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Feb. 24, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
46:58
Looking For Systemic Racism In All The Wrong Places | Ep. 1202
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Time Text
A grand jury declines to indict police officers in the death of black man Daniel Prude.
The first black bachelor complains about systemic racism.
And Democrats struggle with Joe Biden putting kids in cages.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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We're going to get to all the news in just one moment.
A lot of cultural news out today, so we'll get to all of that first.
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Okay, so the news of the day is that Rochester officers are not going to be charged in the death of Daniel Prude.
So you may remember the Daniel Prude case.
It was another one of these cases where the tape looks really unpleasant, but the reality is that the officers are almost certainly not responsible for the death of Daniel Prude.
It created riots during the Black Lives Matter Situation during the summer in Rochester, particularly this came out kind of late in the summer.
Because originally, Daniel Prude died in March, but then the tape didn't come out until a couple of months later.
It became just another one of the names that is listed in the litany of people who are supposedly murdered by the police.
Many of those names don't belong on that list.
Jacob Blake was put on that list.
He's not dead, but he was put on the list.
He was responsible for the riots in Kenosha.
It turned out that he had a knife in his hand when he was refusing to obey the orders of officers.
It turns out not all of these cases are exactly the same, and Daniel Prude falls into the category of a case where it is absolutely unclear that the officers killed him.
In fact, the evidence tends to show the opposite.
According to the New York Times, on a snowy night last March, Daniel Prude sprinted shirtless out of his brother's home in Rochester, New York, seemingly in the grip of a psychotic episode, distraught, his brother called police for help.
Instead, the officers handcuffed Mr. Prude, placed a mesh hood over his head, and pressed him into the pavement until he lost consciousness.
Okay, now that is a wild exaggeration of the actual chain of events.
So we actually have the tape, right?
The police tape came out of what happened here.
And Daniel Prude is walking down the street in the middle of Rochester.
It is snowing outside and he is completely nude at the time.
And he starts shouting at the officers, give me your gun.
And so they restrain him.
And then he starts trying to spit at them and he says that he is COVID positive.
Remember, this is early on in the pandemic.
This is like two weeks into the shutdown of the pandemic.
And so they do what officers are trained to do.
They put a mesh hood on him.
It is breathable.
They did not put him in a burlap sack.
They didn't choke him to death.
And then it appears that he died of excited delirium.
Because it turns out that he was probably extremely high on PCP.
That is what the autopsy showed.
Again, he was walking naked down the street in Rochester.
So this obviously was not somebody who was in a decent mental or physical condition when the officers first encountered him.
Here's a little bit of what that tape looked like.
Get on the ground, man.
No!
Get on the ground.
Put your hands behind your back.
Behind your back.
Don't move.
Don't move.
Chill out, man.
Don't move.
I mean it. God bless y'all.
Let me out! Get the f*** away from me!
In Jesus Christ I pray, amen!
Give me that gun now, man.
You hear him say, give me that gun, and then they put him, and they hold him down because he is not staying down, right?
That mesh hood is breathable.
And then at a certain point, he says that he can't breathe, which is true, because he can't breathe.
He's suffering from excited delirium.
The autopsy said that he was experiencing excited delirium, which is a condition that often follows heavy drug use.
Similar autopsy report was made about, for example, George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The autopsy tends to show that he did not die as a direct result of the officer's pressure in that particular case, that he was high on fentanyl at the time.
Something similar happened here with Daniel Prude, according to the best available scientific reports.
According to the New York Times, Miss James, Letitia James, who is the Attorney General of the State of New York, she said she was extremely disappointed with the grand jury, which is always a good move.
It's always a good move when you have officers of the law saying they are disappointed with the workings of the law.
In any case, on Tuesday, the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, announced none of the officers who arrested Prude would face charges in connection with his death.
A grand jury convened by James to investigate the case declined to charge any of the seven officers on the scene that night with a crime.
If she has a way that people can escape dying from excited delirium, I would love to hear it.
law enforcement officers accountable in the unjustified killing of African-Americans.
What binds these cases is the tragic loss of life and circumstances in which the death could have been avoided.
If she has a way that people can escape dying from excited delirium, I would love to hear it.
Seriously.
In an unusual move, the Monroe County Court Judge Karen Bailey Turner on Tuesday evening granted the attorney general's request to release minutes related to the grand jury's investigation records that are generally protected under seal.
Ms.
James said the public deserves to know what transpires behind closed doors, which of course defeats the purpose of a blind jury system.
The date to make the documents public has not been set.
The federal DOJ says they might open a civil rights investigation into the officers.
They've tried this before under Barack Obama.
Usually it fails.
You'll remember that it was Eric Holder's DOJ that refused to indict George Zimmerman in the death of Trayvon Martin, for example.
