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Nov. 28, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:52
Can You Paint With All The Colors Of The Stupid? | Ep. 425
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Well, hi there.
Today on The Ben Shapiro Show, Trump starts a firestorm by name-dropping Elizabeth Warren and Pocahontas.
James O'Keefe tries to sting the Washington Post, and it does not go well.
Plus, I want to talk a little bit about the Bible and Roy Moore, because there's an article out today that requires some analysis.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
No, we have too much fun behind the scenes in this show.
One day we'll have to actually make a video of all that goes on behind the scenes of this show because it's a lot more fun than the actual show, I think.
But, before we get to any of the current news, because there is a lot of news, including a lot of talk about Elizabeth Warren and Pocahontas and the single funniest video, I think, of the year, which is saying a lot because it's been a crazy year.
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Okay, so the news begins today on an up note.
So this was legitimately one of the funniest things that I have ever seen in covering politics.
President Trump had a ceremony to honor the Navajo Code Talkers.
For those who don't know the Navajo Code Talkers, go watch the Nicolas Cage movie Windtalkers, which is about the Navajo Code Talkers, a group of Navajo Indians, Native Americans who During World War II were used to decode German and Japanese messages because they were just amazingly good at it.
And so they were honored at the White House yesterday in a ceremony.
Now this is directly out of Veep or Arrested Development or I mean it really is amazing.
First of all, you have to start, actually we should flash the image up so before we start so people can see what we're talking about.
First of all, You can see behind President Trump is a portrait.
You can't see the head in that portrait just because the shot isn't wide enough.
The head in the portrait is that of Andrew Jackson.
So they are doing an event honoring Native Americans who served the United States in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the president responsible for the Trail of Tears.
Like the guy responsible for helping to violate a bunch of treaties with the Native Americans and the forcible expulsion of those Native Americans from particular southern states into places like Oklahoma, including the deaths of presumably tens of thousands of Native Americans along the way, hence it being called the Trail of Tears.
So just really well done by the optics folks at the White House.
But it gets better.
President Trump It's obvious he doesn't know anything about the Navajo Code Talkers, and he has not actually done any research on it.
So he goes in his brain to, what's a joke I know about Native Americans?
Oh yeah, Elizabeth Warren.
And so this is a thing that actually happened in real life.
In the White House, with the President of the United States.
To really enjoy this clip fully, you have to keep your eyes not on President Trump, but on the Navajo gentleman, the U.S.
Marine Corps honoree, whom he is talking to, because it is astonishingly great.
What you really need is the slow pan and then the Larry David music coming in to make this complete.
But watch this clip.
It's just great.
It wasn't just what President Trump said about Elizabeth Warren.
It's where he said it.
At an event to honor elderly Native American code talkers who used their tribal languages during World War II to help confound U.S.
enemies.
You were here long before any of us were here.
Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago.
They call her Pocahontas.
And you can see the awkward smile from the Navajo Code Talker guy and the honoree.
And if we played it for a few more seconds, he then realized how awkward it is because apparently there are people who normally had to turn their face to the wall because they were laughing because it's so ridiculous.
And Trump then reaches out to the Navajo guy and he goes, I like you.
I like you a lot.
Like, really, that's how the clip continues.
So, that's pretty astonishing.
It's pretty, you know, that's pretty glorious Trump.
I mean, you know, there's good Trump, and there's bad Trump, and there's eloquent Trump, and there's just glorious Trump.
There's just the pure revelry of Trump.
Now, a bunch of people got very upset about this.
So, two things can be true at once.
One, Elizabeth Warren is the worst.
And Elizabeth Warren lied about having Native American heritage in order to get a job at Harvard Law School.
That can be true.
Second thing that can also be true, it's pretty buffoonish to actually use the opportunity of honoring Native Americans to make a Native American joke about a sitting United States Senator As horrific as she may be.
And she is.
Elizabeth Warren's terrible.
That's pretty clownish.
If they were having an event honoring a bunch of Jewish veterans of World War II who had served their country honorably, and then Trump dropped a Jewish joke in the middle about somebody who had pretended to be a Jew, It'd be real weird.
Like, that's a hell of a non-sequitur from the President of the United States.
But what's amazing about this is that the media insists that Trump was being a racist.
Now, Trump was not being a racist, okay?
Just stop it.
Just stop it.
You're being stupid.
It's not racist for Trump to call Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, okay?
He even gets the joke wrong.
The joke is Focahontas, because she's not really Pocahontas.
She's pretend Pocahontas.
Everyone has been making this joke for several years.
Really, since 2014, I believe?
2014?
2012?
Maybe even?
We've been making this joke about Elizabeth Warren because Elizabeth Warren pretended to be a Native American for her own personal gain.
In fact, here was Elizabeth Warren.
Do we have tape of Elizabeth Warren talking about her cheekbones?
She was specifically asked about, how do you know that you're Native American?
