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Jan. 30, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

55:54

The Independent Threat | Ep. 706

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	Democrats panic over independent candidates, Venezuela approaches chaos, and Virginia is now pushing hard left abortion policy.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Man, we have a lot to get to today, a lot in the news.
	People very angry on the Democratic side of the aisle at Howard Schultz.
	And quick note, there's a lot of news today out about the supposed wage gap between men and women.
	Quick shout out to my wife, who stayed up all night long with my daughter.
	She has the flu and the cough.
	And my wife, being an actual feminist, Actually stayed up all night long with my daughter because she is the best wife in the world.
	So shout out to you, honey.
	I never do that on the show, but you deserve it this morning.
	We'll get to all of the actual news in just one second.
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	Democrats are in a state of sheer panic over Howard Schultz, which is amazing.
	The guy is not exactly lighting up the world with his charisma and good looks.
	He's not George Clooney, Howard Schultz.
	He's a former CEO of Starbucks, a large coffee chain that most people have At least mixed feelings about.
	And yet, he is scaring the devil out of Democrats.
	I mean, they are scared of him.
	And they're scared of Michael Bloomberg, too.
	They're scared more of Shultz than Bloomberg, because Bloomberg has suggested he's going to run as a Democrat in the Democratic primaries.
	And they figure he's not going to go anywhere in the Democratic primaries.
	There's just no real chance that he ends up doing anything spectacular there.
	He's not intersectional enough.
	He's too moderate.
	So they figure, OK, we'll get rid of him the same way we got rid of Jim Webb in 2016.
	He'll just sort of fade out into the distance of his own accord.
	But somebody running as an independent changes the math pretty radically.
	And Democrats are really scared of Shultz, which is why you are seeing the virulent reaction to Shultz.
	I mean, people are angry at him.
	People are so angry at him that he went on MSNBC this morning and he said, like, I've never seen the vitriol like this, which suggests that, as we in the political business like to say, you're not taking flack unless you are over the target.
	Well, this has led some members of the media to try to hit Shultz with gotcha questions.
	So the line of attack on Schultz is going to be that he is a delusional billionaire, that he happens to be extraordinarily rich, and that's the only reason he's considering running.
	And because he is both delusional and a billionaire, that means he is out of touch.
	He's out of touch with the common American person.
	Now, let me just explain at the top.
	The number of politicians who are really in touch with the common American in Washington, D.C.
	is zero.
	There are no politicians in Washington, D.C.
	that you know or I know who are really in touch with the common man.
	People who, you know, actually have to scrape to save for a box of Cheerios, for example.
	The number of Congress people who actually know how much a box of Cheerios costs is zero because they have aides who do all their shopping for them.
	I mean, Hillary Clinton, as of 2016, had not driven herself anywhere in two decades.
	And she admitted that.
	Donald Trump plasters his toilets in gold.
	The people in our politics who are at the top levels are not people who are scrimping and saving with the coupon saver in order to make the bills that month.
	And yet, Howard Schultz is the one being dragged across the room for it.
	So Howard Schultz is on Morning Joe.
	You'll recall Morning Joe from such special events as, Well now, they're going directly after Howard Schultz.
	They decided to ask a real gotcha question to Howard Schultz.
	The question being, how much does a box of Cheerios cost?
	I will be a leader of the country of all American people that people will trust and admire because I will understand.
	I have walked in their shoes.
	I'm on both sides of the equation.
	I'm somebody who has been, who is successful.
	I'm somebody who came from the projects and I understand the American people.
	How much does an 18 ounce box of Cheerios cost?
	An 18-ounce box of Cheerios?
	Here's the deal.
	You ask us.
	You know, like, budgets for the VA.
	We're going to ask you questions about Cheerios.
	I don't eat Cheerios.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay, so that is a sure gotcha question.
	A sheer gotcha question.
	How much does a box of Cheerios cost?
	And this is supposed to show that he's out of touch.
	This is the same routine that the media did with George H.W.
	Bush in 1991 when they suggested that he didn't know how a supermarket checkout scanner worked, even though he knew perfectly well how a supermarket checkout scanner worked.
	By the way, there's something ironic about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski grilling Howard Schultz over his lack of being in touch with the common man.
	I will remind you that Joe and Mika were wed at the National Archives Which, by the way, is illegal.
	Okay?
	Except for Joan Mika.
	No one has ever been wed at the National Archives, which is a government site.
	They were married at the National Archives, becoming the first couple ever to wed at the National Archives.
	They became engaged in 2017 during a trip to France.
	These are common folks.
	The people standing up for the common man.
	They're gonna tell you how much it costs in Podunk, Iowa, for a box of Cheerios.
	But Howard Schultz, that guy over there, he can't.
	The wedding, by the way, was kept under wraps.
	It was purposely held on Thanksgiving weekend when Washington movers and shakers were out of town, according to Vanity Fair, which covered the wedding.
	The ceremony was officiated by Representative Elijah Cummings, another person in touch with the common man, held in the rotunda in front of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights.
	So yes, I'm sure that these are the people who are going to be the police for the common man.
	So you can see the ire at Schultz.
	I mean, people are seriously, seriously angry at Howard Schultz.
	And the reason that people are angry at Howard Schultz is because Howard Schultz has the temerity to believe that there may be a centrist road to the presidency, or at the very least, that Democrats have swiveled it too far to the left.
	Nobody on the right is angry at Howard Schultz today.
	Nobody on the right is upset at Howard Schultz.
	Now, Howard Schultz may in fact take suburban votes away from Donald Trump in the end, but There are not a lot of Republicans angry at Howard Schultz.
	Why?
	Because the more the merrier.
	I mean, when it comes to people who are running on non-insane platforms, I'm basically glad to see it.
	I'm not planning to vote for Howard Schultz in the 2020 election.
