The Ben Shapiro Show - The Tale Of The Tape | Ep. 588

00:00:00.000 A new tape breaks from Michael Cohen, President Trump slams the media, and Elizabeth Warren makes her pitch.

00:00:05.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:05.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 Well, a lot of breaking news today, but let's begin with this.

00:00:14.000 I have some exciting news to announce.

00:00:16.000 I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for this, particularly my college fans.

00:00:19.000 Right now, we are about to announce where exactly I shall be going with YAF, Young America's Foundation.

00:00:25.000 Last month, we announced the finalists for my fall campus tour.

00:00:28.000 Those are the schools that just might be so lucky as to risk the ire of triggered leftist students when the hurricane that is me comes to campus.

00:00:35.000 Well, today, I'm excited to announce the six colleges that make the cut.

00:00:38.000 So, here we go.

00:00:39.000 Drum roll, please.

00:00:42.000 USC, okay, so we begin with University of Southern California on October 4th, and then we move on to University at Buffalo on October 8th, North Central College on October 10th, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on November 12th, Ohio State University on November 13th, and University of Pittsburgh on November 14th.

00:01:01.000 So if you are looking for tickets at any of those lucky schools, then make sure you go over to yaf.org slash ShapiroTour, yaf.org slash ShapiroTour, and get this,

00:01:10.000 We now have a shirt, a tour shirt.

00:01:12.000 It's an official Ben Shapiro YAF Tour shirt.

00:01:14.000 It will be available on Amazon at our new merch store.

00:01:16.000 That's right.

00:01:17.000 The Shapiro store is finally open at long last.

00:01:20.000 You survived to see it.

00:01:21.000 You can wear the shirt when you come to see me speak at your school, or you can frame it and treasure it.

00:01:25.000 Hang it on the wall as you watch the live stream.

00:01:26.000 Gaze at it every evening, knowing that you've made your life better and you've made the world a better place.

00:01:31.000 If you'd like me to visit your campus in 2019, then definitely check out yaf.org slash Shapiro tour.

00:01:36.000 And that's where you can learn how to apply to bring me to your school.

00:01:39.000 I have to say these t-shirts

00:01:40.000 Are pretty cool, although it would be kind of douchey for me to wear a t-shirt with my own face on it.

00:01:45.000 But why would that stop me?

00:01:46.000 I mean, come on, we've met, haven't we?

00:01:48.000 Okay, before we go any further, I also want to mention your Second Amendment rights.

00:01:51.000 So, you've heard all these stories in the news where a kid gets hold of a firearm and then something terrible happens.

00:01:57.000 Well, you don't want that to happen to you, obviously, but you also want to make sure that you're exercising your Second Amendment rights, which is why you need to go talk with my friends at the USCCA.

00:02:06.000 They want to give your entire family a 100% free guide and audiobook for complete

00:02:10.000 Firearms Conference.

00:02:11.000 As a person with two kids under the age of five, I want to make sure that I'm doing firearm safety correctly.

00:02:15.000 You should too.

00:02:16.000 Go to DefendMyFamilyNow.com right now for your brand new Kids and Guns Guide.

00:02:20.000 That's DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:02:22.000 You'll learn the most dangerous mistakes that put kids at risk, proven strategies for teaching gun safety to kids the right way,

00:02:28.000 We're good to go!

00:02:48.000 Again, DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:02:49.000 USCCA is a wonderful organization helping you exercise your Second Amendment rights properly.

00:02:54.000 Go check it out.

00:02:54.000 DefendMyFamilyNow.com.

00:02:56.000 All right.

00:02:57.000 So, last night, late in the evening, Chris Cuomo, the slightly lesser block of wood known as the Cuomo brothers, Chris Cuomo on CNN brought out his big reveal.

00:03:08.000 What was his big reveal?

00:03:09.000 His big reveal is that Michael Cohen, the president's former lawyer, his personal attorney, had revealed a tape

00:03:15.000 Woo, a tape.

00:03:16.000 Now, we know tape is always bad.

00:03:19.000 Except if the tape doesn't tend to show a whole hell of a lot.

00:03:22.000 So, here's what happened.

00:03:23.000 Michael Cohen apparently was talking with the President of the United States.

00:03:26.000 Before he was the president of the United States.

00:03:28.000 This is during the 2016 campaign.

00:03:30.000 And he decided to basically wear a wire into his conversations with Trump, or at least to carry a tape recorder in his pocket.

00:03:36.000 Now, this is not illegal.

00:03:37.000 And a lot of people saying today, isn't that illegal?

00:03:39.000 Like the president of the United States was tweeting out that he thought that maybe this was illegal.

00:03:43.000 This is his tweet.

00:03:43.000 This is 19.

00:03:44.000 So the president tweeted out, what kind of a lawyer would tape a client?

00:03:47.000 So sad.

00:03:48.000 Is this a first?

00:03:49.000 Never heard of it before.

00:03:50.000 Why was the tape so abruptly terminated?

00:03:52.000 Cut.

00:03:52.000 Well, I was presumably saying positive things.

00:03:55.000 I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped.

00:03:57.000 Can this be so?

00:03:58.000 Too bad!

00:03:58.000 Okay, well, it's not illegal for Cohen to tape Trump.

00:04:02.000 It is weird.

00:04:02.000 It's very weird to tape a conversation with your client because the only point of taping a conversation with your client, presumably, would be either blackmail or the possibility of violating attorney-client privilege.

00:04:13.000 Or maybe you want to show your client later that he said something that he said he didn't say.

00:04:17.000 But, like, I'm a lawyer.

00:04:19.000 I've never taped a conversation with a client because that would be extraordinarily weird.

00:04:22.000 It is indeed a weird thing to do.

00:04:24.000 It is not illegal because the state of New York, oddly enough, is a one-party consent state.

00:04:28.000 There are different laws in different states around the country as far as whether you can tape people.

00:04:31.000 So California, where I live, is a two-party consent state.

00:04:34.000 You cannot tape a conversation with anyone unless it's for news purposes.

00:04:38.000 You're not allowed to tape a conversation with anybody without that person's consent, which is why you generally have to get release forms or you at least have to ask on the tape whether it's okay to tape.

00:04:46.000 That's not the case in New York.

00:04:47.000 In New York, so long as one of the members of the conversation is okay with the taping, in this case, Michael Cohen, the taping is in fact legal.

00:04:53.000 So, they're taping.

00:04:54.000 And what exactly are they talking about?

00:04:56.000 Well, apparently, they're having a conversation about how to pay off Karen McDougal. 0.88

00:05:00.000 Karen McDougal is another one of the bevy of porn stars that President Trump stooped during his great adventures in the Vietnam, that is, the STD-ridden world of pornography. 1.00

00:05:11.000 So, Karen McDougal's former Playboy Playmate. 0.98

00:05:14.000 The president has basically had sex with, I think, 10 out of every 12 Playboy Playmates at last count.

00:05:21.000 Let's not be shy about this. 0.99

00:05:22.000 The president is not exactly a sexual miser.

00:05:26.000 He's been rather profligate with his services and with the services of others for several decades.

00:05:31.000 And none of this is a shock, because as I say, all of this is priced in.

00:05:34.000 We knew all of this about Trump for years.

00:05:36.000 This is a guy who used to openly brag about tripping other people's wives.

00:05:38.000 All of this is priced in.

00:05:40.000 Whether you like it, whether you don't, nothing's going to change.

00:05:42.000 People who like Trump, like Trump.

00:05:43.000 They don't care about this.

00:05:44.000 People who don't like Trump, don't like Trump.

00:05:45.000 They're going to pretend they care about this if they're on the left while they don't care about Bill Clinton.

00:05:48.000 And there are a few people on the right who aren't fond of Trump's character and also don't like that this is the stuff that he does.

00:05:54.000 That's a shrinking group of people.

00:05:55.000 In any case, the president is speaking with Michael Cohen and Cohen is saying, we need to pay off Karen McDougal.

