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May 25, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:20
Hollywood’s God Is Gross | Ep. 546
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Time Text
Harvey Weinstein prepares for prison.
Morgan Freeman is accused of sexual misconduct.
Joe Biden reemerges to challenge President Trump.
And we checked the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So it's a real bad day in Hollywood...
Apparently, if you are a famous actor, there is a good chance that you may go to prison or be run out of the business.
We'll talk about all of that in just one second.
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All right.
So we begin today with the big news being Harvey Weinstein has now turned himself in.
He has been arrested.
Now, what is he being arrested on?
According to Joseph Curl over at Daily Wire, former Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein on Friday turned himself into police in New York, where he likely will face serious charges in connection to sexual assault of at least two women.
More than a hundred reporters, countermen, and photographers were on hand as Weinstein made the perp walk at the New York Police Department's First Precinct in Lower Manhattan.
Weinstein, who is 66, quote, stepped back from a black SUV wearing a blazer and carrying books under his arm and lumbered into a Manhattan police station before a crowd of news cameras.
He didn't respond to shouts of Harvey, according to the Associated Press.
After several accusations ranging from inappropriate touching to rape emerged against Weinstein last year, dozens of women came out to join the barrage.
The chorus grew by the day.
More than 75 women have now accused the former movie producer.
But Weinstein escaped criminal charges until now.
On what charges he will face, the AP said, quote, The exact charges against Weinstein still had not been made public early on Friday.
Two law enforcement officials told the AP the case would include allegations by Lucia Evans, an aspiring actress who has said the Hollywood mogul forced her to perform oral sex on him in his office.
She was among the first women to speak out about the producer.
One official said it's likely the case will also include at least one other victim who has not come forward publicly as of yet.
So the crime could carry up to 25 years in prison.
So presumably Weinstein would die in prison.
In the interview with the New Yorker last October, Evans said that Weinstein forced her into the sex act during a meeting at his office in 2004.
She was then a rising senior at Middlebury College.
She said over and over, I don't want to do this.
Stop.
Don't.
I tried to get him away, but maybe I didn't try hard enough.
I didn't want to kick him or fight him.
Actress Rose McGowan, of course, has come out and said that Weinstein raped her in 1997 in Utah.
Sopranos actress Annabella Ciara said he raped her in a New York City apartment in 1992.
Norwegian actress Natasja Malthy said he attacked her in a London hotel room in 2008, according to the Associated Press.
And of course, at the Cannes Film Festival, an actress named Asia Argento delivered an intense speech before presenting the Best Actress Award telling a horrific story about Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
Quote, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here at Cannes.
I was 21 years old.
This festival was his hunting ground.
So obviously, this is a big blow to sort of Hollywood prestige as it has been for months.
Remember the entire Me Too movement was launched on the back of the Harvey Weinstein scandal.
Weinstein, for his part, his lawyer said in court that Harvey Weinstein did not create the casting couch.
Harvey Weinstein was not the creator of the casting couch.
The casting couch, as I've discussed before on the show, is this old Hollywood trope that men who are in charge of Hollywood would cast you in a film if you slept with them.
The casting couch was kept in the office, and then if you wanted to be cast in a film, you wanted to make your way in Hollywood, then you were forced to sleep with the producer.
And they made light of it in movies going all the way back to All About Eve, right?
In All About Eve, which won Oscar for Best Picture, Marilyn Monroe plays this young, up-and-coming kind of floozy who wants to get on the Broadway stage, and so she is trying to woo a fat, ugly old producer who's kind of portrayed in the movie as this kindly old gentleman, right?
This kind-hearted old gentleman who's kind of a goofball generally.
Hollywood casting couch has been a part of Hollywood for as long as power has been a part of Hollywood.
And the truth is that this sort of behavior by men toward women has been around as long as men have wielded power in order to gain sex for themselves.
It's also been largely true in Hollywood for years without any sort of repercussions because many women were willing to use the casting couch in order to get ahead.
There are a lot of women who Might not have wanted to do that in the best of all possible worlds, but they were willing to do it.
So you get into some dicey areas of consent when you have particular people who are okay with sleeping with a director.
It's not like their first choice.
It's not their first option.
It's not something that they would love to do in a scenario where they had the option not to do it, but they weren't exactly forcibly raped.
Right, so we're not talking about Harvey Weinstein, who apparently forcibly raped people, but there are a lot of situations in Hollywood in which young women know that the best way to get ahead is to use their sexuality to get ahead, and then you run into some dicey areas with regard to consent, because if you say to women, you shouldn't be doing this, right, this is a problem, you should try to be avoiding this, then those women might say, well, you're violating my grounds of consent.
You're saying that I can't be a fully autonomous individual capable of making my own decisions.
And then what you end up with is weird situations in some cases, I assume, where you could have the possibility that a woman goes to an office, the producer hits on her, she sleeps with the producer, and then ten years later when it comes out that the producer is actually a rapist, in this case Harvey Weinstein, then women come forward and they say, well, I was pressured into sex too, which is true informally if not formally.
This is the problem with an entire culture that prizes promiscuity as a high value.
Now, again, that's no excuse for actual rape.
It's not any excuse for actual use of force.
Harvey Weinstein should go to jail for the rest of his life.
If any of these allegations are true, he should go to jail for the rest of his life.
But it is also true that Hollywood has forwarded this kind of conduct for a very, very long time, and it is widespread in Hollywood.
Just the latest case in point, a bunch of women are now accusing Morgan Freeman of inappropriate behavior and harassment.
According to CNN yesterday, quote, A young production assistant thought she had landed the job of her dreams when, in the summer of 2015, she started working on Going in Style, a bank heist comedy starring Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin.
But the job quickly devolved into several months of harassment, she told CNN.
She alleged that Freeman subjected her to unwanted touching and comments about her figure and clothing on a near-daily basis, Freeman would rest his hand on her lower back or rub her lower back, she said.
