The Ben Shapiro Show - They’re Coming For You | Ep. 1174

00:00:00.000 The media swivel from impeachment and attack Republicans across the board.

00:00:03.000 The Twitter mob misidentifies a Capitol riot suspect.

00:00:06.000 And Politico staff go wild after I write the morning playbook.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show on my birthday.

00:00:11.000 Well, happy birthday to me.

00:00:19.000 It is indeed my birthday.

00:00:20.000 And I am right now, as we speak, achieving the coveted birthday Twitter trend three-peat.

00:00:25.000 That's correct. 1.00

00:00:26.000 Three days in a row I've trended on Twitter because the world is so unbelievably stupid. 1.00

00:00:30.000 We've had two impeachments in a year. 1.00

00:00:32.000 We had a riot at the Capitol building. 1.00

00:00:34.000 And yet I have now trended three separate times in the last three days for three specifically unbelievably stupid reasons. 0.98

00:00:40.000 I'm gonna explain all of it in just one second. 0.91

00:00:42.000 First, The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:44.000 Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com.

00:00:48.000 Well, I'm looking forward to my birthday gift this year, but if you need to get somebody a birthday gift, let me tell you about an unbelievable birthday gift or a gift for yourself.

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00:01:12.000 I've been guzzling coffee like nobody's business.

00:01:14.000 And now I've gotten very into cold brew coffee.

00:01:16.000 Well, because it's not as acidic.

00:01:16.000 Why?

00:01:18.000 It's not as bitter.

00:01:19.000 It's just, it's better.

00:01:20.000 And the thing about cold brew is that normally you have to wait for the actual coffee grounds to sort of seep and all this.

00:01:26.000 That's not what the Presto Dorothy does. 1.00

00:01:28.000 The Presto Dorothy is awesome.

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00:01:32.000 Dorothy uses a tornado to spin coffee grounds through water to make cold brew fast. 0.80

00:01:36.000 The brew is smooth and flavorful because the grounds are never exposed to the high temperatures that extract acids.

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00:01:46.000 You insert the stirring cup into the carafe, you place the carafe on the power base, you add water to the line, you turn the knob halfway, and then a tornado magically forms.

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00:01:57.000 Let the coffee swirl to the desired strength.

00:01:58.000 It's like 10 minutes for a flavorful, lighter brew.

00:02:00.000 20 minutes for full strength.

00:02:02.000 30 minutes for ultra strong.

00:02:03.000 Then you turn it off and you let the coffee rest for 5 minutes.

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00:02:13.000 You see, it's called the Dorothy because of the tornado.

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00:02:38.000 Okay, so I have been arguing for a week at this point, much longer than that more broadly speaking, but certainly since the Capitol riot, that the country could come together around a few common propositions.

00:02:50.000 Propositions like political violence is bad.

00:02:53.000 Propositions like you shouldn't tell lies about what Congress can and cannot do.

00:02:56.000 Propositions like if you're going to make a broad scale argument about the United States or about the American system, you should have evidence to back those suggestions.

00:03:03.000 And arguments like if there are people on the other side who do really bad things, Then, typically, you should assume that most of the people on the other side are not in favor of those bad things, unless they remain silent in the face of those bad things, or unless they express support for those bad things, right?

00:03:19.000 These seem like these should be fairly common, well-accepted bipartisan principles, except they're not.

00:03:24.000 Except they're not.

00:03:25.000 Because what has happened in the aftermath of the Capitol riot is a wide-scale attempt by many on the left, particularly in the media, to lump together every single person on the right with the Capitol rioters.

00:03:35.000 And a lot of that is driving the sort of drive for impeachment.

00:03:38.000 See, the thing is that you can make the argument that Trump did something impeachable here.

00:03:42.000 I have a lot of friends on the right who have made that argument.

00:03:44.000 There are people in Congress ranging from Liz Cheney to certain senators like Pat Toomey who have made that argument.

00:03:50.000 I don't find the argument completely unconvincing.

00:03:53.000 I have friends in the commentariat ranging from the folks over at the Wall Street Journal to Commentary Magazine to National Review who have argued in some detail why they think that Trump's conduct over the past couple of months has been impeachable.

00:04:05.000 And while I may disagree with some of their analysis, I can't pretend that there is no basis for the ire or for the outrage or even for the argument itself.

00:04:12.000 But here is the thing.

00:04:13.000 What we are seeing on the left is an attempt to broaden out the argument about impeachment so that it broadly applies.

00:04:19.000 It applies too broadly.

00:04:21.000 When I was in law school.

00:04:22.000 There's a professor in contract, and he used to use a phrase over and over and over again, which was, an argument proves too much.

00:04:29.000 An argument that proves too much.

00:04:30.000 What an argument that proves too much means is that there are certain arguments that you make that are specific to the circumstance, and then there are arguments that you make that actually are so broad that they encompass a bunch of stuff that you don't intend.

00:04:40.000 So, if you were to make the argument, for example, that President Trump does bad things and bad things are impeachable.

00:04:45.000 That was your entire argument.

00:04:46.000 You'd say it's an argument that proves too much, because everybody does bad things, and you can't impeach everybody.

00:04:50.000 Right, so whenever you set a standard, the standard should be equally applicable, it should be neutral, and it should be applied really only to the situations where it is in effect.

00:04:58.000 Okay, the problem for the left is they are now making arguments that prove too much.

00:05:02.000 What they are saying is that not only is what happened at the Capitol riot awful and evil, true, Not only is it that President Trump was saying untrue things about what Congress could do or about voter fraud or about the stolen election.

00:05:16.000 True.

00:05:16.000 What they are saying is that it was perfectly foreseeable that what happened at the Capitol riot was going to happen from the moment that Trump got on the escalator and that every Republican, every single Republican, whoever participated in anything, with Trump is responsible for this, and not only responsible for it, knew it was coming and looked the other way because anyone of intelligence and good heart could tell that this was going to end with bloodshed at the Capitol building.

00:05:38.000 Now, first of all, that's just nonsense.

00:05:40.000 It's nonsense.

00:05:41.000 It was a very, very unlikely scenario what happened last week, which is why everyone, including Capitol Police, was taken by surprise.

00:05:47.000 That is not to minimize the evil.

00:05:49.000 That's to point out what an abject evil it is.

00:05:52.000 I think that the most expected outcome of the election after Trump lost, in terms of his behavior based on his character, was that he was going to bitch and moan about it for a couple of months, that he was going to continually suggest that the election was not properly settled based on information that was not true, some people were going to buy into it, and then he would leave.

00:06:09.000 I think that the institutions had hemmed him in for four years.

00:06:09.000 Right?

00:06:12.000 I think most people, right, left, and center, actually believed that that's what was going to go on.

00:06:16.000 And that basically was what had been happening up until the moment that the Capitol was breached.

00:06:21.000 Does that relieve Trump of responsibility for his bad comments?

00:06:23.000 No.

00:06:23.000 Does it mean that he is responsible for incitement?

00:06:25.000 Also no.

00:06:26.000 I have a very strict standard when it comes to incitement.

00:06:28.000 Unless you are telling people to go into acts of violence, because I'm trying to be as tailored as possible here so we can have a neutral standard like I discussed.

00:06:34.000 Well, then it's not incitement.

00:06:36.000 It can be bad language that raises the temperature.

00:06:38.000 It can be something ugly.

00:06:39.000 Okay, but again, the argument that the left is making, the argument Democrats are making, members of the media are making, is that this was the natural culmination of four years of Trumpism, and thus anyone who was even tangentially linked to Trump in any way must be cast aside, must be thrown out of the body politic.

00:06:56.000 And so when Republicans are being asked what they feel about impeachment, they are being asked essentially in their interpretation, which I think doubting the motives of the left in this case is probably good practice, Their interpretation is signing their own political death warrant because they're being asked not about Trump's specific behavior.

00:07:13.000 They're being asked to pass a referendum on themselves.

00:07:16.000 They're being asked to admit that they knew this was going to happen and didn't care if this happened.

00:07:21.000 And that is a lie.

00:07:22.000 It is not true.

00:07:23.000 Now, there's a lot of support for this particular position that I'm taking, this sort of analysis.

00:07:27.000 First of all, I talk to Republicans on a daily basis, literally millions of them on a daily basis with this show.

00:07:32.000 I hear from thousands of you every single week and hundreds of you every single day on topics like this.

00:07:37.000 So I feel like I have a pretty good window into what the right is thinking on this.

00:07:40.000 And if I want a window into what the left is thinking, all I have to do is flip on MSNBC or CNN.

00:07:45.000 And the media have been repeating this argument ad nauseum, right?

00:07:48.000 This is the media's argument.

00:07:49.000 It is that.

00:07:50.000 This was never just about Trump, you see.

00:07:53.000 This is about a deep and abiding phenomenon inside the Republican Party, inside conservative circles, and that everybody who is even slightly right of center is complicit in all of this.

00:08:02.000 So here is just a mashup by our friends over at Grabien of a variety of media figures who essentially are blaming every conservative, every person who voted for Trump, every Trump supporter for what happened at the Capitol riots.

00:08:14.000 This is a huge problem.

00:08:16.000 If you're looking to end political polarization, you have to assume that people on the other side aren't inherently bad.

00:08:21.000 But unfortunately, the Capitol riots are being used, not surprisingly, as a rationale for castigating everybody you disagree with as morally decrepit and morally defunct.

00:08:31.000 This has been going on, by the way, long before Trump.

00:08:33.000 I wrote a book called Bullies in 2013, all about how this was the left's argument going back to then, right?

00:08:38.000 I mean, that was several years before Trump was even a glint in the public imagination, so far as presidential politics was concerned.

00:08:44.000 In any case, here's a brief mashup of just some of the people on cable news who have been making exactly this argument.

00:08:51.000 Each of these people should be shamed, and they're going to go back, you know, to the Olive Garden and to the Holiday Inn that they're staying at.

00:08:59.000 I wonder if you have thought through kind of how Republicans begin what someone on my team earlier today called debathification.

00:09:07.000 Look, I think the challenge is that the rot is from the grassroots all the way to the presidency.

00:09:14.000 So the rot is at every layer.

00:09:17.000 There are millions of Americans.

00:09:20.000 Almost all white, almost all Republicans who somehow need to be deprogrammed. 0.67

00:09:27.000 They need to be deprogrammed. 0.88

00:09:28.000 It's debathification, right?

