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June 18, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:10:47

Bulls*** Charges and The Blue Flu | Ep. 1034

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	The Supreme Court strikes down the Trump administration, striking down Obama's DACA program.
	The Atlanta DA charges an officer for murder after the officer shoots a man who stole a police taser and fired it at him.
	And Atlanta police officers reportedly walk off the job.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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	We're going to get to all the news.
	And boy, is there a lot of news today.
	Man, this news cycle is just insane.
	It's basically the movie Twister, except with news.
	We're going to get to all of that in just one second.
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	Okay, so we'll get to everything that is happening in Atlanta in just a second because it is chaotic and it is also an excellent indicator of where America's major cities are going.
	Now let's just say it's not in good directions.
	We'll get to that in a second.
	First, the breaking news as of this hour is the Supreme Court has just ruled that President Trump does not have the ability to strike down the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
	Now, that's not really what the Supreme Court said.
	What the Supreme Court actually said is that Trump could do it, but he did it wrong.
	So the Supreme Court has taken up a line of cases recently that basically says, orange man bad.
	In other words, if the orange man did it right, it would be okay what he did.
	But he did it wrong, so it's not okay what he did.
	That is what this case is.
	So you will recall that Barack Obama claimed dozens of times, literally dozens of times, that he did not have the unilateral ability to simply legalize illegal immigrants in the United States.
	And then he ignored all of that and he just said, okay, you know what?
	We're not prosecuting anybody who's here illegally.
	We're just not going to do it.
	If you are between the ages of 16 and 30, if you came here as a child, we are not going to prosecute you.
	We are not going to deport you.
	Now, maybe that's good policy.
	Maybe it's not.
	But that's something Congress has to do.
	You don't just get to do that as President of the United States, decide that an entire class of human beings are no longer prosecutable because you're the President of the United States.
	That violates every statutory rule of interpretation.
	It just does not work that way.
	And the Obama administration offered no real justification for this.
	They didn't offer any sort of legal memorandum explaining why the law required this, which you're supposed to do if you're the executive branch, because you execute the laws, you don't make them.
	Instead, they just declared that they would start handing out papers, that they would start protecting you from deportation and all the rest.
	So the Trump administration comes in and they say, listen, we're reversing this.
	This is illegal.
	Jeff Sessions' Justice Department says this is no longer legal.
	We are rescinding this.
	This is not correct.
	The Department of Homeland Security rescinds the DAPA memo in June 2017, citing the fact that it is unconstitutional and that the federal government, the executive branch, does not have the power to unilaterally declare who they will and will not prosecute on a class.
	It's one thing to pardon somebody.
	It's one thing to commute a sentence.
	It's one thing to use prosecutorial discretion.
	It is another thing to completely invalidate a law just because you don't like the law.
	That's not something that the executive branch has the power to do.
	That September, in September of 2017, the Attorney General, who was then Jeff Sessions, advised the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke, that DACA shared legal flaws and should be rescinded.
	The next day, Duke acted on that advice and wrote the so-called Duke Memo, which basically suggests that the thing's unconstitutional.
	And then, a few months later, there was something called the Nielsen Memo, and the Nielsen Memo came out, that was from the new Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Nielsen, Bridget Nielsen.
	And that more fully explained the rationale for rescinding DACA.
	So there's nothing illegal about what the Trump administration did.
	They said this is an illegal order.
	It was poorly formulated.
	It was never legal in the first place.
	Obama himself had said it was never legal in the first place.
	And so the Supreme Court has now held that you're not allowed to rescind an illegal order unless you go through all of the hoops of the Administrative Procedures Act.
	So the Administrative Procedures Act is basically an act that creates internal judicial mechanisms for administrative agencies.
	So let's say that the EPA promulgates a rule, and you want to sue the EPA because you don't like the EPA's rule.
	You have to sue them in an EPA court, essentially.
	Well, the same thing holds true here is that the administrative agencies are tasked with defining their own regulations and their own rules, and a court is not supposed to interfere.
	This is called the Chevron Doctrine.
	The court is not supposed to interfere in the decision-making processes of administrative agencies unless the administrative agency has been arbitrary and capricious.
	is generally the standard that is used.
	Well, the problem is this.
	The Obama administration did not provide any rationale for why DACA was constitutional.
	So they were arbitrary and capricious.
	But the Supreme Court didn't find them arbitrary and capricious.
	So now, they're saying that the Trump administration was arbitrary and capricious in rejecting an illegal order from the Obama administration.
	So in other words, it was okay for Obama to put forward an illegal order saying we won't enforce the law.
	It is very bad for Trump to put forward an illegal order saying we will enforce the law and we'll take back the old illegal order.
	That is basically the rationale of the court.
	Justice Thomas just wrecks it today.
	I mean, Justice Thomas looks at this and he says, you guys are insane.
	You've basically made it that your rationale is orange man bad.
	You don't like Trump, and so you're just not going to enforce the law.
	He says, DHS created DACA during the Obama administration without any statutory authorization, without going through the requisite rulemaking process.
	As a result, the program was unlawful from its inception.
	The majority does not even attempt to explain why a court has the authority to scrutinize an agency's policy reasons for sending an unlawful program under the arbitrary and capricious microscope.
	The decision to countermand an unlawful agency action is clearly reasonable.
	So long as the agency's determination of illegality is sound, our view should be at an end.
	In other words, if it is plausible for the agency, in this case DHS, to say that this is in illegal order, then we don't get to review whether it's in illegal order because they've made the determination.
	So if you're using the loose standard that they get to decide that things are randomly legal, like ignoring the law, Then you can't suddenly tighten the standard and say, OK, and by the way, if you go back to enforcing the law, then that's illegal now.
	Thomas says today's decision must be recognized for what it is, an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision.
	The court could have made clear that the solution respondents seek must come from the legislative branch.
	In other words, if you don't like immigration policy in the United States, then why don't you go to the legislative branch?
	I mean, Congress exists.
	Instead, the Supreme Court has been irrigating more and more power to itself.
	That's been the story of the last several days at the Supreme Court, is the Supreme Court basically deciding that Congress isn't doing the Equality Act, so Justice Gorsuch will do the Equality Act.
	They'll just rewrite the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and read into its sexual orientation and gender identity, neither of which are in, or were even remotely thought to be, within the scope of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
	We don't like the legislature not doing what we want it to do, so we're just going to rewrite the law.
	It's what Justice Roberts did when he rewrote Obamacare to make it a tax instead of a fee.
	Right.
	He suggested, oh, you know what?
	I don't really like what Congress did here.
	So I'm just going to rewrite what Congress did here instead of just striking it down and sending it back to Congress.
	And now the court is doing this with DACA.
	They're saying, we kind of like what Obama did.
	We kind of didn't like what Trump did.
	Instead of us just sending it back to Congress and saying, take care of business, we're just going to take care of it ourselves.
	So the Supreme Court keeps irrigating power to itself.
	Now you may be saying to yourself, wait a second, who is the swing vote here?
	I was reliably informed that there are five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court.
	Namely, Justices Roberts, Kavanaugh, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, right?
	Those were all Republican appointees.
	That is a majority of the Supreme Court.
	Guess who the swing vote was again?
	It was 5-4.
	Swing vote, Justice Roberts.
	Of course, of course.
	Because Justice Roberts is constantly in the mode of, we want to basically leave policy where it lay before.
	That's Justice Roberts' big thing.
	He thinks that judicial activism is overturning current action.
	He doesn't think of judicial activism as completely rewriting the law for political purposes.
	Roberts is just a disaster area on the court.
	Now, when I say disaster area, he still votes with his colleagues 80% of the time.
	But that extra 20% makes an awful lot of difference, doesn't it?
	In Obamacare, in this particular case.
	So here's what we have on the court.
	We have five Republican appointees, and we have a grand total of two reliable constitutionalist voices on the court.
	Justices Thomas and Alito.
	That's it.
	We don't know where Kavanaugh is yet.
	It's still early on Kavanaugh.
