The Ben Shapiro Show - Trump’s First Crisis | Ep. 371

00:00:00.000 Hurricane Harvey hits Houston and the fallout is pretty devastating.

00:00:04.000 We'll talk about that.

00:00:04.000 Plus Antifa goes back to Berkeley and we'll talk about that as well.

00:00:08.000 Plus the VMAs decide to hit Trump because of course they do.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:13.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:22.000 Alright, so lots of news breaking over the weekend, most of it from Houston, where Hurricane Harvey has hit incredibly hard.

00:00:27.000 Apparently there's 50 inches of rain in Houston, which is just an astonishing amount of rain.

00:00:34.000 And these pictures are just amazing.

00:00:36.000 I'm going to show you some pictures in just a second of what the hurricane actually looks like, what the conditions on the ground have been.

00:00:41.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at texture.com.

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00:02:13.000 Okay, so...

00:02:14.000 Over in Houston, it is a full-scale disaster area.

00:02:17.000 I want to show you some of the pictures of what's happening in Houston.

00:02:20.000 Really incredible.

00:02:22.000 So this is what certain parts of Texas now look like.

00:02:25.000 You can see the entire town is covered in water.

00:02:28.000 There are a few cars on the street.

00:02:30.000 But you can see that the cars are covered all the way up to the windshield.

00:02:32.000 So this water is 3-4 feet deep.

00:02:35.000 You're seeing boats with the fan motors on the back just going around in the streets in this particular photo.

00:02:41.000 Really shocking and incredible photo.

00:02:44.000 You can see some more of it.

00:02:45.000 So here's another picture.

00:02:47.000 This is downtown Houston.

00:02:49.000 It's a lake.

00:02:50.000 It's a lake.

00:02:51.000 I mean, downtown Houston is entirely underwater.

00:02:53.000 Houston is built in an area that is about 35 to 40 feet above sea level, but it is incredibly flat and there are a few marshes, what they call bayous, that are over there where all the water was designed to flow.

00:03:06.000 One of the things that's happened, people are looking at the streets and saying, why are the streets underwater?

00:03:09.000 Well, that's because the streets were actually designed as a secondary spillway.

00:03:13.000 In case of situations like this, the idea was that the water would go into the streets so that it wouldn't go into your homes, but it's been completely overwhelmed.

00:03:21.000 Here's another picture of what it looks like in Houston today.

00:03:24.000 This, of course, is a small child in his home.

00:03:27.000 And this kid was rescued, by the way.

00:03:28.000 The kid is sitting on the counter, and you can see this yellow brine just rising in the kitchen.

00:03:34.000 Gotta be two feet high in the kitchen. 0.99

00:03:37.000 There was tape of people who are actually fishing inside their home because there's so much water.

00:03:42.000 They're legitimately just standing in thigh-deep water and pulling fish out of their house.

00:03:46.000 I mean, totally crazy stuff.

00:03:48.000 You can see water, what it looks like when it pours into an office building.

00:03:52.000 This was happening in downtown Houston as well.

00:03:54.000 I can see the doors are shut.

00:03:55.000 It's not stopping the water.

00:03:56.000 Here it goes.

00:03:56.000 This is at the news headquarters.

00:03:57.000 I think this is the New York Times news headquarters, I believe.

00:04:07.000 Just unbelievable stuff.

00:04:11.000 So some of the questions that people were asking is they were asking, why is it that Houston was not evacuated?

00:04:16.000 So the governor, Greg Abbott, wanted to evacuate Houston about three days in advance.

00:04:20.000 The mayor said no. 1.00

00:04:21.000 It's not quite as simple as the mayor's an idiot. 0.99

00:04:23.000 The fact is that during Hurricane Rita, there was an attempt to evacuate and like a hundred people died, I believe, during Hurricane Rita in the evacuation because people were stuck on the roads. 0.99

00:04:32.000 It was crowded.

00:04:33.000 It was overheated.

00:04:33.000 People were dying in their cars.

00:04:35.000 And so what would have happened if everybody had been on the road and then the flood hits?

00:04:39.000 You can actually look at what the video looks like of the streets themselves.

00:04:43.000 Look at these boats maneuvering down the street.

00:04:45.000 Okay, this is actually in Dickinson, Texas.

00:04:47.000 This is what the streets look like right now.

00:04:49.000 You can see there are cars that are completely submerged, and people are moving around in their boats trying to save people from their homes.

00:04:56.000 There's an old age home, actually, where they had to save, I think, 15 people, where the old age home was completely underwater.

00:05:04.000 Just incredible stuff.

00:05:06.000 So, one of the questions that's been asked is, how is Trump doing on all this, right?

00:05:10.000 How's the federal government doing on all this? 1.00

00:05:11.000 So Trump, as is Trump's want, tweets out a lot of stupid things, right? 1.00

00:05:15.000 He tweets out a lot of dumb things. 1.00

00:05:16.000 He tweeted out a bunch of things about the hurricane that are really kind of silly. 0.99

00:05:21.000 He tweeted, it sounds like a game show host tweeting about the hurricane.

00:05:24.000 You know, he tweeted out, for example, wow, exclamation point, right?

00:05:29.000 About the size of the hurricane.

00:05:30.000 I mean, it almost as though, like this, this 17 hours ago,

00:05:34.000 All caps.

00:05:34.000 Historic rainfall in Houston and all over Texas.

00:05:37.000 Flood are unprecedented and more rain coming.

00:05:40.000 Spirit of the people is incredible.

00:05:41.000 Thanks!

00:05:42.000 And then he tweeted also, he tweeted a bunch of things about Mexico.

00:05:45.000 Now he tweeted, he tweeted this, this was yesterday.

00:05:47.000 Wow!

00:05:48.000 Now experts are calling Harvey a once in a 500 year flood!

00:05:52.000 We have an all out effort going and going well.

00:05:54.000 And he also tweeted out, many people are now saying this is the worst storm hurricane they have ever seen.

00:05:59.000 Good news is that we have great talent on the ground.

00:06:01.000 So, I mean, this sort of wonderment from Trump is not, is not good tactics.

00:06:06.000 I mean, it's just not great politics.

00:06:08.000 You don't really want to spend

00:06:10.000 A lot of time when, in the middle of a storm, I'm talking about, wow, this is historic.

00:06:14.000 Like, we can all observe this, but we're not in control of it.

00:06:16.000 Like, theoretically, you should actually be projecting a sense of calm when you do this.

00:06:20.000 Not, wow, look at that rain.

00:06:21.000 Isn't that amazing?

00:06:23.000 Also, we're here.

00:06:24.000 But, that's really been the only criticism of Trump, which demonstrates that Trump actually is doing a pretty good job with all of this.

00:06:29.000 Right, Trump has not done anything wrong.

00:06:31.000 So the media, can you imagine if Trump were doing a bad job?

00:06:34.000 Remember how the media was about Hurricane Katrina, where it wasn't even the federal government's responsibility to be there?

