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June 16, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:52
Shoplifting From Walgreens To Fight Systemic Racism | Ep. 1277
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A video of a shoplifter in San Francisco draws national attention to the city's massive property crime spree.
The Biden administration declares white supremacy America's greatest domestic violence threat.
And President Biden preps for his showdown with Vladimir Putin.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Alrighty, so yesterday, rocketing around the internet was a video from a Walgreens in San Francisco.
And for folks who have visited any of our major cities over the course of the last few years, there's a pretty obvious uptick in property crime.
Not just an obvious uptick in property crime, a complete downturn in quality of life.
There's a reason that people have been fleeing big cities in favor of more outlying red areas or blue cities in red states.
Okay, San Francisco has been turned from a gem, a very clean and safe city, into something really quite awful.
Over the past few years, you've seen reports of feces, human feces, on nearly every corner, open needles on nearly every corner.
In Los Angeles.
The homeless problem is so unbelievably bad that it has now invaded the suburbs.
You have people who are mentally ill or drug addicts who are basically sleeping on the curbs outside people's homes in Los Angeles.
This was happening outside my home in a fairly nice suburb of Los Angeles.
One of the reasons we moved.
The same thing has happened in Seattle.
Used to be called the Emerald City, now it's the Brown City for all the poop that is in public.
And well, one of the things that has upticked in the recent years has been, obviously, low-level crime.
Now, people on the left like to pretend that low-level crime isn't actually crime.
It's just the cry of the oppressed.
Right.
If somebody is shoplifting, it's because poverty is such an endemic problem in American capitalistic society.
It's not a problem of morality.
It's not a problem of decency.
It's a problem of poverty.
Except that when we see film of people actually engaging in crime, it generally is not people stealing the necessities of life just to get by.
More often it looks like something like this.
So here is the video from Walgreens.
You're about to see a young black man.
I point out his race here only because, as we will see, San Francisco has decided that they do not wish people to know the race of the people who are engaging in crime because they want to avoid quote-unquote stereotyping.
This ties into the whole Black Lives Matter argument that if there is disproportionate arrest of particular people, That is not because disproportionate crime is being committed by particular people.
It is because of racism inside the system.
In any case, it's a young black man who is at a Walgreens and he is just literally shoveling stuff.
He looks like he is in the soap and pharmacy aisle.
He's literally just shoveling stuff into a garbage bag.
And his bike is right there.
His bike is sitting next to him.
And you're about to see him shovel stuff into this bag and then just take off.
There he goes.
He's just removing boxes and boxes of stuff, putting it in a garbage bag, hopping on his bike and heading for the door.
You see there's a security guy there.
The security guy sort of puts out a limp hand to try and grab the garbage bag.
Nothing.
And there he goes, just right out the door.
No problem.
Catch you later, gang.
Well, people on the left were basically like, well, this is the cry of the oppressed.
If you looked at the blue checks on the left on Twitter, this is the cry of the oppressed.
Well, except for how it's not the cry of the oppressed.
It is crime.
And crime is generally not... The attempt by the left to suggest that poverty is the great driver of crime ignores the fact that there are impoverished places on earth where people do not engage in crime at nearly the levels that people are engaging in crime, property crime, in San Francisco, for example.
There are impoverished areas of the United States where people are not engaging in this sort of crime at the same sort of levels.
Crime tends to be a problem of people who are committing immoral acts, especially in a prosperous country like the United States with a robust social safety net.
To kind of thrust this off as this is just the downside of the American system, it's just the downside of the American system, of capitalism, of our white supremacist system, is ridiculous on its face.
Hey, here's how bad the problem has become in San Francisco.
Again, one of the most left-leaning cities in all of America.
It's become so bad that 17 Walgreens, and this happened at a Walgreens, 17 separate Walgreens have closed in San Francisco thanks to the shoplifting problem.
In late May, a guy named Thomas Fuller wrote in the New York Times, quote, at a board of supervisors hearing last week, representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chains at national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of theft had made business untenable.
So the narrative that you hear from the left, of course, is this is all systemic racism, and that's the reason for the crime.
And then you see stores like Walgreens, and they're not being built in high-crime, low-income areas.
And isn't that more systemic racism?
And the answer is, when you allow crime to prevail, stores don't move in.
They undercut the tax base.
They make life worse.
People don't have places to go.
Crime is a terrible thing.
And if you wish to make life better for everybody in a community, you have to stop the crime at its source.
Unfortunately, San Francisco and blue cities like it are not interested in stopping crime at its source.
They are more interested in blaming America writ large for their own unwillingness to stop the crime that is happening within their borders.
Employees at Walgreens apparently have been told by the leadership of Walgreens to stand aside while shoplifting takes place.
Like you're wondering when you watch that video, why isn't that security guard doing something to stop that guy?
Like what's his job actually?
