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March 6, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

50:39

Evil Isn’t A Sickness | The Ben Shapiro Show Ep. 731

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	Michael Jackson's legacy crumbles under charges of pedophilia, illegal immigration surges, and Democrats ignore anti-Semitism once again to cover for the fresh faces.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	We have a lot to get to today.
	We're going to jump right in in just a second.
	First, let us talk about your rights.
	When the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was make sacred the rights of the individual to share ideas without limitation by government.
	The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech and their own person.
	With force.
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	Alrighty, well we have a lot to get to today in terms of the news, but there's been a cultural shift that's been happening, a cultural moment that's been happening surrounding Michael Jackson.
	It's way past due, and it is testament to the innate ability of human beings to cover for people that they consider talented.
	There's something in psychology called the halo effect.
	The halo effect essentially suggests that if you think somebody is good at one thing, it means you think they are good at all things.
	So you tend to think that beautiful people are smart.
	You tend to think that people who are smart at one thing are smart at all the things.
	You tend to think that rich people know what they're doing when it comes to everything.
	That's just a normal human tendency.
	We tend to make snap judgments about people, and then we take those judgments too far, and we generalize more broadly.
	Well, two things are true of Michael Jackson.
	Immensely talented human being, evil pedophile, right?
	Those two things are true of Michael Jackson, at least if the allegations are to be believed, which all evidence suggests they should be.
	And people are having a really tough time connecting those two.
	They're having a really tough time overcoming the cognitive dissonance of, I like Michael Jackson's music, and I was a big fan of his when I was 10, with Michael Jackson was an evil human being who preyed upon children.
	Now, both of those things can be true.
	And this new documentary, Leaving Neverland on HBO, which I've been watching, is indeed extraordinarily upsetting.
	It demonstrates how depraved Michael Jackson was.
	There's a piece in National Review by Kyle Smith talking about this.
	He says, debuting on March 3rd and 4th after a previous series of screening at the Sundance Film Festival, this enraging film by Dan Reed inspired a lawsuit against the Pay Cable channel from Jackson's estate, which desperately wants people not to see a story that may significantly diminish the value of his brand.
	It's a wonder there's any brand left to defend, given that four men have now made detailed, credible claims that Jackson sexually abused them as minors over extended periods of time.
	James Safechuck, a child actor, first met Jackson at nine while filming a famous 1988 Pepsi commercial in which he's excitedly examining Jackson's dressing room when the singer pops in.
	The commercial, Safechuck says, genuinely captured his first glimpse of the celebrity.
	Around the same time, Wade Robeson, then five, met Jackson after putting on a dazzling performance in a dance contest In Australia, causing the singer to bring the boy on stage for concerts and invite him to show his moves in front of a huge crowd.
	When the Australian tour wound down, Jackson invited the boy to look him up in LA sometime.
	Driven by his mother, Joy, the family managed to make contact with Jackson on vacation when the boy was seven.
	Jackson immediately invited the Robeson family to stay at his huge ranch at Neverland.
	Wade and his 10-year-old sister were allowed to sleep in Jackson's room.
	Days later, Jackson talked the family into allowing Wade to stay behind with him while the rest of the family went to the Grand Canyon.
	You and I were brought together by God, Robeson recalls Jackson, saying we were meant to be together.
	And this is us showing each other that we love each other.
	This is how we show our love.
	Jackson then fondled the boy and guided the child to his own genitals.
	And Jackson initiated oral sex and guided the boy to follow suit.
	Robeson recalls Jackson telling him other people are ignorant and they're stupid.
	They never understand.
	If they ever found out what we were doing, we'd be pulled apart.
	He and I would go to jail for the rest of our lives.
	Later, at Jackson's coaxing, after Jackson called Wade every day for two years and kept him on the phone for up to seven hours at a time, Joyce simply moved with Wade and her daughter from Australia to SoCal, leaving her husband and other son behind, a move that ultimately destroyed the family.
	Wade's father would later commit suicide.
	Safechuck's story follows a similar pattern.
	He recalls being lured quickly into Jackson's bed at age 10.
	His starstruck mother Stephanie was disarmed by Jackson's childlike demeanor and began thinking of the pop star as her own son.
	Save Chuck's memories of Jackson's sexual abuse are familiar to Robeson's.
	Jackson staged a mock wedding ceremony, Robeson recalls, in which the singer presented the boy with a ring lined with diamonds.
	He would reward me with jewelry for doing sexual acts for him.
	You'll remember that in 1995, he settled a civil suit for a reported $23 million after being accused of sexual abuse by Jordan Chandler, who was arrested in 2003, again, on charges of serially molesting a 13-year-old named Gavin Arvizo, a cancer-stricken boy he had met through a charity.
	During his criminal trial, Jackson urged both Safechuck and Robeson, now adults, to testify he had done nothing inappropriate with them.
	Safechuck simply declined, and in his silence, he incurred Jackson's wrath.
	He threatened me with his lawyers and said I had perjured myself years ago, he recalls.
	The lawyers would get me, he says Jackson told him.
	At the same time, Robeson recalls he was still somewhat attached to Jackson.
	He panicked at the thought of the singer in prison and what might happen to him there.
	Perhaps Jackson would even be murdered behind bars, he thought.
	So he lied, offering false testimony that Jackson had not done anything sexual to him.
	For Gavin, I wish I was a place where I could tell the truth and be a comrade with him, Robeson says now.
	I just wasn't ready.
	His testimony and that of actor Macaulay Culkin, another man who'd spent a lot of time with Jackson as a boy, probably swayed the jury.
