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Sept. 18, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

56:47

Russell Brand DENIES Allegations

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	So, the news that has engulfed much of the legacy media, it's engulfed the British media for sure.
	A lot of the media here in the United States is this massive exposé, supposed exposé, from the Sunday Times in the UK accusing Russell Brand, a person I consider a friend, of rape, sexual assault, and abuse from the period 2006 to 2013.
	Now, I didn't know Russell Brand at that time.
	My guess is if I had known Russell Brand, I wouldn't have liked Russell Brand very much at that time, considering that Russell Brand, by his own admission, in all of his writings and in all of his statements, has basically admitted to being a sect addict and incredibly promiscuous and a person who I would consider to have engaged in incredibly vile behavior during that entire period.
	And then, Russell Brand has remade himself.
	And in the period where I've known Russell, which is really the past three or four years, Russell has been a person who is searching for something meaningful.
	He has settled down, obviously.
	He's married.
	He has kids.
	He's a person who's been trying to put together a good life.
	Now, can I attest to Russell Brand's character from 2006 to 2013?
	Again, I cannot.
	I did not know him at that point.
	Do I think that Russell Brand today is a good person?
	Yes, I think that Russell Brand today is a good person.
	Now, is it possible that you're mistaken about people you think you know?
	Sure, that's possible too, but here is my problem with this particular attack on Russell Brand from the media.
	My problem is the timing.
	During the time that Russell Brand was pretty flagrantly and obviously not only promiscuous, but incredibly vile in the sorts of things that he said publicly about sex and about women and all the rest of this sort of stuff, the media were championing him.
	He was a hero of the left at this time when he was engaged in this sort of behavior.
	He was He was treated as some sort of person to emulate at this time.
	He was not only on BBC, he was on MTV, he was being treated as a public celebrity while he was engaging in this sort of behavior.
	He was the impish devil who was having sex with as many women as humanly possible and doing insane amounts of drugs.
	Now, 10 years later, when Russell Brand has fixed his life and is trying to make a better life for himself, now he gets hit with a full-scale Sunday Times expose about all of these women.
	Now, we're going to go through some of the allegations with which Russell has been hit here.
	Russell has denied all of the allegations.
	And again, in every situation, when you're talking about like a 10-year, 15, 20-year-ago situation, it is a he said, she said.
	There's just no way To verify one way or the other whether somebody is telling the truth or whether they are not absent some sort of DNA evidence and even DNA evidence isn't going to fully explain what exactly happened if a man and a woman are in a room together because consent or non-consent is a matter of behavior in the moment.
	It is not something can be evidenced by physical evidence typically.
	Unless you're talking about, God forbid, some sort of, like, full-on murderous rape or something.
	In this particular case, what you have is a bunch of stories where women suggest that, at the time, they weren't happy, or they weren't happy afterward.
	There's one allegation in particular that seems pretty serious that Russell has said that he is going to address.
	Before I get to the actual allegations, the timeline here is that Russell went on his Twitter and he put out a pretty lengthy statement talking about what he saw coming.
	Because apparently both the Sunday Times and Channel 4 were going around and finding dozens of women to talk to.
	And it was pretty clear to him that they were going to launch this story at him.
	Here is what Russell had to say just before the story launched.
	Hello there you Awakening Wonders.
	Now this isn't the usual type of video we make on this channel where we critique, attack and undermine the news in all its corruption, because in this story I am the news.
	I've received two extremely disturbing letters, or a letter and an email.
	One from a mainstream media TV company, one from a newspaper Listing a litany of extremely egregious and aggressive attacks, as well as some pretty stupid stuff like my community festival should be stopped, that I shouldn't be able to attack mainstream media narratives on this channel.
	But amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute.
	These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies.
	And as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous.
	Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual.
	I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent.
	And I'm being transparent about it now as well.
	And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question Is there another agenda at play?
	Particularly when we've seen coordinated media attacks before like with Joe Rogan when he dared to take a medicine that the mainstream media didn't approve of and we saw a spate of headlines from media outlets across the world using the same language I'm aware that you guys have been saying in the comments for a while, watch out Russell, they're coming for you, you're getting too close to the truth, Russell Brand did not kill himself.
	I know that a year ago there was a spate of articles, Russell Brand's a conspiracy theorist, Russell Brand's right wing.
	I'm aware of news media making phone calls, sending letters to people I know for ages and ages.
	It's been clear to me, or at least it feels to me, like there's a serious and concerted agenda to control these kind of spaces and these kind of voices.
	And I mean my voice along with your voice.
	I don't mind them using my books and my stand-up to talk about my promiscuous, consensual conduct in the past.
	What I seriously refute are these very, very serious criminal allegations.
	Also, it's worth mentioning that there are witnesses whose evidence directly contradicts the narratives that these two mainstream media outlets are trying to construct, apparently in what seems to me to be a coordinated attack.
	Now, I don't want to get into this any further because of the serious nature of the allegations, but I feel like I'm being attacked and plainly they are working very closely together.
	So is he right about the timing?
	Is he right about the timing?
	That's one of the big questions here, obviously, because again, all of these allegations, some of them are not criminal.
	Some of them are very, very criminal.
	And there is no statute of limitations on rape or sexual assault in the United Kingdom or pretty much anywhere else in the West.
	Which means that theoretically the police could still bring charges against him if in fact the allegations are true or if there's proof of the allegations.
	But the real question here that I have, again, and we'll get to the allegations themselves in just one second, the real question I have here is why the sudden interest by the media in all these stories now?
	Meaning all these stories have been floating around for 15, 10 years, over a decade, and only now do they see fit to actually track down all the women who slept with Russell Brand and try to find some who will make allegations Or who believe that they were victims of rape or sexual assault from Russell Brand.
	And all I can imagine here is that Russell Brand crossed a particular political line that if he'd still been on the right side of the line, the media definitely would not have been going after him.
	Because you have to learn about the motivations.
	What exactly changed?
	In the same way that nothing changed about Joe Rogan from point A to point B, except his political viewpoint.
	In the same way that nothing changed really about Donald Trump between point A and point B, except his political viewpoint.
