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April 4, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:25
TODAY Is The Day
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Well, today is the big day.
Last night, Donald Trump flew from Mar-a-Lago to Manhattan in order to turn himself in to be arraigned.
What that means is that later this afternoon, he goes in front of a judge who will plead not guilty.
The order of the day goes something like this.
At 11 a.m., he is scheduled to show up at the courthouse and he is going to surrender.
By surrendering that doesn't mean they're going to handcuff him, doesn't mean necessarily they're going to take a mugshot.
None of that is really public information at this point.
There's been some debate inside sort of the Trump camp over whether there should be a mugshot or there shouldn't be a mugshot.
Apparently, according to Time Magazine and Michael Isikoff, it's unlikely that he is going to be mugshotted, that he will actually be, he might be spared that.
Trump's team apparently wants the mugshot for publicity purposes.
Hogan Gidley, who is a part of Trump's re-elect efforts, he has suggested that it will be the most manly mugshot of all time.
I'm not kidding, that's an actual quote from Hogan.
Apparently, the judge in this particular case has already ruled, his name is Murchin, he has already ruled that no cameras will be allowed in the courtroom aside from a brief still photo spray before the arraignment begins, which is a departure from the normal no cameras period procedure that is usually inside the courthouse, but it's a far cry from the live video coverage the media outlets actually wanted.
Unclear at this point whether cameras will be allowed, as usual, inside the courthouse hallways.
At 10.30am, there's a rally for Trump that Marjorie Taylor Greene is holding.
At 11am, that is when Trump is going to surrender.
He will be moved to the internally connected courthouse.
He's not going to go outside.
Again, not clear exactly what is going to be evident.
There's not going to be a perp walk.
He's not going to be handcuffed.
It's not as though he's going to be frog-marched into the building.
According to Rolling Stone, Trump World is trying to play this up.
Now, again, take everything Rolling Stone says with a giant block of salt, not just a grain of salt, a giant block of salt, because Rolling Stone is often wrong.
But according to their reporting, quote, it's kind of a Jesus Christ thing he is saying.
I'm absorbing all this pain from all around, from everywhere, so you don't have to.
At 2.15, Trump is expected to plead not guilty in front of the judge.
The defendant typically doesn't speak.
The lawyer just says not guilty, and then they move on with the process.
At 3.30 p.m.
today, Alvin Bragg, the DA who's bringing these charges, his 34-count indictment, is going to hold a news conference.
He's going to speak publicly about the indictment for the first time, although he's been quite leaky, as we'll get to in a moment.
And then at 8.15 p.m.
tonight, Trump is going to deliver remarks over at Mar-a-Lago.
A lot of his allies are going to show up.
He'll presumably pack that ballroom again, the same place where he gave his original speech announcing his run.
So that is the order of the day.
All of this, of course, followed hard on the insane media coverage yesterday, in which we basically got Donald Trump's plane leaving Mar-a-Lago treated essentially like O.J.
Simpson's Ford Bronco back during the NBA finals.
It was pretty amazing.
So we begin with Trump leaving Mar-a-Lago.
A lot of his supporters lined the roads, as you would imagine.
Again, this is a bizarrely An horrifically historic moment when the party in power or members of the party in power decide to indict the opposition leader.
Donald Trump is, by every available polling metric, the frontrunner in the Republican nomination race.
He is the former president of the United States and possibly the future president of the United States.
And now he's arrested in New York for crimes that are extremely flimsy.
His supporters lined the road near Mar-a-Lago.
There was some tape that Eric Trump, his son, released on the Twitters.
You can see a big line of cars.
People parked and lining the roads with their Trump flags and all of this.
Again, the area near Mar-a-Lago and near the Palm Beach Airport is going to be pretty heavy Trump territory.
Not a big shock there.
Much smaller crowds showed up in Manhattan outside of Trump Tower to greet him as he actually showed up at Trump Tower.
Here's some video of Trump arriving at Trump Tower.
Tonight, former President Donald Trump waving as he arrived in New York, where less than 24 hours from now, he is due to surrender to face criminal charges.
His journey from Mar-a-Lago receiving live coverage on cable TV, supporters lining the route to cheer.
After landing in New York, streets were blocked off to make way for his motorcade.
Tomorrow, the former president will become just another criminal defendant on the downtown docket.
Yeah, sure.
Just another criminal defendant.
Well done there.
ABC News.
What was amazing is that the media apparently have learned nothing from giving Trump billions of dollars in free political coverage in 2015-2016.
Again, the media are going whole hog wall to wall on the cover.
Listen, you can imagine why.
Trump is an amazing story.
He's an amazing story.
He's always been an amazing story.
He is the greatest political story that we have seen in our lifetime.
He is a person who went from being a real estate magnate on the cover of Playboy to being a person who ran for president without any prior political experience, somehow won, pulled an inside straight and beat Hillary Clinton.
Then proceeded to run against the entire media and his own law enforcement apparatus, who was targeting him for destruction during his administration.
Lost to a dead man in 2020 after a worldwide pandemic and massive, most damaging riots in American history.
January 6th, and now he's being indicted in the middle of a race where he is the current Republican frontrunner.
I mean, if this were a novel, you would not actually believe this was happening.
Because, again, this would be a bad novel, but it is, in fact, reality.
So there's a reason why the media are covering this stuff wall-to-wall.
You can't exactly blame them.
Although I will say that watching all four networks simultaneously covering Donald Trump's plane on the runway was kind of absurd.
Here is some cable news coverage of Donald Trump's plane.
We are going to continue our live coverage here as we see Trump's private aircraft there at Palm Beach International Airport getting ready for takeoff.
Look, it's a plane, guys.
As we are just talking about this story overall, the broad spectrum of what we are witnessing here.
That plane has made a plane.
Definitely a moment in history.
A presidential candidate.
Two hour, two and a half hour flight up to New York.
Just watch that plane the whole way, guys.
Again, the media, listen, the media are getting everything they want out of this.
It makes it much more likely that Trump is the nominee to keep him at the center of the news, because the media essentially treat Republicans the way that I treat my three-year-old when I want her to eat her vegetables.
