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Sept. 15, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:28
The End Of The Berkeley Blockade | Ep. 384
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Today we'll recap my big visit to Berkeley, we'll talk about a terror attack in London, and we'll talk about Chelsea Manning being unfellowed, again, at Harvard this time.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So if I look a little bit tired, it's because I'm a little bit tired.
It was a late night last night.
Had to take an early flight back so that we could do the show for you here today.
And I'm going to recap everything that happened at Berkeley in case you missed it because it was a lot of fun.
I think that it was great.
I also want to talk to you about this new London terror attack.
Thank God nobody's been killed but 22 people were injured when Some terrorists, we don't have an identity yet, but it looks like a member of a possible terrorist cell, put basically a bomb in a bucket, which is inside a bag, and then it blew up inside a train, but it malfunctioned, thank God, and injured a bunch of people, but didn't kill anybody.
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Okay, so let's start with the London terror attack, because that's obviously a bigger international news than what happened at Berkeley.
So...
In London, as I say, there was a terror attack.
It is not clear who perpetrated the terror attack as of yet.
I don't think that it would be idle speculation to suggest that it is highly probable that this was some sort of Islamic terror cell.
The reason being that this is exactly in line with the sort of attack that Islamic terror cells have done in the past.
That could be wrong.
And as I say, if it's wrong, I'm happy to correct it.
But the fact is that we've had situations like this in the past in London.
Just back in late October, I believe, there was a situation like this in which somebody tried to bomb the subway and it ended up being a guy who was a new convert to radical Islam.
According to The Sun, terror cops probing the Parsons Green attack have no idea who detonated the bucket bomb that injured 29, so they've raised the number.
On a rush hour tube train today, the Met police denied earlier reports that a suspect for the cowardly terror act had been identified using CC...
CCTV.
And you can see a picture of the bomb here.
This is what it looks like.
It's obviously got wires coming out of it.
Whenever there's an explosion, the first thing people think is, is it a bomb?
Well obviously this is pretty clearly a bomb.
So President Trump immediately takes to Twitter and begins tweeting things out.
So this is where...
You know, I agree with Trump's general sentiment, but I wish that he would wait for more information because he's the president, I'm not.
And me speculating, not quite the same thing as the president because the president has inside information.
And so people in Britain were a little upset with him because here's what he tweeted.
Another attack in London by a loser terrorist.
Okay, fine.
He said, these are sick and demented people who are in the sights of Scotland Yard.
Must be proactive.
It's that second sentence that's a problem for some of the folks in London saying, why are you giving away classified information on Twitter?
How do you know that they were in the sights of Scotland Yard?
He says, loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner.
The internet is their main recruitment tool, which we must cut off and use better.
Well, I don't know what that means, but sure.
And then he finishes by saying, the travel ban into the United States should be far larger, tougher, and more specific.
But stupidly, that would not be politically correct.
Maybe he should talk to the President of the United States about that.
You know, somebody who could actually promulgate an order like that.
Look, none of this is to rip on Trump, really, because I think that Trump's general sentiment, which is that the West needs to get tougher on terror, is obviously true.
And I've seen the left go nuts over these tweets.
Again, I think the critiques I just gave of the tweets are measured, but real.
But they have not gone nuts over Sadiq Khan, who's the London mayor, who continues to go out there and say things like, terrorists will not divide our community.
Terrorists will not ruin our multicultural city.
Again, if that's your top priority in the aftermath of people nearly being murdered on your subway, then I would suggest your priorities are not in order.
The fact is the reason that a lot of people trust Trump on terror is because it seems like his priorities are straight.
He's much less worried about the sensitivities of the multicultural crowd than he is in finding, killing, imprisoning terrorists.
And that's what the government is there to do.
The government is not there to foster multiculturalism.
The government is there to protect your right to life, and if they're not doing that, they're not fulfilling their most basic duty.
So, for all of the talk about how Trump is the bad guy today, all I would say is that London has seen this is now the fifth major terror attack in London over the past nine months, the last ten months.
Four of those five were Islamic terror attacks, and Tariq and the head of the, and the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has done a pretty terrible job of tamping all of that down insofar as he has the power to do so.
Okay, so, now I want to talk about the speech at Berkeley last night.
So, to lead off, I think that it's important to note a few things.
First of all, there's a temptation on some parts of the left, on some parts of the more radical left, to immediately label everybody on the right a white supremacist Nazi to justify violence.
Last night, the city of Berkeley and UC Berkeley spent $600,000 on security for this event.
$600,000 on security.
That's an enormous amount of money.
They had 700 police officers out there lined up around the buildings.
They had state troopers on call.
They basically showed up with a small army.
And the reason they did that is not because of me.
I'm not a particularly threatening fellow.
I haven't been in a fight since I was like 15 years old, 16 years old.
The idea that I was going to show up at Berkeley and start shattering windows is utterly insane.
But in order for some members of the radical left to justify the sort of activity that they've been pursuing for the last year, they have to declare that everyone who shows up in Berkeley who's slightly to the right of Glenn Greenwald must therefore be a terrorist Nazi sympathizer.
So, one of the people who said this yesterday on Twitter was a guy named Tariq Nasheed, who considers himself an anti-racism activist.
