Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 1, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:21

Hunter Biden Is An Evil Scumbag, Not A Victim | Ep. 1659

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	A bombshell new report demonstrates just how much of a pervert Hunter Biden is.
	The FBI searched Joe Biden's center in Washington, D.C., and Biden declares the COVID emergency over as the media declare you ungrateful.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Bureau, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	He's a sad sack, Hunter Biden.
	He had a rough childhood, obviously, because his mom died in a car crash and because daddy was always away at work.
	And so now he's in his 50s and he's just, you know, sort of a derelict.
	He's a drug user.
	He's a drug addict.
	OK.
	The media have portrayed Hunter Biden as a victim of circumstance.
	They have suggested that there is nothing really wrong with Hunter Biden, that the change in circumstance... Hunter Biden is an evil piece of... Hunter Biden is one of the worst people.
	He's a terrible person.
	There's a news story that is out from the UK Daily Mail.
	And the reason this is relevant is not because it implicates Joe Biden in Hunter Biden's perversity.
	The reason this is important is because it, again, exposes the media for what they are.
	The media are just propagandizers for the Democratic Party.
	Hunter Biden is one of the worst people I've ever heard of.
	I mean, truly, Hunter Biden is a terrible human being.
	And here is the proof.
	If there were any other human being remotely near the political world who did the sort of stuff that Hunter Biden has been caught doing, this person would be thrown out on his ear.
	Meanwhile, Hunter Biden is, you know, visiting the White House and hanging out with Papa.
	So the story is, from the UK Daily Mail, Hunter Biden threatened one of his cash-strapped young female staffers with withholding her pay if she did not FaceTime him for sex.
	Shocking texts between the president's son, 52, and his young assistant, who was 29 at the time.
	Showhunter asking for video sex sessions and sending her cash via Apple Pay after she pled that she was struggling to make rent.
	So this is a person who actively exploited his own young female employees and made them perform sexual acts for money.
	This is evil, okay?
	This is not just a person who's wayward.
	This is not just a sex addict.
	This is a bad, evil person.
	And put aside the fact that he knocked up a woman and then basically abandoned the child when the child has been cut out of the entire Biden family.
	Hunter Biden is a bad human being.
	And again, I keep pointing out that he's a bad human being for a reason.
	And the reason is because in all the media coverage here to four, you've had Books written by Hunter Biden about his own sense of victimhood.
	You've had entire columns written about how Hunter Biden has been victimized by the Republican press.
	About how, really, he's just a sad guy.
	We should all feel a little bad for Hunter Biden.
	No, we shouldn't.
	And if you weren't a Democrat, you wouldn't.
	If Hunter Biden were literally anyone else other than the President of the United States' son, and he were a prominent public figure, this person would not only be out on his ear, he would be one of the most reviled people in public life.
	The woman, according to the Daily Mail, worked as an assistant at Hunter's law firm, Owasco, in 2018 and 2019.
	She's the fourth employee he is known to have had a sexual relationship with.
	Again, this is Harvey Weinstein kind of stuff, guys.
	Forcing your employees to do sexual acts with you for money is a form of sexual oppression, obviously.
	Far be it for me to be the feminist hero here, but you don't have to be to recognize when somebody is oppressing women.
	Documents on his abandoned laptop show Hunter put his lover and brother's widow, Haley Biden, on his company payroll, as well as her sister, Liz Secundi, with whom he also had an affair, according to texts.
	So he was knocking boots with his brother's widow and her sister, and he was forcing his employees to have sex with him.
	He also hired his daughter's basketball coach, reportedly former stripper London Roberts, but ended her employment and stopped responding to her messages after she told him she was pregnant with his child.
	So he got her pregnant, his daughter's basketball coach.
	And then, after he got her pregnant, he cut her off and fired her.
	And she had to sue him for child support.
	Messages and emails involving his now 33-year-old assistant first appear on Hunter's laptop in June 2018 when he flew her from L.A.
	to Washington, D.C.
	Hunter filmed and photographed her having sex with him around that time and saved the images on his laptop.
	What a class act Hunter Biden is.
	The part-time model and fitness instructor was given important administrative tasks at his company, such as receiving Burisma board documents for Hunter to sign.
	So he was abroad picking up bags of cash because his last name is Biden.
	Meanwhile, His father is prepping himself for a presidential campaign and calling Hunter the smartest person he knows.
	In January of 2019, this assistant emailed Hunter's secretary asking why she had not received her December paycheck of $837, by the way, which is a very, very low paycheck.
	That is a minimal paycheck.
	And why her company's health insurance was not active.
	Two months later, he sent her 500 bucks by Apple Pay and complained he really had no money due to alimony tuitions and other bleep like girls insurance, etc.
	He told her, you're as beautiful to me inside as you so obviously are on the outside.
	Miss you very much and feel horribly for having treated you so poorly.
	This man is a sexual predator.
	He is a sexual predator.
	He invited her to New Hampshire, but she told him, I can't afford the plane ticket.
	I can barely even make my rent this month.
	Days later, he texted her saying he would pay her, but she had to video chat with him.
	I will make up for back pay.
	You have to make up for back work by FaceTiming me and or going out to our next club party, Hunter wrote to the 29 year old employee.
	When can you FaceTime?
	If we FaceTime, the rule has to be no talk of anything but sex.
	We must be naked.
	We have to do whatever the other person asks within reason.
	When can you talk?
	I can later tonight.
	Now, there are gonna be some people who claim, well, you know, she was, she was, it was consensual.
	She was into it.
	Okay, there is no other situation in which the left says this is consensual.
	He is her employer.
	He is paying her money.
	And he says, I will not pay you unless you FaceTime me naked.
	This is sexual exploitation, obviously.
	In between messages, Hunter then sends his assistant a total of $2,750 via Apple Pay.
	He also asked his assistant to, quote, set up the phone so I can spy on you showering.
	And show me how you play with yourself.
	It's, it's absurd.
	It's absurd.
	He is a terrible human being.
	And again, the reason that I point this out is because the media have determined that they are not going, he's not going to be a terrible human being.
	He is going to be a sad sack.
	And Joe Biden is going to be his put upon father.
	As opposed to the fact that when you subsidize your kid's lifestyle, this part is about Joe, at a certain point, you got to cut off your kid.
	If your kid is engaging in this sort of stuff, you have to cut off your kid.
	Hunter Biden was a drug addict.
	Hunter Biden was a sexual exploiter.
	He is somebody who is literally paying his own employees to have sex with him on FaceTime, to do phone sex with him.
	And that was being subsidized with his last name.
	Now, all of this is part and parcel of a broader media effort to, of course, basically soft-serve everything that has to do with the Biden family, going all the way back to 2020, when the Hunter Biden laptop was widely reported as Russian disinformation, despite the fact that it absolutely was not.
	There was no information that it was.
	Members of the media knew that it wasn't.
	They reported that anyway.
	It's all a part of just softening the image of Joe Biden.
	Well, now we find out, by the way, that when it comes to the classified documents at the Penn-Biden Center for Chinese Grift, The FBI actually did search the offices of the Penn-Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in mid-November after classified documents were discovered there, according to two senior law enforcement officials.
	The officials said that Joe Biden's lawyers cooperated with the search.
	No search warrants were issued.
	The NBC News does not know the exact date of the search or whether the classified documents or anything else of importance was found.
	The FBI search was first reported by CBS News.
	So I'm just going to note here, you know who knew that the Penn-Biden Center Before Chinese grift had been searched by the FBI, Joe Biden and the White House, and they didn't tell you for two full months.
	But don't worry, they handled this in exactly the right way.
	We are told that these people are the experts.
	They handle everything in precisely the correct way.
	A White House spokesperson was asked about this and basically refused to answer any questions about the classified documents found in Joe Biden's possession.
	Pretty much everywhere.
