The Ben Shapiro Show - Time To Die, Humans! | Ep. 682

00:00:00.000 A philosopher says humans should kill themselves. 1.00

00:00:02.000 Maybe. 1.00

00:00:03.000 An 11-year-old drag kid makes a trip to a bar.

00:00:05.000 And Democrats focus once again on Russian interference.

00:00:07.000 But there's a twist.

00:00:08.000 I'll explain.

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

00:00:15.000 Well, a lot happening.

00:00:15.000 We'll get into all of it.

00:00:16.000 First, I want to make a big announcement.

00:00:17.000 Tonight, 7 p.m.

00:00:19.000 Eastern, 4 p.m.

00:00:19.000 Pacific, tune in to the story with Martha McCallum on Fox, where I will be revealing the title and cover of my latest book.

00:00:25.000 I know, I've been talking incessantly about it for months, but now you're finally going to get to find out what it is.

00:00:30.000 Will it be a book that shreds, wrecks, or possibly slams?

00:00:33.000 Does it destroy?

00:00:34.000 Does it annihilate?

00:00:35.000 Who knows?

00:00:36.000 You'll find out this evening on Martha McCallum's show on Fox News, 4 p.m.

00:00:40.000 Pacific, 7 p.m.

00:00:41.000 Eastern.

00:00:41.000 Tune in and find out.

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00:02:03.000 Okay, well I want to start today with a piece, a couple of pieces of breaking news.

00:02:07.000 Piece of breaking news number one is that President Trump now says that he is not going to, in fact, go through with a government shutdown over the border wall.

00:02:16.000 This is according to spokesman, spokeswoman Sarah Sanders.

00:02:18.000 She said this early on Tuesday.

00:02:20.000 The White House, according to the Washington Post, wants to avoid a partial government shutdown and has found other ways to get the border wall President Trump is demanding, according to Sanders.

00:02:28.000 Sanders' comments came four days before large portions of the federal government will begin a shutting down unless Congress and Trump reach a funding deal.

00:02:34.000 Trump has been demanding $5 billion from Congress for his border wall, which Democrats refuse to give.

00:02:39.000 But Sanders told Fox News Channel, we have other ways we can get to that five billion.

00:02:42.000 She said, at the end of the day, we don't want to shut down the government.

00:02:45.000 We want to shut down the border.

00:02:46.000 Sanders said the White House was exploring other funding sources and believed it could be legally done.

00:02:51.000 She says, there are certainly a number of different funding sources we've identified we can use that we can couple with money that would be given through congressional appropriations.

00:02:57.000 And that would help us get to that five billion dollars the president needs in order to protect our border.

00:03:01.000 OK, well, if that's the case, why hasn't he done it so far?

00:03:03.000 I mean, really, if it's that easy, he's been in office for nearly two years at this point, why doesn't he just fund the border wall?

00:03:09.000 This was his number one promise to all of his constituents.

00:03:12.000 It was his promise to the American people is that border wall was going to get done.

00:03:16.000 And he originally promised Mexico was going to pay for it.

00:03:18.000 Mexico is not going to pay for it, but at least it was going to get done, right?

00:03:21.000 Well, it hasn't been done.

00:03:22.000 We've replaced some of the border fencing with better border wall, but that's about it.

00:03:26.000 So, if President Trump believes he doesn't need a new congressional appropriation, then what exactly has he been waiting for over the past couple of years?

00:03:32.000 And if he does believe that he needs that congressional appropriation, then why in the hell is he caving to a Democrat Congress?

00:03:39.000 Maybe he wants to do this again when there's a Democrat Senate?

00:03:42.000 Right?

00:03:42.000 I guess we'll wait till 2021?

00:03:43.000 I mean, when exactly does he want to have this fight?

00:03:47.000 There are people who are big Trump boosters, people like Ann Coulter, who are livid over all of this, because she says, listen, he made one promise, and that was this key promise, and now he won't even go up against Nancy Pelosi in the House in order to get it done, or Chuck Schumer in the Senate in order to get it done, or fellow Republicans in order to get it done.

00:04:02.000 He's not willing to bear a little bit of pain in order to prevent the vast number of people who are trying to cross that border illegally. 0.94

00:04:11.000 And it's especially dumb if you're gonna signal like this. 0.98

00:04:13.000 It just proves that you don't have any... You don't have any bite to back your bark. 0.96

00:04:18.000 And the fact is, the President of the United States, like, two days ago, went on national television with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and he says, I'll own the shutdown.

00:04:25.000 I'll do a shutdown.

00:04:26.000 Happy to do a shutdown.

00:04:28.000 And Schumer said no.

00:04:29.000 And Pelosi said no.

00:04:30.000 And then Trump was like, oh, okay, I guess we won't do that.

00:04:32.000 How exactly is that the mark of a great negotiator?

00:04:35.000 How is that the mark of a man taking a strong position and then sticking with it?

00:04:40.000 Really, if you are a border hawk, how can you be okay with this?

00:04:43.000 I don't really understand.

00:04:44.000 Now, maybe you say that the border wall wasn't that important to begin with.

00:04:47.000 Okay, that's a position.

00:04:49.000 Maybe you say that what we really need to be doing is focusing on deportations as opposed to physical barriers.

00:04:54.000 Okay, fine.

00:04:55.000 You want to make that case, make that case.

00:04:56.000 But that's not the case President Trump has been making.

00:04:58.000 So the wall either gets built or this one's on him.

00:05:01.000 Because now, he's not only claimed that he's not going to shut down the government, he's not going to fight that way, now he claims he can do it himself.

00:05:07.000 According to The Washington Post, Sanders' comments come after a series of miscalculations by Republicans in recent days over how to try and get Democrats to sign on to $5 billion to pay for the construction of a wall along the Mexico border.

00:05:18.000 Of course, last week, President Trump said he'd be proud to shut down the government over the issue.

00:05:21.000 And then on Monday evening, Senate Republicans said they were anticipating a formal proposal from the White House, but that never materialized.

00:05:27.000 The White House never promised a 5 p.m.

00:05:29.000 proposal.

00:05:29.000 Senate Republicans signaled they plan to move ahead on an overhaul of the criminal justice system this week.

00:05:33.000 So, let's get this straight.

00:05:35.000 President Trump came into office pledging to be a law and order president who is going to shut down the border.

00:05:41.000 He's not going to shut down the border, and he's going to pass criminal justice reform.

00:05:44.000 Now, I've talked on the program about, I think, the costs and benefits of criminal justice reform.

00:05:49.000 Overall, I would vote against it.

00:05:51.000 And I have very strong personal friends who are in favor of criminal justice reform.

00:05:56.000 You know, close political connections who are very much in favor of criminal justice reform, both in the White House and in the Senate as well.

00:06:02.000 I'm not in favor of criminal justice reform that simply grants greater power for wardens to let people who they deem nonviolent out of jail.

00:06:10.000 The chances that people are going to go back to crime after they've been in jail, particularly federal crime, very high.

00:06:15.000 Recidivism rates are incredibly high.

00:06:18.000 If you want to lower the sentences, then go through a legislative process of lowering the sentences.

00:06:22.000 But if the idea is that we're just going to do this through a discretionary process, that ain't going to solve the problem.

00:06:27.000 If you want to get rid of mandatory minimums, if you want to rewrite the penalties for particular crimes, do that.

00:06:32.000 But what this bill really does, is it says that wardens can adjudicate on basically a case-by-case basis whether somebody is deemed nonviolent, and then if they are deemed nonviolent, then they can be released early.

