Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 14, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:34

Bad Moon Rising | Ep. 495

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Democrats run strong in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district.
	Students prepare to walk out all day to protest gun violence.
	And President Trump says some stuff about a space force or something.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	So today, I'm interested in talking about what's happening with this student walkout rather than awkwardly staring at the camera for weird periods of time.
	I'm actually going to talk about what's going on in the news.
	Man, sometimes you're just off.
	But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at LegalZoom.
	LegalZoom is marking National Small Business Month.
	And whether you're just starting out or you already have a business, there's a lot you can take advantage of right now.
	So I've known about LegalZoom for literally years.
	It was one of the ways that I would file documents, do wills and trusts from the time when I was a younger human.
	But now, LegalZoom has actually expanded its business offerings.
	Go to LegalZoom.com slash startup during March and you can download your free business startup kit.
	You get a ton of great information.
	You can find out how to maximize your business deductibles under the new tax laws.
	Plus, you'll get great discounts.
	Your kit includes special deals From LegalZoom, along with offers from their service partners, so you can save a bunch of money financing, marketing, and operating your business.
	LegalZoom is not, in fact, a law firm, but they do know that you need to tap into the right resources to run a successful business.
	And that's why they have their business startup kit.
	They even have people who are actually available to answer your questions as well.
	So it's not just a list of forums.
	You also have people who you can consult with.
	Go to LegalZoom.com slash startup and download your free business startup kit today.
	We have a startup here at Daily Wire.
	LegalZoom is invaluable for other people who are trying to do what we have done.
	They make it a lot cheaper.
	It means you don't have to work through these really expensive law firms, spend 500 bucks an hour just to get a contract on.
	LegalZoom.com slash startup.
	There is no obligation, just free business resources, and the offer is only available in March.
	So if you're listening after that, you can still enjoy special savings by using code Ben when you check out at LegalZoom.com.
	That's LegalZoom.com, where life meets legal.
	Again, use that special code Ben when you check out and you enjoy special savings, and it's only available in March.
	So we're already nearing the middle of the month, so check it out there.
	It's LegalZoom.com and use that promo code Ben.
	Again, these folks, I mean, there's a reason they've been topping the business for literally More than a decade at this point.
	Check it out legalzoom.com and use promo code Ben.
	All right, so A couple of big news stories out the gate today, so we will get to what happened in Pennsylvania's 18th Congressional District last night, because that actually—I have a lot of notes on that.
	But we begin today with this massive walkout that's happening at supposedly 2,500 schools all over America, where a bunch of kids, astroturfed by people who organized the Women's March, have decided to walk out of school for 17 minutes to honor the victims at Parkland—rather, the Parkland school shooting, the victims at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
	And of course, what this really is, is not a call for an agenda, right?
	It's not actually an agenda-driven march, right?
	We actually don't know what they want, and if you read what the Women's March say they are marching for, nobody agrees with their actual agenda.
	I'll get to their actual agenda in a second, but what it really is about, It's about having a lot of pictures of a lot of young people standing around and saying that they hate gun violence so that a bunch of leftist politicians can claim that they are standing with the children in pushing for vast gun confiscation regimes.
	That's what this is all about.
	And that's essentially what the New York Times admits in their editorial today.
	They say the children should lead us, which to which I say, fine.
	Then let the children take over your editorial board.
	They can't do a worse job than you have.
	Why don't you just let the kids run all your op-eds?
	And they can decide whether they want to run op-eds on whether homework is necessary or not.
	It's really funny.
	All the adults at the New York Times, who are all in their 50s, they always talk about how wonderful and genius these 17-year-olds are, but I don't see them giving up their jobs anytime soon to high school juniors who are attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
	But here's what they write in their editorial.
	They say, Weird.
	I don't hear this from the New York Times on issues like abortion, that adults are supposed to take care of children.
	I don't hear about them with regard to single motherhood.
	That line seems to go out the window.
	But now, of course, adults are supposed to take care of children, according to the New York Times, not by defending kids with guns, but by letting kids decide policy, which is a weird way of protecting them.
	They say schools are essentially an extension of the home in that sense, providing sanctuaries of learning, of nurturing and care.
	But after years of attacks by people with weapons of war, students cannot feel safe and are demanding that adults end years of complacence and act.
	OK, first of all, It is.
	The school shootings are actually on the decline, not on the uptick, statistically speaking.
	And your chances of being killed in a school shooting are significantly worse than your chances of being killed in virtually any other sort of accident in the United States.
	And these are acts of terror, really.
	They're not asking for their schools to become armed garrisons, while some would like for there to be more armed guards.
	Rather, they want those weapons to be brought under control.
	I like how the New York Times has direct link into the minds of all young people.
	It's amazing.
	It's like Rousseau's general will.
	They just look at young people and they magically know that all of Chuck Schumer's proposals on gun control have embedded themselves in the minds of young folks.
	But what is the smack of the smacks of the New York Times?
	Basically, taking a child, putting the child out front and saying, this child demands that you do what I say you do.
	Are you going to say no to this very cute child?
	It's like the Pinky and the Brain episode, where they decide to take over the world by becoming small children with big puppy eyes.
	The way to actually become leaders is to show something really cute.
	Well, that's what the New York Times is basically doing here.
	They say at Stoneman Douglas Jr.
	Florence Yared said at the Florida State Capitol late last month, you adults have failed us by not creating a safer place for your children to go to school.
	So we, the next generation, will not fail our own kids.
	We will make this change happen.
	If not today, then tomorrow.
	If not tomorrow, next year, take it from us.
	You created a mess with us, but we will make this world safer for our children.
	Again, you know, I understand that this girl went through something absolutely horrible, but the world is significantly safer for kids growing up today than it has been at any time literally in human history.
	And if she thinks that she's going to be able to ram through gun control because something bad happened to her, I have another thing coming for her.
	She says, with Wednesday's demonstration and their March for Our Lives movement on March 24th in Washington, young voices are being heard.
	How will the nation's adult respond?
	Hopefully by amplifying their demand.
	Never again.
	So first of all, I love the use of the Holocaust All right.
	And then they quote a bunch of high school juniors, right?
	what are rare instances of horrific terrorism.
	Not quite the same thing.
	But as opposed to, you know, like an organized government effort to slaughter 6 million Jews, not quite the same thing as people being allowed to own guns because it is their right to do so.
	And then a couple of bad people going and doing really horrific things with those guns.
	Not quite the same thing as the Holocaust.
	But all right.
	And then they quote a bunch of high school juniors, right?
	And we're supposed to believe that all of these high schoolers are the wisest and greatest among us.
	Now again, tragedy does not confer expertise.
	I've said this about Jimmy Kimmel and his son.
	Just because something bad happened to you in your life does not make you an expert on the underlying issue.
	Jimmy Kimmel had a surgeon perform the surgery on his son.
	He didn't perform the surgery himself because he understands that just because he was suffering doesn't mean that expertise goes out the window.
	The same holds true of gun control.
	Just because you witnessed something awful happen at your school does not mean you know what you are talking about when it comes to the best public policy to stop such shootings.
