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Sept. 8, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show

45:21

The Age Of AOC | Ep. 1570

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	It's a cavalcade of Democratic social media stars as Barack Obama returns to the White House to take a victory lap.
	AOC graces the cover of GQ and Hillary hits The View.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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	I've been saying for a very long time that politics should be a serious business.
	I mean, sure, it's a comedy because it's a bunch of idiots running around who are telling you what to do and botching it every which way and then blaming you.
	And if you watch it as a tragedy, it's really sad.
	But if you watch it as a comedy, it's hilarious.
	But the truth is, politics overall is a pretty serious business because you're talking about people attempting to solve problems that affect it.
	Hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.
	You're talking about people who wield extraordinary amounts of power over your everyday life.
	And that means they should be serious people.
	They should be people who are working within our institutions in order to make incremental changes that better your life over the course of time.
	That's what politics theoretically should be about.
	And the job of a politician is different than, say, the job that I have, right?
	The job that I have is to articulate the principles that I believe in and then to hold people accountable when they don't actually face up to those principles.
	The job of a politician is to understand where their principles are and then to make the necessary adjustments to those principles, the necessary compromises in order to incrementally move the ball forward along the lines of their principles.
	That's what a politician's job is to do.
	But what our politics has basically become is a bunch of social media influencers.
	And I'm talking all the way on up To the presidency.
	So yesterday, Barack Obama shows up at the White House.
	He's back.
	And I think I really do think that Barack Obama represents a gap in how Americans have treated the presidency, have treated politics in total.
	Barack Obama was the first celebrity president.
	Like just treated as a celebrity, fated as a celebrity.
	He was a person who treated the office as a platform.
	He is not somebody who treated the office as an institution to be wielded for incremental change.
	Every change was going to be sweeping.
	He was the leader of a movement.
	He was a radical politician who wasn't really a politician.
	He was a messianic leader who'd been thrust into this and treated as a cultural icon by members of the left.
	Treated as one of the Hollywood glitterati.
	And he ushered in a new era in American politics.
	I mean, before that, basically American politicians, no matter how much the media tried to spin them as celebrities, they were still politicians.
	Bill Clinton was always a politician.
	George W. Bush was always a politician.
	Ronald Reagan had been a Hollywood star, but he was treated like a politician.
	He was not a Hollywood star by the time he entered office.
	In fact, he was mocked for the fact that he'd even once been a Hollywood star when he was running for office in 1980.
	Richard Nixon was a lifelong politician.
	Gerald Ford was a politician, right?
	If you go back far enough, what you're talking about is not celebrity politics.
	You're talking about politicians who have a political job to do.
	And again, a politician is more like a plumber than they are like a messianic figure, at least in the American system.
	You're not supposed to treat your politicians as though they are people who have been arranged from on high to save you.
	And you're certainly not supposed to treat them the same way that you would treat a Hollywood celebrity.
	And yet the merger of culture and politics took place under Barack Obama.
	And it's been really, really bad for American politics on all sides of the aisle, by the way, not just for the left.
	Because once politics becomes not the art of getting things done in the context of checks and balances, upholding rights while pursuing better lives for people.
	Once politics becomes not that, but simply a platform for you to become more famous or more rich.
	For you to stand outside the system and shout at the system, politics breaks down.
	Yuval Levin, really good thinker over at the American Enterprise Institute, he had a book recently called The Time to Build.
	And he talked about how politics had basically shifted From a place where institutions shape the people who are instituted.
	If you went into Congress, Congress shaped you.
	You had to work within the boundaries of Congress to get things done.
	If you became president, the institution of the presidency shaped you.
	It aged you.
	You had to work within its boundaries.
	There were constitutional norms that were supposed to affect you as a human being.
	And how politics has shifted from institutions and working within institutions to people who are using the institutions as a platform.
	And here's what Yuval Levin writes in his book, A Time to Build, because I think it's super relevant because what you're seeing in politics right now, the breakdown in politics and the dissatisfaction of Americans with their politicians comes from exactly this.
	Americans look at these messianic figures who, again, do not want to operate within the boundaries of their institutions, who see the institutions as thwarting them.
	And they expect the world from them because if somebody comes along and says, the institutions are what stand between you and glory.
	Come with me and I will break the institutions and I will fix everything for you.
	People tend to put their faith in those people and that faith ultimately will be disappointed.
	And that's particularly true if that person poses as a messianic figure and is utterly incapable of carrying off the charade, which is Joe Biden.
	At least what you can say about Barack Obama is that Barack Obama acted the part.
	If he's going to be a messianic figure, at least Barack Obama acted it.
	In his very personage, he embodied the idea that America was going to come together racially.
	He was a terrific speaker.
	He was a very good politician, right?
	He actually embodied a lot of these things.
	Joe Biden does not.
	You can say about Donald Trump on the right that at least Donald Trump was a real celebrity.
	I mean, he was a celebrity long before he was a politician.
	And so when he was a celebrity who became a politician, it wasn't that awkward a merger.
	As I've said before, Barack Obama and Donald Trump are actually weird kind of photo negative inverses of one another.
