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Dec. 9, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Only WNBA Trade Anyone Has Ever Noticed | Ep. 1627

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	Barry Weiss reveals the next tranche of Twitter files demonstrating the extent to which Twitter shut down the reach of conservative accounts.
	Joe Biden celebrates the return of Britney Greiner.
	And Kyrsten Sinema declares she's an independent now.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	Well, Barry Weiss has been handed the next giant tranche of files by Elon Musk on all of the mis-action that was performed by Twitter over the course of the last several years.
	And this one is a doozy.
	According to Barry Weiss, there was widespread shadow banning.
	Shadow banning has a couple of definitions.
	One is the idea that you put out tweets and, unaware to you, They just don't go out.
	And that's how Twitter defined it so as to avoid the reality of shadow banning, which was essentially minimizing the amount of reach on particular tweets or from particular accounts.
	And as the new evidence shows from Barry Weiss via Elon Musk, Twitter spent years basically suppressing content from conservative creators.
	So she writes, a new Twitter files investigation reveals the teams of Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending, and actively limit the visibility of entire accounts or even trending topics all in secret without informing users.
	Twitter once had a mission to give everyone the powers to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers.
	Along the way, barriers nevertheless were erected.
	Take, for example, Stanford's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who argued that COVID lockdowns would harm children.
	Twitter secretly placed him on a trends blacklist, which prevented his tweets from trending.
	Now, again, that does not happen in the absence of Dr. Anthony Fauci and members of the federal government essentially attempting to treat Jay Bhattacharya and company as though they were the plague.
	And this is something that was widely pressed by the NIH, by Dr. Fauci.
	The idea was that Jay Bhattacharya and the members of the Barrington, the Great Barrington Declaration, were evil and terrible and no good and very bad, and so all of their information should be suppressed.
	And there were active attempts on the part of governmental actors to lash out at sources like Jay Bhattacharya.
	It was about this time that Twitter was shutting down Bhattacharya's account.
	Or consider the popular right-wing talk show host Dan Bongino, says Barry Weiss, who at one point was slapped with a search blacklist.
	Twitter set the account of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to do not amplify, which essentially shrank the size of the reach that he was able to pursue.
	Barry White says Twitter denied it does such things.
	In 2018, Twitter's Vijaya Gaddy, then head of legal policy and trust, and Kavan Begpor, head of product, said, quote, we do not shadow ban, and they added, and we certainly don't shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology.
	Now, there are a bunch of people on the left who are saying, well, technically speaking, they weren't shadow banning, they were reducing reach.
	That's not quite the same thing as shadow banning, okay?
	This is the same game that Dr. Fauci played when he talked about gain of function research.
	Dr. Fauci meant, it's not gain of function research if we're not talking about adding virality to a disease within a species.
	But if we allow the virality of a disease to cross species, that's not gain-of-function research.
	Everybody else, colloquially speaking, is like, no, that's gain-of-function research, dude.
	Same thing is happening here.
	The Twitter heads were using terms like shadow ban in a different way than the general public.
	And as somebody who spends an enormous, disproportionate, stupid amount of time on Twitter, I can tell you that when we say shadow ban, and what we mean is that we put out a tweet and that a lot of people are unable to see the tweet because of the distribution mechanisms essentially being shut down.
	Not that if I put out a tweet, no one sees it, or that my account is secretly being prevented from getting anything out there.
	That's what Twitter meant by shadowban.
	But what we mean by shadowban is that we just are reducing reach.
	And this is what Barry White says.
	What many people call shadowbanning, Twitter executives and employees called Visibility Filtering, or VF.
	Multiple high-level sources confirmed its meaning.
	Think about visibility filtering as being a way for us to suppress what people see at different levels.
	It's a very powerful tool.
	One senior Twitter employee told us, VF refers to Twitter's control over user visibility.
	It used VF to block searches of individual users, to limit the scope of a particular tweet's discoverability, to block select users' posts from ever appearing on the trending page, and from inclusion in hashtag searches.
	All without users' knowledge.
	We control visibility quite a bit.
	And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit.
	And normal people do not know how much we do, one Twitter engineer told us, to additional Twitter employees, confirmed.
	The group, according to Barry Weiss, that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team, Global Escalation Team, or SRTGET.
	It often handled up to 200 quote-unquote cases a day.
	But there existed a level beyond official ticketing, beyond the rank-and-file moderators following the company's policy on paper.
	That is the Site Integrity Policy Escalation Support, known as SIPPES.
	This secret group included the Head of Legal Policy and Trust, that would be Vijaya Gaddy, the Global Head of Trust and Safety, that would be Yoel Roth, subsequent CEOs Jack Dorsey and Parag Agarwal, and others.
	So again, you've seen interviews with Vijaya Gaddy where she's getting just smoked by Tim Pool on Joe Rogan's show for the fact that she is essentially picking and choosing which accounts to ban or which accounts to shadow ban.
	And she's denying some of that.
	You've seen Yul Roth.
