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Sept. 4, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
52:22
Tear Down This Walmart | Ep. 853
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The left finds a target-rich environment in corporate cowards.
The woke scolds come for Dave Chappelle.
And Brexit's fate remains unclear.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
We have an enormous amount to get to today, and we will get to all of it We'll just move straight through it.
We begin today with the new crusade by the left.
So the left is attempting to use pressure politics in virtually every area of American life.
We're going to talk about how it is that the left uses these pressure politics in areas of American life to make American life a lot worse.
Because normally, if you're going to use pressure politics, you use it in, you know, politics, right?
You direct it politically.
You're going to pressure your senator.
You're going to pressure your congressman.
You're going to organize phone banking or you're going to nominate somebody to primary somebody or run against somebody.
But we are now moving into an era where so many people in America now believe that government is ineffective and ineffectual.
But instead, they're going to go to the commanding heights of our culture and of our business.
And they're going to try to use those commanding heights against their fellow citizens.
Now, that's not illegal, obviously.
That doesn't violate prescriptions on limited government.
But it does change the natural tone and tenor of how it is to live as an American.
If you are simply going after the commanding heights of Hollywood and using it to cram down cultural stereotypes about people you don't like, that does have an impact on American life.
If you are going to the commanding heights of corporate America and demanding that corporate America do your political bending, that does have an impact on how we live.
Again, there's a difference between the government doing something like that and a corporation doing something like that.
We'll talk about that difference and why it actually opens up some market opportunities for conservatives as corporations make themselves less competitive on the American stage in order to cater to the whims of the far left.
It's very short-sighted corporate policy, but nonetheless, it does polarize us in heretofore unseen ways in America.
Okay, so we begin today with the failure of political blackmail.
Political pressure politics have been used, obviously, throughout the history of the United States.
You try to pressure your senator.
And the newest goal for the left is to try and push Mitch McConnell.
Maybe they can shame Mitch McConnell.
into passing some sort of gun control legislation.
Now, there's a solution to this for folks on the left.
You could elect a majority.
You could just elect a majority of Democratic senators.
In fact, you had a majority of Democratic senators all the way up through, what, 2014?
And you could elect a Democratic House, which you already have.
You could elect a Democratic president.
In fact, you had all three of those branches.
You had the Congress, and you had the Senate, and you had the presidency from 2009 all the way through 2011, early 2011.
And you didn't do anything on gun control.
So now, you see the press trying to push Mitch McConnell into doing something, and they're trying to use President Trump's vagary on gun control as sort of the lever to get McConnell to do something.
So you got the Washington Post editorial board writing a full-page editorial, I mean, an extraordinarily long editorial, today, trying to push Mitch McConnell, suggesting that it's Mitch McConnell's fault that mass shootings are taking place.
Which is a rather large absurdity, considering, again, that mass shootings have been taking place in the United States for decades at this point.
Columbine happened in the 1990s.
Mitch McConnell was not the Senate Majority Leader when a bevy of mass shootings happened in 2009-2010.
And Mitch McConnell is not solely responsible for the gun control policy in the United States.
We had an assault weapons ban in the United States.
The same assault weapons ban Democrats are now pushing.
From 1994 through 2004, it accomplished precisely nothing.
So for all of the talk about Mitch McConnell, it ain't about Mitch McConnell.
But this is normal pressure politics.
OK, this is just the way politics works.
And there's nothing particularly wrong with this.
I mean, the people who are pushing the agenda have the wrong agenda.
They're pushing policy that is impractical.
But this is sort of normal politics as politics, I guess, is supposed to work.
So The Washington Post writes an editorial.
Again, titled, How many more names will be added to the list before Mitch McConnell acts on guns?
And they just list a bunch of people who were killed Saturday in Midland and Odessa.
They said, add those seven individuals randomly slaughtered Saturday by a shooter in the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa to the toll of those lost to America's gun insanity.
And then pose this question.
First of all, again, they are wrong on the politics.
There's no such thing as quote-unquote gun insanity.
There are just insane people with guns or evil people with guns.
Me owning a gun is not insane.
You, a law-abiding citizen, owning a gun to defend yourself is not insane.
That's not gun insanity.
Again, a gun is just a tool.
To suggest that it's a part of America's quote-unquote gun insanity is to create this miasmatic evil that descends on America randomly when that is not in fact the case.
But that's not where the editorial board is going, obviously.
They say, let's pose this question.
What if there was a mass shooting in the United States, not once or twice or four or six times monthly, but every single day, a big one, the kind that electrifies social media and squats for days on page one?
Would that be enough to move Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from his insistent inertia on gun safety?
Would any volume of bloodshed convince the Kentucky Republican that Congress faces a moral imperative to act?
38 people were slain in three such shootings in August, and still Senate Republicans and President Trump refuse to act.
Again, this is the old Democratic saw, which is that if you don't agree with them on policy, it's because you don't care if people get shot.
And that's a lie, and it's nasty, but it is normal politics if you're directing it at an elected senator.
And then they just list off all of the people who have been killed in a variety of mass shootings.
They don't seem to care about all the people getting killed in Chicago because that is Democrat governed.
They say the list below, far from comprehensive, is tragic in part because it is so far from inevitable.
No, no single law would end gun violence, but there are reasonable, obvious measures that would help.
For example, ban the sale of military grade assault weapons.
