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May 30, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
55:03
Goodbye, Roseanne | Ep. 549
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Roseanne loses her sitcom after a racist tweet, Kim Kardashian heads to the White House, and we discuss the biggest news story nobody's talking about.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh, and we are very excited to be back in our home studios here in Los Angeles.
By the way, if you have not yet gone and bought tickets to our events in Dallas and Phoenix, the tickets are selling out fast.
Those happen in August.
Go to dailywire.com slash events to check it out before I jump into the news.
And plenty of news there is, as always.
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So, I'm not going to say I told you so.
I'm not going to say I warned you.
I'm not going to say that I was the voice calling out in the wilderness, Roseanne is not a conservative.
Don't trust her.
Don't follow her.
No, don't come back.
Stop.
I won't say that I said any of those things.
I said all of those things, OK?
I told you!
OK, Roseanne's a crazy person.
Roseanne's been a crazy person for years.
She ran with Cindy Sheehan on one of these indie party nomination tickets.
She took a picture of herself with a Hitler mustache, putting little cookies in the oven that were supposed to be Jews.
OK, Roseanne is a crazy person.
She's been a crazy person for a long time.
And just because she's a crazy person who happens to like Trump a lot more than some other crazy people, that does not mean that she was ever an ally of conservatives.
Well, she demonstrated why it is bad to embrace volatile celebrities who happen to be crazy just yesterday when she decided it would be a great idea to start tweeting about Valerie Jarrett in the most insane possible way.
So here is what she tweeted about Valerie Jarrett.
Valerie Jarrett, of course, was the kind of unsung chief of staff to Barack Obama.
I am not a Valerie Jarrett fan.
I think Valerie Jarrett is an awful person.
But, Valerie Jarrett is also not what Roseanne says she is here.
Okay, so Roseanne says, Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby equals Valerie Jarrett.
Okay, so number one, that's disgusting.
That's horrifying.
You shouldn't be calling black people apes.
I mean, I thought there's basically one rule in the media that you cannot violate if you wish to survive.
And Roseanne Barr took that landmine and jumped on it with both feet.
And then just in case it didn't go off, she jumped on it again with both feet.
So she says she compares Valerie Jarrett to an ape, which is just disgusting and horrifying, especially given the long history in this country of comparing black people to apes, which is just awful and horrifying in every possible way.
And then Roseanne's show is dropped.
So she tweets this, and then her show dies, right?
So ABC pulls her show.
It was the number one sitcom on television, so they presumably lost some money on this thing.
But it wasn't like ABC didn't know that Roseanne was a crazy person when they hired her.
They knew the risks involved when they hired her.
They bought the ticket.
They took the ride.
And Roseanne provided them that ride.
We'll talk in a second about When it is appropriate for corporations to crack down on so-called free speech.
I say so-called because free speech issues are really only implicated when the government is involved.
If the government cracks down on your free speech like Tommy Robinson in the UK, as we discussed yesterday, that's a free speech issue.
But when it's a private corporation taking a measure to protect its own products, I'm not quite sure it's the same thing.
In fact, I'm sure it's not the same thing.
In any case, Roseanne tweets this thing out.
Her career is over.
She's toast.
Goodbye to Roseanne.
And frankly, from my perspective, a little bit good riddance.
I understand a lot of conservatives were very happy that Roseanne's show did not treat Trump supporters as evil, nasty, terrible people.
The problem is that what Roseanne did just allowed the left to treat all Trump supporters as evil, nasty, terrible people.
Well, Chris Hayes, for example, over on MSNBC, he tweeted this out, this 15.
He tweeted out, quote, Now, he has no basis for saying this.
He has no basis for saying that a significant chunk of President Trump's base thinks that black people are apes or that Valerie Jarrett is a mashup of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes.
He has no data to support this.
But it doesn't matter.
Roseanne just provided a crowbar for the left to whack people with, which is really just a wonderful thing to do.
And the left jumped on it with alacrity.
So Valerie Jarrett, of course, responded, and she responded by ripping into President Trump and talking about everyday racism in America.
I do have to point out that this clip from MSNBC is extraordinary for a couple of reasons.
One, I just want you to look at this panel.
Okay, look at this panel.
So you got Chris Hayes, right, who's the guy sitting right there who just said that Trump's base supports this kind of stuff.
And then next to him you have Joy Reid.
Okay, Joy Reid is a person who just a couple of weeks ago nearly lost her job because it turns out that she'd written a bunch of posts that were deemed homophobic and offensive and anti-semitic and all this stuff, and she claimed that she didn't write them, and then she claimed that she had amnesia, and she claimed that she was hacked.
OK, and Joy Reid is still sitting on the set now talking about the stuff that Roseanne tweeted.
So just to be straight here, Roseanne tweets something, loses her job.
Joy Reid tweets stuff that's really gross, not only maintains her job, but gets to sit on set with Valerie Jarrett discussing the evils of Twitter racism.
So there's that.
And then sitting next to Valerie Jarrett on the other side, Is Al Sharpton, Al Sharpton, the leading race baiter of the last 40 years in the United States, a man who suggested that Jews in New York City were white interlopers, a guy who suggested that they were diamond merchants, a guy who nearly initiated a riot, maybe initiated a riot in Crown Heights in 1991 that ended in the death of an Orthodox Jew.
He said about Orthodox Jews, there's an Orthodox Jew who accidentally hit a black kid with his car.
And Al Sharpton said, if they want to fight, why don't they pin on their yarmulkes and come on over to my house?
Al Sharpton, that piece of dreck.
He's a bad guy, Al Sharpton.
That guy is sitting there talking about the evils of Roseanne.
So, I do have to point out the media's double standard here.
Roseanne should have lost her job for reasons that I will explain in just a second.
First of all, it really should require no explanation.
That statement, for a public figure, you lose your job.
End of story.
