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May 2, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

45:05

Pod Save The Iran Deal | Ep. 530

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	Team Obama defends Iran from Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House faces down special counsel Robert Mueller, and the Boy Scouts have decided to rename themselves.
	They're no longer the Boy Scouts.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Okay, so we have a lot to get to today, and we will get to all of it.
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	All right.
	Team Obama is very angry.
	Team Obama is very angry today because it turns out that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government revealed for all the world to see that Iran has been consistently lying about its nuclear program for years.
	Not only did they lie about the extent of their nuclear program in the run-up to the Iran deal signed by the Obama administration, but they also continued to lie after that.
	Because they hid all of these documents, and they refused to inform the IAEA of where any of these documents were.
	They had secret sites that nobody knew about.
	And so, Team Obama is very, very mad about this.
	So is Iran.
	Iran has now threatened Israel over Netanyahu's speech.
	So, they say, according to Amir Khatami, who is the Iranian defense minister, he said, they must stop their conspiracies and dangerous behavior because Iran's response will be just surprising and make them regretful.
	OK?
	Israel and Iran, of course, are clashing diplomatically after Netanyahu revealed that they had stolen 100,000 documents out of Iran itself, which is an amazing, amazing intelligence accomplishment.
	But, Tommy said, the timing of this show by a person who has a record of such acts proves that in addition to the general goals of this regime in pursuing hostility toward the Iranian nation, it also pursues other specific goals, which include following suit with President Trump's hostile scenario against the Iranian nation.
	Netanyahu, of course, has claimed that the nuclear deal gives Iran a clear pass to an atomic arsenal and says that it never should have been concluded in the first place.
	What's amusing to watch is as folks on the left struggle to come up with a response to the fact that Iran is a government of liars, that the mullahs are in fact tyrannical dictators who repress women and gay folks and people of other religions.
	And the media are struggling to figure out why exactly they should continue to support this deal.
	And so instead, what they have decided to do is side almost openly with Iran.
	So leading the charge is Tommy Vietor.
	If you've never heard of Tommy Vietor, you're in good company.
	Very few people have.
	Tommy Vietor is one of the co-hosts on Pod Save America, which is now being renamed Pod Save Tehran.
	Tommy Vietor has actually changed his title.
	I'm not kidding about this.
	He changed his title.
	On Twitter, to mock people who are angry about the Iran deal, to Tehran Tommy.
	He started off as a van driver in a 2002 local campaign and worked his way up to be the National Security Council spokesperson under President Barack Obama, showing you that mobility still happens in the United States.
	Mobility is just an amazing thing.
	I mean, you can really move up the ranks despite having low IQ, apparently.
	So Tommy Veeder, Trump is very angry at the Israelis for having revealed the fact that the Iranian government is filled with people who lie about their nuclear weapons program.
	Barak Ravid, who's a reporter from Israel, said an Israeli official said the timing of the publication was coordinated with the White House and the reason it was published this week was due to the May 12th deadline regarding the Iran deal.
	So Vidar tweeted, quote, After years of bashing U.S.
	intelligence agencies for getting Iraq WMD wrong, Trump is now cooking up intel with the Israelis to push us closer to a conflict with Iran.
	A scandal hiding in plain sight.
	Okay, so.
	I think that I have to parse this.
	What Tommy Vietor is saying is that Trump, with the Israelis, he's being manipulated by the Jews!
	The evil Jews are working with Donald Trump in order to push America closer to the brink of war with Iran.
	This, of course, is not what is happening, and there is no evidence whatsoever that intelligence was actually cooked up by the Israelis at all.
	All of the documents have been verified.
	And there is a conflict within Team Obama because Ben Rhodes, who is the national security advisor under Barack Obama, his special national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, former fiction writer from Brooklyn, who knows nothing about foreign policy, he was tweeting out yesterday there was nothing new in Netanyahu's report.
	So half of Obama's team is saying there's nothing new in what Netanyahu is saying.
	And half of Obama's team is saying it's the Jews trying to manipulate the United States into war.
	That's not where Tommy Vieter stopped after he put out this conspiratorial tweet.
	I asked him to get back in the van.
	A neocon is a person who used to be on the left and then became on the right.
	"I want you to believe that Netanyahu unveiled evidence "that Iran violated the deal.
	"He did not.
	"Facts don't care about your feelings, baby Ben and Ben." Okay, so first of all, Tommy Vieter is an insanely stupid human being.
	A neocon is a person who used to be on the left and then became on the right.
	I've been on the right my entire life, my entire life.
	Like literally from the moment I started writing publicly, I was on the right, so I'm not a neocon.
	Neocon very often is used by people who do not like Jews to talk about Jews.
	The term neocon, it's used by a lot of folks like Pat Buchanan, with specific reference to people like Paul Wolfowitz or Bill Kristol.
	I do love the fact that Tommy Vietor is ignorant enough that he calls me Baby Bannon.
	For anyone who has known anything I've done over the past two and a half years, Bannon and I do not get along.
	We do not see eye to eye.
	I quit Breitbart News because Steve Bannon and I did not see eye to eye.
	I was the leading critic of Steve Bannon in the United States, without a doubt, for two full years.
	So, um, no.
	But this just demonstrates again that the left will do anything to defend Obama's legacy, even when that Obama legacy is garbage.
