The Ben Shapiro Show


White Girls Must Stop Dressing Like Moana | Ep. 402


Summary

As we approach Halloween, we ll be discussing everything Halloween. What costumes are you allowed to wear, and which costumes are not? Plus, Hillary Clinton says she's totally innocent, and Bill O'Reilly says the same thing. And neither of them has a ton of evidence to support that. We ll talk about all of those things, and much more, on this episode of The Ben Shapiro Show with Ben Shapiro! Today's After Show Was Hosted By: Ben Shapiro Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator and host of the Daily Wire podcast, and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, NPR, and other media outlets. He is also the author of the book, and hosts the podcast, . In this episode, Ben talks about Halloween and what you should and shouldn't be allowed to dress up as for the holiday, and the difference between children and adults in Halloween costumes, and if you should allow your child to dress as Moana or Princess Tiana or Princess and the Frog, or a spookily dressed up as a spooky character from the movie, The Little Mermaid? And much more! Thanks to our sponsor, ZipRecruiter! For sponsoring the show, we use their smart matching technology to find great candidates for our jobs and find the most qualified candidates for the best possible situation. Zip Recruiter, and we use it to find the best potential candidates! Find out how you can get the best candidate you can be hired for your dream job, right here at the best company in the most affordable possible! Go get the most amazing place on the internet, anywhere in the whole world, no matter where you go, and you can have the best deal in the best place you can do it, anywhere you go and get the cheapest, affordable, most affordable, the most authentic experience in the cheapest possible place in the world, the best experience possible, in less time and the most fun, the quickestest, the cheapest and the healthiest possible, the fastestest possible, and most authenticest place possible, you will be getting the most of everything you can achieve the most beautiful thing you can find it all, including the most rewarding you will ever get, no amount of time and most of your day to do it anywhere you care about it, no stress and most beautiful, most of all, you get it, you won t even need to pay for it anywhere else.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 We are approaching Halloween time.
00:00:01.000 We'll talk everything Halloween.
00:00:03.000 What costumes are you allowed to wear?
00:00:05.000 And most importantly, what costumes are you not allowed to wear?
00:00:08.000 Plus, Hillary Clinton says she's totally innocent.
00:00:10.000 And Bill O'Reilly says the same thing.
00:00:12.000 And neither of them has a ton of evidence to support that.
00:00:15.000 We'll talk about all of those things.
00:00:16.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:00:17.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:00:23.000 Yes, here we are.
00:00:24.000 It is yet another day in the most beautiful country on God's Earth.
00:00:28.000 But there are problems in paradise.
00:00:32.000 Those problems include whether to allow your child to dress as Moana.
00:00:35.000 Yes, seriously.
00:00:36.000 This is what we are now going to have a big fight about.
00:00:38.000 I'll explain in just a second.
00:00:39.000 But first, I want to thank our sponsors over at ZipRecruiter.com.
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00:01:54.000 Okay, so...
00:01:55.000 As we approach Halloween, it is that time of the year for us to have stupid conversations about what sort of costumes you can and cannot wear.
00:02:02.000 Now, I am not of the opinion that every costume is appropriate, because that would be foolish.
00:02:05.000 But I'm also not of the opinion that just because one person is offended by a costume unreasonably, that means that the costume is inherently bad, or terrible, or racist, or any of that stuff.
00:02:15.000 Particularly when you're talking about children's costumes.
00:02:17.000 I do think that there's a difference in kind between children's costumes and adults' costumes.
00:02:21.000 So, very often you'll see adults who should know better dressing as things in order to mock the culture that they're wearing something of.
00:02:27.000 So, for example, if my little daughter were to dress as Princess Tiana from a Disney movie, you know, she wouldn't put on blackface, presumably, but if she were to dress as Princess Tiana from Princess and the Frog, then nobody would be offended by that because she's a little girl.
00:02:43.000 If my wife were to do the same thing, people might have some more questions.
00:02:45.000 There is a difference between children's costumes and adult costumes, and I think that that's worth noting.
00:02:50.000 By the way, I do think that the whole motion of adults dressing up for Halloween... I'm not the biggest fan, unless you have a child.
00:02:56.000 Just a general rule.
00:02:57.000 Like, I have a kid, so both of us dress up in costumes for Purim, for example, and on Purim, everybody dresses up.
00:03:02.000 I'm not sure that adults dressing up for Halloween and, like, making a huge deal out of it, unless it's, like, a cutesy thing, is really a thing.
00:03:09.000 Because it turns out that most people are just looking to get drunk and participate in various activities, which I would not approve.
00:03:16.000 And so you get, like, slutty nurse costumes and such.
00:03:18.000 Not my favorite thing.
00:03:19.000 In any case, the left has decided that it must set some standards, however.
00:03:22.000 And the standard for white people is you cannot dress up as anything but yourself or an inanimate object.
00:03:27.000 That is culturally sterile.
00:03:29.000 Basically, it has no cultural
00:03:31.000 Uh, sort of, weight.
00:03:32.000 Uh, you can dress up as like a Rubik's Cube.
00:03:34.000 Like that would be a good, or a spoon.
00:03:36.000 Like a spoon would be good.
00:03:37.000 Right?
00:03:38.000 You can dress up as a letter of the alphabet.
00:03:39.000 But you can't dress up as anything else because if you do, you're likely to offend someone.
00:03:43.000 So if you're a white person particularly, you have to be very, very careful about these standards.
00:03:47.000 And now, the left is extending these standards down to children.
00:03:51.000 So there's an amazing piece in Cosmopolitan magazine that was going around yesterday that I have to go through because it does reveal, you know, a culture that is determined to be oversensitive about things that don't matter is going to be a culture that tears itself apart.
00:04:04.000 And this is a perfect example of that.
00:04:06.000 We should all be sensitive to the cultural concerns of others.
00:04:08.000 I think that's appropriate.
00:04:10.000 I mean, I really do, actually.
00:04:12.000 I also think that if you are looking to be offended, then you're going to find something to be offended about.
00:04:16.000 The latest iteration is Cosmo has written, has put out a piece by the Red Book editors that says that you should not allow your child, your daughter, to dress as Moana for Halloween.
00:04:27.000 Moana is of course the Polynesian princess from the self-titled movie, Moana.
00:04:33.000 And because she's Polynesian,
00:04:36.000 They're not saying that if you have a white kid, then your kid should not be allowed to dress up as Moana.
00:04:41.000 And the article is just a masterpiece of stupidity, so I really want to go through it, because I think it speaks to where we are in the culture.
00:04:48.000 And you want to know how you got Trump?
00:04:49.000 This is how you got Trump.
