All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 22, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:51
Empire Of Lies | Ep. 723
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Jussie Smollett heads back to Hollywood, the justice system utterly fails underage victims of a major political donor, and voter fraud is a reality.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, we have a lot to get to today.
We are going to be talking about an actual political beating that happened in Berkeley, and that is being treated by the media as alleged, even though it's on tape, because certain types of crime are important, while other types of crime, not important.
We'll get to all that in just a second.
First, in 2008, the U.S.
national debt was $10 trillion.
Today, that debt is nearly $22 trillion, and it is rising like a hockey stick.
If you don't think we are sitting on a house of cards, you are living with your head in the sand.
But since you are listening to this podcast, you are So, what is your plan?
Can you afford another hit to your retirement, like the last downturn, when the S&P dropped 50%?
What you should do is hedge at least a little bit against inflation and uncertainty and instability.
Get a little bit of precious metals.
Gold is a safe haven against uncertainty.
My savings plan is diversified, and yours should be as well.
The company I trust with precious metal purchases is Birch Gold Group.
And right now, thanks to a little-known IRS tax law, You can even move your IRA or eligible 401k into an IRA backed by physical gold and silver, which is perfect for people who want to protect their hard-earned retirement savings from any future geopolitical uncertainty.
Look back historically.
When the bottom falls out of everything else, gold tends to safeguard savings.
Birch Gold Group has thousands of satisfied customers, countless five-star reviews, and A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
Contact Birch Gold Group, get a free information kit on physical precious metals.
See if diversifying into gold and silver makes sense for you.
That comprehensive 16-page kit, it reveals how gold and silver can protect your savings.
To get that kit, text BEN to 474747.
Again, text BEN, my name, to 474747.
Again, text Ben, my name, to 474747. Ben to 474747.
All right.
So the latest updates on Jussie Smollett.
Just breaking today.
Apparently, producers of Empire finally have said that his character will be removed from the final two episodes of the latest season of Empire.
Hilariously, they had not said this as of last night.
He was actually headed back to the set of Empire in Chicago following his release from police custody on Thursday.
Smollett was released after posting bail in Chicago after police charged him with staging what was originally reported as a hate crime last month.
He was originally intended to film throughout the week on the Fox series, His role was dramatically reduced in light of his ongoing legal troubles.
The fact that he was even allowed to go back to the set is perfectly insane.
He was involved in the worst race hoax since Tawana Browley in the United States, and the guy was allowed to go back to set?
What was going through Fox's brain?
Fox has stood behind the actor for the most part, issuing multiple statements backing him as evidence grew that he had staged his own assault.
This is Variety reporting.
Earlier on Thursday, though, the network released a new statement that said in part, How is that even possible?
How is it possible to have large pockets of support with a company after you basically are caught signing checks to two guys to fake a racial crime?
There was hope as late as Wednesday he would be able to finish out his work on the series.
Empire had about an episode and a half of filming to finish its fifth season, or a little more than a week worth of work.
Apparently, instead, they are finally going to write him out.
They released him on $100,000 bond.
It is just amazing to me, the level to which people will surrender to their own narrative bias.
To return this guy to sort of civil society, even to consider returning this guy to civil society in the midst of an ongoing legal trial, after presumably expending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on a racial hoax, is just insane.
You know you've done something wrong, you know that you've gone off the rails, when Rahm Emanuel, a lefty of lefties, is very, very upset with you because of your race hoax.
Here is Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, and you'll recall the chief of staff to Barack Obama talking to Don Lemon, quasi-reporter and friend of Jussie Smollett, last night on CNN.
Across our city in 77 different neighborhoods, there are people that have signs in their front lawn, on their windows, that say, hate has no home here.
And to you, Chicago, in that way is not true to who we are as a city.
Our police officers took this as a very serious hate crime, and they dedicated the resources to deal with it as a hate crime.
But then you literally put doubt.
What about the young man who's dealing with his own sexual orientation and is attacked for it in high school or some school, who's now going to doubt whether people are going to believe him?
You have put all those real stories at risk for your fake story.
That is not right.
There's a certain irony to Rahm Emanuel suggesting that Jussie Smollett's story did grave damage to the city of Chicago.
It did, of course, do grave damage to the city of Chicago.
The widespread perception that Chicago PD are somehow racist, that they were not pursuing the case with alacrity, or that Chicago is home to tremendous amounts of evil MAGA racists who are running around throughout the city trying to string up black people.
It's funny how so many folks on the left, including Rahm Emanuel, will say, you know, this is a slander on the city of Chicago and a slander on the police department.
And yet Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama, they were constantly slandering a huge swath of Americans as exactly the kind of people that Jussie Smollett was trying to target.
The entire Jussie Smollett routine was not really targeting the city of Chicago, obviously.
It was targeting President Trump.
It was targeting white folks across the United States who may have voted for President Trump.
That was the goal of Jussie Smollett's routine.
He knew that folks like Rahm Emanuel, if the crime had been true, he knew that people like Rahm Emanuel would have jumped on board the idea that there were a huge swath of Americans who agreed with the attackers, the fake attackers, of Jussie Smollett.
So if Rahm Emanuel is very concerned about stories that draw a false conclusion about fellow Americans, then it seems to me that people on the left might want to reconsider how they treat crimes like this in the future.
Because the fact is, during the Obama administration, Barack Obama was complicit in presenting exactly Exactly the same types of slander about certain parts of America.
Barack Obama said about Ferguson, Missouri, Michael Brown, you'll recall, was an 18-year-old black man who attacked a police officer.
He tried to run at a police officer and was shot to death for his trouble after robbing a convenience store and after punching that police officer in the face.
And that was portrayed by the media as hands up, don't shoot.
You remember anchors on CNN raising their hands and posing for pictures, hands up, don't shoot.
And you remember Barack Obama in the aftermath of the acquittal of the officer in that particular case.
You'll remember the president of the United States getting on TV and expressing his quasi sorrow at the verdict and then suggesting that communities of color don't make these things up.
That case was made up.
That case was a race hoax.
That case was a massive race hoax.
But we don't see it that way.
Why?
Because massive mainstream institutions decided to back the race hoax.
So, here's the point.
If you are upset with Jussie Smollett on the left today because you feel that he slandered the city of Chicago and the Chicago PD and they made it harder for future victims, then you should have been just as upset over the Michael Brown scenario.
You should have been just as upset over that.
You should have been just as upset over other issues that were happening like that during the Obama administration.
People were not, because President Obama decided to back the play.
In this particular case, it blew back on the city of Chicago.
So now the left realizes that this sort of thing is bad.
When it blows back on the state of Missouri, or the city of Ferguson, then it's a completely different story.
Pretty amazing stuff.
By the way, Jussie Smollett still has his defenders.
He has his defenders on the grounds that President Trump is bad.
Now, President Trump is basically a get-out-of-jail-free card.
For a lot of folks on the left who don't want to acknowledge that something really, truly terrible happened right here.
D.L.
Hewley, alleged comedian, was on CNN with Block of Wood Chris Cuomo.
