As the protests surrounding President Trump's immigration refugee executive order grew over the weekend, Uber came under fire for the great crime of having turned off their surge pricing to JFK Airport in New York in order to help travelers get home.
What was so terrible about that?
The New York Taxi Workers Association had participated in a one-hour work stoppage to join the protest against Trump's executive order.
So Uber was supposedly undermining that protest.
Even though Uber turned off their surge pricing to avoid making a profit, only initiated that policy half an hour after the stoppage ended, and Uber's executives actually opposed the Trump executive order.
But that was not good enough.
Virtue signaling has swept the nation, with leftists policing each other.
to determine who doesn't clap the longest so we can shoot them.
And now BuzzFeed has joined the fray.
Just weeks after their idiotic targeting of HGTV couple Chip and Joanna Gaines for destruction because they committed the grave sin of attending a church where the pastor quotes the Bible on homosexuality, BuzzFeed now wants to target every other company it can find and give it the Uber treatment.
BuzzFeed San Francisco bureau chief Matt Honan tweeted, quote, We're following which companies are speaking out on Muslim ban and which are not.
BuzzFeed's Tom Guerra then ran a piece in which he suggested As Silicon Valley debated its leader's stance on the immigration ban, corporate America simply said nothing at all.
Silicon Valley, Guerra wrote, said, quote, something which is more than can be said for the rest of corporate America, whose leaders have largely remained behind a wall of silence since Friday's announcement, even as plenty of their employees and customers at home and around the world were facing the prospect of being banned from entering the United States.
So here's the question.
Is it truly necessary for every company in the United States to take a position on a controversial executive order that is actually not a Muslim ban, that has not yet been fully interpreted, and that is still being adjudicated in the courts?
Did every company in America have the responsibility to sound off on Obamacare?
In fact, When corporations did sound off on Obamacare, if you recall, the left called them whiners and told them to shut up.
The left wields the media as a club in its fight to push the country to the left, and simply staying out of the fight, that's no longer tolerated.
If you do business, you're expected to do the bidding of the left, which means the right will have to respond in kind in order to compensate for the leftist bullying, and every company will be forced into the polarizing political space, rather than merely providing the best good and services at the most competitive prices on behalf of their shareholders.
That isn't good for consumers.
It isn't good for companies.
It isn't good for the country.
If people want to speak out, by all means they should.
If they don't want to speak out, that's their prerogative too.
And if they don't want to turn their companies into political footballs over issues that aren't even close to clear-cut, that is certainly justifiable.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Alrighty, I gotta tell you folks, I mean, under Trump, it just feels like every event in the next ten years has been crammed into one year.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
You know, my wife always says that when you're not having fun, time moves incredibly slowly.
That's also true when events move this quickly.
And right now, what we're watching is an administration that has been four years long and it's been a week and a half.
I mean, it's truly amazing.
There's so much going on, and we'll get to all of it.
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Okay, so, it was a busy weekend.
A couple of notes that we have to make before anything else.
Everybody on both sides is constantly attempting to attribute genius to their side and the other side.
There's this broad, widespread public perception that people in politics generally know what they're doing, they generally know what they're talking about, that there must be a big plan.
So if Trump appears to have screwed something up, no, it must be part of a conspiratorial, shadowy plan.
No, maybe you just screwed it up.
And if the left screws something up, then there's, on the right, this tendency to attribute it to some evil, shadowy conspiracy.
Maybe it's just that they're incompetent.
As Adam Carolla is fond of saying, you know, one of the most disappointing facts about life is when you're a child, you think the adults know what they're doing, and then you become an adult and you realize that adults are idiots?
They're just stupid.
You know, you thought when you were a kid that they all have cars and houses, and that means they're smart.
You thought when you were a kid the President of the United States knows what he's doing.
The media know what they're doing?
No, everybody's stupid.
If you start from that premise, politics becomes a lot simpler, clearer, and more truthful.
So, we begin today.
With Trump's, of course, immigration and refugee executive order.
The media have lost their freaking minds over this thing.
They've lost their minds over it.
So we're actually going to go through it and we're going to tell you what's in the executive order.
Is it a Muslim ban?