	Barack Obama liked to see himself as this very genteel politician, a A person who is operating in the mode of like Benjamin Disraeli or something.
	But that's not who Barack Obama was.
	He was a selfie stick guy who posed as a messianic guy, which is kind of like Trump, right?
	I mean, they're operating in the same context.
	The context just changed.
	Steve Oliven talks about this.
	He says, on the threats to institutions that are characteristic of our time, he says, quote, we will find that the lure of cynical distance and of playing the outsider are deadly to the kind of renewal our society requires.
	And to the idea that politicians, they stand outside the system, they rip the system.
	That's their job.
	That their job isn't to operate within the system.
	And what makes a politician successful is saying that the system itself is bad, campaigning against the system.
	Which has been a hallmark of Barack Obama and Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
	This is now a hallmark of pretty much everybody in politics.
	I'm an outsider, I'm campaigning against the system.
	Yvon Levin says that destroys the institutions.
	Says, we'll notice that the culture of celebrity turns out again and again to be the enemy of a culture of integrity.
	We'll see that our pervasive and polarized culture war is drowning our society in poisonous acrimony, and perhaps above all, we'll find that the people who occupy our institutions increasingly understand those institutions not as molds that ought to shape their behavior and character, but as platforms that allow them greater individual exposure and enable them to hone their personal brands.
	What he says, you've all heard him, he says, human beings are born as crooked creatures prone to waywardness and sin.
	We therefore always require moral and social formation.
	Such formation is what our institutions are for.
	But instead, what our politicians are doing is they are wrecking those institutions so they can build monuments to themselves.
	They're taking these institutions that have been carefully, gradually built up over the course of centuries, and they're just dismantling them and then reshaping the bricks into a platform for themselves.
	And Barack Obama was the leader in this.
	He was the leader in this.
	He came along, pledging to be a unifying president who's going to operate within the boundaries of the law.
	And by the time he had a second term, he was, I'm Obama, pen and phone guy, right?
	If Congress won't do what I want, there'll be a pen and a phone, selfie stick hanging out on Jimmy Kimmel.
	He is the embodiment of all of this.
	And I know Democrats love to worship at the altar of Obama.
	And it's specifically because of this.
	It's because Barack Obama was the first celebrity president.
	We'd had people who were famous before, but they were expected to then conform to the office.
	General Eisenhower was very, very famous, but then he was very much expected and he did conform to the office of the presidency.
	Barack Obama always operated as an outsider to the presidency.
	So when he arrives back at the White House and is treated as a celebrity, there's a reason why.
	It's because he was primarily a celebrity, not primarily a president.
	So he arrives back at the White House.
	To unveil the portraits.
	This is, again, this is Joe Biden who is sinking in the polls.
	And so welcoming Barack Obama back is a way to try and transfer some of Obama's popularity to him.
	Now that doesn't work.
	A celebrity's popularity is non-transferable.
	That's not transferable credit.
	It's not fluid.
	It's not fungible.
	Barack Obama can't simply arrive at the White House, rub Joe Biden's balding head with the hair plugs and everything, and suddenly Joe Biden is significantly more popular.
	That's not the way this works.
	Barack Obama couldn't even do this with members of Congress when he was president of the United States, let alone when he's the ex-president.
	But that's what this is about.
	And you can see it, by the way, every time Obama shows up at the White House, it's so awkward because the media love him.
	The staff love him because he's famous.
	He's a celebrity.
	He's magnetic.
	And sad old poor shambling Joe over here, It's just a career corrupt politician playing at this.
	It's sort of like LBJ taking over for JFK, right?
	JFK was a big camelot, big celebrity.
	Well, when you look at the contrast between Obama and Biden, it is stunning.
	Well, it turns out that when celebrities run your politics, you end up spending a lot more money than you need to.
	That is how you get a 40-year high in inflation.
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	So Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama returned Wednesday to the White House for the unveiling of their official portraits.
	The paintings were revealed during a ceremony in the East Room hosted by President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden.
	It was the first time Mrs. Obama had returned to the White House since she and Obama left in 2017.
	Remember, Mrs. Obama has also used the White House as a massive platform for herself.
	She arrived in the White House Perceived as an extraordinary political radical, Michelle Obama.
	This is a lady who during the 2008 election campaign had suggested that she was never proud of her country until her husband was nominated for high office.
	Which is a pretty extraordinary thing to say when you went to Princeton University Harvard Law School and got a cush job on the University of Chicago Medical School Board.
	I mean, that's a pretty good life.
	So if you're only proud of your country when your husband gets nominated, that says something about your politics.
	She was then transformed by the media into a level-headed moderate And now, of course, she's treated by the media as Oprah, and her book sold some 12 million copies, and she's treated as a cultural figure, a cultural totem.
	Mr. Obama visited earlier this year for an event honoring Obamacare.
	The ceremony, which was packed with former Obama aides, marked the first portrait unveiling at the White House since 2012, when former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush were received by the Obamas.
	Former President Trump didn't host his predecessor for a portrait event, as many recent presidents have.
