All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 24, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:13
How The Left Blows Itself Up, In 4 Easy Steps | Ep. 369
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So President Trump has had a pretty rough two-week stretch.
How is it possible that the left is blowing it?
Like, completely blowing it?
We will explain in four simple steps how the left is destroying itself.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show.
You know, they've been whining and bitching about President Trump consistently ever since his election and far before, and now they finally have a two-week period where Trump is just a gaffe machine.
He's just going out and saying silly thing after silly thing, and the left can't stop themselves.
They can't stop themselves because their endgame here, their entire endgame, is to castigate all of their political opponents as Nazis and Trump sycophants, and in their pursuit of this endgame, they've forgotten that they don't actually need to do that in order to win.
So we're going to discuss how in four simple steps they are alienating the American people, how it is that they are taking a president who has right now a 34% popularity rating and possibly boosting him to re-election victory, and how it's very possible they may not even win back the House.
We'll talk about all of that.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at ProFlowers.
So, last time I was away on travel, I decided that it would be a good idea to send my wife flowers.
I do this a lot when I'm away on travel, but the only company that I trust to do this is proflowers.com.
Right now, you get 20% off of any of their unique summer rose bouquets or any other bouquet of $29 or more.
Their Colorful Rainbow Rose is always a hit.
If you don't know what to send, I sent them, I think, a couple of weeks ago to my wife.
The ProFlowers bouquets are guaranteed to stay fresh for at least seven days or your money back, and you control the delivery date.
If something breaks, they'll correct it right away.
We actually had a vase break, and they immediately sent a replacement.
ProFlowers gives you more bloom for your buck.
Big, beautiful flowers with more stems for your money.
Right now, if you want to get 20% off summer roses or any other bouquet of $29 or more, go to proflowers.com.
Use my code BENSHOW at checkout.
Go to ProFlowers and BENSHOW at checkout.
You get any bouquet of $29 or more.
You get a 20% discount.
They are beautiful, and they really do last.
I mean, it's much better than store-bought.
That's proflowers.com, and use that code BENSHOW.
It'll definitely make your spouse's or your girlfriend's day.
Make sure that you do that.
Mom's Day.
It's good for all relatives who enjoy flowers.
ProFlowers.com, and use that promo code BENSHOW to get 20% off.
Also, that lets them know that we sent you.
Okay, so the Democrats are coming off a two-week period where the president of the United States pretended he didn't know what the alt-right was and then said that there were very fine people at a torchlight rally with white supremacists.
And they're somehow losing.
Somehow they're losing.
See, this is the amazing thing.
You look at the polling data right now.
What the polling data shows is, in North Carolina, for example, a poll yesterday, Trump would still beat Hillary Clinton 43-39.
And this was the case all throughout the election cycle.
And there's been a lot of talk for the last two years about how the elections, the polls, they're all a referendum on Trump.
The world revolves around Trump.
Trump is our son, and we all revolve around him in planetary orbit.
The reality is that the last election cycle was not about Trump.
The last election cycle was about Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump just showed how unpopular Hillary Clinton is.
That's all that election cycle was.
It wasn't about Trump being some genius god king.
It wasn't about 40 chests upside down underwater, hungry, hungry hippos, magga, magga, magga.
It wasn't about any of that stuff.
It was about Hillary Clinton is the least appealing human being ever to walk the planet.
Hillary Clinton makes the White Walkers on Game of Thrones look as though they are attractive date prospects.
Hillary Clinton was a garbage candidate.
She was such a bad candidate that—this is real statistic, okay?
Donald Trump won fewer votes in Wisconsin than Mitt Romney did in 2012, and he won the state.
Hillary Clinton, no one likes her.
Okay, so, what that means, and you looked at the polls all during the election cycle, and what you saw was Trump was very consistent, always between 40 and 43 percent the entire election, until he got to 46 right at the end.
Hillary Clinton was bouncing around between 50 and 39.
50 and 39.
That's a really broad range.
That's a really broad range.
So what Democrats seem to neglect, in all of their hatred of Trump, is that they have to not suck.
And they are failing at this very simple task of not sucking.
And there are four ways that they are failing at this very simple task.
So the first thing they do is they pick unpopular issues.
So recall all the way back to last week when President Trump gave his ridiculous press conference after he had already given a press conference where he made a very good statement about why he doesn't like the KKK and neo-Nazis.
This is a one-foot putt, okay?
This is a tap-in.
The next day he comes out and he says, well, what I said yesterday?
Um, no, no.
And he does that for no reason.
And all his advisors are saying, dude, what?
Like John Kelly is looking around and saying to himself, I can't believe this is my life now.
Everyone is wondering what he's doing.
So the Democrats have a great talking point.
They have a great talking point.
I can cut the Democrat ad for them, okay?
The Democratic ad is Donald Trump saying, okay, it's a clip from the Charlottesville rally, the Friday night Charlottesville rally with all of the white supremacists and Richard Spencer and people chanting, Jews will not replace us.
And then a clip of Donald Trump saying, very fine people were at that.
And then a clip of Donald Trump with ex-congressional candidate shaking his hand.
That's the ad, right?
The ad writes itself.
It's the easiest thing in the world.
So what do the Democrats do?
They do the thing that they are the best at.
They are unbelievably stupid.
They decide that what is deeply important is to talk about Confederate statues, right?
This is what they're going to talk about, Confederate statues.
So they move from an issue where 95% of the population agrees, neo-Nazis, bad, and they move instead to an issue where 50% of the population thinks they're wrong.
There's a Quinnipiac poll that came out yesterday showing 50% of Americans don't want to get rid of these Confederate memorials or don't care about it, and 39% say they want to get rid of them.