	He was acquitted on all counts with Jackson in 2005 and died, of course, in 2009.
	The final 45 minutes or so of the documentary does delve into the depression and torment as well as that of their mothers, each of whom searches her soul at excruciating length.
	Well, there are a bunch of lessons to be learned here.
	Well, some of those lessons include, again, our capacity for cognitive dissonance, blinding us to the reality about human beings.
	Second, the worship of celebrity that we have in our society.
	The rise of a television and movie culture, the rise of an entertainment culture that puts celebrities before our faces all the time makes us think that we know celebrities.
	It used to be that people who were very famous felt distant and far off.
	Now people who are very famous feel very close to us.
	And so it's very difficult for us to believe that those people could actually be evil and participating in acts of evil.
	That sort of stuff is something that we all ought to keep in mind, whether we are talking politics or entertainment.
	When we're engaging with the public world, it is deeply important for us to recognize that human beings are still human beings, even if they are rich, powerful, and famous.
	And maybe even more so then, because fame and wealth And power.
	These things allow people to gratify their worst urges and lead other people to basically give them the okay to do so.
	Thinking, of course, that the person wouldn't be rich, powerful, and famous unless they were also morally good.
	Now, this also has raised some serious issues about pedophilia itself.
	And it demonstrates what we have lost as a society when we decided that biological urges on any level are incentive to, are basically an excuse to do what we want.
	We have a very weird divide in the Western psyche right now when it comes to biological urges.
	On the one hand, we believe that biological urges give us moral impetus to do the things that we want to do.
	So if you want to have sex before marriage, you have a biological impetus to have sex before marriage.
	That means it's okay to have sex before marriage.
	At the same time, there are obvious biological urges that people don't want to give the go-ahead to because they're in fact evil.
	So if a man has a biological urge to rape a woman, Then we say, no, you're not allowed to do that.
	You are evil.
	Your biological urge does not overcome.
	And yet it's that broad blanket statement that biological urges are somehow an excuse.
	That in the Lady Gaga morality, born this way is somehow an excuse for behave this way.
	That's deeply troubling.
	Now again, I'm not comparing homosexuality to pedophilia because they are completely not the same thing.
	One is a consenting relationship between two adults and another is the exploitation of a child.
	The point that I'm making Is that as a general rule, a society that fails to draw moral lines around things like consent, and instead draws moral lines around things like biological drive or biological urge, is a society that is going to fall apart at the seams.
	And it seems that we are moving in that direction.
	That we have failed to allow morality to guide our views of personal behavior.
	And once we don't start setting human limits to the biological urges that we have, we get ourselves in some very serious trouble.
	The reason I'm bringing this up is there's a column from Dahlia Lithwick, who is a legal analyst, very famous legal analyst actually, writing over at Slate.com, in which she has a piece called, Is Pedophilia a Crime or an Illness?
	We've Never Quite Known Whether Child Molesters Should Be Treated as Sick People or Punished as Criminals.
	She says, "On Sunday, HBO premieres Finding Neverland.
	Again, and for all the wrong reasons, we can't take our eyes off Michael Jackson.
	Whether or not the allegations are substantiated, the question is in the air.
	Is pedophilia a disease to be treated or a crime to be punished?
	Are people who seduce minors sick or evil?
	Our current legal and medical systems blur both views.
	We call for the most draconian punishments, life imprisonment, castration, permanent exile, precisely because we view these acts as morally heinous, yet also driven by uncontrollable biological urges." If sex with children is truly the product of freely made moral decisions, then we should deal with it through the criminal justice system.
	But if it is a genetically overdetermined impulse, an uncontrollable urge nestled in our DNA, then punishing pedophiles must be morally wrong, is what Dahlia Lithwick writes.
	As science and culture increasingly medicalizes bad behavior, finding a neurological component to everything from alcoholism to youth violence, we run the parallel risks of either absolving everyone for everything or punishing criminals who are no guiltier than cancer patients.
	What science has revealed, says Lithwick, about the moral medical roots of pedophiles is, of course, ambiguous.
	What is clear is that the binary choice laid out above is an oversimplification.
	The medical community, which started to view pedophilia as a disease rather than a crime in the 19th century, has amassed evidence that at least some violent and antisocial behaviors have genetic links and signposts.
	Researchers have been unable to isolate a biological cause for pedophilia or even to agree on a personality profile, not to mention the terrific confusion within the medical community in defining what this disease really involves.
	Until a few years ago, for example, the DSM-IV, the Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defined pedophilia as a disease only if the sufferer's fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
	In other words, a non-impaired remorseless pedophile is apparently perfectly healthy.
	By the way, it is worth noting that that is exactly the same language that the DSM-5 now uses with regard to transgenderism.
	They suggest that transgenderism is not, in fact, a mental disorder unless it causes clinically significant distress or impairment.
	So what we have been doing is medicalizing.
	And again, transgenderism is not the same as pedophilia.
	Transgenderism is an adult making a decision, presumably, to behave in a certain way that does not impact other people in violation of their consent.
	Pedophilia is, of course, the exploitation of children.
	I keep repeating this because there are going to be people who don't understand the argument that I'm making and seek to conflate all of these things.
	They are not the same.
	Homosexuality is not the same as pedophilia, is not the same as transgenderism.
	Pedophilia is something apart because it is morally evil.
	Because it is morally evil.
	But the point that I'm making is that when we medicalize evil, then we also run into the danger of suggesting that human behavior is not controllable and that we are not responsible for our actions.
	And that is the death of a civilization.
	I'll talk about that in just a second.
	But first, folks, I've had it with Congress.
	The folks in Congress right now, they are lunatics.