	On this show, I have clips of him talking about how he was actively involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden story because he thought that it was dangerous, or he was actively involved in the decision to ban Donald Trump from Twitter after January 6th because so many of his employees were being hit with quote-unquote threats and their feels were hurt.
	Barry White says this is where the biggest, most politically sensitive decisions got made.
	Think High Follower Account Controversial, another Twitter employee told us.
	For these, there would be no ticket or anything.
	One of the accounts that rose to this level of scrutiny was Libs of TikTok, an account that was on the Trends Blacklist and was designated as Do Not Take Action on User Without Consulting with SIPPES.
	The account, which Hi, Raycheck began in November 2020 and now boasts over 1.4 million followers, was subjected to six suspensions in 2020 to a loan, Raycheck says.
	Each time, Raycheck was blocked from posting for as long as a week.
	Twitter repeatedly informed Raychick she had been suspended for violating Twitter's policy against quote-unquote, hateful conduct.
	But an internal SIPPES memo from October 2022, after her seventh suspension, the committee acknowledged that LTT, lives of TikTok, has not directly engaged in behavior violative of the hateful conduct policy.
	The committee justified her suspension internally by claiming her post, quote, encouraged online harassment of hospitals and medical providers by insinuating that gender-affirming health care is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.
	Well, gender-affirming health care is equivalent to child abuse or grooming.
	I'm sorry, but hormonally treating seven-year-olds by pretending they're a member of the opposite sex is, in fact, a form of child abuse.
	And if you are double mastectomying 16-year-old girls because they are confused about whether they are a girl or not, that is child abuse.
	But apparently they use that as an excuse to essentially suspend libs of TikTok.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	Barry White says compare this to what happened when Raytrick herself was doxxed on November 21st, 2022.
	A photo of her home with the address was posted on a tweet that has garnered more than 10,000 likes.
	When Raytrick told Twitter her address had been disseminated, she says Twitter support responded with this message, quote, we reviewed the reported content and didn't find it to be in violation of the Twitter rules. No action was taken. The doxing tweet is still up.
	In internal Slack messages, Twitter employees spoke of using technicalities to restrict the visibility of tweets and subjects.
	Here's Joel Roth, Twitter's then global head of trust and safety, in a direct message to a colleague in early 2021.
	Quote, A lot of times, SI has used technicality spam enforcements as a way to solve a problem created by safety under enforcing their policies.
	Which again, isn't a problem per se, but it keeps us from addressing the root cause of the issue, which is that our safety policies need some attention.
	So in other words, we couldn't ban people under safety policies, so we found another excuse to ban people.
	Six days later, in a direct message with an employee on the Health, Misinformation, Privacy, and Identity Research Team, Roth requested more research to support expanding, quote, non-removal policy interventions, like disabling engagements and de-amplification visibility filtering.
	Roth wrote, quote, the hypothesis underlying much of what we've implemented is that if exposure to, e.g., misinformation, directly causes harm, we should use remediations that reduce exposure and limiting the spread virality of content is a good way to do that.
	Now there's so many mush words in that particular sentence from Yoel Roth, right?
	The hypothesis is that misinformation, we don't define misinformation, misinformation can range from global warming is not going to end the earth to gender affirming health care is child abuse, right?
	Those particular that saying that Ellen Page or formerly Ellen Page is in fact a woman is a form of misinformation according to Yoel Roth and add on to that directly causes harm.
	That phrase misinformation directly causes harm.
	You have not defined any of those words.
	You have not defined misinformation, which could just be anything I disagree with.
	You have not defined directly, because again, misinformation does not directly cause harm.
	It always indirectly causes harm.
	If you're talking about physical harm, information or misinformation does not directly cause harm.
	Unless you're talking about like actual incitement to violence.
	It might indirectly cause harm, because someone might take that information and use it in the wrong way.
	Or they may take the misinformation seriously, and it may cause them to do bad things.
	Okay, but misinformation is not defined.
	Directly is not defined.
	Causes is not defined here, because you don't exactly know the relationship between the misinformation and the harm.
	And harm is not defined, because we don't know what kind of harm you're talking about.
	Are you talking about physical harm?
	Are you talking about emotional harm?
	Are you talking about financial?
	So nothing there is defined.
	That is a phrase that just is a bleh.
	It's just...
	If I read that sentence again, the hypothesis underlying much of what we've implemented is that exposure to bleh, so we should use remediations that reduce exposure.
	In other words, we don't like whatever this is, and we're going to use the rubric of harm that is being caused by directly by misinformation, and then we are going to shadow ban it.
	Roth adequate, we got Jack on board with implementing this for civic integrity in the near term.
	But we're going to need to make a more robust case to get this into our repertoire of policy remediations, especially for other policy domains.
	Barry says that there will be another installment of all of this in short order.
	Okay, so what do we know at this point?
	What we know pretty clearly is that, again, Twitter became a mechanism by which purple-haired interns, plus some of the heads of policy and safety, people like Bill Roth, people like, yes, Jack Dorsey or Parag Agrawal or Vijaya Gady, they were making decisions on an ad hoc basis.
