On this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, host Ben Shapiro celebrates Father s Day with a special Father's Day Live Stream. Plus, the Supreme Court rules in favor of religious bakers, Democrats struggle for a House majority, and Bernie Sanders makes the stupidest statements about Disney ever. Ben Shapiro is a regular contributor to the Daily Wire and host of the conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and host a regular podcast with his good friend Andrew Klavan and Michael Knowles. He's also the host of "The Daily Wire Live Stream" and hosts a weekly show on the conservative radio show "The View From The Top" on SiriusXM Radio's Power 99.7. Ben is also a host on the popular conservative podcast, "The FiveThirtyEight Radio Show." He is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, CBS Radio, NPR, and other media outlets. He's on the Tonight Show with Alex Blumberg and The View from the Top, and is one of the most influential conservative voices in the country. You can find him on social media at and . Ben's new book, is out now: which you can read on Amazon Prime and wherever else you get your news and information, if you search for it. If you're looking for the latest news and trends, you'll find it here. Enjoy! Subscribe to Ben Shapiro's newest book, "Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire: A User's Guide to Fatherhood: How to Be a Good Dad, Not a Bad Dad, by Ben Shapiro." Learn more about Ben Shapiro: What's a Badass Dad? by becoming a Dad's Day, by Becoming a Dad, a Dad Who's Good at Work and a Dad at the Same Old Thing, by Good Thing, Not Badass, by becoming Ben Shapiro, by clicking here . And don't forget to Like, Share, Share and Share it on Apple Podcasts! and Subscribe to his Insta-Friendship, and subscribe to his other social media pages: , and other places where he'll be spreading the word about all things Dadhood, Life, Work, Money, Relationships, and Life, Love, Blessings, and Friendships, by using the Ben Shapiro Podcast, and so Much More! Subscribe and Share the Scooby-ness, by checking out his Podcast, too!
00:00:00.000The Supreme Court rules in favor of religious bakers, Democrats struggle for the House majority, and Bernie Sanders makes the stupidest statements about Disney ever.
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00:03:00.000The big news was that the Supreme Court has ruled in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case.
00:03:04.000So if you don't remember the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, this is a case where a guy owned a bakery, and this gay couple came in in 2012, and they wanted a cake for their same-sex wedding, and he said, no, I'm a religious baker, so no.
00:03:18.000And he'd be happy to sell them a cake.
00:03:20.000If they were just gay people who want a cake, you'd be happy to give them their cake because who cares?
00:03:24.000But they wanted a cake that said on it, you know, happy wedding to Bob and Joe or whatever it was.
00:03:29.000And this Christian baker said, listen, I'm not going to be part of forwarding what I think is a sin, which seems like a basic American freedom.
00:03:35.000Well, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission immediately cracked down on the guy and tried to basically run him out of business for this grave and horrible sin.
00:03:41.000We've seen the same sort of issue arise with Baronelle Stutzman up in the state of Oregon, where Baronelle Stutzman was Washington, Washington.
00:03:48.000Baronelle Stutzman, where Baronelle Stutzman was a florist and she didn't want to do floral arrangements for a lesbian wedding.
00:03:54.000And then she was basically run out of business by the state.
00:03:56.000We've seen the same thing with photographers in New Mexico.
00:03:59.000So we've seen this sort of thing happening all over the country.
00:04:02.000So the Supreme Court avoided the big issue.
00:04:04.000So the headline that you're hearing today from the left is, OK, first of all, here's my view of this case and every other case like it.
00:04:17.000I do not believe that it is the government's job to tell you who you can and cannot do business with.
00:04:28.000I will go start an alternative business, and I will run you out of business.
00:04:30.000I will go to the business across the street, and they will get my patronage, and they will run you out of business.
00:04:34.000I think this is true across the board.
00:04:36.000I don't see why this is a freedom of religion issue, per se, because it seems like a freedom of association issue to me.
00:04:41.000Now, I understand this is unpalatable to people because we have this weird idea in America that if you don't like something, it ought to be illegal.
00:04:53.000I think the government should get completely out of the business of marriage.
00:04:56.000Well, just as I am libertarian on the issue of same-sex marriage, I'm libertarian on the issue of whether a business owner ought to be forced to cater to a particular population.
00:05:05.000Even if that business owner is a jerk.
00:05:07.000Even if that business owner is a racist or a homophobe.
00:05:09.000Well, you want to be a racist or a homophobe?
00:05:22.000It also doesn't go as far as to even say that religious people have a right to act religiously in their business.
00:05:27.000The case doesn't even say that if you are a baker, you have the right to reject catering to a same-sex wedding.
00:05:32.000Instead, this case is decided 7-2 on the narrowest possible grounds, and that is the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is mean.
00:05:39.000Really, that's how the case was decided.
00:05:41.000The case is written by Anthony Kennedy, who is an excorable justice, just an awful, awful justice.
00:05:45.000He has never seen a copy of the Constitution, apparently, and so he just sort of wanders around in his bathrobe, and depending on whether he had his Metamucil-led bowel movement that morning, he decides how to rule.
00:05:55.000So here is his ruling today, delivering the opinion of the court.
00:05:59.000It's a nonsensical ruling because it doesn't get to any key issue.