	Plus, the executive branch is growing out of control.
	You know, the Constitution was designed to prevent the federal government from taking all of our freedom and from using that freedom against us.
	Well, the federal government has overgrown all of its boundaries, which is why we need to restore the original bargain of the Constitution, the checks and balances that were originally established to prevent this sort of domination of our freedom.
	This is why I'm a big believer in calling a convention of states where we the people can propose amendments.
	Yes, amendments.
	We've got to stop these idiots before it's too late.
	The only way to do that is to restore the greatest ideology ever created, the constitutional ideology of the Founding Fathers.
	Can you imagine the looks on the faces of the people in the federal government when they realize that their power has been restricted?
	Calling a Convention of States is the only way to get the job done.
	There are already 3.8 million people with us on this, more every day.
	So join me and my friend Mark Meckler.
	Go to conventionofstates.com/ben and sign the petition today.
	That is conventionofstates.com/ben.
	They have tremendous amounts of support.
	You should join them.
	There are already 3.8 million people using conventionofstates.com.
	Go check them out, conventionofstates.com/ben.
	The reason that I bring up the Dahlia Lithwick column is because she suggests this dichotomy, and the dichotomy is basically correct.
	She says it's oversimplified, but it really is not.
	It's basically right.
	She suggests that if sex with children is truly the product of freely made moral choices, We should deal with it through the criminal justice system.
	If it is genetically over-determined impulse and uncontrollable urge, then we can't punish pedophiles.
	But here is the point.
	The belief in a free-functioning, free society has to be that reasonable human beings have the capacity to overcome their biological instincts.
	That human beings have the capacity to overcome their tribal affinities.
	That human beings have the capacity to overcome their urges.
	If we don't believe that, we cannot have a republic.
	And here is where psychology shades into politics.
	We are now living in a world in which we are told that we don't control our own behavior.
	That our behavior is controlled by impersonal forces far beyond us.
	That there is institutional racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia.
	That controls your life.
	That it is the broad-based economics of the American system that have determined the future of your life.
	None of that is true.
	That your tribal affinity, that your membership in a particular racial clan, that that determines how you will be treated and how the rest of your life is laid out for you.
	None of that is true.
	That your choices are not your own.
	Once you believe your choices are not your own, you end up justifying all sorts of evil behavior.
	Once you believe that choices cannot be freely made in contravention of biology and tribal affinity, it's very difficult to have a functioning republic.
	And this is why, in the end, I have an entire book coming out about the subject.
	The bargain between Jerusalem and Athens, between religion and reason, is deeply necessary.
	We'll talk about more of this in just a second.
	So, I have a new book coming out.
	It's called The Right Side of History.
	It comes out in a couple of weeks.
	And the central contention that the book makes is that all of human life is based on a certain number of premises that we have to assume.
	That all of Western civilization is based on certain things that we take for granted.
	And many of those things that we take for granted are things that we actually get from religious premises.
	So we all take for granted Greek reason, right?
	The idea that we can reason our way in and out of problems.
	Science is an outgrowth of this belief in human reason and our capacity to reason.
	But even that capacity for reason is based on even deeper roots.
	That capacity for reason is based on the idea that you are a free individual capable of exercising a logic that exists outside of you.
	That you are a free individual, not completely bound down by biology, capable of making choices.
	That you are not just a cluster of meat wandering through the universe, reacting to the environment around you.
	You know, there's a famous philosopher named Baruch Spinoza, and Spinoza, Benedict Spinoza, he suggested that basically human beings were a stone that had been cast by fate, and that we thought that we had willed our own motion, but basically we didn't.
	We're just along for the ride.
	All of Western civilization is based on the opposite of that.
	The idea that you do will your own action, that you have the capacity to will your own action.
	And in politics, that you are in control of the decisions that you make.
	And that in your personal life, you are in control of the decisions that you make.
	That responsibility is the key to a fruitful exchange.
	That you can't reason with people who don't believe they're responsible for their own actions.
	That reason itself is undermined by the belief that human beings are not freely capable of making choices.
	That is the conundrum we find ourselves in.
	We've made excuses for ourselves as a society, blaming all of our activities on outside forces or internal forces.
	But the freer you think of yourself, the more you think of yourself as a free actor, acting in a free country, the more responsible you're going to be, the better you're going to be, because the more responsible you are for your own actions.
	Right now, we have a society that is dedicated to removing responsibility from people, and then, simultaneously, in fits and starts, we will try to restore responsibility for certain people.
	We'll try to go back and fill in the gaps and explain why Michael Jackson should be abhorred, even though we've undercut a lot of the rationale for abhorring Michael Jackson.
	Michael Jackson should be abhorred.
	He participated in evil activity.
	He was a free adult.
	One of the freest people on earth, given his wealth and his fame.
	And he chose to do evil things.
	And his biological urge was not enough to excuse that.
	And the same thing is true for all of us living in the freest country in the history of the world.
	Now, I'm not talking that we're all pedophiles, but we all make decisions on a daily basis for which we are responsible.
	And looking to society, or looking to biological urges, or looking to anything else to blame for our own behavior is a deep problem for a civilization that hopes to continue functioning.
	If you want a democracy, if you want a republic, you have to believe that you are a free actor capable of acting morally.
	Both of those elements.
	You are free, you are capable of making decisions, and you are capable of acting in a moral fashion.
	Now again, I am not saying that... I'm not even talking about which behavior is moral and which behavior is immoral from a generic secular sense.
	Because I think that we can obviously make distinctions between pedophilia and all other sorts of crime.
	Or all other sorts of behavior.