No.
Is it legal?
Maybe.
Is it useful?
Kinda.
Was it rolled out like a bunch of monkeys having to Trying to have intercourse with a basketball?
Yeah, it was basically rolled out about as badly as you could.
So, here's what was actually in the executive order.
We'll start with what's in it, then we'll talk about whether it's useful and legal, and then we'll get to the left's insane response, because it is totally over-the-top, it is totally crazy, and that's only the beginning of the stuff that was happening over the weekend.
So, it's pretty- Wow.
Wow.
It's gonna be a busy four years gig.
Okay, so, number one.
The executive order invokes 9-11.
So Trump says, because of 9-11, because of attacks by people who have come into the United States on student visas, we really have to crack down on the visa system.
And that means that we're going to crack down on the visa system.
We're going to crack down on both immigrants and non-immigrants, meaning people who visit the country, as well as people who are attempting to immigrate to the country.
And we're going to crack down on all of that.
The order suspends visas from nationals of countries of particular origin.
So the Secretary of Homeland Security, as well as Secretary of State and the DNI, Director of National Intelligence, are tasked under the order with determining the standard necessary for visa entry within 30 days.
They're going to rewrite the standard.
All entering into the United States is suspended as immigrants and non-immigrants of such persons for 90 days from the date of such orders.
So these are the countries, this is where everybody's saying you're not able to get in if you're from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and a couple of other countries.
Not Afghanistan, not Saudi Arabia, not Pakistan.
That's one of the flaws in this, and we'll get to that in a second.
The order also states that there may be more countries that are added to this ban list.
So again, it's seven countries they're talking about.
The Secretary of State and Homeland Security are able to waive the executive order for individuals.
So, if they determine that there's an interpreter who wants to get in from Iraq, they can waive the executive order.
Okay.
Refugees are blocked for 120 days.
All refugees are blocked for 120 days while we come up with new standards.
Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely until Trump says okay.
So they're given a special standard.
Priority is given to victims of religious based persecution.
So what it says is that the Secretary of State is directed to make changes to prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious based persecution provided the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality.
So the idea here presumably is that Christians living in Syria will be given higher priority.
They'll still be able to get in.
Muslims who are refugees from Syria are going to have a harder time.
Now that isn't actually a major shift from current refugee law.
Current refugee law defines a refugee as any person who is outside the country of such person's nationality and who is unable to return to the country because of persecution or well-founded fear of persecution on account of religion.
So that obviously encompasses Christians.
The fact is that the Obama administration really cracked down on Christian immigration from Syria, which is truly an awful, awful thing.
They took in, I think, single-digit numbers of Syrian refugees who were Christian in the last year, but they took in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who are not.
That's ridiculous.
The order limits the number of refugees total in 2017 to 50,000.
People go, oh, wow, that's just awful.
Okay, except that was the normal standard, like, three years ago.
It was only upped in the last couple of years.
And then you get into the screw-up.
So, all of this is basically okay.
It's actually relatively moderate.
This isn't a giant Muslim ban.
There are 1.5 billion Muslims all around the world.
They're not going to immediately be banned from the United States.
The most populous Muslim countries are still allowed to send people to the United States.
They're not banned.
Again, this doesn't cover a lot of the countries it probably should cover, like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
It doesn't cover a lot of those places.
All it is, it's a temporary moratorium.
It's an outright ban.
So it's not a Muslim ban.
There's no way this is a Muslim ban.
I've read the text.
Members of the media should bother reading the text, but they don't.
It's not a Muslim ban, folks.
It just isn't.
And the media's lying about that.
Which brings us to the rollout.
So the way that you normally would roll this thing out, let's say that you did this in a normal fashion.
First, you'd run it by the Office of Legal Counsel to make sure that the thing is well written legally.
Second, you'd probably want to pair it with some sort of executive order regarding how to help refugees, right?
So you don't look like you're inhumane.
So what you would do is you'd say, we're signing an executive order.
To help fund the creation of safe zones in Syria and in the Muslim Middle East for Syrian refugees, so that they're not just getting slaughtered in Aleppo.
Instead, they have a place to go, but they're not going to come here.