00:06:01.000It's good for the particular baker in this case, but it does not establish a broad principle that religious people can actually act religiously in their businesses.
00:06:09.000Which you would assume would be protected by freedom of religion.
00:06:12.000I mean, when I say freedom of religion, generally what I mean is my ability to act religiously throughout my life, including in my business.
00:06:18.000That's not what the Supreme Court says.
00:06:22.000So, the court holds, and this is in the court's summary, this is the summary of the case, at the very beginning of every case, the court puts out basically a summary of the ruling.
00:06:31.000The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views, and in some instances protected forms of expression.
00:06:45.000While it is unexceptionable that Colorado law can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.
00:06:56.000Okay, now you ask, how is that possible?
00:06:58.000How is it possible that you're going to be neutral toward religion and crack down on religion while protecting same-sex couples?
00:07:31.000His dilemma was understandable in 2012, which was before Colorado recognized the validity of gay marriages performed in the state or before this court issued its decision in Obergefell.
00:07:40.000Given the state's position at the time, there was some force to Phillips' argument that he was not unreasonable in deeming his decision lawful.
00:07:46.000State law at the time also afforded shopkeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive.
00:07:51.000Indeed, while the instant enforcement proceedings were pending, the state's civil rights division concluded in at least three cases that a baker acted lawfully in declining to create cakes with decorations that demean gay persons or gay marriages.
00:08:02.000Phillips, too, is entitled to a neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all circumstances of the case.
00:08:08.000What they are saying is that Jack Phillips
00:08:11.000Now he'd be crazy, basically, to say that he won't serve a same-sex marriage.
00:08:14.000But back in 2012, when it was still illegal for same-sex people to marry in many places across the country, for people of the same sex to marry each other in many places across the country, back then, it was understandable that he was stupid.
00:08:25.000But now, if you tried it now, I mean, come on, it's the law of the land.
00:08:28.000So you can see the Supreme Court leaving the door open to not protecting the rights of somebody who, in 2016, says, I don't wish to participate in a same-sex marriage.
00:08:36.000Instead, they're saying, well, way back then, it was different.
00:08:38.000Right, back then, Obama supported traditional marriage.
00:08:48.000What they're saying is that the Civil Rights Commission should have been nice to Phillips.
00:08:55.000They were mean to Phillips, and therefore, their decision is not okay.
00:08:59.000Their consideration was compromised by the commission's treatment, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection.
00:09:06.000As the record shows, some of the commissioners at this commission's formal public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips' face as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.
00:09:23.000No commissioners objected to the comments,
00:09:25.000Okay, again, none of this has to do with anything.
00:09:27.000So what they are saying is that the Commission said mean things about Phillips and his religious practice.
00:09:41.000The reality, however, is that that should have nothing to do with whether or not Phillips's behavior is constitutional.
00:09:48.000People misinterpret what freedom of religion is supposed to be about.
00:09:51.000So the court has come up with all of these cases where they say freedom of religion provides you a special freedom, a special freedom, and that special freedom is designed in order to allow you to provide your sincerely held religious beliefs in public.
00:10:06.000But how do you decide what is sincerely held as opposed to non-sincerely held?
00:10:09.000And if you held a sincere religious belief that you should hold slaves, obviously the court wouldn't be okay with that.
00:10:13.000So it's not sincere religious beliefs.
00:10:14.000Instead, there's a three-pronged religion test that's laid forth in a case called Lemon.
00:10:40.000So they say that establishment clause about the government can't put, in God we trust, on coins or some such nonsense.
00:10:45.000And freedom of religion is, can you smoke peyote in violation of federal drug law on a native reservation?
00:10:51.000That was an actual case back in the early 90s.
00:10:53.000Employment Division versus Smith, I believe it's called.
00:10:56.000But one of the problems with this reading of the First Amendment is that the whole point of the First Amendment is to protect you from the government becoming large and overbearing and encroaching.
00:11:04.000So what it's saying is you should not have a government that establishes a religion because that will burden other people's free exercise of religion.
00:11:11.000In other words, the smaller the government is, the less it's going to run into particular freedoms.
00:11:45.000I sympathize with the feelings for it.
00:11:46.000I understand that it was an attempt to wipe out discrimination in the private sector.
00:11:50.000I don't think it accomplished that in quite the way people think it did.
00:11:53.000The reality is that in order to overcome the marketplace, which does not discriminate, the marketplace hates discrimination.
00:12:01.000In order to overcome the marketplace, the government had to implement rules discriminating in the first place.
00:12:06.000I have a whole video, you can view it on YouTube, about why it is that anti-discrimination laws are significantly less important than capitalism is in removing barriers to people getting the sort of care and service that they want.
00:12:40.000Because if it hadn't been for that law, then people would have just opened up their restaurants, which is exactly what happened in the early 1960s with, for example, the Woolworth counter-demonstration in—I'm trying to remember which city it was—in the early 1960s, before the Civil Rights Act.
00:12:54.000Black people walked into Woolworth's, they said, we're not leaving, and then Woolworth's integrated.
00:15:00.000Another indication of hostility is the different treatment of Phillips's case and the cases of other bakers with objections to anti-gay messages who prevailed before the commission.
