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May 2, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:36
Joe Biden's Ministry Of Truth | Ep. 1485
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The White House Correspondents Dinner features America's political elites mocking you, the Biden administration proposes their ministry of truth, and the New York Times puts out a hit on Tucker Carlson.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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One of my most hated events of the year is always the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
I hate this event.
I think that it's just terrible.
There are many events during the year that I think are awful, including the State of the Union Address.
I think it's a monarchic institution.
I don't care who gives it.
But the White House Correspondents' Dinner is particularly Gross.
And there are a bunch of reasons why it is gross.
Now listen, I happen to be a wealthy human who owns a tuxedo and has nice watches and I don't mind going to fancy dinners.
However, when the entire purpose of the dinner is to allow the people who are supposed to police the people in power and the entire dinner is the people in power and the people who are supposed to be covering them with a Gimlet I. And instead, they are hobnobbing with one another and with Hollywood elites, and they are hanging out, eating very fancy food together, and telling nice jokes about one another, and massaging each other's shoulders.
You're giving the game away, and it's just yucky.
That's why I don't like this dinner.
Not because it's a bunch of rich and famous people who are getting together, but because these are people who are not supposed to be congenitally friendly toward one another.
The journalistic establishment is supposed to be policing the people in politics.
The people in politics are supposed to be attempting to take care of the business of the nation.
And instead, it's all of these people getting together and basically laughing at you.
Because everything that they complain about is a joke to them, but it is a reality to you.
Every single thing that they complain about, every single thing that they joke about and they mock, they are mocking you.
They're not mocking each other.
Understand that when the White House mocks the journalists, they're not really mocking the journalists, they're tutting them, they're slapping them on the back.
It's like when you and your buddies go out for a drink and you're kind of breaking each other's balls.
That's what it is.
And when the journalists mock the White House, understand that they are not actually mocking the people in power.
They're basically giving praise to the people in power by saying, look how nice our relationship really is.
Secretly, this is what it's really like.
Behind closed doors, we're all smoking cigars together and massaging each other and giving each other swag bags.
And that's really what and Hollywood is there to kind of glue it all together.
This is the specter of the controlling apparatus in American life.
That's not a conspiracy theory.
That's just reality.
It's not a conspiracy theory to say that Hollywood and Democrats in the media and the Democratic Party, they all work together in order to create cultural institutions that cram down a particular point of view on you.
And that's what the White House Correspondent Center is.
Now, there used to be a time when it wasn't quite this, right?
When George W. Bush was president, for example, the media really didn't like George W. Bush.
George W. Bush really didn't like the media.
And it was like they were taking a sort of break from hating one another to joke with one another.
And it was somewhat nice.
But when it has been Democrats and the media at the White House Correspondents and when it was Barack Obama, basically this event died.
When Barack Obama became president, the media were so focused I'm giving him a fifth chakra Al Gore style massage that there was no way for them to get together with dinner without it also ending up as one night stand.
There was just no way for that to happen.
And then when Trump was president, he said, I'm not going to go because why would I bother showing up to listen to you guys?
Just roast me, but not in good nature, because you hate me.
You wouldn't roast me in good nature.
By the way, there's a difference.
I've been roasted.
I've been roasted by both people who kind of like me and by people who hate my guts.
And there's a wide scale difference between the two.
And Trump said, I'm just not going to show.
And now Biden is back.
And so this dinner was much more like Barack Obama's dinner.
So Joe Biden was the keynote, of course, and Trevor Noah was the emcee.
And I will say Trevor Noah was a lot better than I thought he would be.
I thought that Trevor Noah was actually not terrible.
He's told some jokes about both sides.
As a conservative, I will freely admit that I think that the jokes about the left were much funnier than the jokes about the conservatives.
Joe Biden, however, is one of the least graceful human beings on planet Earth.
I mean, he just, he is graceless.
His entire rant was not about himself.
Normally you go up there, if you watch George W. Bush's little comedic speeches during the White House Correspondents Center, they were mostly self-effacing.
He would get up there and he'd tell jokes about himself.
Joe Biden gets up there and he mainly just tells jokes about how horrible his opponents are.
He makes like one joke about the fact that he's unpopular, and then he just moves right into, and my opponents are awful.
I don't know how much dope they shot into this guy, but his energy level was so wildly out of tune with how energetic he has been in normal daily life that you figure that maybe Elon Musk bought Coca-Cola, inserted the cocaine, and then gave the first samples to the President of the United States.
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So Joe Biden began by joking about how only 42 percent were applauding him.
This was his only decent joke of the night.
Ladies and gentlemen, President Joe Biden.
Thank you, Steve, for that introduction.
And a special thanks to the 42% of you who actually applauded.