In one incident, she said, Freeman kept trying to lift up my skirt and asking if I was wearing underwear.
He never successfully lifted her skirt, she said.
He would touch it and try to lift it.
She would move away and then he'd try again.
Eventually, she said, Alan Arkin made a comment telling him to stop.
Morgan got freaked out and didn't know what to say.
Well, this raises the question as to why no one else on staff was willing to tell Morgan Freeman to stop.
And the answer is because if you tell powerful Hollywood men to stop, this is the other side of the coin, you tell powerful Hollywood men to stop, you will never get a job again.
And this is exactly what happened with Harvey Weinstein.
If anyone complained about Harvey Weinstein, he made sure that nobody in town worked again.
Quentin Tarantino admitted as much.
He said that Harvey would call around and say, this person's a bad person to work with.
You don't want to work with this girl because she's trouble.
And then these people wouldn't get jobs ever again.
So when you have powerful men in positions of high power, This is why you need more virtuous men in the industry.
This is why you need more virtuous standards in the industry.
You need a bunch of people there who are not engaged in the sexual revolution ethos of consent is the only value because consent is sort of fungible in a lot of these cases.
In some cases, it is not.
In some cases, like it sounds like with Morgan Freeman, it is not.
But there are some cases in which there are a bunch of men who've had women saying yes to them for their entire career because women want to get ahead in some of these cases.
And then these men decide, OK, well, that means all women want it because they're scumbags.
This sort of activity is going to be more common in any society in which there is a certain amount of credibility given to men with power to do whatever they want, and there is a certain amount of reluctance to call out women for acting in fashions that forward this particular standard.
So you need two things in order to stop.
Okay, let's come at this from the other end.
You need two things in order to stop what's happening in Hollywood.
What you need is number one, A bunch of women who are willing to say no to directors and then report on them.
And number two, you need a society willing to hear that and a bunch of men in Hollywood who are willing to stand with those women.
And I think I should reverse the order of those.
What you really first need is a bunch of men who are willing to report other men for doing these terrible things.
And those men need to stand up and they need to say no to people like Harvey Weinstein and Morgan Freeman.
You need more Alan Arkin situations.
You need fewer Jason Batemans.
The reason I mentioned Jason Bateman is because you now have a situation with Jason Bateman where he did an interview with the New York Times and a bunch of these men, it was the Arrested Development cast in this lengthy Q&A in the New York Times with the cast of Arrested Development.
Jeffrey Tambor is still included on the show, of course, one of the stars of the show.
He was recently fired from Transparent after sexual harassment allegations, and the conversation eventually turned to Tambor's behavior on the set of Arrested Development, according to Jezebel.
Reportedly, there was an incident on set in which Tambor yelled at his co-star, Jessica Walter, who plays Lucille Bluth.
And all of the men on the show seemed disturbingly interested in brushing it off, according to Jezebel.
So Tambor apparently said that he expects to be part of the next season.
And Bateman said, I wouldn't do it without you.
I can tell you that.
And then Jessica Walter interjected that Tambor had ripped on her, had yelled at her, had lashed out at her.
And Bateman immediately jumped in to defend Tambor.
He said, we've all done this, by the way.
And Walter said, you've never yelled at me.
And Bateman said, not to belittle what happened.
And Walter said, you've never yelled at me like that.
And then Bateman jumped in.
He said, this is a family.
And families, you know, have love, laughter, arguments.
Again, not to belittle it, but a lot of stuff happens in 15 years.
I know nothing about Transparent, but I do know a lot about Arrested Development.
And I can say that no matter what anybody in this room has ever done, we've all done a lot with each other, for each other, against each other.
I wouldn't trade it for the world.
And I have zero complaints.
Well, nobody asked you.
They were talking to Jessica Walter.
And then David Cross.
Again, all these people are on the left.
All these people are big believers in the feminist movement and the MeToo movement.
So you have to ask yourself, why is it that all these believers in the MeToo movement and the feminist movement are so willing to overlook the misconduct of people with whom they work?
And the answer is, because in Hollywood, this is the way Hollywood works.
It is the way Hollywood has always worked.
So when Harvey Weinstein goes out there and says, I didn't invent the casting couch, Yes, he's disgusting.
Yes, the casting couch is disgusting.
Yes, moral people like me have been saying for a long time, people who are religious have been saying for a very long time the casting couch is disgusting and the morality of Hollywood is disgusting.
But Harvey Weinstein, when he says the casting couch was not invented by Harvey Weinstein, he's not entirely wrong in that sense.
He's wrong that he's not a rapist.
I mean, it sounds like he probably is a rapist, but Again, this puts you in a weird position because all of these men who are supposedly in favor of feminism are standing around defending guys who are acting like utter greaseballs.
So here is David Cross.
He says, you know, one thing Jeffrey has said a lot of times that I think is important that you don't often hear from somebody in his position is that he has learned from the experience and he's listening and learning and growing.
That's important to remember.
Well, it's sort of more important to remember that you shouldn't have acted like that in the first place.
And then the New York Times reporter asked, if somebody approached you and said, OK, here's an actor that admits he routinely yells at directors and assistant directors, at co-workers, assistants, would you hire that person?
And Tambor said, I would hire that person if that person said, you know, I've reckoned with this.
And then Bateman said, again, not to belittle it or excuse it or anything, but in the entertainment industry, it's incredibly common to have people who are, in quotes, difficult.
And when you're in a privileged position to hire people or have an influence in who does get hired, you make phone calls and you say, hey, so I've heard about, I've heard X about person Y tell me about that.
And what you learn is context and you learn about character and you learn about work habits, work ethics.
And you start to understand because it's a very amorphous process, this sort of bleeping that you do, you know, making up fake life.
It's a weird thing and is a breeding ground for atypical behavior.
And certain people have certain processes.
In other words, all of these people are difficult people because they're artistes.
