All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 19, 2018 - The Ben Shapiro Show
55:36
The New Blacklist | Ep. 683
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
President Trump plans to pull out of Syria, Tucker Carlson is hit with advertiser boycott, and Michael Flynn gets clocked by a judge.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Wow, what a show we have coming up for you today.
I want to remind you that there was big news yesterday on Martha McAllister.
I revealed the title and the cover of my brand new book.
It's called The Right Side of History.
It goes on presale today.
You can order it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any other major bookstore without any publicity.
It's basically cracking the top thousand on Amazon right now.
Four months in advance.
The West is in a crisis of purpose.
America, which is the greatest national experiment in human history, is not going to survive if we abandon the ideas upon which it was built, and that's what the book is about.
It details this crisis, how we can get back on track, what built our civilization, why it's all falling apart right now.
It's kind of my magnum opus, so please go check it out.
The Right Side of History, How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.
I think you're going to love it.
It goes to a lot of the eternal and serious issues we talk about here on the program.
Go check it out right now.
Pre-buy it.
It comes out, really, in March.
But if you get it now, then you are getting it early.
Make sure you don't run out of stock.
The right side of history, how reason and moral purpose made the West great.
So go check that out right now.
Also, before we begin, I need to talk to you about the best Christmas present you are going to get for anyone this Christmas.
How do I know you're going to get it?
Because I'm telling you to.
And also because it's awesome.
What exactly is this gift, this fascinating, magical gift you should get for somebody?
It is, of course, man crates.
Man crates knows what dudes like.
They have hundreds of unique quality gifts that he is guaranteed to love.
They've got the exotic meats crate, the whiskey appreciation crate that is a personalized decanter and personalized glasses, the perfect vessels for his favorite scotch or bourbon.
They've got the knife making kit.
They've got the grill master crate.
They've got the exotic meats that I already mentioned, which has like ostrich, alligator and wild boar.
Not kosher, but I'm sure delicious.
Most gifts ship in a sealed wooden crate with a crowbar.
This is the best part of the present.
So it's not just that the present itself is awesome.
You have to pry open a wooden crate with a crowbar like a man.
That's what you have to do to get into your man crates.
And he has to do it in front of everyone.
So it's both humiliating and entertaining.
I will admit that the last time I got a man crate, I had to request the help of my four and a half year old and two and a half year old child because they have upper body strength that I may not.
Go check it out.
Every man crate comes with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
And right now, listeners to my show, you buy one gift and you get the second gift for 25% off when you go to mancrates.com slash ben.
The offer is only for the holidays.
Buy one gift, get the second 25% off at mancrates.com slash ben.
Again, it only works if you say it like this, mancrates.com slash ben.
So go to that slash ben, and again, you get that special deal, the first gift, and then the second gift comes 25% off, and it's got all sorts of great variety.
It's really fantastic.
Okay.
So, we begin our show today with the breaking news that the President of the United States has decided that it would be worthwhile to pull out of Syria entirely.
He tweeted this out this morning to the President of the United States.
This would be 13.
to be 13, said, "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, "my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency." Now, have we defeated ISIS in Syria?
Well, we certainly stopped the formation of a caliphate, but have we defeated them to the extent that we can actually pull out safely without any sort of repercussions?
The answer to that is pretty obviously no.
ISIS killed 700 prisoners.
700 prisoners in Syria just over the past short period of time.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Wednesday, Islamic State militants had executed nearly 700 prisoners in nearly two months in eastern Syria.
The UK-based monitoring group ...said the prisoners were among 1,350 civilians and fighters ISIS had been holding in territory near the Iraqi border.
The jihadists control a shrinking strip of land east of the Syrian Euphrates River around the town of Hajin, which U.S.-backed forces entered this month.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, led by the Kurdish YPG militia, have battled ISIS there for several months with the help of U.S.
airpower and special forces.
SDF Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Kobani said last week at least 5,000 ISIS fighters remain holed up in the enclave, including many foreigners who appear ready to fight to the death.
ISIS's self-proclaimed caliphate has crumbled after different offensives across Iraq and Syria, although its fighters still operate in the desert border region on mount attacks.
Now, here is the reality.
So President Trump says that we've destroyed ISIS, we're done, out, goodbye, catch you later, adios.
None of that is really true.
Okay, it isn't.
We have definitely degraded ISIS's capacity to control strips of territory, but we have not degraded their capacity To the ultimate extent, to destroy lives, to create refugee problems, to reconstitute a caliphate.
Barack Obama made this exact wrong move in Iraq back in 2010.
You remember, you were there when President Obama decided to rashly, in the middle of his first term, just like this, rashly withdraw forces from Iraq.
All that happened was that ISIS ended up invading Iraq and filling the gap.
According to the Wall Street Journal today, The U.S.
military is preparing to withdraw its forces from Syria.
People familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, a move that marks an abrupt reversal of the American military strategy in the Middle East.
U.S.
officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin an immediate pullout of American forces from the region where they've been trying to wrap up the campaign against ISIS.
The Pentagon has an order to move troops out of Syria as quickly as possible, said one U.S.
official.
U.S.
military officials have refused to say what a withdrawal timeline could look like, but President Trump wrote on Twitter that he was going to get out of Syria basically now, as we referred to earlier.
This, by the way, violates President Trump's central principles of foreign policy, which is do not actually telegraph to your opponent what you're about to do.
Remember, a lot of his foreign policy is based on what he calls strategic unpredictability.
The idea that you don't know what he's going to do on any given day, and this means that you don't want to piss him off because you may get a missile up your rear, right?
But when you start telegraphing that we're pulling out as soon as possible, that's exactly, exactly, note for note, what Barack Obama did in Iraq in 2010, 2011.
The move follows a call last week between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has threatened to launch an assault on America's Kurdish partners In Syria, Erdogan steadfastly opposes the American partnership with Kurdish forces in Syria that he views as a terrorist force intent on destabilizing Turkey, but the U.S.
has relied on the Kurds, as we mentioned, as the most effective fighting force in Syria against ISIS.
Well, this follows hard on the news that apparently the Trump administration was seeking the possible extradition of a cleric named Gulen, who is an opponent of Erdogan's in Turkey, back to Turkey for possible imprisonment and trial.
If, in fact, the Trump administration is contemplating a warmer relationship with Islamist Turkey, which has repeatedly quashed dissidents, which has arrested something like 100,000 people in the last couple of years, this is all bad news.
I mean, you don't want Turkey increasing its power.
You do not want ISIS increasing its power at the expense of the United States moving its troops out.
You don't want the Kurds to be decimated by the Turks and by ISIS.
All of this is a mistake.
The U.S.
has long sought to reconcile two seemingly incompatible goals the president has sought in Syria.
