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Aug. 9, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:07:02

Is Immigration Enforcement White Supremacy? | Ep. 836

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	Democrats and the media connect border enforcement to white supremacy, Democrats lay out their policy proposals, and Joe Biden flubs it like I just did.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	We have a lot to get to this hour.
	Joe Biden obviously stepping on his own toes.
	Some people are trying to attribute that to racism.
	In all likelihood, it's just because Joe Biden is a dunderhead.
	We'll get to all of that in just a second.
	We begin today, however, with the gradually creeping attempt by so many people in the media and on the left to define out the borders of white supremacy to contain anything they don't like.
	And this is such a mistake.
	It's such a mistake.
	Because again, White supremacism is a thing.
	A very dangerous thing.
	The alt-right is a thing.
	It's a dangerous thing.
	And it's a terrible thing.
	And these things have specific definitions.
	White supremacists believe that white people are inherently superior.
	White nationalists believe that white people should be separate from members of other races.
	All of this cuts against the fundamental bases of Western civilization and the American Revolution and the Constitution of the United States.
	It cuts against the idea of a more perfect union in which the rights that were guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence are broadened out appropriately to more and more people over time as they have been throughout American history through blood and pain and toil and through tears and difficulty and suffering.
	The ideology of white supremacy is existent, it's evil, and it has malignant effects.
	Not just on the body politic more generally, but it has malignant effects when it comes to violence that sometimes attends white supremacists, as we saw in this white supremacist terror attack in El Paso.
	But being specific about our definitions allows us to create unity.
	Nearly all divisions in life come from inability to be clear about the terms that we are defining.
	When you have a fight with your spouse, half the time it's because you're not understanding each other.
	You're sitting right past each other.
	You're talking right past each other.
	The same thing is true in business.
	When you have business disputes, Usually it's because there is lack of clarity at the very beginning.
	Being clear about the definition of terms is what allows us to be on the same side.
	It's what I've always said about the left's take on quote-unquote institutional racism.
	If the left wants to point out a policy that is racist, I will fight it along with them.
	If the left is going to point to a disparity and then just blame quote-unquote institutional racism, racism that is just out there, miasmatic, hovering out there in the universe.
	Then no, I can't be with you because that doesn't have a definition.
	Especially if I believe that you are going to use your definition-free property in order to attack people that you just disagree with politically.
	We saw this yesterday with Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in her long tweet thread about white supremacy in which she talks about the evils of white supremacy, how it's a virus, how you could be subconsciously a white supremacist or suffering from white supremacy, how even if you are anti-racist, you could be suffering from white supremacy, how it's a virus that lies dormant.
	You may not know that you're a carrier.
	It was all deliberately vague.
	And the reason it was deliberately vague is so it could be broadened out and applied to people so that they could be tarred by AOC and her allies as racist and white supremacists.
	This is a pattern.
	The media have been doing it for years.
	Folks on the political left have been doing it for years.
	And the latest example, the latest example is the left's attempt to paint immigration enforcement as white supremacy.
	So, I am very much libertarian on immigration in a perfect world.
	In a perfect world where it's not about becoming a citizen, it's just about coming in, free flow of labor, people moving in and out to work.
	I really don't have a problem with people moving in and out of countries to work.
	Like the freedom of travel provisions that they have in the EU.
	Are not terrible provisions so long as there's some level of cultural assimilation to the country in which you move.
	There are certain factors that militate free and open immigration.
	Those include assimilating to the culture into which you move, making sure that you're not on welfare payments.
	There are certain things that militate against that.
	But free and open immigration served the United States quite well, particularly in the early 20th century when waves of immigrants were coming in, being assimilated, not reliant on welfare.
	With that said, being strong on immigration right now, particularly on our southern border, and ensuring that the people who come through are processed correctly, that they are not falsely claiming asylum, that there are going to be benefits to the United States and not detriments to the United States, that they are coming in to assimilate and become part of American culture and be part of the great American dream, That is something we need to do.
	We do need to distinguish who is coming across our border because any country, any sovereign country, has to be in control of who gets to enter the country.
	This has been true for every country throughout the history of the world.
	And whenever people cite the Bible and say, well, you have to treat the stranger well, of course you have to treat the stranger well.
	One of the provisions of the Bible is also that strangers have to treat you well.
	I mean, they're supposed to come in and respect the sovereign entity into which they are moving, obviously.
	So folks who are saying we need stronger border policing, particularly because there are high crime areas along the border in which drug cartels have an enormous amount of sway, because there are people coming into the country who are disproportionately reliant on welfare programs because they're disproportionately poor and disproportionately undereducated.
	All of that, all of that militates against a free and open border that would exist in the utopian libertarian world of the imagination of libertarians.
	Okay, so being tough on the border does not mean that you're a white supremacist.
	Notice, nothing about this has to do with race.
	Not a single word I have said here has to do with race.
	Because it doesn't have to do with race.
	I wouldn't care if we bordered a poor country on our southern border that was white.
	It doesn't make a difference to me.
	If there are people who are crossing the border who shouldn't be crossing the border, then of course we should make sure that we have better border enforcement.
	What the left is attempting to do now is broaden out the White supremacist label so that they can include within it anybody who is tough on immigration.
	And this just underscores that they don't actually take white supremacism particularly seriously on the radical left.
	If they did, they would be specific about targeting it so we could all fight it.
	It's like going to a doctor, and the doctor knows that you have cancer, but instead of just giving you the treatment for the cancer, the doctor says, you have a condition.
	And you say, well, what condition do I have?
	The doctor says, it doesn't matter, the broad treatment is a broad spectrum of things that I want to do to you and charge you for.
	And you say, well, right, but what do I have so we can fight it together, so we can decide on the treatment together?
	The doctor says, it doesn't matter what you have, it's bad.
	Okay, this is not helpful.
	Not only is it not helpful, it's hurtful because it allows malignant white supremacism to creep into the mainstream.
	See, one thing that white supremacists want, and if you've spent any time Looking at the materials that they distribute, which I have since they target me personally, what you see is they are constantly looking for a broader ship to latch onto.
	They are leeches, they are barnacles, and they clamp on to broader ships, and then they try to pretend that the broader ship is them, right?
	They've done this with Trump.
	This is why you see white supremacist groups abroad wearing MAGA hats.
	It's not because they agree with everything Donald Trump says.
	It's because they want the media and members of the left to believe that Donald Trump is the leader of their movement, so they seem broader and larger than they are.
	And when the left suggests that everyone is a white supremacist secretly, that everyone is on board with it, that the white supremacist position is the hard-on-illegal-immigration position, and that everybody who embraces that position is secretly a white supremacist, what they're actually doing is giving all sorts of credibility and credence to white supremacists.
	Which is what white supremacists want.
	White supremacists want people to believe, disaffected young men, to believe that they are more powerful and more influential than they are, and that they are speaking truths that others just don't want them to hear, right?
	Their goal is to make it seem as though they are an underground group of people who have spread their tentacles throughout the ideologies of mainstream American society, but are really speaking the truths underlying those tentacles.
	And the left right now is pushing that agenda, at least in so far as exacerbating the reach of white supremacists by linking it with mainstream policy.
	That's a huge mistake.
	It's a huge mistake.
	Well, second, we're going to get to how so many members of the left, I think many of them unintentionally, are doing this with regard to illegal immigration.
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	Okay, so how are members of the media attempting to broaden out the white supremacist label?
	Well, they're attempting to do it with regard to illegal immigration.
	Particularly surrounding a raid that just happened in Morton, Mississippi.
