All Episodes
Previous Next
June 19, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:03:03
Musk and Rogan vs. The Biggest Covid Scientist
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So, major controversy broke out over the weekend over a doctor named Peter Hotez.
You have seen him in a multiplicity of clips from MSNBC and CNN.
He is a vaccine researcher who's sort of COVID famous.
He was on the air a lot for the last several years talking about the magic of the COVID vaccines, why everyone should take them up to and including children.
And he had appeared on Joe Rogan's show where he had ripped into RFK Jr.
over RFK Jr.' 's anti-vaxxism.
So, RFK Jr.
is not just against the COVID vax, where, you know, arguments can be made either way in terms of who it should apply to.
My own opinion on the COVID vax is that it was effective for people 65 and above, people with severe obesity, but if you're a young, healthy person, there's really no reason you need to get the vax.
That's why my children were not vaxed.
However, R.F.K.
Jr.
also happens to be anti-vax generally, so he has very serious qualms about people taking generally proven vaccines like measles, mumps, rubella vaccines, for example.
He has serious problems with all of that.
So anyway, Dr. Peter Hotez ripped on R.F.K.
Jr., and R.F.K.
Jr.
then came back at Hotez.
They have a long-standing sort of public debate.
Have you had anyone debate you publicly about any of these?
Nobody will debate me.
For 18 years, nobody will debate me.
RFK Jr. is obviously gaining in the polls because Joe Biden is no longer alive.
And here is RFK Jr. slamming Hotez on autism.
Have you had anyone debate you publicly about any of these?
Nobody will debate me.
For 18 years, nobody will debate me.
In fact, I've scheduled many, many debates and I've asked Hotez many, many times to debate
And I think you've asked him, here, why don't you debate Robert Kennedy?
And he said, because he's a cunning lawyer or something like that.
But I've debated Hotez on the telephone.
With, you know, with kind of a referee.
And, you know, his science is just made up.
He cannot stand by it.
He can't cite studies.
Well, he was trying to tell me that vaccines don't cause autism.
Yeah, and his daughter has autism, and he wrote a book.
But I asked him.
That didn't get her autism from a vaccine.
But I've read that book, and there is no science cited in that book.
It's just him saying, you know, it didn't happen.
Okay, so Rogan then pledged to donate $100,000 to a charity of Hotez's choice if he agreed to appear with RFK Jr.
on his show to do a debate over all this.
Rogan's challenge has been viewed over 25 million times, and that prompted Hotez to then respond to him, quote, Be serious, Joe.
That's what you throw for your hunting parties.
He said, $50 million endowment, which you, Spotify, RFK Jr., can easily afford, not for me, but so we can continue making low-cost, patent-free vaccines for the world's poor, preceded by RFK Jr.' 's public apology.
Which, of course, is an extraordinary demand when the entire debate is over the issue, presumably.
Elon Musk then chimed in, saying that Hotez hates charity, while Kennedy agreed to a respectful, congenial, informative debate the American people deserve.
Hotez then tweeted, quote, from all the online attacks I'm receiving after this absurd podcast, it's clear that many actually believe this nonsense.
And then he tweeted out a Vice News article claiming that Spotify was no longer monitoring Rogan's, quote-unquote, vaccine misinformation.
During Rogan's interview with Kennedy, released on Thursday, Hotez was brought up as a point of discussion as the podcast host criticized the doctor for previously saying he didn't take basic measures to help boost his immune system.
So Rogan correctly noted that Hotez had basically said, don't bother working out, don't bother about nutrition with regard to COVID.
The real thing you need is the vaccine, which of course is not true.
I mean, if you are, again, old, elderly, you have serious obesity, the vaccine was like a good short-term patch.
But if you're talking about like young people, of course young people should be in better shape.
In fact, even if you're 65, you should be in better shape.
My dad, when COVID first hit, he found out that the statistics, when it came to disparity in death rate based on obesity or overweight status, were really grave.
And so he immediately went about starting to lose weight, which would be a smart thing to do.
Hotez then said he was happy to come on and clear the air, and he extended a counter-offer to Musk, inviting him to visit the vaccine laboratory and learn more about the work.
Rogan then called that response a non-answer.
He said, I challenged you publicly because you publicly quote-tweeted and agreed with that dog bleep Vice article.
If you're really serious about what you stand for, you now have a massive opportunity for debate that will reach the largest audience a discussion like this has ever had.
If you think someone else is better qualified, suggest that person.
Hotez then said the deleted tweet was unnecessarily provocative, and he said he was upset because RFK Jr.
had labeled him a pharma shill.
Okay, so this then prompted Hotez to go on Mehdi Hassan's show on MSNBC and say he won't debate.
So again, it's very weird to say you won't go on Rogan's show, which actually has way, way, way, way, way more people watching than Mehdi Hassan's show to talk about the topic that you have dedicated your life to.
Now listen, I understand.
why Hotez looks at RFK Jr. and says, I don't want to debate RFK Jr.
And it's not because all the facts on RFK Jr. side.
It's because very often when you are debating somebody like RFK Jr.,
RFK Jr. might start moving the goalposts or he might just start moving study to study.
And we'll go through some of the claims that RFK Jr. has made in just a second.
It's not whether I agree with RFK Jr.
or whether I don't agree with RFK Jr.
Again, I don't agree with him generally about vaccinations.
And I do agree with him that the COVID vaccine was not necessary
for young people or for small children, even while I think that he exaggerates
or is just wrong about some of his vaccines.
That's not really what this is about.
The reason this has become a hot topic is because what Hotez is falling back on is the same mask of authority the entire scientific establishment has used about a myriad of issues over the course of the last three years, and they've been wrong every time.
Here is Hotez trying to explain to Mehdi Hassan why he won't debate RFK Jr.
Anti-vaccine disinformation, it's always done a lot of damage and harm, but now it's a lethal force in the United States, and that's why we have to have that discussion.
And I offer to come and talk to Joe Rogan again, I've been on a couple of times, and have that discussion with him, but not to turn it into the Jerry Springer show with having RFK Jr.
on.
Okay, but the reality is that somebody is going to have to, if he's the guy to do it, then great.
And if he's not, then he should name the person.
Somebody needs to rebut the claims if RFK Jr.
is to be stopped in terms of the supposed misinformation that he's putting out right here.
I mean, somebody is supposed to do that.
Because, let's be real about this, RFK Jr.' 's claims have gained an awful lot of traction because he's on Joe Rogan's show.
And here's Joe doing the right thing and saying, okay, well, let's get somebody else who opposes you on the program, and then you guys can battle it out.
And again, even if you don't like, What RFK Jr.
is saying.
This notion that RFK Jr.
There are a couple reasons you turned down a debate as somebody who does debate a lot.
There are a couple reasons you turned down a debate.
One, the person who is challenging you like debate me bro online is basically just an anonymous troll who is seeking attention.
That's clearly not the case here.
RFK Jr.
is way more famous than Peter Hotez.
And number two, it's on some sort of outlet that has no listenership.
So why would you bother doing it?
You're actually elevating the claim by engaging in the debate.
That's obviously not true here either, because RFK Jr.' 's podcast with Rogan has like 25 million views.
So Hotez really has no reason to do this.
Even again, the question isn't, is he going to convince RFK Jr.?
He's not going to convince RFK Jr.