Can I just point out here that when you actually watch the footage here, it's really galling.
One of the reasons that it's really galling is not just because of all of the cozy relationships in the room.
It's really galling because all of these people kept us locked down for two years, and they pretended that they cared deeply about COVID, and it was all about how we just have to protect you.
But then when it comes time for them to get together in a very crowded ballroom, inches from one another, In tuxedos?
Then it's totally fine.
By the way, Joe Biden said that he showed up.
Anthony Fauci didn't.
He said, ah, it's still a pandemic.
We can't just show up to the... Okay, so Biden showed up.
He sat in the room.
His concession to Anthony Fauci is that he wouldn't eat.
Because apparently now there's some scientific evidence, according to Joe Biden, that if you eat, you're likely to get COVID.
I'm going to have to have that one explained to me.
Why if you're sitting directly in proximity to somebody six inches away from you and screaming into each other's ears, because these dinners are very loud, that that is significantly better than if you're sitting next to that person and eating.
Anyway, so Joe Biden starts with that joke and then it's all downhill from there.
His worst joke of the evening was his attempt to go after Ron DeSantis in Florida.
This is just a bad joke.
I don't know who's writing this crap, but when you have the entire Hollywood comedic establishment at your disposal, theoretically, you should get somebody who can write a joke.
Instead, he apparently got Ron Klain to write his jokes.
This is such a botchery of a joke on every single level.
Here we go.
Ronald Reagan said, Mr. Gorbachev, tear this wall down.
Today's Republicans say, tear down Mickey Mouse's house.
And pretty soon they'll be storming Cinderella's castle, you can be sure of it.
That is, is that what is, hmm.
It's a questioning, huh? So that was kind of the nature, and that was his entire, his entire routine is about how terrible his opponents were.
And then there was Trump as horrible plague. Here we go. This is the first time the president attended this dinner in six It's understandable.
We had a horrible plague followed by two years of COVID.
Ha ha ha. You see, Trump was like a plague.
I'm going to compare him to COVID.
Now imagine if Trump had made that joke about Democrats, how they were a horrible plague upon the land.
Yeah, would have gone great.
And then he joked about vaccinating and boosting and why he's there.
We're here to show the country that we're getting through this pandemic.
Plus, everyone had to prove they were fully vaccinated and boosted.
So if you're at home watching this and you're wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter.
They're all here, vaccinated and boosted.
Okay, so I'm just going to point out that, again, being vaccinated and boosted is no guarantee you're not going to get COVID and that you're not going to have a super spreader event.
Just putting that science out there.
That third booster shot does not prevent you from getting COVID.
I know because, again, I was vaccinated, not boosted, and got COVID.
My dad was vaccinated and boosted and got COVID.
So, uh, no.
So, again, super, super funny stuff.
And then he joked about Sean Hannity and the suggestion here is that Sean Hannity is really bad because he used to text with Mark Meadows.
Fox News, I'm I'm really sorry.
Your preferred candidate lost the last election to make it up to you.
I'm happy to give my chief of staff to you all so we can tell Sean Hannity what to say every day.
OK, well, the joke here that that is really unspoken here is that Joe Biden's chief of staff tells the Democratic media what to say every single day.
Yes, Sean tends to share the views.
He's an opinion host.
He tends to share the views of Republican administrations.
The problem is that in that room, it's supposed to be objective media, and they share all the views of the Democratic administration.
Ron Klain has all these people on speed dial.
By the way, I do love the fact that Joe Biden is straightening his tie by pulling it directly down.
He's so off-kilter.
He's like, I'm going to straighten my tie.
It's solid stuff there.
OK, so Trevor Noah then gets up there and this is the clip of the night.
This is the one that's going to appear in all the attack ads about Joe Biden.
So Trevor Noah gets up there and he tells a joke about inflation and the cutaway to Joe Biden laughing wildly at his own inflation.
I understand he's trying to be good natured and laughing jokes about him, but this one is not going to play well in Peoria, as they say.
These people have been so hard on you, which I don't get.
I really don't.
You know, I think ever since you've come into office, things are really looking up.
You know, gas is up, rent is up, food is up.
Everything.
Joe Biden finds this hilarious.
It is.
I mean, after all, he's there in a tux.
He's very wealthy.
He owns a bunch of houses, has $5.2 million in unexplained income while he was out of office, while Hunter was going around picking up bags of cash.
What does he care?
What does he care?
And that is the point inside that room.
These folks do not care about inflation.
They're all doing fine.
They're all doing great.
They did great during the pandemic, by the way.
This is the laptop class.
They were sitting in their rooms, holding their jobs.
You were the one who was out of a job while they shut down your small business.