	So listen to how the Associated Press reports this.
	U.S.
	immigration officials raided seven Mississippi chicken processing plants on Wednesday, arresting 680 mostly Latino workers in the largest workplace sting in at least a decade.
	Now, this is nothing new.
	Under George W. Bush, there were workplace stings.
	And there was a very famous one in Postville, Iowa that resulted in the arrest of several hundred illegal immigrants.
	So workplace raids that are designed to go after employers who are employing illegal labor Those have long been a part of American life.
	This is part of law enforcement.
	Sometimes you raid businesses that are violating the law.
	The raids were planned months ago.
	They happened just hours before President Donald Trump visited in El Paso, Texas, the majority Latino border city, where a man linked to an online screed about a Hispanic invasion was charged in a shooting that left 22 people dead.
	So look how the AP is trying to link together the white supremacist shooting with basic U.S.
	immigration enforcement and the Trump administration.
	And then they quote Angelica Sayles, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, saying, quote, On a day when we seek unifying words and acts to heal the nation's broken heart, President Trump allows so many families and communities to be torn apart.
	About 600 U.S.
	immigration and customs enforcement agents fanned out across the plants operated by five companies surrounding the perimeters to prevent workers from fleeing.
	And then all of the media attention has focused in on the family members who were left behind, who were not caught up in the raid.
	The AP says those arrested were taken to a military hangar to be processed for immigration violations.
	About 70 family, friends, and residents waved goodbye and shouted, let them go, let them go.
	Later, two more buses arrived.
	A tearful 13-year-old boy whose parents are from Guatemala waved goodbye to his mother, a coke worker, as he stood beside his father.
	Some employees tried to flee on foot but were captured in the parking lot.
	Mississippi is the nation's fifth largest chicken-producing state, and the plant's tough processing jobs have mainly been filled by Latino immigrants eager to take whatever work they can get.
	Chicken plants dominate the economies of Morton and other small towns east of Jackson.
	Matthew Albence, ICE's acting director, told the AP in an interview on Wednesday, just down the road from the coke plant, that the raids could be the largest ever workplace operation in any single state.
	Asked about their coinciding with Trump's visit to El Paso, Albence responded, this is a long-term operation that's been going on.
	He said raids are racially neutral and based on evidence of illegal residency.
	He said that the companies involved could be charged with knowingly hiring workers who are in the county illegally and will be scrutinized for tax, document, and wage fraud.
	Bill Chandler, then they start quoting folks saying that basically this is racist.
	Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, calls the terrible raids another effort to drive Latinos out of Mississippi and blame Trump for fanning racism with past incendiary comments about immigrants.
	So there's an attempt now to tie basic border policy that Trump is espousing to white supremacy.
	And you can see this in the media coverage.
	There's this massive raid, and the focus isn't on illegal immigrants being arrested for violating the law.
	The focus is on the effect on the families.
	The idea is if we show enough crying children on TV after people are arrested for violating the law, then we will shift the policy.
	You don't see these sorts of stories after there's a big drug bust, for example.
	After there's a big drug bust, cocaine ring, people are dragged away to jail.
	You don't see them focus in on the kids still standing there waiting for mommy or daddy to come home.
	When Kamala Harris is rounding up truant parents in California as Attorney General, you're not seeing videos about the kids who are left at home.
	Every arrest ends with a parent going to jail if there are kids in the picture.
	But the media are focusing heavily on this for a specific reason.
	Here is CNN focusing on kids weeping after the ICE raids.
	Again, it's terrible that this is happening to the kids.
	Their parents also violated the law.
	Two things can be true at once.
	Here is CNN reporting on this.
	Please can I just see my mother, please?
	Parents taken away on buses.
	Crying children left without parents after immigration raids.
	Her mom is the only one she has.
	That's her guardian.
	in immigration raids across Mississippi on Wednesday.
	I need my dad for me.
	My dad didn't do nothing.
	He's not a criminal.
	Many children left behind at schools and daycares.
	One gym in a nearby town offering to house and feed children who were separated from their parents.
	I understand the law and how everything works, and everything has a system, but everybody needs to hold the kids first and foremost in their minds.
	Okay, well, I agree that the kids ought to be held first and foremost in minds, but is there any question that if Barack Obama had arrested people and then separated them from their children that the media would have ignored it?
	That that wouldn't have been the top-line story?
	This, of course, is the top-line story because Trump is president and because there are a lot of folks in the media and on the left who are trying to promulgate a narrative that the real reason Trump is doing this is out of racial animus.
	And it's not just members of the media who are subtly pushing this.
	Some people are just saying it openly.
	Sheila Jackson Lee, congressperson from Texas, she comes out and she suggests that these ICE raids are like a stopo.
	I am on Homeland Security.
	I think it's unfortunate when ICE has to be made into this kind of agency and to be an intimidator rather than an agency that has in the past made sure that we are safe in this nation.
	That is what Americans want, to be safe.
	But when their neighbors are rounded up in a vile way, when children are left unprotected, I'm disappointed.
	And the President And Steve Miller need to stop these Gestapo tactics and we need to work together to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
	Gestapo tactics like a Nazi.
	Immigration policy is Nazi-esque.
	This is exacerbated, of course, by a piece in today's New York Times.
	It was on the front page of their website called, quote, So in other words, because the El Paso shooter talked about the dangers of immigration and did so in the most vile, racist possible way, he is basically just an offshoot of general immigration restrictionism.
	Which is somewhat like saying that because the congressional baseball shooter was angry at Republicans over health care policy, that he is definitely an offshoot of generalized upset over America's lack of proper health care.
	No, that's not how this works.
	So the New York Times explicitly trying to link mainstream anti-immigration groups.
	I don't agree with some of their policies, FAIR and some of the other groups that are cited here, Numbers USA.
	But the notion that those groups are linked to the mass shooting in El Paso, again, this is what the media are trying to do to broaden out the concept.
	Which is that white supremacy really isn't just somebody who declares that white people are superior and that America needs to remain white and then shoots up in El Paso Walmart.
	White supremacy is really anybody who believes that there ought to be immigration restrictions.
	So the New York Times has this piece linking these groups who are not linked with the shooter to the shooter and then the media decide that they're going to cover immigration such that if you are if you are in any way a restrictionist on illegal immigration then you are inevitably linked to an underlying racial hatred.
	This is disgusting stuff.
	It divides Americans for no reason.
	Because again, there is a bad guy out there.
	There are bad people out there.
	There are actual white supremacists out there.
	But linking generalized conservative policies on immigration to white supremacism is overtly dishonest.
	We'll get to this New York Times piece in just one second.
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	Okay, so as I say, the New York Times has this long piece trying to link Those groups that are just on policy, immigration restrictionists, with the racist, white supremacist sentiments of the El Paso shooter.
	David Nakamura writing this egregious piece.
	Hours after the mass shooting in El Paso last weekend, Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, issued a tweet in the organization's name, denouncing the tragic carnage and urging Americans to quote, stand together against senseless rage and destructive impulses.
	Fair, a leading proponent of restricting immigration, typically provides its 300,000 followers on Twitter and 2.1 million on Facebook with links to studies, news stories, and podcasts warning of the economic, public safety, and environmental costs of high immigration levels.
	But Stein made no mention in his tweet of the online document police believe was written by the alleged killer, which cited many of the same arguments against immigration as a rationale and motivation for the attack that killed 22 people in a predominantly Hispanic city near the U.S.-Mexico border.
	Now, why exactly would the head of FAIR Be tweeting out elements of the manifesto.
	He didn't write the manifesto.
