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Feb. 24, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

46:59

The Most Shocking Failure In The Parkland Massacre | Ep. 482

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	We just found out three separate bombshells from the Broward County Sheriff's Office, and they are all good reason why you will never want to give up your guns to the authorities.
	We'll explain all of it.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	If the reports that we are now reading from CNN are true, this is the most shocking law enforcement failure in modern American history.
	And it is not close.
	I'm going to bring you all the news about what's going on out of Broward County.
	Just shameful, shameful, horrifying nonsense.
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	All right, so here is the breaking news.
	Well, let me step back for a second before I get to the breaking news, actually.
	So, you remember a couple of nights ago, On CNN, there's a two-hour town hall, and this town hall special was specifically designed to make gun owners, members of the NRA, Second Amendment advocates, feel as though they were morally inferior, as though these people were somehow responsible for the horrors of what had happened inside that school over in Parkland, Florida.
	And all of that was nonsense, of course.
	The sheriff of Broward County, Scott Israel, did this beating of his chest and this wailing and gnashing of teeth, blaming the NRA and the availability of AR-15s.
	Well, now we know exactly why this shooting happened.
	And it happened because authorities failed on every single level.
	All of them.
	It wasn't just the FBI got two calls and did nothing.
	It wasn't just that the Broward County Sheriff's Office received 39 separate calls to this piece of crap's home over the course of seven years.
	It wasn't just that.
	Now we have even more information.
	You ready for this?
	You want to talk bombshells?
	Here are the bombshells.
	On Thursday night, the American public learned that Broward County Sheriff's Office was told in November that the Parkland shooter, quote, could be a school shooter in the making, but deputies didn't bother to write up a report.
	That report came just weeks after a relative called urging the BSO, the Broward County Sheriff's Office, to seize his weapon.
	Then, here's the even more shocking news.
	We learned that an armed school resource officer — this one's just mind-boggling — an armed school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sat outside and waited for four minutes.
	The entire shooting episode was six minutes.
	The Broward County deputy was outside, heard the shots, waited outside with his gun for four minutes, and did not enter the school.
	That attack ended with 17 dead people, including at least a dozen dead kids.
	And the Broward County Sheriff's deputy, whose job it was, he's the armed school officer.
	It is his job to rush that guy.
	He sat outside and he didn't do anything.
	He sat outside and did nothing.
	We also know, by the way, that the schools Scott Peterson was absolutely on campus through this entire event.
	He was armed.
	He was in uniform.
	on the cameras was 20 minutes, running 20 minutes behind.
	So this guy was sitting outside, but apparently he heard the gunshots and he did nothing.
	Even the Broward County Sheriff himself, Steve Israel, acknowledged this yesterday in a press conference.
	Shocking stuff.
	Here is what Israel had to say.
	Scott Peterson was absolutely on campus through this entire event.
	He was armed.
	He was in uniform.
	But what I saw was a deputy arrive at the west side of Building 12, take up a position, and he never went in.
	And he never went in.
	Okay, this guy sat outside and he did not go in.
	Now a lot of people today on the left are doing this because they want to make this about the guns and not about the fact that there was an armed officer there who did nothing.
	Instead, because they want to make it about the availability of weapons, they say, well, can you blame him?
	This guy not charging?
	Yes, I can blame him.
	And I don't have to be a police officer or a soldier to blame him.
	I wasn't in that situation.
	I also didn't volunteer to become an employee of the Broward County Sheriff's Office and become an armed school officer.
	That is this guy's only job.
	You had one job, and when the time came, you cowered.
	And it wasn't just that, okay?
	Are you ready for this?
	This gets even worse.
	This gets significantly worse.
	This is breaking in the last 15 minutes.
	CNN reporting, quote, When Coral Springs Police Officers, this is a different district, when Coral Springs Police Officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14th, in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff's Deputy Scott Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff's Deputies were also outside the school and had not entered.
	The deputies had their pistols drawn and they were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school.
	So while this monster was roaming classroom to classroom with his rifle, mowing down students, four deputies—four armed, uniformed deputies—were sitting outside.
	They didn't get in there to try and save the kids.
	They didn't get in there to try and rescue the kids after the kids had been shot.
	They waited for an entirely new police department to get there and go inside.
	There's something fishy going on here, folks.
	There is something going on here, because I promise you, when people sign up to be sheriff's deputies, they're not doing so thinking that they're going to cower behind a car.
	They're doing so thinking that they want to help save people.
	So there is something going on, and this thing, Steve Israel knows the answer, and he ain't telling us.
	Steve Israel, this sheriff, he knows exactly what happened here and he is not telling us.
	There's a rumor online that I hesitate to report because I don't know that it's well substantiated.
	This has more to do with sheriff's policy than anything else.
	But we're going to find out because something happened here where four deputies were sitting outside with their guns drawn and a monster inside massacring children and they didn't go inside.
	And you're going to tell me that's the NRA's fault?
	You're going to tell me that's Dana Lash's fault?
	You're going to tell me that's my fault, living in Los Angeles, with my guns in my safe?
	You're going to tell me that's the fault of 100 million gun owners who weren't there, many of whom would have rushed the shooter and tried to do something, just like what happened in the Texas church shooting, where an armed citizen took down the bad guy?
	That guy was just an armed citizen, did a hell of a lot more than any of these cops did in Broward County.
	This is insanity.
	And I'll tell you something that's even more insane.
	Here's something that's even more insane.
	Again, remember, just a couple of days ago, it was this schmuck, Steve Israel, who was standing on stage amidst a bunch of the citizens from Broward County and shouting at Dana Lash and telling Dana Lash that it was her fault that all of this had happened, that it was the NRA's fault that all of this has happened, virtue signaling and posturing about how we just need to get guns out of the hands of bad people.
