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March 15, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:58
The Nature Of Evil | Ep. 738
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A horrifying terrorist attack on Muslims in Christchurch shakes the world, President Trump runs into Republican resistance over his national emergency, and we check the mailbag.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The events in New Zealand are disturbing and horrifying in every possible way.
Naturally, there are folks on Twitter and in the media who will politicize all of this because that is what we do, unfortunately, in our fast-moving media world.
We'll talk about all of this stuff.
We'll talk about what exactly happened in Christchurch, the reactions of folks.
It's just, it's horrifying in every way.
We'll get to all that.
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Let's start with obviously stomach-churning, horrifying, evil, white supremacist terror attack on mosques in New Zealand.
If you didn't lose sleep last night, it's because you weren't following the story closely enough.
If you don't feel sick to your stomach after reading the coverage of all of this, after reading about the evil of the participants in this, then legitimately you're not paying close enough attention to the story.
It is utterly horrifying in every conceivable way.
New York Times reporting 49 people were killed 49 people were killed in shootings at two mosques in Central Christchurch New Zealand on Friday in a terrorist attack the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described as extraordinary and unprecedented act Obviously, this was a white supremacist terror attack that was driven at Islamic centers.
Officials said one man in his late 20s had been charged with murder, that two explosive devices were found attached to a vehicle that they had stopped.
A Muslim leader in New Zealand said the attack was especially shocking.
It took place around Friday prayer, so it was coordinated to be when the mosques were most full.
A gunman streamed a live video of the attack on Facebook.
He appeared to have posted a manifesto online.
We have a rule at Daily Wire.
This was established about a year and a half ago, two years ago.
Saying that we will not name any mass shooter.
We will not name terrorists.
We will not name the people who murder innocents in the name of their politics.
We're not going to do that.
We're also not going to read the terrorist manifesto today.
We're not going to give credence to his thoughts.
We will mention his politics only to the extent that it is necessary to discuss the overarching political issues that affect the world and affect our nation.
But we are not going to quote his manifesto.
We are not going to go out of our way to lend any sort of support or credence to not only his manifesto, but to the notion that his manifesto should be used as a guidebook for others.
What these folks want, what evil terrorists want is attention.
That's why they commit terrorist attacks.
That's why this guy live streamed a video of his attack on Facebook.
And it shows you that in our two connected world, we've got a real problem.
Because if you are seeking fame, if you are seeking notoriety, then all you have to do is commit an act of evil with a camera in your hand.
We've seen this over and over and over again now.
Stop watching the videos.
Delete the videos.
Suck the air out of the room.
Do not provide the impetus for future people, future monsters, monstrous evil people to do stuff like this.
It's just, it's horrific.
And there's also this sense of ersatz community that is created for white supremacists online who are able, because of the internet, to find people who think like them in the dark niches of Western society and non-Western society, able to find...
These dark niches of people who think like them and who cheer when this sort of stuff happens and who act performatively for the sake of others.
You see this when it comes to a lot of bleep posting online, the sort of performative nature of harassing people, bothering people, annoying people.
But, and that's, you know, that's an aspect of free speech.
It's not something I like, but it's an aspect of free speech that we all have to just deal with.
When that bleeds over into the real world, where performance becomes violence, and where people are performing acts of vile cruelty and evil in order to receive the cheers of others, we have to wonder whether our connected universe is a little bit too connected.
Because the truth is, it's not real connection.
Real connection is the connection that we forge with each other when we are offline.
How many of your best friends are people that you meet online and never meet in person?
How many of the people that you actually connect with are people that you are just talking to in a chat room or on a Reddit board?
The answer is probably not many.
Most of the deep connections in your life are the people who you meet.
And because we don't spend enough time out in the world being with other people, it allows us to other other people.
It allows us to treat other people as though they are foreign to us, as though they are monsters, as though they are to be clubbed or destroyed in some way.
And that's terrible.
It really is.
Because The reality is when we treat each other face-to-face, when we see each other face-to-face, it is exorbitantly rare in good societies, in decent societies, that we treat each other badly when we treat each other face-to-face.
And that's why something like this is so shocking, when the sort of vile underbelly of the internet brews up into the real world and ends with deadly consequences.
It really is.
That's not a call for censorship.
It's a call for human beings to be better.
It's a call for all of us to try harder.
It's a call for everyone to get offline and start interacting with people with whom they may not agree and who they may not know.
The Prime Minister of New Zealand had a few words to say about this.
Here's what she had to say.
It is clear that this is one of New Zealand's darkest days.
Clearly what has happened here is an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence.
Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand.
They may even be refugees here.
They have chosen to make New Zealand their home and it is their home.
They are us.
The person who has perpetuated this violence against us is not.
They have no place in New Zealand.
There is no place in New Zealand for such acts of extreme and unprecedented violence, which it is clear this act was.
For now my thoughts and I'm sure the thoughts of all New Zealanders with those who have been affected and also with their families.
My thoughts also to those in Christchurch who are still dealing with an unfolding situation.
Now we'll treat the media response to all of this in just a second after we bring you the information because the media response has been in many cases irresponsible over the top Attempting to cast blame as a first resort.
Attempting to politicize this stuff.
Politicians, particularly one particularly foolish politician who's gotten an inordinate amount of attention tweeting out ridiculous things.
First, let me give you the rest of the information.
Shots were fired at Al Noor Mosque on Deans Avenue in the center of the city and at Linwood Mosque about three miles away, the police said.
The country's police commissioner, Mike Bush, said in an evening news conference that 41 people had been killed at Al-Noor Mosque and seven at Linwood Mosque and another victim had died at Christchurch Hospital.
David Meats, the chief executive of the Canterbury District Health Board, said that 48 people, including young children, were being treated for injuries at the hospital.
He said the injuries included gunshot wounds and ranged from critical to minor.
The International Committee of the Red Cross created a page for reporting the names of people who are missing or accounted for.
The police said that four people, Including three men and one woman had been taken into custody.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia said that one of them was Australian.