00:04:50.000 The feeling that everyone is oversensitive about stupid crap is how you got Trump, and then Trump says stuff that people should be sensitive about, and then they're not sensitive about it, and so things get worse.
00:04:58.000 In any case,
00:04:58.000 Here are the Redbook editors from Cosmo.
00:05:00.000 What I tweeted was, I'll take advice on how to dress my child for Halloween when Cosmo stops telling me to abort my child or raise them gender neutral.
00:05:07.000 In any case, the piece starts like this.
00:05:09.000 It's mid-October, which means Halloween is just two weeks away, which means it's way past time to decide on a Halloween costume for your kid.
00:05:15.000 First of all, I mean, that in itself is stereotypical.
00:05:17.000 I mean, how could you decide for your child?
00:05:19.000 How patriarchal are you?
00:05:20.000 Chances are, you have a child that is enamored with all things Disney and wants to be all of the princesses, all of them, especially Moana.
00:05:26.000 The New York Post recently highlighted an article on raceconscious.org, which seems like a terrible way to spend your day, reading raceconscious.org, about how that's probably not a good choice if your kid is white, and revealed that moms are freaking out over the culturally appropriative costume.
00:05:41.000 As I've said before, cultural appropriation is idiotic.
00:05:43.000 It's one thing for you to take something that has deep spiritual meaning and then mock it.
00:05:48.000 It is another thing for you to say, you know what's great?
00:05:50.000 Italian food.
00:05:51.000 You know what's awesome?
00:05:52.000 Chinese food.
00:05:53.000 You know what's pretty cool?
00:05:54.000 Hoop earrings.
00:05:55.000 Like really, if you're getting oversensitive about this stuff, folks, you really need a life.
00:05:59.000 Needless to say, the post coverage has only amplified the debate around what does or doesn't constitute cultural appropriation.
00:06:05.000 Last year, Disney came under fire for its Maui costume, which depicted the demigods painted brown skin.
00:06:11.000 Uh, and, uh, I-I looked this up.
00:06:12.000 Apparently, Disney released a costume, uh, from-from one of the characters in the film who's played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson, uh, and the-the costume involved having brown skin, I guess.
00:06:23.000 Uh, and this was a big controversy, and so they had to pull the costume.
00:06:28.000 Basically, I'm looking it up right now.
00:06:30.000 The reason people were angry is because the costume itself was a brown-skinned bodysuit adorned with Polynesian tattoos and a faux-leaf skirt, and two sets of wigs with thick, dark hair to top off the Maui and Moana look.
00:06:41.000 And this is just terrible because, for some reason that I don't understand, because Maui is...
00:06:46.000 I don't know.
00:07:02.000 First of all...
00:07:17.000 I think we have to ask a question.
00:07:19.000 Why should Lin-Manuel Miranda be able to write the music for a movie about Polynesians?
00:07:23.000 Why not a Polynesian person writing Polynesian music for a movie about Polynesians?
00:07:27.000 Lin-Manuel Miranda's in Polynesia, as far as I'm aware.
00:07:29.000 In any case, the original article, written by Sashi Ferris, discusses how her white daughter was torn between dressing as Elsa from Frozen or the titular character from Moana.
00:07:38.000 Ferris expresses concern that while an Elsa costume might reinforce notions of white privilege, dressing up as Moana is essentially cultural appropriation, the act of reducing someone's culture to stereotypes and thereby belittling it.
00:07:48.000 Though Ferris puzzles over how one might wear a Moana costume respectfully, she ultimately decides it just isn't a good idea.
00:07:53.000 So, let's get this straight.
00:07:54.000 The left is saying, your daughter can't dress up as a Polynesian girl that she admires.
00:07:59.000 Because that's bad.
00:08:00.000 Because... something.
00:08:02.000 We can't have heroes who are cross-cultural.
00:08:04.000 We just can't do it.
00:08:05.000 Jews have to dress up like Jews.
00:08:07.000 White folks who are not Jewish or Italian or German have to dress up like those people.
00:08:11.000 Basically, dress up as yourself is the Halloween advice from the left this year for white people.
00:08:15.000 I do love the idea that she can't dress up as Ilsa because that would be ethnocentric, but she should dress up.
00:08:21.000 She also can't dress up as Moana because that would be cultural appropriation.
00:08:25.000 I'm a little dizzy at this point.
00:08:26.000 Right, I'm saying both of those things, but I didn't dress up as Jasmine.
00:08:29.000 This is Cosmo.
00:08:45.000 Well, how about more intelligent?
00:08:46.000 Because it sounds like you just want us to be dumber than we were ten years ago.
00:08:49.000 If you missed the mark when you were younger, maybe think about using this Halloween as an opportunity to teach your kids about the importance of cultural sensitivity.
00:08:55.000 If your child's dream costume feels questionable, don't just throw up your hands and hand over your credit card.
00:09:00.000 You're the parent here, and the onus of what your child wears falls on you.
00:09:03.000 If your kid wears a racist costume, you're kind of wearing it too.
00:09:06.000 I just want to note here a little bit of an incongruity.
00:09:10.000 I love that sentence.
00:09:11.000 You're the parent here.
00:09:13.000 If your child's dream costume feels questionable, don't throw up your hands and hand over your credit card.
00:09:17.000 You're the parent here.
00:09:19.000 Unless your child is a boy who declares that he's a girl, in which case you're not the parent here, shut the F up and hand him over to a pediatrician for hormone blockers.
00:09:26.000 Then you're not the parent.
00:09:27.000 So if your kid decides that your kid is a member of the opposite sex, then you're not the parent anymore.
00:09:32.000 But if your kid wants to dress up like Moana, well damn it, step in!
00:09:35.000 Don't you understand the kind of damage you're doing to the country?
00:09:38.000 Okay, but it gets even better.
00:09:40.000 Recognize this.
00:09:41.000 Moana is a really special character to young girls of Polynesian descent who have never seen a Disney princess who looks like them.
00:09:46.000 Just like how Tiana from The Princess and the Frog likely resonated with young black women who had waited decades to see themselves represented.
00:09:53.000 Okay, so?
00:09:54.000 White girls have plenty of princesses to choose from.
00:09:56.000 There's Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty.
00:09:58.000 You get the idea.
00:09:59.000 Well, I guess that only mermaids can dress up as Ariel.
00:10:02.000 And as far as these other characters, none of them are Jewish, so what does my daughter do?
00:10:07.000 I just don't know.
00:10:08.000 Is it white cultural appropriation for her to dress up as Cinderella?
00:10:10.000 She's really big into Cinderella.
00:10:13.000 If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn't get to be exactly what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize that there are Washington privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas of the world will likely never see, because the world is full of racist a-holes.