Tariq Nasheed is also the dolt who put out an anti-racism, it was an anti-racism organization with a logo that looked exactly like a swastika.
And everybody on Twitter started laughing at him and then he got sad and took it down.
Anyway, here is what he tweeted.
He tweeted, Suspected white supremacist Ben Shapiro, who tries to mask his racist rhetoric by claiming to be Jewish, is in Berkeley now.
Hashtag Ben at Berkeley.
There are a few things wrong with this tweet.
Suspected by whom of being a white supremacist?
By whom?
Has anyone watched this show?
Has anybody seen anything I've written for the past 15 years?
Like, white supremacist?
What now?
And then he says that, I love this, I'm trying to mask my racist rhetoric.
Am I claiming to be Jewish?
Man, what a long con I have going here.
I really played the part, you know, going home and not turning on my phone on Sabbath and keeping kosher and all that kind of like, boy, I really, I'm very sophisticated in this con because the best way to mask your white supremacy is to wear a yarmulke and keep kosher for virtually your entire adult life.
That is the best way to do it.
That's the best way.
Claiming to be Jewish?
Really?
Like, that's a thing?
Patricia Heaton tweeted back at him and she said, um, I'm pretty sure he's actually Orthodox.
Like, he won't come to my Saturday night dinner parties until after sunset.
And he won't eat any of my food.
So, yeah, but everybody's a white supremacist, right?
This is the way it works.
Everybody's a white supremacist.
Here's some pictures from the idiot left students who wanted to portray me as such yesterday.
So they put up a giant sign in the student union across the way from the building where I was speaking, Zellerbach Hall, and here's what it says.
It says, we say no to your white supremacist BS.
We say no to your white supremacist BS, which is weird since I don't really spout white supremacist BS and also I oppose white supremacist BS, but it doesn't matter.
Everybody's a Nazi.
Everybody is a Nazi.
And why not?
Then there are pictures of chalk, right?
They were writing things like, F the police, F your donors, your free speech kills.
Really?
Who died yesterday?
Anyone?
Anyone?
If I had the power to kill people with my speech, boy, my life would be a lot better.
And also, I would definitely be targeting people who are not at Berkeley.
Like, I'd start with ISIS.
I'd start with ISIS.
People were putting out F Ben Shapiro, of course, which is, I mean, frankly, I hear that at the office all the time, so it's not that impressive.
Also, free speech is not hate speech.
Well, I mean, honestly, you should probably reverse that slogan.
Hate speech is not free speech.
Because otherwise it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Some free speech is hate speech and vice versa.
In fact, there's no actual category of hate speech.
That's something that you make up.
There is hateful speech.
My favorite is the pretty butterfly that they put up there.
I really like the pretty butterfly.
But there are some people who also chalked down the ground, Ben Sharp Hero is not welcome.
Well, if you can't get my name right, I'm sure Ben Sharpiro would be very hesitant to come to campus.
But I was not particularly intimidated by your chalkings.
I'm sorry, but what did they think?
That I was going to look—ooh, there's chalk.
Ooh!
Some of my favorite other chalkings were the head of the UC Berkeley, the chancellor of UC Berkeley's woman named Carol Christ.
And Carol Christ, her last name is spelled precisely like Jesus Christ.
And so there were a bunch of slogans that were written down like, Christ must go.
And I just thought, that's going to confuse a lot of people.
I mean, I'm sure that's how a lot of people at Berkeley feel, but it's going to confuse some people.
So the protesters showed up en masse, and they had a lot of silly things to say.
So here are some of the protesters shouting, F the police, which is just a charming thing to say.
These are the people who the left says are, you know, a lot of the left says are just wonderful and nice.
I mean, they weren't violent, so what they say is totally cool.
F the police.
Okay, so they're shouting at the cops.
And then, this is my favorite, the protesters started chanting "Speech is violence." People are laughing at them from down below because this is idiocy.
Speech is violence.
Okay, so then it's funny because they seem to be engaging in speech right there, but nobody was dying or being hit.
Right?
Speech is not violence, you stupid people.
Of course speech is not violence.
So, because of all of this, as I said in my speech yesterday, the fact is that the speech is violence crowd are the people who lend all the gas for the tank of Antifa.
Because Antifa says speech is violence, therefore they get to show up and burn things when people come and talk.
Which is just utterly asinine.
And so Antifa shows up where a lot of these people show up and there's some crossover between the two groups.
Now I want to get to show you the security arrangements yesterday because they truly were unbelievable.
I do want to compliment Berkeley on their security arrangements.
I think that they made some mistakes as far as crowd control with regard to people coming into the building.
That's not the fault of the police.
But, you know, they ruled out the top half of the auditorium We had over 3,000 people who wanted to come.
Well over 3,000 people.
They're a bunch of liberals who tried to claim tickets and then didn't show up.
And instead of handing those out to a standby line of 150 or 200 people, the police instead seized the tickets.
So the room, which would have easily fit 2,000, and we had 3,000 people who wanted to come, it ended up being about 800 people instead, which is the fault of the UC Berkeley administration.
But the security was really amazing, and I'll show you some pictures in just a second.
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I want to show you some of the security that UC Berkeley committed to.
And good for Berkeley.
Good for Berkeley.
Good for the PD.
