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March 23, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
44:30
"If You Don't Back Gun Control, It's Because You Don't Care" | Ep. 1221
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Another mass shooting rocks Colorado.
Joe Biden continues to lock kids in cages while keeping the border open.
And Democrats aren't done yet, calling for the end of the filibuster and adding states.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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with that one-year package. That's expressvpn.com slash ben to learn more. It's super easy. You click one button on your phone. Now you're good to go. It's super simple. Go check them out right now. Expressvpn.com slash ben to learn more. All righty. So big news of the day is another horrific mass shooting. This time in Colorado where 10 people were killed at a Colorado supermarket. According to the Associated Press, a shooting at a Colorado supermarket killed 10 people on Monday, including a police officer who was the first to respond to the scene, according to authorities.
Police arrested a suspect.
They didn't reveal his name or any details about the shooting.
At an evening news conference where Boulder Police Chief Maris Harreld fought back tears, Investigators had just begun sorting through evidence and witness interviews and didn't have details on a motive for the shooting at the King Soopers store in Boulder, which is about 25 miles northwest of Denver, home to the University of Colorado, according to Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty.
He said this is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder County.
These were people going about their day doing their shopping.
I promise the victims and the people of the state of Colorado we will secure justice.
The attack was, according to the Associated Press, the seventh mass killing this year in the United States, following the March 16th shooting that left eight people dead at three Atlanta-area massage businesses, according to a database compiled by the Associated Press, USA Today, and Northwestern University.
And of course, it all depends on how you define mass shooting, because some definitions are like three people or more, some definitions are five people or more.
It follows a lull in mass killings during the pandemic in 2020, which had the smallest number of such attacks in more than a decade.
Which is mainly because people were locked inside their houses so people couldn't congregate, which meant it was more difficult to pull off a mass shooting.
This database tracks mass killings and defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter.
One of the reasons, by the way, that a lot of these statistical databases like to separate off mass shootings with four or more dead is because if they include three or more dead, then the numbers rise dramatically and the racial composition of the shooters goes dramatically differently.
Because it turns out there are a lot of gangland shootings that involve people who are killing two, three people.
And so the numbers change pretty radically.
You'll notice that mass shootings are always the excuse for gun control, but the deadly violence that happens in Chicago every single weekend, that is never the excuse for gun control.
Because again, this plays into the broader media narrative, which is that the big problem in America is white supremacy and America's systems of violence.
The slain officer was identified as Eric Talley, 51, who'd been with Boulder Police since 2010, according to Herald.
He went to the store after a call about shots fired, someone carrying a rifle.
He was, by all accounts, one of the outstanding officers of the Boulder Police Department.
His life was cut too short, it's already said, of Talley.
Identities of the other nine victims were not disclosed Monday night, as police were still notifying their family members.
Matthew Kirsch, acting U.S.
Attorney for Colorado, pledged the full weight of federal law enforcement to support the investigation.
Officers did escort a shirtless man with blood running down his leg out of the store in handcuffs.
Authorities would not say if he was, in fact, the suspect.
Officials have not said whether the suspect is the person who was taken from the shooting scenes at Foothills Hospital in Boulder, and the hospital is not releasing any more information.
Dean Schiller told the AP he had just left the supermarket when he heard gunshots and saw three people lying face down, two in the parking lot, one near the doorway.
He said he couldn't tell if they were breathing.
There was also video live-streamed on YouTube.
Which showed one person on the floor inside the store and two more outside on the ground.
And you can hear gunshots at the beginning of the video.
At one point, authorities said over the loudspeaker, the building was surrounded and you need to surrender.
Sarah Moonshadow told the Denver Post, two shots rang out just after she and her son, Nicholas Edwards, had finished buying strawberries.
She said she told her son to get down and then we just ran.
It's obviously just another horrific mass shooting.
And the media typically in these situations responds by suggesting, of course, that people who don't agree with their basic policy prescriptions are somehow unsympathetic to the victims in these sorts of situations.
Because you know that the next political move here, forever and always, will be a federal call for gun control.
Joe Biden has been looking for an excuse to push gun control for a little while here now.
He's been talking about gun control consistently for the last 10, 15 years.
He used to be somebody who's a little looser on gun control.
Now he is somebody who's much tighter on gun control.
He's been pushing for an assault weapons ban, all of the 1994 assault weapons ban that really had no impact on mass shootings in the United States.
He's been looking for that for quite a while.
So this will be used politically as a hook in order to push forward the gun control agenda.
And the media are gonna foster this by suggesting, of course, that if you don't agree with Joe Biden's agenda, it's because you don't care about the people who were killed.
It's a cheap political trick that is played during every tragedy.
