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Aug. 21, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:37
King Of The Jews? | Ep. 844
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Time Text
President Trump decides to jump on all of the rakes simultaneously, California continues to collapse, and big business undercuts its own case.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, you got to love that feeling when you set up an entire podcast and you've got the entire schedule laid out for you.
And then President Trump just blows it up because it's a day ending in Y.
Well, today, President Trump decided it was time to jump into the middle of another controversy.
So, we had seen several weeks of controversy.
Several months of controversy, really, over Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and the entire anti-Semitic contingent in the Democratic Party and in the broader media defending Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar over their anti-Semitism.
We got to see Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib pledging to take a trip to Israel, which they called Palestine, with a group so anti-Semitic it once pushed the blood libel.
We got to see the entire media full of firefighters, intrepid, strong firefighters, Completely ignore that story and instead say that Israel is super, super, super bad for not allowing in people who explicitly say they are joined with a group that wants to destroy the state of Israel.
And we got to see the spectacle of members of the media defending Omar and Tlaib from the cruel predations of people who disagreed with them because they were the real victims here.
They were the real victims here.
Our intrepid journalistic firefighters really doing incredible work.
So, that was the narrative.
All President Trump had to do was point out that the media were not doing their jobs.
All he had to do was point out that Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are what they are, which is people who do not like Jews.
That's all he had to do.
But President Trump, he's not a man who is going to stick to the script.
He's not a person who is going to stick to the winning strategy.
No!
President Trump is going to find all of the rakes and jump on them simultaneously like Scishow Bob in an episode of The Simpsons.
And so President Trump decided yesterday that it'd be brilliant to comment on Omar and Tlaib.
And he started off in a place that is not terrible, and then he went to a place that is quite not good.
Here is the President of the United States jumping on all of the rakes, and then falling over into a minefield, and then falling into the rotors of a helicopter.
Where has the Democratic Party gone?
Where have they gone where they're defending these two people over the state of Israel?
And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.
Okay, great disloyalty is the problem with this statement.
Great disloyalty.
If he wants to say that Jews who are voting for a party that defend Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are showing a lack of knowledge, That, it may be impolitic, but that's a fair statement.
If he wants to say that Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are radically anti-Israel, that's a fair statement.
Once you get into charges of disloyalty, you are getting into very ugly territory.
Now, let's be honest about this.
President Trump is not clear on what exactly he is saying here.
He's not, because he doesn't make clear what he is saying about disloyalty.
Who are these American Jews disloyal to?
Are they disloyal to other Jews?
Are they disloyal to the state of Israel?
Which would be a dual loyalty charge, which would be anti-Semitic, saying they should be loyal to Israel instead of to their priorities in the United States.
Is he saying they're disloyal to Judaism?
It sort of depends what he is talking about there.
To determine whether he is actually engaging in an anti-Semitic trope.
Are they being disloyal to Trump?
Do they owe Trump their loyalty because Trump is pro-Israel?
Which goes back to the dual loyalty smear that so many Democrats have engaged in over the years.
So the non-clarity of what he's saying is a problem.
And I think we do have to break this down because there is a way to read the statement that is not anti-Semitic.
And then there are ways to read the statement that are anti-Semitic or at least engage in anti-Semitic tropes.
So, gotta break this down in a little bit of detail here, so stick with me.
I know, we've had a lot of Jew talk lately.
That's not my fault, okay?
That is just because there are a lot of anti-Semites out there lately, and then the president decided to make this the top issue of the day.
So, let's begin with a simple fact.
When people reference Jews very often, they're not clear about what they're talking.
So, are they referencing ethnic Jews, like people who are born into a Jewish family?
Or are they talking about people who are Jews by religion?
So this is not quite the same thing.
So there are many Jews who are ethnic Jews who are not Jewish by religion.
In fact, the majority of Jews in the United States are irreligious.
Only 40% of Jews in the United States, ethnic Jews, believe in God or really have a connection with Judaism in any sort of way.
So when people say, why do Jews vote Democrat?
My usual answer is because most Jews aren't particularly Jewish.
Most Jews don't actually practice Judaism.
Just because you have a name ending in Steenbaum or Goldberg does not mean that you are actively practicing Judaism in any real way.
Okay, so you have to distinguish between the practice of Judaism, the philosophy of Judaism, and I am a philosophic Jew, right?
I wear a yarmulke, I'm a religious Jew.
You can read all about my religious beliefs and my philosophic beliefs in my book, The Right Side of History, which is very ensconced in a lot of biblical thinking.
There's religious and philosophical Judaism.
And then there is ethnic Judaism, which is Noam Chomsky is an ethnic Jew.
Bernie Sanders is an ethnic Jew.
Now, to me, ethnic Judaism doesn't matter because I don't really care about it.
I don't care about tribalism.
And thus, I don't care about what you were born into.
I care about what you think.
I don't care about your genetic status.
I care about what you think.
And this holds true whether you are black, white, green, or Jewish.
It does not matter to me.
Okay, so we have to make that distinction because that's actually an important distinction for what we're about to discuss going forward.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
I'll continue the explanation.
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OK, so as I say.
When people reference Jews, they have to be clear about what they're talking.
When they say Jews, do they mean ethnic Jews, like people who are born Jewish, or people who practice Judaism in some real way?