On Tuesday evening, a crowd of about 150 people marched through the city denouncing the grand jury decision and the system that made it possible.
The system that made it possible.
You mean like trial by jury and grand jury process and due process of law, that system?
According to the New York Times, after body camera video of Mr. Prude's death became public in the fall, his name now joined a now familiar list of black people killed during interactions with police, including George Floyd, whose death in Minneapolis led to months of demonstrations nationwide.
Particularly unsettling in the case of Mr. Prude were images of him in a hood reminiscent of the ones used in lynching of black people.
That is not what happened.
These police officers did not arrive on scene and decide, you know what, let's lynch this guy.
He started spitting at them, yelling at them that he was COVID positive at that point.
Again, we were two weeks into the pandemic at this point.
So they put a spit hood on him.
which is a mesh hood that you can breathe through.
The Rochester Police Locust Club, which is the union that represents the city's 700 law enforcement officers, declined to comment on the grand jury's decision.
Naturally, Letitia James suggested that there had to be sweeping reforms in how the police interact with and are trained to deal with people in emotional distress.
Buried in this article from the New York Times are the actual circumstances here.
Mr. Prude, 41, lived in Chicago but had been visiting his brother in Rochester.
Friends said that before his death, Mr. Prude had begun to rely more heavily on the drug PCP.
This is one of the more dangerous drugs known to man.
Known as angel dust, it can cause erratic behavior.
He began to use drugs, they said, to cope with the 2018 death by suicide of his nephew with whom he had lived.
The day before the episode, his brother, Joe, had him hospitalized at Strong Memorial Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, but he was sent home hours later.
So if you're gonna put blame anywhere, it ought to be with the psychiatric hospital that released this guy.
Because by the next night, he was out on the street, wandering around naked in the snow and shouting at police officers that he wanted their gun and that he had COVID while trying to spit at them.
Just hours after returning from the hospital on March 23rd, Mr. Prude suddenly burst from his brother's home and ran into the night.
Fearful for his safety, his brother called 911.
And people obviously fear the police so much that they call 911 when they have a problem, worried Prude might inadvertently harm himself or run across nearby train tracks.
Police who answered the call found Prude naked and reported he had told at least one passerby he had COVID.
When they apprehended him, he began spitting, and the officers responded by pulling the mesh hood over his head.
When he tried to rise, the officers forced Mr. Prude face down on the ground.
One of them pushed his head to the pavement.
Police body camera footage showed.
The police held Prude down for two minutes.
He had to be resuscitated.
He died at the hospital a week later.
Okay, now again, the reality of the autopsy is that he likely died of his drug intake and excited delirium, which is a condition that often follows heavy drug use.
One of the symptoms of excited delirium is that you feel overheated, which might be one of the reasons why he shed all of his clothes in the middle of the night in Rochester when it was freezing outside and snowing.
A deputy police chief in Rochester wrote in a June 4th email to his supervisor saying, we certainly do not want people to misinterpret the officer's actions and conflate this incident with any recent killings of unarmed black men by law enforcement nationally. That would simply be a false narrative and could create animosity and potentially violent blowback in the community as a result. The New York Times interpreted that letter as an attempted coverup, as opposed to the police saying, you guys are going to misinterpret the tape, and then everybody going and misinterpreting the tape. Late last year, the city's office of public
integrity apparently concluded no wrongdoing had been committed by any city employee.
Ms.
James suggested Daniel Prude was in the throes of a mental health crisis.
What he needed was compassion, care, and help from trained professionals.
Tragically, he received none of those things.
He literally was at the hospital the day before and they discharged him.
So people are using this as yet another example of black men being brutally mistreated by the police.
This is a bad example.
You can find examples of black men being brutally mistreated by police.
You can find examples of white men being brutally mistreated by the police.
Those situations do happen.
This happens to be a particularly poor example, but it leads all the news because the news people do not care.
Your journalistic experts do not care about the particular circumstances of every individual case.
They don't care about due process.
They don't care about what the actual evidence shows.
They don't care about autopsy reports.
They have a narrative, and the narrative must be promoted.
And the narrative has an effect.
I have some poll statistics that are absolutely stunning that I'm going to show you in just one second.
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Okay, so.
The impact of the coverage of the media in cases like Daniel Prude's, the suggestion that this is a grave miscarriage of justice by Letitia James.
This has an impact on how people think about racism in the United States.
So there's a poll done by Skeptic Magazine, and they surveyed people of various political persuasions on a simple question.
How many black men in America, unarmed, were killed by police in 2019?
Right, that is a simple objective question.
How many people, how many black men who are unarmed were killed by the police in 2019?
Now, the actual statistic, so you know, ranges based on the Washington Post.
There are other reports that suggest higher.
At a maximum, it is 27.
At a maximum, it is 27.
