The Ben Shapiro Show - The Media Goes Hogg Wild | Ep. 506

00:00:00.000 Parkland survivor David Hogg gets the royal treatment from CNN, social media stocks take a tumble, and President Trump attacks Amazon.com.

00:00:08.000 So that's awesome.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:15.000 We're good to go.

00:00:38.000 Countless five star reviews and a plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.

00:00:41.000 Right now, you can contact Birch Gold Group and request a free information kit on physical precious metals.

00:00:46.000 It's a comprehensive 16 page kit that shows how gold and silver can protect your savings and how you can legally move your IRA or 401k out of stocks and bonds.

00:00:54.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:01:09.000 I do have some money in bonds, but I also have some money in precious metals.

00:01:12.000 And the folks over at Birchgold, they are top of the industry for a reason.

00:01:16.000 And the reason is people trust them.

00:01:18.000 Again, they have all those five-star ratings from people.

00:01:20.000 I've worked with them.

00:01:20.000 They're folks that I trust.

00:01:21.000 Check out birchgold.com slash ben.

00:01:23.000 Birchgold.com slash ben.

00:01:24.000 Get that comprehensive free 16-page kit on gold and silver.

00:01:27.000 Ask all your questions and then invest with my friends over at Birchgold when you're ready to do some precious metals investing.

00:01:32.000 Okay.

00:01:33.000 The fallout over the Parkland shooting continues, and the fallout from the media continues.

00:01:39.000 So, we've been told this story, which is that all the Parkland survivors have innate moral authority and can speak on any issue without any criticism.

00:01:46.000 Now, I have said over and over and over on this program, listen to every episode since Parkland, I've said these kids have a right to speak out.

00:01:52.000 Of course they have a right to speak out.

00:01:53.000 This is America.

00:01:54.000 When I was 17 years old, I had a syndicated columnist.

00:01:56.000 But this comes with a caveat.

00:01:58.000 The caveat is you will get criticized.

00:02:00.000 People will criticize you.

00:02:01.000 People will pick apart what you are saying publicly, especially when you're the type of person who goes on national television and suggests that all those who disagree with you are actually akin to child murderers.

00:02:10.000 If you do that, it turns out people get pissed off.

00:02:13.000 But the media have decided that any criticism of these kids whatsoever

00:02:17.000 Not their right to speak, not their expertise, right?

00:02:20.000 If you criticize the stuff they are saying, if you say what they are saying is wrong, or if you say, I don't think that they are conducting themselves properly publicly, if you say that sort of stuff, then you are a hater, then you are brutal, then you are doing something terrible.

00:02:33.000 I don't understand why this should be the case.

00:02:35.000 Really, in public life, everyone gets criticized.

00:02:38.000 It's part of the way this works.

00:02:39.000 And when you're speaking on issues of deep public importance, fundamental issues to American liberty, and frankly, human liberty, like should you have the right to keep and bear arms, then passions are going to run high.

00:02:49.000 And not only are passions going to run high, people have not only every right, but every responsibility to speak out against perspectives that they think are bad.

00:02:56.000 And I think a lot of what these kids have been saying is wrong, non-factual.

00:03:00.000 I think some of what they've been saying is immoral when they suggest that Marco Rubio is akin to the shooter in Parkland. 0.89

00:03:06.000 And when they say that Dana Lash is a murderer with blood on her hands, this stuff is disgusting.

00:03:10.000 And I have, not only do I have every right, I have every moral obligation to speak up against it because it's gross.

00:03:14.000 But that's not how the media have treated this.

00:03:16.000 So CNN tweeted this out about David Hogg.

00:03:18.000 David Hogg is, of course, the guy who's probably become the most famous of these Parkland survivors.

00:03:23.000 Emma Gonzales is the other one who's really gained a lot of credibility.

00:03:25.000 She's very good at media.

00:03:26.000 Emma Gonzales, I think, really knows how to handle herself. 1.00

00:03:28.000 David Hogg, not so much.

00:03:30.000 He thinks that the sort of Che Guevara attitude, the fist in the air thing that you're seeing here, is what's going to win the day, that anger wins the day.

00:03:37.000 Emma Gonzales understands that anger doesn't win the day. 1.00

00:03:39.000 She's much better at this than David Hogg, just from a purely political point of view.

00:03:42.000 If you're going to pick one of those two people to run for office, there's no doubt in my mind you run Emma Gonzales, not David Hogg. 0.74

00:03:48.000 The media have decided that David Hogg's voice is deeply important and that he should be booked on every show.

00:03:52.000 So he's been on CNN a thousand times at this point.

00:03:55.000 And this is what CNN tweeted out yesterday, quote, a brief history of how Parkland survivor David Hogg keeps schooling lawmakers on social media.

00:04:03.000 Yeah, that sounds like objective journalism to me.

00:04:05.000 We here at The Daily Wire, we're not objective.

00:04:07.000 So when we say that somebody is schooling somebody else, you can assume that we're conservative.

00:04:10.000 And we're saying that a conservative is schooling a leftist.

00:04:12.000 Why?

00:04:12.000 Because we are a conservative website.

00:04:14.000 And we make that obvious and known.

00:04:16.000 But CNN is supposed to be objective.

00:04:18.000 Does that sound like an objective headline to you?

00:04:20.000 A brief history of how Parkland survivor David Hogg keeps schooling lawmakers on social media?

00:04:24.000 Of course not.

00:04:25.000 Well, the big controversy that's broken out over David Hogg in the last 24 hours concerns Laura Ingraham.

00:04:29.000 So, Laura retweeted a piece that was on our website.

00:04:32.000 The piece that was on our website about David Hogg being rejected by certain colleges originally appeared at TMZ.

00:04:38.000 So, the story did not originate with us, and it really only originated with David Hogg because he was interviewed by TMZ somewhere, and he started discussing which colleges he had gotten into.

00:04:46.000 So, we begin with what David Hogg actually said about not getting into colleges.

00:04:50.000 And there are a couple ways of reading this, and I want to be fair to him.

00:04:52.000 So, here's what the clip said.

00:04:54.000 It's not been too great for me and some of the other members of the movement, like Ryan Deitch.

00:04:58.000 We got rejected from Cal State.

00:05:01.000 Sorry.

00:05:02.000 We got rejected from UCLA and I got rejected from UCLA and UCSD.

00:05:08.000 So it's been kind of annoying having to deal with that and everything else that's been going on.

00:05:13.000 But at this point, I was, you know, we're changing the world.

00:05:16.000 We're too busy.

00:05:18.000 Right now it's too hard to focus on that.

00:05:20.000 It is.

00:05:20.000 It is absolutely disappointing.

00:05:22.000 But at this point,

00:05:24.000 We're already changing the world.

00:05:25.000 If colleges want to support us in that grade, if they don't, it doesn't matter.

00:05:28.000 We're still going to change the world.

00:05:29.000 Okay, so his comments here could have been read in a couple of different ways.

00:05:33.000 The part that you see the slash through, the part that's cut out there, is where David Hogg says, listen, a lot of people don't actually get into colleges, right?

00:05:40.000 It's not super unpredictable.

00:05:42.000 A lot of people in my class didn't get into a lot of colleges.

00:05:43.000 There are a lot of people who can't afford to go to college.

00:05:45.000 All of that is true, and for the first two-thirds of this comment, I'm actually in agreement David Hogg is handling this with class.

00:05:51.000 That last comment there where he says that if colleges want to help us in our crusade, great.

00:05:54.000 If not, then we're still changing the world.

00:05:57.000 This is where I have a bit of trouble, because the implication is where he—and listen, he's speaking off the cuff, so maybe it's just a mistake.

00:06:03.000 But the implication of what he's saying is the reason that colleges are not letting him in is not because he wasn't qualified.

00:06:07.000 They're not letting him in because of his activism. 0.84

00:06:09.000 Which, of course, would be incredibly silly.

00:06:11.000 There is no question that the top leaders of this movement will end up going to fantastic graduate schools, specifically because they are top leaders of this movement.

00:06:19.000 Political activism on the left is not going to come back and bite you.

00:06:22.000 It's the ultimate extracurricular activity for most college administrators.

00:06:25.000 My guess is that if he had sent in his applications right now, as opposed to six months ago, then he would be admitted to a lot of these schools.

00:06:32.000 But he's getting these rejections now, or two weeks ago, in the middle of all of this.

