your ability to access sites like The Daily Wire via the Facebook News Feed.

00:36:30.000 All of this is just a cover.

00:36:31.000 It is all just a BS cover for the actual seizure of power.

00:36:35.000 David Cicilline, the representative from Louisiana, he's openly saying that Facebook needs to turn over its algorithms to the federal government now.

00:36:44.000 If Facebook comes up with a proprietary algorithm that enhances their business capabilities, they don't seem to think they have to share that.

00:36:53.000 How do you make them share that?

00:36:56.000 Well, I mean, there's a number of ways you can require algorithmic audits to be sure they're doing what they claim they do.

00:37:02.000 You can require greater transparency for algorithms.

00:37:05.000 You can, you know, permit agent and agency responsible looking at their practices, either its impact on competition, or on fairness to consumers are two obvious places.

00:37:15.000 Okay, under what rubric would you seize their algorithms?

00:37:21.000 Really under what rubric?

00:37:24.000 I know of very few other situations in American life where you are simply supposed to turn over your confidential business information to the federal government so they can oversee you.

00:37:34.000 Not because you're like flying an airplane around and you need to demonstrate that the airplane is going to fly to the FAA, but because you're just a business operating.

00:37:43.000 The point here is that you cannot demand that corporations turn over all confidential business information under the open acknowledgement that you are attempting to violate the First Amendment.

00:37:53.000 That's a wild thing to do.

00:37:55.000 But that's exactly what they want.

00:37:56.000 That is the goal here.

00:37:57.000 Why?

00:37:57.000 So they can reestablish that monopoly.

00:37:59.000 So they can continue to push forward their actual agenda.

00:38:02.000 It's always Agenda Uber Alice.

00:38:03.000 We'll get to what that agenda is these days in just one moment.

00:38:06.000 First, let's talk about Grand Canyon University.

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00:38:18.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is proud to be sponsored by Grand Canyon University.

00:38:21.000 It's an affordable Christian university, one of the largest, fastest growing universities in the country.

00:38:25.000 It's located in sunny Phoenix, Arizona.

00:38:27.000 GCU is ranked top 20 for best college campuses in America.

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00:39:11.000 Alrighty, in just one second, we'll get to the democratic agenda being pushed by the media right now.

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00:39:46.000 Now, the reason that the Democrats in the media want to reestablish the oligopoly in terms of informational dissemination is twofold.

00:39:57.000 One for the media, market base.

00:40:00.000 They would love control.

00:40:01.000 They would love to maintain their former levels of control because as the media space fragments and as people start to view podcasts like this one, or start to listen to shows like this one, or start to access the Daily Wire, that means less control over how you get your news and less money for them.

00:40:16.000 And they actually want their narrative to win.

00:40:18.000 And that narrative is so often at odds with reality that the only way their narrative can win is to shut down the dissemination of the opposing narrative.

00:40:25.000 So, for example, you've been hearing that Joe Biden is still in control of things.

00:40:27.000 I'm sorry, Joe Biden is not with us.

00:40:29.000 He has not been with us for a very long time.

00:40:31.000 For like a year, you were told that if you ever questioned Joe Biden's mental health, it was because there was something wrong with you.

00:40:35.000 Okay, Joe Biden is not even speaking English anymore.

00:40:38.000 He is not Englishing. 0.96

00:40:39.000 Hey, Joe Biden is not with us.

00:40:41.000 Again, this is like the middle of the day, guys.

00:40:41.000 Here is Joe Biden.

00:40:43.000 This isn't 7 p.m.

00:40:44.000 after he's had a long day, hard at work in the Oval Office or something.

00:40:48.000 This is like 2.50 p.m.

00:40:50.000 Central Time yesterday, and the man is slurring his words and walking into things.

00:40:55.000 When you build a charging station, it's like back in the day when my grandpa worked for the Maryland Granola Company back in the 1920s in that area.

00:41:04.000 They went from state to state convincing people that they allowed them to put 20,000 gallons of gasoline under the ground.

00:41:12.000 They didn't want them around.

00:41:15.000 I'm sorry, this is embarrassing.

00:41:17.000 It is.

00:41:18.000 You should be embarrassed as an American by this.