That if you don't agree with my policy prescription, it's because you don't care about the people who have died or the people who have been victimized in any particular way.
And you can see the media already ramping up for this, right?
That if you say that the gun control measures that are likely to be pushed by the federal government are extraordinarily unlikely to prevent mass shootings.
In fact, virtually every gun control policy that's been pushed By the federal government has had no impact on mass shootings.
The number of guns in circulation in the United States has risen dramatically over the course of the last 15 to 20 years.
The number of people who have been killed in mass shootings year on year has actually been going down.
But that does not matter to the folks who push gun control.
And so their idea is you are unsympathetic to victims.
This has been a thing ever since I told Piers Morgan not to do it on CNN.
The reality is that you can be deeply sympathetic to people who have been harmed in any sort of crime and still recognize that bad policy does not solve the problem.
OK, but you can see that the media already setting the predicate.
So here on CNN was one of the reporters saying that this is just the way America is.
This is just it's unique to America.
This is how America is now.
Realistically speaking, America does have more absolute numbers of mass shootings than other countries.
But there are mass shootings in Australia.
There have been mass shootings in Norway.
If you were to look at the number of deaths per million from mass shootings, it's actually higher in some civilized countries than it is in the United States.
Nonetheless, again, the predicate here is that America is unique, that this problem is easily solved by a simple policy change, which, of course, it is not.
And the media are going to suggest that if you oppose that policy change, it's because you don't care about what just happened in Boulder, Colorado.
Here was CNN jumping on that within probably an hour of the shooting breaking.
A larger story here that may not be addressed today, but is one that we have to address in light of what happened in Atlanta, which is, are we facing a spring and summer of mass casualty events as we come out, as people congregate?
And that is something that the Biden White House will have to address as well.
Juliette, how can that be?
How can it be that after a year of basic quarantine in the country, the first thing we do as Americans is go back to mass shootings?
I mean, how can that be?
Okay, so again, the level of incredulity, I believe that's Allison Camerata over on CNN, the level of incredulity there, the notion that you are, how can it be that we as Americans are going, we as Americans aren't doing anything?
I didn't shoot anyone today, did you?
I didn't engage in a mass shooting.
In fact, as of yesterday, as far as I'm aware, there were some 330 million Americans who didn't engage in a mass shooting.
It's not as though everybody went out in the streets and started shooting guns in the air and then turned the guns on their fellow citizens.
There are 300 million guns in the United States.
There are over 100 million long guns in the United States.
Virtually none of them were used in a mass shooting yesterday.
But there was one used by somebody who was evil.
We don't know his name yet.
We don't know his motive yet.
So we have no insight into why this happened.
We have no insight into how the gun was obtained.
We just don't have any information as of yet.
That has not stopped the media from immediately setting the emotional groundwork for a gun control push.
And again, the emotional groundwork is that this is the norm in America.
This is what's regular.
And most Americans are fine with it.
Most Americans just turn a blind eye.
Casey Hunt at NBC News pushing the same sort of idea.
She's the Capitol Hill correspondent.
She tweeted out, I don't even know what that last part means.
A moral imperative to be better than what?
Nobody is saying that what happened in Colorado is decent, good, or should be something that we ignore.
Who is saying that?
Better than what?
Did you engage in a mass shooting yesterday?
or no reason. We have a moral imperative to be better than this. I don't even know what that last part means. A moral imperative to be better than what?
Nobody is saying that what happened in Colorado is decent, good, or should be something that we ignore. Who is saying that?
Better than what? Did you engage in a mass shooting yesterday? I didn't. This notion that all Americans are somehow okay or blasé about 10 fellow Americans being shot to death in a supermarket, including a police officer, and some of their blasé about that.
We can't just go back to our normal.
I don't believe that Casey Hunt is more sympathetic than you are, or than I am.
I don't believe that Casey Hunt is a deeper wellspring of emotion than you are, or than other normal Americans are.
I think all Americans are rightly outraged at the act of evil that we saw yesterday in Boulder, Colorado.
But again, the media are setting the groundwork, and the groundwork is that when Joe Biden comes out and makes an emotional pitch for gun control, if you don't believe that that gun control is truly Well calibrated toward reducing risk and preserving rights, then this means that you just don't care, right?
You're not better than this, in the words of Casey Hunt.
Right, you shouldn't normalize.
Nobody's normalizing anything.
But this is the same game that our media play, and it really is kind of an emotionally manipulative game.
That if you don't agree with what they want, it means you're a bad person.
That is the subtle argument that is being made here.
It's not a particularly subtle argument in reality.
Some people are less subtle even than that.