But, The media, to refrain from pointing out the double standard when Joy Reid, who tweeted out a bunch of other gross stuff, and Al Sharpton, who is one of the worst race baiters in the history of the United States, at least in modern American history, to have those two people commenting on it with Valerie Jarrett, who was targeted by Roseanne, but also happened to be a member of an administration that was very happy to polarize along the basis of race, it provides a little bit of irony, sitting there alongside Chris Hayes, who says that all Trump supporters are basically Roseanne.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Anyway, here's Valerie Jarrett commenting on the situation.
Well, first of all, I think we have to turn it into a teaching moment.
I'm fine.
I'm worried about all the people out there who don't have a circle of friends and followers who come right to their defense.
The person who's walking down the street, minding their own business, and they see somebody cling to their purse, or want to cross the street.
Or every black parent I know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation.
The talk, as we call it.
And those, as you say, those ordinary Examples of racism that happen every single day.
Okay, so now we get this routine where everybody is Roseanne, where America is replete with Roseannes, where people in their back room are tweeting out crazy stuff like Roseanne.
Roseanne is a crazy person.
Roseanne tweeted out that she was on Ambien and that's why she tweeted this out, which prompted Ambien, in pretty hilarious fashion, to tweet back, Good for Ambien.
And it's true.
Whenever I saw those Ambien commercials, I never saw that butterfly with the KKK hood on it.
I never picked up on that.
But Valerie Jarrett suggesting that we are all Roseanne is the stupidest thing in the world.
Roseanne did something bad.
And you know what the effect was?
She lost her job.
She lost a multi-million dollar job as the top sitcom performer in the United States.
And Valerie Jarrett is saying this somehow impugns the entire United States.
Somehow this is everyday racism in America.
It's not everyday racism in America because if it were everyday racism in America, Roseanne wouldn't have lost her job.
I'm kind of getting sick of this routine where we smear the entire American public and all Trump supporters with the brush of Roseanne Barr.
Then Joy Reid comments on Roseanne.
Here's Joy Reid, again, a woman who tweeted out a bunch of really nasty stuff like four weeks ago and then recalled that she had amnesia.
She literally claimed she had amnesia, which is a plot line that went out of soap operas in the 1980s.
She claimed that she had amnesia.
She still has a job and she gets to comment on Roseanne Barr.
Here is Joy Reid on MSNBC commenting on it.
They see this as no big deal, that this is something that you should be able to say.
Why can't you say it?
It's just jokes.
Why are people taking it to heart?
That's part of the problem, is that you have a certain set of people who feel that you should be able to speak this way.
And unfortunately, you know, we have a president at the moment who's kind of giving a broad sense of permission to not be politically correct, to speak the way you want, to offend who you want, and that people really shouldn't have a right to say anything about it.
Okay, this is all straw man.
I didn't see one major conservative commentator yesterday saying Roseanne should have kept her job.
Not one.
OK, then the number of conservative commentators who said Roseanne should have kept her job, it was relegated to like Jack Posabiak and maybe like Ali, like a couple of guys who are really fringe and aren't considered mainstream right figures in any case.
But they're treating it as though the entire right came out swarming in defense of Roseanne Barr.
Obviously not true.
Obviously not real.
But the entire left did come out swarming for Joy Reid, right?
So if you're going to tar one movement with the actions of a bad person, you might want to tar the movement with the person they actually defend.
So if you want to say that Trump's base is willing to defend his excesses, that I agree with.
But if you want to say that Trump's base is willing to defend Roseanne Barr, I don't see Trump's base defending Roseanne Barr today.
And the same thing is not true of Joy Reid.
The entire left base came out in defense of Joy Reid.
Very few of them wanted Joy Reid to lose her job.
The same thing is true of Louis Farrakhan, of Linda Sarsour, of a bunch of people, Keith Ellison, who have associated with the worst kinds, Al Sharpton, you know, terrible, terrible people who have been defended repeatedly by the left.
Roseanne Barr lost her job after less than, like, four hours after this tweet came out.
So don't tell me the entire right-wing base is supporting Roseanne Barr.
It just ain't true.
And Trump isn't even supporting Roseanne Barr.
So Al Sharpton, again, the idea the media is going to try Al Sharpton as some sort of great race relations expert is just beyond, it's beyond sickening.
Here is Al Sharpton louding the Roseanne cancellation.
Roseanne has the right to be a supporter of whatever politics she wants.
But to take this kind of obvious racial rhetoric to compare a learned, respected public service like Valerie Jarrett to an ape, reminds us of all of the history of blacks being called monkeys.
And I think that Disney and ABC did the right thing.
And I think they've opened the door now to see other things that they're doing.
OK, so there you are, Al Sharpton, leading race baiter of our time, commenting on Roseanne, also apparently a race baiter.
And one of them still has a job.
So it does show you the double standard in the media.
In just a second, I want to talk about Van Jones's response to all of this.
Plus, I want to lay out some guidelines, I think, for when firing is appropriate in situations like this.
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Van Jones, too, was sounding off on the Roseanne situation, and he is blaming President Trump for it, obviously, because President Trump—it's amazing.
Everybody seems to think that the universe revolves around President Trump, so Roseanne does something bad, and suddenly it has to do with President Trump.
I'm not sure what Roseanne has to do with Trump, other than Roseanne was a Trump supporter, but Harvey Weinstein was a Hillary Clinton supporter, and I'm not sure why—if You know, if Hillary were president right now, I do not think you'd see a lot of headlines about Hillary supporter Harvey Weinstein goes on and, you know, is tried for rape.
I just don't think that would be the headline.
That'd be a little bit fairer.
Roseanne was portraying a Trump supporter on TV, but this was always the danger of her portraying a Trump supporter on TV.
I mentioned it at the time.
I did nearly a full show on it.
I talked about how Trump's portrayal of Trump supporters was not helpful to Trump supporters and that when you tether your boat to crazy people, bad things happen.
As I said about Kanye West, listen, I'm happy Kanye wants to do the open your mind thing.
But live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye.
Live by the Roseanne, die by the Roseanne.
