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April 24, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:36
BREAKING: Biden To Announce Re-Election Run This Week
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Alrighty, so we have reached the week.
There's a lot of trepidation about whether Joe Biden would in fact announce his candidacy or in fact just sort of, you know, make sound out of his face.
No one really knew.
But apparently we have finally reached the point.
The president of the United States is supposed to announce his reelect bid.
On Tuesday, tomorrow, according to the Washington Post, by the time Air Force One returned from Ireland in the pre-dawn hours of April 15th, President Biden's plans to announce his re-election campaign were already in motion.
A videographer soon met him in Rehove Beach, Delaware, where Biden spent the weekend after arriving in Dover at 2.26am with his sister Valerie and his son Hunter.
Again, Joe Biden has been squiring his son Hunter around.
And no one seems to care about the fact that Hunter Biden is one of the world's biggest derelicts.
That's totally fine.
That Hunter Biden spent the last, you know, many years just picking up sacks of cash in foreign countries using his daddy's name.
We don't know where all that money went.
That Hunter Biden, in fact, uses sexually trafficked people.
I mean, he uses prostitutes on a regular basis, or used them.
That he is a drug addict, that he has fathered children out of wedlock with
strippers. You know, all, none of that matters. He travels around with daddy and no one bats
an eye because the media are so far in Joe Biden's corner, which let's be real about. This is
the only reason that Joe Biden can run for re-election. The only reason he could run in the first
place is because the media decided that Donald Trump was the worst thing in the history of mankind.
And therefore we needed a dead person run against him. The only way you can have an 80 year old man
who is obviously in a state of cognitive decline run for re-election is because the media are the
Praetorian guard.
The real story of Joe Biden is not Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was a bad candidate when he first ran in 1988.
He was a bad candidate when he ran again against Barack Obama in 2008.
He's been a bad candidate a thousand times.
But his bad candidacy is not the issue here.
The issue here is what the media are willing to do, to what lengths they are willing to go in order to prop him up.
According to the Washington Post, Once Biden returned to the White House, he and First Lady Jill Biden met with senior aides to finalize the details of his re-elect launch.
After Biden signed off on the plans, the officials ramped up their final preparations.
Top fundraising officials at the DNC scrambled to make dozens of phone calls, frequently ending up in voicemails, inviting top donors for a hastily arranged summit with the president to plan events.
Again, the idea here is that he is going to announce on Tuesday.
He'll probably do so not with a giant rally, but with a video.
That is not a shock, because again, a giant rally in which he announces his re-elect bid is probably going to fall absolutely flat.
Aides are instead looking to pre-tape a video announcing his re-elect bid.
This is not a person who's capable of getting up and inspiring a giant crowd.
A man can't inspire a bowl of oatmeal.
I mean, he's not capable.
He's just not with it.
According to the Washington Post, Biden and his team are preparing to announce his re-elect campaign this week, and they've targeted Tuesday for the release of the video to coincide with the four-year anniversary of this 2020 campaign launch.
They keep saying that it might be delayed, and maybe it will be, but again, they're going to have to get in at some point here just to prevent anybody else from ramping up and starting to suck money out of the system.
As Politico points out, a lot of people care when Joe Biden actually announces.
One camp argues there's no reason to push because obviously once he jumps in, he clears the field.
But there are some other Democrats who are upset about the possibility that there are going to be other people who get in the field and start sucking up attention.
And so they want him to jump in as fast as humanly possible.
Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh, he says it's just good for the party to finally be definitive about it.
Well, I mean, the reason, presumably, that Joe Biden is being more definitive about it is because he's looking at the polls and he's said this for a long time.
The big issue for Joe Biden is who he's going to run against.
If he thought he was going to run against anybody but Trump, he might think twice.
If he thinks it's going to be Trump, he is very enthusiastic to run against President Trump because, of course, Trump lost to him last time around.
Now, as I say, he relies almost entirely on the goodwill of the media.
He relies on the media to never report a damned thing about him.
That's how he can go out and say stuff like he said over the weekend.
He was giving a speech and he suggested that basically he is the world's least controversial politician.
That doesn't matter that his entire career he has been plagued by accusations of corruption, going all the way back to his time as senator in Delaware when he was receiving sweetheart real estate deals from credit card companies.
But He now says that he's really only known for Ray Bans and Ice Cream, and this is just a replay of Barack Obama.
You remember during Obama's second term, there were a myriad of scandals that hit the Obama administration, from HHS to the IRS.
Literally every area of his administration was plagued with problems of one sort or another, but we were told that Barack Obama, the only scandal he ever had was the tan suit, because one day he showed up in a tan suit, and it was an ugly suit, and people made fun of the tan suit.
And so that was the only scandal we ever had.
Well, now Joe Biden is trying to do the same thing.
Apparently, according to Joe Biden, he is an absolutely scot-free, clean-as-the-driven-snow politician.
There's no reason why you wouldn't love Joe Biden.
He's known as the guy who wears Ray-Bans and licks ice cream cones.
As I've told my distinguished friend from Massachusetts, a good friend, Senator Markey, that it's really very, very dull when after all these years in public life, you're known for two things, Ray-Ban sunglasses and chocolate chip ice cream.
That is not what he is known for, actually.
He is known for many things, including, once again, aside from sniffing the hair of young girls inappropriately, the President of the United States is known for not being with it.
He is known also for his son, Hunter, who, yes, that is an issue for him.
I mean, just last week, it was reported that his campaign helped trot out The lie that Hunter Biden's laptop was actually Russian disinformation.
It turns out that Antony Blinken was actually shopping that story around to people like Mike Morrell, the former CIA director for Barack Obama, in order to launder into the media the story that Hunter Biden's laptop was a fake and a phony so that it would be banned from social media.
And Mike Morrell then put out a letter with a bunch of other intel officials who suggested, of course, that it was Russian disinformation.
You'll remember that back in October 2020, Biden actually said that.
He suggested that his son's laptop was Russian disinformation.
Here he was back in October 2020.
What about the Americans who really today only want me to ask you about Hunter Biden's laptop?
How are you going to get them to see that you are fighting for them when they're so dead set against you?
There's nothing to any of that.
Nothing to any of that.
It's all a smear.
Every major outfit, every serious investigator has pointed out that this is a smear.
This is classic Trump.
We have four days left and all of a sudden there's a laptop.
And you may recall there's also talk about four months before there was a similar thing that somebody had, allegedly.
He is a liar.
There's overwhelming evidence that, from the intelligence community, that the Russians are engaged.
I mean, he was lying then.
He was lying.