	So, first of all, if Trump had invited Obama, you think Obama was going to show up and do that event with Trump?
	No way.
	The White House Portrait Collection dates to a painting of former President George Washington that hangs in the East Room.
	Starting in the 1960s, the White House Historical Association sought to acquire portraits of past presidents and first ladies not in the collection and began financing portraits of recent presidents.
	According to Stuart McLaurin, the organization's president, this is the Wall Street Journal reporting.
	Mr. McLaurin said, quote, the association meets with the outgoing president and first lady.
	The couple picks the artist and the association pays for the portraits with private funds.
	Obama's portrait was painted by Robert McCurdy, an artist known for a photorealist style.
	So, you know, kind of, it looks like a photo, basically.
	It's a fine portrait.
	It's kind of stark because there's no background.
	It's just, it's white, so it's made for memes, which of course the internet immediately picked up on.
	Mrs. Obama was painted by Sharon Sprung, whose work includes two portraits at the U.S.
	Capitol, including one of Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress.
	And here is a little bit of what it looked like, right?
	You can see here is Obama and, you know, kind of smiling.
	There's Michelle and she's leaning back against the couch, wearing a formal gown.
	Obama, of course, is the sort of casual JFK-esque appearance.
	Here, it's painted with his face sort of half in shadow, almost the way that the JFK presidential portrait is.
	That's not, I'm sure, any level of coincidence.
	Portraits are fine.
	That's fine.
	But the bottom line is that when Obama comes back to the White House, he does so as a celebrity.
	Obama literally was just handed an Emmy.
	They gave him an Emmy.
	So that means that we have now had two straight presidents.
	Biden hasn't won an Emmy yet.
	We now have two straight presidents who have won Emmys, which says something about where we are as a culture.
	Donald Trump won an Emmy before he was president, right when he was doing The Apprentice.
	And Barack Obama has now won an Emmy for the signal feat of reading narrative about America's national parks.
	They're going to give this guy the EGOT before he's done, because again, he's a celebrity.
	He's more in line with Jennifer Lawrence than he is in line with George Washington.
	Here is CBS News reporting on this signal feat.
	Obama won the Emmy for Outstanding Narrator on Sunday for his work in the Netflix documentary, Our Great National Parks, which is a wonderful series if you haven't seen it.
	The five-part series, featuring national parks around the world, is produced by the Obama's production company, Higher Ground.
	Okay, by the way, you think that he won that Emmy because so many people love that National Parks documentary?
	Or do you think it's because they're all fans of Barack Obama?
	By the way, I believe this is actually his second Emmy.
	Didn't he win a Grammy?
	He's now won an Emmy and a Grammy.
	He won a Grammy for voicing his book or something.
	So again, politicians and celebrities, the merger of that is really, really bad for American politics.
	And then trying to transfer all of that momentum over to politics ends up with not only bad policy, but it also ends up with some real awkwardness because this sort of celebrity does not transfer over to Joe Biden.
	Joe Biden is playing a messianic figure, but It just doesn't play.
	It doesn't play at all.
	Well, if celebrity and politics are a pretty bad merger, then one of the things that you also should not merge are, you know, high inflation rates and high interest rates.
	We are looking at stagflation right now.
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	So, Joe Biden is there with Obama, and he talks about how he starts basically worshiping at the altar of Obama.
	You know, we trusted him, all of you in this room.
	We believed in him.
	We counted on him.
	And I still do.
	That's why the country elected you twice.
	That's why you'll be considered one of the most consequential presidents in our history.
	My favorite thing, actually, about Barack Obama, there are not many things I like about Barack Obama as a president or as a human.
	He seems like a good father and a good husband, but aside from those, which are important things, obviously, the most important thing, but the thing I actually like about Barack Obama is that he hates Joe Biden.
	I mean, he hates him.
	It's really, really funny.
	Like, if you read the stories about what Obama thinks of Joe Biden, Like, they're all about how he's sneering at Joe Biden, just bloviating and his logaria, his diarrhea of the mouth.
	Like, it's really, really funny stuff.
	So the relationship between Obama and Joe, even though Joe is significantly older than Barack, right?
	I mean, Joe Biden is now 80 years old.
	Barack Obama, after having served two presidencies, he is still only 61 years old.
	So he is two decades younger than the man who succeeded him.
	And so Joe wants to treat Obama as the younger brother, but Obama just keeps dismissing him.
	And it's really, really funny.
	And every time Obama talks about Joe, it's with this sort of seething, just disdain for the guy.
	So here is Barack Obama talking about Joe Biden.
	This is casual Obama, by the way.
	One of the most obnoxious forms of Obama.
	There are many forms of Obama.
	There's formal Obama, there's campaign Obama, and there's casual Obama, where he just starts dropping the Gs.
	A lot of Gs just start dropping off the word.
	It's not dropping.
	It's dropping.
	Here we go.
	Someone once said that if you're looking for a friend in Washington, get a dog.
	Our family was lucky enough to have two wonderful dogs.
	But I was even luckier to have a chance to spend eight years working day and night with a man who became a true partner and a true friend.
