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Jan. 31, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
45:06
Will The Ukraine War Turn Into World War III? | Ep. 1658
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Time Text
As Russia prepares another 200,000 troops for battle, the Ukrainian government asks for F-16s.
The possibility of war with China looms on the horizon, and media members continue to blame racism and all cops for the Tyree Nichols killing.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Well, Vladimir Putin is upping the ante in Ukraine.
According to the U.S.
Sun, Russia is now massing at least 200,000 soldiers for a massive new assault on Ukraine, according to NATO's top official, that'd be NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.
He grimly said there is no sign that Vladimir Putin is preparing for peace.
He warned that Russia is preparing for more war ahead of the conflict's first anniversary at the end of February.
I think if he had told anybody this conflict would still be going on one year from the date of inception, people would have thought that you were nuts.
That is specifically the result of Ukrainian resistance and NATO armaments pouring into Ukraine at an unprecedented rate.
All of this comes amid intelligence reports that Putin may be readying for a massive new offensive.
It has been reported that he could launch a new Blitzkrieg style onslaught and attempt to win the war by taking Kiev.
Ukraine fears the assault could coincide with February 24th, the first anniversary of Putin's invasion.
Stoltenberg did not give any details, but reiterated the need for the West to continue arming Ukraine.
He warned the world to prepare for the long haul.
He said it is extremely important that Putin does not win.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, he is arguing that Ukraine not only needs more weapons, they need better weapons.
This would include, presumably, F-16s.
According to Reuters, Ukraine needs new weapons and faster deliveries to confront a, quote, very tough situation of constant attacks by Russian forces in the eastern Donetsk region.
According to Zelensky, he said the situation is very tough.
Bakhmut, Bolidar, other sectors in the Donetsk region, these are constant Russian attacks.
These are constant attempts to break through our defenses.
He said Russia wants the war to drag on and exhaust our forces, so we have to make time, our weapon, we have to speed up events, speed up supplies, open up new weapons options for Ukraine.
The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said earlier on Sunday its forces repelled an attack near Blahodatny, which is in the eastern part of the Netsk region, while Russia's Wagner private military group said it took control of the village.
Zelensky issued his latest appeal for increased weapons shipment days after Germany and the United States led a list of countries agreeing to supply modern tanks.
He's now upping the ante.
He is saying the Ukraine needs the U.S.
made ATACMS missiles with a range of about 300 kilometers.
So far, Washington has declined to supply this.
The West's general perspective on Ukraine has been, we don't want offensive operations to move inside Russian borders.
Because once that happens, then you don't know what Russia is going to do.
In his latest remarks, Zelensky's Ukraine command was committed to ensuring that our pressure is greater than the occupier's capacity to attack.
And that meant, quote, maintaining the defense support from our partners.
Meanwhile, Germany has been warning against an arms race as Ukraine is pushing for more missiles and more jets.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is warning against that race.
He engineered a breakthrough with Joe Biden to send modern tanks to Ukraine earlier this month.
He has said that fighter jets is a nonstarter.
He said, I can only advise against entering into a constant competition to outbid each other when it comes to weapon systems.
Germany has insisted the country will not be equipping Ukraine with warplanes.
Scholes said the question of combat aircraft does not arise at all.
The U.S.
has not shared any plans to send warplanes.
Apparently, NBC News reported a little bit earlier this month that Biden got angry with the Ukrainian president on a call when Zelensky responded to the latest U.S.
announcement of billions in aid by piling on additional requests.
Biden apparently has said no to the United States sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, as according to Arab News, he said on Monday he will not be sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine.
He said no.
Western nations, of course, have been sending upgraded tanks to Ukraine at this time.
It is worthwhile noting that Poland may in fact be cutting some sort of deal with Ukraine to send F-16s to Ukraine and then sort of through back channels, those jets would be resupplied to Poland.
So it's quite possible that the United States will indirectly be helping to fund the sending of F-16s to Ukraine.
It'll just make Poland do it.
This would not be the first time this sort of armaments reshipment has happened.
Poland has been very friendly towards shipping in more weaponry toward Ukraine because Poland, of course, is under direct Russian threat and has been for centuries at this point.
According to TheDrive.com, Ukraine says it has received positive signals from Poland that indicate that the NATO country is willing to supply Kiev with the F-16 fighter jets it's long been campaigning to get.
Meanwhile, Polish officials have confirmed they could send some of their F-16s to Ukraine, although it would have to be done as part of a coordinated effort with other NATO allies.
Moreover, the advanced capabilities of these jets in particular and Poland's own need for them appear to make such a transfer at least questionable.
Andrei Yermak is the head of the office of the president of Ukraine and he put a statement on telegram saying work on obtaining F-16 fighters continues.
We have positive signals from Poland which is ready to pass them on to us in coordination with NATO.
He says tanks, fighter jets, a great combination for turning Russian enemies into fertilizer.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a press conference we will act in full coordination here presumably with the rest of NATO.