Okay, but in any case, here's Van Jones trying to tie Trump to Roseanne as though Trump was somehow using Roseanne as his meat puppet, like he had his hand in the back of her head and was actually manipulating her mouth to call Valerie Jarrett an ape.
It could be that this moral collapse inside of our political system, especially inside the White House, Is being counterbalanced now by people in mainstream media, mainstream corporations who say, listen, we don't want to live in a country where, you know, indecent people can be attacked for no reason.
I agree it's not a joke and I agree it's not funny.
To pretend that Donald Trump is the person who has laid our rhetoric low in American public life is to ignore a lot of American public rhetoric in the last 15 years.
I mean, it was Joe Biden who in 2012 was going around saying that Mitt Romney legitimately wanted to put y'all back in chains.
It was the Democratic Party Who within the last 10 years was producing videos of Paul Ryan throwing old women off the edge of cliffs with their wheelchairs.
So before we go to the Donald Trump destroyed American rhetoric, a sentiment with which I have some agreement, you do have to actually provide the context for that destruction of American rhetoric.
And nobody, including Trump, was saying that this kind of stuff was OK.
Trump was not saying that any of this stuff was okay.
Roseanne Barr, by the way, went back on Twitter later in the evening and started tweeting out more random crazy stuff.
Again, she blamed Ambien, and then she claims that she didn't know that Valerie Jarrett was black.
She said she thought that Valerie Jarrett was white and Jewish, which makes no sense since she accused her of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
All of which demonstrates that maybe Roseanne Barr is crazy, as I said, repeatedly, over and over.
But now listen, because I'm right.
OK, so the reason I say that you should listen is because I'm going to tell you about another celebrity situation inside the Republican Party in just a second.
But first, I want to talk a little bit about what should the standards be when people actually get fired?
So there were two very different Two very different stories that came out with regard to corporate crackdowns on free speech over the last couple of weeks.
Last week we had the big blow up because the NFL bans kneeling during the National Anthem on the sidelines.
They said you want to stay in the locker room, go ahead and stay in the locker room.
But if you come out of the locker room and they're playing the National Anthem, don't kneel or we're going to fine you.
And people went nuts.
This is a violation of First Amendment freedoms.
This is a violation of the spirit of free speech in America.
And, you know, for myself, I'm mildly uncomfortable with the idea that the NFL is going to force people to stand for the anthem.
But, as I said last week, I think that kneeling for the anthem is a stupid, counterproductive, garbage-y thing to do.
It's a general rule.
And I also think that the NFL has a right to defend its product.
Well, this week, the Roseanne thing happened, and ABC immediately fired Roseanne, and half the people We're very angry at the NFL for barring people from kneeling.
We're very happy with ABC for firing Roseanne.
Now, obviously, kneeling for the anthem and calling a black person an ape are not the same thing.
Kellen Kaepernick, I will point out, didn't only kneel for the anthem.
He also wore socks that had cops depicted as pigs on them.
So that wasn't exactly a wonderful thing.
The broader point is one that needs to be made, and that is, when should we, the American public, be interested in the political pronouncements and racist pronouncements and gross pronouncements of public figures?
When should we forgive them?
When should we not?
When should they be fired by companies and when should they not?
And it seems to me that the line of demarcation is when the speech that is being used actually damages the product of the corporation.
So here we're not talking About the government getting involved.
We're not talking about when the government should crack down on speech.
The answer is the government should never crack down on speech.
The government should not be arresting Roseanne Barr for saying vile things.
The question is, when can a company fire Roseanne, and when is it right to boycott Roseanne's show, for example?
Or when is it right to boycott the NFL, and when can the NFL institute new rules about kneeling?
And it seems to me that when the product is connected with the viewpoint, then it is appropriate to initiate a boycott, and it is also appropriate for a corporation to respond in kind to that boycott.
So, with regard to the NFL, the product that they produced was a product that included the national anthem on TV.
It was part of the game.
The NFL is replete with patriotic symbolism.
They use it all the time.
When I was at the Super Bowl last year, it was fully patriotic, and the video of the Blue Angels fly over the whole thing.
So, if that is threatened, and people say, listen, I don't feel the same way about that product as I used to because the product itself has changed, that's not out of the realm of reality or decency.
Boycotting the NFL because you don't like people kneeling for the anthem seems to me well within the bounds of normal public discourse.
The same thing holds true for Roseanne.
Right, Roseanne even more so.
Because Roseanne's character is called Roseanne, right?
The show is based on Roseanne.
So, if Roseanne were playing a completely different character, I think you might even have a more dicey situation.
So Matt Damon says a lot of really stupid things.
I don't boycott Matt Damon's movies, because in Matt Damon's movies, Matt Damon is not playing Matt Damon.
Matt Damon is playing whatever character he's playing on screen.
So the product on screen has nothing to do with the stupid crap Matt Damon says off screen.
Now, if there are people who can't make that connection, if there are people who That's reasonable, but I think that it's a little bit over the top.
The thing about Roseanne is that Roseanne played Roseanne on TV.
Her character was supposed to mirror Roseanne to a certain extent in real life.
So for people to say, I don't want to watch a show with a lady who calls a black lady an ape, I think that's perfectly appropriate, and it's perfectly appropriate for ABC to crack down.
Now, here's where it's not appropriate.
It's not appropriate when you have somebody like Brendan Eich, who is the CEO of Mozilla Firefox, and Brendan Eich was essentially thrown out of his job because someone initiated a boycott because he had once supported traditional marriage.
Because he had once supported traditional marriage.
The reason that is inappropriate is because Mozilla Firefox never discriminated against gay people.
Mozilla Firefox took no stance on same-sex marriage.
Mozilla Firefox's product had nothing to do with same-sex marriage.
So it's unreasonable to boycott Mozilla Firefox based on Brendan Eich's personal political beliefs.
And it is inappropriate to boycott a church for their beliefs if those beliefs don't actually affect how they treat people.
And it is inappropriate to boycott a restaurant for those reasons.
So Chick-fil-A, best example.
Dan Cathy is the head of Chick-fil-A in favor of traditional marriage.
