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March 25, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show

57:53

Biden Threatens WMD Retaliation | Ep. 1460

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	Joe Biden travels to Europe and tells Vladimir Putin that if he uses WMD, we will respond in kind.
	BlackRock's Larry Fink says he wants to control companies, and Ketanji Brown-Jackson's hearings continue.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	Alrighty, so Joe Biden is off in Europe visiting Poland in order to spotlight how unified everybody is around the issue of Ukraine.
	And this is not any sort of surprise.
	I mean, everybody in Western Europe and Eastern Europe at this point is pretty unified around the issue of Ukraine.
	So this is mostly just optics.
	At this point, according to the Wall Street Journal, Biden was scheduled to meet his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda a day after both of them attended a NATO summit where members pledged to reinforce the alliance's eastern flank, provide further military support to Ukraine, and impose high economic costs on Russia for the attack that began on February 24th.
	The two leaders were expected to focus on the growing refugee crisis.
	The bulk of Ukrainians fleeing the fighting having crossed into Poland.
	Over 3.6 million people have already fled Ukraine.
	Over 2.1 million people have already arrived in Poland.
	Biden on Thursday said the United States would take in 100,000 Ukrainians, leaders of the group of seven industrialized countries, after their Thursday meeting in Brussels, also attended by Biden.
	called for greater international assistance for those countries neighboring Ukraine and most affected by the inflow of refugees.
	Biden said that his aim was to reinforce my commitment to have the United States make sure we are a major piece of dealing with the relocation of all of those folks.
	So Biden arrived in Poland at the same time that a cargo plane landed at Reschow Airport.
	It had departed from an airfield in Turkey.
	And Poland is being used as sort of a go-between to move materiel into Ukraine, although the Biden administration, of course, had famously suggested that they were not going to allow Poland to ship MiGs into Germany, which would then be shipped into Ukraine.
	Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged NATO allies to ship more and better equipment as he joined the summit virtually.
	He asked for anti-ship weapons, planes, tanks, air defenses, and systems that can fire barrages of ground rockets that Russia has used to target Ukrainian troops and cities.
	Now, here is the thing.
	The Russian forces seem to not only be stalled out at this point, but there's some pretty interesting talk about how they may not have the capacity to do all of the things that they said that they could do at the beginning, not just take over Kiev, for example, but even allow this to translate over into a long war, which would be kind of shocking.
	There's an analyst from the Atlantic Council named Ben Judah.
	He has a good thread quoted by the historian Neil Ferguson today over on Twitter in which Ben Judah notes a bunch of things about the current situation on the ground.
	He says, Russia can't continue the campaign at current intensity beyond a month and will need to pause and regroup with fresh troops.
	Russia has too many fronts and not enough troops on Kiev, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv lines.
	Russia needs fresh troops to maintain these operations.
	This can either come from upping military recruitment or a general mobilization.
	Putin does not want a mass mobilization because that will be massively unpopular at home.
	Militarily, according to Ben Judah, Russia no longer threatens Kyiv and is exposed on the western approaches of the city, but it does seriously threaten the Ukrainian army in the Donbass with encirclement.
	The Donbass, of course, is the region in which the Russians are the strongest because they have significant force power in places like Donetsk and Luhansk because they have control of that area.
	Really, since 2014.
	Russia has been improving its logistics in the past week, but still has serious communication problems.
	According to Ben Judah, again reporting from the Atlantic Council, Russia's maximalist regime change initial plan was utterly botched and now has no chance of success.
	The verdict is still out on the hastily improvised attempt to switch to a classic high-intensity campaign to focus on conquering Ukraine's southern and outer Donbass regions, trying to essentially unite eastern Ukraine with Crimea.
	Risk of a Russian military assault on Odessa is largely seen as past as the numbers simply aren't there and the Ukrainian army has held the line on the Makolaev front.
	However, officials and experts are more worried than the conversation on Twitter where Ukraine advocacy predominates with the narrative of Kiev having a chance of victory.
	Fears of a long destructive exhausting war with big ripple effects are high.
	Russia is very literally demilitarizing Ukraine military industrial capacity from the air.
	Some think this impact could take over a decade to rebuild.
	Russia's use of air power continues to be minimal due to Ukrainian denial and aversion to even greater civilian deaths.
	The exact state of the Ukrainian military itself is unknown.
	The losses are believed to be considerable for Ukraine as well as Russia, and Ukrainian military effectiveness is believed to have also peaked due to exhaustion and war damage on its terrain.
	There's a risk of Ukraine exhausting its armies in counterattacks, and officials are nervous that Russia could use chemical weapons to terrorize Ukrainians and mobilize Russians for a mass conscription with a false flag attack.
	So in other words, this is again still a very tenuous point, but it is pretty clear at this point that Russia's upper hand in Ukraine is pretty much gone. The only question is, how hard are they willing to go? And as Ukraine mounts counteroffensives, and they are mounting counteroffensives, is Russia going to be more likely to use weapons of mass destruction? Ukraine over the weekend said that it struck the Russian occupied port in the Azov Sea of Berdyansk, it was on Thursday actually, igniting a large fire and hitting a Russian warship at the site, which has become a major
	logistics hub for Moscow's invasion forces, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	Footage from the area showed smoke billowing from a ship, secondary explosions from detonating ammunition.
	Footage also showed two smaller Russian ships fleeing the port after the explosions and one of the ships on fire.
	That attack in Berdyansk, which is 50 miles west of Mariupol and nearly 100 miles from the main front line in southern Ukraine, is a sign that Kiev has retained significant military capabilities in its fight against larger Russian forces struggling to maintain supply lines in the country.
	Kiev said the strike destroyed the Russian Navy landing ship.
	Orsk Ukrainian news reports named the targeted ship as Saratov, the same class of large landing ship as the Orsk.
	The Ukrainian military later said it had hit Russian landing ships in Berdyansk and that one of them was engulfed in fire.
	Ukraine officials had not exactly disclosed how Ukraine had carried out the attack, but Ukraine does have Neptune anti-ship missiles that have a range of about 200 miles and haven't been used in the conflict.
	So far, Ukraine also has ballistic missiles with a known range of about 75 miles.
	There may be modifications with longer range available.
	As well.
	So Ukrainian forces have been capitalizing on Russian supply chain weaknesses.
	And this war looks like it is now moving into the stalemate stage.
