The Ben Shapiro Show - The Question Of Motives | Ep. 645

00:00:00.000 Bombs mailed to prominent Democratic figures, Megyn Kelly gets into hot water for her comments on Halloween, and President Trump comes under fire for saying he's a nationalist.

00:00:08.000 We'll get into all of it.

00:00:08.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:15.000 Man, things are getting quite ugly out there, and we're going to get into why that is and what we can do to actually stop this.

00:00:22.000 Why it is that we are, not only why we're polarized, but what we can do to sort of take the temperature down a little bit, because it seems like that's something we need to do, especially in the run-up to this election.

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00:01:38.000 Okay, so the breaking news today is this really, really awful news that explosive divisives have now been found, addressed to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

00:01:47.000 This after yesterday, there was a story about an explosive device sent to the home of George Soros, the major leftist donor.

00:01:56.000 All of this, of course, is abysmal, disgusting, horrific.

00:01:59.000 Whoever is doing this should be arrested, they should be tried, and then they should go to jail for the rest of their lives.

00:02:03.000 This is just an awful, awful thing.

00:02:06.000 And what's amazing is that if you say that publicly, there's a group of people who immediately suggest that it's a false flag attack, or that, depending on the target of these sorts of bombs, that it's okay, which suggests to me that there is a collective

00:02:18.000 A sort of collective mental illness that's fallen across a small but significant group of people who believe that the other side is so evil that everything up to and including sending pipe bombs in the mail to them is justified which is just sick.

00:02:30.000 That means that we have a sickness in our society that needs to be eradicated. 0.91

00:02:34.000 A mental sickness in our society that needs to be eradicated.

00:02:36.000 Here's the story from ABC News.

00:02:38.000 Explosive devices addressed to Hillary Clinton's home when the House and former President Barack Obama were intercepted.

00:02:43.000 The Time Warner Center that is home to CNN in New York City was evacuated after a suspicious package that apparently looks like a pipe bomb was sent there.

00:02:50.000 A suspicious package was also received at the New York City office of Governor Andrew Cuomo, sources told ABC News.

00:02:56.000 Which should narrow it down a little bit.

00:02:57.000 It sounds like this is probably somebody from New York State if they're sending it to Andrew Cuomo as opposed to, say, Governor Jerry Brown in California.

00:03:03.000 Investigators are working to determine whether the two devices addressed to Clinton and Obama are connected to a pipe bomb found earlier this week in the home of mailbox of billionaire George Soros near where the Clintons live in Chappaqua, New York.

00:03:15.000 The preliminary belief is that all three devices are of similar pipe-bomb style construction.

00:03:19.000 Now, the immediate jump by folks on the left was to suggest that this was a right-winger who hates left-wingers and has been inspired by President Trump.

00:03:27.000 As I have said for years now, I despise when people blame individual acts of violence or attempted violence on generalized political rhetoric.

00:03:35.000 Unless you are actively calling for violence and someone takes you up on that offer, you're not responsible for the violent actions of people who take you

00:03:44.000 To the ultimate extreme in terms of violence.

00:03:46.000 So, for example, when a Bernie Sanders supporter went and shot up a congressional baseball game and nearly killed the House Majority Whip, and the media covered it for all of 15 minutes.

00:03:56.000 I didn't blame Bernie Sanders because that wasn't Bernie Sanders' fault.

00:03:59.000 When a kind of fringe member of Black Lives Matter shot up police officers in Dallas a couple of years ago, right after Barack Obama had made speeches condemning police officers as broadly racist, I didn't say that that was Barack Obama's fault.

00:04:12.000 It wasn't Barack Obama's fault.

00:04:13.000 It was an act of evil on the part of a person who was actually evil or mentally ill or both.

00:04:19.000 And that had nothing to do with Barack Obama's words.

00:04:23.000 I think that you can raise the temperature in society and do serious damage to the society because you have raised the temperature of that society, but I'm not going to attribute individual acts of violence and evil to individual political viewpoints unless those viewpoints are actively calling for violence.

00:04:36.000 And to do anything less leads to the sort of censorship that makes the country a worse place in that way.

00:04:42.000 If you believe that free speech is inherently connected to violence, you're more likely to crack down on free speech in order to prevent that violence, and that seems to be more of a broad danger than individuals in the United States who do evil things.

00:04:54.000 So with that said, obviously this is really, really bad stuff, and it goes to the question of motives.

00:05:00.000 Because what we are seeing now, why is this breaking out so much?

00:05:03.000 Why are we seeing ricin sent to Susan Collins in Maine?

00:05:08.000 Why are we seeing rocks thrown through the windows of Kevin McCarthy's offices in California?

00:05:14.000 Why are we seeing bombs put in George Soros's mailbox?

00:05:17.000 It's because they're a group of people who have been fully convinced that the other side, and I don't just mean the other side ideas, I mean people who are on the other side are actively members of evil.

00:05:28.000 They're Hitlerian figures. 0.65

00:05:30.000 You know, that sort of rhetoric is responsible for heating up the temperature.

00:05:35.000 It's not responsible for individual acts of violence, but it is responsible for an increase in the temperature, and the more you increase the temperature, the more you can expect that there are going to be people who are going to go to the ultimate extreme of attempting to engage in violence.

00:05:48.000 You've seen it on the left, you've seen it some on the right, and it's really ugly no matter how you slice it.

00:05:52.000 It seems to me that a lot of this is springing from

00:05:57.000 A basic failure of values.

00:06:00.000 And the basic failure of values is something that we call in Hebrew, there's a Hebrew commandment that you're supposed to consider everybody in their best possible light.

00:06:09.000 The Hebrew phrase for it is, which literally means that you're supposed to think of everybody's merits.

00:06:16.000 We don't do that anymore.

00:06:17.000 We tend to, instead, think of everybody's demerits.

00:06:19.000 We tend to think of the worst form of everybody's arguments.

00:06:21.000 We tend to think of the worst motives on the part of people with whom we disagree.

00:06:26.000 We see someone say something, and the first thing we think is not, okay, what's the reasonable explanation for what they're saying?

00:06:31.000 Or what, maybe, were they thinking?

00:06:33.000 Instead, we immediately jump to, this person is the worst person in the world, and their rhetoric is obviously intended for the worst possible effect.

00:06:40.000 Now, I can't say I've been innocent in this, because I don't think anybody in politics is innocent in this.

00:06:44.000 But I do think that we're going to have to start trying to attribute to people, perhaps, a less vicious motive than we have been attributing to them so far.

00:06:53.000 Because people hate each other, not because of what they do, but because of what they think the other person is thinking.

00:06:59.000 That's where we are in American society.

00:07:01.000 It's one thing to hate another person because of something that they do.

00:07:06.000 Somebody murders your father, you're allowed to hate them.

00:07:08.000 But what we have come to in society is actions that can be interpreted in a couple of ways, and we have decided to interpret them in the least flattering, most nasty way about somebody else.