On the one hand, says the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump has pushed to withdraw all U.S.
forces from Syria, where more than 2,000 service members are working alongside Syrian militants to defeat ISIS.
On the other, he's embraced a strategy that calls for American forces to remain in Syria as a deterrent to Iran's expansive military ambitions.
Officially, the U.S.
military has no authority to battle Iran and Syria.
Their mission has been to defeat ISIS and ensure the militant group that once controlled large swaths of Syria and Iraq is unable to regroup.
That task is largely complete because ISIS has been cornered.
Earlier this year, Pentagon said that ISIS controlled less than 2% of the territory it once held in the Middle East.
And then he said this spring that he wanted to get, President Trump said in the spring, that he wanted to get everybody out.
But the pullout also comes amid abiding worries about the continued influence of Iran in Syria.
And again, Turkey is looking to fill that gap.
And it is unclear whether Turkey is actually going to do the job of checking ISIS or whether they are just there to kill the Kurds.
So all of this is bad news.
Now, this goes to a central question in American foreign policy.
And that is, what is American foreign policy for?
What exactly do we do when it comes to American foreign policy?
Now, the typical answer In the olden days, and by the olden days I mean really in the World War II era, was you stay at home until somebody hits you, then you go in and you wreck them, and then you institute a democracy, right?
This is what we did in Germany, this is what we did in Japan, and it worked to a certain extent.
I mean, we had to keep troops there forever.
I mean, we still have troops and air bases in Germany and Japan.
We did the same thing in South Korea, right?
We're going to put American troops there, and we're going to maintain troop presence until there's a safe and secure South Korea.
Well, the problem is that there are certain parts of the world where this strategy appears not to have particularly taken root.
Now, it's also true that the time period that we have given this strategy to work has not been all that long.
It's not going to work in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is far too tribal.
There's no history of democracy.
It's a complete Islamist state.
99% of Afghans, of Afghanis, by poll data, support honor killings, for example.
It's going to be very, very difficult to institute a Western-style democracy in Afghanistan.
The same has not been quite as true in Iraq, where there have been the first stirrings of Western-style democracy for a while there.
And if we were to leave troops in the country to basically pacify sectarian violence for a few decades, then probably everything would be okay.
But we have lost our taste for this.
We tend to think of World War II as ending the minute that we got a surrender out of Japan and a surrender out of Germany.
But that is not in fact the case.
We maintain troop presence across Europe until now.
Right?
It is now...
Let's see, it's 2018.
The war ended in 1945.
So that means that we have been maintaining troop presence there for nearly 80 years.
And for nearly 80 years, we've had troop presence in Europe and in the Far East.
So do we have the taste for that anymore?
I think the answer is really no.
And that was proved by Vietnam, because during the Vietnam War, If we had just stayed there, there would be a South Vietnamese government that was free today.
If we had just stayed there in the aftermath of the Paris Peace Accords, instead of pulling out precipitously, there would be a South Vietnamese state today that operates very much along the lines of South Korea.
But there isn't because we pulled out because the American people do not have the taste to keep troops in harm's way, which is really interesting and a little bit ironic considering that we seem to have more taste for occupation and pacification for long periods of time when we actually had a draft in this country than when we have a volunteer military force, which which is really interesting and a little bit ironic considering that we seem to have The volunteer military force ended post-Vietnam.
I mean, the non-volunteer military force, the draft, ended post-Vietnam.
We haven't had a draft since, nor do we intend on reinstituting one.
And yet the taste for Americans to keep troops in these places is very, very small.
We don't have the appropriate level, I think, of understanding that American foreign policy does, in fact, require a lot of troops in a lot of different places.
And it is also true that a lot of people come in from outside of government.
We've now had this with Obama.
We had it with Bush in 2000 before 2001, by the way.
When Bush entered office in 2000, he basically had the same foreign policy program as Obama and Trump, which is let's bring as many troops home as possible.
We don't need to be the world's policemen.
Go back and watch the debates in 2000.
This was the case that George W. Bush was making in 2000.
It's even the case that Bill Clinton was making to a certain extent in 1996.
So there has been this foreign policy consensus in rhetoric since the mid-90s in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union.
Without an existential threat, America should bring home everybody within its borders and go back to the way things used to be.
That's a misread on American history.
The truth is America has always had lots of troops in different places.
That is particularly true in the post-World War II era.
And then the policy ends up being once all these guys get into office, they recognize that precipitous pulldowns of troops actually end up exacerbating violence and international conflict.
Barack Obama, again, was an isolationist until he decided he needed to drone everybody in sight because it turns out that in the absence of the United States, something fills the gap.
There is no such thing as a power vacuum.
There is just a state that has American influence and a state that does not have American influence.
Now, none of this is to make the case that the United States should be seeking to, for example, topple the Syrian regime and set up a puppet government, or that we should be sending tens of thousands of troops to Syria.
If you want to make that case, it has to be made more affirmatively.
We'd have to have some actual good options on the ground in Syria, which it doesn't seem that we have.
But at the very least, the sort of muddled through strategy we've been using in Syria has worked in reducing ISIS violence.
It has worked in reducing ISIS control of territory.
And if we kept it up for a long enough period of time, it would work in reducing the refugee problem that's occurring from northern Africa, places like Libya, and also places like Syria.
And that refugee problem does have an impact on the West.
We've seen it in Europe, where it has tremendous domestic import for a lot of European countries, importing hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East who may not in fact Share the values of the people who live in Europe, who may have a different culture, who may not have any education.
All of this stuff is problematic.
In other words, in an interconnected world, there are too many externalities to foreign policy to simply assume that when you withdraw the capacity to pacify a country, that nothing bad happens.
That is the lesson of the last 20 years, and we refuse to learn it, and so we will keep learning it over and over and over again.
I'm gonna get into more of this in just one second.
First, let's talk about how comfortable you are down below.
This holiday season, as you rack your brain for the perfect gift, I have a tip for treating yourself and everyone on your list to mind-blowing comfort.
It's Tommy John, the revolutionary clothing company that is redefining comfort.
Tommy John has the most comfortable underwear for everyone on the planet.
You can count on their products to be snug and neat and to stay in one place.
How do I know that Tommy John products are awesome?
Because I am wearing them.
On my beautiful behind this very instant.
All of their underwear sports a no wedgie guarantee, which would have been awesome in high school.
Comfortable stay put waistbands and a range of fabrics that are luxuriously soft feather light moisture wicking breathable and designed to move with you, not against you.
That means no bunching, no rolling, no riding up.
So if you're still on the fence wondering if Tommy John would be a memorable gift, think about all the discomfort you'll never have to endure or witness again.
And with limited edition holiday gifts and daily deals, there's something for everyone on your list.
Naughty or nice.
Give the gift of mind-blowing comfort this holiday season with limited edition holiday gifts from Tommy John's.