00:09:29.000 They're just like the members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party. 0.77

00:09:32.000 That's the kind of language that Joy Reid is using. 1.00

00:09:34.000 And this kind of argument is extremely common in the press right now.

00:09:37.000 Paul Krugman wrote an entire piece about how this was the natural consequence of 30 years of Republican malfeasance.

00:09:43.000 Well, we heard from Thomas Friedman that he's happy that Trump is, quote unquote, breaking apart the Republican Party because it deserves to happen.

00:09:48.000 Plus, hey, you know, we might be able to get our Democratic agenda through if the party fragments.

00:09:52.000 Right.

00:09:53.000 So when Republicans and conservatives look at the impeachment charge, As always, and this has become, when Trump was elected, I said all Democrats had to do was not be crazy.

00:10:03.000 That's all they had to do. 0.92

00:10:04.000 And then they proceeded to be absolutely crazy, right? 0.80

00:10:07.000 Then they proceeded to, by the way, this is not exculpatory for people in Trump's camp who have also gone crazy. 0.58

00:10:14.000 There are many people in Trump's camp.

00:10:16.000 Not like a few, but not everybody.

00:10:18.000 There are many people in Trump's camp who believe things that are simply not true.

00:10:21.000 Okay, but the left has also gone insane to the extent that they were pushing Russian collusion, hoax, nonsense for four years, to the extent that they were greenlighting rioting during the summer and pretending that this was some sort of racial reckoning moment for the United States.

00:10:33.000 That was a broad, almost universally accepted tautology for nearly everybody on the left.

00:10:39.000 And to the extent that now they're trying to label everybody a fellow traveler with rioters in order to excise them from the public debate.

00:10:48.000 It's bad and it's ugly.

00:10:49.000 And so what it means is that when people look at any single question, they are not being asked to answer the single question.

00:10:54.000 I've been saying this for a while.

00:10:56.000 There's a lot of polling data. 0.81

00:10:57.000 Every time Trump would tweet something dumb or something bad, there'd be some snap poll and it'd be like, many Republicans approve of what Trump said.

00:11:03.000 And what I kept saying about these polls is that That is certainly a plausible way of reading the poll. 0.94

00:11:08.000 Here's another plausible way of reading the poll.

00:11:10.000 When people snap to a, are asked in a snap poll what they think of what Trump did, what they hear is, you are a bad person if you support Trump in any way, what do you think of you?

00:11:20.000 Right?

00:11:21.000 And the reason they've done that is because the media have so, it's a reactionary move and people shouldn't do that, but that is how people react.

00:11:27.000 And the fact is that when you lump everybody on the right in with every bad thing Trump does, and then you say, This is what you like most.

00:11:34.000 What you like most about him is all the bad stuff that he does.

00:11:36.000 People on the right go, you know what?

00:11:38.000 Middle finger.

00:11:39.000 Trump is a giant pulsating middle finger.

00:11:42.000 He continues to be that and so long as the left lumps everybody together, this is going to continue.

00:11:48.000 Again, this preceded Trump because they did this long before Trump. 0.76

00:11:51.000 They've been demonizing Republicans as racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes literally as long as I've been in politics, which is since I was 17 years old. 0.83

00:11:58.000 And I'm sure before then.

00:12:00.000 Okay, we're gonna get to more of this in just one second, because this has, again, real ramifications for your life.

00:12:05.000 It is the underlying polarization that's tearing away at America, and it was proved in extraordinary colors by our friends, the staff over at Politico.

00:12:14.000 We're gonna get to that in just one moment.

00:12:16.000 That was the second reason that I trended this week.

00:12:18.000 The first reason I trended this week, by the way, in case you were wondering, I hit the coveted birthday three-peat today.

00:12:22.000 I trended three times in three days, which I've never heard of that before, so that's pretty fun.

00:12:26.000 I trended earlier this week because some reporter for the New York Times was tweeting about zip ties and was like, does anybody even own zip ties?

00:12:34.000 Not zip cuffs, not zip cuffs, right?

00:12:37.000 Not restraints.

00:12:38.000 Zip ties, like who even owns zip ties?

00:12:39.000 And I was like, like everybody owns zip ties.

00:12:41.000 And so the entire media took this to mean that I was making excuses for people running through the Capitol building with zip ties, trying to hamstring Congress people and take them hot, which is like, have you listened to five seconds of the show?

00:12:51.000 Have you read anything I have ever written?

00:12:53.000 Okay, so that was reason number one.

00:12:55.000 Reason number two is Politico.

00:12:56.000 We're gonna get to that in just one second.

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00:13:12.000 I have three kids under seven, and that means that I have to spend an awful lot of time keeping an eye on them.

00:13:16.000 I have two eyes.

00:13:17.000 I have three children, and they are basically wildebeest.

00:13:21.000 I mean, they just run to and fro, breaking things.

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00:14:25.000 Okay, so.

00:14:27.000 As I say, the broader media argument that everybody on the right is culpable for what happened in the Capitol riots, and therefore, everybody on the right should be excised, this sort of came to a bizarre culmination with regard to Politico.

00:14:40.000 So, a couple of weeks ago, I was approached by somebody in upper management at Politico who shall remain nameless for the safety of their career.

00:14:47.000 And they asked me to write the political playbook.

00:14:50.000 So for those who are not Washington DC insidery, the political playbook is this thing that's been around since like 2007.

00:14:55.000 It's sort of the morning briefing for a lot of people on Capitol Hill.

00:14:58.000 I'm not going to say that it's like super widely disseminated.

00:15:01.000 Our website Daily Wire has much, much more traffic than the playbook, but it's sort of prestigious, right?

00:15:05.000 It's a prestigious thing from Politico.

00:15:07.000 Well, The authors of Politico's playbook at the end of last year decided they weren't going to write the political playbook anymore.

00:15:13.000 And so they've been trying to figure out who's going to write it.

00:15:15.000 And in the meantime, they've been doing this kind of cavalcade of comedy stars.

00:15:17.000 Basically, they have a famous person and write the political playbook each day.

00:15:22.000 And they rotate it.

00:15:23.000 So about three weeks ago, it was before the beginning of the new year, somebody from Politico approached me and they said, would you like to write the political playbook one morning?

00:15:30.000 I said, that sounds like fun.

00:15:31.000 You know, it's kind of a cool thing.

00:15:32.000 Like I've been kind of a fan of the playbook for a long time, because again, inside politics, inside baseball kind of stuff.

00:15:39.000 Sounds like a cool thing.

00:15:40.000 I sort of consulted internally with other people at the business, and we thought this is kind of a fun, neat thing, and a good way to do a little bipartisan stuff at the beginning of the year.

00:15:49.000 So, last week, all hell broke loose, right?

00:15:52.000 The world just explodes.

00:15:54.000 And I called up the guy at Politico, and I was like, I'm really busy right now.

00:15:57.000 I'm not sure that I can actually do this.

00:15:59.000 Because, like, things are kind of crazy.

00:16:03.000 And he said, no, you know, we already slated you in.

00:16:05.000 We really would love for you to do it.

00:16:06.000 We hope you'll reconsider.

00:16:07.000 On Monday, I thought, you know what, I actually did make the commitment and it's kind of a jerky thing to pull out like, you know, four days, five days in advance.

00:16:14.000 So sure, I'll go, I'll go ahead and do that.

00:16:16.000 And I warned him, by the way, the first day that I talked to this person at Politico, I warned them, you're going to have a riot on your hands.

00:16:22.000 I mean, people, figuratively speaking, you're going to have people inside your staff who are going to get angry at you.

00:16:27.000 They're going to yell at you.

00:16:28.000 Twitterverse will go insane because the rule on Twitter and on the left is that anybody who talks to me You know, me.

00:16:36.000 I'm about as mainstream Republican, mainstream conservative as possible to be, as people can attest who listen to the show.

00:16:42.000 You know, and I've been highly critical of Trump.

00:16:45.000 None of that matters.

00:16:46.000 If you associate with me, if you breathe in the same room that I do, then you are castigated, widely castigated, reviled online.

00:16:55.000 The blowback is intense.

00:16:58.000 So you can have Nicole Hannah-Jones writing absolute falsehoods for the New York Times. 1.00

00:17:01.000 I will never be asked to write an op-ed for the op-ed page of the New York Times.

00:17:05.000 And that's especially true in an era when you can literally be fired as an op-ed editor of the New York Times running an article from a sitting United States Senator like Tom Cotton.

00:17:13.000 So I've had this experience many times before, where somebody from the left wants to get together or do something, and then they end up just blown out by the internet over it.

00:17:22.000 Most famously, this happened with an actor named Mark Duplass.

00:17:24.000 Mark Duplass You'll recognize from such things as new girl, and he directs his own movies, very talented guy.

00:17:30.000 And maybe a few years back, Mark approaches me and he says, I'm making a new film and it's got it's about gun control and gun violence.

00:17:37.000 And I wanted to hear like a good pro Second Amendment argument.

00:17:40.000 And so I emailed him back.

00:17:41.000 I said.

00:17:41.000 Feel free to stop on by the studio.

00:17:43.000 We'll spend a little time together and I'll sort of explain the right-wing perspective, the conservative perspective, the constitutionalist perspective on what the Second Amendment represents.

00:17:50.000 So you don't step into any potholes.

00:17:52.000 And I thought this is kind of a good thing to do.

00:17:54.000 I mean, it would be great if Hollywood would represent the pro-Second Amendment side of the aisle with some level of veracity.

00:17:59.000 So Mark comes in, very nice guy.

00:18:01.000 We spend about, we were slated for half an hour.

00:18:03.000 I blew off a couple of meetings.

00:18:04.000 I spent an hour and a half with him explaining sort of the conservative perspective on the world, the conservative perspective on gun rights.

00:18:11.000 Okay, so as he's leaving, I turned to him and I said, listen, you seem like a really nice guy.

00:18:16.000 Never tell any of your friends you've been here.

00:18:17.000 Like seriously, just don't say anything because you don't understand.

00:18:21.000 People on the left, I can say to my heart's content that people on the left hang out with me and people on my side don't care because they understand that there can be such a thing as disagreement.

00:18:30.000 But if you even utter my name, it's like Voldemort, if you utter my name, nothing good is going to happen.

