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Feb. 8, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

55:53

Bezos Like A Boss | Ep. 713

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	Jeff Bezos of Amazon exposes the National Enquirer as a blackmail racket, the Democratic Green New Deal gets off to a bit of a rough start, and we check the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Remember like a thousand years ago, Do you remember a thousand years ago, when President Trump gave the State of the Union Address?
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	That was awesome, right?
	But that was like a thousand years ago, because so much has happened since then, and a lot happened yesterday as well.
	We'll get to all of it in just one second.
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	Alrighty.
	So, the big news of yesterday is that Jeff Bezos went to war, went to war with the National Enquirer.
	Now, to be perfectly accurate, The National Enquirer first went to war with Jeff Bezos.
	Now, you'll recall that Jeff Bezos is the owner of both Amazon and the Washington Post, and he has been in a running gun battle with President Trump for legitimately three, four years now over President Trump's politics, President Trump's belief that the Washington Post is a smear machine against him, and so President Trump has reveled in all of the allegations about Jeff Bezos and all of the new information that Bezos was cheating on his wife with his next-door neighbor, and now they're gonna get a divorce and his wife is gonna walk away with $170 billion or something.
	Well, now it turns out that the National Enquirer was trying to blackmail Bezos.
	They had obtained photos and text messages of Bezos' crotch, basically, and then they went to Bezos and they said, we'd like for you to stop using the Washington Post to investigate us, or these photos might unfortunately leak.
	Well, Bezos then just basically said, all right, well, if you want to play this game, here we go.
	And he just unzipped and put everything on the table.
	So yesterday, in a very long post for medium.com, he wrote, no thank you, Mr. Pecker.
	There is something unbelievable about the fact that the owner of the National Enquirer is named Pecker, which led to the headline in the New York Post, as well as the Huffington Post today, Bezos Exposes Pecker, which is a fantastic, fantastic headline.
	Here is what Jeff Bezos posted.
	He said, so first of all, just word to the wise, don't blackmail a guy worth $170 billion who also has the capacity to create two-day delivery for anything, right?
	And has drones, like squads of drones that work for him.
	It's just going to go very poorly.
	By the way, it turns out the main distributor for the National Enquirer, owned by Amazon.com.
	Okay, so here is what he says, Bezos.
	Something unusual happened to me yesterday.
	Actually, for me, it wasn't just unusual, it was a first.
	I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, or at least that's what the top people at the National Enquirer thought.
	I'm glad they thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all in writing.
	Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.
	AMI, the owner of the National Enquirer, led by David Pecker, recently entered into an immunity deal with the Department of Justice related to their role in the so-called catch-and-kill process on behalf of President Trump and his election campaign.
	Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they've taken on behalf of the Saudi government.
	And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together.
	After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker's loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia.
	At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions.
	That is from an article.
	From, I believe, the Washington Post.
	Federal investigators and legitimate media have, of course, suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used the Inquirer and AMI for political reasons.
	And yet AMI keeps claiming otherwise.
	American media emphatically rejects any assertion that its reporting was instigated, dictated or influenced in any manner by external forces, political or otherwise.
	Of course, legitimate media have been challenging this assertion for a long time.
	And then he has a list of sources.
	He says, I didn't know much about most of that a few weeks ago when intimate text messages from me were published in the National Enquirer.
	I engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by the Enquirer.
	As it turns out, there are now several independent investigations looking into this matter.
	To lead my investigation, I retained Gavin DeBecker.
	I've known Mr. DeBecker for 20 years, his expertise in this arena is excellent, and he's one of the smartest and most capable leaders I know.
	I asked him to prioritize protecting my time, since I have other things I prefer to work on, and to proceed with whatever budget he needed to pursue the facts in this matter.
	Perks of being a billionaire.
	Here's a piece of context.
	My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me.
	It's unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy.
	President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets.
	Also, the post-essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.
	Back to the story.
	Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is apoplectic about our investigation.
	For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.
	A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker's apoplexy, we were approached verbally at first with an offer.
	They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn't stop our investigation.
	My lawyers argued that AMI has no right to publish photos, since any person holds the copyright to their own photos, and since the photos in themselves don't add anything newsworthy.
	That is the case, by the way, that Peter Thiel and Hulk Hogan made against Gawker, and basically bankrupted Gawker.
	AMI's claim of newsworthiness is that the photos are necessary to show Amazon shareholders that my business judgment is terrible.
	I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago and drove all the packages to the post office myself.
	Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people.
	I will let those results speak for themselves.
	Okay, back to their threat to publish intimate photos of me.
	I guess we, me, my lawyers, and Gavin DeBecker, didn't react to the generalized threat with enough fear, so they sent this.
	And then the chief content officer, he pasted an email from the chief content officer of AMI to the litigation council for DeBecker about Jeff Bezos.
	And it says, Marty, I am leaving the office for the night.
	However, in the interest of expediating this situation and with the Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of the Washington Inquirer's initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during your news gathering.
	In addition to the below the belt selfie, otherwise colloquially known as a bleep pic, the Inquirer obtained a further nine images.
	And then they described the images, including including images from Bezos to his lover, whose name is Sanchez and pictures of his crotch and all the rest.
	Bezos says that got my attention, but not in the way they likely hoped.
	Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a backseat because there's a much more important matter involved here.
	If, in my position, I can't stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?
	On that point, numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake.
	In the AMI letters I'm making public, you will see the precise details of their extortionate proposal.
	They will publish the personal photos unless Gavin DeBecker and I make the specific false public statement to the press that we have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.
	If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they'll say they'll publish the photos and quickly, and there's an associated threat.
	They'll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from the lie.
	Be assured, no real journalists ever propose anything like what is happening here.
	I will not report embarrassing information about you if you do X for me.
	And if you don't do X quickly, I will report the embarrassing information.
	Nothing I might write here could tell the National Enquirer's story as eloquently as their own words below, and then he just dumps out all of their emails.
	So, here is why this is relevant.
	Number one, AMI was being used as a go-between by President Trump during the campaign to pay off various women.
