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May 13, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
48:03
Will Musk Back Out Of The Twitter Deal? | Ep. 1494
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Elon Musk puts his Twitter deal on hold as he examines how many accounts are fake.
As baby formula shortages wrack the nation, the White House has other priorities, and the media try to pressure corporations to do their pro-abortion dirty work.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Well, in breaking news overnight, Elon Musk is apparently considering whether or not to go forward with his Twitter deal.
The reason for this is because apparently there is some sort of investigation going on into just how many accounts over at Twitter are fake.
Whether, in fact, a lot of their stats have been falsified for years about how many users they actually have.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk is still committed to acquisition.
He said this earlier this morning, but that came after a lot of speculation as to whether he's going to pull out of the deal.
Elon Musk said his deal to buy Twitter was on hold, penning details on the amount of fake accounts on the social media platform, raising questions about the acquisition, and sending shares of the messaging service down in pre-market trading, which again shows you that Elon Musk now has the power to basically destroy Twitter if he doesn't buy it.
It's either Musk acquires it or the stock is going to take a significant hit because it's pretty obvious the reason he would not buy it is because that company has not much going for it.
Musk said from his verified Twitter account, Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending detailed supporting calculation that spam fake accounts to indeed represent less than 5% of users.
Twitter shares are recently trading at $38.45 in pre-market trading.
That's down 15%, well below the $54.20 a share or $44 billion Musk agreed to pay for the company last month.
The tweet comes as many big stocks have been falling on Wall Street, including shares of Tesla, which were down 29% over the last month.
The Wall Street Journal was suggesting that Musk might be using Twitter's recent disclosure as a means to get out of or to renegotiate the deal, especially because, again, he promised $44 billion, and that was a share price that is way above what market price is right now for the shares.
Meanwhile, there is still turmoil inside the top levels of Twitter.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter has now freezed its hiring as two senior executives have left the company.
They're pausing hiring.
They're looking to cut costs as the social media company, in the midst of a $44 billion takeover by Elon Musk, grapples with disruptions in the digital advertising market from global economic turmoil.
Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal announced the actions along with the surprise departure of two senior executives, according to an internal memo.
He said, Twitter's move adds to broader upheaval in the tech industry because what we are seeing all over the place is that big tech stocks are sinking.
And this is as a result of Joe Biden's extraordinarily weak economy.
So we'll continue to bring you updates on whether Musk indeed acquires Twitter or plans to pull out of the Twitter deal.
Bottom line is that Twitter has really never made a lot, like any money so far, as I'm aware.
The tech industry is largely reliant on the possibility of future gains.
It is generally not reliant on showing top line actual income, right?
Gross income above cost.
And because of that, Because it doesn't tend to show a lot of profit.
That means that the stocks tend to be particularly vulnerable to speculation, which is what Musk's involvement in Twitter has done.
Meanwhile, again, a lot of this is being driven by overall economic conditions, which are extraordinarily weak.
According to CNBC, prices at the wholesale level accelerated further in April.
That's part of a broader inflation problem persisting throughout the United States economy.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the producer price index, which tracks how much manufacturers get for their products at the initial sale, rose 0.5% on the month, 11% from one year ago.
That's a decrease from 11.5% in March that was revised upwards 0.3 percentage points, excluding food, energy and trade services.
Core PPI rose 0.6% in April and 6.9% from a year ago.
The latter a decline from 7.1% last month.
Both monthly increases were exactly in line with Dow Jones estimates.
Those numbers came the day after the BLS reported consumer prices for goods and services rose 8.3% from a year ago.
That is down from 8.5% in March.
It is still indicative of the worst inflation the U.S.
has seen since the early 1980s.
According to the Bank of America's Jared Woodard, prices are still rising incredibly quickly.
So the notion that prices are somehow coming down, and when you say that the inflation is still maintaining at 8.3% annualized growth rate over the last year, That doesn't mean that inflation is starting to come down.
It means the rate of growth in inflation is coming down, which is not quite the same thing.
Here is Gerard Woodard explaining.
Prices are still rising.
If they're not rising as fast as they were before, yeah, that's arguably good news.
But the fact that prices are still rising incredibly quickly is a big problem for markets.
It's one of the reasons why for several months we've been suggesting that investors maintain higher levels of cash, more dry powder ahead of volatility and what we think will be much better buying opportunities later this year.
People are pulling their money out of the markets, which is why you've seen the markets bouncing around like a yo-yo.
People are pulling their money out of Bitcoin so fast that actually the money started to go back into Bitcoin a little bit yesterday.
The markets are in a state of real flux and turmoil because if you are a smart investor, right now you are sitting on the sidelines.
So for example, when it comes to Bitcoin, I actually texted a friend yesterday.
So as I've told you before, I own some Bitcoin, I own some Ethereum.
And so I texted a friend who's very, very knowledgeable and works in this industry.
And I said to him, Should you be looking to buy up, for example, El Salvador in debt right now?
Because El Salvador, their debt is tied to Bitcoin.
There's a widespread speculation that El Salvador could theoretically default.
I don't think that Bitcoin is going to collapse the way a lot of people think it's going to.
So should you buy that sort of debt?