I can tell you, I was speaking to one of the police officers yesterday, and the police officers were basically saying, we have been waiting to be unshackled by the politicians for well over a year.
We have been waiting for years to truly be told that we're allowed to do our jobs.
We've been waiting for it.
I mean, there's one police officer.
I spoke to a bunch of police officers yesterday.
There's one police officer.
Thank you to all the police officers who provided a safe, secure place for free speech to flourish.
One of the police officers said, I gotta be honest with you, like, if Antifa shows up, I'm not gonna be disappointed.
Because they were out in force, okay?
This is some tape of just the police officers arriving to move around Zellerbach Hall, the place where I was speaking.
taking a look at this.
- Oh my God. - I mean, look at this.
Hundreds and hundreds of police officers.
And Antifa couldn't do anything, right?
Because all the police officers were there, as well they should have been.
Antifa was stymied.
The police officers had been told that if they saw anyone with a mask, they were to immediately arrest them.
Also, you were not allowed to carry weapons within a certain radius of the hall.
So there were nine arrests last night.
It's amazing.
The police is saying, well, there was no violence at this event last night.
It was a peaceful protest.
Imagine if there had been nine people arrested at a tea party protest and what the headlines would have been.
It wouldn't have been peaceful protest or largely peaceful protest.
Nine people were arrested last night.
This was one of the arrests last night.
There was a, what Berkeleyside called a big kerfluffle.
A man shoved a woman and police immediately rushed in and arrested the guy.
There were nine people arrested.
I'll have to show you at some point the clips, the pictures of these people.
They're definitely from Among Life's winners.
They are some of the saddest-looking human beings that you have ever seen.
So the security was top-notch, and it needs to be top-notch because this is what happens.
If you don't nip violence in the bud, it grows.
And I hope that the security is just as good next week when the so-called free speech week shows up, when folks like Milo and Bannon and Coulter show up.
I disagree with them strenuously.
I think Milo, as I've said many times, is a blot on the conservative movement because he's not particularly conservative and also because he's a provocateur and says some pretty terrible things.
But, does he have free speech rights in Berkeley?
You bet your ass he does.
And I hope the police provide him and the rest of Free Speech Week the same sort of protection that they provided me.
I assume that they're coordinating.
If they're not, then the police should make that clear.
But, obviously, this is the sort of security that's necessary in order to preserve free speech at Berkeley.
This is the sort of security that's necessary until it's no longer necessary.
It has become largely necessary, again, because what Antifa likes to do is they hide in crowds.
These terrorist tactics.
They hide among civilians, and then, when the time is ripe, they pull a mask over their face, rush out, do violence, and rush back into the crowd.
And then they take off the mask, and they take off their jacket, and then it's hard to identify them.
The police were told right away, if there's a problem, you grab them.
And that's exactly what happened.
There was no violence, the speech went off just fine.
And the speech itself, I think, was fun.
I enjoyed it.
I'll show you a couple of clips from the speech.
You can go to our YouTube page, where we've posted it, and you can watch the entire thing.
There were over 100,000 people watching it in live time last night, simultaneously.
It already has well over half a million views.
Here is a little bit of the beginning of the speech where I talk explicitly about Antifa.
Thanks to Antifa and the supposed anti-fascist brigade for exposing what the radical left truly is.
All of America is watching because you guys are so stupid.
It's horrifying, I am grateful, and you can all go to hell, you pathetic, lying, stupid jackasses.
So yeah, I didn't hold back on them particularly much.
I also went after the alt-right a little bit later in the speech, so the media is funny.
There's some folks on the left who continue to maintain that I'm alt-right, which again, you have to be an insane person to believe this.
You have to be functionally illiterate to believe this.
But I did spend some time going after the alt-right because that's the right thing to do, because alt-right white supremacism is idiotic and evil.
But I think the clip that is the most popular today is this clip Of me debating abortion with one of the students.
Sorry, we don't have that one.
If you want to see that one, then you're going to have to go over to our YouTube page.
It's on our Facebook, it's on our Twitter.
It's going viral, so you should go check that one out because that one's very popular.
Maybe we'll play it on Monday.
So we'll make sure that we have it then.
But please go over to our Facebook.
It's a good reason to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Go over and subscribe to our YouTube channel and you can go see that particular clip.
How frustrated were the folks at Antifa?
Well, this video is going around, I hope it's real, maybe it's fake, but if it's not, I hope it's real, of a black block guy trying to lift up a trash can because he wants to hurl it through a window.
He neglects to see that the thing is bolted down to the cement.
So stupid.
*laughs* And that was pretty much a good summary of Antifa's night, last night.
I do love that there was apparently some girl who was asked by a member of the media about counseling.
And here's what she said.
She said, uh, just taught, this is Sophia Lee, uh, Soyin, I think this is pronounced.
Uh, and she is a journalist for, uh, the, for World Mag.
She said, just talked to a Berkeley freshman who said she'll be seeking counseling after Bennett Berkeley event.
She's not attending his speech.
Yeah, unfortunately that's how it goes at Berkeley, but I think that it was a really valuable event.
I think it showed the country that we can have civilized discourse, that we can all come out against violence, that we can all rip white supremacy together, that there are still points of unity in this country, and that you do have to let the police do their jobs if you wish to have a civilized society.