	And that, obviously, has been reported on.
	The dot that has yet to be connected and the one the media are jumping on here is the suggestion that President Trump both hates the Washington Post and used AMI as a go-between.
	So maybe the reason that AMI was going after Bezos is because Bezos was going after Trump.
	So basically, AMI was afraid that Bezos was gonna discover some sort of corrupt relationship between the Saudi government and AMI on the one hand and the Saudi government and the Trump administration on the other, and this corrupt triangle colluded together to go after Jeff Bezos, and then AMI tried to blackmail Bezos.
	To that notion, apparently DeBecker has now been telling reporters that he thinks that Bezos' text message were actually obtained, maybe, by a government source, meaning that the phone wasn't hacked Instead, government data gathering allowed the Trump administration to grab these text messages and then hand them off to AMI.
	Obviously, if that's true, Trump gets impeached, right?
	I mean, if that's true, then it's the end of the road for the Trump administration using government resources in order to grab the text messages of your political opposition in the reportorial field.
	And then blackmail, that would be the end of the line for president, I mean, forget about impeachment, he'd go to jail, right?
	I mean, that's an actual crime for a variety of reasons.
	But beyond that, they're trying to now connect dots that have not yet been connected.
	Nobody really understands why AMI was going after Bezos.
	It doesn't make a lot of sense.
	Trump going after Bezos makes sense in the sense that Trump doesn't like Bezos.
	He rails about him routinely.
	He calls it the Amazon Washington Post.
	He's been going after Bezos for years on Twitter.
	The idea that AMI was blackmailing Bezos to stop reporting about their connection with the Saudi government, were they doing that on their own?
	If they were doing it on their own, it just demonstrates what we've already known, which is that AMI is basically just a payoff organization and is used by various rich people in order to shut down stories they don't like.
	Also, they blackmail people, right?
	This is pretty well known.
	All of this is going to come out.
	We're going to find all of this out because remember that David Pecker and AMI You know, I'm a fan of Amazon.
	I think it's a great company.
	I was one of the first subscribers to Amazon Prime.
	I've been a member of Amazon since, like, 1998.
	the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
	They are in a plea arrangement by which they are obligated to cooperate with the Southern District of New York.
	So if you think that all of this is going to stay secret, it is not.
	I will say this.
	All credit to Bezos, really.
	Like, you know, I'm a fan of Amazon.
	I think it's a great company.
	I was one of the first subscribers to Amazon Prime.
	I've been a member of Amazon since like 1998.
	But putting aside my own business interest in this, journalists blackmailing people, people blackmailing people generally is really disgusting.
	And trying to suggest that you're going to reveal personal information about someone unless they do what you want is not only a violation of law, it is a breach of basic human decency.
	So good for Bezos.
	I mean, the man can't afford to do it.
	And honestly, what does he have to lose at this point?
	Like, people are gonna see his junk?
	What does he care?
	He's the richest man on planet Earth.
	So what?
	Really?
	I assume that he has the same junk everybody else does, and he's feeling the same way.
	So, honestly, good for Bezos.
	Good for Bezos.
	A lot of people today are saying, well, Bezos brought this on himself because he was cheating on his wife.
	All that's true, right?
	All that's true in terms of you shouldn't be sending text messages of your junk to other people.
	You shouldn't be cheating on your wife.
	All that's true.
	That is a separate issue from Should personal issues be used by journalistic, purportedly journalistic organizations to blackmail you?
	The answer, of course, is no.
	So good for Bezos for exposing that.
	That's good for the country.
	And frankly, it's good for, it's good for the world.
	I mean, that is just, it's well done by Jeff Bezos there.
	All credit to him.
	All right.
	In a second, I want to get to the botched rollout of the Green New Deal by the Democrats because it is pretty wonderful.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
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	All right.
	Final note on the AMI saga.
	So AMI has now announced that they are going to do an investigation of themselves.
	So OJ is going to search for the real killer.
	That is very exciting stuff from AMI.
	Obviously, it means nothing, but there are other shoes that are going to drop here.
	Here's the statement American media made in response to Jeff Bezos.
	They said, Okay, he's not making claims.
	that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos.
	Further, at the time of the recent allegations made by Mr. Bezos, it was in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him.
	Nonetheless, in light of the nature of the allegations published by Mr. Bezos, the board has convened and determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims.
	Upon completion of that investigation, the board will take whatever appropriate action is necessary.
	Okay, he's not making claims.
	He literally took your emails and published them.
	That's the whole thing.
	That's not a claim.
	That's evidence.
	So, AMI has got some serious troubles of its own.
	Okay, meanwhile...
	I am highly amused by the reaction of everyone to AOC's Green New Deal.
	So if you didn't listen to yesterday's show, you should go back and listen to yesterday's show where I broke down in full detail AOC's Green New Deal.
	There was a resolution put forward on the floor of the House that was basically a series of aspirational motions about what we should do with the energy industry in the United States.
	And then AOC had the temerity to put online a six-page summary of all the things the Green New Deal stood for.
	This was a very bad thing as it turns out, because it turns out that AOC and her team have the combined brainwattage of a kumquat.
	It was, I mean, the document is just astonishing.
	It is one of the worst political documents I have ever seen put together by human hands.
	It's, it's incredibly stupid in every, every aspect.
	And yet, and yet, it was endorsed by every single top Democrat running for president of the United States.
	Cory Booker, Spartacus, he said, excited to join AOC and Senator Ed Markey on a historic Green New Deal resolution to address the peril of climate change and worsening inequality.
	Our history is a testimony to the achievement of what some think is impossible.
	We must take bold action now.
	And then for some reason, people started drumming in the background.
	Just like in his campaign video.
	It's real weird.
	Senator Elizabeth Warren says, if we want to live in a world with clean air and water, we have to take real action to combat climate change now.
	I'm proud to join AOC and Senator Markey on a Green New Deal resolution to fight for our planet and our kids' futures because I want to paint with all the colors of the wind.
	Senator Elizabeth Warren.