The question is, can he make a coherent argument as to what exactly RFK Jr.
is doing?
And if not, can he suggest somebody who can?
Because otherwise, it looks like RFK Jr.
wins by default.
Now, I understand that Hotez and the rest of the crew are claiming that because Hotez is a doctor or because the science is settled, this means they no longer have to debate the issue, but that's just not true.
That is not the way that human minds are changed.
It's not the way that people's minds are changed.
It's not the way that any of this goes, particularly because, again, as I say, the scientific establishment has destroyed itself over the course of the last decade or so.
We'll get to more of this in a second.
First, We say a lot of controversial things on this show, and it takes a special kind of company to want to partner with this show.
This is why we appreciate our friends over at Pure Talk.
Pure Talk makes it possible for me to get up here and bring you facts, logic, and truth every single day.
Pure Talk shares my values as well as those of Matt Walsh, Andrew Clavin, Candace Owens, and the rest of The Daily Wire hosts.
That's why we made them the official wireless partner of The Daily Wire.
But that's not the only reason.
We check the coverage, and it is premium.
Pure Talk is the most dependable 5G network in the United States.
I use it myself.
Makes it match your plans to fit every person in your family.
Choose from talk, text, and 5G data for just $20 a month, all the way up to unlimited data with mobile hotspots for $55 a month.
Remember, you vote with how you spend your money, so stop supporting woke, wireless companies that don't really like you very much, and in fact use your money to push forward ESG or DEI.
Instead, head on over to PureTalk.com slash Shapiro to save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage.
That's PureTalk.com slash Shapiro.
And I've been using PureTalk myself for all my business calls.
They have a great wireless network because they use the same network as one of the big guys.
Go to PureTalk.com slash Shapiro to get started.
PureTalk is wireless for Americans by Americans.
PureTalk.com slash Shapiro.
Again, save an additional 50% off your very first month of coverage.
Okay, so.
You hear right there that again, RFK Jr.
is trying to claim, for example, so there are many claims that I disagree with RFK Jr.
making.
I do not think that they are correct.
So for example, he keeps claiming and a lot of people try to claim that there is a link between vaccinations and autism.
The reality is that there is no solid scientific evidence linking vaccinations to autism.
We really don't know what causes autism.
We do know that there's a genetic component to it because siblings who have autism tend to have other siblings who have autism.
But the notion that we know the cause of every disease in human history is just not true.
And this is particularly the case with a broad-spectrum disease like autism, a broad-spectrum condition like autism.
But that doesn't mean that it's the vaccines.
And so very often one of the things that happens in talking about vaccines is that the burden of proof is somehow put on the vaccines to prove that it is not causing autism as opposed to the burden of proof being put on people who are making the claim to suggest that it is the vaccines causing autism.
One of the things that's happened here Is that people have linked the rise in autism to the rise in vaccine usage because they say, well, they both occur when you're a child.
Well, yeah, but there are a lot of other things that occur when you're a child as well.
In fact, the original claim about autism being linked to vaccinations was made in 1998 when Andrew Wakefield and 12 of his colleagues ran a study in The Lancet, which suggested that MMR, measles, mumps, rubella vaccines, could predispose to behavioral regression and pervasive developmental disorder in children.
This is according to a piece cited by the Indian Journal of Psychiatry.
Despite the small sample size, it was only 12 people who were sampled, the uncontrolled design, and the speculative nature of the conclusions, this became like a bombshell in the middle of vaccine world.
Almost immediately afterward, epidemiological studies were conducted and published refuting the positive link between MMR and autism.
And then the paper ended up being fully retracted in February of 2010, and they admitted that several elements in the paper were incorrect, contrary to the findings of the earlier investigation.
Wakefield and his entire crew were held guilty of ethical violations and scientific misrepresentation.
But it doesn't matter because it had already sort of entered the bloodstream of the entire conversation with regard to, for example, autism.
And so when RFK Jr.
continues to claim Again, without, I think, any strong evidence at all that vaccines are linked to autism, that link just has never been proved in any sort of durable way.
Hotez could say that.
This is the whole point, right?
There are lots of people who can make that claim and they could take on RFK Jr.
The underlying pervasive problem here is not the claim that RFK Jr.
is making.
It's that if the people who are quote-unquote the science destroy their credibility, it means they now have to go back and they have to debate RFK Jr.
Because the same exact people who are claiming that the science is settled on vaccines are also unfortunately claiming that the science is settled on global warming, gender-affirming care, universal masking, the COVID vax, right?
And the science is not settled on any of those matters.
This has reopened the door to why you need to actually debate all of these claims.
This is part of the problem.
So RFK Jr.
makes these kinds of claims all the time.
And again, there are a bunch of claims that he's been making for years, right?
So he suggests, for example, that when people get, when babies get vaccines, that they get ethyl mercury in the vaccines, okay?
And this is what is causing autism, and that it's crossing the blood-brain barrier, and it's getting embedded in the brain, and all this.
Again, the evidence for this is extraordinarily scanty.
Because the reality is, there's a good piece over at Stat News by a guy named Paul Offit talking about this.
He says, babies typically ingest about 360 micrograms of methylmercury during the first six months of life, well before they ever receive their first dose of influenza vaccine.
If the 25 micrograms of ethylmercury in vaccines is 100 times greater than what Kennedy claimed it is, simply by living on Earth by six months of age, babies will have ingested an amount of mercury 1,440 times greater than Kennedy's safety limit.
Kennedy suggested that babies were being injected with 25 micrograms of ethylmercury Which is a preservative in something called thimerosal, which was used in multi-dose vials of influenza vaccine.
It's really only for the flu vaccine.
So thimerosal has not been a part of virtually any vaccine since 2001, but he continues to claim that kids are being routinely injected with mercury, for example.
And it turns out the kind of mercury they're being injected with is very common in human diets.
And then he cites essentially one study, and he does it in the middle of the Rogan interview.
He cites essentially one study suggesting that it's getting embedded in the brain, that it's linked with brain uptake in monkeys.
But the reality, again, is that even in the study that he is citing with regard to the monkeys, what it tends to show is sort of the opposite, actually.
This is a point made by another Twitter account called The Bad Stats.
In which he says that essentially the Birbacher study, he talks about this, RFK does, this is the study on monkeys and mercury in the brain, shows thimerosal only appears to be processed out of your bloodstream because it's accumulating in your brain.
But again, that actual study compares thimerosal to organic mercury and finds that a much lower brain concentration of total mercury was observed in the thimerosal monkey compared with the Organic mercury monkeys.
So, in other words, thimerosal actually does clear out faster than, for example, organic mercury.
And total mercury is cleared much more rapidly from the brain after thimerosal.
So, thimerosal, number one, isn't really in a lot of vaccines.
It's really, I think, in just flu vaccine at this point.
Two, the kind of mercury that's in thimerosal is not really linked to any sort of serious damage by any available study that I'm aware of.
There's speculation, but that speculation is not the equivalent of evidence.
This sort of stuff is the sort of stuff that RFK Jr.
frequently says, but again, why can't Hotez say that to him?
Why can't Hotez point that out?
Many of the claims that Kennedy makes, and again, I understand why it's hard to debate people.
I understand why you have a 250-page book like RFK Jr.' 's book on vaccines.
You have to go through and debunk every point in there if you want to get ready for it.