You can't let violent people run around and then praise them as though they're doing, as though they're the heroes of Normandy, when the fact is that they are nothing but a bunch of street thug morons.
I hope it was an optimistic point for people.
It was an optimistic point for me, and I think it was an optimistic point for a lot of folks right, left, and center who may disagree with a lot of the things that I say, but recognize that there are still rights to say things with which I disagree, even on places like Berkeley campus.
Okay, other news.
So Chelsea Manning is embroiled once again in controversy.
And Chelsea Manning, I do love this story just a little bit.
Chelsea Manning was invited by Harvard to be a Kennedy School fellow.
To be a Kennedy School fellow.
Which, I don't know why Chelsea Manning wasn't upset about the misgendering.
Because Chelsea Manning isn't a visiting fellow.
Chelsea Manning isn't a fellow.
Chelsea Manning's a woman, don't you know?
So anyway, it was announced that this convicted traitor to the United States was going to be a visiting fellow at Harvard.
And immediately, a bunch of people resigned their positions at Harvard over it.
A bunch of the other fellows, including Mike Morello, former CIA director.
He said, listen, I've served this country.
This person undermined our country and is a traitor.
I'm not going to be called a visiting fellow if this person is going to be called a visiting fellow.
So Harvard walked it back.
They said, we still want Chelsea Manning to speak, which is totally fine.
I think that's appropriate.
And then they said, but we're not going to say that this person should be a fellow because it's too much of an honorific and there's been some blowback on it.
So we're not going to do that.
Here is what The dean, his name is Elmendorf, the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, had to say about it.
He said, We invited Chelsea Manning to spend a day at Kennedy School.
Specifically, we invited her to meet with students and others who are interested in talking with her and then to give remarks in the forum where the audience would have ample opportunity, as with all of our speakers, to ask hard questions and challenge what she has said or done.
Fair enough.
On that basis, we also named Chelsea Manning a visiting fellow.
We do not intend to honor her in any way or to endorse any of her words or deeds, as we do not honor or endorse any fellow.
Okay, that's nonsense.
I've had fellowships at particular institutions before.
I was, for example, a Publius Fellow over at Claremont Institute.
That was an honorific.
Of course it's an honorific.
They were idiots to give an honorific to Chelsea Manning.
I speak on campuses all the time without honorifics.
It wasn't like they called me a UC Berkeley visiting fellow last night.
I was just a guy who came to speak.
And Chelsea Manning is just a guy who came to speak who is proclaimed a woman by the media.
Chelsea Manning was very upset about this and tweeted in all emojis.
I mean, if you watch Chelsea Manning's Twitter feed, one of the amazing things is when you see somebody who's that gifted with the use of emojis, I know the first thing you think is, I wish I could take a class from that person at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
I really wish that that person would educate me in the use of hieroglyphics because clearly this is a person who's got it all together.
But I'll read you Chelsea Manning's tweets in just a moment.
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Okay, so Chelsea Manning.
was very, very, very upset about this.
I mean, Chelsea Manning tweeted out, first of all, I'm just, I'm always confused by Chelsea Manning's Twitter handle.
Like, if you're saying that you're a woman, then why is your Twitter handle XYChelsea?
Which technically means that you're a man.
At one point, I'm gonna have to go through a full explanation for why biological men are biological men and why biological women are biological women, but I assumed everyone had taken fifth grade biology.
In any case, Chelsea Manning tweeted out, honored to be first disinvited trans woman visiting Harvard fellow, And then it's a weird sad slash happy emoji.
They chill marginalized voices under CIA pressure.
Sunglass emoji.
Rainbow emoji.
Heart emoji.
Hashtag we got this.
Genius.
As a graduate of Harvard Law School, who went there because I got 176 on my LSAT out of 180, and graduated summa cum laude from UCLA, I know that when I think intellectual caliber, when I think heavy-duty intellectual caliber, I think Chelsea Manning.
Chelsea Manning.
And then Chelsea Manning tweeted, so Harvard says Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski bring something to the table and add something to the conversation and not me.
And then the sunglass emoji, rainbow emoji, heart emoji, hashtag we got this.
I don't understand what we got this is supposed to mean.
And I don't understand what all those emojis are supposed to mean.
Maybe Chelsea Manning is just too sophisticated.
This is why I need a class with Chelsea Manning and emoji use.
Okay, so am I a big fan of Sean Spicer or Corey Lewandowski particularly?
No, but they do bring something to the table.
They are not traitors.
They're not traitors to the United States.
I don't like Corey Lewandowski, but Corey Lewandowski didn't leak American military secrets to WikiLeaks, which was then apparently utilized by terror groups.
That's it.
They've got to step up on you, dude.
I mean, like, really?
That's...
Let's be frank about this.
Chelsea Manning would still be in prison if it were not for the fact that Chelsea Manning is trans.
That is legitimately the only reason that Chelsea Manning is out of prison right now.
The opposition to Chelsea Manning, then Bradley Manning, began long before Bradley Manning identified as a woman.
It began with the fact that Bradley Manning was leaking American military secrets, thousands of pages of American military secrets, to the Russian front group WikiLeaks.
That is why people were angry.
And now, after the trans stuff, then Obama said, oh, we have to let Chelsea Manning out because Chelsea Manning's a hero.
