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Sept. 6, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
45:34
Circular Firing Squad | Ep. 377
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So President Trump is getting rid of the Deferred Action for Childhood Rivals program, President Obama's executive amnesty.
Sort of.
Or maybe he's not.
Or what's he gonna do next?
And what's everybody yelling about?
We will explain all of it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
So much DACA your head will spin.
We'll go through all aspects of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program.
Where everybody stands.
Why is everybody going nuts when they basically all agree on policy?
And why is it that Republicans are so terrible at everything?
We'll explain all things.
All things will be clear by the end of today's show.
An amazing story harkening back to the Obama administration.
They actually used the Holocaust Memorial Museum as a propaganda outfit.
I will explain all of this.
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So...
Yesterday, of course, the big news was President Trump announces that President Obama's Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program is dead.
Or is it?
Or maybe not.
Or kind of, but not really.
That's sort of what this was.
So, remember, all the people who were in the Ann Coulter in Trump We Trust They thought that this was going to be Trump's number one thing.
He was going to come in, he was going to deport a bunch of illegal immigrants, he was going to move out the parents, he was going to take the kids, he was going to dump them also.
There was going to be mass deportations, there was going to be a deportation squad, a deportation force.
This is what a lot of people who were on the Trump train from the very beginning thought.
In fact, remember back to the campaign, there's a revisionist history going on now where a lot of people say, well Trump was always soft on immigration.
Are you insane?
I was here every day doing play-by-play for the campaign.
One of the things that Trump did to great effect was bash the living hell out of people like Ted Cruz, who is very strong on immigration, as not strong enough on immigration.
If you recall, Donald Trump basically took Marco Rubio's head, stuck it in a toilet, and then sat on it over the issue of immigration and the Gang of Eight bill.
The idea was that you could never give amnesty to anyone Well, now, Trump comes along, seven months into his administration, instead of getting rid of DACA on day one, President Obama's executive amnesty on day one, he waited for seven months.
And then, he had Jeff Sessions come out and say that this is being rescinded because it's illegal.
Here was Jeff Sessions, his attorney general.
It shows you how uncomfortable Trump is with the actual policy here, that he sends out Sessions.
If Trump were really comfortable, he'd go out and announce it himself.
He did with the Paris Climate Change Agreement, if I recall correctly.
That is not what happened here.
Here is Jeff Sessions.
The reason that Jeff Sessions stuck around, by the way, you remember like a month ago when Donald Trump was just humiliating Sessions on a daily basis?
That was only like six weeks ago, okay?
Time has stopped.
We're actually moving backwards in time.
We've reached 88 miles per hour in the political sphere and we're back in 1955 trying to make sure that Marty's mom and dad get together.
But time is moving so slowly.
It was only like six weeks ago that Jeff Sessions was being attacked by President Trump as incompetent and terrible and horrible.
Well, Jeff Sessions stuck around because this is the only thing Jeff Sessions cares about.
Okay, the illegal immigration issue is one of Jeff Sessions' big things.
I know this because I was at a drinking session, a late night drinking session between Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, and Stephen Miller.
It was like two years ago.
Three years ago, maybe.
Yes, three years ago.
And Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller and Ann Coulter were all hot and heavy over what they were going to do to restrict immigration.
So this is Jeff Sessions' thing.
Okay, he loves this.
So here's Jeff Sessions yesterday.
Look how happy he looks.
For the first time in months, he really looks truly happy with what he's doing here.
The program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded.
The DACA program was implemented in 2012 and essentially provided a legal status for recipients for a renewable two-year term, worker authorization, and other benefits, including participation in the Social Security program to 800,000 mostly adult illegal aliens.
Okay, so he's very happy about all of this.
Now, he's right that this is unconstitutional, okay?
It was being struck down by the courts.
This is the weird thing.
If Trump had just waited for about three weeks, there were a bunch of courts that were going to strike down Obama's executive amnesty, and then he wouldn't have to do anything.
But he jumped the gun and announced instead that he's getting rid of DACA and then throwing it over to Congress.
Let's start with, I got a couple emails yesterday, people wanted to know why is DACA unconstitutional.
The reason that DACA is unconstitutional is because the President and the Department of Justice do have prosecutorial discretion.
They can just decide who they want to prosecute and who they don't want to prosecute.
It does raise questions about legality when you are just absolving friends and family, but They're allowed to do that, they do have prosecutorial discretion.
That's not really the issue here.
The issue is that Obama went further than that.
Under DACA, all these people were not just said, it wasn't just said they're not going to be prosecuted for being here illegally, they're actually handed work papers.
Okay, so the Obama administration, without legislative approval, went ahead and did all of this.
That is a usurpation of legislative authority.