But that's what this is.
RFK Jr.
is now a prominent figure on the American public scene.
Somebody owes it.
Somebody who is a vaccine defender owes it to actually go on and rebut some of these claims.
But Hotez won't do it.
And again, this gets back to the key point.
This gets back to the key point.
If nobody rebuts the claims, then the claims win.
And the reason you're not rebutting the claims is because you have so many claims of your own that are irrefutable and irrebuttable, and you won't defend them.
If you never have to debate, it doesn't just mean that you won't debate RFK Jr.
It means you won't debate anyone on your own claims.
And those claims are very much in question.
And again, RFK Jr.
is a pretty fringe figure when it comes to science.
I mean, literally on Rogan's show, he suggested that Wi-Fi causes cancer.
Again, the evidence that Wi-Fi causes cancer is scanty.
I mean, I'm not aware of the existence of any serious evidence that Wi-Fi causes cancer.
We've run like a thousand studies on this at this point.
Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
But the evidence that it does is, again, very scanty.
But here is RFK Jr.
saying that Wi-Fi causes cancer.
Wi-Fi radiation does all kinds of bad things, including causing cancer.
Wi-Fi radiation causes cancer.
Yeah, from your cell phone.
I mean there's cell phone tumors.
You know that?
I mean I'm representing hundreds of people who have cell phone tumors behind the ear.
It's always on the ear that you favor with your cell phone.
Oh, and you know, we have the science.
So if anybody lets us in front of a jury, it will be over.
So what is the number?
Because a lot of people use cell phones.
There's a lot of people with it.
They're glioblastomas.
That's the kind of cancers that they get.
But cancer's not the worst thing.
They also, you know, it opens up... Wi-Fi radiation opens up your blood-brain barrier.
Okay, so again, the notion that it is causing cancer is certainly open to debate, but he says this sort of stuff with, like, pure certainty.
Somebody should refute it.
But again, the reason nobody will refute it is because there's a class of people who have considered themselves the specials, and those specials will not descend from the mountaintop to explain themselves to everybody else.
And the problem is that those special people who had, like, a hundred years of, look at our amazing science that's made life better for you, on their side, then blew it over the last ten years.
It was one thing for them to say, we're here on the mountaintop handing you down magical science that will make your life better.
When they're actually making magical science that made your life better.
When instead, the garbage, the stuff they've been handing down is no longer magical science that makes your life better, it's garbage.
Then people start to say, okay, well, now you need to come down from the mountaintop and explain yourself.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
It's really rough getting enough fruits and veggies in your diet.
Very, very difficult to get enough fruits and veggies in your diet.
It's time-consuming.
I'm not a big fan of the veggies.
I'm not the only one.
This is why I rely on Balance of Nature fruits and veggies.
They're a great way to make sure that you're getting essential nutritional ingredients every single day.
Through Balance of Nature's advanced cold vacuum process, the vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients of the fruits and vegetables are preserved.
So you can get that vital nutrition in each capsule.
Balance of Nature is a whole food supplement with no additives, fillers, extracts, synthetics, pesticides, or added sugar.
Pure fruits and veggies are the only things they put in their capsules.
Balance of Nature sent a bunch of their products down to the studio for my team to try, and we all love them.
It's not just me who hates vegetables.
Producer Jake really, really hates shiitake mushrooms, but he loves Balance of Nature's fruit and veggie capsules.
So, why don't you give it a try?
I was excited to find out the product is certified kosher, so I've been taking it, and it's great.
For a limited time this summer when you become a preferred customer at Balance of Nature, they're throwing in a free fruit and veggies travel set and giving an additional $25 off your first order.
Go to balanceofnature.com, use promo code SHAPIRO for a free travel set and $25 off your first preferred order as a preferred customer.
That's balanceofnature.com.
Promo code SHAPIRO.
So, again, the reason that I keep going back to this idea that RFK Jr.
may not even be a reliable source on all of this stuff, but somebody should debate him, is because the same people who say they will not debate the regulars are the people who have been lying to you for years.
So the same Peter Hotez, who's saying, I speak for the science, I speak for the vaccines.
Here he was pushing the vaccination of kids in May of 2021.
Kids being vaccinated before next school year, is that realistic?
Yeah, I think it is.
I mean, the study is not that big.
It's about 1,200 adolescents, 12 to 15, in the vaccination group and a similar number in the placebo group.
And what it showed is there were 18 cases of COVID in the placebo group and zero in the vaccinated group.
That's how you got to the 100%.
I would guess as you get to much larger studies, it'll probably come down a little bit similar.
It'll probably be similar to the very high level of protection that we see in adults. So the question is, where
do we go from here? I think there's a few reasons to vaccinate adolescents. We are seeing
adolescents go into pediatric intensive care units. They are getting sick, especially those with
underlying risk factors. And as you point out, if we're going to actually interrupt virus transmission, we
have to get to 80-85 percent of the population vaccinated now that we have the B.1.1.7
variant.
Okay, the reason that Peter Hoots has to debate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
is because of this.
Right?
It's because he won on national TV and he claimed that we need to vaccinate all the kids.
And the vaccines were going to stop transmission among kids and stop them from getting seriously ill and all the rest of this.
Right?
He made that claim.
As Captain Vaccine over here.
So what does that do?
That opens the door to all of the other claims.
And this is the same thing.
The expert class has lied to us.
About everything for a decade.
And then they say, well, we don't have to come down from that.
It's like, you're not Jonas Salk.
You didn't do the thing.
Okay, if you had represented the science and you had brought actual scientific progress to the fore, that would be one thing.
But once you admix that with bad stuff, once you're a bleep sandwich, once even, let's say that Hotez does good stuff with the vaccines he's developing for the third world, fine.
Okay, once you mix that with, you go on TV every night on MSNBC and CNN and you talk about things like kids have to get the vaccine, Now you are no longer a great science giver.
Now you are a person who has to defend yourself because you have sullied yourself.
You have sullied the science that you are presenting to people with your own personal agenda.
And once your personal agenda is at stake, you have to defend not only your own point of view, but the science that you thought was inarguable five seconds ago because you've sullied it by association.
You've engaged in what the word is, ultracorruptarianism.
You're outside your realm of expertise, but it still is your actual realm of expertise because you operated outside that area.
So now you actually do have to debate people like RF Kennedy Jr.
We're going to get to more of this in a second because, again, every day there's a new quote-unquote myth that the scientific establishment declared was a myth that is being proved to be true like every single day.
First, Everybody knows I love my Helix Sleep Mattress, but now they've come out with their newest, most high-end collection, the Helix Elite.
Helix has harnessed years of extensive mattress expertise to bring their customers a truly elevated sleep experience.
The Helix Elite collection includes six different mattress models, each tailored for specific sleep positions and firmness preferences.
I've had my Helix Sleep Mattress for probably 7-8 years at this point, and it is excellent.
It's the thing that's keeping me alive right now since my baby is getting me up at all hours of the night, and really getting my wife up at all hours of the night.
She's doing heroic heavy lifting here with the baby, and she needs that Helix Sleep Mattress as well.
Helix has a sleep quiz that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you, because why would you buy a mattress made for somebody else?
I took that Helix quiz and I was mashed with a firm but breathable mattress.
Head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben, take their two-minute sleep quiz, find the perfect mattress for your body and sleep type.
