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Feb. 9, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:03:51

The Senate Impeachment Trial Begins | Ep. 1191

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	Democrats move ahead with their Senate impeachment trial for former President Trump.
	The Biden administration and media push endless COVID panic in spite of the science.
	And Bidenomics means firing cash cannons at Americans.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	This show is sponsored by Express VPN.
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	Slash, Ben, we're going to get to all the news of the day in just one moment.
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	Okay, so.
	Today, the Senate of the United States, led by Chuck Schumer, should have been led by Mitch McConnell, but now it's led by Chuck Schumer, is going to start the consideration on the conviction of President Trump for the impeachment charge that was brought against him by the House of Representatives.
	Remember, that single impeachment charge essentially suggested that Trump was responsible for inciting a riot at the Capitol building on January 6th.
	That was the main part of the impeachment charge.
	There were other ancillary parts, like his earlier call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, but the main part of the charge is that he was personally responsible for the incitement of the violence that happened on January 6th.
	Now, the big problem with that charge is really that he is not by any legal definition responsible for incitement.
	And it's very difficult to make the claim that he is responsible for incitement because of the colorful language that he used in the months leading up to January 6th.
	But that other politicians who use similarly colorful language are not also guilty of incitement when violent breaks out from people who agree with them.
	This is the biggest flaw in the entire Democratic argument with regard to impeachment.
	Now, there are some Republicans who voted for impeachment in the House.
	There are cases that Trump had abused his power, that he'd been lying about the results of the election, that he'd been telling lies about voter irregularity and voter fraud and whipping people into a frenzy, and that it was sort of a foreseeable effect of that, that something bad would happen.
	But again, the wording of the incitement charge is pretty specific.
	And beyond that, there is no neutral standard that applies across the board when it comes to an impeachable offense on the basis of this fact pattern.
	And that is the case that Trump's defense is making.
	So we're going to get to what Trump's defense looks like because that's going to start rolling out today.
	The trial actually begins with a four-hour debate today on the constitutionality of bringing an impeachment charge against a person who is no longer in office.
	Remember, he is former President Trump.
	He is not actually President Trump.
	And frankly, if you wanted what was best for the country, I think there's a solid case to be made that the country is better off just kind of moving on.
	And the reason I say that is not because Trump shouldn't bear the political consequences of what he wrought over the couple of months after the election.
	I think he is going to bear those political consequences in whatever way the American public sees fit to bring those consequences.
	I mean, the number one consequence of his behavior over the past four years is that he's no longer president of the United States.
	The simple fact of the matter is, if he had been as silent on social media during his presidency as he has been since he was banned from social media in the aftermath of January 6th, he would probably still be president.
	So it's not as though consequences have not attended to Trump's behavior.
	And the people who actually engaged in violence, those people will be tracked down.
	Those people will be brought to trial.
	Those people will spend time in jail, as well they should.
	And if Democrats are ever willing to bring forth evidence of their most outrageous allegations, which is that there are members of Congress who are complicit in the attack, well then, members of Congress will end up in jail.
	But when it comes to the question of whether it is good for the country as a broad matter for us to be re-litigating Trump's presidency after he lost an election in November, Or whether we ought to be focused on, you know, the crises at hand, namely COVID, the economy, and all the rest.
	I think that increasingly, there's a reason both Democrats and Republicans want to move fast on this thing.
	Republicans want to move fast on it because they think that it's basically just political gamesmanship, which is correct.
	And Democrats want to move fast on this thing because I think they recognize that if this drags out for weeks and weeks, Americans are just gonna get tired of it.
	Because this is what happens with virtually every impeachment trial.
	At the very beginning of the impeachment trial over Ukraine, Americans were largely supportive of impeaching Trump by polling data.
	And then, as the thing continued, Americans were like, what are we doing again?
	Why are we doing this again?
	What?
	Seriously?
	And you're going to get that even more now, because at least at that point, Trump was president.
	Now, Trump's just some guy golfing in Mar-a-Lago.
	So the idea for most Americans that we should be expending enormous quantities of time and not only time, by the way, cash.
	You know, we're going to spend 500 million taxpayer dollars, 500 million taxpayer dollars to have troops all over Washington, D.C.
	during this Senate impeachment trial.
	You know that?
	Now, honestly, I would love to hear members of the law enforcement community explain just why we need a completely militarized D.C.
	right now.
	Because there's been no violence since January 6th.
	That's not to say there couldn't be.
	That's not to say that maybe they don't have evidence that we haven't seen.
	But Governor DeSantis in Florida, Governor Abbott in Texas, they already brought home their National Guard contingent.
	They're like, we're not seeing a ton of fomenting violence.
	We're not seeing giant rallies outside the Senate today.
	So why exactly are we spending $500 million taxpayer dollars to keep Washington, D.C.
	in a state of military lockdown?
	I mean, just on the face of it, it's kind of bizarre.
	So, here is how the trial is going to roll out today.
	According to the Hill, Senate leadership announced on Monday they have reached a deal on the framework for former President Trump's impeachment trial. It'll start today. For the information of the Senate, the Republican leader and I, in consultation with both the House managers and former President Trump's lawyers, have agreed to a bipartisan resolution to govern the structure and timing of the impending trial, said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Apparently, they confirmed on the right side of the aisle that this was happening. The timeline would allow the trial to wrap up as early as next week if both sides agree not to call witnesses.
	And this is the big question right now, is whether the sides are going to call witnesses.
	Under the current deal, the Senate is going to debate and vote today on whether the trial is constitutional.
	The effort to declare the trial unconstitutional will fall short.
	Rand Paul folks were forced to vote on this issue late last month.
	44 Republican senators supported that particular effort.
	There were very few Republicans who sided with the idea that it was constitutional.
	Now that was an easy procedural way out.
	There are some Republicans who are making the case it's not constitutional to push forward with this.
	Tom Cotton from Arkansas is one of those.
	Here's Senator Cotton explaining the constitutional case against convicting a president of an impeachable offense after he has already left office.
	I think it's beyond the Senate's constitutional authority to have an impeachment proceeding, the point of which is to convict and remove from office a man who left office three weeks ago.
	I think it's also a set of misplaced priorities.
	The Democrats continue to obsess about Donald Trump, when Donald Trump left office and went to Florida three weeks ago, when the Senate should be focused on things like how to expand vaccine production and distribute it more quickly.
	Those are the priorities the American people want us to focus on, not an inquest into who is now a private citizen.
	It's an interesting constitutional debate on the right side of the aisle.
	Basically, the Republicans who say that it's unconstitutional to push forward with this, that's people like Tom Cotton or Rand Paul, their case is that it is an impeachment trial.
	The purpose of an impeachment trial is to remove from office a person who apparently is now already out of office.
	So what exactly is the point?
	On the other side of the aisle, there are people who say, yes, he was impeached in the House, but the conviction is still part of the process.
	That happens in the Senate.
