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Aug. 21, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:37
The Democratic Elitism Problem | Ep. 607
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The VMAs feature Trump-bashing students at the University of North Carolina tear down a statue, and I have the two stupidest stories you have ever heard back-to-back.
They are incredible.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
These stories are so good that I can't even get through the opener.
That's how amazing these stories are.
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So.
Last night was the Video Music Awards, the most important of all award ceremonies.
Because it is deeply important that we have award ceremonies that give awards to people who earn millions and millions of dollars for making crappy music that is popular.
And I know, I know, you're going to tell me that I'm an elitist in my tastes.
Right!
Because I like good things.
And just because things are popular doesn't make them good.
See the movie Titanic for an example.
But the Avatar is an even better example.
What is more telling about the VMAs than anything else is the amount of political posturing that happens at the VMAs.
The reason the Democrats are having trouble in the middle of the country is because there's an elitist feel to the Democrats.
The reason Donald Trump won is not because there are all these dispossessed people in the center of the country who felt economically left behind.
The reason that Trump won is because Trump was a giant middle finger to a bunch of people in Hollywood and New York.
That's really what Trump was.
What Trump was, was people getting sick of being told that they were racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, and Trump responding by basically flipping everybody off.
And the Republican base cheering, yeah!
Because we are so sick of hearing over and over and over that we are terrible people.
And that was sort of reinforced all throughout the 2016 campaign.
For example, Hillary Clinton bringing out ads with Lena Dunham, who May have molested her sister, but she was supposed to be this great Hollywood moral icon who is going to tell us all about how we ought to think about issues like abortion and the DNC replete with all sorts of stars and and people cutting versions of fight song with Elizabeth Banks and and the stars of the Pitch Perfect movies and Everybody in the middle country went really that's your pitch to me in Ohio is Lady Gaga.
That's your big pitch Thanks for that The VMAs are another way for the Democratic left to reinforce just how out of touch they are.
And what's funny is that the people who are actually in the business of politics know this.
So Sherrod Brown is a senator from Ohio.
He's a little bit more moderate than the typical Democrat, not much.
He's got that wild hair over there.
But he's the guy who's in touch with that blue-collar base in Ohio, right?
He has to be elected in the same state that Trump won by something like eight points.
Well, Sherrod Brown was on TV yesterday on the MSNBCs, and he said that Democrats aren't really showing that they're fighting for the little guy.
Well, I think Democrats have not talked enough about fighting for the little guy.
I mean, it really our party... Are they too enticed with too free trade?
Well, the party has been too free trade, but the Republicans have been more free trade, but that's our problem, to show where we are and fight for workers.
But I don't think the voters necessarily think what we should be thinking, and that is you fight for the little guy, whether she punches a clock, whether he works in a diner, whether she works construction, whether he works in manufacturing.
So, let's ask a question.
Those people who are punching a clock, working in a diner, working in manufacturing, the people who are working on assembly lines, or who are going to a factory in the evenings, do they really want to hear from a bunch of pampered celebrities who earn millions of dollars to read lines written by others, or sing songs written by others, or warble off-key songs that are then later auto-tuned for millions of dollars?
Do they want to hear from those people?
about what America really constitutes?
Is that really what's their cup of tea?
The answer, of course, is no.
And yet that's what Democrats continue to resonate to.
The Democratic elite are wildly out of touch with all the people who are in the middle of the country, which is why they continue to cater to the folks over at the VMAs.
So the VMAs, the Video Music Awards, it used to actually celebrate music of a sort.
Now it's basically just a place for political posturing.
Kevin Hart was hosting this thing with Tiffany Haddish.
Is that how it's pronounced?
And Kevin Hart He started off by joking about President Trump a lot, which is a brave thing.
My favorite part of this is that when Kevin Hart jokes about all this, what you'll hear is a triumphalism in his voice.
Look at how brave I am.
It's very reminiscent of Robert De Niro at the Emmy Awards, where he started shouting, F you Trump, and then raising his arms, raising his fist, because he had single-handedly deposed the President of the United States.
Under Article 32 of the Constitution of the United States, if an actor who once played a boxer shouts, F you Trump, at the President, he's no longer the President.
So naturally, Robert De Niro was very enthusiastic about this.
He got a standing ovation for shouting F.U.
Trump.
So going to virtue signal in front of a bunch of people who totally agree with you at Rockefeller Center in the middle of New York City or in Los Angeles, this is the height of courage in the entertainment sphere.
It's just like Normandy.
It's like the guys who are coming off the boats and fighting the Nazis.
That's Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish saying, F you Trump.
This makes them feel good inside.
It makes them feel like they've done something virtuous and strong in a room full of people who agree with them and think that virtue and strength come from shouting at the President of the United States.
Here's Kevin Hart joking about Trump.
Again, if you don't think this is off-putting, then you're really not following how America works these days.
I'm looking at this like it's game day, people.
But do not worry, because at this game, you guys are allowed to kneel.
You can do whatever the hell you want.
There's no old white man that can stop you.
Do it!
I mean, beefs pop off, bad language, people run to the bathroom and send out crazy tweets.
It's basically like your typical day at the White House.
In your face, Trump!
Suck it!