	In the same way that nothing has changed here about Russell Brand from point A to point B except his political viewpoint, you wonder about the timing, when he was engaged in all this behavior, when it would have been most plausible that he engaged in the sort of behavior alleged.
	The media were not only uninterested, they were paying him.
	10 years later when Russell has, he's by the way not a right-winger, when Russell has just decided that he is not in favor of a lot of sort of left-wing narratives ranging from COVID to to wokeness.
	When that happens, suddenly you have a coordinated attack, a coordinated investigation between the Sunday Times and the Channel 4 News in Britain.
	I find the timing at least somewhat suspicious.
	When I say somewhat, I mean a lot suspicious.
	We'll get to the allegations in just a moment, because some of them, again,
	are pretty questionable on their face.
	There's one allegation in particular that's very serious, and then there are some that are pretty questionable
	on their face.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	But it does go to character.
	There are women who are now coming out saying that they were contacted by the Sunday Telegraph,
	or the Sunday Times rather, that they were contacted by Channel 4,
	and that they just were not covered because they didn't tell the story the media wanted them to tell.
	Here's one woman explaining that she had consensual sex with Brand and was reached out to by the media.
	I was contacted in June by a journalist regarding a video I made about a certain celebrity and a weekend that we shared together.
	The video is kind of viral, it's on my page somewhere if you want to go see it.
	And that certain somebody was, as most of you will be aware, Mr Brand.
	They weren't going to use my story because it didn't fit the narrative.
	for their documentary because he wasn't an a**hole to me.
	We had a phone call, she contacted me for more information and I didn't contact her back because I
	kind of felt like it would be mean.
	Anyway, there you go. Put your bets on. It's a documentary about the one and only Mr. Russell
	Brand. Okay, so again, not all of this is going to be quoted by the media.
	So what are the actual allegations?
	So there are two sources that coordinated on the allegations against Bran.
	One is a show in the UK called Dispatches from Channel 4.
	And I have to admit, it's a little bit weird that one of the things that they do here is they say that none of the women were willing to come on camera to talk about the actual allegations.
	Instead, they have actresses playing the women, reading their texts, which is kind of strange, just from a media perspective, typically.
	If you want to have a reporter, you know, a talking head read the actual words, I get that.
	I don't understand having an actress play the woman and infusing the lines with emotion.
	I mean, that's a strange move just from a production standpoint to me.
	Anyway, here are some of the quotes from Dispatches.
	I phoned and somebody asked what it was regarding, and I said, it's regarding Russell Brand being a sex offender.
	I was like, oh my God, he raped me.
	July 1st 2012 was when my rape happened.
	I was out late and he happened to call me and say, I've had a really bad day, please come over.
	And I, at first I said, no, I'm not going, it's late.
	And he's like, please come, just come and cuddle with me.
	The door was unlocked.
	I just walked into his place.
	He comes running out of the bedroom naked.
	He came at me.
	I'm super confused as to why they would have an actress do this, but again.
	Kind of fun.
	And then it wasn't that fun when I couldn't move.
	I knew what he wanted from me at that point.
	Okay, so a lot of these allegations sound a lot like, for example, the Kobe Bryant allegations.
	Remember Kobe Bryant's allegations, like, 25 years ago?
	There were allegations that he was at a hotel in Colorado, and a woman came up to his room at, like, 3 a.m., and then, as it turns out, most likely she had consensual sex with him, but then she claimed she was raped.
	In some of these cases where it's, like, women going to men's rooms at 2 a.m., that doesn't mean that the man gets to participate in rape.
	It does mean that you have to take into account all the circumstances when you hear a he-said-she-said story.
	The sort of believe all women meme has always been ridiculous.
	It's no different than saying believe all men.
	It's especially ridiculous when you can't even define the words women or men.
	But when you look at these sorts of stories, this is the problem inherently with not going forward with, say, a criminal prosecution at the time an allegation is made.
	When you come forward 10 years later, of course the story is going to get analyzed.
	And that's not being mean to the woman or cruel to the woman.
	That's if we're trying to get at the truth of a thing that either happened or didn't happen, you have to look at the circumstances surrounding the actual allegations.
	We're going to get some more on these allegations in just one moment first.
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	Okay, so now to the actual allegations.
	Very long story from, as I say, the Sunday Times in the UK.
	And they say, four women have alleged sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013 when he was a presenter for BBC Radio 2 and Channel 4 and then an actor in Hollywood films.
	Others have made a range of accusations about Brand's controlling, abusive, and predatory behavior.
	Brand denied the allegations and said all of his relationships have been consensual.
	And so we're going to go through some of these allegations because, again, there is this weird tendency when allegations like this come out.
	And you see them also about people like, for example, Armie Hammer, right?
	The actor Armie Hammer.
	All these allegations will come out of the woodwork accusing Armie Hammer of having engaged in rape or sexual assault.
	And it turns out the person's been in, like, a longstanding sexual relationship with the person, where they had sex with the person both before and after, but were supposed to somehow believe that in the middle was the rape.
	Maybe that's true.
	Maybe that's not.
	But it goes to credibility if you stayed with the guy, if you were with the guy before and you stayed with the guy after.
	There are a couple of situations that are like this.
	And then there are certain situations where they're not against the law.
	It's just that Brandon is supposed to be creepy, which he's admitted to being between like this entire period that he was a creep with women.
	So, for example, the first story here is quote, As her taxi approached Russell Brand's home, Alice remembers the driver begging her not to go inside.
	Recognizing the destination, he had started to ask questions.
	Alice admitted she was 16 and still in school.
	She says the driver replied his daughter was the same age and intruded.
	Alice, please, I'm asking you to not go in there.
	You could be my little girl.
	I would want someone to do this for her.
	He offered to take her home without charge, but Alice insisted she was fine.
	He had just a sad look in his eye, she recalled.
	Alice, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, now realizes she wasn't fine.
	During a relationship that lasted for about three months when Brand was a BBC radio presenter, she says he referred to her as the child and alleges he became increasingly controlling and then emotionally and sexually abusive.
	So at this time, Brand was 30 and she was apparently 16.
	Okay, now, in the United States, crime.
	In the UK, not crime.
	The age of consent in the UK is 16 and apparently Brand ascertained that she was 16 by asking her and checking.