	And one of the possibilities is barring somebody from running for office in the future on the basis of a Senate conviction.
	So here's Pat Toomey, who's a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, making the opposite case.
	You did have 45 Republican Senators vote to suggest that they didn't think it was appropriate to conduct a trial, so you can infer how likely it is that those folks will vote to convict.
	I disagreed with their assessment.
	I think it is constitutional.
	I think it's clearly constitutional to conduct a Senate trial with respect to an impeachment.
	In this case, the impeachment occurred prior to the President's leaving office.
	Okay, so how is this actually going to roll out?
	The way that this is actually going to roll out is the opening arguments then start on Wednesday.
	So under the current deal, the House impeachment managers and Trump's team will have 16 hours over two days each to present their case to the Senate, which is actually a faster pace than the first Trump trial.
	Both sides got 24 hours in that Trump trial.
	At that point, Chuck Schumer was like, we're rushing this thing even now.
	Because Mitch McConnell was in charge.
	Now, Chuck Schumer wants to rush this thing so much that both sides get 16 hours to present their case.
	And you can bet money that if the Democrats start calling witnesses, like if they start calling up AOC to testify to how terrified she was in the building that was, you know, 0.3 miles away from the Capitol building, protected by police and was never under assault from rioters.
	If they want to call people like AOC, then you can certainly bet Republicans will then call AOC to rebut AOC and ask her about her own violent language with regard to Republicans and riots and all of the rest.
	The way this is going to work is if one side opens that can of worms with regard to impeachment witnesses, you can bet the other side certainly will as well.
	The deal does leave open the door to calling witnesses.
	The House impeachment managers previously invited Trump to testify under oath.
	His attorneys rejected that because if you are Trump's attorney, the last thing you ever want is Donald Trump in a legal proceeding saying anything.
	It is the worst job in the world being Donald Trump's attorney.
	You can tell because of the churn.
	I mean, seriously, that is a bad job.
	Because the first rule of lawyering is that you get your client to shut up.
	And then you are the one who is the mouthpiece for your client.
	But that is not Donald Trump's forte, is shutting up.
	And so being Donald Trump's lawyer is always difficult.
	Although there are reports out today that Donald Trump shockingly has finally learned that actually his best PR tactic may be to not say things.
	Apparently he's like off on the golf courses and people around him are telling him, you know, people are still paying attention to you and you using your social media sparingly as opposed to using it like You know, just word vomit?
	Like, that's actually an effective tactic, and Trump seems to have learned that, which is why he's making so few public statements.
	Would to God that he had learned that in the first year of his presidency.
	Both sides are going to end up with two hours for closing arguments.
	Chuck Schumer says, as in previous trials, there will be equal time for Senator questions and for closing arguments and an opportunity for the Senate to hold deliberations if it so chooses.
	And then we're going to vote on the articles of impeachment.
	So that is the procedure as it is going to play out.
	In a second, we're going to get to what the content is likely to be in the actual Senate trial for President Trump on this impeachment charge.
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	Okay, so what exactly is the content likely to be?
	Well, from the Democrats, what you're likely to hear is how terrified they personally were and also All of their other arguments, which is that the riots were white supremacy.
	Trump is a white supremacist.
	You're likely to hear about how close we were to losing our democracy in the words of representative Jackie Speier from California Democrat.
	She says, you know, we have to hear during this trial how close we were to losing our democracy.
	Now, let's be frank about this.
	We were not close to losing our democracy.
	We weren't.
	I mean, we just weren't as a factual matter.
	A bunch of yahoos, idiot criminal yahoos, evil yahoos, running into the Capitol building and putting their feet on Nancy Pelosi's desk.
	It's ugly, and it's terrible, and it's bad, and it's horrible for the country.
	That was not us being close to losing our democracy.
	You know what losing a democracy looks like?
	It sort of looks like what happens in countries all over the world when the military just marches into presidential palaces and starts arresting officials, right?
	That's what it looks like.
	At no point was this a coup.
	A coup is not a bunch of idiots dressed in buffalo horns running into a government building and sitting in somebody's chair.
	That is not a coup.
	By the way, it's not even a coup if somebody goes and tries to murder members of Congress.
	That is an act of evil, a criminal act of evil.
	Okay, by the way, we've seen it before.
	It is not even a coup when, God forbid, a president is assassinated.
	We've had that in American history before.
	That's not a coup either.
	A coup, specifically speaking, is when one regime is exchanged for a more legitimate regime through the mechanisms of institutional power generally.
	That's when you have the military that intervenes on the behest of one political party, for example, and then else a sitting democratically elected person, for example.
	That is the nature of a coup.
	This was not a coup.
	We were not close to losing our democracy.
	How not close were we to losing our democracy?
	Within hours of these morons jumping into the Capitol building to make trouble and videotape themselves for their Instagram.
	Congress was back in session.
	Ratifying the election and making Joe Biden the president of the United States.
	So yeah, we were not close to a coup.
	But again, the lie has... What's amazing is that you don't actually have to do this.
	I mean, seriously, Democrats don't have to do this.
	I said this the day of.
	This could have been a unifying moment that lies are bad and people believing lies is really bad and people then acting on those lies to do violence and terrible damage.
	is really, really bad.
	We can all be on the same side of all those questions, but instead it's, well, you know, Donald Trump tried to launch a coup and he almost, he was barely thwarted.
	No, he wasn't.
	He was not barely thwarted.
	You know how I know he wasn't barely thwarted?
	Because on January 20th, he didn't attend the inauguration and Joe Biden became President of the United States.
	So that's how I know he wasn't barely thwarted.
	It's just...
	The exaggeration is unnecessary, and it really does demonstrate that what this really is about for a lot of folks, as always, is the PR.
	We have a Congress that doesn't actually do anything for a living.
	We have a Congress that tweets things and goes on cable news.
	They have the same job that I do, except that I'm not paid by taxpayer money.
	Nor am I your elected representative, right?
	We have a Congress that does not pass bills.
	We have a Congress that does not negotiate.
	We have a Congress that does nothing, except every once in a while, they vote on some giant omnibus spending package.
	They toss all power over to the executive branch.
	A bunch of unelected bureaucrats govern your life.
	And then Congress goes on Twitter and talks jack about other people.
	That's pretty much what Congress does for a living these days.
	So here's Jackie Speier doing just that.
	Again, there's no wonder why people hate the American legislature.
	There's a reason the legislature does not legislate.
	Our elected officials do not represent us.
	All they do all day long is just yell on cable news for power.
	It's pretty crazy.
	I intend, like so many of my colleagues, to put into words that every American can hear for decades to come how close we came to losing our democracy.
	This is a man that intended to overtake this government.
	And it's astonishing to me that so few of my colleagues on the Republican side, even after witnessing that, even after being part of that insurrection, are unwilling to do their jobs and protect the Constitution and protect the democracy.
	OK, again, the democracy was not under threat.
	There were people who were threatening to do bad things.
	At no point was the institutional democracy of the United States under threat.
