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June 19, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:09
The Immigration Wars Heat Up | Ep. 563
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President Trump fights back on the rumors that he's attempting to split children from their illegal immigrant parents, the media continue their assault, and the Department of Justice Inspector General goes directly after the FBI.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Many a thing to get to today, and we'll get to all of those things First, I want to let you know that later this afternoon, I'm going to be doing an episode of The Conversation with my good friend Elisha Krauss.
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Here is the policy.
If you arrive at the border, not at the patrol stations, right?
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Okay, so the media continue to go completely nuts over the Trump administration policy.
They say it's a policy of separating children at the border.
So let's go through the policy once more.
Here is the policy.
If you arrive at the border, not at the patrol stations, right?
If you arrive at ports of entry and you claim asylum, we will not separate you from your children.
If you arrive between ports of entry and we arrest you by operation of law thanks to a Ninth Circuit court ruling in 2016, thanks to that ruling, if we arrest you, we have to take your kids away from you because we can't hold your kids in jail with you.
Now, there's a question as to how long we can hold the kids in jail with you.
Do we have to immediately remove them?
Or is it just that we have to remove them within 20 days?
But bottom line is, you will be separated from your kids if you are arrested.
The Trump administration has changed policy in the sense that they are now treating everyone who crosses the border illegally as a criminal.
But that was always the law.
So they're basically just enforcing the law strictly.
Now, I am a fan of enforcing the law strictly.
The reason is not because I always think the law is a great idea.
It's because I don't like the idea of executive discretion.
I think executive discretion is a way of making bad laws palatable and making good laws unpalatable.
If you actually want a law enforced the way that it is on the books, we're going to learn pretty fast whether that law is worthwhile or whether that law is not.
The Obama administration sort of picked and chose how exactly they wanted to enforce immigration law, and it's important to note that these sorts of controversies over separation of families at the border This sort of stuff was going on 2014-2015 when there was that vast influx of illegal immigrants swamping the southern border.
This is from the New York Times, July 25th, 2015.
25th, 2015.
So a guy named Barack Obama was president then.
A federal judge in California has ruled that the Obama administration's detention of children and their mothers who are crossing the border illegally is a serious violation of a longstanding court settlement and that the families should be released as quickly as possible.
So the Obama administration was arresting mothers, and they were keeping them with their children, and the court found that that was a problem.
In a decision late Friday roundly rejecting the administration's arguments for holding the families, Judge Dolly M. G. of the Federal District Court for the Central District of California found that two detention centers in Texas that the administration opened last fall failed to meet minimum legal requirements of the 1997 settlement for facilities housing children.
Judge G also found that migrant children had been held in widespread deplorable conditions in border patrol stations.
Okay, this is 2015.
Under Barack Obama, migrant children had been held in widespread deplorable conditions in border patrol stations.
After they were first caught, she said the authorities had wholly failed to provide the safe and sanitary conditions required for children, even in temporary cells.
Right, so the kids were in cells, right?
We're hearing the same sort of stuff now, but let's not pretend this is unique, because it's not.
The opinion was a significant legal blow to detention policies ordered by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, remember this is 2015, in response to an influx of children and parents, mostly from Central America, across the border in South Texas last summer.
In her 25-page ruling, Judge Gee gave a withering critique of the administration's positions, declaring them unpersuasive and dubious, and saying officials had ignored unambiguous terms of the settlement.
The Department of Homeland Security was nailed for apparently trying to use this sort of policy as deterrence.
So remember, the Trump administration's been ripped up and down for suggesting that separating families was a deterrent.
They're not the first people to do this.
This is from the New York Times, 2015.
Initially, Homeland Security officials said they were detaining the families to send a message to others in Central America to deter them from coming to the United States illegally.
In February, a federal court in Washington, D.C.
ruled that strategy unconstitutional.
Officials stopped invoking deterrence as a factor in deciding whether to release mothers and children as they seek asylum in the United States.
But many women and children remained stalled behind bleak walls and fences, month after month, with no end in sight.
Mothers became severely depressed or anxious, and their distress echoed in their children, who became worried and sickly.
Okay, so remember, again, this is 2015.
So these issues have been plaguing the federal government since 2015, and in fact, this particular case that I'm talking about here was elevated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that when a mother was held in detention, her child had to be released.
The child could not be held in detention with the mom.
They had to be released to a relative, or to foster care, or to somebody inside the HHS.
And they pointed out that the federal government was using this sort of policy, holding mothers and children together, as a deterrent.
So the same people who are now saying that Trump is separating families as a deterrent, four years ago, three years ago, they were saying that holding mothers and children together was being used as a deterrent.
This is a direct quote from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case from from 2016.
Quote, in January 2015, a group of Central American migrants who are not represented by Flores class counsel filed a putative class action claiming that the government had adopted a no release policy as to Central American families and challenging that alleged policy under the due process clause.
On February 20th, 2015, the U.S.
District for the District of Columbia granted the plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction.
The court found that ICE had not adopted a blanket no-release policy, but found ample support for the plaintiff's alternative contention that DHS policy directs ICE officers to consider deterrence of mass migration as a factor in their custody determinations, and that this policy has played a significant role in the recent increased attention of Central American mothers and children.
In other words, all the talk about, you know, Trump Being pro-deterrence and that's so evil, it's so terrible.
The hysteria that you're seeing, people comparing it to Japanese internment, people comparing it to the Nazis.
Okay, this is something that the Obama administration was openly saying in 2015 and 2014.
Openly.
As litigated in court.
And yet all we're hearing about is the Trump administration, their language about deterrence.
We're hearing a lot about what John Kelly had to say about using separation of children from parents as a deterrent.
Listen, I think that's wrong.
I don't think we should be using separation of children from parents as a deterrent.
All I'm pointing out here is there's a massive media double standard.
When it was Obama, then they covered it.
But let's just say that it wasn't this level of hysteria.
That's pretty obvious.
Here's John Kelly back in March talking about separating mothers from children.
We have tremendous experience in dealing with unaccompanied minors.
We turn them over to HHS and they do a very, very good job of either putting them in foster care or linking them up with parents or family members in the United States.
Yes, I am considering, in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network, I am considering exactly that.
They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents.
Okay, so we should not be using separation of parents from children as a deterrent because that's just cruel.
Saying that you're going to use law enforcement as a deterrent, you're going to arrest everybody who crosses the border, that seems to me perfectly appropriate.