	Joe, it is now America's good fortune to have you as president.
	Oh man, I am so happy he's not president anymore.
	And I'm so sad that Joe Biden is currently our president.
	I think one of the best moments here was was Barack Obama started thanking the staffers.
	And he noted, by the way, all the staffers here used to work for me, because what he's really saying is all of Joe Biden's supposed feats of legislation.
	That's not Joe.
	Nobody believes it's Joe.
	It's all the people who used to work for Obama.
	This is just Obama's third term.
	And here's Obama claiming credit.
	As much as I miss our work together, what's been a special joy is to see what's happened since.
	Because so many of you are doing amazing things, whether it's in government, in the private sector, in academia, or non-profits.
	And I'm especially glad to see so many of you serving President Biden as well as you serve me.
	By the way, just a question.
	When you work for the executive branch, do you serve the president?
	You serve at the pleasure of the president, but do you serve the president?
	I thought you were supposed to serve the country, generally speaking.
	That's a weird way of phrasing that.
	You're serving Biden what you serve me.
	But the media are there to... I do love when Barack Obama says, you know, in politics, you need a dog if you want a friend.
	Or you could just have the media massaging your feet all day long as they continue to do.
	That merger of celebrity and politics that started with Obama has not stopped.
	The awkward thing for Joe Biden is that he can't merge celebrity and politics because, again, he has no star quality.
	Joe Biden is only president because he was the person who was standing there barely alive while all of the socialists were fighting it out on the Democratic side of the aisle.
	And Democrats were like, what if we nominate a dead person against Trump?
	He'll probably win.
	And it worked!
	This is why you have Howard Stern begging people not to pay attention to the old man in the corner.
	We got a president who can get legislation through even in the most partisan of times where we're polarized.
	I wake up every morning. I never think about who's the president anymore.
	I don't sit and read wackiness in the newspaper.
	People go, he's too old.
	He ain't too old!
	He's doing fine.
	Say yeah, job well done.
	You're an executive, you're running the country, and it's running well.
	Is everything perfect?
	No.
	To repair what the f*** went on here for the last four years is insane.
	But we need a nation that's stable, that believes in government, that doesn't have conspiracy theories, and that's that.
	And I hope Biden runs again.
	I'll vote for him.
	He hopes Biden runs again, he'll vote for him.
	Again, they're going to have to talk their way through the Biden presidency because he just doesn't have the star quality now that we live in the new world.
	The weird oddity of Joe Biden, of course, is that he combines the same disdain for the institutions that Barack Obama actually began, right?
	Pen and phone Obama, ripping on Congress, ripping on the Supreme Court, all the rest of it.
	He combines all of that with Zero star quality, like zero star power.
	So Democrats are having to walk that one through.
	But again, the transformation of American politics along celebrity lines, it's been a really, really bad thing.
	And you can see it in every major politician that we've seen, pretty much on both sides of the aisle since Barack Obama came into office for solidly 14 years here in the United States.
	So one of the other celebrity politicians who's been making her reappearance is, of course, Hillary Clinton.
	Hillary Clinton, she is now making trailers.
	She's now making full TV shows for Apple TV.
	Do you think that she used politics as a platform?
	You notice how she used it as a platform to build her persona?
	Her persona is now that she gets paid, presumably a lot of money, by Apple TV for a series called Gutsy about how she is the gutsiest person who ever gutsied.
	And the next gutsiest person is her daughter, who's also extraordinarily gutsy.
	And both of them are just as gutsy as Megan Thee Stallion, who's also an extremely gutsy person.
	Well, it's not just Barack Obama who's a celebrity politician.
	It's also Hillary Clinton who is a celebrity politician.
	You know what you don't need?
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	They just spend a lot of money to make themselves look like experts.
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	How did you hear about us, Fox?
	So they know that I sent you.
	So Hillary Clinton is now releasing the series this week on Apple TV.
	Again, politics as platform is very, very bad for politics.
	So here is the trailer, a little bit of the trailer, for Hillary Clinton, gutsy.
	Chelsea Clinton, just as gutsy.
	And the most gutsy of all, Wanda Sykes.
	Super gutsy women.
	Take truth to power.
	When I throw rocks, I'm throwing them up.
	We bring balance to the world.
	Oh my gosh, oh the requisite dancing clip.
	It's a document, it's a documentary by Hillary about Hillary being gutsy. It's amazing.
	One with yourself says Goldie Hawn man This series, it makes you want to, just the trailer makes you want to stick your head in an oven.
	And it's just horrific stuff happening right here.
	But again, that merger of celebrity and politics is the death of American politics because you're going to get people who are ineffective and whose stance is rooted in the idea that they are apart from the system.
	The institutions are bad.
	It's all about them.
	And so this is what you have.
	Hillary is now on The View.
	The View is a perfect example of this, by the way.
	You have a bunch of dunder-headed, low-IQ human beings talking about politics.
	They spent five seconds reading a headline in the New York Times.
	They don't even read to paragraph four in these stories.