Again, they say that's reasonable and obvious.
Didn't really have an impact on mass shootings in the United States.
Again, you can't just assert this sort of stuff.
You actually have to explain why.
And then they just list off a bunch of names, and the names themselves are supposed to be proof that the policy is somehow workable.
Which, of course, is very silly.
Okay, but, again, this is normal political pressure.
And it's not working.
It's not working.
And so many in the media have now upped their game when it comes to normal political pressure.
Many on the left have upped their game when it comes to normal political pressure.
It's not just pressuring Mitch McConnell to do what you want.
It turns into concerted attacks on people in deeply unfair ways.
So here is an example.
Yesterday, Yesterday, there was an article from Bloomberg that resulted in a Texas conservative named Leif Olson leaving the Department of Labor.
Why exactly was he forced to leave the Department of Labor?
Because he posted a couple of times on Facebook, making fun of the alt-right and mocking anti-Semitism.
And Bloomberg took that out of context to suggest that he was alt-right and supported anti-Semitism.
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So as I say, the political pressure tactics start off in the realm of normal, and now they have moved to the extreme.
So you have Bloomberg printing this piece about Leif Olson.
Here's how Bloomberg reports this.
And that sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
Bloomberg reports this.
A recently appointed Trump Labor Department official with a history of advancing controversial conservative and faith based causes in court has resigned after revelations that he wrote a 2016 Facebook post suggesting the Jewish controlled media protects their own.
And that sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?
Except for it's obviously not what he is saying.
He is obviously mocking all of the people on the alt right who were suggesting this 2016 that Paul Ryan, then the Speaker of the House, was going to lose his congressional primary to Paul Nalen, an open white supremacist.
And he wrote this mocking, this mocking, ridiculous Facebook post making fun of the alt-right.
He wrote, establishment insider rhino corporate tool Paul Ryan was finally brought to heel in tonight's primary election by an uprising of the conservative masses of real America, eager for an authentic voice in Washington, instead of the same tired globalist open borders pap they've been pushing on us since the elites abandoned the people.
The guy just suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70 point victory.
Let's see him and his Georgetown cocktail party puppet masters try to walk that one off.
As obviously he is mocking people who said that Paul Malin was going to beat Paul Ryan.
And then somebody wrote back to him as a humorous reply.
He's a neocon, too, you know.
And Lee Folsen wrote back.
No, he's not.
Neocons are all Upper East Side Zionists who don't golf on Saturday, if you know what I mean.
Right.
Meaning, again, this is all making fun of white supremacists and the alt-right.
All of it.
All of it.
OK, so Bloomberg reported this as though making fun of the alt-right and anti-Semitism was actually anti-Semitic so they could get this guy fired.
The guy did end up resigning.
OK, so this is the shift from normal political I'm like Mitch McConnell, to going out of your way to deliberately read something wrong in order to target somebody.
So that's bad enough.
And then it goes even further.
And that is the maligning of people you disagree with.
Not just by taking them out of context, but by literally calling them terrorists.
So this is what's happening in San Francisco.
Within the last 48 hours, the San Francisco board of supervisors declared the NRA a domestic terrorist organization.
You getting this?
An organization that is a lobbying organization on behalf of American citizens who wish to protect their Second Amendment rights is now a domestic terrorist organization.
So what does that mean?
Presumably you can raid an NRA member's home?
You can surveil an NRA member?
I mean, I really wonder why so many gun owners are uneasy about red flag laws when you have the San Francisco legislative body passing a resolution officially labeling the NRA a domestic terrorist organization.
This is the equivalent of labeling EMILY's List a domestic terrorist organization on the right.
District 2 Supervisor Catherine Stefani, whose district includes the Marina and Presidio, wrote the declaration stating that the NRA, quote, spreads propaganda that misinforms and aims to deceive the public about the dangers of gun violence.
In other words, they exercise their First Amendment rights.
Therefore, they're a terrorist organization.
They say that the NRA, quote, musters its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence.
There's no evidence that the NRA incites gun owners to acts of violence.
That's absurd.
And yes, they do promote gun ownership.
So do I. I'm not a terrorist.
If San Francisco is now in the business of labeling people terrorists who disagree with them, now we are getting into the realm of the dangerous.
So you move from normal political manipulation, that is bad stuff, the Mitch McConnell stuff, To abnormal political manipulation, members of the media attacking people for precisely the opposite of what they're saying, to openly labeling everybody who you don't like some sort of terrorist.
The declaration, according to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, reads, quote, All countries have violent and hateful people, but only in America do we give them ready access to assault weapons and large capacity magazines, thanks in large part to the National Rifle Association's influence.
I mean, how delightful.
Okay, so all of this is incredibly divisive.
And then we get to the final step.
So that one is bad because that is an actual board of government labeling fellow citizens terrorists on the basis of their belief system, which is really nasty.
And let us not forget that the entire left has suggested that if you use inflammatory language, about the positions of people on the left, that you're inciting violence against them.
So if you say that Ilhan Omar is a bad person and an anti-Semite, she says that you're inciting violence against her.
If you suggest that Rashida Tlaib's belief system is wrong and nasty, then you're inciting violence against her in some sort of way.
If you label everybody in the United States who supports the Second Amendment a terrorist, apparently that's totally okay in San Francisco.
If you label the NRA, which is again, a law-abiding, First Amendment exercising organization, a terrorist organization, That's totally fine.