	He doesn't support the manifesto.
	There's no evidence that he's a racist.
	There's no evidence that he's a white supremacist.
	Nonetheless, the New York Times overtly links what is, by most lights, a mainstream conservative anti-illegal immigration group.
	Fair is more anti-immigration than I am because they want to restrict legal immigration too, but they are not a racist group.
	And there's no evidence provided in the piece that they are.
	Nonetheless, the New York Times goes out of its way to link the right-wing views of the shooter on immigration to the right-wing views of this group on immigration, then suggests that the two are equivalent, despite the fact that the shooter's right-wing views were not just right-wing, they were actually white supremacist, right, which is not right-wing.
	White supremacism is something beyond.
	The racial solidarity implicit in white supremacism is not just about ensuring that immigrants assimilate to American culture.
	It says no immigrants at all because they're brown, right?
	It's a completely different thing.
	Stein's decision to rapidly issue a statement condemning the El Paso massacre reflects a sense of alarm among FAIR and the small cohort of other restrictionist groups about potential political fallout from the massacres.
	Well, yeah, I mean, number one, they should condemn the shooting because we should all condemn the shooting.
	But second of all, maybe they were worried about disingenuous reporters at The New York Times linking them with the shooter.
	And so they came out and condemned the shooting because they knew The New York Times would do it.
	And then The New York Times did it anyway.
	Long relegated to the fringes of the debate, these organizations have moved center stage under President Trump, helping to provide the intellectual and ideological framework for the administration's hardline immigration agenda, one that immigrant rights advocates have decried as xenophobic and racist.
	And there you have it, right?
	In the end, the New York Times is going to use as its shield and as its sword immigration rights groups that basically posit exactly what David Nakamura wants them to posit, which is that immigration policy is racist and xenophobic if it's not open borders.
	You're a white supremacist if you disagree with the left on immigration.
	So the left's newfound attempt, and many in the media, their newfound attempt to link basic conservative policy with the El Paso shooting, one of the reasons this is going to have such dire effects for American society is once you've basically suggested that half of Americans, because half Americans voted for Trump, once you basically suggest that half of Americans are actually Nazis, what do you think the left is going to do?
	Do you think that they are going to get more reasonable in their conversation or less reasonable in their conversation?
	Once you overtly link ice to Gestapo tactics, as Sheila Jackson Lee did, do you think you're raising the temperature or lowering the temperature?
	Now, I've been sort of positing the linkage.
	I've been talking for years, actually, about the linkage between rhetoric and violence.
	And I've said that I think that unless rhetoric explicitly calls for violence, it is not incitement of violence.
	That is the legal standard in the United States.
	I will say, however, and I've said this before, that raising the temperature is not good for the country on its own merits.
	So it's sort of like the distinction between climate and weather that we very frequently use when we're talking about climate change.
	The climate is the generalized pattern of weather over time, right?
	The climate is over a certain period of time.
	We can expect the average to move up or down based on particular factors.
	Weather is specific events.
	As scientists generally say, you cannot mistake weather for climate.
	So you cannot say that a hurricane is due to global warming.
	This specific hurricane is due to global warming.
	You can say that there are trends with regard to hurricanes that may be due to global warming, but you can't say this specific hurricane is due to global warming.
	A weather event is not a climate event, per se.
	A snowy day is not evidence that there is global cooling, nor is a super hot day evidence of global warming.
	Well, the same thing is true when it comes to Egregious acts, evil acts, out of the statistical norm acts, like a shooting at the El Paso Walmart, that is an act of weather.
	It is not an act of climate.
	But raising the climate, changing the climate, will have impact on weather, inevitably.
	And the left is having an impact on this too.
	The entire climate is getting warmer.
	The political climate is getting warmer.
	We are experiencing political climate change right now.
	And we could.
	We could lower the hot air emissions coming from our mouths.
	We could lower the emissions that are coming from our fingers out on Twitter.
	We could lower the emissions by being reasonable in how we castigate our political opponents.
	But instead, we are not doing this.
	Instead, we are deciding that we ought to ramp it up.
	And Democrats are ramping it up at an extraordinary rate.
	It really is truly incredible.
	Over on MSNBC, they're making this clearest.
	Donnie Deutsch, host over on MSNBC, just last night, he suggested that every Trump supporter, quote, owns the blood that happens.
	And then you expect that that's going to lower the temperature?
	That there's going to be less violence?
	There's going to be less hatred?
	Well done, everyone.
	People of color are already targets under this administration.
	I have no problem with shining the light back on the donors who fund this kind of racialized hate.
	I mean, I go further.
	I want pitchforks and torches outside this man's house in the Hamptons.
	I've been to the Hamptons.
	It's very nice.
	There's no reason why it has to be.
	There's no reason why he should have a nice little party.
	There's no reason why people shouldn't be able to be outside of his house and making their voices peacefully understood that they do not.
	They reject the rejected stuff.
	Okay, pitchforks and torches.
	Pitchforks and torches outside people's house based on who they give money to.
	Okay, that wasn't Donny Deutch, that was Illy Mistel, who's the executive editor of Above the Law.
	Pitchforks and torches outside of Trump donors' houses.
	Then there's an MSNBC host I mentioned, Donny Deutch, he says sort of the same thing.
	He says, you own the blood that happens in clip 18.
	Stephen Ross, to me, is the epitome.
	This election comes down to guys like that and people saying, no, you don't get to say I'm for racial equality and all these good things.
	I disagree with him there, but I like his economic views.
	I'm going to vote for him.
	No, you own it.
	You own the blood that happens.
	You own Charlottesville.
	You can't do it.
	You get the whole package.
	And that's what swing voters have got to understand and be shamed into.
	You own the blood that happens.
	We're going to shame you into all of this.
	OK, so the radical Democratic Party and many in the media are pushing this, including the New York Times.
	It's amazing.
	The New York Times ran two simultaneous pieces today.
	Piece number one.
	We're going to get into it in just one second.
	Piece number one from the New York Times.
	They say Trump's opponents want to name his big donors.
	His supporters say it's harassment by Katie Rogers and Annie Carney.
	They start out, for many businesses, a sudden deluge of phone calls might signal an influx of new customers.
	But most of the 25 calls Justin Harris received before noon on Thursday were from people who wanted to tell him he was a white supremacist for donating money to President Trump.
	Herricks, the owner of Precision Pipe Rentals, an oil and gas services company in San Antonio, said, quote, I've had people say, hey, we were going to use you for business, but we found out you're a racist.
	We hope you burn in hell and your business will go with you.
	The reason for the calls was Herricks' inclusion this week on a list of 44 San Antonio area residents who have maxed out their donations to the president's reelection campaign.
	That list was shared on Twitter by Representative Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves as the chairman of the presidential campaign of his twin brother Julian.
	Republicans have accused the congressman of doxing private citizens and trying to incite harassment of the president's supporters.
	Now, I find it hilarious that the New York Times, which will simultaneously claim that Trump incited violence, will suggest that Joaquin Castro had no role in inciting harassment of businesses whose names he tweeted out and called them complicit in murder, effectively.
	So yeah, I'm not going to stand by your standard of causation, guys.
	I think that you've got this a little bit mixed up.
	The New York Times has a similar uproar over Trump donors as playing out in the moneyed enclave of the Hamptons, where real estate developers are hosting two fundraisers for Mr. Trump on Friday.
	Progressives looking for a way to express their anger at Mr. Trump and the people who support him have threatened to boycott SoulCycle, the popular spin studio chain, and Equinox, a high-end gym both owned by the billionaire developer Stephen Ross, who's scheduled to host the president.