	To pretend otherwise is to ignore the realities on the ground.
	The military would not have participated in anything like that.
	Republican members of Congress voted to ratify the election.
	Vice President Pence was the vice president under Donald Trump, lest we forget.
	He was the person leading the ratification.
	Mitch McConnell was the head of the Senate.
	Like...
	All of this overwrought hysteria is, in fact, overwrought hysteria.
	I'm not saying it's hysteria to have been worried or concerned or freaked out at what happened at the Capitol.
	It is overwrought hysteria to say that America was on the brink of turning into a dictatorship on January 6th.
	That's just silly.
	It's silly.
	On its face, it's silly.
	In just a second, we're gonna get to more silly, because again, this is really not about anything to do with Trump.
	It's really just about the PR that you can use in order to foment your own rise to power in the future via social media, mainly.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Alrighty, so, again, what this trial is really about for the Democrats is ratcheting up the amount of ire at Republicans more generally.
	Which is why you see Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez clinging to the patently absurd notion that Ted Cruz tried to have her murdered.
	Because the goal here is not to castigate Trump for the lies that he told about the election and the aftermath of the election.
	The goal of this is to castigate all Republicans who she doesn't like.
	All of them.
	Because, listen, I was not a fan of what Ted Cruz did in objecting to electors.
	But does that mean that Ted Cruz was trying to kill Alexander Ocasio-Cortez?
	Of course not.
	And everybody knows this.
	This hysterical nonsense is hysterical nonsense.
	Here's Alexander Ocasio-Cortez.
	Again, this is supposed to be the Congress that is representing us and is going to do the people's work?
	Sure.
	Or, alternatively, they're just a bunch of complete nincompoops on social media who are putting out tweets and little videos for lols.
	There's no difference between the memesters who drove up the GameStop stock and our Congress members at this point.
	Except that the people who are on Reddit are significantly more clever and funny, I think, is basically what I'm coming away with here.
	Here's Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, the respected, wonderful congressperson from New York, leader of the Democratic Party.
	party.
	That is the exact, that is the quote.
	I mean, the actual tweet that she sent said that Ted Cruz tried to have her murdered at the Capitol.
	I mean, come on, come on.
	Meanwhile, Ayanna Pressley, the Ringo Starr of the squad, she was on national TV suggesting that January 6th was about white supremacy.
	See, all the narratives get forwarded by every individual instance.
	It's a thing about politics that once you see it, you can't unsee it, and it's so irritating.
	It's really just a point of high irritation.
	There are a bunch of preset narratives.
	Facts very often do not fit into those narratives.
	And most people are unwilling to shift their narrative even after the facts disprove the narrative.
	January 6th, there is so little evidence that it had anything to do with race.
	Seriously, what is the evidence that it had to do with race specifically?
	As opposed to being about people who were just pissed that Trump had lost the election.
	For a wide variety of reasons.
	And yet somehow it was about white supremacy to Ayanna Pressley because she thinks literally everything on earth fits into the white supremacy narrative.
	Student loan.
	student loan issues, those are a white supremacy narrative.
	Housing, it's about white supremacy.
	And of course, January 6th, about white supremacy.
	When everything is about white supremacy, then you have now bought into a false narrative and you are using that false narrative as a cudgel to wield against your political enemies, which is ugly stuff.
	Here's Ayanna Pressley doing that.
	As a black woman, to be barricaded in my office, using office furniture and water bottles, on the ground, in the dark, that terror, those moments of terror, is familiar in a deep and ancestral way for me.
	And.
	And I want us to do everything to ensure that a breach like this never occurs at the Capitol, but I want us to address the evil and scourge that is white supremacy in this nation.
	The hell is she talking about?
	I mean, really, what the hell is she talking about?
	The majority of members of Congress are white.
	The majority of them are white.
	They were also hiding in their- Mitch McConnell is the whitest person to ever white.
	Mitch McConnell was hiding in his office.
	All of this stuff is, it's so stupid.
	Our politics is just so stupid.
	I've like run out of patience with the stupidity of our politics.
	It's unreal how stupid our politics is.
	Okay, so Trump's response to all of this is a very long trial memorandum test.
	78 page trial memorandum talking about the charges against him.
	It's sort of a mix of decent argumentation together with a bunch of Trumpian flourishes because if Trump looks, because of course Trump is going to look over the final document.
	And so it references Trump's Arrangement Syndrome on like the very first page of the trial memorandum.
	What Trump's team understands is that this is all just a PR effort.
	That the trial is not about holding him legally responsible.
	He is not going to be held legally responsible via conviction in the Senate.
	It's just not going to happen.
	They don't have the votes and everybody knows it.
	So that means that Trump's team is basically going to present the countervailing case.
	And the countervailing case, according to the memorandum, is pretty obvious, which is Trump didn't incite anything on January 6th, that by all available evidence, the action was pre-planned, which is correct, by the way.
	Virtually everyone has already reported that this was pre-planned.
	Apparently, you know, the Democrats had started their impeachment effort before they'd even conducted an investigation.
	That during the actual rally before the riots, Trump talked about peacefully protesting at the Capitol building, that the riots started in the middle of his speech.
	They didn't actually start after his speech.
	It wasn't like he finished and then they went over.
	They started in the middle of his speech.
	Now critics are saying, oh yeah, he'd already said the inflammatory part.
	All right.
	But he called for peaceful protest in the speech.
	I know we're all trying to avoid that, but that happens to be a fact.
	It's on tape.
	And, they are correct, law enforcement had reports of a potential attack on the Capitol several days before Trump's speech itself, which suggests that it was not the speech that actually triggered the violent events of January 6th.
	You can say that Trump's rhetoric contributed to the attitude of the people who stormed the Capitol, but if the argument is incitement, that means that you incited the violence with the speech of January 6th, that's the impeachment charge.
	So all of those are fairly good defenses, and those will be brought to bear.
	The Democrats, the more rabid Democrats are saying that they want to bring witnesses.
	I think they're unlikely to do so.
	They're going to get what they want to get out of this thing.
	They'll get all the headlines they want and then we'll all move on.
	But does this have anything to do in reality?
	Like making the country a better place at this point?
	No.
	Trump's out of office.
	Presumably he will remain out of office.
	And all Democrats are doing, the real reason they're focusing on Trump is because they don't want him to go away.
	That's the reality.
	Democrats in the media do not want Trump to go away.
	They want Trump there so they can use him as a foil.
	Without Trump there as a foil, they have to find some other Republican, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a first-term backbencher from Georgia that they can use as the face of all Republican evil.
	So they're going to try and keep this alive as long as possible.
	The American people are bored with it, and I think they're going to want to move on ASAP.
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	Okay, so meanwhile, the COVID numbers in the United States are actually getting significantly better.
	COVID cases are now at their lowest level since October, which is definitely a good thing.
	They've dropped precipitously since the beginning of the year.
	When it comes to deaths, deaths are also starting to level off in the United States and drop.
