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Nov. 1, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:42
Islamist Terror Hits New York -- Again | Ep. 408
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Another Islamic terror attack in New York, plus the Democrat and President Trump respond, and civil war controversy.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
A horrific terror attack yesterday in New York City.
An Islamic terrorist runs a truck into a bike path and injures 21 people, kills at least eight of them.
I think everyone else is seriously wounded, but none in danger of death.
Uh, worst terror attack in the United States since last month when we had, uh, at least a mass shooting.
That was not necessarily a terror attack.
This is the worst terror attack in the United States, uh, for at least, uh, several months.
And there's a lot to say about it.
Also about what we could do to stop terror attacks like this, if anything.
And I have a bit of a more skeptical take than I think a lot of conservative commentators do today.
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Okay, so...
The attack itself was horrendous.
Here is what we know about the suspect.
The New York terror attack suspect's name is Saifullo Khabib... I want to pronounce this correctly, but I'm not going to.
Khabib Yulevich Saipov.
And he is a Muslim.
He did this in the name of ISIS, according to John Miller, the NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism.
Saipov had been planning the attack for a number of weeks, according to Miller, and appeared to have followed ISIS instructions as to how to carry out such attacks.
As soon as a truck ran into a bunch of people, he had to figure that this was an Islamic terror attack, simply because that's been the mode of operation for, it's been modus operandi for ISIS for years now.
They started it in Jerusalem.
They carried it over into Nice, France.
They did it at the Berlin Christmas market.
They've done it in London.
So ramming trucks into groups of civilians has been an ISIS staple for a while now.
He said that a handwritten note in Arabic found near the scene had both symbols and words, but the gist was that the Islamic State would endure forever.
This, of course, is not true, since the Islamic State no longer really even endures.
So this is the deadliest terror attack in New York City since 9-11.
One of the guys is 29 and he plowed into bicyclists and pedestrians just blocks away from the World Trade Center on Tuesday afternoon.
Here's some video of the aftermath.
Oh my God.
West street corner, Houston.
I got a typical train of three bicyclists.
Sound of a terrorist attack.
I'm not sure what it is.
I need a response.
Dry laden off.
Just horrific.
We've blurred out some of the bodies here.
That's why you're not seeing more.
But it's just a horrific aftermath.
Six victims killed instantly.
Two others died later on the way to the hospital.
More than a dozen trying to recover.
Bill de Blasio, of course, came out and said this was an act of terror.
And he said it was a particularly cowardly act of terror aimed at innocent civilians, aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them.
Here is some video of the suspect, actually, who is... Well, actually, we can play de Blasio.
Here's what de Blasio had to say about it.
It's a very painful day in our city.
Let me be clear, based on the information we have at this moment, this was an act of terror, and a particularly cowardly act of terror, aimed at innocent civilians.
aimed at people going about their lives who had no idea what was about to hit them.
It was pretty clear, obviously, immediately, that this was an Islamist terror attack.
The note was left in the car that made reference to ISIS.
The guy popped out of the car, the terrorist popped out of the truck, and he was carrying, I guess, a paintball gun The idea here is that he was attempting to provoke death by cop.
He wanted to make the police think that he was going to shoot them, and so he was carrying around these guns.
Obviously, he did not have more weapons on him, which is definitely a good thing.
There are people like Nick Kristof yesterday saying, well, that's because of gun control in New York City.
Well, no, it really isn't.
If you're willing to get in a car and run over people, the idea that you can't drive upstate, grab some guns, drive back downstate, and run around New York City shooting people seems kind of ridiculous.
In any case, here's some video of the suspect yesterday.
He sprinted towards the group of kids.
Towards the group of kids?
That's what I saw, yeah.
And about how long did this take place?
How long were you watching him for?
I was watching him for about maybe 20 seconds before I had to just run back in just for my own safety.
Right, and you say they looked real, but could you tell, could you hear if any kind of rounds of ammunition were coming out of his gun or you couldn't tell?
I did not hear any shots, and I didn't see him fire at anybody.
Okay, so he didn't end up firing at anybody because the guns themselves were not real, and again, he was attempting to provoke death by a cop.
Here's a photo of the suspect.
Here's what he looked like.
Looks like a nice clean-cut Mormon boy, obviously.
In any case, this has obviously provoked a bunch of media firestorm, and it's provoked some response from the president of the United States.
I want to talk about the response from the media and the response from the President of the United States, and I think that we ought to be as objective as we possibly can in looking at these responses.
Objectively speaking, the response from the media is always quite awful on all of this, and I think that we ought to start there.
Here are some of the headlines that you saw yesterday.
So you're going to see a couple of headlines.
One is from Fox News, and the other is from CNN, and you'll see the difference immediately.
The headline from Fox News was, Again, one of those runaway trucks, you know, they just go off on their own.
Allahu akhbar means Allah is great.
And then here was the headline from CNN.
Fatalities reported after truck rams people in Manhattan.