Right?
That's the idea.
That's what you know.
And by the way, that's actually Trump's policy.
He wants those safe zones.
He could have announced that at the same time.
He didn't.
Third, you make sure all the agencies are on the same page.
You say we're going to implement this.
You tell all the agencies we're going to sign this thing.
Right?
And you give them draft, you say, we're going to sign this thing.
And when we sign it, it's going to go into effect.
But, you all have advance warning, you know how this is going to work.
Instead, the way this was rolled out, is Trump signed it, nobody in any of the agencies knew what was going on, DHS didn't know what was going on, the Border Patrol didn't know what was going on, and so they called the White House and they said, okay, well, you know, this order doesn't make clear what happens to people who already have visas.
Right?
How about people who already have green cards?
What do we do with those people?
And DHS said, what we'd like to do is let them in.
And then if you want to check their visas later, check their visas later.
But don't hold them up at the airport or turn them around just because they're visiting family back in Iraq or something.
Instead, they went to Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.
Now, I need to be clear about something with Bannon and Miller.
Bannon is the superior.
Miller is the inferior.
Okay, Bannon is the one in charge.
Stephen Miller is a 33-year-old speechwriter who has some policy expertise on immigration.
Steve Bannon is the chief strategist to the White House.
Steve Bannon is like 60 years old and has Trump's ear and is very, very tight with Bannon.
The person who is the subordinate here is Miller.
Miller's the one being tossed under the bus.
That is not fair.
Here's what CNN reported.
The White House overruled the guidance from DHS, according to officials familiar with the rollout.
That order came from the president's inner circle, led by Miller and Bannon.
Okay, it should really read Bannon and Miller.
Bannon is the powerful one.
Their decision held that on a case-by-case basis, DHS could allow green card holders to enter the United States.
Before the president issued the order, the White House did not seek the legal guidance of the Office of Legal Counsel.
Apparently, they didn't bother to go through the standard agency review process at all.
And it is worth noting that Donald Trump over the weekend also changed the constituency of the National Security Council to add Steve Bannon, who really is not qualified to sit on that thing, and get rid of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which just makes no sense at all.
If you want Bannon in there, at least don't get rid of the Joint Chiefs.
I mean, my goodness.
Or the DNI.
They got rid of Mike Pompeo as well.
So this is incompetence.
So, two things can be true at once.
One, the executive order isn't nearly what the media are preferring it to be.
It is not a Muslim ban.
It's actually rather moderate.
And two, this could be just a botched abortion of a rollout, and it really was.
It's just an awful, awful rollout of a really not-that-big-a-deal program, but everybody is making it into the end of the world, because now you've got all these pictures...
Of all of these people, kids, old people, trying to get into the country, and they have visas, and they've been here for five years on a green card, and now they're stuck at the airport, and then you have the reunion pictures with all the people cheering around like Trump is trying to ban Muslims from the country, and the hashtag Muslim ban trending, even though it is not a Muslim ban.
Let's go through a couple of quick questions about this thing first.
Actually, before we get to going through a couple of quick questions, first we have to say thank you to our other advertiser for today, and that is dstld.com.
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So, I want to answer a couple of questions and then we'll get to the left's reaction.
So, answering a few questions about this.
First of all, is this unprecedented?
No, it's not totally unprecedented.
The media is making this out to be the end of the world.
No one's ever done anything like this before.
No, there are a couple of precedents that are worth noting.
One, President Obama had a six-month ban on Iraqi refugees in 2011.
Second, in 1980, Jimmy Carter issued a ban on Iranian visa holders.
So there are a couple of differences between what Trump is doing now and what Obama and Carter did.
First off, Obama's order only affected refugees.
So Trump's order actually affects green card holders.
Now they're backing off of that, by the way.
But it presumably only affected green card holders.
It affected green card holders, student visas, travel visas.
It affected everyone.
Whereas Obama's was only refugees.
And Obama also implemented the policy quietly.
Trump did so openly so people say it's bad press.
Okay, I don't really care.
Carter, how about Carter's policy?
He put a moratorium on new Iranian visas, with an exception for humanitarian purposes, so he didn't ban refugees, and a cancellation of then-current Iranian-American visas.
