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Jan. 4, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:02:47
The Democrats Take Over | Ep. 688
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Nancy Pelosi is sworn in as the new Speaker of the House, the far left makes its policy pitch, and the shutdown continues.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Oh, man, so much to get to today.
All the Democrats had to do was not be bat bleep loony.
That's all they had to do.
And they just couldn't do it.
The first day of the new Democrat Congress goes about as horribly as you'd expect.
And a new economic report out that It shows that President Trump's economy is not slowing down.
Not quite yet.
We'll talk about all of that in just a second.
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OK, so day one of the new Democratic Congress, all the Democrats are sworn in and it's a beginning of a new dawn.
I mean, if you look at how the media portrayed this, it was fresh faces galore, diversity, beautiful diversity.
Diversity of the radical left, because it turns out that all the Democrats had to do when they took office was not be completely insane.
And they just couldn't do it.
It's truly amazing.
If you look back at the last days of the 2018 campaign.
The key question in the 2018 campaign was going to be, who were voters going to focus on?
Were they going to focus on the foibles of the Republicans, or are they going to focus on the myriad stupidities of the Democrats?
In the aftermath of the Judge Kavanaugh hearings, where Democrats proved themselves to care nothing about due process or decency, Republicans skyrocketed in the polls because all the focus was on how terrible the Democrats were.
And then President Trump shifted the topic from Judge Kavanaugh to the the caravan and to his border policies.
And suddenly the focus was on Republicans and people decided they didn't like the Republicans and they ran screaming from the Republicans and Republicans ended up losing the popular vote in the House by 8.6 percentage points.
The same thing happened in 2016.
The question was, is the focus on Hillary or is the focus on Trump?
When the focus was on Trump, Trump went down in the polls.
When the focus was on Hillary, as it was at the very end of the election, in large part thanks to James Comey's memo, at that point, the focus shifted to Hillary Clinton and Hillary Clinton lost.
Well, in 2020, whoever the focus is on is going to lose because it turns out that Americans hate both parties.
Americans think that both parties stink.
Americans hate these politicians.
And so whoever they are focused on at that moment, whoever the public eye of Sauron alights upon is going to be in trouble.
So all the Democrats had to do for 2020 was just keep the focus on President Trump.
They can't do it because they're crazy.
And it turns out that their agenda is radically to the left, radical left.
They're not bringing up any serious policy proposals.
They're not bringing up any serious Any serious measures to alleviate the problems that America is experiencing.
They're not unifying Americans around common values or decency.
Instead, they're going to be just as crazy as they can be, and the media are going to celebrate them for it.
The media are going to talk about how wonderful they are for being incredibly radical.
So Nancy Pelosi...
...takes the gavel yesterday.
As Speaker of the House, after eight long years in the wilderness, she is back.
And her first thing is that she says that she's going to tackle climate change.
Okay, if we are going to actually look at the priorities that Americans care about, climate change is not in the top ten.
Climate change is not a major priority for Americans, specifically because, if you look at the statistics, America's carbon emissions have actually been dropping in recent years.
The statistics show that two of the chief ways, Noah Rothman writes this in commentary today, two of the chief ways in which individuals can reduce their carbon footprints according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that's the UN, would be to purchase electric or hybrid cars or to install smart thermostats in their homes.
And consumers are already doing that in the United States, right?
You got that Nest thermostat that the state pays for.
People are putting that in their house already.
Also, U.S.
carbon emissions declined to a 67-year low in 2017.
The U.S.
power generation sector cut emissions by 28% since 2005.
The U.S.
is meeting its Paris Climate Accord targets, despite having left the stupid agreement in early 2017.
All that's happening, and Americans are not deeply concerned about climate change because they do recognize that in reality, technological change is going to outpace all the sort of socialistic cram-downs that Democrats want.
Nonetheless, Nancy Pelosi targets climate change As her chief priority.
And she's not the only one.
Bernie Sanders was saying climate change is a top priority.
Hank Johnson was saying that climate change is a top priority.
Democrats across the border are saying climate change is their top priority.
That's where you're going?
Really?
To climate?
Well, here's Nancy Pelosi doing it yesterday.
The existential threat of our time, the climate crisis, a crisis manifested in natural disasters of epic proportions.
The American people understand the urgency.
The people are ahead of the Congress.
The Congress must join them.
And that is why we have created a select committee on climate crisis.
The entire Congress must work to put an end to the inaction and denial of science that threaten the planet and the future.
Okay, if you really think that this is what the American people are looking for, you're out of your mind, and the Democrats campaigning on this is crazy.
It's particularly crazy when you have people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has thrown out what she calls a Green New Deal.
Her Green New Deal document that she put out yesterday is fully crazy.
It's the text of a proposed House rule change outlining a plan, her Green New Deal.
Now, the reason that we bring up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, this is always what I caveat with.
We're not bringing her up because we think she's an inherently important person.
She's a woman who won 12,000 votes in a heavy Democrat district in a primary that was majority-minority and had a white representative, and they threw him out in favor of Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
This is not some sort of great puzzle.
This is not some sort of massive movement inside the American public.
But she has been touted by the media as a leader in the Democratic Party.
It's not my fault the media decided to choose a complete ignoramus.
As the face of the New Democratic Party.
It's not my fault.
It's the fault of the Democrats and the fault of the media.
And that means that it is now incumbent on us to take whatever crazy ideas she has seriously.
Now, listen, I'll admit that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a good dancer.
There's this video that came out of her yesterday, dancing on top of a rooftop.
And for some reason, I guess there were people, there wasn't anybody on the right that I saw who was upset about this.
We all thought, oh, this is kind of charming and fun.
There was one person on Twitter who said, this just shows Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's privilege or something.
And everybody came down on this person so hard that they actually left Twitter.
The media played it as though conservatives were scolding her over her dancing.
I don't care that she's dancing.
She seems like a pretty good dancer, right?
I mean, here's the video of her dancing on a rooftop, basically reenacting one of the kind of montages from The Breakfast Club.
It's cute and it's funny.
It's nice.
I mean, who cares?
We can show it.
Here she is dancing.
She's dancing around, right?
Cute girl, dancing around.
All right.
Well, it turns out she is significantly, significantly better at dancing than she is at economics.
Now, if you asked me to take her seriously as a dancer, I'd be like, okay, this video's important.
But this video isn't important.
Okay, the part that's important is that she doesn't know anything about economics, and she says crazy crap all the time.
And that's what the New Democratic Party is.
What they want you to see is the fun girl dancing and being Alex from the Bronx, or whatever she calls herself.
What she actually is is a crazy loon bag socialist.
She was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Okay, and now, here are the details of her Green New Deal that she put out.
Okay, this is nuts.
Here's what she says.
This is according to Tom Elliott over at Grabian.com.