	But I do like the idea that there's more than one candidate standing against the idea that we should completely nationalize the healthcare industry, for goodness sake.
	Nonetheless, Howard Schultz being dragged around by his ear because he's rich.
	And we're now in a time of open class warfare.
	If you are rich, Howard Schultz, by the way, did not start off rich.
	There's a person who started off, as he says, in the projects, and now he's a very wealthy man.
	He's a billionaire now.
	But we have to rip him down because he's very wealthy.
	People were tweeting out the percentage of money that he gave to charity this year, neglecting, of course, how much he already paid to the federal government in taxes this year.
	I give a fair amount of money to charity.
	By percentage of my income, it probably isn't high enough and I'd like to give more next year.
	It is also true that my effective tax rate is well over 40% because I live in California.
	The same thing I am sure is true of people like Howard Schultz.
	In any case, Whenever Howard Schultz says things that are eminently true, like, you can't buy your way to the presidency, people get very angry with him because he's rich.
	Now, we're going to ignore the fact that Elizabeth Warren has a net worth of somewhere between 10 and 18 million dollars.
	We're going to ignore the fact that Bernie Sanders is, by any global standard, extraordinarily wealthy.
	The man owns three homes, including two vacation homes.
	We're going to pretend that Kamala Harris is not a pretty wealthy woman.
	Kamala Harris is worth some money.
	Howard Schultz, though, he's different.
	He's different.
	So here is Meghan McCain going after Howard Schultz and Howard Schultz saying, listen, you can't buy the presidency and the audience booing him.
	As long as you're a billionaire, you can run for anything.
	And my problem with politics right now is the influence of money.
	And no shade at you, but you do have to be a billionaire to run as an independent.
	That's why Michael Bloomberg's the other example you've given.
	But you can't buy the presidency.
	The American people are going to decide.
	But let me just make one point.
	Can I make one point?
	I love that Joy Behar is laughing.
	Was Barack Obama a super rich guy who bought his way to the presidency?
	I love all these rich people sitting around on the set of The View.
	Every person on that set is wealthy.
	Every single person who is sitting behind that desk on that set is inordinately wealthy.
	And they're sitting there laughing at the idea that you can't buy the presidency.
	Here's the reality.
	You can't buy the presidency.
	Hillary Clinton spent a fortune on political advertising and she lost.
	Donald Trump self-funded part of his campaign, but he didn't really buy his way to the presidency.
	The media handed him an enormous amount of free political coverage.
	There's this weird idea out there.
	It's really amazing to me.
	There's this weird idea that if you spend more money, you are inevitably going to win elections.
	That is obviously not true.
	It's simply not true.
	If you run a good campaign, you can still win elections, even if you are not spending the most money.
	In fact, with the rise of social media, it is certainly true that spending great amounts of money in the wrong places are not going to help you at all.
	But here's the reality.
	People aren't angry at Shultz because he's a billionaire.
	The reason people are angry at Shultz is because Shultz is saying reasonable things and Democrats aren't allowed to say reasonable things because that humiliates other Democrats who are not saying reasonable things.
	So yesterday, here was Howard Shultz slamming Kamala Harris over her idiotic notion that we should nationalize the entire healthcare industry.
	He just played Senator Harrison saying she wants to abolish the insurance industry.
	That's not correct.
	That's not American.
	What's next?
	What industry are we going to abolish next?
	The coffee industry?
	Okay, and he's exactly right about this, but this is the real reason the Democrats are angry at him.
	Because he said a reasonable thing.
	Because he said a reasonable thing.
	And look, what the Democrats want is they want him to run inside the Democratic primary so that the Radicals can sideline him.
	That's what they would like.
	They would like for there to be only two options on your ballot.
	Donald Trump and a radical, radical Democrat.
	Tom Perez is saying as much.
	Tom Perez is the head of the DNC and he says, you know what?
	Schultz shouldn't run as an Independent.
	He should run as a Democrat.
	So we can sideline him, of course.
	I have respect for Howard Schultz.
	If he chooses to get in the race, I hope he gets in, and the Democratic Party will treat him very fairly.
	Clearly he's saying he's not, though.
	Well, I tend to agree.
	Again, Mayor Bloomberg, I think it was, who said, I've studied independent runs, and what an independent run would do in 2020 is simply split the anti-Trump vote and help Donald Trump get re-elected.
	And Howard Schultz himself said, I'm only going to run if there's a real pathway to victory, as opposed to simply being a spoiler.
	Okay, well, again, the Democrats are deathly afraid of this because they've tacked too far to the left.
	They know they've tacked too far to the left, and they're scared.
	So their real goal here is to have Schultz run inside the Democratic Party so that they can sideline him, right?
	And that's what they are doing with Michael Bloomberg.
	We'll get to Bloomberg in just one second.
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	So the Democrats want to keep the moderates who would run for independent inside the Democratic Party, not because they actually want them there, but because it gives them the ease of sidelining them.
	Now, Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, who was in favor of a soda tax, most famously, and he's very anti-gun, he's going to run, presumably, inside the Democratic primary.
	He's saying many of the same things that Schultz is saying, but he's not receiving quite the sameire.
	So here's Bloomberg yesterday talking about the insanity of the Green New Deal being proposed by Democrats, which would cost them $50 trillion over 10 years, outlaw cars and cut the military in half.
	Here's Michael Bloomberg taking that apart.
	I think it's time as a party that we started putting some meat on the bone and laying out exactly how a Green New Deal should, what it should include.
	And I believe that that plan should be bold and ambitious and most importantly achievable.
	I'm a little bit tired of listening to things that are pie in the sky that we never are going to pass or never going to afford.
	I think it's just disingenuous to promote those things.
	You've got to do something that's practical.
	So obviously what he is saying is true.
	Democrats are not afraid of Bloomberg.