00:06:35.000 It's not like they were considering him five minutes ago.

00:06:37.000 They were considering him four months ago.

00:06:39.000 They probably don't even remember seeing his application, because places like UCLA get tens of thousands of applications every year.

00:06:44.000 So in any case, Laura Ingraham tweets out this story, and we covered it pretty straight.

00:06:47.000 It was pretty objective coverage, or at least it wasn't politically charged.

00:06:51.000 And Laura tweeted this out.

00:06:53.000 She tweeted,

00:07:01.000 Hey, I don't think that this is particularly awful.

00:07:03.000 Anything that Laura says here is particularly awful.

00:07:05.000 Do I think that it's fair to say that he's whining about it?

00:07:08.000 Eh, I think it's maybe half-fair or a quarter-fair.

00:07:10.000 I don't totally agree with Laura's take on David Hogg's comments here, but the way David Hogg responds is what's really important here.

00:07:16.000 So David Hogg responds to this relatively mild critique by saying that they should boycott Laura Ingraham.

00:07:22.000 Right, so he stopped, he starts immediately, immediately, like within minutes, tweeting out Laura Ingraham's advertisers and saying that all these places should drop Laura Ingraham.

00:07:29.000 Why?

00:07:29.000 For the great sin of having suggested that he whined about not getting into college.

00:07:33.000 She didn't say anything racist.

00:07:34.000 She didn't say anything sexist. 1.00

00:07:36.000 She didn't say David Hogg is a piece of crap. 1.00

00:07:37.000 She didn't insult him personally. 1.00

00:07:39.000 Like really, she was insulting his comments, right?

00:07:42.000 The things that he said.

00:07:43.000 He is part of the public discourse.

00:07:45.000 And this is demonstrative of exactly how this game is being played now by the left.

00:07:50.000 They've tried out a bunch of kids.

00:07:51.000 The kids have every right to speak again for the 1,000th time.

00:07:54.000 The kids have every right to speak.

00:07:55.000 They tried out a bunch of kids, and then if you disagree with the kids, they suggest you are attacking the kids personally, and then based on that, they say you shouldn't be on the air.

00:08:02.000 And this is what David Hogg is now doing.

00:08:04.000 David Hogg does not have, I'm sorry, any sort of moral impetus to call for a full boycott of Laura Ingraham based on that tweet.

00:08:12.000 She got ratioed pretty hard on Twitter, meaning that more people replied to her tweet than actually retweeted it, which is very often taken on Twitter as a sign of it was a bad tweet or something.

00:08:22.000 Okay, that's fine.

00:08:22.000 But boycotts?

00:08:24.000 Really?

00:08:24.000 And if we're really at the point in this country where you say something that's even mildly controversial and there are calls for boycotts, then we're not going to have a common culture anymore.

00:08:31.000 We really aren't.

00:08:32.000 Because I promise you, the right is just as capable of this as the left.

00:08:35.000 A lot of the right has stayed away from it.

00:08:37.000 In fact, I used to run an organization called Truth Revolt.

00:08:40.000 It was a branch of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

00:08:42.000 And when I ran Truth Revolt, one of our goals was to provide a mutually assured destruction.

00:08:45.000 The idea was if the left was going to use boycott tactics in order to knock conservatives off the air,

00:08:50.000 Then we would use boycott tactics to knock leftists off the air.

00:08:53.000 And then everybody would learn that boycott tactics are bad.

00:08:56.000 That boycott tactics end up knocking voices off the air or destroying the profit margins for shows that are controversial.

00:09:03.000 I think David Hogg should be able to speak out however he wants.

00:09:06.000 I don't think that advertisers should be boycotted for praising David Hogg.

00:09:11.000 I don't think any of those things, but there's this attempt to use market forces to club people with whom you politically disagree, not because they're racist or brutal or horrible, but just because you disagree.

00:09:21.000 And if that becomes our politics, the entire market basis for political discourse in the country goes away, and that is going to have a significant weakening impact on the kind of voices that you're allowed to hear.

00:09:31.000 And meanwhile, the media continues to portray David Hogg as some sort of apolitical, above-the-fray figure.

00:09:35.000 He's been anything but apolitical.

00:09:36.000 He's been anything but above-the-fray.

00:09:38.000 So do I think that Laura's tweet was completely correct?

00:09:40.000 No.

00:09:41.000 Do I think it's boycott-worthy?

00:09:42.000 You've got to be kidding me.

00:09:43.000 You've got to be kidding me.

00:09:44.000 And the Washington Post, I'm on their email list, and the Washington Post emailed this out as their lead today.

00:09:49.000 Legitimately, as their lead, they emailed out the Laura Ingraham story, that this was some sort of brutal, terrible thing that had just happened, that Laura Ingraham is deserving of all of this.

00:10:00.000 It's just silliness.

00:10:02.000 But again, it's not particularly shocking because they've done this against virtually every major talk show host.

00:10:06.000 Speaking of which, big announcement for the show, and I might as well make it now.

00:10:10.000 So, you listen to the show on podcast.

00:10:12.000 That means that you're listening to it probably on your phone or on your computer.

00:10:15.000 But a lot of older Americans, a lot of people who don't know how podcasts work,

00:10:19.000 They listen to talk radio just disproportionately with regards to how the numbers work.

00:10:23.000 Well, now they can actually listen to the podcast, which is really exciting.

00:10:25.000 Westwood One is partnering with us on this project, so this is really cool.

00:10:28.000 And Westwood One is going to be putting this podcast on air, WABC in New York.

00:10:34.000 It's going to be putting it on air in Chicago, in KBC Los Angeles.

00:10:37.000 It's going to be putting us on in Atlanta.

00:10:39.000 It's going to be putting us on in Seattle.

00:10:40.000 It's going to be putting us on WMAL in Washington, DC.

00:10:43.000 A bunch of stations that are going to be putting this show on the air in Salt Lake City.

00:10:47.000 It's just fantastic.

00:10:48.000 It's just fantastic.

00:10:49.000 And I cannot wait to bring this message that we promote every day to a broader audience.

00:10:54.000 That's really cool.

00:10:54.000 So tell your parents that if they haven't heard of the show,

00:10:57.000 All they're going to have to do is turn on their radio, and they'll be able to hear the show every evening, every afternoon, on their local radio station pretty soon.

00:11:03.000 So that's pretty exciting stuff, and we are really excited to announce it, and we're thankful to Westwood One for giving us the opportunity, because it really is pretty awesome.

00:11:10.000 Well, in just a second, I want to tell you about something else that the media has tweeted out that is just inane and demonstrates, again, that they don't know anything about how statistics work.

00:11:18.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Helix Sleep.

00:11:22.000 There's nobody on the planet who's built like you or sleeps like you, and that's why you need a mattress that is customized to your specific height, weight, and sleep preferences.

00:11:29.000 The way it works, you go over to HelixSleep.com, and when you go to HelixSleep.com, you take a sleep quiz.

00:11:35.000 They ask you how you like to sleep.

00:11:36.000 Is it on your side?

00:11:37.000 Is it on your back?

00:11:38.000 What's your weight?

00:11:38.000 What's your body type?

00:11:39.000 Do you like the mattress to be firm or soft?

00:11:42.000 Do you like it to be heat absorbent, or do you like it to be very cool?

00:11:45.000 And then they send you a personalized mattress in the mail.

00:11:47.000 It comes in the mail, you unwrap the box, it inflates right in front of you, you pop it right on your bed frame, and you're ready to go.

00:11:51.000 It's just fantastic, and the quality is fantastic.

00:11:54.000 You can have the best sleep of your life on a Helix Sleep mattress.

00:11:57.000 Go to helixsleep.com, fill out that two-minute sleep quiz, and they will design your custom mattress.

00:12:01.000 They can even make the mattress so that it has two different sides that feel different for the different halves of the couple.

00:12:06.000 In 2018, they've even taken the customized sleep to the next level with the Helix Pillow.

00:12:11.000 These all new pillows are fully adjustable, so you can achieve perfect comfort regardless of sleep position or body type.

00:12:16.000 You know, you've never really appreciated a good pillow until you've spent a lot of time at hotels.

00:12:19.000 I know why it is that hotel pillows are always made of just fluff.

00:12:22.000 As you put your head on it, it goes directly down to the mattress, and then you feel like you're suffocating.

