All Episodes
Previous Next
July 9, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:32
The Epstein Connection | Ep. 813
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Alleged pedophile Jeffrey Epstein heads for jail, NBC outs Mitch McConnell's great-great-grandfather as a slave owner, and we are forced by law to talk about women's soccer for like the 100th consecutive day.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
I know, I'm excited to talk about women's soccer.
Aren't you?
I mean, it's just what I love doing every single day, but apparently that's what's in the news, so we'll have to do that.
We'll get to that in just a little bit, but the big story of the day continues to be the arrest of Jeffrey Epstein.
For folks who have not been following this long-running and horrifying story, Jeffrey Epstein is a billionaire financier.
It's pretty unclear where he came up with his billions, but the dude is worth a fortune.
He also happens to be an alleged pedophile.
According to Allie Watkins and Vivian Wang, over the weekend, Federal prosecutors resurrected a federal sex crimes case against billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein by focusing on accusations that he sexually assaulted girls at his mansion in Manhattan more than a decade after a widely criticized plea deal shielded him from similar charges in Florida.
Federal prosecutors unsealed the new charges on Monday, accusing Epstein, 66, of running a sex trafficking operation that lured dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, to his Upper East Side home and to a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, according to an indictment.
Epstein, who is 66, is accused of engaging in sex acts with minors, some as young as 14 years old, during naked massage sessions, then paying them hundreds of dollars in cash, according to the indictment.
He also asked some of the girls to recruit other underage girls.
In other words, this guy is one of the worst pieces of crap.
In the modern history of the country, he was engaged in sexual trafficking of minors, which is about as bad as it gets.
Everyone involved with him should go to jail for extraordinary periods of time, because this is horrifying in every way.
The indictment says Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach.
Epstein was arrested on Saturday at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after arriving on a private flight from France.
Two law enforcement officials said he is charged with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy.
He faces a combined maximum sentence of up to 45 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors are also seeking the forfeiture of Epstein's townhouse on East 71st Street.
The new charges, according to the Times, are a revival of a years-long case against Epstein who faced similar accusations involving girls who told the police they were brought to his mansion in South Florida and then assaulted.
That case unraveled in 2008 after Epstein was offered a secret plea deal by federal prosecutors, one of whom is now the Secretary of Labor under President Trump.
And this is where the case starts to become important for modern politics.
There are two aspects of the case that are important for modern politics.
Aspect number one, is the involvement of the current Secretary of Labor who is the prosecutor in this case and who cut a really, really sweet plea deal with Jeffrey Epstein that prevented all of the information in the indictments from going public and ended up protecting Jeffrey Epstein in a variety of ways that he served a very soft sentence for what are obviously horrific crimes.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, Hiring used to be rough.
Not anymore.
When someone makes the slightest, most minor, insignificant mistake here on The Ben Shapiro Show, they know how easily we can replace them.
Thanks to ZipRecruiter.
ZipRecruiter keeps our employees frightened and also productive.
ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire.
Go check them out right now.
ZipRecruiter sends your job posting to over 100 of the web's leading job boards.
They don't stop there.
As applications come in, ZipRecruiter analyzes every single one, spotlights the top candidates, so you're never going to miss a great match.
ZipRecruiter is so effective that four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site within the very first day.
Right now, my listeners can try ZipRecruiter for free at this exclusive web address, ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.
That's ziprecruiter.com slash d-a-i-l-y-w-i-r-e.
ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
By the way, we don't just use it in order so we can threaten our employees with firing.
We also use it when we need new employees who are awesome.
And that's why you should use ZipRecruiter too.
ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.
Go check them out right now and try them out for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
Okay, so as I say, there are two reasons why the Epstein scandal is important for today's politics.
Reason number one has to do with the Secretary of Labor.
Who's name is Alexander Acosta under President Trump.
He was a prosecutor in the Epstein case.
The second reason is all of the rich and powerful people that Jeffrey Epstein knew and who are now being dragged into the conversation about who knew what, when, who might have been involved because apparently Epstein used to...
Traffic these girls to friends.
It's one of the allegations.
So the Washington Post reports today.
The indictment on Monday of Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges has reignited questions about the way Alexander Acosta, now President Trump's Labor Secretary, handled an earlier case against Epstein.
That resulted in a minimal sentence.
As U.S.
Attorney in Florida in 2007, Acosta negotiated a plea deal that led to two felony solicitation charges and 13 months in county jail for Epstein.
The billionaire financier was allowed to work from his office for six days a week.
Epstein had been facing the possibility of life in prison.
Pretty rich deal right there.
His alleged victims were not even told about the deal.
On Monday, in the indictment issued in federal court in New York, Epstein faced charges resulting from allegations like those in the Florida case.
The indictment says that in both New York and Florida, Epstein perpetuated this abuse in similar ways.
Acosta, through a spokesperson, declined to comment.
Labor Department spokesperson Robert Bazzuto referred questions about Acosta's role in the plea deal to the Justice Department.
A Justice Department spokesperson then declined to comment.
This was very controversial because the Miami Herald had done a long-running series about exactly what happened here, and it appeared that this was a sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein, who called in favors from friends, who then called in prosecutors.
That at least was the allegation made by the newspapers in Florida.
Officials at the White House are nervous that Democrats will encourage women allegedly abused by Epstein to testify publicly before Congress, drawing attention to Acosta's work on the plea deal.
President Trump right now has no immediate plan to force out or fire Acosta.
Like others, officials are speaking on condition of anonymity.
A senior White House official said the administration would like to learn the contents of a Justice Department inquiry into Acosta before making any decisions.
So there is already a DOJ inquiry.
On all of this.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of course, says that Acosta should step down.
She's doing so precipitously because we still don't know all of the information, but if it is true that things are as bad as they appear, there's no question that Acosta should step down.
I mean, if it turns out that he cut a sweetheart deal on the basis of something corrupt, not only should he step down, he should be disbarred, obviously.
Maybe there might be prosecution in the works if corruption was involved.
Acosta has not been summoned to testify before Congress specifically on the matter.
The only person who asked him about all of this at his confirmation hearing in 2017 was Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.
Acosta told Kaine that professionals within a prosecutor's office decided on the deal, taking himself out of the negotiations.
He said, this wasn't my deal in the first place.
Two House Democrats said the party now has more leverage to demand that Acosta testify.
Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, he said in the wake of the New York charges, there is resurgent interest in hearing from him about the dual system of justice in Florida.
Acosta has some major reckoning to do.
Several Republican members of Congress said they supported Acosta or reserving judgment about the Labor Secretary pending the DOJ inquiry at this point.
Senator Roy Blunt, he said, if there's more that comes out, I'll be glad to look at it.
At this point, I think it's been looked at repeatedly.
I think everybody has reached the same conclusion.
There is a Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility.
They investigate misconduct of department employees.