00:18:37.000 It's about three weeks later, Mark Duplass, this actor, in a fit of decency, decides to tweet something out.

00:18:43.000 And what he tweeted out was something really innocuous.

00:18:45.000 It was like, you know, I know a lot of you disagree with Ben Shapiro.

00:18:47.000 I disagree with Ben Shapiro a lot, too.

00:18:49.000 But he once did an act of kindness for me out of nothing but just a sense of decency.

00:18:53.000 And he's a person who's worth listening to.

00:18:55.000 Maybe give him a follow.

00:18:56.000 He got hit so hard from the left that not only did he pull down the tweet, he then put up a tweet apologizing for ever having put the tweet up in the first place and now suggesting that I was a xenophobic, racist, sexist bigot.

00:19:07.000 All within like five minutes.

00:19:09.000 It was really, really fast.

00:19:10.000 By the way, before he even put up the second tweet saying that I was the world's worst person and that he had never even heard of me and he'll have to look into his soul.

00:19:21.000 How could he have been in the same room that I was?

00:19:25.000 Before he did that, when he even took down the original tweet, I texted him and I said, you know, Mark, I appreciated the original tweet.

00:19:31.000 I get why you took it down.

00:19:32.000 It's totally cool of me.

00:19:33.000 I don't care.

00:19:34.000 Didn't matter.

00:19:35.000 Still, the next moment, up goes the tweet.

00:19:37.000 What a terrible... Okay, so, I told the people at Politico, if you publish Playbook that I write, the blowback's gonna be intense.

00:19:44.000 And the folks at Politico were like, you know what, we can handle it.

00:19:46.000 It'll be okay.

00:19:47.000 I think people will accept it.

00:19:48.000 I think people will get that there's an open debate.

00:19:49.000 I was like, you do not understand your own side, gang.

00:19:53.000 And they were like, no, no, no, no, it'll be fine.

00:19:55.000 Like, okay, fine, all right.

00:19:57.000 I didn't just warn one editor over there, I warned two editors over there that this is going to happen.

00:20:01.000 One of the people who had originally approached me, and then the person who helped me edit the playbook.

00:20:05.000 And second, I'm going to read you what I actually wrote in the playbook, because it is sort of relevant to determining what the reaction was.

00:20:11.000 And it is so telling.

00:20:12.000 This story is very telling, because it does tell you where we are at as a country.

00:20:16.000 It tells you where we're at in terms of the new ruling class, members of the elite media who all speak the same woke language and will not abide dissent, and will use any flashpoint of a bad thing happening on, broadly speaking, the other side in order to castigate everybody as complicit in it.

00:20:29.000 It's really, really amazing.

00:20:31.000 It's amazing.

00:20:32.000 And then you wonder why the social fabric is torn.

00:20:34.000 Okay, so we're going to get to that in just one second.

00:20:36.000 I think it's a good, important story.

00:20:38.000 So we'll get to that momentarily.

00:20:39.000 First, let us talk about the fact you don't want to be going to the auto parts store today.

00:20:42.000 I mean, why would you want to go to the auto parts store?

00:20:44.000 Like ever.

00:20:44.000 You're just going to stand in line for a while.

00:20:46.000 Then you're going to get up to the desk.

00:20:48.000 They're totally not going to have the part.

00:20:49.000 They're going to have to order it online.

00:20:50.000 Then they're going to upcharge you.

00:20:51.000 So I have an idea.

00:20:53.000 Why not just go to the onlines yourself?

00:20:55.000 Just go to the interweb.

00:20:56.000 Head on over to rockauto.com.

00:20:58.000 It's so much easier than walking into a store and someone demanding quick answers to things like, is your Odyssey an LX or an EX?

00:21:03.000 And then again, they have to order that part online anyway.

00:21:05.000 So just go to rockauto.com and you're going to be saving because rockauto.com always offers the lowest prices possible rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear like airlines do.

00:21:14.000 Why spend up to twice as much for the same parts?

00:21:16.000 Like let's say, hypothetically.

00:21:18.000 Just coming up with this on the spot because, you know, I'm a car guy.

00:21:21.000 You happen to need a Delphi FG 1456 fuel pump assembly for a 2005-2010 Honda Odyssey.

00:21:26.000 That costs like $354 at a big chain store.

00:21:28.000 That'll cost you $217 at rockauto.com.

00:21:31.000 They're a family business.

00:21:32.000 They've been serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.

00:21:35.000 Head on over to rockauto.com, the rockauto.com catalog.

00:21:37.000 It's unique.

00:21:37.000 It's remarkably easy to navigate.

00:21:39.000 Quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle.

00:21:41.000 Choose the brands, specifications, prices you prefer.

00:21:43.000 They've got amazing selection, reliably low prices.

00:21:45.000 All the parts are car.

00:21:47.000 Okay, so what I wrote for Politico is pretty much everything that I've been talking about.

00:22:00.000 What I wrote about for Politico is why so many Republicans oppose impeachment.

00:22:04.000 And I'm going to read it to you so that you see that this is not like a wild right-wing rant or anything like that.

00:22:09.000 Here's what I wrote.

00:22:11.000 The big news of the day, as yesterday, is the House's impeachment of President Donald J. Trump for the second time in just over a year.

00:22:16.000 It was a foregone conclusion that the Democratic House would do so.

00:22:19.000 The only question was how many Republicans would vote, along with Democrats, to impeach Trump over his behavior leading up to and surrounding the Capitol riot.

00:22:25.000 In the end, ten did, ranging from Representative Liz Cheney, the third-ranking Republican in the House, who called openly and clearly for impeachment, to Representative Fred Upton, who said he'd prefer censure, but that he'd settle for impeachment.

00:22:35.000 The spotlight immediately moved to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who now says he hasn't made up his mind on impeachment and seems he'll leave Republicans to their own devices on the Senate vote when it takes place.

00:22:43.000 Many in the media seem bewildered that House Republicans didn't unanimously join Democrats in supporting impeachment.

00:22:48.000 Looking at you, playbook readers in the media.

00:22:50.000 After all, Republicans were in the building when rioters broke through, seeking to do them grievous physical harm.

00:22:54.000 My Republican sources tell me that opposition to impeachment doesn't spring from generalized sanguinity over Trump's behavior.

00:23:00.000 I've been receiving calls and texts for more than a week from elected Republicans heartsick over what they saw in the Capitol.

00:23:05.000 Opposition to impeachment comes from a deep and abiding conservative belief that members of the opposing political tribe want their destruction, not simply to punish Trump for his behavior.

00:23:13.000 Republicans believe that Democrats and the overwhelmingly liberal media see impeachment as an attempt to cudgel them collectively by lumping them in with the Capitol rioters thanks to support for Trump.

00:23:21.000 The evidence for that position isn't difficult to find.

00:23:24.000 And this is all what I wrote for Politico's playbook.

00:23:27.000 Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon suggested this week at NBC News that the only way to prevent a repeat of the Capitol riot was endorsement of a full slate of Democratic agenda items.

00:23:35.000 Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez suggested that, quote, Southern states are not red states, they are suppressed states, which means the only way our country is going to heal is through actual liberation of Southern states.

00:23:44.000 Paul Krugman of The New York Times placed blame for the Capitol riots on the entire Republican Party infrastructure, quote, this pooch was decades in the making.

00:23:51.000 Unity looks a lot like sign onto our agenda or be lumped in with the Capitol rioters.

00:23:55.000 Conservatives see the game.

00:23:56.000 It doesn't matter whether you held your nose when voting for Trump.

00:23:58.000 It doesn't matter if you denounced his prevarications about a stolen election.

00:24:01.000 For the record, I was met with great ire when I declared the night of the election that Trump's declaration of victory was deeply irresponsible.

00:24:06.000 If you supported Trump in any way, you were at least partially culpable, the argument goes.

00:24:10.000 It's not just Trump who deserves vitriol.

00:24:12.000 It's all 74 million people who voted for him.

00:24:14.000 And that claim, many conservatives believe, will serve as the basis for oppression everywhere from social media to employment.

00:24:20.000 Evidence to support that suspicion wasn't in short supply this week.

00:24:23.000 Parler, the social media competitor to Twitter, was taken off the internet entirely by Amazon Web Services.

00:24:28.000 AWS pointed to violent and threatening posts appearing on Parler as the rationale for the takedown.

00:24:32.000 But, as the single journalist most targeted by anti-Semitism on Twitter in 2016, as assessed by the ADL, I've got the medal on my shelf.

00:24:38.000 I can fairly attest, Twitter is no wonderland.

00:24:40.000 And according to the Washington Post, new evidence suggests that Facebook was used by capital rioters to coordinate too.

00:24:47.000 Will tech companies dump them as well?

00:24:49.000 To conservatives, the deplatforming of Parler looked far more like political retaliation than good housekeeping, especially after social media's decision to downgrade the New York Post's coverage of Hunter Biden in the month leading up to the election.

00:24:59.000 GoDaddy kicked AR-15.com, the biggest gun forum in the world, offline.

00:25:02.000 Corporations ranging from AT&T to Marriott, from Dow to Airbnb, announced they would cut off all political giving to Republicans who had challenged electors.

00:25:08.000 No such consequences ever attended Democrats, who winked and nodded, and sometimes more, at civil unrest around the nation emerging from Black Lives Matter protests and Antifa violence over the summer.

00:25:18.000 Furthermore, many conservatives doubt that Democrats are applying any sort of neutral standard toward Trump in pursuing impeachment.

00:25:23.000 Is the standard refusal to accept election results?

00:25:25.000 Stacey Abrams never accepted her election loss.

00:25:27.000 She still claims she was the victim of voter suppression.

00:25:28.000 Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, has been appointed one of the Democrats impeachment managers by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but challenged Florida's electors in 2016.

00:25:37.000 is the standard incitement.

00:25:38.000 Few serious lawyers believe Trump's activities would amount to prosecutable incitement.

00:25:42.000 The real impeachment charge against Trump is extraordinarily reckless and inflammatory rhetoric and behavior.

00:25:46.000 But that sort of rhetoric is unfortunately commonplace in today's day and age, sometimes even ends with violence.

00:25:51.000 See, for example, a Bernie Sanders supporter shooting up a congressional softball game.