Not inciting violence in any way.
So all of that is bad.
But, here's the thing, all of that is also unsuccessful.
The fact is, no matter how much the San Francisco Board of Supervisors yells at the NRA, that is not going to be an effective pressure tactic because the NRA is the NRA.
The fact is that Bloomberg could have reported this about Lief Olsen, and if Lief Olsen and the Trump administration had just stood strong and fought back, they really couldn't have gotten anything done.
Olsen shouldn't have resigned.
The fact is that the Washington Post can write as many editorials as it could possibly want about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and he's not going to do their bidding.
He is not going to care.
He is not going to do their bidding because those are not his constituents.
None of the people who write for the Washington Post editorial board are voters in his state of Kentucky.
So this has pushed the left to a new form of power politics, and that is the exercise of power politics in the corporate sphere.
Now, there are times when the exercise of power politics in the corporate sphere is actually good or justified, right?
So let's take an example.
So back in the 1960s and 1950s, there were segregated businesses, and private people decided to boycott those businesses in order to end segregation.
So for example, the Woolworths counter, In the early 1960s, the Woolworth's lunch counter was segregated.
And a bunch of civil rights activists, young black students for the most part, went into Woolworth's and sat down at the counter and then were abused at the counter.
And this was such a national scandal that Woolworth's actually voluntarily desegregated its counters because they didn't want the blowback.
Right now, those people were acting in courageous ways.
I don't have any problem with that.
And as a general rule, It is quite possible that you can pressure a corporation to quote-unquote do the right thing.
But what we have now seen is that that tactic has been expanded beyond its use in specific situations to simply castigate anybody who disagrees with you on matters of politics and to change corporate policy from above.
And to change corporate policy from above from the commanding heights of business.
And this has grown beyond specific instances of fighting against discrimination and into we need to get our political preferences done by any means necessary, including activating corporate bosses to do our bidding for us.
Today's example comes courtesy of Walmart.
We'll explain why this is actually quite divisive and polarizing and why the end result is not going to be exactly what the left thinks it is.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so.
As I say, there is a difference between private businesses and government.
So, if government were to cram down policy from above, this would be a constitutional problem.
When corporations do it, it's a cultural problem.
It's not a constitutional problem.
It's a cultural problem.
It's not a constitutional problem because corporations can do whatever they want.
Lots of corporations disagree with me.
That is their prerogative.
It's America.
They can do what they want.
Walmart can disagree with me on policy.
That is their prerogative.
Walmart can disagree with me on policy.
That is their prerogative.
I'm not calling for the regulation of Walmart or Facebook or any of these other corporations.
I am saying that the left's use of corporations as a cudgel is dangerous for the nature of American political discourse.
And this is what the left is increasingly doing.
Now, it started off in the realm of secondary boycotts.
So you saw the left do this originally with Rush Limbaugh, and they did it with Sean Hannity, and they did it with Tucker Carlson, they've done it with Laura Ingraham, they've tried to do it with my show.
What they do is they go to corporations, and they try to say to those corporations, how dare you sponsor and subsidize speech with which we disagree?
It doesn't matter that you run your advertising on a wide variety of political shows.
If you sponsor Ben Shapiro's program.
That means that you must endorse everything Ben Shapiro says.
Now, of course, that isn't true.
But the goal is to remove the profit incentive for programs like mine by going after advertisers.
Now, all of this is nonsense, right?
The fact is that those who claim they're going to boycott You know, the coffee makers who are on Sean Hannity's show are totally full of crap.
They were never going to boycott those companies.
The people who sound off from Media Matters, they really are not wielding enormous amounts of power.
They can create a problem for your HR, for your PR department for like three days and that's it.
But a lot of corporations started caving to this sort of stuff when they went after Rush Limbaugh's advertisers, when they went after Sean's advertisers or Tucker's.
They can create all sorts of problems.
And the left saw that this was successful.
So they've decided that they are going to rely on corporate cowardice in order for them to push their agenda now on a broader level.
Not just by going after advertisers on programs like this one, which, by the way, is why you should subscribe to the programs you like.
You can subscribe to this program over at dailywire.com.
They've decided they are going to go after corporations more broadly and use those corporations to cram down policy that affects the entire country.
Again, perfectly legal, but it is a sign of corporate cowardice that so many corporate CEOs are falling for this.
So corporate CEOs do control an enormous amount of American life.
We have these big businesses.
They employ literally millions of people.
I've been a big defender of Walmart over the years.
The left has been attacking Walmart, saying they pay insufficient wages, which is not statistically true.
The left has been attacking Walmart, saying they want to tax them out of business.
That's Bernie Sanders' proposal.
I've been over here defending Walmart, right?
But Walmart does control an enormous amount of America's industry, obviously.
And this is true for a wide variety of corporations.
So, if the left cannot capture government, if they cannot get elected to positions of power, instead they figure they will capture the boardrooms by threatening action against CEOs, by threatening action against corporations, by threatening to make a PR stink if they do not get what they want.
Now, all it would take is corporations to just say, no, not gonna do it.
Oh, you know what we're here to do?
We're here to sell product.
That's what we do.
And if you don't like those products, that's on you, man.
If you don't like the products that we sell, you can feel free to shop elsewhere.
