All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 29, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
41:30
Everything Is Political, Including Hurricanes | Ep. 372
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The left has to find somebody to blame for Hurricane Harvey.
Joel Osteen gets himself in trouble in Houston.
Plus, we'll talk about the latest from Berkeley.
And yes, there are developments.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So you may not know the difference at all, but it is 1,000 degrees in this studio.
Our air conditioning is broken today, so if you see me and it looks like I'm sweating copiously, or if it doesn't look like I'm sweating at all because I'm made of ice and steel, it's all the same.
It's very warm in the studio.
Nonetheless, we will soldier through because that's the kind of people we are.
It's just like Normandy.
Because on the left, everything is like Normandy.
So in any case, we'll talk about everything having to do with Joel Osteen, whether or not he actually barred people from his giant Lakewood church in Houston.
There's been a lot of talk online about that.
We also talk about the left's obvious and deep desire to peg Hurricane Harvey on someone and something beyond weather.
We'll talk about all that stuff, but first I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Bowlin Branch.
So, when it comes to sleep, as I have said many times on the program, I stink at it.
I'm good at a great many things, not including dancing, but another thing I'm bad at is sleep.
Sleep is not my thing.
But thanks to Bowlin Branch my sleep quality has gotten significantly better.
Bowlin Branch makes the best sheets there are.
There are five stages of sleep and all of them can be better with these sheets.
The fact is they are 100% organic cotton.
They breathe better.
Don't worry about the thread count on your sheets.
This is what I've learned from Bowlin Branch.
You go to the grocery store and and outside in the parking lot there's some skeezy guy who's selling sheets you're like oh it's a thousand thread count i'm sure it's great no it turns out it's made of plastic and it's a tarp what you need is the organic cotton sheets over at bowlandbranch.com they don't make you pay the expensive retail price so you're paying about half the price you would for twice the quality of these kinds of sheets you can try them for 30 nights if you don't like them you can send them right back for a full refund if you don't like them and i promise you you will like them everyone who sleeps on bowl and branch sheets that i've talked to Really, really enjoys them.
The only sheets that we allow in our house are Bull and Branch.
Bought them for my kids, bought them for myself.
They are really terrific.
Go to bullandbranch.com today.
You get $50 off your first set of sheets plus free shipping when you use the promo code Ben.
Again, that's bullandbranch.com.
B-O-L-L-N-B-R-A-N-C-H.com and use that promo code Ben.
You get $50 off your first set of sheets plus free shipping.
Three ex-presidents and Bill Clinton's lovers, presumably, sleep on Bull and Branch sheets.
Okay, so the big controversy that has lit the internet aflame is happening over Joel Osteen's church, Lakewood Church.
So for those who don't know Joel Osteen, Joel Osteen is a preacher of what they call prosperity gospel.
Prosperity gospel Is basically the notion that if you follow God's rules and give lots of charity, that God will be nice to you and make you rich.
This is the God is gumball machine view of life.
I am not a fan.
There are people in the Jewish community who do something similar.
They do this routine where it's like, well, if you give a lot of charity, then you will surely prosper, and you will do better in life, and there will be material benefits.
There's certain behavior I think that you follow, secular or religious, and you're more likely to prosper.
Like, Don't have kids until you're married.
Finish high school.
Make good decisions with your money.
Don't blow it all on booze and strippers.
These are obvious things that if you follow God's plan, or basic human morality, you're more likely to be prosperous, but that's not really the baseline of prosperity gospel.
Prosperity gospel says God wants you to be wealthy, God wants you to be rich, and therefore, If you pray hard enough and give enough charity, and you act in a gospel-forward manner, then you will inevitably become wealthy or rich, because God wants you to be rich.
Joel Osteen has made a fortune off of this.
He lives in a $10.5 million home in Texas.
He also has a show, a televangelism show, that's watched by some 42 million people a week, I guess.
That's just enormous.
Lakewood Church was an old Houston Rockets arena, I believe.
Made over for his church.
It holds 17,000 people and it is packed every Sunday.
So, with all of this going on with Joel Osteen, with his belief system, there's no question that a lot of people are looking for a reason to jump on him.
So the reason came yesterday.
When it came out online that Joel Osteen had said we are shutting down services for Saturday and Sunday over at the church and we're basically closing the premises.
And a lot of people said, well, hold on, why aren't you using this as a shelter?
Why aren't you using this as a place where people can go and sleep, you know, blow up some air mattresses, hand out some food, you're a church.
Do some church things.
And the social media people started to go nuts.
So the church itself said, we are flooded, right?
I mean, the parts of the premises are flooded.
This is not a good place to go.
We're coordinating with the city.
And then people started tweeting out photos of what things look like over by Lakewood Church like right now.
And it looks nice and dry over there by August 27th, August 28th.
Here's a picture of what it looked over by Lakewood Church.
A lot of people were blasting Osteen over all of this, but then Osteen's church released some photos of parts of the premises and what they look like, and you can see that some parts of the premises are flooded, right?