00:07:18.000 So to take an example, there's a religious baker in Colorado. 0.60

00:07:20.000 He says, listen, I don't want to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding because I believe that homosexuality is sinful. 0.99

00:07:26.000 We immediately attribute that to malice. 1.00

00:07:28.000 We immediately attribute that to, that's because the baker is a mean man who hates gay people. 0.98

00:07:33.000 Never mind that the baker has been serving gay couples for years in his establishment, and he's just saying, I don't want to be roped or hamstrung into violating my own religious precepts. 0.99

00:07:41.000 No, we have to attribute to him hatred.

00:07:43.000 We have to attribute to him viciousness.

00:07:45.000 And we see this on the other side as well.

00:07:47.000 There are folks on the left who will say things like, well, I want nationalized healthcare.

00:07:51.000 And instead of us saying, on the right, well, maybe they want nationalized healthcare because they don't understand the issue, or because they misunderstand how nationalized healthcare works, or because they have a good faith argument about how we should redistribute resources, instead we go to, it's because they want control.

00:08:07.000 It's because they want control.

00:08:08.000 Once you start explaining people's motives without reference to their actual behavior,

00:08:13.000 You're going to get yourself into hot water politically and you're going to divide the country on a more significant and long-lasting level.

00:08:18.000 And yet this is also... Here's the problem.

00:08:21.000 This is also the stuff that wins you elections.

00:08:23.000 The stuff that wins you elections in today's society...

00:08:26.000 is castigating your opponent as morally somehow deficient.

00:08:31.000 Saying that your opponent is not just wrong, but evil.

00:08:33.000 You know, Ronald Reagan was famous for saying that it isn't that Democrats are just evil, it's that they know so much that isn't so.

00:08:41.000 In other words, he attributed to ignorance what he could not attribute to malice.

00:08:46.000 And it's a rule that I've had on the program. 0.99

00:08:48.000 Try to attribute to stupidity what you can't attribute to malice. 0.99

00:08:52.000 But when it comes to political fights, the easiest thing to do is attribute malice to the other side. 0.99

00:08:58.000 And you're seeing this manifest in a couple of different ways.

00:09:00.000 Let's take, for example, the way that the left has decided to read President Trump's comments about nationalism.

00:09:05.000 So the President of the United States gave a speech a couple of days ago in which he was talking about illegal immigration.

00:09:10.000 And President Trump is no stranger to character attacks.

00:09:12.000 He uses them on a fairly frequent basis against his political opponents, whether they're former opponents like Ted Cruz or whether they are opponents in the Democratic Party.

00:09:20.000 Why?

00:09:20.000 Because it's effective.

00:09:21.000 It's a lot more effective to attack somebody's character than to attack their ideas.

00:09:24.000 Because we tend to vote based on whether we think somebody is a good person or not, not based on whether we believe their ideas are good.

00:09:32.000 See, evaluating ideas takes time and effort.

00:09:34.000 Evaluating ideas requires you to actually sit there and determine whether you think that the evidence is there to support a particular idea.

00:09:40.000 But evaluating a human being, you can do like that.

00:09:43.000 And science tends to show that that's exactly how we deal with other human beings in our daily life and in politics more broadly.

00:09:48.000 When you meet somebody, you tend to make a judgment about that person within the first five seconds of meeting them, whether you think this is a good person or a bad person, a nice person or a mean person, a person who you think is going to benefit your life or a person who's going to be a detriment to your life.

00:10:00.000 You make that decision in seconds.

00:10:02.000 That's a lot easier and a lot more instinctive.

00:10:04.000 The human brain is built for that, rather than thinking through, okay, what are the policies that this politician is suggesting?

00:10:10.000 We as a society need to start thinking about the policies a lot more and stop attributing motives so much.

00:10:15.000 But again, it is easier and more electorally lucrative to suggest evil motive on the part of people that you face down.

00:10:22.000 Character attacks are deeply effective.

00:10:23.000 I wrote an entire book about this in 2013 called Bullies, and the entire premise of the book was that basically the left had decided to leave

00:10:30.000 Let's do it!

00:10:56.000 The real point that he's making is that his priorities are the protection of the American people above all else, and other priorities, such as, for example, kindness or human rights, those take second priority to protection of the nation's borders.

00:11:11.000 Maybe for human rights reasons, maybe for charitable reasons, but that's the way he thinks of things.

00:11:16.000 We're going to see in a second what President Trump said and also how the Democrats responded because they didn't respond by making a critique of President Trump's ideas or what he was saying.

00:11:24.000 Instead, they basically suggested the worst form of President Trump.

00:11:27.000 President Trump wasn't spouting an idea. 1.00

00:11:29.000 President Trump was only saying this stuff because President Trump is a big meanie, a terrible, terrible person. 0.98

00:11:33.000 Again, this is not unique to one side of the aisle. 0.98

00:11:35.000 It's just the most convenient example today.

00:11:37.000 And we'll get to a couple other examples of it too in just a second.

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00:12:56.000 OK, so here's President Trump talking about nationalism and then we'll look at the Democratic response because this is driving up the temperature.

00:13:04.000 Again, it's not unique to one side.

00:13:06.000 I keep repeating that because I think it's important.

00:13:08.000 I think it's important, especially in light of the fact that somebody obviously sending bombs to Democrats.

00:13:12.000 OK, Democrats have been engaged in mob violence and now some crazy person or evil person or both is sending bombs to Democrats in the mail.

00:13:19.000 So obviously the temperature has risen on both sides.

00:13:22.000 And by the way, there are studies that show this.

00:13:24.000 There's a chart I talked about on this program, I think, a couple of weeks ago, when we were in Memphis, that showed the level of hatred within each party for the other party has been rising consistently for years, but it has skyrocketed among Republicans.

00:13:36.000 And in any case, here's President Trump talking about nationalism, then you're going to see the sort of failure of that Jewish principle I was talking about, Dan LeKauf's Zichus, the idea of trying to think of people in the best possible light.

00:13:47.000 You're going to see how Democrats respond that violates that precept.

00:13:49.000 Here's President Trump.

00:13:51.000 A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much.

00:14:01.000 And you know what?

00:14:01.000 We can't have that.

00:14:03.000 You know, they have a word.

00:14:04.000 It sort of became old-fashioned.

00:14:06.000 It's called a nationalist.

00:14:08.000 And I say, really, we're not supposed to use that word.

00:14:11.000 You know what I am?

00:14:12.000 I'm a nationalist, okay?

00:14:13.000 I'm a nationalist.

00:14:15.000 Okay, so you can hear the sort of implicit character attack.

00:14:18.000 President Trump is leveling at folks on the left there.

00:14:21.000 But he's not actually saying something racist.

00:14:24.000 He's not saying something sexist or bigoted here.

00:14:25.000 He's saying that some people have a priority, which is to uplift places in the world that are not the United States.

00:14:31.000 That's not my priority.

00:14:32.000 Now, you can say that President Trump is strawmanning his opposition.

00:14:35.000 I think that's a fair critique.