Save 20% on your first order at tommyjohn.com slash ben.
That is tommyjohn.com slash ben for 20% off.
I promise you these things are really comfortable.
Not only are they comfortable, they're extremely durable.
Every time they go through the wash, they come out the same as they were before the wash, except clean, because that's what a washing machine is supposed to do.
But when you get cheaper versions of underwear, I know, you put them in the washing machine, they come out, they're falling apart, the threads are cut.
That's not what you get from Tommy John.
These suckers last, and they are really great.
I mean, they're really comfortable.
So go check it out right now.
Tommyjohn.com slash Ben.
Use that slash Ben, and you get 20% off.
Go check it out right now.
Great holiday gift.
So, the president saying that he wants to pull out from Syria.
I'm not sure who's giving him this advice or why he thinks that it is going to be a big political win for him.
Because here's also the difference between the Trump administration and the Obama administration.
In 2010, Barack Obama said, I'm pulling out.
We're getting out.
All right, we're getting out.
Okay, so Barack Obama tried to pull out of Iraq, and things went bad.
But he also had the press there to defend him.
This is the nice thing about being a Democrat.
You can pursue the crappiest policy, and the press will still defend you.
Well, he promised he was gonna get out, and then he kept that promise.
This is his shtick in 2012.
We won Iraq, and then we got out.
Our troops are home.
Okay, and then ISIS took over the entire place, and Barack Obama called them the JV team.
You remember this.
All of this was bad, but it didn't manifest.
It was all clear in 2012, by the way, but the press decided to delay coverage of it until 2013.
We were all told that ISIS was a JV problem, no one was worried about it until after Barack Obama's re-election.
You think they're going to do the same thing for President Trump?
Or do you think that if President Trump goes through with his withdrawal from Syria, and then the violence upticks, and suddenly, you think those beheadings are going to stay out of the press with President Trump as president?
Here's the reality of the press.
The press covers Republican presidents the way that the press ought to cover all presidents.
I've always said, I'm not against the press covering the president with a hawkish eye.
I'm not against the press being on top of the president at all moments.
I like when the press is on top of the president.
I think it's good.
What I object to is that they're on top of President Trump at every waking moment for everything that he does, pointing out the ramifications of all of his policy prescriptions.
But as soon as a Democrat enters office, it's like they took ketamine.
As soon as a Democrat comes into office, it's like they took a date rape drug and now they don't remember anything about how foreign policy is supposed to work or how the policy actually hooks up with anything.
Remotely real world.
When Barack Obama does something and then people die, it's like, oh, well, you know, that just happens.
That's the real world.
And so he drones some people.
And when Donald Trump does something and then people die, it's gonna be like, look at President Trump.
And they're freaking, they're blaming President Trump right now for the death of a seven-year-old child thanks to custody in Border Patrol, even though Border Patrol tried to save the girl.
They didn't cover for years Barack Obama's, Barack Obama's immigration policy in nearly the same way.
Let's not say they didn't cover it at all.
They did.
They didn't cover it in nearly the same way.
So, President Trump can think he's going to get a temporary political win from this.
He's not.
The respite will not come.
The only solution for Republican presidents is good policy.
The solution for Democrat presidents is any policy because the Democrats and the media will defend anything and everything.
Okay, meanwhile, we have another controversy that has broken out regarding Tucker Carlson on Fox News.
Now, let me preface this controversy by saying this.
The left has now engaged not in boycotting, but in blacklisting.
The reason I say they've not engaged in boycotting is because they're not actually boycotting products.
What the left does is they find somebody they don't like, and then they decide to make a few phone calls to the advertisers on that particular program.
And the idea is that if they make a few phone calls, then the advertiser will take it as though there has been a mass outpouring of rage at the advertiser for being on the particular program.
That's not the way advertisers work.
Advertisers don't sit here and listen every day to the Ben Shapiro show.
They don't sit there every night and watch the Tucker Carlson show and then go, you know what?
I love Tucker Carlson.
I'm putting my ads on his program.
That's not how ad buying works.
Advertisers go to an advertising agency.
The advertising agency looks to see where there is unused inventory and how much it costs, and how many viewers they can get for what price.
And then they go back to the advertiser and they say for X number of dollars, you can reach X number of viewers on the following channels.
Fox News, MSNBC, CNN.
And that's how all of this works.
So it's not like the advertisers are sitting there going, I approve this message from Tucker Carlson or I approve this message from Ben Shapiro.
That's not how any of this works.
What the left has done is they have sought to destroy the marketability of political content they do not like by basically blacklisting companies that they by blacklisting the shows and then trying to blackmail the companies into not advertising on those particular programs.
And let's not pretend that the left is honest about how they do this.
Let's not pretend that the left is just seeing stuff they don't like, seeing stuff that is truly inappropriate and terrible, and saying, we can boycott.
Because that's a bunch of nonsense.
Joy Reid is still on MSNBC after all the things she said years ago.
But Laura Ingraham was subject to a basic advertiser blacklist because she made a snide comment about David Hogg, a Parkland shooting survivor, who is eminently political.
You remember this.
This happened a few months back.
It was absurd at the time.
Well, it's absurd when it comes to Tucker, too.
I'll explain why in just a second, but the point here is this.
There is, an advertiser should know this, there is no actual advertiser backlash when you advertise on a program that half of Americans agree with.
There is no advertiser backlash.
It is a giant lie.
I know it's a giant lie.
How do I know it's a giant lie?
I ran a company, well it was actually a non-profit, called Truth Revolt.
It was specifically designed to counter Media Matters.
Media Matters is a group on the left that astroturfs these quote-unquote boycotts that are not in fact boycotts.
The reason I'm not calling them boycotts is because no one is not, no one, Is avoiding buying a product from these companies because they advertise on Tucker Carlson.
IHOP's business, IHOP pulled advertising from Tucker Carlson over the last 48 hours.
IHOP's business was not in any way threatened by advertising on Tucker Carlson.
The number of people who are not going to buy pancakes the next day because IHOP was advertising on Tucker Carlson was zero.
And maybe it was five.
And we know this because the left tried to do the same thing with Chick-fil-A.
You remember this?
They tried to say that Chick-fil-A, because Dan Cathy, the owner of Chick-fil-A, is pro-traditional marriage.
They tried to say, OK, we're all going to boycott Chick-fil-A, but it was going to be like an actual grassroots boycott.
All that happened is more people went to Chick-fil-A.
Advertisers are so afraid of blowback and publicity because all they want is to get their products to you, the listener.
They don't want any association with any political view.
But what the left is intent on doing is fundamentally destroying the market for politics.
So what's going to happen?
The end result is going to be that advertisers are going to be too afraid to advertise on any political program.
And then all the profit margins dip for political programs and political speech ends up...