Well, the Trump administration has decided that this is a political winner.
What we have right now is a prisoner's dilemma.
Okay, prisoner's dilemma is something in game theory, where basically everybody's first choice ends up creating the worst possible outcome.
So, basically, here's the way this works.
The Republicans have two choices.
They can either attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law, or they cannot attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law.
And Democrats, similarly, have two choices.
They can either attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law, or they cannot attempt to alleviate the situation by passing a law.
If the Republicans attempt to alleviate the situation and Democrats refuse to go along with it, Republicans get the worst of both worlds.
They look like pansies to their own base, and they get ripped by the press anyway because the press is going to rip them no matter what.
If Democrats go along with all of this, then they look like a bunch of people who are caving to Republicans for their own base, and they're not going to be credited by the media with the win.
Trump will be credited with the win.
So what you end up with is a prisoner's dilemma in which both parties have an incentive not to make the right decision here, which would be to pass a simple piece of legislation saying that kids can stay with their parents in custody pending removal from the country.
That would be the easy way to solve all of this.
But that looks like that is not going to happen.
Trump administration is doubling down on all of this.
President Trump himself came out yesterday.
He said, listen, our goal here is we're not going to be a migrant camp.
That's not something we're going to do.
The United States will not be a migrant camp.
And it will not be a refugee holding facility.
Won't be.
You look at what's happening in Europe, you look at what's happening in other places.
We can't allow that to happen to the United States.
Not on my watch.
Okay, so, you know, this obviously is part of Trump's chief appeal, is that he thinks that there's been a border that's swamped by illegal immigrants.
The truth is that two-thirds of the people who are overstaying their visas—two-thirds of illegal immigrants are people overstaying their visas.
But when President Trump says it's not the job of the U.S.
to be a migrant camp, obviously this definitely appeals to the people who voted for him in the first place.
One of the problems the administration is having is they're sending a bunch of mixed messages.
So, as I say, I think the media have been wildly dishonest on this entire issue, and I'm going to get to the media's dishonesty on all this.
The media, by the way, exacerbate that prisoner's dilemma that I'm talking about.
The media, by hyping up the hysteria, what they really do is they push the Trump administration into a corner where they're defending themselves from the assault, and they push Democrats to never make a deal with Republicans because they're winning politically.
Democrats Had control of the government, full control of the government from 2009 to 2011.
They did not pass a single piece of serious immigration legislation.
That's because they like the illegal immigration issue.
They think that it's a political winner.
They believe that if the press clubs Republicans with it, then they will win.
Republicans have been the only ones who have come forward with any sort of immigration plan over the past 15 years.
They've done it a couple of times.
It's failed both times.
One time because Republican base didn't want to do it.
The other time also because the Republican base was not particularly interested, but The media's hysteria on this particular issue is making things worse, not better.
But with that said, the Trump administration press on this has really been bad.
I mean, their press angle on this has been bad because you've had mixed messages.
On the one hand, you've had certain officials like John Kelly saying, yes, we are separating parents from children at the border because we wish to deter people.
So that's the hardest possible position.
And then you have President Trump saying, we are not going to be a refugee or migrant camp.
That's not something we're going to do.
And then you have Christian Nielsen, who is the head of the Department of Homeland Security, and she's basically saying, listen, it's not our policy to separate parents from kids.
It's just a natural after effect of enforcing law.
Now, I think the Secretary of Homeland Security is correct, but she's the one who's been taking all the flack, which is kind of amazing.
We'll talk about what she had to say yesterday.
She had a full presser yesterday.
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Okay, so Christian Nielsen is the head of the Department of Homeland Security.
And instead of Sarah Huckabee Sanders doing the press conference yesterday with the press gaggle, instead she was called in sort of on emergency crisis management to deal with the press.
Here's what she had to say about entering the country illegally.
This administration has a simple message.
If you cross the border illegally, we will prosecute you.
If you make a false immigration claim, we will prosecute you.
If you smuggle illegal aliens across an extraordinarily dangerous journey, we will prosecute you.
Okay, so this makes perfect sense, right?
If this were the administration's policy, this should have been the lockstep policy that they were talking about.
None of this, I'm gonna quote the Bible, none of this, we're trying to deter people.
Bottom line is, you come across the border illegally, we're arresting you.
And then the law operates as the law operates, right?
It's not our job to make the law not operate that way.
And as many people have pointed out, if you are arrested in the United States, if you and your wife were arrested in the United States for some sort of misdemeanor, and you were put in jail overnight, we wouldn't take your kids with you.
That's the way the operation works.
Christian Nielsen was asked by the press about children.
Are they being taken care of?
Now, there have been a lot of conflicting reports over whether these kids are being taken care of properly or whether they are not.
As I pointed out in 2015, federal courts were finding as far back as 2014-2015 that kids were being held in not great conditions.
These kids were being held in conditions that lacked.
We're hearing sort of conflicting reports.
The department has not put out any pictures.
They probably should put out pictures.
The press have put out some pictures.
They've not looked good.
Christian Nielsen says the kids overall are being taken care of, however.
It is important to note that these minors are very well taken care of.
Don't believe the press.
They are very well taken care of.
You know this, as many of you have detention facilities of your own.
We operate according to some of the highest standards in the country.
We provide food, medical, education, and all needs that the child requests.
Okay, here's a report from Kate Morrissey over at the San Diego Union Tribune.
She writes, Many elements of Casa San Diego, an El Cajon facility for unaccompanied children who arrived at the southern border, seem like what one would expect from a boarding school.
There are classrooms, a play area with soccer goals, and a medical clinic with superheroes like Wonder Woman, Superman, and the Hulk on the walls.
On closer inspection, details about the California licensed child care facility run by Southwest Key Programs reflect the situation of the children it serves.
It's surrounded by fencing that is backed by privacy netting, and a sign at the gate warns visitors it's under video surveillance 24 hours per day.
If someone opens the front door of the facility without first swiping a badge, an alarm blares through the hallway warning of potential escape.
On Friday morning, a class of 15 boys recited all of the ways they had learned to greet each other.
The most were Spanish speakers.
They quickly moved through English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Mom, Arabic, and many more before erupting into applause.
So this doesn't sound quite like the torture that's being portrayed in the press.
Now, that's not to say there aren't some horror stories.
In a second, I'm going to play for you some of the audio from one of these supposed horror stories.
