Fresh face so fresh, so fresh. AOC enters the swamp, Bernie takes the lead, and President Trump s enemies drive themselves fully insane. Ben Shapiro is back with all the news you need to know about AOC's trip to Washington, D.C. and her relationship with Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Plus, a new piece from Luke Thompson on why AOC loves the swamp and why we should all do the same! Get 20% off everything at Blinds.com when you use promo code BenShapiro20 when using promo code BENSHAPIOFRIENDS and a limited time offer only available through September 30th, 2019. BlindS.com is making your blinds look pretty nice, but something seems dingy. You know what that dingy something is? This is why you need blinds, and you know what else you need? You need BLINDS. They re making it easy for you to look like you re living in a nice place, and they re doing it for you. You ll get everything you need for free, including replacement blinds and pillows, and everything else you could use to make your home look like a nice home in the best possible way. Blindes.com will make it look your best, you ll get a little bit like you are living in your ideal home. in no time at all your dreams come true. - no more excuses, no more wasted time, less stress, less money, and less stress. BLINDERS, more time, more freedom, more money, more peace and more freedom all in one place you can do it all day, more of it. And you ll have it all, no less stress and less of it more of you, just like you can be more of what you want and you ll be more like you . a whole lot more of Ben Shapiro, right here, right in front of you! - Ben Shapiro right here on The Ben Shapiro Show, right at home in real life, right on The Daily Mail in real time, right next to you, with all of your favorite podcast with all your favorite host, right now, no spoilers, no need to go anywhere else but here, no worries, no longer has to travel anywhere else than right here.
00:00:14.000You know, a little behind the scenes for you.
00:00:15.000Every night before I come in and do the show in the morning, I put together a preliminary schedule and sometimes the schedule just blows itself up in the morning and I have to rejigger the entire schedule so as to bring you the latest in news.
00:00:25.000That happened this morning and there's a lot of news and it's pretty awesome.
00:00:28.000We're going to get to all of it in just a second.
00:00:30.000First, let's talk about the blinds that you have on your windows.
00:00:34.000Now, I know, you look around your apartment and you think, ah, this place looks pretty nice, but something seems dingy.
00:00:42.000Let's be honest, taking the time to pick out and buy blinds sounds expensive, kind of boring.
00:00:46.000Installing them yourself sounds harder than any self-respecting adult wants to admit, but Blinds.com makes it super easy for you.
00:00:51.000Not sure what you want or even where to start?
00:00:53.000With Blinds.com, you get a free online design consultation.
00:00:56.000You just send them pictures of your house, they send back custom recommendations from a professional For what will work with your color scheme, your furniture, and specific rooms.
00:01:03.000They will even send you free samples to make sure everything looks as good in person as it does online, and every order gets free shipping.
00:01:47.000She's the fresh face of the Democratic Party.
00:01:49.000Incredibly fresh as well as incredibly face.
00:01:51.000Well, it turns out, according to Luke Thompson, a reporter over at Medium, he has a piece up today called, The Congresswoman Loves the Swamp.
00:02:02.000Last Friday, my mentions died for your sins.
00:02:05.000I posted a screen grab of Riley Roberts' House Microsoft Outlook card, including his official House.gov email address, office phone number, and his designation as staff.
00:02:14.000Roberts is the boyfriend of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
00:02:19.000Throwing caution to the wind, she stormed into my mentions, asserting this was just a way to give Mr. Roberts access to her official calendar.
00:02:24.000Her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarty, soon followed, reiterating the calendar claim and accusing me of doxing Mr. Roberts by posting his publicly available LinkedIn profile, which he deleted, and his official government address and the office phone number.
00:02:38.000By the way, putting up a government email address and phone number, that does not qualify as doxing.
00:02:42.000Neither AOC nor Chakra Bharti said why Roberts needs access to her official calendar.
00:02:46.000Regardless, hordes of her howling minions followed.
00:02:49.000I was briefly suspended by Twitter for revealing personal information, only to be released with an apology when I pointed out that everything I posted is government property, and therefore public.
00:02:57.000My brief stint as a digital political prisoner turned into something of a cause celeb on the right, inviting wave upon wave of MAGA enthusiasts to battle back on my behalf against the forces of digital socialism.
00:03:07.000My timeline is still a wasteland, is what this reporter writes.
00:03:10.000During my suspension, I talked to a congressional spouse, a few reporters, and some staffers from both parties.
00:03:14.000AOC hasn't exactly been winning friends lately, which is how I got Roberts' Outlook screengrab in the first place.
00:03:19.000A rumor on the Hill was circulating that Roberts had attended a congressional progressive caucus meeting.
00:03:23.000A tipster looked to see if he'd been given staff credentials.
00:03:27.000All agreed this was irregular if he was just a spouse.
00:03:29.000Per the House Admin Office, a family member can, in special circumstances, get a House.gov email address.
00:03:34.000But Roberts is not a family member, and although AOC referred to him as her partner in November of last year, she omitted him from her mandatory candidate financial disclosures for 2017 and 2018.
00:04:08.000But also isn't on AOC's staff, even though he showed up Friday morning in the house directory as processing into her personal office as a staffer.
00:04:15.000In other words, his staff status, status like his spouse status, is akin to Schrodinger's cat.
00:04:20.000This ought to have been enough to make it clear that AOC's story didn't add up.
00:04:23.000More importantly, I'd clearly hit a nerve.
00:04:25.000So Luke Thompson writes over at Medium.
00:04:27.000Chakrabarty, who is, again, AOC's chief of staff, spent much of his day in my mentions insisting that everything was on the up and up with Roberts.
00:04:34.000Instead of asking if Roberts had been supplied with the badge and pin appropriate to a congressional spouse, evidence of which her office should have been able to produce easily, AOC's worshipful stenographers in the press went into overdrive, witlessly repeating her talking points.
00:04:45.000Jeff Stein over at the Washington Post even woke up Saturday to keep it going in my mentions, as did Chakra Bharti himself.