So what do the media choose to do?
What does the left choose to do?
Let's talk about Confederate memorials.
Do you understand how dumb this is?
Cataclysmically stupid, this is.
It's incredible.
And it's exactly what the alt-right wanted.
Why do you think the alt-right rallied around a Robert E. Lee statue?
You think they did it because they really care that deeply about a Robert E. Lee statue?
The reason the alt-right and white supremacists rallied around the Robert E. Lee statue is because they were attempting to demonstrate to the public that there was a broad swath of people who agree with them.
There aren't a broad swath of people who agree with them, but there are a lot of people who agree with them on the Confederate statue issue for different reasons.
Not because they think that slavery was great, like some of the members of the white supremacist groups believe, but because they believe that this is part of American history.
Don't wipe away American history just because it's uncomfortable.
So what do the Democrats do?
What does the left do?
They decide that it is imperative that we have this out right now.
They did the same thing after Dylan Storm Roof.
Dylan Storm Roof goes and he shoots up a black church and he kills, what was it, 19 people?
Something like that?
I can't remember the exact number.
I think it was 19 or 20 people.
He kills an enormous number of people, murders them in cold blood.
He's a white supremacist piece of human feces.
So what do we do?
Do we talk about why white supremacism is bad?
No, we have a nationwide conversation about the Confederate flag, which literally millions of people do not hold in contempt and do not think connect with white supremacism.
Because the left constantly is trying to broaden out their agenda.
They can't just target the people we all agree suck.
They have to instead try to lump in all of the people they don't like with all the people that we all agree suck.
They have to make that into one giant group.
So, their first step, the first step in the Democratic failures, they pick unpopular issues.
So here are two issues that are unpopular that they've picked.
They've picked the Confederate flag issue, the Confederate statue issue, even Chris Matthews.
Don't let anybody say Chris Matthews.
He comes to the show.
Even he recognizes that all of this stuff about the Confederate statues has no limiting principle, meaning that the same people who want to rip down the Confederate statues want to get rid of the Washington statues, as Trump said, and the Jefferson statues, and now they want to get rid of the Columbus statue in Columbus Circle in New York.
The reason there's a statue to Christopher Columbus is because it was a great thing for the world that Western civilization discovered the Americas.
It was.
Okay, it wasn't a great thing for a lot of the people who were living there, but it was a great thing for world history that Western civilization ended up discovering the Americas, which were a primitive place filled with peoples who had no concept of modern civilization.
It doesn't mean Christopher Columbus is a wonderful guy.
It doesn't mean he didn't commit any sins.
It doesn't mean he didn't enslave the natives.
He did all of these terrible things, but that's not what we're celebrating when we celebrate Columbus Day.
We're celebrating the fact that Western civilization is good, even though there are evil things that Western civilization has done.
But, the entire movement to rip down these statues, It's all about attempting to wipe away any history that people find gross because they can't just acknowledge Western— Here's the thing.
Here's the big disagreement.
There are a lot of people, like me, who say Western civilization is the greatest civilization in the history of the planet, bar none, by far, not close, and there are grains of evil embedded in it.
And we've spent most of our history trying to wipe those away gradually.
And then there are people on the other side who say Western civilization is bad, and racism, and bigotry, and slavery, these are inherent parts of the foundations of Western civilization, and that's why Western civilization is bad.
So for people like me, I look at the Columbus statue, or a Washington statue, or a Jefferson statue, or even a Lee statue, and I say, this was all part of our history, and it's important that we respect the history enough to discuss it.
Because this is all part of building a civilization.
Even the nasty parts are part of building a civilization.
This is what I think Katrina Pearson was trying to say, although she said it badly the other night.
And the left says, all of these things are bad.
Washington is bad, because Western civilization is bad.
It's racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
Columbus is bad.
But even Chris Matthews recognizes that this is a stupid move by Democrats, but they're engaging in it anyway.
Here's Chris Matthews over at LACC explaining why you shouldn't talk confederacy.
What's going on?
I don't even know.
Kathleen, explain.
Go.
Nobody's going after Teddy Roosevelt.
And the idea of going after slave owners, you'd have to basically take away our history, because the first six presidents or so had slaves.
You'd have to go after people like Washington and, of course, all the Southern guys, all the ones who followed him, Madison and, of course, Monroe and the rest, and, of course, old Hickory, because it was Indian fighting and killing.
Where do we stop?
Where do we stop at saying that we're going to recognize it for what it was, And move on.
And when are we going to say no?
Summit has to be de-celebrated, taken away from our site.
Okay, one of the things that's fascinating here is there's a great divide between Chris Matthews Democrats and Al Sharpton Democrats, and it seems as though the Democratic Party is moving in the direction of Al Sharpton Democrats, not Chris Matthews Democrats.
Matthews is much more like Joe Biden.
He's a crazy old kook who talks about coming out of the show, but he actually has a concept of what people in middle America are thinking.
People like Al Sharpton don't, and so they are ensconced in this.
I had a discussion with Don Lemon last night on CNN.
And I explained to him that, you know, just because the media, people like Don Lemon, see the Confederate statue issue as black and white, no racial connotations, just a black and white issue, evil versus non-evil, that doesn't mean that's how Americans see it.
And moving in that direction is actually a large mistake.
So that's one issue.
Step one, again, for the Democrats is pick unpopular issues instead of popular ones.
Here's another unpopular issue they've chosen to pick.
There are hundreds of people, assuming these are all members of the left, not a lot of members of the right who would do this, who are rallying outside NFL headquarters because of Colin Kaepernick, who is a garbage quarterback.
He had the worst quarterback rating of any quarterback in the league two years ago.