It turns out his job is basically to supervise the shoplifting because Walgreens have been told, Walgreens employees have been told by their supervisors to stand aside because security officers have been assaulted repeatedly inside Walgreens.
Now the reason for all of this, particularly with regard to shoplifting, is because of a 2014 California ballot measure.
That ballot measure reclassified nonviolent theft as a misdemeanor so long as the thief took less than $950 worth of material.
So you just hit up several Walgreens in a row and you take less than $950 worth of material and you're fine.
Even if you get arrested, you'll get off with a slap on the wrist.
You'll go right back out on the street.
Thieves quickly hit on the strategy, hit up a bunch of different stores for less than $950 worth of stuff.
Then, last year, amid the Black Lives Matter protests suggesting again that all crime in the United States was truly due to systemic American racism and that the police were the real problem, amid that ridiculous Notion.
The city of San Francisco decided to double down on its soft-on-crime policies.
Mayor London Breed announced that booking photos would no longer be released, lest the prevalence of black and brown faces among the booking photos lead to stereotypical reactions inside stores.
It shouldn't want to lead to racial profiling, so instead what we will do is we'll just obscure who exactly is committing the crime.
That way, if a disproportionate number of black and brown people are arrested, because a disproportionate number of black and brown people actually happen to be committing these sorts of shoplifting crimes in San Francisco, that must mean that the police are racist.
And you'll never know any different because we've never seen the booking photos in the first place.
Also, London Breed announced a $120 million cut to the police and sheriff's department over the next two years in the interest of, quote, prioritizing investments in the African-American community.
In the first six months of 2020 alone, 23 officers resigned from the force.
Naturally, property crime has skyrocketed, and it's not just shoplifting.
Burglaries increased nearly 50% year on year in 2020 in San Francisco.
Car theft jumped 34% in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, of course, San Francisco has been in a state of slow motion decline for the past several years.
The streets are littered with garbage.
In 2018, there was a survey of 153 blocks in downtown San Francisco.
It showed trash, like open trash out on every single block, 41 blocks, quote, dotted with needles, and 96 blocks of the 153 blocks, 96 with open human feces.
And again, this sort of stuff is not rare in major cities around the United States.
As I mentioned, Los Angeles, the quality of life has become truly awful.
The slogan for For the Herbert Hoover campaign in 1932 is a chicken in every pot.
The slogan in Los Angeles is a homeless person on every bench.
And presumably on your driveway as well.
And again, that is not compassion toward the homeless.
Treating severely mentally ill people and drug addicts as though they have a right to sleep on the street and use open needles in front of your children is not compassion to either the children or to the homeless people.
San Francisco, by the way, is now facing its worst drug epidemic ever, according to Amy Graff of the San Francisco Chronicle.
She says, a physician, two nurses, a professional athlete, a drug dealer, and a lawyer who had nodded off in court.
Teenagers, specifically a 14 and a 15-year-old, and a 7-year-old who got into a stash in her mother's purse.
These are some of the types of people Dr. Christopher Caldwell, the Chief of Emergency Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, has recently seen in the emergency room for medical issues related to fentanyl use and overdoses.
A 7-year-old who got into a stash in her mother's purse.
But apparently it's all about white supremacy, gang.
Caldwell said, that's just in the last couple of weeks.
It's really remarkable because it runs the entire spectrum.
This affects all walks of life, all folks.
It's hard to overstate how impactful it can be to anyone.
It doesn't seem to care about race or background or gender or anything.
Caldwell said on average, about 10 to 15 people who have taken fentanyl are treated in the San Francisco General Emergency Room a day, sometimes more.
And that's at just one hospital in the city.
So San Francisco, which is famous for being a drug haven, has been for decades, is now experiencing its worst drug upsurge ever, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Meanwhile, in New York, Massive outbreaks on subway cars of filth and feces, apparently, is according to Fox New York.
As people return to the subway system in New York City, they're finding more trash and filth, according to a new report.
There's been a rise in soiled train cars this year, according to the Daily News, including cases of feces, vomit, and blood.
The paper cited internal MTA reports.
An increase in used syringes is being found amid growing drug use in the subway system.
MTA spokesperson Andre Berman said, quote, Rising crime in the subway system is also a problem.
Last month, Governor Andrew Cuomo said people just don't feel safe riding the trains.
They have to feel safe.
Do they feel safe now?
No, Cuomo said at a news conference.
service support in the city and throughout the system.
Rising crime in the subway system is also a problem.
Last month, Governor Andrew Cuomo said people just don't feel safe riding the trains.
They have to feel safe.
Do they feel safe now?
No, Cuomo said at a news conference.
The governor said there needed to be more NYPD officers in the subway system.
All of which is why, according to a new study from the North American Moving Services, the top outbound states for people who are leaving states in America.
Illinois, New York, California, New Jersey, and Maryland.