And you would know that if you listen to shows like this one because we actually focus in on the data.
We actually talk about the fact that in a country with 40 million black Americans, black Americans are not a genocidal existential risk from law enforcement.
It's just a lie.
It is not true.
But folks on the left like to promulgate that narrative.
In fact, that narrative is so unbelievably popular that you had literally 10 to 25 million people in the streets repeating the lie that America's police are systemically racist over the summer.
And you had some of those people going and burning down the local neighborhood.
So here is how Americans, how many Americans believe Black men were killed by the police, unarmed, in 2019.
And there's a serious differential in terms of political persuasion here.
So, if you are very conservative, you know not very many black men are killed, unarmed, by the police.
In fact, 46% of very conservative people knew that the answer is about 10.
Another 34% of very conservative Americans said that the answer was about 100.
Okay, so that's at least somewhat close, right?
I mean, at least that's ballpark.
A grand total of approximately 20% of very conservative people overall thought that over 1,000 black men were killed unarmed in 2019 by the cops.
Now, let's look at the very liberal crowd.
The very liberal crowd, 15.71% of very liberal Americans believed that about 10 black men were killed unarmed by the cops in 2019.
Fully, I'm not joking, Fully, 31% thought that about 1,000 unarmed black men were killed by the cops in 2019.
Another 14.29% thought that about 10,000 unarmed black men were killed by the police in 2019.
And 7.86% thought more than 10,000 were killed by the cops in 2019, which is utterly crazy.
thought that about 10,000 unarmed black men were killed by the police in 2019.
And 7.86% thought more than 10,000 were killed by the cops in 2019, which is utterly crazy.
So when you add those three numbers together, what you end up with is a majority, a majority of very liberal people believe that over 1,000 black men were killed unarmed by the cops in 2019.
The actual answer at a maximum is 27.
So they are only off by like two orders of magnitude.
Okay, there's a reason for that.
And the reason for that is the media coverage.
And by the way, here's the big problem.
This holds true for normal liberal people, not just very liberal people, normal liberal people.
Normal liberal people, Believe that many, many more unarmed black men were killed than actually were killed.
26.67% of normal liberal people believe a thousand black men a year are killed unarmed by the cops.
Another 12% think that at least 10,000 people were killed by the cops unarmed black every single year.
Now, once you get to people who are moderate and who don't believe the narrative quite as much, you still end up with a huge percentage of Americans who believe that the number is way higher than it is, right?
Fully 41% of moderates believe that about 100 people were killed a year by the cops, unarmed and black, and 16% still believe that about 1,000 were killed.
What you see is that as these polls get more conservative, they get more accurate.
The more conservative these folks are, the more accurate they are.
In fact, there's only one exception to this rule, and that is actually between very conservative and conservative people.
If you're just conservative and not very conservative, you're actually more accurate on this question.
About 86% of just conservative people understood that the answer was below 100.
Okay, so here is the problem.
The narrative has purchase, and the narrative is a lie.
Black men are not being routinely gunned down by cops unarmed every year, and this holds true throughout our society.
Every time you hear about systemic racism, you should be asking for the data.
What is the evidence that a disparity is in fact discrimination?
But people don't bother.
People do not bother to actually answer that question.
Okay, so there is a...
Another poll statistic from Skeptic.
Okay, and the question was, in 2019, what percentage of people killed by police total were black?
The actual answer is about 30%.
Actually, sorry, it's about 25%.
About one quarter of all people killed by the cops in 2019 were black.
The vast majority of those people, as we've just explored, were armed or threatening the cops in some way.
Okay, once again, once again, The very liberal people get this one completely wrong.
They believe that 60% of all people killed by the cops in 2019 were black.
60%, six in 10 people killed by the cops were black, according to very liberal people.
According to liberal people, 56% of people who were killed by the cops in 2019 were black, total.
Okay, again, that is off by at least a factor of two.
Moderate, 46%, they believe that 46% of people who were killed by the cops were black in 2019.
Conservatives were the closest.
Once again, people who just consider themselves conservative were the closest on this score.
They say that 37.8% of people killed by the cops were black.
Again, the real number is 25%.
So every single subgroup in American life thought the number was higher than it was.
Very conservative people thought 44.5% of people killed by the cops were black.
So here's the reality.
Even among conservatives, the narrative has purchased.
Because when you keep hearing over and over and over that black men are being gunned down and when the only stories that you hear are of black men being shot by the police as opposed to white people being shot by the police or Hispanic people being shot by the police, well then you end up with a narrative.
And the narrative, oftentimes, is extraordinarily false.
And here is the thing.
We live in a society where it's not enough.
That you hear the narrative.
You must parrot the narrative.
And if you don't parrot the narrative, you will be called out for being unwoke.
You will be called out for not being one of the people who is sophisticated.