	By the way, in the immediate reach of an actual evil pervert like Hunter Biden, The FBI searched President Biden's former think tank office in Washington in November after the discovery, just before the midterm elections, of the documents with the classified markings.
	Were any additional classified documents found as part of that search?
	That's not something I can comment on from here.
	That's something you'll need to ask the Justice Department.
	What I can say is that we have been cooperative and transparent from the outset.
	No, you have not.
	That is a lie.
	We put out multiple statements from the President's personal attorney describing the process and being clear that the President takes this seriously.
	That is a lie.
	That is Kate Bedingfield, the White House communications director, who is lying right there.
	And this, of course, ties into the broader media narrative, which is that any investigations into Joe Biden at all are a waste of time.
	Jim Clyburn, the Democrat from South Carolina who basically made Joe Biden president.
	It was he who radically shifted over the way that the primaries were going.
	They were moving toward Bernie Sanders and then Jim Clyburn stepped in and a lot of black voters in South Carolina moved their vote over to Joe Biden.
	Unless they're going to vote that way anyway.
	Jim Clyburn says there's no reason for house investigations at all.
	Again, this is all part and parcel of an attempt to whitewash everyone who's remotely associated with the Democrats.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	Now, the reality is these people are running the economy, and they run the economy just as poorly as they run their classified documents, which is one reason why you should diversify.
	If you're an investor, It's a smart move to take some of your money and to put it into actual hard assets, especially things like precious metals, which have durable value over time.
	To dig our country out of the $31.4 trillion debt that we've created for ourselves, for example, the government's going to have to, one, increase taxes, which stagnates the economy.
	Two, they're going to have to cut benefits, which is going to stagnate the economy.
	Or three, they're going to have to print oodles of money.
	None of that is particularly good for your pocketbook.
	This is why you should talk to my friends over at Birch Gold.
	Gold will withstand inflation, geopolitical turmoil, and stock market crashes.
	You should consider converting your IRA or 401k into an IRA in precious metals.
	You can own gold in a tax shelter retirement account.
	Talk to the experts over at Birch Gold.
	We've got an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
	Thousands of happy customers.
	Countless five-star reviews.
	Text Ben to 989898.
	Claim your free info kit on gold today.
	Then talk to one of their precious metals specialists.
	Text Ben to 989898.
	Claim your free info kit.
	Get a signed copy of my book today.
	Again, that's text Ben to 989898 to get started in your attempts to diversify away from Joe Biden's economic stewardship of the economy.
	Okay, so Jim Clyburn says there's no reason for any investigation.
	Of course, the media are fully invested in this idea.
	All investigations of Democrats are superfluous.
	This is the same media that told you the only scandal with Barack Obama There was no Benghazi scandal, no IRS scandal, no HHS scandal, no border scandal, nothing, no Eric Holder gun smuggling operation, nothing.
	The only scandal with Barack Obama was the tan suit, according to the media.
	And now they're playing the same game with Joe Biden.
	So here's Jim Clyburn making that case to Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow, one of the two.
	I can't tell the difference at this point.
	What is your expectation and posture towards these various investigations that they are, they're gearing up to do?
	Well, I think they are very, very unnecessary.
	They are really a waste of time.
	I think they proved that with Benghazi.
	We know what the result of that was.
	Two and a half years, I don't know how much money was spent.
	And it was all for naught.
	OK, these people complaining about the cost of investigations after spending four years and tens of millions of dollars on the Russia collusion crap is really astonishing.
	But again, none of this could happen without the patouring in guard of the media, which brings us to the column of the day from The Washington Post, because it says it all.
	by a person named Leonard Downey Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, and now a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Vaunted, Arizona State University, which is mostly famous for having amazing parties.
	So Leonard Downey Jr. writes for The Washington Post, where he was the executive editor, that essentially the media should stop engaging objectivity.
	In fact, the way to move the trust needle is to actually stop pretending to be objective.
	Quote, increasingly, reporters, editors, and media critics argue the concept of journalistic objectivity is a distortion of reality.
	They point out that the standard was dictated over decades by male editors in predominantly white Newsrooms, and reinforce their own view of the world.
	They believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading both sides-ism.
	Wouldn't want to tell the other side of the story, obviously.
	And covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ plus minus divided by sign, happy face emoji rights, income inequality, climate change, and many other subjects.
	You see, the true journalism-ing is when you don't tell the other side and you just say your left-wing priorities and then call it fact.
	And, says this former executive editor of the Washington Post, in today's diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences, and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.
	They feel bad about themselves if they have to put aside their own preconceived notions about the world and actually report a story.
	It makes them feel sad on the inside.
	And so the best way to journalisma, the best way to do the journalisming that is so necessary, is to move away from journalistic objectivity.
	Says this, again, former executive editor of the Washington Post in the Washington Post today.
	American society itself has been in upheaval over discrimination against and abuse of women, persistent racism and white nationalism, police brutality and killings, the treatment of LGBTQ plus minus divided by a sign, hashtag, ampersand, tilde, people, income inequality and social problems, immigration and the treatment of immigrants, the causes and effects of climate change, voting rights and election equality, even the very survival of our democracy, blah.
	Reporting reliably on all of this has critically challenged newsrooms calling into question their diversity, values, and credibility.
	And so what he says is that we should abandon objectivity.
	Not the pretense of objectivity.
	We'll keep that.
	But objectivity itself, we should just think about it differently.
	He concludes that the best way to change the newsroom is to be transparent as possible about their news gathering decisions and processes.
	When possible, they should hire or designate an editor to field or act on reader complaints and questions.
	And they need to have candid, inclusive, and open conversations.
	Making these values public could well forge a stronger connection between journalists and the public.
	Trustworthy journalism by a new generation of journalists and newsroom leaders can ensure the news media continues to do its part to protect democracy.
	Okay, you guys have been doing this.
	You're obviously partisan.
	You're pretending to be objective.
	You're obviously partisan.
	Now you're just going to say that it's objective because you're objectively right.
	You're going to treat your opinion as objectively right.
	See, something we do on this show, I'll tell you, there's something happening behind the scenes here at Daily Wire, and it's kind of amazing.
	There's this group, it's called NewsGuard.
	And NewsGuard's job, supposedly, is to be a fact checker.
	And like all other fact checkers, they're a group of the left.
	They're a partisan group of the left.
	They've decided they're going to now fact check podcasts to decide whether ads can be placed in podcasts.
	Now, I don't even know how that's possible.
	Because these are opinion podcasts, right?
	Pod Save America is an opinion podcast.
	We're an opinion podcast.
	They're only fact-checking, my understanding is, right-wing podcasts to attempt to demonetize those podcasts.
	That is, of course, no surprise.
	But what they do is they do that specifically claiming that they are objective.
	They're not objective.
	They're a left-wing interest group.
	This is what the journalism-ers have done.
	From covering up for Hunter Biden or soft-selling how evil the guy is, to covering up whatever scandals happen inside the Biden administration, To quote-unquote fact checking everybody on the right, but nobody on the left.
	This is what the journalists have done, which is why, according to the Columbia Journalism Review today, quote, before the 2016 election, most Americans trusted the traditional media and the trend was positive, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer.
	Today, the U.S.
	media has the lowest credibility, 26% among 46 nations in the media, according to a 2022 study by Reuters.
	In 2021, 83% of Americans saw fake news as a problem.
	56%, mostly Republicans and independents, agreed the media were, quote, truly the enemy of the American people, according to Rasmussen.
	That is not because of Donald Trump.
	It's because you guys blew yourself out and you continue to blow yourselves out.
	You decided your mission in life was to be left-wing hacks.
	And to cover for some of the worst predations that we have ever seen in the United States.
	And here I'm not talking about Hunter Biden and the fact that he was stooping his employees for money.
	Here I'm talking about COVID predations.
