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Jan. 31, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
47:38
The Quest To Deplatform Joe Rogan | Ep. 1423
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Enemies of Joe Rogan activate to get Spotify to cancel him.
A new wave of controversies engulf public schools.
And a report shows just how much dark money Democrats spent in 2020.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Alrighty, so.
The controversy over Joe Rogan has now kicked into high gear after a bunch of has-been 1960s rockers decided that they would tell Spotify to remove their music or get rid of Joe Rogan.
Specifically, they say they are angry at Joe Rogan for purveying what they called COVID misinformation, which, again, This is just an excuse to get rid of Rogan.
It really is.
It is not a coincidence that all of this started to snowball after Jordan Peterson's latest interview with Rogan, in which Jordan Peterson was talking about everything ranging from race to climate change, like a four-hour conversation.
And people on the left hate Jordan Peterson, and they hate the fact that Joe Rogan talks to people like Jordan Peterson.
See, if there's one thing the left hates more than anything else, it's anyone who gives a platform to people they don't like.
And so they have now created Almost a chain of deplatformings.
So the idea here is they're going to get angry at Spotify for platforming Joe Rogan, for platforming Jordan Peterson, for platforming people like me.
There's like a chain of infectiousness that the left believes exists.
That if Joe Rogan talks to me directly, that's a problem.
If Joe Rogan talks to Jordan Peterson directly, that's a problem.
If Spotify gives Joe Rogan the ability to talk to these other two directly, now it's Spotify's problem.
And the infectiousness just rises all the way up the chain.
And they're saying again, this is about COVID misinformation because for the left.
Emergency is the predicate for violating all the rules.
The idea always and forever is that there is something so grave happening out there that we must violate core principles like freedom of speech in order to shut it down.
And make no mistake, this is a freedom of speech issue, not in the First Amendment sense, but in the cultural sense.
When you are saying that a platform like Spotify, which is designed in order to allow people to get their ideas out there, should be shutting down, voices like Joe Rogan's, Joe Rogan's not a neo-Nazi,
Again, even shutting down neo-Nazis in the United States is generally forbidden, right, under First Amendment law, but Spotify's a private company, so they can have some content standards, but the suggestion that Joe Rogan is well outside the content standards, like a guy who talks variously with people like me and people like Dave Chappelle, a guy who will sit down with people of the far left and people of the right, that this is somehow the great sin.
It's the fact that Rogan even talks to folks who are not within the mainstream left that the left is so angry about right here.
And they're using COVID as a rationale to go after Rogan because Rogan happens not to follow the party line when it comes to vaccines, when it comes to masking, when it comes to a lot of the other issues that the left has made into religious icons.
And I disagree with Joe on some of his takes with regard to COVID.
He and I have discussed it on his show.
I think that the vaccines are effective.
I think the vast majority of people should get them.
I think if you have a pre-existing condition, you certainly should get them.
I think if you're older, you should get them.
Joe has more doubts about the vaccine than I do.
But that doesn't mean that we can't have the conversation.
We should have the conversation.
And in fact, it was Joe Rogan who completely shellacked the doctor from CNN, Sanjay Gupta, when CNN accused Joe Rogan of taking horse dewormer as opposed to the human form of ivermectin.
CNN has not been accused of platforming misinformation, even though CNN does it on a routine basis with regard to COVID.
They're constantly putting people on the air who say things that are just flat-out false about COVID.
Implying a death rate in children that is extremely high, which is not true.
Implying tremendous efficacy rates for cloth masks, which many of their own pundits have suggested is not true.
Misinformation, in other words, is a fungible term meaning, I don't want this person on the air.
As opposed to just being obvious about it and saying, I don't like Joe Rogan, so I don't want him on the air, which is what they would say if Joe Rogan actually were, say, a neo-Nazi.
They would just say, I don't like him.
We want him to go away.
And then we could have an argument over whether that person should go away or not.
But that's not what they're saying.
Instead, what they're suggesting is there should be some sort of objective standard whereby Joe Rogan has violated the COVID misinformation policies, and now we are going to leverage him off the air.
Now, Spotify knows that Joe Rogan doesn't violate any of his policies.
They signed him.
They're paying him like 20 million bucks a year, Joe Rogan.
But what they can do, and this is what happens at all of the non-political institutions, supposedly apolitical neutral institutions, the left understands that it can weaponize those institutions by the process of renormalization that I've talked about many times before.
If they get a small angry coterie of people to be absolutely intransigent, They can force the entire corporation to the left.
And that's what they're attempting to do with Spotify right now.
What they're attempting to do with Rogan is get a few rockers, aging rockers, maybe even some more mainstream people, to say it's either us or Rogan.
And then Spotify has a market choice to make.
Do they dump Rogan and take the hit, even though Joe has like 11 million listeners per episode?
Or do they keep Rogan and risk losing the Neil Youngs of the world?