00:06:00.000 And here is what it sounds like.

00:06:03.000 I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David, you know, so that... I'm going to do that right away.

00:06:13.000 And I spoke to Alan about it.

00:06:14.000 When it comes time for the financing, which will be... Listen.

00:06:17.000 What financing?

00:06:18.000 We'll have to pay you, so... No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:06:22.000 I got...

00:06:23.000 OK, so he then said that the part of that conversation that actually matters is the very end.

00:06:27.000 So what's happening here is that there is a guy who owns the National Enquirer.

00:06:32.000 His name is David Pecker.

00:06:34.000 He is not a joke.

00:06:35.000 That's his actual name.

00:06:36.000 And he and President Trump are apparently very close friends.

00:06:39.000 And the way that this this

00:06:41.000 The shtick would work is that David Pecker would go out and buy the life rights for all of these women who had stripped Trump, and then Trump would set up a shell corporation and then pay David Pecker to actually convey those rights to Donald Trump so these stories would never hit the press.

00:06:54.000 And apparently this is a fairly regular thing according to various news reports.

00:06:57.000 Well, as the election approached, Michael Cohen comes to Trump and he says, David Pecker has just bought the rights to Karen McDougal's story about schtuping you.

00:07:05.000 And he says, we need to basically figure out a way to pay David Pecker for those rights.

00:07:09.000 We need to give him some cash and then he'll give us the information and then the information will never go anywhere.

00:07:15.000 And so we'll set up a shell corporation that nobody really knows about.

00:07:18.000 And the key part of that is at the very end where Trump says something about cash and then Cohen says back to him, no, no, no, no.

00:07:27.000 Okay.

00:07:28.000 And what's unclear exactly is what Trump is saying.

00:07:30.000 So is Trump saying that we need to pay off David Pecker in cash or is he saying we need to sign him a check instead?

00:07:35.000 The reason this makes a difference is because none of this is particularly legally relevant.

00:07:38.000 There's nothing illegal about me paying off somebody to keep silent, signing a settlement agreement, buying their life rights.

00:07:43.000 If, God forbid, I were to have an affair or something and pay somebody off, that is actually not illegal because it's not blackmail.

00:07:49.000 It's just me paying somebody off.

00:07:50.000 It's a legal agreement for somebody to shut up.

00:07:51.000 So Trump has done this apparently a lot.

00:07:53.000 There's nothing illegal about that, so he's not in any legal trouble for that, as Alan Dershowitz has pointed out.

00:07:58.000 Where there could theoretically be legal trouble is we are approaching the 2016 election, and Trump wants to keep Karen McDougal silent, and so this act is essentially a campaign expenditure.

00:08:08.000 The reason he's paying off Karen McDougal is because he wants her to keep quiet in the run-up to the election.

00:08:13.000 Same sort of accusations were made about Stormy Daniels, that the reason the president actually paid off Stormy Daniels is because he thought that if those stories broke right before the election, he wouldn't win the presidency, and he wanted to keep those people quiet, so he paid them a bunch of money.

00:08:25.000 And then, more importantly, he didn't actually report that to the FEC.

00:08:28.000 So if it's a campaign expenditure and he didn't report it to the Federal Elections Commissioner, then that could be a violation of campaign finance law.

00:08:35.000 Now, is it really a violation of campaign finance law?

00:08:40.000 Very difficult to say yes, considering that John Edwards did the same thing back in 2008.

00:08:44.000 You remember John Edwards?

00:08:46.000 That guy?

00:08:46.000 Right?

00:08:46.000 Breckhair girl?

00:08:47.000 You remember that guy?

00:08:48.000 He, in 2008, was one of the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination, but he'd been knocking on one of the photographers on his campaign.

00:08:54.000 He actually knocked her up. 0.99

00:08:56.000 He actually got her pregnant.

00:08:57.000 And then, he had a bunch of his campaign supporters pay her like a million dollars to shut up. 1.00

00:09:01.000 And this came to light, and they tried to prosecute him for campaign finance violations, and that prosecution fell through.

00:09:06.000 There was a hung jury, and then they never retried him.

00:09:08.000 So, it's difficult to say that Trump did anything wildly different than anything that John Edwards did back in 2008.

00:09:15.000 That said, the media think they finally have President Trump. 0.92

00:09:18.000 They think this will be the porn star that finally takes down the president. 0.86

00:09:21.000 It's like Lucy with the football. 0.98

00:09:23.000 Basically, there's a story that comes out with Trump shtupping a porn star and then paying her off.

00:09:27.000 And the media says, ah, now we have him, now we have him.

00:09:31.000 And Trump kind of nods slowly, like Jack Nicholson in that GIF.

00:09:35.000 He kind of just nods slowly.

00:09:36.000 And then the Democrats approach the football, Trump pulls away the football, and the Democrats in the media go flying through the air.

00:09:42.000 Now, the reason the Democrats are really excited is because they think Michael Cohen has even worse material on Trump.

00:09:48.000 That is unclear at best.

00:09:49.000 We know that there are something like 12 tapes between Trump and Cohen, supposedly, or 12 tapes that Cohen has.

00:09:54.000 We don't know what's on those tapes.

00:09:55.000 We know eventually they will leak.

00:09:57.000 Cohen's lawyer is suggesting that this tape itself is evidence of illegal activity by the President of the United States.

00:10:02.000 So this is, this is Lanny Davis.

00:10:05.000 So Lanny Davis was last seen in 1998 defending President Clinton.

00:10:09.000 And now here he is on the other side going after President Trump.

00:10:13.000 Basically, history repeats itself.

00:10:14.000 The first time is tragedy.

00:10:16.000 The second time is farce.

00:10:16.000 This is the farce.

00:10:17.000 Here's Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen's lawyer, on what these tapes supposedly show.

00:10:22.000 We know that Trump has lied, even during the campaign when his campaign spokesman denied, two months after this tape, that he knew anything about Karen McDougal.

00:10:32.000 Ladies and gentlemen, if you voted for Donald Trump, listen to the tape and ask yourself, is Donald Trump lying when he said he didn't use the word cash and accuses Michael Cohen of using the word cash?

00:10:45.000 Okay, so there is that.

00:10:47.000 Are we really in a situation where President Trump is lying about cash or checks?

00:10:53.000 It doesn't matter, honestly.

00:10:54.000 Legally speaking, it doesn't matter if he paid cash, it doesn't matter if he paid for a check.

00:10:57.000 The only real question is whether he reported it to the FEC or whether he even had to.

00:11:02.000 If it turns out that Trump regularly paid off women to keep silent, this probably is not an election violation.

00:11:07.000 But Lanny Davis is going to make this look as bad as humanly possible. 1.00

00:11:10.000 Why?

00:11:10.000 Why is Michael Cohen doing this?

00:11:12.000 Because Michael Cohen thinks that he's going to be prosecuted, and if he flips on the president, that his prosecution will basically be kicked to the second priority position.

00:11:20.000 That it just won't matter as much.

00:11:22.000 So Michael Cohen's lawyer continues.

00:11:23.000 He says only drug dealers and mobsters use cash.

00:11:26.000 The idea here is to make Trump look as bad as possible so that it looks like Cohen actually has material.

00:11:30.000 Gotta say, Cohen is a pretty sleazy dude here.

00:11:34.000 Now, this is not to excuse the president's sexual profligacy.

00:11:38.000 It's not to excuse the fact that Donald Trump has a

00:11:40.000 Really, really poor history with women is not to excuse any of those things. 1.00

00:11:44.000 But when I see this situation, the first thing that occurs to me is Michael Cohen was happy to ride on Trump's coattails for years and take his money and play his protection man.

00:11:53.000 And then the minute things go wrong, he's out there ratting on him.

00:11:57.000 But it's not even ratting about anything that's necessarily illegal.