	You guys spent the last, most of the last decade making up stories about Russian collusion to excuse the fact that Hillary Clinton was a garbage candidate who lost to Donald Trump, the second least popular presidential candidate in American history at the time.
	And then you decided that you were going to cover for COVID authoritarianism in every single respect.
	We'll get to lack of trust in the institutions because of their support for authoritarianism in just one second.
	First, by the way, you shouldn't trust most major institutions at this point.
	They've blown out their institutional credibility.
	That actually includes things all the way down to your internet service provider.
	Those people are looking at your data and they are using your data.
	In order to make money off of you, and then meanwhile, they're very often suppressing your point of view.
	This is one reason you should be using ExpressVPN the way that I use ExpressVPN.
	It's important to have a VPN to protect your online privacy, but choosing a VPN you trust is equally as important.
	ExpressVPN is the best VPN on the market, and here's why.
	ExpressVPN does not log your online activity to sell it off to advertisers.
	Instead, ExpressVPN engineered a brand new VPN protocol that makes user speeds really, really fast.
	It doesn't slow my connection.
	That's a big thing for me.
	If my connection gets slowed, I'm just not going to use it.
	ExpressVPN does not slow my connection, and it protects me, and it's really easy to use.
	So I can click one button, and now it's installed on my device, and I click another button, and now it's running.
	Protect yourself with the VPN I trust.
	Visit ExpressVPN.com slash Ben right now.
	Find out how you can get three months for free.
	That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S VPN.com slash Ben.
	ExpressVPN.com slash Ben to learn more.
	Again, don't trust all these institutions that say they're protecting you.
	They are not.
	ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
	Okay, so where have the media most blown out their credibility?
	Well, obviously during the Trump era, they blew out their credibility because they decided they were going to defend Democrats at all costs.
	They decided basically when Barack Obama was president, it was now their job to work for the Democratic Party openly.
	They were always biased to the left.
	Dan Rather was biased to the left.
	Walter Cronkite was biased to the left.
	All these people were.
	Sam Donaldson.
	All of the major media news anchors that your parents talk about being objective were not objective.
	They were left-wing.
	But they at least pretended that it wasn't their job to stand for the Democratic administration in power or their job to basically just be the oppo on the Republicans.
	And then Barack Obama became president and it broke their brains.
	And suddenly the comedists stopped doing comedy.
	The journalismers stopped doing journalism.
	They all stopped doing their jobs.
	Now, they were all just the Praetorian Guard for the Democrats.
	Barack Obama broke the nation's brain in 2009, and we can talk more about how he did that, but the reality is that the breaking of the brain in journalism has had dire consequences, and that's particularly true when it came to COVID.
	So, yesterday, Joe Biden announced that he is planning to end the COVID emergency.
	Okay, so let me just point this out.
	The COVID emergency has not been an emergency for well over a year at this point.
	The COVID emergency effectively stopped being an emergency with the emergence of the vaccine.
	The reason I say this is because now, whether you like the vaccine, whether you didn't like the vaccine, now the vaccine was available, you were done.
	There was nothing else you could do.
	I said this at the time.
	I always stood against vaccine mandates.
	My company sued the federal government to prevent vaccine mandates because it should be your choice as to whether you get that vaccine or not.
	I always stood against mask mandates because again, mask mandates were stupid and not backed by the data.
	But regardless of what you think about the pandemic, everyone should have been able to agree that this pandemic was over by about March 2021.
	There are many people who say it was over before that, but you want to say March 2021?
	That is when I think most people of sane mind would say, at the very least, that is when this pandemic ended.
	It is now, I'm looking at my calendar, February of 2023.
	February of 2023.
	You know when the Biden administration says that the public emergency over COVID is over?
	May.
	May.
	Now, do you feel the emergency?
	Do you feel it happening to you right now?
	Do you feel the ever-present threat of COVID ready to kill you?
	You don't, do you?
	The reason you don't is because it's not there ready to kill you.
	The reason I say this is because most people already have some form of immunity to COVID at this point.
	Omicron hit pretty much everybody.
	The vaccines didn't prevent the transmission.
	Everybody got some form of immunity, and whatever it did to you, it did to you.
	And that's the end of it.
	Is COVID a health problem?
	For some people, yeah, it's a health problem.
	For some people, it's a cold.
	For the vast majority of people, it's a cold.
	But Joe Biden is not ending the public health emergency until May.
	So according to the New York Times, quote, the Biden administration plans to let the coronavirus public health emergency expire in May, the White House said on Monday, a sign that federal officials believe the pandemic has moved into a new, less dire phase.
	Oh, do they believe that?
	It's moved into a new, less dire phase now, in February of 2023.
	So, according to the New York Times, the move carries both symbolic weight and real-world consequences.
	Millions of Americans have received free COVID tests, treatments, and vaccines during the pandemic.
	Not all of that will continue to be free once the emergency is over.
	See, this is the beauty of being a Democrat.
	You just declare things an emergency, and then everything becomes free forever for the rest of time, which was, of course, the entire point of this being maintained as an emergency in 2021.
	So you could declare that student loans were over.
	So you could declare that you didn't have to pay your mortgage anymore.
	So you continue to inflate the currency at extraordinarily rapid levels.
	So you could spend trillions of dollars that didn't need to be spent.
	That was the purpose.
	The purpose of an emergency for Democrats is restructure the United States and spend tons of money in doing so.
	The White House wants to keep the emergency in place for several more months.
	So hospitals, health care providers and health officials can prepare for a host of challenges of changes when it ends, according to officials.
	By the way, this is not how emergencies work.
	You don't get to decide when an emergency is over.
	That is not how emergencies work.
	Let's say that there was a fire that broke out in your house.
	You put out the fire.
	Two years later, you say, ah, the fire emergency is over, guys.
	No, the fire emergency ended when the fire was out.
	An emergency by its very nature is a thing that is urgent.
	It is an emergency.
	That's what it is.
	Once it's over, you don't get to declare that the emergency doesn't end until I say it ends.
	But that's precisely what Joe Biden is saying.
	The White House said on Monday the nation needed an orderly transition out of the public health emergency.
	The administration said it intended to allow a separate declaration of national emergency to expire on the same day, on May 11.
	The White House said in a statement, quote, An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the healthcare system, for states, for hospitals and doctors' offices, and most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans.
	Okay, so Joe Biden was asked about this, and Joe Biden did a couple of things that were really, really amazing.
	One, he said, the COVID emergency really ends when the Supreme Court ends it.
	Meaning that he knows it's not an emergency.
	He's just waiting for the Supreme Court to end it for him.
	Here we go.
	What's behind your decision to end the COVID emergency?
	The COVID emergency will end when this report ends.
	We've extended from May the 15th to make sure we get everything done.
	That's all.
	That's amazing.
	When the Supreme Court ends it is when the COVID emergency ends.
	I was not aware that's how emergencies work.
	Also, notice what he did there.
	He walks out and he literally grabs the hand of a reporter holding an umbrella.
	What a weird old coot he is.
	Also, you're saying that the COVID emergency doesn't end until May.
	It's February.
	You're not wearing a mask, which you said is really important.
	You're 80, which means you're in the most high-risk group.
	And you're holding the hand of a woman who did not consent to you holding her hand, you weird old You weird old bat.
	Again, look at this.
	Here's Joe Biden strolling out with his weird, creepy joker grin.
	And he just grasps the reporter's hand.
	There she is.
	And he grabs her hand.
	By the way, if that had been Donald Trump, it would be about, oh, you can grab him by the hand anytime you want.
	They'll let you do it.
	That's only true for Joe Biden.
	I can grab him by the hand anytime I want.
	Meanwhile, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee doesn't want to let the emergency go because why would the Democrats ever let the emergency go?
	It's been amazing for them.
	They've gotten to restructure all of American society.
	They've gotten to shut down businesses they don't like.
	They've gotten to force kids to either go to school or not go to school, to mask kids.