Again, one of those runway trucks.
They just go off on their own.
It's very weird how that happens.
Leaving out the whole allahu akhbar routine.
Instead, they just say that, again, a truck went off on its own and committed these egregious acts of terrorism.
We have to be careful of our runaway truck population because obviously those trucks cannot be trusted.
Anyone in a Ford F-150, beware, your truck may turn on you.
And then CNN ran this chyron in the middle of this after the Allahu Akbar information came out.
It said, Witnesses, suspect was yelling, God is great in Arabic.
Well, no.
The suspect was yelling, Allahu Akbar.
And there is a difference, right?
Saying God is great in Arabic is toning down a little bit exactly what Allahu Akbar is.
It is the typical kind of thing that is screamed by terrorists as they are in the midst of terror attacks.
And there are a lot of people who are obviously upset about that particular Khairon, because the idea here that God is great is the exact equivalent to Allahu Akbar is not true, considering that there's significant... I mean, even in the Islamic community, the idea that the God that is worshipped by Islamic terrorists is the same as the God that is worshipped in Judeo-Christian societies, that's a pretty dicey proposition at best, and so CNN was getting a lot of flack over this, especially since everyone in the Western world knows what Allahu Akbar means now, and they know that it means a radical Islamic terrorist
was just running around killing people.
The equation of the Jio Christian God with the God of radical Islamic terror is quite egregious and quite disgusting.
So, you know, this prompted some thoughts from me yesterday about why it is that the media treats this particular terror attack, Islamic terror attacks, in a different way than they treat, for example, white supremacist terror attacks.
So we saw a white supremacist terrorist attack in Charlottesville.
We saw a guy run a truck exactly like this.
Run a truck into a civilian and kill a civilian in Charlottesville.
We've also seen a white supremacist terror attack in South Carolina.
I'm trying to remember the city.
Where was it in South Carolina?
Charleston.
It was in Charleston, South Carolina.
Dylan Storm Roof murdering a bunch of black folks who are simply attending church because they were black.
And the reaction from the media is completely, completely at odds.
So let's go through this for just a second.
Imagine for a second that a white supremacist had actually driven a truck onto a bike path filled with minority innocents, right?
He went down to Harlem and he was running down black folks in the middle of Harlem, killing eight of them.
And imagine the white supremacist had emerged from his truck wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt.
Now imagine that the media had leapt to the defense of people flying the Confederate flag Explaining that only a tiny minority of people who actually fly the confederate flag or like the confederate flag engage in any sort of racist violence, which is true.
Imagine that all of America's political leaders leapt to the microphones to say the same thing.
Confederate flag does not mean terrorist.
Confederate flag does not mean white supremacist.
Imagine that CNN ran a chyron reading not witnesses suspect was yelling God is great in Arabic, but witnesses suspect was carrying southern version of American flag.
Right?
Which is what a lot of people consider the confederate flag to be.
And let's assume they then hosted panels, assuring audiences that the Confederate flag was not a symbol of racism or bigotry, it was simply a symbol of Southern pride.
Can you imagine the media doing any of those things?
No, of course not.
Because when a white supremacist terror attack occurs, the media's immediate response is to jump to, let's have a national conversation about the Confederate flag.
A white supremacist terror attack is obviously an offshoot.
It's obviously springing from a broader ideology that can be traced to identity with the Confederate flag.
After the Charlottesville terror attack, we had a month-long discussion, months-long discussion, it's still ongoing, about whether to remove Confederate statues.
As though anyone who doesn't want to remove Confederate statues is in league with people who are running down innocents in the middle of Charlottesville.
So, whenever it's a white supremacist who does this, we immediately link the white supremacist with the ideology of millions of other people who have nothing to do with the ideology, and with symbols that are used by millions of other people in completely different ways.
But when it comes to radical Islam, we don't do that at all.
When it comes to radical Islam, instead, we jump to something else, right?
We jump to defending Muslims from any association with radical Islam.
I know Jake Tapper, with whom I'm friendly on CNN, Jake was being criticized last night, and I think partly unfairly, but partly fairly.
He was being criticized last night because he had said something along the lines of, Allahu Akbar was yelled when this guy jumped out, sometimes said at kind of celebratory occasions, but now said on a terrible occasion.
And people were saying, well, would you say the same thing about the Confederate flag?
Like, did you say the Confederate flag is sometimes flown at NASCAR stadiums, but now being used as a symbol of hate?
And I think that's not a completely unfair critique.
I think people are taking it out of context when they said that Tapper said Allahu Akbar is a beautiful phrase.
He didn't actually say that.
But the idea that he was trying to provide context for Allahu Akbar, and people never in the media try to provide context for, for example, the Confederate flag, or for Confederate statues, it demonstrates the lack of honesty in the media.
And it says something deeper about the leftist point of view on America and what America is.
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Okay, so what exactly is driving this disparity between how the media treat Islamic terror attacks and how the media treat white supremacist terror attacks?