	Well, the guns were in the hands of the right people, but they didn't do a damn thing, according to CNN.
	This is the worst law enforcement failure in modern American history.
	17 dead people because there were cops waiting outside who didn't go in there.
	And here's the thing that's amazing about this, OK?
	So I ripped down the CNN special because I thought that it was an emotional setup.
	I think that it was an emotional setup.
	It was specifically designed to destroy the proponents of Second Amendment rights.
	It was, I thought, disreputable.
	I thought it had no news value.
	It was just two minutes of hate.
	It was Orwell's two minutes hate.
	Okay, but here's what makes it even worse.
	While Israel was doing this, there were questions, right?
	Because all this came out this morning.
	There were questions that came out over the last couple days about what Israel knew and when he knew it.
	Because now we know he's admitting it full-on that he had a deputy there who didn't pull his gun and didn't go inside.
	And now we're finding out from CNN there were three more deputies.
	So the question is, when did he know that?
	Did he only find out about that after he ripped Dana Lash to shreds?
	And after he ripped the NRA to shreds?
	And after he blamed Second Amendment proponents for what happened?
	Or did he know that while he was on that stage, and as he's such a dishonest piece of human debris, that he went on that stage and blamed everybody but himself, when he's the guy in power, he's the guy with the star on his chest.
	He's the man responsible for taking care of those kids.
	That is his duty.
	That is his job.
	That is what he was hired to do.
	That is what he's paid to do.
	That's what he'll get his pension from.
	And that guy was standing there.
	So when did he know it?
	Well, fortunately for us, CNN reports.
	It isn't me reporting it.
	It isn't Daily Wire reporting it.
	It isn't a right-wing piece of news media reporting it.
	It ain't Fox News.
	This is CNN.
	Okay, according to Coral Springs City Manager Mike Goodrum, on February 15th, the day after the shooting, this is a direct quote from CNN.
	Okay, direct quote from CNN.
	The Coral City Springs manager, city manager, chewed out Steve Israel over that malfeasance on February 15th.
	He approached him the day after the shooting.
	He said, my people told me that they got there and your people were outside doing nothing.
	Which means that not only did Israel probably know it, he was informed of it directly by somebody else.
	And then a week later, he went on national television and ripped somebody who had nothing to do with it and blamed them for the problem.
	How disgusting is that?
	How repulsive is that?
	I mean, that is just, the level of moral despicability necessary to do that is just astonishing.
	So two levels of absolute degradation, moral degradation.
	One, four police officers waiting outside while kids get mowed down.
	One guy inside with a gun.
	Four people outside with guns.
	That's level number one, which is the worst.
	And then level number two is the cover-up where you blame everybody but yourself when you're the one responsible for it.
	Absolutely horrifying.
	Absolutely horrifying in every possible way.
	Now, what have the media done about this?
	Well, the media, of course, have continued to blame the NRA.
	The media have continued to suggest that it's gun owners, Second Amendment advocates everywhere, who are doing all of this.
	You know, President Trump said today, he was speaking at CPAC, and President Trump said today that the Second Amendment was under threat.
	And Jesse Singel, a guy who I'm friendly with from Formerly of New York Magazine, he and I got into it on Twitter because he said, what kind of nonsense is that the Second Amendment is under threat?
	Well, that same Steve Israel was on stage calling for a full ban on semi-automatic rifles, which is any working rifle in the United States that's not a bolt-action or a lever-action rifle, or a muzzle-loaded rifle.
	So basically they're calling for a vast ban on the most common guns in the United States, and then telling us that's not a violation of the Second Amendment, and we're supposed to feel comfortable with this?
	You roll out a 24-7 propaganda effort by the news media to say that guns are responsible for something where it's pretty clear the authorities didn't do their job, and I'm supposed to feel comfortable with you guys?
	So here's the case you're making to me, Steve Israel.
	Here's the case you're making to me, Barack Obama.
	Here's the case you're making to me, all the folks in the media on the left.
	The case that you're making to me today is the FBI failed twice to do anything about this school shooter.
	And then the Broward County Sheriff's Office failed 39 times to do anything about that shooter.
	And then there were armed people from the Broward County Sheriff's Office there, four of them apparently, and they didn't do anything about the shooter.
	And I'm supposed to hand over my gun to you?
	I'm supposed to hand over my ability to defend myself to you?
	Why in blue blazing hell would I do that?
	Why would I hand over my only ability to protect myself to people who are going to stand outside with the guns that I gave up and not rush the shooter?
	Again, the people in the media are just—it's Scott Israel, not Steve Israel, rather.
	The people in the media have been attempting to spin away from this story all day.
	Now it's even worse, obviously, because it's not just one officer, it's four.
	The way they've been spinning away from this—so, Lawrence O'Donnell was the worst.
	Lawrence O'Donnell last night goes on TV, and he says, how can you expect One man to charge into the line of fire, even if he's wearing a uniform.
	I love these same people who say that the cops are racists, the cops are pathetic, we shouldn't trust the cops, we can never trust the cops, and now all of a sudden they're the big defenders of cops.
	They only like cops when cops don't actually do anything, apparently.
	So this cop didn't run in, he didn't do anything.
	So Lawrence O'Donnell says, you know why he didn't do that?
	Because the muzzle velocity of a rifle is three times the muzzle velocity of a handgun.
	So the officer's gun had a lower muzzle velocity than the shooter's rifle.
	Do you have any idea how ridiculously stupid this is?
	This defense?
	So, is the idea that this guy would be able to avoid a fired bullet from a handgun?
	Does he have Matrix-like ability?
	As soon as he picks up an AR, suddenly he can bend over backwards like Keanu Reeves and make sound waves in the air behind the bullet?
	Is that the idea here?
	Let's say they're standing 100 feet apart.
	We'll do a quick back-of-the-envelope math here.
