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March 1, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:01
The End For Cuomo? | Ep. 1205
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Andrew Cuomo runs into the MeToo buzzsaw, Trump returns at CPAC, and the next Superman reboot will be written by a guy who thinks America is systemically racist.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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All right, we'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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All right, so Andrew Cuomo is now in real trouble.
All it took was the election.
Let's be frank about this.
If it had not been for Donald Trump losing the election, Andrew Cuomo would still be riding high in New York.
Because the media decided for months and months and months they were not going to cover any bad allegations about Andrew Cuomo.
We knew as early as May of last year that Andrew Cuomo was covering up nursing home deaths.
And all of the people who are now coming forward and suggesting that Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed them or sexually assaulted them in some way, All of those people knew what they knew last year.
Now, I don't know whether them coming out is political.
What I do know is that the media's interest in these sorts of stories only started to crop up, bizarrely, around the time of the election.
It was really only after the inauguration.
Then it was like the media, they said, oh, you know, we don't need this Cuomo guy anymore, right?
Before we needed this Cuomo guy because he was going to be kept in contrast with the Trumpy, horrible Republicans.
And this is why they always drew this sort of Good angel, bad angel on your shoulder routine.
Or the good angel, for some odd reason, was Andrew Cuomo, and the evil angel was Ron DeSantis, saying things like, freedom and go back to school.
And you have Andrew Cuomo being like, no, we should never go back to school.
And it was like, no, you should 100% go back to school.
You should 100% have some freedoms.
You should have your business open.
But Andrew Cuomo was hero of the day.
Well, now all of it is coming apart, and it's coming apart awful fast for Andrew Cuomo, because here's the thing.
Revolutionaries don't have friends.
They just have tools.
And Andrew Cuomo was a tool.
And he's still a tool, but a different kind of tool now.
So here is the latest from the UK sun.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo brands it as a monster, as Democrats demand inquiry after sex pest allegations by second staffer.
According to the UK Sun, other leading Democrat women have turned on the New York governor and demanded an inquiry into the abhorrent and heartbreaking allegations.
Cuomo, who denies wrongdoing, said he had asked Clinton-appointed federal judge Barbara Jones to examine claims by two ex-staffers.
Originally, he said, you know what, why don't we have like an internal investigation?
I will have some of my friends do an investigation." And people are like, no, that's not going to work.
And he released a statement saying, these things, you know, I deny them, but we should have an investigation.
Then he released a second statement that was the chain of events over the course of the weekend.
Last night, Charlotte Bennett, 25, claims her 63-year-old boss quizzed her about her sex life after she went to him for help as a survivor of sexual assault.
Which is very not good.
She told the New York Times Cuomo asked her if she was monogamous in her relationships and if she had ever had sex with older men.
First of all, I will never, to the day I die, understand some of the mating habits of the typical American male.
I just won't.
How many scandals have you seen where guys will send pictures of their genitals to women in the somehow mistaken belief that this is attractive to women?
Like, has this line ever worked?
Has Andrew Cuomo's line ever worked?
Has he ever walked up to a 20-year-old girl and been like, you know what, darling?
You ever have sex with older men?
It's just the guy from Airplane asking young boys whether they like Gladiator movies.
Apparently she said, I understood that the governor wanted to sleep with me and felt horribly uncomfortable and scared and was wondering how I was going to get out of it and assumed it was the end of my job.
Charlotte's claims came three days after another ex-aide, Lindsey Boylan, claimed Cuomo kissed her on the lips and suggested that they play strip poker.
Senior New York Democrats remained tight-lipped after the first round of allegations on Wednesday.
Last night, Cuomo was dealt a crushing blow when his own deputy and other members of his party appeared to turn their backs on him, which you knew was coming, right?
He is no longer useful to the party.
This is the political calculation for Democrats.
Is the person useful enough that you keep them in office knowing that they did all of these bad things?
Al Franken was not useful enough, so Al Franken went the way of the dodo bird.
But Andrew Cuomo was kind of useful, so he sort of ignored all this stuff.
Ted Kennedy was useful for decades, so they kept propping him up.
Bill Clinton was useful until he was no longer useful.
And that's Andrew Cuomo.
He was useful until he was no longer useful.
Now, Lt.
Gov.
Kathy Hochul called for an independent review into the allegations, saying, quote, Remember that lady who alleged that Joe Biden had sexually assaulted her?
Yeah.
You haven't heard about her in a while, have you?
Because Joe Biden is still useful.
I guarantee you that if Joe Biden had lost the election, those allegations would be coming back up right now.
Senate leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins called the new allegations deeply disturbing and concerning.
She said the behavior has no place in the workplace.
She also echoed calls by Republicans for the AG to take over the probe.
This is, of course, Letitia James, who has decided to unleash the beast on Andrew Cuomo.
She's the person who came out earlier this year and said, hey, by the way, weren't you covering up those nursing home numbers?
Letitia James, it'd be hard for me to imagine she does not have her eye on the New York governor's spot, because the New York AG very often has their eye on the New York governor's spot.
New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley said, I'm disgusted, I believe Charlotte Bennett.
It's always fun when Democrats are held to account by their own standards.
This is the way that this works.
When they say, believe all women, and then a woman comes forward alleging something about a Democrat, then they have to either pretend the woman doesn't exist, or they have to believe all women.
Now, if the person's useful, they pretend the woman doesn't exist.