	So we're waiting on Kavanaugh.
	Colored me a little bit skeptical that Kavanaugh is going to be anywhere in the league of Alito or Thomas.
	And then you've got Justice Roberts, who's been a full-scale David Souter.
	And then you have Justice Gorsuch, who's been very good except in this one case, where he was really, really, really bad.
	Overtly anti-textualist in doing so.
	And all the attempts to rewrite Justice Gorsuch's opinion there to say, oh no, he was being textualist, he was just being talmudic about it.
	No, no, no.
	If you have to, if you overtly say no one could possibly have interpreted this law as I am interpreting it now when it was written, you're not a textualist.
	You are magically now rewriting the rules.
	You're rewriting the laws.
	That's left to the legislature.
	So bottom line is that this has some pretty significant ramifications for President Trump for a couple of reasons.
	One, because the big pitch for Republican policymakers, and this has been true for a long time, the big pitch has been, listen, we may not do a lot when we're in Congress.
	In fact, we're pretty much going to do nothing.
	But the things that we are going to do are tax cuts and judges.
	You're going to get some tax cuts, which is great, nice.
	And we're going to give you textualist, originalist judges who are going to protect your rights.
	Well, listen, there are a lot of appeals courts where presumably that is happening.
	There are a lot more judges than just the Supreme Court.
	But suffice it to say that three of the last four judges that Republicans have appointed from the presidency are questionable.
	Three of the last four.
	And if you go back further than that, then you have to take into account Stevens, you have to take into account Souter, you have to take into account Justice O'Connor, you have to take into account Justice Kennedy.
	In other words, Republicans suck at this.
	So if you think that voting Republican is a guarantee that the Supreme Court is going to be your bulwark for liberty, Wrongo.
	Wrongo.
	What you should be demanding of your Republican legislators is actual conservative legislation, actually standing up and protecting your rights at the legislative level, not just saying, listen, we're not going to do much over here, but you can rely on the justices we pick because clearly that ain't true.
	Clearly that is not the case.
	So one of the chief kind of mechanisms for gaining Republican votes turns out fairly flawed, fairly flawed.
	And Republicans have a, Republican voters have an absolute right to point out that it's insufficient for you to say you're going to appoint conservative judges because frankly, we have no idea whether that's true or not.
	By the way, only one person I know, me, has opposed two of the last four Republican judges appointed.
	I opposed Kavanaugh, I opposed Roberts.
	So, anyway, we'll see where Kavanaugh ends up.
	In coming up, we're going to talk about Atlanta, where things are going south in a hurry.
	No pun intended.
	We're going to get to that in a second.
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	Okay, so the Supreme Court, another pillar of American life that is consistently being undermined by people who staff it, so that's exciting stuff.
	Meanwhile, Things are coming to a head with regard to the situation in the United States regarding police.
	So, the lie has been purveyed.
	That police officers are broadly racist and brutal.
	It is a lie.
	It is an overt lie.
	The evidence of this is scanty at best.
	The fact that lots of people around the United States have cameras and that you can identify a few dozen cases of police brutality in a country where there are 375 million interactions between the police and civilians on a yearly basis.
	That is not statistical evidence.
	And yet we have pressed forward with the idea that the police are the problem in the United States.
	That the police are the problem.
	So we've seen a historic crime decline in the United States from 1994 all the way till now, right?
	With a couple of bumps, particularly the Ferguson time, right?
	Ferguson 2014-2015, Baltimore 2014-2015.
	But we've seen historic crime decreases.
	Why?
	Because the police were staffed up from 1994 and on.
	There were more police.
	They were better funded.
	There were more of them in high crime areas.
	They were using smarter policing tactics.
	And so we've decided that it's time to do away with all that because obviously the big problem, particularly facing black Americans, is not high levels of crime in black communities.
	It is not poor schools in black communities.
	It is not single motherhood in black communities.
	It is not any of these things.
	The real issue that creates income inequality and wealth inequality in the United States is systemic American racism beginning with the bleeding edge, the cops.
	And so the best thing that can happen is for the cops to go away, presumably.
	And this is where the defund the police movement comes from.
	If the police are the problem, remove the problem, and then you don't have to worry about it anymore.
	Well, we're about to find out how this is going to work, because we have now decided to make it impossible for police officers to do their job in this country.
	That's what we have decided.
	So a few days ago, you'll recall that there was a big controversy.
	It was over the weekend.
	I believe Friday.
	There was a shooting in Atlanta.
	The shooting involved a suspect named Rayshard Brooks.
	Rayshard Brooks had a very long criminal record.
	This is relevant because when you drive up on somebody with a very long criminal record, you're obviously going to treat it with caution.
	Rayshard Brooks had a long rap sheet, including obstructing police battery, possession of firearm, and commission of crime, drug dealing, and multiple thefts.
	So they drive up on Rayshard Brooks because somebody at the local Wendy's called and said, there's a guy who's asleep in our drive-thru, he's obstructing traffic, and he's behind the wheel of a car.
	He was out on parole, by the way.
	So a violation of parole means he goes back to jail.
	The police officers arrive for 25 minutes.
	They have a nice discussion with Rayshard Brooks.
	They ask him to walk a line.
	He can't do it.
	They ask him to take a breathalyzer.
	I believe he refuses.
	The conversation is cordial and extraordinarily long, like for 20 minutes, more, 25 minutes.
	They talk with this guy.
	Then they go to cuff him because they say, you know what?
	No, we're not sending you home in an Uber.
	You were drunk driving.
	Drunk driving, by the way, is a very dangerous crime.
	I'm unaware of why it is that we are... Are we supposed to let drunk drivers off now?
	Like, if you're driving drunk, are we just supposed to send you home in an Uber?
	Is that the way this works anymore?
	I mean, imagine that you send him home in an Uber.
	The next night, he kills someone in a drunk driving accident.
	Guess who gets blamed?
	The cops, right?
	No matter how this thing turns out, the cops get blamed.
	So, they're talking with him.
	It goes on for a long time.
	They're obviously not attempting to get into a confrontation.
	They call for backup.
	Right?
	And this goes on, and on, and on, and on.
	Then they go to arrest him and he realizes, oh wait, I'm on parole.
	If they arrest me, I'm going back to jail.
	And he starts to resist arrest.
	And he resists arrest by taking down both of the cops who are surrounding him.
	He brings them both to the ground.
	He then proceeds.
	He starts resisting.
	He's got his arms behind his back.
	Then he breaks loose.
	And you can see it in the video.
	I'm showing you the video right now.
	He breaks loose.
	He steals a taser off of one of the police officers.
	They try to tase him in the leg.
	One of them tries to tase him in the leg.
	It doesn't work.
	Then he grabs the taser.
	He wrestles away from both officers, and he somehow gets loose of both officers, and he starts to run.
	So you're going to see him again toss these big men, Rayshard Brooks it appears.
	And that only matters because, again, this is a physical confrontation.
	He breaks loose, and he takes off.
	The police start to chase him.
	And then you can see in the tape, he literally turns around, he fires the taser at the cop, and immediately the cop shoots him.
	That's the entire confrontation.
	That is a good shoot.
	I've talked to a bevy of police officers.
	Every single one of them told me it is within police procedures that if someone takes your taser off of you and tries to tase you, you can shoot them.
	Because that is a threat of deadly force.
	How do you know that that's a threat of deadly force?
	Because if someone shoots you with a taser, first of all, a taser could theoretically be a deadly weapon.
	As it turns out, you hit somebody the right way with a taser, they die.
	But, beyond that, if a person has shown the willingness to take a weapon off your body, and they shoot you with a taser, and you have a gun on your body, There is the significant possibility... You don't have to lie there prone, waiting to see if the criminal is going to be a nice guy and continue walking down the street.
	That's not how any of this works.
	According to Atlanta Police Department, official procedure, you're allowed to defend your life if there is the danger of significant bodily harm to yourself or somebody else.
	So, that's the case.
	That's the whole case.
	Now, there's some additional question as to what happened after they shot him.