	Why?
	Because if somebody is inside the Democratic Party, they can easily be marginalized simply through identity politics.
	This is the plan for Democrats.
	Get the moderates in the room and then push them off to the fringes, the moderates, by using identity politics.
	And you can see this From the most passionate of the members of the Democratic base.
	So there's a former campaign aide for Alexander Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.
	And this former campaign aide, whose name is Shaheed, he was, he came forward and he was talking about Howard Schultz.
	Listen to the tactics that he was using to try and marginalize Howard Schultz.
	Regardless of the third party thing, I think it tells you way more about what white male billionaires think about themselves, that they should be in charge.
	And I think in this moment in time where you have all these working class people of all backgrounds who've been hurt by the Trump administration, to put another white male billionaire who thinks the deficit is the biggest crisis in the country, that is ridiculous given where the electorate is at.
	I think Ocasio-Cortez, one of the reasons she's popular is because she's a working class person from the Bronx.
	We need to see more leaders like that.
	Okay, so Waleed Shaheed is making the case inside the Democratic Party, and this is precisely the reason why Howard Schultz should never run inside the Democratic Party.
	Because the rip on him is going to be that he's too rich and too white.
	Neither of which is an argument, both of which are emotional appeals to identity politics and tribal polarization.
	That's what this is.
	If you're Howard Schultz, you're a nut to run inside the Democratic Party.
	If you're Michael Bloomberg, you are crazy to run inside the Democratic Party.
	You will be marginalized so quickly it will make your head spin because you're rich and you're not a member of a minority group that matters.
	Michael Bloomberg's Jewish, but that's not a minority group that matters.
	You have to have a certain shade of skin, a hue of skin, in order for you to be taken seriously as a minority inside the Democratic Party these days.
	Now, the reason that all of this matters is because what Democrats really want to avoid is having to moderate their positions.
	Yesterday, Kamala Harris had to do just that.
	So, we talked about yesterday on the program, Kamala Harris did a CNN town hall in which she simply spit out that she wanted to get rid of all private health insurance in the country.
	Two-thirds of Americans are on some form of private health insurance.
	And virtually the entire system rests on private health insurance, employer-guaranteed health insurance, employer benefits.
	Kamala Harris said she just wanted to do away with all of it.
	Well, yesterday, she had to backtrack it.
	Now, this was really funny because she went out in front, right?
	She said, okay, let's get rid of all private health insurance.
	And then you saw potential contenders like Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
	You saw him come forward and say, yeah, I agree.
	I agree with Kamala Harris.
	Yeah, I want to do that too.
	And then she just slowly backed away, leaving Sherrod Brown standing there, holding the bag of flaming dog poop that is nationalized healthcare.
	So over the last 24 hours, she has backtracked.
	You'll recall that she said on CNN's town hall, quote, I believe the solution, and I actually feel very strongly about this, is that we need to have Medicare for all.
	That's just the bottom line.
	Now, first of all, we should note, what they're actually talking about is not Medicare for all.
	They're talking about Medicaid for all, which is the sort of poverty-based government program that exists for the very poor in this country, and that shows really not a lot of evidence of having any sort of serious impact on the health outcomes of Americans.
	Jake Tapper pointed out that if you like your insurance, you wouldn't get to keep it.
	And Harris said, let's eliminate all of that.
	Let's move on.
	Well, now, Harris is backtracking.
	CNN reports, as the furor grew, a Harris advisor on Tuesday signaled that the candidate would also be open to the more moderate health reform plans, which would preserve the industry being floated by other congressional Democrats.
	It represents a compromised position that risks angering Medicare for All proponents, who view eliminating private health insurance as key to enacting their comprehensive reform.
	Her national press secretary, Ian Sams, told CNN, Medicare for All is the plan she believes will solve the problem and get all Americans covered, period.
	She has co-sponsored other pieces of legislation that she sees as a path to getting us there, but this is the plan she is running on.
	All of this happened after a bunch of Democrats came out and said, uh, this is a bad idea.
	We have many people in our constituency who like their health care plans.
	Senator Dick Durbin, who is a pretty radical guy himself from Illinois, even this was too radical for him.
	He said it would take a mighty transition to move from where we are to that.
	What most of us said we would support is a Medicare-type plan, a not-for-profit public plan that is available for everyone.
	Tim Kaine of Virginia, former VP candidate under Hillary Clinton, one of the most ill-fated political decisions of all time, he said, I'm not going to say you have to give it up.
	I think the idea is to offer a nonprofit insurance plan as an option.
	Senator Dianne Feinstein, who is no moderate, she pushed back on Harris.
	She said, I'm not there.
	So it's amazing to watch as she has to backtrack.
	By the way, Bernie Sanders will now nuke her.
	As well he should.
	This is Bernie's idea.
	And Bernie should come forward and he should say, Kamala Harris said she would support Medicare for all, but now she's weak-kneed and she's backing off that plan.
	The only true solution is to have the kind of healthcare they have in Cuba, and also for me to sit and sing Soviet anthems shirtless.
	Which is actually a thing that he's now on tape doing from like the 1980s during his honeymoon.
	No joke.
	So, Kamala Harris had to back off all this stuff.
	Why?
	Because her positions are actually unpopular.
	The only way for an unpopular position to win when it comes to presidential politics is to pit it against a more unpopular politician.
	Democrats want Kamala Harris's program, but they want to lie about it, and they have to lie about it, if there is an alternative.
	Shultz is the alternative to that, and that is what is scaring the devil out of them.
	So they are attempting what's amazing is they're treating him as though he's a typical Democrat.
	And more more than that, they are treating him the same way they treat any political opponent.
	If you think that the Democrats hate President Trump especially.
	They do, a little bit more than other folks.
	But anyone who opposes their radical agenda, they attack in exactly the same way.