I'm going to talk about whether this is representative of the entire thing or whether this is just the press choosing one example out of many.
But it is pretty obvious the White House is angry about the way this is being pitched.
So the White House has said that they've had enough of this information.
Christian, this is clip 17, Christian Nielsen, she says, listen, all of the talk about how we are basically seizing children from parents and then torturing them for pleasure, all that's not true.
There's a lot of misinformation about what DHS is and is not doing as it relates to families at the border, and I want to correct the record.
Here are the facts.
First, this administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border.
We have a statutory responsibility that we take seriously to protect alien children from human smuggling, trafficking, and other criminal actions while enforcing our immigration laws.
And what she has to say there is basically true.
And this is the line the administration should have taken.
We're enforcing the laws.
You don't like the laws?
Change the laws.
That should have been the line.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration has too many cooks spoiling the broth.
They have too many communications experts who are out there messaging.
One of those communications supposed experts is Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
He was out with Laura Ingraham last night, and he said, listen, this policy is designed as a deterrent.
Fundamentally, we're enforcing the law.
If you break into the country in an unlawful manner... But is it a deterrent, sir?
Are you considering this a deterrent?
I see the fact that no one was being prosecuted for this as a factor in a five-fold increase in four years in this kind of illegal immigration.
So yes, hopefully people will get the message and come through the border at the port of entry and not break across the border unlawfully.
Okay, so that's a different take on deterrence than you were getting from General John Kelly, right?
Here he's saying we're going to enforce the border because that's the deterrent.
That's different from saying we're enforcing the separation policy as a deterrent.
And then he said, listen, we want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it.
It's not that the administration is denying people asylum.
They're saying if you come through a port of entry, right, you come not illegally across the border, then we will treat you as anyone else who is seeking asylum.
There's just so much press on this that is not true.
This is a serious matter.
We need to think it through, be rational and thoughtful about it.
We want to allow asylum for people who qualify for it, but people who want economic migration for their personal financial benefit and what they think is their family's benefit is not a basis for a claim of asylum.
OK, and obviously that is true as well.
So how are these kids being kept?
So I talked a little bit before about one of the accounts that these kids are basically being kept in humane conditions.
Well, this is audio yesterday that was released about agents from ICE mocking crying children or agents from from HHS mocking crying children.
And you can hear the kids crying in the background.
Here's what that sounds like.
And this is, of course, made the rounds in a major way.
- Well, here we have an orchestra.
- It says, well, we have an orchestra here, right?
- Yes. - What we're missing is a conductor.
So this has been going around because you can hear the hubbub in the back, and you can hear some of the crying children, and then you can hear a man yelling, don't cry.
Right, so it's just, you know, that sort of stuff is not great.
Well, there's certainly some truth to that.
that the mother of the six-year-old girl in this audio paid a smuggler $7,000 to guide them through Guatemala, Mexico, and across the border into the United States illegally, who bears the blame for putting the child at risk of kidnapping, death, and separation.
Well, there's certainly some truth to that.
That said, could there be a more humane policy?
Sure there could, and it turns out that Congress is pursuing that more humane policy.
Speaker Ryan's office is pursuing this policy that would clear all of this up in not one, but two separate immigration bills.
Ted Cruz has now proposed an immigration bill that is specific to this particular issue, right?
Mark Meadows has joined him.
So here's Mark Meadows, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
This guy's about as conservative as he comes.
Representative Mark Meadows says they're going to introduce legislation later today that will allow parents to stay with their kids as they await detention.
We're going to introduce later today a piece of legislation that actually is more narrow than the two pieces that the president will be talking about with members of Congress this afternoon.
What it does, it deals with this issue that we're having at the border with the separation of children from their parents.
It also deals with some of the asylum issues at the border.
Now, one of the things that is important to note about this is if, in fact, the Republicans put up a separate bill that says, listen, we're going to solve this particular issue.
Kids get to stay with parents until deportation or until asylum arrangements are made.
If that were the policy, do you think Democrats would vote for it?
I don't.
I don't think Democrats would vote for it.
I think Democrats would vote against it, specifically because they think they've got a political winner on their hands.
I think that they believe they have a political winner because there's a poll out today showing that two-thirds of Americans don't like the separation policy, while a majority of Republicans do.
That's a political winner for Democrats.
They want to hold Trump's feet to the fire on all of this.
And you can hear the press corps jumping with both feet on all this.
So, in just a second, I want to talk about the press.
And how the press have lied routinely about all of this.
I mean, it is just insane.
They continue to drive up the insane levels of rhetoric regarding this entire issue.
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OK, so the press.
When it comes to all of this stuff, have been deeply irresponsible, of course.
And this, of course, this is egging Democrats toward not making a deal, toward not making things better.
How irresponsible have the press been on all this?
Here's a member of the press corps, aghast over that audio that we played of crying children in a border facility.
Press corps, you know, they were talking about how terrible all this was.
They were tweeting out Jorge Rivas.
He's from ProPublica, I believe.
And he tweeted out, reporters are listening to audio of kids crying in Border Patrol facility moments ahead of press briefing.
Philip Bump, I believe he's of the Washington Post, said this is extremely hard to listen to.
Elise Jordan, who I believe is a MSNBC and NBC News contributor, says this is tragedy porn for sadists.
Chris Chalizo of CNN said this cannot happen in America.
Igor Bobik, he's also a reporter.
He says that this is just sickening.
He's a reporter at Huffington Post.
Okay, well, whether or not you like the policy, you know, whether you think that audio is stomach churning, and I think that it is stomach churning, The real question is, how do you solve that?
And when I think the press, I think many members of the press, they think, oh, well, you know what?
We'll jar the American public into action here.
We will force them into action by creating this groundswell of anger about the separation of parents from children.
What they're really doing is they're driving the Trump administration into a bunker and they're driving Democrats never to make a deal.
Because, believe you me, Democrats in Congress do not care about getting a deal done on this particular topic.
Or will find out if they do.
Because Republicans should put up a stand-alone bill to solve this issue and see if Democrats will vote for it.
I highly doubt they will.
Because why would they?
Politically speaking, better to keep the illegal immigration issue burning, better to ensure that illegal immigration issue keeps getting people to the polls than to actually solve the issue.
This is one of the big problems with modern American politics.
We don't elect our politicians to actually get things done.
We elect our politicians as a sort of emotional catharsis.
