The Ben Shapiro Show - They Don’t Care About Rogan’s Sins. They Care About Destroying Him. | Ep. 1428

00:00:00.000 The next round of attacks on Joe Rogan launches with a compendium video of him saying the N-word, the Olympics begins with NBC playing defense for China, and Stacey Abrams thinks masks are great for kids, but bad for her.

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:25.000 Slash Ben.

00:00:26.000 Alrighty, we'll get to all the news in just one second.

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00:01:39.000 All righty, so the next round of attacks have now begun on Joe Rogan because this is the way that it works, gang.

00:01:45.000 When there's blood in the water, the sharks begin to gather.

00:01:47.000 So never chum the waters.

00:01:49.000 This all started a few weeks ago, of course, when the left decided that Joe Rogan was very bad.

00:01:54.000 Now, let's be real about this.

00:01:55.000 The left has believed that Joe Rogan is very bad ever since he said that he would vote for Donald Trump before he would vote for Joe Biden.

00:02:01.000 He said that Biden was not alive.

00:02:02.000 And this set off the left.

00:02:03.000 And ever since then, the left has been looking for some sort of excuse, some sort of hook to hang their let's get rid of Rogan hat upon.

00:02:11.000 And Rogan signed this giant deal with Spotify last year.

00:02:13.000 It looked like he was going to be a mainstay in the so-called mainstream media for years to come, because Spotify is a major publicly traded company.

00:02:20.000 Well, they found their excuse when he had on Dr. Robert Malone, who went on the air and talked about the shortcomings of the mRNA vaccines as he saw them.

00:02:27.000 And this was used as evidence that Joe Rogan was a vax denier.

00:02:32.000 And then when Joe Rogan got COVID and he was not vaxed and he used ivermectin, the entire media declared that Joe Rogan had been taking horse dewormer as opposed to, you know, the human medicine, ivermectin, which has been used for decades.

00:02:43.000 And this started to snowball.

00:02:45.000 And it really reached its culmination a couple of weeks ago, at least people thought, when he had on Jordan Peterson and they made a bunch of headlines.

00:02:52.000 And right after that, there was a concerted attempt by a wide variety of voices in media to de-platform Joe Rogan from Spotify by saying that he had engaged in COVID misinformation.

00:03:04.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:03:05.000 The timing was odd, because Joe's been saying the same stuff about the COVID vaccines since the COVID vaccines were available.

00:03:10.000 He's been saying for a very long time that if you're unhealthy, if you're old, you probably should get the vaccine, and if you're young and you're healthy, then you probably shouldn't get the vaccine.

00:03:16.000 That's Joe's perspective.

00:03:17.000 That's not my perspective.

00:03:18.000 I believe that it is heavily age-striated, that pretty much everybody has a better shot of getting seriously ill from the disease than from the vaccine.

00:03:28.000 This stops applying when you are younger and younger.

00:03:30.000 And when you are more and more healthy.

00:03:32.000 OK, but my disagreements with Joe about the vaccine aside, which we talked about on his show, because Joe has on a lot of people who disagree with him, including Sanjay Gupta from CNN, who talked about the vaccines with him.

00:03:43.000 All of this kind of came to a head in mid to late January because the Spotify stock started to tank.

00:03:49.000 And then people saw their opportunity, which was he had on Jordan Peterson.

00:03:52.000 There were a few bad headlines that came out of that for Joe because people started taking him and Jordan out of context.

00:03:57.000 And then it was like, OK, let's all pile on.

00:03:58.000 Let's get Joe Rogan off the air.

00:04:00.000 And so they immediately start with the Joe Rogan is disseminating misinformation.

00:04:03.000 And this is what has caused hundreds of thousands of people to die now.

00:04:06.000 There is a problem with this theory.

00:04:08.000 That problem is that Joe Biden is the President of the United States.

00:04:12.000 And the CDC is controlled by Rochelle Walensky.

00:04:15.000 And the NIH is controlled by Dr. Fauci.

00:04:17.000 And all of these people have enormous amounts of weight in public opinion.

00:04:22.000 Plus, you have all of the network media, right?

00:04:24.000 You have ABC, NBC, CBS, you have CNN, you have MSNBC, you have the New York Times, you have the Washington Post, you have the LA Times, and I don't have to go through the compendium of the entire mainstream media all repeating the same messages about COVID, which is, do whatever the CDC says, no matter how little sense it makes.

00:04:39.000 But Joe Rogan became sort of the focal point of this.

00:04:40.000 And so they got the blood in the water and Joe released a video where he essentially said, I don't know what you mean by misinformation, since the CDC was saying things that it later had to reject as overtly untrue later on in the pandemic.

00:04:53.000 But with that said, I'll be more careful about my balance of guests.

00:04:56.000 If I have somebody controversial on, then I'll try and balance that out with somebody who is less controversial on these sorts of topics.

00:05:02.000 And this, of course, did not appease anyone because you had a few artists from Spotify who decided you need to pull my catalog or pull Joe Rogan.

00:05:07.000 And Spotify had sunk at least $100 million into this contract with Joe.

00:05:11.000 So Spotify was now stuck between a rock and a hard place.

00:05:14.000 And here's the thing.

00:05:15.000 Once the hard left grasps that a corporation is stuck in the In the bear trap created by its monetary pecuniary needs, keeping Joe Rogan and the hard left, which is now driving all sorts of rage against Spotify, up to and including artists pulling their music.

00:05:33.000 They now have the corporation exactly where they want it.

00:05:36.000 Now, Joe had a couple of choices there.

00:05:39.000 Joe's choices included, tell everybody to go stuff it.

00:05:43.000 And let me try and be a nice guy and work with Spotify in order to get them out of this situation.

00:05:48.000 And Joe opted for the second because he wanted to try and get Spotify out of it.

00:05:50.000 They'd made a contract with him.

00:05:52.000 He felt they were acting in good faith.

00:05:53.000 And so he issued his original statement, which was taken as an apology.

00:05:56.000 It was kind of a quasi apology, but not really.

00:05:59.000 But this was never going to be enough because the minute that Spotify started signifying that it was going to treat Joe Rogan as a sort of un-person, the minute that Spotify said, we are going to take your concerns on the left very seriously.

00:06:11.000 We're not just going to say, listen, we as a platform, we put up all sorts of different types of podcasts ranging from Harry and Meghan all the way to Joe Rogan.

00:06:19.000 I've got all sorts of different material and you're just going to have to deal with that.

00:06:22.000 And if you don't like it, you can stuff it.

00:06:23.000 If they had said that, this would have been over before it began.

00:06:25.000 But Spotify, led by a guy named Daniel Ek, decided not to do that.

00:06:28.000 Instead, Spotify decided that they were going to appease the crowd.

00:06:31.000 They were going to start issuing warnings before episodes of Joe's show.

00:06:35.000 They were going to have a talk with Joe behind the scenes.

00:06:39.000 Okay, so once the blood was in the water, it was only a matter of time until we got to round two.

00:06:43.000 Round two was Joe Rogan is a comedian.

00:06:46.000 Joe Rogan has been doing comedy for 20 years.

00:06:49.000 He's been in the public eye for three decades, Joe Rogan.

00:06:52.000 And all the way from Fear Factor to UFC to now.

00:06:56.000 His podcast has been going for years and years and years at this point.

00:06:59.000 He's got thousands of episodes that are available in various media.

00:07:03.000 And so what the left likes to do when they have a public figure who has a lot of taped material is they go through and they find bad old quotes, bad old quotes.

00:07:12.000 And then they put a compendium together in the worst possible way.

00:07:15.000 And they put out that compendium in an attempt to get the person to apologize.

00:07:18.000 Because understand the goal here is not to make Joe Rogan apologize.

00:07:21.000 The goal here is that if Joe Rogan apologizes, then he has justified their accusations in their mind.

00:07:27.000 And now they can just browbeat these corporations into doing anything that they want.

00:07:31.000 Leftist groups have now put out a compendium hit piece of Joe Rogan saying the N-word.

00:07:31.000 Alrighty, coming up.

00:07:35.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:08:55.000 So there's a group that puts out...

00:08:57.000 It's one of these kind of dark money, left-wing super PAC groups.

00:09:02.000 And their entire goal in life is to destroy voices they don't like.

00:09:05.000 And again, the real reason that all these people don't like Joe Rogan in the end is because Joe Rogan is not an overt left-winger who mirrors all of their particular perspectives.

00:09:12.000 He's somebody who will host people like me and people like Jordan Peterson.

00:09:15.000 He's a person who will talk to everybody from Chappelle to me.

00:09:18.000 Joe Rogan is a very heterodox kind of guy.

00:09:21.000 He says he would vote for Bernie Sanders, but he wouldn't vote for Joe Biden, but he might vote for Donald Trump.

00:09:24.000 That's the kind of guy that Joe is.

00:09:26.000 By the way, also a super nice guy and full disclosure, Joe and I are friends.

00:09:28.000 So the basic idea here.

00:09:32.000 is that once you release a compendium and you get the guy to apologize, then you cudgel the corporation into either dumping him or into making concessions.

00:09:41.000 And whatever concessions they make are then used as the predicate for the next round.