Withering away, because it takes a budget to put on shows like Tucker's.
It takes a budget to put on my show, or Cenk Uygur's show on the other side of the aisle.
It takes a budget to do these things.
So, when advertisers are forced to disassociate from programs, specifically because the three idiots over at Sleeping Giants are angry at Tucker Carlson, all they're really doing is, in effect, quashing the ability of people to speak politically.
Now, that's not a violation of the First Amendment, because it's not government action, but it is a violation of the civil discourse that must exist around free speech.
If free speech is to prevail.
If you actually want to see an open market for ideas, you have to not target advertisers for broadly advertising across a variety of programs.
We have advertisers on this program who also advertise on Pod Save America.
That's great!
They should!
They should reach out to whatever audience they feel the necessity to advertise to.
Without me calling for a boycott against the advertiser because they advertise on Pod Save America, or without the folks at Pod Save America calling for a boycott against my advertisers, it's insane and it's ridiculous.
It's even more insane and ridiculous when you look at the media coverage of this sort of stuff, and when you look at the hypocrisy of a left that would be livid if people talked about boycotting their favorites.
I'm going to get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about whether you are more Native American than Elizabeth Warren.
So, 23andMe.
Now through December 25th, 23andMe DNA kits are on sale.
I love 23andMe.
I think it's a lot of fun.
I took, personally, a 23andMe DNA test.
It involved you basically spitting into a bottle and then sending it back to them.
And then they give you all sorts of information.
They'll tell you about your genetic muscle composition.
Do you have the genetic muscle composition common in elite power athletes?
Yes.
Yes, I do.
Sleep movement.
Do your arms and legs twitch while you're sleeping, or do you lie there like an ed person?
Do you have cilantro taste aversion?
Can you match musical pitch?
Like, all these things have genetic components, and 23andMe can test for all of those things.
As to the question of whether I personally am more Native American than Elizabeth Warren, the answer is no.
I am 100% pure Ashkenazi Jew.
100%.
I mean, it's hard to find that level of purity anywhere in the world, but look at me.
I mean, I'm just a big bag of Ashkenazi Jew.
It's amazing.
And I found that out because 23andMe.
But 23andMe can uncover all of your genetic... It turns out that our Hispanic Makeup artist Jess has related me.
She's 0.4% Ashkenazi Jews.
That's really exciting that she's like my 10th cousin.
In any case, 23andme can give you all this fun information.
It really does make a fun holiday gift.
Now through December 25th, get 30% off any 23andme kit.
Order your DNA kit at 23andme.com slash Shapiro.
That is the number 23andme.com slash Shapiro.
Again, that's 23andme.com slash Shapiro.
And you get that special deal now through December 25th.
Get 30% off any 23andme kit.
Go order that DNA kit right now.
It's a lot of fun.
It's a great way of giving the gift of genetic discovery to parents and siblings and aunts, grandparents, everybody else on your list.
It includes 90 plus personalized genetic reports offering those DNA insights.
Go check it out right now.
And you may, in fact, be more than one 1,024th Native American.
You can find that out at 23andme.com slash Shapiro and then send your results to Senator Warren.
OK, so the Tucker Carlson controversy.
With all those preliminaries out of the way, here's what the controversy is about.
So Tucker is very, very anti-immigration.
He's not just anti-illegal immigration, he's anti-immigration.
He thinks that the influx of foreign workers is undermining our wage base.
He thinks the influx of foreigners into the United States is changing our culture.
And so he made this comment on Fox News about the immigration crisis from December 13th, him talking about the caravans and people crossing the border illegally.
Our country's economy is becoming more automated and tech-centered by the day.
It's obvious that we need more scientists and skilled engineers, but that's not what we're getting.
Instead, we're getting waves of people with high school educations or less.
Nice people, no one doubts that, but as an economic matter, this is insane.
It's indefensible, so nobody even tries to defend it.
Instead, our leaders demand that you shut up and accept this.
We have a moral obligation to admit the world's poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer and dirtier and more divided.
Okay, so it was the comment, poorer and dirtier and more divided, that people decided to take out of context.
There's two ways to read that.
One is the way that Schmuck Michael Avenatti read it.
So Michael Avenatti, who can always be trusted to have the worst take on any possible situation, tweeted out, if an executive or employee at any of the Fox News advertisers called a fellow employee dirtier or poorer, they would rightly be fired.
This isn't about free speech.
It's about racism and bigotry.
Tucker Carlson must be fired immediately.
And the advertisers boycotted.
OK, so first of all, I love when people say stuff like this isn't about free speech.
It's about racism and bigotry.
Free speech includes a lot of stuff you don't like, Michael Avenatti.
Free speech includes a lot of stuff that you may not personally approve.
Now I disagree with Tucker Carlson on immigration.
We had a full Sunday conversation in which we talked at length about immigration.
So I tend to be much more libertarian than Tucker is when it comes to immigration.
But there are two ways to read those comments.
One is the sort of, well they're brown people coming in and so they are dirtier or something.
Okay, that is not what Tucker meant.
What he actually meant, what he actually meant was clarified on his show The next day, right?
He went on and he said, what I mean is that when people come from places that are poorer and they don't have educations, so naturally our country is now getting poorer because more poor people are entering the country.
And when he said our country will get dirtier, he didn't mean because it's going to be browner or something.
What he meant is that a lot of the people who come in who are poorer may not actually be in the habit of keeping their cities clean.
And he makes a reference to Tijuana.
He says, well, Tijuana is dirtier and poorer.
OK, that's inarguable.
It's inarguable.
Tijuana is dirtier and poorer than Los Angeles.
These things are just inarguable.
People decided to read this in the worst possible way.
Why?
Because there's a motivated group of people who want to take Tucker Carlson off the air.
Let's be real about this.
This is not a bunch of good faith folks who have decided, you know what, I am so offended by that thing that Tucker Carlson just said that now I've decided his advertisers must pay.
This is a bunch of people who are sitting there waiting for a comment that they can take out of context so that they can then go after people they already don't like.
This is the game.
We do it on Twitter, too.
The game is that you find somebody you don't like, and then you find a reason to ruin their life.
Not, you see something you don't like, and then you say, wow, I can't believe that person said that.
That's terrible.
We should do something about that.
If you think that sleeping giants and media matters, or sitting around going, Tucker Carlson, No real opinion on him, but that what he just said is so bad.
That's nonsense.
They were sitting there watching every night, waiting for Tucker to say something they could take out of context, and then portray as so egregious that advertisers would need to bail.
And again, I don't blame the advertisers, because the advertisers are just doing what they've been trained to do, which is if you get 10 complaining phone calls, you escalate it up the management chain, and then you withdraw the advertising, because these advertisers can pay a little bit more money, and they can advertise in other places.