A trans hero.
Everybody's a hero.
Medal.
Medal of honor.
And now Chelsea Manning is saying that they're not bringing Chelsea Manning because Chelsea Manning's a trans woman.
No, I would guarantee you that Harvard Kennedy has had trans women speak there as fellows before.
If they have not, I bet they will in the near future.
I went there, okay?
If you think that the nonsense propaganda about transgenderism does not dominate at Harvard, you're out of your mind.
Of course it dominates at Harvard, but apparently Harvard is now some retrograde conservative bastion.
Incredible to me since I spent three years there, not one day.
And I guess I just don't understand because I don't understand why there's a rainbow emoji and a sunglass emoji and a hashtag, we got this.
Everybody's a child.
It's all childish nonsense.
Okay.
In other news, President Trump continues to receive blowback from the right over his DACA deal.
Apparently, one of the things that's happening here is that John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff, is basically limiting his access to the news, treating him like a small child, not allowing him to view opposing points of view because it puts Trump in a bad mood, and then he changes his opinion.
So he hasn't seen that Ann Coulter is really going after him.
I mean, Ann is just on a rampage against President Trump.
She's saying now that she wasn't conned.
She says that Trump is a horse who didn't win place or show.
She said yesterday that maybe he ought to be impeached.
She said, this guy is like a couch.
He picks up whatever the person sitting on him is wearing.
So whatever his audience wants him to say, he says, which is why some of us have been concerned.
Okay, I like that, I've been friendly with Anne for 17 years.
I've known Anne since I was 16 years old.
You know, Anne is a very charming person.
When Anne says that some of us have been concerned, like listen, I'm glad that Anne has a standard.
She has more of a standard than a lot of people on the right who back Trump just because he's Trump.
But when she says this is why some of us have been concerned, she wrote a book called In Trump We Trust.
That was the name of the book.
E Pluribus Awesome.
Okay, all the people who say they weren't conned, They gotta feel a little bit conned, right?
I mean, they were pumping that we had to trust Trump.
You know, Trump was the guy that we had to follow.
Steve King, who, again, another person who I've met, and I think Steve King's a nice guy, but Steve King was blasting Trump over the wall.
Big Trump supporter, very early on, congressman from Iowa.
Here is Steve King blasting Trump over the wall last night on CNN.
So you heard him, right?
Big, beautiful wall, and then today, it's gonna come later, and now it's about a renovation.
Is the wall ever gonna happen?
We were going to have the Rolls-Royce of a big, beautiful wall.
The first section of that is inspiring to me to hear that, Aaron.
The second part kind of says that the Rolls-Royce is now going to be an overhauled jalopy.
Yeah, it's pretty brutal from Steve King there.
Tucker Carlson said the same thing he said.
First of all, points to anybody who uses the word jalopy.
Tucker says that he has no reason to be optimistic about President Trump on this deal, so Tucker doesn't trust him either.
The president seems confident it'll all work out in the end, but there's no reason to be optimistic.
The fate of DACA recipients is by far the best piece of leverage he has or ever will have.
If he gives it away for free, none of his other immigration priorities, the priorities he ran on and won the presidency with, will even be considered.
All those border security measures you keep hearing about?
They're ridiculous.
They mean nothing.
They haven't worked.
And in any case, they'll be rolled back instantly the next time a Democratic president wins.
If this president doesn't get funding for a wall now, it will never be built.
Period.
Okay, so I mean, Tucker is going after him really hard there.
And for a reason, okay, John Podesta, who hates Trump, right?
John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.
And he's out there in all of his weirdness saying that it's great that Trump wants border protection.
We'd give him that.
We'd love to give him some new border protection, for sure.
John Podesta.
Last night, he met with the two leaders.
They struck a deal and he should push forward with it.
More border security in exchange for making DACA permanent.
And that would be good for those young people, it would be good for the country, and I think a majority of the public would support that.
Okay, so it's pretty obvious that the Democrats are getting what they want out of President Trump.
And President Trump is being given some bad advice on all of this.
He continues to maintain that he is going to push forward with this deal.
Don't worry, there will be a wall later.
Now, is he going to lose his base over this?
I don't think he is.
I really don't think that President Trump is going to lose his base over this.
And the reason I don't think that he's going to lose his base over this is because I think that there are a lot of people who follow the leader when it comes to President Trump.
There's a study, very interesting study, that came out recently by a couple of people named Michael Barber and Jeremy Pope at Brigham Young University.
And here's what they said.
They said, there are a large number of party loyalists in the United States.
Their claims to being a self-defined conservative are suspect.
Group loyalty is the much more profound motivator of opinion than are any ideological principles.
They found that liberal cues from Trump moved Republicans in a liberal direction more so than conservative cues from Trump moved Republicans in a conservative direction.
How big was the effect when Trump went to the left?
More than 15% in a liberal direction due to a Trump cue.
That means that when Trump goes lefty on immigration, a bunch of his base will follow him.
In fact, they've measured how flexible the base was on various issues.
The base was least flexible on guns and abortion.
Those were the two issues where they were least flexible.
They were the most flexible on immigration and climate change.
And those are the issues, and immigration particularly, is the area where Trump is now moving.
So, will he lose his base?