00:12:26.000 Well, Helix Sleep pillows are the opposite.

00:12:28.000 They are fantastic.

00:12:28.000 They have thousands of five-star reviews.

00:12:29.000 And right now, if you go to helixsleep.com slash ben, you get $125 toward your mattress order.

00:12:35.000 That's helixsleep.com slash ben for $125 off your mattress order.

00:12:39.000 Again, helixsleep.com slash ben.

00:12:41.000 Use that slash ben to get $125 off your mattress order and let them know that we sent you.

00:12:45.000 It really is fantastic. 0.96

00:12:46.000 OK, so speaking of stupidity in the media, and again, just a quick final note on the Laura Ingraham boycott tactic here. 0.99

00:12:55.000 The same media that's promoting that tactic is vulnerable to that tactic should they step out of line in any particular way. 0.99

00:13:00.000 You're living in a very dangerous era for the future of the media when audiences are being pushed to boycott particular outlets because of the viewpoints of those outlets.

00:13:12.000 They're full-on Nazis. 0.91

00:13:13.000 They're full-on racists. 0.92

00:13:15.000 I think that we all ought to take a step back and just say, listen, people ought to be able to watch what they want to watch. 0.99

00:13:18.000 Even if you want to watch Nazi crap, you should be able to watch it. 0.98

00:13:21.000 I just won't patronize your advertisers. 0.99

00:13:22.000 But Laura Ingraham is not a Nazi. 0.97

00:13:24.000 And the attempt to lump all political speech into one bag that, I don't like it, therefore it's Nazi-esque, is really quite ridiculous. 0.95

00:13:30.000 Speaking of quite ridiculous, I just had to comment on this Jezebel tweet. 0.96

00:13:34.000 So Jezebel is a feminist outlet. 1.00

00:13:35.000 And a couple of days ago, there was a tweet that came out from Planned Parenthood.

00:13:40.000 I don't know.

00:13:49.000 OK, and I said, well, what we really need is a Disney princess who uses her royal authority to defund Planned Parenthood. 1.00

00:13:54.000 Let's start with that.

00:13:55.000 But Jezebel has to defend that, of course, because we do need—you know what we need?

00:13:58.000 We need to indoctrinate children about abortion and transgenderism and same-sex marriage. 0.87

00:14:01.000 We need a Disney princess who's a lesbian—this is the new push, by the way, for Ilsa in Frozen, is that in the sequel, they should give Ilsa a girlfriend. 0.81

00:14:08.000 Because there's nothing better than teaching three-year-old children who like the movie Frozen because they like Olaf.

00:14:14.000 That lesbianism is on equal moral par and societal value with heterosexuality.

00:14:19.000 It's perfect, because kids at three should know all about sex.

00:14:21.000 That's really important. 0.99

00:14:23.000 So Jezebel tweeted something out that was even stupider yesterday. 0.96

00:14:26.000 It tweeted out, statistically, at least two Disney princesses have had abortions. 0.95

00:14:30.000 And the reason that Jezebel says this, of course, is because they say that statistically speaking, a certain percentage of people in the United States, a certain percentage of women, have had abortions.

00:14:39.000 And that means that a certain percentage of Disney princesses, by extension, must have had abortions. 0.73

00:14:44.000 Here's what the piece says.

00:14:45.000 They said, we need many kinds of Disney princesses, according to an extremely fun meme whooshing around the net. 0.79

00:14:49.000 We need a Disney princess who jewels. 1.00

00:14:51.000 I don't even know what that is.

00:14:52.000 We need a Disney princess who is falling asleep, calling a cab, having a smoke, taking a drag. 1.00

00:14:55.000 We need a Disney princess with chronic UTIs. 0.96

00:14:57.000 We also, according to Planned Parenthood affiliate, need a Disney princess who has gotten an abortion. 1.00

00:15:02.000 Statistically, like two and a half already have.

00:15:05.000 So then they say, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 23.7% of women in the United States will have had an abortion by age 45. 0.83

00:15:12.000 According to the official Disney Princess website, there are 11 official Disney princesses.

00:15:15.000 Belle, Rapunzel, Ariel, Tiana, Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Merida, Pocahontas, Jasmine, and Mulan.

00:15:20.000 That means statistically around two and a half of these strong women have gotten abortions and aren't telling you about it because of a national culture of shame and misogyny. 1.00

00:15:27.000 Let me just say something to Planned Parenthood and Jezebel. 1.00

00:15:30.000 You people are so unbelievably dumb. 1.00

00:15:32.000 This is not how statistics work. 1.00

00:15:35.000 If 23.7% of women in the United States will have had an abortion by age 45, a number that I think is probably very high. 1.00

00:15:41.000 But let's say that that's true.

00:15:42.000 If that number is true, that still would not suggest that Disney princesses, were they real people and not fictional characters, would have had abortions.

00:15:50.000 First of all, they're fake.

00:15:51.000 I know I have to keep emphasizing this for folks on the left.

00:15:53.000 Certain things are real.

00:15:54.000 Certain things are pretend.

00:15:56.000 Certain things that are pretend have certain cultural significance.

00:15:58.000 It's why we talked about Roseanne, because people were saying the cultural significance of Roseanne is something.

00:16:02.000 It's why we talked about Black Panther. 0.80

00:16:03.000 People saying Black Panther had cultural significance.

00:16:06.000 OK, fair enough.

00:16:07.000 But you want to argue that Disney princesses have had abortions. 0.98

00:16:10.000 Disney princesses don't exist in real life.

00:16:12.000 They're not real people.

00:16:13.000 And even if they did exist in real life, two and a half of them, two of them would not have had abortions.

00:16:18.000 Because statistically speaking, Disney princesses are incredibly wealthy.

00:16:22.000 Many of them lived hundreds of years ago in a different universe.

00:16:25.000 So, that's like saying that 23.7% of women in the U.S. 1.00

00:16:28.000 will have had an abortion. 1.00

00:16:29.000 That means that in our office, there are probably 10 women who work in our office, in this office. 1.00

00:16:34.000 That means that two of them have had an abortion.

00:16:35.000 That's not how statistics work, gang.

00:16:38.000 It is the equivalent of saying that every family in America has an average of 2.4 children.

00:16:43.000 That means that every family in America has two whole children and a .4 of a child.

00:16:48.000 Statistically, an average does not mean that each individual is a member of the average. 1.00

00:16:53.000 So stupid. 1.00

00:16:54.000 So stupid. 1.00

00:16:55.000 But again, stupid rules the day. 1.00

00:16:58.000 Okay, so now I want to get into some tech news. 0.99

00:17:01.000 So the reason I'm getting tech news is because there's a lot going on on this score.

00:17:05.000 Tech stocks have been dumping.

00:17:06.000 I mean, they've really been dropping pretty precipitously in the last few days.

00:17:11.000 A lot of that is specifically because of all of the hubbub surrounding Facebook and social media, which I'm going to get to in just a second.

00:17:18.000 According to Reuters, fund managers have begun to ditch so-called FANG stocks that powered the U.S.

00:17:22.000 stock market to record highs in January and are slowly rotating into commodity-related shares and other value stocks which typically outperform in late-cycle recoveries.

00:17:31.000 Portfolio managers holding shares of Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google Parent Alphabet, Inc., that's Google, say they are increasingly concerned that the data scandal that has sent shares of Facebook down nearly 15% to date, year to date, will spill over into all of FAANG stocks, imperiling the broad market's momentum at a time when there are no clear companies or sectors to take their place.

00:17:49.000 On Tuesday, an index which tracks the FAANG stocks, along with six other mega cap technology stocks, tumbled 6.3%, the biggest decline since September 2014.

00:17:59.000 Google was slightly positive.

00:18:00.000 Amazon dropped 4%.

00:18:01.000 Netflix fell 5%.

00:18:02.000 A portfolio manager said, there are legitimate concerns over the business models of these companies, and I expect that they will be ironed out in legislation.

00:18:10.000 So this, of course, is talking specifically about Facebook.

00:18:12.000 So I want to talk about a couple of things that are great about technology, and then I want to talk about a thing that is very bad about the future of technology in the United States, particularly with regard to the distribution of our news.

00:18:24.000 So we begin with President Trump ripping on Amazon today.

00:18:29.000 So President Trump decided to go after Amazon today.

00:18:32.000 Amazon has been his bugaboo for a couple of reasons.