Tara Reid just doesn't exist.
But if the woman is of use, then they will say that she ought to be believed.
And now, again, some of this has to do with the New York Democrats just not liking Andrew Cuomo.
He's a very unpopular figure with fellow New York Democrats.
He treats them with disdain.
Why was no further action taken?
How many other times has this happened?
State Senator Alessandra Biagi tweeted bluntly, New York Governor Cuomo, you're a monster.
It is time for you to go right now.
And now again, some of this has to do with the New York Democrats just not liking Andrew Cuomo.
He's a very unpopular figure with fellow New York Democrats.
He treats them with disdain.
Because his father was a very, very popular guy in New York, Mario, he's able to live off the back of that, but nobody actually likes Andrew Cuomo.
If you talk to any politician, Democrat or Republican in New York, they think he's a bully and a braggart and a jackass.
Everyone in New York thinks this, if you're in New York politics.
So now, they finally have their shot, and they're gonna take it.
Now, here's my standard.
Due process, right?
It's the same standard that I held for Brett Kavanaugh, I hold it for Joe Biden as well.
Hold it for Donald Trump.
There's a due process of law.
You bring evidence of these allegations, whatever evidence you have to back them up, and then we have to adjudicate whether we think that these events actually happened as stated or not.
That is how these things work.
But Andrew Cuomo didn't hold that standard.
He said that there was enough evidence that Brett Kavanaugh had done something wrong, that his name should be withdrawn from Supreme Court nomination.
So he doesn't get to claim due process at this point.
The standard is what the standard is.
And whatever standard you hold, that is what's going to come right around on you through the power of Scheidenfreude.
Okay, so the first statement from Governor Andrew Cuomo we'll get to in just one second.
said this pattern of behavior requires a swift and immediate independent investigation, the leader of which must be empowered to access all of the evidence.
Ms. Biagi is chair of the Ethics and Governance Committee.
She said she was speaking out as a New Yorker and a survivor of sexual abuse.
And she added, I commend the courage of Ms. Bennett and Lindsay Boylan for coming forward.
Okay, so the first statement from Governor Andrew Cuomo we'll get to in just one second.
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So his first statement said this.
Ms.
Bennett was a hardworking and valued member of our team during COVID.
She has every right to speak out.
When she came to me and opened up about being a sexual assault survivor and how it shaped her and her ongoing efforts to create an organization that empowered her voice to help other survivors, I tried to be supportive and helpful.
Ms.
Bennett's initial impression was right.
I was trying to be a mentor to her.
Hmm.
I never made advances toward Ms.
Bennett, nor did I ever intend to act in any way that was inappropriate.
The last thing I would ever have wanted was to make her feel any of the things that are being reported.
The situation cannot and should not be resolved in the press.
I believe the best way to get to the truth is through a full and thorough outside review.
I'm directing all state employees to comply with that effort.
I ask all New Yorkers to await the findings of the reviews they know the facts before making any judgments.
I will have no further comment until after the review has concluded.
Okay, well, there's only one problem with that.
Oh man, politics comes at you fast.
writes no further statements until after their view has been concluded.
Within 24 hours, there is a further statement from Andrew Cuomo.
Oh man, politics comes at you fast.
Here was his second statement, this one from Andrew Cuomo.
Questions have been raised about some of my past interactions with people in the office.
I never intended to offend anyone or cause any harm.
Now, what do we know from the left?
Intent doesn't matter.
We now live in the world of the left, where intent does not matter.
All that matters is how people were impacted by your words, Governor.
So, in keeping with the standards created by your own side of the political aisle, it's time to go.
He said, I spend most of my life at work, and colleagues are often also personal friends.
At work sometimes, I think I'm being playful and make jokes that I think are funny.
I do on occasion tease people in what I think is a good-natured way.
I do it in public and in private.
You've seen me do it at briefings hundreds of times.
I've teased people about their personal lives, their relationships, about getting married or not getting married.
I mean no offense and only attempt to add some levity and banter to what is a very serious business.
I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal, and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended.
I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.
To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.
To be clear, I never inappropriately touched anybody, and I never propositioned anybody, and I never intended to make anybody feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations New Yorkers deserve answers to.
That is why I've asked for outside, independent review that looks at these allegations, Separately, my office has heard anecdotally that some people have reached out to Ms.
Bennett to express displeasure about her coming forward.
My message to anyone doing that is you have misjudged what matters to me and my administration.
You should stop now.
Period.
Okay, so...
Does Andrew Cuomo survive all of this?
Well, it depends on who thinks Andrew Cuomo is useful.
Because in politics, again, truth and falsity don't matter.
The only thing that matters is, are you useful?
So, Jen Psaki came out, she said, you know, Joe Biden, he supports Andrew Cuomo's idea for an independent review.
Here's the very refreshing, very honest Jen Psaki spokeswoman for President Biden.
President Biden has been consistent that he believes that every woman should be heard, should be treated with respect and with dignity.
Charlotte should be treated with respect and dignity.
So should Lindsay.
And there should be an independent review looking into these allegations.
And that's certainly something he supports and we believe should move forward as quickly as possible.
And meanwhile, the New York Attorney General, Letitia James, says, well, you know, the kind of independent investigation that Cuomo's talking about is not going to be good enough.
She says, allegations of sexual harassment should always be taken seriously.
There must be a truly independent investigation to thoroughly review these troubling allegations against the governor.