The top inbound states?
Idaho, Arizona, South Carolina, Tennessee, and North Carolina.
Notice the sort of political theme there?
Every single state from which people are leaving is heavily blue.
Every single state to which people are going is red or purple at best.
We'll get to more on this in just one second because there's a move by the left to disconnect crime from ideology.
And that is a very self-serving move.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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Okay, so, all of this is tied to ideology.
It's tied to ideology in a couple of ways.
Number one, it's tied to ideology because the left has decided that crime is to be overlooked, and that if there is a major uptick in crime, particularly in minority communities, that has to do with America's system of white supremacy.
It has to do with America's deep-seated cultural racism.
That in the end, you can always remove one level and then blame America writ large.
So if you say, okay, well, you know, I've noticed that a disproportionate number of people in minority communities are engaging in crime.
I'll say, right, because of historic American racism.
And you say, yes, but those people like right now, they are committing crimes in the moment, not because of historic American racism.
Somebody made the decision to go to that Walgreens and fill a garbage bag with stuff and then just take off.
And they'll say, right, because of systemic injustices.
I've said this before, but it's true.
Atheists are constantly accusing religious believers of using the quote-unquote God-of-the-gaps argument.
The God-of-the-gaps argument is, I can't have any explanation for this, you don't have any explanation for this thing happening in the universe, this phenomenon, therefore God.
We don't understand how the universe was created, therefore God.
And atheists say, well that's not a good argument, because obviously at some point that gap could be filled.
We could gain further knowledge, and just because there's a gap, that doesn't mean that God fills the gap.
It's a fairly good argument by the atheist.
Okay, here is the thing.
The left uses the exact same God-of-the-gaps argument when it comes to systemic American racism.
If there is an imbalance in the crime rates between communities, instead of looking to why people are actually committing crimes, or looking to the ideology of people who are committing crimes, or looking to the ideology of the people who govern the cities where the crimes are being committed, instead, they just go systemic American racism, they wave their hands, and that's the big problem in American life.
Well, the reality is, if you want to stop crime, if you want to make quality of life better, you need a zero-tolerance policy with regard to crime.
You need to say, it doesn't matter what you think the legacy of hundreds of years of slavery was, you don't get to go to the Walgreens and knock it over.
That is not an acceptable response.
Nor does it make your community better.
Beyond that, an ideology that suggests that there's an excuse for crime based on systemic American racism is an ideology that promotes crime and that promotes degradation and quality of life.
And you can see how this works, right?
It's so funny.
Folks on the left will suggest all the time that it's right-wing ideology that drives right-wing extremism, which drives violence.
And then they can't actually connect the dots.
Because what is the connection between, I want smaller government and individual liberty, and a white supremacist goes and shoots up a synagogue?
Right?
There's no connection there.
But the left tries to make the connection anyway.
But there is a pretty solid damned connection between there's an excuse for crime.
The excuse for crime is everything except the criminal.
Thus, we must defund the police.
Thus, there is more crime.
That's a pretty easy connection.
The left just doesn't want to make it because if they were to make that connection, they would have to change their ideology.
They're not going to change their ideology.
So, you know, all of this is, again, part and parcel of a broader view of America.
How you view crime is, in fact, deeply rooted in your individual values, in what you think of the world.
This is why the soft on crime left in the 1960s and 70s decided that riots were just the voice of the oppressed.
And they still believe this.
It's why last year, all of last year, we saw people making excuses for people doing two billion dollars in property damage.
Based on the myth that police officers are disproportionately attempting to kill black people and that there is a quote-unquote genocide against black Americans.
You remember that just last year, my friend Ami Horowitz, he went over to Minneapolis and he asked many of the protesters about destroying businesses because the media, particularly white members of the media, kept saying, well, you know, there's a huge difference between the protesters and the rioters and the looters, right?
They have completely different ideologies.
Okay, and that was true for a lot of people.
A lot of the protesters who are out there, Black Lives Matter protesters, they weren't interested in the looting or the rioting.
They just were protesting in favor of, quote-unquote, police reform.
Now, they seem to have a pretty vague idea of what that constituted, but there was some separation.
But it is certainly true that the rioters and looters believed the same things as the BLM advocates.
And many of the BLM advocates were making active excuses for rioting and looting, including the current vice president of the United States, who is offering bail funds for people who are engaged in property crime.
I mean, you saw people like Nikole Hannah-Jones bragging openly online that her 1619 Project ideology was connected to the riots that were happening in cities across the United States.
She was celebrating that.
She wasn't trying to hide the ball there.
So, as we will see, the left has been attempting to connect, quote-unquote, conservative right-wing ideology to violence for a long time.
But the more obvious tie between crime and violence and ideology exists on the left.
And it is affecting cities to the extent that thousands of people are leaving these left-wing governed cities in favor of safer, better places to live.