The Polish Prime Minister said the country would be open to providing Ukraine with F-16s, provided a more comprehensive framework deal was set up and then approved, which would presumably amount to the West resupplying Poland.
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Okay, so the question is, what the hell is going to be the end of all of this?
Right now, all of the interests are aligned for a prolonged war.
All of them.
This is a basic prisoner's dilemma.
So for folks who are not familiar with game theory, game theory is basically a way of trying to decipher how two parties are going to act when they are in conflict.
And there's a very famous sort of mental exercise called the prisoner's dilemma that really applies here.
The prisoner's dilemma is taken from a situation in which two people are arrested for a crime.
You know that they are in cahoots with one another.
And the idea is how do we get one of them to confess or both of them to confess?
So you put them in separate rooms and then you offer them a deal.
And the deal is basically this.
You say to each one of them, if you guys both stay silent, then you will get one year in jail.
If you, the person in front of me, if you confess and the other guy does not confess, and you will get no jail time and the other guy will get all the jail time right?
You rat on your buddy, you go free, your buddy is the one who gets blamed, he's the one who ends up with three years of jail time.
If both of you betray one another, then you are both going to end up with two years of jail time because you're both guilty of the crime, right?
So if neither of you say anything, then you both get what would be your second best outcome.
In which you both serve one year.
If both of you stay silent.
If you trust your buddy in crime, then you're both going to stay silent.
If you betray your friend, but your friend says nothing.
Then you take a free ride on your friend.
Basically, your friend goes to jail for three years and you go free.
And if both of you defect, then you end up both serving a couple of years.
So in the prisoner's dilemma, there's something called the Nash equilibrium.
The Nash equilibrium is essentially where we assume that the result is going to end up, because all of the interests are aligned in favor of that result.
In this particular situation, you're going to end up both serving two years.
Because you don't want to be the guy who gets jobbed.
You do not want to be the person who ends up staying silent while your friend confesses.
If you stay silent while your friend confesses, he goes free, and you end up going to jail for three years.
So you don't want to be suckered.
That's your worst available outcome.
So to avoid your worst outcome, you end up confessing, your friend does the same thing, he ends up confessing also, and you both end up going to jail for two years.
Whereas if both of you had stayed silent, presumably both of you would have gone to jail for one year.
Okay, the reason that this applies is think about Russia-Ukraine.
So instead of a situation in which we're talking about confessing or staying silent, we're talking about a situation in which you negotiate a diplomatic solution or you continue to maintain the war.
So the worst situation for Ukraine is that you start to make concessions to Russia.
Russia continues to press forward with its gains.
And so Russia gets everything and you get nothing.
That is the worst situation.
The same thing is true of Russia.
If Russia makes diplomatic noises and starts to make concessions, and Ukraine continues to push forward, then Russia ends up in its worst available position.
If both of them were to negotiate, then presumably both of them avoid the worst available situation.
But you have a serious lack of trust, right?
If both of them were actually able to negotiate some sort of solution here, in which Russia, for example, keeps control of Crimea and small areas of Donetsk-Luhansk, which has always been the assumption, I think, in diplomatic circles.
If that were to be the solution, that would be the second best solution for both of them, right?
Because the worst solution for Kiev is that Russia wins the war, and the worst solution for Russia is that Kiev wins the war.
So, but there's lack of trust, and so they're not going to end up negotiating a diplomatic solution.
Instead, all of the interests are aligned for both of them to continue the war.
Because the worst thing that Moscow can do at this point is negotiate while Ukraine continues to push forward on all of Russia's borders.
And the worst thing for Russia, and the worst thing for Kiev, rather, is that they negotiate while Russia continues to pour 200,000 men into the region.
So what you have is an interest in a prolonged war.
So the question becomes, how do you escape the prisoner's dilemma?
How do you stop this from being the interest matrix here?
Because right now, again, all interests are aligned for a long war.
If you're Ukraine, you'd rather have a long war, a harsh war, than you would essentially surrender.
If you're Russia, same sort of thing.
And so avoiding negotiations is part of the game here.
So how do you avoid the prisoner's dilemma?
Well, there are a couple of ways.
One of them has been suggested, of course, by Ukraine.
One of them is that Ukraine ratchets up its military action.
And so now the worst outcome for Russia appears more and more viable.
It's not a 50-50 shot as to whether they win or lose the war.
It is now a 20-80 shot as to whether they win or lose the war.
Right now, there's so much pressure on them, militarily speaking, that they have no choice but to come to the table.
The pressure ratchets up.
So you do the F-16s.
Essentially, this is what Nixon did in Vietnam.
In the aftermath of Nixon taking over, The presidency from LBJ, he ratcheted up the bombing, right?
There's the bombing of Cambodia.
He ratcheted up military operations, and he forced the Viet Cong to the table, and you ended up with a peace treaty that was then undermined by Congress.
But that was how you got an intransigent enemy to the tables.
You bombed the living crap out of them.