But what we are watching right now is a blacklisting of conservative shows by a bunch of people on the left and astroturfing of resistance to advertisers that doesn't actually exist.
If you think somebody's not buying a Bowflex because Bowflex appears on ESPN and MSNBC and CNN and Fox News, you're out of your mind.
How do I know this?
Because how many people actually care about a Bowflex ad on Fox News?
Probably the people who watch Fox News, who generally are going to agree with Tucker Carlson.
How many people who watch CNN care about a Bowflex ad on Fox News?
Probably none, because Bowflex is probably also on CNN.
Nonetheless, Nautilus has now pulled ads from the show.
They're not the only ones.
Smile Direct Club has pulled ads from the show.
Ten, twelve companies, Pacific Life said it would pull ads from the show.
They said one of our ads appeared on Tucker Carlson's show last night following a segment where Mr. Carlson made a number of statements regarding immigration.
As a company, we strongly disagree with Mr. Carlson's statements.
Our customer base and our workforce reflect the diversity of our great nation, something we take great pride in.
OK, why do corporations have to take political positions on immigration?
Why is this even necessary?
They provide life insurance.
What the hell are we talking about here?
It's the same thing with IHOP.
IHOP was like, this violates our corporate policies.
Really?
I thought your corporate policy was basically making crepes.
I thought that was your...
Forgive me if I thought that a boysenberry syrup on pancakes was your corporate policy, not how the border wall fight should go.
But this is what the left wants.
Their goal here, again, is to, in fact, quash debate.
That is their goal.
Now, again, I'm not saying this is a violation of the First Amendment.
It is not.
It is not a legally actionable violation of the First Amendment.
It is, however, destroying the basic bargain that we all have to hold if we are going to have a market-driven Exchange of ideas.
Because this is not the market in action.
This is a bunch of motivated leftists who have decided they're gonna scare the hell out of advertisers with nothing to back it, and a bunch of advertisers who are just playing it risk-averse.
That's all this is.
And advertisers should know that, by the way, for every boycott that is pulled like this, for every attempt to pull from Tucker Carlson's show, there'll be more blowback on them from the right than there would have been blowback on them from the left for being on Tucker's show to begin with.
Fox News has issued a statement on all of this.
Their statement is correct.
The statement is, We cannot and will not allow voices like Tucker Carlson to be censored by agenda-driven intimidation efforts from the likes of MoveOn.org, Media Matters, and Sleeping Giants.
Attempts were made last month to bully and terrorize Tucker and his family at their home.
He is now once again being threatened via Twitter by far-left activist groups with deeply political motives.
While we do not advocate boycotts, these same groups never target other broadcasters and operate under a grossly hypocritical double standard given their intolerance to all opposing points of view.
And this, of course, is exactly right.
It's exactly true.
And two can play at this game.
You want to make the world a worse place, this is the way to do it.
Tucker responded on his show last night.
He said, we're not intimidated, nor should he be.
Those who won't shut up get silenced.
You've seen it a million times.
It happens all the time.
Enforcers scream, racist, on Twitter.
Until everybody gets intimidated and changes the subject to the Russia investigation or some other distraction.
It's a tactic, a well-worn one.
Nobody thinks it's real.
And it won't work with this show.
We're not intimidated.
We plan to try to say what's true until the last day.
Okay, and that's perfectly reasonable.
What's amazing is to watch other members of the media not even seeing what the next step is.
Because you know what the next step is?
The next step is that conservatives will start doing this to liberal networks.
Hey, CNN will be hit with advertiser boycotts.
Because if this is the game you want to play, we can all play this game.
It's ugly.
No one should be playing this game.
Guns down, guys.
Like, really.
Cut it out.
Let's talk about not just your First Amendment rights, but your Second Amendment rights that were set up to defend your First Amendment rights.
You know how strongly I believe in the principle that law-abiding people should own guns?
I'm a gun owner.
Owning a rifle is an awesome responsibility, and building rifles is no different, which is why you should check out Bravo Company Manufacturing.
BCM was started in a garage by marine vets more than two decades ago to build a professional grade product that meets combat standards.
BCM believes the same level of protection should be provided to every American regardless of whether they are a private citizen or a professional.
BCM is not a sporting arms company.
They design, engineer, and manufacture life-saving equipment, and they assume that each rifle leaving their shop will be used in a life-or-death situation by a responsible citizen, law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
Every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standard.
BCM feels a moral responsibility as Americans to provide tools that will not fail the user when we're not just talking about a paper target, but someone coming to do them actual harm.
To learn more about Bravo Company Manufacturing right now, head on over to BravoCompanyMFG.com Where you can discover more about their products, special offers, upcoming news.
That's BravoCompanyMFG.com.
If you need more convincing, go check them out at YouTube.com slash BravoCompanyUSA.
Again, that's BravoCompanyMFG.com.
I know the folks who founded it.
They're just wonderful people.
They are patriots.
And not only that, they're great at their jobs.
So if you're looking for a great rifle, check them out at BravoCompanyMFG.com.
Also, they work with the leading instructors of marksmanship from the special ops who can teach skills necessary to defend yourself.
They have all sorts of great stuff.
BravoCompanyMFG.com.
Go check it out.
Okay.
Now is the time for you to subscribe.
Why?
Because next year, there are two more hours of this show a coming.
And for $9.99 a month, that's the only way you can see those other two hours of the show, unless you happen to be listening to live radio across the country.
But if you actually want to see it, or if you want to hear it later, then you need to be a subscriber.
And when you subscribe, you also get to ask us questions when we do things like the conversation today.
5.30 p.m.
Eastern, 2.30 p.m.
Pacific.
I will be taking your questions and answering them to the best of my abilities, which means the best of anyone's abilities.
So make them good questions.
The lovely Alicia Krauss will be hosting and also making sure that Michael Knowles has been killed and stored in a freezer.
Once again, subscribe to get your questions answered by me today at 5.30 p.m.
Eastern, 2.30 p.m.
Pacific.
Join the conversation.
Only subscribers can ask the questions.
And listen, I'm here for you, right?
I come in.
In the afternoon, just to hang out with you guys.
I mean, I'm going to take it as a personal insult if you don't subscribe.
I know where you live.
I'm like Santa Claus.
I know if you've been bad or good, so be good, for goodness sake.
And it's more of a threat than it is an imprecation.
In any case, you're going to actually want to get the annual subscription because it's better.
It's better not only because you get all that stuff, but also because you get this.
The leftist here's hot or cold Tumblr.
View it.
Look at it.
If you actually left this out for Santa, During Christmas, if you left some warm milk out for Santa in the leftist year's hot or cold tumbler, then it would stay warm.
I can guarantee you that.
Because it is, in fact, great at keeping warm things warm and cold things cold.
Not only that, but I promise you Santa would really appreciate it.