	A typical rifle fires about 3,900 feet per second.
	That's the muzzle velocity.
	It's about 3,900 feet per second.
	A typical handgun is about 1,300 feet per second.
	Let's say they were standing 100 feet from one another.
	Let's say that he ran into the hallway, and they're standing 100 feet from one another.
	That means that if they fired the bullets simultaneously, the bullet fired from the rifle would hit approximately five one-hundredths of a second before the bullet fired from the handgun.
	Are you telling me it's purely impossible for that officer to get in there and have a five hundredths of a second advantage?
	Because it's not even fast enough for you to blink your eyes.
	You literally would not even see that.
	That's how fast it is.
	And yet we're told that this is the deciding factor.
	We have to have tremendous sympathy for this officer.
	Again, I wouldn't want to be in that position as an officer.
	But that's why I didn't sign up to be an officer.
	And if I had a gun as a civilian, I hope that I would have the balls to rush in there and try to do something.
	But if you're going to make the case that the government should have the only authority to stop mass shooters, if you're trying to make the case that we shouldn't arm teachers, or we shouldn't arm private security guards, or that citizens shouldn't be armed, you're going to have to do better than that.
	You're going to have to do better than that.
	But who's really to blame on all of this?
	Who's really to blame?
	According to the media, of course, it's always Republicans.
	It's obviously Republicans who are a problem.
	So the boycotts are now beginning against the NRA.
	So even though we've learned in the past 48 hours that the authorities failed on every single possible level, multiple times, Who's going to blame the NRA?
	So a bunch of folks on the left are now going to people who have business deals with the NRA and urging them to cut off the business deals.
	So Enterprise Rent-A-Car announced today that they would end the discount that they have for NRA members, which is a business deal.
	Enterprise Rent-A-Car tweeted, Thank you for contacting us.
	All three of our brands, this would be Enterprise, Alamo, and National, have ended the discount for NRA members.
	This change will be effective March 26.
	Thank you again for reaching out.
	Kind regards, Michael.
	So there we are.
	Now it turns out that our corporations are going to be pressured to blame gun owners, law-abiding gun owners, for members of the NRA for this.
	Remember, if the NRA played any role in these shootings, the most role the NRA played in these shootings was having shooting classes for Jay Razzi students, and also training the guy who took down the shooter in Texas.
	Not one of these shooters has been a member of the NRA.
	Not one.
	And yet the NRA is being blamed for this, and Scott Israel is not.
	Just amazing.
	It wasn't just Enterprise, by the way.
	Hertz came out, and they've said now they're going to disassociate from the NRA.
	Now, listen, we'll get to the NRA in a second and how the NRA has handled this, because I don't agree with everything that was said yesterday at CPAC.
	I was at CPAC.
	It was wonderful.
	Thank you for coming.
	It was great to see all of you.
	I had a blast talking to all the students and the young people.
	And I think I—I hope I said some important things to the media about how they've treated people who are gun owners and what they can do to help stop the spate of mass shootings.
	But I don't agree with everything that Wayne LaPierre or even Dana, with whom I'm good friends, said yesterday at CPAC.
	But the media's drive to blame this on gun owners is just insane.
	So Trevor Noah, the excreble host over on Comedy Central, the least funny man in America, I can safely say that because Samantha Bee's the least funny woman in America.
	So he's the least funny man in America, Trevor Noah.
	And he says that Marco, he mocks Marco Rubio because Marco Rubio went to this CNN show trial People were baying for the head of Marco Rubio and baying for the head of Dana Lash.
	Apparently, they were calling her a murderer.
	And Trevor Noah rips into Marco Rubio.
	That was a really powerful moment.
	And now, thanks to that father, we all know what Marco Rubio's face looks like when he's crapping his pants.
	He looked like a dad trying to explain to his son why he cheated on his mom.
	He was like, you see, Cameron, sometimes a politician has needs, and when the NRA opens their wallet, it's so hard to resist.
	You know what this reminded me of?
	It reminded me of the reaction a lot of men had to the Me Too movement.
	You know, when people were like, if we carry on like this, we're going to live in a world where men can't even hit on their female staff?
	Huh?
	Oh, that is what we want?
	OK.
	OK, fair enough.
	I misunderstood.
	Okay, so this idea that Rubio is, of course, the bad guy here.
	I'll be interested to hear what Trevor Noah has to say about the law enforcement officers.
	Already, you're seeing the spin starting from the left.
	What this really demonstrates is that a good guy with a gun can't stop a bad guy with a gun.
	No, what it demonstrates is that a useless person with a gun cannot stop a bad guy with a gun.
	It does not demonstrate that a good guy with a gun can't stop a bad guy with a gun, because it's always been a good guy with a gun stopping a bad guy with a gun.
	The problem here is you didn't have a good guy.
	Where were the good guys?
	They were absent.
	They were missing.
	The media treatment here is so egregious.
	It's so egregious.
	And again, they just keep hosting these students to go on there.
	And the ones who they keep hosting are, of course, the ones who are the biggest advocates for gun control.
	There was one Parkland student who was—he was—this is the one of Zeif, actually, the next clip—where he was talking about Trump and suggesting, of course, that Trump listens to people like the NRA who are putting blood money in his pocket.
	I wonder how Samuel Zeif's parents voted for a county sheriff in Broward County, actually.
	Here's Samuel Zeif blaming Trump for the NRA giving him money or some such.
	Everyone saw on his note card and said, I hear you.
	And I think he did hear us.
	But he wasn't listening to us, mainly because he only listens to people putting money in his pocket.
	In this case, blood money.
	My friend's blood.
	A lot of my classmate's blood.
	And it's I don't think we're gonna get far with him right now.
	The NRA does not have blood on its hands.
	To use this kind of language as I said yesterday at CPAC.
	is despicable and vile.