	They've gotten to force people to vaccinate.
	They've gotten to do all sorts of fun stuff they never would have gotten to do if they hadn't been able to do this with the cover of the media.
	Here's Sheila Jackson Lee saying, I don't want this to end.
	It should never end.
	Why should it end?
	We didn't lose a million people on vaccines.
	We lost a million people on not having that vaccination timely.
	And so I am struck by this legislation.
	The pandemic is not over.
	500 people a day die right now as I'm standing here from COVID.
	That's a reasonable amount.
	It's just amazing.
	They don't want to end the COVID.
	Okay, so the real issue here is not Democrats.
	You understand why Democrats don't want the COVID emergency to end.
	It's been a boon for them.
	It's been amazing for them.
	The COVID emergency basically got Joe Biden elected.
	The COVID emergency allowed them to spend more money than God has ever seen.
	The COVID emergency allowed them to explicitly restructure the American economy and do so on the basis of quote-unquote equity.
	They got to do whatever they wanted during the COVID emergency.
	The real issue is where were the media in all this?
	The science was not there to back the things that Joe Biden was doing in 2021, 2022.
	It just was not there.
	He can't, by the way, it wasn't there to back much of what the Trump administration was doing in 2020, while many state governors were doing in 2020.
	You understand people botching this thing at the beginning in March and April, you get it.
	You understand people being taken in by what Pfizer was saying about the vaccines and their prevention of transmission in December because Pfizer was saying it and the federal government was saying it.
	What is not okay is to start vaccine mandating like the Biden administration did or shutting down businesses in the middle of June of 2020.
	These are things that the American people should not forgive or forget.
	And yet the media are out there saying, you should be grateful.
	You should be grateful, because again, they are the Praetorian Guard for the Democrats, and they've blown out their credibility because they are garbage at their jobs.
	I'm going to give you two separate headlines here from the mainstream media, from the legacy media, and just shows you what trash they are, what true trash they are.
	Because COVID is the single most important event of my lifetime, and I lived through 9-11.
	COVID restructured the entire world economy, restructured how everybody thought about government authority, restructured the interaction between individuals in the state, In dramatic ways.
	And that was fostered by not only a compliant media, but a prostitute-laden media.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, all of this can make you worried.
	All this can make you lose sleep.
	All this gives you the worry lines and gives you the bags under your eyes.
	This is one reason why I recommend Unimed.
	Unimed has an excellent package via GenuCell Skincare, and it helps take care of your skin quality.
	I'm on TV all the time, which means that I use GenuCell.
	Their most popular package can take 10 to 15 years off your skin.
	Right now, you can get it for 70% off with their latest breakthrough in skincare technology.
	That's a probiotic moisturizer, absolutely free.
	As it turns out, probiotics are not just good for digestion.
	They can have the same nourishing benefits on your skin.
	Probiotic extracts target bad bacteria on the surface of your skin to restore balance to your skin's microbiome for a noticeably clearer complexion and visibly younger appearance.
	Watch those fine lines, wrinkles, dark spots, sagging jawline, even the bags, disappear.
	I get the bags under my eyes when I'm real tired.
	That's where I use the GenuCell.
	My wife has used it.
	My mom has used it.
	I recommend it to everybody.
	It's great.
	Go to Genucel.com slash Shapiro right now.
	And for the first time ever, every order from now until Valentine's Day includes a beauty box with two luxury gifts, yours free.
	Order now.
	You've only got a couple of weeks.
	That's Genucel, G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash Shapiro.
	Genucel.com slash Shapiro.
	Okay, so here are the two amazing headlines.
	So the COVID emergency is ending.
	And oh, they handled it all right.
	Here are the headlines that matter.
	You are ungrateful.
	You, they killed your business.
	For no reason.
	They killed it.
	Dead.
	All the big box stores, they stayed open.
	Your small business died.
	You should be grateful.
	They forced your kid not to go to school for a year.
	Maybe two, depending on where you live.
	You should be grateful.
	There was no data showing that this was killing kids unmasked because it wasn't killing kids unmasked.
	There was no data showing that masking kids was effective because masking kids was not effective.
	It doesn't matter.
	They did all those things, and they put your kid a year or two behind, or they made your kid unable to actually recognize faces properly because they covered people's faces, including the teachers, with masks.
	So your kid is now behind in terms of facial recognition or reading.
	You should be grateful.
	They tried to force your employer to force you to Vax.
	They tried to do that, knowing that this thing did not prevent transmission.
	Knowing that this thing should be optional.
	They knew that.
	And they tried to use OSHA to force you to vaccinate via your employer.
	We here at the Daily Wire, we're the only major media company.
	I'd like to point this out because I think this has been lost in translation here.
	We are the only major media company in the United States that sued the federal government to protect our employees and you.
	And we're the only major media company.
	It was not Fox News.
	It was not Newsmax.
	It was not any of these other places.
	All those places tried to force their employees to vaccinate.
	We did not do that here at Daily Wire.
	Instead, we spent millions of dollars suing the federal government and we risked millions of dollars in fines saying that we would not comply.
	But that was what the federal government tried to do to you.
	The federal government attempted to do that to you.
	The federal government shut down your business, put your kid out of school, allowed riots to take place on America's streets while curfewing you in your home, which is one of the things that drove us and our family out of California.
	They banned you from travel.
	They told you you couldn't take a plane.
	Certainly, if you were abroad, you couldn't get back.
	If you wanted to go abroad, you couldn't get in.
	They promulgated lies upon lies upon lies.
	You didn't have to pay.
	If you're a homeowner and you're renting out your house to them, that person didn't have to pay mortgage to you for like two years.
	If you are a person who paid off your student loan debt, you're a sucker because Joe Biden says that based on the pandemic, everybody should have their student debt relieved.
	You inflated the currency to a tune not seen in 40 years based on the easy money garbage policies that you promoted.
	When in reality, from nearly the very beginning, the proper solution was to tranche back into the workforce as fast as possible people who are young and healthy.
	This was obviously the solution.
	I was talking about it as early as May and June of 2020.
	You guys shut down the beaches.
	You shut down the libraries.
	You shut down every place my kids could play.
	You did all of this.
	You did this for years.
	And then you claimed that if people refuse to comply, it's because they wanted other people to die.
	If you wanted a beach open in Florida, then you were the Grim Reaper.
	You were Death Santas, if that was the case.
	If you wanted your kids to go to school, it's because you wanted kids to die.
	If you suggested that we needed to shield the elderly, but let everybody else go back to work, it's because you wanted grandma to be killed.
	If you were somebody who didn't vax because you already had Omicron, or because you were worried about the vaccine, then you weren't just a risk to yourself, you were a risk to everybody else.
	It was going to be a winter of death and despair, according to Joe Biden, for all of you.
	Even though Omicron was way milder than Delta or the original variant, and way more transmissible.
	They lied to you at every turn, but you are ungrateful.
	Here are the headlines from the New York Times and the Washington Post in the aftermath of Joe Biden announcing this.
	You ready?
	Here's the New York Times headline.
	Quote, House votes to end COVID precautions as GOP uses pandemic in political attacks.
	Oh, the GOP is using the pandemic in political attacks.
	That's the problem.
	It's GOP pounces.
	It's the pouncing.
	It is not the authoritarianism, the totalitarian nature of what you guys tried to do for three years.
	It is not that.
	It's that the GOP is pouncing, of course.
	It's that people noticed, quote, Republicans on Tuesday pushed legislation through the House that would repeal VAX mandates and declare the pandemic over, blowing past Democratic opposition in a broader drive to use the federal response to the coronavirus spread against President Biden and his party, stoking a culture war over a major public health challenge.
	Oh, it's a culture war now.
	See, when they take away your ability to do business, when they say you can't send your kid to school, When they say you have to allow rioters outside your house to twerk for George Floyd, but you're not allowed to go open your shop today.
