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April 13, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
42:58
The Poop Bird Comes For Joe Biden | Ep. 1473
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Joe Biden tries to brush off inflation but gets pooped on by a bird.
Hollywood won't say gay in China.
And a mass shooting in a New York subway station rocks the city.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Join them at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
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Well, we begin today with the inflation news, which, again, is terrible, and was widely expected, according to the Wall Street Journal, U.S.
inflation surged to a new four-decade high of 8.5% in March from the same month a year ago, driven by skyrocketing energy and food costs, supply constraints, and strong consumer demand.
It's a lot of fun what's happening here under Joe Biden, isn't it?
I didn't think that this man could set so many things on fire so quickly, but it turns out that when you have a senile old doof in the White House who's running around spilling gasoline and then lighting matches, this is what happens.
The Labor Department on Tuesday said the Consumer Price Index, which measures what consumers pay for goods and services, last month rose at its fastest annual pace since December 1981, up from the 7.9 percent annual rate in February.
Rising prices have been unrelenting.
This is six straight months of inflation above 6 percent.
That is well above the Federal Reserve's average 2 percent target.
U.S.
stocks gave up their early gains.
Government bond yields declined following the inflation report.
So this is all just stellar stuff.
For their part, the Biden White House is trying to downplay all of this.
So Joe Biden was in Iowa trying to downplay this by suggesting it is the Putin price hike.
This is eminently untrue, as we'll explore in just one moment.
Here was Joe Biden.
I'm not going to wait to take action to help American families.
I'm doing everything within my power by executive orders to bring down the price and address the Putin price hike.
In fact, we've already made progress since March.
Inflation data was collected.
Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.
Okay, so here's the problem for Joe Biden.
First of all, anytime he leans over during a speech, you're just afraid he's not going to be able to lean back.
He's going to lose his center of gravity and like the leaning tower of Pisa in slow motion, except in fast motion for Joe Biden.
You may have noticed that he had something on his lapel there.
That is because he was pooped on by a bird while he was speaking about inflation yesterday, which is just the best symbolism ever.
You can see it right here.
This is the American Eagle.
Pooping on Joe Biden as he speaks in Iowa about how he's got inflation under control.
And the American Eagle's like, I will have none of that, sir.
That's not hyperbole.
It's about being made in America.
A lot of that has to do with this industry.
Bonk.
No, it's not Joe Biden's fault that he got pooped on by a bird.
I'm just going to say that symbolism in politics matters a little bit, and the fact that birds are pooping on the President of the United States while he is speaking about how he is handling inflation, yes, that is how we all feel.
In the words of Triumph, the comic insulted dog, I poop on you.
When Joe Biden says that it is the Putin price hike, this is obviously untrue.
So let me show you just a couple of graphs to demonstrate how untrue this is.
First of all, here's a graph of U.S.
inflation versus European inflation.
What you'll notice is that European inflation, which is orange in this graph, is significantly lower consistently and always than U.S.
inflation.
But that is particularly true under Joe Biden.
So, you know, U.S.
inflation wasn't all that high for the past 20 years.
And there were a few times when European inflation was a little bit above the United States, but after the COVID downturn, what you see is that the inflation rates in Europe basically went down to zero.
The inflation rates in the United States ran at like one and a half percent.
And then under Joe Biden, just this skyrocketing inflation.
And you see some increase in inflation in Europe, but the European inflation rates right now, like you're talking about like 5% as of February, and you're talking about nearly 8% for the United States.
So if this were just a matter of Putin's price hike, you would think that the inflation rates would be worse in, say, Europe, where they are wildly dependent on Vladimir Putin's natural oil and gas.
So you would think that that's not the story.
So that is graph number one, demonstrating that Joe Biden is a liar.
Here's graph number two.
So Joe Biden says that it is Putin's price hike.
This right here is a graph of inflation in the United States.
And what it shows, for those who are only listening and can't see this, is that beginning, in the beginning of 2021, when Joe Biden took office, inflation starts to skyrocket.
It goes from a little bit under 2% to, by summer, about 5%, and then it stays at kind of 5%, and then it's already spiking up to almost 8% by the time that Putin actually invades.
So what the chart looks like is a huge mountain, and then very tip-top of that peak is right after Putin invaded.
So yeah, when he says Putin's price hike, that's just a lie.
It's just not true at all.
And clearly untrue.
So yes, he is lying.
But even the media are like, yeah, this is not true.
So for example, you have CBS White House correspondent Ed O'Keefe.
He's like, yeah, this Putin price hike talk.
That's just that's just not true.
I'm sorry.