	And I don't care if you have suffered in terms of whether it makes that statement moral or not.
	I care if you've suffered in terms of your suffering.
	I feel terrible for anybody who's suffered had to go through this.
	But again, as I said yesterday, it does not make what you are saying moral.
	It is not moral.
	It is not moral to blame people who are not responsible for bad actions for bad actions.
	That is an immoral act.
	It's an immoral thing.
	Now, I want to take a quick note here before I move on.
	And I do want to debunk something that's been going around.
	So there's been a lot of talk about CNN scripting the people at the town hall.
	Now, CNN was biased in that town hall.
	They knew full well that this was going to be a crowd bang for anti-gun measures.
	They knew that these people were going to mistreat Rubio.
	They knew that these folks were going to mistreat Dana Lash.
	They knew that there was going to be screams.
	They didn't do anything to shut it down.
	They knew that all the people who were asking questions were going to be anti-gun advocates.
	They knew exactly how this was going to go.
	I know this because I know people at CNN.
	OK?
	They knew exactly how this was going to go.
	The notion that this was all scripted, that all these students were told what to say by producers at CNN, that is not so true.
	So the right-wing media, I think, have suggested something that isn't true, and I want to point that out.
	What probably happened is that these students were asked to boil down their questions into little pieces of paper that they could read.
	Now, is there a bias to that?
	Clearly there is, because Cameron Caskey, the student who castigated Rubio on stage, and said to him that he was like the Parkland shooter himself, which is, again, just morally deficient in every possible way.
	That was allowed to go on for minutes at a time, but some of the pro-gun students were told to basically condense their questions into the smallest soundbite.
	So there is a bias, but the bias does not extend to CNN producers were actually writing out the questions for the students.
	There's not any clear evidence of that at this point.
	Jake Tapper says that this is normally how it's done, and from what I've seen at other town halls, that's not a surprise.
	Okay, so I want to get to the NRA response to this now.
	And the NRA response to this has been some good and some bad.
	So first of all, I let Dana Lash speak for herself.
	So Dana, as I've said before, is a friend of mine.
	I'm going to try and put my biases aside here, because I like Dana.
	I think she's a nice gal.
	And talk in all honesty about the NRA response.
	So Dana was at CPAC yesterday, and she was talking about what happened at the CNN town hall.
	And here's what she had to say.
	You heard that town hall last night.
	They cheered the confiscation of firearms.
	And it was over 5,000 people.
	I had to have a security detail to get out.
	I wouldn't have been able to exit that if I did not have a private security detail.
	There were people rushing the stage and screaming, burn her.
	And I came there to talk solutions, and I still am going to continue that conversation on solutions, as the NRA has been doing for before I was alive.
	Okay, so that story is confirmed by the fact that you can actually hear in the audio, we played it yesterday, people shouting out at her that she's a murderer while she's on stage, and Jake Tapper, nobody at CNN stops it and says, guys, calm down, we're trying to have a discussion here.
	Instead, it just continues, and Jake has said online, well, I didn't want to, I didn't want to tell people what they could feel.
	It's not a matter of telling people what they can feel.
	It's a matter of providing good news stuff.
	It's a matter of providing good news content.
	It's a matter of ensuring that you're not just doing a propaganda special, and CNN failed in that.
	I mean, I've never seen a propaganda special quite like that on national TV.
	Now, Dana, in response to this, said something that I think is not true, and I don't think is useful or good.
	She said that many people in the media love mass shootings.
	Now, maybe what she meant by this is that there are people in the Ratings Bureau who look at the ratings, and they say, look at our ratings today.
	They're really great.
	If what she meant by this is that people in the media are fine with mass shootings, or want to, or are happy about mass shootings, then that of course is not true.
	She should have been a lot more specific in her language here.
	She said at CPAC yesterday, a lot of folks in the media love mass shootings.
	I will say again, I think there are people in the media who use mass shootings as a lever for their favorite politics.
	But I don't think anybody in the mass media is sitting around going, God, I hope 15 kids die today at a school.
	I think that's a slander on members of the media.
	And I say that because I think the media have been slandering me.
	I think the media have been slandering Dina.
	I think the media have been slandering everybody on the right by suggesting that we have bad motivations, that we don't care when kids get shot.
	So I think it's silly for us to suggest people on the left don't care when kids get shot.
	We cannot have a good conversation, a useful conversation in this country if we keep saying the other side doesn't care when kids get shot.
	If you really believe that your political opponents are such evil human beings that they don't care when kids die, we can't have a conversation at all.
	It's the end of our country.
	There will be a civil war.
	If you actually believe the person who lives next door to you doesn't care if your child dies in a bloody hail of bullets, then you're going to be much more likely to pick up a gun and go after that guy.
	Let's just put it that way.
	Here's Dana saying this yesterday at CPAC.
	Now I'm going to say something that some people are going to say is controversial.
	So I'll say it really slowly, so all the people on the platform in the back can hear me loud and clear.
	Many in legacy media love mass shootings.
	You guys love it.
	Now, I'm not saying that you love the tragedy.
	But I am saying that you love the ratings.
	Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media in the back.
	OK, but the suggestion here is that they care more about their ratings than they do about the dead kids.
	I don't think that's right.
	I don't think that's right.
	Listen, I think they care too much about their ratings.
	I ripped them from the stage yesterday suggesting that they should put their morality ahead of their ratings and stop showing the names and faces of the shooters.
	But I wouldn't suggest that they actually like the shootings, that they actually want the shootings to happen.
	Like, that I don't think is appropriate.
	Wayne LaPierre from the NRA did this, too.
	Again, I think this doesn't actually serve the NRA's interests.
	What the NRA should be doing right now is saying, listen, We want to stop this stuff as much as you do, and it's insulting and disgusting when you suggest that we don't.
	But to reverse the charge and suggest that people in the media actually like the mass shootings, it's too much.