The legislature is given the responsibility to decide whether to give amnesty and work papers, whether people should be here legally, and the executive branch basically decided to overthrow all of that.
That's why it's unconstitutional.
So Sessions says, we're going to rescind DACA, and he's obviously very happy about it.
Trump, however, has different thoughts.
Trump is split on this, because Trump, on the one hand, says, I want all these people out.
On the other hand, he also says, I want all these people in.
So here is Trump yesterday, literally yesterday, saying he has great love for the Dreamers.
Well, I have a great heart for the folks we're talking about.
A great love for them.
And people think in terms of children, but they're really young adults.
I have a love for these people, and hopefully now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly.
And I can tell you, in speaking to members of Congress, they want to be able to do something and do it right.
And really, we have no choice.
We have to be able to do something.
And I think it's going to work out very well.
And long term, it's going to be the right solution.
Okay, we have no choice is always Trumpian code for, I'm not sure I really wanted to do this, but we have to do it, right?
This is what he's saying here.
Now, here's the thing that's funny.
If Trump, the left is going nuts over this, of course, because if he has a great heart for these people, then why is he just making them, why is he exposing them to possible deportation?
The answer would be that he wants, his actual answer, what Trump is actually saying here, is not that he wants to get rid of DACA.
He's saying, I want DACA to be permanent.
I want the legislature to actually make DACA permanent.
So he's actually ramming through Obama's executive amnesty as legislation.
Something Obama couldn't do with a Republican Congress.
Trump wants to do with a Republican Congress.
This is Trump's Nixon in China moment.
Nixon campaigned in 1968 and 1972 as a very anti-communist guy and then he travels to China and quote-unquote opens China.
That's what Trump is doing here.
He campaigned as a very anti-illegal immigrant guy.
And here he is now saying he wants the legislature.
Okay, make no mistake.
This is what he is doing.
He's announcing publicly that he wants Congress to make Obama's executive amnesty permanent.
That's what he's saying here.
And in case he wasn't clear enough, here's what he tweeted yesterday.
He tweeted this threat.
Quote, Congress now has six months to legalize DACA, something the Obama administration was unable to do.
If they can't, I will revisit this issue.
Okay.
What he's saying here is he wants DACA to be permanent.
He just wants Congress to do it.
He doesn't want to be blamed for doing it.
He wants Congress to do it.
And what's amazing about this is that the entire threat here, let's say that you're a Republican congressperson and you're looking at your base and your base really does not want you to enshrine DACA.
Your base hates DACA.
Not because of the unconstitutionality issue.
They hate it mostly because they don't want 800,000 so-called dreamers to be in the country illegally.
They want some of these people deported.
So you're a Republican congressperson, and here comes Trump sauntering down to your office, and he says, I want you to pass this.
And you say, well, I can't because then I'll get primaried.
Mr. President, are you going to protect me from primary?
And Trump sort of just hides behind the curtain.
Trump's not going to protect any of these Republican congresspeople from being primaried, which is why you're seeing Paul Ryan say, I'm not going to push any bill at all unless Trump explicitly endorses it.
Because Trump has set up this weird situation where all the Trump people are loyal to Trump, but Trump is now pushing a policy that is precisely the reverse of what he was pushing during the campaign.
I mean, let's be frank about this.
If we're going to be honest about what Trump is doing here, what he's doing here is backtracking on a key campaign promise.
This is not just me saying it, it's Ann Coulter saying it.
Ann Coulter was the biggest Trump booster in this election cycle, bar none.
Here is what she said on Twitter.
She said, that's great.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Trump wants comprehensive immigration reform, exactly what he used to denounce.
She said, Trump's landmark election-winning immigration speech, 8-31-16, enforcement first, we can't even discuss amnesty until we have a wall.
Weird how Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump's spokesperson, obsessively attacks Congress.
Trump's not going to get out of betraying voters on the wall by blaming Congress.
So she's absolutely hammering President Trump over all of this.
And if you are intellectually honest and you thought that Trump was going to actually get rid of DACA, you should be hammering him too, because the fact is what he is now calling for is keeping DACA.
And here was the threat that he was going to use, right?
The threat that he was going to use against his own Republican congresspeople wasn't, I need you to pass this bill or I'm going to primary you.
It was, if you don't pass this bill, Then I am going to go after all 800,000 illegal immigrants, and then the Republican Party will become very unpopular.
So you pass the bill, you take the responsibility, I'll reluctantly sign it, and that will be the way that we work this thing.
Right?
That's the way that Trump wants to work it.
The way Trump wants to work it is he wants Congress to pass executive amnesty.
He wants to say, I had no choice but to sign it.
They had wall funding.
Right?
That's what he wants to say.
And then he wants to turn around.
And blame Congress for everything.
And Congress is saying, I don't want to do that.