And he was talking about Jussie Smollett.
He said, well, you know, Jussie Smollett shouldn't go to jail.
President Trump isn't in jail.
Well, that's because President Trump didn't claim falsely that he was beaten half to death and then called racial slurs by people he had hired.
That's why President Trump isn't in jail.
D.L.
Hewley and his hat don't seem to understand that.
You know, it's interesting when you use hatred and bigotry and lying for your own self as in, and you're a young black kid, a young gay black kid, you get indicted.
If you do it when you're an old white guy, you become president.
And I think there are enough monsters out there for real that we don't have to make any up.
White supremacist has never, they're at a historical high.
It's interesting that the president would focus more on the kid that orchestrated a fake attack, but not the man, white supremacist, who was orchestrating an actual attack.
How exactly is this on national news?
Really, like, how is this on CNN?
What is D.L.
Hewley saying here that is of any value whatsoever?
He's saying a couple of things and neither of them make any sense.
The first thing he says is that if you use racism for your own personal ends and you're black, you go to jail.
No, actually, if you use racism in politics to your own personal ends, you end up getting elected to high office as well.
It turns out that race-baiting on every side is very lucrative business.
That's why Jussie Smollett tried to hoax.
The reason Jussie Smollett tried this routine is because he knew there was power in race-baiting for personal gain.
Al Sharpton is still meeting with people after helping perpetrate the Tawana Browley hoax, and it's 35 years later.
So, D.L.
Hewley is just wrong about this.
The reason Jussie Smollett is going to jail is because he actually took up police resources by reporting a fake hate crime.
If Jussie Smollett had just gone out there and preached about how America is racist, and how white people, broadly speaking, are racist, he'd be on the cover of Time Magazine next week.
He'd be getting multi-million dollar deals like Colin Kaepernick.
So D.L.
Hewley is just wrong about that.
And then, when D.L.
Hewley continues to suggest that white supremacism is at an all-time high in the United States, you know how ignorant you have to be of American history to believe that?
You're truly ignorant of American history.
An all-time high?
We had a literal war in this country where half a million people died, because it seems like probably when there were actual slaves being held in the United States, probably then is when white supremacy was at its height.
If I had to guess, I'd probably peg it right then.
And then you know when it was also really high?
It was also really high when we had a legal system of discrimination against black people that was promoted throughout the South and enshrined in law up until the mid-60s.
That seems like a time when white supremacism was at its all-time high.
You know when it's not at its all-time high?
In a country that three years ago a black man was President of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States was a black man, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State Susan Rice, was a woman of color.
I mean, what?
The attempt to paint America as deeply racist in spite of Jussie Smollett is amazing.
The real point here is the one that Matt Walsh, a columnist over at Daily Wire, made yesterday, which is that the supply of racism of the United States is being exceeded by demand.
There is too much demand for racism and not enough supply.
So now we have to get mad over silly things or we have to make up race hoaxes.
We have to find every instance of quasi or fake racism we can in order to promote the idea that America is still a terrible, awful, no good, very bad place.
It's pretty astonishing.
I mean, that really is the theme for Jussie Smollett, right?
All Jussie Smollett had to do if he wanted to be the leader on hate crimes against black folks is find a black gay person who was victimized in a hate crime and promote their story.
That's all he had to do.
But he couldn't do that.
Instead, he had to fake a hate crime so that we could make the front pages across the United States.
It's pretty astonishing.
And by the way, again, there's still people going to defend Jussie Smollett because they are going to make the claim that Jussie Smollett is indicative of a broader problem, even if his story is fake.
The story is fake, but the moral is real.
The AOC version of politics.
We'll get to more of that in just a second.
First, there's one thing we can all agree on, no matter what we disagree on.
It's good to save money.
And this is why you ought to be using Honey.
You've probably heard me talk about Honey.
It's an amazing free browser extension.
That automatically helps me save money on all my favorite sites.
But I would not be doing my job if I didn't tell you how Honey makes even Amazon better.
I love Amazon.
Amazon's the best.
And I save money on Amazon every single day because as you shop on Amazon, Honey's best price finder automatically compares the prices of millions of sellers that carry the item that you want.
Honey even factors in shipping, sales tax, and Amazon Prime status to make sure that you're getting the lowest total price.
It shows you the best deal every time, even if Amazon doesn't.
It's like having your very own smart shopping assistant.
I saved a bunch of money this week.
My wife has finally started working out a lot on a regular basis, and she wanted to buy some weights.
Went on Amazon, bought some weights.
Honey kicked in.
We saved a bunch of money.
More than 10 million people are using Honey to save money right now.
Honey has over 100,000 five-star reviews on the Google Chrome store.
Time Magazine says it's basically free money.
That's because it is.
So next time you're shopping on Amazon, treat yourself to the free upgrade that guarantees you always get the best absolute price.
Add Honey.
For free at joinhoney.com slash ben.
That's joinhoney.com slash ben.
Honey, the smart shopping assistant that helps you save time and money.
Alright, so there's still people who are in fact race hoax specialists, or at least racialists, who make bank off this stuff.
Who refused to acknowledge that Jussie Smollett even did anything wrong.
One of those people is Auntie Maxine, who has been promoted as a champion of the downtrodden among the Democratic Party, especially now because she's very anti-Trump.
She said yesterday she still doesn't believe the Chicago PD.
How do we make sense of Justice Smollett?
How do we make sense of the situation?
I don't think we can, at this point, make sense of it.
There's still some questions that we have, some answers that have to be given.
He's a friend, and so I believed him when I heard about it.
I still don't know all of the details.
I'm waiting for the final results of all of this.
If, in fact, it's a hoax, of course I would be disappointed.
Oh, if it's a hoax, you'd be disappointed.
He's been arrested.
They have a signed check from him to the people he was paying to promote the hoax.
They have the phone call log in which he was calling the guys who helped him promote the hoax.
The evidence is pretty damn clear right here.
And Maxine Waters is still pretending that the evidence isn't fully in.
It really is amazing.
Kamala Harris is doing a little bit of the same routine.
So you'll recall that Kamala Harris first said that this was a modern-day lynching.
And then you'll recall that Kamala Harris said that she was going to wait for all the facts to come out while pretending that she didn't actually know what the facts were.
And now she's released a statement.
It says, like most of you, I've seen the reports about Jussie Smollett, and I'm sad, frustrated, and disappointed.
When anyone makes false claims to police, it not only diverts resources away from serious investigations, but it makes it more difficult for other victims of crime to come forward.
At the same time, we must speak the truth.
Hate crimes are on the rise in America.
Just last year, the FBI released statistics that revealed a 17% increase in the number of hate crimes in America.
Part of the tragedy of the situation is that it distracts from that truth and has been seized by some who would like to dismiss and downplay the very real problems that we must address.
We should not allow that.
So the real problem is not really Jussie Smollett.
The real problem is people seizing and pouncing like a tiger on Jussie Smollett.
You know, the real good news here, I guess, is that he raised awareness.
In the end, he raised awareness of hate crimes.
