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July 24, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

53:13

Major League Wokeness | Ep. 1059

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	Players kneel before the national anthem to protest systemic racism on Major League Baseball's opening night, the Washington Redskins become the Washington football team, and Anthony Fauci throws out a first pitch and makes sure that nobody catches anything.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Stop putting your online data at risk.
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	Well, you know, I learned my lesson a few weeks ago.
	I suggested that when I watch sports, I actually like to watch sports.
	I know that sports are supposed to be a distraction from everyday life.
	That's what the goal of sports is.
	In fact, my friend Clay Travis, who hosts over at Outkick the coverage and over at Fox Sports, he pointed out on this show.
	That the word sport comes from disport.
	The word disport, which comes originally from Anglo-French, which used to mean divert or to amuse.
	Literally, it meant in Old French to carry away the mind from serious matters.
	That's what sport was.
	Sport was a distraction.
	No longer.
	We have entered a new woke world.
	And frankly, I'm really excited about it because here is what I want.
	Here's what I want.
	I want more politics in sports.
	I've decided the time has come.
	I'm tired of all of this apolitical mumbo jumbo where we all sort of get together and just have a good time and don't focus in on all the things that divide us.
	Now, I need everything to be divisive.
	I want every single thing to divide Americans.
	I want to turn on a baseball game.
	And the first thing I want to see is I want to see political platforms laid forth by every single player.
	I need to know.
	What Yohan Mankata, the second baseman for the Chicago White Sox, I need to know what he, second and third baseman, trades off positions.
	And because he has two separate positions on the field, I need two separate policy platforms as well.
	I need to know what Yohan Mankata thinks about the payroll tax.
	I need to know it.
	And if I don't know it before the game starts, I'm just not going to watch the game.
	More than that, I need every single player to mouth platitudes about America and how much America sucks.
	I need them to add exactly the tone and tenor that I like.
	And if they don't, I'm not gonna engage.
	I'm just not gonna watch.
	I'm gonna be so angry.
	I'm gonna suggest that they are just not socially conscious.
	And if anyone else says to me, you know, I just want sports to be apolitical, I know they're lying.
	I know they're lying.
	Because just by saying they want sports to be apolitical, they're being political, don't you see?
	Right, that isn't the national anthem political, isn't the flag, isn't everything political?
	I want everything to be political.
	I am only, I pledge right here, right now, I am only going to buy HVAC parts from CEOs who agree with me politically.
	I am only going to be served by baristas who mouth the slogans that I like.
	If somebody doesn't shout at me, silence is violence, while handing me my chips and fish, I am simply not going to take it.
	I'm going to slam that right down on the table and walk out of the restaurant.
	That is the way life is going to get better in this United States.
	We cannot have any sort of common areas that are apolitical, because if we do, then we refuse to acknowledge the evils that go along, that go on around us.
	Every area of American life must be infused with the nastiness and polarization of American politics.
	And particularly, I want everybody to mouth the slogan that America sucks while simultaneously taking part in some of the most lucrative businesses that the world has to offer.
	That's what the people I want to hear from most are the people who are the most privileged in our society.
	I need to hear from people who earn millions and millions of dollars.
	I want to.
	I'm desperate to hear from people who earn millions of dollars about how they are victimized in American society and how American society innately victimizes people who are members of their group.
	I definitely need to hear about that.
	I want it.
	You want it.
	We all want it.
	And when I turn on baseball, I don't care so much about whether somebody can throw 100 miles an hour or can hit the curve.
	What I really care deeply about This is what Aaron Judge thinks about everything, everything ranging from America's China policy to how exactly we handle restructuring of Social Security.
	I need to know about it.
	I do.
	OK, and so I was super happy with Major League Baseball's opening day.
	I mean, I was just pumped about this because they finally got the message.
	We finally rammed home the message, guys.
	Every single thing has to be political.
	Every single thing.
	We can't just in the middle of a pandemic, you know, be distracted by sport, you know, like the war during World War Two when it was considered kind of important to have sports be there as a distraction for the American public because we were doing important things at the same time.
	No, they got it all wrong during World War II.
	We didn't need Major League Baseball to just exist so that we could all be distracted and look at the box scores.
	What we really needed is for Major League Baseball to be extraordinarily political in every possible way.
	We don't need sports as a distraction.
	It's no longer just sports.
	Sports is politics.
	Politics is sports.
	It's all one giant Agglomeration of anger and rage.
	And that makes America better, I feel like.
	I feel like every time I have a conversation with someone I disagree with, we shouldn't be able to talk sports so that we can sort of distract ourselves and remind ourselves what we have in common as human beings.
	Instead, we should really just, you know, club each other over the head about politics.
	It's made the world better.
	That's how I felt on opening day.
	I felt so much better about America knowing that extraordinarily rich baseball players were kneeling to protest at America's systemic racism.
	I felt, I don't know about you, I felt great about it.
	Great.
	It was good stuff.
	We'll get to this in just one second.
	The wonders of watching a sport turns into basically just MSNBC.
	We'll get to that in a second.
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	So again, I was very pumped about the opening of the baseball season.
	It wasn't weird enough that we have no fans in the stands, which by the way, is strange.
	Like, why can't we socially distance the fans?
	They have these giant stadiums.
	Why exactly should we not be able to socially distance any of the fans?
	But, apparently, we're not going to.
	Instead, we're just going to have these weird, empty stadiums, which makes baseball seem like golf.
	But, okay.
	Okay, I'm just glad that we're getting back to sport.
	I mean, listen, I'm an MLB TV subscriber.
	I love baseball.
	It is my sport.
	My White Sox are going to be really interesting this shortened season.
	They have a bunch of young, up-and-coming players.
	I was pretty pumped.
	And then I got even more pumped because I realized not only was I going to get baseball, I was going to get social justice warrior messaging with my baseball, which is what I crave.
	It's what everybody craves.
	We're already getting it with basketball and with football, as we'll get to in just a moment.
	But to get it with baseball, which is my personal favorite sport, I loved it every single second.
	So last night, the Yankees and the Nationals kick off the MLB season in an empty stadium.
	And they kick off the season by kneeling, not for the National Anthem, but before the National Anthem, while holding a very, very, very, very, very, very, very long black cloth, which has solved all of our problems, Mirka.