The proposed rule change for the upcoming 116th Congress would require the creation of a select committee for a Green Deal that would be responsible for creating a plan by January 1st, 2020, with corresponding draft legislation soon after.
The text of the rule change lies in the Senate.
What is she looking for?
jurisdiction and required areas of action.
Its scope and mandate for legislative authority amounts to a radical grant of power to Washington over Americans' lives, homes, businesses, travel, banking, and more.
So what exactly are they looking for?
What is she looking for?
Their goal is to meet 100% of national power demand through renewable sources by like 2020.
Or by 2030.
By 2030, she wants 100% renewable power sources crammed down by government.
Let me explain how insane this is, off the top of it.
Here is America's energy consumption by energy source for 2017, which is the latest data available.
37% of America's energy consumption came in the form of petroleum.
Another 29% came in the form of natural gas.
Another 14% came in the form of coal.
Another 9% came in the form of nuclear electric power, which the Democrats don't like.
11% of America's energy supply came from renewable energy.
So in other words, the growth of America's economy, the growth of the world economy, which is dependent on the growth of America's economy, is powered 89% by sources of energy that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez doesn't like.
She doesn't like nuclear energy, so we're not going to count that even though that really is a pretty clean source of energy, right?
France is basically run on nuclear energy.
This is, it's just ridiculous.
And by the way, even when we talk about renewable energy...
Okay, wood constitutes 19% of that.
Okay, so that's not quite as renewable as people want.
That has carbon emissions.
When you use wood for fuel, that actually does have carbon emissions.
Solar represents 6% of the 11% that is renewable energy.
Wind represents 21% of the 11%.
In other words, solar and wind, and hydroelectric, represent something like 5% of the total energy supply of the United States.
She wants it to be 100% by 2030.
How is that going to happen?
Through massive taxation and quashing of the American economy.
That's how it's going to happen.
But it doesn't stop there.
The document also states that the Green New Deal will advance non-environmental projects such as social, economic, racial, regional, and gender-based justice.
What a Green New Deal has to do with gender-based justice is beyond me.
I don't know.
I don't know what the hell that's even supposed to mean.
Doesn't matter.
She says that we should have a national energy-efficient smart grid.
I'd like her to design it, right?
Since she's obviously an expert in energy management, you know, more so than people in coal and natural gas and petroleum, probably she should design it, right?
I mean, she's a government expert.
She was bartending until five seconds ago.
But clearly, if there's one person who knows how to build a national energy-efficient smart grid, and that's not just a mashup of a bunch of words that sound nice together, it would be somebody like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, whose combined brainpower could maybe, maybe provide the electricity to lightly toast a piece of bread.
As long as we're talking about people providing renewable sources of energy.
I'll get to more on Alexander Ocasio-Cortez's idiotic plans.
All the Democrats had to do was not be crazy.
They couldn't do it.
And this is the least crazy part of what they did yesterday.
First, let's calm down for a second.
Let's calm down.
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Okay, so back to AOC's grand new deal.
And again, the reason we're talking about this is because she is the fresh new face.
I was encouraged by a friend of mine on Twitter.
Who's a professor of policy.
I believe it's over at Yale.
His name is Howard Forman.
He's a health policy and economic policy advisor.
You know, he he says, well, why don't you just pay attention?
Why don't you just pay attention to the more moderates in the Democratic in the Democratic caucus?
Because the media is not.
Okay?
Because the Democrats are not.
Because AOC is on 60 Minutes this Sunday.
That's why.
That's why.
Okay, so, I'm going to go through the rest of her plan, and then I will tell you how she plans to pay for all of this.
So she says, we should upgrade every residential and industrial building for state-of-the-art energy efficient comfort and safety.
That's not going to cost any money.
We're going to retrofit every building in the United States with all this stuff.
Eliminating greenhouse gas emissions for manufacturing, agriculture, and other industries.
How?
You know, how is a good question.
It's a really useful question.
How?
Why?
These are useful questions in politics.
She says, funding massive investment in reducing existing greenhouse gases.
But that's not all.
The proposed committee would also have seeming total oversight of American industry, with a mandate for pushing union membership.
So it's not just that we are going to green the economy through the force of government, we are going to unionize every industry to green the economy through the force of government.
If this sounds a lot like the government controlling industry from the top down and destroying the economy, that's because it's precisely what it is.
She wants a national jobs force to help people participate in the transition to the green economy.
She says the Green New Deal will provide all members of our society across all regions and all communities the opportunity, training, and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.
So, let me get this straight.
We can have the government take over all the industries and regulate them down to the ground, unionize all the industries, guarantee the employment through all the industries, and redistribute income for gender-based justice through all of this.
Have we ever tried anything like this before in human history?
Yes.
Has it worked out super well?
No.
It turns out people like their property.
It turns out that people are fans of being able to create.
People like being entrepreneurs.
People like working in creative areas.
People like freedom.
Freedom is a nice thing.
And beyond that, obviously, this is gonna destroy the economy.
I mean, it's just immoral for her to suggest that innovation is dying, and therefore, we have to cram it.
What has she ever invented?
Has she invented a thing?
I mean, granted, she does Instagram instant pot cooking lessons.
Ooh!
But has she ever created, like, a job?
Has she ever hired anyone?
You know, not with government money at her congressional office.
Like, an actual job?
Has she ever, like, produced a product, or a good, or a service anyone wanted to buy?
And yet, she's going to be running the economy.
Perfect.
Perfect.
Also, she says that the plan includes fail-safes in the form of universal income and Medicare for All.
Those are like the side projects that they're going to be working on in their spare time.
Universal income and Medicare for All.
Yeah, this isn't going to go wrong in any way.
So, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez puts out this plan, and then she's asked—she's on 60 Minutes.
Remember, she is the new face.
She's the new face.
Not my fault!
You picked her, morons!
Okay, so she's the new face.
And here's what she says.
She's asked, so how are you going to pay for all of this?
Her answer, of course, is we are going to raise taxes massively on the rich.
Here is her dumb answer.
Again, much better at dancing than economics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent.
That doesn't mean all 10 million dollars are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder, you should be contributing more.
What you are talking about, just big picture, is a radical agenda compared to the way politics is done right now.
Do you call yourself a radical?
Yeah, you know, if that's what radical means, call me a radical.
Okay, well, I will.
You're a radical.
You're an insane radical.
And when she says, oh, thank you for explaining marginal tax rates to me, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
Now, what would be awesome is if she explained how much money the people in the top quintile of the United States pay in federal income tax.
Okay, here is the latest statistic.
This is from April of 2018.
For 2018, the reality is that top earners will pay the overwhelming majority of all taxes in the United States.
Houses in the top 20% will have income of about $150,000 or more and 52% of total income.
thousand dollars or more and 52 percent of total income they will pay 87 percent of all income taxes 87 percent of all income taxes are paid for by the people in the top 20 percent of income earners By the way, it's worth noting here that America has the most progressive tax system in the entire industrialized world.