	And you have these women jabbering at each other in the most unintelligent possible way, and then bringing on supposedly serious political figures like Hillary Clinton to jabber with them.
	So Hillary Clinton goes on The View yesterday and she starts, this is amazing, it's just incredible.
	Here she is talking about how it's terrifying the fact that Donald Trump was keeping classified documents in Mar-a-Lago.
	Terrifying!
	Here we go.
	This should be taken really seriously.
	It's not a joking matter.
	And it shouldn't be partisan.
	And it shouldn't be partisan.
	It should concern every American because Those documents in the empty folders, as they were marked, suggest that there was really important secret information that is essential to our country's defense and security.
	And when the report came out yesterday that the documents also included information about we don't know which, an ally or an adversary's nuclear program, I cannot tell you how terrifying that is.
	Yeah, I'm sure she was super terrified.
	She looks terrified.
	She looks absolutely terrified, Hillary Clinton.
	By the way, I've noticed that you know when those documents did not actually leak into view is when they were in Donald Trump's closet.
	You know when they did leak into view?
	The minute the FBI grabbed them and leaked them to the Washington Post.
	So there was that.
	What was more terrifying?
	The fact that they were in his closet or the fact that it was now on the front page of the Washington Post?
	Pretty incredible stuff there.
	Hillary continues along these lines.
	People die to get government information.
	I mean, people also die at U.S.
	embassies that you fail to defend, but lots of people die, as it turns out.
	Mysteriously.
	Jeffrey Epstein didn't count.
	Anyway, here's Hillary.
	We don't have yet an understanding of what was in them.
	We're getting little dribs and drabs like the nuclear posture of an ally or adversary.
	But I do... I mean, people literally die to get our government information.
	They go to prison.
	They get exiled.
	It's dangerous oftentimes.
	And the idea that this would have been done, I hope everybody takes really seriously.
	It is not some casual try to come up with some, you know, throwaway... It's not like an overdue library book.
	No, not like an overdue library book.
	I mean, what you should do with classified information is keep it on your private server, and then when you're asked to turn over that private server, you should probably bleach bit the thing.
	Maybe drill some holes in it.
	That's probably what you should do.
	Hillary Clinton, by the way, is still out there claiming she had zero classified emails on her server, despite the fact that a 2018 Inspector General report found 193 emails that were classified sent to or from Hillary Clinton's server.
	So, again, the merger of celebrity and politics, it results in bad celebrities and bad politics.
	Shocker.
	Well, this culminates in AOC.
	Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is a difference in degree but not in kind from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
	She's essentially their sort of imagistic third generation child.
	That's what she is.
	She is a celebrity influencer who's in Congress.
	She doesn't do anything useful in Congress.
	She doesn't actually sponsor serious legislation.
	People laugh at her legislation because it's stupid.
	She does Instagram clips and she's on the cover of GQ this week.
	She's on the cover of GQ.
	Now, she's extraordinarily radical.
	She hobnobs with anti-Semites and backs their play.
	She is a socialist through and through, like identifies as such.
	And she is the future of the Democratic Party, according to GQ.
	And this is like a perfect confluence, this article.
	It's also written by Wesley Lowry, who used to write for the Washington Post until they said, you know, you're so openly partisan, you can't be a reporter.
	He's like, of course, I'm openly partisan.
	That's called truth.
	So now he's writing the profile piece on Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and the entire piece is about what a victim she is.
	She's a super giant victim, you see, who's using Congress as a platform for her to be on the cover of GQ.
	GQ is a fashion magazine.
	GQ stands for Gentlemen's Quarterly.
	Does this have to do with politics or does this have to do with image making?
	She's like, she is the apex predator when it comes to the merger of celebrity and politics.
	Let me read again the preconditions to the destruction of American institutions from Yuval Levin, right?
	Here are the elements.
	You ready?
	The lure of cynical distance and playing the outsider.
	That is literally her entire shtick.
	I'm an outsider.
	I have to lead a movement.
	The systems of politics are too confining for me.
	The celebrity of culture.
	People using the institutions, not as molds that ought to shape their behavior, but as platforms that allow them greater individual exposure and enable them to hone at their personal brands.
	There's nothing that says personal brand more than being on the cover of GQ in very expensive clothing.
	So she put out on her Instagram this statement, quote, I'm back after some rest time.
	She was gone.
	Really, I didn't even know because she's so unbelievably ubiquitous.
	To tackle the issue of gender and politics, GQ decided to take some big risks.
	So risky.
	So brave.
	So gutsy.
	It's such a big risk to put AOC on the cover of a magazine.
	No one's ever thought to do that before.
	But why do Republicans care?
	Why do you keep talking?
	Because they keep putting her on magazine covers despite her zero legislative accomplishments and her idiotic Instagram page.
	It's this singularly unintelligent and unimpressive legislator.
	That's why you're the ones who elevate her and put her on magazine cover.
	Me pointing out that she's on a magazine cover is not me starting the issue.
	It's you starting the issue.
	You make her an icon.
	And then when I point out that you've made a bubble head, an icon, then suddenly you're like, wow, you can't notice that.