00:06:44.000 Or they can have time that they've already spent in prison count toward the time they've yet to serve.

00:06:49.000 So we're doing that.

00:06:51.000 You know, Ben Sasse of Nebraska has come out against the bill.

00:06:55.000 There are a bunch of other more kind of conservative Congress people who have come out against the bill.

00:06:59.000 A lot of Libertarians.

00:07:00.000 Rand Paul's in favor of the bill.

00:07:01.000 Mike Lee's in favor of the bill.

00:07:03.000 There's a lot of controversy over this bill, but suffice it to say that this was not what President Trump promised, right?

00:07:08.000 What President Trump promised was that border is going to have a wall on it.

00:07:13.000 That border is going to be secure.

00:07:14.000 And as it turns out, statistically speaking, the Trump administration has deported fewer people than the Obama administration did during the same period in the first couple of years of their administration.

00:07:23.000 So for all the talk about border security being ramped up dramatically, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence of it.

00:07:28.000 And I think that President Trump's constituents have a right to question him about all of this.

00:07:32.000 One of the reasons, apparently, that President Trump is afraid of the government shutdown is because the stock market has been dropping precipitously in recent weeks.

00:07:39.000 It is now at a loss on the year, over the course of the entire year.

00:07:42.000 Trump has attacked the Federal Reserve, but apparently it's rattled him that the stock market has dropped, which it should.

00:07:47.000 If the stock market drops too much, and if the economy downturns, not only is he not going to win re-election, he's going to get skunked.

00:07:52.000 I mean, the president is not personally particularly popular, but he does have a good economy and people can at least point to his track record of success.

00:07:58.000 If the economy takes a downturn, he's got a real problem.

00:08:01.000 So, in other words, the stock market, which has taken a dump for a variety of reasons, including the fact that President Trump has decided that tariffs are a good way of making trade policy, The stock market takes a hit, and then President Trump decides that border security is less important than criminal justice reform.

00:08:15.000 Again, I've got to question the priorities.

00:08:17.000 I do.

00:08:17.000 Just politically speaking, I have to question the priorities here.

00:08:20.000 They don't make a lot of sense to me.

00:08:21.000 Now, meanwhile, in other news for the Trump administration, Michael Flynn, President Trump's former national security advisor, is about to be sentenced today, or he has been sentenced today, rather.

00:08:31.000 A judge began the sentencing for President Trump's former national security advisor, saying he needed to address other issues before deciding the punishment that Flynn should face.

00:08:40.000 Both prosecutors and defense attorneys had urged that Flynn face no prison time for his crime, noting he was an early cooperator in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

00:08:50.000 We still don't know what Flynn exactly has said here, but in their sentencing submission, Flynn's attorney suggested that he might have been fooled into lying to the FBI because he'd not been warned in advance that doing so is a crime.

00:08:59.000 That prompted the judge to request more documents.

00:09:01.000 The special counsel's office last week pushed back on the idea Flynn was mistreated.

00:09:05.000 As I discussed last week on the program, I am not under the opinion that Flynn was wildly mistreated in a way that other people are not mistreated by the criminal justice system.

00:09:12.000 Very often police call you in for some sort of interview, you are not in custody, and then you are not given a lawyer.

00:09:18.000 Prosecutors said the court should reject the defendant's attempts to minimize the seriousness of these false statements to the FBI.

00:09:24.000 Nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendants to make false statements to the FBI.

00:09:29.000 A concession from Flynn could disappoint supporters who for months have advanced the notion that Flynn was wronged, although reluctance to admit guilt could prompt the judge to send Flynn to prison.

00:09:39.000 The real issue here is that Flynn's bad activity really has very little to do with Russia.

00:09:45.000 For all the talk about him having, you know, connections with Russia, really very little of this has to do with Russia at all.

00:09:51.000 The vast majority of his bad activity has to do with his relationship with the Turkish government.

00:09:55.000 It was basically paying him as a lobbyist without him registering as a lobbyist.

00:09:59.000 I don't think that the Flynn plea is going to result in anything truly nasty for President Trump.

00:10:05.000 What's ironic about all of this is that the left has spent just an insane, inordinate amount of time talking about Russia interference in the election, talking about all of Trump's top officials being ensnared in Russia interference, when it turns out that all along the best legal avenues they had for attack on President Trump were the ones that you would have thought you would have had in 2016, right before any of the Russia stuff came up.

00:10:26.000 His sort of personal foibles with women.

00:10:28.000 His financial foibles.

00:10:30.000 The fact that he runs kind of a sleazy real estate empire.

00:10:34.000 The fact that he has always been kind of a charlatan when it comes to his business relationships.

00:10:39.000 I mean, the guy...

00:10:41.000 Somehow made a casino go bankrupt in Atlantic City, right?

00:10:44.000 I mean, there's always been a lot of questions about corrupt practices, but the Russia stuff took forefront because it explained a couple of things for Democrats.

00:10:52.000 It demonstrates how, for Democrats, the truth really was secondary to the priority.

00:10:56.000 The priority for Democrats in all of this was to delegitimize the election.

00:11:00.000 It was not about getting to what crimes Trump may or may not have committed.

00:11:04.000 That was never the priority.

00:11:05.000 They're only now talking about that stuff as a secondary.

00:11:08.000 Primarily, they were worried about why did Trump win the election.

00:11:10.000 And so, the Russia narrative allowed them to say two things. 0.97

00:11:13.000 One, Trump was a criminal. 0.99

00:11:14.000 Two, he stole the election. 0.97

00:11:16.000 All of the other criminal activity that is now being laid at the feet of President Trump, all of that other activity doesn't explain why Hillary Clinton lost the election.

00:11:25.000 It doesn't.

00:11:26.000 Because, as we all know, if Trump had simply come out a week before the election and said, yeah, I stripped Stormy Daniels years ago, no one would have cared.

00:11:33.000 Nobody would have cared if he'd said, I pay hush money to women. 1.00

00:11:35.000 We all assume that he did.

00:11:36.000 And that's why Democrats weren't focused in on the Michael Cohen stuff.

00:11:39.000 It's why they haven't been focused in on the Trump Foundation.

00:11:41.000 Because their priority was always delegitimizing the election of 2016.

00:11:45.000 In a second, I'm going to talk about another corruption charge now being laid at the feet of the Trump administration.

00:11:50.000 And then I want to talk about A story that's kind of shocking about how it was the Democrats were already laying the groundwork for this Trump-stole-the-election narrative very, very early on.

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00:13:16.000 Okay, meanwhile, President Trump has agreed now to shut down his embattled personal charity.

00:13:22.000 Amid allegations he used it for his personal and political benefit and gave away its remaining money according to New York AG Barbara Underwood.

00:13:28.000 She announced this on Tuesday according to the Washington Post.

00:13:31.000 Underwood said the Donald J. Trump Foundation is dissolving As her office pursues its lawsuit against the charity, Trump and his three eldest children are also being sued.

00:13:39.000 The suit was filed in June.

00:13:41.000 It alleged persistent illegal conduct at the foundation and sought to have it shut down.

00:13:45.000 Why?

00:13:45.000 Well, because Donald Trump was basically signing personal checks, according to the allegations, for personal expenditures and then funneling it through the charity.

00:13:53.000 Which is pretty ugly stuff.

00:13:54.000 Underwood is continuing to seek more than $2.8 million in restitution and has asked a judge to ban the Trumps temporarily from serving on the boards of other New York non-profit organizations.