And that makes a difference when you're discussing how people vote, because obviously, if you're talking about the first brand of Judaism, if you're talking about people who are just born ethnic Jews, then to suggest that all those people must have loyalties in a particular direction, That is that is just anti-semitism because just because you're born into a particular tribe or into a particular family doesn't mean you have to believe anything.
That is no better and no worse than Ayanna Pressley, the congresswoman who's a member of the squad, saying just a few weeks ago, we don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice.
That was her using tribal loyalty.
As some sort of litmus test, and that is racist and it's anti-semitic to say all Jews have to think the same way, and by Jews I mean everybody who was born Jewish and is ethnically Jewish.
That's very silly.
Just because you were born one way doesn't mean that's how you have to think.
Right, so that is take number one.
Remember, Ayanna Pressley did say this.
The media didn't care about it at the time, but she did say precisely the same thing that people suppose Trump said about Jews, except about brown people and black people.
If you're not prepared to come to that table and to represent that voice, don't come.
Because we don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice.
We don't need black faces that don't want to be a black voice.
We don't need Muslims that don't want to be a Muslim voice.
We don't need queers that don't want to be a queer voice.
And if you're worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don't even show up.
Okay, you remember that she, remember, she said this, no one cared.
She's also, in this particular quote, Ayanna Pressley, I'm not just diverting to Ayanna Pressley here, I'm not.
I think it's actually important that she lumped in brown faces, brown voices, and black voices, and black faces, and Muslim faces.
I think it is actually fair to say that certain philosophies are mirrored in politics.
So, for example, if I say, I don't understand why a practicing Catholic would vote Democrat.
Democrats are pro-abortion.
I don't understand why a practicing Catholic would vote Democrat.
There's nothing anti-Catholic about that.
If I said everyone who was born into a Catholic family must vote Republican, that would be very weird.
That'd be a weird thing to say.
Right, to say that if you're Muslim that that takes into account certain ideological preferences because Islam is a religion meaning that it is a philosophy that has embedded in it certain ideas and therefore you should reflect those ideas in your public life if you proclaim yourself a Muslim voice.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with that.
I don't see anything particularly wrong with saying the same about Judaism.
This is why I've said for a long time that when you see groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, that they are Jews in name only, meaning that they are ethnic Jews, but they are not actually representing any sort of philosophic Judaism in any real way, and in fact, they are using Judaism as a club to wield against Jews, very often.
Okay, so, as I say, couple points.
Difference between ethnic Jews and religious Jews, and two, people who are born Jewish don't have to have political loyalties in any direction, and to suggest that they do is anti-Semitic.
You're now grouping all Jews by dint of birth, as in a certain ideological or philosophical group, and that, of course, is untrue.
Three, American Jews, whether they are ethnic or religious, are loyal to America, not Israel.
So if the implication of President Trump saying that you are disloyal if you don't vote for Trump because you're actually loyal to Israel, okay, that is a pure dual loyalty smear, and that is anti-Semitic.
Okay, fourth is what Trump could be saying that would not be anti-Semitic.
Okay, Jewish belief and practice should, in fact, make it very difficult to vote for a party that celebrates and champions Jew haters like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
Undoubtedly, yes, it should be much harder for people who care deeply about religious and philosophic Judaism to vote for a party that makes common cause with Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, just as it would not be ridiculous to say that it's very difficult to suggest that Jewish belief and practice would allow you to vote Labour in Britain.
A party that has steadily moved away from Israel, which is connected to Jewish belief and practice.
A party that has not only undercut Israel, but undercut religious liberty in the United States, that has favored specific groups.
If those groups are, even if they're targeting Jews, like Omar and Talibar, the intersectional coalition that is throwing Jews outside the circle of victimhood for their own political purposes, There is nothing wrong with saying that philosophic and religious Judaism makes it very difficult to vote for the party that does all of those things.
And just as it's not wrong to say that Muslims should take into account how Muslims believe when they vote, or Christians should take into account how Christians believe when they vote.
There's nothing anti any of those groups about any of that.
That is just pure basic logic.
OK, to suggest again that that if you are a practicing Jew, that if you care about Judaism in any way, that you should take account of those values when you vote.
I don't really see a problem with that.
And here is where Trump's lack of clarity is particularly damning for him.
It's completely unclear if Trump's disloyalty comments suggest that all Jews must be loyal to Israel, which would be anti-Semitic, or that all Jews by dint of birth ought to believe a certain thing, which of course would be anti-Semitic as well, or that Jews who take Judaism seriously should vote for Donald Trump, which is an argument.
It may be an awkward argument for Trump to make.
It may be a self-aggrandizing argument, but at least it's an argument that is not anti-Semitic, right?
It's an argument that in many ways is kind of true.
Okay, well this brings us to this morning.
So this morning, President Trump decided, you know what?
Gonna double down, because that's what we always do here.
Instead of explaining that what he means is that Jews who take Judaism seriously ought to, of course, favor his administration because he's been incredibly pro-Israel, because he's been incredibly pro-Jewish, because this president has been a great friend to the American Jewish community in a lot of ways, all of which is true.
Instead, President Trump decided to go on Twitter and then unleash the single dumbest tweet thread I've seen from him in some time, and that is saying something.