He said, listen, the smart play right now is to basically sit it out.
If you're going to buy more Bitcoin and more Ethereum, maybe you should do that.
But some of the more fringy sort of Bitcoins, some of the more fringy Blockchain backed currencies.
Those ones are probably going to die.
What you're seeing is a consolidation of the market.
And so be careful out there and be careful out there seems to be the wise advice that everybody is offering right now, which is why you're seeing a lot of money now being pulled out of the market and waiting on the sidelines.
Or at the very least, people not pouring more money into the market at the same rates that they were pouring money into the markets, say two or three or six months ago.
Looking for a safe haven for your cash is really, really difficult right now.
Well, the good news is that the Biden administration is focused in on the things that matter, like intersectional identity politics when it comes to the Federal Reserve.
So the Federal Reserve is going to be tasked with bringing down inflation without crashing the economy and sending us into a recession.
That's a pretty difficult task considering the fact that they are the ones who created this massive inflation in the first place by being derelict in their understanding of how fast inflation would occur if you just kept pumping money into the economy like you're pumping Botox into Nancy Pelosi's forehead.
Well, now the White House is focused laser-like on the most important thing about the Federal Reserve, and that is they need a black woman on it.
Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden's White House economic advisor, he says that that's really the important thing.
The first black woman is going to be on the Federal Reserve, and that's it.
Now, most people are going, wait, I don't care who's on the Federal Reserve.
Aren't they just supposed to do their jobs?
But at the Biden White House, equity is the watchword of the day.
And because equity is the watchword, all that matters is whether the person who is doing a bad job in bringing down inflation is a black woman, apparently.
The confirmation of the president's nominees to the Federal Reserve is super important.
This is the first and foremost institution fighting inflation.
And the fact that we now have a Federal Reserve with Dr. Lisa Cook, the first black woman ever to be on a Federal Reserve Board, is, I think, a key achievement of Bidenomics trying to make sure that this extremely important global economic institution looks a little bit more like some of the people that it's representing.
How in the world is anyone supposed to care about that?
Why?
Why would you possibly care?
And the media's obsession and the Democrats' obsession with first black lesbian little person to walk on the moon is really absurd on its face.
But what is even more absurd is when you are in the middle of an economic crisis and your answer to the economic crisis is, well, yes, we don't actually have good policy prescriptions and we don't actually know what to do.
But the person who doesn't know what to do is going to be a black woman.
I mean, if I needed a black woman who didn't know what she was doing, I'd just look at Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States.
She's a black woman who doesn't know what she's doing.
I don't understand how her being a black woman trumps the fact that she doesn't know what she's doing.
What?
How is that a response to economic crisis?
What in the what?
But this is what the Biden administration is focused on because, again, when you have no policy prescriptions, all you have is the sort of identity politics stupidity.
So meanwhile, all of this economic turmoil is having some real significant effects on people's everyday lives.
The baby formula shortage that has hit the country is very significant.
As I've pointed out before, I have three kids.
All three of my kids had to be supplemented with formula.
So if there were no formula on the shelves and I had kids, We're nursing right now and using formula.
That would be a disaster area, and there are tons of families like this.
According to the Wall Street Journal, baby formula manufacturers and retailers say they are working to address a long-running shortage in products on store shelves, but the hardships facing U.S.
families may take months to abate.
Abbott Laboratories, which produces Similac, said it is bringing products from its factory in Ireland to the United States as it continues talks with the FDA to restart production at its factory in Michigan.
However, the company has said it would take weeks before products from the plant are available on store shelves.
Now, remember, the FDA had a whistleblower back in October who said that they thought that there might be a problem at the Michigan factory.
The FDA did nothing.
Then it turns out that a couple of kids died when they had bacterial infections from the formula.
Now, Abbott then looked at its lab and what they found is that the manufacturing facility actually didn't have any of the bacteria, that there were some bacteria in different parts of the facility, but not in the part where they actually manufactured.
The FDA shut it down anyway, and so did Abbott.
Again, great government policy at work.
Rivals have been trying to accelerate production, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Challenges remain in getting supply to the right places.
Many retail chains are continuing to ration supplies by placing strict limits on orders, while many others are trying to find substitutes with little success.
Meanwhile, everyone from frustrated parents to lawmakers on Capitol Hill have called for inquiries into why shortages that initially emerged earlier in COVID have been difficult to resolve.
President Biden on Thursday spoke with executives at Walmart and Target and baby formula makers about the situation, though a senior administration official declined to provide details on the conversation.
Probably because the conversation, as my security guy, Chad, suggested on the way over to the show this morning, probably because the conversation was mostly for President Biden about how he could personally obtain the formula for his own use.
The Biden administration also pointed to several efforts underway to address the formula shortage.
The Agriculture Department is calling on states to allow recipients of the federally funded program known as WIC to use their benefits for a wider range of products in case the ones they want are out of stock.
Biden also called for the FTC and state attorneys general to investigate allegations of price gouging.
Whenever there's a shortage, and whenever it turns out that you've inflated the currency, and whenever it turns out your regulatory policy is creating supply shortages, probably it's price gouging.
Here's the thing about price gouging.