Mr. Bush said that a man in his late twenties had been charged with murder and would appear in Christchurch court on Saturday morning.
A number of firearms were recovered from the scenes of the shootings, he said.
By the way, written on the firearms were the names of other mass murderers who had particularly targeted mosques.
Of the three others who were detained, the police commissioner said that one might have had nothing to do with the attack, and the police were working to determine how the other two might have been involved.
None of those detained were on security watch lists.
Two explosive devices were found on one vehicle, Mr. Bush said.
Adding that the police had diffused one and were in the process of diffusing the other.
Mr. Bush had urged people not to go to mosques anywhere in New Zealand on Friday.
He also urged mosques nationally to close your doors until you hear from us again, which is just horrifying.
Shutting down religious institutions because evil people are attempting to kill people at religious institutions is just insane.
Yeshara Lee.
Who is an Iranian-born reporter in the United States.
He tweeted out that it takes an amount of bravery for people to identify publicly as religious.
And that's true for people who choose to wear a hijab.
It's true of people who choose to wear side locks if you're Jewish or yarmulkes.
It's true for a wide variety of people.
That's not bravery.
That's just how people live.
That's how people live.
It's a choice that they've made.
And when I see somebody who's chosen to wear a hijab, I mean, it's one of the reasons I was in favor of the Congress changing its rules to allow Ilhan Omar, who I think is terrible for a lot of other reasons, but for this, I think that it's great.
Congress changing its rules to allow Ilhan Omar to cover her head on the floor of the Congress if she chooses to do so, that's a wonderful thing.
Because when you see other people who are attempting to reach out to something larger than themselves, people who are attempting to recognize that they are subject to a morality above themselves, that's a good thing.
That's a good thing.
And for people to despise that and try and murder people because of that is such an act of tremendous, tremendous evil.
There's a 17 minute video posted to Facebook showing part of the attack.
Facebook didn't see it in time, so they didn't take it down in time.
The clip, which may have been taken from a helmet camera worn by a gunman, begins behind the wheel of a car.
The man, whose face can occasionally be seen in the rearview mirror, drives through the streets of Christchurch before pulling up to the Al-Noor Mosque beside the sprawling Haigley Park.
He approaches the mosque on foot, his weapon visible, and begins shooting at people at the entrance.
What follows is a harrowing nearly two minutes of his firing on worshippers.
At one point, the gunman exits the mosque and fires in both directions down the sidewalk before returning to his car for another gun, which, like the others, was inscribed with numbers, symbols, or messages.
When he re-enters the mosque, he shoots at several bodies at close range.
The video is absolutely horrendous.
People should absolutely not watch it or give it coverage.
He also posted a white nationalist manifesto on Twitter and 8chan, and people have of course been perusing this to see if they can cast aspersions at American political figures.
The 8chan post included a link to the gunman's Facebook page where he said he would broadcast the live video of the attack.
In the middle of this evil video, Felix Kjellberg, who is PewDiePie, a YouTube celebrity, I've been on his meme review, he distanced himself from the attacks because he's not responsible for the attacks.
And here's where the media start to lose it.
The media start suggesting that because Kjellberg was mentioned by this guy, somehow he is responsible for the attacks.
No, there is a sick online meme world where people make references to other people who are online in order to gain attention, or in order to polarize.
People who don't understand anything about meme world take everything that the folks who are doing in these chat rooms, these threads, they take all of that seriously.
Okay, that is not correct.
Not only should all of it not be taken seriously, some of it is directly an attempt to generate headlines.
Some of it is directly an attempt to implicate people who are not responsible for things.
You've seen Candace Owens' name mentioned in this person's manifesto.
Candace Owens has nothing to do with this guy, and it's actually pretty obvious from the manifesto itself that he is naming Candace Owens specifically to cause political rifts.
The one thing that is clear from this white nationalist manifesto that this piece of human wrote, the one thing that is that is absolutely clear from that is that he wanted to drive political division.
He was seeking to drive political division in the West that would break down along racial racial lines.
And then he could claim that he had started a race war.
That was his intent in all of this.
And anybody who is perpetuating that is is helping him do his work.
And that's what he wanted.
We'll get to more of this in just a second.
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Back to this horrendous story.
So people have been trying to figure out how exactly they curb social media, what to do about social media.
That really is probably not the answer other than actual attempts to create violence.
I've said for a long time.
You don't get to attribute violence to people unless they are openly calling for violence.
If they are openly calling for violence, that's a violation of the First Amendment, and those posts should not be available anywhere.
The fact that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, the fact that they've been looking to take down political posts, political posts they don't like, as opposed to targeting actual posts that inflame violence, that are directly attempting to inflame violence, is a blot on the record of these tech companies.
The 17-minute video apparently could be found on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram more than an hour after being posted.
In order to evade detection, people were cropping the video or posting the text of the manifesto as an image, both of which are techniques used to evade automated systems that find and delete the content.
Facebook has already invested enormous amounts of resources.
They can't be perfect here, of course, and especially when it comes from an account that they weren't actively following.
Still, the tech companies need to focus a little more, if they can, on cracking down on incipient violence and a little bit less on the politics that they particularly do not like.
Now to the politics of the situation.
So, we are already seeing the coverage turn toward what drove this evil, disgusting piece of human debris to do all of this.
And many in the media think they found their answer, and their answer is Trump.
So, there is an article from Al Jazeera in which they point out that the manifesto mentions President Trump.
It does not mention that President Trump is specifically denounced for his politics.
This is a 74 page dossier hailing Trump as a quote, symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.
But the quote continues that this person does not believe in Trump's politics and does not believe in his values.
So here is the point.
When you look at at manifestos like this, first of all, it is not coherent other than a generalized hatred for people who are not of white identity.
Second of all, the manifesto itself is memery.
It is designed in order to heighten conflict.
It is designed to call out certain people, to get them centered in the media.
It is not designed as an active, coherent call to arms.
But the media covering it that way are doing so for political purposes.
There are a lot of things that are said in here.
The guy calls himself an eco-anarchist, or an eco-fascist is what he called himself.