For every Santa on your list, get the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
It makes cookies taste better.
It makes everything really great.
Plus, Santa Claus is, in fact, a right-winger, being a religious saint of claws, as you know.
So check it out.
Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumbler.
You can get all of those wonderful things.
Also, go subscribe over at YouTube, over at iTunes.
You get our Sunday specials.
You get all of the various specials that we bring out on a regular basis.
Go check all of that out.
We always appreciate it.
We are the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast in the nation.
So the same left that is deeply, deeply concerned with free speech issues, we'll get to that in a second, is also cheering this blacklist that is now being used against Tucker Carlson.
It's been used against everybody on the right, really everybody.
They've tried it against Rush Limbaugh, they've tried it against Michael Savage, they've tried it against Mark Levin, they've tried it against Sean Hannity.
They will always try it against people on the right.
And the left cheers it on.
It's amazing to watch people at CNN who are in the same boat as people at Fox.
They may not know it because the right is more polite about this stuff, because the right doesn't generally try to pretend that we're going to boycott advertisers.
But the people at CNN are more than happy to watch their opponents boycott.
I mean, it's just vindictive crap.
I have to hand some credit here to Nate Silver.
Nate Silver came out yesterday and he said, listen, I don't like these tactics.
I think these tactics are very bad.
Which is amazing because Nate Silver is definitely on the left.
Here's what he said.
There was an article by a guy named Jack Schaefer over at Politico.
And Jack Schaefer said, I don't like the organized advertiser boycotts against Bill O'Reilly.
I don't like the ones against Tucker Carlson.
And Nate Silver The leftist commentator at FiveThirtyEight and elections analyst, he wrote, This is exactly right.
Because advertisers will just go to the New York Times, the Daily, which is considered safe content, as opposed to anything with mild controversy associated with it.
is that only milquetoast both sides and with a pro-corporate bent will be advertising supported if any political content is ad-supported at all.
This is exactly right because advertisers will just go to the New York Times The Daily, which is considered safe content as opposed to anything with mild controversy associated with it.
Not even like somebody says something terrible, but mild controversy.
Then a guy named Norm Ornstein wrote back, This is not a boycott because of political viewpoint.
No calls for boycott of Hannity.
This is a set of boycotts because of disgusting personal behavior and disgusting racism.
Very different.
And Silver said, he's a leftist, remember, he said, I tend to agree that Tucker is a racist or that he convincingly plays a racist on TV.
However, I don't want the PR department of Applebee's deciding for us all what's racist versus legitimate, acceptable political speech.
And then somebody else responded to Nate Silver and said, but they're not really deciding that.
Consumers are using capitalism as a lever to force them to make a choice.
I don't particularly care whether their PR departments agree or not, they're just responding to market pressures.
And Nate Silver said, so they don't have to vet the merit of the claims at all?
Anytime a vocal minority of consumers organizes a boycott, the advertisers should just pull itself off the show?
That seems like a bad equilibrium, and one that can and will be gained by people whose politics don't match yours.
And then the best part of this is Sleeping Giants, who are just terrible people.
They wrote back to Nate Silver, and they basically accused him of being a corporate shill.
They said, you are speaking as a publisher, not a citizen.
If you're a person of color or a member of the LGBTQ community or an immigrant, these companies are literally footing the bill for you to be vilified every week.
Bigotry should not be deemed political.
That's a big part of the issue.
And Silver wrote back, guys, I'm gay.
And I'm just old enough, 40, to remember when conservative groups urged boycotts of advertisers and networks who were seen as promoting LGBTQ or other non-traditional lifestyles.
This strongly influences my views on the subject.
This is exactly right.
So good for Nate Silver.
That's exactly right.
We need more folks on the left to acknowledge this basic truth, or we are going to end up in a position where advertisers pull out of all political content, and the only political content you're going to be able to find is going to be left-wing political content.
Which, of course, is the entire goal of this spiel from the very beginning.
At the outset, this was this is always the goal.
Meanwhile, the left pretends that they care deeply about free speech.
So they're very, very upset with what they call anti-BDS laws.
So there's this case in Texas in which a Muslim woman was basically asked whether she believed in whether she believed in boycotting Israel.
And then she was not hired based on the fact that she believed in boycotting Israel.
But that's not the actual full story.
Here's how The Washington Post reported it.
Bahaya Amawi, a speech pathologist who has worked as a contractor in a Texas school district for nine years, received a new contract agreement to sign in September for the upcoming school year.
The agreement asked her to affirm that she did not boycott Israel and assert that she would not while working for the school.
She declined to sign it.
She was forced to stop working with the district.
That was based on a law passed by the Republican-held legislature and governor that prohibits state agencies from contracting with companies that boycott Israel.
She says that this inviolates her right to free speech.
Now, as you know, I have a very broad view of free speech, and this includes for state employees.
So, for example, just a couple of weeks ago, I talked about a case in, I believe, South Carolina, where a teacher has now been fired because he was using biological pronouns for a transgender 11-year-old or something like that.
And he wasn't even using biological pronouns.
He was just not using pronouns at all.
And this, of course, was discriminatory and he had to be fired on that basis.
What I said is that's a violation of free speech.
He's an individual.
He has the right to free speech.
OK, that is not quite the same thing that is happening right here.
This woman is busy.
She operates as an independent contractor.
And the reason that makes a difference.
Is because the government does have policies on who they will hire as independent contractors.
And they have these policies all over the place.
They won't hire independent contractors, for example, who engage in discriminatory housing.
They won't hire independent contractors now under the Obama administration.
They wouldn't even hire independent contractors who would not provide health benefits for sex change operations, for example.
I believe that was the policy.
The government has all sorts of policies on who it can hire as independent contractors, and it uses those policies to police the sort of political affiliations and perspectives of the people who are contracting.
But mainly, it doesn't want to pay companies that are then going to violate the government's views on particular subjects.
So, for example, if a company is doing business with Iran, then there will be a ban.
First of all, it's illegal to do that under the sanctions, but Even without the sanctions, it is plausible the government would say, we cannot hire this company because this company does business with Iran.
This is basically the reverse of that.
This is a company says, we are boycotting Israel, which is anti-Semitic, and the government says, OK, well, then we're not going to contract with you.
That is not exactly a quash on free speech.
There's a good article about this today.
By somebody at Reason Magazine named David Bernstein.
And he says, there are a lot of things I could say about the law and the lawsuit, but I have some time constraints.
So I'll just explain why the take repeated ingenuously by reporters apparently too lazy to look up the actual text of the underlying law is wrong.
Texas has a law banning state entities from contracting with businesses, including sole proprietorships that boycott Israel.
Pursuant to Section 2270 of the Texas government code, the contractor affirms that it does not currently boycott Israel and will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract pursuant to Section 2270 of Texas government code.