And Democrats are looking at issues like this and thinking, boy, this is a political winner for 2018.
Wait till we get to the midterms.
So that's why when reporters are going over the top about all of this, what they're really doing is making it less likely that a deal is going to get done.
What they really should do is they should just report the facts without any of the over-the-top emotional passion, and just report it.
The American people can make up their own minds.
But here, for example, is a reporter to Christian Nielsen, the head of DHS, pummeling her, suggesting that this is a sort of child abuse.
And it was like this all day yesterday, basically.
Are there any examples of child abuse, you believe?
And how could this not be child abuse for the people who were taken from their parents?
Not the ones who were sent here with their parents' blessing, with the smugglers.
from the people who were taken from their parents?
Unfortunately, I'm not in any position to deal with hearsay stories.
If someone has a specific allegation, as I always do when I testify, I ask that they provide that information to the Department of Homeland Security.
We will look into it.
Of course, we do not want any situation where a child is not completely adequately taken care of.
OK, so I think the policy itself should change.
And again, this is why I think that Ted Cruz's bill that he's bringing up is useful.
I think that these kids should stay with their parents.
I'm not in favor of kids being separated from their parents under any circumstances.
I will point out the mild irony of so many Democrats who believe in no-fault divorce and think that if a parent wants to remove himself from the kid, that's totally fine.
But if the government removes the kid from the parent, that of course is totally different.
I guess the kid doesn't matter in all of that, right?
It's just the parent's consent to any of that.
If you get divorced without the kid wanting you to, then that's totally fine.
But, you know, bottom line is, people of good heart can agree that this stuff should not be happening.
The question is, how is this actually going to get solved?
Democrats are having too much fun ripping into the Trump administration to actually solve the problem, however.
So Nancy Pelosi is having a lot of fun calling Donald Trump barbaric.
This is their favorite thing.
All here for arranging for this visit for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other members of our caucus on this heartbreaking, barbaric issue that could be changed in a moment by the presidency of the United States rescinding his action.
It's barbaric.
It's barbaric.
Okay, fine.
So then why don't you work with the Republicans to solve it?
Hey, Hillary Clinton, she comes back from the dead to call President Trump a liar and unchristian for enforcing the same policy that she was touting a few years ago.
She was in the administration when a lot of this policy was being touted.
She was there.
She only left in, what, 2013?
So these policies were already being undertaken by the Obama administration.
And by the way, when she was running for president, she said that we can't keep the kids here.
We should be deporting the kids as well.
But here she is ripping into President Trump and saying he's a liar and unchristian.
Separating families is not mandated by law at all.
That is an outright lie.
And it's incumbent on all of us, journalists and citizens alike, to call it just that.
Those who selectively use the Bible to justify this cruelty are ignoring a central tenet Of Christianity, the law does say the law does say that if you arrest the parents, you have to release the kids.
That is, in fact, the law.
What Democrats want is for the parents to be released as well.
How do we know that?
Because it turns out that in that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that I've been talking about for the last several days, the one that suggested they have to release the kids, the plaintiffs in that case were saying that you should also have to release the parents.
They were saying you should have to release the parents as well because otherwise you are violating the rights of the children.
So that's their actual goal here.
The Democrats don't want a solution because they're hoping to leverage President Trump into backing down and just releasing people into the interior of the United States, into the general population.
Right?
This is the actual goal in all of this.
And again, you can tell this because Republicans are perfectly willing to come to the table with some solutions.
Mark Meadows is one of the most conservative members of the House.
Ted Cruz is one of the most conservative members of the Senate.
Here's what Ted Cruz said yesterday.
So Ted Cruz put out a statement on all this.
He said, All Americans are rightly horrified by the images we are seeing on the news.
Children in tears pulled away from their mothers and fathers.
This must stop.
Now, we can end this crisis by passing the legislation I'm introducing this week.
Repeatedly, I have visited detention facilities tragically housing young children.
For far too long, children have been the greatest victims of our broken immigration system, with tens of thousands of children who were detained under the Obama administration and continuing through today, and with far too many of those children facing horrific physical or sexual assault from criminal human traffickers.
So Ted Cruz is on the same page as the Democrats here, right?
Because everybody's on the same page.
Nobody really likes this policy very much.
Okay, so Congress should solve it.
I do love the idea that in an American government, whenever there's a problem, it's the executive branch's problem to solve it.
You don't like the policy?
Well, I guess the executive branch just won't pay attention to the law.
I guess the executive branch will just stop enforcing the law.
This, of course, is what Obama did on immigration.
In Obama's executive amnesty, was Obama refusing to enforce the law with regard to the so-called Dreamers.
My view was, we ought to change the law, enforce the law, unless you want to change the law.
It is the executive branch, not the legislative branch.
The legislative branch legislates.
The executive branch executes.
The executive branch does not get to make up its own body of law simply because it wants to.
But because we think the president is some sort of king who sits on top of a throne determining what laws to enforce and what laws not to enforce, the Trump administration gets all the blame.
Congress could solve this today.
They won't.
They're having too much fun demagoguing the issue.
Okay, I'll talk a little bit more about the demagoguery.
Plus, the DOJ has released its IG report and the Inspector General That is, uh, testified before Congress yesterday.
It got pretty wild.
So we'll talk about that in just a second.
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So final note on the media's hysteria over all of this immigration stuff.
So, Gayle King over at CBS, she said that the Statue of Liberty is weeping.
The sort of over-the-top rhetoric that is now being utilized is astonishing.
Here is Gayle King from CBS, you know, going full bore, full bore, you know, kind of daytime TV here.
All I can say after talking to the people, watching the people, listening to the people, that the Statue of Liberty, I think, is weeping right now.
OK, and then Chris Hayes over at MSNBC, he actually tweeted out, if I'm remembering my Third Reich history correctly, I think the first use of the term final solution was in a memo describing an initial plan to expel all the Jews from Europe.
The Jews were citizens of Germany.
They were citizens in their country.
The Nazis were not trying to expel illegal immigrants, nor were they trying to prevent people from immigrating into the country.
And they were trying to expel legal citizens of their country.
But Chris Hayes continues, Well, that is a bad response, no question.
to, are you implementing a Nazi policy as well, but the Nazis wouldn't let people leave?
Well, that is a bad response, no question.
But to compare this to Nazi policy is ignorant of history and ignorant of the actual policy on the ground right now.