But Trump's entire threat to get Congress to do that is that he's going to be the bad guy, right?
He's going to step in and start deporting people.
But in this tweet, he says he's not going to do that.
In this tweet, he gives away every bit of leverage he has.
In this tweet, he says, if they don't pass DACA, I will revisit the issue.
Meaning, maybe I'll leave DACA in place after all.
Maybe this is all fake.
Maybe I'm pretending here.
So what does this really say?
This says that Trump doesn't want to get rid of DACA.
Okay, Trump was doing something that he thinks is going to be just sort of enough facade to fake out his base, but it's not really an actual policy.
Okay, it's not an actual policy of changing immigration policy.
His entire administration is on the same page here.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders says this is not cold-hearted.
He's upholding the law, but it's not cold-hearted.
Dreamers, supporters of Dreamers say this is cold-hearted.
You're leaving the future of 800,000 people uncertain, up in the air.
What's your message to them?
It's not cold-hearted for the president to uphold the law.
We are a nation of law and order.
And the day that we start to ignore the fact that we are that, then we throw away everything that gives these people a reason to want to come to our country.
If we stop becoming the country that we were envisioned to be, then we throw away what makes us special, what makes America unique.
This president's not willing to do that.
The previous administration was.
This one isn't.
But we want to have real solutions.
We want to have laws that address these problems.
But it's Congress's job to legislate, not the president's.
And we actually want to uphold the Constitution.
And I think people across this country should be celebrating the fact that they have a president that is standing up and upholding the Constitution as he was elected to do.
But again, that doesn't wash because he's then calling on Congress to pass exactly the same policy that he's rejecting at the executive level.
So even if I agree with the constitutional argument, which I do, I don't understand why Trump's base is not upset with him if he is going to push Congress into basically an amnesty program that he was elected to stop.
That he was elected to stop.
Remember, this is the same Republican Party that rejected President Bush's amnesty program.
This is the same Republican Party that rejected Marco Rubio for the Gang of Eight stuff.
So this notion that Trump can push it and get away with it would be an amazing, amazing shifting of the goalpost by a lot of Trump's fans if that's indeed what happens.
Now, what this means is that there's a conflict between left and right over nothing.
They basically agree on policy.
And I'll explain about that in just a second.
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Okay, so...
Here's the amazing thing.
Democrats and Republicans apparently agree on the Dreamers.
Trump agrees that he wants them to stay.
The Republicans agree that they want them to stay.
The Democrats agree that they want them to stay.
So naturally, that means that they're clubbing each other in the head with baseball bats.
Because that's how our politics works now.
The way our politics works is that people don't disagree on anything, but they have to invest their politics with a deeper meaning, and so they beat the living crap out of each other every single day over virtually nothing.
Understand something.
The Democrats agree with Trump on DACA.
Trump agrees with the Democrats on DACA.
He wants Congress to pass DACA.
Okay, the idea that there's any broad disagreement here is insane, but that's not the way this is being painted.
So, President Obama immediately decides to come back out of the woodwork and bug everyone.
We just couldn't get rid of him.
He goes on Facebook and he decides that he has to defend his executive amnesty.
Here's what he says.
He says, quote, Immigration can be a controversial topic.
We all want safe, secure borders and a dynamic economy.
And people of goodwill can have legitimate disagreements about how to fix our immigration system so that everybody plays by the rules.
But that's not what the action the White House took today is about.
This is about young people who grew up in America.
These dreamers are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one, on paper.
They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants.
They may not know a country besides ours.
They might not even know a language besides English.
Over the years, politicians of both parties have worked to write legislation that would have told these young people, our young people, that if your parents brought you here as a child, if you've been here a certain number of years, and if you're willing to go to college or serve in our military, you get a chance to stay, earn your citizenship.
For years, I asked Congress to send me such a bill.
That bill never came.
And he goes on and he calls Trump cruel, right?
He says, it's cruel.
What if our kid's science teacher or our friendly neighbor turns out to be a dreamer?
Where are we supposed to send her?
To a country she doesn't know or remember?
With a language she may not even speak?
Okay, this notion that if you were brought here as a child, you therefore must stay because we have a responsibility to you.
This has never made sense to me.
It's just not a good argument.
It's like saying your parents embezzled so you get to keep the cash.
It may hurt you.
It's not your fault your parents are in Brazil.
Is it your fault your parent was a criminal?
But we all live with the legacy of things that our parents did that were wrong.
It's the country's decision as to whether people should stay or not.
This is why I've always thought it's so weird that when it comes to immigration, we always treat people as a class.
I'm not a big fan of treating people as members of a class, as you know.
I know the left likes doing this, right?
You're Hispanic, or you're black, you're an illegal immigrant, you're a Jew, you're a woman.