I think that it's a mistake to look at Steve Bannon or Ann Coulter or Tucker Carlson.
And say, these are the people who are demonstrative of the fact that Trump's gonna lose his base.
I don't think that Trump is gonna lose his base over this, and I think Trump knows it, which is not a good thing, right?
This is the problem with not following ideas, following people instead.
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Okay, time for some things I like and some things that I hate, and then we'll get to the mailbag.
So quickly, a thing that I like, we've been doing Disney movies all week.
This one is a charming film.
It has what Walt Disney called his favorite single shot in the history of all of his films in Cinderella.
Um, here is a little bit of the preview.
You will have only to the stroke of twelve, and the spell will be broken, and everything will be as it was before.
It's like a dream!
A wonderful dream come true!
Things that you forget about Cinderella, is that in the animated film, she actually has a character.
So you tend to think of her as a pretty milquetoast character, Cinderella.
But in this film, she actually gets kind of sassy with the stepmother a little bit.
And it's rather charming.
The single favorite shot, which we didn't show in this preview, is there's the shot where she's wearing her torn dress, because the stepsisters and the stepmother have torn up her dress.
And then the fairy godmother shows up.
And you see the magical bolt come from her wand.
And it goes all the way up and around her dress.
And then it comes down.
And when it comes down, she's wearing a new dress.
And that was Walt Disney's single, he said that was his single favorite shot in all of his movies.
So that's kind of a cool thing.
Okay, yeah, there it is.
We can show that shot.
That's a neat thing.
So here's the shot.
Can we play that?
Yeah, there we go.
This shot.
It's a beautiful shot, very cool.
So, okay, other things that I like.
Tucker Carlson dismissed an Antifa professor who was apparently half-giraffe on his show, and it was pretty amazing.
Here was Tucker going after a person who must be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest neck in human history.
I mean, it's pretty impressive.
It makes you think that Lamarckian evolution versus Darwinian evolution is real, that one day he saw a tree outside his house, wanted to eat from it, and just stretched.
But here is Tucker Carlson going up against an Antifa professor.
No, my position is that communities have the right to defend themselves against groups that actively seek to eliminate members of that community.
Defend themselves against violence?
Yes, against violence.
I mean, we were talking about... No, but physical violence?
Yes, physical violence.
We were talking about a history, a group that has a history of enacting hate crimes.
Are we going to pretend like we're suddenly in this ahistorical world where Dylan Roof or Wade Michael Page doesn't exist?
Where Anders Breivik doesn't exist?
Are you kidding me?
No.
Are you really a professor, by the way?
What?
Does Richard Spencer have a right to speak in public?
Richard Spencer is a danger to society.
When he speaks in public, Okay, so does he have a right to speak in public?
I don't think he has a right to speak in public unopposed, and that is ultimately what the purpose of Antifa is, is to show up and oppose him.
But it's not opposition, you shut people down, you prevent them from speaking, and you commit violence against them.
I know a number of people, don't tell me it's untrue, I know people who have been knocked down and beaten by people from Antifa.
So that is true, it does happen, we have it on tape, we just rolled the tape.
So you're saying is that justified?
Yes.
I believe that communities have the right to defend themselves against threats to their community.
Against ideas they don't like?
No.
They have a right to commit violence.
Against people who have explicitly said that they want to eliminate those people from our society.
You're conflating violence with ideas.
No, I'm not.
If I have not raised my hand to strike you, you have no right to strike me.
But in order to raise your hand to strike me, you have to think that you're going to strike me.
And when you are going out in public as a protester, explicitly saying that you want to eliminate most of the people from this country, I believe most of the people in this country have the right to say, no, that's not okay.
Okay, but it's, you absolutely have a right to say it's not okay.
What you don't have a right is to prevent me from saying what I think, even if you disagree.
And you definitely don't have a right to commit violence against me.
And you're blurring the lines there.
And by the way, don't you work at a criminal... Yes, I'm in a cop department.
It's hilarious.
Okay, um, you don't have the right to do that.
You have the right to make a counter case.
Do you see those tickets?
Um, but eventually this, this professor went loping off to the savannah to, to graze with the rest of the herd.
Uh, so, uh, Tucker Carlson, uh, went on safari and, uh, and bagged himself a, uh, a giraffe.
So, uh, I want to talk about some things that I hate and then we'll do the mailbag.
But first, you have to go over to Daily Wire and become a subscriber.
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Okay, time for a couple of quick things I hate, So, the first thing that I hate is there's a host who is named Anthony Bourdain.
And Anthony Bourdain, I am not a fan of.
I think his show is not good.
He goes around to various places and tastes their food and talks about how wonderful their culture is and generally their food is garbage and so is their culture.
In any case, here is Anthony Bourdain and he was talking in some weird way about what he would feed to President Trump.
And he was cornered by TMZ, I guess.
And he was asked what he would serve Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un at an imaginary peace summit.
And here's what he had to say.
If Trump and Kim Jong-un were going to have a bit of a summit to try and mend relations, and they wanted you to cater, what would you serve?
Hemlock.
Okay, Hemlock.
And then he says he's joking.
Hemlock, of course, is poison, so he poisoned both of them.
What a charmer he is, because Trump and Kim Jong-un are exactly the same.
Yet another CNN host who can't contain himself right on the heels of Kathy Griffin with her beheaded Trump mask.