You can see here that this thing looks like it's about under two feet of water, this pillar over here.
And here is underground.
Looks like there's about six inches of water in the parking lot.
So clearly they're not getting off scot-free.
But everybody is eager to jump on Osteen.
So critics of Osteen are eager to jump on him because they think that his preaching of the gospel is materialistic and non-spiritual.
And a lot of people on the left are eager to jump on any pastor whatsoever.
So I think that before people on the right religiously make common cause with people on the left who dislike religion generally against Osteen, they should take into account what's really going on here.
A lot of people on the left would have bashed any church, any major church, that didn't open its doors because they're looking for an opportunity to bash religious people.
That said, Osteen should have known better than all of this, obviously.
Osteen should have known that there are people who are going to look at the prosperity of his church, how big it is, and say he should have been doing more throughout all of this.
But it's not quite as clear cut as the internet wants to make it, and that's why I wanted to sound off on that today and sort of let you know what the true story is, that a lot of this – a lot of the criticism of Osteen seems a little bit overblown to me.
I think you can criticize his ideology without criticizing his particular actions in this case because I'm just not sure that his actions in this particular case are worthy ofire.
I don't have enough information, and from what I'm seeing, according to the city and according to Osteen, it doesn't look like he was shutting his doors.
I mean, there have been prior disasters.
I think during Hurricane Rita, he opened his doors to people who are looking for shelter.
They've now opened their doors.
They've got the air mattresses out.
They're saying it has nothing to do with social media.
I'm sure it does have something to do with social media.
That said, the ire seems to me somewhat overblown and Osteen should have known better because people are out to get him and people are out to get religious communities, even ones that I am not a fan of his gospel, but still.
Religious leaders have to know that there is a double standard when it comes to religious leadership.
The things a secular leader would do and stink at are not going to be taken the same way if a religious leader does them because they're just held to a higher standard, particularly people who are already sort of They're suspected of prospering off the Gospels.
Okay, so with the Osteen thing out of the way, I want to talk a little bit about the left's perspective on the hurricane itself.
So the left has been jumping to conclusions about the hurricane, looking for somebody to blame.
A few years back, during Hurricane Katrina, I think it was Pat Robertson, Actually, it was John Hagee, who was an evangelical pastor, and he suggested that during Hurricane Katrina, the reason for Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans had to do with God being unhappy with New Orleans.
There were suggestions like this after 9-11.
There were suggestions like this during some hurricane seasons in the late 90s.
There were religious leaders who would come out and say this sort of stuff.
Jerry Falwell, I believe, said it about 9-11.
This idea that God was angry, and therefore he punished particular people with the weather, or he punished particular people with nature.
And people on the religious side of the aisle and people on the secular side of the aisle came out and said, that's inappropriate.
You don't know God's mind.
Who are you to say that God is doing this because he doesn't like what's going on in New Orleans?
I mean, after all, Houston seems like a relatively conservative place and now you've got the hurricane hitting this place.
The secular left went nuts, right?
The secular left said, how dare you attribute the sins of the people, attribute the hurricanes or the natural disasters to the sins of the people?
How dare you do all those things?
The truth is that the secular hard left is just as religious as some of the people on the hard right.
They're just as eager to look for some cause outside of the weather to explain what just happened in Houston.
And this is a tendency of the human mind is to jump to a conclusion, these kind of just-so stories about why things happen the way they do.
Sometimes you feel like you can see God's hand in the universe and you feel like it's relatively clear.
You know, the fact that Hitler didn't move on Dunkirk seems like a pretty clear God's hand in history moment.
When it comes to natural disasters, which are happening constantly around the world, it seems a little bit much to me to attribute those to God wanting to take revenge on particular populations.
But the secular left, which hates that, is perfectly willing to ascribe the hurricane to other things.
So their current god is, of course, global warming.
So there's been a whole spate of articles about how global warming is what caused this hurricane.
Never mind that hurricanes have actually been down in recent years.
There was a hurricane gap for a while where it seemed like the number of hurricanes making landfall in the United States had dropped pretty significantly.
The left said that that was due to global warming.
Now the left is saying that the size of this hurricane is due to global warming.
Their suggestion is that the sort of gas fuel for hurricanes is warm water, that when hurricanes are moving over warm water, then the water evaporates more quickly.
And because it evaporates more quickly, it becomes part of the vortex, and it leads to harder, longer hurricanes.
The idea would be that cold water presumably would quash a lot of those hurricanes.
So Politico has a long article today about how global warming is to blame for all of this.
There are a bunch of people on the left who have been tweeting out that global warming is to blame for all of this.
That it's because of all these evil oil companies in Texas that all this is happening.
Cenk Iyger, who I've debated, obviously, at Politicon.
He tweeted out, US taxpayers should help people of Houston in light of this tragedy, but not one dime to oil companies who helped cause it in the first place.
The suggestion being that oil companies drilling and providing a good service to people who need oil, they are responsible for the size and the scope of this hurricane.