They're not quoting that part because it doesn't meet their narrative.
The fact is that you shouldn't be looking at this guy as anything other than an evil white supremacist because that's the overarching message of what he did, but instead what we're trying to do is now attribute his actions to others.
Now, there are people who have reacted badly on both sides of the political aisle.
I hesitate even to label Senator Fraser Anning, a member of the Australian party, as a right-winger, given this kind of rhetoric.
But he tweeted out one of the worst statements I have ever seen.
Quote, Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?
Are you insane?
Are you an insane person?
Muslims were just massacred.
This is not Muslim immigrants causing violence.
This is Muslim immigrants being the victims of violence.
What in the absolute hell?
I mean, this guy has a long record of this sort of thing.
The reason people are turning to the rhetoric question is because they can't turn to the gun control question.
The reason they can't turn to the gun control question is because New Zealand law is some of the most heavily gun-controlled on planet Earth.
Murders are rare in New Zealand, reports the New York Times.
Gun homicides are even rarer.
There were 35 murders countrywide in 2017.
Since 2007, gun homicides have been in the single digits every year except 2009, but there are plenty of guns.
There were 1.2 million registered firearms in the country of 4.6 million people in 2017, which just goes to show you that high levels of gun ownership don't necessarily mean high levels of gun violence.
It depends who owns the gun.
New Zealand law allows any person aged 16 or older with an entry-level firearm license to keep any number of common rifles and shotguns.
Most guns can be purchased without being tracked by law enforcement officials.
With that said, there are still some very heavy gun control regulations in New Zealand.
Virtually every person who owns a firearm has to be registered.
The media is trying to turn this into a gun control debate, but the fact is that compared to the United States, their gun control is pretty serious.
It's pretty serious.
So potential gun owners in New Zealand have to pass a police background check, for example, The gun laws in Australia were tightened following a 1996 mass shooting in which 35 people were killed by a lone gunman in Tasmania.
Within two weeks, Australian lawmakers banned rapid-fire rifles and shotguns and introduced tighter laws governing ownership of other weapons.
New Zealand has some of these laws on the books, and of course they have an incredibly low murder rate.
So this is really not about gun control.
Nonetheless, what you're seeing from some people is a call for gun control.
You're also seeing people trot out their slogans at the wrong time.
So one of the big things that happens in the United States is whenever there is a massacre of some sort, people immediately say that their thoughts and prayers are with the folks who were hurt, which is a way of expressing empathy.
Aren't we told that in politics and in life, sympathy and empathy are good things?
And if I say that I'm praying for people who just lost loved ones, that that is my expression of care for them?
And yet, it has become a thing in the United States that if you say thoughts and prayers, what that really is, is a way of you avoiding the harder discussions about policy and rhetoric.
There's only one problem.
This was a massacre carried out at a mosque, where people were legitimately praying because they wanted to be in consonance with something higher than themselves.
That did not stop Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, very fresh and very face, from tweeting out, quote, At first, I thought of saying, imagine being told your house of faith isn't safe anymore.
But I couldn't say imagine because of Charleston, Pittsburgh, Sutherland Springs.
What good are your thoughts and prayers when they don't even keep the pews safe?
What the hell does she even mean by that?
These were Muslims, religious Muslims, praying to Allah.
They were there to pray.
They were there to commune with something greater.
What good are your thoughts and prayers when they don't even keep the pews safe?
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion does.
Religion does not suggest that if you pray, you will be safer.
Religion suggests that if you pray, you may become better, because you are thinking about something greater than yourself.
And then, she tries to walk this absolute crap back.
She says this is a time of great vulnerability for our communities.
We must come together, fight for each other, and stand up for neighbors.
Isolation, dehumanizing stereotypes, hysterical conspiracy theories, and hatred ultimately lead to the anarchy of violence.
We cannot stand for it.
Fine.
Then she says this.
Thoughts and prayers is a reference to the NRA's phrase used to deflect conversation away from policy change during tragedies.
Not directed to the Prime Minister Ardern, who I greatly admire.
Well, no, thoughts and prayers is not an NRA phrase.
Thoughts and prayers is a phrase that is used by decent people all around the world for legitimately centuries.
To suggest that thoughts and prayers is just a way to shirk responsibility for a gun control debate that you feel like having at this particular time, the blood's still on the pavement.
Just, just horrifying.
But of course the whole thing is horrifying, and the reaction is horrifying.
The truth is, every human being of decency is united on this.
Everybody believes that this human piece of excrement should pay whatever is the ultimate price in New Zealand, and so should anybody who is associated with this act of absolutely evil terror.
Everyone agrees on this stuff, and people who are trying to generate false division based on the fact that they don't like Trump, or they don't like guns, or they don't like Environmentalism, whoever is trying to turn this into a political thing today, other than condemning the ideology of the terrorist.
OK, the ideology of the terrorist is a white supremacist ideology.
It is fully evil.
It is fully evil to suggest that if a Muslim lives in your neighborhood, that Muslim deserves to die because they are a threat to your white majority.
It is sheer, absolute sick garbage.
You can have questions about the nature of radical Islam.
That is not the same thing as suggesting that a Muslim in your neighborhood is a terrorist who is supposed to be shot at a mosque.
It's disgusting.
And anybody who is suggesting today that white supremacism doesn't have victims is, of course, being ignorant of the reality of the modern world.
It is just untrue.
That sort of stuff should be condemned.
The ideology of the killer should be condemned.
Now, what is wrong is to extend that ideology to people who do not believe it.
So you see some people on the political left doing today, taking that ideology and saying, well, you believe that, don't you?
No.
Typical mainline conservatives do not believe this stuff.
They forcibly fight back against this stuff.
There's a reason that the same white supremacists on 4chan are not big fans of a lot of conservatives.
I mean, again, this guy's manifesto itself said that he was not a conservative and didn't like conservatism because he felt it hadn't conserved.
The fact is, White supremacy is indeed evil.
We should all be front and forward in condemning the tribal politics of race.