	One of the things that's funny is watching the media try to spin it.
	So Chris Cuomo, the thickest block of wood on CNN, he's interviewing Benjamin Netanyahu and he makes a fool of himself.
	He asks Netanyahu whether the Israelis should go along with the Iran deal and things go poorly for him.
	Right, if there were no deal in place right now, you would have no idea what was going on and how would that make Israel safer?
	If by all accounts, Iran has slowed or stopped what it was doing prior to the deal, how would you be safer without a deal?
	There are many premises that are incorrect in your statement.
	Please.
	The first is, we'd be better off—we're better off because we have this deal.
	No, you're not.
	Because this deal—the fact that you have a dangerous deal, the fact that Iran is keeping or not violating a dangerous deal doesn't make it less dangerous.
	It's completely flawed.
	It's based on lies.
	I said from the start, look, if you want peace, if you want security, you should oppose that deal as structured.
	I said that.
	Right, the argument Netanyahu is making from the very beginning, and made by people on the right like me from the very beginning, is that the Iran deal gave Iran a clear pathway to a nuclear weapon after 10 years with all sanctions lifted, allowed them to develop ballistic missiles technology, and didn't really force them to dismantle their nuclear program in any serious way.
	It prevented them from ramping that nuclear program up, but it didn't prevent them from maintaining all the equipment in a back basement somewhere, which presumably is exactly what they've done.
	The only reason that we know about the extent of their nuclear program is not because Iran turned over its materials to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
	The reason we know about it is because the Jews smuggled 100,000 documents out of Tehran.
	But again, the media are really invested in the Iran deal, and they are very much invested in attempting to forward the Iran deal.
	And so, you saw yesterday, CNN's Jeff Zeleny, he was asking the White House whether they even take the Iran deal stuff seriously.
	Again, this sort of scorning, dripping media coverage, it demonstrates full scale how much the media were in the pocket of the Obama administration, and how much they now seek to defend Iran in pursuit of defending their own legacy for defending Obama in the first place.
	You believe that the White House has a credibility problem around the world with statements like this.
	Do you take this seriously?
	Absolutely, which is why we immediately corrected it.
	But again, I think the biggest mistake is the fact that the United States ever entered into the Iran deal in the first place.
	That, to me, seems to be the biggest mistake in this process.
	Not a simple typo that was immediately corrected.
	and notified individuals as soon as we knew that it had happened.
	And that, of course, is exactly correct.
	I mean, the fact is that the big scandal here has nothing to do with the Trump administration or Netanyahu.
	It has to do with an administration that actively lied to the American people for years in pursuit of an Iran deal that was garbage and that was being lied about by the Iranians themselves.
	And now the left finds itself in bed with Iran.
	You've got the Pod Save Iran guys over there trying to demonstrate that this Iran deal is a great good and that the Israelis are the big liars.
	So Barack Obama took sides with Iran against Israel and Saudi Arabia.
	And now Donald Trump has reversed that and he's taking sides with America's allies.
	And the Obama guys are really, really mad about it.
	So no shock there in any serious sense.
	We knew all this about Team Obama back when Obama was president.
	Okay, in other news, in other big news today...
	Apparently, Donald Trump is—the situation with Robert Mueller is now coming to a head.
	So, Robert Mueller is, of course, the special counsel who's investigating so-called Trump-Russia collusion.
	Again, there is no serious evidence that has been presented to date that demonstrates any real collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 campaign.
	And the best that they've done is saying that Carter Page traveled to Moscow.
	Carter Page still has not been indicted.
	They've indicted George Papadopoulos, who's a low-level campaign staffer for the Trump team, who was meeting with some Russian connected professor in London.
	There's no evidence that any information actually passed hands or was funneled to the Trump campaign.
	And the only other piece of evidence that I've seen that is suspicious in any serious way is that Trump Tower meeting between Donald Trump Jr., some members of the Trump campaign, and a lawyer that was connected to the Russian government.
	At best, what that shows is a willingness to cooperate with Russia.
	There's no actual evidence of cooperation with Russia in any serious fashion.
	Well, Robert Mueller is apparently going to ask President Trump about all of this, and he wants to ask President Trump specifically about obstruction.
	So this investigation has now shifted in tone and tenor from an investigation about supposed election interference to obstruction of justice.
	Is Donald Trump trying to fire people and obstruct justice in order to protect the government from finding out about something?
	Now, the problem with obstruction charges is it's very easy to bring obstruction charges in virtually any case.
	All you have to do is get someone on the record once lying.
	Once that happens, once you lie to the FBI, that's a crime.
	And once you lie to special counsel Mueller, that's a crime.
	Doesn't matter whether you're under oath or not.
	It is also true that if you fire somebody to stop an investigation, for example, even if the investigation were to find you innocent, then they could try to go after you for obstruction of justice.
	Well, this looks like the path that Mueller is now attempting to take.
	The Washington Post broke news last night of a meeting in early March with special counsel Robert Mueller in which President Trump's lawyers insisted he had no obligation to talk with federal investigators probing Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
	But Mueller, it looks like, is now getting rough.
	He responded that he might subpoena President Trump.
	He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter.
	John Dowd, who's the president's lead lawyer, then said, So where do things currently stand?
	Well, I'll explain it in just one second.