	When they say all those things, that's just policy.
	That's a major public health challenge.
	When you say no, that's stoking a culture war.
	The largely party-line votes to block the government from requiring health care workers to take the COVID vaccine and to end the public health emergency declared at the start of the pandemic were the start of a flurry of legislative activity by the GOP this week that has virtually no chance of yielding any new laws, since the measures cannot make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate or to Mr. Biden's desk, where he would be all but certain to veto them.
	But they were the leading edge of a bid by Republicans to use their majority to portray Biden and the Democrats as overreaching bureaucrats who kept pandemic measures in place for far too long, wreaking havoc with the economy, and in some cases costing people their livelihoods with health restrictions and a vaccine shot they did not want.
	It is a theme that taps into the grievances of parents.
	Well, I mean, those aren't just grievances.
	Those are realities.
	Everyone knows those are realities.
	That's not the worst headline, by the way.
	The worst headline comes courtesy of the Washington Post quote.
	This is by Rachel Rubin.
	Piece of analysis.
	The Health 202.
	The GOP base is still resentful over the COVID response.
	Oh, you resentful, ungrateful people, you.
	You're resentful, aren't you?
	Yeah, you're damn right we're resentful.
	You're damn right we're resentful.
	You wrecked the economy.
	Eggs are eight bucks for a package of eggs now.
	People couldn't get baby formula.
	Why would you not be resentful of the worst public policy disaster I've seen in my entire lifetime?
	Why?
	Of course we're resentful.
	But the answer is you're not supposed to be resentful because Democrats did it.
	That's the idea.
	So much resentfulness.
	Oh, you're wrong.
	You shouldn't be resentful.
	You should be grateful.
	Our media are sheer garbage.
	They're garbage on literally every issue.
	We're running out of issues for them not to be garbage on.
	We'll get to more on that in just one second.
	First, you know, speaking of rough financial situations, a lot of people have had to take out credit cards because obviously the bills are racking up.
	The problem is if you let those credit card bills sit, then you get those high interest rates.
	The high interest rates will just break you.
	You get behind the eight ball on a credit card bill and you're done.
	This is why you need Lightstream.
	Americans' total credit card balance was $925 billion in the third quarter of 2022.
	That is a $38 billion jump from the first quarter of 2022.
	The average APR for all credit cards is almost 20%.
	As Americans, we need to take control of your credit card debt.
	The best way to do that is Lightstream.
	It will give you a credit card consolidation loan from Lightstream.
	It can help you pay off your credit cards and lock in that low fixed interest rate.
	Rates start at 7.99% APR with auto pay and excellent credit.
	The rate is fixed.
	It's not going to increase over the life of the loan.
	You can get a loan from five grand to a hundred grand without any fees.
	And you can get your money as soon as the day you apply.
	Because if you've got good credit, there's no reason why you should get behind the eight ball on your outstanding credit card bill.
	Just for my listeners.
	Apply now.
	Get a special interest rate discount.
	Save even more.
	The only way to get that discount Go to lightstream.com slash Shapiro.
	That's L-I-G-H-T-S-T-R-E-A-M dot com slash Shapiro.
	Subject credit approval rates range from 7.99% APR to 23.99% APR.
	Include a 0.50% auto pay discount.
	Lowest rate requires excellent credit.
	Terms and conditions apply.
	Officers subject to change without notice.
	Visit lightstream.com slash Shapiro for more information.
	Also, by the way, you may have noticed, Valentine's Day is coming up.
	If you're looking for a gift for your trigger warning, man!
	If so, if you think it's right to reward a guy who works hard, plays with his kids, upholds the patriarchy every time he holds open the door, pick up a Valentine's bundle from Jeremy's Razors, now 30% off.
	There's the new Precision 5 razor with six months of blade refills, luxurious beard kit with beard oil, shampoo, balm, a boar's hairbrush, or the best-selling body bundle with charcoal body wash, shampoo, and conditioner.
	You love the dude in your life, ladies.
	You do.
	Woke companies, however, hate him and wish that he were not a man.
	Kick them out of his bathroom with a Jeremy's Razors Valentine's Bundle, now 30% off.
	Nothing says I love you quite like I don't hate your guts.
	Make sure to order by February 7th.
	Receive it by the 14th.
	Jeremy's Razors dot com.
	When it comes to the restructuring of American society, the media will always be on the side of the Democrats, and it doesn't matter how incompetent the Democrats are.
	So, the big controversy that is going to arise over the course of the next couple of weeks is, of course, this debt ceiling fight.
	Now, the Republicans are walking, or they're actually jumping onto a rake if they attempt to restructure something like Social Security or Medicare with a Democrat Senate and Democrat President.
	It's not going to happen.
	What they should do is come up with a list of demands that are popular with the American people and force the Democrats' feet to the fire in order to raise the debt ceiling.
	To pick a bunch of provisions that are really unpopular with the American people that Democrats desperately want.
	Green subsidies, DEI boondoggles.
	Pick those things and say, we want to strip those from the budget or we're not going to raise the debt ceiling.
	And make the Democrats defend those things in order to raise the debt ceiling.
	That is the way that you do politics.
	But if the media have their way, then no demand will be actually decent, right?
	Then no demand will be useful.
	The Democrats are perfect in every single respect.
	Which is why the Democrats are fully confident in saying they're not even going to negotiate on the debt ceiling.
	Here's the White House spokeswoman, Kate Bedingfield, suggesting that there will be no negotiations on the debt ceiling.
	None.
	Which is amazing, since typically in Washington, D.C., that's what you're supposed to do is negotiate.
	The most responsible thing to do is that we sit down.
	We've got time periods between now and June.
	We find places that we can find savings for the American public.
	Irresponsible not to negotiate.
	What's the White House strategy heading into the meeting?
	It would be irresponsible to allow the country to default on its financial obligations.
	So let's start with the fact that Congress has a constitutional obligation to prevent default and address the debt ceiling.
	The President is going to ask him in this meeting tomorrow, will you commit, will you guarantee to the American people that you will not hold the economy hostage, you will not hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to these negotiations?
	The President is not going to negotiate over Congress's constitutional responsibility.
	They're not even gonna negotiate.
	And when you have the backing of the media, you can do pretty much whatever you want.
	Up to and including just being incompetent on literally every single issue.
	So, for example, you can be the DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, and you can completely dodge on where 600,000 people went.
	You just do that.
	And the media are going to say that Republicans are bad for asking you those sorts of questions.
	Here's Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of DHS, claiming that they are now back in control of the system.
	Everything is going fine.
	And he's asked, where did those hundreds of thousands of people go?
	He's like, I don't know.
	Some of the criticism includes, for example, the 600,000 plus getaways, folks who came into this country and did not go through the process of requesting asylum.
	So do you know where they are and who they are, the people that don't get asylum?
	Don't request asylum when they arrive here?
	So, for the first time since 2011, the President of the United States presented a budget successfully that increased the number of Border Patrol agents.
	For the first time this year, we have 300 more Border Patrol agent eligibility positions than we did in the past.
	Do you know where they are and who they are?
	So, gotaways have been a challenge from year to year, regardless of the administration.
	So, just to be straight about this, Joe Biden supposedly hires 300 additional Border Patrol agents.
	By the way, he didn't actually hire them.
	He opened positions for them.
	And then he tells them not to do their jobs properly because he has a bunch of crap regulations on his hands.
	And then, you know, gotaways happen under everybody, according to- and the media are like, oh, that sounds good.
	Sounds good to us.
	How bad can the Biden administration be at this?
	Well, they can nominate judges who don't actually know what the Constitution is.
	There's another amazing clip that emerged over the course of this week.
	There's a judge, Imsharnel Bjelkengren, who was asked by Senator Kennedy from Louisiana to explain what Article 2 and Article 5 of the Constitution are.
	Now, this one is really, really basic.