This is years ago.
And she explained that she knew she was Native American because she had high cheekbones.
This is clip number five.
Warren says her great-great-great grandmother is Cherokee, but genealogists have yet to confirm that.
Warren referenced a photo of her grandfather on her mantle as part of the family lore.
My Aunt Bea has walked by that picture at least a thousand times, remarked, That her father, my papa, had high cheekbones, like all of the Indians do.
Because that's how she saw it, and she said, and your mother got those same great cheekbones, and I didn't.
She thought this was the bad deal she had gotten in life.
That was Elizabeth Warren's defense of her Native American ancestry.
That there was a picture on her mantle with high cheekbones.
That's not racist at all.
The media are still treating Elizabeth Warren like a legit 2020 contender after she said that she thought that she was Native American because Papa had high cheekbones in a photo and her grandmother thought that that was not fair.
Yeah.
Mmm.
By the way, Cherokees questioned Elizabeth Warren's story.
In fact, Cherokee sources talked about Pow Wow Chow.
They said that when they tried to track down why Elizabeth Warren said she was Native American, Elizabeth Warren said she was Native American because she had a recipe that appeared in an Oklahoma publication.
She's from Oklahoma.
And the publication was called Pow Wow Chow, okay?
Pow Wow Chow was supposed to be, exactly as it sounds, like a cookbook of Native American recipes.
Her recipe was a recipe for crab bisque.
No, I am not kidding.
Because obviously this was something the Cherokees did way back when, is they would hunt the crab on the plains of Oklahoma.
They would go out there with their bow and arrow and they would hunt the crab.
This is how the crab became extinct in Oklahoma.
It was because of pow wow chow and crab bisque.
It turns out she'd copied the recipe from like Harper's Bazaar or something and they just sent it in to pow wow chow.
Native American researchers looked at this, Cherokee researchers, they said, um, this is not true about Elizabeth Warren at all.
Here's a Cherokee researcher talking to Fox News about it several years back.
When we first discovered that Elizabeth Warren was claiming to be a Cherokee many years ago, she had published a recipe in a book called Pow Wow Chow, and I first became aware of her at that time.
But this most recent bout has been probably about sometime in April.
We heard her name again and became very concerned because she was Moving into a public realm that could impact the Cherokee Nation and the Cherokee people generally.
Yeah, I guess what is it specifically that you find offensive or bothersome about this?
Well, at first we were not offended because many people have claims of American Indian ancestry and that's not offensive.
What we found offensive was that whenever we presented her with her genealogy and showed her clearly that she was not a Cherokee Indian and that her family throughout history had never been connected to the Cherokees, She continued to make that claim.
Okay, so what is the reason?
This story goes back to 2012.
So what is the reason why Elizabeth Warren continued to maintain her Cherokee ancestry?
Because apparently, according to William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection, she used that claim in order to get a job at Harvard Law School.
She claimed that she was basically a minority and that's how she got her job at Harvard Law School.
This is according to Jacobson on April 30th, 2012.
Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has been all over the newspapers the past several days after a revelation that Harvard Law School identified her as a Native American faculty member in the mid-1990s.
Warren contends she was unaware of the designation by HLS and that it played no role in her hiring.
She asserts her Native American heritage is family lore.
Subsequently, David Bernstein discovered that in the annual reports by the Association of American Law Schools, Warren was listed as a minority faculty member.
Since AALS bases such information solely on what faculty self-reports, the information must have come from Warren herself.
So, it is not clear, apparently, that she filled out the forms herself, but it's weird.
Like, where would they get this information anyway?
And HLS claimed that it had nothing to do with her hiring, that she was Native American, but it probably did.
They were doing affirmative action hiring at the time.
So, what is more racist?
Trump referring to her as Pocahontas because she faked her Native American ancestry, or Elizabeth Warren faking her Native American ancestry?
Well, according to the media, what's truly terrible is that Trump would call her Pocahontas in the first place.
So Elizabeth Warren is featured on national media acting with righteous umbrage at the notion that Donald Trump would call her Pocahontas.
And then what's weird is when she starts breaking out into colors of the wind.
That's the really weird part of this clip.
You know, this was supposed to be an event to honor heroes, people who put it all on the line for our country, and people who, because of their incredible work, saved the lives of countless Americans and our allies.
It is deeply unfortunate that the President of the United States cannot even make it through a ceremony honoring these heroes without having to throw out a racial slur.
Oh, it's a racial slur.
Okay, like, listen, Elizabeth, Professor Warren, as I knew her when we were at Harvard Law School, you know, Professor, Senator, let me just point out to you that you are the one pretending to be Native American.
Okay, you're the one who's talking about what happens just around the riverbend and talking to Old Mother Willow, right?
You're the one who's doing all this stuff.