00:06:38.000 And they responded in relatively prompt fashion and the media ripped them up and down because the Democratic governor of the state, Kathleen... 1.00

00:06:45.000 Mary Landrieu, I think it was.

00:06:47.000 Kathleen Blanco was the governor of the state at the time. 1.00

00:06:51.000 She was garbage. 1.00

00:06:51.000 She was a terrible governor at the time. 1.00

00:06:53.000 And Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans had told people not to evacuate, and then a lot of people died because of that, and then they blamed Bush for it.

00:07:00.000 Can you imagine if things went wrong in Texas how much blame Trump would get?

00:07:03.000 It would be insane, right?

00:07:04.000 The media would never stop.

00:07:05.000 The media would never stop.

00:07:07.000 But Trump hasn't done a bad job with this because he allowed his administrators to do what they had to do.

00:07:11.000 He told them to get down.

00:07:12.000 The federal government learned its job from Hurricane Katrina.

00:07:14.000 They're never going to be caught off guard on this sort of stuff again.

00:07:17.000 And the federal government is doing what it's supposed to do here.

00:07:22.000 Greg Abbott said,

00:07:23.000 Trump has already told us whatever we need we're gonna get.

00:07:25.000 By the way, it's all locals and state that's really doing most of this work.

00:07:27.000 The National Guard is down there helping out too.

00:07:29.000 But this is the difference between Greg Abbott doing a good job at the state level and the mayor of Houston apparently doing a good job with local law enforcement.

00:07:35.000 He's a Democrat, so this is a bipartisan thing.

00:07:37.000 Now here's Greg Abbott talking about the federal government's response.

00:07:40.000 What can you tell us about President Trump's personal engagement in this problem and in managing the response to it?

00:07:48.000 It's been extremely professional, very helpful.

00:07:52.000 He called and said, Governor, whatever you need, you've got.

00:07:56.000 And this is the quickest turnaround I've ever seen from the time that a governor made a disaster declaration to getting that granted.

00:08:04.000 Okay, so Trump is doing what he's supposed to do.

00:08:06.000 He's checking all the boxes.

00:08:08.000 The FEMA administrator, right, works for Trump, says, listen, we're going to be there for years and that's okay.

00:08:12.000 We're going to fix all this stuff.

00:08:14.000 The National Weather Service says that parts of Texas might be uninhabitable for weeks, even potentially months, after the hurricane.

00:08:21.000 Are you prepared?

00:08:22.000 Is FEMA prepared to be there for months on end?

00:08:25.000 FEMA's going to be there for years, sir.

00:08:28.000 This disaster is going to be a landmark event, and we're already in the stages.

00:08:34.000 While we're focused on response right now and helping Texas respond, we're already pushing forward recovery housing teams.

00:08:43.000 We're already pushing forward forces to be on the ground to implement the National Flood Insurance Program.

00:08:49.000 Okay, again, the point here is that the media would be all up in Trump's business if Trump were doing a bad job on this.

00:09:02.000 And that's how you can tell when Trump is doing something okay.

00:09:04.000 When the media are all up in Trump's business over something ancillary, that means that the main job that he's doing is basically okay.

00:09:10.000 When Trump does something terrible, the media are all over him.

00:09:13.000 When he does something mediocre, the media are all over him.

00:09:16.000 When they're focusing on his tweets about the hurricane as opposed to the actual federal government response, that means the federal government is doing what it needs to do and I promise you the people in Houston don't give two dams about what Trump tweets about this stuff.

00:09:27.000 All they care about right now is, is there going to be somebody who's going to help me get out of my house?

00:09:30.000 I mean, it was getting so bad that people were tweeting their home address over Twitter to the emergency response teams because the 911 call center was jammed.

00:09:38.000 There have been over a hundred, sorry, a thousand rescue attempts.

00:09:40.000 I think five people dead in the flooding so far in Houston.

00:09:44.000 The local PD was telling people, if you're going to take shelter in your attic, make sure that you have an axe.

00:09:49.000 Because if the water rises, you may have to bust your way through the roof.

00:09:52.000 Okay, that's how bad things have gotten in Houston.

00:09:54.000 Good for the local administrators, and good for the police, and good for the citizens.

00:09:57.000 There have been a lot of citizens.

00:09:58.000 Great stories.

00:09:59.000 Citizens out there, in their boats, going around saving people.

00:10:05.000 Just normal people.

00:10:06.000 I mean, just going around

00:10:08.000 Really, it shows the American spirit.

00:10:10.000 It is amazing how the media covers this, by the way.

00:10:12.000 There was one guy who was driving around, and he was sailing around in his boat, picking people up, and he happened to have a Confederate flag on the back of his boat.

00:10:20.000 And the media had coverage of this, and they refused to cover it because he had a Confederate flag. 0.96

00:10:23.000 Because clearly, this guy was a brutal, vicious racist, even though he was saving black people from their houses, too. 0.96

00:10:27.000 Clearly, the Confederate flag trumps the fact that he's out there saving people. 1.00

00:10:30.000 Anyone with a Confederate flag must be evil and nasty.

00:10:33.000 I know there was a story like that today, where there was tape of, it was kind of funny tape, 0.96

00:10:38.000 I don't know.

00:10:57.000 Say nice things about anyone who has a confederate flag in their car.

00:10:59.000 The reason that I bring that up is because there's a lot of talk, as this hurricane is happening, about why can't America just be that?

00:11:06.000 Why can't America just be that?

00:11:08.000 Why can't America just be the place where we all help each other out?

00:11:11.000 Where disasters happen, and it doesn't matter our political creeds, it doesn't matter our ethnicities, it doesn't matter our culture, all that matters is that we know each other and we try to help each other out because this is America where we're all Americans.

00:11:23.000 Why can't we be like that all the time?

00:11:25.000 Well, I'm going to explain to you why we can't be like that all the time because we're going to shift focus to Berkeley in just a second.

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00:13:28.000 So, why can't everything be like Houston?

00:13:31.000 Why can't we all just get along, as Rodney King might put it?

00:13:34.000 The answer is, because it's one thing to look at existential threats, like the rain, and say, okay, we all better get together against it.

00:13:41.000 We better get together against this.

00:13:44.000 Yeah, I don't talk Game of Thrones on the show too much, because I know that a lot of people don't watch Game of Thrones.

00:13:48.000 But this is sort of the general tenor of Game of Thrones, is that there's a threat that comes from the North that's not giving anything away.

00:13:54.000 It's in the first episode.

00:13:55.000 There's a threat coming from the North, and it's these zombies basically coming from the North of the country.

00:14:00.000 And then in the South of the country, everybody is fighting over domination.

00:14:02.000 And so half of the series is about how do you get all of these people together to stop fighting in petty fashion with each other in order to fight the White Walkers who are coming from the North. 0.87

00:14:12.000 Ronald Reagan used to say this all the time about the Soviet Union.