He played like five games last year before he was benched in favor of basically some sort of poodle.
I mean, he was such a bad quarterback that they basically took an inanimate object and stuck it behind center for the 49ers until he lost his job.
So there's been this big rallying effect around Kaepernick and Democrats are pushing this.
I'll explain that issue in one second, but first I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Wink.
So, does everything that you are seeing right now make you want to get drunk?
Does it?
Well, I have the proper solution for you.
Over at Wink.com, what they can do is they can actually personalize the best wines to your palate.
So this is actually better for dinner parties.
This is great if you don't know anything about wine.
If you think that Manischewitz is good wine, then you actually need to go over to Wink.com and get some really good wine.
Because the way that it works is you go over there, you take a brief palate quiz, and they tell you which wine best matches your palate and what best matches the meal that you are about to go to.
So if you're going to go to a friend's house, you don't want to look like an ignoramus because you picked up some Schlitz.
Instead, you should probably go over to Wink.com, and you should pick up some wine from Wink.com.
Every bottle is like $9.99.
It's try Wink.com, T-R-Y-W-I-N-C.com.
Take that palate profile quiz, and they will recommend distinct and interesting wines tailored to you.
Again, it's trywink.com slash ben.
If you go to slash ben, you get $20 off your first order plus free shipping.
It's trywink.com slash ben.
Trywink.com slash ben.
T-R-Y-W-I-N-C dot com slash ben to get $20 off your first order right now.
People around the office, we did a wine tasting for everybody around the office.
They've been drunk ever since, which explains the quality of the show lately.
Try wink.com slash spend $20 off your first order right now.
And the wine, I have been told, is glorious.
I've been told that by my sloshed employees.
Okay, so the other issue that the Democrats have chosen to focus on in the last two weeks, instead of discussing why neo-Nazism is bad, God, you people are morons, is they've decided to talk about Colin Kaepernick, a guy who kneels for the national anthem, which is the only reason anyone thinks he's important.
You know how many second string quarterbacks in America lose their job every year?
A lot of NFL quarterbacks lose their job every year because they suck.
It happens a lot.
Okay, Tim Tebow lost his job even though he took his team to the playoffs after winning a series of games.
He couldn't throw a forward pass and so people said, okay, we're not going to give him a job anymore and now he's playing baseball for like the Class A New York Mets, essentially.
The left, though, has decided that Colin Kaepernick, despite being world's crappiest quarterback, must have a job.
You wonder why people like me stopped watching ESPN?
Maybe it's because I got sick of ESPN devoting its entire channel to explaining why a guy who was barely drafted in the seventh round, Michael Sam, had to be employed in the NFL, and now they're devoting all of their time to why a guy who can't throw a pass in the NFL, I mean, threw some of the worst passes of the year last year, must have a job because he kneeled for the national anthem.
So, Tariq Nasheed, who has the IQ of a kumquat, He tweeted out yesterday, I'm with CAP because white supremacy is not patriotism.
And he wrote those all with capital letters and on different lines.
I don't know if that's supposed to be some sort of acronym, but I'm not sure what W-S-I-N-P or whatever that was stands for.
Eugene Gu, MD, no idea who this guy is, says, Blacklisting Kaepernick is completely un-American and proves why his protest is necessary.
Hashtag I'm with CAP.
Maybe he's not being blacklisted, maybe he stinks.
Maybe he stinks.
It's funny, all the same people who are complaining that Kaepernick is being blacklisted laughed when people said that Tebow was being blacklisted.
Susan Sarandon, Bernie Sanders' devotee.
She says, rally in support of Colin Kaepernick in front of the NFL.
Together we win.
I stand with Colin.
Okay, well if you stand with Colin, you're worth a fair bit of money.
Why don't you pay him?
Why don't you give him a job, Susan?
I mean, you still have a lot of Atlantic City money left over.
You can sell some of those oranges, I'm sure, on eBay.
Trayvon Free.
Travon Free?
Trayvon Free?
He posted a picture that says NFL, and it says Negro Fall In Line.
Not even a good acronym because it's really N-F-I-L, which doesn't make any sense.
He says, loving the signs today.
Hashtag, I'm with CAP.
These are all just protest signs in favor of Colin Kaepernick.
Again, Charles Clymer says, white people do not own patriotism.
Hashtag, I'm with CAP.
Well, I mean, I have a feeling that it's not a black or white issue, but if you kneel for the national anthem, I'm going to say that you probably don't get to claim patriotism.
I mean, like, again, there are certain unifying symbols.
The National Anthem is one of them.
You either see America as a good development that is moving in a direction toward perfecting its ills, or you see America as inherently bad.
Anil Dash, again, somebody I don't know, says, but so what, right?
That's a millionaire NFL player using his celebrity to take a stand.
Regular folks can't do that, can we?
But take a look at some of the young women who are out there today saying, hashtag, I'm with Cap.
They're from Girls Club NY, and it's a bunch of young girls.
They look like, everybody in the picture looks like they're black.
It says, hashtag, I'm with Cap.
We know our rights.
Thanks, Colin.
Thanks for what?
Thanks for what?
Did he give you any money or something?
Did he fund your club?
I assume Girls Club is actually a 501c3.
I like this one.
It says, he took a knee for me.
I'll take a stand for him.
Hashtag Kaepernick.
Did he really take a knee for you?
What did he do for you?
What was accomplished for you, random dude?
Wearing a shirt that was apparently a moo-moo from Drew Carey's mom on the show.
What exactly is this?
He took a knee for me.
I'll take a stand for him.
What knee did he take for you?
What change has Colin Kaepernick effectuated?
Any?