	But the New York Times, again, they want to use these kids as political human shields, and so here is what they do.
	They turn over their editorial page to these kids, and then they quote them, right?
	Alfonso Calderon, Jr.
	No kid should be afraid to go to school, no kid should be afraid to walk outside, and no kid should have to worry about being shot.
	Now that's why I'm marching.
	Okay, no kid should have to worry about leukemia.
	No kid should have to worry about disease.
	No kid should have to worry about murder.
	No kid should have to worry about anything terrible.
	That's true.
	I mean, that would be great.
	Unfortunately, we live in a world where there are evil people.
	The question is, how do you stop them?
	We all want to stop those evil people.
	Hey, how about Ali Shihi?
	Not Ali Shidi.
	Ali Shihi.
	The children—senior in high school.
	The children you pissed off will not forget this in the voting booth.
	Don't doubt the power of the younger generation, because we are a force to be reckoned with.
	Every young generation says this.
	Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not.
	But again, the idea that everybody who's young is solidly behind a particular gun proposal is just not true by polling.
	Emma Gonzalez is one of the people who's been featured the most in the media.
	And subsequently, the media have been just enamored of her Twitter followers because she has gotten this big Twitter bump.
	She went from like nothing to 1.1 million because she was featured on Ellen and a bunch of other shows.
	So they quote her.
	Maybe the adults have gotten used to saying it is what it is.
	But if us students have learned anything, if well, first of all, if we students have learned anything, Emma.
	Right?
	Maybe you should learn some grammar.
	But if us students have learned anything, it's that if you don't study, you will fail.
	You should study grammar or you'll fail.
	And in this case, if you actively do nothing, people continually end up dead.
	So it's time to start doing something.
	We are going to be the kids you read about in textbooks.
	Not because we're going to be another statistic about mass shooting in America, but because we are going to be the last mass shooting.
	I fervently wish that this were true.
	I fervently hope that this is true.
	But just because we all want to stop mass shootings doesn't mean I agree with Emma Gonzalez's prescription.
	I mean, all of this is basically Bernie Sanders-style politics.
	I've ripped on Bernie Sanders' Twitter account for a long time because Bernie Sanders' Twitter account is largely Bernie Sanders just saying things like, there are rich people and there are poor people.
	The world should not be like this.
	Is it?
	Well, okay.
	Fine.
	What you can do about it.
	And this is the same thing.
	It's, there shouldn't be shootings of children.
	Yes, we all agree.
	Now, your proposal, please.
	I'm not sure anyone was making the contention that more God was going to bring back children who died.
	every other day.
	Jose Iglesias, Sr.
	More prayer, Jesus, God and compassion won't bring back the victims that sadly lost their lives.
	I'm not sure anyone was making the contention that more God was going to bring back children who died.
	It won't bring back the sense of security that my fellow peers and I lost.
	The only way to get that back is through gun control starting now.
	Weird, because there is significant gun control all over Chicago and people don't feel particularly secure.
	Gun control doesn't make people feel secure.
	Lack of being shot makes people feel secure.
	The only reason that you would embrace gun control over, for example, more armed security guards, is for political reasons.
	So make an argument.
	I love this.
	Madison Leal.
	I don't even know what that means.
	And again, it's always selective.
	So, the New York Times did turn over one of the editorials on their editorial page to a sophomore at Randolph High School, a junior at Toms River North High School, and a senior at Marlboro High School, all in New Jersey.
	Again, this is just political human shield stuff, right?
	They're going to bring out a bunch of young kids and then suggest these kids know something better because they are kids.
	Which is weird.
	And they write, we are Generation Z.
	This is in the New York Times, the generation after millennials.
	We outnumber them by nearly one million and maybe the largest cohort of future American spenders since the baby boomers.
	We have more than 30 billion in spending power and wield enormous influence in family spending.
	Our spending power will only increase as we begin to earn our own wages.
	We will flex our muscles at the ballot box, too.
	Many high school seniors will cast their first ballots this November.
	And in 2020, a majority of today's high school students will most likely be able to vote in their first presidential election.
	Let us remind politicians like Donald Trump.
	Trump, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who accept donations from the NRA and oppose efforts to restrict gun purchases, that we are the future leaders and voters of this country.
	Well, I'm sure that some of you are and some of you are not.
	I mean, there are lots of people who vote.
	There are lots of people who don't vote.
	There are lots of people who lead.
	There are lots of people who don't.
	There are lots of people who are young who will join the NRA.
	There are lots of people who won't.
	Let us remind corporations like FedEx that provide discounts to NRA members that we are their future customers.
	Again, this is not an argument.
	This is a moral appeal, right?
	It's an emotional appeal.
	Now, the reason that I'm reading all of this from the New York Times is to demonstrate that they're rather selective in the folks that they choose to feature.
	Because there are a lot of young listeners to The Ben Shapiro Show.
	There are a lot of young people who listen to this show.
	Something like 70-75% of our audience is under the age of 35.
	We have a very disproportionately young audience, of which we're very proud.
	And we have tons and tons of high schoolers who listen to this show.
	And I've been getting overwhelmingly One message from my emailers over the last two weeks.
	And I mean this.
	I'm talking about scores of emails.
	I'm talking about probably more than 100 emails from high schoolers over the last week alone.
	And today, many, many more, after I wrote this piece, who are saying that they are upset with the media coverage of this mass walkout and asking for advice on how to deal with it.
	I've gotten lots and lots of emails from these folks.
	So here are some of the emails.
	And I want to read the emails from some of these students who are not going to be featured in the New York Times.
	I want to read some of the emails from these students who are not going to be shown on network news tonight.
	I want to read the emails from some of the students who are going to be ignored and castigated and told that they are worse, that they are worse human beings because they disagree with gun control.
	I want to give them a voice, because the rest of the media certainly are not giving these kids a voice.
	And I am speaking with these kids, I promise you, far more often than the editorial board of the New York Times is.
	The editorial of the New York Times hasn't talked to a person under the age of 40, except for, like, this last couple days in years.
	I'm talking to people under the age of 20 every single day.
	So I'm going to read some of the things that they've been sending to me and let them speak.
	So I'm going to turn over my show to them in just one second.
	I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Wondery's new show, This Is War.
	Okay, so there's a new podcast out there from Wondery Podcast Network.
	It's called This Is War, and it is sharing the personal stories from brave men and women who serve in our armed forces.
	These are firsthand accounts of what it's like to fight and survive combat in Afghanistan, in Iraq, what it's like to protect our freedom, the bonds that are formed, the psychological toll it takes on people to fight, and what it is like to return home, trying to figure out how you fit in and how you heal the physical and emotional wounds from time in combat.
	It's a really moving, moving podcast.
	It is a deeply effective and necessary podcast.
	In the first episode, we meet a guy named Ian Mirrens, and a month before his senior year in high school, he joined the Marines, and he signed up for the military, and that was August of 2016.
	Obviously, life changed very much in the next month.
	So, if you want to hear his story, go over to This Is War on Apple Podcasts.
	Wherever you're listening to this podcast, This Is War is available.
	Check out This Is War, hit the subscribe button, or visit wondery.fm slash ben.