00:14:14.000 He used to say, you know, we're fighting the Soviet Union right now, they're fighting us.

00:14:17.000 But what if aliens were to come from outer space and attack the Earth?

00:14:20.000 Well, then we'd all be on the same side, wouldn't we?

00:14:22.000 We're all human.

00:14:23.000 Okay, but the thing is that the conflicts that we have with each other still matter.

00:14:27.000 So I know that everybody wants to do this kumbaya moment over Houston.

00:14:30.000 Oh, look how everybody's getting along.

00:14:31.000 But I promise you, as soon as the waters recede, we're going right back to politics as usual because these issues matter.

00:14:36.000 The question is, how do we all get on the same page about the issues that matter, not just about opposing the rain, not just about opposing the zombies, not just about opposing the aliens, but on the issues that matter, how do we all get on the same page?

00:14:47.000 Well, I would suggest that the first place to start is we should all be on the same page about you don't get to hit people who disagree with you.

00:14:54.000 This is the first rule of being a civilized human being.

00:14:57.000 You don't get to hit people who disagree with you.

00:14:59.000 This is what I'm trying to teach my three-and-a-half-year-old right now.

00:15:02.000 You don't get to hit people who disagree with you.

00:15:05.000 She's gonna get that message now when she's three-and-a-half, not when she's twenty-five.

00:15:08.000 But the left refuses to get this message.

00:15:10.000 So over in Berkeley, there was a, I guess they call it Patriot Pride, so it's just a right-wing march.

00:15:15.000 No evidence that this is a Nazi march or an alt-right march, as far as I'm aware of.

00:15:19.000 This seems like, I think it's patriot prayer is what they call themselves.

00:15:22.000 This is a normal right-wing conservative group, and they were just marching for free speech, and Antifa showed up in force.

00:15:28.000 And apparently it was pretty horrifying, not just because of what happened, but also because of the police response.

00:15:32.000 So, this rally was supposed to happen in a park, Antifa showed up, thousands of them showed up.

00:15:37.000 And the police were supposed to be guarding the park, and the police themselves said, we backed off.

00:15:42.000 That all these people showed up, and we thought that it would facilitate conflict, it would create more conflict, if we were to try and get in the way of these Antifa people, so we decided to back off instead.

00:15:51.000 They left vulnerable citizens vulnerable.

00:15:53.000 Here's what some of this Antifa march looked like in Berkeley yesterday.

00:16:01.000 So you can see the red flags and the black flags.

00:16:03.000 You can see everybody's got their face covered.

00:16:05.000 Good indicator, by the way, that if you have to cover your face, you're a criminal.

00:16:08.000 Or would be a criminal.

00:16:12.000 Okay, so you can see that they're carrying, basically, the red and black is communism and anarchism.

00:16:18.000 That's what that combination is.

00:16:20.000 They're all wearing black.

00:16:20.000 They're all covering their faces.

00:16:22.000 Just like a bank robber, if you cover your face, it's not because you're about to do something good.

00:16:25.000 When was the last time, aside from Batman, no one covers their face to do something good?

00:16:30.000 Everyone who does good things wants credit for it.

00:16:31.000 Everyone who does bad things is robbing a bank.

00:16:34.000 So all these people are there not to do something good, but to march in solidarity with people who hurt people.

00:16:40.000 There was a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and this just goes to show you how insane the press are.

00:16:45.000 So she's tweeting from this rally about the violent things that are going on, and afterwards she said it was mostly peaceful.

00:16:50.000 I love how this works.

00:16:51.000 So, when white supremacists have a rally in Charlottesville, and a white supremacist kills one person and injures 19 others with a car, and a few fights happen, but there are like a thousand of them, then it's a totally violent rally.

00:17:05.000 But, when a bunch of people get violent in an Antifa rally, it's mostly peaceful.

00:17:09.000 That's the way that it works.

00:17:10.000 When there's a Tea Party rally, which no violence occurs, they are called terrorists by Barack Obama and members of the federal government.

00:17:16.000 Here is my view.

00:17:17.000 If a large percentage of your crowd, or even a relatively small percentage of your crowd, is engaging in violence and everyone else is not disassociating, it is not unfair to say that this is a violent movement.

00:17:27.000 If I were to rally and people there started getting violent, you know what I would do?

00:17:30.000 I would leave.

00:17:31.000 Or I would tell the cops to stop the violence immediately.

00:17:34.000 But that's not what happened.

00:17:35.000 Here's Antifa actually attacking a journalist.

00:17:40.000 That guy's a journalist.

00:17:42.000 They grabbed his camera and they started going after him.

00:17:51.000 And there's a journalist who's been pushed down on the ground.

00:17:56.000 And you can see what was hilarious about this is people holding up shields that say no hate on them as they're basically running people over.

00:18:02.000 That was not the only situation like this.

00:18:04.000 Here's Antifa at this rally in Berkeley attacking a father and a son.

00:18:10.000 They're hopping on this guy and beating the crap out of him.

00:18:30.000 Just grand, folks.

00:18:32.000 It's just like World War II. 0.50

00:18:33.000 Remember, we were told, like, two weeks ago that these people were basically just like the World War II soldiers, right?

00:18:39.000 I mean, this is Normandy.

00:18:40.000 This is what Normandy was like. 0.99

00:18:41.000 Normandy was a bunch of schmucks beating up a bunch of randos who were walking around. 0.99

00:18:45.000 That's exactly what Normandy was. 0.99

00:18:46.000 I don't know why you guys don't know your history.

00:18:48.000 Here's another one.

00:18:49.000 This guy was walking along the street.

00:18:50.000 There are people who are saying... The left was saying he's an apparent alt-righter.

00:18:54.000 Again, no evidence of who this guy is.

00:18:56.000 We have no clue who he is.

00:18:57.000 Somebody else was saying he was a guy walking home from the grocery store who was attacked because he was mistaken for an alt-righter.

00:19:02.000 We just don't know the answer.

00:19:03.000 But regardless, unless he initiated the violence, does this look like appropriate behavior?

00:19:07.000 You can see there's a guy on the ground.

00:19:12.000 To this guy's credit, there's a black guy who jumped on top of him.

00:19:15.000 And he's trying to prevent people from hitting him.

00:19:18.000 But the guy goes down and people are beating him up.

00:19:21.000 You can see the folks in the black masks trying to get violent with him.

00:19:26.000 Okay, the worst one is this one.

00:19:27.000 You're about to see a guy legitimately get beat.

00:19:31.000 Pretty senseless.

00:19:32.000 Here's a fellow who got jumped on and pummeled.

00:19:40.000 This is Eleven.

00:19:40.000 You can see there's that guy on the ground.

00:19:47.000 They're dragging him.

00:19:48.000 They're kicking him.

00:19:50.000 They're punching him.

00:19:54.000 Pretty astonishing.

00:19:55.000 So all this stuff was happening.