Have things gotten better for black people because of Colin Kaepernick?
I missed it.
And Francis Maxwell finally says, if people rallying to support a man who protested injustice upsets you, but the injustice doesn't, you are part of the problem.
Again, name the injustice, and I am happy to protest it with you.
But don't tell me that it's an injustice because a second string quarterback who can't throw a forward pass can't get a job because he also alienates fans because he sits for the national anthem.
Okay, so again, that's step number one in the Democrats' plan to alienate all America, is to pick issues like Colin Kaepernick and Confederate statues.
Okay, step two is to continue to pick the worst candidates you can possibly find.
So, step two meant last year picking Hillary Clinton, and they're still trotting out Hillary Clinton as though she's a thing.
The audio from her new book, What Happened, which I really think it should be called What the Hell Happened, but it's called What Happened.
And here is audio of Hillary Clinton reading from What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The only book that she's ever going to sell, by the way, because all her other books are garbage.
But I love this.
She says maybe her big problem was that she didn't call Trump a creep.
Yes, your big problem, Hillary, is that you didn't play the woman card enough.
I'm sure that was it.
I'm sure that if you'd only done this, that would have changed everything.
It was incredibly uncomfortable.
He was literally breathing down my neck.
My skin crawled.
It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, well, what would you do?
Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he weren't repeatedly invading your space?
Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly, back up, you creep.
Get away from me.
I know you love to intimidate women, but you can't intimidate me, so back up.
Okay, so what I love about that is that that's such a jerk store response, right?
It's like a year after this happened, and now she finally came up with the response she should have said.
Because if she had said that, by the way, it would have gone over like gangbusters.
It really would have.
I mean, she would have done a lot better to strike back at Trump by using sort of Trumpian language, but she didn't.
Also, I have a hard time believing that Hillary Clinton has a problem hanging around creepy men.
Her husband is an alleged rapist, gang.
Okay, if you're talking about people who have literally breathed down her neck, last time Bill Clinton tried to breathe down her neck, she tossed a lamp at him.
So this routine where she was really victimized by Donald Trump because he was within four feet of her is really amazing.
And this was the lady they thought was gonna win.
They thought she definitely had to win.
I can't imagine why she lost.
And then, there's a Hillary Clinton aide who was out there yesterday saying that Hillary would have won if not for Russia.
Yeah, keep banging this drum, you idiot.
Do you think she could have won if Russia didn't hack the election?
Yes.
You think she would have?
Somebody powder that guy's forehead.
I think there are a number of factors, including Jim Comey, Putin not minding his business, third, the historical curse of third term.
I think any of those things, if you could change them, she lost by 70,000 votes in three states.
Okay, so, again, they're just going to keep complaining about this, which means they're going to keep picking bad candidates, because the closer they think this election was, the more they think that they don't have to change anything.
And that's what they're doing now.
So who are the bad candidates they're going to pick?
Well, they're talking about Kamala Harris.
Seriously.
Like the senator from here, from my great, stupid state of California, Kamala Harris.
They're gonna pick that trash heap.
This lady, who legitimately can't string together three tweets without making a big boo-boo.
Kamala Harris was a garbage Attorney General, and now she's made her entire name on being a black woman in the United States Senate, saying things that are outrageous, and the entire Democratic Party cheers for her because intersectionality!
Woo-hoo, she's black, she's a woman, woo-hoo!
Okay, here is what the polls say about Trump versus Kamala Harris.
Right now, If Bernie Sanders were to run against Trump, this is the last poll I saw, Bernie Sanders would win 53 to 39.
53 to 39.
If Joe Biden were to run against Donald Trump, he would win 51 to 38.
And if Kamala Harris were to run against Trump, she would be dead even with him at 41 to 40.
So which one of those three candidates are the Democrats looking most seriously at?
Yep, they're looking at Kamala Harris.
They're looking at Cory Booker.
They're looking at all the people who fulfill the minority checklist.
This is what they're interested in because they're dumb.
So, that's step two.
Pick bad issues.
Pick bad issues with step one.
Pick bad candidates is step two.
Okay, step three I will get to in just a moment.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Upside.
So, as I have been telling you for a while, the best way to save money when you travel is going to Upside.com.
You can buy flights individually or hotels individually from Upside, but you can also You can also bundle them, and that's really what saves you the serious cash.
It's great for business travel, particularly last minute business travel.
And the more you bundle, the more you save.
And you also get a gift card from places like Amazon.com.
So the way this works is you use your company credit card in order to book the airline, and then you have an account on the Upside.com website.
And boom, an Amazon gift card just pops right up in your account.
And you are free to use that, not your company.
You are personally free to use that.
They have expert navigators who are there to help you book the right flight and the right hotel 24-7.
They give you all the options if you fly into a different airport, if you stay at a different hotel, if you choose a different time or a different day.
They have people who are available by phone, by chat, by social and email to help you all the way through.
It's basically a concierge service.
It's fantastic.
Right now, give them a try.
When you use promo code Ben at Upside.com, you are guaranteed to get at least a $100 Amazon.com gift card on your package purchase.
That is code Ben to get a $100 gift card for free.
So make sure that you use the promo code at checkout at Upside.com and you get that $100 Amazon.com gift card for free on your package purchase.
Minimum purchase is required.
You can see the site for complete details.
You save on your flight, you save on your hotel, and you get the gift card kicked back to you personally, which is pretty awesome.
Upside.com.
Use that promo code, Ben.
Okay, so...
Step three.
Step one, again, to recap.
Step one was pick unpopular issues.
Step two, pick unpopular candidates.
Step three, be a dumbass fascist.
Okay, so this is the new thing that the left has decided they're going to do.
