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June 4, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Tide Goes Out On The Blue Wave | Ep. 552

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	The Supreme Court rules in favor of religious bakers, Democrats struggle for the House majority, and Bernie Sanders makes the stupidest statements about Disney ever.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	So much news I couldn't even mention it all in the tease before the show.
	Bill Clinton also was on TV a lot.
	And we all remember now why Donald Trump is president with Bill Clinton on TV talking about where he stores his cigars.
	We have a lot to get to today.
	Before we get to any of that, I have a few announcements.
	So first of all, we've decided to honor Father's Day this year with a special live stream.
	So on Tuesday, June 12th at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring is going to host a roundtable discussion with me and Andrew Klavan and Michael Knowles as well.
	We are going to sit around and chat about all of the things.
	We'll discuss what fatherhood means and why fathers matter, and how fatherhood will stand up against an increasingly anti-male culture.
	And subscribers will be able to write in live questions for us to answer on the air, so you should subscribe now so you can write those live questions, and then we'll care about what you have to say.
	Again, that's Tuesday, June 12th, 7 p.m.
	Eastern, 4 p.m.
	Pacific, and you can find our live stream on Facebook and YouTube to watch, so don't miss it.
	Also, more good news for podcast listeners.
	Ben Shapiro's show, along with our other Daily Wire podcasts, is now available on Amazon Alexa and the Google Home device.
	So now your home could be filled with the rich, supple tones of my voice with the simple voice command.
	But first, you have to activate the show.
	So with Alexa, you have to enable the skill.
	It's like adding an app.
	You say, Alexa, enable the Ben Shapiro Show skill.
	And then you can tell her to play or open.
	Alexa, play the Ben Shapiro Show.
	And then Google doesn't need to be added by a user, but you have to speak very clearly for her to understand because I don't know what Google's problem is.
	But just say a command like, OK, Google, talk to The Ben Shapiro Show, or OK, Google, speak to The Ben Shapiro Show, and now your device should be able to play my podcast and your quality of life will improve immeasurably.
	If you need to review those directions, just go over to the pin posts on Daily Wire Twitter and Daily Wire Facebook to check it out.
	OK, now that's not the only announcement.
	Also, we have to say thank you to our sponsors over at LegalZoom.
	So.
	It's time for that mid-year check-in.
	It's almost halfway through the year, folks.
	This is crazy.
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	All right.
	So just breaking before today's show.
	The big news was that the Supreme Court has ruled in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case.
	So if you don't remember the Masterpiece Cake Shop case, this is a case where a guy owned a bakery, and this gay couple came in in 2012, and they wanted a cake for their same-sex wedding, and he said, no, I'm a religious baker, so no.
	And he'd be happy to sell them a cake.
	If they were just gay people who want a cake, you'd be happy to give them their cake because who cares?
	But they wanted a cake that said on it, you know, happy wedding to Bob and Joe or whatever it was.
	And this Christian baker said, listen, I'm not going to be part of forwarding what I think is a sin, which seems like a basic American freedom.
	Well, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission immediately cracked down on the guy and tried to basically run him out of business for this grave and horrible sin.
	We've seen the same sort of issue arise with Baronelle Stutzman up in the state of Oregon, where Baronelle Stutzman was Washington, Washington.
	Baronelle Stutzman, where Baronelle Stutzman was a florist and she didn't want to do floral arrangements for a lesbian wedding.
	And then she was basically run out of business by the state.
	We've seen the same thing with photographers in New Mexico.
	So we've seen this sort of thing happening all over the country.
	So the Supreme Court avoided the big issue.
	So the headline that you're hearing today from the left is, OK, first of all, here's my view of this case and every other case like it.
	I do not believe that it is the government's job to tell you who you can and cannot do business with.
	And that includes discrimination.
	OK, I'm open about this.
	I think that if you want to discriminate against a Jew, that is your problem.
	And you know what I will do?
	I will go start an alternative business, and I will run you out of business.
	I will go to the business across the street, and they will get my patronage, and they will run you out of business.
	I think this is true across the board.
	I don't see why this is a freedom of religion issue, per se, because it seems like a freedom of association issue to me.
	Now, I understand this is unpalatable to people because we have this weird idea in America that if you don't like something, it ought to be illegal.
	Well, I don't like a lot of things.
	I don't think they ought to be illegal.
	I'm not a same-sex marriage fan.
	I don't think it ought to be illegal.
	I'm libertarian on same-sex marriage.
	I think the government should get completely out of the business of marriage.
	Well, just as I am libertarian on the issue of same-sex marriage, I'm libertarian on the issue of whether a business owner ought to be forced to cater to a particular population.
	Even if that business owner is a jerk.
	Even if that business owner is a racist or a homophobe.
	Well, you want to be a racist or a homophobe?
	Guess what?
	You're going to go out of business.
	Because that's the way the market works.
	Capitalism is the single greatest force for tolerance in the history of humanity, not government control from above.
	OK, so that's my perspective on this.
	But this case doesn't go that far.
	It also doesn't go as far as to even say that religious people have a right to act religiously in their business.
	The case doesn't even say that if you are a baker, you have the right to reject catering to a same-sex wedding.
	Instead, this case is decided 7-2 on the narrowest possible grounds, and that is the Colorado Civil Rights Commission is mean.
	Really, that's how the case was decided.
	The case is written by Anthony Kennedy, who is an excorable justice, just an awful, awful justice.
	He has never seen a copy of the Constitution, apparently, and so he just sort of wanders around in his bathrobe, and depending on whether he had his Metamucil-led bowel movement that morning, he decides how to rule.
	So here is his ruling today, delivering the opinion of the court.
	And this is a nonsensical ruling.
	It's a nonsensical ruling because it doesn't get to any key issue.
	It's good for the particular baker in this case, but it does not establish a broad principle that religious people can actually act religiously in their businesses.
	Which you would assume would be protected by freedom of religion.
	I mean, when I say freedom of religion, generally what I mean is my ability to act religiously throughout my life, including in my business.
	That's not what the Supreme Court says.
	Instead, they simply evade the issue.
	So, the court holds, and this is in the court's summary, this is the summary of the case, at the very beginning of every case, the court puts out basically a summary of the ruling.
	Here's what they hold.
	The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views, and in some instances protected forms of expression.
	Which is extraordinarily vague.
	While it is unexceptionable that Colorado law can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other members of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.
	Okay, now you ask, how is that possible?
	How is it possible that you're going to be neutral toward religion and crack down on religion while protecting same-sex couples?
	How are you going to do exactly that?
	Well, they don't answer that question.
	Instead, they just say that in this particular case, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission was mean to religious people.
	They said mean things about religious people, and that means that we can't uphold their decision in this case.
	The guy in this case is named Jack Phillips.
	He owns Masterpiece Cake Shop.