And artistes have to be given more leeway to do what it is they do, except those people have victims.
And then, a bunch of women who don't want to get involved in the casting couch system are forced into the casting couch system specifically because they will lose jobs if they do not.
It's a real disaster area all the way through.
I have a little more to say on this.
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So, you've got Harvey Weinstein.
You've got Morgan Freeman.
You've got a bunch of people defending people like this.
You know, it's really troublesome.
And it's troublesome, again, because so many folks in Hollywood proclaim that they are the moral standards that we must follow.
These are the moral standards.
They are the light bringers when it comes to morality and decency.
And when it comes to feminism, too, they're the light bringers.
Okay, well, they're gonna have to learn how to balance two things.
One is the ability of women to consent to relationships with more powerful men.
And the second is to call out men who are doing terrible things.
And they haven't learned how to balance these two things yet.
They haven't learned how to balance these two things because these two things are sort of hard to balance in an era where is it power relationships that are supposed to define what's wrong?
Or is it consent that's supposed to define what's wrong?
This has not been made clear by anybody on the left yet.
Now, I'm of the opinion that all relationships should, number one, be consensual.
And number two, power should not be abused in this way by powerful people.
And women should not give in, if they can help it, to abuse of power in this way if physical force is not being used.
Like, be willing to lose the job in order not to be abused by a man.
But I understand it's a difficult decision that women should not have to make, and that's why we need to change the system from within.
Well, that's going to require two things.
It's going to require, again, powerful people coming out and speaking out against this, and it's going to require an embrace of a different sexual ethos that does not value the art, And the artiste and promiscuity above everything else.
It's going to require a reversion back to more traditional morality regarding how people interact, men and women interact.
And I understand this makes a lot of people on the left uncomfortable.
But it's very difficult to have it both ways.
You can't say that men and women are just playing around and then also be surprised when it turns out that men are willing to abuse that system in order to do terrible things.
That doesn't mean the men shouldn't be punished.
They should be punished.
But the snapback is what some people in Hollywood are finding so odd to deal with.
And again, I think that there is I think there's a way to fix all of this, but I don't think it can be fixed in the absence of a root change in mentality about how men ought to treat women, how women ought to treat men.
Fortunately, there is good news.
The good news is Hollywood has its priorities straight when it comes to President Trump.
So Robert De Niro, who's a frequent critic of President Trump, and he's been playing special counsel Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live, he talked Tuesday about he'd like to bar the president from eating at his Nobu restaurant chain, which I'm sure Trump will just be Devastated to learn.
The Daily Mail reported that De Niro, a co-founder of the Nobu restaurant and hotel chain, insisted he would not let Trump eat in his restaurant and that he would leave any other eatery where the president entered.
If he walked into a restaurant I was in, I'd walk out, said De Niro.
While Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, who's De Niro's co-owner, then joked it was his dream for Trump to sit next to De Niro so he could make them sushi.
De Niro, of course, has spent a lot of time ripping on Trump.
This is the way it works in Hollywood.
The sort of virtue signaling that matters is not the virtue signaling where you stand up and you call out actual predators in Hollywood.
That's not virtue signaling.
Real virtue signaling, real virtue signaling, of course, is going and talking about how Trump should not come into your restaurant.
And by the way, it's not because Trump has this record with women.
Okay, again, people in Hollywood probably don't care about Trump's record with women.
They care a lot more about President Trump's politics.
They'd say the same thing about George W. Bush when Mitt Romney was running in 2012.
They would have said the same thing about Mitt Romney because these are the actual values in Hollywood.
Hollywood likes to pretend that it has values with regard to treatment of women.
It doesn't.
Okay, Hollywood has no regard for the values of women.
It has no regard for the sexual autonomy of women.
It has no regard for power relationships between men and women, but it certainly wants to make sure that a Republican doesn't enter its restaurants.
There are certain things in Hollywood that'll ensure that you never work again.
Being against same-sex marriage is one of them, being pro-life is a pretty good indicator you're gonna have a tough time working, but sexually harassing the help for years on end, you can do that so long as you're a powerful dude.
And most people will go along with it.
And that's why, as soon as you see a gap in the particular dam that's holding back all these revelations in cases like Harvey Weinstein or Morgan Freeman, you watch.
There will now be 15 women who come forward and say all this stuff, because they've been held back by this entire wall of silence that's been created around Hollywood, by Hollywood, about this sort of evil behavior by people like Harvey Weinstein and people like Morgan Freeman.
All these women are going to come forward now because now they feel it's safe.
There's safety in numbers to come forward.
But you don't want to be the first one, because if you're the first one, you end up like Rose McGowan and you lose your job and you never work again.
That's Hollywood's fault.
Really, truly egregious and disgusting stuff.
OK, well, meanwhile, Joe Biden, former vice president of the United States, he is out there politicking.
He obviously wants to run for president.
Again, he wants to run for president.
He ran in 2008, didn't go anywhere.
He wants to run for president again in 2020 against President Trump.
And he has a serious shot of winning the nomination because presumably President Obama would endorse him as his former VP.
Well, Joe Biden is doing this routine where he is suggesting that President Trump has abandoned GOP values.
I find this utterly hypocritical and hysterical.
This is not your father's Republican Party.
This is a different deal.
They are not.
They are not.
Who we are.
They're not who America is, but what they are doing is they're sending a vision of America around the world that's distorted, that's damaging, that is hurting us with this phony populism and this fake nationalism.
I love that Joe Biden is out there.
It's a different Republican Party.
The Republican Party has changed at root.
Here's what the studies show.
The studies show that the Republican Party has been, since 2010, absolutely stagnant in terms of its politics.
It has not moved to the right.
It has not moved to the left.
Its policies are exactly the same as they were after the Tea Party.
Those have not changed.
The only party that has moved is the Democratic Party, which has shifted radically to the left.
When Joe Biden ran in 2008, every Democratic candidate on stage endorsed traditional marriage.