The left launches massive boycotts against Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A, saying, we don't want to shop at that company because that guy doesn't agree with us on same-sex marriage.
What does same-sex marriage have to do with a chicken burger?
The answer is nothing.
The answer is nothing.
So in those cases, you're destroying the nature of free speech, the feeling of free speech in the country, when you make everything political.
Making everything political is bad for the country, but pretending that everything is not political is just unrealistic.
Roseanne did something that impacted the product she was providing.
Kneeling for the anthem.
Those are not the same sort of impact, obviously.
Kneeling for the anthem is not nearly as bad as calling a black person an ape.
But, insofar as, do the corporations have the right, on a moral level, to fire people for doing this, or to set new rules?
The answer, of course, is yes.
Now, meanwhile, President Trump has fired back on the on the Roseanne thing.
He just couldn't help himself.
So he went all of yesterday without commenting on it.
And I was like, yes, this is great.
You know, Mr. President, just stay out of it.
There's no reason for you to get involved.
And then he got involved because that's what the president of the United States does.
So he tweeted this out.
He tweeted out, quote, Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ABC does not tolerate comments like those made by Roseanne Barr.
Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the horrible statements made and said about me on ABC.
Maybe I just didn't get the call.
Only President Trump could make this story about him.
Only President Trump could make a story about Roseanne insulting Valerie Jarrett about him.
I do want to point out a couple of distinctions here.
Okay, listen, I don't think Trump should have commented on this thing in the first place.
I'm going to get to in a second Trump's relationship with celebrity, which I think is just dumb.
But this is, here's why this tweet is stupid.
First, Valerie Jarrett was called an ape by the main star of Bob Iger's network.
A black person was called an ape by the main star of Bob Iger's network.
He has to call Valerie Jarrett.
Donald Trump was called a lot of names on ABC, but he was not called a historically racist name applied to his race.
If somebody called him honky on ABC, Then I assume that Bob Iger might have to call him.
But if they were just saying they don't like Donald Trump, or he's an idiot, or he's stupid, or he's garbage, or whatever they were calling Donald Trump, like, that's just part of the public discourse, honestly.
And again, I don't know what any of this has to do with Trump.
Trump's not the victim here.
He's the President of the United States.
I understand the main point, which is that there's a double standard in the media, and obviously that is true.
But the double standard in the media doesn't really extend to Bob Iger having to call Trump every time someone insults him.
Plus, I mean, if we're going to talk about insulting people, Donald Trump is like the king of insulting people.
Has Donald Trump ever called Ted Cruz to apologize for calling his wife ugly publicly?
No.
Did he ever call Alicia Machado and apologize for basically calling her a fatty in the middle of a presidential campaign and suggesting that she had a sex tape?
Did he ever do any of that?
No.
You gotta take it if you're gonna dish it out.
Like, that's just my general feeling on that particular subject.
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Okay, so, meanwhile, I don't know what it is with Republicans and celebrity.
That's not true.
I do know what it is with Republicans and celebrity.
What it is with Republicans and celebrity is that Republicans are so often ripped on by celebrities, you know, out here in Los Angeles, in Hollywood.
They spend so much of their day being ripped on by people out here that they get sad.
And then when a celebrity comes forward and says, I'm with you, everybody gets super excited.
Oh my gosh, that famous person's with me.
And it's fairly typical.
It's just a human nature thing.
Like when I was growing up, I remember that a big hero in the Jewish community, and still is, was Sandy Koufax.
Now, Sandy Koufax is not a practicing Jew.
Sandy Koufax is not somebody who spends a lot of time thinking about Judaism.
Sandy Koufax, I believe, is intermarried.
But Sandy Koufax one time took off the day of Yom Kippur in the World Series.
And this was a big move because Sandy Koufax is a celebrity.
People are very, very taken in by celebrity.
The problem is, a lot of celebrities are celebrities for things that have nothing to do with politics.
So Rosanna was a celebrity because she's a funny lady who was on a show in the 90s that was actually quite to the left.
And the same thing is true for Kanye West.
As I say, live by the Kanye, die by the Kanye.
I'm very glad that Kanye is saying that people ought to think for themselves, but Kanye is also Kanye, and he is apt to say things from time to time that may not be politically the wisest.
You tie yourself to a celebrity, Kid Rock, who knows nothing about politics, and you shouldn't be surprised when he burns you.
Hey, Republicans tied themselves to a celebrity in Donald Trump, and most of the things that have burdened them about Donald Trump have come from him being a celebrity, not from him being the president.
It's been him playing celebrity apprentice at the White House, or him during the campaign saying celebrity-like things, right?
That's where most of the trouble for the Trump administration has come, not in his policy.
His policy's been quite good.
Well, now Donald Trump and Jared Kushner and the White House, they're inviting over Kim Kardashian.
Now, why they would invite Kim Kardashian, I suppose it's because, yay, we have a celebrity, and Kim Kardashian is close to Kanye West, and maybe if we recruit some celebrities, then a lot of people will be warmer toward us, and we're showing that we're reaching across the aisle, and all the rest.
Kim Kardashian.
OK, let's just say that the risk factor on Kim Kardashian is not low.
Kim Kardashian is not a low risk figure.
She's not a person who you have to the White House and then you assume that she's going to be a grand spokesperson for your policies.
Now, I understand Democrats could do this and get away with it because they could always hide one celebrity amidst the thousands of other celebrities they had.
Democrats are not tied to particular celebrities in the same way that Republicans are.
So Hillary Clinton was not tied to Harvey Weinstein in the same way that Donald Trump was sort of tied to Roseanne in this particular case, because Harvey Weinstein was one among thousands of Hollywood celebrities who supported Hillary Clinton.
There are like five public celebrities who supported Donald Trump, and so Trump in the public eye is very tied to each of them.
Well, now he's having Kim Kardashian to the White House, and he's having Kim Kardashian to the White House to discuss prison reform.
Now, I am really Luke Cold on prison reform.
I am not in love with a lot of the talk about prison reform, the reason being that it seems to me that the policy has not been clarified.