The White House says those price jumps are happening because of the war and what they call, quote, Putin's price hike.
But remember, prices started spiking well before the war in Ukraine began.
CBS News polling out this week shows nearly 70% of Americans disapprove of President Biden's handling of inflation.
66% say the higher prices have been difficult or a hardship.
So, when CBS News is calling you out, it's a problem.
When CNN is calling you out, it's even more of a problem.
Here's CNN's Caitlin Collins being like, yeah, no, this is not just the gas prices.
All of these steps that they are taking because they know what they are facing with these prices, with the inflation numbers the way they are, which we should know, it's not just being driven by gas.
It's also being driven by other things.
Food prices as well are up.
But of course, this is really a main pressure point for the White House.
So yes, this is a big problem for Joe Biden.
The good news is that Joe Biden is totally on top of this thing.
And when he's not being pooped on by birds, he's absolutely on top of this.
He's a coherent president with a clear policy agenda.
Here he is randomly whispering in to a microphone and then making the microphone scream, as you would if Joe Biden whispered into your ear.
We've gone from waiting for infrastructure week, now you've got infrastructure.
Infrastructure, decade, ten years.
Infrastructure decade.
Ten years.
Okay, but by the way, when you talk about how you're going to solve inflation by pouring money into infrastructure, this is because you're already dumb dumb.
I will give credit to Joe Biden for at least having the introspection to point out that he's a very boring individual.
So he did say during his speech that he was even starting to bore himself.
Bars often need to be split into smaller groups to make it through taking hours and sometimes greater delays.
With new modern locks, we're going to help farmers get their products to market faster, more efficiently, lower cost, and keep American acres globally competitive.
Folks, the list goes on.
I'm starting to bore myself here, but this is important stuff.
I think.
I think.
Yeah, join the club, Joe.
So yes, that poop was not just on behalf of that bird.
That poop was on behalf of all of us.
Meanwhile, the White House is trying to say that Joe Biden isn't trying to shift blame.
So you got Joe Biden out there being like, it's Putin's price, put a hand on it.
And then you have the White House economic advisor, Jared Bernstein, out there being like, Biden's not shifting blame.
Why would you think that Biden is trying to shift blame?
We would never try to shift the blame.
You are a little, I noticed.
Here we go.
You guys seem to be blaming everyone but yourselves for even a teeny part of this.
Well, I don't think that's accurate at all.
I mean, I think what we've tried to say... It's the Putin... Hold on, wait a second.
It's the war.
Let me respond, hold on.
I never hear, hey, some of this is on me, but I'm going to fix it.
Wait a second.
Hold on.
Let me address that directly in two ways.
First of all, March inflation up 1.2%.
That's for the month.
That's elevated.
70% of that is energy costs.
Over 60% is gas alone.
We know that Putin has his bloody fingerprints all over that.
So, in the same clip, he's like, I'm not trying to shift blame, but it's Putin's fault.
And then White House economic advisor Jesse Lee went even further.
He actually said, if you blame Joe Biden for inflation, it's because you are illegal with Vladimir Putin.
So in other words, if you have a brain and eyeballs, then this means that you are in league with Vladimir Putin.
Quote, Putin and Senator Rick Scott fully in lockstep and blaming Biden for Putin's price hike.
So surprising.
Oh, this is so tiring.
It's so tiresome.
So the president of the United States clearly is doing a bad job on inflation.
And if you mention this, it must be because you're in league with Putin.
Because everything that the left has decided since 2016 is that if you do something they don't like, it's because you are somehow In league with Vladimir Putin or Putin is sponsoring you because Putin is the man behind the scenes with the marionette strings pulling your strings.
He's paying you to say that Joe Biden is responsible for the massive inflation we have seen crushing American consumers and investors and savers.
And by the way, I guess that means that Joe Manchin is now on the same page as Vladimir Putin.
So I didn't know that Joe Manchin was a Putin-esque cat paw, but apparently he is.
So here's what Joe Manchin had to say.
He said, quote, When will this end?
It is a disservice to the American people to act as if inflation is a new phenomenon.
The Federal Reserve and the administration failed to act fast enough.
Today's data is a snapshot in time of the consequences being felt across the country.
Instead of acting boldly, our elected leaders and the Federal Reserve continue to respond with half measures and rhetorical failures, searching for where to lay the blame.
The American people deserve the truth about why record inflation is happening and what must be done to control it.
And one of the reasons that Joe Manchin is the one pushing this out, you know, actually saying this, is because Joe Manchin opposes the part of Joe Biden's agenda that exacerbates inflation.