	That's wonder with a y.fm slash ben.
	Subscribe, listen, it's really worth your time.
	And again, it'll give you just a greater appreciation for what it is that our heroes do on a daily basis.
	Check it out, Wondery's This Is War podcast.
	Totally worth the subscribe.
	Alrighty, so.
	Now, I want to read some of the emails that I've been getting from high schoolers all over the country who are deeply upset and deeply angry that there are so many people who are castigating them as bad people because they disagree.
	I mean, I'm looking at just in the last hour.
	In the last hour, I've received 15 separate emails in one hour.
	Before the show, from various high school students who are asking about what they should do during these walkouts, because they're frustrated and they're upset.
	They feel like they're being ignored.
	Here's a high school junior today, quote, honestly, it's like the Women's March.
	There's no single consolidated argument, just a loose collection of rants that obscure the main point.
	From a 16-year-old high school girl, quote, I was planning on not participating in the walkout.
	I do not see the point in leaving class to simply walk outside, stand and talk with peers for 17 minutes, and return to class.
	The act of walking out of class to protest school violence Does not seem to have a target audience, even though they may have a news crew.
	It is doubtful the students in Florida will see the actions of our school's walkout as a stand with solidarity.
	I also support the Second Amendment, and I see this walkout as another opportunity for students and their parents to attack that amendment and my opposition to gun control.
	I do see that my refusal to participate may be seen as unsympathetic or cruel.
	My brother, who's a freshman, is being pressured in class to participate.
	from a 17-year-old high school student.
	Tomorrow, my school is having a walkout at 10 a.m.
	for the 17 students who were killed in the Parkland, Florida shooting.
	The walkout, however, here at my school is not really about that.
	It is being promoted by an anti-gun leftist political agenda that I just don't and can't support, especially using the 17 kids that were my age as a platform.
	I was wondering what you would say to people who want to call me insensitive and a terrible person.
	I mean, my initial response to that is anybody who calls you insensitive and a terrible person because you disagree on political matters is insensitive and a terrible person.
	Hey, here's from another 17-year-old high school student.
	The reason I'm emailing is because my school is having a walkout on March 14th.
	They say in an email that this walkout is to advocate for gun reform, but they also say that we are walking to honor the victims of the Parkland massacre.
	I'm in favor of walking to honor the victims, but not in favor of promoting gun reform.
	I feel like I have to choose between going against my political values or looking like a bad person.
	I need help.
	What do I do?
	I'm getting emails like this literally minute by minute now.
	From another high schooler.
	My high school is participating in the walkout on Wednesday.
	I am unsure what to do.
	I am very against gun control.
	I don't want to protest Congress for something they are doing right, if that makes sense.
	However, I don't want to be singled out by students as someone who quote, doesn't care about the students who died.
	Should I participate and conform to avoid humiliation and honor the students, or should I remain in class alone?
	I don't know if the walkout is more about gun control or honoring the students.
	I mean, I could literally do this all day.
	I could literally do this all day.
	Here's one that came in in the last four minutes.
	Okay, hello, my name is — I'm going to bleep out his name and his class because I don't want him to get in trouble.
	I saw your tweet about the unheard conservative students and it is very relatable.
	There was a walkout at my school today.
	A large majority of the students sat in the gym instead of walking out.
	This is a school of about 1,800 people.
	Fortunately, my school would not allow protests, so the liberal students had to mask it as a memorial, but the motives were still very much apparent.
	The local media only covered the minority of the students participating in the walkout.
	I have a question as to how to get my own and my conservative peers' voices heard.
	Can you post about that or something related to that sometime, please?
	I'm happy to talk about it right now.
	This is in the last 10 minutes, OK?
	These are all emails from the last 10 minutes alone.
	I'm not even screening them.
	I'm just pulling them up from my mailbag right now.
	This guy, this guy is named Anthony, says, Ben, first, let me say I'm a big fan of the show on the website.
	Second, I'm a 16-year-old sophomore in Philadelphia.
	Our student council, in collaboration with our school administration, organized a walkout today to remember and pray for the victims of the recent shooting.
	In my opinion, this walkout quickly shifted into a walkout for gun control, similar to the walkouts occurring across the nation.
	We thankfully had the option to choose to stay inside, which I did.
	As a Catholic, I stayed inside and said a prayer for the victims of the shooting.
	However, I refuse to go outside to protest gun control because I am a proud Second Amendment supporter.
	I believe we have the constitutional right to bear arms, and therefore it shall not be infringed upon.
	Just thought I would share my story regarding this walkout.
	Again, thanks for your mail.
	I'm getting these things—they're coming in faster than I can actually read all of them, because there are tons of them coming in over and over and over.
	And all this—and here is the thing.
	Here is the thing.
	The media won't read you any of these emails, because the media wants to promote this agenda.
	The media wants to suggest that the only reason in the world that you would not walk out with these students is because you hate the students and you don't care about the students, and by the way, we support gun control.
	Now, in a second, I'm going to talk about the supposed agenda of this gun control walkout.
	In a second, I'm going to talk about that.
	So let's jump right in.
	The Women's March is organizing this, first of all.
	The Women's March is organized by some of the worst people on earth.
	Three of the four people who are Women's March co-chairs are open supporters of Louis Farrakhan.
	And still, the Women's March has not really disciplined them.
	The Women's March has not demoted them.
	These three people have not come out and apologized for their support of Louis Farrakhan.
	The Women's March put out sort of a ridiculously vague statement about how they want to be tolerant, but they didn't go any further than that.
	The Women's March is a group of radicals who like to obscure their message by suggesting that you have to walk out in support of women.
	We have to walk out in support of children.
	But here's what they're actually stumping for.
	So if you actually go to the Women's March website, and they have something called hashtag enough national school walkout, our demands.
	You can't demand anything.
	It's a democracy.
	You can elect people who do what you want, but your demands are going to fall on deaf ears because it's just you shouting at the wind with media support.
	Here are their demands.
	Quote, demand one, banning assault weapons in high capacity magazines.
	In this country, there's a fine line between wanting to be protected and wanting to intimidate others.
	It's all in the title.
	Assault weapons don't protect, they harm, and too easily these deadly weapons can be bought, sold, and distributed within the borders of our nation.
	How can we enjoy freedom if our own country condones the selling of deadly, military-grade weapons which threaten our very existence?
	The right to bear arms should not be the right to kill.
	No one says you have the right to kill, you idiots.
	And the notion that assault weapons are even a definable category is ridiculous.
	You know what a military-grade arm is?
	Any rifle ever.
	Those are all military-grade because at some point in history, all rifles have been used for military purposes.
	But I guess that we're supposed to pretend that this makes any sense.
	Demand two, expanding background checks to all gun sales.
	With one in five gun purchases being a no questions asked purchase, dangerous people have the ability to easily purchase guns from private sellers at gun shows, over the internet, and even through magazines in states that don't require background checks.
	Well, this is again a misstatement of the law.
	The statement is that if you're going to buy from a federally licensed firearms dealer over the internet, at a gun show, or anywhere else, you have to go through a federal background check.
