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Jan. 26, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

46:08

Facebook Readmits Trump | Ep. 1655

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	Facebook readmits President Donald Trump to the platform, but only with one of the most ridiculous statements of guidelines ever devised.
	President Biden appoints a fat activist to his 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and the Biden administration plans to send tanks to Ukraine.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Well, Donald Trump is going to make his glorious return to Facebook, I would assume sometime Facebook has now released a statement saying that his two-year ban is over.
	Now, you'll recall that when Elon Musk took over Twitter, he unbanned Trump, but Trump is on TruthSocial.
	It would undercut his own profitability in order for him to leave TruthSocial and move over to Twitter.
	He'd basically have to admit that TruthSocial is a dud.
	He hasn't done that as of yet.
	I would assume sometime in the near future.
	If, in fact, he wishes to run a presidential campaign, he's going to have to go where the eyeballs are and move over to Twitter.
	But Facebook, again, you'll remember, banned Trump in coordination with Twitter and with the other social media networks.
	They did that immediately after the events of January 6th, claiming, based on unspecified breaches of their protocol, that Trump had to be banned.
	Now, they admitted at the time that he hadn't actually done anything to formally break any of their rules.
	He hadn't harassed anybody.
	He hadn't actually said anything that was racist to the point that it could get him banned.
	He had not violated any of the guidelines that Facebook had laid forth.
	However, they said totality of the circumstances led them to ban Trump, which was basically just a statement that they felt like banning him.
	And so now they're going to ban him.
	Well, now they're unbanning him, but, but they're setting conditions.
	And this shows you the evils of social media.
	It shows you The vagaries of the people who are setting the rules.
	And unlike Twitter, where Elon Musk is basically just saying, listen, I'm doing this off the top of my head.
	You want to blame me?
	Blame me.
	Go for it.
	Facebook pretends they have procedures and protocols, and then they hide behind those procedures and protocols to do whatever the hell that they want.
	And that is, in fact, a lot more threatening.
	Because when you give the patina of objectivity, the patina of algorithmic objectivity, to a subjective decision to ban prominent people, what you are actively doing is deceiving the public.
	Musk is not deceiving the public.
	When he says this person is banned, this person is readmitted, you at least know who to write the letters to.
	When it is meta, when it was Twitter before Musk, that was a whole different thing.
	And so now Facebook is claiming they have a new set of guidelines that they're going to put on Donald Trump that's going to make it easy to ban him again should they see fit to do so.
	So they put out a very long statement via Nick Clegg, the president of Global Affairs.
	He is the guy who is responsible for banning Trump in the first place.
	And he says this, quote, Social media is rooted in the belief that open debate and the free flow of ideas are important values, especially at a time when they are under threat in many places around the world.
	As a general rule, we don't want to get in the way of open public and democratic debate on META's platforms, especially in the context of elections in democratic societies like the United States. The public should be able to hear what their politicians are saying, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so that they can make informed choices at the ballot box. But, uh, and as MC Hammer might say, here comes the big but.
	That does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform.
	When there is a clear risk of real world harm, a deliberately high bar for META to intervene in public discourse, we act.
	What exactly does that mean?
	Here's where you get into the vagaries of statements like this.
	Well, you're not saying that Donald Trump actively incited people on January 6th because the legal standard for incitement is he has to tell people, I want you to go and invade the Capitol building on January 6th.
	And the standard can't even be, he said something that's generally inflammatory, because if that were the standard, you'd have to ban Kamala Harris for bailing people out of jail who were rioting.
	Or half the Democratic politicians in America for lying about what happened with George Floyd by suggesting that it was racially driven.
	Again, no matter what you think happened with George Floyd, there's one thing that is certain.
	There is no evidence whatsoever that the killing of George Floyd had anything to do with race.
	That evidence was never presented.
	Every single Democrat suggested, because they were part of the Black Lives Matter moment, That that killing had something to do with race.
	I didn't see Facebook stepping in despite the $2 billion in property damage that were done during the riots.
	So what exactly does that mean?
	A clear risk of real world harm.
	What it means is we are going to just say there's a clear risk of real world harm when we're looking for an excuse to ban somebody.
	So the statement from Clegg continues, quote, Two years ago, we took action in what were extreme and highly unusual circumstances.
	We indefinitely suspended then-U.S. President Donald Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts following his praise for people engaged in violence at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
	This presumably would have been the same day that he also told them to go home.
	And also the same day he told them beforehand that they should protest peacefully at the U.S.
	Capitol building.
	We then referred that decision to the Oversight Board, an expert body establishing an independent check and balance on our decision-making.
	The Board upheld the decision, but criticized the open-ended nature of the suspension and the lack of clear criteria for when and whether suspended accounts will be restored, directing us to review the matter to determine a more proportionate response.
	In response to the board, says Clegg, we imposed a time-bound suspension of two years from the date of the original suspension on January 7, 2021, an unprecedented length of time for such a suspension.
	It was indeed unprecedented, and you had no real excuse for saying two years.
	You picked it out of a hat.
	It is worth noting here that when they decided they were going to ban Trump in January of 2021, and then later decided it would be a two-year ban, that was just in time for them to unban Trump just before the 2024 election cycle, presumably.