Opened an ethics investigation in February into whether its attorneys committed professional misconduct In pursuing the plea deal in the first place.
It is unclear at this point how this is going to result.
Acosta's initial handling of the case was widely criticized.
He signed off on a deal in which, in exchange for guilty pleas in state court to solicitation, Epstein served a 13-month sentence, registered as a sex offender, and paid restitution to certain victims.
The deal was initially sealed, keeping it secret until it was released as part of a 2015 lawsuit.
In addition, while the Florida investigation initially came to the attention of authorities because of a 14-year-old alleged victim, the only minor Epstein was convicted of soliciting was 16 years old, according to the Washington Post.
That age difference eased his obligations to register as a sex offender.
In 2011, Acosta, again the Secretary of Labor, wrote a letter seeking to explain his reasoning, saying he faced a year-long assault on the prosecution and prosecutors by an army of legal superstars.
He also wrote that defense lawyers investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for personal peccadillos that may provide a basis for disqualification.
Again, I think there is going to be a lot more information that comes out right here and we will find out as time goes on.
Suffice it to say that with all of this swirling, Acosta should certainly be thinking about whether it is good for the administration for him to remain and whether the Trump administration should have to bear the burden of a case that seems Pretty obviously wrongly negotiated in the first place.
That is angle number one.
And folks are jumping all over it.
Angle number two is that Epstein had a lot of rich and powerful friends with whom he used to hobnob.
And two of those friends were Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
And so there's all sorts of speculation today that either one of those men is involved in these sorts of sexual activities with women or girls who are underage.
And that speculation obviously is based also on the reputation of the two men, both of whom are famous womanizers.
According to the Associated Press, Jeffrey Epstein is hobnobbed with some of the world's most powerful people during his jet-setting life.
Future President Donald Trump called him a terrific guy.
Former President Bill Clinton praised his intellect and philanthropic efforts and was a frequent flyer aboard his private jet.
The arrest of the billionaire financier on child sex trafficking charges is raising questions about how much his high-powered associates knew about the hedge fund manager's interactions with underage girls and whether they turned a blind eye to potentially illegal conduct.
And of course, it is putting additional scrutiny on Alex Acosta, as we have pointed out.
Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House That the president has not talked to Epstein in 10 or 15 years.
She said, like everyone else, Trump sees the charges against Epstein is completely unconscionable and obviously criminal.
Disgusting.
Conway also defended Acosta saying that the the actual perpetrator here is Jeffrey Epstein.
The only major comment that has ever been given to date that we know about from Trump about Epstein is a comment to New York Magazine in 2002 in which he said that he had known Epstein for 15 years and praised him as a terrific guy, saying, quote, he's a lot of fun to be with.
It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side, which is not a great thing to say about a guy who's an alleged pedophile.
No doubt about it, Jeffrey enjoys his social life.
Trump Organization attorney Alan Garten has since distanced Trump from Epstein, telling Politico in 2017 Trump, quote, had no relationship with Mr. Epstein and had no knowledge whatsoever of his conduct.
And Trump said he didn't know anything about all of this.
Now, that's the Trump of it, and now we get to the Clinton of it.
We'll get to that in just one second first.
Let me tell you something about my Raycon earbuds.
They are just awesome.
Not only do they sound good, not only do they look good, they don't even have the little stems that you get in comparable products, but they cost like half the price of any other premium wireless earbuds on the market, and they sound just as amazing.
Raycon's E50 wireless earbuds are a game changer.
They're so comfortable, and they are easy to take anywhere.
Unlike some of your other wireless options, Raycon earbuds are both stylish and discreet.
They have no dangling wires or stems, and of course, they don't just look great, they sound great as well.
Raycon offers their wireless earbuds for everyone in a range of fun colors at an unbeatable price.
Go to buyraycon.com slash ben.
Get 20% off your order right now.
That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash ben for 20% off your Raycon wireless earbuds.
They're awesome, which is why I wear them pretty much everywhere.
I mean, I'm listening to content all day long, and Raycon not only makes that possible, they do it with style and at a cost you can afford.
If you've been eyeing a pair, now is the time to get an amazing deal.
One more time, it's buyraycon.com slash ben.
B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash ben.
Go check them out.
Get amazing earbuds for, like, half the price.
Buyraycon.com slash ben.
Okay, so, one of the names mentioned was Donald Trump.
And again, there's been no actual accusation that Donald Trump was involved in any of these activities other than he knew Epstein.
And so the question becomes, did he know what Epstein was doing?
Should he have said something if he did know?
But again, we have no evidence of any of that.
We just have Trump sort of mouthing off to New York Magazine in 2002, which is yucky, but not exactly indicative that Trump knew that Epstein was trafficking in 14-year-old girls.
There's a difference between icky and gross.
President Trump has plenty of experience with icky and gross when it comes to his treatment of the ladies.
There's a difference between that and knowing that somebody is an actual sex trafficker of underage women.
And then, there's Bill Clinton.
So Epstein was also an associate of Bill Clinton's, repeatedly lending the former president his jet to travel overseas.
Flight logs obtained by Fox News showed the former president took at least 26 trips aboard Epstein's Boeing 727, nicknamed the Lolita Express, from 2001 to 2003.
It's never good to ride around on a plane called the Lolita Express, guys.
It's always kind of a bad move.
That included extended junkets around the world with Epstein, and fellow passengers identified on manifests by their initials or first names, including Tatiana, according to the outlet.
Clinton told New York Magazine through a spokesman for that same 2002 story, Jeffrey is both a highly successful financier and a committed philanthropist with a keen sense of global markets and an in-depth knowledge of 21st century science.
I especially appreciated his insights and generosity during the recent trip to Africa to work on democratization, empowering the poor, citizen service and combating HIV AIDS.
Clinton spokesperson Angel Urena said the former president knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.
He said in 2002 and 2003, Clinton took four trips on Epstein's plane with multiple stops and that staff and his Secret Service detail traveled on every leg.
So the claim is that the discrepancy between 26 flights and four trips is that a trip can include multiple flights.
And so it was four trips and Secret Service was there.
And thus, this was not Clinton flying over to Lolita Island or Sex Slave Island and then participating in the in the proceeds of evil.
Yorena said he has not spoken to Epstein in well over a decade, has never been to Little St. James Island, Epstein's Ranch in New Mexico or his residence in Florida.
All of this is extraordinarily ugly, of course, and it does raise questions about whether we have a dual track of justice in the United States for folks who are exorbitantly wealthy.
The answer, of course, is yes.
We'll get to that in just one second.
So there are also accusations that this story was well-known by the media and that a cover-up basically took place, including by major editors.
Over at Democracy Now, which is a far-left website, they did an interview with Vicki Ward, who's an investigative journalist who profiled Epstein for Vanity Fair in 2003, in a piece headlined, The Talented Mr. Epstein.