	So Article 1 has to do with the legislature.
	Article 2 has to do with the presidency.
	Article three has to do with the judiciary, right?
	Judge.
	Each article has to do with a different branch.
	By the time you get to article five, you're talking about how to change the constitutions, re-get the convention of states, for example.
	Like this is not even first year law school stuff.
	This is like high school social science stuff.
	It's like what you did in social studies class when you were in 10th grade.
	This person wants to be a judge.
	And here is this nominee not knowing like the most basic things about American law.
	Judge on the far end.
	Tell me what article five of the Constitution does.
	I Thank you.
	Article 5 is not coming to mind at the moment.
	Okay.
	How about Article 2?
	Neither is Article 2.
	Okay.
	Do you know what purposivism is?
	Um, in my 12 years as an assistant attorney general and my nine years serving as a judge, I was not faced with that precise question.
	Uh, so the last one is at least a little more obscure, but article two and article five are not obscure.
	Those are the things that as a federal judge, you should know.
	That is amazing stuff.
	This person will be confirmed by the Democrats anyway.
	Imagine if Donald Trump had nominated a judge who did not know what Article 2 of the Constitution was.
	Imagine if that had happened.
	How do you think that that would have played?
	Wouldn't that person have been immediately labeled one of the dumbest people alive, unfit for the bench?
	But this person is intersectional.
	She's a woman.
	And that means that It doesn't matter that she doesn't know what the Constitution is.
	This is what happens when you have a compliant media.
	Democrats can basically get away with anything up to and including the worst vice president of the United States in probably American history.
	So, it is time for an installment of a new series that we've decided to initiate here at Daily Wire.
	It is called Deep Thoughts with Kamala Harris.
	And now, Deep Thoughts with Kamala Harris.
	Today's episode of Deep Thoughts with Kamala Harris has her describing how rockets work.
	What it's like to fly a rocket.
	Let's experience the glory with Kamala Harris.
	Bob and Doug returned to the Kennedy Space Center.
	They suited up.
	They waved to their families.
	And they rode an elevator up nearly 20 stories.
	They strapped in to their seats.
	And waited, as the tanks beneath them filled with tens of thousands of gallons of fuel.
	And then, they launched.
	Yeah, they did.
	You know, that's that's that's how rockets work.
	They got up, and then, by their families, they got in a rocket, and they launched.
	Yeah, they did.
	They launched.
	That lady is only vice president of the United States because the media are fully invested in the idea that a black woman must be vice president of the United States even if she happens to be the worst political candidate in human history.
	Okay.
	Meanwhile, the presidential race is heating up on the right side of the aisle.
	It appears now that Nikki Haley is going to declare for the presidency.
	I'm not sure exactly what Nikki's strategy is again.
	I like Nikki Haley.
	I think she was a great U.S.
	ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump.
	I thought she did a wonderful job there.
	It's also one of the best jobs in American politics.
	You literally go to the U.N.
	and yell at dictators, which is an amazing, amazing job.
	She was widely considered a possible presidential candidate when she left the administration.
	After a couple of years in the Trump administration, but then she had a couple of sort of political botches that really harmed her.
	After January 6, she originally condemned January 6, then she sort of walked it back.
	She had suggested that she was not going to run if Donald Trump was running, and now she's suggesting that she will run.
	And more candidates, the better.
	And the more the merrier, from my perspective, when it comes to this presidential race.
	I don't think that this should be handed on a silver platter to Donald Trump.
	I think that just because Donald Trump wants to run doesn't mean that he's necessarily the best candidate.
	I think there are a huge number of serious drawbacks to Donald Trump, as we'll get to in just a moment as he starts to launch his campaign in earnest.
	Haley, according to the Wall Street Journal, is going to challenge Trump and apparently is going to announce that in just a couple of weeks.
	She'd long been mentioned as a potential national candidate in part because of her biography as the daughter of Indian immigrants that could provide a compelling narrative for a party that has struggled to attract support from non-whites.
	Kirstie Noem of South Dakota is the only other woman known to be contemplating a 2024 presidential bid.
	In the early polling data, she's charting in sort of the high single digits.
	Big problems for Nikki Haley systemically are twofold.
	One is that she hasn't been on the public scene in quite a while.
	And the last time that she was on the public scene, she was getting herself in hot water with the base over a lot of the Trump stuff.
	Two, is that she was a foreign policy person when she was in the Trump administration.
	Americans typically don't care all that much about foreign policy.
	This is also going to be an issue, for example, for I think Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State under Donald Trump.
	Americans, when it comes to primaries, they don't tend to favor foreign policy experience over sort of domestic policy experience.
	But with that said, am I happy to see more people in the race?
	Sure.
	I'm not sure why she's announcing so early.
	I assume that she's trying to grab some of the donations early before some of the other big fish get in, like presumably Governor Ron DeSantis.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump is escalating his campaign.
	And this means, as he sort of really truly launches, we get into the 2024 cycle.
	It is now February of 2023.
	I know it seems early, but it's not because pretty soon we're going to have all the candidates jumping in.
	It's time to bring back an old favorite from this show.
	So back in 2015, if you go back a long ways, We used to do something that we called Good Trump, Bad Trump.
	And it was where we analyzed what Donald Trump did on a daily basis, because here's the thing.
	Donald Trump, he's full of good things, and he's also full of bad things.
	Donald Trump says many things that are good and useful, and then he hits a baby with a hammer.
	And you're like, I don't know why you did that, sir.
	Well, we are back to the Donald Trump 2024 campaign.
	And that means it is time for the grand return of Good Trump, Bad Trump.
	Ah, so we begin with some good Trump.
	Yes, he actually did some good things.
	So, he's been making these sort of social announcements on social media.
	He made an announcement yesterday that he plans to stop chemical castration of children, which is good.
	I mean, I'm glad that he does.
	I wish that he had done this while he was president, really pushed for it while he was president.
	Wasn't all that long ago he was president, but this is a good idea, obviously.
	Here's my plan to stop the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our youth.
	On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden's cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care.
	Ridiculous.
	process that includes giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance, and ultimately performing surgery on minor children.
	Can you believe this?
	I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.
	I will declare that any hospital or healthcare provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare and will be terminated from the program immediately.
	This is a good idea.
	This is all very good stuff.
	I mean, this is stuff that he should have done while he was president of the United States, obviously.
	But, you know, we're already president again.
	That'd be a very, very good thing.
	So there is some good Trump for you.
	Again, when he...
	Best Trump was always teleprompter Trump.
	I know people didn't love teleprompter Trump because he wasn't as enthusiastic and he always appears to be reading.
	He's not like amazing off teleprompter, but his policies were always the best part of his administration.
	And there's always like the him saying wild and crazy things.
	And sometimes it was pretty spot on and hilarious.
	And sometimes it was just insane.
	But the best part of his administration was the actual policy wins that we got from his administration.
	So more of those.
	Which brings us, unfortunately, to bad Trump.
	So on Truth Social, he just continues to vent his spleen about 2020.
	Just continues on with this.
	So yesterday, Donald Trump put on Truth Social, quote, In Georgia, I made a perfect phone call about election integrity with many people on the line.
	And if it wasn't perfect, why was I not admonished, screamed at, or hung up on?
	Especially with many lawyers listening to each and every word.
	Answer.
	Because it was perfect.
	Capital P-E-R-F-E-C-T.
	And a very appropriate call to make.
	Uh, we don't need this.
	We don't.
	Why are we relitigating the Georgia phone call?
	Which, by the way, was not all that great.
	He called up Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State of Georgia, and he encouraged him, I made the read at the time, that he encouraged him to find the votes that would put him over the top in Georgia.
	Not because he was attempting voter fraud, but because he actually believed, because Donald Trump believes, that there was major voter fraud in Georgia, and there got to be 11,000 votes over there that'll put me over the top in Georgia.