	Joe Biden, meanwhile, seems to be running out of tools.
	And remember, he said at the beginning of this war, really the end of February, he suggested that large scale sanctions were going to deter further Russian action here.
	That has not happened so far.
	He got very angry when asked about that while he was over at the NATO summit.
	Sir, deterrence didn't work.
	What makes you think Vladimir Putin will alter course based on the action you've taken today?
	Let's get something straight.
	You remember, if you covered me from the very beginning, I did not say that, in fact, the sanctions would deter him.
	Sanctions never deter.
	You keep talking about that.
	You believe the actions today will have an impact on making Russia change course in Ukraine?
	That's not what I said.
	You're playing a game with me.
	I know.
	The answer is no.
	Okay, so once again, this is a lie.
	If you go back to early February, the Biden administration was saying that sanctions would snap into place and those sanctions would be so devastating that Putin definitely wouldn't dare to do what he then proceeded to go ahead and do.
	So they were talking about sanctions as a deterrent.
	Now Biden, who's looking pretty frayed here, he's snapping at reporters who are asking him about all of this.
	Meanwhile, the State Department spokesperson is saying that the big concern is Ned Price, that the big concern with Putin is that he's going to escalate Using weapons of mass destruction, this has been a serious concern for the past couple of weeks.
	Once it became clear that this offensive was stalled out, and once it became clear that Russia was basically boxed in, the Russian military strategy has always been to escalate to de-escalate.
	The idea being, we're going to scare the living crap out of everybody by, say, using chemical weapons or using biological weapons.
	And then everybody will know that if they get too deeply involved, this could happen to them too.
	Here's Ned Price from the State Department making clear that this is the chief worry of the West at this point.
	We know, as I said before, that this war is not going according to plan for Vladimir Putin.
	His back is up against the wall in some ways, and so he has continued to escalate.
	Our concern is that he will escalate in the direction of chemical or biological weapons.
	We have been very clear there will be a swift, strong response from the United States, from the international community, were that to happen.
	Okay, now, it is not exactly clear what that response would be, and herein lies the problem.
	If you don't set actual red lines that seem like you're going to uphold those red lines, It actually promotes the idea that your enemies should cross the red lines.
	We learned this in Syria, when Barack Obama said that if Bashar Assad used chemical weapons, that would cross a red line for him.
	It turns out that Bashar Assad was like, fine, I'll do it.
	And then he used chlorine on a bunch of people in Syria and murdered them all.
	And Barack Obama's chief response, after the violation of the red line, was to go directly to the Russians and then hand power in Syria over to the Russians.
	So it turned out that red line was not much of a red line at all.
	If you are going to draw a line in the sand, you had better be standing on the other side of it ready to punch somebody.
	So Biden was asked about this yesterday, and he was speaking about the use of chemical or nuclear weapons at this summit in Brussels in Belgium.
	And he used some very interesting and bizarre language as to what the West would do if in fact chemical or nuclear weapons were used by Vladimir Putin.
	If chemical weapons were used in Ukraine, would that trigger a military response from NATO?
	It would trigger a response in kind, whether or not, you're asking whether NATO would cross, but we'd make that decision at the time.
	Okay, so that is a bizarre statement.
	The reason it's a bizarre statement is because when you say something is in kind, what you mean is, of the same kind. If I say to you that I'm going to make an in-kind contribution on this show, what I mean is I'm going to use the resources of the show to give you a contribution. That's what in-kind means. And if you say to me that you are going to respond in-kind, it means you're going to respond in exactly the same way that I just acted.
	So if I smack you and you say I'm going to respond in-kind, you don't mean that you're going to give me a birthday present and it doesn't mean that you're going to economically sanction me.
	It means you're going to slap me right back.
	So the idea here that if Vladimir Putin uses chemical or nuclear weapons, the West is prepared to use chemical or nuclear weapons is obviously not true.
	When you use language like this, all you are doing is lending Putin the belief that he can cross red lines because you are now making a non-credible threat.
	Now according to one administration official, this is hot air reporting, Biden has set up a tiger team looking at potential responses if Russia does deploy chemical weapons.
	They're also gaming out scenarios should Putin use biological or even nuclear weapons.
	And for the first time, they've now confirmed there are some scenarios that might trigger a military response directly against Russia from the United States and NATO if a single nuke is detonated, according to the source, all bets are off.
	But as Jazz Shaw points out at Hot Air, it feels like there's a serious discontinuity in the U.S.
	position here.
	So it's okay to slaughter Ukrainian civilians using conventional bullets, missiles, and bombs.
	If you do it using chlorine, phosgene, or mustard gas, that's a bridge too far.
	To be clear, there's nothing wrong with sending a message like this to Putin, though it probably should have come from the beginning.
	But let's say that he goes ahead and deploys chemical weapons.
	What sort of response is left if it's not a military response?
	Sanctions?
	Putin is already ignoring them.
	A strongly worded letter?
	Like, what exactly are you going to do?
	And if you launch a strike on a Russian tank or armored personnel carrier, we are now officially at war with Russia.
	And if we are officially at war with Russia, is Vladimir Putin really going to hold back from, for example, using nuclear weapons against some sort of NATO ally?
	Once we are in a shooting war with Russia, then the risks of an actual nuclear exchange rise significantly, which is why you can't send senile old men out to deal with this particular problem.
	You don't want to have Joe Biden out there saying, we're going to respond in kind.
	You actually need to make clear what the consequences will be if Vladimir Putin gets involved in a particular way.
	Maybe it is establishing a no-fly zone.
	Maybe the idea is, if you are going to fire a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, we'll immediately establish a no-fly zone and shoot down any plane that enters the sky over there.
	Maybe that is the response, but you need to make clear what exactly the response is going to be.
	And the response cannot be something as vague as what Biden is talking about right now, because that is not a deterrent.
	Deterrents do not involve vaguery.
	This is true from raising children to dealing with nuclear weapons.
	Deterrents have to involve clear threats of rational action that people understand.
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	Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Biden He's actually re-embracing a long-standing U.S.
	approach of using the threat of a potential nuclear response to deter conventional and other non-nuclear dangers in addition to nuclear ones.
	During 2020, Biden promised to work toward a policy in which the sole purpose of the U.S.
	nuclear arsenal would be to deter or respond to an enemy nuclear attack.
	Biden, of course, has been wrong about every single thing in his entire life, and so he's wrong about this one as well.