But now, because of the media pressure, because of the left's pressure, political pressure, the threat of legislation from the government, what you're starting to see is corporations seeking safety behind the shield of either government regulation or positive PR from the press.
That is what they're doing.
Now, that is a business-driven decision in the short term.
In the long term, it's a bad business decision, and it's bad for the culture.
So in the short term, that decision is driven by a desire to avoid scrutiny, a desire to avoid political blowback.
In the long term, you're removing faith in our corporate institutions, which are not designed to do good.
They're designed to provide product.
They're designed to provide you products and services.
You're the one who's supposed to do good with the products and services.
It's not up to a paternalistic CEO to decide exactly which products you should consume.
It is up to you to decide which products you should consume.
And again, this is different from Woolworth's counter-boycotts, which were designed to stymie actual discriminatory policy by corporations.
That, I think, is morally justifiable.
I think that if you are going after Walmart and suggesting that Walmart cannot distribute or sell ammunition because it makes you mad, I'm having a hard time understanding what that has to do with them discriminating against black people, how that's comparable in any way, for example.
OK, so why is this relevant?
Well, because on Tuesday, Walmart announced that after its current inventory is depleted, it will cave to the demands of far-left activists and stop selling handgun ammunition and ammunition commonly used in other popular semi-automatic firearms.
Now, again, let me reiterate, this is their decision.
They can do this.
Legally, they can.
I'm not calling for regulation of Walmart.
I'm not calling for a boycott of Walmart.
I am suggesting that Walmart is making a corporate-driven decision that is driven by PR.
It is not driven by good business.
And it's not going to be good for the culture in the long run.
Walmart also stated it was requesting that customers issue carrying guns openly in their roughly 4,700 stores, as well as at Sam's Club stores in states that permit open carry.
According to CNN, this is Daily Wire reporting.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillan issued a memo to employees on Tuesday, in which he started by citing the mass shooting in El Paso and Dayton in August, as well as further shootings in Midland and Odessa, Texas.
He continued, quote, we've been listening to a lot of people inside and outside our company as we think about the role we can play in helping to make the country feel safer.
It is clear to us that the status quo is unacceptable.
McMillan noted that Walmart had already ceased selling AR-15s, raising the age of limit to purchase a firearm or ammo to 21, required a green light on the background check for purchase instead of the absence of red light, which is required by federal law, among other steps.
Then he wrote, quote, Today, we're sharing the decisions we've made that go further.
After selling through our current inventory commitments, we will discontinue sales of short-barrel rifle ammunition, such as the .223 caliber and the .556 caliber, that, while commonly used in some hunting rifles, can also be used in large-capacity clips on military-style weapons.
Again, no definition of what a military-style weapon is here.
He says, we will sell through and discontinue handgun ammunition.
We will discontinue handgun sales in Alaska, marking our complete exit from handguns.
McMillan acknowledged that the stores would still offer long-barreled deer rifles and shotguns, cited incidents where individuals have entered Walmart stores attempting to make a statement and test our response, and then says we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam's Clubs in states where open carry is permitted, unless they are authorized law enforcement officers.
McMillan stated he was sending letters to the White House and congressional leadership, encouraging them to implement stronger background checks and the removal of weapons from those who have been determined to pose an imminent danger.
He concluded the status quo is unacceptable.
OK, so this is corporations that are now being activated in political ways.
Don Bartlett, who is the Walmart executive VP of corporate affairs, told reporters, quote, We feel like we are striking a responsible balance between the interests of law abiding citizens who are exercising their legal rights and the safety concerns of our associates and customers.
Again, this is their prerogative.
However, it is important to note a couple of things.
One, they will not escape the woke scolds.
The left will come after them anyway.
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Okay, so.
There are a few things that Walmart is not thinking through here.
One, they're not thinking through whether the left is going to leave them alone.
The answer, of course, is no.
A bevy of Democrats then went on Twitter after this announcement and suggested that Walmart needed to do more.
Kamala Harris said that she thought Walmart should stop selling guns utterly.
She said, yeah, I do.
It's not that everyone needs to stop selling guns, but there need to be checks and balances.
Well, she's going to have to explain why it is that Walmart shouldn't sell guns, but other people should.
Presumably, she would like for everybody to stop selling guns.
Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio said, I think if you keep it to hunting rifles and those kind of things, I think that's appropriate.
How long is that going to last?
Five moments?
Exactly five minutes?
There had been a bunch of Democrats who had called on Walmart to change its policy.
So, that is not going to stop the woke skulls from coming for Walmart.
So this is Walmart trying to buy off, in the short term, all of the Democrats to basically stop criticizing them and leave them alone.
They don't want the PR hit of continuing to sell guns.
And that is, again, their prerogative, but it is short-sighted because it ain't gonna stop.
You can keep feeding that alligator, it will eat you.
You will be eaten.
Okay, so that is point number one.
Point number two, if you continue along these lines where major corporations are expected to insert themselves in hot button political debates and then take sides in hot button political debates, the predictable and more than that, where the policies that they cram the predictable and more than that, where the policies that they cram down from above on customers are policies that favor one political side, what you will end up with is an entire other side of
So for every Walmart that fails to sell ammunition as they used to, there will be another store that crops up that sells ammunition.
And this is why, again, I'm not going to pretend that government regulation and Walmart doing this are the same.
They are not.
Obviously, I've made that distinction several times here.
But what you are going to end up with inevitably, and this is the direction we are moving as a country, is separate stores for conservatives and liberals.