And there's a reason for that.
And it's because there are, yes, a lot of criminals out there who believe that they are fully morally justified in doing what they are doing.
One amazing thing about human beings, very few human beings believe they're the villain of their own story.
Now, the truth is that most human beings are kind of the villain of their own story.
Most of the mistakes that I make in my life are my own mistakes, right?
I'm the villain of my own story.
I'm also the hero of my own story.
We have the capacity to be both.
But most people have very little capacity to see that when they do something wrong, they're actually doing something wrong.
Very few people own their own acts of evil.
Instead, most people blame it on somebody else.
And they see their act of evil as acts of heroism.
And so if you're going to burn down a business, you see that as an act of resistance against a powerful hierarchy.
So, as I mentioned, my friend Ami Horowitz went to Minneapolis and he asked some of the protesters what they thought of the riots and the looting.
And here's what they said.
You're not giving it to us, so we're gonna take it.
Of course!
What do you expect them to do?
Google, Microsoft, all that bull****, that's all built up.
That's all slavery money.
If anybody's a thief, it's America.
So when we take it back or we burn it down, yeah, we getting back what's ours.
You want to give it up?
Okay, you ain't have any no more.
Okay, so you understand what that guy was saying right there.
He said, Google, Microsoft, all that BS, that's all built up, that's all slavery money.
When we take it back or we burn it down, yeah, we're gonna take what is ours.
You ain't gonna give it up?
Okay, you ain't having it no more.
And the left has been making excuses for this sort of idea for a very long time.
Again, the LA riots, when LA uprising, the violence and looting that we saw last summer was completely not worthy of note because after all, it was just a sort of reparative justice, a restorative justice.
This ideology is damaging to not just thousands, millions of Americans.
It has real consequences.
The uptick in murder that we have seen is an outgrowth of ideology.
It is not merely happening in a vacuum.
There's a reason we saw a massive uptick in violence last year.
In the middle of the pandemic.
A massive uptick in murder in every major city in the United States governed by a blue state Democrat.
Every one.
Hey, the reason for that is, again, when you make excuses for this, and when you suggest that all the problems of American society can be attributed to the society writ large and white supremacy broadly, and you make excuses for this stuff, you get an uptick in this.
You get a real surge in the destruction of quality of living in America's major cities.
You know, the reason that I bring this up is not just because of this Walgreens video.
It's also because what you have seen from the Biden administration is a tremendous focus these days on quote-unquote white supremacy.
So yesterday, the Biden domestic terror plan suggested that they were going to focus on militia extremists and white supremacy and would include anti-radicalization training for retiring military.
Now, listen, there are white supremacists out there who do commit terrorist acts.
They do.
Now, statistically, they are quite rare.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, in the year 2020, there were a grand total of 16 murders committed by white supremacists in the United States.
Now, every one of those murders is terrible and horrible.
This is a country of 330 million people.
And I'm not a person who's downplaying white supremacist terror, considering that the FBI has arrested people who are white supremacist terrorists threatening my family.
I was not very far away from the Poway shooting of the Chabad just a few years ago.
I mean, they're like, they're members of the Jewish community who've been targeted by white supremacist terror.
So I'm not downplaying the threat of white supremacist terror.
But if we are talking about ideologies that are truly threatening to the American way of life, if we're talking about ideologies that are deeply connected to endemic violence in American society, there are like 11 white supremacists in the United States, true white supremacists in the United States.
Meanwhile, you have an ideology that says that all of American life is racist, and therefore crime is okay.
And that is held by one of the major parties in the United States, and it governs major cities across the United States, and it has real-life ramifications, not just for non-minority members of the United States population, but for all law-abiding Americans who have to live in these cities and experience the crime waves, and watch as the institutions that have facilitated the greatest upswing in prosperity and freedom in history Are undermined.
You want to talk about dangerous ideologies that actually have an impact on American life?
White supremacy is a super dangerous ideology that has very little impact on American life.
The ideology of the hardcore left is a super dangerous ideology that has a massive impact on American life.
And yet one of these things is being played up and one of these things is being radically ignored.
Not only ignored, downplayed.
I'll get to that in just one second.
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All right, so the Joe Biden domestic terror plan is now focused like a laser on white supremacy.
Joe Biden said in a press conference, quote, the National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lays out a comprehensive approach to addressing the threat while safeguarding bedrock American civil rights and civil liberties, values that make us who we are as a nation.
We cannot ignore this threat or wish it away.
The outlet noted that the National Security Council has now defined domestic terrorism as, quote, activities that involve dangerous acts to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state, appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.
Or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.
And occur primarily within the jurisdiction of the United States.
Domestic terrorism is both persistent and evolving and requires an overarching approach.
Okay, so.
All of this is worth targeting, right?
I mean, anybody who's trying to engage in violence on behalf of a political ideology ought to be targeted by this.