So Spotify has already started to cave just a little bit, and I really think that if this accelerates, if there are a bunch of people on the hardcore left who continue doing this, all these musicians, aging rockers, who by the way don't know their ass from the hole in the ground when it comes to science.
These are people who have shot their bodies up completely full of drugs for 70 years, and now they are lecturing you about the necessity of COVID-19 vaccines.
I'm sorry, I don't take their word on this.
I just don't.
I'll examine the data on my own rather than listen to Neil Young on my health data.
But they understand that if they mobilize enough of a contingent, they can get people completely booted.
Again, this happens virtually.
This happens for every neutral service provider.
The left makes it so that you will either obey them or you will be destroyed.
There is no middle ground.
There is no neutral ground in any of these corporations.
This is why corporate America has moved to the left, because corporate America understands that if they kowtow to the left, the left might leave them alone.
And if they don't kowtow to the left, then they will be destroyed.
We'll get to the latest on this situation in just one second.
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Okay, so the goal here for the left is to get rid of Rogan because Rogan holds anti-progressive views on issues like, are men women?
And also, should people be fat or not?
These are the issues that are very controversial.
And again, Spotify, when Rogan first signed with Spotify, Spotify took down certain episodes of Rogan's show, of Joe's show.
And Joe was okay with that because they'd already been out there, they'd already been archived in other places.
Well, now, I would not be surprised to see Spotify caving to leftist pressure and attempting to censor Joe.
And I do not think that Joe is going to stand for that because Joe can walk outside and make exactly the same amount of money.
The reality is, Rogan's show is a monster.
It's a monster.
And what you will see, by the way, is if the left does achieve Spotify de-platforming Rogan, you'll see them start putting pressure on YouTube to get rid of Rogan's YouTube channel.
They'll start seeing pressure for that.
But here's the thing.
There are alternative methodologies available for people like Joe Rogan.
We here at Daily Wire will make sure that there are always methodologies available for you to listen to the things that you like and watch the things that you like.
But Spotify is indeed beginning to cave.
They're doing so on the basis of misinformation, by the way.
Not just misinformation about Rogan and COVID because again, he's had a wide variety of guests on with regard to COVID ranging from Sanjay Gupta to Robert Malone.
But also you have like a bunch of articles out right now suggesting that the Rogan controversy is what is tanking Spotify stock.
So for example, there's an entire article in the San Francisco Chronicle titled Spotify loses $4 billion in market value after Neil Young controversy.
Okay, but that is not what is happening at all with Spotify.
To understand what is happening with Spotify, you have to understand that it has nothing to do with Rogan.
Spotify's stock has been sliding since like January 11th.
I pulled up the stock for Spotify over the course of the last year or so.
When they signed Rogan, that was May 19th, 2021.
Their stock was at 220.
It rose to a high of 300 November 1st, 2021.
That was where it was at its very height.
And by the way, picking up Rogan led to a massive increase in stock price from at the time 220 all the way up to about 275.
And it started to kind of stagnate over the summer because summer is a tough time for the podcast industry generally.
And then it started to peak all the way up until November 1.
And then it started a slide.
It slid all the way until like The beginning of December and then it basically stabilized until January 11th and then the stock has been dumping from January 11th until now.
All this stuff with Rogan and Spotify didn't start until like a week ago.
Which means like late January, not January 11th.
So they're just lying.
So the San Francisco Chronicle says, Spotify lost $4 billion in market value the week after rock icon Neil Young called out the company for allowing comedian Joe Rogan to use its service to spread misinformation about the COVID vaccine on his popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience.
At the end of the day, Friday, January 28th, shares of Spotify were down 12% from where they closed last week, according to data from NASDAQ.
Against a broader index that was flat over the same period.
Yes, but they've been tanking since January 11th.
That really has nothing to do with Rogan.
But the goal here from the left is to create a concerted narrative, which is that if you keep Rogan, Spotify goes bankrupt, which of course is really, really silly.
If they get rid of Rogan, then Spotify has a real problem on their hands.
Because what creator of actual interesting content would want to go to Spotify ever, ever again?
So here's where things stand currently.
There are a bunch of these 1960s rocker types who decided to get involved.
It wasn't just Neil Young.
There's also Niles Lofgren, who I guess is a guitarist for Springsteen, and Joni Mitchell, who said that they wanted their stuff removed.
And then there is a podcast host named Brene Brown, who I guess is some sort of self-esteem guru, who decided that she wouldn't do any more podcasts for Spotify.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry felt the necessity to sign off on all of this.
Like, why anyone cares what these people have to say is absolutely beyond me.
One of them was a second-rate actress on Suits before she married a second-rate princeling in the UK.
And then they moved over here while bitching about their rich and famous lives.
These are the most irritating human beings on planet Earth.
Honestly, we fought a revolution not to have to deal with this garbage.
And then they come over here and follow us because we're the only idiots who will pay them any attention anymore.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have now expressed their concerns over the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on Spotify, where they have a podcasting deal.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed a deal with the popular music and podcast streamer in 2020 that had them producing content for the platform through Archwell Audio, a branch of their larger Archwell brand.