	The well-researched connection between a history of domestic violence and gun violence, combined with expanded background checks, could have prevented much of the gun violence we experience in this country.
	We know states that required background checks on all handgun sales or permits had 35% fewer gun deaths per capita than states without that background check requirement.
	I don't know where you are getting that particular statistic, and I would like to.
	I haven't had a chance to actually vet that statistic.
	That comes from the Giffords Law Center to prevent gun violence.
	I think that, you know, the statistics do not bear out that one factor in a multifactorial analysis explains the states that have fewer gun deaths per capita.
	That background check on handgun sales, you'd have to explain that there are a bunch of people who are buying privately and then shooting people.
	Again, those statistics are not available as a general rule.
	Okay, this one I actually support.
	This one they say, time and time again, we hear people commenting on how they saw it coming or always knew it'd be him.
	Gun violence restraining orders would provide a consistent and localized system for people to provide reasonable suspicion to local courts resulting in the expeditious removal of guns from those showing signs of potential to harm themselves or others followed by due process.
	Okay, nothing, First of all, that is a wild misstatement of the law at the very end that the due process comes after the seizure of the guns.
	No, the due process comes before the seizure of the guns, and then the due process continues after the seizure of the guns.
	OK, but.
	Then they get to the final one, and this undermines all their others.
	In 2017, there were only 14 days when police didn't kill someone.
	So it's important that when we talk about gun violence, we not forget state-sanctioned gun violence that disproportionately impacts black or brown communities.
	Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, yet constitute one quarter of those killed by police.
	Non-mentioned here, black people also constitute one half of all murder victims in the United States and approximately half of all murderers in the United States.
	This is not a statement about race being implicitly tied with violence, but so long as you are citing race in connection with violence statistics, it's important to note that police actually statistically undershoot minority people.
	They don't overshoot minority people if you actually connect that with the levels of violence occurring in the minority community.
	This act would slow the process of turning our neighborhoods into war zones by preventing the police from having the weaponry and equipment of invading armies.
	So, here's the hilarious part.
	They want to disarm everyone, presumably leaving all of our safety in the hands of the police.
	And then they want to disarm the police.
	Who do you think is actually going to disarm all those people?
	Do you think that it's going to be a bunch of unarmed people who walk up to armed people in Texas and take away their guns?
	Do you think that when a school shooter shows up, if the police don't have weapons, they're going to go in?
	We've been told by these same people that a guy with a handgun can't even go up against a guy with an AR-15.
	If that's the case, then why would you possibly want to disarm the cops?
	But this is what the Women's March is.
	It's a radical, radical group.
	And it gets even better.
	I mean, at some point in here, they actually talk about how they want to oppose international violence or something like that.
	This is an agenda-driven march masquerading as a broad statement of sympathy for students.
	I hate that sort of conflation because it's just not true.
	Okay, in a second, I'm going to move on to Pennsylvania 18th, and I want to also give a piece of advice to all the students who are experiencing the walkouts today.
	But first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Helix Sleep.
	So as I've said many, many times, I am very bad at sleeping.
	This is particularly true when I'm on the road because I miss my Helix Sleep mattress.
	Helix Sleep gives you something that does not exist anywhere else.
	A mattress personalized to your unique preferences and sleeping style that won't set you back thousands of dollars.
	You go to helixsleep.com slash Ben, and you take their simple two to three minute sleep quiz.
	They build you a custom mattress, and it's the best thing you've ever slept on.
	It really is fantastic.
	We've got a more fantastic mattress in our room.
	We moved it out because the Helix Sleep mattress is better.
	For couples, they'll even personalize each side of the mattress.
	And here's the best part.
	You can try it for 100 nights, and if you don't love it, they will pick it up and refund you in full.
	Okay, the custom mattress arrives, directs your door in a week.
	Shipping is completely free.
	Unpack it from the package.
	It automatically inflates, and it's ready to go.
	Go to helixsleep.com slash Ben right now.
	You get $50 toward your custom mattress.
	That's helixsleep.com slash Ben.
	$50 toward your custom mattress.
	Again, helixsleep.com slash Ben for $50 off your order.
	There's a lot of more expensive mattresses out there, and they're not as good.
	HelixSleep.com slash Ben.
	Make sure that it's personalized.
	Make sure that it is made just for you.
	That's what Helix does.
	HelixSleep.com slash Ben.
	Use that slash Ben to get 50 bucks for your custom mattress.
	Plus, it lets them know that we sent you.
	Okay, so for all those students, We're asking what they should do during this walkout, given all the propaganda that's surrounding the walkout.
	Here is my answer.
	My answer is that you should go to the walkout so that you're not perceived as uncaring, and you should bring with you a sign.
	And the sign should say something like, I care about children's lives.
	I care about my life.
	Protect my life.
	Arm teachers.
	Protect my life.
	Arm law-abiding people.
	Protect my life.
	More school security.
	Put your message right out there.
	Show that you can do both.
	It's like I said at CPAC.
	Everybody in the room at CPAC, the vast majority of them are Second Amendment supporters.
	Very strong.
	I said to them, raise your hand if you care about what happened in Parkland.
	Every hand goes up.
	And I said, raise your hand if you care about the Second Amendment.
	Every hand goes up.
	The media seem to want to believe that these two things cannot coexist.
	They do coexist.
	Show that they coexist.
	Go to the walkout and carry a sign saying that you stand with the Second Amendment and you stand with the kids.
	The media will ignore you, but at least you'll have made your point, and I think that's sort of important.
	Okay, so last night the other big news, aside from the impending school walkout, was the results from the Pennsylvania 18th Congressional District.
	So, Conor Lamb apparently has won that seat, or apparently it looks like he's going to win that seat.
	He is the Democrat in that district.
	That district went to Donald Trump by 20 points. 20.
	And it is flipped all the way Democrat.
	This makes just another data point in a data set that is really, really bad for conservatives.
	According to FiveThirtyEight.com, in the seven special elections that have taken place since 2016, there's been an average swing in favor of Democrats of 16 points.
	And the way they're measuring that swing is they average the differences between how the constituencies in these particular districts voted and how the country overall voted in the last two presidential elections.
	So the average swing has been 16 points.
	There was a 31-point swing, for example, in the Alabama U.S.
	Senate race, in which Doug Jones ended up becoming the senator.
	The Democrat ended up becoming the senator.
	The same thing happened in Pennsylvania last night.
	There's a 20 point swing in that race.
	This is not good news for Republicans.
	It's actually very bad news for Republicans, pretty obviously.
	And Republicans are trying to make all sorts of excuses for this.
	They're trying to explain why this is not such a big deal.
	One of the explanations is put forward by Kayleigh McEnany, who's a big Trump fan, big Trump acolyte.
	And she says, listen, Conor Lamb won because he was basically running as a Republican.
	Conor Lamb has essentially run as a Republican.
	He's pro-gun.
	He says he's personally pro-life.
	He says he's pro-coal.
	He's pro-tariff.
	He's anti-Nancy Pelosi.
	Imagine that.
	The Democratic candidate who's against Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader, he has made himself into essentially a Republican.