The magazine's editor at the time, according to Democracy Now, that editor named Graydon Carter, cut out the testimonies of two young women Epstein allegedly molested, who had spoken to Vicki Ward on the record, one of them underage.
Word wrote about what happened with her Epstein reporting for the Daily Beast in an article headline, I tried to warn you about sleazy billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
And here is what she wrote about this, this year.
The piece was originally published in 2015, updated as of yesterday.
Vicky Ward says, Jeffrey wanted me to tell you that you looked so pretty, the female voice said into my disbelieving ear.
It was the fall of 2002.
I was pregnant, uncomfortably so, for the first time and with twins.
Due the following March, I was besieged by a relentless morning sickness.
I was sick in street gutters, onto my desk, at dinner with friends.
I suffered severe bloating and water retention.
But here was this faux compliment coming, bizarrely and a bit grotesquely, from a woman I hadn't met.
A female assistant who worked for one Jeffrey Epstein, a mysterious Gatsby-esque financier, Upon hearing of my assignment, Epstein had invited me to an off-the-record tea at his Upper East Side house, during which I distinctly remember avoiding the finger food, and then had his assistant call to tell me he thought I was pretty.
At first, it was the early stages of reporting, I was amused at having been so crassly underestimated for a man who clearly considered himself a sophisticated ladies' man.
The only book he'd left out for me to see was a paperback by the Marquis de Sade, That's a hell of a tactic.
I thought his journalist seduction technique was a bit like his table manners, in dire need of improvement.
If only it had ended there.
This was what it had been meant to be.
A gossipy piece about a shadowy, slightly sinister, but essentially harmless man who preferred track pants to suits, but somehow lived very large, had wealthy important friends, hung out with models, and shied away from the press.
But it didn't.
I haven't ever wanted to go back and dwell on that dark time.
But then, the latest Epstein scandal broke.
This is circa 2015.
When Prince Andrew was accused in a Florida court filing of having sex with a 17-year-old girl while she was a sex slave of Epstein's.
In the last 48 hours, I've had a journalist from the UK Sun newspaper put herself inside my foyer.
I've been inundated with requests for TV interviews.
Epstein's old mentor, the convicted fraudster Steven Hoffenberg, recently released from jail after a 20-year sentence, had been pestering me and my agent to write a movie.
Separately, Hoffenberg's daughter has gotten in touch, and it's gotten me thinking, there are some injustices maybe only time can right.
Perhaps now is the time.
And Vicki Ward goes on to talk about how all of this gossip was starting to emerge, how she talked with at least a couple of underage girls who accused Epstein of engaging in criminal activity, and how all of this was basically silenced by Graydon Carter.
How Graydon Carter had her cut all of this out of the story.
All of this does speak to something deeply ugly about the halls of power in American life, about the reason that there are so many people who are suspicious of exactly how our criminal justice system works.
Epstein speaks to all of those things.
Epstein speaks to all of those things.
And it does go to our perceptions of how justice ought to be done in the United States.
It does raise questions about how justice ought to be pursued.
Now, that does not mean that people are being over-prosecuted if they are poorer.
It does mean that people are being under-prosecuted if they are richer.
There's a difference between the two accusations.
We'll get to more of that in just one second.
First, Let me talk to you about starting Daily Wire.
So, when we started Daily Wire, we had to expend an enormous amount of energy and an enormous amount of capital.
And one of the ways you end up spending a lot of capital is on your legal costs.
But you don't have to.
One of the best resources to help you run your business is LegalZoom.
LegalZoom was created 18 years ago to help all Americans confidently get past the hurdles that come with owning a business.
Since then, Over 2 million people have trusted LegalZoom to help start or run their businesses.
Whether you have questions about incorporating or forming an LLC, if you need tax advice, contracts reviewed, or info on trademarks, their network of independent attorneys and professionals can provide the guidance you need.
The best part is, you won't get charged by the hour because LegalZoom is not a law firm.
Let LegalZoom help out with your small business worries so you can focus on what you do best.
Visit LegalZoom.com right now and use promo code BEN at checkout for special savings.
That's LegalZoom.com, promo code Ben.
LegalZoom, where life meets legal.
Go check them out at LegalZoom.com.
I'm a lawyer, and I've been using LegalZoom myself for years.
They just have great legal resources, and you're not gonna have to spend an arm and a leg to get your business started or make it more efficient.
Check them out right now at LegalZoom.com, and use promo code Ben at checkout, LegalZoom.com.
Okay, so let's talk about this dual track of justice.
So there's an accusation that's been made by Elizabeth Bruning.
Who is a sort of interesting columnist for the Washington Post.
And she talks at length very often about her sort of perception of wealth.
And what she says about this case is that this is an obvious case of rich people solidarity.
That basically rich people decided to overlook all of this because they are rich.
And that the best way to read this case is banality of banality of evil.
Among rich people who see class solidarity as the thing that really matters.
She tweeted out this morning, If you want to see class loyalty transcend partisan divides, just look at who rich liberal politicians hang out with when they think that you aren't paying attention.
Well, yes and no.
Yes and no.
The fact is that rich people do tend to hang out with rich people, just like people who are poor tend to hang out with people who are poor.
All the institutions that used to bridge that gap have basically been destroyed in American life.
One of the institutions that was chief in bridging that gap was the church, where people don't really check each other's income.
I go to a synagogue every Saturday.
I really don't know the income of the people I go to synagogue with, nor do I care.
Because we're there to participate in the same activity.
A lot of these sort of societal building institutions that cross class lines happen in religious contexts.
They don't tend to happen in social contexts.
These don't tend to happen in educational contexts, per se, because if you go to Yale, chances are that everybody you're going to school with is going to be rich in 10 years.
With all of that said, the idea that rich people are backing each other up because they are rich, that is an over-read of the situation.
It does mean, however, that they are in contact with other people who are rich and powerful on a regular basis, and Epstein was giving lots of money to various charities, including cancer charities and Harvard University, and this put him in contact with a lot of very rich and powerful people, so when he was in trouble, he could pick up the phone, and a lot of those people were on speed dial.
Wealth does come with power.
There's no question that that is true.
But this is why what happened with Alex Acosta really matters.
Because this is where the prosecutors are supposed to say no.
This is where the prosecutors are supposed to say, listen, you can hire the best attorneys, you can call all your powerful friends, but we stand for the people.
This is why prosecution is not the victim versus the perpetrator.
Prosecution is instead the people versus.
Every case in state prosecution courts is the people versus.
You're supposed to be representing the people of a particular state and that means that you're not supposed to be cutting sweetheart deals.
This is why I think what comes out from the DOJ about Acosta's involvement in the sweetheart deal is much more important than all of the people that Epstein was hobnobbing with.