I mean, he knew that the laptop was real, and he was lying.
Because he is a liar.
And he's a very bad president who's a liar.
He's a corrupt liar.
This president of the United States has presided over a 40-year high in inflation, he has presided over a stagnating economy, and he has presided over a collapse in foreign policy, which we'll get to in just a moment.
Because, once again, this is a president who's presided over not one, But two, Saigon-like incidents in foreign countries in which we have to pull people off the roofs of our embassies.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
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Well, as Joe Biden prepares to announce his reelect bid, you may have noticed that over the weekend, the president of the United States announced that the U.S.
military is now going to be evacuating and already has evacuated American government personnel from Khartoum, which is in Sudan.
The president tweeted out today on my orders the United States military conducted an operation to extract US government personnel from Khartoum in response to the situation in Sudan.
I'm grateful for the commitment of our embassy staff and the skill of our service members who brought them to safety.
I'm receiving regular reports from my team on their ongoing work to assist Americans in Sudan to the extent possible.
We're also working closely with our allies and partners in this effort.
The tragic violence in Sudan has already cost the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians.
It's unconscionable and it must stop.
Well, I mean, if he says so, then probably that'll stop the violence, as we found out in Afghanistan.
We'll get to a report on that in just a moment.
We're temporarily suspending operations at the U.S.
Embassy in Sudan, but our commitment to the Sudanese people and the future they want is unending.
Oh, man, the absolute balls on this guy, like unending.
It just ended.
You literally just pulled the U.S.
embassy staff out of Sudan.
And they're like, but don't worry, I'm going to tell you violence is bad.
Or in Joe Biden's words, much better.
According to the Associated Press.
U.S.
Special Operations Forces carried out a precarious evacuation of the U.S.
Embassy in Sudan on Sunday, sweeping in and out of the capital with helicopters on the ground for less than an hour.
No shots were fired.
No major casualties were reported.
The United States then shuttered its diplomatic mission indefinitely.
Remaining behind in the East African nation are thousands of private American citizens.
So just like Afghanistan, we're going to leave thousands of Americans behind.
We're just going to cut.
We're going to run.
We're going to leave them no options for getting out.
The U.S.
officials said it would be too dangerous to carry out a broader evacuation operation, so you leave them behind.
You know, after all, What are they even doing there?
Like, whatever!
They're Americans!
Joe Biden got away with it the first time.
What does he care?
What does he care if a bunch of Americans get left behind enemy lines?
Totally fine.
Battles between two rival Sudanese commanders had forced the closing of the main international airport and left roads out of the country in control of armed fighters.
Skirmishes have already killed more than 400 people.
About 100 US troops in three MH-47 helicopters carried out the operation.
They airlifted all of the roughly 70 remaining American employees from a landing zone at the embassy and moved to an undisclosed location in Ethiopia.
Biden then said that he was proud of the extraordinary commitment of our embassy staff who performed their duties with courage and professionalism and embodied America's friendship and connection with the people of Sudan.
So, no, everybody is just stuck there.
This is all a result, apparently, of a power struggle between the head of the armed forces, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the head of the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, General Mohamed Hamdoum Dagolo.
And apparently, basically, this has led to full-out civil war in the country.
Not a big shock, Sudan has been a disaster before.
But the amazing nature of this, the fact that the Biden administration is once again pulling, without any plan whatsoever, out of a foreign nation that is filled with terrorists and leaving American citizens behind, it's a reminder that this president not only has no plan, he has failed signally when it comes to foreign policy.
Like everywhere, he has failed when it comes to foreign policy.
In fact, as it turns out, One of the players who's having an outsized impact on the breakdown in Africa right now is the so-called Wagner Group.
Apparently, the Wagner Group is a set of Russian mercenaries that is fomenting instability while using their paramilitary and disinformation capabilities to bolster Moscow allies.
The rapid expansion of Russia's influence in Africa has been a source of growing alarm to U.S.
intelligence and military officials, according to the Washington Post, prompting a push over the past year to find ways to hit Wagner's network of bases and business fronts with strikes, sanctions, and cyber operations, according to the document.
So, while the United States has been funding the war in Ukraine, Russia has been expanding its footprint elsewhere.
The Washington Post says, at a time when Wagner leader Yevgeny Progozhin has been preoccupied with Kremlin infighting over the paramilitary group's deepening involvement in the war in Ukraine, U.S.
officials depict Wagner's expanding global footprint as a potential vulnerability.
So, once again, the President of the United States, while he says that he is succeeding, he actually is failing.
Because as it turns out, France is talking with China now about the possibility that China may invade Taiwan and France might do nothing.
The Russians were supposed to be tied down in Ukraine.
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely hampered the Russian military in Ukraine, but they're making trouble in Africa as well, and thousands of Americans have now been left behind too.
According to WCVB.com, there is growing concern for thousands of Americans in Sudan, including a Massachusetts woman and her young daughter, as the bloody fighting that has engulfed the African nation enters its second week.
Trillian Clifford of Ashland moved to Sudan less than a year ago to teach at a school in the capital, Khartoum.
Clifford and her daughter Alma are currently sheltering in place in Khartoum.
They've contacted government officials for help.
None has come so far.
The family believes the United States should be doing more to bring her and other Americans back home.
The White House, however, says, you know, you're on your own.
Apparently they've said that Americans who do not work for the embassy should not rely on the military to help them leave the country.
We've been clear eyed about how American citizens should not travel to Sudan for months now.
We've communicated to American citizens in the country about safety and security measures and precautions they can take, said Vendant Patel, spokesperson for the U.S.
Department of State.
How many Americans are currently in Sudan?
16,000.
16,000 Americans are being left behind in Sudan.
So once again, slow clap for the Biden administration doing an excellent job.
Speaking of which, remember that time when we pulled out of Afghanistan ignominiously and we left behind billions of dollars in military equipment?
We let the Taliban, an 8th century group of barbarians, simply take over the country and blow up some 13 American soldiers in the process?
You remember that time?
You remember that Joe Biden at the time said everything was going to be fine?
Well, we now have a report, things are not so fine.
Who could have predicted?
We'll get to that momentarily first.
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Okay, so, meanwhile, remember that time that this wonderful, amazing president who's running for re-election at the grand old age of 80?
Remember that time that the President of the United States withdrew from Afghanistan and left the state in a complete state of absolute anarchy and collapse and just handed it over to the Taliban?
Well now, it turns out, according to the Washington Post, less than two years after President Biden withdrew U.S.
personnel from Afghanistan, the country has become a significant coordination site for the Islamic State.