	Wayne LaPierre did the same thing yesterday.
	Again, I don't think this is the smart move.
	The elites don't care not one whit about America's school system and school children.
	If they truly cared, what they would do is they would protect them.
	For them, It's not a safety issue.
	It's a political issue.
	OK, so again, this is a mistake.
	It's a tactical mistake.
	It's a moral mistake.
	And you're getting it from the other side.
	So now you have both sides screaming at each other that they're the worst people on earth.
	Keith Ellison, of course, comes out and he says that Wayne LaPierre has blood on his hands.
	This is the schtick that the entire Democratic Party has fallen into.
	He doesn't want to talk about the fact that since the assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004, we've seen a 239 percent increase in gun-related deaths.
	He doesn't want to talk about the blood that has spilled all over his hands because of the lax policies that he's pushing.
	He wants to make people afraid, and he wants to tell people lies and distortions, rather than deal with the fact that he is essentially a trafficking In fear, in order to line the pockets of his clients in the gun manufacturing industry.
	This stuff is just gross.
	It's just gross, and it's not worthwhile.
	It doesn't do credit to the NRA.
	It doesn't do credit to the NRA's opponents.
	It doesn't do credit to any of that.
	Now, Alison Camerata had on Dana Lash today, and I want to show you two clips of that, because one of them, I think, demonstrates the lack of credibility on the part of the media, and the other demonstrates why it's a mistake to castigate the media and say they don't care about mass shootings, which, of course, is not true.
	Here's the first one, Alison Camerata saying, listen, When you say that we like mass shootings, that's just nonsense.
	And here, I have to agree with Alison Camerata.
	You think we love mass shootings?
	Well, I said many.
	I said many, not all.
	But I do think that the way that the network and I do think that the way that I do think that many in the media do because they like the ratings aspect of it.
	And that's true, because it's wall-to-wall coverage.
	They put the murderer's face up on loop, on televisions all across America, more than they discuss even the victims or survivors.
	That individual's name has been mentioned and is still mentioned on your network.
	It's just malicious, actually, that you would say that.
	I don't know anybody in the media who likes mass shootings.
	You're wrong on every single level.
	Okay, so this is why Dana shouldn't have said what she said about the media.
	Now, Dana says, but you say that about me, right?
	You guys say that I'm a murderer.
	You guys yell at me.
	You say burn her.
	You say that I'm responsible for these mass shootings.
	And now, Alison Camerota, the shoe's on the other foot, and Alison Camerota can't even acknowledge that this is exactly what the media have been doing, which they have, right?
	So here is Dana being in the right and Camerota being in the wrong.
	This is 19, yeah.
	It is.
	You're saying that it's malicious, but yet on your network you've allowed accusations against me and millions of law-abiding Americans to be indicted as child murderers.
	I've watched you, Allison, on your program.
	We've never said that, Jana.
	At this very time slot.
	And you've allowed that to stand uncorrected on your network.
	You've allowed it to stand uncorrected on your network.
	That's not true, Dana.
	It's not true.
	You've allowed the accusations to stand.
	You've done nothing to correct it.
	You've done nothing.
	And making it even easier for these horrifying people to get guns because if you can't get elected without taking money from child murderers, why are you running?
	Hey guys, are you gonna be able to go back to school?
	Right, we played that clip on the show the other day.
	So here's Alison Camerota saying, no one's called you a murderer.
	That kid called her a murderer right on Alison Camerota's show, and Alison Camerota sat by and did nothing.
	So that is not, so again, dishonesty, dishonesty, and more dishonesty from the media.
	That doesn't mean the people on the right should fall into the trap of accusing their political opponents of being bad human beings, except insofar as the people on the left accuse us of not caring about dead kids.
	Okay, by the way, another piece of breaking news.
	This is just—how many red flags do you have to miss here?
	And then standing outside, four deputies.
	I mean, it's just—it's heartbreaking.
	It's heartbreaking.
	Somebody should go to jail for this.
	They really should.
	Here is—this is a call, according to The New York Times, a transcript excerpt from Adam Goldman of The New York Times of an FBI tipster warning the Parkland shooter in January, quote, Okay.
	I just figured I was talking to the operator and she transferred me.
	I'm like, I said to her, I don't know how to go about this, but on the Instagram account I have, I wouldn't say he's crazy by blood, but I would consider him bleep.
	He's only 18.
	He's got the mental capacity of a 12 to 14 year old.
	His mother just passed away on the 1st of November.
	He's got Instagram accounts.
	He started off saying he wanted to kill himself.
	So what I did was I called the Parkland, which is where he lived.
	Parkland Police Department.
	I spoke to an officer.
	I didn't hear anything.
	I left a message.
	I gave him all the information I had.
	And then just recently, now he's switched it.
	He wants to kill people.
	And then he put that on his Instagram.
	And about two days later, he took it off.
	If you go onto his Instagram pages, you'll see all the guns.
	He's very into ISIS.
	I'm afraid this is something that's going to happen because he doesn't have mental capacity.
	He can't.
	He's so outraged if someone talks to him about certain things.
	And he had pulled a rifle on his mother before.
	She passed away because she wanted to get money.
	Another problem is that he's 18, and his mother's life insurance policy is coming in.
	He's going to receive $25,000 from that, and then $21,000, $24,000, up to $30,000 he's receiving.
	$25,000 every year after that.
	He went out.
	He took money out of his mother's account.
	I don't know how he got the debit card, but he did.
	He took the money, and then the Social Security money, and he bought all these rifles and ammo.
	He posted pictures of them on the Instagram.
	This is a transcript of a call to the FBI.
	Transcript of a call to the FBI.
	He never graduated high school.
	He's thrown out of all these schools because he would pick up a chair and just throw it at somebody, a teacher or a student, because he didn't like the way they were talking to him.