Over the last few years, you know, they're going to shut down people like me when I go to speak at UC Berkeley.
They're going to protest outside, but not protest, get violent.
They're going to try to use the mechanisms of law in order to shut down people from speaking.
It's really insane.
Most Americans are not interested in shutting down free speech.
What's funny is that overall, most Americans are not interested in shutting down free speech, but they're all in favor of shutting down speech from the other side.
So this is why we have checks and balances in this country.
It's why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place.
If it were up to people on the right, there was a poll that said that, I think it was a plurality of right-wingers would be in favor of shutting down CNN.
A poll on the left, I'm sure, would be a plurality would be in favor of shutting down Fox News.
We're all in favor of shutting each other up.
Everyone's a little fascist.
Except that when it comes to the broad principle, we're not.
If you ask them, are you in favor of shutting down free speech?
They'll say no.
And that is the protection for free speech.
We can't rely on each other's goodwill and good nature to protect each other.
We have to rely on the fact that we know that if we attempt to encroach on somebody else's free speech, they will encroach on ours.
Well, the left has decided this is now going completely out the window.
There was an op-ed in the Washington Post, I think yesterday, talking about how free speech should go by the wayside for certain college speakers.
Right?
Free speech doesn't apply to people who are speaking hate speech.
This is a new talking point.
So here, for example, is a columnist from Law News, which is supposed to be a legal outlet.
Her name is Elora Nanos, and she was on with Tucker on Fox News last night.
And here she is basically saying that free speech should not be defended if it's speech that she doesn't like.
In many of these cases with these white supremacist groups, if you look at their mission statements, you will see that their underlying mission basically is genocide.
So if that's what they're trying to do, it has to be taken in that context.
Okay, so just because their underlying mission is gross does not mean that they are actually violating free speech protections.
It doesn't.
I mean, lots of people say gross things all the time that I hate and despise, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
They say this stuff all the time.
But that has no impact on whether that has protected speech or not.
What the left is trying to do is declare that Donald Trump is the real threat to free speech, so they can shut down Trump.
They're trying to declare that the right is the real threat to free speech, so they can shut down the right.
So here is a perfect example of this.
On ABC, there is this commentator whose name is, she's the senior White House correspondent actually, named Cecilia Vega, and she was on Good Morning America, and she suggested that Trump's speech, in which he ripped on the media, should actually be illegal.
It's basically incitement.
Well, George, this was incitement, plain and simple.
I turned my cell phone camera on the crowd just so you could see the reaction there as we were on the stage.
That's what it looks like when the president turns the crowd on you.
The president said that journalists hate this country.
That's what he told this crowd.
This was an assault that went on and on and on.
And, George, I've got to tell you, this one felt different.
It really feels like a matter of time, frankly, before someone gets hurt.
Okay, so I love that the left is willing to say this.
It was only a matter of time until some Bernie Sanders supporter snapped and tried to shoot a bunch of Republican Congress people, but you didn't hear any of this talk from the left.
It's only with regard to the right.
And this is the new talking point, is that it's not free speech for you, because everything you say is incitement.
Everything I say is true and wonderful and glorious, but everything you say is incitement.
Democratic representative John Garamendi from California, he says the same thing.
He actually said that Trump's attacks on the media, it was just like Hitler!
It was exactly like Hitler!
Let me explain!
Man that is totally, totally out of control and engaged in rhetoric that slams the press, which by the way happens to be the very first thing that a dictator will do to secure his position, is to delegitimize the press.
And Trump has been at that for his entire campaign, in fact his entire Don't you understand?
He must be shut up because he's trying to delegitimize us!
This nonsense where the left suggests that everything the right says is incitement.
Listen, I don't like a lot of what Trump said at that rally.
I talked about it on the show, but it was not incitement.
You know, later in the show I'm going to do the big ideas, what we do on Thursdays here.
I'm going to explain to you what the legal standard for incitement is, so that you know.
So that you don't fall prey to the stupidity of people who say things like, fire in a crowded theater and have no idea what the hell they're talking about.
I'm going to give you the full background on what the law says about all of this.
Suffice it to say, what Trump did the other night was not actual incitement.
It was not incitement under the law.
Okay, so those are the three things.
First three steps, and we'll get to the fourth in a second.
So first three steps were pick unpopular issues, pick horrifying candidates, and then be a fascist.
Okay, step four.
is I think the most telling one of all.
But for that, you're gonna have to go and subscribe.
So $9.99 a month gets you a subscription to Daily Wire.
You get the rest of this show live on video.
Later when we post it, you get it free of the ads that I talk about on the show.
You also get Andrew Klavan's show live that's happening in about an hour here.
You get Michael Knowles' show live, God help us, at 12:30 today.
Cassie Dillon is sitting in here and I think she's on Michael Knowles' show later.
So that's a double recommendation for not watching.
But if you do wanna watch, then you can subscribe for $9.99 a month and check that out.
Also, for the annual subscription, you get all those things, plus the website for free, all of these wonderful things, and you get this.
This Tumblr.
Did you see it magically appear?
This Tumblr is so incredible that it doesn't even have to be present, and it's still there.
It's there in heart and mind.
No one brought this here and just put it on the desk in the middle of the show because we had forgotten it or anything, okay?
It was just, it wasn't there, and then it was there.
That's how great this Tumblr is.
It's where you need it to be at all times for $99 annually.
You get this, the magical Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumblr.
It'll make your life better.
You'll never have to look for it because it just appears wherever you're looking.
It's actually slightly creepy.
You open up a closet, boom, there it is.
You get up in the morning, go in the bathroom, boom, it's on top of the toilet.
You just never know.
But it's great.
You're going to love it.