I stand ready to oversee that investigation and make any appointments necessary.
So, Letitia James with her eye on that gubernatorial seat.
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi, she's now boxed in.
But the good news for her is that Andrew Cuomo is no longer useful.
So she put out a statement saying, the women who have come forward with serious and credible charges against Governor Cuomo deserve to be heard and to be treated with dignity.
The independence investigation must have due process and respect for everyone involved.
Funny, because due process and respect for everybody involved, weirdly, that did not happen with Brett Kavanaugh.
I'm old enough to remember that because I'm more than three years old.
Also, I will say that I don't remember these statements about the necessity for due process and a clear investigation and everybody ought to be treated with respect, again, when it came to Joe Biden.
By the way, where's Kamala Harris in all this?
Remember when Kamala Harris, the current vice president of the United States, said about Joe Biden that he might want to think about dropping out of the race because of the terror redelegations?
And then she was like, oh, I don't talk about that anymore because I'm his vice president.
That's the way politics works.
This is why, just on a general level, when politicians try to sell you on the idea that they are honest, They're self-interested.
Sometimes they're honest, because it's in their self-interest to be.
And some politicians are more honest than others.
They say things that are not in their own self-interest.
The vast majority of politicians, like everybody else on earth, are self-interested people who bend the truth.
This is why when politicians say they have a harsh standard with regard to X, Y, or Z, first you should check to see whether they actually hold themselves to that standard or who they hold to that standard, because usually the answer is no, there is just a double standard.
They want a harsh standard for everybody else and no standard for themselves.
So it'll be interesting to see whether the Democratic Party decides that Andrew Cuomo's worth it.
Remember, for a year, they upheld him as the pinnacle of gubernatorial leadership while he was apparently doing this stuff, or allegedly doing this stuff.
They held him up as the greatest governor in America.
It's amazing who they've held up as the greatest governor in America.
In California, where the death rate per million is about the same as in Florida, except that California is a garbage heap that's been closed for an entire year, and Florida has been wide open for months.
Gavin Newsom, another governor being held up by the press and the left as a wonderful governor.
By the way, California now leads the nation in deaths from COVID.
Um, it turns out that Gavin Newsom was dining inside over the weekend in an area where you are not allowed to dine inside.
How odd.
How odd.
The hypocrisy of our... Again, the standard does not apply to the specials.
All pigs are equal, except for some of the pigs.
Here is Gavin Newsom dining inside.
This is in a TikTok.
George Lopez's TikTok, actually.
How do I find out if I can get a vaccination?
George, you gotta go to myturn.ca.gov.
Wait a minute!
Thank you, Governor!
It's wonderful to be of service, George.
Why are they inside that restaurant?
They're not allowed to be. That's in a purple area.
It's an area where it's too much for the restaurant to be open.
But there's Gavin Newsom inside the restaurant.
This hypocrisy, by the way, runs throughout American politics.
And the hypocrisy, again, I'm not a big fan of the charge of hypocrisy, unless the rule is bad.
If the rule is bad, then charges of hypocrisy point out the stupidity of the rule.
That's what I think.
rule is bad. If the rule is bad, then charges of hypocrisy points out the stupidity of the That's what hypocrisy charges are designed to do.
What people on the left like to do is they will say things like, look at this religious person who went out and sinned.
That means that the standard is bad.
We should have no standards.
Well, that's a stupid idea.
But if the standard is bad, like restaurants should be closed, or the standard is bad, like quote unquote, believe all women, which is silly because you should not believe all of any group.
Human beings are human beings.
Some are telling the truth, some are not.
Okay, then hypocrisy charges are perfectly valuable.
Another excellent example of this over the weekend.
Apparently, the Berkeley Unified Union president, a guy named Matt Mayer, who's according to Reopen California Schools, he's been leading efforts to keep Berkeley schools closed for nearly a year because it's unsafe.
He drops his kid off at a private school for private in-person tutoring, for private in-person schooling.
Isn't that nice?
Because that's the way this all works.
The rules do not apply to the people who are special.
They never apply to the people who are special.
Which is one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected president in 2016.
One of the reasons that Trump was elected president in 2016 is because he was a member of the specials.
Donald Trump is extremely wealthy.
Donald Trump is extremely famous.
And yet here he was calling out the other specials.
It was one of the reasons for his popularity.
Because when you have somebody who has all of these When you have somebody who is respected by the coterie of the elite, and then he doesn't look down at other Americans, this really was the pitch for Donald Trump in 2016 and in 2020.
He got in his own way a lot, but at heart, that really was his pitch all the way through.
It is the reason for the maintaining popularity of Donald Trump, because the other story of the day is that Donald Trump was speaking at CPAC over the weekend.
There's a straw poll at CPAC.
These straw polls are not typically useful.
They've had straw polls in the past show people like Scott Walker winning the presidency.
Of course, that never happened.
Very often, Ron Paul would show up very high in these straw polls, even though he really didn't in the main polling, but I'll tell you something.
And the level of enthusiasm for Trump is still very high.
And as I've been saying for a while, it is not that people are in love with everything Trump, right?
This is something the left likes to say, is that if you are supportive of Trump in any way, or have been supportive of Trump in any way, it's because you buy into all of his excesses, or all of the things he said that are not true, or you like all of his behavior.
That's not right.
Donald Trump is just a giant F you to everyone.