	I just think about, you know, getting into a school and just shooting the place up.
	Direct transcript to the FBI.
	Nobody did a damn thing.
	And you're gonna tell me I'm supposed to give up my gun to these clowns?
	To these jokers?
	I'm supposed to give up my ability to defend myself to these morons?
	You've got to be freaking kidding me.
	Never going to happen.
	Not going to happen.
	All right, well, when we come back, I have a couple more things to say on this.
	We'll do some things I like, things I hate.
	We'll do the mailbag as well.
	But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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	All righty.
	So, you know what?
	Let's just go right to things I like, things I hate in the mailbag, because I'm all—honestly, I'm emotioned out at this point.
	I'm not one to run on feelings.
	That's not the gas that I usually have in my tank, but this has been such a disturbing, upsetting, Pathetic week for the country.
	Really a terrible week for the country.
	The last week and a half.
	The way that Americans are treating each other and seeing each other.
	It's really heartbreaking to watch.
	So let's just go to the mailbag and say, so first let's do things I like and things I hate.
	So first, things I like.
	So there's a movie that came and went and wasn't really seen by a lot of folks called Thank You for Your Service with Miles Teller.
	I really like Miles Teller a lot as an actor.
	It's basically a new version, I would say, of the best years of our lives, which is one of the great coming home from war movies of all time.
	Best picture, 1946.
	This one is not that, but it's about three soldiers who are coming home from war in Iraq, and they all three have serious PTSD and how they have to deal with it.
	Here's a little bit of the trailer.
	I rode shotgun in the lead Humvee, and I looked for bombs. - Yeah.
	Stop the truck.
	You don't see the bomb unless they want you to.
	What you got?
	I don't see nothing, man.
	You don't see, he feels it.
	Okay, so the movie is pretty gritty.
	It really doesn't focus too much about what happened in Iraq.
	It focuses a lot more about the adjustment home and how there's a lot of veterans who are falling through the cracks, which certainly is true.
	I guess it's a little bit hard on the military, but as somebody who's never been through this, I can't really say that that's for sure.
	Whatever it is, Anything that helps propel more money to the VA, more resources to soldiers who are coming home from war, I'm very much in favor of.
	Hopefully it's as accurate as possible, of course.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate, and then we'll get to the mailbag.
	So, the thing I hate today is the movie Lady Bird.
	So, everybody loves this movie.
	Mathis loves this movie.
	I know Moles liked this movie, which is one reason to hate it.
	But the movie Lady Bird is getting all sorts of plaudits because Greta Gerwig is a first-time director, and apparently if you're an actress and you can also do a plausible job of direction, then we think that you're the greatest thing that ever lived.
	This movie, I thought, was extraordinarily twee.
	Twee is just a word meaning kind of cutesy.
	Too cutesy by half.
	All of the dialogue is overwritten.
	It's, you know, the performances are good all around, but every beat of the movie is predictable.
	There are a bunch of threads that are just left hanging for no reason.
	And the theme of the movie is actually nice, right?
	I like it in spite of the theme of the movie.
	The theme of the movie is there's a girl who's basically obnoxious.
	She's an atheist.
	She is pro-abortion.
	And over the course of the movie, she learns that she should be less obnoxious.
	That's essentially the plot.
	Sunny Bunch at the Weekly Substandard, I think, put this well, and The Free Beacon, I think that he put this well.
	He said this is basically an hour-and-a-half long version of Roseanne, except filmed a little bit nicer.
	And that's basically right.
	The mom's kind of, you know, the tough-talking but truthful one, and the dad is the pushover, and the girl's a pain in the butt.
	So, you know, if it's your cup of tea, enjoy.
	It was not mine.
	I didn't think that it was any great shakes.
	The fact that it's nominated for Best Picture, I think, is a little bit weak.
	They should have nominated, for sure, the Florida Project, which is not nominated for Best Picture.
	They should have nominated that.
	They should have left this off the list instead.
	But, yeah, we'll show you a little bit of the preview, I suppose.
	I hate California.
	I want to go to the East Coast.
	I want to go where culture is, like New York, or at least Connecticut, or New Hampshire, where writers live in the woods.
	Get into those schools anyway.
	Mom!
	You should just go to City College.
	You know, with your work ethic, just go to City College and then to jail, and then back to City College, and then maybe you'd learn to pull yourself up and not expect everybody to do everything.
	Lady Bird?
	Is that your given name?
	Yeah.
	Why is it in quotes?
	I gave it to myself.
	It's given to me by me.
	Lady Bird always says that she lives on the wrong side of the tracks, but I always thought that that was like a metaphor.
	But there are actual train tracks.
	Okay, so here's the good news about the preview.
	You just saw every clever line in the film.
	So, most of the cleverness in the film is actually in that two-minute segment right there, that one-minute segment.
	I thought the move dragged a little bit.
	Not a fan.
	Okay.
	I know there are people who disagree, but just...
	Meh.
	OK.
	Time for some mailbag.
	So, if you have questions, now is your time to send them in live.
	If you're in our Daily Wire chat room, then you can send in your questions now.
	OK.
	Seth says, Hi Ben.
	I'm a pro-Second Amendment gun-toting Texan.
	It seems American values have changed so much since the Second Amendment was enacted.
	Is it possible that in today's society we're too far gone to be trusted with the freedoms that so many have sacrificed for?
	Well, I would say that there are a lot of people who are certainly misusing their freedoms.
	But that's not a problem with freedom, that's a problem with virtue.
	And it's our job to re-inculcate virtue.
	The solution to lack of virtue is not curtailing freedom, it's to reinstall virtue.
	But those are the two choices, you're right.
	Those are the two choices.
	And this is why when people who are cultural libertarians, not even governmental libertarians, I'm sort of a governmental libertarian, but cultural libertarians, people who say that community values don't matter very much, that we're atomized individuals.