	He has to walk that back.
	He now says that in extreme circumstances, we couldn't use nuclear weapons in order to deter enemy conventional biological, chemical, and possible cyber attacks.
	That decision apparently comes as Biden is meeting with allies in Europe.
	A spokeswoman for the president's NSC declined to comment.
	Biden's nuclear policy follows an extensive nuclear posture review in which administration officials examined U.S.
	nuclear strategy and programs.
	And apparently, U.S.
	officials said that the administration's review is expected to lead to cuts in two nuclear systems that were embraced by the Trump administration.
	If Congress agrees, this would mean canceling the program to develop a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile and retiring the B83 thermonuclear bomb.
	That review supports extensive modernization of the U.S.
	nuclear triad of land-based missiles, sub-based missiles, and bombers projected to cost over $1 trillion.
	And NATO allies have already been nervous about shifting to the so-called sole purpose doctrine, which is what Biden had embraced.
	So he is now moving back into line with the Europeans.
	Once again, the Biden administration, just like the Obama administration, leads from behind.
	So they're not taking their cues directly from NATO.
	It turns out in this particular case, NATO is correct.
	Biden is also acknowledging for the first time that there are likely to be real food shortages due to the Ukraine war.
	And so the question becomes, is there an endgame here at all?
	If this is likely to lead to an international stalemate and food shortages are likely to be the result, and if your sanctions are not actually deterring Putin or causing him to end the war, Where's the off-ramp?
	What's the endgame?
	And it's not wrong to ask, where's the off-ramp or what's the endgame?
	When again, the American people are being asked to bear the brunt of, for example, economic downturns.
	After all, we are all American citizens.
	We get to determine what exactly foreign policy should be through the elections.
	It is not ridiculous to ask.
	If Biden wants to make the case that all of this is worth it, he's welcome to make that case.
	But he's not really making that case that everything is worth it when, again, he can't demonstrate how his policies have led to any serious change in Vladimir Putin's action plan.
	Here is Biden talking about real food shortages.
	With regard to food shortages, yes we did talk about food shortages.
	And it's going to be real.
	The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia.
	It's imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.
	So, he's now talking about, you know, the real consequences of this thing.
	He's also banking on large amounts of hope here.
	He's talking about China and he hopes that China isn't going to get involved because China will, of course, prolong the war.
	And here he was saying that he hopes China doesn't get involved.
	Well, I'm glad he's hoping things, but again, when you don't show that there are clear convincing consequences to our enemies doing things we don't like, they're just going to do things we don't like.
	This is not particularly complicated.
	Have you seen any indications of action or lack of action from China that has led you to believe whether they will intervene and help Russia either with the sale of arms or the provision of supplies to support this war in Ukraine?
	China understands that its economic future is much more closely tied to the West than it is to Russia.
	And so I'm hopeful that he does not get engaged.
	Yeah, well, I'm glad that you're hopeful, dude.
	But, you know, it's going to take a little bit more than hope.
	It turns out that hope is not, in fact, a policy.
	And this is why, particularly when it comes to America's naval forces, whether we are talking in the Black Sea or whether you're talking in the South China Sea, we need to up our military game.
	And I understand that for the Democratic Party, the plan has been cut the military all the time.
	Even when the Obama administration was in place and they made a deal with the Republicans in Congress for sequestration to put some sort of cap on spending, they insisted that half the cuts come from the military.
	The anti-military posture of this administration has to stop.
	The Democratic Party has to understand that we live in a dangerous world.
	There used to be a bipartisan level of support for growing the military when it came to facing down global threats.
	And you're either going to have to get back on board with that or you're going to face more global threats.
	According to Arthur Herman, writing for the Wall Street Journal.
	Herman is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
	He says that we really should be upping our naval game with regard to Ukraine.
	He says most proposals for military aid to Ukraine involve help from the air, such as establishing a Berlin-style airlift, flying in warplanes from Poland, creating a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory.
	But it would be a serious blunder to neglect the naval aspect of conflict because Russia hasn't.
	According to the Times of London, recent intelligence indicates Russia has a fleet of warships ready to launch an amphibious assault on Odessa, the last major Ukrainian seaport not in Russian hands or under Russian siege.
	It's vital to Europe's peace and security Ukraine not lose what remains of its Black Sea coastline and that Russia not consider that international body of water its private naval and maritime preserve.
	The US and NATO can protect that strategic flank of Europe and NATO while also relieving Russian pressure on Ukraine short of risking war.
	Okay, well in order for us to do this sort of thing in the long term, we definitely need to up the amount of military weaponry we have available on the seas.
	The fact is that our naval strategy is rooted in weakness at this point.
	The Heritage Foundation reported back in October 2021 that they compile an annual index of military strength and they have now rated the Navy for the eighth straight year as a marginal performer.
	They say this anemic rating reflects the Navy's actions taken or not taken to shore up weaknesses and build the capacity to prevail against current and foreseeable challenges.
	The status also reflects the fact that unlike the United States, both China and Russia have accelerated their naval modernization programs over the last eight years.
	Moreover, China has dramatically expanded its fleet.
	These developments necessitate greater investments in our Navy's capacity and capability, but that hasn't happened.
	Over the same exact time period, mostly flat or declining budgets force the Navy's leadership to focus on preserving what is most perishable, readiness.
	But readiness alone can't fulfill combat mission requirements.
	Only a balance of readiness, capability, and capacity can do this.
	This year's index assesses the Navy as being weak in capacity and marginal in its We need a better employee at the top of government.
	since 2019.
	Simply husbanding forces in the homeland to train is no longer an option.
	World events and our foes dictate the Navy must be present to deter our adversaries and reassure our allies.
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	So again, when we are weak militarily, when we are weak with regard to the Navy, that has some pretty significant consequences.
	That also happens to be the case when it comes to, for example, energy policy.
	So according to the Wall Street Journal, Joe Biden is now warning that we are going to start shipping gas over to Europe.
	Well, you know what would be helpful in doing that is if you would relieve the regulatory restrictions with regard to oil and natural gas production here in the United States.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States is ramping up shipments of liquefied natural gas to Europe this year as the continent hunts for new supplies around the globe to face out reliance on Russian energy after the invasion of Ukraine.
	The globe-spanning effort to wean Europe off Russian energy supplies is at the center of Biden's summit with the EU leaders this week in Brussels.