So he tweeted out from Wayne Allen Roots, and Wayne Allen Roots is a radio host and commentator, and Wayne Allen Roots said some silly things today, and Trump decided to retweet them out into the world.
He said, Trump said, quote, Thank you to Wayne Allen Ruud for the very nice words.
Quote, and this is from Wayne Allen Ruud, President Trump is the greatest president for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America.
He is the best president for Israel in the history of the world.
I think, again, there's a case to be made for this.
This is the president who did move the U.S.
embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
This is the president who acknowledged Israel's right to the Golan Heights.
This is a president who has been overtly pro-Israel in all of his statements and all of his speech.
That part's not the wrong part.
Okay, and then Wayne Allyn Root continued, the Jewish people in Israel love him.
This is true by poll numbers.
And then we get to the weird part.
Trump, remember, this is Trump retweeting stuff about himself.
They love him like he's the king of Israel.
Like Trump is the king of Israel.
Ah, now you're getting awkward, dude.
Because you're not King David?
And if you mean like another King of Israel, the Jews are not famous for their worship for Jesus.
And as it turns out, Wayne Allen Root is talking about Jesus when he says King of Israel.
Now, I'm not a New Testament expert, but I do know some things about the Old Testament and about the Jews.
And suggesting, as Donald Trump is doing in this tweet, that he's like the second coming of Jesus and therefore the Jews love him.
He may have missed the whole point of the part where the Jews are not Christian.
He may have missed that whole part where the Jews were not big on the first coming.
Gettin' real awkward, dude.
Gettin' real awkward and crazy.
And then Trump says, American Jews don't know him or like him.
They don't even know what they're doing or saying anymore.
It makes no sense.
But that's okay if he keeps doing what he's doing.
He's good for all Jews, blacks, gays, everyone.
More importantly, he's good for everyone in America who wants a job.
Wow.
That's why Trump adds that wow at the end.
Okay, again.
If you are saying that American Jews should practice Judaism and therefore they should have different priorities, it's a call to religion from Trump that would be kind of strange, but not anti-Semitic.
It is very weird that the president is calling himself the king of the Jews and the second coming of God by dint of retweet.
That is that is bizarre.
OK, now, with all of that said, with all of this said, and again, I have opened wide the possibility that Trump was using anti-Semitic language here, right?
I mean, I've explicitly acknowledged two ways in which this could be interpreted that were anti-Semitic and one way in which it would not be.
And my inclination is that Trump is an ignoramus because that is all my, that's always my inclination.
I don't think Trump is a Jew hater in the way that Omar and Talib are, as evidenced by the fact he's not calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.
He's not suggesting that the only support for the state of Israel in America is due to Jewish money, that it's all about the Benjamins.
This president may engage in root stereotyping, and he does this on a regular basis with a variety of groups, and it's ugly, and it's wrong, but my inclination is that that's because the president is not up on the political jargon.
And this is not me letting him off the hook for any of this, but what do you think rings more true?
That Trump hates Jews in the way that Omar and Tlaib obviously do?
Or that President Trump is just an ignoramus who doesn't know how to use the English language?
Which seems to ring true in a variety of ways.
Because that's what he is.
That's what he is.
Now, in one second, we're going to get to the great irony of the media turning this into the story of the day.
We're going to get to the great irony of that, because there is a great irony in this.
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Okay, so.
The media have jumped all over Trump, over these comments.
And again, I think criticism of Trump over the comments is due.
I think that the comments are easily read in a way that is not the proper way to talk about religious or philosophic Judaism.
I myself have talked about bad Jews before.
And what I mean by bad Jews is Jews who invoke Judaism, as I mentioned, like J Street or Jewish Voice for Peace, cynically in an attempt to use Judaism as a substitute for progressive values that run directly counter to Judaism.
I don't mean Jews who don't practice Judaism.
There are lots of Jews who don't practice Judaism.
Many members of my family are Jews who don't particularly practice Judaism.
That is their choice.
Okay, what makes somebody a bad Jew, in my view, is somebody who is using the tenets of Judaism cynically and overtly in order to undermine a lot of Jewish tenets, which you do see this.
Okay, but that is a discussion within philosophic Judaism, that is not a discussion within ethnic Judaism.
Okay, with all of that said, it is unbelievable that the members of the media are jumping all over this.
Why?
Because the members of the media have spent the last several weeks blatantly ignoring Omar and Tlaib trying to tour Israel with a group that pushed the blood libel and pushed the idea that Jews drink Christian blood on Passover with a group that was quoting from neo-Nazi websites, the same media, those those real intrepid firefighters in our media were focused in like a laser beam.
On Donald Trump today, don't give a damn when it's anti-Semitism from the other side.
And I've been complaining about this for years at this point.
The New York Times has openly admitted that they have not been reporting on local anti-Semitic crime because it doesn't fall into the category of white supremacist crime.
In other words, they only care about anti-Semitism when it's time to use anti-Semitism as a charge against a Republican or against a conservative or against people who they can associate with Republicans or conservatives.
Right, when they can try and tie together white supremacists and Trump, then they're worried about anti-semitism.
But when it comes from Omar and Tlaib, then no, no, this is just the Jews.
Those crafty Jews, crafty Jews.
You know, they're always trying to infiltrate the media and push their, push their censorship, trying to silence people of color.