Harry and Meghan revealed to Fox News Digital they have their concerns.
Now, here's the problem.
They've been losing like tons of money for Spotify because who the hell wants to listen to podcasts by Harry and Meghan?
Meanwhile, I got 11 million people who are listening to Joe Rogan every single episode.
Instead of the media asking themselves, why are people listening to Joe Rogan?
What can we do differently?
Their goal is, how do we de-platform Joe Rogan and make it so that no one else can listen to his stuff and to his guests?
According to the Wall Street Journal, here's where things stand at present.
Joe Rogan, responding to Neil Young's objections to his podcast and host Spotify, said his show has grown out of control and pledged to be more balanced and informed about controversial topics and guests.
In a late Sunday evening 10-minute Instagram video post, Rogan said, quote, If I pissed you off, I'm sorry, referring to growing backlash against him and Spotify technology essay stemming from the folk rockers' accusations they spread false information about COVID-19 vaccines through the popular podcast.
Rogan said, it's a strange responsibility to have this many viewers and listeners.
It's nothing that I've prepared for.
I'm going to do my best to balance things out.
Rogan said he will have more guests on the show that present different opinions from contrarian ones right after he hosts controversial guests.
He thanked Spotify for their support, said he is a huge Neil Young fan.
Spotify earlier Sunday made public its policies, which it didn't alter, and created a COVID-19 information hub in response to Neil Young removing his music last week from the streaming service.
Chief Executive Daniel Eck then put up a blog post on Sunday that said, quote, We haven't been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly.
It's become clear to me that we have an obligation to do more to provide balance and access to widely accepted information from the medical and scientific communities guiding us through this unprecedented time.
Spotify isn't removing any of Rogan's episodes that detractors have highlighted in recent weeks as spreading what they deem misinformation.
Spotify's rules do allow them to remove stuff they consider, quote, dangerous, deceptive, sensitive, and illegal.
And says that creators who break its rules could face consequences.
It was Neil Young who led this off.
Obviously, he wrote a letter saying they can have Rogan or Young, not both.
But this isn't really about that.
This is about a bunch of chicken bleep people at the highest levels of advertising and podcasting who are just cowards.
They're just cowards.
What they should say is, people who want to listen to Rogan can listen to Rogan.
People who don't want to listen to Rogan don't have to listen to Rogan.
Shut up and listen to what you like.
Like seriously, do what you want.
If one corporation had the balls to actually say that, this would all be over.
But they won't say it.
Instead, they apologize for existing.
It's pathetic.
Rogan said, quote, It's good to have some haters.
Spotify's Mr. X said there are opinions on both sides of any issue.
He personally disagrees with plenty of individuals and views on Spotify.
To our very core, we believe that listening is everything, he said.
Okay, so here is the deal.
If they stand by Rogan, good for them.
But I have a feeling that they're not going to.
I just have a feeling that these co- because once you put blood in the water like this, once you let them know that they've gotten to you, they will keep coming.
Like Spotify has made clear at this point that they are going to cater to the whims of people like Neil Young.
And what they should have just said is, listen, how many more people are going to listen to Joe Rogan than Neil Young this year?
You have any idea?
Like tons and tons and tons of people.
Tons of people.
Spotify can either stand by its decisions or it can run away.
But they're now on the verge of doing the same thing that the Atlantic did with Kevin Williamson or the Georgetown Law School is about to do to Ilya Shapiro.
These people hire people knowing exactly what they are and what they do, knowing that these are good business decisions.
And then they get a little bit of blowback and they start running for the hills.
These cowards, they're only going to end up in the foxhole by themselves because the left body snatches these companies.
They take them over or they destroy them or both.
Usually they take them over and they destroy them because they've destroyed the only thing that made them attractive, which was the ability to listen to people like Joe Rogan in the first place.
OK, in just one second, we'll get to the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party, which complains about dark money.
Now, of all places, The New York Times has an astonishing report as to just how much dark money Democrats have been using in elections.
We'll get to that in a moment.
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Okay.
721-3300 that is 866-721-3300. Okay, meanwhile, the New York Times ran an amazing piece over the weekend, all about the use by Democrats of dark money.
So they've been complaining for years about dark money.
Oh, it's so terrible.
Look at all these super PACs and these Republicans and campaign finance.
And now we learn, of course, of course, that when it comes to the use of dark money, Democrats are the best at it.
They are just incredible at using dark money, money from unnamed sources.
Kenneth Vogel and Shane Goldmacher reporting for the New York Times.
For much of the last decade, Democrats complained, with a mix of indignation, frustration, and envy, that Republicans and their allies were spending hundreds of millions of difficult-to-trace dollars to influence politics.
Dark money became a dirty word, as the left warned of the threat of corruption posed by corporations and billionaires that were spending unlimited sums through loosely regulated nonprofits which did not disclose their donors' identities.
Then came the 2020 election.