In your face, Trump.
Suck it.
Well, first of all, funny would be good.
Kevin Hart used to be a comedian.
Now he's just a short guy who yells at the president.
And he's one of the few people in America that I'm allowed to call short because he's actually shorter than I am.
But in any case, I'm going to at least take a moment to enjoy that.
But Kevin Hart, doing this routine at the Video Music Awards broadcast across the nation, watched by seven people, but treasured by the celebrity culture in the Democratic Party.
Is that sort of thing going to hurt Trump?
Or is it going to help Trump?
The answer, of course, is it's radically going to help Trump.
Every time people in the culture decide to insert themselves into politics, everyone else gets really, really annoyed.
But it wasn't just that.
And there was somebody named Logic.
I assume that was his given name.
I assume he came out of his mother and his mother said, I shall call you Logic.
But apparently he's some sort of rapper.
Don't know.
Don't really care.
And he did some song called One Day.
He ran out while doing this song wearing a shirt that said, F the wall.
And then he brought out a bunch of kids who are either illegal immigrants or children of activists, and they're all wearing shirts that say, we are all human beings.
Right.
Okay, but some of you are here illegally.
Like, I'm confused.
There are lots of different types of human beings all over planet Earth and in the United States as well.
That does not answer the question.
I mean, you could go to prison and say, and have everybody wear shirts saying, we are all human beings.
Like, there are lots of types of human beings.
That's not even to say these kids are bad.
But again, the virtue signaling in the room is really strong.
Also, F the wall.
I just wonder whether Mr. Logic Actually has a wall around his house.
I assume he lives in some sort of gated community.
He has security.
It's very easy to pick on celebrities this way because they live in a world that they don't actually inhabit.
There's a great book by Charles Murray called Coming Apart.
And what the book is really about is all of these people who are these kind of white upper crust elites who live on the coast.
And they push a message of social liberalism.
They push that single motherhood is totally wonderful.
And they push that abortion is totally cool.
And they push that not saving your money is fine.
They push all of these socially liberal messages about big government and high taxes.
And then they take all their money and they store it in offshore bank accounts and they get married and they have kids just like a normal family in 1955.
But everybody in the middle of the country who listens to them follows this advice and then they live crappy lives.
Well, that's exactly what happens when you see these celebrities talking about F the wall.
You think these people are going to be affected by the lack of a wall on the southern border?
They're not ranchers in Arizona.
These folks are not going to be affected by this.
All that a lack of a wall means to these folks is that they have cheaper illegal immigrant labor to do their lawns.
Legitimately, that's what celebrities in L.A.
do.
Most of the time, celebrities who are interacting with illegal immigrants are doing so in terms of household service.
Seriously, I live in LA.
I promise you, I know a lot of these celebrities.
And most of them, when they talk about illegal immigrants, they're talking about that.
They want a cheap housekeeper or a cheap nanny.
Now listen, I don't blame any of the people who are coming across the border to live a better life in the United States.
I do blame a system that allows people to cross the border illegally without checking them.
It seems to me that the least a country can do is check the folks coming across the border to make sure that number one, they are safe.
Number two, they are educated.
And number three, they're going to contribute to society and not mooch off of society.
But these folks, it doesn't affect them.
It doesn't matter to them.
They don't live in poorer neighborhoods where culture changes when thousands of people come across the border and they don't speak the native tongue and they bring customs from home.
That doesn't actually make any difference to people who are living in gated communities and gated establishments.
It doesn't make any difference to them because they are gated off from everyone else.
And the only actual contact they have with illegal immigration Doesn't involve any additional crime.
It doesn't involve any sort of additional poverty that exists in certain communities in the United States, thanks to illegal immigration.
It doesn't actually change any of that for them.
So it's easy for them to go up there and virtue signal in front of all of their rich friends.
Here was the aforementioned Logic.
Again, I'm so confused by rapper names, I can't even express it.
But here is Logic performing one day in a shirt that reads F the Wall.
I really have to admit, it's almost impossible not to watch this particular number and just get flashes to Popstar with Andy it's almost impossible not to watch this particular number and just Because it legitimately is one guy singing like, who is it, George Michael in it?
With George Michael singing, and then some guy rapping about social justice in the background.
It's really, it's really incredible.
So, if you haven't seen that movie, you should go check it out.
It's very obscene, but it's really, really funny.
But that's what all of this stuff is, and it is inherently absurd.
It's inherently absurd.
They didn't just do that, they also cut a TV promo to get out the vote, which is really exciting.
They had all of these celebrities who cut a TV promo trying to tell everybody it's important to rock the vote, because this is what we need, is celebrities telling people to vote.
I would prefer, frankly, that fewer uninformed people vote, rather than everybody who watches the VMAs voting.
Also, if people are voting because a celebrity told you to, then you probably shouldn't be voting in the first place.
The final word on this comes courtesy of Michael Avenatti, who legitimately showed up at the VMAs.
I will explain in just one second.
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Okay, so, the best part of this, and when I say that the Democrats and the VMAs are basically one thing, that the celebrity culture of the Democratic Party has basically eaten the Democratic Party, I don't mean that apocryphally.
I don't mean that in any sort of vague sense.