I like treating people as individuals.
So this seems to me as though we should approach illegal immigrants in the same case-by-case way that we approach people who are trying to come here legally.
And when my father-in-law came to the United States with his wife legally, he had to go through a rigorous process, he had to show that he was employed, he had to show that he wasn't gonna be on welfare, he had to show that he was going to That he was going to be employed by this employer for a certain period of time.
He had to have a green car, right?
He had to go through this long process.
It took my wife 10, 15 years to get citizenship.
Okay, that seems to me the same way that we should treat DREAMers.
That just because you were here from the time that you were two, let's say, just because you were here from the time you were two, that doesn't mean that you are automatically a citizen.
And that means that the country has the ability to make the decision as to whether you are a detriment or benefit to the country or not.
So, it seems to me we should be approaching this on an individual level, but the temptation for Democrats is always to treat everybody as a class and then say that if you want to get rid of some members of the class, you hate the entire class.
You understand how this logic works?
This is how Democrats operate.
What they do is they say, all black people are victims.
Then you say, well that's not true.
Some black people are not victims.
They say, you hate black people.
Don't you understand you hate them?
That's the reason you're targeting black people right now.
It's because you hate them.
Because all black people are victims.
And they do the same thing with Hispanics and illegal immigrants.
They say, well, all of these dreamers are wonderful people who deserve to stay.
You say, well, some of them probably are.
Many of them probably are.
But some of them probably are not.
And Democrats say, how dare you attack the Dreamers?
How dare you attack them?
I mean, there are very few Dreamers who are very bad people.
How dare you say some of them should go?
How dare you say we should screen them?
How dare you say we should treat them as individuals?
That means that you hate the entire class.
You must be a racist!
And this is the routine that Obama is pulling today.
He says, the action taken today isn't required legally, it's a political decision and a moral question.
Okay, first of all, it was required legally, but Trump undercut his own case for why it was required legally by waiting seven months to do it.
It's also weird that if you say it's unconstitutional, that you're saying that in six months you may reimplement it.
So, Trump has a case, but he's undercut his own case.
And then, Obama continues, he says, I'm very sick of this argument again, the no-fault, the through-no-faults-of-their-own routine is really a bad argument.
of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us.
I'm very sick of this argument again, the through no fault of their own routine is really a bad argument.
There are a lot of people who we were, like the vast majority of criminals are criminals technically through no fault of their own, Not the vast majority, but a significant minority of criminals are people who maybe grew up in bad circumstances without any sense of morality, and they make decisions because they're stupid.
And now we put them in jail.
Okay, is that their fault?
You know, it's a contingent of fault.
It's not quite the same thing.
I mean, if you're born in the United States, obviously you have no control over the circumstances of your birth.
But, I mean, I would like to apply the same logic to people who are wealthy.
Right, why is it that people who are born into wealthy families are supposed to pay all of their estate tax, right?
They're supposed to have all their money given away.
Were they born rich through some fault of their own?
Was that their fault?
Like, we can't determine where we're born, but we can determine where we go from there, which is why I think we should offer a pathway to citizenship for dreamers who we think ought to stay in the same way that legal immigrants ought to stay, but they ought to go to the back of the line.
He says this action is contrary to our spirit and to common sense.
Business leaders, faith leaders, economists, Americans of all political stripes called on the administration not to do what it did today.
So, you know, Obama's going nuts.
And this is pretty common.
You're seeing all the Democrats lose their minds.
Andrea Mitchell, she comes out from MSNBC and she says, Jeff Sessions used the word illegal aliens.
That's just offensive.
It's just terrible.
It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same illegal aliens to take those jobs.
To say nothing of his use of the word illegal aliens, which is offensive to a lot of people and not correct.
But Michael, the fact is, I don't know what he's talking about when he talks about the border.
Because this has nothing to do with the border.
Oh no, we certainly, that's certainly the correct term.
I mean, illegal alien just means a person who came here illegally.
So, but again, the idea here is that you're a racist if you suggest that we have to control our borders.
Joy Behar says the same thing.
She says, it's racist!
It's racist!
I mean, if the Trump administration is all about jobs, a lot of them employ people also, by the way, but if they're all about jobs and saving money and having money in the United States, then why would you then get rid of people who contribute $24 billion a year?
That's the lie.
That's the lie, that it's not about that, because none of these kids or people, whatever ages they are, are from Sweden or Norway.
They're all from these brown, so-called brown countries.
They're called brown people who are not white.
Non-white people.
So there's racism involved here, and why don't they just admit it?
Okay, the idea, by the way, that all DREAMers are from Mexico is just not true.
Okay, the fact is that DREAMers are from a wide variety of countries.
Apparently, there are 800,000 undocumented immigrants who are given a DACA referral.
Here they are, by top countries of origin.