00:14:04.000 Underwood said Tuesday her investigation found a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation, including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.

00:14:14.000 One of the allegations with regard to the Trump Foundation is that the Trump Foundation basically gave a giant check.

00:14:21.000 To a veterans group in the middle of the election cycle and President Trump campaigned on that basis.

00:14:26.000 So this was allegedly using charitable contributions for a political purpose is sort of the idea.

00:14:32.000 The shuddering comes after the Washington Post documented apparent lapses at the foundation.

00:14:36.000 Trump used the charity's money to pay legal settlements for his private business, to purchase art for one of his clubs, to make a prohibited political donation.

00:14:44.000 Trump denied he'd done anything wrong, but in 2016 he said he wanted to close the foundation, but the AG blocked the move while they investigated.

00:14:50.000 Underwood said the foundation's remaining $1.75 million that are in charity right now would be distributed to other charities approved by her office, as well as a state judge.

00:14:59.000 The Trump Foundation was never super impressive.

00:15:01.000 It was only about $3.2 million in the bank in 2009, which is pretty small.

00:15:05.000 The real estate mogul used other people's donations to build up the foundation's assets.

00:15:09.000 The biggest donations came from Vince and Linda McMahon in recent years.

00:15:12.000 The post reporting showed that for years, Trump appeared to treat the foundation as a checkbook for gifts that bolstered his interests.

00:15:18.000 The largest donation in the foundation's history, a $265,000 gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 1989, appeared to benefit Trump's business.

00:15:25.000 It paid to restore a fountain outside Trump's Plaza Hotel.

00:15:29.000 The smallest, a $7 foundation gift to the Boy Scouts that same year, appeared to benefit Trump's family.

00:15:33.000 It matched the amount required to enroll a boy in the Scouts the year that his son, Donald Trump Jr., was 11.

00:15:38.000 The Attorney General's probe turned up evidence that Trump and Donald Trump Jr., Eric Ivanka Trump, all listed as officers of the charity, had not actually attended a board meeting.

00:15:47.000 The board hadn't met since 1999.

00:15:49.000 And one of the charity's official treasurers, Allen Weisselberg, told investigators he wasn't even aware that he was on the board.

00:15:55.000 At one point, he used the charity's money to make a $25,000 political donation to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and the charity didn't tell the IRS about it.

00:16:03.000 Instead, they listed a donation as a gift totally unrelated to a charity in Kansas with a similar name.

00:16:09.000 During the 2016 campaign, there was also some issues with coordination between the Foundation and the Trump campaign, for example.

00:16:19.000 And there's a large portrait that Trump bought in 2007 for $20,000 using money from the charity.

00:16:24.000 We still don't know what happened with exactly that money or with that portrait.

00:16:29.000 Why is all of this relevant?

00:16:30.000 Well, it's only relevant in the sense that for Democrats, This could have been their line of attack from the very beginning, and it would have been a richer line of attack from the very beginning.

00:16:38.000 They could have, January 20th, 2000, 2017, they could have come out and they could have said, listen, President Trump has got a corrupt personal charity, we know that his business has some corruption issues, and we think that he hasn't properly separated off from those businesses, there's corruption going on, we need to investigate all of that.

00:16:57.000 That would have been a much richer line of attack, but Democrats didn't do that. 0.98

00:17:00.000 Why?

00:17:01.000 Solely and completely on the narrative that Hillary Clinton had lost the election because Donald Trump cheated.

00:17:06.000 And they're still pushing that nonsense.

00:17:08.000 They're still pushing that nonsense.

00:17:09.000 The latest evidence of this nonsense is they're pushing a report very, very hard that suggests that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube were all working hand-in-glove, basically, with Russian sources in order to manipulate data in the run-up to the election.

00:17:23.000 Shira Frankl, Daisuke Wakabayashi, and Kate Conger over at the New York Times report, when lawmakers asked YouTube, a unit of Google, to provide information about Russian manipulation efforts, it did not disclose how many people watched the videos on its site that were created by Russian trolls.

00:17:36.000 Facebook did not release the comments its users made when they viewed Russian-generated content.

00:17:40.000 And Twitter gave only scattered details about Russian-controlled accounts that spread propaganda there.

00:17:44.000 The tech company's foot-dragging was described in a pair of reports the Senate Intelligence Committee published on Monday in what were the most detailed accounts to date about how Russian agents Excuse me.

00:17:52.000 First of all, very difficult to tell what is Russian manipulation and what is just Russian citizens posting stuff.

00:17:57.000 Google, Twitter and Facebook were described by researchers as having evaded and misrepresented themselves and the extent of Russian activity on their sites.

00:18:03.000 The companies were also criticized for not turning over complete sets of data about Russian manipulation in the Senate.

00:18:07.000 First of all, very difficult to tell what is Russian manipulation and what is just Russian citizens posting stuff or American citizens posting stuff.

00:18:14.000 This report was done with a particular conclusion in mind.

00:18:19.000 The conclusion was that the Russians were attempting to throw the election to Trump and successfully accomplish this.

00:18:24.000 The studies renewed questions, according to the New York Times, about whether social media companies have withheld data on Russian activity and how willing they really are to address the issue.

00:18:32.000 And herein lies the actual Democratic agenda.

00:18:35.000 In all of this, from beginning to end, the agenda in the Russian investigation was all about Trump was illegally elected, and two, All of these social media companies need to change their algorithms, need to change how they provide you information, need to prevent you from gathering the information that you want specifically in order so that a Democrat will win in 2020.

00:18:53.000 Okay, that's really what's going on here.

00:18:55.000 Let's be frank about this.

00:18:56.000 Let's be honest about this.

00:18:57.000 What Democrats want is for social media companies to continue to manipulate the data according to their particular preferences under threat of government largesse.

00:19:04.000 Okay, under threat of government pressure.

00:19:06.000 That is what they are looking for.

00:19:08.000 That is what Democrats want, and that's what all of these articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post are expected to do.

00:19:14.000 That's what they are trying to do. 0.70

00:19:16.000 And it's a bunch of nonsense. 0.96

00:19:17.000 If you think that this election was twisted because of Russian propaganda on Facebook, you are out of your mind. 1.00

00:19:23.000 Even Nate Silver, who is no right-winger, is saying, this is a bunch of crap. 1.00

00:19:26.000 If you think that Russian memes swung the 2016 election, then you legitimately don't know what you're talking about. 0.97

00:19:33.000 There's an article in the New York Times today from Michelle Goldberg, who's really not a very good columnist, and she writes about the supposed link between Russian propaganda and the election results, and she talks about the massive impact of Russian propaganda.

00:19:50.000 Okay, for those of us who actually know something about internet statistics, we laugh at this.

00:19:55.000 Okay, laugh at it.

00:19:56.000 It's absurd.

00:19:57.000 Absurd.

00:19:58.000 Okay, here, let me give you some of these statistics, because if you don't know, these sound big, but they're not.

00:20:02.000 Okay, so, According to Michelle Goldberg, Russian propaganda, one of the reports found, had about 187 million engagements on Instagram, reaching at least 20 million users, and 76.5 million engagements on Facebook, reaching 126 million people.

00:20:15.000 Approximately 1.4 million people, the report said, engaged with tweets associated with the Internet Research Agency, which is a Russian front group.

00:20:22.000 Okay, now those sound like really big numbers, right?

00:20:25.000 1.4 million people.

00:20:26.000 1.4 million people engaging with tweets.