	How are you noticing that?
	It's this singularly unintelligent and unimpressive legislator.
	She says to tackle the issue of gender in politics, GQ decided to take some big risks and featured their first female politician on their cover interviewed by one of the most prominent young black male journalists and top journalist.
	Period of our time, Wesley Lowry, who again was kicked out of major publications for being a bias left winger with two legendary trans icons, photographing Wow.
	Well, I mean.
	Huge news guys!
	Trans, they're not just trans people, they are trans icons who photographed and styled her of so many people to serve the celebrity.
	The fight to restore abortion rights needs more than a few good men and a lot of good work ahead.
	So men, let's talk.
	The article itself is just a fawning piece of absolute tripe.
	It's amazing.
	It doesn't even pretend at anything other than utter worship.
	Yesterday, we spent a bit of time on this show talking about an article in Vogue about Jennifer Lawrence.
	It's the same article.
	It's the same article.
	Right?
	Jennifer Lawrence talking about politics.
	Is AOC talking about politics?
	They are the same.
	Is Meghan Markle talking about politics?
	There is no difference between GQ featuring AOC and The Cut featuring Meghan Markle and Vogue featuring Jennifer Lawrence.
	They are all part of the same celebrity clique.
	That is who they are.
	Pretending that this is serious politics is a lie.
	These are not serious people.
	They do not think two steps ahead.
	They do not have the interest of the American people at heart.
	What they have at heart is being on the cover of GQ.
	What they have at heart is being celebrities.
	And pretending that there's a difference in kind between Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, AOC, Jennifer Lawrence, Meghan Markle.
	It's just not true.
	Which is why Meghan Markle thinks maybe she should run for office someday, despite the fact that her entire political resume is, I was a B-list actress on Suits, and then I married into a royal family that I crapped upon.
	There's no difference between her and AOC.
	The same.
	The same in terms of politics, in terms of image.
	These are all part of a piece.
	This is not the way politics was supposed to work.
	Politics was supposed to be a boring business.
	For lawyers who basically put together legislation to tinker around the edges of our civilization.
	It was not meant to be a bunch of people who get very famous and very, very rich off of the institutions that have created the ability for Americans to be free.
	That is not what these institutions were built for.
	So Wesley Lowry has this entire just fawning piece.
	And implicit in this entire piece are all of the Evolvin warnings.
	All of them.
	A person who's outside the system, who yells about the system, believes the system is bad.
	A person who makes it her personal mission to use the system as a platform for her own celebrity quote.
	For her first two years in Washington, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez walked the few blocks from her apartment to her congressional office nearly every morning, a routine she felt forced to change after a treasonous mob stormed the Capitol.
	Now she drives most days.
	A comically short commute, she considers a necessary safety precaution.
	No comment on the fact that she parks her Tesla outside of Whole Foods.
	But for some reason, she's not quite sure why.
	The congresswoman decided to walk to work on what would become Washington's most tumultuous morning since the insurrection.
	She's not quite sure why.
	Everyone knew Roe vs. Wade was coming down that day.
	Maybe it was that.
	But, says the Completely credulous, Wesley Lowery.
	No, no, no.
	It was all a coincidence.
	As she reached the Capitol grounds on June 24th, a group of men stopped her for a photo.
	I said, hello, and how are you all doing?
	She'd recall later.
	They're like, well, you know, definitely been a lot better given this morning.
	This was how the Congresswoman learned that the Supreme Court had gutted the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe versus Wade.
	The ruling had been anticipated for weeks after a draft opinion from the court's conservative faction leaked, but somehow much of Washington still managed to appear blindsided.
	Out on the steps of the Capitol, a group of lawmakers gathered to sing God Bless America, a pre-planned photo op that now Red is hopelessly out of touch.
	Angry Americans were spilling into the streets, and elected Democrats were singing campfire songs.
	Ocasio-Cortez knew where she needed to be.
	It wasn't at a sing-along.
	So, um, she went to a protest.
	Right?
	She didn't need to be at Congress, putting together legislation to fix what she perceived as a problem.
	Nope!
	She needed to be at the Supreme Court, yelling in front of the cameras.
	This is what celebrities do, gang.
	It's no different than Sean Penn arriving at a protest and speaking into a bullhorn.
	Sometimes people ask, oh, what's the point of protest?
	She told me later, recalling that day.
	The act of protest, she said, creates community and participation by political leaders sends a message.
	It's really important for people to feel like their elected officials give a bleep about them, she said.
	Not from on high.
	I'm on the same level.
	Or alternatively, it's really important for you to go where all the cameras are and stand in front of that crowd and pretend that you're one of the people who you are now living a very cush life off taxpayer money to quote-unquote represent.
	I'd arrived at the Supreme Court a few minutes before Ocasio-Cortez said Wesley Lowry to interview protesters and watched as she maneuvered in her plaid pink pantsuit.
	It was all coincidence what she was wearing that day.
	A plaid pink pantsuit.
	Total coincidence.
	Past a small circle of anti-abortion demonstrators and then waded into the sea of women and men who gathered to mourn.