Barack Obama is sort of the celebrity to the celebrity culture, and the mutual backscratching of celebrity that went on during the Obama administration was pretty incredible.
Everybody in Hollywood Thought Barack Obama was a celebrity.
And Barack Obama wanted to hang out with the celebrities who thought that he was a celebrity.
So the merger of celebrity and politics was already in place long before we elected a reality television star to the presidency of the United States.
Barack Obama was actually the first reality TV star to be president of the United States.
He had no real political experience.
He came out of nowhere.
TV glorified him.
And he was considered a celebrity more than he was a politician, even before he was elected president of the United States.
In any case, What this leads to is the actual merger of reality TV and politics, which is, I have to admit, deeply entertaining.
So Michael Avenatti, you will remember, is the lawyer for Stormy Daniels.
He became famous literally by representing a porn star who once shtooped the president.
This is his legitimate claim to fame.
The only reason he is famous is because Stormy Daniels, during Shark Week, nailed the president and then went away for many years because the president paid her lots of money to go away, and then, in an act, Of brazen bravery decided to come out and tell her important story.
She doesn't allege the president actually abused her in any way, right?
She just wanted to come out and make some money off of this thing so she could strip for higher rates.
But Michael Avenatti is her lawyer, and he's been out there saying that he is going to tear down the president.
He's the lawyer who's finally going to bring down the president of the United States.
And he shows up at the VMAs.
Now, everybody's sort of laughing at this.
I think Michael Avenatti has a shot at the 2020 nomination.
I do.
I'll explain why after you watch Michael Avenatti talk about why he's at the Video Music Awards.
What the heck are you doing here?
Well, you know, I was invited to this great event.
It's a pretty cool event.
And I thought I'd show up.
Were you surprised to be invited?
A little bit, a little bit.
But, you know, hopefully it won't be the first time.
Well, it is the first time.
Hopefully it won't be the last time.
So are you really considering a run for president?
I am.
I'm serious about it.
I'm seriously looking at it.
I'm traveling around talking to people in the country.
And, you know, I've been really surprised at how much enthusiasm there is out there for the potential.
So I'm going to make a decision.
I want to be smart about it, deliberate.
You know why?
Because the VMAs is a signifier of Democratic id.
If you want to know what Democrats feel, all you have to do is really watch the VMAs.
You want to know what Democrats think?
You have to look at their various policy proposals, and you have to talk to the Democrat Socialists of America, and all the rest.
If you want to know what they feel, watch the VMAs.
And that is a visceral hatred for the President of the United States.
And Michael Avenatti represents that in a pretty solid way.
His entire claim to fame is yelling at Trump.
And so now he's at the VMAs yelling at Trump.
And people look at him and they go, I like that guy.
You know why?
Because he yells at Trump.
That's awesome.
If the Democrats disappoint in 2018, if they don't take back Congress in 2018, for example, you could see such a strong backlash, so much anger, that somebody like Avenatti could actually win some primaries based solely on, I'm the only guy in this room who's actually sued the President of the United States.
I'm the only guy in this room who's willing to say basta.
I'm the only one in this room who's aggressive enough to take on the president.
That has some appeal to Democrats because the VMAs represent the id.
Michael Avenatti is the id.
And the Democrats have basically decided to cave to their id as opposed to following the sort of blue collar tactics that Sherrod Brown would prefer.
Meanwhile, as I say, you know, the president of the United States, Trump, was elected.
Because of cultural issues.
So here are a couple of cultural issues.
There are a lot of stories that we use in radio and podcasting on Twitter that signify, this is why Trump won.
You get that a lot.
This is why Trump won.
Something dumb happens and people tweet out, this is why Trump won.
But these dumb stories actually are sort of why Trump won.
So here is one of those examples today.
This is such a great story.
This is courtesy of the Associated Press.
press.
You ready?
Mondelez International, the parent company of Nabisco, has redesigned the packaging of its Barnum's Animals crackers after relenting to pressure from people for the ethical treatment of animals.
PETA, which has been protesting the use of animals in circuses for more than 30 years, wrote a letter to Mondelez in the spring of 2016 calling for a redesign.
Given the egregious cruelty inherent in circuses that use animals, and the public's swelling opposition to the exploitation of animals used for entertainment, We urge Nabisco to update its packaging in order to show animals who are free to roam in their natural habitats, PETA said in its letter.
Mondeley agreed and started working on a redesign.
In the meantime, the Cracker's Namesake Circus, Ringling Brothers, and Barnum & Bailey folded for good.
The 146-year-old circus had removed elephants from its shows in 2016 because of pressure from PETA.
It closed down in May 2017 due to slow ticket sales.
The redesign retains all of the coloring, but instead of showing the animals in cages, implying they are traveling in boxcars for the circus, The new boxes feature a zebra, elephant, lion, giraffe, and gorilla wandering side-by-side in a grassland.
The outline of acacia trees can be seen in the distance.
So, this was deeply important.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has now released the fake cookie animals.
It's no longer enough to have free-range chickens.
We now have to have free-range cookie chickens.
Very, very important.
But let's be real about this.
All of this is fun and games until the Cookie Lion and the Cookie Tiger decide to eat the Gingerbread Man.