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	Okay, so all of this with Trump and Mueller is coming to a head.
	So in the wake of that meeting that I was discussing, Robert Mueller's team agreed to provide the president's lawyers with more specific information about the subjects prosecutors wanted to discuss with the president.
	So they sent them a bunch of questions.
	And that's when all of those questions were leaked.
	So there were a bunch of questions that were leaked by apparently Team Trump is probably the best guess.
	What Mueller wants to talk to Trump about.
	He wants to talk to him about the collusion, but he also wants to ask him pretty far ranging questions like, what were you thinking about James Comey before you fired James Comey?
	And what did you think of James Comey when you first came into office?
	And what were you thinking during this meeting?
	And what were you thinking during that meeting?
	Well, Trump doesn't have any obligation to answer those questions.
	He can always just say, I don't remember.
	That's probably the easiest way.
	Now, there are some people who have been saying they think that Trump is going to plead the fifth.
	I do not think that Trump is going to plead the fifth if he is subpoenaed.
	I agree with Alan Dershowitz here.
	Here's Alan Dershowitz and Jeffrey Toobin on CNN yesterday discussing whether Trump would plead the fifth if he were in fact subpoenaed by the special counsel.
	By the way, the special counsel does have the power to subpoena the president in a civil or criminal procedure in all likelihood.
	But Trump probably will not plead the fifth for a pretty specific reason.
	I think the president has a way of short-circuiting this entire process, and I think that's what he's going to do, ultimately, which is take the fifth, which he's refused to answer.
	Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
	Can I finish, Alan?
	There's just no way you're going to do that.
	Which is, you know, the president will denounce the process.
	It's a witch hunt.
	He doesn't want anything to do with this.
	There is nothing Mueller can do if the president takes the fifth.
	Of course there is.
	He gives him immunity, number one.
	He's never going to give the president immunity.
	Of course he is.
	Let me tell you why he'll give the president immunity, because immunity doesn't apply in an impeachment proceeding.
	Okay, so Dershowitz is exactly right here.
	Let me elucidate what he is saying.
	What Truman is saying is that Trump will plead the fifth because he doesn't want to be criminally prosecuted.
	And what Dershowitz is saying is what Mueller will do instead is he will say to Trump, listen, I don't want to prosecute you.
	I'm going to give you immunity.
	Well, if you give somebody immunity, you can't plead the fifth.
	So pleading the fifth only protects you from criminal prosecution.
	If I am a witness in a trial, for example, and criminal prosecution is not imminent, then I am not allowed to plead the fifth.
	Pleading the fifth only applies to self-incrimination when criminal charges are on the table.
	Once you are granted immunity, if I'm granted immunity as a witness, I can no longer plead the fifth because the fifth is to protect you from self-incrimination.
	So what instead, what Dershowitz is saying, what Mueller will do instead is he'll say to the president, listen, we're not going to prosecute you.
	He'll force Trump to testify.
	And then there'll be an impeachment proceeding, which has nothing to do with the criminal prosecution.
	Remember, impeachment is not a criminal prosecution.
	It is a political process.
	So, Mueller could still catch Trump up in his little trap here, and that's a serious problem for President Trump.
	Trump is beginning to notice that.
	The best thing for Trump to do is avoid the interview with Mueller as long as he possibly can, and then if there's anything even mildly incriminating, the president ought to be saying, I do not remember.
	Because, frankly, even if the president is completely innocent, he has a habit of stepping in doo-doo, and I don't think that he should be stepping in doo-doo in front of a talented lawyer like Robert Mueller.
	Meanwhile, in breaking news, apparently the Boy Scouts of America are now going to change their name.
	So we've reached the point in American society where it is just not tolerant enough for there to be things like Boy Scouts anymore.
	There's a famous clip of me online talking to a woman about transgenderism, in which we're talking about the Boy Scouts, and she says, why shouldn't girls be allowed to be in the Boy Scouts?
	Meaning, why shouldn't girls who believe they're boys be allowed in the Boy Scouts?
	And I said, because it's called the Boy Scouts.
	Right?
	It's for boys.
	Well, now the Boy Scouts have changed their names.
	They've already been moving to the left on a bunch of social issues under pressure from various state governments.
	The state of California tried to remove the state tax-exempt status of the Boy Scouts of California if they had not actually allowed gay Scoutmasters, for example.
	The Boy Scouts have become a much more secular organization, and they've begun admitting girls as well.
	According to the New York Post today, for 108 years, the Boy Scouts of America's flagship program has been known simply as the Boy Scouts, with girls soon entering the ranks.
	The group says that iconic name will change.
	Now, you may be asking yourself, why can't there be a Girl Scouts?
	Because there are Girl Scouts and they sell me cookies.
	So what's the deal?
	Why does there have to be a Boy Scouts that allows girls?
	And the answer is because the left is so stupid and terrible that they believe that any such situation in which boys play only with boys must by its very nature be sexist and discriminatory.
	This is insanely dumb.
	Boys should be allowed to have groups with other boys.
	Girls should be allowed to have groups with other girls.
	And it is stupid to suggest that this is some form of nefarious discrimination.
	It's very important for males to bond with one another.
	And it's important for them to do so in the absence of females sometimes.
	The same thing is certainly true for women.
	There are lots of places in America where women get together and they are just with other women.