00:20:28.000 Okay, now I'm going to give you how many people have engaged with my tweets last month.

00:20:34.000 Just my account.

00:20:35.000 How many people engaged with just my tweets last month alone?

00:20:38.000 Not for the entire election cycle of 2016.

00:20:39.000 Last month.

00:20:40.000 We had 197 million tweet impressions.

00:20:47.000 Okay, according to this study, the Russians got 1.4 million tweet impressions for an election cycle.

00:20:55.000 I had 200 times that amount last month. 0.98

00:20:57.000 Okay, but all this data is basically a bunch of crap. 0.92

00:21:00.000 Like they say, You know, that 187 million engagements on Instagram, 76.5 million engagements on Facebook. 0.91

00:21:08.000 OK, my engagements on Facebook in the last month, mine personally in a month, 87 million.

00:21:14.000 So more than the entire Russian propaganda network in a year, in a year and a half.

00:21:19.000 But we're supposed to believe that's what swung the election. 1.00

00:21:22.000 What absolute garbage! 1.00

00:21:23.000 What absolute silly nonsense! 1.00

00:21:25.000 And yet, this is what they are focused on pushing. 0.95

00:21:28.000 In a second, I'm going to explain to you why this study says what it says.

00:21:32.000 And there's a very good reason for it, uncovered by the folks over at Media Research Center.

00:21:35.000 I'll explain to you in a second.

00:21:36.000 But first, let's talk about how you're going to mail stuff this holiday season.

00:21:39.000 So, the holidays are really busy.

00:21:41.000 You know, you don't have time to run to the post office.

00:21:43.000 The post office is great, but you don't have time to schlep all the presents over there.

00:21:45.000 Instead, what you really should be doing is going over to my friends at Stamps.com and looking for help.

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00:22:47.000 Okay, so why exactly are all of these studies suggesting that Russian interference swung the election?

00:22:52.000 Because the sources of the study are Democrats.

00:22:56.000 Okay, this is a study called the Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project.

00:23:02.000 And the study, according to Media Research Center, was produced by Oxford and Grafika.

00:23:07.000 Two of the people behind that study, junk news consumption, were involved in another study.

00:23:12.000 Okay, that study was all about how if you are on the right, you are a member of junk news.

00:23:17.000 So basically, the people behind the Russia study were also behind another study that suggested that conservative outlets were junk news.

00:23:23.000 Which outlets were junk news?

00:23:24.000 Drudge Report, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, Free Beacon, Life News, National Review, The Federalist, and Red State. 0.54

00:23:31.000 Those were all junk news according to the same authors who are now claiming that Russia propaganda swung the election.

00:23:35.000 Maybe they have an agenda? 0.91

00:23:38.000 Is it possible they have an agenda?

00:23:40.000 Yes, of course, and so does the New York Times.

00:23:41.000 You think the New York Times doesn't understand internet analytics?

00:23:44.000 You think the reporters at the New York Times don't have comparable data from how the New York Times performs on Facebook so that they know what the actual impact of these various Russian Facebook pages was?

00:23:55.000 And now they're trying to claim that these Russian Facebook pages, because some of them were front groups that were supposed to appeal to Black Lives Matter folks, that it somehow suppressed black voting in 2016.

00:24:06.000 Absolute hogwash.

00:24:07.000 Nate Silver points that out today. 0.96

00:24:08.000 He says this is just nonsense.

00:24:10.000 Of course, it didn't suppress black voting in 2016.

00:24:12.000 Black voting in 2016 was the highest in any election ever, except for 2012 and 2008, both of which had Barack Obama on the ballot.

00:24:20.000 But, again, all the Democrats care about is the narrative.

00:24:23.000 If they cared about corruption, they'd care about corruption, but they clearly don't.

00:24:26.000 What they actually care about is just the narrative, and the narrative says that Trump somehow corruptly seized the election.

00:24:32.000 Okay, meanwhile, we spent a little bit of time on this editorial yesterday, and I felt like I didn't give it the attention it deserved.

00:24:37.000 You know, it's very rare on this program that I think to myself the next day, you know, I didn't do a sufficient job the previous day.

00:24:43.000 Usually I think to myself, yesterday's show was just spectacular, and today's is even better.

00:24:48.000 But yesterday, I felt like I didn't give the full flavor of an editorial that appeared in the New York Times about human extinction, titled, Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?

00:24:57.000 The reason I didn't give it full shrift is because it actually speaks to some deeper philosophical points that I think are important.

00:25:04.000 Now, I said at the top of the show, That tonight, on Martha MacCallum's show, we're announcing the title of my book and the cover of my book.

00:25:11.000 And this editorial is about as good a case for buying my book as you could possibly imagine.

00:25:16.000 My book is all about purpose and meaning and why human life matters and why humans are unique and why human life is sacred.

00:25:25.000 All the big issues.

00:25:26.000 This editorial in the New York Times that says basically we should all kill ourselves is truly the last gasp of a civilization that has failed to recognize certain eternal truths.

00:25:36.000 So, this article was written by a Clemson philosophy professor, who I'm sure is teaching wonderful stuff, named Todd May.

00:25:41.000 And he begins by saying that he acknowledges that the experience of humans coming to an end would be a bad thing, or at least it would cause some pain because people dying is painful.

00:25:50.000 He's agnostic on the question of whether human beings as a species deserve to die out.

00:25:55.000 He says what he's really wondering is whether it would be a tragedy if the planet no longer contained human beings.

00:26:00.000 His conclusion, it would be a tragedy and it might be a good thing.

00:26:05.000 To which my response is, okay dude, like, there are a bunch of bridge overpasses near Clemson, you can just, you know, go there anytime.

00:26:12.000 May's reasoning, though, is really interesting.

00:26:14.000 So, he argues that human extinction would be tragic because we have a tragic flaw, which is that we have wrecked the Earth, and that would be rectified by our extinction.

00:26:20.000 He says humanity is the source of devastation in the lives of conscious animals on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.

00:26:28.000 So we're mean to animals, so we should die.

00:26:29.000 Well, he recognizes that nature is itself hardly a Valhalla of peace and harmony.

00:26:33.000 He says humans are uniquely cruel and destructive, which is a weird case to make.

00:26:38.000 Like, we are uniquely productive, and we are also uniquely destructive in the sense that we have greater capacity than animals.

00:26:44.000 But we don't, for example, have a generalized habit of cannibalizing our mates, as many insects do.

00:26:50.000 We don't generally kill our stepchildren, as many primates do.

00:26:55.000 But according to Todd May, we are wrecking the world.

00:26:56.000 He says, to make that case, let me start with a claim I think will be at once depressing and upon reflection uncontroversial.

00:27:02.000 Human beings are destroying large parts of the inhabitable earth and causing unimaginable suffering to many of the animals that inhabit it. 0.99

00:27:09.000 Okay, I do think that's arguable, by the way.

00:27:11.000 The fact is that there are more trees now in the United States than there were before settlers actually settled the United States.

00:27:17.000 He says this is happening through at least three means.

00:27:19.000 First, human contribution to climate change is devastating ecosystems, as the recent article on Yellowstone Park in The Times exemplifies.

00:27:25.000 So global warming.

00:27:25.000 So we should all die because of global warming.

00:27:28.000 Second, increasing human population is encroaching on ecosystems that would otherwise be intact.

00:27:32.000 So coral reefs are going out of business.

00:27:34.000 Third, factory farming fosters the creation of millions upon millions of animals, for whom it offers nothing but suffering and misery.