	With that said, the generalized point, which is that we're going to have to stop pathologizing evil, that it can be true that you have a pathology toward doing something bad, but that you still have the capacity to overcome, that is the essence of Western civilization.
	And that is being ripped away from us.
	The only reason we're even having this conversation about whether Michael Jackson should have been basically treated as an ill person or as an evil person is because we have lost the capacity to see evil for what it is.
	Choices freely made by human beings capable of making those choices in contravention of their own biology.
	It used to be that you'd be able to say, yes, both.
	Yes, both.
	He's a sick person with a drive toward doing sick things.
	And also, he's an adult capable of overcoming that.
	But once we decide that we're not in control of our own actions, it's very difficult to make the case for Western civilization, for individualism.
	It's very difficult to make the case for human rights, frankly, because human rights, again, are based on this idea that we are each individuals created in the image of God, and that we have the capacity to make decisions freely and of our own will.
	You want to restore a system where people believe in right and wrong?
	And where we are responsible for one another?
	And where we don't hurt each other?
	We're gonna have to go back to a system where we assume that your decisions are your own, and not the product of some other evolutionary force, or some product of some other environmental force beyond your control.
	Now, again, that's not to say there aren't biological forces driving us.
	There are.
	That's not to say there aren't environmental forces that put pressures on us.
	There are.
	The question is how we shape those environmental forces to get them off our back.
	But the goal has to be shaping those environmental forces to get them off our back, to maximize human freedom, to maximize the human capacity, because the rights, the freedom, they come with duties.
	You cannot have duties without rights, and you cannot have rights without duties.
	And we as a society have decided to bifurcate the two.
	We want the rights without the duties, or we want the duties without the rights.
	You can't have it both ways.
	Freedom comes with responsibility.
	Not because we want you to be responsible, but because it simply does.
	You cannot be a free person if you are incapable of making choices.
	Freedom comes with your capacity and responsibility to choose.
	All righty, meanwhile, on a more sort of political note, the illegal immigration surge at the border is continuing.
	Now the media have finally decided to report on it.
	Amazing how for two months they said nothing about illegal immigration surging at the border during the government shutdown and while President Trump was pushing Democrats to compromise over immigration.
	Pretty incredible.
	But now they're reporting on it, so better late than never, I suppose.
	The New York Times has a big piece today called Border Patrol Facilities Put Detainees With Medical Conditions At Risk, talking about the underfunding of Border Patrol.
	They point out that Border Patrol simply does not have the resources to deal with this massive influx of migrants.
	They say an average of 2,200 migrants a day are now crossing the nation's 1,900-mile border with Mexico, many after grueling journeys that leave them injured, sick, or badly dehydrated.
	Yet most of the nation's customs and border protection facilities along the border lack sufficient accommodations, staffing, or procedures to thoroughly assess health needs or provide more than basic emergency care, a situation that has led to dangerous medical oversights.
	I don't remember the New York Times reporting this while the entire Democratic Party talked about disbanding ICE and underfunding CBD.
	I don't remember that at all.
	But now I guess the media is catching on.
	Also the media are reporting that a record number of families are now crossing the border.
	This is according to the Washington Post.
	They're reporting that in February alone, U.S.
	authorities detained more than 70,000 migrants, up from 58,000 in January.
	Weird.
	Weird that they didn't report any of this stuff until, you know, after the government shutdown ends and Trump declares a national emergency.
	How weird.
	Once again showing that the media's coverage of these issues tends to have a rather large impact on our public discourse.
	Okay, coming up in just a second, I want to talk about the Democrats and intersectionality and their continued push to avoid the consequences of their own willingness to support anti-Semitism.
	We'll get into that in just one second.
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	Okay, meanwhile, The Democrats are struggling again with their anti-Semitism, their willingness to okay anti-Semitism so long as it comes from the intersectional faces.
	The real reason they're okay with this anti-Semitic nonsense, the real reason that they are now backing out on condemning anti-Semitism is because they feel that the people who are pushing the anti-Semitism are the most important members of their party.
	Nancy Pelosi just went up against Ilhan Omar and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib and Nancy Pelosi came up on the losing end.
	That's an amazing thing.
	Now, the reason for that is that Nancy Pelosi was only Speaker of the House by a couple of votes in the last in the last Speaker vote.
	All it would take is for a couple of these Democrats to drop out and suddenly she wouldn't be Speaker of the House anymore.
	So she knows where her bread is buttered.
	She can't afford to alienate the radical wing of the Democratic Party, which now effectively controls the Democratic Party.
	Also, the Democratic Party believes that their pathway to victory lies not in pure socialism, but in a socialistic, a democratic socialistic Governmental policy combined with racial appeals, overtly racial appeals.
	Who better to push that than fresh face of the Democratic Congress, AOC.
	So Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, for example, she did an interview with Spectrum News in New York and she talked about the Green New Deal.
	This is the kind of intersectional socialism that Democrats are looking for.
	One of the things that some folks give pushback is they're saying, why are you talking about racism when it comes to the environment?
	And they said racism has nothing to do with environmentalism.
	And my immediate retort is look at Flint, look at Katrina, look at Hurricane Maria.
	It's not as though income inequality or social injustice or racism are these separated out issues that you just legislate to address those things and fix.
	You can't pass a law to just end income inequality.
	You address it in every issue, every major systemic issue.
	Okay, so the basic appeal here is that socialism may not be all that appealing for minorities, but if you overtly appeal to minorities with socialism, then maybe you'll be okay.
	The Democratic Party wants to embrace this.
	They are into embracing this.
	This is the new coalition.
	One of the people who is pushing that idea is a center-left Democratic economist named Brad DeLong.