Pretty incredible.
Pretty incredible.
You're not fighting anti-Semitism unless you're calling it out on all sides.
You're not fighting anti-Semitism unless you are willing to call it out when you see it.
I've called it out when I see it from President Trump.
I've called it out when I see it from people on the right.
I've called it out when I see it from people on the left.
But I'm not going to take it under advisement.
When commentators for Al Jazeera, who spend their lives defending the anti-Semitism of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, are out there doing this routine.
Oh, woe is them!
Yes, I am sure that the same Democrats who are deeply defending Omar and Tlaib today, I'm sure that the same Democrats who refused to condemn Ilhan Omar's statements, refused to censor her, and instead passed a resolution against hate more broadly, I'm sure that they are very disturbed by anti-Semitism today, guys.
I am super certain that they are really disturbed by that sort of thing.
In fact, I am sure that Democrats are incredibly disturbed whenever anybody suggests that a group owes their loyalty to a politician.
If anybody, any politician would suggest that a group owes, a specific racial group owes their loyalty to a politician or owes their loyalty to a set of causes on the basis of race, I'm sure that the media would be just as upset.
Like, let's say, just for the sake of argument, Barack Obama back in 2016 did exactly... I'm sure everyone would have gone nuts, right?
Obama never would have done something like that.
Ever.
Ever.
Yeah.
There's no such thing as a vote that doesn't matter.
It all matters.
And after we have achieved historic turnout in 2008 and 2012, especially in the African-American community, I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election.
You want to give me a good send-off?
Go vote!
It's an act of personal disloyalty.
An act of personal disloyalty.
Undermining Barack Obama's personal legacy if black voters don't show up to vote for Hillary Clinton.
Weird, it seems like he's accusing them of disloyalty if they don't do what he wants on the basis of their race.
Very strange.
I remember when the media went cr... Nope.
Not at all.
In other words, it seems as though two things can be true at once.
Trump can say a bad thing.
Trump can say an ignorant thing.
Trump can say a crazy thing about King of the Jews and second coming of God and all of this kind of stuff.
Trump can do all of that stuff and also the media can be sheer garbage and I don't trust them to call out anti-Semitism because they don't do it.
Because they don't do it.
I'm not going to listen to a bunch of people who have made excuses for anti-Semitism for years, so long as it comes from the right, so long as it comes from the correct side of the aisle, so long as it comes from the left, anti-Semitism is fine.
So long as it comes from a group that is higher on the intersectional pyramid of victimhood than the Jews, then anti-Semitism is totally cool and we'll ignore it.
Now they're up in arms because Donald Trump is dog whistling, don't you see?
Forget the bullhorns over here.
Forget Omar and Tlaib standing over here, shouting at the top of their voice that they hate Jews.
Forget that.
Forget the fact that they retweeted from Mondoweiss yesterday, an anti-Semitic website.
Forget the fact that in the last four days, they retweeted a cartoon from a guy who placed in a Iran Holocaust denial cartoon contest.
Forget all of that.
Right?
That doesn't matter.
The only thing that matters is that Trump, Trump said some bad stuff today.
Again, call out Trump by all means.
Do it!
Because this discourse is ugly and it's wrong.
Especially if he meant it in the way that he seems to have meant it, which is that all ethnic Jews have to vote a certain way because they were born into the Jewish community or something like that.
That is a wrong thing to say.
Or if he meant it like all Jews are more loyal to Israel than America and therefore that has to be their top priority.
Right, if he meant it that way.
If he meant it in the way that I have talked about it when I say that a lot of Jews don't care about Judaism, well then, I don't see anything wrong with that, frankly.
I've said it myself.
When I say that a lot of Jews don't care very much about Judaism, that is true by poll statistics.
It is true by absolute data.
And so I don't find it a mystery when a lot of Jews don't support the more pro-Israel party, or the more pro-religious freedom, or the more pro-life party.
I don't find that a big surprise, because that's been true in the Jewish community for years.
The Orthodox community in the United States votes somewhere around 70-30 Republican, and the rest of the Jewish community votes like 80-20 Democrat.
So that is not a shock in any way, shape, or form.
So it depends on what Trump meant here.
But by all means, call him out when he does something wrong.
But if you're asking me to trust the editors of the New York Times, who five minutes ago were apologizing for printing anti-Semitic cartoons of their own, who have spent years promulgating the myth that there is moral equivalence between the state of Israel and terrorists trying to murder Jews in the heart of the state of Israel, the same members of the media who are happy to host Peter Beinart, a spokesperson for Hamas, in essence, Yeah, I'm gonna take that with a... When I say a grain of salt, what I really mean is a giant vat of salt.
I mean a vat of salt the size of the Dead Sea.
That's how much salt I'm gonna take that with.
Because I think that you guys are completely full of crap.
Many things can be true at once.
Trump can say a bad thing, and also, you guys are utterly and completely and intensely full of garbage.
Full of excrement.
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Okay, meanwhile, The Democrats are they have to be thanking their lucky stars that President Trump is doing what President Trump does.
They have to be thanking their lucky stars because meanwhile, they are tearing themselves apart.
They don't know whether they ought to embrace a middle road or whether they ought to swing wildly to the left.
Their leading candidate is a gaffe machine.
And and their policies are failing.