It's even titled, Prohibition on Contracts with Companies Boycotting Israel.
So, he says, this is no different analytically than requiring a contractor to pledge that the business does not refuse to hire Muslims or blacks or Jews or veterans or any other state-designated group.
This is the First Amendment analysis, but the lies are being spread by people who don't really understand the Constitution and reporters who want to suggest that this is some sort of violation of free speech.
Maybe you still say that this is a bad law.
Okay, certainly plausible, but you do have to acknowledge that this falls into the category of the government saying we can't contract with X because X does something we don't like.
It does not fall into the category of we hire an individual to do a job and that individual has opinions that are off the clock.
That's not the same thing, really.
And so a lot of hubbub breaking out yesterday over the Michael Flynn hearing.
Michael Flynn basically was forced to Recant his plea deal with the government because it appears that the that the judge in this case was wildly biased against him and it appeared that if he went forward with his attempt to get a plea deal that the government was basically going to slap him.
So according to the legal documents, the court learned that no pretrial travel restrictions had been imposed on the case.
The court imposed travel restrictions on Michael Flynn.
You remember Michael Flynn Was the president's national security advisor.
He has been tried and he's pled guilty to lying to the FBI.
He lied to the FBI about something that was not illegal.
Talking to Sergey Kislyak as the as the incoming national security advisor.
He's also been ensnared in a lot of talk about whether he was lobbying for the government of Turkey without revealing that he was actually a lobbyist for the government of Turkey.
What made things go off the rails yesterday is that the judge went nuts.
The judge in this particular case went crazy and then tried to call Michael Flynn a traitor, which is pretty astonishing.
So the U.S.
District Judge, Emmett Sullivan, he said, I'm not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense.
And then he walked through a number of procedural steps to make sure Flynn was pleading guilty because he was guilty and not for any other reason.
He seemed frustrated with a lot of the arguments Flynn's team was making that basically Flynn had pled guilty to a crime because he'd been Cudgeled into it by the FBI.
Sullivan had Flynn admit guilt again that he had lied to the FBI and was pleading guilty because he was guilty.
And then he said the crime is very serious.
He said that Flynn lied in the White House in the West Wing and he shouldn't minimize the serious offense.
And then he got really bad.
Then he said, arguably, you sold your country out.
Now, there is no evidence whatsoever that Michael Flynn sold his country out with regard to Russia.
None.
The Turkish question is another question.
This was about him lying to the FBI about Russia.
There is zero, I mean zero, evidence that Michael Flynn was a traitor to his country because of Russia.
That's an insane contention.
In fact, the judge had to come out and apologize for all of this.
He asked the government whether undermining U.S.
sanctions against Russia for their interference in the 2016 election could be considered treason.
The judge had to come out later and recant all of that.
And then the judge ended up agreeing to delay the sentencing because Flynn was like, um, I don't want you sentencing me today.
We may need to have you recused.
This is insane.
So the judge acted completely inappropriately in this case.
It shows you how political bias on the bench can be, in fact, a very serious problem.
And this was really a disgusting display by the judge.
I mean, that's insane.
To call Michael Flynn, a general in the United States military for most of his life, to call him a traitor based on the fact that he had a non-illegal conversation with the Russian ambassador as the incoming NSA, and then lied to the FBI about it, That's not traitorous.
It's bad to lie to the FBI, but that is not treason.
Treason is aiding or abetting enemies of the United States at home or abroad.
That is not what Michael Flynn was doing there, nor is there any evidence that any of that stuff was happening.
That did not stop reporters from yelling at Sarah Huckabee Sanders and doing the job that Judge Sullivan couldn't do in the press room.
Here are the reporters yelling at Sarah Huckabee Sanders, shouting at her, saying that Michael Flynn is representative of the treason inherence in the Trump administration.
We'll talk to you soon.
Thanks, guys.
This is a 10-minute briefing, Sarah.
Do your job, Sarah.
Okay, can I ask a question?
If somebody had done this to an Obama administration press secretary, this is your job?
Jay, this is your job?
Bob?
Robert Gibbs?
Do you think that anyone would have been okay with that?
But it's okay because Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a member of the Trump administration.
To yell at Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
They also tried to say that Michael Flynn Was somehow connected with treason inside the Trump administration.
Again, no evidence of any of that at all.
The media continue to push the Russia investigation despite the fact that there is no actual evidence that the Russian investigation is going to result in any sort of charges against the president and any sort of charges against anybody around him for moving during the election to work with the Russians in a criminal fashion.
That's not stopping CNN from bringing up old documents that really are not supremely relevant.
They revealed a newly obtained document showing that President Trump signed a letter of intent to move forward with negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Russia that apparently was signed and dated October 25, 2015.
Rudy Giuliani had said that Trump hadn't signed it.
Apparently it was signed.
Okay, that's October 2015 now.
Do you have any evidence of a quid pro quo?
Because still, you're missing that.
Doesn't matter.
CNN has an agenda here.
As we said yesterday, the left is much more focused on the possibility of the election being stolen than they are on the reality of criminal activity.
If they weren't, they'd be focusing a lot more on Michael Cohen today than the dumb Russia collusion charges, which have yet to be substantiated.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, Things that I like, as I mentioned earlier this week, it is Beethoven's birthday this week, so we're doing some Beethoven.
This is Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.
23, the Appassionata.
The pianist is Emile Gallel, who I think is one of the great underrated pianists in recording history.
I love Gallel's playing.
I mean, he really digs into the piano.
He is fantastic.
His recording of the Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with Fritz Reiner is just a masterpiece.
And here he is playing the last movement of the Appassionata.
The Appassionata
It's so good.
So Beethoven, if you're in a bad mood today, put on some Beethoven.
It'll put you in a better mood.
OK, other things that I like.
I just love this.
This is a great story from Sweden.
A man free feminist music festival in Sweden has been found guilty of discrimination.
The event is called Statement.
It was held in Gothenburg in August this year, having been billed as the world's first major music festival for women, non-binary and transgender only.
But describing the festival as male-free was a violation of anti-discrimination legislation Sweden's discrimination ombudsman has ruled.
So a female-only music festival has now been ruled sexist.
Which is fantastic, because this is the standard that the feminists set.
So fine, now the standard comes back around to you.
You want to do this whole routine where men can't have a club just for men, because it's discriminatory?
Fine.
Women can't have a music festival just for women.
And, not only that, that's even if you cave to the idea that transgender women are actual women, and a bunch of biological men show up to your festival, you're still being discriminatory.
Love it.
So the D.O.
press officer, Klaas Lundstedt, said in a statement, it is important to point out what an infringement is.
These are statements made before the festival, what they wrote on their website.
Still, we haven't been able to prove that someone would have been discriminated against in connection with the implementation or that someone would have been rejected.