Like, all of this nonsense about how it was Trump who coined all of this and that it's Trump's— Listen, do I think it's ridiculous for Trump to break into a Navajo Code Talker event to make fun of Elizabeth Warren for calling herself Native American?
Yes, it's absurd.
It's ridiculous.
It's buffoonish.
You run out of thesaurus adjectives.
It is equally ridiculous for the media to pretend that it's racist for Trump to call Warren Pocahontas when she's the one pretending to be Native American.
And yet Don Lemon on CNN did exactly that.
Oh, it's an attack on people of color.
Elizabeth Warren isn't a people of color.
Elizabeth Warren is whiter than this piece of paper.
Elizabeth Warren is the whitest person in America.
Okay, she's whiter than Sean King.
Here's Don Lemon trying to turn this into Trump's a racist.
Are you racist?
I am the least racist person that you have ever met.
I am the least racist person.
Here's what everyone should know.
Just because you say you're not racist doesn't make it so.
Especially if you say, do, and defend racist behavior over and over and over again.
Okay, so, no.
No.
Okay, so using the Pocahontas thing as the example is just ridiculous.
I was unfortunate enough to be watching CNN yesterday during the Wolf Blitzer hour.
And I have to admit that Wolf Blitzer, his show is amusing to me because virtually all of the show is just Wolf acting really puzzled about life.
So that's really fun to watch.
Every time somebody finishes a story, he goes, and that's a very, very important story.
And then on to the next story.
He's just, he's sort of a traffic cop for news.
But in any case, Wolf Blitzer has on a full panel, and it's Dana Bash, and it's Chris Chilesa, and I'm trying to remember who the third person was who's there, and they're all just beside themselves.
Trump, it's so racist.
It's just so derogatory to the office for Trump to do this.
Listen, is it unpresidential?
Yes.
Are you not used to this by now?
I mean, President Trump has been the president for nearly a year at this point.
Are we really expecting him to be the hallmark of decency and poise?
Because that ain't happening.
But the attempt to turn it into something racist is truly absurd, especially when, again, you want to know why Trump gets support?
Trump gets support because now the media, they can't help themselves.
Instead of just saying, utterly inappropriate for Trump to make these comments in front of a bunch of Navajo code talkers.
Instead of them just to say that, They have to go overboard and say it's racist.
And then all of his people go, wait a second, the person who's racist is the person pretending to be the Native American and talking about why high cheekbones make you Native American, right?
That's actually racist.
I'm pleased Sarah Huckabee Sanders' response to all of this because I think that it is correct from the White House.
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Okay, so, here is Sarah Huckabee Sanders responding to claims that Trump was engaging in racism.
Why is it appropriate for the president to use a racial slur in any context?
I don't believe that it is appropriate for him to make a racial slur or anybody else.
Well, Monson thinks that this is a racial slur, so why is it appropriate for him to use that?
Well, I think, like I said, I don't think that it is, and I don't think that was certainly not the president's intent.
Okay, so that is correct.
What is truly racist is, again, Elizabeth Warren's schtick.
This is why Trump continues to have support among his base, because if you insist on going overboard with every claim, then you are going to create a backlash, and that's exactly what happens.
Okay, so.
In other news, there's an article that I want to go through because I think it makes an interesting argument, but it's an argument that, as we say in law school, proves too much.
So here is the article.
The article is from The Federalist.
There's a woman named Denise McAllister, who's a very good columnist.
I enjoy her work a lot.
She's on Twitter as well.
But she released an article that basically suggested that the Bible says that you have to vote for Donald Trump or Roy Moore, that constantly we are Forced to vote for bad politicians in order to do good things.
That's essentially the argument that is being made.
I want to find the exact title of it.
Why it's justified to vote for a morally questionable politician.
Actually, the article is stronger than that.
It basically suggests that it's unjustified not to vote for a morally questionable politician.
And the article basically suggests that God uses bad people to do good things, right?
There's an argument that we heard from Franklin Graham about Donald Trump.
It's an argument that we're hearing now about Roy Moore.
And it's not an argument I find particularly convincing.
The reason I don't find it convincing is because we are not God.
We aren't.
Now, there is a complex moral calculus that goes on when you decide whether or not to vote for a politician.
You have to decide, are this person's character flaws so deep and abiding that one, they will prevent this person from implementing my values.
Two, they harm my values just by association.
There are people who will do what you want, but they are so gross that they smear your entire system of thought because you're associated with them.
And three, it's such an emergency that you have to side with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler.
In order to make the argument to side with Stalin to defeat Hitler, we heard this a lot in 2016, you actually have to be facing down Hitler.
It doesn't help if you're facing down Elizabeth Warren.
Elizabeth Warren is not Hitler.
As much as I dislike her, she's not.
Okay, this is the same thing that holds true with regards to Democrats in the Senate.
I don't think they're Hitler.
I think they're bad.
I don't agree with them.
I don't think they're Hitler.