00:14:36.000 You can say that President Trump is maligning his opposition in an unfair way.

00:14:41.000 Fair, but that's not how Democrats reacted.

00:14:44.000 The way Democrats reacted was by doubling down on the maligning.

00:14:47.000 So they say that when President Trump says nationalist, what he really means is that he is a racist.

00:14:52.000 So here is Joe Biden.

00:14:53.000 Remember, Joe Biden, that guy who was at John McCain's funeral calling for a new, better politics.

00:14:58.000 Joe Biden, the guy who said that John McCain and I, we got along, we were best friends because we never questioned one another's motives.

00:15:04.000 Here is Joe Biden at a rally last night suggesting that Donald Trump is like George Wallace, an actual segregationist.

00:15:11.000 Who, by the way, was a Democrat and therefore is probably closer to Joe Biden than to Donald Trump.

00:15:15.000 In any case, here is Joe Biden saying that Trump is like George Wallace thanks to the nationalism comments.

00:15:21.000 No president has ever led by fear.

00:15:25.000 Not Lincoln, not Roosevelt, not Kennedy, not Reagan.

00:15:29.000 This president is more like George Wallace than George Washington.

00:15:32.000 OK, I mean, that is about as vile a statement you can make about another human being as is possible.

00:15:36.000 And this is a guy who says that he wants a new kind of politics, and then he maligns the president of the United States as George Wallace, an active segregationist.

00:15:43.000 It's an amazing statement, but again, not unexpected from Joe Biden, a man who suggested that Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, the most milquetoast candidate in American history, wanted to put black people back in chains during the 2012 campaign.

00:15:56.000 These sort of character attacks have been happening since long before Trump, and they continue unabated on the part of people on both sides, but the left really has ramped it up.

00:16:04.000 There's no question the left has ramped it up.

00:16:05.000 I think the right has ramped it up in reactionary response.

00:16:08.000 Here's more evidence of that.

00:16:09.000 So, Maisie Hirono, senator from Hawaii. 0.93

00:16:12.000 When President Trump says that he's a nationalist, she says maybe it's because he's a white supremacist or an anti-Semite.

00:16:18.000 We should stop giving him the benefit of the doubt that he doesn't understand what he means when he refers to nationalists or any of these other terms.

00:16:27.000 These are not just dog whistles, but it's bullhorns.

00:16:30.000 It's racism.

00:16:32.000 It's basically, for many people, it's anti-Semitic. 0.87

00:16:36.000 It's white supremacy.

00:16:37.000 He knows very well what he's talking about, even if he professes otherwise.

00:16:41.000 Okay, Maisie, my antenna is pretty high up there for anti-Semitism.

00:16:45.000 When the president says nationalism,

00:16:48.000 I'm not hearing Nazi.

00:16:49.000 When the president says nationalism, that is not what he is saying.

00:16:52.000 He is saying that he prioritizes the United States' border security over the human rights of people trying to make their way across that border.

00:16:59.000 You may disagree with that, but there is no way that that has anything to do with racism or anti-Semitism.

00:17:03.000 But this became the actual talking point across the left yesterday.

00:17:07.000 Jim Acosta of CNN.

00:17:08.000 And ladies, find you somebody who loves you like Jim Acosta loves him some Jim Acosta.

00:17:13.000 Here is Jim Acosta saying, well, maybe when President Trump says nationalist, he means white nationalist. 1.00

00:17:19.000 Okay, or maybe when Jim Acosta says stuff, I just think that he's an idiot. 1.00

00:17:22.000 Here's Jim Acosta. 0.99

00:17:23.000 When you're demonizing Middle Easterners and making the suggestion that they're terrorists and so on in that caravan without offering any proof, and then calling yourself a nationalist in front of thousands and thousands of people, I don't think it's a stretch for a lot of Americans out there to wonder whether or not the president is secretly considering himself a white nationalist.

00:17:42.000 So much journalisming.

00:17:44.000 So much objective journalisming there from Jim Acosta.

00:17:47.000 I don't think it's any wonder that people ask whether the president is a Nazi when he says things like, we should protect our border and nationalism.

00:17:54.000 I mean, flashback to Barack Obama 2005 saying exactly the same thing.

00:17:58.000 Barack Obama actually said this, right?

00:18:00.000 Here's Obama circa 2005 when he was just a senator, barely a glint in the nation's eye.

00:18:05.000 Here he was saying exactly the same thing as Donald Trump.

00:18:08.000 We are a generous and welcoming people here in the United States, but those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law. 0.97

00:18:23.000 We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country. 1.00

00:18:39.000 Okay, so, you know, again, I guess that Barack Obama, way back when, was a sort of white nationalist also, you know, being half-white.

00:18:47.000 I guess that he was a white nationalist as well.

00:18:49.000 It wasn't just Jim Acosta, who, at this point, basically everything that he says should be prefaced with, Dear Diary, because he says all of the quiet stuff out loud.

00:18:57.000 It was also NBC News' Peter Alexander, more objective journalism-ing from the mainstream media on the issue of nationalism.

00:19:03.000 Yeah, it definitely does.

00:19:04.000 I mean, undertones that are not just racial, they're xenophobic.

00:19:07.000 This is something that the president has sort of shied away from in the past.

00:19:11.000 Obviously, nationalism was a phrase that Steve Bannon obviously embraced over the course of the campaign, and a lot of the president's opponents tried to pin this idea on him.

00:19:22.000 Now listen.

00:19:23.000 I'm somebody who has said that I prefer patriotism to nationalism.

00:19:25.000 I don't think that nationalism alone is enough.

00:19:27.000 I think there are ties that bind us, ties of history, ties of culture, but what actually makes the United States the United States is the root idea embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and backed by 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian history, or rather 3,000 years of Judeo-Christian history.

00:19:41.000 That's what makes the United States the United States, is the idea of classical liberalism combined with cultural conservatism.

00:19:48.000 That's what makes the United States unique.

00:19:50.000 That is a unique idea in world history.

00:19:52.000 So I'm not such a big fan, even, of the president using nationalistic language. 1.00

00:19:56.000 But to suggest that that is white supremacy is just idiocy. 0.99

00:19:59.000 But again, this comes back to the basic idea. 1.00

00:20:02.000 You want to raise the temperature in a country?

00:20:04.000 You want to raise the hackles of people on the other side?

00:20:09.000 All you have to do is just question motives day in and day out.

00:20:12.000 And that's what we are now in the business of doing.

00:20:14.000 And again, I want to work on this myself.

00:20:16.000 Every time I give some sort of, you know, values advice, I try to think about how often I violate those values.

00:20:21.000 I would imagine I do it fairly often.

00:20:23.000 I want to work on it myself.

00:20:24.000 I think we all should work on it because the truth is that in a country where we agree on 90% of our values, we really do, I think, in the end, agree on 90% of our values, the only way you can divide us is by

00:20:36.000 Castigating people who disagree with you on the manifestation of those values as evil, nasty, bigoted, horrible people.