00:41:20.000 I know there are a lot of people who are embarrassed by how Trump talked.

00:41:22.000 Trump actually completed sentences sometimes.

00:41:25.000 Joe Biden... I never thought that I would be favorably comparing Donald Trump's rhetorical prowess with a future president, but that's...

00:41:32.000 I mean, it's like they play Hail to the Chief.

00:41:37.000 President Joseph R. Biden. 0.99

00:41:39.000 What in the hell? 0.99

00:41:48.000 What in the hell? 0.98

00:41:50.000 It didn't stop there, by the way. 0.98

00:41:51.000 The babbling just continues.

00:41:52.000 It feels like you are walking the halls of an insane asylum at this point.

00:41:57.000 They believe they'll win.

00:42:01.000 They'll win today.

00:42:02.000 And they can dictate their way forward and leave us behind.

00:42:05.000 They're betting, not a joke.

00:42:07.000 They're betting for the first time we won't respond to this inflection point in history.

00:42:12.000 And we'll fail to rise to the occasion.

00:42:15.000 But you've heard me say it a lot of times.

00:42:17.000 It's never, ever been a good bet to bet against the American people.

00:42:22.000 Never.

00:42:24.000 It's never been a gamba-doobly-sam-chim-goobly-sam.

00:42:29.000 Here's the thing the American people see through Biden. 0.99

00:42:32.000 His poll numbers suck. 1.00

00:42:33.000 They suck for a reason. 0.99

00:42:34.000 According to Politico, Democrats who were hoping that the monthly $300 per-child checks the federal government started sending to families over the summer would be a winner in the midterms, they won't like the findings of the latest Morning Consult poll. 0.98

00:42:44.000 Fewer than half of respondents, 47%, gave Congressional Democrats any credit for providing the extra cash.

00:42:49.000 Even fewer, 38%, credited Joe Biden.

00:42:52.000 While half of registered voters support the expanded payments versus 38% in opposition, only 35% want to make them permanent, which is what Democrats are trying at the moment.

00:43:00.000 Democrats just want to cram down the idea that they will give you free money and that you will love it.

00:43:04.000 You will love the free money that they are cramming down upon you.

00:43:08.000 And in order to justify spending all of this money, of course, they're going to claim that the Republicans are obstructionists because Republicans won't voluntarily raise the debt ceiling.

00:43:16.000 Here's the thing.

00:43:17.000 The debt ceiling is a way to pry concessions as far as future spending plans out of the hands of Democrats.

00:43:25.000 That is the goal here.

00:43:26.000 That is what Republicans are trying to do.

00:43:27.000 They're saying, listen, we understand you're trying to pay off the current credit card bill.

00:43:30.000 Also, we are not going to extend you a further line of credit unless you decide that you're going to restructure how you approach the economy as a whole.

00:43:39.000 But Democrats don't want to do that. 0.91

00:43:40.000 And here's the thing.

00:43:41.000 Democrats don't even want to be held accountable on all of this.

00:43:44.000 So Joe Biden is fulminating over the debt ceiling.

00:43:48.000 We're supposed to hit the debt ceiling in a couple of weeks.

00:43:50.000 Democrats have every ability today to pass a debt ceiling bill.

00:43:54.000 They can do it literally today.

00:43:57.000 And they can do what is called a vote-a-rama.

00:43:59.000 And they can do it today.

00:44:00.000 But Joe Biden is trying to blame this on Republicans.

00:44:03.000 He's saying that it's Trump.

00:44:04.000 Well, you know, the big problem here is that Trump was a big spender.

00:44:06.000 As I recall, all of the spending done last year was a bipartisan affair, including Democrats.

00:44:10.000 All of the spending done this year was a completely partisan affair with not a single Republican vote, so far as I'm aware.

00:44:15.000 Here is Joe Biden here ripping on Trump.

00:44:18.000 The reason we have to raise the debt limit is in part because of the reckless tax and spending policies under the previous Trump administration.

00:44:27.000 In four years, they incurred nearly $8 trillion.

00:44:33.000 In four years, $8 trillion in additional debt and bills we have to now pay off.

00:44:41.000 That's more than a quarter of the entire debt incurred now outstanding after more than 200 years.

