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March 14, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
57:33
Beto’s Excellent Adventure | Ep. 737
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Beto declares for the presidency.
Elizabeth Warren attacks to the center.
And President Trump runs up against his own party.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
I have many, many thoughts on Beto.
Many thoughts on Beto.
We'll get to all of those thoughts in just a moment.
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Alrighty, so.
The big moment has finally arrived.
Beidou is off the fence.
That calls for some music, guys.
That's right.
Beidou's in!
Oh!
Kickflip!
Bongrip!
Beidou's in!
So exciting!
I know everybody is very excited.
The millennials are so raucous that they just smoked a larger joint than usual.
The progressives are so into it that they looked at Beto and then went, now we're going to go with Bernie.
The moderates looked at Beto and they're like, he's like young Joe Biden.
Wow, how impressive.
Beto O'Rourke.
OK, let's let's start with Beto's announcement.
So yesterday he is featured on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine.
This tells you everything you need to know about Beto O'Rourke.
If your announcement is essentially made on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine, we know what you are.
You're a white elite liberal.
Okay?
That is what you are.
And the reason that the media love themselves some Beto, the real reason the media love Beto, is because they look at Beto and they see themselves.
They look at Beto, and what they see is a white kid who grew up extraordinarily privileged, in a rich situation, who spent a few years kicking around before he found himself and settled down, who has broadly liberal views, left-leaning views, but likes to think through the issues, is really considered and temperate, but also cool, like the cool guy whose kids think he's cool.
Also a little bit nerdy, but really mostly just cool, and like a guy you'd want to hang out with and be with.
Basically, when the folks at CNN look in a mirror, they see Beto O'Rourke.
And that is why they love Beto O'Rourke.
The same thing is true over at MSNBC.
When Chris Hayes looks in a mirror, he sees Beto O'Rourke.
And that's why all of the media are in love with Beto.
When they looked at Barack Obama, it was even better, because Barack Obama mirrored all of those things except for the race, so they could say they were intersectional.
And also, Barack Obama mirrored who they think they are, the considered politician Who really likes to think through the issues and then comes up with sophisticated analyses.
Who spent a few years kicking around until he found himself helping the downtrodden.
That's how folks in the journalistic world like to see themselves.
All the people who went to NYU journalism school.
All those people see themselves as Beto O'Rourke.
Which is why every fawning profile of Beto O'Rourke is written by the same former NYU English grad.
who is sitting in a crappy apartment in Brooklyn overlooking an alleyway in which a bum is pissing into a trash can.
Every one of these profiles is written with this sopping, I'm-writing-the-great-American-novel attitude.
So, the Vanity Fair piece in which Beto essentially declares his presidential run is no different.
The cover of the magazine, if you can't see it, is Beto standing in the only shirt he apparently owns.
Every picture I've ever seen of Beto O'Rourke, he is wearing this blue kind of beat-up shirt because he's a man of the people despite the fact that he's worth nine million dollars and his wife is the daughter of a near billionaire and his father was an extraordinarily powerful county judge.
There he is, man of the people, standing in jeans across a lonely road in Texas and just standing there considering his future.
Maybe he'll take out a guitar, flick his bangs out of his eyes and play you a ballad, yeah?
So, Vanity Fair has his profile, and the profile is just as pathetically drooling over Beto O'Rourke because all of these profiles of Beto O'Rourke are the same.
Sure, he has no ideas.
Sure, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about.
Sure, he's never done anything of real importance.
But Beto O'Rourke is a man who likes to think through issues and consider them.
And he'll take your point of view into consideration.
Beto O'Rourke is the guy that apparently a lot of suburban women are into.
And he was the guy in high school who a lot of the girls were into.
Why?
Because he was the guy who seemed deep, but it turns out that he was just... He seemed deep because he was a mirror.
Meaning it looked like there was depth to him, but he was just mirroring back to you what you wanted to hear.
And that is basically what Beto O'Rourke has been for his entire political career.
And the media love this!
They love it!
So this Vanity Fair article, in which he was photographed by Annie Leibovitz, the article was written by Joe Hagan, who is just the same as every other columnist who has ever written about Beto O'Rourke.
There's a great thread.
Someone put together on Twitter, of all of the physical descriptions that the media have given to Beto O'Rourke, he's sweating because of his passion.
Like he's playing Great Rock in a hot stadium.
And then there's talk about how he's just relaxed, leaning back, looking wistfully at the world.
Every description of Beto O'Rourke is exactly the same because everybody who's writing it is exactly the same.
So, this entire Vanity Fair piece, it's got pictures of Beto sitting with his dog, his dog looking forlornly at the camera like, why am I here?
What am I doing here?
That's the best part of every one of these pictures, is the dog just in the background looking like, I can't believe this is my life now.
Anyway, here's what Vanity Fair writes about Beto O'Rourke.
Beto O'Rourke's mission-style home in the El Paso neighborhood of Sunset Heights is the site of a famous 1915 meeting between Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa and U.S.
General Hugh Scott.
While renovating it, O'Rourke had a wrought iron fence around the property removed, save for a few feet of it around a pistachio tree.
In late February, he came home to find Republican protesters live-streaming video and asking why he still had a fence, mimicking Trump's remark that politicians like walls when they're around their own homes.
I said, come up with me, and I'll take you to our front door, he recalls.
This is just decorative fencing.
Why do you have walls in your house, they retorted?
Why do you have a door?
Okay, that's true.
Behind the door, in the O'Rourke living room, and here is where we get into the deep heart of the media's love for Beto.
Behind the door, in the O'Rourke living room, a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf contains a section for rock memoirs.
Bob Dylan's Chronicles, a favorite.
Okay, and a step.
The pretentiousness of people who sit around reading Bob Dylan's chronicles.