00:19:57.000 Where were the cops for any of this?

00:19:58.000 You see any cops?

00:19:59.000 So here's the deal, Berkeley.

00:20:00.000 Okay, let's start with this.

00:20:02.000 I'm coming September 14th.

00:20:03.000 We just paid $15,000 security fee so that you guys would be protecting.

00:20:06.000 If this goes down, it's all on you.

00:20:08.000 I've already openly called and I will continue to call for no one

00:20:12.000 Who's a supporter of mine to engage in violence, even defensive violence.

00:20:15.000 I want everybody to come and be entirely peaceful, okay?

00:20:18.000 This is an act of non-violent resistance.

00:20:20.000 We're going there with the approval of the Berkeley administration.

00:20:22.000 We have every right to be there.

00:20:24.000 You have every right to be there.

00:20:25.000 You have every right to attend.

00:20:26.000 Okay, don't act violent because I want the world to know.

00:20:29.000 I want America to see whether the police are going to do their jobs.

00:20:33.000 They charged us an arm and a leg to ensure security.

00:20:36.000 Let's see if they run away and allow Antifa to have its way. 0.79

00:20:39.000 I'm not blaming the individual cops.

00:20:41.000 I think the cops want to do their job. 0.98

00:20:42.000 But whoever the higher-ups here are, they're doing a garbage job. 0.95

00:20:45.000 And if Governor Jerry Brown won't call out the National Guard to stop this sort of material, then he is a horrible governor. 0.98

00:20:50.000 He is a horrible governor, by the way.

00:20:51.000 But if he won't do that, then it's just demonstrative of the fact that the left uses the rioters' veto to try and establish these fascist safe spaces in places like Berkeley.

00:21:00.000 So you wonder, you look at Houston, which is the best that we have to offer, and then you look at Antifa, which is the worst that we have to offer, and you wonder, what's the difference?

00:21:07.000 The difference is that when there is no existential crisis, people sometimes get worse.

00:21:12.000 When there's no existential crisis, people find something to believe in.

00:21:15.000 And when you have a country where people have been told for two generations now that America is not a thing to believe in, that free speech is not a thing to believe in because hey, who knows?

00:21:24.000 You may be a Nazi. 0.66

00:21:25.000 Who say that the regime is a white supremacist regime. 0.99

00:21:28.000 America is a white supremacist country.

00:21:30.000 There's nothing to defend. 0.97

00:21:31.000 There's nothing to stand up for.

00:21:32.000 Our history is replete with racism and sexism and bigotry.

00:21:34.000 When you teach people that, what's the existential threat?

00:21:38.000 The existential threat is the system itself.

00:21:40.000 When you look at Houston, the existential threat is not the system.

00:21:42.000 The existential threat is the rain.

00:21:44.000 For Game of Thrones fans, the existential threat is death, right?

00:21:47.000 And even if you're gonna lose, you still have to fight.

00:21:49.000 But there's the existential threat.

00:21:51.000 But what happens when that existential threat no longer exists?

00:21:54.000 I think there's a very strong case to be made that one of the great ills that happened to the soul of America, it's a great thing for the world, one of the great ills that happened to the soul of Americans is the fall of the Soviet Union. 0.86

00:22:05.000 Not because the Soviet Union was a great place.

00:22:06.000 It was an evil, evil place.

00:22:07.000 It was an amazing thing for the world.

00:22:09.000 The Soviet Union fell.

00:22:10.000 Amazing thing.

00:22:11.000 Millions of people were freed and were lifted out of poverty by capitalism.

00:22:15.000 But for the soul of Americans, the idea that there's this existential threat in the form of an evil ideology

00:22:21.000 Once that goes away we begin to eat our own.

00:22:23.000 What's the new existential threat that you are going to devote your life to fighting?

00:22:27.000 Religious people.

00:22:28.000 We devote our life to fighting the existential threat of the darkness, right?

00:22:31.000 The idea of being a religious human being in Western civilization is that you devote yourself to fighting off 1.00

00:22:37.000 The threat of people who are intent on ripping away the notion of a God-filled universe where your actions matter, right?

00:22:44.000 That's what religion is all about, is you spreading the word that your actions matter, that your soul matters, that God cares about you, and that the universe has a mission for you, right?

00:22:51.000 That's what religion is about.

00:22:52.000 So religious people spend their life fighting that. 0.98

00:22:54.000 Sometimes it gets violent in terrible ways, but that's at least their goal, right?

00:22:58.000 What is the goal of Antifa?

00:23:00.000 Presumably they would say their goal is to fight racism.

00:23:02.000 But where do they turn their ire?

00:23:03.000 They turn their ire against the common man walking down the street in favor of free speech.

00:23:06.000 Because free speech is just part of the strata, the stratification of American society.

00:23:12.000 It's part of a power structure.

00:23:13.000 It's legitimately what the left says.

00:23:15.000 The left will say that free speech is just the revivification of the power structure.

00:23:22.000 It's just the reinstatement of the power structure.

00:23:25.000 The only people who care about free speech are the powerful.

00:23:27.000 That powerless people don't really have power of free speech because they're poor.

00:23:31.000 So we have to silence people.

00:23:32.000 So here's what I suggest.

00:23:34.000 If we all want to get together again, we have to understand that the existential threat is not without, it is within.

00:23:38.000 It is not people so much as it is ideology.

00:23:42.000 The existential threat that we now face in the United States is a nihilistic view of the universe that says that the new wars we have to fight are wars against liberalism itself.

00:23:53.000 I mean classical liberalism, against freedom.

00:23:55.000 Freedom itself is a threat.

00:23:57.000 That is the existential threat to the United States.

00:23:59.000 What you're seeing in Antifa is an existential threat to the future of the country.

00:24:03.000 Because what you're looking at right now are people who are willing to use violence.

00:24:06.000 Even the Washington Post got this right.

00:24:08.000 Even the Washington Post said, Antifa rioters beat up non-violent protesters.

00:24:13.000 Peaceful protesters.

00:24:14.000 At least the Washington Post got that right.

00:24:15.000 They've been blabbing wrongly about this for weeks and months.

00:24:19.000 The existential threat to the country lies within.

00:24:21.000 It's not just the rain in Houston.

00:24:23.000 It's the darkness in the human heart that says, if you disagree with me, I get to shut you down.

00:24:28.000 That is a serious problem.

00:24:30.000 Again, the tradition of liberty rises out of a Judeo-Christian value system that must be reinforced at every turn for children particularly, but we're fighting that too.

00:24:40.000 The existential threat comes from our own hearts, and that's a much harder thing to fight.

00:24:44.000 It's a much harder thing to fight, and that's why conflicts like this are going to continue to rage, and we won't all just be Houston, because we're not all going to have to deal with a hurricane every day, but we have to deal with the darkness inherent in the human heart, and that's much harder to deal with.