That's all Donald Trump is.
He's a giant orange pulsating middle finger.
And most Republicans know this.
Most conservatives know this.
He is just a screw you.
Now, there are some people who say, you know what, it's not worth it for me to vote for that guy because, you know, the screw you isn't important enough.
But there are a lot of people for whom the screw you is very important because they look at the way that politics is currently run and they say, Donald Trump pisses you guys off.
Good.
We like anything that pisses you guys off because you have created this little bubble for yourselves in which all of the elite gets to talk to each other and cover for each other and decide who the rules apply to and who the rules do not apply to.
And here's a guy the rules didn't didn't apply to in nearly any way.
And it was called you out for that.
And so we kind of like that.
Donald Trump's enduring popularity, it really is not because many Republicans think, or all Republicans think, that Donald Trump would win the third time around.
It's not because people think that Donald Trump is necessarily the best Republican candidate.
In fact, the CPAC straw poll showed only 68% of people at CPAC, which is a very Trumpy place, want Trump to run again.
The reason for Trump's enduring support is because people see Trump as a giant middle finger and because they see him as a shield who is kind of out there shielding them from the blows.
Or at least a magnet for the blows that were originally aimed at them.
Or at least an avatar for them in the fact that he was being attacked because really the people they wanted to attack were the people standing behind Trump.
All of the conservatives in society, those are the people that they wanted to attack.
Okay, so Trump shows up at CPAC over the weekend.
And he gave, honestly, what I thought was a fairly good speech.
His speech contained a lot of things that were good.
It contained one particular jibe that, of course, the media went nuts over.
It was designed to do that.
He is an epic level troll.
He is a cave troll of extraordinary proportions.
So Trump shows up in public to speak for the first time since he left office in January.
And he began by attacking Joe Biden, and his take on Biden is not wrong here, gang.
He happens to be correct about this.
And by the way, I think that it would behoove Republicans.
It would behoove Republicans to take a note from Trump's playbook when it comes to fighting Biden's priorities.
I know that they're focused on apparently other things, but the reality is the stuff that actually matters in American life, I know a lot of Republicans right now are focused in on the $1.9 trillion stimulus package.
That's all fine and good.
The $1.9 trillion stimulus package is a joke.
Only a small percentage of that money actually goes to Americans, even though I think, frankly, a lot of that is even unnecessary given the fact that there are a lot of states that are wide open right now.
Even of the $1.9 trillion package, if you think that a lot of that should go to Americans, most of it is not.
The vast majority of it is not.
But the focus for Republicans right now should really not be on the taxing and spending.
It should be on the overall move by the Joe Biden administration to enshrine the idea that America is systemically racist, is systemically sexist, is systemically evil, and needs to be remolded from the inside.
And Donald Trump speaks out about that in a way that many other Republicans seem afraid to, particularly mainstream Republicans.
The real political battle of our time is not a battle over spending.
It isn't.
I think spending is super important.
I do.
I thought it was really important when Donald Trump was doing it as President of the United States.
But for most Americans, They don't inherently care all that much about the national debt.
It's just a political baton.
Anytime the other party's in power, you care about the national debt.
Anytime your own party's in power, you just ignore the national debt.
Some of us are consistent and don't like the national debt being increased under any president.
But the real battle that people feel in their bones right now is the culture war that is going on in which half the country has declared the other half of the country deplorable and evil and wrongheaded and fascistic.
And Donald Trump is speaking up for a lot of those Americans in a way that other Republicans are not.
Somebody could fill that vacuum.
Where are the other Republicans filling that vacuum?
Until somebody else on the right fills that vacuum, it's going to be very difficult for Donald Trump to go away.
Even if you like Trump, and you want to see him just move off to the side and continue to wage his political battles, but you don't want to see him run again.
Or you'd like to see a new face, maybe a less damaged face for a lot of that agenda.
Somebody is going to have to step up and fill that role as the person who goes to battle in the culture wars.
That means you can't ignore the culture war issues.
The irony, of course, is that Donald Trump is the most oddly placed person to fight these culture war issues, considering the guy is kind of socially liberal on a lot of things except for abortion.
And yet it's Donald Trump who has stood up repeatedly and said commonsensical stuff about this sort of thing.
It's the reason for his popularity.
So, where's the Republican who's gonna step in and pick up that baton?
Until that happens, he's gonna maintain his durability as a member of the sort of center of Republican politics.
So, here is a bit of Trump's speech.
So Trump's speaking in CPAC, of course, and he went after Biden.
He said, Biden has had a horrible first month.
Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history.
That's true.
Already the Biden administration has proven That they are anti-jobs, anti-family, anti-borders, anti-energy, anti-women, and anti-science.
In just one short month, we have gone from America first to America last.
Okay, this sort of attack line is one that Republicans need to be making.
It happens to be true.
I know that the media have tried to make Joe Biden into a genial older fellow who's filled with empathy.
His policies, as we've been pointing out every day on the show, are extraordinarily radical.
More radical than the Obama administration's policies.
His take on the world that has been promulgated via his administration, which is that equity, meaning anti-racism, Ibram X. Kendi nonsense, is at the center of all of his policies.
That stuff is extremely radical.
But on the right, everybody is focused in on, hey, look, a stimulus bill that's too much money.
I agree, it's too much money.
And I agree, you should do your best in Congress to stop it.
Also, where is the leadership calling out the actual battle for the soul of the country?