00:04:51.000And of course, AOC had decided to get into it.
00:04:53.000That's a lot of time and effort spent refuting a GOP consultant known to a tiny corner of the internet for posting cat pictures and bitching about the doctrine of co-equal branches.
00:05:01.000So I went to the FCC, did a little searching, and discovered that lo and behold, there is more to the story.
00:05:05.000Now, during the original kerfuffle, some folks noticed that AOC's campaign had paid Roberts $1,750.
00:05:26.000It's a way to keep people from circumventing federal contribution caps by providing discounts and or free services.
00:05:31.000But that is not the only political work Roberts ostensibly did during the cycle.
00:05:35.000Nor would it be the first time Chakrabarty had hired Roberts.
00:05:38.000He's done so at least once before in 2017, although it's unlikely Roberts was hired to do any actual work in that case.
00:05:43.000So here is where things get a little dicey for AOC.
00:05:47.000At the beginning of 2017, Chakrabarty created Brand New Congress, an organization dedicated to shaking things up in Democratic primaries.
00:05:54.000It's a rather ingenious organization, but one that dwells in a legal gray area as far as campaign finance law is concerned.
00:06:00.000It facilitates campaigns on shoestring budgets by providing a single clearinghouse for campaign services generally filed under the banner of strategic consulting.
00:06:07.000But as a result, it limits the meaningfulness of FEC closures, disclosures by these campaigns.
00:06:13.000Additionally, it means that Brand New Congress, unlike most PACs, spends most of its budget on overhead and makes relatively few actual contributions to candidates.
00:06:20.000Additionally, Brand New Congress is not one thing, but rather two.
00:06:23.000It's a non-qualified political action committee, a PAC, that can raise and bundle campaign contributions for candidates.
00:06:29.000Donations and expenditures from PACs, like those to and by candidates, are publicly disclosed.
00:06:33.000However, Brand New Congress is also an LLC owned by Chakrabarty.
00:06:36.000Remember, Chakrabarty is AOC's Chief of Staff.
00:06:39.000That provides campaign services to candidates to help lower the barriers to entry.
00:06:43.000LLCs do not have to disclose or itemize their spending.
00:06:46.000This is a clever way to try to make running for office easier and to place a lot of small bets on a lot of insurgent candidates and hope for a few lucky wins.
00:06:52.000And that pretty much seems to be what happened.
00:06:54.000According to FEC records, the PAC was founded in mid-January of 2017.
00:06:57.000At the end of February, it affiliated with Justice Democrats, a collaboration between Chakrabarty and Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks.
00:07:04.000The two organizations are inextricably linked.
00:07:06.000Chakrabarty lists himself as a co-founder of both Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats on his LinkedIn page.
00:07:11.000Over the course of the cycle, Justice Democrats would pay Brand New Congress LLC $605,849.
00:07:18.000In May, Brand New Congress changed the address for its custodian of records to Tennessee.
00:07:22.000In August, it switched addresses again, but in December of 2017, Justice Democrats registered at the same address.
00:07:28.000AOC also used that Tennessee address in her first candidate filing, which incorrectly registered her to run in New York's 15th congressional district.
00:07:35.000Five days later, she switched to the 14th, and two months after that, the campaign committee's address was changed to the Bronx as well.
00:07:41.000A quick tour through AOC's campaign expenditures reveals the extent to which brand new Congress midwifed her campaign into existence, precisely as the frequently asked questions described would have had it.
00:07:50.000But AOC's campaign was different from others backed by brand new Congress PAC, and not simply because she won.
00:07:56.000Like other candidates, AOC paid Brand New Congress LLC for strategic consulting, in her case totaling $18,880.
00:08:03.000Unlike in the other cases, Brand New Congress PAC turned around and paid her boyfriend as a marketing consultant.
00:08:09.000Indeed, while Brand New Congress PAC's 10 largest expenditures were paid to Brand New Congress LLC for strategic consulting, a sum that totaled $261,000 over the course of her campaign, its 11th and 12th largest expenditures were paid to Riley Roberts.
00:08:22.000Brand New Congress PAC paid Roberts $3,000 on August 9th.
00:08:25.00018 days later, AOC's campaign paid Brand New Congress $6,191.
00:08:30.000A month later, Brand New Congress then turned around and paid Riley another $3,000.
00:08:33.000So why would Chakrabarty, a founding engineer at Stripe and wealthy veteran of Silicon Valley, be hiring a no-name, UX-experienced guy with little discernible marketing experience to serve as Brand New Congress PAC's sole marketing consultant?
00:08:47.000The answer seems to be that Chakrabarty was funneling money paid to him by AOC's campaign back to Roberts and by extension to AOC.
00:08:53.000In other words, AOC's campaign, she raised a bunch of money, she paid her chief of staff, who had a consulting firm, and he, in turn, paid the money directly to her boyfriend.
00:09:03.000This is the allegation by Luke Thompson, which is pretty swampy.
00:09:07.000At the beginning of October, more than four months into her campaign, AOC's fundraising had been anemic.
00:09:12.000Excluding an in-kind contribution from Chakrabarti, she raised only $3,000, but had already spent $27,000, more than half of which she had paid to Chakrabarti's brand new Congress LLC.
00:09:21.000By the end of 2017, she'd spent $37,000 but raised only $8,000.
00:09:25.000That's a lot of money to stick on a credit card.
00:09:28.000Since no loans are recorded on her campaign books, presumably either AOC or Roberts was fronting the necessary cash.
00:09:34.000It looks to me like Chakrabarty was effectively reimbursing AOC for a third of her expenses with brand new Congress LLC, perhaps so that she would stay in the race despite her mounting debt.
00:09:43.000The shadiness of the whole business may also explain why Roberts, who is AOC's boyfriend, lists his residence as Arizona for the expenditure, rather than New York.
00:09:50.000Roberts is from Arizona, but was living in New York with AOC.
00:09:53.000His other contributions to her campaign, both cash and in kind, list New York as his residence.
