Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

April 14, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:04:31

Shocking Details Emerge As Pentagon Leaker Arrested

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Well, after the media speculated for a couple of weeks here that all of these documents that had been released from America's national security classified documents cache all about what was going on in Ukraine, and these documents contain some pretty vital national security secrets about how the United States monitors other countries, what exactly was going on in Ukraine, and all the rest, the media speculated For a while here, that this was Russia, because this is the way that the media do their business.
	They basically do the bidding of whatever administration is in power, so long as it is a Democrat.
	And this has been the case for quite a while.
	If you go back, and we will, in the history of leaked documents, whenever a Democratic administration is at the helm, and there is somebody who leaks, that person becomes persona non grata for about the next 10 minutes.
	And then, if that person, say, transitions, like Chelsea Manning transitions, then that person becomes hero of the republic.
	If, however, the leak is against something right-wing, then the generalized perception is that the leaker is super bad and must be punished, or we must never identify the leaker.
	The media's treatment of leaks when it comes to national security questions is very questionable.
	But the big story of the day is, of course, the arrest of the actual leaker.
	Who, it turns out, was not a member of the Russian National Security Force in any way, shape, or form.
	Again, Reuters had reported on April 7th, as just last week, quote, So, it's always fun and games.
	One of the reasons the American public seem pretty blasé about national security leaks is that members of administrations seem to do this all the time to benefit those administrations.
	So, just to get the timeline correct, about a week and a half ago, all these documents get leaked.
	It's a major national security crisis for the United States.
	And the media immediately run to the narrative that it must be the Russians who are doing it because this ties in with their broader narrative that everything bad in the universe must be blamed on the Russians because, of course, the Russians are to blame for Donald Trump.
	So, the person who actually was arrested yesterday is a Massachusetts-era national guardsman named Jack Teixeira.
	This particular situation is kind of weird in the sense that the leaker did not actually go to members of the media in order to disclose this information.
	So typically when you look at large-scale leaks, those large-scale leaks happen to members of the media.
	to video games and guns, the biggest national security breach in at least 10 years. This particular situation is kind of weird in the sense that the leaker did not actually go to members of the media in order to disclose this information. So typically when you look at large-scale leaks, those large-scale leaks happen to members of the media. So for example, when it came to Chelsea Manning, Chelsea Manning was working And we'll see you next time.
	with Wikileaks.
	I was working with Julian Assange to get those documents out.
	Edward Snowden was working with people like Glenn Greenwald to get those documents out.
	This guy apparently was just on a Reddit board, basically, and started releasing national security documents for the bleeps and giggles of it to all of his friends.
	According to the New York Post, law enforcement officers swarmed the home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, about 20 miles east of Providence, Rhode Island, hours after multiple reports sketched out to share his key role in a Discord channel called Thugs Shaker Central, where the files first popped up earlier this year.
	So one of the things that was unique about this situation is here the media actually helped track down the leaker.
	The media actually started putting out very detailed reports about the entire investigation into who the leaker was.
	They started actually leaking out who the guy could be by name before the actual arrest happened.
	So this is a media that instead of, you know, focusing in on the On the actual content of the leaks, which is what the media usually do when there's a national security breach.
	First, they focus in on the content of the leaks, and then afterward, they start to focus in on who the person was.
	And all of that is sort of backdropped by which administration it helps or harms.
	In this particular case, it was obvious that these leaks harmed the Biden administration.
	They harmed the Biden administration's agenda, so the media immediately went to, okay, who is this person, and how do we go after this human being?
	The footage has now been released of the arrest of this leaker.
	The guy, who's 21, is wearing like gym shorts and a t-shirt and being taken out of mommy's house.
	So obviously a life success story here.
	that we've now seen publicly.
	But, you know, they managed to narrow it down pretty quickly over the course of days.
	They spent the weekend doing interviews with people who are associated with this group that was online on Discord.
	And so they narrowed, they honed in on Teixeira very, very quickly.
	Okay, the reason that Teixeira himself has become, again, the focus as opposed to the actual classified documents themselves, right?
	Remember when Edward Snowden released NSA documents detailing surveillance of American citizens through metadata and all the rest, that was like the blanket coverage.
	When it came to Chelsea Manning's leaks of Iraq and Afghanistan, that was the blanket coverage.
	It was the content of the leaks.
	In this particular case, the content of the leaks has been kind of obscured in favor of who this person is.
	And the reason for that is because this person is perceived by the media as right-wing.
	That is the actual reason why the media are focused in on the person themselves.
	So according to the Washington Post, quote, And allegedly leaked U.S.
	secrets.
	Now again, when it was Chelsea Manning, it was a person struggling with personal identity problems.
	It was a person struggling with a trans identity and gender identity issues.
	It was somebody who was really just trying to deal with his own personal issues.
	And he was becoming a her.
	And eventually, of course, President Obama would commute the sentence for Chelsea Manning based solely on the fact that Chelsea Manning says that he is a chick.
	That is the way that that worked.
	Again, politics is inevitably imbued into all of these particular issues.
	When it came to Edward Snowden, Snowden is more controversial, even though the truth is that of all the leaks, the major leaks that we've seen in the last 20 years, Snowden's leaks are at least arguably for the benefit of American citizens.
	Very difficult to claim that Chelsea Manning's leaks were for the benefit of American citizens.
	You can claim that at least some of the stuff that Snowden was releasing into the public view dealt with things that affected American citizens. This particular leak has nothing to do with American citizens.
	I mean it has to do with our foreign policy interests, but it doesn't have to do with the government targeting American citizens the way the NSA was apparently targeting American citizens through metadata.
	We'll get in just one second into the character of the leaker, which again, this all ties into how this this particular leak is covered.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
	One thing is for certain, there are people out there who are watching everything you do, whether it is the government or whether it is leakers.
	There are all these people out there who are looking for your data.
	Why not protect your data?
	The way you should with ExpressVPN.
	Are you aware that your browsing data is constantly being tracked and monitored?
	Have you ever stopped to think about who has access to that information and what they might be doing with it?
	If you're like most people, you probably haven't given it tons of thought, but the truth is your browsing data can reveal a lot about you, your interests, habits, locations, even your identity.
	Every time you visit a website, click on a link, or make a purchase online, you're leaving a digital trail that can be monetized by advertisers and data brokers.
	They use that information to target you with ads and promotions that are tailored specifically to you, and the more data they have, the more accurately they can actually target you.
	With ExpressVPN, you can encrypt your internet traffic and hide your browsing data from prying eyes, which makes it much, much more difficult for anyone to intercept your data or track your online activity.
	With lightning-fast speeds, unlimited bandwidth, easy-to-use software, ExpressVPN is the perfect choice for anyone looking to protect their online privacy and security.
	I love ExpressVPN.
	It is super easy to use.
	You click one button, put it on your phone, click one button, you're done.
	Secure your online activity by visiting ExpressVPN.com slash Ben today.
	That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Ben.
	Get an extra three months for free.
	ExpressVPN.com slash Ben.
	Okay, so, again, the media are focusing in on the identity of this person.
	Here is Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, announcing the arrest of Jack Teixeira yesterday.
	Today the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information.
	Teixeira is an employee of the United States Air Force National Guard.
	FBI agents took Tashira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident.
	He will have an initial appearance at the U.S.
	District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
	I want to thank the FBI, Justice Department prosecutors, and our colleagues at the Department of Defense for their diligent work on this case.
	Okay, so who exactly is Jack Teixeira?
	According to the Washington Post, patriotic zeal appeared common around Airman First Class Shaq Tishera 21, who had followed in the footsteps of numerous family members to join the military.
	Tishera, slim and boyish, and photographs taken in his blue dress uniform, had been assigned to manage and troubleshoot computers and communications systems for the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base, according to the Air Force. Now, it should be clear at this point that classified information is available to way too many people.