And people whined about it, and people cried about it, and people suggested it was human rights predations.
Of course, in the aftermath of the United States pulling completely out of Vietnam, you got a million people murdered in Cambodia.
So for all the talk about how terrible it was for the United States to be secretly bombing It turns out it was significantly worse when the United States withdrew from the entire region.
You had hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese fleeing to boats in the middle of the sea.
And you got Cambodia taken over by Pol Pot, who then slaughtered at least a million people.
But put that aside, the basic Nixonian strategy was you ratchet up the pressure so strongly and so suddenly that the other side is forced to the table.
So that's what Ukraine is suggesting.
The problem, of course, is that in this particular case, what everybody is afraid of is that if you ratchet up the pressure that strong, this is what Biden's afraid of.
This is what pretty much everybody in NATO is afraid of.
If you ratchet up the pressure that strongly, you might end up with Vladimir Putin panicking and firing off, say, a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon.
Or you might see Vladimir Putin mobilize not 200,000 men, but a million men.
Or maybe actually try to distract by firing off a couple missiles into an actual NATO ally.
Prompting not a massive retaliatory response from NATO, but NATO being slowly dragged into a conflict that it doesn't want.
So that is one of the risks here.
The risk with regard to the Viet Cong was fairly low.
You ratchet up the military operations, you weren't really afraid that Russia or China was going to directly join that war.
That would be more like the Korean War.
In the Korean War, there was a lot of worry that if the United States ratcheted up All of its military power and went directly after China, which is exactly what General Douglas MacArthur was suggesting.
And if that had happened, then you drag China into the war and Russia into the war, and now you have World War Three.
So that's kind of what the situation looks like right now.
So the best that Ukraine can sort of hope for here is to hold the line, which is why Henry Kissinger has suggested, and I think this is probably correct, that Ukraine at this point should apply for NATO membership, gain NATO membership, and then lines should be drawn and that's it.
If Putin is unwilling to come to the table, if he continues to pour men into the region, then one thing that Putin actually does not want is a direct conflict with NATO.
Because if you think that he's losing to Ukraine, wait until direct NATO armaments are flying over parts of Russia.
Now that's brinksmanship.
But it's almost impossible at this point to avoid brinksmanship if you actually want this thing to come to the end.
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I know that there are a lot of people out there who are sort of suggesting the best thing is for the United States to completely defund Ukraine.
The best thing is for the United States to get out of this business entirely.
And the reality is the United States does have an interest in preventing Moscow from keeping this thing long enough that you end up with a full Vietnam situation in which the Russians just swamp the border and end up taking Kiev after a year of fighting.
Which, by the way, is still quite possible.
I mean, Russia has not lost full military capacity.
The United States is looking for a solution to this conflict in the here and now that stops this thing.
The reason for that is the longer it drags on, the greater the possibility that something goes wrong.
We've seen miscalculations in war lead to far greater miscalculations in war.
We've seen the spread of war.
The longer it lasts, the greater chance that you have a missile.
This almost happened just a couple of months ago.
You have a missile fly from soil in one nation to a NATO nation.
We saw an actual Russian-made missile fired from Ukraine go awry and hit Poland, for example.
Now, what if that had come from Russian soil?
Then you would have had a serious international problem, obviously.
So, everybody has an interest in this thing coming to an end, except for the parties who are directly involved in the conflict.
So the question becomes, how do you actually end the conflict?
What Kissinger has suggested, and I think this is probably correct, is that the thing that you need to do right now is say to the Ukrainians, OK, guys, you're not going to get all your territorial ambitions, but you are going to be admitted to NATO.
And once you're admitted to NATO, Russia is going to stop this, because what Russia does now actually want to do is go to war with full NATO.
Which, by the way, is true.
I mean, if you think that Russia is getting crushed by military tech right now, and that's really the problem.
The material that Russia is bringing to the front in this war is decrepit 1980s, sometimes 1940s equipment is being dragged to the front by the Russian military.
It is of no comparison to the Ukraine's.
All the talk about Ukraine being overwhelmed militarily, that's true in sort of certain raw manpower terms.
But the fact is that Russia's military tech is really degraded.
Russia does not have the sophisticated military tech that we have been providing Ukraine.
They don't have the sophisticated microchips.
And so they are being essentially destroyed by precision armaments by Ukraine.
If you want this thing to end, in other words, what you actually do need to do, presumably, is you need to label Ukraine a NATO nation.
And now you say to the Russians, OK, guys, this war is over.
We're done now.
You get to keep this part.
You get to keep that part.
You get to keep Crimea.
And what you get in return if you're Ukraine is NATO membership, meaning that the Russians are not going to walk over that border anymore.
That's not going to make Vladimir Putin happy, but it's also not going to make Vladimir Zelensky particularly happy because he's going to have to give up a bunch of areas that he right now thinks he's capable of gaining back.
The other alternatives that are being discussed, by the way, are way riskier.
Some of the alternatives that are being discussed right now.