00:12:00.000 It's just ratting on him in order to avoid culpability for other activities, perhaps.

00:12:04.000 But Lanny Davis says that this is mobster type stuff, what Trump did here.

00:12:07.000 There's no way that Mr. Giuliani, who knows from being U.S.

00:12:11.000 Attorney, the only people who use cash are drug dealers and mobsters.

00:12:17.000 Cash is not what you do.

00:12:19.000 OK, so again, I think this is this is an exaggerated case being made by a lot of folks on the left.

00:12:24.000 Do they think they're really going to get Trump this time?

00:12:25.000 Apparently they do.

00:12:27.000 Rudy Giuliani has been caught in a little bit of a pickle.

00:12:30.000 This is the president's lawyer.

00:12:31.000 He's been caught in a little bit of a pickle because he suggested that Trump only paid via check.

00:12:36.000 He never would have paid via cash.

00:12:37.000 Now it appears that he may have paid via cash.

00:12:39.000 But again, I don't think that any of this is going to make a large difference.

00:12:41.000 I'm going to explain that in just a second.

00:12:44.000 Let's talk about the software that you are using for your company.

00:12:47.000 You're dealing with a real head-scratcher, and having your go-to person on call is a no-brainer.

00:12:52.000 And this is particularly true when it comes to the world of software, which is really, really complex.

00:12:56.000 When it comes to picking the right software for your business, SoftwareAdvice has done all the research for you.

00:13:00.000 Their team of advisors can point you in the right direction, so you can start working more effectively right now, and it's absolutely free.

00:13:06.000 Just go to softwareadvice.com and answer a few short questions about your business.

00:13:10.000 We're good to go.

00:13:33.000 There's no way the president is going to be talking about setting up a corporation

00:14:04.000 Okay, well, I honestly think that's sort of an irrelevant point.

00:14:13.000 In the end, is this going to take down Trump?

00:14:15.000 No, of course this isn't going to take down Trump.

00:14:16.000 Now what we do have to discuss here is the way that the media has treated this particular issue.

00:14:20.000 So when it was President Clinton, again, I don't mean to misdirect away from the supposedly central issue, which is how President Trump acted with regard to money.

00:14:29.000 When it was John Edwards, when it was President Clinton, when it was Ted Kennedy, the media buried this stuff.

00:14:34.000 The media were not interested in covering this stuff.

00:14:37.000 When it comes to

00:14:39.000 Barack Obama's college transcripts.

00:14:41.000 We still don't have those.

00:14:42.000 When it comes to tapes that are being released by Michael Cohen, then the media is eager to run all of those, right?

00:14:47.000 This is the same media who decry all the people who are running all of the Hillary Clinton emails that were being put out there by WikiLeaks.

00:14:54.000 The same media is now saying, well, you know, if we decide to run these tapes, it's totally fine to run these tapes.

00:15:00.000 In the end, none of this is going to matter.

00:15:01.000 The reason it's not going to matter is because everybody already has an opinion on President Trump.

00:15:05.000 Everybody already knows that this is the sort of stuff that President Trump does.

00:15:09.000 None of this is particularly telling, none of it is particularly revealing, and none of it is particularly troubling if you already like President Trump.

00:15:17.000 So all of this talk about this is going to take down Trump seems to me wildly exaggerated.

00:15:21.000 And it's a level of enthusiasm that I think is rather uncalled for, given the fact that everybody already assumed all this stuff was true.

00:15:27.000 It's so funny.

00:15:27.000 Every time the left thinks they catch President Trump in a lie, what they realize is that most Americans already thought he was fibbing.

00:15:34.000 And this is the part that I think the media don't understand.

00:15:36.000 Even people on the right who say that they believe President Trump at every turn, they understand when he's fibbing.

00:15:41.000 Okay?

00:15:41.000 Everybody on the right who says, yeah, no, we believe Trump when he says he never schtupped Stormy Daniels.

00:15:46.000 Everybody on the right believes that he schtupped Stormy Daniels.

00:15:48.000 And no one cares.

00:15:49.000 Because they already figured that that was baked into the cake.

00:15:51.000 The same thing is true of Karen McDougal.

00:15:53.000 They figure Trump's gonna say what Trump's gonna say to get himself off the hook, but they're very understanding about that because they feel as though President Trump is being unfairly targeted.

00:16:00.000 And to a certain extent, they're not wrong.

00:16:02.000 President Trump is being unfairly targeted in the sense that if the same stuff had happened with regard to a Democrat, it is highly doubtful whether the media would be treating this with anything like the same sort of enthusiasm.

00:16:13.000 So all the talk about why is it that Trump supporters don't just understand, why don't they get on the bandwagon that he's a bad guy who does bad things?

00:16:21.000 Well, the answer is because they already priced that in.

00:16:23.000 And what they decided is that they don't trust you more than they don't trust President Trump because they know where Trump is lying, but they don't know where you are lying.

00:16:30.000 Trump's lies are predictable.

00:16:31.000 Trump's fibs are predictable.

00:16:32.000 We know exactly what he's going to say about Karen McDougal.

00:16:34.000 When it comes to the media, we don't know when they're going to say something completely, wildly untrue.

00:16:39.000 Now, here's a great example of that.

00:16:41.000 So, yesterday, President Trump was speaking at a veterans group, and he started talking about the fake news, right?

00:16:47.000 One of his favorite topics. 0.99

00:16:49.000 And he suggested that we should not believe the fake news crap. 0.99

00:16:52.000 And the media went nuts. 0.97

00:16:53.000 Here's what President Trump had to say about this yesterday.

00:16:56.000 Remember, they have the biggest, best, strongest lobbyists, and they're doing a number.

00:17:01.000 Just stick with us. 1.00

00:17:02.000 Don't believe the crap you see from these people. 1.00

00:17:05.000 The fake news. 1.00

00:17:07.000 Okay, so everybody on the left went nuts over this.

00:17:09.000 How could he say that you shouldn't believe the stuff you read, the stuff that you see?

00:17:13.000 It's Orwellian.

00:17:14.000 He's saying, believe me, not the press.

00:17:16.000 Right?

00:17:16.000 As opposed to Barack Obama, who said, don't believe the propaganda over at Fox News.

00:17:19.000 This is nothing new.

00:17:21.000 This is nothing new.

00:17:22.000 And why should we believe the press when they are constantly fibbing about things?

00:17:25.000 Like really, there are a lot of times when the press undercuts its own credibility.

00:17:27.000 I'll give you a perfect example.

00:17:29.000 So, yesterday, Jeff Sessions, or the day before, he was speaking at Turning Point USA.

00:17:34.000 It's a big high school event over in Washington, D.C.

00:17:36.000 A lot of big names over there.

00:17:38.000 My friend, Kyle Cashew, who I've mentored a little bit, he helped put together the speakers list while Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General, spoke there.

00:17:45.000 At a certain point, the students started chanting, lock her up. 0.98

00:17:48.000 Now, I've been in a position like this.

00:17:49.000 I was at CPAC and people started chanting, lock her up. 1.00

00:17:53.000 And my immediate response was, there's no reason to lock her up because she's already living in a hell of her own making. 1.00

00:17:58.000 She's wandering around the woods of upstate New York.

00:18:00.000 Lock her up! 1.00

00:18:01.000 Lock her up! 1.00

00:18:02.000 Lock her up! 1.00

00:18:03.000 Lock her up! 1.00

00:18:03.000 What's up? 1.00

00:18:21.000 And then he says something like, I heard that a lot during the campaign.

00:18:24.000 The media immediately started running headlines about how Jeff Sessions had led chants of Lock Her Up.

00:18:28.000 I'm not kidding.

00:18:29.000 Katie Tour over at NBC said Jeff Sessions led chants of Lock Her Up over on MSNBC. 0.96

00:18:35.000 He did not lead a chant.

00:18:37.000 They started chanting, lock her up. 1.00

00:18:39.000 He kind of chortled about it because it's a little bit funny.