Spurred by opposition to then-President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal, pulling even with, and by some measures, surpassing Republicans in 2020 spending, according to a New York Times analysis of tax filings and other data.
Now, realistically, depending on how you count dark money, Democrats have always had a leg up in this area.
Union money is effectively dark money, and unions have been spending billions of dollars on our elections for decades at this point.
And if you're going to look at how Democrats spent actual dark money in the last year, you really have to look at all the donations that giant corporations were making to Black Lives Matter-associated left-wing groups that were doing get-out-the-vote efforts.
They spent something like $20 billion, like $20 billion over the last year and a half, last couple of years, since the George Floyd debacle.
Since then, they've spent tens of billions of dollars.
A lot of that was poured in in the immediate aftermath of the Floyd riots.
And that, of course, had an impact on the election.
According to the New York Times, even using their analysis, they say 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Democratic Party spent more than $1.5 billion in 2020, compared to roughly $900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the GOP.
The findings reveal the growth and ascendancy of a shadow political infrastructure that is reshaping American politics as mega-donors to these non-profits take advantage of loose disclosure laws to make multi-million dollar outlays in total secrecy.
Some good government activists worry the exploding roll of undisclosed cash threatens to accelerate the erosion of trust in the country's political system.
Democrats' newfound success in harnessing this funding also exposes the stark tension between their efforts to win elections and their commitment to curtail secretive political spending by the super-rich.
They don't have any commitment to curtail secret political spending by the super-rich.
They just don't want the Republicans doing it.
They like gripping on the Koch brothers, but the minute you mention George Soros, they're like, oh, you only hate him because he's a Jew.
Meanwhile, Sheldon Adelson was a very, very bad man.
It's all hypocrisy all the way down.
A single cryptically named entity, according to the New York Times, that has served as a clearinghouse of undisclosed cash for the left, the 1630 Fund, received mystery donations as large as $50 million and disseminated grants to more than 200 groups, while spending a total of $410 million in 2020, more than the DNC.
Non-profits do not abide by the same transparency rules or donation limits as parties or campaigns, though they can underwrite many similar activities, advertising, polling, research, voter registration, mobilization, legal fights over voting rules.
The scale of secret spending is such that even as small donors have become a potent force in politics, undisclosed money dwarfed the 2020 campaign fundraising of President Biden, who raised a billion dollars, or Trump, who raised $810 million.
Heading into the midterm elections, Democrats are warning major donors not to give in to the financial complacency that afflicts the party in power.
Republicans are rushing to level the dark money playing field to take advantage of what is expected to be a favorable political climate in 2020.
At stake is not just control of Congress, but whether Republican donors will become more unified with Trump out of the White House.
Two Republican secret money groups focused on Congress said their combined fundraising niche reached nearly $100 million in 2021, far more than they raised in 2019.
But again, none of this is actually counting extraordinary amounts of money that were poured in by corporations, like Facebook, into voter registration in particular areas.
None of it is counting that $20 billion poured into Black Lives Matter front groups by corporations over the course of 2020.
It's crazy.
And by the way, some of the biggest money raisers were some of the people who made a bunch of money by shifting into the full anti-Trump, anti-Republican camp.
So for example, Defending Democracy Together, co-founded in 2018 by Bill Kristol, spent $40 million in 2020, almost $11 million of it from the 1630 Fund. And so, bottom line is this.
It's always going to be about money.
Always and forever.
It doesn't mean that the money necessarily wins elections.
It doesn't.
But if you believe that the powers in elections are always to the right, that all the secret money in elections has always been the Koch brothers, the nefarious Koch brothers, etc.
That is a lie.
And it's been a lie for a very long time.
And now the New York Times is exposing that lie.
And by the way, this is prompting people on the left to get angry about it.
So Mark Elias, who is one of the main players behind the Russia collusion hoax, he's a Hillary Clinton lawyer, basically.
He tweeted in response to this story, quote, If the media is not going to be pro-democracy, it is probably time for the courts to revisit New York Times versus Sullivan.
The case was premised on a role in democracy the mainstream press seems increasingly disinterested in playing. So how dare how dare the New York Times report the truth, which is that Democrats are spending a ton of dark money.
Instead, let's shut down the free press.
These people are very, very committed to their particular principles.
They have so many principles left, except that they don't.
They don't actually have any principles at all.
It is all about power.
It's always been about power.
We'll get to more of that in just one second, because that is perfectly apparent in the way that the media are covering public school controversies first.
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Okay, meanwhile, the media have noticed, now they're finally noticing, that there are some places that don't put certain books in the curriculum.
The books that they are particularly upset that aren't being put into the curriculum are books like Sex is a Funny Word and This Book is Gay in Wyoming.
Or, for example, in Oklahoma, a bill was introduced in the State Senate that would prohibit public school libraries from keeping books on hand that focus on sexual activity, sexual identity, or gender identity.
Now, all of this was really driven, in the last couple of weeks, by a controversy that broke out in McMinn County, in Tennessee, where the Board of Education voted to remove the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Mouse, from an eighth-grade module on the Holocaust because of nudity and curse words.