Your mattress will come right to your door for free.
Plus, Helix has a 10-year warranty.
You can try it out for 100 nights risk-free.
They'll even pick it up for you if you don't love it, but you will.
Helix has over 12,000 five-star reviews.
For a limited time, Helix is offering up to 20% off all mattress orders, plus two free pillows for our listeners.
It's their best offer yet.
Hurry on over to HelixSleep.com slash Ben with Helix.
Better sleep starts right now.
Get a personalized mattress.
Do it the right way.
HelixSleep.com slash Ben.
Get up to 20% off all mattress orders and two free pillows for our listeners.
Okay, so speaking of other things that the science said was not real, but now turns out to be real, according to The Intercept, One of the first Wuhan researchers reportedly sickened with COVID in fall of 2019, a guy named Ben Hu, was getting U.S.
financial support for risky gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the transparency advocacy organization White Coat Waste Project.
The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million dollars, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID.
That is the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is listed as an investigator on the grant.
The news that the U.S.
intelligence had learned that three Wuhan Institute of Virology lab workers had been hospitalized with COVID symptoms in November 2019, well before the supposed outbreak at the city's seafood market was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in May 2021.
But the revelation had pretty much no impact on the broader debate over the origin of the pandemic.
It's still totally unclear which animal this thing supposedly jumped from spontaneously, but new reporting by Michael Schellenberger and Matt Taibbi sourced the three government sources familiar with the State Department investigation has now identified the three lab workers working at the COVID lab in Wuhan as Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu.
Two of the grants ran from 2014 through 2019.
The third was cut off in 2020 by President Trump after the outbreak in Wuhan.
The NIAID and USAID grant list who, as an investigator in the project, is being funded.
So in other words, people who are actively working on gain-of-function research funded by U.S.
dollars were some of the first people who were infected with COVID, which is lending a lot of credence to all of the things that the scientific community said that you weren't allowed to talk about.
Like, did this thing start at a lab?
And also, who was funding that lab?
And was it gain-of-function research that led to the outbreak at this lab?
Senator Rand Paul spent the weekend ripping on Fauci again and suggesting that Fauci had orchestrated a cover-up of all of this.
What about Anthony Fauci's accountability and the media complicit?
What we know is from the very first days of the pandemic in January of 2020, that Anthony Fauci orchestrated an elaborate cover-up.
He knew there was a problem.
At three in the morning, he was emailing somebody on January 31st, and that person was head of the committee that was supposed to review dangerous research, the P3CO committee.
potential pandemic pathogens.
It was supposed to look at this dangerous research, but Fauci allowed it to go around that.
So he knew from the very beginning, not only was he funding the Wuhan research,
but he was going around the regulatory apparatus to let it happen,
even though the rules said it shouldn't have happened without more scrutiny.
So he knew this from the beginning and it was an active coverup.
If you talked about any of this, like two years ago, not only were you deemed a kook,
you were banned from social media.
And this is what the science did.
So the science told you that your kids had to take the COVID vax.
And then the science told you, like, had to.
And then the science told you that you had to mask mandate at your place of work or that you had to vax mandate at your place of work.
And then the White House claimed that the science recommended all of this, which is why OSHA tried to cram it down, which is why our company actually sued to stop it.
And then we find out that it may in fact have been engineered at a lab and then leaked from that lab.
And maybe it turns out that after all, it was gain-of-function research.
All that stuff.
But it doesn't stop there.
I mean, it undermines the scientific establishment when you have the Biden monkeypox advisor, a person named Dr. Dimitri Tsikalakis, again, this is for the Biden administration, claiming that we have to call monkeypox mpox.
Why?
Because we wouldn't want to shut down the joy that some people have by banging random dudes at the bar through the glory hole on a Friday night.
Not kidding.
He said this on national television, on MSNBC.
I always say that I've never made an HIV diagnosis in someone that hasn't somehow related to stigma.
I think mpox is the same.
So really, stigma tends to be a barrier to testing, a barrier to vaccination.
And so, you know, really addressing stigma intentionally and making sure that we get the word out in a way that supports people's joy as opposed to, you know, calling them risky.
So I think, you know, one of the things to think about is that, you know, One person's idea of risk is another person's idea of a great festival or Friday night, for that matter.
So we have to sort of embrace that with joy.
We have to embrace it with joy.
If we just keep saying joy over and over and over, we will ignore the fact that it is wildly more risky to screw random people in bathrooms.
But there's the science.
He's a scientist.
I know because he says so.
The authority figures, they are the science and you must listen to the science.
It's very important.
And that's why they won't debate you.
It's because if they would debate you, then you might actually end up refuting some of their other points.
It's very frustrating because, again, a lot of the scientific progress that we have already established in the area of, for example, getting rid of childhood diseases, like measles, mumps, rubella, it's not just those kill kids.
They kill those kids, historically speaking, in very low numbers, even before vaccinations.
Measles were killing, like, a couple of kids a year in the United States.
It's all of the other side effects of measles, including, by the way, leading the way for shingles later on.
It's leading to pneumonia, at least encephalitis, right?
There are other things that happen when you get measles sometimes.
Getting rid of the disease of measles has been a net positive, for sure, for the United States.
But that goes away when you totally undercut your credibility.
In the same way that when your obituary gets written, it doesn't matter how much good you did.
If you took your car and mowed down three random passers-by, that will be your obit.
It doesn't matter if you did something else that is good.
In the same way, this is what the scientific establishment has now done.
They spent 100 years building up the credibility of science, 150 years building up the credibility of science, and then in 10 years they ripped it all down.
So now you do have to reestablish that credibility, and the only way that you reestablish that credibility is through open debate.
It's through convincing human beings.
Again, you have to do it.
You have an obligation to do it now, and that's your own fault.
Especially because, again, the science has been used.
Tough science, as I like to say.
Tough science, trademark.
Has been used in order to mainstream and mainline in, through the press, a bunch of falsehoods.
We'll get to more of that momentarily.
First, the 4th of July is right around the corner with how many family gatherings we have lined up.
The last thing I need when I host my family is to run out of propane at the grill.
I'm planning on a lot of grilling this summer.
Cinch makes the magic happen.
Cinch is a propane grill tank home delivery service.
They deliver propane tanks right to your door on your schedule.
They don't require any long-term commitment or subscription.
Plus, delivery is completely contactless.
You don't have to wait around at home.
Track the order on the Cinch app from anywhere.
The perfect summer night wouldn't be complete without Cinch.
Go to cinch.com or download that Cinch app and use promo code SHAPIRO to get your first tank exchange for just $10.
Again, I'm looking forward to a lot of grilling this summer, so I'm relying on Cinch.
You should too.
That's C-Y-N-C-H dot com, promo code Shapiro.
It's a limited time offer.
You must live within a Cinch service area to redeem it.
Visit cinch.com slash offer for details.
It's going to be a great summer.
You're going to want to be in that backyard next to the pool,
There's nothing worse than you run out of propane for your gas, like when you're doing the grill.
You don't want that to happen.
Instead, head on over to Cinch.
Cinch.com.
Promo code Shapiro.
Go check them out right now.
Again, that's Cinch.com.
Promo code Shapiro.
Okay, also, we have something magical here.
It has appeared.
Behold, the Precision 5 razor.