	They were saying it was all algorithmic.
	They were saying that it wasn't, either it wasn't happening, they wouldn't reply to you, they wouldn't get back to you, or it was all the algorithm.
	It was the magic algorithm that was telling you that Libs of TikTok had to be suspended.
	Well, it wasn't.
	There's a bunch of people in a backroom somewhere who are literally deciding whether or not you should be able to see a Charlie Kirk tweet.
	There's a bunch of people in a backroom, filled presumably with vape smoke, deciding that Dan Bongino should not be searchable on Twitter.
	Again, I've been deeply suspicious of this for some time.
	This is not a great shock to me.
	I will repeat that since I currently have about 5.2 million followers on Twitter.
	When Elon Musk took over Twitter, which was like five weeks ago, six weeks ago, I had 4.3.
	I picked up almost a million Twitter followers in about six weeks.
	So what that suggests to me is that literally the minute the deal went through, a lot of the foot that was stomping on the face of particular accounts was removed.
	So none of this is a particular shock, but it is kind of shocking that all of it has now been confirmed.
	This is precisely what the left would like, of course.
	This is one of the great dangers of the recentralization of power.
	This happens all the time, by the way.
	You have sort of trustless systems like the internet, where there's a wide distribution of mechanisms of information.
	It all gets centralized in a place like a social media hangout, like Facebook or Twitter, or now TikTok.
	And then the people who are in charge of those giant social media centralization sites are able to siphon off or quash particular forms of information.
	You see this financially too, by the way.
	And the entire FTX scandal was basically about a trustless form of currency, cryptocurrency, and people just leaving it in a centralized place that requires trust.
	And then the person essentially just embezzling the money.
	So, bottom line here is that thanks to Elon Musk, we now know all of this is happening.
	And what's amazing is that the left is still pissed at Musk.
	Which makes sense, of course, because he has taken away their plaything.
	He has now allowed forms of information to be disseminated they don't particularly like.
	And he's showing what censorious bastards they are in many cases.
	You know, you got people like Adam Schiff, who's suggesting, of course, as always, that it's Elon Musk who is the problem.
	Adam Schiff is just an execrable congressperson.
	He is a liar extraordinaire.
	This is a person who spent four years suggesting that just around the corner, he'd seen the evidence, just around the corner, behind the curtain, there was the smoking Russian gun that was going to show that Donald Trump was actually a Russian agent.
	And of course, that was all nonsense.
	It was all crap.
	Well now, Adam Schiff is out there saying that Elon Musk is a bigot for allowing speech to be disseminated.
	Because this is really what members of the left think.
	Mainstream leftists, very often members of the Democratic Party, they think that things like free speech are dangerous because people might say things that they don't like.
	Just like freedom of religion is dangerous, people might believe things they don't like.
	Just like freedom of association is dangerous, people might hang out with people they don't like and not with people they do like.
	Here's Adam Schiff going after Elon Musk.
	Musk wrote, and I quote him, hate speech impressions are actually down by one third for Twitter now versus prior to acquisition.
	And you don't buy it.
	How come?
	No, I certainly don't buy it.
	And what's more important, credible analysts don't buy it.
	So, you know, sadly we're seeing bigotry directed at the LGBTQ community, against the black community, against the Jewish community, and many other communities just spiral on Twitter now.
	And we can't be surprised because Musk has let go so many of the people that might be responsible for moderating and taking that content offline.
	By the way, it is no coincidence that Schiff is essentially standing for all of the people who are doing the shadow banning on Twitter.
	All of the people, the head of trust and safety, people like Yoel Roth, who's now been fired.
	All of those people are the people who Schiff wants put back in place.
	Democrats want those people back in place, claiming that they're shutting down the hate speech on the platform.
	And Musk is out there actually releasing data showing how hate speech impressions are now lower.
	And what the data actually show is that there was a massive spike in hate speech impressions immediately upon him taking over.
	And then there was a dramatic drop right after that because they quashed it and they shut it down.
	That is what the charts show, but Adam Schiff doesn't believe that.
	The reason Adam Schiff doesn't believe that is because what Elon Musk is currently proving with the working of Twitter is that a bunch of losers in big tech don't deserve jobs.
	90% of the staff over at Twitter is now gone, and their impressions are at an all-time high, and they're cutting down on the hate speech impressions, and they're revealing information about the throttling of informational dissemination.
	It's a pretty amazing thing that Musk is doing, actually, over at Twitter, and it is worthy of note.
	Meanwhile, Corinne Jean-Pierre over at the White House, she continues to be highly critical of Twitter.
	But when asked about coordination between, say, the Biden campaign or the Biden White House and the executives at Twitter, she's got nothing to say about that, obviously.
	You've said a few times that you really can't talk about communications between the Biden campaign and Twitter.
	Who is telling you that that's off-limits?
	I've already had that conversation with you, with your colleague, I believe yesterday.
	I've already addressed this multiple times this week, so I don't have anything more to add.