At that point, it really gets seriously ugly.
The Muffin Man takes it right in the neck from the lion that has now been released from his cage.
On the Barnum's Animal Crackers.
They're really doing important things here in the United States.
And this is why people are like, oh, screw political correctness, screw this.
This is just ridiculous.
That is not even the most politically correct story of the day.
This one is spectacular.
Okay, so this is from Healthline.
Healthline is a publication, I believe they are connected with men's health in some way.
And they have something reviewed by Janet Brito, PhD.
It's called the LGBTQIAZBYL Safe sex guy.
It's good times.
And here is... It's so good.
It's so good.
So, they have decided they are going to rename genitalia.
Rename them to be more sensitive to transgender folks.
You ready for this?
It's unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
For the 1,000th time, my wife happens to be a doctor, which means she uses medical terminology.
Even when I teach my children what genitalia are, my daughter is four and a half years old and knows the name of genitalia, and then she calls it her private zone.
She uses a euphemism.
Just like most parents, I don't want my kids running around in stores screaming penis or vagina, right?
That's just what we do.
But that's because my children are children.
And when we actually discuss actual biology, it's good to know the terminology and not to say pee-pee, right?
It's good to know the actual terminology.
However, it's apparently very, very bad.
Very bad.
Because here's what Healthline says.
These guides, too many guides with regard to LGBTQ issues, often unnecessarily gender body parts as being male parts and female parts.
So it...
Yes.
Correct.
You know, like in every sexually dimorphic species, which is to say every animal species on planet Earth, the penis is a male part and the vagina is a female part because these still have biological meanings because we're not idiots.
But apparently we are idiots.
I've assumed too much.
These guides often unnecessarily gender body parts as being male parts and female parts and refer to sex with women or sex with men, excluding those who identify as non-binary.
You can't have sex with a non-binary body part.
It doesn't exist.
That's not a thing.
Unless you are screwing a tree.
That's not a thing.
Many individuals don't see body parts as having a gender.
People have a gender.
But body parts have a sex!
What in the world are you talking about?
Are you saying that it's just some sort of social construct?
That the presence of a penis seems to be connected with male genetics?
That's a social construct?
Okay, I can't wait to give you the punchline to this, because the punchline to this is so unbelievably good.
Okay, the punchline is just, it's astonishingly good.
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Okay, so here is the punchline to this LGBTQIAZAY guide.
Here's the punchline.
So they've already said these guys unnecessarily gender body parts as being male parts and female parts.
So here's their solution.
Here's their solution.
The notion that a penis is exclusively a male body part and a vulva is exclusively a female body part is inaccurate.
No, it's not.
By using the word parts to talk about genitals and using medical terms for anatomy without attaching a gender to it, we become much more able to effectively discuss safe sex in a way that's clear and inclusive.
For the purpose of... Here it is.
It's so good.
It's so good.
Okay, there's no way to pitch how good this is.
For the purposes of this guide, we will refer to the vagina as the front hole instead of solely using the medical term vagina.
This is gender-inclusive language that's considerate of the fact that some trans people don't identify with the labels the medical community attaches to their genitals.
The front hole.
Okay, so, again, my wife's a doctor.
If she is doing a gynecological exam, she is not going to ask a biological woman if she can see her front hole.
Because that's absurd.
That is ridiculous.
And I'm afraid that these folks are mixing up their face hole with their rear hole.
Because basically, their head is up their ass.
That's what I'm trying to tell you here.
That is so ridiculous.
But this is how far we've come.
You want to know why you got Trump?
This is why you got Trump.
I know.
Everybody's like, what does this have to do with Trump?
It has to do with everybody looks at these stories and we go, that guy.
OK, fine.
Whatever.
You can do this.
Fine.
That that ridiculous human being.
Let's just make him president.
I don't even give a crap anymore.
At least he's not doing front hole.
At least we're not going to have a Democratic debate.
You're not going to see a Republican debate where they argue over the proper terminology for terms that have been settled by science for all of history.
Hey, so we're not going to do this.
We're not going to do this.
Honest to God.
Front hall.
Yeah, Democrats, let's keep going down the...
Let's explore these paths.
It's just, just great.
Meanwhile, in other ridiculous stories today, this is an amazing story.
So we talked yesterday about Asia Argento.
Asia Argento is one of the Me Too leaders.
And she has said that we should believe all women, we should believe all victims, except for that 17-year-old boy that she apparently molested, right?
Who apparently she paid $380,000 to silence.
He was a child actor.
When she was 37 and he was 17, she invited him to a hotel room where she apparently essentially had sex with him.
Well, she said Tuesday, And she never had any sexual relationship with a man who has accused her of molesting him, which is weird since he actually forwarded a picture of her in bed with him at a hotel to the New York Times.
But here's what she says.
She said Tuesday she'd never had any sexual relationship with a man who has accused her of molesting him when he was a minor, and that her former boyfriend, the late Anthony Bourdain, urged her to agree to a financial settlement to end the man's longstanding persecution of her.
So that's a strong tactic.
Blame the dude who just hung himself.
That seems like that's a very strong move by Eja Argento.
If that's not true, then she is not only a terrible person, she is THE terrible person.