00:10:27.000 I'm gonna go with, if you are so race-conscious that you think that you can't admire someone of a different color or ethnicity, you may be one of the racist a-holes.
00:10:34.000 You might want to take a look in the mirror.
00:10:36.000 But, here's the best part of the article.
00:10:38.000 Basically, the article says, you can't dress your daughter as Moana because Trump.
00:10:42.000 Really, I'm not making this up.
00:10:43.000 Like, this is how you got Trump times 1,000.
00:10:45.000 So what does this have to do with a seemingly innocuous princess costume?
00:10:49.000 Pretty much everything.
00:11:08.000 Really, that's what the article says.
00:11:09.000 I'm not making this up.
00:11:10.000 It's important to align with and stand up for people of color and minorities, and a key part of that is showing respect for their cultures.
00:11:16.000 To pretend to be a racial, ethnic, or religious minority when you're not makes light of their history and reinforces a deeply problematic power dynamic wherein white people use, then discard, pieces of culture they've subjugated for centuries just because they can.
00:11:30.000 And they say that your kids can still sing Moana songs,
00:11:34.000 I don't know why.
00:11:35.000 But you're not allowed to allow your kid to actually dress up as Moana.
00:11:40.000 That's fine, but why can't they dress up as those people?
00:11:53.000 As I've said before, every year when I was growing up, when I was a child, I dressed up as John Adams.
00:11:57.000 John Adams.
00:11:57.000 Not a Jew.
00:11:58.000 Right?
00:11:59.000 John Adams.
00:11:59.000 A Christian founding father.
00:12:01.000 I used to get in that costume every year because I was a huge John Adams fan because I grew up on the movie 1776.
00:12:06.000 Was that culturally appropriating, John Adams?
00:12:08.000 Was that making light?
00:12:09.000 The whole point of your kid wearing a costume is that your kid is saying the costume is cool.
00:12:14.000 It's that simple.
00:12:15.000 End of story.
00:12:17.000 But this is how you get Trump, really.
00:12:19.000 It's the oversensitivity, and the deliberate oversensitivity, and the attempts to paint everyone who is not willing to fall for this microaggressions culture as racist.
00:12:27.000 That is the serious problem, and it's why people are rejecting this nonsense wholesale.
00:12:31.000 Okay, before I go any further, and I'm gonna talk about the President Trump-Bob Corker spat that has now broken out, because it's a day ending in Y, which means that somebody is in a fight with President Trump, and President Trump is in a fight with somebody, none of which actually affords policy.
00:12:44.000 By the way, I'm not just going to be critical of Trump's policy.
00:12:46.000 There's a good story about Trump's policy I want to tell you too.
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00:13:59.000 Okay, so.
00:14:26.000 Meanwhile, while the rest of the world fights over Halloween costumes, you know, people tend to think that this Halloween costume thing is irrelevant, except that it's not.
00:14:33.000 Okay, at Yale University last year, or two years ago, Erica Christakis was the head of the, she was the, I guess, the resident advisor at Silliman College, which is a place that a bunch of students live at Yale, and she wrote a letter to people saying basically, you know, don't be offensive if you can avoid it, but
00:14:49.000 If you're offended, maybe take a second thought about why you're offended and whether it's worthwhile being offended about Halloween costumes.
00:14:54.000 The students went completely insane.
00:14:56.000 There was all sorts of video of the students screaming at her husband, Nicholas Christakis, who's a very famous professor, and yelling at him, and telling him to shut up and listen to them, because they're people of color in many cases, and he is a white guy, and so he should shut up and listen to them because their opinions are important, and his is not, and his wife's letter made them feel unsafe, etc., etc.
00:15:14.000 He ended up resigning his position at Silliman College, and so did she.
00:15:18.000 This sort of thing is happening all over the country.
00:15:19.000 Over at University of Texas at Austin, they actually put out a guide as to what sort of costumes you should think about wearing for Halloween, so as not to offend everyone.
00:15:28.000 And they legitimately come up with things like, don't dress up like cowboys or Indians, because that might be offensive to someone.
00:15:36.000 Don't dress up as, you can't do a South of the border party, so you can't do anything that is Mexico related.
00:15:42.000 You know, they did a whole shtick about why you should not dress up as various members of other cultures.
00:15:50.000 And then, what do they leave?
00:15:51.000 They're like, you can dress up as a Rubik's Cube.
00:15:54.000 Dead serious, this is what they suggest.
00:15:55.000 That you should dress up as a Rubik's Cube.
00:15:57.000 They also suggest that perhaps you should dress up as letters of the alphabet.
00:16:02.000 We know that certain letters, which I find weird, because certain letters of the alphabet are inherently offensive.
00:16:06.000 Like, the letters W and T.
00:16:09.000 I mean, T will remind people of Trump and might trigger them, and W will remind you of W and might trigger you.
00:16:14.000 Decade time period, they say you should dress up in like a 50s outfit, but doesn't that ignore the plight of women during the 50s?
00:16:20.000 They say you can dress up as comic book heroes and villains, but what if you're a culturally appropriating kryptonite culture?
00:16:26.000 Kryptonian culture, how do you know?
00:16:28.000 And then my favorite one here is that you're allowed to dress up as Catalina Yachtmixer or Preppy.
00:16:34.000 So you can do a cultural stereotype of a white guy in boat shoes, but you can't do any other sort of cultural stereotype.
00:16:40.000 Well done, University of Texas at Austin.
00:16:42.000 Again, this is the sort of stuff that tears us apart needlessly.
00:16:45.000 Everybody should take a deep breath because it isn't that important.
00:16:48.000 But we're going to have a big fuss over it this year.
00:16:49.000 I promise you this is just the beginning of the stupid Halloween stories.
00:16:52.000 Okay, so meanwhile, in more important news, President Trump is on the Hill trying to push through his tax reform package today.
00:17:00.000 We still don't know exactly what that package looks like.
00:17:01.000 There's been a lot of talk about it, what exactly that will look like when all is said and done.
00:17:05.000 There's been some talk about it, including revisions to 401K plans.
00:17:09.000 Trump rightly has said he is not going to do that, which is good.
00:17:12.000 There's been some talk about not lowering the top tax bracket, which is stupid.
00:17:16.000 The top tax bracket should be lowered, and that's not just because I'm a member of the top tax bracket.
00:17:20.000 I felt that way before I was a member of the top tax bracket.
00:17:22.000 The reason being, the people who actually hire you and create your jobs are very often members of the top tax bracket.
00:17:28.000 Okay, beyond that, there's a lot of controversy over what this will include.
00:17:31.000 And Trump has a very fractious caucus.
00:17:33.000 A very fractious caucus.