	So you have a Republican in name and a Republican in truth running against one another.
	Okay, so, you know, this is the argument is that it's really not a big deal because Conor Lamb is basically a Republican.
	Well, Conor Lamb is not a Republican.
	He's a pro-abortion Democrat.
	He says he is personally pro-life, but he is in favor of abortion being legalized all the way across the board.
	He is not pro-gun control, so he opposes gun control.
	This is not an argument that Republicans are going to do well in 2018.
	It's an argument that if Democrats are not stupid and they run people tailored to their districts, they will do better.
	If they run John Ossoff in the Georgia 6th district, if they run a Nancy Pelosi fan who's not from inside the district, they're going to lose.
	If they run Doug Jones, who is perceived as moderate in Alabama, even though he is not, if they run Conor Lamb, who is perceived as moderate in the Pennsylvania 18th, then they will win.
	So, the argument here is not that Republicans are doing fine because this Democrat ran a conservative campaign.
	The point is, a Democrat, just one, who caucused with Democrats in a district that no Republican has lost—no Republican has lost in 20 years, and no Republican has won by fewer than 15 points in the last 20 years.
	They just lost that district.
	Now, listen, there were some factors moving against the Republicans in this district.
	Tim Murphy was the former congressman who stepped down.
	He stepped down specifically because he had knocked up his mistress and then he had told her to get an abortion.
	Then he had to step down.
	That's never good for the Republican who's going to have to step in.
	But in an R-plus-20 district, that really should not make a difference.
	There are a lot of bad signs for Republicans here.
	The reason I'm saying this is not God forbid, celebratory.
	I don't want Republicans to lose the House.
	I think it would be terrible, as I've said many times on the show, for Republicans to lose the House because I think the Democrats would then start passing all sorts of bills, and I think President Trump would be sorely tempted to sign a lot of those bills.
	I'm not sure that Trump is going to stand between the Democrats and their policy priorities if he thinks he's going to get some good headlines out of it, particularly if he can swivel to the middle.
	If he can give Democrats a bunch of things they want and get a bunch of good headlines, Trump likes pleasing the people who are in the room with him.
	I'm very perturbed by the possibility of a Democratic Congress.
	And it's fairly obvious at this point that Democrats do have a major enthusiasm advantage.
	Again, in those seven special elections in 2017, Democrats gained an average of 16%.
	Last night, they gained 20% just over 2016.
	So in a year, like one year, that district shifted by 20 points.
	One of the reasons for that is obviously that Republican enthusiasm is really low.
	There's only 60% of the turnout that they got in 2016.
	Trump isn't on the ballot this time.
	So, you know, off-year elections are usually bad for the president in power.
	But there's sort of regression to the mean.
	That said, Trump's unpopularity doesn't help.
	Right?
	Trump actually went and campaigned for Rick Saccone.
	Didn't make one bit of difference.
	Not one.
	And here's a worse statistic for Republicans.
	This is an R-plus-20 district.
	There are 118 seats held by Republicans that Trump won by fewer than 20 points.
	There were closer districts than this district.
	Now, does that mean Republicans are going to lose 100 seats?
	No, it doesn't mean that.
	Republicans will win the vast majority of those seats.
	But Democrats only need to pick up 24 seats in order to win the House.
	So you have to say at this point that statistically speaking, in a data-driven way, they are the favorites to pick up the House, which means House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, God help us.
	OK, second point here.
	Trump's popularity does actually matter.
	So there's been a lot of talk, a lot of loose talk.
	About the idea that Trump can be as unpopular as he wants to be.
	Polls don't matter.
	His base will support him.
	His base will get out there and vote.
	His base is not big enough to win congressional elections.
	It just isn't.
	His base was not big enough to win the popular vote.
	And congressional elections are going to look a lot more like the popular vote than they are like the electoral college because, again, they're within smaller districts.
	The electoral college means that if you win the state of Florida by one vote, you win all of their electoral votes.
	But congressional districts are much more localized.
	So that means that national polling, you know, these sort of generic congressional ballots, they do matter.
	If there's a generic congressional ballot that shows the Democrats are up by about nine, which is where they're saying it is right now, Democrats win back the House in a pretty easy walk.
	Trump's popularity is a drag here.
	My president's with low popularity ratings, depressed turnout for their own side, and Trump has a gift for increasing turnout on the other side, at least now that Democrats realize that he could be president.
	The reason that the Democrats didn't show up to vote for Hillary is because Hillary was awful, but also because they believed it was a foregone conclusion that Hillary was going to win.
	And they believed that if they stayed home, it wouldn't make a difference.
	Hillary was going to walk over Trump by 10 points.
	But they were wrong.
	And I don't think they're going to make that mistake again.
	So Trump had better pull his plummeting popularity ratings out from the sewer.
	Democrats are also, as I say, running better candidates.
	Conor Lamb is a much better candidate than John Ossoff.
	Lamb ran, it is true, as a soft Republican.
	But the fact that he ran as a soft Republican Demonstrates that Democrats may not be quite as stupid as the intersectionality-laden politics they have been promoting would suggest, which is devastating for Republicans.
	We've been hoping that Democrats are going to basically cave in on themselves.
	They will run the worst candidates in human history again and again and again and again.
	They will in some districts, but not in all districts.
	And you can't count on them making this many mistakes.
	You just can't.
	So, you know, all of this is bad news.
	I want to talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
	I also want to talk about my friend Stephen Crowder being suspended from Twitter and apparently from YouTube also, which is just absurd.
	We're going to talk about all that in just a second.
	But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com.
	So for $9.99 a month, you can get a subscription to dailywire.com.
	You get the rest of the show live.
	You get the rest of Klavan's show live.
	Knolls' show live gets to be part of our mailbag on Friday.
	So if you want your mail answered, then actually go to the mailbag by becoming a subscriber at $9.99 a month.
	The annual subscription comes along with this.
	The very greatest in tumblers.
	The Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
	You will enjoy it.
	You will treasure it.
	It will make your morning.
	It will make your evening.
	It will make your entire life, actually.
	It's just that good.
	Check that out.
	$99 a year, so cheaper than the monthly subscription.
	Also, you just want to listen later?
	iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, Stitcher, any of those.
	Please subscribe.
	Please leave us a review.
	We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
	All righty.
	So there are a lot of people who just want to ignore the data in Pennsylvania 18.
	There are a lot of people who want to believe that everything is going to be fine.
	There are a couple factors cutting against this.
	Trump actually has governed pretty well.
	His actual governance has been pretty decent for the first year.
	We got a big tax cut.
	The economy is doing pretty well.
	All those things are true.
	He still just lost a district, right?
	Saccone did.
	Just lost a district that was R plus 20.
	And Trump visited that district.
	All of which is to suggest that things are not going to get better for President Trump.
	And not unless President Trump makes a market shift in how he approaches politics, which is very unlikely at this point, because the economy's booming.
	Like, what could get better at this point, really?
	Policy-wise, for all those policy wonks who think that everything's going to get better, this was supposed to be one of the districts that was going to love President Trump's tariffs, right?
	This is a Pittsburgh suburb.