The answer is the media believe that white supremacist terror attacks are more representative of America at large than they believe, or at least southern Americans or conservative Americans, than they believe that radical Islamic terror attacks are representative of Muslims across the world.
This is factually and statistically, it's just mistaken.
It's just not true.
It's just not true.
I mean, the fact is there are more people who have died in white supremacist terror attacks since 9-11 than have died in Islamic terror attacks since 9-11.
But that's leaving out 9-11, number one.
And that also leaves out the calculation of politically motivated killings on the other side, meaning people from the left who are committing politically motivated killings like you saw in the attempted congressional baseball shooting.
In any case, The idea that white supremacism is more closely tied to conservative ideology than radical Islam is tied to Islam itself is bizarre and groundless.
And this is what the left believes, right?
I mean, this is why they ran an ad two days ago, excuse me, in Virginia, the Latino Victory Fund, ran an ad two days ago in Virginia showing an Ed Gillespie supporter flying a Confederate flag, running down minority children, right?
We just saw yesterday what actually is happening.
What actually is happening is that a radical Muslim just ran down a bunch of people in New York.
But the ad that we saw from Democrats was an ad in which a Gillespie supporter was running down a bunch of minority children with a truck.
Because Ed Gillespie supporters are in league with the KKK and white supremacists because they're conservative.
We have to be very careful about attributing terrorist ideologies to broader movements.
And we're going to have to be pretty careful about that across the board, and we're going to have to be as statistically accurate as possible.
I cut a video several years ago in which I talked about how representative is terrorist ideology of broader Islamic ideology, and I used polls to sort of suss out the idea that there are tens of millions of Muslims who believe the same things that a lot of the terrorists believe.
Many more Muslims, as a percentage, believe Islamist ideology than conservatives believe white supremacist ideology.
And yet, the media treat it as precisely the opposite, and that's why.
That also explains the media's reaction to these attacks being an immediate leap to, we have to prevent Islamophobia.
Because remember, the bad guys in this scenario are not Muslims, right?
They're not Muslims, and they're not radical.
Radical Islamists may be the bad guys, but they're a tiny offshoot, right?
They're just isolated incidents.
They're lone wolves.
They don't represent anything broader.
But, White supremacists do represent something broader, the evil, cruel, conservative white America.
And those are the people we constantly have to be on guard against.
That's why the media are constantly jumping to prevent Islamophobia after there is an Islamic terror attack, even though no mosques are being burned down, there haven't been any riots in the streets, people are not going crazy and beating Muslims up on the streets.
The rate of hate crimes against particular religions remains far higher against Jews than it is against Muslims as a general matter across the United States, according to the FBI.
But we always have to worry about these hate crimes and we have to worry about Islamophobia after a terror attack because the bad guys that we have to worry about are us.
We are the bad guys.
This is the media's perspective on this, which is just wrong and immoral.
And the disparity between the treatment of white supremacist terror attacks and Islamist terror attacks is quite telling and shows you where the media's heads are at.
Now, meanwhile, President Trump and a lot of the right have been immediately jumping to policy prescriptions that have to do with immigration, because it turns out that this guy was a green card holder from Uzbekistan.
He came in under the diversity visa program seven years ago.
Apparently, there was no real sign that he'd been radicalized.
There were some conflicting reports.
There were some people who were suggesting that the FBI had its eye on him in 2015 because he had been hooking up with people who are on the terror watch list.
That said, when he was originally checked, he did have to go through a screening program, and there were no red flags.
He had nothing but traffic tickets in the United States.
There were some red flags as far as his associates, but that was late-breaking, right?
That was in the last two years.
That was not in the first five years that he was in the United States.
In fact, Governor Cuomo says that he was radicalized while he was in the United States.
He was not radicalized overseas, and then he was sort of an infiltrator who came in through the diversity visa program.
Here's what President Trump tweeted, right?
What President Trump tweeted was this.
He said, we must not allow ISIS to return or enter our country after defeating them in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Enough.
And then he tweeted also along those lines.
So, there are people making fun of not in the USA.
by a very sick and deranged person.
Law enforcement is following this closely.
All caps, NOT in the USA.
So there are people making fun of not in the USA.
Obviously, this is Trump making an appeal for his immigration ban on particular Muslim countries.
And here is what he tweeted this morning.
He tweeted this morning, "I have just ordered Homeland Security to step up our already extreme vetting program.
Being politically correct is fine, but not for this." And then he said, "The terrorists came into our country through what is called the Diversity Visa Lottery Program, a Chuck Schumer beauty.
I want merit-based." And he said, "We are fighting hard for merit-based immigration.
No more Democrat lottery systems.
We must get much tougher and smarter." And then he was tweeting at Fox & Friends, "Senator Chuck Schumer, helping to import Europe's problems," said Colonel Tocqueville, So, I want to be both intellectually honest and, I think, factually honest about all of this.