Which is, what should the motivating ideology of the country be?
Here was Trump touching an issue that many Republicans seem afraid to touch publicly.
And that, of course, is the issue of trans policies being pushed by the Biden administration.
Here he was going after the so-called Equality Act, the Orwellian Equality Act, which suggests that men ought to compete alongside women.
A less equal idea, it's hard to imagine.
Here was Trump going after that.
Joe Biden and the Democrats are even pushing policies that would destroy women's sports.
Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males.
It's not good for women.
It's not good for women's sports, which worked so long and so hard to get to where they are.
The records that stood for years, even decades, are now being smashed with ease.
Smashed.
If this does not change, women's sports, as we know it, will die.
They'll end.
It'll end.
Okay, so the left makes fun of this sort of stuff.
Like, why does this matter?
Because the redefinition of basic biological sex matters.
Pretending that everybody is exactly the same in all respects, and thus, all outcomes ought to be exactly the same, because everybody, of course, is exactly the same, is a recipe for top-down control.
It is a recipe for disaster.
That's why this stuff actually matters.
And yes, Americans care about this sort of stuff.
By the way, if you think that it ends at women's athletics, you are dead wrong.
It doesn't end at women's athletics.
It ends with children being taken out of homes if parents refuse to go along with the prevailing views at their public school that their kid should have a sex change.
Okay, that's where this is going to end eventually.
You already see this kind of stuff happening in certain parts of Canada, by the way.
You've already seen threats to parental conservatorship based on refusal to acknowledge that your child is actually a member of the gender that they say they are a member of, rather than their actual biological sex.
This is not the last step here.
Trump was, in essence, a culture war figure.
He continues to be a culture war figure.
And until somebody on the right picks up that mantle, there's not going to be anybody else on the right picking up that mantle.
We all know it.
Okay, so the left likes to make this all about Trump and people love Trump because Trump says all these terrible things and all of these tweets that a lot of people don't like, and because Trump was telling lies after the election about the... That is not why people like Trump.
The answer, if you ask conservatives, if you ask Republicans why they are still warm to Trump, the answer is they would rather have the guy who's punching back, even if he is punching back in dirty and wrong ways, than the person who sits there and just takes it.
Right?
This is why you get the why he but he fights stuff from conservatives.
Now, I've always made the case with Trump that but he fights has to come with an asterisk, which is if you keep punching yourself in your own face, that's not a good way of fighting.
Yes, it's good that he fights.
It's also bad that he fought in such a way that he lost to an actual corpse in Joe Biden.
There is a way to fight in which you win.
But if you ask Republicans, which would I prefer, the one who fights or the one who doesn't fight?
Because both are not going to win victory, but I'd rather have the one who fights.
That is what you're going to end up with.
Okay, Trump also went after Biden on the teacher's unions.
Again, this happens to be correct stuff.
There's no reason whatsoever why the vast majority of young Americans should not be back in school immediately.
The only reason that most parents do not have that choice is because Joe Biden sold out America's children to the teacher's unions.
His position is morally inexcusable, you know that.
Joe Biden has shamefully betrayed America's youth, and he is cruelly keeping our children locked in their homes, no reason for it whatsoever.
They want to get out.
They're cheating the next generation of Americans out of the future that they deserve, and they do deserve this future.
They're going to grow up, and they're going to have a scar.
Okay, by the way, all of it's true.
All of that is true.
Joe Biden is enthralled to the teachers unions.
Everybody knows it.
Even the New York Times has a piece today titled, as school closures near first anniversary, a diverse parent movement demands action.
Now, normally the way they push this is Democratic policies on school closings push Republican kickback.
Right, the Republicans pounce on school closings.
Okay, but even the New York Times is being forced to recognize that these school closings have no basis in reality, that schools being closed are not a good answer to what has been happening with COVID, particularly as the vaccines get rolled out faster and faster.
They have a long piece in the New York Times today all about a diverse body of people in Philadelphia, of all places, who are saying we need to reopen these schools.
A Queen Tyler, a mother and hairstylist in North Philadelphia, has been disappointed in her neighborhood's public schools for many years.
Now, her 9-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter have been learning online for nearly a year, even as mass children gather boisterously at local private schools.
Ms.
Tyler is planning a radical change, moving her family to Florida, where the Republican-controlled state government has mandated that all districts provide in-person learning five days a week, and each there is attending traditional public school in Sarasota complete with sports, art, and music.
Okay, well, welcome down here.
Leave your politics at home.
Seriously, you bring a bunch of Democrat crap down here and you make it worse, then please, stay in Philadelphia.
But if you want to come down here and be part of a free state, I just moved here to be part of a free state, then come on down.
The water's fine.
Again, Trump's pushback here, there is such a base for Republican victory here.
People are writing off the Republican Party because of what happened on January 6th, which was truly an awful, egregious, and evil incident by a fringe group of people who broke off even from a bigger rally.
There are people who are writing off the Republican Party because of supposed conflict inside the corridors of the Republican Party.
Here's the point.
When there is a point of pushback that unifies the Republican Party, they could easily win back the House.
They could easily win back the Senate.
And they could win back the presidency in 2024.
This is not a pipe dream.
If you had said to people in 1976, after Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, in the aftermath of Watergate, how long it would take for Republicans to get back into power, people probably would have said about 15, 20 years.
Instead, it was four.
Things turned real fast, because bad policy has consequences.