But you'll notice that the focus has honed in specifically on white supremacy.
Now, again, this doesn't mean that there is no threat from white supremacist terrorists.
It means that if we're going to focus on the threats to everyday Americans coming from people who are fomenting violence on behalf of a political ideology, and we're going to rank those threats, white supremacist terrorism is not at the top of the list.
All these threats, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I've noticed that we are not walking and chewing gum at the same time.
We are chewing gum and not walking at all.
Although domestic terrorism can focus on a wide range of ideas, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and militia violent extremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats, the NSC said, adding many domestic terrorists unite around anger with, quote, the same segment or segments of the American community, including persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, other religious minorities, women and girls, LGBTQI plus individuals or others.
The NSC does include anarchist violence extremists who violently oppose all forms of capitalism within its pantheon of potential domestic terrorists to address.
But apparently they are focused really strongly on the white supremacist terror threat.
Now, again, if we were just sort of looking at terror threats generally, and then assessing each terror threat, and then fighting all terror threats, that'd be one thing.
Because again, terrorism, unlike just regular everyday crime, is deeply intertwined with ideology.
But as I am saying, there's one ideology that the left wishes to ignore when it is tied to violence.
We all know what that ideology is.
Merrick Garland, who's the new Attorney General, yesterday was testifying, and he said that the top domestic violence extremist threat comes from white supremacists, which is kind of an amazing statement, given the fact that we've seen an uptick in murder across the nation, numbering thousands of murders across the nation over the course of the last year, connected to a deeper root belief in the systemic nature of American racism.
We have seen $2 billion of damage done last year alone in the vast spate of rioting connected to ideology.
These were outgrowths of the actual protests.
And yet apparently the only threat that is worth talking about is the white supremacist terror threat.
Again, you don't have to downplay one to talk up the other.
You can talk up both.
But I've noticed that we're not talking about both.
We're only talking about one.
It happens to be the one that is responsible, yes, for a certain number of murders in the last year.
And we are downplaying the other one that is responsible for the collapse of major American cities.
Here is Merrick Garland.
According to an unclassified summary of the March Intelligence Assessment, the two most lethal elements of the domestic violent extremist threat are racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and militia violent extremists.
In the FBI's view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the white race.
Okay, so that is the greatest domestic violence threat in America.
Not just terrorist threat, domestic violence threat in America.
Okay, no.
I mean, no.
Just statistically, no.
The greatest domestic violence threat that is tied to ideology in America is not coming from white supremacists.
It's coming from people who believe that there's an excuse for violence across the nation rooted in America's history of racism.
It is the group of people in governance, in the halls of power, And yes, on the ground, committing acts of violence right now, committing crimes, who blame that on American racism and suggest that the violence is justified because, you know what, America sort of deserves it.
And again, it's amazing how people on the left will actively downplay this threat because it is so closely tied to some of the things that they promote.
So Merrick Garland says, don't worry guys, we're not focused on ideology.
This is not an attempt to crack down on ideology.
We're just focused on violence purely and specifically.
We are focused on violence, not on ideology.
In America, espousing a hateful ideology is not unlawful.
We do not investigate individuals for their First Amendment-protected activities.
We do not prosecute people for their beliefs.
Across the world, extremist or terrorist labels have at times been affixed to those perceived as political threats to the ruling order.
But there is no place for partisanship in the enforcement of the law.
Okay, so he's saying at least we're going to preserve free speech in all of this, right?
That's really what we're going to do.
Now, I have a question.
Do you trust them to preserve free speech?
Truly.
Considering that every time there is a domestic terrorist who's a white supremacist, the entire media rush to condemn the entire right.
Do you trust that this administration is really going to preserve First Amendment rights?
I have some trouble believing that they are interested in preserving First Amendment rights.
First Amendment rights do, in fact, apply to everyone.
They apply to BLM protesters the same way they apply to white supremacists.
I hate all of that.
I hate all of those ideologies.
That does not mean that they don't have rights.
But again, there is a political motivation to ignoring one problem here that is much larger than the other problem in terms of size and scope and depth of effect on everyday American life.
And again, I just keep pointing this out.
The disparity in what the left is willing to acknowledge about ideologies that are closely tied with its own and their connection to violence and what they're willing to focus on is pretty astonishing.
To take an example, Andy McCabe.
You'll remember Andrew McCabe.
Andrew McCabe, of course, was one of the, he was the former FBI agent who was tied into the Russia investigation and he engaged in ridiculous acts that ended up basically, I believe, losing him his pension.
Anyway, Andrew McCabe was on CNN yesterday talking about this.
And he said, well, you know, we still don't know what motivated the congressional baseball shooting.
Interesting.
He brought the other side of the equation into it by referring to the shooting of the congressional baseball practice.
And he did it very carefully by saying a shooting by someone only who committed the shooting only after he confirmed that the players were Republican.