00:09:58.000Regardless of whether or not Roberts was officially AOC's spouse at that time, it seems probable Chakrabarty was reimbursing her for her campaign expenses off books.
00:10:05.000Brand new Congress PAC simply served as a pass-through to do so.
00:10:09.000When AOC won, she then hired Chakrabarty as her chief of staff, taking money from a rich guy, trying to hide it by passing it through a PAC, and then giving her benefactor a government job.
00:10:18.000That is definitely unethical and potentially illegal.
00:10:20.000So in other words, she was raising money, but it wasn't clear that she was actually raising enough money to pay her boyfriend.
00:10:25.000So she just went to Chakrabarty and said, why don't you float my boyfriend the money?
00:10:52.000So that is not a great story for AOC, who is, remember, she is the fresh new face, so fresh, so face of the Democratic Party, very much against the swamp, against corruption and corruption.
00:11:04.000And now it turns out that she may in fact have been violating campaign law.
00:11:07.000At the very least, she was working with a firm that was apparently funneling money back to her via her boyfriend, which is really corrupt.
00:11:16.000And it turns out that then she hires the head of that firm as her chief of staff.
00:11:20.000Now, I'm old enough to remember when Dinesh D'Souza went to jail for illegal campaign contributions.
00:11:26.000So, don't give me the, everybody breaks the rules if you're on the left.
00:11:29.000I don't believe in campaign finance rules, by the way.
00:11:31.000Like, if it were up to me, I don't really care what happens with all this stuff.
00:11:33.000Chakrabarty wants to give AOC's boyfriend some money, and then he wants to join her office, whatever.
00:11:38.000I don't really care because money in politics is endemic to politics, that's just the way things work, doesn't bother me all that much.
00:11:43.000I will say, however, that the massive hypocrisy of members of Congress doing this kind of stuff and then claiming that they are standing for truth and justice in the Soviet way is pretty astonishing.
00:11:53.000And Congress, indeed, is getting crazier pretty much all the time.
00:11:56.000I mean, AOC, you'll recall, is radical, of high order, and so are a lot of her fellow members of Congress.
00:12:02.000That's why they're talking tax rates of 90%, eliminating private health care, abortion to the point of birth, a Green New Deal that would cost $50 trillion.
00:12:17.000The states can get together to propose amendments to the Constitution, to impose term limits, a balanced budget, and put limits on the power of the federal government.
00:12:26.000Thirteen states have already passed it.
00:12:28.000We are working on the remaining states right now.
00:12:29.000To fix the broken system in Washington, you should add your voice to the call for a Convention of States, of which I am a fan.
00:12:35.000So join me and my friend Mark Meckler and sign the petition at conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:12:40.000To get involved, go to conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:12:43.000That is indeed conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:12:45.000There are a lot of folks who will say, well, at a Convention of States, will you have a runaway convention?
00:12:49.000No, you won't have a runway convention because the Convention of States is going to be called largely by conservative states and conservative delegates are going to be the ones writing up the proposed constitutional amendments that would help shore up a lot of the holes that have been poked into the Constitution by the left over the last century and a half.
00:13:04.000Go check it out at conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:13:08.000And join and add your voice to the call for a convention of states.
00:13:10.000That is conventionofstates.com slash ben conventionofstates.com slash ben.
00:13:15.000Well, all of this is bad news for AOC, obviously, because she poses herself as above the fray, purer than the driven snow, an ideologue of ideologues.
00:13:25.000And I mean, she's doing so like today, like she's calling out CNN for corruption.
00:13:30.000The same day that it turns out that she may have actually been funneling money via her chief of staff to her boyfriend.
00:13:35.000It turns out that she is calling out CNN.
00:13:48.000Well, they're upset because they hired Sarah Isker Flores, who's a former spokeswoman for Jeff Sessions.
00:13:52.000They hired her as one of their political editors to help oversee coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign.
00:13:57.000And this prompted AOC, so fresh, so face to say in a tweet, sorry, didn't get the latest memo after a thousand experienced and qualified journalists of all stripes were let go without warning a few weeks ago and still looking for work.
00:14:09.000Are we still pretending that hires like these are evidence of a meritocracy?
00:14:12.000I remember when AOC was just this upset about George Stephanopoulos being the chief political correspondent for NBC or ABC rather after being Hillary Clinton's chief of staff.
00:14:25.000I I recall her being super upset when the brother of Ben Rhodes, who was the national security advisor under Barack Obama, was the head of CBS News.
00:14:32.000I remember her being super upset about Chris Cuomo, who was Andrew Cuomo's brother, being a news anchor on CNN.
00:14:38.000I mean, I remember her being upset about all these things.
00:15:12.000I love the people in the press who have been passing back and forth out of Democratic administrations as long as I have been alive.
00:15:18.000Remember, Jay Carney, the Obama spokesperson, used to work for Time magazine.
00:15:22.000They've been passing in and out of this for a very long time.
00:15:25.000Now, all of a sudden, it's shock, shock, that somebody who worked for Jeff Sessions, who, by the way, President Trump was not particularly fond of, is now going to be working over at CNN.
00:15:34.000According to the Daily Beast, CNN staffers are upset and confused about the network's decision to hire a partisan political operative to oversee its 2020 campaign reporting.
00:15:43.000Again, this has never happened before.
00:15:45.000Partisan political operatives at major news networks?
00:15:53.000On Tuesday, a CNN spokesperson confirmed to Daily Beast that the network had hired Republican political advisor Sarah Isker as the politics editor helming CNN's 2020 coverage.
00:16:02.000The move was first reported by Politico.
00:16:04.000Isker served as an advisor to Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney.
00:16:07.000She was Carly Fiorina's deputy campaign manager for the 2016 Republican primary, and then she worked for Jeff Sessions.
00:16:13.000A CNN spokesperson said Isker will not be involved in the network's DOJ coverage, but will guide TV and digital coverage of the 2020 election, occasionally offering on-screen analysis as well.