That's the real thing that we should be very excited about.
Zerlina Maxwell, another commentator doing this Jussie Smollett defense routine, pretty amazing over on MSNBC, she says, listen, we should react to Jussie Smollett with empathy.
You know, empathy for the guy who is willing to falsely testify that people who did not commit a crime committed a crime and send them to jail, presumably for the rest of their lives.
We should have empathy for that guy.
Folks that believed Jussie as a default position, we feel sadness today.
We don't feel stupid today.
I feel bad for the people who did not default to that empathy, who think that this is a game, who are gloating today.
Those people have something fundamentally wrong with them.
The people that defaulted to feeling empathy for someone who may be going through something.
And so I still feel empathy for him because obviously he's deeply troubled.
But I think we should default to supporting people and let the investigators do the investigation.
Oh, so I guess that you're a good person if you believed him without evidence.
But you're a bad person if you are happy that the police uncovered the fact that his crazy story was actually a crazy story.
By the way, we have no evidence that he's actually mentally ill.
We don't have any evidence that Jussie Smollett is mentally ill.
I've said this before.
You can't just attribute crazy to things you don't understand.
Jussie Smollett took action.
He did that as an independent human.
That is his decision.
This notion that we are supposed to default to empathy after it's already revealed that this piece of debris, I mean, he's a bad guy.
That is a bad guy.
Somebody who is willing to testify falsely so that other people go to jail, that makes you a bad human being.
Jussie Smollett did something deeply evil here, and to pretend that empathy should be on the table is bizarre at best, and obviously malicious at worst, because you're actually promoting a narrative, not a truth.
And meanwhile, there was an actual political crime, a politically driven assault that happened at Berkeley.
I guess this was yesterday.
And police at Berkeley were called to a student plaza on Tuesday after reports that a representative of the Conservative Leadership Institute was physically assaulted by a man on the campus.
Well, we actually have tape of it and here is what it sounded like.
You are f***ing encouraging violence.
No, I'm not.
I don't give you a fucking videotape.
You're a fucking punk.
I'm a fucking fuck out of my face, motherfucker.
Put your phone out of my fucking face.
So he punched the student in the eye.
Gave him a black eye.
The student maintained control of the camera, so we have a good shot of the guy's face.
I mean, just sh** delivered a short right to his eye.
And this guy should be arrested, and obviously he will be arrested.
He's now on camera, so the chances that he doesn't end up spending some time in jail, pretty low.
The Daily Californian was the first outlet to report the incident, which the student-run paper says took place in the Upper Sproul Plaza.
Citing a campus police alert that went out Wednesday, the paper reports that the alleged victim, a male Leadership Institute representative, had been tabling for Turning Point USA, that's Charlie Kirk's group, on Tuesday afternoon, about 3.29 p.m., When two males approach the table.
The victim told police he and the two men became embroiled in a verbal altercation, at which point he began filming the escalating exchange with his phone.
One of the two alleged attackers reportedly slapped the phone out of the activist's hand and then overturned the table the group was using to recruit.
While he and the suspect struggled for the phone, the suspect punched the victim several times, causing injury to the victim's eye and nose.
By the time the police arrived, the suspect had already left the scene.
A student who witnessed the attack filmed the second part of the altercation on his phone.
Charlie Kirk, the head of TPUSA, tweeted out the footage, wrote, That, of course, is 100% true.
That is 100% true.
The College Fix has also published additional footage filmed by a conservative activist that includes the assaulter threatening, So, the student paper has reported in an update that UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said in a statement the campus condemns all forms of harassment and violence and that the university does not have any information about whether the student, the suspect is a student at the university.
He is wearing a backpack and he appears to be college age.
The student who reportedly filmed the incident Apparently told Breitbart News that the altercation appears to have begun over an argument about a TPUSA sign that warned hate crime hoaxes hurt real victims, which was a reference to Jussie Smollett.
And then apparently he began filming after the suspect flipped over the table.
Newsweek, covering this thing, Newsweek headlined, conservative activists allegedly, allegedly assaulted.
When they headlined Jussie Smollett, it was Jussie Smollett assaulted.
You be the, you be the judge as to whether the media would be covering this differently if this had been an Obama supporter punched by a Trump supporter.
I have a feeling the answer would be yes.
And meanwhile, in a horrifying story, this is from the Washington Post, A judge has now ruled that prosecutorial deal between Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers was absolutely corrupt, which is 100% true.
We covered this a few months ago on the podcast.
A judge ruled Thursday that federal prosecutors, including the future Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, violated the law when they did not tell victims the government had struck a deal not to prosecute Jeffrey Epstein.
A politically connected billionaire accused of molesting dozens of young girls.
You'll recall Jeffrey Epstein from having an island, it was basically sex slave island.
He had a bunch of underage young girls there and he was flying his friends down there.
And his friends ranged in politics from Bill Clinton to, I believe he was friendly with Trump, I think.
I know that he was friendly with Alan Dershowitz.
The ruling was a stinging rebuke for prosecutors and how they behaved in a grim high-profile case that has drawn increased scrutiny in recent months.
A Miami Herald investigation last year highlighted the allegations and Acosta's role in cutting a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein, while a Justice Department office said it is exploring whether the federal prosecutors who reached the deal committed professional misconduct.
District Judge Kenneth Marrow was blunt, ruling that prosecutors had acted improperly in reaching the agreement with Epstein, which stopped federal action in exchange for him pleading guilty to a state charge without telling the victims.
I mean, the case itself was horrific.
He was basically kidnapping young girls off the street, bringing them home, and then sexually abusing them.
And then he was releasing them because he was extraordinarily wealthy and because he gave lots of money to politicians.
The presumption is that this had an impact on how his prosecution went.
The judge wrote that he was not ruling the decision not to prosecute was improper.
He was simply ruling that under the facts of this case, there was a violation of the victim's rights under the CVRA, which is the Crime Victims Rights Act, which entitles victims to know about significant events in their cases.
Prosecutors did not give victims a chance to affect prosecutorial decisions and did not accurately tell them about what was happening.
Prosecutors instead sought to conceal the existence of the deal cut with Epstein and mislead the victims to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility.
Mera wrote, while the government spent untold hours negotiating the terms and implications of the non-prosecution agreement with Epstein's attorney, scant information was shared with the victims.
The case remains in active litigation.
It has referred further questions to the Justice Department.
The U.S.
Attorney's Office in Southern District of Florida declined to comment on the ruling.
The allegations against Epstein and the fact that he had reached a deal had been publicly known.
They came up during Acosta's 2017 confirmation hearings to lead the Labor Department.
The case surged back into the public eye in November, when the Herald published its investigation, reporting it had identified approximately 80 women who said they had been sexually abused by Epstein between 2001 and 2006, and then how Epstein had struck a deal that effectively ended an FBI probe.
The Justice Department revealed earlier this month it had opened an investigation into how prosecutors handled the Epstein case, though the probe is likely to be of limited impact.
Epstein is one of the worst people walking this earth.
I mean, just one of the worst people.