	As in every brunch ever.
	This happens a lot.
	And that's okay.
	It's good.
	It's important.
	People should be allowed to associate with the people they want to associate with in the United States of America.
	But the left has pressured the Boy Scouts so much that now they not only are admitting girls, And they now are renaming themselves.
	Well, this comes along with a fair bit of irony, because there's one group that's actually super ticked about this.
	The Girl Scouts.
	The Girl Scouts are really mad that the Boy Scouts are now allowing girls.
	They're afraid that the Boy Scouts are going to suddenly have Girl Scout troops, and suddenly the Girl Scouts, which is an independent organization, will cease to exist.
	It will actually fall out of favor.
	The whole thing is really dumb.
	Chief Scout Executive Mike Cerbaugh said many possibilities have been included.
	They've renamed the Boy Scouts program Scouts BSA, right, which really means Scouts Boy Scouts of America, but they're not going to use Boy Scouts of America anymore.
	The parent organization remains the Boy Scouts of America.
	The Cub Scouts keeps its title, but the Boy Scouts, the program for 11 to 17 year olds, is now the Scouts BSA, and the organization has already started admitting girls into the Cub Scouts.
	Scouts BSA begins accepting girls next year.
	They say that now they are going to refer to themselves simply as scouts rather than boy or girl or another modifier like that.
	Now listen, we here in this office, we sign a lot of letters in congratulation for folks for becoming Eagle Scouts.
	It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to become an Eagle Scout.
	and potentially having the same pathway to the coveted Eagle Scout Award.
	Now listen, we here in this office, we sign a lot of letters in congratulations for folks for becoming Eagle Scouts.
	It takes an enormous amount of time and effort to become an Eagle Scout.
	But Girl Scouts have a similar process, and that's okay.
	That's okay.
	I don't think that girls have to do exactly the same things as boys.
	And by the way, the Girl Scout awards, the merit badges, are not cooking and sewing anymore.
	Many of them are exactly the same merit badges as the Boy Scouts get.
	But this is the funny part, again.
	Once you obliterate the distinction between the sexes, you end up destroying the feminists.
	So the Girl Scout leaders say they are blindsided by the move.
	They're gearing up an aggressive campaign to recruit and retain girls as members.
	Among the initiatives is creation of numerous new badges that girls can earn, focusing on outdoor activities and on science, engineering, technology, and math.
	Let me just be straight about this.
	The number of girls who are desperate to get merit badges in science, engineering, technology, and math, just by choice, is a lot lower than the number of girls who want to do all the other merit badges.
	You know how I know that?
	Because this has been true to every study ever done of science and technology preference among girls and boys.
	It's not to say that girls aren't good at STEM stuff.
	It's just to say that they don't prefer working in STEM fields.
	So, if you're trying to attract girls to your ranks, it's kind of weird that you're going to do so by Moving into areas where girls are least likely to want to participate.
	Listen, I'm fine with them offering these options.
	That's totally fine with me.
	But again, I think that the obliteration of sexual distinctions is really, really stupid.
	And not only that, it is from the left a fascistic matter.
	The attempt to break down cultural distinctions by the left in order to level all human beings into these sexless widgets is really counterproductive and really, really stupid.
	So that's pretty...
	That's pretty amazing stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, the New York Times is now pressing for you to starve your parents, so that's exciting.
	The New York Times has a piece in their Life section about advanced directives for patients with dementia.
	Now, everyone, I believe, should have an advanced directive.
	I think it's deeply important for folks to have advanced directives, for sure.
	But those advanced directives should not include the directive to starve yourself.
	Okay, here's what the New York Times writes.
	I noticed there's a piece in National Review about this.
	It's an amazing thing.
	So according to the New York Times, quote, I had hoped that by now most adults in this country would have completed an advanced directive for medical care and assigned someone they trusted to represent their wishes if and when they aren't unable to speak for themselves.
	Alas, at last count, barely more than one-third have done so, with the rest of Americans leaving it up to the medical profession and ill-prepared family members to decide when and how to provide life-prolonging treatment.
	But even the many who, like me, have done due diligence—this is written by a doctor named Jane Brody—completed the appropriate forms, selected a health care agent, expressed their wishes to whomever may have to make medical decisions for them, may not realize that the documents typically do not cover a likely scenario for one of the leading causes of death—dementia.
	Missing in standard documents, for example, are specific instructions about providing food and drink by hand as opposed to through a tube.
	Now, this is the part where it starts getting weird.
	You should have an advance directive.
	It should talk about things like whether you want the plug pulled or whether you want to be on life support, under what conditions you want your life support maintained, all of that.
	But there is no circumstance under which you should be denying food to people who can still eat.
	Okay, that's assisted suicide.
	That's just euthanasia.
	And what's happened in some of these cases is that you'll have a patient with dementia, no longer capable of making decisions, and when they did not have dementia, they handed power of attorney, they handed power of agency over to another family member, and in that directive, in the final directive, it said that If I am afflicted with dementia, then I want you to provide me with food and water.
	And then the person will actually get in that situation.
	It turns out that whether you have dementia or not, you still want to eat and drink.
	You don't want to starve to death.
	And these people have been denied food and water because they no longer have the capacity to choose.
	Because they've actually given away that capacity to somebody else when they were sane.
	This is really, really troubling.