	When people on the left say that you can just destroy the social fabric, no problem.
	That virtue no longer is an aspect of our common heritage.
	When people say that, it inevitably is going to lead to more governmental tyranny, or it's going to lead to a reinculcation of virtue.
	I vote for virtue.
	Okay, so yes, that is true.
	I always encounter liberals that say red states consume more welfare than blue states.
	Is this true?
	And if so, why?
	So the answer is yes, this is true.
	The reason this is true is because there are federal welfare programs that go to poor people.
	There are more people in red states than in blue states on per capita level.
	So yes, that is true.
	It is also true that the people who are voting for the higher levels of welfare on the federal level are not from the red states.
	So if the people from the blue states are whining about this, maybe they should stop voting for all the welfare programs.
	We could start there.
	James says, Ben, I keep hearing conservative advocates of mental health reform suggest the idea of bringing back the ability to involuntarily commit people deemed unfit and dangerous to society.
	What are your thoughts on the potential abuses of such a practice?
	How would you suggest protecting against them so as not to put individual liberty at risk in a similar fashion to overly restrictive gun control laws enforcing punitive measures against law-abiding citizens?
	This is a great question.
	The answer is that you have to have a certain burden of proof.
	So, danger to self or others is usually a pretty high burden of proof.
	Involuntarily committing somebody, even for a 24- or 48-hour hold in the state of California, for example, is actually pretty difficult.
	You have to show the person's suicidal or that the person is violent.
	I assume that you'd have to show the same thing to a judge.
	And that wouldn't just mean you going there and testifying that's the case of the judge.
	You'd probably need some form of evidence that that is the case.
	And you'd have to need more—if it was based on witness testimony, it would have to be more than one witness.
	And, you know, the truth is that I think judges are fairly good at sussing this out.
	I don't think that you're facing a— If the worry is that your leftist family members are going to forcibly prevent you from getting guns by going and testifying in front of a judge, then maybe that would happen once in a bajillion tries.
	I don't see this as a major problem.
	Maybe I'm wrong.
	It's possible that I'm wrong, but this is why you need a high evidentiary bar.
	You can set a high evidentiary bar by suggesting that it's not just by preponderance of the evidence, that it's beyond a reasonable doubt that this is the case, for example.
	There are different standards of proof that you have to meet.
	Beyond a reasonable doubt is usually a criminal standard.
	Preponderance of the evidence is usually a civil standard, but you can set up whatever standard you want there.
	Brandon says, Ben, what is your opinion on right-to-work states?
	I'm an employee of Washington state.
	I'm forced to pay union dues regardless of me joining a union or not.
	As expected, Washington state leans very heavily to the left with its policies and the liberals' lifestyle choices.
	So this, of course, is true.
	I used to do a show up in Seattle.
	And it is certainly the case that Washington is a lefty state.
	It is also true in the state of California.
	You have to be a member of a union in order to work in certain areas.
	Right to work should be a constitutional amendment.
	You should be able to work in any industry that you want to without being a member of a union.
	Unions are fine in the private sector when people are voluntarily joining them and when kneecaps aren't being broken.
	They're not good in the public sector, and the silly, idiotic, legislative idea that you are going to legislate, that you have to be a member of a union to work as a teacher, undermines the interests of students.
	Remember, when there's a public sector union, the people they are collectively bargaining against are the taxpayer.
	That's the person on the other side of the table.
	If you're in a private sector union, and you are collectively bargaining, you're doing so against the person who owns the business.
	Who owns the federal government?
	Okay, we own the federal government, which means that every time a union bargains with the federal government, they are bargaining with the taxpayer.
	What makes it worse is that when they're not actually bargaining with you or me, they're bargaining with elected representatives.
	And those elected representatives take donations from whom?
	From exactly the people with whom they are bargaining.
	So that's not, that's a pretty corrupt cycle.
	There's a good book called Shadow Bosses by a friend of mine named Mallory Factor that goes into all of this.
	Yes.
	Now, Antonia says, Ben, I live in Anaheim, and while I agree that many homeless people are mentally ill, I'm surrounded with homeless individuals that are around my age, and it is visually obvious that they are on drugs, not mentally ill.
	You can see where they inject themselves and the rashes on their bodies.
	Do you think that there is a growing amount of homeless people due to drugs rather than mental illness?
	Yes.
	I mean, I have said that I think that a huge percentage of people who are on the streets are either drug addicts or mentally ill or both.
	That's obviously true.
	You can see it in the needles on the streets.
	I was walking a block from my house the other day and I found a needle on the street.
	It's just horrifying.
	And this is, you know, one of the arguments against legalizing hard drugs is that this skews your ability to reason and makes it so that you can't actually have free choice in how you choose to behave.
	And so we have to limit that dramatically.
	Whatever it is, there's no excuse for people to be living on the streets.
	One of the ways that you can clean up this problem is by taking people who are living on the streets and either putting them in a facility against their will, so they can clean out.
	And if they're mentally ill doing that, or if they're a drug addict, putting them in a facility where they will clean out and be taken off of drugs.
	So, here's my view of romance.
	says, "Hi Ben, I was just curious.
	What things led you to realize you were going to marry your wife?
	Was there a specific moment or factor that made you decide that you were going to pursue her?
	How did you actually propose to her?" So, here's my view of romance, and this is a very realistic view of romance, I think.
	The first thing that has to happen is, of course, there has to be physical attraction You're not going to want to talk to the person if you think that they're not attractive.
	That is always the first thing.
	So when I first saw my wife, I thought, this is a smoking hot person.
	So that was the first thing that I thought.
	When she saw me, by the way, she thought, dorky but cute.
	I think that's still a very flattering response to my physical appearance, but that's how she felt about it.
	She actually thought I was a jackass when I drove up.