	Donald Trump, according to the left, a member of the KKK, racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
	Now, we are getting the exact same attacks on Howard Schultz, a liberal.
	And this is my favorite attack of the day.
	This one comes courtesy of the Daily Beast.
	And Sam Stein, who is a Daily Beast reporter, formerly of Huffington Post, he tweeted this out.
	The Starbucks music store under Schultz's tenure was unbelievably, painfully white.
	I'm not kidding you.
	They're now going through the musical selections at the Starbucks music store.
	You'll recall that Starbucks used to have these, they may still, have these CD racks where they sell various CDs.
	You mean a Seattle-based coffee firm put out white people music?
	Unbelievable.
	Shocking.
	You mean a firm from like the center of the grunge world and alternative rock put out a bunch of white people alternative rock music?
	That's crazy!
	But this is disqualifying, obviously, if the CDs that you could buy in Starbucks, not forced upon you, but that you had the option to buy, were by disproportionately white artists from Seattle.
	This means that Howard Schultz is a brutal racist.
	Here is what it says over at the Daily Beast.
	I kid you not.
	Over 21 years, Starbucks released and sold 262 records using Discogs.com.
	A good percentage of these were compilations like Music for Little Hipsters or British Folk.
	The single artist albums, though, are overwhelmingly from white musicians, according to a review by the Daily Beast.
	The only living black artists we could find among the 262 Starbucks releases were Herbie Hancock, Mary J. Blige, Sly and the Family Stone, Al Green, Ben and Eve singer Angelique Kidjo, and jazz trio Soul Live.
	Blige is the youngest among those.
	She's 48 years old.
	Ah, obvious racism.
	Racism!
	It must be stopped!
	Because you could only buy mostly white people music at a mostly white people coffee shop based in a mostly white people area.
	Wow.
	Obviously, we have to stop this guy.
	I mean, if we don't stop him, he's gonna put you all back in chains.
	That's how this is gonna go.
	The Democrats have only one strategy when it comes to marginalizing their opposition.
	It can't be that their positions are bad.
	Because the Democratic positions are one hell of a lot worse.
	The position, instead, has to be the same as it always is.
	Racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe.
	That gets tired really quickly, and that's why anyone who has a moderate position would be so unbelievably stupid to run inside the Democratic Party right now.
	Like, why would you?
	They're just gonna destroy you based not on your positions, but based on your race, based on your sex, and based on your wealth status, based on your income line.
	Okay, in just a second, I'm gonna talk about the increased radicalism of Democrats at the state level on the issue of Abortion Plus, a real hit job that's been put out On a black professor at Harvard University.
	It's really kind of fascinating.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
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	Meanwhile, The Democrats are moving in an increasingly radical direction when it comes to abortion.
	And it's frightening.
	Honestly, it's frightening.
	We're now living in a world where the Democrats have decided to full-scale embrace the most extreme version of pro-abortion law.
	There used to be a time when Democrats were in favor of safe, legal, and rare.
	That is not a thing anymore.
	Safe, legal, and rare is not a thing for Democrats.
	The only thing they care about now is the ability to kill babies up to point of birth.
	And this is not an exaggeration.
	This is a basic, obvious truth.
	I'm not the one who's even saying it.
	There's a Virginia bill that is now set to legalize abortion all the way to point of birth.
	It was introduced by Democratic Delegate Kathy Tran in Virginia.
	When questioned about the bill on Monday by a Republican delegate named Todd Gilbert, the Virginia House Majority Leader acknowledged it would allow abortion even at the very end of pregnancy when a woman was going into labor.
	So the woman is going into labor at 37 weeks of pregnancy, and you can plunge a knife into the back of the baby's head and kill it under this bill.
	Okay, here's this lady acknowledging exactly that.
	It's pretty astonishing.
	How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?
	Or physical health.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	I'm talking about the mental health.
	So, I mean, through the third trimester.
	The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks.
	Okay.
	But to the end of the third trimester?
	Yep.
	I don't think we have a limit in the bill.
	So, where it's obvious that a woman is about to give birth.
	She has physical signs that she is about to give a birth.
	Would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified?
	She's dilating.
	My bill would allow that, yes.
	This is infanticide.
	There's another way to put it.
	That is infanticide.
	If you believe that the 10 centimeters between the dilation of the cervix and the exit of the separate human being from the womb is all that defines humanity, you are insane.
	This is full-scale support of infanticide, and it's now being backed by Virginia Democrats.
	Virginia Democrats, not New York Democrats, not California Democrats, not Massachusetts Democrats.
	Virginia Democrats.
	In New York, this has already become legal.
	There are, I believe, seven states where you can now abort a baby all the way up to point of birth.
	I mean, this is utterly uncontroversial stuff.
	We're not talking about a fertilized embryo.
	We're not talking about an egg that was fertilized three days ago and whether or not you should be able to get a morning after pill.
	Okay, what we are talking about now is a fully formed human baby.
	In every aspect.
	Every aspect of this baby is completely formed.
	This is infanticide.
	This is human sacrifice to Molech.
	I mean, this is like biblically enjoined.
	And the only reason I cite the Bible is because the Bible was enjoining actual child sacrifice.
	This is actual child sacrifice.
	If, for the mental health of the woman, you believe that you can cut a baby apart in the womb that is fully alive, This is insane.
	But this is how far the Democratic Party has moved.
	In order to fight back against Republicans who say that life should be preserved, the position Democrats have taken is that the end of life is to be celebrated.
	The ending of a life that is not your own, even, is to be celebrated.
	And it's not just in Virginia.
	The Rhode Island governor has now signaled that she is willing to go forward with all of this.
	According to Michael Bilger over at LifeNews.com, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo, who is purportedly Catholic, she is pushing a radical pro-abortion bill.
	The legislation would legalize abortions for basically any reason up to birth.