00:17:35.000 And when I say very fractious, I mean that Trump has, he was saddled with a Senate that only has 52 votes.
00:17:41.000 Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and John McCain and Rand Paul are always going to be iffy on anything.
00:17:46.000 Rand Paul barely votes for anything because he wants to maintain his supposed purity.
00:17:50.000 And Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins are very left-leaning Republicans, so hard to get them to vote for anything.
00:17:57.000 And Trump has exacerbated some of these problems by going directly to war with some of these senators.
00:18:01.000 So the person who he's currently at war with is Bob Corker, the senator from Tennessee.
00:18:05.000 He's been angry at Bob Corker for several weeks now because Corker has been sounding off about President Trump.
00:18:12.000 I'm not a Bob Corker fan.
00:18:12.000 I think Bob Corker is as oozy and slimy as it is possible to be in the United States Senate.
00:18:17.000 Bob Corker is the guy behind the Senate approval for the Iran deal.
00:18:21.000 Bob Corker is the guy who was happy to back President Trump all the way up till the election and then flirt with being Secretary of State before he decided to turn on him.
00:18:29.000 So now Bob Corker is going out in public and yelling basically at President Trump talking about how terrible he is.
00:18:34.000 Here is Bob Corker ripping him this morning.
00:18:36.000 The constant non-truth-telling.
00:18:39.000 Just the name-calling, the things like, I think the basement of our nation will be what he'll be remembered most for, and that's regretful.
00:18:50.000 And it affects young people.
00:18:52.000 I mean, we have young people who, for the first time, are, you know, watching a president stating, you know,
00:19:00.000 Absolute non-truths.
00:19:02.000 Non-stop.
00:19:04.000 Personalizing things in the way that he does.
00:19:06.000 And it's very sad for our nation.
00:19:09.000 So there's Corker.
00:19:10.000 Trump is debasing our nation.
00:19:11.000 The only thing he's going to remember for it is debasing our nation.
00:19:14.000 Dude, you're part of that debasement if this is the way that you feel.
00:19:17.000 Like, thank you for taking no political risk now that you've said you're not running for re-election, and then coming out and ripping Trump in the middle of a tax reform fight.
00:19:23.000 But this is why, you know, all the talk about ideological relations on the Hill, a lot of it's nonsense, a lot of it's interpersonal.
00:19:30.000 Like, John McCain and Trump despise one another.
00:19:32.000 The same thing is now true of Bob Corker.
00:19:33.000 Bob Corker didn't stop there.
00:19:35.000 He then ripped into Trump even more so, and then Trump ripped back.
00:19:38.000 I've been with him on multiple occasions to try to, you know, create some kind of aspirational
00:19:46.000 Uh, approach, if you will, to the way that he conducts himself, but, uh, I don't think that that's possible, and, um, he's obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.
00:19:58.000 Okay, so, there's Bob Corker ripping Trump up and down, and Trump responds, not by trying to tamp things down, by saying this, Bob Corker, who helped President Obama give us the bad Iran deal and couldn't get elected dog catcher in Tennessee, is now fighting tax cuts.
00:20:10.000 Fair.
00:20:11.000 Corker dropped out of the race in Tennessee when I refused to endorse him, and now is only negative on anything Trump.
00:20:15.000 Look at his record.
00:20:16.000 Isn't it sad that lightweight Senator Bob Corker, who couldn't get re-elected in the great state of Tennessee, will now fight Tax Cuts Plus?
00:20:22.000 Senator Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and look how poorly the U.S.
00:20:26.000 has done.
00:20:27.000 He doesn't have a clue, as the entire world was laughing and taking advantage of us.
00:20:31.000 People like little Bob Corker have set the U.S.
00:20:33.000 way back.
00:20:34.000 Now we move forward.
00:20:35.000 Okay, first of all, I do like that Trump does have a rotating series of about 10 insults, and he just keeps going around and around.
00:20:41.000 It's sort of like the old photo rotation that you had at your grandparents' house.
00:20:46.000 It's just, click, okay, time for a new insult.
00:20:48.000 Little, L-I-D-D-L-E, apostrophe for some reason.
00:20:51.000 Bob Corker.
00:20:52.000 The question here is not whether Trump is right about Corker.
00:20:54.000 I just said, Corker's oozy and slimy.
00:20:57.000 Okay, I think that that's basically correct.
00:20:59.000 The question is, is this effective in pushing your legislation?
00:21:02.000 I'm gonna go with no.
00:21:02.000 I'm gonna say this probably isn't super effective in pushing your legislation.
00:21:06.000 Good luck pushing through tax reform when Bob Corker, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and John McCain are all part of your caucus and all of them hate you.
00:21:14.000 You know, this is where some of Trump's wheeling and dealing would have been really nice, but the problem is that Trump was never that guy.
00:21:19.000 And this is a point where presidential relations does matter.
00:21:22.000 You know, there's sort of this assumption that, look, here's what's going to happen.
00:21:25.000 All these senators are going to vote against tax reform.
00:21:27.000 Trump's going to blame McConnell.
00:21:28.000 The Trump base will blame McConnell because it's convenient to blame McConnell, and everyone will forget about how Trump said that McCain was not a war hero and suggests that Bob Corker is disgusting and has gone after Rand Paul.
00:21:41.000 Now they're friends again, I guess, but they'll be enemies again soon enough.
00:21:44.000 None of this is particularly helpful and none of it pushes legislation, which is why a lot of the accomplishments of the Trump administration are basically happening at the executive level.
00:21:52.000 Virtually none are happening at the legislative level.
00:21:54.000 So in good news, Molly Hemingway reports over at the Federalist that the Trump administration, there have been about 13,000 new regulations added to the federal rules every year for the last 20 years or so.
00:22:07.000 The Trump administration has added basically zero.
00:22:09.000 That is a very good thing.
00:22:10.000 We don't need more useless regulations that have not been approved by the American people.
00:22:14.000 So on the executive side, the stuff that Trump can control, it seems like a lot of it is going pretty well.
00:22:19.000 The stuff that he can—let's put it this way—the stuff that he can control and is allowing his team to do what they're supposed to do, all of that is going fine.
00:22:26.000 Right, all of the regulatory cuts, all of the judicial nominations, all the stuff where he takes his hands off, all that's going fine.
00:22:32.000 All the major legislative pushes, though, those are collapsing into sand.
00:22:36.000 And there are personality problems here.
00:22:38.000 Personalities do matter in politics.
00:22:40.000 George W. Bush was a back slapper and a guy who got along with people.
00:22:43.000 Barack Obama at least did that with his own party.
00:22:45.000 He alienated all the Republicans, but he did that with his own party.