Okay, when he ran in 2008, nobody on stage would have been paying homage to Bernie Sanders.
They all thought he was a kook and a nut job.
And now the entire Democratic Party has moved radically to the left.
And when you hear Joe Biden talk about how much the Republican Party has changed and moved, remember, Joe Biden is the guy who said in 2012, just six years ago, he was saying that Mitt Romney wanted to put y'all back in chains.
So Mitt Romney was the great outlier.
It was Mitt Romney who changed the Republican Party.
Mitt Romney is about as moderate a candidate as Republicans have run in the last 25 to 30 years.
And yet there was Joe Biden ripping on the Republican Party.
So when you hear Democrats rip on the extremism of Republicans, understand that they've been ripping on the supposed extremism of Republicans, no matter how moderate at any point.
The hypocrisy of Joe Biden is truly astonishing here.
But I guess we shouldn't be astonished by Joe Biden.
The guy wants to run for president.
He understands he has to run to the hard left if he wants to cut off people like Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Okay, so I want to give you the update on the house in just a second, on the house race for control of the house in just a second.
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Okay, so here's an update on the battle for the House.
So with the Democrats still struggling for an actual message, The battle for the House has turned not in their favor.
Sean Trend, who's an excellent analyst over at RealClearPolitics, he says this, "If you had asked me six months ago who I thought would win control of the House of Representatives in 2018, I wouldn't have hesitated before answering, 'It's early, but Democrats are heavily favored, although conventional wisdom has been very slow to catch up.' With a raft of GOP retirements and highly vulnerable open seats, a president with job approval ratings in the 30s, and a generic ballot lead for Democrats in the double digits, it was increasingly difficult to spell out a path to victory for Republicans."
In fact, things were bad enough that it appeared their losses could grow into the 40 or even 50 seat range.
Things have changed, says Sean Trend.
If the election were held today, it is not clear who would hold the chamber.
I might put a thumb on the scale for Republicans, but right now, and it is still early, the House is likely to be close.
Like, really close.
Once again, conventional wisdom seems slow to catch up, with analysts still discussing the toxic environment for Republicans.
Okay, President Trump's job approval rating has been rising.
There are a bunch of reasons for it.
People are tired of the Mueller investigation, the passage of the tax cut, the good economic news.
The generic ballot is moving.
Look at the polls.
It is narrowing dramatically.
In mid-December, the Democratic lead was around 13 points.
Today, it is at three points.
That is a massive movement.
And special elections are not a good metric.
This is the most important thing.
You've been hearing a lot about Democratic turnout in special elections.
And Sean Trent says, hold up a second.
He says, some point to Democrats' performance in special elections as a sign that their voters are energized.
This is undoubtedly true.
I pointed to a similar phenomenon in late 2013, so I do think special election outcomes are interesting.
But there are three problems here.
I did not make specific projections from these in 2013, because we don't have a lot of experience projecting a midterm election from special election results.
These are informative data points, but until we have more experience seeing how models based upon them perform, we should prefer established metrics like job approval and the generic ballot.
Second, special elections all involve open seats.
The one set of elections that didn't involve open seats exclusively in Virginia and New Jersey brought about a set of results that are a lot less encouraging for Democrats.
They lost in Trump districts and they won in Hillary districts.
Well, if that's replicated in 2018, Democrats would fall just shy of winning the House.
So bottom line is the prospects are looking much better for Republicans than they were even a few weeks ago.
And a lot of that is the extremism of Democrats.
Well, I got Joe Biden out there claiming that Donald Trump has moved the Republican Party in radical new ways.
My God, look at these Republicans with their populism.
Here's the reality.
The Democrats are radical.
The latest point being, obviously, the MS-13 argument, where President Trump called MS-13 a bunch of animals, and then he doubled down on it, and Nancy Pelosi said that this was terrible.
She said, we believe some of those who are attracted to the political arena, to government and public service, that we are all God's children.
There's a spark of divinity among every person on earth.
And she's defending MS-13 now.
As I said earlier this week, President Trump has a magic power.
His magic power is he can make Democrats defend legitimately anything.
So what do the polls say about the MS-13 issue?
Well, according to The Hill, 56% of American adults in the Harvard-Capps-Harris poll said referring to members of the gang as animals is fair, compared to 44% who said the characterization was unfair.
A slimmer majority, 52%, added that the comments that dehumanize members of MS-13 Are acceptable.
So in other words, Trump's on the right side of the American public on this particular issue.
By the way, he is also on the right side of the American public with regard to the kneeling situation, the kneeling in the NFL situation.
As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not a fan of the president interjecting himself into arguments about what a private corporation, the NFL, should do about its own employees exercising their right to kneel.
It's a private company.
They can do what they want.
I think the president Trump polarizing the issue is not good for the country.
But as I mentioned yesterday, it is good for him.
There's no question.
He's an idiot.
Plain and simple.
of the polls on this particular issue.
Most Americans do not have tons of sympathy for people who are kneeling for the national anthem.
They just don't.
And this is why when Democrats, people on the left come out and label Trump an idiot for him ripping on people who are kneeling for the national anthem, they're only hurting themselves.
Doug Baldwin is a wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, and he calls Trump an idiot over all of the kneeling controversy.
Well, this is the kind of stuff Trump eats up and spits out.
It is great for Trump.
He's an idiot.
Plain and simple.
I mean, listen, you know, I respect the man because he's a human being, you know, first and foremost, but he's just being more divisive, which is not surprising.
It is what it is.
Can most Americans look at the situation in the NFL?
They don't think Trump was the one who was originally divisive on this.
Most Americans think that it was the NFL players who decided to kneel for the national anthem, a signal of unity in the United States, who are actually being divisive in this entire process.
So the more people react to Trump by taking the side of the people who are kneeling, that's exactly what Trump wants.
This is what's so funny.