In order for true price gouging to be happening, what you need is a full-on monopoly.
That is how price gouging occurs, when you have a full-on monopoly.
And the thing is, that usually price gouging can't last for very long, because then you have competitors who ramp up to undercut your inflated price.
This is one of the beauties of the free market, is that when it comes to prices, it is a race to the bottom.
When it comes to quality, it's a race to the top.
This is what free markets tend to do.
But Joe Biden and the rest of the left-wing Democrats, their favorite thing to do is suggest that whenever prices go up, it must be some sort of price gouging.
Somebody else is to blame.
It's the companies, it's the American people.
It really is just, it's somebody else.
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So Corinne Jean-Pierre, who's the incoming new press secretary, again, very important press secretary because she's not just a black woman.
She's a black woman who's gay.
Doesn't matter if she happens to be a radical who hates Israel and has suggested that Fox News is racist and that the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen and all the rest of that.
That doesn't matter because after all, historic, right?
Historic TM trademark.
So here she is explaining the baby formula shortage is our Biden's top priority.
Severe shortages throughout much of the country over many weeks and months, but particularly the last couple weeks.
What is the administration doing?
What can you do?
It's something certainly we've been tracking.
Ensuring that infant formula is safe and available for families across the country is a top priority to the White House and this administration.
Okay, when it comes to this being a top priority for Biden, basically all that means is that he gets on the phone and jabbers with somebody, but he has no plan for any of this.
His team is so behind the ball on all of this.
I mean, is there an issue where they've actually been ahead?
Like an issue where they've actually foreseen a problem and then solved the problem?
I'm unaware of it.
Jen Psaki, who's still there, I know she's supposed to be over at MSNBC any moment, hosting her own show, because again, that's just a propaganda outlet for the administration and it's a revolving door.
Psaki says she doesn't know if Biden could have done more on the formula shortages.
The whistleblower who used to work at that Sturgis plant warned the FDA top officials about safety concerns in October, but they didn't interview that whistleblower until December.
The inspection wasn't until January 31st.
The recall happened February 17th.
So is that timeline acceptable to the White House?
And if not, what is the White House doing to correct that at the FDA?
I'm sure there will be plenty of time to take a look at if there are any issues that could have been improved here.
I don't have any specific analysis of that at this moment in time.
Well, I mean, yeah, no analysis.
By the way, she was asked, what should you do if you can't find formula?
Like, does the president have any recommendations?
She said, yeah, call a doctor.
The whole immediate question of if you can't find formula and you need it for your baby to eat, what should they be doing?
We would certainly encourage any parent who has concerns about their child's health or well-being to call their doctor or pediatrician.
That sounds like this administration is really, really on top of it.
By the way, how is all of this going to impact the Democratic Party?
In pretty serious ways, because there's new polling data out demonstrating from Pew just what people think is a problem right now.
Here's the percentage of people who think that the following are problems.
Inflation, 93%.
Say it's either a very big problem or a moderately big problem.
Violent crime, 54% very big problem, 34% moderately big problem.
That's 88%.
The federal budget deficit, 84% say very big problem or moderately big problem.
The quality of K through 12 schools, public schools, 78% say this is either a very big problem or a moderately big problem.
And so these are big numbers on issues that really, really hurt Democrats.
Again, 57% of Democrats say that inflation is a very big problem.
84% of Republicans say this is a very big problem.
You know what the concern that people care about the least right now?
Literally the least that they care about?
COVID.
People don't care about COVID.
So Democrats are focused in on things like COVID and blaming COVID.
And people are like, nope, this is all you guys.
It's all on you.
Meanwhile, this administration that keeps talking about how inflation is really hurting you, and then they look at the core price index and they're like, wow, look at the fact that this is gas prices.
It's Putin's price hike.
Well, I mean, literally yesterday, the Interior Department, under Joe Biden, cancelled oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Alaska coast.
So we're in the middle of a gas and oil shortage.
And we could be ramping up production to help out the Europeans.
And instead, we've got this idiot administration attempting to cancel oil and gas leases.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Biden administration canceled plans to auction drilling rights in three regions off the U.S.
coastline later this year, adding more friction to an uneasy relationship with the oil industry during a period of high gasoline prices.
The decision to cancel lease sales for two regions in the Gulf of Mexico and one off the coast of Alaska leaves oil and gas companies facing a blackout period of unknown length for access to new drilling spots in valuable offshore acreage.
And one of the reasons this is a major problem is because when you have regulatory schemes that prevent you from buying these leases, how are you going to get a loan for it?
How are you going to find the money to actually fund the leases?
So once they're actually greenlit?
These delays create backlogs.
You want to talk about a supply chain backlog?
This creates a supply chain backlog when it comes to oil and gas, which is what the administration has over and over and over said they want to do.
They say this is an opportunity to move us off carbon-based energy, as though they have some sort of viable energy alternative, which they do not.
Marty Durbin, president of the Energy Arm of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, said, quote, the lack of new lease sales will lower future supplies, which will keep energy prices high and drive inflation for years to come.
While some in the administration have called for more domestic production, this action sends exactly the wrong signal to producers and markets.
