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June 1, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:14:36
Rioters And Looters Are Evil | Ep. 1021
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Cities across America force law-abiding citizens into curfew as rioters and looters burn and smash, protesters watch their cause undermined by violent hangers-on, and Democrats in the media keep feeding the flames.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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So, I leave for three days and burn down the country.
That's how this works.
I mean, I had a Jewish holiday on Friday and then a Jewish holiday on Saturday.
And I come back on Saturday night and half the country is in flames.
And let me just make this clear right at the very top.
If you're a rioter, if you're a looter, you're a human scum.
You're doing nothing positive for society.
What you're acting on is not quote-unquote justified anger.
You're a piece of crap.
You're a piece of crap!
And you should be arrested.
You should be prosecuted.
Business owners should defend their businesses.
This is sheer, unbelievable garbage and the failure of government to perform its single function, which is to protect the law-abiding.
That failure of government is catastrophic.
I'm talking from local governments to state governments to the federal government.
The lack of ability of the government to do the one thing it is supposed to do, right?
This government that's supposed to provide you everything that you could possibly need, provide you privileges from the top.
Instead, it can't even protect you in your own cities.
This government.
The government is designed to protect life and liberty.
In the case of George Floyd, they did neither.
And then they allowed rioters to run roughshod throughout the country.
We had most every major American city last night under curfew.
L.A.
County, which has 10 million people, went into curfew yesterday at 6 o'clock p.m.
Santa Monica went into curfew at 4 o'clock p.m.
This is not a free country.
So I have some good news.
Here's the good news.
Apparently COVID-19 is over.
Apparently it's over because what I saw over the weekend And Saturday night and Sunday, what I saw was tens of thousands of people in the streets and nobody giving a good gosh darn because bottom line is they were doing something that the media agreed with.
And so there are three things that we need to talk about today.
One is the legitimate cause of fighting police brutality.
The second is the illegitimate argument that America is endemically racist, systematically racist, racist at every level, and that America must apologize for its very being, that America must be remade from bottom to top and top to bottom.
And then there's the third argument that some are making, which is that people who riot and loot are somehow an outgrowth of justified anger.
That somehow going and smashing a store window makes you some sort of hero in this society.
It's bulls**t. It's bulls**t. If you are a rioter, if you are a looter, you ought to be captured, you ought to be arrested, you ought to be prosecuted.
This is not the behavior of a civilized country.
It is not.
And don't tell me that the behavior of the police officer in George Floyd's situation was unsymbolized.
I agree.
We all agree.
We're all on the same page.
That guy's in jail.
He's going to remain in jail.
He should be in jail.
The only question is, on what charge?
What does the evidence support?
No one disagrees on this.
And if you say people weren't acting in civilized fashion with Ahmaud Arbery, I agree.
Those guys are in jail.
They belong in jail.
Everyone agrees on this.
But using this as an excuse to destroy the Lincoln Memorial, to go and tag the World War II Memorial, to beat business owners outside their business?
And to do it on the basis of race.
Have you seen some of the signs that have been put up in these cities?
People attempting to put up Black Lives Matter signs in their windows to dissuade rioters from breaking their windows.
I don't think most of this is Black Lives Matter, by the way.
I think Black Lives Matter is a cause with which some of its points I disagree.
I think that they make an overwrought case as to the nature of America itself, which is the second argument we're going to talk about today.
But the people who are mostly smashing windows are folks from Antifa, And people who are vile hangers-on who are attempting to grab a TV.
You're not honoring George Floyd's memory or doing anything good for America or fighting police brutality by stealing a TV.
You're just a piece of shit.
If you are stealing a TV, you are on the back of the killing of an innocent black man.
You're a bad person, red, white, or green.
This is insane.
And for all the people in the media who are saying, well, you can't pay attention to this, you're paying attention to this, you're not paying attention to all the other bad stuff that's happening in the country.
I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Not only that, we spent an entire episode on Ahmaud Arbery.
We spent entire episodes talking about George Floyd.
Everyone, again, agrees on this stuff.
The attempt to polarize America around the question of whether rioting and looting is a justified uprising.
I'm seeing language of uprising.
That's not an uprising.
That's not an uprising.
What are you rising up against?
Target?
Is Target the great oppressor?
And yes, I'm angry because you've shut millions of Americans in their homes.
Tens of millions of Americans you have shut in their homes.
Law-abiding Americans.
And you're burning down businesses.
And you're breaking store windows.
And you're hurting people who are disproportionately minority, by the way.
You're really hitting shops in most of these cities that are owned by black people.
Owned by Hispanic people.
Owned by Asian people.
And somehow this is being treated by celebrities as justified?
Okay, so we're gonna get to the news in just one second, but I just thought that I'd put that up front.
That if you're defending this, if you're defending this behavior, you are part of the problem.
And I think there are some Democrats today, thank God, who are coming out and not defending this.
I think that there are a lot of black leaders who are coming out today and not defending this, nor should they defend this, because no leader of any race should defend any of this, because this isn't a black-white issue.
This is just, this is not a race issue.
Looting is not a race issue, and police brutality should not be a race issue.
It's just a human decency issue.
These are all human decency issues.
And it breaks my heart for my country that the human decency that we should all be united around seems to have been thrown out the window completely.
To the point where people are defending rioters and looters because America is bad.
Or people are suggesting that Americans don't care, by and large, when a white police officer puts his knee on the neck of a black man for eight minutes.
Who are the people who don't care about this stuff?
Who?
And we're going to get to the actual news in just one second.
But if you woke up not angry this morning, then it's because you haven't been watching the news.
And it is justified anger to ask why in the hell, living in the freest, most prosperous country in the history of mankind, we had 50 million citizens last night who were confined to quarters, not on the basis of a virus for their own protection, but on the basis of people running roughshod through the streets and throwing Molotov cocktails at cop cars.
Nuttiness.
And by the way, where's President Trump?
President Trump needs to get his ass in gear, okay?
These tweets are not sufficient.
These are not sufficient.
He needs to be on TV tonight, and President Trump needs to be telling people that whatever your cause, we value the First Amendment in this country.
We do not value violence.
Not only do we not value violence, we are going to make the full weight and power of the federal government available to any mayor or governor who calls for its help.
All resources will be used to stomp this sort of violence out.
None of this is good for the country.
None of this is decent for the country.
None of this affects change.
In fact, it affects precisely the reverse of a lot of the kind of change that some of the protesters are protesting for.
This is madness.
It's just madness.
Okay.
Well, we'll get to more of this madness and what exactly has been happening in just one second.
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So, what exactly is happening in the here and now?
Now, according to the Washington Post, pockets of the United States descended into Chaos Sunday as another day of mass demonstrations over the death of yet another black man in police custody led to another night of fire and fury.
Even the way this is phrased by the Washington Post demonstrates their take on what America is.
The death of yet another black man in police custody.
Yet another.
OK, yes, there have been more than one black people, more than one black person has died in police custody.
But the implication of the Washington Post, of course, is that there is a widespread systematic brutality put upon black Americans across America by nearly every police department.
And that is just not true.
It is not statistically true.
That does not mean there are not racists in police departments.
It does not mean that there is not police brutality, which is effectuated against populations in which police officers come into contact with populations.
Police brutality can be affected against black people, against Latino people, against white people.
I mean, the cases of police brutality are too numerous to mention, and usually it's a problem of training and a problem of who are you recruiting to the police forces.
But the Washington Post's implication here is that, of course, all of policing across America is endemically racist because America has not changed from 1960 and onward.