In fact, Trump was live tweeting Fox and Friends.
Now, it's the sentiment here that I want to talk about for just a second.
So I want to be both intellectually honest and I think factually honest about all of this.
A couple things have to be pointed out.
First of all, I am against the diversity visa program.
I think the diversity visa program is stupid.
I agree with President Trump that a merit-based system on immigration is the best system and the only system we should be using.
We have the capacity as a citizenry to pick the people who we want to join our citizenry.
You do not have a right to immigrate to the United States just because you are from Uzbekistan or just because you are from any other country on planet Earth.
We get to pick and choose the people who come into the country.
That said, there are some people on the left who are saying, and Chuck Schumer is among them, saying, you know, Trump immediately jumping to politicize this is bad faith.
Here is Chuck Schumer saying exactly that.
After September 11th, the first thing that President Bush did was invite Senator Clinton and me to the White House, where he pledged to do what was ever in his power to help our city.
President Bush, In a moment of national tragedy, understood the meaning of his high office and sought to bring our country together.
President Trump, where is your leadership?
The contrast between President Bush's actions after 9-11 and President Trump's actions this morning could not be starker.
Again, Mr. President, President Trump, Where is your leadership?
I'd say in closing, I have always believed that immigration is good for America.
I believe it today.
President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be bringing us together.
Okay, so we can stop it there.
Okay, Chuck Schumer is a giant hypocrite, obviously, because he's politicized every tragedy that he can get his grubby mitts on.
I mean, over and over and over again.
Right?
He's continued to politicize tragedy repeatedly.
Every time there's a mass shooting, for example, Schumer is the first to the mic.
So, a month ago, after the Las Vegas rampage, he said, As much as we might hope to, we cannot banish evil from the earth.
Congress can't do that.
The President can't do that.
What Congress can do, what Congress must do, is pass laws to keep our citizens safe.
And that starts with guns, especially laws that help prevent guns, especially the most dangerous guns, from falling into the wrong hands.
Pelosi did the same thing.
Hillary Clinton chimed in with regard to the NRA.
You know, it was a bunch of people on the right who scolded the left, as Alaa Pandit points out over at Hot Air, for leaping to half-baked policy fixes.
I was one of those people, right?
I said, this is not the time to talk about this for a couple of reasons.
One, I don't think that in the aftermath of tragedy is the best time to talk policy.
The reason being that passions are high and passions don't necessarily make for the best policy.
Number two, Las Vegas was actually a unique situation.
We didn't know what gun the guy had used, we didn't know how he obtained the gun, we didn't know what his motivations were, we didn't know what fixes would actually have stopped this thing.
In this particular case, we knew right away, right within 24 hours, we know who the guy is, we know why he did it, we know how he got in the country, and we know how he obtained his weapon, which is a truck, right?
We know all of those things.
So it's easier to at least have policy discussions on that basis, but I still think that it is bad policy.
It's bad policy.
Forget the sort of optics of it.
I think it is bad policy to talk about immigration reform in the aftermath of this thing because it's actually not factually supportable.
The reason I say this is because when you create a policy fix, and again, I agree with Trump's policies, right?
I agree that Trump is correct on the diversity visa program.
I've been in favor of a merit-based program for years.
Go watch an interview that I did with Ann Coulter two years ago before Trump was even running for office, in which I specifically talk about the visa lottery program and all of this stuff with Ann.
I totally agree that the idea that we have to have an affirmative action program for particular countries is quite foolish.
But if you think that ending the diversity lottery program would have stopped this guy from getting in the country, or that extreme vetting would have stopped this guy from getting in the country, that is not certain at all, especially because this happened in 2008.
And if you're going to blame Chuck Schumer for it, that doesn't work either, because as part of the Gang of Eight bill that Chuck Schumer was trying to push in 2013, it would have gotten rid of the diversity visa program.
Right?
It would have gotten rid of it.
So, you know, Chuck Schumer is a giant hypocrite, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the policy that's being proposed by President Trump as a fix is actually a fix.
And I want to talk a little bit more about that.
Again, I agree with Trump's policy, but I think that we should be careful when we propose a policy that it actually fixes the thing that we say that it's going to fix.
Right?
The reason that you don't want the diversity visa program is not because we think that it's going to lessen the risk in any tremendous way of terrorists like this one.
Because the fact is, this guy could have come through France.
He could have come through Britain.
I mean, there are Muslims who come through each of those countries.
The real issue here is the cultural melting pot and whether people should come into the country at all from particular countries if they don't imbibe American culture.
The left has a particular idea about immigration, that you should have a right to immigrate.
This is sort of the basis for all of these judicial decisions against the Trump travel ban.
I think that's nonsense.
But does that have much to do with this terrorist attack?
Not really.
And I want to explain that in just a second.
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Okay, so Ed Morrissey has a very good piece over at Hot Air talking about the manipulation of the agenda in order to push a particular political outcome.