	Amazing.
	They all knelt.
	Now, why were they kneeling?
	They were kneeling to protest systemic racism.
	Systemic racism.
	The vaguest, most weasel word Weasel phrase used in American politics today, it means virtually nothing.
	As John McWhorter has said, as Glenn Lowry has said, the term systemic racism has very, very little meaning.
	It's deliberately designed, Glenn Lowry, the professor at Brown University, who happens to be black, he pointed out in my program yesterday, that the term systemic racism is basically just a way to silence debate.
	Because by saying systemic racism, you now suggest that anyone who disagrees with your take is in fact a racist.
	So, all the players, who by the way are disproportionately of color, I mean, the MLB is not disproportionately black, but it is disproportionately Hispanic and Latino.
	The MLB, you have all these people who are earning millions of dollars to hit and throw a baseball, kneeling for the systemic racism of the United States, which is always wonderful.
	They knelt for it, and they played a beautiful video from Morgan Freeman, a social justice catechism, right before the game.
	And frankly, I'm looking forward to the seventh inning kneel.
	I think that'll be the new aspect of Major League Baseball.
	That's really exciting.
	Instead of standing for the national anthem, I think we should kind of just sit for it, generally.
	And also, mostly for the 7th inning stretch, we need... 7th inning stretch is not woke enough.
	I'm sorry.
	It's snacks of privilege.
	You even have time to stretch?
	How many people around America cannot stretch today because of income inequality?
	How many people around America are forced not to stretch?
	Stretching is for white people because yoga is a white people thing.
	Okay, no more 7th inning stretch.
	We need to stop the 7th inning stretch.
	Instead, we need to play Donald Glover's This is America, and everybody needs to kneel.
	It's the seventh inning kneel.
	That's what we need from now on.
	Okay, so Morgan Freeman led off the season with a bizarre, meaningless video about empathy.
	Because, of course, the implication is that if you disagree with kneeling for America's systemic racism, you're not empathetic.
	Right, that is the goal of this particular video.
	Empathy must lead the charge.
	This moment signifies our choice, our brotherhood, our unity.
	Equality and unity cannot be until there is empathy.
	Today and every day, we come together as brothers, as equals, all with the same goal, to level the playing field.
	Okay, there's only one problem.
	Okay, empathy is actually kind of bad for politics.
	The reason that empathy is bad for politics is because it leads you to empathize with people that you are more likely to like, as opposed to people you don't like.
	Okay, so first of all, the pitch for empathy is actually, there have been several books that are written on this, social science books, talking about how empathy is not actually The best thing for politics.
	It actually almost deactivates the reasoning centers of your brain because when you're empathetic, you don't actually create good policy.
	This doesn't mean that feeling sympathy for people is a bad thing.
	It means that if empathy is what drives your policymaking, you're probably not acting in a rational fashion.
	But the real goal here is, of course, not to generate empathy.
	The real goal here is to suggest that if you disagree with the idea that America is systemically and institutionally racist, you are not an empathetic person and therefore you're a bad, cruel and callous person.
	The idea is that empathy is really about, it's really a moral statement about what kind of good person you are.
	And you can't watch baseball until you say it along with Morgan Freeman.
	You can't.
	You can't just watch a game and be distracted, which is the goal of sports.
	Now listen, none of this is to say, obviously I'm being incredibly sarcastic.
	None of this is to say that players don't have a right to speak.
	They do.
	I think that every player has a right to speak just like every other American.
	I think also their words should be taken with exactly the same amount of seriousness that their expertise on the subjects dictates.
	So, when it comes to actually hitting a curveball, the actual art of hitting a curveball, I'm not an expert on that.
	And when I sound off about it, you should take it with a grain of salt.
	I flamed out as a baseball player at age 12.
	But when I talk about, you know, systemic racism in the United States, its meaning, economic inequality, things that I've actually spent years studying, then probably you should take it a little bit differently than a baseball player who spends zero time studying it, but knows that they're supposed to kneel for the Morgan Freeman social justice invocation before a baseball game.
	We don't have to take everybody's opinion with the same amount of seriousness, but we are now being dictated to really by the corporation that is MLB.
	It's not really the players.
	So some of the players are doing this kind of stuff and you take them with about as much seriousness as they deserve.
	What's actually happening right now is that the major corporations have decided, just like all major corporations across America, that if they virtue signal in incredibly vague fashion about things that social justice warriors want, then they can buy off the social justice warriors.
	That's really the goal.
	The goal here is not about forwarding any particular good in the United States.
	The goal is avoiding the blowback.
	It's the same reason you see so many corporations across the United States paying Rob and D'Angelo to educate their people on diversity.
	They don't actually care what Robin DiAngelo has to say.
	They're just trying to limit their liability.
	It's the exact same thing with regard to these major sporting events and teams and corporations.
	Their goal is to avoid public blowback.
	They don't want to be called out for not being empathetic enough.
	So if instead they quote-unquote lead the charge by saying incredibly vague things with no actual commitment to do a thing, With no actual prescription?
	Well, then they've fulfilled their pledge.
	They've been shamed into repeating and believing.
	And this is why you see the Boston Red Sox unveiled a giant Black Lives Matter logo at Fenway Park yesterday.
	I mean, enormous.
	Right outside Fenway Park.
	Really, just perfect.
	Perfect.
	Again, the basic idea that Black Lives Matter is utterly uncontroversial.
	The group Black Lives Matter is a neo-Marxist organization.
	The semantic overload that has been placed on the phrase Black Lives Matter is deliberate.
	When folks in the Black Lives Matter movement say they want to tear down the entire structural system of the United States, they are not lying about that.
	And then the idea is if you say, well, I don't agree with that, then you must not agree Black Lives Matter.
	It's all semantic overload game playing.
	So the Red Sox are engaging in this.
	Do you actually believe that the Red Sox believe the entire system has to be torn down in Ibram Kendi and how to be an anti-racist fashion?
	Do you believe that?
	I don't believe that.
	This is just woke virtue signaling so that people will say, oh, look at the Red Sox, look how much they care.
	It's about the empathy and the feelings.
	And so at least, I will say this, at least the Yankees and the Nationals didn't kneel for the national anthem, right?
	They knelt before.
	So kneeling for systemic racism is stupid because America is not systemically racist.
	It isn't.
	America is one of the most tolerant countries on the planet.
	Black Americans are the richest black people on planet Earth.
	It is not particularly close.
	The system of the United States is built around the notion of equal rights.
	We're not talking about the history of the failure of application of that principle.
	We're talking about right now in 2020.
	America is not a systemically racist country.
	The presence of inequality does not mean that all disparity is discrimination.
	So I have problems with the basic premise that everybody's supposed to kneel for systemic racism, especially when the case that's being used, even the George Floyd case, that is not evidence of systemic racism.
	I'm sorry.
	There's not evidence that Derek Chauvin, who is apparently a very bad cop, was not just being a very bad cop.
	He was actually being a vicious racist who was targeting black people.
	The evidence is not even on that.
	But even if he were, that would not implicate law enforcement across the country.
	The 800,000 law enforcement officers across the country.
	And that would not implicate the generalized system of American rights, duties, and institutions.
	Okay, but at least the Yankees and Nationals didn't kneel for the National Anthem.
	You can't say the same for Mookie Betts.
	So, Mookie Betts is a terrific, terrific baseball player.
	He plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
	And Mookie Betts is kneeling for the Nation- He knelt for the National Anthem.
	He just, by the way, signed a contract with the Dodgers worth $365 million!
	Listen, you can be rich, and you can still spot flaws in the United States, but if what you're saying is that the system of the United States is deeply broken, while you are currently kneeling for the national anthem, getting no blowback, and picking up 365 million bucks to boot?
	Yeah, that's a hard push.
	That's a hard push right there.
	Hey, by the way, MLB is doing more than this, right?
	There's the corporate... I talk about the corporate virtue signaling.
	We'll get to what MLB is doing corporately in a second.
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	Okay, so MLB has gone further than this.
	So MLB has now issued a bunch of regulations on what is supposed to appear on the field.
	According to Sports Illustrated, MLB will debut a Black Lives Matter stencil on mounds across the league, apparently.
	I don't, like, I've been watching baseball all my life.
	They've never put a political logo on the mound.
	Okay, and the American flag's not a political logo.
	I'm sorry.
	Anybody who suggests that Black Lives Matter, which again, is a term that has been issued with semantic overload, right?
	Does Black Lives Matter just mean that we care about black lives?
	Because then it's not political and it also doesn't need to be said because it's 100% true and pretty much everybody agrees with it.
	And if you don't, then you are like one in 330 million.
	Does Black Lives Matter mean America is systemically racist?
	Because that's highly political.
	And if Black Lives Matter reflects the organization, it's even more political than that.
	But I've not seen any political messaging on the mound before.
	But apparently we are at an unprecedented point in crisis for black Americans, which is just anti every piece of data ever existent in human history.
	We are not at a point of existential threat for black Americans.
	It is just not true.
	There is no existential threat to the 42 million black Americans, the vast majority of whom are middle class or up.
	The idea that the police are systemically hunting down black people is a lie.
	It is a blatant, overt lie.
	There are a grand total, last year, according to the Washington Post, of 15 black men shot unarmed by the police.
	The majority of those cases is where the person was attempting to steal a weapon off a cop or was attempting to use another object in order to harm a cop, like driving a car or something.
	And by the way, in all the other cases, the cops were under investigation.
	And so, the entire idea That law enforcement is hunting down black people is just not true.
	Okay, but apparently it's a point of existential crisis, which is why every major corporation now has to infuse the stuff that was supposed to be distractions from politics in real life, right?
	We have to infuse all of that with these deeply and apparently universally upheld apolitical messages that happen to be very, very political.
	Okay, Sports Illustrated reports, MLB will debut a Black Lives Matter stencil on mounds across the league in its opening week, according to the Washington Nationals.
	The stencil will first appear on Thursday.
	The Nationals, in conjunction with Major League Baseball, stand with the Black Lives Matter movement and will utilize the platform and National Stage of Opening Day to express support for the fight against systemic racism and injustice.
	So there it is, right?
	It's all about America's systemic racism and injustice.
	And if you don't believe this, well, you're going to watch baseball and you're going to see it anyway, just like you see it when you watch the NBA and it's on the sidelines.
	MLB will also allow players to sport a social justice message on their jersey for opening day, according to ESPN's Howard Bryant.
	United for Change and BLM are among the approved phrases to be written on jersey patches, per Bryant.
	I also look forward to Unborn Lives Matter.
	I think that one will be real good.
	I think Free Hong Kong should appear as well.
	Like really, let's just make this as political as humanly possible.
	Or, alternatively, what's happening with these corporations is they feel like they're gonna make a quick buck.
	Because capitalism always makes its buck.
	Now, again, if I sound upset about this, I am.
	I mean, I am upset about this.
	You have every right to do it.
	You're a corporation, you can do it.
	I don't have to like it.
	And I can also point out, I think it is bad for the country when every area of American life becomes overtly political and you are forced to take a position on deeply controversial issues.
	And you're supposed to actually not even take a position.
	You're supposed to acknowledge and repeat that America is a systemically racist country in order to watch a damned baseball game.
	It's an absurdity.
	It's an absurdity.
	And by the way, this is of course the going message of the NBA as well.
	They've put Black Lives Matter on the side of the court.
	So if you watch a basketball game, now you're going to be messaged too by people who suggest that America is systemically racist in a league that is 80% black and where the average salary is millions of dollars.
	Now again, none of this is to fail to recognize that problems still exist in the United States.
	Of course they still exist.
	Of course there are still racists.
	Of course bad things happen to people on the basis of race sometimes.
	The notion that America is systemically racist and that LeBron James is going to lead the charge?
	LeBron James, I'm sorry, he's just not a good spokesperson for this stuff.
	He isn't.
	LeBron James yesterday, he put out a statement about, he said, Black Lives Matter isn't a movement.
	It's a walk of life.
	It's a walk of life.
	And then he went further.
	He actually said it's not a movement because there has been no movement for black people in America.
	LeBron James, one of the richest black men on planet Earth, Who grew up in apparently pretty impoverished circumstances and has risen to become not only one of the most powerful voices in the country, but also one of the richest voices in the country.
	Apparently there's been no black movement.
	No movement for black Americans, according to LeBron James.
	Which, um, read a book.
	Here's LeBron James.
	A lot of people kind of use this analogy to talk about Black Lives Matter as a movement.
	It's not a movement.
	When you're black, it's not a movement.
	It's a lifestyle.
	We sit here and say it's a movement, and okay, how long is this movement going to last?
	Don't stop the movement.
	This is a walk of life.
	When you wake up and you're black, that is what it is.
	It shouldn't be a movement.
	It should be a lifestyle.
	This is who we are, and we understand that.
	I don't like the word movement.
	Because unfortunately, in America and society, there ain't been no damn movement for us.
	There ain't been no movement.
	There hasn't been a movement for black Americans?
	There hasn't?
	Really?
	Really?
	Weird, because if there hasn't been a movement for black Americans, I have been reliably informed by the New York Times that slavery was at the root of the American experiment.
	I've been reliably informed by every historic source in human history that black Americans used to be held as slaves, and then black Americans were kept in abject poverty and segregation for a hundred years.
	And now I have an extraordinarily powerful black man on my TV who earns hundreds of millions of dollars like a year through advertisement and all sorts of other venues.
	And by the way, he's done a lot of great charitable work, by the way, LeBron James.
	And I hear from him there's been no movement for black Americans.
	None.
	Zero.
	Curious, curious.
	I feel like I'm not being fed a line that is true here.
	But again, if you refuse to acknowledge that that line is truth, if you refuse to suggest that America is a systemically racist country today, if you refuse to acknowledge, then of course you are unwoke.
	And by the way, if you point out that you think that this very fraught battle, the best place to fight that might not be on the field itself.
	If you want to have these conversations off the field, go for it, enjoy.
	But when I turn it into a baseball game, I actually won a baseball game, Then you are apparently unwoke and problematic and also very political.
	It's just as political to say you want to watch sports without politics as it is to say that every single player in the NBA and the MLB and the NFL ought to mirror the sentiment that America is a systemically racist country.
	This sort of stuff is designed to divide Americans.
	It is.
	They're taking away all... They, and by they, I mean the corporations, I mean the social justice warriors, I mean the sports media, I mean many of the players.
	They're attempting to divide the country by specifically taking apolitical areas of American life and making them incredibly political.
	It makes the country worse.
	There are plenty of ways to have these conversations.
	We have them every single day in this country.
	Every.
	Single.
	Day.
	Or have you not noticed?
	But apparently, unless everything becomes political, then the country is worse off.
	Well, we'll see how that goes.
	I have a feeling that is not the case.
	In just a second.
	We'll get to other social justice warrior stories from the world of sports.
	Get to that in just one moment.
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	All right, so other social justice warrior nonsense from the world of sports.
	The Washington Redskins have renamed.
	They're now called the Washington Football Team.
	I'm not kidding.
	That's a real thing.
	Redskins?
	It wasn't just that the term Redskins was offensive.
	Now again, there are polls that have been done over the past 10 years that shows the Native Americans did not care about this issue.
	There was a poll done about 7 years ago that showed 9 out of 10 Native Americans not only didn't care, they actually kind of thought that the name was cool because you had a bunch of people who were actually rooting for a team named after Native Americans.
	But the Washington Redskins were pressured, because of George Floyd or something, into removing the name.
	Okay, fine, I understand.
	Like, you think that one's offensive.
	But here's the problem.
	There is no limiting principle to renaming anything that could possibly be found offensive.
	So Washington could not find a new name.
	This is not the Onion.
	It's not the Babylon Bee.
	The Washington team could not find a new name.
	They've renamed themselves the Washington Football Team.
	So I designed a logo for them that really emphasizes the team aspect of it.
	And the logo looks a little something like this.
	Looks like that right there.
	You see like Washington football team.
	Big T right there in the middle.
	It looks like WTF, but actually it's WFT, right?
	The T is just big in the middle.
	What?
	I think we've gone woking a little too much here, guys.
	The Washington football team.
	Exciting, exciting stuff.
	Established in 1932.
	They won't change their color scheme.
	They're still going to use burgundy and gold.
	But apparently the rebranding process takes 12 to 18 months.
	And according to Terry Bateman, the franchise's new executive vice president and chief marketing officer, he says, if you want to do it right, you got to take a deep breath, take a step back, go through the process.
	We want to do it right.
	We just couldn't figure out what the hell to call the team.
	So we're now the Washington football team.
	Oh, we America getting better.
	One stupid renaming at a time.
	Well done.
	Well done.
	By the way, in other politics and sports, Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals-New York Yankees opening day game.
	It didn't go great for him.
	So let's just put this out there.
	You know, Anthony Fauci's 80 years old.
	I wouldn't expect him to fire in a fastball.
	But there are a few kind of oddities about this.
	One is he's wearing a Washington Nationals mask in the middle of a completely empty stadium, which you don't actually need to do.
	And second of all, it's not a good first pitch.
	I mean, let's just point that out.
	Is that important?
	Absolutely not.
	It's not important.
	That doesn't mean we can't make fun of it.
	I mean, here he is, throwing a first pitch.
	The only first pitch I've seen that really is as weak as this first pitch.
	Barack Obama threw a real weak first pitch at the All-Star Game in, what, I think 2011?
	This was not good here from Anthony Fauci.
	He gets up there.
	He really flattens the curve.
	Here he is, throwing up, and there it goes, right down the first baseline.
	And fake crowd noise cheering that on.
	So Anthony Fauci, by the way, the reason that, it is incredible how Anthony Fauci has, we do, it seems like we keep doing this over and over because of Trump.
	People buying votive candles of Robert Mueller.
	If Fauci won't perceive to be at odds with Trump, would there be anybody who's worshipping Fauci at this point?
	Of course not.
	You don't see Deborah Birx throwing out the first pitch, do you?
	Anybody who's actually serving in the administration is not worthy of throwing out the first pitch.
	Only when Fauci opened a gap between himself and Trump was there this feeling that Fauci was now national hero number one, again, to the point where he's throwing out first pitches.
	The good news is that Fauci ensured, once again, that nobody could catch anything.
	By the way, I'm wondering, Fauci's being celebrated as a national hero.
	Like, I'm glad that he served the country in a lot of ways, right?
	He helped solve HIV.
	He's actually done an enormous number of very good things in his life.
	But, I mean, the handling of the pandemic, if it's so bad for most Americans, Fauci was in the president's ear for months on end.
	At some point, you know, you gotta say that it's not going that great.
	Either it's going great or it ain't going that great.
	By the way, that was the worst first pitch since 50 Cent threw one out at the Cubs game a few years back.
	Lord, the Mets game, yeah, it did not go well.
	Yeah, it was pretty similar.
	I will say that he got a little more distance on his throw than Fauci, but 50 cents is probably in his 30s.
	Fauci's in his 80s, so to be fair.
	Now, not to shoeshine the president here, but the president does have a better throwing motion.
	There was a video that came out yesterday in which he's throwing with Mariano Rivera.
	So here we can compare a 70-year-old man throwing a baseball to Mariano Rivera with an 80-year-old man throwing a baseball at the...
	National game.
	He's got a pretty good motion.
	I mean, I'll admit that.
	The President of the United States has a fairly decent motion.
	Right there.
	All of this is silliness.
	But baseball should be the great distraction.
	It is no longer the great distraction.
	We have to load up the social justice messaging.
	Also, every element of American life should be turned into social justice messaging.
	To the point where everything becomes entirely stupid.
	There's a singer-songwriter I'd never heard of named Conan Gray.
	Conan Gray apologized yesterday for his use of emojis.
	His use of emojis.
	He said, Many of you have brought to my attention my use of tan emojis.
	I apologize to anybody who was hurt by my use of emojis that you believe are too dark for me to use.
	I am mixed race.
	I chose to use the emojis that I felt best represented.
	My skin tone.
	Most of you have never met me in real life and are unaware of how I look in person.
	I am not pale.
	I am not white.
	I am mixed race.
	I was only trying to find an emoji with a skin tone that felt most accurate to me and my background.
	So, um, this guy's now apologizing for the use of emojis.
	We've made the country better, gang.
	Everything is moving in the right direction.
	I feel excited.
	Everything has to be political.
	Emojis.
	Sports.
	Hollywood has to get even more political.
	Michael B. Jordan, the major star of Creed, among other movies, he came out, he said that Hollywood has to defund the police.
	That's exciting stuff.
	He said Hollywood has to divest from the police and invest in black talent and careers.
	And hire independent security firms.
	Apparently very easy for Michael B. Jordan, who is being taken care of by studios in terms of his security.
	Good times from Michael B. Jordan.
	Again, the country is just getting better.
	Can't you feel the wokeness healing the country?
	Can't you feel the wokeness oozing out of the pores of America, covering us all up in a great A great, wondrous coating of protective joy and just binding the country together.
	I feel like we're doing so much better now, don't you?
	Everything's just way better right now.
	In every way.
	The Sierra Club, by the way, is apologizing for John Muir, so that's exciting too.
	Like, every aspect of SJW nonsense now has to be humored.
	The executive director of the Sierra Club apologized on Wednesday for the substantial role the group played in perpetuating white supremacy.
	They condemned John Muir for friendships and views he had.
	We're canceling John Muir now, so that's exciting stuff.
	That is because John Muir was friends with eugenicists and was kind of a racist.
	But I just have a question.
	Did they found the Sierra Club because he was a racist?
	Nope.
	But it doesn't matter.
	Sierra Club is now apologizing for John Muir.
	I guess we're going to rename the high schools.
	For all the harms the Sierra Club has caused and continues to cause to black people, indigenous people, and other people of color, I am deeply sorry.
	The cultural revolution continues apace.
	Okay, in just a second, we're going to get to the situation in America's major cities, because there are real world things happening right now, and none of them are good.
	While we're focused on stupid, the real world continues on apace.
	We'll get to that in just a moment.
	First, let's talk about the fact that you don't really want to go to an auto parts store right now.
	RockAuto.com.
	It's much easier than walking into a store and someone demanding quick answers to things like, is your Odyssey an LX or an EX?
	And then they usually just have to order the part online anyway, and you have to wait for it.
	And then you're probably paying too much because you're going through the auto parts store.
	Instead, go check out rockauto.com, which is the glorious interwebs.
	RockAuto always offers the lowest prices possible.
	Rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear the way that airlines do, rockauto.com is a family business, serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
	Go to rockauto.com, shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.
	Best of all, prices at rockauto.com are always reliably low and the same for professionals and do-it-yourselfers.
	Why spend up to twice as much for the same parts?
	The RockAuto.com catalog?
	Unique.
	Remarkably easy to navigate.
	Quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle.
	Choose the brands, specifications, and prices you prefer.
	Amazing selection.
	Reliably low prices.
	All the parts your car will ever need.
	RockAuto.com.
	Head on over to RockAuto.com right now.
	See all the parts available for your car or truck.
	Write Shapiro in there.
	How did you hear about us box?
	So they know that we sent you.
	Again, that's RockAuto.com.
	Go check them out right now.
	Alrighty, we're gonna get to...
	Everything actual serious related?
	Look, I think the culture wars are serious because I think that that's where a lot of the heavy lifting is done.
	If we have now made it that every corporation in America must mirror hard left social justice nonsense about systemic racism and bigotry?
	Then that does shift exactly how we live.
	But it also has real world consequences because it turns out that if you suggest America is systemically racist and that the police are the leading arm of the systemic racism movement, it turns out that you are more likely to want to get rid of the police, which does have some pretty significant real world consequences.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
	First, it is that glorious time of the week when we give a shout out to a Daily Wire member.
	It is that time.
	Today, it's Garrett Shaw on Instagram who has the correct recipe for the perfect weekend.
	In this picture, Garrett's elite beverage vessel is resting on a patio table alongside a copy of my brand spanking new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
	The caption reads, Official Ben Shapiro, how I'm starting my weekend, hashtag leftist tears tumbler.
	Well done, my friend.
	Drink well.
	Those are indeed excellent choices.
	Thanks for the pick.
	Hope you enjoy the book.
	My new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps is on sale right now.
	The book covers two fundamentally different visions of America that we are watching right now.
	One says America is basically a crap fest and has always been a crap fest and will never stop being a crap fest because our fundamental principles are lies.
	Our fundamental institutions are racist.
	The other is the traditional view of America, which is that the Declaration of Independence is right, that American history is flawed but great, and that the story of America is the attempt to live up to founding principle that we ought to have a culture in which entrepreneurship and adventure is valued, in which we respect each other's right to speak freely.
	Disintegrationists are trying to cancel all of that stuff.
	How to destroy America in three easy steps is about how to stop them.
	Go check it out right now, How to Destroy America in 3 Easy Steps.
	You can pick it up on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble right now.
	Also, hark and hear me out!
	Backstage is this very eve.
	Ah, the hallowed all-backstage eve.
	Join me, and perhaps Dog Jasper, and possibly others, at 4pm Pacific to watch as I attempt to make salient points, all while artfully dodging cigar smoke.
	I will admit that I have made it as a condition that we be In a socially distanced room and that people do not breathe smoke directly into my face.
	Oh, this faux masculinity with the nonsense and the smoke breathing.
	Oh, I'm such a man.
	I'm smoking a cigar.
	Yeah, sure.
	Whatever.
	All right.
	We'll get to that tonight.
	But go subscribe over at DailyWire.com.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So there are real world consequences as it turns out to a lot of the BLM messaging.
	If you believe America is systemically racist, if you believe the police are systemically racist, the first best move is to get the cops out of heavily minority areas.
	There's only one problem.
	When this happens, then areas with high crime, which unfortunately are heavily minority across the United States, immediately become more violent.
	And that is really not great.
	Last night, a teenager was shot and killed in Minneapolis near 38th and Chicago Avenue, which is basically where George Floyd was murdered.
	This boy's death is according to Mike Tobin, who is a Fox News International correspondent.
	The boy's death marked Minneapolis's 38th homicide, more than doubling last year's total of 17.
	So in order to fight police brutality, they removed all the cops and twice as many people have been killed in Minneapolis as were last year.
	Well done, everybody.
	So apparently the legacy of Black Lives Matter in Minneapolis is the riots that hollowed out a lot of the industrial and commercial centers.
	A perpetual feeling of crime on the horizon and an increased murder rate.
	Seems like life is getting better in Minneapolis as a result of all of this.
	You can see the progress happening in real time.
	It's pretty fantastic.
	Also, progress happening in Seattle.
	According to Ryan Saavedra over at Daily Wire, the Trump administration is having to send an elite tactical team to Seattle to serve as backup for the law enforcement officials already there after the Democrat-controlled city has failed to stop violent riots in recent days.
	The New York Times reports, the special response team is being deployed similar to the tactical teams currently operating in Portland.
	Agents from the Special Response Team, operated under U.S.
	Customs and Border Protection, are typically deployed for intense law enforcement operations similar to the agency's BORTEC group that is operated in Portland.
	The agents will be backing up the Federal Protective Service, which said in a statement, the CBP team will be on standby in the area should they be required.
	Over the weekend, violent rioters injured at least a dozen Seattle police officers and caused significant damages to numerous businesses and attacked multiple police stations.
	So things have been going great in Seattle.
	When the mayor calls off the police, shockingly, crime rises.
	Who would have thunk such a thing?
	So things have been going great in Seattle.
	Things actually went so great in Chicago that the Chicago mayor Actually signed an agreement with President Trump to increase the federal footprint in Chicago.
	Remember when she was saying that it was basically the feds terrorizing Chicago?
	Well, Lori Lightfoot at the same time was negotiating an agreement with the feds to bring in more resources.
	Which is just perfect.
	Apparently, according to Daily Wire, President Donald Trump reportedly phoned Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday night to hash out details of a surge of 200 federal agents designed to help Chicago officials control a dramatic uptick in gun violence that has taken place in the city since the end of May.
	The Chicago Sun-Times reports the pair spoke about an agreement to send 200 federal agents, mostly from the FBI, ATF, U.S.
	Marshals, and DEA, to assist the Chicago PD in handling crime in a number of target neighborhoods racked by recent gang activity.
	Lightfoot fought federal assistance, but after a gang-related mass shooting outside of a funeral home left 15 mourners wounded Tuesday night, Lightfoot seemed somewhat more open to the idea of receiving federal assistance.
	Shocker.
	So now, the Sun-Times says, Trump and Lightfoot are in agreement over the strategy of sending in agents to plug into existing operations.
	So in other words, it was all for show.
	Lori Lightfoot is perfectly happy to accept federal agents in her town.
	She just doesn't want to say that out loud because Trump.
	Which is demonstrative of the fact that everyone right, left, and center knows the only way to stop criminal activity is with law enforcement, but we're going to lie about it to pretend that America is systemically racist.
	That is the goal.
	This resulted in Chicago protesters being very angry at the mayor last night.
	They went out outside of the mayoral offices and protested in large numbers.
	A lot of white people protesting there.
	You see how many white people there are in this crowd?
	A lot of white people.
	Not all of them wearing masks.
	You still can't visit grandma in the hospital, but we can have these mass protests in close proximity with a lot of people not wearing masks.
	A lot of dancing going on.
	It really is just a giant street party, guys.
	People shouting in close proximity to one another, which is exactly how COVID gets passed.
	Things are just going great out there.
	The country's falling apart, but things are going fantastically.
	You can see people dancing in the middle there.
	Half of them not wearing masks.
	Really good stuff.
	In order to combat this, Lori Lightfoot has now announced that the city of Chicago is going to remove statues of Christopher Columbus.
	So problem solved, guys.
	Problem solved.
	Christopher Columbus, who's been dead for like 550 years, That guy, he's gone.
	He's down.
	Problem solved.
	Chicago is now non-violent.
	So they removed the Christopher Columbus statue from the city park just, by the way, a few days after there were near riots there that injured a bunch of police officers.
	According to The Hill, crews came around 1 a.m.
	A few dozen people cheered when the statue came down a few hours later, not clear where the statue is going to be taken.
	Because Western civilization arriving in the Western Hemisphere was apparently a very bad thing.
	It was apparently really, really bad.
	The move is a reversal from Lightfoot, who initially opposed taking down the statue on the grounds it would erase the history of the Italian explorer.
	She's rejected calls to rename Columbus Day holiday.
	That rejection will last approximately another 7.2 seconds.
	America, getting better by the hour.
	The unbelievable hypocrisy of, my town is completely out of control, let me call in the feds.
	Also, let me cave to the rioters and looters and protesters at every available opportunity, is pretty incredible.
	It's pretty strong stuff.
	Meanwhile, in Portland, the situation continues to unravel.
	Continued rioting last night because it was a night ending in Y.
	Meanwhile, Portland mayor, Ted Wheeler, who's being called a fascist by the people he was allowing to riot and loot, went on CNN and said that the problem here is, of course, you wait for it, wait for it, wait.
	The problem is the Orange guy.
	Yeah, it's not the rioters and the looters who are taking over blocks of downtown Portland and trying to destroy federal property.
	And engaging in mayhem?
	The problem is Trump, and he's a meanie, and he's super mean, and he's orange, and he's bad, and he's mean.
	And also bad and orange.
	Here's Ted Wheeler with idiot Chris Cuomo.
	The president is using these federal forces as his own personal militia, I believe, for the purpose of political grandstanding.
	He's doing this.
	He's creating the chaos in democratically controlled cities so, ironically, he can point to the chaos and then say, look, those democratically controlled cities are in chaos and I, and only I, can stop the chaos.
	I think this is abhorrent and it's a clear political stunt.
	Guys, he's creating the chaos.
	Trump is creating it in all the Democratic cities.
	It's crazy.
	It's just sort of like until Trump was president, there was no chaos in any of these cities ever.
	Chicago was just a wonderful utopian landscape until Trump became president.
	And also Portland, which has not had a Republican mayor in forever, like I think literally ever.
	Portland is, it was doing great.
	And then Trump, you know, these riots, it's all about Trump.
	It's all about Trump.
	Ted Wheeler, the world's worst mayor.
	There's heavy competition for that title right now.
	Is it Lori Lightfoot?
	Hmm.
	It could also be Keisha Lance Bottoms in Atlanta.
	Could be Bill de Blasio in New York, who really is a garbage show.
	It could be Mayor Garcetti here in my hometown of Los Angeles.
	Could be Jenny Durkin in Seattle.
	But Wheeler's really up there.
	I mean, there are a lot of bad mayors.
	They all have a D next to their names, oddly enough.
	I can't explain quite why.
	Yeah, sure, it's Trump's fault.
	It's Trump's fault.
	Your city's been burning for two months, and it's Trump's fault for sending in people to stop the burning.
	Pretty incredible stuff here.
	So, everything is going really well, but the important thing is that we have put up banners that say Black Lives Matter everywhere, and we have emboldened people who wish to defund the police, increasing violence.
	Problems solved.
	America on the right track.
	I'm feeling pretty optimistic at this point, aren't you?
	And if you're not feeling optimistic, what's wrong with you?
	What's wrong with you?
	If you just want to watch a sporting event without being clubbed over the head with a brand of left-wing politics that castigates America as evil, what's wrong with you?
	Don't you understand?
	This is how we make America better.
	It's by making it more violent, more polarized, more divided, by suggesting our fellow Americans are all racist, sexist, bigot, homophobes, and that the entire American system, which has built unprecedented wealth, prosperity, tolerance, and freedom, that that system needs to be torn down to the shreds.
	I can feel the progress.
	Can you?
	Can you feel the progress?
	I'm feeling it.
	I think everybody else is too.
	Meanwhile, COVID continues to surge across the country.
	Now, there's some misinformation that's being put out there about the COVID surge that is currently happening.
	I think that this misinformation, it's pretty stunning that it's coming from Dr. Deborah Birx, who's been pretty accurate about this stuff.
	So yesterday, Dr. Birx suggested the surge across the country is three New Yorks.
	No, it isn't.
	It isn't.
	Statistically speaking, it is not three New Yorks.
	If it were three New Yorks, we would be seeing approximately 7,000 deaths a day.
	Because when we were looking at New York, we were seeing up to 1,500 deaths a day and 2,900 deaths a day total.
	3,000 deaths a day total across the entirety of the United States.
	It's not three New Yorks.
	The total death numbers yesterday were about 1,200.
	Those are the total reported deaths.
	It's one New York.
	But it spread out over the other 310 million people, which is bad.
	But if we could not exaggerate the case, that'd be really nice.
	Here's Dr. Deborah Birx.
	We're already starting to see some plateauing in these critically four states that have really suffered under the last four weeks.
	So Texas, California, Arizona and Florida, those major metros and throughout their counties.
	And I just want to make it clear to the American public, what we have right now are essentially three New Yorks.
	Okay, so I'm all in favor of the social distancing and the mask wearing.
	I have been all along.
	I've been following exactly what the experts and supposed experts have been saying this whole way.
	Okay, but we're not facing three New Yorks.
	That's not accurate.
	It's not.
	We're not seeing the ICUs overwhelmed.
	For all the talk and anecdotal talk about ICUs being overwhelmed in places like Houston, it has not happened.
	In fact, cases are now receding.
	Caseload is receding.
	In places like Houston, it's receding in Arizona.
	So that's just not accurate.
	Okay, by the way, I am amused and bemused by the media coverage suggesting that, of course, the bad guys here are Ron DeSantis in Florida, Greg Abbott in Texas, and Doug Ducey in Arizona, completely ignoring the fact that your coronavirus leader in the clubhouse right now among states is California, which is now engaged in a second lockdown, which is exciting stuff.
	Gavin Newsom somehow has escaped all of the blowback that all of the Republicans are getting.
	I can't believe it.
	All three of the Republicans I just mentioned have seen their coronavirus handling numbers absolutely tank.
	Gavin Newsom's still up at 58%.
	Hey, it's real bad here in California.
	I live in L.A.
	County.
	That's basically the epicenter of the United States in terms of coronavirus cases.
	And yet the press are not focused in on L.A.
	I can't imagine why.
	Could it be because of the Democratic mayor and the Democratic governor and the entirely Democratic state?
	It's incredible how Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Doug Ducey are responsible for California and Trump too.
	It's all Trump's fault.
	It's also incredible how Trump somehow convinced everybody in Spain to act so irresponsibly they got a second wave.
	This is from the UK Sun today.
	Spain admits coronavirus second wave may be underway as UK air bridge could be axed and France threatens to close the border.
	There was 971 new cases yesterday, 241 more than the previous day, a record since the end of the country's state of emergency.
	You can't just look at the raw numbers, by the way.
	The United States has many, many more tests than any other country on a raw level.
	So what you really have to look at is the directionality.
	The UK Sun revealed the surge could lead to the collapse of an air bridge between the UK and Spain, meaning British tourists could be forced to quarantine upon their return home.
	And Spain and France are closing their own borders to each other.
	So that is exciting stuff.
	Meanwhile, France is experiencing its own second wave.
	According to the UK Express, France is having a second wave and Emmanuel Macron is panicked as coronavirus outbreaks hit a dreaded milestone.
	On Wednesday, France's health ministry said a further 998 new confirmed COVID-19 cases had been recorded over the past 24 hours, heightening concerns about new flare-ups of the epidemic.
	Fears of a second wave have increased after the Directorate General of Health warned the circulation of the virus is increasing after France recorded 208 currently active coronavirus outbreaks on Tuesday.
	Also, by the way, Japan experiencing a second wave.
	According to France24.com, Japan saw a record 366 new cases of coronavirus recorded in the capital on Thursday.
	France24 correspondent Michael Penn says the national government seems to be prioritizing economic concerns by opening up the country, but Tokyo's governor is urging people to exercise caution and stay indoors.
	None of this is to say that any of these countries are wildly mishandling this thing.
	But when you see the same pattern everywhere, which is just giant spike and then it recedes and then you're seeing the second wave start to begin, you have to start to say nobody has a great handle on this thing.
	And Paul Krugman has an idiotic column at the New York Times saying, why can't we handle this the way Italy handled it?
	Italy has a higher death per million rate than the United States.
	I've seen the same thing said about countries like the UK.
	The one you're never allowed to mention, of course, is Sweden.
	Sweden has a higher death per million rate than the United States.
	But right now, they're experiencing virtually no death.
	Like, none.
	Even though they have a significant caseload.
	Because it's already run through vulnerable areas of the population.
	And this is the common theme.
	Is that places like New York, it killed everybody.
	So is there going to be a second wave as they reopen?
	We don't know yet.
	We're starting to see a second bit of an uptick in places like Massachusetts, by the way.
	Right?
	Which again, was supposedly one of the states that handled this beautifully.
	But don't worry, Andrew Cuomo is on the scene to stop everything bad from happening.
	Andrew Cuomo, the world's greatest governor, when he's not creating weird papier-mâché mountains that symbolize tens of thousands of dead, and when he's not putting out weird posters glorifying himself as the greatest governor in the world that says, New York is love and crap like that, Andrew Cuomo is deciding what bars can and cannot serve.
	So remember, in New York, the bars are supposed to be closed, right?
	You're not supposed to be in a bar drinking in proximity with other people because this is a chief vector of transmission.
	The problem is that bars want to stay open in order to serve food.
	So Andrew Cuomo got mad because what bars were doing is they were basically saying, this is stupid, right?
	You're dictating to us what kind of food we can serve in order to serve alcohol.
	So what bars were doing to basically make fun of him, they were issuing what they called Cuomo menus.
	And the Cuomo menus included things like a bag of grapes.
	It's like you have to eat this bag of grapes if you're going to drink alcohol.
	Cuomo, by the way, acknowledges he cannot force people to eat the food.
	You just have to order the food in order to get alcohol at the bars.
	So Cuomo now has his comeback.
	His comeback is he is going to shut down any establishment that doesn't sell sandwiches.
	I'm not kidding about this.
	He says that if you're a bar and you sell buffalo wings, buffalo wings are not sufficient for you to call yourself a food serving establishment.
	It has to be sandwiches.
	Also, hot dogs do not constitute sandwiches.
	Not kidding.
	We now have an official New York government ruling on hot dogs according to the New York State Liquor Authority guidance.
	If you operate a restaurant or bar and you understand that you must serve sandwiches, soups, or other foods when a patron orders an alcoholic beverage, other foods are foods which are similar in quality and substance to sandwiches and soups.
	For example, salads, wings, or hot dogs would be of that quality and substance.
	However, a bag of chips, bowl of nuts, or candy alone To be a bar, you had to have food available.
	that is similar in quality and substance as a hot dog to a sandwich.
	So the question has been answered, but Andrew Cuomo says even that is not sufficient.
	Now he's making a distinction between wings and sandwiches.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo, great expert, explaining based on the science that buffalo wings are different than sandwiches in terms of nutritional content.
	To be a bar, you had to have food available, soups, sandwiches, et cetera.
	More than just hors d'oeuvres, chicken wings.
	You had to have some substantive food.
	The lowest level of substantive food were sandwiches.
	That was the lowest level, but it had to be more.
	It couldn't just be wings.
	What's incredible is that everybody calls Trump a fascist.
	Last I checked, Trump wasn't issuing giant national regulations about whether you have to serve sandwiches or buffalo wings.
	I mean, like, seriously.
	What a horror show Cuomo is.
	But don't worry, he's been great at this.
	We know he's been great because he doesn't like Trump.
	And anybody who doesn't like Trump, anyone who doesn't like Trump, is fantastic.
	Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
	I have some assignments for you in the meantime.
	So today, there's two additional hours of content.
	Plus, you need to pick up a copy of my book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
	Amazon just lowered the price, so now's a great time to buy the book.
	It was weird.
	Amazon had it at like the highest price book in the top 100.
	And finally, they lowered the price, which was a little bit tardy.
	But they did it, so you can get it now for like 18 bucks.
	So go check it out right now, How to Destroy America in 3 Easy Steps.
	Plus, later today, we have a Daily Wire backstage, a socially distanced backstage.
	We'll be in the same room, but I'm going to sit far away from the others.
	And they're going to not be allowed to blow smoke at me, which I'm excited about.
	So you have that as an assignment.
	Plus, subscribe over for Reader's Pass at dailywire.com.
	Lots of stuff for you to do this weekend.
	Try to stay out of trouble if you don't do any of it, or if you do all of it.
	And we'll see you here next week.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, assistant director Pavel Lydowsky, technical producer Austin Stevens, playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan, associate producer Katie Swinnerton, edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.
	I think there are enough of those already out there.
	We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.
	So my main focuses are life, family, faith.
	Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

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