00:20:44.000 By the way, this is how you got Trump on the left. 0.94

00:20:45.000 I mean, you wanna know how you got Trump?

00:20:46.000 This is how you got Trump.

00:20:47.000 By castigating folks in the middle of the country as deplorable, bitter clingers for 10 years.

00:20:51.000 And then they said, you know what? 0.98

00:20:52.000 Screw you. 0.99

00:20:53.000 We don't like you either. 1.00

00:20:54.000 That's how you got this situation.

00:20:56.000 That's pretty much American politics in a nutshell.

00:20:58.000 I'm gonna show you another example of that.

00:21:00.000 That came out of a weird place yesterday.

00:21:01.000 Megyn Kelly got herself into hot water over on NBC. 1.00

00:21:06.000 And I think there are some illustrative lessons to be learned there.

00:21:09.000 But first, let's talk about your Second Amendment rights.

00:21:12.000 So, the Second Amendment is obviously designed in order to protect those key rights in the Bill of Rights.

00:21:16.000 And like many of you, I am a gun owner.

00:21:18.000 Depending on the state you live in and the concealed carry laws, maybe you want to protect your family when you go out. 0.88

00:21:22.000 Maybe you don't live in a crappy state like California.

00:21:24.000 And you actually have the capacity to concealed carry.

00:21:26.000 Well, that's why you're going to need a great holster to properly hold your gun.

00:21:29.000 And you're a law-abiding citizen, you want to keep your fellow citizens safe?

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00:22:27.000 Alrighty, so...

00:22:31.000 There was a big controversy that broke out yesterday over Megan Kelly.

00:22:34.000 Now, full disclosure, I'm friends with Megan Kelly.

00:22:37.000 I think that Megan Kelly is a really nice lady. 1.00

00:22:40.000 I used to be a regular guest on her Fox News show when she was on Fox News, and I wish her nothing but the best.

00:22:46.000 Megan got herself into hot water because she was on yesterday on NBC News, and they were doing soft stuff.

00:22:51.000 And what was the soft stuff they were doing?

00:22:52.000 It was the NBC morning show.

00:22:54.000 Well, the soft stuff that they were doing was they were talking about Halloween costumes.

00:22:58.000 Well, this always gets into dicey areas because as soon as you start talking about limits on Halloween costumes and what should be allowed and what shouldn't be allowed, people get very easily offended by Halloween costumes to the point where people on the left have been suggesting in recent years that white girls shouldn't be able to dress up as Moana for Halloween.

00:23:12.000 We talked about it last Halloween. 0.99

00:23:14.000 It's just idiocy. 1.00

00:23:15.000 It's just idiocy. 1.00

00:23:16.000 My daughter is going to dress up as any Disney princess she chooses. 1.00

00:23:19.000 But Megan steps into some pretty fraught territory here because she's talking about the use of dressing up as black folks. 0.57

00:23:26.000 For Halloween, whether you can put on black makeup to dress up as a black person for Halloween. 0.99

00:23:30.000 And here's what Megan has to say.

00:23:31.000 And this goes to the central contention I'm making today, which is that people are jumping to the worst possible conclusion about people's motives without actually analyzing what the motives are.

00:23:40.000 So here is Megan talking about Halloween costumes involving putting on black makeup or darkening your skin for a costume.

00:23:47.000 And the blowback was just enormous.

00:23:51.000 Okay, so she got in all sorts of trouble because she said when I was a kid it was okay to dress up as like Diana Ross.

00:24:09.000 Like I was a big Diana Ross fan, and in my neighborhood if somebody darkened their skin to look like Diana Ross, because if you just put on a fright wig, you know, to look like Diana Ross, people still didn't know who you were, so you darkened your skin or whatever.

00:24:21.000 People went nuts over this. 0.98

00:24:22.000 This is Megyn Kelly being ignorant and bigoted and racist. 1.00

00:24:25.000 And so Megyn Kelly actually had to issue an apology. 0.99

00:24:28.000 Here's what she said.

00:24:40.000 When we had the roundtable discussion earlier today about the controversy of making your face look like a different race as part of a Halloween costume, I suggested that this seemed okay if done as part of this holiday where people have the chance to make themselves look like others.

00:24:51.000 The iconic Diana Ross came up as an example.

00:24:54.000 To me, I thought, why would it be controversial for someone dressing up as Diana Ross to make herself look like this amazing woman as a way of honoring and respecting her?

00:25:00.000 I realize now that such behavior is indeed wrong, and I am sorry.

00:25:03.000 The history of blackface in our culture is abhorrent. 1.00

00:25:05.000 The wound is too deep.

00:25:06.000 I've never been a PC kind of person, but I understand that we do need to be more sensitive in this day and age, particularly on race and ethnicity issues, which, far from being healed, have been exacerbated in our politics over the past year.

00:25:16.000 This is a time for more understanding, love, sensitivity, and honor, and I want to be part of that.

00:25:19.000 I look forward to continuing that discussion.

00:25:21.000 I'm honored to work with all of you every day.

00:25:23.000 Megan.

00:25:25.000 I think that her apology is perfectly appropriate, by the way.

00:25:27.000 But the outsized reactions to original comments is pretty astonishing.

00:25:31.000 So here was Kirsten Powers, who supposedly is in favor of people saying what they want, freedom of speech. 0.99

00:25:35.000 Here's what she tweeted.

00:25:36.000 Dear white people who are upset that you can't dress up as another race or culture for Halloween, your feelings don't matter.

00:25:42.000 The only feelings that matter are those who feel disrespected or mocked by you appropriating their culture for entertainment.

00:25:48.000 Show some common decency.

00:25:50.000 So, basically, the feelings of people who are non-white matter more than the feelings of people who are white.

00:25:56.000 Now, I think that there is some actual nuance to this issue.

00:25:59.000 Here is the nuance to this issue.

00:26:01.000 Blackface has a long, terrible history in the United States.

00:26:04.000 People actually dressing up as black folks in order to mock them was something that happened on a frequent basis all the way up till the 1950s and 1960s in the United States.

00:26:13.000 And you can go back and you can watch old videos on YouTube of people dressing up, making their faces black, and giving themselves big lips in really, really racist fashion, and then singing Mammy songs in order to mock black folks.

00:26:26.000 And it's very much the same thing as in anti-Semitic cultures for centuries where people would put on a hook nose and they'd put on a fake belly and curly side locks and then they would suggest that they were Jewish, right?

00:26:38.000 I mean, it's the same sort of thing. 0.94

00:26:39.000 Dressing up as a culture to mock that culture is disgusting, unacceptable, actually racist. 0.69

00:26:45.000 Now, is that what Megyn Kelly was suggesting?

00:26:48.000 This is where we get into the issue of assuming people's motives.

00:26:52.000 Here's my opinion on people darkening their face for costumes like this.

00:26:57.000 I agree that it's inappropriate specifically because of the past and I think that it is fair for people to look at this sort of thing and be sensitive about it.