It's horrifying and it has impact.
I legitimately don't understand why there's division on when this sort of stuff happens.
I understand that people want to use flashpoints to push their particular politics.
I understand that.
But it does nothing but tear apart a civilization that is united on acts of evil like this sort of stuff.
Alrighty, in just a second we'll turn to President Trump's national emergency declaration.
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Okay, final note.
I just want to reiterate.
When it comes to stuff like this.
We live in a world where flashpoints are used in order to politically polarize.
I don't legitimately know.
I don't legitimately know where there should be serious political difference on the evil of this.
And why you would point fingers at people who are not responsible for things.
Unless you are badly motivated.
I don't know why you would do that.
Everybody is united in condemning this.
As well they should be.
Just like everybody was united in condemning the shooting at the Texas church.
Or at the South Carolina church.
We are all united when it comes to fighting acts of evil.
It's why we have a civilization.
If we were not united in fighting acts of evil, we would not have a civilization.
And casting aspersions at people who believe the same way that you do.
That this is an act of tremendous evil.
And that the ideology that supports this act of evil is itself evil.
That fighting those people are lumping them in with the bad guys.
That is, in and of itself, horrifying and disgusting.
It's really bad.
It's really bad stuff.
Okay.
Let's move on to President Trump and his emergency declaration.
So, the Senate voted yesterday to reject President Trump's emergency declaration.
Immediately, Trump tweeted, VITA, all capital letters, the Senate's resolution was passed 59 to 41 to overturn his national emergency declaration.
Them saying, we didn't delegate you this kind of power and you are not allowed to simply overrule us by declaring a national emergency.
And it does show that the national emergency power is to a certain extent being abused because the fact is that the National Emergency Act was designed to allow the president to act in the absence of congressional opinion making or weighing in.
The reason to declare a national emergency is you don't actually have time to go to Congress for the appropriations.
You just declare a national emergency.
It was the first time That, I think, has ever happened, where Congress has explicitly rejected a national emergency declaration from a president.
The reason for that?
Because the President negotiated with Congress.
He didn't get what he wanted.
And then he declared a national emergency.
That is a violation of the constitutional order.
That is not how the Constitution is supposed to work.
President Trump said he was going to veto this.
He said, And in fact, you saw a bunch of Republicans who switched their position on this simply because President Trump does have a massive amount of support.
The fact is that a bunch of senators flipped on this, most prominently Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska.
He had said earlier, we absolutely have a crisis at the border, but as a constitutional conservative, I don't want a future Democratic president unilaterally rewriting gun laws or climate policy.
If we get used to presidents just declaring an emergency any time they can't get what they want from Congress, it will be almost impossible to go back to a constitutional system of checks and balances.
Over the past decades, the legislative branch has given away too much power, and the executive branch has taken too much power.
That seems like a pretty good predicate for voting against the National Emergency Declaration.
And then he voted in favor of the National Emergency Declaration.
He said the reason he did so is because he and Mike Lee had put forward a bill that would have curbed, generally, the power to declare a national emergency.
And that bill had not been agreed to by the president.
Well then why are you voting with him on this national emergency that still doesn't answer the question?
The fact is this national emergency, the one being declared right now, is not in fact legally a national emergency.
It is a national emergency in the common parlance.
It is something that the Congress ought to do something about.
We ought to have a wall.
The president doesn't get to overstep his boundaries just because he's doing something you like.
The measure of a principle is whether if the violation of the principle accomplishes something that you want, you are for it or against it.
So if you have a principle, And then it turns out that tossing out the principle in order to get something done appeals to you.
So you toss out the principle, then you really didn't have the principle to begin with.
You had a politics of convenience.
It's not just Senator Sasse who flipped on this sort of thing.
Senator Tom Tillis wrote a full op-ed saying that he was not in favor of the National Emergency Declaration.
He announced he would vote to terminate the National Emergency Declaration.
And then he changed his mind and voted against terminating the National Emergency Declaration.
And listen, I understand that there is severe pressure on these senators from people who are sitting home and who are thinking, OK, well, all this really comes down to is do you want to protect the border or not?
But that is a failure to educate your own voters, which is part of the job.
There's been this move in national politics toward, we will just appease whichever voters are in front of us.
It's our job to give the voters what they want.
Well, that's half your job.
The other half of your job is to help shape what voters want.
It's to convince voters.
It's to go back home and give people the hard messages.
If you're not doing that, then you're not acting as a good representative.
This is the difference between the sort of straight democratic representation model and the Burkean model of representation.
Edmund Burke famously wrote that if you were a representative, Then it was not just your job to represent the temporary wishes of the public.
It was your job to represent, to act as your own conscience.
They elected you to use your own conscience.
And if the people don't like it, then I suppose they can turn you out.
But they should give you a solid listen.
They should give you a solid listen.
Again, I think Republicans, this should have passed with an overwhelming supermajority.
It did not.
That is a lack of principle on the part of a lot of Republicans, including many Republicans with whom I generally agree.
And I think there is a case to be made, and I think that you've heard Representative Dan Crenshaw make it, that if you really believe that it is legal for the President to declare a national emergency under current powers, then you vote in favor of this.
But there are a bunch of people who said the President doesn't have those powers under the National Emergencies Act, and then they voted in favor of the President exercising powers he doesn't have.
That's bad.
And I hear the excuses.
Listen, I hear the excuses.
The excuse that Democrats would do the exact same thing.
That's true.
That's why I'm not a Democrat.
It is true.
Democrats would go along with violations of the constitutional order.
Which is why, again, I am not a Democrat.
So, I guess you can continue to just go along with whatever the president wants if it mirrors your political preferences, but don't claim to be a constitutional conservative if you do.
Okay, coming up, we're going to talk about Beto O'Rourke and we're going to jump into the mailbag.
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Okay, meanwhile, Beto, Beto writes, So he is he is running and the blowback has begun.
The blowback has begun to to Beto O'Rourke.
There is a piece today in The New York Times all about how Beto O'Rourke is too white.
And you knew this was coming.