	Again, we've litigated this all week.
	Don't have anything to add.
	I'm going to the back.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, this is how democracy dies.
	Remember, if a press secretary under President Trump just talked over a reporter that way, I'm going to the back, I'm going to the back, I'm going to the back, then that would be really bad.
	But she works for the Democrats, so it's totally fine.
	Okay, meanwhile, in other big political news, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who has been sort of a swing voter in the Senate, and she always, she is to the left, she is a Democrat, She voted with the Democrats on their big bills.
	She has moderated a couple of their biggest boo-boos.
	So, for example, Kyrsten Sinema refused to sign on to the bigger version of Joe Biden's Green New Deal nonsense.
	She didn't sign on to the full Build Back Better plan.
	She helped carve it down along with Joe Manchin.
	But she's certainly to the left.
	I mean, she is a Democrat, no question.
	She's just a moderate Democrat, a la Joe Manchin.
	Well, now she's declared that she is registering as an independent.
	She put out an ad to that effect that looks sort of like a commercial for, I don't know, Prozac?
	Here's the ad.
	What I love about serving is that I get to hear from Arizonans day in and day out about what's working in Washington, or more frequently, what's not working in Washington.
	And I really am grateful that folks have trusted me to take back those concerns that they have.
	I promised them I would be an independent voice for our state.
	I promised that I would always do what is right for the people of Arizona.
	And that's what I've done.
	Registering as an independent and showing up to work with the title of independent is a reflection of who I've always been.
	Okay, so let's just make clear about Kyrsten Sinema a couple things.
	First of all, side effects may include constipation, skin rash or dermatitis, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness, dry mouth, headache, and insomnia.
	Whenever they have that soft piano music as politicians talk, you just have to add that little disclaimer at the end.
	However, let's make clear that Kyrsten Sinema, when she originally campaigned, she was super duper radical left.
	And she is a politician.
	She's a very talented politician, actually, because she shifts and moves.
	She's sort of Clintonian.
	She sees where the political winds are, and she moves toward those political winds.
	Arizona is not a blue state.
	Arizona is at best a purple state.
	And if the Arizona Republican Party weren't off its rocker, it would be clearly a red state.
	Doug Ducey won his last gubernatorial race easily.
	Now they have Katie Hobbs as the governor because they decided they were going to run Carrie Lake, who is an out-of-the-box, very Trumpy candidate.
	Blake Masters was running against Mark Kelly.
	Mark Kelly was highly vulnerable.
	Blake Masters was a very vulnerable candidate on the right side of the aisle with a lot of quirkiness to him.
	The Arizona Republican Party decided to elevate election 2020 as the big issue in election 2022, and it did not go well for them.
	Kyrsten Sinema essentially is running as a moderate Democrat slash moderate Republican, right?
	So her campaigning as an independent makes a lot of political sense.
	Because it essentially puts her in the mold of John McCain.
	That's what she's trying to do here.
	She's trying to say, I'm a maverick, just like McCain was a maverick.
	McCain was in the Senate for pretty much two centuries.
	And so she intends on being in the Senate for a very long time.
	Now, by re-registering as an independent, that means she's not going to be the Democratic Party presidential nominee.
	But it does more for her than that.
	It's actually an extraordinarily clever political move.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	So why exactly is Kirsten Sinema re-registering as an independent?
	Well, she has an op-ed where she explains.
	She says, there's a disconnect between what everyday Americans want and deserve from our politics and what political parties are offering, is what she writes in azcentral.
	I'm privileged to represent Arizonans of all backgrounds and beliefs in the U.S.
	Senate.
	I'm honored to travel to every corner of our state, listening to your concerns and ideas.
	While Arizonans don't all agree on the issues, we are united in our values of hard work, common sense, and independence.
	We make our own decisions, using our own judgment and lived experiences to form our beliefs.
	We don't line up to do what we're told, automatically subscribe to whatever positions the national political parties dictate, or view every issue through labels that divide us.
	She says, it's no surprise that Washington, D.C.
	often fails to reflect our expectations of setting aside political games, working together, etc., etc., etc.
	She says in catering to the fringes, neither party has demonstrated much tolerance for diversity of thought.
	Bipartisan compromise is seen as a rarely acceptable last resort rather than the best way to achieve lasting progress.
	Most Arizonans believe this is a false choice.
	And when I ran for office, I decided to essentially run against that.
	I worked with senators in both parties, et cetera, et cetera.
	And she says, that's why I've joined the growing number of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.
	I registered as an Arizona Independent.
	Like a lot of Arizonans, I've never fit perfectly in either national party.
	And she concludes saying it's an honor to represent the state I love so much in the U.S.
	Senate.
	And while I do, I pledge to continue doing exactly what I promised to be an independent voice for Arizona.
	Because the Senate seat doesn't belong to Democratic or Republican bosses in Washington.
	Okay, so what is she actually doing here?
	Well, the answer is what she's actually doing here is she's insulating herself from political challenge.
	That is why Kyrsten Sinema is doing what she's doing.