	Some of that is due to vaccination.
	A lot of that is due to the fact that we've seen this pattern before.
	Basically, you have variants of COVID or waves of COVID.
	They burn through a community, they run out of people to burn through, and then they wane.
	So hopefully, by the time we move forward with this thing, by the time the next variant hits, a lot of people are vaccinated.
	That'd be great.
	And we are rolling out vaccines at a fast pace, and that is largely thanks to the Trump administration, which the Biden administration has denied over and over and over again.
	And yet, we are still hearing this sort of panic to tone from our media.
	It's all panic all day, all the time from our media.
	Because there has to be some bogeyman that Team Biden can use in order to jack through their agenda.
	To understand that the Biden team, when it comes to their economic plans, those economic plans are not in a vacuum popular.
	If it were not for COVID, first of all, Trump probably would have been reelected if it were not for COVID.
	The economy was just too good.
	But if it were not for COVID, do you think Americans would be on board with spending $1.9 trillion with AT?
	Do you think Americans would be on board with a $15 national minimum wage, which is more than significant percentages of people in less wealthy states earn?
	Like, do you think that that makes a lot of sense?
	People would not be up for this.
	A lot of the Biden agenda rests on the specter of COVID in the background.
	And so they're going to continue to play this thing up.
	And they will do so in hypocritical fashion.
	It'll be the media and the Democratic Party doing this.
	And so you'll end up with a CNN reporter looking at Tampa.
	And I was down in Tampa, or up in Tampa, rather, for the Super Bowl.
	And there were a lot of people who were unmasked in Tampa.
	I mean, that is true.
	It is also true that in the actual Super Bowl Stadium, because you had to, everybody was masked up.
	But these CNN reporters are very selective in when they get outraged about lack of masks.
	If it's happening in New York, they're really not all that concerned about it.
	If it's happening in Florida, they are super concerned about it, despite the fact that Florida has performed admirably, given the fact that Florida has, by far, the oldest population in America.
	Not close.
	But here is a CNN reporter absolutely aghast at the fact that there were young people who are healthy not wearing masks in Tampa.
	Let me show you a scene from last night in an area called Ybor City.
	We have some video to show you.
	You can see on the streets of Ybor City this massive crowd.
	Again, not many of them wearing a mask.
	This is a very popular spot where people go to bars and restaurants.
	There were some police there, but we're unsure about citations.
	I spoke to the Tampa police and I asked them, what are you doing about this?
	Because a lot of people were very concerned.
	Okay, there's one thing that you will notice, primarily above all, in these crowds.
	There's not a person over 30.
	I mean, if you look at these pictures, you cannot spot a person over the age of 30 years old in these pictures.
	So, the very basic notion that this poses a massive health risk to the United States because a bunch of 25-year-olds are walking around without masks.
	25-year-olds are not dying of COVID.
	So unless they're going home and they're infecting granny, this really is not a huge issue, frankly.
	Because again, 25-year-olds, not dying of COVID.
	Nonetheless, this drove Tampa, when I say not dying, like, in massive numbers.
	We're in outsized numbers.
	Just to be very specific for the idiot fact-checkers who don't understand the English language or how it works.
	The reality is, there are a few people who are 25 who will die of COVID.
	It is vastly disproportionate to the actual number of people who are at risk from COVID.
	Here is Tampa's mayor, Jane Castor.
	She saw this CNN report, obviously, and now she's like, everybody who is maskless at the Super Bowl is going to be identified by law enforcement.
	Yes, this sounds like a tremendous use of resources.
	My favorite part of this is the cop standing directly behind her who's got the mask on under his nose.
	You know, we had tens of thousands of people all over the city.
	Downtown, out by the stadium, Ybor City, down here in Channelside, and very, very few incidents.
	So, I'm proud of our community, but those few bad actors will be identified, and the Tampa Police Department will handle it.
	Now, the media want to sort of have it both ways, because one of the things that has been happening, and it is a reality, is that populations mask up or associate at different rates.
	So you've seen that the media are very, very down on Orthodox Jews in New York and New Jersey, right?
	They've been very down on them since the beginning of the pandemic.
	I think there's some justification to the idea that if you're getting together in closed spaces without masks and then you are transmitting the virus at high rates, that has to do with personal behavior.
	But the media completely ignore that when it comes to people who are also getting the virus at disproportionate rates.
	At no point have they suggested, for example, that disproportionate rates of COVID in the black community in New York, which is a thing, that maybe that has to do with personal behavior as well.
	It's either personal behavior or systemic racism for each.
	But the way that it works is if a bunch of Jews get it in New York, that is called personal behavior.
	And if a bunch of black folks get it in New York, then it is all about systemic racism is the way that this works.
	Well, now you have the New York Times justifying black people refusing to get the vaccine.
	Now, if this were a bunch of white people refusing to get the vaccine, it would be about QAnon and Trump support, right?
	But Charles Blow over at the New York Times has an entire piece about why it is that many black Americans are not getting the vaccine, and he's attempting to justify or excuse it.
	Which is crazy, okay?
	Because the people who need the vaccine the most, presumably, are the people who are getting it at the highest rates.
	This is what we have been told.
	And the people getting it at the highest rates are people of color in the United States.
	So why would you be making excuses for people opting out of that?
	This is like the fifth editorial from the New York Times making this case.
	He says that black Americans are justified in not getting the vaccine because they don't trust the government.
	Which is a weird way for... That's a weird argument given that black Americans are voting in a 92-8 clip for a party that wants to expand the size, scope, and reach of government.
	If you don't trust the government, it seems like a weird indicator how much you distrust the government to vote for the party that vows to expand it in every area of your life.
	But in any case, here's what Charles Blow says.
	He says, the distrust in the healthcare system is real in the black community.
	Perhaps most notably, at least in the last century, was the Tuskegee experiments, in which hundreds of black men were told they were being treated for syphilis, when in fact, they were not.
	They were being observed to see how the disease would progress.
	Those men suffered under this experiment for 40 years.
	Yes, it happened in the 1930s.
	30s!
	Okay, the people today who are denying vaccines and are 30 years old, their grandparents were not alive when the Tuskegee experiments happened.
	The Associated Press exposed the program in 1972, but the black people in the age group most resistant to the vaccine weren't alive when that experiment was conducted, as Charles Bull acknowledges.
	Indeed, older men, those who might have been alive at that time, are more likely to want the vaccine.
	Yes, because they're the people who are most vulnerable to COVID, generally.
	He says it occurs to me something bigger might be contributing to those numbers, an overall mistrust of a government that has repeatedly disappointed, disrespected, and dehumanized black people.
	Ah, so, when black Americans refuse to get the vaccine, then it's because of justified distrust of the government from a population that overwhelmingly votes for the party of government.
	When white people refuse to get the vaccine, it's because they are doing something dumb.
	The media double standard is pretty amazing there.
	It's pretty amazing.
	Okay, meanwhile, the Biden administration continues to ratchet up.