You knew that it was going to happen, that he was going to be criticized for being too privileged.
I mentioned yesterday that it was astonishing to me that the media hadn't already jumped on this.
The fact that Beto O'Rourke grew up exorbitantly wealthy and exorbitantly powerful in a fairly small town, and that he escaped a couple of misdemeanor transgressions, including a DWI, in which he apparently crossed the median lane, rammed into somebody, and then ran away.
That he was able to spend most of his 20s running around the country in a crappy punk rock band with no blowback.
And I was asking, why aren't Democrats pointing this out?
I thought this is the party of inspiring personal stories and intersectionality and opposing white privilege and all of that.
Well, all I had to do is wait 24 hours.
Estiad Herndon is a columnist over at the New York Times.
He writes, in Beto O'Rourke's announcement, his wife's silence stands out.
Oh boy, get ready.
Beto O'Rourke, the charismatic Texas Democrat and former member of the House of Representatives, announced his presidential campaign in a video on Thursday.
The three-minute clip quickly racked up thousands of shares, with some viewers excited by the prospect of his out-of-nowhere political rise.
But others were put off by how his campaign deployed an age-old trope in American political theater, the silent, supportive wife.
Throughout the video, Mr. O'Rourke's wife, Amy, sat quietly by her husband's side, periodically grasping his hand as he outlined his campaign vision.
And occasionally, she smiled and gazed.
Okay, now I have a question.
Why is this such a bad thing?
There are a bunch of tweets, people saying, I'm so sick of wives being forced to silently gaze.
Okay, so my wife, who is in fact a doctor, does not follow politics supremely closely.
When people have asked her if I would ever run for office, she said, God, I hope not.
My wife doesn't like being in the public spotlight.
If she were in some sort of campaign commercial, if I asked her, you know what, sweetheart, I want to show a kinder world to the face, would you be in a campaign commercial?
You think she actually wants me to kick it to her so she can talk about tax policy?
Or is it possible that she would be supporting my dream in the same way that I have supported her dreams?
I mean, there are a lot of rips on Beto O'Rourke.
I don't think this one is particularly fair.
Nonetheless, he's getting hit for it because his wife is not speaking in his campaign video.
Which is absurd.
When was the last time you heard somebody say, where's Kamala Harris's husband and why isn't he speaking in her campaign videos?
Because we're not electing that person.
Why would we?
The presence of the spouse is meant to show that this is a human.
It's meant to cue you to the fact that Beto is a human.
Which I agree with.
He may not be my favorite human, but he is a human.
This is such an unfair riff, but it shows where the Democratic head is at, or where a lot of Democrats are at.
Is what this column says.
So absurd.
Throughout the 1980s, Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush could be found next to their presidential husbands, often silently supporting them in big moments.
More recently, buoyed by Hillary Clinton's active role in her husband's campaigns, many elected officials have leaned on their partners as high-profile surrogates.
In the current presidential race, Jane Sanders, wife of Bernie Sanders of Vermont, enjoyed a prominent behind-the-scenes role and gave a speech at his initial campaign rally.
Wow.
Mr. O'Rourke's video, however, struck some observers as especially out of place in a presidential race in which more Democratic women are running for president than ever before.
Among several of these women, the husbands are rarely seen.
So which is it?
Should the spouse be seen?
Or should the spouse be heard?
Or should the spouse be neither?
Which is it?
On his first day of campaigning, in a seemingly offhand comment, Mr. O'Rourke joked about his wife, saying she was raising their children, sometimes with my help.
His comments elicited both laughter and derision.
I don't understand.
Why is that?
And then the following sentence is the best part.
This is not the first time Mr. O'Rourke has been accused of appearing to revel in his advantages as a white male in an increasingly diverse Democratic Party.
No, you don't.
That is not what he was saying.
Again, how am I finding myself defending Beto O'Rourke?
How did this happen?
Have we created a world where the guy that I mock as a pseudo pothead who spends his days on the quad playing guitar for the Gullible women.
How am I defending Beto O'Rourke?
How?
Because you people are so crazy that you forced me into defending Beto O'Rourke.
If I say about my wife that she spends an enormous amount of time raising our children, sometimes with my help, that is not deriding her.
That is deriding me.
That is Beto O'Rourke saying that his wife is a heroine and he is a person who is not doing his fair share.
It's ridiculous to criticize him for that.
But, this columnist for the New York Times says, as he announced his campaign, complete with a profile in Vanity Fair, in which he hinted he was born to run for president, detractors pointed out that prominent black Democrats who lost their 2018 campaigns, including Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida, are not running for president.
Well, first of all, that's only for now.
Both of them have said that they are considering it.
For weeks before his presidential announcement, O'Rourke traveled across the country as he wrestled privately with whether to run and wrote musings on his Medium account.
This drew jokes from several comedians and prominent social voices who compared his public Agonizing with the stereotypical tendency for men to refuse to commit to relationships, particularly romantic ones.
Okay, that of course is absolutely true.
Nonetheless, this sort of rip is amazing.
By the way, you know what I just noticed?
This is not an opinion column.
This is not an opinion column.
The guy who wrote this is a reporter.
You get to the bottom and it reads like an opinion column.
You get to the bottom and it says that there are a couple of reporters who helped with this column.
It says, Megan Felling, Sergio Pencaja, and Anjali Singhvi contributed.
Wow, just the bias of the New York Times is so strong that you can legitimately read one of their news pieces as though it's an op-ed and not notice it until you hit the end.
But that just shows you where Beto is going to fall flat with a certain segment of the Democratic Party.
It's the same place, by the way, that Joe Biden is going to fall flat.
It's the same place that Joe Biden is going to fall flat with that intersectional base of the Democratic Party.
Bernie Sanders can escape that because Bernie Sanders has that progressive base that is locked in.
That's why I think people are overestimating Beto, not underestimating Beto at this point.
I think people think that his charm offensive with the media will have some sort of significant impact in the primaries.
I think that that stuff is going to wear off.
It's going to wear real thin really quickly.