Mary L. Trump, who is famous only because her last name is Trump, and has made a bajillion dollars off of writing a book about how much she doesn't like Donald Trump.
So Mary L. Trump tweeted out, The NRA is a terrorist organization and should be treated as such.
Do we have any evidence that this particular person was an NRA member?
Or that the NRA fostered his behavior?
Or that the NRA trained him for this behavior?
And by the way, what exactly is that suggestion?
If the NRA is a terrorist organization, then presumably we should round up all the members and put them in Gitmo.
If the NRA is a terrorist organization, what?
We're going to go around... Does Joe Biden now have the capacity to just drone American citizens who happen to believe in the Second Amendment?
So little of this is rooted in anything remotely resembling a policy debate.
If you want to make a case for specific pieces of legislation that would mitigate mass shootings, or shootings at all, while actually preserving Americans' fundamental right to defend themselves and defend their property and defend their rights, then bring it forth!
But this is the big problem.
Barack Obama used to admit this all the time.
He used to say, sure, the legislation we're now bringing forward on gun control wouldn't have stopped this shooting, but it might stop other shootings.
Might.
OK, well, if it wouldn't stop this shooting, then why are you talking about this piece of legislation on the back of this particular act of evil?
They recognize the game before it's being played because I promise you this is going to be the narrative over the course of the next couple of weeks as Joe Biden immediately shifts into gun control mode.
He's immediately going to shift into gun control mode.
The media are going to shift along with him because they don't want to talk about what's happening on the border because that, of course, is a Biden-fostered crisis.
And so they're immediately going to shift with Joe Biden into gun control talk.
And the implication is going to be those evil obstructionist Republicans, if only they would just go along with the gun control agenda, then all of this would stop.
And if they don't go along with it, it's because they wish to normalize, in the words of Casey Hunt, what just happened in Colorado.
Again, no one is normalizing acts of evil.
That is not something that any fellow American is doing.
And if you're imputing to fellow Americans that they literally don't care about people getting shot in a supermarket in Colorado, we shouldn't share the same country.
If you truly believe That your fellow Americans do not care about innocents being gunned down in a supermarket?
Then you're living next to people who are evil.
And you shouldn't be sharing a town with them.
You shouldn't be sharing a church with them.
You shouldn't be sharing a country with them.
But that is the underlying emotional play that is being made here by your delightful mainstream media.
Alrighty, in just a second, we're gonna get to the situation on the border, which continues to just marinate and get worse day after day.
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Okay, so, Meanwhile, the situation on the border continues to get worse and worse, and this is driven explicitly at this point by Joe Biden's terrible policy.
According to Axios, the Biden administration kept a Trump-era policy known as Title 42 as a tool to quickly turn back adults and families who illegally crossed the southern border.
But according to new Department of Homeland Security data leaked to Axios, it has not been used at all for families.
So Trump had a policy.
If you show up on the border, We force you to remain in Mexico while we adjudicate your case.
You can apply for asylum in Mexico.
You can't cross the border and just disappear into the interior.
And that was Title 42.
But DHS now says that if you arrive as a family, they're not going to do that.
In fact, the data shows an average of just 13% of nearly 13,000 family members attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border were returned to Mexico between March 14th and March 21st using the public health order, which essentially says the U.S.
can close the border to non-essential travel because of the COVID virus.
It's a sign of how the administration is struggling to keep up with the migration surge and has recently been hamstrung by Mexico's inability to take in more families the U.S.
would otherwise expel.
Well, actually, it is not a sign of how the administration is struggling to keep up with the migration surge.
It's a sign of how they are unwilling to keep up with the migration surge.
They're saying, let everybody in.
The same administration that tells you that Florida is terrible because it's wide open and COVID's gonna spread and we're all gonna die and keep masking up, they're not even using the coronavirus pandemic to reject people at the border that we have not tested for COVID.
That's how ridiculous and incoherent this administration's policy is.
The other 87% won't remain in the U.S.
indefinitely according to Axios, but they will be allowed into the U.S.
to go through immigration proceedings, which means they will stay in the U.S.
indefinitely.
Proceedings can take years.
The DHS spokesperson said, well, you know, one week of stats doesn't reflect the full picture.
Our policy remains that families are expelled, and in situations where expulsion is not possible, they are placed into removal proceedings.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki says the process of deporting those families sometimes, quote, takes a minute to ensure there's proper transportation and steps in place to do that.
No, what's happening right now is that you guys have decided that you are just going to let a ton of people in.
And Joe Biden has incentivized all of this.
It is perfectly clear at this point.
The good news, though, is that Kamala Harris is happy about it, apparently.
So Kamala Harris was asked whether she's going to go visit the border.