Is separate TV channels for conservatives and liberals.
Separate everything for conservatives and liberals.
All the common spaces we once used to inhabit will go away.
Because once you expect corporations to become the leading political players because they have enormous power to shape American life, you should not be surprised when other corporations form to fight back against all of that.
The former Walmart CEO, Bill Simon, he said yesterday that in the end, the only thing that will solve the problem is gun control and D.C.
And this is why when people say that big business is Republican or big business is conservative, it's not true.
Big business is profit-seeking.
Okay, what that means sometimes is they are rent-seeking from D.C.
And so they don't want to have to take a position on this.
And so they're going to call on Washington, D.C.
to change policy just so that they don't actually have to make decisions about any of this or leave it to the customers to make decisions about any of this.
Here's Bill Simon, former Walmart CEO.
When you do see a major retailer like Walmart take a move like this though, do you think it does add pressure to lawmakers to try and come to the table and have discussions?
I think that's the only thing that's going to solve the problem.
We have a crisis that has to be dealt with, and it has to be dealt with by sitting down petitions to retailers.
Gosh, maybe they make some people feel good because they feel like they need to take action, but they won't solve the problem.
Okay, now that's true, but it didn't stop Walmart from, quote unquote, trying to solve the problem by inserting itself into the issue.
And so that really should be the normal answer of CEOs.
Now, I understand that what the left has been trying to do is suggest that capitalism is itself the problem.
There's this real push over at the New York Times, a bunch of other major publications suggesting that capitalism and free markets themselves are the problems.
and that we need a new type of capitalism, a quote-unquote responsible capitalism, What they mean by that is they want retailers not to give customers choice.
They want retailers to act as sort of guardian angels toward the American public.
Not to stop selling products that inevitably do damage to people, like cigarettes, for example, but products that can be used for good or can be used for ill.
They want the corporations to decide.
Well, they're not going to like it if the shoe's on the other foot, right?
I mean, if the corporations decide the other way, to ban a bunch of products the left loves, then all of a sudden it'll be, well, how could these corporations be cramming down their politics on us?
But when it comes to them cramming down their politics using the commanding heights of the economy, then they are not only fine with it, they are very much in favor of it.
Again, the predictable result is going to be a massive, large-scale division in American life.
And it's not going to stop at Walmart.
So Andrew Ross Sorkin, who writes for the New York Times and also is a commentator on CNBC, he has a column in which he praises Walmart's CEO for injecting themselves into this gun debate.
And then he suggests that this should happen with all businesses.
Right, he says, Midday Tuesday, Doug McMillan, Walmart's chief executive, sent me a surprise email.
He shared a series of policies the company was about to make public about combating gun violence since the mass shooting that killed 22 people at one of his El Paso stores last month.
Mr. McMillan's email was a reply of sorts to an open letter I had written to him, along with the outcry he heard from scores of Americans calling on him to use his leverage as leader of the country's largest retailer to create a model for more responsible gun selling practices.
Now, McMillan and Walmart were not breaking the law in the first place.
They were abiding by the law, but the idea was that they were supposed to do more.
They were supposed to be our leaders, the corporations.
It's always amusing to hear folks on the left, who are constantly ripping on big business and corporations, talk about these people being our moral leaders.
Weird how that morphs really quickly, right?
Elizabeth Warren moves from, corporations are the evil scourge of our society to, but they really should be setting gun policy, shouldn't they?
It's a pretty amusing about face.
But Ross Sorkin wants more, not just from Walmart.
He says, until now, many top executives in corporate America, with some notable exceptions, refused to acknowledge the roles they could play in curbing the epidemic of gun violence.
They invariably pointed to politicians in Washington as the ones who are responsible for solving the crisis.
For example, now listen to this example.
It's an amazing example.
He says, for example, Al Kelly, the chief executive of Visa, whose network has been used repeatedly to carry out mass murders, Really?
Visa's been used repeatedly to carry out mass murders?
How?
Were people, like, slicing each other's throats with the actual credit cards?
Because if Visa did not engage in illegal transactions, I'm not sure how you blame them for mass murder.
It is Al Kelly, the chief executive of Visa, has ducked any attempt to even discuss what his company could do to help.
Mr. Kelly likes to say, as he did earlier this summer, we are in the business of facilitating legal commerce.
That's what we do.
Our job is not to set or interpret, but to follow the law.
This is the proper answer.
This is what the economy is set up to do.
This is what free markets are supposed to do.
Give you the choice as to the products and services you wish to consume.
Make you the consumer responsible for where you shop.
Make you the consumer responsible for the kind of products that you decide to buy.
Instead, what many on the left would like to do is lobby the heads of these corporations to set policy for you.
And they want to do so not at the behest of the consumer, because there was not vast consumer outcry against Walmart.
Its stock was not dropping.
Instead, what they would like to do is create manufactured media controversy, and then suggest that the CEOs should step in where the political bosses have failed to act.
So, these are the new pressure tactics.
Basically, you use a form of corporate blackmail to go after corporate figures, and then use them to culturally cram down what you could not achieve politically.
As I say, all of that is perfectly legal.
Is it good for the country?
No, it's not good for the country.
Why?
Well, imagine a world in which Visa sets policy for exactly who they will do business with.
Imagine a world in which Visa says, we are just not going to process your transaction.