Not a shock at all, but that's how this administration rolls.
So, no baby formula?
Well, it's probably price gouging.
Bad gas prices?
Putin's price hike, except we are going to cancel oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Alaskan coast.
Got a real inflation problem getting that thing under control over at the Federal Reserve?
Well, the truth is we do have a black woman who's now on the Federal Reserve.
This administration always has other priorities.
And then, by the way, they also do lie about the priorities that they have.
So yesterday, Jen Psaki was asked about their safe smoking kits that were being handed out by the federal government and the fact that they include crack pipes, and she just lied about it.
She's like, they don't include crack pipes.
They include crack pipes.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that they went to harm reduction facilities in five cities and all of those facilities had crack pipes in their kits.
HHS would not say which programs had applied for funding and the recipient list is not out yet.
So I'm just wondering if the White House can say if any taxpayer dollars paid for these Crack pipes.
No federal funding has gone to it.
This policy does not allow for crack pipes to be included.
I would just note that this is a bit of a conspiracy theory that's been spread out there.
It's not accurate.
There's important drug treatment programs for people who have been suffering from what we've seen as an epidemic across the country and money is not used for crack pipes.
Okay, so the Washington Free Beacon reports differently.
Crack pipes are distributed in safe smoking kits up and down the East Coast, raising questions about the Biden administration's assertion that its multi-million dollar harm reduction grant program wouldn't funnel taxpayer dollars to drug paraphernalia.
The Washington Free Beacon visited five harm reduction organizations and made calls to over two dozen more.
Every organization that they visited, facilities in Boston, New York, D.C., Baltimore, and Richmond, Virginia, included crack pipes in the kits.
While the contents of the safe smoking kits vary from one organization to another, and while those from some organizations may not contain crack pipes, all of the organizations we visited made crack pipes as well as paraphernalia for the use of heroin, cocaine, and crystal meth readily available without requiring or offering rehabilitation services, suggesting the pipes are included in many, if not most, of the kits distributed across the country.
All of the centers we visited are run by health-focused nonprofits and government agencies, the types of groups eligible to receive funding starting this month from the Biden administration's $30 million grant program, and none of the organizations responded to inquiries about whether they bothered to apply for government grants.
It's not clear which organizations will receive those grants.
The bottom line is that these smoking kits, all the money is fungible.
So if a grant is given to an organization, and then they say, well, you know, it's the same thing the left does with funding Planned Parenthood.
They'll be like, yeah, we give it to Planned Parenthood, but we're not funding abortion.
Nope, you're funding abortion.
If you give to organizations that then spend some other money on crackheads, then you're funding the crackheads.
That is the way this works.
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And meanwhile, the Democrats continue to push forward with their agenda on abortion, hoping that it's going to save them from a shellacking in 2022.
And, um, Again, they're really bad at this.
The media seem to believe that the Democrats have some sort of messaging advantage when it comes to abortion.
I'm not seeing it.
One of the reasons I'm not seeing it is that the pro-choice caucus inside the House sent out messaging materials to the House Democrats on Roe versus Wade.
And they put out this chart, messaging do's and don'ts.
Messaging do's and don'ts.
Here's what they say is harmful language.
Choice.
That's correct.
Pro-choice Democrats are now saying that they should not use the word choice because it's become too toxic.
And people understand that choice means abortion.
Instead, you should use the word decision.
Good luck with this.
They also say that you should never say, okay, the Democrats have decided, you should never say the goal is to reduce abortion or to use safe, legal, and rare.
Which again demonstrates how the democratic mindset has moved.
Because to say safe, legal, and rare is an inherent contradiction.
Because once you say that it should be rare, you are suggesting there is a moral problem with abortion.
Instead, say these Democrats, you should use the following language.
Safe, legal, and accessible.
Abortion shouldn't be rare.
Abortion should be widespread with no sort of moral judgment attached.
Abortion is in fact a morally apathetic issue.
It's the same as removing a polyp.
So it shouldn't be safe, legal, and rare.
It should be safe, legal, and accessible.
Also, you should no longer say unwanted pregnancy.
You should say unexpected pregnancy.
Well, I mean, first of all, talk about Orwellian language, unexpected pregnancy.
I mean, do we mean just that you had unprotected sex and then you are surprised?
Well, unexpected pregnancy, like, I think it is fair to say that if you had consensual sex and then you got pregnant, That shouldn't be considered unexpected in the way that you are talking about.
Unwanted is more accurate, but they don't want you to say unwanted because, again, it demonstrates exactly the problem here, which is that you are defining whether this is a baby or not by your pure desire for the baby, which is an incredible thing.
Deciding the value of another human being by deciding whether you want that person in your life, man, if that were the case, if I just got to decide whether everybody who is in my life, whether I want them in my life or I don't want them in my life, and then I just got to kill them if I didn't want them in my life, It'd be me and Charles Manson, man.
But that is the entire Democratic proposal when it comes to abortion, so they're trying to shield that now.
It's not unwanted pregnancy, it's unexpected pregnancy.
Now, first of all, even if it was unexpected pregnancy, a lot of people have babies that are quote-unquote unexpected in this way.