00:09:44.000 So if Spotify thinks that this is the last round of attacks on Joe Rogan, they got another thing coming.

00:09:49.000 Within 24 hours, I guarantee there'll be another compendium of bad old things Joe has said.

00:09:53.000 Because it turns out that when people make jokes 20 years ago, it is not hard at all to find things that they have said.

00:09:59.000 And string them together in a compendium and put it out there and we look at it and everybody kind of goes...

00:10:04.000 Well, E is not an excuse for de-platforming somebody.

00:10:06.000 If you didn't have a problem with anything Joe Rogan said 10 years ago, if you said nothing about it 10 years ago, shut the F up now, because we all understand what this is, which is an attempt to de-platform Rogan.

00:10:15.000 The entire goal here is to un-person Rogan.

00:10:17.000 We all get that.

00:10:18.000 This is not a well-motivated attempt to change Joe Rogan's thinking.

00:10:22.000 It's an attempt to destroy Joe Rogan because he's too powerful a voice, because he has tens of millions of listeners every week.

00:10:28.000 Okay, so, what happens if this group drops a compendium of Joe Rogan saying the N-word?

00:10:28.000 That's why.

00:10:33.000 Now, it's not a compendium of Joe Rogan calling black people the N-word.

00:10:37.000 That's not what he's doing.

00:10:38.000 It's a compendium of Joe Rogan saying the N-word while reading things like rap lyrics.

00:10:42.000 Now, this has been a widely debated concept in American life for quite a while. 0.88

00:10:47.000 To pretend this has not been sort of a controversial and widely debated concept is very silly.

00:10:50.000 So I, as an individual who's on media all the time, I never say the N-word ever.

00:10:55.000 I will never say the N-word because I know the rules.

00:10:57.000 And I also know the deliberate way in which the left takes people out of context.

00:11:00.000 They've been doing this for years.

00:11:02.000 If you use the n-word in order to condemn people using the n-word, or if you say people should not use the word bleep, but you say the n-word, they will cancel you for doing that. 0.67

00:11:11.000 They literally did this to the science reporter at the New York Times.

00:11:14.000 He was discussing the various ways you should and should not use the n-word in public conversation.

00:11:19.000 And they literally canned him, the COVID reporter for the New York Times.

00:11:23.000 Who'd been nominated for the Pulitzer, I believe.

00:11:25.000 They canned him because he had said it, like, five years ago, in the context of condemning it.

00:11:29.000 I remember them doing the same thing to Dr. Laura way back when.

00:11:33.000 She said the N-word on air.

00:11:34.000 But it was to talk about why you should not use the N-word.

00:11:37.000 The N-word is so toxic in American life.

00:11:40.000 There have been people who have lost their jobs or been suspended for using a completely unrelated word, which is spelled N-I-G-G-A-R-D-L-Y.

00:11:50.000 The word means stingy.

00:11:52.000 Niggardly means stingy and it has nothing to do with the n-word.

00:11:56.000 Completely unrelated.

00:11:57.000 People have lost their job for that because you should know not to use a word that sounds sort of like the n-word.

00:12:03.000 That's how sensitive this word is, but there has been this widely fraught debate over whether if you are saying lyrics in a song, you can use the n-word if you are white. 0.99

00:12:10.000 Now, to me, this is the stupidest thing in the world. 0.94

00:12:12.000 If there's a lyric in a song and people are allowed to repeat it, everybody should be allowed to repeat the lyric. 0.99

00:12:16.000 Obviously, it's not meant as a disparaging term about black people if it's being used in a lyric of a song.

00:12:22.000 Fortunately for me, I don't listen to that type of music, nor do I like that type of music.

00:12:26.000 In fact, I've controversially stated I don't think that rap is music at all.

00:12:29.000 But put my views of rap aside, The question as to who gets to say the n-word while quoting rap lyrics has been sort of a fraught topic for quite a while.

00:12:39.000 But what Joe did is he read that word while he was talking about comedy routines and while he was talking about various rap lyrics.

00:12:47.000 They strung all this together in a compendium and then they released it.

00:12:50.000 And it comes out on Twitter, and of course the entire left says, ah, Joe Rogan, he's a racist.

00:12:55.000 Now this has been their pitch ever since this started.

00:12:57.000 Because for the left, anything bad falls into the category of racist.

00:13:00.000 So they don't like Joe Rogan because Joe Rogan doesn't like Biden.

00:13:03.000 And therefore, Joe Rogan is bad.

00:13:04.000 And Joe Rogan platforms people like me, or he talks to people like Eric Weinstein, or he talks to people like Dave Rubin, or he talks to Jordan Peters.

00:13:11.000 So he's bad. 0.66

00:13:11.000 That means that he's secretly racist. 0.66

00:13:12.000 Nicole Hannah-Jones had said this last week.

00:13:14.000 No evidence whatsoever provided, Joe Rogan's a racist.

00:13:17.000 Alrighty, we'll get to Joe Rogan's apology, which came out yesterday, in just one second.

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00:14:26.000 And so, Joe then came out and he issued an apology for using the n-word.

00:14:31.000 And again, I think this is coming, frankly, from a good place.

00:14:34.000 Because I think that if you haven't been through this war, which I have many, many times because I'm a conservative, and so this has been my life for the last several years, is that anything I say is picked apart six ways from Sunday and then used as an excuse to try and cudgel me online.

00:14:47.000 So I don't care about it anymore.

00:14:48.000 It just bounces off.

00:14:49.000 I've been doing it for too long.

00:14:50.000 But if you're Joe Rogan, and you have friends on all sides of the political aisle, and you're really not conservative, I mean, Joe is not a conservative guy.

00:14:56.000 He has conservative leanings on particular issues, but he's definitely not, like, a down-the-line Republican in any way, shape, or form.

00:15:02.000 I mean, he himself, he's like, I'm kind of a dope-smoking libertarian slash socialist anarcho-socialist capitalist.

00:15:11.000 Like, he's all over the place, politically.

00:15:14.000 So Joe's not used to this.

00:15:15.000 Which I get.

00:15:16.000 And if you're not used to it, if you've never been through it, folks, you've never been through it.

00:15:19.000 It is brutal.

00:15:20.000 If all of a sudden there's just a tsunami of hatred coming toward you, and people labeling you something you know that you aren't, and people labeling Joe Rogan en masse a racist, and he knows he's not, then you feel like you need to make an apology because you think that these people are coming in good faith.

00:15:35.000 But they're not coming in good faith.

00:15:37.000 They're coming for your neck.

00:15:38.000 So here is what Joe Rogan had to say.

00:15:41.000 It's a very unusual word, but it's not my word to use.

00:15:46.000 I'm well aware of that now, but for years I used it in that manner. 0.98

00:15:51.000 I never used it to be racist because I'm not racist, but whenever you're in a situation where you have to say, I'm not racist, you f***ed up. 0.94

00:16:03.000 And I clearly have f***ed up. 0.62

00:16:07.000 And that's my intention to express myself in this video. 0.91

00:16:10.000 To say... Stop it right there.

00:16:11.000 So first of all, I don't buy this whole thing that the word doesn't belong to me so I can't use the word.

00:16:16.000 Either words belong to everybody or they belong to nobody.

00:16:18.000 I really don't buy the rule that certain people get to use this word but other people don't get to use this word. 0.87

00:16:22.000 I think that's very silly.

00:16:23.000 Frankly, I think we should get rid of the word entirely in the English language if nobody is allowed to use it.

00:16:27.000 It is of no value if only one group can use it and another group cannot use it.

00:16:30.000 But put that aside.

00:16:31.000 Again, you can see, because it's coming out of Joe's mouth, that what Joe is saying here is he is taking it as a critique of him.

00:16:37.000 He's saying, I'm not racist, but if you think I'm racist, then I've done something wrong, which of course is not true.

00:16:42.000 Nobody thinks he's a racist.

00:16:44.000 The people coming after him don't think he's racist.

00:16:46.000 They think they've got their hooks in him, and they think they have their hooks in Spotify.

00:16:49.000 Joe's making the mistake here of acting in good faith when the people who are dealing with him hate his guts and want him to die, at least career-wise.

00:16:57.000 And so here's the conclusion of the statement.

00:16:59.000 They — there's nothing I can do to take that back.

00:17:05.000 I wish I could.

00:17:06.000 Obviously, that's not possible.

00:17:08.000 I do hope that, if anything, that this can be a teachable moment.

00:17:15.000 OK, so, of course, this is never, ever about what Rogan actually said.

00:17:20.000 If anybody had been bothered by anything that he said 10 years ago, it's not like racism was not an issue in America 10 years ago.

00:17:26.000 Barack Obama was president of the United States 10 years ago.

00:17:28.000 He'd been president for several years 10 years ago.

00:17:31.000 So these clips, I mean, it's not as though we had never thought about racism until the last five minutes.

00:17:36.000 That's not true.

00:17:38.000 Nobody objected at the time because nobody found it offensive at the time.

00:17:41.000 They're retroactively finding it offensive because they wish to find it offensive because they wish to oust him.

00:17:47.000 That's what they actually are interested in doing.

00:17:50.000 Okay, so other artists have started because they want to see Rogan go away.