00:44:48.000 Okay.

00:44:49.000 And then Biden continues along these lines and gets catastrophic.

00:44:51.000 Well, it's going to be, it's going to be the end of the subject.

00:44:55.000 Here we go.

00:44:57.000 Not only are Republicans refusing to do their job, They're threatening to reuse the power, their power, to prevent us from doing our job, saving the economy from a catastrophic event. 0.97

00:45:10.000 I think quite frankly, it's hypocritical, dangerous, and disgraceful. 0.96

00:45:14.000 Their obstruction and irresponsibility knows absolutely no bounds. 0.95

00:45:19.000 Excuse me, especially as we're clawing our way out of this pandemic.

00:45:25.000 And then he finishes up by saying, if you don't want to save the country, get the hell out of the way, because there's nothing that says bipartisanship quite like that.

00:45:32.000 Meteor is headed to crash into our economy.

00:45:36.000 Democrats are willing to do all the work stopping it.

00:45:40.000 Republicans just have to let us do our job.

00:45:43.000 Just get out of the way. 0.64

00:45:45.000 You don't want to help save the country?

00:45:47.000 Get out of the way so you don't destroy it.

00:45:49.000 Okay, they aren't in the way.

00:45:51.000 Democrats can pass a debt ceiling relief bill any single, anytime they want.

00:45:56.000 They have 50 votes.

00:45:57.000 They can do it via reconciliation.

00:45:59.000 Joe Biden doesn't want to do that because that would involve a quote-unquote voterama.

00:46:01.000 Okay, voterama is where the Democrats have to vote on a bunch of separate issues, and they all have to be on the record voting for those separate issues.

00:46:07.000 Biden doesn't want them on the record, so he's angry at Republicans.

00:46:10.000 That's all this is.

00:46:11.000 The media would love to be able to cram down narratives like that one without anybody being any the wiser.

00:46:18.000 That is the end goal here. 0.99

00:46:20.000 OK, speaking of the generalized Joe Biden policy on the economy, the Democrats are at this point talking about just ridiculous crap. 0.95

00:46:28.000 So the debt ceiling is scheduled.

00:46:30.000 Again, Democrats, anytime they want, can do what is called a voterama and they can vote through a debt ceiling provision.

00:46:36.000 Simply, by majority vote, through reconciliation.

00:46:38.000 They do not need a single Republican vote to pass reconciliation at this point.

00:46:41.000 That's it. 0.95

00:46:42.000 Okay, but instead, they are now considering, just to avoid the culpability of having to vote on a bunch of single issues at the Senate level, and then hold those Senators to account, to avoid all of that, the Democrats are now apparently contemplating the stupidity of minting a trillion dollar platinum coin, according to Axios. 0.68

00:47:01.000 A trillion dollar platinum coin could be minted within hours of the Treasury Secretary's decision to do so, says Philip Deal, former director of the U.S. 0.68

00:47:07.000 Mint.

00:47:08.000 Congressional solutions to the debt ceiling problem could take weeks to implement, especially if reconciliation is used.

00:47:13.000 And time is running out.

00:47:14.000 Well, then you guys better get on it, shouldn't you?

00:47:16.000 In case of emergency, a trillion dollar coin could be deployed to bridge any gap between the money running out and the debt ceiling being raised.

00:47:23.000 The U.S.

00:47:23.000 Mint already produces a one-ounce platinum eagle and has no shortage of platinum blanks already in stock.

00:47:29.000 So first of all, I'm just looking forward to the Netflix film about the ragtag group of diverse criminals who steal the one trillion dollar Fed coin that has now been created in order to pay off our ballooning national debt. 1.00

00:47:42.000 Apparently, a coin could be struck in minutes at the West Point Mint, and then it would be physically deposited at the New York Fed.

00:47:48.000 And voila! 1.00

00:47:49.000 You have bought yourself the equivalent of a trillion dollar increase in the debt limit without any impact on inflation.

00:47:53.000 Well, I mean, there is some impact on inflation, considering that when you start minting coins in order to pay off the debt, which is what you're talking about right here, The idea being that we'll backfill all of this later and then take the $1 trillion coin out of circulation. When you start doing that, you are leading the way to what if we just print more money? What if we actually just physically print more money?