	He gave an interview to Vox in which DeLong argues, this is according to Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, that it's time for centrists like him to make peace with the left.
	The idea is that he has to make peace with the open socialists like AOC because they're going to be the winning coalition that allow the neoliberals to sort of drive the boat.
	That if Nancy Pelosi can make peace with AOC, if Nancy Pelosi can make peace with Ilhan Omar, then they can create a coalition that is durable and allows them to get done what they need to get done.
	It's easier, in other words, to sort of hold back AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar than it is to make peace with people on the right.
	And so, you make peace with the people on the left, including the open anti-Semites and the people who cover for them.
	This is the basic notion that many on the left have been embracing.
	DeLong notes that on one issue from another, from health care to climate change, centrist-minded Democrats have modulated the party's priorities in hopes of striking a political deal with the center-right.
	But that deal has never been forthcoming because there's no functional center-right in U.S.
	politics.
	In other words, DeLong says, we can't make a deal with moderate Republicans.
	There are no moderate Republicans.
	Let's make a deal with our hard left.
	Now, Republicans and conservatives would see this in the opposite way.
	They would say, listen, you guys on the left, you moved radically left in the last 10 years.
	And we can't make a deal with you because you moved radically left in the last 10 years, and then castigated us as racist bigots, sexists, and homophobes.
	But according to the left, they now have to make, according to sort of the mainstream Democratic Party, easier for Nancy Pelosi to kowtow, to bow down, to bow the knee before AOC, than for Nancy Pelosi to create some sort of centrist coalition.
	Now, the problem for Democrats is going to come when it turns out that AOC is driving the boat into an iceberg, when it turns out that the American people are not all that fond of AOC's agenda.
	Nancy Pelosi is sort of hoping to have it both ways.
	You use AOC to gin up the base, and then when it comes time for a national election, then you appeal to the center of the country.
	But the base is out of her control, and that is what the last week and a half have proved.
	The last week and a half have proved that the base is not in Nancy Pelosi's control, and that even the most vile elements of the Democratic base will be bowed to by Nancy Pelosi.
	It's truly incredible.
	So, for example, you'll recall that Ilhan Omar is a vicious anti-Semite who's been using anti-Semitic language for years on end.
	She has anti-Semitic views about Israel.
	She really doesn't believe that Israel ought to exist.
	She doesn't, which, by the way, is an anti-Semitic view.
	If you disagree with policies of Israel, then that is one thing.
	I disagree with many policies of Israel.
	I've discussed some of them on the program.
	But, if you believe that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state, But every Muslim country has a right to exist as a Muslim state.
	If you believe that the only Jewish state on planet Earth does not have a right to exist, then you are, in fact, engaging in anti-Semitism.
	And the State Department even says as much.
	This is the perspective of Rashida Tlaib.
	It's the perspective of Ilhan Omar.
	And it is probably the perspective of AOC, who makes overtures to Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
	And by the way, makes overtures also to people who are apparently open terror supporters, not just Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party, who AOC paid homage to just a couple of weeks ago.
	But also, she just retweeted Yousef Muneir, who's the head of a Palestinian rights organization, Who also happens to be a terror organization sympathizer, is according to the Jerusalem Post.
	In a tweet first discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Ocasio-Cortez wrote, quote, She did that in retweeting and responding to a tweet by Yusuf Muneer, the executive director of the U.S.
	hubbub over an untrue mischaracterization that i was threatening primaries based on pro-ice votes yet there seems to be no problem at all with a zero tolerance stance for simply asking about u.s foreign policy she did that in retweeting and responding to a tweet by yusuf munair the executive director of the u.s center for palestinian rights in his tweet he wrote a pack activist tells new york times the lobby is coming for congresswomen aoc rashida talib and ilhan omar okay And she is retweeting this guy.
	Well, Munayer has condoned the efforts of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an actual terror group, on his Twitter feed before, including retweeting a PFLP announcement of a terror attack in Jerusalem on June 16, 2017.
	In another tweet from July 2014, Munaya reminded his followers that the military wings of PFLP and other terrorist organizations, not just Hamas, are all fighting against Israel in this war.
	The AOC has no problem tweeting that out.
	Now, it is hilarious to watch as everybody on the left points out every time Steve King retweets a white nationalist, which he does far too often, and it's gross.
	You know what happened to Steve King for doing all that stuff?
	He lost his committee assignments.
	AOC is retweeting terrorist sympathizers?
	No problem.
	The left is caving into all of this.
	Because I'm going to tell you, I mean, the process of the cave-in was truly astonishing.
	I'll explain it in just a second.
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	So the Democrats have cut this devil's bargain with the anti-Semites in their base.
	I mean, it is that simple.
	And it's the same Democrats who have criticized President Trump, rightly, for kowtowing and winking and nodding at the alt-right in 2016.
	It was correct that it was gross for Trump to do that in 2016.
	I criticized it at the time.
	It was disgusting.
	I have criticized Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, for making common cause with the Kahanists.
	He has now brought into his coalition members of the former party of Mayor Kahana.
	Who are legitimately extremists who have celebrated terrorist incidents like the Baruch Goldstein massacre.
	Netanyahu brought them into his coalition.
	That's disgusting.
	He should never have done that.
	It's really gross.
	The Democrats are doing the exact same thing right now.
	The Democrats are bringing into their coalition and championing and putting them on the cover of Rolling Stone people who are in favor of terrorist groups or at least have spoken out in defense of terrorist groups.
	Remember, Ilhan Omar actually voted against, she voted against a proposal that would have punished ISIS members more harshly.