And the fact that he was politically connected, I can't imagine that had nothing to do with the agreement that was cut here.
I imagine there were probably powerful people who were sounding off to the prosecution office about letting Epstein go.
When people talk about injustices in the criminal justice system, I think it has very little to do with race.
I think it has a lot to do with the amount of power that you wield.
And if you're Jeffrey Epstein, and you're paying off politicians, and those politicians can call up their political friends, sometimes deals get cut that way, and that is really bad.
There's a reason that it's good to be a celebrity in a criminal justice case.
It is not good to be a non-celebrity.
I mean, we'll see what happens with Jussie Smollett, by the way.
There was a report yesterday that it is likely that the prosecution will cut a deal with Smollett so he does no jail time, which would be fully insane.
At least on the state level, we'll see what the feds do.
Bottom line here is that if Acosta cut this deal for any corrupt reason at all, not only should he not be Labor Secretary, he should probably do jail time.
I mean, that's an insane deal to cut.
That you're going to let the guy off without prosecution for abusing underage girls for years on end.
Very, very frightening.
And a bad look for our criminal justice system, obviously.
I'm going to get to voter fraud in just a second because voter fraud is back in the news.
This time, of course, it's in the news because Republicans were engaged in it.
We'll talk about it in just a second.
First, let's talk about your postage rates.
They've gone up again.
Thankfully, stamps.com can ease the pain with big discounts off post office retail rates.
With stamps.com, you save five cents off every first class stamp and up to 40% off priority mail.
That kind of savings really does add up, especially for small businesses.
Stamps.com is completely online, which saves you time.
No more inconvenient trips to the post office.
Stamps.com automatically calculates and prints the exact amounts of postage you need for every letter or package you send.
You're never going to overpay or underpay again.
Stamps.com brings all the services of the U.S.
Postal Service directly to your fingertips.
Buy and print official U.S.
postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail, using your own computer and printer.
Stamps.com makes it easy.
They'll send you a free digital scale automatically calculating your exact postage.
Anything you can do at the post office, you can now do from your desk for less.
That's why I use Stamps.com.
It saves me time, it saves me money, it means I don't have to schlep my packages down to the post office right now.
My listeners, get a special offer that includes a four-week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale.
See for yourself why over 700,000 small businesses use stamps.com.
Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in Shapiro.
That is stamps.com, enter Shapiro for that special deal.
Stamps.com, click on that mic at the top of the homepage, type in Shapiro.
Alrighty, meanwhile, a new election has been ordered in North Carolina.
According to the New York Times, North Carolina officials on Thursday ordered a new contest in the 9th Congressional District after the Republican candidate, confronted by evidence that his campaign had financed an illegal voter turnout effort, called for a new election.
The unanimous ruling by the five-member Board of Elections was a startling and, for Republicans, embarrassing conclusion to a case that has convulsed North Carolina since November, and it followed testimony that outlined how a political operative had orchestrated an absentee ballot scheme to try to sway the race in favor of Mark Harris, the Republican candidate.
It is now the single undecided House contest in last year's midterms.
Robert Cordell, the state's board chairman, cited the corruption absolute mess with the absentee ballots when he called for a new election.
He said it was certainly tainted.
Harris had a 905-vote lead over his Democratic opponent, Dan McCready, but his success in Bladen County, where he won 61% of absentee ballots, even though Republicans were there accounted for just 19% of them, alarmed regulators.
When he finally took the stand on Thursday morning, Mr. Harris denied knowing of any wrongdoing in the voter turnout effort led by L. McCray Dallas Jr., a veteran political operative known as a local guru of elections.
But in a series of questions, Harris stumbled and appeared to mislead the board.
When he returned to the crowded courtroom after lunch recess, he asked whether he could read a statement.
He apologized to the board.
He explained that recent medical issues, including two strokes, had impaired his abilities and recall, and then he asked for a new election.
Which sounds pretty damaging to him.
Now, the entire article talks about this voter operations guy, McCray Dallas.
And it talks about his history in the district, but it does not actually talk until very late about his longtime history working for Democrats.
In fact, if you search the piece for references to Democrat, there is no, there's one reference, one reference to his shadowy work for Democratic and Republican politicians.
But that is not how New York Times reporter Patrick Healy talked about this on CNN.
Here's Patrick Healy, the politics editor for the New York Times, saying Republicans are engaging in voter fraud.
For years, President Trump and Republicans have tried to create this image that Democrats were stealing elections.
Millions of voter fraud ballots.
Phony votes.
You know, President Trump would have won the popular vote against Hillary Clinton if not for all of this voter fraud by Democrats.
Never proven.
No evidence.
And now the Republicans have the biggest case of voter fraud that we've had in this country for years.
Okay, amazing.
I will point out, it is amazing that the politics editor of the New York Times will say that Republicans are responsible for voter fraud.
Let's learn a little bit about Leslie McCray Dallas.
Now it is true in this case.
Republicans apparently responsible for voter fraud.
Obviously that is true.
Also true, this guy has been working for politicians of both parties And mostly the Democratic Party over the course of his career.
According to the News Observer in North Carolina, Dallas had long voted in Democratic primaries, but became a registered Republican after the 2016 general election.
In 2012, he was paid for get-out-the-vote efforts for competing Democratic candidates in a state house race.
Why weird?
You think maybe a voter fraud guru may have committed voter fraud on behalf of Democrats historically, but nobody cared because it was Democrats doing it in a Democratic primary?
News reports indicate he has been doing campaign work at least as far back as 2006.
He told the News Reporter of Whiteville in a 2010 article that he worked on then-District Attorney Rex Gore's campaign that year.
In 2010, Dallas worked for the man Gore defeated, Harold Butch Pope, a Whiteville attorney.
During that campaign, Pope and Dallas had to respond to concerns about Dallas' criminal record.
In 1992, Dallas was convicted of felony insurance fraud after he and his wife were accused of taking out an insurance policy on a dead man and collecting nearly $165,000 from his death.
And he was being hired by Democrats four years after that.
He served more than six months of a two-year prison sentence after repeating the plot of double indemnity.
Pope knocked out Gore in the Democratic primary, then lost the election to John David, who remains the district attorney for Blayden, Brunswick, and Columbus counties.
Pope said when he ran for the office, two or three people called and told him he needed Dallas working for him in Blayden County.
Someone told me McCray Dallas is the guru of Blayden County.
So, the guy who is responsible for the voter fraud is McCray Dallas, fellow.
He basically was gathering absentee ballots, and then he was throwing out the ones that he didn't like, and he was keeping the ones that he did like.
That was essentially what happened here.
And this is why ballot gathering is a bad process.
Absentee ballots should not be allowed unless you're a member of the military.
Really.
Absentee ballots, early voting, it should only be allowed if you're a member of the military.
This idea that we need to maximize the number of people voting early and then we need to allow various political parties to go out and vote gather is extraordinarily dangerous.
It's extraordinarily dangerous.
And yet Democrats don't seem to have any problem with the systematic voter fraud issue.
This is the part that I think Republicans have a real claim on.