	Which means, scuzzied, scumbaggy behavior?
	Sure.
	Criminal behavior?
	No.
	If you're, again, in the UK, and the age of consent changes from states, I would prefer the age of consent be 18.
	But, if you're not going to have that, then that's what it is.
	According to the Times, Brand made his name in comedy in the early 2000s and also achieved the status of London's most lascivious Lothario.
	After he gave up drugs in 2002, Brand filled that void with sex.
	In 2005, he received treatment for sex addiction at a clinic in the U.S.
	His womanizing ways.
	He once said he could sleep with 80 women in a month.
	Some crowned Shagger of the Year by The Sun three times, have relationships with some of the world's most beautiful women, including Kate Moss, and married pop star Katy Perry in 2010.
	Now, again, this goes back to what I was saying before.
	When he was engaged in this incredibly promiscuous behavior, the media were championing him and talking about what a wonderful guy he was.
	And they were talking about how he was just this, again, sort of elvish, impish figure on the world stage, screwing as many women as humanly possible.
	Now, this would have been like an amazing time to check into whether any of those women were happy with the situation.
	Or whether all of them were, or whether some of them weren't.
	Did they do so at the time?
	No, because he was busy getting paid by all these same people.
	Only 10 years later, when he has flipped in terms of his personal life and in terms of the values he espouses, now, now it's worthwhile for them to come after him.
	And the media motivation here is part of the story, and it's impossible to do without it.
	And then they go on about Alice and it gets very graphic and talks about how she was a version and how he was turned on by this again.
	Is anything here actually an accusation of criminality?
	No, it's apparently an accusation of grossness.
	Toward the end of the relationship, Alice says that Bran sexually assaulted her.
	Now this is an accusation of criminality, right?
	She says that effectively he forced her into oral sex and she had to punch him to get him off of her and all of this.
	There's only one problem, which is his quote, the relationship ended when Bran invited her over one day
	and she arrived to find another woman in his bed.
	I was so angry.
	I said to him, why would you do this to me?
	This is so humiliating.
	Alice has decided to speak out now because she believes she was too young
	to be able to consent to a relationship with an adult man and the law should be changed
	to protect those under 18.
	I agree the law should be changed to protect those under 18, but the allegation of illegal behavior,
	including forcible sexual assault here, right?
	Wouldn't that, like, if that's a criminal assault, Shouldn't she have reported that to police?
	Or shouldn't she report it now?
	You'll notice that these are not criminal charges.
	The police apparently are now soliciting the women to see if they want to come forward and do criminal charges.
	So far, none have responded, as far as I'm aware.
	Then there's talk about how when Brand was a Channel 4 presenter, there were basically people who were sent into the crowd to pimp for him, to go pick up women and bring them backstage so that he would have sex with them.
	Now, let me just point out that this is common practice in Hollywood.
	It's disgusting.
	It's been vile forever.
	Only people like me have been pointing it out and we're considered prudes for doing so.
	It's totally fine in Hollywood up until the point it's not.
	That's part of the changing standard here.
	Pretty amazing.
	They all knew.
	I mean, if this was the bad behavior, I have a question.
	Why is this news relevant?
	That he was a Lothario who was sending people into the crowd of BBC shows to pick up women?
	I'm just wondering.
	Bill Clinton did the same thing, became President of the United States, and the media dismissed it.
	I'm just wondering why exactly.
	This is relevant now.
	It would have been relevant then, but the problem is they're on the side of those values.
	They're on the side of those values, which is why they protected it then.
	If it was bad then, if it's bad now, it was bad then, apparently.
	But according to them, it wasn't bad then.
	So this is why they're trying to come up with new allegations, the new allegations being an actual rape or sexual assault.
	And Russell is denying all these allegations, and we have yet to see the proof.
	But part of the problem with a situation in which you have unnamed women making allegations, and these unnamed women are not making them criminally, is that there is no way to adjudicate the truth or falsity of the statements.
	Now the burden is supposed to be on Russell Brown to disprove that this thing happened, which is typically not the way that it works.
	Typically, you have to have a burden of proof that shows that the thing did happen.
	And we've seen too many situations in the past few years of accusations that turn out to be either exaggerated or not true.
	Brett Kavanaugh being the most obvious example that comes to mind.
	In my opinion, the Eugene Carroll story is not credible, right?
	There are just plenty of these allegations that are out there about famous men who've crossed a particular line, and I mean politically there, and the allegations end up being either false or exaggerated.
	Get to more on this in just one second.
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	Okay, so this Sunday Times article includes other allegations.
	It includes an allegation that this Nadia person who's quoted in that Channel 4 clip by an actress, which again, I keep coming back to that because it's so bizarre.
	Like, why not just read the allegations the way I'm reading the allegations out loud right now, unless you want to infuse it with an extra level of emotion as played by an actress, which is strange.
	Okay, so he met Nadia, a businesswoman, who was then in her 30s.
	They exchanged numbers.
	Brown later got in touch.
	They began texting and talking on the phone.
	They met up in June 2012 at his house in LA, and they went on to have consensual sex.
	Okay, so They screwed and apparently she was unsettled by his glazed overlook.
	And then during one text exchange, Bran suggested Nadia bring a friend.
	Again, he was a degenerate at the time.
	They then met again in the early hours of the morning of July 1st when she arrived at his house after he had pled with her to come over.
	And this is where you get into the allegations stated before.
	So she's coming over in the middle of the night.
	He's obviously calling her to have sex with her, clearly.
	Now, does that mean that she contends to everything that follows?
	Of course not.
	Does it also mean that she's in a situation she probably should not be in?
	Sure.
	Does it also mean that we now have a full he said she said scenario?
	Yes.
	Not only that, she claims that he had another person in the apartment.
	He says that a friend was already in the bedroom and he wanted her to join them, according to Nadia.
	And she's like, no, I'm not happening.
	We're not doing that.
	And then she accuses him of pushing her up against the wall and then raping her.
	And then she has some texts.
	And hear what the texts say.
	This is, I think, the only proof in the story to support some of the allegations that are made.
	Quote, And then she wrote back, you scared the bleep out of me.
	You're right, I am a lovely person.
	And for you to take advantage of me like that is unexpected.