00:18:41.000 And then he moved on with his speech.

00:18:44.000 But if you just read the media headlines, it sounds like the Attorney General of the United States is abusing his power by standing there and chanting, lock her up with a bunch of students.

00:18:52.000 OK, another great example.

00:18:54.000 We're good to go.

00:19:19.000 A ripoff of Between Two Ferns.

00:19:20.000 She sat across from me and she asked me absurd questions, and I sort of laughed awkwardly at the absurdity of the questions.

00:19:25.000 This is Ally Shtick, right?

00:19:26.000 She generates an awful lot of satire content. 1.00

00:19:28.000 So, she took an interview.

00:19:30.000 We showed you and you listened to portions of this same interview with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

00:19:37.000 We actually played this interview on the air.

00:19:38.000 It was with Margaret Hoover on PBS. 1.00

00:19:40.000 It's the same interview in which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested that she didn't know anything about foreign policy, and she obviously didn't know anything about capitalism or economics, and she looked like an idiot. 0.96

00:19:50.000 So what Allie did is she cobbled together a video of her questioning Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it was very funny. 0.88

00:19:57.000 And it was obviously not real.

00:19:58.000 And the reason you know it's not real is because the background for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not even remotely the same as the background in the video for Allie Stuckey.

00:20:06.000 It is obvious that it's not, that it's not, you know, that Cortez is not sitting down with Allie Stuckey.

00:20:12.000 You can also tell because in some of the cutaway shots, you can see Margaret Hoover's dress, which is green.

00:20:17.000 And then when they cut away to Allie Stuckey, she's wearing a blue dress. 0.99

00:20:19.000 It's completely a different dress.

00:20:20.000 Okay, here is what it sounded like.

00:20:22.000 And then I'll tell you how the media reacted to this because it's completely insane.

00:20:26.000 How do you respond to the people who say that socialism has never worked?

00:20:30.000 Capitalism was the most efficient and best economy, perhaps.

00:20:35.000 Abject poverty is at the lowest level it's ever been because of capitalism.

00:20:40.000 Well, I think the numbers that you just talked about is part of the problem.

00:20:45.000 I don't understand.

00:20:51.000 So, what do you hope to accomplish when you're in Congress?

00:20:55.000 This is a really good question.

00:20:57.000 So, what is it?

00:20:59.000 I just think that that's the wrong question.

00:21:01.000 Okay.

00:21:03.000 So, why should voters vote for you?

00:21:05.000 You vote.

00:21:06.000 It's democratic.

00:21:09.000 Okay, and obviously it is Allie mocking the hell out of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which is fine.

00:21:15.000 You know how I know it's fine?

00:21:16.000 Because the left does this exact same tactic all the time.

00:21:19.000 For instance, last week, Stephen Colbert.

00:21:22.000 We'll get to Stephen Colbert in just a second, because I'm going to show you how the left uses this exact same tactic, and then I'll give you the punchline exactly how the left treated this Allie Stuckey video, because it's totally insane.

00:21:30.000 First, I want to remind you that you may be spending too much on your credit cards, right?

00:21:34.000 We've been living on credit for a very long time.

00:21:36.000 Or you're buying it now and then you're paying for it later.

00:21:38.000 Except you're now paying exorbitant fees because you didn't pay off your credit card on time.

00:21:42.000 But with LendingClub, you can consolidate your debt or pay off your credit cards with one fixed monthly payment.

00:21:47.000 Since 2007, LendingClub has helped millions of people regain control of their finances with affordable fixed-rate personal loans.

00:21:53.000 No trips to the bank, no high-interest credit cards.

00:21:55.000 Just go to LendingClub.com.

00:21:57.000 Tell them about yourself, how much you want to borrow.

00:21:58.000 Pick the terms that are right for you.

00:22:00.000 And if you're approved, your loan is automatically deposited into your bank account.

00:22:03.000 We're good to go.

00:22:24.000 All loans made by WebBank member FDIC equal housing lender.

00:22:29.000 Go check it out right now.

00:22:30.000 LendingClub.com slash Ben.

00:22:31.000 It's an easy way to get a loan if you qualify and you can find out if you do right now.

00:22:35.000 LendingClub.com slash Ben.

00:22:36.000 Use that slash Ben so you can check your rate in minutes and then borrow up to 40 grand.

00:22:39.000 Check it out.

00:22:40.000 LendingClub.com slash Ben.

00:22:42.000 Okay, so.

00:22:43.000 Allie Stuckey cuts this video with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 0.99

00:22:46.000 And as I say, this this parodic video in which she sits across from the radical socialist, self-described democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez goes viral.

00:22:56.000 It's like a million hits on Facebook.

00:22:58.000 And there's nothing unusual about this tactic, right?

00:23:00.000 It's a frequent comedic tactic.

00:23:02.000 How do I know this?

00:23:03.000 Because Stephen Colbert did it last week with President Trump.

00:23:05.000 So President Trump did an interview with Bret Baier.

00:23:08.000 Except Stephen Colbert has significantly better graphic artists than Ali does.

00:23:11.000 Ali basically just cut back and forth one-camera shots of her face and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's face.

00:23:17.000 Here, the producers over at Stephen Colbert's show are actually able to essentially superimpose Stephen Colbert over Bret Baier in this particular interview.

00:23:25.000 And so, or with Sean Hannity, rather, in this particular interview, here's Colbert interviewing President Trump using exactly the same tactic as Ali Stuckey used with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.

00:23:36.000 Mr. President, right off the bat, I gotta say, wow, what a summit. 0.96

00:23:41.000 You managed to bring both sides of the aisle together to agree that you historically sucked. 0.89

00:23:47.000 How do you think your buddy Vlad came off? 0.96

00:23:49.000 I thought that President Putin was very, very strong.

00:23:52.000 What else can you tell us about the man?

00:23:54.000 President Putin is very much into... Undermining our democratic process.

00:24:01.000 Having the U.S. 0.80

00:24:02.000 over a barrel.

00:24:03.000 Don't tell me.

00:24:03.000 I'll get this.

00:24:05.000 Playing you like a fiddle.

00:24:06.000 Wait, what am I doing?

00:24:07.000 Why don't I just go to the source?

00:24:09.000 Okay, and then he actually just trots over and he sits down with Vladimir Putin, right?

00:24:13.000 So this is a frequent tactic that is used by folks on the left.

00:24:15.000 I'm old enough to remember when you had Conan O'Brien doing a routine where somebody would play Bill Clinton's lips, right?

00:24:21.000 Where there would actually be like a still photo and then just Bill Clinton's mouth would move and it would be as though he was interviewing Bill Clinton.

00:24:26.000 All of this is normal comedy, right?

00:24:28.000 This sort of stuff happens all the time.

00:24:29.000 But how does the left respond to basic satire?

00:24:32.000 Which, by the way, is much funnier than what Stephen Colbert did there.

00:24:34.000 That is utterly unfunny.

00:24:35.000 How did they respond?

00:24:36.000 Well, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, she tweets this.

00:24:39.000 She tweets, Here's one bonafide truth.

00:24:40.000 Election Day is November 6th.

00:24:50.000 No one is faking the video.

00:24:52.000 I mean, honestly, perhaps we ought to look into a governmental program of forced redistribution of senses of humor so she ends up with one. 1.00

00:25:00.000 Because this is crazy.

00:25:02.000 It is obviously a satire video.

00:25:03.000 Again, Ali makes satire all the time.

00:25:05.000 But what the left really can't deal with, the real truth they can't deal with, is that some people on the right actually have a sense of humor.

00:25:11.000 The left wants to paint the right as completely humorless.

00:25:13.000 This is one of their favorite things to do.

00:25:14.000 What the right really is is we're all John Lithgow in Footloose.

00:25:17.000 We sit around telling the kids not to dance.

00:25:19.000 That's our thing. 0.97

00:25:20.000 But if we're ever funny at all, then it turns out that it's because we're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, or because we're faking it.