In many cases, the prison reform they're talking about involves letting people out of prison too early, and the recidivism rate among those prisoners is like 75% over the course of the next five years.
So, letting people out of prison so they can go back in prison seems not to make a lot of sense to me.
Now, what people have said is, we're taking fewer people into American prisons and the crime rates aren't rising.
Right, because we still have a lot of people in prison.
But if you let more people out of prison, the crime rates rise.
We've seen this in the state of California.
In the state of California, Jerry Brown has let thousands of prisoners out of prison early on prison furloughs, and the crime rates have gone up relatively dramatically in most urban areas in the state of California over the last several years.
Instead of building new prisons, he decided to release those people back to county level, and then those county level prisoners were released into the general public, and it's been quite a disaster.
Now the White House is going to have Kim Kardashian over there to talk about prison reform.
And apparently she is interested in pushing for the release of one particular prisoner named Alice Johnson.
So who exactly is Alice Johnson and why should she be released?
The answer is that she shouldn't be released.
And the answer is that Alice Johnson is a person who is convicted of a major drug offense in 1994.
Not just a major drug offense, like trafficking in thousands of pounds of drugs.
And she's being treated as though she's a wronged innocent.
If you look at the left-wing press today, a lot of it is all about how Alice Johnson is a wronged innocent who ought to be released from prison because now she's older and she's wiser and she's a sweet, nice old lady and we ought to let her out.
Well, I mean, she was sentenced for a reason.
She was given life in prison.
The reason that she was given life in prison is because Alice Johnson committed some pretty terrible crimes.
And she's never admitted to committing these terrible crimes, by the way.
I love this.
CNN printed a piece from her in early May, and the editor's note said this.
Alice Marie Johnson is a grandmother who has served more than 20 years in prison for a first time nonviolent offense.
So that makes it sound like Alice Johnson was smoking dope in her backyard and the police came in and they arrested her and then they gave her 20 years in prison.
That is not what happened.
According to Alice Johnson, that is what happened.
And according to Alice Johnson, she says, I'm only one of thousands of first-time nonviolent offenders given mandatory and lengthy prison terms after committing crimes under financial distress.
In 1996, I was given a death sentence without sitting on death row.
I was convicted as a first-time nonviolent drug offender to life behind bars in federal prison.
Since I went to prison, the laws governing my wrongdoing have changed.
If I were convicted again today for the same crime, my life might look very different.
And then she wrote, she's written some plays, and she supposedly made herself, she supposedly made herself into a better human being, And all of this, she says, I'll tell you the rest of Alice Johnson's tragic saga in just one moment.
But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Policy Genius.
to five beautiful children.
As the years went on, I became a facilitator, training people on how to be managers.
I was a manager at FedEx for seven years.
Life for a time was good.
I'll tell you the rest of Alice Johnson's tragic saga in just one moment.
But first, I want to say thanks to our sponsors over at Policy Genius.
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So I'm going to tell you the rest of Alice Johnson's story and why it is that all the talk about her being released from prison seems a little bit Like a fib in just a second.
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So to return to our story, as you recall, Kim Kardashian, the Trump administration, they are all pushing for Alice Johnson to be released from prison.
Again, there is a problem here.
The problem is that Alice Johnson actually committed a pretty dire crime.
She says she did not.
She says, After almost two decades together and a tumultuous relationship, my husband and I divorced in 1989.
It was during this time my life began to spiral out of control.
I lost my job and then my youngest son was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.
No mother should have to bury her child.
This weight was unbelievable and it was a burden I couldn't sustain.
I made some very poor decisions out of desperation.
I want this part to be clear.
I acknowledge that I have done wrong.
I made the biggest mistake of my life to make ends meet and got involved with people selling drugs.
This is a road I never dreamed of entering down.
I became what is known as a telephone mule, passing messages between distributors and sellers.
I participated in a drug conspiracy and I was wrong.
Okay, so that makes it sound like she made some phone calls, right?
If you just read that story, she made a few phone calls.
If you read it, the left-wing press, then that's all that she did.
Here is the actual AP story from when Alice Johnson was sentenced.
OK, this is from 1997, quote, A 41-year-old Memphis woman was sentenced to life in prison for leading a multi-million dollar drug ring that dealt in tons of cocaine from 1991 to 1994.
Alice Marie Johnson was, quote, the quintessential entrepreneur, said U.S.
District Judge Julia Gibbons as she pronounced sentence on Friday.
And clearly the impact of 2000 to 3000 kilograms of cocaine in this community is very significant.
Johnson was tried last year on cocaine conspiracy and money laundering charges, along with Curtis McDonald and Jerleen McNeil.
During the trial, evidence showed an operation with Texas-based Colombian drug dealers and their Memphis connections trading tons of cocaine for millions of dollars in cash.
McDonald was sentenced earlier this month to life in prison for his part in the cocaine conspiracy and money laundering operation.
McNeil received a 19-year sentence.
So, no, this was not like she was just sitting on the corner selling some pot.
She was running thousands of pounds of cocaine from a Colombian-based drug cartel.
You're not going to get that in the press.
All of which is to say, maybe you want to release her from prison.
Maybe you want to parole her.
Maybe you think that she's done her time.
She's been in prison since 1997, so she's been there for 21 years at this point.
Maybe you think that she should be released into the general public.
That's fine.
I don't know why you would do it based on Kim Kardashian's recommendation.
And I don't know why you would take celebrities seriously on these issues in the first place, since they're not experts on these issues in the first place.
It irritated the living hell out of me when Barack Obama had George Clooney in to talk about Middle Eastern policy, and it drives me nuts when the Trump administration has Kim Kardashian in to discuss prison reform.
I'm sorry.
There is no level of expertise that Kim Kardashian or George Clooney seem to have.
It's one thing if you want to talk to Amal Clooney.
Amal Clooney apparently actually has some expertise.
She used to work at the UN.
But you want to talk to people who actually know what they are talking about.
I am not sure what Kim Kardashian has expertise on other than branding.