	I used to drive a 2006 GT Mustang convertible, baby blue.
	And so I drove up in that, and she thought, oh, who is this jerk?
	And then I got out, and I was wearing, like, mom jeans and a beat-up polo shirt, and she's like, oh, he's just a nerd.
	Okay.
	And she was happy about that, which is why I love my wife.
	The reason that—what made me think of this—so, Number one, I could hold an intelligent conversation with her.
	Number two, we had values in common.
	So as I've said before, we dated for marriage.
	That meant that our first date was about free will and determinism.
	Our second date was about, if I recall, gun control and the death penalty.
	And our third date, we finally talked about TV shows.
	So there was a...
	A heavy bias toward talking about things that matter to us.
	We talked a lot about our religious heritage.
	We talked a lot about how many... I mean, I asked her on first date how many kids she wanted.
	This is the difference between dating for marriage and dating to just date.
	Now, in the Orthodox community, you're typically dating for marriage because you can't date for sex because that's not something you're supposed to be doing.
	So that means that you actually have to date for values, which I think is a good thing as a general matter.
	And as a specific matter, actually.
	Ann says, Dear Ben, I've been enjoying you in the DailyWare for the past six months.
	After the crazy election, I started taking the Hillsdale College Constitution 101 online, being frustrated when politicians, MSM, and people toss around tidbits of the Constitution to suit their agenda.
	What I've discovered is very few people understand or have truly studied the Constitution.
	I know it's true for me.
	My question is about executive orders.
	When, how, and what is the criteria for their use?
	Seems since FDR it's been used regularly and may be out of control.
	The answer is yes, it has been used regularly, and yes, it is out of control.
	So, executive orders have existed since George Washington, but what an executive order was designed to do is there was a piece of legislation and it would say, we direct the president to go and impose this law.
	And so the president would then write an order to like the three people who worked for him, because it was a very small executive branch, And say, you three people are authorized to go do it.
	Right?
	So it was just a question of filling in a gap that the law left.
	But the law had to mandate that the executive was to do that.
	Now the executive does things like President Obama saying he's not going to enforce the law with DACA, which is unconstitutional.
	Or the President of the United States going into war on the basis of an executive order where he doesn't have the authority to do so.
	So that is absolutely an overreach on the part of the executive branch.
	Not really.
	Not really.
	I think that maybe it should be heightened, actually.
	"You must be at least 21 but 18 to vote.
	"Do you believe the minimum age to be president "should be lowered?" Not really, not really.
	I think that maybe it should be heightened actually.
	When the minimum age to be president was 35 years old, the average life expectancy in the United States was probably 50, 55, so 35 years old.
	So, 35 was probably the equivalent of 50 in our society.
	So, in an age when people who are 26 years old are still on mommy and daddy's insurance and live at home and aren't married and have no kids, no, I don't think we should necessarily lower the age to be president.
	I wouldn't want—like, right now, if one of these kids from Parkland were to run against Trump, that kid might win.
	That seems not like a great idea to me, because I don't— The standards for our presidency are so low already.
	Do we need to lower them any further?
	We just had an election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
	Is this what we want to do?
	Is this what we want to do?
	Let's make it more rigorous to become a candidate for high office.
	How about that?
	Andrew says, hey Ben.
	I recently had a civil conversation with my classmate about gay marriage.
	I used her argument how the federal government shouldn't be in the business of marriage.
	The main purpose of marriage is the procreation of children, and it provides a stable foundation for family and society.
	She agreed with most of my argument.
	She didn't agree with it completely, because she believes gay married couples should still get the same tax bonus as heterosexual married couples do.
	I said to her I didn't know about this specific issue, and we ended the conversation there.
	How do I make a counterargument?
	Well, if she already accepts the idea that the federal government only has an interest in marriage because of raising families and children, then why should there be a federal tax benefit that accrues to you because you're sleeping with someone with whom you are incapable of having children naturally?
	That doesn't seem to me to make a whole hell of a lot of sense.
	I don't think there should be tax benefits for any of this stuff, by the way.
	I think the government discriminating in favor of certain couples and against other couples just seems like a fool's errand at this point.
	I don't think anybody is having more kids based on the tax benefits.
	That doesn't seem realistic to me.
	But the idea is that if the government is going to confer advantages based on what it gets out of the deal, the government gets a lot less out of the deal from gay couples than it does from straight couples in terms of childbearing and rearing, obviously by statistics.
	And that will always be true no matter what, because people like having sex.
	And when straight people have sex, there's a chance of a baby.
	And when gay people have sex, presumably with each other, there is no chance of a baby.
	Sorry about the biology, folks.
	That's the way it works.
	Well, I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	I mean, I hope so.
	That's what we do on a daily basis.
	As a father with a young daughter enrolled in my local New Jersey school district, I was so upset by the media's handling of the Parkland school shooting that I subscribed to Daily Wire today as a way to fight back.
	Well, I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	Is there more I can do?
	Would you say my money helps conservatives like ourselves fight the disinformation being spewed on a daily basis?
	I mean, I hope so.
	That's what we do on a daily basis.
	I think that there are a lot of people joining the NRA for particularly this reason.
	I don't think that's a terrible idea at all.
	I think you should go and talk to your local school district about the safety measures that are actually being taken on campus.
	But, yeah, I mean, this is a real public opinion battle that's being waged right now.
	And every little bit helps.
	So we appreciate everybody who's joining up for the memberships.
	We couldn't do the show without you.
	So here's a hard pitch for becoming a subscriber.
	The reason we can do this business every day is because you support us.
	So please go over and subscribe right now at dailywire.com.
	Okay, we will be back here on Monday.
	Try not to ruin the country further in my absence.
	It's already bad enough.
	So please, let's have a safe, quiet, as happy as we can weekend, and we'll be back here on Monday.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
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