Cannot be overstated.
A stack of LPs.
The Clash, Nina Simone, but also a sizable collection of presidential biographies, including Robert Caro's work on Lyndon B. Johnson.
I love that this means that he's a sophisticate.
Again, all of the members of the media who love Beto O'Rourke consider Beto O'Rourke one of them.
That's why they love him.
Hey, look, I also have Bob Dylan's Confessions or Chronicles on my shelf.
Also, when I was in high school, I liked The Clash.
And I also liked to skateboard a little bit.
Or at least I wished I had.
Most of the kids in the media are actually the fat kid who is sitting with the typewriter in the AV room, but they wish they were Beto.
Beto was the kid they always wished they had been.
Arranged in historical order, the biography suggests there's been some reflection on the gravity of the presidency, but there's also some political poetry to it.
A sense that O'Rourke might be destined for this shelf.
He has an aura.
Oh, don't describe to me his aura.
First of all, the rigorous party of science describing politicians with an aura.
Good stuff right there from Vanity Fair.
It is worth noting here that the same members of the media who have spent years at this point praising Beto O'Rourke and overlooking the fact that he lives in a three-story house in El Paso and is worth nine million dollars, almost none of which came from him, presumably.
Or at least was made really only through family connections.
That Beto O'Rourke is somehow a man of the people, but Howard Schultz, the head of Starbucks, there's a big article in the New York Times today about how Howard Schultz isn't as poor as he said he was when he was growing up.
Howard Schultz has said that he grew up in the projects.
There's a big article in the New York Times today, well, you know, the project he grew up in was actually kind of middle class.
So obviously he's a liar.
Okay, now do Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, guys.
Now do Beto.
Not gonna happen.
O'Rourke and his wife, Amy, an educator nine years his junior, both described the moment they first witnessed the power of O'Rourke's gift.
It was in Houston, the third stop on O'Rourke's two-year Senate campaign against Ted Cruz.
Every seat was taken, every wall, every space in the room was filled with probably a thousand people.
You could feel the floor moving almost.
It was not totally clear that Beto was what everyone was looking for, but just like that, people were so ready for something.
So that was totally shocking.
I mean, like, took my breath away shocking.
And then Beto says, I honestly don't know how much of it was me.
It's a rockumentary.
I mean, this is political spinal tap, guys.
It is a rock documentary in which Beto O'Rourke plays a fake political candidate on TV.
I honestly don't know of it, how much was me.
But there is something abnormal, super normal, or I don't know what the hell to call it, that we both experience when we're out on the campaign trail.
He says, I don't ever prepare a speech.
I don't write out what I'm gonna say.
I remember driving to that.
I was like, what do I say?
Maybe I'll just introduce myself.
I'll take questions.
I got in there, and I don't know if it's a speech or not, but it felt amazing, because every word was pulled out of me, like by some greater force, which was the people there.
The people are the force.
I am the people.
The people are me.
Give me another rip on that bong, bro.
That's quality, quality weed!
It's, he's so obnoxious.
I'm sorry.
He's so obnoxious.
And again, the media fawning over this guy as though he is a self-made man.
As though he's a person who came out of nowhere.
Here is Beto O'Rourke's life story.
Okay, we're gonna do Beto, you know what?
Hold on.
One more quote from Beto O'Rourke, then we will get to Beto O'Rourke's life story.
Which the media love because this is the media's life story.
Most of them grew up middle class to upper class in big cities.
Growing up with a lot of privilege, and then they found themselves, and now they see themselves as purveyors of the truth, who are broadly liberal-minded.
And they look at Beto and they're like, yeah, that guy's me.
Beto O'Rourke was a useless person for most of his life, and then he became non-useless later on in his life.
And we are supposed to think of that as a spiritual journey, or in any other context, we would think of that as a person wasting opportunity.
Really?
So, final quote from Beto O'Rourke before we get to his short biography.
He says, there's something that happens to me, he says, or that I get to be a part of in those rooms.
That is not like normal life.
I don't know if that has ever happened to me before.
I don't know if that would happen again.
Wow, what an amazing, amazing guy.
Now we're gonna get to his political announcement in just one second, which is filled with this sort of platitudinous garbage.
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Okay, so, Vanity Fair ushers in Beto, and again, that tells you everything you need to know.
The entire circulation base of Vanity Fair is upper-class white women.
That is everyone who subscribes to Vanity Fair.
And that's who Beto is going for.
So here is Beto's announcement.
First of all, we should note, Beto's a liar.
Like, one year ago, Beto said that he would not run for president.
So let's just play him saying he's not going to run for president, and then we'll play him saying he'll run for president.
I'm not looking at 2020.
And in fact, I'm completely ruling that out.
I'm not going to do that.
No matter what, win or lose, you're not going to run in 2020.
Win or lose, I'm not running in 2020.
I gotta tell you, it's incredibly flattering that anyone would ask me the question or that that's even up for discussion.
But since people have asked, the answer is no.
Fast forward to today.
Beto O'Rourke, his announcement.
Amy and I are happy to share with you that I'm running to serve you as the next president of the United States of America.
This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us.
The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy, and our climate have never been greater.
And they will either consume us, or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America.
We can begin by fixing our democracy and ensuring that our government works for everyone.
This is going to be a positive campaign.
That seeks to bring out the very best from every single one of us.
That seeks to unite a very divided country.
There's a lot more to come, but I want to leave you with this.
The only way for us to live up to the promise of America is to give it our all and to give it for all of us.
What does that even mean?
What does that even mean?
For us to give us our all, and give us all of us, and all of our all, and all of us, and here are some spiritual camp band leader hands.
Woo!
Check this out.
God, Beto O'Rourke.
Okay, so we're gonna get to Beto's bio now, because here is the thing about this.