In actual foreign policy circles is maybe giving Ukraine the power to take Crimea, giving them enough weaponry that they can go into Crimea, which means more war, which means significantly more Russian troops, which means the possibility of a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon because Russia doesn't actually want to lose Crimea.
Crimea provides access to a warm water port.
So all of this is to say that something on the ground is going to have to change or this war is going to continue interminably.
If you wish to maintain the gains that Ukraine has seen against Russia, but you also wish to prevent World War Three, you have an interest in this thing ending as fast as possible.
That means the incentive structure has to change.
That prisoner's dilemma has to change.
Russia knows right now that if it keeps pressing and keeps pressing its foot to the metal, That eventually, maybe the West caves.
If, however, Ukraine, as Kissinger suggests, joins NATO, then this thing may, in fact, be a fait accompli.
At that point, it's basically over.
And so that has been the suggestion.
I think that suggestion is probably right.
This is particularly true because the truth is that the United States and its allies right now, they need to be looking away from Russia, which is a militarily degraded nation.
It's a second rate world power.
Again, the economy of Russia is smaller than the economy of the state of Florida.
It is a gas station on the Volga with nuclear weapons.
Our attention needs to turn to China, Ukraine, Russia.
This brings to mind things like World War III, right?
I mean, very, very dark thoughts.
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Now the reality is that China is facing circumstances that may force a conflict in the very near future.
The United States and its allies presumably have a reason to happy talk its way through the possibility of this conflict, but all of the stars are now aligned for China to make some sort of move on Taiwan.
Because if they wait, the United States may rebuild its Navy.
If they wait, they fall further behind in the microchip wars.
If they wait, their demographics are sinking their economy.
If they wait, they have right now a surplus of several million men over women because of the one-child policy, the evil, fascistic policy imposed by the Chinese government that led to the forced abortion and or sterilization of hundreds of millions of people.
Well, John Kirby is trying to happy talk his way through this over at the National Security Wing of the Biden White House.
Here he was saying, there's no reason for U.S.-China bilateral relations to erupt into conflict.
Well, that may not be up to you, my friend.
In a new memo, a top U.S.
Air Force general is warning of a potential conflict with China.
You know, we've addressed the challenges coming out of China here for quite some time.
It's very plainly in our national security strategy.
It's in the Pentagon's national defense strategy.
They call it the pacing challenge.
And we need to make sure that in every sphere of government we can meet that challenge head-on.
The President believes that we should be in a competition with China and that it should not devolve into conflict.
And there's no reason for it to, Wolf.
There's no reason for the bilateral relationship, the most consequential bilateral relationship in the world, to sort of erupt into some kind of conflict.
Okay, I mean, that's happy talking your way through what is actually happening on the ground.
ground according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Quote, honesty is not the default policy in Washington these days, so the political and media classes were jolted this weekend by the leak of a private warning by a US general telling his troops to prepare for a possible war with China over Taiwan in two years.
Imagine a warrior telling his troops to be ready for war.
In an internal memo leaked to NBC News, General Michael Minahan told his troops, quote, I hope I'm wrong.
My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.
The general runs the Air Mobility Command, the Air Force's tank refueling operation.
He says in his memo he wants his force to be ready to fight and win in the first island chain off the eastern coast of continental Asia.
He called for taking more calculated risks in training.
The general's document won't be remembered for subtlety.
One of his suggestions is that airmen with weapons qualifications start doing target practice with unrepentant lethality.
Another tells airmen to get their affairs in order.
This candor seems to have alarmed the higher-ups at the Pentagon.
NBC quoted an unidentified defense official as saying the general's, quote, comments are not representative of the department's view on China.
While General Minahan's words may be blunt, his concern is broadly shared or ought to be.
U.S.
Navy Admiral Phil Davidson told Congress in 2021 he worried China was, quote, accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and could strike Taiwan before 2027.
General Minahan came to his post after a tour as deputy of Indo-Pacific Command.
He, like many others, suggested 2025 may be a right moment for Xi Jinping to move.
Taiwan and the United States both have presidential elections in 2024.
China may see as moments of weakness.
No less than Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year Beijing was determined to pursue reunification with Taiwan on a much faster timeline than it had previously contemplated.
Former Naval Officer Seth Cropsey explained on these pages last week, America isn't investing in the ships and weapons stockpiles that would be required to support a long war in the Western Pacific.
Such yawning gaps in U.S.
preparedness make a decision by Beijing to invade or blockade the democratic island significantly more likely.
Preventing a war for Taiwan requires showing Beijing the United States has the means and the will to fight and repel an invasion.
This of course means forming alliances It also means doing something that actually the United States should be doing.
So credit to the Biden White House where it is due.
The United States is trying to pursue an agreement to open as many as four U.S.
military sites at Philippine bases in Washington's latest push to expand its strategic footprint across the region to counter threats from China.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is meeting later this week with recently elected Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
in Manila in hopes to secure the deal, which would rotate groups of U.S.
forces to sites in the country, according to U.S.
officials.