And when I say progressive, I mean the more money you make, the more money you pay.
This is truer in America than it is in any of the European countries that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is talking about.
The reality is that in order to pay for all of her god-awful, terrible, regulatory, economy-crushing programs, she would have to raise taxes radically on people who are lower down on the income scale.
And when you hear people like Bernie Sanders say things like, well, back in the day of JFK, the top marginal tax rate was 91%.
Why cannot we do that now?
A few quick notes about this idiotic point.
Number one, the top marginal tax rate in the day of Eisenhower and JFK was indeed 91%, but that was for people who earned, filing jointly, $3.4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The top marginal tax rate in the United States today kicks in at about $400,000.
It's not the same thing.
Two, even that 91% top marginal tax rate was never paid for by anyone.
The effective tax rate for people making that amount of money in 1955 was about 45%.
Why?
Because everybody was shielding their income because of the lower corporate tax rate and also because until at that point you were actually allowed to deduct on your taxes depreciation on all loans and depreciation on all real estate.
So people just weren't paying that tax rate, is the reality.
And the economy was good, because people weren't actually paying that tax rate.
For every year between 1952 and 2014, the government brought in between 17% and 20% of GDP in tax revenue, and between 7% and 9% of GDP in income tax revenue.
So it's just a lie to suggest that taxes used to be so high, and the economy was awesome, when the taxes were super duper high.
People just weren't paying them.
They just were not paying them.
If you really believe that you can do this to the tax rates, and that magically everything will be okay, you're an idiot.
And by the way, all the proposals they're talking about, these Medicare-for-all studies, Guy Benson put this together a few months ago.
He talked about how to raise tax rates to pay for AOCs and Bernie Sanders' Medicare-for-all nonsense.
And here's what he came up with.
Here's what you have to do.
You'd have to raise the payroll tax paid for by workers and employers by 10 percentage points for everyone.
Hey, for the workers and the employers.
So that's a 20% increase.
Impose a brand new 20% national VAT sales tax and hike income tax rates across the board for poor people, middle class people and rich people by 10 percentage points.
Not one of those.
All of those.
All of those.
This is why, if you look at all the famed socialistic countries, the supposed socialistic countries that the Democrats like to talk about, the Norways and the Denmarks, the average tax rate across the board is exorbitant.
Exorbitant.
People are paying 60% of their income to the Denmarkian government, okay, to the government of Denmark.
The Danish government, you're paying 60% of your income when you make over $60,000 a year in Denmark.
And that does not include the national sales tax, which means that when all is said and done, like 80% of your income is going to the government of Denmark.
Does that sound awesome to you?
Do you think that might have an impact on, you know, how business works in the United States?
Now, it's always easy, always, always to look at these Democrat socialist countries in Well, look, their economies are still working fine.
You know why they're working fine?
Because everyone on planet Earth is reliant on the economic strength of the United States.
When the U.S.
hits a depression, the rest of the world hits a depression.
The economy is interconnected.
It's why China right now is having economic problems, and it's going to affect the U.S.
markets.
If the U.S.
has economic problems, everyone goes down the crapper.
It's easy to survive with a population of 6 million and exorbitantly high tax rates.
A homogenous population of 6 million and exorbitantly high tax rates.
You can survive if you've got the float of the United States bolstering the world economy.
All socialism does is redistribute the gains made by capitalism.
But it's slightly a different thing when there is no backup plan.
What happens when the U.S.
economy tanks because of all these myriad stupidities being pushed by the radical left in terms of policy?
So that's their big plan.
So their big plan is this new green deal, big spending, Medicare for all, free college for all.
All of these grandiose things that cost exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars and are wrongheaded in the extreme as well.
You know, that when it comes to their college free for all plan, they say, well, you know, we can pay for that by just raising taxes a little bit and we'd pay for the education.
We don't need more people going to community colleges to get degrees they don't need.
What we need is more people going into careers that are useful.
The idea that college is inevitably driving income is just wrong.
Correlation does not equal causation there.
The bottom quintile of college degree earners is earning less than the top quintile of high school degree earners.
Meaning that you can have a high school degree and still make a good living in the United States if you're willing to move up to Montana and work in oil rigging.
But apparently we're not allowed to talk about any of those things anymore.
Okay, so that wasn't the only thing on the Democrats' agenda this week.
So what did they propose in their first couple of days?
Well, we have Brad Sherman, who is my representative here in California and is a full-fledged doof.
He intends to introduce articles of impeachment against President Trump on Thursday as the new session of Congress convenes.
Because this is a priority.
We're going to impeach President Trump with no underlying charges.
He's going to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice in the firing of James Comey, which is absolutely asinine.
There's no obstruction of justice in firing your own FBI director.
You have the authority to do that.
Comey himself testified that the Mueller investigation was not hampered in any way by his firing.
And yet, they're now going to try and impeach him.
But that's not all.
They're going to scream about it.
So Rashida Tlaib, who's another one of these new faces, a fresh face.
Again, I'm not the one labeling these people the new leaders of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party are.
The media are.
Not my fault.
I'm not just cherry picking these folks.
When Vanity Fair did their spreadsheet, their big spread, in their new magazine, I think it's a February issue, of Power Players, in which yours truly appears, the Democrats they chose, from Congress, Were AOC, Rashida Tlaib, there's all these radicals.
This is the people they chose to feature.
This was the new wing, the new diverse magical wing.
So, Rashida Tlaib is a radical anti-Semite.
Not only is she in favor of boycott, divestment and sanctions from the state of Israel, she has tweeted out radically awful things about Israel and Jews before.
She's a terrible person.
And Rashida Tlaib, but we can't say that she's a terrible person because she's diverse, right?
She's one of the first Muslim American congresspeople.
She, along with another one of her colleagues in Congress this year, she is just, they're Muslim.
And this means that they're inherently good, right?
This means that they're inherently good because diversity is inherently good.
Rashida Tlaib, number one, her office immediately, I mean, just to show who she is.
She moves into her congressional office and Hannah Allum, who is a reporter, tweets out this photo of a map in her office.
And says, someone has already made a slight alteration to the map that hangs in Rashida Tlaib's new congressional office.
What does it show?
It shows a post-it note that has been placed over Egypt with an arrow toward Israel and the word Palestine.
So she wants to replace Israel with Palestine, which means the genocide of the Jews in the area.
And she has placed that on her map in her congressional office.
But don't worry, she's new and fresh-faced.
Also, we know she's new and fresh-faced because she uses lots of curse words.
Now, I remember a time, you know, 30 seconds ago, when we kept hearing that Donald Trump was a very vulgar bad man because he's vulgar and bad.
Now, there are those of us who don't like vulgarity.
There are those of us who think that Donald Trump is vulgar and that his vulgarity is not excusable and that it's a bad thing.