	Soon she was speaking into a borrowed megaphone, hoping to lead the call and response.
	Into the streets, Ocasio-Cortez shouted, pumping a clenched fist in the air.
	Within minutes, a sobbing young woman found the congresswoman and threw herself into her arms.
	I'm so scared, she wept.
	I'm so scared.
	Of what?
	Of what?
	But it made for a perfect photo op for Wesley Lowry.
	I love that.
	He's criticizing the Democrats for gathering on the steps of the Capitol to sing God Bless America as a photo op.
	So she went to another photo op.
	And she's shouting into the streets.
	Wait, aren't you an elected representative in the most powerful legislative body in world history?
	Shouldn't you be doing that?
	Why are you out there shouting into the streets?
	Because again, it's not about getting things done.
	It's not about politics.
	It's about platform building.
	That's all it's about.
	The institutions are the enemy.
	Well, this ridiculous GQ piece continues.
	This soporific, sophomoric, sycophantic, Ridiculous GQPs.
	There's a lot more of it.
	But first, let's talk about the fact that in an increasingly tumultuous time, you might feel like you need to protect yourself.
	I mean, I own guns.
	If you're a law-abiding citizen, you should own guns.
	You should protect your family.
	You should protect your rights.
	But here's the thing.
	It's not enough to just own guns.
	You have to know when and how to use it.
	It's not enough to legally and safely own a firearm to protect your family.
	In order to fully protect yourself and your loved ones, you have to be prepared for the mental, physical, and legal ramifications Of self-defense, in case, God forbid, you ever have to do that.
	That's why I'm a member of the U.S.
	Concealed Carry Association and you should be as well.
	Right now, the U.S.
	CCA is giving away a free Concealed Carry and Family Defense Guide and a chance to win $1,000 to buy a firearm to protect yourself and your family.
	100% free.
	Just text BEN to 87222.
	In this 58-page defense guide, you will learn how to detect attackers before they see you, What the USCCA has learned about school shootings, equipment and training basics about law and justice systems, how to responsibly own and store a gun particularly if you have small children like I do, and a whole lot more.
	Text Ben to 87222 for instant access to this free guide.
	Enter for the chance to win a thousand bucks to put toward a firearm to protect your family.
	Text Ben to 87222 right now.
	Also, Are you still giving your money to woke razor companies that hate your values, see masculinity as toxic, and think you should teach your daughter to shave her beard?
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	Those other razor companies keep virtue signaling to the totalitarian left and using your money to do it, but you don't have to let them.
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	That's jeremysrazors.com, Jeremy's Razors.
	Shut up and shave.
	Also, last night we had our NFL draft party for our fantasy football teams with Crane & Company, the best sports show on the air.
	If you haven't actually checked out Crane & Company, you need to.
	Make sure to follow our daily wire fantasy league throughout the season by watching Crane & Company every Monday through Friday.
	All right, so we are going through this GQ cover piece on AOC, who indeed is sort of the culmination of the merger of celebrity and politics in our society, which really spells the end of a serious America.
	It does.
	I'm sorry.
	There are actual serious people in the world today who make aggressive moves against the United States.
	And we have decided instead to delegate the most powerful country in world history with the most robust constitutional system in world history to a bunch of dunderheaded idiots who seek celebrity status.
	That is what we have decided to do.
	You had Xi Jinping seeking full authoritarian rule in China and aggressively seeking to expand his borders.
	You have Vladimir Putin who's aggressively expanding his borders in Ukraine.
	And you have a bunch of celebrity politicians in the West who have decided that their main goal is to speak about the Green New Deal and or appear on Emmy broadcasts.
	We are not a serious civilization.
	We just are not.
	And AOC is the culmination of that.
	Again, I'm not saying that AOC started this.
	She didn't.
	AOC is essentially the ideological Child of people like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, the attempt by the left to merge celebrity and politics.
	So this piece by Wesley Lowry is just the ultimate example of this.
	She's again, she's on the cover of GQ quote.
	For a fleeting moment in front of the Supreme Court, it was possible to see the full, complicated public totality of the woman we've come to know as AOC, a 32 year old second term Congresswoman representing one of the country's most diverse districts by diverse districts.
	He means racially diverse, not ideologically diverse.
	It's universally Democrat, a certified celebrity.
	Arguably more famous than any other person in American politics without the last name Obama or Trump.
	Beloved and loathed at competing ends of the political spectrum.
	Constitutionally opposed to sitting down, shutting up, and conforming to the patriotic play theater of Washington.
	The right-wing's night terror in the flesh.
	We're not afraid of AOC as a human.
	We're afraid of her crap ideas being implemented.
	And we're sort of afraid of the fact that the entire media lick her boots despite the fact that she's a radical who stands for wrecking all of the major institutions.
	To many foot soldiers of the fractured, contradictory coalition that is the progressive left, she represents something singular.
	The future, says Wesley Lowry.
	Man, Pravda couldn't have written this better.
	A revolutionary on the rise.
	A revolutionary.
	She's an elected official, by the way.
	Your elected officials are not supposed to be revolutionaries.