	Calling out people who fund campaigns is not a new tactic, but the question of how much should be publicly disclosed about those donors has been an issue that Republicans, led by the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, have repeatedly raised in recent years.
	In a heated political environment, boycotting businesses of big donors has led to a new round of outrage at either end of the political spectrum.
	Okay, so the New York Times is openly acknowledging that the people that Joaquin Castro targeted are being harassed.
	So the New York Times then has an editorial from the editorial board, and it's called, May the Soul Cycle Boycott Make Democracy Better.
	And then they try to separate off what Joaquin Castro did from what the people boycotting SoulCycle did, which is impossible because it's the same exact thing.
	It is targeting donors to political campaigns on the basis of their politics and then suggesting that they are responsible for grave evil and no one should patronize their businesses and they deserve pitchforks and torches outside their house.
	It is the same exact thing.
	The New York Times is embarrassed that Joaquin Castro precipitated harassment of specific people, but they kind of like his tactic.
	And that's what the editorial says.
	They said stunts like Joaquin Castro's upstage a real concern.
	Americans should want to know more about who funds political campaigns.
	Um, we already have transparency laws in place.
	We already know who funds political campaigns.
	That's not what's going on here.
	What is going on here is that when you call Trump a Nazi, and when you call his supporters Nazis, and then you say, here are all the people who donate money to Nazis, you should not be surprised when the political climate change that you are incurring racks up and continues to rack up.
	And again, I'm focusing in on the left today because the reactionary left is doing this this week.
	Trump has raised the temperature in the past and I have ripped him a new one when he has.
	But the raising the political temperature from the left this week has been utterly astonishing in the aftermath of an attack that should at least have brought us together for a moment of mourning when we're all on the same page with regard to white supremacism.
	So the New York Times editorial board tries to distinguish the same movement to go after Equinox and SoulCycle from what Joaquin Castro did.
	They said a popular form of protest, boycotts, more often serve to draw public attention to an issue than to affect concrete change.
	With Mr. Ross, critics may or may not manage to inflict any financial pain.
	They nonetheless are publicly demanding that he answer for, and perhaps ultimately rethink, his political giving.
	In the process, they're sending a signal to other major contributors to carefully consider their choices, lest they face a similar accounting.
	Public shaming seemed to be at the core of Mr. Castro's treat it well, though the outcry from Republican officials was much louder.
	The Texas congressman was accused of inviting harassment and encouraging violence against his own constituents.
	There's rich irony about the Republican self-righteousness, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Then they say, well, it's kind of embarrassing that Mr. Castro did this.
	Right, they say that he unlinked disclosure from policy, and that is a bad thing.
	But then they conclude by basically saying that we should increase the amount of coverage of this sort of stuff.
	They say, for now, one basic step may be for media outlets and other advocates for transparency to keep working to ease access to and promote interest in donor data more broadly.
	So in other words, we're embarrassed that people harassed the people that were targeted by Joaquin Castro, but let's do more of that.
	More of that would be good.
	The only problem is that Castro said the quiet part out loud.
	And that the people he targeted were the little people.
	But if they'd been the big people, it would have been fine.
	Now listen, I think it is perfectly appropriate to call out major donors for whom they donate to.
	I do not think it is appropriate to boycott businesses in which they invest specifically because they happen to be investors in that business.
	Especially, particularly, and only if the business does not reflect the policy preferences of the person at the top.
	So I don't know which businesses George Soros is invested in.
	I don't.
	And frankly, I don't really care.
	Because as long as those businesses are not reflecting his political preferences, I will shop there.
	I think George Soros donates a lot of people to people I really dislike.
	I think that his politics are egregiously bad in many, many ways.
	Really terrible in many ways.
	I think it funds a lot of groups that I really can't stand.
	But I'm not going to stop shopping.
	I'm not going to become part of a country where everybody is expected and must, in fact, go through the corporate boards of every major corporation that produces a product that we eat, wear, or entertain by, and then decide whether those people reflect our politics.
	By the way, important to note, one of the major funders of Marvel Entertainment is a Trump donor.
	So guys, start burning your Avengers Endgame DVDs.
	This is all making the country so much stronger and so much better.
	In the aftermath of something as terrible as what just happened, the fact that we can't get together on anything is really indicative of a serious problem in the country.
	Okay, in just a second.
	We're going to get to Democratic gun control proposals and Joe Biden making a big boo-boo on the campaign trail.
	We're also going to get to something that Joe Biden is doing right that the other Democrats are not doing right first.
	Time is quickly running out to purchase tickets to our backstage live show.
	It's a special one night only event, August 21st at the beautiful Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California.
	I'll be there.
	Daily Wire God King Jeremy Boring will be there, Andrew Clavin, Michael Moles will be there, if that's something you want, like herpes.
	We'll be talking politics, pop culture, answering your questions from the audience.
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	Also, our Sunday special this week.
	One of the reasons you should subscribe is because you get our Sunday special a day early.
	And this week we have, I think, what is a really fascinating and different conversation.
	With the author, Jonathan Safran Foer.
	So you might know his work in fiction.
	Everything is illuminated.
	He's done a lot of bestselling books, but he's also written nonfiction specifically about the morality of eating animals and meat eating.
	And he has a new book that's coming out in September all about climate change.
	He sort of makes the case that we should eat less meat in order to stop climate change.
	I press him on a little bit.
	It's a really interesting and I think fun conversation, something completely different on our Sunday special.
	Here's a little bit of what it sounds like.
	A lot of the ways that people talk about making a difference are not making a difference.
	They just feel good.
	And I think in the future, our children and our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, aren't going to look back and say, what did great-grandpa Ben feel?
	They're going to look back and say, what did great-grandpa Ben do?
	It's a really interesting conversation.
	You know, I'm, as you know, skeptical of some of the claims that the solutions purported to be pushed by the global warming extremists, people like AOC, that those are going to either accomplish what they seek to accomplish or are practical in any possible way.
	But I also believe that climate change is indeed happening.
	I agree with the general scientific consensus that man-made climate change is a huge part of the problem.
	I disagree with a lot of the prescriptions that are put out there.
	It's really an interesting conversation.
	You should go check it out because I think it's kind of more sophisticated than a lot of the global warming climate change conversations that you generally hear out there.
	Also, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a DailyWire subscriber.
	Today, it's Joseph Lynch on Instagram.
	His one amazing view.
	I mean, that's a terrific view.
	While enjoying a sip from the world's greatest beverage vessel in the picture, Joe, apparently while sitting on his motorcycle, is holding that leftist tears tumbler in frame with Mount Rushmore looking down upon him and a fellow traveler.
	The caption reads, cross-country ride to toast the founders with some leftist tears.
	Hashtag leftist tears tumbler.
	Hashtag combat veterans motorcycle association.
	Awesome, awesome stuff.
	Thank you, Joe, for your service in the U.S.
	Army and continued safe travels across this beautiful country.
	If you want that Leftist Chairs Tumblr, which is indeed magnificent, all you have to do is subscribe.
	Go subscribe over at dailywire.com.
	99 bucks a year gets you the Tumblr as well as the annual subscription and all the goodies.
	We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	Again, the left has to make a decision.
	When we get to the broadening out of the white supremacist label, the labeling of everybody on the right Nazis and complicit in Nazism, the left has to make a decision.
	And it's a political decision as well as a moral one.
	The moral one is, do you really believe that your fellow countrymen are insidious racist Nazis?
	Is that really what you believe?
	Do you really believe that this is 1859?