Don't eat those vegetables.
Don't eat them.
Those are my vegetables.
Don't eat the vegetables.
I'll eat the vegetables.
That's kind of what the media have been doing with regard to Trump.
Don't nominate him.
We don't want you to nominate him.
We want to jail him.
You want to nominate him?
There's some of that going on.
But it is also true that the media are getting inordinate ratings.
I mean, Trump was absolutely right when he said that the media infrastructure depends on him being at the center of the news.
We'll get some more on this in just one moment.
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Okay, so.
Again, Trump left the Mar-a-Lago compound around noon yesterday, and he traveled in that motorcade, and he wrote on social media Sunday night, quote, on Tuesday morning, I will be going to, believe it or not, the courthouse.
America was not supposed to be this way.
New York City officials, warning of road closures, they say they are deploying extra officers in Manhattan during Trump's visit.
Because Marjorie Taylor Greene is showing up in New York, because, again, there are a lot of people who are going to make a lot of money off of this particular incident.
I don't blame Marjorie Taylor Greene for showing up to rally for Trump.
Frankly, I don't blame the media for covering this.
It is fascinating.
There's no question about that.
But to pretend that there aren't incentive structures in place that have caused this to happen in the first place.
That the left is not doing this for a reason.
They are absolutely doing this for a reason.
They're indicting Trump on flimsy charges because they had to.
Because they've been saying for years that he is a criminal.
And they have not fulfilled that promise to their base.
Simultaneously, they are hoping to elevate Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race.
And they are achieving that effect.
The polling data right now has Trump up significantly.
In the 2024 primaries.
This is presumably exactly what the media want.
Again, they are not dum-dums.
They know exactly what they're doing.
So the money is on their side.
The politics is on their side.
And folks on the right, obviously, are resonating to Trump's cause because they feel correctly that he is being unfairly targeted.
So, Marjorie Taylor Greene is showing up in New York, and this is causing Eric Adams, the garbage mayor of New York, to rip into Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Adams actually called her out and said, we just want her to keep things peaceful.
First of all, that'd be the first time anyone in New York has not committed a serious, violent crime on the streets if Marjorie Taylor did not.
It seems like that city, that hellhole of a city that is now run almost entirely by pizza rats, is probably safer with Marjorie Taylor Greene and her friends showing up.
But Eric Adams is very wary, obviously.
While there may be some rabble-rousers thinking about coming to our city tomorrow, our message is clear and simple.
Control yourselves.
New York City is our home, not a playground for your misplaced anger.
We are the safest large city in America because we respect the rule of law in New York City.
And although we have no specific threats, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is known to spread misinformation and hate speech, she stated she's coming to town.
While you're in town, be on your best behavior.
This is a city that deeply respects the rule of law and wouldn't want your misplaced anger to, you know, shatter all the windows on Fifth Avenue during a 2020 Black Lives Matter riot.
You definitely would want to make sure they're not shoving people in front of subways.
Marjorie Taylor Greene.
It's so ridiculous.
Again, do you ever get the...
Feeling that so much of this is like W. W. E. K. Fobby or however it's pronounced.
This is this is this is all basically just play acting.
So much of this is bizarre play.
It's it doesn't feel authentic.
It feels like Eric Adams is playing a part and he feels like Marjorie Taylor Greene is playing a part as well.
Everybody's playing their part here.
The only problem is, of course, all of this has real ramifications for American politics.
All this has real ramifications for the future of the country.
Your political class is not playing in the same sandbox that you are.
All you would like to do is go about your life and not be bothered by these doofi.
The plural of doofus is in the Latin.
But apparently you're not going to be allowed to.
It's just amazing.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, correctly, goes after Eric Adams.
She tweeted out, delusional.
New York mayor is trying to intimidate, threaten, and stop me from using my First Amendment rights to peacefully protest the Democrats' unconstitutional weaponization of our justice system against our top Republican presidential candidate, President Trump.
Mary Adams should be more concerned about New York citizens and taxpayers being murdered, raped, robbed, and carjacked than an elected member of Congress coming to town.
Or should I be the one concerned that the mayor of New York will weaponize his government or maybe his thugs like DA Alvin Bragg against me?
And not an unfair critique there from Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Meanwhile, again, in all of this WWE play acting, Michael Cohen, who is the chief witness for the prosecution, presumably, in this particular case, he's just appearing on the mainstream media, which is always what we do in criminal cases.
It's always great when you have the key witnesses in criminal cases who have been convicted of perjury appearing on MSNBC, which is a network that hates the person who is now under indictment, talking about Donald Trump's crowd size at Trump Tower and mocking it.
Yeah, these are all very serious people engaging in very serious business.
Or alternatively, this is all just ginned up political activist nonsense that is designed to polarize America politically for the gain of political elites.
Well, if there's so many people concerned, why aren't they out in the streets today?
Yeah, they certainly weren't.
I mean, that was, I don't know, it looked like a bake sale over at a high school football game.
It didn't, I mean... Do you think that's because people are deterred by how many people have gotten in trouble?
Supporting him?
Meaning criminal trouble?
Or do you think he's lost some of that heat?
Oh, I believe he lost a lot of the heat.
I truly don't believe that the popularity of Donald Trump is where it was six months ago or a year ago.
I'm sorry, this is all, it just feels fake, right?
It doesn't feel real.
Now, it is very real for Donald Trump because, you know, now that he's getting indicted in Manhattan, he could actually go to jail.
In the high likelihood, we spoke to Professor Alan Dershowitz, who's sort of part of the Trump advisory team.
He suggested that if Trump actually does his trial in Manhattan proper, a Manhattan jury will probably convict him of pretty much anything.
So they're real consequences for them.
They're real consequences for the country.
But our political class, it doesn't feel like they're real consequences for any of this.
It just feels like they're using their power in order to achieve particular purposes, more money for themselves, more power for themselves, a more polarized political environment in which they can get away with legitimately anything.
And that feeling is exacerbated by the fact that they apparently do not want Americans to see much about what is going on inside the courtroom.