	As we will see.
	But that's the tape, right?
	That's the important tape.
	If you're going to charge someone, that's the tape upon which you charge somebody.
	Well, it turns out that they have decided to charge that officer.
	And they might put him on death row for that.
	They might put him on death row.
	I'm going to get to the actual details of this because it's perfectly insane.
	It's perfectly insane.
	And again, it demonstrates why social and quote-unquote racial justice are not justice.
	Justice is, you get what you deserve.
	Racial justice is, you're a white police officer, you did something justifiable, but you did it to a black guy in the middle of a massive national controversy over policing and race.
	And therefore, we are going to try you for murder.
	For felony murder.
	For defending yourself from a guy who stole your taser and shot it at you in the middle of an arrest after he was arrested for a DUI.
	Really, This is great stuff for the country.
	Really healing all racial wounds and fixing our policing problem.
	All at once.
	Incredible work, everyone.
	We're gonna get to all the details of this because it's absurd.
	It's a bullcrap charge.
	Everybody knows it's a bullcrap charge, including the DA who's pursuing it.
	Everybody knows this.
	And there's a reason the DA's pursuing this.
	It has nothing to do, nothing to do, with what actually occurred on this tape.
	It has everything to do with the DA being in the middle of a hard-fought re-election battle and being under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
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	Okay, so.
	That police officer, right, in that case, has now been charged with felony murder as well as 11 other charges.
	His name is Garrett Rolfe, he's 27.
	He is charged with murder in Brooks' death.
	He could face life in prison or the death penalty for shooting a man who broke away from police custody, resisted arrest, stole a taser, and tried to taser him.
	And now the DA is just, he's either a liar or an idiot.
	I'm gonna go with a liar.
	And he's following in the footsteps of the mayor.
	The mayor is just awful, obviously.
	The mayor of Atlanta, she suggested right away, her last name is Bottoms.
	I'm trying to remember her first name.
	She said right after this that the shooting was unjust.
	Based on nothing.
	Because we've all seen the tape.
	Doesn't matter.
	She said it was unjust right away.
	While there may be debate as to whether this was an appropriate use of deadly force, I firmly believe that there is a clear distinction between what you can do and what you should do.
	I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer.
	So she fired the officer right away, and then she declared that it was a murder, essentially.
	And then the DA picked up on that.
	And the reason that the DA picked up on that is, again, because the DA is in the middle of a hard-fought re-election battle.
	He also happens to be under investigation for a corruption case.
	So, this is so political, it's insane.
	I mean, back in May, the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, opened an investigation into the Fulton County District Attorney.
	The guy's name is Paul Howard.
	He apparently, allegedly, used a non-profit to funnel at least $140,000 in City of Atlanta funds to supplement his salary, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
	He's being challenged in the Democratic primary for re-election.
	He's also facing allegations of sexual harassment, which he strongly denies.
	So he's in the middle of a bad re-election battle.
	He's under investigation by the GBI.
	And so he's decided, you know what, time to make a headline for myself in a different way and pander to black voters by unjustly charging a man.
	I mean, that's obviously what is going on right here.
	He's attempting to pander to Democratic primary base voters, particularly black voters, by suggesting that racial justice is being done on behalf of a man who stole a police officer's taser and tried to tase the police officer and then was shot for his trouble.
	So here are the charges he's being charged with.
	And we need to actually point this out because the charges conflict.
	I mean, it's the whole thing is when you hear the DA, you'll see how insane this is.
	So Rolf is facing a bunch of charges, felony murder.
	He's also facing aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
	The offense carries a possible sentence of 1 to 20 years.
	That is because he shot at him.
	Aggravated assault for kicking Brooks.
	So this was the only real bombshell that was released by the DA, is that apparently there's third-party footage of Rolfe kicking the suspect when he's down.
	Now, the problem is he didn't actually show the footage.
	All he showed was a still from the footage.
	So it'd be nice to see the actual footage.
	But if Brooks was kicked by Rolfe after he'd been shot, that'd be a case for assault.
	It would not be a case for felony murder.
	And if he kicked somebody, that doesn't mean he killed them.
	That is an assault charge, that is not a felony murder charge.
	But this is my favorite part of the indictment.
	So the DA, first of all, normally, the way this goes is that the DA works with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
	The Georgia Bureau of Investigation does the investigation and then they work with the DA to bring charges.
	This DA rushed out the charges without consulting with the GBI.
	Perhaps because the GBI is investigating him right now.
	And then he just rushed forward and did what no prosecutor is supposed to do.
	He presented all of the evidence in a very selective fashion.
	Before this thing has even gone to a grand jury.
	By the way, the actual result of this is that it will go to a grand jury and it probably will not go forward to prosecution.
	So he's making a headline right now, and the prosecution probably will not go forward because I cannot imagine a grand jury going along with the idea that you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this officer was involved in a felony murder.
	That's insane.
	Okay, but here's my favorite part.
	He gets aggravated assault, an aggravated assault charge for kicking Brooks, according to an arrest warrant.
	Rolf was wearing a shoe, quote, which, when used offensively against a person, is likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury.
	Now, the reason I particularly like this charge is because, as you will see, this DA is claiming that if you fire a taser at somebody, that you are not in threat of serious bodily injury.
	If you kick somebody, yes, the shoe is a weapon that could be used for serious bodily injury, but a taser is not a weapon that could be used for serious bodily injury.
	Also, four counts of violation of oath by a public officer, a felony offense under Georgia law, each offense carrying a sentence of one to five years.
	Prosecutors say that Rolfe broke his oath and didn't follow police department policies when he used a taser as Brooks ran away.
	Failure to render timely medical aid to Brooks because after he was shot, it took a couple of minutes for them to render medical aid.
	And failed to tell him he was under arrest for driving under the influence.
	You know, about the time when you are being arrested for driving under the influence after a 25-minute questioning for driving under the influence, I figured that people might know that they are being put under arrest for driving under the influence, which might be why you resist arrest and run away.
	I don't understand.
	Is the implication here that Brooks thought that this guy was going to take him home for dinner?
	Like he didn't realize what he was being arrested for?
	What absolute absurdity.
	By the way, the other officer is now being charged as well.
	What did the other officer do?
	He's facing an aggravated assault charge for standing on or stepping on Brooks' shoulder while he was lying on the ground.
	Which, by the way, we haven't seen the footage of that.
	Perhaps the reason is because the guy's run before and you don't know if he's actually dying, right?
	So, we don't know any of that.
	He's also charged with two violations of oath of office, which is basically just attack on charge.
	We're gonna get to more of this in just a second, because this sort of bullcrap, we'll get to the DA's statements, it's insane.
	This sort of bullcrap charge has a real consequence for policing.
	And the DA also happens to be lying about some of the facts here.
	So we'll get to that in a moment.
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	Okay, so so this particular this particular indictment, the charges are just absurd.
	They're absurd on virtually every level.
	And the DA, his presentation of the facts are just crazy.
	So the DA says, at the time that Rayshard Brooks was shot, he didn't pose an immediate threat of death or injury to the officer.
	In fact, the DA actually said that he was very calm and collected in his interaction with the police.
	That's true up until the point he tries to break away from the police, takes two of them to the ground, takes a taser off the body of one of them, and then tries to shoot the other.
	Up until then, it was going fine.
	How's it going, they asked the man who had just jumped from the seventh story.
	On the fourth story, he said, everything's going fine so far.
	The interaction was good until it was not good.
	This is insane.
	Here is the Fulton County D.A.
	who should summarily be dismissed from his job for this prosecution.
	It's an absurdity.
	It's an absurdity from the outset, from the get-go.
	It's all on tape.
	This is crazy.
	Here's the Fulton County D.A.
	just saying an idiotic thing.
	Based on the way that these officers conducted themselves while Mr. Brooks was lying there, that the demeanor of the officers immediately after the shooting did not reflect any fear or danger of Mr. Brooks, we've concluded at the time Mr. Brooks was shot,
	That he did not pose an immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or officers.