00:25:26.000 So, you could forgive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for having no sense of humor about herself.

00:25:31.000 You know, as somebody who is parodied on a pretty frequent basis, I can tell you, I find most of the parodies about me pretty funny.

00:25:38.000 But apparently, if you're a hardcore democratic socialist, humor was outlawed by Stalin a century ago, and so we ought to simply pretend that it doesn't exist.

00:25:47.000 The part of it that's hilarious, though, is the way the media treat this stuff.

00:25:50.000 So how do the media treat this?

00:25:51.000 So a video producer at Vox tweets this out.

00:25:55.000 He tweets out,

00:26:10.000 Did it ever occur to this guy that they weren't trying to make it look like an actual interview?

00:26:15.000 That the whole thing is parodic?

00:26:18.000 Like, yes, it's shot with different resolution because it was done on the cheap.

00:26:22.000 Because it's not like she's spending, Ali is spending tons of money on a Stephen Colbert-style implant you in the video talking to President Trump. 0.59

00:26:30.000 I love that the people on the left were so exercised over this.

00:26:32.000 I mean, they were really exercised over this.

00:26:33.000 The Washington Post ran a full piece about this.

00:26:37.000 I am not kidding.

00:26:37.000 It's a full piece from the Washington Post about the evils of this.

00:26:40.000 And they tweeted this out after a fake interview.

00:26:44.000 of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went viral, its maker said it was satire.

00:26:48.000 Its maker said it was satire?

00:26:49.000 It's obviously satire.

00:26:51.000 It's clearly satire.

00:26:52.000 I understand we live in an era where people are not allowed to make jokes or have a sense of humor, but you have to be out of your mind. 0.99

00:26:57.000 You have to be so unbelievably stupid to think that this was meant as an actual, legit interview, that it amounts to dishonesty. 0.99

00:27:03.000 Eli Rosenberg writes the piece. 1.00

00:27:05.000 He says, the video traveled quickly after being shared Monday on Facebook, gathering more than 1.5 million views in less than a day.

00:27:11.000 In it, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the congressional candidate from New York whose democratic socialist campaign has struck a lightning bolt into the world of democratic politics, appeared to give bizarre answers in a two-and-a-half-minute video that was staged as an interview with conservative commentator Ali Stuckey on the site TRTV.

00:27:26.000 Ocasio-Cortez shook her head no when Stuckey asked if she had any knowledge about how the political system worked and seemed to imply that Venezuela was in the Middle East and was a model of socialism.

00:27:34.000 But the video did not depict a real interview, despite its caption.

00:27:38.000 Okay, and the grills is in scare quotes.

00:27:42.000 It's in scare quotes.

00:27:43.000 It's obviously satire.

00:27:44.000 Instead, it used heavily edited footage.

00:27:51.000 After an outcry, the Facebook page for Stuckey's show was updated to note that the video was satire and included a reference to the original PBS show.

00:27:57.000 But the fact the video traveled so widely has served as another example of how misleading information continues to thrive in the fast-paced flow of information online, despite Facebook's promise to better weed it out.

00:28:07.000 So now the Washington Post is calling for regulation of Facebook because people cannot recognize a satire video.

00:28:13.000 And then you wonder why when President Trump says, why are you listening to the media?

00:28:17.000 So many people on the right nod along and go, yeah, that's right.

00:28:19.000 You know, when I saw this video, this, this, this Allie Stuckey video for the first time, it was a couple of nights ago when it first went up and my father was online.

00:28:26.000 He said, look at this hilarious video.

00:28:28.000 Everyone realized that it was funny.

00:28:30.000 Everyone realized it was satire, except the writers at the Washington Post.

00:28:34.000 And then this writer says, No.

00:28:35.000 It says, This is reminiscent of when, I believe it was the Washington Post,

00:28:56.000 Mr. President, let me just get specific.

00:28:58.000 Why are we in Iraq?

00:29:27.000 We will be changing the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people.

00:29:35.000 Governor, then I'd like to hear your response on that.

00:29:38.000 If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us.

00:29:41.000 I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the ugly American is for us to go around the world saying, we do it this way, so should you.

00:29:49.000 Okay, so, okay, this is a tactic that's frequently used, and this is the part that drives me up a wall.

00:29:54.000 When you undercut your own credibility on a regular basis, members of the media, it's going to be very difficult for you to fight President Trump when he says that you've destroyed your own credibility.

00:30:01.000 Okay, before we go any further, let's talk about your impending death.

00:30:04.000 So, let's be real about this.

00:30:05.000 You're going to plot.

00:30:06.000 And when you do, if you don't have life insurance, your family is going to be a lot poorer than they were while you were alive and earning, son.

00:30:11.000 So go check it out right now.

00:30:13.000 71% of people say they need life insurance.

00:30:15.000 Only 59% of people have coverage.

00:30:16.000 That means at least 12% of people are procrastinating.

00:30:19.000 Go check it out.

00:30:20.000 PolicyGenius, the easy way to compare life insurance online.

00:30:23.000 You can compare quotes in just five minutes.

00:30:25.000 When it's that easy, putting it off becomes a lot harder.

00:30:27.000 You can compare quotes while you're sitting on the couch watching TV.

00:30:29.000 You can compare quotes while listening to this podcast.

00:30:31.000 Go try it.

00:30:32.000 PolicyGenius has helped over 4 million people shop for insurance.

00:30:35.000 They've placed over $20 billion in coverage.

00:30:37.000 And they don't just make life insurance easy.

00:30:38.000 They also compare disability insurance, renter's insurance, health insurance.

00:30:41.000 If you care about it,

00:30:42.000 They can cover it.

00:30:43.000 So if you need life insurance, but you've been putting it off because it's too confusing or you don't have the time, check out PolicyGenius.

00:30:48.000 It's the easy way to compare top insurers and find the best value for you.

00:30:51.000 There's no sales pressure, zero hassle, and it's free.

00:30:54.000 PolicyGenius.com.

00:30:55.000 When it's this easy to compare life insurance, there's no reason to put it off.

00:30:59.000 Fact is, everybody needs life insurance.

00:31:01.000 Yes, you.

00:31:01.000 Go check it out.

00:31:02.000 PolicyGenius.com.

00:31:04.000 Alrighty, so...

00:31:06.000 The media, obviously, stepping in it on a routine basis.

00:31:10.000 And it would be hilarious if it weren't quite so sad.

00:31:13.000 Now, in a second, I want to talk about some other agenda items on the left that involve things including plastic straws.

00:31:20.000 I'm not kidding.

00:31:21.000 But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

00:31:23.000 So for $9.99 a month, you can get

00:31:25.000 A subscription to dailywire.com.

00:31:27.000 When you do, you get the rest of this show live, the rest of Andrew Klavan's show live, the rest of Michael Moulsey's show live.

00:31:31.000 There's a lot of good stuff that you get when you become a subscriber.

00:31:34.000 For a $99 annual subscription, you get this, the very greatest in all beverage vessels, the leftist here's hot or cold tumbler.

00:31:39.000 Go check it out right now.

00:31:41.000 Also, when you subscribe at YouTube and you hit that little bell so that you're updated, you will be able to know when we release a new episode of our Sunday special.

00:31:48.000 And this Sunday special is pretty awesome.

00:31:50.000 Coming up this Sunday, Mike Rowe is stopping by.

00:31:52.000 You know, dirty jobs, Mike Rowe.

00:31:54.000 So go check it out.

00:31:55.000 Here's Mike Rowe talking about how awesome it was.

00:31:58.000 Did you know Ben Shapiro has a Sunday special?

00:32:01.000 Did you know it was on Sundays?

00:32:02.000 Well, it is.

00:32:02.000 Did you know that I'm his guest this Sunday?

00:32:04.000 Well, I am.

00:32:05.000 Did you know that watching it will make you exponentially smarter and more liked?