If you can't prove that any of those people were actively engaged in sex trafficking, then I think casting aspersions at them that they were quote-unquote probably engaged in sex trafficking is inappropriate.
I think that's true whether you're talking about Donald Trump or whether you're talking about Bill Clinton.
Like, is it suspicious that all these guys were flying around with Alex Epstein?
Or Jeffrey Epstein, rather?
Yeah, of course that's suspicious.
But does that mean that we can immediately say that these guys were involved in the same sorts of activities?
No, it doesn't mean that at all.
It turns out that when you're hanging out with rich people all the time, some of those rich people are probably going to be criminals.
And that is true no matter which class you are in.
Virtually everybody knows somebody who has committed a crime.
And when you're very wealthy, And you are a philanthropist and you are trying to buy access for your business, which is basically why Bill Clinton was getting flown around in 2000 to 2003.
Well, then presumably you're going to come into contact with a lot of very powerful and corrupt people.
So.
I would put the Clinton and Trump stuff off to one side, and I would put the Secretary of Labor questions on another page entirely.
But suffice it to say, it'll be fascinating to watch as all of this unfolds.
Fascinating and horrifying.
The real question is whether our state prosecutors are doing their job.
That is the only question in the end that really matters here.
If there's no evidence that any of these other rich and powerful people were involved in this sort of criminal activity.
Okay.
Meanwhile, the media doing yeoman's work on behalf of stupid.
So if they own stock in Stupid, they are doing a wonderful job.
It is so obvious, truly obvious, what many members of the media have as their agenda.
So let's take NBC News as an example.
So NBC News yesterday launches the most bizarre, stupid story I may have seen in modern American history.
And that's saying a lot.
They launched a story yesterday from Meet the Press, and the title did this, quote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's great-great-grandfathers owned 14 slaves bringing reparations issue close to home.
And then there's a graphic of Mitch McConnell looking somber next to a bunch of text from slave sales from 1859-1860 with the signatures of his great-great-grandfathers.
So, this is now news that we are going to go back 160 years and dig up who your great-great-grandfathers were, and then use that to browbeat you into taking a position on slavery reparations that you do not hold.
Meet the Press Report's details about McConnell's ancestors, discovered by NBC News through a search of ancestry and census records, came in the wake of recent hearings on reparations before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.
Well, it's not quite that that has happened here.
Color me a little bit suspicious when it comes to NBC dropping this news.
Because immediately after this news drops, I mean immediately, within 24 hours and 12 hours of that news dropping last night, that's not news by the way.
Hey, great-great-grandpa did something is not news.
It was news in like 1855.
It is not news in 2019.
Because Mitch McConnell, it turns out he was not alive when his great-great-grandfathers were.
In fact, he was not a glint in their eye as of yet.
But apparently he is guilty of all of their sins, and this is really what's infusing his opposition to slavery reparations.
Obviously, it is the fact that he carries that slave owner blood within him.
that is infusing his deep and abiding hatred for slavery reparations because deep within his DNA is buried slaveholding.
Now, what makes this kind of weird, what makes that report kind of weird, just in terms of timing, is the fact that literally within 12 hours, Amy McGrath, who ran for Congress in Kentucky just last year, in 2018, announced that she is running against Mitch McConnell.
So weird.
Within 12 hours of this stupid bit of OPPO research, which is a terrible dumb bit of OPPO research dropping, within 12 hours, he has a challenger.
And a challenger who ran in an R-plus-9 district and lost by three?
She's gonna get crushed.
Okay?
The state of Kentucky went for Donald Trump by something like 30 points.
So she has no shot at all in this race.
The media, nonetheless, are playing this up.
They're gonna give her the Beto O'Rourke treatment, Amy McGrath.
She is a retired fighter pilot.
She also happens to be a person who has called herself the most progressive legislative mind in the state of Kentucky, so good luck with that one.
The media are pumping her up, and the way they're doing that is by dredging up information about Mitch McConnell's great-great-great-grandfather.
The piece is by Corky Simasco.
And here's what the idiotic piece says.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said recently he opposes paying government reparations to the descendants of American slaves, has a family history deeply entwined in the issue.
Two of his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners, U.S.
Census records show.
Two great-great-grandfathers, James McConnell and Richard Daley, owned a total of at least 14 slaves in Limestone County, Alabama, all but two of them female, according to the county's slave schedules in the 1850 and 1860 censuses.
The details about McConnell's ancestors discovered by NBC News, the research of ancestry and census records, came in the wake of recent hearings on reparations.
McConnell said he was opposed to the idea, arguing it would be hard to figure out whom to compensate.
I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, when none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea, he said on June 14th.
We've tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation.
We've elected an African-American president.
NBC News, in several phone calls and emails to McConnell's office, asked if the senator was aware that his great-great-grandfathers were slave owners.
The office did not respond to those requests, nor should they, because that's stupid crap.
You know, honestly, this is where we're going?
We're going to track down everybody's four generations' removed ancestors and determine what crimes they committed?
This is how we decide all of this?
Now, there's some obvious problems with this particular angle.
Namely, that a lot of people you wouldn't expect have slaveholders in the family tree.
Take, for example, Kamala Harris.
Here's a piece from her father, Donald J. Harris, who's a professor over at Stanford.
Quote, My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother, Miss Chrissy, née Christina Brown, descendant of Hamilton Brown, who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brownstown, And to my maternal grandfather, my maternal grandmother, Miss Iris.
So, it turns out that, you know who else has slaveholder blood running in her veins?
Presumably, if we're using the same metrics as Mitch McConnell, is Kamala Harris.
But I guess Kamala Harris is off scot-free because she has the right politics.
That's how this works.
So, a thing for which you are not responsible.
We used to have this thing in America where you weren't supposed to judge somebody based on an immutable characteristic.
Like their race, for example.
The level of melanin in their skin.
Based on their ancestry.
You weren't supposed to judge people based on that, but apparently you can if they hold the wrong political positions.
So Mitch McConnell opposes slavery reparations.
He has two great-great-grandfathers who were slaveholders.
That's probably why he's doing this.
Because he wants to avoid paying $80,000 or something in taxes.
That's obviously why Mitch McConnell is doing all of this.
And Kamala Harris gets off scot-free because Kamala Harris, of course, while she has slaveholders in the family tree, she's in favor of reparations.
That means she's... But this does raise some weird questions.
about Barack Obama, who, as it turns out, used to oppose slavery reparations.
Like in 2008, he came out and he said openly that he was opposed to slavery reparations.
So what do we do with the fact that Barack Obama has, you guessed it, slaveholders in his family tree?
And listen to how the Baltimore Sun covered this twist on Obama's family history at the time.
This is more appropriate coverage, but here is how the coverage was done about Barack Obama versus NBC News doing it about Mitch McConnell.
Quote, Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother was from Kansas, but an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now.