	Oh, did you conclude that now?
	No serious threat of death or injury to the officers.
	So, again, to get this straight, someone fires a taser at you.
	That's not a threat of death or immediate injury to the officer, but a shoe is, according to the actual charges filed against the officer.
	Plus, I will note that two weeks ago, the same DA prosecuted officers on the basis of using a taser and called the taser a deadly weapon.
	I think my favorite part of this particular clip is that there's a picture of the man who's speaking right behind the man who's speaking, which is one of my favorite things.
	I always love that sort of stuff.
	That little detail where there's a picture of you behind you as you speak is pretty spectacular.
	It's like a Jim Acosta infinite regress of arrogance.
	Here is this DA.
	Charged with aggravated assault of Ms.
	Pilgrim, and this is for pointing a taser at Mrs. Pilgrim.
	And as many of you all know, under Georgia law, a taser is considered as a deadly weapon under Georgia law.
	Oh, is it?
	Is it now?
	Oh, well, that's weird.
	Case dismissed, I feel like.
	But seriously, I mean, like the defense attorneys, all they have to do is play the tape of the D.A.
	saying this and the case is dismissed.
	Then he's not just going to lie about that.
	He also says one officer has become a cooperative witness.
	So he says this yesterday.
	He says the second officer is now cooperating with us and is a cooperative state's witness.
	There's only one problem with this.
	The attorney says, no, not true.
	We're not.
	No, that's not that's not the case.
	We're not going to cooperate with this D.A.
	because he's railroading people.
	Because Officer Brosnan is now becoming a cooperating witness for the state, we are asking the court to grant a bond of $50,000.
	And to allow Mr. Officer Brosnan to sign that bond, as I indicated, that he would become one of the first police officers to actually indicate that he is willing to testify against someone in his own department.
	This is a lie.
	It is not true.
	The attorney for the other officer, whose name is Devin Brosnan, they said he's cooperating with the Fulton County DA's investigation and met with the ADA yesterday, but he has not agreed to be a state's witness or to testify in any court hearing or to plead guilty to any charge.
	The decision to initiate charges by the Fulton County DA's office is irrational, obviously based on factors which should have nothing to do with the proper administration of justice.
	This was not a rush to judgment.
	It was a rush to misjudgment.
	According to the lawyer, He also said that Brooks used the taser he took from Brosnan against the officer as he resisted arrest and later ran from the scene.
	The lawyer says that Brosnan sustained burns from the taser.
	Samuel also states that when Brooks began to violently resist arrest, Brosnan's head hit the asphalt parking lot, and he was later diagnosed with a concussion.
	But don't worry, he was not a danger to anyone.
	Brooks.
	Okay, so this is perfectly insane.
	I mean, perfectly, perfectly insane.
	But apparently, all this is okay.
	Now, again, the only piece of new evidence that we actually got from the DA yesterday was this still photo of Rolfe kicking Brooks.
	We haven't seen the actual video, so we don't know what was happening at the time, other than the still photo.
	So this was the only piece of new evidence, which would suggest that even if that was the case, that he ran up to the guy and kicked him, Apparently, the other piece of evidence he said is that he said to his partner, I got him.
	Which, by the way, is not evidence that you tried to murder somebody.
	If you're trying to collar a suspect and the guy fires a taser at you and you shoot him, you say, I got him.
	That doesn't mean I wanted to murder the black guy I just had a 30-minute conversation with in the parking lot of Wendy's.
	That is not what that means.
	That is not evidence of intent to murder, you idiot.
	Okay, so the Fulton County D.A.
	put out the kick.
	Okay, the kick is an assault.
	So you charge him with assault.
	That's called an assault.
	Okay, but you don't charge somebody with felony murder for kicking somebody.
	That is not, that's not how this works.
	That's not how this works at all.
	When we examined the videotape and in our discussions with witnesses, what we discovered is during the two minutes and 12 seconds that Officer Rolfe actually kicked Mr. Brooks while he laid on the ground, while he was there fighting for his life.
	Okay, and then we don't actually release the tape, we just release the sit hill.
	Forgive me if I don't trust this DA, who seems to be completely full of crap, politically motivated, and under investigation by the GBI.
	Forgive me if I have problems believing that this guy is really acting in the interest of justice, rather than in the interest of his own career, and in the interest of so-called racial justice, which suggests that in order to rectify the imbalances of criminal justice in American history, this means that we have to straighten out the stats, even if that means that people who ought not go to jail, go to jail, and people who ought to go to jail, ought not go to jail.
	It is very, very, I mean, incredibly dangerous stuff that we are engaged in and with real ramifications, as we are about to talk about in just one second.
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	Okay, we're gonna get into what happened in Atlanta as a result of this.
	Namely, the cops were like, okay, so here's the deal.
	If I do my job, then you're going to prosecute me.
	So how about this?
	How about I just don't?
	How about I just don't?
	That's what happened last night in Atlanta.
	We're gonna talk about that and why it's about to happen across the country in all likelihood.
	Plus, we'll get to John Bolton tearing into the president in a new book.
	Get into that in one second.
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	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So last night in reaction to the Atlanta DA going after an officer for a fully justified shooting.
	Put aside what happened after with the kicking.
	Maybe there's an assault case there.
	Don't know.
	We haven't seen the tape.
	We don't know if somebody was still resisting.
	We just don't know.
	Again, we don't know does not mean the officer is innocent of the thing, it means we don't know.
	Just to explain that sentence for people who are morons.
	That's what that means.
	What we do know is that that was a justified shooting because we have the tape of the shooting.
	Guy's being prosecuted.
	His partner's being prosecuted.
	Apparently everybody in a seven-mile radius except for criminals is being prosecuted, so that's exciting stuff.
	And so, yesterday, last night, the Atlanta PD, in many precincts across the city, they just called in sick.
	They said, you know what?
	Not gonna do it.
	Oops!
	We all have COVID.
	Whoops!
	It was going around Twitter, it was called the Blue Flu by people including Mike Cernovich.
	And that phrase has been around for a while, the rumors of a blue flu.
	The police officers were basically going to start calling in sick and saying, listen, we're not going to police crime.
	You want us to police crime?
	Well, guess what?
	I'm happy to police crime so long as you're not going to prosecute me for policing crime.
	But I'm not going to go out there and get killed for the sake of your politically correct bullcrap.
	That's not a thing I'm going to do.
	I've talked to a bevy of police officers.
	I haven't talked to a police officer in the last month who has not suggested that they are seriously considering early retirement or leaving their major city department.
	Because these departments are not protecting their cops.
	They are not.
	The vast, vast majority of police officers are heroes who stand between you and villainy every day.
	And when you cast them as the villains, you should not be surprised when they walk away and you are face to face with real villains.
	And that is what is going to happen in cities like Atlanta.
	This is a data-based argument.
	I mentioned a study the other day from Roland Fryer, another researcher from, I believe, the National Economic Council, that showed that in the aftermath of viral incidents in places like Ferguson and Baltimore and Cincinnati and Riverside, that in the aftermath of viral incidents that prompted major investigations that in the aftermath of viral incidents that prompted major investigations of police departments, policing basically stopped in those cities, leading to 900 excess deaths, 900 excess homicides in the Now think about that in every major city in the United States, which is basically what is happening now.
	It's happening in LA.
	It's happening in Seattle.
	It's happening in New York.
	It's happening in Atlanta.
	It's going to happen in Chicago.
	What do you think happened?
	Even the cops who stay on the job, do you think that they're just going to proactively police now?
	They'll respond to 911 calls, but only after somebody's been shot and is bleeding out, presumably.
	So, a bunch of precincts of Atlanta walked out last night.
	One observer who was sort of observing the radio traffic said that this afternoon when the DA announced murder charges were filed, almost an entire shift in a patrol zone drove back to the precinct, said they needed to talk to the EAP or weren't feeling well.
	Another specialty squad did the same.
	The overnight shift had multiple sick outs.
	The officers are broken, abandoned.
	After eight officers were fired and charged by this DA two weeks ago, the officers were outraged.
	More to that story didn't get told.
	They didn't handle it correctly, but the aggravated assault criminal charges didn't sit well.
	During the middle of riots, when the DA charged these officers, three outside agencies pulled their officers back home.
	I can't have my officers placed in a situation like this.
	The mayor has already taken away the raises they were promised and given control of the budget to the COO.
	The APD has already basically been defunded.
	Nine of the 15 council members voted to take back the money.
	Their chief was fired, basically for being a white lady.
	It's now a black head of the APD.
	By the way, you know what's worth noting?
	The Atlanta PD?
	58% black as of 2016.
	58% black.
	The DA is charging officers before the GBI even does an investigation.
	Most of them are in their 20s.
	They aren't going to work to kill a black man or anyone for that matter.
	The department is about 65% black as of now, apparently.
	Not just 58% black as it was back in 2016.
	And the mayor is trying to hold this thing together despite cracking down on the cops.
	She said, don't worry guys, it's fine, it's fine.
	She was on CNN last night as Atlanta police officers were calling in sick across the county.
	They do it for one night and it'll probably be okay.
	But they had to lie, right?
	They came out and said, no, we're just having them higher than average call out.
	It's not, people aren't calling in sick.
	It's not, it's not a blue flu.
	We just had sort of a higher than average people calling in sick today.
	Try this for like two weeks and see how it goes.
	Not one night.
	Once the criminals know that the cops are not on the streets and not responding to calls, then see how it goes.
	By the way, she was apparently trying, according to a lot of the radio traffic, the Atlanta Police Department, the dispatchers, were trying to call in people from surrounding counties, and the surrounding counties were like, nope, you're on your own.
	I'm not going down there, I'm not getting prosecuted for you guys.
	Nope, not gonna happen.
	So Keisha Bottoms, the mayor, said, it's okay, we have enough officers, kind of.
	Whistling past the graveyard here.
	We don't have a count yet because we were in the midst of a shift change.
	But what I do know is that we do have enough officers to cover us through the night.
	And our streets won't be any less safe because of the number of officers who've called out.
	But it's just my hope, again, that our officers will remember the commitment that they made when they held up their hand and they were sworn in as police officers.
	According to Charlie Gile of NBC News, producer over there, he says Atlanta Police Union spokesman Vince Champion tells me officers around the city are protesting the charges announced against officers Rolfe and Brosnan.
	Because they're walking off the job, not responding to calls unless backup is needed, and going silent on the radios.
	And if you listened to the radio traffic last night, that was perfectly obvious that was happening.
	You can do that for one night, you can't do it for two weeks.
	You can't do it for a week.
	Get ready for the purge in Atlanta.
	That's what this is gonna be.
	I love that the mayor is like, oh yeah, morale is just down at the police department.
	I can't really explain why morale is down, except that I just called my officers murderers who didn't commit a murder.
	But aside from that, I can't really explain why the morale is down.
	Across the country, morale is down with police departments.
	And I think ours is down tenfold.
	This has been a very tough few weeks in Atlanta and with the tragedy of Mr. Brooks.
	And then on top of that, the excessive force charges that were brought against the officers involved with the college students.
	There's a lot happening in our city and our police officers are receiving the brunt of it, quite frankly.
	So, good times right there.
	So, Atlanta is just the beginning.
	We've already heard evidence that there are going to be blueouts in places like Los Angeles, where people were not being paid proper overtime, that the LAPD was just going to be like, you know what?
	We're not doing this anymore.
	We're not going to police the metro.
	That's been a major issue in Los Angeles.
	You've already seen rumors that over 600 police officers in New York are looking at possibly leaving the police force.
	This is going to happen at places across the country.
	Because what we were watching, the assault on police from public figures across the aisle, it's not going to end well, folks.
	Because guess who stands between the criminals and innocent citizens?
	Particularly black and brown citizens, by the way.
	Those are the police.
	You remove the police, the crime is going to go up.
	That is not going to hurt the people who are living in Beverly Hills.
	It's not going to hurt all of the white, woke, liberal hipsters on college campuses who are hashtagging Black Lives Matter.
	It's going to hurt all the people who are going to be killed in areas with high crime, disproportionately in black and brown communities.
	That's the reality here.
	And it's an ugly reality.
	The posturing from all of the white, woke liberals meets the reality that when you remove the cops from high crime scenarios, crime goes up.
	Always.
	Not sometimes.
	Always.
	And don't give me Camden, New Jersey, where they got rid of the police department by doubling the size of the police department and getting rid of the local police union, which is what actually happened there.
	Meanwhile, you know, Bottoms says there, Keisha Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, she says, That the morale is down in the police department.
	Morale is down across the country.
	I mean, there are polls showing right now that Americans are less satisfied with the United States than they have been in 50 years.
	That is not a giant surprise.
	Maybe one of the reasons for that is because everyone sort of feels like they are being treated unfairly.
	You have an entire narrative on one side of the aisle that declares that America is sexist, racist, bigoted, homophobic, horrific in every way.
	So if you're a member of a minority group, you're being told over and over every day that your fellow American is seeking to keep you down.
	And something Michelle Obama actually said to people, no matter how hard you work as a young black person, the system is designed to keep you down.
	That's pretty depressing.
	And then, if you are not a member of a minority group, you are told that you are suffering from white privilege.
	Or that you are the beneficiary, rather, of white privilege.
	And that any move you make to be colorblind is actually just an emanation of your own white privilege.
	And we're going to call you out.
	We're going to go after you.
	We're going to uncover every bad thing you have ever done.
	It's the Salem Witch Trials.
	We're going to go after you.
	And if you sink to the bottom, then we know you're innocent.
	But if you float, then we know you're a witch and we burn you.
	Really, really exciting stuff.
	Over at the Washington Post, they're going through full-scale purges.
	I do love this story.
	There's a story by Mark Fisher and Sydney Trent.
	The picture on the story has a picture of two Washington Post staffers, one named Lexi Gruber and one named Lyric Prince, standing next to a statue in the park looking very, very determined.
	Very determined people.
	What are they so determined about?
	What sort of grand conspiracy have they uncovered?
	What sort of Woodward and Bernstein journalism have they done to merit such a wonderful photo?
	Quote, Blackface incident at post-cartoonist 2018 Halloween party resurfaces amid protests.
	The Washington Post is now calling out bad old Halloween costumes.
	This is a 3,000 word piece in the Washington Post.
	3,000 words on how a person wore a non-woke costume to a Washington Post Halloween party in 2018.
	Now the great irony of the woke costume is that the woke costume was supposed to be woke.
	The un-woke costume was supposed to be woke.
	Here is the harrowing story of a...
	Racism!
	Over at the Washington Post.
	K, you ready for this?
	And the staffer's already been fired.
	Quote, every year, Tom Tolles' Halloween party draws an eclectic mix.
	Journalists and political types from Washington's power elite, but also artists and musicians, everyone from retirees to college kids, jammed into small rooms and sprawled across the backyard, dancing and gossiping, checking out the crowd to see who has the most inventive and outrageous costumes.
	At the 2018 party at the home of the Washington Post editorial cartoonist, in addition to several Ruth Bader Ginsburgs, someone dressed as the Mueller witch hunt and post columnist Dana Milbank came as just confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, complete with a beer dispensing device on his head.
	A guest named Lexi Gruber wore a scary Beetlejuice getup and called herself dead.
	Wow.
	A middle-aged white... white... named Sue Schaefer wore a conservative business suit and a name tag that said, Hello, my name is Megyn Kelly.
	Her face was almost entirely blackened with makeup.
	Kelly, then an NBC morning host, had just said that week she'd caused a stir by defending the use of blackface by white people, saying, quote, when I was a kid, that was okay as long as you were dressing up as like a character.
	First of all, if you recall, that was a bullcrap story in the first place, because what Megan was not doing was defending actual blackface.
	She was saying there's a difference, as by the way, Juan Williams has said on my show, right?
	Juan Williams, the black commentator.
	For Fox News, there's obviously a difference between you dressed up as Michael Jackson in 1985 and you dressed up like Ralph Northam did, just plainly in blackface in 1985.
	Like, that is not the same thing.
	But, in any case, put aside the Kelly controversy.
	This lady, this middle-aged white woman, was making fun of Megyn Kelly for supposedly being racist by dressing up as Megyn Kelly in blackface.
	It was not because she was doing blackface, right?
	Like, she's so woke that she's un-woke.
	She was dressed up as Megyn Kelly and she had black on her face because she's supposed to be making fun of that evil, conservative, vicious, racist Megyn Kelly.
	And now she's being targeted as a racist for targeting the supposed racist Megyn Kelly.
	And now she's been ousted for her racism.
	Just before heading over to the party, Schaefer, a graphic designer and friend of Tolles, decided to dress as Kelly in blackface to mock her, she said.
	Well, yes, clearly, because that's perfectly obvious.
	Some of the approximately 100 guests at the home of the cartoonist in the district's American University neighborhood said they didn't notice the blackface.
	Some noticed it and said nothing.
	A few people walked over to Schaefer, who was then 54, and challenged her about the costume.
	Gruber, who's of Puerto Rican descent, and her friend Lyric Prince, who's African-American, confronted Schaefer directly.
	You understand how offensive that could be to a person of color, Gruber said, according to two witnesses.
	I'm Megyn Kelly.
	It's funny, Schaefer replied, the witnesses said.
	Nearly two years later, the incident, which has bothered some people ever since, ever since, but which many guests remember only barely or not at all, has resurfaced.
	Ooh, resurfacing in the nationwide reckoning over race.
	By the way, resurfaced is code for a woke staffer decided to go up and dig up an old photo to get somebody fired.
	That's what resurfaced means.
	It's not like we're bobbing out here on the eddies of time, and suddenly, oh, look, a picture.
	It just resurfaced magically.
	I was just here on the lake of news and boom, up came the picture.
	Nope.
	That's not how that works.
	Resurface this code for a woke staffer decided to get somebody fired.
	For an unfunny Halloween costume that was targeting supposed racism.
	That wasn't even racism in the first place.
	Well done, everyone.
	The story goes on for 3,000 words.
	Gruber felt compelled to revive the 2018 incident.
	Last week, she emailed Tolles.
	She said, in 2018, I attended a Halloween party at your home.
	I understand you're not responsible for the behavior of your guests, but at a party, a woman was in blackface.
	She harassed me and my friend, the only two women of color.
	It was clear she made her costume with racist intent, which obviously is not true.
	According to the Washington Post's own story, the two people approached her and then started harassing her about being a supposed racist.
	Gruber, a 27-year-old management consultant, told Tolles the incident had, quote, weighed heavily on my heart.
	It was abhorrent and egregious.
	And then asked him to help her identify the woman.
	It didn't resurface.
	This lady kept this around in the back of her mind so she could get a heroic picture in the Washington Post for getting another Washington Post employee in graphic design fired for a costume that was not racist.
	Okay, again, the costume is not racist because it's making fun of the evils of blackface, you stupid idiots.
	It is not about how blackface is good.
	It's making fun of the evils of blackface.
	After the killing of George Floyd in the protests, I began reflecting more on this incident, Gruber said in an email seeking post coverage of the incident.
	I wanted to know who the woman is.
	What impact does she have on society?
	I think this is an important story.
	That a party full of prominent people in Washington welcomed a person in blackface, danced and drank with her, and watched in silence as she harassed two young women of color.
	Prince, 36, a science writer, art critic, and artist, wants Schaeffer to explain publicly why she did what she did.
	I don't want an apology.
	That time has long past, she said.
	She wants tolls to make it clear that what Schaeffer did was wrong.
	That's not the kind of person he knows to be a good person.
	She's a bad person now.
	We now know everything we need to know about this person because she dressed up as Megyn Kelly in blackface to mock Megyn Kelly.
	Looking back, some guests at the party say they wish they'd confronted Schaeffer more aggressively.
	Others say she's already paid a price and that her embarrassment and regrets were evident when she left the party in tears.
	I wish I'd been the one to call her out, said Philippa Hughes, a Washington arts entrepreneur who— I mean, this is just malice crap.
	I'm sorry.
	It is just unbelievable malice crap.
	Tolles, a 68-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner, replied to Gruber's email last week with apologies for your experience at the party.
	A lot of people show up, I don't know.
	I don't recognize the woman you're inquiring about.
	Tolles did know Schaefer.
	Ooh, so now he must be fired!
	He said, I meant I didn't recognize any bad intent.
	I didn't feel it was my place to tell her who my other guest was when she had misinterpreted what the other guest intended with her costume.
	I mean, this is just, it's plainly insane.
	This goes on and on and on and on.
	3,000 words because a 27-year-old is so weak-minded that she believes a costume that is meant to mock the evils of blackface is actually horrifically racist to the point where two years later, she's still having bad dreams about it and has to get the person fired.
	Well, I wonder why people are feeling so negative about the future of the United States.
	I just can't imagine why.
	I can't imagine why.
	When the woke scolds are not only out in force, they are forcing people to have their job lost.
	I mean, this lady is what now?
	56 years old?
	You're firing a 56-year-old lady because she wore a liberal costume making fun of Megyn Kelly to a Washington Post party, and then the Washington Post does a 3,000-word mea culpa with hero pictures of the people who were offended.
	And can I just tell you something about being offended?
	Being offended does not make you virtuous.
	Very often it makes you a weakling.
	If you are that offended by these- like, as a person who's the number one target of all antisemitism on the internet in 2016, and watched people send me actual memes of my- of me being gassed by Hitler, okay?
	It takes a lot to offend me.
	Guess what?
	I still lead a happy life.
	I don't have a bunch of nightmares about that.
	My wife, I've mentioned this before.
	My wife, as an Israeli-American woman, walking with her father in Sacramento, a man drove past, threw a rock at her, and yelled, killed the Jews.
	Does she have nightmares about that?
	She's mentioned it to me once in our 12 years of marriage.
	Those are all worse things than, I saw a costume that made me feel bad at a party, even though the costume was supposed to be making fun of alleged racism.
	These are your reporters.
	These are your journalists.
	As someone put it online, Gawker didn't go away.
	It just became the Washington Post.
	That's all that's happening now.
	We're now outing all the baddies.
	All the baddies have to be outed.
	Making America a worse place, one mobbing at a time.
	Well done, everybody.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, you want to talk about more ridiculous sort of woke scolding.
	So there are a couple more stories that are worth noting in the woke scolding lane, and then we'll get to John Bolton for a little while here, because John Bolton is, of course, a big story, because John Bolton wrote a book.
	Ooh, a book!
	Okay, and then just confirmed everything we knew about President Trump.
	He says rash and stupid things.
	Who knew that?
	Except for every absorber of President Trump.
	That he says rash and stupid things and says the quiet part out loud.
	And is completely unsubtle and tactless.
	And very often will say things that are bad about America.
	Who knew that?
	Except for everyone who has ever seen his Twitter account.
	Every human, that is.
	Okay, we'll get to that in a second.
	First, let's talk for a second about people seeking to be offended at this point.
	Again, offense has become a virtue.
	If you take offense at a thing, you are now virtuous.
	You get the hero pose over at the Washington Post.
	You get the full front page splash in 3,000 words because you were offended by a Halloween party in 2018.
	Slow clap for you.
	You're Martin Luther King.
	You're Rosa Parks.
	Well done.
	Well done.
	You're Malcolm X. You've really stood up to true American prejudice by calling out a lady who you didn't know from two years ago at a Washington Post editorial cartoonist party.
	Amazing, amazing stuff.
	Well, looking for his merit badge of offended-ness is Tim Gray, a columnist for Variety.
	Ten problematic films that could use warning labels!
	Ah, we now need more warning labels.
	We need trigger warnings.
	Remember that time?
	When I used to talk about trigger warnings and microaggressions on the show and in my college speeches, people were like, that's not going to enter the real world.
	These young people, they're going to get out there and then the real world's going to hit you hard, bro.
	The real world is going to change them.
	They're going to come face to face with reality.
	And then it turned out that reality came face to face with the woke skulls and ran.
	And the new reality is, the more offended you are, the more virtuous you are.
	So find something that offends you, and you too can be initiated into the woke, into the woke priesthood, where you can rip out the entrails of your enemies and just spread them on the ground and read the auspices.
	So there's a piece of variety.
	It's not enough to go after Gone with the Wind.
	Instead, they have now a list of 10 problematic films that could use warning labels.
	All films should be viewed with a critical eye, says this columnist.
	That doesn't mean banning them.
	These films represent the era in which they were made.
	It's important to remember history, so we don't repeat those things.
	But here are 10 films that need to be presented with disclaimers and discussions before and after entering a screening.
	Dirty Harry from 1971.
	Lieutenant Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department is determined to uphold the law even if he has to break the rules.
	It started a craze for movies about maverick cops who get the job done by following their instincts rather than the law.
	The film mocks liberal judges and do-gooders, and the villain claims police brutality, planting the seed that other such charges are fake moves to get sympathy.
	And one of the things that they're not going to mention is that Dirty Harry was an extraordinarily popular movie because it came amidst one of the great crime waves in American history, beginning in the mid-60s and culminating in 1994.
	Dirty Harry was a direct reactionary response to the fact that criminality was being allowed to run wild by the left.
	That's what Dirty Harry was.
	It's why it was popular.
	Same thing with the movie Death Wish.
	Both of those movies were very popular because they were actually responding to the ridiculousness of the left taking over the auspices of law and order and destroying them.
	Forrest Gump apparently is bad.
	Forrest Gump is very bad.
	Forrest Gump was made by intelligent people, won six Oscars, and is beloved by many.
	While the film is condescending to anyone with a disability, Vietnam vets and people with AIDS among others, it's actually hostile to protesters, activists, and the counterculture.
	As a bonus, lovable title character Nathan Bedford Forrest was named after his grandfather, the first Grand Wizard of the KKK.
	So Forrest Gump is cancelled.
	Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
	Ah, we have to get rid of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because the exotic villains are portrayed as primitive and bloodthirsty foreigners, resulting in negative and stereotypical depictions of India and of Hindu customs.
	I'm pretty sure that anybody who watched Temple of Doom didn't go away thinking, I feel like all Hindus just, like, rip hearts out of chests.
	It's an actual temple cult.
	Like, what are you ta- Apparently, Me Before You needs to be done away with.
	Me Before You.
	Because it's really insensitive.
	Because it's a romance about a man who becomes paralyzed after an accident and falls in love with his new companion, and then he urges her to live her life to the fullest instead of living half a life with him.
	So he kills himself, presenting the idea that suicide is better than life with a disability.
	So first of all, I agree with the take on the film, but I wonder why it needs a disclaimer.
	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is also very bad.
	Very, very bad.
	Because the film is set in 1969, when some Americans felt the status quo was being threatened by minorities, hippies, and newly liberated women.
	From the controversial depiction of Bruce Lee, to the fact that black people seem non-existent, and the Mexicans, as they're called in the film, are car valets or waitresses, Tarantino's film seems to have several blind spots.
	Wow.
	Also, The Searchers is bad.
	The Searchers is cancelled.
	Silence of the Lambs is cancelled, which is exciting.
	True Lies is cancelled as well.
	By the way, the reason that Silence of the Lambs is cancelled is because the criminal is trans.
	So that's bad.
	That's bad.
	You can never have a trans criminal.
	All trans people are good.
	Just like all straight people.
	Oh no, sorry.
	The only villains we're allowed are actually white straight people.
	Those people are villains.
	Well done, Variety.
	You're offended.
	Congratulations.
	Congratulations.
	Virtue has been conferred upon you.
	How bad has this stuff become?
	The city of Seattle has now put out, I'm not kidding you, this is according to Dr. Carolyn Borsenko, who's an organizational psychologist.
	The city of Seattle asked its white employees to voluntarily spend a day off in a training about their internalized racial superiority.
	There's an email that was sent out to white employees.
	It says, the Office of Civil Rights is hosting a training on internalized racial superiority tomorrow morning, specifically targeted for white employees.
	They say, we're opening up this Friday's long-scheduled citywide RSJI training on internalized racial superiority, a training for white people, to additional white city employees.
	We'll hold the training on Microsoft Teams from 9.30 a.m.
	to 12 o'clock p.m.
	White employees not already registered can sign up at the link below.
	Tomorrow, many city employees will be using paid or unpaid leave to take a day of reflection and action.
	This was during Blackout Tuesday.
	Is that what it was called?
	I think that's what it was called.
	I can't remember.
	We're inviting city employees who identify as white to join this training to learn, reflect, challenge ourselves, and build skills and relationships that help us show more fully as allies and accomplices for racial justice.
	We'll examine our complicity in the system of white supremacy.
	This was sent out by the City of Seattle to its white employees.
	Nothing like a little racial targeting of your white employees and suggesting they ought to take the day off that's been given to them to consider their racial guilt and come on in to learn about their internalized white superiority.
	Yes, I wonder why so many people are negative.
	Maybe it's because things suck right now, like radically suck right now in a huge way.
	Okay, meanwhile, I would be remiss if I didn't talk at least a little bit about John Bolton's book.
	So John Bolton has a 496-page book out, which, I mean, frankly sounds interminable.
	I don't like reading political books that are that long because they rarely justify the word count.
	I've also, I will admit, I've gotten to the point in my life where I will get, if there's an 800 page book and I start it and I get 500 pages in, and I get bored, I'll just put it down.
	I just don't have that many breaths left in my life.
	When I was younger, I would be like, okay, I'm gonna blow my way all the way through the end of this thing.
	But if I'm reading Vanity Fair and it's 900 pages long and I get to page 700, and I'm like, okay, I feel like I got the gist.
	I get how the writing works.
	All right, let's let's move on.
	I'll just read the rest of the plot and put it down like that.
	So I feel that way about Bolton's book, which I believe is in the mail for me.
	So I will let you know how it is after I read the first 300 pages of his 496 page tome.
	So, let me say right at the outset, I think that John Bolton is an honest person.
	Okay, I've met Ambassador Bolton several times.
	I do not think he's a liar.
	I think people who are trying to flip on him now that he is saying things that are anti-Trump, that's sort of absurd.
	The idea that Bolton is just making things up full-scale.
	Why is it that everybody who turns against Trump is a liar, but Trump himself is considered the epitome of honesty?
	Like, that's just not something I believe.
	Now, do I think that it is worthwhile for John Bolton to talk out of school?
	I generally don't think that it's worthwhile for government officials to talk out of school unless they quit over a matter of principle and want to talk about the matter of principle.
	But this idea that you're going to sit in on meetings for three years and take the benefits of the job and try to swing the job and then you're just going to go out and talk about it.
	That's really kiss and tell kind of stuff that I'm really not fond of.
	I will also say that most of the things that we learn about Donald Trump in the excerpts of the book that we've seen are not particular revelations.
	Namely, he says horrible things.
	Truly horrible things.
	That he is completely transactional in his approach to politics.
	That he says the quiet part out loud.
	The real difference between Donald Trump and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama was the sophisticated version of Trump.
	So I'll give you a perfect example.
	So one of the big headlines from this is that apparently Trump talked to Xi Jinping about his re-election.
	So according to John Bolton, President Trump was constantly motivated by re-election, which, by the way, is true for virtually every president.
	Barack Obama always had an eye toward re-election.
	So Bolton says in a piece in the Wall Street Journal, I'm hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my White House tenure that wasn't driven by re-election calculations.
	Okay, well it's just called Welcome to Politics.
	I mean, John Bolton knows this.
	So he says that Trump saw his meetings with Xi not as a policy issue to be resolved, but as an opportunity to make personal gestures to Xi.
	In 2018, for example, he reversed penalties that had been carried out by the Commerce Department on ZTE.
	In 2019, he offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei if it would help in a trade deal, which of course was primarily about getting Trump reelected in 2020.
	So apparently, he talked openly with Xi about the fact that he wanted Xi to start importing all sorts of agricultural products, because if he imported agricultural products, then Trump would have the ability to win some of the swing states.
	So, is that good?
	No, it's not good.
	Of course it's not good.
	You don't want the President of the United States going to foreign dictators and being like, you know, it'd be great if you could help me out with my re-election prospects by importing some of our agricultural goods.
	Just give me a win here.
	Just give me a win here.
	That's really bad.
	I'm old enough to remember when Barack Obama literally said to Dmitry Medvedev, tell Vladimir I have more flexibility after this election.
	Okay, so Obama did the same thing.
	He was just a lot more sophisticated about how he did it and tried to do it off mic.
	He failed in that instance.
	But this idea that politicians are never thinking about re-election and never talk with foreign leaders with an eye toward re-election is very silly.
	This is a distinction that I made when we were talking about Trump and Ukraine.
	I said, if one of the motivations for a president is re-election, if it is not the only motivation, but if one of the motivations is re-election, Then that's just called politics because that's what politicians do.
	And so that's that one is sort of the least of my concerns among the John Bolton bombshells.
	Some of the other John Bolton bombshells is just Trump generally going easy on China because he was trying to win over Xi Jinping on a personal level.
	This is, again, an aspect of Trump's negotiation that I've always thought is dumb, obviously.
	The worst thing that apparently Trump said is that he was talking with Xi Jinping about Xi Jinping's concentration camps for Uighur Muslims, and apparently he suggested that he was okay with them.
	That's the part that's ugly.
	But he was asked about it.
	There's no justification for that.
	According to Bolton, at the opening dinner of the Osaka G20 meeting in June 2019, with only interpreters present, Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang.
	According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps that Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.
	The National Security Council's top Asia staffer, Matthew Pottinger, told me that Trump said something very similar during his November 2017 trip to China.
	Apparently Trump was particularly dyspeptic about Taiwan, having listened to Wall Street financiers who had gotten rich off mainland China investments.
	Apparently Trump used to point to the Resolute desk and say, this is China, and then point to the tip of his Sharpie and say, this is Taiwan.
	So none of this is good.
	The stuff about concentration camps, apparently Trump was asked about it, and Trump said something like, America does bad things too.
	So the question isn't, did Trump say a very bad thing?
	And is that a horribly evil thing to say, that concentration camps are okay?
	Yes, that is a horribly evil thing to say with no justification whatsoever.
	Also, this is coming from the same guy who said openly in an interview with Bill O'Reilly in 2016 that Vladimir Putin routinely killing his political enemies, America does bad stuff too.
	Don't you remember that?
	He said that I believe it was February 2016.
	You want to criticize Putin?
	Well, America kills people too.
	And I was one of the people going like, uh, what now?
	So this has been a constant Trump refrain.
	In other words, things can be bad without being news.
	And I'm wondering, what exactly is the news here?
	I'm not seeing anything newsy here.
	John Bolton is making the rounds, though, and he says Trump isn't fit for office.
	He did an interview with ABC News, I believe, in which he went after Trump pretty hard.
	I don't think he's fit for office.
	I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job.
	There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's re-election.
	I think he was so focused on the reelection that longer term considerations fell by the wayside.
	So if he thought he could get a photo opportunity with Kim Jong-un at the demilitarized zone in Korea, there was considerable emphasis on the photo opportunity and the press reaction to it.
	And little or no focus on what such meetings did for the bargaining position of the United States.
	Okay, so again, he disagrees with the policy.
	This makes him no different, Bolton, than any other officer who has left the Trump administration.
	He sounds like Jim Mattis.
	He sounds like Rex Tillerson.
	He sounds like everybody who has left the Trump administration on bad terms with Trump, or who's basically been fired by Trump.
	They all say they don't like Trump.
	They all say that Trump is incompetent.
	They all say Trump doesn't know anything.
	They all say they disagree with him on policy and that he's driven by pure election concerns and sort of trade tit-for-tat politics.
	All of which is perfectly obvious from everyone, right?
	Everyone knows this.
	So again, not news would be sort of where I put this.
	By saying things that are worse than I thought he had said, maybe that's news.
	The concentration camp, again, is inexcusable on every possible level.
	It's just terrible.
	But, and the but is not with regard to the comment.
	It's not really super newsy, considering that... Now, does this mean that John Bolton's a liar?
	This narrative I find completely tiresome.
	So President Trump went out and slammed Bolton and said, he's a liar, he's a liar.
	Okay.
	If forced to the map between do I believe that Trump did these things because John Bolton saw them, or is Trump lying to further himself?
	That is not a choice.
	Okay, I do not think that Trump is honest as the day is long, and I think that you'd have to be a sucker to believe that he is.
	Here's President Trump going after Bolton.
	By the way, his best move here would be to just ignore it.
	That would be his best move.
	Politically speaking, just be like, you know, disgruntled former staffer, we're done.
	That's all he should do.
	But will President Trump ever let a sleeping dog lie?
	No, not at all.
	Go for it.
	He broke the law.
	He was a washed-up guy.
	I gave him a chance.
	He couldn't get Senate-confirmed, so I gave him a non-Senate-confirmed position, where I could just put him there, see how he worked.
	And I wasn't very enamored.
	He went into the Middle East.
	He was one of the big guns for, let's go into Iraq.
	And that didn't work out too well, and I was against that a long time ago, before I was ever even thinking about doing what I'm doing now.
	And so, is this helpful?
	Not really.
	Robert Lighthizer, another trade advisor to Trump, he said that Bolton is completely crazy, that all this stuff is made up.
	Here's my rule of politics, and it's true across the board.
	My rule of politics is always this.
	Whatever is bad that people say about each other is true.
	Whatever is good that people say about themselves is false.
	Always.
	Always and inevitably.
	Okay, now, unless they are making some sort of, like, patently absurd accusation, like, Brett Kavanaugh is guilty of gang rape.
	If somebody says, I was in the room and this person said X, and it was a bad thing that they said, and the person says, no, I never said it.
	Generally, believe the bad things in politics.
	Because everybody's self-motivated.
	Everybody's self-motivated.
	And then you decide, okay, is that news?
	Is that changeable?
	The media's newfound respect for John Bolton is something to behold.
	Although I will say the media are pretty upset at John Bolton, because they're like, where were you during impeachment, dude?
	Like, where were you?
	Chris Hayes went after John Bolton yesterday.
	And frankly, I think he sort of has a point.
	He's a vicious bureaucratic infighter.
	He's duplicitous, untrustworthy, extremely militaristic.
	He's never been held accountable for all the terrible things he's done in his long public career, and there are many.
	He's a completely morally odious individual you would not want in your organization or anywhere around you.
	And yet he is, of course, also a Fox News contributor and at the highest levels of Republican policymaking.
	John Bolton could spend the rest of his life like Lady Macbeth trying to wash the blood off his hands, and it would be there still.
	And now Bolton is attempting to literally cash in on betrayal of his country.
	Again, all of which is par for the course of the modern Republican Party.
	Okay.
	So again, the only part of this I actually agree with with Chris Hayes, not the characterization of Bolton, but the idea that Bolton was like avoiding testimony, avoiding testimony, avoiding testimony.
	And then he says in his book, you know, if the Democrats had broadened out their impeachment inquiry to include all transactional politics for Trump, they would have had a better shot.
	Yeah, you know, if you really thought that, you could have said that at the time, John Bolton.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with all your COVID updates.
	There's so much news, it is impossible to cram it all into one show, which is why we have another one tomorrow.
	And we have a backstage live tonight, so go head on over to dailywire.com and subscribe.
	You're listening to The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	Atlanta police officers walk off the job, Aunt Jemima gets canceled, and the Boy Scouts get woke.

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