And the left just went berserk over this.
Now, Maus is a great work.
It's a great work of art.
I've read it.
I own a copy.
It's kind of de rigueur for Jews to read this growing up.
But the notion that it shouldn't be part of an 8th grade curriculum, maybe it should be part of a 10th grade curriculum is not totally crazy.
I'm not talking about like when the Dr. Seuss Foundation just took away Mulberry Street and said, we will never distribute this again.
It wasn't like an actual digital book burning the way that that was, for example.
And I've noticed that the left is much more interested when Tennessee's McMinn County Board of Education Decides not to use mouse.
They're not getting rid of their whole Holocaust module.
They're keeping that.
They're just going to find some new books for it.
They're very angry that the mouse is no longer going to be used in the classroom in eighth grade classrooms here because of the cursing and the age appropriateness of the material.
Very upset about that.
I noticed they were a lot less upset by the banning in Seattle again of To Kill a Mockingbird.
So To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the books that has been most banned in the United States of Mice and Men as well.
The New York Times has an entire piece over controversies at school boards, but of course, it all leads off from the right.
The idea is that these crazy right-wing school boards are banning books.
Okay, so first of all, let's just point out that free speech It does not apply in public schools the way that it does in other areas of American life.
Because when you are teaching kids in school, it's not about giving them access to all available points of view all over the political spectrum.
You actually have to pick and choose what you're going to teach kids.
You have a limited amount of time.
You have to teach them what the curriculum is going to be.
You have to design a curriculum that you believe is going to inculcate certain values.
There's no such thing as full value neutrality in schooling your kids, which is why I send my kids to a private Jewish day school.
I know there's not value neutrality.
I want my values taught to my kids.
And this is true for the vast majority of parents, which is why it is very good that we have local school boards all over the country.
I promise you that San Francisco local school boards aren't banning sex is a funny word and this book is gay.
But it's not a surprise that you're seeing a ban in places like Oklahoma and Montana.
The reason being in Oklahoma and Montana, they have different values than they do in San Francisco.
That is not exactly a shock.
The question is, who should be the decider?
And the answer for the left is the left should be the decider.
According to the left media, it really is not that big a deal when you get rid of To Kill a Mockingbird or Of Mice and Men.
To Kill a Mockingbird because it has a white savior complex and Of Mice and Men because it has racist undertones or whatever.
The left isn't all that upset about that.
They are very upset if your local 7th grader isn't available to access Maya Kobabi's genderqueer in which boys are performing sexual acts on one another.
In comic book form.
So, you know, this has become a major sort of issue for the left, but again, I don't trust that they actually care about localism because they don't care about localism.
The basic idea here is that localism only applies when it's the left that gets to exercise the localism.
And of course, that is very silly.
When it comes to what is taught to kids, it should be parents making those decisions.
But the left doesn't actually believe that on any real level, which is why, of course, they've allowed the National Education Association to determine whether or not schools are even open across the country and why the Biden administration has been catering to these national organizations at the expense of localities.
According to the Washington Post, public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions.
Test scores are down.
Violence is up.
Parents are screaming at school boards.
Children are crying on the couches of social workers.
Anger is rising.
Patience is falling.
For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction.
Enrollment is down.
Absenteeism is up.
There aren't enough teachers, substitutes, or bus drivers.
Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.
Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades.
It reaches into almost everything educators do, from teaching math, to counseling ancient children, to managing the building.
Political battles are now a central feature of education, leaving school boards, educators, and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors.
Schools are on the defensive about their pandemic decision-making, curriculums, their policies regarding race and racial equity, even the contents of their libraries.
Republicans are pressing their case for more quote-unquote parental control, or the right to second-guess educators' choices.
Meanwhile, an energized school choice movement has capitalized on the pandemic to promote alternatives to traditional public schools.
Well, yes, but that's because of what you guys did.
You guys nationalized education.
You suggested that the experts at the top level of leftist institutions should decide what all children learn and how they learn.
And now people realize what you are doing.
The backlash is coming.
You guys nationalized every issue, and then we noticed.
And when the people noticed, they started to fight back against it.
They only noticed, of course, as soon as they were actually given cameras in the classroom and they could see what was happening during Zoom school time.
One of the unintended side effects of Zoom school is that parents actually got to see what their kids were being taught and they were appalled.
Appalled.
So the public schools, of course they're failing.
But who's been in control of those things for years?
Haven't been the right.
It's been the left.
Universally.
And people are starting to notice.
Which actually is a good thing.
Okay, meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, things are getting uglier and uglier.
The situation in Ukraine continues to basically be in a state of stasis.
Folks in the eastern provinces of Ukraine, which are typically pro-Russian, they've started to lose their sympathy for the Russians because they keep threatening, the Russians keep threatening to take over.
And the simple fact is that the Russians still have 100, 150,000 troops who are sitting along that border.