00:16:23.000One network editorial staffer said it's extremely demoralizing for everyone here, because if there's a Republican in here, man, how are we even going to talk to people?
00:16:30.000People are generally confused, said another editorial employee, adding the decision to hire a partisan operative for an editorial position comes off as very bizarre.
00:16:39.000CNN's Reliable Sources anchor, Brian Stelter, reported on the network's perspective, tweeting, Love it or hate it, political insiders have been joining newsrooms for decades.
00:16:47.000The more viewpoints represented in newsrooms, the better.
00:16:49.000As for the critiques, CNN PR declined to comment.
00:16:56.000There are so many members of political campaigns in newsrooms that the false, objective, journalismic nonsense that you hear from these newsrooms, it has been alive for a very, very long time.
00:17:08.000Nonetheless, people are very upset on the left because Isker should never be allowed in a newsroom.
00:17:17.000CNN's Jeff Zucker has said before he wanted to bring a little more balance to the newsroom, so it really shouldn't be that big a shock, but anytime any Republican is hired by any major outlet, it becomes an issue for that outlet.
00:17:57.000No one really believes that it should be criminal activity for gay people to have sex with each other.
00:18:03.000That is not a thing that anyone really believes in Western civilization anymore.
00:18:08.000Whether you believe that this activity is a sin or not, the idea of a government busting into somebody's bedroom and prosecuting them for their private activity is something that no person who believes in a free society should really be in favor of.
00:18:20.000Consenting adults participating in an activity of which you do not approve does not give you the license as a government to go in and stop them from doing what they want to do.
00:18:29.000And President Trump, who by the way has been very LGBTQ friendly, particularly LGB friendly, he's been very gay friendly, This is not a surprise coming from him.
00:18:40.000His ambassador to Germany is Rich Grinnell, who is an openly gay man.
00:18:44.000President Trump held up a gay pride flag in the middle of his campaign in 2016.
00:18:49.000How weird is Trump Derangement Syndrome?
00:18:51.000Trump Derangement Syndrome is so strong that gay magazines are now angry at President Trump for attempting to decriminalize homosexuality in a variety of nations around the world.
00:19:30.000Legitimately, it's impossible to understand this sort of logic because it's completely illogical.
00:19:33.000So Iran hangs gay people, and you're like, that's multiculturalism.
00:19:37.000He's cracking down on multiculturalism by telling them to stop hanging gay people from cranes.
00:19:42.000So Out Magazine has a piece by Matthew Rodriguez.
00:19:44.000It says, "While on its surface the move looks like an atypically benevolent decision by the Trump administration, the details of the campaign belie a different story.
00:19:53.000Rather than actually being about helping queer people around the world, the campaign looks more like an instance of the right using queer people as pawns to amass power and enact its own agenda." They say the most telling detail of NBC News' report is that his plan centers homophobic violence in Iran, who NBC News calls the administration's top geopolitical foe.
00:20:13.000So really, what they are saying is that it's very bad that Trump is anti-Iran on the basis of them hanging gay people from cranes, because we don't want to go to war with Iran because we like Iran even though they hang gay people from cranes.
00:20:26.000And it's not just this Out Magazine article.
00:20:28.000Human Rights Campaign put out a tweet storm saying the Trump-Pence administration has consistently worked to undermine the fundamental equality of LGBTQ people and our families from day one.
00:20:38.000And they have a long thread about how terrible it is that they made this decision.
00:20:41.000They say, if this commitment is real, we have a lot of questions about their intentions and commitments and are eager to see what proof and action will follow.
00:20:48.000So if your first reaction to the Trump administration doing something incredibly benevolent on behalf of gay people the world over is, we are deeply suspicious that this is another racist move by the Trump... Trump Derangement Syndrome, man, that is some strong, strong stuff these people are smoking.
00:21:11.000In a second, I'll give you the latest on the Jussie Smollett case, which demonstrates that Trump derangement syndrome can actually lead you directly to prison.
00:21:19.000But first, let us talk about how you defend your rights.
00:21:22.000When the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their government.
00:21:28.000The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own persons with force.
00:21:33.000You know how strongly I believe in these principles.
00:21:39.000Bravo Company Manufacturing was started in a garage by a Marine vet more than two decades ago to build a professional-grade product that meets combat standards.
00:21:46.000BCM believes the same level of protection should be provided to every American, regardless of whether they're a private citizen or a professional.
00:21:54.000They design, engineer, and manufacture life-saving equipment.
00:21:57.000They assume every rifle leaving their shop will be used in a life-or-death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
00:22:05.000Each component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standard.
00:22:09.000BCM feels a moral responsibility as Americans to provide tools that will not fail the user when it's not just a paper target, but someone coming to do them actual harm.
00:22:18.000To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing, head on over to bravocompanymfg.com, where you can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.
00:22:41.000So here's the latest on the Jussie Smollett case.
00:22:45.000The latest on the Jussie Smollett case is that the two brothers involved in the Jussie Smollett attack told police that Smollett was not just behind the fake attack, he was also behind creating a fake racist letter that was sent to the actor on the set of his show Empire, according to two sources with first-hand knowledge of the investigation.
00:23:00.000When the letter did not get a bigger reaction, Smollett then orchestrated the attack a week later with the two men, Ola and Abel Osundero, sources said.
00:23:09.000Also on Tuesday, sources said the two brothers were seen on a rideshare video camera before being dropped off near the location of the attack.
00:23:17.000Smollett received a letter containing a white powder on January 22nd.
00:23:21.000The letter was mailed to Chicago's Cinespace Studios, where the show Empire is filmed.
00:23:26.000The letter prompted a hazmat response.
00:23:27.000CPD said the white substance was later determined to be aspirin.
00:23:32.000The note was crafted with letters apparently cut out from magazines to form words.
00:23:36.000The pieced-together message contains racial and homophobic threats directed at Smollett.