	Or even 1960?
	Is that what you really believe?
	When you look at your neighbors, is that what you see?
	When you look at a state that you don't live in, do you see either godless leftists who hate America on the one hand, or do you see a bunch of rube rednecks who hate black people and gays on the other?
	Because if that's what you believe, you're doing it wrong.
	You really are doing it wrong.
	There are serious differences in values in the United States, but if the way we do politics is now to label our opponents, As either incipient, incipient tyrants who are going to inevitably destroy the Republic and all of our rights, or as people who are deliberately attempting to harm black people and brown people, and you lump in general policy with that without any sort of logical linkage?
	You're doing it wrong.
	Unfortunately, the left is doing this more and more.
	Now, Joe Biden actually is doing something somewhat smart about this.
	So Joe Biden was asked yesterday, Joe Biden is taking a clever tack politically.
	So he says that Trump forwards white supremacy.
	That is at least an arguable proposition on a logical point of view, because in 2015, 2016, Trump did wink and nod at the alt-right.
	So that's at least an arguable proposition.
	But Joe Biden is not willing to call Trump a white supremacist.
	Why?
	Because he understands that's number one, not true.
	And number two, that by suggesting Trump is a white supremacist, he is suggesting that all of Trump's supporters back a white supremacist.
	So Biden, quite correctly, is reluctant to go all the way.
	As we'll see, his Democratic opponents are not.
	I believe everything the president says and has done encourages white supremacists.
	And I'm not sure there's much of a distinction.
	As a matter of fact, it may be even worse.
	In fact, if you're out there trying to, in fact, curry the favor of white supremacists or any group that, in fact, is anathema to everything we believe.
	So whether he is or is not a white supremacist, he encourages them.
	Everything he does, he speaks to them.
	He's afraid to take them on.
	And if you notice, the one time he used the word white supremacy, he was, uh, you know, it was not was he talking about sleepy.
	He was awful sleepy in the way in which he talked about.
	Okay, so he's making the distinction.
	Now, he should be making the distinction more strongly, and obviously he's exaggerating the president's record on white supremacy by a long shot.
	Again, the president has condemned, Trump has condemned white supremacy about a thousand times since 2017.
	With that said, he's doing something other Democrats are not doing, right?
	Elizabeth Warren just came straight out and she tweeted out that the president is a white supremacist.
	She actually tweeted out today, I was asked whether the president is a white supremacist.
	I said yes.
	Okay, good luck with that pitch.
	Good luck with the pitch that Trump is a white supremacist.
	First of all, it's obvious BS.
	Everyone knows it.
	Second of all, you're labeling everyone who supports him a supporter of white supremacism.
	And what this is leading the radical left to do...
	is to polarize the debate in a wild and crazy way.
	So I want to give you an example of how terrible the media are in covering this sort of polarization.
	So Tommy Lee, who's the founding member of Motley Crue, long, long time drummer, and of course, star of a sex tape with Pamela Anderson, most famously.
	Tommy Lee put out a statement on Twitter that he cribbed from somebody else on Reddit.
	Here is the statement that he put out on Twitter.
	Quote, you Trumpsters better pray that liberals never gain control of the White House again, because we are going to pay you back so effing hard for all of this s-word.
	Planned Parenthood's on every damn corner.
	We're gonna repaint Air Force One pussy hat pink and fly it over your beloved Bible belt six days a week, tossing birth control pills, condoms, and atheist literature from the cockpit.
	We're gonna tax your megachurches so bad Joel Osteen will need to get a job at Chick-fil-A to pay his light bill.
	Speaking of Chick-fil-A, we're buying all those and giving them to any LGBTQ person you're sick cult leaders tortured with conversion therapy.
	Have fun with the new menu, you bigoted F-words.
	Try the McPense.
	It's a boiled, unseasoned chicken breast that you have to eat in the closet with your mother.
	We're gonna gather up all your guns, melt them down, and turn them into a gargantuan metal mountain emblazoned with the face of Hillary Clinton.
	All parks will be renamed Rosa Parks ASAP.
	We're replacing Confederate statues with BLM leaders and Mexican immigrants.
	Every single public school will be renamed after a child that was kidnapped by this regime.
	And after we fumigate the White House, we're repainting the whole thing rainbow.
	Fox News will be taken over and turned into a family refugee shelter.
	We're turning Hannity's office into a giant unisex bathroom with changing tables and free tampons.
	And every single time a Trumpster complains about any of the changes, we're adding an openly gay character to a Disney movie.
	Okay, so it's obviously an insane, ridiculous post that is specifically designed to tick off the right.
	Obviously, it's trollery.
	It's trollery.
	Let me read you the headlines and how this is covered.
	Now imagine, first of all, that this had been somebody, a Trumpster, posting this from the right.
	We are going to seize your birth control.
	We are going to turn this into the Handmaid's Tale.
	Every time you complain about it, we are going to force you to bear a trial.
	Imagine the right-wing reversal of this.
	Like a right-wing fascist reversal of what Tommy Lee is doing here.
	Imagine the headlines from a prominent person.
	Career over, right?
	Career done, obviously.
	Here are the headlines.
	Here are the headlines from the various newspapers.
	People Magazine.
	Wow, what a hero.
	What a hero.
	USA Today.
	No, Tommy Lee is not a fan of President Trump.
	Wow, what a hero.
	What a hero.
	USA Today, an unapologetic Tommy Lee lays aim at the Trumpsters.
	The Daily Beast, no, Tommy Lee is not a fan of President Trump.
	Complex, Tommy Lee strikes a nerve by sharing, quote, that envisions a post-Trump America.
	New York Daily News, Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee takes aim at Trump supporters.
	Okay, I mean, this is AOL.com, Tommy.
	Tommy Lee riles up Trumpsters with lengthy political message on social media.
	Variety, Tommy Lee slams Trump in Twitter rant.
	And then you wonder why people in conservative America are getting a little frustrated.
	Let's see, you're calling us all Nazis and white supremacists.
	And meanwhile, you are treating with kid gloves a rant in which a person threatens to establish abortion clinics on every corner.
	The takeover of all right-wing businesses, right-wing-owned businesses, conservative-owned businesses, the destruction of our culture wholesale, and that's celebrated by the media.
	Well done on ramping down the polarization here, guys.
	You're doing a fantastic, fantastic job.
	Seth Bullock, the governor of Montana, at least he seems to understand that this is a real problem, that the Democratic Party, that the media, that the left are out of control.
	He says, listen, we're gonna lose this election if we keep going this way.
	Please permit me to take everyone out of the Twitterverse for at least a minute and bring us back to earth.
	Let me put it plainly.
	We cannot defeat Donald Trump's politics of personal destruction if we practice the politics of self-destruction.
	The fact is, we are well on our way to losing this election long before it ever really even has started.
	Okay, well, you know, they're not going to take them seriously.
	They're not taking anybody seriously on the left.
	They are ignoring every good piece of advice they have ever received.
	And meanwhile, they're pushing further and further on policy.
	And this is the other half of the coin, the other side of the coin, is that it's not just Democrats castigating Republicans as Nazis, it's also them pushing policies that are wildly unpalatable to the vast majority of Americans.
	So take for example Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York.
	So he came out yesterday and he endorsed a bevy of gun control measures.
	Some of these measures are patently crazy.
	I'm asking all Democrats, Democrats who want to run for president and come into the state of New York, Just make it a simple, clear choice for the American people.
	The Make America Safer Pledge.
	Four elements.
	An assault weapon ban, high-capacity magazines, universal background check, mental health database, red flag laws.
