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June 2, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:06:23
The End Of America? | Ep. 1022
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Time Text
Rioters loot, criminals run over, police officers with cars, and President Trump declares he'll unleash the military if chaos continues.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.com.
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Well, chaos continued last night because, once again, our government has failed to protect you, the law-abiding, tax-paying citizen.
It is apparently better to be a rioter and looter in major American cities than it is to be a law-abiding citizen.
If you were law-abiding, you were locked in your home.
At sunset last night in Los Angeles, curfew went into effect at variously either 5 p.m.
or 6 p.m.
last night.
And apparently, this is all okay.
It's all okay because, after all, the protests are legitimate and their outrage is legitimate.
Now, you can believe that protesters who are exercising their First Amendment rights in law-abiding ways are doing something perfectly American.
You can even agree with the agenda of the protesters with regard to police brutality.
And even if you disagree on their broader agenda, which is that America is endemically racist and that America has to be Remade from top to bottom.
You can still agree that obviously them out marching, that's an aspect of Americanism that is quite good.
Okay, but that does not mean that you have to believe that rioting and looting ought to be allowed to roam our major cities.
And the attempt by the media to conflate the rioters and the looters and the protesters is absolutely insane.
They're doing it for political purposes.
And it is hard not to believe that some members of the media are not thrilled with the amount of conflict that is being generated here.
Because how else could you possibly explain the takes that are happening in the media?
I mean, it's nearly impossible to explain without some sense that people are excited by the possibility that this is going to be the tip of the spear in breaking down the old ways in America, in remaking America in some new unspecified way.
So last night, here's how events went.
You can, again, the media coverage of this is absolutely insane.
Last night, the big story was not President Trump going to a church.
Last night, the big story was that there was mass looting in New York City.
Mass looting in New York City.
There were police officers shot or run over around the country.
Okay, that is the big story this morning.
In the valley in Los Angeles, there were people who were ransacking Van Nuys.
In New York City, people were literally just taking cars to stores, hopping out of cars, breaking into the stores, and stealing everything while the cops were being limited by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who's just terrible at his job in every possible way that it is possible to be terrible at his job.
According to the Washington Post, four police officers were shot early on Tuesday in St.
Louis.
Police said in a tweet, all four officers remained conscious and breathing before being taken away from the scene.
The St.
Louis Metropolitan Police Department said the officers were taken to a nearby hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
They were standing near a line, all of a sudden they felt pain, said St.
Louis Police Chief John Hayden.
He said two officers were shot in the leg, one was shot in the foot, one was shot in the arm.
Police had not identified a suspected shooter or made any arrests as of early Tuesday.
Also, there was a large peaceful protest apparently in St.
Louis before 200 people started involving themselves in break-ins and looting and throwing rocks and explosives at police officers and throwing gasoline at police officers.
So everything is apparently hunky-dory.
Everything is going really well.
Meanwhile, In New York City, an NYPD cop was attacked and there is tape of it.
You can see it happening.
By the way, there was a big controversy in New York because apparently a member of NYPD drew his gun on somebody and was fired yesterday and then the entire tape came out and it turns out that somebody was throwing bricks at one of the police officers who was standing right next to the guy.
So we have tape of this NYPD cop being attacked.
We also have tape of Buffalo cops being run over by a car.
So everything is going great, guys.
Everything is going really well.
Here's the thing about civil disobedience.
It's supposed to be civil.
Okay, civil disobedience means you are not going to pay attention to traffic laws.
It does not mean that you start throwing bricks at officers or throwing gasoline at officers or breaking storefronts to grab a pair of shoes.
That's not what any of this is about.
The looting in New York City was extraordinarily widespread last night.
I mean, it was very, very widespread.
We're going to get to the updates from New York City and Andrew Cuomo, your illustrious governor, a garbage heap of a governor, a terrible, terrible governor who's responsible.
I mean, I have a solution for Andrew Cuomo.
Maybe we should throw the looters into old age homes.
Maybe that's the solution.
He's throwing people with COVID-19 into old age homes.
Apparently the solution is to throw all problems into old age homes in New York City.
So maybe the governor of New York can do that as well.
We'll get to what's happening in New York and what's happening in LA, and we'll get to the media coverage of all of this, plus all of the controversy surrounding President Trump momentarily.
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Okay, so the looting was widespread in New York City last night.
It didn't matter that Andrew Cuomo had announced the first New York City curfew since 1943.
Since 1943, which was in the middle of World War II.
Okay, so we had the first, I mean, New York City has been the site of riots before and He announced a full curfew.
He's an idiot, so he announced the curfew at 11 p.m., which makes perfect sense because what you really want is like five hours of darkness to set in before he actually declared the curfew.
Genius move here by Andrew Cuomo.
And what was the predictable result, as we'll see?
People running around in their cars and just looting shops and then running away.
In New York City, I spoke to the mayor.
the looting was widespread.
Nothing says, let's get back to business after COVID-19.
Quite like, let's shut down all businesses in the country, particularly in New York City, and then, just on the verge of reopening, let's let looters go in and just smash and grab everything.
After all, insurance will cover it or something.
Here's Andrew Cuomo, your garbage governor of New York.
In New York City, I spoke to the mayor.
There's going to be a curfew in New York City that we think could be helpful.
And, uh, more importantly, there is going to be an increase in the force in New York City.
Uh, there were about 4,000 officers on duty, uh, last night.
Uh, there'll be double that tonight, about 8,000.
It's not a question of needing more personnel in New York City.
He's so bad at this.
So you issue a curfew order for 11pm.
Well, it turns out people were out on the streets before 11pm, and here's what some of that looked like.
Here's some tape of the looting that was happening in New York City.
You can see people just walking right into these stores, and in the background you can see that store that is being broken into, a giant crowd of people.
Do these look like people who are deeply disturbed about the death of George Floyd, or who give two damns about George Floyd, actually?
Does it look like people who are desperately protesting police brutality, or does it look like a great opportunity to grab yourself a pair of shoes or something?
Okay, and then you saw this last night.
Aldo was being broken into because Aldo obviously killed George Floyd.
Aldo is police brutality writ large.
What you're seeing, by the way, is corporations all over the United States today who are engaging in what they call Blackout Day, which is an attempt to buy some sort of respite from the looters and rioters.
You saw this all over the Sherman Oaks Valley area.
People boarding up their windows in expectations of rioters and looters and writing on the boards things like, BLM, we love George Floyd.
Guess what, guys?
Ain't gonna save you.
It ain't gonna save you.
And, by the way, I would assume that no one is in favor of George Floyd dying.
But the idea that you're going to buy some sort of mercy from rioters and looters assumes that the rioters and looters give two craps about George Floyd, which they do not.
And they're not attempting to say any differently.
It's amazing.
The media's willingness to conflate three groups of people, people who are protesting, people who are rioting and looting in Antiva, is unbelievable.