00:23:40.000A magazine is one of the pieces of evidence retrieved from the brothers' home last week during a search conducted by CPD.
00:23:45.000Investigators also recovered a book of stamps.
00:23:48.000So, I mean, it's gonna be kind of hilarious when it turns out that not only did they cut the letters from the magazine, they then kept the magazine.
00:24:15.000Once you start sending things through the mails, then you have a real problem.
00:24:18.000But the reason that people believed him is because they believed in a narrative about President Trump the same way that Out Magazine believes a narrative about President Trump, that he's a brutal, terrible homophobe.
00:24:27.000And therefore, Everything that people say that is bad about Trump is true and everything good they say must inevitably be false.
00:24:33.000Geraldo Rivera basically admitted this yesterday.
00:24:34.000He said, A charge like this was so incendiary, it caught on because it was, you know, kind of justifying and reaffirming the stereotype that people had.
00:24:48.000I mean, it was so patently obvious, and yet, because it is so toxic, racism, and because we want justice in this country, we want people to have a fair shake, we bought this guy's unbelievable tale.
00:25:08.000Okay, and it is true that people jump to these conclusions because they are eager to continue showing that America is a deeply racist, terrible place.
00:25:17.000And these hoaxes started long before President Trump.
00:25:20.000This is America derangement syndrome for a lot of folks.
00:25:23.000This is people think that America is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad place steeped in racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, and therefore In the attempt to continue painting America this way, every story that can be used as a data point in defense of that narrative will be pushed out there, will be promoted, will be trumpeted, will be made more audible.
00:25:43.000That is the goal of many members of the media.
00:25:49.000And what you see over and over when it comes to this sort of America Derangement Syndrome is that any piece of data in favor of a silly narrative that is not true, that America is an awful, awful place, gets pushed to the absolute limit.
00:26:03.000America Derangement Syndrome is merely the broader version of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
00:26:08.000Trump is not America and America is not Trump, but The anger at Trump existed for Bush.
00:27:01.000If you go back to 2016 and you look at the percentages that he won, the percentages that he won, state by state, were very similar to the percentages that Mitt Romney won.
00:27:09.000The left paints every Republican with the same brush, which is one of the reasons Trump was nominated in the first place.
00:27:14.000Because Republicans said, fine, you're going to paint us with this brush?
00:27:24.000But, again, Trump derangement syndrome is just the latest iteration of an anti-American, anti-conservative derangement syndrome.
00:27:32.000When I say anti-American, I don't mean that folks can't be patriots or that they are hating America.
00:27:37.000What I am saying is that they paint a vision of America that's a lot darker in terms of its history and current presence than is warranted by the evidence.
00:27:45.000Meanwhile, speaking of Trump derangement syndrome, The media continue to push the narrative that President Trump is in the pay of Russia, again, without any evidence.
00:27:52.000Yesterday, Andrew McCabe, the former fired interim FBI director, he came out and he said on CNN, well, maybe President Trump is being paid by Russia.
00:28:21.000I think that's why we started our investigation, and I'm really anxious to see where Director Mueller concludes that.
00:28:28.000Okay, so he's got no evidence, he says it's possible, and we're supposed to just go along with that.
00:28:32.000Then, a CNN national security analyst gets on TV and says Vladimir Putin could be controlling the White House.
00:28:37.000This is Samantha Vinograd, who served on the National Security Council under Barack Obama.
00:28:42.000McCabe has said that the president's moves to undercut Russia-related investigations, to believe Vladimir Putin over his intelligence community, to make personnel decisions based upon Russia-related matters, all led to this investigation.
00:28:56.000McCabe would have laid that out before the Gang of Eight.
00:28:58.000This investigation is continuing, and there is still a chance that Vladimir Putin is controlling the White House.
00:29:03.000Yeah, I mean, these are astonishing allegations that are being made without any real evidence that the allegations are true.
00:29:09.000But again, Trump derangement syndrome continues to be promoted across mainstream media.
00:29:13.000Now in a second, we're going to jump into the 2020 race.
00:29:33.000They use the answers to match your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress.
00:29:37.000Whether you're a side sleeper or a hot sleeper, whether you like a plush or a firm bed with Helix, there's no more guessing and no more confusion.
00:29:42.000Just go to helixsleep.com slash Ben, take their two-minute sleep quiz.
00:29:45.000They will match you to a mattress that will give you the best sleep of your life.
00:29:48.000For couples, Helix can even split the mattress down the middle, providing individual support needs and feel preferences for each side.
00:30:46.000First, you're going to have to go over to Daily Wire and subscribe.
00:30:49.000For $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to Daily Wire.
00:30:52.000Not only that, not only that, for $99 a year, you can get the annual subscription, which comes along with all sorts of goodies, including two more hours per day of my show.
00:31:01.000Also, my new book, The Right Side of History, details the crisis of purpose that is happening right now in Western civilization.
00:31:07.000Again, the title of the book is The Right Side of History.
00:31:09.000If you want to know how we got here and how we can get back on track, pre-order today at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and any major bookseller.
00:31:14.000I really can't wait to share it with you.
00:31:23.000When you get the subscription for $99 a year, you get all sorts of goodies.
00:31:25.000You get to be behind the paywall with me, ask me questions during the breaks in the show.
00:31:29.000You get also this, the very greatest in beverage vessels, Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
00:31:33.000And right now, if you take a picture with your Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler, And you hashtag it, Leftist Tears Tumblr, and you put it on Instagram or you put it on Twitter, then you may show up, your face may show up in all of its glory on the Ben Shapiro Show.
00:31:47.000Also, make sure you subscribe over at YouTube or iTunes because then you get the Sunday Special.
00:31:51.000Now, when you're a subscriber to Daily Wire, you get the Sunday Special on Saturday, which means that you get it a day early for those of us keeping track at home.
00:32:39.000Bernie Sanders has picked up an enormous amount of money.
00:32:42.000Apparently, according to Nick Visser over at Huffington Post, Bernie raised $6 million in the first 24 hours after announcing his 2020 presidential bid.