00:18:33.000 One is because it's owned by Jeff Bezos.

00:18:35.000 Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post.

00:18:37.000 The Washington Post has not been friendly to Trump.

00:18:39.000 Therefore, Trump says, the Amazon Washington Post.

00:18:42.000 His suggestion is that Amazon uses its profits to subsidize the Washington Post.

00:18:46.000 There is no statistical truth to this.

00:18:48.000 This is something that is made up in Trump's mind.

00:18:50.000 It is just not true.

00:18:51.000 It's not factually true. 1.00

00:18:52.000 Now, you may think Jeff Bezos is a schmuck. 1.00

00:18:54.000 That's fine. 0.99

00:18:55.000 But Amazon is a phenomenal company.

00:18:57.000 Amazon is the best company in America.

00:18:59.000 Amazon is just unbelievable.

00:19:00.000 It's running other companies out of business, not because it's evil and brutal, but because they are incredibly good at what they do.

00:19:06.000 You never have to worry about what to remember for the grocery store.

00:19:09.000 You just order stuff.

00:19:10.000 I use Amazon nearly every day.

00:19:12.000 I believe I was one of their first 1,000 prime users, because it started off as a used book company, and so I used to buy used books from there all the time.

00:19:18.000 I still do.

00:19:19.000 Amazon is just a phenomenal company.

00:19:21.000 So Trump decides to rip them on the web.

00:19:24.000 So here's what he says.

00:19:24.000 He says,

00:19:38.000 OK, so Amazon's shares were up about 2% before the president's tweet, and then it fell about 2.6% after the market opened.

00:19:43.000 I'm sure it will recover pretty quickly. 1.00

00:19:45.000 OK, this is a really stupid tweet. 0.99

00:19:46.000 I'm going to just be frank about this. 1.00

00:19:48.000 This is economically illiterate.

00:19:49.000 First of all, Amazon does pay sales tax in states that require it to pay sales tax.

00:19:53.000 So in California, I pay a sales tax on my Amazon products.

00:19:56.000 I wish I didn't.

00:19:57.000 But states do require that if you buy a product in California from Amazon, that you are going to pay the sales tax that is equivalent to what you would pay at the store.

00:20:05.000 So I pay a sales tax on products that are shipped to me in California.

00:20:08.000 And I'm not sure why Trump is complaining about Amazon using the postal system.

00:20:12.000 You know what is keeping the postal system existent?

00:20:14.000 Amazon.

00:20:15.000 No one uses the post office anymore because everyone uses email.

00:20:19.000 Bulk mail has gone down.

00:20:20.000 When people send packages and they want to make sure that it gets there, they use FedEx.

00:20:24.000 So Amazon is using the post office because the post office is subsidized and because the post office is cheap, and it is because they are doing that that the post office has any business at all.

00:20:33.000 In fact, little known fact about Amazon.

00:20:35.000 Have you ever gotten an Amazon package where it's like you ordered a thing of toothpaste and it comes in a box that's like half the size of your house?

00:20:41.000 And you're always wondering why is it that the box is totally out of proportion to the item that is inside the box?

00:20:46.000 That is because Amazon has come up with such a science of this thing that when they deliver stuff to you, they actually have slotted every box into the truck in the most efficient possible way.

00:20:56.000 So they know that they need to fill up every piece of space in the truck so that the things aren't bouncing around back there.

00:21:01.000 So they will ship you things with weird sized boxes because it is most efficient to ship it that way.

00:21:07.000 Several states, according to CNBC, say that online retailers should have to collect sales tax, even in those states where companies don't have a physical presence.

00:21:15.000 The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that states couldn't collect sales taxes gathered by mail-order catalog companies unless the firms had a physical presence in the state.

00:21:22.000 Obviously, Amazon does collect sales—I mean, listen to this.

00:21:25.000 Amazon collects sales tax from consumers in 45 states and the District of Columbia.

00:21:29.000 So what is Trump even talking about here?

00:21:32.000 What is he even talking about here?

00:21:33.000 There are certain economists who say that if Amazon started to—I mean, the truth is, what Amazon is eventually going to do here is they are just going to substitute their own shipping for the post office, and the post office will have no business.

00:21:44.000 So the fact that Amazon is using the post office right now is really a temporary measure.

00:21:48.000 People think that Amazon is going to become the largest single shipper in the United States and become a shipping company, basically.

00:21:55.000 So Axios is reporting that Trump wants to go after Amazon. 0.99

00:21:58.000 It's really dumb. 0.89

00:22:01.000 According to this report from Axios, people have explained to them that Trump's view of the post office is not even accurate. 0.98

00:22:08.000 The U.S.

00:22:08.000 Postal Service is not owned or operated by the government.

00:22:11.000 It's an establishment of the executive branch, so it's controlled by presidential appointees and acts as a government agency.

00:22:16.000 And again, Amazon's business is the only thing keeping the post office afloat.

00:22:18.000 So, again, Amazon is a great piece of technology.

00:22:21.000 Why are we attacking that?

00:22:22.000 I'm going to tell you another great piece of technology that people are ignoring, and it's being attacked by leftists and some people who don't understand economics as well.

00:22:28.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Ring.com.

00:22:31.000 Speaking of fantastic technology, Ring.com is a fantastic technology.

00:22:35.000 It ensures that you and your family stay safe.

00:22:38.000 Over a million people use the amazing Ring Video Doorbell to help protect their homes.

00:22:42.000 Ring knows home security begins at the front door.

00:22:44.000 It does not end there.

00:22:44.000 So they have their Ring Floodlight Cam as well, extending security to the rest of your house.

00:22:48.000 The Floodlight Cam is a motion-activated camera and floodlight.

00:22:51.000 It connects right to your phone with HD video, two-way audio, and lets you know the moment anyone steps on your property.

00:22:55.000 So what's really awesome about this is that it rings directly to your phone no matter where you are.

00:22:59.000 I can be across the country and know who's at my front door at my house.

00:23:02.000 You can see and speak to visitors, even set off an alarm right from your phone.

00:23:05.000 All right, so I can actually set off the alarm, scare off the intruders from my phone.

00:23:09.000 Ring Floodlight offers the ultimate in in-home security with high visibility floodlights, a powerful HD camera.

00:23:14.000 It puts security directly in your hands.

00:23:16.000 And right now, you save up to $150 off a Ring of Security Kit when you go to ring.com slash Ben.

00:23:22.000 That's ring.com slash Ben.

00:23:23.000 Again, ring.com slash Ben.

00:23:25.000 Use that slash Ben so they know that we sent you.

00:23:27.000 Ring helps keep my house safe.

00:23:29.000 I've recommended it for months and years here.

00:23:32.000 There's a reason for that, and it's not just because they're an advertiser.

00:23:34.000 Ring is fantastic.

00:23:36.000 People always ask me, do you actually?

00:23:37.000 Yes, we use ring at our house.

00:23:38.000 It is on our front door.

00:23:39.000 It is tremendous.

00:23:40.000 Ring.com slash Ben to get $150 off that ring of security kit.

00:23:44.000 Ensure that your house, your family is safe, even when you yourself are not at home or out of town.

00:23:48.000 OK, now speaking of great technology,

00:23:51.000 That is being ripped by the left.

00:23:54.000 Right now, there's an effort underway by a lot of folks on the left to go after Uber and Lyft.

00:23:58.000 This has happened particularly in leftist jurisdictions.

00:24:01.000 So in California, for a long time, there was a rule that ride-sharing apps could not actually go to the airport because they wanted you to use cabs instead.

00:24:07.000 It was basically a government-guaranteed monopoly.

00:24:09.000 In the city of New York, there are heavy restrictions on Uber and Lyft.

00:24:12.000 In the city of Seattle, there are heavy restrictions on Uber and Lyft.

00:24:16.000 But there is an upside, and this demonstrates a point that I've been making about the free market for a long time.

00:24:20.000 The great thing about the free market is that the free market actually cuts against racism.

00:24:24.000 It cuts against discrimination in virtually all forms, because the only color that the free market cares about is the color green.

00:24:30.000 So there's a tweet from a guy named Matthew Cherry, who is a black filmmaker for the NFL,

00:24:36.000 And he was tweeting about a New York Post story.

00:24:38.000 So the New York Post story said, This was another one of these lamentation pieces about how all these new technologies are hurting people who are already in business, and what are we going to do about the cabbies, and all the rest of this nonsense.