	Whatever it was, it was not a perfect phone call.
	And again, the real issue here is, do you want to relitigate this?
	Here's the question.
	For Republicans who are going to vote in the primaries.
	Is this stuff you want to be relitigating all the way through 2024?
	You think that's good for the Republicans or bad?
	Do you think that makes it more likely that Joe Biden gets reelected or less likely that Joe Biden gets reelected?
	This is the danger of good Trump, bad Trump.
	The question is, does the good outweigh the bad?
	Now, when he was president, the good outweighed the bad because he actually had power.
	When you are choosing a candidate, Perhaps one of the things we should be asking is whether we need the distraction.
	Which brings us to Governor Ron DeSantis, widely perceived as the greatest rival to Donald Trump in the Republican Party.
	Trump certainly perceives him that way.
	And so Donald Trump has been ripping him over his COVID response, which makes no sense whatsoever.
	DeSantis was well to Trump's right on his COVID response.
	And here is Ron DeSantis responding to Trump criticizing his COVID response.
	What DeSantis says here is both correct and smart.
	DeSantis understands that the game with Trump is that you don't actually respond directly to Trump.
	You don't name Trump.
	If you're a candidate, you avoid the wrath of Trump at pretty much all costs.
	And the way to do that is basically pretend he doesn't exist.
	And if you're asked about him, you say, listen, I'm not going to address that.
	I think he's a great president.
	And then just move on with your life.
	Here's Ron DeSantis responding to Trump complaining about his COVID response in Florida, which was absurd on its face.
	I have people attacking me from all angles.
	It's been happening for many, many years.
	And if you look at the good thing about it, though, is like if you take a crisis situation like COVID, you know, the good thing about it is when you're an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions.
	You've got to steer that ship.
	And the good thing is, is that the people are able to render a judgment on that.
	Okay, so again, this is his best response.
	It is a subtle sideswipe of Trump, for sure.
	A very subtle sideswipe of Trump, because he never mentions Trump.
	Not only did we win re-election, we won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has in the history of the state of Florida.
	So again, this is his best response.
	It is a subtle side swipe at Trump for sure.
	A very subtle side swipe at Trump.
	He never mentions Trump.
	But when he says, I got re-elected by 20 points, not everyone got re-elected.
	Everybody can kind of read what that means.
	Meaning if you're looking for somebody who wins...
	In the words of a famous man, I like people who win.
	If you're looking for somebody who wins, that's essentially what DeSantis is saying.
	Speaking of winning, DeSantis yesterday also made an executive order that there would be no DEI or CRT bureaucracies in Florida.
	There would be no diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies because they violate the equal protection clause of the Florida state constitution.
	Here he was going after DEI and critical race theory in Florida.
	This is winning, right?
	He has power, he's able to implement that power, and he's doing so in a very methodical way in the state of Florida.
	He's the best governor in America for this reason.
	We are also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida.
	No funding, and that will wither on the vine.
	And I think that that's very important because it really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter.
	You've seen different things.
	I mean, New College has really embraced that, and that's part of the reason I think it hasn't been successful in the enrollments down so much.
	Okay, so if you could get like all the policy wins, but without the downside, there's a reason why DeSantis is doing really, really well in the polls.
	Okay, time for another thing.
	It's a day of renewal.
	And it's time for another thing that we used to do a lot on the show.
	And then we stopped doing for some reason that I can't recall.
	And that is some things I like and some things that I hate.
	So we begin with a thing that I like.
	Okay, so the thing that I like today, remember that time that Spotify was supposed to be killed by Joe Rogan?
	Remember that?
	The idea was that Joe Rogan, because he was so controversial, because he said ivermectin might actually help you, and he said that working out was good if you were attempting to lower your obesity in order to fight COVID.
	He was really bad.
	He was wrong and terrible.
	He had to issue apologies, and he was the worst.
	He was going to kill Spotify!
	And Neil Young, man, Neil Young was going to drop off Spotify.
	And then he came back on Spotify like five seconds later, because who gives a crap whether Neil Young is on Spotify?
	Anyway, so.
	What was Joe Rogan's impact on Spotify?
	Was it negative?
	Or was it positive?
	I'll let you guess.
	The answer, of course, is that it was wildly positive, according to The Wrap.
	The audio streaming service now has 205 million paying users.
	It's still losing money, but it's banking that diversifying audio formats will change that.
	Spotify's podcasting business has generated endless bad press for the Swedish music streamer, the Joe Rogan controversy, layoffs and cutbacks at its studios, the departure of a key executive.
	But the latest earnings report flipped the script with CEO Daniel Ek crediting podcasts with retaining paying customers and helping steer the money losing company on a path to profit.
	The company presented its podcasting business as flourishing in a presentation accompanying the earnings release, noting that podcasts drove a 14% increase in advertising revenue.
	You know who that is?
	That, of course, would be Joe Rogan.
	Joe Rogan is driving whatever increase they have seen in advertising revenue on Spotify because people like listening to Joe Rogan.
	So it turns out that the woke can't rule the roost for long.
	People still want to listen to Joe Rogan, and that means that people are going to Spotify to listen to Joe Rogan.
	So good for Joe.
	Good for Spotify for eventually standing by.
	I mean, they were a little bit wavery and weak at the very beginning, and then they said, well, no.
	It also goes to show you why Dave Chappelle is still on Netflix.
	Now, the real question is going to be whether one of these big streaming services picks up Louis C.K.
	again.
	Louis C.K.
	has a massive audience.
	He was essentially canceled for something that appears to be much closer to consensual sexual activity than it does to be close to, like, Harvey Weinstein, like rape.
	And none of the streamers have picked up Louis CK.
	That is a major audience waiting to be found right there.
	But, congrats to Joe Rogan, who once again proves the durability of the notion that if you are popular, people will find you, and people will give you money if you are popular.
	Okay, time for a thing that I hate.
	Okay, so, we are going to steer into some dicey waters here.
	I'm about to criticize an episode of the TV show, The Last of Us.
	So, I'm gonna say, right up front, HBO's The Last of Us, right?
	This is the one that, uh, that stars Pedro Pascal, and, um, it's really well produced, written by Craig Mazin, he's a super talented guy, he's the one who was behind Chernobyl.
	Okay, so, first the things about this series that are good.
	And again, preface, I've never played the game.
	So, don't care about the game, don't care about how true it is to the game.
	There are lots of gamers out there, you wanna watch their videos on the correlation between the game and the show, that's fine.
	I'm just watching it as a piece of pure TV entertainment, okay?
	I'm coming from, I don't care what's canon, I don't care what's not canon.
	Just coming at it from the view of a TV viewer, so I'm just gonna say that right up front.
	That is not my particular purview, I don't play video games.
	Because I'm not a child.
	I know, I'm just joking.
	Lots of good people play video games.
	Okay, in any case, including Andrew Klavan, who's a mediocre person.
	Anyway, The Last of Us is a, for those who haven't seen it, it is a zombie show.
	Okay, it's a show about a zombie apocalypse that essentially arises because fungi go viral, essentially, and take over people's brains and turn them into zombies.
	That is the premise of the show, and it's really well produced, and it's beautifully shot, and it's really well scripted, and all the rest.
	So, the first two episodes are about Pedro Pascal finding, again, some of this is sort of hackneyed trope, but he is introduced to the other main character, who is a young girl.
	The young girl is, for some reason, immune to the zombie virus.
	And so, the question is, can he get her to a place where presumably they are going to try to manufacture a cure from her?
	That's where the show is going, I would assume, because any other place doesn't make any sense.
	So, it is this character, Joel, and this character, Ellie, and they are navigating the zombie apocalypse.
	And then we get to, so that's the first couple episodes, and they're good, they're really compelling.
	Again, really well made, really well written.
	And then we get to episode three, and this, according to the media, is the single greatest episode of television that has ever been.