00:27:03.000 But I think it would also be worthwhile to recognize there is a difference between being ignorant slash racially insensitive and being racist. 0.97

00:27:11.000 Nowhere was Megyn Kelly suggesting that black people should be mocked. 1.00

00:27:14.000 Nowhere was Megyn Kelly suggesting that black people are inferior in any way. 0.86

00:27:18.000 In fact, what Megyn Kelly was suggesting is that maybe white people want to dress up as some famous black people because they admire those famous black people.

00:27:24.000 That is not the same thing as people dressing up in blackface.

00:27:26.000 Now, again, that doesn't mean that it's okay to go to a frat party dressed as a black person with black makeup on.

00:27:32.000 That's insensitive. 0.85

00:27:33.000 And you should take into account black people's feelings about historic use of this sort of costuming for mockery. 0.99

00:27:41.000 But I also think there's a difference between even a frat boy going to a party and a little girl who decides that she wants to dress up as Michelle Obama and so she puts on dark makeup.

00:27:49.000 Because I think that you can pretty easily tell the difference in motives.

00:27:52.000 The attempt to misattribute motives in our society is really gross.

00:27:57.000 Megyn Kelly is not a racist.

00:27:58.000 And Megyn Kelly was not attempting to be racist by that statement. 0.74

00:28:01.000 At best, you know, at worst, at worst, Megyn Kelly was being ignorant of the history of blackface and the impact it still has on black folks in the United States. 0.89

00:28:09.000 That's at worst. 0.96

00:28:10.000 Okay, but there is no way that Megyn Kelly was actually suggesting it's okay to mock black people. 0.75

00:28:16.000 That is not what was happening here.

00:28:17.000 And yet, here is CNN's Don Lemon suggesting that Megyn Kelly actually is a racist because there's never been a time when blackface was acceptable. 1.00

00:28:24.000 First of all, he doesn't know where she lived.

00:28:26.000 He doesn't know what kind of parties she went to.

00:28:28.000 Like, Don Lemon doesn't know that.

00:28:30.000 So if his suggestion is that Megyn Kelly was a racist when she was seven years old because she dressed up as Diana Ross and blackened her face for it,

00:28:37.000 I would suggest that Don Lemon doesn't really know what he's talking about.

00:28:41.000 He may know what he's talking about historically with regard to blackface, but again, there's a difference between darkening your face for a costume to praise an African-American person and darkening your face to mock African-American people.

00:28:53.000 And again, I've said several times in the segment, I still don't think that you should do it to praise African-American people specifically because there are too many black folks who are going to look at that and say, well, maybe you're mocking me.

00:29:03.000 Maybe the real reason you're doing that is because you're mocking me.

00:29:05.000 So out of sensitivity, you shouldn't do that.

00:29:07.000 But the attempt to immediately attribute the worst available motive to Megyn Kelly is really telling, and it says something about the nastiness of our politics right now.

00:29:18.000 Megyn is 47 years old.

00:29:20.000 She's our age.

00:29:20.000 There has never been a time

00:29:23.000 In her 47 years, that black face has been acceptable. 1.00

00:29:28.000 There were all white people on that panel.

00:29:30.000 There were no African Americans, no people of color there to say, hey, Megan, not cool. 1.00

00:29:37.000 Okay, so this is really, really absurd.

00:29:42.000 Again, taking blackface seriously is fine, but misinterpreting motives is not.

00:29:47.000 I'll give you an example.

00:29:47.000 You wanna know how we should deal with these issues?

00:29:49.000 Really how we should deal with these issues?

00:29:51.000 The same way that Jamie Foxx deals with these issues.

00:29:52.000 So Jamie Foxx is obviously an incredibly prominent black man in the United States, has made lots of money as a musician, as an actor, very talented guy.

00:30:01.000 He's very close friends with Robert Downey Jr.

00:30:04.000 A few years ago, he did a podcast with Joe Rogan.

00:30:06.000 And in the middle of this podcast, the question of Robert Downey Jr.

00:30:09.000 actually putting on blackface for the movie Tropic Thunder came up.

00:30:13.000 Robert Downey Jr.

00:30:14.000 was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

00:30:15.000 There is no way, by the way, that even, I think, when was Tropic Thunder made?

00:30:19.000 Maybe 10 years ago?

00:30:20.000 Eight years ago?

00:30:21.000 Maybe eight years ago.

00:30:22.000 In any case, there is no way that movie gets made, even today, because of the great sensitivity around identity politics.

00:30:27.000 But here is Jamie Foxx's perfectly decent explanation of Robert Downey Jr.

00:30:32.000 and how he feels about all of this.

00:30:34.000 People have to understand where it comes from.

00:30:37.000 There are real people out there that really mean you harm.

00:30:40.000 Like, outside of us.

00:30:41.000 I mean, there's some real people who really don't like you.

00:30:44.000 Whatever you are. 0.70

00:30:44.000 Whether you're black, you're white, you're straight, you're gay, whatever it is. 0.70

00:30:47.000 There's some people who really don't like you.

00:30:49.000 We're the entertainment.

00:30:51.000 And it's easy, we're easy targets.

00:30:54.000 Okay, so when Jamie Foxx suggests you have to know where it's coming from, there are some people who are bad out there who don't like you, but Robert Downey Jr.

00:31:01.000 is not one of those people. 0.90

00:31:02.000 Why don't we start thinking of each other as people who probably could be friends if we would stop treating each other like garbage? 0.99

00:31:08.000 Hey, Megyn Kelly is not going to a party dressed in blackface to mock black people. 1.00

00:31:12.000 And it is kind of amazing how certain people get away with this sort of stuff because everybody assumes the best motives on their part. 0.81

00:31:17.000 So, for example,

00:31:18.000 Tom Hanks, in 2004, was at a fundraiser.

00:31:21.000 And at that fundraiser, there was a comedian who got up.

00:31:23.000 His name was Glenn Frey.

00:31:25.000 And he was actually making jokes while wearing blackface, right? 0.92

00:31:28.000 He was actually darkened his face, and he was wearing a fright wig.

00:31:32.000 And Tom Hanks was cool with that.

00:31:33.000 Okay, the controversy lasted about five minutes, because Tom Hanks said, listen, that never should have happened, it was inappropriate, I don't know what was going on there, I understand people were offended, and everybody said, right, Tom Hanks isn't a racist, we know he didn't mean to mock black people, we know that he's not interested in somehow hurting black people, and everybody got on with their lives.

00:31:52.000 But because we are interested right now in what can we pin people to the wall over, that makes for the worst available country, the worst version of ourselves.

00:32:00.000 And that has to stop, whether we're talking about Megyn Kelly, or whether we're talking about President Trump, or whether we're talking about the attempt to nail people on the other side of the aisle in reverse.

00:32:10.000 Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit more about this, plus I want to talk about the latest on the caravan issue in just a second, plus there's some breaking news on the return address of the suspicious packages.

00:32:19.000 Which is kind of weird.

00:32:21.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:32:22.000 First, let's talk about your Second Amendment rights again, because your Second Amendment rights are crucial.