As the terrorist group plans attacks across Europe and Asia and conducts aspirational plotting against the United States.
That is not according to right-wing sources.
That is according to a classified Pentagon assessment that portrays the threat as a growing security concern.
The attack planning, which is detailed in U.S.
intelligence findings, leaked on those Discord leaks.
It revealed specific efforts to target embassies, churches, business centers, and the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, which drew more than 2 million spectators last summer in Qatar.
Pentagon officials were aware in December of nine such plots coordinated by ISIS leaders in Afghanistan.
The number rose to 15 by February, according to the assessment.
The assessment says, quote, ISIS has been developing a cost-effective model for external
operations that relies on resources from outside Afghanistan, operatives in target countries,
and extensive facilitation networks.
The model will likely enable ISIS to overcome obstacles like competent security services
and reduce some plot timelines, minimizing disruption opportunities.
So once again, it turns out that having pulled out from Afghanistan without any plan whatsoever
was one of the worst ideas in modern American history.
And you'll remember that Joe Biden was just a liar.
He's a liar.
Back in April of 2021, you know, we're running up on the four-year anniversary of the President of the United States announcing that he was going to run for president.
We're also running up on the two-year anniversary of the President of the United States, we actually just passed it, saying that we're pulling out from Afghanistan.
Which led to the death of 13 American soldiers, presumably thousands of American allies, people dropping off wheel wells of planes, and hundreds of Americans left behind.
Here was Joe Biden, April 14, 2021, saying, don't worry, guys, we're going to bring our soldiers home and everything will be fine.
Don't worry.
We've ended the threat of terrorism, as it turns out.
We went to Afghanistan in 2001 to root out al Qaeda, to prevent future terrorist attacks against the United States planned from Afghanistan.
After consulting closely with our allies and partners, with our military leaders and intelligence personnel, with our diplomats and our development experts, with the Congress and the Vice President, as well as with Mr. Ghani and many others around the world, I've concluded that it's time to end America's longest war.
It's time for American troops to come home.
And then if you fast forward all the way to September, it was fairly obvious at this point that ISIS-K was taking over along with the Taliban.
And it didn't matter.
Joe Biden was still lying.
He sent out his Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, to explain that everything was handled as well as humanly possible.
America was in this war for 20 years.
And I think any effort to unwind that, any effort to bring our troops out, any effort to end our military presence in Afghanistan was going to be filled with heartbreaking scenes and difficulties.
And I think the Biden administration has managed that as well as it could be managed under the circumstances we were placed in.
Well, they did a wonderful job.
You'll remember that Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, said it was a historic withdrawal.
They did an amazing, amazing job, guys.
You know, it was all part of the plan.
People dropping off the wheel wells of planes from thousands of feet and exploding on the turf like watermelons.
That was totally fine.
It was all part of the plan.
We have concluded our historic evacuation operation and ended the last mission of the U.S.
war in Afghanistan.
My thoughts have been with the brave Americans Who stood up to serve after Al Qaeda attacked us on September 11, 2001.
And my heart is with their families and loved ones and with our friends and allies and with our fellow citizens whose lives were lost or changed forever.
Now we have just concluded the largest air evacuation of civilians in American history.
It was heroic.
It was historic.
They did an amazing job, according to them, and this president is going to run for re-election on the basis of things like that.
So glad that we can do it again over in Sudan, leaving 16,000 Americans behind.
According to Nathan Sales, State Department coordinator for counterterrorism during the Trump administration, quote, ISIS-K has enjoyed safe haven in Afghanistan since the administration withdrew 20 months ago.
The group has the ambition to attack American interests in the region, ultimately the U.S.
homeland itself.
None of this is a shock of any sort.
Joe Biden is a liar, and he's a cowardly liar at that when it comes to foreign policy at the very, very least.
Which means that Republicans had better get their heads on straight when it comes to defeating him.
And who they nominate is going to make a large difference in this effort.
Who should be nominated?
So here's what the polls show right now with regard to Joe Biden.
Well, number one, nobody actually wants Joe Biden to run.
Something like 70% of Americans currently say that they do not want Joe Biden to run for president.
Only 26% of Americans say that they want Joe Biden to run for president.
That's according to a new NBC News poll.
Only 38% of Americans have positive feelings toward the current president of the United States.
His job performance rating currently is 41%, according again to that NBC News poll, which means that this old dullard is unbelievably vulnerable.
But are Republicans going to take advantage of that, or are they going to continue to run headlong at a brick wall?
That's the real question here.
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And so, what the polls show is that Joe Biden is wildly unpopular.
Like, very, very, very unpopular.
However, the Republican nominee, only 60% of Americans think Trump should not run for president.
Only 35% think that Donald Trump should run for president of the United States.
Not only that, the leading feelings that people have with regards to the possibility of a Trump-Biden rematch is exhaustion.
Which, frankly, I can't imagine why.
I can't imagine why.
There's a survey, again from Yahoo News at YouGov, And I found that 38% of Americans chose exhaustion after being shown a list of eight feelings and asked to select all that comes to mind when considering another Biden versus Trump campaign.
And among registered voters, that number is even higher.
44%.
The other numbers?
Fear, 29%.
Sadness, 23%.
Hope, 23%.
Anger, 23%.
Excitement, 16%.
Pride, 8%.
Or gratitude, 7%.
Yes, Americans are very positive about another Trump-Biden matchup.
It's what the people want.
anger 23%, excitement 16%, pride 8%, or gratitude 7%?
Yes, Americans are very positive about another Trump-Biden matchup.
It's what the people want. They demand it.
And this is one of the big problems that you have with the weakening of parties counterintuitively.
The weakening of both the Republican and the Democratic parties means that basically the basis of both parties and the more involved basis of both parties tend to have an outsized influence compared to the rest of the American population, which means very often that candidates who are not wildly popular with the American public end up being the nominees of their parties.
Trump, for what it's worth, is currently wrapping up a bunch of congressional endorsements.
Now, you would imagine, listen, he's the former president of the United States.
He's the Republican frontrunner.
He should be.
He's also the only major candidate to have announced thus far.
You have Nikki Haley, who's announced, and you have Vivek Ramaswamy, who's announced.
DeSantis has not yet announced.
But Trump is racking up endorsements, particularly in Florida.
Again, not a major shock, also because if you are a state Or a congressional politician.
What you don't want is Trump attacking you.
If Trump asks you for an endorsement, the safest thing to do is give it to him because if you don't endorse DeSantis, DeSantis isn't going to attack you.
But Trump will if you don't.
So here's Fox News covering that.