00:32:10.000 It will.

00:32:10.000 See you Sunday.

00:32:12.000 So check that out, the Sunday special coming up.

00:32:14.000 And when you subscribe at YouTube or iTunes, then you can ensure that it will arrive in your inbox just as promised.

00:32:19.000 Go check it out.

00:32:20.000 We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:32:28.000 So when the left and the media aren't pretending that satire videos are real for the sake of attacking people, people on the left are also proposing some brand new ideas.

00:32:36.000 There's only one problem.

00:32:37.000 These brand new ideas, they're basically the same as the old ideas.

00:32:40.000 So for example, Elizabeth Warren, she's presenting a brand new idea.

00:32:43.000 It's brand new.

00:32:44.000 What is her idea?

00:32:45.000 She wants to run for president in 2020 as a Native American. 0.97

00:32:48.000 And she says that she wants a 50% tax rate.

00:32:52.000 That's what she's looking for, a 50% tax rate. 0.56

00:32:54.000 Now, let it be said,

00:32:56.000 That people in the top brackets in the United States are already paying the overwhelming majority of actual net tax dollars toward the federal government.

00:33:04.000 It's not even close.

00:33:05.000 People at the upper end of the tax spectrum between state and federal taxes are paying well in excess of 40%.

00:33:10.000 If you're in the state of California, you're already paying closer to 50% of your money to taxes.

00:33:14.000 But Elizabeth Warren says we need a 50% top tax rate.

00:33:16.000 That's going to fix all of our problems.

00:33:19.000 What's too high for the top personal rate?

00:33:22.000 It's not about a number.

00:33:23.000 That's what negotiations are all about.

00:33:25.000 It's that... It's 50% obviously too high?

00:33:28.000 Look, there was a time in a very prosperous America, an America that was growing the middle class, an America in which working families were doing better generation after generation after generation, where the top marginal rate was well above 50%.

00:33:44.000 It's 90%!

00:33:44.000 That's exactly right.

00:33:48.000 The left never, ever, ever will actually give you a straight answer on this particular question.

00:33:52.000 When you say to them, what is your preferred top tax rate?

00:33:55.000 They'll never tell you that it's 100%, but it basically is 100%.

00:33:59.000 Folks on the left will say, you know when the tax rate's really good?

00:34:01.000 It's when the top marginal tax rate was 91% under JFK.

00:34:05.000 Ignoring, of course, the fact that everybody basically avoided paying the 91% top tax rate with a variety of loopholes and deductions.

00:34:11.000 But if you really believe that this is a winning campaign in the United States, a winning campaign is I want to raise everybody's taxes dramatically.

00:34:18.000 Talk to Walter Mondale circa 1984.

00:34:21.000 This is your program.

00:34:22.000 Let's raise taxes incredibly high.

00:34:25.000 Yeah, genius ideas from the left.

00:34:27.000 Also, outrage is on the program as well.

00:34:29.000 So Cory Booker also wants to run for president in 2020.

00:34:32.000 This is why when people say that Donald Trump is running at a disadvantage in 2020, I just wonder who they think he's going to run against.

00:34:38.000 If it's going to be Elizabeth Warren, who's sending smoke signals, or Cory Booker, wild-eyed Cory Booker, the advantage has to be with Trump.

00:34:45.000 Cory Booker is the senator from New Jersey, one of the senators from New Jersey, along with the ex-global Bob Menendez.

00:34:50.000 And Cory Booker has decided that he is going to play crazy-eyes Mr. Potato Head in his 2020 campaign.

00:34:56.000 There is no neutral.

00:34:57.000 In a moral moment, there is no bystanders.

00:34:58.000 You are either complicit

00:35:27.000 You are either contributing to the wrong or you are fighting against it.

00:35:32.000 The outrage routine, every time Cory Booker speaks, he thinks that he is doing the McCarthy era, have you no decency, sir?

00:35:38.000 And it grates really, really quickly.

00:35:40.000 Moral outrage does not work against President Trump, and it doesn't work on the American people.

00:35:44.000 When you're talking about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the left is already attempting to mobilize against Kavanaugh's nomination, not by suggesting that there are holes in his legal resume, or by asking specific questions about his record, or how he will rule on future cases, but simply by stating over and over and over again that you are evil if you support Brett Kavanaugh.

00:36:02.000 Well, this was exactly the thing that led to Trump's presidency in the first place.

00:36:05.000 Everybody on the right got tired of hearing they were evil for disagreeing politically, and so the left is doubling down on all of that.

00:36:11.000 So what have we learned from the left in the last 24 hours?

00:36:14.000 We've learned that their program involves

00:36:17.000 dishonestly suggesting that satire is actually real for the purposes of attacking people.

00:36:22.000 We've learned from the left that they want tax rights radically elevated and we've learned from the left that you are evil if you support a judge who disagrees with Cory Booker on abortion.

00:36:31.000 This is what we've learned from the left.

00:36:33.000 The radicalization of the Democratic Party is happening in real time.

00:36:35.000 And this is not me suggesting this from some subjective point of view.

00:36:40.000 RealClearPolitics has these charts that show sort of the movement in the party politics over the past 20 years.

00:36:46.000 And what you see is that the Republican Party moved to the right, leading all the way up until 2010.

00:36:50.000 And since 2010, the Republican Party has basically been stagnant in its policies.

00:36:55.000 And what you see is that the left, the Democratic Party, has moved radically to the left since 2010.

00:37:00.000 And that's not a giant surprise, because just watching it in real time, you can see it happening.

00:37:04.000 I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama was running on behalf of traditional marriage and suggesting that he didn't want to raise taxes in 2008.

00:37:11.000 And now you've got Elizabeth Warren, who's going to run on transgender bathrooms and 50% tax rights. 1.00

00:37:16.000 That might be a little bit too radical for the American people.

00:37:20.000 Now the other angle that folks on the left could take is that the Republicans in Congress aren't checking President Trump quite enough.

00:37:25.000 That the Republicans in Congress are letting President Trump have his way.

00:37:28.000 The problem is it's hard to come up with the evidence that on policy they're actually letting Trump have his way except perhaps

00:37:33.000 on the issue of tariffs, where Congress really should seize back its power.

00:37:36.000 It's a legislative power under Article 1 of the Constitution to handle tariff policy.

00:37:41.000 But on other areas, for example, on Putin, the left has suggested that the Republicans are complicit in allowing President Trump to sell out the country to Vladimir Putin, except for the fact that the policy that has been promulgated by Congress is much harsher under President Trump than it ever was under President Obama.

00:37:57.000 Yesterday, for example, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, cocaine Mitch, he came out and he said that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan

00:38:04.000 The two of them would not be welcoming Putin to give some sort of joint address to the Houses of Congress, so they're not going to go along with the sort of warm feeling that President Trump has for Putin.

00:38:12.000 Again, the policy that Trump has pursued via Putin is very different from the verbiage he has spoken via Putin with regard to Putin.

00:38:18.000 Here is Mitch McConnell elucidating.

00:38:21.000 Well I can only speak for the Congress.

00:38:23.000 The Speaker and I have made it clear that Putin will not be welcome up here at the Capitol.

00:38:29.000 OK, well, again, if the idea is you need to elect Democrats to check the president of the United States, I'm failing to see where Trump has really overridden his constitutional boundaries, except in the area of tariffs.

00:38:39.000 And there is a case to be made that Republicans should stop him on that stuff for the sake of Trump's own presidency.

00:38:44.000 But the case for a Democratic Congress has never been weaker, I think.

00:38:47.000 And that's why I'm so bewildered by folks like George Will, who have suggested we need Democrats in Congress to check President Trump.

00:38:52.000 You may not like President Trump, but the policy that is emerging from the Trump administration is not the same as President Trump's personality and what he believes personally.

00:39:01.000 They're not quite the same thing at all.