	It's a one-way ratchet in terms of how worried we're supposed to be.
	We're never supposed to get less worried.
	We're always supposed to get more worried.
	So now we have Anthony Fauci saying that he was asked by Brett Baier, so when can the masks come off?
	Like, you know, we're now rolling out these vaccines.
	Over a million a day, people are getting the shot.
	When can the masks come off?
	Fauci's answer is so bizarre and disturbing.
	Here it is.
	If we can get, and I have used this as an estimate, it's not definitive, that if we can get 70-85% of our population vaccinated and get to what we would hope would be to a degree of herd immunity, which really is an umbrella or a veil of protection against the community, Where the level of virus is so low, it's not a threat at all, then at that point you could start thinking in terms of not having to have a uniform wearing of masks.
	Okay, it's that last, it's that last sentence that's insane.
	When the virus, the risk of it, does not exist, then you can take off the mask.
	Okay, so when we have learned to defeat death generally, you can leave your house.
	When the risk of the virus does not exist, Are you out of your damned mind?
	We've shut down the entire world economy for a year for a disease that mainly kills people over the age of 70.
	And you can make the argument that that's a good idea.
	You can make the argument that's a bad idea.
	I will tell you what is an absolute crap, idiotic, anti-scientific idea.
	The idea that the virus is going to have a 0% risk rate.
	A 0% risk rate.
	And that's when you can take off the mask.
	You know when people are going to take off the masks?
	Seriously?
	People are going to take off the masks after they get the shots.
	It is that simple.
	On a practical level, once people have the shots, they're going to say, I am done with this and I'm taking off the mask.
	And I'm not going to stay away from grandma.
	I'm not going to stay away from parties I want to go to.
	If grandma's at a particular risk, like a super high risk, maybe, if I'm really worried, I might stay away.
	But generally speaking, people have to live their lives.
	And this idea that we live in a bubble where risk does not exist, and the risk from COVID is gonna go down to zero before we all start taking off our masks?
	Nuts.
	Nuts.
	It's not gonna happen.
	I mean, you can see what's happening in Tampa right now.
	People who don't believe they're at risk are not wearing masks.
	People who believe they are at risk are wearing masks.
	People who believe they're at risk are getting vaccinated.
	People who believe they're not at risk are not getting vaccinated.
	Turns out people have individual judgment.
	But this notion that we're going to cram down mask wearing on people until the end of time, when the risk is zero, is insane.
	It's insane.
	And by the way, counterproductive.
	Because if I have to wear a mask forever, why would I bother getting vaccinated?
	As soon as I'm 37, I'm healthy.
	Why bother getting vaccinated?
	If I have to wear a mask forever and the mask is supposed to protect the people around me from the risk of transmission, I can just skip the shot and wear the mask if we're all going to be wearing masks until the end of time anyway.
	It's idiotic PR.
	It is anti-scientific.
	It is ridiculous.
	And this guy is the greatest doctor in the land.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	He's the second greatest doctor in the land.
	We also heard from the very, very scientific Dr. Joe Biden, the greatest of all doctors.
	It goes in order.
	From least great doctor to greatest doctor.
	It goes like Jonas Salk, Dr. Pepper, Dr. J, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Jill Biden, who has a doctorate in education from the prestigious University of Delaware after writing a dissertation about the importance of junior college.
	Here is Dr. Jill Biden informing you how you should live your life when it comes to masking.
	Hi there, I'm Jill Biden here at the White House with our two dogs, Champ and Major.
	For a lot of us during this pandemic, our pets have been such a source of joy and comfort, and maybe a bark or two on a video conference.
	The unconditional love from a dog is one of the most beautiful things on earth, and we owe it to them to keep ourselves healthy.
	So please keep wearing your mask, even when you're out walking your dog.
	Right, guys?
	By the way, if you're walking your dog away from people, don't wear your mask.
	Seriously.
	If you're 100 feet from somebody, and you're walking along on a park path, and you're wearing a mask, I don't know why you are.
	There's no purpose to it.
	But Dr. Jill says so, and I have been informed that she is the greatest of all doctors.
	And on the list of doctors, she is the top doctor.
	Like, in all of human history.
	She's a more important figure in medical history than Hippocrates.
	Just unbelievable importance.
	Oh, the science.
	The science!
	We'll get to more of ta science in just one second.
	First, let us talk about the fact now is not a great time to go to the auto parts store.
	In fact, you know when's a great time to go to the auto parts store?
	Never.
	Because you wait in line for a really long time, then you get to the front, and then you are having to answer a bunch of very specific questions about your car you probably don't know the answers to.
	Finally, You tell them what part you need and they're like, you know what?
	Why don't we order that online for you and then upcharge you?
	Or you could just order it online yourself and not pay the upcharge by going to rockauto.com.
	Rockauto.com always offers the lowest prices possible rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear like airlines do.
	Why spend up to twice as much for the same parts?
	RockAuto.com is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
	Head on over 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 would you spend up to twice as much for the same parts?
	The RockAuto.com catalog is unique.
	It's remarkably easy to navigate.
	You can quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle and choose the brands, specifications and prices you prefer.
	They've got 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 and write Shapiro in there.
	How did you hear about us, Box?
	So they know that we, saying it helps them, helps us.
	Go check them out, rockauto.com.
	Write Shapiro in there.
	How did you hear about us, Box?
	When you check out.
	Alrighty, so here's the thing, folks.
	You've heard me talk about our All Access membership before, but for those of you who have not heard me talk about it, it is our most elite membership base here at The Daily Wire.
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	you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So that Biden administration really big on the science.
	Speaking of which, is Joe Biden with us?
	We always have to ask this because usually he's kind of not.
	They can kind of get him up and wheel him around Weekend at Bernie style for like a short period of time before he starts to babble nonsense.
	So yesterday he was on a COVID call with a registered nurse and he creepily started babbling about how young she looked, which by the way, if Donald Trump had done that, endless headlines about his sexism and all the rest.
	But Joe Biden doesn't, he's just a charming older fellow.
	Here was Joe Biden.
	Saying weird things about a registered nurse.
	I know that I'm trying to do everything to make this safe and efficient.
	So, support, yeah.
	Are you a freshman at the university?
	No, no.
	You look like a freshman.
	She's been a registered nurse for nine years.
	She's probably 30.
	So no, she does not look like a 17-year-old girl.
	Joe Biden, you weirdo.
	You big old weirdo.
	We only elect weird people to be president now.
	It's just a thing.
	It's just a thing.
	America.
	Well, speaking of the Party of Science and the Biden administration's Party of Science, so I'm just gonna note here.
	So Biden's CDC director, right?
	She came out yesterday and she said, you know, when Donald Trump was president, There were a few COVID guidelines, minority of COVID guidelines, that were politically impacted.
	Rochelle Walensky said that Anne Schuchat, the CDC's principal deputy director and career civil servant, is in charge of the review of those regulations.