The media have proclaimed for years that what is the real problem in America is the problem of rich white privilege.
That is the problem in America.
So it is good to know That finally, for the first time in a long time, a rich, white man, growing up in a rich, powerful, white family, and marrying a very rich, white woman, and spending years playing in a punk rock band uselessly, can also be President of the United States.
America has grown, guys.
You got that?
A rich, white guy who married a rich, white lady, and has run for office and failed in an attempt for Senate?
Finally, a person like that can be President of the United States.
Slow clap, America.
Well done.
It's going to be fun to watch as all the intersectional Democrats in the media suddenly embrace Beto O'Rourke, who is presumably the least intersectional candidate of all time.
A man who calls himself Beto, but who is whiter than I am by a long shot.
So let's go through who is Beto O'Rourke.
Who is Beto O'Rourke?
So, Beto O'Rourke is a fellow who was born in El Paso, Texas to an extraordinarily powerful family.
So his father was, in fact, a powerful local Democratic politician.
His father was named Pat O'Rourke.
He was nicknamed Beto in infancy because he grew up in El Paso.
His mother was the stepdaughter of the former secretary of the Navy under President John F. Kennedy, and his dad served as county commissioner and county judge.
Paddle Rourke was also a close associate of the Texas governor, so obviously Beto grew up in very difficult circumstances.
A little Beto was growing up really on the rough streets of El Paso.
He began his education at the Escuela Montessori Del Valle Preschool and continued to Rivera Elementary School and Mesita Elementary School.
And then he went to the Woodbury Forest School, an all-male boarding school in Madison County, Virginia, just like all the underprivileged little kids.
Between graduating high school and starting college, he was a summer congressional intern in the Capitol Hill office of U.S.
Congressperson Ron Coleman.
Then he went to Columbia University, where in junior year he captained Columbia's heavyweight rowing crew.
I mean, is this an intersectional-inspiring story, or is it an intersectional-inspiring story?
He graduated with a B.A.
in English literature, which means that he was qualified to be a professional useless person, which, fortunately, is a job he has fulfilled.
Well, he's also been arrested a couple of times.
But he's been arrested for cool kid stuff, right?
Cool kid stuff so long as you happen to be well-connected.
So he was arrested back in 1995 for breaking into the University of Texas El Paso campus.
He was arrested for burglary.
His misdemeanor was then waived.
And of course, as everybody knows, he was also arrested in 1998 for a misdemeanor DWI after he was driving so drunk that he actually crossed the median line and crashed into somebody apparently head-on and then fled the scene of the arrest.
So Beto O'Rourke, you know, really making the most of his youthful opportunities.
His dad, by the way, had his own political issues as well.
His father, apparently, apparently, was, in 1983, sheriff's deputies installed a radio, installing a radio in the Jeep of Pat O'Rourke, his dad, found a condom filled with a white powder believed to be either cocaine or heroin, according to press reports at the time.
A sheriff's captain then ordered the substance destroyed and was indicted by a grand jury on charges of official misconduct and tampering with evidence.
So that's Beto O'Rourke's dad, right?
That's the family in which he grew up.
The kind of family where if sheriff's deputies find a full condom filled with cocaine in your truck, they destroy it for you.
Clearly, Beto was on a path to self-made success.
O'Rourke's public life started in 2005, according to the Houston Chronicle, when, at the age of 32, he ran for city council and became one of El Paso's youngest ever representatives.
That was the same year he married Amy Hoover Sanders.
Amy O'Rourke was an educator and charter school executive.
She has a constant presence at his Senate campaign events.
In 2006, the personal became very public for the O'Rourke family.
Just a year into O'Rourke's council tenure, he became enmeshed in a controversial urban renewal plan led by the Paso del Norte group, a non-profit business organization spearheaded by his father-in-law.
So you have to understand that between the time that Beto O'Rourke graduated from Columbia University and the time that he decided that he was going to be a local politician, he played for years in a punk rock band.
So his great claim to fame is that he didn't need money enough that he could actually afford to blow several years running around the country playing in a crappy punk rock band.
He also worked as a live-in caretaker and an art mover.
He's basically Justin Trudeau.
You know, Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister, grew up extraordinarily privileged, extraordinarily wealthy, and then was best known for being like an elementary school P.E.
teacher and then became Prime Minister because he was handsome Bernie Sanders.
That's basically Beto's shtick.
So O'Rourke worked as a nanny and an art mover before working for an internet service provider, and that's when he started talking about how he didn't know what he wanted to do with his life, man.
Just would brood.
I'd just sit there and I'd brood.
Remember several weeks back, there was an entire New York Times article about Beto's brooding, how he was brooding now, just like he brooded then.
Because we love people who brood.
They're so dark and meaningful.
As opposed to people who actually have purpose in their lives, who just go out and do, Beto had the privilege of being able to sit around and brood, which in other circumstances we would call intellectual and moral laziness.
In any case, Beto returns to El Paso in 1998, and then he co-founds something called Stanton Street Technology Group.
His wife, Amy, operates the business now.
He also published an online newspaper called Stanton Street, which he modeled on the village voice.
And then he decided that he was going to run for city council.
And that's where things started to get dicey for young Beto when it came to his public career.
In 2006, he became enmeshed in a controversial urban renewal plan led by Paso Del Norte Group, a nonprofit business organization spearheaded by his father-in-law.
As originally envisioned, the plan called for redeveloping a blighted part of downtown El Paso, including a largely Hispanic residential area called Segundo Barrio.
Opponents feared gentrification and dubbed it urban removal.
So this was young Beto getting involved.
In non-intersectionality.
He was going to redevelop parts of El Paso.
But there is a bigger problem for young Beto.
Residents and business owners facing displacement organized and filed a pair of ethics complaints with the city, citing O'Rourke's ties with his father-in-law, William Sanders, who is a real estate executive in Texas.