So, as Ed mentioned, it's true that Saipov gained entry to the United States through the lottery process.
However, Saipov got here in 2010, long before the refugee crisis began in Europe.
So, in 2010, no one was talking about refugees from the Middle East because that wasn't a major issue yet.
He says, furthermore, these refugees aren't coming from Uzbekistan, a country in Central Asia, but mainly from Syria and North Africa, mainly Libya, right?
Trump has proposed his travel ban on a set of countries that does not include Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan does have a terror problem, but extreme vetting probably wouldn't have stopped this guy, and Uzbekistan is not on Trump's travel ban list.
Which would suggest that if he actually wants to stop the importation of people who are potential terrorists or who do not jive with American culture, then we ought to have more broad-based travel restrictions, more broad-based immigration restrictions.
But again, you know, what Trump is proposing here, it's sort of like when Democrats propose that we should have an assault weapons ban after an assault weapon is not used, a so-called assault weapon is not used at a mass shooting.
They ban some sort of unrelated policy, right?
We're gonna ban certain magazine sizes that have nothing to do with the efficacy of a mass shooting.
If you're going to say that your policy solves a problem, it ought to solve the problem.
And as Morrissey points out, the lottery program still requires the normal visa application process.
Trump suspended visa and foreign refugee applications from eight countries earlier this year, but Uzbekistan was not on that list.
And there's no evidence that Saipov was radicalized in Uzbekistan, then waited seven years and decided to conduct a truck attack That's not the M.O.
of a sleeper agent, but more of a recently radicalized impulse attacker.
And then as far as Schumer, and again, I want to be objective as possible and bring out as many facts as possible here.
The lottery system in question was part of the Immigration Act of 1990 signed by George H.W.
Bush in 1990, 20 years before Saipov entered the U.S.
That wasn't introduced by Chuck Schumer.
It was introduced by Ted Kennedy, who's really to blame for all of this.
Schumer didn't join the Senate until 1999.
Again, this was a bipartisan move in 1990 to create this Diversity Visa Lottery program.
In fact, the Diversity Visa Lottery program was originally designed to make it easier for European immigrants to get in because the Diversity Visa Lottery program was designed to allow countries that didn't have tons of immigration, right, that had under, I think, 50,000 immigrants a year or 60,000 immigrants a year, to the United States to add people who are immigrating.
That was designed for places like France, places like Italy.
It wasn't really designed for Uzbekistan.
And finally, you know, statistically speaking, the diversity visa program admits about 50,000 people a year to the United States and has for almost 30 years, which means that more than a million visas over that period of time have been issued.
And Saipov appears to be the only person who's entered through the diversity visa lottery program who's committed a terror act.
So the idea that this problem was caused by the diversity visa lottery seems to me wrong.
That said, I'm against the diversity visa lottery.
And this is why I think that it's important to have these policy discussions, not in the aftermath of terrorist attacks when everybody is jazzed up, because then we devolve into this particular political battle.
One side says, we need to get rid of diversity visa lottery in order to save American lives.
And the other side says, This wouldn't have saved American lives.
And the first side says, you don't care enough about saving American lives.
And then the second side says, well, you don't care enough about immigrants.
That seems to me the same reverse of what we do on gun control after a mass shooting.
People on the right say, that's not good policy and it's not going to help.
And the left says, you don't care enough about the people who were shot.
I don't like this argument on either side.
Again, there is a strong case, for the fifth time, there's a strong case that everything Trump is saying about immigration is true in a generalized sense, but suggesting that this would solve the terrorist problem is, I think, setting up an expectation that is not accurate.
You know, the sort of Fortress America mentality with regard to protecting the United States There's some truth to it, but I don't think there's a complete truth to it.
And again, when you're talking about radicalization of people who are already in the United States, it seems to me that the best way that you can actually fight this is by crushing ISIS overseas and destroying the motivation for people to become terrorists.
See, I think this is really the biggest problem.
We're constantly looking for ending the means.
We're not looking for stopping bad people from becoming bad people.
We're looking for ending the means.
I'm not sure that that is necessarily going to work.
So, we can kill as many terrorists as possible over there, and we should do that.
We should prevent as many terrorists as possible from entering the country.
That's why you should have a vetting program and...
A lot of these visa programs, you know, just on a cultural level.
But, what's really going to stop terrorists, the reason terrorists commit terrorist attacks, people think they do it out of despair, right?
This is a lefty trope.
That the reason that terrorists commit terrorist attacks is out of despair.
I don't think that terrorists commit terrorist attacks out of despair.
I think terrorists commit terrorist attacks out of hope.
They think they're going to win.
They think they're going to go to heaven.
They think their side is going to be forwarded by them committing these atrocities.
Apparently, this human piece of debris was In the hospital last night, bragging about what he'd done and talking about how wonderful all of it was.
Right?
And talking about how it was just great.
Because he's a disgusting human being.