In just a second, we're gonna get to more of bad policy here, and we'll talk about Trump's trollish comment that he's gonna run for a third time.
Will he actually do so?
We'll get to that in just one moment.
First, Let's talk about the fact that going to an auto parts store, really not something that you're up for.
Like, you're really not up for it.
I mean, why would you be?
Why would you want to stand in line, and then, you get to the front of the line, and then the person asks you for a specific part, you have no idea, finally you figure it out, they order it online.
Or you could just stay at home, and order it online, and then it would come to your door, and you wouldn't have to wait in line.
You wouldn't have to get the upcharge.
Over at the store.
This is why you need RockAuto.com.
RockAuto.com, they always offer the lowest prices possible, rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear, like airlines do.
Why would you spend up to twice as much for the same parts?
Like, let's say, hypothetically, you happen to need a Delphi FG-1456 fuel pump assembly for a 2005-2010 Honda Odyssey.
That'll cost you like $354 at a big chain store.
Well, at RockAuto.com, that costs you $217.
That's a lot of money.
rockauto.com is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.
You're gonna save all sorts of Kwan when you head over to rockauto.com.
Their catalog is unique, remarkably easy to navigate quickly.
See all the parts available for your vehicle.
Choose the brands, specifications, and prices that you prefer.
They've got amazing selection, reliably low prices, all the parts your car will ever need.
rockauto.com.
Write Shapiro in there.
How did you hear about us, Fox?
So they know that we sent you rockauto.com.
Go check them out right now.
Okay, in just one second, we're going to get to The future of Trump personally inside the Republican Party and, again, another example of the left over its skis when it comes to trying to cancel folks.
First, there's so many narratives around hot topic issues, it's hard to keep track of all the newest controversies the left decides to be offended by on any given day.
Like, for example, now they're trying to cancel Dr. Seuss.
They say Dr. Seuss is racist.
Look, It can be difficult to respond to a lot of these ridiculous quote-unquote arguments.
They're not real arguments.
They're just emotional appeals.
A lot of the time, it might mean doing your own research and diving into the data.
That can be super time-consuming.
That is why we at The Daily Wire have launched a brand new series.
It's just for our members.
It is called Debunked.
It's a new show I'm hosting every Friday.
The point of the series is to provide you with a breakdown of popular fallacies purported, pushed by the political left.
I've done the research.
I know the data.
I walk you through it in 15 minutes or less on a different topic every week.
It is super useful.
It is only for our members.
Last Friday's episode covered minimum wage.
I'm sure you've heard the argument before, we need a livable minimum wage.
What liberal activists and politicians won't acknowledge, however, is that the minimum wage was generally not designed to be livable.
It actually pushes people out of work because the minimum wage is zero for all the people who end up unemployed.
Debunked is available exclusively to Daily Wire members.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe.
Use code debunked.
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It is a great resource.
Plus, you're getting all the other great stuff.
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We have a brand new show coming out with Candace Owens with tons of stuff that you are gonna love.
Go check us out at dailyware.com slash subscribe.
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It's gonna give you all the resources you need to fight with all the people you disagree with.
Go watch the minimum wage episode.
Stay tuned.
We have a new topic this Friday.
You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So if only seeking to prove the right's point about Trump, right?
The left has decided that basically everything must be canceled.
Everything is racist.
And here's the thing.
It's like the Incredibles, right?
If everybody is special, nobody is special.
If everybody is canceled, nobody is canceled.
If you don't actually go after people who you think deserve to be canceled on the basis of very specific behavior, you just go after everyone, you start to get ignored.
You're the boy who cried cancel.
And this is what the left has become.
They've become the person of unspecified gender identity who calls cancel.
That's what they are.
And so we don't pay attention to you anymore.
This is a problem.
It's a problem for the right.
It's a problem for the left.
Because the truth is there are certain things that We all find kind of gross.
We don't want people saying.
And there are social strictures to those things.
But as a general rule, the left wants everybody they don't like canceled and not just people they don't like for like a great reason.
Not like neo-Nazis.
They'll just label everybody a white supremacist or a neo-Nazi.
And this of course is what has driven so many Republicans to support for people like President Trump because he is the loudest and he is the most out there and he is the person who's taken the most hits.
And so people on the right now associate takes the most hits with the person who tells the truth the most.
Because those two things tend to be pretty highly correlated where the left is concerned.
If you see the people the left likes to attack the most, very often it's the people who are saying the most things.
Now the problem is sometimes it's not.
Sometimes the left is attacking Marjorie Taylor... Great example.
Sometimes the left is attacking Marjorie Taylor Greene for Jewish space lasers.
Seems like a pretty good reason to go after somebody.
They believe the Jewish space lasers started a California wildfire.
Or they are touting the QAnon theory.
But the exact same level of outrage met Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that there are two genders, which is true, as her saying that there are Jewish space lasers, which is crazy.
So at a certain point, the right just says, we don't trust anything you people have to say.
We don't trust anything you people have to say.
It's why there is so much skepticism of the institutional media.
It's why there's so much skepticism of the left when they make claims.
People are not evaluating claim by claim whether the left is telling the truth.
Instead, they're just ignoring the left wholesale.
And the left just keeps on doing it.
I mean, it's truly incredible.
So for example, Alyssa Milano is now pushing a weird theory.
Okay, so CPAC's stage was built in a certain way.