Barack Obama had the capacity to carry both the intersectional core as well as the media's love.
Not the same thing for Beto O'Rourke.
By the way, Beto is not doing a wonderful job on the campaign trail.
He's going around making gaffes basically.
Yesterday he did some sort of Instagram where he asked people for gas money because he's driving his minivan.
But he just told us that we were all going to die thanks to climate change and here he is at a gas station asking for money.
Hey everybody, we're in Wapaloa, Iowa.
We started the day in Keokuk, we then went to Fort Madison, then Burlington, and we're going to stay on the problem for a very long time, but it takes your contributions to keep us out here.
Let me show you, we've just filled up.
So we've got 12 gallons in the Dodge Grand Caravan that cost us $28.53.
Please pitch in, join everyone else who's helping to make this happen.
Thank you.
What in the?
What in?
Okay, so I thought that, again, I guess he's just living in the world like AOC.
You know, just living in the world.
One of the beautiful things about being a Democrat is you can actively ask for gas money as though you are Beto O'Rourke when he's 25 years old, not 45 years old.
And people will think that this is a cool thing to do.
Also, Beto suggested, of course, that the Green New Deal is just like Normandy.
So at the same time he's asking for gas money, he's saying the Green New Deal is like Normandy.
If you think of our leadership, those who preceded us, those who were on the beaches in Normandy, those who faced an existential threat to Western democracy and our way of life, they showed us the way.
We can all come together, we can unite, we can marshal the resources, and we can convene the countries of the world around otherwise.
Okay, so, if we're indispensable, also give me gas money.
We're all gonna die in 12 years, also.
Can I get in this minivan and spew some carbon emissions into the air?
Guys, I'm just living in the world.
Okay, time for some mailbag because it is a Friday.
Ryan says, Hi Ben, I'd be curious to know your perspective on the court's ruling that Remington can be sued in connection with the tragic Sandy Hook shooting.
This is an absurd ruling.
An absurd ruling.
There is a court that ruled, for those who missed it, that Remington can be sued in court because the shooter in Sandy Hook used an AR-15 manufactured by Remington.
That is the height of silly.
That is the same thing as suggesting that Ford can be sued because you drove your Ford into a storefront.
It's a vehicle.
They didn't tell you how to drive it.
The gun was not made to shoot children.
It was made to defend against people who try to shoot children.
That's what guns are made for.
If you want to sue the state for failing to do proper background checks, that's more understandable.
But if you're going to sue Remington, that theory of products liability is a complete fail.
Products liability, generally, there are only a couple of classes of products liability, and I'm trying to remember all the way back to law school, which was now 12 years ago.
But thinking back to law school, there are only a couple of lines of product liability.
There is design flaws, and then there's manufacturing flaws.
Design flaws are that I designed a product that is designed Badly and is going to harm you because of its design and the other one is a manufacturing flaw There's something in the machine itself that is broken and that broke and that hurt you It's not a design flaw when the gun works exactly how it's supposed to work It is just being aimed by a complete evil piece of garbage at innocent people Because the gun was not designed for that purpose.
This is like suing a knife manufacturer for a murder for OJ Simpson's alleged murder of his of his ex-wife Now, I don't see that happening.
I think that what we've seen in the last ten years is basically ideological shifts within these parties.
It's easier to take over an established party than it is to start a new party in the United States.
The Libertarian Party proves that legitimately every presidential election cycle.
Thanks, Craig.
No, I have not actually met Rabbi Shmuley.
atheist versus religion debates on YouTube, specifically Christopher Hitchens debating Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
In light of your upcoming book, what are your current thoughts on the debate between atheists and theists?
Have you ever met Rabbi Shmuley?
Thanks, Craig.
No, I have not actually met Rabbi Shmuley.
As far as the debate between atheists and theists, you know, I've done a couple of these.
So I've had more discussions than debates.
I've had discussions with Sam Harris a couple of times, once on his podcast, once on mine.
I've had discussions with Michael Shermer, a friend of mine who happens to be the editor of Skeptic Magazine and is best described as sort of an agnostic slash atheist.
The real question about the argument between atheism and theism is that I don't think Both sides actually understand each other.
Mainly, I think atheists don't understand theists.
I think that a lot of atheists seem to believe that if they argue against the Bible, that this is somehow an argument against theism itself.
It is not.
That if they just cite a couple of out of context verses from the Bible, they're going to shatter the faith of people who believe in it.
That is not going to happen.
That if There is an order to nature that somehow this is a disproving of God's presence, or that if you are a believer in Darwinian evolution, that somehow this disproves God's presence because it looks like an order without a designer.
Well, who designed that order?
All that theists believe is that there is a designed order to the universe, and that that order to the universe was created by an active mind.
That's the basis of theism.
And it's not really a disprovable thesis.
There are some people who have attempted to... And then you stack up evidence on both sides.
You see which is more likely, which is less likely.
So, I find these sorts of things interesting.
What I do find is that for a lot of atheists, people with whom I speak, and I talk about this in my new book, The Right Side of History, a lot of atheists use religious premises for their own arguments.
So a lot of atheists will assume that free will exists.
A lot of atheists will assume that reason is something worth doting upon.
But in an atheistic materialist universe, I don't see why reason is anything special.
Reason is just a firing of neurons that is evolutionarily beneficial, presumably.
So why should we value reason above, for example, force, if force is more evolutionarily beneficial?
The attempt to build a morality on atheism is the real problem I have.
There are lots of atheists who are wonderful people.
I have lots of friends who are atheists.
But building a morality on atheism, I think, is nearly impossible.
Dominic says, Hi, Ben.
I need to get the Beto jokes out of the way first.
When I'm president, we'll finally get the man out of our weed, man.
We'll have both parties gather around a new monument of our own design, the Liberty Bong.
Okay, now, my actual question.
Out of all the Democratic presidential candidates, who is the least of all evils right now?
Thank you for your time, Dominic.
Well, I've expressed a slight preference for Pete Buttigieg.
I'm still trying to figure out exactly how he's pronounced.