	She has encouraged ISIS members in Minnesota not to be treated with great harshness by the law.
	She actually wrote an appeal on behalf of, I believe, a former ISIS member to a Minnesota judge.
	She has laughed and joked about Hamas and Hezbollah.
	They've hobnobbed with Linda Sarsour, who's an active terrorist supporter.
	I mean, she's an actual supporter of terrorists before, or at least prior terrorists.
	Linda Sarsour, speaking out, by the way, against Nancy Pelosi.
	She's a noted anti-Semite with strong ties to the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan.
	Sarsour posted comments in a Facebook missive against Nancy Pelosi.
	She said, So Linda Sarsour and AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, these are the new leaders of the Democratic Party.
	work of powerful white men.
	God forbid the men are upset.
	No worries.
	Nancy to the rescue to stroke their egos.
	So Linda Sarsour and AOC and Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, these are the new leaders of the Democratic Party.
	And Nancy Pelosi is just hanging on for dear life, hoping that she can control the alligator a little bit.
	That's all she's hoping.
	She's riding the back of this alligator, hoping that it eats her last.
	It will not eat her last, by the way.
	So what exactly are the Democrats doing about the open anti-Semitism inside their own party?
	Here's how this works.
	So in the last couple of days, there were calls for Democrats to censure Rashida Tlaib.
	Not Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar.
	For them to put out a congressional resolution naming Ilhan Omar because of her three prior anti-Semitic comments in six weeks.
	Instead, Democrats said, you know what we'll do?
	We'll put out a generic resolution.
	A generic resolution that condemns antisemitism just generally.
	Which, of course, is a way of avoiding the actual reason why the resolution is being put forth in the first place.
	It's like putting forth a resolution on the evils of white nationalism without mentioning Steve King right after Steve King's comments.
	Like, we all know why we're doing this, don't we?
	But that was too much.
	That was too much.
	The base of the Democratic Party, they decided we can't do that even.
	The CBC protested.
	Ilhan Omar protested.
	AOC protested.
	So then the Democrats decided, you know what, we're gonna have to table this thing.
	Ilhan Omar's name won't go in it.
	But now, now we are going to change the language of the bill to include language condemning anti-Muslim bias.
	Now listen, you want to pass another resolution condemning anti-Muslim bias based on, you know, like an inciting incident?
	Go for it.
	But this entire incident was based on Ilhan Omar being an anti-Semite.
	So Ilhan Omar's an anti-Semite.
	And then presumably some people react to Ilhan Omar with Islamophobia, not members of Congress, because you can't name any who have done that.
	But some randos in West Virginia?
	And so we get a congressional resolution condemning both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia?
	Without mentioning Ilhan Omar, the inciting reason for this entire incident?
	It's absurdity on its face.
	And it is a way of watering this down so it doesn't look like a condemnation of Ilhan Omar, it looks like a defense of Ilhan Omar.
	The Democratic Party is doing this because they know where their bread is buttered.
	Ilhan Omar butters their bread.
	AOC butters their bread.
	Rashida Tlaib butters their bread.
	This is the decision that they have made.
	And you can tell this from leading members of the Democratic Coalition.
	So, Eliot Engel is a Jewish congressperson from New York.
	He had condemned Ilhan Omar's comments as anti-Semitic, because they are in fact anti-Semitic.
	Then he was asked, should Ilhan Omar be stripped of her Foreign Affairs Committee assignment?
	First of all, there's no reason she should be on Foreign Affairs anyway.
	It's a very prestigious committee assignment.
	She knows nothing about foreign policy.
	Her foreign policy positions are absurd on their face.
	She's in favor of Nicolas Maduro basically remaining as the dictator of Venezuela.
	She's a dangerous ignoramus.
	And Eliot Engel won't even say that she should be ousted from Foreign Affairs.
	You're the chairman of a really important committee, right?
	Foreign Affairs.
	This is the center of a lot.
	And it's certainly the center of this discussion about Israel.
	At what point do you say to her, Congresswoman Omar, look, you're not on this committee anymore.
	You strip her of your seat.
	Are you close to that or at that point?
	No, I'm not close to it.
	First of all, it's not up to me.
	This is done by the leadership.
	I don't know that that would do anything except exacerbate the situation even more.
	I'm looking to get rid of anti-Semitism, not looking to punish anybody.
	You're going to have to explain, Representative Engel, how you get rid of anti-Semitism without punishing anti-Semites.
	You're gonna have to explain how that works.
	This really pathetic patting Ilhan Omar on the head.
	Ilhan Omar is how old?
	40 years old, I believe?
	Ilhan Omar?
	When was she born?
	Let's see.
	Ilhan Omar age.
	She is 37 years old.
	She is two years older than I am.
	She is twice married.
	She was a fellow at the University of Minnesota.
	She is not an ignoramus.
	She is not stupid.
	She is not a fool.
	And yet the Democrats, because they don't want to acknowledge that they are okaying antisemitism in their own ranks, have decided basically, you know what, it turns out that she's just a, she's a poor, ignorant woman who doesn't know anything.
	If anybody ever said that about Ilhan Omar on the other side, that she is, she's just ignorant of basic things about, about life and about antisemitism and about religious bigotry, you know, because she's an ignoramus.
	Then they'd immediately be accused of not taking her seriously enough.
	I think she's ignorant because I think that she's ignorant about Venezuela.
	Like, I don't think she knows things about Venezuela, but she's certainly not ignorant about anti-Semitism.
	For years, members of the Minnesota Jewish community have been approaching Ilhan Omar, reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and talking to her about anti-Semitism, and she has not cared one iota.
	This is what she believes.