That is about as terrible as it gets.
Again, what's amazing about this whole phenomenon with Eja Argento is to watch people give her the benefit of the doubt in an area they would not give anybody else the benefit of the doubt.
You know, the Bible is very clear about judging.
And what the Bible says, it's a very interesting verse, the Bible says, I rarely quote the Bible, but this is an actual moral rule.
And the moral rule is when you judge, you're not supposed to judge in benefit of the rich or in benefit of the poor.
Why would the Bible specify you're not supposed to judge in benefit of the poor?
We all understand you don't, it would have to specify don't judge in favor of the rich because corruption tends to come from rich people who can pay off judges.
But The notion of sympathy for particular victims allows people to make unjust decisions.
Okay, that is what is happening here.
There are a lot of folks on the left who are rushing to Asia Argento's defense and providing her with all sorts of credibility because they like Asia Argento.
We see this on all sides.
When President Trump is accused of sexual abuse, people who like Trump are like, ah, none of that's true.
And then when Keith Ellison is accused of sexual abuse, people on the right are like, yeah, that's totally true.
And exactly the reverse for Democrats.
You got to have one standard of guilt or innocence, and you have to have one standard for the level of evidence necessary in order for us to determine whether somebody is actually responsible for behavior or not.
The double standard is pretty telling, and that's a pretty shocking move by Asia Argento right there.
If that's not true, She's got a real problem.
OK, meanwhile, a big story that broke last night is that over at the University of North Carolina, protesters knocked over a pro-Confederate statue from 1913.
Here's some video.
Here's what it sounded like when a bunch of students decided to topple Silent Sam, which is a 1913 statue placed on campus in memoriam of the 300 alumni who served in the Confederate Army.
Here's what it sounded like.
So they're pulling down the statue, And people are celebrating and cheering and kicking the statue and stomping on the statue as though they've just pulled down a statue of Stalin or a statue of Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union or the destruction of the Hussein regime.
I think that there is a solid case that Silent Sam should not be on public property.
I'm not a big fan of removing monuments.
I tend to agree with Condoleezza Rice, who I think made this case very well.
She says, I am a firm believer in keep your history before you and so I don't actually want to rename things that were named for slave owners.
I want us to have to look at those names and recognize what they did and to be able to tell our kids what they did and for them to have a sense of their own history.
When you start wiping out your history, sanitizing your history to make you feel better, it's a bad thing.
I agree with Condoleezza Rice.
I think that people should be forced to look at that statue and then cope with the legacy of slavery in the United States and the legacy of the Confederacy.
It is not fair to say that this statue was merely a sort of Amidine tribute to people who died in a war, because when it was actually dedicated in 1913, it was pretty obviously a symbol of Anti-black hatred at the time.
Julian Carr, who is a local KKK member, who helped dedicate the statue, said this at the actual dedication ceremony.
He said, "There are no words that I have been able to find "in the vocabulary of the English language "that adequately express my feelings "in the presence of this occasion." And then he gets to the truly horrible part.
100 yards from where we stand, less than 90 days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a Negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village, she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these university buildings where it was stationed a garrison of 100 federal soldiers.
I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for 30 nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shotgun under my head.
So, yeah, the statue was pretty well connected with some awful, egregious, evil behavior, no question.
But, does that mean that we should start tearing down statues?
I don't think, number one, we should tear down statues.
And, number two, I don't think that, well, I mean, I don't think statues should be removed, number one.
Number two, I think that we are setting a really bad precedent when we are actually having mobs of people tear down statues.
For a couple of reasons.
The main reason why it's really bad when people tear down statues, when mobs tear down statues, is that you understand why people did it in the former Soviet Union, or why people did it in the Hussein regime, because legitimately, a regime that was repressive had fallen.
There was no government that had now taken control.
To get rid of the old vestiges.
And so the people, in a fit of wild enthusiasm, tore down these old symbols of tyranny.
But we have a Democratic government in the United States.
We have a Democratic Republic in the United States.
The governor of North Carolina is a Democrat, who doesn't actually like this monument.
If you're telling me that the people who run the University of North Carolina are people who are emissaries of white supremacy, you're out of your mind.
I mean, the people who run that university are very much on the left.
These are people who really oppose, I'm sure oppose that statue.
The point is that in the United States where you actually have a redress of grievances available through the democratic process to use mob rule as an excuse to do this is really bad and it actually leads to some even worse stuff.
So I got a letter from a student at UNC last night to tell me about this stuff.
And here's what the student wrote, quote, I'm a freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tonight, students tore down a Confederate statue on campus that is known as Silent Sam.
Peaceful protesters acted just like their name suggests and destroyed this piece of history, chanting black power and go away cops when police arrived on the scene.
By the way, it's worth noting that if you think that the system of white supremacy is still in the offing in the United States.
In 1913, when an evil KKK member horse whipped a black woman for no apparent reason in front of a garrison of 100 federal officers who did nothing.
Hey, the reverse happened last night.
A bunch of police officers stood around while a bunch of students tore down a statue in honor of the Confederacy.
I don't think the cops should have stood around for that.
I think the law should be enforced, whatever the law is in a democratic republic.
public property.
They didn't do anything about it because they decided that it was worthwhile to tear it down.