00:17:53.000 Other artists, in order to make a name for themselves, they've started dropping out.

00:17:57.000 Many of these artists are sort of second-rate artists or has-beens.

00:17:59.000 It doesn't seem like Taylor Swift dumped off Spotify because she's making too much money from Spotify.

00:18:03.000 But you have seen people like India Airey, who I've never even heard of, who said that she was going to drop off from Spotify unless they got rid of Rogan.

00:18:11.000 And Airey said that Rogan shouldn't even be uttering the word.

00:18:13.000 Don't even say it under any context.

00:18:14.000 Don't say it.

00:18:15.000 I've always stood there.

00:18:15.000 That's where I stand.

00:18:17.000 Eh.

00:18:18.000 Okay, well, whatever.

00:18:20.000 But again, this is not about anything remotely resembling an attempt to make Joe Rogan a better person or make him understand.

00:18:29.000 It's not a teachable moment.

00:18:30.000 They're not seeking to teach.

00:18:31.000 They're seeking to beat the living hell out of you.

00:18:33.000 And we all know the rules here.

00:18:33.000 That's what this is about.

00:18:35.000 The rules are that if you give the left what it wants, and you become part of the mob, then they leave you alone.

00:18:40.000 And if you're anything, in any way, at odds with them, then not. 0.94

00:18:45.000 So, Dwayne Johnson, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, this is pathetic.

00:18:47.000 So, last week, after Joe Rogan came out and kind of quasi-apologized, not really, but kind of, with regard to COVID material, he came out and he said, this is a good statement, brother.

00:18:57.000 Okay, and then, folks on the left started hitting The Rock with this video.

00:19:02.000 And he immediately backtracked.

00:19:04.000 He immediately backtracked, suggesting that he was upset that he had, and now he was more fully aware.

00:19:11.000 He said I was not aware of his n-word use prior to my comments.

00:19:14.000 He said it was a learning moment.

00:19:16.000 And by the way, this is how it works in Hollywood.

00:19:18.000 If you defend anybody, anybody, who you are quote-unquote friends with, or anybody who you're even friendly with, or even an acquaintance with, they will come after you so hard.

00:19:27.000 I've told you this story before because it was relevant in the news a couple of years ago when Mark Duplass, who's an indie director, he came to our offices.

00:19:34.000 And he wanted to know more about the Second Amendment.

00:19:35.000 So I gave him sort of an education from a conservative view on the Second Amendment.

00:19:39.000 And before he left, I said, don't bother tweeting about it or writing about it because people will attack you and then you'll feel compelled to run away.

00:19:44.000 And he's like, no, no, no, I'll be fine.

00:19:46.000 Two weeks later, he issued a statement online saying, I disagree with Ben Shapiro about pretty much everything, but he's a nice guy.

00:19:51.000 He got hit with a huge wave of hatred.

00:19:53.000 He immediately put up a statement basically calling me a racist and a transphobe.

00:19:56.000 That's how it works in Hollywood.

00:19:57.000 So Dwayne The Rock Johnson did this.

00:19:59.000 Said it was a learning moment for him.

00:20:02.000 Instead of him just saying, listen, Joe Rogan is a comedian, he's used that words in a bunch of different contexts, I know him, he's not a racist, end of story.

00:20:08.000 Which is what you would do if you were friends with a person, if you had any level, any modicum of respect or decency with regard to other people, as opposed to saving your own skin, this is what you would do.

00:20:18.000 Instead, he ran like a screaming little girl, did Dwayne The Rock Johnson, away from his friend, Joe Rogan.

00:20:24.000 But here's the problem.

00:20:26.000 Everybody who's in media has got this stuff in their past.

00:20:28.000 I mean, here's The Rock, not all that long ago, when he was with WWE, talking about how John Cena was a quote-unquote bloated transvestite Wonder Woman.

00:20:39.000 But you're not going to see the left come after The Rock for this.

00:20:42.000 Because they don't care about what The Rock had to say.

00:20:44.000 The Rock's on their side right now.

00:20:45.000 He's busy canceling Joe Rogan.

00:20:46.000 If you become one of the cancel culture mob, they leave you alone. 0.97

00:20:49.000 And everybody knows the incentive structure.

00:20:52.000 Here's The Rock, like, not that long ago, doing stuff that's as bad or worse than anything Rogan said.

00:20:59.000 Like a bloated transvestite Wonder Woman, ready to fight crime. 1.00

00:21:03.000 Pew pew pew! 0.97

00:21:04.000 Pew!

00:21:05.000 Pew! 0.97

00:21:08.000 I mean, The Rock has been deleting stuff from, like, 2011, in which he calls transgender people trannies. 0.80

00:21:15.000 He deleted that.

00:21:18.000 He's cleansing his tweets because he knows what's coming for him also if he refuses to go along with the left.

00:21:23.000 But here's the rule, always and forever, there are no rules.

00:21:25.000 It is just power.

00:21:27.000 This is the clearest thing.

00:21:27.000 The left has no rules, they only have power.

00:21:30.000 And the power is the power to destroy you and destroy your career unless you do everything they want you to do.

00:21:34.000 Which is why it's fine that Joe Biden used to say the N-word in particular contexts.

00:21:38.000 I mean, here's Joe Biden, the President of the United States, using the N-word.

00:21:41.000 Just, you know, way back when.

00:21:44.000 In a confidential portion of your staff memo, they brought to your attention the allegation that important legislators in defeating the Nunes plan in the basement said, quote, we already have an a***** mayor and we don't need any more a***** big shots. 0.52

00:21:59.000 Okay, so he's quoting somebody saying the n-word, right?

00:22:02.000 It's not Joe Biden calling somebody black n-word.

00:22:04.000 Right, that's exactly, exactly what Joe Rogan is now under fire for doing.

00:22:08.000 But Joe Biden is one of the good ones, so it's totally fine.

00:22:10.000 So Spotify is now in a complete state of disarray.

00:22:14.000 They've pulled more than 100 episodes of Rogan's show.

00:22:18.000 Apparently 113 episodes of the Joe Rogan experience, many of them older and recorded well before the COVID-19 stuff, had been yanked.

00:22:25.000 Why?

00:22:26.000 Because now they're just trying to pull down anything that could be remotely used by the left as a cudgel.

00:22:29.000 But it doesn't matter, guys.

00:22:30.000 They'll find it.

00:22:31.000 Don't worry.

00:22:32.000 They'll find it.

00:22:33.000 Because now the left has been empowered to destroy your company.

00:22:36.000 You will either become a tool in their arsenal or you will be destroyed.

00:22:39.000 And only you can cancel you in this culture.

00:22:41.000 If you are the head of Spotify, you know what could have ended all of this?

00:22:44.000 The first day when this stuff came out, you said, we hired Joe Rogan to be an iconoclastic heterodox voice.

00:22:50.000 We have lots of voices on this platform.

00:22:52.000 Many who disagree with Joe Rogan on COVID.

00:22:54.000 We're not going to remove anyone.

00:22:56.000 Done.

00:22:56.000 That's the end of the story.

00:22:58.000 Done.

00:22:59.000 You guys want to go form your own streaming service where it's only wild lefts?

00:23:02.000 Enjoy.

00:23:03.000 But that's not what we do here at Spotify.

00:23:04.000 If Daniel Ek had done that over at Spotify, this would have all been over within the first five seconds.

00:23:10.000 Because we do this all the time at Daily Wire.

00:23:10.000 You know how I know this?

00:23:13.000 All the time. 0.99

00:23:14.000 Because people are on our ass every single day about getting rid of this host or that host. 0.98

00:23:18.000 I disagree with many of our own hosts on a lot of these topics, but guess what? 0.99

00:23:21.000 Tough.

00:23:22.000 Deal with it.

00:23:23.000 It's a free country.

00:23:24.000 People aren't allowed to disagree with me.

00:23:25.000 They're allowed to remain on my platform, for goodness sake.

00:23:28.000 Like, this whole thing is an absurdity, but we'll get to how Spotify is basically cutting its own wrists here in just one second, because they really are.

00:23:37.000 Already coming up, Spotify has now removed 113 episodes of Rogan's show, plus the CEO, Daniel Ek, put out a pathetic, mewling letter to the woke employees.

00:23:47.000 Always the worst move an employer can make.

00:23:48.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:23:50.000 First, you know, I have a lot going on in my life.

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00:23:55.000 I love my kids.

00:23:56.000 It was a lot.

00:23:57.000 And that meant that when I went to sleep last night, I needed to be asleep forthwith because I knew that my kids were going to be up at 5.45 this morning, which duly they were.

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00:25:04.000 So 113 episodes of Rogan's show have now been yanked.

00:25:09.000 According to the New York Post, among the missing shows are those featuring well-known conservatives, far-right pundits, or conspiracy theorists, including Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, Michael Malice, Alex Jones, and Milo Yiannopoulos, as well as comedians like Rich Voss and Little Esther and Bulletproof founder Dave Asprey.

00:25:24.000 They're just sort of going through and they're going to remove anything that is remotely controversial, which, again, makes Rogan's show not worth listening to.

00:25:31.000 The thing about Rogan that makes his show really interesting is that he had on controversial people, and then he allows them to talk. 0.95

00:25:36.000 And very often they make fools of themselves.