It's unbelievable.
So they can have the dramatic footage, and so they can suggest that America is on the verge of civil war, and so they can suggest that protesters are the ones who are breaking in, and people can't be contained.
Their anger just can't be contained.
Alternatively, there are a bunch of people who take advantage of bad situations in order to riot and loot.
And the veneer between civilization and non-civilization is incredibly thin.
I mean, I think that's what we are seeing in most of America's major cities over the past week or so, is that the veneer is really, really thin.
That as soon as the expectation goes away that you will be punished for violating a law, Then people just start violating the law.
Okay, and by the way, people who are protesting believe this is true about police officers, that if police officers with impunity can harm people, then you will get more police officers harming people.
I think that as a basic set of incentive structures, that's correct, is one of the reasons why I'm not in favor of qualified immunity for police officers, which is a doctrine created by the Supreme Court in 1982, and basically suggesting that even if you work outside the scope of your authority, you should be granted some sort of immunity.
But the same logic apparently does not apply to, you know, violations of law on a daily level.
It's been building up in places like New York and Seattle and LA for a long time as the mayors of these cities basically declared that low-level violations of law are totally fine.
And then when it turns into outright rioting and looting, then they just let it go for a week.
They just let it go for a full week.
Okay, so what do the rioters and looters want?
Well, why don't we ask one of the looters?
So here's a looter who was arrested yesterday in Los Angeles talking to a member of Local Fox and explaining what exactly he was doing rioting and looting.
Why you out here?
Uh, man, period, point blank.
Just like all my real ones trying to do, trying to get some money.
Explanation, that's it.
Trying to get some dough, that's it.
Just out here for the money?
Yeah, pretty much.
Anything to do with the protests?
What happened in Minnesota?
I mean, a little bit to do with that too.
You feel me?
But not really.
I'm out here for the dough.
Was it worth it?
Obviously not, I'm right here hemmed up.
Yeah, y'all see it.
Man, if y'all gonna get some money, do it right.
Don't do it the dumb way, do it the smart way.
So, that's all, good times.
I'm just, I'm very, very pleased that the media have decided to wrap all of this up in a ball and then declare that America is guilty for all of it.
America writ large.
If you're going to blame people, see, here's the thing.
If you want to solve problems, you have to be specific in your solutions.
And you have to be specific in the person who you think is the problem.
But this entire conversation about police brutality has been absolutely non-specific.
Not only has it been nonspecific on police brutality, it's been nonspecific on America more generally.
As we will see, the media basically just wanted to declare that America is racist and evil and guilty and terrible.
It's why you saw the founder of Black Entertainment Television come out yesterday and call for $14 trillion in slavery reparations in order to stop the rioting and the looting and the unrest and all the rest of this.
You're going to have to explain why it is that a white person who's never done anything racist is supposed to kneel in front of black people, as happened at some of the protests yesterday, in order to demonstrate their fealty to the idea that America is inherently racist.
Why is that?
Why does that fix the problem?
Why does that fix the problem?
Why is a non-racist person being being shamed into doing penance for a crime they didn't commit?
How is that?
How is that fixing any problem at all?
Again, we should all be in solidarity with the idea that what happened to George Floyd is terrible.
We're all on the same side.
You can't read the transcript and not see it as an atrocity.
The transcript of that incident is awful.
It is awful.
The transcript is people around the office are saying to him, get off that guy, he can't breathe, for like eight minutes and him not getting up.
Is there anyone in America who doesn't read that transcript and think that's awful?
But according to the media, of course, we are deeply divided over George Floyd.
Even though we are not divided over George Floyd.
Even though no one is in favor of police brutality.
No one of whom I am aware is in favor of police brutality.
But guess what?
It ain't police brutality when the police go arrest rioters and looters.
And the divided mind the media seem to have about police officers.
Why aren't the police officers protecting us and at the same time police officers are racist and vicious and cruel?
It doesn't work that way.
Okay, so, meanwhile, the situation at the White House got very contentious yesterday.
It got very contentious because the President of the United States started going after the governors, and he was pointing out quite correctly that governors across the nation have failed to perform their most basic duty, protecting the citizenry.
You must protect the citizenry.
This is your chief duty.
John Locke suggested, not to get into too basic philosophy here, John Locke suggested that in a state of nature that you have rights that pre-exist government and the reason that you form a government is to protect those rights, not to violate those rights, to protect those rights.
It is tyranny for the government to lock you in your home and tell you that as a law-abiding citizen you're supposed to pay taxes and obey the law and now you're locked in your home so we can let the rioters and looters run free on the streets.
That is not an aspect of a decent government.
That is an aspect of tyranny.
So President Trump had some words about that, and of course the media predictably went nuts on it.
We'll get to that in a moment.
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Alright, so President Trump, yesterday, he went off on governors on a phone call saying, why the hell aren't you locking down your states and making sure that law-abiding citizens are able to actually roam your streets?
Here's President Trump going off on governors, correctly.
You get a lot of men.
We have all the men and women that you need.
But people aren't calling them up.
You have to dominate.
If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time.
They're gonna run over you.
You're gonna look like a bunch of jerks.
You have to dominate.
And You have to arrest people, and you have to try people.
And they have to go to jail for long periods of time.
And those kids, they're all on camera.
They're wise guys.
Okay, he is correct about this.
The media were very angry.
How dare he say this to the governors?
Well, considering the governors have failed to prevent the destruction of law and order in their areas, considering that they have completely failed to do this, Trump is not wrong.
Okay, so Trump yesterday, he does a presser in the Rose Garden.
And at the same time the presser was going on, this is what became the major controversy of the day, of course.
At the same time the presser was going on, the situation in Lafayette Square, which is right adjacent to the White House, there were a bunch of protesters there, and they were being cleared with apparently smoke grenades, essentially.
They were being cleared from the area.
Now, the media later declared that President Trump had done this in order to clear the area so that he could walk over to the local church at St.
John's, which had nearly been burned down a couple of days ago for a photo op.
Well, let's just be clear about this.
According to U.S.
Park Police, they say that tear gas was never used, smoke canisters were deployed, which don't have an uncomfortable irritant to them.
This is according to Neil Augenstein over at WTOP.
The source says Park Police didn't know Trump would be walking across the park several minutes later.
Park Police say the reason the crowd was dispersed with smoke canisters is that at the moment, while officers were being pelted with water bottles, another factor was that protesters had climbed on top of the structure at the north end of Lafayette Square that had been burned the day before.
That is Park Police's side of the story.
So they're saying that basically there was indeed civil unrest, and that is why they were clearing the park.
In any case, as that was going on, President Trump spoke in the Rose Garden.
Here was President Trump saying that we're going to ensure that justice is served for George Floyd.
By the way, there's an FBI investigation going on.
The DOJ is on this particular case.
Trump has been very consistent in suggesting that he was horrified by the tape.