I'll be asking everybody to support President Trump, and Ron DeSantis hasn't declared he's running for president yet.
I think he's a great governor of Florida.
So, if I were Florida, I would give DeSantis a third term, and everybody get behind President Trump.
You can't.
With us now, Congressman Carlos Gimenez, who was kind enough to take time to let us know where he's going and where he's heading and who he's supporting.
Congressman, who is it?
Well, announcing that I'll be supporting President Donald J. Trump for president in 2024.
I think he gives us the best chance of winning.
Nope.
He has a solid track record as president and yesterday at the dinner he laid out a solid plan for the future and where we need to go.
Okay, so this idea that Trump gives Republicans the best chance of winning is belied by pretty much all of the polls at this point, as well as the fact that he already ran an election campaign against Joe Biden, and it didn't go amazing.
He's not the President of the United States right now.
Trump's team is focused in on Ron DeSantis like a laser beam.
According to Rolling Stone, a Trump advisor says, quote, Now, the problem for Trump is that the angle that he's taking with regard to DeSantis is one that does not make the base particularly enthusiastic.
He is currently attacking DeSantis with alacrity from the left, almost entirely from the left, because it's impossible to get to DeSantis' right.
So instead, he's attacking him from the left.
So over the weekend, Trump did a speech in which he ripped on DeSantis repeatedly.
The important thing here is really not the attacks.
The important thing is the crowd reaction.
Listen to how quiet it is.
Except you don't see that tabulation.
We did much better in 2020 in Florida.
I got 1.2 million more votes than your successful governor's campaign.
You know that.
We got 1.2 million.
Sir, I'd love to have your support, sir.
I'd love to have your support.
I'm down at about three.
I'd love to have your support.
All right, let's think about it.
And there was like a rocket ship after I gave it, otherwise right now you'd have a lawyer someplace looking for business.
Okay, and the crowd is pretty much silent there.
Because the reality is that the base, unlike when Trump was attacking everybody back in 2016 when nobody actually liked any of the other candidates, this is the dirty secret, nobody liked anybody else who was running in 2016.
And so Trump had a bunch of baked-in advantages.
People actually like Ron DeSantis' record of governance.
And so Trump has been relegated to attacking DeSantis from the left.
He put out a statement, a lengthy statement, over the weekend, in which he said that Florida has now become among the worst states to live, or to find economic opportunity, or to work, or to retire, or to raise a family.
No one believes this.
No one.
I moved my family to Florida in large part because Governor DeSantis has done an excellent job.
If Andrew Gillum were the governor of Florida, I don't know that I'd move my family here.
I didn't just move my family.
My parents moved, my in-laws moved, two of my sisters and their families moved.
There's a reason that over the course of the last several years, about 700,000 people have left their home states and moved to Florida.
There's a reason why Florida is the fastest growing state in America, and it is not because it is a terrible place to live.
This dog just does not hunt.
It's a real problem for Donald Trump, actually, that it does not hunt if the issues matter at all.
So DeSantis, for his part, he is finally starting to open up the guns on Trump, and he has a pretty good angle here.
His angle here is that Trump blew it on COVID.
That Trump was too weak on COVID, that Anthony Fauci is only a household name because Donald Trump appointed him and then left him in place and didn't actually have any control over his own policy because he didn't know what to do.
So here is Ron DeSantis over the weekend saying, listen, when it came to COVID, I took control because that's what leaders do.
They take control.
And to me, leadership is having the courage to make difficult decisions in the teeth of opposition and criticism.
A leader must have the confidence to stand all alone if need be.
And so for us, as I got into office, COVID presented that situation for us because we were in a situation, the third largest state in the country, one of the highest percentage of elderly, economy based on tourism, which we needed travel to continue.
So this situation was an existential threat to our state.
But I made the judgment, leaders take the bull by the horns and make the decisions for themselves.
They don't subcontract out their leadership to health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci.
That is going to be a very rich vein for attack from DeSantis toward Trump.
Because he doesn't have to actually say anything about Trump.
He can just say, listen, when it comes to actually formulating policy and being a leader, I was right on COVID, and you're attacking me from the left.
And that is a fact, because Donald Trump was two DeSantis' left throughout the pandemic.
In fact, here is Donald Trump attacking Governor Brian Kemp, not DeSantis, in April 2020 for reopening the state of Georgia.
You'll remember, if you have the memory, that Donald Trump actually was very angry at Brian Kemp for reopening the state.
I told the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, that I disagree strongly.
With his decision to open certain facilities which are in violation of the phase one guidelines.
I would advise him not to just turn the switch on and go.
Would I do that?
No.
I'd keep him a little longer.
I want to protect people's lives.
And I went to Debra and Dr. Fauci and other people and they weren't thrilled about it.
I think it's too soon.
And I don't want this thing to flare up because you're deciding to do something that is not in the guidelines.
There is a danger of a rebound.
They can wait a little bit longer, just a little bit.
If you ask me, am I happy about it?
I'm not happy about it.
Safety has to predominate.
And I'm not happy about Brian Kemp.
Okay, so remember, that was Trump's opinion in the early days of the pandemic.
And then he kind of went back and forth.
He was like, we need to open up Michigan, but also we need to close down Georgia.
It was all over the place.
In fact, in the middle of the 2020 election, Donald Trump actually put out a campaign ad featuring Anthony Fauci, talking actually to Mark Levin in this particular interview.
He has never overruled me.
He's never countered or overridden me.
when we went in and said, we probably should be doing that.
And the answer was yes.
When I've made recommendations, he's taken them.
And then another time was we should do it with Europe.
And the answer was yes.
He's never countered or overridden me.
And the next time we should do it with the UK.
And the answer was yes.
I never, in the multiple times that I've done that, where I said, for scientific reasons,
we really should do this, that he hasn't said, let's do it.
The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a, quote, shutdown.
The president listened to the recommendation.
Okay, I mean, that was an actual Trump-Pence ad in 2020.
DeSantis should just replay that ad, except it said, donate to DeSantis button.
I mean, I'm not sure what to do about the fact that Donald Trump was doing this in the middle of the pandemic.
I mean, he was.
That is the reality.
It was DeSantis who was taking the slings and arrows when it came to this sort of stuff.
Trump was unwilling to make the call.
In fact, in the middle of the 2020 COVID pandemic, Trump talked about how he was a genius for the policies he'd taken, including shutting down the country.
We did the right thing.
We closed the country down.
I could have kept it open.
And I could have done what some countries are doing.
I had to shut it down.
We did the right thing.
I thought of keeping it open.
And we did just the right thing.
We closed it down.