00:25:38.000 But he allows them to express their opinions. 0.99

00:25:39.000 He's not there to cudgel them into the CNN box.

00:25:43.000 This is not just about Brian Stelter having somebody on and then forcing them to repeat his nostrums.

00:25:48.000 He actually lets them talk, which is why his show is very popular.

00:25:50.000 I mean, he has them on for like three, four hours.

00:25:53.000 I went on Joe's show where I had to cut because we had to have like a pee break because it had been so long since we'd actually like gone outside and seen daylight.

00:26:00.000 That's how long Joe lets you talk on his show.

00:26:04.000 Upon his return to the platform, Rogan slammed a 10 p.m.

00:26:08.000 curfew which had been enacted in Montreal last month as COVID infection surged, calling the restrictions wild.

00:26:13.000 But here is the thing again, Spotify is not going to stop.

00:26:16.000 So Spotify then put out a statement.

00:26:18.000 This is late last night.

00:26:19.000 They put out a full statement.

00:26:21.000 The full memo says this.

00:26:22.000 This is from the CEO, Daniel Ek. 1.00

00:26:25.000 And this is just pathetic, mewling garbage. 0.96

00:26:27.000 Spotify team, there are no words I can say to adequately convey how deeply sorry I am for the way the Joe Rogan experience controversy continues to impact each of you. 0.98

00:26:36.000 Not only are some of Joe Rogan's comments incredibly hurtful, I want to make clear they do not represent the values of this company.

00:26:41.000 I know this situation leaves many of you feeling drained, frustrated, and unheard.

00:26:45.000 Okay, you know what would happen to my employees if they came to me and they said, you know what?

00:26:48.000 Some of this podcast host's comments are making me feel drained, frustrated, and unheard.

00:26:52.000 I'd say, that's nice.

00:26:53.000 Go to work.

00:26:55.000 Really, like, I'm sorry you feel that way.

00:26:59.000 I can disagree or I cannot disagree.

00:27:00.000 I don't undercut the hosts on this platform.

00:27:03.000 Go have a cup of coffee and get back to work.

00:27:05.000 Because your feelings are of no consequence.

00:27:06.000 This is a workplace.

00:27:07.000 This is not a kindergarten.

00:27:10.000 And any employee who feels that this is this, it's a free, it's a platform for a podcast.

00:27:15.000 The hell are you talking about?

00:27:17.000 If you don't like Joe Rogan's podcast, I have a super easy solution for you. 0.89

00:27:20.000 Just turn that knob.

00:27:21.000 You're done.

00:27:23.000 But here's the thing.

00:27:24.000 Joe has big ratings because people want to listen to him.

00:27:26.000 And that's what's making you angry.

00:27:27.000 It's not what he said that's making you angry.

00:27:28.000 It's that other people are listening to what he said that is making you angry.

00:27:33.000 The fact that the CEO is now kowtowing to the 21-year-old woke employees means the death of his company. 0.50

00:27:37.000 I'm never going to kowtow to my 21-year-old interns here at The Daily Wire because I'm not a moron, but apparently they are over at Spotify.

00:27:46.000 The letter continues, I think it's important you're aware we've had conversations with Joe and his team about some of the content in his show, including his history of using some racially insensitive language.

00:27:55.000 Following these discussions and his own reflections, he chose to remove a number of episodes from Spotify.

00:28:00.000 He also issued his own apology over the weekend.

00:28:02.000 Okay, but is that going to be enough for these folks?

00:28:05.000 Of course not.

00:28:06.000 While I strongly condemn what Joe has said, says Daniel Ek, and I agree with his decision to remove past episodes from our platform, I realize some will want more.

00:28:14.000 I want to make one point very clear.

00:28:15.000 I do not believe silencing Joe is the answer.

00:28:17.000 Right?

00:28:17.000 Getting rid of all his old episodes and asking him to apologize, that's the answer.

00:28:21.000 And it'll probably stop here.

00:28:22.000 Probably you won't get more market.

00:28:23.000 Probably this is where the... Or alternatively, when you keep feeding the alligator your toes, eventually it goes for a leg.

00:28:30.000 He says we should have clear lines around content and take action when they are crossed, but canceling voice is a slippery slope.

00:28:35.000 Looking at the issue more broadly, it's critical thinking and open debate that powers real and necessary progress.

00:28:40.000 Another criticism I continue to hear from many of you is it's not just about the Joe Rogan experience on Spotify.

00:28:45.000 It comes down to our direct relationship with him.

00:28:47.000 In last week's Town Hall, I outlined to you we are not a publisher of JRE.

00:28:51.000 But perception due to our exclusive license implies otherwise.

00:28:54.000 So I've been wrestling with how this perception squares with our values.

00:28:56.000 So what he's saying is we're a platform, we have a licensing deal with Joe Rogan, and we don't actually produce his show.

00:29:01.000 Which of course is true. 0.75

00:29:01.000 Because if we believe in having an open platform as a core value of the company, we must also believe in elevating all types of creators, including those from underrepresented communities and a diversity of backgrounds. 0.75

00:29:11.000 We've been doing a great deal of work in this area already, but I think we can do even more.

00:29:15.000 Ah, here's where we get the actual blackmail check.

00:29:18.000 And to the left is like, we're coming for your neck.

00:29:20.000 And Spotify CEO is like, if I sign you this $100 million check, will you leave me alone?

00:29:25.000 Perhaps.

00:29:26.000 You know, this is precisely the wrong way to address people who are after your company and trying to destroy you.

00:29:31.000 The right way is to flip them the bird, and then use every dollar of that $100 million to destroy them.

00:29:38.000 You turn this into ransom with Mel Gibson.

00:29:41.000 You say, if there are groups that are out to destroy me, let's uncover them, let's find out who they are, where their money is coming from, and why they are so all-fired intent on controlling the content disseminated via this platform.

00:29:50.000 That's what you actually do.

00:29:51.000 That's how CEO Daniel Ek is doing.

00:29:53.000 He says, I am committed to an incremental investment of $100 million for the licensing, development and marketing of music, artists and songwriters and audio content from historically marginalized groups.

00:30:03.000 OK, now here's the funny part.

00:30:04.000 This is already going to happen, right?

00:30:06.000 I mean, he's going to spend $100 million on content.

00:30:08.000 And a lot of that content was going to be produced by black and Hispanic artists.

00:30:12.000 Of course, because a huge amount of art in this country comes from Black and Hispanic artists, particularly in the music realm.

00:30:17.000 So, like, he's not actually pledging any money.

00:30:19.000 He's pretending to pledge money.

00:30:21.000 But let's be real about this.

00:30:22.000 When he says, I'm going to spend $100 million licensing content from Black and Hispanic artists.

00:30:26.000 Yeah, that's called, like, your entire R&B channel, dude.

00:30:28.000 Like, we get it.

00:30:30.000 It's a pretty funny attempt to bait and switch, but I think everybody with a brain is going to see it.

00:30:34.000 He says, this will dramatically increase our efforts in these areas.

00:30:37.000 While some might want us to pursue a different path, I believe more speech on more issues can be highly effective in improving the status quo and enhancing the conversation altogether.

00:30:45.000 And then he gets into the I feel your feelings, the Bill Clinton I feel your feelings nonsense.

00:30:49.000 He says, I deeply regret you are carrying so much of this burden.

00:30:52.000 I also want to be transparent in setting the expectation that in order to achieve our goal of becoming the global audio platform, these kinds of disputes will be inevitable.

00:30:59.000 For me, I come back to centering on our mission of unlocking the potential of human creativity and enabling more than a billion people to enjoy the work of what we think will be more than 50 million creators.

00:31:08.000 That mission makes these clashes worth the effort.

00:31:11.000 I've told you several times over the last week, says Daniel Ek, but I think it's critical we listen carefully to one another and consider how we can and should do better.

00:31:18.000 Of course, better is never defined.

00:31:20.000 Better just means whatever the left tells me to do, I will do some of it until it actually crosses my bottom line too hard.

00:31:25.000 I've spent this time having lots of conversations with people inside and outside of Spotify.

00:31:29.000 Some have been supportive, while others have been incredibly hard.

00:31:32.000 All of them have made me think.

00:31:33.000 One of the things I am thinking about is what additional steps we can take to further balance creator expression with user safety.

00:31:40.000 Ah, user safety.

00:31:41.000 There it is.

00:31:42.000 And so there's always a few euphemisms.

00:31:44.000 User safety means I got offended.

00:31:46.000 Joe Rogan provides no actual risk of harm to humans.

00:31:50.000 You are not harmed by listening to Joe Rogan.

00:31:52.000 You may not like what you hear.

00:31:52.000 You may disagree with what you hear.

00:31:54.000 Maybe you take his advice to your own detriment.

00:31:56.000 But you're not harmed by listening to Joe Rogan because those are called words.

00:32:00.000 And words are things people say, not things that people do.

00:32:04.000 User safety.

00:32:05.000 It's always used as the excuse for quashing speech, because of course, if speech threatens safety, speech is an action, which means it can be met with an equal and opposite reaction.