	I mean, this is like a low-level 21-year-old serving in the Air National Guard and suddenly he can release these extremely detailed national security documents talking about what exactly we are doing in Ukraine.
	And again, some of the revelations about what we're doing in Ukraine are kind of fascinating.
	It turns out that we actually do have people on the ground in Ukraine.
	They're not in combat positions.
	They're apparently in support positions at the U.S.
	Embassy in Ukraine.
	But what the documents also show is that a lot of the talk about how well Ukraine is doing in the war seems to be somewhat exaggerated.
	They're apparently Estimates that say up to 130,000 Ukrainians have been killed in this war and about 230,000 Russians have been killed in this war.
	It is also clear that the United States has been leveraging other allies, particularly allies in the Middle East, in order to do their bidding.
	So the United States was pressuring Jordan over supporting Ukraine and Jordan was worried about ticking off the Chinese.
	They're pressuring Israel apparently behind the scenes to give Iron Dome technology to Ukraine.
	They're trying to blackmail Israel with essentially saying that we won't support a strike on Iran if Iran develops nuclear weapons unless you do stuff like this.
	The U.S.' 's hopes for a future Ukrainian total victory are apparently pretty slim.
	This is some of the stuff that's just in the documents.
	One of the more interesting parts of the documents suggests that Egypt was secretly planning to supply rockets to Russia because everybody in the Middle East is now triangulating because of the absence of Joe Biden in the Middle East.
	Because the U.S.' 's presence in the Middle East went from facilitating agreements between American allies in the Middle East to let's pull completely out and then just pretend that everything's going to be fine.
	China has now filled that gap.
	China filling that gap means that places like Egypt, which is an erstwhile American ally we give a lot of aid to, was actively considering sending tens of thousands of rockets to Russia.
	South Korea was torn on delivering weapons to Ukraine as well.
	All this stuff was in the documents.
	But again, the focus has turned from what was in the documents to the person who leaked the documents.
	And that is specifically because of the identity of the person who leaked the documents, as we'll get into right now.
	So the Washington Post says, investigators think there's more troubling reckless sides to Shara and the fallout is only beginning.
	Tashara has been identified as the suspected leaker of hundreds of photographs of highly classified military documents that have proliferated across the internet in the past week.
	The leak, probably the military's largest in at least a decade, has revealed secrets about everything from gaps in Ukrainian air defenses to the specifics of how the United States spies on its allies and partners.
	Tashara used online handles including JackTheDripper and ExcaliburEffect, posted the images to Discord, a chat platform popular with gamers.
	Which, again, actually follows a pattern.
	Chelsea Manning apparently did some of the same sort of stuff.
	Chelsea Manning was very active in sort of gamer circles.
	Like some others interviewed for the story, they spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
	So they've already started with, the reason this guy is doing this is because he is an anti-Semitic racist.
	So the rule is that if you are a person who leaks information that is damaging to Republicans, we treat you as an absolute hero.
	If you leak information that's damaging to Democrats, we uncover every single thing about you, and then we hold your feet to the fire until such time as you come out as a trans person like Chelsea Manning.
	Apparently, one friend described Teixeira in an interview as patriotic and about Catholic and a libertarian with an interest in guns and doubts about America's future.
	The friend said he met Teixeira before 2020 on a Discord server mainly focused on guns and libertarian politics and bonded over their shared interest in Glock handguns and Catholicism.
	Apparently, he started sharing classified documents on the Discord server around February 2022 at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, which he saw as an oppressing battle between the two countries that should have more in common than keeping them apart.
	Again, this is a pretty common view on some parts of the right, which believe that the Russian state, for some odd reason, is standing up for Christianity, despite Russia's actual crackdown on Christianity inside its own borders.
	Sharing the classified documents was meant to, quote, educate people who he thought were his friends and could be trusted.
	Free from the propaganda swirling outside, according to the friend, the men and boys on the server agreed never to share the documents outside the server because they might harm US interests.
	So again, in this particular case...
	This kid, apparently, was putting out material to people he thought were his friends.
	This is not quite the same thing as Snowden, who is actively coordinating a leak, or Chelsea Manning actively coordinating a leak.
	And I keep coming back to the fact that the differential treatment by the media of particular leaks is what leads to the generalized belief in the American public that pretty much all leaks are okay.
	Now, here's the thing.
	We do have to have national security secrets in the United States so we can actually pursue a successful foreign policy.
	In times of conflict, in times of war, it is very important that the enemy not have access to intelligence about what exactly the United States is doing.
	Now, there's a couple of problems with that.
	One is that you can have a government that keeps way too many secrets, and there's no question that the United States government is in the constant process of over-classification.
	So much of the stuff that is considered classified really ought not be classified.
	This is one of the things that Donald Trump has said about the classified documents in his home.
	Joe Biden, by the way, has basically admitted this about the classified documents in his home.
	It turns out the U.S.
	government classifies stuff for like 50 years for no apparent reason.
	But it is also true that there are a lot of things the U.S.
	government does that ought not be in the public view because they actually affect how we do, for example, foreign policy.
	Again, the best case that can be made with regard to intelligence leaks are ones that affect American citizens' rights.
	But the idea that intelligence leaks should target what the United States is doing vis-a-vis spying on other countries, and that the American citizen is supposed to know that, and that foreign countries are supposed to know that, that is a real problem.
	But, as I say, the media's treatment of leaks is incredibly disparate depending on the target and source of the leaks.
	We'll get to more of that in just one second.
	First, are you tired of overpaying for your phone service?
	Well, PureTalk can fix that for you.
	They offer top-notch coverage at an affordable price.
	The average family saves over $900 per year with PureTalk.
	You can get the same exact coverage you're used to at half the rate you're currently paying.
	PureTalk offers a variety of phones to choose from, including the latest iPhones and Samsung Galaxy devices.
	With a range of affordable plans to choose from, you can find the perfect options for your needs.
	Get unlimited talk, text, and plenty of data.
	for just $30 a month with no contract.
	Switch over to PeerTalk in as little as 10 minutes.
	Keep your phone and your phone number.
	Their U.S.
	customer service team is available to answer any questions you might have and help you make the most of your plan.
	The CEO and chairman of PeerTalk is a U.S.
	military veteran.
	When you become a PeerTalk customer, you're given the option to support America's warrior partnership in an organization that works to prevent veteran suicide.
	Not only will you save a lot of money, you'll also get the satisfaction of knowing that you're supporting an amazing American company.
	I'm a customer.
	I use PeerTalk for all my business phone calls.
	You should do the same thing.
	Don't settle for less than the best.
	Go to PeerTalk.com.
	enter promo code Shapiro, save 50% off your very first month of coverage. That's PeerTalk.com, promo code Shapiro. PeerTalk is simply smarter wireless.
	All right, so as I say, the disparate treatment is kind of amazing. So for example, it is now coming out that the US government actually was leaking out, for example, all sorts of secrets on Chinese spy balloons.
	And we know exactly who's doing it.
	Is this person going to be prosecuted?
	I have serious doubts.
	According to the Washington Free Beacon, Pentagon official Colin Kahl leaked classified information about the Chinese spy balloon to deflect blame about the Biden administration's mishandling of the situation, according to two Republican senators.
	I mean, that's classified national security information.
	Like whether Chinese spy balloons crossed into American airspace, how we dealt with all of that, whether we should have shot at it.
	Like, that's all classified information.
	But Colin Call isn't being prosecuted, so far as I'm aware.
	Joe Biden appointed Kahl his Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and he actually provided reporters with classified information disclosing that Chinese spy balloons may have infiltrated the United States during the Trump administration, according to two senators, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Marco Rubio of Florida.