They complained that O'Rourke was, quote, impermissibly entangled in the Paso Del Norte group's downtown revitalization plan through both family and business ties.
His critics, as according to the Houston Chronicle, honed in on past work O'Rourke's tech company had done for Paso Del Norte, as well as his vote to approve the group's downtown 2015 redevelopment plan.
O'Rourke had been a dues-paying member of Paso Del Norte, though he dropped out soon after being elected to the council.
Eventually, the Ethics Review Commission dismissed the complaints.
And they said it because even if it was true, it wouldn't be a technical violation of ethics ordinances.
But opponents argued that O'Rourke's daddy-in-law stood to make millions through a real estate investment trust called the Borderplex Community Trust, which was formed to buy real estate in downtown El Paso for redevelopment.
And they would have aggressively used the city's eminent domain powers, which is hilarious because now Beto O'Rourke stands around talking about how President Trump is going to have to aggressively use eminent domain powers to build a wall.
That's very bad.
It wasn't quite as bad when his father-in-law was seeking to do it for redevelopment purposes.
We'll get into more of Beto O'Rourke's Sterling political career.
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The sort of thing where the media just can't help themselves.
We'll get to more of that in just a second.
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Alrighty, so back to the story of Beto O'Rourke.
So, Beto O'Rourke was apparently faulted for his associations with his father-in-law and the use of eminent domain for purposes of supposedly driving up real estate prices in areas owned by his father-in-law.
The New York Times reported on this back in October.
They said at a special city council meeting in 2006, a billionaire real estate investor unveiled his vision for redeveloping downtown El Paso.
To replace tenements and boarded up buildings, he proposed restaurants, shops, and an arts walk rivaling San Antonio's Riverwalk.
Representative Beto O'Rourke, one of hundreds attending, wasn't exactly a disinterested party.
Not only had he married the investor's daughter, but as a member of the city council, he represented the targeted area, including a historic Mexican-American neighborhood.
Calling downtown one piece of El Paso that was missing on the road back to greatness, O'Rourke voted to take the first step forward with the plan.
Over the next two years, O'Rourke would defend the plan before angry Barrio residents and vote to advance it.
At other times, he would abstain.
Business owners who opposed the plan accused O'Rourke of a conflict, citing the involvement of his father-in-law.
Twelve years later, O'Rourke is championing progressive causes.
But his involvement in that proposed El Paso redevelopment highlights a side of his record that seems to contradict the populist image he has cultivated in Texas and nationally.
According to David Dorado-Romo, a local historian, Mr. O'Rourke was basically the pretty face of this very ugly plan against our most vulnerable neighborhood.
Barrio residents feared they would lose their homes through eminent domain.
And among a lot of the residents, the hurt feelings have lingered.
He says that in the past he never voted for eminent domain, says O'Rourke, and no property was ever taken by the city through eminent domain, and that he had no financial interest in the project.
Nonetheless, his father-in-law was deeply involved in this project.
There's a lot of suspicion surrounding that.
But that's not the only issue with Beto O'Rourke.
According to the Houston Chronicle, O'Rourke's sunny vision of immigrant energy in many ways echoes his father-in-law's focus on cross-border business development in a region known for its young bilingual bicultural workforce.
Sanders, who is his father-in-law, said the U.S.-Mexico border region is a very attractive place to be.
So Sanders formed up a bunch of real estate firms.
He sold a lot of them for inane, I mean, just crazy amounts of money.
He sold security capital for $5.4 billion.
He was considered one of the founders of real estate investment trust REIT.
And Sanders and his business associates have boosted O'Rourke's political career with generous donations.
O'Rourke stepped back from his family business activities since 2013.
That was when he came under scrutiny for purchase of stock in several companies just going public, including Twitter.
IPOs are generally reserved for heavy hitters looking for big profits.
O'Rourke said the purchases were made by a financial professional who manages his investments.
They were reported on his financial disclosure forms.
When reporters discovered them, he reported himself to the Ethics Committee, which directed him to send the profits to the U.S.
Treasury by mail overnight.
He said that none of the purchases were made on our behalf because of my position.
And he says he has no involvement in his and his wife's personal investments.
Great.
Okay, the fact again is that throughout his career, he's been involved with businesses that are deeply family-oriented and in which people in his family stand to make a lot of money based on his public connections.
I mean, for example, O'Rourke went back to El Paso in 1998.
He founded Stanton Street Technology Group.
I mentioned that.
His mom, Melissa O'Rourke, eventually became a shareholder in the company.
Amy O'Rourke joined the company as well, and she ran it from the time he went to Congress in 2013 until March 2017.
She sold all shares in the company for between $250,000 and $500,000, according to House Financial Disclosure Reports.
One of Stanton Street's clients?
O'Rourke.
Since 2011, his political campaigns for the House and Senate have paid the company more than $125,000 for web hosting and other online services, according to federal campaign reports.
So in other words, Beto O'Rourke raised a bunch of money for his congressional campaigns, and then paid a company that his wife was running, and she would eventually sell her shares in the company for something like half a million dollars.
That's Beto O'Rourke.
But don't worry.
Beto is a man of the people.
He's a man of the people who really understands because he travels around, you see.
He travels around like a Johnny Appleseed of politics.
Speaking Spanish, talking to the folks, wandering into bars, talking with the people.
That he's a down-to-earth fellow who could simply afford to blow several years of his life wandering around after racking up debt at Columbia University, wandering around with a punk rock band, and then suddenly move into a historic 1915 three-story home once occupied by Pancho Villa.
Pretty amazing and inspiring, uplifting story of American mobility now.
Pretty impressive stuff.
Now listen, as you know, I don't tend to believe that politicians have to come from nothing in order to be something.