According to the Fox News, the longer the Ukraine crisis stretches out, The more it resembles a worldwide Rorschach test, it forces every nation to reveal its innermost thoughts and desires.
This is KT McFarland writing, former Trump administration official.
Given America's weakness and perceived decline under President Biden and China's and Russia's new assertiveness, the inkblots on the Rorschach test have changed dramatically from just a year ago.
American allies no longer trust us.
Our adversaries are emboldened.
Friend and foe alike are reassessing their interests and ambitions accordingly.
These inkblots have yet to settle in their new configuration, could reform themselves even more so by next year at this time.
Russia, of course, wants to bring Ukraine back under its historic control.
The United States, for its part, is attempting to bring Russia to heel by use of economic sanctions that are far too weak to achieve their goals, and the UN, where Russia has a seat on the UN Security Council.
There's supposed to be a Security Council meeting today.
I'm sure that Russia is going to condemn Russia for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
I'm sure that is likely to be on the table.
By the way, economic sanctions, as a tactic, are a complete fail.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a single situation anywhere on Earth where massive economic sanctions against a rival that has outs have ever worked in any serious way.
The best that you can do is stifle the growth of a country, but you can't get them to surrender because of economic sanctions.
Not unless you can, not unless their own system basically leads to economic failure.
Which again, Russia's system already is an economic failure.
So the idea that we're going to sanction Putin and then Putin is going to be sitting in one of his palaces, sitting around Complaining that his access to the international financial system has been cut off is absurd.
He is not going to care.
That is not exactly how you deter anybody.
Meanwhile, there are serious questions on the world stage about just how intimidating the United States is militarily anymore.
Dana Perino asked Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby over the weekend about wokeness in the military, because the general perception of the military is changing.
Because the Biden administration puts out ads every single day about how many bisexual, gender neutral recruits are happy in the military while getting their depression treatments.
Like, this is not the way that you recruit for a military.
Everybody who's serving the military deserves our respect and deserves our thanks.
But if you are attempting to portray a powerful military abroad, the last thing that you do is run ads talking about why the U.S.
military is all about gender fluidity.
Anyway, here is John Kirby getting upset about the question.
I think a lot of it, quite frankly, is driving a stake through a straw man here, this argument of wokeness in the military.
I was in the military for 30 years, and I can tell you things like diversity and inclusion, that makes us a better military because it brings to the fore in the decision making, operational decision making, that we conduct better ideas, more unique perspectives, somebody else's lived experiences which might actually make us smarter on the battlefield.
So those kinds of arguments I think are ridiculous.
Okay, his argument is ridiculous.
I'm sorry, but the idea that quote-unquote diverse lifetime experiences are what make for a better battlefield, like, no.
No.
Okay, Robert Putnam wrote a very famous book called Bowling Alone, in which he suggested that the military is a great cohesion unit because it is geared toward a particular goal.
And it brings people in from a variety of different backgrounds, and then everybody is geared toward a particular goal.
That's what makes the military great.
Not that we diversify and include people of every different perspective on every different issue, and this is what may... Okay, again, there's no evidence that diversity as an ethnic thing, or diversity as a sexuality thing, has any impact that is materially positive with regard to the fighting forces of the United States.
There's been no evidence to suggest this.
The evidence suggests that when you bring the best of everybody in, then you're good.
And when you exclude people, or when you divide people, or when you pick people or lower the standards based on necessity for diversity and inclusion, you end up with a worse fighting force.
Because this is true everywhere.
From Supreme Court picks to the military.
Diversity is only good when it is achieved as a subset of merit.
But when diversity is the goal and merit is put to the side, that's a really, really bad thing.
Anyway, the image of the U.S.
military abroad has been waning.
Meanwhile, it seems as though the United States is not willing to do the things that are necessary to actually deter countries from taking aggressive action.
Now, that may not matter all that much for the United States directly in Ukraine.
It won't matter until Russia takes Ukraine and then turns its eyes to an actual NATO country and breaking NATO full on.
So there's bipartisan support for the moment for sanctions.
Well, look, do you do?
I mean, it's really not that hard to get people on board for sanctions.
Here is Senator Bob Menendez from New Jersey announcing that one over the weekend.
There is an incredible bipartisan resolve for support of Ukraine, and an incredibly strong bipartisan resolve to have severe consequences for Russia if it invades Ukraine, and in some cases for what it has already done.
And so what I would say is what we are devising, building upon the legislation that both Senator Risch wrote independently and I wrote, Uh, which I call the mother of all sanctions.
Okay, but guess what?
Those sanctions are not going to be the key here.
The key here is going to be, is there going to be a complete resupply and military deterrence of a Russian invasion into Ukraine?
So why does that matter?
It matters because basically our pullout from Afghanistan leads Russia to believe it can take Ukraine.
And now if Russia takes Ukraine, what do you think that's going to lead China to believe?
As I've said before, when it comes to American foreign policy, the bad guys here are Hans Gruber and Diehard.
Eventually, they will get to something we care about, which is why it is better to stop them early rather than waiting around.