00:27:40.000 Before slaughtering them in often barbaric ways, there's no reason to think that those practices are going to diminish anytime soon.

00:27:45.000 Quite the opposite.

00:27:46.000 Well, actually, I do think that factory farming is probably going to diminish sometime in the near future as developed countries begin to look again at whether they think that that's a good idea or a bad idea.

00:27:56.000 But he says humanity is the source of devastation of the lives of conscious animals on a scale difficult to comprehend.

00:28:01.000 He says if this were all there were to the story, there would be no tragedy because the elimination of the human species would be a good thing. 0.96

00:28:08.000 Full stop.

00:28:09.000 Now, what's funny is that he would never make this claim about any other species on the planet.

00:28:11.000 So there are lots of species on the planet that end up devastating the ecosystems in which they grow, in which they inhabit.

00:28:18.000 Would he be for the complete extinction of those animal species?

00:28:22.000 I mean, there are places where the deer population is too large, and it's a threat to other populations in the area.

00:28:29.000 Is he in favor of not just culling the deer population, but, like, wiping it out completely?

00:28:35.000 It's kind of a weird argument.

00:28:37.000 So it's weird because May doesn't treat up people as members of the animal community, but he does treat us as members of the animal community.

00:28:43.000 So we are not members of the animal community because we are capable of making conscious decisions and rational decisions, but then he places our interests on a level with animals.

00:28:53.000 So my answer to factory farming is bad is I would like to see more humane conditions for animals, but also people are more important than animals and we can eat animals because we need the protein.

00:29:02.000 And his position is, humans and animals are in precisely the same moral plane, but it's bad if humans eat animals.

00:29:07.000 Why?

00:29:08.000 Is it bad when a lion eats a zebra?

00:29:10.000 May continues by stating that human beings bring... So what's his case that we should survive, maybe?

00:29:15.000 His case is that human beings bring an advanced level of reason that can experience wonder, as well as our creation of literature, music, and painting.

00:29:23.000 Well, this right here is philosophically incoherent, because if a mass murderer wrote symphonies, for example, he'd still be worth killing, presumably.

00:29:30.000 So if we are wrecking the planet, why does it matter that humans are responsible for Beethoven's 9th?

00:29:35.000 He says it would be a loss to the world if those practices and experiences ceased to exist, ignoring the fact that there wouldn't be any humans around to enjoy them.

00:29:41.000 So it would be a loss to whom?

00:29:43.000 A loss to the world?

00:29:44.000 The world is a planet.

00:29:45.000 It's a big rock floating through space.

00:29:48.000 I don't think the rocks care if Beethoven's 9th exists or not.

00:29:52.000 In the end, there's no real way to justify humanity's murderous existence, as long as you say that humans and animals are equivalent.

00:29:57.000 And that is precisely the conclusion at which May arrives in the end.

00:30:00.000 I'm going to give you his conclusion in just a second, because it really is astonishing and speaks to the nihilism that undergirds a philosophy that says that human beings are not made in God's image, that human beings are not special, and that human beings do not have a real meaning and purpose in the world other than just to be animals wandering about on a giant rock floating through space.

00:30:17.000 We'll get to his punchline in just a second.

00:30:19.000 First, let's talk about how you can Find a better health insurance program, how you can get insurance in a better way, and also a way that helps build the social fabric, a way that helps you look out for your neighbor, a way that reinstitutes exactly the sort of Judeo-Christian values that I'm talking about here on the show every single day. 0.82

00:30:35.000 This is called MediShare.

00:30:37.000 MediShare is a Christian healthcare sharing program.

00:30:39.000 It's been around for 25 years.

00:30:40.000 They now have more than 400,000 members all around the country.

00:30:43.000 And get this, Over the years, MediShare members have shared over $2 billion of each other's medical bills so they could help share your needs as well.

00:30:50.000 Also, you can save a lot of money with MediShare.

00:30:52.000 The typical savings for a family is about $500 a month.

00:30:55.000 Your savings could be more or they could be less, but it could be a lot of money that you could be saving.

00:30:59.000 So go check them out right now.

00:31:00.000 Head over to MediShare.com slash Ben or call 844-61-BIBLE.

00:31:04.000 844-61-BIBLE to find out more.

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00:31:29.000 Medishare works, and you don't have to pay for things you don't believe in, because, again, it is a Christian healthcare sharing program.

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00:31:40.000 Okay.

00:31:41.000 Also, let me remind you that it is almost time for our next episode of The Conversation.

00:31:45.000 So tomorrow at 5 30 p.m.

00:31:46.000 Eastern, 2 30 p.m.

00:31:47.000 Pacific.

00:31:48.000 I will be taking your questions and answering them to the best of my abilities, which means the best of anyone's abilities.

00:31:53.000 Live on air.

00:31:54.000 So make the questions good.

00:31:55.000 The lovely and talented Alicia Krauss will be hosting and making sure that the exorable Michael Knowles has been murdered and buried in the garden. 0.97

00:32:01.000 Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by me tomorrow at 5.30 p.m.

00:32:05.000 Eastern, 2.30 p.m.

00:32:06.000 Pacific.

00:32:06.000 Join the conversation.

00:32:07.000 Now, if you actually want to ask questions, though, you have to be a subscriber, which is why you should spend $9.99 a month and become a subscriber.

00:32:12.000 What have you been doing all this time?

00:32:13.000 You listen to the show every day and you don't subscribe?

00:32:15.000 Who are you?

00:32:16.000 Why?

00:32:17.000 What kind of person are you?

00:32:19.000 I mean, I know this is a hard sell, but I mean, really, guys, get it going.

00:32:22.000 Also, for $99 a year, you get access to the mailbag, you get to see the rest of the show behind the paywall, and come January, you get two additional hours of the show.

00:32:31.000 I mean, what more can I give to you?

00:32:34.000 My lifeblood?

00:32:36.000 What more?

00:32:37.000 Also, you get when you spend 99 bucks a year, you get this.

00:32:40.000 He left his tears hot or cold tumbler.

00:32:42.000 You know the drill. 1.00

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00:32:45.000 It holds any liquid. 0.99

00:32:46.000 I mean, literally any liquid so long as it is not actual magma or acid.

00:32:51.000 Those are the only two that I think it doesn't hold.

00:32:54.000 All the other liquids it is capable of holding.

00:32:55.000 That doesn't mean you should pee in it.

00:32:57.000 It's too good for that.

00:32:57.000 Don't do that.

00:32:58.000 Don't do that to the tumbler.

00:32:59.000 But it is fully capable of holding your coffee.

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00:33:05.000 Go check it out right now for $99 a year.

00:33:07.000 Also, check us out over at iTunes, SoundCloud.

00:33:10.000 I remind you that iHeartRadio, right now if you go to iHeartRadio.com, they have these podcast awards that are coming up next month.

00:33:16.000 Go vote for us in the news category because we appreciate it and that would be awesome.

00:33:19.000 Also, check us out and review us over at iTunes.

00:33:22.000 That helps with our ranking.

00:33:23.000 We always appreciate it.

00:33:24.000 show we are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.

00:33:26.000 So here's the conclusion to this deeply nihilistic article in the New York Times about whether humans should go extinct.

00:33:36.000 After this guy basically says humans are like animals, and as animals we're really bad animals, he says, So then, how much suffering and death of non-human life would we be willing to countenance to save Shakespeare, our sciences, and so forth?

