Trump calls Gold Star Widow Myeshia Johnson after her husband was killed in Niger and she goes on Good Morning America and criticizes him, and he responds in kind. Plus, Bill O'Reilly is accused of settling a sexual harassment suit out of court, and we talk about how partisanship has completely eaten our politics to the point where basic facts are no longer worthy of consideration. Plus, we discuss the possibility that we have a Rashomon situation, where President Trump calls up a Gold Star widow and they have a heated exchange of words that could lead to a terrorist attack on the family of a fallen service member, and the White House responds in a way that makes it seem like the entire world is about to end, and no one knows why. And, of course, we also talk about why this might not be the first time this has happened, and why we should be worried about the possibility of a natural disaster that strikes in your area, and then you don t have to worry about it until the emergency actually hits. Welcome to America 2017, gang! Happy Monday, gang. -Ben Shapiro Subscribe to The Ben Shapiro Show on iTunes and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting platforms wherever you get your favorite podcast listening to your favorite podcasts. Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Become a supporter of the show: bit.ly/support-and-reviews/TheBenShawneeShawShow Listen to our new single-player podcast: Download MP3" Subscribe on your favorite streaming platform Subscribe on the App Store or Google Play Store Subscribe on any other podcast platform? Rate, review on iTunes or wherever else you re listening to the podcast? Subscribe and review on your thoughts and opinions are valuable? Leave us a rating and reviews are appreciated! Connect with us on social media? Thanks for listening to our podcast! We re listening and sharing our podcasting Ben Shapiro s podcasting on your podcasting greats? Thank you Ben Shapiro's work is getting more and more Ben Shapiro is getting better and more important than you're listening to this week's episode on the Ben Shapiro Podcast? - Ben Shapiro on The Six Sigma Podcasts - Subscribe to Ben Shapiro - and we'll be listening to him on The FiveThirtyEight Podcasts - The Six Sides Podcast on Podchaser - Subscribe on Itunes?
00:00:22.000Yeah, that's right, welcome back from the weekend.
00:00:24.000And as we come back from the weekend, it turns out the President of the United States is now in an open run and gun battle with a gold star widow, which is the, this is maybe the second time that he's decided to do this particular thing.
00:00:34.000We had this last time at the Republican, at the Democratic National Convention, when the Khan family decided to go political.
00:00:41.000In this case, there's a woman named Myesha Johnson.
00:00:44.000Her husband, David Johnson, was killed in Niger, Niger?
00:02:29.000Okay, so, I have a lot to talk about today, and a lot of it is based around the idea that partisanship has completely eaten our politics to the point where basic facts are no longer worthy of consideration.
00:02:43.000Let's start with President Trump and this widow, Myeshia Johnson.
00:02:48.000Let's talk about the possibility that we have what I've called before a Rashomon situation.
00:02:53.000I'm not the person who coined that term.
00:02:55.000Okay, the Rashomon situation, it's a movie by Kurosawa, and in Rashomon basically there's a murder that takes place, and there are four people who see the murder, but they all have a different recollection, because they were in different places at the time, they all have a different recollection of how the murder went down, who's responsible, how the murder was caused.
00:03:10.000And so this has become known as sort of a Rashomon situation.
00:03:13.000In this particular case, there's high potential for a Rashomon situation where President Trump calls up a gold star widow.
00:03:18.000The gold star widow, it sounds like, was probably politically oriented against Trump to begin with.
00:03:22.000She and her family were very close with Frederica Wilson, this Democrat congressperson from Florida who's very much on the left and who's talked about impeaching Trump for months.
00:03:30.000And the Congresswoman was present when Trump decided to call the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson.
00:03:36.000Remember, La David Johnson was killed in Niger or Niger was killed in October 4th in a mission went wrong.
00:03:44.000His body went missing for some 48 hours and we still don't know how he died publicly.
00:03:48.000In any case, the Congresswoman said that Trump had been
00:03:52.000really kind of cold during the call, that Trump hadn't remembered the name of the soldier who was killed, that Trump had said something to the effect of he knew what he was signing up for, the implication being, you know, he knew he might die, so big deal.
00:04:06.000And then John Kelly came out last week and said, listen, I was present for the phone call, too.
00:04:42.000That the person you're talking to is opposed to you, the person doesn't like you, then it's possible to read their words in the worst possible way.
00:04:49.000That's what I actually think happened here.
00:04:51.000I don't think President Trump called up a widow of a soldier and decided to be cold and calculating and cruel.
00:04:57.000I don't think he even intended to do that.
00:04:58.000I don't think that he, in ignorance, would do that.
00:05:00.000That doesn't sound like President Trump.
00:05:02.000I mean, I've been very, very critical of President Trump, but even that one is a bridge too far for me.
00:05:07.000That said, it's certainly possible for the widow to take that away from the conversation.
00:05:11.000So, this morning, on Good Morning America, the widow finally appears.
00:05:16.000At this point, we've only heard from the mother-in-law, or really the aunt, of the soldier who was killed.
00:05:23.000We've heard from Frederica Wilson, we've heard from John Kelly, but we hadn't heard from the principals in the conversation, right?
00:05:28.000Trump said that he hadn't said any of this, but now you have the widow coming out, and the widow says, here's exactly how it went down.
00:05:33.000Here she is with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.
00:05:38.000The questions that I have that I need answered is I want to know why it took them 48 hours to find my husband.
00:06:53.000So Trump tweets out, I had a very respectful conversation with the widow of Sergeant LeDavid Johnson and spoke his name from beginning without hesitation.
00:07:34.000Because, sure, it's true that Trump can feel that he is justified in fighting back if he feels like he is being fibbed about.
00:07:41.000Sure, Trump has every right to speak how he wants to speak.
00:07:43.000There's a First Amendment in the country.
00:07:45.000But it is also true that we had a certain basic agreement in the country, and that was that the President of the United States ought to have a fair bit of respect for war widows, even ones who disagree with him.
00:07:55.000So what Maisha Johnson is saying here is nothing even close to as bad as what Cindy Sheehan said about George W. Bush.
00:08:01.000If you don't remember back to 2005, there was a woman named Cindy Sheehan.
00:08:48.000The reason character matters in the Oval Office is for the same reason that character matters in your day-to-day life.
00:08:54.000The people that make you feel like you can lead a cohesive life.
00:08:58.000The people who make you feel like you live in a community.
00:09:00.000What creates social capital is character.
00:09:03.000Social capital, as Robert Putnam, the political scientist from Harvard, has said, social capital is the idea that as a society, we all have a certain given amount of trust in one another that allows us to act as though the other person is not going to screw us all the time.
00:09:17.000So, the higher your social capital, actually, the less you need contracts, right?
00:09:20.000The more lawyers you need, that's a good indication that you don't have a lot of social capital.
00:09:24.000Because why do I sign a contract with somebody?
00:09:26.000I sign a contract with somebody and I'm very meticulous about that contract because I'm afraid they're going to break it.
00:09:30.000Do I have a contract with my children?
00:09:32.000I have a marital contract with my wife, but it's a pretty short, sweet document.
00:09:46.000It's just a longer way of saying trust.
00:09:49.000And if we don't trust each other to have a generalized sense of what's appropriate and what's not, a generalized sense for what is sacred and what's not, then you're gonna end up in these running gun battles over stupidity every single day, and you're gonna be attributing to the other person bad motives all the time.
00:10:03.000So Cindy Sheehan, as I said, was really quite horrible to President Bush.
00:10:06.000I mean, she, again, accused him of being a war criminal, suggested that he had gotten America into the war in Iraq based on explicit lies, that he lied because he wanted to go to war in Iraq, that he was solely responsible for the death of her son.
00:10:17.000Here's how George W. Bush responded to Cindy Sheehan making all of these allegations in Crawford, Texas.
00:10:23.000You're referring to Mrs. Sheehan here, I think.
00:10:25.000I'm referring to any grieving mother or father, no matter what their political views may be.
00:10:31.000Part of my duty as the president is to meet with those who've lost a loved one.
00:10:37.000And so, you know, listen, I sympathize with Mrs. Sheehan.
00:10:53.000And I've thought long and hard about her position.
00:10:55.000I've heard her position from others, which is, get out of Iraq now.
00:11:00.000And it would be a mistake for the security of this country and the ability to lay the foundations for peace in the long run if we were to do so.
00:11:13.000Okay, and this is who George W. Bush was.
00:11:15.000This is why I have a lot of respect for Bush the man.
00:11:17.000As I said, I disagreed with him on a lot of policy, but this is a classy individual who is in the White House.
00:11:22.000I mean, there's a story that Dana Perino told.
00:11:25.000I don't remember if I actually told it.
00:11:27.000I think I referred to it the other day.
00:11:28.000But here's the actual story that Dana Perino told about George W. Bush visiting a grieving mother.
00:11:56.000Wanting to know why it was her child and not his who lay in that hospital bed.
00:11:59.000Her husband tried to calm her, and I noticed the president wasn't in a hurry to leave.
00:12:03.000He tried to offer him comfort, but just stood there and took it, like he expected and needed to hear the anguish to try to soak up some of her suffering if he could.
00:12:10.000Later, as we rode back on Marine One to the White House, no one spoke.
00:12:13.000But as the helicopter took off, the president looked at me and said, that mama sure was mad at me.
00:12:17.000Then he turned to look out the window of the helicopter, and I don't blame her a bit.
00:12:21.000A tear slipped out of the side of his eye and down his face.
00:12:22.000He didn't wipe it away, and we flew back to the White House.
00:12:25.000That's what creates trust in a country.
00:12:27.000I may disagree with Bush on a particular war.
00:12:29.000I may disagree with Obama on a particular war.
00:12:31.000But if I don't believe that Obama believes that people who clearly have good motivations, you know, the families of people who have died in Iraq, or died in Afghanistan, or died in Niger, that those people have bad motivations, that those people have to be attacked, that those people... It doesn't matter what they say politically.
00:12:47.000At least when it comes to their child, or their family member, their husband, their wife.
00:12:51.000Those people have the right motivations.
00:12:53.000We cannot have a country with social capital where we trust each other if we're not willing to take the hit once in a while.
00:12:58.000If we're not willing to go out there and say, as Trump should have just said.
00:13:14.000I would never in a million years try to be callous to anyone whose husband had served the country with such honor and distinction as Sergeant Johnson did.
00:13:24.000If it was read that way, then I fully apologize and I'm more than happy to meet with the widow and talk with her and try and clear the air because I think that it's important that we all be on the same page here.
00:13:35.000We all know what a hero her husband was.
00:13:37.000Instead of doing that, he's busy tweeting about how this isn't how it happened.
00:13:42.000And again, you can say that Trump is just telling the truth, but it's not helpful to him.
00:13:47.000If you want him to succeed as president, he must have social capital with the American public.
00:13:53.000If you want him to succeed, if you want him to be re-elected, understand not everything Trump does, not every fight he picks, is a winning fight.
00:14:00.000If he would pick fewer of these fights, he would be better off.
00:14:03.000You know, I think that there's this certain sense that's set in on the right, and it's set in on the left too, and it's very weird, okay?
00:14:09.000There's this sense that's set in on the right that no matter what Trump does, he is utterly untouchable, because after all, he was hit with everything, including the kitchen sink in the 2016 election cycle, and he won anyway.
00:14:19.000And so therefore, he can do and say whatever he wants, and he's never gonna lose his base, and he's not gonna lose another election, because after all, he beat Hillary Clinton, so why would he lose another election?
00:14:28.000This neglects two really important facts.
00:14:31.000One, George W. Bush in 2000 lost the popular vote by 500,000.
00:15:34.000Trump had the same approval ratings now that he had before, and he won.
00:15:37.000Approval ratings don't mean a thing because he's running against someone.
00:15:41.000It's a binary election, as we learned.
00:15:43.000We were told a thousand times it was binary.
00:15:45.000So that means the Democrats are going to have to come up with somebody that can't just rail on Trump all day and hope to win.
00:15:50.000By the same terms, Trump can't hope to do whatever he wants to do and increase his approval rating and win re-election just by default, because that's not how this is going to work.
00:15:58.000Now, I want to talk a little bit more about things becoming partisan that absolutely should not be partisan in just a second, but first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Birch Gold.
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00:17:14.000With all of this said, I want to talk about the self-assurance of President Trump and the assurance of the Democrats that all they have to do is attack Trump and then they can win.
00:17:23.000And then I want to talk a little bit about sexual harassment and the polarization regarding that.
00:17:27.000Okay, so here is the what I think is foolish self-assurance of President Trump that he can basically do whatever he wants and get away with it because so far he's been able to do whatever he wants and get away with it.
00:17:37.000Here's President Trump talking about his use of Twitter.
00:17:42.000I have friends that say, oh, don't use social media.
00:18:28.000His Twitter does set the agenda, which is why he should be careful about how he uses it.
00:18:31.000Again, this is not coming from a place where I want to see Trump fail.
00:18:33.000You think I want him to stop tweeting so that he'll fail?
00:18:36.000I want him to stop tweeting so that he'll succeed as president.
00:18:39.000I want him to stop tweeting so he's not getting in useless fights.
00:18:42.000Okay, so this is the problem on the right.
00:18:43.000The problem on the right is a bunch of people on the right think Trump can do whatever he wants, and he'll get away with it because, after all, he's been able to so far.
00:18:49.000And then there's the problem on the left.
00:18:57.000They can either recognize that they lost in 2016 and have been losing for the past several years, several election cycles, because they have remade their base, or they can continue to try and go back to the well.
00:19:09.000So there is the Clinton base from 1992-1996, and then there is the base
00:19:14.000And then there's the base from Barack Obama in 2012.
00:19:22.000Now, first of all, if Democrats think that Trump is weak going into 2020, they're neglecting the fact that one president since 1968 has not won re-election.
00:19:33.000Right, without a significant third-party candidacy.
00:19:37.000Bush only loses because Perot's there.
00:19:39.000But every other president has won two terms in office except for Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter was so freaking awful.
00:19:45.000And even Carter had to run against one of the great candidates in American history, Ronald Reagan, in order for him to lose in what was a close election up to the very end.
00:19:52.000Okay, so for Democrats to suggest that Trump is weak here is foolish on their part.
00:19:58.000One, they can try to remake the Bill Clinton coalition.
00:20:01.000They can go after those blue-collar voters, nominate somebody like Joe Biden, somebody like Bernie Sanders, go after the voters in Michigan that Hillary Clinton lost and couldn't drive out.
00:20:08.000They will have to acknowledge that Hillary was a garbage candidate.
00:20:11.000They'll have to acknowledge that Hillary was a terrible, terrible candidate and the real reason that Trump is president is not because Trump is good at this, it's because Hillary was quite awful at this.
00:20:19.000A lot of Democrats don't want to accept this.
00:20:45.000They thought that they could just remake the Obama coalition, they could just go back to the well with this old white lady, and it didn't work that way.
00:20:52.000They figured, okay, if we lose a few black voters, a few Hispanic voters, no big deal, we can just drive up the women's vote.
00:20:58.000If they decide to go back to the well with Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren because they're going to ignore the white working class again, they're going to ignore males or white women who are married, if they do that, they're going to lose again.
00:21:09.000So, they think that if they just attack Trump enough, then by default, they will win the election.
00:21:15.000I don't think that that's true in any sense, and that's why they're making a very foolish mistake.
00:21:19.000In the same way that Trump is making a foolish mistake by attacking Myeshia Johnson, the gold star widow, the media are making a very foolish mistake by attacking General John Kelly, a gold star father.
00:21:28.000So General Kelly, as we discussed last week, went out there, ripped Frederica Wilson, ripped the media.
00:21:32.000For turning this whole Gold Star family phone call thing into a fiasco.
00:21:37.000Again, I said everyone here deserves blame except for I think Myeshia Johnson and John Kelly.
00:21:42.000I think both of them are Gold Star family members and they have an added bit of credibility here.
00:21:47.000But the media have decided to jump on General Kelly anyway because Kelly is associated with Trump.
00:21:56.000I mean, Thomas Friedman, the columnist from the New York Times, who's basically made a career out of flying around to various terrible countries, being put up in a hotel for a night, and then talking in glowing terms about how wonderful the country is.
00:22:07.000Thomas Friedman says John Kelly lost moral authority last week.
00:22:10.000How seriously should the public take this?
00:22:12.000Well, I think what's going on, Chuck, is a real crisis of authority.
00:22:15.000Something I talked about on the show once before, I quoted my friend Dov Seidman, who said, you know, there's a big difference between formal authority and moral authority.
00:22:23.000So we have a president who has formal authority, but I would argue he has lost all of his moral authority.
00:22:28.000That is why last week he had to bring out General Kelly, a four-star Marine general, because he still had
00:22:37.000Unfortunately, General Kelly, by saying things that were provably false about that Congresswoman, really lost, I think, a lot of his moral authority.
00:22:47.000And now, we have a situation where the White House spokeswoman had to invoke his formal authority, that he was a four-star Marine General, to basically shut up the press.
00:22:58.000Like, everyone has lost their moral authority, and I think that's a real crisis.
00:23:03.000First of all, I don't think General Kelly lost his moral authority.
00:23:05.000What they're talking about is General Kelly made an allegation during that press conference that Frederica Wilson had dedicated a building in 2013, I believe, 2012, in which, and at that dedication of an FBI building, he said she bragged about achieving funding for the building.
00:23:20.000Now if you go back and you watch the speech, which I have, and I wrote a full transcript of it, she does spend about four minutes bragging, but she's not bragging about the building funding, she's bragging about the naming of the building, and she says that she was chiefly responsible for the naming of this building after these fallen FBI agents.
00:23:35.000Kelly may have gotten the content wrong with regard to what she was bragging about, but he was right that she spent several minutes bragging about what a wonderful job she had done.
00:23:42.000In any case, the idea that John Kelly lost his moral authority, let's put it this way.
00:23:46.000Is there anyone on the left who would be making this contention if a Gold Star family on the left had said the same thing?
00:23:51.000We were told that Cindy Sheehan had absolute moral authority.
00:23:55.000We were told that the Jersey Girls, who were the widows of people killed on 9-11, had absolute moral authority.
00:23:59.000I think that's a phrase used by Maureen Dowd.
00:24:01.000These people had absolute moral authority.
00:24:02.000It didn't matter if what they were saying wasn't true.
00:24:50.000I was shocked to see Citizen Kelly standing next to the President when he, when President could not have the proper word to condemn the attack on the blessed city of Charlottesville, Virginia by neo-Nazis.
00:25:09.000He stood, you could look at his face and his gesture in disgust, but he stood in support of
00:25:18.000That moment when Donald Trump could not condemn the attack that took place.
00:25:25.000Then again, instead of advising the president that restraint and dignity is the call of the moment, former General Kelly indulged in defending behavior of the president and made the situation even worse.
00:25:44.000So only he is allowed to speak politically.
00:25:45.000Only he's allowed to go up there to Democratic National Convention and talk about politics.
00:26:00.000There's basic bipartisan agreement that Gold Star families deserve our sympathy and our respect, even if we disagree with them politically.
00:26:06.000That was destroyed last year, and now it's been destroyed even more.
00:26:10.000All of these things, where we had consensus, are now gone.
00:26:13.000Frederica Wilson is openly attacking John Kelly, suggesting that Kelly was a puppet of the president.
00:26:17.000Again, is there anything from her lips about the respect for Gold Star families that she supposedly signifies?
00:26:22.000First of all, I have to say, I don't know how many hats this woman owns, but it is astonishing.
00:26:27.000I mean, this is a real repertoire of hats.
00:26:29.000As a hat aficionado, I enjoy a good hat.
00:26:32.000I have to say, respect to Frederica Wilson on the hats.
00:26:36.000Not a lot of respect for what she has done over the past week.
00:26:39.000You know, John Kelly is almost, I guess you could say he was a puppet of the President, and what he was trying to do was divert the attention away from the President onto me, and he basically just lied on me.
00:26:58.000And I don't like, I don't appreciate people lying on me.
00:27:10.000I've been lied on before, but the character assassination that he went through to call me out of my name and empty barrel and all the work that I've done in this community.
00:27:23.000Not only does he owe me an apology, but he owes an apology to the American people because when he lied on me,
00:27:46.000That's not the, again, now she can disagree with Kelly, but the way she should do it is she should say this.
00:27:50.000She should say, listen, I know that General Kelly has great experience with Gold Star families.
00:27:54.000I respect his experience with Gold Star families.
00:27:57.000With respect, the wife of a soldier says that she was offended by the President of the United States.
00:28:03.000I don't see why General Kelly would defend the President under those circumstances or give facts that are provably untrue about me.
00:28:10.000That does not undermine his moral authority.
00:28:13.000But it does say that just because you have moral authority doesn't mean what you're saying is correct on this score.
00:28:17.000Moral authority on Gold Star Families does not necessarily translate over into other areas.
00:28:21.000This is the way we could have a civil, decent conversation that builds unity in the public, but we're not going to do any of those things.
00:28:26.000So before I get to sexual harassment and sexual assault, again, becoming a partisan issue, I first want to say thank you to our sponsors over at RealtyShares.com.
00:30:02.000For $100 toward your first investment, again, Realtyshares.com slash Ben, you owe it to yourself to ensure that you have a financial future that is secure.
00:30:10.000Realtyshares.com slash Ben helps you do that.
00:30:13.000Okay, so, again, I think that everyone is getting partisan because they think that if they attack the personalities on the other side, they'll win.
00:30:19.000Trump thinks that if he attacks the personalities on the other side, that this will somehow boost him.
00:30:22.000The left thinks if they attack Trump, then that will boost Trump.
00:30:34.000I think aggressive politicking is good.
00:30:38.000But I like aggressive politicking on the issues.
00:30:40.000I don't like aggressive politicking on the implication that your character is flawed because we disagree or because we interpreted the same event two different ways.
00:30:48.000And I think that this has gone sideways in a pretty significant way.
00:30:52.000Another way in which this has gone sideways, there are just certain aspects of American life that I feel like good people all agree on things.
00:31:14.000Like, name the people who are pro-racism, who think racism is a great thing, aside from, you know, some of the members of the alt-right.
00:31:21.000Or some of the members of the intersectional left.
00:31:22.000Like, name the people who think racism is an awesome thing.
00:31:25.000And the answer is, there are not a lot of people who believe those things, but there's a secondary problem that we do have to talk about, and that is the feeling that
00:31:34.000Even if you agree rape is a terrible thing, or even if you agree that sexual harassment and sexual assault are a bad thing, that when it's your own side doing it, you're willing to look the other way for the quote-unquote greater good.
00:31:47.000It's something that's fascinating to me.
00:31:48.000I think that this is actually how evil movements get started.
00:31:51.000I think that Nazi Germany got started not because the Nazis were clear and concise about what they were about to do to the Jews, but because there were a lot of people who felt like, well it's a lot of fringe rhetoric, that's a lot of garbage they're saying, but
00:32:02.000At least they're better than the communists.
00:32:05.000At least they're better than is a recipe for you approving bad things.
00:32:09.000At least they're better than is you winking and nodding at bad behavior in order to justify bad behavior on your own side.
00:32:16.000Because what it really should be is not at least we're better than, it should be
00:32:19.000Yes, this is garbage on our side, and it's bad on the other side, too.
00:32:22.000It's terrible on our side, and it's terrible on the other side.
00:32:24.000So, on the left, there's been this rush to condemn Donald Trump.
00:32:28.000And then, as soon as it was Harvey Weinstein, then everybody hid in the closet.
00:32:32.000And now there's an avoidance of naming more names.
00:32:47.000Well, in some cases, there are power relationships at stake, but in some cases, there's a feeling by some people on the left like, well, I'll condemn it when it's the Catholic Church, but when it's Hollywood, really?
00:32:59.000And on the right, there was this feeling about President Trump.
00:33:02.000We were loud and proud about how much we thought that Bill Clinton had sexually exploited women, but when Trump bragged about it on tape, then we were like, ah, big deal.
00:33:25.000Again, I want to distinguish between a couple of different types of response to bad behavior that I'm talking about.
00:33:31.000One is situations in which you are at the lower end of the power imbalance.
00:33:35.000So I'm not talking about victims who are still trying to make a career in Hollywood and know that no one is going to stand up with them and that their career will be ruined for speaking out.
00:33:44.000I understand the moral conundrum that happens.
00:33:47.000I'm sure that there are plenty of women who are going on shows like Bill O'Reilly's who may have felt not good about how they were treated,
00:33:55.000But also understood that if they spoke out about it, they would never be appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show again, right?
00:34:00.000I'm sure there are women who felt that way.
00:34:01.000Just as I'm sure that there are women in Hollywood who feel like they've been sexually assaulted or harassed by producers and directors.
00:34:08.000And have said, well, I'm not going to give up my career.
00:34:11.000Do I really want to give them the tool to destroy my career by going out and saying something that isn't going to be tried in a court and the guy will just continue to work?
00:34:49.000There was a story that broke over the weekend, and the story was that Bill O'Reilly had allegedly signed a $32 million settlement of sexual harassment against a woman named Liz Wheel, I think, who was a lawyer who used to appear on Fox News a fair bit.
00:35:03.000$32 million is an enormous amount of money.
00:35:06.000You know, to sign a settlement for $32 million, it does not tend to suggest that everything was evidence-less or easily disprovable, at the very least.
00:35:13.000Now, Bill O'Reilly's fighting back against this, as you would imagine, but obviously there's a serious problem inside Fox News.
00:35:26.000There were people who were beyond that, who apparently had problems, or at least they were looking the other way because these were powerful people.
00:35:33.000Powerful people are the ones who need to stand up.
00:35:35.000Powerful people are the ones who need to stand up and say something.
00:35:38.000So today, Megyn Kelly came out, and again, I want to show you that the partisanship here is so incredible, with regard to Megyn Kelly in particular.
00:35:45.000And I'll say, I'm friendly with Megyn.
00:35:47.000But here's what Megyn had to say about Bill O'Reilly.
00:35:51.000Bill had basically come out and said that all of this is trumped up by the left.
00:35:54.000Here's Megyn Kelly suggesting precisely the opposite today.
00:35:59.000However, O'Reilly's suggestion that no one ever complained about his behavior is false.
00:36:07.000I wrote an email to the co-presidents of Fox News, Bill Shine and Jack Abernathy.
00:36:11.000An email I have never made public but am sharing now because I think it speaks volumes about powerful men and the roadblocks one can face in taking them on.
00:36:21.000I wrote, in part, perhaps he didn't realize the kind of message his criticism sends to young women across this country about how men continue to view the issue of speaking out about sexual harassment.
00:36:33.000Perhaps he didn't realize that his exact attitude of shaming women into shutting the hell up about harassment on grounds that it will disgrace the company is in part how Fox News got into the decade-long Ailes mess to begin with.
00:36:46.000Perhaps it's his own history of harassment of women, which has, as you both know, resulted in payouts to more than one woman, including recently, that blinded him to the folly of saying anything other than, I am just so sorry for the women of this company, who never should have had to go through that.
00:37:04.000So, Megan said that the response to this was the Fox brass saying they would take care of it and then allowing O'Reilly to go on that night and basically defend his commentary.
00:37:11.000Roger Ailes was still at the company at that point.
00:37:13.000Now, were there people inside Fox who knew what Roger Ailes was doing?
00:37:18.000I'm sure there are people who knew exactly what Roger Ailes was doing.
00:37:22.000I'm sure that there are people who knew what the conditions were like, you know, around Roger Ailes.
00:37:26.000But, if they couldn't take down Roger Ailes, then you have a power imbalance situation.
00:37:30.000But how about all the women who didn't say anything?
00:37:32.000How about all the people who were around Ailes, who knew stuff was going on, who didn't say anything?
00:37:35.000You know, this to me is the same as Harvey Weinstein's driver who was saying that there were women getting into his car, and, you know, he was afraid to lose his job, but he could have testified about it.
00:37:56.000You know, the title of this episode is, Are We Looking at the End of the Country?
00:37:59.000It means the end of the country when we don't have a common vision that includes a common decency, that includes a common basic idea that bad behavior is bad behavior, whether it's somebody I like or somebody I don't like who's performing that bad behavior.
00:38:12.000What I'm seeing too much of is bad behavior, but it's on my side, so eh.
00:38:18.000We talked about this a lot last year during the election cycle.
00:38:32.000My, as though you're a baby for saying my principles.
00:38:35.000I thought that the founding fathers of this country were deeply imbued with a sense of principle.
00:38:40.000I thought that being a religious person meant being principled.
00:38:43.000I'm not sure when principles became an insult, as opposed to something that we're supposed to stand up for, defend, and protect.
00:38:49.000I'm not sure when principles went by the wayside because, hey, we're in a fight and it's a blood match.
00:38:54.000If you feel like you're in such a blood match with the other members of America, that principles go by the wayside, that you're in such an actual war, that principles are now by the wayside, or that you can't at least express publicly, I'm putting aside my principle now to make a tactical decision to club everyone back in line on principle.
00:39:10.000If you can't even do that, you're just discarding them because, hey, principles, what do they matter in war?
00:39:31.000As we continue here on the Ben Shapiro Show, I want to talk about some Republican infighting that has been taking place.
00:39:37.000I also want to talk about some Democratic infighting that's been taking place and why all of this, why this partisanship, this decision that principles no longer matter has some real ramifications for how the government is run.
00:39:47.000But first, you have to go and subscribe.
00:39:48.000So for $9.99 a month, you can subscribe to DailyWire.com.
00:39:51.000Go over and check it out right now over at DailyWire.com.
00:39:54.000You get the rest of today's show live on video.
00:39:56.000You also will get Andrew Klavan's show live on video.
00:40:53.000We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
00:41:02.000This sort of all-this-matters-is-the-fight mentality that I think is really corrupting the country.
00:41:06.000I talked about it a little bit in reference to George W. Bush's speech last week.
00:41:09.000I thought Bush's speech was a quite normal, good, decent defense of constitutional conservatism.
00:41:18.000And I think that people felt insulted because they are so entranced with this partisan bickering.
00:41:25.000Now, how does it matter beyond the social capital?
00:41:27.000How does it matter beyond the fact we don't trust one another?
00:41:29.000How does it matter that we don't have a common set of facts?
00:41:32.000So one of the things that I think has contributed to the fact that we don't have a common set of facts are the media, because the media have conflated their own opinions with their perception of the facts.
00:43:56.000I mean, for purposes of this, the only reason, it turns out that woman gives birth to child is not a story, so CNN pursues its narrative by skewing the facts.
00:44:04.000If you're going to claim that there's a hard divide between objective fact and opinion, if you're going to claim that certain things are outright false and certain things are outright true, you cannot conflate opinion and fact.
00:44:15.000You cannot say that your opinion is a fact.
00:44:18.000There's another thing that's contributing to the rise in partisanship.
00:44:22.000So we can't agree on principles, and we can't agree on facts anymore.
00:44:24.000And if we do agree on principles, then we have to go partisan over it.
00:44:28.000How does this have an impact beyond just the loss of social capital?
00:44:30.000It has a pretty significant impact in terms of how the government is run.
00:44:33.000So while we're all busy slapping each other silly over issues where we largely agree, like rape is bad, sexual assault is bad, sexual harassment is bad,
00:44:41.000Because we're too eager to defend politicians on our side?
00:44:44.000Because, you know, it's easy for us to look at Penn State and say, why did all those people look the other way?
00:44:48.000How dare they look the other way at Penn State?
00:44:52.000When it's our institution that's under fire?
00:44:54.000Or we say to the Catholic Church, how did you guys look the other way on child abuse?
00:44:57.000But then if it's inside our institutions, we look the other way?
00:45:00.000This is true in a lot of religious communities too.
00:45:03.000Okay, then we have to recognize that that destroys the society, but it also means that we are going to ignore actual things happening on the ground.
00:45:12.000So, to take an example, what happened in Niger, I still can't pronounce this properly, I'm going to look it up after the show.
00:45:19.000What happened in Niger, the killing of four American soldiers in Niger, there were two separate senators who came out and announced they had no idea that we even had troops in Niger.
00:45:29.000Chuck Schumer, who is the Senate Minority Leader, and Lindsey Graham, who is on the Foreign Policy Subcommittee.
00:45:34.000Lindsey Graham, both of them said, I didn't even know the United States has troops in Niger.
00:45:53.000Special Forces arrived in Niger in January 2013 on the orders of President Obama.
00:45:58.000They were then followed by about 100 military personnel and advisors with the intention of conducting unmanned reconnaissance missions over Mali in conjunction with French military forces.
00:46:08.000Reuters reported in February 2013 that France intervened in Mali, so we've had troops there for years.
00:46:13.000But the Congress didn't even know, because they're not doing their jobs.
00:46:16.000They're too busy engaging in the partisan hackery.
00:46:18.000And the partisan hackery goes something like this.
00:46:19.000If Obama approved the troops in Niger, the left goes yay.
00:46:22.000And if Trump approved the troops in Niger, then the right goes yay.
00:46:25.000But at no point does anyone say, should there be troops in Niger, and maybe Congress should have voted on this thing, rather than just using the broad authorization for use of military force from 2001 in order to give the go-ahead to these sorts of things.
00:46:37.000All of this has some pretty significant consequences for our society, for how our government works, it's a problem.
00:46:42.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:46:46.000I was encouraged by my adoptive son and producer, Mathis Glover, to go see Blade Runner 2049 over the weekend.
00:46:53.000Mathis and I have a good crossover in terms of the movies that we like generally, and we have some disagreements about Ridley Scott, but Mathis said this morning that the reason this movie is good is because it's not Ridley Scott.
00:47:38.000Each time I think, why do I not like this movie?
00:47:40.000The new Blade Runner, which is not directed by Ridley Scott, is directed by Denis Villeneuve, who is a very talented director who made Arrival, which I also recommended on the show.
00:47:53.000It is a very, you know, scientific materialist view of the universe, basically, that what makes a human being is your sense of your own consciousness.
00:50:02.000It basically becomes its own personality.
00:50:03.000It gains its own personality and almost gains sentience.
00:50:06.000If you want to see a better version of that subplot, go see the movie Her, which is a really interesting film with Joaquin Phoenix that's quite fascinating about this exact storyline.
00:50:15.000But the film is really cool to look at.
00:50:18.000Harrison Ford turns in his only good performance in the last 15 years.
00:50:21.000I mean, Harrison Ford in this movie is what Harrison Ford should have been in Force Awakens if Force Awakens had been a good film, which it is not.
00:50:27.000There are a couple things that I think are cool about this film that people haven't noticed that are really neat.
00:50:32.000So people are saying, well, why is it called Blade Runner 2049?
00:50:34.000Obviously, the world isn't going to look like 2049 by this point.
00:50:38.000It is obviously an alternative history.
00:50:42.000Even in the preview, there's a graphic of a ballerina dancing, and it says, Soviet Happy CCCP.
00:50:47.000So meaning that the Soviet Union is still around in this version of reality in Blade Runner 2049.
00:50:52.000A critique that I saw from Kevin Williamson of National Review that I like a lot is he said that there's this weird notion on the left that corporations are gonna take over the world and run everything and it's gonna be really oppressive and terrible.
00:51:11.000Google is what allows you to do all the cool things you're doing right now.
00:51:14.000All of the corporations, we may not like how they run, and that's why we actually expect them to run more like public utilities when it comes to providing services to everyone.
00:51:22.000Those, I think, are real fears about corporations, but the idea that the corporations are going to take over and buy human beings and use them as chattel and all this kind of stuff, I don't see a lot of evidence of that.
00:51:31.000Corporations, people are suspicious of them.
00:51:33.000It's governments that do these sorts of things, not corporations, unless those corporations are basically being run by governments.
00:51:40.000Most of the evil corporations of the past have been government-run or government-owned.
00:51:44.000Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
00:51:51.000Okay, so we begin with the UK government has now announced that it wants the United Nations to stop using the term pregnant women in a UN treaty.
00:52:18.000When people talk about gender being separate from sex, what they're suggesting is that sex doesn't necessarily determine your attributes in terms of feminine or masculine.
00:52:27.000But that just means feminine or masculine.
00:52:29.000The attempt to say that a feminine man is actually a woman or a masculine woman is actually a man is idiotic.
00:52:34.000And if people are intersex, right, they have two sets of genitals, which happens on very rare cases, or they have Kleinfelter's syndrome, for example, then you would say this is a man with Kleinfelter's syndrome.
00:53:02.000DSM-IV called it gender identity disorder and said it was a mental illness.
00:53:06.000DSM-V, based on no additional evidence, none, zero, zip, zilch, decided that instead of saying that it was in and of itself a mental disorder, instead we would say that it was not a mental disorder, it was only the depression associated with gender dysphoria that was a mental disorder, which has no logic to it.
00:53:21.000That's like saying schizophrenia is not a mental disorder.
00:53:23.000It is only a mental disorder if you are depressed because you are schizophrenic.
00:53:27.000Or it's more like saying that you have a body dysmorphia issue, that you're anorexic, for example.
00:53:32.000And that is not actually a mental disorder.
00:53:34.000It's only a mental disorder if you're depressed because of it.
00:55:10.000I hope that we'll have moved beyond the Gold Star Widow story because I would like to see some dignity restored to American public life on every side.
00:55:17.000That's not a critique specifically of Trump.