	You have a problem, you need help.
	It's dangerous that you think you can get your own way all the time.
	Do you know how scary you are when that glazed look comes over you?
	When a girl says no, it means no.
	Do I have to go and get myself tested?
	Last time you asked me condom or no condom.
	When I say condom, that doesn't mean it's optional.
	You don't have the best reputation.
	I pride myself on being safe and trying to make the right decisions.
	Obviously, this was a bad one.
	I'm so disappointed.
	And he said, I'm very sorry.
	You don't need to get tested.
	I will somehow make this up to you with love and kindness.
	Not my original idea, which was more sex.
	You've been lovely to me and I'm embarrassed by my behavior, sorry.
	And then will you ever forgive me?
	Okay, so this is, again, this is the most telling allegation and the most credible allegation, right?
	Nadia had told a friend what happened.
	She apparently went to the rape treatment center at UCLA Santa Monica Medical Center that same day and she shared a copy of her treatment records.
	Apparently she provided her underwear and other samples as evidence, which were frozen at the time.
	An officer from LAPD was alerted by the center, according to the notes.
	She chose not to make a police report.
	She said she didn't think my words would mean anything up against his.
	Which, again, is a strange allegation in the year 2012.
	We're not talking about 1960.
	The notes say if she was worried that if her assailant's name is somehow released, her name will be dragged through the mud.
	She had therapy at the clinic for the following five months.
	During her therapy sessions, records show Nadia was contemplating criminal or civil proceedings before ultimately deciding against it.
	She wrote Brandon a letter hoping to regain some sense of power in the process, and she sent it to her house, and she said, Okay, so that is by far the most serious allegation.
	you scared the bleep out of me on July 1st. I thought in any situation I'd be strong enough
	to fight someone off. You completely broke me down." Okay, so that is by far the most
	serious allegation. All the other allegations that are levered here are pure, he said,
	she said, with no real supporting evidence other than the allegation itself. And again,
	many of the allegations here include further sexual entanglements that go on after the
	actual sexual assault allegation.
	Now, are we going to find out what happened here?
	Well, presumably there's actual hard evidence, certainly that she had consensual sex with him, right?
	I mean, that's presumably what the frozen samples would show.
	But if she made contemporaneous police reports, like all of this could be made not only public with her name, but also she could file criminal charges.
	If those criminal charges are filed, presumably it will be adjudicated.
	We just... I'm gonna say I don't know because I don't know and you don't know and no one knows.
	Again, I can say what I think of Russell Brand today.
	I can't say what I think of Russell Brand in 2012.
	And I don't know that Russell Brand would say what he thinks of Russell Brand in 2012.
	The thing that I find non-credible about the entire situation is not that allegation, which frankly sounds like she has supporting evidence and we'll see what comes up.
	The thing that I find puzzling and bewildering is the media's decision to go whole hog on this story after spending years propping him up while he was engaged in the behavior and apparently everyone in town knew about it.
	Elon Musk, for his part, He put out a tweet after Russell Brand put out his
	statement saying, of course, they don't like the competition, meaning this is
	why the media are going after him.
	And he says, I support Russell Brand. That man is not evil.
	Tucker Carlson said the same thing. He said, criticize the drug companies,
	question the war in Ukraine, you can be pretty sure this is going to happen.
	Sure seems that way, Musk replied. Again, the media's decisions to go in a particular direction in cases like
	this, the pattern of who they go after and who they do not is
	pretty obvious to everyone, which ironically enough undermines actual credible
	allegations. But also, Thank you.
	You know, leads one to question why they're doing this in the first place.
	Okay, we'll get to the rest of the news in one second.
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	Okay.
	Meanwhile, apart from the Russell Brand allegations, which will continue, I'm sure, to progress as the media covers them wall to wall.
	And one additional note there.
	I should point out here that those of us who have always advocated for traditional sexual mores have been scoffed at and laughed at by the media for literally decades.
	And it turns out the greatest protection for both women and men is those sexual mores.
	And only when Russell Brand has re-embraced those are the media coming after him.
	Full scale.
	When he was engaged in transgression of those sexual mores, he was a hero to the world.
	The minute that he switches, all of a sudden the media are after him.
	Because this is one of the things the media love to do.
	Their favorite charge is hypocrisy.
	The thing that they consider to be a crime in many cases, they don't actually consider to be a crime.
	So much of the behavior they discuss here, they're totally fine with.
	It is when the person advocates a different standard of morality, even now, you know, 10 years later, that they say, well, he's a hypocrite.
	Hypocrisy, you should recognize, is not actually an attack on the behavior.
	Hypocrisy is an attack on the standard.
	Which presumably is why they're going after Russell Brand now, as opposed to when he was actually engaged in the behavior.
	Okay, meanwhile, United Auto Workers are striking against the Detroit Three, that'd be GM, Ford, and Stellantis.
	They were set to resume talks starting on Sunday, following the start of the most ambitious U.S.
	industrial labor action in decades.
	This is the first time the UAW has gone on strike against all three automakers simultaneously.
	It is not a coincidence that this is happening.
	In the middle of Joe Biden's administration.
	It's happening for two reasons.
	One, the automakers are getting squeezed.
	They're getting squeezed because Joe Biden's new mandate that everybody shift over to electric vehicles is creating massive profitability problems at companies that are largely invested in gas-powered engines.
	All these companies have built up their entire brand on making affordable and powerful gas-powered engines.
	And now the Biden administration comes in and they're trying to force all the automakers to completely shift their business model.
	This cuts into profitability.
	Simultaneously, UAW knows that they have their man in the White House.
	Joe Biden is a union man.
	When I say he's a union man, I don't mean he has sympathy for the unions.
	I mean he is bought and paid for by the unions and has been since 1970.
	Joe Biden has always been a politician in the pocket of the unions.
	And so what they figure is they will get Joe Biden to cram down a settlement on the big three automakers who are simultaneously unable to accept any of the deals that are being proposed, not only because the demands are extraordinary, but also because their profitability is being destroyed by the same Biden administration now siding with the unions.
	As the Wall Street Journal editorial board points out, Sean Fein narrowly won election as UAW president in March on a platform of new militancy against U.S.
	auto companies.