So I think that reflects the fact that the FBI still doesn't exactly know what that shooter was up to.
They never really uncovered the sort of detailed evidence that laid out a specific plot or an objective.
But it is undeniable that he was targeting Republicans.
Okay, again, Andy McCabe suggesting there that the FBI still doesn't know what exactly motivated this.
I know the FBI knows full well.
The guy had a list in his pocket of Republicans.
He was shouting, this is for healthcare while he shot Republicans.
So yeah, we kind of know.
But the temptation by folks on the left to downplay violence, so long as it is linked with their side, continues to astonish and dismay because that does have some really negative impact.
I got an email the other day from a member of our military.
So the military right now is undergoing all sorts of violent extremist training, violent extremist threat training.
So that means that they're sat down and they're put through PowerPoint presentations about the evils of white supremacy and be on the lookout for people who are being recruited into white supremacist groups.
And this member of the military raised his hand and he asked the training commanding officer, he asked him, okay, what about BLM and Antifa?
And the training commanding officer said, no, those are not extremist groups.
Those are just philosophies.
Yeah, sure.
All righty, coming up, we're gonna get into Joe Biden facing off with Vladimir Putin.
First, let's talk for a second about the fact that the stuff that your kids are watching and learning on TV is largely garbage.
We talked last week about how Nickelodeon is openly propagandizing on behalf of LGBTQ causes to very young children, like three to five-year-old children.
Well, it's time to tune out of that and tune in to PragerU.
PragerU has launched a massive new K-12 education program.
Thousands of educators and parents have already signed up.
Check it out at PragerU.com forward slash kids.
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How about passing on values you care about like truth, freedom, responsibility, hard work, and equality under God?
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Most importantly, support PragerU in their efforts to take back America's education.
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Made videos with them.
Daily Wire is basically a sister company with PragerU.
Go check out PragerU's children's education materials right now.
Really awesome stuff.
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Don't miss PragerU's incredible free kids content.
Visit PragerU.com forward slash kids today.
Alrighty, in just a second we'll get to Joe Biden facing off with Vladimir Putin first.
As the woke mob continues to ramp up their attacks on American culture, it's become incredibly clear the only thing standing between our freedom and their brand of authoritarianism is us.
And that is why I wrote the book The Authoritarian Moment.
It is a vital book.
What I'm talking about right now, the destruction of America's major cities, the destruction of Basic necessities like safety and security and individual rights.
That's all happening because the left has taken over our institutions and are now weaponizing those institutions against your rights and your safety and your way of life.
Okay, the only way to fight back against that is to know how to retake those institutions.
That's what my book, The Authoritarian Moment, is all about.
It's really an important read.
I wrote it just a couple of months ago at White Heat.
I think you're going to need to read it.
I think it's how we fight back.
The Authoritarian Moment is now available for pre-order.
at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any other major bookseller.
Also, leaving the left is a journey all liberals should make.
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You remember Georgia?
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All righty, meanwhile, Joe Biden is meeting with Vladimir Putin today, and it is going exactly as you would have thought.
He is sitting there with notecards.
I'm not kidding you.
He's sitting there with notecards and reading off notecards while Vladimir Putin stares him down like the Bond villain he is.
It's just unbelievable.
I mean, Joe Biden is not with us.
He's not been with us for quite some time.
And, um, you know, that's not great.
Joe Biden yesterday said that he was always ready.
I was born ready.
Yes, but you were born so long ago that you don't know the meaning of the word ready anymore.
Here he was yesterday before the meeting explaining that he was ready for his meeting with Putin.
And it turns out not so much.
OK, somebody said, are you ready for Marwan?
And Joe Biden said, I'm always ready for some Metamucil.
Okay, so here is what has been happening today.
A reporter asked President Biden directly, do you trust Putin?
Do you trust each other?
President Biden is going to Yamiche Alcindor, an official spokesperson for the Biden campaign.
President Biden looked directly at the reporter and nodded affirmatively.
Oh, good.
Then Kate Bedingfield, the White House comms director, had to walk it back.
She says it was a chaotic scrum with reporters shouting over each other.
The president was very clearly not responding to any one question, but nodding in acknowledgement to the press, generally.
He said just two days ago in his presser, verify then trust.
Oh, so he had to walk it back in real time.
By the way, many, many, many reporters reported exactly what Yamiche Alcindor reported.
Meanwhile, Caitlyn Collins, the CNN chief White House correspondent, tweeted, It was very hard to hear, but President Biden referred to U.S.
and Russia as two gray powers in the opening of his summit with Putin.
He mentioned areas of mutual interest where they can cooperate and noted being quote-unquote predictable and rational when they don't agree.
So just crap all over Trump is really the theme of this thing.
But I mean, Putin is just eating Biden's lunch, basically, because Biden is not with us anymore.