	His dilemma was understandable in 2012.
	Listen to this line.
	His dilemma was understandable in 2012, which was before Colorado recognized the validity of gay marriages performed in the state or before this court issued its decision in Obergefell.
	Given the state's position at the time, there was some force to Phillips' argument that he was not unreasonable in deeming his decision lawful.
	State law at the time also afforded shopkeepers some latitude to decline to create specific messages they considered offensive.
	Indeed, while the instant enforcement proceedings were pending, the state's civil rights division concluded in at least three cases that a baker acted lawfully in declining to create cakes with decorations that demean gay persons or gay marriages.
	Phillips, too, is entitled to a neutral and respectful consideration of his claims in all circumstances of the case.
	So let's stop there for a second.
	What they are saying is that Jack Phillips Now he'd be crazy, basically, to say that he won't serve a same-sex marriage.
	But back in 2012, when it was still illegal for same-sex people to marry in many places across the country, for people of the same sex to marry each other in many places across the country, back then, it was understandable that he was stupid.
	But now, if you tried it now, I mean, come on, it's the law of the land.
	So you can see the Supreme Court leaving the door open to not protecting the rights of somebody who, in 2016, says, I don't wish to participate in a same-sex marriage.
	Instead, they're saying, well, way back then, it was different.
	Right, back then, Obama supported traditional marriage.
	But now, everything's changed.
	So, obviously, if somebody tried to do the exact same thing now, now, of course, it would be unconstitutional.
	And then, the court continues.
	What they're saying is that the Civil Rights Commission should have been nice to Phillips.
	They were mean to Phillips, and therefore, their decision is not okay.
	Their consideration was compromised by the commission's treatment, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward the sincere religious beliefs motivating his objection.
	As the record shows, some of the commissioners at this commission's formal public hearings endorsed the view that religious beliefs cannot legitimately be carried into the public sphere or commercial domain, disparaged Phillips' face as despicable and characterized it as merely rhetorical, and compared his invocation of his sincerely held religious beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust.
	No commissioners objected to the comments, Okay, again, none of this has to do with anything.
	or disavowed in the briefs filed here, the comments thus cast doubt on the fairness and impartiality of the commission's adjudication of Phillips's case.
	Okay, again, none of this has to do with anything.
	So what they are saying is that the commission said mean things about Phillips and his religious practice.
	The reality, however, is that that should have nothing to do with whether or not Phillips's behavior is constitutional.
	This should be a very easy decision.
	People misinterpret what freedom of religion is supposed to be about.
	So the court has come up with all of these cases where they say freedom of religion provides you a special freedom, a special freedom, and that special freedom is designed in order to allow you to provide your sincerely held religious beliefs in public.
	But how do you decide what is sincerely held as opposed to non-sincerely held?
	And if you held a sincere religious belief that you should hold slaves, obviously the court wouldn't be okay with that.
	So it's not sincere religious beliefs.
	Instead, there's a three-pronged religion test that's laid forth in a case called Lemon.
	All of this is stupid.
	Okay, the reality is that what the founders believed is laid out very clearly in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
	It is laid out in two sides of the same coin.
	The Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause.
	So the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment says that the free exercise of religion shall not be abridged.
	And then it says that there shall be no establishment of religion.
	These are the same clause.
	People read them separately.
	So they say that establishment clause about the government can't put, in God we trust, on coins or some such nonsense.
	And freedom of religion is, can you smoke peyote in violation of federal drug law on a native reservation?
	That was an actual case back in the early 90s.
	Employment Division versus Smith, I believe it's called.
	But one of the problems with this reading of the First Amendment is that the whole point of the First Amendment is to protect you from the government becoming large and overbearing and encroaching.
	So what it's saying is you should not have a government that establishes a religion because that will burden other people's free exercise of religion.
	In other words, the smaller the government is, the less it's going to run into particular freedoms.
	And this is true across the board.
	It's true of freedom of association.
	It's true of freedom of speech.
	The smaller the government is, the less it is going to burden anybody's particular exercise of a freedom that they hold.
	So your freedom of religion is not going to be burdened so long as the government's not getting up in your grill.
	But now the government's up in your grill with anti-discrimination law, particularly in this case.
	And so they have decided that anti-discrimination law runs up against religious liberty concerns.
	In reality, anti-discrimination law for private businesses, to me, is a serious constitutional problem.
	I understand why people did it.
	I sympathize with the feelings for it.
	I understand that it was an attempt to wipe out discrimination in the private sector.
	I don't think it accomplished that in quite the way people think it did.
	The reality is that in order to overcome the marketplace, which does not discriminate, the marketplace hates discrimination.
	In order to overcome the marketplace, the government had to implement rules discriminating in the first place.
	I have a whole video, you can view it on YouTube, about why it is that anti-discrimination laws are significantly less important than capitalism is in removing barriers to people getting the sort of care and service that they want.
	And I point out that Jim Crow was not put in place by private people.
	Jim Crow was put in place by the government.
	It was the government literally establishing laws that prevented people from serving people in their restaurants.
	There were actual laws in the South in places like Alabama that if you owned a restaurant, you had to have a separate seating section for black people.
	And if you violated that, the government would come in and sue you for that.
	The government would come in and fine you or jail you for that.
	Because if it hadn't been for that law, then people would have just opened up their restaurants, which is exactly what happened in the early 1960s with, for example, the Woolworth counter demonstration in, I'm trying to remember which city it was, in the early 1960s before the Civil Rights Act.
	It Black people walked into Woolworth's, they said, we're not leaving, and then Woolworth's integrated.
	That's because the market works.
	The market does work.
	OK, the reason that I keep saying the market works is because the market doesn't make impositions on anybody.
	The government does.
	Again, just a second.
	I'm going to continue with the analysis of this new case, which, again, everybody is over reading.
	And actually, I don't think bodes all that well for religious freedom in the United States.
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	Okay, so back to the analysis of the Supreme Court's decision in the Masterpiece Cake Shop case.
	So they continue.
	This is, again, the summary of the case.
	They say, the consideration was compromised by the commission's treatment of Phillips' case, which showed elements of a clear and impermissible hostility toward his sincere religious beliefs.
	So they're not saying that religious people get to actually act out their religion in public or that freedom of religion really exists.
	They're just saying you're not allowed to be mean to religious people.
	Then they say, another indication of hostility is the different treatment of Phillips' case and the cases of other bakers with objections to anti-gay messages who prevailed before the The commission ruled against Phillips in part on the theory that any message not on the requested cake would be attributed to the customer, not to the baker.
	Yet the division did not address this point in any of the cases involving the requests for cakes depicting anti-gay marriage symbolism.
	So the case continues.
	For these reasons, the commission's treatment of Phillips's case violated the state's duty under the First Amendment not to base laws or regulation on hostility to a religion or religious viewpoint.