There are those of us who think that this sort of approach to politics is ugly, whether it's Republicans or Democrats.
But there's something a little hypocritical about the Democrats whining about vulgarity and then celebrating as Rashida Tlaib goes out there and says that her chief goal is going to be impeaching the mother effer.
She was caught saying this yesterday on tape.
Here she was.
People love you and you win.
And when your son looks at you and says, mama, look, you won, bullies don't win.
And I said, baby, they don't because we're going to go in there.
We're going to impeach the mother.
That's how you know she's authentic.
And by the way, if she said to her daughter, impeach the mother-effer, that's not very good parenting.
I mean, I don't know how old her daughter is, but I don't curse to my children.
That's a bizarre choice.
Now, that doesn't mean that people can say, like, if you're not pissed at Trump doing this sort of stuff, then you're not allowed to really be pissed at Rashida Tlaib for doing this sort of stuff.
But the same holds true the other way.
So Nancy Pelosi, who's been whining about Donald Trump being vulgar for the last several years at this point, She shied away from moving forward with impeachment, but she said that the language used by Rashida Tlaib, well, it was no worse than what he said.
She said that impeachment is divisive, but she's not actually going to, like, chide Rashida Tlaib over all of this because she can't control her own radicals.
This is going to be an ongoing problem for Nancy Pelosi.
Here is Pelosi basically making room for her own radicals while at the same time pretending that only the Republicans are radicals.
Many Democrats are talking about impeachment.
You've said it would be sad and divisive for the country to pursue impeachment.
Are you willing to rule it out?
Well, we have to wait and see what happens with the Mueller report.
We shouldn't be impeaching for a political reason, and we shouldn't avoid impeachment for a political reason.
So we'll just have to see how it comes.
So that's her saying impeachment is on the table.
She can't really name why yet, but sure, why not?
And then she says about the language used.
She says, generationally, that would not be language I would use, but nonetheless, I don't think we should make a big deal of it.
The hypocrisy of politicians is so tiring.
It's so tiring.
If you're going to complain about Donald Trump's behavior, and when your own members use that same kind of behavior, you have to condemn it.
And the same holds true on the right.
If you're going to condemn Rashida Tlaib, then when President Trump uses this kind of behavior, you should also condemn it.
You need to be consistent with these sorts of standards, otherwise there are no standards at all with which to be consistent.
But that wasn't the only thing that Democrats were doing yesterday.
Rashida Tlaib, for her part, she tweeted out that she's unapologetic about using the Mother F Royce says, I will always speak truth to power.
Hashtag unapologetically me.
Oh, I'm so tired.
It's January 4th and I'm so tired.
I will always speak truth to power.
Yeah, speaking truth to power is calling the president a mother effer as people cheer wildly for you.
Wow, what a difficult life you lead, Rashida Tlaib.
Being elected once and then saying whatever you want and people cheering for you because you're a diverse congressperson.
And I love it when it's like, unapologetically, me.
I'm here and I'm proud to be me.
You're so boring.
You know it's not boring self-betterment.
You know what actually is boring?
I'm me.
Oh, it's so just self-absorbed.
Congratulations.
You know who else is me?
My son.
And he poops in his diaper.
Just ridiculous.
Okay, that's not the only thing Democrats were doing either.
Also, Representative Steve Cohen.
Introduce two bills on Thursday.
One to eliminate the Electoral College.
So that's exciting.
It's particularly exciting because he doesn't understand how the Constitution works.
You can't introduce a bill to remove the Electoral College.
It's part of the Constitution, you moron.
You actually have to introduce a constitutional amendment, which would never pass.
So glad to see the Democrats have all their priorities in the correct place.
Hank Johnson, a man who thinks that the island of Guam is going to tip over from too many people because he's a highly intelligent human.
This is Congressman Hank Johnson from the GA 4th District.
Meanwhile, he is ranting and raving about how Trump supporters are all committing suicide.
So Democrats really demonstrating that they should be trusted with power.
Their whole pitch was, you can't trust Trump with power.
And now their whole pitch is, we crazy.
I mean, so here is Hank Johnson being totally nuts.
Donald Trump supporters are older, less educated, less prosperous, and they are dying early.
Their lifespans are decreasing, and many are dying from alcoholism, drug overdoses, liver disease, or simply a broken heart caused by economic despair.
Yeah, that's what Trump supporters are.
They're all dying, committing suicide.
It's all the Trump supporters.
That's what's happening here.
No Democrats have ever committed heroin overdoses.
None.
I mean, incredible knowledge being dropped there by Hank Johnson, who legitimately said that an island was going to tip over because of overpopulation.
The good news, though, is that the media are doing yeoman's work in covering the Democrats.
CNN took Nancy Pelosi for ice cream.
I'm not kidding you.
Remember when they did this to Paul Ryan when he became Speaker?
Nah, neither do I. Remember when Donald Trump became President and they took him for a milkshake?
I mean, we know he likes milkshakes.
Bill O'Reilly took him for a milkshake once.
Okay, but do you remember when CNN did that?
I don't.
But here they are taking charming Nancy Pelosi over to the local Vaqueros for some ice cream.
Hopefully sugar-free so it doesn't melt away at those dentures.
Here they are on CNN.
She attributes her boundless energy to Italian genes.
It's certainly not a balanced diet.
Dark chocolate and ice cream.
Vicaro's has been her favorite since she was a little girl.
The chocolate.
Not the chocolate chip, the chocolate.
I like my childhood unadulterated.
Okay, so that's a thing.
She likes her chocolate unadulterated.
Good coverage there, CNN.
Solid coverage.
I mean, I can't imagine why people think CNN's a biased network.
I mean, come on!
That's not bias!
That's hard-hitting reporting!
She attributes her long-standing life expectancy to Italian genes.
Very, very important stuff.
By the way, do we have any data about whether Italians live longer?
I don't know that that data exists, but it doesn't matter.
She's an old lady, and we have to trust everything she says.
She loves dark chocolate, and she loves ice cream, and she used to go to Vaquero's as a child, and this means that she is going to legislate on behalf of the children.
Oh, CNN, you suck so radically much.
It makes you actually want to chant that at a rally.
CNN sucks.
Just awful stuff.
Okay, so.
I want to get to the government shutdown, which continues.
I also want to get to the markets, which have been all over the place, and a very good economic report for President Trump.
And we'll do some mailback, too, so a lot coming up.
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All righty.
So the government shutdown, meanwhile, continues apace.
As the Democrats push out their own idiotic policies, they say one thing that they will certainly, certainly not pay for.
So they'll spend literally trillions of dollars on programs that do not work.
Medicare for all.
They're going to spend trillions of dollars on universal basic income.
They're going to spend trillions of dollars on a Green New Deal, which is just basically a cronyist boondoggle where they pay their friends and their union cronies.
They're going to spend billions of dollars on that, but they will not give President Trump $5.6 billion for a wall.