	Kahl's been named as the source of these leaks for the first time.
	The leaks were provided to reporters and appeared in news stories at CNN, Bloomberg, and the Washington Post.
	All of that was an attempt to shift blame away from the Biden administration for allowing a Chinese spy balloon to cross Unmolested across the entirety of the continental United States.
	Is Colin Call going to be prosecuted by the DOJ?
	I have serious questions about whether that is in fact the case.
	Has anybody been prosecuted over the massive IRS leaks that we saw over the course of the last couple of years targeting rich people and Donald Trump?
	By tax records that were just revealed from the IRS.
	That investigation has come to no conclusion.
	No one knows how they got out there, which is weird since we should be able to track that down.
	Or is it possible that no one's focusing on that because they don't care because it damages all of their political opponents?
	How about that abortion decision?
	How about the fact that you had a member of the Supreme Court cadre who actively leaked the outcome of the case overruling Roe v. Wade months in advance of the actual decision being released, leading to not only protests, but an actual assassination attempt at Justice Kavanaugh's home.
	And apparently, there's just no way to uncover who did this.
	It's kind of amazing how we delegate which resources we are going to use to track down leakers.
	Now, I'm fine with the idea that we should track down all the leakers.
	If you have a law, you enforce the law.
	It's the selective tracking down of leakers that I have some worries about, and it's also, again, the disparate media treatment of who is doing the leaking.
	I mean, Chelsea Manning, Leaked documents that were highly damaging to America's national security in both Afghanistan and Iraq and then ended up being commuted.
	Their sentence was his sentence was commuted.
	Chelsea Manning's by Barack Obama, an administration under whom he leaked.
	He ended up having his sentence commuted and he ran for Congress as a Democrat.
	Chelsea Manning.
	Daniel Ellsberg has been a hero for decades for revealing the Pentagon Papers going back to the 1970s, which completely undermined U.S.
	national security and the war in Vietnam, leading in large part to the surrender of the war in Vietnam and the subsequent slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, as well as the takeover of Cambodia by Pol Pot.
	I mean, there are real consequences to this sort of stuff, but who is a hero and who is a villain almost entirely depends on the politics of what is being leaked in the first place.
	Meanwhile, the Biden administration, they've decided that the outcome of this is, we need more feds.
	We need more feds on the web, is the answer to all of this.
	According to NBC News, the Biden administration is now looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chat rooms after U.S.
	intelligence agencies failed to spot classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks.
	So they did a crap job.
	So their answer is more feds.
	The possible change in the intelligence gathering process is just one potential shift as officials scramble to determine not only how the documents leaked, but also how to prevent another damaging incident.
	Well, it turns out that their prior strategy of blaming the Russians is a giant failure.
	President Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were briefed about the disclosure last week, according to administration officials, but the secret documents appeared online in early March on the Discord social media app.
	According to Bellingcat, the open source investigative group, some documents may have appeared as early as January.
	Senior administration officials leaked to the media about how unhappy they were.
	Nobody is happy about this, said a senior administration official.
	The administration is now looking at expanding the universe of online sites that intelligence agencies and law enforcement authorities track.
	And they're looking, presumably, for new authorities in order to monitor what everyone does online.
	Watching a public chatroom is fair game.
	Law enforcement agencies do not currently have legal authority to monitor a private online chatroom without probable cause, according to former officials.
	But you can see the Biden administration attempting to go back and change all of that.
	So, all of that is just wonderful.
	Naturally, the worst available outcome will be the one that is pursued.
	Meanwhile, chaos continues to reign in Tennessee, where Democrat Justin Pearson, our newest fake racial hero, has been reinstated to the Tennessee legislature.
	Pearson and fellow Democrat Justin Jones were expelled last week.
	You remember they were expelled because they decided to take part in a storming of the Tennessee state capitol, in which they ended up in the well of the state legislature, shouting on bullhorns and holding up signs.
	And then they were expelled.
	And then it turns out the process for being unexpelled is you just go back to basically the city council, and the city council just reappoints you, and then they come back in triumph.
	We'll get to all of that momentarily.
	First, as many of you know, our family recently got a very cute dog.
	Happy is doing really well.
	He's a very cute dog.
	Kids really, really love him.
	And we all want Happy to be as healthy as possible, which is the reason I'm very excited about Rough Greens.
	Naturopathic doctor Dennis Black, the founder of Rough Greens, is focused on improving the health of every dog in America.
	The dog food you've been giving your dog is dead food.
	It doesn't have all that much nutritional value.
	Rough Greens, however, is a supplement that contains all the necessary vitamins, minerals, probiotics, omega oils, digestive enzymes, and antioxidants your dog needs.
	You don't have to go out and buy new dog food.
	You just sprinkle rough greens on their food every single day, it makes it super easy.
	Dog owners everywhere are raving about rough greens.
	It supports healthy joints, improves at bad breath, boosts energy levels, and so much more.
	Now they say that you are what you eat, and that is also true for your dog.
	So you should do the same thing that we've been doing for Happy.
	Again, he's a very, very cute dog.
	If you want your dog to be cuter, then you probably should do the same thing you do for our cute doggie.
	Naturopathic doctor, Dennis Black, is so confident rough greens will improve your dog's health, he's offering my listeners a free Jumpstart trial bag so your dog can try it.
	A free Jumpstart Trial Bag can be at your door in just a few business days.
	Go to freeroughgreens.com slash Ben.
	That's free.
	R-U-F-F greens.com slash Ben today.
	Okay, so.
	The Memphis area officials who were able to reinstate Justin Pearson to the Tennessee legislature did so on Wednesday.
	The seven members of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners present for the vote unanimously approved reinstating Pearson at a special meeting in Memphis.
	And of course, Pearson then went out and addressed the crowd.
	And I gotta say, this dude, the civil rights hero cosplay on this guy is so strong.
	It's truly amazing.
	And he's getting more wild with each camera that is put upon him.
	So when it started with one camera and he was just in college, he's just like a normal guy, you know, like a normal person.
	And then there were two cameras and he started getting a little wilder.
	And then there were like five cameras and he went crazy.
	And there was pictures of him and video of him that we played a little bit earlier on in the week, preaching at a church, talking about mother God and going like totally wild.
	Well, that was nothing in comparison to what he did over the course of the last 24 hours.
	He went out there triumphantly.
	There were a hundred cameras on the set, not five, a hundred.
	And so he just went full, I mean, full bore.
	And this is like, this is chewing the scenery, Jack Nicholson style from The Departed.
	I mean, this is like, wow.
	He just goes for it.
	Here we go.
	I believe in the vision of people who've been ostracized, coming to the well.
	I see white folk and black folk.
	I see queer folk and straight folk.
	I mean, Bristol and Portland, they are from the back.
	They are from the back of the back.
	You're the magic justice.
	You're the magic justice.
	That's a lot of arm movement, man.
	He's, like, dancing.
	He's jumping up and down.
	Wow, that is a man who is very active with his arms when he is cosplaying in the civil rights movement.
	That's not even like a good impression of MLK.
	It's certainly not a good impression of Malcolm X. That's a terrible impression of both of them.
	It's like Saturday Night Live-esque.
	It's so crazily over the top that it is wildly off-putting.
	By the way, he's not the only person who is cosplaying.
	Meanwhile, Representative Justin Jones, who's the other guy who got reinstated, he's also cosplaying.
	So he got up in the General Assembly over in Tennessee to decry another bill that was being pushed. These guys are the new civil rights heroes and then we're gonna it turns out that um yeah they are they're both fakes. Here we go.
	Representative Reagan, do you believe that it is it is racist to prohibit concepts on systemic racism in the history of America?
	Chairman Reagan.
	Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	Once again, my belief is in God.