And a group of very smart people walk in and say, sir, we have to close it.
And we did the right thing.
They can't do anything without the approval of the President of the United States.
Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that.
By contrast, here was Ron DeSantis in the middle of 2020.
This is actually kind of amazing.
His own Surgeon General was out there suggesting that until there was a vaccine, they were going to have to basically socially distance.
And DeSantis had him kicked out of the room.
He's like, nope, we're not going to do that.
And you're not the one who gets to make that decision.
So as long as we're going to have COVID in the environment, and this is a tough virus, we're going to have to practice these measures so that we are all protected.
Based upon what has been reported, probably a year, if not longer, is what some individuals have talked about.
He's being told to leave by one of DeSantis' assistants.
He's saying it's time for you to leave the room.
Do you, what do you?
Hard to see pieces.
They're closing his microphone and telling him to leave.
Yeah, do you see the difference right there?
This is the living room.
By the way, I know that this difference applied because Governor DeSantis called me in the middle of the COVID
pandemic, it was like June 2020, to explain his policy of reopening in granular detail.
Yes, that makes a big, big difference.
And in a primary, people are going to have to remember who it was that actually demonstrated more leadership when it came to the pandemic.
In just one second, we'll get to the left-wing attacks on DeSantis because it is very clear who they would love to see nominated.
I mean, they're really not making a lot of bones about it at this point.
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Every attempt to fix this non-existent problem in the name of equity is making the country worse by leagues and measures.
Heather MacDonald is shutting down that malignant ideology of anti-racism in her brand new book, When Race Trumps Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives.
Heather MacDonald's When Race Trumps Merit exposes how the BLM-fueled equity obsession is destroying Western civilization, or tearing down meritocracy, or tearing down Anything approaching actual equality?
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Okay, meanwhile, obviously the left is focusing in on the 2024 presidential race.
They're doing so by attacking DeSantis.
They've decided they want Trump.
I mean, it's very clear that the mainstream media would love Trump to be the nominee, mainly because they think, again, that he's easily defeatable, which is why the new going line about DeSantis is that he's mean.
Typically, Democrats have, like, three lines on Republicans.
It's mean, stupid, or corrupt.
Those are the only three.
And it's cold or stupid or corrupt.
They can't say that DeSantis is corrupt because he's not.
They can't say that he is stupid because he clearly is not.
And so they've decided to go with he's mean.
So Jennifer Rubin, one of the least charming people on planet Earth, she says that Ron DeSantis is a jerk, and that is the thing that's really going to harm him, as opposed to Joe Biden, who's a really, really nice guy who just leaves, you know, hundreds of Americans behind enemy lines to die.
But other than that, other than being, you know, a bloviating, blowhard jackass, he's the best.
But Ron DeSantis is super mean.
What happens now?
There are all sorts of people who, in theory, are running against Donald Trump, but he has a remarkable ability to pick people off one at a time.
He really does.
And let's face it, I take a little bit of joy in predicting that Ron DeSantis was going to crash and burn.
He's a jerk.
And it's hard to disguise being a jerk when you're running for President of the United States.
He just is not ready for prime time.
And I think the Disney episode is going to look like the little Marco episode in retrospect, making him seem small and petty and rather silly, frankly.
Oh, it's gonna make him look small and petty and rather silly to take one of the biggest corporations in American history and force them to back off of their insane politicking with regard to the indoctrination of small children, is it?
Interesting.
Maureen Dowd has settled on the same line.
She has a piece in the New York Times doing exactly the same thing, suggesting that Ron DeSantis isn't likable enough.
And then who does she quote?
She quotes David Axelrod, the former Obama advisor, who said that the Florida governor is coming across, quote, like the high school quarterback who throws the geek against the lockers to get a laugh from the cheerleaders.
And that's not a good look.
Oh, as opposed to, you know, President Trump, who they all love, who's apparently, according to them, incredibly charming.
According to Maureen Dowd, even in a world made crueler by social media and Donald Trump, DeSantis seems mean, punching out at Mickey Mouse, immigrants, gays, and women, pushing through an expansion of his proposal to ban school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity to include all grades, as well as a draconian ban on abortion after six weeks.
He even admonished some high school kids during the pandemic for wearing masks.
No, that's not true.
He actually laughed with them and joked with them that he didn't understand why the adults were forcing them to wear masks.
Actually, if you watch the video.
But this is going to be the line. The going line is he's not charming enough.
So they can't come up with a political reason why he'd be a bad president. So what they're
coming up with is he's not charming enough. So it'll be fun to watch when they do the exact
same thing to Tim Scott. So Tim Scott is the senator from South Carolina who they all pretend
to like in the moment. But the minute that he runs, they will throw him directly under the bus.
He's been thinking about throwing his hat into the ring. He says he doesn't have a timeline.
What do you feel like you have to make a decision of going from exploratory to official?
I guess the simple answer is, is I continue on the faith in America tour.
As I continue to tour farms and businesses and churches, it gives me an opportunity to understand
whether or not what I'm focused on, which is an optimistic, positive message anchored in conservatism,
As long as it's working, you continue to build momentum, you continue to make good decisions.
If you do it prematurely, then likely you don't.
So my goal really isn't to figure out the timeline.
My goal is to continue to listen.
The more I listen, the better off I am.
They're the same members of the media who think that Tim Scott is charming and wonderful and super nice.
And Tim Scott is a very nice person.
They will be ripping his head off the minute he declares for the presidency.
Because this is what they do.
There's only one person who they've been pretty much leaving alone at this point in so far as his candidacy.
They'll go after him with regard to his election behavior and they'll go after him with regard to his taxes and everything else and his Michael Cohen.
But when it comes to his actual election behavior, the media basically decided it is hands off with President Trump.
There's a reason for that.
Okay, in other news.
Bud Light has begun the climb down, at least publicly.
They're now attempting to sort of buy off everybody who's angry at them and no longer will shop and buy Bud Light by putting on sort of unnamed suspension the marketing executive who originally put together the partnership between Bud Light and Dylan Mulvaney.
According to the Associated Press, Alyssa Heinerschneid, Bud Light's VP of Marketing, will be replaced by Todd Allen, the most recent Global Vice President to Budweiser, according to reports from Beer Business Daily and Ad Age.
A spokesperson for Bud Light's parent company, Anheuser-Busch, on Saturday did not directly confirm the leave of absence, but said that Allen, as VP of Bud Light, will report directly to the U.S.
Chief Marketing Officer.
This should not end whatever boycott people have going against Bud Light, because again, this is obviously just some sort of PR move.
That is why you announce a move like that.