	And then you had Kamala Harris, the brilliant newcomer from California who spends her days going after the Knights of Columbus and spends her evenings going after gang rape allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.
	She says, I am proud to co-sponsor AOC and Ed Markey's Green New Deal.
	We must aggressively tackle climate change, which poses an existential threat to our nation.
	And that wasn't all.
	There's one more.
	We also had Kirsten Gillibrand, who said, a Green New Deal is ambitious, it's bold.
	And I'm co-sponsoring this resolution with AOC and Senator Markey because it's exactly the kind of action it will take to conquer the biggest threat of our lifetime.
	Also, I'm against the resolution, but I'm also for the resolution.
	But I'm against the resolution and also for the resolution.
	Kirsten Gillibrand, with her typical savoir-faire and stolidity in support of her ideals.
	So all four senators who are currently running for president on the Democratic side endorse the Green New Deal.
	Bernie Sanders had nothing to say about it.
	He was busy presumably eating pudding.
	So all of them endorse this.
	And none of them apparently have read anything AOC has to say.
	And what's even more amazing is the media have not asked any of them do they support what's in AOC's actual statement.
	Remember, AOC sponsored it.
	Every single one of those tweets mentions AOC because she is the fresh face.
	So fresh, so face.
	None of them have been asked.
	None of these Senators have been asked about her proposals to, for example, replace all air travel by rail, including presumably from Hawaii, which led Mazie Hirono, the Senator from Hawaii, who is a Democrat, to say, uh, what now?
	Or is it like, huh?
	And then the proposal says that we should pay for full benefits, retirement, vacation for anyone unable or unwilling to work She says we should retrofit or replace every building in the United States in the next 10 years.
	She says that we should get rid of cow farts by getting rid of the internal combustion engine.
	All of this was put in writing.
	We went through the entire document yesterday, like word for word.
	And it's funny, because then you have the media coverage, which is, don't take her seriously.
	Don't take her literally.
	Just take her seriously.
	We shouldn't take AOC literally.
	I mean, come on.
	Come on.
	Why would you read her words and then say she means the words that she writes?
	Why would you possibly do that?
	Here's Politico's headline.
	The impossible green dream of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
	The Green New Deal will never happen the way it's laid out.
	And that's also kind of the point.
	What now?
	Since when has somebody proposed legislation like, it's not going to work the way they say it will, but that's exactly the point.
	It's like when you go to a modern art museum and it's just a blank canvas.
	You're like, what is this?
	They're like, it's nothing.
	And you're like, well, then what does it mean?
	It means nothing.
	That's the point.
	Except there's a policy proposal.
	So, Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico magazine.
	Let's get real.
	The United States is not going to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years.
	The key goal of the Green New Deal resolution unveiled Thursday.
	More real talk.
	Americans won't get 100% of its power from zero-emission sources within a decade either.
	Another audacious Green New Deal goal.
	And we're not going to upgrade the energy efficiency of every single building in the country, as the resolution proposes.
	If we were getting all our energy from zero-emission sources, it wouldn't even make sense to try.
	But here's one more reality check.
	None of it matters.
	The official rollout of the Green New Deal on Thursday was met with a barrage of skepticism from well-intentioned fact-checkers, badly-intentioned climate trolls, and desperate-to-look-savvy pundits, all focusing on the logistical and political impossibilities of transforming the economy as rapidly as the Green New Deal envisions.
	And they're right.
	Its goals really do seem impossible to achieve.
	But they're all missing the point.
	If anything, they're hoping the Green New Deal's backers make their point, which is that climate change is an unprecedented emergency.
	Okay, no, that's actually not what happened here.
	This is basically just a version of Republicans Pounds.
	That's all this is.
	It's a version of AOC put out something so ridiculously stupid that it makes her sound as though she was dropped multiple times on her head as a baby.
	I mean, this proposal is so bad, it can only have been written by somebody who is mentally deficient in some way.
	It is a seriously ridiculous proposal on its face.
	On its face.
	No sane person could think otherwise.
	And so the comeback from the media is, well, you guys are pouncing.
	Because the real point is to open minds.
	That's the real point, is to make you think.
	To make you think.
	You know, it's a thought, it's a conversation.
	It wasn't meant seriously.
	You know, like co-sponsored by six senators and 60 congresspeople.
	No, it wasn't meant seriously.
	It was meant to open your mind and broaden your horizons.
	I'm sorry, this isn't some sort of trip to Europe junior year of college.
	This is a legislative proposal that envisions redoing the entire United States economy.
	By the way, If we were to do all the things in this proposal, you know what it would do to climate?
	Presumably nothing.
	Seriously, nothing.
	Because if you actually spec out the impact on climate, if the United States were to achieve full zero emissions, you know what would happen?
	Over the course of the next century, it would lower the global temperature, according to the IPCC, by something like 0.2 degrees Celsius.
	Why?
	Because it turns out that the real threat to the climate, if you believe in climate change, man-made climate change, the real threat to the climate is coming from not industrialized countries at this point, but developing countries like China and India, who have no interest whatsoever in lowering their emissions.
	So none of it makes any sense.
	But that's not the only idiotic media take today.
	There's also the New York Times, which can always be counted on to cover for the stupidity of Democrats in their reporting.
	We'll get to that in just a second.
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	Okay, so we read you Politico's take.
	Here's the New York Times' take.
	You ready for this?
	On this idiotic plan that legitimately says we're going to pay people not to work.
	Quote, Liberal Democrats formally call for a Green New Deal, giving substance to a rallying cry.
	Now you may be wondering, Did AOC write this piece for the New York Times?
	No, she didn't actually.
	It turns out it's written by Lisa Friedman and Glenn Thrush, both top-notch reporters at the wonderful, incredible New York Times.
	Listen to how this is covered.
	With a sweeping resolution intended to redefine the national debate on climate change by calling for the United States to eliminate additional emissions of carbon by 2030.
	The measure, drafted by freshman representative AOC and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, is intended to answer the demand by the party's restive base for a grand strategy that combats climate change, creates jobs, and offers an affirmative response to the challenge to core party values posed by President Trump.