00:32:13.000 Daniel X says, I've asked our teams to expand the number of outside experts we consult with on these efforts and look forward to sharing more details.

00:32:19.000 Well, congratulations to Kara Swisher and company for getting an outside consulting gig for a hundred grand with Spotify, because that's what's coming next.

00:32:24.000 It says your passion for this company and our mission has made a difference in the lives of so many listeners and creators around the world.

00:32:30.000 I hope you won't lose sight of that.

00:32:31.000 It's that ability to focus and improve Spotify, even on some of our toughest days, that has helped us build the platform we have.

00:32:36.000 We have a clear opportunity to learn and grow from this challenge.

00:32:39.000 I'm ready to meet it head on.

00:32:40.000 I know it's difficult to have these conversations play out so publicly.

00:32:43.000 I continue to encourage you to reach out to your leaders, HR partners, or me directly if you need support or resources for yourself or your team.

00:32:49.000 Okay, so this means I'm willing to accept all blackmail demands.

00:32:52.000 Okay, so here is the thing that's hilarious about all of this. 0.99

00:32:55.000 If they think that it ends right now, they are out of their damn minds. 0.99

00:32:58.000 You let them have you. 0.98

00:33:00.000 You let it happen, Daniel Ek over at Spotify, and it's about to get worse.

00:33:03.000 Because if you think there ain't going to be a compendium of Joe saying stuff about women in his jokes, you're wrong.

00:33:08.000 It will be out within the next 24 hours, I'm sure.

00:33:11.000 Or about gay people, or about Asian people, or about Jews, because he's a comedian.

00:33:15.000 He says lots of stuff on his show.

00:33:18.000 And if a simple compendium video online is enough to drive your company into the insanity of embracing the policy prescriptions of the people who want to destroy you, I don't have to tell you, you got Stockholm Syndrome, and you deserve whatever you get as a company, and Joe will survive.

00:33:33.000 Honestly, the best thing that can happen to Joe Rogan at this point is that he stops saying sorry for things, and then Spotify decides that they have to fire him because the left is so angry about it, and they tank their stock by half.

00:33:44.000 They have to pay Joe Rogan a bag full of cash, and he goes somewhere else and takes his entire audience with him.

00:33:49.000 The people who end up dying on this hill, it's not going to be Rogan. 0.97

00:33:52.000 It's going to be Spotify because they're cowards. 1.00

00:33:54.000 Because they are deep and abiding cowards. 0.98

00:33:58.000 The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece on the crisis at Spotify talking about Neil Young and other artists and all this. 0.92

00:34:05.000 Chief Executive Daniel X said in an interview, we were too slow to respond.

00:34:10.000 The company had been looking for ways to respond to the open letter before Young's demands surfaced.

00:34:13.000 He added saying, that's on me.

00:34:15.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, This week, Spotify reported it had 406 million monthly active users up 18% from the year before.

00:34:23.000 Its advertising revenue was up 40%, but they're stock-tanked anyway.

00:34:29.000 So, it's going to get worse, in all likelihood, because now, if you're a second-rate artist and you want to make Spotify pay, just threaten them.

00:34:37.000 One Spotify executive says, part of Spotify's proposition is get all your audio in one place.

00:34:41.000 If you have big artists who aren't available, if Drake or Taylor Swift pulls off, it's a real problem for the proposition.

00:34:46.000 And that's right.

00:34:48.000 That's right.

00:34:48.000 If any one of these artists decides to get their woke bona fides in order and dumps off Spotify, then the bear trap closes completely, right?

00:34:55.000 You got Rogan on the one hand earning you a lot of money, and then you have a big artist, not Neil Young, a has-been, but like a big artist, crunching them on the other.

00:35:01.000 And then Spotify is in trouble.

00:35:03.000 And this is what the media obviously want.

00:35:05.000 The most absurd attack, the media will not stop.

00:35:07.000 The media want Rogan gone.

00:35:08.000 They want Rogan gone specifically because he has competition to them and he's destroying them in the ratings.

00:35:14.000 So this is why you have Brian Stelter attacking Joe Rogan.

00:35:18.000 Here's Brian Stelter on CNN over the weekend.

00:35:22.000 He is now apologizing, and we're going to find out if that's enough for Spotify, the company that has an exclusive distribution deal with him.

00:35:29.000 Jim, this is all coming to light because of the recent controversy about anti-vaccine rhetoric on Rogan's podcast.

00:35:35.000 Some artists decided to quit the service.

00:35:37.000 One of them, India Auri, pointed out this video, this compilation video, and pointed out that the language Rogan has used around race in the past is just as or maybe even more problematic than his rhetoric about vaccines.

00:35:50.000 We know Rogan's show is known for its fresh and frank and unvarnished conversations.

00:35:55.000 That's why his fans like the show.

00:35:57.000 But this compilation, this use of the n-word so many times in the past, may be too much even for some of his defenders to bear.

00:36:07.000 Okay, no.

00:36:08.000 Actually, only you guys.

00:36:10.000 Because you were never his defenders.

00:36:11.000 His defenders know what Joe's show is, and that Joe is a comedian, that Joe says things that are edgy.

00:36:16.000 Only you are upset.

00:36:17.000 The kind of pearl grasping here, the pearl clutching.

00:36:19.000 Oh, Joe Rogan says things that offend me.

00:36:22.000 Oh, well, he must go, says Brian Stelter.

00:36:24.000 Same thing with Jim Acosta.

00:36:26.000 The real reason that Acosta and Stelter are pissed is because their ratings are lower than dirt.

00:36:26.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:36:32.000 Watching grass grow is more entertaining than watching Jim Acosta.

00:36:36.000 At least, presumably, Jeffrey Toobin was pleasuring himself to a visual of somebody else.

00:36:41.000 Jim Acosta, every day on air, just goes for it in the mirror.

00:36:45.000 Here is Jim Acosta going after it again.

00:36:48.000 You and I both know, that compilation right there, which he has admitted to is, you know, authentic.

00:36:57.000 That would be enough to put anybody out of a job.

00:37:01.000 I mean, to me, it seems untenable to have that kind of video surface, that kind of compilation surface, and keep one's job.

00:37:10.000 Okay, so I just wish to note one thing.

00:37:12.000 These are all people on CNN who are still defending Jeff Zucker, who is nailing his top executive, who is probably going to be the new head of CNN until he was ousted.

00:37:20.000 Meanwhile, both of them were working with Andrew Cuomo to do ops for Andrew Cuomo.

00:37:26.000 Jeff Zucker may not have launched this network, but he revived it.

00:37:28.000 He made it relevant again.

00:37:29.000 because he said things that offend Brian Stolter and Jim Acosta.

00:37:31.000 Oh, oh, he said the N word while quoting Rappler.

00:37:34.000 Oh, but here's Don Lemon defending Jeff Zucker, who is nailing his top executive while getting Andrew Cuomo on the air with his brother, Chris, and then getting Chris fired over it.

00:37:42.000 It's unbelievable. Here's Don Lemon.

00:37:45.000 Jeff Zucker may not have launched this network, but he revived it.

00:37:49.000 He made it relevant again.

00:37:50.000 He steadied it for the last decade.

00:37:55.000 He left us with a very good blueprint going forward.

00:37:59.000 So for all of you at home watching, you should know that I and my colleagues will continue to do exactly what he would want us to do, and that is to do what I'm going to do right now.

00:38:10.000 Deliver the news, no matter what it is, without fear or favor.

00:38:14.000 So thank you, Jeff Zucker, for everything you did for everyone at this network, and for what you did to the entire country, for the entire country.

00:38:22.000 For the entire country, what Jeff Zucker did.

00:38:24.000 Incredible.

00:38:25.000 Incredible.

00:38:26.000 Again, the standards only apply if you are a part of their team.

00:38:30.000 If you are not part of their team, there are no standards.

00:38:32.000 There's just you getting the bleep kicked out of you.

00:38:35.000 Alrighty, coming up, Margaret Sullivan from the Washington Post.

00:38:38.000 She has the worst piece on Joe Rogan I have seen yet.

00:38:40.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:38:41.000 First, Now, when you start a business, you never think about HR.

00:38:45.000 We really did not.

00:38:46.000 When we started The Daily Wire, we started in a pool house. 0.83

00:38:48.000 It was me and Jeremy Boring, like five other people.

00:38:51.000 We started literally in Jeremy Boring's pool house.

00:38:52.000 We didn't think about HR.

00:38:53.000 And finally, when we did think about HR, we were like, oh my God, this is such an unbelievable headache.

00:38:58.000 And it's a headache for every business, unless you do it right from the start.

00:39:02.000 Wrongful termination suits, minimum wage requirements, labor regulations, HR manager salaries are not cheap.

00:39:06.000 They average $70,000 a year.

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00:39:35.000 You didn't start your business because you wish to do HR like Toby from The Office.

00:39:39.000 Instead, head on over to Bambi.com slash Shapiro right now.

00:39:42.000 Schedule your free HR audit today.

00:39:44.000 That is Bambi.com slash Shapiro.

00:39:46.000 Spell B-A-M to the B-E-E dot com slash Shapiro.

00:39:49.000 In just one second, I have to bring you the best piece on Rogan of the weekend.