I mean, California is ground zero for Democratic policies, and it is a giant, giant failure.
Hey, California, I've lived here my entire life.
I've been here my entire life except for three years when I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard Law.
I have watched this state deteriorate.
I've watched the living conditions in my area deteriorate.
Even though people are living in nicer apartments, they walk outside and the ground is strewn with garbage.
There are open needles on the street.
A few weeks ago, I walked out of my house, which is in a nice residential area, and I kid you not, right across the street, lying face down in the gutter like Edgar Allan Poe after a drinking binge, was some person, I felt terrible for them, some person who is obviously high, lying face down in the gutter, nothing being done about it.
This is the state of California now.
And the state of California has no answers because the real answers are free market solutions and enforcing the laws that are on the books with regard to criminal trespass.
That is the way that you enforce this.
Instead, nobody will do that.
So the idea is that developers do not have a right to build, but homeless people have the right to sleep on the streets.
I wonder why there is so little development and so many homeless people.
I cannot imagine.
Naturally, the state of California is blaming the only people who are not responsible, big business.
Barney Chakrabarty writing for Fox News.
So San Francisco homeless stats soar.
City blames big business.
Residents blame officials.
It has more billionaires per capita than anywhere else in the world, but it also has a homeless problem so severe that it rivals some third-world nations.
On any given day, you can see souped-up Lamborghinis and blinged-out trophy wives in one part of the city, and walk over a few blocks and see piles of human feces, puddles of urine, and vomit caked on the sidewalks.
The misery of homelessness, mental illness, and public drug addiction hits deep in San Francisco and has turned parts of a beautiful city into a public toilet.
As the problem grows, residents are finding themselves at a crossroads.
The compassion for those struggling is constantly being challenged by a fear for their own safety and quality of life.
It never had to get this bad, say critics, who are appalled that it's getting worse every day.
Well, this is where you mistake compassion for failure to enforce the law.
It is not compassionate to mentally ill people to leave them non-medicated on the street to live in their own filth.
I don't know what society believes that that is a form of compassionate, but apparently that's the government of California.
Amelia Cartwright told Fox News, I won't visit my son who lives out there again.
It's disgusting.
I went there a few months ago for the first time.
This guy who looked homeless and really beat up spit on me.
Can you imagine?
He spit on me.
While it might be a shock to the system for some, residents say such interactions are common.
Lately, the cases of citizens being harassed by mentally ill street people has taken a dangerous turn.
Last week, Austin Vincent, a homeless man, was caught on camera attacking a 26-year-old woman outside her condo complex.
As he threw Paniz Cosarian on the ground, he allegedly talked about saving her from robots and offered to kill another woman nearby so he could earn her trust.
Vincent was arrested and pled not guilty to a false imprisonment charge, two counts of battery, and armed robbery.
Instead, Superior Court Judge Christine Van Aken released Vincent over the objections of the DA's office.
Eventually, Vincent had to wear an ankle monitor, which means nothing.
And on Monday, he was arrested again for an alleged assault that occurred in February.
The police said he was armed with a knife, approached a woman and her friends as they waited for a ride.
Vincent's allegedly threatened to kill the woman and lunged at the group.
The city still manages to blow through hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year to supposedly address the crisis and blames everyone but themselves when the homeless count rises.
City officials in May recognized that the homeless problem jumped 17% from 2017.
And then that was the preliminary report.
The final report showed the street count increase would have been 30% if they had stuck to the same definition of homelessness as they had in the past.
This is insane.
And it's true in Los Angeles as well.
In Los Angeles, the homeless problem has become so terrible that pretty much every part of the city has been overrun with people who are living on the streets.
This is not a question of wealth redistribution.
This is a question of failures of policy.
If you're worried about affordable housing in major cities, one of the things you could do is allow developers to build.
But we can't do that.
Not in Seattle.
Not in L.A.
Not in San Francisco.
Nowhere.
How do we know this?
Listen to this story from USA Today.
$700,000 for an apartment?
The cost to solve the homeless crisis is soaring in L.A.
Chris Wood, you're writing.
As the city tries to cope with thousands of people living on the streets, a few homeless and low-income senior citizens will be luckier than most next year.
They will receive keys to one of 72 new apartments complete with a fitness center in the heart of trendy Koreatown built at a projected cost of $700,000 for each unit, according to the city controller's office.
Controller Ron Galperin said, this kind of cost is utterly unacceptable.
I believe we need a fundamental course correction.
Despite a booming national economy, homeless people have set up tents in makeshift encampments in major cities on the West Coast amid a housing shortage that has driven up rents to unaffordable levels.
In Los Angeles, the tents are spread out on sidewalks across the city, the homeless emboldened by a court ruling that allows them to live outside if no shelter space is available.
Making matters worse, many live in filthy, third-world conditions without basic necessities like toilets and sinks, making people susceptible to disease.
L.A.
voters passed a $1.2 billion bond in 2016.
We're going to spend a bunch of money on building 10,000 permanent housing units.
That would be enough to make a significant dent in the 28,000 people deemed living unsheltered in the most recent homeless count.
The result was a crash program to construct new apartments meant as permanent housing.
The median cost, $520,000.
Galperin says by taking a costly route, at the current rate, only somewhat more than 7,000 units will be constructed, far short of the 10,000, leaving thousands on the street.