Jim Crow lives on today.
We'll see this is the argument being made by actual columnists over at the New York Times.
Protests that began peacefully exploded into mayhem as windows were smashed, stores were looted, buildings were vandalized, and police vehicles were torched.
The unrest spread from Chicago, Atlanta, and Boston to Sacramento, Seattle, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
As protesters and police clashed outside the White House for a third consecutive night, President Trump tweeted a call for law and order.
And the tweets ain't gonna be sufficient.
Mr. President, get on TV.
Tell America what you are going to do to stop this violence.
Tell America what you are going to do to reestablish some semblance of civilization, because this is madness.
In some cities, law enforcement officers were seen marching and kneeling with protesters.
Elsewhere, police and riot care continued to increase their use of force, which added to the disorder.
Early Monday, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear ordered a state investigation after a man was fatally shot during an overnight confrontation with Louisville police and the National Guard.
More than half of the nation's governors have called on the National Guard to help quell the unrest.
Meanwhile, at least 45 million Americans were under curfew Sunday night.
Many cities have extended their overnight restrictions.
By the way, I will point out here that the lockdowns from COVID-19 have absolutely not helped the situation here.
When you put 40 million Americans out of work, and most of them are disproportionately young, and they have nothing to do on a Sunday afternoon or a Saturday night or a Friday, they're going to get much larger protests.
And that's not to call into question their passion for these issues.
That is to suggest that when people have jobs, they sometimes have to go to those jobs as opposed to being out on the streets protesting and violating all of the COVID-19 restrictions in the first place.
Weird how everybody who's deeply worried about Anti-lockdown protesters not wearing masks and socially distancing doesn't give two craps about people who are in the streets 20,000 strong as long as they're protesting for a cause the members of the media agree with.
A number of major retailers including Walmart, Target, and Apple have temporarily closed their stores in some areas rocked by upheaval.
By the way, worth noting here, if you are worried about the availability of grocery stores and pharmacies and all the things that people need in predominantly black areas, you know it'd be a great solution to that?
Fighting back by local government against the rioting and against the looting.
You want to want to reason why grocery stores and CVSs are not opening up in low-income areas?
In some cases, they're not doing it because they're afraid that it comes with increased costs.
This would be a good example of why a Walmart is not going to open in an area where it was looted two years ago.
More than 4,000 people were arrested in U.S.
cities over the weekend, according to the Associated Press.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio's daughter Chiara was among the hundreds of people arrested in the city after failing to disperse law enforcement sources, told the Washington Post.
People have been told for years that America is deeply evil on every level, that every anecdotal incident of bad behavior is both racist and indicative of America's broader racism, and thus any measure you take against the American superstructure is therefore okay.
Some conservative commentators are urging the president to address the nation.
Yes, that would be me.
He's the president of the United States and hiding behind Twitter ain't gonna do it.
It isn't.
He has a job.
This is where being president would actually be a useful thing.
Okay, so what did all of this look like?
Well, it looked horrible.
So there were riots at the White House last night.
Apparently 50 Secret Service agents were harmed in these riots at the White House last night.
Here's a little bit of what that looked like.
You can actually see it.
I mean, there were big protests at the White House.
People were starting to push.
I have a question.
The Secret Service officers, people were grabbing the officer's shields.
Over the weekend, it got so bad, the president was put in the bunker.
People on Twitter are like, oh, what a weak link.
The president goes to the bunker.
Right, he's the president.
It's literally the job of Secret Service to keep him safe.
I have a question.
What does President Trump have to do with a Minneapolis police officer putting his knee on the neck of a black suspect in a Democratic city that has been ruled by Democrats for 50 years?
But again, this is going to be turned into a question of America writ large.
As I've said, there are a bunch of issues here.
Okay, issue number one, we should all agree on, rioters and looters, as we will see.
Evil.
Evil, evil, evil.
Okay, second, protesters.
Many of them are angry for good reason about police brutality.
Some are angry for bad reasons, suggesting that all of America is indicated in police brutality or that all police forces across America are racist.
But they're exercising the First Amendment rights, not even close to in the same category with the rioters and the looters.
And then there is the other question here, which is the George Floyd case.
But the George Floyd case has been left far behind.
The fact is that most of the protesters are moving far beyond the facts of the George Floyd case, and certainly all the rioters and looters don't give two craps about George Floyd.
If you are breaking a store window on behalf of George Floyd, let me just tell you, George Floyd's family doesn't appreciate it.
You know who said that?
George Floyd's family.
We'll get to all this in just one second.
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We got 20,000 people in the streets.
With the economy reopening, people are going to need to be hiring.
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It may have lost its strength, which would be amazing and great news for America and for the world.
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Okay, so over the weekend, the Minneapolis government, you want to talk about failures of government?
The Minneapolis mayor withdrew the police from a precinct.
Withdrew them.
And protesters, rioters, okay?
I'm going to make a real hard distinction here.
Rioters promptly burned the place to the ground.
They promptly set it on fire and burned it.
Here's a little bit of the news coverage.
This is a look from above and on the ground of the police station burning overnight out of control.
This was the very police precinct where the four officers involved in the death of 46-year-old George Floyd worked.
Look at overnight there.
Protesters set off fireworks outside.
Rioters even got inside the police station.
All staff had been evacuated earlier as the protests began.
Meanwhile, police cars were being burned across the country.
They were burned in Los Angeles.
They were burned in Cleveland.
They were burned in Columbia.
People just setting police cars on fire as though this is somehow normal.
This is not normal.
These are images from a third world country.
These are not images typically from the United States, at least not since 1968.
The last time I saw anything like this, I was eight years old and it was the Los Angeles riots.
This is full scale insanity.
Here's some of that footage.
Now I think one of the cars is burning in the background as they're really becoming aggressive and moving people back.
And we do have a vehicle fire here.
Yeah, we can see in an area shot.
The police have been told that they are supposed to allow people to do this.
That is how this happens.
The police have been told by the mayor that they are supposed to allow people to do this.
In the middle of Los Angeles.
I mean, this is downtown LA and you're seeing cars burning on the sidewalk.
Police cars being set on fire.
Okay, this is a failure of local governance on the highest level.
On the highest level.
I know you're not a damned hero if you set a police car on fire.
You know what you're gonna need?
It turns out, most people, they need the police.
You know who's calling the police when a crime gets committed?
Everyone.
Black, white, and green.
You're all calling the police.
Hey, targets were being burned across the country.
Targets were being attacked across the country.
People were breaking into Target and breaking open the ATM.
Well, that ATM ain't gonna be involved in systematic racism anymore.
Good job, everybody.
You solved racism.
You broke into an ATM.
You looted the bras off the store shelves at Target.
Well done, everyone.
Wow.
Fighting the power.
You fought the power.
I have a feeling this has nothing to do with George Floyd.
Nothing.
I have a feeling this has nothing to do with police brutality.
And you can tell.
You see the anarchist symbol on the window there.
Right, that would be the Antifa.
That'd be Antifa putting those up.
There are people in the media pretending Antifa doesn't exist.
They absolutely exist.
Just because they're not top-down coordinated does not mean they don't exist.
But here are people, well, gotta grab a pair of gym shoes for George Floyd, guys.
Really, really important stuff.
You want to talk about undermining the cause of fighting police brutality?
This would be the one.
This would be the one.
Target has to be taken down.
Meanwhile, you had protesters chanting, eat the rich, as they were trying to loot Rodeo Drive yesterday.
Wow.