I think that you're supposed to judge a politician on their own merits, but that's not what the media believe.
The media tell you that you have to have an inspiring personal narrative, and so they've worked very, very hard to craft an inspiring personal narrative for Beto.
The problem is, his actual circumstances are not in any way inspiring.
He grew up privileged, he spent his teenage years privileged, he spent his young adulthood privileged, and now he's spending his adulthood privileged.
That is not an inspiring story in any way.
He made a bunch of silly decisions, including two arrests, and he's basically gotten away with all of that, and he's moved on with his life, and now they're abjectly falling over themselves.
Why?
Because for a lot of people who work in the media, if you're gonna manufacture a story about Beto, it has to be an internal story.
You wanna know why all the media coverage focuses on Beto's soul?
On his deep, brooding soul?
It's because they can't talk about his story.
Because his story is not only a nothing burger, it is a negative for him in these primaries.
There are still some candidates who have more inspiring stories in the Democratic primaries.
Howard Schultz has a much more inspiring story than any of those people.
Nonetheless, what you are seeing from folks in the media is this worship of Beto.
Now, okay, so how is Beto actually going to do in these primaries?
How's all this actually going to play out?
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Where does Beto show up in these polls?
We'll get to that in just a second.
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Okay, we're going to talk about how the polls are shaping up.
Where does Beto show up in these polls?
We'll get to that in just a second.
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All right.
So how are the polls showing up right now?
Well, Beto is running currently fourth, according to the morning consult polls.
Joe Biden is running first at 31%.
I think his lead is the most tenuous, mainly because Joe Biden is not a clever politician.
He tends to make a lot of gaps, makes a lot of mistakes.
And so the moderate lane is kind of open, and you're going to see Beto move into that moderate lane.
Bernie Sanders is running second to 27%.
I think that if you have to forecast this primary process right now, Bernie has to be the frontrunner.
I've been saying this for weeks.
Why?
Because in a 19-candidate primary, the person with the most solid base of support is going to win.
That was the story of Donald Trump in 2016.
Everybody else was moving up and down in the polls.
Rubio was sometimes doing really well.
Sometimes Cruz was doing well.
And then Trump was just riding there at 30%.
Just consistently, right there at 30%.
And everybody else was splitting the other 70% of the vote.
And Trump was just sitting there like, go for it.
Do what you want.
They were all attacking each other, assuming he would fade.
Everybody's doing the same with Bernie, it seems.
They're all sort of ignoring Bernie.
They're attacking each other.
If I were a betting man, which I no longer am after 2016, I would be betting my money on Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries.
Biden is at 31%, according to Morning Consult.
Bernie is at 27%.
Then there's a massive drop-off.
Kamala Harris is at 10%.
Now, she already got her initial boost, right?
Her initial boost came when she announced, and she went from 0% to 10%.
She's been stagnant ever since.
She's not really growing.
And one of the reasons she's not really growing is because she does not have the same sort of appeal, particularly in the black community, that Barack Obama has.
She was hoping that she would get that sort of boost and she'd be up around 15 to 20% right now.
She is not.
Beto O'Rourke was running at 7% without having declared, Elizabeth Warren at 7%, and then the also-rans, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, which I guess is pronounced Boot-Ej-Ej?
Is that how it's pronounced?
Really, I think that's how it's actually pronounced.
In any case, Beto O'Rourke at 7%.
So the real question is, how does Beto run when it comes to this race?
Well, I think he gets a little boost.
I think he's probably in third place, which demonstrates, once again, the Democratic Party, the party of intersectionality.
They really make it easier for white guys, don't they?
And that means the top three candidates in the Democratic Party are all white guys.
So that's exciting.
One of the things that is that is fascinating, though, is that this morning consult poll shows where everybody's second preference goes, where everybody's second preference goes.
And it's pretty fascinating.
So look at, for example, Biden supporters.
So Biden supporters split like this.
Their second choices.
So if Biden starts to go down in flames and people are shifting their votes, where are they going to go?
30 percent of them say they will go to Bernie Sanders.
30% say they will go to Bernie Sanders.
12% say Kamala Harris.
10% say Elizabeth Warren.
So that means there are a lot of Biden supporters who are actually pretty warm toward Bernie.
Now, the thought, I think, in Beto's camp is that Biden supporters will move on over to Beto.
That may be true.
He may be younger, more moderate.
He may have some suburban female appeal.
But there's a heavy percentage of Biden's vote if he goes down that will move over to Sanders and may move over to Sanders more quickly if Biden begins to move toward the moderate center.
Where do Bernie Sanders' supporters go?
Fascinatingly enough, most Bernie Sanders, plurality of Bernie Sanders supporters, their second choice is Joe Biden.
31% say they'd go to Biden, 15% to Elizabeth Warren, 9% to Kamala Harris.
Kamala Harris's supporters are pretty evenly split.
Joe Biden, 19%.
Bernie Sanders, 18%.
Elizabeth Warren, 15% for their second choice.
Elizabeth Warren supporters would go to Bernie Sanders.
So that means that Sanders continues to have tremendous upside in a lot of these polls.
And Beto O'Rourke's supporters are split evenly between Sanders and Biden.
Their second choice would be Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, pretty evenly split.
So here's the question.
What's the lane for Beto O'Rourke?
Really, we know what Bernie's lane is.
Bernie's lane is the uber-progressive socialist wing of the Democratic Party, which has some millennial appeal.
He's not going to do great with the black community.
He's not going to do fantastic with the Hispanic community.
He'll do okay with the Hispanic community.
He did last time, actually.
But he's not going to do amazing with the Hispanic community.
He's not in the moderate lane.
But he's not actively alienating the moderates either as much as he did last time around.