	We also clarified the circumstances in which accounts of public figures could be restricted during times of civil unrest and ongoing violence, and introduced a new crisis policy protocol to guide our assessments of on and off platform risks of imminent harm, so we can respond with specific policy and product actions.
	Now, notice again that they say that they have a protocol to guide their assessment of on and off platform risks of imminent harm.
	So if you don't even do something on Facebook, but you do something off of Facebook, now they're saying that if there is a clear risk of danger off of Facebook, they can ban you on Facebook for that.
	Which makes them sort of like God.
	There is no actual barrier between what you are doing in the rest of your life and Facebook seeing that and then banning you on platform for something you did well off the platform.
	They also said that before making any decision on whether or not to lift Trump's suspension, we would assess whether the risk to public safety has receded.
	Now, again, what does that even mean, the risk to public safety has receded?
	Literally receded the day of.
	You know when the risk to public safety receded?
	When the cops went in and arrested everyone and hundreds of them went to jail.
	That would have been the time that public safety was now restored.
	But apparently it took two years for the risk to recede.
	These Facebook standards are nonsense.
	They cannot be trusted.
	And you know who else can't be trusted?
	The Biden administration with your money.
	I mean, it's just that simple.
	Right now, the Federal Reserve is playing games with monetary policy.
	This has been true for the last several years.
	The debt ceiling now exceeds $31.4 trillion, and inflation is still above 7%.
	We are seeing layoffs in major companies throughout the United States.
	So here's the question.
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	They say this, Facebook, the suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances, which is an easy way of saying we just did it as a knee-jerk reaction.
	The normal state of affairs that the public should be able to hear from a former president of the United States and a declared candidate for that office again on our platforms.
	Now that the time period of the suspension has elapsed, the question is not whether we choose to reinstate Trump's account, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period is justified.
	To assess whether the serious risks to public safety that existed in January 2021 has sufficiently receded, we have evaluated the current environment according to our crisis policy protocol, which included looking at the conduct of the U.S.
	2022 midterm election, And expert assessments on the current security environment.
	Now, we don't know who those experts were.
	We have no idea how that determination was done.
	We don't know exactly what factors went into that consideration.
	I'm pointing out all the vagaries here, because in the end, it is a bunch of Democrats at Facebook who are deciding who to ban.
	In the end, that's what this is.
	And they can pretend that it's algorithmic.
	They can pretend they can hide behind the computers.
	They can pretend that it's all AI.
	It is not.
	It is a bunch of people who are setting policy, and they are doing so in completely arbitrary fashion.
	Or, if you're a partisan, completely non-arbitrary fashion.
	They say that the risk has sufficiently receded and that we should therefore adhere to the two-year timeline we set out.
	But, they say, Trump is subject to our community standards in light of his violations.
	He now faces heightened penalties for repeat offenses.
	Penalties which will apply to other public figures whose accounts are reinstated from suspensions related to civil unrest under our updated protocol.
	In the event that Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed, he will be suspended for between one month and two years depending on the severity of the violation.
	Our updated protocol also addresses content that does not violate our community standards, but that contributes to the sort of risk that materialized on January 6th, such as content that delegitimizes an upcoming election or is related to QAnon.
	So, this policy is a total mess.
	It's a total and absolute cluster.
	When they say content that delegitimizes an upcoming election, How about, say, content that suggests that Georgia's voting law is Jim Crow 2.0?
	That delegitimizes an upcoming election.
	If you claim that there's going to be widespread voter suppression, and that this is going to lead to skewing of the results, let's say you're Stacey Abrams and you say this over and over and over and over, does that mean that you're going to get banned on Facebook?
	I think not.
	And this sort of policy is really overbroad and also really specific to Donald Trump.
	We may limit the distribution of such posts, they say.
	For repeated instances, may temporarily restrict access to our advertising tools.
	This would mean that content would remain visible on Trump's account, but would not be distributed in people's feeds, even if they follow Trump.
	So they would essentially shadow ban him.
	We may also remove the reshare button from such posts.
	They prevent you from even being able to share what Trump is saying and may stop them being recommended or run as ads.
	In the event that Trump posts content that violates the letter of the community standards, but under our newsworthy content policy, we assess there is public interest in knowing that Trump made the statement that outweighs any potential harm.
	We may similarly opt to restrict the distribution of such posts, but leave them visible on Trump's account.
	So again, this is all just, it's a complete mess.
	So they think it's newsworthy content and it outweighs potential harm, but they could theoretically, they could just restrict the distribution of the post.
	They say we publish our community standards publicly so everyone can see where we draw that line.
	Our policies sometimes require reconsideration and revision.
	We are highlighting these rules today because we anticipate that should Trump choose to resume activity on our platforms, many people will call for us to take action against his account and the content he posts, while many others will be upset if he is suspended again or if some of his content is not distributed on our platforms.
	We want to be as clear as possible now about our policies.
	This is about as clear as mud, and it's meant to be as clear as mud.
	It is not going to actually stop any of the problems that Facebook faces.
	If they ban Trump again, the right will properly be quite upset.
	If they do not ban Trump again, the left will be absolutely enraged.
	So instead, what you're going to see is a selective attempt to shut down particular messages coming from Trump's account.
	That's what's actually, they're not gonna ban Trump again.