	So, presumably she will caucus with the Democrats, in the same way that Bernie Sanders, who is a registered Independent, but is a Democrat, caucuses with the Democrat, or Angus King in Maine, who is an Independent, but caucuses with the Democrat, caucuses with the Democrats.
	The reason this makes a difference is because if Kyrsten Sinema decided not to caucus with the Democrats, if the Senate became 50-49-1, as opposed to 51-49 for the Democrats, the way that it currently is, that shifts how the committees are shaped.
	And it makes a very large-scale difference when it comes to judicial nominations.
	Right now, thanks to Harry Reid's original destruction of the filibuster for judicial nominees, you can ram through judicial nominees with 51 votes in the Senate.
	And what that would have meant is that the committees, if it's split 50-50, the Judiciary Committee does not have enough votes to actually get people out of Judiciary Committee all the time.
	It's pretty even split in the Judiciary Committee.
	When Democrats take over full control of the committee, they can just ram people out onto the floor and ram in a bunch of federal judges.
	That's why this makes a difference.
	But is she going to break that?
	No, she's not.
	There's no indication that Kyrsten Sinema is not going to caucus with the Democrats.
	She could theoretically caucus by herself or just be an independent by herself.
	And then Kamala Harris would have to be there.
	She'd be the tiebreaker again.
	It would elevate Joe Manchin again.
	I don't think that's what she's going to do.
	I think she's going to caucus with the Democrats, changing none of the math for the Democrats in the Senate.
	She will mostly vote with the Democrats.
	She'll do what she always did.
	So why did she re-register as an independent if she's just going to caucus with the Democrats?
	The answer is this insulates her from challenge inside Arizona.
	So there are a lot of Arizona Democrats who are very unhappy with Kyrsten Sinema.
	When she was elected, people thought she was going to be a wild progressive.
	She made all sorts of anti-military statements.
	She seemed like she was extraordinarily far to the left on social issues.
	And then she got in office and she's been kind of moderate, particularly for a Democrat.
	And so there are a lot of Democrats who are trying to push Ruben Gallego, who is a representative in Arizona, a Democrat, to challenge her in a primary.
	Well, there's an easy way to avoid a challenge in a Democratic primary, and that's you don't run in a Democratic primary.
	Right now, Ruben Gallego could theoretically run for the Democratic nomination, win, and still get skunked by Kyrsten Sinema in the general.
	So she has now avoided any primary challenge and because she will continue to caucus with the Democrats, the smart move, that means Democrats are not going to expend a lot of capital in order to get her out.
	You don't see Democrats expending a lot of capital in order to get Bernie Sanders kicked out in Vermont just because he's a registered independent.
	He does all the work for them.
	He caucuses with them.
	He just calls himself an independent.
	Same thing with Angus King in Maine.
	You don't see Democrats being like, man, we got to get rid of this Angus King.
	So Kyrsten Sinema is doing a smart thing, politically speaking.
	For all those Republicans who are just eager and excited because she's re-registering, It makes no difference except to her.
	It essentially sets her up for all future Senate runs.
	She's making herself more durable by preventing herself from receiving a serious challenge from the left, which is where she really thinks the challenge is, because she thinks she's moderate enough to draw McCain votes, which means that she's probably going to do well in a general election so long as she makes it past the Democratic primary in the state of Arizona.
	So don't be fooled by the politicking here.
	Sinema's a clever politician, and what she's doing here makes a lot of political sense.
	Meanwhile, The other big controversy of the day is that Brittany Griner, a WNBA player, has now been released in exchange for an arms dealer known as the Merchant of Death.
	The 2005 Nicolas Cage movie, The Lord of War, was actually based on the arms dealer Victor Bout, who has now been released in exchange for this WNBA player.
	This is the first WNBA trade in human history that anyone has ever paid attention to.
	As my friend Jade Crane pointed out, you should take a listen to our sports show, Crane and Company.
	The Wall Street Journal reports, women's basketball star Brittany Griner, which of course is an oxymoron.
	That doesn't exist.
	Quick, name three WNBA players.
	Do it.
	Nope.
	By the way, Brittany Griner is mostly famous because she once dunked a basketball.
	Really.
	The real thing is that people know Brittany Griner's name because they made a huge deal out of it on ESPN when like 10 years ago, she dunked a basketball and people were like, oh my god, first dunk in WNBA history.
	It is astonishing how amazing the action is at WNBA games.
	To paraphrase Bill Burr, whenever people complain that it's sexism is the reason why WNBA games have no attendance, women represent 51% of the American population.
	Ladies, go do your jobs and attend a WNBA game.
	You don't want to?
	Don't blame the men.
	Women's basketball star Brittany Griner has now been released from a Russian penal colony.
	and is being returned to the United States through a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Victor Bout, which culminated on Thursday with a Cold War-style handover on an airport runway in Abu Dhabi.
	The swap kept a drama that began in February when Greiner, a 32-year-old two-time Olympian and center for the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury, was on her way to a high-paying professional job in Russia during U.S.
	offseason, which is, of course, a genius move.