There's a lot of talk today about a gag order being placed inside the courtroom, which would prevent Americans from actually seeing what's happening, which would, of course, lead to a thousand conspiracy theories blooming.
Get to that momentarily first.
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Okay, so.
All of this, obviously, is helping Donald Trump in terms of his fundraising.
According to Trump aide Jason Miller, the campaign has raised $8 million since news of the indictment broke, which is a pretty solid number.
Meanwhile, they've added, has the Trump team, a new lawyer, Todd Blanche, who's been a partner at the firm Cadwallader, Wickersham, and Taft, pretty significant law firm.
And he has experience representing defendants in Trump's orbit, including, particularly, Paul Manafort.
So again, it's the same set of lawyers who tend to defend the same set of people.
Trump's current lawyers, Susan Ishellis and Joe Tacopina, remain on the team.
Tacopina is also set to defend Trump in a civil trial later this month on allegations by an advice columnist, E. Jean Carroll, who alleges that Trump raped her in a dressing room.
In the mid-1990s.
Meanwhile, one of Trump's attorneys, Alina Haba, is accusing the Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, of actually leaking the charges and accusing Alvin Bragg of a felony.
We'll get to the contents of the charges in just a moment.
A gag order to silence a candidate, the leading candidate, number one.
Number two, to silence the defendant in a case where the plaintiff, the state of New York, the D.A.
Bragg, has leaked.
And we know this for a fact because we don't have the indictment.
He leaked 30 to 34 indictments.
How do we know that?
We know that because it came from their camp.
And it could only come from their camp.
And that, by the way, Benny, is a felony.
Okay, so what exactly did Alvin Bragg leak at this point?
So again, it's unsubstantial where exactly the leak came from, but leaks by their very nature generally have to come from people with knowledge of the charges.
Presumably Trump's team has already been informed of the charges as well, so the leak could have come from Team Trump, unclear at this point.
However, what we now know is that Trump will be placed under arrest on Tuesday and informed that he's been charged with 34 felony counts for falsifications of business records.
They're all felonies that he's being charged with, according to Michael Isikoff, who is reporting for Yahoo News.
A New York City police arrest report summarizing the charges against Trump will be prepared and entered into the court system before he goes to the courtroom to be formally arraigned on the charges, none of which are misdemeanors.
Again, it appears that he's not going to be handcuffed or put in a jail cell or subjected to a mugshot at this point.
The charge of falsification of business records can be prosecuted in New York State as a misdemeanor, but Bragg bumped all of those charges to Class E felonies.
That's the lowest level of felony in the New York State Penal Code, on the grounds that the conduct was intended to conceal another underlying crime.
According to the source, under that New York State Penal Code, a conviction for a Class E felony of falsifying business records could result in a prison term of up to four years.
That seems extremely unlikely.
According to law enforcement officials, they say no one gets jail time for that as a first offender.
That'd be like one charge though.
So presumably it would be falsification of a lot of business records?
Is that sort of the idea?
Unclear whether if you are convicted of falsification of a lot of business records, the sentences run concurrently, or if Trump would get any sort of jail time.
Again, all this is up in the air.
We haven't even seen the indictment yet.
Trump, for his part, went on Truth Social, and he put out a statement saying, wow, District Attorney Bragg just illegally leaked the various points and complete information on a pathetic indictment against me.
I know the reporter, and so, unfortunately, does he.
That means he must immediately be indicted.
Now, if he really wants to clean up his reputation, he will do the honorable thing and, as District Attorney, indict himself.
He'll go down in judicial history, and his Trump-hating wife will be, I am sure, very proud of him.
That is unlikely to happen, but you know, again, not a bad talking point for Donald Trump.
Trump's lawyers at the moment are opposing cameras in the courtroom.
They say that it leads to a circus-like atmosphere.
If you are, in fact, Trump's team, I'm surprised at this.
I think that you would probably want more cameras in the courtroom because you actually don't want people Lying about what's happening inside the courtroom, if you don't trust the system.
Apparently, Trump's attorney said on Monday that there is no scenario in which the Manhattan judge presiding over the ex-commander-in-chief's arraignment on Tuesday would impose a gag order.
That's what Joe Tacopina told Fox News host Sean Hannity.
He said, can't happen, won't happen.
I don't believe he's even looking for that.
Which, I certainly hope that's the case.
A gag order in this case would be absolutely absurd.
It would basically just be a pretext to hit Trump with another charge.
Because it is perfectly obvious that Trump is going to talk about the case against him publicly.
He is a candidate for President of the United States and the leading candidate on the right side of the aisle.
So I'm glad to hear that.
I hope that that is true.
I hope that there is no gag order.
A gag order in this case would be particularly absurd on every available level.
Now, again, Democrats are very, very eager about all of this.
Not only because you can sense the kind of glee in their eyes, but also because they are achieving all of their purposes.
I will say it once more.
They're boosting Trump in the primaries and they're making a buttload of money off of this whole situation.
This is like all their dreams coming true.
We'll get to them sort of smiling through their tears momentarily.
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Okay, so.
The predictable result of all of this is that Trump has really bumped in the polls.
He is supposed to speak, as I say, a little bit later tonight after the arraignment.
He's going to be speaking at 8.15 tonight from Mar-a-Lago.
And presumably he is going to, again, sort of hit the system very hard.
This stuff is very good for Trump because Trump's entire campaign is basically they're coming after me so that they're not coming after you, right?
That I am here.
They're coming after you.
I'm just in the way.
That's literally what his profile says on Truth Social right now.
The problem is that everything that's elevating him in the primaries right now is also denting him in the general.
There are not a lot of voters out there who are like, man, I really didn't like Trump the first couple of times.
I really, I was okay with Trump the first time.
I didn't vote for him the second time, but now that he's been indicted, I'm totally back in his camp.
The number of swing voters who move into somebody's camp because they are indicted is fairly low.
And that's particularly true if there are more indictments on the way.
There's, again, another case that is percolating over in Georgia about election interference from 2020.
According to the current polling data, the CNN poll released on Monday, it found that 60% of Americans approve of the indictment.
Support for the indictment fell along party lines.
94% of Democrats approved of the decision to indict Trump.
79% of Republicans disapproved of the decision to indict.
But here is the big stat.
62% of independents approved of the decision to indict Trump.
Those are not great numbers if you're hoping for a general election victory for Donald Trump.
The fact that 62% of the people who declare themselves independent say that they are in favor of him being legally prosecuted is probably not a great sign for his re-elect efforts in a general election.
An ABC News Ipsos poll released on Sunday found 45% of Americans believe Trump should be charged with a crime.
32% say he should not be charged.
Again, this is just a proxy for essentially public approval rating because nobody knows what's actually in the indictment.
Those of us who've been following it pretty closely, it's pretty obvious that he shouldn't be indicted.
Again, even the New York Times is admitting it's a novel legal theory that's being tried out right now.
So when they ask the general public, do you like the indictment?
What they're really asking is, do you hate Donald Trump so much that you think he should go to jail?
Maybe.
And a lot of people are like, yeah, probably.
There's a Quinnipiac poll that was conducted before the news of the indictment.
62% of Americans in that poll thought the indictment was mainly motivated by politics.
Doesn't matter.
Majority of people still said that Trump should be indicted, even though it was politics.
Again, this is not a poll on people's legal opinions of the underlying matters at issue.
People don't even know what those are.
People don't understand how these charges work.
All they are saying is, should Trump go to jail?
And a lot of people are saying yes.
Now, none of those people are inside the Republican Party, which is, again, presumably what the Democrats want from all of this.
It is not a coincidence that it is right in the middle of this.
The Democrats on Monday released a 500-page op-ed drop on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
American Bridge 21st Century, which is one of the largest tracking and research groups in progressive politics, compiled the trove.
They released it as a website after spending one year gathering data on DeSantis to brand him as a quote-unquote MAGA extremist.
Now, again, if you are a Democrat and you actually cared about the country and you think that Trump truly is a fascist, Hitlerian figure who is going to, if he were on the brink of victory, wreck the country, wouldn't you want somebody else to get nominated?
But no, the reality is that Democrats want Trump nominated because they think he will be easy to beat, which is why you drop a 500-page oppo dump on his chief opposition inside the Republican Party in a primary, like in the middle of this news cycle.
That is the only reason that you do this.
Meanwhile, the Trump team is putting out ads against DeSantis as well.
hoping to convince voters that DeSantis is caught up in culture wars, unfit for office, utterly unprepared for the public pressure that comes with a contentious Republican presidential primary.
Meanwhile, the Trump team is putting out ads against DeSantis as well.
A Trump super PAC put out an ad on DeSantis and their chief hit on DeSantis is that he is not far left enough.
And this is the beauty of being Donald Trump is that you can legitimately hit everybody Nobody expects any sort of positional consistency from President Trump's campaign.
So here you have President Trump's campaign smacking Ron DeSantis from the far left.
You know Ron DeSantis?
Think again.
In Congress, DeSantis voted three separate times to cut Social Security.
That's right, three times over three years.
Worse, DeSantis voted to cut Medicare two times.
DeSantis even voted to raise the retirement age to 70.
The more you learn about DeSantis, the more you see he doesn't share our values.
He's just not ready to be president.
Yeah, apparently our values are endless entitlement programs.
That's exciting to learn inside the Republican Party, where I've spent literally my entire political career.
The traditional Republican line was that entitlement programs actually do need to be restructured at a certain point because we are going to go bankrupt.
Everyone literally knows this, but apparently this is now an attack ad on Ron DeSantis from Donald Trump's campaign.
I say it again, it is very, very obvious who the left would like to see be the nominee.
They're not hiding the ball here.
They're not pretending.
They're elevating President Trump because they think he'll be easy to beat.
Now again, it could be that this is all karmic revenge.
That they're going to do the same thing they did in 2016.
They're going to do what Hillary did.
They're going to handpick their own nominee on the Republican side.
And then Donald Trump is going to swoop in like an avenging angel and he's going to just mop the floor with these people.
That could theoretically happen.
Is that a likely thing to happen?
If you look at all of the available data, I would say it's a pretty unlikely thing to happen, considering that Trump has not gotten more popular since 2020.
He's gotten significantly less popular since 2020 by every available public opinion poll.
That doesn't mean that Trump can't win.
It just means he's not super duper likely to win, which is precisely why Democrats are pushing him.
So if you are a Republican, you can do two things at once.
One, you can support him against a bunch of Confabulated charges against him.
You can do that.
You can.
You should do that.
You should say these charges are nonsense.
This appears to be a weaponization of the justice system against a person Democrats just hate when people go into office claiming they're going to prosecute people before even deciding what the crime is.
That is obviously a perversion of our justice system.
You can say all those things.
You can also say, I'm not sure that this is the guy who is best calibrated to actually be the Republican nominee.
But that kind of cognitive dissonance is apparently beyond a lot of conservative voters.
And again, I get it.
It's the middle of this issue.
Trump is the center of the story.
All I'm saying is, it is currently April of 2023.
You might want to take a think about who is likely to win a victory against the Democratic agenda.
The person who is less likely to win the general or the person who is more likely to win the general.
It is very obvious, once again, who the Democrats are afraid of.
I mean, Ron DeSantis right now is being attacked by Bob Iger and Disney for a reason.
That is not happening because they are in favor of Ron DeSantis.
It's happening because they don't like Ron DeSantis.
They think that DeSantis is a dangerous figure.
They think he's actually an effective executive.
This is the thing that drives me absolutely nuts right now about the Republican Party.
There's a battle within the Republican Party not about Really principles, but sort of about what it is that we are here to do.
Are we here to win actual policy victories in which we're able to roll back the perverse program of the radical left?
Or are you here to make yourself feel good through a sort of Cathartic support for a person because you like the guy.
I get it.
I totally get it.
I'm with you.
I agree that this what we are seeing right now in Manhattan is a travesty and it is setting the predicate for a for a true crack up in the country.
I agree with all of those things.