This is not merely a problem of lack of housing.
This is also a problem with you shouldn't let people live on the street.
You do not have a right to live on the street in the United States.
You do not.
That is public land.
You don't have a right to live in the middle of the sidewalk, creating a public health hazard.
Rudy Giuliani knew this in New York, which is why New York is no longer a hellhole.
LA has turned into a hellhole.
It's the saddest thing.
And Sacramento too.
I was just in Sacramento for the weekend.
We drove past full blocks of people living in tents, full homeless cities.
According to the UK Daily Mail, a Sacramento salon owner claims Californian homelessness crisis is forcing her to relocate after 15 years because she has grown sick of multiple break-ins and cleaning up syringes, urine and feces from outside her premises every single day.
Of course, this tends to hit disproportionately poor areas the worst because richer areas have police departments that tend to actually move people if they can.
The poorer areas are the ones where everybody is locating on Skid Row.
The homeless problem in LA and San Francisco and Sacramento is a disaster area.
Gavin Newsom, the governor, is doing nothing.
We'll get to the stupid policies pursued by California Democrats in order to fight all of this, and they are indeed unbelievably stupid policies.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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All righty.
So what are the policies that California is taking in order to fight back, militate against the homelessness crisis?
No.
Nothing, except making it harder for people to build units.
So it costs too much to live in these cities.
Supposedly, this is the cause of the homelessness problem.
Answer, it's not, okay?
The reason that there are a lot of homeless people on the street in LA and San Francisco is because they're nice places to live.
If you're gonna live on the street, you do it in LA because it ain't cold, Also, it's because LA and San Francisco have refused to prosecute people who are engaged in criminal activity.
It's also because LA, San Francisco, the state of California, they've declared a right for people to have their crap out on the street.
Police are not even allowed to move it.
I mean, there are a lot of reasons why we've not dealt with the mental illness problem, we've not dealt with the drug addiction problem, we've not dealt with any of those problems on a public health level.
That's really why the homelessness problem is a thing.
But, according to the left, the homelessness problem is because the rent is too damn high.
In the words of a famous man.
Well, if the rent is too damn high, you know what you need.
I'm no expert, but if something costs too much, you probably need more supply.
Just gonna put that out there.
You need more supply.
Naturally, this means the state of California is making it more difficult to build units.
Genius.
The California State Senate is now considering a measure that would limit rent hikes.
The Assembly earlier approved the bill that would cap rent hikes to 7% plus the rate of inflation up to a maximum of 10% per year.
The measure would apply to all rentals 10 years or older.
In the meantime, rent control advocates are backing a new proposition that would allow rent control for more properties, including apartments at least 15 years old or single-family homes if the landlord owns at least three rentals, which will completely destroy the real estate market in the state of California, which, by the way, is holding up a lot of people in their mortgages.
If you want a second real estate crisis, this is the way you do it.
You make sure that the real estate values in the state of California, which represent a disproportionate share of asset ownership in the state of California, start declining rapidly.
You wanna do that?
Very easy way to do it.
Make it impossible to rent those properties.
Make it so that if you own a second home, like some sort of rental home, that we're gonna be penalized for that, so the market drops out for that.
The prices start declining.
Banks stop giving loans as quickly.
People fall into foreclosure.
It'll be great.
Well done, everybody, because what we need is more people who fall into foreclosure.
That'll definitely stop the homelessness crisis.
Shockingly, California developers are now claiming, according to Curbed.com, that they are scared to build in the Bay Area.
There's a shock.
According to UCLA's Anderson School of Management and the law firm Allen Matkins, They released their survey of California developers.
They found that those at the stake in building housing are feeling gun-shy about the Bay Area.
You mean it's hard to build housing in the Bay Area and maybe that's contributing to the homelessness crisis?
No.
No!
They're indicating that construction activity is expected to slow down over the next 18 months.
The Bay Area is a big exception.
Developers think that in 2022, those areas, East Bay, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, will see worse economics than in 2019.
Production of multifamily homes, specifically, is expected to decline.
Those would be exactly the places that people need to rent.
Just genius.
Rent control talk is obviously impacting all of this.
So you know what would definitely help?
What would definitely help is if, let's say, the crime rates in California were also spiking.
That would be great.
So as it turns out, we can make that happen for you guys.
We can make the crime rates in California spike as well.
The California crime rates are indeed up.
They are up because of realignment.
They are up because there has been an attempt to take people out of prison early.
An analysis by the Marshall Project and the L.A.
Times found that while California's crime rates remain near historic lows, overall crime is up.
Theft has been rising after California reduced its criminal penalties, according to one report.
This is obvious.
It is obvious that crime has been a serious and rising problem.
In California, and a lot of the police departments, I mean, I have lots of friends on the force in LAPD, and a lot of the staff just get futzed by the political operators in a lot of these areas.
I mean, just a few days ago, we had on a police officer from Garden Grove, the chief of Garden Grove Police, talking about how realignment had spiked crime in the city, and how this was being hidden from the public.
So what's to blame?
What's to blame?
Well, obviously what we need is more taxpayer dollars spent, right?
What we need is more taxpayer dollars being used.
Only one problem.
California is basically maxed out.
California is raking in the bucks.