	They're just going to shadow man him a lot.
	They're going to step in, they're gonna prevent you from resharing his posts, they're going to allow stuff to remain on his page, but they're gonna make you go to his page.
	Now, I don't know what to call this other than election interference.
	This is clearly election interference.
	When you have major social media companies overtly stating that one candidate, not others, one candidate is going to be hit with a bunch of restrictions that only apply to that candidate because no other major candidate in the United States has ever been banned from Facebook.
	What you are essentially saying is that you're going to put a thumb on the scale against Trump.
	That's what you're doing over at Facebook.
	They conclude, we know any decision we make on this issue will be fiercely criticized.
	Reasonable people will disagree over whether it is the right decision, but a decision had to be made. So we've tried to make it as best we can in a way that is consistent with our values and the process we established in response to the oversight board's guidance. I'm sorry, guys, that doesn't even come close to making any sense whatsoever.
	It's another attempt by Facebook to sort of split the baby, when in reality, they should have just taken the original stance that Mark Zuckerberg took at Georgetown in 2018, when he said, we are a free speech platform. End of story. We are not going to ban Donald Trump. If you don't like what Donald Trump has to say, you can mute him. You don't have to reshare him. You don't have to amplify him. This, by the way, is how I deal with my personal Twitter account.
	It's not a bad idea.
	Twitter is the account that I tend to use the most on a personal level.
	I have almost five and a half million followers on Twitter.
	Many of those people hate my guts.
	You know what I choose to do?
	I don't ban any of them.
	No one is banned from following my account on Twitter.
	Instead, you know what I do to people who are abusive?
	I mute them.
	Which is also called life.
	You can do that in your life.
	But these social media platforms decided that because Democrats were calling on them to control elections, now they're actively going to do that.
	And again, there are many of them who admit this.
	There's a woman named Crystal Ball who wrote a piece for Time magazine in the aftermath of the 2020 election admitting that they were doing exactly this.
	They were intervening in social media in order to prevent the dissemination of messages that were harmful to Democrats.
	So look for the exact same thing to rear his ugly head in 2024.
	Okay, meanwhile, I gotta admit, this story... I won't say that this is the most important story of the day.
	I will say, however, that I have a bizarre obsession with the ugly statues.
	And there are a lot of ugly statues that have been produced lately.
	So we saw that MLK statue in Boston that looked like a tentacled thing.
	I'm not sure exactly what it was supposed to be.
	It was the MLK statue.
	I suppose it was supposed to be a hug between MLK and his wife, but it was just their arms and it was disembodied arms that their heads were missing, their bodies were missing.
	So it sort of looked like bizarre tentacle monsters that were hugging one.
	I don't know what it is with Democrats and tentacles, but now there's another tentacle monster that has emerged onto the scene.
	This time, it has emerged atop the New York courthouse.
	According to the New York Times, quote, frenzied commuters in New York's Flatiron District have been stopped in their tracks in recent days by an unlikely apparition near Moses, Confucius and Zoroaster.
	Standing atop the grandiose state courthouse is a shimmering golden eight-foot female sculpture emerging from a pink lotus flower and wearing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's signature lace collar.
	Staring regally ahead with hair braided like silk.
	Sorry, no matter what you think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not on par with Moses or Confucius.
	I'm sorry, no.
	female to adorn one of the courthouse's 10 plinths, dominated for more than a century by now-weathered statues representing great lawgivers throughout the ages, all of them men. By great lawgivers, we are talking about the founders of religions. Sorry, no matter what you think of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is not on par with Moses or Confucius. I'm sorry, no. Zero statements that Ruth Bader Ginsburg has ever made are going to live 2,000 years. Few of them are even going to live two years.
	So no, there's that.
	And then there's the actual statue.
	And I gotta say, modern artists, they are just in the business of producing garbage.
	And then we are supposed to pretend that we can't see that the statue, that the emperor is naked.
	And the emperor is not wearing any clothes here.
	This thing is hideous.
	It looks like it was produced by an AI with a real ugly sense of humor.
	The artist is apparently a person named Shazia Sikander, 53, a paradigm-busting Pakistani-American artist, who said the sculpture is part of an urgent and necessary cultural reckoning underway.
	And by the way, reckoning is the key word of the day.
	Whenever somebody says a reckoning is happening, you know what comes next is going to be sheer garbage.
	Reckoning?
	What exactly is the reckoning?
	She says, the reckoning is about reconsidering traditional representation of power in public spaces and recasting civic structures to better reflect 21st century social mores.
	She is a fierce woman!
	Oh my god, it's all buzzwords.
	Fierce.
	So much fierceness.
	She's so fierce with her doily thing that she wore on top of her on top of her robe and so this is that's what the statue is.
	It doesn't look anything like Ruth Bader Ginsburg by the way but it does have the weird doily thing that she used to wear on top of her of her robe which has now become a religious icon. If you can find a shred of the weird doily thing she used to wear on top of her robe then you can you can take it to Lourdes and you will be and it will perform miracles for you or something.
	In any case, Sikander said, quote, Yes, that's what Moses and Jesus and Muhammad, it's all patriarchal representation.
	And Ruth Bader Ginsburg is going to be the statue standing up against this.
	She said the work is called NOW because it was needed now.