	A state house committee is expected to vote on the bill as of today.
	Earlier this month, Raimondo promised to support the pro-abortion bill in her State of the State address.
	According to NBC10, she said, This is a war on human life, and this is, in fact, a war on religious practice.
	Let's be clear about the next step here.
	It's not just about the killing of the unborn, which should be gross and horrifying enough.
	What this is going to result in is the states telling doctors that they must perform these abortions or lose their medical license.
	This is where this is going.
	Obamacare contraceptive mandates were already moving in this direction.
	There was already, even in the state of California, you're allowed right now to refer out to other providers who provide an abortion, but I believe you must do so.
	I believe that you're supposed to, I want to check the law in the state of California, but last I checked, I believe that the law in the state of California is if you're a religious practitioner, if you are an OBGYN in the state of California who doesn't perform abortions, And a woman comes in and says, I want an abortion.
	You must, by law, refer her to somebody who will provide that abortion, I believe.
	If it's not that way, it soon will be, because that is what Democrats want.
	Democrats are radical on these issues.
	This is not in line with what the American people want, but the affect of American politics is now resulting in substantive change.
	What I mean by this is that the hatred that members of both parties feel for one another is leading to actual policy radicalization.
	It used to be that people in each party, even though they disagreed with each other, they didn't really hate each other on the deep root level that members of the parties now despise one another.
	And what that meant is that you would at least grant the basic humanity of the person with whom you were talking.
	Now, when you have a conversation with somebody, if you ever wish to reach any sort of agreement or even to be in the same room with them, you have to assume good intentions.
	It's something I've been working on in my own life and in my own career, trying to assume good intentions of people with whom I disagree.
	But if the other person doesn't assume good intentions on your behalf, if they assume that your positions are driven by animus, that is going to lead them to reject your positions and take the exact polar opposite position.
	So, for example, if the people on the left with regard to abortion assumed that people who are pro-life simply want to preserve the life of infants, even if they disagree, then maybe they would respond by saying, okay, well, what's a reasonable way to define life?
	And then we can have an argument over that.
	I would still be pro-life and I'd still think that the pro-abortion side is wrong, but at least then you can have a conversation that is steeped in science and not steeped in insulting the other side.
	If, however, pro-choicers believe that pro-lifers simply want to control the bodies of women and are ensconced in a fight to be tyrannical handmaid's tale purveyors, well then their reaction is going to be, well, any attempt to limit abortion access is really about controlling the body of women and we can't have that, so let's just legalize abortion all the way up till birth.
	In other words, when you start assuming bad faith on the part of the other side, it leads you directly away from moderation.
	You can see the Democrats doing this with Howard Schultz.
	And Howard Schultz was one of them until he wasn't.
	And now that he's not one of them, they're castigating him as badly motivated.
	Until five minutes ago, Howard Schultz was a good guy.
	The kind of guy who wasn't gonna put Christmas colors on Starbucks cups, and who was going to ensure that bathrooms would be available to all without purchase in Starbucks stores.
	Then, he walked outside the party line, and now he's an evil, rich, white billionaire.
	Terrible.
	Terrible person now.
	Which means all of his positions can be thrown out as well.
	The reliance of Democrats on the belief in the bad intent of their political opponents, that's what's driving this radicalization right now.
	So we may think that it's just about, you know, fraying the social fabric, but there are actual policy ramifications to all of this.
	If you cross the line politically for Democrats, then many folks on the left will immediately assume you are now a bad person, and that means there can be no moderation.
	There can be no negotiation.
	It is over.
	Okay, in just a second, we're gonna talk about where the Republican Party stands in all of this.
	But first, let's talk about how you make your business better this year.
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	You post a job to several online job boards, only you get tons of the wrong resumes.
	Then, you have to sort through all those resumes just to find a few people with the right skills and experience.
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	Okay, we're going to get to more of the Republican versus Democrat battle and an astonishing story out of Harvard where a prominent black professor is now, I think, being railroaded over really skimpy Me Too charges.
	We'll talk about that in just a second.
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	So breaking news.
	Breaking news.
	Journalists suck at their jobs.
	I have to bring this up because this is legitimately breaking as we are on the air right now.
	So you remember yesterday, we discussed a story.
	This was the story of unfortunate Empire actor Jussie Smollett.
	Jussie Smollett is black and gay, and he alleged, according to TMZ, that he was walking along the streets of Chicago, the mean streets of Chicago, at 2 a.m.
	when suddenly, out of nowhere, this is according to TMZ,
	They say a friend of Smollett said this, or somebody close to Smollett, which probably means Smollett, that this person, Smollett reported, that he was walking down those mean streets of Chicago when suddenly two white men emerged from the shadows carrying a noose and bleach, proceeded to throw the noose around his neck, proceeded to call him the N-word and also the F-word for gay people, pour bleach all over him, and then shout at him that this was MAGA country.
	In Chicago, at 2am, in 60 degree below freezing weather.
	They were just like hanging out on the street waiting for an obscure actor from a show that is, I'm sure, highly popular among the MAGA crowd.
	By the way, I do love the implication that the people in MAGA country, that their favorite show is Empire.
	No.
	Okay, no.
	I mean, if the implication is that MAGA people are racist, I'm pretty sure they're not tuning into Empire every single week to find Jussie Smollett.
	In any case, this guy alleges this.
	And then Chicago PD says, um, okay, well, in the original report, we didn't have any evidence.
	And so, and then the story gets weirder.
	Apparently, they just sort of let him go after bringing a noose and bleach.
	And yelling at him that this was MAGA country.
	They allegedly broke a rib, and then he somehow got out of there, and he didn't call an ambulance, and he didn't call for the police to actually pursue anyone.
	He just sort of sauntered over to the hospital.
	He drove himself to the hospital, and then he reported something to police.