She's not, by the way.
Kamala Harris apparently is now going to visit Florida.
She tweeted out yesterday, help is here.
She put out a tweet, help is here.
She wasn't landing at the border.
She was landing in Florida.
Guess what, Vice President?
We don't need you here.
In fact, the great success of the state of Florida is because we have explicitly rejected everything you could have possibly recommended.
You're from California, the state that I rejected because they went entirely the wrong direction.
Do not come here and bring your crappy policy here.
The state of Florida voted against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for a reason.
And it's because they reject the kind of policy... Help is here.
Help is here, says Kamala Harris.
Yes, we desperately in Florida need the help of Kamala Harris, an incompetent senator who couldn't get 0% in a California primary before she was plucked out of obscurity, thanks to the fact that Joe Biden wanted a black female for his vice president.
We need her help, desperately.
So she arrives in Florida, and she then is asked about whether she's going to head down to the border.
And she breaks out the joker laugh, which makes perfect sense, because this is super funny stuff, guys.
Do you have plans to visit the border?
Um, not today.
But I have before and I'm sure I will again.
Where is the Batman?
She's got the worst, I mean, that's a bad nervous tic.
A lot of people have nervous tics.
That is a bad one.
She's asked a difficult question and she starts cackling.
You're like, oh my God.
You wonder why the Democratic Party needs to wheel around a not fully sentient, not fully alive human as President of the United States, because all that stands between Kamala Harris, a terrible, awkward, horrific politician in the presidency, is that old man.
That's why they have to just keep pretending that everything is fine in Biden-land, because here is the thing.
Kamala Harris, as the face of this policy, looks very, very different, not because of race or gender, but just because she's terrible at this, than Joe Biden does.
Okay, in any case, the situation on the border, again, continues to be bad.
The media were barred from these migrant facilities, where we now have a multiple of people who are being kept and housed.
But footage did leak from inside the migrant facilities.
Project Veritas got a hold of some of the footage.
Here's what that looked like.
Project Veritas has obtained never-before-seen photographs of what it actually looks like inside this facility.
Shocking images showing people wrapped up in what looks like metal foil, laying on the ground, their faces covered.
Why won't the administration be honest about this?
Why won't they show you these images?
We have now obtained these photos inside this facility.
Now these photos are very, very grim.
Project Veritas has also learned these photographs were taken in the last few days.
Okay, so if you actually could see the photos, this is why you should subscribe so you can see the photos.
If you actually see the photos, they're astonishing.
I mean, honestly, it looks like a bunch of people wrapped in aluminum foils lying down inches from one another.
Inches.
You want to talk about a COVID super spreader event?
This would be what that looks like.
And they are being put... Don't worry, those are not kids in cages, guys.
This is Happy Fun Time Camp with Joe Biden.
It's all great over there.
Everything's fine.
According to the Biden administration, not a crisis.
And also, everybody should keep coming, but also they should stay away, because it's awkward right now.
But also, the media shouldn't be allowed in, because if they see those pictures, then it might be bad for the administration.
Even CNN, finally catching on, they say, um, yeah, it turns out that we now have migrant children who are essentially staying in jail cells.
Here with CNN finally doing its job.
You have more kids coming into U.S.
custody, but just not enough space to put them in shelter.
So that means that these kids are staying in Border Patrol facility for prolonged periods of time.
And those are facilities that are not intended for them.
They look like jail-like conditions, like prison cells with concrete walls and concrete benches.
And these kids are spending more than the three-day limit than they're supposed to, according to federal law.
So the administration racing here to find enough space for these kids that is suitable for them.
Okay, yeah, are they racing?
Are they racing, though?
Because I feel like they're not racing so much.
And I feel like if they wanted to make sure that kids were not along the border, they would reject families at the border, which apparently they're not doing.
Because it turns out families generally have kids, but they're not rejecting the families.
They've fostered this border crisis, and every single person knows it.
In fact, NBC's Steve Gutierrez said that migrants say they are now being encouraged by the Biden administration.
We have spoken with several migrants over the last several days, Andrea, both on this side of the border and over in Mexico, in Matamoros, Mexico, that said that they were encouraged by the change in administration.
Many of them didn't know the specifics of President Biden's border policies, but what they did know is that he was not President Trump, and some of them did feel that now would be the time to come to the border.
So actually, that's Gabe Gutierrez.
Sorry about the first name scrub.
Gabe Gutierrez, the NBC News correspondent at the border.
Fully saying that these migrants are arriving and they are saying they're doing so because of Biden.
But don't worry, according to the administration, it's not because of Biden.
Everything is totally fine.
Now the media are finally beginning to catch on to all of this.