00:25:54.000 Those on the political left see such questions as whataboutism.

00:25:57.000 This is what I wrote in Politico, and then we'll get to the blowback.

00:25:59.000 And yes, none of these politicians are the sitting president of the United States and head of the executive branch looking to pressure the legislature to violate the law and overturn a lawful election.

00:26:07.000 But it's just as plausible to see such questions as demands for neutral political standards to hold everyone accountable.

00:26:12.000 Without such standards, conservatives fear any political flashpoint will be used as a cudgel to cram down social, cultural, even governmental repression.

00:26:19.000 Republicans may divide over impeachment.

00:26:21.000 There are good prudential arguments against and good principled arguments in favor.

00:26:24.000 But one thing is certain.

00:26:25.000 If anyone expects Americans to come together once the Trump era is over, that's a pipe dream.

00:26:29.000 Our social fabric is torn.

00:26:30.000 It was torn before Trump.

00:26:31.000 And as it turns out, the incentive structure of modern politics and media cuts directly against stitching it together again.

00:26:36.000 That's what I wrote for Politico.

00:26:36.000 Right?

00:26:37.000 Seems relatively uncontroversial to me.

00:26:40.000 Frankly.

00:26:41.000 Okay, and we'll get to the blowback in just one second because it absolutely proved my point.

00:26:45.000 My contention was the left is going to lump everybody together, call them evil, and then excise them from the public debate.

00:26:53.000 So Politico staff was like, conservatives are evil.

00:26:55.000 We should excise them from the public debate.

00:26:56.000 He's like, oh, thank you for proving my point.

00:26:57.000 Really appreciate it.

00:26:58.000 We'll get to that in a second.

00:26:59.000 First, let us talk about the best pillows on the market.

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00:28:19.000 Okay, so that is the piece that I print in Politico, and the editors worked with me on it.

00:28:26.000 They went through their entire editorial process.

00:28:28.000 And then all hell breaks loose.

00:28:31.000 As absolutely predicted.

00:28:32.000 As absolutely predicted.

00:28:34.000 Now, to explain how predicted this was and how predictable this was, I need to flashback to 2018.

00:28:39.000 So Brian Stelter is the media critic over... He's the...

00:28:44.000 Reliable sources guy, right?

00:28:46.000 He's the one who's the media analyst over at CNN.

00:28:48.000 Well, a couple of years ago, it's 2018, I was on his program and we were talking about the media and bias in the media.

00:28:54.000 And I said on his show, he was saying, which media outlets are biased?

00:28:57.000 And I was like, well, yours, like CNN.

00:29:00.000 Okay.

00:29:01.000 And Stelter then said, you know, you keep complaining about media bias.

00:29:04.000 Maybe you guys should try to get a job in the media and make it better.

00:29:07.000 Here's what that exchange sounded like.

00:29:09.000 Part of me thinks that you and your colleagues at the Daily Wire should try to get jobs then at the New York Times.

00:29:14.000 If you don't like the coverage, try to be a part of the solution as opposed to complaining about it.

00:29:18.000 I mean, I don't know.

00:29:18.000 Would you hire me?

00:29:20.000 I really doubt that.

00:29:21.000 And not only that, I'm not sure you guys can pay me.

00:29:23.000 I'll be frank with you.

00:29:24.000 I make a lot of money.

00:29:25.000 I wanted you as a guest for many months.

00:29:27.000 Okay.

00:29:28.000 And the answer, of course, is no.

00:29:30.000 The answer is no.

00:29:31.000 Right?

00:29:32.000 Would you hire me?

00:29:33.000 No!

00:29:33.000 You wouldn't.

00:29:34.000 Would you hire Kevin Williamson?

00:29:34.000 Right?

00:29:35.000 Then you'd fire him.

00:29:35.000 You would.

00:29:37.000 Would you hire a conservative columnist to do the playbook?

00:29:44.000 Sure, but then your staff would go absolutely bat bleep loony.

00:29:48.000 By the way, I love some of the media requests for comments on this.

00:29:50.000 Some of them were like, how much money was Politico paying you?

00:29:54.000 Right, I'm doing it for the money.

00:29:55.000 Guys, let me explain something.

00:29:59.000 This show is extremely, extremely large. 1.00

00:30:02.000 If you think that I was writing and spending like a day writing for Politico's playbook out of anything but a sense of fun and an attempt to appeal to broader audiences, you are out of your damn mind. 0.99

00:30:13.000 Okay, in any case, people lose it. 1.00

00:30:15.000 Lose it.

00:30:16.000 And so all day yesterday, Politico is trending.

00:30:18.000 How dare they turn over the sacred space of the Politico playbook to a conservative like Ben Shapiro?

00:30:25.000 How could they do such a thing?

00:30:26.000 Now, understand that for folks in the media left, they proclaim that they are objective.

00:30:31.000 They proclaim that they want to hear all sides, right?

00:30:33.000 Freedom of the press, more voices, a thousand voices.

00:30:37.000 Yeah, bull.

00:30:39.000 What you guys actually want is a monolithic media culture in which everybody agrees with you.

00:30:42.000 That's actually what you want.

00:30:43.000 Okay, how can I, how do I know this?

00:30:45.000 How do I know this?

00:30:46.000 Well, let's say, let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Politico's playbook had been handed over to a rotating cast of characters Most of whom were openly allied with the political left.

00:30:57.000 And there had been not a peep, not an iota, not a whit of dissent inside Politico.

00:31:04.000 Let's say, for example, that literally the day before I wrote the Politico playbook, Chris Hayes, who has gone kind of crazy, It was writing the political playbook.

00:31:11.000 When I say he's gone kind of crazy, I mean that within the last 48 hours, Chris Hayes suggested that Amy Coney Barrett should basically resign her Supreme Court seat because Donald Trump appointed her to it because she is somehow complicit in the Capitol riot.

00:31:22.000 I mean, like he tweeted out a picture of Amy Coney Barrett with Trump and he's like, well, maybe she has this picture on her wall.

00:31:29.000 As though she is responsible for Trump's behavior, or as though you're supposed to turn down a Supreme Court nomination because Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

00:31:35.000 So Chris Hayes has not been, I would say, the most responsible or factual actor in all of this.

00:31:41.000 Did I call for his deplatforming?

00:31:42.000 No.

00:31:43.000 Have I ever called for advertisers to drop him?

00:31:44.000 Not once.

00:31:46.000 Was I upset that Playbook decided to let him edit the playbook?

00:31:48.000 Of course not!

00:31:49.000 Okay, nor was anyone at Playbook.

00:31:51.000 No one was.

00:31:52.000 Okay, Ken Burns, who's an open member of the left, he wrote the playbook.

00:31:56.000 Yamiche Alcindor, who's an incredibly open member of the anti-Trump left, she wrote the playbook earlier this week.

00:32:02.000 Okay, so then I write the playbook.

00:32:03.000 And everyone loses it.

00:32:05.000 It trends on Twitter.

00:32:05.000 Loses it, right?

00:32:06.000 And when it trends on Twitter, you have to understand that your elite media guardians, the new ruling class, all the people who went to the same schools and speak the language of vokery, Twitter is like the place they go.

00:32:18.000 It's basically like a listserv.

00:32:19.000 Twitter.

00:32:21.000 is where they go to have their public internal discussions.

00:32:24.000 And so you start hearing news that on the Slack channels, at Twitter, at Politico, people are very angry on the Slack channels.

00:32:30.000 Ooh, they're typing mean messages about Politico management into Slack.

00:32:35.000 Now, let me say this, okay?

00:32:36.000 Politico's management, they actually did the right thing.

00:32:39.000 I couldn't believe it, honestly.

00:32:41.000 Like, good for them.

00:32:42.000 Good for them!

00:32:43.000 Really, like, they asked me to do it.

00:32:44.000 They stood by it.

00:32:46.000 They did one thing, which they didn't do for anybody else, which is that in their PM playbook edition, they then ran a letter to the editor essentially from somebody who opposed me.

00:32:52.000 They didn't do that for anyone else this week.

00:32:54.000 But overall, they stood up and they said, listen, we publish a wide range of views and that's important.

00:33:00.000 OK, but what the management did is actually less indicative of what the media are than what the staff did.

00:33:05.000 So the staff absolutely rebelled.

00:33:06.000 People went insane.

00:33:07.000 I was getting messages from people who I know with whom I am friends over in the political stuff.

00:33:11.000 Yes, I have friends on the left and I talk with them.

00:33:15.000 And so they were giving me live updates on what was going on.

00:33:18.000 Apparently somebody on the call compared me to David Duke.

00:33:21.000 It was like having David Duke write the political playbook.

00:33:24.000 Yes, correct.

00:33:25.000 The Orthodox Jew, who's the number one enemy of the alt-right and the number one recipient of anti-Semitism.

00:33:30.000 You're right.

00:33:31.000 It's just like David Duke, guys.

00:33:32.000 100% like David Duke.

00:33:34.000 You're not in a bubble at all.

00:33:34.000 Well done.

00:33:36.000 At all.

00:33:37.000 Okay, it got so bad yesterday that 225 pseudo-journalists over at Politico had a staff call.

00:33:46.000 225 with the management.

00:33:49.000 Now, let me tell you what would happen if we printed a piece and members of our staff came to us and they were like, we are very sad and upset that you printed this piece.

00:33:55.000 I'd be like, that's nice.

00:33:56.000 Now go back to your cubicle and write.

00:33:58.000 That's exactly how that conversation would go.

00:34:00.000 Because you know what? 0.99

00:34:02.000 As the editor of the publication, Don't give a crap. 0.98

00:34:04.000 But they had to have a little bit of a struggle session because this is how it works in modern media. 0.99

00:34:08.000 You don't want your upset woke staffers to go on Twitter and say the means about you and quit in despair and undercut you with your base.

00:34:15.000 I mean, it was so funny.

00:34:16.000 I mean, I was getting calls from people inside Politico yesterday.

00:34:20.000 I won't mention names.

00:34:21.000 I'm not going to say what positions they held.

00:34:22.000 And they were like, I can't believe this is happening.

00:34:24.000 I was like, how can you not believe this is happening?

00:34:25.000 I told you it was going to happen.

00:34:27.000 Okay, in any case, this was reported with breathless anxiety by members of the media, like Eric Wemple from the Washington Post, like Maxwell Tani from the Daily Beast.