The purpose of that policy was to get the Iranians to give up the American hostages.
It wasn't meant as a broad-based indefinite policy.
So it's sort of like those cases and it's sort of not like those cases.
I want to be as honest as possible in how we analyze the actual law.
How about the legality of this thing?
Is it legal or is it not legal?
And this is what people are asking because courts have issued stays on parts of this executive order.
There's a really interesting kind of legal argument for people who like the specifics between Andy McCarthy of National Review on one side and David Beyer of the Cato Institute on the other.
It really comes down to two provisions of immigration law.
One provision says no person shall receive any preference or priority or be discriminated against in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of the person's race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place of residence.
So that would seem to prevent these sort of bans on certain areas of the world.
It's discrimination on the base of place of birth or place of residence.
Okay, that's provision one.
Provision two says the president has the capacity to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants on the basis of saying that they are detrimental to the interests of the United States.
So the question is, which one of these legal provisions is the more powerful?
Is it the one that gives the president, gives Trump, lots and lots of power?
Or is it the one that limits that power?
So, Beyer argues that it's the non-discrimination provision that's more powerful, and McCarthy argues that it's the presidential provision that's more powerful.
Not really clear.
That's the part that's going to be adjudicated in the courts.
There's a pretty good case on both sides.
Okay, finally.
Is this actually a smart order?
Is the executive order actually smart?
So, there are a couple of problems with the order itself.
First of all, does it achieve its stated purposes?
So, the media is pointing out that foreign-born refugees are responsible for like two deaths in America in the last 10 years or 15 years.
And so they're saying it's not calibrated.
It's not well calibrated to achieve its purposes.
And people on the right are saying, well, you know, it's common sense.
You got to do it.
Now, this sort of mirrors on the one side, to be intellectually honest, this sort of mirrors on the one side the arguments that have been had over birth control.
Not birth control.
Gun control, rather.
The idea that they'll put a blanket ban on assault weapons and people like me will say, yeah, but assault weapons don't kill that many people.
They aren't used in that many shootings.
And they'll have to say, right, but it's common sense.
We have to do something.
Okay, now you have to calibrate the solution to the actual problem.
I agree that if we can't vet refugees, regardless of whether they're terrorists or not, we shouldn't let people in we can't vet.
That's just a good general principle.
Just as there's a background check, a federal background check that happens when you get a gun, the same for mental illness and for criminal background check.
The same thing is true when it comes to, if you're a federally licensed firearm dealer, that's true.
The same thing should be true when it comes to coming into the country, immigrating into the country.
So it's not really about Syrian refugees per se, it should be applied to everyone.
It should be creating a new standard for visas, and it applies to everyone.
And the reason for that is that it's actually under-broad, right?
It's too narrow.
What if somebody comes from Saudi Arabia, let's say on a student visa or travel visa, they overstay their visa, This policy doesn't really apply to them, per se.
It doesn't stop them from coming into the country.
They're from Saudi Arabia, right?
Not from one of these seven named countries.
Well, every hijacker on 9-11 was from Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
How about Pakistan?
Lots of terrorists come from Pakistan.
Doesn't do anything about Pakistan.
So if you're going to cite 9-11 as your rationale, you should actually calibrate a policy that would have stopped 9-11.
Otherwise, you fall into the same trap as folks on the left when they say that their policy wouldn't have stopped Sandy Hook, but it's good anyway.
You actually need to tailor the policy so that it'll help stop things.
So this is why I say this is a pretty narrow policy.
It actually is not a broad policy.
It's a pretty narrow policy.
Second of all, it's an overbroad application.
Again, stopping people in the air with no warning is just foolish.
It leads to bad press.
The whole thing was done idiotically.
And you can tell how idiotically it was done because Bannon's already tossing Miller under the bus.
Bannon's already saying, oh, it's Stephen Miller's fault.
Like, Joe Scarborough today was ripping on Stephen Miller.
It's Bannon's fault, right?
I mean, the fact is that Bannon is the guy who's largely in charge of these executive orders, but he's blaming Miller to get out of it.
So that's where we stand on this thing.
The left has lost its mind.
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