So what you are seeing is that Bernie is crowding everybody else out of his lane.
Bernie's crowding out everybody.
And the way you can tell he's crowding out everybody is Elizabeth Warren, who wanted to rival Bernie in that progressive lane, is already shifting to the right.
She's now talking about capitalism in a warm and friendly light, which is pretty fascinating, since she wanted Bernie Sanders' vote.
So here is Elizabeth Warren yesterday talking about how capitalism was actually a force for good.
Do you believe capitalism over the course of history has been a force for good?
Yes, I do.
I think it also, when it doesn't work, it's been a force for bad.
But that's been true of every form of government that we can identify.
We've gotten it right sometimes and gotten it wrong sometimes.
When you let markets work with rules and with people on the beat to enforce those rules, We can produce a lot of wealth in this country.
That's what we've done for a very long time.
So Elizabeth Warren's sounding more like Howard Schultz there than like Bernie Sanders.
So she is trying to run to the right.
She feels that Joe Biden is more vulnerable.
If she can move over to the right, then maybe she can move into that Joe Biden category and steal some of his support.
The part of the base that is seen as most vulnerable is not the progressive socialist part of the base.
That part is seen as Bernie's base.
And all Bernie has to do is wait for everybody else to divvy up the rest.
That's all he really has to do.
So I'm not sure where Beto thinks that the opportunity really lies other than in overwhelming media coverage of how wonderful Beto O'Rourke is.
But again, Beto O'Rourke's background is not intersectionally inspiring.
He's not going to win a lot of the black vote or the Hispanic vote.
He's banking on suburban women, but suburban women may not be enough of a percentage of the Democratic primary vote to get him through.
In my view, Beto is running for VP.
What Beto really wants is that VP slot.
Now that would be the smart move, by the way.
If Bernie Sanders were to win the primaries, he'd be smart to pick somebody like Beto O'Rourke, even though Beto is a complete lightweight.
He would be smart to pick Beto O'Rourke because he needs suburban women, and those are the people who are most likely to feel unsafe because of Bernie's socialist policies.
He might pick Kamala Harris, too, just because the media would push him to pick somebody who wasn't white.
But Beto is obviously running for VP.
If Kamala Harris were to win the nomination, there's very little doubt that she would pick Beto O'Rourke for her VP.
If Joe Biden were to win the nomination, people are already speculating Biden-Beto.
I think that's unlikely.
I think more likely is Biden-Kamala Harris.
In any case, the fact that Beto O'Rourke is even taken seriously as a national candidate after losing a Senate race to Ted Cruz is pretty well insane.
There's no shot that Beto wins Texas in a presidential race.
I don't want to say no shot.
There's a very slim shot that he wins Texas in a presidential race.
In a presidential race, everybody shows up and Beto's flaws are on full display.
He lost to Ted Cruz, who is not the world's most popular politician.
Okay, but I guess if Democrats can deceive themselves into believing that Beto is the wave of the future, then maybe he'll draw just enough support to push him into that sort of presidential territory.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I think the initial push that you're seeing, I don't think it's gonna last.
I don't think Beto has quite the magic that Barack Obama did.
And the attempt to manufacture magic typically does not work.
He feels a lot more like John Edwards circa 2008 than he feels like Barack Obama circa 2008.
Okay, meanwhile, The attack on Tucker Carlson continues apace.
Media Matters continues to press against Tucker Carlson, tries to get him ousted from the air.
And this is obviously a concerted campaign at this point by the entire left to take away the advertising base for Fox News because the left just doesn't like Fox News.
This has nothing to do with the specific opinions voiced by Tucker Carlson on the Bubba the Love Sponge show in 2007.
It has nothing to do with that.
It is obviously that there are a bunch of motivated leftists who do not like Fox News and they will use any club at At their disposal, to beat Fox News about the ears with it.
That's why, if you actually look at the footage of Media Matters' protest at Fox News, nothing was about how terrible Tucker Carlson's comments was.
All of it was about how Fox News should be banned.
Drop Fox News!
Drop Fox News!
When I say foxes, you say racists!
Foxes!
Racists!
Foxes!
Be Americans, support actual real news because what you are supporting now is hurting people and is dangerous.
Drop Fox News!
Drop Fox News!
The problem is much bigger than Tucker Carlson.
The problem is this entire network.
When I say Foxes, you say racist!
Foxes! Racist! Foxes!
Racist! Fox News lies! Fox News lies!
So obviously this has nothing to do with Tucker, right?
Everything here has to do with they just don't like Fox News and they have pre-printed signs by Media Matters to do all of this.
Well, the irony of this, of course, is that Media Matters is hanging its hat on these old comments by Fox News's Tucker Carlson back when he was working for MSNBC.
But it turns out that the head of Media Matters himself has made a bunch of terrible comments about various minority groups.
Now his excuse today, Angelo Carusone, who's the head of Media Matters, his excuse is that when he wrote that stuff, it was a parody.
He was parodying the right wing.
Oh, so that's how he's going to get off the hook for this.
Here's Tucker Carlson shellacking him last night on his show.
Carusone runs Media Matters.
Almost every day, he issues outraged press releases accusing other people of bigotry.
And yet, because everything is irony, Carusone is himself an enthusiastic bigot.
We know this for sure because he has written about it extensively.
It turns out that for years, Carousel maintained a racist blog.
Media Matters probably ought to issue a press release about this.
They've done a lot more for a lot less.
But they're not going to issue a press release about that.
Huffington Post last night ran with a massive headline about how everybody should boycott Fox News, how everybody should stop advertising with Fox News.
This sort of wave, this sort of tsunami that has come for Tucker Carlson, once again, has nothing to do with Tucker Carlson.
This is fake outrage.
Everybody knows that it's fake outrage.
Does that mean that stuff that Tucker said was good?