	So according to the New York Times, while trying to provide nourishment for a terminally ill person nearing death is commonly done in the name of comfort and caring, if that person cannot benefit from food or drink, it can become quite the opposite.
	When patients can no longer swallow what they are fed, they may choke and aspirate food or drink into their lungs, resulting in pneumonia that adds to their misery and hastens their death.
	Okay, this is certainly true.
	There's no question that that's true, but...
	The problem with the advance directive that this article then directs you to is it makes no distinctions as to whether you are capable of swallowing the food or not.
	What it says is, do you wish to be denied food and drink in the case of dementia when you are terminally ill?
	So that means that you're basically pre-deciding that you want to starve to death.
	And the doctors are supposed to make this happen for you?
	It's pretty incredible stuff.
	So, again, the New York Times moving us in the direction of Europe on a lot of these topics, and that is very, very scary stuff.
	Now, speaking of movements in a scary direction, CEO Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook now says that Facebook is going to rank news outlets by trustworthiness.
	I can't imagine how this is going to go wrong.
	According to the Huffington Post, Mark Zuckerberg said in a meeting Tuesday with media executives that the company has begun implementing a system of ranking news organizations by trust, relying on user surveys to determine which news sources are broadly trusted.
	I can't imagine how this could go wrong.
	I can't imagine how an online survey of people might not be reflective of people's general feelings about a particular news outlet.
	I can't imagine, for example, that a bunch of lefties might not spam the Daily Wire account saying they know the Daily Wire, but they don't trust the Daily Wire, and therefore we get dinged in the Facebook rankings.
	I can't imagine anything like that would happen At all?
	That would be just unthinkable.
	I can't imagine that Facebook would construct a system that benefits only left-wing outlets, even though that's apparently what they've been doing.
	Here's how you know.
	Okay, so here's who he met with.
	He met with executives in announcing this new priority.
	He says, quote, CNN, News Corp, HuffPo, and other news organizations.
	So in other words, all left-wing organizations.
	And he said, hey guys, you know what?
	We're now going to rank things based on trustworthiness.
	And you know what's an outlet people really trust?
	BuzzFeed.
	You know what's an outlet people really, really trust?
	Huffington Post.
	How is it that Daily Wire was not invited to that meet?
	How is it that, I assume, Daily Caller, The Blaze, you know, a bunch of other right-wing websites were not invited to that meet in all likelihood?
	Why is it that Atlantic Media, which just fired Kevin Williamson for having a dissenting point of view, they are a trusted news outlet, presumably, but who knows whether National Review is?
	It's pretty amazing that Zuckerberg is so obviously doing this at this point.
	He says that Facebook has a responsibility to help reduce polarization and help people find common ground, and that a shared set of facts and a common understanding of truth is essential for democracy.
	Okay, well if Zuckerberg believes this, why doesn't he just start his own publication?
	Really, if Zuckerberg actually believes that it is his job to police the facts, then he could just create Facebook News.
	He has plenty of cash.
	He could hire a bunch of reporters who've been fired by all these other outlets, and he could go out and he could investigate the news himself and become the most trusted name in news himself.
	But he's not doing that.
	Instead, he's using his platform as a censorship tool to crack down on particular outlets he doesn't like.
	More evidence of that yesterday.
	Yesterday, you may have noticed that if you were on Facebook, there were a bunch of links that were cut.
	Everybody who was putting out anything, any material, there was a little link at the bottom that said, is this hate speech?
	And then you were allowed to click yes or no.
	And then Facebook later took down that notice and they said, oops, that was something we were trying out, but we're really not going to do it.
	And why is it that every error Facebook makes always seems to cut against the right?
	Even the notion of labeling things hate speech is a left-wing propaganda item.
	Hate speech is not an actual element of speech.
	It's not an actual legal element of speech.
	There's speech that you may not like.
	There's speech you may find hateful.
	There's speech that I think is probably objectively more hateful.
	But I promise you, the folks who are clicking that things are hate speech, are not the people who are taking an objective, verifiable view of what hate speech constitutes.
	They're not saying that it's only disturber stuff that is hateful.
	They're not saying that only stuff that threatens violence is hateful.
	They're saying that stuff they don't like is hateful.
	How do I know that?
	Because pretty much anybody on the left will claim that anybody on the right is now alt-right.
	They'll claim that anybody who is remotely conservative is somehow an evil terror sponsor.
	And then Facebook goes right along with that.
	Facebook says it has no plans to begin paying news companies for the journalism the media publish on Facebook.
	Zuckerberg said, I'm not sure that makes sense.
	Instead, he's just going to promote a bunch of outlets that he likes.
	So it is offered little to news outlets that rely on digital advertising.
	He says Facebook plans to spend billions and billions of dollars to combat fake news, misinformation, and hate speech.
	So they're becoming a censorship tool.
	And I'm going to return to a point that I've been making about Facebook for weeks.
	If Facebook begins cracking down on all of the outlets that they don't like, This makes them a publisher.
	They're no longer a platform.
	And if they're a publisher deciding what gets, what content sees the light of day, and which content does not see the light of day, they're then responsible for all the content that appears on their platform, and they are suable.
	They are now legally liable for the material that appears on Facebook because they're acting as a gatekeeper.
	They're no longer acting as a platform.