All the credit card companies, the left gets what it wants.
All the credit card companies say, we are not going to process your transactions if they're not transactions with which we agree.
That's going to get into some really dicey territory incredibly quickly.
Because let's say, for example, that you want to give charity to your synagogue or your church.
And your synagogue or your church does not perform same-sex marriages, for example.
And Visa says, OK, well, we are not going to allow you to give charity using our credit card because we disagree with your church's policies.
OK, is that a good thing or a bad thing?
What you will end up with is separate chains of commerce, politically speaking.
The biggest problem in the country right now, everyone talks about it, is political polarization, but the left's solution for political polarization is to not let you engage in any business, in any commerce, unless you agree with them.
Let's not pretend that they just want Walmart to stop selling ammo.
What they want is for everyone to stop selling ammo and everyone to stop selling guns.
Well, that's not going to happen.
Instead, what you're going to have happen is people who set up entire chains of commerce that are based outside of the common system we currently hold.
I'll tell you what will happen.
People like me will set up a conservative credit card that is designed and oriented so that conservatives can patronize conservative businesses and get points back to conservative causes.
And we'll do this, not because we want to, but out of necessity.
What you will end up with is not people failing to buy guns.
You'll have people buying guns in cash, which actually makes it a lot harder for people to track the transactions.
So if you're on the left and you like gun control, that ain't smart.
What you're going to end up with is a world in which we have entirely separate spheres of life based on your political orientation because we force corporations into taking sides.
That is where we are going, and that is the future that a lot on the left want.
They're very excited that corporate CEOs are now getting involved in these fights.
Now, in the long term, what's going to end up happening is that these corporations are going to cut themselves off from half the American public.
Because there will be a reaction, and the reaction will be, I'm not going to shop there anymore.
So in the moment, they're figuring that conservatives will be sanguine about all of this, and they'll just continue to shop at Walmart.
And that's probably true.
But here's the reality.
If they had not stopped selling ammo, leftists would have continued shopping at Walmart.
They like to bitch and moan about Walmart, but then they go and shop there every day.
But the corporations in injecting themselves into these sorts of scenarios are going to create an alternative line of commerce.
And that's not actually, it may be fine on a free market level.
Again, free markets work, but it ain't gonna be great on a cultural level for people to shop separately, to go to different stores.
Things are gonna get nastier and nastier, more and more polarized.
We'll talk more about this in just one second.
First, listen, it's really tough to find good people to staff your company.
For example, we have a producer here, Austin.
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Of course I would not prefer to employ a Cubs fan.
I'm a White Sox fan.
Also, Austin has a deep and abiding level of calm and patronizing cynicism that alienates everyone who works within a 30-foot sphere of Austin.
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He's actually a really nice guy, but he's so quiet that you feel like he's judging you all the time.
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Alrighty.
In just a second, I want to get to more cultural polarization because the attempts to polarize us using politics, those are pretty much going to fail in the political sphere.
But then to do it on the corporate level, that is succeeding.
And then there's another area where the left seeks to polarize, and that is in the entertainment arena.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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So as I say, what we're going to end up with is a cultural polarization.
And the CEOs think that they can buy off the left.
And they are so wrong here.
They are so wrong.
So MSNBC yesterday was cheering Walmart's decision.
It's a big victory.
I mean, imagine a supposedly First Amendment press organization cheering a corporate decision to crack down basically on some of its own consumers.
Here's MSNBC cheering this.
This is a massive move.
If you consider what an enormous retailer Walmart is, what an enormous employer it is, and we can sit here in a newsroom and say this is a very clear-cut issue, it's not a clear-cut issue.
Gun culture is a really important part of America.
Right, and Walmart sees more of America than any other business in this country.
Without a doubt.
So to see Doug McMillan, the current CEO, sort of stand up and step up at a time like this, this is a massive move.
Oh, they're so happy about this.
They're so happy about this.
You know, pressuring corporations into doing their bidding.
This is what the left would like to do.
And again, they can do this because if you're a corporate boss, what you want is no controversy.
That's really what you want, is no controversy, and you want to piss off the fewest number of people.
Now, what they mistake is that everybody in the media who talks has any real impact on who shops at Walmart.
If that were the case, Walmart would have been bankrupt 15 years ago.
But CEOs are risk averse and they figure the easiest way to avoid risk is how much money do they make off selling ammo?
Maybe a few million bucks a year.
What's the risk of the media coming down on us?
Maybe a few million bucks a year.
What they don't understand is that when you shape the overall culture so that people feel alienated from your business because they feel like you're taking sides, Your long-term risk is actually pretty significant.
And if you think that the Democrats are going to lay off you, you are totally wrong.
So, let's take an example.
Facebook has been attempting to make nice with a lot of folks on the Democratic side of the aisle.
And in helping, Senator Ron Wyden suggested today that he wants to send Mark Zuckerberg to prison.
He said that he wants to send Mark Zuckerberg to prison.
For what?
What exactly would the crime be?
Unclear.
He just knows he doesn't like Mark Zuckerberg.
He says, Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy.
I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to, and let me underline this, the possibility of a prison term.
If corporate CEOs believe that there will not be a push by members of the Democratic Party to jail CEOs who do not do what they want them to do, they're wrong.
The far left is not going to stop with, oh, we're so happy that Walmart stopped selling ammo.
Do you really think that that's the only problem the left has with Walmart?