One of the people who doesn't see.
It'll be suggested that you're naive.
You don't see through the system.
In fact, you are a pillar of the system.
You are a person who makes this evil system possible.
Unless you repeat a false narrative.
And this has infused every aspect of our culture.
And so you see it every single day.
Corporations around America, you see it in entertainment.
In a second, we're going to get to a bizarre cultural conversation.
I can't believe I'm going to talk about The Bachelor, but it's actually kind of culturally indicative.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so meanwhile, my friend Andrew Breitbart used to say that culture is upstream of politics and it is true.
When you hear from all of your cultural sources, all of them, that America is systemically racist and evil, you start to believe it.
And when you see that people are called out and cudgeled into line if they don't repeat that narrative, you start to say to yourself, well, maybe I should do that too.
Maybe I need to say all of this woke stuff, because if I don't say that woke stuff, I'll get fired from my job at Woke-a-Cola.
Or maybe I will be tossed out by my local university.
Or maybe all of my friends will unfriend me on Facebook.
This has infused even some of our most apolitical Dumb cultural institutions.
So, I say dumb because I will freely admit to you, I am not a watcher of The Bachelor.
I think the premise of the show is idiotic, frankly.
The notion that you have one person who's dating 20 people at once, I think is kind of perverse.
The fact that people think this is romantic is absolutely beyond me.
It must be part of the lizard brain that sees any sort of romantic gesture as romantic, even if it's done in the context of a highly and slickly produced program in which a dude is dating 20 chicks at once.
Okay, but in any case, being a non-fan of The Bachelor, I think this gives me in some ways more credibility to talk about the stupidity of what is now going on at The Bachelor.
Okay, The Bachelor has been an apolitical show that men have not wanted to watch for 25 years.
It's the kind of show where your wife turns it on and watches it and is enthralled, and you sit there and you just wish that you could turn the channel to football.
But it is one of the key institutional cultural touchstones of our society, clearly, right?
I mean, it's been around for forever.
It's a cultural institution in America.
It's been one of the highest rated shows on TV since 2002.
It has been around more than half my life on TV.
So, now The Bachelor is imploding.
And it's imploding because there is a contestant named Rachel Kirkconnell.
And Rachel Kirkconnell, several years ago, went to a antebellum-themed plantation party when she was in college.
This involved basically dressing up like Scarlett O'Hara at a plantation.
And this was considered wildly uncouth and racist and covered by the internet sleuths.
Those great people doing amazing things, like suggesting that people are racist because they dressed up as Scarlett O'Hara at an antebellum-themed party.
in the South, as though this was sort of some sort of referendum on slavery.
That probably Rachel Kirkconnell was totally cool with slavery because of this.
Probably that was that is the most obvious takeaway, right?
I mean, that's the most obvious takeaway.
OK, so when that first came out, the contestant on The Bachelor this season is a Black man.
His name is Matt James.
And Matt James originally came out on February 3rd and reacted by asking for some grace for her.
Matt James.
Here's what Matt James said.
Here's a direct quote.
I have not spoken to anybody since the show ended, but I would say that you have to be really careful about what you are doing on social media.
Rumors are dark and they're nasty and they can ruin people's lives.
So I would give people the benefit of the doubt.
And hopefully she will have her time to speak on that.
Now, spoiler alert.
I mean, it's well all over the news, but here's your spoiler alert.
If you're one of the number of people who for some odd reason love the show, Matt did end up with Rachel in the show, right?
He picked her.
He ended up with her.
And that was Matt James, the black contestant on The Bachelor, saying we should show her some grace.
The social media jury, they really should not be doing what they're doing.
People on social media decided to check into her parents' voting record.
They decided that she had to be canceled because she went to this antebellum-themed party, and boy, isn't it fun to go get this lady.
Let's just go right after this lady, because she disagrees politically with us, or her parents disagree politically with us.
And also, she went to an ill-advised-themed party in 2018, when she was in college.
Okay, so that's the setup.
The setup is that she does something that is somewhat questionable in the modern context, but certainly not questionable as of even five, ten years ago.
And I mean, at that point, it would have been considered kind of crazy to cancel somebody over something like this.
Now, you cancel somebody over literally saying the N-word to denounce the N-word.
So, everything is cancelable.
But it was so crazy that even Matt James, the Black Bachelor, was like, uh, yeah, guys, you need to give her some space.
Okay, that is the setup.
That is the setup.
Fast forward about three weeks, right?
Because that was February 3rd.
February 3rd, the Bachelor contestant, Matt James, comes out and defends her.
And then, A couple days later, Chris Harrison, who's the host of The Bachelor, he comes out and says basically the exact same thing as Matt James, right?
Just a couple days later, he comes out, he does an interview, and he says, maybe we should show her some grace.
Social media is not judge, jury, and executioner.