	The government, consistent with the Constitution's guarantee of free exercise, cannot impose regulations that are hostile to the religious beliefs of affected citizens and cannot act in a manner that passes judgment upon or presupposes the illegitimacy of religious beliefs and practices.
	It's a dumb decision.
	And then they say the inference here is thus, that Phillips religious objection was not considered with the neutrality required by the free exercise clause.
	The state's interest could have been weighed against Phillips sincere religious objections in a way consistent with the requisite religious neutrality that must be strictly observed.
	But the officials expressions of hostility to religion in some of the commissioner's comments were inconsistent with that requirement.
	Okay, this is a dumb decision.
	It's a dumb decision.
	Okay, again, where they're coming down is that if they had been nice about it, they could have rejected this guy's religious views.
	Nothing in the constitution says you can be nice about it and still get rid of people's religious views.
	There is no provision of the First Amendment that says free exercise of religion must be protected except when people are really nice to you.
	If they're really nice about removing your religious exercise clauses, well then we can get rid of them.
	Nothing in the Constitution says all this.
	And that's exactly, of course, what is said in some of the dissents by members of the Supreme Court who are on the right.
	So Clarence Thomas writes, again, he always writes very good dissents.
	I really enjoy Clarence Thomas' writing.
	He says, I agree that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated Jack Phillips' right to freely exercise his religion, as Justice Gorsuch, who also wrote a dissent, explains, or concurrence, rather.
	The commission treated Phillips' case differently from a similar case involving three other bakers.
	While Phillips rightly prevails on his free exercise claim, I write separately to address his free speech claim.
	The court does not address this claim because it has some uncertainties about the record.
	And then he concludes that even after describing his conduct this way, the Court of Appeals concluded Phillips's conduct was not expressive and was not protected speech.
	It reasoned that an outside observer would think Phillips was merely complying with Colorado's public accommodations law, not expressing a message.
	This reasoning flouts bedrock principles of our free speech jurisprudence and would justify virtually any law that compels individuals to speak.
	It should not pass without comment.
	So in just a second, I'm going to go through Clarence Thomas's entire opinion, continue going through his entire opinion.
	So here's what he says.
	He says, the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the 14th Amendment, prohibits state laws that abridge the freedom of speech.
	When interpreting this command, the court has distinguished between regulations of speech and regulations of conduct.
	The latter generally do not abridge the freedom of speech, even if they impose incidental burdens on expression.
	As the court explains today, public accommodations law usually regulate conduct.
	As a general matter, public accommodations law do not target speech, but instead prohibit the act of discriminating against individuals in the provision of publicly available goods.
	So the court makes this distinction.
	I think this distinction is stupid, by the way.
	I think the distinction between free speech and free exercise of public accommodations, for example, is overstated.
	So in other words, I think it is an aspect, if it's an aspect of speech to burn a flag, I don't see why it's not an aspect of speech to say I don't want to Care for this person in my establishment.
	It may be speech you don't like.
	It may be speech that's gross.
	It may be speech I don't like.
	But I fail to see how the First Amendment doesn't protect that freedom of association or that freedom of speech.
	In any case, Thomas does respect that distinction.
	He says, although public accommodations laws generally regulate conduct, particular applications of them can burden protected speech.
	When a public accommodations law has the effect of declaring speech itself to be a public accommodation, the First Amendment applies with full force.
	And then he goes on to describe all of the ways that this is a burden on free speech for this Masterpiece Cake Shop owner.
	It says, The conduct that the Colorado Court of Appeals ascribed to Phillips, creating and designing custom wedding cakes, is expressive.
	Phillips considers himself an artist.
	The logo for Masterpiece Cake Shop is an artist's paint palette with a paintbrush and a baker's whisk.
	Behind the counter, Phillips has a picture that depicts him The same can be said of any hotelier.
	exceptional care with each cake that he creates, sketching the design out on paper, choosing the color scheme, creating the frosting and decorations, baking and sculpting the cake, decorating it, delivering it to the wedding.
	Here's why I think that Thomas's dissent here or concurrence is actually not wide enough.
	The same can be said of any hotelier.
	So you own a bed and breakfast.
	People who own bed and breakfast are very careful about how they make their bed and breakfast, right?
	They're very careful about how they do the decor.
	They're very careful about the kind of accommodations they provide.
	They're very careful about the kind of food that they cook.
	To separate artistry from business seems to me a little bit of a false distinction that people are making when it comes to First Amendment issues.
	In any case, Thomas concludes by essentially arguing that this is a violation of the First Amendment.
	The Colorado Court of Appeals was wrong to conclude that Phillips' conduct was not expressive because a reasonable observer would think he is merely complying with Colorado's public accommodations law.
	This argument would justify any law that compelled protected speech, and this court has never accepted it.
	From the beginning, this court's compelled speech precedents have rejected arguments that will resolve every issue of power in favor of those in authorities.
	So obviously, I agree with Justice Thomas here, even though I think he's making distinctions that I find unjustified in prior law.
	Then, of course, there is the leftist justice.
	You have Ginsburg who dissented and Justice Sotomayor dissenting.
	And they say basically that religion doesn't matter, free exercise doesn't matter, the government should be able to tell you to do whatever the government wants to tell you to do.
	Justice Gorsuch wrote a very good concurrence in which Justice Gorsuch makes the case that, and he joins with Justice Alito in his concurrence, in which they basically say that this does violate freedom of religion.
	They say, in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources, Vorgan v. Smith, this court held that a neutral and generally applicable law will usually survive a constitutional free exercise challenge.
	But we now know with certainty, when the government fails to act neutrally toward the free exercise of religion, it tends to run into trouble.
	Today's decision respects these principles.
	As the court explains, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission failed to act neutrally toward Jack Phillips' religious faith.
	Maybe most notably, the commission allowed three other bakers to refuse a customer's request that would have required them to violate their secular commitments.
	He says, the only wrinkle is this.
	In the face of so much evidence suggesting hostility toward Mr. Phillips' sincerely held religious beliefs, two of our colleagues have written separately to suggest that the commission acted neutrally toward his faith when it treated him differently from the other bakers, or that it could have easily done so consistent with the First Amendment.
	Though respectfully, I do not see how we might rescue the commission from its error.
	A full view of the facts helps point the way to the problem.
	Start with William Jack's case.
	He approached three bakers and asked them to prepare cakes with messages disapproving same-sex marriages on religious grounds.
	All three bakers refused Mr. Jack's request, stating they found his request offensive to their secular convictions.
	Mr. Jack responded by filing complaints with the Colorado Civil Rights Division.
	He pointed to the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination against customers in public accommodations because of religious creed, sexual orientation, or certain other traits.
	And then Mr. Jack was given the go-ahead.