00:15:07.000The commission ruled against Phillips in part on the theory that any message not on the requested cake would be attributed to the customer, not to the baker.
00:15:16.000Yet the division did not address this point in any of the cases involving the requests for cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism.
00:15:48.000Okay, again, where they're coming down is that if they had been nice about it, they could have rejected this guy's religious views.
00:16:15.000Nothing in the Constitution says you can be nice about it and still get rid of people's religious views.
00:16:20.000There is no provision of the First Amendment that says free exercise of religion must be protected except when people are really nice to you.
00:16:28.000If they're really nice about removing your religious exercise clauses, well then we can get rid of them.
00:16:34.000Nothing in the Constitution says all this.
00:16:35.000And that's exactly, of course, what is said in some of the dissents by members of the Supreme Court who are on the right.
00:16:41.000So Clarence Thomas writes, again, he always writes very good dissents.
00:16:47.000He says, I agree that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated Jack Phillips' right to freely exercise his religion, as Justice Gorsuch, who also wrote a dissent, explains, or concurrence, rather.
00:16:56.000The commission treated Phillips' case differently from a similar case involving three other bakers.
00:17:00.000While Phillips rightly prevails on his free exercise claim,
00:17:03.000I write separately to address his free speech claim.
00:17:05.000The court does not address this claim because it has some uncertainties about the record.
00:17:08.000And then he concludes that even after describing his conduct this way, the Court of Appeals concluded Phillips's conduct was not expressive and was not protected speech.
00:17:15.000It reasoned that an outside observer would think Phillips was merely complying with Colorado's public accommodations law, not expressing a message.
00:17:21.000This reasoning flouts bedrock principles of our free speech jurisprudence and would justify virtually any law that compels individuals to speak.
00:17:34.000He says, the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the 14th Amendment, prohibits state laws that abridge the freedom of speech.
00:17:41.000When interpreting this command, the court has distinguished between regulations of speech and regulations of conduct.
00:17:46.000The latter generally do not abridge the freedom of speech, even if they impose incidental burdens on expression.
00:17:51.000As the court explains today, public accommodations law usually regulate conduct.
00:17:55.000As a general matter, public accommodations law do not target speech, but instead prohibit the act of discriminating against individuals in the provision of publicly available goods.
00:18:04.000I think this distinction is stupid, by the way.
00:18:06.000I think the distinction between free speech and free exercise of public accommodations, for example, is overstated.
00:18:13.000So in other words, I think it is an aspect, if it's an aspect of speech to burn a flag, I don't see why it's not an aspect of speech to say I don't want to
00:18:20.000Care for this person in my establishment.
00:18:25.000But I fail to see how the First Amendment doesn't protect that freedom of association or that freedom of speech.
00:18:30.000In any case, Thomas does respect that distinction.
00:18:32.000He says, although public accommodations laws generally regulate conduct, particular applications of them can burden protected speech.
00:18:38.000When a public accommodations law has the effect of declaring speech itself to be a public accommodation, the First Amendment applies with full force.
00:18:46.000And then he goes on to describe all of the ways that this is a burden on free speech for this Masterpiece Cake Shop owner.
00:19:03.000Here's why I think that Thomas's dissent here, or concurrence, is actually not wide enough.
00:19:25.000People who own Bed and Breakfast are very careful about how they make their Bed and Breakfast, right?
00:19:28.000They're very careful about how they do the decor.
00:19:30.000They're very careful about the kind of accommodations they provide.
00:19:32.000They're very careful about the kind of food that they cook.
00:19:35.000To separate artistry from business seems to me a little bit of a false distinction that people are making when it comes to First Amendment issues.
00:19:42.000In any case, Thomas concludes by essentially arguing that this is a violation of the First Amendment.
00:20:01.000From the beginning, this court's compelled speech precedents have rejected arguments that resolve every issue of power in favor of those in authority.
00:20:08.000So obviously, I agree with Justice Thomas here, even though I think he's making distinctions that I find unjustified in prior law.
00:20:15.000Then, of course, there is the leftist justice.
00:20:17.000You have Ginsburg who dissented and Justice Sotomayor dissenting.
00:20:20.000And they say basically that religion doesn't matter, free exercise doesn't matter, the government should be able to tell you to do whatever the government wants to tell you to do.
00:20:27.000Justice Gorsuch wrote a very good concurrence in which Justice Gorsuch makes the case that, and he joins with Justice Alito in his concurrence, in which they basically say that this does violate freedom of religion.
00:20:39.000They say, in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources, Vorgan v. Smith, this court held that a neutral and generally applicable law will usually survive a constitutional free exercise challenge.
00:20:48.000But we now know with certainty, when the government fails to act neutrally toward the free exercise of religion, it tends to run into trouble.
00:20:53.000Today's decision respects these principles.
00:20:55.000As the court explains, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to act neutrally toward Jack Phillips' religious faith.
00:21:00.000Maybe most notably, the commission allowed three other bakers to refuse a customer's request that would have required them to violate their secular commitments.
00:21:08.000In the face of so much evidence suggesting hostility toward Mr. Phillips' sincerely held religious beliefs, two of our colleagues have written separately to suggest that the commission acted neutrally toward his faith when it treated him differently from the other bakers, or that it could have easily done so consistent with the First Amendment.