She's great at branding.
No question.
She makes emojis.
So there's that.
So I guess if there's an emoji summit at the White House, then we can have Kim Kardashian in.
I hate celebrity worship.
It drives me up a wall.
I've lived my entire life in L.A.
surrounded by people who worship celebrity.
It is so stupid, I cannot even tell you.
Most celebrities do not know what they are talking about.
Most celebrities are not politically aware.
Most celebrities are, at best, tangentially involved with politics.
But because they're famous, we think they know everything.
The halo effect in the human psyche is really an amazing thing.
It really is an amazing thing.
The halo effect, which suggests that because somebody is good at one thing, this means they are good at all things.
It's pretty amazing.
So we think that because somebody is beautiful, this means they're smart.
Or because they are rich, it also means that they are wise.
Okay, none of this is true.
You can be rich and stupid.
You can be beautiful and stupid.
You can be smart and ugly.
All of these things can be true at once.
Or he can be rich, and stupid, and ugly, right?
Any combination of these factors is possible.
But, because human beings tend to worship at the altar of fame, they say, okay, I see that guy, I know that person, that person must know what they're talking about, so Kim Kardashian must obviously know what she is talking about.
Kim Kardashian, I don't know why you would think she knows what she is, what she's talking about.
I just wouldn't know.
Meanwhile, while we're having summits at the White House, While we're having summits at the White House on prison reform, while we're spending time on prison reform at the White House with Kim Kardashian, and spending our time talking about the situation regarding Roseanne, it turns out that 5,000 people died in Puerto Rico.
Did you know that?
Were you aware of this?
Okay, like, this is an actual thing.
So we were told that it was a couple of dozen people who died in Hurricane Maria.
Turns out not.
According to the Washington Post, Miliana Montañez cradled her mother's head as she lay dying on the floor of her bedroom here, gasping for air and pleading for help.
There was nothing her family could do.
It took 20 minutes to find cellular reception to make a 911 call.
Inoperative traffic signals slowed down the ambulance struggling to reach their neighborhood through crippling congestion.
More than eight months after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island's slow recovery has been marked by a persistent lack of water, a faltering power grid, and a lack of essential services, all imperiling the lives of many residents, especially the infirm and those in remote areas hardest hit in September.
The New Harvest study, published on Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, estimates that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, making the storm far deadlier than previously thought.
Official estimates have placed the number of dead at 64, a count that has drawn sharp criticism from experts, so they're only off by a factor of 70.
Whoops.
The Harvard findings indicate that healthcare disruption for the elderly and the loss of basic utility services for the chronically ill had significant impacts, and the study criticized Puerto Rico's methods for counting the dead and its lack of transparency in sharing information as detrimental to planning for future natural disasters.
The authors called for patients, communities, and doctors to develop contingency plans for such disasters.
More people were killed by Hurricane Maria according to this Harvard study than were killed in 9-11 by a factor of about 50%.
And yet nobody is talking about that today.
We are all too busy talking about Kim Kardashian at the White House and the fact that Roseanne said something racist and mean to Valerie Jarrett.
Maybe our priorities in this country are a little bit screwed up.
Researchers in the mainland United States and Puerto Rico, led by scientists at the Harvard T.H.
Chan School of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, calculated the number of deaths by surveying almost 3,300 randomly chosen households across the island and comparing the estimated post-hurricane death rate to the mortality rate for the year before.
Their surveys indicated the mortality rate was 14.3 deaths per 1,000 residents from September 20th through December 31st, 2017.
A lot of people have died because the government has done a terrible job of restoring what they need to in Puerto Rico.
or 4,645 excess deaths.
Now, that's probably a little bit exact.
It could be 5,000, it could be 3,000, but it is not 64.
A lot of people have died because the government has done a terrible job of restoring what they need to in Puerto Rico, and that is both the fault of the federal government and it is also the fault of the local government in Puerto Rico, which is a protectorate of the United States, obviously.
Carlos Mercader, who is executive director of the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs Administration, said in a statement on Tuesday that the territorial government welcomes the new Harvard study and looks forward to analyzing it.
Okay, well, I'm sure that they do, but...
Again, our priorities in this country really need to change.
We are attracted to the shiny bauble.
Celebrity attracts us to the shiny bauble.
And listen, we all like discussing the cultural issues because we can all have an opinion.
But these are the areas where government really needs to be good at things.
And government is just not good at these things.
And it seems to me we should be spending an awful lot more time talking about bipartisan failures to help alleviate the problems in Puerto Rico than we should be talking about Kim Kardashian's priorities with regard to a woman who's been in jail for 20 years for trafficking in thousands of pounds of cocaine.
Or Roseanne Barr's mean comments about Valerie Jarrett.
Okay, so we just won't have a revived Roseanne sitcom next year.
Seems to me like that's less important as a general matter than the number of people who died in Puerto Rico because of this hurricane.
Okay, well, in just a second I want to talk a little bit about the Eric Greitens resignation in the state of Missouri.
So Eric Greitens is the governor of Missouri or was the governor of Missouri until late last night.
Last night, Eric Greitens made an announcement he would no longer be the governor of Missouri because he was caught up in the sex scandal where he was having an affair with a lady and she alleged that he tied her up and naked and then took pictures of her.
It sounds like a delight.
So Eric Greitens resigned yesterday.
This ordeal has been designed to cause an incredible amount of strain on my family.
Thank you.
Millions of dollars of mounting legal bills.
Endless personal attacks designed to cause maximum damage to family and friends.
And it's clear that for the forces that oppose us, there is no end in sight.
I cannot allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty To the people that I love.
Okay, so he should have gotten out of here a lot earlier.
What took him months to do it?
There's this feeling in American politics right now that the longer you hold on, the better the chance that you're going to survive, right?
Al Franken announced that he was going to resign and then he had to resign very quickly.
If he had held on for a few more weeks, he'd probably still be in the United States Senate.
Eric Greitens felt like if he somehow was able to hold on, then he would be able to retain his job despite all of the allegations that have been made against him.