00:39:53.000 It really is amazing.

00:39:54.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:39:55.000 First, this Thursday, February 10th, will be the world premiere of Shudden, DailyWire's first original film, 9 p.m.

00:40:01.000 Eastern, 8 p.m.

00:40:02.000 Central, over at DailyWire YouTube.

00:40:03.000 You have to go check it out.

00:40:05.000 It is really suspenseful.

00:40:06.000 I just watched a cut of it.

00:40:07.000 It's pretty spectacular.

00:40:08.000 It's about a mother, young mother, trapped by her violent ex and his meth addict friend, and she has to save her kids.

00:40:14.000 It's really sea-gripping.

00:40:15.000 I watched it with my wife.

00:40:16.000 It freaked her the hell out.

00:40:19.000 It's a very scary, intense movie, and it does have the values that you think are important, because that's what we do here at Daily Wire.

00:40:25.000 The simple fact of the matter is Hollywood ain't gonna do it, so we will instead.

00:40:27.000 The film premieres this Thursday, February 10th at 9 p.m.

00:40:30.000 Central over at DailyWire's YouTube page.

00:40:30.000 Eastern, 8 p.m.

00:40:32.000 Make sure you click the link in the description.

00:40:34.000 Turn on the notification bell so you don't miss it.

00:40:36.000 Because after the premiere, it will only be available to DailyWire members.

00:40:40.000 So if this is the only time you can see it for free, then it's DailyWire members only.

00:40:42.000 We entered the entertainment space in order to send Hollywood a message.

00:40:45.000 You don't have a monopoly on the film industry anymore.

00:40:47.000 The release of Shut In is our next step in proving it.

00:40:51.000 By the way, we are very excited about Shudden.

00:40:53.000 That's why we are hosting an episode backstage leading to the release of the film.

00:40:56.000 Join me, Jeremy Boring, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh, and Andrew Clavin, Thursday night, 7.30 p.m.

00:41:00.000 Eastern, 6.30 p.m.

00:41:01.000 Central, on the Daily Wire's YouTube channel.

00:41:04.000 The premiere of Shudden starts at 9 p.m.

00:41:05.000 Eastern on that very same channel.

00:41:07.000 Make sure to tune in before then.

00:41:09.000 Also, by the way, have you ever wanted to work At DailyWire, I know you have.

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00:41:48.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:41:51.000 And while the best piece of the day is from the Washington Post, because it really shows how far the left is all just about power.

00:42:02.000 It is not about anything remotely resembling truth or grace or decency.

00:42:06.000 Margaret Sullivan, who used to be the publisher of the New York Times, meaning it was her job, she's like the ombudsman over there, it was her job to ensure, she's the public editor, that they acted with moral rigor at the New York Times.

00:42:20.000 She wrote a piece for the Washington Post titled, I'm disgusted by Joe Rogan's weak apology.

00:42:24.000 This is before the N-word stuff.

00:42:25.000 She says, my former colleague's death at 47 makes it worse.

00:42:29.000 So the implication seems to be that Joe Rogan somehow killed her 47-year-old colleague.

00:42:34.000 She says, quote, what I didn't hear from Rogan was any remorse that he might have done harm when he held forth about his own bogus belief that healthy young people don't need to get vaccinated. Or when he failed to challenge a guest who promised that the drug Ivermectin would extinguish the virus altogether. Or when he allowed another guest to spout theories on how Americans are essentially being hypnotized about the COVID by the media and comparing the situation to Nazi Germany. He didn't address the 270 medical professionals whose powerful open letter warned about one of Rogan's episodes that mass misinformation events of this scale have

00:43:02.000 extraordinarily dangerous ramifications. Worse, I heard no apologies to the people who took to heart what they heard endangering themselves or their loved ones.

00:43:10.000 To my ears, Rogan sounded glib, narcissistic, and clueless.

00:43:13.000 And Spotify is even worse.

00:43:15.000 Its failure to take any meaningful responsibility, other than adding a few disclaimers, is all too reminiscent of the way Facebook has dodged accountability.

00:43:21.000 Remember, this is part of the left-wing playbook.

00:43:23.000 The left-wing playbook is, any platform that allows my enemies to be on it must be destroyed, must be cuddled into submission.

00:43:30.000 It's amazing.

00:43:31.000 So Facebook stock dropped the other day like a lot and it dropped because TikTok has a great algorithm and because Facebook may have market saturation at this point and because Apple is screwing with the ad algorithm, right?

00:43:40.000 So Facebook's revenue dropped and therefore their total stock price dropped.

00:43:45.000 Kevin Roos and Brian Stelter, by the way, started tweeting out the most shared links from Facebook in their news feed, which many of them were from my Facebook page.

00:43:54.000 The suggestion being that their revenue was dropping because people were reading articles from the Daily Wire. 0.99

00:44:01.000 Yeah, no, you morons. 1.00

00:44:02.000 But of course, it's not moronic. 1.00

00:44:02.000 That's not what this is about. 1.00

00:44:04.000 What they are attempting to do is make these companies just be CNN or The New York Times or make Spotify into The Washington Post, as edited by Margaret Sullivan.

00:44:13.000 But here's the punchline.

00:44:14.000 She says, Rogan's non-apology made me furious.

00:44:17.000 Probably because I've been spending a lot of time this week thinking about Miguel Rodriguez, a former colleague of mine who died of COVID last week.

00:44:22.000 Miggy, as everyone calls him, was only 47, a beloved and well-respected reporter at the Buffalo News where he covered high school sports.

00:44:28.000 As one news colleague wrote this week, he was a ubiquitous community presence with a booming laugh that would fill a room, even when that room was a high school gymnasium.

00:44:36.000 He was overweight and asthmatic.

00:44:38.000 In other words, very much at risk.

00:44:40.000 And he was unvaccinated.

00:44:42.000 I don't know for sure whether getting vaccination and booster shots would have saved Miggy's life, and I have no idea whether he had ever listened to Joe Rogan's podcast.

00:44:50.000 But I have talked to many of his co-workers and friends over the last week, and at some length to his father.

00:44:55.000 What I've gleaned is that friends had been pushing him to get vaccinated for months, but he and his family hadn't been convinced it was wise or necessary.

00:45:01.000 So, in other words, this random guy, who was very overweight and asthmatic, A person that Joe Rogan, by the way, would have told to get vaccinated, because Joe Rogan has been saying only young, healthy people shouldn't.

00:45:10.000 That's Joe's take, not mine.

00:45:12.000 Again, for the censors over at Big Tech.

00:45:17.000 This overweight, asthmatic person who Joe Rogan would not have told not to get a vaccine, and she has no evidence to ever listen to an episode of Joe Rogan, died, according to Margaret Sullivan, because Joe Rogan exists.

00:45:28.000 This is the point, folks.

00:45:29.000 It is all just a tool of power.

00:45:31.000 It is all just a tool of power.

00:45:32.000 And it's true throughout the media.

00:45:34.000 It's true throughout our institutions.

00:45:36.000 When the left talks about institutional power of the right and white supremacy, the left controls the major institutions in American society, from the corporate hierarchies to government.

00:45:45.000 This is why GoFundMe, for example, completely decided that they would not even allow donations to the Freedom Convoy in Canada.

00:45:54.000 They did allow donations on GoFundMe for bailing out rioters during BLM.

00:45:57.000 But if there are a bunch of truckers who are protesting vaccine mandates in Canada, that has to be stopped.

00:46:03.000 Not only that, they originally said that they were going to shut down donations, and then they were going to refund the money to anyone who specifically asked.

00:46:10.000 But otherwise, they were just going to donate the remainder to charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy organizers and verified by the site.

00:46:17.000 So in other words, they were going to basically distribute all the money to charities of their liking and choosing, which is amazing.

00:46:24.000 They're just going to seize that money. 0.99

00:46:26.000 So eventually they reversed themselves and said, we'll send it back to your pocket.

00:46:28.000 But it's just the fact that GoFundMe picks and chooses which types of causes that there's nothing illegal about freedom of speech.

00:46:37.000 At least there shouldn't be.

00:46:39.000 The fact that GoFundMe has decided they're going to crack down on this sort of stuff is just indicative of how corporate America works.

00:46:46.000 And it really is scary sort of stuff.

00:46:47.000 It really is.

00:46:48.000 By the way, When we speak of the media and how the media are full-scale engaged in leftist causes, it is not that the media hate human rights violations.

00:46:58.000 It's not that the media is really, really deeply upset about bad things happening.

00:47:01.000 They don't care about bad things happening.

00:47:02.000 They care about certain specified bad things happening that impede their agenda.

00:47:07.000 How do I know this?

00:47:08.000 Because they're perfectly willing to cover for the Chinese. 0.99

00:47:10.000 So the Olympics launched last week, end of last week, and they have no viewership.

00:47:15.000 Nobody is watching the Olympics.

00:47:16.000 Not a single minute.

00:47:18.000 The viewership fell hard from the 2018 kickoff in the early numbers.

00:47:23.000 According to Deadline.com, only 8.7 million people tuned in on NBC and Primetime to see the pre-taped Mike Tirico and Savannah Guthrie-led coverage of the propaganda-heavy spectacle put on by the Chinese President Xi Jinping and filmmaker Zhang Yimou.