So here is Trump saying that, yeah, we're going to do our best to find out what happened with George Floyd, and then people will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd.
My administration is fully committed that for George and his family, justice will be served.
He will not have died in vain.
But we cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob He is exactly correct about this.
And then he says, listen, we're going to end the riots and the lawlessness.
This is not going to continue.
Here's the president yesterday in the Rose Garden on the split screen with all of the protests and riots going on around the country.
I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, including your Second Amendment rights.
Therefore, the following measures are going into effect immediately.
First, we are ending the riots and lawlessness that has spread throughout our country.
We will end it now.
And then he said, listen, if the mayors don't do it, I'm going to dispatch the military to do it.
So I'm just going to note here, the same media who are very angry at Trump for not issuing a nationwide lockdown order over COVID-19 are now saying that he's a tyrant for saying that if he has to, he will activate the military.
And he does have the legal authority to do this.
He will activate the military in order to stop rioting and looting.
So is it possible that the media just hate Trump?
I sort of get that feeling.
Here's President Trump yesterday.
A number of state and local governments have failed to take necessary action to safeguard their residents.
Innocent people have been savagely beaten Like the young man in Dallas, Texas, who was left dying on the street.
Or the woman in upstate New York, viciously attacked by dangerous thugs.
If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.
Okay, so this was horrible according to Democrats and according to the media.
This is tyranny, and as we'll see, the media reaction here is extraordinary and over-the-top and crazy.
He does have the legal authority to do this under the Insurrection Act.
The Insurrection Act has, in fact, been invoked before.
It was invoked in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots.
Now, in that case, the governor, who was then Pete Wilson, a Republican in California, asked the federal government to invoke the Insurrection Act so that the federal government could send in troops and quell the rioting that was happening in South Central Los Angeles.
Okay, but you don't actually need state permission in order to do that or a state request in order to do that.
In fact, the Insurrection Act was invoked over the objections of Governor Orval Falbus in Alabama in order to ensure that black kids could go to school in the 1950s at integrated schools.
President Eisenhower invokes the Insurrection Act.
Okay, so the Insurrection Act is generally invoked when local authorities are not doing their jobs and protecting the civil rights of their citizens.
So, the president does have the authority to do this sort of stuff.
So the president has real authority to do it.
And the president, by the way, didn't say he's going to do it.
He said, if you don't get your cities and states under control, then I will do it.
And guess what?
He should.
He should.
Because guess what?
Because you're an American taxpaying citizen.
You have civil rights.
Your civil rights are being abridged and violated when you are locked in your home so rioters and looters can roam free.
If the president has to do this, and he shouldn't have to, I mean, the fact is that mayors and governors who fail should be held politically accountable for their failures.
But does the president have the legal authority to do this?
He does.
He does have the legal authority to do this, and he was not guaranteeing he is going to.
He was saying, if you continue to let this stuff rage out of control, then I will have to.
But guess what?
Many states are starting to get this under control.
Minnesota is where this started, and the unrest has basically died down over the last three days.
Why?
Because there are now heavy boots on the ground from police.
After the governor, Tim Walz, basically activated the National Guard and told the Minneapolis mayor to stop with his nonsense and allow the police to do their jobs, it turns out that rioting and looting were basically stamped out.
So this is controversy number one regarding President Trump.
There is controversy number two regarding President Trump.
And that was the situation right after this.
So President Trump speaks at the Rose Garden.
As he is speaking, the police are firing tear gas at protesters in Lafayette Square.
So the original story is that they were doing this in order to clear the path so that President Trump could go do a photo op at St.
John's.
And the video is Disturbing, because you see the police who are advancing on a crowd of people who seem to mostly just be protesting.
Like, you don't see anybody who is committing active violence in this particular video.
And the police are dispersing smoke grenades in order to move people out of Lafayette Square.
People are saying, these are peaceful protesters, why are you dispersing them?
Why are you telling them to leave?
Well, okay, this is about 25 minutes before the mandatory curfew in the city.
Okay, but beyond that, It is also a fact of the matter that you do not necessarily, typically if you're going to have a protest, I mean just to be perfectly legally technical about this, I'm not a huge fan of clearing people who are protesting in public parks Just generally.
Not a huge fan of that.
However, if you've ever held a protest, one thing you know is that you actually have to have licensing from the police.
You're supposed to be licensed with the local authorities.
Presumably that's not what happened here.
And so the police moved them out, according to the Park Police.
Again, I'm just quoting the Park Police.
According to the Park Police, these people were moved out because people were chucking water bottles at the cops and they were...
Positioning themselves on top of burned out monuments and all the rest.
Okay, so that's that's the situation.
Then President Trump walks out and he decides to walk to the church.
We'll get to that in just one second because this became the sort of flashpoint.
Of course, the implication was that Trump had ordered the clearing out of the park in order so that he could do the sort of macho pose in front of the church.
First of all, if you are deeply troubled by the president going and if you are more troubled by the president going and posing in front of a burned out church and vowing law and order, then you are by the fact that people burned the church in the first place.
Then you are doing this wrong.
You are doing this wrong.
Whatever your feelings about the photo-op nature of this sort of thing, the fact of the matter is that if you are more disturbed about President Trump photo-opping in front of a burned-out church than you are about the fact that a cop was run over last night in Buffalo, or the fact that cops were being shot in St.
Louis, or the fact that stores were being looted around New York, or the fact that the church itself was burned like two days ago, Then it's because you hate Trump.
Truthfully.
You can be outraged at both, but you really cannot say that this is what's breaking the country.
I'm sorry, Trump clearing a park, even if that's what happened, and the park police say it isn't, but even if that's what happened, Trump clearing a park to stand in front of a church is not fascist, it is not tyranny, it is not Sandman Square, it is not on the order of anything else that is going on.
It is an actual threat to the lives and rights of American citizens.
We'll get to this in just one second.
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Okay, so, then President Trump walks over to the church.
So, the park is cleared.
President Trump walks over to the church, holding the Bible.
And there is this photo op, and he is surrounded by some of his staffers.
His chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Ivanka shows up.
Jared Kushner shows up.
Again, I'm not a photo op fan, generally.
Again, I don't like the idea that the President of the United States is supposed to be some sort of image-making symbol.
I've never liked this sort of thing.
Is this supremely outrageous that he went to stand in front of a historic church that was nearly burned to the ground by protesters last night?
I don't feel this is supremely outrageous.
Really, I don't.
He brought a Bible along with him.
Look, is it a photo op?
Obviously it's a photo op.
Of course it's a photo op.
He didn't even read anything from the Bible.
Of course it's a photo op.
I don't like these sorts of photo ops, but if the image that Americans are getting is of a president who's not going to allow churches to be burned down, then I'm kind of in favor.
If that's the image that's being put out there, a president who is not going to allow spaces to be taken over by looters and rioters, I'm kind of in favor.