	Now, I don't know what happened, and you don't know what happened, but neither do the police know what happened.
	The original report from the police is that Smollett had not told them about the MAGA country comment.
	Only TMZ had it.
	TMZ stood by its report.
	Then later, the Chicago PD backtracked, and they said, oh yeah, we called up Smollett, and we asked him about it, and he said, oh yeah, that happened, by the way.
	Which, I mean, if I had to speculate, that sounds a lot like somebody who told a story to TMZ that was a lot more sensational than the story he told the police.
	Because the original story he told the police did not have the race of the suspects or the MAGA country comment.
	Which is just, I got mugged on the streets of Chicago.
	Which is like everyone in Chicago.
	Pretty much every day.
	But the story he told to TMZ is a lot more salacious.
	So, he tells that story, or somebody tells that story to TMZ.
	The Chicago PD don't get that story.
	Then they call for follow-up and he says, oh yeah, by the way, they were white and they were shouting MAGA country.
	So all of this is weird.
	Now here is what the Chicago PD are reporting.
	This is according to the Associated Press.
	Chicago police say they've reviewed hundreds of hours of footage from downtown surveillance cameras, but haven't found footage yet of the alleged attack on Empire actor Jussie Smollett.
	Weird.
	How weird!
	The department said in a news release late Tuesday that detectives reviewed footage from privately owned cameras near where Smollett says he was attacked and will broaden their search by reviewing footage from traffic cameras and public bus cameras.
	Smollett told police he was walking downtown near the Chicago River at about 2 a.m.
	on Tuesday when two masked men hurled racial and homophobic slurs at him, beat him, threw an unknown substance on him, and put a rope around his neck.
	The 36-year-old actor, who is black and gay and plays the gay character Jamal Lyon on the Fox television show, took himself to Northwestern Memorial Hospital for treatment.
	Empire is shot in Chicago and is currently in production.
	By the way, the police said that they had tape of him leaving the store where he was shopping at 2 a.m., but no tape of what happened just outside the store.
	So they've reviewed hundreds of hours of tape, and they come up with nothing.
	Nada.
	Weird.
	So maybe this happened just the way this guy said it happened.
	Maybe.
	Or maybe this was a story that was too good to be true, and the media jumped on it, and they decided to make it a national issue without any evidence, and none supportable by the police.
	Now, you know what would have been good?
	If the journalists had simply waited for all the facts to come out.
	The headlines yesterday from the media were things like Empire actor beaten and victimized by slurs and by MAGA fans.
	That was like the TMZ headline mentioned the MAGA thing.
	And then there was no backtrack.
	What it should have said is actor says blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
	Then it's true.
	But pretty amazing stuff.
	Pretty amazing stuff.
	So, well done, journalists.
	As always, you have made clear your narrative structure.
	Just, well done.
	We'll wait for all the details to come out.
	Maybe it all happened the way this guy said it went down.
	So far, there's no evidence.
	And I think that all of the questions that were being asked about this story initially still remain kind of puzzling.
	This is Chicago.
	Who runs around Chicago going this is MAGA country?
	111% of people in Chicago voted against Donald Trump in 2016.
	I mean, I can't think of a place that is less MAGA country than downtown Chicago.
	Legitimately.
	What the?
	Okay.
	So.
	That's that.
	Meanwhile, Republicans are having their own problems.
	So Texas Republicans are reporting that come 2020, they are afraid they're going to lose the state.
	They should be afraid they're going to lose the state, given Beto O'Rourke's very strong showing against Ted Cruz in the last senatorial election.
	Texas GOP Chairman James Dickey has delivered a message to the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, GOP donors, and activists in the state.
	Nationally, Republican operatives and donors have historically taken Texas for granted.
	They've directed their financial and organizational muscle to more competitive regions.
	This is according to the Washington Examiner.
	Separately, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who's up for re-election next year, has spoken with the new RNC co-chairman, Tommy Hicks, about concerns that Trump could actually lose the state.
	Texas is the election.
	I mean, if Trump loses Texas, the election is over.
	Of course, if Trump loses Michigan and Pennsylvania, or Michigan and Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, then he loses the election as well.
	The president really has a narrow path here to 270.
	If he loses Texas, he's done.
	And if Republicans lose Texas in a 2020 election matchup, that does not bode well for the future of the Republican Party in the country.
	I mean, Texas is about as red a state as it is possible to have.
	Now listen, they had some structural disadvantages in 2016.
	They got blown out in the suburbs.
	Trump is deeply unpopular in the suburbs.
	Republicans are going to have to face some basic facts when it comes to Trump 2020.
	They're going to have to face the fact that Donald Trump does not actually have a massive group of people who are secretly hiding in the shadows and who are going to emerge to vote for him.
	That is not what happened in 2016.
	It wasn't a bunch of people who lied to pollsters.
	What happened in 2016 is everybody on the left thought Hillary was going to win and everybody on the left didn't like her.
	So they didn't show up.
	And Donald Trump won because they didn't show up.
	In 2018, Republicans showed up at better than 2016 levels, and they got blown out by 8.6 points on average across the country.
	Democrats all showed up.
	If Republicans want to win in 2020, they have to appeal to those suburban voters.
	This, by the way, is the real reason that many Republicans are fond of Howard Schultz's candidacy.
	What they're hoping is that he does, in fact, draw away those suburban voters from the Democrats and split the vote.
	Trump's support base is pretty solid and it's not going anywhere.
	Shultz isn't going to carve into that support base.
	But the other option here is for Trump to do what Democrats should be doing, which is appeal to that suburban vote base.
	Now, President Trump is a double-down guy.
	There's a guy who dances with the gal that brung him, not in his personal life, but certainly in politics.
	He's the guy who, if he believes that his manner of politics won him election, he's not going to change it now.
	But here is the truth.