00:24:54.000 It means looking at ourselves, it means fighting ourselves when we think that we're doing the wrong thing, it means contemplating whether we're living up to our own ideals, and it means fighting people who are willing to twist those ideals into unrecognizable forms.

00:25:06.000 Okay, so I want to talk about a couple of things that happened over the weekend in the Trump administration.

00:25:10.000 But for that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.

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00:26:20.000 So the hurricane coverage and the Antifa coverage has really swamped some pretty big news that happened over the weekend.

00:26:25.000 A couple of big things happened over the weekend.

00:26:27.000 Late Friday afternoon, President Trump decided that it was definitely necessary for him to pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

00:26:34.000 This was obviously a political move.

00:26:36.000 We can talk about the ramifications of it, why I think some people are overstating the case against the pardon.

00:26:42.000 But, you know, it's obviously a political move.

00:26:45.000 You know, Juan Williams sums up sort of the left view of why Sheriff Joe was pardoned.

00:26:51.000 Sheriff Joe had been a longtime Trump supporter.

00:26:53.000 No question that that had something to do with all of this.

00:26:56.000 Here is Juan Williams suggesting why he was pardoned.

00:26:59.000 This was not an act of mercy for someone who had been denied justice.

00:27:03.000 Sheriff Arpaio has not been sentenced yet.

00:27:05.000 He's been convicted but not sentenced.

00:27:07.000 So this was a preemptive act by President Trump that I think then sets a precedent going in that he can act in terms of pardons with a little review from the Justice Department to help out someone who's a family member,

00:27:21.000 Someone who's a political ally?

00:27:23.000 You remember, Arpaio was not only an early supporter of Donald Trump, he was an early birther, and he is the face of hostility towards immigrants, specifically Mexicans and Latinos in this country.

00:27:35.000 So it was a political act that he promised his base on Tuesday night at that rally in Phoenix, and he has delivered on that promise in such a way as to say that in the future, such acts of pardon are not more normal.

00:27:48.000 Okay, so what the left is afraid of is that Arpaio is going to lead to a series of pardons for family members or Trump pardoning himself.

00:27:54.000 You know, again, I think that's overstated.

00:27:55.000 I don't think there's a lot of evidence of that.

00:27:56.000 I think that Trump just likes Arpaio and wanted to pardon him.

00:27:59.000 I think it's that simple.

00:27:59.000 And the reason he likes Arpaio is because Arpaio says that he likes Trump.

00:28:02.000 Here's Sheriff Joe talking about how he's going to be with Trump until the very end.

00:28:08.000 I love that president.

00:28:09.000 He supports law enforcement.

00:28:12.000 And I'm very humble.

00:28:13.000 If you recall two years ago,

00:28:16.000 I supported him and I said publicly, recently, pardon or no pardon.

00:28:21.000 I will be with him to the end.

00:28:24.000 Okay, so that's really, I think, a reason behind this.

00:28:27.000 So let me give you sort of the background of facts about Sheriff Joe so you know what you're talking about.

00:28:31.000 So a lot of people are pointing out that Sheriff Joe has acted in corrupt fashion, that he's gone after journalists.

00:28:35.000 He had to pay out, I think, a $3.5 million payout.

00:28:37.000 The Sheriff's Department had to pay out a payout to journalists who was wrongly

00:28:41.000 Arrested or harassed by the police.

00:28:43.000 They've had to pay tens of millions of dollars in various fees for racial profiling in civil suits.

00:28:49.000 So Sheriff Joe has not been, I think, a wonderful sheriff.

00:28:53.000 He's popular because for many years there was a lot of publicity around things like him forcing inmates to wear pink underwear because he wanted to emasculate them, which is funny, right?

00:29:01.000 Or Sheriff Joe wanting them to work on chain gangs because he didn't want them lazing around all day

00:29:05.000 We're good.

00:29:24.000 So, there's a couple issues that are wrapped up here.

00:29:26.000 A lot of people are saying he deserves to be in jail because of all the things that he did that he wasn't convicted for.

00:29:43.000 That's not how the system works.

00:29:45.000 If you're going to be convicted for those things, then he should be convicted for those things.

00:29:48.000 You cannot like him for those things.

00:29:49.000 I think that's perfectly fine and fair.

00:29:51.000 But if we're going to talk about what he's being pardoned of, you have to talk about the crime that he actually committed, which is criminal contempt of court.

00:29:58.000 So let's start with the basic idea of criminal contempt of court.

00:30:02.000 We'll talk about the politics and why it's, you know, why Trump did what he did and whether it's smart or not in a second.

00:30:07.000 Criminal Contempt of Court is essentially a political offense.

00:30:11.000 I say that it's a political offense because the fact is that it is the court basically declaring that you are not acting in accordance with its rulings, and therefore it's going to throw you into jail.

00:30:20.000 A lot of people say that this is perfectly appropriate, that if you pardon somebody like Garpario, what you're really saying is that the executive branch has priority over the judicial branch.

00:30:31.000 But when it comes to pardons, the executive branch does have priority over the judicial branch.

00:30:34.000 I mean, that's in the Constitution.

00:30:36.000 Trump didn't do anything extra constitutional here.

00:30:38.000 And if you were to change the situation, let's say that there was a court in 1960s Alabama that ruled that Martin Luther King had to go to jail.

00:30:45.000 And so Martin Luther King goes to jail.

00:30:46.000 And then he says, you know what?

00:30:48.000 I'm not showing up for jail.

00:30:49.000 I'd rather be held in criminal contempt.

00:30:51.000 Or they convict him of something and they say, you have to pay a fine because you are disturbing the peace, right?

00:30:56.000 I'm making this situation up.

00:30:58.000 And Martin Luther King says, I'm not paying a fine.

00:30:59.000 The law is unfair. 0.98

00:31:00.000 Go screw yourselves. 0.83

00:31:01.000 And then they throw him in jail for criminal contempt. 0.97

00:31:03.000 And then he's pardoned by LBJ.

00:31:06.000 Is that illegitimate?

00:31:08.000 It's not illegitimate under those circumstances.

00:31:10.000 So simply saying that any attempt to overthrow a criminal contempt conviction with a pardon is illegitimate, I think, is overbroad.

00:31:17.000 So the question becomes, was this a political conviction of Sheriff Joe?

00:31:21.000 So there's a guy named Warren Henry over at the Federalist who has a very, very good column about this today, explaining all of the background to this.

00:31:29.000 He talks about, I should really just read some of it because it gives you the factual background you need.

00:31:33.000 In 2007, Manuel de Jesus Ortega Melendrez and other plaintiffs brought a class action against Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, and other defendants, alleging the defendants violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution by racially profiling Latino motorists and passengers.

00:31:50.000 The Melendrez lawsuit, which the Justice Department joined—that was Bush's Justice Department—focused primarily on saturation patrols.

00:31:57.000 In 2009, ICE modified its agreement with Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office

00:32:02.000 Revoking their authority to enforce civil immigration laws, except in jails.