Okay, you ready?
El Salvador is number one, at about 28,000.
Guatemala is number two, Honduras is number three, Peru is number four.
Then, South Korea.
Okay, so about 7,200, 7,300 members of the Dreamer community who are South Korean.
Okay, the Philippines is on this list at 5,000.
India has 3,000 people on this list.
There are a lot of people from South and Latin America, but that's because we have a contiguous continent with them.
But the idea that it is only people who are from countries that are south of the border, that's not technically true.
It's just not technically true.
But again, the idea is that Trump is a racist if he wants to enforce the border.
But the problem is Trump doesn't even want to enforce the border.
Okay, that's the thing that's amazing.
Trump isn't even interested in deporting all these people, and I'm going to explain why I think a lot of people are going to go along with this regardless, and it just demonstrates why partisanship has now taken a front seat over good policy on both sides.
We'll get to that in just a second.
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So, the left is going nuts over this, even though they know it's Kabuki theater.
Why are the left going nuts over this, even though they know it's kabuki theater?
Because they're trying to damage Trump, even though Trump's actual intent here is to do the same thing that they want.
And some of this is on Trump.
He's playing a double game here.
On the one hand, he's trying to appease his base.
On the other hand, he's trying to signal to everybody that wink-wink, nod-nod, I kind of like DACA.
Like, Republicans are split on this, and you're not seeing Trump come down in one direction or another.
It's kind of fascinating, actually.
Lindsey Graham, for example, he sounds exactly like a Democrat when he says to DREAMers, you've done nothing wrong.
To the Dream Act, uh...
There are a lot of people on the Republican side of the aisle who understand your dilemma and we want to find a fair solution because you have done nothing wrong.
You came here as children.
You've contributed to society.
You have passed criminal background checks.
You've demonstrated your ability to be beneficial to the country now and in the future.
The only thing that stands between you and certainty in your life is the Congress.
That cannot be that reassuring.
Okay, that's the same thing that Trump is trying to say, is that it's Congress's fault.
Congress should step in and fix all of this.
And here's the thing, the Democrats agree.
Dianne Feinstein, right?
Democrat senator from California, my state.
She's not a good senator, but she is a bright lady.
Here's what she had to say about Obama's executive amnesty.
She said Congress should have fixed this a long time ago.
DACA was executive order.
Legal is the law of passage of something.
There are 10 attorneys general that are prepared to sue.
I don't want to get into that.
The point is DACA is here and we've got 800,000 young people.
Your answer indicates though that it's on shaky legal ground.
It is.
That's why we need to pass a law.
Okay, she got ripped up and down by her own party for saying what is obviously true, that DACA was on shaky legal ground.
And it's really funny because you're seeing the media go nuts right now.
Look at the uncertainty that's been created by DACA.
Yes, the uncertainty created by DACA is because President Obama decided to use executive amnesty instead of trying to get something through Congress.
That's why there's...
Uncertainty, excuse me.
He asked all of these people to give up all their information to the federal government, knowing full well that the next president could very well strike down DACA.
He was just he had faith that he could use these people as pawns.
The Democrats have been using these people as pawns for a long time.
And now President Trump is using these people as pawns as well.
It's really I find this whole thing really distasteful.
I gotta be honest with you.
I find it really distasteful because I think there's an honest argument to be made for deportation for a certain number of people who are here illegally and not benefiting the country as a whole.
Again, on an individual level.
But Obama used these people as pawns in 2012 to win re-election.
He had control of the Congress from 2008 to 2010.
He did not do a damn thing on any of this.
It's an easy pass.
It's an easy one.
He could have done this in 2009.
He didn't.
He chose not to.
And then he used them as pawns in 2012 in order to create this poison pill situation for President Trump.
And now President Trump, in order to appease his base, is getting rid of DACA just so long as Congress will pass something else.
I mean, he's pledging that if Congress doesn't pass something else, he's going to go right back to DACA, or at least will consider it.
Is any of this good policy?
No, it's not good policy, and it shows you why partisanship on both sides is destroying the debate.
Everyone on both sides basically agrees on this issue, even though they probably shouldn't.
And yet they're bashing each other's brains in for this kabuki theater for their own base, because the Democratic base refuses to allow Democrats to work with Trump, and the Republican base wants to pretend that Trump is actually not in favor of DACA.
Blech!
Okay, so, when we come back, I'm going to explain to you a couple of things I like and things I hate.
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Okay, so I want to get to some things I like and some things I hate, because there's one thing I hate that really is astonishing today that I want to spend a little bit of time on.
So, let's start with a thing that I like.
So, the thing that I like today is when I was in law school, I tried watching this show.
There are certain shows where, I don't know, when I was single and in law school and bored and it was winter, very often I would leave the TV on in my room just because you want some company.