And now they're back in the room, hanging out with one another and chiding you about your vaccine status and being vaccine boosted.
Because they're the special people.
They're the special people.
Good for Trevor Noah, at least, mocking this.
Trevor Noah did mock the fact that all these people had gotten together for their super spreader event.
It is my great honor to be speaking tonight at the nation's most distinguished super-spreader event.
No, for real, people, what are we doing here?
Let's be honest, what are we doing?
Like, did none of you learn anything from the Gridiron Dinner?
Nothing?
Huh?
Like, do you read any of your own newspapers?
I mean, I expect this from Sean Hannity, but the rest of you?
What are you doing here?
Mm-hmm.
Well, I mean, why does he should expect that from the rest of them?
Because the rest of them during the entire pandemic were actively avoiding their own rules.
The rest of them during the pandemic were out there partying.
London Breed was doing it because her soul felt it.
Gavin Newsom was at the French Laundry.
So he really shouldn't be particularly surprised.
OK, at the very end of this, Trevor Noah finally did this routine very end.
A very moving tribute to journalism.
And here's the thing, this falls on deaf ears because that room is just filled with a bunch of administration lackeys.
And herein lies the point.
Again, people treat the Democrats and the media and Hollywood as though these are separate apparatuses.
They are not.
The Democrats, Hollywood, the media, they are all part of one big social group.
They all know each other.
Y'all hang out together.
Y'all love each other.
Y'all have the same priorities.
They mirror one another.
They create an echo chamber that completely excludes you.
This is how they end up in the bizarre position of embracing the most radical policies imaginable.
You have to be in a real echo chamber to come up with the idea that boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
But that can't happen if you are Democrats being reflected by the media or being reflected by Hollywood.
The White House Correspondent Center is a perfect encapsulation of how left side of the aisle politics actually works.
So when Trevor Noah does these sort of these homages to the journalists who are out there working hard every day, let me just point out that those journalists are not out there working hard every day.
Some of them are.
The vast majority of them are not.
They're just reading Twitter and they're reporting what their Democratic overlords would like them to say.
The reason we're here ...is to honor and celebrate the Fourth Estate and what you stand for.
What you stand for.
An additional check and balance that holds power to account and gives voice to those who otherwise wouldn't have one.
Every single one of you, whether you like it or not, is a bastion of democracy.
Okay, so I'm just going to, again, point out here that when he says that you are the defenders of democracy, our journalistic establishment abandoned that pursuit a very long time ago.
They did.
They have not been the defenders of democracy in the United States for a very long time.
They are selective defenders of policies that they like, and they are attackers of anybody who crosses them.
Which is how you end up with the media cheering the establishment of a Ministry of Truth over at the Department of Homeland Security.
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So according to the Wall Street Journal, Roger Koppel and Abigail Devereaux reporting, the Department of Homeland Security has announced the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board, charged according to Politico with, quote, countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.
In a twist to Implausible for Fiction, the abbreviation is DGB, one letter off from KGB.
The stated goal of combating misinformation and disinformation is framed to seem unobjectionable.
Who objects to truth and pines for falsehood?
DGB experts will guide the way, separating the informational wheat from the disinformational chaff.
But there's one small problem with empowering truth experts.
Experts are people, and people respond to incentives.
People, therefore, experts respond to incentives as well.
Graham Medley, British expert involved in the UK policy response to COVID, illustrated the point in recent testimony before Parliament.
The worst thing for me, he said, would be for government to say, why didn't you tell us it could be that bad?
Inevitably, we were always going to have a worse case, which is above reality.
Put yourself in his shoes.
If you predict doom and nothing happens, it was because of your wise warning.
If you don't predict doom and reality is worse than you expected, you'll be blamed and shamed.
The incentives are clear.
Truth experts at the DGB will proclaim grave threats around every turn when even any threats are minor to non-existence.
The dangers of the DGB will amplify if it becomes the tool of partisan political actors, and it already has.
Executive Director Nina Jankiewicz once described Hunter Biden's laptop as a Trump campaign product and has written that America's informational landscape includes declining trust in the media fed by the Trump administration's relentless attacks on the fourth estate.
She has said, quote, unless we mitigate our own political polarization, our own internal issues will continue to be an easy target for any malign actor, Russian, Iranian, domestic or foreign to manipulate.
And here is Nina Jenkiewicz.
I mean, this is an actual tape of her singing about disinformation to Mary Poppins.
So we've got theater kids running disinformation departments inside the Department of Homeland Security.
The Ministry of Truth is here.
And the future is tap shoes stomping on the human face forever.
Bombering is really quite ferocious.
It's when a huckster takes some lies and makes them sound precocious by saying them in Congress or a mainstream outlet.