00:39:03.000 I'm not sure how you trust Democrats, especially considering this final plank of the Democratic platform that I'm going to talk about in just one second. 0.96

00:39:09.000 So, final plank of the Democratic platform apparently for 2020 is going to be plastic straws suck. 0.82

00:39:14.000 And no, I don't mean that in punny fashion.

00:39:16.000 I mean that they're no longer going to allow you to slurp through plastic straws in cities like San Francisco.

00:39:21.000 According to the San Francisco Chronicle, soon to be heard in San Francisco, the last slurp through a plastic straw.

00:39:27.000 This morning, my kids wanted to drink some tea and they wanted to use plastic straws.

00:39:30.000 So I guess I am now complicit in evil, according to Cory Booker.

00:39:33.000 This board of supervisors passed an ordinance on Tuesday that will prohibit the city's restaurants, bars, and retailers from providing customers with plastic items such as straws, stirrers, or toothpicks beginning July 1st, 2019.

00:39:45.000 If the ordinance passes the board on the second reading next week, it will then be presented to Mayor London Breed.

00:39:50.000 If the mayor signs the measures, retailers will be prohibited from selling single-use food service products made with fluorinated chemicals.

00:39:56.000 So you're not going to be allowed to get like a Starbucks cup anymore.

00:39:59.000 Instead, you're going to have to use biodegradable straws that taste like corn every time you use them.

00:40:04.000 She says, this is about changing people's behavior.

00:40:05.000 Do you really need to offer a straw with a glass of water?

00:40:18.000 Well, yeah, I mean, I kind of want the straw, so a little bit. 0.76

00:40:23.000 And by the way, all of the propaganda surrounding plastic straws is absolutely silly.

00:40:27.000 When people say that plastic straws are actually contributing to the degradation of the environment in a serious way, it's just not true, okay?

00:40:35.000 There's basically a survey that was done by an eighth grader suggesting that there are eight million plastic straws that are thrown into the ocean, but that's just not, it's not true.

00:40:43.000 It's not true, okay?

00:40:45.000 It's... This is your program now?

00:40:47.000 Is to make life more... So, poop on the streets in San Francisco, fine.

00:40:51.000 Straws on the streets in San Francisco, not okay.

00:40:53.000 Open needles on the streets of San Francisco, fine.

00:40:56.000 Straws on the streets of San Francisco, not okay.

00:40:59.000 Classic straws are not the problem.

00:41:00.000 If you want to talk about ocean pollution, by the way, what is really polluting oceans are nets.

00:41:04.000 Okay, that's really what's happening.

00:41:06.000 The anti-straw movement, according to Bloomberg, took off in 2015 after a video of a sea turtle with a straw stuck in its nose went viral.

00:41:12.000 Campaigns soon followed, with activists often citing studies of the growing ocean plastics problem.

00:41:17.000 But this well-intentioned campaign assumes that single-use plastics have much to do with ocean pollution.

00:41:21.000 That assumption is based on some highly dubious data.

00:41:23.000 Activists and news media often claim that Americans use 500 million plastic straws per day, which sounds awful. 1.00

00:41:30.000 Because that's stupid. 0.99

00:41:31.000 There are only 300 million Americans. 1.00

00:41:33.000 Okay, in this room, guys, on average, how many plastic straws do you use a day?

00:41:38.000 A day.

00:41:38.000 Okay, that's right.

00:41:39.000 Okay, I use zero.

00:41:40.000 Senya uses zero.

00:41:41.000 Mathis uses zero.

00:41:42.000 Okay, the notion, that means that for all three of us using zero, in order for us to get to 500 million, there has to be some person out there who's using 10 plastic straws in a day.

00:41:53.000 For that to average out to 500 million.

00:41:55.000 Somebody has to be using 10 plastic straws.

00:41:56.000 I don't know what they're doing.

00:41:57.000 I don't know if they're like snorting cocaine with straws piled up the wazoo.

00:42:01.000 But that's real weird.

00:42:02.000 The source of the figure was actually a survey conducted by a nine-year-old.

00:42:06.000 Two Australian scientists estimated there were 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines.

00:42:11.000 But even if those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for 0.03% of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated tend to the oceans in a given year.

00:42:19.000 But don't worry.

00:42:20.000 The city of Santa Barbara has also passed an ordinance that will allow restaurant employees to be punished with up to six months of jail time or a $1,000 fine for giving plastic straws to their customers.

00:42:30.000 The bill was passed unanimously last Tuesday.

00:42:33.000 A $1,000 fine.

00:42:34.000 So if you go to a table and you just give four plastic straws to people, that's $4,000.

00:42:39.000 Or you could do two and a half years in jail.

00:42:42.000 You could do two years in jail for giving four customers plastic straws.

00:42:46.000 Santa Barbara's ordinance is likely the most severe straw ban in the country, but of course it is not the only one. 0.97

00:42:51.000 By the way, Santa Barbara didn't just ban plastic straws, they also ban compostable straws. 0.90

00:42:55.000 So I guess there are no straws available at all. 0.87

00:42:57.000 So I guess if you're a disabled person who actually needs to sip through a straw, you're basically screwed, right? 1.00

00:43:01.000 I mean, I guess that you could probably have a lawsuit based on this. 0.97

00:43:04.000 This is pretty nuts.

00:43:07.000 This is pretty nuts stuff, but again, the left is not known for its moderation on issues of virtue signaling, and this is merely the latest example of all of that.

00:43:15.000 So, again, I'm very glad that the leftists have decided the crucial threat to the planet is plastic straws.

00:43:21.000 And that that must be ended immediately.

00:43:23.000 But the spread of poop on sidewalks, that's cool.

00:43:26.000 Homeless people occupying every square inch of Los Angeles, that's fine. 1.00

00:43:30.000 Just make sure those homeless people don't have plastic straws while they're spreading disease at Skid Row in Los Angeles.

00:43:35.000 A thing that is actually happening.

00:43:37.000 Priorities, guys, priorities.

00:43:38.000 OK, time for things I like, then some things I hate, and then we'll do a psalm, an uplifting psalm.

00:43:43.000 I like Wednesdays because we do psalms.

00:43:44.000 OK, so we are going to do a thing I like.

00:43:46.000 The thing I like today, we're doing jazz all this week.

00:43:48.000 Sarah Vaughan, one of the great voices of all time.

00:43:50.000 This is from her Live in Japan album, and it is just spectacular.

00:43:54.000 She is, again, a once in a century voice.

00:43:58.000 Sarah Vaughan singing for you.

00:44:01.000 So close.

00:44:09.000 I don't know.

00:44:16.000 You know, jazz really is the great American musical form.

00:44:19.000 And it's obviously present in stuff like this, from the blues that we played yesterday to the kind of torch songs that you hear here from Sarah Vaughan.

00:44:27.000 It's present in George Gershwin.

00:44:29.000 Jazz is a truly great all-American form of music, largely begun by black folks in the United States.

00:44:35.000 And that's why when I rip on rap, because this is actually music.

00:44:38.000 Again, I don't have to do my spiel about how much I hate rap.

00:44:41.000 Suffice it to say, I don't like rap.

00:44:43.000 OK, time for a couple of things that I hate.

00:44:49.000 So the thing that I hate today, this is really tragic.

00:44:51.000 So Demi Lovato suffered a drug overdose.

00:44:53.000 She's apparently awake and responsive at this point.

00:44:56.000 She had a drug overdose.

00:44:58.000 People are saying that she had a heroin overdose.

00:45:00.000 She was found unconscious when they arrived at her home, according to media reports.

00:45:03.000 She was treated with Narcan, which is an emergency treatment for narcotic overdoses, at her home.

00:45:08.000 I'm not sure what the story is on how she actually became an addict.

00:45:10.000 I think the story is that she's told that she became addicted to cocaine when she was actually on Disney Channel.

00:45:15.000 And then...

00:45:16.000 I guess you transferred over into heroin.