	The resolution has more breadth than detail and is so ambitious that Republicans greeted it with derision.
	Well, no, actually, we greeted it with derision not because it's ambitious, but because it legitimately has no plan for achieving anything that it says it wants to achieve other than completely destroying the United States economy.
	Other than that, it's great.
	Its legislative prospects are bleak in the foreseeable future.
	Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has no plan to bring the resolution in its current form to the floor for a vote, according to a Democratic leadership aide.
	Why?
	Because Nancy Pelosi still has two brain cells to rub together.
	But listen to the New York Times.
	As a blueprint for liberal ambition, it was breathtaking.
	Imagine the Republicans said, we have a plan.
	Here's our plan.
	Full employment for everyone, taxes of zero, and abolition of seven-eighths of the federal government.
	No details, just that.
	Do you think they would be talking about how it's breathtakingly ambitious?
	You think that's where that would go?
	It's breathtakingly ambitious?
	Media bias is so... I mean, this is nauseating, nauseating stuff.
	Nauseating.
	Now, what's hilarious is that the New York Times suggests that Ms.
	Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi, is on the wrong side of history.
	People online yesterday, it was delicious.
	I mean, it was so delicious, as Neon Taster put it, that it must be fattening.
	People online, on the left, were suggesting that Nancy Pelosi is now a climate denier because she was not supportive enough of the Green New Deal.
	But the New York Times reports, Ms.
	Pelosi is likely mindful of her own past mistakes.
	A decade ago, she pushed the last major climate change measure hard, an ambitious bill to cap emissions of climate warming pollution.
	She got a cap-and-trade measure through the House.
	The next year, Democrats were swept from power.
	So now she's afraid, but she's letting her critics on the left know about her own past efforts and saying she's making climate change the flagship issue of her first speakership.
	Proponents of the Green New Deal insist that Democrats are unified.
	Ocasio-Cortez said, I think it is a green dream because Pelosi kind of dismissed it yesterday.
	Pelosi said, well, you know, I'm enthusiastic.
	Here's what Nancy Pelosi had to say because she again, she's not a complete dolt when it comes to, you know, running the Congress.
	Here's what she had to say yesterday about the green dream.
	Is the Green New Deal proposal a useful baseline?
	Quite frankly, I haven't seen it, but I do know that it's enthusiastic, and we welcome all the enthusiasms that are out there.
	The Green New Deal points out the fact that the public is much more aware of the challenge that we face, and that is a good proposal.
	This is a very stupid thing.
	The public sentiment will help us pass the most bold common denominator, the bold initiatives.
	I'm very excited about it all, and I welcome the Green New Deal and any other proposals that people have out there.
	Okay, what she actually means there is I don't welcome the Green New Deal.
	This is a very stupid thing, but I'm going to pretend to be enthusiastic because I don't want people yelling at me.
	That's really what she is saying there.
	Now, what's hilarious about all of this, what's hilarious about all of this is that AOC can't even keep herself straight on what exactly this necessitates.
	So yesterday, yesterday morning, she was asked whether, in fact, this Green New Deal would necessitate massive government intervention.
	And again, For all the people out there saying that she is savvy and smart, I don't know what to tell you.
	I really don't.
	I mean, if you are of the view that AOC is some sort of brilliant newcomer, I'm gonna play you two clips in a row, and you gotta tell me how exactly she's a genius.
	Here she goes, saying that maybe this might necessitate massive government intervention.
	As you know, Congresswoman, one reason that people who are politically conservative are skeptical of efforts to combat climate change is that it sounds to them like it requires massive government intervention, which they just don't like.
	Are you prepared to put on the table that, yes, actually, they're right.
	What this requires is massive government intervention?
	It does.
	It does.
	Yeah, I have no problem saying that.
	Fast forward about six hours, here is AOC with Meet the Press' Chuck Todd.
	One way that the right does try to mischaracterize what we're doing as though it's like some kind of massive government takeover.
	Obviously what we're trying to do is, well obviously it's not that because what we're trying to do is release the investments from the federal government to mobilize those resources across the country.
	You know, in the real world, we call that being a damned liar, right?
	I mean, we just call that being a liar.
	Like, within six hours, she goes from, sure, it's a massive government intervention, and then after the blowback, she's like, well, no, these Republicans, they're pouncing.
	They keep characterizing it as a massive government takeover.
	It's not a massive government takeover.
	It's a massive government intervention.
	But, sorry, sorry, I shouldn't say that.
	It's not a massive government intervention.
	It's unleashing investment.
	It's unleashing investment.
	So we're all supposed to take her seriously.
	We're all supposed to pretend she's not a damn liar.
	She's a damn liar, because all you have to do is read the words on her own website, which were so stupid that her own campaign had to take them off her website.
	She memory-holed her own six-page proposal yesterday.
	But we're supposed to believe, according to the media, that it's an act of genius, and also, we are not supposed to ask Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, or Kirsten Gillibrand about any of the details in AOC's proposal.
	We're not supposed to ask them about that.
	I very rarely get angry at media bias anymore because it's just a fact of the world.
	It's just like the sun rising every morning.
	But it is absolutely stomach-churning how disgusting the media are at their job.
	I'm talking about the mainstream media who will not ask any one of the top Democratic nominees how they feel about things like partial birth abortion.
	They won't get an answer, a straight answer from any of the top Democratic nominees about what should happen.
	With sexual assault allegations against Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax in Virginia.
	They won't ask anyone of these top Democratic nominees if they believe that those unwilling to work should be paid for unwillingness to work, according to AOC's plan.
	Or why they think AOC's plan is so brilliant.
	They're not going to be asked about a single detail to abolish Air travel?
	They're not going to be asked about any of those things.
	Instead, we'll just get the New York Times assuming that it's a breathtakingly ambitious proposal.
	And if we look at the details, it's because we are not looking closely enough.
	It's because we are not looking closely enough.
	Because if you push away all of the details, if you push away the thickets of details of that six-page proposal, what you get to is a gem, a gem of genius, which is that we should care.