	I settle other things with facts and data.
	The fact of the matter is, sir, this bill is not racist.
	It is not unconstitutional.
	Representative Jones.
	We keep bringing up God, but God says in Isaiah 10, Woe to those who pass unjust laws that hurt the poor and rob them of their rights.
	And so stop using God to justify your bigotry.
	Stop using God to justify hatred and racism.
	Stop using God to put a- Representative Jones.
	You are out of order.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And then he goes on to suggest that Tennessee Republicans want to reenact the Civil War, which, uh, no.
	Like, what?
	What?
	Here he was with Jake Tapper.
	Just surreal to hear that, to hear the commentary and to realize that for them they really are reenacting the Civil War.
	You heard Representative Sopicke say, you know, we need to come hard against them, you know, because if we don't, Tennessee will fall and the Southeast will fall and the left will take over.
	And he said, you know, I hate that I have to see, you know, Jones in these sacred halls with the greats of Tennessee still.
	And so you hear this mentality that is very extreme and very alarming.
	I mean, we're dealing with people who want to reenact the Civil War, who don't believe someone of, you know, like me or Representative Pearson, young black lawmakers even deserve to be in the legislature.
	Oh, it's reenacting the Civil War.
	I noticed that that was not really about what the black people could be in a state legislature.
	It was about whether they would be slaves.
	That's not even the... If you want to say reenacting the civil rights, the pre-civil rights movement, that's a bad argument.
	Reenacting the Civil War is just completely... Okay, but when I say cosplaying, I just want to bring you the past of Justin Jones.
	Like, we don't have to go back that far.
	So it turns out that in 2020, Justin Jones was actually caught in the middle of Black Lives Matter riots stopping cars and assaulting drivers.
	Allegedly.
	Here we go.
	He was actually indicted on two counts of reckless endangerment.
	You can see him repeatedly assaulting a citizen with a traffic cone.
	It's good times.
	He said it's a false narrative and he's not violent.
	Yep.
	There we go.
	Good times.
	There he is picking up the traffic cone and pushing it into the window of a driver for no reason.
	That would just be like a person who is trying to drive to work.
	This person is now in the state legislature in Tennessee.
	So things are working out just amazingly well.
	What is amazing in all of this is that what you've been told is that the Tennessee Statehouse is doing nothing about gun violence, right?
	This is what was supposed to be the driving factor behind all the chaos in Tennessee.
	Well, there's only one problem.
	House Bill 322 passed the House with bipartisan support.
	It was a vote of 95 to 4.
	What exactly did that bill do?
	Again, it was 95 to 4.
	So what exactly did it do?
	It required Additional emergency drills in both public and private schools.
	Increasing security collaboration with state and local law enforcement.
	It would require every public school to lock exterior doors while students are present subject to penalties for repeat violations.
	Conduct annual incident command and bus safety drills in addition to already require armed intruder drills.
	Requires all new built public school facilities to install classroom door locks and secure visitor entry vestibules.
	It would require school districts to annually share safety plans, floor plans, and security systems with state and local law enforcement, require every district to have a threat assessment team, require active annual shooter training for private security guards, require such training to be completed before being posted in the school.
	It would require private schools to develop safety plans, conduct annual armed intruder incident command and bus safety drills, lock exterior doors, and all of the rest.
	And both chambers are still considering the governor's separate budget amendment proposal, including a $140 million grant to place armed school resource officers in every single public school.
	So that particular bill passed in the Tennessee House 95-4, which means bipartisan legislation.
	Who voted against it?
	You guessed it, the Tennessee Three.
	Three of those four, no votes, were Gloria Johnson, the white lady from Knoxville, the Karen from Knoxville who didn't end up being expelled but gets to trot around with her two young friends and pretend that she's a civil rights hero, Representative Justin Jones, who until five minutes ago was attempting to allegedly assault drivers during quasi-riots and protests, and Justin Pearson of Memphis, who has rediscovered his acting chops, but not particularly well.
	And that is the way that all of this works.
	The media narrative is race above all.
	Race is the only thing that matters.
	Actual action does not matter.
	Tennessee is doing actual action.
	They don't care about that.
	They care about race.
	Which presumably is why, over in California, Dianne Feinstein is now coming under fire.
	She doesn't know she's coming under fire because Dianne Feinstein is senile.
	Everyone understands that Dianne Feinstein is senile, right, left, everyone knows that the senator from California is past her sell-by date, that she should not be sitting in the United States Senate at this point.
	Ro Khanna, Democrat from California, he's been saying that she should step down.
	She actually put out a statement yesterday talking about how she had shingles and she wasn't going to be showing up for the Senate for quite a while.
	But nobody can actually push her out.
	The person who could push her out, theoretically, is the governor of California.
	He could theoretically take action against her, but he's not going to.
	But assuming that she eventually steps down here, Politico is already something for the Kamala Harris treatment.
	Quote, Governor Gavin Newsom provoked fury When he didn't appoint a Black woman to fill the Senate seat held by Kamala Harris, opting to choose longtime friend Alex Padilla instead.
	Really, did he provoke fury?
	What was the fury, exactly?
	Democrats keep trotting him out as a presidential candidate.
	Was there, like, wide-scale fury that he didn't appoint a Black woman to fill Kamala Harris's seat?
	But now, according to Politico, he's facing similar pressure as the state's senior senator, Dianne Feinstein, recovers at her San Francisco home from shingles and could be forced to step down early if her health worsens.
	Black political leaders are making it clear they remember the governor's public pledge to appoint a black woman to the Senate if Feinstein resigned.
	And there are floating names, including Representative Barbara Lee, who is already running for the seat.
	So they don't want her to have to run for the seat.
	They want her to just be appointed to the seat, apparently.
	Because she's a black woman.
	And it doesn't matter her qualifications, doesn't matter whether she'd be the best person to fill the seat.
	None of that matters.
	She's a black lady, obviously.
	And that's worked out amazingly well for the vice presidential office.
	So why not do it for the Senate instead?
	Again, the fact that the Democrats think that so much of the media think along the lines of race is the only thing that matters.
	Like how did Tennessee's gun debate or school safety debate turn into a racial debate?
	And the answer is for the left, that's pretty much all the things.
	How does Dianne Feinstein's seat filling turn into a question about skin color?
	But of course it did, because this is what the media cares about.
	Which of course is also, presumably, why no controversy attaches anytime there's bizarre racial casting in Hollywood.
	This is the weirdest Hollywood story of the day.
	So Netflix has now announced that Jada Pinkett Smith is doing a docu-series on Cleopatra, because she's an Egyptologist.
	Did you know that, Jada Pinkett Smith?
	Like, there's nobody in America who knows more about the Empire of the Ptolemies than Jada Pinkett Smith.
	And, um, the racially ambiguous queen is now being depicted as black in the Queen Cleopatra docuseries.
	Here we go.
	Cleopatra was trying to save the country that she loved from destruction.
	It did what I had to do to protect what is mine.
	This is a woman exercising power.
	Cleopatra was a Ptolemaic ruler.
	The very first Ptolemy is a general of Alexander the Great.
	It's possible that she was an Egyptian.
	I imagine her to have curly hair like me and a similar skin color.
	I remember my grandmother saying to me, I don't care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.
	She has become an icon.
	I'm a god.
	I don't care what they tell you in school, it's a pretty good summary of this.
	With every woman.
	I don't care what they tell you in school, it's a really, really good summary of this.
	Okay, for people who don't know anything, like literally anything about world history, let me explain that Cleopatra was probably of Greek extraction.
	The reason that we say this is because she was almost undoubtedly of Greek extraction.
	She was part of the Ptolemaic Empire.
	Here's how it worked.