00:22:48.000 I don't think that you see the same thing from President Trump, which is kind of amazing.
00:22:52.000 I'm not, again, I'm not blaming Trump for all of this because I think the Democrats were motivated to go against him from the very start.
00:22:59.000 But Trump came into office as one of the guys on the supposed right side of the aisle who is very friendly with Democrats.
00:23:04.000 He'd worked with Chuck Schumer, he'd worked with Nancy Pelosi, and now it seems we've fallen into this basically three-pronged scenario, none of which are fantastic.
00:23:12.000 One is, only executive actions get done.
00:23:15.000 We can share that, but if Trump loses, then the executive actions get reversed day one.
00:23:19.000 Two,
00:23:20.000 Nothing gets done in Congress at all because he can't get his own caucus together.
00:23:24.000 And three, he surrenders to Pelosi and Schumer as supposedly he was going to do with DACA.
00:23:28.000 None of these are glorious outcomes.
00:23:30.000 That's why President Trump really needs to focus and really needs to do a little bit of wooing if we're going to get anything done here at all.
00:23:36.000 Now, I want to talk about the crisis among Democrats as well as Bill O'Reilly's controversy in just a second.
00:23:42.000 But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Skillshare.
00:23:45.000 So, let me just tell you, the job market is incredibly fluid.
00:23:48.000 Right?
00:23:49.000 The job market is incredibly fluid, meaning that people move job to job.
00:23:52.000 You're no longer at the same job for 20 years.
00:23:54.000 If you are, it's only because you're constantly increasing and improving your skill set.
00:23:57.000 The only way that I know to do this in really effective fashion, repeatedly, is with my friends over at Skillshare.
00:24:03.000 They have over 3 million members, more than 17,000 classes.
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00:24:15.000 And Skillshare classes are taught
00:24:17.000 We're good to go.
00:24:41.000 We're good to go.
00:25:11.000 Meanwhile, in other news, the big news over the weekend was, of course, this big report from the New York Times that Bill O'Reilly had apparently paid out a $32 million settlement on some sort of unspecified sexual harassment allegations.
00:25:23.000 A New York Times reporter was on television yesterday talking about how Bill O'Reilly was trying to quash the story.
00:25:28.000 I don't think he thought he could get us to not write the story, but maybe he thought that he could bully us into not doing it or get us, you know, sort of push us into not doing it.
00:25:39.000 It certainly wasn't the type of interview where he tried to charm us.
00:25:43.000 It was clear from the beginning that this would be unlike any other interview that I certainly had ever been in.
00:25:48.000 Where, you know, he was going to as hard as he could to make the case that this was not fair and that we weren't really following the facts.
00:25:58.000 And we spent a lot of time there just asking him questions to try and learn as much as possible.
00:26:03.000 Okay, so this obviously did not work.
00:26:05.000 The New York Times ended up writing a very, very lengthy hit piece on Bill O'Reilly.
00:26:10.000 O'Reilly is fighting back against what he called lies and smears.
00:26:12.000 Megyn Kelly, as we played yesterday, said that she had complained to the administrators over at Fox News about Bill O'Reilly's treatment of women going back years and years and years.
00:26:21.000 There's a settlement from Fox News and Bill O'Reilly with regard to one of his producers, a woman named Andrea Macris, who I had once met when she was producing O'Reilly's show.
00:26:29.000 That's when you heard all of the tapes about Bill O'Reilly basically calling her up and leaving messages on her machine of a sexual nature.
00:26:37.000 She posted, so Bill O'Reilly has posted on his website three notes.
00:26:42.000 So one is from Megan Kelly and her husband.
00:26:44.000 It says, Dear Bill, what a class act you are coming to my baby shower.
00:26:47.000 I was truly touched.
00:26:48.000 I know how busy you are, especially that time of day.
00:26:50.000 It meant a lot to me and Doug.
00:26:51.000 And thank you for the darling bodysuits and snuggly.
00:26:53.000 It's hard to believe we'll soon have a little human being in our lives tiny enough to fit in this.
00:26:57.000 You become a dear friend no matter what you say, and I'm grateful to have you in my life.
00:27:02.000 Uh, and then, uh, there's another one from Megan Kelly that said, And then there's one from Gretchen Carlson who also has suggested there's reality to the rumors about, about Bill O'Reilly.
00:27:08.000 And, uh, it says, So...
00:27:27.000 This is being used as proof that Bill O'Reilly did not do all of these things.
00:27:30.000 So, a couple of things.
00:27:31.000 One, very hard to imagine a personal $32 million settlement in a case where there's no evidence.
00:27:36.000 Very, very difficult to imagine that.
00:27:38.000 So all of this is alleged, because settlements are confidential, but difficult to imagine nothing happened here.
00:27:44.000 Difficult to imagine, and I have a feeling more stories are going to come out in the near future.
00:27:47.000 Second, these thank you notes don't really say a lot.
00:27:49.000 The reason I say they don't say a lot is because
00:27:52.000 People write thank you notes to each other all the time for attending events.
00:27:54.000 They're constantly saying nice things and polite things to each other because they need them for career purposes or because they work for them or work with them that they don't actually mean.
00:28:03.000 I mean, if you go back and read my book Bullies, I say some nice things about Steve Bannon that I can say, in all fairness, were probably motivated by the fact that I was working for Steve Bannon at the time.
00:28:13.000 In any case, I don't think that that stuff is particularly rare in the business, because again, everybody needs to scratch each other's back when it comes career time, but that doesn't say anything about the nature of these allegations.
00:28:23.000 O'Reilly also released an affidavit from a woman named Les Wheel, or Liss Wheel, sorry.
00:28:29.000 She's a former Fox News legal analyst, and he claims on his website the affidavit repudiates all allegations against him, but this is not true.
00:28:36.000 Basically, the affidavit says, from List Wheel, that she's known Bill O'Reilly for over 18 years.
00:28:41.000 We have worked together, we have socialized, and on occasion, I gave him legal advice.
00:28:46.000 And it says, Well, of course not.
00:28:46.000 Once you settle, that bars you from making the allegations in the draft complaint, so that doesn't help at all.
00:28:50.000 It says,
00:29:15.000 Right, again, once you settle things, you can't sue based on them.
00:29:17.000 So, because the settlement is approved by the court.
00:29:19.000 So, the idea that Bill O'Reilly is off the hook on this, not legally true, just as a lawyer.
00:29:26.000 Says, also, I've reached an accommodation with Fox News regarding the termination of my employment.
00:29:29.000 I have no claims against Fox News.
00:29:31.000 Again, she doesn't have claims against Fox News because she settled all of them.
00:29:34.000 So, that doesn't tend to do much.