	What absolute unbelievable horse bleep.
	Or cow fart.
	I mean, it's just, it's unreal.
	It's unreal.
	We're going to get to more democratic insanity in just a second.
	Plus, I want to talk about a sad piece of news from the Supreme Court.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	One of the things that is so...
	I mean, you feel like you're being gassed by the media.
	It feels like you're being gaslit.
	It feels like... The term gaslighting comes from an actual movie called Gaslight, in which a woman basically is driven mad by her husband.
	And the reason it's called Gaslighting is because what he does to drive her crazy is every evening, he lowers the lights on the lamps, and then he tells her that the lights are not actually lower on the lamps.
	He lowers the lights on the lamps and then she looks around and she's like, why does it seem dark in here?
	He says, it seems fine to me.
	And the whole point is to drive her crazy.
	That's what the media are doing every single day.
	And they are doing it particularly about AOC because they are declaring her the fresh face.
	They're giving her 20 minutes on MSNBC this morning.
	They are pitching her.
	They literally pitched her all day on MSNBC.
	They had a running counter on the bottom of their screen saying eight hours until we interview the brilliant, magnificent AOC.
	They put her on the covers of magazines.
	How many covers of magazines has Melania Trump done recently?
	I mean, forget that.
	How many covers of magazines has Elise Stefanik, who is a very young Republican Congresswoman, how many has she done?
	She was first elected at the age of 30.
	She's now 34.
	She's also from New York.
	Have you ever heard of her?
	Of course not.
	But we've been told that AOC is a deeply important figure in Democratic politics.
	And then when you comment on how dumb she is, then it's, you're obsessed with her.
	Maybe if you guys would, I mean, it's just gaslighting.
	It's just basic gaslighting.
	So Democrats are going to have to own AOC.
	You got, you broke it.
	You bought it, guys.
	You broke it.
	It's yours now.
	So you're going to have to own comments like this.
	Here's AOC yesterday explaining that ICE should be abolished and does not deserve one dime of funding.
	We're here to say that an agency like ICE, which repeatedly and systematically violates human rights, does not deserve a dime.
	They do not deserve a dime until they can prove that they are honoring human rights Until they can make a good faith effort to expand and embrace immigrants, until they can prove good faith to an American ideal, they do not deserve any resources for their radical agenda.
	Okay, unbelievable.
	So we're going to abolish ICE, but then she goes even further.
	Then she says, you know what?
	Forget about abolishing ICE.
	What if we just didn't have a border, basically?
	What if it turned out that everybody who is descended from Latinos or from Native Americans They can't commit crimes in the United States.
	Let's just assume everyone in the United States illegally is not actually here illegally because their ancestors were here before we were.
	So here is, here she is legitimately making the argument we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us.
	Right?
	Which is a full-on La Raza radical argument.
	Here she is making that argument yesterday publicly in front of microphones, but we're all supposed to ignore it because we only pay attention when AOC is on the cover of a magazine smiling or when she's dancing on a rooftop.
	We don't pay any attention to the dumb crap that falls out of her mouth on a regular basis.
	We are standing on native land, and Latino people are descendants of native people, and we cannot be told and criminalized simply for our identity or our status.
	Okay, quick note.
	Latino people are not all descendants of native people.
	If by native people she means people who occupied the continental United States.
	There are lots of Latino people, by the way, who are from, you know, like South and Central America, and whose ancestors came from there.
	So the notion that everybody coming up from Honduras is actually a descendant of a person who is living in Arizona in 1722 is obviously untrue.
	But it's also a dumb argument.
	We're a sovereign nation.
	We have control of our own borders.
	But according to her, no.
	Will any of the other Democrats be asked about that?
	Any of them?
	Of course not.
	One of the great annoyances that I have with the way the media cover these things, if a Republican does something bad, every Republican is asked whether they agree or disagree, and is asked to own it or disown it.
	When a Democrat does something bad, then every Democrat is asked whether they like cheese.
	Right?
	Just random questions that have nothing to do with the topic.
	And there's never any follow-up questions.
	So yesterday, for example, Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic frontrunner for the 2020 nomination, she was asked about the situation with Justin Fairfax in Virginia, who has now been credibly accused of sexual assault.
	And she says that the accuser is credible, but she does not call for Fairfax's resignation.
	Now, the natural follow-up question would be and should be weird, because you thought that Brett Kavanaugh should be disqualified from the Supreme Court by an accusation alone.
	Does that follow-up question happen?
	Of course not.
	I think that the letter written by the woman reads as a credible account, and I think there should be an investigation to get to the bottom of it and determine the facts.
	Certainly her letter reads as it's quite detailed and suggests that there's credibility there but there needs to be an investigation to determine what exactly happened.
	Oh, interesting, an investigation.
	Well, I don't remember you saying that an investigation would be enough to exonerate Kavanaugh.
	In fact, there was an FBI investigation.
	It found nothing, and then you still called for him not to be put on the Supreme Court.
	So, in other words, lady, you're a liar, but nobody asks you a follow-up question, because that's the way this nonsense works.
	Democrats can say whatever stupid garbage they want to say six months ago, and then when they say precisely the opposite, no questions.
	AOC can say two opposite things in the course of eight hours, and there will be no follow-up questions.
	She can release a proposal so bad that it makes a hamster look like a great legislator.
	I mean, that proposal yesterday was so bad.
	They say that a thousand monkeys typing for a thousand years might eventually be able to type all of Shakespeare in a row.
	No monkeys would ever be able to create that proposal given an infinite amount of time.
	It is too stupid for the animal kingdom, that proposal.
	It is just dumb.
	Where are you on the issue of paying people who are unwilling to work?
	Where are you on the issue of plant a lot of trees?
	That's what it actually says.
	It's so maddening.
	The Democrats openly tweeted, we love this proposal.
	It's great.
	And then the proposal comes out.
	And do the media even ask them, so how do you feel about like abolishing air travel?
	Where are you on the issue of paying people who are unwilling to work?