And again, I am just astonished by the fact that so much of this was happening under the Obama administration.
Nobody seemed to care.
As soon as it's Trump, of course, then it's motivated by animus against brown people, according to the press.
Meanwhile, in the actual story that should be covered over the last week, right, the Department of Justice released its inspector general report.
And in that inspector general report, it was very clear that Peter Strzok, who was a top FBI agent, he was in charge of the Hillary investigation and the Russia investigation, was not only wildly biased against President Trump, but that he was texting to his lover, Lisa Page, another FBI agent, that he would personally try to stop.
He would personally try to stop Trump from becoming president.
Pretty clear, he was saying, using his official authority.
Because Michael Horowitz, who is the Inspector General over at the DOJ, a nonpartisan figure, he came out and he said, That should not be downplayed by anybody.
I can't think of something more concerning than a law enforcement officer suggesting that they're going to try and use, or may use, their powers to affect an election.
Okay, when the next investigator general, when the next inspector general report comes out about the Russia investigation, expect to see a lot more about Strzok's decision-making.
Horowitz also said that James Comey, former FBI director, He was concerned about his survivability.
He was less concerned about exactly what proper policy would be in investigating the Hillary email situation.
Instead, he was concerned about how he could keep his job, which is pretty obvious from the report, right?
The reason that he decided to release that letter right before the election that said that they were reopening the Hillary email investigation, he said, and he said it openly, is that he thought Hillary was going to win and he wanted to make sure that her presidency was seen as legitimate.
So he was already trying to get himself in good with Hillary Clinton so that he could stick around in his job.
Here is Michael Horowitz saying exactly this.
I think that was a concern we had certainly where it's even clearer in that October time period because we have testimony that indicated that when he explained why when he explained through his chief of staff why he was going to do what he did on October 28.
Okay, the FBI is just filled with bad actors.
It's just filled with bad actors.
It doesn't mean everybody in the FBI is a bad actor, of course.
I know lots of FBI agents who are wonderful people, but there were key people in key places who were bad actors.
Okay, James Comey is now under investigation for mishandling classified information, according to Michael Horowitz.
He's specifically under investigation for his handling of memos he wrote about his interactions with President Trump while he was FBI director.
You remember that James Comey leaked out all sorts of information to his good friend, a former FBI agent as well, Chuck Grassley said Comey said he did not expect a report on his handling of classified information because, quote, that's frivolous.
I don't happen to think that's frivolous.
And then he said, question number one, Mr. Horowitz, are you investigating the handling of his memo?
And does that include the classification issues?
And should Mr. Comey expect a report when it is complete?
Pretty amazing.
Horowitz responded, we received a referral on that from the FBI.
We are handling that referral.
We will issue a report when the matter is complete, consistent with the laws and rules that are a report that's consistent and takes those into account.
Pretty amazing.
So James Comey is now under investigation as well.
Now, all of this is not to suggest there was some giant conspiracy happening inside the FBI.
What it is to suggest is that there was basically an informal group of people who all thought the same way, and when you're in a bubble with a lot of authority, bad things can really happen.
You see this on college campuses a lot, with professors who all agree with one another.
It's the reason there's media bias.
It's when there's media bias against President Trump.
It's not that everybody in the media are getting together and deciding, let's go after President Trump today.
It's that there is a groupthink that happens in the media because everybody in the media shares the same political perspective.
And they understand the social expectation, which is you're going to be a lot harder on President Trump than you were on President Obama.
Well, the same thing is true inside the FBI.
When you have top officials at the FBI who have spent eight years working with the Obama administration, very warm with the Obama administration, very friendly with the Obama administration, When you have people there, at the top, who believe that it is their use of authority that stands between America and the darkness of Trump.
Why are you so surprised when something bad happens?
This is sort of what happened with the IRS under President Obama.
When the IRS began targeting conservative nonprofits, and I know because I know two, I personally know at least two 501c3s that were targeted by the IRS under Obama.
When all that happened, it wasn't that Obama had to call down to Lois Lerner and say, hey, I need you to shut down those 501c3s from the conservative side of the aisle.
It was there was an expectation at the highest levels of the IRS that they were going to work hand-in-glove with the Obama administration.
You can certainly see the flavor of that happening in these Peter Strzok texts.
And the texts of four other FBI agents, by the way.
And the activity of James Comey.
There were several assumptions that were made in the course of the investigations.
Assumption number one is that Hillary was going to win.
Assumption number two is that Hillary should win.
And that really dictated a lot of the behavior here.
It dictated an enormous amount of the behavior here.
So, you know, when we talk about whether there was bias inside the FBI, yes.
But that bias doesn't have to be 100% conspiratorial.
You can say that that bias was deeply troubling and had impact without it being a deep conspiracy.
And this is, I think, the way the FBI is going to sneak out of this.
They're going to say, well, there wasn't any deep conspiracy.
We weren't planning the bias.
This is what the IRS did on the 501c3 issue.
Just because he didn't plan it doesn't mean that there wasn't a basically covert op happening, or essentially that there wasn't an informal conglomeration of people working together toward a common goal, even if it was unstated what that common goal would be.
Okay.
Meanwhile, in bad news for President Trump, President Trump is now threatening more tariffs.
So we'll see how this goes.
We have a booming economy, a thriving economy, and the President of the United States is gradually escalating a tariff war with a bunch of trade partners.
Now, I'm not against the idea of tariffing China.
I'm not against the idea of putting economic pressure on China for humanitarian reasons and for security reasons.
I think that China as a world power... I'm not...
In fact convinced that Nixon opening China was something great for the world.
I think there's a strong case to be made that we should have continued to isolate China and then maybe it would have collapsed in on itself just like the Soviet Union did if we had been willing to actually go all the way.
Nixon was not willing to go all the way.
He opens China and instead China continues to be a global threat and a regional threat particularly.
But now President Trump is escalating A trade war with China not out of a sense of national security, but out of a sense that he likes trade wars.
So according to the Washington Post, President Trump threatened Monday to levy tariffs on nearly all of China's products shipped to the United States unless Beijing agrees to a host of sweeping trade concessions, a dramatic escalation that would enlist American consumers in the brewing U.S.-China commercial conflict.
In a statement, Trump said he had ordered his chief negotiator, U.S.
Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, to drop a list of $200 billion in Chinese products that will be hit with tariffs of 10% if China refuses his demand to narrow the yawning U.S.
trade deficit and change its industrial policies.