	The U.S.
	aims to ship 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Europe annually through at least 2030, officials said Friday, making up for about a third of the gas the EU receives from Russia.
	The EU imported a record 22 billion cubic meters of LNG from the United States last year.
	The boost in U.S.
	gas deliveries goes only part of the way in covering that shortfall.
	Officials across the continent are now racing to sign new contracts with producers in both the Middle East and Africa before next winter.
	France has ended subsidies for new gas heaters in homes and will instead subsidize electric heat pumps.
	Italy is considering burning coal at some power plants rather than natural gas.
	On Friday, US and EU officials said the 27-nation bloc would this year receive an additional 15 billion cubic meters of LNG using supplies from the United States and elsewhere.
	Well, you know, it'd be nice.
	Again, we keep making pledges that we can't fulfill so long as we don't up capacity.
	We cannot defend against Chinese predations in the South China Sea and in the Straits of Taiwan unless you are ensuring that we have naval capacity.
	You can't ensure that the coastline of Ukraine remains free unless you have naval capacity.
	And you cannot ensure that Europe is not dependent on Russian oil and natural gas unless you increase capacity.
	Everything else is just mandating this thing.
	If in fact the United States is to treat as a war what is going on with Russia, which we are doing, if we're going to do that, that means that you actually have to kick into place the sort of basic wartime mentality that requires you to get rid of all of your sort of foolish misimpressions about how environmental policy is supposed to take priority over fighting your enemies.
	And meanwhile, by the way, the Democrats are trying to cure all of this, you know, lack of capacity, the fact that they will not relieve the regulations.
	They're now trying to set off federal stimulus checks to make basically just print money so people can pay for gas.
	We're in the middle of an inflationary spiral.
	And now you have a trio of House Democrats, Mike Thompson of California, John Larson of Connecticut, and Lauren Underwood of Illinois, introducing the Gas Rebate Act of 2022.
	To send Americans $100 check in any month this year when the national average gas price exceeds $4 a gallon.
	So that's not actually a rebate.
	It's just the government sponsoring more inflation, which of course is bad policy.
	You know what?
	We don't have a demand issue here.
	We have a supply issue here.
	And increasing the amount of money that people have at their disposal to pay for a lower supply means that you're going to get inflation.
	That is the definition of inflation.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden is talking about how Russia needs to be expelled from the G20, which I mean, effectively, Russia's already expelled itself from the G20 at this point.
	I mean, they're no longer involved in any of these transnational economic negotiations.
	Biden said of Putin, the single most important thing is for us to stay unified in the world, to continue to focus on what a brute this guy is and all the innocent people's lives that will be lost and ruined.
	And he said that the Russians should be removed from the G20.
	Now, the truth is that Russia has already been excluded from the Group of Seven since the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and that didn't deter anybody.
	So again, the only thing that's going to matter here, because this is always true when it comes to foreign policy, is the hard power.
	And if you're not willing to use the hard power, then at a certain point, people are going to start asking for what's the off-ramp.
	Now, the United States is, it's been reported that the United States is pressuring Zelensky to take an off-ramp in this particular war, and Zelensky I think justifiably is unwilling to do so, considering that if he looks at the material situation on the ground, Ukrainians have heroically battled back to Russians and prevented them from making serious incursions into the capital areas of Ukraine.
	John Kirby from the Pentagon yesterday, he says, we are not pressuring Zelensky to negotiate at this point.
	Nobody's turning the screws on Mr. Zelensky to negotiate this or that, or to take a certain position.
	This is his country.
	It's his sovereign country.
	He is the democratically elected president of that country, and everybody here at NATO respects that.
	Obviously, we all want to support him in his efforts to come up with a negotiated settlement, and clearly we want that settlement to end this war, but also to respect Ukrainian sovereignty.
	Okay, so if this continues for a longer period of time, then the question is going to become, how much does the rest of the world How much are citizens willing to do?
	How far are they willing to go?
	And maybe the answer is they're willing to go all the way.
	If they are willing to go all the way, we should be talking pretty openly and honestly about what that looks like for the American people.
	And we should also be pointing out that there are people who are always willing to take advantage of bad situations.
	It seems like some of those people are the folks in the financial industry, folks like Larry Fink over at BlackRock.
	So BlackRock is an investment firm that has about $10 trillion under management, and Larry Fink yesterday was talking about the end of globalization.
	He's at a big event with a bunch of CEOs.
	He said, BlackRock remains committed to helping clients navigate the energy transition.
	This includes continuing to work with hydrocarbon companies to ensure the continuity of affordable energy prices during this transition.
	Fossil fuels like natural gas will be important as a transition fuel.
	However, he says that we are now moving toward the end of globalization.
	That is the major takeaway from Larry Fink.
	Okay, well, if you think that this is the end of globalization, then perhaps what you might want to do is spur domestic production in key industries.
	Maybe what you want to do is you want to start building spheres of influence that actually matter.
	That's not actually what Larry Fink has been proposing over time.
	Instead, Larry Fink has been pushing a sort of woke capitalism agenda in which he gets to control CEOs top down through his investments.
	He's talking with Aaron Ross Sorkin over at the New York Times Dealbook, and he said this pretty openly.
	He said, we are forcing behaviors, and it's our job to force behaviors.
	Well, behaviors are going to have to change, and this is one thing we're asking companies.
	You have to force behaviors, and at BlackRock, we are forcing behaviors.
	Well, I mean, I'm not comfortable with BlackRock forcing behaviors, particularly the kind of behaviors that Larry Fink would like to force.
	Larry Fink had a letter back in February of 2022 talking to CEOs all across the country and encouraging them to embrace his politics or they don't get the dollars.
	So as dollars become more scarce on the global markets, then people like Larry Fink may be left more in charge.
	And that is something that we ought to watch out for.
	He says, stakeholder capitalism is not about politics.
	Now, we've talked about this before on the program.
	When people use the phrase stakeholder capitalism, understand that what they mean is they are not interested in maximizing profit for the people who actually own shares in their companies.
	Now, normally that is a good thing for you to maximize profit for the people who hold shares in your company because they are the ones with skin in the game.
	That doesn't mean you get to violate the law.
	It doesn't mean that you get to cast externalities out on outside players.
	It does mean That your chief goal is not using your shareholders' money in order to pursue your own political agendas.
	Stakeholder capitalism is a way for you to do just that.