So disinformation's origins are slightly less atrocious.
It's how you hide a little idle lie.
When Rudy Giuliani shared bad intel from Ukraine.
Or when TikTok influencers say Covid can cause pain.
They're laundering dissent for when we really should take note.
And not support their lies with our wallet, voice or vote.
Oh!
Information laundering is really quite ferocious.
It's when a huckster takes their lies and makes them sound precocious.
By saying them in Congress or a mainstream outlet service.
Information's origin seems likely less atrocious!
Ha ha ha!
Whoo!
So that is your new head of the disinformation department over at the Department of Homeland Security.
We're going to go ahead and close out the meeting.
Weird, creepy Mary Poppins.
Do you trust her to determine what is misinformation and what is disinformation?
And why is the government doing that at all?
And why are the journalistic establishment not up in arms about this?
I mean, you know, if Trump were doing it, they'd be up in arms about it.
But you have the Washington Post actively cheering this stuff on.
Barack Obama, a couple of weeks ago, he gave a speech in which he talked about how the government should basically crack down on social media to prevent the distribution of quote-unquote misinformation.
The Washington Post, which I will remind you, is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, because only certain billionaires are bad, according to media.
Jeff Bezos is a good billionaire because he's on the left, but Elon Musk is a bad billionaire because he's not of the left.
The editorial board at the Washington Post has an entire piece today titled, Barack Obama's Smart Way to Change the Disinformation Debate.
Barack Obama may have done too little when he was president to counter Russia's subversion of our democracy on social media.
Now, however, he's trying to make up for lost time.
The former president spoke at Stanford University April 21st to lay out his vision for fighting disinformation on the internet.
His focus on the subject is fitting.
The dusk of his administration marked a turning point from techno-optimism to pessimism after election interference revealed how easily malicious actors could exploit the free flow of information.
But whatever blame the White House deserved in 2016 for failing to speak publicly about or retaliate against Moscow's incursions, Congress and companies have fallen even shorter in the years since by failing to enact reforms or reform themselves.
And this is where Obama's ideas come in.
His diagnosis is on target.
The Internet has given us access to more people, more opportunities, and more knowledge.
This has also helped the nation's adversaries play on our pre-existing prejudices and divisions to sow discord.
So we need to have Congress step in, and we need to have the law rein in what you can and cannot say, according to the Washington Post.
Again, these are your journalists, the people that Trevor Noah is praising as the people who are going to protect democracy.
Remember, the Washington Post still has the ridiculous aphorism, democracy dies in darkness, emblazoned at the top of the page.
And their editorial board is very much in favor of the darkness, so long as the darkness is being sponsored by Democrats in charge.
Or how about CNN's David Zuruik, who says, you know what?
We can't have people like Elon Musk taking over Twitter because we need to control the means of communications in this country.
We need control.
We can't give up control.
There's a bigger problem here about how we are going to control the channels of communication in this country.
In 1927, we had the Radio Act.
1934, the Communications Act.
Congress stepped in.
We made rules.
FCC wasn't great, but it's still regulating the broadcast industry.
You can't use vulgar language.
You can't do all these things with speech.
You need controls on this.
You need regulation.
You cannot let these guys control discourse in this country, or we are headed to hell.
We're headed to hell if people like Elon Musk own companies like Twitter.
Now, I noticed that he's not really complaining about the major media conglomerate owned by CNN.
I noticed he's not really complaining about the Washington Post right here.
CNN's at David Zerouek.
These are your journalists.
These are your journalists.
And then they get together with their Democratic bosses and they party it up.
And they laugh at you because their problems are not your problems.
Their problem is how do we advance the interests of the regime?
That is their problem.
It is incredible how Orwellian all of this has become.
We have a Department of Homeland Security that focuses in on opening the border and policing disinformation.
We have a Department of Health and Human Services that focuses on on puberty blocking children.
We have a Department of the Treasury that focuses in on how much deficit spending we can do and how much more we need to continue to do.
This is all Orwellian.
It's just the reverse of reality.
In a second, we're gonna get to Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, praising his new pick to head the Disinformation Department.
This is just unbelievably Orwellian stuff.
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Alejandro Mayorkas, for his part, the head of Homeland Security, he was praising Nina Jankowicz over the weekend.
He was praised as the new head of the Disinformation Governance Board.
Republicans are criticizing your decision, the administration's decision to choose Nina Jankowicz to lead this disinformation board.
They say she is not somebody who is neutral.
Your response?
Eminently qualified, a renowned expert in the field of disinformation.
And neutral?
Absolutely so.
She's absolutely neutral, guys.
She's absolutely neutral.
And overall, the media are like, this is just, this is all Yeah, Brian Stelter, he literally said this.