	And then he compares that, Gorsuch does, So of course, Justice Gorsuch is right about all of this also.
	He says, the facts show these two cases share all legally salient features.
	In both cases, the effect on the customer was the same.
	Bakers refused service to persons who bore a statutorily protected trait, religious faith, or sexual orientation.
	But in both cases, the bakers refused service intending only to honor a personal conviction.
	And here's his point.
	His point is you can't treat these two things disparately just because you change the language.
	So, of course, Justice Gorsuch is right about all of this also.
	Okay.
	Now, in just a second, I want to get to the fact that Democrats' extremism on issues related to everything from this case to just general politics are putting them behind the eight ball when it comes to elections.
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	Okay, so.
	Bad news for the Democrats.
	First of all, the Supreme Court decision that came out earlier today that basically suggests that Democrats have overstepped their boundaries, it does go to the attitude many Democrats have toward public policy.
	So this decision was essentially decided on the basis Well, Democrats still don't get this.
	They still don't get that the more nasty and vile they are, and the worse their policy is, the less people are interested in working with them under most circumstances.
	So there's a poll out today that shows that Democrats are basically in a dead heat with Republicans for taking back the House.
	According to CBS News' YouGov battleground tracker, how many districts the Democrats would get and how many Republicans would get as of today, the 2018 looks like a toss-up for control at the moment.
	Democrats would most likely get 219 seats if the election were held today, which is only one more than the 218 needed for a majority in the Republicans' 216.
	The margin of error on this model is nine seats, so control is totally up for grabs.
	If you would have told me six months ago that Donald Trump would be the President of the United States, would be riding in the low 40s in the approval ratings, and that Democrats would not be able to retake the House, I would have thought you were insane.
	But this is how bad Democrats are at everything.
	And maybe the reason Democrats are bad at everything is because they're both nasty and they have bad policy.
	Bernie Sanders is the most obvious case of this.
	So Bernie Sanders, who's become the ideological thought leader of the Democratic Party, which is an incredible thing for a man who loves pudding this much to become the ideological thought leader of the Democratic Party.
	It says that we live in a new era, an era in which everybody appreciates pudding a lot.
	But Bernie Sanders, over the weekend, he was campaigning in Orange County.
	Why is he in Orange County?
	Isn't he from Vermont, you ask?
	Why yes, but Bernie doesn't know where he is, so what the hell?
	He gives the same speech in Orange County, he doesn't in Vermont.
	In any case, he goes to Orange County, and he is stumping for a $15 minimum wage in Orange County, and he is particularly directing his ire at Disneyland.
	Now, when you strike at Disneyland, you strike near my soul.
	Okay, Disneyland is a wonderful place.
	How dare you, sir?
	Disneyland is one of the best-run places in all of America.
	They have 30,000 employees.
	They're the single largest employer in Orange County.
	Disneyland, also, it's hilarious.
	No matter how much social justice warrior-ing you do, you're not immune from the evils and the anger of Bernie Sanders.
	So, Disneyland is a very left place, right?
	Disneyland has their gay pride days, and they have everything over at Disneyland that fosters the sort of left-leaning politics of Disney as a company.
	Doesn't matter.
	Bernie Sanders wants to come after you, Disney.
	Bernie Sanders will come after you.
	He's pushing $15 minimum wage in Orange County.
	And here's Bernie Sanders railing on Disneyland because Disneyland does not sell proper pudding.
	Instead, they only have those churros.
	And it hurts my teeth because my dentures cannot chew through the churros.
	But if they would sell pudding, everything would be much better.
	Here's Bernie Sanders in Orange County.
	Go. - - And shaming the Disney corporation.
	Shaming them.
	Because I want to hear the moral defects.
	We're in a church now.
	I want to hear the moral defense of a company that makes $9 billion in profits, $400 million for their CEOs, and has a 30-year worker going hungry.
	Tell me how that is run.
	I'm hungry also.
	OK, so would he like to hear a formal defense?
	Because I have one.
	I mean, if he wants to hear one or a moral defense.
	Here's my moral defense.
	Disney hires 200,000 people across the United States.
	200,000 people across the United States.
	Bernie Sanders once worked in a Vermont commune.
	They could not even keep him employed.
	Seriously, the story is that he was so lazy he would sit around talking politics all day and he wouldn't go out and, like, work the earth or something.
	And the Vermont commune had to get rid of him.
	So here's the defense of Disney, okay?
	Number one, Disney, as the largest employer in Orange County, one of the reasons they have such a good profit margin is because they actually treat their workers pretty well.
	People want to work at Disney.
	This is simple supply and... demand and supply, okay?
	This is a simple supply-demand curve.
	Bottom line is, there are lots of people who want to work at Disney.
	Many people cannot work at Disney.
	That means that there is a higher supply than there is a demand.
	This means that Disney cannot pay all these people tons and tons of money.
	But, that said, Disney is actually a pretty good employer.
	Here are the facts.
	Disney has been in negotiations with unions like the Master Services Council, which represents nearly 10,000 cast members, and Disney has already offered a plan that would get to $15 minimum wage by 2020.
	The state of California, which has endorsed $15 minimum wage, it won't arrive until 2022.
	So Disney has already offered a deal that would get to $15 minimum wage by 2020.
	Disney has also increased the number of their employees by 50% over the last decade.
	Maybe that might have to do with their hiring practices.
	And if they don't pay people exorbitant fees for dressing up in Chippendale costumes and running around the park, and they're not paying people $800 an hour to dress up as Chippendale.
	Okay, hourly cast members already receive overtime and premiums.
	Nearly nine in 10 leadership workers and operations started off as hourly employees because it turns out minimum wage jobs are designed to move you beyond minimum wage jobs, okay?
	And in 2017, more than 2,000 part-time workers, like 2,200 part-time workers, became full-time.
	Furthermore, Disneyland Resort pays an average of $13,500 per family for full-time workers' medical premiums.
	Now, one of the things is very weird.
	Bernie Sanders says, oh, it's just unaffordable what Disney's doing.
	Look at what they're doing.
	It's just so terrible.
	Sanders doesn't ever look at his home state.
	Like, is he ever in Vermont, Bernie Sanders?
	Does he ever spend any time in Vermont?
	Because if he looked at his home state, he might notice that according to an out-of-reach report from the National Law Income Housing Coalition, Vermonters have to work 1.7 full-time minimum wage jobs to afford a one-bedroom rental home.
	So minimum wage won't pay for a one-bedroom rental home in Vermont.
	Vermont has the fifth highest shortfall between average renter wage and two-bedroom housing wage.
	By the way, the other four that are ahead of them, California clocks in third, Hawaii, Maryland, and New Jersey.
	Notice anything about those five states?
	Notice anything about those five states I just mentioned?
	All blue.
	All deep blue states which have a massive shortfall between average renter wage and two-bedroom housing wage.