	It's a way for you to say, yeah, I understand my shareholders don't want me to do X, but too many people are affected.
	The stakeholders require me to do X. This is how you end up with Disney saying idiotic things about Florida laws on education and Texas laws on gender transition.
	Because their shareholders have no interest in this, but the stakeholders, the stakeholders, their employees, people in the media, all those people are very concerned.
	And Larry Fink is doing the same thing.
	He says, stakeholder capitalism is not about politics.
	It is not a social or ideological agenda.
	It's not woke.
	It is capitalism driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper.
	This is the power of capitalism.
	In today's globally interconnected world, a company must create value for and be valued by its full range of stakeholders in order to deliver long-term value for its shareholders.
	Okay, and he now wants the pandemic to turbocharge change in the economy.
	He talks about how we want to invest only in companies that are going to be Complying with sustainability demands, as we focus on sustainability not because we're environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients.
	This is why we ask you to issue reports consistent with the Task Force on Climate-Related Finance Disclosures, because we believe these are essential tools for understanding a company's ability to adapt for the future.
	And, of course, he suggests that we have to harness the power of governments.
	They're going to work directly in conjunction with governments in order to restrict economic activity by only investing in companies that do what the government wants.
	This is what Larry Fink says.
	Capitalism has the power to shape society and act as a powerful catalyst for change.
	A business can't do this alone.
	They can't be the climate police.
	That will not be a good outcome.
	We need governments to provide clear pathways and a consistent taxonomy for sustainable policy, regulation, and disclosure across markets.
	When we harness the power of both the public and private sectors, we can achieve truly incredible things.
	That is what we must do to get to net zero.
	Well, I have a question.
	Who put you in charge of getting to net zero?
	Who put you in charge of the entire global economy?
	Who suggested that you guys get to make the decisions as to how all companies act?
	Listen, this is a private company.
	Larry Fink can invest the dollars any way he wants.
	But I promise you, there are other investors who are going to pour money into the areas Larry Fink ignores, unless Larry Fink captures government, which is what he has been attempting to do.
	This is why you saw, for example, the SEC attempting to crack down on companies by requiring ESG, environmental regulatory compliance, from companies.
	You now see the government basically doing the work of Larry Fink so that Larry Fink is the person who benefits.
	He says, Our conviction at BlackRock is that companies perform better when they are deliberate about their role in society and act in the interest of employees, customers, communities, and their shareholders.
	However, we also believe there's much to learn about how a company's relationship with stakeholders impacts long-term value.
	So we're launching a Center for Stakeholder Capitalism to create a forum for research, dialogue, and debate.
	And so, again, this is the masters of the universe attempting to construct a world in which they are the kings.
	And that should make everybody very, very uncomfortable.
	And if crisis is the opportunity for these guys to take control, then perhaps we should be thinking about why crises are continuing.
	This is not to say that there is a good off-ramp in Ukraine, for example, or a good off-ramp with China.
	It is to say that at the very least, we should be looking with a skeptical eye at people like Larry Fink, who are looking at the challenges to globalization right now and immediately thinking, how do I take control of the situation for my own political priors?
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	Alrighty, if you didn't catch them yet, the latest three episodes of Adam Carolla's Daily Wire exclusive comedy series Truth Yeller.
	That's streaming right now.
	Adam sits down with the oldest man to go to space, William Shatner, Family Guy actor Patrick Warburton, and the iconic Parent Trap and Reagan star Dennis Quaid.
	Head on over to dailywire.com slash watch right now to binge the last three episodes.
	If you're not a member, head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe to sign up right now.
	you are listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	Meanwhile, the hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson continue, and the media are just upset that anybody is asking questions at all.
	John Harwood, over on CNN, he says that basically the Republicans, by asking her basic questions, that they want her dead.
	So John Harwood tweeted out, in idiotic fashion, quote, unambitious GOP senators playing to the base with KBJ.
	Conservative National Review calls their attacks meritless.
	They know a disturbed man fantasizing about Dems and child sex trafficking fired an assault rifle in DC pizzeria in 2016.
	Political fun and games can get dangerous.
	I can't even express how tired I am of this idea that if you engage in absolutely normal political conduct, you're going to get somebody killed.
	It's just a way for you to shut down normal political conduct.
	Of course, of course.
	If we use this logic, by the way, Bernie Sanders should shut his fat trap today, considering that one of his supporters tried to murder a bunch of Republican Congress people at a baseball game.
	That logic does not hold.
	Bernie Sanders gets to talk as much as he wants to my consternation because this is still a free country.
	That is a good thing.
	I'm annoyed that he's the one talking because he's an idiot, but he gets to talk and that is a good thing for the country.
	But not for John Harwood.
	If you ask questions of Ketanji Brown-Jackson like, what is a woman?
	Then apparently you're going to now get her killed.
	Meanwhile, we'll be Goldberg sounding off on this.
	One of our great sages will be Goldberg saying, if Republicans are so concerned about pedophilia and sex criminal sentencing, why don't they care about Brett Kavanaugh?
	The wisest among us here.
	I feel like if they were so concerned about pedophilia and sex crimes, why didn't they want to hear the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh?
	Because those allegations were false?
	Because there was no substantiating evidence to the allegations whatsoever?
	That would be why, whoopie.
	But it's fun to watch the entire media rush to the defense of a woman who cannot answer what a woman is.
	So, USA Today has an entire piece by a person named Alia Dastagir today.
	Called, Marsha Blackburn asked Ketanji Brown-Jackson to define woman.
	Science says there is no simple answer.
	Oh, really?
	Is that what science says?
	Truly, is that what science says?
	There's no simple answer to what is woman?
	Weird, because for example, I will note that archaeologists have literally dug up corpses of people like 2,500 years old, okay?
	And they can identify how this person lived.
	They can identify whether they were male or female.
	You can dig up the bones of Humans of homo sapiens from thousands and thousands of years ago.
	And you can determine whether they are men or women without asking their gender.
	It's unbelievable.
	I know it's very difficult.
	You can't believe it or not.
	You can even do this with non humans.
	You can do this with like seals.
	Like if you go to a mammal, you can tell whether it's a male or female.
	I know these are really difficult concepts for these people.
	Honestly, I cannot believe that anyone believes this stuff.
	They don't believe it.
	They're just liars.
	They're just liars because they wish to destroy the truth.