Pete Buttigieg, Pete Buttigieg, the South Bend, Indiana mayor.
Mainly because he seems like he is a little bit more considered than his Democratic colleagues.
He'll throw out a proposal and then he'll say, and maybe it won't work.
It's like, okay, I sort of appreciate that.
I mean, he's just as radical as a lot of his friends, but he seems like a person who is slightly more open-minded.
As far as people who I think would be the most damaging, anybody who polarizes along intersectional racial lines is going to be deeply damaging to the country.
And obviously, open socialists like Bernie Sanders will be very damaging as well.
There's a temptation to say Joe Biden, but I don't think that Joe Biden is actually the quote-unquote moderate that he purports to be.
Whenever he's been in a position of actual power, he doesn't govern like a moderate and he doesn't speak like a moderate.
He just pretends to be a moderate for purposes of elections.
Emily says, Hi Ben.
You very often cited the Brookings Institute study with the three things one must do in order to avoid being in poverty.
I have a friend who has been something of a sister to me since we were just toddlers.
She had some difficult circumstances up in her late teens, early twenties.
She's at the point where she has violated all three guidelines.
She had a daughter by a deadbeat dad.
She dropped out of high school.
She's currently unemployed and claims she's too depressed to work.
She often attributes my success to being lucky rather than decision-making, but she's near rock bottom and desperately wants to turn her life around.
How do you convince someone that luck has nothing to do with success?
And more importantly, how does someone come back from horrible decision-making?
She's family to me, so I hope you can help.
Well, the real question is, is she really ready to turn her life around?
That really is the question, because the only person who's going to be able to turn her life around is her.
You can advise her on anything.
If she ignores the advice, it's not going to help.
If she insists on being depressed and blaming societal forces for her own mistakes, she's not going to fix her own life.
If you take control and ownership of your own life, and you're ready to do that, and you're ready to take responsibility, and you're ready to take action, then you can make a practical plan with her.
You can find out, for example, what sort of financial support does she need to make sure that her daughter is taken care of while she goes and finishes high school.
You can make sure that there are people who are out there willing to grant her a helping hand.
There are lots of charitable people out there.
Lots of people give charity for specifically this reason.
You can get her enmeshed in a social fabric.
Find friends and family of yours to help her out.
There are lots of people who are willing to help out.
But first, she has to commit herself to actually changing her behavior and not blaming the situation around her.
Sally says, hi, Ben.
Like you, many people I grew up with dated with a purpose in mind.
However, do you think a case can be made that looking only at the opposite gender for purposes of marriage could result in the genders never engaging on a friendly basis?
Is dating only for marriage somewhat responsible for a disconnect between the genders?
So much so that in traditional communities, they seem to be occupying two separate worlds.
Thanks, Sally.
Yeah, I think this is a legitimate criticism.
You know, I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community.
There was a separate boys' school and a separate girls' school in our high school.
I think that was a good thing, because I think the risks of sexual interplay between boys and girls in an unhealthy way in high school is extremely high.
With that said, once I went to college, did I hang out with girls?
Did I have friends who were girls?
Of course!
In law school, some of my best friends were women.
That's great.
I mean, I think that you should be friends with members of the opposite sex.
I also think that this is where siblings really do play a role.
I have three younger sisters.
That means that I knew kind of how girls act and how they think and all of that is very helpful.
You do have to have a well-rounded view of women in order to know what to look for in a woman.
And a lot of that has to do, again, with having a healthy family life, too.
Having a father and a mother who have a healthy marriage.
You learn a lot about what you want in a person of the opposite sex by looking at your parents.
Just as you learn a lot about what you want to be by looking at your parents of the same sex.
Parents are really important here.
Really important.
Connor says, Hey Ben, I'm planning on starting a blog featuring my political commentary.
Do you have any tips on how to gain an audience and a platform?
Well, you know, I think that the great temptation, and I know this because I went through this at 17, the great temptation is to write stuff that is deliberately provocative to get attention.
Resist the temptation.
I wish that I had.
I think most of the stupid stuff that I feel like I've said in my career happened very early in my career when I was attempting to do just that.
So I'd recommend against that.
It means the path might be slightly longer, but it will also mean that you have less that you regret saying back when you were a young person publicly.
When it comes to getting an audience and platform, the fact is that virtually every successful company is based on marketing.
It means that you have to find somebody who's willing to invest a little bit of money into marketing on Facebook.
You need to make connections.
You need to reach out to as many people as possible so that they know that you exist.
You need to reach out on Twitter.
You need to reach out on Facebook.
You need to find people who are willing to promote your stuff.
That's the way to get started.
JC says, Hey Ben, I'm somebody who did not finish college due to multiple reasons.
I've always planned to go back for at least an associate's degree in business, but I recently found out my brother's college offers a degree in homemaking.
If the cost is equal, and my goal is ultimately to be a stay-at-home mom, would the homemaking degree be a better option, or should I get the business degree in case I need one in the future?
What are your thoughts?
Well, I'm not sure what the homemaking degree offers, because you can be a homemaker without a degree.
So the question is, what does the degree do?
Is it providing you a skill set?
Is it providing you a credential?
Or is it providing you a social fabric?
Those are the three things that education theoretically could do.
Skillset, credential, social fabric.
I'm not sure what the homemaking degree does for any of those things.
But again, I don't know the specific degree program.
As far as business, it does offer a credential that is very useful.
It may offer a skillset, depending on the program.
So I tend to lean toward the idea that you should check out the business program rather than the homemaking program, knowing nothing else other than the titles of the program, not the contents of the program.
Okay, a couple more here.
Jacob says, Ben, when you get your Beto on, can you please add a few righteous in there?
Your Beto impression always makes me think of the sea turtle crush from Finding Nemo.
Thanks, I could use a good laugh.
Absolutely, Jacob.
That is an excellent idea because Beto is indeed a righteous, radical dude.
Carson says, hey Ben, Of course.
I think every president finds themselves distanced by the party in the future.
There are candidates now who are distancing themselves from half of Barack Obama's institutional policies.