No.
Does it mean that Tucker should apologize?
He should apologize to people he actually harmed.
He should apologize to people who were actually victimized by his comments.
He shouldn't apologize to media matters for any reason whatsoever.
But this is all in bad faith.
As we've always known, it is in bad faith.
And the media covering it as though this is an actual story as opposed to a bad faith hit attempt on a fellow member of the media is pretty astonishing.
Honest to goodness, it is really astonishing.
Meanwhile, President Trump is fighting a power battle with the Senate.
The Senate was on the cusp of passing a rebuke to President Trump on his national emergency declaration as of last night.
According to the Washington Post, the Senate prepared Wednesday to rebuke President Trump over his national emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Senator Mike Lee, who we had on our radio show yesterday, was leading compromise efforts.
He wanted to pass A bill that would basically allow Congress to end any sort of funding for national emergency declarations after 30 days.
Trump threatened to veto it.
And then that bill sort of fell apart.
So now it's turned into a simple showdown where the Senate is voting to not basically to condemn or override Trump's national emergency declaration.
And Trump is just going to veto it.
So this will end up in the courts.
Here's President Trump talking about it yesterday.
I think it's a bad vote if they go against.
I think anybody going against border security, drug trafficking, human trafficking, that's a bad vote.
The Democrats are for open borders.
They're for crime.
I mean, frankly, they're for crime.
But I told Republican senators, vote any way you want.
Vote how you feel good.
But I think it's bad for a Republican senator.
I also think it's bad for a Democrat senator.
Okay, so this is, it's a foolish, non-strategic move by President Trump to threaten to veto Lee's bill.
where it's a very bad thing for them long into the future.
Why?
Okay, so this is a foolish, non-strategic move by President Trump to threaten to veto Lee's bill.
Why?
Because if Lee's bill had passed, it would have let Congress override a national emergency declaration when they don't agree with the president, but it would have allowed them to quietly allow a national emergency declaration to move forward if they did agree with the Effectively, it acted like the War Powers Resolution.
Congress has 30 days, basically, to withdraw funding from any sort of war in which the president is currently engaged.
It is very rarely invoked by Congress.
Instead, Congress usually just looks the other way and lets the executive continue spending money on foreign conflicts.
In fact, actually, today was the first time in a long time that the Senate fought back against the executive's use of war powers.
When it came to Saudi Arabia, for example, the Senate voted to cut funding for Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
Which is kind of fascinating and has some ramifications for Middle Eastern politics, considering that Iran is the other party in Yemen fighting for control over there.
Suffice it to say that President Trump is not being strategic in his approach to this thing, but I'm not sure that strategy really came into play anywhere here.
Really, I don't think strategy came into play at any point along the line.
Will the wall be built under these conditions?
Probably not.
Probably it now goes to a court which says this is not a national emergency.
Congress just doesn't agree with the president.
The president doesn't get to declare a national emergency simply to overrule Congress in doing what they are doing.
You know, the president had a way out here.
He didn't take the way out.
And frankly, you can see from his administration that everybody in his own administration is puzzled by it.
Vice President Pence was negotiating with the Senate, came to an agreement with Senator Lee, and then Trump blew it all up.
It's a problem when the greatest negotiating president of all time turns out not to be able to negotiate a simple deal with his own members in Congress.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
There is great irony to Elizabeth Warren.
Just wonderful irony to Elizabeth Warren.
So, Elizabeth Warren, you'll recall, wrote on official papers that she was Native American.
And the speculation has long been that Elizabeth Warren used her quote-unquote Native American status to move forward in the academic world.
She was asked on MSNBC about this college scandal we talked about yesterday, in which parents were paying exorbitant amounts of money to basically cheat their kids' way into top university.
Here was Elizabeth Warren talking about it.
As a parent, how much sympathy would you have for these parents who are embroiled in this alleged cheating scandal?
Zero.
Zero.
Okay.
Okay, so she has no sympathy whatsoever.
The irony meter here is off the charts.
So in other words, if you falsified your SAT scores to get into university, she has no sympathy for you.
But if you falsified Native American heritage to be listed in minority faculty, Listings?
Then she has tremendous sympathy for you.
I mean, after all, high cheekbones run in her family.
Solid stuff there from Elizabeth Warren.
Gotta enjoy that.
Okay, other things that I like today.
So there's an article today called, How Real America Became Queer America by Samantha Allen.
She's an author and reporter covering LGBT issues.
And it's a big column in the New York Times.
What's hilarious about this column is that it implicitly acknowledges that people across the country who disagree with her on politics still treat people well.
She refuses to acknowledge this in the piece.
But, like, she immediately assumes that everybody who treats gay people well, or transgender people well, must inevitably agree with her on the political issues.
But the article subtly understands and accepts that there are a lot of people in the middle of the country who disagree with her on the issues, who still treat people really well who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.
Her article says this may seem like a strange time to feel optimistic about the future of LGBT rights in America, but as a queer transgender woman who has spent most of her adult life in red states, hopeful is exactly how I feel.
In July 2017, the same month that President Trump announced on Twitter he would ban transgender troops, I left on a six week long road trip across the red states.
I wanted to understand what motivated LGBT people to stay in the heartland at a time when some progressives were still pondering escaping to Canada.
What I learned on the way from Utah to Georgia only reaffirmed what I have come to believe over the past decade.
Attitudes toward LGBT people are changing rapidly in conservative states, and no one inside the Beltway can stop it.
This country's bright queer future is already here, hiding where too few of us care to travel.
From a bird's eye perspective, this person writes, it may not seem that life has changed for LGBT Americans in so-called flyover country.
State laws prohibiting discrimination against them remain elusive in red states.
But in their absence, midsize cities have become pockets of LGBT acceptance.
This progress includes transgender people.