00:33:47.000 Unless we believe there is such a profound moral gap between the status of human and non-human animals, whatever reasonable answer we come up with will be well surpassed by the harm and suffering we inflict upon animals.

00:33:56.000 Right?

00:33:56.000 And this is, he's right.

00:33:58.000 If you believe that humans are just animals and have the same moral status as animals, then maybe humans should go extinct.

00:34:04.000 Thankfully, we have a 3,000 year tradition saying that humans and animals are not, in fact, the same.

00:34:09.000 Humans are different.

00:34:10.000 Humans have a quality that Aquinas would call a soul.

00:34:14.000 Humans have the capacity to reason.

00:34:16.000 Humans have the capacity for beauty and wonder.

00:34:20.000 All of these things make humans unique and more important than animals.

00:34:23.000 You're more important than your dog.

00:34:25.000 I know you love your dog.

00:34:26.000 You're more important than your dog.

00:34:27.000 You're more important than your cat.

00:34:28.000 It's one of the reasons, you know, I have two kids.

00:34:31.000 When I hear people say that their animals are their four-legged children, I'm like, you stop that right now.

00:34:37.000 Those are not your four-legged children.

00:34:38.000 I mean, did you bear that dog?

00:34:40.000 If so, that's weird.

00:34:42.000 But also, that is not a thing, okay?

00:34:44.000 Humans are not on the same moral level as animals.

00:34:46.000 And if you believe they are, then Todd May is making a strong case.

00:34:49.000 And listen to his conclusion.

00:34:50.000 He says, there is just too much torment wreaked upon too many animals and too certain a prospect that this is going to continue and probably increase.

00:34:56.000 It would overwhelm anything we might place on the other side of the ledger.

00:34:59.000 Moreover, those among us who believe there is such a gap should perhaps become more familiar with the richness of lives of many of our conscious fellow creatures.

00:35:06.000 Our own science is revealing that richness to us, ironically giving us a reason to eliminate it along with our own continued existence.

00:35:11.000 So basically, if you study the monkeys long enough, then you'll want to kill yourself. 0.58

00:35:15.000 Good. 0.90

00:35:15.000 Good pitch, man. 0.90

00:35:17.000 And then he says, one might ask here whether, given this view, it would also be a good thing for those of us who are currently here to end our lives in order to prevent further animal suffering.

00:35:24.000 Yes, that was the literally first question that appeared to me.

00:35:26.000 That a man who writes a piece called, Would Human Extinction Be Okay?

00:35:30.000 might want to go grab himself some rope.

00:35:32.000 But he says, although I do not have a final answer to this question, we should recognize that the case of future humans is very different from the case of currently existing humans.

00:35:39.000 In other words, I'm not going to kill myself.

00:35:40.000 That's not something I'm going to do.

00:35:42.000 But he says, to demand of currently existing humans that they should end their lives would introduce significant suffering among those who have much to lose by dying.

00:35:49.000 In contrast, preventing future humans from existing does not introduce such suffering since those human beings will not exist and therefore not have lives to sacrifice.

00:35:57.000 The two situations then are not analogous.

00:36:00.000 So, in other words, kill all the unborn babies, don't have any more babies, but you don't have to kill yourself. 0.98

00:36:05.000 Man, I mean, just go hog wild, because in a generation it's all going to be gone anyway, and then it's going to look like Logan's run. 0.99

00:36:10.000 I mean, the Capitol building is going to be all covered in vines and stuff.

00:36:14.000 So, have fun, you, but just don't have any babies. 0.99

00:36:16.000 Just don't have any babies. 0.82

00:36:17.000 If this is the kind of fulfilling life that you see yourself living, buying into the deep-seated philosophy of the left, Enjoy, man.

00:36:24.000 It's all you.

00:36:25.000 It's all you.

00:36:25.000 And the value system that the left is promoting right now is so nihilistic and so deeply disturbing that it's almost impossible to describe.

00:36:32.000 And this is not to suggest that everyone on the left believes this stuff.

00:36:35.000 Obviously not.

00:36:36.000 But if you don't believe that human beings are special, if you don't believe we're created in God's image, if you don't believe we have the capacity to reason, if you don't believe that the universe has a rational basis that we can comprehend, if you don't believe any of those things, And yet, you are still living in a way that suggests you believe those things.

00:36:52.000 Maybe you ought to examine your first rules, your first values, the stuff that you actually believe way down deep.

00:36:58.000 Because I would think a lot of people who consider themselves atheists and agnostics are still making the same assumptions that religious people take for granted because they are in fact religious assumptions about life.

00:37:07.000 And those religious assumptions about life extend to the moral sphere.

00:37:11.000 So, the idea that you are made in God's image and that you are more than just a body.

00:37:16.000 That you are more than just a body and that your autonomy ought to be used for the sake of reason.

00:37:21.000 Your autonomy ought to be used for the sake of doing good.

00:37:24.000 That's something that's gone completely by the wayside since we are apparently just a ball of synapses.

00:37:29.000 And you can see that in the generalized attitude toward what is actual degradation and perversion.

00:37:35.000 Okay, what we are about to watch is actual degradation and perversion.

00:37:38.000 An 11-year-old boy who's become a very famous drag kid.

00:37:42.000 So he's 11 years old and his parents dress him in drag.

00:37:46.000 That is, in and of itself, sexualized. 0.62

00:37:48.000 Drag queens are sexualized. 1.00

00:37:49.000 The idea of dressing up as a girl in midriff-bearing clothes as a young boy is, of course, sexualized. 0.84

00:37:58.000 This little boy, this poor little kid, who is, in fact, being victimized by his parents because parents get to make decisions for their children. 0.99

00:38:04.000 I have no tolerance for this garbage that an 11-year-old boy gets to decide whether he wants to appear at a strip bar, at a gay bar, dancing at a strip bar at 11 years old. 0.99

00:38:14.000 You don't get to do that. 0.99

00:38:16.000 Hey, if a stranger came and took your kid and did this, they'd be prosecuted.

00:38:19.000 If a parent does it, then apparently it's okay.

00:38:22.000 On December 1st, an 11-year-old boy dressed in drag danced on stage in a sexual manner at a gay bar in Brooklyn, New York, called Three Dollar Bill.

00:38:27.000 This is according to Amanda Prestigiacomo over at Daily Wire.

00:38:31.000 The child, Desmond Napoles, was dressed as a Gwen Stefani lookalike, full drag makeup, a blonde wig, and crop top included, as he bounced around on stage to no doubt like a girl.

00:38:40.000 Here's a little bit of the video.

00:38:42.000 And what you can see, On stage, dancing.

00:38:47.000 This kid's 11.

00:38:47.000 I mean, what the actual F?

00:38:51.000 A small 11-year-old boy, dressed in drag, dancing in front of a bunch of gay men, and then stripping. 0.97

00:38:56.000 Stripping off a dress to dance some more.

00:39:00.000 And the patrons begin offering him dollar bills.

00:39:03.000 They begin offering this little 11-year-old kid dollar bills.

00:39:06.000 This is... This is pedophilic.

00:39:08.000 I mean, there's no other way to put it. 0.98

00:39:09.000 This is absolutely pedophilic.

00:39:12.000 The club apparently has no cell phone policy.

00:39:15.000 One of the people who went there... This is not a rip on gay folks, by the way. 0.65

00:39:18.000 This is a rip on this kid's parents and the patrons who decided that it was okay to hit on 11-year-old boys. 0.92

00:39:24.000 One of the patrons, who is not a sick person, said, This was on Saturday night.