Remember, this inflation is hitting pretty much everywhere in the American economy.
Here are the stats.
Inflation has now skyrocketed in the last month 8.5%.
That outpaced wage gains by almost 3%.
Inflation has flooded every area of American life.
You're talking about gas up 48%, airfare up 24%, furniture 16%, milk 13%.
Inflation is costing the average American family hundreds of dollars every single month.
Thousands of dollars a year.
And by the way, the claim, as I mentioned again, that it was Vladimir Putin that did this is just ludicrous.
In February 2021, the month after Biden took office, the inflation rate was 1.7%.
In April 2021, it was 4.2%.
In May 2021, the inflation rate was 5%.
In October, it was 6.2%.
In November, it was 6.8%.
In January, it was 7.5%.
In May 2021, the inflation rate was 5%.
In October, it was 6.2%.
In November, it was 6.8%.
In January, it was 7.5%.
You'll notice all of that happened before Putin invaded Ukraine.
And again, it's not just supply chain issues, because that should be affecting Europe somewhat equivalently to the way it's affecting the United States.
And it just is not.
I mean, these inflation statistics, they can keep you up at night.
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Now the real reasons for inflation are pretty clear.
One, is that the Federal Reserve has done a horrible job of reining in its own Electrified spending policy.
So the Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the economy for a decade and a half.
And this is the predictable consequence of pumping money into the system for a decade and a half.
Between 2008 and 2015, the Federal Fund's effective rate, which is the overnight lending rate that the Federal Funds set, the Federal Reserve sets, where banks lend money to each other backed by the Federal Reserve so they can shore up their balance sheets at the end of every day.
The Federal Fund's effective rate was essentially zero.
It rose to about 2.25% in May 2019, and then it dived back down to zero as a stimulative measure to try and stimulate the economy during the COVID lockdowns.
Which means the Federal Reserve essentially from 2008 to now subsidized spending at a 0% interest rate.
The problem didn't stop there because during the COVID downturn, the Federal Reserve purchased about $4 trillion in assets, picking up a bunch of troubled assets and injecting more money into the economy that is going to supercharge the economy.
So all that's the Federal Reserve.
Some of that is on Trump.
Some of that is on Biden.
But one of the things that is supercharged, this under Biden specifically, Is the ridiculously spend thrift policy by the Biden administration.
The Trump administration in 2020 spent an enormous amount of money.
Now the case can be made is bipartisan spending, Democrats and Republicans.
The case can be made that some of that spending was necessary because when you lock people in their homes, even if they are young and healthy and tell them they're not allowed to go to a restaurant or go back to work, you're going to have to fill in that gap somehow.
And the federal government basically just paying people to stay home for prolonged periods of time is going to amount to extraordinary spending.
But here's the problem.
Joe Biden came into office and none of that was necessary.
We had vaccines by the beginning of Joe Biden's administration.
By April, every elderly person in the United States had had the opportunity to take the vaccine.
My parents got it at the end of February and they're 65.
Now, this bizarre notion that you needed to continue to stimulate the economy to the tune of trillions of dollars, it's totally crazy.
In 2020, the government spent about $6.6 trillion in federal outlays.
In 2020 year, the year of the amazing recovery, the government spent $7.2 trillion.
And this is going to be the new normal from here on out.
Projected spending for every year, and that's projected, okay?
That's not going to include all the new discretionary spending that people are going to add on top of it.
We went from spending, in this country, about $3 trillion a year prior to the 2008 recession, to spending about $4 trillion a year after the 2008 recession, to spending $6 trillion a year in 2020.
And I promise you, within two years, we'll be spending $7 trillion a year in this country.
All of this is wildly unsustainable.
The federal debt burden in the United States is now $30 trillion.
And that does not include the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare.
That's just the stuff we've already borrowed.
That is utterly unsustainable over the long term.
So why are you surprised that the currency is inflated?
And what you really should be worried about is the fact that in bipartisan fashion, but really exacerbated by Democratic administrations like Joe Biden and Barack Obama, what you've got here is a tremendous failure to rein in spending that is going to create economic stagnation in the long term.
Inflation is a really bad short-term problem, and it will get solved over the course of the next year and a half by the Federal Reserve ratcheting up those interest rates in dramatic fashion.
We'll probably tip over into a recession in order to do that.
The Federal Reserve actually does know how to do it.
It's just ugly and no one wants to do it, but they know how to do this.
The bigger problem is when you saddle the American economy with tens of trillions of dollars in debt and you create new mandatory spending programs, which is what Joe Biden wants to do.