00:34:38.000 How could they have turned over Politico playbook to that sick guy?

00:34:44.000 By the way, just quick note.

00:34:46.000 So 225 of the... There's so many things to say about this.

00:34:48.000 One, the newsroom was angry.

00:34:51.000 Not the people at the editorial side.

00:34:54.000 The newsroom.

00:34:55.000 So, I was under the impression the newsroom was supposed to be above a bunch of objective, factual-based journalists who are just there to report the news.

00:35:02.000 I was not aware that the newsroom could be so upset about a viewpoint on what effectually is an op-ed page.

00:35:10.000 If there is a strict divide between news and op-ed, then I'm just wondering, if the newsroom people, they don't have any political angle, why is it that there was universal rage in the newsroom at all this?

00:35:21.000 But don't worry, guys, they're so objective, they're so fair-minded.

00:35:24.000 And by the way, there were some people at the Politico staff who were like, this is overblown.

00:35:27.000 And Eric Wemple, who was reporting all day on this yesterday, he explicitly said they weren't speaking up because they were afraid of the blowback inside the Slack channels, inside the call.

00:35:37.000 So people at Politico went nuts.

00:35:39.000 Maxwell Taney was reporting that Politico was basically in flames yesterday.

00:35:45.000 People, oh my God, the outrage, the insane outrage.

00:35:49.000 It was all day trending.

00:35:51.000 Politico is facing backlash on Thursday, both internally and externally, for handing over the keys to its signature news product for the day, to Ben Shapiro, an oft-incendiary right-wing commentator.

00:36:02.000 Honest to God.

00:36:03.000 When they say I am oft-incendiary, Wait, it would behoove them to listen to, like, a episode of the show.

00:36:10.000 A episode.

00:36:10.000 Okay, well, Matt Kaminski, he, um, good for him.

00:36:15.000 Seriously, good for Matt Kaminski.

00:36:17.000 Okay, the, the Outlast top editor.

00:36:19.000 He said, we published a piece by a very prominent writer, provocateur, and podcaster.

00:36:22.000 We stand by every word in there.

00:36:23.000 It was very closely edited.

00:36:25.000 And then he said, mischief-making has always been a part of Politico's secret sauce.

00:36:28.000 We were an upstart.

00:36:28.000 Some of that sensibility is always going to be a part of this publication.

00:36:31.000 So, again, let me repeat.

00:36:33.000 Nothing but plaudits for Politico's editors for doing what is, objectively speaking, the right thing.

00:36:37.000 Standing by people that you actually asked to write for you.

00:36:40.000 Unlike the coward Jeffrey Goldberg over at The Atlantic with Kevin Williamson.

00:36:44.000 Hours later, says the Daily Beast, during a staff-wide Zoom call to address the controversy, staffers were vocally upset and demanded answers for why Company Brass published Shapiro the day after Congress voted to impeach President Trump for the second time.

00:36:57.000 Okay, I have a question.

00:36:59.000 Number one, we pre-scheduled this thing, like, weeks in advance.

00:37:01.000 I did not pick the day.

00:37:03.000 They picked the day.

00:37:04.000 It was weeks in advance.

00:37:06.000 I wouldn't have minded if they moved the day.

00:37:07.000 I didn't care.

00:37:08.000 Okay, so it actually happened to be coincidence that this is how the calendar fell out.

00:37:12.000 It was not like they came to me the day of the impeachment like, would you like to write tomorrow's playbook?

00:37:15.000 In any case, just as a factual matter.

00:37:17.000 But beyond that, I love the way this is reported at the garbage Daily Beast.

00:37:21.000 So I do love that the Daily Beast reports this like, well, it was the day after, especially the day after the impeachment.

00:37:27.000 How could you turn over the playbook?

00:37:29.000 You're right.

00:37:30.000 The rule under the Constitution is that if he's impeached in the House, but then I write the playbook the day after, he's unimpeached in the House.

00:37:36.000 That's actually in the Constitution.

00:37:37.000 It's Article 57, Clause 2.

00:37:40.000 Kaminsky said, we're not going to back away from having published something because some people think it was a mistake to do so.

00:37:45.000 And then they point out that lots of people have written the playbook recently.

00:37:48.000 By the way, Chuck Todd is doing it.

00:37:50.000 There are other conservatives who are slated to do this?

00:37:52.000 On Thursday, Politico turned the newsletter over to Shapiro, said the Daily Beast, who used the space for a column making the case that House Republicans who voted against impeaching Trump, despite his repeated lies about the 2020 election and stoking of riders, are right to feel aggrieved.

00:38:05.000 Shapiro's guest appearance was not particularly well-received.

00:38:08.000 Internally at Politico, several staffers raised concerns about the decision to allow him to guest-write the key newsletter even for one day.

00:38:16.000 One staffer pointed out in a company-wide Slack channel, the right-wing pundit has a long history of bigoted and incendiary...

00:38:23.000 Sorry, I fell asleep because that is so boring.

00:38:26.000 Seriously.

00:38:27.000 I have full articles on my own website in which I have talked about my most controversial comments and either apologized for or explained them, which is something no one else in media so far, like literally no one else in media so far, as I am aware, has ever done.

00:38:38.000 Okay, if you're going to claim to me that many of the people who are writing Politico's playbook have never said a bad thing ever, that they are all pure as the driven snow, that's nonsense.

00:38:47.000 Basically, it was, he wrote something I don't like, and now I'm really, really mad.

00:38:50.000 He's conservative, and I'm really, really, really mad.

00:38:52.000 The staffer said, it has clearly generated a wave of negative attention.

00:38:55.000 First of all, nobody reads the playbook.

00:38:56.000 I'll bet you they had better traffic on the playbook yesterday than they have had in five years.

00:39:00.000 I'll guarantee it, in fact.

00:39:01.000 The staffer said, it has clearly generated a wave of negative attention.

00:39:04.000 I fear it's already overshadowing a lot of great work being done by journalists across this newsroom.

00:39:08.000 The comment received several dozen upvotes from, wow, upvotes.

00:39:11.000 Apparently, there were a bunch of smile emojis also.

00:39:15.000 Ooh, the emoji brigade is at it again.

00:39:19.000 This is especially confusing given the newsroom's welcome efforts over the last year to cover issues related to race in a more intentional, elevated, thoughtful way, said another staffer.

00:39:26.000 Oh, you mean like how the left would like?

00:39:29.000 Outside the Beltway-centric outlet, reporters and columnists alike voiced anger and disappointment with Politico's decision.

00:39:36.000 Okay, by the way, it's all left-wing.

00:39:39.000 They never quote anybody from the right, of course. 0.81

00:39:40.000 It's all a bunch of left-wing people who hate my guts.

00:39:43.000 Apparently, during a heated Zoom call, several employees compared Shapiro to right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. 1.00

00:39:48.000 Are you out of your f***ing minds? 0.98

00:39:51.000 You're comparing me to Alex Jones and David Duke? 1.00

00:39:55.000 Are you out of your f***ing minds? 1.00

00:39:59.000 Like, what is wrong with you? 1.00

00:40:00.000 What is wrong with you?

00:40:03.000 But this was my entire point!

00:40:04.000 My entire point was you're going to lump us all together, and then you're going to declare us all deplorable, and then you're going to excise us from the public debate.

00:40:09.000 That was literally the point of the piece.

00:40:10.000 I read you the entirety of it.

00:40:11.000 That was the point of the piece.

00:40:12.000 And you all went, you know what?

00:40:14.000 You know what?

00:40:15.000 Shapiro is wrong, so we're going to do everything he predicted we would do, and we're going to do it in exactly the way we said he was going to do it.

00:40:21.000 That's how wrong he is.

00:40:22.000 To prove he is wrong, we will do all the things that prove him right.

00:40:26.000 Another staffer said the top editor was dismissive of the concerns brought up throughout the chat.

00:40:31.000 But some Politico staffers stood by the publication's decision to publish, saying they were too afraid to speak up on the calls out of fear of being criticized by their colleagues.

00:40:38.000 That's what an open-minded organization looks like, is that you're super-duper afraid of being criticized by your colleagues.

00:40:43.000 Again, I have friends within many of these newsrooms.

00:40:46.000 I have friends within many of the editorial boards of many of these websites.

00:40:49.000 I talk to lots of people.

00:40:50.000 In fact, because it's my birthday, it's time to play one of my favorite birthday games.

00:40:54.000 One of my favorite birthday games is when all the people who I'm friends with at leftist publications send me a text that says happy birthday, but will never acknowledge that I have had a birthday publicly, because that would acknowledge I'm a human being born of woman.

00:41:05.000 Because then they would get backlash.

00:41:06.000 Okay, we're gonna get into more of this in just one second, but it just, it demonstrates the complete disconnect, and it's that disconnect that is wrecking the social fabric that's been going on for years.

00:41:14.000 It preceded Trump, it brought about Trump, it will post-date Trump, and it's gonna get worse.

00:41:18.000 We'll get to this in just one second.

00:41:19.000 First, let us talk about how hard it is to stay in shape these days.

00:41:23.000 Maybe your gym is shut down because of COVID.

00:41:25.000 Maybe it is.

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00:41:31.000 Well, I have a solution for you right now.

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00:42:01.000 It's the bike for competitors at heart.

00:42:03.000 Their world-class instructors will motivate you with thousands of daily live and on-demand studio-level classes always available when you need them.

00:42:09.000 Unlike their competitors, Echelon is affordable for everyone and one membership lets up to five family members all work out at the same time.

00:42:16.000 Right now you can try any Echelon fitness equipment at home for 30 days.

00:42:18.000 So my wife actually requested that we get some exercise equipment for her during the pandemic.

00:42:23.000 And I, like a good husband, got her an Echelon.

00:42:26.000 And it didn't cost me a fortune.

00:42:27.000 Like, for example, a Peloton would.

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00:42:34.000 You can do the same.

00:42:36.000 Awesome product.

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00:42:37.000 Go to echelonfit.com slash Ben.

00:42:39.000 That's E-C-H-E-L-O-N fit.com slash Ben.

00:42:42.000 If you made a New Year's resolution to get yourself in shape, Echelon's the way to do it.

00:42:45.000 Head on over to echelonfit.com slash Ben.