Because if so, you haven't been watching very closely.
Now, this has also infected the cultural sphere.
So, the left, there are several major institutions in American life where there are commanding heights.
Now, again, for the ninth time this show, there's a difference between the government, which is an elected body with delegated powers to defend our rights, Invading those rights and the cultural decay that happens when other common institutions break down.
I'm talking about the latter.
This is not a question of regulating Walmart or regulating Hollywood or anything like that.
But when the left decides to weaponize cultural institutions, that alienates a lot of people.
It creates polarization.
It makes it impossible for us to have conversations together.
So the latest victim of this is Dave Chappelle.
So I don't know if you've seen Chappelle's special, but Chappelle's new special is insanely politically incorrect.
I mean, incredibly so.
He mocks his own audience for being too woke.
There's one point where he says, in the middle of the special, he says, I'm going to do an imitation.
And then he says, you tweeted something bad five years ago, and now I'm going to come after you and destroy your career.
Who am I?
And everybody thinks, oh, well, you know, that's the media.
And he says, that's you.
That's all of you.
And that's right.
I mean, Chappelle is correct about this.
Chappelle also calls out, in specific, I mean, he specifically calls out the LGBTQ lobbying organizations for going after comedians and for trying to destroy their careers.
And he specifically cites the Kevin Hart situation.
He very hilariously states that Kevin Hart, who's known for years, is basically a perfect human being.
Well, four tweets shy of perfect.
And he talks about Kevin Hart's career basically being destroyed.
Or at least significantly damaged at the height of his career aspirations, I host the Oscars, by the woke skulls.
And then he talks at length, he does a riff about abortion.
And his riff about abortion ends up being kind of pro-life.
And he says that he doesn't care whether a woman has an abortion, but if it's the woman's choice, and only the woman's choice, then men shouldn't have to pay for the child support, which is a very common argument that is made by sort of cynical pro-lifers.
And then he says, or maybe we have the logic of this whole thing entirely wrong.
The left has gone absolutely ape bleep about this.
I mean, they have gone insane about this.
And the critics hate this Chappelle speech.
Now, Chappelle used to be the sort of consensus best comedian living.
And there are a lot of great comedians.
Chappelle was loved by everybody.
Everybody enjoyed his routine.
Now, however, he has done something, something very bad.
And the reviewers are very, very angry about it.
And so Chappelle must be punished.
Don't you understand?
The commanding heights of Hollywood must prevent the accession of people like Dave Chappelle.
Because Dave Chappelle has crossed too many lines.
Now, Dave Chappelle is intersectional, right?
He is a black man, and this means that he also makes jokes about white people that are very, very harsh jokes about the heroin epidemic and white folks and all the rest of this.
But he is a gun-toting black man who makes jokes about abortion and LGBTQ lobbying organizations, and this means he must be excised.
Hollywood has to be, the commanding heights of Hollywood have to be used on behalf of one particular point of view.
And if they are not, then the woke scolds in the media and in Hollywood will come after them.
So Dave Chappelle is now the target of these woke scolds.
So Vice reviewed Chappelle's special like this, quote, now he chooses to blatantly ignore the historic criticism against his style of comedy and new loud and clear criticism from the trans community.
Pace Magazine called his special boring, hypocritical, and out of touch.
There's a bunch of it.
Basically, he had for a long time zero percent at Rotten Tomatoes from critics.
Why?
Because critics are no longer reviewing the quality of an act.
Instead, they're reviewing the wokeness of an act, which is how Hannah Gadsby, who is the least funny person who has ever lived.
I mean, I'm talking about the least funny human being who has ever lived.
There are There are human beings who live in caves, in isolation, who have never heard a joke and are not properly socialized, who are more funny than Hannah Gadsby.
She has 100% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes.
Dave Chappelle was at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why?
Because he violated the rules.
He violated the rules.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Slate, right, Nkou Kang of Slate wrote, like dropping in on a rascally uncle who doesn't know or doesn't care how much he's disappointing you.
Alison Herman of The Ringer said Sticks and Stones is designed to generate inflammatory coverage.
It's a symbiotic cycle with no end in sight.
It's become the last thing a beloved provocateur should ever want to be predictable.
Okay, they are reviewing him for his proper acquiescence to the struggle session Maoist left views of comedy.
He must be destroyed.
He must be destroyed.
It's really quite pathetic.
And now the audience reviews of the special are very high.
People who like Chappelle like Chappelle.
And people who don't even watch Chappelle all that often are looking at this and going, I can't believe that dude said that out loud.
But the fact is that Hollywood will not allow this sort of thing to go forward.
And so Chappelle must be destroyed.
So Chappelle is now on the target list, the same way that Kevin Hart was on the target list.
It's the same reason why you saw in the last 48 hours attempts by folks in Hollywood to try and out everybody in Beverly Hills who is going to a Trump fundraiser because everyone must think alike or be excised.
The commanding heights of the culture, the commanding heights of corporate America, and the commanding heights of politics must all be occupied by folks who agree with the left.
Now, in the political realm, The good news is we have things called elections, and so we can just say no.
In the corporate realm, it is very difficult to convince corporate CEOs that they ought to listen to their own customers as opposed to the woke-schooled, check-marked crowd on Twitter.
And in the entertainment media, that is particularly true.
So here I must stop and say good on Whoopi Goldberg.