If the left even half understood what was going on in this particular debate, maybe they might make a more shaded argument.
Maybe they would argue, as actually people like me have argued, that Trump should not involve himself in these particular issues because it polarizes the country, but they are in favor of people standing for the national anthem.
The NFL has a right to do what it wants to do.
The hilarious thing about all of this is the NFL is getting just shellacked over this decision.
Fox Sports 1 has a show with Skip Bayless, and Skip Bayless and his co-host, I can't remember who it is, they were talking about this NFL controversy.
They called it a dark day in American sports.
Bell is highly respected.
He's not a shock jock.
He's not over the top with his criticism.
He's very even handed.
He is a black man, but that's a strong, powerful conclusion from Jarrett Bell about what just happened.
And it does feel to me from this side of the desk like it was a dark day in American sports.
Okay, it's so hilarious that this is the, this quote, dark day in American sports.
Let's call host to Shannon Sharp there.
This is such a dark day in American sports.
The NBA has had this exact same policy, this exact same policy for a long time.
Okay, the NBA has had this policy since like 1994, 1995.
And yet nobody's complaining about that.
They only complain when the NFL changes the policy because it looks like a quote-unquote win for Trump.
And by the way, the implication that Trump is a racist and that's the reason he cares about all of this?
Yesterday, Donald Trump pardoned the late black boxing champion Jack Johnson.
Okay, Jack Johnson was issued a posthumous pardon.
He was the first African-American heavyweight champion.
He was jailed a century ago due to his relationship with a white woman.
Okay, he was accused of violating federal law by transporting his white wife, a woman who later became his wife, named Lucille Cameron, in 1912 across state lines.
He supposedly violated the Mann Act in sexual trafficking.
Of course, that wasn't true.
It was trumped up.
But Jack Johnson was... was...
Okay, so I have a little bit more to say about sports and where America stands in just a second.
The president signed the pardon, and yet we're still hearing from people that obviously all of his stances here are due to racism.
It just doesn't wash in terms of public relations.
Okay, so I have a little bit more to say about sports and where America stands in just a second.
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Okay, so before I go any further on the sports front, first, I want to say that you have to go over and subscribe.
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Okay, so final note on this whole NFL controversy.
I think the whole thing is overblown.
I think it's overblown because two things can be true at once.
One, we do not want to pressure corporations to crack down on people for their speech.
Second, if it is actively impeding a corporation's ability to distribute the product.
Okay, if the free speech amounts to you providing a design flaw in the product itself, then the corporation, it seems to me, has every right to do something about you.
Okay, so, as I say, me speaking at a private college and being barred from a private college, they can do it, but I think it's stupid.
You boycotting the NCAA over an unrelated bathroom policy in the state, I think, is stupid.
You boycotting Brendan Eich from Mozilla Firefox because Brendan Eich was pro-traditional marriage and has no effect on the product.
That's stupid.
But the product the NFL puts on the field includes all of the visual product before the game, including the national anthem.
So if the NFL says, listen, we're losing money because of this because the product we are putting on, we believe to be inferior, at least in terms of how it is grabbing audiences.
Well, they have every right to do what they're going to do.
And I think that's how you balance these two things.
There are certain things that are inherent to the development of the product.
There are certain things that are not.
Again, if they wanted to kneel for the national anthem every day before they started their factory work, I don't see how that would really be a problem.
But all of this is televised and has an impact on whether people watch the games or not.
So people who are failing to make this distinction, they're friends of mine who I think are failing to make this distinction.
I rarely disagree with my good friend David French.
David had a piece in the New York Times in which he argued that the NFL should not have changed policy.
They should have allowed everybody to continue kneeling.
I'm not quite as sold on that, and I don't equate every situation in which a private corporation is trying to save its product with every other situation.
A college campus is a place, obviously, for exchange of ideas.
NFL pregame doesn't seem to me like that's what it was generally for, as a rule.
Okay, so let's go through some mailbag.
Let's do some mailbag.
So, Aslan says, Hey Ben, I'm a subscriber and watch you all the time.
Well, thank you, Aslan.
I know how to combat the general ridiculous nature of the left and their meltdown over current events.
I'm a bit confused about one of my friends who worked for the Bush administration, and since President Trump has been elected, he's gone full SJW and left ideals.
He argues that his era of the Republican Party is dead because of Trump, and everything Trump does is against his view of what the Republican Party was in the president's past.
My question, is the Republican Party so very different under Trump than some of his great Republicans of old, or is he just being ridiculous?
Most of Trump's policies are great, I think, as far as conservative values, but he's just a buffoon at times in a way no president has been before.
Thanks, huge fan.
OK, so this is the serious question, right?
We talked a little bit earlier about Joe Biden and Joe Biden saying the Republican Party has massively shifted.
What was stupid about what Joe Biden said is he was saying that there is this populist move in the Republican Party.
The policy is exactly the same as it has been for years.
President Trump has governed more conservatively than George W. Bush.
President Trump's first year and a half of policy is a conservative dream in many ways, really.
Like, as a conservative, as somebody who's very, very skeptical of President Trump's policies, I can say I've been very pleased by his policy decisions.
That said, is Trump a difference in kind for the Republican Party?
Yes.
I mean, he is.
I mean, there's no question that he's a man of different character than Republicans have elected before.
In some ways, that's a good thing, right?
In some ways, it means that he violates certain taboos that need to be violated.
And that was certainly true when he moved the U.S.
Embassy to Jerusalem, for example.
It's also true when he attacks actual fake news.
But there are obviously downsides to this.
President Trump lacks character when it comes to women.
I think this is obviously clear.
President Trump has made statements that I find absolutely morally egregious.
I've called them out on this show many times.