And my youngest sister was a surprise pregnancy for my mom.
That's not only not the end of the world, that's an amazing gift, but the Democrats have to shift away from, it's all euphemistic language.
Also, don't use language like conscience clause or protections.
Because they don't want you as a religious health care provider to be able to say, I don't perform abortions.
They don't want to say that's your conscience.
Instead, they call this refusal of care or denial of care laws.
And finally, they say, you shouldn't say back alley abortions with coat hangers.
You should say criminalizing healthcare.
Because the problem is that when you say back alley abortions with coat hangers, people go, oh, so you're saying that it's bad with a hanger, but that it's good with a scalpel.
So we're going to change the language over.
Now it's criminalizing healthcare.
So we at Daily Wire, we have a new comedy series that you should go check out called That's Not Funny from some of the guys who used to do material over at the Babylon Bee.
And there is a video that we just put out called That's Healthcare.
It pretty thoroughly debunks the idea that abortion is healthcare.
Healthcare for whom?
Not the baby who ends up with its brain sucked into a sink.
But the Democrats do not have an advantage on this issue.
This is their big problem.
And they're being forced over and over again to shift away from their own talking points.
Like what they're forced to do in order to defend abortion truly is egregious.
There's an entire article in the New York Times today.
It's an interactive article simply attacking crisis pregnancy centers, talking about how if you go to a crisis pregnancy center, which generally speaking is a pro-life organization that gives women access to an ultrasound so they can actually see the baby before they kill the baby, and then guides women toward making decisions that don't involve the murder of the unborn.
The New York Times hates this, and they're very angry about this.
They say their names sound benign, even comforting.
Pregnancy Help Center, Options for Women, Clarity Clinic.
You might not notice them if you drove by, but crisis pregnancy centers are frontline outposts in the war against abortion.
My God, nefarious.
And there are more than 2,000 of them in the United States.
Carly Thompson, Kerry Baker, Zach Levitt writing, One is an assistant professor for Middlebury College, and one is a chaired professor at Smith, and one's a graphics editor for the New York Times.
Pregnant?
Need help?
They have an agenda.
As opposed to Planned Parenthood, who has no agenda.
Did you know Planned Parenthood has no agenda?
I mean, sure, they get tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year under Democrats.
In order to perform widespread abortion.
But they have no agenda whatsoever.
When you come into a Planned Parenthood, they have no judgment, no agenda, nothing.
It's not like they are basically pushing abortion.
No, they have no agenda.
Planned Parenthood is absolutely apathetic on abortion.
It's amazing.
The big problem is you might go into a place that doesn't recommend that you immediately kill your baby.
The New York Times says, as the number of crisis pregnancy centers has increased in the United States, the number of abortion facilities has dropped.
From more than 2,700 in 1978 to about 785 today.
As a result, CPCs now outnumber abortion facilities three to one.
More than half of American women of reproductive age would live closer to a CPC than to an abortion facility, according to our analysis.
Oh no, you might live closer to a place where they won't kill your baby than to a place where they will kill your baby?
Wow, what moral tragedy.
So again, this is the New York Times going after crisis.
So you have the Democrats telling their own people not to use the word choice because it's harmful language.
You have the New York Times attacking pregnancy crisis centers, and these are the issues where they are supposed to have a moral advantage going into the election?
You don't have to explain that one to me.
I mean, their spokespeople are people like Whoopi Goldberg on national television, telling people it doesn't matter if it's a baby.
Here was Whoopi Goldberg on that great aggregation of IQ points, The View, yesterday.
At what point does a baby in the womb have rights separate from another?
Listen, it doesn't matter what you think, when you think it is.
If I don't think that that's when it is... Is it the ninth month?
Is it the third trimester?
Listen, I don't have to tell you because... It's none of your business.
It's your decision what you do with your body and how your family works.
And for me, I don't care what your religious beliefs are.
But it's not even religion.
It's way more philosophical debate.
This is all based in religion.
It's all based in religion, according to Whoopi Goldberg.
And it doesn't matter what you think.
No, it really, really, really matters a lot.
Because again, this notion that you can subjectively define another human being's life is a crazy one.
And Whoopi Goldberg, by the way, I mean, just look at American history.
There was a large period of time in American history where people subjectively defined black people as not human.
Hey, that was the greatest evil in American history is the subjective redefinition of other human beings to not be human.
Because after all, it's your decision.
That is not how rights work.
That is not how the value of human life is determined.
So Democrats are supposed to have an advantage on this issue.
They do not, which is why they're now bringing their journal activists to bear.
So this is the playbook that Democrats in the media now run, and they are the same.
The Democratic media complex is a thing.
They all run the same playbook, and they have attempted to weaponize woke capital on their own behalf.
So what happens is, there's a controversial social issue that crops up.
And the first thing they now do is they go get a couple of journalists who are indistinguishable from people who work for Media Matters.
And they have those people call up various corporations, like random corporations be like, don't you have an opinion on X?
Your silence is deafening.
Why doesn't Taylor Swift speak up about gay marriage?
Why doesn't random video game company speak up about abortion?
Anything I'm kidding?
I'm not kidding.