00:47:36.000 Put in starkest terms, these early numbers are down harder and faster from four years ago in PyeongChang than Michaela Schifrin on a slalom run.

00:47:43.000 They crashed 69% in the fast affiliates, to be specific.

00:47:48.000 It's an all-time Olympic slope for NBC.

00:47:49.000 That's not stopping the media from doing propaganda for China.

00:47:52.000 Here is NBC propagandizing for China during the Olympics opening ceremony.

00:47:57.000 It's worth remembering that while Western countries may be boycotting these Olympics over human rights issues, China styles itself as a champion of the developing world.

00:48:07.000 And it has plenty of support in countries from Africa to Latin America, where its investments are building up local economies.

00:48:17.000 It's always great when you have NBC News actively promoting Chinese propaganda.

00:48:21.000 What was that, written by the Chinese ministry over there?

00:48:24.000 By the way, it's not just NBC.

00:48:26.000 Jay Adande, who has been, he's a very left-wing voice on ESPN, he said over the weekend that the United States can't even criticize China because we have real problems in the United States with regard to our elections.

00:48:37.000 We can't criticize an overwhelmingly tyrannical regime.

00:48:37.000 Yes, that's right.

00:48:43.000 that keeps a billion and a half people in a form of objective servitude. 0.93

00:48:48.000 We can't criticize them because we have voter ID in Georgia now.

00:48:52.000 Here's J. Edande saying all the stuff Chinese propagandists would want him to say.

00:48:56.000 J. Edande, Former U.S. Attorney General, California Who are we to criticize China's human rights records when we have ongoing attacks by the agents of the state against unarmed citizens, and we've got assaults on the voting rights of our people of color in various states in this country?

00:49:12.000 Amazing.

00:49:15.000 How can we say anything bad about China?

00:49:16.000 After all, all these sports networks are making money off of China, so we can't say anything bad about China.

00:49:21.000 I mean, bad things are happening here in the United States, too.

00:49:24.000 Yes, our media.

00:49:25.000 They're focused in like laser beams on the things that are truly bad in life.

00:49:30.000 Like Joe Rogan, having said the N-word, quoting a rap lyric ten years ago.

00:49:35.000 Nailed it.

00:49:36.000 Nailed it.

00:49:37.000 Okay, meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, Russia continues to be threatening toward Ukraine.

00:49:43.000 According to General Mark Milley, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he says that Russia, if it wanted to, could take Kiev inside of 72 hours.

00:49:50.000 That's what he told lawmakers.

00:49:52.000 If there was a full-scale Russian invasion.

00:49:54.000 He said that A full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kiev within 72 hours, could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths.

00:50:03.000 This has led the United States to lead an air bridge of weapons to restore Ukraine's security.

00:50:08.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, quote, the U.S.

00:50:09.000 and an informal coalition of several NATO countries are operating an air bridge to ship military aid to Ukraine, flying in the weapons and ammo that Kiev has requested.

00:50:18.000 Until Russia's current escalation, Turkey and the United States were the only countries willing to supply Ukraine with arms.

00:50:22.000 airplanes have landed in Kiev since January 22nd, after US President Joe Biden approved $200 million in new military aid for Ukraine.

00:50:29.000 With more scheduled in coming days, NATO members, including the UK and Baltic states, have sent plane loads of weapons with Poland and the Czech Republic slated to make deliveries soon.

00:50:37.000 Until Russia's current escalation, Turkey and the United States were the only countries willing to supply Ukraine with arms.

00:50:42.000 The rest of Europe was chickening out.

00:50:45.000 Alongside the United States, British, Canadian, and Polish trainers have long been training Ukrainian armed forces in modern warfare.

00:50:51.000 Ukraine, of course, is not a member of NATO, but this entire fight is over whether Ukraine gets to retain some sort of independent status with regard to both NATO and with regard to the Russians.

00:51:01.000 There's a fascinating sort of foreign policy debate that is broken out on the right and the left.

00:51:06.000 And there's this sort of bizarre horseshoe that has now formed in American politics, where there are some folks on the right Who basically suggest that Russia should just be allowed to take Ukraine.

00:51:15.000 And then there are folks on the left who are basically suggesting that Russia be allowed to take Ukraine.

00:51:19.000 Folks on the right are doing so because they say that we should be more interested in expending resources at home, don't worry about foreign policy, it has no impact.

00:51:27.000 Which seems to me short-sighted on a pragmatic level, considering the fact that the cost of deterrence is typically far less than the cost of actually having to fight a war that follows when deterrence fails.

00:51:38.000 And it turns out that when you allow Russia to take Ukraine, the next move is that China moves to take Taiwan.

00:51:43.000 And then once they've taken Taiwan, they start shutting down all of the shipping lanes, and they start threatening Australia. 0.90

00:51:48.000 Because this is what China intends on doing. 0.69

00:51:51.000 And folks on the right are very unhappy with this line of thought, and then there are folks on the left who are just pacifists.

00:51:56.000 So you sort of have isolationists and pacifists, and they're joining hands a little bit.

00:51:58.000 There's an interesting article in the New York Times from some people who's writing I generally like, but I think are dead wrong on this.

00:52:05.000 Sourabh Amari, Patrick Dineen, and Gladden Pippin writing in the New York Times.

00:52:09.000 They say, a painful contradiction lies at the heart of the American right.

00:52:12.000 Even as conservatives are breaking with some cold war orthodoxies on domestic policy, Republican politicians remain wedded to that era's violently expansionist foreign policy.

00:52:20.000 They oppose liberal imperialism in the United States, the aggressive push to impose progressive values, often joined to corporate power, while still contriving to spread the same order to the ends of the earth.

00:52:29.000 That, of course, is a wild misstatement.

00:52:31.000 Suggesting that Ukraine ought to be able to retain its autonomy doesn't mean imposing liberal imperialism in Ukraine.

00:52:38.000 Nobody is talking about us invading Saudi Arabia and creating liberal imperialism or invading Iran and creating a liberal imperialist state.

00:52:44.000 Nobody's talking about that.

00:52:46.000 And the question was whether we should have pulled precipitously out of Afghanistan once there was a nascent form of such a state that had already been created and just handing it back to terrorists. 0.91

00:52:55.000 And now the question is whether you decide to uphold the sovereignty of a nation that has existed since the end of the Cold War as an independent body and has existed before the USSR as an independent area and whether or not that place ought to be allowed to decide its own fate.

00:53:08.000 That is not liberal imperialism.

00:53:11.000 But, say these authors, it's a contradictory vision for many members of the so-called New Right who are pushing for a political realignment of the Republican Party.

00:53:18.000 It presents a major stumbling block.

00:53:20.000 We do not want to see this new vision of conservative American politics co-opted by hawkish ideologues more interested in posturing abroad than in reform here at home.

00:53:29.000 So again, I'm not sure why it's mutually exclusive to suggest that we ought to have a more conservative country at home and also that we ought to be able to uphold the rights of people against Russian predation in Ukraine if the cost to us is fairly minimal.

00:53:43.000 They say the crisis in Ukraine illustrates the problem.

00:53:45.000 Even Republicans sympathetic to the new right haven't been able to resist the hawkish temptation.

00:53:50.000 Among the loudest voices calling for escalation were Republican Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida.

00:53:54.000 They're not calling for escalation.

00:53:56.000 Russia is escalating.

00:53:57.000 And they're saying that we should not bow before the Russian escalation.

00:54:01.000 Today's nationalist hawks, they say, often speak of an obligation to defend democratic allies dotting the peripheries of revanchist powers like Russia and China.

00:54:09.000 But if they had their way, the real-world effects would be little different from those of their hawkish predecessors, protracted and destabilizing conflicts that would distract us from domestic reform, not to mention imperil the lives of overwhelmingly working-class young Americans in uniform.

00:54:23.000 Okay, now, first of all, treating members of the volunteer military, the all-volunteer military of the United States, as victims of their own choices is really degrading.

00:54:30.000 That is not right.

00:54:31.000 If you join the military, you join the military because you wish to be in the military, not because you're just joining to get the Pell Grants or something.

00:54:37.000 Okay, beyond that, no, no one is calling for an offensive war against China.

00:54:42.000 No one is calling for an offensive war against Russia.

00:54:45.000 All the people are saying is that you have to maintain borders against America's geopolitical enemies or they will grow in power and eventually get to things that we care about.

00:54:52.000 By the way, the invasion of Taiwan would dramatically upend Americans' lives since 92% of advanced semiconductors are produced in Taiwan.

00:55:01.000 So what these authors are doing is they are conflating a realistic, hard-headed foreign policy with any sort of interventionist, overweening neoconservatism, as described by them.

00:55:13.000 The idea is that Woodrow Wilson and Henry Kissinger are somehow the same guy, which is a very weird take.

00:55:19.000 To say that we should do what we can to deter Russian aggression in Ukraine is not the same thing as to say that we should invade Russia, for example, and create liberal democracy there.

00:55:30.000 According to these authors, however, they say, Since the earliest days of our nation, a division has existed between those who argued that America should be an exemplary republic and those who called instead for a crusader nation.