That is a sea change for Republicans, particularly if they go along with that sort of thing publicly, which is why I've always said that if Republicans want to maintain their moral center, they should clap for President Trump when he does good things, and he's doing a lot of those things, and they should boo President Trump when he does something bad, because President Trump can take it, and he's a human, and that means that all humans should be treated equally, not as idols, not as objects of pandering, but President Trump, when he says something truly bad, everybody should say, hey, that's truly bad, you shouldn't say that.
And when he does something truly bad, they should say, hey, that's truly bad.
You shouldn't do that.
And when he does something good, you have to praise him.
I think if you take this tack with your friend, then maybe you'll be a little bit more open to your messaging about the fact that Trump really hasn't changed a lot of policy on the Republican side of the aisle because he hasn't.
Jonathan says, "Hey Ben, should the government "force food producers to put nutritional information "on their products?" Thanks.
I don't think that the government has any business telling food producers what information to put on their products.
In fact, I'm a libertarian on this.
I'm not a big fan of the FDA.
I think that the Food and Drug Administration, the idea that you needed a government agency to ensure the safety of your food, I think that's largely stupidity.
I think there are private companies that could do just the same thing.
We have Sagets that rates restaurants.
I don't see any reason you couldn't have a private organization that essentially licenses food.
Not licenses in the sense they can ban a food, but looks at a food and says whether it is healthy or not, whether it is good or not.
There are private organizations that I think could do this fairly well.
You know, if one was dishonest, then there would be others that competed with it.
I think this is something the market certainly has room for.
I don't think there's a market failure taking place in food, in other words, right?
You don't actually have to have an FDA telling you the ingredients in your light bulbs, although presumably they do.
There are government regulations that force that sort of thing.
I don't think that's necessary because I don't think that most producers have an interest in killing their consumers or making food so bad for them that they never want to eat that food again.
And competition allows you to do this.
First of all, I think that the nutritional product information would end up on the bottles anyway, because I think that some creative producer would say, you know what?
We should undercut our competition by saying we are completely transparent about what's in our food as opposed to our competition, which presumably would then drive the competition to actually put the nutritional products out there.
I mean, you see this all the time, right?
You see this in terms of diet products.
So I'm not sure why it shouldn't apply to food more generally.
Richard said, You've mentioned, usually when talking about one of your sponsors, about how you use an electric razor on only part of your face for religious reasons.
Could you explain the doctrine in more detail, please?
Sure.
I mean, the quick answer is that in the Bible, it says that you're not supposed to shave the corners of your beard.
And Orthodox Jews take that to mean that you are not supposed to use a straight edge to shave your face.
And so I use an electric razor around my entire face and then the jawline and then below the jawline, There are certain commentators who say that you're allowed to use a straight edge below there because, you know, when you're shaving your neck, that's really not a part of your beard.
Okay, Dylan says, So, my gut reaction is that it is important for wives to take their husband's last name because you are now forming an independent unit and you should have the last name because now you are part of a team.
If you join the New York Yankees, you don't maintain that you are a Yankee cardinal.
Right, if you sign as a free agent, then you become a Yankee.
And it seems to me the same thing should be true now.
There are people who say, well, why shouldn't you take your wife's last name?
Well, listen, if you want to do that, you can.
And I think that's sort of emasculating to dudes, because I do think that there are male and female roles in a relationship, and a man who feels that he doesn't have any sort of leadership in his relationship with his wife is going to feel emasculated.
This is just the natural human process.
I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong, that is just natural.
I'll tell you this, when we got married, when I got married to my wife, I said she didn't have a middle name.
And her last name, her maiden name was Toledano.
And my wife wanted to... I said to her that she could do like my mom and she could actually take her maiden name and make it her middle name.
Like, I shouldn't even have permission.
She can do whatever she wants, right?
She's an autonomous human being.
But I said, if you want to do that, it's fine with me.
I don't care.
And it came time for us to go over to the social security office for her to formally change her name to...
I'm still a member of my old family, but this is our family now.
she and she went in and she said, you know, I decided not to do it.
And the reason I decided not to do it is because I want to take your last name.
It's my gift to you.
And I, you know, I'm not I'm still a member of my old family, but this is our family now.
Our family is the Shapiro family.
And it meant a lot to me.
It did mean a lot to me as a man.
I promise you, women, if you ask men whether it means something to them, most men will say it means something to them because it is a sacrifice a woman is making of her family name, and that should mean something.
That's a sacrifice.
Okay, so yes, I think it's important, and I think that it's enough of an important thing that you should ask your potential spouse about it.
I don't think that if... Let's put it this way.
I think that...
The types of people do different things on this issue.
If you are a hardcore feminist and you think that it's a real sacrifice to give up your last name for your husband's last name because this means he owns you now, I would suggest that you're not being generous enough to the husband that you're marrying.
I don't think it's a matter of ownership.
I think it's a matter of, let's be on the same team.
That's just my general take.
David says, We often talk about the left's ideas and practices as self-destructive, and I agree on those points, but do you have an expectation that the left will ever actually destroy itself and become genuinely relevant in American culture and policy?
It seems like they keep drinking poison, but it's only making them stronger.
They shoot themselves in the foot, and it never really slows them down.
No, I don't think the left is ever going to go away.
I think it will always be with us.
I think that leftism springs from a couple of elements of human nature.
One is jealousy, and the other is utopianism.
And I think as long as jealousy and utopianism are parts of human nature, there will be a left to fight.
Because jealousy is the basis for economic policy.
You earn more than I do, therefore I deserve your money.
And utopianism is the idea that if we just shift government policy, there will be a huge number of new human beings will be created.
And these new human beings will be transcendent human beings, better human beings, more generous human beings.
And then we'll all have a beautiful world where the unicorns prance and play in the meadows with raindrop smiles.
Right?
It's just... It's stupid, but unfortunately this is part of human nature.
We think we can change everything.
It's why whenever anything bad happens, anything bad in the United States, our first reaction is, why didn't the government do something about it?
And we should really be asking ourselves, why didn't I do anything about it?
And if I didn't do anything about it, can anyone do anything about it?