Politico has a long article, as I say today, all about how global warming is the problem.
Their article is titled, Harvey is what climate change looks like.
A guy named Eric Holthaus wrote it.
He says, in all of U.S.
history, there's never been a storm like Hurricane Harvey.
That fact is increasingly clear, even though the rains are still falling and the water levels in Houston are still rising.
But there's an uncomfortable point.
That so far, everyone is skating around.
We knew this would happen decades ago.
We knew this would happen.
We didn't care.
Now is the time to say it as loudly as possible.
Harvey is what climate change looks like.
Well, not really.
I mean, not really.
So they say that Houston has been sprawled out into the swamp for decades, largely unplanned and unzoned.
Now that pavement has been transformed.
It has transformed the bayous into surging torrents and shunted Harvey's floodwaters towards homes and businesses.
So these all might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a bad idea.
What does that have to do with global warming?
Nothing.
It has to do instead with urban planning.
That has nothing to do with global warming.
I'm going to explain why this global warming stuff really is evidence-less in just a second, even according to some of the left's favorite sources.
But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the USCCA.
So, if you are ever forced to defend yourself with a firearm, forced to defend your wife, your child, your family, it's a decision that you make on the spot.
Try to picture the instant you know that the threat is real and you're actually going to have to pull the trigger.
Many of us know that we would act, we know what we would do, but we wouldn't know how to do it and we wouldn't know what to do in the aftermath because the police will show up and they will ask you questions and they may indeed arrest you.
This is why you need protection from the law even though you are acting in accordance with the law.
Get self-defense insurance from the USCCA.
They will support you with 100% upfront coverage for criminal defense, civil suits, and bail funding.
They have 24-7 critical response teams, so it's the middle of the night, doesn't matter, USCCA is there, local attorney coordination, and more.
Visit defendmyfamilynow.com for coverage starting at just $13 per month.
We already know that if something bad happens, we're going to have to defend our loved ones, but now we should be prepared for the legal and financial battle that is sure to follow.
Go activate your membership today at defendmyfamilynow.com You'll also be entered to win a brand new gun.
Go to defendmyfamilynow.com to get a chance to win a gun.
They'll give you the training that you need, plus they give you the defense that you need in case you get in legal trouble for exercising your second amendment rights.
Okay, so the left is trying to blame global warming for all of this.
As I say, Politico has a long article about this.
They say Harvey is the third 500-year flood to hit the Houston area in the past three years, but Harvey isn't a class by itself.
By the time the storm leaves the region on Wednesday, an estimated 40 to 60 inches of rain will have fallen on parts Of Houston, so much rain has already fallen that the National Weather Service has had to add additional colors to its map to account for the extreme totals.
They say this is already the worst rainstorm in US history.
Okay, so the idea here is that global warming has made the world warmer.
But what happens next is critically important to us.
Climate change is making rainstorms everywhere worse, but particularly on the Gulf Coast.
Since the 1950s, Houston has seen a 167% increase in the frequency of the most intense downpours.
Okay, so the idea here is that global warming has made the world warmer.
This is what's causing this increased intensity of storms.
Okay, there are a few questions here.
One, we still don't know how much human activity has actually contributed to this level of global warming.
We don't.
Even if you accept the IPCC's kind of average temperature increase, which they say is going to increase about 7 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century, it's still unclear from most scientists what percentage of that is due to human activity.
It's unclear what the solution to that is.
And it's unclear that you can actually attribute individual weather events like this to global warming itself.
Now I'm going to quote you the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the government agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.
It says, quote, it is premature to conclude that human activities and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.
That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations and are not yet confidently modeled.
In other words, we don't know.
We just don't know.
So they said that, you know, there's not enough information to know at this point what the story is going to be.
They say anthropogenic warming by the end of the 21st century will likely cause tropical cyclones to have substantially higher rainfall rates than present-day ones, with a model projecting an increase of about 10 to 15 percent for rainfall rates, averaged within about 100 kilometers of the storm center.
How do they estimate that?
They say there's about a 66 percent likelihood that that is the case over the next century.
But the left wants to attribute a 100% likelihood now.
Okay, there's just not the science to prove that.
There just isn't.
The Atlantic has a very similar piece today talking about how climate change intensified Hurricane Harvey, but buried, it's like paragraph 21 of this piece, it says, All of this said, a storm like Harvey could have happened even if there was no climate change.
Planning experts have long fretted over the possibility of a major hurricane striking Houston.
Harvey is also a powerful hurricane, forming in one of the most hurricane-friendly regions of the world at the peak of hurricane season.
Storms similar to it would form in any climate.
Okay, this is a leftist publication, The Atlantic, saying all of this.
They say it's unclear what effect climate change is having on hurricane formation across the greater Atlantic Ocean.
So the idea that this is definitely attributable to global warming is just not backed.
It's just not supported.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't worry about it.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't do more climate research on it.