	Well, also because she used to be a lawyer for the National Organization for Women, I would assume.
	It is a hideous garbage statue.
	She wrote in The Artist's Statement, with Ginsburg's death and the reversal of Roe, there was a setback to women's constitutional progress.
	So apparently, they had to shift Mohammed off the pillar.
	I do find that hilarious.
	I mean, I will admit that the woke intersectional hierarchy, having Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a left-wing Jewish lady, knocking Muhammad off the top of the building, is kind of hysterical.
	Because literally any other statue knocking Muhammad off the building and the left is losing its mind on behalf of diversity right now, but it's Ruth Bader Ginsburg, man!
	And she is a goddess.
	She's exactly the same as a religious lawgiver.
	By the way, anybody who tells you that secularism is not a religion, secularism is a religion.
	They are using RBG as an actual religious totem at this point.
	They're equating her to religious leaders like Moses and Muhammad.
	Like Moses, who for the Jews, you know, like the most holy person who ever lived.
	And Muhammad, the great lawgiver for 1 billion people.
	They are equating to a left-wing lawyer who wrote zero consequential decisions in her entire career on the United States bench.
	Like, slow clap for the left.
	Don't worry guys, it's all logical.
	It's not at all some sort of weird cult.
	Nothing like that.
	The Lahore-born Sikander, whose work has been displayed at the Whitney Biennial and who made her name reimagining the art of Indo-Persian miniature painting from a feminist post-colonial perspective, sounds fascinating, was at pains to emphasize that Muhammad's removal and her installation were completely unrelated.
	My figure is not replacing anyone or canceling anyone.
	Well, I mean, somebody isn't there anymore.
	So apparently, the stylized sculpture was aimed at feminizing a building that was commissioned in 1896.
	So, what exactly is this thing supposed to be?
	Well, um, it's weird.
	It's super weird.
	It apparently is in dialogue with another 18-foot sculpture of a powerful woman called Witness in Madison Square Park.
	That sculpture wore a hoop skirt inspired by the stained glass dome of the courthouse, symbolizing the need to break the legal glass ceiling.
	Written on the sculpture is the word Chava, which she said means air or atmosphere in Urdu, and Eve in Arabic and Hebrew.
	Okay?
	Like, like, as in Adam and Eve.
	So, um, So, after all that talk, I gotta say that it looks as though, basically, RBG has been now possessed by some satanic form, and tentacles have taken over her arms.
	This is like a weird form of tentacle-squid takeover.
	It's like a hybrid alien thing that is now happening here.
	So you have statues that represent humans, and then you have RBG, whose arms have turned into cables from the Matrix, And whose head is now emerging from her head are weird devil horns in braided fashion that swirl around her.
	Also, she's nude except for the weird doily thing.
	So, honestly, modern art, man.
	They're doing an amazing job.
	But, you know, you gotta have your religious icons.
	If you're a religious movement, you gotta have your religious icons.
	So, it seemed like a great idea at the time to put a satanic statue of RBG atop a building, but if this puts you in mind of You know, fighting Satan, perhaps you might think about praying.
	You might think about the importance of faith.
	You might think about hallow.
	Just like physical exercise, daily spiritual exercise is critical to your well-being, especially in a world where they're putting satanic statues of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in favor of abortion on the top of New York courthouses.
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	It is filled with studies, meditations, and reflections that are rooted in Judeo-Christian prayer practices.
	You can pray alongside Mark Wahlberg, Jim Caviezel, and even some world-class athletes.
	You can access the number one Christian podcast, Bible in a Year, with Father Mike Schmitz on Hallo as well.
	Set prayer reminders, invite others to pray with you, and track your progress along the way.
	Again, we are living in an increasingly godless world.
	Try to bring God back into your life, particularly if you're a Christian.
	Try Hallo for three months free at hallo.com slash Shapiro.
	That's Hallo H-A-L-L-O-W dot com slash Shapiro to get started today.
	So, I'm excited that New York's courthouse will now have this religious icon.
	It'll only be there temporarily, as would befit the patriarchy.
	I mean, it couldn't be there permanently.
	Only the patriarchy has to move that thing.
	By the way, women, try not to look upon the statue of RBG Medusa, Ruth Bader Ginsburg Medusa.
	If you do, your uterus will reportedly turn to stone.
	So that is exciting stuff happening in New York.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, in the other stupidest story of the day, Joe Biden apparently has a panel, another one of these governmental panels.
	It is the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.
	Ooh, ah.
	So, normally when you think about the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, you think, maybe we shouldn't just, like, feed people things that will make them fat.
	How about that?
	How about that the dietary advice that we give people isn't run by the Department of Agriculture and a bunch of farmers who are trying to sell you corn syrup?
	Which is literally what happened in the United States in the 1970s.
	Remember that food pyramid?
	Do you remember this?
	And the food pyramid at the bottom said grains?
	And then everybody followed the food pyramid and they got super duper fat because it turns out grains make you super fat, as we all know now.
	And it was driven entirely by the Department of Agriculture because farmers were like, hey man, we're growing all this corn over here.
	What are you gonna do with this corn?
	What if we just tell everybody that corn is amazing for you?
	What if we just tell everybody that all this wheat, you shove it down your gullet and you'll get skinny?