On my road trip through what is ostensibly Trump country, I met many LGBT people who saw no need to flee their conservative home states for the coastal safe havens of generations past, thanks to local progress.
It's so much better, said one of these people.
It's so much freer.
It needs to be reported.
The inherent connection between the political preferences of the left and tolerance is assumed by people on the left, but it is simply not true.
I spend my life working with religious people, religious Christians, religious Jews.
I spend my life talking to people in the middle of the country.
I spend a lot of time traveling in the middle of the country.
These are nice people.
Being a nice person can be, you can be a nice person and still disagree with the political priorities of people and still treat those people well.
For example, I'm good friends with Dave Rubin.
Dave Rubin is a gay, same-sex married man.
Dave knows that I believe that homosexual activity is sinful because I'm a religious Jew.
I've sat with him and his husband.
I don't believe in same-sex marriage on a legal or on a moral level.
It doesn't matter.
I still treat Dave really well and he treats me really well because we don't have to agree on political priorities to understand that each of us is made in the image of God and that it is our job to treat people with tolerance even if we don't necessarily like their behavior.
Because guess what?
It's not my business.
It's not my business.
On a spiritual level, I can disapprove of something, but that's God's business.
It is not my job to force anybody to do anything.
That is the perspective, I think, of the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum.
But folks on the left believe that in order to be tolerant toward LGBT Americans, you must therefore agree with everything that the LGBT movement has to say.
That in order to be tolerant towards transgender people, for example, you have to accept that a trans woman is a woman.
I do not accept that.
But I treat every transgender person I've ever met, I've treated decently.
Because that's what decent people do.
Folks on the left don't seem to understand that there is a difference between politics and how you treat people.
That decency doesn't necessarily mean that we agree with you.
It's why, for the left, that conflation between decency and we agree with you, it's why they believe that if you disagree with them, you are indecent.
They conflate the two.
I know there are a lot of people who disagree with me on politics, who are decent, kind, loving people.
I know that's true.
And we just disagree on our political priorities in many cases.
That doesn't mean we can't treat each other with dignity.
But for a lot of folks on the left, if I disagree with them on their political priority, it's because I have a lack of compassion, a lack of care.
And therefore, I must be the kind of person who would treat people individually in a mean way.
That's nonsense.
The article makes that assumption, but the article is wrong.
What the article is right about is that LGBT people across the country are being treated extraordinarily well, and they are treated extraordinarily well even in deeply red areas.
And that shouldn't be shocking to anybody.
Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
Pretty shocking story in The Week all about Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard.
So you'll recall that for years, the story was basically that Johnny Depp had physically abused Amber Heard, his ex-wife.
And this was repeated.
Amber Heard was used as the Me Too poster girl.
Well, now it's turning out that it may have been the other way around.
According to The Week, Depp has now filed a lawsuit against Amber Heard for $50 million for defamation.
Depp's lawsuit referred to Heard's allegation as a hoax.
He has presented new evidence who is actually Depp, who was physically abused in the marriage, and not the other way around.
Ms.
Heard also knew that her elaborate hoax worked, said the lawsuit.
As a result of her false allegations against Mr. Depp, Ms.
Heard became a darling of the MeToo movement, was the first actress named a human rights champion at the UN Human Rights Office, was appointed ambassador on women's rights at the ACLU, and was hired by L'Oreal Paris as its global spokesperson, the lawsuit stated.
Depp's legal team have provided fresh evidence alleging Heard punched Depp in the face and chopped a part of his finger.
The new video and photographic evidence submitted showed Depp's face with a huge bruise and one of his fingers severed.
Depp also submitted 87 surveillance camera videos to the court and 17 depositions of witnesses, including police officers.
Fans have been apologizing to the actor for accusing him of abuse.
It's pretty horrendous stuff, obviously, but it just demonstrates that, once again, believe all women is just as nonsensical as believe all blank.
You shouldn't believe all anything.
You should check the facts and you should follow the evidence.
Believe all women is just an excuse for people not doing their homework or for enshrining their confirmation bias in the public consciousness.
That's all that's happening there.
So, and we'll wait to see the rest of the facts come out.
Reporting 87 surveillance videos, and my goodness, if it turns out the entire media fell for this thing, it's once again a demonstration of where the media's sympathies actually lie on these issues, and it's not with the truth.
Okay, other things that I hate today.
There's an article in the New York Times all about China's declining birth rate.
The title, a flurry of ideas to reverse China's declining birth rate, but will Beijing listen?
Now, there's something hilarious about the New York Times complaining about China's declining birthrate.
The real reason that they're worried about the declining birthrate in China, of course, is because they have a massive social welfare state infrastructure.
It's a communist country.
If you don't have young people, nobody's paying the bills.
And they used a one-child policy to completely destroy the future of their country.
The same New York Times will call next week for people not to have kids because of global warming.
Maybe the New York Times should do a little soul-searching.
If it turns out that no kids in China is a bad thing, maybe no kids in America is also a bad thing.
Maybe if you want your giant social welfare state, you're actually going to have to have an influx of new people who can work.
Maybe you're going to have to have young people.
Maybe if you want a giant social welfare state, you're going to have to do what China does and limit immigration pretty tremendously.
It's hilarious that the same folks who will push for a Nordic-style social system refuse to acknowledge that a giant social welfare state relies on new populations of young people to work, and also relies on restrictive immigration policies, both of which the New York Times opposes.
Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two more hours of coverage.
I'm sure there will be lots of breaking Beto news, like he's probably playing a song right now, and brooding, and then brooding, and then playing a song, and then thinking, and then brooding, and being dark, and then brooding.
So I'm sure we'll have every brooding update about Beto O'Rourke.
If you want to check that out, go subscribe over at dailywire.com.
If not, we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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