$99 a year gets you the subscription plus this, the greatest of all tumblers ever created by God or man.
So you'll get all of those things.
Or if you just want to listen later on iTunes or SoundCloud, go over there, subscribe, leave us a review.
We always do appreciate it.
It helps us with the rankings.
So thank you for that.
And we are the largest and fastest growing conservative talk show, podcast, on the interwebs, in America, in the world, in the universe, anywhere.
All right, so we're now finishing the square dance of idiocy from the Democratic Party, how they are blowing all of their political capital on nonsense.
Again, pick unpopular issues, pick crappy candidates, be a fascist, and finally, claim you are objective.
Yes, this is the big one.
So last night, I was on CNN with Don Lemon.
And Don Lemon, you recall, we played it on the show.
The night before, he had gone on this long rant about Trump, how Trump was crazy, and how Trump was attacking the media, and how this was evil and insane, and how he was mentally unstable and all.
So I was on with Lemon, and I said to Don, Don, I don't think that you're doing yourself a service when you do this.
Trump's entire case is that you guys are emotionally biased against him, that you have an animus against him, a specific hatred for him, and that you react emotionally to everything he says, and that you don't give him a fair shake because you don't like him.
Or you don't like his issues.
And Don says, no, no, no, it's not that I don't like him, I just think that he lies.
I say, well, then why don't you just fact check him in calm and clean manner instead of questioning his mental health, for example.
And then I said, listen, his whole case about Confederate statues, for example, is that you are stumping for a position while proclaiming that you're not.
And Don says, well, you know, I have a view on it, but that doesn't make me biased.
I say, well, Don, let me ask you a question.
Do you want the Confederate statues to go down or not?
And Don gives a long explanation about why Confederate statues are evil and racist.
And then he says, but I don't really have a perspective on it.
I said, Don, really?
Like, you really don't have a perspective?
This is the problem, okay?
So the media proclaim themselves objective, and then they do things that are completely non-objective.
And then they expect us all to fall for it.
This is the chief critique.
I don't spend a lot of time on this program ripping on MSNBC.
I spend a lot of time on CNN or the New York Times or the Washington Post, because MSNBC does not claim to be objective.
I laugh at the people on MSNBC, but I don't spend a lot of time trying to suggest that they are doing something dishonest, because they're not.
If Rachel Maddow says I'm of the left, here's my perspective.
She's wrong, but she's honest.
If people on CNN say, I have no perspective.
I am just, I was bestowed by God with the wisdom and ability to objectively remove myself from situations and speak clearly and truly about things without dint of perspective.
It's nonsense.
It's nonsense.
And so you see the same media claiming their objective, going nuts on Trump, and this allows Trump to win.
Trump's entire battle against the media is lent credence by the ineffective silliness of the media claiming that they're objective.
So Anderson Cooper, who claims he's an objective journalist, this was last night on his show.
Does this look like someone who's objective with regard to Trump?
Supporters of the president say his base doesn't care if the president lies or not, and many Republicans believe him over the media reporting about it.
So be it.
But even those who don't care if he lies have to at some point wonder, what drives it?
What is it that makes someone so uninhibited, so untethered by facts and the truth, Not just in random tweets pounded out in the early morning hours while the president's watching morning news programs, but in settings like last night, lying directly to those who support him the most.
As one Trump biographer who joins us later tonight said, it might be fruitless to get inside the man's head, better just to look at what he does.
And when you do that, a thread becomes clear.
Whether it's insisting his inauguration crowds were the biggest, even though they weren't.
Or that he won a historic electoral vote victory, which he didn't.
Or that he said all the right things about a victim of domestic terrorism when so many Americans clearly believe he did not.
With President Trump, there's always one constant.
Himself.
Okay, so here's the thing.
What Anderson Cooper is saying, forget about whether it's true or false for a second because I think some of the critique here is actually not wrong.
I think some of it's overblown, but I think some of it's right.
I think Trump obviously is an incredibly narcissistic guy.
A very egocentric guy who takes himself far too seriously.
I think all of that's true, but I am an opinion commentator.
Anderson Cooper is a quote-unquote journalist.
He's a quote-unquote objective journalist.
The media, by proclaiming that they are objective, end up destroying their own credibility because how can we trust them to tell us the truth when they're not even telling us the truth about themselves?
Joe Scarborough makes the same mistake.
Joe Scarborough's a little better because at least Scarborough is pretty clearly an opinion guy.
But, you know, Scarborough, I mean, you talk about credibility problems.
Listen, I don't mind Joe Scarborough all that much from time to time, but this is a guy who spent a lot of the primary season telling us how Donald Trump was wonderful and great and shorting it up with him and doing full events with him, and now look at him.
James Clapper said in August 2017 was identical to what Michael Hayden warned about in August of 2016.
And you know, you can go back and look at the transcripts.
Mika was saying, watch out, America.
Watch out, Republicans.
You better not do this.
Is this what you really want to do?
And I guess what's chilling is that Americans, enough Americans did want that.
They don't care.
Okay, again, this lament would have more teeth if you hadn't propped the guy up for a year.
When the media do these sorts of things, all they end up doing is promoting Trump, because Trump says, you guys are dishonest, and he's right.
There is a baseline level of dishonesty with the media.
The problem for Trump is that his critique goes further than that.
He says, not that you guys are dishonest about yourselves, but everything you say is infused with lies.
That's not true.
Some of the stuff they report is true.
In fact, most of the stuff, I'm going to say something that's very unpopular in right-wing media to say, but this is true, okay?
Here is the fact.
The New York Times and the Washington Post, these newspapers that we think are wildly biased and to the left and we hate, they are biased.