And Democrats are pointing to this case and saying, look, voter fraud.
And I'm like, yes, of course, voter fraud.
Yes, that's voter fraud.
That's very bad.
You know it's bad when everyone does it.
Maybe we should change the system so it is not as easy to commit voter fraud.
Take, for example, my state, California.
The San Diego Union Tribune has a piece back from December.
It says this, in the wake of last month's blue wave that wrested control of the House from Republicans and transferred it to the Democratic Party, some members of the GOP are complaining about the results and the practice of so-called ballot harvesting in California.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who's then the House Speaker, said last week that California defies logic and he can't begin to understand what ballot harvesting is.
So what exactly is ballot harvesting?
It's political jargon for a practice in which organized workers or volunteers collect absentee ballots from certain voters and drop them off at a polling place or election office.
Coined by California Republicans, the term carries a negative connotation to suggest improprieties and even election fraud.
In 2016, Jerry Brown signed into law a change to section 3017 of the election code that allows any person to collect a mail-in ballot from voters and turn in the mail ballot to a polling place or the registrar's office.
Prior law restricted the practice to just relatives or those living in the same household as the voter.
So in other words, Jerry Brown made voter fraud easier.
Because now, you can have somebody just coming to your door and saying, listen, I've been assigned by whomever.
I've been assigned by the Elections Oversight Committee.
to come gather your ballot.
So, you know, you're not going to leave it in the mail.
You're going to forget.
Just give me your ballot.
Just vote right now.
Give me your ballot.
I'll take it down to the mailbox for you.
I'm not sure that the actual law requires you to say if you are working for one of the parties.
The legislation says that a vote by a mail voter who is unable to return the ballot may designate any person to return the ballot to the elections official from whom it came or to the precinct board at a polling place within the jurisdiction.
So, in other words, the actual process that McCrae Dallas used, which is he would go around, gather a bunch of ballots, throw out the ones he didn't like, keep the ones he did like, that process is very much on the table in places like California and was just made easier by the former governor of California, Jerry Brown.
It used to be you could only give it to your brother, sister, your wife, your kids, take the ballot down to the mailbox and drop it off.
Now, it's if I come to your door and I sign a piece of paper saying I gave you my ballot, then I can hand it to Rando.
And who the hell knows what Rando is doing with those ballots?
So, this is where I have a real problem with all the talk about voter fraud.
If you are only concerned about voter fraud when it happens on one side of the aisle, you are not really concerned about voter fraud.
If you are only upset about voter fraud because of what just happened in North Carolina's 9th District, but you don't care that the guy responsible for the voter fraud was active in elections for legitimately four election cycles before that, and you don't care that the exact methodology he used is still open to abuse in states like California, Then you don't get to claim that you really care about voter fraud.
All you care about is blaming Republicans.
That's why that politics editor from the New York Times is doing a grave disservice to the actual issue.
Now, I love this.
The San Diego Union-Tribune says there have been no credible reports of ballot harvesting being employed illegally or systematically to amount to election fraud.
Secretary of State Alex Padilla was quoted saying the laws don't benefit one party over another.
Oh, well, we're not going to find out about that until it's found out about.
That's the thing about crimes.
You don't find out about them until somebody detects the crime.
Again, don't pretend that you care about this stuff unless you actually care about this stuff.
It's just absurd.
Okay, in a second, we're going to talk about the Democrats who continue to move ever more to the left.
First, let's talk about how you shave each morning.
How you get ready.
The kind of soap you use.
I love that Dollar Shave Club has everything I need to look, feel, and smell my best.
What I love even more is the fact that I never have to go to a store.
That's because number one, DSC delivers everything I need directly to my door, and two, they keep me fully stocked on what I use so I don't run out.
Here's how it works.
Dollar Shave Club has everything you need to get ready, no matter what you are getting ready for.
They've got you covered head to toe for your hair, your skin, your face, you name it, they've got it.
And they have a new program where they automatically keep you stocked up on the product you use.
You determine what you want, and when you want it, it shows up right at your door from once a month to once every six months.
That's what I do for their Amber Lavender Body Cleanser, their Sage Black Pepper Shampoo.
I mean, this stuff's fantastic.
Plus, with their handsome discount, the more you buy, the more you save.
And right now, they've got a bunch of starter sets you can try for just $5, like their Oral Care Kit.
After that, the restock box ships regular-sized products at regular price.
So, what exactly are you waiting for?
Get your starter set for just five bucks right now at dollarshaveclub.com slash ben.
That is dollarshaveclub.com slash ben.
There's a reason I use their products.
It's because they're awesome.
dollarshaveclub.com slash ben for the special deal.
Go check it out right now.
Okay, so the Democrats continue to move in more and more radical directions.
The latest indicator of this is Elizabeth Warren calling for, I kid you not, slavery reparations.
This will be a mainstream democratic position across the board.
The first person to talk about it was Kamala Harris.
And the reason that she agreed with it is because a host suggested it to her.
So now we are making policy by radio host suggestions, which, hey, I mean, if we're going to do that, I'm right here, guy.
I'm right here.
We'll get to all that in just a second.
First.
First, you have to subscribe over at Daily Wire.
Today, for example, we are featuring a Daily Wire premium subscriber.
We wanted to give a shout out to a different subscriber every week as a thank you for helping support the Daily Wire.
Although, let's be honest, we're already giving you people way more than you deserve.
That's true, we are.
This week's shout-out goes to Cameron.
At RealMCGCam on Twitter, Cameron tweeted this epic photo of him inhaling what I'm guessing is scalding hot leftist tears, because judging by the photo, Cameron, total badass, dude.
Cameron writes, because Ben Shapiro told me to do it.
Hot or cold Tumblr, you're Leavenworth Washington, from Seattle.
I mean, look at that picture.
Snowmobile, trees, cold outside.
That's man stuff.
If you want to receive a shoutout and experience the pure bliss that Cameron is likely experiencing at this very instant, you have to be an annual subscriber and you have to post a photo of your Tumblr on either Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag LeftistTearsTumblr.
You can even be in the photo if you would like.
Get creative, folks!
Keep it PG-rated.
We like when you make us laugh.
Entertain me!
I mean, I entertain you.
Come on.
Also, be sure to join us this Monday, February 25th, for The Daily Wire Backstage, where we will be talking about everyone's favorite award show.
By which I mean the one no one's gonna watch, but we'll all watch the highlights.
Daily Wire god-king Jeremy Boring, me, Andrew Clavin, the exquirable Michael Knowles, and Alicia Krauss will be here talking culture, Hollywood, and of course, taking your questions as well.
As always, only Daily Wire subscribers get to ask those questions, So make sure to subscribe today.
Also, as we mentioned, when you subscribe, you get to ask me questions in the mailbag, which we will be doing momentarily.
And the annual subscription comes with that Leftist Tears tumbler, which, as you have seen, is so magnificent that it will warm your bones even in the chilliest of days in Leavenworth, Washington.
So go check that out right now.
We have so much good stuff for you.
I mean, like, two additional hours of the show every day later today.