He said, this is Fox News misinformation.
And you covering it and saying it's a ministry of truth.
That's Fox News misinformation.
Nobody should be upset about any of this.
Alejandro Mayorkas, who again is one of the creepier figures in American public life, just because everything that comes out of his mouth seems to be a lie.
So he is assuring us that he's not going to monitor American citizens.
Yeah, I believe all of the people in structural power.
I mean, it's not like they spent four years pursuing a Russian disinformation hoax about the Steele dossier, pretending that they were at any moment going to uncover evidence that President Trump was a Russian asset.
I definitely, it's not like they trumped up a FISA warrant on Carter Page based on nothing.
I definitely trust them not to monitor American citizens.
These people are super trustworthy.
Will American citizens be monitored?
No.
Guarantee that.
So what we do, we in the Department of Homeland Security don't monitor American citizens.
You don't, but will this board change that?
No, no, no.
The board does not have any operational authority or capability.
Oh, they don't have any authority or capability, because as we know, the government is typically hemmed in by its own restrictions.
They would never involve themselves in things that are beyond their permit.
You would never have, for example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration trying to force every person in the United States to vaccinate.
You definitely wouldn't have, for example, the IRS cracking down on conservative 501c3s.
These things would never happen.
We should probably trust Alejandro Mayorkas.
And I'm so glad that we have our journalistic hound dogs who are on the trail here tracking down all aspects of ultra-crepidarianism from our governmental actors.
Really important stuff.
By the way, he assures us that they are not the opinion police.
Well, I mean, how you define disinformation and misinformation is an opinion.
Yes, you are the opinion police and you've set yourself up as such.
Do you really think that Jankiewicz is anywhere near objective enough for this particular job?
Yes, I do, and by the way, highly regarded as a subject matter expert, and I don't question her objectivity.
There are people in the department who have a diverse range of views, and they're incredibly dedicated to mission.
We're not the opinion police.
Yes, you are.
Yes, you are.
And you're helped out by your friends in the media, who spend all day every day deciding which opinions are okay and which opinions are not okay, and then stumping for legislation to crack down on the opinions that are not okay.
And they will force corporate America to do their bidding.
Certain corporations are good, certain corporations are bad.
And they can determine that by who they force to do this sort of stuff.
They're refreshingly open about it at this point.
It really is amazing.
It is not a coincidence that the minute that Elon Musk takes over Twitter, you suddenly have a slate of stories about how bad it is to have billionaires involved in politics.
Like they were fine when it was Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.
When it's Elon Musk, then obviously the math is completely different.
The Wall Street Journal has an entire piece today.
By the way, people should know, the Wall Street Journal editorial page is conservative.
The Wall Street Journal reporting is actually left of the New York Times by most available studies.
They have a reported piece today called, The Shadow Crew, who encouraged Elon Musk's Twitter takeover.
Behind the scenes, fellow billionaires and internet provocateurs bent Tesla's CEO's ear.
Wow.
I mean, because they're evil.
This is why, as CNN commentator David Zerouk said, we must regulate this sort of stuff.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Musk's declined to be interviewed.
It isn't clear whether he took any of their advice or merely followed his own gut.
And here we are talking about a bunch of massive billionaires and internet trolls who controlled Elon Musk, and we can't allow them to be setting the standard.
According to the Wall Street Journal, before and during Mr. Musk's breakneck takeover of Twitter, a close-knit group of libertarian-leaning activists and businessmen have been encouraging him to get involved.
This group includes the so-called PayPal Mafia, former executives at the online payments company who include Mr. Musk, the investor Peter Thiel, and the entrepreneur David Sachs, as well as ancillary figures like the venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, an early Tesla investor who once served on the automaker's board, and Mr. Musk's brother Kimball, a Tesla board member, according to people familiar with the matter.
Their involvement may help explain one of the great mysteries of his Twitter obsession.
With all the problems in the world, why has Mr. Musk decided he alone can fix it?
Wow, I mean, that's just terrible.
Wow.
I mean, these billionaires, they must be stopped, except for, you know, like Jeff Bezos.
He shouldn't be stopped.
Meanwhile, over at the Washington Post, you have a piece called, How a Billionaire's Boys Club Came to Dominate the Public Square.
The world's richest man, Elon Musk, attacked a publication owned by the world's third richest man, Jeff Bezos, last month for reprinting a column by the world's 13th richest man, Mike Bloomberg.
The Bloomberg Opinion article posted by the Washington Post asked whether Musk's recent investment in Twitter would endanger freedom of speech.
WAPO always good for a laugh, Musk wrote in a tweet with smiling and crying emoji.
The jab underscored an unusual and consequential feature of the nation's new digital public square.