00:24:54.000 The New York Post says,

00:25:16.000 Over the last five years, last month longtime black car driver Doug Shifter shot himself in front of City Hall over money troubles.

00:25:22.000 Two livery drivers killed themselves in recent months, one of whom, Danilo Castillo, pointedly wrote his suicide note on the back of a taxi and limousine commission summons.

00:25:32.000 I'm by review to say is the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and wrote that we've seen this building over the past three years.

00:25:38.000 In particular, the financial crisis is crushing enough, but it's the political silence that's destroying people.

00:25:43.000 The number of four higher cars in circulation is swell to about 100,000.

00:25:47.000 About two thirds of those are Uber drivers.

00:25:49.000 The number of yellow cabs is capped by the city at 13,587. 0.99

00:25:53.000 Once again, demonstrating the government guaranteed monopolies are garbage.

00:25:56.000 And the minute that those monopolies end, those companies go out of business. 0.95

00:26:01.000 It's not the fault of these cab drivers.

00:26:02.000 I feel terrible for the cab drivers who spent their years investing in a product that the government had basically guaranteed, only to have the government pull the rug out from under them.

00:26:08.000 But that's not enough for me to say that we should get rid of a technology that's helping lots of people.

00:26:12.000 And here's the point.

00:26:12.000 So Matthew Cherry tweets out, quote,

00:26:20.000 This is accurate.

00:26:36.000 Do not go to outlying areas.

00:26:38.000 It's almost impossible to get a taxi cab out there.

00:26:40.000 And if they go into heavily black or Hispanic neighborhoods, they just won't pick people up because they're afraid that they'll pick somebody up who will attempt to rob the cab. 0.79

00:26:47.000 Right?

00:26:47.000 This has been a serious problem for a long time.

00:26:49.000 It is true of before they've done studies.

00:26:51.000 It's true for drivers of all colors.

00:26:52.000 So it has nothing to do with white drivers avoiding black areas. 0.78

00:26:55.000 Black drivers also avoid black areas. 0.78

00:26:58.000 And what this demonstrates—and here's the amazing thing. 0.91

00:27:00.000 OK, so what kind of discrimination is that?

00:27:02.000 So, as I discussed last week with regard to a New York Times article in which there was a claim that America was widely and terribly racist, Thomas Sowell has a model of how to think about discrimination that's really useful.

00:27:15.000 He thinks about discrimination in three ways. 0.93

00:27:16.000 There's open discrimination, like, I'm a racist, I hate black people, and therefore I'm not going to pick up a black guy if I'm driving a cab. 0.98

00:27:21.000 That's open racism. 0.98

00:27:23.000 Obviously morally wrong.

00:27:24.000 Then there is discrimination type number one.

00:27:27.000 He calls that discrimination two, like the clearest form of discrimination.

00:27:30.000 Then there is discrimination one, 1A.

00:27:32.000 That is, I discriminate amongst the people I choose to date.

00:27:35.000 I discriminate amongst the people I choose to hire.

00:27:37.000 I look at behavior and then I make a decision on an individualized basis.

00:27:40.000 That's the kind of discrimination we all like and we all use every day.

00:27:43.000 Then there is something in between.

00:27:44.000 It's what Sowell calls Discrimination 1B.

00:27:46.000 Discrimination 1B is I don't have any data other than the group data.

00:27:51.000 The only data I have as a taxi driver in New York City is that if I go into this particular area and I pick up a person of this particular race, I am more likely to be robbed. 0.85

00:28:00.000 And because the crime rates in New York are racially disproportionate.

00:28:03.000 And so if I have a choice between driving into a middle of a high crime black area and picking up a black guy or driving down to the Wall Street district and picking up a white guy in a suit and pick up the white guy in the suit. 0.71

00:28:13.000 Now, is that a form of racism?

00:28:16.000 Kind of and kind of not.

00:28:17.000 It's a form of making individual judgment based on group data. 0.97

00:28:21.000 But that's not quite the same thing as, I think all black people are incapable of being picked up for a ride, right? 1.00

00:28:25.000 That's people using data as a substitute for lack of individual data.

00:28:29.000 Now here's where Uber solves this problem.

00:28:31.000 It's not that Uber drivers are better people.

00:28:33.000 It's not that Lyft drivers are better people.

00:28:35.000 Okay, the reason that drivers were not picking up black folks in New York is because, one, there was a guaranteed monopoly, which meant that you wouldn't lose your job if you did this.

00:28:43.000 Two, that everybody in the monopoly had the same rules and pay. 0.90

00:28:47.000 So it wasn't like you gained money by going out of your way to pick up the black guy in the black neighborhood.

00:28:52.000 There was no competitive advantage to that.

00:28:53.000 You were already a member of an exclusive club and you were going to make a certain amount of money per year.

00:28:57.000 Then the market opened things up.

00:28:59.000 And what does Uber and Lyft do?

00:29:00.000 Have you ever used Uber and Lyft?

00:29:01.000 When you use Uber and Lyft, one of the things they do for drivers is the same thing that you do when you are a passenger.

00:29:06.000 If you get a notice from Uber or Lyft that somebody is going to pick you up, two things pop up.

00:29:10.000 A picture of the person and a number of stars.

00:29:13.000 The stars rate whether this person is a good driver or a bad driver.

00:29:17.000 And drivers rate customers.

00:29:18.000 So it rates whether a customer is a good customer or a bad customer.

00:29:21.000 This does what Seoul talks about.

00:29:23.000 It overcomes the burden of data.

00:29:25.000 So, if the only data that you had as a taxi driver in New York is that certain races are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than other races,

00:29:35.000 And then you may not be making an individual judgment on this particular black guy, that this particular black guy is going to rob me, but you make a group judgment based on the only data that's available to you. 0.91

00:29:43.000 Uber makes it individual, right?

00:29:45.000 Uber individualizes.

00:29:46.000 So, number one, it creates a competitive advantage for you to go into what would be higher risk crime areas, because if nobody else is doing it, you can pick up a lot of money by going into those areas, right?

00:29:54.000 You can now out-compete the cabbies.

00:29:56.000 That's number one.

00:29:57.000 And number two, you have user-specific data.

00:29:59.000 So if I look and I see that there's a one-star rating on a guy because last time he was in a car, he crapped in the backseat, I'm not going to pick that guy up.

00:30:06.000 But if I see there are a bunch of five-star ratings, I can pretty well guarantee that the guy actually isn't a criminal.

00:30:10.000 This is why the market is fantastic.

00:30:12.000 So what's hilarious is that a lot of people on the left don't understand why it is that Uber and Lyft don't discriminate against black folks in New York.

00:30:18.000 The answer is not, again, that cab drivers in New York are evil, terrible racists, and Uber drivers are wonderful people.

00:30:23.000 That is not what, or that Lyft drivers are wonderful people, right?

00:30:26.000 That is not the case.

00:30:28.000 Here is the case.

00:30:28.000 The case is that the incentive structure changes.

00:30:30.000 The amount of data has changed.

00:30:32.000 And this is what technology does.

00:30:33.000 This is what technology is good for.

00:30:34.000 Technology is good for providing you additional data so you can make better decisions.

00:30:38.000 And with those better decisions, you can now go out and live a better, less discriminatory life.

00:30:44.000 That's where tech really comes in.

00:30:46.000 And that's what makes tech great.

00:30:49.000 It is value neutral, but it gives you more data.

00:30:54.000 Hey, remember those two things, right?

00:30:55.000 Value neutral and gives you more data.

00:30:57.000 Because in one second, we're going to get to the problem with some of our social media with regards to the news.

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

00:31:03.000 For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to Daily Wire.

00:31:05.000 When you do, you get the rest of this show live, the rest of Clayton's show live, the rest of Noel's show live.

00:31:08.000 You get to be part of the mailbag, which we are doing tomorrow.

00:31:11.000 Just before Passover and Easter.

00:31:12.000 So, very exciting mailbag.

00:31:14.000 Subscribe now, ask us a question.

00:31:16.000 And you can log in tomorrow, and while you're watching the show, ask us questions live that we will answer for you, which is pretty awesome.

00:31:22.000 Also, if you get the annual subscription, you get this.

00:31:24.000 The very greatest in all beverage vessels.

00:31:26.000 I have praised this to the skies because it is of the heavens.

