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Oct. 31, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
57:43
Like A Dog | Ep. 887
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Time Text
The media go nuts over a meme of President Trump giving a medal of ponder to a dog.
Drag Queen story hour goes awry in Minnesota.
Who could have thought?
And the left celebrates censorship.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
Oh man, we have a lot to get to today.
And we begin with the most glorious story of the day.
It is a glorious story because it just exposes everything that you need to know these days about the nature of the mainstream media.
First, a preface.
The mainstream media have been doing this routine where they act like Amelia Bedelia, where every time somebody on the right tells a joke, they take it extremely literally.
So if you don't remember the Amelia Bedelia books from when you were a kid, or from when your kids were kids, well, the Amelia Bedelia books, there's a series of books about a character named Amelia Bedelia who is basically a maid who took everything extremely literally, and every idiom she would take Extremely literally.
So for example, there's a book called Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia and her boss told her to bake a date cake and so she literally went over to the calendar and she cut out a bunch of dates and then baked it into a cake, right?
Or she would have an instruction in one of her books And says, dust the furniture.
And so she would go and she would find dust, dusting powder in the bathroom, and then she would dust it all over the furniture.
Or she is told to draw the drapes.
So she sits down and she actually draws drapes on a sketch pad.
Right?
That is Amelia Bedelia.
Where the media play this game lately.
And it's an absurd, ridiculous, insane game.
Where somebody on the right tells a joke, does a satire headline.
And the media take it extremely seriously, very seriously.
Very, very seriously.
Because they are going to fact-check and bring you the truth.
Now, no matter that everybody knew it was a joke.
No matter everybody in the world knew that it was a joke, or that it was satire.
Instead, the media are going to treat this as though this must be fact-checked.
So, you end up with absurdities like Snopes fact-checking the Babylon Bee.
Which is an out-and-out satire site, which claims to be a satire site.
It's the equivalent of Snopes fact-checking the Onion.
It's a Babylon Bee happens to be right-wing and Christian in orientation.
And the media are like, oh, well, you know, that's not a big deal.
Of course they should fact check.
People could have taken that seriously.
People could have taken that seriously.
When the Babylon Bee said to draw the drapes, we sat down and we drew an actual picture of the drapes.
Or you would get Allie Stuckey, my friend from the Blaze TV.
And Allie would do one of the fake interviews with, like, AOC.
The same exact sort of interview that people on Comedy Central do all the time, where they cut themselves into interviews with people who they would never get to book on their show.
And Allie would say things, and AOC would look ridiculous, and it was obviously satire.
It was obviously meant to make fun of AOC and the fact that AOC knows nothing about policy.
And the media fact-checked Allie Stuckey.
This was not a satire video.
It was a fake news video.
It was a doctored video.
Doctored.
And fake.
And bad.
Okay, well, the latest iteration of this stupidity comes courtesy of none other than our wonderful social media team over at The Daily Wire.
So, first of all, shout out to our social media team at The Daily Wire.
They are just incredible.
Their meme game is spot on.
They're really, really good at what they do.
So, all this week, Americans have been celebrating the heroism of a dog whose name has now been declassified as Conan, which is just the best.
So this dog, Conan, is a very, very good doggie.
This is the best doggie.
The best doggie I have ever heard of.
This doggie went into a cave after al-Baghdadi.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS, and was ready to take down Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and scared Baghdadi so much that he promptly blew himself up, just incinerated himself.
Unfortunately, he took children with him because he was an evil piece of murderous terrorist scum.
Okay, but Conan was in the cave, and Conan was slightly wounded, and now Conan is back in service.
And so everybody was celebrating the heroism of this dog.
Because that's pretty awesome, right?
I mean, this is the best dog ever.
It's a great dog!
I mean, this is the doggy you ask, what is best in life?
And the dog replies, to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of your women, and also, biscuits.
Kibble is great, also, if you have some of that.
So, this is a great doggy.
Okay?
And, as you know, if you've been listening to my show at all, I am not a huge dog fan.
I'm growing warmer toward dogs over time.
My children are twisting me into a fan of dogs.
But I will say that Conan is really making me want a dog.
I said as soon as Conan was wounded that if Conan needed an owner, I would be happy to become a dog person and adopt Conan because this is the best doggie.
Okay, so the Daily Wire social media team, who listen to the show and then very often create memes that are kind of drawn from the general themes of the show, they put out A meme.
And the meme was a picture of President Trump awarding the Medal of Pawner to the dog.
Right?
And so they took a picture of President Trump awarding a Medal of Honor to an American hero named James McLaughlin, who is credited with saving the lives of 10 men in a battle in Vietnam.
And this photo had nothing to do with McLaughlin.
Okay?
Like, McLaughlin.
The last thing that the Daily Wire would ever think of doing is deriding an actual war hero.
Of course.
Of course, of course.
And nobody actually thinks that's what the Dailyware social media team was doing.
Are they really suggesting that this was meant to dishonor the person who's at the center of the photo?
No.
The Dailyware social media team took this photo and they just put in the dog.
Right?
They obviously photoshopped in the dog.
So it's President Trump putting, not the Medal of Honor, it's a medal that has a picture of a paw print on it.
On the dog.
Obviously, obviously photoshopped.
It has our watermark in the bottom right hand corner of the picture.
Okay, nobody's trying to hide the ball here.
This is just a cute little tribute to a very good doggie.
That's all.
It's a joke and a cute little tribute to a very good doggie.
And so President Trump sees this and he thinks it's cute.
Because, you know, Trump... This is one of the charming things about Trump.
There are many things that are not charming about Trump.
One of the wonderful, charming things about Trump is that when the man sees something that he enjoys, he sort of just puts it out there.
So, he put out our picture with the watermark in the right-hand corner of himself giving the Medal of Honor to the dog.
And I point out, again, that it's obviously photoshopped.
That, obviously, he did not give a Medal of Honor to a dog.
There's no such thing as a Medal of Honor.
The actual medal is not the Medal of Honor.
Look at that photo, if you're subscribing.
You can see, or if you're watching this live, you can see.