One handle plus one blade cartridge kit for only $14.99.
Jeremy's lowest cost for a razor, only for a limited time.
It's crafted with luxurious tungsten handle, five welded steel blades, a flip-back trimmer for a close, smooth shave around hairlines and hard-to-reach places.
But remember, the Precision 5 is no ordinary razor.
It is a sword in the battle for beliefs.
A precision instrument to force woke companies to earn back your dollar.
Also, it's a razor and you can shave with it.
The Precision 5 starts at just $14.99.
It's a price so low, it has never been easier to stop giving your money to woke companies that hate you.
Over 125,000 men have already ditched those woke razors and switched over to Jeremy's.
Now is the time.
Do it right now.
Go to Jeremy'sRazors.com today.
Okay, meanwhile, the idea that the scientific community has now created a set of pseudo-scientific notions that are irrefutable and undebatable, that's opened the door to a bunch of people who are saying stuff that actually is not particularly scientific and getting away with it because the scientists are like, I'm not debating anything.
I don't have to debate anything.
But there's another problem, and that is that these bad anti-science messages then get bled down via the media into literally everything.
And anyone who stands up against that is then crushed.
So, for example, the CEO of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, was on MSNBC over the weekend claiming that Twitter basically needs to be shut down.
Free speech has to be shut down.
By the way, this is also happening with RFK Jr.
The reality is that Jordan Peterson did a podcast with RFK Jr.
and was immediately pulled from social media services.
When that happens, it doesn't make people stop looking at the claims.
It makes people think the claims are real and that you guys are trying to silence them.
Here is GLAAD trying to do just that with Twitter.
So there is incremental improvement on all of them, except for Twitter, which did significantly, statistically, excuse me, significant progress.
And what's really sad here is that Twitter actually used to be the leader.
We sat on their trust and safety council, but Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a weapon against the LGBTQ community.
And he leads the charge.
Literally leads the charge with tweeting out anti-trans rhetoric and misinformation about the trans community and the LGBTQ community.
Again, this is the goal.
The goal is to shut down the debate.
It's the same group of people.
Shut down the debate.
AMC Theaters, by the way, has now cancelled a detransitioner film following a trans group deplatforming campaign, according to the Daily Wire.
AMC theaters canceled a film showcasing the voices of young people who have detransitioned after having hormone therapy and surgeries to purportedly affirm their gender identity.
The movie is called No Way Back, the reality of gender-affirming care, and it was set for initial release on June 21st in dozens of theaters across the country.
AMC then caved to the pressure of a deplatforming campaign by a trans group called Queer Trans Project, which has not even seen the film.
The Daily Wire reached out to AMC theaters about the cancellation.
They received no response.
So, you can't distribute stuff that runs counter to all of this.
And this, of course, has now extended over into places like Ireland.
Irish citizens currently are facing jail time for quote-unquote hate speech if they say things that do not comply with the changing and variable notions of truth promoted by the trans movement.
According to Fox News, the Irish criminal justice bill is supposed to target hate speech, but the text notes that a person can be imprisoned if they prepare or possess material, quote, likely to incite violence or hatred against a person or a group of persons on account of their protected characteristics or any of those characteristics or the view of the material being communicated to the public or a section of the public, whether by himself or herself or another person.
So what exactly are those protected groups that you're not allowed to speak badly about in Ireland?
Well, now they want to add in sexual orientation and gender identity.
So that means that if you own a Bible, then you could theoretically be arrested in Ireland.
Because who knows?
That could be used to theoretically promote or incite violence or hatred.
Not even violence, right?
Inciting violence is an actual legal standard.
Inciting hatred is the standard.
So if you just have a Bible and you look up Leviticus, it turns out people may not particularly like particular types of behavior that are now identified with identity.
In the left-wing parlance.
So you could get arrested in Ireland.
And they're pretty obvious about this.
Here's the Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly saying this is the whole point.
It's designed to stop hate.
Shut up.
When you think about it, all law, all legislation is about the restriction of freedom.
That's exactly what we're doing here, is we are restricting freedom, but we're doing it for the common good.
You will see throughout our constitution, yes, you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good.
Everything needs to be balanced.
And if your views on other people's identities Go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace.
Then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.
Okay, the freedoms have to be restricted for the common— You can't say things.
All part of the generalized authoritarian cram-down when it comes to everything from science to social politics, which of course are linked.
And that authoritarian cram-down, I have to say, it is amazing to watch it coming from the Biden administration abroad.
Like you know it's happening at home when they're promoting topless trans influencers
at the White House jiggling male parts that have now been changed over by a surgeon.
Right, you know that it's happening at home.
Like we can all see it happening at home.
But we're also doing it abroad and it's the most hypocritical, ridiculous thing.
So for example, over the weekend, our ambassador, a guy named David Pressman,
he was speaking in Hungary and he was ripping on the social politics in Hungary,
which is apparently what we do.
Is we go to foreign countries rip on their social politics except of course if they
happen to be a to be in actual authoritarian countries.
This is the ambassador to Hungary for the United States, insulting Hungary, which is a quasi-American ally.
I would like to speak this evening about freedom, and I would like to speak tonight about love,
but I cannot speak about them without first speaking of hate.
The sad and somber truth is that as we assemble here today, LGBT people are under attack in countries around the world,
including in Hungary.
Thank you.
Perhaps this is driven by ignorance or hate or fear Or perhaps it's driven by cynicism and expedience.
So that is our ambassador to Hungary.
Hungary is a country that is not at war with the United States and is not in a direct conflict with the United States geopolitically.
In fact, Hungary sides with the United States far more often than it sides with the United States' enemies.
The most you can say about Hungary right now is that they're drawing a middle line between Russia and the United States with regards to Ukraine.
They're not opposing NATO action in Ukraine, obviously, but they also are adjacent to Russia, and so they have to be a little bit careful.
We are perfectly willing to unleash our ambassadors to insult American allies.
Meanwhile, we are sending American ambassadors to kowtow to America's enemies.
So you know where they're really not big on the LGBTQ rights?
China.
Not huge on it over there.
Not big into the transing over in China.
But we have no words for the Chinese, because the Chinese, of course, are the ones buying our debt.
So here is the President of the United States, who's all for the Pride Progress flag, flying from the center of the White House.
But here he is pretending that the Chinese spy balloon was no big deal, actually.
Can Secretary Blinken ease tensions with China on this trip, do you think?
Sure, well look, China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States.
I think one of the things that that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down, but I don't think the leadership knew where it was and knew what was in it and knew what was going on.
I think it was more embarrassing than it was Oh, you know, it was bad for them, right?
That's Joe Biden offending China.
So we have our ambassador in Hungary insulting the Hungarian prime minister.
And then we have Joe Biden who's kissing the ass of the Chinese.
And it's not just Joe Biden, by the way.
Tony Blinken went to China where he said that we do not favor Taiwanese independence.
And now the truth is that we've always been very unclear on exactly what it is that we favor with regard to Taiwan.
We've used a policy of strategic ambiguity, right?
The idea is that it's not clear what the United States wants for Taiwan, what it doesn't want for Taiwan.
Maybe we're okay with their independence.
Maybe we're not okay with their independence.
We just want things to continue as is.
We want status quo.
But here is Anthony Blinken saying out loud that we don't want Taiwanese independence, which of course encourages the Chinese to do something about it.