Until they say, listen, we are not going to dip our toes into politically sensitive waters again.
We're here to sell beer and to like America.
And those are the only two things that we are here for.
Until they actually do that, then you don't need to buy Bud Light.
You shouldn't buy it anyway.
It seems to be not very good beer.
But aside from that, It is fairly obvious at this point that when people on the right and people in the middle say we're not interested in the thing, it turns out the companies actually do answer to that, at least in small part.
So, you know, what does that tell you?
What it does tell you is that companies respond to pressure campaigns.
Now, hilariously, there's a piece by Brian Broome over at the Washington Post blaming the Bud Light controversy not on stupid marketing ideas, wherein a beer largely marketed at poor white people is going to be best Best marketed by a man pretending to be a woman.
No, the real problem is you wait, wait, wait for it.
Toxic masculinity!
According to Brian Broom.
Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer with more than 10 million followers, documented her transition over the course of a year.
To celebrate Day 365 of her journey, Bud Light sent her some personalized cans of beer.
This attempt on Bud Light's part to be forward-thinking about how its customers live and love has been met with backlash by one group of people who seem to believe that another group of people should not exist.
For some, trans people represent just the latest bad-a-bad-a-babadook, a complex fear they cannot tolerate.
A note to those folks who are upset that Anheuser-Busch relied on a trans woman as a quasi-spokesperson.
Whether you like it or not, queer people have been drinking your beer for decades.
In fact, as long as there's been beer, queer people have been drinking it.
Mulvaney's celebration for some reason threatened the very existence of a whole bunch of guys who aren't ready for that reality.
This will surprise no one who has ever been a small boy.
Everyone knows the sting of being called a sissy.
Yes, it's toxic masculinity because if a man doesn't believe that a man can be a woman, that's toxic masculinity.
So the best way, obviously, to demonstrate solidarity with women who are, in fact, being lied about and mocked when a man pretends to be a woman and the entire society pretends that the man is a woman, when men say, no, we're not going to go along with that, that apparently is an aspect of toxic masculinity.
So we have now redefined toxic masculinity to mean men defending women from other men pretending to be women.
The attempt to destroy masculinity as a very concept is absurd.
The reality is that if women want to be protected, you know what they need?
They need masculine men protecting them.
I give you another example that comes to mind here.
So, one of the stupidest things I have ever seen is happening now in Canada.
Apparently, Canadian politicians, male politicians, decided that they had to wear women's pink high heels To raise awareness about violence against women.
The event was hosted by Halton Women's Place and was part of their Hope in High Heels campaign.
And one of the members of the Canadian Parliament tweeted, violence against women is still prevalent in our society.
Hope in Heels, an event that spreads awareness on violence against women while encouraging men and boys to be part of the solution.
We award their signature pink heels in support of this important cause.
Here are some of the video.
You can see them dancing around in high heels.
At least three of these guys look like this is not their first time.
But yeah, the event aims to sensitize men and boys about gender-based violence and the need to end it.
It's about starting a systematic conversation regarding violence against women in the society.
Okay, so you want to actually know how to stop violence against women?
You put intimidating men who defend women in the way of men who are attempting to harm women.
You think a single one of these politicians is going to prevent a single act of violence against women?
You think that's going to happen because they're gallivanting around wearing women's shoes?
Guess what doesn't solve toxic masculinity?
Femininity.
It doesn't.
It doesn't.
The thing that solves toxic masculinity is men being good men.
But this is what we've done.
We've decided that masculinity in and of itself is toxic.
It's bad.
The only way that men can defend women is if they don high heels or if they allow other men to gallivant around pretending to be women and mocking women in the process.
That is the height, apparently, of the new masculinity is to be as effeminate as humanly possible.
And somehow this is going to stop bad men from doing bad things.
Which, of course, is absolute silliness at every level.
At every single level.
Alrighty, meanwhile, this year marks the 75th anniversary of Israel's independence.
Coincidentally, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is also celebrating 40 years of ministry.
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If you've ever met Holocaust survivors, I mean, they're some of the most amazing people on the planet.
They've gone through some of the worst hardships.
If you're a Holocaust survivor and you live in Ukraine, there's a good shot that you not only lived through the Holocaust, but then you were made subject to the predations of the Stalin government and the Soviet Union.
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Okay, meanwhile, there is a fascinating piece from the Wall Street Journal
talking about who in America these days is very happy, very happy.
So, today in America, the number of people who consider themselves very happy,
it used to be back in, say, 2016, the number of people who consider themselves very happy
was a bit over 30%.
Now, the number of people who consider themselves very happy
is about 12%.
Not just happy or pretty happy.
People who consider themselves very happy.
The number who consider themselves pretty happy is basically stagnant.
It's somewhere in the 50s.
But people who say, like, they wake up every morning and they are very happy.
They're just very happy people.
Who are these people?
According to the Wall Street Journal NORC poll, the 12% was the smallest share of very happy people ever recorded in this poll, dating all the way back to 1972.
Who exactly are these people?
Well, some 67% of these people say marriage is very important to them, regardless of their own marital status, compared with only 43% of respondents overall.
These people tend to say that God is important.
Two-thirds describe themselves as very or moderately religious, compared to less than half of adults overall.
Community involvement rates as more important among the very happy than among those who report lower levels of happiness.
Well, many of the very happy are satisfied with their personal finances.
As a group, they don't attach high importance to money.
Well, who could have suspected?
So here's the description of the very happy person in America.
A person who is married or believes in the value of marriage, who is involved in the community or believes that it is very important to be involved in the community, and a person who believes in God.
Those are the people.
Who are very happy in America.
And those are precisely the people we are apparently determined, bound and determined as a society to essentially push out of the population.
How are we doing this?
Well, there are a couple of ways we're doing this.
One is we just make an overt appeal that religious living is bad and terrible and bigoted, right?
This is the case of the hardcore left.
This is the case that presumably is being pushed by people like The Amazing Atheist.
There's a tweet that has now gone viral from a person who calls himself The Amazing Atheist.
And never have I seen atheism and paganism so closely connected in one tweet.
It's pretty incredible.
The tweet goes like this, from the amazing atheist.
Hey transphobes, it's okay you want to suck girl bleep.
Bleep is the word for his penis.
Hey transphobes, it's okay you want to suck girl bleep.
The only people judging you are other transphobes, who also secretly want to suck girl bleep.
If you all stop being bigots at the same time, you could all goon to girl bleep as one.
It's okay.
So atheism directly to the idea that a woman can have a penis,
and that everyone who opposes this particular atheist, must actually want to have sex with a man who says he's a
woman.