Now, this is why you know this is stupid policy.
If the president actually wanted to tackle something meaningful, what he should have said is, we're going to levy these tariffs unless you stop the violation of our intellectual property.
That's an actual fraud issue.
We are going to tariff you unless you actually liberalize your regime, for example, or stop supporting North Korea so much, right?
These would all be legitimate reasons.
But if you are tariffing a country because you have a trade imbalance with that country, as I've explained a thousand times, that's just stupid policy.
This is like you saying that you have a trade deficit with your local grocery store, so you are therefore going to shop at a different grocery store that is more expensive, costing you more money.
Well, then you'll have a trade deficit with that grocery store, too.
So what the hell is the difference?
The president warned he was prepared to hit China with an additional $200 billion in import taxes unless Beijing capitulates.
Such a step would be virtually unprecedented in U.S.
history.
It would put nearly all of the $505 billion in products the United States imports from China under tariffs.
Trump said the trade relationship between the United States and China must be more equitable.
The United States will no longer be taken advantage of on trade by China and other countries in the world.
That is, again, very foolish.
This trade imbalance talk is economically illiterate.
It is economically illiterate.
There are countries that have trade surpluses and that are garbage.
There are countries with trade deficits, like the United States, that are wonderful.
And again, every dollar that goes over to China has to be re-spent on American products.
The big problem has been that China has been re-spending it on American bonds.
And they've been basically holding up the value of our dollar.
If they decide to retaliate, they theoretically could undercut the price of our bonds by simply selling our bonds on the open market, thereby tanking the dollar and hurting the American economy.
Tariffs are a tax on American citizens.
You better have a good reason to tax American citizens.
If you're going to tax American citizens because you need to crack down in war-like fashion on somebody else, well then, make the case that that war-like fashion has to be done.
But if you're doing so because you want to strengthen America's trade deficit, trade imbalance, That's really foolish.
So, none of the tariffs announced on Monday would take effect until industries and consumers have a chance to make their views known in a 60-day public comment period.
This is a threat the Chinese can't match, said Jeff Moon, a former U.S.
trade negotiator.
I see this as a major growl to get the Chinese to take his threats seriously.
Rick Helfenbein, who's president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, called the president's decision to up the ante, quote, hollow, vindictive, and reckless, said it would endanger the $130 billion in American exports to China.
Again, I don't think this is good policy.
I think there are ways that tariffs can be good policy.
This does not look like a good policy, particularly because the White House has already attempted to reinstate legal relations with the Chinese telecom giant ZTE.
ZTE has put actual American security at risk.
ZTE products pose a national security risk, according to Congress, and could be used by the Chinese government to spy on the United States.
At the same time, Trump is pushing the idea of tariffs.
He's also trying to help out ZTE, which is a Chinese government National security spying apparatus, basically.
So none of that makes any sense.
The President of the United States needs to get his agenda straight on trade because he has a booming economy.
There's no reason for him to undercut that booming economy with foolish policy when it comes to free markets.
Okay, so time for some things I like, then things I hate, and then we will deconstruct the culture a little bit today because it is a Tuesday.
So, things I like today.
So I just, this ad is just spectacular.
So Richard Painter is a former George W. Bush ethics lawyer.
He's now a Democrat, he's up in Minnesota, and he has cut I don't know what's going on with the Democrats and their ads this election cycle, but we've already seen a Democratic ad in which a guy pepper sprayed himself in the face.
We've already seen a Democratic ad from Maryland in which a gay guy kissed his husband to show Trump to own the cons or something.
And now Richard Painter cuts what has to be the most bizarre ad of the election cycle in which he stands literally in front of a flaming dumpster and explains how he is going to stop the dumpster fire.
Some people see a dumpster fire and do nothing but watch the spectacle.
Some are too scared to face the danger, or they think it will benefit them if they just let it keep on burning.
Others shrug and say, oh, all this talk of a dumpster fire, it's just fake news.
There is an inferno raging in Washington.
But here in the land of 10,000 lakes, we know how to put out a fire.
OK, that is spectacular stuff.
Well done, Richard Painter, for the weirdest ad in the world.
If you can't watch, there's an actual flaming dumpster behind him.
And when he says that we know how to put out a fire, a bunch of water falls on the fire.
You're right.
No one in the world has ever figured out that water puts out fire.
No one has ever figured this out.
Also, Richard Painter, if you're going to shrug in front of the camera, as someone who is not natural on camera, let me just say, even I can do a better fake shrug than that.
That is really spectacular stuff from Richard Painter.
And there it is.
Wow, it's magic.
It's just magic.
Right?
Just incredible.
I can do it all day, the shrugs.
It's just incredible.
But apparently Richard Painter cannot.
So what I really love is stiff politicians wearing ties from 1987 talking about dumpster fires behind them in CGI.
My favorite part also, there's so many favorite parts of this commercial.
The fact that he's standing next to a batch of trash, like right next to him, is really spectacular.
Also, the fact that they CGI'd the dumpster fire is pretty spectacular as well.
Like if you go back to the beginning of the ad, you can actually see like a little line above the dumpster.
Like what is that?
How did?
What?
Really good job.
Richard Painter first.
I would almost vote for him just because that's so spectacular.
OK, time for a quick thing.
Oh, you know, one more thing that I like.
So Chris Pratt was at the MTV Movie Awards.
Chris Pratt's awesome.
Hey, Chris Pratt is apparently a religious Christian, which I kind of heard rumors of.
But it's pretty obvious that that's the case from the speech that he gave at the MTV Movie Awards, which is Frankly, a speech that I could have given except for his weird riff about pooping in a neighbor's bathroom.
Aside from that, his speech was really fantastic.
So here's what he had to say to all the millennials in the crowd.
Number six, God is real.
God loves you.
God wants the best for you.
Believe that.
I do.
Number eight, learn to pray.
It's easy, and it's so good for your soul.
And finally, number nine, nobody is perfect.
People are going to tell you you're perfect just the way you are.
You're not!
You are imperfect.
You always will be, but there is a powerful force that designed you that way.
And if you're willing to accept that, you will have grace.
And grace is a gift.
And like the freedom that we enjoy in this country, that grace was paid for with somebody else's blood.
Do not forget it.
It's pretty spectacular stuff.
I mean, even as a Jew, right, I'm not I'm not big into the whole in the whole paid for somebody else's blood routine as far as your flaws.