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00:33:41.000 Okay, I want to give you an update on this bomb situation in just one second.

00:33:45.000 First, you're going to have to go subscribe at DailyWare.com.

00:33:47.000 For $9.99 a month, you can get the rest of this show live, the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live, the rest of Michael Knowles' awful show live.

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00:34:14.000 Go check it out right now.

00:34:16.000 Also, when you subscribe over at YouTube or iTunes, you get to see our Sunday special because it arrives

00:34:21.000 In your feed, every single Sunday.

00:34:23.000 And this week's star is Scott Adams.

00:34:25.000 You know Scott Adams, he's the Dilbert guy, but he also happens to be the great Trump decoder.

00:34:30.000 And we talked with him for a full hour, for the full hour.

00:34:33.000 So here's what it sounds like.

00:34:34.000 Hi, I'm Scott Adams.

00:34:36.000 You can see me on The Ben Shapiro Show, Sunday special, where I'll be talking about my book, Win Bigly, and persuasion, and President Trump, and are we in a simulation?

00:34:45.000 All kinds of fun stuff.

00:34:47.000 It did get pretty wild, so you're going to want to listen to that one.

00:34:50.000 Go check it out right now.

00:34:51.000 We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:34:59.000 Okay, so the update with regard to these bombs, that there was a return address that was put on the labels to Debbie Wasserman Schultz's office.

00:35:06.000 That doesn't mean that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is actually sending these bombs.

00:35:09.000 It means that somebody is probably trolling by doing exactly that.

00:35:12.000 Okay, so I want to talk a little bit more about where we are as a society and how we cure all of this.

00:35:20.000 Again, we need to start with the premise that the people that we are talking about generally do not have harm in mind.

00:35:26.000 That their goal is not to destroy us in any way.

00:35:29.000 If we figure that, then we can have normal elections.

00:35:32.000 Yes, fraught, heated elections.

00:35:34.000 But we're not going to be trying to kill each other.

00:35:36.000 Because we can assume that most people in the United States grew up with the same value system we did.

00:35:43.000 And they did.

00:35:43.000 I mean, the reality is that we all grew up in the same milieu.

00:35:45.000 Our values are not all that different.

00:35:47.000 Even the most right-wing members of the United States and the most left-wing members of the United States theoretically agree on certain basic values, like freedom of speech and treating each other compassionately and decently.

00:35:57.000 Why?

00:35:57.000 Because we all grew up in the same society.

00:35:59.000 When you grew up in the same society, you share a certain level of baseline values.

00:36:02.000 Now, I think that's splitting.

00:36:03.000 I think that's one of the problems with the country.

00:36:05.000 But one of the ways that that split is exacerbated is by simply assuming that political disagreement reflects underlying character differences.

00:36:11.000 Now, speaking of political disagreement and, you know, the polarization of our politics, that social fabric, those common values, as I say, are being split.

00:36:21.000 And you're seeing it in some of these Democratic campaigns.

00:36:24.000 One of those campaigns is from Stacey Adams.

00:36:26.000 She's the Georgia gubernatorial candidate for the Democrats. 0.94

00:36:29.000 And she was caught on tape talking about free markets.

00:36:32.000 Here's what she had to say.

00:36:35.000 And I am sick and tired of hearing about the free market being the solution to this problem.

00:36:41.000 Because I've never seen the free market right of prescription in rural Georgia.

00:36:48.000 Stacey Abrams, if you can't hear her, she's saying that the free market has never solved any problems in the medical field, which is obviously untrue.

00:37:00.000 These are baseline root issues in American politics.

00:37:02.000 Do I think Stacey Abrams is therefore lacking in character?

00:37:04.000 No, I don't.

00:37:05.000 I think she's just wrong.

00:37:07.000 I think she's wrong and she doesn't know enough about economics and she's misinterpreting the economics that she does know.

00:37:12.000 But is she a bad person?

00:37:13.000 I don't know Stacey Abrams.

00:37:15.000 Probably not.

00:37:16.000 Even though, you know, there's tape of her, I believe, now burning a flag back in college. 0.53

00:37:19.000 So I guess we're now ripping directly from scripts written by Aaron Sorkin.

00:37:22.000 Like, we're actually just gonna do the American president all over again with Stacey Abrams.

00:37:27.000 I've noticed this weird trend in the news the last couple of days.

00:37:29.000 Like, there was a Luftwaffen plane that landed on the 101 North.

00:37:33.000 Okay, like, not that far from where we filmed this.

00:37:36.000 And all I can say is thank God for the RAF.

00:37:39.000 Because the Royal Air Force really took care of business, making sure the Luftwaffe— So the man in the high castle is coming true. 0.89

00:37:45.000 That's exciting.

00:37:47.000 And apparently Stacey Abrams is directly from the American president.

00:37:51.000 And then there was a story that I saw today about a guy who looks exactly like David Schwimmer robbing a liquor store and robbing it of beer.

00:37:59.000 So Ross from Friends has been cut loose.

00:38:01.000 And President Trump is the president.

00:38:03.000 Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

00:38:05.000 Scott Adams is the guy who says we may be living in a simulation.

00:38:08.000 I'm starting to maybe believe that we are just living inside a weird, weird, weird script.

00:38:12.000 But in any case, the divisions that are growing in the country, those need to be rectified, but they cannot be rectified in any serious way unless we stop attributing the worst available motives to everybody. 0.94

00:38:26.000 And that holds true even with regard to some of these stupidities like the worship for Beto O'Rourke, which is foolish, but I don't think it's coming from a place of 0.98

00:38:33.000 People who are bad, I think, is just coming from a place of people who fall in love with politicians in the dumbest possible way. 0.99

00:38:38.000 Okay. 0.96

00:38:39.000 Now, speaking of attributing bad motives, let's talk about the latest on the caravan.

00:38:43.000 So, the illegal immigrant caravan continues to move up through Mexico.

00:38:46.000 They're about a thousand miles from the border right now, probably less.

00:38:49.000 There are apparently 10,000 people who are walking toward the border.

00:38:53.000 The folks who are in that caravan, as I've said, I think many of them are looking for a better life.

00:38:58.000 They're looking to come into the United States. 0.95

00:38:59.000 That doesn't mean that the United States has to admit all of those people or any of those people.

00:39:03.000 The United States gets to pick and choose who we decide to admit to the country. 0.65

00:39:06.000 And yet this is cast as a great moral issue. 0.97

00:39:09.000 If you believe that America should secure its border, this means that you are racist and nasty and bigoted and terrible.

00:39:14.000 And if you believe that people should be admitted to the country because they need a better place to live, then this is because you don't care about America's interests.

00:39:23.000 The truth is that people who believe in free flow of immigration, even free flow of illegal immigration, generally they believe that that makes the country better because on a moral level we have to uphold certain charitable instincts.

00:39:35.000 I disagree with that assessment, but that's where that's coming from.

00:39:38.000 And for people who say we have to secure our border, that is also coming from a good place.