You're ruining somebody's life.
Maybe you ought to take into account the fact that she was young and stupid.
When you're young and stupid, you're young and stupid.
Maybe she can explain herself.
Maybe she'll apologize.
Okay, and then Chris Harrison got hit with the Anvil of wokeism is just dropped on his head from the third story.
And so he ends up being suspended from his own show for the great crime of suggesting that a young woman ought to be given grace, saying the exact same thing in nearly the exact same words that Matt James said.
Okay, the reason that this all started is because there's a former Bachelor contestant named Rachel Lindsay.
Okay, so Rachel Lindsay went after Chris Harrison and said it was racist of him.
He didn't understand, she said, when she was not cutting ads for Cadillac in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protest.
She said that it was very, very important that Chris Harrison understood the context of his own racist sentiments.
And the producers of The Bachelor, wanting to avoid controversy, then removed Chris Harrison from the final episodes of The Bachelor.
Which is kind of incredible, actually.
Okay, fast forward about three weeks.
Now, Matt James, who, by the way, picked Rachel Kirkconnell.
Again, he picked her after defending her at the beginning of February.
Now, he has issued a full-scale statement, not only denouncing Rachel Kirkconnell and throwing her under the bus.
I mean, this guy's...
What a douchebag.
Honestly, seriously.
He was defending her three weeks ago.
What changed in three weeks other than he didn't like the media blowback?
So he took a girl who was dating him, right?
And then he just tossed her under the bus.
And the show that made him a star and a relevant person in American life, The First Black Bachelor, a show so apparently racist that you had women of all different racial makeups dating the main character who's black.
So obviously this is a deeply racist, terrible show.
Now Matt James has flipped on a dime.
And now he says the show is racist, Chris Harrison is racist, and he is woke.
Which makes this guy not only a douchebag, but a coward.
So Matt James put out a statement and says, the past few weeks have been some of the most challenging in my life.
And while there are several episodes left of the season, it is important that I take the time to address the troubling information that has come to light since we wrapped filming, including the incredibly disappointing photos of Rachel Kirkconnell and the interview between Rachel Lindsay and Chris Harrison.
So he went from, let's give her some grace and treat people like human beings to, I'm incredibly disappointed in everyone around me and it's definitely not my fault and please leave me alone and maybe I should be on the cover of a magazine talking about racial problems in America.
Matt James writes, the reality is that I'm learning about these situations in real time.
Oh really?
Because back on February 3rd you knew about them.
So if by in real time you knew that the photos were out at the beginning of February and you defended her and now you're too much of a coward to stand by it?
There's that.
He said it's been devastating and heartbreaking, to put it bluntly.
Chris's failure to receive and understand the emotional labor that my friend Rachel Lindsay was taking on by graciously and patiently explaining the racist history of the antebellum South, a painful history that every American should understand intimately, was troubling and painful to watch.
Okay, that's just pathetic.
I'm sorry.
It's ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
The labor and pain, the emotional labor Rachel Lindsay was taking on, Again, this is a lady who in the middle of the Black Lives Matter protest, she's like, you know how I fight for Black Lives Matter?
I put on podcasts talking about Black history in my beautiful Cadillac XT6.
I'm not kidding.
That's an actual Instagram post she put up.
Okay, it is a post in which she touts Black Lives Matter and she says she can listen to podcasts about Black history on her beautiful Bose sound system in her Cadillac XT6.
Emotional labor, my ass.
Rachel Lindsay couldn't be reveling in this anymore if you paid her.
And they are paying her.
Emotional labor.
Come on.
Yeah, she seemed, I mean, it must be real emotional labor, having to explain to people that they should be canceled, not because they're actively racist or believe in the inferiority of black people, but that they should be canceled because they suggest grace for a person who went to a party That was ignorant.
And that should be, that's cancelable.
And not only that, the person who says, maybe we should give that person grace, give them a chance to explain themselves and apologize, to even explain to that person, to even explain to that person, is emotional labor.
You cannot even explain to Chris Harrison, that is an emotion, it's an act of emotional labor.
Emotional labor.
Honest to God, pay me for that kind of emotional labor.
Give me a Cadillac sponsorship for that kind of emotional labor.
Emotional labor.
As black people and allies immediately knew and understood, it was a clear reflection of a much larger issue that the Bachelor franchise has fallen short on addressing adequately for years.
Again, Matt James is the first black Bachelor.
The first one.
Okay?
And Rachel Lindsay was a contestant on The Bachelor.
She's very famous now.
This is... Yes, that is... You nailed it, right, Matt?
You nailed it.
It turns out that it has dawned on you now that you are a participant in the most racist franchise in American history, obviously, The Bachelor.
It was like Birth of a Nation, except with dating, and a black lead, who's the hero, and him dating a bunch of... Lindsay, by the way, was the first black Bachelorette.