But the notion that this is absolutely clear and anybody who denies it is a global warming denier is just not correct.
It's just not true.
But the left has to attribute blame to somebody.
Keith Olbermann is now attributing blame to Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education.
This nutjob Olbermann.
Here's what he had to tweet out.
He said, this hurricane is going to do less damage to schools than you are, Mother Bleeper.
To Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education.
All she did was tweet out, our prayers are with all those in the path of Hurricane Harvey.
And he's angry at her.
And he's enraged at her.
There's a University of Tampa professor who was fired, I don't think he should have been fired for this, but he was fired for tweeting today that the hurricane happened to Trump supporters.
That they deserved that.
That Hurricane Harvey is attributable to people voting for Trump.
Just ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.
And again, I think there's a broader point to be made here, which is that the left is looking for some way to attribute bad things that happen in the world to the right.
We're constantly looking to government as the answer to all of our problems.
This demonstrates, I think, the problem with thinking in these terms generally.
When you look to government as the answer to all your problems, when you think that government is going to be God, it's going to protect you from all forms of vicissitudes.
When the left has its own prosperity gospel, well, if we pray to government, we pay it lots of taxes, it will stop hurricanes.
It'll stop global warming.
It'll fix all of our problems.
It'll prevent you from being poor.
Okay, all of this is nonsense.
Even religious people who don't believe in prosperity gospel understand that it's not God's job to make you prosperous.
It's your job to make you prosperous in acting in accordance with God's law.
Maybe you'll be more prosperous, maybe you won't.
Okay, there are no guarantees in any of this.
This is what a lot of religious people believe.
Even those of us who are deeply religious understand that they're, as we would say in Judaism, tzaddikim, they're righteous people who are poor.
Being righteous has no guarantee that God is going to grant you wealth in this life.
It just isn't.
But the left is so religious about government that they believe that if they just pay homage to government, if they hand over all their cash, if they give government control over the economy, that somehow hurricanes like this will be prevented.
Major hurricanes have been taking place on planet Earth for the last several million years.
The idea that you are going to sit around and say the government is certainly going to fix all of this if we just give it enough power is really silly.
But, you know, that's the left's worship.
That's the hard left's worship, is trying to blame things that happen around them on someone or something so that they don't have to take into account the fact that there's some randomness to the universe that they're simply not going to be able to prevent.
It's the same thing that Joe Biden used to say about how we could cure cancer if we just got government on the right page.
I'm pretty sure that the impediment to curing cancer is not will to cure cancer.
I'm fairly certain that everybody wants to cure cancer.
You know, Mr. Former Vice President.
But, again, when you worship at the altar of government, then you tend to think that it's going to prevent all of your problems if you just, if you just hand over all your money.
Katie Tuer sort of evidenced this.
Katie Tuer is a reporter over at NBC News, and she was asking Senator Ted Cruz about funding for Hurricane Harvey.
He's backed funding for Hurricane Harvey.
He did not back a bill that would have funded Hurricane Sandy because there was a lot of pork in it.
Again, the premise of the question seems to be the government can solve all the problems if stupid Republicans would just get out of the way.
Watch Cruz Schellacker on this question.
A lot of people are pointing out that you voted against aid for Sandy after that catastrophic storm up in the Northeast, that package back in 2012.
And they're pointing at you and saying you're asking for money now when you weren't willing to help the people in the Northeast.
What do you have to say to them?
Well, you know, look, there's time for political sniping later.
I think our focus needs to be on this crisis and this disaster.
It's not really political sniping, Senator.
These are people who needed money and who needed funding right after that storm.
I covered those people.
Many of them, just like those in Houston, lost absolutely everything they owned.
Okay, so again, she's going after him in these kind of blatant terms, but he's correct that the hurricane Sandy Bowl was laden with pork.
Why was that one laden with pork?
The reason that it was laden with pork is because, again, Democrats think that government is God, and they think that if they just donate all their money to the government, prosperity gospel will come upon them.
So for all the critiques of Joel Osteen's perspective, at least Joel Osteen's perspective still calls for some sort of worship of a higher power.
The higher power the Democrats worship, apparently, is the government itself.
Okay, so, I want to talk about the latest from Berkeley and what Antifa's riot on Sunday means for my appearance at Berkeley in just a second.
But for that, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
For $9.99 a month, you too can subscribe to dailywire.com.
That gets you the rest of today's show.
It gets you the rest of Every Day's show live.
It means that when we post it later, you don't have to watch the commercials.
It also means that you get Michael Moseley's show live.
It means that you get Andrew Klavan's show live.
So you get all of those things.
Plus, you get the mailbag, which is coming up on Friday.
You get to be a live participant in the mailbag.
Send me questions live, and I'll answer it for you live on air, which is pretty cool.
So we'll do all of those things.
Plus, you get the website ad-free as well.
We are not only the fastest growing podcast in the country, we're the fastest growing conservative website in the country.
Plus, if you want the annual subscription, Go over to dailywire.com, get the annual subscription, and get this, the Leftist Tears hot or cold tumbler.