This is the tweet.
So there are the militant folks in our society who have decided religion is just bad, it's evil, it needs to be wiped away.
And then there's a softer version of this.
The softer version of this is where we substitute faith in a quote-unquote higher power or in the universe or in something for God and religion and tradition.
Faith in a thing is effectively the same as faith in nothing.
You actually have to specify what the thing you have faith in is.
And when people say that they believe in a higher source of spirituality, in a spiritual path, they're not religious, they're spiritual.
What they're really saying is they have no idea.
They understand there's a mystery in the universe, but they have no interest or idea of what that mystery could be or how exactly to penetrate it.
And so they're going to live with the boundaries of secular humanism as their morality.
It doesn't connect them with a higher guide for morality.
It doesn't connect them to a community because there is no secular humanist community.
In fact, secular humanism tends to lead to individualistic atomism.
That is what we have been doing as a society.
So there's an article, again from the Wall Street Journal today.
A greater share of young adults say they believe in a higher power or God.
But that's not the same thing.
So, the Wall Street Journal found this puzzling because it said that a higher share of people are now saying that they believe in God or a higher power.
But, there's a big difference between saying that you believe in a higher power and saying you believe in a God.
When you say you believe in God, everyone understands obligations and duties now attend to you.
That you now have to do things.
You believe in God?
Well, God demands things of you.
You say you believe in a higher power?
This doesn't demand anything of you.
What is the higher power?
Is it astrology?
Is it woo-woo crystals?
Like, what is it exactly?
Unless you have a belief in God that is embedded in your life and that winds up binding you to a community and to a set of values, a belief in a higher power does not do you much good.
And in fact, it ends up being directed in very, very weird directions.
It ends up being pushed toward a pagan atheistic direction, which is why you end up with people making the case that Earth Day should actually be a religious holiday.
There's a piece in Time Magazine today by Paul Greenberg and Carl Safina.
Greenberg teaches at NYU's Animal Studies program.
Safina holds the Endowed Research Chair for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University.
And they say, for the two of us environmentalists, one of us nominally Jewish, the other a recovering Catholic,
we find the ill-defined nature of the only day honoring a place that makes life itself possible
more than a little sacrilegious.
So on this 53rd Earth Day, we thought it useful to pose what a real Earth Day should represent
and how it could form a central time for a new approach to worship.
So what exactly do they want?
Well, they say that an Earth reverent belief system would look like this, quote,
to begin with, let's take a look at what established religions get right
and where we might take a cue.
Perhaps the first step might be unearthing the nature-centered origins of our existing religious holidays.
Most of us know in the back of our minds that Christmas and Hanukkah fall around the time of the winter solstice, that Easter and Passover are celebrated in tandem with the arrival of spring, that Sukkot and Diwali mark harvest in summer's last warmth, and Eid follows the path of the moon.
These holidays have origins in gratitude.
Gratitude for the sun returning, gratitude for the harvest.
Thanks for when we did avert it.
We also might look at what religions do to help us form community and mark life's important benchmarks.
Birth, maturity, marriage, and death.
What if we were to come to celebrate these benchmarks for what they are biologically?
Birth, that ecstatic co-joining of atoms and molecules, resulting in sentience, might prompt a ritual of truthfully and factually recounting how inanimate objects become animate.
Well, that sounds, like, absolutely incredible.
You're just gonna do, like, atheistic materialist projections of how lifeless form could become life form.
Instead of, or in addition to, bar and bat mitzvahs, would it be too much to expect our children to go beyond the average 20 daily minutes most American kids spend outdoors and commit to memory the names and descriptions of local plants and animals?
I mean, we're just going right back here to paganism.
Nature worship.
Pantheism, maybe.
So, get rid of God and people find something to believe in, and what they apparently believe in is, you know, the trees.
The leaves.
Now, if you find yourself believing that a community can be built on this, or a lifestyle can be built, or this will make you happy, I have another thing coming for you.
It's not going to make you happy.
No community can be built on this sort of nonsense and make people happy.
The reason being, it does not bind people together.
Nature wants to kill you.
Nature both keeps us alive and also tries to kill us.
This is what nature does.
Every single day.
The notion that you are going to worship the inanimate powers of nature, and that this is somehow going to make you feel better about life, or that you're going to jettison religion entirely and fall back on a pure subjectivist view of what humanity is and truth is, such that you end up like the amazing atheist talking about girl d**k. If this is the way you approach the world, you are likely to end up less happy.
Great piece by Leo Leibovitz over at Commentary Magazine, titled The Return of Paganism, on exactly this topic.
He says, how to make sense of statements in which people say that they are men who have vaginas.
He says, appealing to reason hardly helps.
Instead, anyone wishing to find his way through the thicket of American public discourse these days should start by embracing one simple and terrifying idea.
The barbarians are at the gates.
I mean this almost literally.
Everywhere you turn these days, pagans are afoot, busily hacking away at the Christian and Jewish foundations of American life and replacing them with a cosmology that would have been absolutely coherent to followers of, say, Baltumna, the Etruscan earth god, or to those who worship the Celt tribal protector Teutatus.
If you think the above paragraphs a little overblown, consider the numbers.
In 1990, scholars from Trinity College set out to learn just how many of their fellow Americans practice some form of pagan religion.
The numbers were unsurprisingly small, about 8,000 or enough to pack your average journey reunion concert.
But the researchers asked again in 2008.
This time, 340,000 Americans said yes to paganism.
A decade later, the Pew survey posed the same question.
There are now 1.5 million Americans professing an array of pagan persuasions from Wicca to Viking lore.
So this is now one of the fastest growing religious persuasions in the country.
But it's not just that.
It turns out that paganism has also now been embedded into a huge variety of the ways that we live today.
And that means that people are likely to start worshipping at the altar of untruth.
See, the key to paganism is to understand that what pagans believed is that we lived in a chaotic and violent universe in which everything was nearly un-understandable.
And because of that, you tried to propitiate the gods with various aspects of sacrifice, human and non-human.
This is what paganism was all about.
And then monotheistic religion came around.
They said there's one God who stands behind all of this.
And we can't understand everything about him, but we can understand some things about him.
And he has communed with human beings to the extent that he has given us a moral code to live by.
And it presents traditional wisdom in a way that we can understand and act out.
And as that poll from the Wall Street Journal shows, Once again, these tend to be the things that make human beings actually live fulfilled lives.
But paganism has taken the place of all of that, and the result is really, really ugly.
Alrighty, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
So, things that I like.
I gotta say, I do wonder sometimes whether the left hears itself.