Good times.
Okay, other things that I hate.
Floyd Mayweather came out yesterday and he was praising Trump's what they called locker room talk during the campaign.
He said it's great because he speaks like a real man.
He speak like a real man spoke.
Real man speak.
Like, man, she had a fat ass.
I had to squeeze her.
I had to grab that fat ass.
Right?
This girl I was talking to.
When you're talking privately about grabbing the girl in the vagina.
So he talking.
Locker room talk.
Locker room talk.
You know what I'm saying?
I'm the man, you know what I'm saying?
You know who I am.
Yeah, I grind about it.
Okay, so I think that we should all be concerned when Floyd Mayweather is complimenting the President of the United States on his manliness.
Floyd Mayweather, in a five-month span in 2001-2002, pled guilty to two counts of battery domestic violence.
In November 2003, he was arrested and charged with two counts of battery for allegedly fighting with two women at a Las Vegas nightclub.
He was later convicted of misdemeanor battery, ordered to serve 100 hours of community service.
According to the AP, one of the accusers testified that Mayweather punched her on the cheek and then punched another woman on the back of her head as she tried to help.
In December 2011, he pled guilty to one count of misdemeanor battery, domestic violence, no contest to two counts of harassment for hitting the mother of three of his children.
I don't know how many kids he has or how many mothers they have.
He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and released after 60.
When Floyd Mayweather is complimenting you on your manliness, let me suggest that you're doing something wrong.
Okay, it's that simple.
Okay, time for some mailbags.
So, let's jump right in.
James says, "I've seen a lot of millennials make the argument that conservatives have outdated morals.
Do morals get outdated, or is this just an excuse for the left to engage in moral relativism?" It's definitely an excuse for the left to engage in moral relativism.
The idea that morals become outdated, morals are based on the vagaries of human nature, on the evils of human nature.
And morals do not become outdated just because you think that you have come up with a reason not to engage in the morals.
This is not to say that morality has not—the way people see morality has not evolved, obviously.
I mean, slavery was a thing in virtually every society up until the last 200 years.
That's one way in which morality evolved.
But to say that all morality is outdated, you need to explain—if you're going to change a moral, you need to explain why the moral needs to be changed.
And really, what is the inherent value in the morality itself?
So as I've said before, I think that the G.K.
Chesterton line here about morality is pretty much right.
The difference between the right and the left is that when it comes to changing morals, for example, think of a fence that you find in the middle of a field.
The person from the left says, this fence has no reason to be there.
I may as well just get rid of it.
The person on the right says, listen, I'm not going to let you get rid of it until you explain to me why it's there in the first place.
Think why an institution is there in the first place, and then think whether you should get rid of it.
You need to understand why something is there in the first place.
I don't think that conservatives have quote-unquote outdated morals.
I do think that that is an excuse for the most part by people not to evolve morality, but to get rid of it entirely in favor of what they think is moral.
As a religious person, I couldn't think otherwise.
I mean, I think there is such a thing as an eternal God who creates an eternal moral code for human beings.
Ryan says, hey Ben, With all that's going on in the debt ceiling debate, would you please clear this up for my friends and me?
Does the debt ceiling give the government permission to spend money or does it give the government permission to pay back money it has already borrowed?
Thanks, Ryan.
So it gives the government permission to borrow more money to pay off the money that it's already borrowed.
Okay, so government is in debt, right?
And we have to pay off the debt.
Well, how do we pay off the debt?
We can't just raise taxes and take people's money without an active legislature.
The debt ceiling allows the government to borrow more money in order to pay off the money that it's already borrowed.
Sell more bonds in order to pay off... It's basically... Think of it this way.
You have a credit card.
You have a credit card bill that's due.
You don't have any cash in the bank.
What do you do?
You go find a 0% APR credit card, you transfer the balance from your first credit card to the 0% APR credit card, and then you try and make a living and then pay it back.
That's what the debt ceiling really is.
So does the debt ceiling have to get raised?
It has to get raised unless you're going to immediately cut expenditures.
But is it also something that should be used as a leverage point in order to cut future government spending?
I believe it is.
Jacob says, "What is your view on the privacy versus security debate?
And how do you feel about the sentiments of tradition being used to fill voids in the Constitution?" Well, when it comes to filling voids in the Constitution, my general view is that you have to rely on the people of the United States to fill those voids, as opposed to trying to rewrite the Constitution in the name of your own personal values.
Like Jacob suggests, Griswold v. Connecticut and Bowers v. Hardwick and Roe v. Wade.
Griswold v. Connecticut, which is a ruling that says that contraceptive use is a private thing, and therefore it's protected by the Constitution.
There's two questions you're asking.
One is a constitutional question, and one is a question about how I feel personally about privacy versus security.
I don't think the state has a role in regulating what you do inside your bedroom.
That's not the same question as whether the Constitution prohibits a state from invading that space.
And the answer to that is that the Constitution is silent about whether a state can ban contraceptives for unmarried couples, for example.
So that means that the state can do that under the Constitution.
Now, you may have a state constitution that says differently, but this is why in a republic you have a legislature.
If you don't like that policy, elect people to overturn that policy.
Nathan says, Hey Ben, my wife and I have been trying to have a baby for some time.