	In the middle of expectation that Russia's about to declare war on Ukraine, you fly in, but you don't just fly in.
	You also land with hash oil in your luggage.
	A genius move.
	Just gonna put it out there.
	The world is not a safe place when you fly into, you know, evil dictatorships.
	Probably don't bring your hash oil.
	Just as a general rule, don't bring your hash oil.
	Reiner was convicted of drug smuggling and possession, sentenced to nine years in a penal colony.
	That, of course, was dramatic overkill.
	The Russians were doing that in order to hold her as a hostage, clearly.
	The U.S.
	deemed that Greiner had been wrongfully detained and a designation that obligated it to work to obtain her release, which of course, the United States should.
	I mean, it's the job of the United States not to leave people behind.
	Like, I don't know, like the 10,000 Afghan allies that we left behind in Afghanistan, or the hundreds of Americans we left behind in Afghanistan, or green card holders that we left behind in Afghanistan who are still there.
	Or, you know, the dozens of other people we leave languishing in prisons around the world.
	Brittany Greiner was top of the heap.
	She was the one who mattered absolutely the most.
	That sends off a tent.
	Months-long diplomatic negotiation between the two superpowers at perhaps the lowest moment in their relations.
	In decades, a breakthrough came in recent days.
	Earlier this week, Greiner was moved from a penal colony in Mordovia, about 350 miles northwest to Moscow, a city where her imprisonment had begun.
	The bout was given a conditional grant of clemency that was not completed until Thursday, when U.S.
	officials in the UAE verified that Greiner was thereto and ready to return to the United States.
	There's some tape that has now emerged of Britney Greiner getting on the plane.
	I would not be the first to observe that Pete Davidson will apparently be playing her in the movie.
	In any case, here's Brittany Griner.
	This is just Brittany Griner walking to the plane.
	And then Victor Bout, an arms dealer, being freed.
	The United States, by the way, essentially looks like it decided in favor of Brittany Greiner over Paul Whelan.
	Now, the White House has denied that.
	Paul Whelan is a former member of the U.S.
	military.
	He did receive a dishonorable discharge, but We'll say that he tends to stand for the national anthem, unlike Brittany Griner, who famously did not, because America is so systemically racist that we trade arms deal orders to get back our own citizens.
	That's how terrible we are.
	In any case, Whelan is still languishing in prison.
	As Jordan Schachtel points out over his substack, the evidence tends to show that essentially the United States made the deal for Griner as opposed to Whelan.
	He says on Thursday morning, the Biden administration announced that WNBA player Brittany Greiner had been freed from a Russian prison in exchange for a bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer who is known to Western intelligence agencies as the Merchant of Death.
	The seeming lopsided trade was made worse by the reality that American citizen Paul Whelan, who served in the Marines, was left behind in Russia.
	For several months, the Biden administration had been publicly indicating their intent to try to secure the release of both Greiner and Whelan in exchange for bouts before announcing Thursday they had secured Greiner in a one-to-one exchange.
	Did the Biden administration choose Griner over Whelan?
	Although Biden officials, the president himself have denied that that was the case.
	Several pieces of evidence indicate Greiner was indeed prioritized over Whelan.
	So, for example, NBC News actually stealth-edited a story about this.
	NBC News originally reported, quote, A senior U.S.
	official told NBC News the U.S.
	government had sought to have both Greiner and Whelan released as part of a swap with the Kremlin, which wanted the return of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer who has served 11 years of a 25-year sentence in the United States.
	But the official said Russia has treated Whelan differently because he's an accused spy and that the Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Greiner or Whelan or none.
	Then they went back and they self-edited it.
	So they said the Russians gave the White House the choice of either Greiner or no one.
	So they got rid of or Whelan or none.
	The NBC report also cited Whelan's Russian lawyer who said the deal was an exchange one-to-one and that choosing Greiner appeared more humane because she's a woman and an Olympic champion while Whelan was in the military and it's easier for him to be in custody.
	Whelan's brother indicated just days ago the former US service member was being considered for a one-to-one swap.
	So it looks a lot as though Whelan was given second status here to Brittany Griner, presumably because she is very famous and also intersectional.
	I mean, I'm not sure how else to what else to make of it when Whelan is still in prison over there and Brittany Griner is coming home and all of the media coverage and the White House coverage, by the way, is all about her historic status as not just a WNBA player, but an LGBTQ plus woman of color.
	And there's been heavy focus on this from the Democrats, which is very strange.
	And honestly, like we should work to get every American back, whether it is Paul Whelan or whether it is, as I say, the 40 to 50 Americans who are being wrongfully detained by foreign governments.
	But only this one is apparently like a major, major priority.
	There was a prisoner exchange that happened, I believe, back in in April.
	That included another American, but he was exchanged for not a high level weapons dealer.
	He was exchanged for like a guy who'd been convicted of drug smuggling or something.
	This is a very high profile exchange for a very, very powerful terrorist arms dealer, and it was done for Brittany Griner.