We also have the Sunday special, which is available as a Saturday special for people who subscribe.
I mean, this is a hell of a pitch, guys.
I'm spending a lot of time and effort on it.
So all I can say is you should really go get a subscription.
Just do it, guys.
OK, so we always appreciate your business.
We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So back to the Democratic move toward the radical left.
The new platform for a lot of the Democrats is apparently going to be slavery reparations.
Now, you may be thinking, I know what you're thinking.
What you're thinking is, isn't it 2019?
Doesn't that mean that it's been approximately 153 years since the end of slavery in the United States?
Why are we talking about slavery reparations?
That would be a good question.
The answer is because there's a group of Democrats who have to pander for a percentage of the Democratic voting base in the primaries.
It's that simple.
Because guess what is a thing that's not going to happen?
That.
You know why it's not going to happen?
Because it is utterly impractical.
It is utterly impractical.
And by the way, counterproductive.
Because it is suggesting that the vast majority of disparities in mobility in today's American society are due to an event that ended 150 years ago.
That does not hold water.
It does not.
If you want to say that people who suffered under Jim Crow should get some sort of reparations from the state of Alabama, for example, There's maybe an argument.
Those people are still living.
But if you want to suggest that people ought to get slavery reparations, that's a different story.
Also, here's the question.
How would you even do that?
Who pays it and who receives it?
So for example, Barack Obama, half black, half white.
Does his white half pay reparations to his black half?
How does that work exactly?
If you are one quarter black, do you get slavery reparations?
Also, if you are black but not a descendant of a slave, if you're Kamala Harris, and your father is Jamaican, your mom is Indian, do you get slavery reparations?
I assume not.
Also, shouldn't we make it so that the people who directly benefited from slavery are the ones who foot the bill for it?
Or are we going to make the people who are descendants of people who died in the Civil War fighting slavery pay for the reparations?
One of the broad-based accusations when it comes to slavery and Jim Crow is that the entire United States benefited as a whole from slavery and Jim Crow.
That is obviously and eminently economically untrue.
It is just not true.
There is no fact pattern that suggests whatsoever that the vast majority of white people who are not directly engaged in having slaves on their plantation benefited from slavery.
In fact, it helped make the southern economy agrarian and backwards.
The reason that the North overwhelmed the South was sheer industrial power, and a large part of that is because slavery was not allowed in the North.
Slavery is not actually economically feasible or beneficial.
Forget that it's morally evil.
It is not feasible or economically beneficial.
So the entire basis of reparations, which is the United States broad-scale benefited from slavery, and that white people in the United States broad-scale benefited from slavery, that is simply not true.
And the reason that matters is because, for my family, my great-great grandparents arrived in the United States in like 1907.
That was a solid 50 years after the end of slavery in the United States.
They were Jewish.
They lived in New York when they first got here.
Should they be paying slavery reparations?
Well, the theory is that they lived in a system that had benefited from slavery.
Therefore, they should pay slavery reparations.
But they moved into that system 50 years after slavery ended.
And you're going to be hard-pressed to tell me how my great-great-grandparents benefited from slavery.
Like, really, you're going to have to explain that one to me.
It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
The best you could do, if you're just talking about a fairness argument, if you're talking about a simple racial fairness argument, is find the direct descendants of slaves, find the direct descendants of plantation owners, and have the direct descendants of plantation owners turn over a percentage of their wealth to the direct descendants of slaves.
That's going to be very difficult, and also, it's likely not to be beneficial because there's a very good shot that many of the people who are direct descendants of plantation owners are poorer than the direct descendants of slaves.
Again, once you are far removed from historical events, making it right through reparations is extraordinarily difficult.
As I say, I think there, if you, if someone could make a case about Jim Crow, maybe?
Maybe?
You know, Holocaust reparations make some sense to me because those people are still living, and the German government was responsible.
So, maybe?
But the idea that we're gonna go to slavery reparations now, obviously it's just a pandering move, especially by Elizabeth Warren.
So Kamala Harris was on a radio show, And she was asked about government reparations for black Americans.
And she said if that was necessary to address the legacy of slavery and discrimination.
She affirmed that statement.
She said, we have to be honest that people in this country do not start from the same place or have access to the same opportunities.
I'm serious about taking an approach that would change policies and structures and make real investment in black communities.
Well, that's not slavery reparations.
Presumably, that was a large part of what drove the social welfare state.
I mean, LBJ essentially said that openly, that he saw large swaths of the social welfare state as designed to as designed to address the disparities that existed between black and whites in the United States on economic issues.
Elizabeth Warren also said she supported reparations for black Americans because she's basically just following around every candidate and shouting, yeah, me too.
Her campaign is she follows around Kamala Harris until Kamala Harris says something radical.
And then Elizabeth Warren stands in the background, waves around, yeah, I also agree.
And then Bernie Sanders emerges from the woodwork, it's like, I think that everything should be free.
And Elizabeth Warren creeps up behind him, pops up her pen, she goes, yeah, me too.
That's basically her campaign at this point.
I love this.
The Warren campaign declined to give further details on that backing, but it came amid her calls for the federal government to provide special home-buying assistance to residents of communities that were adversely affected by redlining.
So here's the other problem.
What you're seeing from a lot of Democrats is an attempt to push bad government policy, not direct reparations, actual bad government policy that has resulted in terrible economic woes for the United States on the basis that disparity is discrimination.
So, too few black families were getting home loans.
Therefore, why don't we have a subprime mortgage industry backed by the federal government?
That won't do any harm, will it?
Except for, you know, destroying half the United States economy in 2007-2008.
Except for that, it'll be totally fine.
Pursuing bad policy as some form of reparations is not smart, either for black people or for white people.
And if we are talking about reparations, we have to discuss who gets it, from when, from whom, over what period, and why.
Okay, you know, let's do a little bit of mailbag here.
So, John says, what are your thoughts on Andrew Yang's running for president 2020 on the Democratic ticket?
1,000-month UBI freedom dividend that he proposes can be available for all Americans to either replace or enhance welfare.
Well, I believe that the only purpose of a universal basic income or a negative income tax, as Milton Friedman suggested, is if you're going to replace the entire welfare structure with it.
If basically we just sign a check to everybody every month, below a certain income level, and that's it.
There are no other supplemental programs.
We don't need 70 different welfare programs.
We don't need food stamps.
We don't need any of that stuff.
We just sign you a check, and now it's your job to do with it what you will.
The problem I see is that many of the decisions that are being made with money by people who are on welfare are not great decisions in the first place.
So that is not to suggest they shouldn't have control over their money.
They should.
But if you have control over your money, that means that you also bear the brunt of the decisions that you make with your money.
It's one of the reasons why, for example, there's been a suggestion by Republicans for health savings accounts when it comes to health care for poor people, because there's a fear that a lot of that money will not be used for health savings.
Well, all Brahms chamber music is fantastic.
I love his piano quintets.
I love his piano quartets.
public treasury.
Keegan says, "Howdy Ben.
"Recently you commended a Mozart piece, "Piano Concerto No. 1, Second Movement, "and I've absolutely fallen in love with it.