	All of this is what the left wanted from Facebook, of course.
	The left wanted Facebook to be bullied into embracing their perception of what news constitutes.
	The left was desperate to paint Facebook as responsible for Hillary Clinton's loss so they could push Facebook into stop being a neutral platform and they could push Facebook into becoming a publisher of the left.
	They could let Mark Zuckerberg's instincts roam free and suddenly Mark Zuckerberg could play Jeff Zucker.
	Suddenly, Mark Zuckerberg could morph into Jeff Zucker, the head of CNN, and he could sit around deciding what news ought to see the light of day and which news ought to be ruled out of the relevant and of the good.
	It's really dangerous stuff.
	All the gatekeepers are being put back into place.
	It's why it makes podcasts like this and makes shows like this.
	So in just a second, I want to bring you an alternative viewpoint.
	of distribution, it means that they are really important because where the gatekeepers lie in wait to shut down alternative viewpoints, there will be no alternative viewpoints.
	Okay, so in just a second, I wanna bring you an alternative viewpoint.
	Kanye West was at TMZ yesterday and things got real weird.
	We'll discuss that in just a second, But first, you're going to have to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
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	All right.
	So meanwhile, more fallout from Kanye West's.
	So, yesterday, as we mentioned, Kanye West was ripped into by Maxine Waters, who called him ignorant.
	Now, you know, I don't think that Kanye West is any great shakes at politics.
	I think that Kanye West doesn't know very much about politics.
	The one thing that I think Kanye has done that is very important is he has said that people should think for themselves and people should, you know, occasionally think outside the box.
	I think that's a good thing.
	You know, Kanye, I warned you about this before, Kanye is not a conservative thought leader.
	There's this tendency on the right, and it's really troubling, that anytime a celebrity says anything you like, suddenly this person becomes capable of being president.
	There was this guy named Donald Trump, you may remember him, and he used to say out-of-the-box things on a fairly regular basis.
	And then, people deemed him a thought leader, and now he's the president of the United States.
	And that's worked out pretty well in terms of conservative ideas.
	But, if we apply that same logic to every celebrity, say Kid Rock, I don't think it's going to work out quite as well.
	Maybe you got lucky with Trump's policies, but I don't know that you'd get quite as lucky with celebrities who just mouth the occasional anti-leftist talking points.
	Now, Kanye West has become close with Candace Owens, who is, of course, a black conservative.
	He's become close with Charlie Kirk.
	The other day he was quoting Thomas Sowell on his Twitter feed.
	All this is good.
	Kanye should educate himself about all of these issues.
	Educating yourself.
	I spend my life speaking on college campuses, and there is a dueling tendency among young conservatives.
	Tendency number one is, I want to get educated.
	I want to know my stuff.
	I want to read books.
	I want to know more.
	I want to have the information at my fingertips so I can actually argue my points cogently.
	And then there is the other tendency on the right, particularly among young conservatives, and that is I want to own the libs.
	And I want to own the libs.
	And the way I'm going to own the libs is by ticking them off.
	Anything that ticks them off is owning the libs.
	So I'll do anything stupid in order to own the libs.
	Okay?
	This does not own the libs.
	I'm just telling you, being dumb does not own the libs, okay?
	If you want to own liberals, if you want to own the left, you actually have to look at their arguments, you have to determine why their arguments are wrong, and then you have to dismantle their arguments, and that takes a few facts.
	Otherwise, you end up in situations like this.
	So yesterday, Kanye was at TMZ with Candace Owens, and things went wildly wrong when the topic of slavery came up.
	A black employee over at TMZ confronted Kanye and started asking him about Donald Trump, and then he invoked slavery.
	Now, Kanye's response should have been, listen, slavery was an awful evil, but what does that have to do with Donald Trump?
	Slavery is an awful evil, promulgated by the Democratic Party, and then pushed into law, and then after the end of slavery, Jim Crow was codified into law by a bunch of Democrats.
	And the Republican Party has stood for individualism since its inception, and it should continue to stand for individualism now.
	Right?
	That would be the conservative defense against, you know, sort of random charges of slavery, but that's not what Kanye does here, because I'm not sure that Kanye knows enough to actually combat the charges that are aimed at him.
	You know, do I think it'll affect Kanye in any real way?
	Probably not, but this isn't very good.
	Here was Kanye yesterday talking about slavery at TMZ.
	When you hear about slavery for 400 years, for 400 years?
	That sounds like a choice.
	Like, you was there for 400 years and it's all of y'all?
	You know, like...
	It's like we're mentally in prison.
	I like the word prison because slavery goes too direct to the idea of blacks.
	It's like slavery, Holocaust, Holocaust Jews, slavery is blacks.
	So prison is something that unites us as one race.
	Blacks and whites being one race.
	That we're one, we're the human race.
	Okay, so I'm not sure what point he's trying to make here.
	If he wants to say that a lot of black Americans are living inside a self-imposed ideological Prison.
	Okay, maybe.
	And he's saying that's true for a lot of other racial groups.
	I think that's probably true as well.
	But what that has to do with slavery is beyond me.
	When he says 400 years, that sounds like a choice.
	You know, there are people like my quasi-friend, Michael Knowles, who have been arguing that what Kanye is saying is that slavery began in the United States in 1619.
	It ended in 1865.