It is fairly incredible that we are supposed to just ignore the fact that Joe Biden is being softer on Russia than Donald Trump.
I like a long shot.
A long shot.
Again, Jennifer Jacobs.
She reported the same thing, right, of Bloomberg News.
She reported the exact same thing as Yamiche Alcindor.
Quote, U.S.
press asked Biden if he trusted Putin.
The president nodded yes.
Reporters again asked Putin, why do you fear Alexei Navalny, who's this dissenter in Russia who's been in prison and is probably going to die in prison?
And what did you do if Ukraine joined NATO?
No Putin answer.
So Putin's just sitting there giving nothing.
And Biden's like, I trust this guy.
Who is he again?
Wow, this is going great.
By the way, you know what is worth noting here?
I was very critical of President Trump for doing foreign meetings with foreign dictators without any sort of goal of deliverables.
And there are a lot of people on the right who are very, very happy with President Trump meeting with Kim Jong-un.
Wow, look at that.
He stepped over the DMZ line over in Korea, and he's writing love letters to Kim Jong-un.
I said, this is stupid.
There is no point to this.
Not only is there no point, it grants Kim Jong-un legitimacy on the world stage.
It legitimizes him with his own people.
If you're going to have an international meeting with an adversary, there has to be a goal attached to the meeting.
These are not just fun get-togethers where you get together and you play backgammon or something.
You go there with an agenda in mind, and then you seek to achieve the agenda, and if you don't, you usually get your lunch eaten.
So if I said it about Trump, I'm certainly saying it about Biden too.
Biden met with Putin for no reason at all.
They didn't go there with an agenda.
They didn't go there seeking any deliverables from Vladimir Putin.
It was just a chance for Biden to get a photo op.
But the problem is that even Biden knows he was going to get his lunch eaten and his milkshake drunk by Vladimir Putin.
And so instead he was downplaying it, but he's like, I'm doing a photo op with Putin, but it's not a photo op.
And also we're not going to do anything, but it's kind of a photo op.
It's just amazing stuff.
And we're supposed to ignore the fact, of course, that Joe Biden is not with us.
It's very important that we ignore this.
According to the Washington Post, Vladimir Putin's first interview with an American television news outlet in three years was, perhaps strategically so, a big hit for Russia's networks.
The Russian president's one-on-one with NBC has been widely aired and much discussed across state media platforms.
In it, Putin dropped a Russian schoolyard rhyme in response to one question and alluded to the satirical Soviet novel, The Little Golden Calf and Another, references for a Russian audience rather than an American one.
As Putin was pressed on issues including Moscow's cyber attacks against the United States and whether he orders the killings of his political opponents, his tone was dismissive, at times nonchalant.
It mirrored the Kremlin messaging at home ahead of Putin's planned summit with President Biden in Geneva on Wednesday.
Putin agreed to this meeting at the request of the Americans, but will not be ceding anything.
Russian officials and propagandists have repeatedly said they do not expect the summit to produce any big breakthroughs for a U.S.-Russia relationship that has hit a post-Cold War low.
They've worked to portray Putin as going into it from a position of strength because he has little to lose or gain.
So what exactly are we even doing at this meeting?
What is the point of this meeting?
The answer, of course, is to pretend that Joe Biden is a world leader who is still sentient, but he is not.
There's a reason why Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas, said this sit-down is a very bad idea, because it is a very, very bad idea.
I would not be going into this summit tomorrow.
I think it was ill-advised for the president to make one of his first major bilateral summits overseas with Vladimir Putin, especially after this string of weak actions towards Russia.
The President should have spent more time this weekend focused on China and the threat that China poses and bringing our European allies along with us to see that threat as opposed to talking so much about things like climate change.
Russia remains a threat, but China is the threat that the United States and really the free world faces in the decades ahead.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is doing nothing about China either.
So lest you think that it's just about Russia, they're doing nothing about China either.
They continue to promote public statements made by the Europeans that don't actually have any teeth to them.
In fact, the left is too busy being angry at anybody for mentioning the Wuhan lab leak theory.
Remember Joe Biden started taking it seriously last week and then said, maybe we should have like an intelligence committee investigation on all that.
We'll get our intelligence people together.
They'll investigate all of this.
This was It just seemed like a lot of people wanted to squelch any idea that there was another hypothesis.
such an investigation that had been begun under the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Robert Redfield, the former CDC director, he says the scientific community acted to squelch the Wuhan lab leak theory while I was over at the CDC.
It just seemed like a lot of people wanted to squelch any idea that there was another hypothesis.
And I think that's what I find the most disappointing because I would expect that from politicians.
I would expect that from governments.
I would never expect that from the scientific community.
And yet, what we witnessed was the scientific community went on heavy to try to stop any open debate about the origin of this virus.
And I find that very sad, very disconcerting, and very anti-science.