	She said a vast minority of the public health agency's guidelines on how the nation should respond to the coronavirus pandemic have been, quote unquote, politically swayed by former President Donald Trump's appointees and that the agency is in the process of updating those.
	So the headline became, Biden's CDC director says that a minority of COVID guidelines were politically swayed.
	I'll just remind you that this week, Joe Biden completely undercut his own CDC director because she said schools can reopen without teachers being vaccinated.
	And then Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was like, well, she was just speaking in her personal capacity.
	Obviously, politics no longer matter when it comes to the CDC.
	They are just following to science.
	Speaking of which, Norah O'Donnell did ask Joe Biden over the last couple of days, why exactly are the schools closed at this point?
	And Joe Biden did not have a good answer.
	About 20 million American children have not been in the classroom for nearly a year.
	There's a mental health crisis happening.
	There really is.
	Women are dropping out of the workforce.
	Is this a national emergency?
	It is a national emergency.
	It generally is a national emergency.
	Okay, so it's a national emergency, but Joe Biden, I have a question.
	If it's such a national emergency, when are we going to reopen?
	Well, the answer is we're going to reopen when other teachers unions say that we can reopen, because Joe Biden does not run his own administration.
	Do you think it's time for schools to reopen?
	I think it's time for schools to reopen safely.
	Safely.
	You have to have fewer people in the classroom.
	You have to have ventilation systems that have been reworked.
	Our CDC commissioner is going to be coming out with science-based judgment within, I think, as early as Wednesday, as to lay out what the minimum requirements are.
	Really?
	You guys didn't have this ready?
	Like months ago?
	I was informed you were the party of science.
	By the way, the Trump administration did have reopening guidelines.
	For schools.
	They did exist.
	So I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about.
	Schools in Florida, they never closed.
	Schools in Europe, many of those never closed.
	Schools in Israel, largely never closed.
	All over, all over the world, particularly for elementary school children, the risk of transmission in elementary schools is extraordinarily low.
	Very, very low.
	And yet here you still have this guy because he's in hock to the teachers' unions pretending that he's speaking on behalf of the science.
	It's just a lie.
	Who's he really speaking on behalf of?
	Randy Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers.
	There are a lot of great teachers out there, teachers who want to be in school, teachers who are doing a great job for kids.
	And then there are the teachers' unions, which are bags of flaming garbage and should be illegal if they are public sector unions.
	They should be illegal.
	It is ridiculous.
	The teachers are allowed to bargain against the interests of students and taxpayers.
	And the fat cats at the top, who are earning million-dollar salaries and building giant monuments to themselves in Washington, D.C., in order to prevent children from learning, are doing nobody any favors.
	The New York Times, nonetheless, has a SOP piece on Randi Weingarten from just the other day, from yesterday, talking about how she is going to work with Joe Biden to reopen schools.
	Randi Weingarten.
	Yeah, sure she is.
	Teachers, said Ms.
	Weingarten, have good reasons to be anxious.
	They don't trust soap and running water will always be available in schools because sometimes they haven't been.
	They don't trust that extra funding will materialize for masks, hand sanitizer, and nurses because in so many other years, budgets were cut.
	Oh, probably it's that.
	It can't just be that these unions are taking advantage of a really bad situation in order to bargain for more things.
	By the way, undercutting the demand for their services.
	The number of people who are opting for homeschooling is at record rates, record rates.
	But one of the things that we have to understand about what is going on right now is that in order to gin up panic, ginning up panic about COVID is largely at this point, when vaccines are right around the corner from millions of Americans.
	Millions of Americans already had them.
	Ginning up panic is all about pushing the concomitant political agenda.
	More power to the teachers' unions and more spending.
	So you've got Jen Psaki over at the White House saying it's time to roll out these giant economic plans, $1.9 trillion in stimulus.
	Now again, recognize that by most economic standards, people believe that the economic spending shortfall due to COVID this year is going to be about $450 billion.
	So they're spending about four times that amount of money in order to quote unquote rectify the breach.
	And in order to do this, they're now claiming that they also want to kill a bunch of jobs.
	So Jen Psaki was specifically asked about fossil fuel workers because one of the things that Joe Biden has been pushing in the middle of a pandemic is new restrictions on fossil fuel development and fracking.
	And Jen Psaki was asked about that.
	She was asked, okay, so you want a bunch of people, Keystone XL, you want a bunch of people to lose their jobs in the middle of a pandemic.
	And her answer was, how dare you, sir?
	So much, how refreshing, so much transparency and factual accuracy coming from Jen Psaki.
	When is it that the Biden administration is going to let the thousands of fossil fuel industry workers, whether it's pipeline workers or construction workers, who are either out of work or will soon be out of work because of a Biden EO, when it is and where it is that they can go for their green job?
	And that is something the administration has promised.
	There is now a gap.
	So I'm just curious when that happens, when those people can count on that.
	Well, I'd certainly welcome you to present your data of all the thousands and thousands of people who won't be getting a green job.
	Maybe next time you're here, you can present that.
	What the hell does that mean?
	Well, seriously, he's asking you.
	That's the question, lady.
	Can you show anybody who's gotten a green job?
	Because you keep saying that when somebody is laid off from a fracking job, when somebody loses their job in the Keystone XL pipeline, don't worry, they'll get a green job.
	And Ducey's like, OK, so can you name them?
	Like, who got a green job?
	And she's like, maybe you can tell me who got a green job.
	What?
	I mean, I can tell you all the people who just lost their jobs at Keystone XL.
	We can look up their names, and we can ask them if they are now working on windmills.
	That is a possibility.
	But that's not the only great Biden economic plan that is going to be propped on the back of COVID.
	She says that Joe Biden wants to make sure that in this $1.9 trillion package, the national minimum wage is raised to $15.
	Where did they come up with $15?
	Out of Shama Sawant's butt.
	Shama Sawant is a socialist from Seattle.
	She's been preaching $15 minimum wage in Seattle.
	Seattle, you may have noticed, is not Birmingham, Alabama.
	In fact, they are two very, very different places.
	And $15 minimum wage drove a lot of small businesses out of business in Seattle.
	Here is Jen Psaki, however, saying it is vital in the middle of a pandemic, with unemployment at extraordinary rates, for us to raise the minimum wage to throw people out of work and create lower margins for businesses to operate.
	Brilliant, brilliant stuff.
	The president remains firmly committed to raising the minimum wage to $15.
	That's why he put it in his first legislative proposal.
	And he believes that any American who is working a full-time job, trying to make ends meet, should not be at the poverty level.
	And it's important to him that the minimum wage is raised.
	Okay, by the way, just legislating that somebody be paid more money does not mean that they will actually be paid more money.
	Many of those people, their minimum wage will now be zero because they will be laid off, or people are just gonna put a bunch of self-checkout lines in grocery stores, which is what Kroger is going to do.
	They're now experimenting with getting rid of all checkout specialists, like all of them, and they're just gonna put machines in place.