00:42:48.000 All right, we're gonna get into more of the politico meltdown and then how this ties into broader trends in American public life that are gonna make things a lot worse in the very near future.

00:42:58.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:43:00.000 First, last night, it was a big, big night for DailyWire.

00:43:03.000 Really exciting for us.

00:43:04.000 We made our entrance into entertainment content with our first feature film, Run, Hide, Fight.

00:43:08.000 If you missed it, head on over to dailywire.com.

00:43:10.000 You can watch it right now.

00:43:11.000 The movie's awesome.

00:43:12.000 Like, it really is excellent.

00:43:13.000 I've now watched it twice.

00:43:14.000 It is better the second time.

00:43:15.000 It is just terrific.

00:43:16.000 We've seen the audience reviews.

00:43:17.000 We've seen the audience response.

00:43:19.000 People are enthused about the film.

00:43:21.000 It is great.

00:43:22.000 It is tense.

00:43:22.000 It is an excellent thriller.

00:43:24.000 And it's not going to suck or punch you with leftist garbage. 0.99

00:43:26.000 Please be aware the film isn't political. 0.99

00:43:28.000 It is for mature audiences only.

00:43:28.000 It is intense.

00:43:30.000 I've warned you several times about this.

00:43:31.000 The same for the kiddies.

00:43:32.000 Okay, it does have language.

00:43:34.000 It does have violence.

00:43:35.000 It has all the stuff that you would see on Netflix.

00:43:38.000 Or Amazon Prime.

00:43:39.000 Except it's not going to sucker punch you in the face because you happen to be conservative.

00:43:42.000 It stars Isabel May, Thomas Chain, Radha Mitchell.

00:43:44.000 Run, hide, fight, it follows Zoe Hall. 0.98

00:43:45.000 She's a high school student coping with the recent loss of her mother.

00:43:48.000 All she wants is to get through the last few weeks of her senior year and leave for college with a fresh start. 0.84

00:43:51.000 Instead, her high school is attacked by four nihilistic, gun-toting school shooters.

00:43:55.000 They plan to make their siege the worst school shooting in history.

00:43:58.000 Using her wits and survival skills, Zoe fights back to save her fellow students.

00:44:01.000 It really is a glorification of heroism and a and a rip on the evils of the villains.

00:44:09.000 It's a very, very moral picture.

00:44:10.000 We are excited to bring you great stories Hollywood refuses to tell.

00:44:13.000 We hope you will join us.

00:44:14.000 Become a member today over at dailywire.com.

00:44:16.000 We've been talking for a long time about the culture wars and about how the left is attacking on all fronts.

00:44:20.000 If you want to take back the culture, we need your support at dailywire.com to make that happen.

00:44:25.000 We need to get into the entertainment sphere.

00:44:26.000 We need to offer people on an alternative to the agitprop you see on so many of your favorite entertainment offering channels.

00:44:33.000 We're getting into that business.

00:44:34.000 It's expensive.

00:44:34.000 We need your help.

00:44:35.000 Head on over to dailywire.com right now and become a member if you have not already.

00:44:38.000 And you can see Run Hyde Fight, which is just an awesome piece of filmmaking.

00:44:42.000 you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:44:45.000 So, how out of touch are the folks at Politico?

00:44:52.000 So this is my favorite quote.

00:44:53.000 So Eric Wemple of the Washington Post, media critic, who of course is biased to the left because he just is.

00:44:58.000 I mean, he works for the Washington Post.

00:45:00.000 That is not a surprise.

00:45:01.000 Here is what he tweeted yesterday.

00:45:03.000 One staffer in today's meeting at Politico over Ben Shapiro's guest written playbook argued that the decision to publish his thoughts complicates frequent conversations with Republicans and conservatives.

00:45:12.000 Quote is what a person said.

00:45:13.000 OK, you ready?

00:45:15.000 I'm spending all this time trying to convince them that we're here for them and that there's a difference between what Ben Shapiro is doing and what Alex Jones is doing and what Politico is trying to do.

00:45:23.000 And then just to have Ben Shapiro on the top thing that we publish undermines this huge problem in our country right now, which is just people don't even know who to trust.

00:45:30.000 People don't know where to go to get information that is correct.

00:45:33.000 I don't even know what to do, how to go to tell them not to listen to Ben Shapiro because we published Ben Shapiro, the place that I work for.

00:45:41.000 So how can I get back on my soapbox and say there's a difference between news that's trying to give you information and news that is opinion, that is not fact-checked, that is not true?

00:45:48.000 How do we separate Ben Shapiro from what we are doing?

00:45:54.000 Here's the thing.

00:45:55.000 You say that you're trying to separate your news from opinion.

00:45:58.000 And your chief complaint is that you are trying deliberately to stop people from hearing opposing points of view.

00:46:04.000 Your view of your job is to set up a monopoly on information in which you are the only good source, and anyone who disagrees is akin to Alex Jones.

00:46:12.000 So I don't trust you, and people shouldn't trust you.

00:46:15.000 So as an award for Politico, demonstrating my point, we sent the Politico staff, or are in the process of sending them, 225.

00:46:23.000 There are 225 staffers on this call, which is insane, by the way.

00:46:28.000 225 staffers just to complain that I had written a piece, a piece, for Politico.

00:46:33.000 And we sent them 225 Leftist Tears tumblers.

00:46:38.000 We don't want them to get their desks wet from all of their tears.

00:46:40.000 They need something to catch all of the moisture freely flowing from their faces over this horrific, horrific act.

00:46:46.000 The fact that they see it as their mission to get people to stop listening to this show.

00:46:49.000 Just remember that.

00:46:50.000 Remember that.

00:46:51.000 It is the mission of so many members of the media to stop people from hearing opposing voices.

00:46:56.000 No one on the right is telling you not to read Politico.

00:46:58.000 I have never said that you should not read Politico.

00:47:00.000 I've said you should read it.

00:47:01.000 You should keep their bias in mind.

00:47:02.000 Read Politico.

00:47:03.000 Read the New York Times.

00:47:04.000 Read the Washington Post.

00:47:05.000 Read all of these places.

00:47:06.000 Do it!

00:47:07.000 Don't subscribe if you don't want to actually support them.

00:47:09.000 But sure, read them and get their opinions.

00:47:10.000 I've told you to go listen to Pod Save America.

00:47:12.000 You think they're ever going to say that about me?

00:47:13.000 They would love to get me deplatformed.

00:47:15.000 They would love to have all my advertisers drop.

00:47:16.000 Okay?

00:47:17.000 I have been perfectly open about the fact that this is an opinion show.

00:47:21.000 I've been perfectly open about my own opinions.

00:47:23.000 Nobody is suggesting that I am objective because I am not objective.

00:47:27.000 What I do try to do on this show is be honest with you about what is factually based and what is my opinion.

00:47:32.000 That is something that the jackasses at the political newsroom don't bother to do. 1.00

00:47:36.000 Which means, yes, I do look down on them because I am more honest than they are. 0.94

00:47:40.000 I will give you my opinion.

00:47:41.000 I will give you the facts.

00:47:42.000 I will tell you the difference.

00:47:43.000 Over at Politico, they believe it is literally their mission to stop people from listening to the show.

00:47:47.000 And how can they tell their friends and family not to listen to the show after I wrote an opinion piece for Playbook?

00:47:53.000 The goal here is not dialogue.

00:47:56.000 The goal here is not a better social fabric.

00:47:59.000 The goal here is not truth.

00:48:00.000 It is not the search for truth.

00:48:02.000 The goal here is to silence.

00:48:03.000 That is the goal.

00:48:05.000 And they're being perfectly open about it now.

00:48:07.000 Now it's out in the open.

00:48:08.000 We've known this for a long time.

00:48:09.000 And then they wonder, and then they wonder why we're not making comment, because I can't.

00:48:13.000 I literally cannot.

00:48:14.000 It is not possible.

00:48:16.000 You are attempting to lump me in with people I have explicitly derided.

00:48:20.000 And then you're like, oh yeah, well, but we can't, why won't they make common cause?

00:48:23.000 Why aren't they on our side?

00:48:24.000 Yeah, I can't imagine.

00:48:25.000 I mean, it's almost like I wrote a piece in your publication about this.

00:48:29.000 And then you went ahead and just explicitly did what I predicted you would do to prove my point. 1.00

00:48:34.000 Slow clap for the geniuses at the political newsroom, you idiots. 0.99

00:48:38.000 Okay, meanwhile, Twitter has announced that they want to make the conversation better by basically shutting down a lot of the conversation. 0.99

00:48:45.000 So Jack Dorsey, yesterday, he was like, yeah, I feel like we have a problem here because on the one hand, we don't want people to foment violence, and on the other hand, we would like to shut down all the opinions we don't like.

00:48:54.000 So what's the middle road?

00:48:56.000 What exactly do we do?

00:48:57.000 And so yesterday, James O'Keefe got some audio of Jack Dorsey from an internal phone call, I believe, talking about making the conversation better at Twitter.

00:49:06.000 He says, banning Trump is just the beginning.

00:49:08.000 Now again, you can dislike what Trump has to say.

00:49:12.000 You can think Trump tweets things that are not true.

00:49:13.000 In fact, Twitter had been putting on nearly every one of Trump's tweets a fact check, like a little fact check notification.

00:49:19.000 That fact check notification did not apply to a wide variety of other falsehoods that were being told on Twitter, so those rules were not being evenly applied.

00:49:24.000 But, then they just banned him.

00:49:26.000 And they banned him because they were like, yeah, if Trump speaks, people are gonna get violent.

00:49:29.000 Which is a hell of a standard to put on anybody.

00:49:32.000 That if somebody reads speech that is not calling for violence and then gets violent, that's the fault of the person speaking.

00:49:38.000 That is a—then Twitter should—honestly, if that's the case, then Twitter should literally be offline.

00:49:42.000 Amazon Web Services should cancel Twitter in the same way they canceled Parler.

00:49:45.000 By the way, there is evidence that people were using Twitter in order to coordinate for the capital riots, as well as Facebook.

00:49:49.000 So when is Amazon Web Services going to deplatform both of those?

00:49:52.000 Anyway, here's Jack Dorsey talking about the new standards on Twitter.

00:49:57.000 We are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account.

00:50:02.000 And it's going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week, in the next few weeks.

00:50:07.000 It's going to go on beyond the inauguration.