	Where are you on the issue of plant a lot of trees?
	That's what it actually says.
	Where are you on cow farts?
	What a joke.
	What a joke our media are.
	I mean, seriously, no one takes them seriously, and they shouldn't take them seriously.
	All right, you know, let's get to some mailbag, because I need to calm down.
	So let's do some unrelated stuff for a second.
	Ay yi yi.
	It's absolutely frustrating to see some of the dumbest people in the world say some of the dumbest things and then be feeded as the smartest people in the world by some of the dumbest people in the world.
	That's a summary of our current political situation.
	All right, so.
	Mailbag time.
	David says, Hi Ben, major fan, I really appreciate all the great work you do.
	I go to UCSD.
	I had a discussion with my professor regarding unconscious bias and discrimination, and I held that affirmative action policies make generalizations based on race that are unnecessary given accessibility to individual information of applicants.
	He directed me to a number of sociological studies that seem to demonstrate racial discrimination in employment hiring, with the disparities in response to white and black applicants being statistically significant over the last couple of decades.
	Well, I can think of some alternative explanations that can explain away some of the relation.
	The data seemed to be reliable.
	I was wondering what your opinion was on this sociological research.
	I don't believe in anti-discrimination laws.
	I'm libertarian, but I'm not sure I can ignore some of the data.
	Thanks for all you do.
	Okay, well, a couple of quick things.
	First of all, since I don't have the exact studies that you are referring to here, it's hard for me to respond.
	I don't want to give short shrift to sociological studies that I have not read.
	I will say this.
	The sociological studies that are most often cited, things that suggest, for example, That people with black first names get hired less often than people with white first names are ignoring other studies that also suggest that if you use black last names and white last names, there is no discrimination.
	In other words, what people are discriminating against is an assumption that may or may not be justified about culture and not an assumption about race per se.
	In other words, if you were to receive an application from a Jewish person and it were to say on the application, Yechezkel, as a first name, And then you were to receive an application from a Jewish person, just a David.
	You might treat those two applications differently because Yehezkel probably implies the person keeps Sabbath and is not going to be able to work from Friday night to Saturday night, for example.
	That's because one is a Hebrew name and one is a name that also applies in English.
	The same thing can apply to first names.
	So if that's the study you're talking about, that's my response to that study.
	As far as anti-discrimination law, my feeling is that if people are being dumb enough not to hire productive black citizens, then that's a competitive advantage for a lot of businesses that are willing to hire competitive black citizens.
	So I'd like to see the sociological studies, frankly, before I analyze them.
	Again, I don't want to give short shrift to studies that I haven't read.
	That's sort of the basic response.
	And also, again, affirmative action programs would not actually countermand the unwillingness to use individual data.
	Very often people are using generalized data about groups because they are not allowed to ask about individual data.
	So, for example, the Obama administration refused to allow federal contractors to ask about prior criminal status for people they were hiring.
	This led to less black employment.
	Why?
	Because a lot of companies were simply using group data on prison statistics instead of individualized data about whether this person went to jail in the absence of individual data.
	Melissa says, "Mr. Shapiro, my husband and I have very different opinions on how the 2020 election will pan out.
	I think that the Democrats have been united by such loathing for Trump that they will come out in droves to vote in 2020.
	My husband thinks that Trump will defy all odds yet again because that's just what he does.
	What do you think?
	Well, I'm not a big fan of the, we'll defy all odds in spite of data.
	Just because, look, there's a 70-30 shot that Hillary was going to win the last election.
	That doesn't mean the 30% doesn't exist.
	70% is not 100%, so it wasn't impossible for Trump to win.
	It was very unlikely he would win.
	And in fact, he did buck the odds by losing by 2.5 million votes in the popular vote and then running an extraordinarily narrow gauntlet.
	To win three separate states by a combined total of 80,000 votes.
	I think that Trump does have an uphill battle.
	With that said, could Democrats blow it?
	You bet your ass they could blow it.
	There's a new poll out today from Optimist that shows that in the national race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, it is Trump 45, Harris 44.
	All Democrats had to do was not be bat bleep insane, and they just couldn't do it.
	They just can't stop themselves.
	They are this crazy.
	Michael says, Greetings, Mr. Shapiro.
	I am writing an essay on common stereotypes of conservatives and how it is harmful to the group.
	I seek your advice on what you believe are those common stereotypes.
	Well, there's one that has been put out by Eric Fromm.
	It's been used for now 60 years, basically suggesting that conservatives are authoritarian, that they have too much respect for authority, and therefore they're big fans of government telling people what to do.
	That is a lie.
	Conservatism is about limited government.
	We have respect for moral authority, but that does not mean that we have lots of respect for governmental authority.
	Very, very different thing.
	There are also stereotypes about how conservatives are racist and bigoted and sexist and homophobic.
	Again, those stereotypes are unjustified by the realities, but it is simply a way for the left to suggest that the politics with which they disagree are ill-motivated as opposed to simple disagreements.
	Steven says, Hey Ben, what do you do to decompress when you're frustrated?
	This podcast.
	Right, this radio show.
	I yell at people.
	But really?
	What do I do?
	Well, you know, same things everybody else does, presumably.
	I watch TV, I go home, and I practice violin, I play music.
	Mostly I play with my kids, that's the best way to decompress.
	I put down my phone, is honestly the best thing you can do.
	Like, thank God for Sabbath, because Sabbath is necessary.
	Ofer says, Hello Ben, have you asked forgiveness from Michael Knowles at Yom Kippur for bullying him for years?
	No, I pay him.
	No.
	He should ask forgiveness for me, considering that his productivity has significantly lacked behind what exactly we pay him.
	He owes me a constant apology on a daily basis.
	Stephanie says, Well, I'm not sure that they are socially conservative on abortion.
	They are socially conservative on same-sex marriage and transgenderism, is what I've seen from the polls.
	I'm not sure that they are socially conservative on abortion.
	They are socially conservative on same-sex marriage and transgenderism is what I've seen from the polls.
	Not sure that's the case on abortion.