Okay, and usually it is kind of the hotel planner who decides how the stage is going to be set up, particularly in a place like the Hyatt.
Alyssa Milano put out a graphic of sort of an aerial view of the stage.
And she said, this is a Nazi symbol.
She said, this is the stage at CPAC.
They're not even trying to hide it anymore.
Hyatt, this is what's happening in your building.
Ted Cruz, you stood on this stage.
And she says that that stage was built in order to resemble a Nazi symbol.
Okay, you're a crazy person.
I'm sorry, you're totally wild.
You're wild and crazy.
This is no less crazy than the QAnon crap.
If you think that people at CPAC that Matt Schlapp was like, you know what?
We need a stage.
Let's make it in the shape of a giant swastika.
Mmm, nobody will catch on.
To whom are you signaling?
Alyssa Milano?
You caught on to the code, Alyssa.
But these people, like, Alyssa Milano, who dressed up in like a Handmaid's Tale outfit to go to the Justice Kavanaugh hearings, like, that person is considered a serious human on the left.
People are considered serious for calling on the Hyatt to be boycotted because they hosted CPAC.
By the way, good for Hyatt.
Hyatt came out and they're like, you know what?
We host all sorts of conferences.
Go F yourself.
This, by the way, should be the response of every single corporation in America when the wokes come for them.
According to Fox26 Houston, Hyatt Hotels defended its decision to host the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference at a time when the political climate has become increasingly volatile, citing its belief that individuals and organizations should be able to peacefully gather and express their own views.
The three-day event is being held at the Hyatt Regency Orlando in Florida, featuring a slew of prominent Republican speakers from lawmakers and former administration officials to President Trump.
The spokesperson for Hyatt said, quote, we take pride in operating a highly inclusive environment.
We believe that the facilitation of gatherings is a central element of what we do as a hospitality company.
We believe in the right of individuals and organizations to peacefully express their views, independent of the degree to which the perspectives of those hosting meetings and events at our hotels align with ours.
Our own values support a culture that is characterized by empathy, respect, and diversity of opinions and backgrounds.
We strive to bring this to light through what we do and how we engage with those in our care.
And this of course prompted boycott Hyatt to trend on social media.
This is how you got Trump, gang.
You're gonna keep getting it.
Good and hard.
This is how the right is going to continue pushing into the culture wars.
The harder you push, the harder the backlash is going to be.
And by the way, they are pushing unbelievably hard.
The scariest story of the last couple of weeks is Amazon coming after books.
I mean, digital book burnings are now a real thing.
According to the Daily Wire, Amanda Presti-Giacomo reporting, As noted by Daily Wire, Amazon has ramped up its censorship on conservative views in recent weeks.
For example, a popular documentary on U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was banned from their streaming service this past week.
Before that move, the company deplatformed conservative Ryan Anderson's book, Critical of Gender Theory, when Harry became Sally.
When just the news reached out to Amazon over a ban on Anderson's book.
The outlet directed them to a page outlining their content guidelines for books.
Under a section labeled offensive content, Amazon now states, they quote, don't sell certain content, including content we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children.
Okay, so I'm just gonna point out that you literally have books promoting the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
When you are telling five-year-olds that they can be members of the opposite sex, and that they might wanna get puberty blockers, that is the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
End of story.
They say they don't sell certain content involving content they determine as hate speech.
So if you say that that's bad, by the way, that's hate speech.
Contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.
The report says a review of those policies suggests that sometime in the last few months, Amazon made a major change to the ways in which it moderates book content on its servers, imposing a much stricter standard on books than it had previously done.
It appears the company recently added so-called hate speech to their guidelines on book platforming and is amping up their censorship of the quote-unquote offensive.
This is going to lead to the complete cancellation and banning of conservative books entirely.
We already saw them try to do this with Abigail Schreier's book.
Abigail Schreier points out, when a company controls over 83% of the market for books, it begins the process of deleting ideas from a society.
A bookseller can sell what it wants.
If Marxist books wants to only sell books that conform to its ideology, okay, that has integrity.
But this is the world's largest bookseller.
Amazon can basically make books disappear for all readers, and does so on a blatantly dishonest basis.
My understanding, by the way, is that even if you bought these books, they may have erased them from your Kindle.
So it doesn't matter if you already bought the book.
Like if you have When Harry Became Sally on Amazon, like you bought it on the Kindle version, I believe they've disappeared it from the Kindle.
Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.
Okay, this sort of stuff is what Americans are afraid of and they should be afraid of it because it has infused all of our society.
According to Ash Scowl, Boston public schools have suspended advanced class enrollment tests.
They've decided they're no longer going to allow you to enter admission tests and new enrollments.
Okay, why?
Well, because they are afraid that the people who are doing well on the test are too white and too Asian.
And Asians, of course, are not a minority when they perform well, then they're just white people.
According to Ash Scowl, new 5th and 6th graders will not be accepted into advanced classes in Boston, the entire city, for the next year.
The entry test was suspended due to the pandemic, while at the same time, the school district has raised concerns about racial equity problems, noting that a vast majority of students in those classes are white or Asian.
GBH News reported the selective program called Advanced Work Classes will suspend enrollment because of the pandemic, but also they cited concerns about equity because more than 70% of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though 80% of Boston public school students are Hispanic and black.
Superintendent Brenda Casillia said, there's been a lot of inequities that have been brought to light in the pandemic.