They are to the left.
If they were not expending hundreds of millions of dollars on reporters, the news business would be significantly poorer.
The fact is that sites like mine over at Daily Wire, we're a vastly growing website.
We have something like 65 million page views in the last month and 16 million unique visitors.
We're a very, very large website.
We rely on the reporting of other sites in order for us to supplement our own commentary.
Everyone does this.
Okay, so the idea that everything that you read in the media is not true, it's not true.
Okay, that's not true.
Everything you read in the media may be infused with bias, but that doesn't mean it's untrue.
This is where Trump's critique goes off the rails.
It is fair to call out the media for their bias.
It is not fair to say that they are lying all the time, because that is not true, and that is not accurate.
But when the media play into that, By refusing to acknowledge their own bias, all they're doing is lending Trump credibility.
The more animated they get, the more emotional they get, the less they engage in fact-checking, and the more they engage in shouting and screaming, the more they end up destroying their own credibility and lending credence to everything that Trump accuses them of.
It's when I said to Lemon last night, I said to Don, listen dude, you actually want to defeat Trump?
I know you do.
If you actually want to defeat Trump, all you have to do is something very simple.
Turn the emotion down to one, and turn the fact-checking up to ten.
Because right now, all I'm hearing is the fact-checking at one, and the emotion at ten.
And that's what everyone else is hearing too, and so it sounds like you guys are just slap-fighting each other.
Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then I'll explain to you, in the Big Idea, what the legal standard for actual incitement is under the Constitution.
Okay, so first, things I like.
So thanks to President Trump looking directly into the solar eclipse, like Emperor Maga Maga, we are doing things related to blindness this week.
And the most famous blind person in history is, of course, Homer, and his best book is The Iliad, the epic poem The Iliad.
It really is an easy read, believe it or not.
I know a lot of people don't like to read poetry, but it's not really poetry.
It's an adventurous story that's told in meter, and it is fantastic.
The reason that it's told that way, of course, is because originally it wasn't written.
Originally, it was essentially a song.
And people memorized it and handed it down, just like there are portions of the Bible that are sung because it was easier for people to remember.
That is also true with regard to—a lot of ancient literature was written in meter and poetry.
It's one of the reasons why, for example, when you read the Bible, the way that it was handed down, there's an actual song to it.
Like when I did my Bar Mitzvah Parsha, and when I did my portion, my Torah portion from the Bible, there's an actual tune that you're taught, and so you can actually remember what it is that you're reading.
When you read from a Torah scroll, not to get sidetracked, but when you read from a Torah scroll, there are actually no vowels and there's no punctuation.
So that means they actually have to memorize the vowels and the punctuation.
That's because of oral transmission for thousands of years.
It's actually very expensive and difficult to write a Torah.
Okay, the same is true for the Iliad, where a lot of it was memorized and handed down, but it is a wonderful expression of the ancient ideas of heroism and valor, and a fascinating look into the ancient world, the Iliad.
So go and get a copy of it and check it out.
Okay, other things that I like.
So yesterday, I have to say, my listeners are just fantastic.
So yesterday I called on you to go out and please make me some videos of the most wonderful, most wonderful video that I have seen in the last year.
And that was this Antifa protester getting knocked right in the balls by a gas canister.
And it is fantastic.
And so some people have created various versions of this and I want to show you All of the various versions that have been created.
And I want to particularly thank several people who listened directly to my request.
And I do think it turned out the best.
My direct request for this to be set to Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You.
And we'll play that last because it's just spectacular.
It came out just- you guys are great.
It came out just like I imagined it.
You know, I imagined it, the picture was in my head, and it came out just as I had imagined it.
It was beautiful.
It sprang directly from my head to your keyboard and now onto your screen that you're about to watch.
So first, you have to see this in slow motion because the slow motion is pretty spectacular.
Okay.
Okay, so that...
You know, in the movie Idiocracy, there's a show called Ow, My Balls.
And they say that's sort of the end of Western civilization.
Yeah, that's what we're going to do now.
We call this segment Ow, My Balls.
OK, so this also was great.
Somebody sent this video to WWE announcing, and it is very, very good.
Oh, no!
Oh, come on!
Oh, no!
No, don't do this, John!
Oh my God!
Well, somebody's not going to die, man!
And that's enough!
The poor son of a...
He's broken his head!
Okay, and then somebody put this little gift together.
I'm still undecided on GIF or JIF, but here is it.
This is pretty amazing.
I love it.
This is Trump.
They flipped around the footage so that it works visibly.
Trump is not actually a lefty, but here's Trump.
And for those who can't see, it's Trump golfing.
And then it morphs right into this video.
It's pretty spectacular.
Looks like Trump is knocking the golf ball right into this guy's crotch.
Okay, uh, and then somebody did the the ever-present internet classic that is the mashup of the Titanic music with, uh, with pepper balls, which is what this guy has now been called.
I love it so much.
Here it is It's never gonna get old man It's so good.
Again, I think the best thing about this is Colin Kaepernick apparently found a job rushing this guy off the field to play after this happened.
Okay, and finally, the one that I requested and I must have gotten.
10 to 15 people who actually went ahead and did this independently of one another.
Sorry we couldn't coordinate it, but credit to all of you.
You all get credit.
This is one of the versions that was put out online yesterday.
I think it is a fantastic version.
This is Pepperballs, set to Whitney Houston's I Will Always Love You.
You just saw one of the protesters go up there and actually kick a can of that.
Yeah.
And I will always love you.
My will always love you.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I need to watch that one again.
I'm sorry.
We're going to do it again.
Play it again.
Run it back.
You just saw one of the protesters go up there and actually kick a can of that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And now I will always love you.