00:31:29.000 It is magnificent.

00:31:30.000 Gaze upon it, and your soul shall be uplifted.

00:31:33.000 And you get to bring it home and caress it and drink from it each and every night when you get the annual subscription for 99 bucks a year.

00:31:39.000 Cheaper than the monthly subscription, so make sure that you get that.

00:31:42.000 If you just want to listen later for free, iTunes, SoundCloud, YouTube, please subscribe, please leave us a review, and of course, tell all of your friends who are listening to talk radio to tune into our shows, which will be syndicated on Monday, which is really exciting.

00:31:53.000 We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative show in the nation.

00:32:01.000 Alrighty, so, as I say, what makes technology great is that it is value neutral and provides data.

00:32:07.000 And then it's up to human beings how they want to use that data.

00:32:09.000 And if we are provided with more data, then this gives us a better ability to choose.

00:32:13.000 But value neutral is important when it comes to the platforms.

00:32:17.000 Now, value neutral isn't important when it comes to

00:32:19.000 You know, you come to the Daily Y. We're not value neutral.

00:32:21.000 And we make very obvious to you we're not value neutral because we're providing you another piece of data that you can use to judge whether you think our stories are good or not.

00:32:27.000 That's fine.

00:32:28.000 What you can't do is pretend to be value neutral and then actually promote an agenda.

00:32:32.000 And this is where social media is really going to have a problem.

00:32:34.000 And it creates an actual legal problem for a lot of social media that I think is just around the corner.

00:32:40.000 It used to be that there were gatekeepers in media, rather.

00:32:44.000 That for most of the history of the United States, at least in the 20th century, there were gatekeepers at the top of the media.

00:32:49.000 There were only three major television networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, right?

00:32:53.000 And these were the news providers for you.

00:32:55.000 Everyone watched these, and so there was a monopoly.

00:32:56.000 Those gatekeepers decided what you saw when it came to the news.

00:32:59.000 The same thing was true in print, because the barriers to entry for the print media were very high.

00:33:05.000 It's very expensive to go out and hire reporters and print millions of newspapers and distribute millions of newspapers.

00:33:10.000 So that meant there was a monopoly, right?

00:33:11.000 Or an oligopoly is more accurate.

00:33:13.000 The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The L.A.

00:33:16.000 Times, right?

00:33:17.000 These were the newspapers that you got.

00:33:19.000 And then Fox News started to break that monopoly by providing an alternative on cable.

00:33:23.000 And then finally, the monopoly was truly broken by the internet.

00:33:26.000 The internet exploded this entire monopoly.

00:33:28.000 Now there are no gatekeepers anymore, right?

00:33:30.000 You want to visit Daily Wire?

00:33:31.000 You want to engage with my podcast?

00:33:32.000 You just do it.

00:33:33.000 I don't need your approval to put my podcast up.

00:33:35.000 I don't need your approval to put my website up.

00:33:37.000 I don't need anyone's approval to do that, because there is a neutral source that I put my stuff on, and then you get it, right?

00:33:42.000 You either get it at YouTube, or you get it at SoundCloud, or at Google Play, or at Stitcher, or at iTunes.

00:33:46.000 You get it from there, and those outlets have said to you, we are not discriminating against Shapiro's podcast.

00:33:51.000 We're just a platform.

00:33:52.000 Same thing is true of Daily Wire.

00:33:53.000 We put it up on the internet.

00:33:55.000 We have a server.

00:33:56.000 The server doesn't discriminate against us.

00:33:58.000 And now, when you search for our website, Google says they have an algorithm that's neutral.

00:34:01.000 It comes up.

00:34:02.000 And that means that you have more information, right?

00:34:05.000 That's why these technologies are great.

00:34:07.000 Social media promised they were going to be neutral.

00:34:10.000 And so, everybody started using the social media on the promise they were going to be neutral.

00:34:13.000 That if I was looking for Daily Wire, I would get Daily Wire.

00:34:15.000 That if I was on Facebook and I followed Ben Shapiro, then Ben Shapiro's posts were going to pop up in my timeline.

00:34:20.000 Or Dennis Prager's, or Stephen Crowder's, or Laura Ingram's, or anybody's, right?

00:34:24.000 You follow that person, the implicit guarantee was Facebook would not stand between you and the information you wanted to see.

00:34:30.000 It was a neutral arbiter.

00:34:32.000 Okay, but now things have changed.

00:34:33.000 So everybody started investing tons of money in Facebook, in Google, in YouTube, in SEO, in research, in marketing.

00:34:41.000 We all started investing lots of money in those things on the promise that Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, that all of these outlets were acting more like AT&T, more like they were providing a phone line, than acting like the editors of the New York Times.

00:34:52.000 They weren't actually cultivating my content.

00:34:54.000 They had no control over my content.

00:34:56.000 They were just the neutral platform on which we put material.

00:34:59.000 Then all the heads of these companies decided that they were going to lie to the public, and from now on, they were going to become gatekeepers again.

00:35:08.000 So they sucked everyone into this lie that they were just AT&T, that they were just a phone line.

00:35:12.000 And then they said, you know what?

00:35:13.000 We're not a phone line anymore.

00:35:14.000 We're the editors of The New York Times.

00:35:15.000 Even the editor of The New York Times, Ian Paquette, he came out and he said, it seems to me that people over at Facebook are acting more like we are than they're acting like a social media platform.

00:35:25.000 This is a serious problem because it means that now when you follow people like me on Facebook, my alerts may not pop up in your timeline anymore because Mark Zuckerberg has decided he doesn't want you to see my alerts.

00:35:34.000 Now, the way Facebook expresses it is, we just want better news.

00:35:38.000 But there's no standard for better news.

00:35:39.000 They say, well, better news is nonpartisan news.

00:35:41.000 Says whom?

00:35:42.000 Says whom?

00:35:43.000 That's clearly not what the public feels, because when left to their own devices, the public likes partisan news.

00:35:48.000 Which is fine.

00:35:48.000 They're allowed.

00:35:49.000 It's the United States.

00:35:50.000 Now, Facebook's a private company, but there is a lie that they engaged in, and that lie actually has some legal ramifications.

00:35:55.000 Let me explain why.

00:35:57.000 The way that free speech works in the United States, when it comes to lawsuits, for example, the way free speech works is that if you are a social media platform, a neutral social media platform, you cannot be sued for the material that is put on your platform.

00:36:08.000 You're an open source platform, like Facebook, for example, and somebody puts something up that's slanderous or libelous,

00:36:17.000 In any case, somebody puts up something that is defamatory on Facebook.

00:36:23.000 Can Facebook be sued for having that stuff up on Facebook?

00:36:26.000 The answer is no.

00:36:27.000 Facebook cannot be sued for that.

00:36:28.000 Instead, only the person who posted it can be sued.

00:36:30.000 That's because Facebook is like AT&T, right?

00:36:32.000 If I say something nasty about Mathis over the phone, on a radio show, then the phone company doesn't get sued, right?

00:36:39.000 Verizon doesn't get sued every time I say something nasty about Mathis.

00:36:43.000 Okay, only I get sued if I say something nasty and untrue and defamatory about Mathis.

00:36:47.000 Okay, but what if the phone company decides that it's going to screen my calls?

00:36:51.000 And so every time I say something now, the phone company is going to intervene and mute me every time I say something they don't like.

00:36:57.000 Well, now the phone company is on the hook because the phone company has decided what it's okay for me to say and what it's not okay for me to say.

00:37:03.000 Facebook is doing that.

00:37:04.000 Facebook is deciding they are no longer a social media platform.

00:37:07.000 They are instead a publisher.

00:37:08.000 They're going to intervene as to what you can see and what you can't.

00:37:10.000 YouTube is doing the same thing.

00:37:12.000 Twitter is doing the same thing with its verification protocols.

00:37:14.000 Google is doing the same thing.

00:37:16.000 And this means they are now going to be start, I think, that in the very near future, they're really opening themselves up here.

00:37:21.000 I think that there will be lawsuits in the near future in which all of these social media platforms are sued for the content that they allowed to be put on their sites because they're acting as cultivators of content and publishers of content, not merely a social media platform.

00:37:35.000 I think there's a pretty decent legal case for all of this.

00:37:39.000 And maybe that'll encourage all of these social media companies to go back to being platforms, because fully 78% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 get their news from social media, right?