How many Democrats do you hear talking about the wonders of Obamacare?
Any?
They're all talking about running away from it.
George W. Bush was thrown under the bus as soon as humanly possible by future members of the party.
In some ways that's appropriate because you are not those people and the easy intellectual temptation is to lump people in with former presidents of their own party.
With that said, is that intellectually honest?
No, I mean, we're all individuals.
We all have different ideas.
I wish people could see that, right?
I don't see Kamala Harris in the same light in which I see Barack Obama.
They don't have the same policies.
I don't even see Joe Biden in that same light.
I don't see Joe Biden today in the same light that I saw Joe Biden four years ago.
People are constantly changing and shifting.
People don't hold the same opinions that they did even five minutes ago, in many cases.
Okay, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.
So, Thing that I like today.
It's really kind of a thing that I hate.
I didn't have any things that I like, so I just sort of stuck one of the things that I hate in the things that I like.
This is pretty spectacular, though.
There is a nine-year-old, a nine-year-old who was featured by the New York Times reading a book about climate change to the adults.
I hate this stuff more than I can tell you.
This notion that nine-year-olds have something deep to tell us about the world.
Nine-year-olds are innocent, but they are not wise.
Nine-year-olds are innocent, but they are not knowledgeable as a general rule.
Why am I supposed to take the advice of a nine-year-old who I assume has not read any of the IPCC reports upon which he is basing his book about climate change while he lectures me about how he thinks we should balance the economic needs of six billion people with the need to lower carbon emissions so as to lower the climate by a grand total of three degrees Celsius over the next century.
But nonetheless, the New York Times featured this on their homepage, a video of a nine-year-old boy reading a climate change book to the adults so as to shame us into agreeing with the prospects of the left.
The world is big and I am small.
The Earth's in trouble.
Hear her call.
One degree warmer's our demise.
We're on track for more to rise.
Goodbye New York and Miami, both cities swallowed by the sea.
Whose fault is all this climate mess?
You grown-ups must confess.
My god!
cities burned and temperatures soared you upped and left the Paris Accord you think this is a fun rhyme book?
With your inaction the earth will cook I've had enough of empty vows, your plastic bags, your farting cows on a hot February day you barbecued and went to play but it's no time for celebration you totally screwed my generation if we don't protect all it's worth prepare to say goodbye earth Whoa, little frickin' Nostradamus over there.
My goodness!
And then you exp— I mean, that's like from a— that's from a— a terrible Stanley Kubrick horror film.
My goodness!
There's little kids sitting in front of the adults.
I mean, that's shot like a scene from a horror film, even.
With the up angles and everything.
That is not true, by the way.
This is why I don't take my advice from nine-year-olds.
I got a five-year-old.
I don't take my advice from her either.
When you start saying intelligent things, then we'll start taking your advice.
How about that?
And New York Times, what in the world?
I mean, I understand that the average op-ed columnist at the New York Times may have about the same level of rhetorical capacity as this nine-year-old boy, but that doesn't mean you should be pushing nine-year-olds and their poetry about global warming on your homepage.
My goodness.
Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
So once again, terror rockets hit Tel Aviv yesterday.
They were aimed at Tel Aviv.
They were shot down by the Iron Dome.
There's some video of what that looked like, actually.
Now you should understand how terrifying that is.
Those are rockets flying over the largest, most populous city in Israel.
And then the Iron Dome shoots down those rockets that are shot by Hamas from the Gaza Strip.
Why Israel, why any state would be expected to just sit there and take it as a hostile terrorist power, shot missiles at their civilian centers, is beyond me.
Yet, if Israel retaliates, undoubtedly they will be condemned, because that is the way that our media works.
Don't worry, guys.
Those are not anti-Semitic missiles directed at random Jews in Israel.
Those are just anti-Zionism missiles, guys.
Don't worry about it.
We shouldn't worry about any of the anti-Semitism of Hamas.
Really, it's all just about, they don't like the settlement policy.
That's why they're shooting into Tel Aviv.
Which isn't a settlement.
Okay, time for one more thing that I hate.
So, once again, another day, another college that has banned me, apparently.
So, a Christian university has now banned me.
This is Whitworth University, a private Christian university in Spokane, Washington.
They were being used as the backup to Gonzaga, which is also in Spokane, Washington.
Gonzaga had banned me, and then when they finally offered us a venue, they offered us a 20,000 seat venue.
Which, like, that is not useful to us.
Thank you so much, Gonzaga.
Finally, the student body held a vote.
The students at Whitworth University held a vote on whether they should allow me to show up.
And the vote was tied 9 to 9, and that's when the president of AWSU broke the tie and voted against me speaking on campus.
There was a 90-minute back and forth, and then there was a vote to stop YAF from inviting me in the first place.
The director of student activities, Jason Chapman, said, these issues are not simple.
There was not a clear majority.
I think this is reflective of today's political climate.
At the end of the day, I think that this student union stuck to the platform they ran on last year of transparency and unity.
Yeah, because transparency and unity is don't allow any of the opinions you don't like on campus.
Well done over there.
Okay, final thing that I hate today.
So Samantha Bee, who is the least funny human in the world, like legitimately in the world.
You cannot find a less funny human than Samantha Bee.
She's very angry at Democrats for not standing up for Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitism, which she just characterizes as anti-Israel.
Samantha Bee is the hack of hacks, but for some reason she has a job.
I think we all know what the reason is.
It's that she's on the left.
Democrats want to be the big tent, diverse party.
They're more than willing to pose with Omar on magazine covers, but when she tried to talk about a truly difficult topic, which is her job as an elected official, and her life was in danger, they kind of threw her under the bus.
Ilhan Omar went from being a Somalian refugee to a fearless congresswoman on the hill, and has demonstrated that she is willing to learn.
Okay, uh, no.
She has not demonstrated any willingness to learn, and there was no debate on the Hill.
She said something anti-Semitic, and you want her defended because she is a member of the intersectional coalition.
End of story.
Okay, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two more hours.
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We'll see you in a little while.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
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