	The truth is, you should be eating a lot more vegetables, a lot more fruits, you should be eating a lot more meat, a lot more eggs, fish, very good for you.
	You should really skimp on the carbs.
	As anybody who's tried to stay in shape will tell you, carbs are effectively the devil.
	They taste amazing, and they also make you unbelievably fat.
	In any case, what exactly is the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee going to do?
	Well, we do have one indicator.
	Apparently, Joe Biden has now appointed a Dr. Fatima Cody-Stanford.
	She claims that obesity is mostly genetic.
	She's one of the 20 doctors appointed to the committee, according to the Daily Caller, which will examine the relationship between diet and health through a health equity lens.
	Oh, goody, goody gumdrops.
	A health equity lens factoring in socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, and culture.
	I didn't realize that being a fatso was a matter of status, race, ethnicity, and culture.
	How about caloric deficit, gang?
	Don't eat as much as you burn.
	That is the rule.
	It's very, very simple.
	Now, it's not easy to keep.
	I will admit that I have not always kept to it.
	My weight fluctuates just like any other human.
	However, the wisdom of the ages does not change here.
	And it turns out that if you eat too much, you get fat.
	I know this is like very mysterious stuff here.
	They apparently are going to provide recommendations to the USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services.
	This particular doctor has claimed that doctors do not understand obesity, and that many patients can't simply lose weight through improved diet and exercise.
	So on January 1st, she appeared on CBS's 60 Minutes, and she then explains that it's actually genetic.
	The reason that you're fat is genetic, so it's not any fault of yours.
	You shouldn't bother dieting.
	There's nothing you can do.
	You are doomed to be a large fatso for the rest of your life.
	It's a brain disease.
	It is?
	It's a brain disease.
	More like syphilis?
	And the brain tells us how much to eat and how much to store.
	Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity doctor at Mass General Hospital.
	An associate professor at Harvard Medical School says common beliefs about obesity are all wrong.
	I've always heard that it's the fast food, that it's the diet cokes, that kind of thing, that is the instigator.
	Is that true?
	So I think we have to look at the different causes of obesity as a big pie.
	And that's one factor.
	But notice how I'm using this part of the pie, right?
	But the number one cause of obesity is genetics.
	79 to 90% of physicians in the United States have significant bias towards individuals that are heavier.
	Oh, that's so sad.
	Well, I mean, by significant bias, you mean they tell people that they need to lose weight, and then people get super offended?
	So, my wife is a family med doc, and this happened to her before, right?
	Somebody will come in, and it turns out obesity makes everything you have worse.
	Every single health condition you have, it makes it worse.
	COVID, it makes it worse.
	Heart disease, it makes it worse.
	Various forms of cancers, they think now, are linked to obesity.
	And so if you tell somebody who is young and obese, you need to lose weight.
	And the way that you lose weight is you eat healthier, you get more exercise, stop cramming food in your face.
	If you say that, people get super offended.
	They're like, I'm just big boned.
	You're not big boned.
	Again, we live in a society where it is now considered wise and normal to tell people that things they can fix are not in their control.
	And if you tell them they are in their control and they should fix them and it will be better for them if they fix them, people get super angry at you.
	Now we have the government appointing experts who say exactly that.
	She said, quote, For most people, they will acutely lose weight.
	But 96% of those participating in The Biggest Loser regained their weight because their brain worked well.
	It was supposed to bring them back to store what they needed or what the brain thinks it needs.
	Well, which means that you have to break the brain habit.
	I mean, as everyone who has ever dieted understands, you have to come up with a sustainable plan for dieting.
	I'm not a diet and lifestyle advice show here, but I'm just telling you.
	You know, these sort of crash diets where you lose a hundred pounds and you do it really, really fast?
	You are going to bounce back in the opposite direction very often because you have not come up with a sustainable diet that will last you the rest of your life.
	That is what you actually need.
	You need to figure out what you can do on a daily basis that is going to lower your caloric intake, and then you need to maintain that for literally ever.
	As part of her work on the committee, Stanford will provide recommendations to HHS and USDA that inform federal dietary programs and nutrition programs, as well as dietary education.
	Today, we are super fat.
	We didn't used to be quite as fat.
	Well, when you think about your business, maybe your business used to be in slightly better shape as well, and now you need to trim some fat.
	Whatever you need to do to help your business, one thing you can't afford is to have given a bunch of your business's money to the government.
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	Now, I'd like to point out here something, which is that we didn't used to be that fat a country.
	If this were a genetic condition, one of the things that you should think about is the fact that we didn't used to be even remotely as fat as we are right now.
	In fact, if you go back in American history, You go back to like 1980, it turns out that Americans were significantly skinnier than they are right now.
	According to a study from the National Library of Medicine, And this is actually from the Surgeon General's Vision for a Healthy and Fit Nation.
	It's the governmental document.
	Quote, the prevalence of obesity changed relatively little during the 1960s and 70s, but it increased sharply over the ensuing decades, from 13.4% of Americans in 1980 to 34.3% of Americans in 2008 among adults, and from 5% to 17% among children during the same period.
	The prevalence of extreme obesity also increased during 1976 to 1980.
	to 1980 and 2007-2008. And approximately 6% of U.S. adults now have a BMI of 40 kilograms per square meter or higher. The United States is not alone in experiencing obesity epidemics.