Oh, it's not often you get to laugh at somebody's pain.
Uh, and it's great.
It's great.
So that's, uh, okay.
Thank you all for, for doing your level best to make The Ben Shapiro Show great again.
Fantastic.
Okay.
Time for a quick, a couple of quick things that I hate, and then I will explain to you what legal incitement is.
No, this doesn't count as legal incitement.
This counts as me laughing at a guy getting knocked in the crotch for kicking gas canisters at the cops.
Okay, so.
Time for some things I hate.
Okay, so the first thing is the CEO of an organization called CloudFare.
CloudFare is a hosting organization, and the CEO banned the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer.
Suffice it to say, I am not particularly hot on the Daily Stormer.
I think that Nazis are evil.
You see this thing on the top of my head?
It means that they would have murdered me, right?
So I'm not big on neo-Nazis.
I'm not big on Nazis.
But I'm also not big on Matthew Prince, who's the CEO of Cloudflare.
So he discussed the web hosting company's decision to remove Daily Stormer from their servers, and here was his explanation.
I found the Daily Stormer repugnant.
I am not shedding a tear that that content isn't online anymore.
But one of my fellow employees came up to me the day that we took it offline and said, hey, is this the day the internet dies?
There was no due process.
OK, and then he went on to say that he said, I am deeply concerned I had the authority and the power to wake up one morning and say I'm done.
I'm sick of this, so screw them.
They're off the internet.
But he did it anyway.
And this is the problem.
If you recognize That your goal here, in a service like CloudFare, which is not an ideological service, and you didn't have any preconditions as to what could be posted, obviously.
I assume they still host a bunch of bad sites, things that most people would consider bad.
If you are essentially posing yourself as an open server and then you're banning people, it's not illegal.
It's a private company.
But it definitely verges on the nasty to violate your own prescriptions on free speech because What's to prevent him from knocking Daily Wire off his servers if he doesn't like the material that we're posting?
These standards are malleable.
I wish they weren't.
I wish they weren't.
I think there are things like Daily Stormer that virtually everyone agrees are garbage, but opinions change, right?
I mean, the fact is that now, if you are anti-same-sex marriage, you are considered so bad that they're going to get rid of you at Mozilla, right?
So where does the standard actually take place?
I think this is dangerous, dangerous thinking.
Okay, so I want to get right to the big idea because I think it's actually important to discuss this.
So the big idea Today we're going to discuss incitement.
You've heard the phrase, shouting fire in a crowded theater.
This is what people use as an excuse to shut down free speech.
Oh, the government should be able to shut you up, because it's just like shouting fire in a crowded theater.
No, the point of shouting fire in a crowded theater is that you are, number one, saying something that is untrue, because if there actually is a fire, then you have to shout fire in a crowded theater.
But number two, if you shout fire in a crowded theater, not only does it have to be untrue, it also has to present actual danger.
The problem with doing it in a crowded theater is that presumably people will trample each other to get out based on a lie.
That was the point of the language.
It comes from a case called Schenck v. United States.
There's a long history in the country of censorship, and then over time, censorship has actually gotten less stringent, not more stringent, in the United States.
In this case from 1919, the court ruled that censorship under the 1917 Espionage Act under Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, was okay for a pamphlet from socialists claiming that the draft was a form of slavery.
They suggested that the language created a clear and present danger of bringing about lawbreaking.
And so Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, the question in every case is whether the words used are in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger.
So this created what they call the clear and present danger standard for what was not protected by the First Amendment.
They create a clear and present danger.
In 1923, there's another case called Gitlo versus New York.
When the court held, that using a criminal anarchy statute to prosecute people advocating for the overthrow of the U.S.
government was fine.
The court said, it does not restrain the advocacy of changes in the form of government by constitutional and lawful means.
What it prohibits is language advocating, advising, or teaching the overthrow of government by unlawful means.
These words imply urging to action.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, the guy who wrote the Fire in a Crowded Theater line, he voted against this.
He said that did not create a clear and present danger.
Where this really was rebutted, where this entire line of argument was really rebutted, so when people say, fire in a crowded theater, it really doesn't apply anymore, that's because of a 1969 case called Brandenburg v. Ohio.
Brandenburg v. Ohio was a case in which the Supreme Court held that speech tending to promote lawlessness or advocating illegal activity cannot be restrained by criminal laws unless the speech, quote, is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
So that's a two-pronged test, right?
One, that my design is to produce in you some sort of violence action.
I say, Cassie, go shoot Mathis.
And that it has to be likely to actually produce that, right?
It's likely to incite or produce such action.
So I have to make a strong case for why she should shoot Mathis, like he's doing a crappy job today, right?
If I do that, then maybe it's illegal.
But in this particular case, the court found that a KKK rally, where somebody talked about revenge against the president and Congress, if they continued their scheme of supposedly oppressing whites, they said that is not incitement under the law.
So that's not incitement under the law.
Nothing that you saw today, nothing from Trump, nothing from Bernie Sanders, nothing that has been said on this program, none of it's incitement.
So next time somebody says fire in a crowded theater, suggest to them they don't know their law.
The governing standard is imminent lawless threat, okay?
The governing standard is imminent lawless action likely to incite.
That's the standard under Brandenburg v. Ohio.
That's the legal standard.
The left likes to cite the Supreme Court.
Okay, you can cite that case back to them, because that is the governing standard, not the old, clear, and present-danger standard that has largely been changed by Brandenburg.
Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow, and tomorrow, thank God, is a Friday.
We're getting close to the end of the week, folks, so be here tomorrow.
Make sure you subscribe so you can be part of the mailbag, and we'll see you then.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
▲
Export Selection