When you do that, you're burdening the American economy with such a heavy burden that there's no way that the spindly legs of American capitalism can maintain that burden.
This is not a matter of a straw breaking a camel's back.
This is a matter of a truck breaking a camel's back.
You cannot pile this kind of spending on top of the American economy and regulate the American economy and tax the people who actually generate the revenue at exorbitant rates and then expect the American economy to be able to hold up to this.
But that's exactly what Joe Biden is pursuing right here.
So when they try to shift blame, recognize that it's just a lie.
They can't shift the blame because this is indeed their fault.
And if Republicans take power again, they need to be looking at the sort of measures that are going to rein in the spending because the long-term problem here is spending and fiscal policy, not merely the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.
Again, the Wall Street Journal points out just how untrue it is that this has nothing to do with Joe Biden.
They say the nearby chart shows the inflation trend began in earnest a year ago at the onset of the Biden presidency.
It has accelerated for most of the last 12 months.
That's long before Putin decided to invade.
The timing reflects too much money chasing too few goods owing mainly to the combination of vast federal spending and easy monetary policy.
President Trump signed on to an unnecessary $900 billion COVID relief bill in December 2020.
Democrats threw kerosene on the kindling with another $1.9 trillion in March 2021.
The Federal Reserve continues to support negative real interest rates.
Nearly two years after the pandemic recession ended, that inflation was made in Washington, D.C.
The overall price news is terrible for American workers and consumers.
The March surge means real wages fell 0.8% or a decline of 2.7% in the last year.
Real average weekly earnings fell a striking $4.26 in March alone, and they have fallen nearly $18 during the Biden presidency.
Even the core inflation of 6.5% is more than three times the Fed's target rate of 2%.
Bottom line is that the fiscal and economic policy pursued by members of both parties because no one wishes to speak the honest truth to the American people about the fact that there are consequences to spending, it leads to some pretty dire consequences and that is what you are seeing right now.
Okay, meanwhile...
Hollywood, it's a very principled place, Hollywood.
It's so principled that they let off the Oscars with intellectual and comedic luminaries like Wanda Sykes and Amy Schumer and some lady who I'd never heard of shouting gay at you.
Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay.
Remember that?
Because after all, Florida has a bill that says you're not allowed to sexually indoctrinate young children.
And this has been deemed by the left to be the don't say gay bill.
So they say that we have to say gay as often as humanly possible in a state like Florida where gay people literally have all the rights that they have everywhere else in the United States.
But we have to pretend that Florida is a really, really backward, horrifying place where gay people cannot live their lives, which of course is wildly untrue.
Now the thing is, Hollywood can say this because they know that they can get away with it.
They know two things.
One, that there will be no governmental punishment for Hollywood for saying this sort of stuff, nor should there be because this is a free country.
And number two, That most American consumers will probably ignore what they are saying and then just go watch movies as they see fit.
However, Hollywood's principled stand on behalf of LGBTQ plus IA minus quotation mark, carrot, backslash, colon, semicolon, hashtag, tilde.
It seems that their courage ends where their bank account begins.
Because now, as it turns out, Warner Bros.
has stripped a direct reference to a gay relationship from Fantastic Beasts The Secrets of Dumbledore for the film's Chinese release.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, which confirmed that Warner Bros.
admitted to the move, the studio scrubbed the film of clear references to Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald's intimate past.
Now you'll recall that this was a dumb move by J.K.
Rowling after all the books came out, which had no sexual orientation talk in the books because they are directed at children, and J.K.
Rowling is not stupid enough to undermine her own market.
She did an interview where she's like, yeah, Dumbledore is gay, and everyone's like, okay, fine, Dumbledore is gay, whatever.
So now they're putting it in the movies.
Again, directed at children, which is pretty wild.
But in China, they don't really like that sort of stuff.
So what did Hollywood do?
Did they say gay?
Did they show the power of their principle and say to the Chinese, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, gay?
No, of course not.
Of course not.
Well, you learn something new about Hollywood every day.
But you know where you really can learn something new every single day?
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That's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Okay, so according to Mediaite, Jude Law portrays Dumbledore in the Harry Potter prequel series.
It is worth the listen at it's your podcast rotation.
That's the Jordan Harbinger show.
H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R, in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening right this moment.
Okay, so according to Mediaite, Jude Law portrays Dumbledore in the Harry Potter prequel series.
Grindelwald is played by Mads Mikkelsen.
Used to be played by Johnny Depp.
While Harry Potter author J.K. Riddell Rowling revealed Dumbledore was gay in 2009.
You can't reveal that one of your characters is gay like 10 years after you write the character.