	Similar increases in the prevalence of obesity have been reported in developed countries such as England and in countries where obesity was formerly rare.
	For example, the prevalence in China among preschool-aged children living in urban areas has now increased eightfold from 1.5% in 1989 to 12.6% in 1997.
	So again, I'm noticing that modern society is either lighting on a bunch of bizarre environmental and evolutionary bottlenecks in which magically, The transgenderism rate is multiplying by tens of thousands of percentage points, and everyone is becoming rapidly fat just through evolutionary biology.
	We've hit the end of humanity just because, boom, we triggered a bunch of genes.
	Or, possibly, our culture is broken.
	And we've also made an enormous amount of fast food very easily available to people.
	Processed food.
	Sugars.
	All this stuff is really, really easily available to people.
	And people are engaging in those sorts of things.
	And by the way, if you look at the countries that are the fattest, it is in fact a cultural thing.
	So that has little to do with brain function, unless the idea is that certain cultures have different functioning brains than other cultures, which seems kind of racist to me.
	It seems more like what you have is that certain cultures actually promote eating unhealthy.
	Now, there are certain cultures where the diet is just different, right?
	I mean, if you go to cultures in the The United States, however, is apparently on the list.
	that these are disproportionately overweight places.
	The Cook Islands actually is the most obese country in the world, followed by Nauru and Samoa and Tonga and Tuvalu.
	These are all countries that are in the Pacific Asia region.
	The United States, however, is apparently on the list.
	The United States is the fattest of the westernized countries.
	If you look at the obesity rate in the United States, it's currently 36.2%.
	By the way, the total obesity rate for both men and women in Nauru is 61%.
	Wow.
	The United States is about 36%.
	And then it's Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt.
	And by the way, this is one of the reasons why when people make a comparison between the health outcomes in the United States and the health outcomes in, say, Norway, that is complete apples to oranges.
	You cannot make that comparison whatsoever.
	It's ridiculous to make that comparison.
	The Nordic countries don't even chart in terms of the fattest countries.
	So maybe we should focus in on the fact that we have an actual obesity crisis in the United States, rather than appointing people who make people feel good about the weight that they are carrying around, rather than telling them that they actually need to lose that weight.
	This is having pretty significant downstream effects, not just on the health of the nation, but on things like the military and our ability to recruit in the military.
	According to a 2018 RAND report featuring roughly 18,000 randomly selected participants across each of the service branches, 66% of service members are considered to be either overweight or obese.
	One of the big problems we are having in recruiting people to the military is that you're supposed to not be a giant fatso when you go into the military and too many people are showing up and they can't actually pass the tests.
	This does correlate with the obesity epidemic plaguing the United States, where as of 2015, one in three young adults are considered too fat to enlist.
	One of the reasons, by the way, a huge number of people died in the United States of COVID is because we are a super fat country.
	And when people like Joe Rogan mentioned this and suggested, hey guys, maybe as a first resort, we ought to go to the gym and lose weight, people laughed at him.
	It made people feel bad.
	Instead, we have to promote fat positivity.
	And we have to suggest that you are healthy at any weight.
	You are not healthy at any weight.
	If you are 150 pounds overweight, you are 100% not healthy at that weight.
	Stop pretending that making people feel validated about how they look is somehow more important than protecting their health by telling them the truth about the health effects of what they're doing.
	If that were the case, by the way, then you know what looked really cool in like the 1940s and 50s?
	Smoking.
	Looked super cool.
	Watch all the movies.
	All the cool kids were doing it.
	And then it turns out it kills you of lung cancer.
	And so we said to people, hey, you know what you should stop doing?
	Smoking.
	And people stopped smoking.
	And now we have, I guess if smoking were a full public health issue right now, at the level that obesity is, I suppose now we'd be appointing people to government agencies to say that really, smoking is just a brain disorder.
	After all, addiction is a brain disorder.
	Just the foolishness knows no bounds.
	I mean, do we understand the stupidity of encouraging people to just continue being fat?
	It's unbelievably stupid.
	Just like it is unbelievably stupid to continue to spend too much money on your cell phone coverage.
	That'd be a dumb thing to do.
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	Also, I want to talk to you about some amazing things happening over at Daily Wire+.
	On my last Sunday Special, I sat down with Fr.
	Frank Pavone, a priest and pro-life activist who was recently dismissed by the Catholic Church for persistent disobedience.
	In our conversation, Fr.
	Frank describes a noticeable ideological shift amongst the clergy and how Pope Francis himself has intentionally sowed confusion around long-held church teachings regarding gay marriage, abortion, and others in order to placate a progressive agenda.
	It seems almost everywhere you turn, the world wants to make you more woke.
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	Dennis wants to make you more wise.
	My good friend, the founder of PragerU, is going to do just that with a brand new series exclusively on DailyWirePlus.
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	So, head on over to DailyWirePlus.com, become a member, watch Prager U Masters program, and more.
	That's DailyWirePlus.com today.
	Okay, meanwhile, the Biden administration is now pledging to send tanks to Ukraine.
	So the ante is being up.
	President Biden announced on Wednesday he would be sending M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine to help it defend against Russian invaders.