	Because if there is truth, an objective biological truth is a truth.
	Then this means that there might be rules that naturally attach to those truths.
	Like that there are male and female roles in society and those roles are not identical.
	Like there are different rules for males and females in, for example, athletics.
	And they might not like that.
	They might deny that all disparity equals discrimination.
	See, the basic truths that leftism is built on, all disparity is discrimination, that every human being is basically an identical widget, and that all problems between human beings are crafted by systems of injustice.
	All of those things are blown up completely by actual icebergs of reality.
	One of those icebergs of reality is that women and men exist.
	So they have two choices.
	Either they can adjust their viewpoint, or they can just pretend that men and women don't exist.
	And so they've decided on the latter.
	And if you don't do it as well, then this means you're now anti the science.
	All these morons who spent the entire pandemic shouting, listen to the science, while triple-masking their faces and duct-taping their mouths, and throwing masks on two-year-olds.
	All these idiots are the same idiots who have decided now that you can't actually decide what a man or a woman is based on biology.
	You have to go to a sociologist to decide what a man or a woman is.
	Or you have a six-year degree in bulls**t.
	Well, so here's what the USA Today says, okay?
	In the 13th hour of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Senator Marsha Blackburn asked the Supreme Court nominee, can you provide a definition for the word woman?
	Jackson, appearing confused, responded, I'm not a biologist.
	So first of all, as I noted yesterday, once Ketanji Brown Jackson says I'm not a biologist, the game is given away.
	Because if a biologist can determine what a man or a woman is, gender theory is nonsense.
	Because a biologist looks at, wait for it, biology.
	If you can determine, biologically, whether somebody is a man or a woman, which, by the way, you can.
	If you can do that, then all of the rest of this is nonsense.
	So even her answer gives away the game.
	But according to USA Today, no, no, no, no, no.
	It's really complex.
	It's super difficult to tell who's a man or a woman.
	Forget about the fact that human beings have been, for several hundred thousand years, correctly identifying the difference between men and women in such a productive way that human beings have been able to be born from that identification.
	Because if it turned out that human beings could not actually identify the difference between men and women, human reproduction would be extraordinarily difficult.
	As it turns out, if men and women looked exactly the same and had exactly the same functions, it would be really, really tough to reproduce.
	Because that is the definition of biological sex, by the way, is the size of the gamete.
	Is it large like an egg, or is it small like sperm?
	This is not large.
	It's amazing.
	It's amazing.
	But according to USA Today, it really is difficult.
	It's super difficult.
	Scientists, gender law scholars, and philosophers of biology say Jackson's response was commendable, though perhaps misleading.
	Commendable, but perhaps misleading.
	First of all, I have a question.
	Why are scientists and gender law scholars in the same category?
	I've never gone to a gender law scholar for anything productive, nor should you.
	Because they are unproductive, professional, useless people.
	Gender law scholars.
	You go to a scientist when you want an answer verified through the scientific method.
	You go to a gender law scholar when you want somebody to lecture you about fat studies.
	It's useful, these experts say, that Jackson suggested science could help answer Blackburn's question, but they note a competent biologist would not be able to offer a definitive answer either.
	You never know.
	Scientists agree there is no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman.
	And with billions of women on the planet, there is much variation.
	Okay, I'm going to have to read that sentence real slowly to you from USA Today because it is so rich in self-contradiction.
	And we're going to read it slowly.
	You ready?
	Scientists agree there is no sufficient way to clearly define what makes someone a woman.
	And with billions of women on the planet, there is much variation.
	So, um, what I'm taking from the sentence that there are billions of women on the planet, but also you can't define what a woman is.
	So how do you know there are billions of women on the planet?
	Explain.
	Seriously, explain.
	And you know what's hilarious about this particular question when you ask people on the left this question?
	They don't have an answer, but then they just scoff at the question.
	So, I said at one point yesterday online, what is a woman?
	And somebody from MSNBC immediately wrote back, well, you would have to ask.
	Well, give me an answer.
	How about that?
	See, I know what a woman is.
	And I can describe exactly to you what a woman is.
	And I'm married to one.
	And we have three kids.
	And you know why we have three kids?
	Because she's a woman and I'm a dude.
	Like, that's how that worked.
	Really, really easy.
	But, you can't define it.
	And so all you have is scoffing at the question that you can't answer.
	Rebecca Jordan Young, scientist and gender studies scholar at Barnard College.
	She says, I don't want to see this question punted to biology as if science can offer a simple definitive answer.
	But it can.
	It can.
	Jordan Young said she sees Jackson's answer, particularly the second half, reflecting the necessity of nuance.
	While traditional notions of sex and gender suggest a simple binary, if you're born with a penis, you are male and identify as a man.
	And if you are born with a vagina, you are female and identify as a woman.
	The reality, gender experts say, is more complex.
	There's not one single biological answer to the definition of a woman.
	There's not even a single biological answer to the question of, what is a female?
	There are at least six different biological markers of sex in the body.
	Genitals, chromosomes, gonads, internal reproductive structures, hormone ratios, and secondary sex characteristics.
	None of the six is strictly dichotomous, and the different markers don't always align.
	Yes, but they are markers, are they not?
	And the vast majority of people, like nearly all of them, they do align.
	And you have no metric whereby non-alignment means that you are a member of a third sex or the other sex.
	So, no, your definition is a fail.
	It is a fail.
	But we have to pretend not to see the truth so that we can make world-breaking change, as always, as always.
	So, here's the thing.
	There are going to be real consequences for this sort of stuff for Democrats.
	So, in the end, Katonji Brown-Jackson will end up getting confirmed, of course, because she has the votes.
	But here's the reality.
	This sort of radicalism has some pretty grave consequences.
	Democrats are just out of touch with the rest of the American people.
	They are out of touch.
	There's a reason that Joe Biden is riding at 38, 39, 40% of the approval ratings.
	Nancy Pelosi, by the way, is out there suggesting that Joe Biden is a great president, but she's been disconnected from reality ever since she let the gelato get to her brain where it conflicted with the Botox in her face.
	Joe Biden is a great president.
	He is a gift.
	As I've said to him, don't say I told you this, but what I've said to him sometimes I'm glad you didn't win before because we really needed you to win now.
	He's perfect.
	He's perfect, guys.
	He is perfect.
	Joe Biden.