	Shocking!
	Shocking!
	Why is it that a state like California that has boosted its minimum wage, supremely progressive, why is it no one can afford rent?
	Well, because it's governed by Democrats.
	And as I will explain in a minute, it turns out Democratic policy across the board is hot garbage on this sort of stuff.
	So now, Bernie Sanders wants to do for Orange County what Democrats did for Seattle.
	Go after Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, raise the minimum wage, drive business out.
	That's exactly what's happened in Seattle, by the way.
	According to a University of Washington study, quote, employees increased wages, which you'd expect given the mandate of law, but they also cut hours and they cut jobs.
	And so in just a second, I'm going to talk about California, the state that Bernie Sanders is targeting right now.
	There's a great article by Michael Schellenberger over at Forbes I want to talk about.
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	Alrighty, so.
	I want to discuss how California is failing.
	I want to discuss Bill Clinton.
	We still haven't gotten to Bill Clinton.
	I want to discuss Melania missing.
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	So while Bernie Sanders is standing around complaining about minimum wage in Orange County, it is worth noting that California is a hellhole.
	Okay.
	And I say that advisably.
	I've lived my entire life in California.
	It is headed precisely the wrong direction.
	So there's a great piece by Michael Schellenberger over at Forbes.com talking about what has happened here.
	So what he basically suggests is that it's a real-life Elysium.
	He says, homeless encampments of hundreds of people have cropped up around the state in the last two years.
	Occasionally, they are ravaged by hepatitis A, which killed 20 people last year.
	In Silicon Valley, 132 people died on the street in 2016, up from 85 in 2015.
	In San Diego, 117 people died on the streets, up from 56.
	And last year, San Diego City workers nearly killed a homeless person after accidentally throwing her and the tent she was sleeping in into the back of a garbage truck.
	So, well done everybody in California.
	Meanwhile, You can buy a really expensive house in California.
	I know, I have one.
	It is true that workers in California earn 11% more than counterparts nationally, but that's not enough to make up for mortgage payments and rents that are 44% and 37% higher, respectively, than the national average.
	56% of Californians could afford a middle-class home in 2012.
	In the third quarter of 2017, just 28% could.
	Okay, this is the way that people escape poverty, is by buying a home in the United States, largely.
	For about 40 years, from 1930 to 1970, black families were channeled into renting rooms and denied loans, whereas white families were encouraged to buy homes.
	Richard Rothstein explains, it was that primary discrimination that kept African Americans out of white suburbs, and then affordability.
	So once the prices rose, black families couldn't even buy into a lot of these areas.
	Environmentalism is used to justify de facto racial segregation in California housing as well.
	Environmental lawsuits are a major reason for longer delays and higher costs of new housing.
	Last September, Governor Jerry Brown signed housing legislation that will raise $250 million per year to subsidize housing, but that's just enough to subsidize about a little under 2,000 units annually at a time when 100,000 to 200,000 annual units are needed.
	So it's all of this left policy.
	All these people who are saying that California is too progressive, I mean, that it's too right-wing, and that's why you have problems like Orange County.
	No, it's that California is too progressive, and that's why you have problems like the problems in Orange County.
	It's just foolishness all the way through.
	And it's no shock.
	Progressive policy everywhere when taken to its extreme fails.
	California is no exception to all of this.
	This is why you're seeing a massive drain in Venezuela.
	It's funny.
	I was walking through New York last week.
	As you saw, we talked about last week.
	I met with Nikki Haley.
	She was walking down Embassy Road there.
	And I walked past the Venezuelan embassy.
	And I said to Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring, I said to him, inside that building is the luckiest person in Venezuela, because that person is not in Venezuela.
	That person is in New York, eating good food and not dog.
	There's a reason that all of these socialist countries are failing.
	It's a reason that California is failing as well.
	OK, so meanwhile, let's talk a little bit about Bill Clinton.
	So Bill Clinton is back in the news.
	For all people on the left, you can't understand why so many people on the right don't care about the moral The moral silliness and moral evils of President Trump.
	Let's travel back just 20 years, 20 short years, to when Bill Clinton was President of the United States and schtuping his interns with cigars.
	Let's just recall that.
	And then let's recall that Bill Clinton's wife ran for election in 2016 and that Bill Clinton would have been the First Lady of the United States if Hillary Clinton had won.
	Okay, maybe you can start to imagine why it is that maybe our standards have dropped off a little bit for presidents of the United States.
	So Bill Clinton is back on the press trail.
	That's because he's now co-written a book with James Patterson, meaning neither one of them wrote it, but they both stuck their name on it.
	And Bill Clinton was talking about the presidency, and it got real awkward because he was asked specifically about Monica Lewinsky and crying about Monica Lewinsky and apologizing to Monica Lewinsky.
	This is clip 16.
	Did you ever apologize to her?
	Yes, and nobody believes That I got out of that for free.
	I left the White House $16 million in debt.
	But you typically have ignored gaping facts.
	Okay, so he's going with the deadbroke line.
	So he's going with the deadbroke.
	And then he was asked specifically about apologizing to Monica Lewinsky.
	And he said that he has not apologized to him, that he has apologized to Monica Lewinsky because he apologized to everyone.
	And then he went into Bill Clinton lecture mode, right?
	He's got his bony finger and started wagging it at people.
	Yeah, I can't imagine why people, and this is my favorite part, he says that he couldn't be elected today, Bill Clinton.
	He says that, no, I couldn't win today.
	I couldn't win today because I'm too nice.
	I'm too kind.
	Here's what he had to say.
	I don't like all this.
	I couldn't be elected to anything now because I just don't like embarrassing people.
	My mother would have whipped me for five days in a row when I was a little boy if I spent all my time bad-mouthing people like this.
	Okay, you literally had your campaign go out and say that if you drag a 20 through a trailer park, a bunch of women would follow it.
	In defense of your behavior with Kathleen Willey, in your defense with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky and Jennifer Flowers.
	Bill Clinton was a garbage human, okay?
	He is a garbage human.
	The fact that Bill Clinton is so widely beloved is because he is exactly the same as Trump in the sense that everybody knows that he's a grifter.
	Everybody knows he's a grifter.
	He's an honest grifter.
	He's honest about his grifting.
	Everybody knew that he was grifting for years, and he still continues to grift.
	I just love that he's now going to be the moral voice of the Democratic Party.
	Yeah, good luck with that.
	I love that James Patterson is sitting there like, I can't believe this.
	And James Patterson's just sitting there right next to him like, I can't believe I have to be here for this interview.
	This is so awkward.
	This is so terrible and so awkward.
	And then Bill Clinton said, you know, if this were a Democrat in office, we'd be impeaching that Democrat already.
	I think if the roles were reversed, now this is me just talking, but it's based on my experience.