Again, another reason for us to lock down the situation in Taiwan so we can redirect our resources to what appears to be a looming conflict over Taiwan.
And again, Taiwan is the single greatest supplier of sophisticated microchips on planet Earth.
It is unlikely that there is a full-scale invasion of Taiwan.
A blockade of Taiwan is significantly more likely in an attempt to force the microchip manufacturers in Taiwan to create sophisticated microchips for the use of China's military, which would dramatically upgrade their military.
The major advantage the United States has over China is of course not size.
It is our technical sophistication in terms of military weaponry.
And meanwhile, on the domestic front, The Tyree Nichols case continues apace.
The Wall Street Journal reports that three Memphis, Tennessee emergency medical technicians were fired on Monday.
Two additional police officers have been relieved from duty as officials continue investigations into the death of Tyree Nichols.
The three EMTs were let go after an internal investigation into their actions at the scene of Nichols' January 7th encounter with police following a traffic stop, according to the Memphis Fire Department.
The review showed they failed to conduct an adequate patient assessment of Mr. Nichols.
The Memphis Police Department said that Officer Preston Hemphill and a second unnamed officer were relieved from duty.
The two officers' actions and inaction continue to be the subject of an internal investigation.
Police said that Hemphill and the unnamed officer were relieved from duty at the beginning of the investigation.
The people who have now been, who have now been fired from the force are, two of them are black, one of them is white, because race is the only concern for our media, apparently.
Officer Hemphill, who participated in the initial traffic stop and the use of a taser, will remain on administrative leave, depending on the outcome of the investigation.
The use of the taser, by the way, is not obviously the problem with regard to the Tyree Nichols situation.
We watched the tape yesterday on the show, and we talked about the fact that Tyree Nichols fled on foot as he was leaving.
They attempted to tase him.
So, again, this is more reaction, legal reaction, to what appears to be an egregious situation.
The Memphis Fire Department said on Monday its investigation showed that the three fired EMTs found Nichols handcuffed on the ground and leaning against a police vehicle.
Apparently the department said that they violated numerous MFD protocols and policies.
Unclear exactly what they were supposed to do at that point, or what medical action would have been necessary in order to save Nichols, or whether that would have actually materialized in any sort of health change for Nichols.
He did die at the hospital of internal injuries, is my understanding.
In any case, the media continue on their dual narratives of one, the police are bad, and two, this is all about race.
So Sarah Haines, the view is just a repository of all the lowest IQ humans on the planet, apparently.
So Sarah Haines said that we can talk about racism because the race of the officers does not matter.
All the officers in this particular case, of course, were black.
It is only the race of the victim that matters.
Which is quite bizarre, since if you're going to claim white supremacy, typically white people are supposed to be involved in a claim of white supremacy, but apparently only the victim matters.
You can still claim white supremacy so long as the victim is black.
It does not matter who killed him.
So presumably every gangland violence shooting in Chicago is the result of white supremacy.
This is one of these broad arguments that is beautiful for the left because it involves no actual outcome.
You don't actually have to achieve a policy solution.
You just blame white supremacy out there in the ether for all the bad problems on the ground.
And then all of your policy prescriptions magically amount to radical leftist diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense.
Here is Sarah Haines saying something very silly.
Part of police reform over the years for all these cameras, dash cameras, body cameras.
And there is such a casualness to this aggression.
And I did watch it because I think, you know, people say it was too hard to watch or I couldn't watch it.
And I thought that's the least we can do to watch what is going on.
Because I think people have to see it sometimes to maybe be one.
I think there's a lot of people that do realize this is never acceptable, not OK.
I think the fact that it was black officers shows it doesn't matter the color of the cop.
It's the victim.
And meanwhile, Whoopi Goldberg, she of the genius sort of sage presence on The View, she's like, I'm not saying that maybe white people need to get beaten up for police reform to happen, but maybe white people need to get beaten up for police reform to happen.
So first of all, this is unbelievably stupid.
We've seen many, many cases of police brutality against white people.
In fact, some of those cases are significantly worse than what we saw with Tyree Nichols.
That one case that I mentioned the other day of a white man killed by the police in a hotel.
The Daniel Shaver killing of 2016.
Significantly worse than what we saw with Tyree Nichols.
I mean, Tyree Nichols is really, really, really bad.
Daniel Shaver is literally on the ground trying to comply with officer's orders and they just murder him.
So, this notion that white people have never been the victims of police violence is absolute bullcrap.
It is not true in the slightest.
But here is Whoopi Goldberg because, again, everything for Whoopi, just a reminder.
Whoopi Goldberg believes that everything in life is racist except Hitler.
That is an actual thing that Whoopi Goldberg has said, because she believes that when Hitler went after the Jews, the Jews are white, so it was white-on-white crime, so it wasn't racism.
Here's genius Whoopi Goldberg.
When will the brutality finally lead to some police reform from the ground up?