"Consider me ignorant on classical composers.
"The earliest music in my typical playlist "is the big bands of the early 1900s.
"I have a love for swing music.
"What other composers or pieces would you recommend?" Well, all Brahms chamber music is fantastic.
I love his piano quintets.
I love his piano quartets, the first piano quartet particularly I love.
His violin sonatas are wonderful.
I love to play those as well.
In terms of symphonies, you gotta take the Beethoven symphonies.
Usually people recommend the odd numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 9.
Those are all fantastic.
Number 6 is also great.
That's the Pastoral.
You'll have seen it in Fantasia.
I'm a big fan of Dvorak's 9th Symphony, the New World Symphony.
That one's terrific.
If you like more dissonant music and more modern music, then Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra is one of my personal favorites.
There's so much great classical music.
Everything that Mozart wrote in his late career, I tend to love.
So I love Don Giovanni, I love the Requiem, at least the parts of it that he wrote.
He died in the middle of writing his Requiem.
There's so much great classical music.
Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, his Scottish Symphony, his Violin Concerto.
So it really depends on the form of music you're talking about, but that's enough to get you started.
Also, one of my personal favorites, I've played it on the show before, Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Fantasia on the Theme by Thomas Tallis is, I think, one of the most spiritual pieces of music ever written.
Zachary says, "I'm currently dating a girl from Peru "who's blindsided by the fact that she was illegal "due to her parents never informing her until she was 18.
"We've been fighting to keep her here via a pardon, "and after a year, she only recently has been granted "the permission to get biometrics done.
"My question is two parts.
"Is it morally right to be a Republican "and against illegal immigration and still date her?
"And how could the system of immigration be sped up "while still having a proper vetting process?
"Thanks for all you do." Of course, it's morally right to be a Republican and against illegal immigration and still date this person.
Of course.
I don't see the conflict at all.
You're not saying that she should continue to illegally immigrate.
You're not saying that she should continue to violate America's laws.
And presumably, if you married her and she were rejected for immigration status, then you would find another place to live.
So I don't see a conflict there at all.
What I do see is a system that is wildly broken when a lot of people who were brought here as children and are net benefits to the United States, it takes forever for them to get citizenship, but we're talking blanket amnesty for people who come across the border now.
That makes no sense to me at all.
My wife was an immigrant to the United States.
She came here with her family permanently when she was 12.
She and her family were sort of back and forth between Israel and the United States for many years.
They moved her permanently when she was 12.
She didn't get her citizenship until she was 23, and it was not because she married me.
They had already been married a couple of years.
Her green card finally ran, and so she had 10 years in the United States, and then she got citizenship.
Is that, was that length of that process truly necessary?
Her dad had been working at a major American company for years on end.
He had already gotten his citizenship.
So, what exactly was the holdup?
Our immigration system is broken, and this is just another indicator of it.
Zachary says, a co-worker and I often discuss complex and larger issues about life, the state of the country, etc.
One thing that has recently come up that we can't seem to figure out is automation and AI.
Now, I'm not a big fan of UBI, but in 10 or so years, when electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles become more prevalent, retail stores and fast food restaurants become mostly automated, which causes millions of jobs to evaporate, and not all of those people can be retrained to do something else.
Do you think we will inevitably end up with a UBI, or do you think there's a better solution?
Well, again, people are asking me to predict the future on these sorts of questions.
All I can say is that if the future looks like the past, the answer is no.
If the future looks like the past, then technology will be an aid to the creation of new jobs and new industries.
And we can look at a number of examples from modern American life.
First of all, 150 years ago, did we think there'd be a massive trucking industry?
No, because the car had not yet been invented, so it'd be very difficult to imagine a giant trucking industry.
Could we imagine an entire social media industry?
No, the internet was invented like 25, 30 years ago, or at least became widespread at that point.
We create new jobs and new industries all the time.
Like the Daily Wire, we're going to have probably, what, 100 employees over the next year?
None of those jobs exist in the absence of the internet or television.
None of that exists.
How many people are in the entertainment industry today?
That entertainment industry did not exist.
In other words, with new technology come new opportunities.
And the fact is that technology very often is an aid to job creation, not a killer of jobs.
It kills certain types of jobs always, but it also aids in the creation of new types of jobs, which tend to be, by the way, easier and less backbreaking than the old jobs.
I always find it kind of weird when people are like, I long for the days when my grandfather worked on a union line at Ford and he could afford a house.
You know what's probably a really bad job working on a union line at Ford?
Really, going in at like 8 in the morning, coming home at 5 at night, and all you did was just rivet stuff.
All day.
Is that a job you would take?
And maybe your grandfather thought it was a great job at the time, because that was the kind of job that was around at the time.
But would you rather sit on your fat can in an office, in an air-conditioned office, or would you prefer to be in a hot, sweltering factory riveting stuff 10 hours a day for 35 years?
I find it kind of, there's a certain level of ingratitude in American life that is really kind of galling to me.
This ingratitude that suggests that we really have it hard now, it was better how it used to be.
There are very few aspects of American life that are worse than they used to be, really.
Maybe some of our moral life, but certainly not much of our economic life.
Donnie says, can you explain how illegal immigrants cost America money?
I hear they pay all taxes from some people and just sales tax from others.
Well, they don't pay Income tax, obviously, because their income is not reportable.
They do pay sales tax.
They are a drain on America's resources in terms of public education if they have kids who become citizens and are not eligible for all sorts of government benefits.
Also, if you just come here as an illegal immigrant, you are eligible for certain state benefits.
You're not eligible for any federal benefits, but if you're an illegal immigrant in the state of California, there are certain state benefits that do accrue to you.
Plus, you can be a drain on our emergency rooms, for example.
There's a big debate over whether illegal immigration is of net cost or net benefit to the United States.
The statistics I've seen and tend to believe are the ones that suggest it is a net cost to the United States.
Okay, let's see.
One more question.
One more question.
David says, Hey Ben, my wife and I have five kids, four of whom were adopted out of the foster care.
Adopting has been by far the greatest decision in our lives.
It has lately been on our hearts to have another child.
And my wife and I can't help but feel pain for every victim of abortion.
I mean, what you're doing sounds a lot more important than what I'm doing, frankly.
That's an amazing, amazing thing.
I have nothing but admiration for people who adopt.
It's an incredible, incredible thing.
"that would otherwise have been aborted.
"We know we can't do much, "but we feel if we can give one child a loving home, "that's a good start.
"Thanks for all you do." Well, thanks for all you do.
I mean, what you're doing sounds a lot more important than what I'm doing, frankly.
That's an amazing, amazing thing.
I have nothing but admiration for people who adopt.
It's an incredible, incredible thing.
So, as far as agencies that do this, honestly, there are a lot of Catholic charities that specifically are sort of designed to reach out to folks who are contemplating abortion.
Also, there are pro-life pregnancy centers that you should check out because many of those recommend adoption rather than abortion to women.
Let's see, Ashley, final question.
Who do you think will sit on the Iron Throne?