	Those four elements of gun control will change this nation.
	Those four elements of gun control will change.
	So, red flag laws are something that I've talked about.
	Gun violence restraining orders.
	And if properly drawn, they might be a good idea.
	But creating a mental health database?
	How's that even going to work?
	I mean, really, how's that going to work?
	Like, you suffer from depression and go see a therapist, and so now you're banned from accessing guns?
	Like, under any circumstances?
	That's not Orwellian at all.
	That's not violative.
	Passing universal background checks?
	We have them in California.
	They have not Again, California has done the high-capacity magazine outlawing.
	It hasn't done anything.
	We've had multiple mass shootings in California since that has happened.
	The assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004 had no effect.
	So this is these policies are not in line with what most Americans want.
	And then it gets worse.
	Right.
	Joe Biden yesterday speaking in Iowa, he says his first move as president of the United States would be to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, which, by the way, is a completely effect free climate accord.
	It doesn't actually create obligations on any of the countries.
	The number one reduction in climate emissions happens in the United States after we pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord.
	So it has nothing to do with anything real.
	But according to Joe Biden, its first priority.
	You know, I love the fact that there's no global warming.
	You all know that out here in Iowa.
	You know it doesn't exist.
	I heard a farmer today on the TV who's a Republican say, well, I don't think it's caused by humans, but I have a problem.
	I have a problem.
	Well, there's a big problem.
	This is the existential threat to the United States, to the world.
	And it's real.
	And it's not just 11 years.
	We got about 10 years before we lose the opportunity to stop the erosion that's occurring now.
	It's real.
	First thing I would do, As President of the United States, I've rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, which I helped put together.
	Stumbling and bumbling and bumbling and stumbling his way around the campaign trail.
	Speaking of which, Joe Biden had a major stumble yesterday on the campaign trail.
	And it's fun to watch the left simultaneously, depending on whether they like Biden or not, ignore it or make a big deal out of it.
	In reality, it's just Trump.
	It's just Biden stumbling over his words like he regularly does.
	But listen to Biden.
	He's talking about education.
	And in this clip, you're going to hear him equate poor people with black people and smart people and smart and rich people with white people.
	It's pretty wild.
	We should challenge students in these schools to have advanced placement programs in these schools.
	We have this notion that somehow if you're poor, you cannot do it.
	Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.
	Wealthy kids.
	Black kids.
	Asian kids.
	And then I like how he tries to walk it back as he realizes what he said in real time.
	Now, let's put it this way.
	If Donald Trump had ever said anything like that, that leads the news for a week, right?
	Because the media have a narrative, and the narrative is that if Trump makes a gaffe, it is in line with his underlying racism and racial animus.
	If Joe Biden, who once declared that every 7-Eleven has an Indian person behind the counter, apparently he got that from watching The Simpsons or something.
	It's ridiculous.
	That same Joe Biden, if he says that poor kids are basically black and white kids are rich, then that's totally fine.
	Most members of the media have been trying to walk this off.
	Now, in fairness, do I think that Joe Biden actually believes that all poor kids in the United States are black?
	No, I don't.
	I don't.
	I think this is Joe Biden messing all over himself because he does that on a regular basis.
	And that's why he has to wear political depends.
	The political depends are the members of the media.
	The but that's not going to stop members of his own party from going after him, the woke brigade.
	So Bill de Blasio, who is insufferable on the highest level, he tweeted out about Joe Biden.
	And this is this is a let them fight from Godzilla moment.
	Bill de Blasio tweets out, poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids.
	To merely dismiss Joe Biden's words as a mere slip of the tongue is as concerning as what he said.
	We need to have a real conversation about the racism and sexism behind electability.
	So now Bill de Blasio is making the case that if you talk about electability, you're racist.
	And if you're a Democrat who thinks Joe Biden is more electable, it's because you think Joe Biden is more racially friendly to the vast bevy of racist white folks across America.
	So electability is code for you're a racist.
	I mean, if this doesn't give the lie to what the left and the Democrats on the radical left are doing.
	I don't know what does.
	It's just a matter of degree.
	The mainstream media are trying to declare that if you are strong in immigration policy, you're a racist.
	The more woke Democrats are trying to declare that if you ever gave money to Donald Trump or give money to Donald Trump, mainstream Democrats even, are doing this, then you are a racist and a vicious bigot.
	The most woke Democrats, it's like Galaxy Brain.
	The most Galaxy Brain Democrats, like Bill de Blasio, are claiming that Joe Biden is a racist.
	The Galaxy Brain is like AOC.
	Nancy Pelosi is a racist.
	AOC said that the New York Times was racist.
	So it's only a matter of degree.
	And then you wonder why people don't take your adjudications of racism seriously, guys?
	Maybe it's because it's only a matter of degree and how you're going to misuse the label, because you never actually define the label.
	It's really, it's a bad move by Democrats politically, and it's really, really bad for the country.
	Failing to define terms, deliberately obfuscating clarity, deliberately overriding reality in order to pursue a narrative is dangerous, dangerous stuff.
	Meanwhile, a piece of news that the media will largely ignore.
	A good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun over in Kentucky, or rather in Springfield, Missouri.
	According to Kentucky Three, the Springfield Police Department says it responded to a call of an active shooter at the Walmart neighborhood market at Republic Road near Golden Avenue on Thursday evening.
	The Springfield Police Department arrived on scene within three minutes of the call.
	Police stated that a young white male, appearing to be in his 20s, pulled up to the Walmart where he donned body armor and military fatigues.
	Police say that the man had tactical weapons.
	He walked into the Walmart.
	He grabbed a cart and began pushing it around the store.
	Police say the man was recording himself walking through the store via a cell phone.
	The store manager at the neighborhood market pulled a fire alarm, urging people to escape the store.
	The man then made his way out of an emergency exit, where a former firefighter held the man at gunpoint.
	So, a firefighter, not a police officer, a firefighter, who had a concealed carry permit, held the guy at gunpoint.
	At that moment, Springfield police arrived on scene and detained the man.
	The Springfield PD could not confirm the nature of the statement said by the man to those inside Walmart.
	They do confirm the man had loaded weapons and over 100 rounds of ammunition.
	Lieutenant Mike Lucas said it was clear the man's intent was to cause chaos.
	He said his intent was not to cause peace or comfort.
	He's lucky to be alive still, to be honest.
	Police identified the man's vehicle.
	For all the talk about how good guys with guns don't happen, good guys with guns do happen.
	And that is a pretty obvious case of a good guy with a gun.
	Okay, it's a Friday, so it's time to do a little bit of mailbagging.
	So let's mailbag it up.
	Let's see, Abraham says...
	A few weeks ago, you tried to answer my question about the long-term sustainability of trade deficits.
	The thing is, I've often heard your grocery store analogy, but I see a flaw.
	Suppose the sum total of all your outside shopping exceeded all of your outside income.
	Wouldn't you go broke eventually?
	Your answer, that China invests in U.S.
	bonds or U.S.
	companies, means that you agree that in the end it winds up as U.S.
	debt or foreign ownership of our assets.
	How is that sustainable over time?
	Well, it is sustainable over time, given that they are going to have to buy from you.
	So that actually, you answered your own question.
	To go back to the grocery store analogy, let's say you spend all of your money at the grocery store, and the grocery store only spends some of its money with you.
	But then the grocery store can only spend you currency, right?
	You have your own currency.
	So the grocery store can only spend the you bucks with you.
	So the grocery store goes in and they buy some of your assets, or they buy something that you want.
	One of two things is eventually going to happen.