Well, the reason that you didn't have this level of terror attack, you know, before ISIS's rise is because there was no hope that ISIS was going to win.
Crushing ISIS overseas, demonstrating that the might of Islamic terrorism doesn't win you battles, it gets you killed, That seems to me the best way to defeat this particular scourge.
Now, is that going to end all terror attacks?
No, it's not going to end all terror attacks.
And we should be taking defensive measures.
I mean, one of the obvious ones is, and I don't know why they don't have this, they should have bike paths that are basically restricted by these cement medians, right?
Israel has that and has had it for a long time.
It prevents these trucks from driving into areas where people are running.
That seems to me like a relatively smart thing to do.
You can put it on sidewalks as well.
I know there are parts of New York City, like Times Square actually has these.
That seems to me like that's something that might be worthwhile.
But again, I just want to recommend that we look at this in the cold light of day.
If we're going to make a decision about the Diversity Visa Lottery program, it shouldn't be on the back of this terror attack, which again, is an isolated incident specifically with regard to that program.
We should look at it and say, is this good policy or is it bad policy?
I think it's bad policy.
I think it should go.
If we're going to talk about extreme vetting, is that good policy or bad policy?
It's good policy, I think that we should do it.
I can agree with all of Trump's policies without suggesting that this terror attack be a leverage point for those policies.
Trump can win that battle on the merits without getting into the nasty business of trying to suggest that a particular terror attack could have been prevented by this specific policy fix, which I really don't think is accurate.
Okay, well, we're going to continue and talk about this.
We're also going to do some things I like and some things I hate and some Bible talk.
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Now, with all of that said about why I think it's a mistake to use this terror attack as a leverage point for immigration, I think it is also important to note that because Trump does talk about things like culture, because he does talk about things like immigration I think it is also important to note that because Trump does talk about things like culture, And the Democrats are falling into a trap if they decide to fight him on this.
The Democrats think that they're going to win a battle every time there's a mass shooting and they talk about gun control.
They think they've won a public relations battle.
Trump thinks he's going to win an immigration battle on this score.
He's probably right.
On a political level, it's not stupid what Trump is doing.
I think that what Trump is doing on a political level is actually, you know, politically advantageous for him and for his agenda.
I just don't like it as a general matter.
But that's not the same thing as saying that what he's doing is stupid.
I don't think that it's stupid.
You know, Trump is sort of reference level, gut response to all of this stuff.
And I think that that is, and I think that that's why he's popular, right?
He's popular because people feel like it's only political It's only political correctness that prevents people from speaking about the cultural problems inherent in all of this, right?
There's something that unites the two conversations we've had today.
The conversation about radical Islam and its relationship to normal Islam and the conversation about immigration.
And that is, these are topics that people are afraid to talk about because they are afraid that they are going to be undercut by the general media atmosphere.
And this is why Trump won, right?
There's a poll out yesterday from Cato Institute.
And what that poll basically showed is that a huge percentage of Americans hate political correctness and find it to be stifling.
In fact, I think it's 71% of Americans say that they hate political correctness and feel that they can't actually speak out on issues of serious concern.
You know, that same percentage of people basically feel like they have to silence themselves on all of this.
And I think that that exactly is – that is the reason why Trump won.
The reason why Trump won, the reason why Trump is going to continue to be popular is because instead of the left responding as I have and saying, listen, you know, the policy prescriptions that you're talking about, we can have a good debate about that, but I don't think that this is either the time or the matter upon which to use that rhetoric, which is what I said about gun control.
Instead, they've decided to say we can never discuss this.
The only reason you discuss this is because you're Islamophobic.
The only reason you discuss this is because you hate Muslims.
The response to that is what drove Trump.
That Cato Institute poll shows, in living color, why Trump won.
71% of Americans, according to the poll, believe that political correctness has done more to silence important discussions our society needs to have.
That's why Trump explicitly referenced political correctness in his series of tweets.
Only 28% of Americans think political correctness has bettered society.
And that shows why the left is losing.
73% of Americans, of Republicans rather, say that they are more likely to keep their views to themselves.
58% of independents say the same thing.
They feel silenced.
Trump gives them a voice.
So even when Trump is using his voice in ways that I don't particularly think are appropriate, he's still doing something that the left refuses to do.
Because the left doesn't see any time when we should have this discussion.
I'm happy to have a gun control discussion anytime the left wants to, except right after a national tragedy, when they're exploiting that for political gain.
I think we should have those discussions.
But what I really object to is I've said, I said it during the gun control debate and I'm saying it now.
I don't like the association between tragedy and policy.
I think it makes for bad policy, right?
I think the Department of Homeland Security, which is a bad policy decision, was formed in the aftermath of 9-11 and has done very little to keep the country safer.
I think that if we had had one less agency, one less department, we would just be, if it had been part of the Department of Defense, for example, We'd have been just as safe.
There are a lot of bad policy decisions that are made on the basis of emotional response to bad things happening.