Now, I don't think the cops should have stood around for that.
I think the law should be enforced, whatever the law is, in a democratic republic.
But let's also note that those same police officers are not exactly standing up for white supremacy when they stand around allowing people to tear down a Confederate statue.
That's just silly.
Here's what the student continued to say.
Here's where it gets ugly.
He says, "I walked by to see what I figured "was going to be national news, "and that was probably not the smartest thing for me to do.
"Almost immediately, some of these protesters "started coming at me yelling, 'Get out of here, Whitey,' "which I found ironic 'cause they were holding a sign "that said, 'From Durham to Charlottesville "to the White House, tear down racism.' Needless to say, I ran back to my dorm pretty darn fast.
I was hearing from several students who had similar experiences at UNC.
So it turns out that anti-racism only extends as far as battling the quote unquote superstructure of white supremacy.
It doesn't actually extend to not yelling at people who happen to be white walking by this rally as it's happening.
OK, in just a second, I want to talk a little bit more about student revolutions and the youth that are supposed to save us.
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So the media are celebrating the fall of Silent Sam.
Again, I think there's an argument to be made whether that statue ought to be removed from public property or not.
I don't think it's a particularly compelling argument, but at least that's an argument.
There is no argument that I can see that a mob should be able to tear this statue down.
I don't think mobs tearing things down is actually a good thing in the United States.
Mob rule is generally not something I'm in favor of.
But again, it's this feeling that has now been pushed across the United States.
It's this wave of feeling that the angrier you are in politics, the more justified you are.
And that means the youth shall lead us because the youth are the angriest.
And one of the angriest people in the United States is obviously David Hogg.
Now, David Hogg, you'll remember from months ago, he's now more obscure.
He was one of the Parkland survivors.
He's been on the cover of magazines.
He's on the cover of New York Magazine.
The cover of New York Magazine, which is pretty incredible for a kid who's, I guess he's 18 now.
He just is about to graduate high school or he just graduated high school and he's extraordinarily politically active, which is fine.
He says he wants to run for Congress and also he curses about Nancy Pelosi.
We know that he's authentic because he says the F word a lot.
He says, the reason Republicans are successful right now is because they're empowering young people.
Pointing out that Paul Ryan was 45 when he became Speaker of the House, ignoring the fact the President of the United States is 1,272 years old.
His older Democrats just won't move the F off the plate and let us take control.
Nancy Pelosi is old.
And then he says he wants to join Congress, and he says a lot of sloganeering that doesn't actually have any Real basis in fact.
And he is championed as the face of the new movement on the cover of New York Magazine.
It's actually a really weird article because it talks about him refusing to move to his hometown without his parents granting him concessions.
He comes off as a bit of a prima donna in the New York Magazine article again.
Just like anybody else has the right to participate in politics, but this idea that the youth are the people who ought to be trusted is really, really dumb.
How about good ideas ought to be trusted?
Speaking as somebody who was writing when they were 17, I can say that I was dumber when I was 17 than I am now.
I know more things.
I know more about politics.
I think I am a more moral person.
All of life is about getting better at what you do.
And when you're 18 years old and you're getting coverage and the cover of the New York magazine, As the future of the Democratic Party, that's a bit of a problem.
But maybe the future of the Democratic Party isn't, in fact, David Hogg.
Maybe the future of the Democratic Party is Chelsea Clinton.
So after years of people on the right warning that Chelsea Clinton would run for office, and her saying no, yesterday she came out and she said maybe.
Great.
She says, if my city councilor were to retire, if my congresswoman were to retire, my senators, and I thought I could make a positive impact, I think I would really have to answer that, I would really have to ask my answer To that question.
For me it's a definite no now, but it's a definite maybe in the future because who knows what the future is going to bring.
Because every generation must run for office.
Every single one.
We have to have Kennedys and Clintons and Bushes and Trumps all the way down.
It's just going to be awesome.
We have to have a legacy of paternalism in politics that stretches across generations Honestly, if I have to pick between David Hogg and Chelsea Clinton, I'll pick David Hogg.
Honest to God.
And I can't stand David Hogg.
I'll pick him just because at least he's fresh blood.
At least he's somebody who's engaged.
At least he's not just doing it because mommy and daddy were doing it and then got rich off of it.
It's really insipid.
If we're going to have legacy politics all the way through, then we've got a real problem in the country.
The reason Donald Trump became president is partially because he went around punching Jeb Bush, like they were in the back of the sixth grade class with the teacher, not watching.
That's the feeling I think that is going to accrue thanks to the dominance of big names in politics, the Bushes and the Clintons and all the rest of it.
There's a sort of pushback that's happening on a broad level.
Now, meanwhile, President Trump is getting himself in hot water, but he's not getting himself in hot water with the American public, I think.
I think he's getting himself in hot water with the press, mostly.
And the stuff that he should be getting in hot water for is not the stuff he's actually getting in hot water for with the press.
So, yesterday, he was talking about the Mueller probe, and the president came out and said, if I want, I can lead the Mueller probe.
As I've said before, the president should stop talking about the Mueller probe.
He should let it take its course.
I don't think it's going to come up with anything.