According to the Mercury News, Dan Walter is writing for CalMatters.
He says, last week, the State Department of Finance closed the books on 2018-2019 revenue and reported that the state had collected $145 billion, $1 billion more than it had anticipated just weeks earlier, and $2 billion plus more than the 2018-2019 budget had originally forecast.
That is a whopping 72% more than the state was collecting one decade ago, outpacing population growth and inflation.
The state has enough money to max out its reserve funds and provide several billion dollars in extra cash to offset schools' rising pension costs.
For pupils, spending on K-12 schools in California has risen by at least 50% in recent years.
Okay, so this is not a lack of tax revenue or spending.
The big problem in California is that we're just blowing it out in terms of the spending.
We're wasting it on a bunch of crap and then regulating business.
Is it any wonder that business is leaving California?
Our business is located in California.
We have conversations nearly daily about relocating our business out of California.
There is a reason for all of that.
So the reason that I point out all of this is that this is a failure of democratic policy.
It is a failure of left policy.
Republicans have no power in the state of California.
This is a single party state.
This is what it looks like when Democrats are in charge.
A problem forms because they refuse to solve a problem.
And in order to solve that problem, they create another problem.
And then they create a third problem on top of that.
The only solution is to tax you more, which creates more problems.
And then they're surprised when the problems get created.
And then the only solution is to blame business.
The only solution is businesses are the culprit, of course.
Businesses are evil.
Now here is where you would expect business to stand up and say, hold up a second.
Hold up.
This is not on us.
You guys have been taking all our money.
We pay people exactly what they are willing to take in the market.
This isn't on us.
We are the ones creating jobs.
Government does not create the economy.
Government provides the conditions under which an economy can flourish.
But government does not create the jobs.
Government does not create the businesses.
Government does not create any of those things.
Government, in fact, hampers those things.
Business should be defending itself.
But, because so much of business is now tied up in public relations, Because so much of business is now tied up in pandering to government for subsidies and tax breaks, because big business and big government are very often in each other's pocket, you're starting to see big business undermine its own case for existence.
So big business' case for existence used to be, we provide the jobs, we provide the products, the services, the goods, we provide all of those things, and we do so in a free market, consent-based way.
Now, big business, in an attempt to make cozy with big government, in an attempt to pander to the left politically, is undermining its own case.
There's an article in the New York Times called Shareholder Value is No Longer Everything Top CEOs Say.
Chief executives from the Business Roundtable, including the leaders of Apple and JPMorgan Chase, argued that companies must also invest in employees and deliver value to customers.
Oh wait, I missed it.
If companies don't invest in their employees, meaning they don't pay them, they're not going to have employees.
And also, if they don't deliver value to their customers, aren't they not going to have a business?
Businesses that don't deliver value to their customers go out of business.
So what the hell are we talking about here?
What we're talking about is these businesses being forced into a malice struggle session with left-leaning media and politicians to declare that, really, it's our fault.
Really, if we just worked harder, you were right all along.
There was a Scrooge McDuck money bin in the back room, and now, out of the goodness of our hearts, we're unlocking it.
Do they understand, these big business leaders, that the long-term and mid-term effect of what they are doing Is to allow governments to take the moral high ground against free markets.
This is why when people say that big business is capitalism, big business is free market.
No, a lot of big business looks for government rent seeking.
A lot of big business is looking for government protection.
A lot of big business is looking for the government to step in and regulate smaller businesses to protect them.
Breaking with decades of long-held corporate orthodoxy, the Business Roundtable issued a statement on the purpose of a corporation, arguing that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders.
Instead, the group said, they must also invest in their employees, protect the environment, and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers.
Again, I missed it.
Were businesses not doing this stuff before?
If you don't invest in your employees, you know what they do?
They leave.
You know how I know?
We have employees here.
Many of the people who are top-level employees in our company started off as low-level employees in this company.
I could name names, but I don't want to embarrass them.
But there is tremendous upward mobility at this company.
Why?
Because we don't want people to leave.
We want people to be happy here, despite having to work with me.
Okay, the fact is that if a business does not protect the environment, that business is going to be regulated into the ground.
And that if a business doesn't deal fairly and ethically with suppliers, why would the supplier deal fairly and ethically with the business?
Free markets are based on a root level of trust and reciprocity.
For big businesses to now come out and issue statements saying, oh yeah, heretofore, we were amoral Gordon Gekko types, but from now on, we're just like Warren Buffett, and we're gonna tow the company line.
We're gonna tow the Democratic Party line so that we're not regulated.
Yeah, just wait, okay?
The alligator, you can keep feeding it.
It may eat you last, but it'll still eat you.
A group says, while each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.
We commit to deliver value to all of them for the future success of our companies, our communities, and our country.
The shift comes at a moment of increasing distress in corporate America as big companies face mounting global discontent over income inequality, harmful products, and poor working conditions.
Okay, so why aren't they pushing back on this?
I mean, this article from the New York Times explicitly says that these companies are caving to the propaganda of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who, by the way, are using iPhones to tweet out their various campaign stops while driving around in vehicles made by large corporations.
There was no mention at the roundtable of curbing executive compensation, by the way, nor should there be.
And the fact is that executive compensation is market-based.
And if you want to look at the dramatic rise in executive compensation, what you really should look at are the major corporations like Facebook and Google, where executives have made a bajillion dollars.