00:50:09.000 The U.S.

00:50:10.000 is extremely divided.

00:50:12.000 Our platform is showing it.

00:50:15.000 We're seeing it.

00:50:16.000 And our role is to take the integrity of that conversation and do what we can to make sure that no one is being harmed based off that.

00:50:25.000 Okay, so again, the focus for the left is always on how do we quote unquote minimize harm.

00:50:30.000 But the way that they define harm always seems a little bit too broad.

00:50:35.000 So if they're talking about threats of violence, obviously that stuff should be removed.

00:50:38.000 If they're talking about plans for violence, obviously that stuff should be removed.

00:50:41.000 But there's a tendency on the left to conflate everything when they call for violence.

00:50:45.000 In fact, one of the complaints inside Politico apparently on the call is that I was making people feel unsafe, which is just like, come on. 0.93

00:50:51.000 Come on, you whiny babies. 1.00

00:50:54.000 Making you feel unsafe. 0.74

00:50:56.000 I have like 24-7 security because of death threats, and now I'm making you feel unsafe because I wrote that maybe Republicans feel excised from the public debate?

00:51:04.000 I mean, the term snowflakes is overused, but my goodness, it's a blizzard over at Politico.

00:51:11.000 Pretty impressive stuff.

00:51:12.000 So, You know, that is unfortunately where things stand in the state of the United States media.

00:51:20.000 Meanwhile, members of Congress continue to foster this sort of attitude as well.

00:51:24.000 The Honorable, Right Honorable, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-Twitch.

00:51:28.000 She tweeted out yesterday in the middle of the Politico hubbub, and I can only assume that she was subtweeting the situation.

00:51:32.000 People really twist themselves into knots, giving platforms to white supremacists and their enablers like, come on everyone, we must listen to both sides equally, fact and fiction.

00:51:40.000 Hey, first of all, I find it super ironic hearing from AOC about fact and fiction when she literally said, on tape, on camera, that it does not matter whether you are factually accurate so long as you are morally true.

00:51:50.000 And that is a thing that AOC actually said.

00:51:52.000 I mean, she prevaricates an awful lot when it comes to politics, but not a particular surprise. 1.00

00:51:56.000 Everybody who's her opponent is a white supremacist. 0.96

00:51:58.000 And not only that, they ought to be silenced. 0.86

00:52:00.000 She's also the same person who suggested, over the course of the past 72 hours, that Congress ought to look into reigning in the media.

00:52:09.000 Now, call me crazy.

00:52:12.000 I remember there's this thing called the First Amendment that literally says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

00:52:17.000 He literally says it.

00:52:19.000 Cute gif of dry ramen guy pointing at the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

00:52:26.000 Come on, but don't worry.

00:52:28.000 AOC says that everybody she doesn't like is a white supremacist and should be de-platformed, but everything is going absolutely great.

00:52:33.000 And Twitter, of course, is jumping on the bandwagon.

00:52:36.000 By the way, and the media are cheering that.

00:52:38.000 The media are absolutely cheering de-platforming as fast as humanly possible.

00:52:43.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:52:45.000 Okay, so here is an example.

00:52:47.000 The media, the media who are supposed to be pro-free speech, I've been complaining about this for a very long time, is that members of the media have been for a long time cheering on social media censorship.

00:52:56.000 They want it.

00:52:57.000 They are desperate for it.

00:52:58.000 The thing they hate most in the land is the fact that people do listen to shows like this.

00:53:02.000 This is what the Politico staffers were saying on their call.

00:53:05.000 How can we convince people not to visit Daily Wire after we printed Ben Shapiro?

00:53:08.000 How can we stop people from listening to his podcast?

00:53:11.000 It's not about freedom of the press.

00:53:13.000 They don't care about freedom of the press for you. 0.99

00:53:14.000 They don't care about freedom of speech for you, you silly. 0.97

00:53:17.000 They care about freedom of speech for them, so that they can give you their perspective. 0.94

00:53:20.000 But your perspective is of no consequence, and all elements of distribution of information should be twisted so that only they, they and only they, have a monopoly on the dissemination of information.

00:53:31.000 So, here's an article from the technology section of the Washington Post.

00:53:35.000 And it's all about how the tech bros had the power all along.

00:53:39.000 And isn't that wonderful?

00:53:40.000 Craig Timberg writing, During President Trump's first impeachment in December 2019, he tweeted more than 600 times, an average of 58 times a day.

00:53:46.000 One of the last said, can you believe I will be impeached today by the radical left, do nothing Democrats, and I did nothing wrong.

00:53:51.000 During President Trump's second impeachment this week, he tweeted not once.

00:53:55.000 This shift, the silence was momentous, made possible by Twitter's decision Friday to ban him from the platform.

00:54:00.000 It may take historians years to grasp the full implications of the social media hurricane that Trump has conjured ever since he announced his intention to run for president five and a half years ago.

00:54:09.000 But it took a single week, underscored by a single remarkable day, to appreciate what happened when that storm headed back out to sea.

00:54:15.000 This emerging new world, free from Trump's tweets and the kaleidoscope of reactions to Trump's tweets, has dawned suddenly, costing the president his ability to speak directly with 88 million followers, unfiltered by journalists or other traditional gatekeepers, with a few finger taps on his iPhone.

00:54:29.000 Trump's ability to shape events has diminished dramatically since he was banned on Friday night.

00:54:33.000 Twitter's decision removed an account analysts said helped fuel the rage that consumed the U.S. 0.69

00:54:37.000 Capitol last week and is threatening to flare again.

00:54:40.000 But Twitter's action also removed a bountiful source of ideas and impressions followed avidly by his supporters.

00:54:44.000 Joan Donovan, Research Director at the Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy says this week will echo in history as the moment when Trump was unable to shape reality in real time.

00:54:55.000 And the whole article is about the power of the small group of companies.

00:54:59.000 Yeah, a small group of companies already with commanding power over the American economy, headquartered in liberal West Coast enclaves, has demonstrated rising corporate power over the national political debate.

00:55:08.000 While Twitter is punishing Trump, in the span of a few days, Google, Apple, Amazon also moved against a social media site favored by his supporters, Parler, pushing it out of the app stores.

00:55:16.000 All this happened after years in which the same companies studiously avoided challenging Trump and his backers, publicly embracing a high-toned doctrine of free speech, far beyond that required by the First Amendment, which constrains the federal government, not private companies.

00:55:27.000 So here it is.

00:55:28.000 Here is the media itself, the beneficiary of the First Amendment.

00:55:32.000 Democracy dies in darkness, Washington Post.

00:55:34.000 These social media companies and their high standards of free speech, they don't need to do that.

00:55:38.000 They're private companies.

00:55:39.000 Why are they doing that?

00:55:41.000 They should stop that.

00:55:42.000 The only thing they should publish is the Washington Post.

00:55:45.000 Anybody who believes that there's a real commitment to free speech and diversity of thought in the halls of our press?

00:55:50.000 Yeah, no, there ain't.

00:55:52.000 There just ain't.

00:55:53.000 Again, some of us have called for neutral rules of neutral applicability.

00:55:58.000 Some of us just want the rules applied against our enemies.

00:56:01.000 When the left is in power, they just want the rules applied against their enemies.

00:56:04.000 That is all they want.

00:56:06.000 The turnabout was abrupt, says the Washington Post, and, as many have noted, timely, given that it came as Democrats took control of the Senate and President-elect Joe Biden's path to the White House, became assured.

00:56:17.000 And so, again, the idea from the media over and over and over again is that it's very bad that these social media sites were open, now they are closing, and that's a good thing.

00:56:24.000 That's a good thing, because then we can have a left-wing media monopoly again.

00:56:27.000 Now, here's one of the problems with a left-wing media monopoly.

00:56:30.000 Here's one of the problems.

00:56:32.000 They routinely say things that are not true.

00:56:34.000 Just patently not true.

00:56:36.000 So for months, up to the present day, we had headlines from places like the Washington Post, alleging that in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Jacob Blake, an alleged rapist, who went to his ex-girlfriend's house, the one he had allegedly digitally raped, and then she called the cops, the cops came, he resisted arrest, He threw the cops off his back.

00:56:56.000 He refused to obey orders.

00:56:57.000 He walked around the other side of the car.

00:57:00.000 He reached down to the floorboards and there was a knife and he was shot.

00:57:02.000 The Washington Post printed a headline not all that long ago suggesting that the cops had shot an unarmed man.

00:57:07.000 This was the going headline for a while, right?

00:57:09.000 The tape shows that he was a victim of police brutality.

00:57:12.000 How convincing was the narrative put out by the media?

00:57:15.000 The narrative was so convincing that Kamala Harris personally called Jacob Blake, an alleged rapist who's resisting arrest, Joe Biden met with Jacob Blake's family to talk about systemic police racism.

00:57:28.000 Riots racked Kenosha.

00:57:31.000 And now it turns out that Jacob Blake is speaking to ABC News, and he actually is telling the truth about what happened that night.

00:57:38.000 And it is not the narrative, as it turns out.

00:57:40.000 It turns out that Jacob Blake is, in fact, allegedly, and according to his own admission, a violent criminal.

00:57:46.000 Who could have foreseen such an eventuality?

00:57:49.000 I mean, we were told by people like Benjamin Crump that he was unarmed and victimized by the cops.

00:57:53.000 The only person who's arguing with that assessment is all of the videotape, all of the officers, and the alleged victim himself.

00:57:58.000 Here is Jacob Blake on ABC News admitting that he was carrying a knife and going for a knife when he was shot by the cops.

00:58:05.000 All we had was months of false media coverage on this, but those are the people who should have a monopoly over your ability to access information.

00:58:10.000 You shouldn't be able to listen to a podcast like this who is saying since day one that that's what happened.

00:58:16.000 Okay, here's Jacob Blake admitting the truth.

00:58:19.000 I'm rattled.

00:58:21.000 You know, I realized I had dropped my knife.

00:58:23.000 That little pocket knife.

00:58:27.000 So I picked it up after I got off of him.

00:58:30.000 Because they tased me and I fell on top of him.

00:58:34.000 With an open knife in hand that Blake says fell out of his pocket, he walks around the front of the vehicle towards the driver's side door.

00:58:41.000 What are you thinking at that point?

00:58:43.000 I'm not really worried.