The charges against him are still pending and they may be refiled.
All of which is to show there was a lot of talk in the aftermath of President Trump's election about the change in the mindset of the American people.
That the American people were willing to go along with anything politicians were willing to do so long as those politicians gave them what they wanted.
I don't think that's actually true.
I think that President Trump is, in many ways, a one-off.
I think President Trump won the presidency because Hillary Clinton was deeply unpalatable to a huge number of Americans.
And because of that, they were willing to look the other way a little bit at his excesses.
But if you ask most Americans, do they actually like the accesses of President Trump?
They would say no.
Do they like how President Trump treats women?
The answer probably for most Republicans is no.
Does that mean they don't like his policies?
It doesn't mean that either.
But they see Donald Trump as a tool.
Now, here's the way that it works in politics.
The more power you have, the more you are able to get away with.
This is an unfortunate truth, again, about human nature.
If you are a dog catcher, you can get away with nothing because we can easily replace you.
We can easily replace you with something else.
Well, the truth is that you can easily replace the president with the vice president, but in terms of his cultural impact, in terms of his appeal, in terms of the damage that he can do on a cultural level, that is certainly not true for President Trump, who's a much more powerful cultural figure than Vice President Pence, for example.
So as you elevate the amount of power somebody has, we are willing as human beings to allow those people to get away with more things.
But that willingness is not infinite.
And so Eric Reitens, who's just a governor of Missouri and who can be easily replaced by another Republican for governor of Missouri, which is what will happen, he can go away without having a significant impact on the Republicans in the state or the conservative agenda in the state.
The same is not really true for President Trump in a lot of ways, and so that's why there have been so many people who have been willing to kind of brush off President Trump's excesses in a way that they wouldn't be willing to for Eric Reitens.
Is that right?
It probably isn't right.
Is it realistic?
Yeah, that's realistic.
I mean, that's just the way that the human mind works.
Now, speaking of the presidential race coming up in 2020, good news for Democrats.
Bernie Sanders is there to split your party again.
A former Bernie Sanders spokesperson says, don't worry, he's going to run again in 2020.
Will voters get another chance to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020?
Well, voters in Vermont certainly will coming up in November.
Nationally, you know, he is considering another run for the presidency and, you know, when the time comes, I think we'll have an answer to that.
But right now, he's still considering it.
He'd be a fool not to run in 2020, considering how splintered the Democratic Party is.
He actually has a serious shot at winning the nomination in 2020.
Now, it's hard to capture the magic twice, as Ross Perot learned in 1996.
That said, who's going to be out there against him?
Kamala Harris?
Kamala Harris isn't going to take votes away from Bernie Sanders.
Elizabeth Warren?
She's not going to take votes away from Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders has 30% of the Democratic Party base locked down behind him, and that's enough to win.
He could run a very Trump-like primary campaign in 2020 and seize the nomination that way.
Unless Democrats rally around a Joe Biden-esque figure.
So Bernie Sanders is a serious threat for the nomination.
So we could, in fact, get a Trump-Sanders race in 2020.
And wouldn't that be something?
My goodness.
So much pudding.
So much pudding.
So we can all look forward to that.
Oh, happy, happy day.
Our politics can get even dumber.
That'll be just awesome.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate.
So, things I like.
So there's a book by a guy named Gary Salmorsan.
Gary Salmorsan is a great favorite of my new brother-in-law.
I was out of town over the weekend because my sister got married and Gary Salmorsan was at the wedding.
He is a really terrific thinker and a great literary analyst.
And he has a book called Anna Karenina in our time seeing more wisely.
So you sort of have to have read Anna Karenina in order to get the book.
So go out and buy a copy of Anna Karenina and when you're done reading it, come back in six months and then read this book.
But Anna Karenina, of course, one of the great novels in the history of mankind.
And this book is really about how people misread Anna Karenina.
As a story of failed female empowerment, when what the story really is about is about failure to abide by commitment, attempts to hide from your true nature, attempts to find romantic love in place of affectionate love.
And it's got some really deep thoughts on the human condition that are not necessarily completely apparent from reading Anna Karenina.
When you read Anna Karenina, people tend to read it as sort of a bad, not a bad romance novel, but as an over, Overly long romance novel with Anna Karenina, who's having an affair, and then she kills herself at the end by throwing herself under the train.
200 years later, spoiler alert.
But the story is really not about that.
That ignores at least two-thirds of the actual plot and the other characters in the story.
Like all Tolstoy novels, Anna Karenina is sprawling.
I mean, really sprawling.
Covers a lot of ground.
But Gary Solomonsen does a wonderful job of weaving all those strands back together, so go check it out.
Anna Karenina in our time.
It's really a fun read if you're into literature.
Time for some things that I hate.
So, I just have to feel really bad for this dude.
So, this is a picture of a dude who was crushed a couple thousand years ago.
So, Pompeii, right?
Remember this big volcano?
This guy escaped the volcano, then a giant rock fell on his head.
So, yesterday his body was discovered.
He had the second worst day after Roseanne, yesterday, this guy.
So that's just, you know, and the good news for him is he will live on in meme history forever, given the nature of those pictures.
know.
Oh, man.
The last thing that went through his head was that rock.
That's terrible.
What a terrible story.
You know what?
I have to revert.
I forgot again.
I was going to do it yesterday.
Quick thing that I like, and then I'll go back to some more things that I hate.
So on Monday evening, I had a chance to meet with Nikki Haley-Spring.
So I actually got to meet my spirit animal.
So the world did not implode when I met my spirit animal, Nikki Haley, at the UN.
I did, in fact, meet the UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, and I met her son, who's an awesome kid, Nalen, who listens to the show.
And it was great.
It was a blast.
So I just wanted to give a shout out to Ambassador Haley, as well as mostly Nalen, who's a really great kid and really politically active and doing great work out there.
And that was a blast.
That was that was really cool.
Just wanted to just want to note that.
OK, now back to things I hate.
So that was enough liking things.
So back to things I hate.