	He now has the strike he appears to have wanted, as the union simultaneously struck GM, Ford, and Solantis on Friday for the first time in history.
	Fein said, The UAW is calling walkouts at select plans to minimize how much it has to pay workers from its $825 million strike fund while still causing pain for automakers.
	So it's about greed.
	But the UAW is also not calling, like, a strike of all of the people.
	They're just calling a strike of some of the people so they don't have to pay everybody.
	Mm-hmm.
	Fain wants a larger share of automaker profits, but Detroit's big three say his demands would make them less competitive against carmakers like Tesla and lead to losses.
	He wants a 36% pay increase over four years.
	A 32-hour workweek.
	32-hour workweek?
	What?
	I'm sorry, who has a thir- what?
	I mean, if I- I may not be a math genius, but a 32 hour workweek is an 8 hour a day, 4 days a week.
	32- 32 hour workweek?
	In what world?
	I come from a world where a 40 hour workweek was the norm, you know, an 8 hour a day, 5 days a week.
	32-hour work with overtime for additional hours, the restoration of retiree health benefits, which bankrupts all of these auto companies, because again, those health benefits were benefits-defined, not contribution-defined, and defined benefit pensions, rather than 401ks, and they want cost-of-living adjustments.
	So in other words, they want all the things.
	The three automakers have raised their initial wage offers to increases between 17.5% and 20%, plus large one-time payments and improved fringe benefits, including time off.
	But a 32-hour workweek and restoration of retirement benefits for newer workers are non-starters.
	In many ways, as the Wall Street Journal points out, the strike is made in Washington because of the Biden administration's policy mandating rapid transition to electric vehicles.
	The UAW knows EVs require fewer workers to make and will jeopardize union jobs making gas-powered cars.
	But the companies already lose money on EVs, and they worry about making too many concessions to the UAW that will cause them to lose even more.
	It's hard to overstate the cost of this coerced EV transition.
	The Biden administration, with California as co-enforcer, is mandating that EVs make up an increasing share of automaker sales two-thirds by 2032.
	California and other progressive states plan to ban all new gas-powered cars by 2035, which, by the way, is not that far in the future.
	It is 2023 right now.
	Last year, EVs made up 3% of Detroit automaker sales.
	I mean, it's amazing to think that Joe Biden has basically forced the automakers into this position.
	And because, again, he is such a bought-and-paid-for union shill, the unions feel like they can force these sorts of insane concessions down on the car companies.
	Hakeem Jeffries, again, another Democrat-based union shill, he says that the UAW is fighting for basic freedom, which is weird, because I didn't think basic freedom was a 32-hour workweek and defined benefit pension plans.
	I'll be heading to Detroit a little later on today, looking forward to standing in solidarity with the United Auto Workers who are fighting
	for the fundamental American dream, which is quite simple. If you work hard and play by the
	rules, you should be able to provide a comfortable living for yourself, for your family, educate
	your children, purchase a home, and one day retire with grace and dignity. Oh, that's it. That is
	how they're fighting for.
	A 32-hour workweek to find benefit pensions and all that?
	That's about basic human rights.
	Interesting take, interesting take.
	Well, no shock.
	It turns out that as the union ratchets up pressure on the Biden administration, they're sending their emissaries there to try and cram some sort of deal down on the automakers.
	UAW President Fain, he says that they're refraining from openly endorsing Biden in the next presidential race because they're trying to pressure Biden.
	Here he was saying, we expect actions, not words from Joe Biden.
	President Biden says he's most pro-union president in American history, but you haven't endorsed him.
	What is it going to take for you to do that?
	Our endorsements are going to be earned.
	We've been very clear about that, no matter what politician it is.
	How does he earn it?
	We expect action.
	We expect action, not words.
	And, you know, this fight we're in right now, I mean, obviously, you know, people are talking about them trying to interject themselves into our negotiations.
	You know, This negotiating, our negotiators are fighting hard, our leadership's fighting hard.
	It's going to be one at the negotiating table with our negotiating teams, with our members manning the picket lines and our allies out there.
	Who the president is now, who the former president was or the presidents before them isn't going to win this fight.
	Okay, so that is, again, him basically pressuring Biden.
	Now, Biden is naming White House advisor Jean Sperling and acting Labor Secretary Julie Hsu to go to Detroit to help reach a deal to end that walkout, which began early on Friday.
	The official with the White House, unnamed official, said both Sperling and acting Secretary Hsu are engaging with the parties by phone, as they have for weeks, with the intention of being there early in the week.
	They're pleased that the parties are continuing to meet as they had been before the contract expired.
	They're not going to serve as mediators or intervene, but to help support the negotiations in any way the parties feel is constructed.
	And Biden says he understands workers' frustrations that as automobile companies registered record profits, they haven't been fairly shared, in my view, with those workers.
	Let's be clear, no one wants a strike, but I respect workers' right to use their options.
	And the unions know they have their man.
	And Joe Biden really needs the unions.
	He really does.
	There's a new poll out from CBS News and it finds that 72% of Americans believe that Joe Biden is not actually healthy enough to serve as president of the United States.
	Again, a new poll from CBS News YouGov has Donald Trump over Joe Biden, 50 to 49 at this point, showing again that Donald Trump remains an incredibly tough candidate against Joe Biden.
	More importantly, showing that He's not running away from Biden.
	Biden isn't running away from him.
	They're locked in a death struggle here.
	Meanwhile, the entire Democratic Party is in a state of panic about Joe Biden.
	The New York Times has an article titled, Top Democrats' Bullishness on Biden 2024 Collides with Voter Worries.
	As one top Democratic strategist put it, the voters don't want this.
	That's in poll after poll after poll.
	So no wonder Joe Biden has to shore up that union support.
	So you would imagine this is a bad time for the Democrats.
	Well, good news.
	The Republicans are great at blowing every opportunity.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
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	Okay, meanwhile, you imagine the Democrats are running into some pretty strong headwinds here.
	They've got the Joe Biden impeachment, Kevin McCarthy, By the way, is saying that he is going to call Hunter Biden in any sort of impeachment action here.
	He will be subpoenaed.
	Here was Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, saying so just yesterday.
	Will you subpoena Hunter Biden?
	I mean, Don Jr.
	spent 20 hours.