00:39:28.000 a child dance on stage for money at nighttime.

00:39:30.000 This was on Saturday night.

00:39:31.000 I've been feeling disturbed ever since. 0.97

00:39:33.000 This whole thing is ridiculous. 0.59

00:39:35.000 And by the way, it is worth noting that the mainstream media has propped up this kid's publicity. 0.95

00:39:40.000 RuPaul wrote a disturbing piece in the Daily Beast talking about how much he loved a drag kid.

00:39:46.000 Desmond and the Today Show promoted this kid, saying that he's taking over social media with an inspiring message.

00:39:54.000 This is a society that has lost its moral moorings on every conceivable level.

00:39:58.000 A society that has lost its moral moorings.

00:39:59.000 Really disturbing stuff.

00:40:00.000 Okay.

00:40:01.000 In just a second, I want to get to a couple of big stories.

00:40:07.000 Here's a story with regard to Russian collusion that you're not hearing from the mainstream media today, but is making the rounds in sort of conservative media, and it should be.

00:40:15.000 So I said earlier on the show that Democrats are very deeply concerned with The idea that they lost the election in 2016 because of Russian interference.

00:40:25.000 How deeply concerned are they over this?

00:40:27.000 That they were preemptively concerned over this.

00:40:30.000 They were preemptively planning to make a fuss over Russian interference if Hillary were to lose.

00:40:34.000 According to Ron Scarborough over at the Washington Times today, British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who wrote the Democrat-financed anti-Trump dossier, said in a court case that he was hired by a Democratic law firm in preparation for Hillary Clinton challenging the results of the 2016 presidential election.

00:40:50.000 That's a pretty bombshell statement.

00:40:52.000 Christopher Steele, you remember the Steele dossier guy, he is now saying in legal filings that he was hired by Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie in order to gather data that would lead to a conclusion that the election was stolen.

00:41:05.000 He said the law firm's Perkins Coie wanted to be in a position to contest the results based on evidence he unearthed on the Trump campaign conspiring with Moscow on election interference.

00:41:13.000 His scenario is contained in a sealed August 2nd declaration in a defamation lawsuit brought by three Russian bankers in London.

00:41:18.000 The trio's American attorneys filed his answers Tuesday in a libel lawsuit in Washington against Fusion GPS.

00:41:24.000 In answers to interrogatories, those are questions asked by the opposing lawyer, Mr. Steele wrote, Fusion's immediate client was law firms Perkins Coie.

00:41:32.000 It engaged Fusion to obtain information necessary for Perkins Coie LLP to provide legal advice on the potential impact of Russian involvement on the legal validity Based on that advice, parties such as the DNC and HFACC could consider steps they would be legally entitled to take to challenge the validity of the outcome of that election.

00:41:54.000 So in other words, Democrats were already planning In the middle of the election cycle for how they were going to challenge the results of the election should Hillary lose.

00:42:03.000 So if Hillary won, they weren't going to talk about Russian interference.

00:42:06.000 If she lost, not only were they going to talk about it, they wanted to see if there was a way they could file a legal lawsuit to prevent the election from being legally stamped.

00:42:14.000 That's pretty unbelievable stuff, especially from a party and a media that were complaining loudly and every day about how terrible it was that President Trump probably would not accept the results of the election.

00:42:24.000 The Democrats were prepared to accept, to challenge the results of the election based on this crappy dossier of which not a single part has yet been substantiated.

00:42:35.000 Maybe there's stuff in the Steele dossier that's legit.

00:42:37.000 We haven't heard any of it.

00:42:39.000 All the stuff that we've heard has been illegitimate.

00:42:42.000 It's pretty incredible stuff.

00:42:44.000 So this is why I say when Democrats talk about the institutions of the United States falling apart, when they talk about how they're going to fix the institutions of the United States gerrymandering, when they talk about how Wisconsin legislature is curbing the power of the incoming governor, oh my goodness, it's a violation of the law of the land.

00:43:01.000 No, it is them in one-sided fashion complaining about how the system works.

00:43:06.000 It is them in one-sided fashion complaining, whatever they lose.

00:43:09.000 And this goes to a bunch of deeper issues about what's going to happen in the next couple of years.

00:43:14.000 Because what you're going to hear from Democrats is that President Trump cannot be allowed to be president.

00:43:17.000 He must be impeached on the basis of his Cohen campaign finance issues.

00:43:23.000 And that's what you're going to hear from them.

00:43:25.000 And they're going to say, listen, we want to have an objective standard by which we can judge presidents. 0.98

00:43:30.000 And if you trust a Democrat with an objective standard when it comes to rules like this, you are making a foolish error.

00:43:37.000 Because what Democrats have shown over the last four decades is that they are not trustworthy when it comes to setting an objective standard by which they then later are expected to hold.

00:43:46.000 They're very upset about challenging the validity of elections unless Stacey Abrams loses in Georgia or Hillary Clinton loses in 2016.

00:43:53.000 Then they're fine with challenging the validity of elections.

00:43:56.000 They're very deeply disturbed when a president commits some crime in office, when he suborns perjury.

00:44:02.000 Except if it's their president, in which case they don't care at all.

00:44:05.000 They're deeply disturbed about gerrymandering unless they're the ones doing the gerrymandering.

00:44:08.000 They're deeply disturbed about limiting the power of incoming parties unless they're the ones doing it.

00:44:13.000 All of which is to suggest not that there shouldn't be any rules, but that you shouldn't fall for the Democrat trick that suggests that they are actually interested in engaging with you and setting up a new set of rules.

00:44:21.000 They have not established a grounded basis for us to trust them in helping to set up a set of rules we can live by.

00:44:28.000 And until they show some good faith in that by going after some of their own when something bad happens, no, they don't get the benefit of the doubt in any of this sort of stuff.

00:44:36.000 OK, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:44:39.000 So things I like today, normally I would do music, but it is in fact a Jewish fast day, which means no music for me. 0.93

00:44:45.000 So instead, we will be doing the best video ever.

00:44:47.000 So this video is just spectacular.

00:44:49.000 I first saw it when Sonny Bunch of the Washington Free Beacon tweeted it out.

00:44:52.000 Basically, there is a guy who had packages stolen from his front porch.

00:44:58.000 So what he decided to do is create a package.

00:45:01.000 This package was basically a prank package.

00:45:03.000 So if it was stolen, the minute somebody opened it, it was going to shoot out glitter, destroying the person's car and or house.

00:45:11.000 And then it was also going to unleash a fart smell to destroy their car and or house.

00:45:17.000 It is just amazing.

00:45:18.000 And this guy is a full on engineer.

00:45:20.000 So he spent like six months doing this.

00:45:21.000 Here's a little bit of the video.

00:45:22.000 It's awesome.

00:45:23.000 This guy took a package from my porch, and now he's about to open it in his car.

00:45:26.000 But what he doesn't know is this is a custom-built bait package that is recording him on four different cameras, and it's about to unleash a pound of the world's finest glitter, along with some other surprises.

00:45:50.000 It's so good.

00:45:59.000 So America, America's already great.

00:46:02.000 Okay, this whole making America great again, America's already great when it's filled with people who are willing to spend time punishing criminals by making over the course of six months, handmade stink bombs and glitter.

00:46:13.000 Bombs that have the capacity to detape so we can all enjoy that together?

00:46:17.000 That's America right there.

00:46:18.000 I mean, that's the spirit of the West.

00:46:20.000 That's the pioneer spirit happening right there.