And if you think that they're Hitler, then it's time for you to start engaging in some civil disruptions, right?
It's time to actually start building bombs if you think that Hitler is right on the horizon here.
You know, with all of this being said, We have to acknowledge something.
When people say this silly argument that God uses bad people to do good things, that's a decision for God to make.
That's not a decision for you to make.
God is omniscient.
You are not.
So here's the question.
People say, for example, well, God used King David, didn't he?
And King David was an adulterer and a murderer, right?
He sent off a woman's husband to die in battle because he'd impregnated the man's wife.
Right, that's a question for us about God, right?
Why would God choose to do that?
But that's not a question as to whether David could do that if he would also attempt to build the temple, or if he'd also get rid of the Philistines, right?
David repents.
The whole point is that our human action is not God's action.
God does a lot of things we don't understand.
God chooses a lot of vessels we don't get.
That does not mean that we get to act evilly.
In fact, one of my favorite movies is Amadeus.
The entire premise of Amadeus is basically this.
We're at Salieri in the movie.
And in the play, which is just a beautiful play, Salieri is a relatively untalented guy who's saintly, and Mozart is basically a perv who is insanely talented.
And Salieri can't handle this, and so he decides that he is going to rebel against God.
Why would God choose this really terrible person in order to bring godly music down to earth?
Why would he do that?
And so he decides to basically kill Mozart, essentially.
And then at the end he realizes that it's not his job to determine why it is that God chooses certain people as his vessels.
It is his job to facilitate the use of those vessels in order to bring God's message to earth.
Right?
That's the point of the play.
And that's the point of the Bible too, by the way.
I don't think that it's our job to say, well, all the things that David did that were wrong are actually right because it turns out that God was okay with him.
That is backward logic and it relieves us of responsibility.
It relieves us of serious responsibility.
So, again, do I think that every decision about Trump, Roy Moore is easy?
Oh, they're bad guys, don't vote for them?
No, I don't think they're easy.
I think that we have a complex moral calculus on our hands.
We have to determine, is it better to vote for a bad person or an allegedly bad person who's gonna stop terrible things from occurring in the present, or is it better to avoid voting for that bad person in the belief that A, God could provide a better solution, B, there's a long-term damage done when we're represented by bad human beings since it dirties our cause, or C, maybe we actually have to take a hit In order to achieve the resurrection of our values.
Denise writes this, and I actually agree with this.
She says, Will a serial liar deceive those who put him in office?
Most likely.
Will the porn-watching senator be influenced by his immorality to make bad foreign policy decisions?
I don't think so.
I think this is relevant.
I think that when we decide whether to vote for somebody, we have to determine how close their character flaw and their sin is to the decisions that they're being asked to make.
But it's not a complete analysis.
It does leave out the danger of allying with unsavory people to an advance and end from even a utilitarian perspective, which it seems that Denise is pushing here.
If we do that, we own those people.
Denise is right, we can't always vote for saints, but by the same token, that's a far cry from saying that we should vote for someone who's credibly alleged to have molested 14-year-old girls.
Then she goes into an analysis of the City of God and the City of Man, and she basically says that in the City of God then we have to ally with holy people, but in the City of Man we have to use the best vehicle at our disposal.
But that's not a proper read of Augustine.
Augustine's entire thesis in the City of God is that worship of Christ, because he's a Christian, is worth striving for, and that the City of Man is driven by worship of the material.
And that doesn't mean that you can't associate with people who live in the city of man, materially driven people.
But it does mean that you have to keep your eyes on God.
That's the important thing.
And the minute that you fail to do that, you have failed.
It's our choice to be holy.
It is God's choice as to which vessels He chooses to use.
We have to decide how best to be holy, not which vessels we think God ought to use or has used.
We can't read God's mind.
To treat our choices like divine choices, in other words, it's an act of arrogance.
And in the end, the argument's a bit of a cop-out, because basically it says this.
She writes this.
She says, I recognize the slippery slope that can come of what I'm writing here.
Why not put the devil himself on the throne if he offers liberty, some might ask.
I, of course, am not saying that, and I'm not talking about putting evil men in positions of power.
Well, I mean, she is a little bit.
She says, people are multifaceted and complex.
I'm not a fan of condemning a person for one failing or even a couple.
There's more to us than a singleness of a part.
I'm not going to fall into the trap of treating individual politicians or secular groups as if they're manifestations of the city of God on earth.
Outside the realm of criminality and abuses of power that degrade the office and put the public at risk, a sinner can still serve and do great things.
This is because God is ultimately in control, bringing about his purposes by his own righteous authority and not the authority of fallen men.
I hate this argument so much I can't even tell you.
The reason is because essentially what it is saying is that you can just vote for whomever you choose and then say it was God's plan anyway.
Right?
It's a deterministic universe.
God plans it anyway, so what does it matter for whom you vote?