It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.
The records, which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois Senator or his relatives, were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Adams Wright Wisner, who works at the Library of Congress.
The report carries a disclaimer that it is a first draft, one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.
According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census, in Nelson County, Kentucky.
Oh, so they were next-door neighbors with Mitch McConnell's ancestors.
The same records show that one of Obama's great great great great great grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.
So it turns out that Obama has basically the same family story as Mitch McConnell.
And also opposed slavery reparations.
But that wasn't why he opposed slavery reparations, obviously, at the time.
But for Mitch McConnell it is.
The media are so corrupt and so stupid.
At least members of the media who cover this kind of stuff is news.
The Washington Post covered it too.
It's all insipid and it is obviously a smear and obviously a hit job.
But this is what so many members of our media are engaged in these days.
It truly is gross and stupid.
We'll get to more of that in just one second.
First, you may know I'm on the internet for about 24 hours per day.
I'm concerned about hackers stealing my data because of that.
And that's why I trust ExpressVPN to protect my online activity.
You should too.
Hackers, governments, internet companies, basically everybody is gobbling up your data, like all of it.
ExpressVPN runs in the background of your computer or phone, and then you use the internet just like you normally would.
You download the app, click to connect, and voila, you are protected by their powerful encryption technology.
I never go online without ExpressVPN, and you shouldn't either.
ExpressVPN is the fastest VPN I've tried, costs less than $7 per month, and comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Stop hackers, Big Brother, internet companies from grabbing that data.
They are using that data.
Why should they use that data without your permission?
Take back your online privacy like I did with ExpressVPN.
Protect your online activity today.
Find out how you can get three months for free at expressvpn.com slash ben.
That's e-x-p-r-e-s-s-vpn.com slash ben.
For three months free with a one-year package.
Visit expressvpn.com slash ben to learn more.
Go check it out right now.
Expressvpn.com slash ben.
Okay, in just a second we're going to get to the Democratic presidential race where the media are doing Incredible work on behalf of candidates they love, and they are hatchet-jobbing everybody else.
We'll get to that in a second.
First, head on over to dailywire.com for $9.99 a month.
Get a subscription for the annual.
$99 a year.
You also get this, the Leftist Tears Hot or Cold Tumblr.
It is indeed phenomenal.
You will enjoy it.
You also get all sorts of benefits, including two additional hours of the show every single day.
We are working hard for you.
So go check us out over at dailywire.com.
All sorts of great things.
Sunday special coming up this Sunday.
It's really first rate.
You're going to get it on Saturday if you happen to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
All sorts of goodies.
Go check us out.
out we are the largest fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation so as is evident from mitch mcconnell and their coverage of mitch mcconnell's ancestors going back four generations and this is now obviously the reason that he feels the way that he feels about a current political issue today i mean it
I mean, it's such an astonishingly stupid and perverse and corrupt and sick way of doing politics to go back to something no one can control, namely their ancestry, and then declare that inevitably, based on that ancestry, that is probably why they hold the positions that they do today.
It's so divisive and so cruel and so terrible and so inconsistent.
And as I say, Barack Obama had slaveholders in the family tree, two of them.
Kamala Harris apparently, according to her dad, had slaveholders in the family tree.
By the way, I will note also that Snopes did a fact check on the claim that Kamala Harris had slaveholders in the family tree, and they labeled it unknown and suggested that right-wing purveyors of doubt were putting out that information.
No, Donald Harris, Kamala Harris's father, put out that information.
So, are we to take him at his word, or no?
Apparently not, if it does not cut in Kamala Harris' favor.
Snopes.com in their fact-checking.
Well done, guys.
Just really strong stuff.
When the media have an agenda, they're willing to push it however they can.
Right now, in the 2020 race, their agenda is to knock Joe Biden out.
So there are a couple new polls that are out today.
Joe Biden is still leading the field, but those polls are obviously narrowing, and that is a problem for Joe Biden.
The latest poll is an Emerson poll that is out today, and it...
Kind of shows what polls have been showing for the last couple of days.
Biden continues to have a substantial lead.
He is at 30 percent, according to Emerson.
He's at 30, but there are three candidates who are tied at 15.
And that's a problem for him, because if he's at 30, they ain't all going to be at 15 by the time these primaries roll around.
Pete Buttigieg, by the way, you want to talk about somebody who's been inflated by the media, Buttigieg is it.
I mean, Buttigieg raised a fortune, a fortune, and he is Good on the stage.
She's a good talker, Pete Buttigieg.
I've talked about this before, but he's averaging 5.3% in the polling.
I mean, this is not somebody who's cracked double digits in one poll in the last month and a half, as far as I'm aware.
In the last several polls, he's at 5, 6, 8, 4, 4, 6, 4.
So Pete Buttigieg is really not a top contender.
Right now, there are four top contenders in the Democratic Party.
Those are Biden, Harris, Sanders, Warren.
Harris, Sanders, and Warren are all splitting 45% of the vote.
As Sanders continues to recede, what you will probably see is that support bleed over to Elizabeth Warren.
And you may start to see Kamala Harris continue to rise if black voters start to bleed over to Harris.
So I think that it's a three person race.
It may be a two person race between Biden and Harris.
If this continues, the two latest polls, Emerson has Biden at 30, and then the other three candidates tied at 15.
Politico has Biden at 31, Bernie Sanders at a solid 19, Elizabeth Warren at 13, and Kamala Harris at 14 points.
There's a poll out today that showed actually that among 2016 Bernie Sanders voters, Elizabeth Warren was now the favorite candidate, which is sort of Sort of fascinating.
In any case, it is obvious that many members of the media want to see Joe Biden go down.
They're not interested in Joe Biden being the candidate.
So here's a CNN panel saying that Joe Biden is out of touch.
He's obviously out of touch.
Well, he's certainly out of step with the far left of the party.
There's no question about that.
And the challenge often for Democrats in these kind of elections is the primary base is further to the left than the general election primary voter and independents.
So it's always a hard line to walk if you're really focused on the general election.
No different for Biden than anybody else.
Okay, so this is going to be the repeated line and Joe Biden is feeling it.
So Joe Biden was on CNN last night and she was forced into the position of trying to defend her husband from charges of racism.
And this is going to be basically Biden's That is not the position you want to be in if you are Joe Biden defending the plurality of the black vote in the Democratic primaries that you currently hold.
Here's Jill Biden trying to explain that Joe Biden is not a racist and there's one glaring absence in this quote that will make itself apparent.
I mean, the one thing you cannot say about Joe is that he's a racist.
I mean, he got into politics because of his commitment to civil rights.
And then to be elected with Barack Obama, and then someone is saying, you know, you're a racist.
As soon as I heard those words... Well, they say you're not a racist, but... I know, but as soon as I heard those words, I thought, uh-oh, what's coming next?