Because really, if you're looking at geopolitical foes right now, Russia is not where you should have your eyes.
You should have your eyes further to the east.
You should be looking at China.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, there's been a war on the truth, as you know.
Dr. Robert Malone's episode with Joe Rogan is probably what kicked off this vast campaign against Joe Rogan on Spotify.
Well now, Robert Malone has been removed from nearly all major social media platforms for his public skepticism regarding the COVID-19 vaccine that matters because he's not only an esteemed virologist and immunologist, but the pioneer of the mRNA vaccines themselves.
After going viral on Joe Rogan, his insights can no longer be silenced, which is why Candace Owens sat down for a three and a half hour interview with Malone.
They don't leave any stone unturned.
Together, they touch on some of the most alarming stats, questions, and trends the mainstream media and big tech do not want to acknowledge.
It's an important interview.
It will be available exclusively at DailyWire.com tomorrow, February 1st.
By the way, this is a great example here at DailyWire.
Candace Owens and I disagree pretty strenuously on the vaccines, on their efficacy, and who should use them.
Candace deserves to be heard.
If you don't already have a Daily Wire membership, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe right now.
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The episode will premiere tomorrow, 9 p.m.
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Also, if you missed our Sunday special featuring my interview with attorney Harmeet Dhillon, I highly recommend you check it out.
If you want a great look at why the conservative movement has been failing for so long, it's because they're not using the lawfare they need to be using.
Harmeet is a pioneer in that field.
You can stream it at dailywire.com slash watch or on my YouTube channel, Ben Shapiro.
You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
Alrighty, so the people we should really be keeping our eyes on are the Chinese.
And the Chinese are getting more authoritarian by the moment.
And here's the thing to understand about China.
China is a second-rate power masquerading as a first-rate power, as I've said on the show before.
Their GDP per capita is $10,400 a year.
That is not a high GDP per capita.
Yes, they've raised a lot of people out of abject poverty to mid-range poverty.
The simple fact is that China is a failed state.
The only reason that we don't perceive it as a failed state is because they have massive military power and because they've been able to cram down their form of communism on an extraordinary bulk of human beings.
And they've been able to weaponize capitalism against our own corporations by essentially providing a vast manufacturing market for the United States and also providing the possibility of a vast market for American products there.
They've been able to hijack a lot of our corporate talk.
And by the way, some of our politicians.
There's an unbelievable piece by Peter Schweitzer today.
It is from his new book, which is a huge bestseller.
This piece is over at the New York Post, and it is about the relationship between the Biden family and the Chinese.
His new book, by the way, is Red Handed, How American Elites Got Rich, Helping China Win.
This piece is titled Chinese Elite Have Paid Some 31 Million Dollars to Hunter and the Bidens.
Here's what Schweitzer reports.
For those wondering why Joe Biden is soft on China, consider this never-before-reported revelation.
The Biden family has done five deals in China totaling some $31 million arranged by individuals with direct ties to Chinese intelligence, some reaching the very top of China's spy agency.
Indeed, every known deal the Biden family enjoyed with Beijing was reached courtesy of individuals with spy ties, and Joe Biden personally benefited from his family's foreign deals.
What are these deals?
Who are the individuals who made them happen for the Bidens?
Here are a few key facts about the Biden family's $5 million-plus deals with individuals in bed with Chinese intelligence.
The first deal is with a company called Bohai Harvest.
The payout is an estimated $20 million.
Peter Schweitzer says, In 2018, I was the first to report on Hunter Biden's involvement with a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Harvest.
Hunter even introduced his dad to a company executive in December 2013.
When father and son flew to Beijing on Air Force Two.
In October 2019, Hunter Biden's lawyer, George Maciris, said Hunter would be resigning from the BHR board without receiving any return on investment.
But they didn't address the fact that Hunter still owned a stake in the investment funds had to be 10%.
After first reporting on this, Team Biden denied that any of this existed.
They claimed his stake in the BHR investment fund was only 420 grand.
But that's untrue because the private equity fund has $2 billion under management, which means that probably it's closer to about a $20 million share in the firm.
Two months ago, Hunter Biden's lawyer said he sold his equity stake.
They have not disclosed how much he made.
Courtesy of the Hunter Biden emails on his abandoned laptop, we know two of the key individuals who made the deal happen.
At the time, they had close ties to the very top of the Chinese intelligence apparatus.
There was a Chinese tycoon named Che Feng, aka the super chairman, who played a key role in getting the deal going.
Hunter wrote, quote, I don't believe in lottery tickets, but I do believe in the super chairman.
Who exactly is Che Feng?
At one time, he was business partners with the then vice minister for state security in China, which is China's KGB.
This man was reportedly the director of the ministry's number eight bureau, which targeted foreigners with its intelligence apparatus.
Apparently, he also oversaw intelligence operations for North America.
So you wonder why the Biden family has been so warm toward China?
Maybe it's the cash.
Hunter Biden had another company called Burnham Asset Management.