This is their entire shtick now, because if they cannot cudgel The American people into doing what they want in various areas.
They are hoping that perhaps they can get corporations to exert pressure on governments via the power of the markets in order to get done what they want to do.
All they have to do is call up some nervous Nellies on the board and get those nervous Nellies to start mirroring their left-wing priorities.
Which is why there was a spate, a large spate of stories yesterday all about Democrats in the media attempting to do journalism that's actually activism.
By the way, it's not journalism to find out whether a video game company has a perspective on abortion.
That's not a story.
You're manufacturing a story.
It's like going to your next door neighbor as a reporter and being like, so what do you think about the conflict with China over the Taiwan Straits?
That person doesn't need to have an opinion.
That person isn't an expert.
That person isn't making policy.
So the hell are you talking about?
But this is what the media do.
They try to find people who have market power and who employ people.
And then they try to cudgel them into place to do their dirty work for them.
And then they pretend this is journalism.
So, for example, Nathan Grayson and Shannon Lau writing for the Washington Post in the video games section, quote, as Roe versus Wade repeal looms, video game industry stays mostly silent.
The F?
Well, I mean, if the people who make Elden Ring don't have an opinion on abortion, I don't know what we're gonna do here.
According to the Washington Post, quote, in the wake of a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion essentially confirming that Roe vs. Wade's days are numbered, most of the video games industry's biggest companies have remained conspicuously quiet.
They make video games!
Are they in the abortion industry?
Are they doctors?
Like, why are you even asking this question?
The answer is because they're attempting to pressure employers into getting involved.
That's the whole goal here.
It's gross.
It really is yucky.
Shortly after Politico first reported on the leaked Supreme Court draft on May 2nd, Sony-purchased Destiny 2 studio Bungie published a statement in support of reproductive rights, calling Roe vs. Wade's demise a blowout to freedom in America and a direct attack on human rights and prompting fans to donate to reproductive rights-focused organizations.
In the following days, indie developers and a handful of other studios, like Psychonauts 2 creator Double Fine and Guild Wars developer ArenaNet, published brief statements of their own.
A handful of workers told the Post they'd participate in a week-long Mother's Day strike aimed at protesting the potential overturn of Roe vs. Wade, which again is super Orwellian stuff.
I'm protesting on Mother's Day in favor of killing the thing that makes people mothers.
The majority of gaming's heaviest hitters appear to have kept both their mouths and their wallets closed.
The silence is especially conspicuous following the industry's near-unilateral support of causes like Black Lives Matter.
In the wake of George Floyd's murder and anti-Asian hate as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In both of those cases, many big companies released statements, donated to charitable causes, updated internal policy.
This is why, by the way, these corporations were morons to have engaged in this in the first place.
The minute you give an inch to the left, they will now demand that they run all of your social policy.
You decided to cave to them because you were afraid they were going to say mean words about you because of BLM?
And so you gave to a bunch of organizations that bought Patrisse Cullors a $6 million home?
And now, these same people are coming back to you for more, like, well, I see that you haven't donated to Planned Parenthood lately.
I see that you haven't said anything about Emily's List.
Never let your boardroom become the preserve of left-wing activists who masquerade as journalists.
And if you do, you're an idiot.
You're an idiot CEO.
The Washington Post contacted 20 major video game companies about whether they plan to make a statement regarding Roe's potential repeal or provide employees with monetary aid in places where abortions would no longer be available.
Like, that's just, that's not journalism, guys.
That is not journalism.
When you go to companies and then you try to pressure them to do the thing you want them to do, that's just activism.
And you should just go work for Media Matters or hang out with Judd Legamum.
That's what, that is your job.
So now you're pretending you're a journalist, you're not a journalist, you're an activist, and it's gross.
How do we know how stupid this is?
So, apparently, Sony PlayStation staff are now fuming over their CEO's abortion comments.
So, PlayStation was trending on Twitter yesterday.
It was trending on Twitter because the CEO put out a statement, and his statement said that employees should respect differences of opinion on abortion.
And then he did five paragraphs about his two cats' first birthday.
Which, frankly, is the proper response to all of this.
You're allowed to have whatever opinions you want to have.
Also, my cat had a birthday.
That seems like a perfect response from the PlayStation CEO.
But apparently, this is now super controversial.
And this person must be yelled at.
We have to yell at Jim Ryan, the PlayStation president, because he didn't take a position that we like on abortion.
Okay, any corporation that caves to this deserves whatever it gets, and I'm happy to see them ripped down by the left and turned into tools.
Well, companies that bow to the far left are really, really dumb, but there's a way you can make yourself more intelligent, and that is you can check out the Jordan Harbinger Show.
We are fans here at The Daily Wire.
The Jordan Harbinger Show features in-depth interviews with some of the world's most fascinating minds, ranging from Charles Koch to Neil deGrasse Tyson to Kobe Bryant, diving so much deeper than any other interviewer I've heard.
It's so clear that Jordan really does go in the weeds preparing for these.
He actually does his research.
Jordan dives into the minds of really interesting people, from athletes and authors and scientists to mobsters, spies, hostage negotiators.