Because clearly, it doesn't matter if it's a white policeman or a black policeman, it is a problem in the police, in the policing itself.
You know, seems things don't seem to make sense to people unless it's somebody they can feel or they can recognize.
But how many times do we have to, do we need to see white people also get beaten before anybody will do anything?
Again, white people get beaten pretty regularly by the cops.
The rate of white People being shot by the officers unarmed.
The number of white people shot by officers unarmed is significantly higher than the number of black people shot by officers unarmed every year.
So, I'm not sure what the hell she's talking about, except that everything is always racism, always and forever.
Ana Navarro, just to complete our round trip of the view, Ana Navarro says people would have done more to help a dog than of Nichols.
Again, presumably the idea is because he's black, which is weird since two of the EMTs who have been fired are black.
The people that came to treat him and didn't treat him.
The level of inhumanity in watching this play out and some of these war reforms.
That's the part that makes me feel- People would have done more to help a dog out than they did to help Tyree Nichols out.
And that is inhumanity.
What I always like about these tapes is we all agree that what we saw was truly egregious.
But the more you shout about it on TV, the more credit you get.
That seems to be the rule.
Again, we can all be outraged.
And these people are going to jail.
They're all being prosecuted.
The kind of virtue signaling that you see on TV with all these people shedding what I imagine are TV tears is rather egregious.
Meanwhile, again, there are two narratives that have emerged from the media from this.
One is that all the cops are bad, and so we have to stop policing.
And two is that racism is the real problem.
So we begin with the first argument, which is that all policing is bad.
Professor Alexis Hogue-Fordjour of the Brooklyn School of Law, she said, you know, maybe a solution here is that police don't actually need to administer stops in basic traffic violations.
Uh, no, they do.
They actually do.
In fact, one of the reasons why the Scorpion unit existed in Memphis is because they were pulling people over for reckless driving.
The reason they were pulling people over for reckless driving is apparently there was a high correlation between reckless driving and other criminal activity.
It's very much akin to James Q. Wilson's broken windows theory in New York City, which became the way that New York brought down its crime rate in the 1990s.
The basic idea was turnstile jumpers very often are people who also commit other crimes.
I'm confused as to why you believe that if basic traffic stops are not done, suddenly the crime rate will go down.
It is worthwhile noting, by the way, Memphis has one of the highest violent crime rates in America.
Memphis' Scorpion Unit was founded by the current police chief who just disbanded it because of the problem of violent crime in Memphis.
In fact, according to Neighborhood Scout, You have a 1 in 12 chance if you live in Memphis of being the victim of either a violent or a property crime.
That's how bad crime is in the city of Memphis.
And so the solution from this Ivy League professor at Brooklyn Law School, this ivory tower person, is that what if the police just don't police anymore?
Great solution, guys.
It'll work out amazing.
My really strong sentiment is that to decrease violence between law enforcement officials and the public is to decrease the contact and intervention that police have with the public.
Fewer traffic stops.
Exactly.
Police do not need to administer stops in basic traffic violations.
I know all of us, I can confidently say.
Yes, and virtually all of us have gotten a traffic ticket at some point.
And you know what all of us don't do?
Run away from the police officers or fail to obey commands.
Not to quote early Chris Rock, but you should obey commands from the police.
This is a good idea.
If you want to avoid a bad interaction with a cop, the best way to avoid a bad interaction with a cop is not to, number one, commit a crime, and number two, not to disobey the police officer when he tells you what to do.
Now, again, that does not excuse police brutality.
It does not mean these officers shouldn't go to jail.
They violated the law.
We talked about this yesterday.
But if you want to actually reduce the number of interactions between one population group and the cops, one of the things you're going to need to do is reduce the crime rate among this population group so they don't have the interactions with the cops.
This is not exactly rocket science.
And yet the solution, apparently, is that we stop the policing, which of course results in precisely the opposite of what you seek to achieve.
You get fewer interactions with the cops, that's for sure.
You do get many more interactions with criminals.
This is why you have genius Mehdi Hassan on MSNBC claiming that it's time to abolish the police.
Why is it so radical, says Mehdi Hassan, to abolish the police from his security-protected studio over at MSNBC?
The issue here, as plenty of people have pointed out, is not black versus white.
It's blue versus the rest of us.
Which is why this whole reform nonsense from Democrats is so tiring and so dishonest.
You can't reform this stuff with body cameras or diversifying the police as we just saw in Memphis.
That doesn't solve the problem either.
The Memphis Police Department's response to all this controversy and camera footage on Saturday was to announce that it was disbanding the specialized police unit whose officers inflicted that brutal assault on Tyree Nichols, the so-called Scorpion Unit.
Yeah.
They defunded and abolished it.
So I love that he's like, there's no way to reform.
OK, well, so at least you're saying the quiet part out loud.
If there's no way to reform the cops, then you have to abolish the cops.
There's only one problem with that, which is that when you abolish the cops, crimes goes up.
This is true everywhere.
It's been true for all of human history.
So that's narrative number one.