Forgive me for my ignorance on matters concerning The Bachelor, one of the dumbest shows of all time.
Matt James continues.
No, it has not.
No, it has not.
The only important question is why is it that you are running away from your own willingness to grant people the benefit of the doubt?
questions. No, it is not. The only important question is, why is it that you are running away from your own from your own willingness to grant people the benefit of the doubt?
People you are dating, by the way. And then the minute that there's some blowback, you throw her under the bus and you suggest that you're a hero for doing so and resulted in It has also pushed me to re-evaluate and process what my experience on The Bachelor represents.
Oh, so now he's going to re-evaluate, right?
We're going to go back and we're going to re-process.
They're really going to think hard about what a rough life he had dating 20 women at once on national television and being paid for the privilege.
It has pushed me to re-evaluate and process what my experience on The Bachelor represents, not just for me, but of all the contestants of color.
Oh, no, he's a representative of all black Americans.
Black America, do you understand?
This guy represents you, apparently, according to him.
Especially the black contestants of this season and seasons past, and for you, the viewers at home.
I will continue to process this experience, and you will hear more from me in the end.
My greatest prayer is that this is an inflection point that results in real and institutional change for the better.
I'm sorry, this is the stupidest crap I've ever heard.
It does not make the culture better, it makes the culture significantly worse.
If you look at this season of The Bachelor as a victory for American racial tolerance, you're missing it.
Because what it was, was a victory for conciliation, and then The woke came and decided to completely destroy everything.
And the Bachelor, again, he started it, man.
He started it.
He defended Kurt Connell.
He defended her at the beginning of February.
And within three weeks, he has flipped.
He's not only inciting Kurt Connell as a racist, he's inciting Chris Harrison as a racist, and the entire Bachelor franchise as a racist.
He's doing all of that within three weeks because Rachel Lindsay said, you are obviously a sellout, essentially.
I mean, that must have been the case that she was making publicly.
Or at least he felt that way.
Pretty incredible stuff there.
Pretty incredible stuff, because the show ain't racist.
You know what the proof is that the show ain't racist?
The show.
There is no good evidence that Rachel Kirkconnell is a racist.
Not only did she post a groveling apology for the antebellum stuff, She's put out a bunch of statements since, that Rachel Lindsay has found insufficient.
And Rachel Lindsay, as the Pope of Wokeness, gets to determine whether or not you are sufficiently, whether you're sufficiently deferential to woke principles.
And she'll do so while standing in front of a Cadillac XTS, by the way.
It's an XT6.
It's impressive stuff, I will admit.
Because nothing says America is racist quite like getting to rip America as racist, the show that you starred in as racist, the host of that show as racist, other contestants on that show as racist, and the entire system of the United States as racist while standing in front of a beautiful Cadillac XT6 with a Bose sound system.
Clearly, this is an awful, awful country for people like Rachel Lindsay.
Clearly, she has suffered greatly in her life.
Clearly, Matt James has suffered.
The emotional labor, oh!
The emotional labor, oh!
The emo- Emotional labor my ass.
Seriously.
Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.
But don't worry.
We're making the country less racist, one cancellation at a time.
It's all very exciting stuff.
I'm excited to report to you that the latest in making the country less racist is that Harry Shearer, a white actor, will no longer voice the black character Dr. Hibbert on The Simpsons.
Now, if it had ever occurred to you, like, who voiced that character?
Then congratulations to the dozen of you.
Like, seriously, who sits around going, the voiceover artists, what color are they?
Hmm?
Well, I can guarantee you one thing.
The Simpsons is super racist, because a lot of the characters on The Simpsons are yellow.
Many of those characters are yellow.
And I guarantee you that not a single person who has ever voiced one of those characters has that same color, because that color doesn't exist on humans in real life.
It's very upsetting.
I mean, honestly, unless we have people who voice over these characters, who have all the characteristics of the characters on cartoons, I think that we absolutely should not be able to do these things anymore.
Unless you, as a human being, if you are hit in the face with a frying pan, and your face takes on the shape of a frying pan, I do not think you should be able to voice a cartoon character who, when hit in the face with a frying pan, has their face take on the shape of a frying pan.
All characteristics must be shared.
It was clearly a sign of deep American racism that a white actor was voicing over a black character on a cartoon Racism solved, gang!
Shurer has voiced Springfield's most skilled doctor, in contrast to Hank Azaria's incompetent doctor, Nick, since 1990.
He also voices Ned Flanders and Principal Skinner, among other characters.
He will continue voicing the other roles.
He joins Azaria, who last year announced he'd be no longer voicing the Indian character Apu.
In part, after a 2017 documentary, the problem with Apu brought attention to the subject.
Yes, this is great.