00:32:50.000Apparently, there are a lot of people who are willing to give their money to a guy who wants to steal everybody else's money.
00:32:54.000More than 225,000 people have already donated to Bernie Sanders' campaign.
00:33:00.000That number is way ahead of everybody else.
00:33:02.000It is more than double the $1.5 million raised by Kamala Harris in her first 24 hours.
00:33:08.000He is raising an average of $27 a person, so that means a lot of small donors.
00:33:13.000The Democratic field is already crowded, but by polling data, Bernie is doing incredibly well in the polls.
00:33:18.000Right now, there's a tracking poll that RealClearPolitics has been highlighting Showing exactly where everybody shows up here, and right now it looks like Biden at 28% is their RealClearPolitics poll averages, Biden at 28%, Sanders at 17%, Kamala Harris at 10%, Warren at 7, Roark at 6, and Booker at 5, and then everybody else is basically a corpse at this point.
00:33:43.000Gillibrand, by the way, does not even show up in these polls.
00:33:46.000Because nobody likes Kirsten Gillibrand, as we will illustrate for you in just a second.
00:33:51.000So Joe Biden is the other shoe to drop.
00:33:52.000Everybody is still waiting for Joe Biden to jump in the race.
00:33:55.000But for the moment, Bernie is the frontrunner, which is pretty astonishing because the guy is not only an open, quote unquote, democratic socialist.
00:34:01.000Back in the day, he was like an actual commie.
00:34:03.000And now he's hiding the communism by saying that he likes Norway and he likes Sweden and all this.
00:34:07.000But back in the 1980s, he really didn't hide it.
00:34:11.000Bernie Sanders back in the flashback praising Fidel Castro and talking about how the word socialism doesn't frighten him.
00:34:16.000As a socialist, the word socialism does not frighten me.
00:34:19.000And I think it's probably fair to say that the Nicaraguan government is primarily a socialist government.
00:34:23.000You may recall way back in, what was it, 1961, they invaded Cuba.
00:34:27.000And everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world.
00:34:31.000All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro.
00:34:34.000They forgot that he educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.
00:34:40.000But just because Ronald Reagan dislikes these people does not mean to say that the people in their own nations feel the same way.
00:34:46.000Which is why they have a dictatorship where they haven't had a free election in 60 years.
00:34:50.000So Bernie Sanders back in 1985 defending the Castro's who were legitimately throwing dissidents in prison for dozens of years, people in Cuba getting on Legitimately, old 1950s Cadillacs with the tires inflated trying to float their way to Miami, and Bernie Sanders is sitting there going, Cuba's great!
00:35:12.000I mean, really, really well done stuff.
00:35:14.000Bernie Sanders, though, even Bernie has to lie about his own agenda.
00:35:16.000This is the dirty little secret, is that Bernie, despite all of his vast honesty about American politics, he will not actually tell you The impact of his own program.
00:35:26.000So, Bernie Sanders was talking about healthcare yesterday, and he was talking about his Medicare for All plan.
00:35:31.000And he dropped a line that is so eminently false that even fact-checkers on the left are going, uh, Bernie, that's not true.
00:35:37.000He was talking about Medicare for All, and he suggested that if you like your doctor, you're going to be able to keep your doctor and it will be cheaper under Medicare for All.
00:35:44.000You're offering something that the polling shows people can get very spooked very quickly about.
00:35:48.000No, well, but that's because we're going to be taking on the insurance companies and the drug companies who are going to spend a whole lot of money distorting what we believe in.
00:35:56.000For example, They're going to say, people, you're going to lose your current health insurance and employment.
00:36:01.000Yeah, but you're going to have the same exact doctor.
00:36:04.000You're going to have more freedom of choice under our proposal than you have under the current proposals.
00:36:09.000The average middle-class family will save money, will spend less money on health care, will have more choice and have broader coverage than is currently the case.
00:36:21.000The only thing you could possibly say is that if you nationalize the health system the way that Bernie Sanders wants to, that on a per capita taxing level, we might spend less than we do on a voluntaristic level.
00:36:48.000You're not going to have to wait for any of that stuff.
00:36:50.000The fact is the United States still has the world's best five-year survival rate for virtually all cancers.
00:36:55.000The United States is still the repository of nearly all medical innovation on planet Earth.
00:36:59.000On planet Earth, more than half of all new drugs are produced in the United States, and it would be higher if the FDA weren't so insane in its regulatory overreach.
00:37:08.000It is true that the United States is more expensive than other nations, but if you remove the amount of money that we spend on healthcare on a per capita level from our GDP on a per capita level, we are still number one or number two in the world.
00:37:19.000In other words, we spend a lot of money on healthcare because many of us want to spend a lot of money on healthcare.
00:37:24.000Also, because we heavily subsidize, really heavily subsidize our medical system.
00:37:30.00049% of all medical spending in the United States is done by the federal government.
00:37:34.000It's done by the government, through Medicaid and through Medicare.
00:37:36.000The idea that there isn't government healthcare provided in the United States is simply nonsense.
00:37:41.000When he says, if you like your doctor, you're gonna get... Listen, even Obamacare wouldn't let you keep your doctor once they decided to rewrite all the regulations.
00:37:49.000This is why when... Bernie Sanders has a choice.
00:37:51.000If he wants his nationalized healthcare system, he must abolish private insurance.
00:37:54.000If he does not abolish private insurance, then people are simply going to purchase supplemental insurance, and most doctors are going to start taking that insurance and not taking the government insurance, because reimbursement rates from private insurance are higher than reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid.
00:38:07.000This is why many doctors now will not take Medicare or Medicaid patients.
00:38:11.000The only way to guarantee that doctors will do that is to prohibit them from taking money from private insurers by abolishing private insurers.
00:38:18.000I mean, there are other ways to do this, but that's not the way that Bernie Sanders wants to do it.