	The Democratic Party has made its peace with the radicals in their base.
	They are quickly becoming the UK Labour Party.
	In a second, we're going to talk about how the media continues to cover for this, because it's quite insane.
	So, Dana Milbank is a columnist over at the Washington Post.
	Now, the Washington Post has been awful about all of this.
	The Washington Post has run a bevy of pieces in full-throated defence of Ilhan Omar.
	Why?
	Because the Washington Post are the Democratic leadership.
	They are the same.
	And so they have to pretend that Ilhan Omar isn't an anti-Semite.
	In fact, she's speaking the truth.
	Dana Milbank was asked specifically about the Democratic treatment of Ilhan Omar.
	He said, listen, it's pretty obvious that Democrats hold themselves to a higher standard with regard to Ilhan Omar.
	Uh-huh, sure.
	Do you think the Democrats are holding her to a higher standard than Republicans have been holding themselves?
	I think that's probably also true on Me Too and other things.
	The question is, should Democrats do the same thing Republicans have been doing, sort of circle the wagons and basically look the other way because they're a member of the tribe?
	And I think that it's probably worthwhile to hold yourself to a higher standard.
	Okay, there is no higher standard.
	Again, they took an original resolution that would have included a condemnation of Ilhan Omar, they stripped out her name, and then they added anti-Islam sentiment to an actual resolution about anti-Semitism.
	Which is astonishing.
	It's astonishing.
	And yet, we're being told by the media they hold themselves to a higher standard.
	Yeah, sure.
	Right.
	Uh-huh.
	I don't remember Steve King being featured on the cover of Rolling Stone with Speaker Paul Ryan, by the way.
	Like, I don't remember that happening.
	Pretty amazing stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, One of the great irritants for Republicans at this point has to be the fact that while Democrats are running as far as they can to the left, Republicans seem to be following them to the left.
	Apparently, Republicans are now advancing paid leave.
	Now, I understand that there are some lawmakers on the right who are big fans of paid parental leave, and that includes senators with whom I am very friendly.
	The bills would supposedly provide a government-backed paid parental leave Spurred in part by activism from Ivanka Trump, according to Roll Call, a growing number of Republicans have embraced arguments that it would improve maternal and fetal health, provide income stability for families, and strengthen caregivers' connection to the workforce.
	Paid family leave would allow the GOP to showcase its claim to uphold family values while still appealing to working-class voters whose sense of economic instability helped propel Trump to victory in 2016.
	Now forcing businesses to either pay for paid family leave or forcing taxpayers to take on the burden of paid family leave is obviously a new government entitlement.
	Republicans are pushing this at the same time that the debt is being blown out.
	I'm old enough to remember when Republicans pretended to care about the debt.
	I'm old enough to remember when conservatives pretended to care about the deficit.
	But the U.S.
	budget deficit, according to Bloomberg, has now widened to $310 billion in the first four months of the fiscal year, underscoring, according to Bloomberg, the revenue hit from Republican tax cuts and an increase in government spending.
	It ain't about the tax cuts, gang.
	It's about the spending.
	The budget gap widened 77%.
	Why?
	Well, receipts fell by 2% to $1.1 trillion.
	That seems like a solid amount of money to take in, does it not?
	But spending rose 9% to $1.4 trillion.
	So the budget did receive a tiny bump in customs duties, about $25 billion, but the U.S.
	trade gap widened.
	Which, by the way, shows that President Trump's trade policy is economically ignorant.
	The economy has continued to boom because the trade deficit is not a good indicator of whether an economy is booming or not.
	The trade deficit usually means that people in America can afford foreign products, so we are buying them.
	Also, President Trump actually exacerbated the trade deficit, made it worse.
	Why?
	Because by pushing the idea that tariffs were going to clamp in at the beginning of 2019, he forced a bunch of businesses to buy products early from foreign countries.
	So it actually accelerated the trade deficit.
	With all of that said, it would be really nice if Republicans would not be Democrats.
	We already have Democrats.
	We don't need another Democratic party.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, I feel like I really need to comment on a great exchange that happened yesterday on Joe Rogan's podcast.
	For those who don't know Joe Rogan's podcast, you should give it a listen.
	It's really a lot of fun.
	Joe's a great questioner.
	So Joe and Tim Pool, who is one of his sidekicks, Joe and Tim Pool were questioning some members of the Twitter clan.
	So Jack Dorsey showed up.
	We have a divide between the conservative estimation of what's happening and then the definition that's the liberal definition of it.
	I think that's right, Joe.
	And I think what I'm trying to say is that it's not that you can't have those viewpoints.
	It's that if you're taking those viewpoints and you're targeting them at a specific person in a way that reflects your intent to abuse and harass What if it's in the context of the conversation?
	What if she's saying that, I don't think that trans women should be allowed in these female spaces to make decisions for women?
	And then this person's arguing and she says, a woman is biologically female.
	You are never going to be a woman.
	She responded with, men aren't women though.
	And that was her first, in the series of events, that's what got her the suspension and the warning.
	That was one of many tweets that was part of providing context.
	It was not.
	Okay, the woman who's speaking is Vijaya Gaddy, who is the company's global lead for legal policy and trust and safety.
	And that's Joe Rogan asking specifically about Megan Murphy, who's been a guest on our show.
	Megan Murphy, of course, is a feminist.
	She's a left-wing feminist who was banned from Twitter for making the absolutely obvious contention that men are not women and women are not men.
	Twitter claimed that this was targeting of particularly transgender people.
	And Joe Rogan and Tim Pool are pointing out how dumb this is.
	That Twitter has no consistent standard.
	But again, Twitter doesn't have to have a consistent standard.