00:37:47.000 They use it more like a phone line.

00:37:49.000 They use it more like a search engine than they use it like the New York Times, right?

00:37:54.000 55% of 50-plus Americans get their news from social media.

00:37:57.000 So if all of these companies decide to act like publishers and crack down on the right, which is what has happened in the last few months, right?

00:38:02.000 Virtually every right-wing site has seen its traffic plummet, except for Fox News, just because it was a legacy brand that's really large.

00:38:09.000 If that continues to happen, I think that what you will see is people begin to realize that this is a publisher.

00:38:13.000 Well, if Facebook is a publisher, Facebook has a real problem.

00:38:17.000 Just on the basis of unlicensed photos alone.

00:38:19.000 Like, we at The Daily Wire license our photos, right?

00:38:21.000 We have a contract with Getty Images.

00:38:22.000 That's how we get all of our photos that we put up on our site, and we pay for those.

00:38:26.000 How many unlicensed images are there every minute on Facebook?

00:38:30.000 Probably thousands.

00:38:31.000 Thousands every minute on Facebook.

00:38:33.000 Well, what happens when a photographer says, listen, 0.95

00:38:35.000 I know that that schmuck in Iowa decided to put up my photo, but he doesn't have a lot of money.

00:38:41.000 I'm going to sue Facebook instead, because it's Facebook's job to prevent copyright infringements. 0.89

00:38:45.000 And so now I'm going to go after Facebook.

00:38:47.000 Or let's say that someone gets slandered on Twitter or on Facebook.

00:38:51.000 And they say, you know what?

00:38:52.000 Facebook, Twitter, these are now publishers.

00:38:54.000 I'm going to sue them for having allowed this stuff to be published.

00:38:57.000 It could bankrupt these companies pretty quickly.

00:38:59.000 These companies ought to get wise.

00:39:00.000 They're not in the business of publishing, nor should they be.

00:39:03.000 They should be in the business of being social media platforms.

00:39:05.000 The fact that they are not is actually restricting the kind of news you can see.

00:39:09.000 They are deciding the flow of information.

00:39:10.000 They've reestablished the media gatekeepers.

00:39:12.000 That is very, very bad for the United States.

00:39:15.000 You don't want Mark Zuckerberg deciding what news you can see.

00:39:17.000 You want you deciding what news you can see.

00:39:19.000 And Zuckerberg should figure that out pretty damn quickly or he's going to have a serious problem on his hands.

00:39:24.000 OK, well, meanwhile, in other news, the president decided to fire his VA secretary.

00:39:28.000 This was long overdue.

00:39:30.000 He, of course, tweeted it out because

00:39:31.000 He's the president, and that's what the president does.

00:39:33.000 So here's what he tweeted.

00:39:34.000 I said,

00:39:48.000 Well, the truth is, he was really ticked at Shulkin.

00:39:50.000 This was a long time in coming.

00:39:51.000 The VA has been mishandled and misrun for years, of course.

00:39:55.000 There was obviously the Veterans Affairs scandal in the latter years of the Obama administration, in which it became clear that the VA was putting people on hold, that they were making people wait for years at a time.

00:40:05.000 And those people were literally dying in line.

00:40:07.000 We're good to go.

00:40:23.000 He has never run a $200 million agency or $200 billion agency.

00:40:27.000 That's a very weird pick by Trump, but Trump tends to pick people that he trusts personally.

00:40:32.000 Shulkin's exit was expected, although the timing was not known, according to Politico, after he antagonized the White House with a scandal over a taxpayer-financed trip to Europe last summer and engaged in open warfare with conservatives in his agency.

00:40:44.000 And Trump made the decision on Wednesday afternoon.

00:40:47.000 The news was delivered by Chief of Staff Kelly in a short phone call to Shulkin.

00:40:50.000 The turnover in the administration right now is quite high.

00:40:53.000 Here is the good news.

00:40:54.000 The turnover has been for the better.

00:40:56.000 All of the upgrades have been upgrades, indeed.

00:40:58.000 John Bolton is an upgrade over H.R.

00:41:00.000 McMaster, over National Security Advisor Mike Pompeo is a clear upgrade over Rex Tillerson at Secretary of State.

00:41:06.000 So Trump's administration is getting better, not worse.

00:41:09.000 And getting rid of Shulkin will be quite useful. 1.00

00:41:11.000 He'd been looking at a few people, including Robert Wilkie, the guy who's the interim guy, as well as Fox News host Pete Hegseth.

00:41:18.000 He liked Hegseth on TV, but Hegseth does have a background with the Veterans Affairs Department.

00:41:24.000 And this was a surprise that Jackson was the guy.

00:41:26.000 He was recently nominated for promotion and rank.

00:41:28.000 It's unclear whether he'll remain an active duty officer if he is confirmed by the Senate.

00:41:33.000 So we will find out whether this is a, whether, you know, this improves the agency or not.

00:41:39.000 But it certainly can't make it worse.

00:41:41.000 The VA inspector general reported last year that Shulkin and his wife had improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets and used staff to arrange sightseeing visits during a business trip to Denmark and England.

00:41:49.000 Last summer, Shulkin repaid the money in question, but foes in the White House and the VA used the opportunity to press for his removal.

00:41:57.000 We're good to go.

00:42:17.000 She says that getting rid of Shulkin is a distraction. 1.00

00:42:19.000 Sure, it had been coming for months.

00:42:20.000 Sure, no one cares all that much.

00:42:21.000 But according to the media, this is the be-all, end-all, and it's distracting from something.

00:42:25.000 This is the media's going theory.

00:42:26.000 Whenever Trump just does something, and they don't know why, it must be a distraction from his scandals.

00:42:31.000 It's not a distraction from his scandals.

00:42:32.000 He wanted to replace his VA secretary.

00:42:34.000 He got rid of him.

00:42:35.000 It's that simple.

00:42:35.000 But the media are full of crazies, and here's Katie Tour being one of them.

00:42:39.000 And let's bring back tonight's panel, Jonathan Lemire, Michelle Goldberg, Michael Steele.

00:42:43.000 It does feel like a distraction tactic to me.

00:42:46.000 Oh, totally.

00:42:46.000 Am I crazy?

00:42:47.000 No, you're not.

00:42:48.000 No, it is totally that.

00:42:49.000 You know, folks were waking up this morning having a conversation about the news that was breaking that we talked about before.

00:42:55.000 Now, all of a sudden, we're now talking about Shulkin. 0.67

00:42:58.000 And what the president's going to do, he's got the list of people that he wants to help him remake his cabinet.

00:43:04.000 And he will roll them in and out as the news cycle warrants.

00:43:09.000 OK, so no, no.

00:43:10.000 I mean, I like Michael Steele, but this is wrong.

00:43:12.000 OK, this is not correct.

00:43:14.000 This is not about, you know, Trump distracting from anything. 0.51

00:43:16.000 Again, people are going crazy over nonsense.

00:43:18.000 They're also going crazy because the president decided that he was going to ask about immigration status in the latest census, which is certainly within his purview.

00:43:25.000 But as Guy Benson writes, this is not even a thing, right?

00:43:28.000 Why is this even a question as to whether we should ask about census status?

00:43:31.000 Prior to 2010, according to Guy, which represents the historical anomaly on this question, citizenship questions had appeared on U.S.

00:43:37.000 censuses dating back to the early 1800s.

00:43:39.000 And the citizenship inquiry on the long-form version of the questionnaire from 1970 to 2000 appeared.

00:43:47.000 But people are saying this is somehow going to alienate illegal immigrants who won't get a proper census count.

00:43:52.000 So we can ask about race, we can ask about religion, but we can't ask about whether you're in the country legally?

00:43:57.000 Again, just demonstrates how crazy everyone is that this has become even an issue. 1.00

00:44:03.000 This is not an issue, but because it's Trump, everything is an issue now, no matter how stupid. 0.99

00:44:07.000 Okay, time for a couple of things I like and then some things that I hate. 0.99

00:44:11.000 So let's do it.

00:44:12.000 Things I like.

00:44:13.000 So I've started watching this documentary on Netflix about a cult that was up in Oregon.

00:44:18.000 Nobody's heard of this cult, but apparently it was linked to the largest

00:44:23.000 Seriously, the largest poisoning case in United States history.

00:44:27.000 It's an amazing story.