	You do need to change strategies at a certain point.
	If you don't change strategies while all the indicators are pointing south, You're being foolish.
	And President Trump has an opening.
	The Democrats are incredibly radical.
	All President Trump has to do is be the nicest version of himself.
	Doesn't mean change himself, but be the nicest version of himself.
	It's funny, when you talk to folks who know President Trump on a one-to-one level, what they will say is that in person, on a one-to-one level, he is charming, he is generous, he's very nice to people, and then you get him in a group and he changes radically.
	He wants to dominate, he wants to be the alpha in the room.
	You know, a softer side to Trump would be such a shock to the American people, I'm not sure the American psyche could stand it.
	If President Trump had any appeal for suburban voters, he would clean up in 2020.
	Instead, he's busy alienating the very voters he needs in order to win election.
	There's an opening for him here, but he's gonna need to take it.
	Now, one of the big problems here, again, as I mentioned earlier, is that people are so polarized by Trump that they're embracing positions they wouldn't otherwise embrace.
	And this is particularly true among young people.
	There's a new poll out from Axios and SurveyMonkey showing that warmth toward socialism has grown particularly amongst the young.
	This is largely the effect of media coverage, but it is partially the effect of a reaction to President Trump.
	Some 29% of Republicans aged 18 to 34 said that they are positive toward socialism, toward the word socialism.
	Which should scare the living daylights out of everyone.
	One of my concerns about President Trump in 2016 is that Trump would be so polarizing that he would end up smearing a lot of Republican causes with his unpopularity.
	President Trump needs to do better.
	He needs to do better.
	He needs to actually explain issues.
	And if he can't do it, he needs to shut up and let others do it.
	This same Axios SurveyMonkey poll shows that 31% of young Republicans say inequality is a bigger problem than over-regulation of the free market.
	39% of young Republicans want the Feds to do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.
	This is not good news for Republicans.
	Republicans are trending toward Democratic positions.
	Independents are trending toward Democratic positions.
	Now, Democrats are trending too far left.
	But that doesn't mean that Republicans don't, in fact, have a problem.
	They do.
	They're not making the case.
	And because they're not making the case, they're losing.
	Let's be real about this.
	We can yell as much as we want about Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax and Kamala Harris's wild proposals on guns and green new deals and all the rest.
	If Republicans aren't making an affirmative case for their own belief system, they've got a problem.
	Look, President Trump is by nature a counterpuncher.
	And it's useful.
	That's a useful skill.
	But when you're the president, you should be a bulldozer.
	When you're the president, you actually need to be using that bully pulpit.
	You can't just sit behind—you can't beat Floyd Mayweather.
	Being a defensive president who's excellent at defending and deflecting punches, again, useful skill, but you better have a right.
	You better have a heavy right.
	And so far, President Trump has not had a heavy right when it comes to pushing positions that Republicans care about.
	He's been getting things done, but getting things done is not enough to shift the country.
	The president has two jobs.
	One is to implement policy, and the other is to make the case to the American people about why his policies are best and why his ideology is best.
	This is why all the talk about having a pragmatic president, a pragmatically minded president, is so much silliness.
	The most influential presidents in American history have really not been chiefly about policy.
	They've been chiefly about shifting the way the American people thought.
	I'm thinking really here of three presidents in the 20th century.
	Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Ronald Reagan.
	Those were the three presidents who did the most to shift how Americans thought.
	Barack Obama tried to do that.
	He didn't really succeed.
	Donald Trump isn't even trying to do that, and that needs to change immediately.
	And if he's incapable of educating the American people, he needs to point to people who are capable of educating the American people.
	Because if the American people aren't educated toward conservative positions, they're not going to embrace those positions.
	They're just going to embrace whoever is the most magnetic candidate, and then we have cult of personality politics, which is the opposite of what conservatism would recommend.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	There's a great new memoir.
	It's going to be out by a guy named Saurabh Amari.
	He is the opinion editor over at the New York Post, formerly of Commentary Magazine.
	It's a memoir of his journey from being an Iranian Muslim to being a Catholic.
	The book's called From Fire by Water, My Journey to the Catholic Faith.
	As you know, I am not a Catholic, I'm not a Christian, I'm an Orthodox Jew.
	This is a moving book about why it is that Western civilization is based on certain fundamental religious principles, and more importantly, it's a great study in comparative culture.
	There are a lot of people in the United States who have never studied any culture other than their own, and so they believe that America is bad, because America in a vacuum, you look at all of its flaws and you think, oh, this place, it's got serious problems.
	And then you look at America as compared to other places on Earth, and you realize this place is pretty fantastic.
	This place is pretty great.
	By the way, I felt the same about Los Angeles before I went to Boston.
	I've lived my entire life in Los Angeles, and I used to think, ah, LA, kind of dingy.
	People are kind of shallow.
	You know, LA.
	And then I went to Boston, where it is winter.
	Nine months of the year.
	It's the worst.
	And I came back to Lima, I'm like, this place is great.
	Saurabh Mahari's book is basically about that, except with America and other countries.
	Well worth the read.
	From Fire by Water, My Journey to the Catholic Faith.
	Also, it's an amusing, fun read.
	Quick read.
	I read it in one sitting.
	Saurabh Mahari's book.
	Go pre-order it right now.
	It's quite good.
	Okay, time for A Thing That I Hate.
	So a couple of things that I hate.
	There's a news story out from the Wall Street Journal today talking about how the White House may soon be making concessions to Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris about appointing leftist judges to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
	Yee-yee-yee.
	Here is what the Wall Street Journal story says.
	It says, So, more than a few eyes widened this month when the White House omitted three names from the list of 50 judges Mr. Trump sent back to the Senate.
	court nominees, he is remaking the federal courts.
	So, more than a few eyes widened this month when the White House omitted three names from the list of 50 judges Mr. Trump sent back to the Senate.