And I think the American people know Joe Biden.
They know his values.
They know what he stands for.
And they didn't buy it.
OK, so Jill says, well, he served with Barack for eight years.
Where's Barack?
Where is he?
Where's Michelle?
She wouldn't comment on this.
Joe Biden has problems.
The same media that is attempting to take down Mitch McConnell.
Many of them are very eager to watch Joe Biden burn as long as he's not the nominee.
As soon as he becomes the nominee, then, of course, things switch on him.
The rest of the Democratic Party continues to run dramatically to the left.
Elizabeth Warren So I am.
attempting to grab that Bernie Sanders base and successfully wresting away at least double-digit support.
Elizabeth Warren reiterated yesterday that she wants to decriminalize border crossing, which would effectively mean that if you cross the border illegally in the United States, you get to remain forever because we would now have no grounds for deportation, absent some other lawbreaking, I assume.
Quick yes or no repealing 1325 of immigration.
Are you in favor of that?
So I am.
I think that the whole notion of criminalizing the approach to coming across the border without documentation is not making anybody any safer and that we just need to be in a different position on this.
Okay, so Elizabeth Warren's claim there that we need to be in a different position on illegal immigration is a very, very radical claim.
And not particularly surprising.
Not particularly surprising because Elizabeth Warren is indeed a radical.
She's out-raising Bernie Sanders, by the way.
In the last quarter, she out-raised Bernie Sanders.
$19.1 million she raised in three months.
That is not a huge election haul at this point.
But it does place her firmly in the top echelon of the Democratic money race, according to the New York Times.
She had raised just $6 million in her campaign's first three months, and it had caused some people like me to write her off.
And she obviously was not to be written off.
Two candidates have reportedly topped $20 million in the second quarter.
Pete Buttigieg raised $25 million in the second quarter to be at 5% in the polling, and Joe Biden collected $22 million.
Sanders brought in $18 million in the quarter.
Kamala Harris really lagging behind at $12 million, although that is going to uptick significantly next quarter.
It's not just Elizabeth Warren who is moving radically to the left.
Bill de Blasio, who has no shot in this presidential race at all, he came out yesterday and he suggested that he basically wants to stop privatization of education, like no more private schools if he can get away with it.
That if he can get away with it, he would like to get rid of public funding for charter schools.
Many of which have been the most successful schools in his own area of New York.
Bill de Blasio going full commie here.
Alright everyone, I'm gonna be blunt with you.
I am angry about the state of public education in America.
I am angry about the fact that you are disrespected on a regular basis in this country despite doing such important work.
I am angry about the privatizers.
I am sick and tired of these efforts to privatize a precious thing we need, public education.
I know we're not supposed to be saying hate.
Our teachers taught us not to.
I hate the privatizers and I want to stop them.
OK, so that is, again, where the Democratic Party is.
If that's where the Democratic Party is and that's where the media are, then Joe Biden has some serious trouble on his hands.
The good news for Joe Biden is that now there's another candidate in the race who's going to draw significant support.
I'm talking, of course, about Tom Steyer, the billionaire.
Now, I know we lost Eric Swalwell yesterday, and that's really sad because we are all Eric Swalwell.
Eric Swalwell dropped out.
He is out.
His campaign lasted a grand total of 91 days.
But it felt like longer than that, frankly, because every moment Eric Swalwell was on stage was an eternity.
But now we have a new candidate jumping in.
It's just what we need.
It's Tom Steyer, who's already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on quixotic campaigns to fight climate change while flying around in his private jet.
Tom Steyer is now going to spend another $100 million, presumably running for president on the basis of he likes the environment.
And he launched a campaign ad in which he trotted out, apparently he raided Beto O'Rourke's wardrobe.
He went and he got a pair of faded jeans and a blue shirt and then he like rented a ranch that he looks like a man of the people.
He's out there ranching with his billions of dollars.
Here is Tom Steyer's bizarre, strange ad launching his presidential campaign which will garner presumably the support of his immediate family.
I think what people believe is that the system has left them.
I think people believe that the corporations have bought the democracy, that the politicians don't care about or respect them, don't put them first, are not working for them, but are actually working for the people who have rigged the system.
We've got to take the corporate control out of our politics.
All these issues go away when you take away the paid opposition from corporations who make trillions of extra dollars by controlling our political system.
What do we care about?
We care about proving the world and handing it on to the next generation in ways that they can lead better lives.
He is so inspiring.
And by inspiring, I mean, I'm almost falling asleep watching this.
I can't, I can't wait.
I mean, so glad that there is just like a random line high-fiving people.
What's hilarious about that particular shot right there is that it is obvious that this line is not there for him, right?
It's obviously a gay pride parade.
And he just kind of shows up and is high-fiving people.
It's like, they're all here for me!
And they're all looking in the other direction.
And there he is just high-fiving randos.
And they're like, we have no idea who you are or why you are here.
Really, really spectacular stuff.
Good job there, Tom Seyer.
So I'm glad.
We needed more people in this particular Democratic race.
It is very important that we have more candidates.
Without more candidates, what exactly were we going to do?
So, Tom Steyer, Godspeed to you, sir.
Godspeed.
Okay, so, meanwhile, Kirsten Gillibrand is still hanging out over there, and I think she'll exit the race pretty soon.
I don't think that Kirsten Gillibrand can last very much longer, despite the fact that the Washington Post is trying to pump her up with a piece called, Why America is Ignoring Kirsten Gillibrand.
It's a very easy answer, because she's the worst.
Four-word answer.
Because she's the worst, that's why.
According to the Washington Post, the ignoring of Kirsten Gillibrand is happening because she is boring.
It says, in 2019, this is by Anna Peel, in 2019, it's unforgivable for a presidential candidate to be boring.
Maybe that's our loss.
The problem is not that she's boring.
The problem is she's held every position on every issue, that she is grating beyond all imagination, and that she will not stop being Kirsten Gillibrand.
You can't watch a clip of Kirsten Gillibrand without understanding why everybody is ignoring her.
Here's Kirsten Gillibrand explaining that it should be better than Joe Biden would be to take on Donald Trump.
Do you think that Joe Biden waited too long to apologize?
You know, that's not for me to decide.
I just know why I'm running.
And I think I'm the better candidate to take on President Trump.
Because my history is I take on the fights that other people don't.
I've stood up to the Pentagon twice.
First over the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
And then over sexual violence in the military.
I stood up to my party when they're wrong.
And you have to be able to stand up to fight for what's right, even when it's hard.
Especially when it's hard.
And that's why I'm the best candidate to take on President Trump and to govern this country moving forward.
Why are people ignoring her?
Because she's eminently ignorable.
Unlike Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, she's eminently ignorable.
That is why she's being ignored.
Okay, time for some things I like and then a bevy, a cornucopia of things that I hate.