Right, just because you want to hear some voices in the room while you're reading an incredibly boring law book.
And there are certain shows you can't do that with.
Like, there are certain shows, particularly sitcoms, where you can sort of do that, but there are certain shows where if you don't watch them closely, because there's actually a lot going on, then you miss what's going on, you don't enjoy the show fully.
So, one of those shows was The Wire, which I've recommended on the show before.
When I first watched it, I was watching it sort of half-distracted.
It's a show you really have to concentrate on in order to enjoy the show fully, because there's too much going on plot-wise.
Another show that's like that is Deadwood.
So when I first watched Deadwood, I really was not a big fan.
I also couldn't get over the cursing.
There's an enormous amount of cursing in Deadwood.
It was sort of, the way that it was created, The creator's a guy named David Milch and they use the F word and the C word and every C word actually that is possible to use, they use in that show.
They use all of these words on a really frequent basis.
The reason, apparently, that they use those words is because all of the actual curse words that were used in the Old West, things like Galdarn, they sound funny to the modern ear, so David Milch wanted you to be shocked by the language and how much people cursed back then, so he used modern curse words.
The F word, believe it or not, did not come into common currency in the United States until like the 1920s.
That's when it became an actual common curse word.
Before that, the f-word was not a thing.
Now, it is amazing how it's become so common that it's almost losing its impact, the f-word, and people are going to move on to new and more egregiously vulgar forms of language pretty soon.
In any case, Deadwood is all about the mining community of Deadwood, South Dakota.
This is back during the post-Civil War era, like shortly after the Civil War, and it's really well acted.
A lot of the people who are stars on Deadwood are known for the parts that they played on Deadwood.
Particularly, I'm thinking of the guy who plays the saloon keep.
Why is his name escaping me now?
Ian McShane.
Ian McShane.
He's become a big star because of Deadwood.
Timothy Olyphant was the star of the show, but he's actually the weakest link in the show in terms of acting.
Keith Carradine plays Wild Bill.
He plays Wild Bill Hickok.
The guy who really is the best thing in the show and was underappreciated is Brad Zuroff.
Brad Zuroff is one of the great actors of our time.
Okay, so for people who don't know Brad Zuroff, watch this show, and then watch Lord of the Rings, and then watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Okay, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he plays Billy Babbitt.
It is one of the single greatest film performances ever, because if you read the book and then you watch the movie, he is the character.
He is the character.
I mean, he inhabits a character like no one else.
When he's Grima Wormtongue, he is Grima Wormtongue.
And when he's the Doc in this, he is the Doc.
Brad Zurf is one of the most underappreciated actors in modern American history.
He really is terrific.
He's only had these sort of bit parts, but he's amazing.
In any case, the show is really first rate, so you should go and check out Deadwood.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
Sans the Cursing.
It is definitely R to X rated.
I would say more R-rated than X, but here is Deadwood.
There's a hell of a place to make your fortune.
No ball at all in Deadwood.
There's a lot of gold out here.
Something terrible is going to happen.
You're going to find out something now about yourselves and your fellow man.
No one gets out alive.
Okay, there's so many terrific, terrific kind of character actors in this.
It really is a showcase for all of these character actors.
So you get people like Powers Booth, right, who shows up as Sy Tolliver.
You remember him as Curly Bill Brocious in Tombstone.
And he shows up as the rival saloon keep to Ian McShane.
Really a terrific show, and it has some depth to it as well, so go and check out Deadwood if you have a taste for that kind of stuff, if you're able to handle that kind of cursing and HBO-level violence and sex.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
All right, so the first thing that I hate today, this is an amazing, amazing story.
According to Tablet Magazine, some people working with the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum had a desire to whitewash former President Barack Obama for his inaction vis-a-vis the conflict in Syria.
This is according to Hank Barian at The Daily Wire.
They colored a new study offered by the museum, so it read, quote, "A variety of factors which were more or less fixed made it very difficult from the beginning for the U.S. government to take effective action to prevent atrocities in Syria, even compared with other challenging policy contexts." They were going to introduce this study on September 11th.
It was supervised by former Obama National Security Council and Intelligence Officer Cameron Hudson, who now serves as director of the Simon Schott Center for the Prevention of Genocide.
According to Tablet Magazine, using computational modeling and game theory methods, as well as interviews with experts and policy makers, the report asserted that greater support for the anti-Assad rebels and U.S.
strikes on the Assad regime after the August 2013 Guta chemical weapons attack would not have reduced atrocities in the country and might conceivably have contributed to them.
So here's the story.
The Obama administration, a bunch of Obama administration officials, went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and they made them write a report.
They wrote a report retroactively absolving Retroactively absolving the Obama administration of responsibility for war atrocities in Syria.