00:38:21.000Avik Roy, who's supposed to be on our show a little bit later today, talking about healthcare systems, he recommends the Swiss model.
00:38:26.000The Swiss model has an individual mandate where every person pays into a private health insurance system, and then you have choice among your health insurers, you have choice among your doctors.
00:38:34.000That's not what Bernie is talking about.
00:38:36.000That's not what Bernie is talking about.
00:38:41.000So, he botches that, but You know, no matter, what makes Bernie popular is the fact that he is a truth teller.
00:38:49.000Now, I will say, there is one area in which Bernie Sanders is a lot better than the other Democrats, and it's one of the reasons why Bernie Sanders may, in fact, have a plurality run to the nomination.
00:38:59.000So, Bernie, in his opening interview, he talked about intersectionality.
00:39:03.000Bernie's been trying to play both sides of this coin.
00:39:05.000He's been trying to say, America's racist, sexist, bigoted, and homophobic.
00:39:09.000But, he then will say we ought to have a meritocracy.
00:39:11.000Now, the left agrees with the first part, but the hard left disagrees with the second part.
00:39:15.000They don't believe a meritocracy is even possible.
00:39:18.000They don't believe that we should judge people by their abilities.
00:39:20.000They believe we should judge people by their group identity, because in the view of the radical left, All human relationships can be attributed to power hierarchies and imbalances of power.
00:39:31.000So there's no such thing as a meritocracy.
00:39:36.000Deep down, Bernie Sanders is, while he's a communist, Well, he's an actual Marxist, Bernie Sanders.
00:39:42.000He still has this gut-level belief, because he grew up in the United States, in a meritocracy.
00:39:47.000And so he says some stuff that makes him kind of unpopular on the intersectional left.
00:39:51.000There's a problem for him in one area, and kind of a win for him in another.
00:39:54.000Here's Bernie Sanders saying something that violates the tenets of intersectionality.
00:39:59.000We have got to look at candidates not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender, and not by their age.
00:40:07.000I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a non-discriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.
00:40:35.000If they do pass it, they will immediately revoke it.
00:40:37.000There will instead be a wave election for Repu... If Bernie Sanders were to be elected president, God forbid, in 2020, in 2022 there would be a wave congressional election for Republicans.
00:40:46.000Not only because we do this every four years, but also because nobody actually wants Bernie's policy proposals.
00:40:52.000But Bernie is a lot more like Trump when it comes to the idea that he is in favor of a non-racial meritocracy.
00:40:58.000This is not what the Democratic Party wants.
00:41:00.000And so, Stephen Colbert, who is a full-time pander bear, he comes out and he says, it's just terrible that Bernie Sanders would say something like this.
00:41:10.000The field is also way more diverse this time with multiple women, people of color, the first openly gay major party presidential candidate.
00:41:52.000In any case, Stephen Colbert going after Bernie Sanders for not being intersectional enough.
00:41:57.000And this is going to be the battle inside the Democratic Party.
00:41:59.000And if I have to root for one side of the Kamala Harris intersectional politics versus Bernie Sanders, non-intersectional socialism, I'll go with Bernie.
00:42:07.000Honestly, because I think the greatest damage being done to the country right now is not even the battle between bigger government and smaller government.
00:42:14.000It's the battle between tribalism and non-tribalism.
00:42:16.000If Bernie is arguing in favor of non-tribalism, even by accident, that's a lot better to me than the intersectional politics being pushed by the hardcore left.
00:42:24.000It's also why Bernie Sanders is going to do disproportionately well among non-college educated white people in primaries and maybe in the general election.
00:42:31.000Kamala Harris is hoping that she can crowd Bernie out when it comes to the black lane, the African-American lane of the Democratic Party.
00:42:40.000But Bernie could strike back by doing incredibly well among white folks in such primaries.
00:42:45.000Now, the question is whether those white folks are so woke that they have embraced the same intersectional politics that Kamala Harris is counting on.
00:42:52.000If they look more like Stephen Colbert, if they're angry at Bernie for violating the tenets of intersectionality.
00:42:57.000It really is kind of a fascinating thing when Bernie Sanders is more Pro-America in his vision of race than Kamala Harris.
00:43:04.000Really, really a fascinating, fascinating thing considering that Bernie's like an actual Soviet.
00:43:08.000And meanwhile, there are a couple of updates on other candidates.
00:43:58.000So, she did a cooking thing last night, because this is now a thing.
00:44:01.000Everybody who runs for president has to cook.
00:44:04.000Honestly, if I were to run for president, My video would be me just going to a restaurant and ordering something.
00:44:09.000Because, number one, I do it more often than cooking, and so do all the rest of these candidates.
00:44:13.000Okay, if you think Kirsten Gillibrand is at home cooking every night, or AOC is at home with her Instant Pot every night as opposed to just ordering out, you're insane.
00:45:10.000By the way, Kamala Harris's dad is also ripping into her, so that's kind of hilarious.
00:45:14.000Apparently, he is very angry at her because in a recent interview, she suggested she had smoked pot because half of her family was from Jamaica.
00:45:21.000And her dad called his daughter's remarks a travesty and accused her of stereotyping.
00:45:25.000He said, My dear departed grandmother, as well as my deceased parents, must be turning in their grave right now to see their family's name, reputation, and proud Jamaican identity being connected in any way, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy-seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.
00:45:40.000Harris is an economics professor at Stanford University, and this is reported by the Washington Times, and speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically disassociate ourselves from this travesty.
00:48:02.000You'll recall that during the 2016 race, he actually made some speeches in which he talked about why campuses should be open places for inquiry, and he shouldn't have speeches trying to be shut down.
00:48:10.000Well, he gave a speech yesterday in Oakland, California, in which he talked about masculinity.
00:48:16.000He said, all of us have to recognize that being a man is first and foremost being a good human.
00:48:20.000That means being responsible, working hard, being kind, respectful, and compassionate.
00:48:23.000The notion that somehow defining yourself as a man is dependent on are you able to put someone else down, able to dominate, that is an old view.