	Eventually, what you're going to end up with is the grocery store will no longer be able to buy your assets because you won't have any more assets.
	And thus, you will be forced not to spend in those countries, presumably at the grocery store.
	Or, alternatively, the grocery store will keep taking your money and keep buying stuff from you.
	The long-term ownership of U.S.
	assets, there's a lot of worry about this with Japan in the 1980s, It turns out that trade deficits usually are not sustained on a year to year basis.
	They fluctuate.
	So sometimes there is a trade deficit.
	Sometimes there is not a trade deficit.
	If you ran a trade deficit forever, eventually countries might stop investing in you if they found nothing worth investing in.
	But there are really not cases that I can think of.
	Offhand that where this has been the case where there's been a continued forever trade deficit and people stop investing with you because they just won't take your money anymore.
	Ariel says, Hey Ben, love your show.
	I'm a new mother to a soon to be one year old.
	You often talk about the importance of raising kids with healthy boundaries and rules.
	I was curious about what you think are some imperative rules and boundaries to have in the home to raise healthy children.
	Thanks for all your hard work.
	Well, you know, I'm working on this the same as you are.
	I have a five year old and a three year old.
	And the imperative rules and boundaries?
	Well, number one, no hitting.
	If you have more than one, no hitting.
	Express yourself.
	Whining doesn't get you anything.
	In fact, whining gets things taken away from you.
	You have to wait, right?
	Patience would be a big one.
	Fighting frustration in kids is very difficult because they can't really express themselves a lot of the time.
	So you have to be patient with them, but bad behavior does not earn extra attention.
	This is the easiest mistake to make.
	I've made it before, obviously.
	Most parents have.
	That is, your kid is whining.
	Your kid is bothering you.
	It's easier just to give them the cookie than to fight the whining.
	The problem is, you've now trained your kid to whine to get cookies.
	So you really do have to fight that instinct in yourself to just say, God, this is such a pain in the ass.
	Here's the cookie.
	It's very difficult.
	Well, I do think that there is some of this.
	if you thought that the Democrats' run to the left is about more than just the makeup of the primary voting base.
	Is there also a degree of confidence that Trump is so unpopular he will lose no matter what and that running to the left will allow them to claim a mandate for their far-left policies?
	Well, I do think that there is some of this.
	I think that the Democrats have convinced themselves that Trump is wildly unpopular and they therefore believe that they can run as far-left as they want to run.
	And so they are mistaking Trump's personal unpopularity with the unpopularity of his political program.
	And that's a huge mistake.
	That's not backed by polls or reality.
	My question is around my parents.
	They're adamant that Trump is riding a good economy which was set up by Obama.
	appreciate it.
	Even have my kids yelling at my parents who only watch CNN, the Ben Shapiro show.
	This is a six-year-old and a four-year-old, mind you.
	Anyway, I live in Australia.
	Sometimes I wish I lived in the US, as long as the leftists aren't running the show.
	My question is around my parents.
	They're adamant that Trump is writing a good economy, which was set up by Obama.
	I'm not sure of good arguments against this.
	Is there any policy in which you suggest I should bring up and facts behind them to prove that, in fact, Trump is the reason behind the strong economy?
	Well, again, I think it's actually more complicated.
	I think it's more complicated.
	Economics is more complicated than who is president.
	So, there's a good case to be made that Bill Clinton was riding off the back of a strong Reagan economy.
	It is much easier for the President of the United States to quell economic growth than to create economic growth.
	What the markets generally look for is predictability and stability in sort of the background noise of the economy, meaning they know what's going to happen tomorrow.
	Now, what you could point to is the fact that the GDP growth rates under Barack Obama were very low on average, around the 2% range, for most of the recovery that lasted from about 2009 all the way up to the present.
	But the fact is that those GDP rates accelerated dramatically in year one under the Trump administration.
	That was due to deregulation.
	It was due to the tax cuts.
	Again, I'm always loathe to suggest that the president of the United States of any party is able to just jog the economy with his policies inevitably, but a president can certainly hurt the economy with his policies.
	And Barack Obama did quell growth by raising taxes, by increasing regulations, by creating a less friendly business environment.
	There are other ways in which Obama's trade policies, for example, were actually more free and open than some of the stuff that Trump has been pushing.
	And that's why you're starting to see the economy slow right now because of the back of Chinese tariffs.
	Andre says, Hey Ben, I'm an immigrant from Columbia, holds the same views as you do on immigration.
	Most recently, I had a close friend of mine who's a teacher talk about students she has who have had their parents or relative arrested and deported and how much it has affected them in a negative way.
	Her post was very emotional and appealed to people's humanity.
	How do you respond to such emotional stories without compromising on what the real solutions should be and without sounding like you don't care at all?
	Honestly, I do care.
	I mean, I think that Of course I feel terrible for a student who's had their parent deported.
	The question really is whether, for a country, sympathy alone is enough of a rationale for allowing immigrants into your country.
	The question is why the parent was deported.
	I don't have enough information to know.
	Was the parent deported simply because the parent was here Illegally and the parent, let's say, was working without taking government benefits and was a benefit to the community and assimilating.
	In that case, I think that person should have a pathway to citizenship.
	My view on immigration has always been that we ought to treat people like individuals the same way that we treat people like individuals under the law in the United States generally.
	Treating people by class is usually a large-scale mistake.
	Now, if the person was deported because they committed a crime, because they were on welfare, and because they were taking taxpayer dollars, because they had come here illegally, without the permission of the U.S.
	government, and cut people in line, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the parent.
	I have sympathy for the kid, but the parent put the kid in that position by illegally immigrating.
	That's not the U.S.
	government's fault.
	We should try to figure out a way where families can come in together to be of benefit to the United States.
	We have to regularize our immigration process.
	But none of that forecloses sympathy for the kid.
	It's not the kid's fault.
	Of course I feel terrible for the child.
	John says, "Hi Ben, a couple of weeks ago, you mentioned that if Joe Biden does not get the 2020 nomination, the Democratic Party will irreversibly turn even more radical than they already are.
	Do you think that in the future, the party will just go further and further to the left, Or do you think it will cease to exist at some point?
	I wonder about this since the Democratic Party appears indistinguishable from other groups like the Socialist or Green parties.
	Thanks a lot for your thoughts.
	Have a great day.
	As I've said many times, I don't think that either party is poised to disappear.
	I do think that both parties have moved steadily to the left, particularly on issues of spending and regulation.
	And I think that More and more, we are going to see the parties co-opted from forces inside the parties.
	The Democratic Party will just become the Green Party, effectively speaking.
	It won't be that it just disappears and the Green Party replaces it.
	I think that if I had to forecast politics for the next 20 years, basically, over the next 20 years, the Democratic Party will become the Green Party, and the Republican Party, as it has been wont to do, will continue to slide to the left on spending to the point where it now matches where the Democratic Party is.
	Because the Republican Party on spending now is where the Democratic Party was on spending in like 2005.
	It's pretty ridiculous.
	Clive says, Ben, in episode 18, you state that an atheistic society does not give you a reason to live.
	I disagree.
	In an atheistic society, a reason to live might be to be successful and enjoy life.
	Well, again, I'm not saying that atheists on an individual level can't find a reason to live.
	I'm saying that a society that is based on godlessness, that is based on an idea that you are purposelessly here in the universe, on the John Paul Sartre idea, you're here purposelessly in the universe, that you have no free will, you're a ball of meat wandering through space, that your life has no innate value above that of any animal life, I'm not sure how that grants a sense of purpose to anybody on a broad scale.