	They have market dominance.
	It's pretty astonishing how the left will continue to shut down debate with no good excuse for doing so, simply because their confirmation bias is so incredibly strong.
	When you have an agenda, it really does allow you to run roughshod over your own supposed central principles.
	You can tell where people's real principles lie by which principles people are willing to violate in pursuit of those primary principles.
	So, Twitter says it's a free speech platform, a place for people to speak out and debate.
	But their real priority is not that.
	Their real priority is social leftism, and when the two come into conflict, social leftism overrules anything having to do with free speech.
	Good on Joe Rogan and Tim Pool for exposing the insane hypocrisy and stupidity of the Twitter The Twitter leadership.
	Alrighty.
	Time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	There is a movie that is now available on Amazon Prime.
	It's called You Were Never Really Here.
	It's sort of a newfangled take on Taxi Driver.
	Frankly, I think it's a better movie than Taxi Driver.
	It's with Joaquin Phoenix, who is in fact our finest living actor.
	The only other competitor would probably be Daniel Day-Lewis, but he is retired.
	Joaquin Phoenix turns in another fantastic performance.
	When you talk about people who just inhabit a role, where you don't even think of them as an actor, they're just the role, Joaquin Phoenix is the guy.
	The basic plot is essentially a taxi driver.
	He is a, he is a kind of taxi driver.
	He is basically a veteran who has had some bad experiences, a suicidal veteran, and he is hired by a middleman to go save this state legislator's daughter from sex slavery.
	I'm gonna ask you some questions.
	How many are there?
	One guy inside the front door.
	Second guy on the top floor.
	After the tone, please leave a message.
	It's done.
	A man called.
	He wants to see you.
	Right away.
	State Senator Albert Votto.
	His teenage daughter's missing.
	What's the lead?
	He got an anonymous text with an address.
	I've heard of these places.
	- We said you were brutal. - I can be. - I want you to hurt them.
	- Okay, so he, So, he did win the best actor, did Joaquin Phoenix, for his role in this.
	He's a terrific actor.
	Honestly, it gives me hope for the Joker movie.
	So the new Joker movie is going to be directed by Scorsese, correct?
	And Joaquin Phoenix plays the Joker.
	That is fantastic casting.
	So, looking forward to that.
	The movie is very brutal.
	It is definitely rated R. You were never really here, available on Amazon Prime.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	So let's talk a little bit about H.R.
	1.
	H.R.
	1 is the Nancy Pelosi-led House's first priority, and basically it restructures voting and voter ID all across the country in violation of federalism.
	States are generally supposed to set the standards, and state redistricting is supposed to set the standards for how voting is done on the state level.
	HR1, according to the Heritage Foundation, seizes the authority of states to regulate voter registration and the voting process by forcing states to implement early voting, automatic voter registration, same-day registration, online voter registration, and no-fault absentee balloting, all of which are the devil's playground for voter fraud.
	Early voting, first of all, should not be allowed except in Really bad circumstances.
	Or unless you're a member of the military or something.
	Early voting is bad because a lot of news breaks right before an election.
	Second, automatic voter registration.
	You should not be automatically registered to vote because maybe you don't want to vote.
	Same-day registration is absurd.
	It doesn't allow you to actually check whether the person is who they say they are.
	Online voter registration is very difficult to control.
	No fault absentee balancing.
	Again, that's a problem because people vote absentee instead of simply going down to their polling place.
	Makes it more difficult to verify their vote.
	This creates a lot more chaos at the polls, which is exactly the opposite of what we need.
	It will hurt voter turnout because everybody will early vote.
	It will degrade the accuracy of registration lists by automatically registering individuals from state databases, such as DMV and welfare offices.
	In California, you can have a driver's license if you're an illegal immigrant.
	So if you automatically are registered from the state database, well, that's going to be a problem, isn't it?
	It constitutes a recipe, according to Heritage, correctly, for massive voter registration fraud by hackers and cyber criminals.
	Through online voter registration.
	It's hilarious to watch as the left tries to loosen the methods of confirming who voters are.
	At the same time that they are trying to make sure that only people who see Captain Marvel can review Captain Marvel.
	And there's a point made by one of our producers here, by head of production Jonathan Hay to me the other day.
	He was pointing out that now Rotten Tomatoes has changed their standards on who gets to review Captain Marvel.
	You can only do it if you have bought a ticket to Captain Marvel.
	They've changed the standard.
	Why?
	Because they were afraid that fanboys were going to crap all over Captain Marvel and lower the viewer rating, the generalized viewer rating.
	And so they've decided they're essentially going to use a form of voter ID.
	So yes to voter ID for seeing a movie and reviewing it on Rotten Tomatoes.
	No to voter ID for, you know, actually voting.
	This will cripple the effectiveness of state voter ID laws by allowing individuals to vote without an ID and sign a statement in which they claim they are who they say they are, but you can just forge the signature, obviously.
	It will reduce the number of federal election commission members from six to five, allowing the political party with three commission seats to control the commission.
	Which of course means that if Democrats take control of the FEC, then they will control the entire FEC.
	It would require states to restore the ability of felons to vote the moment they are out of prison, which is a state issue, not a federal issue.
	It would violate the separation of powers.
	Even the ACLU opposes H.R.
	1 because they say that it goes too far in a lot of these directions.
	So it's a pretty extreme bill.
	Don't believe all the hype when Democrats say they're restoring voter integrity.
	It is precisely the opposite.
	Alrighty.
	Well, we will be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours, which is why you subscribe.
	Otherwise, be here tomorrow.
	We'll be here for more.
	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.
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