Technological change and the fortunes it have created have given a vanishingly small club of massively wealthy individuals the ability to play arbiter, moderator, and bankroll.
I noticed you didn't give any craps about this, Washington Post, when Jeff Bezos was buying you.
I noticed that you didn't care whatsoever when Bill Gates was involving himself in every aspect of COVID policy.
I noticed that you didn't care when Pinch Sulzberger and the Sulzberger family owned the New York Times for a century.
I noticed you didn't care about any of this.
You only care the minute that Musk gets involved.
And suddenly, it's the Billionaire Boys Club.
These are your journalistic watchdogs.
Man, they are just, they are, they are such, they're amazing.
And by the way, your journalistic watchdogs, they're also determining which corporations advertise and how they advertise and how those corporations act.
They have to be the great determinants.
Which is why you have the New York Times running an extraordinarily long piece on Tucker Carlson, a three-part piece called American Nationalist.
How Tucker Carlson stoked white fear.
White.
Again, whenever the New York Times writes white, you have to put the H before the W. How he stoked white fear to conquer cable.
So the New York Times has this extraordinary, I mean, it's a really, really long piece about the evils of Tucker Carlson.
Part one, Tucker Carlson, once a failed pundit, stoked white fear to conquer cable.
Part two, how Tucker Carlson reshaped Fox News and became Trump's heir.
Part three, look inside the apocalyptic worldview of Tucker Carlson tonight.
Wow.
By the way, what is the apocalyptic worldview of Tucker Carlson tonight?
Night after night, this is what the New York Times says, and this is why he's so bad.
Night after night, the host of the most watched show in primetime cable news uses a simple narrative to instill fear in his viewers.
They want to control and then destroy you.
Okay, I'm just going to point out that this has been a hallmark of all democratic politics for literally ever.
And it's not just Tucker Carlson saying that.
And depending on who the they is and who the you are, it could be true.
Democrats are constantly saying that white people are out to get black people in the United States and this is the systemic racism from which we all suffer.
It's the New York Times that's constantly suggesting that plutocrats are out to get the poor.
It's the New York Times who's out there saying that Tucker Carlson is the they who's out to get the you.
So why is it so bad if Tucker Carlson says they are out to get you?
Well, because he's bad.
That's it.
They don't care what you think.
They want to control your mind.
They want you to kiss the ring.
They're not sentimental.
They want power.
They hate you.
They want to hurt you.
They call you a racist.
They want to control what you... These are all things that Tucker Carlson has said about his opponents.
All that's true.
I'm sorry.
I don't know what to tell you, New York Times.
You guys do want to control how I raise my child.
You do call us racists if you oppose anything we do.
Again, it's all the apocalyptic worldview of Tucker Carlson.
This is how your journalismers are journalisming to the praise of Trevor Noah and to the cheers of tuxedoed cretins at a giant dinner.
According to the New York Times, a New York Times analysis of 1,150 episodes reveals how Tucker Carlson pushes extremist ideas and conspiracy theories into millions of households five nights a week.
He's done so since the beginning, but the show has gotten darker.
Here's how the show works.
When you enter Mr. Carlson's world each night, you are among his three million plus viewers and part of a Fox News audience that is 92% white and overwhelmingly older, according to Nielsen data.
They are the ruling class.
They threaten everything you believe in.
Well, I mean, wow, white and elderly, man, that has to be that has to be.
They include Democratic and some Republican officials, members of the media, big tech executives, academic sports and Hollywood stars and others.
Many of the people here have been attacked in dozens or even hundreds of episodes.
Who are these people, by the way?
These people include Barack Obama, who is the president of the United States, and Joe Biden, who is the president of the United States, and Anthony Fauci, one of those prominent people in the history of the country.
And Ilhan Omar, an open anti-Semite, and AOC, one of the most prominent Congress people, and a radical leftist, and Kamala Harris, the VP.
How dare he attack public figures?
My God, attacking public figures?
That has to be stopped.
Mr. Carlson, again, this is all the New York Times covering Carlson, who's very bad.
And we're being told by the New York Times, which is an outlet, it is an editorial page for the left, the entire newspaper, not just the editorial page, all of it.
They're saying Tucker Carlson is evil and bad.
Mr. Carlson tells you over and over, they don't care about you and will do whatever they can do to maintain power.
Well, I mean, yes?
I'm just wondering, what is controversial about this in the political sphere?
How is that different from anything Bernie Sanders says on the left, or Joe Biden, for that matter, says today?
And then they just have a bunch of little clips of him talking about George Soros, who's a very powerful human being, and Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi, all very powerful human beings.
It's just this is the New York Times going after Tucker.
Basically, the entire article is they've discovered that there is a popular person who is not on their side of the political aisle.