Whoopi Goldberg actually said the right thing yesterday on The View.
She was talking about this push by Deborah Messing and Eric McCormick, the stars of Will & Grace, to out all of the donors to President Trump in the Beverly Hills area.
And Whoopi Goldberg says the right thing.
Your idea of who you don't want to work with is your personal business.
Do not encourage people to print out lists, because the next list that comes out, your name will be on, and then people will be coming after you.
In this country, people can vote for who they want to.
That is one of the great rights of this country.
You don't have to like it!
We don't go after people because we don't like who they voted for.
We don't go after them that way.
We can talk about issues and stuff, but we don't print out lists.
Okay, good for Whoopi Goldberg, and we need more of this from the left.
Now, it's funny.
I said basically all of this on Twitter this morning, and the left went nuts.
How dare you?
How dare you?
You are suggesting that this is just like government action?
You're trying to cram down on CEOs what you want?
Okay, absolute sheer horsepucky.
I'm suggesting that these CEOs can do precisely what they want, but there will be ramifications to it, and it will not be good for the country.
Will Wilkinson, who writes for, I believe, Huffington Post sometimes, he said, the complaint here is really that businesses cater to customers, but the hard-right minority is accustomed to political institutions rigged to stymie majority opinion, and they want everything to be like that.
Really?
Is the majority opinion in the United States that Walmart should not be able to sell product that's legal?
Is that the majority opinion in the United States?
Or is that a minority opinion in the United States that is using the power of social media and blue check marks and MSNBC to cram down their preferred policy on CEOs?
Again, my big concern here is that at least politics is built so that we can have conversations.
And then we can decide how those conversations turn out because we do this thing called voting.
It's really great.
And then we have checks and balances to prevent people from simply running roughshod over other people's rights.
But the realm of corporate America is not designed for that.
The realm of Hollywood is not designed for that.
And when people wonder why it is that Republicans, conservatives focus so much on politics, the answer is, at least we have a voice there.
At least we can push back there.
In Hollywood, which is universally staffed by Democrats, there is really no way to push back there.
Dave Chappelle will find himself on the outs.
Or he will change.
Or he will do what Aziz Ansari has done and say some politically incorrect things, but say them in politically correct ways.
He will either cave to the crowd or he will be destroyed.
And in corporate America, as long as corporate CEOs decide that they are going to cower in fear at the woke left, Then there's not much the conservatives can really do about any of that, which is why I say that corporations need to stand up on their hind legs and say, our job is to provide goods and services to willing customers.
If you want to change the law, change the law, but we are not going to change policy based on your policy preferences today.
That is not what we are doing as a general rule.
If they don't do that, then things will get more polarized, and it will become more and more important for Republicans to keep the levers of government.
You wonder why Republicans are so rabid about elections these days?
That would be why.
They feel like the government is the only area of life where they still get a say, and they feel like if the left takes over the government, they're going to use precisely the same logic that they have used with corporations and with Hollywood, and they are going to cram down their opinions on everybody else using the power of the government gun this time, not just the power of a few loudspeakers in the faces of abjectly craven CEOs.
Okay, time for a quick thing I like, and then a quick thing that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
So, in my spare time, my copious free time, I am a fan of fantasy novels.
Somebody in the office had recommended Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule.
I'll admit it took me a little bit of time to get into it.
This book, I believe, is from the early 90s, I think?
And it took me maybe 150, 200 pages to get into it.
I have not finished the book yet, so I don't know if it ends well.
But I will say that it is entertaining and it definitely carries you.
So the book is Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind.
The writing style takes a little bit to adjust to because at the beginning it's kind of awkwardly written, but then it definitely gets better and more interesting as it goes on.
So if you're into good fantasy novels, then try that one out.
Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind.
And thanks to producer Anthony for that particular recommendation.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
Alrighty, so, today, the New York Post is reporting that Representative Ilhan Omar's husband wants a divorce after this bombshell report about her having an affair with D.C.
political consultant Tim Minette.
Now that, in and of itself, is a thing to hate.
Whenever families break up, regardless of whether you like the people involved, that is really terrible for the kids.
She has three kids.
That cannot be good for her.
I will point out that if a Republican congresswoman were involved in this sort of scandal right now, it would be on the front pages of every newspaper in America.
Because Ilhan Omar is a beloved figure on the left, however, then everybody sort of ignores this or pretends that it's politically incorrect to talk about it.
The fact is that it raises serious moral questions about her character, obviously.
She is a married woman, still.
They allegedly separated in March, and Omar asked Hersey to divorce her around that time because she didn't want to file the papers, but Hersey refused, telling her if she wanted a divorce, she should do it herself, according to sources talking to the New York Post.
And then, after Tim Minot's wife filed bombshell divorce papers claiming that her spouse was having an affair with Omar, Hersey was angry, and he said that he was made to look a fool, and he is considering filing for divorce.
Again, the media coverage of this, I mean, the New York Post is covering it.
I've not seen it covered in any mainstream publication.
Again, imagine this were Nikki Haley.
Imagine that this were Sarah Palin.
I imagine the media would be covering this story incredibly, incredibly differently.
Okay, we'll be back here later today with much, much more.
We didn't get a chance to get to Brexit.
We didn't get a chance to get to the developments in Hong Kong.
So we'll get to those later today.
That's why you should subscribe over at dailywire.com.
Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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