I raised U.S.
concerns, shared by a growing number of countries, about the PRC's provocative actions in the Taiwan Strait, as well as in the South and East China Seas.
On Taiwan, I reiterated the longstanding U.S.
One-China policy.
That policy has not changed.
It's guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint communiques, the six assurances.
We do not support Taiwan independence.
We remain opposed to any unilateral changes to the status quo by either side.
We continue to expect the peaceful resolution of cross-strait differences.
We remain committed to meeting our responsibilities under the Taiwan Relations Act, including making sure that Taiwan has the ability to defend itself.
So, kissing the ass of the Chinese, yes.
Insulting the Hungarians, yes.
This is what this administration is all about.
Really stellar foreign policy right there.
They definitely have principles.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the aisle, there is a battle that is going to break out and it's going to be over policy.
So, there's really two battles with regards to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is the clear frontrunner at this point by every available poll.
There are two battles that can be fought with regard to the Republican nomination.
One is a battle over policy and one is a battle over personality.
The battle over personality is likely to fail if the other Republican candidates point out that Donald Trump is very frequently incoherent.
That Donald Trump hires bad people.
Donald Trump makes crazy decisions.
He tweets, we all know that.
That's all baked into the cake.
That is going to change precisely nothing.
So the media were running with that narrative over the weekend because obviously Donald Trump's own lawyers are now likely to testify against him in this particular federal criminal indictment case in Miami.
Bill Barr, his former attorney general, who's one of the people that Trump is now going to war with.
And by the way, that list is like super long of former administration officials that Donald Trump is at war with.
Here's just a brief list of the former administration officials appointed by Donald Trump who he now considers to have stabbed him in the back or been bad.
You ready?
Here's the list.
Vice President Pence, Attorney General Bill Barr, James Madison and Mike Esper, both Secretaries of Defense, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, both Secretaries of State, two Chiefs of Staff, John Kelly and Mick Mulvaney, two NSAs, John Bolton and H.R.
McMaster, Deputy NSA Matt Pottinger, Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, Communications Director Alyssa Farrah Griffin, Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, Cabinet Members Elaine Chao, etc., personal lawyers Michael Cohen and counting.
That is from a list put together by some of the folks over at The Bulwark.
And while I disagree with The Bulwark a lot, that happens to be an accurate list.
Those are all people that Trump hired and now is at war with.
Okay, so Bill Barr goes after Donald Trump and he says, like, he's very bad at hiring people, I noticed.
Like, if the idea here is that all the people he hired keep betraying him, why is he so bad at hiring people?
Here's Bill Barr.
Would he put the country at risk if he was in the White House again?
He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests.
There's no question about it.
This is a perfect example of that.
He's like, you know, he's like a nine-year-old, defiant nine-year-old kid who's always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table, defying his parents to stop him from doing it.
It's a means of self-assertion and exerting his dominance over other people.
OK, and Chris Christie, of course, then picked up the baton and went after Trump as well, saying, like, he has the worst hiring history in the history of the world, which I mean, by the facts, it's I mean, who in his administration did he hire who he's not at war with?
I mean, that that list is actually much shorter at this point.
So Trump on his social media site is attacking former Trump officials that you know who have criticized him over the indictment.
He's saying his former Chief of Staff, retired Marine General John Kelly, has a very small brain.
For some reason he put brain in quotation marks.
He also called Kelly a mummy who sat in his office and stared at the ceiling.
Trump called his former Attorney General Bill Barr a gutless pig, lazy, and totally ineffective.
What do you make of the comments?
Either Donald Trump, if you believe what he said when they left, that means he didn't pick the very best people and doesn't know how to pick personnel.
If you believe what about them what he said at the beginning, the great stuff, then this guy is the worst manager in the history of the American presidency.
Either way, Republicans should listen to what he says.
He's a petulant child when someone disagrees with him.
Okay, so this is going to be, you know, one of the big pushes is going to be the character push against Donald Trump.
The problem is that that's not actually where the debate against Donald Trump is going to happen.
Everyone knows Trump at this point.
It's like any of this is shock.
Like people who love him, love him.
And people love him specifically because he's wild and crazy and they feel like he can use that wild and crazy on their own behalf.
The reason that Chris Christie's attack doesn't have any sort of actual sea legs is also because Christie is very wavery on policy himself.
So for example, Chris Christie, same guy who's attacking Trump with regards to his personnel decisions, is ripping on conservatives who are trying to stop parents who are transing their kids.
So here's Chris Christie.
As governor of New Jersey, you signed into law some legal protections for trans people, including students.
What do you make of your fellow Republican governors and candidates going in the opposite direction?
Jake, what I believe we should be focused on most importantly in these issues is making sure there is parental involvement at every step along the way.
I don't think that the government should ever be stepping into the place of the parents in helping to move their children through a process where those children are confused or concerned about their gender.
And I just would say that parents are the people who are best positioned to make these judgments.
Okay, so that's Chris Christie being bad on policy.
So the question people are going to ask is Chris Christie's ripping on Trump on personnel.
He was one of the personnel.
Also, he's wrong on policy, which opens the door for policy, okay?
And that's really where the attack is going to come.
So if the reason that you don't like Chris Christie is because Chris Christie, while he's saying true things about the personnel, is really bad on policy, saying that like parents should be able to trans their kids, here's the problem.
Hey, Trump has some real political problems here, not only with regard to COVID.
One of the disadvantages that Ron DeSantis has right now against Trump is that everybody forgot about COVID being like the worst thing in the world in terms of governance.
People forgot that they literally moved.
Like, I moved my family, at least in part, because of the COVID regime in California, to Florida, where Governor DeSantis is the governor.
People don't want to talk about COVID anymore.
They kind of want to put it in the back of their brains.
But here's the problem for Trump.
Trump is a mess when it comes to his own political Sort of bona fides.
So, for example, tape emerged over the weekend of Donald Trump really pushing pretty hard trans propaganda.
Back when he was the head of the Miss Universe contest, back when he owned the thing, he was very much in favor of men competing with women.
This is a young woman who, according to the laws of Canada and according to the laws of the United States, is allowed to enter the pageant system.
What I did is I said, we have 58 contestants in Canada.
I said, let her run and maybe she'll win.
And if she wins, she'll go to Miss Universe.
And I think I made the right decision.
I feel fine with the decision.
I mean, that was Donald Trump.
Not that long ago.
Years later, Trump has done a 180, making the repealing of transgender rights a central part of his 2024 campaign speech.
No serious country should be telling its children that they were born with the wrong gender.
We will defeat the cult of gender ideology to reassert that God created two genders, male and female.
And here's another beauty.
I will keep men out of women's sports.
Okay, so that flip-flop is not exactly good.
But again, very, very Trumpian.
This does open the door for candidates who are able to actually attack Trump on policy.
And again, this is why DeSantis is largely considered his most viable rival, is because DeSantis is certainly very, very consistent on policy.
So over the weekend, DeSantis was campaigning, and in one of his sort of big campaign moments, he was at a bar, and he was asked what he wanted.
He said anything but Bud Light.
Just so you know, I'll serve you anything except my money.
Meanwhile, by the way, you can see where the media's interest lies.
The media is going after Casey DeSantis with alacrity.
It's astonishing.
I really have not seen the media go after any politician's wife this way.