Also, you should vote for the person who's most likely to beat the Democrats, because guess what?
Their agenda continues apace.
They are not stopping for one iota.
They're not stopping for one millisecond in pushing for the most radical agenda we have ever seen.
And the more we're talking about Republicans, the less we are talking about that radical agenda.
What is that radical agenda?
Well, yesterday, literally yesterday, senior officials in the Biden administration hosted a roundtable at the White House about affirming trans kids.
United States Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice hosted a number of trans kids and their parents on Friday to discuss efforts in some states to ban so-called sex change surgeries for minors, according to the Daily Wire.
Attendees discussed the joys, hopes, and challenges associated with their supposed identities.
A readout of the meeting from the White House said, quote, As one roundtable participant shared, it feels scary when the politicians elected to represent you don't care about your well-being.
Families participating in today's roundtable highlighted transgender kids can thrive when parents love and affirm their trans children and when trans kids have access to the support they need at their schools and in their communities.
That's right.
Your your child's teacher is going to pick their agenda.
Definitely we should vote based on what feels good and not based on stopping these people and their perverse agenda.
Or, theoretically, we could try to stop them.
It seems like trying to stop them would be a more important thing to do.
How radical and insane is this agenda?
Again, they're doing this in the midst of a news cycle in which a trans person, a person who is a girl who declared that she was a man, decided to murder a bunch of Christian school kids.
Have you heard one statement from the White House about the targeting of Christians on the basis of hatred for biblical doctrine?
Because that's what happened there.
Have you heard one thing about that from the White House?
Not a word.
Not a word.
Instead, what you have heard is them come out in full-scale support of the transgender agenda.
And meanwhile, we are finding out that the shooter in this particular mass shooting had been preparing this thing for months.
According to NBC Philadelphia, police have not established a motive for the shooting.
Oh, well, it's probably a big mystery wrapped in enigma and all.
Both Nashville police and the FBI continue to review writings left behind by the shooter, both in the shooter's vehicle and home.
It is known that the shooter considered the actions of other mass murderers according to the police.
They know perfectly well what is happening here.
I'm generally in favor of not saying the names of shooters, which is why I still have not said the name of the shooter.
I'm also in favor, generally, of not releasing the manifestos of shooters.
But it doesn't work in the sense that if you are going to release manifestos from one side but not manifestos from the other side in order to shield the political agenda of one side, that's not how any of this is supposed to work.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
It has to be one rule for everyone when it comes to these manifestos.
And there's a reason they're not releasing this manifesto yet, and I think we all know what that reason is.
And it's because the White House is pushing the same ideological agenda that boys can become girls and that it is an act of quote-unquote genocide to deny that.
That presumably is what the shooter in this particular case thought, and that's an uncomfortable thing for the media and for the left to have to deal with.
Meanwhile, the entire culture is pushing it.
It's not literally the entire culture.
Wall to wall is pushing the same absurd agenda.
Get to that momentarily.
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Okay, meanwhile, one of the things that is driving me absolutely up a wall is the fact that as we have these contentious and important political battles about, say, Trump being indicted in New York, the left continues its steady cultural march in favor of true radicalism.
This is a target-rich environment for conservatives if they can actually chew gum and walk at the exact same time.
I mean, come on.
As we've been talking about, Bud Light has made Dylan Mulvaney, a man who pretends to be a little girl and dresses up as Audrey Hepburn, one of their brand spokespeople.
In a statement shared with Fox News, the brand now says that the collaboration was designed to quote, authentically connect with audiences.
The statement added, quote, from time to time, We produce unique commemorative cans for brand influencers like Dylan Mulvaney.
This commemorative can was a gift to celebrate a personal milestone.
What was the personal milestone?
Dylan Mulvaney spending 365 days pretending to be a woman, which is just, it's incredible.
Again, the woke bosses, the corporate bosses, they hate their customers and they want to change their customers.
They believe that their customers are a bunch of united fools and they need to be ushered into a new era.
We have reached the point where elite major institutions no longer fear market competition enough to actually have to subject themselves to the desires of their customers.
If you think that the average Bud Light customer, in other words, 95% male and almost 100% non-trans, We think they're desperately clamoring for Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesperson or brand influencer.
You're out of your mind.
But this got pitched inside the halls of Bud Light and they figured, OK, well, we'll get some earned media out of it and probably people will drink our piss water if we do this.
And there's no way that conservatives will stop drinking it because conservatives are too stupid to actually stop drinking this sort of stuff.
So here's the deal, folks.
Stop drinking Bud Light.
First of all, you shouldn't drink it because it's garbage.
Second of all, if you are going to drink a beer, pick literally any other beer.
And if the left says, well, you know, that beer also supports gay rights.
I mean, they tweeted back in 2020.
That's not the same thing.
You got to punish the brand that's in front of you right now.
The brand that is in front of you and currently pushing trans propaganda is Bud Light at a very high level.
And you should punish them for that.
You should punish them with whatever tools at hand.
And the best tool at hand right now is your is your pocketbook.
It is your it is your Credit card.
Do not spend it on Bud Light.
It is that simple because otherwise this is just going to continue.
And it's continuing again.
It is amazing the disconnect between major corporate America and their own customer base.
So as I say, Bud Light is geared toward essentially middle income to lower income white people.
White men.
OK, that is the chief constituency for Bud Light.
It's like frat boys who are 21.
And doing keg stands.
That's who Bud Light is for.
And they're like, oh, Dylan Mulvaney, perfect fit.
Or alternatively, they are trying to change how you think.
Same thing with the Country Music Awards.
So, country music, typically consumed by, you know, white people from rural America.
That's like where it is the biggest.
So you wouldn't think that the CMT Music Awards would be like the chief place where you would expect to see all sorts of trans propaganda.
And yet that is precisely what happened at the CMT Music Awards in Austin, Texas.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Kelsey Ballerini drew heat and praise Sunday night after featuring all-star drag queens from RuPaul's Drag Race during a colorful performance at the 2023 CMT Music Awards.
The Peter Pan and This Feeling singer, who also co-hosted the fan-voted country music awards show, sang her new ride-or-die best friend anthem, If You Go Down, I'm Going Down Too, backed by a quartet of drag race stars dressed as glam mid-century housewives.
Because there's nothing quite like not only promoting the idea that men can be women, women can be men, and that it is an act of good for men to dress as women and prance about in ridiculously parodic fashion.
But also, you have to hijack all of the imagery from the 1950s and then use it against Americans.
That's the most important thing, is to hijack American history and then trans-American history.
That's the thing that's really important for a largely white, rural, conservative, and Christian audience.
This is what was happening at the CMT Music Awards on Sunday night.
Again, they will not stop until every aspect of the culture has been taken over.
Ridiculous.
I'm sorry, this is absurd.
This is crap from the Hunger Games now.
Come on.
This person is singing a country song while being surrounded by men dressed in ridiculous female garb from the 1950s.
Just, just absurd.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the live performance made quite the statement amid a brewing debate over anti-LGBTQ legislation in Ballerini's home state of Tennessee.
With this year's CMT Awards taking place at the Moody Center in Austin, Ballerini appeared emboldened to broadcast her political stance while she is- What a heroine.
What an absolute heroine.
And the fact that, by the way, she doesn't get to make that call on her own.
Presumably it's the people who produce the CMT Awards and the country music industry in general that seeks to promote all of this garbage.
Because they hate their audience.
The people who run these corporations hate their audience.
The very people they are supposed to cater to.
They think that you are a benighted homophobe who hates trans people, and you're a garbage person, and therefore you have to be preached to by the stars of RuPaul's Drag Race, our great moral exemplars in Western civilization.
The people, the most brave people, we have been told by the White House, are people who believe they're members of the opposite sex.
Those are the most brave people.
Small children who are confused about their gender.
The most brave people.
You know, we used to look up to Sports stars, successful business people, mom and dad, your local religious authority.
These are the people we used to look up to.
But now, the people we look up to are people who cross-dress and or pretend to actually be members of the opposite sex.
And every area of the culture must be activated along these lines.
Every area.
Which is why, presumably, you have Daniel Radcliffe, who, has he done anything since Harry Potter?
I'm not aware that he's done anything of note since Harry Potter.
Trying to promote the Trevor Project, which is a trans the kids organization.
Hi, I'm Dan Radcliffe.
This week I was incredibly fortunate to get to meet six young people who agreed to come and share their stories with us.
And also to have a conversation about allyship and the people in their lives who have shown up for them and made a positive impact on their lives and their journeys.
So, yeah.
I'm excited to share that conversation with you.
I would love to talk to you all if you're, depending on how much you want to say, but, like, I'd love to know about all your journeys and, like, discovering who you are.
And I'd also like to talk about some people in your life that may have helped or that you see as an ally in some way.
Like, could I ask you?
Yeah.
Is that throwing you into it too much?
But, like, could you talk to me about, like, how you came to, like, understand who you are?
Removal did not so!
Every, every aspect of the culture.
And by the way, Daniel Radcliffe is a superhero because the person who actually made him famous, J.K.
Rowling, for writing the Harry Potter series actually believes that girls can become boys and boys cannot become girls because she is still more connected to reality than the actor who reads all of the words on the screen.
It's directed at kids, obviously.
That's what that is about.
Cartoon Network is now teaching kids to use pronouns.
they put out this little cartoon on Twitter itself.
How does gender pronouns describe a person's gender identity?
Examples of pronouns are she, her, they, them, and she, zur.
If you're comfortable, you can share your own pronouns, says Cartoon Network.
Hi, my name is Cam.
My pronouns are they, them.
Wow, I thought there was only she, her, and he, him.
No, you ignorant b****!
Oh, no, it says, I'm Alex.
Mine are they, them, too.
I'm Chloe.
The pronouns that describe my identity are she, her.
Cool!
Let's be clear.
All of this is just skin in the game.
It's ritualistic obeisance to an entire worldview.
And the more ridiculous they can make you, the more ridiculously and deeply they can make you bow, the more they will have achieved victory.
This is the goal.
And they have achieved total political victory, by the way.
It's certainly internationally on the left.
Matt Walsh's question, what is woman, has completely broken the brains of people on left because it turns out that they actually can't defend any of their actual positions.
Here, for example, is the New Zealand Prime Minister being asked what a woman is and being utterly confused by the most obvious question in human history.
How do you and how does this government define a woman?
To be honest, Sean, that question's come slightly out of left field for me.
the... well...
Biology, sex, gender, people define themselves.
People define their own genders.
It's all a parody.
This is straight from the office.
New Zealand edition.
Biology?
Sex?
Gender?
What do words mean?
What are words?
Why are words?
Who are we?
Deep down inside.
Why does New Zealand have its own accent?
It's really just Aussie, but not quite.
Why?
Yes, even reality itself must be disturbed by the predations of the left.
In just one second, we'll get to the latest on the economy.
Because here's the thing, real things are happening in the world!
We're all focused in on what makes us feel good about voting, what makes us feel good about politics.
How about we win some victories against bad agendas?
We'll get to more on that in a moment.
First, it is difficult to trust anything or anyone these days.
Literally, our politicians can't define the word woman.
And we're supposed to take them seriously?
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Inflation continues to be at record highs.
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Meanwhile, Joe Biden's economic record is absolute garbage.
Inflation continues to be at record highs.
We still are having a slowing economy.
McDonald's is now laying people off.
According to the Wall Street Journal, McDonald's has temporarily closed its US...
offices this week and has started informing corporate employees about layoffs being made as part of a broader company restructuring.
Some McDonald's workers began to hear about the fate of their jobs on Monday.
The company's corporate vice president of insurance said he was informed on Monday his position was being eliminated and he was leaving the company after 20 years.
McDonald's is laying off hundreds of corporate employees this week, according to people familiar with the McDonald's plan.
The Chicago-based fast food chain sent an internal email last week to U.S.
employees and some international staff that should work from home Monday through Wednesday so they can basically fire people.
So things are going just amazing.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden, remember that time that he said that the Saudis were the worst people on earth and that we should punish them and that they're just awful?
And then the Saudis went across the street to the Chinese?
And then you remember right before the election, the midterm elections, Joe Biden went over there and begged them We really, truly begged them to up their oil supply, and they're like, nah dude, not interested anymore.
Well now, because of the Biden administration's idiotic actions in the Middle East, Saudi has addressed some sort of mild rapprochement with Iran, brokered by China.
And they're punishing the United States by cutting their oil production, which helps, wait for it, China and Russia.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a Saudi Arabia-led production cut vaulted crude prices 6.3% higher Monday in their steepest one-day increase in more than a year.
But with oil markets facing a host of challenges, including a possible recession, only the most bullish analysts see prices touching $100 a barrel soon.
So again, the fact that the economy is sinking is the only thing that is keeping the oil from truly spiking through the roof right now.
The swing's out of complication for central bankers balancing the need to tackle inflation with worries about the health of the banking system.
If crude prices continue to rise, they're likely to feed into higher gasoline bills for drivers, which boosts inflation, which in turn is going to generate higher interest rates, which in turn is going to generate more economic recession, presumably.
Apparently, the production caught by the Saudi-led group showcased how Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is increasingly giving priority to a nationalist energy policy over U.S.
concerns.
Why, almost as though this idiotic administration alienated one of our chief sources of energy, and we are now feeling the cost of that.
Why, it's, again, well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of Joe Biden's own stupid actions.
Fareed Zakaria, writing at the Washington Post, is now positing the possibility that Russia, China, Brazil are actually going to form an alternative to the United States dollar as the world currency.
According to Zakaria, the dollar is America's superpower.
It gives Washington unrivaled economic and political muscle.
The United States can slap sanctions on countries unilaterally, freezing them out of large parts of the world economy.
When Washington spends freely, it can be certain its debt, usually in the form of T-bills, will be bought up by the rest of the world.
However, however, the dollar may be in a bit of trouble.
So Zakaria says the dollar dominance is firmly entrenched for a lot of good reasons.
A globalized economy needs a single currency for ease and efficiency.
The dollar is also stable.
That's why China's efforts to expand the yuan's role internationally have not worked.
Again, the Chinese economy is not particularly stable, but.
There are a lot of countries that are starting to diversify a little bit away from the dollar.
The share of dollars in global central bank reserves has dropped from 70% 20 years ago to less than 60% today and falling steadily.
The Europeans and Chinese are trying to build international payment systems outside of the SWIFT system so they can avoid sanctions.
Saudi Arabia has flirted with the idea of pricing its oil in yuan.
India is settling most of its oil purchases from Russia in non-dollar currencies.
Digital currencies might be another alternative.
Again, as you sink the American economy, and as you break all the ties that bind you to allies, it turns out that they look elsewhere for economic help, and that actually has some real consequences for the American economy.
The good news is that the left continues to be completely disconnected from actual economic reality, which is kind of the story of every Ezra Klein column over at the New York Times.
So he has a piece over at the New York Times called The Problem with Everything Bagel Liberalism, talking about how you can't go for everything, everywhere, all at once, essentially.
And even though he is saying that you can't pursue, say, DEI and economic growth at the same time, he tries to pretend that you actually can.
He talks with Gina Raimondo, the Secretary of Commerce, about the fact that, for example, in trying to generate American-made microchips, Forcing companies that are going to create factories over here to have, say, childcare is an idiotic thing.
That's not something the American taxpayer should be overly concerned about.
If it's a national security issue, you just fund the making of the chips, not the childcare or the diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives associated with forcing companies to do those things.
But Gina Raimondo says no.
Every one of those requirements, or they're not really requirements, are for factors or criteria we think relate directly to the effectiveness of the project.
The unemployment rate in the building trades is basically zero.
If you don't find a way to attract women to become builders and pipefitters and welders, you won't be successful.
You have to be thinking about childcare.
So, Raimondo is now suggesting that we have to spend more money on less competitive workers in order to boost the economy, When Klein pointed out that this costs us more money, she said, I was thinking too narrowly.
Quote, I consider it a fact that a more diverse workforce is a more productive workforce.
Well, you may consider it a fact, but it is not true.
I'm sorry that there is no evidence whatsoever that simple diversity is the key factor in productivity.
There's no data to back that.
Diversity may be some sort of in the air additive, but certainly it is not the key product in actual efficiency.
And why would the skin color of the people who are producing product matter particularly?
But Ezra Klein's like, I don't disagree with her.
Well, why not?
I mean, clearly, if you make things more expensive, they happen to be more expensive.
And then you're all surprised when they get more expensive.
And you blame systemic racism or something.
This administration is garbage on policy.
And this would be an excellent time for Republicans to point that out.
However, it turns out that Republicans, unfortunately, are highly distractible.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like today.
So, when it came to the Nashville school shooting, the left decided on two Narratives.
Neither of them were the truth.
One of them is that guns were to blame and therefore you can't have more guns at schools in order to protect against people who are attempting to murder school children.
And two is that trans people are actually the victims when a trans identifying person murders a bunch of school kids.
When it comes to narrative number one, the left has taken the bizarre position that it's a bad idea to have armed guards at schools.
Dana Bash tried to make that point to Dan Crenshaw and it didn't go amazing for her.
So the answer is more guns?
No, the answer is armed guards.
The answer is armed guards, right?
Armed guards, yes.
The kind of guns that protect the president, that protect you all at CNN.
Is it easy to get into your headquarters at CNN?
Absolutely not.
There's armed guards there.
There's single points of entry.
I think we should look at our schools as a place that is precious and have the same kind of security that your corporate offices do.
Well, that seems like a pretty good point.
It turns out that they have a lot of security over at the CNN building.
I know, I've been there before.
So, you actually have to check in, they have armed guards at the front, and all the rest.
But that's the way it works for our elites.
Our kids should not have the same protections that they have.
They play by a different set of rules.
Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
Okay, so.
Big controversy has now erupted because apparently people watched a women's basketball game.
So first of all, congratulations to women's basketball on people finally watching a women's basketball game.
Presumably a lot of that has to do with the ESPN was really featuring the female NCAA tournament heavily, like more than the actual men's NCAA tournament on their homepage, for example.
And so people actually watched the final four in the women's NCAA tournament.
And there were two players of note.
One is a woman named Caitlin Clark, who plays for Iowa.
And the other is a woman named Angel Rees, who plays for LSU.
These were the two teams that faced off in the NCAA Finals.
And the LSU Tigers defeated the Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 to win their first national championship program.
But that's not where the controversy was.
The controversy is then in Caitlin Clark, who's a very good player apparently.
She, in an earlier, again, I wouldn't know these people from Adam because I don't watch women's basketball because I would rather stick my face in an oven.
But in any case, Caitlin Clark, she was apparently playing a little bit earlier in the tournament and at a certain point she taunted an opposing player by doing the John Cena Hand gesture.
John Cena apparently does this hand gesture in front of his face that you can't see me.
Hand gesture again.
Not a WWE fan because I have children and a real life.
In any case, Caitlin Clarke did this a little bit earlier in the tournament.
It sets the predicate for the actual controversy.
Okay, so, there she is.
You can see her.
And here is Angel Reese, then responding to the end of the game.
And Angel Reese does the you-can't-see-me motion to Kaitlyn Clark near the end of the victory, and also points to her ring finger, suggesting, I just won a national championship, and you did not.
And everyone went nuts on Angel Reese.
A lot of people went crazy on Angel Reese, talking about how it was disrespectful and terrible.
It was the end of the game.
The game was already over.
It's one thing to do it in the heat of the moment.
It's another thing to do it, you know, previously thought out and all the rest.
Reese said, I was waiting.
Caitlin Clark is a hell of a player for sure, but I don't take disrespect lightly.
She disrespected Alexis Morris and my girls, South Carolina.
They're my SEC girls too.
Y'all not going to disrespect them either.
She said, I wanted to pick her pocket, but I had a moment at the end of the game and I was in my bag.
I was in my moment.
I don't know what it means.
I don't know what any of that means, but do I have serious qualms about sports mockery?
No, who cares?
Like, there were a bunch of people who got really, really upset about all of this stuff.
And because they got upset about this stuff, because apparently they didn't realize that Caitlin Clarke had done it earlier in the tournament, or they didn't like that this happened after the game or something, this, of course, prompted spasms of apoplexy.
Because if you got upset about it, this meant you were a racist.
So, I'm annoyed with everyone on all sides of this particular stupid issue.
Here was Stephen A. Smith torching the backlash to the Angel Reese taunt.
We all know that there's a white-black issue here.
Because the fact of the matter is, when Caitlyn did it, people were celebrating it.
And they were talking about nothing but her greatness.
But then the second a sister stepped up and threw it back in her face, now you got half the basketball world saying, well you know what, that's not the classiest thing to do.
And the fact that that hasn't been brought up tells us a lot about our society as a whole.
Yes, Shanae Ogumike is not taking it there.
I'm taking it there.
You know exactly what the hell you're doing as people when you want to bring up how Angel Reese acted, but you don't want to bring up how Caitlyn Clark acted.
Okay, so do I think that it's racism that people think that there is a slight difference?
I mean, it does look like there's a slight difference there.
Do I think that Angel reached in anything wrong in doing that?
No.
Do I care at all?
No.
Should you care at all?
No.
I mean, guess what?
Trash talking in sports is kind of a thing.
It's been a rather large thing in sports since Muhammad Ali was doing it.
I mean, going back to like the early 1960s.
So I'm not sure exactly why we are supposed to be shocked or appalled by anything that happened right here.
The only thing that I find shocking and appalling is Joe Biden.
So Joe Biden, who is, of course, the greatest doctor in American history, On Monday, she said that she wanted to invite the Iowa women's basketball team also to the White House, as well as LSU.
Which, by the way, is so unbelievably toned up.
So the Iowa team is largely white, and the LSU team is largely black.
And so a lot of black fans of the LSU team are like, what the hell?
Like, if the races were reversed, would Jill Biden be inviting the other team also to the White House?
Is it going to be a beer summit, exactly?
Like, Iowa lost.
You don't invite the losing team in the NCAA championship also to the White House.
They're the people who lost.
You invite the winning team to the White House, obviously.
Joe Biden said, I know we'll have champions come to the White House.
We always do.
We hope LSU will come.
But you think, you know, I'm going to tell Joe, I think Iowa should come too because they played such a good game.
Man, watching Democratic women in positions of high power talk about basketball is just painful.
Whether it is Kamala Harris showing up at the NCAAs to lecture A team that just lost by 30 points on how they tried super hard.
They tried super hard.
Whether it is Joe Biden now inviting the losing team to the list.
Man, that is some bad stuff.
Oof.
Unpleasant.
Speaking of unpleasant, one final thing that I hate.
So Colin Kaepernick, a person who just will not go away because obviously he has to make a living somehow.
He has now decided that the best way to make a living is to go full Prince Harry and just rip on his family.
So the white family that adopted him, raised him, it gave him every privilege and allowed him to become a successful athlete.
until he actually turned out to not be a very good football player and got benched for the immortal Blaine Gabbert and then knelt and became a national hero because that's how you become a national hero in America. Well now he is doing the I hate my parents tour, which is rather teenage of him. Here he was talking about how he had trouble calling out his white parents when they were being problematic. How about this dude? They gave you literally everything. They are your parents and this is utterly classless and gross. It is very difficult for people to have a
nuance conversation around it. Yeah, I.
Yeah, the people that love you and that you love can also perpetuate very problematic elements.
Right, right.
And those things can exist at the same time.
Right.
And part of it is like, how do you grapple with that?
Right.
How do you navigate that?
Right.
And especially at a young age, where it's like, Are you equipped to navigate that?
And are your parents equipped to navigate that?
What a victim.
What an absolute victim.
And nothing says class quite like going on broadcast and ripping on your parents.
Just a classy thing to do.
Alrighty, folks.
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