This relieves you of the duty to make these hard moral choices.
Again, notice, in this argument, I'm not saying you can't vote for Roy Moore if you adjudge that it is the holiest choice to vote for a guy who may have molested 14-year-old girls because you think that it's necessary to have another vote against abortion.
That's a serious moral calculation that you have to make.
But to suggest that it is biblically mandated to do this, or that the Bible allows you to just overlook character flaws and not even take that into account, or sins, and not even take that into account when you're making these decisions, is a biblical misread, a serious biblical misread.
Well, before I go any further, and I do want to talk a little bit more about Conyers and Franken and Roy Moore and the CFPB controversy that I've got tons to get to today, a lot of news breaking today.
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Alright, so, there was another big story that broke yesterday, and this one, I feel bad doing this because I like James O'Keefe.
James and I are friendly.
And I think that James has done a lot of good stuff.
I think that James has, beyond the ACORN stuff, I remember when James broke news about unions who were basically suggesting that they had lobbied for make-work projects that they could get government dollars.
James did a lot of good work on voter fraud and voter ID.
But James tried a sting that I think is really bad.
So here is the background on this sting.
So James sent in A woman pretending to be an alleged victim of Roy Moore.
So after the allegations about Roy Moore that he had molested underage women, James apparently deployed a woman to go to the Washington Post and claim that she had been impregnated by Roy Moore at age 15 and that Roy Moore had then paid for her abortion.
The purpose, I guess, here was dual.
One was to show that the Washington Post was so deeply motivated by a desire to get Republicans and get Roy Moore that they'd be willing to accept bad intel.
And two would be to discredit the other accusers of Roy Moore by saying that this is what the Washington Post had reported, that the Washington Post had no standards, that they hadn't checked out the stories, and that therefore the other accusers would be discredited.
The first allegation that the Washington Post has an outsized interest in Roy Moore because they don't like Roy Moore, there's probably truth to that.
The second allegation that all of the women that were interviewed by the Washington Post were lying, or that the Washington Post didn't do its due diligence, That's gross.
Okay, that's gross.
There are a thousand ways to discredit the Washington Post and show that they have political bias.
They do have political bias.
But, to suggest that you have to use fake sexual assault victims in order to discredit real sexual assault victims, that's pretty morally disgusting, and I have a serious moral problem with it.
In any case, it really backfired because it turns out the Washington Post does its homework.
It actually ends up reestablishing the Washington Post's credibility, particularly with regard to the women who are alleging things against Roy Moore, because this woman went in and she tried to convince the Washington Post to run a story about how she'd been abused by Roy Moore so then they could come out and say that it was fake.
And the Washington Post did its due diligence and not only didn't believe her, they tracked her down to James O'Keefe's offices and showed that she was an agent of James O'Keefe.
So that actually ends up basically upholding the ability of the Washington Post to report, at least in a factual manner.
Here's some of the tape that was released by the Washington Post of this woman trying to basically catfish the Washington Post reporter.
I mean, I don't want to be in the story.
But I didn't agree to go on the record.
I'm not going to answer any of your questions.
Well, we're all on the record, you know, as I said, and this is you.
Right.
But this is your chance.
I'm not going to answer any more on this question.
Okay.
I'm just going to go.
Okay.
Okay.
And what ended up happening is this woman basically kept looking for the Washington Post reporter to say, I hope that this gets Roy Moore out of office.
I hope that this will drive Roy Moore from office and prevents him from running.
And none of that happened.
So huge backfire.
Huge backfire on James.
I think James ought to...
Think of better ops.
I don't think this should finish his career by any stretch of the imagination, but I think this is a very, very bad sting.
I think it's an immoral sting, actually.
I think there are plenty of ways to go after the media to try and demonstrate their bias.
And again, I think James has done some really good work in the past, but this is not it.
And it does demonstrate that the right is so distrustful of the media that attempting to plant a story like this in an attempt to discredit the media so that you can save Roy Moore Not good stuff.
Okay, so I have many more things to discuss, including Conyers and Franken, the new CFPB, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau controversy, plus things I like and things I—just a lot of stuff coming up.
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So one of the reasons that there's a new poll out about Roy Moore today, and it shows that Moore is now up six points in his Alabama Senate race— I think Moore is going to win that race, and I think that he will be seated.
One of the reasons he will be seated is because the Democrats, as I said yesterday, have now stepped on a landmine with both feet.
They have decided they are going to defend every bad allegation against every one of their bad guys.
They demonstrated their full-fledged hypocrisy.
Yesterday, Al Franken did a press conference, and this press conference is just a masterpiece of misdirection and confusion and awkwardness.
The fact that they thought that this guy was a potential 2020 candidate says everything about the Democratic Party.
Here's Al.
Al, hands on your butt.
Franken.
I know there are no magic words that I can say to regain your trust, and I know that's going to take time.