	They didn't have any evidence.
	And yet they brought him in.
	They questioned him.
	How come you haven't brought in Hunter Biden?
	Well, the first thing is I don't subpoena anybody.
	I let committees do their work.
	But think about this, Maria.
	You wouldn't know any of this.
	If we weren't in charge.
	I understand.
	I understand that.
	The one thing the American public has to understand is there's a strategy behind everything.
	We only follow facts.
	Hunter Biden will get subpoenaed, but when's the appropriate time?
	Do you do it because television wants it, or do you do it around the facts and the timing?
	When Comer, I think we should have the bank statements to actually know where did the money go so you would know the questions to ask Hunter Biden.
	By the way, Hunter Biden, for his part, he's responding to all of this, including the new gun charges against him, by suing the IRS over IRS whistleblowers who criticized the DOJ probe and blew up his sweetheart deal.
	I don't know where he's getting all this money.
	It's weird.
	He doesn't have enough money to pay off child support, but he's got plenty of money to sue the IRS.
	That's interesting.
	All this would be very bad for the Democrats.
	The good news is, for the Democrats, that the Republicans, again, we are locked in a clash of stupid.
	We are locked in a closet with a couple of morons just going at each other.
	That's the Democrat Party and the Republican Party.
	So, the Republicans are stupid for a couple reasons.
	There are two things that make Republicans inherently unpopular.
	A feeling of chaos, and also, whenever Democrats can charge Republicans with any sort of sexual hypocrisy, it is like their favorite thing to do.
	So, we have not one, but two stories along those lines for Republicans.
	First, of course, we have the Christy Noem story.
	So, Christy Noem, who's the governor of South Dakota, Apparently had an absurdly blatant and public affair with handsy Trump aide Corey Lewandowski.
	That is according to the New York Post.
	I have sources of my own who say that Noam and Lewandowski are basically making the rounds being all cozy like months and months and months ago publicly.
	Like they're just walking into interviews together and such.
	According to the New York Post, married Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has engaged in a years-long affair with longtime Donald Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski, who seems to be, um, a bit of a, um, he seems to be, uh, let's just say he gets around.
	The dude was apparently having an affair with Hope Hicks while he was married with four kids, and now he's having an affair with Kristi Noem, who also is married with kids.
	Apparently, the pair have been less than discreet about their relationship, with one source recalling them making out at a hotel bar at 2021 CPAC.
	Which is pretty gross.
	It wasn't like 2 a.m.
	the source says.
	It wasn't like we caught them in a dive bar miles away.
	It's a lobby bar where everyone's staying.
	There's a bajillion political operatives and journalists and electeds around.
	I remember I saw it with my own eyes and a couple other people saw it and the blatantness was absolutely absurd.
	The liaison emerged one week after Noem, a 51-year-old mom of three, formally endorsed Donald Trump, 77, for the 2024 presidential nomination.
	Trump, for his part, by the way, said even this weekend that he would consider Kristi Noem for the vice presidential slot.
	This is shortly after she endorsed him for the presidency, obviously.
	Are you leaning toward a woman?
	I like the concept, but we're going to pick the best person.
	But I do like the concept, yes.
	A lot of people noticed when Governor Noem endorsed you, there were Trump-Noem signs.
	Do you have your eye on her?
	I do.
	I think she's fantastic.
	She's been a great governor.
	She gave me a very full-throated Endorsement, a beautiful endorsement actually.
	And it's been a very good state for me and certainly she'd be one of the people I'd consider or for something else maybe.
	But we have a lot of people, we have a lot of great people in the Republican Party.
	Yeah, so there's that.
	So we have Kristi Noem, who apparently is having an affair with Corey Lewandowski, a man who keeps failing upward, apparently.
	And then we also have Lauren Boebert.
	So in the dumbest story of the recent past, Lauren Boebert, who's the congresswoman from Colorado, she apparently has a new beau.
	Her new beau is a person who owns a bar that stages drag shows occasionally.
	It's a gay-friendly drag bar.
	In January 2020, Aspen Gay Ski Weekend hosted an evening of cocktails, appetizers, and laughs at Hooch, which is the bar owned by Quinn Gallagher, who is the person who is canoodling with Bulbert.
	So again, that's not the scandal.
	The scandal here is that apparently Bulbert was caught on video getting frisky with Gallagher at a showing of Beetlejuice.
	Apparently she was, like, vaping and loudly singing during her viewing of Beetlejuice.
	And then, he was petting her breast, and she was, um, grabbing his hand to keep it there.
	And apparently, um, there was some crotchety behavior as well.
	Some crotch behavior as well.
	And then, when she was- when the ushers came, and they came to boot her, there was a pregnant woman behind her who complained about the vaping.
	She refused to stop, and at that point, the ushers came and got her, and she said, quote, And then she apologized for her uncouth behavior, chalking it up to a recent split from Jason, her husband of 18 years.
	She says, there's no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce, which over the past few months has made, for me, a difficult, challenging, personal time in my entire family.
	I've tried to handle it with strength and grace.
	I simply fell short of my values on Sunday.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	No, no, no, no.
	There may not be a perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce.
	I'm pretty sure that first on the list of things you don't do on the blueprint is, you know, give people hand jobs in the aisles at Beetlejuice while they grab your breast and you vape.
	Pretty sure it's that.
	Now the reason I say this is not because I deeply care about Lauren Boebert's sex life, I really don't.
	But the point is, that as another one of these Republicans who is supposedly standing up for family values, I just don't un- Why don't Republicans seem to understand that when they present candidates who engage in this sort of behavior, it undercuts their position with the American public?
	And I don't like the hypocrisy charge.
	I think the hypocrisy charge is stupid.
	I think you can hold values that you yourself failed to meet.
	I think it happens pretty much all the time.
	However, running candidates and championing candidates who consistently do this in swing districts, Boebert won her last race by like 200 votes.
	I don't know that that's a recipe for success.
	This is why I say the Republican Party They are the stupid party, there is no question.
	And that stupidity is extending over into this government shutdown talk.
	Meanwhile, the Republicans are having an internal fight now over a spending cut that would theoretically avert a government shutdown.