	Meanwhile, you have 40 to 50 Americans who are being wrongfully detained by foreign governments.
	According to the New York Times, an average of 34 U.S.
	nationals were wrongfully held by foreign governments each year between 2012 and 2022.
	More countries are unjustly holding Americans.
	At this point, at least 19 countries had either wrongfully detained or continued to hold a U.S.
	national in captivity.
	That includes detentions in Iran, China, Venezuela, Syria, and Russia.
	But again, Brittany Griner was the priority.
	Again, I'm glad that we are getting American citizens back.
	I'm just wondering why Brittany Griner, as opposed to Paul Whelan or any of the other dozens, if you're going to be releasing high-level terrorists, this is not a good trading strategy.
	In other words, Vladimir Putin appears to have fleeced the United States in this particular trade.
	When it comes to hostage dealing, that's how you have to look at it.
	Because Again, this is now going to create massive leverage for foreign governments taking hostages of Americans knowing they can get criminals free.
	It's always a problem when foreign governments do this.
	When you make bad deals, it's even more of a problem.
	We'll get some more of this in just a second.
	Well, we recently launched a brand new biblical series by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson.
	The series is called Exodus, and in it, Jordan sits down with other scholars to read the book of exodus and discusses what it means and why it remains significant thousands of years after it was written.
	Scholars at the table includes Ennis Prager, Jonathan Paggio and many more.
	The first few episodes are available to stream right now.
	There are more new episodes coming very soon.
	Trust me, you have to see the series.
	Here's a bit of the trailer.
	The Hebrews created history as we know it.
	You don't get away with anything.
	And so you might think you can bend the fabric of reality and that you can treat people instrumentally and that you can bow to the tyrant and violate your conscience without cost.
	You will pay the piper.
	It's going to call you out of that slavery into freedom, even if that pulls you into the desert.
	And we're going to see that there's something else going on here that is far more cosmic and deeper than what you can imagine.
	The highest ethical spirit to which we're beholden is presented precisely as that spirit that allies itself with the cause of freedom against tyranny.
	Yes, exactly!
	I want villains to get punished!
	But do you want the villains to learn before they have to pay the ultimate price?
	That's such a Christian question.
	You have to be a member to watch.
	So head on over to dailywire.com slash Ben.
	Become a member.
	Watch Exodus today.
	It's fabulous content.
	You're going to love it.
	Dailywire.com slash Ben.
	Become a member and watch Exodus today.
	Alrighty.
	So the question isn't why we try to get Brittany Griner home.
	We should be trying to get all of our people home.
	Again, that would have included the hundreds or if not thousands of people we left behind in Afghanistan when we turned the place over to the Taliban in cowardly fashion.
	I'm glad that Brittany Griner is home.
	The question is why we traded one of the world's most notorious arms dealers for a WNBA player.
	That seems like a really crappy trade.
	The United States is the most powerful force literally in human history.
	And a second-rate power like Russia is able to pull off this swap.
	I mean, this is Ernie Brolio for Lou Brock when it comes to foreign policy.
	According to the Washington Post, At a U.S.
	penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, in a special unit so restrictive it has the nickname Little Guantanamo, a broad-chested mustachioed man nicknamed the Merchant of Death, who speaks at least six languages, was serving a 25-year term after building a gun-smuggling empire that spanned the globe.
	His name was Victor Bout.
	His native Russia wanted him home badly.
	The big question is why.
	Well, Bout is the most notorious arms dealer of his time, accused of profiting from weapons that fueled conflict in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
	There's little doubt that Bout is a top prize for Russian officials who protested his treatment since his 2008 arrest in Thailand after a DEA sting.
	Steve Zissou, Bout's New York-based lawyer, warned in July no Americans will be exchanged unless Victor Bout is sent home.
	What's less clear is exactly why Russia cares so much about Bout.
	When CIA Director William Burns at the Aspen Security Forum was asked why Russia wanted him, Burns responded, that's a good question, because Victor Bout's a creep.
	Bout's lawyers argued the swap was fair.
	Though Russia complained the bout was entrapped by the DEA, many U.S.
	officials and analysts say Moscow's anger was not linked to the merits of the case, but rather Bout's links to Russian military intelligence.
	Lee Ulosky, a National Security Council official in the Clinton administration, said it's clear he had significant ties to Russian government circles.
	Russia's military intelligence agency, commonly known as the GRU, has a reputation for taking bold and risky action.
	It has been accused in recent years of operations ranging from hacking elections to assassinating dissidents.
	Reports suggest Bao could have close ties to Igor Seshin, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and an ally of Putin.
	Bout has denied links to the GRU, but that silence could be the point.
	The arms trafficker refused to cooperate with U.S.
	authorities, even as he sat for over a decade.
	So they wanted him home.
	And we gave him up for a WNBA player.
	At the very least, if you're going to give up Victor Bout, you get more for him than Brittany Griner.
	But we're supposed to believe that this is a particularly good trade.