00:21:20.000Though respectfully, I do not see how we might rescue the commission from its error.
00:21:24.000A full view of the facts helps point the way to the problem.
00:21:28.000He approached three bakers and asked them to prepare cakes with messages disapproving same-sex marriages on religious grounds.
00:21:33.000All three bakers refused Mr. Jack's request, stating they found his request offensive to their secular convictions.
00:21:38.000Mr. Jack responded by filing complaints with the Colorado Civil Rights Division.
00:21:42.000He pointed to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination against customers in public accommodations because of religious creed, sexual orientation, or certain other traits.
00:21:54.000And then Mr. Jack was given the go-ahead.
00:21:56.000And then he compares that, Gorsuch does,
00:21:58.000So of course, Justice Gorsuch is right about all of this also.
00:22:26.000Now, in just a second, I want to get to the fact that democratic extremism on issues related to everything from this case to just general politics are putting them behind the eight ball when it comes to elections.
00:22:37.000But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Stamps.com.
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00:23:54.000First of all, the Supreme Court decision that came out earlier today that basically suggests that Democrats have overstepped their boundaries, it does go to the attitude many Democrats have toward public policy.
00:24:05.000So this decision was essentially decided on the basis
00:24:15.000They still don't get that the more nasty and vile they are, and the worse their policy is, the less people are interested in working with them under most circumstances.
00:24:24.000So there's a poll out today that shows that Democrats are basically in a dead heat with Republicans for taking back the House.
00:24:30.000According to CBS News' YouGov battleground tracker, how many districts the Democrats would get and how many Republicans would get as of today, the 2018 looks like a toss-up for control at the moment.
00:24:38.000Democrats would most likely get 219 seats if the election were held today, which is only one more than the 218 needed for a majority in the Republicans' 216.
00:24:48.000The margin of error on this model is nine seats, so control is totally up for grabs.
00:24:52.000If you would have told me six months ago that Donald Trump would be the President of the United States, would be riding in the low 40s in the approval ratings, and that Democrats would not be able to retake the House, I would have thought you were insane.
00:25:02.000But this is how bad Democrats are at everything.
00:25:04.000And maybe the reason Democrats are bad at everything is because they're both nasty and they have bad policy.
00:25:10.000Bernie Sanders is the most obvious case of this.
00:25:12.000So Bernie Sanders, who's become the ideological thought leader of the Democratic Party, which is an incredible thing for a man who loves pudding this much to become the ideological thought leader of the Democratic Party.
00:25:21.000It says that we live in a new era, an era in which everybody appreciates pudding a lot.
00:25:24.000But Bernie Sanders, over the weekend, he was campaigning in Orange County.
00:25:31.000Why yes, but Bernie doesn't know where he is, so what the hell?
00:25:33.000He gives the same speech in Orange County, he doesn't in Vermont.
00:25:35.000In any case, he goes to Orange County, and he is stumping for a $15 minimum wage in Orange County, and he is particularly directing his ire at Disneyland.
00:25:42.000Now, when you strike at Disneyland, you strike near my soul.
00:25:46.000Okay, Disneyland is a wonderful place.
00:25:58.000No matter how much social justice warrior-ing you do, you're not immune from the evils and the anger of Bernie Sanders.
00:26:04.000So, Disneyland is a very left place, right?
00:26:06.000Disneyland has their gay pride days, and they have everything over at Disneyland that fosters the sort of left-leaning politics of Disney as a company.
00:26:52.000I want to hear the moral defense of a company that makes $9 billion in profits, $400 million for their CEOs, and has a 30-year worker going hungry.
00:27:15.000Disney hires 200,000 people across the United States.
00:27:21.000200,000 people across the United States.
00:27:23.000Bernie Sanders once worked in a Vermont commune.
00:27:25.000They could not even keep him employed.
00:27:27.000Seriously, the story is that he was so lazy he would sit around talking politics all day and he wouldn't go out and, like, work the earth or something.
00:27:33.000And the Vermont commune had to get rid of him.
00:27:35.000So here's the defense of Disney, okay?
00:27:36.000Number one, Disney, as the largest employer in Orange County, one of the reasons they have such a good profit margin is because they actually treat their workers pretty well.
00:28:05.000Disney has been in negotiations with unions like the Master Services Council, which represents nearly 10,000 cast members, and Disney has already offered a plan that would get to $15 minimum wage by 2020.
00:28:16.000The state of California, which has endorsed $15 minimum wage, it won't arrive until 2022.
00:28:20.000So Disney has already offered a deal that would get to $15 minimum wage by 2020.
00:28:25.000Disney has also increased the number of their employees by 50% over the last decade.
00:28:29.000Maybe that might have to do with their hiring practices.
00:28:31.000And if they don't pay people exorbitant fees for dressing up in Chippendale costumes and running around the park, and they're not paying people $800 an hour to dress up as Chippendale.
00:28:40.000Okay, hourly cast members already receive overtime and premiums.
00:28:44.000Nearly nine in 10 leadership workers and operations started off as hourly employees because it turns out minimum wage jobs are designed to move you beyond minimum wage jobs, okay?
00:28:52.000And in 2017, more than 2,000 part-time workers, like 2,200 part-time workers, became full-time.