But just as a religious person, this is wonderful.
I mean, this is so brave.
You want to talk about brave bravery in public spaces?
And people were like, wow, look at Robert De Niro going out there and saying F Trump and standing ovation at the Tonys because F Trump.
That's not brave.
Everybody in the room believes F Trump.
Chris Pratt goes in front of a room of Hollywood people who are gonna go after this and go smoke weed and do cocaine and nail a hooker, right?
And he's standing up there going that, and he's up there saying that God is real, you should cultivate your prayer, and you're a flawed human being so you should seek grace in God.
Like, that's awesome stuff.
Good for Chris Pratt.
Really good for Chris Pratt.
One of the good guys in Hollywood.
And just by me saying that, I may have lost him four jobs there.
So, I apologize to you, Chris Pratt, except I figure that he's a big enough star that he can probably handle it.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So, there's a new poll out.
It's an Ipsos survey.
It was conducted for the Daily Beast.
It found that among Republicans, 19% of Republicans indicated they hold a favorable opinion of Kim Jong-un.
17% said they have a favorable opinion of Nancy Pelosi.
I have no problem with 17% of Republicans saying that they have a favorable opinion of Nancy Pelosi.
It really should be zero.
But, Why in the world would 19% of Republicans say that they have a favorable opinion of the world's worst dictator?
Just because he hung out with Trump doesn't mean he's a good guy.
He's holding 25 million people in abject slavery and 200,000 people in actual gulags.
68% of Republicans said they held an unfavorable opinion of Kim.
72% said they had an unfavorable view of Nancy Pelosi.
I think Nancy Pelosi's god-awful.
I think she's just terrible.
I think she's a terrible politician with terrible principles.
She's also an American citizen who is not spending her days actually keeping people in slavery.
Now, she may be pro-abortion, but she's not forcibly aborting people the way that Kim Jong-un's government actually does.
So, not quite the same thing.
Guys, just because you want to own the libs doesn't mean you have to embrace the world's worst humans, okay?
Kim Jong-un is the worst.
He's an awful, awful person.
I can only hope that he dies in an electrical fire.
He's a terrible person.
I want to see him die in a painful way, okay?
I say this about only very evil people.
You keep 25 million people in slavery, I have no problem with you going in with the worst form of penile cancer.
That's fine with me.
Okay, so Kim Jong-un's gonna go, but the point is this.
Why would you possibly be warm to the world's worst dictator warmer than you would be to a Democrat?
I think Democrats are wrong, too, guys.
I spent my entire life arguing why Democrats are wrong.
But Kim Jong-un is an order of magnitude worse than that.
So let's not do that.
Let's not let's not fall into that.
OK, time for deconstructing the culture.
So we haven't done this in a couple of weeks.
Deconstructing the culture is where we take a piece of culture and we break it down for you.
Or at least I attempt to.
From my perspective of knowing nothing about pop culture, and I tried to explain to you what it is that is being purveyed in the pop cultural sphere, because the fact is more people know who Beyonce is than know who any random congressperson, senator, or governor is.
So, she has now cut a music video with her husband.
It is not good.
Okay, it's not good.
Rolling Stone, so this song is called Ape Bleep, which is just great.
I mean, it's just, the sophistication is incredible.
They filmed this at the Louvre, and shame on the Louvre for allowing this sort of filming at the Louvre, right?
Shame on the Louvre for putting this kind of crap in front of actual great art.
But I love Rolling Stone's take on this.
I'm gonna read you Rolling Stone's take a little bit, and then we're gonna go through the music video.
Okay, so in the video for Beyonce and Jay-Z's Ape Bleep, Okay, bleep would be poop.
Ape poop.
Oh, God.
The first visual from the Paris surprise joint album, Everything is Love, except when Jay-Z's shooting on Beyonce.
The two stars romp through the Louvre in Paris, seizing center stage in a high culture palace that, like most Western art museums, historically made little room for non-white artists.
Oh, God.
So we're going to get an entire music video about why the Louvre doesn't have enough art by black people.
Hey, first of all, Louvre does have some art by black people.
Second of all, the Louvre has a ton—the Louvre is a barn, okay?
It has tons of stuff from every various culture.
It has Asian art.
It has African art.
It has Egyptian art.
It has tons of stuff.
It's just the most famous stuff at the Louvre is Western art because, in my humble opinion, Western art was the culmination of Western civilization.
And Western civilization is the culmination of all civilization, in my opinion.
I'm a big fan.
So.
Here's what the Rolling Stone Rolling Stone says.
Some of their mission involves the strategic highlighting of nonwhite images already in the Louvre.
Beyonce and Jay Z rap in front of an Egyptian Sphinx and in galleries filled with mostly neoclassical French paintings.
White artists, white subjects, the camera singles out black faces.
OK, I'm not sure why that matters.
Why you would go to the Louvre and the first thing that would hit you is racial imbalance?
I'm going to suggest that the whole point of art is to take the particular and universalize it.
Good art takes things that are particular, and then it makes you feel a universal feeling.
That's what great art does.
When you watch a movie that has to do with people who are nothing like you, you feel something about Star Wars, right?
Star Wars is in a universe far, far away with people who are nothing like you, but you feel something about it because there is something unique to every human experience that also happens to be universal to all human experience.
This is why great art is extraordinarily particular.
Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, these people, Their writings are extraordinarily particular.
It's not generalities.
It's not broad generalities.
That's why I don't like a lot of modern literature that I think draws broad generalities.
Great art is extraordinarily particular because you identify with other people the more particular we are about those people.
If I just say to you, there's a guy who just died in Zimbabwe, you're not gonna feel anything.
But if I describe that guy to you, if I describe his entire life to you, if I describe his family to you, you feel more because I've now particularized the subject.
Great art does that.
Okay, so of course, if you have, so the idea that it can't be a universal piece of art because it focuses on a white subject is simply idiotic.
But the Rolling Stone says this is just a great piece of art, this Beyonce-Jay-Z video.
Beyonce and Jay-Z set about interjecting blackness into a space that has never placed much value on it, claiming one of the centerpieces of European culture with gleeful defiance.
They frequently film themselves moving in opposition to the frozen stillness of painting by Jacques-Louis David.
David, a French neoclassical artist whose works like The Oath of Horatii and Madame Recamier invoke the Greco-Roman tradition.