	So if you've gone 200 years beyond that, then obviously you're not talking about slavery anymore.
	You're talking about mental imprisonment.
	I don't think that's what Kanye is saying here.
	I think that Kanye's saying something different, and he made that pretty clear on his Twitter feed.
	What he's actually saying here is that if you were in slavery for a very long period of time, you did not do so without bowing your neck to the yoke, which is, I think, a really messed up argument.
	People who were forcibly transported across the ocean into slavery for 400 years, And the transatlantic slave trade did last for 400 years.
	The American slave trade lasted, you know, from the inception of America until 1865.
	The transatlantic slave trade began in the 15th century and lasted all the way into the 19th century.
	So that 400 year period is actually not including the stuff after 1865.
	In any case, what Kanye is saying here doesn't do any great service.
	Do I think Kanye has ill intent?
	No.
	Do I think he knows what he's talking about?
	Not really.
	And I think that It would be much better if Kanye were to get educated before speaking out.
	This is the tendency on the part of the right.
	We have spokespeople, some of them somewhat intelligent, some of them very attractive physically.
	If you don't do the reading, you shouldn't be doing the talking.
	If you haven't thought about an issue, you shouldn't be talking about the issue.
	And you shouldn't be a spokesperson.
	So again, Kanye can say whatever he wants, right?
	But again, I think what Kanye should really stick to, if I were Kanye, what I would be doing today is I'd be starting KanyeCon, right?
	I would actually have like a convention event where I have a bunch of people from all over the aisle talk to each other, and I would say, I'm trying to open up gates.
	I'm trying to make sure that everyone talks to one another.
	That Kanye would be great at.
	But making him a spokesperson on all of these issues that he doesn't know much about, it's a mistake for conservatives.
	I think it's a mistake generally to do this with people who don't know what they are talking about, and Kanye apparently is one of those people.
	Okay, so meanwhile, The caravan is being stopped by the Justice Department.
	So for people who have not been following this story, there's a migrant caravan that starts in South America and travels all the way through Central America up to the United States.
	This is according to NBC News.
	Organizers of the Caravan of Migrants Seeking Asylum in the United States said Tuesday the Department of Justice's announcement that it had charged suspected members of the group was an attempt to criminalize the caravan.
	Alex Mensing is project coordinator of Pueblos Enfronteras, an aid group that helped organize the caravan.
	With regards to the people that the Department of Justice has said are crossing illegally, that's clearly an attempt to criminalize the refugee caravan.
	The group of about 120 migrants continued waiting Tuesday at a border crossing between Tijuana and California to plead their cases for asylum after a grueling journey to the border.
	By Tuesday evening, 28 of the asylum seekers have been allowed inside the San Ysidro port of entry.
	Customs and Border Protection spokesman said the Karen of Migrants had camped out in front of the port of entry, sleeping on concrete in small tents.
	So the DOJ announced Monday night it had filed charges against 11 people who were suspected members of the caravan for allegedly entering the United States illegally.
	One was alleged to have been previously deported, according to a department statement.
	Apparently they apprehended them in areas west of San Ysidro.
	So some of the members of the caravan are apparently coming to the border in an attempt to do a PR stunt.
	To humiliate the United States into admitting them.
	Other members of the caravan are apparently attempting to actually enter the United States illegally.
	Attorney General Sessions said, quote, when respect for the rule of law diminishes, so too does our ability to protect our great nation, its borders, and its citizens.
	And The Trump administration has described the caravan as a threat.
	Now really what the caravan is is a PR stunt, but there's an ideology that underlies the caravan that is a threat to the United States.
	And that ideology is that it is the United States' fault whenever something bad happens on planet Earth, and therefore it is our job to take in every refugee everywhere.
	So, for example, there's an article in The Guardian by a guy named Levi Vonk, and Levi Vonk marched with these migrants a few years back, and he says, "Regardless of the migrant caravan's effectiveness, it is important to keep in mind that the march is a product of militarized borders and increased deportations, not the cause of them.
	Marching migrants are not part of a hostile takeover, but rather the effective one.
	They are the ones who have seen their countries and their lives crumble under U.S. intervention.
	During the traditional reenactments in Latin America, Christ cries out as he has crucified, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" Trump and his evangelical base must now decide if they will forsake the migrants as well.
	So the idea here is that if something bad is happening in South America, it's the United's job, the United States' job, to accept the refugees from that situation.
	In much the same way, the idea is that Syria is collapsing in on itself, and that means that it is the job of the Europeans to accept millions of migrants from Syria into the heart of Europe.
	This is foolishness.
	This is foolishness.
	Okay, those nations are independent nations.
	They have independent governments.
	If those independent governments suck, it is not the job of the rest of the world to take in all of the refugees, right?
	It is the job of that country to fix itself.
	Maybe you can argue there's a moral case to be made that the United States should intervene in some of these countries, but most of these people don't want the United States intervening in most of these countries.
	They want it both ways.
	They want the United States to be isolationist in its foreign policy, and then they want the United States to take on all of the burden of the folks who are trying to escape.
	Now, should there be cases of asylum?
	You bet there should be.
	But should we vet those people?
	Yes.
	And is there a widespread obligation on the part of any nation to take in any group of refugees anywhere?
	Not really.
	Not really.
	Not refugees they don't want to accept.