00:28:59.000Furthermore, Disneyland Resort pays an average of $13,500 per family for full-time workers' medical premiums.
00:29:12.000Sanders doesn't ever look at his home state.
00:29:13.000Like, is he ever in Vermont, Bernie Sanders?
00:29:15.000Does he ever spend any time in Vermont?
00:29:17.000Because if he looked at his home state, he might notice that according to an out-of-reach report from the National Law Income Housing Coalition,
00:29:24.000Vermonters have to work 1.7 full-time minimum wage jobs to afford a one-bedroom rental home.
00:29:30.000So minimum wage won't pay for a one-bedroom rental home in Vermont.
00:29:33.000Vermont has the fifth highest shortfall between average renter wage and two-bedroom housing wage.
00:29:39.000By the way, the other four that are ahead of them, California clocks in third, Hawaii, Maryland, and New Jersey.
00:29:43.000Notice anything about those five states?
00:29:44.000Notice anything about those five states I just mentioned?
00:29:54.000Why is it that a state like California that has boosted its minimum wage, supremely progressive, why is it no one can afford rent?
00:30:01.000Well, because it's governed by Democrats.
00:30:02.000And as I will explain in a minute, it turns out Democratic policy across the board is hot garbage on this sort of stuff.
00:30:07.000So now, Bernie Sanders wants to do for Orange County what Democrats did for Seattle.
00:30:12.000Go after Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, raise the minimum wage, drive business out.
00:30:16.000That's exactly what's happened in Seattle, by the way.
00:30:18.000According to a University of Washington study, quote, employees increased wages, which you'd expect given the mandate of law, but they also cut hours and they cut jobs.
00:30:26.000And so in just a second, I'm going to talk about California, the state that Bernie Sanders is targeting right now.
00:30:30.000There's a great article by Michael Schellenberger over at Forbes I want to talk about.
00:30:34.000But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at ManCrate.
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00:32:57.000So while Bernie Sanders is standing around complaining about minimum wage in Orange County, it is worth noting that California is a hellhole.
00:33:07.000I've lived my entire life in California.
00:33:09.000It is headed precisely the wrong direction.
00:33:11.000So there's a great piece by Michael Schellenberger over at Forbes.com talking about what has happened here.
00:33:16.000So what he basically suggests is that it's a real-life Elysium.
00:33:20.000He says, homeless encampments of hundreds of people have cropped up around the state in the last two years.
00:33:24.000Occasionally, they are ravaged by hepatitis A, which killed 20 people last year.
00:33:28.000In Silicon Valley, 132 people died on the street in 2016, up from 85 in 2015.
00:33:32.000In San Diego, 117 people died on the streets, up from 56.
00:33:37.000And last year, San Diego City workers nearly killed a homeless person after accidentally throwing her and the tent she was sleeping in into the back of a garbage truck.
00:33:45.000So, well done everybody in California.
00:33:50.000It is true that workers in California earn 11% more than counterparts nationally, but that's not enough to make up for mortgage payments and rents that are 44% and 37% higher, respectively, than the national average.
00:34:02.00056% of Californians could afford a middle-class home in 2012.
00:34:04.000In the third quarter of 2017, just 28% could.
00:34:08.000Okay, this is the way that people escape poverty, is by buying a home in the United States, largely.
00:34:12.000For about 40 years, from 1930 to 1970, black families were channeled into renting rooms and denied loans, whereas white families were encouraged to buy homes.
00:34:19.000Richard Rothstein explains, it was that primary discrimination that kept African Americans out of white suburbs, and then affordability.
00:34:26.000So once the prices rose, black families couldn't even buy into a lot of these areas.
00:34:30.000Environmentalism is used to justify de facto racial segregation in California housing as well.
00:34:36.000Environmental lawsuits are a major reason for longer delays and higher costs of new housing.
00:34:40.000Last September, Governor Jerry Brown signed housing legislation that will raise $250 million per year to subsidize housing, but that's just enough to subsidize about a little under 2,000 units annually at a time when 100,000 to 200,000 annual units are needed.
00:34:56.000All these people who are saying that California is too progressive, I mean, that it's too right-wing, and that's why you have problems like Orange County.
00:35:03.000No, it's that California is too progressive, and that's why you have problems like the problems in Orange County.
00:35:08.000It's just foolishness all the way through.
00:35:23.000She was walking down Embassy Road there.
00:35:25.000And I walked past the Venezuelan embassy.
00:35:27.000And I said to Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, I said to him, inside that building is the luckiest person in Venezuela, because that person is not in Venezuela.
00:35:35.000That person is in New York, eating good food and not dog.
00:35:38.000There's a reason that all of these socialist countries are failing.
00:35:40.000It's a reason that California is failing as well.
00:35:43.000OK, so meanwhile, let's talk a little bit about Bill Clinton.
00:35:49.000For all people on the left, you can't understand why so many people on the right don't care about the moral
00:35:53.000The moral silliness and moral evils of President Trump.
00:35:57.000Let's travel back just 20 years, 20 short years, to when Bill Clinton was President of the United States and schtuping his interns with cigars.
00:36:04.000And then let's recall that Bill Clinton's wife ran for election in 2016 and that Bill Clinton would have been the First Lady of the United States if Hillary Clinton had won.