Now, what's amazing is that Tucker and I disagree about a lot of things, right?
You can watch a Sunday special I did with Tucker.
We disagree on free markets.
We disagree on how much the government should get invested in the economy.
We disagree on foreign policy.
But Tucker is not wildly outside the mainstream of anything that is just the right.
Mr. Carlson frames nearly every topic on his show as a ruling class plot from gun control to marijuana legislation to COVID restrictions.
Well, again, again, kind of.
I mean, like.
When people are in charge and they have institutional power and they use the institutional power to cram down what they want upon you, that is the ruling class attempting to rule you, is it not?
But according to the New York Times, you're not supposed to say this.
Only they can use this sort of language about you.
You're not the ruling class, but they treat you as the ruling class.
And then the actual ruling class goes to the White House Correspondents' Dinner and jokes about you and mocks you.
So, the New York Times, again, everything is dedicated to the idea that everyone who they don't like is either racist or evil, white nationalist, ought to be suppressed by government, free speech ought to be quashed, the limitations ought to be made, and corporations ought to be cuddled into place.
And if you respond to any of this, this makes you the problem.
If you say, no, no, no, I don't want corporations cudgeled into doing the work of left-wing wokesters.
And so if they do, then they're going to meet with the disapproval of government actors who are going to remove their special privileges in Florida.
This is just the natural consequence of the left attempting to take over institutions.
There will be pushback and there should be pushback.
And this means that you are the problem.
And if you say that if the media decide to get involved in corporate America and then there are counter boycotts, this makes you the aggressor.
This is the entire game the left is playing.
Propped up by the journalistic lackeys.
Coming up, we'll get to members of the media openly saying that they want to cudgel corporations into doing what they want and they should regulate corporations and all this, but they get very mad when it's Florida and Disney.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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You look at guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and— —Grooge McDuck.
—Exactly.
When it comes to taxes, the rich do not pay their fair share, man.
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Well, what is a fair share?
By nearly every measure, the U.S.
has the most progressive system of taxation in the world.
I mean, the top 40% of earners pay 95% of all federal income tax.
So they actually pay more than their share of income.
So what part exactly do you think is unfair?
I think they should just pay more.
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So again, all of the levers of power, Democrats, media, Hollywood, and then all the people that they try to cudgel into place, the members of corporate America.
They do form a power apparatus in the United States to pretend otherwise is to ignore reality.
And it's not as though the ball is being hidden here.
MSNBC's Ali Velshi, for example, he told Bill Maher, he's on Bill Maher, he said, it's good.
It's good to force corporations to go woke.
It is good that their staffers are doing that.
And then we in the media promote all of this.
You do this, and then when Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, when he says, we're going to provide a counter incentive here, because we're not going to allow asymmetric polarization to happen in which you guys get to use every tool of governmental and media power in order to cudgel corporations to do what you want.
And then we're supposed to sit here and just shout free speech.
That's not the way this works.
They're not engaged in free speech.
They're being cuddled into place by you and compulsive tactics by you.
And so we are going to provide a counter-incentive, and now these corporations might have to think twice.
This makes DeSantis the bad guy, according to everybody from The Atlantic to The New York Times, because this is the game.
If you uncover what they're doing and then respond, this means that you're bad.
But they are allowed to just do it.
So here's MSNBC's Ali Velshi pushing it.
I actually think companies are a good place right now to see some of this leadership.
It's going to be complicated.
They're going to make mistakes.
They're going to get in trouble by the public, and they're going to get in trouble by Ron DeSantis and a bunch of governors.
But the bottom line is I think it's a good development that companies are wading their way into politics.
They were always there anyway with their paychecks, with their donation checks.
Now they're getting there and actually talking directly to what the problems are.
No, that is incorrect.
Okay, what corporations used to do is lobby on behalf of their direct political interests.
Now they're being pushed into position by people like reporter Ali Velshi.
They're being pushed into that by that power apparatus at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
If they don't do what those people say, those people initiate boycotts against them, and they go after them to destroy them.
By the way, that entire New York Times piece on Tucker Carlson is deliberately aimed at Tucker Carlson's advertisers.
The idea is that if you advertise on Tucker Carlson, it's because you are complicit in white supremacy and white nationalism, and therefore, you should remove your dollars from Tucker Carlson, even if you advertise on both MSNBC and Fox News.
So when there's pushback, then all of a sudden they're like, oh my God, you're threatening free speech.
You guys don't get to play this game.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
They've got to be willing to engage in war.
You cannot play fair with people who don't play fair.
There are no rules.
Roland Martin, for example, telling Tiffany Cross openly that Democrats should not play fair in 2022.