I'm ready to start that process, and it starts with going back to work today.
Okay, so what process is going to take time?
Like, not grabbing women by the ass?
I'm super confused about this.
Again, I've now stated this many times.
I've taken thousands of pictures with people.
Literally thousands of pictures with fans.
Not once have my hands gravitated toward their asses.
Zero times has this happened.
Zero.
In fact, negative.
Right?
There are asses that have not yet been created I will never grab.
This is not a thing.
Okay?
And then Al Franken, I love this part.
He says, you know, I'll have to think about it.
And then he says, you know, maybe more women will come forward.
I can't speculate.
By the way, more women are definitely going to come forward.
What is the reason, can you tell us, that you can't definitively say that more women would not come out with more allegations of these kinds of things?
Sure.
If you had, you know, asked me two weeks ago, would any woman come forward with an allegation like this, I would have said no.
And so, I cannot speculate.
Okay, you can't speculate?
I can speculate.
There are many more women who are going to come out with these allegations.
And you can see that because the Democrats are going to let Franken sit and this will all just blow over, the Republicans are like, okay, well then why should we throw over more?
The standards have been so lowered at this point that anyone can be elected.
Literally anyone.
You know, when Donald Trump said in 2016 he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, that is not an exaggeration.
I mean, Teddy Kennedy drove a woman off a bridge and murdered her.
And then he left her to die.
And he was not only re-elected, he was called the lion of the Senate.
So yes, all of our standards are basically gone at this point.
Everything has become rote.
Like yesterday, there was this video of a campaign coordinator for the Roy Moore campaign literally attacking a camera person.
This came out yesterday.
You think this is going to lose Roy Moore any vote?
None.
You know why?
Because the antipathy for the media is so high among Republicans that it doesn't matter.
When Greg Gianforte literally bodyslammed Ben Jacobs of the Washington Post, he won his congressional race and raised more money the day after the bodyslam than he had the rest of his campaign combined, if I'm not mistaken.
Here's the video of the Roy Moore campaign coordinator.
Hey!
Okay, so solid stuff happening over there.
You know, none of this is good.
None of this is good for the country.
But we hate each other so much politically that we're basically willing to allow the worst of both parties to be elected to high office.
And we're willing to believe anything so long as it allows us to alleviate our cognitive dissonance.
We all want to believe we're good people.
We all want to believe that we don't like bad people.
We all want to believe we have some sort of moral standards.
But we have to alleviate our cognitive dissonance.
And that's why, you know, President Trump is an expert at alleviating his own cognitive dissonance.
He doesn't want to believe he's a bad guy either, and so now apparently he's making the claim that the Access Hollywood tape on which he was caught saying that he could grab women by the bleep and get away with it, he's now saying that that's a fake according to several reports.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked about that yesterday.
Here is her response.
Back to the Access Hollywood tape, you said that he made his position clear at the time.
He said, at the time, he said, I said it, I was wrong, I apologize.
But you just said the media's reporting of its accuracy.
Can I ask you again, does the president acknowledge saying that?
Look, I said that he'd already addressed it and that we didn't have any updates to that.
I said what he didn't like and what he found troubling were the accounts that are being reported now.
But what counts are being reported now that weren't reported last year?
What counts are you talking about?
The ones that are current that he's questioning.
That is not a thing.
There are no accounts that are correct.
In any case, there are a lot of people who will believe that because we all have to feel good about ourselves.
It's very important in politics that we feel good about ourselves and that means that we have to pretend that the evidence against Roy Moore is not damning.
We have to pretend for Democrats that the evidence against Al Franken is not damning.
We cannot live with the cognitive dissonance of knowing that we're voting for bad people.
At least I will give Denise McAllister and a bunch of other people on the right who have basically said, Roy Moore may be guilty, but I'll vote for him anyway.
Some credit.
At least there's intellectual honesty there.
David Horowitz on the left.
I'll give credit to people who are this honest.
But I think that the vast majority of the public is not this honest.
Maybe honesty in this case is not the best policy.
Maybe we should go back to a standard where we all denounce our own garbage.
Okay, time for, well, you know, before I get to things I like and things I hate, I have to comment once more on the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau controversy.
It's basically turned into an Austin Powers skit at this point.
There were like eight people who showed up yesterday at the CFPB claiming to be the new director of the CFPB all pointing at each other.
It was like the end of Reservoir Dogs.
They were all just standing there with guns pointed at each other in a Mexican standoff.
And Richard Cordray, who's the outgoing director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, he has come out and said, here's the basic backstory.
Richard Cordray was appointed by President Obama during a recess appointment that was probably illegal.
He was finally confirmed by the Senate.
He had a five-year term.
He stepped down a little bit early, specifically so that he would not hand over the CFPB, the controls of the CFPB, to a Republican.
And then he appointed his own successor.
That is not legal, okay?
He does not have the power to actually do that.