But you know who else did?
The janitors who started working at the company and who had stock options.
Guys.
They're responding to something in the zeitgeist, said Nancy Cohen, a historian at Harvard Business School.
They perceive that business as usual is no longer acceptable.
It's an open question whether any of these companies will change the way they do business.
Well, and here is the point, right?
These businesses think that by kowtowing to the language, by basically saying, oh, Thomas Piketty is right.
Income inequality is our fault.
We've got to do better.
That people will leave them alone.
Good luck with that.
Good luck with that.
There is no end to what people want once you start feeding them.
And once you start feeding the media, I don't mean people generally, I mean the media.
Once you start feeding the media and democratic politicians the propaganda they desire, there is no end to how much you're going to have to feed them more and more and more and more until they are taking out vital organs.
This is all ridiculous.
Okay, but it's ridiculous because we live in a heavily politicized world, and we refuse to acknowledge the vast good that big businesses actually do in American society.
We crap all over big businesses, despite the fact that they are employing the vast majority of people in the United States.
We crap on people who are high-income earners, despite the fact that the vast majority of those people have gone in and out of that high-income earning bracket over the course of their lives, and the fact that those are the people who are providing jobs to other people.
It is companies that invest, that are creating innovation that you like.
But I guess these companies must be brought to heel and, pathetically, the surrender culture is in full swing.
Do not surrender to the woke brigade.
Do not surrender to the SJWs.
When you surrender to them, you are only giving them the capacity to hang you.
You think by giving them rope that they will allow you a longer leash?
Incorrect.
They are tying the noose for you as we speak.
You give people power over your life and they are going to use it against you.
And it is truly amazing.
I mean, you can see there's never any end to this.
I'll give you an example.
Okay, so there's a guy named Stephen Ross, right?
He's the owner of the Miami Dolphins.
He was on the NFL Committee on Social Justice.
And that committee was dedicated toward pushing Anti-racism, anti-sexism, all of this.
There was no indicator that Stephen Ross had ever done anything wrong as a member of this committee, or that he had pushed against, quote-unquote, social justice for the NFL.
It turns out that he held a fundraiser for Trump, now he's been kicked off.
Long said the NFL social justice initiative recently got Ross to agree to remove himself from the group.
He shouldn't have done it.
Ross should have stuck around, he should have said, you need to force me out.
Just because I support Donald Trump does not mean I can't also support things that I think are good for the country, and where we may agree.
Once you start surrendering to people, the end is nigh for you.
You gotta fight back.
And too often in our society, people think the easiest way out is to apologize for doing stuff that they didn't do wrong in the first place.
Really, really dumb strategy, guys.
Dumb strategy by big business?
Because I promise you, Elizabeth Warren ain't gonna care about the nice words you are saying.
She's just out there dancing like a crazy person to Aretha Franklin and waiting for the moment when she can come after you.
That's all.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like.
My wife and I have been watching The show Hannah.
It's based on the 2011 movie.
I've never seen the movie.
I've heard it's pretty good.
But the show itself is pretty good.
And just like the movie, apparently, it's got some sort of weird musical choices.
But it definitely is entertaining.
Joel Kinnaman is a true star.
The guy who plays the father in Hannah.
He was also in Altered Carbon, another show that I've recommended.
Both of these are very R-rated.
Let's talk about your father.
She's terrific.
When people talk about future Bonds, I've always thought Idris Elba would make an awesome Bond.
But if not Idris Elba, no, not a female James Bond, guys.
I know.
Open that can of worms again.
But Joel Kinnaman would be a good Bond.
He really would.
He's a real action star, and he can act.
Here's a little bit of the preview.
Let's talk about your father.
Do you know why he kept you in the forest?
Did he tell you where he was going?
We are all worried about him.
You're safe now.
She's faking.
Richards, get out of there.
It's a very intense series, and it's very action-packed.
It is pretty good.
My wife and I are really enjoying it, so go check it out.
Hannah on Amazon Prime.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
So I gotta say, I do not understand why candidates feel the need to be something they are not.
And not everyone has to be AOC dancing on rooftops.
Elizabeth Warren, you don't have to do this, lady.
I understand that you hijacked AOC's drinking a beer in your kitchen while doing an Instagram video.
But you don't have to dance, lady.
You really don't.
I knew Professor Warren very peripherally when I was at Harvard Law School.
She was always pretty straight-laced.
She was always a very intense person.
The first time I met her, she tried to rip into Rush Limbaugh.
I mean, that's who Elizabeth Warren is.
Her dancing to Aretha Franklin is one of the most awkward- She's not even Hillary Clinton 2.0 at this point.
She's Hillary Clinton 0.5.
Like, Hillary's an upgrade.
Like, Hillary just getting wild in Cedar Rapids is nothing com- Oh my god.
Wow.
If you're not watching this video, this is why you should subscribe.
Because Elizabeth Warren dancing is one of the worst things you will ever see.
It's Elaine from Seinfeld quality.
Full-on Elaine from Seinfeld quality.
Don't be what you're not, people.
Just be what you are.
Be a crazy, leftist, progressive, cynically manipulating the American people.
I'm old enough to remember when Elizabeth Warren was a moderate.
Yeah, that was funny.
Alright, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
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