No deal.
No.
Not a dime.
And Nancy Pelosi is saying that.
She says, I will offer President Trump one dollar.
She literally said this.
Her opening bargaining position was like Alec Baldwin from 30 Rock.
One dollar.
Here she is.
Is there any situation in which you would accept even a dollar of wall funding for this president in order to reopen the government?
She's in such a good mood.
She spent a dollar.
One dollar?
Yeah, one dollar.
How high were you willing to go?
You said a dollar.
You said a dollar.
How high were you willing to go?
Well, that's not your question.
You said a dollar.
She's in such a good mood.
She spent a dollar.
There's an old Oscar Wilde joke in which Oscar Wilde apparently went up to a woman at a cocktail party.
And he said to her, this is how you know it's apocryphal because Oscar Wilde was gay.
But in any case, Oscar Wilde supposedly went up to this woman and he said to her, madam, would you sleep with me for a million pounds?
And she said, I'd have to think about it.
And they said, well, would you sleep with me for one pound?
And she said, how dare you, sir?
What kind of woman do you think I am?
He said, well, we already know what you are.
We're just haggling over the price now.
Really, I mean, if Nancy Pelosi is willing to give a dollar, why not 5.6 billion?
I mean, really, same thing in federal government terms.
In any case, they will not grant a dollar for the wall, or if they will, it's like one dollar.
Meanwhile, Mike Pence says the shutdown is going to continue without the wall, which, by the way, it should.
We'll talk about the politics of this in just a second, because there are a lot of people saying, oh, it's going to damage President Trump.
Democrats are in control of Congress now.
I'm not sure that's how this is going to play out.
Ever since the Christmas holiday, The president sent us to Capitol Hill.
I met with Senator Schumer not once but twice.
We engaged in good faith negotiations.
The president and I canceled all of our Christmas vacation plans.
We were here in Washington, D.C.
Democrats broke off negotiations about a week ago, but the president's made it clear.
We're here to make a deal.
But it's a deal that's going to result in achieving real gains on border security.
And you have no border security without a wall.
We will have no deal without a wall.
By the way, Pence apparently in a meeting already went to Schumer and said, we don't need 5.6 billion, we'll do 2.5 billion.
And then Schumer was like, well, you guys said you wanted 5.6 billion.
And Trump's out there nodding at Schumer, which is just amazing, undercutting Pence in the room during the negotiations.
It's just...
Incredible stuff.
But the fact is that the Trump administration is willing to move.
The Democrats are simply not willing to move.
President Trump called sort of an impromptu press conference.
He went into the press room yesterday.
He congratulated Nancy Pelosi and then he talked about the border wall and he is correct to do so.
I just want to start off by congratulating Nancy Pelosi on being elected Speaker of the House.
It's a very, very great achievement.
And hopefully we're going to work together and we're going to get lots of things done, like infrastructure and so much more.
I know they want to do that very badly, so do I. So hopefully we're going to have a lot of things that we can get done together.
And I think it's actually going to work out.
I think it'll be a little bit different than a lot of people are thinking.
So I congratulate Nancy.
Tremendous, tremendous achievement.
Okay, and then he went on and talked about, you know, why we needed a wall, and he is right about that.
So this is Trump being generous.
The media cracked down on him anyway.
How dare President Trump interrupt the swearing-in of these new Democratic members?
How dare he steal the spotlight?
Because Obama never stole the spotlight from anybody.
That was never his thing, Obama.
He just eschewed the spotlight like crazy.
If there's one thing I remember about Barack Obama, that was a man who disdained the spotlight.
He definitely never wanted to be the center of attention.
President Trump did put out a tweet about the border wall.
It was basically about the crisis on the border, showing video of people climbing the border.
You can show it, I'll narrate it.
It's video showing people throwing rocks at border agents, and criminals throwing rocks at border agents, drugs being shipped over the border, and all the rest, and him saying we need a border wall.
All of this is obvious.
He had a bunch of border agents to the White House, and in typical media fashion, it demonstrates exactly Where the media's heads are at.
So he had at this presser a bunch of border agents who came forward and they blasted the Democrats over the wall.
Here's what they had to say.
I've been a Border Patrol agent for 21 years.
I can personally tell you, from the work that I have done on the southwest border, that physical barriers, that walls actually work.
You all gotta ask yourself this question.
If I come to your home, do you want me to knock on the front door, or do you want me to climb through that window?
These criminal aliens that have been released from jail, that have been deported, will come right back into the United States.
However, if we had a physical barrier, if we had a wall, we wouldn't be able to stop that.
Okay, so, you know, Trump said this, and the border agents say it, and they're all right.
I mean, this is all exactly correct.
But the media don't cover that.
The media instead cover it as though there's an open debate to be had about this.
The Democrats have not put forward a single proposal for how they plan to stop illegal immigration at the border.
Not one.
Not a proposal.
And yet the pressure is supposed to be on President Trump?
President Trump should bring these border agents with him everywhere.
He should go on a national tour with these border agents.
He should go down to the border right now, to the empty area of the border.
See, there is no wall here.
Do you think that our border agents are magic?
You think they can just stop people walking over the border?
We have no way of alerting them to people crossing these borders.
Trump should make this a national issue.
And he should force Nancy Pelosi to answer why she is willing to allow government workers to be furloughed simply to not pay for a wall.
They're gonna have to explain that one.
So Trump is not wrong to do this.
Meanwhile, the markets have been tumbling.
They've been going up and down and all around.
But there's a very good economic report that came out today.
The new economic report shows an amazing 312,000 jobs added in December, plus average hourly pay improved 3.2% from a year ago, up from average wage growth of 2.7% at the end of 2017.
It's a very, very solid economic report.
The amount that was expected was like 200,000 jobs added.
It's 312,000 jobs added instead.
The unemployment rate did rise slightly to 3.9% because people were looking for more work.
They've gotten back into the jobs market.
4% is basically considered by economists full employment.
So we have a full employment economy and Democrats are treating it as though we are supposed to wreck that economy with 70% tax rates across the board and massive green scams designed to pay off all of their political cronies.
Trump should just run on their radicalism.
This would be a very good... Now Trump has an opponent.
So it was suggested yesterday by the exorable Michael Knowles that President Trump does better when he has an opponent, an actual opponent.
Now he has actual opponents in Congress.
Maybe that's true.
He should aim his fire directly at their idiotic programs that they are pushing as hard as they possibly can because they're going to keep pushing these programs even if the economy is good.
There are warning signs on the horizon for the economy.
Apple, for example, announced that its earnings would come up short.
That's because Apple has been poorly run.
I mean, really, their products just are not as innovative as they once were.
And this is one of the realities of the economy.
It's why when people talk about Google being inevitably large and eating the world economy and all the rest of it, companies rise, companies fall.