The media are beginning to pretend to care.
So the media have decided that they don't like the fact that there is now lack of border access.
Which is good!
I'm glad that they have woken up to the problem that is the lack of transparency inside the Biden administration.
So here are some of the members of the media beginning to have questions for the Biden administration about why you won't let us in.
Here's Katie Tour from NBC News saying that the lack of border access is somewhat disturbing.
Well, yeah, it is.
The Biden administration kept talking about transparency, and we're not getting any transparency here with what is happening at the border, that we have to get those images from a congressman who won't say where he got those images.
It's very frustrating for not just journalists, but for the American public who want to know what's going on inside those facilities, those disturbing images.
Okay, so Katie Ture calling it out.
Jake Tapper of CNN now calling it out.
Today we saw this rare look inside these facilities, since the Biden administration has not granted news media access to the facility, citing COVID restrictions, despite the president's promise in his inaugural address to always level with you.
Blocking access to the news media is not leveling with the American people, Mr. President.
Yeah, they're not leveling with the American people.
They're refusing to release statistics.
And by the way, who are you going to believe, the administration or your own eyes?
Jen Psaki said literally yesterday that as these pictures were emerging of these kids sleeping directly next to each other, and adults, by the way, sleeping directly next to each other in large numbers inside what looked like essentially plastic bubbles, she said, don't worry, we're following all the CDC guidelines.
Oh, are you?
It looked super safe over there.
These kids are tested.
If they need to be quarantined, they are quarantined.
We also follow CDC guidelines to ensure that they are kept safe.
One of the reasons that it took us some time to have some of these facilities or some of the shelters open to larger groups of kids is because we wanted to follow those CDC guidelines.
But where else in the country would it be okay to have 400 people in a space for 260 during the pandemic?
Well, again, Peter, we're closely following the CDC guidelines.
No, you are not.
You really, really, really are not.
You have said that kids cannot be in schools.
Kids can't be in schools if they are three feet or less apart.
But you are keeping these kids inches from one another, and it's totally fine.
Which suggests this is not really about COVID on the one hand, and also they just don't want to do anything about the immigration problem.
According to the Washington Post, over the last three weeks, the average number of teenagers and children crossing into the United States without parents has topped 550 per day.
Border officials are on pace to take in more than 17,000 minors this month, which would be an all-time high.
This is obviously a crisis.
Biden has had a markedly different approach than his predecessors to an influx of homelands that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said was on pace to be the largest in the last 20 years.
20 years.
So far, they're just adding capacity to shelters and other facilities to absorb the influx, declining to implement policies that would send minors back because the administration considers the policies morally unacceptable, which means they want this to happen.
That is their goal.
Which suggests that it's all about the agenda.
It's all about the political agenda.
Just keep letting illegal immigrants into the country and everything will be fine.
And by the way, this is the same administration that said if you come after January 1st, we're not going to simply amnesty you.
Does anyone believe that?
Including the illegal immigrants who are crossing the border?
Of course not.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden's plans grow ever more grandiose.
Apparently, Joe Biden wants to blow $3 trillion more dollars.
$3 trillion more dollars.
So we're already inflating the currency beyond all measure because sooner or later, somebody has to pay for this crap.
We just paid for $2 trillion of spending.
For no reason at all, because we are already coming out of the pandemic.
Now, Biden wants to spend another $3 trillion.
This time to quote, boost the economy, reduce carbon emissions and narrow economic inequality.
Ahem.
According to the New York Times, it's going to start with a giant infrastructure plan that might be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich.
Yeah, that's not going to have any impact.
You're going to take all the corporations that have to rehire everybody right now, and you are going to tax them in order to pay for roads that largely should be done through the state and local level.
After months of internal debate, Biden's advisors are expected to present the spending proposal to the president and congressional leaders this week, as well as begin outreach to industry and labor groups. Industry and labor groups are the key here. When you wonder why Biden wants to spend trillions of dollars on this stuff, it's because he wants to quote, quote, create good union jobs.
The goal is to pay off big labor, because the most corrupt open bargain in American politics is that our Democratic friends, they pay off the unions.
The unions then take that money and pour it back into campaigns so that Democrats can be elected to pay off the unions.
It's the most open corruption in American politics, and it's been going on for decades.
Administration officials caution the details remain in flux, but the enormous scope of the proposal highlights the aggressive approach the Biden administration wants to take as it tries to harness the power of the federal government to make the economy more equitable, address climate change, and improve American manufacturing and high-technology industries in an escalating battle with China.
I always love when the New York Times quote-unquote reporting reports they want to make the economy more equitable.
What the hell does that mean?
Equitable is a mush word.