I just don't like that as a general matter.
But Trump is willing to talk about these things, and he's constantly willing to talk about these things, and it's the left's willingness to shut down the debate that is driving support for President Trump.
Right?
This is why I think this poll is sort of telling.
Okay.
Time for some quick things I like, some things I hate, and then we'll do a little bit of Bible talk.
So, things that I like today.
So, we've been doing baby books.
You know, books you should read as a young parent.
There's a good book called Brain Rules for Baby by a guy named John Medina.
How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child from Zero to Five.
And John Medina talks about sort of all of the topics that you would think you need to know about.
Like, should you allow your kid to watch TV?
How do you handle temper tantrums?
How do you teach them impulse control?
The best predictors of academic performance.
All of these things are in the book.
It's a really good way of looking at how to parent your child.
And I highly recommend it.
Again, the book is Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina.
Well worth reading.
Okay, other things that I like.
So, Bernie Sanders, shockingly, said something that I like yesterday.
So, a lot of people over the last couple of days have been spending an awful lot of time and effort, particularly in the media, talking about Russian collusion, right?
It's the collusion.
We have to talk about whether Trump was colluding with Russia.
Bernie Sanders has a better handle on what Americans want to hear about than most of the Democratic Party, which is why if Bernie actually runs in 2020, he will present a serious threat to both the Democratic Party and to President Trump in his re-election effort.
I'm serious about that.
Bernie's a crazy old man.
He's a loon bag who loves pudding.
You know, all of that's true, but...
Bernie Sanders has a better handle on what the American people care about than most of the mainstream media.
Look how upset Seth Meyers is asking Bernie Sanders about the Russia stuff and having Bernie basically shoot it down.
I mean, I think we've got to work in two ways.
Number one, we have got to take on Trump's attacks against the environment, against women, against Latinos and blacks and people in the gay community.
We've got to fight back every day on those issues.
But equally important, or more important, we have got to focus on the bread-and-butter issues that mean so much to ordinary Americans.
Americans are not staying up every day worrying about Russia's interference in our elections.
They're wondering how they're going to be able to send their kids to college.
They're worried about how they're going to be able to pay the rent.
They're worrying about whether they can afford health care.
They're worried about whether their income they make is enough to put food on the table.
Okay, so, you know, I think that this is—the beginning of what he's saying, of course, is stupid, but the very end, when he says that people aren't that concerned about Russia, he's correct about this.
And this is why he is more likely to resonate with more Americans than the Democratic Party, which is constantly focused on Russia, mostly because they are focused on—mostly because they want to justify why Hillary Clinton could possibly have lost this election.
Okay, in other things that I like, this is just breaking now, and I think this is pretty spectacular.
Trump is trying to create a name for the tax cut acts that he's trying to pass.
This is the scoop.
You ready for this?
This is amazing.
Trump wants to name the tax bill, I kid you not, the Cut, Cut, Cut Act.
That's really what he wants to call it, the Cut-Cut-Cut Act.
Apparently, Hill leaders disagree.
Now, listen, I think that the Cut-Cut-Cut Act, I mean, frankly, it sounds more like a brismilla.
It sounds more like a circumcision ceremony than it does like a tax cut thing.
But somebody was suggesting the Tax-Cutting-Cut-Face Act of 2017.
I think that's pretty spectacular.
Listen, Trump has a better idea for branding than the Republican Party.
I mean, they'll call it something like the Revitalize the Economy in a Great Way Act, right?
Then it'll be some sort of crazy acronym that'll end up being, you know, revitalized.
But every one of those letters will have its own word.
It'll be the Revitalize the Economy in Virulent And I'm not going to do the entire word of revitalize, it's too long a word, but that's what they would do.
So I sort of like the Cut Cut Cut Act, although I do think it does sound like a rabid director trying desperately to prevent a scene from going off the rails, the Cut Cut Cut Act.
So, well done, President Trump.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
So he talked about this a little bit yesterday.
Apparently, John Kelly's a racist.
So the left has had enough of John Kelly.
The reason they've had enough of John Kelly is because John Kelly actually came out and defended President Trump.
They were fine with Kelly when he just looked very exercised and disappointed in President Trump at Charlottesville.
But when he's actually out there defending Trump's agenda, Then they're very angry at Kelly.
So Kelly said a couple of things in an interview with Laura Ingram that were controversial.
First, he said that the Civil War was fought because there was lack of compromise, and he said that there were a lot of people on the southern side who were honorable people.
And second, he said some things about China.
Now what's amazing to me is that the stuff he said about China, for me, is way worse than the stuff he said about the Civil War.
What he said about China is that China seems to be a regime that represents what its people want, which is just insane.
I mean, it's a communist regime that represses and oppresses its people.
But the thing that the left jumps on—the left agrees with that.
The left likes China.
So instead, the left jumps on the Civil War stuff.