	What intrigue gives?
	The three missing names were Californians nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Two other Ninth Circuit nominees, Eric Miller of Washington and Bridget Bate of Arizona, were re-nominated.
	But Daniel Collins, Kenneth Lee, and Patrick Bumate were withheld because the White House is negotiating with Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.
	Ms.
	Feinstein and the White House Counsel's Office have been pen pals on this for some time.
	In a November letter to new White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, Ms.
	Feinstein and Ms.
	Harris requested that the White House work with us to reach an agreement on a consensus package of nominees.
	The Democrats want to pick one name from the White House list, one from their own, and a third consensus nominee.
	Why in the world would the White House agree with this?
	Why in the world would they do this?
	They're suggesting that maybe they're doing this to buy the support for a nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
	Are they insane?
	Are they insane?
	If the White House is doing this, they must be off their rockers.
	If they believe that Kamala Harris or Dianne Feinstein will hold by any deal that allows them to vote for a conservative replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, out of their mind.
	First of all, if Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies in the next two years, there will be riots in this country over the Supreme Court.
	There will be, because Democrats are not going to stand for an actual swing vote moving to the right.
	This is why they're already writing... They're already writing eulogies for her in movies, right?
	They're already doing movies, like, on the basis of sex, which looks more boring than any movie other than, like, actual drying of paint on film.
	They're making full hagiographies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the notorious RBG.
	If she dies while Trump is in office, all hell will break loose.
	You really think you're gonna count on Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris to come to your aid in this, Mr. President?
	My goodness.
	This would be so stupid.
	This is Trump's biggest, it's his biggest accomplishment.
	If he blows it, it will be a massive, massive fail.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, another thing that I hate today.
	So there's a piece today by Stuart Taylor of Real Clear Investigations about the takedown of Roland Fryer Jr.
	Excuse me.
	Now I've mentioned Professor Fryer before on the program.
	He did a study last year all about police violence against black folks.
	He came up with the conclusion that, in fact, black folks were not shot as often as white folks in similar situations by the police, which was a controversial finding.
	Well now, Fryer is under fire.
	Here's what Real Clear Investigations reports.
	In a December 14, 2018 piece, the New York Times set the stage by noting in its opening sentences that Roland Fryer Jr.
	had attained tenure at Harvard, received a MacArthur Genius Grant, and won the most prestigious award for a young American economist.
	In the second paragraph came the takedown, but his rapid ascent has taken a troubling turn.
	It's Harvard officials review a university investigator's conclusion that Dr. Fryer fostered a work environment hostile to women, one filled with sexual talk and bullying.
	This article and Harvard's Office for Dispute Resolution have made a near pariah of the youngest black professor ever tenured at Harvard, a man born into poverty who is still much admired among many former female and male subordinates and other people who know him well and who see the attacks on him as tinged with racism and Me Too overreaction.
	He is also admired among experts for his pioneering scholarship on how best to educate poor and minority children and other racial and gender issues.
	In an article littered with sins against honest journalism, the Times vastly overstated the criticism of Fryer in a confidential 81-page November report by the Office of Dispute Resolution, which has a staff of 10, 8 women, and 2 men.
	The report seems subtly and skillfully biased against a man whom ODR branded a sexual harasser for, among other things, the kind of off-color jokes and teasing of both male and female subordinates that more risk-averse bosses avoid.
	But it at least made clear that Friar 41 has never been accused of making a pass at a subordinate or asking for sex.
	The 2600 Word Times article did not.
	So this is a long report about exactly how it is that the ODR at Harvard blew it, and how they overestimated the amount of terrible, terrible things that Fryer did.
	He denies the most obvious accusations.
	And yet, that was enough for the New York Times to run this hit piece trying to destroy him.
	The reason that I think Fryer is being targeted, realistically speaking, is because Fryer is not a deep partisan.
	You know, Fryer happens to be somebody who performs research that sometimes sides with the left and sometimes sides with the right, but the process has been deeply flawed and deeply unfair because that is the way that it works at these universities.
	The accusation itself is tantamount to condemnation.
	It's pretty astonishing.
	The lawyers for Fryer say that the case has been racially biased as well as procedurally flawed.
	Fryer wrote to a friend and later shared a letter stating 30 years after watching my father be sentenced to eight years in prison because of a he say she say type encounter with a white woman in Texas with no physical evidence.
	I am fighting every day to prove I am innocent of allegations that threaten the work I have devoted my life to.
	Sullivan, who's the lawyer, told me that the Office of Dispute Resolution weighted the credibility of white witnesses far above minority witnesses.
	The main complaint is against Fryer as white, and that in the absence of real data, the process used racial stereotypes.
	As an example, he cited the Office of Dispute Resolution's disparagement of the credibility of Tania Devi, who was present for many of the allegedly harassing comments.
	Insisting she saw no harassment, she spoke very highly of Fryer.
	Although the investigator in ODR praised the credibility of the complainants, the white roommate, they tended to dismiss Devi's eyewitness recollections of what she saw and heard at the labs.
	Now, is this racism?
	Or is this political bias?
	Whatever it is, it is clear that the sort of kangaroo courts that happen at these universities have no relationship, really no relationship, with due process of law.
	Me too is fine, but we're actually gonna need evidence of things.
	So, you know, I think this deserves a full airing.
	And I think later on the show, when I have a little bit more time later today on the show, we're going to go through the full accusations against Fryer and the takedown because this is well worth discussing.
	Why it is that on today's college campuses, we are willing to run people out of business simply based on allegations alone without any serious evidence to suggest that the allegations are even damning.
	All right.
	Well, we will be back here later today for two more hours.
	Be there or be square.
	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 Adam Sajovic.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Karamina.
	Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera, production assistant Nick Sheehan.

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