But he keeps kind of feeding the fire on this thing, and this is driving the media up a wall.
So he said that he can leave the Mueller probe if he wants.
He also tweeted out about security clearances.
There's another thing that he tweeted.
He was watching TV last night.
And he tweeted, Just watched former intelligence official Philip Mudd become totally unglued and weird while debating wonderful Paris Denard over Brennan's security clearance.
Denard destroyed him, but Mudd is in no mental condition to have such a clearance.
Should be revoked.
At Sean Hannity.
Okay, so the president of the United States, it's just important to note.
When we say that we now live in a reality TV universe filled with stupidity, yeah, you And President Trump loves pardons because he can sort of hand them out if you win The Apprentice.
And then he likes security clearances because he can withdraw them if you lose The Apprentice.
So he doesn't like Philip Mudd because Philip Mudd's saying mean things about him on TV.
And so he wants to withdraw his security clearance.
This is not good presidenting.
It's not good executive branching.
We should be a nation of rules, not of vindictive vendettas.
And when the president does this, it undercuts his own case.
But Democrats continue to focus in not so much Adrian, come here.
I want to ask you a question.
So, how did you come... Come here.
in on, for example, the president of the United States saying that there was an ICE event yesterday at which he honored a particular ICE agent who happens to be Hispanic.
And here's what Trump said.
And the media lost their minds over this.
Adrian, come here.
I want to ask you a question.
So how did you come here?
Come here.
You're not nervous, right?
Speaks perfect English.
Come here, I want to ask you about that.
78 lives.
You saved 78 people.
OK, I don't know why he would say the guy speaks perfect English.
I mean, I guess he looked at me and said, Hispanic dude, I have to point out that he speaks perfect English because the president is, suffice it to say, sometimes thick.
So that is not a great statement, but the media decided this is a deeply, deeply important scandal.
It's indicative of something deep and horrifying about President Trump.
Most of the country, though, is more focused on the fact that the Democrats are ripping on ICE generally than on the fact that the President says impolitic and dumb things about members of ICE.
The President is actually honoring that guy.
The Democrats would disband ICE.
So while the President is honoring that guy in the dumbest possible way, the Democrats would actually disband ICE and get rid of the borders.
They're sending out people with Shirts that say F the wall at the VMAs.
And then they're ripping on Trump for saying this guy speaks perfect English.
Again, does that make the president brilliant?
No, but if you contended that, I think that you are delusional.
Does it mean that the president is a racist?
I think it means the president is racially insensitive, but did we not know that before?
But when it comes right down to it, if I have to choose between the racially insensitive guy who supports ICE and the person who is perfectly politically correct, who does not support ICE, most Americans are going to side with President Trump Meanwhile, members of the media are still pushing President Trump on the Mueller stuff, and Trump is responding.
Here is Chris Cuomo, who is, again, in a running gun battle with his brother for stupidest Cuomo brother.
And he starts ripping into Corey Lewandowski, who, again, is about as bright as a tomato.
And Corey Lewandowski is a former campaign manager for President Trump, also an incredibly dumb man.
And here is Cuomo actually being dumber than Lewandowski, which is a pretty astonishing feat.
I mean, you really have to try to do that.
If you've got nothing to hide, you talk!
How many times has he said, I want to sit down with Mueller, I want to tell him?
So do it!
Man up and do it!
Hey, the president isn't talking to Robert Mueller, not because he's not man enough, but because if he does, he understands that any sort of misstatement will be used by Mueller to charge him with obstruction of justice or perjury.
The idea there is no perjury trap?
This is what the media are saying now.
If you have nothing to hide, why don't you talk to Mueller?
Okay guys, if you have nothing to hide, why don't you let the IRS audit your books every year?
If you have nothing to hide, why don't you let the police into your house?
This is just foolishness.
The president isn't going to talk with Mueller because the president is fond of saying ridiculous things, and in a legal context, that is a huge mistake.
The reason that I'm bringing all this stuff up with President Trump is that Trump says dumb things on a fairly regular basis.
But the media are always at 11.
You can't tell the difference between their treatment of him saying, he speaks perfect English, and the president should talk with Robert Mueller, and the president just complimented Vladimir Putin and compared the United States to Russia.
There's no difference in tone or tenor.
It's exactly the same tone, exactly the same tenor.
If the media actually cared about having an impact on politics, they might have some dynamic range.
They have no dynamic range.
Everything is played at the full possible volume, and that means that everything is basically muted.
Your brain.
If you are in a room with a very loud, constant noise, your brain will start to tune it out.
That's what the media have become these days.
And that's why President Trump, even continuing to ramp stuff up, doesn't have all that much impact on President Trump himself.
Okay, time for a thing I like, and then we'll get to a thing I hate.
So, things I like.
There is an HBO show that starts off kind of bizarre, like a mix between Billions and Arrested Development, and then it sort of morphs into a King Lear Shakespearean drama.
It's pretty good.
I'm not gonna say it's fantastic.
But it is compelling.
The show is called Succession.
Brian Cox is the star of the show.
He's definitely the best thing in it.
All of the characters are deeply unlikable, as per most HBO shows.
But if you are a fan of sort of corporate espionage kind of stuff and family drama, then this will work for you.