This is the equivalent of the FDR administration former officials going to the Holocaust Memorial Museum and saying, can you write a report saying that it wouldn't have made a difference if we had bombed the train lines to Auschwitz?
Can you do that for us?
Because it might conceivably have worsened things.
How do you even make that call?
How do you make that call?
The whole point of the Holocaust Memorial Museum is that governments should do more to prevent atrocities, not to excuse governments for atrocities they didn't prevent.
Leon Wieseltier, who's a literary critic and an author.
He's a fellow at the Brookings Institute.
He said, shame on the Holocaust Museum.
He blasted the museum for releasing an allegedly scientific study that justifies bystanderism.
He added, quote, if I had the time, I would gin up a parody version of this that will give us the computational modeling algorithmic counterfactual analysis of John J. McCloy's decision not to bomb the Auschwitz ovens in 1944.
I'm sure we could concoct the effing algorithms for that, too.
Tablet noted, since the outbreak of the Civil War in early 2011, the Syrian dictator has repeatedly attacked civilians with poison gas, maintaining a network of prison camps where as many as 60,000 people have been tortured, murdered and disappeared, their bodies dumped into crematoria and mass graves.
Even Abe Foxman, who is a real leftist, He said, I assume the leadership understands it made a misstep.
I served three times on the Holocaust Commission.
The institution is very dear to my heart.
I believe it's appropriate, indeed imperative, for the museum to deal with questions of genocide in contemporary current events.
But in this case, several things are happening that are problematic.
First, the genocide isn't over.
Two, more broadly, I don't think it's appropriate for the museum to issue this kind of judgment.
That's beyond its mandate.
So, who works for the museum?
Ben Rhodes.
Obama's former National Security Advisor, who is largely responsible for the Iran deal.
Okay, Obama NSC alumni Grant Harris, Anna Cave, Daniel Benjamin, all worked for Obama at the NSC.
They are all on the Memorial Council.
They were all appointed at the end of Obama's tenure.
Just disgusting.
Just disgusting.
The museum is offering the following message now by people who wish to peruse the study.
It says, Last week, the U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Museum's Simon Schott Center for the Prevention of Genocide released a research study that examined several decision points during the Syrian conflict.
Since its release, a number of people with whom we have worked closely on Syria since the conflict's outbreak have expressed concerns with the study.
The museum has decided to remove the study from its website as we evaluate this feedback.
The question is why they ran it in the first place and the answer is because they're a bunch of Democrats who wanted to absolve other Democrats of malfeasance in a genocide.
That's what happened here.
It just demonstrates how far Democrats are willing to go to cover their own asses when it comes to their complicity in genocide.
Just incredible stuff.
Just incredible.
The same revisionist history.
You know, they're constantly accusing people on the right of manufacturing news, of manufacturing history.
This is manufactured news and manufactured history using the guise of a Holocaust memorial in order to do it.
Just gross all the way through.
Okay, other things that I hate.
So, Linda Sarsour, who of course is the terror-sympathizing Women's March organizer who's celebrated all over the left because she wears a hijab.
She has spent a lot of time recently saying that as a person of color this and as a person of color that, well here she is a few years ago explaining that she's actually just a normal white girl and now she wears a hijab so she's no longer a normal white girl.
When I wasn't wearing hijab I was just some ordinary white girl from New York City.
Wearing hijab made you know that I was Muslim.
She was just an ordinary white girl, you understand, but now she's a person of color because she threw on the hijab.
This demonstrates that the left likes to conflate activity with ethnic identity.
Okay, I am technically a white person, I guess.
I mean, Jews have been kind of qualified as white and then not qualified as white, but for purposes of the left, I'm a white guy.
I'm still a white guy even though I wear a yarmulke.
It means I'm identifiable as a Jew in the same way the hijab makes her identifiable as a Muslim.
But the idea that this makes me a quote-unquote person of color is just asinine.
And what this really means is that for the left, the only real people of color are people who are quote-unquote victimized by the broader society.
That's what they're going for.
So when you slap on a hijab, suddenly you're a person of color.
Why?
Not because you're actually a person of color, but because you're victimized.
And this also means that if you're a black person who's a Republican, If you are Larry Elder, if you are Walter Williams, if you are Thomas Sowell, if you're Clarence Thomas, you're not an actual black person because an actual black person wouldn't act like that.
An actual black person, like Linda Sarsour, is more black than Clarence Thomas because Linda Sarsour is a white person who wears a hijab.
Color, in other words, is just another way for the left to say leftist.
And that's what you see from Linda Sarsour here.
She is a self-admitted not person of color by this tape, but she calls herself a person of color all the time.
Okay, final thing that I hate.