00:39:41.000 It's coming from the idea that any country that wishes to preserve its strength so that it can help other people has to have limits on who gets to enter the country.

00:39:50.000 So again, there's a way to explain this debate in which we examine everybody's best motives.

00:39:55.000 It's hard to do that in a polarized political environment.

00:39:59.000 It's hard to do that in a polarized political environment.

00:40:01.000 So, President Trump, he had said about this illegal immigrant caravan that there were random Middle Easterners in the middle of it and criminals in the middle of it.

00:40:09.000 It turns out there may be criminals.

00:40:10.000 I'd be shocked if there are not criminals in the middle of it.

00:40:12.000 People have been convicted of crimes and deported who are now trying to come back in.

00:40:15.000 There's no evidence of random Middle Easterners and he was asked about it.

00:40:18.000 Here was his statement in response.

00:40:27.000 There could very well be is not a good answer to an accusation that you made about people who are trying to come into the United States.

00:40:37.000 Again, that is a political tactic by the president in order to get people to talk about the incipient criminality of the folks who are in that march.

00:40:45.000 But it's another way of polarizing politics.

00:40:47.000 This is why I've said both right and left are responsible for what's happening right now in the country.

00:40:50.000 I'm not going to pretend that this exists only on one side for my own political purposes.

00:40:54.000 I just don't think that's honest.

00:40:56.000 At the same time, you see the response to that, which is Jorge Ramos, who says, there are no Middle Easterners in this caravan.

00:41:02.000 And Tucker Carlson, who's interviewing him, is like, well, there are still criminals in that caravan.

00:41:08.000 And Jorge Ramos says, right, but there are no Middle Easterners.

00:41:10.000 It's like, well, now you're deliberately missing the point in order to castigate the other side as racist.

00:41:16.000 I spent two days with these refugees, and I have not seen a single person from the Middle East.

00:41:21.000 That's a lie.

00:41:22.000 And I think, Tucker, you have to tell the truth to your audience, and you don't have, you have to make sure that people are not lying about this caravan, because the people from the Middle East are not part of this caravan.

00:41:35.000 Okay, but what are you, let me just, let me just say. 1.00

00:41:37.000 Stupidity on one side drives stupidity on the other. 1.00

00:41:39.000 When the president says they're Middle Easterners without evidence who are part of the caravan, and the left says, well, they're no Middle Easterners, that means the caravan's good. 1.00

00:41:46.000 This is not the central argument in any way, shape or form, obviously.

00:41:50.000 The central argument about the caravan is whether the United States ought to have borders that are protected or whether the United States is obligated by morality and decency and international law to let people freely cross the border.

00:42:00.000 Making that latter case is Tom Perez, who's the head of the DNC.

00:42:03.000 And this gets down to the root of the issue.

00:42:04.000 And this is where Americans really should be deciding the issue, not on the basis of stupidities about Middle Easterners and a caravan, but on the basis of what are the values we wish to uphold as a country and how do we protect the country best. 0.53

00:42:14.000 Here's Tom Perez giving the wrong answer to Jake Tapper on CNN.

00:42:17.000 We are a nation of laws and the laws that are on the books deal with issues of refugee and asylum status.

00:42:25.000 And those are the laws that have always applied.

00:42:28.000 It's a humanitarian issue of significance.

00:42:32.000 And our laws require that people be treated with dignity and given that process.

00:42:37.000 Okay, well, they are given that process.

00:42:39.000 They can go to any checkpoint that they wish to go to and they can apply for asylum in the United States.

00:42:43.000 Again, the implication by Tom Perez here a little bit is that folks on the other side don't want to treat people who are trying to cross the border illegally with dignity.

00:42:50.000 That is inherently untrue.

00:42:52.000 So, in essence,

00:42:53.000 The theme of today's show, and what should be the theme of our politics, is if we want to have serious discussions with folks on the other side, we have to cut out the idea that there are inherently bad, evil folks who are manifesting that bad and that evil in ways designed to destroy the country.

00:43:06.000 If we actually believe that, then we are five minutes from civil war. 0.94

00:43:09.000 If we actually believe that the other side is Hitler, then we are justified in trying to kill Hitler. 0.97

00:43:14.000 So, all this has to stop. 0.98

00:43:15.000 All this has to stop.

00:43:16.000 And if we don't stop it, then things are going to get a lot worse before they get any better.

00:43:20.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:43:22.000 And then we'll do a psalm, a bit of an uplifting psalm.

00:43:24.000 So, things I like today.

00:43:26.000 I was listening to some of my favorite music last night.

00:43:29.000 I've recommended the music of Ray Fun Williams before, one of the great British composers.

00:43:35.000 He wrote

00:43:36.000 Probably my favorite piece of music ever, Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, which I've recommended on the show before.

00:43:42.000 He also wrote a Fantasia on Greensleeves that is just fantastic.

00:43:44.000 He wrote a beautiful piece for violin called The Lark Ascending.

00:43:47.000 It's a difficult piece.

00:43:48.000 I mean, I play it a little bit, but it's a difficult piece.

00:43:51.000 This is a recording with Iona Brown on violin, with Neville Mariner and the Academy of St.

00:43:55.000 Martin in the field.

00:43:56.000 It's a beautiful piece and very effective.

00:44:22.000 We're good to go.

00:44:27.000 And as a lifelong violinist, Iona Brown plays the hell out of the violin.

00:44:30.000 She is just terrific.

00:44:32.000 So, go check out this recording.

00:44:33.000 It's quite beautiful.

00:44:34.000 It's on a CD with all of the pieces I just mentioned.

00:44:37.000 CD.

00:44:37.000 I know.

00:44:38.000 It's a thing.

00:44:38.000 Colton.

00:44:39.000 Colton's CD.

00:44:39.000 It used to have music on it.

00:44:40.000 It was like a disc, and you put it in a machine.

00:44:41.000 It spun really fast, and then it would play music for you.

00:44:44.000 It was kind of cool.

00:44:45.000 I kind of miss it.

00:44:47.000 Although, it used to take up too much room in my house.

00:44:49.000 Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:44:55.000 So Thing I Hate No.

00:44:56.000 1 goes to the essence of the show today.

00:44:58.000 This is a tweet from Bruce Bartlett, who is a member of the political left.

00:45:01.000 Here's what he tweeted.

00:45:02.000 Praising Hitler to own the cons. 0.90

00:45:03.000 That's an interesting angle.

00:45:03.000 An interesting angle.

00:45:05.000 First off,

00:45:21.000 Adolf Hitler also killed 6 million people in a genocide and 11 million people total in mass murders, leaving aside the number of people who died overall in World War II.

00:45:32.000 So there was that.

00:45:33.000 That was kind of a key distinction.

00:45:35.000 Also, Hitler had a mustache. 0.68

00:45:38.000 Um, but I mean, if we're just going to talk about, like, differences, I wouldn't— I love this.

00:45:41.000 I love when he says Hitler was faithful to his wife. 0.94

00:45:43.000 He was married to Eva Braun for 24 hours before they killed themselves.