	This is the area that Trump was going to bring back steel manufacturing with tariffs.
	And Republicans just lost it.
	So what does that say?
	It says that Trump is about at the high watermark of what he can do politically to help himself.
	The economy is doing really well.
	There isn't any major foreign crisis on the map.
	We're not involved in a long-lasting war outside of Afghanistan, which has been going on at low levels for the last 20 years.
	Nothing has happened that would drive Trump's approval rating into the toilet, right?
	There hasn't been an economic collapse, like killed George W. Bush's last term.
	There hasn't been anything like that.
	So what is Trump supposed to do policy-wise?
	The answer is nothing, which means a lot of this is personality.
	It means that Trump is going to have to stop kind of emitting this odor of chaos.
	He's going to have to stop with the trollery, I think.
	He's actually going to have to unite.
	If Trump receded into the background, if Trump just became part of the wallpaper, I think the Democrats would have a harder time getting their turnout out.
	The reason they're getting their turnout up is because people dislike Trump in the same way that Republicans disliked Obama, but probably more so.
	It helped Republicans in 2010 that Obama was the president.
	And it will help Democrats in 2018 that Trump is the president of the United States.
	Again, I can like a lot of what Trump is doing and also recognize that he is a political liability in a lot of these districts.
	There's a report out today that only two Republicans across the country actually want Trump to campaign with them.
	Again, that's not unique to Trump.
	And people who are saying, well, look, that's just because Trump's terrible.
	There were a lot of Democrats who didn't want Obama anywhere near them in 2010, in 2012, in 2014, in 2016.
	They didn't want Obama putting the stink of his presidency on them.
	They didn't want Obama spending his days blathering about gun control and health care reform and then coming to their districts where they were running a really narrow race.
	Well, the same thing can hold true for Trump, that a lot of Republicans may not want the stench of Trump on them.
	And so they're trying to avoid him.
	But Trump demands loyalty.
	And so if you don't show enough loyalty, like they're stuck between a rock and a hard place, at least Obama had the brains to recognize that if Democrats didn't want to campaign with him, that was probably because they thought they were going to lose and he needed them in the Congress.
	Trump is the kind of guy who, if you say, I don't, Mr. President, love you.
	I don't need you in my district.
	It's going to be a problem for me.
	If you say that to President Trump, there's a solid shot that within five minutes, he's on Twitter blasting you as disloyal and suggesting that you be primary.
	So Republicans are sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place on Trump.
	But, listen, not all of this is about Trump.
	Again, there's an average loss of, you know, 20-plus seats in these congressional off-year elections.
	But it does not help when people insist that data doesn't matter, that polls don't matter, that nothing matters.
	Just because the polls were off on the state level in 2016 does not mean that all polls are fake.
	The national polls in 2016 were actually pretty close to the money.
	The polls last night in Pennsylvania were very, very close.
	They said this was a dead heat.
	It was a dead heat.
	The races separated by like a thousand votes.
	So before we just start ignoring data because it is convenient to us to ignore data, then I think we should probably look at that data and analyze whether or not any of this is a good idea.
	Okay, so quick note on my friend Steven Crowder.
	So my friend Steven Crowder has now been suspended from Twitter for violating its hateful conduct terms.
	He's apparently also been suspended from YouTube, which is insane.
	Right, so now they posted a South by Southwest video of Sven computer infiltrating a gender fluid panel and Twitter suspended Steven's account.
	So they've said that he needs to delete the tweets that violate the rules.
	They've suspended the account for 12 hours.
	Okay, here's what Crowder's website is saying.
	Here's what we think happened.
	The original video that went out didn't have the word Bleep.
	It's the F word for gay people.
	Soft bleep.
	The original video was immediately pulled from YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook as the studio team added bleeps for the offensive content.
	After the bleeps were added into the video, the studio re-uploaded the South by Southwest undercover video back to YouTube and Facebook.
	When NotGayJared shared the video with the bleeps added and information blurred, he was also suspended.
	Which means Twitter didn't find the word offensive, they found the general concept of the video offensive.
	So, what exactly is the video?
	So apparently, the video is Sven Computer, right?
	A fake character who is forced to crash an LGBTQ gender non-conformity meetup at South by Southwest.
	Okay, this tape has now been removed from YouTube.
	It's just a comedy video, right?
	It's typical Crowder, right?
	Crowder's the guy who does Tranny Bane, right?
	This is his shtick.
	He's a comedian.
	Comedians do lots of stuff that walks right up to the edge and sometimes crosses over the edge.
	This is a reason that you're going to be banned from Twitter, suspended from Twitter.
	Louis Farrakhan is tweeting openly.
	Louis Farrakhan is tweeting openly anti-Semitic crap on Twitter every single day.
	He has not been suspended.
	And his counterparts on the right, people like Richard Spencer, who I even hesitate to call of the right, You know, Richard Spencer, who is sort of the white version of Louis Farrakhan in reverse, right?
	Richard Spencer has been suspended from Twitter.
	I don't think he's on Twitter anymore.
	I think he's been banned from Twitter.
	The same thing holds true of Milo Yiannopoulos.
	Now, I'm not in favor of any of these people being banned from Twitter, even though I despise all of them, but...
	I think that it is completely absurd that Steven is getting knocked off these platforms because Steven happens to be a conservative comedian, where if you were a left-wing comedian and you said exactly the same words about Christians, everything would be totally fine.
	If you said the same words about Jews, everything would be totally fine.
	This double standard that exists in social media is really dangerous.
	It's one of the reasons why Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google, all of these outlets seem to be targeting conservative content right now.
	Conservatives better get on their horse.
	I mean, we better start building some of our own outlets because the reality Is that if we don't build some open threat outlets, if we don't build some open source outlets that allow people to post what they want to post with some very, very minute restrictions, then the left will simply castigate everything as hate speech.
	And this is one of the things that's been so funny in the recent couple of weeks.
	The left keeps saying, well, you know, you know, you're worried about crackdowns on free speech on college campuses.
	You're worried about intolerant leftists.
	But if you look at the polls, people on campus say they're for free speech.
	Right, but those same polls show that these people say that they are against what they call racist speech, but the problem is they then define racist speech as anything they disagree with.
	So you have a definitional problem that's very serious.
	Okay, the same thing is happening to Crowder here.
	Lumping in Crowder with Milo Yiannopoulos or lumping in Christina Hoff Summers with Richard Spencer.
	As some people on the left are trying to do is just absurd.
	It's insane.
	It's happened to me also.
	It's disgusting.
	If you're not going to make any sort of honest intellectual distinction between these categories, then you don't deserve to have a platform.
	Your platform should fall apart.
	Jack over at Twitter, get on your get on your game, dude.
	I mean, this is just it's just ridiculous.
	There's no excuse for it whatsoever.
	All right.
	So meanwhile, President Trump.
	is, he decided to inspect the border yesterday.
	So he comes and he inspects the border wall.
	Here is what it looked like when he inspected border wall prototypes in San Diego. - President Trump there in San Diego, California, taking a look at the border wall prototypes.
	In the meantime, I just want to let you know that more than 400 firms submitted proposals to be included here.