	That's not what that job is for.
	The clear air to an ascendant progressive movement, the best and possibly last, depending on how quickly some of the combination of fascism, religious fundamentalism, and climate change comes for us all, chants a source of hope that things can get better in their lifetimes.
	A lot of that was about human need.
	Ocasio-Cortez said of why she took to the streets that day about providing just a very real position that this is not over and we're not giving up.
	You are in control of Congress.
	Democrats are in control of the Congress of the United States and the Senate and the presidency.
	Go back to your office, lady.
	But she's not.
	She's out in the streets because this is all about platform building.
	That's the entire thing.
	And of course, it's all about how she is a moral exemplar.
	And we know she's a moral exemplar because she's on GQ's cover, obviously.
	That's how you know she's a moral exemplar.
	In those weeks after Rose's demise, Ocasio-Cortez was ubiquitous.
	Actually, she's been ubiquitous literally since she entered Congress, at rallies and on TV demanding that her colleagues move with urgency to protect access to reproductive health services, calling on men in particular to share their stories of how they had benefited from decades of legally protected abortion.
	I love that now men are supposed to speak about abortion.
	So before, if you're a man who opposes AOC, you're supposed to sit down and shut up.
	Because you're a man.
	Men aren't supposed to talk.
	If you're a man who backs AOC's agenda, then you're supposed to talk.
	By the way, she really revealed something truly ugly about the pro-choice movement, the radical pro-choice movement that she represents here.
	This is a quote for her about abortion.
	Get ready for this.
	Quote, for almost every woman that has gotten an abortion, there's a man who's either been affected or liberated by that abortion too.
	You're saying the quiet part out loud there.
	A lot of men like killing babies because it liberates them.
	Yeah.
	Awkward.
	But she says that men should speak out about abortion now.
	And she has some ideas about gender.
	She says, quote, I think there's plenty of well-meaning reasons why men may feel it's not appropriate for them to talk about it.
	I think sometimes the way white folks don't like to talk about race and they say we just want to censor the person who's most impacted.
	So it's not my role to do anything or take a space and speak up.
	But we know that when white folks take up space and say the right thing in rooms of other white people, that is the most shifting activity that can happen.
	More sometimes than any protest or any person writing a letter to the editor or anything like that.
	We need men to be speaking up in that way as well.
	But I think men sometimes they think, I'm not a woman.
	This doesn't affect me the most.
	I love the double standard here from people like AOC.
	It's the same as Ibram X. Kendi.
	Shut up if you're a white person and you're in the room with a black person and you're talking about race.
	Shut your face.
	If you're a man, you're in a room with a woman and abortion comes up, you shut your face.
	But if you represent our message to other white people, then the power is with you.
	And if the system fails to change, well, that's your fault because you kept quiet.
	And then Ocasio-Cortez starts lecturing men about what masculinity means, which is just hysterical.
	I'm sorry, that's just really, really funny.
	She's a 32-year-old woman who just got married and has no children, who is lecturing men about what it means to be a man.
	Sorry if I take that with a grain of salt.
	Men keep quiet, Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, because of the burdens and antiquated expectations of masculinity.
	Feminist writers and thinkers have raised this notion for decades, pointing out how men themselves are victimized by toxic societal constructs.
	Oh, I need a lecture from Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez about ideal masculinity.
	Yeah, sure.
	Men suffer from being under the patriarchy, the congresswoman said.
	They don't go to the doctor.
	They suffer from much higher rates of completed suicides.
	Even though they report lower levels of depression, that doesn't mean they suffer from it less.
	The key to combating stigma of men being vulnerable, I think sometimes it's really powerful for men to share their stories of growth.
	Men need to dive into their compassion, into their sadness, into their insecurity, and explore it, and work through it.
	I can barely make it through this quote without vomiting.
	How about men need to man up.
	Men need to be responsible.
	Men need to protect.
	Men need to defend.
	But no, it's not about that.
	It's not about that for AOC.
	Because of course, she is a thot.
	By the way, she is asked in this piece about running for president, and she says that she is concerned about being president because actually it's really hard to be president.
	She says that she might run at some point, but there's so many obstacles.
	So many obstacles, quote, could Obama have gotten elected without the kind of financial support she had, that he had?
	I don't know.
	Even if she were theoretically to become president, then what?
	She'd face a system from the Supreme Court to the Senate, both empowered and inclined to thwart her most sweeping ambitions.
	There are plenty of limitations, she said.
	It's tough.
	It's really tough.
	Because again, she doesn't want to be responsible for actual policy.
	She wants to be a person who grows all of her membership lists and make a lot of money and complain about how America is unjust.
	That's what she, and so we have an unserious political class Leading, apparently, an unserious people who believe that these folks are actual leaders.
	Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show is continuing now.
	You don't want to miss it because we are going to be getting into Whoopi Goldberg defending election denial on the part of the current White House press secretary and we'll bring you the story of a Democratic politician who actually murdered a journalist.
	Now, that would be front page news nearly everywhere.
	If it were the opposite party, it is not.
	We'll get into that.

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