00:32:06.000 In 2011, during pretrial proceedings, the district court judge, a guy named Murray Snow, a Bush appointee, ruled in favor of the Melendrez plaintiffs on some of their constitutional claims.

00:32:15.000 He entered a preliminary injunction barring the defendants from detaining people solely based on reasonable suspicion they were unlawfully present in the country.

00:32:23.000 So you can say that this is a political decision by the judge, but it was really the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that had already ruled on this.

00:32:29.000 He was abiding by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

00:32:31.000 So basically, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that he doesn't have the authority, Arpaio does not have the authority to actually enforce immigration law himself.

00:32:39.000 Arpaio disagreed.

00:32:40.000 He decided to ignore the injunction.

00:32:42.000 So in 2013, after a non-jury trial, Snow concluded that Arpaio's policy violated the 4th and 14th amendments by using race as a factor in determining where to conduct patrols, in deciding whom to stop and investigate for civil immigration violations, and in prolonging detention of Latinos while their immigration status was confirmed.

00:33:01.000 So Arpaio and the NSCO continued to operate, openly acknowledging that they were violating the law at the time.

00:33:08.000 All of the parties in this particular lawsuit agreed race cannot be considered as a factor for reasonable suspicion.

00:33:13.000 That goes all the way back to 1975 and a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2000.

00:33:18.000 But Sheriff Joe is basically saying we're not doing it on a racial basis, we're rounding people up on the basis of where we think all the illegal immigrants are.

00:33:25.000 In May 2016, and this is the final contempt order, following 21 days of evidentiary hearings, Snow found Arpaio and other defendants in contempt of court.

00:33:33.000 In a 162-page order, Snow found Arpaio understood but intentionally failed to implement the court's preliminary injunction while publicly asserting that the MCSO, the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, had the authority to do what had been enjoined in the belief that such activities would benefit his upcoming re-election campaign.

00:33:49.000 So in this case, Arpaio basically openly said, I'm ignoring the law, I know I'm ignoring the law, and that was the biggest problem here.

00:33:55.000 So, I think that Warren Henry's conclusion here is basically right, and I think this is what we should keep in mind.

00:34:00.000 It's a little more complex than Trump had no right to pardon Arpaio, and it's a little more complex than Arpaio was clearly a political victim here.

00:34:17.000 For viewing the court record and the public record as a whole, it's easy to argue politics were involved in the Arpaio case.

00:34:23.000 It is less easy to argue politics played a significant role or ran in only one direction.

00:34:29.000 For example, the Obama administration's termination of Arpaio's authority to enforce civil immigration laws carries at least a whiff of politics.

00:34:36.000 But a key to Snow's decision, as the judge who made the contempt decision, is that Arpaio's policy of using race as one factor in assessing reasonable suspicion for detaining motorists to check illegal immigration status was largely a continuation of ICE's legal interpretation, a view already rejected by the 9th Circuit.

00:34:53.000 It could be argued the 9th Circuit's precedent, which declined to follow dicta in the Supreme Court decision, was ideological, but it was a decision of the full court and it wasn't really disputed.

00:35:01.000 You could say that there were politics involved in the DOJ's decision to pursue Arpaio for criminal contempt.

00:35:06.000 Maybe.

00:35:07.000 That's possible.

00:35:08.000 Or maybe they were looking at his case and they thought that he had openly said that he was violating the law and engaging in some sort of racial profiling.

00:35:16.000 So here's the bottom line.

00:35:17.000 If you are sympathetic to what Arpaio was doing, if you think that the locals should be able to enforce immigration law, and that there will be some element that looks like racial profiling if you are involved in detaining illegal immigrants,

00:35:29.000 In Maricopa County, then you are likely to think that this was a political prosecution.

00:35:33.000 If you think that racial profiling in this case was obvious and that Sheriff Joe's a bad guy and that he was attempting to do all these things in order to help his re-election campaign, then you are likely to think that Trump is the one who's political here.

00:35:45.000 But I don't think that it's quite as clear as everybody's making it out to be.

00:35:47.000 Now, politically, is it smart?

00:35:49.000 Well, it's not smart for the future.

00:35:51.000 Politically, it's not brilliant to alienate every Latino voter in the country by pardoning a guy who is most famous for saying kind of nasty things about Latinos generally to publications like Rolling Stone.

00:36:04.000 But obviously, Trump knows where his base is.

00:36:06.000 That's why Trump treated this as sort of a rallying point, right?

00:36:08.000 He treated it as an actual rally issue.

00:36:10.000 He went to Phoenix and spoke openly in front of a crowd about pardoning Sheriff Joe.

00:36:13.000 So for Trump, it might be a good move.

00:36:15.000 For the Republican Party in the long run, it probably is a bad move.

00:36:17.000 Is it unprecedented?

00:36:19.000 No, obviously not.

00:36:20.000 President Obama pardoned Chelsea Manning.

00:36:26.000 President Clinton pardoned Mark Rich for obvious political reasons.

00:36:28.000 It's not unprecedented in any way.

00:36:30.000 I've long said I'm an opponent of the president's ability to pardon.

00:36:33.000 I don't think governors should be able to pardon.

00:36:34.000 I don't think the president should be able to pardon.

00:36:36.000 I don't think they were granted any godlike knowledge that is above and beyond what a jury and a judge can do.

00:36:40.000 Okay, so in other news affecting the Trump administration,

00:36:44.000 Rex Tillerson looks like he's going to be on the way out, the Secretary of State.

00:36:47.000 I think that's a good thing.

00:36:48.000 I don't think he's a good Secretary of State.

00:36:49.000 I think that Rex Tillerson is basically a Democrat.

00:36:53.000 I don't think that he is right-wing in any serious sense.

00:36:56.000 He's not hawkish on foreign policy in any serious sense.

00:36:58.000 He's sort of a State Department lifer.

00:37:00.000 The talk is that he may be ousted and Nikki Haley would be made Secretary of State.

00:37:04.000 That would be fantastic.

00:37:05.000 That'd be a fantastic move.

00:37:07.000 Good for Trump if he does that.

00:37:08.000 Rex Tillerson basically signed his own death warrants on the way out.

00:37:11.000 He went after Trump himself.

00:37:14.000 He was specifically asked about Trump's take on Charlottesville, and here was Tillerson's answer.

00:37:25.000 It seems to say they begin to doubt whether we're living those values.

00:37:30.000 I don't believe anyone doubts the American people's values or the commitment of the American government or the government's agencies to advancing those values and defending those values.

00:37:39.000 And the President's values?

00:37:41.000 The President speaks for himself, Chris.

00:37:44.000 Okay, that's brutal.

00:37:45.000 I mean, when your own Secretary of State won't say that you speak for America's values, that's basically him saying, sayonara, I will see you later, catch you on the other side.

00:37:52.000 I think that Tillerson is out by the end of the week.