According to Redfield, by the way, Anthony Fauci was one of the people who was less than interested in investigating the lab leak theory in the first place.
I think Tony is holding on to this hypothesis tightly.
Now, why would that be?
Sometimes scientists, when they get on, they bite into a bone on a hypothesis.
It's hard for them to move on.
I guess if I'm disappointed about anything about the early scientific community is that there seemed to be lack of openness to pursue both hypotheses.
Okay, now what's amazing about all of this?
Again, you got Joe Biden not being able to face up to Vladimir Putin.
Things are going very poorly over there.
Joe Biden, who literally glitched in the middle of the EU meetings.
And he was over there at the G7, and he just glitched for a second time.
And you know how bad his glitch was?
We played a clip yesterday of Joe Biden answering a question.
His gap in thinking was so long that I had to go back and re-insert myself saying, wait for it, wait for it, for radio, because otherwise there was so much dead air that they would have taken the show off the air.
That's how bad the glitching is from Joe Biden.
Meanwhile, what is the left focused on?
They're not focused on the fact that Joe Biden is not really with us or the fact that Joe Biden is busily ramping up the inflation.
They're not worried about the fact that Joe Biden is about to have Russia eat his lunch.
Now, they're worried about the fact that Jon Stewart said some true things about the Wuhan lab leak.
So yesterday, Jon Stewart was on Stephen Colbert, and he said some funny and true things about the Wuhan lab leak situation.
And the media's response was, how dare Jon Stewart do this thing?
I think we owe a great debt of gratitude to science.
Science has in many ways helped ease the suffering of this pandemic, which was more than likely caused by science.
Stewart went off on this a little bit more, and again, it was not well taken by the left.
I If there's evidence, I'd love to hear it.
I just don't know.
There's a novel respiratory coronavirus overtaking Wuhan, China.
What do we do?
Oh, you know who we could ask?
The Wuhan novel respiratory coronavirus lab.
The disease is the same name as the lab.
That's just a little too weird, don't you think?
And then they ask those scientists, they're like, so wait a minute, you work at the Wuhan Respiratory Coronavirus Lab.
How did this happen?
And they're like, a pangolin kissed a turtle.
Okay, meanwhile, so how did the media react to Jon Stewart, their favorite person, doing this?
Piece in the Washington Post today by Paul Waldman, quote, Jon Stewart's rant is a reminder.
Don't rely on celebrities for COVID-19 theories.
Oh, weird!
Because five seconds ago, you were telling us that every celebrity in America needed to be relied upon for a COVID-19 theory so long as it was anti-Trump.
Truly, it's an incredible turnabout.
Because bottom line is, for the media, whatever effectuates the agenda of the Biden administration is worth promoting.
Anything that does not effectuate that agenda is not worth promoting at all.
Now, this is leaving some fairly large openings for Joe Biden's political opponents.
Because it turns out that you can only hide the truth for so long and then people start to get a little bit skeptical of what you are telling them.
The left is trying to shut Donald Trump out of politics.
And meanwhile, by creating this bubble around Joe Biden, it just makes it easy for Trump to bust through that door like the Kool-Aid man and just pop that bubble.
Perfect case in point today.
Donald Trump is now going to head down to the US-Mexico border because Kamala Harris won't.
According to the Daily Wire, Ryan Saavedra reporting.
Former President Donald Trump announced Tuesday he is traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border as President Joe Biden's border crisis has continued to worsen and Vice President Kamala Harris has repeatedly avoided traveling to the area.
I have accepted the invitation of Texas Governor Greg Abbott to join him on an official visit to our nation's decimated southern border on Wednesday, Trump said in a statement.
The Biden administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, most secure border history.
In mere weeks, they turned it into a single worst border crisis in U.S.
history.
It's an unmitigated disaster zone.
If this weren't bad enough, Biden and Harris won't even tour the scenes of the wreckage they created or come down and visit with the Border Patrol and ICE heroes risking their lives to defend our nation at a time when the White House is doing everything it can to make their job totally impossible, said Trump.
What Biden and Harris have done and are continuing to do on our border is a grave and willful dereliction of duty.
So yeah, they're just pushing that door wide open for Trump or frankly any other Republican with half a grain of sense to walk right through it.
So I guess the good news here is that in their blind attempt to cover for their own ideology, to cover their failures with their own ideology, they are opening the door wide to the blowback and the blowback is most definitely coming.
Alrighty, we'll be back here today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
In the meantime, go check out the Michael Knowles show today.
He's discussing the Senate making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
You can hear more details about that story over on Michael's show that is available right now.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Editing is by Adam Sajewicz, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Christina, production assistant is Jessica Kranz.
The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2021.
The Senate makes Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Chuck Schumer calls a kid retarded.
And firebrand GOP Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene apologizes, maybe for the first time ever, for something that she said.
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