So there was a video.
That was going around the Internet of this black woman ranting at a Jewish man on a subway.
OK, this was going around the Internet because it's really quite incredible.
That tweeted out said this is what it's like to be on the subway in New York.
Here is a little bit of the video.
You said I'm being racist, so you tell me what I'm being racist towards.
Because you're Jewish, and I said if a Jewish family got on here, somebody would have got up.
That is not a racist statement.
That is a factual statement.
No, no, we're different.
Understand that.
No, we are different.
You know why?
Because your people treat my people different in our community.
The f*** you talking about?
You treat us different in our community!
You don't even rent to us!
What the f*** are you talking about?
Okay, so here's what happened in this video.
Okay, this is a pretty crazy video.
What happened in this video is a black woman got on the subway with three kids, and nobody stood up for her.
And this guy, this Jewish guy, was already standing.
And a second black woman started chiding the people in the subway for not standing up for the black woman.
Then she said, if this were a Jewish family getting on, you'd stand up.
Which she has no evidence for.
My guess is that people wouldn't stand up.
I've been on subways with Jewish families where people don't stand up, okay?
This happens all the time.
People in New York are incredibly rude.
Sorry to break it to you, but that's your reputation.
And so this Jewish guy says, well, that's kind of racist.
Like, why are you saying that they'd stand up for a Jewish family but not for a black family?
And then she says, no, Jews are racist because you won't rent to us.
And then he says, well, why don't you stop talking about groups and just talk about you, like, as an individual.
Talk about you and me.
And he says, well, we're not the same.
We're not individuals.
So there are a couple of notes that I have about this video.
So note number one is people say vile things all the time, and very few people are willing to stand up and say something.
Good for this Jewish guy for saying something when this lady started ranting in racist fashion about Jews.
Second of all, where are all the other people on the subway?
So while all this is going on, apparently people still don't stand up to actually get up and let the kids sit down.
And second of all, nobody on the subway actually says to the lady, listen, calm down.
This has nothing to do with group politics or racism.
Maybe you should cut that out.
And when people stop acting out of decency and start acting out of a sense of entitlement, things get really ugly.
And when people sit there and allow it to go forward, things get even uglier.
There's this great movie, and I'm trying to remember.
I've recommended it on the show before.
It takes place on a subway.
It takes place on a New York subway.
It's called The Incident.
That's what it's called.
And it has this big cast.
There's Beau Bridges, and Ruby Dee, and Jack Guilford, and Ed McMahon, and Brock Peters, and Thelma Ritter, and Jan Sterling.
And the basic premise of the film is that these two criminals get onto a subway car and then start harassing one by one the passengers on the car, and people are not able to stand up to them.
The only person who's willing to stand up to them is Beau Bridges, who plays a soldier on the car.
Things have not changed since 1967.
Okay, the same thing is happening on subways today, because again, it is human nature.
I've talked a lot about human nature today, but it is indeed human nature for a lot of folks to believe that they're better off if they just sit there and allow bad things to happen in front of them.
Okay, final thing that I hate.
Trevor Noah Who, as I've said, has been in a running gun battle with Samantha Bee, and Amy Schumer is on this list, and Lena Dunham is also on this list for least funny person in America.
So Trevor Noah was on CNN.
Again, amazing how CNN will give Trevor Noah all sorts of room to run with regard to his political viewpoints, even though he's just a comedian, of course.
And he comes out, he says, Trump is ripe for comedy and Obama is not.
That's why we make fun of Trump all the time.
It cannot be more apparent.
One is ripe for comedy.
For instance, Donald Trump has left no contradiction unturned.
That's his thing.
Donald Trump is a gift to every level of comedy.
If you want to apply comedy or satire at the lowest level, Donald Trump is ripe for that.
You don't have to dig deeper.
But if you do dig deeper, you will get more from him as well.
You know, Obama was, like many politicians, a water table that is buried far beneath the surface.
So to get to the right joke and the right piece of satire that would really illuminate what Obama was doing, you had to dig through so many layers and work through the weeds to get to the water table of jokes.
No, so this is actually not true.
Okay, so here's the truth about comedy.
Trump is an inherently funnier person than Barack Obama, no question.
I mean, the guy's funny.
Like, the whole thing's hilarious.
Like, the day he was elected, the night he was elected, there's a tape of me laughing for two straight minutes when someone calls him President Donald Trump, because it's just funny.
The whole situation is hilarious.
In terms of what you can get better comedy out of, the truth is the easy comedy is not always the best comedy.
And you're seeing this on SNL, where they're going for low-hanging fruit and they're failing on a routine basis.
Where Alec Baldwin, his impression of Donald Trump is not particularly funny because he doesn't like Donald Trump.
Because it's too easy to kind of mock Donald Trump for being Donald Trump.
The truth is that the pretensions of Barack Obama were ripe for comedy.
Barack Obama was the most pretentious Jerk in the Oval Office in a long time.
A guy who really thought he was above it all.
He thought he was this sort of Jesus-esque figure, and he really wasn't.
He was a selfie-stick president.
There was a lot of potential for comedy there.
It's just that folks on the left don't think Barack Obama is funny because they see him the same way Obama sees himself.
That was the big problem.
Obama saw himself as this grand, unifying, Jesus-esque figure, and so did the people in Hollywood.
So they saw no way to make a joke.
You can't make a joke about Jesus when you believe in him, right?
So the same thing is true for Barack Obama.
Not true of Trump.
They don't like Trump.
But that means that their comedy ain't all that funny about Trump.
It's usually them just making a face into camera and look how stupid Trump is.
That's not inherently funny.
What's inherently funny is the ridiculous...
I am above it nature of Barack Obama.
They could have been played for laughs if any of these people bothered to actually make a move in that direction.
They weren't ever going to make that move.
It's, you know, again, I think very silly that the comedic world has suddenly rediscovered its funny bone as soon as Trump became president.
There's plenty to laugh at in the Obama administration, for sure.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all of the latest.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and 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 Ford Publishing production.
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