00:48:12.000 That's clearly why people have been hesitant to do this in the past. But according to the Democrats, the real idea here should be to get rid of the debt limit entirely. Entirely. Here's James Clyburn making that case.

00:48:24.000 We have some arcade rules that we need to just get rid of.

00:48:28.000 This debt limit business is arcade and needs to be thrown to the trash pile.

00:48:36.000 OK, it needs to be thrown in the trash pile.

00:48:38.000 We want to have to remember the way that it used to be is that Congress actually had to appropriate specific funds.

00:48:43.000 Congress had to tell the federal government exactly what debt instruments they had to use.

00:48:47.000 This was the case from about 1787 all the way through about 1910.

00:48:52.000 And then during World War One, there were these sort of blanket Abilities for the federal government to take out debt.

00:48:58.000 And then in the 1970s, there was an attempt to effectively get rid of the debt ceiling by saying anytime Congress appropriated funding that would give the federal treasury the ability to take out debt.

00:49:08.000 And then that was walked back in the 1990s.

00:49:11.000 That's what the Democrats would like back.

00:49:12.000 They would like the idea to be that we never have to think about the debt ever, ever, ever.

00:49:15.000 It just automatically increases the ability of the federal government to borrow.

00:49:19.000 And then they wonder why people are worried about inflation.

00:49:22.000 Janet Yellen, again, it is incredible, and it says something about how our financial system works, that people move directly from the so-called independent Federal Reserve directly over to heading the Treasury Department for Joe Biden without any gap, and they promote exactly the same policy.

00:49:37.000 We're going to pretend that's not political in any way?

00:49:41.000 Here is Janet Yellen saying that inflation is transitory, but also it's not going to go away soon, which is not the definition of transitory.

00:49:48.000 Supply bottlenecks have developed that have caused inflation.

00:49:53.000 I believe that they're transitory, but that doesn't mean they'll go away over the next several months.

00:50:02.000 Oh, well, if it goes away, then... But it's also not... It's kind of transitory, but not... Also, she wants more control over how you do your finances. 0.97

00:50:10.000 So the Democrats have been proposing an IRS rule that would require all banks to report all transactions over $600.

00:50:15.000 So that the IRS can spy on everything you do.

00:50:18.000 They're not talking about $10,000.

00:50:19.000 They're not talking about $10,000, not $5,000, not $600.

00:50:19.000 Not $5,000.

00:50:19.000 That's $600.

00:50:24.000 You're talking about like taking out cash for a couple of nights at a hotel.

00:50:28.000 Here's Janet Yellen saying that the IRS should be empowered to audit basically every transaction you do automatically.

00:50:36.000 Banks will automatically be forced to report all transactions over $600.

00:50:41.000 Because regulators should control your life.

00:50:44.000 They should.

00:50:46.000 A simple way for the IRS to get a sense of where that might be is just a few pieces of information about individuals' bank accounts.

00:50:58.000 Nothing at the transaction level that would violate privacy.

00:51:02.000 Simply aggregate inflows into the account over the year and aggregate outflows.

00:51:07.000 Oh, okay.

00:51:10.000 Great.

00:51:11.000 Just the IRS should have more control.

00:51:11.000 Great.

00:51:14.000 All of this is about more control top down, and this is why they have to maintain the supremacy of informational dissemination.

00:51:20.000 If that goes away, they got a real problem on their hands.

00:51:22.000 Okay, meanwhile, Democrats have begun to narrow their differences on Biden's social spending bill.

00:51:26.000 As I predicted, this thing is not going to go down to flaming defeat.

00:51:28.000 Eventually, it will end up in the $2 trillion area.

00:51:31.000 According to the Washington Post, Democrats in a flurry of private talks are beginning to narrow their differences over the size of Biden's sweeping safety net bill.

00:51:38.000 As liberals signal, they are open to sizable concessions on the scope of what could be the most far-reaching social legislation in years.

00:51:44.000 I mean, guys, stop tubing all over the place.

00:51:46.000 That's some serious journalism.

00:51:47.000 Hot, hot, sticky journalism.

00:51:49.000 Most far-reaching social legislation in years.