You know, you come back from vacation.
There's a lot to hate.
And so we've got to do some things that I hate.
So, things that I like.
Over the vacation, I was getting up very, very early and making my kids breakfast because they decided it would be fun to wake up at 5.45 every single morning.
And so I would wake up, and they would sit there, and they would read books, and I would watch TV, frankly.
And cook breakfast for them.
And one of the movies that I watched while I was doing this was a movie called The Standoff at Sparrow Creek.
It got very little attention.
I don't even think it was in theaters.
I'm pretty sure it was only available on demand.
The basic premise of the film is that there is a militia group that receives a call that a militia member has shot up a bunch of police officers, and then they gather together because they're afraid that the police are gonna come after them, even though they're not responsible, and they realize that, at least they think, one of them committed this crime.
The movie is a really, really good, tight, kind of black box thriller.
One of the things that I really enjoy are movies that can be done basically with no budget, and this is a movie that was done with no budget, and you can tell it was done with no budget.
I also tend to like claustrophobic movies, movies that are written... You really have to write a great movie in order to make it work within the confines of a couple of sets.
So, for example, 8 Cloverfield Lane.
The first three quarters of that film is just phenomenal.
It's just phenomenal, because it's all taking place with about three characters, four characters, in, I think it's three characters, in a very small space.
This is done with basically five characters, six characters, in a very small space.
So it's about these guys trying to figure out which one of them did it.
Should they turn them over to the police?
Here's a little bit of the preview.
About 30 minutes ago, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of people.
It was a cop's room.
A cop in a casket.
A cop in attendance.
He got away.
Who?
Shooter.
Shooter got away.
They're saying the shooter was a militia man.
Contact the other militias nearby.
Tell them we didn't do it.
Okay, so now, the remaining cops and the inevitable military reinforcements are searching for... Us.
We should get rid of anything that can link us to a shooting.
One's missing.
Who's got it?
Okay, it's an actor's showcase.
It really is quite good.
It got very mixed reviews, I think mainly because it doesn't take the militia with the sort of lightheartedness, I think, that the media wish to treat militia groups with, like it treats the characters seriously.
It does point out that many of them are What Hillary Clinton would call deplorables, not like Donald Trump voters, but actually like one is a former white supremacist and all of this.
But it's it's got some really interesting twists and turns.
Go check it out.
The standoff at Sparrow Creek.
OK, time for some things that I hate.
OK, so thing that I hate, number one, there is this new trend.
I don't know why young people are apparently incredibly stupid.
There's a new trend of people who are who are destroying products that are on the shelves at supermarkets simply out of pure nihilism.
It feels like soft core clockwork orange.
Basically, people just running around And doing things to hurt other people for no discernible purpose.
One of these videos was making the rounds on Twitter yesterday.
A young fellow who is apparently opening up an Arizona iced tea, spitting in it.
It's disgusting.
And then closing it back up and putting it back on the shelf and smiling about it.
What a delightful, delightful human being.
I can only hope that that person is captured and then goes to jail.
There's an article over at the New York Times today by a person named Farrah Stockman says a man licked a carton of ice cream for a viral internet challenge.
Now he's in jail.
Says it started with a video of a teenage girl licking a carton of Blue Bell ice cream in a store and then putting it back on the shelf.
The video, which went viral under the hashtag Ice Cream Challenge, grossed out a nation and struck fear in the hearts of ice cream lovers everywhere.
In fact, actually, I saw a picture yesterday of a freezer that had been locked up like you would lock up razors at a grocery store.
I've been locked up with a sign saying that you needed help to open the freezer because of this idiocy.
Now the authorities and store owners across the country are wrestling with how to stop a series of copycat videos made by people committing the same crime.
Investigators in East Texas, where the first video originated, tracked down the girl but turned the case over to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department because she's a minor.
Then, on Saturday, the police in Louisiana arrested a man who posted a video on Facebook of himself licking a carton of ice cream in a supermarket, even though he produced a receipt showing he actually purchased the ice cream afterward.
Laniece Lloyd Martin III, a 36-year-old unemployed man, has been in jail ever since.
Lonnie Cavalier, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office in Assumption Parish, said Mr. Martin appeared surprised to be arrested.
Mr. Cavalier said he didn't feel like he had done anything wrong.
His explanation was, all I wanted to do was be famous, and I paid for the ice cream.
But Martin was charged with criminal mischief for tampering with a product before he had purchased it, and with unlawful posting of criminal activity for notoriety and publicity.
It is indeed criminal activity to make it appear as though you are stealing somebody's product, and then buy the product.
There's one thing, like, I'll be in the supermarket with my kids, and my kids want to open something, and I know I'm about to buy it, so I just hand it to my kids and they eat it.
I don't take it and put it back on the shelf, put it on video, and then go and buy it to create the perception that my kids have defaced product at a store, which can help drive down business at the store.
Martin will spend at least four nights in jail awaiting his bail hearing, as he should.
In Louisiana, the authorities have 72 hours to bring suspects before a judge, but because of the July 4th holiday, the clock didn't start ticking until Monday.
France Borghardt, a defense lawyer, said the authorities appeared to be trying to make an example out of Mr. Martin in an effort to put a stop to the flurry of ice cream licking incidents.
This is a highly aggressive arrest based on a seldom-used statute that is constitutionally questionable, said Mr. Borghardt.
He said that the charges were questionable because it was unclear whether Martin had committed a crime.
He said it criminalizes speech.
Okay, it is not speech to lick ice cream and put it back on the shelf and tape it.
That is not speech.
That is not a form of protected speech under the First Amendment to the Constitution.
My God, people.
But there is something deeper going on, and it is in that quote.
It is in that quote.
That quote is that this person wanted to be famous.
All I wanted to do was be famous, and I paid for the ice cream.
If all you want to do in life is be famous, and you don't care whether it's for doing something stupid or doing something notorious, Then you will earn fame and you should earn ignominy.
But there is a there's a soullessness to people who are doing this kind of stuff.
Now, is this supremely prevalent?
No, it's not.
It's not.
But the fact that this stuff is being imitated at all, there are copycatters who are out there doing this sort of stuff.
Should be disturbing to anyone.
And it shouldn't be laughed off as, well, you know, this is just something young people do.
It's stupid.
First of all, it's actually dangerous, right?
I don't know what kind of diseases people have when they're putting their mouths in other people's food and then putting it back on the shelf.
And it's dangerous for businesses because now you've created the perception that any package of ice cream that I open may in fact be defaced.
But beyond that, what is going on in the heads of people who are so concerned about fame that they forget about basic duty?
I'm working on a manuscript right now that is tentatively titled Rights and Duties, all about the fact that we have spent so much time in America focusing on rights that we spend very little time focusing on duties.
And the flip side of rights are duties.
Your right to free speech is protected by my duty not to inhibit your free speech.