It is a word that means whatever the Biden administration wants it to mean.
What it really means is that they don't care about growth rates, they care about redistribution of income.
And when they say they're going to address climate change, question, what policy here is calibrated to addressing climate change?
If the United States were to go carbon neutral right now, it would lower the climate by estimates about 0.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
So what in the world is he talking about?
The $1.9 trillion economic aid package Biden signed into law this month includes money to help vulnerable people and businesses survive the pandemic downturn, but it does little to advance the longer-term economic agenda.
Oh, um, so that's a lie.
The economic agenda is completely tied in to the billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars in that package that are designed at creating a new welfare net for people without any requirements as to their behavior.
According to Seth Hanlon, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, President Biden's plan represents a stunning shift in priorities addressing many of the nation's most pressing challenges.
The plan is super wide-ranging, reflecting the fact we've under-invested in so many areas.
Under-invested in so many areas, we are spending $4 trillion a year before the pandemic.
Last year, we spent something like $7 trillion, and that doesn't count the Fed spending, which was another several trillion dollars.
And now, we've already got the $4 trillion budget that's gonna pass this year.
Plus another $2 trillion package, and you want to add another $3 trillion on top of that.
So you're talking about $9-10 trillion blown into the economy by the Biden administration this year.
You think that's not going to lead to runaway inflation?
Get ready, gang.
It's coming over the next couple of years.
Right now, we can survive it because the economy has been artificially depressed.
But what happens when the prices increase?
And because we owe so much money, we still have to have these dollars in circulation.
What happens then?
Stagflation is a real thing.
It has happened in multiple economies.
And pretending that what goes up does not come down cannot be the hallmark of your economic policy if you actually care about growth, which apparently they don't.
Right now, the White House officials say they want to focus on the infrastructure stuff.
That plan would spend heavily on clean energy deployment and the development of other high-growth industries of the future, like 5G telecommunications.
It includes money for rural broadband.
Advanced training for millions of workers, by the way.
These advanced training programs, I wish they were successful.
I wish it were just as easy for somebody losing a job to get trained for another job and stick them in a government program.
It doesn't work that way.
These programs are not particularly successful.
One million affordable and energy-efficient housing units.
I don't think those are going to be affordable.
Not for the American people.
If by affordable you mean that we're going to subsidize government housing in a time when the economy is going to be booming, then good luck with that.
Officials have discussed offsetting some or all of the infrastructure spending by raising taxes on corporations, including increasing the 21% corporate income tax rate and a variety of measures to force multinational corporations to pay more tax in the United States on income they earn abroad.
So they're gonna punish corporations for success, even as they attempt to rehire Americans who've been put out of work by the pandemic.
Sounds perfect.
We were at 3.5% unemployment before the pandemic, and your goal is now to reach, is now to quote-unquote, build back better by completely shifting the basis of the United States economy that had been at historic highs before the pandemic.
Don't worry, it'll all be fine.
So they're just gonna keep blowing out the spending, no matter what.
They wanna raise the top marginal tax rate to almost 40% from 37%.
They want to change the tax rates.
And by the way, it's going to bleed down into lower tax brackets.
According to the New York Times, one question is how to apply Mr. Biden's campaign promise that no one earning less than $400,000 a year would pay more in federal taxes under the plan.
Currently, the top marginal income tax rate starts at just about $500,000 for individuals and about $600,000 for couples.
Biden proposed raising that rate during the campaign.
But here's the problem.
They've debated whether to lower the income threshold for the top marginal tax rate to tax all individual income above $400,000 at 40% in order to raise more revenue for his spending plans, and they're going to raise a bunch of taxes that do impact people making less money than that, because when you tax corporations, you're inherently taxing a bunch of people who make less than $400,000 a year.
But don't worry, it doesn't stop there.
The Democrats are now pushing forward on their plans to kill the filibuster.
Which would, in essence, mean ramming through every radical policy proposal you could imagine.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, in just one second, we're gonna get to the Democrats attempting to kill the filibuster.
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So just as it is with gun control, if you disagree with the left, it means that you are in some way unsympathetic or evil.
Well, when it comes to every element of the Democratic agenda, that is basically the pitch.
So now the new pitch by Democrats is we need to get rid of the filibuster and we need to make Washington, D.C.
a state.
Okay, so we've got Hillary Clinton out there saying it's time to dump the legislative filibuster.
No.
No, it's not.
But now the case by Democrats is basically that the legislative filibuster is a racist tool, which is weird because Barack Obama used it repeatedly when he was a senator.
The Democrats used it repeatedly to shut down, for example, a police reform bill from the black Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina, who happens to be a Republican.