	Now, I'm not saying, again, that it wouldn't be a nice thing to accept refugees, or that it wouldn't be a nice thing to accept migrants.
	I'm saying there is no obligation, legally or morally speaking, for a sovereign country to have anyone else determine who gets to enter that sovereign country.
	Just because things are bad someplace doesn't mean it's the job of the United States to accept everyone who's coming from that country.
	Should we try to find solutions out of the goodness of our heart?
	Yes.
	Should we try and pick the best of those people to come into the United States?
	Absolutely.
	Should we try to make people's lives easier where we can?
	Of course.
	But we can't let anyone else decide our immigration policy.
	This bucks the concept of a nation.
	The concept of a nation.
	The reason that nations are important.
	There's a great book coming out by a guy named Yoram Hazoni, who's a professor in Israel, about the case for nationalism.
	He calls it the virtues of nationalism.
	And in this book, he argues that nationalism is deeply important because it is broader than tribe, it's not tribalism, but it also grants us ties that bind.
	And when you say that anyone else gets to define your nation, you are immediately dissolving the ties that bind us together because we no longer have the capacity to decide as a group what we want to do and what we do not want to do if some outside force is deciding for us.
	There's a reason why Brexit just happened in Britain.
	There's a reason why the United States elected Donald Trump on the basis of this sort of nationalism, and that's not a bad thing.
	It is important that a nation be able to define itself, and one of the ways it defines itself is not by having anyone else determine for it what sort of refugees ought to enter and what sort of refugees ought not enter.
	Okay, time for a thing I like and then a thing that I hate.
	Things that I like today.
	My daughter's become very entranced with this particular song.
	So there's a great funk band called Tower of Power.
	If you've never heard them, they're really tight.
	I mean, their horn section is really good.
	And when I say tight, I mean like they hit their notes, they're very precise in their playing.
	Tower of Power, one of their great songs is Don't Change Horses in the Middle of the Stream.
	And my four-year-old daughter is very fond of this song.
	She likes the part where they say giddyup.
	So here's a little bit of that song.
	Five long years we have been together Your love and understanding has brought us through stormy weather.
	I must admit girl, I haven't always been good.
	But you're stuck by me Just like you said you would Hey, I know That enough is enough But you shouldn't be talking about Give it up Turning loose Might be right to say You know, for people who say that I don't like rock, okay, I don't like funk, okay, this is, they're funky.
	So, good stuff from Tower of Power.
	Their other great song, of course, is What is Hip, which is just a great song.
	I think I may have played it on the show before.
	If I haven't, then I definitely should.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	And I really do not like, this is a bad one.
	Okay, so here is the thing that I hate.
	So, Mike Pence, I have a lot of respect for Vice President Pence for a lot of different reasons, but he did something I think yesterday that was really, truly pretty egregious.
	He's doing a rally in Arizona, and in the middle of the rally, he decides to stop and pay tribute to Joe Arpaio.
	Joe Arpaio, you'll recall, is the sheriff that President Trump And I just found out when I was walking through the door that we were also going to be joined today by another favorite.
	He was set to be imprisoned because he had been held in contempt of court for failing to stop a program that was rounding up illegal immigrants.
	And Mike Pence defended and praised Joe Arpaio.
	And I just found out when I was walking through the door that we were also going to be joined today by another favorite.
	A great friend of this president.
	A tireless champion of strong borders and the rule of law.
	Spent a lifetime in law enforcement.
	Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
	I'm honored to have you here.
	OK, honored to have you here.
	You know, this is just pandering garbage.
	And I'm sad for Pence that he did this because I think that it's a huge mistake.
	Joe Arpaio is not a good guy.
	In 2007, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors settled a lawsuit by the founders of the Phoenix New Times newspaper against Arpaio and the board for $3.5 million.
	The newspaper founders sued after they were arrested by deputies for publishing details of a grand jury subpoena for the paper's notes and sources for its coverage of Arpaio.
	The charges against the newspaper were dropped.
	This is according to Reason.com.
	The Maricopa County attorney and deputy attorney, on the other hand, were both later disbarred for ethical violations involving campaign finance corruption.
	Arpaio's chief of staff deployed spies, deputies, to spy on Arpaio's political opponents.
	He was fired as well.
	Arpaio's jail lost its accreditation after investigators found jail officials provided false information inside the facility.
	Arpaio himself has engaged in apparently massive corruption, alleged massive corruption, using his office to funnel money to particular folks.
	It's not good stuff.
	And the idea that just because Joe Arpaio is popular because people have read the headlines about how he puts prisoners in pink jumpsuits, Which, admittedly, is fun.
	Or Joe Arpaio's attempt to crack down on illegal immigration, which apparently involves racial profiling.
	Maybe.
	Okay.
	Just because you read that stuff doesn't mean everything Joe Arpaio did was great.
	And Pence, you know, was supposed to be a more moral face of the GOP.
	I don't think that he's helping with this sort of endorsement of Joe Arpaio.
	It's just, it's not good.
	Okay.
	It's just not good.
	Just because you like something someone does doesn't mean that you should praise them overall, and Joe Arpaio is a very good case of this.
	Okay, so we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest news.
	We'll have much more then.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Mathis Glover.
	Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
	Senior producer, Jonathan Hay.
	Our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
	Edited by Alex Zingaro.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.

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