	African-Americans, historically speaking, started to align with the Democratic Party long before the 1960s Civil Rights Act and welfare programs came into effect.
	They started to do so during the FDR administration, and then they continued to do so over the years as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act moved forward, and mainly as a lot of welfare programs began to come online.
	Because, why not?
	I mean, if you're disproportionately receiving government benefits, then why wouldn't you vote for an increase in those government benefits?
	But, to suggest that that is solely due to the politics of the 1960s is to ignore the trend lines which began in the 1930s of black Americans moving away from the Republican Party and toward the Democratic Party in large numbers.
	Samuel says, Ben, how do you suggest young people get involved in local politics successfully?
	Well, get involved in local politics.
	I mean, here's the nice thing about local politics.
	No one cares about them.
	All you have to do, apparently, is win 15,000 votes in a primary and you become the most powerful congressperson in America.
	Which is what happened to AOC.
	So local politics can matter, as long as you also are social media savvy.
	Kemper says, Hey Ben, huge fan.
	I'm a senior at a private Catholic high school.
	Today we were discussing poverty and its causes, and I, being an outspoken person, brought up your point for how not to stay poor in the United States and how cultures in cyclical poverty-stricken areas have reinforced these bad habits.
	My opponents insinuated I was racist and my generalizations were disrespectful to the poor.
	Any tips on debating this issue and any good sources I could reference?
	Yes, I always reference the Brookings Institute.
	The Census Bureau has numbers that prove that this is the case.
	Every study ever done has shown that single motherhood is linked to intergenerational poverty and crime.
	And, again, when people suggest you're a racist, your first response should be, well, you're a jackass because you have no evidence I'm a racist.
	You just want to ignore the point of my argument.
	It's really a pathetic move by people to say that when you say, you know, people should make responsible decisions to avoid poverty, and then they respond by calling you a racist, that that's somehow okay.
	It is not okay, it is nasty, it is gross, and it is unjustifiable.
	Let's see, Race says, Hey Ben, as a 17-year-old conservative from Vermont, I was wondering how you think Generation Z will affect voting in the country over time, since for our age we are pretty conservative.
	I know also many others my age who are secretly conservative.
	I wonder if you think this would affect polling data.
	I think over time it will.
	I think there's a backlash to the PC SJW culture, mainly because they're so boring and annoying.
	Honestly, are there any less fun people than the SJW class on college campuses and in the media?
	People who make you feel like you have to look over your shoulder every minute of every day so that you have not offended their shifting moral standards, that apparently do not include killing babies up to point of birth, but do include random microaggressions that they just defined in the last two minutes.
	David says, hey Ben, thanks for spending more than six hours of your State of the Union Tuesday in front of a camera for our pleasure.
	Best 99 bucks I've ever spent.
	Thank you David, appreciate it.
	I noticed that Trump said in the address his administration was in negotiations with the Taliban.
	How, if at all, do we reconcile this with the USA's policy we do not negotiate with terrorists?
	Thanks.
	I don't think we can, frankly.
	I think negotiating with the Taliban is a mistake.
	I think that we should have gone in and we should have Basically installed a dictator and gotten out, because democracy is not going to flourish in Afghanistan.
	Now, you can install a dictator who is friendlier to particular rights that we hold dear.
	This is the case in, for example, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates.
	Those areas of the world are dictatorships that have respect for certain basic rights, like freedom of religion, in a way that a lot of democracies, so-called democracies like Hamasistan in the Gaza Strip, obviously do not.
	Does that mean that's the ideal?
	No, it's not the ideal, but to pretend that every Culture and every tribal situation is equally prepared for democracy that will end with a neoliberal-style democracy is just foolhardy and untrue.
	I mean, I'll be honest with this.
	I paid off my wife's medical school loans as we went.
	I was already earning.
	You and your wife manage loans from school.
	Are there any books you recommend on the subject?
	Thanks, love the show.
	I mean, I'll be honest with this.
	I paid off my wife's medical school loans as we went.
	I was already earning.
	I was a little older than she was.
	So I was already in the workforce and we spent an awful lot of money as we went through with me like paying off her bills we went.
	So she came out of medical school debt-free.
	But that is because we were a couple already.
	As far as taking loans, you know, there are some people like Dave Ramsey who suggest that you shouldn't take loans even for medical school.
	You should go out and work for a few years, build up your nut, basically, and then go out and spend that on medical schooling.
	I'm not of the opinion that that is necessary.
	But, you know, you find the lowest interest loan you can and then don't get behind on the payments.
	If you have to take a side job, you take a side job.
	Avery says, I'm a freshman at James Madison University.
	In multiple classes this year, professors have used the 2008 financial crisis as evidence that the free market must be regulated.
	They say the conservative governance leading up to the crisis and the deregulation of financial markets directly caused the recession.
	Is this characterization of events correct?
	No, it is not correct.
	Deregulation of the financial markets combined with massive government intervention in the financial markets is what caused this.
	So the United States does not have a full-scale free market system It has closer to a corporatist system in which government policy skews incentives.
	So, to take an example, the subprime mortgage crisis that melted down beginning in 2007 and then extending into 2008, that was caused largely by the government guaranteeing loans from particular companies because they wanted more minority homeowners to get into houses at subprime mortgage rates.
	Subprime mortgages were created for people with poor credit scores who wanted to get into housing.
	And the government propped this up.
	The government was happy to back a lot of those loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and then all those went belly up.
	It turns out a lot of people were going bankrupt.
	Now, what happened is that while there was still demand that was artificially boosted by the federal government, then the basic assumption made by the market forces was, okay, well, let's say we give a loan, a subprime loan, and somebody doesn't pay off the loan.
	We go back in, we seize the house, we flip it, and then next week we sell it for more.
	So we don't actually lose money on the deal.
	That's only true as long as the market keeps going up.
	So they were slicing and dicing all these subprime mortgages, and they were creating derivative products where they were combining those subprime mortgages with higher value mortgages and then grading all of it A-plus, basically, and selling it on the open market.