Maybe ever, actually.
Like, just a person who's running in a primary, not just a person who's won a general election nomination or something.
They went after Melania, but nothing remotely like this.
The basic idea here is that Casey DeSantis is Lady Macbeth.
Giselle Federman, who literally took a brain-damaged husband and ran him for Senate.
She's great.
She's wonderful.
I mean, the guy literally can't speak anymore, but she's amazing.
When I say he can't speak anymore, I literally have a clip of John of John Fetterman introducing Joe Biden, and it is the most awkward, horrifying thing.
You want to talk about just.
Some some real severe lack of neural connections here between Joe Biden and John Fetterman on this stage, my goodness.
The president again next to a collapsed bridge here, and he is here to commit to work with the governor and the Delegation to make sure that we get this fixed fast as well, too.
This is a president that is committed to infrastructure.
And then on top of that, the jewel kind of law of the infrastructure bill.
Joe Biden is the only person who understands what the hell John Fetterman is talking about right there.
Gisele Fetterman who ran this guy and maintains him in the Senate, however, she's great.
But Casey DeSantis is super bad.
There's an entire article in the Washington Post today titled, Tracing the Power of Casey DeSantis.
Where's Casey?
Ron was asking.
Where is she at?
Ron was always asking.
Ron DeSantis was in the middle of a picnic in Sioux City, Iowa, bent over a homemade poster.
Four photos arranged in a neat grid stared back at him.
Ron and Casey smiling on election night 2022.
Ron and Casey smiling outside the governor's mansion 2021.
A headshot of Ron, a headshot of Casey.
The governor signed his name in the corner, leaving room for his wife's signature.
He was the one running for president, but of course she should sign it too.
I don't know where the first lady is, but she'll do it, he said.
Casey was on the other side of the room.
She knew, starting with his early days in politics when Ron was still a member of Congress, elected at the age of 34, how she wanted to figure in his world.
She knew the staff he should hire, former aide said, the invitations he should accept, the invitations he should decline.
That is one of two articles over the weekend about how terrible it is that Ron DeSantis has a young family that is involved in his political career.
The New York Times has an entire article titled, Ron DeSantis is young, has little kids, and wants America to know it.
At 44, he is more than three decades younger than Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
He is subtly playing up that age gap, even if his right-wing views leave him out of step with many younger voters.
It's bad!
It's bad he has young kids.
What you really need is an 80-year-old president who doesn't even acknowledge one of his grandchildren.
That's what you really, really need.
The fear and hatred they have of DeSantis is much stronger in the media than the fear and hatred they have of Donald Trump.
I mean, it's a dirty little secret, but it's not much of a secret.
They want Trump nominated because they think Trump is more beatable than DeSantis, right or wrong.
They may get it the hard way.
They may get Trump as the nominee, and then they may lose to him.
That's certainly what they think at this point.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to collapse as a human being.
Over the weekend, he ended a speech by thanking the Queen.
I don't know why.
No one knows why, as it turns out.
As that scene in the John Wayne movie, don't make me a dog-faced lion pony soldier.
All right?
God save the Queen, man.
God save the Queen, man.
Axios then ran a piece titled, Biden's Weird Words.
President Biden often uses old-timey expressions that confound even his own staff.
That happened again Friday when he ended a speech on gun violence with, God save the Queen, man.
Later, the White House didn't respond when Axios asked what Biden had meant.
Yeah, it is.
It's weird and quirky.
Not that he is no longer functional.
By the way, he's no longer functional!
Look at a picture of the man.
The White House released this picture of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
I don't even know what to say about the picture.
The caption is, the duo that gets the job done.
And for those who can't see it, it is Joe Biden looking as though he is being guided through physical therapy by a nurse.
He's grinning weirdly, like, in absent fashion at Kamala Harris while she holds both of his hands and grins like a cackling crazy person.
It does.
It looks like an AI.
Producer Zack says it looks like an AI.
It does.
It looks like an AI.
It's like if I just typed in weird Biden and Kamala Harris dancing into AI, it would come up looking exactly like this.
It's so weird.
He's a weirdo.
He's also an ignorant weirdo, by the way.
But, you know, this is the reason, going back to RFK Jr.
Want to know why RFK Jr.
has durability?
It ain't because he's right on vaccines.
It's because RFK Jr.
is not Joe Biden and Joe Biden is no longer functional.
Okay, time for some things I like and then some things I hate.
And today, we have a very special Deconstructing the Culture.
So, things I like today.
So, we begin with a book that I finally had a chance to read over the weekend.
I'm only about 30 years late on this one.
It's called Remains of the Day.
Mike Hazua Ishiguro.
Ishiguro.
This was made into a movie originally with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.
It is, in fact, a very good movie.
The book is better than the movie.
It's a beautifully, beautifully written book.
The basic premise of the book is there's a butler and he is going to meet the lead housekeeper at this estate where he was the butler.
You know, 20 years after he's last seen her at the estate.
And it's him reminiscing as he goes to meet her about what it was like to be butler for a person who's essentially supposed to be a Neville Chamberlain type.
And how he sacrificed all of his life ambitions in order to help this person sort of achieve his life ambitions and what that meant for him.
The movie is much more about the supposed romance between the two characters.
That's not really what the book is about.
The book is better than the movie.
And so if you have time to read the book, you really should.
The book is largely about subsuming your own ambitions in favor of broader political or moral goals.
I will say that the book, not to be a spoiler about it, but the book is sort of stacked in favor of the idea that one should never do this, when I don't think that that's actually the proper argument to be made.
But it is a fascinating examination of class divides inside Britain.
It's also a fascinating examination of what it means to put aside personal wants, needs,
and ambitions in favor of sort of a higher goal and subsuming your own judgment in favor
of the judgment of another.
Really, really interesting book, remains of the day.
Okay, other things that I like.
So Bill Simmons, who is certainly no right winger, he is the founder of the Ringer podcast
network.
to be very involved at Spotify. They made him an executive over there when they
signed him. And he sounded off on Harry and Meghan whose $20 million
deal has now collapsed at Spotify because it turns out nobody wants to
listen to these whining grifters. Bill Simmons apparently has the same opinion
about them that I do.
You do a lot of business deals, a lot of negotiations.
I do?
Well, let's just...
I wish I had been involved in the Megan and Harry leave Spotify negotiation.
The f*** Rifters.
That's the podcast we should have launched with them.
I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try to help him with the podcast idea.
Do it!
It's one of my best stories.
One of the things that we are now finding out, apparently, is that Megan, she did a podcast that nobody listened to, and that podcast was interview-centric.
Apparently, she had her producers interview everybody, and then she cut in her questions, so she didn't even sit in the same room as the people she was interviewing, and the entire pod- it's not like that was like a section of her podcast, it was like the entire podcast!
Which is pretty amazing stuff there from Harry and Meghan.
When Bill Simmons is even trashing Harry and Meghan, I think that the gravy train for those two is over, which I'm here for.
Okay, time for some things that I hate.
I really only have one thing I hate today because the thing that I really hate is the
deconstructing the culture segment, which is going to make me want to rip off my own ears van Gogh style.
But the thing that I hate today, Corinne Jean-Pierre, I'm so tired of people declaring themselves historic because of, you know, who they want to have sex with and also the color of their skin.
It's really, really tiresome.