00:29:35.000 The reason that I point this out is because there's going to be a tendency that I think we all ought to avoid on both sides to say,
00:29:41.000 Harvey Weinstein is guilty because I'm right-wing, or Bill O'Reilly is innocent because I'm right-wing, or vice versa, on the left.
00:29:47.000 And you see the ratings on CNN and MSNBC.
00:29:49.000 Every time they talk Weinstein, according to Yashar Ali over at Huffington Post in the Atlantic, he says every time CNN and MSNBC cover Harvey Weinstein, the ratings plummet.
00:29:57.000 Every time they cover O'Reilly, the ratings go up.
00:29:59.000 That's because people want to believe things about people they don't like.
00:30:03.000 So, let's not fall into that trap.
00:30:06.000 Given the evidence on the table, a $32 million alleged settlement, and the evidence that O'Reilly has produced, this does not quell my suspicions.
00:30:13.000 O'Reilly said yesterday in an interview that he was angry at God.
00:30:17.000 If the allegations are true, I have a feeling the feeling might be mutual.
00:30:20.000 Again, I don't think that we should make light of people on our own side doing bad things just because they're on our own side.
00:30:27.000 Speaking of which,
00:30:28.000 The Democrats continue to defend Hillary Clinton, which is very exciting.
00:30:30.000 So, the new allegations about Hillary Clinton have basically been that Hillary Clinton sold essentially 20% of the uranium of the United States, or her State Department did, to Rosatom, which was the Russian atomic energy agency.
00:30:43.000 And that, at the same time, the Russians were giving all sorts of money to the Clinton Foundation, the FBI and DOJ knew about it and did nothing.
00:30:50.000 Hillary Clinton came out yesterday and she said, no, no, no, all this has been debunked, don't you understand?
00:30:54.000 It's been debunked.
00:30:56.000 I would say it's the same baloney they've been peddling for years.
00:30:59.000 And there's been no credible evidence by anyone.
00:31:03.000 In fact, it's been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.
00:31:06.000 But here's what they're doing.
00:31:07.000 And really, I have to give them credit.
00:31:09.000 You know, Trump and his allies, including Fox News, are really experts at distraction and diversion.
00:31:16.000 So the closer the investigation about real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians, as we heard Jeff Sessions finally admit to in his testimony the other day, the more they want to just throw mud on the wall and I'm their favorite target, me and, you know, President Obama.
00:31:35.000 We're the ones that they always like to put into the crosshairs.
00:31:38.000 Uh, so yes.
00:31:56.000 And most of the evidence that is now coming out about events that happened with regard to Russia actually is blowing back on things like the Podesta group, not on Trump per se, at least the stuff that's being leaked.
00:32:04.000 So we still have to reserve our judgment on what exactly has happened here, but it doesn't look good for Hillary Clinton, and people on the left who are willing to sort of brush away all of this are making a mistake I think.
00:32:15.000 Trey Gowdy, who is the head of the House Investigative Subcommittee, House Judiciary and Oversight Committee, he announced on Tuesday a joint investigation into how the FBI handled last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server.
00:32:29.000 This, I think, is completely appropriate because, once again, I think it's pretty clear that James Comey had pre-decided the outcome of how this is going to work.
00:32:38.000 Before it actually happens.
00:32:40.000 So that is another controversy that just will not die.
00:32:43.000 Okay, so I want to get to some things I like, some things I hate, and then we'll deconstruct a little bit of culture.
00:32:47.000 So let's jump right in.
00:32:48.000 So let's begin with things I like today.
00:32:51.000 So, things I like.
00:32:53.000 I just finished reading all the way through Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed.
00:32:57.000 So people are constantly asking what's a good book about kind of Jewish philosophy.
00:33:00.000 There's a pretty sophisticated book about Jewish philosophy by Moses Maimonides who is
00:33:05.000 One, probably the most famous rabbi in the post-biblical era, Maimonides Rambam, as he's called in the Jewish community because he's Moses ben Maimon, so Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, R-M-B-M, right, Oresh, Mem, Betmem.
00:33:18.000 So Rambam was the author of the Guide for the Perplexed.
00:33:21.000 This was a series of letters that he basically wrote to one of his students all about trying to square religion with secularism.
00:33:27.000 And it's quite fascinating, especially because
00:33:30.000 There's a bit of a misconception inside some parts of the Orthodox Jewish community that secular learning doesn't play a role in how great rabbinic minds have thought about the world.
00:33:40.000 Half of this book is basically a restatement of Aristotelian theories about the creation of the universe and arguments about it.
00:33:47.000 My mom was deeply engaged in secular culture and that's what makes the Guide for the Perplexed so interesting.
00:33:51.000 He talks about the questions of free will versus determinism.
00:33:54.000 He talks about the questions of God's providence over the universe.
00:33:58.000 He talks about questions about why bad things happen to good people.
00:34:02.000 It's really interesting.
00:34:03.000 This thing was written in the 11th, in the 12th century rather.
00:34:06.000 And it's still readable.
00:34:08.000 This translation that you see up on your screen here was written, I think it was 1979, and it's a pretty good translation.
00:34:14.000 Now, it is sophisticated.
00:34:14.000 You should probably do some reading about Aristotle before you read this.
00:34:19.000 I would suggest, as I've mentioned, Edward Fazer's books on Aristotelian theory.
00:34:22.000 That gives you a good background in this.
00:34:24.000 What's really fascinating culturally is that the Guide for the Perplexed was basically written at about the same time as Thomas Aquinas was writing Summa Theologica, and they mirror a lot of their logic.
00:34:34.000 Which makes a lot of sense, because Aquinas was a Christian thinker who believed in the Old Testament, and Moses Maimonides was a Jewish thinker who believed in the Old Testament, and both of them believed in Aristotle.
00:34:42.000 So the attempts to square Aristotelian theory with Judeo-Christian belief is one of their missions.
00:34:49.000 It's something in which I deeply believe.
00:34:51.000 Go watch my speech at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, if you're interested in seeing how I think this plays into the American founding.
00:34:57.000 I'm actually writing a book on all of this right now that I'm looking forward to pushing out probably sometime next year.
00:35:02.000 Okay, other things that I like.
00:35:03.000 So yesterday, I showed you the CNN ad talking about how an apple is just an apple, unless, of course, it's not.
00:35:09.000 So a fellow named Greg Tomlin, friend of mine, producer over at Michael Medved's show, he cut this ad in response to the CNN ad.
00:35:17.000 This is a man.
00:35:19.000 Some people might try to tell you it's a woman.
00:35:22.000 They might scream woman, woman, woman over and over and over again.
00:35:28.000 They might put woman in all caps.