President Trump said, OK, now we have a recess, I'm going to recess-appoint somebody, right?
I'm putting in an interim director.
That interim director is my head of Office of Management and Budget.
He's going to come in.
He's going to clean house.
Cordray says, no, I get to appoint my own successor, which is illegal because Congress didn't get to approve this person, and the president doesn't get to fire that person.
So now we have an office that is completely independent of any accountability from any branch of government.
That's not the way that the bill was supposed to work.
That's not the way the bill does work.
The CFPB itself, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau itself is not a good agency.
The reason I say it's not a good agency is because originally it was designed to protect consumers but instead it's turned into basically a shakedown industry for particular democratic donors.
Richard Cordray and his allies have targeted specific firms that they want to go after and then they've used them to achieve settlements and fund their future projects.
It basically operates like a shakedown operation, the CFPB, at this point.
And it's dominated by Democrats.
Republicans cannot be employed there.
Republicans have basically been barred from employment there.
And they get their funding from overages at the Federal Reserve.
So it's not as though they are dependent on congressional funding or even executive funding.
It's automatic.
They are now a rogue agency that can do whatever they want if Cordray were to have his way.
Well, he can't have his way, and President Trump appointed a new director.
What's really galling about this is that Trump's saying we need to rein in the CFPB and actually wet it back to its original purpose, which is protection of consumers instead of shakedowns of particular industries.
You know, Trump saying this means that the Democrats immediately say any attempt to make any change at the CFPB is an attack on consumers.
This is one of these political angles I despise the most.
The political angle That if I want to make a change to a particular law, it's because I hate the name of the law, right?
So what you would do for a Democrat is, there's the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare.
And you say, I think the Affordable Care Act has been a disaster.
They'll say, what, you want to make care unaffordable?
Hmm?
They would do the same thing with the Patriot Act during the Bush administration.
Well, are you an unpatriot?
Hmm?
No.
Okay, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, that does not mean that it's actually protecting consumers.
It does not mean that it's protecting consumer finance.
Right?
It's just the name of the agency.
But this is what Democrats are doing.
Here is Cordray saying that, you know, the new director isn't going to be decided by insults, it'll be decided by law, he says, after a lawless attempt to seize power at the agency.
This is the kind of disagreement that involves two different laws.
They conflict with one another.
The right place to hash that out is in the courts, which is where it is right now.
It shouldn't be decided by name-calling and tweets and insults.
It should be decided by people presenting their arguments and a judge thinking it over.
This judge obviously is looking at it overnight, so recognizes it's a serious issue.
Okay, so, again, this is, you know, this is nonsense.
He does not have the power to do this.
This is a really silly political controversy designed so that Cordray can run for governor of Ohio.
Gross.
Okay, time for some things I like, things I hate, and then we will deconstruct culture briefly.
So, things that I like.
I just finished reading this book called The Cartel.
It is really enjoyable by Don Winslow.
There are a couple of leftist sucker punches in the middle of it.
It basically suggests that everyone who's right-wing is bad, everybody who's left-wing is good, but the hero of the story is actually a right-wing guy.
And despite the attempts of the author, Don Winslow, to drop these sort of sucker punches against the Bush administration and to uphold the genius of the Obama administration, and this suggestion that America has been involved in atrocities all around the world and that we're really at fault for the Mexican drug cartels, the book itself is really good.
It's been compared to The Godfather.
I think that's actually not a bad comparison.
I've read Mario Puzo's original The Godfather, and this is You know, much along the same lines, it's really kind of, it's juicy stuff, let's put it that way.
The cartel, it's also, it tries to make a larger point about the way that the government in Mexico has worked historically with various cartels in order to achieve their purposes.
If you liked the movie Sicario, Then this book is very much along those lines.
It's a very cynical take on the drug war, and I think, given the non-success of the drug war, a relatively accurate one.
So check it out, The Cartel, by Don Winslow.
Okay, time for A Thing I Hate, and then we'll deconstruct culture for a minute.
Alrighty, so I have to say, today is a sad day.
Today is a sad day.
It's a sad day because Keith Olbermann has finally decided to hang it up.
Shut it down.
Walk out the door.
Leave.
Good riddance.
Keith Olbermann.
So Keith Olbermann says that he is leaving his GQ special correspondent role.
Why?
Because he has achieved his purpose.
No, seriously.
He says Trump's going to be impeached, so there's no reason for him to stick around.
I'm going to go with there's another reason why Keith Olbermann is stepping down from this job.
And it has nothing to do with President Trump being impeached.
And maybe it has something to do with Fluffy not getting her proper care from the mobile pet spa down the street, leaving me a ball of crying agony and wounded piss.
But, Keith Oldman is leaving.
Maybe it was the Halloween impersonation.
Maybe it was just too much for him.
Here's Keith Oldman explaining why he is leaving behind those crazy glasses.