It is wondrous.
In times like these, when you're in a non-air-conditioned studio frying your bleep off, that is when you need a hot or cold tumbler so you can sip the icy water of the gods.
So make sure that you go get that Tumblr for a $99 annual fee or go over to iTunes or SoundCloud later, Spotify, any of the places that post podcasts.
You can get access to The Ben Shapiro Show.
Go and leave us a review.
Go and subscribe over at iTunes.
It helps us with our iTunes ranking.
We always appreciate it.
it.
We are the largest and fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
So a real split is now emerging with regard to Antifa on the left.
There's some people in Antifa on the left who are willing to disown Antifa.
It is amazing to me, by the way, that every Republican legislator in the country, every one of them, was forced to come out and personally denounce what happened in Charlottesville, but no Democrat legislator I'm aware of has been forced to denounce Antifa.
No one seems to be asking these questions.
I think Jake Tapper actually has asked some people on CNN.
But aside from Tapper, I haven't seen anybody being asked this question regularly.
Do you back Antifa?
Should Antifa be shut down?
Should it be considered a criminal group?
Should the police be doing more to stop all of this?
The police in Berkeley did a really crappy job on Sunday.
It was obvious they did a crappy job on Sunday.
The Washington Post reported that they were supposed to block off entrances to the park where this rally, this free speech rally was taking place.
Instead, they just allowed Antifa to run roughshod over them and they said, well, we don't want this to become violent.
Now, the mayor of Berkeley is calling on UC Berkeley to cancel free speech week itself.
So on Monday night, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Araguin, this is Hank Barry in writing for Daily Wire, Ereguen is a committed leftist and he urged UC Berkeley to cancel the university's plans for a free speech week in September that happens to coincide with speeches planned by speakers who target the left.
Ereguen asserted, quote, I don't want Berkeley being used as a punching bag.
I'm concerned about these groups using large protests to create mayhem.
It's something we've seen in Oakland and Berkeley.
Free speech week is not my speech.
Free speech week is happening, I guess, about a week and a half afterward.
That is going to include provocateurs like Milo.
It's going to include Ann Coulter.
Steve Bannon is supposed to show up for Free Speech Week as well, September 24th through 27th.
I back the right of all of these people to speak, no matter how much I disagree with their opinions on things, obviously.
The Berkeley Patriots spokesman, Bryce Casamoto, acknowledged on Monday, we're still working out the logistics of the event with the university and law enforcement.
Once we have worked out final specifics, we'll be able to confirm speakers for Free Speech Week.
I assume that Berkeley Mayor Araguin does not want Berkeley to approve my speech happening September 14th at the university either.
Berkeley, by the way, still has not released tickets.
I mean, this is insane.
It's now August 29th.
The speech happens in just about two weeks.
They still have not released the free tickets.
There are 2,000 seats.
I assume that it'll sell out almost immediately thanks to people like you.
If you want to go and register for notification as soon as the tickets become available, we should pack the house and demonstrate that free speech still matters.
You can go over to YAF.org for all of the information there.
But the fact that the Berkeley mayor is saying openly that he doesn't want these free speech events in his city is really disgusting and demonstrative of the fact that there is a rioter's veto of which leftist government officials approve.
And it's not just limited to Berkeley.
You remember Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the Baltimore mayor, saying when there are riots in Baltimore that she wanted to give the rioters space to destroy.
Remember her saying that.
The way that this works, this sort of inside-outside game, is that you have a bunch of rioters who show up to shut down speech you don't like, and then you say, oh, you know what, my police just couldn't control it.
I guess that we just can't have these events anymore.
That's the way this works.
Go to hell, Jesse Araguen.
Okay, this is still America, and you don't get to deny the First Amendment in your city just because you're the mayor of this city.
That's not the way that this works.
As I've said and will continue to say, no one should show up to my speech on September 14th looking for a fight.
If you are, we fully expect the police to arrest you.
If they don't, that's on Jesse Arrigan and it's on the UC Berkeley administration if the police don't do their jobs.
I have personal security for me.
I want all the people who are coming to hear me speak protected.
I don't want any of those people assaulted.
And if they are assaulted, if the police don't do their jobs, if they're told to stand down as apparently they were on Sunday, by the Berkeley PD higher-ups, or by the mayor, or by the Berkeley administration, Then Congress should move fully and forthwith to withdraw funding from UC Berkeley as well as any federal funding connected to the city of Berkeley overall in accordance with law.
And that's something that needs to happen as soon as possible.
And the left should be calling out for this as loudly as I am.
It shouldn't just be me saying this.
It should be the left saying this as well.
First of all, they've already charged us a $15,000 fee for security.
Young America's foundation said that it would pay the fee.
It's a tax on free speech.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education regularly points out that, quote, any requirement that student organizations hosting controversial events pay for extra security is unconstitutional because it affixes a price tag to events on the basis of their expressive content.
And as I've said, again, no one should show up ready for violence.