	So according to Bloomberg, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the weekend proposed a deal to temporarily avert a U.S.
	government shutdown with demands, including an 8% spending cut for domestic agencies and
	resumption of border wall construction.
	He presented that plan to Republican lawmakers in a conference call on Sunday evening after
	negotiators representing key factions within the House of GOP settled on those demands.
	But it seems like there are a bunch of Republicans who aren't who aren't going to go along with
	the plans.
	The plan here was we present a plan for an 8% government, an 8% cut in spending and building
	some border wall in the middle of an immigration crisis.
	And that wrongfoots the Democrats because that's not an ask for a 40% cut or a 70% cut.
	It's a pretty reasonable ask.
	Joe Biden eventually comes to the table, he makes like a 3% cut, he refuses on the border, and then we yell at him about how he doesn't care about the border, which is fairly decent politics.
	Instead, and Politico, right, has an entire article about how this isn't going to avert a government shutdown because Biden won't give them anything.
	Okay, well, if Biden doesn't give them anything and McCarthy's able to pass something, then the onus moves to Biden and the Democratic Senate to do something.
	GOP leaders told their members on a private call Sunday night they hoped to bring that plan to the floor on Thursday, according to multiple people listening.
	The bill, which would punt the next funding deadline to October 31st, was drafted in the last few days by a coalition of hardliners in the House Freedom Caucus and more centrist members in the Main Street Caucus.
	The deal includes those across the board's cuts to domestic spending, exempting defense and veteran spending, as well as disaster aid, and would pave the way for Republicans to pass a standalone full-year defense spending bill.
	That vote would now happen on Wednesday.
	But a bunch of Republicans have now said that they're not going to go along with it.
	Because, again, you have a collective action problem inside the Republican Party.
	If you're the person who shows the crowd that you are the purest, this apparently means that you win points.
	This is one of the problems with weakening parties.
	So, the problem with a strong party is that the party can cram down moderate policy on people who don't want it.
	The problem with a weak party is that it has no capacity to hold together its members sufficient to prevent humiliations like walking directly into walls.
	So apparently, the Freedom Caucus and the Main Street Caucus worked this thing out.
	And then, apparently, a bunch of people come out and say no.
	That, of course, includes Matt Gaetz, whose entire agenda in life, apparently, is to bring down Kevin McCarthy's speakership.
	Matt Rosendale of Montana is opposing, so is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Eli Crane of Arizona, also.
	There are objections from a bunch of others.
	Presumably, some of these people will have some goodies negotiated for them.
	With that said, You know, the fact that whenever chaos is projected, and it may end well, it may end fine, whenever chaos is projected to no apparent end because the Democrats run the Senate and Joe Biden is the president, and so they have a bit of a say in what exactly ends up becoming law here, Republicans, how about this?
	Be concerted in the issues that you attack.
	Focus for a moment in time.
	Otherwise, Democrats are going to have something to run on, and that is not what you want.
	Meanwhile, Donald Trump did a mainstream media interview over the weekend.
	It didn't go amazing for him.
	His recent interviews have not been going particularly well.
	This one was with Kristen Welker.
	The most newsworthy thing that he said in this interview was he made a comment suggesting
	that heartbeat bills, like to protect the lives of the unborn in states, are terrible.
	Which is not only not pro-life, it's an awful thing to say.
	It's one thing to say, that tactically speaking, as President of the United States, I'm going to try to reach as much consensus as possible and gradually move the line back on abortion to accustom the American people to protecting life.
	Because if we move too far too fast, then the snapback is going to be dramatic, as we saw in Kansas.
	That's a pragmatic question, and it's a case you can make.
	That's not what Trump says.
	What Trump actually says about abortion in this interview is morally egregious.
	He says that heartbeat bills to, you know, protect babies in the womb past week five, week six, those are terrible.
	That's the thing he says.
	If a federal ban landed on your desk, if you were reelected, would you sign it at 15 weeks?
	Are you talking about a complete ban?
	A ban at 15 weeks.
	Well, people are starting to think of 15 weeks.
	That seems to be a number that people are talking about right now.
	Would you sign that?
	I would sit down with both sides and negotiate something and we'll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.
	I'm not going to say I would or I wouldn't.
	I mean, DeSantis is willing to sign a five-week and six-week ban.
	Would you support that?
	I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.
	A terrible thing and a terrible mistake.
	In the state.
	He's not even talking federally.
	In the state.
	Hey, that is not a pro-life position by any stretch of the imagination.
	Now, obviously, Trump supporters are going to say, look, he appointed three justices to the Supreme Court.
	They overturned Roe.
	But the real question is, is Donald Trump going to make this a priority in his next term?
	But he did in his last term.
	I'm with you.
	What's he going to do in his next term?
	And this should provide, you know, some fodder for the DeSantis team to work with when it comes to, for example, states like Iowa, which are very, very pro-life.
	I mean, the question is whether Republicans really care about policy at this point or whether they just kind of trust Trump to do whatever he's going to do.
	That's really the running question of this campaign.
	Now, meanwhile, Donald Trump was asked about his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election by Kristen Welker.
	One of the questions I keep asking people is if they think that this race is run on this, is Trump going to win that race?
	It's going to be difficult.
	It's going to make it harder for him.
	Could he win that race?
	Sure.
	Because Joe Biden's a terrible president.
	So could he win?
	Maybe.
	Will he win if this is the chief issue that he's going to be discussing?
	And he loves discussing it.
	It's obviously what animates him.
	I don't know.
	Is it smart politics?
	The most senior lawyers in your own administration and on your campaign told you that after you'd lost more than 60 legal challenges that it was over.
	Why did you ignore them and decide to listen to a new outside group of lawyers?
	Because I didn't respect them.
	You'd hired them?
	Sure, but that doesn't mean, you know, you hire them, you never met these people, you get a recommendation, they turn out to be rhinos or they turn out to be not so good.
	In many cases I didn't respect them.
	There are numerous books that were written on how the election was Just to be clear, were you listening to your lawyer's advice, or were you listening to your own instincts?
	I was listening to different people, and when I added it all up, the election was rigged.
	There are books that are written... Were you calling the shots, though?
	In fact, Molly Hemingway wrote a great book called Rigged.
	But were you calling the shots, ultimately?