It is a picture of a paw print.
Okay, so President Trump then tweets out, American hero, American hero.
Now, this should be the end of the story, right?
It's just kind of like a cute, funny little tweet.
But no, our intrepid media are on the case.
They are on the case.
So, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, and USA Today, and pretty much everybody else, covers this as though it's actual news, and as though it's a scandal.
Not just that President Trump tweeted out a meme, but that it's a real scandal.
Here is the headline from the intrepid reporters at the New York Times.
They put two of their finest on it, Neeraj Chokshi and Karen Schraig.
Okay, their headline is, Trump Tweets Faked Photo of Hero Dog Getting a Medal.
Faked photo?
Faked pho- Like, was anyone- Like, a faked photo would be something where there was any pretense at realism.
Any pretense at trying to fake out the audience.
Fake photos sort of assumes that we are attempting to fake you into believing something.
This is just called a funny meme.
Like, do you not- Do you not even meme, bro?
Like, this is the most obvious joke and tribute ever.
Ever!
Okay, the New York Times reports it this way.
President Trump on Wednesday shared an altered photograph of himself placing a medal around the neck of the dog injured in the raid last weekend that led to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Islamic State's leader.
Wow, an altered photograph.
Ooh, it's fake news.
It's bad information.
President Trump trying to cede the ground that he likes a dog that was involved in the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Wow, wow.
I mean, what a get.
What a get, guys.
Well done, New York Times.
That is some extensively amazing journalisming.
Just unbelievable journalisming.
He tweeted out a photo of himself giving a fake medal to a doggie, to a very good doggie.
This is your big story, you idiots?
Okay, then they continue along this- the image, which bears a watermark for a social media account for the conservative news site The Daily Wire, appeared to be an altered version of a 2017 Associated Press photograph.
In the original, Mr. Trump is seen awarding a Medal of Honor to James McLaughlin, a retired Army medic who is credited with saving the lives of 10 men during the war in Vietnam.
And then they quote President Trump talking about how wonderful the dog is.
And then they talk about McLaughlin and suggest that Trump is trying to deride the veteran who was simply in that photo, right?
I mean, it was not, again, no one.
Trump, Daily Warrior, no one is trying to dishonor the person who won the Medal of Honor.
That's insane.
For you to believe that you have to be such a wretched tool bag of a human being.
Like, of course that's not what anyone was trying to do.
But the media tried to twist this into This is, like, McLaughlin knows this!
Right?
McLaughlin was called up by the New York Times.
In a phone interview on Wednesday, McLaughlin, 73, who had not seen the image before a reporter sent it to him, said that he interpreted it as Mr. Trump recognizing the dog's heroism.
He certainly was not offended, and laughed when he compared the two images.
Of course!
Because McLaughlin is a normal human being, you stupid tools!
Of course!
Like, what the hell is wrong with you people?
What is wrong with you?
Because McLa- Like, to be offended by that, you'd have to be...
You have to be wrong in the head.
You have to be wrong in the head to be offended by all of this.
And McLaughlin said, after all, Medal of Honor recipients accept on behalf of their entire teams, especially those that did not return from battle, and canines have long been part of war efforts.
He said this recognizes the dog as part of that team of brave people.
McLaughlin said he had worked with a dog in Vietnam who helped detect enemy activity during missions.
They are very courageous, he said, of military canines.
Like, come on.
Come on.
Okay, so that was the New York Times coverage, but it gets even better.
Wait until you hear the Washington Post coverage, which is even worse.
And again, this is a story that the media treated as a national story.
They treat it as an actual national story that Donald Trump tweeted out a meme of himself awarding a hero dog.
They treat it as a national story.
The story gets better, guys.
It gets so much better.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so the story gets even better.
Okay, the story gets even better.
The story from Alex Horton, reporter at the Washington Post.
Okay, so first note, Alex Horton apparently is an Iraq War veteran.
Nothing but respect for his military service.
Also, this is insanely bad reporting.
Okay, so two things can be true at once.
Alex Horton can be an American patriot who served honorably in Iraq.
Also, he can be an unbelievably crappy reporter.
So, here is his report from the Washington Post.
The headline says, Trump tweeted a photo of a Medal of Honor recipient who was edited out and replaced by a dog.
By a dog!
Oh no!
Then it says, In a somber White House ceremony in July 2017, President Trump draped the Medal of Honor around the neck of James McLaughlin.
He was credited with saving the lives of 10 men in a brutal, days-long battle in Vietnam, and Trump told the former Army medic that, On Wednesday, Trump posted a photo of that moment with McLaughlin's image replaced by that of a dog.
The distinctive star of the medal was replaced with a paw print.
Trump and the Pentagon declined to release the dog's name, but the canine has since become a social media sensation after Trump tweeted a photo of the dog on Monday.
Since then, the dog has been a feature of countless memes.
It also collided with a real-world moment after the conservative site Daily Wire tweeted the image Tuesday with McLaughlin removed.
A watermark for the site appears in Trump's tweet, but it is a cropped version that removes the attribution of the source photo, which is the Associated Press.
That's because the source photo has now been dramatically altered.
The source photo did not include a dog or a medal of pawnery, you idiots.
It's called a meme.
This is how memes work on the interwebs.
That would have indicated it began as a legitimate news photo, raising the question of whether Trump or a staffer knew McLaughlin had been edited out.
Okay, so I'm pretty fairly certain that Trump knew he had not actually awarded the Medal of Honor to a dog.
I'm fairly certain that Trump knew this.
Now, even if you thought that Trump may have forgotten that he awarded the Medal of Honor to a dog, I feel like he would have known that it wasn't real once he looked and saw a Medal of Pawner.
It's a paw on the medal!
You dolts!
Okay, here's where the story gets great.
Okay, and then, it says a White House spokesman declined to comment.
McLaughlin, 73, could not be reached for comment.
Well, actually, he could by the New York Times.
He just didn't respond to you.
And then, this is the best part.
Jeremy Boring, the Chief Operating Officer at the Daily Wire, dismissed emailed questions about whether the altered photo originated from his publication.
Okay, this is the part that's totally insane.
So, Jeremy, who is my longtime business partner and Chief Operating Officer at Daily Wire, Founder, co-founder of Daily Wire.
He, listen to that sentence again.
Dismissed emailed questions about whether the altered photo originated from his publication.
Okay, first of all, number one.
Our watermark's on it.
It's like right there, in Trump's original tweet.
But, that, the way that's reported sounds like boring dismissed question.
Like he wouldn't, we refused, we at the Daily Wire, we were so scared of the question, we refused to answer the question as to whether the altered photo originated from our publication.
We just refused.
Because this is a scoop, guys.
It's a scoop.
Okay, well, here's how the actual exchange went.
Alex Fortin emailed our social media team.
He said, hello, I'm with the Washington Post, and I wanted to get confirmation this photo originated with you.
And if you digitally removed Medal of Honor recipient James McLaughlin and replaced him with a dog.
OK, and Jeremy responded the way that any normal human being would respond. - Yeah.
It's a pretty epic response.
He wrote back, Alex, on the record, you've got to be effing joking.
Please quote me on that.
Thanks, Jeremy.
We jokingly called Jeremy the God King, but he definitely was great there.
That's spectacular stuff from Jeremy.
You've got to be effing joking, please quote me.
By the way, I didn't see this until like hours later, because I'm over here in Israel, and this is just the best.
You've got to be effing joking, because correct!
You've got to be effing joking.
You're fact-checking whether a photo of a dog being awarded the Medal of Ponder is real.
You're expending reporter dollars on this stuff.
What?
What?
And then it was reported by the Washington Post as, Jeremy dismissed emailed questions about whether, no, he didn't dismiss emailed questions, he dismissed your stupid question.
He dismissed you.
He didn't dismiss the question, he dismissed you.
He said you've gotta be, like there's no way to read that as Jeremy saying, you know, we have no comment.
We issue no comments all the time here at The Daily Wire.
It's a thing that everybody does in the media.
That happens.
If we wanted to no comment, you know what we could have done?
No comment.
Instead, Jeremy explicitly said, please quote me.
You have to be... Please quote me.
You have to be effing joking.
Correct!
Correct.
But I'll get to the deeper thematic here, because there actually is something deeper and kind of disturbing here in this story.
It's embedded in a very funny story, but there is something.
That is well worth discussing.
I'm gonna get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so president, so all of this becomes an issue.
By the way, I also tweeted back at the, so I tweeted out all of this, right?
I tweeted out this entire exchange.
And then I added, And then I added, I said, so Washington Post asked my business partner, Jeremy Boring, about our Medal of Honor dog meme.
His glorious response is screen capped below.
Their report then suggested Jeremy refused to answer questions about the picture.
Um, no, we think you're being effing insane.
And then I added, yes, we created the meme.
Yes, it is a joke.
Yes, you people are also jokes.
Please feel free to quote both me and Jeremy on this, because, of course, of course.
Okay, so, then President Trump takes it to the next level, which is just, this is best Trump.
I love it.
This is best Trump.
So, President Trump then tweets out, thank you Daily Wire, very cute recreation, but the live version of Conan will be leaving the Middle East for the White House sometime next week.
Which is great!
It's a very good doggie!
How do you somehow end up on the wrong side of the very good doggie debate?
It's a very good doggie!
Why are you upset about things that are paying tribute to a very good doggie, you stupid tools?
Why?
How?
And all of these people acting as though Photoshop is a new thing.
Oh my god, have you seen?
It's a faked, altered photo.
It's not a deepfake, okay?
It's not like a deepfake of some matinee idol.
Having sex with somebody, for pornographic purposes, is not a deepfake of Barack Obama saying a thing he didn't say.
It's not even an altered video attempting to skew things in any way.
It is literally just a meme.
And somehow the media ended up on the wrong side of this.
One person online was tweeting out photos that were photoshopped.
They're very funny.
Of President Trump.
Remember there's that photo of President Trump on the White House lawn, like yelling at a kid who's mowing the lawn.
So he tweeted out a photo of President Trump yelling at the dog, saying, are you photoshopped?
Like that's, that's what this is.
It's so unbelievably stupid.
And I'm looking forward to the media fact-checking all jokes, actually.
Like, I can't wait for it.
Like, we definitely need the media to fact-check knock-knock jokes.
Like, were you aware that when someone tells you a knock-knock joke, they're not actually standing outside your house knocking on the door?
Were you aware?
Fact check.
Fact check.
Were you aware that chickens lack the requisite intent to even know really why they're crossing the road?
So all of those, why did the chicken cross the road jokes?
They're irrelevant.
Because the chicken doesn't know why it's crossing the road.
It doesn't have the requisite intent.
Media fact check!
And what the hell is wrong with you people?
So I tweeted back at President Trump, no thank you, Mr. President, and say hello to a very good doggie for us.
Because everyone has lost their mind.
They've lost their damn mind.
But there is a deeper point here.
Okay, and the deeper point here is that what the media are doing and they keep doing this, is they are broadening the scope of what they now consider, quote unquote, disinformation.
Anything that they don't like, any joke, any meme, any piece of funny satire, they now take seriously, like Amelia Bedelia, specifically so that they can then label the outlet that promotes that content as somehow dealing in misinformation and lies, right?
This is their thing.
As I say, they did it to the Babylon Bee, they've done it to Ali Stuckey over at Blaze TV, and now they're doing it with regard to an obvious meme with a dog receiving the Medal of Pawner.
This is what they are doing.
And this has real-world ramifications because what the left is doing is they're making a very simple argument that has very large real-world ramifications.
This is just kind of the outlying stupid case point.
Okay, but What the left is attempting to do is they're attempting to say that disinformation has so radically skewed the way that the American public views information that the government needs to step in and stop people from exercising the First Amendment.
We had an article like this by Richard Spangler over a former Time Magazine editor and Obama Administration State Department official.
We had an article like that from him in the Washington Post just two days ago.
Right?
That happened just a couple of days ago.
And now you have the media pressuring Facebook and Twitter to shut down free dissemination of speech in the name of shutting down disinformation.
So what they do is they keep broadening the definition of disinformation to encompass anything they don't like.
So you have an article in the Washington Post by Charlie Warzel claiming that Breitbart should not be included in Facebook's news feed.
Yes, CNN.
Yes, Huffington Post.
No, Breitbart.
Why?
Because that's misinformation or disinformation.
How do we know that?
Well, I mean, you can check.
Snopes Facts checks them all the time.
And it doesn't matter that Snopes also fact-checks selectively only right-wing outlets, and half the time the Snopes fact-checks are wrong.
That doesn't matter.
The idea is to create a narrative, and the narrative is that if you see content from a right-wing outlet, that it should be shut down and is not a legitimate exercise of the First Amendment.
And so you're seeing members of the media I'm old enough to remember when there was a very famous case called New York Times vs. Sullivan.
And it was all about the rights of the media to print material.
It was all about slander and libel and the standards for printing material publicly.
And the New York Times was on the right side of that fight.
It was about broadening the First Amendment.
Members of the media used to be very much in favor of broadening the First Amendment.
Of recognizing a joke for a joke.
Of trying to actually suss out facts rather than create fake controversies of the day for click-baity anti-Trump material.
Right?
That was like What, five minutes ago?
Ten minutes ago, when this was supposedly their top priority?
Now they've shifted.
Now they've shifted.
And so what you see is this vast push by the left to go after right-wing outlets and say that they are, in fact, fake news, who should be banned because they are disseminating misinformation, or to go after Donald Trump's political campaign and say that Trump's political campaign should not be allowed to post ads because if they post ads, the ads might contain information that the left finds to be false or twisted.
Because it's called the campaign ad, right?
But they don't want that?
Or you'll see them say, well, thanks to Russian interference in the 2016 election, we need to use government to crack down on big tech and prevent the dissemination of information.
Understand, there's only one type of information that the left truly cares about preventing dissemination of, and that's anything that opposes their agenda.
Because we're all on the same page when it comes to the Russians disseminating misinformation.
Nobody wants that.
I don't want that.
You don't want that.
Facebook doesn't want that.
Twitter doesn't want that.
Nobody wants that.
But that's not the real agenda.
The real agenda is shut down all the speech I don't like.
Shut down the quote-unquote hate speech I don't like.
Shut down the political speech that I feel like is misinformation.
Sure, it may be factually correct, but it's couched the wrong way.
I'll get to the real world example of this happening over at the New York Times.
Again, used to be the bastion of free speech, but not anymore.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so what are the real-world ramifications of all this?
It's the call by members of the media to shut down dissemination of political information on social media websites.
It's the call by members of the media and some members of the Obama administration to actually curb the First Amendment and rewrite it.
And the way, again, that they broaden this out is to go after even stupid examples of quote-unquote fake news, like a meme of the president tweeting out himself giving a fake medal to a dog.
You just keep broadening this thing out.
That's the goal here.
And so here's where you end up.
Yesterday, Twitter said it would ban all political ads.
Ban all of them.
Outright.
Now the left is celebrating.
Why?
The left is celebrating because they know that they own the means of distribution that are not the main social media platforms.
Meaning that if you want to get any sort of non-left news, the best places to get that online are places that used to be sort of an online public forum.
Right?
Places like Twitter, or places like Facebook, or places like YouTube.
And so what the left really wants, they're happy with banning all political ads.
They'll say, oh, this isn't politically motivated.
They're banning all political ads and we're happy about it.
No.
You just know that the political ads are then going to be distributed and disseminated in the form of the New York Times, or CBS, or CNN, or all of the other outlets that you guys have.
The internet has radically decentralized the methods for disseminating information.
Radically decentralized it.
The internet has made it possible for you to access information in a way you wouldn't before.
Right?
You get to watch this show.
You get to see this show.
You get to read our stuff at Daily Wire.
You can follow us on Facebook.
You can follow me on Twitter.
The goal of the left would be, okay, you know what?
If we have to ban, like, all political speech on these platforms and force people to not engage in political speech, we can live with that.
Because if we go back to the old system, we were dominant under the old system.
Which is true.
The left media were dominant under the old system.
The New York Times would love nothing better, nothing better, than to shut down the dissemination of information in places like Facebook and Twitter and YouTube.
They would love nothing better than that.
Why?
Because they have legacy media branding.
People still know who the New York Times is.
It's a barrier to entry to get rid of the social media methods of distribution of information.
And the New York Times knows that.
They don't want competition.
They want to be the only game in town.
And the way you ensure you're the only game in town is you basically make it very difficult for people to disseminate information through publicly available fora.
So, Twitter went along with the game because Twitter is a horrible outlet run by a guy who is on the very far left and has no principles about free speech, as in none, Jack Dorsey apparently.
So Twitter said on Wednesday it would ban all political ads, putting a spotlight on the power and veracity of online advertising and ramping up pressure on Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, to reverse his hands-off stance.
Yeah, well, Jack Dorsey's probably also willing to kowtow to the Chinese when it comes to censoring Twitter, so he ain't exactly a free speech warrior.
Dorsey said political ads, including manipulated videos and the viral spread of misleading information, presented challenges to civic discourse, all at increasing velocity, sophistication, and overwhelming scale.
He said he worried the ads had, quote, significant ramifications that today's democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.
He added he believed the reach of political messages should be earned, not bought.
Okay, now this is his way of saying, I'm not a real capitalist.
Really, Jack, give up your stock.
Really, like, the idea here is that... I prize civility over money.
Shut down your website, man, because let me tell you, Twitter's a cesspool.
Anytime you feel like giving up that stock, it is all you.
Make the magic happen.
But the fact is that Jack Dorsey has no intent of doing any of that.
This is virtue signaling to the left.
And not only is it virtue signaling to the left, it is an attempt to appease a left that wishes to see speech narrowed rather than broadened.
I've seen many political ads for Democrats on Twitter.
I think a lot of them are steeped in false information.
Do I think that Twitter should stop running those ads?
No.
I think that it's my job to critique those ads.
I think there's millions and millions of people on Twitter who can then discuss whether the ads are true or false.
And just promoting an ad on Twitter, just like any other political campaign, preventing that is insane.
By the way, it's sort of the equivalent of what the left commonly does when we talk about campaign finance reform.
So when we talk about campaign finance reform, they're like, Look at these big, bad, terrible donors.
They're so big, and they're so bad, and they're so terrible.
Also, you know who we should allow to have more power?
The unions.
Right?
The unions should have more power, and media should have more power.
So, I shouldn't be able, with my friends, to form a super PAC to put out political advertising information.
I shouldn't be able to spend my own money to disseminate information.
Or, for example, buy an ad in the New York Times with my super PAC.
But, the New York Times should be able to run whatever it wants on its front page over and over and over, and also unions should probably be able to do that.
All animals are equal except for the pigs.
This is the way that the left wishes to treat discourse in the United States.
So of course they're very happy with Twitter shutting this down because they understand that Twitter is never going to shut down leftist political messaging on Twitter.
Twitter will ban people for saying that a man is not a woman.
But Twitter will never ban somebody for saying the opposite.
Twitter will ban political advertising knowing full well that Twitter also tends to promote leftist causes and leftist politicians.
So of course the left is happy about this.
But the media is setting this up as a clash of principle.
You know what?
It is a clash of principle.
It turns out that some of these outlets want more speech and some of these outlets want less speech.
And it's kind of amazing for Twitter, a supposed free speech outlet, to be curbing political ads in the name of, we're going to fact check it now.
Who died and appointed you, the great arbiters of truth, over at Twitter?
You guys are a joke when it comes to arbiting truth over at Twitter.
I mean, I can't even count the number of false headlines that Twitter has run in its trends over the last nine months about me personally.
So no, you guys aren't the arbiters of truth.
You're just a bunch of leftists who are motivated to push a particular point of view.
And the New York Times is super happy about this.
And they say Twitter's announcement that it would eliminate political ads starting November 22nd prompted immediate attacks from the right.
Brad Parscale, Mr. Trump's campaign manager for the 2020 election, said Twitter's decision was a partisan act intended to silence conservatives.
And of course, that is true.
Democrats, of course, praised Twitter.
AOC, who is happy to disseminate as much information as humanly possible via her well-followed account, praised Twitter and said if a company cannot or does not wish to run basic fact-checking on paid political advertising, they should not run paid political ads at all.
How about this?
How about we run basic fact-checking on your tweets, and then if they don't meet basic fact-checking notions, then you get banned from Twitter.
How about that?
How about we stop your crap tweets that very often are steeped in absolute falsehood?
How about that?
But it seems to me that all those are still up.
Your buddy Ilhan Omar put out an absolutely false tweet about a kid dying who isn't dead the other day.
And then she just put like a little addendum.
That thing's still up.
It's amazing how so many members of the left are sanguine with the inability of people to disseminate information.
Why?
Because they know that they always will be able to.
They say that they... Even Biden's campaign is saying this is ridiculous, right?
Bill Russo, a spokesman for Joe Biden's campaign, said it was unfortunate to suggest the only way to deal with false claims in political ads was not to run the ads at all, but he added it was encouraging that for once revenue did not win out.
Ah, so the anti-capitalism outweighed the free speech principle.
So they were all good with the free speech, you can disseminate what you want, until it turned out that you were paying to put stuff on Twitter.
Oh, wow, because as we all know, people on Twitter, they don't earn any money for being on Twitter.
And they don't spend hours being paid to be on Twitter.
Which, by the way, is what every major media figure does.
Why do you think AOC's on Twitter?
Because it's good for her brand.
This is all a concerted attempt to shut down the ability to disseminate information by broadening out the fact-checking abilities of the media into areas that are completely false.
It's gaming the system, in other words.
And the left is fond of doing it, and now they're trying to leverage it against Facebook.
And as I say, you get complete anti-free speech fools like Kara Swisher writing pieces on this today at the New York Times.
Your move, Facebook, is what Kara Swisher writes.
By the way, the other day she suggested she would like to head up the appeals board over at Facebook so she could determine what stuff to kick off.
This is the same Kara Swisher.
When a conversation with Susan Wojcicki suggested that she would love nothing better, she said, I can't, I understand you can't really do it, but I would love nothing better than to see Ben Shapiro booted from YouTube because my son watches his videos.
I definitely trust her with free speech.
I've never suggested that Kara Swisher should lose her job or be booted off social media or be restricted in any way from disseminating her content.
But this lady is the greatest and wisest among us who is going to dictate how you get your information.
So it starts off with like these simple, stupid, fringe stories about the media going nuts over a doggy photo, but that's not really what this is about.
What this is really about is exaggerating the threat of misinformation, assuming that you are a moron who is incapable of assessing your own sources of information, and then saying, well, you know what?
I understand.
You're dumb.
You're dumb.
You didn't get that that dog photo wasn't real.
You didn't get it because you're dumb.
So here's what I'm going to do.
I'm going to stop all that information from even hitting your eyeballs.
Instead, you'll see the stuff that I think is true.
Normally, we would call this censorship.
On the left, this is called freedom of speech because language has been completely inverted.
Okay, we'll get to more of this in just one second.
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Okay, we have much more on this topic, plus the extent to which censorship is being taken by the left.
I mean, this is a scary time for the First Amendment.
And for free speech attitudes in general.
Forget about government censorship.
For free speech attitudes, it's a very dangerous time in the country.
We'll get to more of that in just one second.
First, head on over to DailyWire.com.
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So Woke's golden chief and censor Kara Swisher has a piece entirely about this today called Your Move, Facebook.
Twitter will no longer allow political advertising, a move that places Twitter and Jack Dorsey in stark contrast to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
That's one small step by Jack, one giant leap for tweet kind.
It's not as significant as a man conquering space.
Yeah, see, A Man Conquering Space was about achieving something.
This is about shutting down political speech.
So, yeah, those aren't the same, it turns out.
But Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, moonwalked into the digital future on Wednesday with a move that was both unexpected and inevitable.
In a Twitter thread, of course, he declared that the company would no longer allow political advertising on Twitter globally.
Why not just extend it?
Why not just say no political speech on Twitter globally?
Because you know the next step.
It's going to be that powerful people in the media, on the right, are, quote-unquote, disseminating false information.
They need to be kicked off Twitter.
That is the next step.
It starts with the paid political stuff because, after all, they can rip Twitter for being corporate-driven and profit-driven.
But it's not going to stop there.
Tara Swisher has made clear over and over she doesn't want it to stop there.
To those hoping that Mr. Dorsey would also take action against one of the platform's most famous rules violators, let's make one thing clear.
Donald Trump can still huff and puff away on his disingenuous digital sousaphone, but his campaign cannot pay to do so.
Still, it was a bold- See, she wants Trump kicked off Twitter.
I mean, she's not even hiding the ball here.
She says, still, it was a bold and epic poke that seemed to aim directly at Mark Zuckerberg since Twitter's announcement came just as Facebook was dropping its current earnings report.
While Facebook's earnings were spectacular, especially in comparison to Twitter's weaker showing a week ago, the announcement now places Twitter and Dorsey in stark contrast to the social networking giant and its co-founder and CEO.
Why?
Well, Mr. Zuckerberg said in a disastrous series of recent appearances in Washington, D.C., his huge platform would not only keep accepting political ads, but also would allow politicians to lie in them.
Well, what Zuckerberg said is, it's your job to fact check, and it's my job not to shut down speech.
Which is called freedom.
Coincidence?
Actually, it feels like the best subtweet ever.
It is yet another example, like last year's widespread deplatforming of conspiracy troll Alex Jones, of social media not only starting to clean itself up, but beginning to understand the major responsibility it has to the well-being of society at large, well beyond just making money.
Oh, bullcrap.
Here's what happened.
Hillary Clinton lost in 2016.
You guys were pissed.
You blamed Russian trolls and quote-unquote disinformation instead of yourselves for running a crap candidate.
You're very angry that Donald Trump is president and now you're going to take it out on all of the outlets and ask them and then demand that they and then push them to de-platform everybody you don't like.
Your response to losing an election is that you don't like the principles that underlie American elections on a fundamental basis.
That is what is going on here.
You have a similar article from Thomas Friedman in the New York Times called Trump Zuckerberg and pals are breaking America.
Now, what does Trump have to do with Zuckerberg?
They apparently don't even like each other.
So, what exactly do they have to do with each other?
Apparently, Zuckerberg is a problem.
Why?
Because he's allowing political ads to run on Facebook.
You know, because dissemination of information is good.
More information is better.
More debate is better.
But Friedman says, this is all about money for Zuckerberg, as opposed to Thomas Friedman, who gives all of his salary to charity, who works for the New York Times for free, and just runs around the globe writing bestselling books on his own dime.
I mean, what a giver he is.
Profit, profit, oh, terrible profit.
Or alternatively, Mark Zuckerberg has given up an awful lot of profit by not actually allowing his service to be available in China just so he would not have to bow to the Chinese censors.
I have not heard the same about Twitter.
So, there it is.
I mean, it's just, it's absurd.
It's absurd.
Friedman says, yeah, right, as if average American citizens are able to discern the veracity of every political ad after years of being conditioned by responsible journalism to assume the claims aren't just made up.
What does that even mean?
Basically, you believe that people can't make decisions on their own about the veracity of information.
They're all idiots and morons, unlike Thomas Friedman, who's been taken in by regimes including the Iranians and the Chinese, and who wrote a column several years ago suggesting that one-party democracy in China may be more effective than two-party democracy in the United States.
Thomas Friedman should definitely determine what sort of information you can see.
This is the stuff that's scary.
And then they use Russia as the front.
All these conversations always start with Russian disinformation.
Again, we all agree.
Russian disinformation?
Bad.
Foreign countries interfering in American elections?
Bad.
Agree?
Agree.
But that's not where it ends.
It doesn't start with, you know what, we really need to find these sort of Russian bot accounts and shut them down because that's interference by a foreign government.
We shouldn't allow that?
It turns very quickly into, we need to stop Trump from running ads.
And then it turns very quickly into, Trump should be banned from the platform.
And then it turns into, everybody that you hear from on the right should be banned from these platforms.
We need to de-platform everyone.
These platforms, in fact, should just become outlets for the left.
And that's what the left would like.
That's what the left would like.
This all springs from the same attitude that says that anything that you don't like is dangerous to you, right?
That any information that you disagree with is, in effect, Russian disinformation.
That any information that you don't like is in effect incitement.
We saw that article, as I mentioned again, yesterday from Richard Stengel, that former Obama administration official, who said we should pursue hate speech laws in the United States, the home of the First Amendment, because, hey, people might get offended.
And this is how you end up with the stupidity over at Stanford.
So next week, I'm supposed to speak at Stanford University?
I'm very much looking forward to it.
It's always fun.
I like hearing questions from people who disagree.
We have a basic rule at all of my speeches.
It's been true for years.
If you disagree, you raise your hand, you go to the front of the line, and then we have a discussion about it.
And so these are open, free speech events.
And all of the posters are being vandalized by people on the left.
And hours after postering in the Nordelpha dorm, the Conservative Club's members, according to Young America's foundation, found their posters removed, with a note from RAs being put in place, quote, We, the Nordelpha staff, care about you and your feelings, your physical and emotional health.
This is in response to the fact that the lecture is titled, Facts Don't Care About Your Feelings.
We, the Nordelpha staff, care about you, your feelings, your physical and emotional health.
This is after taking down the poster for the event.
This isn't in response.
It's not next to the poster for the event.
It's they took down the poster for the event and then they replaced it with a note saying that they care about your feelings.
Right, so I can't think of a better metaphor than that.
Taking down the poster that says facts don't care about your feelings and replacing it with a note that says we care about your feelings and we do so so much that we are going to remove material you don't like.
I say you matter and are welcome here in this space.
We welcome and center the voices that some may wish to specifically marginalize and target and that we support black people, people of color, non-binary folks.
LGBTQIA folks, Muslims and Jews, people from diverse backgrounds learning and flourishing together is what makes Stanford and Nordelphia special.
Thank you for being you.
You are a star and don't let anyone tell you you're not.
Please reach out to any of us if you need to talk or need us to support you in any way.
With love, your Nordelphia staff.
Creating a generation of losers.
This is how you create a generation of losers.
You say to them, you know what?
We're not even going to allow you to see a poster that doesn't even have any political material on it.
It just says that facts are more important than feelings.
We're going to replace that with a poster that says, you are a star, lest you be offended in some way.
The conservative group apparently also attempted the, yeah, chapter over at Stanford, also attempted to enter Stanford's Hispanic-focused dorm, Casa Zapata, where they were met with a mob of screaming leftists who hurled expletives at the chapter members.
The unhinged leftists blocked the students from entering the dorm and followed them to the next dorm where they intended to poster, encouraging the staff in that building not to let them inside either.
Stephen Sills is president of the conservative group on campus and said, Homophobia!
Homophobia.
Wow.
Apparently you don't care about the feelings there, do you?
Sills described that after leaving and heading over to another dorm to poster, they'd been followed by a group of eight students.
Quote, they shouted obscenities, heckling us and keeping us from entering the other dorms.
Never before have I ever feared as much for my safety on campus as I did then.
The conservative students were then accused of targeting at Casa Zapata, despite the fact that they went to a bevy of different dorms.
Angry leftists discussed potential disciplinary action against the group at a meeting with Stanford's provost, Persis Drell.
The conservative group plastered nearly every dorm with posters to advertise for them.
By the way, I'm a libertarian, you idiot!
I've been in favor of broadened legal immigration for Hispanics for years.
For years!
I'm in favor of work permits.
What the hell are you even talking about?
What are you talking about?
I mean, this is just, it's just absurd.
I'm sorry, it's absurd.
And by the way, the tickets sold out in like five seconds, of course, because people actually still care about free speech in America, although the left is doing its best to shut it down.
But it's not just the left in the United States, it's also the left in Canada.
Megan Murphy, who was kicked off of Twitter for the great sin of pointing out that a man is not in fact a woman, she held a lecture in Canada, and this drove the mayor of the town of Toronto, To rip on the library that allowed her to speak.
The anti-free speech movement on the left, internationally, is strong and growing much, much stronger.
And it's happening day in and day out because the left doesn't like the results of free speech.
Because they don't like the results.
I have not called for the deplatforming of anyone on the left.
And listen!
I have significant suspicions that 2020 may not in fact be a great year for Republicans, right?
The polls right now show Republicans not doing well in the White House, in the House, in the Senate, right?
All of that may be true.
I have never called for anybody on the left to be platformed for expressing a political viewpoint, even when I think they're twisting the truth.
Even when I think they're twisting the truth, because it's my job to then re-inform you as to what they are saying wrong.
And it's their job to fact-check me, right?
This is everybody's job.
But the goal here is to create this... It's so funny.
What the left will say is that they're trying to just suss out the misinformation.
We have to target it.
We have to destroy the misinformation.
But they're not doing that.
Instead, they're carpet bombing the informational distribution centers and saying...
True, false, doesn't matter.
You can't distinguish.
To save this village, we need to burn it.
We need to burn this free speech village in order to save free speech.
This is their goal.
This is why you end up with people tearing down posters at dorms.
This is why you end up with the Toronto mayor, John Tory, who is now calling on libraries to cancel events.
From Megan Murphy, a feminist, who says that it's bad for women if men who say they are women are allowed to go into women's dressing places and locker rooms.
All of this is designed to shut down dissent, to shut down debate.
By the way, I'm just going to juxtapose really fast the activity of Toronto's mayor with activities that took place in Minnesota last night that apparently have received no actual governmental talk about censorship despite the fact that they basically amount to child abuse.
So this library in Toronto allowed Megan Murphy to speak.
About the fact that men are not women.
Contrast that to a story from Ann Taylor writing at Caffeinated Thoughts who attended an October 17th event at Hennepin Country Library in Minnesota.
A taxpayer-funded event.
A drag queen story hour.
This has become a thing in some major left-leaning cities.
Apparently, a drag queen showed up wearing nude-colored underwear and proceeded to expose his crotch to the children.
Quote, We're talking a sleeveless cut-off t-shirt resembling SpongeBob SquarePants with midriff exposed, a pink mini skirt, rainbow ankle socks, a black spiked heels that went above six inches.
The wig he wore, the drag queen, was mermaid-style crimping in the color of bright orange and the makeup that was far too much under the neon lights.
The drag queen, quote, strode in suggestively past the children, sitting down in a chair before several preschool-aged girls, with his legs spread wide, exposing his nylon-covered crotch in front of children sitting at eye level.
We noticed he did this often while reading nervously before the children.
Taylor says, I initially thought drag queen story hours were a hoax and simply unfathomable until I experienced one myself.
Apparently there are about 22 kids ranging in age from infant, toddler, and preschool into elementary grades.
The library is set to host another Drag Queen Story Hour on November 2nd.
Now listen, I think that libraries should be allowed to host these things.
I think parents are morons for having their kids there.
I think that parents are doing an act of deep disservice to their own children by exposing them to sexualized performances at a young age.
I think that's child abuse.
I think that if the library has found a way to desexualize a Drag Queen Story Hour, which I don't see any way to do that, but if you find a way to do that, free speech, more power to you.
But, the fact that the left wants to shut down Megan Murphy for saying men are not women, but celebrates Drag Queen Story Hour, and then condemns anyone who condemns Drag Queen Story Hour, tells you everything you need to know about the censorious left.
The Hennepin County Library told The Blaze the program is relatively new and it is unfortunately making mistakes.
Oh, unfortunately making mistakes.
Most storytime performances involve a performer in brilliantly colored costume and theatrical makeup.
They read books and share songs about characters who are different in some way and who learn to accept and celebrate differences in themselves and others.
Now again, I think that there are plenty of ways that you could do that.
You could dress up as a dog and do that, right?
But instead you're dressing up as what is inevitably and inherently a sexualized performance piece when it comes to drag.
Drag is inherently sexualized.
I have yet to hear a great argument that drag is not inherently sexualized.
I mean...
It just, like, explain the argument to me.
Really, I'm waiting to hear it.
But in any case, they said partway through this year's schedule, we realized the need for a performer dress code.
We followed up right away with each of the performers to ensure that their costumes are appropriate for the audience and activity.
Now, listen, I think that people have the prerogative not to get involved in this drag queen story.
In fact, I think that they shouldn't.
I think that parents should not take their kids to it.
I think the constituency for this thing should be zero.
But I'm not calling for censors to shut down drag queens.
I think that if it's child abuse, if it's sexualized, then again, that's a criminal violation.
That's a different thing.
But the fact that libraries all over America and in Canada are really pushing Drag Queen Story Hour, but mayors of Toronto are coming out and saying, well, you know, we can't have somebody saying a man is not a woman.
That tells you everything you need to know about the censorious left.
They're extending this to the social media sphere.
The goal, once more, shut down the dissemination of information.
That is what they want.
Because when the dissemination of information is equal, it gives a better shot to people who are not in the monopolistic left.
And the left did have a monopoly on information up until the last 20 years or so.
My friend and mentor Andrew Breitbart used to say that the internet was the greatest leveling force in the history of media, which is of course why mainstream media wants to bring all of that back in, reign all of that back in.
It starts with dumb things like fact-checking dogs being given medals by the president, and that's not where it ends.
Okay, so it's time for a quick thing that I like, and then we'll do a quick thing that I hate.
So, quick thing that I like.
This is kind of some fascinating polling.
So there is some new polling out that shows that President Trump is actually running extremely competitively with the Democrats in this race right now, but with a huge percentage of Americans saying they don't know.
According to Morning Consult, former VP Joe Biden only leads Trump 41 to 36.
Basically, Trump is always between 35 and 37% in all of these polls, but A lot of the Democrats have now dropped below him in these polls because people are not sure about these Democrats.
They're too radical and they're promoting an agenda that nobody likes.
Bernie Sanders is only up 39-37, which is margin of error.
Elizabeth Warren is actually down 36-35.
Kamala Harris is down 36-31.
Buttigieg is down 35 to 29.
Now, again, that's a huge percentage of the population that says they don't know, but that gives Trump time to redefine himself and to define the left, which is obviously what he should be doing today.
He should be spending all of his time doing exactly that.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
All righty, so big, big story today.
Out of Paul Sperry at Real Clear Investigations, he apparently has uncovered the identity of the whistleblower who triggered this whole Trump-Ukraine thing.
Apparently he has identified the person who's behind all of this.
Now, let it be said up front, the content of the whistleblower report is in and of itself troubling enough that people should ask questions.
So it doesn't discredit the actual questions being asked, Who made the report?
But does this appear like initially an act of partisanship as opposed to an act of good faith?
Given the identity of the whistleblower, the answer is pretty obviously yes.
So according to Paul Sperry, the name of the government official fitting the description that has been given is Eric Shiramella.
And I'm gonna say his name because I don't think that the whistleblower requires anonymity.
I think that we should know what we need to know about the people who initiated the investigation.
I don't think anonymity under these circumstances is appropriate.
The name of the government official fitting the description, Eric Schiramella, has been raised privately in impeachment depositions according to officials with direct knowledge of the proceedings.
Presumably, this is Republicans leaking, which is bad, but Democrats have been leaking too, so everybody's leaking, right?
As well as in at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry.
Fearing their anonymous witness could be exposed, Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking more questions about him and intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.
RealClear Investigations is disclosing the name because of the public's interest in learning details of an effort to remove a sitting president from office.
Further, the official's status as a whistleblower is complicated by his being a hearsay reporter of accusations against the president, one who has some indicia of an arguable political bias in favor of a rival political candidate.
That's the inspector community, the intelligence community inspector general, who said this originally.
So, what do we know about this guy?
He's 33.
He's a registered Democrat, held over from the Obama White House.
He previously worked with both VP Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan.
He's a vocal critic of Trump.
Further, he left his National Security Council posting in the White House's West Wing in mid-2017 because people were concerned that he was leaking to the media.
He was then returned to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
A former NSC official said he was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump.
Apparently, Shiromela huddled for guidance with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, including former colleagues also held over from the Obama era whom Schiff had recently recruited from the NSC.
And apparently, Sharmilla also worked with a DNC operative who dug up dirt on Trump during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, according to former White House colleagues.
That operative, Alexandra Chalupa, is Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary and led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government.
He knows her.
He had her in the White House, said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Documents confirm that she actually attended at least one White House meeting with Sharmilla in November of 2015.
So, this has been, you know, this is obviously deeply troubling because it does go to motive, right?
It looks like basically a person who hated Trump, who was waiting for the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of a problem and then blow it up to epic proportions.
This wasn't somebody who was like, well, everything's going fine here and, you know, I'm gonna wait for a legit crime in order to make a fuss.
Instead, it was somebody who apparently was colluding with Adam Schiff in order to Come up with this entire whistleblower allegation.
It was somebody who was an ardent Joe Biden defender, which is why he found this so inappropriate.
Now, does this answer all the questions about impeachment?
Of course not.
Of course not.
It doesn't answer the questions about whether Trump's activity on that call was appropriate, whether Trump was in fact leveraging American taxpayer dollars to specifically go after a 2020 political rival without evidence and without any concern for corruption.
It doesn't answer those questions and Trump will have to answer those questions, but it's certainly going to lend a lot of credence to Trump's allegation that this entire thing from the beginning was cooked up by a Democrat and somebody inside the quote-unquote deep state who's seeking to selectively leak information to harm Trump.
Because apparently that's what this guy did according to Paul Sperry reporting for Real Clear Investigation.
So we'll bring you more on that this afternoon, I am sure, when we get to our two additional hours of content.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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