	Why is it a particularly good trade?
	Well, because of identity, of course.
	That's what makes this a particularly good trade.
	It's perfectly worthwhile.
	I mean, listen, still a better trade than the Taliban 5 for In the Oval Office, I spoke with Brittany Griner.
	So Obama was the worst hostage trading GM in American history.
	I mean, just awful, awful, awful.
	But Biden is coming in close second.
	Here was Joe Biden yesterday championing the Britney Griner trade.
	In the Oval Office, I spoke with Britney Griner.
	She's safe.
	She's on a plane.
	She's on her way home.
	After months of being unjustly detained in Russia, held under intolerable circumstances, Brittany will soon be back in the arms of her loved ones, and she should have been there all along.
	This is a day we've worked toward for a long time.
	We never stopped pushing for her release.
	It took painstaking and intense negotiations, and I want to thank all the hardworking public servants across my administration who worked tirelessly to secure her release.
	So he was very happy.
	He is flanked, of course, by Kamala Harris and Brittany Griner's wife.
	And so this was part of the deal, right?
	So what we are going to see now is a litany of praise for Joe Biden, not just because he got an American citizen home, because, of course, the last American citizen who came home did not receive anything remotely like this level of attention from the Biden administration or from the media.
	Joe Biden could have taken a victory lap on that one.
	He didn't.
	He took a victory lap on this one because of Brittany Griner's intersectional status.
	So Corinne Jean-Pierre, world's worst press secretary, she says that Brittany Griner represents the best of America.
	She's not just an American citizen.
	It's not just about getting American citizens home.
	Brittany Griner is what America is all about, kneeling for the national anthem and being a black lesbian.
	Brittany's safe return home is the product of months and months of painstaking negotiations that were the culmination of extraordinary efforts across the U.S.
	government.
	Throughout her ordeal, we saw Brittany, a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Team USA, demonstrate strength, courage, and dignity.
	As the President said this morning, she represents the best of America.
	On a personal note, Brittany is more than an athlete, more than an Olympian.
	She is an important role model and inspiration to millions of Americans, particularly the LGBTQI plus Americans and women of color.
	So that is the key takeaway here is on a personal note for KJP.
	Britney is an important role model and an inspiration to millions of Americans because she is a gay black woman.
	Right.
	That is the thing that makes her so darn important.
	Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, said that her freedom is a gift to the world.
	Well, I mean, again, I'm glad an American citizen is coming home.
	A gift to the world seems a little strong to me.
	How wonderful is it that on the same day that Brittany Griner is going to be free?
	Thank you, President Biden.
	Free to go home to her wife on the same day that we passed the Marriage Protection Act.
	So we have respect for marriage, respect for marriage acts.
	Her freedom is a gift to the world, to all of us.
	Her freedom is a gift to the world, to all of us because she's going home to her wife and we just passed the same sex marriage act in the House?
	What?
	Why the special, really, why the special status and why the special treatment?
	It is hard not to come to the conclusion that there is special status and special treatment specifically because of the intersectional status of this person.
	All American citizens, I'll say it for the fifth time in the show, all American citizens should be pursued with alacrity if they are being held in detainment.
	None of them are being pursued with the same alacrity that allows Victor Bout to be released in exchange for them, while members of the president's party go around spouting about how important this particular person is specifically because she is a black lesbian.
	Again, this was the line in the press by Don Lemon, the very objective journalism over at CNN.
	He said this is so important for the LGBTQ plus community.
	Why are members of the LGBTQ plus community in the United States disproportionately being held in Russian prisons for smuggling drugs into the country?
	So I don't see this as a bad sign for Paul Whelan.
	I think it's a good sign for what Americans can do when we stand together.
	I think I would be remiss if we did not mention also the importance this plays for the LGBTQ community.
	As we've been talking about black women, this is big.
	So this is for the LGBTQ community.
	Glad releasing a statement.
	Obviously, just I'm summarizing here that they're happy and that shows the struggles and the danger that members of the LGBT community face around the world.
	What in the world?
	Why is it?
	What?
	But Paul Whelan is still in prison.
	Apparently he put out a statement saying that he is disappointed that more has not been done to secure his release.
	And if it is indeed true that they had a choice between Whelan and Greiner, you do have to ask the question as to why Whelan was the guy who wasn't coming home while Greiner was the person who was coming home.
	Here was Paul Whelan talking about it.
	Paul Whelan says the president needs to bring him home.
	And soon.
	I have to say I'm greatly disappointed That more has not been done to secure my release.
	Especially as the four year anniversary of my arrest is coming up.
	I was arrested for a crime that never occurred.
	I'm happy that Brittany is going home today and that Trevor went home when he did.
	But I don't understand why I'm still sitting here.
	That would be the big question.
	And I think the answer, if it turns out that it was either Whelan or Greiner, I think the answer from the way that the White House is treating this, the way the press is treating it, is pretty damned obvious.
	Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be getting into the House enshrining same-sex marriage.
	Plus, we'll be joined by Bishop Robert Barron.

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