00:37:54.000 I think that's a good move by the Trump administration.

00:37:56.000 I think it's a bad reason to oust him.

00:37:57.000 You know, I think the reason to oust him is because he's not good at his job.

00:38:01.000 He's a bad Secretary of State who doesn't actually forward the policies of the United States in any serious way, but if he has to go like this, I'm in favor of it.

00:38:08.000 Fine.

00:38:08.000 Get out.

00:38:09.000 So Tillerson, I think, will be out.

00:38:10.000 I think Nikki Haley will replace him, and that would be a good move by the Trump administration.

00:38:14.000 He'll have to use Haley to replace him, because otherwise the Senate's not going to confirm anybody he nominates.

00:38:19.000 Haley has already gotten through as the young ambassador.

00:38:21.000 It would be hard for the Senate to turn her down. 0.96

00:38:23.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.

00:38:25.000 So, things that I like.

00:38:27.000 If you ever want a fantastic synopsis of various great philosophers over time, Will Durant has a book called The Story of Philosophy.

00:38:35.000 That truly is a first-rate book.

00:38:37.000 It does a great summary of all of the great philosophers over time.

00:38:41.000 Aristotle, and William James, and Nietzsche, and Herbert Spencer, and Plato, and Spinoza, and Kant.

00:38:47.000 It's really terrific.

00:38:49.000 It's a great summary without having to wade through 800 pages of a critique of pure reason, which is almost unreadable anyway.

00:38:56.000 Reading their summary of Kant is accurate and good.

00:38:59.000 Will Durant is, of course, a very, very famous historian.

00:39:02.000 He wrote a much-celebrated history of Western civilization that is well worth reading.

00:39:07.000 He was very pro-Western civilization, and it comes out in all of his writing.

00:39:13.000 I believe he's a religious Catholic, so he's a religious thinker as well.

00:39:17.000 This was written in 1926, so it stops dead before you get to a lot of the later developments in philosophy, but it's such a good book and it's been continuously in print for years.

00:39:29.000 You can get it for like five bucks on Amazon.

00:39:31.000 It remains an excellent, lucid reading of various works of philosophy.

00:39:38.000 After he wrote this and it came out, he wrote The Story of Civilization, which is like an 11-volume set that everybody has on their shelf but nobody has ever read.

00:39:46.000 Except me.

00:39:47.000 It's really good.

00:39:48.000 It's really top-notch.

00:39:49.000 So go out and check The Story of Civilization as well, which is Will Durant's book on the history of Western civilization.

00:39:55.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:40:02.000 So let's imagine that we're in the middle of a natural disaster.

00:40:05.000 And let's imagine that that natural disaster happened while an unpopular President of the United States was President.

00:40:10.000 And let's imagine there was some sort of cultural event where everybody decided to get up and rip the President in the middle of that.

00:40:16.000 It would never happen for a Democrat, but imagine if it happened for Obama.

00:40:18.000 Imagine there was a giant hurricane that put an entire city underwater.

00:40:21.000 And as the President was attempting to help, there was a giant cultural event broadcast on national TV, almost solely dedicated to ripping the President of the United States up and down.

00:40:30.000 Would you consider that a problem?

00:40:31.000 Would you consider that polarizing?

00:40:33.000 I certainly would.

00:40:34.000 That's what the Video Music Awards were on MTV last night.

00:40:37.000 Basically, the entire thing was mocking Trump from beginning to end.

00:40:41.000 I don't know that these things get any ratings anymore, but they are absolute turd. 1.00

00:40:45.000 They're garbage. 1.00

00:40:46.000 They're most famous for Miley Cyrus doing whatever her latest soft porn schtick is, right? 1.00

00:40:50.000 Whether she's humping a foam finger with Robin Thicke. 0.98

00:40:54.000 Or whether she is doing a puppet show full of sex There's always some it's basically push the boundaries land in VMA land. 1.00

00:41:01.000 This is they became originally I met the first time I remember the VMAs becoming a national issues when Britney Spears was strutting around the stage with a giant boa constrictor About her abdomen, but that is but they've moved on from there now.

00:41:12.000 They've decided to go full political So Paris Jackson who I don't even know why Paris Jackson is culturally relevant Michael Jackson's

00:41:18.000 I'm seeing a lot of love and light here tonight.

00:41:20.000 Already.

00:41:40.000 A lot of diversity and a lot of potential power.

00:41:45.000 You know, if we were to all put our voices together, do you realize the difference we would make?

00:41:51.000 If we were to all stand up, united as one, our impact?

00:41:57.000 It would be huge!

00:42:00.000 Believe me, huge!

00:42:03.000 And that's not fake news.

00:42:05.000 So, let's leave here tonight remembering that 1.00

00:42:09.000 We must show these Nazi, white supremacist jerks in Charlottesville and all over the country that as a nation, with liberty as our slogan, we have zero tolerance for their violence, their hatred, and their discrimination! 1.00

00:42:31.000 Oh, she's so, she's so righteous. 1.00

00:42:32.000 I'll preach at Paris.

00:42:34.000 I mean, okay, so she's at, uh, she's at legitimately one of the most useless cultural events in history.

00:42:39.000 A bunch of people whose music will be forgotten inside of two years, uh, with a bunch of young kids who have nothing better to do than spend their night listening to a bunch of adult celebrities talk to them about things of which they know nothing. 0.90

00:42:49.000 And then she gets to feel real special because we all hate Nazis!

00:42:51.000 Woo! 0.99

00:42:52.000 Guess what? 0.85

00:42:53.000 I've been hating Nazis my whole life. 1.00

00:42:55.000 We fought a war to kill a bunch of Nazis. 0.99

00:42:57.000 Everybody hates the Nazis. 0.99

00:42:58.000 You're not doing anything special by saying we hate Nazis. 0.80

00:43:00.000 Yay! 0.99

00:43:00.000 We all hate Nazis! 0.99

00:43:01.000 Yay! 0.99

00:43:02.000 How about if she got up?

00:43:04.000 Imagine if Paris Jackson had gotten up and said, listen, violence is never the answer on any side.

00:43:09.000 But she didn't say that, right?

00:43:10.000 She said, we have to stand up to their violence and their hatred and their bigotry.

00:43:13.000 As people of liberty, we cannot tolerate their hate.

00:43:15.000 Well, I'm pretty certain that as people of liberty, you have to tolerate their hate so long as it's not violent.

00:43:20.000 This is one of the principles of liberty.

00:43:22.000 Because what you consider hate might be somebody else's belief system.

00:43:26.000 And you can tell that I highly doubt that Paris Hilton or Paris Jackson actually feels the necessity to limit her own hatred for Nazis alone.

00:43:35.000 Because the left never does.

00:43:36.000 The left always broadens it out, right?

00:43:37.000 When I go to Berkeley in two and a half weeks, they're gonna call me a Nazi.

00:43:40.000 They will.

00:43:41.000 Okay?