The movies had never explicitly mentioned the character's sexuality until The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Dumbledore's lines, I was in love with you, and the summer Gellert and I fell in love, which marked the first time he professed his sexuality, were taken out of the film in China.
While the dialogue amounts to just 6 seconds of the 143 minute film, and other allusions to Dumbledore and Grindelwald's relationship remained intact, the moment was crucial to understanding the Hogwarts professor's past.
So Warner Bros.
actually issued a statement, quote, As a studio, we're committed to safeguarding the integrity of every film we release, and that extends to circumstances that necessitate making nuanced cuts in order to respond sensitively to a variety of in-market factors.
That's a nice way of saying we just completely collapsed to the Chinese regime.
Our hope is to release our features worldwide as released by their creators, but historically, we've faced small edits made in local markets.
In the case of Fantastic Beasts, The Secrets of Dumbledore, a six-second cut was requested, and Warner Bros.
accepted those changes to comply with local requirements, but the spirit of the film remains intact.
Yeah, I'm sure that this will please.
Glad.
We want audiences everywhere in the world to see and enjoy this film.
It's important to us.
Chinese audiences have the opportunity to experience it as well, even with these minor edits.
So, in other words, you guys are just complete cowards.
You're complete cowards.
You are totally principled, exactly to the point where it starts to hurt your pocketbook, at which point you're like, those gay people!
Whatever, I mean, China's got a really big market, guys.
Okay, so what this should tell conservatives in the United States is one, use your market power.
Use your market power, because Hollywood does respond to market incentives.
If you stop going to movies that you think spit on your values, Hollywood will have to respond.
And if they don't respond, we here at Daily Wire are happy to take your money for DW Entertainment or DW Kids and provide you with entertainment that you actually seek.
But Hollywood, again, their principles run precisely as deep as their pocketbook.
And we'll see if there's any blowback.
Of course there won't be blowback, because here's the thing.
All of the actors, all the Wanda Sykes and the Amy Schumers of the world, they want their movies released in China too.
That's why you have John Cena speaking Mandarin to apologize for having referred to Taiwan as a country at one point.
All these people are as corrupt as the day is long.
And their pretend principles are nothing like principle at all.
There are a few of them who may be principled enough to lose the money to make the stand.
But that is a very, very limited number of human beings over in Hollywood.
Speaking of grifters.
Incredible story out from the Washington Examiner today about Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors.
So you now have to say Black Lives Matter was one of the great scams in American history, maybe the greatest scam in American history.
Corporations spent $21 billion on Black Lives Matter associated causes in 2020 to back a lie, which is that American police are systemically racist and targeting black people for no reason other than their race.
It was a lie, it was promulgated by the media and corporations in order to buy the woke crowd, basically threw a bunch of bucks at a bunch of organizations, and then the money just sort of disappeared.
Black Lives Matter, the organization itself, took in 90 million dollars over the course of 2020, and we have no idea where any of that money went.
It just went right down that, right down that rat hole.
So when people accuse political people of grift, just understand, this is the greatest grift I have ever seen.
It's an amazing grift.
According to the Washington Examiner, laws that require charities to disclose their finances and activities to the public endanger the lives of activists, according to Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors.
The embattled activist was facing renewed criticism following reports BLM Global Network Foundation, while under her control, purchased a $6 million L.A.
mansion.
That's a sweet gig right there.
You take a 90 million bucks and you're like, six million will be spent on my personal mansion, which is necessary to save black lives.
Or alternatively, to make this black life a lot better.
Said she gets triggered whenever she hears the... She said she gets triggered when she hears the term IRS Form 990.
The document charities are required to file to the public every year, disclosing their financial activities.
So here is Patrice Cullors talking about just how corrupt she is.
It is such a trip now to hear the word, the term, 990s.
I'm like, ugh, it's triggering.
April 15th is next week, yo.
This doesn't seem safe for us, this 990 structure, this nonprofit system structure.
This is deeply unsafe.
This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with.
I can't tell you how many people are like, am I next?
Oh my god, you mean they might be asked about how they're spending the money?
That's crazy.
That's totally crazy.
Wow.
I mean, oh, shocking.
And so, really...
The grift goes on.
Now, is The Left ever going to cover any of this?
Of course not.
It's one of the great scams in American history, and they were all participants in the scam.
The idea was that if you paid your little religious indulgence to Black Lives Matter, they would leave you alone.
And then they took that money and they used it on... I mean, listen, this has been a scam in American life.
The race-baiting scam has been a scam in American life since Al Sharpton was claiming that Tawana Browley was raped by a DA.