	After Alexander the Great conquered vast parts of North Africa and the Middle East and then died, this would be in the 4th century BCE, There was a giant sort of conflict that broke out among his chief generals.
	There was the Seleucid Empire.
	That was one area.
	One of the empires was the Ptolemaic Empire, right?
	Ptolemy.
	Ptolemy was one of his regional governors, and he ended up taking over that area.
	He was Greek.
	All of his descendants were therefore from him.
	They were Greek.
	The notion that Cleopatra was black is silly.
	Again, you're allowed to do this in Hollywood because, of course, the only thing that matters is our weird Parochially American perception of what race matters?
	It's super, super strange.
	By the way, we actually have sculptures of Cleopatra.
	It's not as though there's, like, nothing to indicate what Cleopatra looked like.
	There's a Roman sculpture of Cleopatra from, like, the mid-first century, around the time of her visits to Rome.
	And she looks Greek.
	Because she was probably Greek.
	Like, it was amazing.
	The entire Hollywood crowd went totally nuts when it turned out they were trying to cast Gal Gadot as Cleopatra.
	Gal Gadot undoubtedly looked a lot more like Cleopatra than anybody who's being cast in this particular production.
	Now, again, you can cast however you want, but I've noticed a certain pattern in Hollywood, which is that people who clearly are not black are now being cast as black, but if you ever did the reverse, then no way, right?
	That would be racism of the highest order.
	In fact, you'll recall that there's this Shonda Rhimes show, Bridgerton, which is Queen Victoria, is it?
	I don't watch Bridgerton because I'm a dude and I have testicles.
	So Bridgerton is a show for women.
	And also a racially strange show in which a bunch of white people are cast as black people, sort of like Hamilton, a bunch of white people are cast as people of color, and all the rest.
	And again, if we're just gonna do race-neutral casting on everything, I'm here for it, fine, alright, that's cool.
	But that also means that Ryan Gosling needs to be up for Martin Luther King.
	Right?
	It also means...
	That we're gonna need Christian Bale as, like, Booker T. Washington.
	Like, either you do it or you don't, okay?
	You don't get to make up— In this particular case, it's even worse, because they're actively trying to claim a thing that was not true for purposes, presumably, of suggesting that there was a whitewashing of Cleopatra's history.
	That there was an attempt to whitewash Cleopatra by turning her into a white lady, but actually, she was probably a black lady.
	Now, again, she had particularly distinctive facial features.
	There are paintings of her at the time.
	There are sculptures of her at the time.
	But the point that I'm making here is that we view everything now from the peculiarly intersectional lens of what exactly would black people want, presumably, like the most radical black activists want to say about a historical incident, and then we just like put it out there.
	And it's super weird.
	Netflix putting its money behind that sort of thing?
	Why is Jada Pinkett Smith doing a thing about Cleopatra?
	Like, explain to me.
	It's super strange.
	Again, just a little bit of accuracy would go a long way.
	But intersectionality, above all, that's the only thing that matters.
	We'll get to more intersectional insanity in just one second.
	It is very, very important for responsible people to have life insurance.
	A good life insurance plan can give you peace of mind that if something happens to you, your family will have a safety net to cover mortgage payments, college costs, or other expenses.
	Life insurance through your workplace might not offer enough protection for your family's needs.
	It won't follow you if you leave your job.
	Since life insurance typically gets more expensive as you age, now would be the time to buy.
	PolicyGenius makes it easy to compare life insurance quotes from top companies and find your lowest price.
	With PolicyGenius, you can find life insurance policies starting at just $25 per month for a million dollars in coverage.
	Some options offer coverage in as little as a week and avoid unnecessary medical exams.
	PolicyGenius is licensed agents, they work for you, not the insurance companies, which means they don't have an incentive to recommend one insurer over another, so you can actually trust their guidance.
	There are no added fees, your personal information remains private, your loved ones deserve that financial safety net, and you deserve a smarter way to find and buy it.
	Head on over to policygenius.com slash Shapiro, click the link in the description, get your free life insurance quotes, see how much you could save.
	That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro.
	Again, all responsible people need to have life insurance.
	My wife has life insurance.
	You should have life insurance as well.
	PolicyGenius makes it easy.
	Go to policygenius.com slash Shapiro.
	Also, a lot of people on the left share a worldview where nothing is sacred.
	Literally nothing.
	So we shouldn't be shocked when nothing is sacred.
	For instance, it's fine to be pro-choice and and go after the small unborn babies.
	But the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian law compel us to actually revere the sacred, including God himself.
	Commandment number three, thou shalt not take thy God's name in vain, is akin to casual blasphemy.
	And it's not something we think about a lot these days, but you know who actually does think about that sort of thing?
	Jordan Peterson.
	In the latest episode of Exodus, we talked about this concept.
	Yeah, I've kind of revamped my earlier view about taking the Lord's name in vain.
	You know, I thought, well, it definitely meant, do not take to yourself what is religious to justify your own tyrannical presuppositions.
	But I also think there is likely an injunction against In addition to Jordan, I sat alongside a group of esteemed scholars, theologians, and artists to discuss one of the most seminal books in the Bible.
	New episodes are coming online every single week exclusively for DailyWire Plus members.
	of practice. So I think we said if I modify my speech to take that into account.
	In addition to Jordan, I sat alongside a group of esteemed scholars, theologians, and artists to discuss one of the most seminal books in the Bible. New episodes are coming online every single week exclusively for DailyWirePlus members.
	Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to watch Exodus. Meanwhile, intersectionality is doing enormous damage to people.
	The highest form of intersectionality is, of course, trans women.
	Trans women and trans men, these are the highest form of intersectionality because they violate all prescribed rules and boundaries and are victims on all sides, right?
	This is the way that all of this works.
	Now, there are actual victims here.
	So there's a clip that has now been Making the rounds on Twitter of a gay man who has now detransitioned after having all sorts of surgeries and all sorts of hormone treatments.
	It's really, really sad.
	It's super sad.
	And we're supposed to pretend these people don't exist.
	This is the truth.
	I'm an almost 30-year-old man.
	This is what I look like.
	This is what I sound like as an almost 30-year-old man.
	And I feel like everyone is ignoring the pain because they are afraid that it threatens their choices and their narrative.
	But the active pressuring of people to transition so they can preserve their femininity, which is what happened with me, I was told that if I allowed myself to age, that I would become masculine and that it would never be possible and that I would do it anyway, and that I would be a more masculine transgender person like them.
	I take accountability for all of my choices, but when is the trans community going to take accountability for theirs?
	For leading me down this path.
	The answer is never.
	Legislators are instead going to do precisely what they want to do, including in Washington state, they've now passed just an insanely abusive law.
	So according to Axios, while other states are working to limit gender-affirming care, which of course is one of the most euphemistic euphemisms in the history of euphemisms, for transgender young people, Washington's state legislature is going in the opposite direction.
	This year, Washington lawmakers are trying to protect trans patients, as well as doctors who practice here, from the reach of other state laws that restrict gender-affirming health care for minors.
	A measure has now passed the Washington House that would block courts and law enforcement in the state from aiding other states' investigations into patients who travel to Washington for gender-affirming care.
	So in other words, if mommy and daddy disagree on transing the 11-year-old, and mommy simply absconds with the child and goes to Washington State and starts transing the 11-year-old, Washington State will not allow any sort of investigation into that.
	Not only that, the law apparently goes even further than that.
	Apparently, under state law, elective surgeries on minors still require parental consent.
	However, Washington state is now promoting law that would effectively suggest that parents don't have that power if a child seeking a gender transition runs away from home.
	And if the state knows their whereabouts, the state actually does not have to tell the parents where the kid is if the kid runs away from home because they are seeking quote-unquote transgender care.
	This is insane.