00:35:32.000 You might even start to believe that this is a woman.
00:35:36.000 But it's not.
00:35:38.000 This is a man.
00:35:45.000 So thanks to Greg Tomlin, very funny stuff.
00:35:47.000 Obviously, CNN does not believe that, which is why whenever they do the, we are the fact network, you just go, um, no.
00:35:54.000 Okay, time for a couple of things I hate, then we'll deconstruct some culture.
00:35:57.000 So, things that I hate.
00:36:03.000 So speaking of useless invocation of racism for no particular reason except to annoy people, Jesse Jackson, who again should really have very little to say about things racial.
00:36:14.000 Jesse Jackson, given the fact that, you know, he used to call New York hymetown and such, Jesse Jackson
00:36:19.000 I made the statement on Undisputed on Fox Sports 1.
00:36:24.000 First of all, I don't know why Jesse Jackson is even on a sports channel.
00:36:27.000 Why is Jesse Jackson on a sports channel?
00:36:29.000 I love that Rush Limbaugh was booted off ESPN for saying that Donovan McNabb was overrated.
00:36:33.000 And Jesse Jackson, it's totally fine for him to be on a sports channel talking about his perspectives on sports.
00:36:39.000 What he's about to say here is so utterly nuts that I just have to play it for you.
00:36:43.000 Here's Jesse Jackson.
00:36:45.000 All the fraudulences around the world owe their wages and their benefits to Kurt Lloyd, who paid the price of rebelling against a system of oppression.
00:36:55.000 And it is oppressive to go from picking cotton balls to picking footballs and basketballs without freedom.
00:37:01.000 It's not very much progress.
00:37:02.000 It's just a lateral move.
00:37:04.000 And what strikes me is that in football, the reason why so many guys are standing, when the president says, fire them, and you're talking about sons of bitches.
00:37:11.000 These boys are not sons of bitches.
00:37:12.000 They're sons of mothers who produce champions.
00:37:14.000 They're not sons of bitches.
00:37:15.000 They're sons of mothers who produce champions.
00:37:17.000 That's what they really are.
00:37:18.000 Okay, so I don't understand what he's saying in the last part because Jesse Jackson's patterns of speech are difficult to decipher sometimes, but what he is saying at the beginning there is he says that to go from picking cotton balls to picking footballs and basketballs without freedom is not very much progress.
00:37:32.000 This is so insane.
00:37:34.000 It's so insipid.
00:37:35.000 To suggest that the football players who are earning millions of dollars to play football, or basketball players who are earning millions of dollars to play basketball, and they don't have freedom?
00:37:43.000 They can say whatever they want off the court.
00:37:45.000 They can do whatever they want off the field.
00:37:47.000 You know, this idea they don't have freedom.
00:37:49.000 I am an employee, right?
00:37:50.000 Or I have employees.
00:37:51.000 If my employees speak out in, you know, in terrible, awful, evil ways, there are punishments and there are consequences.
00:37:58.000 Okay?
00:37:58.000 The idea that Jesse Jackson is going to go around saying that employees are the same as slaves is just insipid.
00:38:06.000 And again, it's insulting to slaves.
00:38:07.000 I mean, you're really going to equate, like, Steph Curry with a slave?
00:38:11.000 I don't think Steph Curry would do that.
00:38:14.000 But if this is the line that we're going to use from now on, then race relations are basically dead.
00:38:18.000 Okay, other things that I hate.
00:38:20.000 This cartoon appeared in the Berkeley student newspaper a couple of days ago.
00:38:23.000 Alan Dershowitz was speaking on Berkeley's student campus.
00:38:25.000 This one is directly from Der Sturmer.
00:38:27.000 I mean, this is completely from, you know, the Nazi newspapers.
00:38:30.000 It's a very ugly picture of Alan Dershowitz with the hooked nose and the fat lips.
00:38:34.000 And it says, the liberal case for Israel.
00:38:36.000 And there's sort of a board that he's putting his face through, speaking to students.
00:38:41.000 And then behind the board,
00:38:42.000 There's a foot stomping what appears to be a Palestinian person with a Palestinian flag, and in his hand, an IDF soldier shooting a child.
00:38:50.000 This is just pure anti-Semitic drivel.
00:38:53.000 The idea that, number one, IDF soldiers are just going around shooting Palestinian children for no reason at all, for fun of it, and that Alan Dershowitz is being paid off by these people because he's a Jewish front, basically for evil Jews.
00:39:06.000 You could legitimately remove the caption, the liberal case for Israel, and just write Judaism.
00:39:12.000 And then you could remove the caption IDF and just put a Jewish star, and this would look like it's directly from a Nazi newspaper.
00:39:18.000 No retractions from the UC Berkeley newspaper.
00:39:20.000 Pretty insane stuff.
00:39:21.000 Okay.
00:39:21.000 Quickly, we're going to deconstruct the culture, and then I have a surprise for frequent listeners of The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:39:27.000 Deconstructing the culture.
00:39:29.000 Every Tuesday, we take a little bit of culture and we deconstruct it.
00:39:31.000 So, here is the culture we are going to deconstruct today.
00:39:34.000 Eminem, who also appears to be basically Mike Pence.
00:39:39.000 He's sort of turned into Mike Pence.
00:39:40.000 When he takes off that hat, he's got the white hair and their hair, they look identical.
00:39:45.000 Eminem, in an attempt to seek relevance, has decided to alienate half of his audience by suggesting that President Trump is evil, and he did a freestyle rap to this effect at the Black Entertainment Television Awards.
00:39:57.000 Here's what he said.
00:39:58.000 Okay, so this is the genius of Eminem.
00:40:00.000 We've heard that this man is akin to Beethoven.
00:40:02.000 This is only Beethoven after he had suffered from lead poisoning, presumably.
00:40:06.000 Even then, Beethoven was still writing good stuff deaf and poisoned by lead.
00:40:09.000 I'm pretty sure that's not equivalent.
00:40:13.000 He's a genius because he can come up with a bunch of near rhymes for the word pot.
00:40:17.000 Congratulations.
00:40:18.000 This is just genius stuff.
00:40:19.000 I also like that cultural appropriation is fine so long as you're a leftist who hates Trump, right?
00:40:23.000 So he's culturally appropriating a lot of obvious, you know, black rap culture here, clearly.
00:40:28.000 I mean, this has been Eminem's schtick for a very long time.
00:40:30.000 And then he can use phrases like this.
00:40:33.000 Now I got a hatchet like a damn Apache would a tomahawk.
00:40:38.000 Totally fine, right?
00:40:39.000 No cultural appropriation there, nothing insulting there, right?