00:43:41.000 They'll call me a Nazi.

00:43:44.000 Because this is what they do.

00:43:45.000 And then they'll get up and they'll say, we couldn't tolerate him. 0.64

00:43:47.000 It was so great that Antifa shut him down because he was just like a Nazi.

00:43:49.000 You know why?

00:43:50.000 Because he says that Black Lives Matter is not a movement that helps the country. 0.72

00:43:54.000 That's like a Nazi. 0.69

00:43:55.000 You know who would say that?

00:43:55.000 Hitler.

00:43:56.000 Hitler would say that. 0.98

00:43:57.000 You know, he used to eat with a fork.

00:43:58.000 Hitler. 0.57

00:43:59.000 Like, this routine is really getting old.

00:44:02.000 But the level of, let's pat ourselves on the back because we hate Nazis.

00:44:06.000 Guess what?

00:44:06.000 You know what?

00:44:07.000 I don't feel like a better person because I hate Nazis.

00:44:08.000 That's my basic principle as a human being.

00:44:11.000 I don't feel like a better human because I dislike 0.95

00:44:14.000 You know, alt-right white supremacists. 0.91

00:44:15.000 I don't feel like a better human being because that's just like being a normal human.

00:44:18.000 I don't spend my time virtue signaling because virtue signaling is not virtue, but this is just virtue signaling because you're not actually doing anything.

00:44:24.000 You're not actually, like, how many people in the audience are like, you know what?

00:44:27.000 I was a Nazi one second ago, but now that Paris Jackson said that, I guess I'm gonna give up my hatred and my violence.

00:44:32.000 I'm not a Nazi anymore because of Paris Jackson. 0.98

00:44:35.000 So ridiculous. 0.99

00:44:36.000 Katy Perry, who looks like the nice, clean-cut daughter who you sent off to school and she came back a lesbian dance theory major, she decided that it was worthwhile to mock Trump as well. 0.99

00:44:47.000 First of all, Katy Perry doesn't get to mock anybody's hair with this getup. 1.00

00:44:50.000 I mean, she looks like she stuck her head in a bowling ball cleaner. 1.00

00:44:54.000 Here's Katy Perry. 0.90

00:44:56.000 So there were five nominees for Best New Artist when this whole night got started.

00:45:00.000 Now it's just up to the top two.

00:45:03.000 Congratulations, Julia Michaels and Colleen.

00:45:06.000 And who wins is up to you.

00:45:09.000 One artist will join the ranks of other Best New Artist winners like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and my personal favorite, Hootie and the Blowfish.

00:45:20.000 Listen guys, this is one election where the popular vote actually matters, so vote online.

00:45:26.000 But hurry up before some random Russian pop star wins, okay? 1.00

00:45:32.000 Okay, so boring, so stupid. 1.00

00:45:34.000 Katy Perry should not do comedy, but here's my advice to the Democrats. 1.00

00:45:37.000 Please keep using Katy Perry in everything.

00:45:39.000 You did it at the DNC.

00:45:40.000 It worked beautifully, ensuring that Hillary Clinton would never be President of the United States. 1.00

00:45:44.000 Okay, this one I thought was, you know, I feel bad for Heather Heyer's mom.

00:45:47.000 Heather Heyer's mom showed up to the VMAs. 1.00

00:45:49.000 I do not know why Heather Heyer's mom is at the VMAs. 0.98

00:45:51.000 Heather Heyer was, of course, the victim of the white supremacist in Charlottesville. 0.89

00:45:56.000 The woman who was killed was Heather Heyer.

00:45:57.000 Her mom shows up at the VMAs.

00:45:59.000 I do not like that, like,

00:46:01.000 I can't speak—Heather Heyer's mom can do whatever she wants, right? 0.80

00:46:03.000 I haven't lost a child, I can't speak to that.

00:46:06.000 If somebody did that to my child, the chances that I would go on a cultural show to talk about it like this, like a VMA-type show, are nil.

00:46:13.000 It would not happen. 1.00

00:46:14.000 And the reason it would not happen is because this is obviously just a—it's a stupid show. 0.99

00:46:19.000 And for the VMAs to use the platform as a, let's make it about Charlottesville, 1.00

00:46:25.000 Again, 95% of Americans hate white supremacists. 0.98

00:46:28.000 Probably 98% of Americans hate white supremacists.

00:46:30.000 It's all virtue signaling in an attempt to suggest that anybody who doesn't like the VMA's lifestyle, and VMA is a lot more than just we don't like Nazis, it's an attempt to say anybody who dislikes the VMA's generally must stand against the anti-Nazi

00:46:44.000 It is my distinct honor to introduce Susan Brough, Heather Heyer's mother, who is continuing to magnify Heather's work.

00:47:32.000 We all feel terrible for women.

00:47:34.000 I have a general objection, and this has been true for years, so it's not specific to Heather Heyersma.

00:47:38.000 I have a general objection to, in politics, using people who are victims of crime as spokespeople for a particular point of view.

00:47:44.000 I don't like it very much.

00:47:45.000 The reason being that if we're going to espouse particular policies, they should be disconnected from emotion.

00:47:50.000 They shouldn't be connected deeply to emotion.

00:47:52.000 I understand in politics the easy thing is to always connect it to emotion.

00:47:56.000 You can't watch this woman and not feel horrible for her.

00:47:58.000 Obviously, what happened to her daughter was an evil, evil crime, and the person who did it should get the death penalty. 0.67

00:48:03.000 But, I don't understand what it has to do with video music awards.

00:48:06.000 I think that the more we meld our culture and our politics, the more polarizing both culture and politics become.

00:48:10.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow.

00:48:11.000 We'll bring you all of the latest updates, including Antifa updates, of which I'm sure there will be many.

00:48:17.000 Plus, just want to mention before I go here, that Berkeley still has not released tickets for my event on September 14th, but if you go to yaf.org, then we've set up a link where you can sign up for a list, so you'll be the first to be notified about the availability of tickets.

00:48:31.000 I think that there are 2,000 tickets available.

00:48:33.000 We already have like 1,600 signups in just

00:48:36.000 About 48 hours here, so the tickets are going really fast in terms of people who are signing up to be notified.

00:48:41.000 So go over to YAF and sign up to be notified.

00:48:43.000 We want to make sure that we pack the hall.

00:48:44.000 This is a free speech event, and we are going to be speaking out against tribalism.

00:48:48.000 All the things we talk about on the show will come up, so it should be a great event, and I look forward to seeing you there.

00:48:52.000 Obviously, everyone remain nonviolent.

00:48:53.000 We are paying so that the police will do their jobs.

00:48:55.000 I'm a taxpayer in the state of California, so the police will do their jobs.

00:48:59.000 You're a taxpayer in the United States, so the police should do their jobs.

00:49:02.000 Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow.

00:49:03.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:49:04.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 28, 2017

Trump’s First Crisis | Ep. 371

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