According to court documents, Harvest Global wired Burnham five million bucks.
The purpose of the payment was unclear.
It may have been intended as an investment in Hunter's business.
So all of this is ugly, ugly stuff.
OK, here's why this matters.
It matters because while China is a failing state, while they have failing demographics because they don't have enough people and they have too burdensome a social welfare net, Their economy is like 30 to 40% real estate, which is why they built giant ghost cities that are completely empty.
They have extraordinary levels of debt to their GDP.
And now China has to crack down an authoritarian measure more and more often in order to prevent any sort of talk about getting rid of the regime, which is why they had to take over Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was too successful and too loud about its success.
They had to destroy it.
Well, now China is talking about how they're going to continue COVID-era controls after COVID is gone.
According to the New York Times, the police had warned Xi Yang, a human rights lawyer, not to go to Shanghai to visit the mother of a dissident.
He went to the airport anyway.
His phone's health code app was green, which meant he could travel.
His home city, Changsha, had no COVID-19 cases.
He'd not left in weeks.
Then his app turned red, flagging him as high-risk.
Airport security tried to put him in quarantine, but he resisted.
Mr. Xi accused the authorities of meddling with his health code to bar him from traveling.
He said in a telephone interview in December, the Chinese Communist Party has found the best model for controlling people.
This month, the police detained Mr. Xi, a government critic, accusing him of inciting subversion and provoking trouble.
The pandemic has given Xi Jinping, China's top leader, a powerful case for deepening the Communist Party's reach into the lives of 1.4 billion citizens, filling out his vision of a country as a model of secure order in contrast with the chaos of the West they've used COVID-19 to stamp out any sort of liberty or freedom in China at all.
According to the New York Times, they're now turning their sharpened surveillance against other risks, including crime, pollution, and most of all, hostile political forces.
This amounts to a potent techno-authoritarian tool for Xi as he intensifies his campaigns against corruption and dissent.
The foundation of the control was the health code.
The local authorities generated a user's profile based on location, travel history, test results, and other health data.
The code's color, green, yellow, or red, determines whether the holder is allowed into buildings or public spaces, and it allows them to track you.
And well now, they've been using it not to track people for health reasons, they're doing it for political reasons.
And so, China's becoming more and more authoritative.
So why does this matter?
It matters because the United States is heavily reliant.
This is why this matters.
It relies because the United States is heavily reliant on semiconductors.
Semiconductors are the products that are used in microchips.
Microchips are used in everything.
Everything.
Where are the microchips made?
Microchips are all made in Taiwan.
According to Wired, Circup, July of 2021.
American innovation from smartphones to search engines to gene sequencing is built on a foundation of impossibly intricate, perfectly etched silicon.
But few of those semiconductors are actually made in the United States.
Only 12% of chips sold worldwide were made in the United States in 2019, down from 37% in 1990.
For decades, this wasn't seen as a problem.
U.S.
companies were world leaders in designing cutting-edge chips, the most valuable and important part of the process.
Now, that is changing.
Supply disruptions caused by the pandemic and an intensifying technology rivalry with China are prompting industry executives and policymakers to say the U.S.
must actually make, not just design, chips.
Why?
Because the vast majority of these chips are made in Asia.
92% in Taiwan.
92% in Taiwan.
That's according to an April 2021 report by the Semiconductor Industry Association and Boston Consulting Group.
All chips made with the most advanced methods are made in Asia, 92% in Taiwan, the remaining 8% in South Korea.
Which country is China currently threatening?
That's right, Taiwan.
And China's not going to be deterred from invading Taiwan by economic sanctions.
They don't care.
Because Xi Jinping's rule depends on him extending the authoritarian mandate that he has held out for himself.
In the next two years, if the United States does not give extraordinary military assistance to Taiwan and make credible threats as to keeping Taiwan safe and free, There will be an invasion of Taiwan.
And when that happens, there will be massive consequences.
Because again, everything you use is coming from Taiwan.
Every major piece of technology you use is coming from Taiwan.
China knows this.
China also has control of a huge amount of the rare earth's minerals that are necessary to produce all of these sorts of things.
Foreign policy matters, even if you think that it doesn't.
Get out of Afghanistan.
Russia looks at Ukraine.
Russia looks at Ukraine.
China starts to look at Taiwan.
Xi Jinping is about to have his third party congress in which he re-enshrines his forever rule in China.
And he's going to put the capstone on his Mao Zedong goals by attempting to get rid of the last vestiges of Chinese freedom in Taiwan.
And that is going to happen in the next several years.
And if the United States, if the West does not realize that, and if they don't stop China from doing that by preparing Taiwan for invasion and making the cost to China too high for them to do it, Then we're going to be sitting in a world where we just don't have the resources we need to make our technology work.
Doesn't mean that China beats us.
It does mean that life gets massively worse for hundreds of millions of human beings.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
In the meantime, go check out our newest podcast, Morning Wire.
On today's episode, a report on all the current controversy surrounding the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
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