So Corinne Jean-Pierre over the weekend declared herself historic, which again, if you're really historic, you don't need to say it yourself.
Other people will say it of you.
Lincoln wasn't like, you know who I am?
I'm super historic.
Come on.
A year in this role, there's been a couple of things that has made me incredibly proud.
Many things, many things that made me incredibly proud to be at that podium during this historic moment.
Again, this is a historic administration.
I'm a historic figure and I certainly walk in history every day, but this is also a historic-making administration because of this president.
She is so historic, guys.
I mean, she is historic.
She's the worst press secretary in the history of the United States.
She's horrible at her job.
Horrible.
But we live in a world where that doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that she is a black queer woman.
And this apparently makes her super duper duper historic.
Okay.
It's time to do something we haven't done in a while.
We have to deconstruct the culture.
Let's do this thing.
Okay, so today is Deconstructing the Culture.
I have been informed by the interwebs that there is a person who has literal face tattoos.
So this is like face tattoo syndrome all over.
Who calls herself Sexy Red.
Sexy is spelled with two Ys.
I don't know what the second Y adds to the pronunciation.
It's Sexy Red.
Also her given name.
Probably she came out of her mother and her mother said, Behold, I shall call you Sexy Red.
And she apparently has become a bit of a thing, she's like in the hot 100 now, because of a song titled Pound Town, which is about the glories of Shakespeare, as you might imagine, and the joys of the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Or alternatively not.
She just does really, really bad rap, but she has a lot of extraordinarily graphic content in her rap.
So I was made aware of this particular clip, which I'll play in a moment.
But first, I want to do a bit of a review of her musical history.
Apparently, her first song was a song called A Thousand Jugs.
And this is based on the song A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton.
I don't know if she even bothered to get the rights to this, but it is one of the worst things ever, ever, ever in human history.
And it's only surpassed by her new song, Pound Town.
And yes, folks, this is the height of human civilization.
We have achieved it.
It is the apex of human civilization.
Here is Sexy Yee Red in a thousand jugs.
Here we go.
It hasn't started yet.
She's not good at singing.
We're taboo, all his homeboys think I'm cute.
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
She's not good at singing.
Auto-tune, guys.
10-5, told his aunt, bet nine and I've tried nine.
Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah.
You get killed too.
Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah.
I could've killed you.
Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah.
You lost a tennis shoe.
Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah.
This is about murdering people, by the way.
I should point out that the lyrics are her actually talking about murdering people.
Okay, like, you may have missed that in you wanting to rip out half of your own brain and throw it in the river in order to avoid hearing that anymore.
But she took a song by Vanessa Carlton and she made it into a murder rap It's making my way through the hood.
With your boo, all his homeboys think I'm cute.
Ridin' round, tinted five, toting his iron, which I assume is a gun.
Better not, nah.
Op, try nothing.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you gettin' filled too.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, I could've killed you.
So, I didn't realize, like, points for creativity in turning A Thousand Miles into a murder song.
I did not see that coming.
Her Sarah McLachlan rendition is gonna be lit.
Okay, but that is not her latest song, right?
That one is not a famous song because no one's ever heard of that.
Her famous song is way worse, like way worse.
It makes WAP look childhood friendly.
Okay, this is like, we've reached new levels.
We've now reached the level of transgressivism where it's not even like what it used to be.
That in the world where we had traditional notions about sex and marriage and stuff, That art that was transgressive was kind of sexy, because it was transgressive.
And then we transgressed further, and then still further.
And we have now transgressed to the point where the transgressivism sounds like a third grader doing a clinical description of bodily orifices.
That's where we are.
So, here is SexyYeaYeaYeaYeaYea, you read, singing, I'm putting that generously, the song Pound Town.
Is this Poundtown 2 or Poundtown 1?
I'm not sure.
Apparently there's a Poundtown 2 that fe- This is Poundtown 1.
Poundtown 2 is the sequel.
The sequel, More Pounding.
Poundtown 2, More Pounding.
Our civilization, it's in the best of hands.
Poundtown 1, A New Hope.
Poundtown 2, Return of the Pound.
PoundTown 3, I assume, has Ewoks, because PoundTown 2 has Nicki Minaj in it.
But this is PoundTown 1.
Okay, so before we get to PoundTown 2, before we get to the return of PoundTown, we have to start with PoundTown 1.
And I pitched it pretty strongly here, so here we are.
our sexy red in pound town.
Oh, oh, oh, oh. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. Wow. What? I'm out of town. Thuggin with my round. My
pink, my brown. What? I'm looking for the whole town. Just let's pound town. He just
took a down. Yeah, down. Yeah, down. Just let's pound town.
Oh, we'll make a multimillionaire.
This person.
Yep, and when I said that this person makes Cardi B sound like a kindergarten school teacher, I don't mean like the Drag Queen Story Hour person, I mean like an actual kindergarten school teacher, yeah.
I'm so hesitant to read the lyrics to this thing out loud.
It's gonna be even more meme-able than WAP, if I do.
But you know what, it has to be done.
I can't live with myself reading it, and I can't live with myself not reading it.
So, for all those who are watching this now, on the left, this is me reading the lyrics to Poundtown because it is the worst thing ever written, and it is hilariously bad, and I can't stop myself from laughing.
Okay, you ready?
Here we go.
I'm out of town, thuggin' with my rounds, my coochie pink, my booty hole brown.
We're now doing color descriptions of bodily orifices.
My booger's green, my earwax orange, But nothing rhymes with orange.
Where's the N-words?
I'm lookin' for the hoes.
Quit playin', N-word!
Come suck a b**ch toe.
Mm.
Indeed.
Indeed.
Well spet.
Well said.
Poundtown just left Poundtown.
With my N-word, he took a b**ch down.
Yeah, that N-word.
B**ch a b**ch down.
Yeah, that N-word.
And it just continues along these lines.
And my favorite part of this is where she actually opens applications for a stepfather for her child.
That's my favorite part is where she like opens the resumes up.
So she's like, uh-uh, I'm out here in Miami.
Again, remember, the NAACP has put a travel warning on Miami for black people.
So I don't even know how she's living out down here in Florida.
I just don't know.
I mean, obviously she's in serious danger in pound town.
She says, uh-uh, I'm out here in Miami, looking for the hoochie daddies, where they at?
Where the N-words, get that ratchet, where they at?
My son need a new pappy.
Well, that seems like, this all seems like an amazing way of capturing an excellent father for your son.
I'm so glad that you've decided to open applications by describing the color of your booty hole.
That is, like, that is a great way to find a spouse.
It's just walk around singing songs about the color of your ass.
Hole.
That's good.
You know I'm sexy, I'm the best.
I'm the s-word, little bitch.
I'm that.
You know it.
I can't say his name because he be cheating.
Yeah, and I'm the reason.
What Suki say?
It just gets worse.
But the important thing is that I think we've all learned something here today.
I don't know what we've learned here today, but it's something.
And apparently, Nicki Minaj found it necessary to do a second version of Poundtown.
I was hoping that it was Poundtown Roman Numeral 2.
It is not.
It's just Poundtown 2.
Like Zootopia 2.
It's not like, you know, Empire Strikes Back or something.
And Nicki Minaj was like, this is real talent.
I'm putting myself on this album.
Oh, the values.
▲
Export Selection