00:36:12.000Okay, maybe you can start to imagine why it is that maybe our standards have dropped off a little bit for presidents of the United States.
00:36:17.000So Bill Clinton is back on the press trail.
00:36:20.000That's because he's now co-written a book with James Patterson, meaning neither one of them wrote it, but they both stuck their name on it.
00:36:25.000And Bill Clinton was talking about the presidency, and it got real awkward because he was asked specifically about Monica Lewinsky and crying about Monica Lewinsky and apologizing to Monica Lewinsky.
00:37:56.000The fact that Bill Clinton is so widely beloved is because he is exactly the same as Trump in the sense that everybody knows that he's a grifter.
00:38:23.000And then Bill Clinton said, you know, if this were a Democrat in office, we'd be impeaching that Democrat already.
00:38:27.000I think if the roles were reversed, now this is me just talking, but it's based on my experience.
00:38:34.000If there were a Democratic president and these facts were present, most people I know in Washington believe impeachment hearings would have begun already.
00:38:41.000Okay, that's probably true because Republicans run the Congress, but if Democrats ran the Congress, impeachment hearings would not have begun already because Democrats voted not to impeach President Clinton, who openly lied.
00:38:59.000There's a big gap between Republicans over the age of 60 and Republicans under the age of 40.
00:39:02.000Republicans under the age of 40, when they look at President Trump, they see a guy who fibs a lot, who's dishonest, who has behaved egregiously in his personal life, and they don't like any of that.
00:39:11.000Republicans over the age of 60, they remember Bill Clinton.
00:39:14.000And they say, well, I'm not going to be lectured on morality by the same people who ran around telling me that Bill Clinton was a defensible guy, that Bill Clinton was a wonderful human being, and that anyone who criticized Bill Clinton was doing so only because of their prurient interest in sex.
00:39:28.000This is a real gap in knowledge base between people who are under 40 and people who are over 60 in the Republican Party.
00:39:33.000I'm not saying people who are under 40 are wrong about President Trump.
00:39:36.000I am saying that when Democrats say, why are Republicans so much in Trump's camp?
00:39:39.000It's because they're not going to take lectures seriously from people who pretend that JFK and Bill Clinton were standard-bearers for morality and values and virtue.
00:39:54.000So President Trump went on Twitter, as he is so apt to do, and he decided that it'd be worthwhile tweeting a bunch of things about the Russia investigation.
00:40:03.000By the way, it is never worthwhile tweeting a bunch of things about the Russia investigation.
00:40:06.000President Trump has done a good job of undermining sort of the credibility of that investigation.
00:40:11.000But now he's talking about pardoning himself openly.
00:40:14.000So he started tweeting things like this.
00:40:18.000As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to pardon myself.
00:40:22.000But why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?
00:40:24.000In the meantime, the never-ending witch hunt led by 13 very angry and conflicted Democrats, capital A, capital C, capital D, and others continues into the midterms.
00:40:33.000So the reason that he's bringing up pardoning himself is because Rudy Giuliani brought up the idea of Trump pardoning himself.
00:41:31.000And then, apparently, Giuliani told HuffPost on Sunday, quote, in no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted, the president of the United States.
00:41:39.000I don't know how you can indict while he's in office, no matter what it is.
00:41:42.000So in any case, so the president is apparently above law.
00:41:45.000He says, if he shot James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day.
00:41:48.000Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to him.
00:41:52.000Okay, so the president could be brought up on state murder charges if you were to shoot James Comey, but this is one of the really weird things about the Obama versus the Trump administration.
00:42:01.000So there are a lot of people who believe that the Trump administration is broadening the expanse of presidential powers, that President Trump has widened the number of powers available to the office and deepened the powers already available to the office of the executive.
00:42:14.000And because he mouths off about it a lot.
00:42:16.000The reality is that Trump really has not, he really has not expanded the power of the executive in any major way.
00:42:21.000In fact, most everything that he is doing has been a revision of powers that Obama already grabbed or he has tossed in the legislature.
00:42:29.000He's actually revising regulations that Obama put in place in the first place.
00:42:33.000He has almost a precisely opposite tactic to President Obama when it comes to presidential power.
00:42:37.000So Obama would go out there and say, I'm not changing anything.
00:42:53.000So President Obama had a nasty habit of saying he was not expanding presidential power while expanding presidential power.
00:42:59.000President Trump has a nasty habit of saying that he can expand presidential power and then not expanding presidential power.
00:43:04.000The best of all worlds would be to say, no, I don't want to expand presidential power, and no, it oughtn't be expanded, and we're not going to expand it, and we're going to kick more stuff over to the legislature.
00:43:13.000That's what everybody should be doing, but nobody's actually going to do that, which is really sort of silly.
00:43:18.000Trump is not going to have to pardon himself because he's not going to be brought up on charges, is the reality.
00:43:23.000President Trump fulminating over this stuff just makes it, this is my opinion, President Trump should stop fulminating over this stuff.
00:43:29.000He should let the investigation go forward.
00:43:30.000Everybody who believes the investigation is corrupt already believes the investigation is corrupt.
00:43:35.000Now, the only case to be made in favor of the tweets is that I guess it distracts from everything else he's doing.