	Six companies built a total of eight prototypes.
	The prototypes, you can see a lot of them there in the background, are 18 to 30 feet high.
	Okay, so Trump goes and visits the prototypes.
	The purpose of this, of course, is to show the Democrats that he's serious about building the wall, even though we have not had one foot yet built of the wall.
	The president then talked a little bit about the wall, and for some odd reason started talking about the Jamaican bobsled team or the Mexican mountain climbing team.
	Like, really, this is a thing that happened.
	The larger it is, the better it is, because it's very hard to get over the top.
	It's really deterrent from getting over the top.
	Who would think?
	Who would think?
	But getting over the top is easy.
	These are like professional mountain climbers.
	They're incredible climbers.
	They can't climb some of these walls.
	Some of them they can.
	Those are the walls we're not using.
	Okay, Mr. President, thank you for that dissertation on the climbing capacity of Mexican illegal immigrants.
	Just well done.
	Don't even know what's happening there.
	That was not the only weird thing that Trump said yesterday.
	He also pushed what he called the Space Force.
	He floated the idea of creating a new military branch to fight wars in space.
	Now, to be fair to President Trump, he's not the only person who's actually mentioned this before.
	This has been mentioned by a number of legislators, the idea of creating a space force, but it is kind of funny when Trump says it.
	So here he is.
	Space is a war-fighting domain.
	Just like the land, air, and sea.
	We may even have a Space Force.
	Develop another one.
	Space Force.
	We have the Air Force.
	We'll have the Space Force.
	We have the Army, the Navy.
	You know, I was saying it the other day, because we're doing a tremendous amount of work in space.
	I said, maybe we need a new force.
	We'll call it the Space Force.
	And I was not really serious.
	And then I said, what a great idea.
	Maybe we'll have to do that.
	That could happen.
	That could be the big breaking story.
	Look at all those people back there.
	Look at that.
	What exactly is happening?
	I'm what now?
	Space Force?
	Well the good news is that President Trump has already cut a commercial for Space Force.
	Here's what it looks like.
	Young people from all over the globe are joining up to fight for the future.
	I'm doing my part.
	I'm doing my part too.
	They're doing their part.
	Are you?
	Join the Mobile Infantry and save the world.
	Service guarantees citizenship.
	There it is.
	That, of course, is from Starship Troopers.
	So, the President of the United States promoting Space Force.
	Okay, fine, whatever.
	It's probably not the worst idea in the world, actually.
	So, there's that.
	Okay, meanwhile, the President, this is breaking news in the last few minutes, the President of the United States about to appoint, as the head of his National Economic Council, the famed free trader, Larry Kudlow.
	Which just goes to show you that Trump really doesn't have policies, he just has people he likes.
	So, Larry Kudlow, is basically Gary Cohn, except his name is Larry Kudlow.
	So, Gary Cohn, you recall, was ousted from the National Economic Council head.
	He was supposed to be the guy who stood up to Trump's anti-free trade agenda, and he stepped down after Trump said that he was going to push forward with his steel and aluminum tariffs.
	Kudlow has been an ardent free trader for years.
	He says that free trade is the bulwark of the international system.
	Trump's appointing him to replace Cohn, which is a really weird pick.
	Listen, I like Larry Kudlow.
	I think that Larry Kudlow is correct about all of this.
	Here's the report from CNBC.
	President Donald Trump plans to name Kudlow as his top economic advisor, sources told CNBC.
	Trump could announce his decision to choose Kudlow as his National Economic Council director as soon as Thursday.
	The CNBC senior contributed an on-air personality to replace Gary Cohn, who left the White House earlier this month amid disagreements about tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
	Now, I can't imagine that Larry's going to go in there and that he's immediately going to turn into a tariff fanatic, that he's suddenly going to turn into Peter Navarro.
	It is good news.
	I mean, this means that Peter Navarro isn't the head of the NEC, which would just be a disaster.
	But it is pretty astonishing that Trump is willing to appoint somebody who disagrees with him on all the policy because he saw him on TV, which basically is what it sounds like here.
	That's exactly what it sounds like.
	It sounds like there is some sort of personal relationship between Trump and Kudlow, and so he's going to have Kudlow as part of his team.
	Which is, again, not the best way to form policy.
	This just breaking that Kudlow has accepted the job and the alert is out on the Washington Post.
	So, that is pretty, that is pretty hilarious.
	Okay, another hilarious news.
	Katy Perry is responsible for a Me Too moment.
	So, Katy Perry is a judge on the new American Idol, and there's a guy who sang for her.
	He is a virgin who has never been kissed.
	His name is Benjamin Glaze.
	He's a 19-year-old cashier from Enid, Ohio.
	And apparently, he sang beautifully on American Idol, and Katy Perry loved it so much that she came over and kissed him right on the lips.
	Right, moments before his audition.
	He said, instead, it came to, so she, it wasn't even after he sang.
	He said, it was a tad bit uncomfortable.
	His first kiss was a rite of passage he'd been putting off with consideration.
	He said, I wanted to save it for my first relationship.
	I wanted it to be special.
	Would I have done it if she said, would you kiss me?
	No, I would have said no.
	I know a lot of guys would be like, heck yeah, but for me, I was raised in a conservative family.
	I was uncomfortable immediately.
	I wanted my first kiss to be special.
	The scene with the kiss was part of a two-night season opener for the new American Idol, which is now on ABC after it was kicked off of Fox.
	And the new panel of celebrities is Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, and it's hosted by Ryan Seacrest.
	In the segments that featured Mr. Glaze, he was shown waiting around in anticipation for his audition with other hopefuls.
	As he entered the studio, guitar slung over his shoulder, looking a bit starstruck.
	He said he enjoyed his work as a cashier because it let him meet cute girls.
	And have you kissed a girl and liked it?
	Asked Mr. Brian, making a coy reference to Miss Perry's first hit single, I Kissed a Girl.
	Mr. Glaze said that he had not.
	And he said, I've never been in a relationship.
	I can't kiss a girl without being in a relationship.
	And then she stood up and she said, come here right now.
	And then she said, one on the cheek.
	And she smiled.
	And then she asked for another kiss, complaining he hadn't even made the smush sound.
	As he moved toward her cheek again, Miss Perry swung her face toward him and kissed him quickly on the lips.
	And then she raised her arms in victory.
	Okay, a Me Too moment that no one will care about because obviously even though the contestant was not into it, even though he didn't want it, Katy Perry is a hot liberal so we are allowed to pretend that that's all okay.
	Yep, that's the way that it works.
	Imagine that had been a conservative dude doing that to a virginal feminist and imagine how that would have gone.
	The answer is it would not have gone.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I like and then we'll get to some things that I hate.
	things that I like today.
	There is a brand new book out called The Escape Artist from my friend Brad Meltzer.
	And Brad Meltzer is a terrific author.
	I mean, he's written thrillers before.
	It's been several years since he wrote a thriller.
	So this is his first thriller in quite a long while.
	He's also the author of a bunch of books I've recommended on the program for kids.
	I am George Washington.
	I am Jackie Robinson.