00:55:39.000 The exemplarist camp figured that America could best serve liberty and self-government by perfecting domestic republicanism without going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

00:55:47.000 The crusaders sought to expand liberal democracy abroad, partly because they thought this would make America more secure, and partly because they believed it was our destiny to baptize all nations in liberal ideals.

00:55:57.000 Okay, but this is a false distinction.

00:55:59.000 Because the reality is that there are countries abroad that do threaten us.

00:56:02.000 It turns out that in 1827, when John Quincy Adams was president, there were giant oceans separating us from the people who were most competitive toward us.

00:56:13.000 And when there weren't, we did fight wars, like the War of 1812.

00:56:15.000 It turns out borders mean a lot less these days.

00:56:20.000 And that global supply chains actually matter a fair bit.

00:56:23.000 Okay, so the reason that I point this out is because there's a sort of horseshoe that has now occurred.

00:56:27.000 The same day that this came out, you have people hearkening back to Ben and Jerry saying the same thing circa 1998.

00:56:37.000 Ben Cohen, as of like the radical left Ben and Jerry's, Ben says, I think I've got it.

00:56:44.000 Our biggest competitor is Haagen-Dazs.

00:56:45.000 It would be as if one day Haagen-Dazs announced that after all these years of competing with us, it had decided to go out of the ice cream business and instead would sell only hot dogs.

00:56:52.000 And then one day Haagen-Dazs Hot Dogs comes to Ben & Jerry's and says, we'd like to be your partners with you and sell your ice cream in our hot dog shops.

00:56:58.000 But we said to them, no, we won't let you sell our ice cream.

00:57:00.000 We still want to drive Haagen-Dazs out of business, even though you're not in the ice cream business anymore, because we remember, you were once in the ice cream business.

00:57:06.000 Furthermore, we're going to spend $2 billion to kill your hot dog business to make sure you'll never sell ice cream again. 1.00

00:57:11.000 You get the point, says Thomas Friedman, who's interviewing the ice cream mavens.

00:57:14.000 NATO expansion is about not knowing when the war is over and how to consolidate your gains.

00:57:19.000 And Mr. Cohen is speaking intelligently about the NATO foreign policy.

00:57:24.000 So again, going all the way back to 1998, this has been the position of the left.

00:57:28.000 Now it is the position of the nationalist conservative right, apparently.

00:57:30.000 The problem, of course, is that China is watching all of this with greedy eyes.

00:57:34.000 What do you think the Olympics are about?

00:57:36.000 China is watching to see what the West does and whether they can pervert the West into basically allowing them to do whatever it is that they would like to do. 0.87

00:57:46.000 And they have every indicator, early indicator, that the United States is going to be rather sanguine about our enemies on the move.

00:57:52.000 I mean, right now, the United States is so invested, the Biden administration is so invested in kowtowing to our enemies, that they've decided to waive sanctions on some of Iran's civilian nuclear activities.

00:58:02.000 Iran has already said, we are not stopping our nuclear, our nuclear plan.

00:58:06.000 We're just going to move forward full scale with that.

00:58:08.000 And the Biden administration is like, what if we waive some sanctions?

00:58:10.000 Would that make you stop?

00:58:11.000 Of course, the answer is no.

00:58:13.000 The broader Biden foreign policy is a complete discombobulated mess, which is why China is now looking at Taiwan and trying to figure out how to go after Taiwan.

00:58:23.000 So it's worth pointing out the sort of bizarre new isolationist versus pacifistic alliance that is cropped up in American politics because you do not have to be a neoconservative, we're going to conquer every place on earth person on foreign policy in order to understand that China and Russia pose a threat and the power of deterrence is quite useful when it comes to preventing these people from making aggressive moves against things we actually do care.

00:58:46.000 A lot about.

00:58:47.000 OK, I would also be remiss if I did not comment on what was the tweet of the weekend.

00:58:52.000 This came from Stacey Abrams.

00:58:53.000 So Stacey Abrams is now running for governor of Georgia.

00:58:56.000 She's losing the polls to Brian Kemp, which is why the Republican Party needs to unite behind Brian Kemp right now.

00:59:01.000 They need to unite. 1.00

00:59:02.000 Stacey Abrams cannot be governor of Georgia, you idiots. 1.00

00:59:05.000 Don't make 2022 about 2020 and about Donald Trump's anger at Georgia. 1.00

00:59:10.000 Do not let Stacey Abrams become governor because you are mad at Brian Kemp over the 2020 election.

00:59:16.000 Donald Trump already was instrumental in losing two Senate seats and giving Democrats the ability to spend trillions of dollars because he was mad at the Georgia election of 2020.

00:59:22.000 You're gonna make Stacey Abrams governor now over all of this? 1.00

00:59:26.000 Stacey Abrams went and spoke in front of a class of children and a picture emerged.

00:59:31.000 It didn't emerge.

00:59:31.000 She put it out.

00:59:32.000 She put it out of her sitting in front of an entirely masked group of small school children. 0.89

00:59:38.000 She, of course, is not wearing a mask because the rules do not apply to people like Stacey Abrams. 0.97

00:59:43.000 She then came out with a statement trying to suggest that it wasn't her fault.

00:59:47.000 Her campaign said, it is shameful.

00:59:49.000 Our opponents are using a Black History Month reading event for Georgia children as the impetus for a false political attack.

00:59:55.000 Yeah, you nailed it.

00:59:56.000 It's all about Black History Month, Stacey, always and forever.

00:59:59.000 She says it is pitiful and predictable.

01:00:00.000 Our opponents continue to look for opportunities to distract from their failed records when it comes to protecting public health during the pandemic.

01:00:08.000 One of Stacey's opponents downplayed the virus while trading stock to profit off a pandemic.

01:00:11.000 After his private coronavirus briefings as a senator, another of her opponents attacked mayors seeking to protect their citizens and has failed to expand access to Medicaid.

01:00:20.000 Okay, so here's the reality.

01:00:21.000 Stacey Abrams doesn't care about wearing a mask in front of kids. 1.00

01:00:24.000 All she cares about is that the kids keep wearing masks.

01:00:27.000 Because for the left, the masks have now become a religious totem.

01:00:29.000 The same thing is true in Boston, by the way.

01:00:31.000 Boston's mayor, Michelle Wu, I mean, they're preparing for permanent masking in parts of the United States.

01:00:35.000 In Boston, Michelle Wu, she was like, yeah, we probably won't mask forever because who knows, there could be another wave sometime in the future. 0.97

01:00:42.000 COVID will be around for a while.

01:00:44.000 Even after we are through this surge, we know it is likely that next fall, next winter, there likely will be another surge.

01:00:52.000 But in the meantime, as we're tracking these numbers, these protections are not permanent.

01:00:58.000 They are to make sure that we are safe in the most urgent moments, and we will continue to take steps to balance that guarantee of safety through public health Public health policies that are responsive and clear, as well as the need to provide support to our small businesses.

01:01:20.000 They want it forever.

01:01:21.000 It's become a mindset now.

01:01:22.000 They want it forever.

01:01:23.000 It's never going to go away.

01:01:24.000 All right, so you know what?

01:01:25.000 If this is what you guys want to run on, more power to you.

01:01:28.000 As Governor DeSantis down here in the beautiful free state of Florida says, you guys keep criticizing Florida, but I noticed you're vacationing here quite a lot.

01:01:34.000 When you had over New Year's, you had AOC coming down, criticizing Florida, then comes down.

01:01:40.000 So we decided to make kind of a little joke about it.

01:01:44.000 So we created T-shirts that said, Escape to Florida, the Lockdown Liberal Tour.

01:01:49.000 And instead of having concert dates on the back, we had Governor Whitmer, March of 2021, AOC, and the dates, they were all in Florida. 0.95

01:01:58.000 And we sold more outside the state than we sold here because people realize how hypocritical these people are. 0.88

01:02:06.000 You know, go for it. 0.92

01:02:07.000 So this is the country that you want.

01:02:08.000 You want the country that tries to go after Joe Rogan and get him thrown out of his job at Spotify, have his contract canceled by Spotify because you're mad that he didn't endorse Bernie Sanders completely, or that he didn't endorse Bernie Sanders, but he didn't endorse Joe Biden or whatever.

01:02:23.000 This is the country that you want.

01:02:24.000 The non-forgiving, masked forever, Pacifistic nonsense.

01:02:29.000 Really, you guys are doing yeoman's work over there on the left side of the aisle.

01:02:32.000 All right, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon as the Matt Walsh Show airs at 1.30 p.m.

01:02:37.000 Eastern.

01:02:37.000 Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.

01:02:39.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:02:39.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:02:56.000 Editing is by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Cristina, production assistant Jessica Crand.

01:03:04.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

01:03:08.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

01:03:28.000 now sorry breaking Jessica I can smell weakness from here

01:03:53.000 Oh Oh money Oh Let me out, please!

01:04:10.000 What good is this to me now?

01:04:17.000 You had your way.

01:04:24.000 I'm scared.

01:04:28.000 Now you must pay.

01:04:34.000 Your daughter.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 07, 2022

They Don’t Care About Rogan’s Sins. They Care About Destroying Him. | Ep. 1428

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