00:43:39.000And the media are chasing President Trump around in his comments on this stuff like a cat following a laser pointer.
00:43:44.000But I'm just not sure that when President Trump tweets about stormtrooper tactics, it's particularly useful.
00:43:49.000Here's what President Trump tweeted yesterday.
00:44:04.000No, actually, this is not a stormtrooper tactic, okay?
00:44:07.000Stormtroopers were people who literally busted down doors illegally in the middle of the night without any warrant whatsoever and no legal basis for their action.
00:44:14.000That's not the same thing as setting up an independent counsel who was set up, I should mention, by a Trump appointee.
00:44:19.000I should just point that out a little bit, and that Trump can fire at any time.
00:44:23.000Again, does any of this have any real impact?
00:44:24.000I don't think any of this has any real impact on President Trump, but it does lend an air of chaos to the administration that is not useful when the president should be busily pursuing better policy.
00:44:34.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:44:39.000So today, I'm going to discuss Ad Nauseam Solo.
00:44:43.000So, if you have not seen Solo yet, you're probably not going to because it's not doing very well at the box office, which is too bad because I actually really like this movie.
00:45:55.000If you're gonna do a nostalgia play, what you do is you have everybody have kids, and then you have everybody retire off into the distance, and that's it.
00:46:02.000Okay, what you don't do is kill off beloved characters by making them divorced loser fathers who are flying around in their 67 Durango, you know, and then they come back just to get murdered by their child.
00:46:11.000Han Solo was the coolest guy in the galaxy, and you turned him into the guy who abandoned his kid when his kid was like 11, and then he runs around being an idiot.
00:46:19.000Like, it's just, it's, ugh, so stupid.
00:46:22.000The Force Awakens still makes me angry.
00:46:23.000So I'd gotten over that anger, and then I saw Solo.
00:46:26.000And the reason that I got angry after seeing Solo is because, once again,
00:46:30.000You cannot kill off a key character and then make three prequels about him, which was supposed to be the idea here.
00:46:36.000You don't kill off a beloved character for many of us who grew up on these movies and then say, let me tell you the backstory of the character we just killed off in the stupidest possible way.
00:47:01.000There's a bunch of good things about this movie that are callouts.
00:47:03.000I'm not a big fan of the newly minted importance of the dice that are on the Millennium Falcon.
00:47:09.000Now it's like every other shot in this movie is the shot of the dice to reunite it with the importance of the Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, which is just dumb.
00:47:16.000It was never important in the original movies.
00:47:17.000I didn't even know there were dice on the Millennium Falcon until I saw Force Awakens and people made a big deal out of it.
00:47:23.000Really, I didn't even realize there were dice up there.
00:47:25.000It was supposed to be like a little joke, I guess.
00:47:27.000I mean, in any case, if they're going to recast Han Solo, I guess the objection was that we couldn't recast Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher because they were too iconic.
00:47:39.000And so if we're going to do movies after Return of the Jedi, then those movies had to fast forward to the current age where the actors are, and then we have to work within that framework.
00:47:47.000But if you're going to recast Han Solo as Alden Ehrenreich, why didn't you, for example, just recast Donald Glover as Lando, Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, why didn't you just recast Mark Hamill
00:48:05.000People would've had a hard time with it at the beginning.
00:48:06.000I probably would've moaned about it a little bit.
00:48:08.000And then, if the movie had been really good, it would've been good.
00:48:11.000Instead, you get the whole expanded universe of Force Awakens and Last Jedi, which are just terrible because, again, you're fast-forwarding 30 years, the Rebellion is still the Rebellion for some odd reason, and everybody's turned into a loser.
00:48:21.000Luke's off on a planet being a loser somewhere, and he never had kids, and he never did anything useful, and you've got Rey, who no one cares about, you've got Finn, who no one cares about, you've got Poe, who no one cares about, and you've got Han Solo getting killed like a loser, Luke, like, astral projecting himself and then dying out of exhaustion, which is just ridiculous, and then you've got Carrie Fisher, who actually is dead now, and you're stuck because she's dead, right?
00:48:42.000So, what they could have done, and I think this would have been so much better, because I've talked up the Star Wars books before, I've talked up the novels that used to be part of the canon,
00:48:50.000After Star Wars, after the Death Star is destroyed in Return of the Jedi, there is still an entire empire out there.
00:48:57.000It's not like the entire empire was on the Death Star.
00:48:59.000They destroyed the first Death Star and the entire empire was still around.
00:49:02.000In the books, there's a guy named Admiral Thrawn who comes along and he starts to reconstitute the empire.
00:49:07.000Then you could have had a continuation of the universe.
00:49:09.000You could have recast everybody and you could have just continued from there.
00:49:11.000And it would have been really cool and really interesting in the books.
00:49:35.000Don't pay attention to the old characters, because killing them off one by one is a real attempt to use nostalgia to destroy my childhood, and I really object to it.
00:49:42.000Okay, so that is objection number one.
00:49:44.000Objection to Solo, the movie, is that the Alden Ehrenreich character really doesn't have much to do with Han Solo, so he has his backstory.
00:49:50.000I don't think Han Solo needed a backstory.
00:49:52.000I think they're adding this in an attempt to add to the backstory.