And still you have politicians who arrive at the National Action Network to give Al Sharpton, one of the great grifters in American history, piles of cash so that he will then pretend that he has absolved you of your racial guilt and sins.
You have major corporations like Macy's in New York.
He'll accuse them of racial profiling without any evidence and they'll be like, what if we give a donation to the National Action Network?
This ain't about principle, it's about the money.
Follow the money.
I love that Cullors is now saying that if you're asked for a 990, this means that racial discrimination is happening.
Quote, people's morale in an organization is so important, but if their organization and the people in there are being attacked and scrutinized at everything they do, that leads to deep burnout, that leads to deep resistance and trauma.
Let me just point out that under Barack Obama, the IRS actively targeted conservative 501c3s for destruction for no reason other than the fact that they were conservative.
There were documents to this effect from Lois Lerner at the IRS and no one was prosecuted.
And if the right yelled about it, which we did, then you were accused of just seeking to avoid the consequences of the law.
Here you have a person who's clearly grifting for millions and millions of dollars, and she is just complaining openly about the fact that she might be audited.
She says they know what they're doing, how to create the infighting, how to create the distrust.
We have to stop it before they do.
We have to shut it down.
We have to be showing up against it.
So I would like to point out here, That this is cult behavior.
So the way that cults typically work is that if you question the leadership of the cult, the cult immediately goes into defense mode and says it's an attack on all of us.
It's an attack on all of us.
If you're questioning why this cult leader is having sex with the wives of all of the members, that is an attack on our entire ideology.
It's an attack on all of us.
Okay, so Patrice Cullors is doing that routine here.
If you ask why she bought herself a $6 million mansion with a bunch of donations directed against systemic racism, she'll be like, that's an attack on all of us.
They know how to divide us.
It's us versus them.
Ah, the grift.
Ah, the grift.
The grift is strong on the left.
Okay, meanwhile.
Major story of the day yesterday is that there was this unbelievable subway shooting in New York.
At least 29 people were injured in this mass shooting.
According to the New York Post, a madman disguised as a construction worker turned a Brooklyn subway car into a bloodbath during the early morning rush on Tuesday, setting off smoke bombs before opening fire and wounding 29 people.
The shooter was wearing a neon orange and green construction vest and a neon green helmet and muttering to himself on a Manhattan-bound N train when he unleashed a bloody havoc just before 8.30 a.m.
The gunman suddenly put on a gas mask and released two smoke grenades as the car pulled into the 36th Street station in Sunset Park.
Oops, my bad, the suspect mumbled, according to witness Fitim Jaloshi, after opening the canister and then pulling out an axe and dropping it on the floor.
As the crowded subway car filled with smoke, the shooter took out a 9mm semi-automatic Glock and fired 33 rounds at commuters, hitting 10 victims, leaving at least 19 others wounded.
Those hurt include two teenagers aged 15 and 19, a pregnant woman shot in the leg, seven men, three women, law enforcement said.
Of the ten victims hit by gunfire, five were listed in critical but stable condition.
Others suffered from smoke inhalation and other related injuries.
Police later identified the shooter.
He said he'd been treated for mental health issues at a facility with violence, not physical, but the kind of violence a child experiences in grade school that would make him go get a gun and start shooting mother effers.
A stranger named Claire, who witnessed the shooting, said of the gunman, I thought he was an MTA worker at first.
Adding, so many rounds were fired, she lost count.
The gun which was used by the shooter had three extended magazines on him.
It jammed in the middle of the bloodshed.
One of the magazines was found in a backpack.
The other was on a seat.
And the third in the weapon.
The gun's malfunction was a fluke.
Law enforcement sources liken to a miracle.
Law enforcement says it was lucky it was jammed.
We could be talking about a lot more people in the hospital or worse.
Now, you may have noticed, I've now read several paragraphs into this New York Post story.
And the question that you may be asking to yourself is, what is the physical description of the suspect?
Right?
You might be asking that to yourself.
What is the physical description of the suspect?
We're now like 20 paragraphs deep into the story.
The answer is that he is a 5'5 black man.
Now, if you watch the early coverage of the story, you would never see any of that.
And it matters an awful lot when you're trying to track down a suspect at large, the physical description of the suspect.
And you know that if this was a white guy, that would have been revealed by the media immediately along with a picture.
And yet there was a real hesitance to acknowledge the race of the suspect in the early going here, because to do so might trigger thoughts and feelings of racism in people is always the idea.
Now, here is the thing.
If a crazy black person shoots a bunch of people on a subway platform, and your immediate response is, all black people are bad, this makes you a racist, and you're stupid, and there's no reason why we should take you seriously.