	If there were a Democratic president and these facts were present, most people I know in Washington believe impeachment hearings would have begun already.
	Okay, that's probably true because Republicans run the Congress, but if Democrats ran the Congress, impeachment hearings would not have begun already because Democrats voted not to impeach President Clinton, who openly lied.
	He perjured himself.
	And he lied to the American people.
	And nobody seemed to care.
	So if you're wondering, look, there's a big gap.
	I've talked about this before.
	There's a big gap between Republicans over the age of 60 and Republicans under the age of 40.
	Republicans under the age of 40, when they look at President Trump, they see a guy who fibs a lot, who's dishonest, who has behaved egregiously in his personal life, and they don't like any of that.
	Republicans over the age of 60, they remember Bill Clinton.
	They remember this guy.
	And they say, well, I'm not going to be lectured on morality by the same people who ran around telling me that Bill Clinton was a defensible guy, that Bill Clinton was a wonderful human being, and that anyone who criticized Bill Clinton was doing so only because of their prurient interest in sex.
	This is a real gap in knowledge base between people who are under 40 and people who are over 60 in the Republican Party.
	I'm not saying people who are under 40 are wrong about President Trump.
	I am saying that when Democrats say, why are Republicans so much in Trump's camp?
	It's because they're not going to take lectures seriously from people who pretend that JFK and Bill Clinton were standard-bearers for morality and values and virtue.
	Because that's just silly.
	It's just silly.
	Okay, now, speaking of President Trump, we do have to get to President Trump's comments Over the weekend.
	So President Trump went on Twitter, as he is so apt to do, and he decided that it'd be worthwhile tweeting a bunch of things about the Russia investigation.
	By the way, it is never worthwhile tweeting a bunch of things about the Russia investigation.
	President Trump has done a good job of undermining sort of the credibility of that investigation.
	But now he's talking about pardoning himself openly.
	So he started tweeting things like this.
	Mark Penn, why are there people?
	Well, here's this.
	We'll do this one.
	Okay.
	As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to pardon myself.
	But why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?
	In the meantime, the never-ending witch hunt led by 13 very angry and conflicted Democrats, capital A, capital C, capital D, and others continues into the midterms.
	So the reason that he's bringing up pardoning himself is because Rudy Giuliani brought up the idea of Trump pardoning himself.
	Here's what he had to say.
	He's not, but he probably does.
	He has no intention of pardoning himself, but he probably does.
	It doesn't say he can't.
	I mean, that's another really interesting constitutional argument.
	Can the president pardon himself?
	Do you think it's an open question?
	I used to run the pardon attorney.
	It would be an open question.
	I think it would probably get answered by, gosh, that's what the Constitution says.
	And if you want to change it, change it.
	But yeah.
	Okay, so the assumption of the Constitution is probably the president could pardon himself, but he'd get impeached.
	If the president committed a crime worthy of pardoning himself, he would probably be impeached.
	But in any case, bringing this sort of thing up is not particularly helpful.
	When you're trying not to look guilty, it's probably not good to even be discussing this.
	Like Giuliani's answer should have been, when asked, could the president pardon himself?
	His actual answer should have been, why are you even asking me this?
	He's not guilty of anything, so why would he possibly want to pardon himself, right?
	That's the proper answer.
	Instead, you have both Giuliani and the president talking about pardoning himself.
	It's just bad politics.
	And then, apparently, Giuliani told HuffPost on Sunday, quote, in no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted, the president of the United States.
	I don't know how you can indict while he's in office, no matter what it is.
	So in any case, so the president is apparently above law.
	He says, if he shot James Comey, he'd be impeached the next day.
	Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to him.
	That is not correct.
	Okay, so the president could be brought up on state murder charges if you were to shoot James Comey, but this is one of the really weird things about the Obama versus the Trump administration.
	So there are a lot of people who believe that the Trump administration is broadening the expanse of presidential powers, that President Trump has widened the number of powers available to the office and deepened the powers already available to the office of the executive.
	And because he mouths off about it a lot.
	The reality is that Trump really has not, he really has not expanded the power of the executive in any major way.
	In fact, most everything that he is doing has been a revision of powers that Obama already grabbed or he has tossed in the legislature.
	He's actually revising regulations that Obama put in place in the first place.
	He has almost a precisely opposite tactic to President Obama when it comes to presidential power.
	So Obama would go out there and say, I'm not changing anything.
	There's nothing.
	We don't have the power to do that.
	We don't.
	22 times, President Obama says, we don't have the power to unilaterally suspend immigration law.
	We can't do that.
	That's crazy.
	We'd never do that.
	And then, of course, he goes ahead and does it.
	Right.
	So President Obama had a nasty habit of saying he was not expanding presidential power while expanding presidential power.
	President Trump has a nasty habit of saying that he can expand presidential power and then not expanding presidential power.
	The best of all worlds would be to say, no, I don't want to expand presidential power, and no, it oughtn't be expanded, and we're not going to expand it, and we're going to kick more stuff over to the legislature.
	That's what everybody should be doing, but nobody's actually going to do that, which is really sort of silly.
	Trump is not going to have to pardon himself because he's not going to be brought up on charges, is the reality.
	President Trump fulminating over this stuff just makes it, this is my opinion, President Trump should stop fulminating over this stuff.
	He should let the investigation go forward.
	Everybody who believes the investigation is corrupt already believes the investigation is corrupt.
	Now, the only case to be made in favor of the tweets is that I guess it distracts from everything else he's doing.
	And the media are chasing President Trump around in his comments on this stuff like a cat following a laser pointer.
	But I'm just not sure that when President Trump tweets about stormtrooper tactics, it's particularly useful.
	Here's what President Trump tweeted yesterday.
	Quote, Mark Penn.
	Why are there people from the Clinton Foundation on the Mueller staff?
	Why is there an independent counsel?
	To go after people and their families for unrelated offenses.
	Constitution was set up to prevent this.
	Stormtrooper tactics, almost.
	A disgrace.
	No, actually, this is not a stormtrooper tactic, okay?
	Stormtroopers were people who literally busted down doors illegally in the middle of the night without any warrant whatsoever and no legal basis for their action.
	That's not the same thing as setting up an independent counsel who was set up, I should mention, by a Trump appointee.
	I should just point that out a little bit, and that Trump can fire at any time.
	Again, does any of this have any real impact?
	I don't think any of this has any real impact on President Trump, but it does lend an air of chaos to the administration that is not useful when the president should be busily pursuing better policy.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	Things that I like.
	So today, I'm going to discuss Ad Nauseam Solo.
	So, if you have not seen Solo yet, you're probably not going to because it's not doing very well at the box office, which is too bad because I actually really like this movie.
	I thought this movie was fun.
	I thought it had nothing to do with Han Solo, kind of.
	It had a lot of references to Han Solo.