	The fact that this is what has now become sort of the rote democratic position is beyond contempt, obviously.
	You know who's noting this is Elon Musk, who actually has a kid who's trying this sort of nonsense right now.
	now he tweeted out any parents or doctor who sterilizes a child before they are consenting adult should go to prison for life. Elon Musk is correct on that for Meanwhile, Washington State has lost the thread completely.
	James O'Keefe put out one, I believe this is his first investigation, with his new group, OMG Media, in which he actually talked to female prisoners in the Washington State prison system who talk about what it's like to be housed with males who are pretending that they are female and suggesting that they are in fact trans.
	James O'Keefe, OMG News here.
	Have you heard of the Washington State Correctional Center for Women, which has been in the news for its policy to place men who identify as women in the same prison, sometimes even the same cell, as biological women?
	Imagine coming to your room one day and you're in close custody and you turn around and there's a man standing up peeing in the toilet because you have the bathroom in your room.
	What are you expecting me to do?
	What you just heard and what you're about to hear are multiple inmates describing their experiences with transgendered women, formerly known as men, within the women's prison.
	WCCW has been the tip of the spear with inclusivity in the prison system.
	To protect the at-risk individuals involved, we've taken steps to conceal the identities of the sources and the inmates.
	You should go check it out over at okifmediagroup.com.
	But the simple fact that Washington state has decided that it's top priority right now is ensuring that males can be in female prisons, where presumably they will commit further sexual assault.
	Some of the inmates in this tape actually allege that that's what's been happening in the prisons, but people are afraid to speak about it.
	And also Washington state is pursuing the idea that parents do not have to be notified if their kids run away from home and claim that their parents are being mean to them on their on their trans identity.
	This is all insane.
	Now you would imagine that some of this might have some blowback for the Biden administration considering the Biden administration backs all this kind of stuff.
	You might also consider the fact that the Biden administration is presiding over an inflationary spiral that still has not ended.
	There's a lot of triumphalism a little bit earlier this week while I was off for the holiday from Democrats claiming that inflation was now coming down at a radical rate and we were going to soon be out of the woods.
	Well, that is not true.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Biden is right that inflation has fallen from its monthly 1.2% peak last June and it's more than 9% peak on a 12-month basis.
	But prices are still rising at a 5% 12-month rate.
	That is 2.5 times what it is supposed to be.
	It's supposed to be a 2% rate.
	Service prices, less energy, are up 7.1% over 12 months.
	Transportation services are up 13.9%.
	The Wall Street Journal says this is what economists mean when they say inflation is sticky.
	Biden is boasting that wages are now higher than they were nine months ago after accounting for inflation.
	But real wages are still down 0.7% from March 2022, and they are still down since Biden took office.
	Which is why there was a bit of a price spike in terms of the stock market immediately after the report happened, and then there was a sell-off immediately after that.
	Meanwhile, the Biden administration is presiding over the death of the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency.
	Lula da Silva, over in Brazil, is now calling on the BRICS nations to come up with an alternative to replace the dollar in foreign trade.
	Okay, so the BRICS nations, which represent 41% of the world's population, they are now talking pretty openly about essentially selling off their dollars and instead reinvesting in a sort of collective currency for themselves.
	Now, listen, that may be weaker than the dollar, it may be an objectively bad economic move to invest in the BRICS currency as opposed to anywhere else, but if the world is starting to break down into a Multipolar world in which you have to show allegiance to both sides or neither side or one side.
	You're going to see people divesting from the United States dollar in major ways.
	When that happens, it makes it much more expensive to raise debt.
	When it gets expensive to raise debt, the United States can't afford all of the massive social spending that we've been doing, considering we're well over 100% of debt to GDP ratio here in the United States.
	By the way, the entire left, which was centralizing on the idea that Jair Bolsonaro was an enemy of freedom and he was truly scary.
	It's Lula da Silva, the one who's making nice with the Russians and the Chinese.
	It's Lula da Silva who's openly calling for the divestment from the United States dollar.
	He said, why can't an institution like the BRICS Bank have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China?
	Between Brazil and the other BRICS countries?
	Who decided the dollar was the trade currency after the end of gold parity?
	I mean, the answer is the dollar is still the best bet on the market.
	But what he's saying is, who cares what the best bet on the market is?
	Let's trade amongst ourselves.
	Let's just create our own trading block, which starts to look an awful lot like a new Cold War.
	The Biden administration has been just a bleep show on a wide variety of issues.
	And it didn't let up while Joe Biden was over in Ireland.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
	Unemployment continues to be a serious problem.
	Employers right now, the unemployment rate is low, but employers are having trouble finding people to actually fill those roles.
	Hiring can be really hard, but it doesn't have to be.
	This is why you go to ZipRecruiter.com.
	ZipRecruiter is the best place to find the right position, or if you're an employer, the right person to join your team.
	If you're looking for a job, you upload your resume to every job posting site and come to a never-ending list of jobs, or you just upload it to ZipRecruiter and then you don't really think about it until an offer comes your way.
	ZipRecruiter helps you find the most qualified people for your roles fast.
	Right now, you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.
	ZipRecruiter's matching technology helps you find the most qualified candidates for a wide variety of roles.
	If you see a candidate you like, you can easily send them a personal invite so they're more likely to apply.
	Their user-friendly dashboard makes it easy to filter, review, and rate your candidates all from one place.
	Right now we're looking for an editor over here.
	We posted on ZipRecruiter, right?
	That's a great way for us to find somebody to fill that slot.
	See why the majority of employers count on ZipRecruiter.
	Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the very first day.
	Use my exclusive web address.
	Try ZipRecruiter for free.
	Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire.
	That's ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.
	ZipRecruiter is indeed the smartest way to hire.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden is over in Ireland and things didn't go amazing for him because, I mean, frankly, how could they?
	So his trip began with a dog barking at him.
	He tried to pet a dog and the dog was like, no, old man, stay away.
	Yeah, we feel you, dog.
	We feel you.
	Here we go.
	I like dogs.
	And the dog's like, get the hell out of here.
	I want to, I like, can I ride the doggy?
	Can I pet the doggy?
	I love doggies.
	Doggies are, oh, he's barking at me.
	And then Joe Biden announced that he would be staying in Ireland.
	Sadly, this is not true.
	Thank you all very much.
	And I'm not going home.
	I'm staying here.
	And this is an incredible place.
	All you American reporters.
	Looks just like the White House, right?
	So, sadly, not true.
	He said he was going to stay in Ireland.
	And everyone in Ireland is like, no!
	Go away!
	And then he said that he was going to, like the Dalai Lama, lick the world.
	So that got a little awkward.
	There's nothing our nations can't achieve if we do it together.
	I really mean it.
	So thank you all.
	God bless you all.
	Let's go lick the world.
	Let's get it done.
	It's gonna lick the one I love.
	I know where it wants to be licked.
	I got a thing going through.
	It's a little awkward.
	Lick on the ear.
	I don't know.
	Where do it wear?
	Like ice cream?
	How?
	Then he said in the middle of a press conference that people can count on the United States.
	We are totally committed to our allies, except for sometimes.
	Actually said this.
	Together we've worked to become more peaceful, more equal, more diverse, more unified, and I think more hopeful.
	So today, wherever there is a yearning for freedom, a struggle for change, a cry for justice, people around the world know they can count on Ireland.
	They can count on Ireland.
	And I believe they can count on the United States with notable exceptions once in a while.
	With notable exceptions once in a while, what is it you do for a living, sir?
	I believe people can count on the United States except for, you know, the people we betray and stab directly between the shoulder blades and leave for dead.
	Those people, they can't count on, but everybody else, they can count on us.
	And not Afghanistan, or Egypt, or Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, maybe Ukraine, we'll see, Taiwan, I don't know.