	I mean, you can find one, but you have to ignore some of the premises of your own philosophy.
	Which you can do!
	I mean, people live like this all the time.
	Cognitive dissonance.
	Wonderful thing.
	And the same thing holds true in the realm of morality.
	I know many atheists who are more moral people than many of the religious people I know.
	So I'm not talking about the individual level, really.
	I'm talking about, if you're going to create a societal system that inculcates purpose and virtue in people, very hard to do that from an atheistic, materialist basis.
	Now, I think that you can be an atheist without being a scientific materialist, but I'm wondering how you get to the notions of free will, the notions of virtue and morality, how you go from human beings are basically an evolutionary creation created by randomness mutated over the course of generations to deal with the environment.
	How you get from that to morality or purposefulness in life?
	Let's see.
	And if you want to know more about this, Clyde, you can check out my book, The Right Side of History, largely about this topic.
	Dylan says, hey, Ben, I work at a liberal university managing public health telephone surveys.
	I recently have been working on a project that requires data collection in both English and Spanish, both of which I speak.
	However, I came upon information that Planned Parenthood is a stakeholder in the project.
	Being vehemently pro-life, I feel as though I can't collect data on this project and should speak with my boss.
	What would you recommend?
	So the question really is, when it says they're a stakeholder in the project, do they benefit from the project?
	And is it affecting how the project is done?
	Meaning, if you are gathering information on behalf of Planned Parenthood, then you're working for Planned Parenthood.
	This is not quite the same thing as boycotting Equinox, where the person making money on the other end doesn't actually control the government policy.
	It doesn't have to do with how the business is run.
	If that person, if Steven Ross, who ran Equinox, was running a get-out-the-vote effort, then boycotting the get-out-the-vote effort seems to me perfectly reasonable.
	If, effectively, what you're talking about is a get-out-the-vote effort for Planned Parenthood, then going in and saying you don't want to be part of it, that seems reasonable to me.
	Let's see, Nathan says, Ben, love the show and everything you do.
	Live in the DC area and work Department of Defense.
	I hear a dozen different and probably useless explanations on Chinese currency manipulation.
	Wondering if you can give the elevator speech on the topic and offer a book, paper, something that can delve deeper into the topic.
	Thanks again, Nate.
	Well, when it comes to currency manipulation, you know, I'm always a fan of the sort of classical Viennese economists, folks like Frederick Hayek.
	Folks like Mises, they write about currency manipulation and its curses repeatedly.
	As I've told you before, as I've said before, I am a fan of the gold standard in which the government doesn't get to manipulate the level of currency.
	When it comes to Chinese currency manipulation, What people are worried about is that China is going to radically inflate its currency, and in doing so, it's going to make it very hard for the United States to import product into China, and very easy for China to export product to the United States.
	In the long run, devaluing your currency like that actually hurts your own citizens, because now they're getting more and more expensive products, and their savings are worth nothing.
	So devaluing currency is not actually good for a country.
	Over any significant period of time.
	But when it comes to trade wars, devaluing your currency sometimes allows you to pay back debts with the devalued currency.
	Sometimes it allows you to export products quote-unquote more cheaply because the exchange rate has just changed dramatically.
	Now, I am not sure that Chinese currency manipulation is behind what is currently going on in China.
	So people have been saying that China is manipulating its currency right now to inflate it.
	That seems to me quite plausibly the aftereffects of American tariffs against China.
	Because when we tariff the Chinese government, what we are actively doing is up-valuing our own currency.
	We're putting less American dollars into circulation, which means there are fewer of them available, which means that the demand stays the same, the supply is lowered, the price of an American dollar goes up.
	This means an immediate devaluation of the Chinese currency, just as a natural consequence of America placing tariffs on Chinese goods.
	But labeling them a currency manipulator allows us to take different trade actions against them.
	Again, not clear that that's a good idea.
	Also not clear that it's actually an effective evaluation of the situation.
	Okay, let's see.
	Maybe one more question.
	Michael says, Hey Ben, serious question.
	What would it take to turn the Star Wars franchise around for you with the upcoming Rise of Skywalker film?
	It was all a dream.
	It was all a dream.
	It would be the best possible solution.
	I think that we would probably, at this point, have to redo all of it.
	It turns out that killing off all of your childhood heroes and making them losers was a very bad idea.
	And there's this line in The Last Jedi where Kylo Ren turns to Rey and says, why can't we just erase all of the past and then we'll start new, you and me?
	And it's a really interesting moment.
	And Rey's like, no, we can't do that, we can't do that.
	Okay, the problem is that Disney is actually Kylo Ren.
	So they've taken all the nostalgia that you had for your childhood watching the Star Wars movies, and then they have killed off every one of those characters, one by one, to benefit characters who are significantly less interesting on every possible level.
	It's terrible.
	I mean, I'm still... I blame J.J.
	Abrams.
	I think this all started... I'm not going to blame Rian Johnson as the true creator of the Star Wars collapse.
	J.J.
	Abrams is a derivative B-movie director, and he directed the... He directed episode... What was it?
	Seven?
	He directed episode seven.
	With all of the creativity of a plagiarist.
	Hey, look, a Death Star.
	I'm shocked.
	Hey, look, it's a guy who's kind of cut.
	He's just basically Darth Vader.
	That's amazing.
	But he created a great sin.
	The great sin, as I've said before, is that he took Han Solo, who was the coolest character in the original Star Wars, and turned him into a loser divorced dad who wanders around the universe in his Cadillac with the fuzzy dice and his best friend smoking weed.
	And then shows up only to be killed by his son at the behest of his wife he hasn't seen in 20 years for the dumbest possible reason.
	At that point I was like, out.
	Sorry, I'm out.
	So, you know, I think that what would it take to make this happen?
	What would it take to, honestly, what would it take to make this more interesting and creative would be for there to be a sort of mixture of the light and dark side.
	There's been talk about this, that maybe Rey unifies the light and the dark, and that was sort of the move that Kylo Ren was making in the last movie.
	That would've been interesting.
	They were actually, honestly, like 15 seconds away from making that movie really fascinating, and that was Kylo Ren and Rey joining forces.
	Right, that would have been fascinating.
	And then the tension between them.
	Like, what they really should have done is they should have allowed Rey to move with Kylo Ren, and then they should have had the original Star Wars characters, because at that point, Luke is still alive, they should have had the original Star Wars characters, then fighting against the newbies.
	Right, that would have been fascinating, and really counterintuitive, because, honestly, let's be real about this, who cares about Kylo Ren and Rey?
	Like, just your sympathies, don't lie with them.
	Your sympathies were always with the original characters, because you have 40 years of nostalgia for those characters.
	Stupid, stupid, stupid!
	Okay, so, here's my proposal.
	My proposal is we pretend that these movies never happened, it was all a dream, and then we either recast all of the original parts and pick up right where Return of the Jedi left off, with Admiral Thrawn still out there trying to reunite the fragments of the Empire, or we fast forward 70 years, everybody's dead, there are statues of them in the Great Hall, and you just move on with whatever the universe is.
	Instead, they decided to have the baby, and you ended up with the worst of all possible scenarios.
	Alrighty, so we're not gonna do things I like or things I hate today because we're just out of time.
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	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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	Hey guys, over on the Matt Wall Show today, Republicans and Democrats are both now pushing for gun control.
	They want something called a red flag law.
	But what is a red flag law and is it a good idea?
	We'll try to answer those questions today.
	Also, Joe Biden once again embarrasses himself in hilarious fashion and the left seeks vengeance.

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