00:58:44.000 I'm walking away from them, so it's not like they're gonna shoot me.

00:58:48.000 I shouldn't have picked it up.

00:58:50.000 Yeah, oh, but I was informed you were unarmed, sir.

00:58:53.000 That's what I was informed.

00:58:54.000 By your attorney, we were informed.

00:58:57.000 The world was informed of this alleged fact.

00:58:59.000 And this became the cause of destruction of property, destruction of businesses, risk to lives, injury in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

00:59:08.000 But those media, you should trust them.

00:59:09.000 You should absolutely, to the point where only they, only they should be able to speak.

00:59:14.000 Again, the game that the media have been playing with the social media companies, I've been on this for years at this point, the game that members of the media have been playing with social media is social media was designed in order to facilitate broader conversation and broader dissemination of information.

00:59:27.000 The media got angry at that.

00:59:28.000 And so they decided, you know what?

00:59:30.000 We've lost our monopoly.

00:59:31.000 Let's reestablish our monopoly by pressuring the social media companies to crack down on the people we don't like by setting up bullcrap fact checkers.

00:59:38.000 That the social media companies can use in order to crack down on our competitors, and we can claim that dissemination of false information is only on the other side of the aisle, so the only people you should be able to access are, wait for it, wait for it, us.

00:59:49.000 Wow.

00:59:49.000 Who could have predicted?

00:59:50.000 And then we can promulgate whatever false narrative we want, and you won't have any ability to access the alternative information.

00:59:56.000 And you wonder why folks on the right are suspicious of your motives in the media?

00:59:59.000 You wonder why we don't trust you?

01:00:01.000 We shouldn't trust you, because you're not trustworthy.

01:00:03.000 That's why.

01:00:04.000 And I'm glad that the editors at Politico had the stones to actually stand by the decision to let me write in their pages.

01:00:11.000 I'm grateful for that.

01:00:12.000 But the staffers, what they did is much more telling to me about the state of the media than what a couple of editors with spine actually had to say.

01:00:18.000 Because here's the truth, most of these editors do not have spine across the broad scale media.

01:00:23.000 And they're not policing every single piece that goes out.

01:00:26.000 Meanwhile, in other narratives that have been exploded, at least just a little bit.

01:00:30.000 So, it happens to be that there's a lot of claim in the aftermath of the Capitol riot that there are some claims by folks on the right that there are a lot of Antifa involved.

01:00:39.000 And I said day one, I did not see evidence that a lot of Antifa was involved.

01:00:42.000 I still don't see evidence that a lot of Antifa was involved, but there was at least one member of a left-wing group.

01:00:47.000 There was a left-wing activist who has now been charged.

01:00:50.000 This left-wing activist was interviewed on CNN by Anderson Cooper, unbelievably enough.

01:00:54.000 According to the Daily Caller, federal prosecutors on Thursday announced charges against John Sullivan, a self-described left-wing activist who recorded the fatal police shooting of a Trump supporter inside the U.S.

01:01:01.000 Capitol last week.

01:01:03.000 Sullivan, the founder of a group called Insurgents USA, which formed in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, is charged with illegally entering the Capitol, civil disorder, and violent or disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

01:01:13.000 Sullivan, 26, faces separate charges of rioting and criminal mischief in connection with an incident in Provo, Utah, on June 30, 2020, where a person was shot and injured during a protest against police brutality.

01:01:23.000 An FBI affidavit issued against Sullivan on Thursday cites comments he made on video he recorded during the Capitol breach.

01:01:28.000 Sullivan told FBI agents as well as members of the media he showed up at the Capitol to document the activities of Trump supporters, but the FBI affidavit indicates Sullivan was acting more as an active participant in the riots than as a journalist.

01:01:40.000 There are so many people.

01:01:41.000 Let's go.

01:01:41.000 This bleep is ours.

01:01:42.000 F-yeah, he is heard saying in the video, according to an FBI affidavit from FBI Special Agent Matthew Folger.

01:01:48.000 We accomplished this bleep.

01:01:49.000 We did this together.

01:01:50.000 F-yeah, we are all a part of this history. 0.95

01:01:52.000 Let's burn this bleep down.

01:01:55.000 In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper hours after the fatal shooting, Solomon acknowledged he was not a Trump supporter but denied instigating the rioters who stormed the Capitol.

01:02:02.000 I don't want to see people get hurt unnecessarily, he told Cooper.

01:02:06.000 Hmm.

01:02:07.000 Yeah, so there was that.

01:02:09.000 That's a thing.

01:02:09.000 The Daily Caller reported that.

01:02:11.000 That has not been widely reported yet in the establishment media, which is not exactly a massive shock at this time.

01:02:19.000 Okay, well, to close out the week, there is a piece of news.

01:02:25.000 It's amazing how, in real time, the narrative has now shifted on COVID.

01:02:28.000 It has now become the position of many, many Democratic politicians that, wait a second, it's time to reopen society.

01:02:34.000 Amazing.

01:02:35.000 Andrew Cuomo in New York, he said, we can't lockdown anymore.

01:02:37.000 This is doing economic damage.

01:02:38.000 So if you said this as a Republican for months...

01:02:41.000 You're trusted. 1.00

01:02:41.000 Sources in the media informed you that Ron DeSantis is an evil pile of garbage. 1.00

01:02:45.000 Brian Kemp was doing an experiment in human sacrifice, according to The Atlantic. 0.98

01:02:50.000 Now, the greatest of all governors, the greatest governor who has ever walked the earth, as we all know, Andrew Cuomo, he came out and he was like, yeah, you know what?

01:02:56.000 We probably have to reopen society because this isn't working.

01:03:00.000 Now we know that there is a study evaluating COVID-19 responses around the world, is according to Newsweek.

01:03:05.000 I found mandatory lockdown orders early in the pandemic did not provide significantly more benefits to slowing the spread of the disease than other voluntary measures, such as social distancing or travel reduction.

01:03:16.000 The peer-reviewed study, conducted by a group of Stanford researchers, published in the Wiley Online Library January 5, analyzed coronavirus case growth in 10 countries in early 2020. The study compared cases in England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, and the US, all countries that implemented mandatory lockdown orders and business closures to South Korea and Sweden, which implemented less severe voluntary responses. It aimed to analyze the effect that less restrictive or more restrictive measures had on changing individual behavior and curbing virus transmission. The researchers used a

01:03:45.000 mathematical model that subtracted the sum of non-pharmaceutical interventions, effects, and epidemic dynamics in countries that did not enact more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions from the sum of the NPI effects and epidemic dynamics in countries that did.

01:03:56.000 In other words, they just looked at human behavior and said, okay, what was the difference in human behavior and transmission rates when there was a mandatory lockdown, when there was not a mandatory lockdown?

01:04:04.000 Using that model, the researchers determined there is no clear significant beneficial effort or effect of more restrictive measures on case growth in any country.

01:04:12.000 Wow, who could have predicted this?

01:04:14.000 Except for anybody who watched the data for any amount of time.

01:04:19.000 It's really amazing.

01:04:20.000 By the way, President-elect Biden has said he has no intention of implementing a national shutdown when he takes office on January 20th.

01:04:28.000 Of course, he had also implied that he might think about a national mask mandate and all the rest.

01:04:33.000 So weird how the narrative changes in real time.

01:04:37.000 Also weird how the media are not jumping all over Governor Andrew Cuomo.

01:04:40.000 So one of Cuomo's spokespeople is ripping on Janis Dean.

01:04:43.000 Janis Dean lost a parent in the COVID epidemic in New York.

01:04:46.000 She was in a nursing home. 0.99

01:04:47.000 The nursing homes were ravaged with COVID.

01:04:50.000 The statistics, people talk about Florida stats.

01:04:52.000 Florida has extremely transparent stats on COVID.

01:04:54.000 New York is still hiding the number of deaths in nursing homes by misclassifying deaths in hospitals.

01:04:59.000 As non-nursing home deaths, if the person died in a hospital after getting the COVID at a nursing home.

01:05:04.000 In any case, Janis Dean has been very, very critical of Andrew Cuomo's response.

01:05:08.000 Richard, as a party, a spokesperson for Cuomo, then told the Daily Mail, quote, every state has had issue with vaccine distribution because of lack of federal funds. But we're rapidly ramping up distribution. Currently, we've administered more than 60% of vaccines we have. Last I checked, she's not a credible source on anything except maybe the weather. And way to dismiss somebody who had a parent who died on your watch as not a credible source on anything except the weather.

01:05:28.000 Yeah, I definitely believe Andrew.

01:05:29.000 I mean, Andrew Cuomo's an Emmy.

01:05:30.000 Probably we should believe him.

01:05:33.000 Okay, we'll be back here next week.

01:05:35.000 As I say every Friday, please try not to wreck the country more.

01:05:39.000 Please don't do it.

01:05:41.000 I've been begging you.

01:05:42.000 It's not working.

01:05:43.000 So I'm gonna continue to beg you.

01:05:45.000 Treat each other with decency and respect.

01:05:48.000 Listen to each other's viewpoints.

01:05:50.000 Acknowledge that people may disagree with you, and we can all have a better, brighter world.

01:05:54.000 World peace.

01:05:56.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:05:59.000 First, be sure to watch The Andrew Klavan Show.

01:06:01.000 Andrew is officially back, and better than ever, he is alive, every Friday for 90 minutes.

01:06:05.000 That is right, folks, it is a 90-minute show on Fridays only.

01:06:07.000 He'll have very special guests, and the first show is today.

01:06:10.000 So head on over to dailywire.com this evening, and tune in.

01:06:13.000 Also, grab yourself a Daily Wire membership while you are at it, so you can watch our brand new movie, Run, Hide, Fight, only available at Daily Wire.

01:06:19.000 For our members, I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:06:20.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:06:22.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

01:06:29.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:06:31.000 Our Supervising Producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

01:06:34.000 Production Manager, Paweł Łajdowski.

01:06:36.000 Our Associate Producers are Rebecca Doyle and Savannah Dominguez.

01:06:39.000 The show is edited by Adam Sajewicz.

01:06:41.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

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01:06:45.000 Production Assistant, Jessica Crand.

01:06:47.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

01:06:51.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

01:06:54.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

01:07:01.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 15, 2021

They’re Coming For You | Ep. 1174

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