00:40:42.000 That's not insulting in any way, but that's just because he is just a genius leftist who hates President Trump.
00:40:48.000 Apparently, he attended an NBA game in Detroit, and he was cheered.
00:40:53.000 Kid Rock, however, was booed.
00:40:54.000 Kid Rock, by the way, says he's no longer going to run for Senate.
00:40:56.000 So, just like General Sherman, if nominated, he will not run.
00:41:00.000 If elected, he will not serve.
00:41:01.000 Kid Rock has now stated the same, except he screamed really loud and said,
00:41:06.000 Okay, other things.
00:41:07.000 Final deconstructing the culture point.
00:41:09.000 Mark Wahlberg has now come out and repented for doing the movie Boogie Nights.
00:41:14.000 Now, I've never actually seen this film.
00:41:15.000 I've heard that it's a very good movie.
00:41:17.000 Mathis, you've seen the movie?
00:41:19.000 No.
00:41:19.000 So, I've heard that it's good, but it is obviously a glorification of the pornography industry, is the idea of it anyway.
00:41:26.000 And he said he asked God to forgive him for some of his past movie roles, especially Boogie Nights.
00:41:29.000 He was speaking with Cardinal Blaise Cupich in Chicago this past weekend,
00:41:34.000 And he said, I hope God is a movie fan and also forgiving because I've made some poor choices in my past.
00:41:39.000 And he said, the Boogie Nights is up there at the top of the list.
00:41:41.000 Good for him.
00:41:42.000 I mean, good for him.
00:41:43.000 I believe in the capacity for redemption and forgiveness.
00:41:46.000 That's one of the things religion is all about.
00:41:48.000 And it's good to see some people in Hollywood who have the capacity to look back at things that they've done and say, perhaps that was a bad idea.
00:41:54.000 Okay, now.
00:41:55.000 I have a surprise for all of you.
00:41:56.000 The surprise is that for years, literally years, here on The Ben Shapiro Show, you have heard me talk about Birchgold.
00:42:03.000 And you have wondered, who are these Birchgold people?
00:42:05.000 What do they do?
00:42:07.000 Why are they special?
00:42:07.000 Well, joining us here on The Ben Shapiro Show, we decided to have on Philip.
00:42:11.000 He's a precious metals specialist from Birchgold.
00:42:12.000 Philip, welcome to The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:42:14.000 Thanks for having me, Ben.
00:42:15.000 Okay, so first of all, cool accent.
00:42:17.000 Second of all, let's start by asking you, where do you think the market is going right now?
00:42:24.000 Look, I mean, it looks tough.
00:42:26.000 You look at the big picture, and we have, I think, a number of different problems.
00:42:30.000 Debt currently is a big issue here in the United States.
00:42:34.000 We're holding more debt than we ever have before.
00:42:37.000 And of course, the stock market looks problematic, to say the least.
00:42:40.000 I mean, it's been going up and up and up and up.
00:42:43.000 But it's the nature of that growth, I think, that has been so concerning.
00:42:48.000 Look, for example, at stock prices versus company earnings.
00:42:52.000 Historically out of proportion in today's climate.
00:42:55.000 We've seen it in two other occasions.
00:42:58.000 Historically, 29 before the crash that ultimately sparked the Great Depression, and more recently in the year 2000.
00:43:05.000 So the numbers are not looking good.
00:43:07.000 Okay, so given that fact, I've said many times on the show that one way to protect yourself is to diversify by investing in precious metals, but what makes Birch Gold different than other groups of people who are trying to sell precious metals?
00:43:18.000 Look, I think there's a number of things.
00:43:20.000 First of all, you look at our track record.
00:43:22.000 We have A-plus ratings with the Better Business Bureau, longevity, and a solid history.
00:43:29.000 More than that, I would say the approach.
00:43:31.000 I mean, look, we know that there are tough times.
00:43:34.000 And I think in tough times, the fear monger has come out.
00:43:38.000 That's one thing that we're, you know, very, we stress a lot.
00:43:42.000 There is a rational argument for precious metals in today's climate and I think fear just clouds the decision-making process.
00:43:49.000 So we guide our clients through very carefully and we make sure that things are done effectively.
00:43:55.000 And that honesty is something that I definitely appreciate.
00:43:58.000 Can you explain sort of how a client goes through the process if they want to get involved with Birch Gold?
00:44:02.000 Do they call you up?
00:44:02.000 Do they go to your website?
00:44:03.000 And then how does that process actually work?
00:44:05.000 Of course.
00:44:05.000 I mean they can go to our website birchgold.com slash ben.
00:44:10.000 They can get a free info kit there.
00:44:12.000 Typically our clients will contact us and we will guide them through the process so we have an understanding of what they're trying to achieve.
00:44:19.000 We can make recommendations and really handle the process from start to finish.
00:44:23.000 Whether it's a cash purchase or protecting IRA funds, we handle everything.
00:44:28.000 And that's one of the things that I really appreciate about you guys, that you are honest about looking at people's financial situations and helping them come to the correct conclusions.
00:44:35.000 So again, it's birchgold.com slash Ben if you want to go check it out.
00:44:40.000 And they are the people that I trust with precious metals investment.
00:44:43.000 As I said before, you know, everyone I think should have at least some of their money in precious metals.
00:44:47.000 And right now, one of the things that you've been pitching for a while is the idea that you can shift your 401k or IRA into precious metals IRA.
00:44:55.000 How would that work?
00:44:56.000 Absolutely.
00:44:56.000 So first of all, one can move all or a portion of any 401k or IRA that you have.
00:45:03.000 In terms of the mechanics, it's very simple.
00:45:06.000 I always say to clients, you need to determine what you're looking to do, how much you're looking to work with.
00:45:13.000 But at that point, we can handle the process.
00:45:15.000 I mean, we have an in-house IRA department.
00:45:17.000 They will fill out paperwork and essentially manage the heavy lifting between custodians.
00:45:22.000 So we do the work.
00:45:24.000 The client makes the decision, of course.
00:45:25.000 Well, folks, if you're interested in investing with Birchgold, then you can talk to somebody like Philip by going over to birchgold.com slash Ben.
00:45:31.000 Who knows if you get that accent on the other end of the phone, then it is Philip.
00:45:33.000 But in any case, Philip, thanks for joining the show.
00:45:36.000 Really appreciate it.
00:45:36.000 Thanks for having me.
00:45:37.000 Okay, so tomorrow we'll be back with much, much more.
00:45:40.000 We'll give you the update on the tax plan, and I would like to talk a little bit more about some of the good stuff that's happening that people aren't talking about.
00:45:46.000 We'll get to all of that tomorrow.
00:45:47.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.
00:45:48.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.