	I mean, if by perfect you mean immobile and not alive, so he's perfect in memory.
	Okay.
	But here's the thing.
	She's out of touch.
	The Democrats are out of touch.
	Mainstream Democrats are out of touch.
	That's not me saying that.
	That is Thomas Edsel saying that.
	So Thomas Edsel is a, he writes a weekly column for the New York Times.
	It's always kind of interesting.
	He's on the left, but his columns are about the data.
	And here's what he says, quote, as the 2022 midterms draw into view, the question arises, to what degree are democratic difficulties inevitable?
	Roy Teixeira, a co-editor of the Liberal Patriot, argues in an email that the cultural left has managed to associate the Democratic Party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech, and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median voter.
	That is a success for the cultural left.
	The hard reality is that it's an electoral liability for the Democratic Party.
	Teixeira says, quote, the current Democratic brand suffers from multiple deficiencies that make it somewhere between uncompelling and toxic to wide swaths of American voters who might potentially be their allies.
	And to share his view, many Democrats have fallen victim to what he calls the Fox News fallacy.
	This is the idea that if Fox News criticizes the Democrats for X, there must be absolutely nothing to X. And the job of Democrats is to assert that loudly and often.
	Take the issue of crime, initially dismissed as simply an artifact of the COVID shutdown that was being vastly exaggerated by Fox News and the like for their nefarious purposes.
	It is now apparent the spike in violent crime is quite real and that voters are very, very concerned about it.
	In an analysis of the complexity of current Democratic predicament, Sarah Anzia, professor of public policy and political science at Berkeley, addressed the preponderance of urban voters in the Democratic coalition.
	The Democrats have a challenge rooted in political geography and the institution of single-member, first-past-the-post elections.
	Anzia argues the density of Democratic voters in cities has geographically isolated the party and empowered its most progressive activist wing.
	She says that Democrats have, quote, collectively staked out positions that have alienated certain supporters, which is related to the built-in challenge I just described.
	In other words, they have created an echo chamber in the major cities, heavily minority-based, but also heavily elite, media, college-educated, liberal, white, voter-based.
	And that is completely out of touch with the rest of America.
	Anzia says the murder of George Floyd and BLM brought policing reform to the agenda in a way that hadn't been before.
	However, one defines the specifics of what that should mean.
	I do think it sounds extreme and scary to a lot of people when they say defund the police.
	This happens to be the case not just with regard to crime, but also with regard to things like gender.
	Eric Schickler, political science at Berkeley, described the most likely outcome of the 2022 elections as part of a cycle of disappointment and recrimination.
	And not only has plagued Biden's first two years in office, but also dogged his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton in 94 and Barack Obama in 2010.
	The pattern?
	Republicans provided unified opposition to Democrats' agenda.
	Democrats struggled to corral all of their members behind their program.
	The party's own voters grew frustrated by the disappointing results compared to expectations.
	But that's really not the issue.
	The real issue is that they are out of touch.
	They're out of touch with their own constituency.
	Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow at Brookings said, quote, the white working class that used to vote Democratic no longer does.
	She says when she studied at this group back in 2018, what surprised me most was their very negative attitudes towards government, their dislike of social welfare programs, their commitment to an ethic of personal responsibility, and the importance of family and religion in their lives.
	This large group includes some people who are just plain prejudiced, but a larger group that simply resents all the attention paid to race, gender, sexual preference, or identity, and the disrespect they think this entails for those with more traditional views and lifestyles.
	Sawhill says that these messages coming from progressive members of the Democratic Party will, quote, be exploited Correct.
	Correct.
	But they can't stop.
	So this is why it matters when Katonji Brown-Jackson says she doesn't know what a woman is.
	But the idea that you guys are just going to keep doubling down on your radicalism is not going to alleviate the worries of people who are in the middle.
	It is foolish to continue to mirror the echo chamber politics of your own people.
	But this is precisely what the media do.
	See, there's a great irony here.
	The media are capable of drawing extraordinary attention on just non-issues.
	They're capable of falsifying entire... They're capable of shutting down major stories.
	They are also capable of blinding the Democratic Party to such a point that they fall completely out of touch with their own voting base.
	When you create an echo chamber, the good news for you, if you're the Democratic Party, is in that echo chamber there are lots and lots of people.
	And those people tend to believe what you say.
	The bad news is that if you are also in the echo chamber, you have no idea there's an entire group of people outside the echo chamber who are not listening to what you say and think that what you're saying is just crazy.
	And more and more, this is the Democratic Party.
	This is why you see, for example, Gavin Newsom's wife celebrating Women's History Month by celebrating a dude.
	A trans man.
	A trans woman.
	A biological man.
	And also Angela Davis.
	A communist.
	Right?
	I mean, here we go.
	There's five Golden State Trailblazers to celebrate this Women's History Month.
	Dolores Huerta is a labor leader.
	Angela Davis, who actively was involved in terrorism in the 70s.
	Del Martin and Phyllis Leon.
	Izanayola, who is, in fact, a dude.
	Joan Didion, who was kind of a conservative, actually.
	But, you know, if this is your listicle of women to celebrate during Women's History Month, and it includes a biological man, I'm going to say that you are out of touch with the vast majority of the American people.
	But this is what the media do.
	This is what they do.
	They have created, I mean, I have an example of just how out of touch the media is, and it's kind of from a bizarre place.
	So, number one, never go to the New York Times advice columnist for advice.
	There's a piece by the ethicist, okay, who's not an ethicist, because there's nothing ethical about this person.
	Kwame Anthony Appiah, writing for the New York Times.
	And here is the question.
	This is actually, there are two separate questions in this advice mailbag, and both of them have, I would say, less than stellar answers.
	One is about a daughter who is like 15 years old and is sleeping with her female best friend in the house.
	Should I tell the parents?
	So things are going great.
	Here is the one, however, that I want to focus in on, okay?
	Here's the question, quote, I am an anesthesiologist at a busy multi-surgeon plastic surgery practice.
	One of the surgeons has started offering a tongue bifurcation procedure, wherein the tongue is split down the middle, creating a lizard-like appearance for patients who are interested in body modification.
	I find I have a deep aversion to this surgery to the point where I would like to refuse to take part.
	However, this means one of my partners would be stuck with the work or worse, that a procedure might need to be canceled and rescheduled to the inconvenience of patient and surgeon.