The number of companies that have been on the S&P 500 is not 500 over the course of the last 50 years.
It is several thousand because companies join, companies fall off.
There was a time when Apple was a secondary company, when IBM was the big company, and now IBM is barely alive, and Apple is on top.
Well, Apple will fall too.
The same will happen with Google.
I remember a time when AltaVista was a thing, and Yahoo was a thing.
All these companies rise and fall because of innovation.
Now, innovation makes people uncomfortable.
It makes them feel like they're not in control.
There are a lot of articles today out in the New York Times about how innovation is basically stalling, and we don't know where the next big thing is going to come from.
If we knew where the next big thing was going to come from, then I would have invested in it, wouldn't have you?
Innovation always takes us by surprise.
As well as should.
In a free economy, innovation always takes us by surprise.
Which is why we should remove all barriers to innovation.
And that means we should reduce tax rates, we should reduce regulations, we should reduce tariffs.
Innovation.
Entrepreneurship.
People coming up with new and better stuff.
That is what creates a booming economy and will create the next wave of stuff.
And we don't have to know where that's coming from.
The great lie that's told by centralized planners is that there are a few geniuses who can just forecast where technology is going to go.
Again, if they could forecast where technology were going to go, they would just invest in the technology and be rich themselves.
Certainly the folks at government level can't do that.
When you try to force innovation, it generally fails.
It does not succeed.
Innovation can only happen when people are left to their own free devices.
The inspiration of man has allowed 7.3 billion people to remain alive on a planet that really in a subsistence economy would sustain maybe a billion, right?
I mean, it's just not...
It's not credible to believe that technology is not going to continue to advance in the wake of human ingenuity and human intelligence.
But that seems to be the case made by folks on the left, is that human intelligence and ingenuity, suddenly they're not up to the task.
Capitalism, which has raised nearly the entire globe from abject poverty, Needs to be curbed because it's too rapacious and greedy and terrible and all the rest.
This sort of stuff is just, it's foolish.
It's foolish.
But foolishness is stock and trade for a lot of folks these days and that's what President Trump should campaign on because it turns out that whatever President Trump's problems, at least he isn't proposing destroying the entire United States and thus world economy on the shoulders of centralized planning by bartenders from New York.
Okay, let's get into the mailbag for a few minutes.
So Annette says, hey, my seven-year-old is super into U.S. history.
He really enjoys watching Crash Course on U.S. history videos.
However, I've noticed a significant liberal bent in a lot of these videos.
Do you have any recommendations for U.S. history that are trustworthy and could still be considered somewhat entertaining to a seven-year-old?
Well, you know, I've recommended for years the musical 1776.
My daughter is four.
She loves the musical 1776 because, indeed, it is, in fact, musical.
I've been seriously considering the possibility of putting out podcasts on American history, or putting out graphic novels on American history, because I think that it is ill-taught, and I think the most entertaining versions are put together by folks from Hollywood who legitimately are attempting to bias American history in the worst possible way.
Listen, there is sophistication to American history.
There are nuances to American history.
Not all of American history is glorious and wonderful, but the overarching thrust of American history and philosophy is inherently wonderful.
And if that's not what kids are initially taught, and they're instead taught that America was initially bad and was founded on racism and sexism and slavery and all this kind of stuff, Then what they're going to come away with is a leftist version of history that ignores the transformative power of the United States and really doesn't answer the question as to why the U.S.
is so good, so powerful, and so righteous on the world stage across the scope of history.
Daniel says, It begins on Monday, so you can go to your local radio station that may be carrying it.
We are going to be on in all the major markets, in real time.
It broadcasts live from 12 to 3 on the West Coast, right?
So it'll be the first hour is the recut version of the podcast, and then the last two hours are going to be live radio, but it plays basically a three-hour radio show.
So you should be able to find that at your local radio station.
If you don't catch it there, then you need to subscribe.
You need to go over to dailywire.com and subscribe, and then you can actually join me during the breaks.
Like, one of the things we're planning is that occasionally during breaks, I'll take questions from you in the audience, and we'll have fun with our subscribers.
So go check that out at dailywire.com.
Matthew says, hey, I'm a new subscriber after a year of watching on YouTube.
I'm a follower of the intellectual dark web and have been intrigued and disturbed by the recent developments with Patreon's banning of Sargon of Akkad.
I've been following Dave Rubin's and Jordan Peterson's recent announcement to leave Patreon with the hope to create a competitor platform.
What are your thoughts on the Rubin-Peterson platform and on Peterson's worried about the change of terms, site movement, and potential for credit card companies to further the social push toward radical leftist ideologies and censorship on the internet?
Well, my view is that Jordan and Dave are doing exactly the right thing.
And not only that, there's all sorts of market opportunities that are going to be opened up by the censorship of the left.
If Mastercard decides that they're going to crack down on your ability to subscribe to my show, for example, people will just get another credit card.
And that's all that will happen.
Freedom finds a way.
If Jeff Goldblum said that life finds a way, so does freedom, so does liberty.
If people can somehow find a way to listen to this show in China, and I know there are people who do, then you can certainly find a way to get another credit card to listen to this show if these credit card companies decide to try and reach out and harm you.
Veronica says, we had a discussion in the DW chat that sparked this question.
Since alcohol kills more people a year than drugs, does it make sense to legalize marijuana, cocaine, etc.
and ban alcohol?
My view when it comes to all of these things is that legalization is preferable for all substances and that it is your personal responsibility not to abuse those substances.
We have ancillary crimes that are attached.
To abuse of those substances.
If you smoke pot and then you drive while smoking pot, that's a crime.
That's DUI.
If you become violent after using cocaine, then that is a crime.
The real question about legalization of drugs is whether there are certain drugs that are so powerful that they actually rob you of your capacity to reason And be a good citizen in the process.
And there are certain drugs that do make you into a zombie.
I mean, heroin obviously makes you into a zombie.
So, would legalization of heroin... Then the question becomes, is government policy and criminalization effective in combating the use of heroin or not?
And I think the evidence on that is fairly mixed.
I believe that heroin is actually legal in places like Amsterdam.
And I'm not sure that it has radically increased the number of people who are addicted to heroin, for example.
I'd want to do some more research on that topic.
Drew says, Hey Ben, I've heard you say a few times you're an absolutist when it comes to free speech in the First Amendment.
Therefore, I'm curious what your thoughts were on free speech in schools, specifically high school.
The two scouts cases, SCOTUS cases, I immediately think of are Tinker v. Des Moines Independent School District and Morse v. Frederick.
Well, you do give up certain rights depending on their time, place, and manner restrictions.
school do you think these rights should be preserved and respected at these schools thanks for all you do for the conservative community well you do give up certain rights depending on their time place and manner restrictions it's not appropriate for you to get up and protest in the middle of your math class because there's actual jobs that have to be taken care of in that math class such as teaching math for example i'm not sure that free speech applies in the same way in in public schools now So long as it is not impeding the educational mission of the school, I think free speech is fine.