This also follows Family Guy actor Mike Henry, who is white, announcing in the aftermath of the George Floyd incident that he would not be voicing the black character Cleveland anymore.
And that solved racism, guys.
It's amazing.
I mean, you know how much less racist American society got since Mike Henry, who is white, announced he would not be voicing Cleveland anymore?
Every day, we draw closer to utopia.
It's really, really exciting stuff.
I'm just glad that I could be alive when we decided that we were going to basically purge everybody who doesn't agree with the most woke among us, and then cudgel everybody else into imitating that viewpoint.
I'm grateful to be living in such a virtuous time, truly, because we know that we're on the verge of eliminating racism by calling every single person in the United States racist, every single show in the United States racist, determining That everybody should be canceled for their past views except the people who get to join the mob.
And if you join the mob, then you're basically okay.
And not only that, you get to be a leader in the movement.
And we celebrate you.
And we talk about how you're right.
Don't you feel the joy and hope?
Wait, you're saying that this is all depressing?
And it makes you despairing that we are living in a free and tolerant country?
No!
Don't you understand?
The revolution is afoot!
And it's a wonderful revolution, in which we will promulgate false narratives, and in which we will push those false narratives with every piece of institutional power at our disposal, and we will run right over you if you disagree.
Isn't that great?
It's so much fun.
Okay, in just a minute, we're going to get to the unfortunate fact that apparently Joe Biden is putting kids in cages.
It's just like, I mean, AOC told me that when Trump did it, it was like a concentration camp.
So, I don't know.
That lady knows everything.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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All righty, so meanwhile, the news media are fully intent on covering up for the fact that Joe Biden apparently is putting kids in cages.
So here is the funny thing.
We talked about this yesterday on the program a little bit.
There's an article in the Washington Post.
It is titled, First Migrant Facility for Children Opens Under Biden.
And it sounds fun, man.
It sounds like a summer camp.
According to the Washington Post, the emergency facility, which, by the way, is a vestige of the Trump administration that was open for a month in summer 2019, is now being reactivated to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17.
Here's the thing.
We need these facilities.
You know why we need these facilities?
Because these are kids who are coming across the border unaccompanied.
We can't just release them to nobody inside the United States of America.
We have to keep them somewhere, and so we put them in the facilities we have.
They were not concentration camps or ghettos or cages when it was Trump, and they are not concentration camps or ghettos or cages when it is When it is Joe Biden.
And if they were all those things, they were those things when Barack Obama was president and started this entire process under Flores.
OK, but according to the Washington Post, it's amazing.
Tents, tent cities are now soft sided structures and cages are now migrant facilities for children.
It's all very exciting stuff.
Now, members of the Biden administration were, in fact, asked about this.
Jen Psaki was asked about this by the only decent reporter in the White House press corps, apparently, Peter Doocy.
So he said, you know, it's weird because you guys were ripping on Donald Trump and saying kids in cages a lot.
I remember because I was there.
So why are these not kids in cages exactly?
This is not kids being kept in cages.
This is a facility that was opened that's going to follow the same standards as other HHS facilities.
It is not a replication.
Certainly not.
That is never our intention of replicating the immigration policies of the past administration.
But we are in a circumstance where we are not going to expel unaccompanied minors at the border.
That would be inhumane.
So it's not kids in cages, guys.
So notice she never explains why it's not kids in cages.
She just says that our policy is not the same as the Trump administration's policy because the Trump administration policy said we are not going to simply release people into the interior of the United States without tracing where they are, right?
Basically, there were two choices under the Flores settlement when you end up with parents who arrive with kids at the border, right?
Those choices were either you release both the parents and the kids, Or you release the kids, or you release the parents, right?
You can't have a situation in which you keep both the parents and the kids in facilities together, right?
That was one of the problems with the Flora settlement.
It was an idiotic settlement.
It was done under the Clinton administration.
It was ridiculous.
Okay, but the bottom line here is that what she is saying is that the structures are exactly the same, but since our policies are different, it's not kids in cages anymore.
Weird, because it's the same kids in the same cages, but it's not kids in cages anymore.
And guess what?
Members of the media are defending this sort of nonsense.
You know, again, she doesn't actually explain why it's not kids in cages.
She just says, our policy is different than Trump's, and Trump is bad.
The orange man was super bad.
So if we do exactly the same thing as the orange man, but our overall policy is different, then that makes it good.
Post-senior political reporter Aaron Blake defended the decision not to call this thing a concentration camp.
By the way, the paper did refer to the facilities during the Trump era as quote-unquote concentration camps.
So Aaron Blake said no, Biden's new border move isn't just like Trump's kids in cages.
Blake said the description was justified because the paper didn't view it as a good thing and because the Biden administration doesn't separate children from the adults accompanying them.
It's amazing.
It's amazing.