	I also recognize I willingly take part in other body modifications like breast implants, rhinoplasty, and gender-affirming surgery.
	Is it reasonable for me to draw a line?
	Name withheld.
	First of all, we might ask this particular doctor whatever happened to the Hippocratic Oath in Do No Harm.
	It turns out that gender reassignment surgery Doesn't actually reassign gender.
	Or gender affirmation surgery, which is the most Orwellian phrase in the English language.
	You are not affirming anything.
	You are literally saying that your biological sex is wrong, and what you have in your head about your biological sex is somehow right, though completely unverifiable.
	You're not affirming anything.
	You are mutilating somebody.
	Okay, bottom line here is that this person has now gotten rid of any available standard.
	The Hippocratic Oath was do no harm.
	It turns out that chopping off somebody's d*** would be doing some harm to them.
	Probably.
	That is not the case with, for example, a rhinoplasty, which is not particularly doing harm.
	When it comes to breast implant surgery, it depends on the breast implant surgery, generally it's not doing harm.
	When it comes to splitting someone's tongue down the middle for no reason, this would also be a violation of do no harm.
	But because we are completely libertarian oriented consent based society, this person has to ask the question.
	And here's the New York Times advice columnist quote, people who seek this lizard like look are doing something to their bodies that in most states they are free to do.
	No third parties are being harmed.
	So ask yourself what basis you have for not participating in their surgery.
	If your revulsion derives from an aesthetic disagreement, does that mean you think all the other surgeries you engage in result in aesthetic improvements?
	Is it any of your business if clients choose to make themselves less attractive to you?
	The most obvious reason not to participate in this procedure would be an undue risk of complications.
	The American Dental Association advises against tongue splitting, deeming it an invasive procedure with negative health sequelae, including severe bleeding, infection, and nerve damage that outweigh any potential benefit.
	It's unclear how the association calculates the benefits.
	People who split tongues aren't trying to appeal to you or me.
	They're presumably trying to look cool or otherwise attractive to members of a particular subculture.
	Buttock augmentation may appeal to a wider set, but it too can involve various risks.
	Infection, capsular contracture, sciatic neuropathy, fat embolism, and if you generally objected to surgery performed without a medical objective, you would surely have a range of other procedures in your sights too.
	Is there a principal distinction to be drawn here?
	Possibly.
	You'd have to have reliable data about the rates of serious complications.
	Well, you guys don't care about the rates of serious complications when it comes to gender reassignment surgery.
	You don't care.
	At all.
	At all.
	It turns out that the chances of adverse consequences really are substantially higher for this procedure than for the others your practice offers.
	You'd have a solid first do no harm argument, not only for refraining, but also from discouraging your colleagues from continuing to offer the service.
	But if you find yourself making this case, be sure it's more than a yuck response masquerading as a safety concern.
	You don't want to be speaking with forked tongue.
	How dare you judge people who want to chop their tongues down the middle?
	How dare you?
	This is the media that is determining democratic priorities these days.
	Very, very solid stuff here.
	And the same media, which by the way, is upholding politicians as geniuses like AOC.
	Good piece by Kat Rosenfield today, over at UnHerd, talking about how AOC is completely useless in terms of legislation.
	She says Alexander Ocasio-Cortez takes up space on magazine covers, cable news, social media, where her followers number in the millions across multiple platforms.
	Her Twitter account alone, with 12 million followers, is not just an order of magnitude larger than most junior politicians, but over twice as large as the followings of the other three members of her squad combined.
	Her influence is inestimable.
	She's a giant in the eyes of her fans and an enormous rent-free presence in the heads of the people who hate her.
	This, of course, is part of her cachet.
	Take Up Space has become a feminist war cry, a clapback at the offensive old mores that say women should be small and slender and quiet.
	It is to this war cry, presumably, that Take Up Space, the unprecedented AOC, refers.
	This is a brand new book out from New York Magazine about AOC called Take Up Space.
	But, says Kat Rosenfeld, the title of the new biography of our youngest ever congresswoman works on multiple levels.
	For one thing, it's a good description of the book itself.
	Printed on luxuriously heavy stock, so it bears the heft of a pint-sized coffee table tome.
	It's also a fitting description of its subject, who is so ubiquitous as to be inescapable.
	And yet, for all the mental and media real estate occupied by Ocasio-Cortez, says Cat Rosenfeld, she's far more famous for being who she is than for what she's accomplished.
	Which brings us to the double entendre.
	Before it became something that brave and iconic women do, taking up space was primarily the purview of useless objects.
	Correct.
	And this entire book from New York Magazine is designed as sort of a fetishist guide to AOC, according to Kat Rosenfeld.
	Quote, For instance, almost dead center in the book is a two-page full-color high-definition spread depicting AOC's open mouth, like a Playboy centerfold for oratory fetishists.
	Elsewhere in the book, there's a graphic, novelized narrative about a congresswoman's visit to the detention centers at the Mexican border, in which she appears as a heroic figure surrounded by over-the-top, comic-book-style villainy.
	In one panel, a guard stands outside a pen of sleeping women and screams, Wake up, whores!
	An incident I was shocked I hadn't heard about until I realized it was invented.
	There's a chapter devoted exclusively to her greatest Twitter dunks, each one diagrammed to illustrate the machinations of her political genius.
	As a political biography, it's odd.
	But as partisan pornography, it's undeniably fantastic.
	The value of the book is the mirror it holds up to a culture in which public service and celebrity have become uncomfortably intertwined.
	But here is the thing.
	The same media that has made AOC a hero means that she has, um, She has moved into an uncomfortable political space in which she is guiding the priorities of her party.
	And she has an extreme sensitivity to slights, as Kat Rosenfeld notes.
	She takes shots at her other members of her party.
	Of course, she suggested that I was catcalling her when I suggested that I would donate a bunch of money to a charity in order to have a debate.
	She suggested that was catcalling.
	All of this for AOC is about the publicity.
	But this is the Democratic Party.
	They are guided by the AOCs of the world.
	And it is frankly a mistake by them.
	It is leading to the polarization of society in dramatic ways, and they're going to lose.
	They're going to lose because of it, and they deserve to lose because of it.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
	First, you can't forget to end your week by tuning in to The Andrew Klavan Show.
	Drew's show is every Friday.
	He's got an exciting evening planned for you.
	So head on over to dailywire.com at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, 6 p.m.
	Central, and tune in.
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	Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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