That didn't stop the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, D.C.
who oversees that church from saying that she was outraged that neither she nor the rector was asked or told that they would be clearing with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.
Worth noting that this Episcopal Bishop really doesn't like President Trump in the first place, so it is worth taking that into account.
And then you have Axios reporting that certain members of the White House were not exactly thrilled with the church photo op.
One senior aide was telling people that this was an iconic moment for President Trump.
A senior White House official, though, told Axios that they were ashamed and disgusted.
Okay, whatever your reaction to President Trump standing in front of the church, Let's be real about what the actual story in America is right now.
Widespread rioting across the nation, targeting of police officers, and a president who finally is getting out of the bunker and telling people that he is going to enforce the law.
And now there better be some damn follow-up.
Because if I'm still locked in my home and you're still locked in your home a week from now because rioters and looters are running roughshod, then the president was doing empty photo ops and it means nothing.
Okay, so the president better fulfill his pledge to actually protect the citizens.
And so must mayors and governors.
This is the only reason that government was instituted, was to protect your rights in the first place.
And now the media reaction to all of this is just insane.
Insane.
So, they're pushing a couple of different notions.
One, that looting and rioting are actually good.
That they're like the Boston Tea Party.
Two, that the rioters and looters and the protesters are on the same page.
Which is not, in fact, true.
The looters are there to loot, and the protesters are there to protest, and they are not there for the same reason at all.
And then three, the reason that the rioters and the protesters are on the same page is because America is deeply, deeply evil.
So, again, this sort of process of thinking is disturbing, and it could lead to the destruction of the country.
I wrote a book all about the destruction of the country called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
It's coming out in July.
And when I wrote it, this is exactly the sort of stuff I was worried about.
And then the pandemic hit and I thought, okay, well, at least we can all come together around shared values.
Like, we don't like disease.
And even right now, I think that we should all be able to come together around certain shared values.
Like, it is bad when a police officer kneels on somebody's neck for nine minutes for no reason.
And also, rioting and looting is bad, but apparently not.
And why is that not a thing?
The reason that it is not a thing, the reason we can't come together, is because there are a group, there's a large group of people, I call them disintegrationists in my book, because they're actually for the disintegration of the country.
Disintegrationists who want to portray America as nothing more than an agglomeration of various interest groups at each other's throats constantly.
And the portrayal of America's founding principles as deeply malign and evil, the sort of 1619 project view of America, it bears fruit.
And those fruit can be seen every day in academia, they can be seen every day in the media.
The push for the complete destruction of America as a unified body politic, because our history is evil, our shared philosophy is a lie, our culture doesn't exist, our culture of rights doesn't exist, we're just a bunch of competing interest groups locked into this cage with each other.
That vision of the United States has been promulgated by the media.
It continues to be promulgated by the media.
And what's amusing is to watch, in a very dark way, what's amusing is to watch as politicians on the left try to capture that sentiment and then say, and if you just vote us in, we'll solve that problem.
That is not a solvable problem.
It is not a solvable problem.
Once you suggest that America is corrupt through and through, that America, racism is in our DNA, as Barack Obama suggested.
Once you suggest that America is incurably vicious, Then no vote is going to change that.
What you really need is dissolution of the country.
And by the way, any attempt to cram down a fundamental change from the top is going to go without the consent of the vast majority of Americans who actually sort of like the country.
That's what's going to lead to more of the country breaking apart.
I would be, I'm bewildered and saddened and honestly like it brings you to the verge of tears when you think that the greatest edifice for human freedom in the history of the world, for human freedom and prosperity, the greatest edifice ever, the philosophical underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are being abrogated and thrown out in favor of pure malign politics, nasty, disgusting politics.
that are attempting to tear us one from each other, even though you know your neighbor isn't in favor of rioting and looting.
You know your neighbor isn't in favor of police officers kneeling on anybody's neck.
You know all that.
But you've been told that America stands for police officers kneeling on people's neck, and therefore rioting and looting are okay.
That's what the media are telling you day in and day out.
It's what academia are telling you day in and day out.
You can see it over at CNN.
Okay, so CNN, again, the stories of the day are not President Trump stands in front of church.
I'm sorry, that's not the story of the day.
The story of the day isn't even the president suggesting that if the local authorities don't do their job, then the federal government will do its job.
The story of the day is continued destruction of law and order across the United States and the failures of local authorities to do anything about it.
That's the story of the day.
Okay, CNN's front page makes no mention whatsoever of police officers being targeted.
They make no mention whatsoever of the rioting and looting that happened in New York City last night.
Instead, the headline over at CNN is, Trump responds with a strongman act.
Your most trusted name in news.
And we're gonna get to the media, again, pushing this notion that riots and looting are okay because America is brutal and evil.
And also, by the way, President Trump's a dictator.
So President Trump, if he tries to shut down riots and looting, it's because he's a dictator, not because it is the job of the government to ensure that you are able to go about your business in normal fashion, but because he's a dictator.
We'll get to the media's coverage and the Democrats, and this is all insane.
It's insane sorts of stuff.
We're gonna get to it in just one second.
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So what we are seeing right now is the case from the media and the Democrats.
But I repeat myself that the riots and looting are part of the protests, that the protests and the riots and looting are all justified by the innate evil of the United States.
And therefore, the president Trump attempting to crack down on the riots and the looting is a tyrant.
That is the logic.
And it's being openly pushed by members of the mainstream media.
Openly pushed.
Not quietly, openly.
Chris Cuomo, Full-on moron on CNN last night.
He was just pushing riots, I mean openly pushing riots, suggesting that rioting and looting are just like the Boston Tea Party.
Hey, there are a few distinctions with regard to the Boston Tea Party.
Distinction number one, the Boston Tea Party was directed against the East India Tea Company, a monopoly granted by the British government so that they could gain money off the backs of American taxpayers who did not have the ability to vote.
That was an act of insurrection.
So if what you're talking about is that the riots and the looting are actually acts of insurrection, and that the federal government has every force at its disposal to stop acts of insurrection, I suppose that you're correct.
The British government attempted to.
The difference is that the British regime was wrong.
I'm wondering exactly how it is wrong to shut down rioting and looting.
And again, at least the Boston Tea Party was targeting a monopoly granted by the British government.
I'm not sure what robbing a target has to do with police brutality, Chris Cuomo, you stupid ass.
Here's Chris Cuomo, block of wood.
Doesn't make it okay to riot, says the majority.
But doesn't it depend why it's happening?
A riot in Boston Harbor started the fight that amounted to America.
Cities burned across the continent in 1968, again at Stonewall.
In each of those cases, it was the minority manifesting a desperate plea to be heard and for change, just like now.
A friend of mine, celebrated American and African American, asked me in a broken voice, why doesn't America love us?
Why do they do this to us?
Do what?
Do what?
Like, what is he talking about?
Seriously, what is he talking about?
Is the impression that Americans are willy-nilly going out and killing black people?
Apparently that's the actual impression.
Not kidding.
Apparently that's the actual impression.
There was a picture that was going around the internet yesterday from Beverly Hills on Sunset Boulevard.
A black man had set up a series of nooses and he is dressed in sort of jean cutoffs so that he's obviously attempting to look like a black slave or being being hanged literally hanged to death on sunset boulevard with a giant sign that said 1619 to 2020 okay this is just bullshit i'm sorry it's just bullshit like the idea that 1619 to 2020 there's been no progression at all I can think of a few things that are different between 1619 and 2020.
Number one, that blacks are now free and American citizens with full rights as they always should have been.
The most unjust act in American history was slavery.
Second most unjust act was Jim Crow.
This guy is in the middle of Sunset Boulevard exercising his First Amendment rights under the Constitution of the United States and no one is bothering him.
That is not the same thing as 1965, let alone 1865.
This notion being pushed by the media that nothing has changed in 400 years is explicitly a notion directed at the heart and soul of the United States.
We are an evil country and we ought to be torn out by the roots.
Bernie Sanders was doing this yesterday.
So Bernie Sanders tweeted out, He has not condemned any of the rioting or the looting, of course, because America's evil.
This is the Bernie Sanders perspective.
He tweeted out yesterday, The richest 400 Americans sit on $3 trillion, the size of the entire UK economy.
The billionaire class now pays a lower tax rate than people living paycheck to paycheck.
The looting of America has been going on for over 40 years, and the culprits are the ultra rich.
He says nothing about actual physical looting, but if you run a business, you're a looter.
It's been going on for 40 years.
For 40 years, America is being looted by the rich.
And nothing to say about riots happening in the streets where people are looting businesses.
Nothing to say about that at all.
And then you have people like Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is the editor over at the New York Times who just won a Pulitzer for her essay on the 1619 Project, a bag of lies so bad that it was ripped up and down by a set of other Pulitzer Prize winning historians.
Not only is she an overrated writer, she is an awful, awful historian.
So President Trump yesterday suggested that people value their Second Amendment rights.
One of the reasons people value their Second Amendment rights is because if you ain't gonna protect me, I'm gonna protect myself.
If you're going to allow rioters and looters to roam around my neighborhood, I will shoot them if they come on my property.
And you should too.
Okay, if people enter your property looking to riot or loot on your property, You should be able to shoot them.
This is called self-defense.
That is uncontroversial.
That has been uncontroversial for all of history in every society.
If somebody breaks into your house, of course you have the right to shoot them.
And guess what?
You know who's doing most of the defending of property right now?
Our poor minority shop owners in places like Van Nuys.
Hey, we've seen situations in poorer areas where people are stationing themselves with guns in their small shops trying to protect their life savings.
So what does Nicole Hannah-Jones write?
She writes, this reference, so President Trump referenced the Second Amendment.
She says, this reference to the Second Amendment is a head scratcher only if you don't know that the Second Amendment was in fact created to ensure Southern slave owners the right to maintain and arm slave patrols to put down insurrection among the enslaved.
Now, Trump is invoking the Second Amendment against their descendants.
What the hell are you talking about?
I want black people to be armed against the predations of other people, white, black, or green.
Everybody who is a law-abiding citizen should have the ability to defend themselves.
And this is historically nonsense, absolute sheer, absolute nonsense.
Top to bottom, Charles Cook, the editor of National Review, he says, the first state to incorporate an explicit protection of the right to keep and bear arms was Pennsylvania in 1776.
Okay, Pennsylvania was not a slave-holding state.
Vermont copied that provision in 1777 in the same document in which it abolished slavery.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicole Hannah-Jones.
Again, the idea here is that America is racist top to bottom, just as racist as it has ever been, and therefore rioting and looting are okay, and therefore, any attempt to stop the rioting and looting is bad and tyrannical.
Because obviously these people are rioting and looting in the name of abolishing a cruel and unjust system.
Pushing this notion today is Ibram Kendi, who is another sort of famous author who writes about race all the time, and he has written a couple of best-selling books.
He has a piece over the Atlantic that is called The American Nightmare.
Hey, let me just note, according to the Washington Post in 2019, the number of black unarmed men who were shot, black unarmed people who were shot by the police, this is according to the Washington Post, not me, the Washington Post, was nine.
In a country of 330 million people with 30 million black people.
The number of black unarmed men shot and killed by police was nine.
Every one of those is a tragedy.
But does that suggest that every black American is in danger of being shot and killed by the police in unarmed fashion?
By the way, the number of black Americans, according to the Washington Post, unarmed and not fleeing from the police at the time, shot and killed?
Three.
Three.
This is according to the Washington Post.
The notion, again, that blacks are on set for extinction in the United States is just a lie, or that nothing has happened in the past 200 years or 400 years.
This narrative is dangerous, it is ugly, and it is driving legitimization of violence against the regime.
Because after all, if the regime is dedicated to your destruction, then anything you do to resist the regime is okay.
And not only that, if every aspect of American society is an outgrowth of a racist regime, And resistance against any institution, including the local Target or the local jewelry store, is an act of resistance against the regime.
Right?
You knock over the institutions of capitalism and you're knocking over the institutions of racism, according to the left.
You see, Abraham Kennedy has this piece, and this is the most often played trick in the op-ed world of the left when it comes to race.
It is, cite an incident from 1896 and then just fast forward 120 years and pretend nothing has happened in the interim.
So this is what Amber McKenzie does.
This is the Ta-Nehisi Coates trick.
This is the Jamal Bowie trick.
And it is ridiculous.
It's a ridiculous trick.
There's this thing called history and a bunch of crap happened between, you know, 1865 and now.
And between 1965 and now.
And between 1968 and now.
But here's what he writes is on May 19th, 1896, the New York Times allocated a single sentence on page three to reporting the U.S. Supreme Court's Plessy versus Ferguson decision.
Constitutionalizing Jim Crow hardly made news in 1896.
There was no there there.
Americans already knew that equal rights had been lynched.
Plessy was just the silently staged funeral.
Another racial text published by the nation's premier social science organization, the American Economic Association, and classified by historian Evelyn Hammonds as one of the most influential documents in social science at the turn of the 20th century elicited more shock in 1896.
Nothing is more clearly shown from this investigation than that the Southern black man at the time of emancipation was healthy in body and cheerful in mind, according to Frederick Hoffman in Race, Traits, and Tendencies of the American Negro.
What are the conditions 30 years after?
Hoffman concluded from the plain language of the facts that black Americans were better off enslaved.
Okay, so what does any of this have to do?
Is there anyone arguing that black Americans are better off enslaved?
Anyone who did would be abjectly evil, according to every living human citizen in the United States, with the exception of like five evil pieces of human debris.
But according to Ibram Kendi, nothing has changed.
He says, A nightmare is essentially a horror story of danger, but it is not wholly a horror story.
Black people experience joy, love, peace, and safety.
But as in any horror story, those unforgettable moments of toil, terror, and trauma have made danger essential to the Black experience in racist America.
What one Black American experiences, many Black Americans experience.
Black Americans are constantly stepping into the toil and terror and trauma of other Black Americans.
Black Americans are constantly stepping into the souls of the dead because they know they could have been them.
They are them.
Because they know it is dangerous to be black in America.
Because racist Americans see blacks as dangerous.
Racist Americans see blacks as dangerous?
How about like a stat?
How about anywhere in here a stat about the number of people who are black who are being murdered by the number of people who are white for racial reasons?
Because those stats are available.
The FBI puts them out every year.
And you know what?
The number is not high.
It is not high.
Because guess what?
America is not overwhelmingly racist.
And America is not 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson or evil texts like the one he is citing here by this Hoffman person.
So what is the jump?
Here's the jump.
You ready?
To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction.
Honest to God, does Ibram Kendi think that he is staring in the mirror of his own extinction in the United States?
Does he think that, like, any moment the cops are going to bust down his door and shoot him?
Just for being black, they know where he lives.
White people can figure out where he lives.
Is the idea that you are on the verge of extinction if you are black in America?
Because I'm wondering for the evidence.
He says, ask the souls of the 10,000 black victims of COVID-19 who might still be living if they had been white.
What in the actual F are you talking about?
What, like, what?
Black people were wheeled into the hospital and all the doctors took one look at them and they went, oh, black guy, gonna let him die.
There is zero evidence of that.
The reason that black Americans are dying at a higher rate than white Americans is because they are suffering from COVID-19 at a higher rate than white Americans.
And part of that has to do with levels of obesity and levels of diabetes.
Black Britons, people who are... Black Britishers are dying at four times the rate of white Britishers.
Is that because of endemic British racism as well?
He says, ask the souls of those blamed for their own deaths.
Ask the souls of those who disproportionately lost their jobs and then their life, as others disproportionately raged about losing their freedom to infect us all.
Ah, so now, if you argued against the lockdown because you wanted everybody to be able to get back to work, including people at your business, you were racist.
Ask the souls of those ignored by the governors reopening their states.
Because apparently all black and hispanic people want these states to remain closed forever.
There is not a single point of data that is deployed in this piece.
Not one.
It is all simply just conjecture.
Abject conjecture.
With removing of all confounds.
The only statistics that are cited in the entirety of the piece are things like, take Minneapolis.
Black residents are more likely than white residents to be pulled over, arrested, and victimized by its police force.
Even as black residents account for 20% of the city's population, they make up 64% of the people Minneapolis police restrain by the next since 2018, and more than 60% of the victims of Minneapolis police shootings from late 2009 to May 2019.
Question.
How many of those people were resisting arrest?
How many of those people had committed crimes?
How many of those people were reported to have crimes?
How many of those people were armed at the time?
None of those statistics make it into the piece.
Why?
Because any inequality in the data is obviously inequity because America is evil.
Because America is evil.
Right?
That is what Imbram Kendi is writing today over at The Atlantic.
So, the idea is that there is something wrong with society, something dangerous and deathly about racist policy, and black people are experiencing the American nightmare.
This is the case that the left is making, and making every day.
And therefore, to shut down the rioting and the looting is to be a dictator, right?
Is to be a tyrant.
The rioting and the looting should be allowed to go on, because the rioting and the looting, they are just the natural result of resistance to an evil regime.
And that evil regime, of course, is the United States, writ large.
That is the underlying message here.
So Don Lemon last night on CNN, he says, we're teetering on the verge of a dictatorship now.
Why?
Because President Trump said that he would use federal forces if need be to restore order.
Teetering on a dictatorship?
This is Alex Jones kind of stuff from Don Lemon, except he's the well-respected CNN anchor.
Open your eyes, America.
Open your eyes.
We are teetering on a dictatorship.
This is chaos.
Has the president, I'm listening, is the president declaring war on Americans?
What is happening here?
He's saying he wants to protect peaceful protesters at the same time sending law enforcement and military into the streets to push peaceful protesters back.
What you're watching is tyranny because this is the greatest threat in our history.
That's what Representative John Yarmuth tweeted out.
He said this is the greatest threat to America in our history.
In our history.
He said the President just declared war on millions of Americans and the First Amendment.
He is the greatest threat to the American way of life in our history.
Really, I seem to remember Jim Crow and slavery being part of American history.
What happened to those is like the greatest threat.
Val Demings, who is a representative who is widely considered to be a possible candidate for Vice President under Joe Biden.
It's basically down to Kamala Harris and Val Demings.
She tweeted out, What the hell does that mean?
Resist law enforcement authorities trying to stop rioting and looting?
The only way that you can get to this conclusion is to suggest that America deserves what is coming here.
And if not, then please speak up.
And I think that there are some Democrats who are speaking up.
I think there's some Democrats who are saying rioting and looting are bad.
Not every disintegrationist is a Democrat, and not everybody who is critical of the United States is calling for rioting and looting.
But the attempt to conflate the protesters and the rioting and the looting and declare it tyranny, to stop all of this, is absolutely insane.
Absolutely crazy.
In a second, we're going to get to the sort of moderate position.
We'll see how these conflict.
I mean, there is the moderate position here has fallen away because the Democrats have made a pitch that they cannot actually fulfill.
So here's the thing.
Once you make the pitch that Democrats have been making for a very long time and continue to make that America at root is racist, sexist, bigoted, homophobic, capitalist, tyranny.
And once you suggest that rioting and looting are the natural outgrowth of these things, as you see from Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo, who are overtly defending this sort of activity, and once you suggest that it is tyranny to stop all of this, that it is tyranny to suggest that law and order be restored, once you do all of this, you cannot then put the genie back in the bottle.
You can't say, well, if you just vote for the right people, then magically everything is healed.
And this is the trick the Democrats are trying to play here.
So let me give you an example.
Joe Biden's spokeswoman yesterday said that protesters should rise up.
I don't know what that means.
What does it mean to rise up?
What, disobey the law?
Does it mean to riot and loot?
What does this mean?
Here is Joe Biden's campaign spokeswoman.
Is he dismayed by what he's seen in terms of the pushback to the violence?
Does he feel like some of these governors could be doing more?
He believes that, as he has said, he believes that people have a right to protest.
He believes that they should rise up.
I'm talking about the violence.
They should rise up.
He has unequivocally condemned the violence.
He has said that the reason that people are protesting should not be overshadowed by the protests themselves.
Okay, you're going to need to be a little clearer right there.
You're literally asked about the violence, and then they say they should rise up, and then immediately you say, oh, but he condemns the violence.
Here's the thing.
If you say that you're rising up against an unjust system, and the system itself is unjust, you can't then put the genie back in the bottle.
So this is a trick that President Obama tried to play yesterday.
He put out a piece called, How to Make This Moment the Turning Point for Real Change.
And he says that basically America is endemically racist.
This is the same thing that he has been saying for years.
The DNA is in the American bloodstream.
The racist DNA is in America's bloodstream.
He says, I've heard some suggest the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time.
I couldn't disagree more.
The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, to make the powers that be uncomfortable.
In fact, throughout American history, it's often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities.
But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices.
Okay, here's where the disconnect comes in.
Because once you declare the entire system is bankrupt top to bottom, Then no amount of voting within that system is going to cure the problem.
Once you suggest that the entire constitutional structure is ordered in order to keep black Americans down, once you suggest that the entire American philosophy is corrupt and cancerous, and that it is a tool that is used by the oppressors in order to oppress the oppressed, you cannot then claim, well, if you just vote within the system, then everything is going to be okay.
And this is what protesters are recognizing at a visceral gut level.
When Barack Obama says, you know, yeah, go protest, but then vote for your elected mayor, All the mayors in these cities are Democrats and have been for 50 years.
They are.
They voted.
People voted for the people that Barack Obama wanted them to vote for.
And guess what?
Those police forces are still doing all the things that Barack Obama says are racist and horrible.
And it doesn't matter that Eric Holder's Justice Department crammed down consent degrees without evidence against a wide variety of police forces across the country.
None of that matters.
The bottom line is that if you claim that the system is rotten top to bottom, you can't then claim that if you just vote for the right people within that system, then magically everything will be cured.
You can't have it both ways.
You cannot.
Barack Obama wants to have it both ways.
And so does Joe Biden.
And the protesters know that they've been oversold.
They've been oversold.
They've been told.
The Nicole Hannah-Jones story, the 1619 Project, 400 years of slavery continuing till today.
The Spike Lee, well, you know, everything is proportional, including violence.
Because after all, violence is done to black bodies every day in the United States.
The protesters hear that rhetoric, and they react to that rhetoric.
You think that telling them to go vote for old, slow Joe Biden is going to be a motivating factor in preventing the dissolution of the country?
That's not how this works.
And Joe Biden humoring this and going along with it, the protesters should rise up, says his spokeswoman.
You think that the protesters think that rising up amounts to voting for an 80-year-old white man who sponsored the 1994 crime bill?
Does that sound like rising up to you?
Most protesters understand on a gut level that what they are being asked to protest does not equal the outcome the Democrats are seeking right now.
Joe Biden was suggesting solutions yesterday to police brutality.
Here were his solutions to police brutality.
Let's teach cops to shoot people in the leg.
That's the solution to police brutality.
Here's Joe Biden yesterday.
The idea that if you vote for that senile old white man, that that is going to fix the problem that Democrats have been labeling as the root of the United States for years.
lot of different things that can change.
Like the idea that if you vote for that senile old white man, that that is going to fix the problem that Democrats have been labeling as the root of the United States for years, this career politician from Delaware.
Sure, sure.
And protesters know that, which is why, of course, nothing will be alleviated by Joe Biden being elected.
It may be papered over because the media will stop with the fire-breathing, it's-time-for-civil-war rhetoric.
Maybe it'll be papered over for a little while.
Maybe we'll get fewer essays in The Atlantic about how America's endemically racist when a Democrat is president.
After all, that story seems to go away a lot until it doesn't, right?
Until there's Ferguson or something.
But the notion that all the problems are alleviated by electing Democrats, that's what Barack Obama's pushing.
So they stoke the flames, stoke the flames, stoke the flames, and they're like, oh yeah, if you just vote for us, we'll fix it.
That bullshit ain't gonna work.
It is not going to work.
That bullcrap is not going to work.
Okay, meanwhile, I'll tell you something else that's not going to work.
So the media, right, left, and center, have been cheering a variety of officers kneeling with protesters.
Now, listen, officers have to do what they have to do in order to prevent violence right now.
I understand that.
And expressing solidarity with people who don't like police brutality is fine.
I severely reject the idea that kneeling is the correct symbol here.
It is not the correct symbol.
Kneeling was taken up by Colin Kaepernick as exactly the 1619 Project line.
America is deeply, endemically racist.
America is racist top to bottom.
And therefore I'm kneeling for the American flag because police brutality is representative of America more broadly and all police forces across the nation.
And so there's been all sorts of tape of people celebrating when police officers take a knee and showing solidarity.
Listen, police officers showing solidarity with people who are protesting police brutality is good.
Taking a knee and agreeing with the sort of Colin Kaepernickization of American politics is a very bad thing because the underlying message is not true.
It's a lie.
Colin Kaepernick was lying about America.
Kneeling for the American flag is lying about America.
And celebrating when police officers do this because the cause that is being pushed here is not the cause of anti-police brutality alone, because we all agree on that, but the idea that America is horribly racist across the board.
That is sheer and absolute nonsense, and it's going to be damaging.
And guess what?
It also is not going to alleviate the problem either.
Because let's be frank about this.
The first time... So there are a bunch of tapes of police officers expressing solidarity with citizens protesting police brutality.
And they should.
That's good.
Right?
That's good.
Does anyone believe, for one solitary minute, that the next time there's a case of police brutality in these cities, that there won't be renewed protests or riots?
Does anyone believe that?
Does anyone believe this is going to last more than the next 15 seconds?
It's a diffusing of the situation in front of the cops.
I get that.
But does anyone actually believe that, let's say, so yesterday there was tape of that NYPD chief of police hugging protesters.
First of all, just want to note here that the entire media were shaming you as murdering grandma if you went out in public without a face mask 50 feet from every other human being.
Now you're supposed to hug protesters with no mask in public, in New York, in crowds, with no one wearing a mask.
And no one cares.
This is a celebratory moment.
And watch, the way the media will play this is then there will be an uptick in the number of COVID cases over the next two weeks.
And then it'll be, oh look, there's an uptick in the number of COVID cases, and it's targeting Black and Hispanic communities.
You can't have it both ways.
If you're going to say that the protests are deeply important, and so we are going to ignore all of the COVID regulations because we like these protests, and those protests are disproportionately minority, and then there's a disproportionate outbreak from the protests, Okay, that's not American racism.
That's just called cause and effect.
But put aside all of the COVID of all of this, and it is indicative of the media's insanity that the hot take here is that COVID is only something worth talking about when we're talking about lockdown protests, but when you have tens of thousands of people marching in the street and screaming and getting spit all over each other, right, which is what you do when you protest, that that's totally okay.
But does anyone believe, that's the NYPD chief of police.
The next time that there's an issue with police brutality or disputed circumstance with police, does anyone believe that if the NYPD chief of police comes out and says, we all oppose this stuff, that he's going to be believed?
Seriously, does anyone think that's what's going to happen?
Does anyone think that when the police officers in Seattle go out there and kneel with the protesters, that the next time there's an incident that gets caught on tape of a disputed circumstance with a cop, that the next wave of protesters are going to be like, oh, no, you know, they're good guys.
I remember last time when they kneeled with us.
I remember last time when they came out and showed solidarity with us.
Does anyone believe that that's what's going to happen?
The answer, of course, is no, because none of this actually solves the underlying problems.
The underlying problem is manifest distrust between a large swath of American citizens and the police.
And the attempts to bridge that trust gap by having the police express sympathy for the population.
That's good.
By the way, cops do this routinely when they're not on tape.
Cops do this all the time.
All the time.
But the idea that if you kneel with people and admit generalized American racism, that this is somehow going to alleviate the problem, it's not true.
Because all that's going to happen is the next time something happens, they're going to say, even you recognize that American racism is at root of this entire problem.
So here's all I'm saying.
Express sympathy.
Everyone is on the same page on police brutality for the one millionth time.
Express sympathy for people who are fighting against police brutality.
But do not admit to the lie that America is in favor of police brutality, that America is endemically racist, that America is incurably racist, that the American system is attempting to exterminate black people.
It is not true.
And police are doing themselves and no one else any favors by exceeding in that particular line of attack.
You wanna go out and give people hugs?
Go for it.
Seriously.
Like, go for it.
Aside from all the COVID stuff.
Go for it.
Like, what the NYPD chief does right there, giving people hugs, is significantly... I think it's positive.
I think that's good.
Kneeling.
Using the symbology of the Colin Kaepernick, America is evil.
Betsy Ross's flag is a symbol of racism movement.
That's not good for the country.
It's not unifying.
And that unity is going to last approximately another 27 seconds until there's another bad tape that comes out, at which point the unity immediately dissipates and we go back to the endemic levels of mistrust that have been promulgated by the media and will continue to be promulgated by the media no matter what the cops do.
And meanwhile, today is apparently, they're calling it Blackout Tuesday.
So Blackout Tuesday is basically a bunch of companies now saying that they are not going to do business today and putting out woke statements about the levels of racism in American society, which begs the question, if you guys are all such racists, name the racists on your board and fire them.
Really, I mean, if you have to come out and say this, I don't know Who needs to hear from corporate America, which, again, it's illegal to engage in racially discriminatory activity as a private business in the United States.
That's illegal by federal law.
And by every state's law, too, by the way.
If they're racist within your midst, let's hear about them.
Like, who are they and what are they doing?
And how are they impacting policy?
But what this really is, is now we have reached the point where basically businesses are afraid that they are going to be blackmailed if they do not put out social justice warrior statements about how America is endemically racist.
Corporations are out there to make money.
They understand that the levels of risk attendant in not making quote-unquote anti-racist statements is very high.
Now again, I'm not saying that people aren't entitled to their opinions or that corporations can't put out these statements.
They absolutely can.
But I'm telling you, you're a sucker if you believe that Foot Locker is spending each and every day considering the 1619 Project as opposed to they see people who are pressuring them outside and now they are attempting to basically buy their way into your good graces by putting out an ad.
By the way, which is not going to work.
Nike got looted last night in New York City.
Nike put out an ad about how America was horribly racist, and we can't- Don't do it.
Who is- That ad was so ridiculous.
Don't do it.
Who's doing it?
Are you putting your knee on the neck of a black person today?
I'm not.
That's called evil.
Nobody's doing it.
Except that one cop.
Who's going to go to jail?
And should go to jail.
Because it was atrocious.
It was an atrocity.
But Nike tried to buy its way into the good graces of the social justice warrior left.
And that is a dangerous thing, because here's the thing.
The social justice warrior left isn't just involved in attempting to push a lie about America more broadly.
Once they have their foot wedged in the door, then they can militarize all of American business in favor of their favorite political causes.
And this is what you've seen the hard left doing for a long time.
If you disagree with the hard left on an issue, they will then suggest that you're not woke enough and they will have you fired from your job.
This is part of the politicization of an area of American life that does not need to be political and should not be political.
Target should not be political.
It shouldn't.
That doesn't mean that they should be pro-racist.
Again, the conflation of anti-racist with agreeing with everything that Ta-Nehisi Coates writes is absolutely asinine.
Target is not racist because they don't discriminate against black customers.
Target does not need to put out statements about Black Lives Matter.
Because Target is a store.
They are not involved in killing black people.
They're not involved in discriminating against black people.
The attempt to impute guilt to people who do not repeat your preferred formulations is utterly insane and ideologically tyrannical.
It turns out that silence does not mean that somebody opposes you.
Maybe silence is because that's not in their purview.
It is not indi... You know, we hear this rightly with regard to terrorist attacks.
So every time there's a terrorist attack, There are a bunch of people who say, let's say it's a Muslim terrorist attack, a radical Islamist terrorist attack.
There are a bunch of people who will say things like, the Muslim community is not obligated to come out and condemn terror attacks because they weren't involved in the terror attack.
I kind of agree with that.
I don't think it's up to every Jew to condemn something bad when a Jew does it.
And I don't think it's up to every black person to condemn something bad when a black person does it.
And I don't think it's up to every white person to condemn something bad when a white person does it, or when a white person did it 150 or 200 years ago.
And I don't think it's the job of Target to condemn activity in which they were not involved.
The attempt to hold people accountable for activities in which they are not involved so that you can get them to basically repeat your preferred nostrums of the day is really dangerous.
It's really dangerous because it doesn't allow any area where we can be apolitical.
It doesn't allow any area where you are allowed to disagree.
Basically, silence will be taken as resistance to the dominant social justice warrior narrative, and then as an excuse to hurt you.
Well, Target didn't put out its virtue signaling statement today.
That means it's time to loot Target.
Obviously, they're not anti-racist.
It's not enough to be against racism.
You have to be actively anti-racism and Target didn't put out a statement.
If you believe that the shareholders at Target or the board at Target were motivated by pure, unbridled belief in Black Lives Matter to put out statements, as opposed to, you know, public pressure, then you're wrong.
And if you believe that that sort of pressure is good for the country, get ready for a lot more, a lot more polarization in the country.
Because guess what?
Most people just want to be left alone.
Most people just want to be left alone.
And most people are not appreciative of the root justification for this kind of stuff, which is if you don't say anything about the Black Lives Matter system, it's because you don't care about black lives.
Most people don't want to be bullied into opinions.
They don't want to be bullied into opinions with the implication that if you disagree with my specific agenda, it's because you're a horrible person.
As opposed to maybe we just have differences in our viewpoint.
So, again, corporate cowardice combined with pressure tactics by the media.
The country is becoming a worse place every day because of these things.
Again, in a time when we should all agree on this stuff.
We should all agree on this stuff.
The attempt to polarize on stuff where we all agree is insane.
Insane.
Alrighty, well, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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