Every Friday, Jordan also releases a Feedback Friday episode to respond to listener questions, covering everything from conventional problems like leaving a dream job to really heavy stuff like helping someone escape an abusive relationship.
Some of the best episodes, he did an interview with Yanmi Park that is really excellent about the differences between America and North Korea.
He's interviewed people like Jack Schafer or Dan Carlin.
Plus, listening to Jordan goes great with listening to this show, which you're already doing right now.
I don't always agree with Jordan, what he says on the show, but you're going to get smarter just listening to the show.
Search for The Jordan Harbinger Show.
That's H-A-R-B as in boy, I-N as in Nancy, G-E-R.
In Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now.
Again, check out The Jordan Harbinger Show and give it a listen.
Alrighty, folks, it is that glorious time of the week.
I wanna give a shout out to a Daily Wire member.
Today, it's Alex Gagalack on Instagram who appreciates an outstanding beverage vessel when he sees one.
In this picture, Alex is proudly holding the world's greatest and most elite chalice while wearing a BJ Penn for Governor t-shirt.
The caption reads, I joined Real Daily Wire to support the effort.
I wasn't expecting this gift.
I will drink out of this with pride.
Hashtag leftist tears tumbler.
Awesome, and best of luck at your next Brazilian jujitsu tournament.
Thanks for the pic.
Thanks for being a Daily Wire member.
Folks, we have a huge and important piece of content out today, and you should check it out.
The most infamous Supreme Court decision, maybe in American history, is Roe v. Wade.
Looks like it's about to be overturned.
Even 50 years after Roe v. Wade, most people don't know the truth behind the landmark decision, a decision that's enabled the destruction of over 64 million babies since 1971.
Well, The Daily Wire is taking a wrecking ball to the four big lies the abortion industry was built upon.
We have an original documentary, it is out today, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe.
We uncover the inside story of how Roe versus Wade came to pass and why it needs to go the way of the dodo bird, which, thank God, it looks like it might.
You'll hear the facts and stories the abortion regime has suppressed for generations.
You'll get a clear-eyed view at the brutal reality they desperately do not want you to see.
Some of this content is graphic, very hard to watch, but that is the point.
No one else is going to show you the truth about this stuff.
We will.
Here's the trailer.
Many times when we did this, as we started, patients would begin crying and protesting.
you But once we had begun dilating the cervix and passing instruments into the uterus, it was too late to stop.
I was handing hush money to women who we had left pieces of their baby.
We had put these women's lives in jeopardy.
We had put their lives at risk, and we were literally giving them a check for $800.
for $800, and for a poor woman, $800 is a lot of money.
I mean, there have been so many moments in the last decade plus of going undercover in abortion clinics myself and seeing just heartbreaking things.
Women vomiting in the hallway of an abortion clinic, crying out in pain.
The late-term abortionists talking casually about how they would literally leave a born-alive baby to die.
Or if you deliver the baby in the toilet, then you pick it up and stuff it in a plastic bag and bring it to us.
Babies are being born alive and the backs of their necks are being slit.
They are being drowned.
Their necks are being snapped.
It's happening more often than people want to think about.
These abortion facilities, these abortion providers, these doctors, they don't care about these women.
And you're just, you're realizing you're watching in front of your own eyes play out America's greatest horror story, which is how we butcher children in the name of choice.
I'm watching on the air!
Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!
It is deeply disturbing stuff.
Abortion is deeply disturbing stuff.
And this is a very frank look at the great evil of our country for the last 50 years.
So please help us expose the truth.
Tell your friends to watch.
If you're not already, become a Daily Wire member.
Tune in today to watch our documentary on abortion, Choosing Death, The Legacy of Roe.
Go to dailywire.com slash choosing.
Join the fight today.
Make sure all of your friends.
Maybe disagree with you on abortion?
Take a look at the documentary.
It's going to help change their mind.
Dailywire.com slash choosing.
You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
Well, companies are starting to realize that this is incredibly stupid to cave to the idiot journalists who work for Media Matters.
They're starting to realize this for a few different reasons.
Reason number one is because the market does not approve of this sort of activity.
So for example, when it runs directly up against their profit margins, they start to freak out.
So the best example of this is Netflix.
So Netflix, you'll remember, has Dave Chappelle.
They paid Dave Chappelle a fortune in order to do comedy specials.
And those comedy specials do enormous business for Netflix.
Netflix has been taking it on the chin in terms of subscriber numbers, right?
Their numbers are really, really down.
And so they can't afford to lose pieces of content like Dave Chappelle.
So they put out a memo.
to their own employees saying that they are not going to cave to sort of the woke censors at this point.
They put out, according to Variety, a memo, an update to its corporate culture memo, for the first time in five years.
The core principles of the Netflix Culture Memo, including empowering employee decision-making, requiring candid feedback, and terminating staffers who aren't up to dream team snuff, remain intact.
But there are some key changes.
For starters, the document has a new title, Netflix Culture Seeking Excellence.
More significantly, the document adds a new directive for employees to act with fiscal responsibility.
So, in other words, don't just spend a bunch of money on crap that you like.
It actually has to make some sort of economic sense.