	A decision meant to unlock a wave of heavier aid by Western allies in preparation for an expected escalation of fighting in the spring.
	Things are going to get hotter and hotter in the spring by pretty much all accounts.
	Speaking at the White House after a morning of telephone calls to European allies, Biden said the United States would send 31 Abrams tanks.
	Today, I'm announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion.
	by contributing its own Leopard 2 tanks and freeing other allies to send their own, the equivalent of two more battalions.
	Here was Joe Biden announcing just that yesterday.
	He says, we will be sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
	Today, I'm announcing that the United States will be sending 31 Abram tanks to Ukraine, the equivalent of one Ukrainian battalion.
	Secretary Austin has recommended this step because it will enhance the Ukraine's capacity to defend its territory and achieve its strategic objectives.
	Now, I'd be a lot more edified by all of this if I thought that Joe Biden were capable of carrying forward a plan.
	I'm not sure that he's capable of carrying forward a sentence.
	Here was Joe Biden trying to explain what exactly he was doing here, and suddenly he starts jabbering about Ukrainian aggression.
	And none of this is particularly edifying.
	Together with our allies and partners, we've sent more than 3,000 armored vehicles, more than 8,000 artillery systems, Ukraine's brutal aggression that's happening because of Russia?
	Uh, dude.
	Dude.
	By the way, that wasn't his only gaffe of that particular press conference.
	defense systems, all to help counter Ukraine's brutal aggression that's happening because of Russia.
	Ukraine's brutal aggression that's happening because of Russia?
	Dude, dude.
	By the way, that wasn't his only gaffe of that particular press conference.
	He also forgot exactly what the Secretary of Defense does.
	So that was awkward.
	And they need an enduring capability to deter and defend against Russian aggression over the long term.
	The Secretary of State and the Secretary of the military behind me, they've been deeply, deeply involved in this whole effort.
	Oh, the awkwardness.
	Oh, the awkwardness.
	According to the New York Times, the Pentagon has long been reluctant to send the Abrams, in part because it's very, very complex, challenging to operate and maintain.
	As it is, officials have said it could take a year or even longer for these tools to actually reach the battlefield in Ukraine.
	Apparently, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, that's the position he was looking for right there, came around to the move in order to spur Germany to send those Leopard 2 tanks.
	Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Wednesday also that they'd be sending tanks to Ukraine.
	There was Scholz announcing just that.
	Final word.
	There are many citizens in this country that are worried, worried because of this decision and the dimensions that this type of arm brings about.
	Please trust us.
	Trust the government.
	We will continue working at an international level.
	We have made this support possible without The risks increasing into the wrong direction.
	Please trust us, trust the government is always the prelude to something going wildly wrong.
	Russia, for its part of course, is fighting mad about it.
	When I say fighting mad, I mean that they are really going to up the ante in the near future because they effectively have to.
	All of the interests in Russia are moving toward a broader war, not toward some sort of deal, not in the face of further Russian Not in the face of further American infusion of resources into Ukraine.
	According to the Daily Mail, Russia today warned that Germany's decision to send dozens of modern tanks to Ukraine is extremely dangerous and will take the conflict to a new level.
	We don't actually know what that means at this point.
	Russia branded the move a blatant provocation and warned that the new NATO supplies will burn like all the rest, while one raging Putin propagandist called for the German parliament to be destroyed in a nuclear strike.
	Russia's ambassador said, quote, this extremely dangerous decision takes the conflict to a new level of confrontation and contradicts statements by German politicians about the unwillingness of the German Federation to get involved in it.
	So, so far, this has been largely empty talk from Russia.
	They're obviously talking about upping the ante by drafting millions more people and just throwing them cannon fodder style into Ukraine.
	They're talking, of course, about Mass mobilization.
	They're talking about a broad offensive in the spring and all the rest.
	However, you know, Russia keeps talking, I think, in sort of empty ways about how they're going to attack a NATO country or maybe fire a battlefield nuclear weapon.
	They haven't actually demonstrated the willingness or capacity to do any of that.
	The problem is that when you are talking about hot wars, you just don't know what comes next.
	It's impossible to predict fully what the next step is going to be.
	I mean, the good news is that means sometimes Russia foresees that it's going to run Russia over Ukraine and then it loses.
	It also means that the longer this goes on, the further the chance that something could go wildly wrong.
	Russia had warned the supply of more tanks would leave a lasting mark and lead to nothing good.
	With fears in Moscow that the high-tech equipment could land a devastating blow on the invading forces, pressure has been building for weeks on Scholz's government to send the tanks and allow NATO allies to do the same.
	The goal is to quickly establish two battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine, according to the statement.
	Training Ukrainian troops how to use the armor will begin in Germany almost immediately.
	So yeah, again, it's a lot of empty rhetoric from the Russians up until the point it is not.
	And so, I only can hope, at this point, that the West is consistently going to Putin and asking him if he wants an off-ramp or what that off-ramp is going to look like.
	If they're not, if this really is just the West continuing to ratchet up the pressure without actively engaging in back-channel negotiations with Putin, I don't know what the end of this thing looks like.
	I don't think anyone knows what the end of this thing looks like.
	By the way, there's a completely possible situation in which the Russian regime comes toppling down, and what follows in Russia is actually a disaster area.