Much of the potency of the ape bleep video comes from the contrast drawn between the white art on the walls and the black women on the gallery floor.
So it's all about race, of course.
And now we're supposed to believe that the art being created by Beyonce and Jay-Z is actually better than these great works of classic Western art.
art.
Quote, throughout the ape bleep video, Beyonce and Jay-Z repeatedly upstaged some of Western classical arts, most famous images in one of its central sacred spaces.
And then they talk about how it's much more lively, right?
The, the, These people who are dancing are much more lively.
It's not only Beyonce who eclipses the art, just a few scenes before the singer's victory over Venus de Milo.
Yeah, right.
I'm sure that Beyonce is victorious over Venus de Milo.
A line of her dancers sway back and forth in the foreground while another white marble statue, the winged victory of Samothrace, looms inertly behind them.
Right, idiots, it's a statue.
It can't move.
Wow, you mean people moving is more lifelike than people not moving?
I cannot believe it!
Wow, you've really upstaged great Western art.
See, the thing about Western art, folks, and all art, is that it's supposed to outlive the person.
Because all the people in this video, they're gonna die.
That statue's still gonna be there.
I love this.
Because she's a living human.
Wow.
So's my two-year-old baby.
He has arms.
One of the Louvre's most famous well-known statues, the kind of white marble creation that is synonymous with European high art.
The statue is inert and famously armless.
Beyonce is fluid, fierce, and in perpetual motion.
Because she's a living human.
Wow.
So is my two-year-old baby.
He has arms and he moves.
Okay?
Wouldn't say that he upstages the Venus de Milo if we went to the Louvre.
In fact, I wouldn't bring him to the Louvre because he'd knock over the Venus de Milo and then I would be broke.
So we're not gonna do that.
Okay, so now I actually have to show you some of this video and I'm gonna read you some of the lyrics because this is the art that Rolling Stone says upstages the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa and the great canon of Western civilization.
Okay, this is the video.
Okay, you ready for this?
Here we go.
It's a bunch of naked people lying on the stairs and then doing sit-ups.
Weird.
Okay, all these people are doing dance motions and then we have some close-ups of various great pieces of art.
And then Beyonce and Jay-Z sitting there, very bored in the Louvre, because who isn't bored in the Louvre?
And then them standing in front of an Egyptian pharaoh.
And then all these people, again, on the stairs of the Louvre, basically doing sit-ups.
And then Beyonce sitting in front of Winged Victory in a giant white dress that looks like it ate her alive.
I mean, listen to this great art.
It's just spectacular.
Okay, so this is the part where they say that John Louise David's work is being upstaged by a bunch of dancing women.
Right, because it turns out that if you went to a strip club, it would probably upstage Western civilization.
Okay?
That's just the way that works, because it turns out that human beings would... This is her fierce motion.
We're watching Beyonce's fierce motion in juxtaposition to art that doesn't move.
Okay, according to Rolling Stone.
The level of stupidity of that review is just astonishing.
And now we're supposed... This is the kind of art that we are told is upstaging Western civilization.
Okay, you ready for this?
I'm going to read you some of the lyrics now, because you have no idea what the hell they're saying, right?
It's just... But... I have no idea what the hell they're saying.
So, here is what the actual lyrics read, okay?
Stack my money fast and go.
Fast like a Lambo.
Skrt, skrt, skrt.
I'd be jumping off the stage, ho.
Jumping, jumping.
Hey, hey.
Crowd better savor.
Crowd going ape.
Hey.
I can't believe we made it.
This is what we made, made.
This is what we're thankful for.
This is what we thank, thank.
I can't believe we made it.
This a different angle.
Have you ever seen a crowd going ape poop?
Raw.
The magic, the magic.
I mean, I just I can't I can't believe when I saw this video, I immediately thought, burn down the Louvre.
I mean, we've got our art, right?
If this this video will last the test of time, this video, 1000 years from now, when people have forgotten about Beethoven, when they have forgotten about The Mona Lisa, when they have forgotten about Da Vinci, when they have forgotten about the great works of art, when they've forgotten about Rembrandt, when they've forgotten about all these people, the one thing they will remember is, give me my check, pay some respect on my check, or pay me in equity.
Pay me in equity.
Watch me reverse out of debt.
Squirt.
He got a bad bitch.
Bad bitch.
We live in lavish.
Lavish.
Doesn't even rhyme.
I got expensive fabrics.
I got expensive habits.
Okay, that is four separate lines, none of which rhyme.
Bitch, lavish, fabrics, habits.
Okay, none of those rhyme.
He wanna go with me, go with me.
He likes to roll the weed, roll the weed.
He wanna be with me, be with me.
He wanna give me that vitamin D, D!
Ice ornaments, icy style tournaments, woo.
You ain't on to this, no.
Don't they think on to this, no.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bought him a jet.
There's no possible way to say that Western art could possibly survive this sort of genius.
I got nothing, guys.
I mean, I really don't.
Beyond this, can I just point out something?
Beyoncé used to sing songs, remember that?
Remember that time that Beyoncé used to sing because she has a nice voice?
And now she just sort of mumbles like Rihanna?
You remember that?
It was so nice when she used to sing.
Like, you watch her on Dreamgirls, you're like, ah, that's a talented lady.
And now she just does kind of spastic motions in front of a camera and goes, and I, what?
I don't know what you're doing, but apparently this is great art.
We should all be honored to breathe the same oxygen as Beyonce and Jay-Z.
I love that Jay-Z basically just sits there the entire time and does nothing.
Literally the entire video, Jay-Z just sits there and does nothing.
Here he is, standing there in an outfit from 1975 with his giant medallion, and Beyonce just starts thrashing around.
This shot right here?
There's a bunch of those where he's just sitting there and suddenly Beyonce's thrashing around and all this.
Yes, you're right.
The Louvre.
Western art.
Western civilization.
This is my favorite show.
Here we go.
And Jay-Z's like, I don't know what's going on, man.
Jay-Z's just standing in the background going, I don't even know where I am.
Like, why I'm in this video.
I don't know what I'm doing here.
Yeah.
Great art.
Great art.
Is this video better than This is America?
I don't know.
Because that was the greatest start I've ever heard of.
This is America.
This may be even better than This is America, because this is France, gang.
So, all righty.
So we will be back here tomorrow with much, much more.
Hopefully no more terrible music videos, but we'll be back here.
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 Caramina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
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