	It was sort of a giant reference to Han Solo.
	Here's a little bit of the preview in case you missed it.
	You're after something.
	Is it revenge?
	Money.
	Or is it something else?
	You look good.
	A little rough around the edges, but good.
	Heard about a job.
	Big shot gangster putting together a crew.
	Okay, so here are my thoughts on this film.
	So let's start off with the 30,000 foot thoughts on this film and where it fits in the Star Wars canon and universe.
	So let's start off with the fact that The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi are hot, flaming garbage.
	Okay, they are flaming garbage.
	I said this after The Force Awakens came out.
	They murdered my childhood because Han Solo was the coolest character in the original series and then they killed him for no reason.
	At all.
	They brought him back just to kill him because Harrison Ford said he wanted to be killed off.
	So stupid.
	So dumb.
	If you're gonna do a nostalgia play, what you do is you have everybody have kids, and then you have everybody retire off into the distance, and that's it.
	Okay, what you don't do is kill off beloved characters by making them divorced loser fathers who are flying around in their 67 Durango, you know, and then they come back just to get murdered by their child.
	Like, that's so dumb.
	Han Solo was the coolest guy in the galaxy, and you turned him into the guy who abandoned his kid when his kid was like 11, and then he runs around being an idiot.
	Like, it's just, it's, ugh, so stupid.
	The Force Awakens still makes me angry.
	So I'd gotten over that anger, and then I saw Solo.
	And the reason that I got angry after seeing Solo is because, once again, You cannot kill off a key character and then make three prequels about him, which was supposed to be the idea here.
	This was going to be a trilogy.
	You don't kill off a beloved character for many of us who grew up on these movies and then say, let me tell you the backstory of the character we just killed off in the stupidest possible way.
	That's just idiotic.
	Beyond that, they recast Han Solo, right?
	They cast him as Alden Ehrenreich, which is fine.
	Alden Ehrenreich, I thought, did a just... I think he's a very good actor, by the way.
	He's even Hale Caesar.
	He's really versatile.
	He does a lot of good things.
	And Donald Glover as Lando works perfectly.
	All of this is good.
	There's a bunch of good things about this movie that are callouts.
	I'm not a big fan of the newly minted importance of the dice that are on the Millennium Falcon.
	Now it's like every other shot in this movie is the shot of the dice to reunite it with the importance of the Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, which is just dumb.
	It was never important in the original movies.
	I didn't even know there were dice on the Millennium Falcon until I saw Force Awakens and people made a big deal out of it.
	Really, I didn't even realize there were dice up there.
	It was supposed to be like a little joke, I guess.
	But in any case...
	I mean, in any case, if they're going to recast Han Solo, I guess the objection was that we couldn't recast Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher because they were too iconic.
	And so if we're going to do movies after Return of the Jedi, then those movies had to fast forward to the current age where the actors are, and then we have to work within that framework.
	But if you're going to recast Han Solo as Alden Ehrenreich, why didn't you, for example, just recast Donald Glover as Lando, Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, why didn't you just recast Mark Hamill Everybody will get it, right?
	It'll be like James Bond.
	Okay, so it's just a new person who's coming in who's playing these characters for a new generation.
	That's fine.
	It would've been okay.
	People would've had a hard time with it at the beginning.
	I probably would've moaned about it a little bit.
	And then, if the movie had been really good, it would've been good.
	Instead, you get the whole expanded universe of Force Awakens and Last Jedi, which are just terrible because, again, you're fast-forwarding 30 years, the Rebellion is still the Rebellion for some odd reason, and everybody's turned into a loser.
	Luke's off on a planet being a loser somewhere, and he never had kids, and he never did anything useful, and you've got Rey, who no one cares about, you've got Finn, who no one cares about, you've got Poe, who no one cares about, and you've got Han Solo getting killed like a loser, Luke, like, astral projecting himself and then dying out of exhaustion, which is just ridiculous, and then you've got Carrie Fisher, who actually is dead now, and you're stuck because she's dead, right?
	In real life.
	So, what they could have done, and I think this would have been so much better, because I've talked up the Star Wars books before, I've talked up the novels that used to be part of the canon, After Star Wars, after the Death Star is destroyed in Return of the Jedi, there is still an entire empire out there.
	It's not like the entire empire was on the Death Star.
	They destroyed the first Death Star and the entire empire was still around.
	In the books, there's a guy named Admiral Thrawn who comes along and he starts to reconstitute the empire.
	Then you could have had a continuation of the universe.
	You could have recast everybody and you could have just continued from there.
	And it would have been really cool and really interesting.
	In the books, Leia ends up having twins with Han.
	There's this whole thing where the twins have the Force or not.
	Luke ends up getting married.
	Like there's a lot more stuff that happens in that series than basically them just hanging out and being losers for 30 years, which is what happens beginning with The Force Awakens.
	So the point is, you could go one of two directions.
	Either you could recast everybody, or you could fast forward 60 years and then just don't pay attention to the old characters because killing them off one by one is a real attempt to destroy, to use nostalgia to destroy my childhood Okay, so that is objection number one.
	Objection to Solo, the movie, is that the Alden Ehrenreich character really doesn't have much to do with Han Solo, so he has his backstory.
	I don't think Han Solo needed a backstory.
	I think they're adding this in an attempt to add to the backstory.
	The problem with Han Solo's character in this film is that I think what they're trying to do, and maybe they were gonna get there with the trilogy, but that may never happen now, They're trying to show how an optimistic, sprightly young lad, kind of a Luke Skywalker figure, ends up like Han Solo.
	So it's not that Han is naturally cynical.
	It's that Han used to be really idealistic and all this sort of stuff, and then Han became cynical.
	But this movie doesn't show how he becomes cynical.
	This movie just has him still being idealistic.
	Like, he and Luke Skywalker are much more similar than the Elden Arrogant Han Solo and the Han Solo Han Solo that we've come to know and love.
	Lando is played exactly right.
	Like, Donald Glover gets that on the nose.
	The script writing for Han is a little flawed.
	There are some things about the movie that I love.
	I mean, the way that they have Han and chewy meat is really great.
	Like, that really works, and it's really funny, and it's really good.
	I think Woody Harrelson does a good job in the film.
	There's a whole weird kind of SJW side plot with robot rights that I'm not sure if they were supposed to be playing for laughs or whether they were supposed to be playing it seriously.
	But I don't really have a problem with the movie.
	In fact, one of the things I liked about the movie is that finally they actually cast a human being as the bad guy, right?
	Paul Bettany plays the bad guy, and he's actually a human.
	He's not like a weird-looking creeper.
	So that's kind of, he's just a human-looking creeper.
	So that's kind of good.
	Emilia Clarke can't act her way out of a paper bag, which is unfortunate, but if you've ever watched Game of Thrones, you know this, which is one of the reasons that Daenerys Targaryen can never end up on the throne at the end of Game of Thrones.