There's a lot of work we have to do to be anti-racist.
There it is, your code word, anti-racist.
It's the infusion of this bull crap throughout all of American culture.
And you will be canceled if you disagree.
And your children will be denied opportunity if you disagree.
And then, when you flee to a private school, they will follow you there.
See, here's the thing.
There are no places where you get to live your life.
The left has determined that all of society is to be their safe space.
It'd be one thing for them to say, okay, we just want our safe space, even in this little domain on campus.
Then they declared all of campus is our safe space.
Then they declared all of corporate America is our safe space.
Then they declared your church is our safe space.
They will soon declare that your home must also be their safe space.
All of society must be their safe space, because in order for them to live their most fulfilled, expressive lives, as we talked about last week, you have to acknowledge and cheer them.
It is not enough for you to just say, live your life and leave me alone.
That is not enough.
You must accept and cheer them because you see, your failure to cheer is an imposition on their personal happiness.
You are the problem.
It's not their failure to conform to societal standards, which we all have to do from time to time in ways we don't particularly like.
It is that the left believes all of society must conform to them and particularly you must conform to them in every available way.
And so they have taken over every institution, every major institution of our society.
It's hard to think of a more symbolic, A more symbolic move than the one that was just made in the entertainment industry by DC Comics.
So apparently, according to Observer.com, Shadow and Act has a scoop.
Author Ta-Nehisi Coates is now writing a Superman feature film produced by J.J.
Abrams.
As of now, the project is shrouded in mystery with no information provided on whether the movie will be a sequel to Man of Steel or a complete reboot without Henry Cavill.
Deadline says the film is a reboot.
There's no director attached, no plot details available.
Code said to be invited into the DC extended universe by Warner Brothers, DC Films and Bad Robot is an honor. I look forward to meaningfully adding to the legacy of America's most iconic mythic hero. He's listed in the thank you credits of Avengers Infinity War Endgame and Black Panther, of course, because he penned some Black Panther and Captain America comic books in which Captain America gets woke. Toby Emmerich, the Warner Brothers chairman, said his bestselling novel Between the World and Me, it's a nonfiction book, lends itself to a new and exciting way of viewing The man of steel.
If by new and exciting, you mean that the guy who used to be iconic for saying truth, justice, and the American way will now be systemic racism, evil, and the American way.
I mean, this is what's going to happen, right?
You've taken a superhero whose literal pitch is that America is good, and he is defending American values.
You're taking that and you're handing that over to a guy who literally said that he was watching 9-11 happen from the top of an apartment building while smoking marijuana.
I believe this is in his memoir.
And he suggested that he felt nothing because of the long history of racism in America.
That's the person you're handing Superman over to.
Now again, it's a private company.
But they are wrecking a piece of intellectual property that was designed to be pro-America by handing it to a person who really does not like the foundational ideals of this country.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is not a fan of the foundational ideals of the country.
He, like Nikole Hannah-Jones, believes they were a lie when written.
He believes they have never been truly acted out.
And he believes that the fundamental ideals of the country have to fundamentally shift.
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a slightly more soft-spoken Ibram X. Kendi in terms of his actual politics.
He is more socialist.
Basically, his idea is that we need socialism in order to cure racism.
He's kind of a Bernie Sanders acolyte along these lines.
But he's a racial essentialist.
He believes that black and white cannot understand each other.
And you are handing Superman, the most iconic American piece of intellectual property there is, over to Ta-Nehisi Coates.
So every part of our culture is now being militarized on behalf of the woke left.
And then you wonder why there's a blowback.
There will be a blowback and it will be egregious.
Final note on this.
We've been updating you on the hubbub surrounding The Bachelor.
You remember that Bachelor host Chris Harrison, who's the host for like the last 25 years, has been replaced.
Or the last 20 years.
He's been replaced temporarily, right?
And he was replaced because he had the temerity to say that a contestant who was originally defended by the first Black Bachelor because he was dating her as not racist, Harrison said, maybe we should give her some grace.
And now he's been canceled from a show on which he is an executive producer.
Well, now, now he has been replaced in the final, on the Beyond the Rose episode, whatever the hell that is, by a person named Emmanuel Akko, who hosts a YouTube series about confronting racism for the Bachelor after the final rose.
Akko, the host of the YouTube series Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, announced on Saturday he would host the one-hour special for the 25th season and Akko will address the situation head-on during the special.
Because clearly, a dating show requires a person who is a specialist in confronting racism on YouTube.
Sounds fantastic.
Apparently, the show has placed a disclaimer on scenes filmed before Harrison stepped aside.
The Wrap reports that last week's episode, which featured footage of Harrison competing on a celebrity edition of Wheel of Fortune, noted the scenes were filmed in December.
We have to make sure that everybody knows that Chris Harrison has been cancelled and any appearance by Chris Harrison is an appearance from the past.
Every institution, every institution will be militarized on behalf of the woke left.
And you're either a tool or an obstacle to them, unless you push back.
Hence the enduring popularity of Donald Trump, who is more of an obstacle to the left than anybody else, apparently, right?
This is the way that the left views it.
Alrighty, we'll have another hour of the program a little bit later today.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Knowles Show.
Michael will be talking about Trump at CPAC.
That episode is available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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Former President Trump dominates CPAC.
Democrats appear to turn on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as another woman accuses him of sexual harassment.
And a famous priest doesn't respect God's preferred pronouns.
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