	Because does anyone know who's going to take over the country that has 2,500 nuclear-tipped weapons?
	Does anybody actually know who's going to take over the Russian military if Putin were to fall?
	Is it going to be somebody who's more crazy?
	Is it going to be an internal battle inside a fragmenting state that has nuclear weapons pretty much all over its soil?
	If there's no plan, then it is a mistake to up the ante.
	There'd best be a plan.
	Okay, meanwhile, speaking of a controversy over a plan, apparently the Republicans have now mobilized in the face of Democratic predations to kick off a couple of high-profile Democrats from committees.
	They're trying to kick Eric Swalwell, who was last seen nailing a Chinese spy, off the Intelligence Committee.
	They're also trying to do the same to Adam Schiff, Who has set up a puppet tent outside the MSNBC headquarters where he spends most of his days attempting to pretend that Russian collusion is a reality.
	They're also trying to kick Ilhan Omar, who is one of the worst people in Congress, off the foreign affairs panel.
	She's of course an overt raging anti-Semite and an anti-American commentator par excellence.
	So, Kevin McCarthy was asked by the media about why Swalwell and Schiff should not go on the Intel Committee, and he was like, well, maybe it's because they completely lost the trust of the American people.
	Maybe it's because of that.
	What did Adam Schiff do as the chairman of the Intel Committee?
	What Adam Schiff did, use his power as a chairman and lie to the American public.
	Even the Inspector General said it.
	And if you want to talk about Swalwell, let's talk about Swalwell.
	Because you have not had the briefing that I had.
	I had the briefing and Nancy Pelosi had the briefing from the FBI.
	The FBI never came before this Congress to tell the leadership of this Congress that Eric Swalwell Okay, he happens to be absolutely correct about that.
	Steve Scalise has been doing exactly the same thing.
	just us who are concerned about, the FBI was concerned about putting a member of Congress on the Intel Committee that has the rights to see things that others don't because of his knowledge and relationship with the Chinese spy.
	Okay, he happens to be absolutely correct about that. Steve Scalise has been doing exactly the same thing. Here is Steve Scalise, who is the second-in-command over on the Republican side of the aisle in the House making the same case against Eric Swalwell. Well, with all of those members you talked about, there are very specific things that they've done in their time here in Congress.
	I don't even think Swalwell could get a security clearance in the private sector.
	So why should he be on the Intelligence Committee?
	I mean, these committees are very unique in that they deal with our national secrets.
	They deal with very classified information.
	Of course, all of that is true.
	Meanwhile, Eric Swalwell is very angry about all of this.
	Not a shock there.
	He says that Kevin McCarthy will regret not giving me and Ilhan Omar committee assignments.
	No, I don't think he'll regret that very much.
	I feel like he has other things to regret, but probably not that.
	Even though we have said publicly these smears are bringing death threats, he continues to do it, which makes us believe that there's an intent behind it.
	But we will not be quiet.
	We're not going away.
	I think he'll regret giving all three of us more time on our hands.
	But at the end of the day, our mission now is to restore the credibility and integrity of this institution of which the Speaker has so gravely, so gravely smashed and destroyed.
	Wait, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar going to restore the credibility of Congress?
	Those three are going to do it?
	Yeah, I'm gonna go no on that one.
	Also, this argument that the left loves using, which is, McCarthy's saying stuff, and that stuff is mean.
	And that mean stuff he's saying might put us under threat.
	So he's not allowed to say it.
	So by attacking McCarthy, is he doing the same thing?
	Is he putting McCarthy under threat?
	Is that how this dumb logic works?
	So the Republicans are doing the right thing here.
	There's only one problem for the Republicans along these lines.
	That problem happens to be that now there are some Republicans who are sort of dropping out of this.
	Is the problem with having a very small majority in the House?
	Apparently some of the Republicans are not willing to kick Ilhan Omar off of her committee.
	According to Politico, House Republicans are already facing defections over a leadership push to oust Omar from her committees.
	Democrats plan to make the vote even more painful.
	The Minnesota Democrat and her caucus allies have begun to mount a robust defense of the progressive squad member.
	While they focused on Omar's past comments about Israel, Republicans loudly protested last Congress when Democrats booted a pair of conservatives from committee.
	Democrats are working to have no defections on the vote to remove Omar, and they are attempting to swing at least a few Republicans in favor of Omar.
	Apparently, a second public defector has now emerged on Tuesday.
	Representative Victoria Sparks of Indiana joined Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina in declaring that she would not vote to yank Omar off the panel.
	Remember, this House Republican majority is like four or five votes, and one of those votes just became not part of the congressional vote because of an injury.
	So that means that they're down to like a three-vote majority.
	Democrats are lobbying other Republican members of the Foreign Affairs panel to oppose Omar's removal as well.
	If McCarthy can't hold that together, again, I feel bad for McCarthy in the sense that he has the world's worst job.
	It is a garbage job trying to hold together a fractious committee.
	But if Republicans can't even get together to kick Ilhan Omar off the committee in the aftermath of a bunch of Republicans being kicked off committees by Nancy Pelosi, I don't know what the Republican majority is really all that good for.
	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 Disney shutting down Splash Mountain over racism, of course.
	Plus, Democrats may be cruising for a bruising in the Senate in 2024.
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