If it is impeding the educational mission of the school, then I think that obviously free speech is a problem.
But that's not the same thing as bringing in a guest speaker on college campus, for example.
Or restricting certain types of political activity at the expense of other types of political activity.
I mean, the general rule when it comes to time, place, and manner restrictions is that they have to be content neutral.
Isaac says, Hey Ben, your argument against Trump pulling our military presence from the Middle East is solid.
Allow me to present a counter-argument you may not have heard.
In short, we need our troops here at home.
We've lost all our important social fabric to the ravages of tribalism and nihilism.
We are now embroiled in a culture war against these forces.
Maybe the return home of a bunch of people who believe in this country and have an interest in restoring our social fabric is just what we need to win.
Well, honestly, listen, I think that our troops are unbelievable people.
I mean, they're incredible, they're far braver than I, they made a commitment that I have not made.
I have nothing but praise for them.
The idea that you join the military to be at home and then influence other people, I don't think is exactly correct.
I mean, what you're actually suggesting More effectively would be some sort of national service program, you know, like Israel, that everybody does a year of national service, everybody serves in the army.
I'm generally uncomfortable with government force being used that way.
I think rebuilding of the social fabric ground up through local community is a better solution.
Matthew says, Ben, I'm looking at becoming a political commentator, hopefully similar to what you do.
What college degrees and courses would you suggest to be the best equipped for this path?
I mean, I'm not sure the college prepares you to actually do any of this stuff.
I think that taking poli-sci courses, then reading all of the stuff they don't want you to read is probably useful.
I think that taking a journalism course and realizing what it is that they want you to do is maybe a little useful.
Learning how to write in an English course is useful.
But most... I actually believe this about college generally.
Unless you are going to a college that is pushing you to learn a skill set that is specific.
So my wife was in pre-med, and now she's a doctor.
Right?
I know.
I know.
Shocking.
But...
That's an actual college degree that's worth something.
I'm not sure that it's necessarily worth something to go to college and then major in a subject where you're actually going to learn what to do while you're on the job.
As far as being a political commentator, opinion maker, I always say to young people, the first thing people want is information.
People like our show because we're information first.
We provide you enormous amounts of information and then my opinion.
And this is true.
When you are in college as well, you have access to information, stuff that's happening on your campus.
As Andrew Breitbart said to everyone, to me also, he said, listen, if you have a cell phone, you are now a reporter.
And this is true.
If you see something bad happen on your campus, you have access to information.
You should distribute that information.
It'll make you more worth listening to.
Okay, let's see.
Just says, Dear Ben, in downtown Portland, homeless people wandering around with trash bags full of cans, which they collect to turn in for money, are ubiquitous.
As I walked to put some cans in my building's recycling bins today, I wondered, is leaving cans in recycling bins the new leaving a corner of one's wheat field for the poor?
If not, what is?
Thanks, from a former Jewish day school student.
So, that's a reference to Paya and Leket, which are biblical sort of taxes.
You're supposed to leave one, basically, you're supposed to leave a corner of your field unreaped for the poor and if you go through your field and you drop stuff on the ground you're not supposed to pick it up you're supposed to leave that for the poor as well is that what recycling is kind of a funny idea i don't think so i think that the idea of pay and like it was to provide job opportunities for people uh that they were it wasn't that you were supposed to pick the the grain and then hand it over to a poor person although that is a form of tzedakah of of charity
You're actually supposed to leave something for the poor people to do so that they become self-sufficient.
And I think that that's what we should be aiming toward, giving people a job as the highest form of charity.
Okay, let's see.
Maybe one more question.
Let's do this one.
Okay, Joshua says, my issue has to do with the United States not producing enough children to sustain a growing population.
Because we aren't having enough kids, it will impact the economy, social security, etc.
But having paid maternity leave, like Europe, be enough of an incentive for parents to have more kids.
No.
The answer is no.
Paid maternity leave is not the reason people aren't having kids.
If that were true, then Europe would be having a lot of kids.
They're not having a lot of kids.
It is a cultural thing to have a lot of kids.
In the Orthodox Jewish community, the average number of children is 4+.
In the Catholic community, the average number of children is similar.
It's 3-4 people.
Average number of kids being had in secular households is under two.
And the reason for that is because kids are a pain in the butt.
Okay?
Really, just putting this as blatantly as possible.
Kids are a giant pain in the butt.
They're also the most wonderful thing that will ever happen to you in your life, don't get me wrong, but they're a lot of hassle.
They change your life radically.
You have to plan every day around the most minute needs of your children.
You have to change your schedules to deal with them.
You have to deal with their fussing and their whining.
You have to feed them.
They're a large time and energy drain.
Well, it used to be that the reason people had kids was so that they could work the farm, or so one day when you were old, your kids would take care of you, but in an era when the government is supposedly going to take care of you, which it won't, but in an era when the government is supposed to take care of you, then the idea is that you don't actually need kids to do all of that stuff.
The only reason to have kids would be to pay for these programs 20 years down the road, but you're gonna be dead, so what do you care?
So people aren't having kids.
Kids have become a net Negative, as opposed to a net asset.
Well, that means that people are not going to have kids.
Which means the only reason people are having kids, really, is for religious reasons.
Because they believe that it's a good thing for the world to have kids, because they believe that kids are an inherent good, and because there still is a human biological need, and this is particularly true among women, to have children.
Okay?
Doesn't mean that every woman wants to have children.
The vast, vast majority of women are happier having kids.
They are.
And all this talk about how you're going to be fulfilled having a career as a high-powered lawyer at 50 with no kids is nonsense.
It's just not the case.
You may be fulfilled if that's part of your life, but if that's your whole life, there's not a man or woman who's totally fulfilled by that, but particularly not a woman who feels that she forwent her magical power of being able to produce and spawn another human being And did that so they could build more hours at the office.
I just don't think that's a recipe for happiness.
And feminism, which has taught women this, has made more women miserable.
So, I think that the cure for this is a values cure.
It's not an economic cure.
I don't think it's about paid maternity leave.
Now, is there a conservative argument for paid maternity leave?
Yeah, I think there is, which is why I think that there are a lot of private companies that undertake that argument.
But I think it's ridiculous to suggest that, for example, my private company has to pay people for taking time off Should be forced by the government to pay people for taking time off at the same rate they would be if they were working.
Like, if that's something I want to offer to incentivize really well-qualified women to come to the company, because that's something I believe in, great.
But if the idea is I'm supposed to sacrifice the economic income of the company because you are making a personal choice to have a child, that's top-down control.
I'm very much opposed to it.
Okay, time for a couple of things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, Things that I like.
So, over the last couple of days driving around with the kids, and I realized my kids were not familiar with the work of Stevie Wonder.