And is it possible that the collective can't solve everything?
And then maybe you say, OK, well, maybe the collective can solve this one.
But we should at least ask ourselves the question, leftism is rooted in human nature.
Just as conservatism, I think, is actually more of a... I think conservatism is actually more of a departure from human nature.
Right, your kid is a leftist.
Your two-year-old is a leftist.
My two-year-old is a leftist.
My two-year-old wants stuff when he wants it, and he wants it right now.
He doesn't care how he got it.
He doesn't care what it came about.
He doesn't care that if he screams, now, now, now, now, now, it's not just going to appear.
And he thinks that if I give things to him, then life will magically be transformed.
And you are a communist in your relationship with your own family, right?
You have a joint bank account, you share with your family, you earn from each according to his ability to each according to his need is basically the rule inside my house anyway.
But that does not mean that that is a good idea for the governance of society as a whole or that it instills any sort of responsibility, which is why you have to fight that communistic nature of the family with the idea of teaching responsibility and inculcating responsibility in your children.
Brian says, hi, Ben.
O'Sullivan's law states that any institution not actually on the right will eventually end up on the left.
The truth of this statement is indisputable.
We see examples of this every day.
The news media, educational institutions at every level, religious denominations, professional organizations, civic organizations like the Boy Scouts, corporations.
What causes this?
Is there any way to counter it?
Well, in many ways, this answer is the same as my last answer.
Any organization that is not overtly embracing particular principles about personal responsibility and God-given rights eventually is going to be eaten up by this quest for cosmic justice that Thomas Sowell talks about.
And Thomas Sowell has a great book called The Quest for Cosmic Justice.
I highly recommend that everybody read it.
And it basically explains the desire of human beings to look for answers in places where they can't get answers.
And organizations particularly are collective in nature.
And that means that they tend to think they can solve everything through the collective.
All right, so it's not really a surprise they move in a collectivist direction.
Wow, I like that.
Well, Michael, I appreciate it, and I appreciate that Michael is the person who wrote that.
All right, it says, What are you getting His Holiness Pope Saint Michael Knowles and the person who wrote this is Michael.
So, Michael, nice try.
But Michael already knows what I got, Michael, because we were sitting next to each other.
OK, so this is a good story.
Well, Michael, I appreciate it.
And I appreciate that Michael is the person who wrote that.
It says, what are you getting, His Holiness Pope St. Michael Moles?
And the person who wrote this is Michael.
So, Michael, nice try.
But Michael already knows what I got, Michael, because we were sitting next to each other.
Okay, so this is a good story.
So the other day, there was an event that we had to go to.
It was a really terrific event with some big-name Hollywood folks at like a lunch.
It was really fun.
And our entire company went.
So there were a bunch of people from our company who were supposed to go.
We were all supposed to carpool over.
So I come out.
It's like 12 noon.
I'm supposed to be there at like 1225 and I have been told that we are all going to carpool out together.
So I'm in my studio at the Daily Wire offices.
And I saunter my way on out at about 1210 because I've been doing work, you know, to make everyone money.
And then I walk out of my office and I look around and everyone is gone.
Everyone is gone.
And I look around and then I ask my assistant, the only person left in the office, you know, where'd everybody go?
And she said, where are you supposed to be somewhere?
I said, well, I don't know.
I mean, you tell me.
And I call my business partner and he says, you're supposed to be here right now.
And right at that moment, all of my co-workers and employees walk in without me, because they left me there.
That's the kind of office we have here at Daily Wire.
So anyway, we go to this lunch, and I sit down, and unfortunately, I was seated directly next to the excorable Michael Knowles.
And, I mean, listen, I didn't make the seating chart, okay?
Not on me.
So I sit down, and Michael Knowles is sitting next to me, and then it hits me that Michael's wedding is coming up in the next week.
And that I have not gotten him anything for his wedding.
Frankly, I hadn't really thought about it, because who cares?
I mean, it's Knowles' wedding, like, really?
So anyway, I'm sitting next to him, and it strikes me that, you know, if I don't get him anything, like, right now, I will forget about it five minutes later, and then I just won't get him anything.
And I wouldn't care, it would save me money, but I think he'd feel bad about it, and then we'd all have to feel bad, and then it would cause a lot of drama, because that's who Knowles is, and anyway...
He's sitting next to me.
So I pull up his wedding registry, I get him a blender, and then I turn to him and say, congratulations, you have a blender.
So that's basically what I got him.
I got him a blender.
Okay, there's your answer.
Long story for a short question.
Christian says, "Hey Ben, what is your stance on the argument that the executive branch should practice discretion on enforcing laws as it is part of the checks and balances?" Well, I think the executive branch obviously has the veto power But in terms of enforcing laws that are already on the books by Congress, it is job to enforce laws, not to decide not to enforce the laws unless those laws are expressly unconstitutional.
Now, this is a serious issue.
The executive branch does have the ability to say, listen, this law is unconstitutional.
I'm not going to enforce it.
Unfortunately, we've now shifted our vision of the government so that the executive branch does not have the duty to independently say that this is not actually constitutional.
I'm not going to enforce it.
Instead, they kick it over to the judicial branch.
And they kick it all the way over to the judicial branch and they say, well, I'll enforce it whether it's constitutional or not.
It's up to the judiciary to decide.
That is false.
That is false.
The system was not built for that.
The system was built so that members of the executive branch take a constitutional oath to uphold the Constitution.
And that means if a law is passed that is unconstitutional, even over their veto, They should at least be able to challenge Congress on it, and then if Congress wants to impeach, Congress can impeach.
But everybody was supposed to uphold their constitutional duty, not just the judicial branch.
Mostly I'm interested in how you'd want to collect taxes from citizens, like income tax, tax brackets, if at all, how much to tax, etc.
Well, you know, I've moved sort of in favor of the idea of a fair tax, which is essentially a national sales tax, with certain exceptions for people who are more impoverished.