The updated Netflix culture memo also includes a new section called Artistic Expression, explaining that the streamer will not censor specific artists or voices, even if employees consider the content harmful, and bluntly states, if you'd find it hard to support our content's breadth, Netflix may not be the place for you.
Okay, that is Netflix saying to the wokesters and members of the media, we are not going to play this game.
We are not going to play this game where you guys get to dictate content to us because their bottom line was threatened, which demonstrates again that the left has attempted to use the media to astroturf fake campaigns against companies to push them to the left.
And then they've gone to their friends in the government and had those members of the government subtly and not so subtly threaten companies with regulation or bans or with some sort of punishment if they don't do what the left wants.
And the companies have been reacting to those incentives.
And now there are counter incentives, meaning that the market is looking at these places and saying, well, if you wish to work for the left, we don't wish to work with you.
And they're getting counter incentives in a couple of really important ways.
So one is from places like Florida.
Obviously, Ron DeSantis leading the path on this.
Rich Lowry has a really, really good piece in the New York Times today called Republicans Need a New Leader.
They are looking to Florida.
As you know, I think Governor DeSantis is the best governor in the country.
He's also my governor here in the state of Florida.
And Ross Douthat really nails it.
He says, For all the talk about how Trumpy DeSantis is, there's much about him that recalls the party's pre-Trump era.
He was elected to Congress as a Tea Party conservative in 2012.
He's fond of boasting that Florida's budget is roughly half the size of New York's, even though his state is more populous.
He's proud and protective of Florida's status as a low-tax state.
None of this is new.
What stands out as a true departure is DeSantis' willingness to use government power in the culture war.
Sometimes this has involved areas like public education, where the government has every right to set the rules.
One such example is the Don't Say Gay Bill, more properly known as the Parental Rights and Education Bill, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
Another is the Individual Freedom Bill, which among other things, prohibits promotion of the concept that a person, quote, must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions in which the individual played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.
Then there's the fight with Disney.
The revocation of its special tax status is a frankly retaliatory act that also presents free speech issues and could prove a legal and policy morass.
That said, Disney got a truly extraordinary deal from the state that allowed it, in effect, to run its own city.
The company never would have been granted this arrangement 55 years ago if its executives had told the state's leaders, and by the way, eventually the Walt Disney Company will adopt cutting-edge left-wing causes as its own.
The broader point of making an example of Disney is to send a message to other corporations.
There could be downsides to letting themselves be pushed by progressive employers into making their institutions weapons in the culture wars, and conclude it's best to stick to flying planes, selling soda, and so on.
And Ross Douthat explains why so many people on the right have become sort of comfortable with this.
He says, The key, I think, is that for many people on the right, a libertarian-oriented politics was largely a way to register opposition to the mandarins, who have an outsized influence on our public life.
It turns out that populism is an even more pungent way to register this opposition.
Progressive domination of elite culture has now grown to include formerly neutral institutions like corporations and sports leagues.
More conservatives are beginning to believe that the only countervailing institutional force is democratic political power as reflected in governors' mansions, state legislatures, and Congress.
The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York once wrote, Democrat, the central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.
Given the state of play, says Rich, conservatives have been learning to appreciate Moynihan's liberal truth.
If Florida's culture war initiatives succeed, the education establishment in the state will not mindlessly absorb the latest left-wing fad.
Corporations will be warrior of wading into hot button social fights.
In other words, the culture of these institutions will have changed for the better.
This is correct.
Meanwhile, you have my friend Vivek Ramaswamy, who is coming up with a very creative way to fight back against woke capital by providing an alternative.
He's doing something that we here at The Daily Wire have done, right?
We're dedicating $100 million to making kids programming so that you can get great kids programming without the woke.
And you can get away from Disney Plus and instead move over to DW Kids, for example.
And that's something that Vivek is doing in the investment sphere.
So he points out That major firms like BlackRock basically have said that they are using their market power in order to force companies in which they invest to mirror left-wing social priorities.
Vivek is now offering people the opportunity to invest in the same companies that BlackRock is investing in, but use that great market power in order to push those companies to be apolitical.
A lot of states are going to have an interest in that.
A lot of state pension funds might have an interest in not pushing the political priorities of Larry Fink over at BlackRock and instead going apolitical and saying, listen, we like the trading.
We don't like the social agenda.
You were not elected.
All of this is very good.
So the fight against woke capital has begun, and that is definitely a positive.
So all the avenues of victory for Democrats are currently being taken away.
Electoral avenues of victory are being taken away.
Judicial avenues of victory are being taken away.
And the attempt to pervert the market Through subtle and not-so-subtle cuddling of corporations into taking a left-wing political stance, that's being taken away too.
All of which bodes well for the future.
I know, ending on an optimistic note here.
A rarity here on the Ben Shapiro Show.
But, I am optimistic for the future because I think that the left, they can't get out of their own way.
They just cannot.
And because of that, and because people are fighting smarter and harder, I think that they are going to lose.
All righty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
First, you can't forget to end your week by tuning into The Andrew Klavan Show.
Drew shows every Friday.
He's got an exciting evening planned for you, so head on over to dailywire.com at 7 p.m.
Eastern, 6 p.m.
Central, and tune in.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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