So filibusters are only racist, apparently, when Republicans use them.
Here is Secretary Clinton making the case.
I think we need to bring back a real legislative process.
If you thought you had to actually stand up and vote on something, you'd actually work to get an amendment to change it.
As opposed to saying, I don't even have to think about it, I'm just going to show up and I'm going to be part of a filibuster.
That doesn't inspire cooperation, it just keeps people in their separate camps.
I think it's going to take a little bit of change in order to get to where people have to work together.
And surprisingly, in my own mind, I think, you know, getting rid of the filibuster will actually have that result.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
So now she's saying that getting rid of the filibuster will create bipartisanship.
In what way?
Seriously, in what way?
The Democrats just passed a $2 trillion package with no Republican support.
None.
Okay?
And they did that because they didn't have to have a filibuster, right?
It was filibuster-proof.
They could just do it with a simple majority.
They could do it with 50 votes plus Kamala Harris.
So, what in the world is she talking about?
The case that Democrats usually make is that the filibuster is racist, even though it has been a piece of procedure that has been in place and used by both parties for centuries at this point.
Nonetheless, Erwin Chemerinsky is now calling, the professor formerly of USC, he is now calling for Vice President Kamala Harris to simply declare the filibuster unconstitutional.
He says, in 1957, Vice President Richard Nixon, sitting as presiding officer of the Senate, issued two advisory opinions, holding that a crucial provision of the Senate's filibuster rule, requiring two-thirds vote to amend it, was unconstitutional.
Nixon's constitutional determination was reaffirmed by subsequent VPs Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller.
In fact, it was this ruling that allowed both the Democratic-controlled Senate in 2013 and the Republican-controlled Senate in 2017, by simple majority vote, to eliminate filibusters for all executive and judicial nominees.
Harris possesses the same exact power.
Which essentially establishes a 60-vote supermajority rule, the filibuster.
She could say it's unconstitutional because it denies states equal suffrage in the Senate in violation of Article 5 of the Constitution, which is absurd.
Okay, the Senate can come up with its own procedures.
The notion that the Senate, that the states are denied equal suffrage because you need a supermajority to pass things, you could bring the same exact complaint against the other areas requiring supermajority consent, including, for example, impeachment.
It takes two-thirds of the Senate in order to greenlight an impeachment.
Is that denying?
Is the Constitution itself unconstitutional?
Everyone agrees the text of the Constitution does not allow for simply giving California more senators than Wyoming, says Erwin Chemerinsky, nor can the Senate's lack of representative fairness be cured by adopting internal Senate voting rules.
But that doesn't mean the Senate has authority to create even more unfairness than already exists.
In fact, Article 1 of the Constitution doesn't allow a broad 60-vote supermajority rule.
Okay, again, this is ridiculous.
The Senate has the ability to make its own rules.
Now, would it be a good idea for Kamala Harris to simply overthrow the filibuster in a time of high political polarization and division in the United States?
It would be about the dumbest thing she could do.
If she did that, I will tell you what the predictable result of all of this is going to be, as Democrats surge forth with a more and more radical program with fewer and fewer people supporting it.
What this is going to look like, as opposed to a bipartisan compromise, what this is going to look like is states beginning to say, you passed it, now enforce it.
If you really want to pass it, you can try to enforce it, but we're not helping you.
Not one iota.
We're just going to become sanctuary states where people actually still have constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.
Doesn't mean we're going to use armed opposition to stop the feds from doing things.
It does mean that you are going to have to enforce this sucker yourself.
That is what you're going to start getting very, very quickly.
Meanwhile, the Democrats really want to get rid of the filibuster because, number one, they want to completely destroy the system of voting in the United States by violating, by the way, the Constitution.
So they want to get rid of the filibuster so they can violate the Constitution by federalizing all voting procedures which were not delegated to the federal government under the Constitution of the United States.
H.R.
1 is a crap show.
It is a horribly written bill that dramatically increases the possibility of voter fraud and dramatically undermines the ability of anybody to believe in the voting system of the United States.
And this is coming from somebody who doesn't believe that the last election was decided by voter fraud and irregularity.
You want to make sure that every future election is in doubt?
Make sure you pass H.R. 1.
It's not just that.
Now the Democrats are pushing to simply add new states.
So notice the pattern here.
Erwin Chemerinsky is now claiming that we should get rid of the filibuster because it's unfair.
Because it treats states unequally.
And they need to do that so they can add states.
So they can completely overthrow the bargain that the states currently have by adding with a simple majority vote states like the District of Columbia.
So Democrats want to add D.C.
as a state because they want two additional senators.