I like that idea better than the income tax.
I don't think it's the government's business how much money I earn, and I think the income tax is rife with corruption.
There's a reason that the state of California has the highest income taxes in the nation, and also the number one rate of tax deductions in the nation.
So we pass all these stupid high taxes, and we vote for all the politicians to pass the stupid high taxes, and then we all take enormous deductions in order to avoid the high taxes we just voted for.
I don't like the income tax.
I think that the fair tax is probably the way that I would go.
Okay, a couple of more here.
Matthew says, Well, I find that a weird argument.
I mean, frankly, I think faith should be the value system that undergirds your politics.
And then you should be able to make a secular argument for whatever politics you hold.
beliefs that I need to choose between my faith and my politics.
Any advice on how to handle that?
I don't believe I should have to choose between the two.
Well, I find that a weird argument.
And frankly, I think faith should be the value system that undergirds your politics.
And you should be able to make a secular argument for whatever politics you hold.
But I think that we all have certain basic assumptions about the nature of life, as I And I think that those values are allowed to come from a religious place.
So this is a weird argument to me.
I don't really understand it.
For instance, would Bernie be condemned to forever reach for pudding cups that recede out of his grasp?
And to what gruesome tortures would you consign Michael Knowles in the afterlife?
Trump, Bernie and Hillary, for instance, would Bernie be condemned to forever reach for pudding cups that recede out of his grasp?
And to what gruesome tortures would you consign Michael Moles in the afterlife?
I shudder to think of it.
So the gruesome torture to which I would consign Michael Moles is that he would have to talk constantly into a camera that was dead.
That would be his gruesome torture.
And also, he would have to wear a shirt at all times.
Wouldn't matter.
He goes in the shower, he has to wear a shirt.
He's never allowed to take off his shirt.
That's the rules.
Those are the rules.
As far as Trump, Bernie, and Hillary, I think life has a beautiful way of giving certain punishments to people who deserve them.
Hillary's already got her punishment.
She's not President of the United States, and she got humiliated by Donald Trump.
So I think that eternal that would probably be her punishment.
And also, she'd have to probably sit there and grin as people made speech after speech about how great her husband was.
I think that would be an excellent eternal punishment for Hillary Clinton.
For Bernie Sanders, I think that the eternal punishment is that he should actually have to work for a living.
Like, he should actually have to go work, like, get a real job, like a normal person.
And then he should have to give charity, like a normal good person would.
That would be his eternal punishment, which sounds to me pretty good, but for him it would just be terrible.
And President Trump's eternal punishment, he'd eternally be forced to stare at a Playboy centerfold forever, but he can't do anything about it.
She just stands there forever, and he just stares at her, and there's nothing he can do.
It's just an eternal case of, uh...
I think that would be pretty fair for President Trump.
So it would be, I think that would be pretty fair for President Trump.
And Molly says, hey, Ben, I'm participating in an archaeological excavation this summer in Jerusalem.
I'm super excited.
But with all that has been going on lately, my family's worried about my safety.
Since you're more familiar with Jerusalem, what would you say to help ease their minds about my safety?
Well, terrorism is extraordinarily uncommon in Israel.
It is the source of very few injuries and deaths in Israel.
Israel is actually really safe at this point.
There are soldiers on every corner, and there are certain things that you can avoid that the Israeli government will tell you to avoid.
But there are certain ways to make yourself safer.
Just assure your family that you will take the safest possible measures.
I know this is controversial inside Israel.
A lot of people take the bus.
If I were in Israel, I probably wouldn't take the bus.
That's a very common site for terrorist attacks to occur, but that's because I'm overcautious.
Again, Israel is an extraordinarily safe place at this time.
Okay, so we'll be back here next week with more Mailbag.
Let's do a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing that I hate.
So yesterday I mentioned a show called The White Queen, all about Richard III.
The last three episodes of the show are about Richard III, and they paint Richard III in very positive light.
Another book That sort of paints Richard III in a positive light is a book called The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tay, one of the great mysteries of all time.
The book is all about basically a detective who's a frequent character in Josephine Tay's novels, and this detective this time is laid up in bed, and he decides that he is going to unravel the mystery of what actually happened to Richard III's nephews.
Did Richard III actually kill his nephews?
And the book is really gripping and really interesting and really historical, so check it out.
One of the great mystery novels of all time, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tay.
Mixed for a good weekend read for sure.
Okay, a quick thing that I hate.
So when I say Hollywood is out of touch, I mean Hollywood is really out of touch.
They made a movie called Show Dogs.
Show Dogs is a movie about what you would think.
Show Dogs stars Will Arnett as an FBI agent named Frank who is forced into partnering with a talking dog named Max, voiced by Ludacris, to infiltrate a prestigious dog show in the hopes of rescuing a kidnapped panda.
Yep, sounds awesome.
But that's not the best part.
So the best part of this is that apparently there is a plot point involving Max learning to cope with the idea of having a judge examine his genitals while competing in the dog show.
The problem is this is a movie for children, okay?
And as Daily Wire pointed out, having a judge fondle a dog and then the dog talk about how good it feels is not really a great message to be forwarding for small children.
Well, now Show Dogs has actually been pulled from the theaters.
Even leftist sources like Slate were saying this is not really particularly great.
Daily Wire, I will say, was, I think, involved in pulling it.
A week after its debut, it pulled an abysmal $6 million on its opening weekend, a rotten score of 23% on the Tomatometer.
Well, now the film's producers have released a statement apologizing to offended parents, and they're going to fix the film.
They've decided to remove those two scenes from the movie, which were not appropriate for children.
That seems appropriate to me, since I don't think that children should be taught that it feels good to have your genitals stimulated by an adult.
That's really disgusting.
So thanks, Hollywood.
I can't imagine why you're so screwed up in every possible way.
OK, well, we will be back here next week with much, much more.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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