But what is incredible to me is that a media whose job it is to provide a description of a person who is at large for shooting nearly 30 people, refused for hours to mention the physical description of the suspect.
Out of fear that you might have bad thoughts.
You.
The real issue is not capturing the guy who just shot 30 people.
The real issue is you might have bad and negative thoughts.
It takes until like, again, maybe 25 paragraphs into this New York Post story before you get to the actual race of the suspect.
Not just below the fold.
It's like way down in the fold.
It is mentioned, his race is mentioned precisely one time in the story, and not in the context of the shooting.
Quote, a neighbor who saw a black man park a U-Haul on Monday night on West 3rd Street near Kings Highway reported it to police late Tuesday after realizing there had been a shooting on a nearby train line.
So, really well done.
Again, it's kind of incredible to me.
Here is the timeline of events that was provided by the NYPD commissioner in all of this, Kishant Sewell, providing a timeline of events.
824 this morning as a Manhattan bound N train waited to enter the 36th Street station an individual on that train donned what appeared to be a gas mask.
He then took a canister out of his bag and opened it.
The train at that time began to fill with smoke.
He then opened fire striking multiple people on the subway and in the platform.
So, obviously horrifying.
The, uh...
The NYPD commissioner also suggested that the subway attack was not being investigated as terrorism right away.
As it turns out, it probably was not an act of terrorism.
It depends.
I mean, let's be real about this.
We are now unclear on what the definition of terrorism for purposes of investigation of this sort of stuff.
Meaning terrorism used to be a shooting determined for political purposes to achieve a purpose.
This guy apparently was quite political.
Apparently the suspect in this particular case is on YouTube ranting and raving about race war and why black people and white people should not associate and seems to be somewhat of a black nationalist from what you can tell.
But he also is pretty clearly mentally ill.
So where's the borderline between mentally ill and terroristic?
Is that borderline easily breached?
In any case, early on it was said this was not an act of terrorism per se.
I want to begin by assuring the public that there are currently no known explosive devices on our subway trains and this is not being investigated as an act of terrorism at this time.
Okay, meanwhile, Eric Adams, the mayor of the city, he yesterday was talking about why they were reluctant to release the photo of the suspect.
This is in the early going.
And again, the answer is that if this were a white guy, I have a feeling that the suspect photo would have been released right away.
Here was Eric Adams, the mayor of the city.
Again, don't ride the subway in New York.
I got to tell you, like whether you're being pushed in front of a train or being shot in the subway station, this city is out of control.
Here's Eric Adams.
You talk about getting the public to try to help you find this suspect.
An image, a picture, would be useful, yes?
Do you anticipate being able to release one anytime soon?
Yeah, but what we don't want to do is to put out the wrong picture, the wrong image.
This must be done in a coordinated, intelligent way to make sure that whatever leads we receive, once we properly identify the person we're looking for or a person of interest, that's when you want to release that photo.
Oh, that's it.
Really?
You're going to?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So you have like a real-time crisis in terms of finding the shooter, but you're not going to release the photo because, you know, gotta be real, gotta be real careful here.
I mean, they have photos from the platform.
So, I mean, the photos are available.
You can see them now.
So they had those right away.
Well, the governance of New York is a garbage heap, and listen, there's no question leftism has been a disaster and it's getting worse every single day, which is why it's time to discuss all of it in a very special episode of Backstage Tonight.
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Obviously, a lot of what's going on in New York City is a gigantic failure of policing and that failure of policing is political.
And if you talk to New York police officers, all they want to do is be able to do their job.
But they've been spending years on end hearing from Mayor Bill de Blasio and now Mayor Eric Adams that they really shouldn't do their job.
And even Adams, who is supposed to be the pro-police Mayor, he's been rather hesitant to just unleash the police to stop the crime wave that has engulfed the city.
When people are being pushed in front of subway trains or being shot on subway platforms, at that point, you might think about actually allowing the police to do their jobs.
Eric Adams has asked a very awkward question.
The mayor of New York is asked, would you ride the subway right now?
The obvious answer is no.
I mean, really, no.
So, I mean, I have a lot of friends who live in New York City and they're all saying like, yeah, no, I'm not going to.
I'm not riding the subway.
Why'd I ride the subway?
Save a little bit of money?
I could get killed out there.
Here's Mayor Eric Adams trying to pretend that everything is all right in the city.
If you were not in COVID isolation, Mayor Adams, would you go ride the subway right now?
Yes, the New Yorkers know me.
That's one thing they would tell you.