00:51:52.000 The discussions, which remain highly fluid, suggest that Democratic leaders are pushing to move beyond a series of angry intraparty standoffs and focus instead on whether they can coalesce around a scaled-down package.

00:52:02.000 In a virtual meeting with a dozen liberal Democrats on Monday, Biden suggested a package in the range of $1.9 trillion to $2.2 trillion for the safety net bill, significantly lower than the original $3.5 trillion.

00:52:12.000 Still a massive bill.

00:52:15.000 Pramila Jayapal countered with a range of $2.5 trillion to $2.9 trillion, according to three of those people.

00:52:21.000 Biden signaled another potential compromise when asked by reporters whether he would sign the bill if it included the Hyde Amendment, a provision banning the use of federal funds for abortion.

00:52:29.000 That is a rider that is attached to pretty much every federal bill.

00:52:32.000 And Biden said, yeah, yeah, I'll still sign that, which is fun since last year he said he opposed the Hyde Amendment.

00:52:38.000 Biden is also attempting to tell people how important this bill is when we are in the middle of an inflationary spiral and we are paying people to stay out of work and there are 10 million open jobs in the country right now.

00:52:49.000 And Democrats are a little bit damned if they do damned if they don't hear.

00:52:52.000 If they don't do it, then they are incapable of getting anything done. 0.60

00:52:54.000 And if they do do it, then they are going to end up with a bill that is going to provide just a field day for Republicans ripping on how Democrats spend your money. 1.00

00:53:04.000 So there's only one way that you can get through that.

00:53:06.000 The only way, there's no way out but through for the Democrats, and that is they just have to keep talking.

00:53:09.000 They have to keep talking, they have to fill the airwaves, and they have to prevent anybody from speaking back against them.

00:53:14.000 Okay, this is true in the area of fiscal responsibility.

00:53:17.000 It's also true in the area of science.

00:53:20.000 It is just a continuing incredible thing to me how the scientific establishment has been completely perverted by a desire for social justice nonsense.

00:53:32.000 So yesterday, there was a meme that was going around.

00:53:32.000 It's insane.

00:53:34.000 It wasn't even a meme.

00:53:35.000 It was a thing from Healthline, right?

00:53:36.000 Healthline is a medical website.

00:53:38.000 And here's what Healthline is now saying.

00:53:40.000 It's under Parenthood at Pregnancy.

00:53:41.000 Can men get pregnant? 1.00

00:53:44.000 Is it possible?

00:53:45.000 Yes, according to Healthline.

00:53:47.000 It's possible for men to become pregnant and give birth to children of their own.

00:53:51.000 In fact, it's probably a lot more common than you might think.

00:53:54.000 In order to explain, we'll need to break down some common misconceptions about how we understand the term man.

00:54:01.000 Uh, so, um, no we don't.

00:54:05.000 You mean the misconception that's been held by all of humanity since the dawn of time?

00:54:09.000 Because human species is a sexually dichotomous species?

00:54:14.000 That is the basis for all human reproduction?

00:54:17.000 I mean, if men can get pregnant, I will say that the birthing process via the urethra is going to be extraordinarily painful.

00:54:25.000 You think it's bad through the vaginal canal?

00:54:26.000 Try it through the urethra.

00:54:28.000 Um, no, men cannot get pregnant, but our scientific experts are now telling us so. 0.97

00:54:33.000 The only way that you can promote garbage is, again, to hold an informational monopoly. 0.89

00:54:37.000 That is the only way that you can do it.

00:54:39.000 And that's how you end up with this insane situation with Sonic.

00:54:42.000 So, there's this insane story that made the rounds yesterday.

00:54:46.000 Again, this just demonstrates, it demonstrates at full scale how crazy our society has become.

00:54:52.000 There is a recent viral video of a trans woman in a heated conversation with a Sonic employee, and it sparked a debate about gender identity and transphobia.

00:55:00.000 Here is the video. 1.00

00:55:01.000 And then Sonic said they would investigate because everyone is a damned coward. 1.00

00:55:05.000 Here is the video. 0.99

00:55:07.000 Okay, but your entire staff has been calling me, sir, the entire time.

00:55:12.000 Okay.