00:44:28.000 And the documentary is really well done.

00:44:30.000 It does make you uneasy about the capacity of human beings to follow incredibly crazy ideas because they find meaning in them.

00:44:37.000 And it just demonstrates, once again, that in the absence of Judeo-Christian values, people will fall for anything.

00:44:41.000 That if you stand for nothing, you'll stand for anything.

00:44:43.000 And if you will listen to anything, then you will fall for anything.

00:44:48.000 In any case, here is a little bit of the preview for Wild Wild Country on Netflix.

00:44:55.000 Everybody felt they were there at the beginning of the great experiment.

00:45:01.000 Like we were the chosen people.

00:45:04.000 I'm here in one of the largest ranches in the Northwest.

00:45:08.000 Today, it's Rajneesh Puram, because a prominent Indian guru and his followers brought it.

00:45:14.000 Our vision was to create a community based on compassion and sharing.

00:45:19.000 Bouguin's agenda was simply to raise the consciousness of humanity.

00:45:25.000 That was his goal.

00:45:27.000 America was land of promise.

00:45:30.000 It was my conviction.

00:45:32.000 We will have no problems.

00:45:35.000 I don't think America has a place for these people.

00:45:39.000 Everyone in Antelope mistrusts Rajneesh.

00:45:42.000 I want that guru and his evil influence out of my city. 0.54

00:45:45.000 They're run by satanic power.

00:45:47.000 There is talk of vigilantes who may seek revenge on the Rajneeshies.

00:45:52.000 Okay, it's really interesting, but it is worth noting that this group was holding orgies and poisoning people, and things went pretty wild pretty quickly.

00:46:01.000 So, it's a very interesting documentary and well worth the watch.

00:46:06.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:46:13.000 I really should have put this in things I like.

00:46:14.000 Sean Penn has written a novel.

00:46:15.000 And it is just as grand as you would have thought that it was.

00:46:18.000 You know, Sean Penn is a very good actor.

00:46:20.000 I like Sean Penn's acting.

00:46:21.000 I think Sean Penn is a really good actor.

00:46:22.000 I think he's great in Mystic River.

00:46:24.000 I think that he's a very compelling actor to watch on screen. 0.96

00:46:28.000 He's also an absolute crazy person. 0.93

00:46:30.000 And this comes out in his writing. 0.99

00:46:31.000 I don't know what he thought he was writing.

00:46:33.000 Jonah Goldberg thinks he was trying to do Pynchon, which giant fail.

00:46:36.000 But I'm going to read to you a couple of sections of Sean Penn's new book, OK?

00:46:41.000 It is not good.

00:46:42.000 Somebody over at Huffington Post has wasted their time reading the entire thing and provided us these samples.

00:46:46.000 Pretty amazing.

00:46:47.000 Quote, hence, his life remains incessantly infused with her identity infidelity and her abhorrent ascensions to those constant salacious sessions of sexual solitaire she'd seen as self-regard.

00:46:58.000 That's an actual thing that somebody wrote.

00:47:00.000 So, you understand, he's got a Thesaurus on his nightstand because he doesn't know any of those words, but it doesn't even make any sense.

00:47:05.000 Like, what is he even talking about?

00:47:07.000 If he's just saying that there's a woman who had an affair and then was pleasuring herself, then he should just say that. 0.98

00:47:14.000 This one is pretty spectacular. 0.85

00:47:15.000 Whenever he felt these collisions of incubus and succubus, he punched his way out of the proletariat with a purposeful inputting of covert codes, thereby drawing distraction through Scottsdale's deployments, dodging the ambush of innocents astray, evading the discount vogue of viagratic assaults on virtual vaginas or worse, falling passively into prosaic pastimes. 0.79

00:47:34.000 What in the eff-a-roo? 0.98

00:47:37.000 What in the world?

00:47:38.000 This one, I think, is my favorite.

00:47:40.000 So, Sean.

00:47:40.000 Sean.

00:47:53.000 You're good at one thing.

00:47:54.000 The thing that you are good at is acting.

00:47:56.000 You should probably stick to that because it is not good.

00:47:58.000 Now listen, I have a lot of sympathy for people trying to write novels.

00:48:00.000 I wrote a novel.

00:48:01.000 I think it's decent.

00:48:02.000 But there are some people who hate it.

00:48:03.000 That's fine.

00:48:04.000 I don't think there's a person on earth who thinks this is good.

00:48:07.000 It's amazing to me that he even found a publisher if he did.

00:48:09.000 I don't even know if he self-published it.

00:48:10.000 But in any case,

00:48:12.000 This is just bad writing, and it just demonstrates that because you're famous doesn't mean you're good at everything.

00:48:16.000 There's this weird notion among rich and famous people that they are good at lots of things.

00:48:20.000 One of the great things in life is to recognize your own limitations.

00:48:22.000 Man's gotta recognize his limitations, as Clint Eastwood says in Unforgiven.

00:48:27.000 And, uh, Sean should recognize his limitations, I think.

00:48:31.000 Okay, the other thing that I hate today comes from world's most unfunny person, Samantha Bee.

00:48:35.000 Legitimately an unfunny human being.

00:48:37.000 She was asked, she was on ABC's The View.

00:48:39.000 Why can't I get on The View?

00:48:40.000 What the hell, guys?

00:48:41.000 I mean, I've been lobbying for this for years. 0.57

00:48:43.000 What do I have to do?

00:48:44.000 I'll have Samantha Bee, but you won't have me on?

00:48:47.000 Come on! 0.61

00:48:48.000 Come on, what does a man gotta do to get on The View?

00:48:50.000 Okay, in any case, Samantha Bee was asked about President Trump, and of course, here's what she had to say.

00:48:58.000 Uh, for me, from my perspective...

00:49:02.000 It's worse than I imagined.

00:49:05.000 I mean, I can't... You know, I had my own predictions, but I didn't expect it to be this fast.

00:49:11.000 I didn't expect everything to happen at this pace.

00:49:14.000 I didn't expect it to be as incoherent as I feel it to be.

00:49:18.000 I didn't expect it to be as mean-spirited as I personally find it to be.

00:49:23.000 Yeah, so it's been a grave disappointment, but... It gives you a lot of material.

00:49:29.000 Well, I'd rather have balance.

00:49:33.000 I'd rather... I prefer a slower-paced show.

00:49:39.000 Okay, so, um, let's be real about this.

00:49:42.000 There was no way she was going to say that things are going better than I expected, but things are going better than anyone expected, okay?

00:49:46.000 When it comes to President Trump's administration, okay, the economy is good, everybody's doing pretty well, there hasn't been this giant assault on civil liberties or anything remotely like that, but the left has spun itself up into such a frenzy that everything is worse than you could possibly have imagined.

00:50:01.000 Pretty much all the chaos I imagined, right?

00:50:02.000 I thought, like, if you were realistic about President Trump, you figured that this is pretty much how that part of the administration was going to go, right? 1.00

00:50:07.000 Trump was going to tweet stupid crap all the time. 1.00

00:50:10.000 And indeed, that has happened. 1.00

00:50:11.000 But even Samantha Bee should be looking at the stock market or at the economic statistics and going, well, to be honest with you, I thought that there was going to be a Great Depression three days in. 0.87

00:50:19.000 I thought we would already be in a nuclear war by now.

00:50:22.000 At a certain point, don't you get tired of being, you know, this panicked about stuff that's not going all that badly?

00:50:27.000 Apparently not.

00:50:28.000 Apparently there's still a big market for this.

00:50:30.000 So, you know, whatever.

00:50:32.000 Alright, so we'll be back here tomorrow, and we'll be back here with the mailbag.

00:50:35.000 So many things to discuss then.

00:50:36.000 That's why you should subscribe.

00:50:37.000 Again, $9.99 a month.

00:50:38.000 It helps us out.

00:50:38.000 It helps us bring you the show.

00:50:40.000 Get the annual subscription.

00:50:41.000 Get the Tumblr.

00:50:41.000 The whole deal.

00:50:42.000 And ask us all the questions that your heart desires, and we'll answer them tomorrow for you.

00:50:46.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:50:46.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:50:52.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:50:54.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:50:55.000 Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.

00:50:57.000 Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:50:59.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:00.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:51:02.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:51:04.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

00:51:07.000 Copyright Forward Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 29, 2018

The Media Goes Hogg Wild | Ep. 506

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript