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Nov. 30, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:09:32
Joe Biden's Disconnect From Reality | Ep. 1146
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Time Text
Iran's top nuclear scientist is assassinated to the consternation of the Biden foreign policy establishment.
Joe Biden continues to receive startling notices from our very objective media.
And the Supreme Court slaps down Andrew Cuomo's anti-religious bigotry.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Well, a lot of news broke over Thanksgiving weekend.
So apparently the Israelis is the is the sort of suspected source of this.
Apparently the Israelis knocked off Iran's nuclear chief.
Now that's not been clarified.
It's not Totally clear who killed Iran's nuclear chief over the weekend.
But whenever somebody in the Iranian nuclear industry goes down, it's a fair bet that probably the Israelis had something to do with it.
According to the UK Daily Mail, remarkable detail of the elaborate plot to assassinate prominent and distinguished Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been leaked as the rogue nation claim Israel is behind the hit.
Fakhrizadeh, dubbed the father of Iran's bomb program, was shot dead in his car by 12 highly trained assassins following an explosion in the city of Absard, 50 miles east of Tehran.
The killers, apparently including a pair of snipers, formed part of a 62-person group of plotters.
The remaining 50 people were responsible for logistical support.
According to the Daily Mail, extraordinary detail about Favrizadeh's final moments have been revealed by Iranian journalist Mohammad Awazadeh, who claims he received leaked information from the country's authorities.
This is coming courtesy of the Iranians, so always take it with a grain of salt.
Fakhrizadeh's death sent tensions in the region skyrocketing as Iran has repeatedly blamed Israel's National Intelligence Agency, Mossad, for the assassination, with several prominent figures vowing revenge.
Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of state yesterday, said Iran's first priority after the killing was the definitive punishment of the perpetrators and those who ordered it.
He did not elaborate.
In an intervention that risks inflaming conflict even further, a former head of the U.S.
CIA labeled the assassination a criminal act and branded it highly reckless.
This came courtesy of piece-of-crap John Brennan, who was director of the CIA from 2013 to 2017.
At least a couple major Iranian scientists were knocked off during that time.
He had no words to say about it when he was actually in the government.
Now, of course, it's the end of the world.
Brennan is a ridiculous figure.
He said he did not know who was to blame for the murder, but said he, quote, risks lethal retaliation and a new round.
A couple of notes on this.
First of all, remember that time that Michael Flynn did exactly that?
You remember that?
Remember the Russians and the U.S.
were at odds and Michael Flynn called up the Russians.
He said, you know what?
You might want to wait a couple of weeks until the Trump administration is in place.
And then Obama's intelligence agencies decided that they were basically going to persecute Michael Flynn over this.
They decided that Michael Flynn had broken the law.
You have John Brennan now saying openly the same thing.
Just wait until our guys are back and then we'll be nice to you again, Iran.
John Brennan, who again, is a ridiculous liar.
Yeah, given the fact that he actually did overtly lie to Congress, probably should have done some prison time.
He said, I do not know whether a foreign government authorized or carried out the murder of Faghrizadeh, such an act of state-sponsored terrorism.
It's state-sponsored terrorism to kill the man who is responsible for the Iranian nuclear program, a program designed, according to the highest leaders of the Iranian government, who openly state this, to nuke the Jews into oblivion.
Right, that apparently is now state-sponsored terrorism to kill a guy who is the head of the nuclear program for a terrorist state.
Interesting take.
John Brennan, who helped preside over the drone war that Barack Obama launched on a wide variety of continents.
Apparently, Brennan says such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law and encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against foreign officials.
Oh, I see how this works.
So when Iran runs around the globe killing foreign officials and killing foreign Foreign people and intervenes in other nations and kills American soldiers.
That's kind of just how they work.
But if somebody in the West kills an Iranian scientist responsible for the development of a nuclear program that would be in and of itself responsible for the threat against some 7 million Jews living in Israel as well as people all over the region who are not Jews, including many Arab Muslims, then apparently that's totally fine.
Brennan continued, these assassinations are far different than strikes against terrorist leaders and operatives of groups like Al Qaeda, an Islamic state, which are not sovereign states, as illegitimate combatants under international law that can be targeted in order to stop deadly terrorist attacks.
Oh, I see how this works again.
So you're going to pretend that the Iranian government is completely legitimate, even though it is a terrorist state that has been in charge since 1979, with no free and fair elections in the entire country since 1979.
But terror groups, they're different.
Okay, fine.
So John Brennan is part of this foreign policy establishment that is being brought back into power by Joe Biden.
It is a good thing.
Once again, it is an unmitigatedly good thing that the Iranian nuclear scientist at the head of their nuclear program is no longer with us.
That is a very, very good thing.
Anything that stops Iran from getting a bomb is a good thing for the region, not just for Israel, but also for Saudi Arabia, also for Bahrain, also for anybody else in that area.
It is a very good thing that the Iranian terrorist state, that the Iranian mullahs, are not going to gain a nuclear weapon all that quickly.
And naturally, the Biden team is very, very angry about this.
Now you see this from Europe too, right?
Britain is saying the same sort of stuff.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab is concerned about the possible escalation of tensions.
The foreign policy establishment, they have a basic idea.
The basic idea is anytime the West does something in order to knock off people who are involved in terrorism or the development of weapons that could be used by terrorists, then the West is responsible and the West has raised tensions.
Little secret about the Iranians, they don't need the West to raise tensions.
They've been consistently and persistently responsible for terrorism against a wide variety of targets, from Jewish to Christian to Muslim, for decades on end.
And what this really is, is the basic notion, it's setting the stage for the media and Biden pushing once again to make concessions to an Iranian terror state.
And you can see this in how the media are covering this.
There's this bubble that is being formed once again, anew.
This bubble that is being formed, the Biden media bubble.
And it's really despicable.
It existed during the Obama era, where Barack Obama could lie to the American public and to the media and just get away with it.
Ben Rhodes, who's the architect of the Iran deal, one of the architects of the Iran deal, that guy admitted openly that he lied to members of the media and created an echo chamber because he said, they're so ignorant, they'll just print anything that I say.
Maybe the only true thing Ben Rhodes has ever said.
And that was true.
The media continued to parrot the line that Iran had been ratcheted down in its extremism, that Iran's nuclear program had been ended, that Iran was now safe for the world.
The media just parroted this crap.
And then Donald Trump came into office, and then they became the Democracy Ties in Darkness crowd.
Then they became the people who are going to stand up truth to power at every moment because Donald Trump is a threat to the republic.
Well, now that they think that Trump is gone, now they're going right back to parroting whatever Biden's people tell them to parrot.
It's really disgusting.
It's really disgusting.
The absolute echo chamber that is created, this bubble that is created by the media, it's bad for a couple reasons.
Well, several reasons.
One, whatever credibility the media have, they've completely blown out.
They just do not have any credibility at this point.
You should cut the cable.
You should stop subscribing to the New York Times.
It's a joke.
I mean, all they do is just parrot whatever the Democratic talking points are.
That's not a good thing for the country.
You need objective journalism, or at least quasi-objective journalism, or at least people who admit their biases.
Now, people who are masquerading as objective journalists while parroting the Biden line, it's not good for the country.
Two, these sort of bubbles create bad policy because Joe Biden and Barack Obama and everybody else in that orbit, they've been protected for decades by a foreign policy media that basically speaks sweet nothings into their ear as they destroy foreign policy around the globe.
Barack Obama was considered by the media an excellent foreign policy president while he emboldened Russia, emboldened China, and led to the fall of friendly regimes in the Middle East and the rise of the Iranian regime in the Middle East.
And all the while, he was being talked about as though he was a wonderful foreign policy president.
Barack Obama has never met a critic in the actual mainstream media.
They don't exist.
And that creates bad policy, because when you're insulated from the effect of your own policies, you start to believe your own press.
And there's no question that Joe Biden and his team believe their own press at this point, and that leads to really, really bad policy.
So, there are a lot of bad consequences to the media creating this impenetrable bubble around the democratic foreign policy and domestic policy establishment.
Here's what the New York Times tweeted about this, okay?
This is the New York Times, right?
You're very objective.
They're just journalisming all over the place.
Journalism here, journalism there.
Sticky, sticky journalism everywhere.
Here's the New York Times reporting, quote, Iranian officials, who have always maintained that their nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, not weapons, expressed fury and vowed revenge over the assassination, calling it terrorism and warmongering.
Oh, well, I mean, if the Iranians say it's for peaceful purposes, then, of course, we should take them at their word.
I mean, it's not as though Iran has resources.
It's not like they're a resource-rich country when it comes to oil and natural gas or anything.
Obviously, the Iranians need nuclear energy.
I mean, clearly, that's top priority over there.
They would never lie about developing a nuclear weapon, the Iranians.
I love the New York Times just taking that at face value.
And they're taking it at face value because, of course, they have an agenda.
And their agenda is to do the press work for the Iranians.
This has been true ever since the Obama administration pushed the Iran deal.
It basically turned the Obama administration into a PR wing of the Iranian mullahs.
They had to go out and do defense for how the Iranians were actually friendly partners.
Because if it turned out that the American public were ever informed that we had just made massive concessions to a huge terror state that hates us, hates Israel, and hates Western civilization, then people might have been a bit more skeptical than the Obama administration wanted them to be.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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Okay, so the media immediately turned to the domestic American political consequences for Joe Biden.
That's all that matters now.
Protect the precious.
When it was Obama, it was protect the precious.
Now it's protect the precious.
They're gonna protect the precious.
The precious is whatever Democrat is in the White House.
So the New York Times reports, the assassination of the scientist who led Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon for the past two decades threatens to cripple President-elect Joe Biden's efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal before he can even begin his diplomacy with Tehran.
So question, why?
Seriously, why?
If Iran wants to give up its nuclear program in exchange for some sort of concessions from the West, and presumably at this point they would also have to give up terrorism, if they actually wanted to do that, why would the killing of their top nuclear scientist matter?
Seriously, I don't get it.
I mean, they can do it anytime they want.
This is the great irony of this whole Iran deal crap.
Anytime the Iranians want to start acting like a normal country and stop pursuing terrorism and regional domination, they can.
It doesn't take concessions by the West to make that happen.
In fact, if they want to rejoin the rest of the world in peace and harmony, they can do that literally at any time, any day.
They can just snap their fingers.
I make all this go away.
They don't want to do that.
So what exactly, why would it undermine this process to kill the guy who's at the head of a program that you say is going to be made defunct anyway by a peace deal?
That doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't matter.
The idea is that anytime, anytime there is something bad that happens to Iran, this is something bad for the United States, which is a crazy notion, right?
That's nuts.
Anytime something bad happens to the Iranian regime, that is generally something that is good for the West, considering that Iran is responsible for the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers in Iraq, is responsible for terror acts all over the globe, ranging from Buenos Aires all the way to Europe.
And suddenly, it's like bad if something bad happens to the Iranian regime?
Color me confused.
Anyway, the New York Times says, intelligence officials say there is little doubt Israel was behind the killing and had all the hallmarks of a precisely timed operation by Mossad, the country's spy agencies.
And Israelis have done nothing to dispel that view.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long identified Iran as an existential threat and named Mohsen Fakhrizadeh as a national enemy, number one, capable of building a weapon that could threaten a country of 8 million in a single blast.
But, says the New York Times, Mr. Netanyahu also has a second agenda.
There must be no return to the previous nuclear agreement, he declared shortly after it became clear that Biden would be the next president.
Now, here's the thing.
The previous nuclear agreement was garbage.
And in fact, the death of the nuclear agreement led to the rise of Arab-Israeli peace in the region.
There are several reasons why the Iran deal was garbage.
Number one, all it did was basically postpone the Iranian nuclear payday.
Until 10 years down the road.
Then they could just go about building a nuclear weapon completely free and clear.
There's nothing in the deal that restricted them from building a nuclear weapon 10 years down the road, which by the way, has now basically expired, right?
We're basically there now.
And then we're 8 years into the Iran nuclear deal, or 9 years, or 7 years into the Iran nuclear deal.
Okay.
With all of that said, the notion that Iran had put aside terror was also a lie.
They were developing ballistic missile technology.
It was not covered by the treaty.
They were continuing to use the money for terrorism, as even John Kerr acknowledged.
Okay, and when Iran's nuclear deal went away, suddenly they were boxed in.
They weren't getting money from the outside world.
They couldn't spend that money on terrorism abroad.
And the Arabs recognized that maybe Israel was not actually their chief enemy.
Iran was.
So maybe they ought to form some alliances.
That is the new Middle East.
But because the media are creating this bubble around Joe Biden, Biden is going to try to pursue a deal with the Iranian mullahs anyway.
And thus it becomes bad when the chief Iranian nuclear scientist, again, serving one of the worst regimes on earth, is killed.
So the New York Times is doing heavy lifting here.
Whatever the mix of motives, Mr. Biden must pick up the pieces in just seven weeks.
The question of whether the deal that the president-elect has outlined, dropping the nuclear-related sanctions Trump has imposed over the past two years if Iran returns it strictly to the nuclear limits in the 2015 accord, was shot to pieces along with Mr. Fakhrizadeh's SUV in the mountain town of Absard east of Tehran.
The answer lies largely in how Ron reacts in the next few weeks.
Three times since the start of the year, Ron has been on the receiving end of highly visible, highly damaging attacks.
What victims they are.
Joe Biden's going to have to come in and he's going to have to sue them.
Don't you understand?
And the media is going to cheer this on.
Here, the New York Times mourns the killing of Major General Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian commander who ran the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in a drone strike.
You remember that the entire foreign policy establishment screamed and whined, oh, it was going to lead to nuclear war.
It didn't lead to anything.
It led to nothing.
It was an excellent move by the Trump administration.
In July came the mysterious explosion at a centrifuge research and development center at Natanz, a few hundred yards from the underground fuel production center the U.S.
and Israel attacked more than a decade ago with sophisticated cyber weapons.
And apparently this is all very bad.
It's all very bad.
Because now, how is Biden going to be able to broker a peace with the Iranians?
And if there's no peace with the Iranians, then what?
Seriously, then what?
The answer is, then nothing.
And the fact that John Brennan continues to go out there and say all of this nonsense about how Middle Eastern peace has now been put under the evil boot heel of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump.
Okay, you know what guys?
You're a joke.
You always were a joke.
Your foreign policy is garbage.
And just because you've had the, the, sycophantic tongues of the media at your disposal does not make your policy any better.
In just a second, we're going to see how Thomas Friedman, who's wrong on nearly every issue and has been a democratic sycophant, like nearly his entire career, even he is looking at the Biden administration going, your policy here on Iran, it's really not very good.
Is that going to change anything?
Probably not.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so even Thomas Friedman is on board with how stupid Biden's foreign policy looks like it's going to be with regard to Iran.
He says, with the assassination by Israel of Iran's top nuclear warhead designer, the Middle East is promising to complicate Joe Biden's job from day one.
President-elect Biden knows the region well.
But if I had one piece of advice for him, it would be this.
This is not the Middle East you left four years ago.
The best way for Biden to appreciate the new Middle East is to study what happened in the early hours of September 14th, 2019, when the Iranian Air Force launched 20 drones and precision-guided cruise missiles at Abqaq, one of Saudi Arabia's most important oil fields and processing centers, causing huge damage.
It was a seminal event.
Iranian drones and cruise missiles flew solo and with such stealth, neither their takeoff nor their impending attack was detected in time by the Saudis or the U.S.
Israeli military analysts, who were stunned by the capabilities the Iranians displayed, argued this was the Middle East's Pearl Harbor, and they were right.
The Middle East was reshaped by the Iranian precision missile strike, and by Trump's response, and by the response of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to Trump's response.
Trump didn't do anything.
Instead, he reflected the fact that there needed to be some sort of alliance between the Israelis and the Arabs in order to defend against Iran.
The clear shift in American posture in which the U.S.
basically said to the Saudis, listen, you're going to have to defend yourselves here.
It gave birth to the first new element that Biden will confront in the new Middle East, the peace agreements between Israel and the UAE, between Israel and Bahrain, and a whole new level of secret security cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which will likely flower into more formal relations soon.
The key result is that Trump, is that Biden can expect to find Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and UAE operating as a loose anti-Iran coalition, which will certainly complicate things for Biden.
Because the bottom line is that he wants to make some sort of deal with the Iranians, and the entire region is now allied against that sort of deal.
Which is very good, right?
That is a good thing.
Naturally, the Biden administration's response will be to try and undercut all of those peace deals.
So Barbara Slavin, Who directs the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council and has been known to be pretty close to some of the Biden folks.
She has a piece in the New York Times talking about how the United States should make concessions to the Iranians even after the killing of Iran's top nuclear scientist.
According to Barbara Slavin, she says the killing of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, the reputed mastermind of Iran's past weaponization efforts, will not dent Iran's nuclear expertise, which is considerable.
The latest killing may not provoke Iran to build nuclear weapons, but it will likely feed the animosity between the U.S.
and Iran making diplomacy that much harder.
It could strengthen hardline factions in Iran arguing against a return to diplomacy.
Okay, this is one of the great myths that was purveyed by the Obama administration.
It was an open lie.
Penrod said it was a lie.
That there was a moderate side to the Iranian administration versus the hardliners.
And in order to get the moderates to win, you had to make concessions to them so the hardliners would not pursue their hardlineness.
It was completely made up.
It was completely a fiction.
So they're just going to return to this fiction.
And Barbara Slavin is pushing it.
She says, with temperatures running so high, the incoming Biden administration now faces a serious challenge.
Biden has vowed to return to negotiations with Iran, but he and his team cannot do much more than message through the media to Iran to stay patient until the inauguration on January 20th.
I mean, first of all, the fact that Biden is even trying to tell the Iranians again, one of the probably the worst terror state on earth to stay patient because he wants to make concessions is a pretty damning indictment of just how bad his foreign policy is.
For a variety of reasons, Iran's nuclear program, says Barbara Slavin, has been slow-moving.
In the more than 60 years since Iran's nuclear efforts began, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea have all developed bombs.
Iran has not.
It still has only one functioning nuclear power plant.
It would be the ultimate tragedy if Israel's aggression now led Iran to change its calculus and go for weapons.
Okay, this is just a joke.
Everybody knew that Iran was going for weapons.
That's why all of these alliances were formed in the first place.
But again, the idea here is that the Biden administration, if it takes place, the Biden administration is going to pursue a bunch of crappy policy, guarded and protected and egged on by the media.
Because they've been able to create this ridiculous echo chamber.
And that's what the Biden team would be counting on.
They would be counting on the fact that no matter what they do, the media will just echo how wonderful it is.
I mean, Ben Rhodes had that for several years.
Again, Ben Rhodes, the former national security advisor to Barack Obama.
Jared Kushner is over in the Middle East right now, trying to broker some sort of agreement between the Saudis and the Qataris and the Israelis.
And Ben Rhodes is tweeting out about how Jared Kushner is taking payoffs, okay, with no evidence of that.
Are the media going to say anything about that?
Of course not.
Of course not.
Because again, the idea here is that the Praetorian Guard for Joe Biden throughout this election cycle, and now moving forward, no matter what happens, the Praetorian Guard will always be there for the Democrats.
And you can see that in full living color when it comes to the past weekend, when it comes to Joe Biden's personal activity.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so.
The Praetorian Guard out there for Joe Biden.
So over the weekend, Joe Biden, it was initially reported, sprained his foot.
According to Ryan Savedra over at Daily Wire, Joe Biden apparently fell over his dog, apparently.
His injuries stemmed from a fall over the weekend, and apparently they are more serious than initially thought.
New imaging tests revealed he fractured his foot.
President-elect Joe Biden sustained a sprain of his right foot, said Biden's doctor, Kevin O'Connor.
He initially said this on Sunday evening.
Initial x-rays are reassuring there's no obvious fracture.
He will be getting an additional CT for more detailed imaging.
But follow-up tests revealed that Biden, 78, sustained fractures in his foot from a fall he sustained while playing with one of his dogs.
According to O'Connor, follow-up CT scans confirmed hairline fractures of Biden's lateral and intermediate cuneiform bones, which are in the midfoot.
He will probably require a walking boot for several weeks.
Don't worry guys.
Don't worry.
He's in excellent health.
Everything is going to be just fine.
Kamala Harris had no comment on this.
X-rays did not show any obvious fracture, his clinical exam warranted more detailed imaging.
Apparently, he fell while playing with one of his two German shepherds on Saturday, and then he visited an orthopedist.
Kamala Harris had no comment on this.
I will say that if mysteriously we find that Joe Biden's brakes have been cut sometime in the future.
Or if we find that there's a tripwire on the stairs of the White House for no apparent reason.
Or if it turns out that the floor just outside Joe Biden's bedroom has been heavily greased.
Like for some reason there's just oil on the floor.
I'm not saying it might be Kamala Harris.
I'm not saying that Kamala Harris desperately wants to be president and Joe Biden is super old and kind of fragile.
I'm not saying any of those things.
I'm just saying Some of those things.
A little bit.
Just a little bit.
Anyway.
So the media, of course, everything's fine.
Everything's fine, guys.
Now, we were told for four years, Donald Trump didn't have any serious physical problems over the course of his four years in the White House.
We were told every couple of weeks that he was probably going to die of a heart attack because he was fat and old.
We got this every week from the media.
Joe Biden, before he even takes office, he's breaking his foot while playing with his dogs.
He can't make it through a sentence and we're told everything is perfectly fine.
Everything is perfectly fine.
And of course, why would we worry?
Because we have the media there are beautiful, objective media there to tell us how wonderful Joe Biden is.
See, what's amazing is the democracy was dying in darkness while Trump was president.
Now they think Biden's going to be president.
And now the light has come.
So I guess that we don't have to be we don't have to be in any way critical anymore.
It's really exciting stuff.
So over the weekend, Joe Biden announced his communications team and everybody's really excited about his communications team because it's filled with the ladies.
Now, this has always been a puzzle to me.
The same party that will tell you that there are 87 genders and that the word woman doesn't mean anything and that, in fact, Caitlyn Jenner is a woman and that many women are not women.
The same party that thinks that if you are an actual biological woman, you could probably best be termed a vagina owner.
That's pretty much like the best we can do because you might actually be a man, right?
We actually don't know.
Okay, this party has determined it is also extremely important for there to be lots of women at the highest echelons of the incoming Biden administration.
According to Mediaite, President-elect Biden chose Jen Psaki to be his White House Press Secretary.
Ooh, this comes amid news that Biden is crafting an all-female senior communications team.
It's gonna be like that shot at the end of The Avengers where they randomly assemble all the female superheroes in one area.
And you're like, why did they do that?
That doesn't make any sense.
This is a battlefield.
They're like, oh, I know why they did that.
Okay, so that's the Joe Biden team at this point.
Biden's campaign and transition teams confirmed on Sunday that Jen Psaki, a former White House communications director for the Obama administration and CNN contributor, which is the same thing, will succeed Kayleigh McEnany as press secretary.
On top of that, several of the most prominent women from Team Biden have been tagged for their own major White House roles.
Deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield will be communications director.
Corrine Jean-Pierre will be deputy press secretary.
And Symone Sanders has been exiled to chief spokeswoman for VP Kamala Harris, which hardest hit Symone Sanders.
Because remember, she was the one who was out there like a lot more like Jen Psaki was just working at CNN.
Then she was apparently she was desperately lobbying to be press secretary for Biden.
He's like, well, how about you just go work for Kamala over there?
Just over there.
Just like, OK, just enjoy yourself over with Kamala.
And really, like, have a good time.
Psaki then released a Twitter thread to express her gratitude for the position and solidarity with her colleagues.
Which, by the way, sounds terrible.
You know what I don't like in meetings when people inject empathy and humanity?
the Obama-Biden administration as he helped lead economic recovery, rebuilt our relationships with partners, and injected empathy and humanity into nearly every meeting I sat in.
Which by the way, it sounds terrible. You know what I don't like in meetings when people inject empathy and humanity? Just as a meeting person? I don't like meetings, period.
But if we're in a meeting and we're talking business and all of a sudden you just start telling me personal stories with empathy and humanity, maybe it's just me.
I'm not super into it.
Anyway, Jen Psaki says, this is a team of some of the most talented, battle-tested communicators out there who are also all women, most diverse team in history.
Well, I mean, actually, actually it's not the most diverse team in history because there are no men.
I'm just going to put that out there that if you're all women, that's not super diverse.
That's actually just monolithic.
Also, six moms of young kids, which, by the way, we were told was a bad thing when it was like Kayleigh McEnany, because she has kids, right?
I mean, that's that's not good.
We're told whenever there is a woman in a prominent position who has kids, that's not a good thing.
Unless they're a Democrat, then we can talk about how their mom, right?
When it was Amy Coney Barrett, then it was like, why isn't she at home with her children?
But if it's Jen Psaki, it's like she's a young mom and she's out there fighting for the best.
Okay, so here is the statement that Biden put out, and the media just ate this up.
You ready for this?
Here is the quote from the New York Times.
Annie Carney, White House correspondent from the New York Times reporting, Oh my God, these stenographers.
These stenographers!
truthfully to the American people is one of the most important duties of a president, said Biden, drawing an implicit contrast with Trump's use of the briefing room to disseminate falsehoods and undermine the credibility of the press.
Oh my God, these stenographers, these stenographers.
Did you know the only person who has ever lied during a White House press meeting is a member of the Trump administration?
No one's ever lied before that.
Before that, Jay Carney, he never lied.
When he got up there and he said, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, he wasn't lying.
He was just mostly mistaken on purpose.
He was like, dissembling, but not lying, not lying.
When they got up there and they just lied to you about the Iran deal during the Obama administration, or when they went up there and they said that Barack Obama found out about everything on the news, he found out about Fast and Furious on the news, and the IRS scandal on the news, and the failures at HHS on the news, that wasn't dissembling.
And when Barack Obama's administration was sicking the DOJ on reporters, that was not an attack on journalism.
Joe Biden has now informed the Democracy Dies in Darkness crowd that he is going to be communicating in clear and truthful fashion.
And they're just eating this bleep up.
They're eating it up.
Annie Carney from White House, New York Times, communicating directly and truthfully.
Wow, it's back!
Oh, the best era ever!
This is gonna be so unbelievably amazing!
Woo!
Yeah, um, don't give these people your money, really.
That's some reporting right there.
That's some reporting.
Daily Beast. Very reporter-y and very politically, very objective McFace. Here is what she tweeted.
Joe Biden has already started making good on his promise to staff his administration in a way that looks like the country. He is building a highly diverse team at major levels of government. That's some reporting right there. That's some reporting. I mean, it's reporting from directly inside Joe Biden's colon, but still it's reporting, is it not?
I mean, come on.
She didn't find the polyp, but she definitely found his talking points directly in his gullet.
So, excellent job, Hannah Trudeau, over at the Daily Beast.
Like, really good stuff.
Meanwhile, Yamiche Alcindor, also super pumped.
She tweeted out about the new Biden staff announcement.
It's the first time all the top aides have tasked with speaking on behalf of an administration and shaping its message, we'll be female.
So much girl power!
Also, girls don't exist!
Woo!
Super exciting.
Now, I just have, like, a few questions.
I know it's impolitic.
We're not supposed to ask questions about the people that Joe Biden picks.
I know we're not supposed to do that.
That's silly talk.
We're just supposed to say how great it is, because they all have lady parts, right?
I mean, because we can't say they're women.
Again, it's not me.
I didn't set the standard here, guys.
I'm firmly of the opinion that biological women are women.
But Democrats are not.
So to be fair, I don't know how these women self-identify.
Also, I don't know why it's important how they self-identify.
But apparently it is.
And we'll get to more of this in just one second.
But what I want to get to actually is like how I have some questions about the people he's selecting because it turns out they're actual humans, not just sets of genitals.
I know.
It gets awkward when you start mentioning people's actual qualifications for offices.
And how the Biden administration, supposedly, how that's not going to be great.
I know.
Democracy dies in darkness, guys.
I'm not supposed to mention this stuff.
But I will.
We're going to talk about that in just one second.
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Okay, we're going to actually vet some of the people that Joe Biden is talking about in a second, because the media is too excited telling you about their ex-chromosomes to tell you about, you know, who they are.
We'll get to more of that in just one second.
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♪♪ Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the people that are now being appointed to Biden's incoming, supposedly, allegedly incoming team.
Let's talk about that for just a second, because I know we're only supposed to just be marveling in awe at the fact that it's girl power without an I, right?
It's just G-R-R-L is how it's spelled, I'm informed, reliably, by the most powerful and empowered of female sources.
So Jen Psaki, right?
She comes straight from the Obama administration and then from CNN, which is basically just That's basically what Obama administration officials do in their off time.
It's like summer vacation.
You just go to CNN.
They continue to pay you to be a flack for Barack Obama.
And then, if somebody Obama once knew ends up as president, then you just go right back into government.
It's really fun.
You just bounce in and out.
What a great lifestyle it must be to be a member of a White House, like the wonderful, wonderful Barack Obama White House.
Anyway, Jen Psaki is the same character who spent her time at the State Department defending some of the dumbest policy of all time.
My personal favorite, Jen Psaki, quote, When she was the spokesperson for the State Department.
This is one of my favorites.
You remember after Russia invaded Ukraine?
Remember this?
There's all this bad stuff that happened during the Obama administration.
We don't talk about any of that because the only bad thing that ever happened with Barack Obama is he wore a tan suit one time.
Again, reliably informed by our objective news media, he wore a tan suit.
It's the only thing he ever did that was wrong.
Every other thing he did was unbelievably great.
Like the man never took a dump, ever, in his entire life.
Isn't that incredible?
You didn't know that, but it's true.
The only thing that Barack Obama has ever done his entire life that is bad is one time he wore a tan suit and people went crazy.
And even then it wasn't bad because the tan suit was kind of handsome.
I mean, he's a dapper gent.
So other than that, he's basically just like Jesus.
I mean, the guy's unbelievable.
He's incredible in every possible way.
He can part the seas, walk on water, like all these things.
So Jen Psaki, she was the State Department spokesperson when Russia invaded Ukraine and Barack Obama did nothing.
I know, that actually happened here on Earth.
While you were paying attention to the Tansu, that was the thing that happened, was Russia just took over a large swath of Ukraine.
Remember that?
And Jen Psaki had this to tweet.
Okay, you ready?
She tweeted this out.
This is one of the great all-time tweets.
Pretty spectacular.
Quote, the world stands hashtag united for Ukraine.
Let's hope that the hashtag Kremlin and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Russia will live by the promise of hashtag She tweeted that.
Live by the promise of hashtag.
Remember hashtag diplomacy?
This was a big deal during the Obama era.
When they weren't busy being godlike wonder figures.
When they weren't busy healing the sick by laying of the hands upon them.
When they weren't busy doing that, they were allowing, like, Boko Haram to go wild and just kidnap girls.
And then they were doing things like holding up pieces of paper that said, like, hashtag bring back our girls.
And Boko Haram was like, holy crap.
Holy crap.
Michelle Obama held up a piece of paper and it said hashtag bring back our girls.
Damn it.
We got to bring back the girls.
I mean, like, who could resist power of hashtag?
And then you have Jen Psaki saying to the Russian, you know, you guys, you really shouldn't invade Ukraine.
Live by the power and promise of hashtag.
The promise of hashtag.
Remember how great it was?
I mean, it was such a great year.
I'm so glad that these people want to bring it back.
It's just wonderful.
So Jen Psaki, who's never lied to you, she is going to be back running comms over at the White House press shop.
Also, she lied to you and admitted to lying to you on an open mic while she was, you know, over at the State Department.
Back in 2014, in fact, ABC News reported that she made an impromptu remark after a briefing in which she read a one-sentence reaction to an Egyptian court dropping all of the charges against Hosni Mubarak related to the murder of protesters during the Arab Spring.
She said, generally, we continue to believe that upholding impartial standards of accountability will advance the political consensus on which Egypt's long-term stability and economic growth depends, but beyond that, I would refer you to the Egyptian government for any further comment.
Reporters in the room expressed confusion about what that meant, and incredulity that the United States could react to the reversal in Mubarak's sentencing with such a lukewarm response.
Now, it's fun to remember this kind of stuff, because remember, nothing bad ever happened during the Obama administration.
So during the Trump administration, the Trump administration was pretty lukewarm in their response to the Jamal Khashoggi murder at the hands of the Saudi Arabian government.
And this was a big story for like weeks on end.
You'll recall that the Obama administration did not react at all to an Egyptian regime simply dropping all charges against Hosni Mubarak after a bunch of protesters were killed.
Everybody's like, well, you know, that's Obama.
That guy, he, I mean, what can we say?
Looks amazing in a tan suit.
Unbelievable.
So Jen Psaki was caught on a hot mic at the time.
Saying that Egypt line is ridiculous, right?
So she had gone out there and just lied to the press about what exactly the Obama administration was saying and saying this was good policy.
And then she just lied about it.
Don't worry, guys.
Honesty and decency, they are back and they are back and they are better than ever.
Meanwhile, speaking of back and better than ever.
Apparently, a woman named Neera Tanden is back.
So, Neera Tanden is an extremely online person.
What I mean by that is she's on Twitter saying dumb crap all the time.
But Joe Biden doesn't know what the Twitter is because he still has an AOL hardline.
He still has that routine going, Joe Biden.
In fact, in order to get his information, he actually goes up on top of a hill and waves a flag around, and somebody else waves a flag from the next hill, and that's how information is exchanged with regard to Joe Biden.
Anyway, Neera Tanden has said many, many dumb things online over the years.
He wants to make her.
She's the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress.
He wants her to serve as the first White House budget director, which is pretty much putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
I mean, The Center for American Progress is basically, why don't we spend all the money that has not yet existed on all of the things that have ever not yet existed.
Like just, I don't even have a program for the spending of the money.
We'll just literally put money into a giant fire hose with a huge nozzle and just fire it at things.
For no reason at all.
It'll be like you're at a baseball game when they shoot the t-shirts, the t-shirt cannons into the crowd.
We'll do that with money.
Except it won't even necessarily be directed at crowds, it'll just be like directed at anything.
Like people, dogs.
Potholes don't really matter.
That's kind of Neera Tanden's general policy.
But put that aside, Neera Tanden has been one of the more controversial figures online.
Many, many years of saying dumb crap online.
In fact, her first act over the weekend was to delete 1,100 tweets, which is always a good sign.
So, she is going to be coming in to run the OMB, supposedly.
And and Drew Brandy, we a spokesperson for John Cornyn of Texas said Neera Tanden has an endless stream of disparaging comments about Republican senators stands zero chance of being confirmed.
She previously was at Department of Health and Human Services.
Again, this is the way that it works.
You bounce around in politics.
You bounce around from being a part of an administration to a think tank, and then back to being part of an administration, or if you're a Democrat, from a administration to the media, to a think tank, to the media, to the administration.
She was a senior aide to Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential bid, and was the domestic policy advisor to Bill Clinton.
Here are just some of Neera Tanden's best hits.
So, she said online that the Steele dossier was mostly true.
She said this repeatedly.
That would be the P file.
That that was mostly true.
Also, she repeatedly tweeted about how terrible Susan Collins is, which is always a wise move when you actually turn out to need Susan Collins' vote for your own confirmation.
Always a good move.
She said she is the worst direct quote near as candid about Senator Susan Collins, so good luck.
For that.
Also, Joe Biden wants to put her in charge of the Office of Management and Budget.
BuzzFeed reported in 2018.
That apparently, Neera Tanden named an anonymous harassment victim in an all-staff meeting, which is always a good move.
Two days after BuzzFeed News unveiled allegations of sexual harassment and retaliation at one of the nation's top liberal think tanks, the Center for American Progress's president, Neera Tanden, met with staff to restore confidence in the organization's ability to handle the issue and ensure that employees feel safe.
But during the meeting Wednesday afternoon, Tanden named the anonymous victim at the center of the story.
Whoops!
Whoops!
That's not super a good idea.
One CAP employee said, quote, there's literally one thing you cannot do in this meeting, and that is out the victim.
Neera did it multiple times.
It destroys whatever small level of confidence in the system remained.
As a manager, I don't know how I can tell staff to trust the system when the head of the organization just outed the victim in front of the entire organization.
It is impossible to trust her.
But don't worry, guys, because in democratic politics, you just keep failing upward.
But don't worry, look, bottom line is she's a female.
That's all that matters.
It doesn't matter that she outed a sexual harassment alleged victim at her old company.
Doesn't matter.
She's a lady.
And we know she's a lady, not because she's objectively a lady, but because she says she is a lady.
And by Biden administration standards, this means she's wonderful, and the media are into it, and it is just great.
Now, things the media are not really paying attention to.
So David Sirota, who is of the left, right?
He has his own newsletter called Daily Poster.
He used to work at Slate and Salon, I believe.
David Sirota.
He had a piece over the weekend Covering the fact that a bunch of the supposed Biden incoming administration insiders, some of the people that are supposedly going to be incoming to the supposed Biden administration, apparently they're openly now talking about how their old firms are going to make money.
According to the Daily Poster, two former government officials who may now run President-elect Joe Biden's national security team have been partners at a private equity firm, now promising investors big profits off government business because of ties to those officials.
Pine Island Capital Partners lists former Undersecretary of Defense Michelle Flournoy and retired General Lloyd Austin as a partner in the firm, and lists former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a partner on a leave of absence.
Flournoy and Austin are reportedly among leading candidates being considered for Secretary of Defense.
Blinken is Biden's designated nominee for Secretary of State.
Pine Island's chairman is John Thain, former top executive at Merrill Lynch.
Flournoy and Blinken's ties to Pine Island were first reported by the American Prospect, In Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Pine Island describes one of its investment vehicles as a newly organized blank check company incorporated in Delaware that will use its connections to top officials to take advantage of rising government expenditures on the national security agencies Flournoy and Blinken could oversee.
The company said in one SEC document, the reputations and networks of Pine Island Capital Partners' team, both individually and collectively, will ensure exposure to a significant number of proprietary opportunities.
It sounds like they are basically openly saying, yeah, we're going to take advantage of our connections.
We believe there will be increased demand in the US defense market for advanced electronics, communications, sensor and detection processing, and other technologies.
We believe this demand represents strong growth.
Our management team is uniquely positioned to capitalize on, given our combined investment expertise and deeply connected partner group of former US defense and government officials.
This is so explicit, it's astonishing.
Pyte and Eileen even put it on paper, said David Siegel of Demand Progress, a grassroots group pressing Biden to reject cabinet appointments tied to corporations.
This is not an example of people who happen to work at a big company.
These are partners at a firm whose stated business model is to profit from the revolving door and connections gained from time in government.
Pretty incredible stuff there.
Everything is awesome, guys.
Everything is awesome.
Now, progressives are not super happy.
Nathan Robinson, who is a socialist, he has an entire piece of The Guardian talking about how much he dislikes the various members of the incoming, supposedly, Biden administration.
Right.
And it's true.
Some of the progressives are upset.
But the fact remains that so long as the media create this bubble, Joe Biden can do whatever he wants.
Now, the good news for Republicans and conservatives and people who care about the future of the country outside of the sort of cozy rubber room they've created for Joe Biden.
The good news is that when you create bubbles, what you end up doing is isolating yourself from the criticism that could make your administration better.
That could make your policy better.
Instead, you just keep doubling down on stupid.
And I think that is exactly what you're going to see.
You're going to see doubling down on stupid from these same exact people.
Because Obama did it, and he did it, and he did it until the country said basically, like, I'd rather have Trump.
Like, anything but this.
Trump it is.
Anybody who kicks back against this system, we're on board.
This seems like what is being built here, because the media don't do their jobs.
The media actually don't end up helping Democrats in the end, I think.
I mean, they do in the short term.
In the long term, they don't, because they isolate them from all the sorts of criticism that are necessary in order to make for better policy.
So, Joe Biden's just gonna continue along his merry way, trying to appoint a bunch of corrupt and bad officials who stink at their jobs, and the media will just continue cheering it on.
Exciting, exciting news.
Okay, meanwhile, over the weekend, The Supreme Court also issued a major ruling, Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5-4, John Roberts being that fourth vote with the left on the court.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Andrew Cuomo could not explicitly discriminate against churches as opposed to against other establishments in enforcement of COVID rules.
Now, this should be perfectly obvious.
This should have been a 9-0 case.
The fact that it was not is really disturbing for the prospects of American liberty.
Cuomo's policy basically did not make church attendance dependent on various safety measures in place for COVID.
It basically just said churches, synagogues, shut down.
You can still go into a grocery store, you can still go and gather at various places of business, but it is not essential for you to go to a church or go to a synagogue and therefore we are just going to shut this stuff down.
Now, the lack of faith that has been shown by Democrats across the country and the ability of the American people to make their own decisions is awe-inspiring in its sneering disdain for the American people.
It truly is incredible.
And so over the weekend, I went to synagogue, right?
I'm in Florida.
Our governor here, Ron DeSantis, is not garbage at his job.
And so he basically says, use your best judgment, right?
If you're very scared, don't go to synagogue, don't go to church.
The synagogue that I go to takes extreme COVID precautions.
Everybody is wearing masks.
They have taped off places on the floor.
So everybody is separated by 10 to 15 feet.
The area around the Bema in the synagogue is protected by plexiglass, so the people who are reading the Torah basically can't emit any of the spittle toward the rest of the congregation.
It's very, very well protected.
And again, that makes perfect sense.
We're being responsible.
Also, over the weekend, because again, Florida is not a garbage state like my former state of California, my family went over to Disney World.
And again, guess what?
There have been no outbreaks at Disney World.
Disney World has been open since June.
They're operating at probably 35 to 40% capacity.
You had to make a reservation ahead of time.
They insisted that everybody wear a mask, including children, over the mouth and the nose as well.
And they had people who were stationed all around kind of reminding you throughout the day to keep the mask up.
And everybody was wearing a mask, and guess what?
No outbreaks.
In other words, people can be responsible with this.
But governors have decided, because Democrats love running your life, they've decided that they get to run your life in every which way, and they're specifically going to single out religious communities.
So the editors of National Review have a good piece about this.
this. They say Andrew Cuomo thinks he can limit the capacity of churches and synagogues to 10 people in areas besieged by COVID-19, while other more essential activities face no limit at all. The Supreme Court rightly disagrees.
A majority of the court thinks the restrictions proposed by Andrew Cuomo cross the line.
Under long-standing precedent, states typically may enact religiously neutral, generally applicable laws without running afoul of the First Amendment.
But if a law burdens religion and is not generally applicable, it must satisfy quote-unquote strict scrutiny.
It means it must be as narrowly tailored as possible to promote a compelling government interest.
Cuomo's restrictions in areas classified as orange or red, in terms of COVID-19 prevalence, are neither generally applicable nor narrowly tailored.
Within these areas, different types of establishments are treated differently.
Houses of worship face strict rules.
Religious services are limited to 10 people in red areas, for example, no matter the size of the actual synagogue, right?
You can have a huge synagogue, still only 10 people.
The policy was not tailored to minimize damage to religious observance.
As the court noted, some churches in New York can see more than 1,000 people.
Others accommodate far fewer.
None could host more than 25 people, period.
And it doesn't matter the size of the room.
It's idiotic because Andrew Cuomo is, in fact, idiotic.
His policies have been terrible basically throughout.
All the court is doing here is reiterating the law and pointing out the discrimination that is being carried out by Andrew Cuomo.
Naturally, Andrew Cuomo immediately blamed Amy Coney Barrett, who ended up being one of the swing votes here because it was five to four, and because Justice John Roberts is absolutely gutless in his rulings.
In any case, here was the governor of New York, the greatest of all governors, who is now overseeing a second spike in New York after writing a book about how well he did during the first spike that killed 30,000 people.
Here is Andrew Cuomo.
You have a different court, and I think that was the statement that the court was making.
So I would agree with those people who say it's a different court and they wanted to make the statement that it's a different court.
And that's the statement they're making.
I understand that.
And that's to be expected.
I mean, we know who we appointed to the court.
We know their ideology.
We know their ideology.
This should have been a 9-0 ruling.
This is a perfectly obvious ruling.
You can't treat churches different than you treat bike stores.
As Justice Gorsuch, who actually wrote the opinion, wrote, it is time, past time to make plain that while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops, but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is the most ideologically driven of the justices on the left, she said the Constitution does not forbid states from responding to It is hard to tell exactly how that is the case.
It is hard to tell how these regulations were designed to help religious communities.
secular institution, particularly when those regulations save lives. Because New York's COVID-19 restrictions do just that, I respectfully dissent.
It is hard to tell exactly how that is the case. It is hard to tell how these regulations were designed to help religious communities.
Exactly. Naturally, a bunch of people on the left immediately started citing an editorial by Pope Francis. He He authored something in the New York Times on Thursday telling people that they should approve of government coronavirus measures.
The Pope wrote, Not a huge fan.
I can say this because I don't believe in papal infallibility since I'm not Catholic.
as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom.
I gotta say, not a huge fan. I can say this because I don't believe in papal infallibility since I'm not Catholic.
But I believe even if you're a Catholic, this does not follow under the status of doctrine.
This is more dicta, unless I'm getting this completely wrong.
That means that when the Pope says things like you have to approve of government edicts on COVID, I think that we are allowed to say, nope, that does not make any sense.
Speaking of government edicts on COVID that make no sense, L.A.
County announced over the weekend that they would be banning all outdoor dining starting on Monday, which makes perfect sense because they have no data.
I mean, seriously, none.
There was an actual public health meeting last week in which zero data was presented to explain why it was bad to eat outdoors.
It is not, in fact, bad to eat outdoors.
There's no evidence that eating outdoors is a vehicle for transmission.
Eating indoors is a vehicle for transmission because you're sitting there and chomping away and spittle's getting in the air and it's getting recirculated in a contained area.
If you're eating outdoors with tables socially distanced from each other, it's not a risk.
Doesn't matter, LA County's shutting it down.
Why?
Because once Democrats apparently have felt this power, they're just going to continue to wield this power.
I wonder whether they're going to relinquish it even after the vaccine.
I mean, seriously, whether there's just going to be this sort of quote-unquote public health outbreak every flu season.
I don't know the answer to this.
Because, I mean, it's got to be intoxicating to be able to shut down 30,000 restaurants in L.A.
County simply based on whim, without any data to back it up.
Here's CNN reporting.
California saying it's hit a record 7,400 hospitalizations.
And here in L.A.
County, the numbers also dire.
5,000 new cases in L.A.
County.
That number of deaths low.
That always lags behind.
And the hospitalizations in L.A.
County are up over 2,000 again.
So, throughout Los Angeles County, among the myriad of new restrictions, no more outdoor dining.
That went into effect.
But Pasadena, which is its own city, Okay, again, this is all ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.
Meanwhile, Anthony Fauci came out over the weekend, and I've noticed that a lot of the people who are saying follow the science don't actually want to listen to Fauci when he says something that is obviously true, like we need to keep elementary schools open.
Here was Fauci over the weekend saying what has been perfectly true for months, and we have known it for months at this point.
Here was Fauci saying, okay, if you're going to shut something, shut bars, because there's lots of transmission, but for God's sake, don't shut the elementary schools.
Close the bars and keep the schools open, is what we really say.
Obviously, you don't have one size fits all, but as I said in the past, and as you accurately quoted me, the default position should be to try as best as possible, within reason, to keep the children in school or to get them back to school.
So let's try to get the kids back, but let's try to mitigate the things Okay, well, we've known that for quite a while.
It hasn't stopped the teachers' unions from writing pieces every single day.
to avoid. And those are the things that you know well, the bars, the restaurants where you have capacity seating indoors without masks. Those are the things that drive the community spread, not the schools.
Okay, well, we've known that for quite a while. It hasn't stopped the teachers unions from writing pieces every single day. People like Leanna Wynn wrote one in the Washington Post the other day. Randy Weingarten has been saying this.
People from the American Federation of Teachers have been saying this.
They keep saying over and over, close the schools.
They're not following the science because they don't care about the science.
And now Bill de Blasio, shockingly, has decided post-election, wait, we're going to reopen the elementary schools.
Why?
Look at that.
Isn't that incredible?
Isn't that incredible?
So we've got to shut the schools.
It's really important.
And now he's like, you know, we're going to reopen the schools.
Why, it's almost as though electoral politics changed the math for somebody like Bill de Blasio.
According to the Daily Wire, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday he will reopen public elementary schools beginning in early December, a decision that comes less than two weeks after he pulled the rug out from underparents and students by closing the public school system for in-person learning.
Under the new rules, many elementary school-aged children will be allowed to return to school five days a week for in-person learning, as will children already enrolled in pre-K beginning on December 7th.
Most students with disabilities will also be allowed to return to school several days after the elementary schools open.
De Blasio says we'll have testing that is going to go from monthly in every school to weekly in every school.
So, funny.
students will not be able to attend school unless they have a consent form signed by parents.
In order to attend in-person school, students will already need to have been enrolled in hybrid learning classes.
Right now about 335,000 students are hybrid enrolled, among them 190,000 elementary age or otherwise eligible students.
So funny, it's almost as though, almost as though the teachers' union has been full of crap this entire time, but Democrats kept moving along with it anyway.
Meanwhile, I love this.
The United Federation of Teachers put out a statement.
While schools in the city's high-impact red and orange coronavirus zones will continue to abide, by the state's 3% closing rules, we are supportive of a phased reopening of schools in other neighborhoods, as long as stringent testing is in place.
Sure you are.
Sure you are.
By the way, speaking of New York City, it's funny.
We've heard that it's the Jews who are responsible for all of the spread in New York City.
We got to shut down the schools while leaving the bars open.
Weird, because the New York Times reports that sheriff's deputies found 393 people packed into a makeshift nightclub over the weekend, where New York City Sheriff Joseph Fusito said the hundreds of partygoers were, quote, non-social distancing or wearing proper face coverings.
I would find it shocking if they were wearing any sort of proper coverings at all, actually, in any way, like, as in clothing.
The sheriff's department said the party violated emergency orders and was operating without a liquor license.
The department also shared photos of dozens of bottles of hard liquor confiscated by the authorities.
Earlier this month, of course, Andrew Cuomo had restricted churches.
So, it is good to know that all of these restrictions will eventually come to naught because people are going to do what they are going to do.
People who are unreasonable about COVID are going to be unreasonable, and the government is not the answer to all of your problems.
Okay, meanwhile, gotta give you the update in election land.
So, Wisconsin has now recounted its votes.
They've confirmed that Joe Biden continues to be ahead in the recounts.
There are still outstanding lawsuits, particularly in Pennsylvania, which we'll get to in just a second.
According to the Washington Post, the recount of presidential ballots in Wisconsin's two largest counties reconfirmed on Sunday that Biden beat Trump in the key swing state by more than 20,000 votes.
It actually added votes to Biden's margin a little bit.
In the end, Biden's lead over Trump grew by about 87 votes.
Trump was required to foot the bill.
There are some election lawsuits that were filed last week in Pennsylvania.
One of them was briefly successful, actually.
That was a lawsuit that was filed by Mike Kelly and Sean Parnell and a variety of sort of Trump associated figures.
Suggesting that the mail-in process that Pennsylvania had embraced was actually illegal.
And there's a fairly good legal case for the idea that it is illegal.
The problem that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania suggested is we're not going to disenfranchise some 7 million voters on the basis that you guys should have filed a lawsuit a year ago.
That's sort of the basis of the rejection of the ruling.
The original ruling was a memorandum opinion, and it prohibited the certification of the vote in Pennsylvania's by a judge named McCullough, in which this judge found That the complaint was correct.
That basically the Constitution of the state of Pennsylvania requires a majority vote of the members of both the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and the Senate in two consecutive legislative sessions and a proposed amendment to be published for three months ahead of the next general election in two newspapers and then submitted to qualified electors as a ballot question in order to change voting procedure.
Instead, the voting procedure was simply rammed through through a majority vote.
And this judge found that this violated the constitution of the state of Pennsylvania.
She wrote, petitioners contend that without an immediate temporary injunction, Pennsylvania's electoral votes will be cast, electors will be appointed, this court will lose any authority to provide relief to petitioners. Petitioners argue greater injury will result from allowing the certification of election results pursuant to an unconstitutional, no excuse mail-in voting scheme than from prohibiting it.
Specifically, they contend no voters will be disenfranchised by the result of a slight delay in certifying the results.
Conversely, they argue, if limited injunction is not granted, the harm to all Pennsylvanians is irreparable because they will suffer the fruits of an unconstitutional election.
The court then found in favor of the petitioners. That was immediately rejected by the Supreme Court of the state of Pennsylvania, which suggested they weren't going to disenfranchise the voters of Pennsylvania on the basis that this lawsuit should have been filed a year ago. If they really had a problem with the procedure, then why are they filing it only after the election results are in? Okay, so that lawsuit.
You know, whether you like the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruling or whether you don't, I'm not a huge fan.
Whether you like that ruling or not, that is where the legal process stands at this time.
Meanwhile, President Trump continues to fulminate over the election.
He was on Maria Bartiromo's show on Fox News over the weekend, and he actually suggested that the intelligence agencies or the DOJ may have been involved in rigging the election.
Here he was on the phone with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News over the weekend.
This is total fraud and how the FBI and Department of Justice, I don't know, maybe they're involved, but how people are allowed to get away with this stuff is unbelievable.
This election was rigged.
This election was a total fraud.
And it continues to be as they hide.
And the problem we have, we go to judges and people don't want to get involved.
The media doesn't even want to cover it.
He is not wrong that the media refused to literally cover any allegations of voter fraud or voter irregularity at all.
I mean, if you actually put up such an allegation, even if you're just reporting on the allegation, Twitter will actually put a fact check on the allegation itself, which is pretty wild, right?
There are all sorts of allegations flying around Twitter all the time.
Twitter doesn't just put any sort of fact check on the allegations.
My business partner, Jeremy Boring, a couple of weeks ago put up a tweet just to see what would happen, saying Stacey Abrams is the legitimate governor of Georgia.
No fact check or this has been This tweet has been called into dispute.
It's only with regard to certain claims, obviously.
President Trump went further.
He then suggested that he was upset with Brian Kemp, who's the governor of Georgia, because Brian Kemp is a Republican.
The Secretary of State is a Republican.
They've certified the vote in Georgia in favor of Joe Biden.
Here's Trump saying that he's ashamed that he ever endorsed Brian Kemp.
They had judges making deals, and they had electoral officials making deals, like this character in Georgia who's a disaster.
And the governor's done nothing.
He's done absolutely nothing.
I'm ashamed that I endorsed him.
But I look at what's going on, it's so terrible.
But what happened in this election, Maria, I can't imagine has ever happened before.
Okay, so, again, you want to make these allegations, he's perfectly, he can make whatever allegations he wants.
It's a free country, right?
And he's getting court cases filed all over the place.
Some of them are better substantiated than others, like that Pennsylvania court case that was really more about procedure than it was about specific allegations of voter fraud.
There have been some specific allegations that have yet to be fully rebutted, and I'm actually curious to see some of the answers, and some that have been fully rebutted.
There's been some allegations, for example, about the miscount of ballots in Pennsylvania.
The suggestion is that more mail-in ballots were actually filed than were requested in the first place.
That is mismatching the data.
That is looking at data for the number of mail-in ballots requested for the primaries, not the number of ballots requested for the general election.
But there's one allegation made, I believe it was last Thursday, by the Trump team in Pennsylvania, maybe it was Wednesday, in which they suggested that there are these sort of late ballot dumps that went heavily for Joe Biden, like 99.6% for Joe Biden, which of course looks rather suspicious.
I'd love to see the response to that from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth to see exactly what happened there.
But Victor Davis Hanson, I think, has the best take on this at this point, right?
Which is that there is a legal process and it's going to move forward and Trump has a couple of paths.
Victor Davis Hanson, by the way, is probably the biggest Trump fan in intelligentsia, right?
Victor is a professor of classical studies.
He's been a Trump fan since 2015, 2016.
He wrote an entire book in defense of President Trump, who's a big bestseller.
So here is his piece at National Review about the current status, because here is where we lie.
Trump talking about voter fraud and voter irregularity in his own election?
He's perfectly entitled to do that.
At a certain point, he's going to start undercutting the ability of Republicans to win races in places like Georgia.
Undercutting the governor of Georgia and suggesting that he's corrupt or that his own FBI and DOJ are corruptly trying to rob an election from him is going to make it very hard for Republicans to win races in races they actually need to win.
Right now, the control of the United States Senate is up for grabs.
Right now, there are two seats in Georgia.
If both of them go Democrat, the Democrats control the Senate.
And if things continue along the lines they are continuing right now, Joe Biden ends up as president, and you end up with Kamala Harris breaking a tie in the Senate, which is just a full-scale disaster area.
So, Trump needs to bring the goods, you know, in terms of actual proof of voter fraud and voter irregularities, he needs to bring all of those goods right now, in court, not on Maria Bartiromo, in court, right now.
This is Victor Davis Hanson saying this, right?
He needs to do that because otherwise what you're doing is you're depressing the voter turnout in places like Georgia.
And this is happening, like, in real time.
For example, Over the weekend, Ronna McDaniel, who's the head of the RNC, she was out speaking to folks, and one voter asked about voter fraud and said, like, why should I even bother voting in Georgia if all of the elections are already rigged?
And it didn't go great.
It's not decided.
This is the key.
It's not decided.
First of all, David Perdue still has a 100,000 vote lead over Jon Ossoff.
Right now.
With the certification.
So if you lose your faith and you don't vote and people walk away, that will decide it.
Okay, that's it.
Okay, and she's right.
That is the disaster area, is that if Trump doesn't bring the proof and if things don't change and if he doesn't actually just move with the process here and bring it actually in court, and all we get is a bunch of Republican voters who are discouraged from voting because they think this thing is already rigged, that's a full-scale disaster.
And Democrats want it, right?
Andrew Yang, former Democratic presidential candidate, right?
Yang came out, he says basically that's what he's hoping for, is that Republicans are going to buy into what Trump is selling with regard to Georgia and just not show up to the polls.
It's vital that Democrats get every single voter out here in Georgia.
And I believe there are going to be many Trump voters who may not participate.
There's even some conspiracy theories out there.
It's interesting.
If you say to the folks in Georgia that the election is rigged, But then you also say, and come out and vote January 5th.
It's kind of an incongruous message.
Okay, Victor Davis Hanson's making the same point again.
Victor is a huge Trump fan, and here's what he says.
He says, Trump has a couple of pathways.
One is to keep addressing legitimate reports of voter irregularities.
He can continue to ask the courts to set aside any illegal votes that do not conform to state voting laws.
His supporters demand and deserve no less than the investigation of all charges of serial voting impropriety.
But Trump within days will have to prove any such crimes and lapses warped state counts enough to have wrongly elected Joe Biden president.
Trump realistically has perhaps a week or so left to either make his case or concede.
Then, to maintain the Senate majority for Republicans, and to save the very rules and protocols of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution, Trump will have to barnstorm Georgia.
His challenge will be to enthuse his conservative base to re-elect the state's two incumbent senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
After that, then Trump will have a shot at 2024.
Or, the other alternative is bleaker.
This is according, again, Victor Davis Hanson, not me.
He says, currently, Trump affiliated lawyers claim they can prove their bombshell allegations of historic voting fraud by leftists and foreign interests.
They further claim Trump was robbed not of a close election, but of a veritable landslide constituting the greatest scandal in American history.
So far, none of these advocates have produced the requisite whistleblowers, computer data or forensic evidence to prove their astounding charges.
If they don't, and if Trump pivots to put his fate in their hands, the pilloried Republicans may well lose the Senate races in Georgia.
And with that historic setback, Trump would endanger his own legacy, his influence, and perhaps a crack at a second presidential term.
In blunter terms, Trump may be forced to choose within days whether he wishes to emulate Andrew Jackson, the aggrieved victim of a crooked bargain in 1824 that denied him victory in that year's presidential election.
Jackson stormed back in 1828.
Otherwise, Trump would risk being reduced to the status of sore presidential losers like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.
So right now, it is a very fine line.
Trump can keep talking about voter fraud and voter irregularity all he wants.
He's going to have to bring the proof.
And then at a certain point, he's gonna have to work to win those Senate races for Georgia's Republicans.
Because otherwise, a world of hurt is coming for Republicans in Georgia.
That is a major upcoming issue.
And if Republicans ignore that, they do so at their own peril.
Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
Executive Producer Jeremy Boren.
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The show is edited by Adam Siavitz.
Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
Joe Biden has pet problems, statistical impossibilities appear in Pennsylvania election hearings, and the Supreme Court defends religious liberty.
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