And it does have a couple of really fantastic scenes.
The best performance is actually given by, I'm trying to remember the name of the actor, Matthew McDermott, I think?
But he's really terrific.
He's not a member of the family.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
Everything I've done in my life, I've done for my children.
I know I've made mistakes, but I've always tried to do the best by them because I love them.
Have you thought about the possibility that your children are actually scared of you?
Oh, f*** off!
I want a broadcast network.
The show is pretty good.
It's obviously based on Rupert Murdoch.
Whether it's an accurate take on Rupert Murdoch or not doesn't really matter, but it does actually highlight a serious problem for folks who tend to be powerful, which is that their kids very often are deeply, deeply screwed up.
And that is because when you grant a sense of entitlement to your kids, it's difficult for them ever to recover from it.
So that's a challenge that parents who are powerful or rich, wealthy, accomplished have to pass on to their kids.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
So Facebook has decided they are now going to rank users.
Oh goody, how could this possibly go wrong?
According to the UK Sun, Facebook is rating users based on how trustworthy it thinks they are.
This won't, this won't, absolutely this will not result in people spamming other people's accounts to try and ding their trustworthiness rating.
It absolutely won't happen.
It's not like people have ever used social media to target others before.
Users receive a score on a scale from 0 to 1 that determines if they have a good or bad reputation, but it's completely hidden, so you can't even check your own reputational score, which is just great.
The rating system was revealed in a report by the Washington Post, which says it's in place to help identify malicious actors.
Facebook tracks your behavior across its site and uses that info to assign you a rating.
Tessa Lyons, who heads up Facebook's fight against fake news, said, quote, one of the signals we use is how people interact with articles.
For example, if someone previously gave us feedback that an article was false and the article was confirmed false by a fact checker, That we might weight that person's future false news feedback more than someone who indiscriminately provides false news feedback on lots of articles, including ones that end up being rated as true.
The problem with that, of course, is that a lot of the fact-checkers happen to be left-wing, and those fact-checkers are going to confirm the preconceived biases of a bunch of folks on the left.
Facebook's tendency toward the left is going to be exacerbated by all this.
This is why when Facebook says, oh, we just run algorithms, how you define the algorithm is exactly the issue.
It's like saying, I always abide by the law.
Well, it depends what the law is.
If the law is bad, then you abiding by the law isn't particularly useful, is it?
So Facebook, again, failing to understand its own bias, and that's going to create some problems.
Other things that I hate today.
So Oprah Winfrey has now promoted the Shout Your Abortion movement.
The July issue of O Magazine, according to LifeNews.com, featured Shout Your Abortion founder Amelia Bono in its inspiration section, because nothing is more inspirational than you talking about how you killed your baby.
Bono, who began the campaign to urge women to brag about aborting their unborn babies, soon will be coming out with a new book by the same title, according to the report.
I'm sure it will be a massive bestseller.
Nothing says fun quite like having shout your abortion on your coffee table.
She told the magazine how it all began in 2015.
She says, when I found out the House of Representatives had voted to defund Planned Parenthood, I kind of unraveled.
I opened Facebook and without thinking wrote, like a year ago I had an abortion at Planned Parenthood and I remember this experience with a nearly inexpressible level of gratitude.
I hit post 153 words later and everything changed.
And then her friends shared her post on Twitter with the hashtag shout your abortion.
On some level I'd internalized the stigma.
If I honestly wasn't ashamed, then why hide?
It wasn't out of character for me to disclose something so personal online.
What was out of character was my silence.
Which is to say, you're an oversharer, but then she felt bad about this because you should actually feel bad, it turns out, about killing babies.
It's probably not something you should shout.
But now this is something that the left has... I'm old enough to remember when Bill Clinton said things like safe, legal, and rare.
The idea being that abortion was a bad thing that was still necessary under certain circumstances.
I think that's a bad argument, but it's at least closer to a moral argument than abortion is an unfettered good that you should brag about, and it's some sort of mark of maturity and womanhood.
And yet that's what the left is pushing these days.
A culture that does not have shame is a culture that is soon going to degrade into full government dependency.
Seriously, shame culture, guilt, is a very good thing.
I think there's a difference between a guilt culture and a shame culture.
A shame culture is one where people are shamed in doing the right thing.
A guilt culture is one where morality is inculcated in individual citizens so they feel bad about doing the wrong thing.
Western civilization tends to be more of a guilt culture.
Islamic civilization tends to be more of a shame culture.
But, if there is neither shame nor guilt, then what you end up with is a culture where every sin is considered a positive, and we're all supposed to cover for you because after all, all behaviors are supposed to result in equal benefit to you.
Whether you have an abortion or not, whether you're a single mom or not, it's all supposed to end up exactly the same way for everyone.
This is how you end up with a society of people who are dependent on the largesse of others, who happen to be more responsible citizens anyway.
It's just, it's bad stuff all the way through, but Oprah's always been a deeply socially liberal person, and this is why if she ever ran for president, I think a lot of her veneer would immediately come off.
I think that she's got this cross-cultural appeal that comes out, that starts to be washed away the minute that she comes out as the partisan hack that she actually is.
Okay, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest.
I'm Ben Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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