00:45:18.000 So this wasn't the typical sort of story that you hear with regard to heroin addiction in sort of more prosperous communities where somebody goes to the doctor and then they are prescribed some sort of opioid and they can't get the high from the opioid that they used to and the prescription runs out so they start using heroin, black tar heroin instead.

00:45:34.000 There's a great book called Dreamland by a guy named Sam Quinones that I've recommended on the show before about the problem of heroin trafficking in the United States.

00:45:41.000 But there is something to be said about the idea that when you have

00:45:45.000 A severe epidemic of drugs in upper class communities.

00:45:49.000 I mean economically viable communities.

00:45:52.000 It's not something you can blame on economics.

00:45:55.000 It's something that you do have to blame at a certain point on lack of a moral framework for folks.

00:46:02.000 And that's not to suggest that Demi Lovato is not a victim of her own addiction.

00:46:06.000 I think that addiction can be treated as a disease.

00:46:09.000 I think we have to treat it as a disease.

00:46:10.000 It is also something that self-control helps with, which is why you have 12-step programs, as I've talked about a little bit earlier this week.

00:46:18.000 But the idea that society as a whole is responsible for addictions like Demi Lovato, I have a bit of a problem with this.

00:46:23.000 The reason that I say this is because the same day this happened with Demi Lovato, there was an article in a publication called NME by a guy named Barry Nicholson, and it says,

00:46:35.000 And I just thought to myself, well, I'm not.

00:46:36.000 I have an alibi.

00:46:38.000 Amy Winehouse's death has nothing to do with me.

00:46:41.000 And the article essentially suggests that we are all complicit.

00:46:45.000 Why are we complicit in her death?

00:46:47.000 At the film's core is a single deeply unsettling question.

00:46:50.000 How did a happy, healthy, outrageously gifted 14-year-old, glimpsed in its opening moments, become a traumatized figure we all recognize from her final months?

00:46:56.000 There are no easy answers.

00:46:58.000 By the end, the coroner's verdict of death by misadventure doesn't seem to tell the whole story.

00:47:02.000 This was death by a thousand cuts and agonizingly drawn out demise of cumulative influences, appetites, and mistakes.

00:47:08.000 So the basic suggestion is that by humoring our most talented people in their excesses, that we are complicit in their fall.

00:47:17.000 I think there is some truth to that to the people who immediately surround a star.

00:47:20.000 I think there are a lot of people who, when you get famous, there are a lot of folks who surround you who are going to tell you yes to a lot of things, and people who want to be your friends who are going to tell you yes to anything that you want to hear because saying no means you're going to be unpopular with the famous cool kid.

00:47:32.000 You know, we here at The Offices know a lot of very famous people.

00:47:35.000 And this is a serious problem with famous people, is that they're often told yes by their hangers-on, and being told yes a lot means that you're going to start engaging in more and more outrageous excesses.

00:47:45.000 That's why it's important to surround yourself with good people as a famous person.

00:47:48.000 In the end, regardless of whether you are famous or whether you are not, if you believe in the idea that there is some level of personal responsibility for your own activity, I think blaming society for consuming your product is a little bit

00:48:00.000 Over the top.

00:48:00.000 I don't think that it's the people who watched Roseanne who are responsible for Roseanne having serious life problems.

00:48:07.000 I don't think that it's the people who bought Amy Winehouse albums who are responsible for Amy Winehouse doing what she did.

00:48:11.000 I don't think it's the people who were fans of Demi Lovato who are responsible for Demi Lovato doing what she did either.

00:48:16.000 I'm not suggesting, by the way, that Demi Lovato suggests that it is their fault.

00:48:19.000 But I think there's a tendency on the part of the media to suggest that personal problems are actually societal problems and societal problems are actually personal problems.

00:48:26.000 And that is a serious problem.

00:48:28.000 Yeah, I think the only way we're going to recover from this is with the belief that a more virtuous society in which we are all held to account and in which we protect each other from our excesses by not setting stumbling blocks in front of the blind, that's the kind of society that's going to protect people who do have a tendency toward addiction, who do have a tendency toward making mistakes in their personal life.

00:48:47.000 Honestly, prayers for Demi Lovato, and I hope and pray, as I would for anyone, I hope that she gets over

00:48:54.000 The issues that obviously plague her.

00:48:55.000 She was sober, I guess, for some six years before she sort of fell off the wagon.

00:48:59.000 And that's quite terrible.

00:49:00.000 I hope that she gets back on the wagon.

00:49:02.000 Thank God for Narcan.

00:49:03.000 Thank God that she has the ability to hopefully recover and lead a fulfilled life.

00:49:08.000 Okay, let's check out a psalm.

00:49:10.000 So every Wednesday we do a psalm.

00:49:11.000 We're making our way through the book.

00:49:13.000 Today's psalm is Psalm 4.

00:49:16.000 And what's really fascinating about the book of Psalms is there's a really good book that I've recommended on the show before called Poetic Diction.

00:49:24.000 And the basic suggestion of that book is that when you read old poetry, when you read ancient poetry, that it feels more substantive.

00:49:30.000 It feels like there is something more whole about that poetry than there is about modern poetry.

00:49:34.000 And the reason for that is that the language of the time, particularly if you read Psalms in Hebrew, for example,

00:49:40.000 It conveys more meaning than the language now.

00:49:43.000 Like we in the West, in English, we have words for spirit and for wind, right?

00:49:49.000 These are two separate words.

00:49:51.000 The word in Hebrew is ruach, and it encompasses both senses of the word.

00:49:54.000 So the language is richer because it has more embedded meanings in it.

00:49:57.000 And I think that you see that when you read the Psalms.

00:49:59.000 Psalm Force is for the director of music with stringed instruments, a psalm of David.

00:50:18.000 The idea of silence in the face of cosmic injustice is something that Judaism kind of goes back and forth on.

00:50:22.000 Judeo-Christianity goes back and forth on.

00:50:24.000 If you read the Old Testament, there's a lot of protesting against

00:50:38.000 Perceived injustices on the part of God.

00:50:40.000 So, for example, the book of Job is all about this, where Job experiences awful, awful cosmic injustice.

00:50:44.000 And God's final answer is to be silent.

00:50:47.000 What is it about silence that matters here?

00:50:49.000 I don't think that it's just God saying, you ought to be silent because I know best for you.

00:50:52.000 I think it's about the idea that when you sit in silence, it causes you to think and to listen.

00:50:58.000 When you're talking, you're not listening.

00:51:00.000 And talking to God is useful.

00:51:01.000 Praying to God is useful.

00:51:03.000 But listening and trying to figure out what it is that might make your life better on your own might be a better solution than constantly crying out to the heavens.

00:51:12.000 Silence is a very effective tool.

00:51:15.000 It's one of the reasons why I think Eastern forms of meditation, in many cases, are extraordinarily useful.

00:51:20.000 The idea of actually just taking a break and shutting up for a second.

00:51:23.000 In politics, if we did this a little more, if we shut up a little bit more and listened a little more and talked a little bit less, I think that we'd all be better off.

00:51:29.000 I think it's certainly true when it comes to our personal interactions with the divine as well.

00:51:33.000 And I'm not saying that God is going to speak to you because I don't think that most people have the ability of prophecy.

00:51:38.000 But I do think that you just listening is going to allow you to maybe see beyond yourself.

00:51:43.000 This is true for all of us.

00:51:44.000 It's the hardest thing to do is to be silent in the face of perceived injustice from the cosmic.

00:51:48.000 But

00:51:49.000 Perhaps we can get beyond ourselves if we're if we're not talking quite so much.

00:51:53.000 OK, well, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest and we'll talk about it.

00:51:56.000 Well, then I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:51:57.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:52:08.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:12.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:52:13.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:52:15.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:52:17.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

00:52:20.000 Copyright Ford Publishing 2018.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 25, 2018

The Tale Of The Tape | Ep. 588

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript