Ben Shapiro explains why the culture wars are a distraction from the real issues, and why the real issue is the culture war itself. He also points to California's Prop. 8 as an example of how the culture has shifted in favor of traditional marriage, and how that can be applied across the country. Ben Shapiro is the host of the conservative podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is a regular contributor to the conservative newsletter "The Weekly Standard" and has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, and is one of the most influential conservative voices in American politics. Ben is also the author of several books, including "The Culture Wars" and "Culture Wars: How to Win at the Culture War." He's also a frequent guest on the conservative radio show "The O.C.U." and hosts the conservative think tank "The Civility Project." He can be found on social media as and on the right and the left, and also on the far-right, and what he's been writing about in his new book, "Conspiracy Theories." "Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories: The Real Story." Ben's new book is out now. It's out in paperback! See link below for the paperback edition of his book. The Culture Wars: The Culture War: How To Win It or Lose It? and why you should stop fighting the Culture Wars and focus on the Real Issues, and get into the real ones. If you like what you're fighting for, buy a copy of the book now! or watch it on Amazon Prime Video and subscribe to it on Audible, wherever else you can get it, it will be the best listening experience on the best of it's best, the most authentic and the most digestible version of the best, it'll be the most fun in the best possible listening experience you'll be getting the most of it. You won't want to miss it! Links mentioned in the book: Subscribe to the show: Watch the video version of this episode? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad-free version on the show on the podcast? Thanks for listening and review it on iTunes and other links on the App Store and on PODCAST? Download it on Podcharts?
00:00:25.000We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
00:00:26.000First, this is your reminder that those big tech companies, they don't like you very much, and they're using your data in order to monetize their dislike of you.
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00:01:33.000All right, so there is this perspective on the right that has started to crop up sort of from the anti-Trump right, I would say.
00:01:41.000It's cropped up more and more recently over recent months and over recent years.
00:01:45.000And that is that people on the right who are focused on the culture wars are people who are not focused on the real issues.
00:01:51.000And I think what these people fail to appreciate is that the culture war is the real issue.
00:01:55.000It really is, because culture is upstream of politics.
00:01:58.000And if you think that simply fighting in favor of Particular forms of voter bills or fighting in favor of particular views of economics is enough.
00:02:16.000It's being infused into every institution in American life.
00:02:20.000And so it won't matter what kind of bills you pass when it turns out that every major institution immediately reacts to those bills by trying to cut off The Republican Party or conservatives or anyone they disagree with at the knees.
00:02:32.000When it turns out the media won't report the truth.
00:02:34.000When it turns out that your corporate overlords demand fealty or they will fire you.
00:02:38.000When it turns out that the education system, your entertainment system, when all of those things militate against everything that you believe in legislatively on economics.
00:02:48.000It does not matter what you believe in on economics anymore.
00:02:51.000The battle has to be first won within the institutions, then you can talk about what exactly is the policy that ought to be promulgated.
00:03:21.000And within a few years, anybody who had even supported Proposition 8 was being thrown out of a job.
00:03:26.000Brendan Eich over at Mozilla Firefox famously supported Proposition 8.
00:03:29.000By the way, so did Barack Obama at the time.
00:03:31.000He was in favor of traditional marriage.
00:03:33.000And yet within just a few years, even having supported it, even though it was a majority position in 2008, meant that you are now some sort of societal pariah.
00:03:42.000So when people on the right say, why are we fighting the culture wars?
00:03:45.000It's a distraction from the real issues.
00:03:47.000No, the culture war is the real issue.
00:03:50.000And all of the legislation is an outgrowth of the culture wars.
00:03:54.000And that's something that people on the right, I think, inherently recognize.
00:03:56.000It's why the traditional Republican Party has shifted, I think, actually, in some positive ways around this stuff.
00:04:03.000I think for a long time, the Republican Party was just the party of build up the military and cut taxes.
00:04:07.000And I think now there are more and more Republican politicians who understand that a lot of these battles aren't fought at the legislative level.
00:04:14.000A lot of these battles are fought at the cultural level.
00:04:26.000So, just to take the most obvious example over the last 48 hours.
00:04:31.000Lester Holt, who is the nightly news anchor over at NBC News, Lester Holt was given the Edward R. Murrow Award.
00:04:40.000And in the middle of his speech, he announced that he was no longer going to try to bother to cover both sides of any particular issue, because some sides are true and some sides are false.
00:04:49.000This is the way that people on the left will massage themselves into never having to grant the credibility of another side even existing.
00:04:57.000This is dangerous stuff, in other words.
00:04:58.000When you have a media that is fully bought into the idea that it is quote-unquote both sides-ism to actually represent both sides of a particular issue...
00:05:06.000Then that's the media just excusing its own partisanship.
00:05:08.000Now, if the media wants to be partisan, that is totally fine.
00:05:16.000The difference is, I'm not dishonest about it.
00:05:18.000Members of our establishment media are.
00:05:20.000They are hijacking an institution, the institution of quote-unquote objective media, and they are doing so on behalf of the left in order to vitiate the power of the right in the societal discourse.
00:05:35.000I think it's become clear that fairness is overrated.
00:05:39.000Well, before you run off and tweet that headline, let me explain a bit.
00:05:43.000The idea that we should always give two sides equal weight and merit does not reflect the world we find ourselves in.
00:05:50.000That the sun sets in the West is a fact.
00:05:54.000Any contrary view does not deserve our time or attention.
00:05:57.000Providing an open platform for misinformation, for anyone to come say whatever they want, especially when issues of public health and safety are at stake, can be quite dangerous.
00:06:08.000Now listen, there do have to be limits to what you think should be reported, because you can't report literally every view on every single issue.
00:06:16.000But the problem here is that when innate bias comes in, when inherent bias comes in, the sort of confirmation bias that you see in the media all the time, The natural tendency for people on the left is to assume that everybody on the right is saying stuff that is not true, and everybody on the left is telling you the truth.
00:06:34.000The Biden administration has been lying like a rug since they entered office, and yet they've been given all the credibility that is unwarranted.
00:06:41.000And yet, if you take an opposing point of view, then this is treated as somehow misinformation.
00:06:46.000And the natural result of this is silencing.
00:06:48.000This is why Facebook and Instagram have now non-personed Trump, according to the UK Daily Mail, Facebook and Instagram have actually removed a Donald Trump interview with his daughter-in-law, Lara, in another sign of the left-leaning Silicon Valley giants canceling the former president.
00:07:02.000In the interview, Trump tore into social media and the mainstream media for suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
00:07:06.000He criticized President Biden's green agenda and railed against cancel culture, which he said obliterates U.S.
00:07:23.000on Tuesday night, four minutes before it was due to be uploaded, Facebook emailed Lara's team warning them it would be removed if it went live.
00:07:30.000At 9.51 p.m., they emailed again to say they had taken it down.
00:07:34.000Trump has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram since the January 6th riots, cut off from his supporters, unable to get messages to them in the way he did before.
00:07:42.000In their email, the Facebook employee said, quote, content posted in the voice of President Trump is not currently allowed on our platforms, including new posts with President Trump speaking, and will be removed. Okay, we're no longer talking about Trump's account having been suspended here, which by the way, should not have been done.
00:07:57.000We are not talking about Trump putting out via his own auspices, his point of view.
00:08:04.000We are talking about a person who has not been banned interviewing Trump and that content being taken down.
00:09:55.000Terms apply available at paintyourlife.com slash terms.
00:09:59.000Again, text Ben to 64000 to get started on a fabulous gift that really is super meaningful.
00:10:04.000OK, so it is only certain types of lies that the media are unwilling to report.
00:10:09.000It is only certain types of perspectives the media are willing to silence.
00:10:12.000If the Biden administration lies and lies and lies again, The media will sometimes report that it's a lie, although it'll take them quite a while.
00:10:19.000But mostly, they will amplify the lie until at the bottom of page A13, they add a little correction at the bottom.
00:10:25.000So, to take an example, the media have lied over and over and over about this Georgia voting bill.
00:10:30.000Well, because the Democrats have been lying over and over and over about this Georgia voting bill.
00:10:34.000This Georgia voting bill is not a transformative bill.
00:10:36.000In fact, in some ways, it actually broadens the ability for people to vote.
00:10:40.000The only thing that the bill does in terms of, quote-unquote, limiting people's ability to vote, and it doesn't limit anybody's ability to vote, is it requires voter ID.
00:10:48.000It requires voter ID for absentee ballots, which makes sense because you don't want people voting without being able to verify who they are.
00:10:54.000It actually lengthens voting hours in certain places.
00:10:57.000And it says you're not allowed to bribe people in line.
00:10:59.000This much-ballyhooed line about how you're not allowed to give people water in line.
00:11:02.000No, you are allowed to give people water in line, just not within a certain distance of the polling place and as, quote-unquote, a gift.
00:11:07.000Okay, that is what the language of the statute suggests.
00:11:10.000It is not about somebody stepping out of line to get a cup of water or something.
00:11:14.000Or you sending a member of your family to go get a cup of water.
00:11:17.000That is not what this is talking about.
00:11:18.000It's talking about a guy with a Biden t-shirt walking up to everybody at the front of the line and handing them a water bottle that says Biden 2024.
00:11:25.000That is what the bill is talking about.
00:11:28.000But the administration's been lying about this because they have to create a myth.
00:11:32.000It remains incredible to me that the media have suggested since November 6th that voter fraud and voter irregularity, these are things that do not exist.
00:11:40.000And if you even suggest they exist, then you have to be banned from social media.
00:11:44.000However, what does exist is voter suppression when there is literally no evidence of widespread voter suppression in the United States.
00:12:06.000That lie is super wonderful, according to the media.
00:12:10.000Because after all, that's how they promote things like the For the People Act, H.R.
00:12:14.0001, which is a complete federal takeover of voting procedures, a loosening of federal procedures, a mandate of ballot harvesting across the country, which as I say, is the single greatest opportunity for voter fraud and irregularity that I've ever seen.
00:12:25.000They need to promote a false crisis in order to push a particular solution.
00:12:29.000It's the same thing, by the way, that the CDC is now doing with regard to COVID.
00:12:33.000So we know for a fact, according to the data, that people who are vaccinated are generally not transmitting the disease.
00:12:37.000When I say generally, I mean it is extraordinarily rare for people who have been vaccinated to either be able to get COVID in the first place or to transmit COVID.
00:12:47.000In fact, the CDC had said that earlier this week.
00:12:49.000Earlier this week, Rochelle Walensky of the CDC openly explained And if you're vaccinated, you're not passing it.
00:12:57.000The CDC walked it back not based on the data and not based on the science.
00:13:00.000They walked it back because Joe Biden wants another two rounds of transfer spending.
00:13:04.000He wants another two tranches of spending, and he can't get that spending done unless crisis mentality is on the table.
00:13:09.000Well, the same thing is true when it comes to voting.
00:13:11.000The left has to promote the lie that there is widespread voter suppression across the country.
00:13:14.000This is why everybody gets very angry when I point out that there is no widespread voter suppression across the country.
00:13:19.000Like, the evidence of widespread voter suppression is significantly less than the evidence that there is voter fraud and irregularity across the country.
00:13:25.000And there ain't that much evidence of widespread voter fraud and irregularity across the country.
00:13:29.000And it's coming from somebody who didn't believe that stuff.
00:13:32.000But if you mention that, then again, the goal here is it's about what Democrats want to do.
00:13:39.000So what crisis, what fake crisis do we have to generate today in order to generate support for this piece of wide ranging legislation that we don't actually need?
00:13:46.000OK, so certain lies in pursuance Of the goal, that's okay, according to the media.
00:13:52.000So Jen Psaki, remember, how refreshing.
00:13:56.000Never forget, when Jen Psaki entered office, when the Biden administration entered office, there was a spate of articles about how Jen Psaki was super honest, even though she had been a liar during the Obama administration.
00:14:05.000About how this Biden administration was going to be incredibly transparent.
00:14:07.000They are significantly less transparent than the Trump administration.
00:14:11.000About how this was going to be a refreshing new day.
00:14:15.000And now the media have changed their tune.
00:14:17.000But only to the extent that many in the media, like Jen Rubin over at the Washington Post, will suggest that the real problem is that people keep asking questions.
00:14:24.000Okay, so yesterday, Jen Psaki went to the White House podium and she just started lying openly about this Georgia law.
00:14:28.000Now, Biden has lied so openly that even the Washington Post, which loves Joe Biden, which carries around a drool cup for Joe Biden, which is second in the human centipede to Joe Biden, which is a messy job, Even the Washington Post had given four Pinocchios the other day because he suggested that the Georgia law had somehow limited voting hours, which is simply not true.
00:14:48.000They had given four Pinocchios for that.
00:14:49.000That didn't stop Jen Psaki from getting out there and lying about it again.
00:14:51.000She doesn't know anything about the Georgia voting law.
00:14:54.000And she knows it's bad because they're pushing H.R.1.
00:14:56.000And because this is a wonderful way of suggesting to black Americans that somehow their votes won't be counted in Georgia, a state in which two Democratic senators were just elected, in large measure because of increased black turnout.
00:15:08.000Here is Jen Psaki lying about the Georgia voting bill.
00:15:11.000It also makes it so that outside groups can't provide water or food to people in line, right?
00:16:12.000When it comes to the culture war, it's about the wielding of power.
00:16:16.000Particularly power outside the government now.
00:16:18.000Because what the left has realized is that they have to play an inside-outside game.
00:16:21.000What they have to do is gain government power by essentially telling private industry that if they go along to get along, they will be the last people eaten.
00:16:30.000The Democratic Party is an alligator, and corporations have decided they are going to feed the alligators so as to not be eaten.
00:16:40.000It manifests in major corporations like Delta and Coca-Cola just being completely dishonest.
00:16:44.000So Delta and Coca-Cola have decided that they are very angry with the Georgia voter law.
00:16:47.000Now, one thing that you will note here is that Delta and Coca-Cola had nothing to say about the Georgia voter law until after it was passed.
00:16:56.000So they're perfectly fine with the voter law.
00:16:57.000It is only now that there is blowback from the left that they've decided they're going to cave to the woke left.
00:17:01.000They're going to do whatever the left wants them to do.
00:17:05.000As Karen Townsend writes over at Hot Air, the manufactured outrage over Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signing voting law reform has reached the point of satisfying no one now.
00:17:12.000The backlash includes black executives facing a very basic question, along with CEOs of large corporations who are now opposing the bill.
00:17:18.000Where were you when the bill was being written and debated in the state legislature?
00:17:22.000Why is opposition only happening after the governor signed the legislation into effect?
00:18:06.000The same left that will tell you that it is corporate corruption to donate money from a corporation to a candidate will tell you that every corporation has to openly sound off in support of their policies or be forced into a position of being boycotted.
00:18:20.000It wasn't even that they backed the bill.
00:18:22.000Their failure to condemn the bill drew fierce criticism as well as protests at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and calls for a boycott.
00:18:30.000And because Delta pansied out, they decided to cave to this stuff.
00:18:33.000On Wednesday, Ed Bastian, Delta's chief executive, made a stark reversal.
00:18:36.000quote, I need to make it crystal clear that the final bill is unacceptable and does not match Delta's values.
00:18:41.000You know what he should have said to all of these protesters?
00:18:53.000The amount of actual financial damage done by the so-called boycotters in virtually all of these scenarios is nearly nothing.
00:18:58.000It is just that Delta doesn't feel like dealing with the bad publicity from the left, and the left is super loud, and the media are super annoying, and so they feel like, okay, well, if I buy them off with some statement about Georgia law that doesn't actually change Georgia law today, maybe they'll leave me alone.
00:19:11.000They know that they've got your neck in the noose, and now they're just going to tighten the noose.
00:19:14.000Every time Georgia does anything that they don't like, you are going to be expected to side with the woke.
00:19:19.000If Georgia passes a law protecting human life in the womb, you're going to be expected to sound off about how terrible Georgia is at Bastion, and they're going to bully you until you either leave the state or until you declare that you are openly in favor of Democrats being elected.
00:19:34.000We moved real fast from your speech is violence to silence is violence, right?
00:19:39.000This is the game the left like to play, is that if you speak out in a way they don't like, that is a form of violence.
00:19:43.000But also, if you stay silent, that is also violence.
00:19:46.000In other words, the only way they will let you off the hook is if you become part of the board, is if you start to mirror the woke mob.
00:19:53.000Coca-Cola had also declined to take a position on the legislation before it passed because they are a soda company.
00:19:59.000They made a similarly worded statement James Quincy, Coca-Cola's chief executive, said, I want to be crystal clear.
00:20:04.000The Coca-Cola company does not support this legislation as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.
00:20:28.000Less than a day before the abrupt reversals, a group of prominent black executives called on companies to publicly oppose a wave of similarly restrictive voting bills.
00:20:34.000Republicans are advancing in almost every state.
00:20:36.000They are not restrictive voting bills.
00:20:38.000There's nothing here that makes it incredibly difficult to vote.
00:20:41.000This is just, it's sheer ridiculousness.
00:20:44.000There are people all around the world who have actually had to brave bullet to vote.
00:20:48.000I'm sorry, you stood in line for an additional 45 minutes to vote.
00:20:52.000That does not count as voter suppression.
00:20:54.000I'm sorry, you actually had to find an ID?
00:21:06.000The narrative is that if you want to push any form of voter verification, this means that you're a racist.
00:21:10.000All this plays into the broader white supremacy lie that is being promulgated every single day by the left and the equity lie pushed by the Biden administration.
00:21:17.000Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation and board member at Ralph Lauren Pepsi and Square said, Mr. Bastian decided to write the memo and revise the company's position on Tuesday night after speaking with Kenneth Chenault, a former executive of American Express, who helped organize the statement by black executives, according to three people familiar with the conversation.
00:21:38.000Again, black Americans are not being suppressed in the vote in Georgia.
00:22:11.000Or alternatively, Brian Kemp, who didn't uphold that lie, backs the bill because people should have to show ID when they vote.
00:22:19.000In a second, we will show you the unbelievable hypocrisy of these CEOs, because as it turns out, they're not sincere in their objections to this law.
00:22:49.000promote principles we have stood for in Georgia around broad access to voting, around voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity.
00:23:00.000And this is frankly just a step backwards.
00:23:02.000We've spent many decades promoting within Georgia better society and a better environment for business.
00:23:57.000All they're trying to do is avoid scrutiny.
00:23:59.000Because when it comes to places they do care about, they are perfectly willing to greenlight open human rights violation.
00:24:06.000Remember, back in November of 2020, okay, just a few months ago, Nike and Coca-Cola, Woka-Cola here, that says that it is a human rights violation to show voter ID, and that it is of deep brutality, what is happening in Georgia.
00:24:21.000Coca-Cola was lobbying against a bill that would crack down on forced labor in Xinjiang, according to the New York Times.
00:24:28.000Quote, Nike and Coca-Cola are among the major companies and business groups lobbying Congress to weaken a bill that would ban imported goods made with forced labor in China's Xinjiang region, according to congressional staff members and other people familiar with the matter.
00:24:40.000The legislation called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act has become the target of multinational companies, including Apple.
00:24:46.000Lobbyists have fought to water down some of its provisions, arguing that while they strongly condemn forced labor and current atrocities in Xinjiang, the act's ambitious requirements could wreak havoc on supply chains that are deeply embedded in China.
00:24:59.000Human rights groups and news reports have linked many multinational corporations to suppliers there, including tying Coca-Cola to sugar sourced from Xinjiang.
00:25:06.000So, just to get this straight, Coca-Cola is fine with forced labor in Xinjiang, so long as they get the sugar from Xinjiang.
00:25:11.000But, being based in Georgia, as Coca-Cola is, or as Delta is, and Coca-Cola having the temerity to pass a voter law that does not prevent people from voting?
00:25:21.000That, of course, is a major, major problem.
00:25:23.000Remember, Woke-a-Cola is so woke, they openly thanked China on the pandemic.
00:25:29.000Quote, this is Kurt Ferguson, the president of Coca-Cola for greater China and Korea.
00:25:33.000Quote, thank you very much to the government with your quick, decisive actions.
00:25:43.000Yeah, they did a great job containing COVID as it turns out.
00:25:47.000All of this is about leveraging social pressure from the outside in order to cow legislators into submission, and mostly in order to cow voters.
00:25:56.000It's about Coke and Delta saying things to force you into submission.
00:26:01.000It's about you, the employee of Coca-Cola.
00:26:03.000It's about you, the employee of Delta.
00:26:05.000It's about you, the normal citizen of Georgia, who's now being told by all of the leaders in your society, from corporations, to churches, to newspapers, to your government, That you are a bad person if you support this Georgia legislation.
00:26:24.000Remember, the Democrats are never culture warriors.
00:26:26.000Only these Republicans are their stupid culture warriors.
00:26:28.000Joe Biden said on ESPN that Major League Baseball should relocate their all-star game from Atlanta In order to punish Georgia for having passed this voter ID law.
00:26:38.000You've seen the left attempt to do this before.
00:26:40.000The NCAA attempted to remove basketball games from North Carolina when a bill passed that would have prevented localities from allowing biological men into women's bathrooms.
00:26:51.000So you've seen private industry attempt to leverage Legislation that they like, or that they don't like.
00:27:23.000There's a difference between profit and free enterprise.
00:27:25.000Free enterprise is the idea that there should be fewer regulations generally, even if that hurts your business, because you ought to compete in the marketplace.
00:27:33.000Many corporate heads are not in favor of that.
00:27:35.000Many corporate heads are in favor of subsidies from the government.
00:27:36.000They're in favor of tax breaks from the government.
00:27:39.000They're in favor of the government patting them on the head and working with them to suppress their competition.
00:27:43.000So corporations are deeply afraid of the government and are happy to work with the government if the government pats them on the head and gives them a Scooby treat.
00:28:52.000Jim Crow, as in, like, black people and white people can't use the same water fountains?
00:28:56.000As in, like, you know, let's unofficially allow people to go and terrorize black people so they can't vote?
00:29:00.000You know how disgusting it is that this perverse elderly gentleman keeps suggesting that what is happening in Georgia is in any way akin to Jim Crow?
00:29:09.000It's an absurdity at the highest level.
00:29:12.000It's a devaluation of how evil Jim Crow was, and it's a degradation of who Georgians are.
00:29:18.000And the fact that he's allowed to get away with the Jim Crow, is there gonna be any fact check from the media?
00:29:22.000Is Lester Holt gonna do a fact check on the differences between Jim Crow, where he had segregated schools, and a voting law that applies to every single person in Georgia who can vote?
00:29:31.000Of course you won't get that fact check.
00:29:32.000There's only one side of the aisle matters when it comes to truth and fact checking.
00:29:37.000Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, he points out, this is all ridiculous.
00:30:09.000And if you want to get a bottle of water while you're standing in line in Georgia, you can absolutely do that.
00:30:14.000The elections officials can help you with that, but you can't do that in Delaware because they don't have early voting.
00:30:20.000OK, and yet this is not the line you will hear from the media.
00:30:24.000You'll hear from the media that this is like Jim Crow.
00:30:27.000Anybody who tells you like this is like Jim Crow, anybody who says that should immediately be Cast out of the public conversation for being a damned liar.
00:30:42.000And when Joe Biden says that we should have athletes lead the way here, and then he praises the NBA.
00:30:46.000Yeah, you notice, I noticed a few things about the NBA over the past few years.
00:30:50.000I noticed, for example, that if you're in the NBA and you're anti-Semitic and you're Kevin Durant or you're LeBron James, you get totally away with it.
00:30:55.000I noticed also That if you're Kevin Durant or LeBron James or anybody else in the NBA, and you put equity on the back of your basketball jersey, this means that you can then just laugh and cash the check while China subjects Hong Kong to complete tyranny.
00:31:10.000I also noticed that you can bitch and moan about lack of equal pay.
00:31:15.000And then you can take home your $43 million check while Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm is taking home $215,000.
00:31:28.000But again, it's all about creating a culture in which we pretend that these people are our moral leaders and the media backing this to the hilt.
00:31:33.000Now there are ways that people on the right can fight back and should fight back.
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00:34:17.000All righty, so the good news is that some Georgian legislators are now pushing back on some of this corporate nonsense, the corporate echoing of woke garbage lies.
00:34:33.000According to The Hill, Georgia Republicans on Wednesday took a last-minute swipe at Delta after the company's chief executive criticized a massive measure overhauling voting rules.
00:34:41.000In the waning hours of the legislative session, the Georgia Statehouse passed a bill to repeal a tax break on jet fuel aimed squarely at one of the state's largest companies and the largest operator of flights into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.
00:34:53.000In the past, I'd be very much opposed to legislators basically giving privileges or denying privilege based on politics.
00:34:59.000But once these corporations start to simply echo the lies of the left, and they start to use their thumb and put it on the political scale, then legislators are well within their rights to say, listen, you don't like it?
00:35:15.000Dan Patrick is the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
00:35:18.000He just came out similarly today, and he smacked American Airlines because American Airlines put out a statement ripping on Senate Bill 7 in Texas, which is a bill dealing with voter ID, for example.
00:35:29.000He said, Texans are fed up with corporations that don't share our values trying to dictate public policy.
00:35:33.000The majority of Texans support maintaining the integrity of our elections.
00:35:36.000That's why I made it a priority this legislative session.
00:35:38.000Senate Bill 7 includes comprehensive reforms that will ensure voting in Texas is consistent statewide and secure.
00:35:43.000By the way, this is the same American Airlines that in 2017 led the fight to try to force us to allow boys to play girls sports in Texas and take away their scholarships.
00:35:50.000They're probably still fighting for that today.
00:35:52.000It's likely they have not read Senate Bill 29 either.
00:35:55.000If corporations are going to become political, then they are going to be subjected to the same sort of scrutiny as everybody else in the political space.
00:36:04.000You don't get to dip your toe in without actually entering the waters.
00:36:07.000And you certainly don't get to do that on a one-sided political, along one-sided political lines, and then hope that the other side just doesn't smack you.
00:36:43.000It was created by the Biden administration.
00:36:44.000Now they're denying it, but they have no plan to solve it.
00:36:46.000Here's retired acting ICE Director Tom Homan pointing out that Joe Biden was briefed and knew that his changes in policy would actually create this surge.
00:36:55.000No, the Biden administration, the incoming administration, they said, if you end these programs, we're going to see a surge like you've never seen before.
00:37:03.000They were briefed by leadership at ICE, at CBP.
00:37:06.000I've talked to people that briefed them.
00:38:23.000I've seen the video and I think any of us who saw the video were incredibly alarmed by the steps of smugglers, ones that we have been quite familiar with, that we've spoken out about our concerns about.
00:38:36.000As Secretary Mayorkas said, the inhumane way smugglers abuse children while profiting off parents' desperation is criminal and morally reprehensible.
00:38:44.000There's a lot of issues and steps we need to take to address root causes.
00:38:48.000So of course our concern is for the safety of these kids.
00:39:17.000They're here because they are seeking asylum and looking for a shot at the American dream.
00:39:24.000A lot of them have family members here already that they're looking to reconnect that they haven't seen and have been separated from for a really long time.
00:39:33.000And so to me, this really is a reminder that we have a moral and legal responsibility to provide that opportunity for these kids.
00:39:47.000No, we have a legal responsibility to reunite them with their parents.
00:39:51.000We have a legal responsibility to reunite them with the parents who sent them across the desert.
00:39:55.000That we do have a legal responsibility to do.
00:39:57.000What we don't have a legal responsibility to do is make them citizens.
00:40:00.000You keep saying stuff like this, people are going to rush to the border.
00:40:11.000I will note, this is kind of a funny story.
00:40:14.000The woke left is so woke at this point that Barack Obama is not woke enough.
00:40:17.000According to Hot Air, an effort to rename two schools in Waukegan, Illinois ran into a buzzsaw of opposition when the Waukegan Board of Education took public comment on the finalists for Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
00:40:27.000The author of the Constitution will be removed from the school for his participation in slavery, or the Declaration of Independence, but Latinx activists demanded that Barack and Michelle Obama be removed from consideration as well because Obama is the quote-unquote deporter-in-chief.
00:40:40.000So, good to know that Barack Obama is not woke enough for the woke activists.
00:40:45.000Meanwhile, there is no limit to what the woke activists would like to do here.
00:40:48.000Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, in the aftermath of Joe Biden suggesting that we spend, you know, $2 trillion on mostly useless crap, including $80 billion for a monorail.
00:41:35.000If you take that $2 trillion number at face value and combine it with the $1.9 trillion Biden and the Democrats spent in their COVID relief bill, we're talking about $32,000 of new spending for every household in the United States.
00:41:46.000That's more than all the wealth of all the nation's billionaires put together.
00:41:49.000You put that on top of our annual $4.48 trillion budget before you add in another $2 trillion on education, child care, and social program spending reportedly on the way.
00:41:58.000AOC says the Biden plan is not nearly enough.
00:42:01.000Here is AOC saying, you know what we need?
00:42:15.000We're talking about realistically $10 trillion over 10 years.
00:42:20.000And I know that may be an eye-popping figure for some people, but we need to understand that we are in a devastating economic moment.
00:42:29.000Millions of people in the United States are unemployed.
00:42:31.000We have a truly crippled healthcare system and a planetary crisis on our hands, and we're the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.
00:44:21.000If Andrew Cuomo committed a crime, he should go to jail.
00:44:24.000Anybody who commits crimes should go to jail.
00:44:25.000I have a very consistent standard on this stuff.
00:44:27.000According to ABC News, the federal investigation targeting Republican Representative Matt Gaetz is specifically looking into whether he and an associate in his home state of Florida provided cash or other things of value to women they had sex with after connecting online.
00:44:38.000The New York Times first reported on Thursday evening.
00:44:41.000Gaetz's associate, former local politician Joel Greenberg, was indicted last year for allegedly trafficking a teenage girl for sex in 2017.
00:44:49.000The DOJ is also trying to determine whether Gates had sex with the 17-year-old, according to sources.
00:44:53.000Greenberg pled not guilty to the charges.
00:44:56.000The details of the investigation were first reported by the New York Times two days after the paper revealed an investigation was underway.
00:45:02.000Gates' office did not respond to requests for comment.
00:45:04.000Earlier this week, Gates insisted on Fox News he never had a relationship with the 17-year-old.
00:45:08.000He said such allegations were totally false.
00:45:10.000According to the Times, investigators believe Greenberg met a woman through certain websites and introduced some of them to Gates.
00:45:15.000As recently as 2019 and 2020, Gates and Greenberg told women to meet them at hotels in Florida Laying out how much they're willing to pay beforehand, the newspaper said, adding that party drugs may also have been used by Gates and others at times.
00:45:26.000Gates's office said Matt Gaetz has never paid for sex.
00:45:28.000Matt Gaetz refutes all the disgusting allegations completely.
00:45:31.000Matt Gaetz has never been on any such websites whatsoever.
00:45:34.000Matt Gaetz cherishes the relationships in his past and looks forward to marrying the love of his life.
00:45:38.000So, all of this is gonna come out in the wash.
00:46:16.000The jurors are hearing a pretty shaded version of what happened that day so that if Derek Chauvin is acquitted, it will be blamed on American racism rather than on the very complicated fact patterns of this particular case.
00:46:28.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:46:30.000First, you cannot forget to end your week by checking out The Andrew Klavan Show, Drew's show, every Friday.
00:46:35.000He's got an exciting evening planned for you.
00:46:37.000So, head on over to dailywire.com this evening at 7 p.m.
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