You're making America a better place, one smashed window at a time.
Clearly, you've made your voices heard.
Good job, guys.
You're protesters screaming, eat the rich, on Rodeo Drive.
Eat the rich!
By the way, disproportionately white crowd here screaming, eat the rich.
What the hell does Rodeo Drive have to do with George Floyd?
Is there a police station there?
What the hell do nice shops have to do with George Floyd?
The idea that the police are protectors of the systematic hierarchy is the bottom line here.
That is what is actually prevailing.
And that gets you from the looting and the rioting to the actual argument that's being made, which is that it's the same system that kills George Floyd that is responsible for Rodeo Drive, right?
That's the underlying message that is being put forward.
We're going to get to that in just one second.
All of this is just the property damage, by the way.
And by the way, I don't want to hear from people declaring themselves moral.
I saw Sally Cullen do this.
Well, all these places have insurance.
Okay.
Really?
Last I checked, stealing people's stuff is evil.
Theft is evil.
Breaking into someone's store is evil.
And the fact that there's an insurance company that they pay money out of their own pocket to insure against this sort of stuff does not alleviate the evil.
There was looting over at the Grove last night.
The Grove is a very nice sort of public-private project in the middle of Los Angeles in the Fairfax District.
People burned down the police.
They have like a tiny little police hut there, basically.
They broke into the Apple Store.
They broke into the Nordstrom over there.
All this for George Floyd.
Well done, everyone.
Just really well done.
Again, I keep saying it over and over, but if you're the protesters and you're not pissed at the rioters today, you're doing this wrong.
Because guess who's losing sympathy for the protests?
Everybody who's watching the rioting and watching the two conflated.
The smart protesters know this, by the way.
Here was some looting at the Grove yesterday.
People just breaking right into that Apple store, grabbing yourself an iPad for George Floyd. - Really important stuff.
Stealing an iPhone for George Floyd.
Everybody just having themselves a grand old time.
Stealing stuff from Nordstrom's.
And people just, by the way, law enforcement just sitting there and allowing this to happen, right?
You can actually see security there and law enforcement doing nothing because they've been told that they're not supposed to do anything by these feckless mayors.
If you're a citizen of these cities and you pay taxes in these cities, what the hell are you paying taxes for when people who are overtly committing crimes are being allowed to run around freely and break windows and do this kind of stuff?
Historic buildings.
Somebody attempted to burn down St.
John's Church at Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C.
last night.
That is a church where Abraham Lincoln prayed.
These images are not images from the United States.
They're not.
This is insane.
John's church is on fire.
The parish office.
We went downstairs and it is on fire.
I'm going to walk this way.
This is awful.
We saw graffiti.
Once the door was broken, we saw something similar happen earlier.
And as you can see, there's definitely a fire here.
This is the parish office.
Here, come on back.
Come on back.
Come on back up.
That's good.
By the way, it was not just property damage.
We're going to get to the actual violent attacks on human beings.
Again, I'm all for let's fight instances of police brutality, change police procedures, hire better people.
I'm just wondering how it's not a national story when people are being beaten in the streets on a nationwide scale for standing outside their businesses.
I'm just wondering.
I'm just wondering why it is that if you mention on Twitter that this stuff is happening, it's, oh, well, you don't care about George Floyd.
How about I care about George Floyd being killed?
And I also care about the fact that 45 million Americans were confined to quarters last night because pieces of shit were running around beating people up on the streets of the United States.
How can I not care?
Like, what?
Again, basic human decency suggests that you should care about all of these things.
But apparently basic human decency is too much to ask these days.
Because if you point to one issue, this means that you're ignoring the other.
Absolute insanity.
And we're gonna get to more of this in just one second.
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So it wasn't just property damage, obviously.
Although, like, I'm very tired of this nonsense that property damage doesn't mean anything.
There was a black bartender, black firefighter, who watched his bar that he was just about to get open.
Burn down over the weekend.
You think maybe that matters?
I talked to a small restaurant owner here in the area where I live.
It's a kosher restaurant.
And this lady and her husband put their life savings into this restaurant.
And it was doing real well up until COVID-19.
And then COVID-19 happened, and they've maintained their business.
They've been able to stay alive through takeout.
Yesterday, They're located on Ventura Boulevard.
Ventura Boulevard is like the big boulevard in the North Hollywood, Encino, Tarzana area.
Yesterday, they were told by the police that rioters might come down their streets and they should go buy some plywood.
They should go buy some plywood and plywood up their windows.
This is just to pretend that this stuff doesn't matter, that property doesn't matter, private property doesn't matter.
If private property doesn't matter to you, again, that's because you don't care about other people.
You don't care about other people's rights.
Because it turns out we do have a right to life, liberty, and property.
We have rights to these things in the United States.
And government was instituted to protect these things.
And if government can't protect them, then people are going to start defending them themselves.
And it's going to get really, really ugly out there.
So government better get its ass on top of these things.
It better do it right now.
And then there was the violence.
To pretend that this was just violence against property is not true.
I saw the Minneapolis mayor saying, well, brick and mortar is not the same as human life.
You know what else is kind of important?
Human life.
Hey, in Rochester, New York, thugs attacked a business owner in Rochester, New York.
And there's no other word for it.
That is not a racially tinged term.
If you hit an elderly woman, you're a thug.
I don't care what race you are.
Okay, there's an elderly woman standing outside her business.
People were yelling at her.
And then apparently her husband kind of shows up.
And one of these rioters, one of these looters who wants to loot the business.
First, you can see him taking a piece of wood and breaking it on the storefront.
Doing all this for George Floyd, presumably.
Okay, they start to walk away, the husband apparently comes out, and you can see, one of these guys, this lady looks, what, maybe 55, 60 years old?
I think 60.
Okay, and one of these guys is gonna turn around and just clock her directly in the face.
Okay?
Disgusting.
Disgusting.
These guys should go to jail for life.
I mean, that's just, like, they should go to jail.
This is...
I mean, this is so hard to watch.
A man was beaten unconscious in Dallas, nearly killed in Dallas.
He was in serious condition in the hospital.
Apparently, he was defending his store with a sword, and he was overrun by a mob, and they were just curb stomping him.
He was on the ground, and they were just kicking him directly in the head.
A full crowd of people.
Does that have anything to do with the cause?
Or are these just people who are pieces of shit?
There's another guy who's brutalized.
These people are no less pieces of than the officer who puts his knee on the neck of a man and keeps it there for eight minutes.
It's the same sort of activity.
There was a man yesterday.
He was apparently trying to defend an American flag.
He was chased down.
He was punched in the back of the head, and now he's being kicked.
By the way, these are white guys who are doing this.
Literally kicked in the face.
So there are presumably some Antifa members kicking this guy in the face as he is down.
The NYPD over the weekend was being hit with Molotov cocktails.
And then when they are having bricks and rocks and bottles filled with, apparently it came out today, that members of Antifa have been stashing bottles filled with gasoline around the cities.
That is not something that the protesters are doing.
Notice, I'm making a hard distinction between the protesters and the rioters and looters.
They are not the same group of people.
But the media are fully conflating the two in order to justify the rioting and the looting.
They are doing no service to the actual cause that people are marching for, whatever disagreements I may have with some of the implications of that cause.
Okay, so the NYPD was hitting Molotov cocktails last night.
There was a black federal officer who was killed in Oakland.
So how is that useful?
There's a man who's wearing a red hat, and this is in South Carolina.
Apparently, people thought that he was some sort of Trump supporter, which again, it's not illegal to be a Trump supporter in South Carolina or anywhere else in the United States.
And a crowd starts running after him and just beats the living hell out of him.
This is just...
It's beyond belief.
It's beyond belief.
And of course this is ending with situations of violence.
People attempting to obstruct cars and trying to rob cars and then people in the car scared and doing something.
We saw this last night.
There was a protester, I assume a looter, who was attempting to assault a FedEx, a guy in a FedEx truck.
And the FedEx truck kept driving because he's like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be pulled out of my car and beaten nearly to death like Reginald Denny.
Guy got dragged underneath the car.
I mean, this is just, this stuff cannot happen.
It cannot happen in the United States.
This is so awful and so tragic and so terrible for the entire country.
It truly is.
Whatever your race, this is just nothing good is happening here.
Nothing good.
And the product of this is not going to be anything good either.
Anybody who suggests that it is going to be something good is getting it completely wrong.
So naturally, our politicians are making excuses for this sort of activity and fueling the flames.
And they're doing so in a couple ways.
Some of them are actually like directly giving aid and comfort to the rioters and looters.
And then there are some people who are fanning the flames of the of the protests, but doing so in an extraordinarily radical way.
Again, I think there's for the 1000th time, there's an absolute case to be made that we should change procedures surrounding police brutality.
There's an absolute case to be made that contracts with police unions ought not to have things like sovereign immunity, or qualified immunity.
There are plenty of policy changes that we can argue about and talk about.
But when you suggest that the entire American infrastructure, writ large, is racist and doesn't care when people get killed in incidents of police brutality, you are a liar and you're wrong.
And, by the way, when you fan the flames by suggesting that what we saw on TV was the execution of a black man, which is not what happened, that isn't what happened.
What you saw in this particular case with George Floyd was an act of assault that ended with a death.
That is not the same as a cold-blooded execution.
It is an act of evil, but it is not a cold-blooded execution.
There's a difference.
We're going to get to more of this in just one second because our politicians are ill-serving us.
In a republic, we're supposed to be having conversations.
We're not supposed to be winking and nodding at violence in the streets because we think that it's politically beneficial to do so.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
This is so... Oh, this is devastating.
We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
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Alrighty, well, we're going to get back into the political response to all of this, which has been, it has ranged from cowardly to disgusting, I would say, is the political response to all this.
We've seen a few people who have acted in proper ways, including the Democrat mayor of Atlanta, for example.
The Democrat mayor of St.
Paul has acted in an appropriate way.
And then we have seen our politicians and our media and our celebrities acting like absolute, absolute garbage.
Because everybody who is decent is, again, on the same side of this.
Officers who put a knee on the neck of a person who's saying he can't breathe and keep it there for eight minutes.
Those people are pieces of s***.
People who break windows and loot in response to that are pieces of s***.
They're not equivalently pieces of s***.
People who go and beat the hell out of business owners are pieces of s***.
I haven't cursed this much on a podcast ever, but my country also has not been on fire in a time when we should all be unified against acts of evil.
It is an act of evil to put your knee on the neck of a man, white, black, or green, as he says, I can't breathe for eight minutes long.
It is an act of evil.
To go burn down a store that someone put their life savings into.
It is an act of evil to beat the hell out of somebody who's attempting to defend their business.
It is an act of evil to throw Molotov cocktails at cop cars.
These are acts of evil.
If we can't all agree on this, we don't have a country.
If you disagree on any of these things, then we can't have a country.
And yet what we are seeing from our politicians is a willingness to wink and nod at some of this activity in the name of political gain.
And that is horrific.
Horrific.
And particularly in the name of a political narrative that is supposed to suggest that all of America can't agree on these things.
Because here's the thing.
If you agree with me on all of these things, if you agree with me that there are many people out there who are doing very bad things, if you agree with me, then that means that you're fundamentally decent.
And I'm fundamentally decent.
And even if we disagree on the implications of policy, we are fundamentally decent and can have a fundamentally decent conversation.
But, if you can generate some sort of political polarization off the issue, because you believe that America is inherently evil, and that Americans are inherently evil, the natural result is going to be chaos in the streets, and that is what we are watching right here and right now.
That is what we are watching.
In some ways, this is the outgrowth of a mentality that suggests that America as a giant country is a lie, America, its history, its philosophy, its culture are garbage, and that it deserves to be torn out by the roots.
In some ways, this is the outgrowth of justification of a campaign against America as it stands.
And again, I'm not talking about protesters who protest police brutality.
I'm talking about people who justify rioting and looting.
I'm talking about people who suggest that America is inherently racist, evil to today.
That argument is inherently divisive and it's going to lead to the breakdown of all conversation.
And once the conversation breaks down, you do end up with situations where people defend violence.
And that's exactly what you don't want.
We're going to get to more of this in just one second.
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Our celebrities are, of course, the morons, right?
If you're in the media or if you're a politician, you at least have the sort of wherewithal to understand what you are doing and then couch your terms.
If you're a celebrity, apparently you're just a complete damned moron.
So celebrities were donating bail for protesters over the weekend.
They were donating bail for, and by the way, not protesters, rioters, over the weekend.
So Chrissy Teigen, Seth Rogen, Steve Carell, were donating money to bailout people arrested in the nationwide protests.
By the way, there were hundreds of thousands of people protesting over the weekend.
The people who were arrested were, by and large, committing crimes.
That's why they were there.
Teigen said she decided to make a $100,000 donation after President Trump declared Saturday night was MAGA night at the White House.
She said, in celebration of whatever the eff MAGA night is, I'm committed to donating $100,000 to the bailout of protesters across the country.
And then that was matched by a bunch of other liberal celebrities.
People like Jameela Jamil.
She put in $1,000, of course, not $100,000.
And then we saw Seth Rogen saying he had matched a contribution.
And James Blake and Janelle Monáe and Yara Shahida.
Rapper No Name said she had donated $1,000 to this.
Patton Oswalt donated to it.
Padma Lakshmi did this.
So we're now bailing out people who committed crimes.
Really well done, everybody.
Just well done stuff.
Genius, genius stuff.
Unbelievable.
Okay, meanwhile, you had Cardi B, who's tweeting out that looting was okay, because after all, what other outlet do people have but to steal shoes from a shoe locker?
From a footlocker?
She tweeted out, they looting in Minnesota, and as much as I don't like this type of violence, it is what it is.
Too much peaceful marches, too much trending hashtags, no solutions, the people are left with no choice.
Well, it seems like there were a lot of people who were protesting who did not decide that they were going to steal a pair of shoes in order to protest the death of George Floyd.
Seems like there were hundreds of thousands of them in the streets, actually, Cardi B.
But Cardi B may not know the difference between criminality and non-criminality, considering she used to brag about the fact that she lured men back to her hotel room and then drugged them and stole their crap.
So, this is, this is insane.
I will say, some of the celebrities are just hilarious.
I mean, like, hilariously stupid.
Madonna put out a video of her son David, her adopted son David, who is black.
Dancing to Michael Jackson movie.
Racism solved, Madonna.
Problem solved.
There was this video.
Even the left was owning Madonna over this one.
Even they were like, Really?
Lady?
What?
Ah, Madonna.
I Our celebrity class.
We need a better class of celebrity.
We really do.
Are you going to bail out all these people?
Jane Fonda was on CNN last night.
Why the hell is Jane Fonda on CNN?
I have a question.
Seriously.
What insight does Jane Fonda have?
I don't even know.
She's either dressed up as Pablo Picasso circa 1937, or she's dressed up as a Black Panther.
I have no idea which.
She was on last night on CNN.
Talking about this.
Why?
Why?
CNN, the trusted name in news, bringing on Jane Fonda to talk about this stuff.
There have been several articles talking about how in Los Angeles this is taking people back to 92, 1992 or 3 when there were, there was rioting after film of police beating Rodney King became public and then the officers were never held accountable and This is different.
And I think it's important for us to recognize that.
Okay, why Jane Fonda on national TV?
Okay, so the celebrities are of course the morons.
The celebrities are the people who say the quiet part out loud.
It ended with some fairly ironic stuff last night because there was one sports writer, I think it was an NBA writer, who had written that looting and rioting, that's just the natural consequence of a racist country.
And then the looters and rioters came to his neighborhood and started trying to break in to the gated neighborhood where he lives.
And he's like, where are the police?
Okay, you can't have it both ways.
Members of the media, though, we're doing the yeoman's work of trying to connect the rioting and the looting to the protests.
And this is complicity in violence.
Trying to connect people who are committing heinous acts of violence and evil with people who are protesting is not helping the protesters, and it is making excuses for people who are doing evil things.
It's truly incredible.
Lester Holt did this, and honestly, I expected more of Lester Holt.
He did a whole bit last night in which he suggested that people looting and rioting were involved in a primal scream of pain.
The expressions I saw on some of the faces when people were stealing TVs was not primal scream of pain.
There were people who were expressing pain in these protests, but the conflation between that and burning cop cars is not clear to me.
Here's Lester Holt last night.
Pick your emotion.
Chances are it was represented in these jumbled images from America's streets.
Rage.
Hate.
Disappointment.
Emptiness.
Hopelessness.
And so much fear.
It's hard to comprehend that this was about a singular event.
No matter how horrific, this explosion of raw passion seeming to come from a place far deeper, a primal scream from a country that may just be fed up.
Okay, so again, the attempt to conflate all of these activities is really a disservice to the protesters, but it's a disservice to America, too, because the underlying argument that Lester Holt is making here is the same as the rest of the media today, which is that the riots and the looting and the protests, they're all coming from the same place, and that is people are fed up with America as it stands.
America is innately evil.
And America, if people get mad and people tear things down, well, that's just the way things go.
Spike Lee basically made this explicit in an interview with Don Lemon last night.
Again, I don't know why Spike Lee is on TV talking about stuff.
He's a film director.
I'm not sure what his level of expertise in any of this is.
So here is Spike Lee with Don Lemon last night basically excusing rioting and looting.
Can I just read something from someone who I highly respect and watching our conversation about condoning violence?
And they said the answer to aren't you condoning violence is no, but I don't know what is a proportional response to mass murder.
Spike Lee.
400 years.
We've been killed 400 years.
OK, to equate what is happening in the United States to black people right now with 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow is just disgusting.
It's disgusting.
It's morally disgusting.
It's historically ignorant.
It's ridiculous on every level.
And that's the sort of crap that's being promoted.
And by the way, when you say no but, as everybody knows, what matters in that sentence is everything after the but.
And when you're excusing rioting and looting, well, you know, it's bad.
But, but, what's the proportional response to slavery?
Slavery formally ended in the United States in 1865.
The Civil Rights Act was passed in the United States in 1965.
The, the, the 64-65.
The basic notion that Americans in 2020, black Americans in 2020, are in any way similarly situated to slaves or black Americans living under Jim Crow is absolute sheer crap.
But it is the media's attempt to basically suggest that nothing has changed, that this is 1968.
Cornel West, who's been saying this all along, he suggested that America is a failed social experiment.
This does lay bare a lot of the talk that is put forward by the media.
People who are, you wanna forward riots, you wanna forward violence?
Suggest that America is a failed social experiment, that America is nothing more than an agglomeration of random interests who are attempting to gain leverage and power over each other.
And so however people attempt to gain leverage and power, Well, it's a dog-eat-dog world, man.
Here's what Cornel West had to say about America as a failed social experiment.
If it is, by the way, if America is a failed social experiment, there's nothing more to talk about.
There's no more republic.
There's no more voting.
It's useless.
As we'll see, by the way, there are some Democrats who are not saying this kind of stuff.
People like, for example, Barack Obama, who actually put out a Medium post today condemning the violence and making a stark distinction between the violence and what people are protesting for.
I may disagree with him on what people are protesting for, but at least he's condemning the violence.
You're not getting any of that from some members of the media.
And also, the notion that rioting and looting, yeah, we condemn those, but all white Americans are racist and America is a racist system.
When you tell people for years, for decades, that they are living under the boot of a racist, jackbooted system, then violence does become predictable.
It does become predictable.
Which is why maybe you should stop telling the lie that America is a racist, jackbooted system in 2020.
Not in 1960.
Not in 1860.
In 2020.
Here is Cornel West suggesting America is a failed experiment.
I think we are witnessing America as a failed social experiment.
And what I mean by that is that the history of black people for over 200 and some years in America has been looking at America's failure.
It's capitalist economy could not generate and deliver in such a way that people could live lives of decency.
The nation state, it's criminal justice system, it's legal system could not generate protection of rights and liberties.
So here we are, America's evil terror town.
Van Jones goes even further.
He says all white people, even the most well-intentioned white people, have a virus in their brain where they don't recognize racism, which suggests it's going to be kind of difficult to live in a republic, is it not?
This kind of suggests the end of the country, does it not?
Here's Van Jones suggesting just that.
It's not the racist white person who's in the Ku Klux Klan that we have to worry about.
It's the white, liberal Hillary Clinton supporter walking her dog in Central Park Who would tell you right now, you know, people like that, oh, I don't see race.
Race is no guilt to me.
I see us all as the same.
I give to charities.
Even the most liberal, well-intentioned white person has a virus in his or her brain that can be activated at an instant.
And so what you're seeing now is a curtain falling away.
You can't have a country this way.
This is the end of the country.
It is.
What Van Jones is talking about, what Cornel West is talking about, what Spike Lee and Don Lemon are talking about, that's the end of the country.
What Charles Blow is talking about in the New York Times.
He has an article today, again, using the riots and the looting as self-justificatory, that they justify themselves.
He has a piece, Charles Blow, awful columnist, he says, destructive power of despair.
The protests are not necessarily about Floyd's killing in particular, but about the savagery and carnage that his death represents.
He says, So now he's just openly justifying looting and rioting.
He says, The people involved in the Ahmaud Arbery case are in jail right now.
That Central Park lady was fired from her job.
What the hell are you talking about?
He says this all breeds despair, simmering below the surface, a building up in need of release, to be let out, to lash out, to explode.
So now he's just openly justifying riots.
As protests and rioting have swept across the country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis, it's evident that America has failed to learn that lesson yet again.
The protests are not necessarily about Floyd's killing in particular, says Charles Blow, but about the savagery and carnage that his death represents.
The nearly unchecked ability of the state to act with impunity in the oppression of black bodies and the taking of black life.
Now, from this rhetoric, you would think that literally the 30 million black Americans are living in everyday danger from the police, and that thousands of black people are being mowed down by the police indiscriminately every day in the United States.
All of that is not true.
It has not been true for a very long time.
The notion that every black person in America is under dire threat by law enforcement is a lie.
It is a statistical lie.
It is not true.
And people feel things.
That doesn't mean the feelings are necessarily justified.
And it certainly doesn't mean that the feelings that lead to rioting and looting are the same as the feelings that lead to protesting.
So there's a two-step that's being done here.
One is that America, that any instance of brutality is an instance of racism.
It's actually a three-step process.
One is, any brutality is racism.
Two is, any racism can be attributed to the entire system.
And three is, if you attribute racism to the entire system, we cannot expect you to go out and vote.
We can't expect you to confine your activities to the legal.
Sooner or later, it's going to burst out and you're going to start burning cop cars and breaking into Target.
So Charles Blow says it's an anger over feeling powerless, stalked and hunted, degraded and dehumanized.
It's an anger that the scenes keep repeating themselves until one feels exhausted and wrung out.
It's an anger over people feeling, over feeling that people in power on every level are utterly unresponsible to people's calls for fundamental change and equal justice under law and equal treatment by it.
What is the call for change?
Don't just say institutional racism.
Give me a policy I can back.
I've said, you want to talk about changing qualified immunity for police officers?
We can have a talk about that.
We'd have to change the police union contracts.
You know who's been against public sector unions longer than any of these liberals?
People on the right.
But you want to talk about how America is endemically racist and everybody has a white virus in the brain like Van Jones?
Forget it.
There's no republic to be had there.
And you know what else is not a solution?
What's not a solution is the notion that every white person is guilty for the sins of America's past.
That's not a solution either.
That's a recipe for destroying the country.
So we saw this.
There was a rally last night.
It was put out.
I'm not sure exactly where this was.
But it was put out by a filmmaker and photographer named Shaggy, and it is a video of white Americans kneeling down in front of black Americans.
Kneeling down in front of them.
And this person tweeted, a powerful show of unity and support.
The white community kneeling down in front of the black community to ask for forgiveness after years of racism.
Really?
Is this Bill Conner and George Wallace kneeling down?
Or are these a bunch of people who are not racist, kneeling in front of black people because they're white?
I am not in favor of anybody of any race kneeling down in favor of anybody of any other race on the basis of racial identity.
America is built on the notion that individuals are individuals.
The greatest sins in America's history have come from treating people as members of groups, as opposed to treating them as individuals.
And yet what is being stumped for here is the notion that America is indeed a country in which groups vie for power, and that the only way that any sort of change can be achieved is if one group gives up power to another group, as opposed to equal justice under law, individuals treated with that justice, and fundamental human decency being the basis of all of it.
Now, here's the amazing thing.
Here's the amazing thing.
There's actual unity about the things that I'm saying, but it's being obscured by politicians who are afraid to say all of these things.
There's unanimity about most of this.
And then we'll get to the politicians.
The truth is that Floyd's girlfriend, for example, Floyd's girlfriend came out yesterday and his family pleading for peace, asking for peace, asking for the rioting and the looting to stop, even while Charles Bull is excusing it, even while Don Lemon is excusing it, even while Lester Holt is conflating the violence and the protests.
Floyd's family is saying, please stop looting, please stop rioting.
This is not what George Floyd was about.
Please stop it.
You can't fight fire with fire, you know?
Everything just burns.
And I've seen it all day today.
People hate.
They're hating.
They're hating, they're hating, they're mad.
And he would not want that.
He wouldn't.
He wouldn't.
He would give grace.
He would.
I stand on that, that today he would still give grace to those people.
Okay, and you've seen this from police officers, too, who are going out of their way.
Police officers in areas across the country are going out of their way to demonstrate.
You know who got hurt by police brutality?
You know who gets hurt by police brutality?
Among various other targets, aside from people who are actually hurt directly by police brutality.
The good cops who are lumped in with bad cops are hurt by police brutality, too.
I've talked to enough cops across the country to know.
I can't find a single cop who will defend anything that happened in that video with George Floyd.
Really, those police officers are fired and one's in jail.
Bellevue PD, right, over in Seattle, sat and talked with the protesters.
Police want to work with communities.
This is what they do every single day.
To treat them all in lump, like the media is, as just the arms keepers for a racist society is disgusting and unjustified.
There's a Bellevue PD over in Seattle talking with protesters yesterday.
The officers that were involved need to go to prison for justice for George Floyd and the entire African-American community.
We're with you.
We are with you.
We are not against you.
I'm telling you, the vast majority of law enforcement, and I can tell you 100% here in Bellevue, when we saw it, we condemned the behavior.
We make sure that that is never going to happen here.
We embrace all of you.
God bless you.
How are we doing it?
Let me tell you.
Let him talk.
OK, like police, and this was, by the way, these were the scenes that they were not showing on the national news.
That's only on local news.
Right.
In New Jersey, police started marching with the protesters because guess who doesn't like police brutality?
Police officers who do the right thing.
Like, this is where the hope of the country is.
The hope of the country is in the idea that yes, we are all at root decent, but there's a whole cast of people out there who want to portray America as divided between the indecent and the decent.
And the indecent are nearly everybody in America, and the decent are the victims of that unjust, terrible America.
This is over in New Jersey, the police marching with the protesters.
There was an officer in Fargo, North Dakota, holding a sign with the protesters.
Over in Santa Cruz, the police were taking a knee.
Now listen, I don't like the taking a knee routine, because again, I objected to it when it was Kaepernick, I object to it when it's these protesters, I object to it when it's cops.
Taking a knee suggests that all of America is indicated in this situation.
I do not think that is true.
And I think that if you took a poll of Americans, 99.999% of them want this officer in prison, including 99.999% of cops.
By the way, people in the black community are not in favor of the rioting and the looting.
Only people in the media who get to sit in their cushy mansions are in favor of the rioting and the looting.
Most members of the black community are not in favor of this rioting and looting.
The Atlanta mayor, right, who is black, said yesterday to the rioters, go home.
You're not doing any good for the country.
You're not doing any good for any cause here.
You're not doing any good for anything.
This city that has had a legacy of black mayors and black police chiefs And people who care about this city where more than 50% of the business owners in Metro Atlanta are minority business owners.
If you care about this city, then go home and pray that somebody like Reverend Beasley will come and talk to you and give you some instructions on what a protest should look like and how you effectuate change in America.
Good for her.
That's Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Atlanta mayor.
The St.
Paul mayor, who also is black, he said people who burn businesses are not driven by love of community.
These are local leaders who understand that this is not the right thing to do.
Now, we're going to contrast some of this leadership with the leadership that you've seen from white mayors of major cities like Los Angeles and New York, which is absolutely cowardly and pusillanimous.
Here's the St.
Paul mayor saying people who burn businesses aren't driven by love of community or by any cause.
They're doing this because they are bad people.
What we know is there's some people in our community, there's some people in our streets who are driven there by a passion for our community, by a love for our community, and by a deep desire to never see the painful loss of life, like the killing, like the video of the killing of George Floyd that we all saw this week.
And then there's folks in our streets who are there to burn down our black-owned barbershops, To burn down our family-owned businesses, our immigrant-owned restaurants, and it is very clear to me that those people are not driven by a love for our community, and there's no way you can argue that those actions are designed to produce a better future for our community.
Quite the opposite.
This is exactly right.
Why were Democrats— By the way, virtually all of this is happening in Democrat-run major cities.
Virtually all of it is happening in Democrat-run major cities.
And if you're a decent mayor, you understand that law-abiding citizens in your city—black, white, green, brown, Democrat, Republican— need to be protected from people who are committing acts of violence.
And you are doing no favors to anybody By allowing this to go on.
But that's not what you have seen from Democratic politicians who are so interested in the intersectional gain to be made by basically kowtowing to all of this, that they're not willing to say anything remotely true.
It's pretty amazing.
Joe Biden took 48 hours, 48 hours, to condemn the violence.
He put out a statement early on Sunday morning, very, very carefully worded statement, saying, these last few days have laid bare that we are a nation furious at injustice.
Every person of conscience can understand the rawness of the trauma people of color experience in this country, from the daily indignities to the extreme violence, like the horrific killing of George Floyd.
Now, once again, this is underscoring the sort of CNN, Charles Blow dynamic.
America is a deeply racist, evil country.
Okay, and at the same time we all condemn it.
So like, which is it?
Are Americans angry at racism or are Americans complicit in racism?
Joe Biden can't make up his mind.
He says, protesting such brutality is right and necessary.
It's an utterly American response.
Burning down communities and needless destruction is not.
Violence that endangers lives is not.
Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not.
The act of protesting should never be allowed to overshadow the reason we protest.
It should not drive people away from the just cause that protest is meant to advance.
And then he just goes on in this vein.
It took him 48 hours to do that.
48 hours to give that sort of mild condemnation.
And then, by the way, you want to benefit Trump.
This will benefit Trump pretty strongly.
Campaign staffers for Biden were donating to a group in Minnesota bailing out people who are violating the law.
Andrew Bates, a Biden campaign spokesperson, told the news service that Biden opposes the institution of cash bail as a modern-day debtor's prison.
They're bailing out all of these people who had committed crimes.
This is what you're seeing from Democratic politicians.
You're seeing it from some Democratic administrators in various cities.
The Raleigh, North Carolina Police Department head said, we're not even going to defend property.
We're just going to allow people to go and burn the property.
This is very reminiscent of the riots in Baltimore back in 2014, when the mayor said that they were going to give the protesters and rioters and looters space to burn.
Okay, so meanwhile, Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York, again, he doesn't have the balls to say what the mayor of Atlanta or the mayor of St.
Paul said, so instead, he says, I'm the problem.
Bill de Blasio's the problem.
I acknowledge my white privilege.
Okay, as opposed to, this is a major American city and we will not allow lawlessness to prevail and we are working hard every day to stop police brutality and make sure that the law is enforced.
Instead, we get Bill de Blasio saying, I am white privilege and I understand my own privilege.
How is this helpful in any way?
The answer is it's not.
It's just part of the program to delegitimize the country as a whole.
We can't go on like this, and I'm talking to everyone, but I'm particularly talking to white New Yorkers to say we can't go on like this.
The entire nation watches George Floyd killed in broad daylight by someone who's supposed to protect us with no concern at all.
His killer seemed to have no emotion about the fact that he was killing a black man as if there was no value in that man.
And unfortunately, that's what the history of this country has taught too many people.
And we have to stop.
Okay, like, why are white New Yorkers... Question.
Why should white New Yorkers have to learn that lesson?
Are white New Yorkers going out and killing black people in the streets?
Did I miss that part, Bill de Blasio?
Or are you just a terrible person?
Also, if you're going to talk about the case, you might as well, you know, stick to the evidence of the case.
It is a case of police brutality.
There has yet to be brought any evidence that this was an element of racism.
You could try to impute racism.
Maybe it was racism.
We don't know yet.
But the idea that the history of America is white people not caring about black people and therefore George Floyd is dead.
He said, by the way, that if George Floyd were white, he'd be alive today.
I have no idea where he is coming up with that evidence.
Really, a shred of evidence there would be a nice thing.
But Bill de Blasio is a garbage mayor.
He should resign.
He's horrible at his job.
Speaking of garbage mayors, my mayor, Eric Garcetti, he tweeted out over the weekend that he wasn't going to call for the National Guard because that would just be escalating things.
And then, of course, he immediately came out and called for the National Guard because it turns out he's not in control of his own city because he was too busy cowering before protesters and then really cowering before rioters and looters.
I spoke with the governor earlier today.
This is not a city.
This is not 1992.
We're not going to evoke what happened then and call in the National Guard.
But that's also on all of us.
Let's just all de-escalate.
We've trained police officers to learn more and more about de-escalation, and we still have more to do.
But all of us as human beings can de-escalate.
You can escalate without a weapon.
You can provoke without a baton.
So let us all de-escalate and know.
I do not anticipate in any way needing to call in a National Guard.
We got this, Los Angeles.
Let's show our better angels.
Yeah, and then five hours later he was calling in the National Guard.
He literally said, like, hours later, the California National Guard is being deployed to Los Angeles overnight to support our local response to maintain peace and safety on the streets of our city.
Yeah, it turns out that basically preparing to take it from rioters and looters and begging them to show the better angels of their nature is not a particularly productive move.
It's just, it's amazing.
It's amazing, amazing stuff.
Our politicians are so cowardly.
And speaking of cowardly, our corporations are similarly cowardly.
So corporations have been putting out statements to try and demonstrate that they are on board with the social justice arguments that America is deeply racist and terrible.
The idea being, of course, that if they virtue signal that America is deeply racist and terrible, then maybe they'll be left alone.
That's the way this works in corporate America too often these days, is that it's not enough to simply, like, I don't know why you need to hear from corporate leaders about the killing of George Floyd.
I wasn't aware that corporate leaders were making police policy.
Like, if you want to on your individual capacity, that's fine.
But seriously, I don't really care about Target's policy on anything.
Target is a store where I buy things.
When did it become the idea that Target is supposed to issue a corporate statement on every element of politics?
Like, they're allowed to?
I'm just pointing out the fact that it is a very odd thing that so many members of these various institutions now feel the need to virtue signal so that they will, what, not be targeted, not be boycotted?
That's the idea here.
So you had, for example, Peloton put out a letter suggesting that they are standing with Black Lives Matter The whitest company on earth, standing with Black Lives Matter.
And they talked about donating $500,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
So basically, don't yell at us.
We're a corporation.
Don't break our windows over this thing.
Now, what does Peloton have to do with any of this?
The answer is nothing.
Was George Floyd killed with a Peloton?
He was not.
Did Peloton have anything to do with this?
The answer is no.
If the CEO wants to march, he should go march.
If the individuals want to go march, they should go march.
But the fact that every corporation now feels the need to write emails to the entire public at large, signaling their politics on questions as to whether America is endemically racist.
The pressure tactics that are being brought to bear on corporations and the willingness of corporations to go along with it, it's pretty incredible.
It's pretty incredible.
Meanwhile, President Trump is involved here, but he's only involved apparently, like, kind of tangentially.
The President of the United States does not seem to be supremely involved in all this.
Politicians want to blame him for all of this, obviously.
This is what you've seen from politicians.
So, the Attorney General pointed out that there were some Antifa-like tactics here, that Antifa is involved here.
Media immediately came out to defend Antifa and pretend that Antifa is not a group that exists here, as the Department of Justice had explaining, that we are seeing some organized terror-like activities here.
In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchic and left Okay, meanwhile, the president was tweeting out about all of this and he's basically been on Twitter.
He had a speech on Saturday in which he said he stands against violence and mayhem, but mostly he's been on Twitter.
So he tweeted out, here was a little bit of his speech talking about violence and mayhem.
Every citizen in every community has the right to be safe in their workplace, safe in their homes, and safe in our city streets.
This is the sacred right of all Americans that I am totally determined to defend and will defend.
My administration will always stand against violence, mayhem, and disorder.
Okay, now, that's good.
He should be saying then, he should be assuring Americans that they're not going to be confined to their homes for the foreseeable future because of ridiculous and cowardly local leadership.
But President Trump has basically mostly been on Twitter fulminating about Antifa.
And I'm sorry, Twitter is not a substitute for being president.
So President Trump tweeted out, Something along the lines of he wants to.
He said the United States of America will be designating Antifa as a terrorist organization.
People cheer.
Okay, effectually under American law, you can't do that.
There are terror laws.
They generally apply to foreign-based terror organizations because you run into serious problems with prosecuting people on First Amendment bases for a quote-unquote domestic terrorism other than laws that already exist, like attempt to do damage, attempt to do harm across state lines.
He's been tweeting out things like law and order in all capital letters.
He's been tweeting out About how crossing state lines to incite violence is a federal crime.
Liberal governors and mayors must get much tougher on federal government, or the federal government will step in and do what has to be done.
That includes using the unlimited power of our military in many arrests.
Thank you.
Like, all of this is, like, I don't have a problem with anything Trump is tweeting.
I'm just wondering, like, he's the president.
It would be good for him to do something about this.
Like, what actual activity is happening?
Again, he's right, but this is ineffective.
This is ineffective.
Now, what's hilarious about this is that the ineffective response from Trump, which has been mainly just tweeting stuff, is blamed by the media for all of this.
So it's always Trump's fault.
It's America's fault.
It's Trump's fault.
It's never the fault of rioters and looters who want to steal the TV.
It's never the fault of people who just want to burn stuff down.
It's not Antifa's fault.
In fact, Joy Reid on MSNBC was out full-on defending Antifa over the weekend.
She tweeted out, What's weird is that if you spelled out what the acronym for this loose movement called Antifa stands for and rewrite Trump's tweet accordingly, it would read, The United States of America will be designating anti-fascists as a terrorist organization.
Okay, if you're stupid enough that you believe Antifa is anti-fascist in actual practice as opposed to just name, it's because you are a complete moron and you were dropped on your head as a baby.
That's like believing that the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea is an actual Democratic People's Republic.
Just because you call yourself anti-fascist doesn't mean that you are not a fascist.
Antifa shuts down free speech, they beat people for wearing the wrong hat, they attempt to shut down... I mean, I've been... When I spoke in Berkeley, they showed up and they attempted to shut down the speech.
Like, this is what Antifa does.
Antifa is garbage.
And the fact that members of the media are willing to defend them, it just demonstrates where the media's sympathies lie.
One MSNBC contributor said, we are now on the verge of Trump designating his enemies, enemies of the state!
He's gonna crack down, he's gonna violate their rights.
Like right now, I saw last night that the World War II memorial, the week after Memorial Day was defaced by Antifa.
I mean with the actual anarchist symbols and everything.
And yet we have MSNBC contributors suggesting the problem here is that Trump is being mean to Antifa.
...are so loosely based and so diverse in their beliefs, from global anarchy to simple anti-Trump to supporting Black Lives Matter, that you cannot isolate a single body of political or ideological beliefs here.
So, I'm concerned that if we're not careful, this is one small step away from the President of the United States designating his political opponents as enemies of the state, as terrorists, Oh, yes, I'm sure that's what's happening here, is that he's just going to lock up everyone he disagrees with, as opposed to, you know, the people who are actually beating heads in and breaking into Target and burning police stations.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is, of course, blaming Trump.
What I love is that it's Trump.
So Trump's responsible for the rioting and the looting.
He's fanning the flames.
But if you claim that America is a deeply racist place in which one group of Americans, namely white Americans, have been systemically oppressing black Americans at the same level for 400 years, That Americans were, like, from 1619 to now, have basically acted the same way toward black Americans?
That police officers across the nation are randomly executing black men for no reason at all?
That's not fanning the flames, but if Trump says Antifa, that's fanning the flames.
Or if Trump tweets something dumb, that's what's really fanning the flames here.
It's not the generations long indoctrination in the idea that America is gravely evil, that America's constitution is rooted in racism and slavery and evil, that America's Declaration of Independence is a lie.
It's not that stuff that's fanning the flames.
What's really fanning the flames is that Trump is president, which is weird because I remember race riots in the United States in 2014 when Donald Trump was not president.
Here's Nancy Pelosi.
President of the United States should be a unifying force in our country.
We have seen that with Democratic and Republican presidents all along.
They have seen their responsibility to be the president of the United States, to unify our country and not to fuel the flame.
Okay, same Nancy Pelosi said that the case in Minnesota was a case of an execution.
Was an actual execution.
It wasn't a case of manslaughter.
It wasn't a case of assault.
It was a case of an execution.
Same Nancy Pelosi.
But Trump is fanning the flames.
And then the D.C.
mayor came out and said Trump is hearkening back to segregation.
Why?
Because he tweeted when people were trying to break into the White House that we have vicious dogs in here.
As though Trump is actually looking up the language of Bull Connor.
He's like, I'm gonna unleash the vicious dogs against black Americans.
How about, guys, if you climb that fence, we got some stuff in here.
This is the White House.
Bad idea.
Like, do you really think... Here's the thing about Trump.
Do you think that Trump is a master of subtlety and making historical references?
Is that really what you think?
This is so stupid.
On every level it's stupid.
It's not fanning the flames for CNN to be out there basically suggesting that rioting and looting are a natural outgrowth of the evils of American racism.
But it is fanning the flames for President Trump to mention that there are dogs at the White House.
Can he play a helpful role still?
Or is it too late?
Well, I think that the president has a responsibility to help calm the nation.
And he can start by not sending divisive tweets that are meant to hearken to the segregationist past of our country.
And he can start by doing that right now.
Yes, I'm sure it was a reference to segregation when he talked about dogs.
Meanwhile, the same media are also trying to blame President Trump for COVID, right?
They're blaming him for COVID.
But if you mention that, by the way, you guys all stopped talking about COVID the minute that the protesters agreed with your generalized perception that America is evil, then you're bad.
So Susan Hennessey, who is a reporter, she tweeted out that, I can't believe that President Trump is going to blame this for an uptick in COVID.
Well, if there's an uptick in COVID, it seems like maybe tens of thousands of people gathering and shouting In close quarters with one another, without wearing masks, that might be a problem.
Susan Hennessey is the Brookings senior fellow and CNN national security and legal analyst.
She tweeted out, as coronavirus numbers climb from here, I think it is a safe assumption that Trump will now attempt to blame these protests for the spread rather than his own inadequate and incompetent response.
I mean, if there is a spread from the protest, it seems like that might be a good thing to point out that maybe the protest, like, amazing how COVID-19 was only ended as soon as the media found a shinier object.
As soon as the media found a shinier object, namely, we like these protests because they say America's bad, then I guess COVID-19 is not a worry anymore.
And if you point out that COVID-19 is still a worry, gathering in major numbers and screaming at the top of your lungs, with your spittle flying everywhere, which is what happens when you scream, whether you're singing in a church or screaming at a protest, then you're very, very, very bad.
Then you're very terrible.
our media and our politicians, this class, and then they say, let us protect you.
Why would anybody need to protect themselves in the United States of America?
Yeah, you've been doing a bang-up job.
Really, really well done.
All righty, well, we'll be back here a little bit later today with a lot of additional content.
This stuff is unfolding in real time.
Stay safe out there and demand more of your politicians and your government.
Demand more of your politicians and your government and demand more of people who suggest that America is endemically evil.
Decent people agree on all of these things.
And if you suggest that other people don't agree with you because you don't like the color of their skin, And that is likely because you are the indecent person in this particular situation.
We'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
I'll be on All Access Live tonight, or we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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