We are going to maintain it no matter what the situation.
Narrative number two is that it was racism.
Racism was involved.
Black cops kill a black guy.
White people are to blame.
White racism is to blame.
White supremacy is to blame because policing is white supremacy, which is weird coming from Eric Adams, a former cop.
And the reason, by the way, he was elected to the mayoralty is because he was supposedly not anti-cop.
Here he was suggesting that white supremacy is embedded in the system.
Chief CJ Davis, in my interview with her, she said that all the officers being black, it takes race off the table.
Do you agree with that?
No, no I don't.
I think that I understand what the Chief was saying, and I think she really handled this situation in a very professional way.
She moved swiftly, she ensured that those officers were removed from the department, she took all the necessary steps.
But I think race is still on the table.
When a culture of policing historically has treated those from different groups differently, even when the individuals are from that same group, 58% of the Memphis Police Department is black.
The chief of police is black.
All five of the suspects in this case are black.
And yet Eric Adams says it's because of the history of white supremacy.
And of course you have Kimberly Crenshaw, the founder of intersectionality, who's out there saying the same thing.
She says, black people can still be anti-black.
That's all critical race theory.
So basically, it's very funny.
Atheists often accuse religious people of the God of the gaps.
The idea here is that we can't explain something, therefore it's God.
Atheists think this is why religious people believe what they believe.
That's not true.
Religious people believe that there is a God.
structure to the universe that exists behind all of nature, all the rest of it.
But the argument of the atheistic left is that religious people believe in a God of gaps.
The left believes in a white supremacy of the gaps.
No matter what the situation, there's an unfalsifiable thesis, which is that it is white supremacy to blame.
And Kimberly Crenshaw's made a hell of a living off of this garbage.
Here she was yesterday.
It's about the systemic racism that is embedded in this country's history and its institutions, like the police.
Why is that such a difficult distinction for so many people to make?
Well, frankly, Mehdi, this is precisely the question that critical race theorists have been asking since the 70s.
It shouldn't be a surprise to people that individual black people can actually do anti-black things.
Anyone who knows the history of enslavement, anyone who knows the history of policing knows that black people can do anti-black things.
So if you are a police officer who is black, apparently this is akin to being a black person who is complicit in the institution of slavery, according to Kimberly Crenshaw.
This is just pure unbridled racism.
That white supremacy is to blame for individual black people who mishandled and did something terrible to another black person.
It's amazing stuff.
Again, it's all part and parcel of a left-wing push that suggests that white supremacy is always to blame for everything, and it must be taught in schools, and it must be taught to your children, and all the rest of this sort of stuff.
Now, the consequences of this sort of bad policy, that's the stuff that people like Kimberlé Crenshaw don't actually have to live with.
Kimberlé Crenshaw lives a wonderful life.
She teaches at a college.
She teaches over at Columbia.
Columbia is protected by its own police force.
She doesn't have to worry about her safety.
The same thing is true of Mehdi Hassan.
The nimbyism on the left is overwhelming.
Left-wingers, when they push policies like this, they are blind to the consequences.
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Hey, so speaking of left-wing policy choices and the nimbyism that that involves, it is amazing the disconnect between the elite members of the Democratic Party and the people who are affected by the policies of the Democratic Party continues to grow.
The latest symptom of this comes courtesy of Steph and Ayesha Curry.
Not the first time that we have seen people who are very much proponents of left-wing social policy hating it as soon as it arrives literally on their doorstep.
According to the New York Post, famed NBA marksman Steph Curry appears more comfortable with three-point daggers than three-story developments.
Along with his influencer wife, Ayesha, Curry has objected to the establishment of multi-family housing on a property next to his sprawling California mansion, according to reports.
In an email, the couple told officials in Atherton, one of the nation's most exclusive enclaves, that the three-story townhouses would encroach on their privacy.
Routinely vocal on matters of social justice, the Bay Area power couple indicated that joining the well-heeled chorus of objection made them uneasy.
They literally wrote in their letter this quote, we hesitate to add to the not in our backyard literally rhetoric, but we wanted to send a note before today's meeting.
Safety and privacy for us and our kids continues to be our top priority and one of the biggest reasons we chose to live in Atherton. Home to tech moguls, athletes and international business titans, Atherton officials will reluctantly submit a plan to the state this week outlining their efforts to increase housing density.
The parcel in question, which abuts the Curry residence, is set to be rezoned in order to accommodate several multi-family units sought by the owner.
In their email-read quote with the density being proposed for 23 Oakwood, there are major concerns in terms of both privacy and safety with three-story townhomes looming directly behind us.
The couple noted the development would not add to low-income housing to the area, only increase the density.
If their municipal buzzer beater falls short, the Currys asked the town to erect considerably taller fencing and landscaping to block sight lines onto our family's property.
They currently bought that spread for about $30 million.
So, if you are a Red Winger and you say, I don't want affordable housing being built next door, this means that you hate the poor.