The claims that are being made by the Democrats, of course, are that if you oppose D.C.
statehood, this is because you are, of course, racist.
Ayanna Pressley, the Ringo star of the squad, she came out and she said, D.C.
statehood is a racial issue, of course, because everything's a racial issue.
Every single thing.
Here she was.
There have been only two black elected governors in the history of this country.
Massachusetts had one of them, Deval Patrick.
Now, in more than 230 years, only two black governors.
I'm gonna make it plain.
D.C.
statehood is a racial justice issue.
And racism kills.
And I don't just mean police brutality and hate crimes and food apartheid systems and transportation deserts and unequal access to healthcare.
I mean all of that, too.
But racism kills our democracy.
Okay, so it is racist not to make D.C.
a state because we need to appoint people to governorships based on race.
That's the case she's making.
Racism is bad because we need black people to be governors.
Now, I seem to remember that the Vice President of the United States is a black woman.
And I seem to remember that the President of the United States was a black man for eight years.
And the Attorney General of the United States was black.
And the Secretaries of Homeland Security and the current Secretary of Defense is black.
But according to Ayanna Pressley, We need to make D.C.
a state that will have a black governor.
Her assumption, of course, is that D.C.
will have a black governor because there's a heavy black population in D.C.
Which, again, is kind of racist.
The notion that black people only vote for black people.
By the way, not really true.
Because, again, black people did not vote for a black person in the primaries.
They voted for Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries.
But in any case, you know why D.C.
is not a racial issue?
Because it has long been held, since like the foundation of the country, that the District of Columbia should not be under the auspices of any state.
Because if you have a state, that means the seat of the federal government is now in hock to the states.
That's not a racial issue.
It can't be a racial issue because at the time, no black people could vote, okay?
At the foundations of this country, black Americans were stopped from voting by racist policy.
So the notion that the Federal District of Columbia was prevented from being a state because white people were afraid of black people gaining power is an absurdity, historically speaking, and it also happens to contravene the explicitly stated intent of making the Federal District of Columbia federal in the first place.
Federalist 43, James Madison, fully explains why the District of Columbia is a federal district.
He says, if it were not, then the federal government would then be in hock to the state.
It would create a dependence on the members of the general government on the state, comprehending the seat of government for protection in the exercise of their duty.
Might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy.
In other words, D.C.
would be seen to be running the federal government, as opposed to the federal government being D.C.
This consideration has the more weight as the gradual accumulation of public improvements at the stationary residence of the government would be both too great a public pledge to be left in the hands of a single state and create so many obstacles to a removal of the government as still further to abridge its necessary independence.
The extent of the federal district is sufficiently circumscribed to satisfy every jealousy of an opposite nature.
Again, this goes all the way back to the foundation of the country.
The notion that this is racially based is ridiculous on its face, but again, it's not about any of that.
It's about America's bad unless you give me what I want.
Rashida Tlaib says it explicitly.
She says, America is an authoritarian system unless D.C.
is a state.
This kind of language about the country that allows for immigrants to the United States to become members of Congress regularly, it is quite an astonishing thing.
I mean, Rashida Tlaib is one of the great beneficiaries of America's systems of freedom and meritocracy.
And yet, here she is saying that America's racist because D.C.
isn't a state.
In opposing D.C.
statehood, which is overwhelmingly supported by the people of Washington, these representatives and their dark money backers over the Heritage Foundation, that's right, are telling over 700,000 Americans to sit down, shut up, and enjoy this authoritarian system implemented by a bunch of elites who thought it was okay to enslave people for their selfish monetary gain hundreds of years ago.
It is shameful that anyone would claim to support democracy and freedom and oppose statehood.
You can't even support democracy and freedom and oppose D.C.
statehood.
And that's what she thinks of the American founders.
All they were were slaveholders.
It's amazing stuff there from Rashida Tlaib.
But this is the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party is not going to stop anytime soon.
They believe they are on the ascent.
They're on the rise.
They're in the ascendancy.
They're going to...
The future of the United States is an authoritarian left bootstamping on your face forever.
That's what this is.
And they're going to do so by killing the filibuster.
They're going to do so by changing the voting rules.
They're going to do so by incentivizing illegal immigration.
And they're going to do so by cowing you into silence by leveraging the power that they have institutionally in order to shut you up.
That is the future of the country over the next few years.
There's only one thing you can do to stop that, and that is don't shut up and don't acquiesce to their ridiculous suggestion that if you disagree with them, this makes you somehow morally deficient, which is an absurdity on its face.
Because I'll tell you what, this agenda is morally deficient.
Alrighty, we will be back here later today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show coming up soon.
The Matt Wall Show airing at 1.30 p.m.
Eastern.
Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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