This is the police's job.
Eric Gwynne has said, quote, I'm very concerned about Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter and some of these other right-wing speakers coming to the Berkeley campus because it's just a target for BlackBlock to come out and commit mayhem on the Berkeley campus and have that potentially spill out on the street.
He said, I obviously believe in freedom of speech, but there's a fine line between freedom of speech and then posing a risk to public safety.
No, there is no fine line.
These are two completely separate issues.
Free speech is my right.
Protecting public safety is your job.
End of story.
And if you're not willing to do your job, then you should be kicked out of your office summarily, or you should lose federal dollars for not doing your job.
By the way, where the hell is Jerry Brown?
I live in this state.
I pay taxes in this state.
I pay probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes in this state.
The idea that my government, the government under which I have lived my entire life, except for three years in Harvard, I've lived my entire life in California.
That government is not going to protect my free speech rights or the freedom of assembly of people to hear me, or people like Milo, or people like Ann Coulter, is really repulsive, really disgusting.
And that obviously has nothing to do with my belief in their message, because I don't believe in the message of some of the people that I just mentioned.
So again, Berkeley just doing a horrific job doing what it's supposed to be doing.
So, we'll keep you updated on all of that.
Meanwhile, President Trump landed in Texas, just demonstrating the ire of the left when it comes to the situation in Texas.
People are apparently very, very upset with Melania Trump.
She landed and she was wearing high heels.
Apparently this is some sort of big deal.
She was wearing stilettos, I guess, for five seconds, and then she changed her shoes.
Okay, everyone who's getting on her back for changing her shoes, is this like a big deal?
Like, am I supposed to think this is a big deal?
My wife changes her shoes every time we go to synagogue.
She wears the shoes that are comfortable to walk in, and then she changes into the shoes that are pretty.
I mean, I think that women are silly for doing this, but still, is this a big deal?
But the left has made this a huge big deal.
How dare this happen?
Trump is in Texas today.
There are even some people at the Washington Post saying, how dare Trump land there?
So let me get this straight.
When George W. Bush did a flyover because he didn't actually want to land and create a security problem in New Orleans, then he was a bad guy.
But when Trump flies to Texas, he's also a bad guy.
Amazing how this works.
So Trump, you know, the truth is that Trump on Hurricane Harvey is actually doing quite a good job.
I don't see any problem whatsoever with what Trump has been doing on the hurricane thus far.
He's done everything that he's been asked to do.
Now, does that mean that some of his other sillinesses have been obliterated?
No.
Of course, Trump is still Trump.
This is why his approval rating is down.
It demonstrates that if Trump would just stick to the good stuff, he could actually be quite a popular president.
You know, hurricanes like this boost the president's popularity.
They always boost the popularity of the president of the United States in power.
Barack Obama's popularity was boosted by Hurricane Sandy so much he probably won re-election.
Donald Trump is doing a good job with the hurricane.
I just wish he would get out of his own way.
What do I mean when I say get out of his own way?
Well, he was doing a joint press conference with Finland's president yesterday, and he was asked about the pardon of Joe Arpaio, and here's what he had to say about it.
Well, a lot of people think it was the right thing to do, John.
And actually, in the middle of a hurricane, even though it was a Friday evening, I assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would be normally.
You know, the hurricane was just starting.
And I put it out that I had pardoned, as we call, as we say, Sheriff Joe.
Okay, so why are you saying that he was doing it for the ratings?
I assume what he was saying here is that he wasn't trying to bury this under the hurricane, the arpaio pardon under the hurricane, but the way that it comes out, he's talking about using the hurricane as a way to get attention for his arpaio pardon.
Not very good wording by the president, but I'll take it that what he actually meant here is not that he wanted higher ratings for the Arpaio pardon, but that he actually was not doing it to hide the Arpaio pardon.
CNN, of course, does it the exact wrong way.
Dana Bash comes out and she says, it's abhorrent.
Clearly he was doing it for the ratings.
It's clip seven.
Even if he is tongue-in-cheek, which I don't think he was.
The notion of the President of the United States saying that he announced something because ratings were high, or people were fleeting their homes, excuse me, fleeing their homes, underwater, and some people losing their lives, is a point.
Okay, again, this is overwrought stuff from the media, but Trump has to know that's the way this is going to go.
Again, he keeps making some boo-boos that are not really great.
He came out the same day, and he was asked about Russia again.
Once again, it's not difficult for him just to condemn Russia.
There's a big story that came out from the New York Times.
It doesn't really hold a lot of water, as far as I can see, but the story seems to suggest that there was a Trump associate who boasted to another Trump associate that Trump had a deal that was pending in Moscow, and because of that deal with Moscow, Vladimir Putin was going to lend his support to Trump for the presidency and get Trump elected.
It could just be braggadocio by one of Trump's associates, but it would be good if Trump would condemn Russia every so often.
He still seems to have a tough time doing it.
Here is Trump being asked about Russia as a security threat.