	Excuse me.
	Molly Hemingway, who's highly respected and great, she wrote a book, a best-selling book, called Rigged.
	Were you calling the shots though, Mr. President, ultimately?
	As to whether or not I believed it was rigged?
	Sure.
	It was my decision.
	Okay, so the reason she's asking him that is because that is the entirety of the RICO case against him.
	Is that he was calling the shots.
	Right now.
	I think the RICO case is specious.
	I think there are serious problems in the legal interpretation Fannie Willis is putting forward and all the rest.
	Donald Trump, there's part of the danger here.
	Dude's in the middle of a bunch of legal cases and he's being asked about legal matters on national television.
	The Secret Service said it would be better if you didn't.
	I said, I'd love to do it.
	Again, this is legally relevant only in so far, I really don't think it's particularly relevant,
	but it's legally relevant in so far as it's part of Jack Smith's January 6th case against Trump.
	Here was Trump on what he was doing during the Capitol riot.
	The Secret Service said, sir, it would be better if you didn't.
	I said, I'd love to do it.
	They said it would be better.
	And so we went back to the White House, just so you understand, I spoke.
	I made a very nice speech.
	Tell me how you watched this all unfold.
	Were you in the dining room watching TV?
	I'm not going to tell you.
	I'll tell people later at an appropriate time.
	Just so you understand, however... What did you do when the Capitol was under attack, though?
	Let me just tell you.
	Did you see the statements I made?
	In the Oval Office and just outside of the Oval Office?
	Absolutely.
	I was there that day.
	Go home.
	Our police are great.
	We love our police.
	We love everybody.
	Go home.
	This was a beautiful statement.
	That was at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
	I don't know.
	Three hours after the attack started.
	But there were tweets that were put out before that.
	Okay, is this going to be what people want to hear about in the 2024 election?
	And Joe Biden's a terrible president.
	He's presiding over a terrible economy.
	He's presiding over foreign policy disaster after foreign policy disaster.
	Apparently, 103 Chinese ships were spotted around Taiwan today.
	Is this what we want to be talking about?
	Real question.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	Apparently, according to the Daily Wire's Amanda Prestigiacomo, it seems that Stephen Avery himself from behind bars may now be directing supporters to tank the Rotten Tomatoes audience review score of Daily Wire host Candace Owens' docuseries, Convicting a Murderer.
	Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, were convicted of murdering photographer Teresa Halbach back in 2007.
	And of course, they are featured in the brand new series from Candace, Convicting a Murderer, which rebuts making a murderer.
	Well, apparently, a post on the Facebook group called Steven Avery is Innocent says, important, Steven is asking for all of his supporters to flood Rotten Tomatoes and give Convicting a Murderer a bad review.
	This garbage and vitriol is not true.
	We need our community to step up and let Candace Owens know that Steven Avery is innocent.
	The Facebook post issued by the group's administrator on Friday night and then links to the Rotten Tomatoes review page of Convicting a Murderer and tags everybody in the group, which is like 36,000 people.
	Before the post, Convicting a Murderer was boasting an average review score in the 90s.
	It has now dropped all the way down to, at last check, in the 60s.
	So, yeah, this is how things are going right now.
	Why do I like this?
	Because it shows that Stephen Avery, if there's something that Stephen Avery doesn't like, it's pretty obvious what it is here, and that is that Candace's documentary really puts the lie to all of the allegations that he is wrongfully convicted.
	Her documentary really blows the lid off that particular story and the fact that Stephen Avery appears to be directing from behind bars an effort to take down the film tells you what you need to know about the value of the film.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	So apparently our F-35 stealth fighter is so stealth that it's now missing.
	Like it's just gone.
	According to NBC News, a U.S.
	fighter jet's stealth abilities appear to be working too well, with authorities forced to ask the public for help, finding an F-35 that went missing somewhere over South Carolina when the pilot ejected because of a mishap.
	Joint Base Charleston and Air Base North Charleston said it was working with the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap.
	Sunday afternoon, the pilot was able to safely eject from the aircraft an F-35B Lightning II jet and was taken to a local medical center in stable condition.
	The jet was left in autopilot mode when the pilot ejected from the aircraft, so it might still be airborne.
	However, searchers were focusing their attention north of the airbase around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion based on the jet's last known position.
	Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, said, How the hell did you lose an F-35?
	How is it not a tracking device?
	We're asking the public to what?
	Find a jet and turn it in?
	Apparently the transponder is not apparently working.
	Worth noting that the F-35 cost per plane The acquisition costs right now are somewhere between 80 and 156 million dollars.
	So, that's not ideal, guys.
	So yeah, everything's going well in the military, which is why Mark Milley is still the head of the Joint Chiefs.
	He's doing such a stellar job.
	He was asked over the weekend about the military going woke, meaning like, why are you guys flying LGBTQ plus minus divided by signed flags?
	Why is it that you guys are, for example, putting out ads talking about The value of individualism in the military, as though that's what the military is all about.
	Why are you guys doing DEI training?
	And Mark Milley is like, I've never heard of this woke.
	What is this woke that you speak of?
	Is the U.S.
	military too woke?
	No, not at all.
	So, you know, I'm not even sure what that word truly means, but I would tell you that the military I see is a military that's exceptionally strong.
	It's powerful.
	It's ready.
	In fact, our readiness rates, the way we measure readiness is better now than they've been in years.
	You thought about resigning.
	It's the military.
	It's, he doesn't know what woke means guys.
	Things are going amazing.
	Then he said that it's their obligation to stay out of politics, which is weird
	because Milley keeps injecting himself into politics by talking about white rage and such.
	You thought about resigning.
	You did not.
	I thought at the time it was a consideration of mine, but several people counseled me and they reminded me
	that an officer, a commissioned officer resigning is the consummate political act.
	and that it's our obligation to stay out of politics.
	And if I were to resign, then that would be a grave mistake, and it would be putting the uniform even more into politics.
	Okay, there's very little that can put Mark Milley's uniform more into politics.
	Quick reminder, he did get a presidential accommodation from Donald Trump as he was leaving office on January 19th.
	Alrighty, folks.
	Coming up, we're going to jump into the Ben Shapiro Show Mailbag.
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