	By the way, if you're not worried about any of this, Anthony Pompliano, the investor, he tweeted out, within the last 12 months, we have increased the US dollar supply by 40%, by 40%.
	There will be consequences for that sort of stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, the culture wars continue apace.
	So if you think that things weren't falling apart fast enough, the culture wars definitely continue apace.
	The New York Times is very angry at the Super Bowl.
	So every time there's a Super Bowl, and the Super Bowl is not sufficiently woke, people get super ticked off.
	So Ken Belson has a long piece of the New York Times about the evils of the Super Bowl.
	He says, But when it comes to topics like race, health, and safety, the league's certainty dissolves into a series of mixed messages.
	First downs are measured in inches.
	Air Force jets fly over stadiums just as the Star Spangled Banner reaches its peak.
	But when it comes to topics like race, health, and safety, the league's certainty dissolves into a series of mixed messages.
	That was the case on Sunday at the Super Bowl, the NFL's crowning game, typically watched by about 100 million viewers in the United States.
	The championship game provides the league a massive platform each year to promote itself as America's corporate do-gooder with the best interests of its enormous fan base at heart.
	That was harder to do this year.
	On Sunday, the NFL trumpeted its support for the fight against social injustice.
	The national anthem was performed by two musicians, one black and one white.
	The poet Amanda Gorman, who wowed the country with her recitation of President Biden's inauguration, read an ode to three honorary captains.
	It was fine.
	I was like, eh, okay.
	The TV announcers spoke often of the work that the league and players have done to battle racial inequities.
	Yet, moments later, says the New York Times, when the Kansas City Chiefs took the field, the NFL played a recording in the reduced-capacity stadium of the made-up war cry that is a team custom.
	The prompts got fans to swing their arms in a tomahawk chop, an act many find disrespectful and a perpetuation of racist stereotypes of the nation's first people.
	I mean, just the brutality of the NFL.
	Brutal.
	Plus, no one mentioned Colin Kaepernick.
	I mean, frankly, I have to admit, like Matt Walsh, I was appalled that no one mentioned Colin Kaepernick because, yes, Tom Brady cemented his status as the greatest quarterback ever to play football, but He was the second greatest quarterback to ever play football because we all know that the true greatest is the person who has been denied a slot in the NFL for years after backing up the immoral Blaine Gabbard in San Francisco, Colin Kaepernick.
	We needed more Colin Kaepernick talk.
	We needed more of that.
	I mean, after all, Mariah Carey did tweet out, Happy Colin Kaepernick Appreciation Day.
	There was no talks, says the New York Times, of the league's abysmal record hiring people of color as head coaches and general managers, or even as television cameras showed, the Chiefs' successful offensive coordinator Eric Bename, who is black, had been unable to land a head coaching position in multiple hiring cycles.
	Before the game, CBS Sports showed a segment that featured Viola Davis saluting Kenny Washington, a black player who in 1946 reintegrated the NFL, which had an unofficial color barrier for 13 years.
	But there was no discussion of a lawsuit brought by two former NFL players who accused the league of rigging the concussion settlement.
	Well, I mean, probably that's what they should have led with at the Super Bowl.
	You know, as a piece of marketing, probably they should have led with, also, we're secret racists.
	I will say the NFL did its best to buy into woke nonsense.
	So the NFL ran a commercial.
	After the end of the Super Bowl, in which it just basically poured out a bunch of woke slogans.
	So it showed one of the referees, one of the female referees, wearing a hat that said, End Racism.
	That hat, by the way, did end racism.
	In the history books, it will go down that in 2021, racism was ended by the hat of an NFL referee.
	So lots of racism being ended right here.
	Here is the NFL ad promising to end, they promised they were gonna spend $250 million to end systemic racism.
	$250 million to end systemic racism.
	What an amazing contribution by the NFL.
	In fact, I think the NFL has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to quote-unquote ending systemic racism considering a huge percentage of the league's players are black and people in the league are being paid an exorbitant amount of money far above the average American.
	So that seems like that's a good way to end systemic racism.
	Nonetheless, here is the NFL pledging to do more because corporate wokeness is now a thing, gang.
	To fulfill the promise of one nation, To be part of the solution.
	Be part of the change.
	To try harder.
	Show up.
	Dive in.
	And stay at it.
	Wow.
	Amazing.
	Amazing, by the way.
	I'll tell you what is true.
	And they've got people kneeling and saying, while the season is over, while the season is over, the fight isn't.
	Ooh, yes, yes.
	And it's got people raising the black power fist and all of this.
	Okay.
	Our fight for social justice is not.
	So in any case, the NFL is doing its best to do the corporate wokeness routine, but nothing is enough for the New York Times.
	Here's the reality.
	The reason people watch the Super Bowl for many, many, many people, including me, the only game I watched all season was the Super Bowl.
	And maybe they did the wokeness routine in the commercials.
	I can tell you in the stadium, it was not really a thing.
	In the stadium, the NFL really did not play that stuff up.
	And they didn't play that stuff up because guess what?
	When you call the American system systemically racist, and suggest that America is a deeply offensive place, and suggest that NFL players are victimized by systemic racism on a regular basis, most people sense the bullcrap in that.
	Yet the culture wars continue apace.
	Meanwhile, Google is running ads.
	You want to talk about systemic racism?
	Google is now running ads, touting their ability to search for black-owned businesses.
	Now imagine for just a second that Google touted the ability to search for white-owned businesses.
	Do you think that'd be something they'd be championing?
	I'm seeing this on Amazon also right now.
	If you go to Amazon, they will try to link you to black-owned businesses because it's Black History Month.
	That's racist.
	Just in its purest form, it is racist to suggest that you should shop at a business because of the skin color of its owner.
	That is a racist thing.
	And yet, this is something that all of corporate America is now buying into, including these social media bros who are disseminating their own information and policing how dissemination of information actually works.
	Here was Google's ad touting the fact that you can now search for who owns a business by race, unironically believing that they are fighting racism in the process.
	The 4-Way is a destination place.
	Right here, between these walls, is a lot of history.
	To have a place where you have dignity and belong, that's the legacy of the 4-Way.
	identifies as Black-owned. I do like identifies as Black-owned is what pops up because that means they're not actually checking. That's what it means. They say identifies, not Black-owned, identifies as Black-owned means that somebody checked that box that it's a Black-owned business.
	But I also love the implication, which is that Black-owned businesses are a place where Black people belong, but apparently white-owned businesses are not.
	I mean, that's what's said in that commercial?
	I mean, this is what you saw during the BLM riots, by the way.
	We saw it in LA.
	We saw people who were boarding up their businesses and writing on the plywood, black-owned business, which is the most racist Passover story ever, basically.
	I was like, oh, maybe they will pass over my store if I just write black-owned business on the front of the store.
	They're only gonna target people who are not of a particular race.
	The fact that corporate America has, like, where's the unity?
	Is this unity?
	Really, is that unity?