So you've got the entire media flipping on a dime, and the same exact facilities being used.
And they were bad when it was Trump, and they are good when it is Biden.
Well, actually, they waited until the final few paragraphs to talk about why it was a bad thing.
Otherwise, they talked about how there were soccer fields and basketball courts.
It sounded like fun summer camp, man.
He called this facility the Cadillac of detention centers.
Here is the biggest point.
He added, Trump's policy on children at the border wasn't controversial merely because it resulted in children being held at the border, which is a longstanding reality and is what will happen at this facility.
It was controversial because it forced children to be separated from their parents, given its hardline policy requiring the parents be held and not released into the country.
So in other words, we don't like the Trump policy, but the facilities are exactly the same, but they were cages when it was Trump, and they are just beautiful, wonderful trailers when it's Joe Biden.
These are your objective media.
Amazing at this stuff.
So, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez decides to get in on the act, and you will notice some muted language here from the irrepressible and incomparably brilliant Democratic Congresswoman from Twitch.
She tweeted out, this is not okay.
Never has been okay.
Never will be okay.
No matter the administration or party.
And then she added, our immigration system is built on a carceral framework.
It's no accident that challenging how we approach both these issues are considered controversial stances that require reimagining our relationship to each other and challenging common assumptions we take for granted.
Oh, like you're not supposed to cross the border illegally.
It's only two months into this administration and our fraught, unjust immigration system will not transform in that time.
That's why bold reimagination is so important.
DHS shouldn't exist.
Agencies should be reorganized.
ICE gotta go.
Ban for-profit detention.
Create climate refugee status and more.
Okay, so her solution is no more immigration laws, essentially, at all.
No enforcement mechanism for immigration.
But, you'll notice one thing that she didn't do, was head on down to Joe Biden's cages for kids, and take a picture dressed in all white, weeping, several hundred yards from the actual facility.
You'll notice that she didn't do that.
Or call them concentration camps.
I wonder what changed.
And it's weird how she says there, you know, it's only two months in.
We can't change things that fast.
Weird, because it seems like it's a president of her own party.
Shouldn't she be putting the pressure on?
But instead, it's like, you know what would be really nice is if we reimagined utopia.
By the way, none of these people have an actual answer as to what you're supposed to do with unaccompanied kids who show up at the border.
None of them have an answer as to what you're supposed to do.
None of them have an answer as to what you're supposed to do when parents and kids show up at the border.
And the kids cannot be held, so the kids are released.
And the parents have to stay because they illegally crossed the border.
They have no answer to any of these questions.
It is all posturing.
It was posturing during the Trump administration.
It remains posturing today.
And they are happy to promulgate any lie that they can in order to uphold the ridiculous Biden administration.
And by the way, it turns out it is indeed ridiculous.
You notice something?
So Joe Biden, for like a week here, did not go down to Texas.
Remember, it was super duper bad when Ted Cruz flew off to Cancun.
And I will admit, that was bad optics, right?
Well, remember when Joe Biden just basically went to sleep for like a full week?
He just went to sleep and he's like, you know what?
Matlock's on.
Well, it turns out that Biden is going to go to Texas on Friday.
Now, again, I don't like when presidents do this sort of stuff, so I was perfectly fine with him sleeping in the basement.
I was fine with people doing whatever they want.
Like, I really don't care.
I think that if you're looking to politicians for empathy, you are looking in the wrong place.
Get a dog.
Politicians don't care about you.
They never have cared about you.
Politicians care about making sure that their constituents keep voting for them and serving their own ambition.
That is mainly what politicians do.
And I don't feel that our politicians are more honest when they just jet set off to some location where there is a tragedy and then hand out water bottles.
Like, this does not make me feel as though they care more about me.
But then again, I don't look for empathy from people I elect.
I think that's silly.
I don't look for empathy from my plumber.
My attorney or for my politicians, but a lot of people do.
If you are looking for empathy, though, it's kind of weird that Joe Biden waited for like a year to go to Texas.
So now he's going to show up.
The thing's over, by the way.
The power is back up.
Things are getting better.
And now Joe Biden is going to show up.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Psaki told reporters that Biden is eager to go to Texas.
Psaki said, we're hopeful the trip can happen as early as this week.
Apparently, they're going to head to Texas on Friday, which will heal everything.
Our politics is... But he's empathetic.
That's what we know.
He may be crappy at policy, but he's empathetic, and that means that he can do exactly the same stuff that Trump did, or he can lie routinely, and we all just give him the space, because it's fine.
I'm sure it's all fine.
All right, coming back later today, we'll have an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
In the meantime, go check out The Michael Knowles Show.
It is available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Joe Biden throws migrant kids in cages.
Dr. Fauci says to give up on going to restaurants.
And a 105-year-old woman beats the virus that shut down the world.
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