	If you read the headlines on episode three, this is the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of television.
	CNN, The Last of Us, just made an early claim to one of the best TV episodes of 2023.
	The Last of Us viewership soars 12% to a new series high with heartbreaking episode three.
	It's historic.
	It's important.
	Okay, guys, it's historic and important.
	Now, why is it historic and important?
	It's historic and important because it's about two gay dudes.
	That's why.
	So the essential plot of this episode, which is the problem with this episode, and again, you want to make Brokeback Zombie Farm or whatever, fine.
	But the problem with this episode is that it absolutely does not advance the plot in any way and actually has no consequences.
	So the entire plot of the episode is that Ron Swanson, Nick Offerman, but he actually plays Ron Swanson, but Ron Swanson who likes to nail dudes.
	So Ron Swanson, a libertarian who hates the government and lives in his basement and is a prepper, but also is gay.
	Ron Swanson, during the zombie apocalypse, he's having himself a grand old time.
	For some reason, his town is completely not hit by any of the zombies at all.
	It's, like, completely left alone.
	And so he goes out and gets all of his resources, and then he builds a nice fence around his place, and he sets up all of these booby traps so if anybody shows up, whether they're raiders, whether they're zombies, they're gonna get killed.
	And then, somehow, another dude ends up, like, falling into one of his traps.
	And they meet.
	And they bang.
	And they end up becoming a couple.
	Okay, so.
	You can see it here, right?
	There's gay Ron Swanson.
	And it's complete with, like, sex scenes and the whole thing.
	And the entire episode has no zombies, no real threat, and it is about two gay dudes who meet and have a relationship in which one grows strawberries for the other, and then they die.
	But not being killed by zombies or under threat.
	One dies, he gets cancer, and he decides to essentially euthanasia himself, and Gayron Swanson decides that he is also going to commit suicide at the same time because Romeo and Juliet, or Romeo and Romeo in this particular case.
	Okay, now, here's the problem.
	It's all really well produced, and it's beautifully shot.
	Brokeback Zombie Farm.
	Here's the problem with Brokeback Zombie Farm.
	One, it's a zombie show.
	There are no zombies in this entire episode.
	Like, none.
	I understand simplistic critique, but there are no zombies in a zombie show.
	This is worth pointing out.
	It literally has nothing to do with the plot of the show.
	This is a show where this entire episode could have taken place completely without a zombie apocalypse.
	It just would have been a showtime romance between two middle-aged gay dudes who get older, one dies of cancer, and the other assisted suicides himself.
	That would not have changed one iota of the show.
	It is completely irrelevant to the story.
	And one of the reasons that it is completely irrelevant to the story is because there are no stakes.
	And the reason that there are no stakes is because, again, we are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
	When you're in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, one of two issues has to come into play.
	One, the threat of the zombies.
	Or two, the threat to humanity more broadly.
	So, if you're talking about the threat to humanity more broadly during the zombie apocalypse, what you're talking about is underpopulation, right?
	You're talking about there are no people.
	The zombies are going to take over.
	Humanity is going to be extinct.
	That is the entire threat in a zombie apocalypse.
	Correct?
	Or in an alien invasion movie.
	Or in any other sort of species-level extinction event movie, like War of the Worlds.
	The question is, how do human beings repopulate?
	How do they survive?
	And how do they become successful once again?
	If you're going to center an episode like that, what you need to do is you need to have an episode about people who can have babies.
	Again, there are only two issues in a zombie apocalypse.
	You could have this whole thing, but the whole thing is these two dudes in love, but they're fighting off zombies.
	But they never fight off the zombies.
	It's not an issue.
	So, irrelevant.
	Or, you could have them somehow interact with the main characters.
	They never do.
	They interact with the main characters for like 30 seconds.
	They are both dead by the time the main characters arrive to pick up guns.
	So, this entire episode is a sidestep.
	It has nothing to do with anything.
	Ellie and Joel could have just stopped by, found the house, picked up guns, and gone on their merry way.
	It would have taken 10 seconds.
	Instead, you get an entire hour-long digression to do, as I say again, La Caja Falls, or whatever this is.
	So, it's irrelevant.
	Beyond it being irrelevant, it has no stakes.
	So, you want to have an interesting conversation about love during the apocalypse?
	The big issue of love during the apocalypse is, what if you have a baby?
	What happens if you have a baby?
	Or should having babies be the purpose here?
	So let's take another example of a show that did this correctly.
	So Battlestar Galactica had an episode early on, I think it was season two, in which one of the questions was underpopulation, right?
	The fleet is depopulating.
	And so the question becomes, what do you do about abortion?
	So President Roslin, who is a lefty, She decides that she's going to outlaw abortion because if you want humanity to survive, then it turns out that individual autonomy over your body is significantly less important than actually repopulating humanity.
	So here's Roslyn announcing that she's outlawing abortion, right?
	Because again, the stakes are whether humanity survives.
	It is not whether two individuals fall in love in the middle of a farm, not threatened by anyone, which is the story of this particular episode.
	Since assuming the presidency, I've made it my mission to maintain the rights and freedoms we so enjoyed prior to the attack.
	One of these rights has now come into direct conflict with the survival of the species.
	And I find myself forced to make a very difficult decision.
	The issue is stark.
	The fact is that if this civilization is to survive, we must, must repopulate this fleet.
	Therefore, I'm issuing an executive order.
	From this day forward, anyone seeking to interfere with the birth of a child, whether it be the mother, or a medical practitioner, shall be subject to criminal Okay, so, you know, this is like an actual issue.
	What do you do during an apocalypse?
	Do you actually try to preserve humanity or not?
	Two gay dudes falling in love and then dying of old age is not relevant to that particular conversation.
	I can say, well, that's not what they wanted to cover on the show.
	That's not what they were interested in covering on the show.
	The truth is a much more compelling storyline.
	I mean, that's the entire plot line of A Quiet Place, right?
	You have an alien invasion.
	What do you do when you have a baby?
	Do you continue to have babies in view of the fact that there's a threat to the children, in view of the fact they're going to have to live difficult and rough lives and all the rest of it, right?
	But you can say, I see the argument.
	Okay, well, that's not what they wanted to take on in episode three.
	So I have a question.
	What were they seeing to take on in episode three?
	What was the major topic that they were seeing to take on?
	People falling in love during the apocalypse?
	What are the stakes?
	We don't know any of these characters, nor are we going to care about them beyond this particular episode.
	Which means that it's basically just a sidetrack.
	It's a throwaway episode.
	But it's so important because it has gay people, you see.
	It's so important.
	And, you know, the guy who created the video game, of course, is a big lefty.
	In season two, apparently, if it mirrors the video games from what I've been told, it gets very trans and very lesbian and all the rest of it.
	And that's their prerogative.
	They're the creators of the show.
	But all of the talk about how this was like an excellent episode of TV that was wrapped into a broader show is not true.
	And pretending that it is, is ignoring kind of the dynamics of the show.
	So there's my critique of The Last of Us Episode 3.
	I know, I'm not allowed to say that I didn't like it.
	You have to say you loved it.
	And you particularly loved the most, like, the most graphic parts of it.
	Those are the parts you loved the most, right?
	I mean, because if you don't say that, it means you're a homophobe or something.
	All I'm saying is that nobody actually paid to see the movie Bros.
	And when you go to see The Last of Us, what you generally want to see is a zombie apocalypse TV show, not two gay dudes dating while listening to Linda Ronstadt and then dying of old age after growing strawberries.
	I don't, I think that, and frankly, I think everybody who's like, wow, I was super into this.
	Yeah, I think some of you are lying.
	Some of you are in, some of you were kind of lying.
	Alrighty, guys.
	The rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We will be getting into the Mailbag Plus.
	Dennis Prager is going to be stopping by.
	He has a brand new series over at Daily Wire Plus.
	Become a member.
	Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

▲