I want to be on the front line with the people of this city, not only as a former police officer who had happened to have been A transit police officer, but this is what I do.
I ride to subways.
I'm in the subway system three and four in the morning because if I'm telling New Yorkers they could ride to subway, then I need to leave from the front and that is what I'm known to do.
So here in the city.
I mean, so I'm glad that he'll ride the subway, but he is also protected by the mayor's security contingent.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reporting, as the new year begins, New Yorkers shuttered a subway crime straight out of Urban Nightmares.
The death of a woman shoved onto the tracks by a disturbed stranger.
The city's new mayor vowed to make sure New Yorkers feel safe in our subway system.
A commuter on Tuesday morning faced an attack that evoked many riders' deepest fears.
A rush-hour train car filled with smoke as it pulled into a Brooklyn station.
Gunshots at least 33 of them rang out, wounding at least 10 people.
Frightened riders fled, so did the gunmen who remained at large on Wednesday.
Much is unknown about the attack, including whether it was an act of terrorism.
At a Tuesday evening press conference, authorities said they were looking for this Frank James 62 character who they say rented a van linked to the shooting.
It was a searing reminder of the city's unyielding battle with gun violence and the specter of terror-like attacks that hangs over New York City, and particularly the subway system that is its transportation backbone.
Oh, is it really about the battles with gun violence and terror attacks, or is it about the fact that you guys undercut the cops for years on end, to the point that when Mayor Bill de Blasio would go to the funerals for cops who had been slain in the line of duty, police officers from the Fraternal Order of Police would literally turn their backs on de Blasio.
Maybe it's that.
Police and security officers have made many attempts to harden the city against such attacks, putting officers on trains and platforms, installing cameras, even doing rare spot checks for weapons on passengers entering stations.
Yet the sprawling system with nearly 500 stations largely remains, like the city streets themselves, too big to guard, too busy to completely secure.
So I love how the media is covering this.
It's just an unsolvable problem.
There's only one issue with this.
Ten years ago, the problem was solved.
So why is it unsolvable now?
The answer is because you don't like what it says about your political priors.
We know how to solve crime.
You put more cops on the street, and you allow them to actually enforce the law.
Yes, you bring back the much maligned stop-and-frisk programs, or stop-question-and-frisk, as it is more properly called, and you allow the police to actively look for people who actually have guns on subway platforms.
I know this is really difficult for people, but the reality is that crime dropped in New York City because of these policies.
And then everybody got very angry on the left because it turns out that a disproportionate number of people being arrested were black and Hispanic.
Well, it turns out that a disproportionate number of crimes in the city of New York are committed by people who are Black and Hispanic.
That is not a racist point.
That is a simple demographic fact.
That does not mean that you are inherently more likely to be a criminal if you are Black or Hispanic.
It just means, as a statistical matter, criminals are disproportionately Black and Hispanic in the city of New York.
This has been true for a very long time.
And what that means, that if you're looking for criminals, and you find criminals, that is not racial profiling.
It's just you policing for crime.
If a disproportionate number of people in New York committing crimes wore red hats, you would assume that the police were probably pulling over a lot of people with red hats, or should pull over a lot of people with those red hats if those people were walking with a bulge in their pocket.
But the city decided that all of this was just too hot to touch, so instead they moved away from actual proven policing policies, and then surprise, surprise, it turns out the crime rates increase.
Well, I mean, duh.
Public officials say the subway system is crucial to the city's recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Typical daily subway ridership fell from 5.5 million riders to less than a tenth of that over the course of the pandemic.
As more people return to offices, the ridership is increasing.
On Monday, estimated ridership was 3.1 million people, according to the MTA, which operates the system.
But a lot of people are now saying, you know what?
I'm just not going to do it.
Which means that you're going to see the subway system, one of the crown jewels of New York, starting to fade.
Again, all because of politically correct idiocy that is focused in on the evils of police rather than the evils of criminality.
This is not a hard problem.
Just like the border problem, you got to enforce the law.
It turns out when you don't enforce the law, bad things happen.
Shocker.
Turns out that I think you're going to get a generation of conservatives out of all of this, because if you got a generation of conservatism after the 1970s, when a bunch of liberals were mugged by reality, when people are being shoved into subway trains by reality, at that point, I think you're going to start to see a lot of people disillusioned by the bad inflationary economic policy of the Democrats, the bad crime policy of the Democrats, the bad social policy of the Democrats.
A lot of people are getting mugged by reality these days.
All right, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content coming up soon as the Matt Wall Show airing at 1.30 p.m.
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Be sure to check it out over at dailywire.com.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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