	That's why it had ramifications when all the subprime mortgages melted down into the It took down all of these derivatives with them.
	Those derivatives had been used in trades by a variety of financial firms, and those financial firms went bankrupt off the back end.
	So when people say that it was really about Glass-Steagall and hedge funds being able to both invest and also to do banking, it really wasn't about that.
	It was about the government skewing the incentives and creating a false bubble that eventually burst because people were being told that there was no consequence.
	If they put out a mortgage to a person who could not pay back the mortgage.
	It was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all the way that was really involved in causing the subprime mortgage crisis.
	And then, as far as government interventionism, it is probably true that absent government interventionism, in order to save those financial firms, the fallout from the meltdown is broader and wider.
	It is also true that maybe if that fallout had been a little bit broader and wider, it would have taken down a lot of the irresponsible financial firms, but Again, the problem with a government-involved system is that the solution very often, unfortunately, to prevent further fallout is more government involvement, which is exactly what happened.
	Okay, final question.
	Let's see.
	Amelia says, Hi Ben.
	I recently got into an argument with someone regarding the gender pay gap.
	I told her that the statistics she stated didn't include factors like job choice, hours, etc.
	Her rebuttal was that further studies were conducted that included these factors and had the same determination.
	I know this is wrong, but I want solid evidence to prove my point.
	I'm asking for a few good resources I can turn to for this argument.
	Well, Heather McDonald has written extensively about this.
	Christina Hoff Summers has written extensively about this.
	I do not know of a single study that takes into account Gender, gender inequities in, in job taking, in number of hours worked, in time in the workforce.
	I don't really, really, I don't know of a single study that takes into account all of those things that suggest that the gender pay gap is, for example, 23 cents on the dollar, which is the, which is the proposal of many of the folks who are pushing this nonsense.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So things that I like today.
	So AOC's Green New Deal proposal is basically the Fyre Festival.
	It's we're all going to party it up on a beach.
	How are we going to pay for it?
	We're not going to pay for it, guys.
	All you have to think about is your shared prosperity.
	That's all that matters.
	That was the pitch of the Fyre Festival.
	So there's a great documentary over at Netflix on the Fyre Festival, aptly titled Fyre.
	Here's a little bit of the preview.
	All these models, like, in the Bahamas.
	The most insane festival the world has ever seen.
	Island getaway turned disaster.
	It became very barbaric.
	Just wait until you see what you're getting yourselves into.
	American rapper Ja Rule is in the Bahamas with his business partner.
	Billy McFarland.
	He's an amazing entrepreneur.
	He can convince anyone of pretty much anything.
	They just bought an island.
	Pablo Escobar's island.
	Oh my God.
	We're gonna throw a festival, yeah.
	Within 48 hours.
	They sold out.
	These guys are either completely full of shit or they're the smartest guys in the room.
	Ah, well, then there you have it.
	The Green New Deal on an island.
	Basically, everybody ended up living in tents and beating each other up for bottles of Avion water.
	So it worked out just spectacularly over at the Fyre Festival.
	Well done, everybody.
	And I guess we can apply that nationally now.
	And we will call... Basically, AOC is Billy McFarlane.
	That, right, hanging out with all the cool people, genius salesperson, also complete fraud.
	But we're supposed to ignore all that because it's breathtaking in its ambition.
	You know what else was breathtaking in its ambition?
	The Fyre Festival.
	It ended quite poorly.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	The thing that I hate today.
	I'm old enough to remember when people like me, meaning me, when people like me Suggested that perhaps John Roberts would be a bad pick for the Supreme Court because he did not have an established record on key issues.
	And then there were people like me who suggested that Brett Kavanaugh also may not have been the world's best pick for the Supreme Court because his record was a little bit spotty on certain key issues like, for example, abortion.
	Well, now it turns out that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the left in a key case from Louisiana.
	According to Ed Morrissey over at Hot Air, he says, say, weren't 5-4 decisions supposed to go the other way now?
	Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberals on the Supreme Court to issue a stay on a tough new abortion law in Louisiana.
	It's temporary, but it's curious.
	A divided Supreme Court stopped Louisiana from enforcing new regulations on abortion clinics in a test of the conservative court's views on abortion rights.
	The justices said, by a 5-4 vote late Thursday, they will not allow the state to put into effect a law that requires abortion providers to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
	Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four liberals in putting a hold on the law pending a full review of the case.
	And then it turns out that Brett Kavanaugh also wrote in a dissent that the situation was not ripe for the court's scrutiny.
	He said, between us, the case largely turns on the intensely factual question of whether three doctors can obtain admitting privileges.
	If we denied the stay, the question could be readily and quickly answered without disturbing the status quo or causing harm to the parties or the affected women and without this court's further involvement at this time.
	So basically, his logic actually spelled out the same logic as John Roberts, he just dissented.
	But the bottom line is it looks like Roberts and Kavanaugh are the new swing votes on the Supreme Court and that the replacement of Kennedy with Kavanaugh and the replacement of, I'm trying to remember who went down for Roberts to take over.
	But in any case, the putting of John, was it Rehnquist?
	I think it was Rehnquist.
	Rehnquist going down, Roberts taking over.
	That did not result in a new right-wing majority on the Supreme Court or even a constitutionalist majority on the Supreme Court.
	It ended up with two center moderates who are now a new switch.
	We've got a lot coming up on today's radio show.
	So well done, everybody.
	Well done, everybody.
	So we'll find out the final result of this.
	But relying on the Supreme Court to protect all your hopes and dreams when it comes to the pro-life position is a fool's errand.
	All right.
	Well, we'll be back here later today for two more hours.
	We've got a lot coming up on today's radio show.
	You're going to want to subscribe so you can listen or listen live on your radio station, depending on where you live.
	Go check that out.
	Otherwise, we will see you here next week.
	Make sure to tune in for our Sunday special and subscribe so it becomes a Saturday special with Gary Sinise, a world-famous actor and terrific director.
	Go check that out.
	We'll see you here on Monday.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Senya Villarreal, 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.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

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