00:48:31.000And then he says, if you're confident about your strength, you don't need to show me by putting somebody else down, show me by lifting somebody else up.
00:48:37.000And then he got into some really good stuff, he really did.
00:48:40.000He talked, he was talking for an initiative called My Brother's Keeper Initiative.
00:48:44.000He talked about how racism historically sends a message that you are less than and we feel we have to compensate by exaggerating stereotypical ways men are supposed to act and that's a trap.
00:48:55.000That racism historically has said to black men that you are, you are less than and so what that leads to is a chip on the shoulder and a feeling like you have to act out aggressively to prove your masculinity.
00:49:04.000That's not completely false what Obama is saying here.
00:49:06.000But the best thing that he said is he started talking about how It's a self-defeating model for being a man to act in these ways.
00:49:13.000He talked about how hip-hop and rap are often built around talking about how I have more money than you, I can disrespect you.
00:49:19.000He said, ironically, that shows the vulnerability you feel.
00:49:22.000If you're confident about your sexuality, you don't have to have eight women around you twerking.
00:49:25.000You seem stressed that you got to be acting that way.
00:49:27.000I got one woman who I'm very happy with, he added.
00:49:34.000Like every so often he showed up during his presidency and says stuff like this, but it was dominated by campaigning.
00:49:38.000It was dominated by hardcore politics.
00:49:40.000If this had been the leading edge of his presidency, you know how much better the country would have been?
00:49:44.000You know how much better the country would have been?
00:49:48.000I mean, really, this could have been such a great thing, and it's a tragedy for the country that Obama didn't do this more while he was president.
00:49:55.000So, praise to Barack Obama for saying some true things about masculinity.
00:49:58.000Being a man is about being a responsible man, taking care of your wife, taking care of your children, taking care of your neighbors, building your community.
00:50:04.000That's what being a responsible man is all about.
00:50:06.000If Barack Obama and I can agree on that, hopefully, you know, that'll be a starting point.
00:50:11.000For the revision of masculinity in the country more generally.
00:50:15.000By the way, the one thing I don't like about this is the idea that toxic masculinity is so prevalent.
00:50:20.000The truth is traditional masculinity was all the things that I'm talking about.
00:50:23.000Traditional masculinity was about taking care of your family, being responsible, building your community.
00:50:27.000Okay, time for some things that I hate.
00:50:34.000Martina Navratilova, probably the greatest women's player of all time outside of Serena Williams in tennis, she's now been removed as an ambassador by Athlete Ally, an organization that supports LGBT athletes.
00:50:52.000She's being ousted because she referred to trans women as men who decide to be female in a newspaper column this week, which is true, adding that allowing them to compete with women who are assigned female at birth is cheating and unfair.
00:51:05.000Her comments were heavily criticized and described as disturbing, upsetting, and deeply transphobic by the rights group Transactual and now Athlete Ally, a U.S.
00:51:13.000nonprofit organization that campaigns for greater inclusion in sport.
00:51:17.000In a statement, the organization said Athlete Ally unequivocally stands on the side of trans athletes and their right to access and compete in sport free from discrimination.
00:51:24.000Martina Navratilova's recent comments on trans athletes are transphobic based on a false understanding of science and data.
00:51:31.000And perpetuate dangerous myths that lead to the ongoing targeting of trans people.
00:51:45.000I saw a statistic yesterday that the fastest women in the world, there are 2,000.
00:51:51.000For every fast woman in the world, like at the upper ranks, there are 2,000 men faster.
00:51:55.000There's a study that was recently done that said the average woman, the fastest woman throwing a baseball, like the woman who throws fastest, or who throws a baseball the fastest in the United States, The vast majority of men can throw a baseball faster than that.
00:52:10.000The fact is men have more upper body strength.
00:52:16.000There's a reason that Rene Richards, who you'll recall is one of the first openly trans people in the United States, was a former ophthalmologist who was like an amateur tennis player.
00:52:30.000And he, his name was Richard Raskin, a nice Jewish boy, She, he then had a sex change and was just like a mildly competitive tennis player.
00:52:43.000Was ranked 6th out of 20 males over, out of the top 20 males over 35 in the United States.
00:52:52.000And then began dressing as a woman, had a sex change, and suddenly was one of the top tennis players in the world as a woman.
00:53:00.000Richards played professionally from 1977 to 1981 when he retired at age 47.
00:53:05.000He was ranked as high as 20th overall.
00:53:08.000He was legitimately like just a mediocre men's tennis player and suddenly he was ranked 20th overall as like a 40 year old.
00:53:14.000That's because men are stronger than women on average.
00:53:17.000Martina Navratilova is of course exactly correct about this.
00:53:20.000Martina Navratilova, one of the great pioneers in the LGBT movement, has decided, has been ousted from her own movement now.
00:54:24.000Like when you do a genetic test and it turns out that you have zero Y chromosomes and so we label you a female, that is science misgendering you.
00:54:32.000Man, the trans movement really undermines their own credibility when they get into this stuff.
00:54:35.000If they want to make the case, the only logically consistent case for trans rights is that gender is entirely separate from biology.
00:54:42.000Now that is not true, there's no evidence to support that, but the idea that gender is completely separate from biology, and therefore can be arbitrarily applied and self-applied, But that biology is biology, so in other words, a trans male is still a biological woman, but identifies as female.
00:54:57.000That at least has some internal logic to it.
00:54:59.000But if you are claiming now that trans women are genetic women, or biological women, or that facial recognition software using objective metrics are supposed to identify you as the gender to which you claim identity, what in the world are you even talking about?
00:55:12.000This leads to some rather weird places.
00:55:14.000There is a person, I've never heard of this person.
00:55:17.000Apparently there's a show called Pose and there's an actress named India Moore.
00:55:21.000And this trans star, who I guess is a genetic male, wrote on February 17th, quote, if a woman has a penis, her penis is a biologically female penis.