Mr. Trump, would you consider Russia as a security threat?
Thank you.
Well, I consider many countries as a security threat, unfortunately, when you look at what's going on in the world today.
As you know, a few weeks ago, our great Vice President Mike Pence, who's right here, was in the region and spent quite a bit of time there.
We consider that a very, very important part of the world.
We have great relationships there.
We have a great relationship with Finland.
And so I would consider many countries threats, but these are all threats that we'll be able to handle if we have to.
Hopefully, we won't have to handle them, but if we do, we will handle them.
Okay, again, I think that, you know, when President Trump says there are many threats, it would be good if he would just say Russia is a threat.
Obviously, Russia is a threat to Finland.
Russia invaded Finland during World War II.
So him sort of shying away from that is not a good move.
But I wish he would stop this so that we could focus on what he's doing on the hurricane, which so far has been pretty much misstep free.
I haven't seen a lot of boo-boos for President Trump during this hurricane, and it's driving the left up a wall.
Okay, time for a quick thing I like, a quick thing I hate, and then we'll deconstruct a little bit of culture.
So a thing that I like, so we're going to talk a little bit of philosophy this week.
So yesterday I recommended The Story of Philosophy, which is a book by Will Durant that came out in 1926, goes through a lot of major philosophers, one of the ones he doesn't spend a lot of time on, and who is kind of...
Lost, I would say, some of his luster, but was the leading philosopher of the foundation of the country was John Locke.
John Locke's Second Treatise on Government is a masterwork.
It is all about why men are deserving of a government that protects their individual rights.
John Locke really is the great propagator of the notion that we have rights in spite of government and government is instituted in order to maintain those rights.
He exists in opposition to Thomas Hobbes.
Hobbes says that men in a state of nature beat the living crap out of each other, and you need government in order to ensure that men don't beat the crap out of each other.
So better a leviathan, right?
Better the government leviathan than the freedom of nature.
And Locke says, basically, government is also staffed by men, and government can also become tyrannical.
It's not a long work, the Second Treatise of Government.
But it's actually relatively easy to read for a philosopher.
There's some philosophers that are very difficult to read.
Kant is very difficult to read.
It's pretty abstruse.
John Locke is actually very readable.
So if you want to get your start on the philosophers that made a difference in American thought, Locke is a beautiful way to start.
Second Treatise of Government.
So check that out.
Okay.
Time for a thing that I hate.
Over at USC, there is a horse.
The horse is the mascot, okay?
The horse is the mascot.
I know this because Tommy Trojan always rides the horse in the statue at the games.
Tommy Trojan rides the horse.
Over at UCLA, we used to prank the horse sometimes.
In any case, there are a bunch of leftists who now think that the horse's name has to be changed because the name of the horse is Traveler.
Okay, and the USC Black Student Assembly co-director Sophia Jackson thinks that the name of the horse should be changed.
Why?
Because Robert E. Lee's horse name was also Traveler.
Okay, the actual name of the horse at USC only has one L. Robert E. Lee's horse had two L's, but it doesn't matter.
It wasn't named after Robert E. Lee's horse.
Still, she says that it must be changed, and now there's a campaign afoot to change Traveler's name.
It's just absurd.
It's just absurd.
Brent Musburger, I think, had this exactly right.
This is the retired sports announcer.
He was asked about changing the name of the stupid horse that's the stupid mascot for the stupid USC Trojans.
And here's what he had to say about it.
I'm very upset with USC.
Yeah.
Because I'm very upset.
Okay.
I mean, there's a move afoot to change the name of the horse from Traveler because Robert E. Lee's horse was named Traveler.
Can't have that.
Okay, again, it was just absurd all the way through, but the absurdity is only growing on these college campuses.
Today, Yale announced that it was removing a decorative piece of stonework from the main entrance of its center for teaching and learning.
Why?
Because there's a picture of a Puritan pointing a gun at a Native American.
So, they spoke with faculty and other scholarly experts.
They said the stonework depicted violence toward local Native American inhabitants, so the university decided to relocate the stonework.
It had been rested by the York Street entrance to the Sterling Memorial Library, but after that entrance, which hadn't been used for a long time, was reopened, the head librarian and the university's Committee on Art and Public Spaces decided that the carving's presence at a major entrance to Sterling was not appropriate.
Instead, they're removing it, and they're moving it elsewhere.
They've decided to move the carving and contextualize it.
Contextualize it.
They said the layer covering the original stonework will be removed as well.
They said we have to create a setting that clearly communicates that the content of the image is not being honored or even taken lightly but rather is deserving of thoughtful consideration and reflection.
Again, the wiping away of history.
It turns out that the Puritans, who settled the area in which Yale is located, actually did go to war with the Native Americans on a relatively frequent basis.
That is not a call for violence against Native Americans today, and if you think it is, that's because you're dumb.
But to ignore the history of the region, or move it into the back room because it's uncomfortable, seems to me completely counterproductive and stupid, but that's what our college campuses have become.