It looks like we'll need to go the route of IVF.
My concern is that part of the IVF process is fertilizing a significant number of eggs, which means we'll either need to have many babies, or eventually destroy the excess fertilized eggs.
I'm not sure what the moral thing to do here is.
I'm extremely pro-life, but also pro-a-happy-wife.
Thoughts?
Well, here's my thought.
You know, IVF is morally complex because the obvious intent is to create a child, not kill one.
But, if you believe that life begins at conception, then that means that you are better off, from a moral point of view, using in vitro to fertilize, say, as many babies as you're willing to have at one time.
And then some of them will implant, some of them won't.
But what you shouldn't do is fertilize a certain number of eggs and then kill some off purposely because you don't want to use those eggs.
That seems to me to be a serious moral quandary.
Daniel says, "Do you think all great empires or civilizations fall for the same reason?
If America ceases to exist at some point in the future, what do you think would be the primary factors of the downfall?" Well, no, they don't all fail to exist for the same reason, but reality basically hits all civilizations.
And depending on how the civilization is constructed, it hits the civilization in a different way.
If America ceases to exist, I think the primary factor in the downfall would probably be the overreaching government, the overreaching federal government that sees fit to invade all of our lives and all of our money and all of our property ownership and all of how we run our businesses.
I think that will cause the collapse because people will simply not want to abide by those rules.
Joshua would say, hey Ben, I'm in nerve.
How do you feel about asking for the father's permission before proposing?
Thanks.
Okay, so, if your fiancé wants you to do it, do it.
I feel, I have to say, this is one area where I may have changed my opinion because I am, I'm now a father.
So, it is, that sort of changed things.
I remember my wife really wanted me to ask her dad's permission as a traditional thing, because her dad is Moroccan-Israeli.
And she thought it would mean a lot to him, and I really was annoyed with it, because it was like, you're old enough to get married, what happens if he says no?
Like, if he says no, I'm still marrying you, so what's the point of this little charade?
But as a sign of respect, I think it's probably a good idea, so you should probably do it.
Daniel says, hey Ben, if you had to choose a country to live in that wasn't the USA or Israel, where would you choose to live?
Well, I mean, I really only want to live in the United States.
I think that Australia, I like English-speaking countries, to be honest with you.
Australia, Canada, Great Britain.
Italy's a beautiful country.
I really like Italy a lot.
Italy's a really pretty country.
There are a lot of... But I have to admit that I'm not the most well-traveled person.
I've been to England, and I've been to France, and I've been to Italy.
But that is about it outside of the continental United States and Hawaii.
Also, I was in Israel for my wedding.
Okay.
Well, I don't think it's unethical.
I think that it's actually good to know where people stand politically.
What I do think is unethical is for religious leaders to actually hide the religious point of view on political issues.
I don't think it's unethical.
I think that it's actually good to know where people stand politically.
What I do think is unethical is for religious leaders to actually hide the religious point of view on political issues.
That is unethical.
The whole point of religion is to help promulgate values.
Politics have a values intersect very often, and if you are hiding politics in religion in order to not alienate some of your group, that's because you're doing a bad job as a religious leader.
Thomas says, "Should new parents such as myself be worried about sending our young children to public schools?
Pending the recent news of gender swapping, indoctrination, and other far-left ideals that seem to be growing in the public education system, is private or homeschooling the way to go?" Listen, I've always felt that private or homeschooling is the way to go if you can afford it or if you can spend the time.
There are many good public schools, by the way.
I went to a public school that was really great called Edison Elementary School in Burbank.
I went to one that was not as great called Walter Reed in North Hollywood.
But I'm not saying that all public schools are equally bad, but I would obviously be worried about the way that the public school system is run with respect to the values it promulgates.
Jackson says, hey Ben, do you believe there's a way for people in sports to protest what they believe without it being seen as disrespectful by the public?
Yes, don't attack general symbols with which we all agree.
There are plenty of ways for sports figures to come out and say, listen, I think that this is an injustice.
And then we all go, okay.
Alright, well that's what you think.
That's fine.
But when you kneel for the national anthem, that is a symbol of unity for the United States.
When you kneel at the side of the flag, that's a symbol of unity.
And that has nothing to do with sports or not sports.
I would suggest, however, that if you are a sports figure and you want to get political, you should know that comes with a cost, because you are stepping outside your area of expertise.
Just as if I were to step into the sporting world, I wouldn't expect that Kobe Bryant would allow me to sink jumper after jumper without blocking me.
The fact is that's not my venue.
Politics is my venue.
If you're a sports person, you step into my venue, you're on my turf now.
Brad says, Ben, what is your next book about?
You know what?
I'm going to save that one because I'm working on a proposal.
I'm hoping that it will be my magnum opus.
It's sort of my broad view of life and the decline of the West.
So if that titillates you, then prepare yourself.
It'll be ready in 16 years.
No, I should be making that proposal pretty quickly, and then I'll tell you all about it as soon as that is clear.
Okay.
So, we finally made the weekend.
Long week, guys.
But, we'll be back here on Monday with much, much more.
I believe I'm off the end of next week, because the end of next week is Rosh Hashanah, so it'll be a bit of a truncated week for me on that end, so make sure you're here on Monday to get all of the news.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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