If you're Steph Curry and Aisha and you do it, then presumably you're still one of the good people.
Absolutely amazing stuff.
Speaking of left-wing social causes, I have to say, if you want to prove that you're not vindictive jackasses, it seems that the worst way of doing that would be to continue going after a single cake shop owner in Colorado.
And yet this is what the LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign happy face emoji, sad face emoji, cry emoji, trans flag emoji, hashtag ampersand crowd.
They continue to do this.
According to the Daily Caller, a Colorado Court of Appeals judge ruled against Christian baker Jack Phillips Thursday after he appealed an earlier court decision requiring him to bake a cake for an individual's gender transition.
Phillips already won a previous case at the Supreme Court in 2018 after he declined to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
He was sued again in March 2021 after a trans individual wanted Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cake Shop, to make a cake that was blue on the outside and pink on the inside.
Alliance for Defending Freedom announced in a press release on Thursday the Colorado Court of Appeals had ruled against Phillips.
They said a plan to appeal was already in motion.
The court determined that Phillips' right to religious freedom did not fall under First Amendment protection.
The court said, quote, So apparently, doing that means nothing.
constitutional issues presented, the division concluded the act of baking a pink cake with blue frosting does not constitute protected speech under the First Amendment.
So apparently doing that means nothing. It's not actually a speech element which defies reason because otherwise why would this trans person want it from Jack Phillips?
That is literally the reason this person is doing it.
The court says, additionally, the division concludes that the CADA's prohibition against discrimination based on a person's trans status does not violate a proprietor's right to freely exercise or express their religion.
Autumn Scardina, who is a dude, attempted to order a cake for a gender transition party on the same day the Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips' case regarding his refusal to bake a cake celebrating a gay wedding, according to the ADF press release, and harassing individuals who do not agree with your nonsense that you're a member of the opposite sex.
Apparently, that is, uh, That is apparently...
I don't know, some sort of politeness?
That is acting in good standing?
Meanwhile, the trans agenda in Scotland is completely falling apart.
Hilarious story, because the Scots have basically decided to engage in all of the insanity of the trans ideology.
Well now, according to the UK Spectator, Scottish prison service rules allowing male-born transgender offenders to be housed in women's prisons have been suspended.
They're now under urgent review.
The women who raised concerns about this issue for several years have thus been vindicated.
Their persistence and determination in raising these concerns should be noted and acclaimed.
The Scottish development follows cases that have grimly caught the public eye across the UK.
Last week's conviction of a double rapist known as Isla Bryson was followed by reports that the violent sex offender Tiffany Scott born Andrew Burns was heading for a female jail.
Solely because he says he identifies as female.
These miserable stories and the torture language used to report them, including phrases such as, her penis, are precisely what a number of women have been warning of.
And while trans sex offenders transfer to the female estates, those are now on hold.
There have already been too many reports of women in that estate being intimidated and worse by other male-born criminals who say that they are female.
The fact that it has taken such vivid cases for those warnings to be accepted and acted on is revealing now.
Of course, J.K.
Rowling has been ripped up and down for pointing all of this out.
All of the women who have said, hey, it turns out that women are women and men are men, they are now being vindicated by the fact that in Scottish prisons, they're now saying that, hey, men shouldn't be housed with women.
The fact that this even has to be argued is absolutely insane.
But it just shows the aggressiveness of the movement.
The aggressiveness of the trans movement is such that they were literally insisting that men who had raped women and now say they are women should be included with women in jails.
Speaking of aggressiveness, Quick story out of New York, apparently the left is now enraged that the New York Rangers botched their Pride Night promotion.
Because the rule, by the way now, is that LGBTQ pride involves everybody being forced to wear your flag.
According to the New York Daily News, it wasn't a proud moment for the New York Rangers, whose botched Pride Night promotion ended up being ripped as a, quote, slap in the face to the LGBT community.
The Rangers had promised to wear Pride-themed jerseys and use rainbow-colored stick tape during warm-ups, but that didn't happen.
They wore regular game jerseys and normal stick tape.
No!
No!
That's terrible!
They didn't make their hockey sticks gay.
They didn't wear the gay jerseys during warm-ups.
My God.
How can the United States stand such bigotry?
Pride promotions are common in the NHL.
Friday was the Rangers' seventh Pride Night.
All players wore Pride-themed jerseys in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
After the games, the gear was auctioned off for charity.
The Rangers didn't address the matter on Saturday in a statement.
The NHL did not return requests for comment.
David Kilmanick, the president of the Queens-based LGBT Network, said, quote, if the Rangers are saying they're going to be celebrating Pride Night, everyone needs to come out and celebrate.
Everyone!
Tolerance!
Diversity!
You will wear the flag and you will love it.
Love it.
And if you don't, you are a bigot.
Oh man, the backlash to this nonsense is going to be so strong and I am here for it.
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 cross-addressing flight attendants, which is very exciting stuff.
Plus, we'll be getting to the Trump-DeSantis debate.
Is it breaking out?
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