00:49:56.000The problem with Han Solo's character in this film is that I think what they're trying to do, and maybe they were gonna get there with the trilogy, but that may never happen now,
00:50:03.000They're trying to show how an optimistic, sprightly young lad, kind of a Luke Skywalker figure, ends up like Han Solo.
00:50:09.000So it's not that Han is naturally cynical.
00:50:11.000It's that Han used to be really idealistic and all this sort of stuff, and then Han became cynical.
00:50:18.000But this movie doesn't show how he becomes cynical.
00:50:20.000This movie just has him still being idealistic.
00:50:22.000Like, he and Luke Skywalker are much more similar than the Elden Arrogant Han Solo and the Han Solo Han Solo that we've come to know and love.
00:50:32.000Like, Donald Glover gets that on the nose.
00:50:33.000The script writing for Han is a little flawed.
00:50:35.000There are some things about the movie that I love.
00:50:37.000I mean, the way that they have Han and chewy meat is really great.
00:50:40.000Like, that really works, and it's really funny, and it's really good.
00:50:43.000I think Woody Harrelson does a good job in the film.
00:50:46.000There's a whole weird kind of SJW side plot with robot rights that I'm not sure if they were supposed to be playing for laughs or whether they were supposed to be playing it seriously.
00:50:54.000But I don't really have a problem with the movie.
00:50:57.000In fact, one of the things I liked about the movie is that finally they actually cast a human being as the bad guy, right?
00:51:01.000Paul Bettany plays the bad guy, and he's actually a human.
00:51:03.000He's not like a weird-looking creeper.
00:51:05.000So that's kind of, he's just a human-looking creeper.
00:51:09.000Emilia Clarke can't act her way out of a paper bag, which is unfortunate, but if you've ever watched Game of Thrones, you know this, which is one of the reasons that Daenerys Targaryen can never end up on the throne at the end of Game of Thrones.
00:51:20.000If she does, it's a complete disappointment.
00:51:24.000What they really needed to do at the end of this movie, so spoiler alerts now, I really haven't spoiled a lot yet, spoiler alert now, okay, the real, what they should have done at the end of the movie is they should have had the rebellion, right, the people who are working with the rebellion accidentally kill Han Solo's love interest and then you could see why he's so cynical about the rebellion and also why he's cynical about love, right?
00:51:43.000That would have done it, but maybe that's their plan in future movies, but I'm not sure they're gonna do future movies because this movie is gonna lose hand over fist at the box office.
00:51:50.000It's only going to end up clearing about $400 million, which sounds like $500 million maybe with foreign returns.
00:51:57.000That means that it doesn't break even because they spent several hundred million dollars on the making of the film, on the marketing of the film.
00:52:03.000It's hard to see where they go from here.
00:52:06.000Kathleen Kennedy has done a terrible job steering the Star Wars universe.
00:52:08.000Rogue One was a very good movie, Solo is a pretty good movie, and the fact that they did what they did with Force Awakens and Last Jedi is impossible to get over.
00:52:15.000It's impossible, because now you either have to make a nostalgia play for characters you killed off in the worst possible way, or you have to make spin-offs
00:52:21.000About characters you don't care about, like Poe Dameron and Finray.
00:52:24.000Like, what they really should have done, again, what they should have done, is they should have, instead of relaunching, if they're gonna do a Marvel-style, instead of relaunching with Force Awakens and Last Jedi, they should have relaunched with Rogue One and Solo, and then they should have moved forward from after Return of the Jedi, or fast-forwarded 60 years, when everybody's already presumed dead, basically, and then moved on into the new Star Wars universe.
00:52:44.000Instead, they decided to capitalize on the nostalgia.
00:52:46.000It was a short-sighted play, and it has some really negative ramifications for this movie, which I think is quite good.
00:52:51.000I think that, you know, I've been kind of arguing whether this is better than Revenge of the Sith.
00:52:54.000I think it's better than Revenge of the Sith, on second thought.
00:52:56.000So, my current Star Wars rankings are in order.
00:53:00.000Empire Strikes Back, Episode 4, Rogue One, Return of the Jedi, Solo, Revenge of the Sith, everything else is hot garbage.
00:53:08.000That's the, those are the official Star Wars rankings here on the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:53:12.000And anyone who disagrees will be summarily fired.
00:53:14.000Alright, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:53:24.000So a lot of people have been making this argument, like, how crazy are people right now?
00:53:28.000So, you remember during the last election cycle, when people said, maybe Hillary has some health problems, and everybody was like, no, you can't say Hillary has health problems.
00:53:35.000She's the healthiest woman who ever lived, Hillary Clinton.
00:53:37.000That woman could compete in a triathlon tomorrow with one arm disconnected from her body.
00:53:43.000She can do one-armed pull-ups, Hillary Clinton.
00:53:46.000That woman can jump tall buildings in a single bound.
00:56:45.000You might want to, like, take care of your agents a little better.
00:56:48.000Also, like, who does backflips while carrying a gun in their, in the back of their, like, I'll be honest, I'm not somebody who conceals and carries because it's illegal in the state of California, but I'll get a lot of emails.
00:56:58.000I need emails from people, you know, about, like, whether if you're concealing and carrying, do you put the gun in the back while you're doing these weird moves?