So, the Cleveland Browns have decided that they are not going to, a bunch of Cleveland Browns have decided they're going to kneel for the National Anthem, and a bunch of the cops said, listen, I'm not going to go there and hold the flag so that you can disrespect the flag.
And Stephen A. Smith, who is sometimes right, but is more often wrong, He says that it's disrespectful for the police officers to refuse to hold the flag on the field in response to the Browns protesting the national anthem.
Here's Stephen A. Smith making the case with the ex-Scribble Max Kellerman.
What's your reaction to the Cleveland officers that they won't carry flags now?
I think they're the ones disrespecting the flag as opposed to the athletes.
For you to be the benevolent association or anybody else that then stands up and says we will not support an organization who is basically saying they agree with you but they're supporting the rights of their players because those players are American citizens.
You are disrespecting the flag more than the players are!
Because the players are exercising the rights given to them!
Okay, this is the backwards logic you constantly hear from the left, and it's really stupid, I'm gonna debunk it really fast.
Okay, so they constantly say things like, dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Well, it depends on dissent from what.
Okay, because if dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and revolution is the highest form of dissent, then revolution is the highest form of patriotism.
Which is weird, because that would mean overthrowing the government.
So that's not super patriotic.
Okay, dissent is not always the highest form of patriotism.
Sometimes dissent is the lowest form of patriotism.
The person who burns the flag is not more patriotic than the person who refuses to stand there and hold the flag while you burn it.
That's idiocy.
But this is the sort of deconstruction that you seek when you're attempting to justify unjustifiable behavior.
It's the players who are making a mockery of the flag, and if I decide not to go there and participate in their mockery of the flag, good on me.
Good on the cops.
But again, Stephen A. Smith is coming to this with a prearranged conception of who's right and who's wrong.
The people who are kneeling are right and justified, and therefore anyone who impedes their efforts must be wrong.
Okay, time for—it's Wednesday, so time for a little bit of quick Bible talk.
So, this week, the portion of the Prophets that we read in the Jewish community, because every week we read a portion of the Prophets, as well as a portion from the Torah, is from the book of Isaiah.
There are a bunch of different sections from Isaiah that we read in the lead-up to the High Holy Days.
Rosh Hashanah is coming up in, like, two and a half weeks, I think?
And then Yom Kippur is coming up right after that.
So these are considered the Days of Atonement for Jews.
This month is, well the days of Atonement technically are the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but the month beforehand is considered a time for repentance.
And so, we like to read about the uplift of repentance, returning to God, and what you get when you return to God.
So here is from Isaiah chapter 60, 19 through 21.
You shall no longer have the sun for light by day and for brightness.
The moon shall not give you light, but the Lord shall be for you an everlasting light and your God for your glory.
Your sun shall no longer set, neither your moon shall be gathered in for the Lord shall be to you an everlasting light and the days of your morning shall be completed and your people, all of them righteous shall inherit the land forever.
A scion of my planting, the work of my hands in which I will glory.
The point that I want to make here is that we live in a very naturalistic world.
We live in a very materialist conception of reality.
In the last 200 years, really since probably David Hume, the deconstruction of the notion that nature is part and parcel of God has taken on a rather sinister aspect with regard to religion.
This notion that nature is a living rebuke to God.
That there's always a naturalistic explanation for everything, so you don't need God.
God is an unnecessary hypothesis, as a philosopher once put it to Napoleon.
Well, what this is saying in Isaiah is that really nature is a mask.
Nature is a mask.
We live in a natural, materialistic world, and it's impossible for us to detect anything logically beyond that natural world.
You can come up with rationales, but there's no proof for it.
And so because we live in this materialistic world, we think that's all there is.
But what this is saying in Isaiah is that the real light is the light of God.
That all of the rest of this, these are just manifestations of God's nature that he has created for you.
A world mask, as Rabbi Akiva Tatz puts it.
But when it comes down to what is real in the universe, there is something beyond.
There is something outside of Plato's cave.
There is something that is unseeable.
but exists beyond the light, and that light, that true light, infuses the nature with which we deal.
So there's the sun for light by day, and the moon that we rely upon, but in the end, if we're not relying on God, then we're living in a universe devoid of meaning.
And so it's not the sun that you should rely on, and not the moon you should rely on, but the everlasting light of God to infuse the entire universe with meaning, and in the end of days, when there is repentance, then that mask will fall away, and we'll all see clearly That nature, as beautiful as it is, the systems that God created for us to live in, they were created by a master hand.
And that master hand has infused all of it with a meaning that makes your life worth living.
That's what Isaiah is saying here.
Okay.
We'll be back here tomorrow.
We'll give you the update on DACA and everything else.
Plus, we'll give you the update on this hurricane that's now headed for Florida.
A bad year for hurricanes in the United States.
We'll talk about all of that.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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