00:46:22.000 This guy, by the way, has designed technology that's currently on Mars.

00:46:24.000 I mean, I guarantee you he feels more proud of what he did with this than designing technology that is currently on Mars.

00:46:30.000 As well, he should.

00:46:31.000 One of the great things about humanity is that human beings have shown that they are willing to give up affirmative goods in order to punish evildoers.

00:46:38.000 There are a bunch of social experiments along these lines.

00:46:40.000 They're really fascinating.

00:46:41.000 They basically suggest that if you are in a game where you can take, let's say that you are given a dollar, and without the other person knowing how much money you have, you can split the dollar with that person.

00:46:54.000 So, you can either split it 50-50, or you can take 90 and give them 10, or you can take 95 and give them 5.

00:47:00.000 If it's a repeat game, and people find out that one person keeps taking all of the money, And not distributing the money equitably?

00:47:07.000 Then people begin to actively cheat.

00:47:09.000 They begin to actively punish the person.

00:47:12.000 So everyone will then collude to deny that person any money every time they sit next to him, even if they would normally be looking for a 50-50 split.

00:47:19.000 It's pretty amazing stuff.

00:47:20.000 Like, this is just how human beings operate.

00:47:22.000 And you can see that in its more complex fashion with this glitter bomb and stink bomb.

00:47:26.000 So, good for that guy.

00:47:28.000 That is some heroic stuff right there.

00:47:30.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:47:36.000 Idris Elba, the actor, who I love Idris Elba, I think he's great, but he says that the Me Too movement is only difficult if you're a man with something to hide. 0.99

00:47:43.000 This is just a load of garbage. 0.92

00:47:45.000 He says it's only difficult if you're a man with something to hide. 0.99

00:47:49.000 And he earned praise, of course, from Valerie Jarrett and Shonda Rhimes for saying so.

00:47:54.000 What a bunch of hooey. 1.00

00:47:56.000 That is a bunch of hooey. 1.00

00:47:57.000 That's like saying that you have nothing to fear from the police ransacking your house if you have nothing to hide.

00:48:04.000 Maybe true, maybe not.

00:48:06.000 You're really depending a lot on the honesty of the police, if that is the case.

00:48:09.000 You are depending a lot on the honesty of women with regard to an objective assessment of their Me Too situation, if you believe that you have nothing to lose in these situations. 0.80

00:48:19.000 And this goes back to the whole women never lie about rape, or women never misconstrue an activity, or women never subjectively remember an event in a way that's not objectively verifiable.

00:48:29.000 It's just not true.

00:48:30.000 I mean, if that's actually going to be the standard, then we should believe every accusation about everything.

00:48:33.000 Why is sexual assault or sexual misbehavior any different than any other crime?

00:48:37.000 Why shouldn't we just believe everybody?

00:48:38.000 Every accusation should immediately be believed because people are believable.

00:48:42.000 You wouldn't lie about somebody robbing your house.

00:48:44.000 You wouldn't lie about somebody stealing your car.

00:48:46.000 You wouldn't lie about somebody slandering you.

00:48:48.000 We should just believe every accusation.

00:48:50.000 The accusation is, in fact, the proof at that point. 0.99

00:48:52.000 Of course, we don't operate like that because that's incredibly dumb. 0.62

00:48:54.000 And Indra Selva, I promise you that he is taking precautions in his own personal life so that he does not get hit with a Me Too moment just like every other wealthy, famous person does. 1.00

00:49:04.000 And if you're not, you're a fool. 0.95

00:49:05.000 Really, if you're subjecting yourself to random women coming up to your apartment at random odd hours, without worrying about me too, because, hey, I'm a gentleman. 1.00

00:49:16.000 You are so stupid. 1.00

00:49:17.000 Okay. 1.00

00:49:18.000 Time for a couple of other things that I hate.

00:49:21.000 So, there's an ad that, it's the first ad that's come out from President, for President Trump.

00:49:25.000 It's from Brad Parscale, who is the head of President Trump's, basically, technological campaign committee.

00:49:31.000 He was the guy who was responsible for a lot of the data analytics in the last campaign.

00:49:35.000 Here's a little bit of the ad.

00:49:36.000 It is not a, it's, it's not the best ad, I think.

00:49:40.000 This is Brad Parscale, campaign manager for President Trump.

00:49:43.000 President Trump has achieved more during his time in office than any president in history.

00:49:46.000 And that is why I need every Trump supporter to pick up the phone right now and deliver a personal thank you to your president.

00:49:52.000 We have a booming economy, historical unemployment, including the lowest unemployment rate for minorities in history.

00:49:58.000 We're bringing jobs back to America through new trade deals and the world is a safer place. 0.85

00:50:02.000 We need to let President Trump know that we appreciate what he's doing for America.

00:50:06.000 I need you to call the number on your screen and deliver a thank you to President Trump.

00:50:10.000 Call or go online now.

00:50:12.000 Call 800-684-3043 now.

00:50:13.000 Okay, the reason that this is not a great ad is because it assumes a level of personal fealty to the President that is not necessary.

00:50:22.000 So, it is, and then there's a bunch of videos of these people saying, thank you President Trump, thank you President Trump, thank you President Trump.

00:50:28.000 You know, the beginning of the ad where he says that President Trump has accomplished a lot of stuff?

00:50:32.000 Fine.

00:50:32.000 Solid.

00:50:33.000 But if we are really going to run just a personal loyalty campaign, I hated it when- I don't like cultural personalities in the presidency.

00:50:39.000 I don't like it when it comes from the left.

00:50:40.000 I don't like it when it comes from the right.

00:50:41.000 I am not a fan of this whole, you have to thank President Trump personally for all he's done for you.

00:50:47.000 I thought that was his job, right?

00:50:48.000 I mean, wasn't that why people elected him?

00:50:50.000 I thought that was sort of his job.

00:50:51.000 So wouldn't it be better to just say, President Trump has fulfilled his campaign promises, and that's why he needs your support today.

00:50:56.000 But this whole, you must say thank you, say thank you, to President Trump.

00:51:02.000 Maybe he should say thank you to, you know, his voters, or maybe he should say thank you to his donors, or maybe his donors should just say we want to see him re-elected, but I'm not a fan of this particular tack.

00:51:11.000 Okay, a final thing that I hate today.

00:51:14.000 So Nicole Wallace says just very silly things on a regular basis over at MSNBC. 1.00

00:51:18.000 She's talking about President Trump and his attitude toward the Michael Cohen investigation, and she says that criminals are now going to use President Trump as their model.

00:51:28.000 Are there criminals out there who will point to the president and say, well, you know, the president's lawyer said he wasn't going to do it.

00:51:36.000 That's already happening.

00:51:37.000 Are there criminals who are going to model the president's conduct while under federal investigation and make it harder to solve crimes?

00:51:44.000 Yes, I'm sure that's what criminals are going to do.

00:51:46.000 Criminals have never been criminals until they heard that President Trump said stuff on Twitter.

00:51:50.000 Then they became criminals.

00:51:51.000 The level of myopia that it takes in order to say something like this is really extreme, but it has unfortunately become the mainstream opinion among a lot of quote-unquote journalists on the left.

00:52:00.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow to break down all the latest news.

00:52:02.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:03.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:08.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.

00:52:14.000 Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.

00:52:18.000 Edited by Alex Zingaro.

00:52:20.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.

00:52:21.000 Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.

00:52:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 19, 2018

Time To Die, Humans! | Ep. 682

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