So, over in Florida, a gay parade has now been cancelled.
Why?
According to Local 10, officials in a Florida city have cancelled a gay pride parade and restricted other pride events to people 21 years and older, in anticipation of Governor Ron DeSantis signing a bill meant to keep children out of drag shows.
The Pride Alliance for the Treasure Coast posted Wednesday on Facebook the decision to change this Saturday's Pridefest events was made, after multiple conversations with Port St.
Lucie officials.
So, why?
Well, apparently, the DeSantis administration was cracking down on lewd displays before children.
They basically said, no assless chaps or displays of dildos.
And, in front of the kids.
And the gay pride parade, instead of being like, okay, we'll fly our rainbow flags and we will celebrate gay marriage, they're like, nope, we're gonna pull the parade.
Do you hear yourselves, guys?
I mean, I'm fine with it.
That's what you want to do.
But it seems like you're kind of, like, is that the pur- if the purpose of the Gay Pride Parade is the assless chaps and, uh, and the simulated sex act in front of kids, and so you have to cancel it to the extent that, like, a law that says you can't sexually indoctrinate kids affects the parade?
What does that say about your parade, really?
I mean, meanwhile, other things that I like.
The trans movement, obviously, is going to have some radical ramifications for a lot of other things in American life.
One of those things, obviously, is going to be the question of age.
So, you'll recall that a few years back, a very, very famous exchange between me and a college student, in which this college student took the position that men can be women, women can be men, and I asked this college student her age.
And she told me her age, she said she was 20 or something, 21, and I said, why aren't you 60?
And this, of course, went viral, because I was saying, like, you can't change your age, and you can't change your sex.
What are you talking about here?
Let me ask you this.
Okay, I won't ask you how old— I will ask you how old you are, okay?
Because you're young enough that it's probably not insulting to ask you.
So— I'm 22, so I'm probably under 90, right?
No.
Why aren't you 60?
Why aren't you 60?
Because it— And why— Why can't you identify as 60?
What is the problem with you identifying as 60?
You're right.
Age is significantly less important than gender.
Well now, I guess we've hit the end of parody because now we have 60-year-old men identifying as 6-year-old girls.
This is a clip that was going viral on the Twitters of a 60-year-old man in Great Britain claiming that he is in fact a 6-year-old girl.
Now what's hilarious about this, and the reason why I put it in things I like rather than things I hate, is I think it does quite well expose the trans agenda.
If this were a man claiming that he is in day 365 of girlhood, he would be getting all sorts of ad deals from Maybelline, and Tampax, and Bud Light, But since he claims that he's a 60-year-old man who's a six-year-old girl, it's the age that really is upsetting people.
It's the age that's troubling, not the fact that this is a dude claiming that he is a female.
Today is my first day of having my living room as my playroom.
And my koto is here with me, but I didn't have any friends over for the playdate because it's COVID time.
But I'm having fun with Makoto, my cat, and with Franny.
She's my baby.
Anyways, I just wanted you to see I made a tutu with my sewing machine.
Oh no.
And it's for pretending to be a little fairy.
Oh no.
Oh no.
But here's the thing.
Why not?
Question to the left, why not?
Why can't this 60-year-old man be a 6-year-old girl?
Why not?
You say he's a man who can be a girl.
Again, day 365 of girlhood means that you're getting calls from the President of the United States.
So when is the Prime Minister of Britain, not Rishi Sunak, who actually has his head screwed down straight on this, maybe some of the former Prime Ministers, why don't they call up this guy and congratulate him on becoming a 6-year-old girl?
I mean, the good news is that, according to the left, this means that he is basically immortal.
Because he can just keep identifying as a younger and younger person.
He'll never die.
So that's very exciting.
None of this ideology makes sense, because it is all pagan crap, and it has nothing to do with reality.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
Alrighty, so.
There is a human named Jules Hoffman.
Jules Hoffman is a woman.
But, Jules Hoffman says that she is a they.
According to Jules, the reason this is of relevance is because Jules Hoffman is one of the stars of a wildly popular YouTube channel for babies and toddlers called Songs for Littles.
The host of this is apparently a person named Miss Rachel.
Now, I've never watched this, nor did I expose my children to a woman who says that she is a they.
Not three-year-old children.
Nope.
So Miss Rachel used to be just a place where you would hear a cute song to your three-year-old.
Now it's a place where you can learn about why gender is non-binary.
Hello everyone!
We're gonna have so much fun.
I'm so glad you came today.
Are you ready to sing?
Are you ready to play?
Hooray!
It's time for Songs for Littles.
Songs for Littles.
It's time for Songs for Littles.
Okay, so this is a lady singing.
Okay, right?
I mean, unless that is a man with a very high voice, which it is not.
That is a lady singing.
So, what are the pronouns?
So, Hoffman uses they-them pronouns.
And, um, that's, I'm sure, very exciting for your tiny child who doesn't understand what the hell is going on.
And yes, distinctions matter to small children and to everyone else in life.
But now we have an entire piece in the Washington Post saying that you must expose your child to this or you're a bad parent.
Quote, Hoffman is one of the stars of Songs for Littles.
Using their niece and nephews, which they refer to as nibblings, as inspiration, Hoffman belts out tunes on Pizza, Dinosaurs, and the Hokey Pokey.
The channel's most popular video has been viewed more than 290 million times.
But the channel has come under fire recently after some parents took issue with Hoffman's identity, asserting falsely the show introduced the concept of they-them pronouns to their young audience.
A video on TikTok criticizing the show has been viewed more than 400,000 times.
Hoffman said the backlash was a surprise and sent them on a rollercoaster of emotion as they waded through hundreds of TikToks and commenters, some critical and others supportive.
Apparently, the show's star, Rachel Griffin-Acurso, educator and songwriter, announced she was taking a break from social media to address her own mental health after the fallout.
Hurtful videos and comments, no matter how much attention they get, will not bring you what you want.
Only love can do that.
Oh, how radically exciting.
Again, how about this?
You should be screening pretty much everything your kid watches.
The fact that there are people who wish to present themselves to your child in a guise that is deliberately confusing to your child, the fact that that exists means that you just have to police it harder.
And parents who refuse to police this material for their kids should not be surprised when their kids become very confused about these things because they are inherently confusing.
Because they do not make sense.
Because they are not true.
It turns out that Jules Hoffman is a woman, not a they-them.
It's just amazing, amazing stuff.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be getting into the director of Queen Cleopatra, who is very upset that people are bothered by the idea of Black Cleopatra, because Cleopatra was, you know, like, Greek.
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