Lundstedt said nobody suffered damage as a result of statements saying men were not welcome and there will be no penalty for organizers.
But the festival was billed as being a safe space featuring cis men free artists, security and catering.
Swedish comedian Emma Knickare came up with the idea for a festival after a huge number of sexual offenses were reported at Brevella, Sweden's biggest music festival, last year.
No such crimes were reported during statement, which carries pictures of women dancing and celebrating together.
Lundstedt added, clearly we believe that sexual abuse, especially at festivals, is a serious problem, so we are looking forward to trying to correct this.
However, it shouldn't happen in a way that violates the law, which their statements in the media and their website do.
So I love that the... I also love that the assumption here was that all the sexual assault was gender based.
Which is probably correct, right?
That men are more likely to assault women, sexually assault women, at a music festival than women are likely to be sexually assaulted in an all-female music festival.
This might suggest some biological differences between men and women.
But we're not allowed to say that.
We're not allowed to say that men and women are different.
Because if men and women are different, then why?
Then, then, then, maybe that might explain differences in outcome.
Maybe that might explain why men can't become women.
We're not allowed to say that.
But at the same time, women are only safe with other women.
But men and women are the same.
So how?
Oh, it's all so confusing.
So thank you, Sweden, for making clear how confusing and stupid all of this is.
Gotta love Sweden, man.
Well, one of my favorite statistics is that in a lot of the Nordic countries in Sweden and Norway and Denmark, that the gender gaps in STEM, in STEM fields has actually grown.
It's actually widened because it turns out that when women are free to do what they want to do, they don't do the same things that men do, because men and women, not the same.
Stuff you've known since basically you're a small child, but have been told is not true by idiots.
OK, time for some things So, a Democrat State Senator yesterday encouraged a Republican aide to kill herself, so that's always good news.
That's exactly what you want.
A New York State Democrat Senator came under intense fire on Tuesday after he urged a Republican aide to kill herself in a now-deleted tweet and then immediately continued attacking her.
His name is Senator Kevin Parker of Brooklyn.
He instructed a New York State Republican Deputy Communications Director named Candace Geob to kill herself after she allegedly exposed Parker appearing to misuse a parking placard.
So, it said, I got to the bottom of this, the placard is assigned to Senator Parker, however the license number on the placard does not match the vehicle, so either he used it in another car or he gave it to someone else, both of which are not permitted.
So he responded, kill yourself.
Which is, um, I mean, as Ron Burgundy says, that escalated quickly.
Parker's horrifying remark came after he attracted attention late last month when he proposed a bill that would require those seeking a firearm permit to consent to having their social media accounts searched for objectionable content.
So, after saying that social media should be policed, he then tweeted that an aide should kill herself after she said that he was misusing a license plate.
Pretty amazing.
And then he says Candace is on the wrong side of history for every important issue facing New York State.
It is amazing the double standard that is held for Democrats.
So I point out also Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who's been tweeting incessantly about fake news this week.
She's been saying that members of the fake news media have been making up stories about her, such as that she wants to take a self-care break before she begins in Congress.
I'm all for people taking self-care breaks.
I know that was a thing, but if she feels like she needs... I mean, she's been busy.
I understand.
You want to take a vacation?
Enjoy!
Like, really.
That's fine.
The last time people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez been in Washington, D.C., the happier I am.
Also, maybe she could read, like, a book.
Right?
You know, while she's on break.
You know, like the Constitution.
Maybe the Federalist Papers.
You know, something.
Like Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hassel.
Like, something useful.
Right?
So, take a break.
Enjoy.
But then, she tweeted out, like, all of these accounts are false.
Unnamed sources.
Fake news.
And people, I'm left like, well, you know.
Maybe she's right, maybe fake news.
And you're sitting here going, President Trump says that stuff, and you say that he's responsible for the death of journalists, and AOC says this stuff, and you're like, she's got a point, you know?
She's smart, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
No.
No.
First of all, not a single report about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been recanted by the source that reported it, which is a pretty good indicator that actually she is fibbing about how the news covers her.
And yet the media allow her to get it.
Like, when is Brian Stelter going to feature her attacks on the fake news media this Sunday on Reliable Sources?
Or are we just gonna get a bunch more stories about how she really uses social media to its fullest extent?
I mean, she does, like, Instagram episodes with her instant pot!
I mean, come on!
She's so sophisticated in her use of Twitter!
The point I'm making here is a double standard exists in the media, and you know it does, and I know it does, and everybody knows it does.
Okay, speaking of double standards existing in the media, can you imagine if a right-winger sent their beard shavings to a famous artist to make an amulet?
And this person we're also in charge of a major outlet for free speech?
Well, you have to imagine no longer, because it turns out that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent beard shavings to Azalea Banks so she could make an amulet to protect him from ISIS.
If that's not a Mad Libs headline, I don't know what is.
I mean, that's basically like, fill in these blanks.
Blank sent blank to blank so she could make him a blank to protect him from blank.
And you filled that in with Jack Dorsey, beard shavings, Azalea Banks, amulet, and ISIS.
All right, man.
Okay.
Apparently the bizarre claim was first mentioned by Banks on Twitter in 2016 when she claimed that Dorsey sent me his hair in an envelope because I was supposed to make him an amulet for protection.
Yeah, man.
That's a thing.
Ross Dude had an interesting piece over the New York Times about the new paganism that has arisen in America, that we've basically kept all of the religious morality of the past, but we've shifted it into social media frenzies.
And all we were lacking was a sort of programmatic religious custom stuff.
A programmatic religious order, right?
Like the sacrifices in the temple.
I guess we're doing that stuff now, too.
We got Jack Dorsey sending his beard hair to Azalea Banks to protect him from ISIS.
I will say this.
I mean, apparently it's worked so far.
He's still alive.
I mean, I still haven't got him.
So does Azalea Banks really have time for that?
Is that like what she does in her spare time?
She takes beard shavings and puts them in amulets?
That's right, she is a Wiccan.
Thank you.
Which means, according to the media, that means she's a witch.
Did you know that?
It's really amazing.
There was a headline the other day.
It said that witches are very upset with President Trump for using the term witch hunt.
They are insulted by the use of the term witch hunt.
Wait until you hear what real women have to say about people saying that men are women.
Wait until you hear... I like when the media says, real witches upset with term witch hunt.
Real witches?
Okay, alright.
So that's the thing.
Yeah, we haven't gone crazy at all.
Yeah, our country's doing just fine, everybody!
Alrighty, so, we'll be back here tomorrow with all the latest in news and insanity.
We will see you then.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villareal, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay.
Our supervising producer is Mathis Glover, and our technical producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Alex Zingaro.
Audio is mixed by Mike Carmina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Alvera.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Ford Publishing production.
▲
Export Selection