Stevie Wonder is one of the most talented musicians of the 20th and 21st centuries.
And I think, is it safe to say, sort of underrated?
Because people say that Michael Jackson is the king of pop.
So I was listening to some Michael Jackson.
I'm not sure there's a Michael Jackson album you'd actually want to listen to beginning to end, like three times.
Stevie Wonder's stuff is fan-fricking-tastic.
The man is just unbelievably talented.
And obviously his best song is Superstition, the bass line of which is the catchiest bass line in the history of pop music.
Here's a little bit of superstition for folks not familiar if you've been living under a rock with the work of Stevie Wonder.
Really, I do think underrated.
I tweeted out Stevie Wonder over Michael Jackson.
I got a lot of flack for it.
I was kind of shocked by that.
I thought this was perfectly obvious.
Stevie Wonder is a much better musician than Michael Jackson.
And again, I may have my political disagreements with Stevie Wonder, but talent, man, I mean, he's incredible.
He works in a variety of genres.
He's terrific.
Here's a little bit of Stevie Wonder.
Here's a little bit of Stevie Wonder.
Here's a little bit of Stevie Wonder.
Okay, I mean... The man can sing, the man can play multiple instruments.
I mean, he's really a talented guy, so... Don't forget about the Stevie Wonder.
Stevie Wonder's fantastic.
And by the way, he would have survived in Bird Box.
Okay, so a couple of things that I hate today.
So, demonstrating once again that our social media outrage culture absolutely stinks.
This is a story from The Daily Caller.
At first, it appeared to be just another story about a white person calling the cops on a black person over the summer.
A supposedly racially motivated phone call to the police that caught international attention out of hundreds of others.
Stories of police arriving to scenes around the United States to find black people committing crimes of barbecuing, sleeping in a university dorm common room, or selling water bottles were taking over the media.
With each story, a white person made the phone call, and each caller was given a memorable nickname.
In this case, the caller was Doorway Debbie.
I don't know if you remember this one.
On a midsummer day in July, Darcelle Obregon ducked into an apartment building to shelter herself from the rain while waiting for an Uber.
Minutes later, the front door swung open and out walked a 19-year-old girl who demanded that Obregon leave the premises immediately.
The resident's name is Arabel Torres, a 19-year-old student at Brooklyn College who also has autism.
I came downstairs and a woman was standing as I am right now and wouldn't leave, said Torres.
What might have been an unremarkable, high-strung incident that occurs hundreds of times a day in New York City ended up becoming a fake news story that race-baited an incident without any credible evidence of bigotry.
Torres said, Hey ma'am, this is private property, could you please move?
Okay, and the woman, Obregon, is an assistant to a fashion model.
She flat out refused to leave.
After about 10 times of me saying, ma'am, go, this is private property, Obregon still refused, so I called the cops.
As a person with autism, I was scared.
When somebody is blocking me from leaving, it's a problem, and I was alone in that situation.
Torres dialed 911, so Obregon whipped out her phone and began filming.
Later that evening, the words worthless skank popped up on her phone.
When Torres was at a Broadway show, messages poured in.
Hashtags like white privilege and barbecue Becky were included.
Obergon's Facebook post reads, on Sunday afternoon, I was in Brooklyn walking to the train when a sudden rainstorm began and I hid in the doorway outside of a random apartment to shield myself from rain.
No more than three minutes later, a young woman who lives in the building opened the front door and told me I cannot stand there and had to leave.
And then she proceeded to call the police and then she released all of this tape.
And there's a lot of talk about how she was maybe high or maybe she's not Spanish, she looks Jewish, all of this stuff.
It turns out that this woman was diagnosed with autism.
She has ASD.
And Torres said that for an individual with autism, she's pretty good at communication.
But when she sees or hears people outside the building, it triggers feelings of paranoia and tremendous discomfort.
Doesn't matter.
She was labeled a racist.
And this story was reported at Ebony Magazine and at the New York Post and all the rest.
It turns out the Taurus herself is not white and she's not even sure that Obregon is black.
So, well done social media.
Makes everybody feel better to tweet about how people are terrible without actually recognizing maybe you're the terrible one for jumping to a conclusion in the first place.
So, well done there.
New York City, also another crazy story today.
New York City added to the growing list of U.S.
states and cities to offer residents a third gender option on their birth certificates.
Now, here is why this is absolutely asinine.
When you are born, you have a sex.
The purpose of putting a sex on your birth certificate is so that if a doctor, let's say that something happens, there's a car crash, and the baby has to be rushed to the hospital, and now you have to determine how to operate on the baby or the child, and you actually have to determine how are you going to credibly deal with this child.
Health problems are different based on sex.
For example, let's say that you are in a situation where you have a government census being done to determine how healthcare is differentiating between males and females and can healthcare be changed to change any sort of imbalance.
Then these statistics matter.
The purpose for the government keeping statistics is so that we can use them for our data production for purposes of public policy.
Mixing that up by putting X on a birth certificate is just absolutely idiot.
It's idiocy.
It's just idiocy.
The new law allows the choice of X in addition to male or female.
The non-binary category can be selected by those who identify as non-binary, as well as by parents who choose the category for newborn children.
Now, what's so amazing about this part?
You know, the parents who choose the category for newborn children.
First of all, you don't get to choose your own sex.
That's nonsense.
You are a biological human.
Second, I love the idea that I am imposing on my child by recognizing a biological reality, but I am not imposing on my child by pretending biological reality doesn't exist.
So it is not an agenda-driven item for me to suggest that my child is neither male nor female, but it is an agenda-driven item for me to recognize that my boy has a penis.
All of this is insane.
It's fully insane.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio dropped a groundhog and then praised the law for furthering the city's commitment to defending the rights of the LGBTQ community.
Here he reiterated his stance in a statement this week.
He said, You do not get to choose how people identify you.
You can choose how you identify.
Change your name.
Live with respect and dignity.
You do not get to choose how people identify you.
You can choose how you identify.
Change your name.
Call yourself Bojangles.
Call yourself whatever you want.
Doesn't matter.
Just call yourself a cat.
I don't care.
But, if you insist that society treat you as a non-biological entity, Then you are living in a world of fantasy, and that's just reality.
That's just nonsense.
California already does this.
So does Washington and Oregon.
Now, I always laugh at this sort of stuff because the truth is that in the end, none of this is going to matter at all.
Biology outweighs all of this stuff.
This will be a fringe phenomenon.
A few people will do it.
It'll become trendy for a while, and then it will go away because no one is going to actually do this overall.
But the fact that we are all supposed to change what biology is, So that your self-identification becomes how we use objective measures to identify you.
So basically, the government defines you.
So you define yourself to the government, and then the government defines you for everyone else.
And that is a form of thought control that I just simply am not going to engage in.
All right, so we'll be back here next week.
And I'm sure there will be much more news.
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I'm Ben Shapiro.
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