I am confident now, even more so than I have been throughout the last year, that this nightmare presidency of Donald John Trump will end prematurely and end soon, and I am thus also confident that this is the correct moment to end this series of commentaries.
And so this series is over.
This was intended as something temporary, a two-month project by somebody who had given up politics.
But frankly, I have not enjoyed one minute of it.
As I'm certain it has also been for you, for me, it has been unadulterated pain and revulsion and horror.
No illness, no scandal, no firing.
Just, I've said what I've had to say.
So I am retiring from political commentary in all media venues.
Thank you for all the kind words and all the support.
Have fun storming the castle.
My work here is done.
Matter of fact, so is Trump's.
Resist?
Remove.
Peace.
Well, goodbye, Keith.
Resist.
Remove.
That weighs the door.
So, Keith Olbermann's gone.
That's sad.
It's a thing I hate because it's sad.
I like Keith Olbermann being around because what else am I gonna bounce off of?
I mean, I need crazy people to talk on a regular basis, otherwise we don't have a show, right?
So, that's sad.
And I just hope that Fluffy finally receives the proper care to which Fluffy properly is entitled.
Okay, time to deconstruct the culture briefly.
So, this was a specific deconstructing the culture request by a fan.
The song is called Lemon.
I don't know why it exists.
It was made by Nerd and Rihanna.
Pharrell, I guess, is one of the members of this group, Nerd.
But in any case, this song is hot garbage.
And it has some lyrics that are political.
We will explain.
Here's a little bit of one of the worst songs I have ever seen.
Okay, um, what now?
It's like Beethoven.
I mean, just like... And the artistry of the dancing.
It's like watching Baryshnikov just gallivant around the stage.
It's like Beethoven.
I mean, just like...
And the artistry of the dancing.
It's like watching Baryshnikov just gallivant around the stage.
Magnificent.
Okay, I can't listen anymore.
That's garbage.
Okay, so the reason that this was mailed to me is because one of the lyrics here, and this is fairly typical of a lot of R&B and rap, is there's an insertion of random politics in the middle of a song where, number one, I'm not going to pretend that I understand anything that's being said here.
Okay, if I just listened to this song, I could not decode what was just said.
Okay, I speak a language called English.
That was not in English.
I'm good at English.
Like, I got A's in all of my English courses forever.
I don't think it's just me.
And this is not racial in any way, because I think there are lots of people who speak English with dialects I don't understand.
I don't know what that was saying.
But maybe there are people who do.
So, for those who don't know, I'm going to translate for you.
There's one point at which Pharrell says, hate.
You keep asking me where I'm from.
Hate.
About the borders and did I run.
Hate.
So that obviously is a rip on President Trump in the middle of a garbage song that no one can understand.
Oh, hate, if not now, then when.
Oh, hate, if not me, then who.
Hate, don't drink the Kool-Aid, my friends.
Hate, I tried to tell you all about this dude.
So that obviously is a rip on President Trump in the middle of a garbage song that no one can understand.
What I wish to suggest here is that we spend a lot of time on deconstructing the culture actually looking at lyrics.
Obviously, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people who listen to this garbage are not even going to know what that means.
It just sounds like hate, and then a bunch of words, and then hate, and then a bunch of words.
You don't know what's actually being said.
What is more damaging to the culture, honestly, is the imagery that is promoted.
If you don't want women to be treated as sexual objects, which I don't, If you are not interested in women being treated as just pure objects of sexuality, then perhaps you should stop depicting them as objects of pure sexuality as they are in things like this music video.
Now listen, this lady can dance however she wants.
That's fine.
She can wear whatever she wants.
That's her prerogative.
It's a free country.
All I'm suggesting is that if you are appealing to a young male audience, which a lot of this music does, and all you're doing is showing women shaking their rumps, you know, close-ups of women shaking their rumps, that would be objectifying.
Feminists would call that objectifying.
Okay, because it's objectifying.
And that does more damage to the culture, even than the bad lyrics.
It's one of the reasons why Hollywood, the damage that Hollywood does to the culture is mostly with its imagery and plot lines, not by its sucker punches.
So this is why there's a new movie coming out called The Post, about the Washington Post, with Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, and it's just award season's bait.
It looks awful.
I'm gonna have to do it in Things I Hate tomorrow, maybe.
It's just self-congratulatory nonsense.
The Washington Post was about to be shut down by the Nixon administration.
No.
And the whole thing is really self-congratulatory.
That movie is not going to make a dent on the political scene, but there are movies that will make a dent on the political scene that have nothing to do with politics and much more to do with culture.
This is also true with a lot of this sort of music.
The hidden messages that are embedded in the music are often less important than the overt stuff, which in this case would be the overt objectification of women, the close-ups of women, sweaty rears shaking on your screen.
Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow from Washington, D.C., actually, for reasons that will remain unspecified.
So that's mysterious.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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