00:55:13.000 What about me looks like a sir right now?

00:55:16.000 If they call you a sir, I don't know why they did that.

00:55:19.000 Because they saw the name on my credit card and they were not being nice people.

00:55:24.000 Well, I mean, they saw your name on the credit card.

00:55:27.000 What do you want them to tell you?

00:55:30.000 That has nothing to do with it.

00:55:32.000 There could be someone in the back that they don't see.

00:55:36.000 That's paying!

00:55:37.000 Okay, ma'am.

00:55:38.000 So why would they intentionally do that?

00:55:40.000 Can you tell me what your location has done to be transcompetent?

00:55:44.000 Because clearly they are not.

00:55:48.000 Okay, so the entire video is about a person who is complaining.

00:55:54.000 Because this person's credit card apparently has a male name on it, and people called the person sir.

00:56:00.000 And then this person got angry.

00:56:03.000 Satora says I demand to be given respect when it comes to my gender identity.

00:56:06.000 I refuse to let a cisgender, heteronormative world dominate my existence. 0.99

00:56:09.000 I and any other trans person fighting for trans liberation is doing so to make the world a more inclusive and equitable world for us.

00:56:16.000 As my friend Lola famously said, We aren't working with a broken system.

00:56:19.000 We're working with a system that was never in place for trans and gender expansive humans.

00:56:23.000 I don't want this Sonic manager fired.

00:56:24.000 That would do no good.

00:56:25.000 He would be transphobic the next place he works.

00:56:27.000 He deserves the chance to leave.

00:56:29.000 I want all businesses to hire trans-led organizations to teach their employees how to respect all humans.

00:56:34.000 So Sonic immediately looked into this and started thinking about whether they ought to fire this person for the great crime of pointing out that perhaps the employees were terming this person sir because the person's credit card had a male name on it.

00:56:48.000 It's just, it's unbelievable.

00:56:51.000 Okay, and at one point, the employee asks, so what are you?

00:56:54.000 Can I call you sir or ma'am?

00:56:56.000 And Taurus says, what would you assume looking at me?

00:56:58.000 And the Sonic employee answers, I assume you're a man.

00:57:02.000 And that's when Taurus turned the camera to face himself, displaying pink lipstick, long hair, and cat eye frames, and said, thank you, whatever, and drove away.

00:57:10.000 Okay, well, if you ask somebody whether they appear to be a man or a woman, and then they give you an honest answer, that is not transphobia if you are a man.

00:57:18.000 I'm sorry, it isn't.

00:57:19.000 You're a biological man. 0.97

00:57:20.000 But again, the only way that you can promote this sort of crap, and then you can do it to corporations, and then you can do it to the entire society, is by essentially monopolizing the conversation. 0.98

00:57:31.000 I keep focusing on it because it's so important. 0.95

00:57:33.000 The monopoly on the conversation is everything to the left.

00:57:35.000 If they lose the monopoly on conversation, they lose the conversation.

00:57:39.000 They know it.

00:57:39.000 We all know it.

00:57:41.000 That's what's behind the Facebook crackdown.

00:57:43.000 It's what is behind the corporate woke pressure.

00:57:45.000 It is all about monopolizing the conversation and shutting down dissent.

00:57:48.000 That's what it's about in the end.

00:57:49.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.

00:57:51.000 In the meantime, go check out The Michael Moller Show.

00:57:53.000 That is available right now.

00:57:54.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:57:55.000 Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:58:04.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

00:58:06.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:58:08.000 Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky.

00:58:10.000 Associate Producer Bradford Carrington.

00:58:12.000 Host Producer Justin Barber.

00:58:14.000 The show is edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:58:16.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:58:17.000 Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.

00:58:19.000 Production Assistant Jessica Kranz.

00:58:21.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:58:24.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2021.

00:58:27.000 An Australian state has citizens sending selfies to the government to prove they haven't left their homes.

00:58:32.000 The CDC floats another virtual Thanksgiving, quote-unquote.

00:58:35.000 And most millionaires don't want to leave money to their lazy kids. 0.64

00:58:39.000 I don't blame them.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 06, 2021

The Leftist Quest To Seize Control Of Facebook | Ep. 1348

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