	He is the best, he's so good at this.
	He also babbled about his grandfather, who apparently was born in 144 BC.
	And I never understood what he meant when he said, Joey, I worry about you.
	No, not Joey.
	I said, Pop, what do you worry about?
	I'm leaning forward with the Joey story.
	He said, you're too much, you're too much like that guy who led the revolution.
	Instead of the guy who was the prime minister.
	He said, you gotta be less like a military guy.
	They shot him.
	What are you even talking about?
	Also, that's a story that never happened.
	His grandfather, again, the dead giveaway is anytime Joe Biden says, and my granddad said, Joey, Joey, and then he leans into the microphone and says, Joey, I'm Superman.
	And you're like, that never happened, Joe.
	You all know my favorite example of this.
	It's when he talked about his father.
	His father telling him, Joey, Joey, see those two men?
	It's Delaware, 1952.
	You see those two men jackhammering on a street corner?
	That, right there, that's love, Joey.
	1952, just full-on sexual relations in the streets, and that's what love looks like, Joey.
	Oh, this old man, this guy.
	Well, you would think, perhaps, he is vulnerable in his re-elect effort, would you not?
	He is no longer with us, Joe Biden.
	Unfortunately, he remains the odds-on favorite to win re-election.
	I say this despite the fact that Joe Biden is currently riding in the actual presidential approval ratings at low ebb.
	He is not doing particularly well.
	That does not matter, because again, if the Republicans cannot get it together, then they will not be able to get it together to beat him.
	Right now, he has been climbing a little bit in the public approval ratings.
	The Economist YouGov has him at four points underwater.
	Rasmussen has him at two points underwater.
	IBDTIPP has him at dead, even at 45, 45.
	The only recent poll that shows him severely underweight, this is a new kind of wave of quasi-pro-Biden polling.
	The spread remains at about 8%, but that's the lowest it's been in about a year.
	So, he's on a bit of an upswing right here, and you would imagine that now would be a good time for Republicans to start to centralize around candidates who can win, right?
	I mean, because Republicans presumably want to win.
	Maybe that's a priority for them, would be winning.
	I know, I know, this is a weird idea, that you don't actually vote because you do it out of ardent love for a person, and that voting isn't actually about the wonderful personal relationship you wish to have with a candidate, and that no matter how many times you vote for Doug Mastriano in a primary, he's not going to win a general election in Pennsylvania.
	I know that I know these are hard things to say, but as someone who would like to see Joe Biden not be in office, you know what I would love is to see Joe Biden be defeated.
	That would be a really, really good thing.
	The reason I point this out at this point is something occurred to me over the last couple of days.
	You know, President Trump, who is the most likely nominee right now by the polling data in the Republican Party, he says that he won the 2020 election and that he was robbed out of it.
	So I have really one question, because I really care about Republicans not losing, and that is, what is your plan to correct this?
	Let's assume that's all true, okay?
	I don't actually think that's true.
	I don't think that he was robbed of the 2020 election.
	I think that the election was informally rigged by the media and by social media.
	I think that the rules of the election were changed to benefit Democrats dramatically.
	The more mail-in ballots were sent than ever before.
	That ballot harvesting was done at a level never before attempted.
	I think all of that is true, but...
	Was the election actually actively stolen in the sense that like ballot boxes were being stuffed and votes were being thrown in rivers and that sort of thing?
	No, I don't think that the evidence is there for that, nor does pretty much anyone else who has actually examined a huge variety of that, including Donald Trump's own legal team.
	Okay, but let's assume that I'm wrong.
	Let's assume that Trump is totally right, that what actually happened in 2020 was nefarious people in the dead of night bringing trucks filled with ballots down to the Fulton County Courthouse and just stuffing those ballots, or In Arizona, Maricopa County, just a bunch of illegal immigrants voting and no one bothering to check the votes, or whatever is the theory of the day.
	Let's assume that all of that is right.
	What is Donald Trump's plan to correct this?
	Does he have a plan to correct this?
	Because if not, that means he is, by his own theory, going to lose again.
	It seems like this would make a difference, and this is why it would actually matter to hear a plan for that.
	You know, when he talks about his positions, all of that is well and good.
	But none of those positions get made into policy if he doesn't win.
	So just to give an example of somebody who doesn't really understand, this is one of the problems for Trump when he was the actual president, is he doesn't understand how the system works.
	So Donald Trump was talking about progressive DAs, and he was saying that he was promising to fire what he called Soros district attorneys.
	Here he goes.
	If we cannot restore the fair and impartial rule of law, we will not be a free country.
	As president, it will be my personal mission to restore the scales of justice in America.
	We want fairness and equality under the law.
	And to that end, I will appoint U.S.
	attorneys who will be the polar opposite of the Soros district attorneys and others that are being appointed throughout the United States.
	Very unfair to our population, very unfair to our country.
	They will be the 100 most ferocious legal warriors against crime and communist corruption that this country has ever seen.
	Okay, so I agree with all that inside the federal DOJ, but you may have noticed that Soros-funded district attorneys are all state-level employees.
	You can't actually fund a federal-level district attorney.
	George Soros can't do that.
	That's not how federal DAs get made.
	You get hired by the DOJ as a low-level DOJ staffer.
	You maybe make it up to district attorney.
	Not to DA, you make it up to an attorney for the DOJ.
	Again, knowing how the system actually operates is crucial to actually being able to shape the system.
	And this remains one of my big questions about Donald Trump.
	Now, again, none of this means that Donald Trump isn't being victimized by the quote-unquote system.
	He is being victimized when it comes to, for example, this district attorney case in Manhattan.
	But Bragg is not a federal employee.
	Bragg is a state-level employee.
	He's a New York district attorney.
	He's a Manhattan district attorney.
	Donald Trump, as president, could not do anything about all of that.
	As far as the victimization of Donald Trump, it now turns out that this is amazing.
	So the way that it works is that if you are a Republican and you mention George Soros, like Donald Trump just did, this means that you are some sort of crazed anti-Semite.
	If you point out that George Soros is actually an extremely left-wing guy who does not particularly love Judaism and has funded a bunch of progressive causes, this makes you a villain.
	You're not allowed to mention George Soros.
	Meanwhile, Reid Hoffman, who is one of the so-called PayPal Mafia, is actually providing direct legal funding for writer E. Jean Carroll's sexual assault lawsuit against Donald Trump.
	According to Trump's attorneys, they wrote a letter to U.S.
	District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Thursday saying that Carroll failed to disclose she actually received legal funding from Reid Hoffman, billionaire and donor to the Democratic Party.
	A lawyer for Carroll dismissed the allegations as baseless.
	But if that's the case, then obviously it's not a particularly good look when you have billionaire left-wingers like Reid funding Reid Hoffman, funding this, funding private lawsuits against the President of the United States.
	It's definitely a weird thing.
	Now meanwhile, you know, if you wish to talk about all of these things, which are very unlikely to win elections, that's one thing.
	If you wish to actually get things done, this is the nice thing about getting things done.
	When you get things done and you win, you actually get to do things.
	So over in Florida, they've now passed a six-week abortion ban.
	This has led to the normal puerile behavior by Democrats.
	When Democrats do puerile behavior, by the way, this is fighting in favor of democracy.
	When Republicans do puerile behavior, it's a threat to the Republic.
	The Democrats and their activist base, they decided to apparently flood the building at the Florida Capitol on Thursday as the statehouse prepared to vote on a six-week abortion ban.
	And then they proceeded to drop objects onto the floor of the house, throwing stickers and small pieces of paper on lawmakers as they entered the House chamber.
	All of that looked particularly good.
	Here are some of the protesters doing that.
	Again, occupying state capitol buildings is now good.
	It's great.
	Okay, all of this was um you can see a bunch of people who are in the middle of the uh of the rotunda there and they are they're standing and they are singing and then as lawmakers were entering they were showered with objects from above and then they were cleared from from that particular area.
	Now, here's the thing.
	When you win, it doesn't matter very much.
	Ron DeSantis continues to actually get things done in the state of Florida.
	So again, I give you a choice.
	Would you like to get things done, or would you like to feel good about yourself as you have a higher chance of losing moving forward?
	That really is the big question right here.
	DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, according to the New York Times.
	He said on Thursday night that he had signed the new ban and he put out a signing statement in which he explicitly pointed out that the Democratic Party is in favor in major states of abortion up until point of birth, which is in fact the way to approach this issue.
	So a lot of people who are wary of these sorts of bans in states like Florida.
	I will admit that this is a politically risky move for Governor DeSantis.
	It definitely is.
	It is a riskier move than, for example, going for a 12-week ban or a 10-week abortion ban.
	But the way that DeSantis has typically governed is that he stakes out a position and then he tries to move the public along to that position, which is actually what leadership very typically looks like.
	He did not take a middle road during COVID.
	He took a very strong stand during COVID, and then he tried to educate the public about that, and the public ended up with him.
	That's not always going to work, but it is, in fact, a demonstration of leadership.
	So signing a six-week abortion ban, at political risk to himself, right?
	He's running for president.
	The easiest thing to do would be to sign, like, a 12-week abortion ban, and then, when asked about it on a presidential stage, he can say, we took a moderate position.
	It's what a vast majority of the voters wanted, not just in my state, but countrywide.
	These are the same sorts of restrictions as in Europe.
	Instead, he went for a full pro-life position, a six-week abortion ban.
	And pointed out that the dichotomy is between people, that there are exceptions for rape, incest, and for fatal fetal abnormalities in the Florida restriction ban.
	And he pointed out again in his signing statement that the alternative is California and New York.
	So, this is what happens when you win.
	When you win, you get to make the rules.
	That's the way all of this works.
	Or you could lose, theoretically, and you could continue to not make the rules.
	Those are really the choices that are available to the Republican Party in 2024.
	Because otherwise, you are looking at another four years of an 85-year-old man wandering around and slipping upstairs.
	That is the actual possibility right here.
	Again, when I look at the polling data here, and I look at election 2024, What you see is that Joe Biden has consistently held a fairly solid lead over Donald Trump.
	The RealClearPolitics polling average right now is showing that Trump is in spitting distance, but that's because Trump is restricted.
	Again, Trump's cap is at like 46%.
	There's no poll I'm aware of which Trump breaks 46%.
	Trump versus Biden right now, again, pretty even.
	You saw the same thing with Romney versus Obama in the early going.
	It'll be fascinating to see.
	The same polls, by the way, that have Trump up over Biden also have DeSantis up bigger over Biden.
	The same polls that have Trump down to Biden tend to have DeSantis down less to Biden.
	That's the way these polls work.
	But listen, you know, we're gonna make our choices and then we're gonna live with the consequences of those choices.
	So think seriously about all of this.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like.
	There is a man who has decided, and I kind of like this, that he is a big Jack Daniels fan, and he discovered that back in 2021, they had done like a full campaign with RuPaul, and he's like, yeah, you know what?
	Don't like Jack Daniels anymore.
	He just set it all on fire.
	Which is a good way to break your alcoholic habits, I suppose.
	Here we go.
	Two of the world's most expensive Jack Daniels.
	$250 a bottle and $100 a bottle.
	$100 a bottle.
	F* your woke s* company.
	Put it in his fire pit.
	He's really going for it here.
	Now, there are those who will point out that he's already bought the bottles, and so Jack Daniels already has the money.
	But that's not actually the point.
	The point is that when you signal disapproval of a product, it is bad press for the product.
	That's the reason why he is doing this.
	He's gonna set all this stuff on fire.
	A lot of drinkers right now are like, noooo.
	But, again, the wages of wokeness are people disliking the wokeness.
	There's a piece by Gregory Angelo in the Wall Street Journal today that's kind of fascinating.
	It's called, I Helped Make Corporations Woke and I Regret It.
	This person was an activist for the Log Cabin Republicans who went to a bunch of different corporations back in 2010 or so and tried to cudgel corporations into making public statements about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
	He said, My work was completely unnecessary.
	Market forces organically shaped a culture in which almost every American now believes in equal job opportunities for gay people.
	We'd have same-sex marriage in all 50 states today, with or without 379 major corporations filing friend of the court briefs with the Supreme Court.
	The trend I helped begin, I now realize, was a disaster.
	In the past three years, major U.S.
	corporations have weighed in on everything from abortion and Black Lives Matter to election laws, even as the American public overwhelmingly wishes they wouldn't.
	This of course is exactly right, and good for Angelo for actually writing this piece.
	Okay, time for A Thing That I Hate.
	Well, there is a video that has now gone viral of a person named Sophie Rebecca.
	This has gone viral online.
	Sophie Rebecca is apparently a ballet dancer who back in 2017 became the first person, who is a dude, awarded a female scholarship at the Royal Ballet, at the Royal Academy of Dance.
	Circa 2017, quote, a former male racing driver has become one of the first openly transgender ballet students to pass a Royal Academy of Dance exam.
	Sophie Rebecca, 35, was a racing driver for nearly a decade before leaving motorsport to chase her childhood dream of becoming a ballet dancer.
	Uh, this would be a very, very large dude, by the way.
	She originally began learning ballet as James at 17, but was dropped from class after a teacher found out about her gender struggles.
	Apparently, the Royal Academy of Dance abandoned rules that only people born as women should be allowed to take its female dance courses in 2013.
	And this person passed the exam.
	I will say this person was not an A student.
	So this is pretty astonishing stuff.
	It is not good.
	So, apparently, RAD is a ballet style which fuses features of the French, Italian, Russian, and Danish traditions.
	The RAD is also a credentialing organization, according to National Review, and Sophie Rebecca claims to have passed five levels of the dance exams.
	They merit in grade 7 and a distinction in grade 8.
	Apparently, that just means that you have studied the style.
	But, uh, Unsurprising to say.
	This is, uh, it's an absurdity.
	Here is some of the tape of Sophie Rebecca dancing.
	This is a person who, again, was granted some sort of benefit from the Royal Academy of Dance.
	Um, it's not great. Um, now what's kind of funny is that look at the camera shake every time. It's like Jurassic Park with shaking water glass. This is, this is not good, folks. This is very awkward.
	Boom, boom.
	Okay, the reason this comes in for mockery is not because of this person who, honestly, I feel a little bit bad for.
	This is a person who is an overweight, middle-aged man who is dancing around in a leotard.
	I feel bad for that person.
	What I do not feel bad for is the standard.
	The standard must not change.
	This is not what ballet is supposed to look like.
	Men who pretend that they are dancing female ballet and are treated by society as though they are dancing female ballet are destroying the standard.
	Standards do matter in a society.
	The attempt to pretend that this is what great ballet looks like, because men can actually dance in the same way as women, is simply silly.
	It is simply silly.
	And yet this is precisely what has now been promoted, culminating with a performance in which actual women studying ballet who have trained their whole lives to, you know, look graceful while they dance, end up carrying flowers over to a middle-aged man in a dress.
	A special bow for the very large male wearing a dress.
	And here are all the women who actually trained for years and are graceful and actually know how to dance ballet.
	And they're going to actually pick up flowers from the floor and pay homage to the large gentleman.
	This is the new feminism.
	The new feminism is women handing prizes to men for being women.
	Slow clap for the new feminism.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be getting into conflict in the Middle East and the mailbag.
	If you're not a member, become a member.
	Use code SHAPIRO.
	Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

▲