00:45:46.000 So, I mean, this is just also basic ignorance of history.

00:45:49.000 He literally married her and then they committed suicide.

00:45:50.000 So there was that.

00:45:52.000 Also, I love this.

00:45:53.000 Hitler wrote a book.

00:45:55.000 That book was called Mein Kampf.

00:45:56.000 It wasn't a good book.

00:45:58.000 There were some problems with that book, bros.

00:46:00.000 Trumps were all ghostwritten.

00:46:02.000 You know who else had his books ghostwritten for him?

00:46:03.000 John F. Kennedy.

00:46:05.000 So if you're going to do Hitler wrote a book, Trumps were all ghostwritten. 0.50

00:46:09.000 Man, oh man.

00:46:10.000 Yeah, I'm gonna go with this is kind of crazy.

00:46:12.000 Okay, other things that I hate.

00:46:13.000 So, the Pod Save America bros, who, as I've said before, I think that they do a good job at what they do.

00:46:19.000 I think they're wrong about virtually everything, but they're very talented at what they do.

00:46:21.000 And the folks over at Crooked Media, they were hosted on Stephen Colbert again.

00:46:25.000 I think it's like the fourth or the fifth time they've been on Stephen Colbert's show. 0.97

00:46:28.000 For all those folks who pretend that late night comedy is not politically influenced or biased, you're insane.

00:46:33.000 Okay, I will give you a guess as to how many times, this is not about me, but it is about me. 0.81

00:46:38.000 Let me, let me hazard a guess.

00:46:40.000 How many times have I ever been invited on a late night comedy show?

00:46:43.000 Ever.

00:46:44.000 The answer is zero.

00:46:45.000 I've never ever been invited on any late night comedy show.

00:46:47.000 The only comedy show I've ever been invited on was Trevor Noah, and I insisted that if I were going to do an interview with Trevor Noah, it had to be live in front of the audience.

00:46:53.000 I was not going to be taped and then cut apart the way they did to Jonah Goldberg when Jonah was on Trevor Noah's show.

00:46:58.000 I was not going to do that.

00:46:59.000 So, but the Pod Save America bros are on with Stephen Colbert specifically because Colbert is a far leftist and

00:47:07.000 How many times are we gonna do this?

00:47:08.000 Alright?

00:47:09.000 It doesn't matter what the early votes look like, it doesn't matter what the polls look like, we can lose everything!

00:47:13.000 We lost everything two years ago, we can lose everything again!

00:47:15.000 Oh my god!

00:47:30.000 Okay, and quick correction.

00:47:31.000 I was on Bill Maher, so good for Bill Maher.

00:47:32.000 Good for Bill Maher.

00:47:33.000 That was the one example of a show I was actually invited on and that I went on because it was live.

00:47:38.000 But Stephen Colbert is not on pay cable.

00:47:41.000 Stephen Colbert is nightly.

00:47:43.000 So, the bias in the media is a very, very real thing.

00:47:47.000 Okay, time for a quick psalm.

00:47:48.000 So after all of that negativity, it's time for a little bit of uplift.

00:47:51.000 So, Psalm 10.

00:47:52.000 We've been going through a psalm a week, more or less.

00:47:54.000 We've been missing some weeks.

00:47:55.000 But one of the things that I love about the psalms, and the reason that they carry over time, the reason that they've been crucial to religious people's understanding of God for thousands of years, is because the psalms don't sugarcoat things.

00:48:05.000 They really don't.

00:48:06.000 Now, for all the people who believe that religious people think that everything is hunky-dory, that we're living in this kind of fantasy world where everything is great and nothing bad ever happens, all you have to do is read the anguish that is implicit in the Psalms, and you know that King David and King Solomon and all the folks who are writing the Psalms, that these Psalms are deeply in tune with

00:48:27.000 It's a pretty harsh indictment of God, right?

00:48:30.000 And we all feel like that.

00:48:30.000 Religious people feel like that.

00:48:31.000 That is the challenge of faith.

00:48:32.000 Again, I hate this kind of

00:48:45.000 Ned Flanders' approach by the secular left to religion, that everybody who's religious is actually just, everything's hunky-dory, everything's great.

00:48:51.000 That's not how religious people feel about things at all.

00:48:54.000 This is why it's so weird to folks who are religious when non-religious people say to them, well, you know, how can there be a God when bad things happen in the world?

00:49:01.000 It's like, oh, you're the first person who thought of the question of theodicy.

00:49:04.000 You're the first person in history who thought of that question.

00:49:07.000 Now that you've said that bad things happen to children, I guess you've defeated me.

00:49:11.000 This is legitimately an argument made by people who are secular all the time.

00:49:14.000 Well, you know, if God is good, then why do bad things happen?

00:49:17.000 I don't know.

00:49:18.000 We have thousands of years of theology discussing this exact issue, and the final answer is basically that you aren't God.

00:49:23.000 That's basically the answer.

00:49:24.000 And that's not always a comforting answer.

00:49:27.000 But it is a true answer, and it's a reality-based answer.

00:49:30.000 Psalm 10 says, It's interesting how wicked folks are characterized not just as people who do other people harm, you know, hunting down the weak, but also they're characterized as folks

00:49:50.000 Who don't spend any time thinking about God.

00:50:05.000 People who genuinely are wicked, including religious people, spend very little time thinking about higher morality or what is demanded of them by their God. 0.98

00:50:12.000 Instead, they're spending a lot of time thinking about what they want.

00:50:15.000 His ways are always prosperous.

00:50:16.000 Your laws are rejected by him.

00:50:17.000 He sneers at all his enemies.

00:50:19.000 He says to himself, nothing will ever shake me.

00:50:20.000 He swears no one will ever do me harm. 0.98

00:50:22.000 This is the wicked man.

00:50:24.000 Obviously, King David led a pretty rough life, right?

00:50:30.000 I mean, this is a guy who was being chased from place to place by King Saul.

00:50:34.000 He was constantly in threat of murder.

00:50:36.000 His kingdom broke down over succession disputes between his own children, several of whom died in the process of him maintaining his kingdom.

00:50:45.000 When you talk to a religious person, if you're secular, even if you're not religious, you should recognize that religious people do think about the serious problems of life on a daily basis.

00:50:53.000 Their answer may be different than yours.

00:50:54.000 I think it's a more inspiring answer than the secular answer.

00:50:56.000 And I think it's also a truer answer than the secular answer.

00:50:58.000 The secular answer is basically, bleep happens.

00:51:01.000 The religious answer is, bleep happens, but that's because God is in charge.

00:51:04.000 And we don't understand God.

00:51:06.000 And I think that's a fairer answer to the question than simply random chance.

00:51:11.000 Okay, we will be back here tomorrow.

00:51:13.000 With all of the latest, I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:51:20.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:51:25.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:51:30.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:51:31.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:51:33.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:51:35.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:51:37.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 24, 2018

The Question Of Motives | Ep. 645

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