Ah, now you've asked a question I care about.
So, This is a Game of Thrones question, so if you're not a Game of Thrones fan, it's tough.
So who do I think will sit on the Iron Throne?
Here is how I think the last season of Game of Thrones will go.
I think that Daenerys has been set up for too many seasons as the heroine to actually be the heroine.
I think that she is going to turn to the dark side, and she will go crazy, like her father did, because everyone else in her family has gone crazy.
Maybe she'll have a redeeming moment, like a Darth Vader moment, where it seems like she's going crazy, and at the very end, she stops herself.
But Daenerys is certainly going to die.
The chances of her surviving the series are zero.
I'd be willing to put money on this, really.
I think Jon Snow has already died, so killing him off would be anticlimactic.
I think he probably survives.
I think there's about a 50-50 shot that he's forced to kill Daenerys, especially since in the end of last season they went at it.
So, I have a feeling that this is the way Game of Thrones works.
I have a feeling he might be the one who has to kill her.
I think that there's a very good shot that, well, not a very good shot, a 100% shot that Jaime Lannister has to kill Cersei.
So, not Cersei, not Daenerys.
I think Jon is going to have to recede to the West.
He's been changed too much by his death and his comeback is going to be sort of like Frodo after throwing the ring in the fire.
I think in the end what happens is that Tyrion ends up leading a council of elders and they form a republic in Westeros, which would just suck, man.
No one wants that.
It's not called Game of Republics.
If we wanted to watch that, then we'd watch House of Cards or we'd watch American politics like as it is now, which is more dramatic and far funnier and crazier than Game of Thrones.
If it's a Game of Thrones, honestly, all the best candidates have been killed.
All the smart people died.
You know, this is one of my pet peeves about Game of Thrones.
It really annoys me.
Every person with a brain has been killed in Westeros.
Every single one.
And we keep hearing about how Tyrion, he knows things and he drinks.
He has not made one good decision the entire series.
And somehow he's the wisest guy there.
He has somehow failed as an advisor to Daenerys, as an advisor to Cersei.
As an advisor to who else?
He tried to save Sansa.
That was a giant fail.
Everything Tyrion has done has failed.
He's a garbage advisor.
He's tried to advise Jon Snow.
Giant fail there too.
He has failed like everywhere.
He's a giant fail of a human, Tyrion.
And he killed the only person in Westeros who actually knew how things run, Tywin.
Right?
Tywin was the best character on the show.
He was the only person who thought about things.
Between him and Olenna Tyrell, if they had married each other and they had ruled Westeros, everything is cool.
Sure, it would have been a dictatorship, but at least the trains would have run on time.
But, I mean, my goodness.
It is amazing.
Cersei is an idiot.
I love that her grand plan was, I'm going to blow Bleep up.
My grand plan is I'm going to gather all my enemies in this one place and then blow it up in fully anticlimactic fashion.
By the way, one of the most disappointing moments of the series.
I mean, this is full of spoilers, but too late.
You're here.
her blowing up the sept after they build up natalie dormer who's one of the better characters on the show and they just kill her off honestly the last season had a lot of flaws and and i i'm hoping they can save things i'm hoping they can save things but they've killed off the vast majority of interesting characters so i i just gave you my rundown on what i think happens to everybody I think Sansa ends up on the council with Tyrion.
I think that Jon recedes into the West.
Maybe he goes back and ends up leading the military or something, or he just goes and lives in peace as a farmer.
I think that Arya ends up regaining her innocence at some point, because they're not going to kill her off.
She's too young, but they're not going to allow her to retain her cool assassin ways.
So, I'm preparing for disappointment.
Just like you should in life, because that's just the way life works.
And Game of Thrones.
Alrighty, time for a thing I like and then a thing I hate.
You know what, we're gonna skip the thing I like today because Game of Thrones was the thing I like.
Let's do a thing I hate instead.
The thing I hate instead, everybody is ripping on John Wayne.
No one cares about an interview John Wayne did in 1971.
You know why John Wayne is an American icon?
He's an American icon because of the movies that he made.
That's why he's an American icon.
Do you know anything about Cary Grant's political views?
Do you know anything about Clark Gable's political views?
Do you know anything about Vivian Leigh's political views?
Do you know anything about any of the great movie stars' political views, really, unless they were members of the ...of the Soviet bloc and we're prosecuted in Hollywood and then we make a bunch of movies glamorizing them.
John Wayne is an American icon because he's the most famous actor in Hollywood history, and because he made a lot of fantastic movies, and because the image that Hollywood created of the American cowboy is one of the enduring images of the West.
That is why.
Now there are people calling for his name to be taken off the John Wayne Airport in Orange County because of a 1971 Playboy interview that he did, which showed that he was really out of touch.
Come on.
Come on.
I mean, this is of the same ilk as, let's take George Washington's name off of universities and off of states, and let's get rid of Thomas Jefferson.
Again, the accomplishments of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, slightly more important than the accomplishments of John Wayne.
But I'm really tired of this notion that by valorizing certain aspects of people's personas and personalities, that we are therefore green-lighting every aspect of them.
It's one of my great pet peeves.
People do this with Washington.
Oh, well, if you have a statue of Washington, you're saying it was okay to own slaves.
Really, am I?
Or am I saying it's a good thing that he helped establish the United States and oversaw the Constitutional Convention and was a great president?
When there's a statue of Jefferson, am I really saying I think it was good that he shook Sally Hemings and kept her in a form of sex slavery for years?
No, I'm not saying any of those things.
It turns out human beings are complex.
They have good things, they have bad things, but the part that we build statues to typically is the part of them that is good.
Now the reason statues should come down is if there is no good, right?
So if Saddam Hussein There's a statue of Saddam Hussein.
I challenge you.
What is the good thing Saddam Hussein deserves a statue for?
If I ask you what is the good thing Thomas Jefferson deserves a statue for, or John Wayne, or George Washington, or any of these folks, I think that the answer is pretty obvious.
This is why I think that the argument over Confederate statues is more of an interesting one than the one over John Wayne.
You can make the case that Confederate statues should not exist by dint of the fact that there is nothing good that these folks stood for.
They were standing for slavery.
They were literally fighting for slavery.
I think they should be left up as a monument to America's past.
I think that not to honor them, but to remind us that people can do evil things.
And justify it to themselves for decades at a time.
So I'm not even a fan of tearing down, like, Lenin statues or Saddam Hussein statues.
I think that stuff should be left up as a monument to human evil.
But, with that said, the John Wayne airport is not a monument to human evil.
It's a monument to a guy who was in some of the best movies in American history, it's a monument to the guy from True Grit, and she wore a yellow rose, and like, just...
Get over yourselves.
Honest to God, people.
If these are your big problems, John Wayne can't be— We found an interview from a dead guy 50 years ago and we're so mad.
Find some new problems.
Find some new problems.
Alrighty.
We'll be back a little bit later today with two additional hours of The Ben Shapiro Show.
That's why you should subscribe.
Otherwise, we will 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 Karomina.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Production assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
▲
Export Selection