	I am Martin Luther King.
	These are really great books for children.
	My four-year-old loves them.
	So I had the opportunity to sit down with Brad the other day, and here's what it sounded like.
	So joining us on the line in a rare Things I Like interview is Brad Meltzer.
	Brad is the author of a number of best-selling thrillers, as well as books that I've recommended on the show many times, actually.
	The I Am George Washington, I Am Abraham Lincoln children's series all about historical American figures.
	He has a new book coming out.
	It's his first new thriller in years, and it's called The Escape Artist.
	Brad, thanks so much for joining us.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you, my friend.
	So, Brad, what exactly is The Escape Artist about?
	Yeah, you know, The Escape Artist opens with Nola Brown, one of my favorite characters I've created in years.
	And Nola's dead.
	Government says she's dead.
	She's a staff sergeant who died in a military accident, a plane crash.
	But at Dover Air Force Base, when our hero, Zig, is laying the body to rest, he opens it up and sees that there's a hidden note inside her stomach.
	And the note says, Nola, you were right.
	Keep running.
	And he realizes Nola's not dead.
	She's alive.
	She's on the run.
	She's the escape artist.
	And for me, that's the fictional plot.
	That's what drives the book.
	But what I love is that it's based on real details.
	So I was, on a USO tour a number of years ago, entertaining our troops, and found out about Dover Air Force Base, of course knew that Dover was where our soldiers, our fallen soldiers are laid to rest.
	What I didn't know is Dover is home to our absolute top biggest cases.
	So whether it's 9-11 and the Pentagon flight, or the space shuttle going down, or our top spies around the world, they go to Dover too.
	And that means Dover is a place that's built on secrets and mysteries.
	And you'd originally apparently heard the story that there were actual notes found in the bodies, correct?
	So that's based on actually a true thing that you'd heard.
	Yeah.
	No, I always take my plot and I give it to the real person.
	And the people at Dover, they just blew me away.
	I was humbled.
	I mean, I've done research at the White House and with Presidents Bush, and it's been an amazing experience.
	But when I went to Dover, I'd seen nothing like it.
	They will spend 14 hours rewiring someone's jaw.
	Because they want them to see their son or daughter one last time.
	Rebuilding an entire hand, because the mother specifically says, I want to hold my son's hand one more time.
	And so I gave these amazing people, my heroes, I was like, we need heroes like this in the world.
	I wanted to make them the heroes of this book, of The Escape Artist.
	And I gave them the plot.
	I said, could you hide a secret note in a body?
	And they told me that if a plane was going down, this is true, that if you ate the note at the right time, Yeah, what's the note?
	went down into your stomach, the liquids in your stomach would actually protect the note.
	And I thought, oh, that's a cool story.
	And what they said was, it's not just a story.
	It happened on 9-11.
	And I said, what are you talking about?
	They said, on 9-11, this is true.
	One of the victims on the Pentagon flight, when they opened up their stomach, there was actually a note inside.
	And I said, Ben, let's be honest.
	What's the question right there?
	What do you got to ask?
	Yeah.
	What's the note?
	I mean, that's crazy.
	What's the note?
	Right.
	I mean, that's it.
	We've never been closer.
	I was like, what's the note?
	And of course, they couldn't tell me, and I respect the privacy of it.
	I thought it had to be someone in the military because who else would have the wherewithal to do such a thing?
	But as I look back on it, I realized that person was doing what we all do and we all want is seeking connection, right?
	We all want to love and be loved.
	And to me, when my parents died, the one good thing that happened was I got to say goodbye.
	And I remember they said to me, this is like the ultimate message in a bottle.
	And the reason I take hope from that note is that when you put that message out there, You're gonna be heard.
	And that's the plot of the book.
	I literally, all I did was just change the fact of what was on the note and said, you know, you're alive, keep running.
	And I made it sexier for a thriller, but I always base my books on real research.
	Well, the book is The Escape Artist.
	The author is Brad Meltzer.
	Again, I highly recommend The Escape Artist.
	I also recommend all of his children's books, as my daughter does.
	She is actually even a bigger fan of Brad Meltzer than I am.
	Brad, thanks so much for joining us, and thanks for taking the time out.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you, brother.
	Really appreciate it.
	Alrighty, so there is a thing I like.
	Go out and check out Brad Meltzer's new book.
	Again, it's called The Escape Artist and it is well worth the read.
	It's really interesting and quite a good book.
	Okay, other things that I like today.
	So there's a book that is very popular in sort of conservative intellectual circles but is not well known called The Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset.
	This is written in 1926, I believe.
	And it was all about the problem of having an undifferentiated population that is interested in overthrowing the established order.
	And it was specifically written about the rise of Marxism.
	It's a pretty sophisticated book.
	It also talks a lot about the balance between democracy and a republic and balance between elites and the masses and whether you actually do need people who know what they're talking about at the top.
	But how do you avoid tyranny if that's the case?
	So check it out.
	Revolt of the Masses by Ortega Iglesias.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	All righty, so Eminem found it necessary to go off on the NRA.
	I don't know what Eminem is trying to do at this point.
	I know he's trying to escape being irrelevant.
	And so I guess the way he thinks he's going to do that is by politicking all the time.
	But here is Eminem ripping into the NRA.
	Sometimes I don't know what this war has come to.
	It's blowing up.
	This whole country is going nuts.
	And the NRA is in our way.
	They're responsible for this whole production.
	They hold the strings to control the public.
	Okay, so there he is saying the NRA is responsible for all of this, all these people clutching their guns, etc, etc, etc.
	I have a bit of bad news for Mr. Eminem.
	more than our children.
	I think I'll never go to the Senate than our buildings.
	Okay, so there he is saying the NRA is responsible for all of this, all these people clutching their guns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
	I have a bit of bad news for Mr. Eminem.
	His actual name is Marshall Mathers, correct?
	Yeah.
	So, yes, I have some bad news for Mr. Eminem.
	In 2001, he was sentenced to probation for gun charges.
	Apparently, the gun was not loaded, nor was it directed at anyone, but the rapper pled guilty to a concealed weapons count on February 14, 2001.
	And also, he had had all sorts of problems with run-ins with the law, including weapons.
	He got two years probation on gun charges back in 2001.
	So, well done, Eminem.
	Just well done.
	Again, all the virtue signaling by all these artists who are running out of steam, and so now they are looking for the approval of the critics in the hope that this will boost their profile a little bit.
	They need to make a headline again.
	It's sort of pathetic and it demonstrates.
	When was the last time that Beethoven, when Beethoven was alive, was he like, you know what, I need to make a political statement now in order for people to like my art.
	Was this true of Brahms?
	Was this true of Mozart?
	Was this true of the big band swingers of the 1940s?
	Was this true for any of the great jazz artists?
	I don't think so.
	It's only now when pop culture and politics have completely merged that we're supposed to pretend that pop artists have something deep to say about the nature of politics.
	politics, and then we cheer for them, and then we're supposed to go buy their crappy records if they say something nasty about the NRA.
	Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow.
	The news is breaking fast and furious, and we will have all of the updates.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Blubber.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

▲