So now you've got CNN's Chris Cuomo basically saying that, you know, Kelly ignored and rationalized bigotry by saying that the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
Kelly is a respected guy.
How he leads men and women, how he has organized his attention to duty.
That's all true.
I've checked it ten ways from Sunday, it's true.
But giving him credit for a political, modulating ethos is false.
It's always been false.
The idea that he would control the president's political play towards division was always an empty promise, and this is the proof.
Listen to what he's saying, and listen to where we've heard it before.
You've heard it come out of the president's mouth.
Good people on both sides.
Crisis of conscience.
Think about the monuments in a different way maybe than these people want to take them down.
It's bigotry being ignored and rationalized and Kelly is not going to make it better.
He's making it the same Or worse.
The attacks on Kelly, of course, are now growing in size and scope because the Democrats know and the media know that Kelly is an effective spokesperson for sort of Trumpian philosophy.
It is insane to suggest that Kelly is a racist because he said that lack of ability to compromise led to the Civil War.
First of all, he didn't even say on which side, right?
It was the South's refusal to compromise that led to the Civil War.
There are multiple attempts to compromise.
There was the Missouri Compromise.
There was an attempt, there's the Fugitive Slave Act.
There are a bunch of attempts to compromise on the part of Congress, all of which would be compromised with the incredible evil of slavery.
I will say that in historical context, I think that it's important to note that, you know, there's this sort of binary view that has now prevailed among people of today, because we all know slavery is evil.
There's sort of this binary view that says that anyone who wanted to try and compromise with the South wanted to uphold slavery.
That's not true.
There were a lot of people who wanted to try and create compromise with the South, hoping that slavery would eventually die out.
The real reason the Civil War happened is because the United States was expanding to the West and there were serious concerns about whether slavery was going to expand into the Western states.
The Civil War, in the end, turned out to be about abolishing slavery south of the Mason-Dixon line as well.
But originally, remember, the Civil War was not about abolishing slavery in South Carolina.
It was really about abolishing slavery in places like Kansas and Nebraska.
John Brown was fighting wars out in Kansas to try and stop slavery from entering Kansas.
So I think there's a little more complexity to the Civil War than boiling it down to simply pro-slavery, anti-slavery.
Although that is a good shorthand, I don't think that's the entirety of the matters to discuss in the Civil War.
States' rights versus national prerogatives was definitely on the table.
To pretend that wasn't on the table is to be ignorant, even if the states' rights were being used in defense of something evil like slavery.
Okay, time for a little bit of Bible talk since it is Wednesday.
So, I've sort of been picking and choosing from the biblical canon to talk about.
So, last week I did sort of the creation of the universe and the Adam and Eve story.
Today I'm going to do the Cain and Abel story.
So, I thought this was perfectly appropriate for Halloween.
So, believe it or not, the Cain and Abel story is about cultural appropriation.
Yes, really.
It's about cultural appropriation.
So, why is that?
If you look back in the Bible, what happens in the Cain and Abel story is that both Cain and Abel decide that they are going to Cain has a choice.
Cain can either look at that and say, what can I learn from Abel?
What did Abel do right that I did wrong?
from the fat of his flock, and Cain chooses from just, he just chooses some vegetables.
And it doesn't say he chose the best ones.
He was a farmer, and so he just chose whatever was sort of left over.
And he sacrifices.
God accepts Abel's sacrifice, but he doesn't accept Cain's sacrifice.
Now, Cain has a choice.
Cain can either look at that and say, what can I learn from Abel?
What did Abel do right that I did wrong?
How do I fix this?
Or he can get angry that Abel's sacrifice was accepted and his was not.
He can justify to himself that God is unfair, that the universe is unfair.
And it can anger him so much that he ends up killing Abel because how dare Abel hold a different standard?
The reason this is cultural appropriation is because the whole idea behind most cultural appropriation is not about mocking the culture that you are attempting to appropriate.
It's about looking at the cool things that other cultures do and saying, this is a good thing and I want to imitate it.
Imitation is how society gets better.
It's how your child learns.
When you have a three-year-old, the way that your three-year-old, your two-year-old learns is by imitating your behavior.
That's why you have to model good behavior.
We as adults should be doing the same thing.
And so the idea that cultural appropriation is a great evil because I like, you know, your girl and you like hoop earrings and you think they're cool and pretty and so you wear them.
And this is some sort of insult?
No, what would you rather?
That the person hate hoop earrings because they're beautiful but they can't have them?
It's really stupidity.
So the idea of appropriating good things that other people do, that's how civilizations get better.
That's how civilizations grow.
What destroys civilizations is the refusal to acknowledge that somebody did something in a way that was better than your way, and instead you get angry at it and you attempt to destroy that way.
And that's really what the Cain and Abel story is about.
It's about Halloween costumes.
Not really, but kind of.
In any case, we'll be back here tomorrow with much, much more, and we'll bring you the latest updates on this horrific terror attack in New York City.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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