They've got to be willing to engage in war. You cannot play fair with people who don't play fair. There are no rules. The other side has shown that they will do whatever is necessary in order to win.
This is what they think. And then when people fight back, then those people are bad. The The reason that I bring this up is because, guess what?
A lot of folks on the right have been getting dyspepsia over Ron DeSantis and the removal of the Reedy Creek Special Tax District, which by the way, again, this is sort of how politics has worked forever in the United States in the sense that if you take a special tax break from a government and then you oppose that government, very often the government will crack back against you and take away the tax break.
But put all that aside, people will get how Ron DeSantis is now involving himself in punishing corporate speech Well, the entire left has been pushing corporations into speech issues they don't want to be a part of.
Remember, Disney didn't want to be a part of this fight.
It was pushed by the wokesters and governmental actors on the left, as well as the media, into sounding off on a topic that was completely outside of its purview.
Completely outside of its purview.
And then it got clocked.
Well, now, what do you think the predictable result of this is?
And this is a good result for the country.
The predictable result is that CEOs are beginning to think, hey, maybe we should only involve ourselves in the issues that directly affect our stockholders.
Like they always have done.
Good.
That is a good result.
The Wall Street Journal reporting, in private meetings and coaching sessions over the past few weeks, top business leaders have been asking a version of the same question.
How can we avoid becoming the next Walt Disney Company?
The fallout from the recent political spat between Disney and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has alarmed leaders across the corporate sphere, according to executives and their advisors, and heightened the challenge for chief executive officers navigating charged topics.
At many companies, vocal employees have in recent years pushed bosses to take public stands on social and political issues.
Florida's pushback against Disney has raised the stakes.
The number one concern CEOs have is, when should I speak out on public issues, said Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and now senior fellow at Harvard Business School.
As one CEO said to me, I want to speak out on social issues, but I don't want to get involved in politics.
Which I said under my breath, that's not possible.
Some executives might be relieved.
The old idea that CEOs should focus on shareholder returns and stay out of politics lingers in some corporate suites, even in a politicized age of public social media discussions and more activist workforces.
Certainly, the consequences of weighing in appear to be changing.
Lawmakers for years have expressed displeasure when companies take public stands on issues like voting access through critical tweets, public remarks, and in some cases, calls for public boycotts.
Disney's experience shows a willingness to go further, corporate advisors say, by challenging arrangements that have helped a company to operate.
Governor DeSantis in April signed into law a bill that would terminate a special tax district that allowed Disney to self-govern the land that houses its Orlando-area theme parks, hotels, and resorts for more than half a century.
David Berger, a partner who specializes in corporate governance at Wilson, Sansani, Goodrich, and Rosati said politicians seem increasingly comfortable taking on businesses when it is advantageous for them.
It used to be the Republicans especially, but both parties like big business.
And now what you're seeing is both parties like to use big business as political footballs one way or another.
No, the difference is that the left used businesses as political footballs qua businesses.
If the business did business and just didn't acquiesce to the predations of the left, this made them an enemy.
Hobby Lobby.
Little Sisters of the Poor.
Masterpiece cake shop.
All these places became enemies just by not acquiescing in their own business.
The right is now saying, you don't get to weaponize these businesses against their own will and bully them into taking a position.
And if you do, they will be clocked back into place by counter incentives.
And the left says, no, no, no, this is very bad.
It's a predation on freedom.
And then you have the libertarian wing, the people at Reason Magazine, for example, Stephanie Slade writing for the New York Times about how terrible this is.
We're now anti-big business.
No, it is not anti-big business to say that businesses should do what businesses do and be involved in the issues in which businesses are involved.
It is pro-big business to say they should go back to serving their stockholders, not to serving the stakeholders at the White House Correspondents' Dinner who demand that they do certain things upon penalty of media-pushed boycotts and Democrat-pushed legislation that punishes them.
Evening the playing field is what allows corporations to go back to actual work.
All of which goes to, once again, the simple fact that institutional power in this country is held almost entirely by the left.
And the fact that the right is now challenging that institutional power is what has them so hot and bothered.
It's what has them being made so crazy.
It's why they're talking about shutting down Elon Musk and Twitter.
It's why they're talking about departments of disinformation at the federal level.
It's why they are all fired angry at Ron DeSantis for simply saying what everyone knows, which is if you are going to provide governmental dispensations for only left-wing corporations, there will be and should be a response that says to corporations it's now an even playing field.
You get involved, you get clocked, and that is true on both sides of the aisle now.
If you want to not get clocked, then how about this?
Elect people on both sides of the aisle who are not going to get involved in your business.
But if we were going to have one side of the aisle involved, you're going to have both sides of the aisle involved, and that's just the way this is going to work.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
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