Okay, time for a little bit of deconstructing the culture, because it is a Tuesday.
Today we're actually going to do a pure deconstructing the culture.
Katy Perry has a new song that is typically garbagealicious, called Swish Swish.
It is with, who's in this song?
Nicki Minaj?
Okay, so two of my very favorite people.
Just spectacular.
Apparently there are a bunch of Taylor Swift references in the Swish Swish music video, so she's in some sort of cat fight with Taylor Swift, who also wrote a garbage song targeting Katy Perry.
Called look what you made me do or something.
It's it's it's an awful song like I gave it a listen just to see how awful it was and I think that swish swish is a better song than then Tyler than Taylor Swift's Response song, but that's like saying that certain types of feces are less offensive than other types of feces in any case Here is the music video for swish swish replete with social justice messaging of course
It says Bingo's Bail Bond Stadium for those who can't watch.
She's sitting atop a pyramid of basketballs looking all weird and then she falls down the pyramid and the basketball hit a janitor.
It's time to tip this off.
Let's take this off.
Okay, so...
So, Katie Perry's basketball team is going up against apparently a bunch of wrestlers in this video.
What in the world is going on?
Okay, this is all confusing and I'm hesitant to show the rest of the video because it's so randomly confusing.
Okay, Katy Perry is jumping in the air and trying to get the basketball now and she has... She came down with the basketball.
And then it's stolen.
Okay, this is a garbage song in a garbage music video.
Wha- Okay, I'm sorry, I just- What in the world is going on?
And there's some point where Nicki Minaj shows up, right?
Who was high when they constructed this thing?
Okay.
Okay, so I'm assuming- Is it sometime soon?
Because I can't sit here indefinitely waiting for Nicki Minaj to show up.
Okay, it's coming.
Okay, and then Ram Gronkowski is in the audience.
Okay, she's sitting on the bench.
And then Nicki Minaj is about to show up and throw a basketball at her, I think.
This is the worst music video I have ever seen in my entire life.
It makes no sense at all.
And then Nicki Minaj is about to show up in one second.
Okay, so the actual lyrics here, I'm just going to read the lyrics because I don't know when Nicki Minaj is going to show up.
You can keep showing it without the sound because I can't handle it.
But apparently, so it says, a tiger don't lose no sleep.
Don't need opinions from a shellfish or a sheep.
Don't you come for me.
No, not today.
You're calculated.
I got your number because you're a joker.
I'm a courtside killer queen and you will kiss the ring.
You best believe me.
So keep calm, honey.
I'm a stick around for more than a minute.
Get used to it.
Funny my name keeps coming out your mouth.
Does anyone know why they're fighting, by the way?
Why are they fighting other than they're both obnoxious?
touch this, another one in the casket.
Okay, so apparently she's very upset with, does anyone know why they're fighting by the way?
Why are they fighting other than they're both obnoxious?
Like I guess they're fighting because celebrities have to fight with each other and be obnoxious, but this kind of culture, finally Nicki Minaj shows up for the halftime show and then tells Katy Perry to get her act together.
She gives her a buck-up speech and throws a basketball at her.
If you wonder why our country is becoming stupider, it's because of this.
Katy Perry actually is considered a political voice on the left.
She is somebody who is considered a political voice on the left.
But what are people fighting about?
Why are people yelling at each other?
Why are people angry with one another?
Why are these singers who are multi-bajillionaires angry with one another?
We have no idea, but they make music videos about it, and we're all supposed to be ensconced in culture.
I think that there is a God-sized hole in a lot of people's hearts in the United States, and we're filling it with stupid culture, and the culture is getting ever stupider because we have to fill that maw somehow.
And so we end up with idiotic music videos like this that don't even make any sense, aren't funny, are badly constructed, but are about some sort of minor conflict between a couple of obnoxious people who are so rich they never have to come within 3,000 miles of each other if they don't want to.
Okay, I'm so annoyed by this, I can't even express how annoyed I am by this music video and by Katy Perry as a whole, by her new appearance, by all of it.
Like, the new appearance, which is the SJW warrior routine, and then Nicki Minaj lecturing her from her perch atop, I guess, the...
From a perch atop the pyramid of power and wonder?
If this is female empowerment, gang, I can tell you this does not make women look very empowered.
It just makes women look stupid and petty.
That's what this video looks like.
There's a whole sexist section of Ethics of the Fathers where it says that men should not talk to women because they waste your time.
Okay, I don't think that's true, but I think that if you watch this music video, this is a bunch of silly women wasting your time.
And I would say the same thing if it started a bunch of dudes, but it doesn't.
Okay, so enough of me ranting about Katy Perry and the stupidity of this nonsense.
Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow.
We'll give you all the latest updates on the hurricane.
Apparently, there's been some violence breaking out around the hurricane.
Looters shooting at people attempting to help people.
So, just as we are seeing some of the best in Houston, we're also seeing some of the worst.
We'll give you all the updates.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
▲
Export Selection