	If she does, it's a complete disappointment.
	But in any case...
	What they really needed to do at the end of this movie, so spoiler alerts now, I really haven't spoiled a lot yet, spoiler alert now, okay, the real, what they should have done at the end of the movie is they should have had the rebellion, right, the people who are working with the rebellion accidentally kill Han Solo's love interest and then you could see why he's so cynical about the rebellion and also why he's cynical about love, right?
	That would have done it, but maybe that's their plan in future movies, but I'm not sure they're gonna do future movies because this movie is gonna lose hand over fist at the box office.
	It's only going to end up clearing about $400 million, which sounds like $500 million maybe with foreign returns.
	That means that it doesn't break even because they spent several hundred million dollars on the making of the film, on the marketing of the film.
	It's hard to see where they go from here.
	Kathleen Kennedy has done a terrible job steering the Star Wars universe.
	Rogue One was a very good movie, Solo is a pretty good movie, and the fact that they did what they did with Force Awakens and Last Jedi is impossible to get over.
	It's impossible, because now you either have to make a nostalgia play for characters you killed off in the worst possible way, or you have to make spin-offs About characters you don't care about, like Poe Dameron and Finray.
	Like, what they really should have done, again, what they should have done, is they should have, instead of relaunching, if they're gonna do a Marvel-style, instead of relaunching with Force Awakens and Last Jedi, they should have relaunched with Rogue One and Solo, and then they should have moved forward from after Return of the Jedi, or fast-forwarded 60 years, when everybody's already presumed dead, basically, and then moved on into the new Star Wars universe.
	Instead, they decided to capitalize on the nostalgia.
	It was a short-sighted play, and it has some really negative ramifications for this movie, which I think is quite good.
	I think that, you know, I've been kind of arguing whether this is better than Revenge of the Sith.
	I think it's better than Revenge of the Sith, on second thought.
	So, my current Star Wars rankings are in order.
	Empire Strikes Back, Episode 4, Rogue One, Return of the Jedi, Solo, Revenge of the Sith, everything else is hot garbage.
	That's the, those are the official Star Wars rankings here on the Ben Shapiro Show.
	And anyone who disagrees will be summarily fired.
	Alright, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	Alrighty, so, Melania.
	She's not missing.
	So a lot of people have been making this argument, like, how crazy are people right now?
	So, you remember during the last election cycle, when people said, maybe Hillary has some health problems, and everybody was like, no, you can't say Hillary has health problems.
	She's the healthiest woman who ever lived, Hillary Clinton.
	That woman could compete in a triathlon tomorrow with one arm disconnected from her body.
	She can do one-armed pull-ups, Hillary Clinton.
	That woman can jump tall buildings in a single bound.
	She's faster than a speeding bullet.
	And then she, like, fell down in the middle of a 9-11 memorial, and she, like, had to be dragged into a van.
	You remember?
	They, like, threw her into a van like a sack of potatoes and drove away.
	Remember this?
	Okay, so, everybody who's considered a conspiratorial person who's worried about her health.
	And now, you have mainstream media figures who are legitimately wondering, where could Melania Trump be?
	Why?
	Because she had a kidney surgery, like, three weeks ago, and she hasn't been seen publicly.
	Maybe, guys, it's because she had a kidney surgery three weeks ago.
	Maybe it's that.
	So the going theory was that Donald Trump, like, punched Melania in the face and she didn't want to appear at all.
	She had a black eye or some such nonsense.
	Okay, this is the stupidest thing in the world.
	It's so dumb.
	First of all, I'm not convinced that Donald Trump and Melania ever see each other.
	Second of all, like, what do you have to go on here except for Donald Trump is bad?
	So people are tweeting out like, I wouldn't have even had to think about this except that Donald Trump is president.
	Really?
	OK, so maybe Melania was abducted by aliens.
	You wouldn't have even had to think about that.
	But now Donald Trump is president, so anything's possible.
	So Brian Stelter did an entire segment on this on CNN.
	Reliable Sources did a segment on where is Melania Trump?
	It's like, where's Waldo?
	Except for Slovenian Fashion models.
	And then there are a couple of tweets that went out.
	So Melania tweeted out about this.
	Melania finally was forced to tweet out, This, of course, led everybody on the left to say it was faked.
	It's like the moon landing.
	She's actually dead somewhere in the basement.
	They're wheeling around like Weekend at Bernie's.
	on behalf of children and the American people.
	This, of course, led everybody on the left to say, it was faked.
	It's like the moon landing.
	She's actually dead somewhere in the basement.
	She's actually, they're wheeling around like Weekend at Bernie's.
	It was actually Trump who went in and hacked into her account and started tweeting from her account.
	So stupid.
	And then Jim Carrey, who has completely lost whatever was left of his mind, tweeted out this bizarre picture.
	I don't know why Jim Carrey thinks that he's good at painting, but no.
	He tweeted out a picture of Melania Trump being, like, re-indoctrinated, Clockwork Orange style.
	Stiles says, don't worry, folks, Melania is fine.
	They're probably just reminding her how to play well with others.
	I don't know what happened to Jim Carrey or whether it was always like this, but folks on the left, you don't get to claim that everybody on the right is a conspiracy theorist while So that is a thing that I hate today.
	Okay, final thing I hate.
	We'll do a Federalist paper tomorrow because we're sort of out of time.
	But we'll do a final thing I hate.
	You know, people say we should trust the FBI.
	And I'm inclined to believe there are a lot of good FBI agents.
	And then I see videos like this and I think, wow, that's not great.
	So here's an FBI agent who is dancing at a party.
	You'll see him do a backflip, drop his gun, try to pick it up and shoot somebody.
	This is video of a man at a Denver nightclub cutting loose on the dance floor, but something else is loose too.
	As he flips, his handgun flies out of its holster to the floor, then accidentally going off as he picks it up.
	Watch again.
	As he reaches, there's that muzzle flash, the bullet striking a man in the crowd.
	Okay, the guy was fine.
	The guy was hit by a bullet.
	But, um, yeah, when people say trust the FBI, um, yeah, yeah.
	That's not the best argument, guys.
	You might want to, like, take care of your agents a little better.
	Also, like, who does backflips while carrying a gun in their, in the back of their, like, I'll be honest, I'm not somebody who conceals and carries because it's illegal in the state of California, but I'll get a lot of emails.
	I need emails from people, you know, about, like, whether if you're concealing and carrying, do you put the gun in the back while you're doing these weird moves?
	Do a backflip?
	Okay, so good exploits from the FBI.
	Well done, FBI, once again, really doing yeoman's work.
	Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow to discuss all of the latest news, plus we'll do a little bit of Federalist papering it up.
	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 Karamina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.

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