Your right to property is protected by my duty not to violate your property rights, right?
Every right has a concomitant duty.
And we've spent a lot of time in this country not focusing on the virtues that have to be instilled in a population in order to protect rights.
If you want rights to be protected, like true rights, the right to do what you want, then we also have to have a population that is not going to let liberty descend into licentiousness.
We have to have a population that is not going to allow a perception of you can do whatever you want to devolve into, I can do whatever I want, even if it harms other people, or even if it's bad for me, or even if it's bad generally.
I'm in favor of a government that stays out of everybody's business, that I get to swing my fist around until I hit you in the nose.
But I don't want a society of people swinging their fists around because there will lead to more bloody noses.
The fact that there are more people who are doing bad things, even if it's not hurting other people, eventually, the argument is, and I think it's correct, that will lead to more people doing bad things that do hurt other people.
That doesn't mean the government should come in and regulate people waving their fists around without hurting anybody else.
It does mean that we should be inculcating a culture where we disdain this sort of stuff.
That we should be inculcating a culture where we look at how people act, and we do make judgments, social judgments, about how they act.
Now we have created this bizarre ersatz virtue, this weird ersatz virtue, where virtue lies in being yourself.
And being yourself is the measure of all things.
Being authentic is the measure of all things.
Your duty lies to yourself.
It doesn't lie to others.
True duty lies in fulfilling your own desires and longings.
It doesn't lie in your duty to society or the common good or others.
And this has led to an argument that's been made by a lot of conservatives, including my friend Sourabh Amari over at the New York Post.
And his argument has been that liberalism itself, that liberty and liberalism, the idea of a small government liberalism, That that inevitably could lead to a licentiousness that undermines liberality itself.
It undermines your rights because as people start to act worse and worse, people want more and more government regulation.
I think that there is something to that argument, but I think that the balance was struck by the founders who said we have to have strong social institutions that inculcate virtue and morality and decency in people.
John Adams's quote about this, which I still think is the best quote on this, where he said that our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.
That's correct.
That is, in its heart, correct.
If you want to live in a society with others, you have to have a common framework of responsibility.
That doesn't have to be crammed down by government.
That has to be voluntarily undertaken by people who care about each other enough that they don't go around licking ice cream and putting it back on the shelves.
So I understand this is a deep read on what is obviously a stupid juvenile prank, but there is A seething, a roiling feeling that you owe nothing to anybody in your society unless the government orders you to do it.
And that's very dangerous because then the government becomes the be-all end-all, number one.
And number two, it makes you a worse person.
Because the stuff that makes you a better person is exercising your free will, exercising your free choice to help others and live in a society where you are doing good for somebody else, as opposed to trying to get famous and be notorious for doing something, anything.
As we, again, start to measure ourselves...
By our beliefs about ourselves, not by beliefs of others, we become worse.
The self-esteem movement has been something terrible for the United States.
There's this notion that was put out in the 1950s, 1960s, that self-esteem was the reason that crime was occurring.
That the rise in crime was tied to low self-esteem.
All we had to do was boost self-esteem in order to lower crime rates.
If we wanted less bad behavior, we needed to boost self-esteem.
It turns out that precisely the opposite is true.
Sociopaths have extraordinarily high self-esteem.
Self-esteem is not, in any market way, tied to whether you're a criminal or not.
In fact, lower self-esteem, a feeling that you have not achieved enough, is very often tied to achievement.
Amy Chu, so-called Tigermon professor over at Yale, she's talked about the idea that cultures that actually inculcate a feeling of shame for lack of achievement tend to be more successful.
That self-esteem is not part of the equation.
That earned self-esteem is important.
Earned achievement is important.
And that you can earn that self-esteem in a number of ways, including helping out other people in your community.
But in a society that has disdained shame, in a society that says that shame is no longer good or right, that shame itself is part of the problem, that true virtue lies in disdaining shame.
That when people say to you, you're doing something wrong, maybe you should think about how you're acting, your first reaction should be, screw you, I'm being me.
A society that disdains that is building a society of people whose only judge of morality is how many Twitter followers they have, or how many Facebook followers they have, or how many Instagram views they have.
And that's going to lead to depression.
It is going to lead to a feeling of worthlessness.
You know why?
Because this is worthless.
It's worthless.
Why does any of that matter?
Why would fame, without any regard for the reason for your fame, be something worth pursuing?
Especially here, it's not gonna make the guy rich.
It's not like he's gonna get any ancillary benefits from being famous.
It's almost like people who are writing their names underneath, graffitying their names on a subway station in order to feel as though they have left their mark.
There are a couple of ways to leave your mark in real ways in the world.
One is to be incredibly destructive, and one is to be incredibly creative.
To help other people, to be part of that social fabric, to rebuild communities.
The individualistic atomism that's been promoted by social liberalism in our culture is really dangerous stuff.
And we tend to think of it as fulfillment and freedom.
But the idea of freedom was always tied to the notion that we were going to take care of each other on a voluntaristic basis.
We were going to build together.
That we didn't need government to tell us what to do.
We took pride in the fact that we could get together and build things.
That doesn't mean we were perfect, but it does mean the mentality was better than the mentality is now.
The mentality now is, if the government doesn't prohibit it, then I am allowed to do it, nay, it is promoted that I do it.
The government is tasked with inculcating its own peculiar sense of what is right and what is wrong.
But you are not only under no obligation to do that, you are basically prohibited from even enacting your private morality in public with others on a voluntary basis.
And that leads to a generation of people who really are kind of lost.
That's what I'm seeing out there, and I think that it's It's dangerous.
We need a return to virtue.
Virtue is not a word that gets said a lot anymore, but we need to talk about virtue, and we need to talk about duty, and I'm not talking about the government imposing it from above.
In fact, the reason that I want virtue and duty to return is so that we don't have to have a government imposing all of this stuff from above.
If liberty turns into licentiousness, licentiousness pretty clearly and obviously turns into tyranny.
Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with a lot more content, two additional hours.
We'll see you then.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Robert Sterling.
Directed by Mike Joyner.
Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.
Senior Producer, Jonathan Hay.
Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.
And our Technical Producer is Austin Stevens.
Edited by Adam Sievitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
Hair and Makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Production Assistant, Nick Sheehan.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2019.
Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
Alleged crapstain Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested again for allegedly raping and pimping allegedly underage girls, like the alleged scumbag he allegedly is.
As a result, Epstein's Wikipedia entry is being rewritten to edit out Epstein's good pal Bill Clinton, And Labor Secretary Alex Acosta is being set up as the sole scapegoat because Acosta provides a tenuous connection between Epstein and Donald Trump.
The coverage of this story is going to reveal who among journalists and politicians cares about the truth and who only cares about preserving Democrat power.
We'll talk about it on The Andrew Klavan Show.
▲
Export Selection