	I think people should patronize black-owned businesses, and white-owned businesses, and Asian-owned businesses.
	In fact, I think people should patronize all of the businesses that they think are good.
	That's pretty much it.
	That is my, is that standard terrible?
	It seems like a pretty good standard to me.
	And yet we have an entire corporate infrastructure that is devoted to the idea of a racial segregation that we were supposed to abhor and should abhor.
	Pretty impressive stuff.
	Meanwhile, turmoil continues inside the newsroom over at the New York Times.
	A great piece over at the Washington Free Beacon by Aaron Siberian.
	We talked yesterday about this story from the New York Times.
	When you talk about the complete takeover of institutions by the woke culture, The New York Times has been taken over.
	It's been destroyed.
	Nicole Hannah-Jones is the de facto editor over there.
	As I said yesterday, Nicole Hannah-Jones is not a journalist.
	She's an activist, and she's a bad person.
	And Nicole Hannah-Jones basically just got a man fired for having said the N-word in the context of explaining a story in which the N-word was the key part.
	By the way, she has tweeted out using the N-word before herself, right, in discussing a story, as we'll see.
	So Aaron Siberian writes this over at the Washington Free Beacon.
	The resignation of star New York Times science writer Donald McNeil Jr.
	has sparked a furious back and forth among Times staffers, many of whom are outraged over the Gray Lady's handling of his departure.
	The Washington Free Beacon reviewed a series of postings to a Facebook group for current and former Times staffers, where a tense debate is unfolding over McNeil's exit.
	One camp asserts that his dismissal was justified, another asserts it sets a troubling precedent, which the New York Times union should have done more to prevent.
	Whatever happens in the notion of worker solidarity to giving a fellow worker the benefit of the doubt, asked Stephen Greenhouse, who spent three decades covering labor issues for the New York Times.
	Why didn't the News Guild, that's the union, do far more to defend and protect the job of a longtime Times employee, one who at times did tireless heroic work on behalf of the Guild to help improve pay and conditions for all New York Times employees?
	Times crossword columnist Deb Amlin accused Greenhouse of an excessive focus on the perpetrator, arguing that he and others should shift their attention to the people McNeil had harmed.
	By the way, there's no evidence that McNeil actually harmed anybody.
	He was literally asked a question about whether a person in high school should be canceled for at 12 using the n-word, and he said, was the person saying bleep in the context of a rap song or not?
	That is the sin that he was fired for, essentially.
	When asked about this, Deb Amelin said, McNeil's ouster came nearly two years after the incident that precipitated it.
	While chaperoning high school students on a pricey trip to Peru, the science reporter responded to a question from a student about whether one of her classmates should have been suspended for using the N-word.
	In the process, he uttered the offending syllables himself.
	An Internal Times investigation found his judgment wanting, but stopped short of firing him.
	We talked about this yesterday.
	What an absurd standard that is.
	And we're not gonna look to the intent of language.
	If you say a racial slur to say, the word bleep is bad and evil.
	Neil pushed out.
	We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent, said Dean Beckett.
	We talked about this yesterday.
	What an absurd standard that is.
	And we're not going to look to the intent of language.
	If you say a racial slur to say the word bleep is bad and evil.
	If you say that, but you say the word that's racist language regardless of intent.
	Which is nuts.
	Nuts.
	By the way, the pipeline for the Daily Beast, this is how the Daily Beast works, obviously.
	They have a reporter over there named Maxwell Townie.
	Whenever somebody in the media, a woke staffer, gets mad, they email Maxwell Townie.
	Maxwell Townie then runs a piece about how the woke staffers are mad.
	The editors at the offending paper start prostrating themselves before the woke staffers, and then the woke staffers stomp on their neck.
	That's the way this process works.
	McNeil's resignation on Friday and Baquette's post-hoc explanation that intent doesn't matter renewed the bitter debate among staff with reporters warring with each other in public and private, says the Free Beacon.
	A Times spokeswoman muddied the waters further on Sunday, telling the Free Beacon that racial epithets had no, quote, place in the newspaper.
	The paper, as the Free Beacon notes, printed the same epithet last week in a magazine profile of Princeton Classics professor Don L. Padilla-Peralta.
	Even in ironic or self-mocking quotations about a speaker's own group in rap lyrics, for example, their use erodes the worthy inhibition against brutality in public discourse, said Danielle Rhodes-Ha.
	That was the spokesperson for the paper.
	She declined to say if that policy extends to social media, where other New York Times writers, including Nicole Hannah-Jones and Asted Herndon, have quoted the slur.
	So, for example, back in 2016, Hannah-Jones wrote, Larry Wilmore did not say you did it, my n-word.
	She said there's a linguistic difference between the N-word with an ER at the end and the N-word with an A at the end.
	So the Washington Free Beacon asked Hannah Jones whether intent made a difference in her case, because of course this is the standard she's been pushing.
	Racist language doesn't require intent.
	If you say the N-word, it is racist.
	You ought to be fired.
	She responded by posting the reporter's inquiry, including his cell phone number on Twitter, in direct violation of the website's terms of service.
	You think she's going to be suspended?
	Yeah, I don't think so.
	I don't think so.
	Greenhouse argued staffers who went after McNeil, including Hannah Jones and race reporter John Elgin, had their priorities backward.
	Many of them, he wrote, were, quote, far more willing to sympathize with these privileged 15- and 16-year-olds than with a longtime colleague who has done much great work for The Times over the years.
	When one Times reporter posted a statement from a nonprofit literary organization called PEN calling McNeil's ouster chilling, What if they just think that you're a schmuck?
	You personally.
	Not people like you in terms of race, but maybe like you and people who act like you are schmucks.
	How about that?
	lovely to your face are actually thinking or saying about you or people like you behind your back.
	What if they just think that you're a schmuck?
	You personally, not people like you in terms of race, but maybe like you and people who act like you are schmucks.
	How about that?
	Because you are.
	Apparently according to the free beacon, the lack of clear standards has generated frustration I don't think anybody feels like we have any clarity about what happened with this incident or other alleged incidents, said one New York Times reporter.
	We demand transparency of other people.
	We don't have it in our own processes, but this is the point.
	When it comes to the woke, there is no standard to meet.
	Understand?
	There's no standard at all.
	There's no neutral standard.
	The point is the changing standard.
	The point is that you can do everything right and still have it come back and bite you directly on the ass.
	That is the standard.
	The standard is, will you do all the things they want you to do at precisely the time they want you to do it?
	And will you atone when they demand atonement?
	And then will they continue to hold it over your head?
	And if they do, you need more atonement.
	That is the standard.
	Because this has nothing to do with ideological consistency or even a consistent philosophy.
	All this has to do with is sheer power.
	Nikole Hannah-Jones has it at the New York Times, and nobody who's honest at the New York Times does.
	It is that simple.
	All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show coming up soon.
	The Matt Walsh Show airing at 1.30 p.m.
	Eastern.
	Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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