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Oct. 27, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

48:15

No, I Won’t Give Up My AR-15

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	The mass shooter in Lewiston, Maine is still at large.
	He has done extraordinary damage, 18 dead, 13 injured, lives ended, lives destroyed, families wrecked.
	In America, such events quickly devolve into the usual arguments.
	Those who argue for gun control blame the weapon carried by the shooter.
	They point out that he was carrying an AR-15 and that he had a high-capacity magazine.
	They say that Maine's gun laws are too loose and that if they had been tighter, the shooter never would have been able to obtain the weapon.
	Gun rights advocates argue, by contrast, that the shooter was mentally ill, that according to the Washington Post, he had, quote, so alarmed people around him that he was hospitalized and received mental health treatment this summer.
	People who knew the shooter told investigators that, quote, in recent months, he described hearing disturbed voices and had increasingly become fixated on the bowling alley and the restaurant where he allegedly opened fire.
	It's unclear where the shooter got his weapon.
	If he did not have a criminal record, a federal background check would not have stopped him from getting a weapon anyway.
	But Maine also has a so-called yellow flag law that requires police to get a medical practitioner to evaluate someone with mental illness and identify them as a threat before the police can petition a judge to order a person's firearms seized.
	If ever somebody would have qualified for use of such a law, the shooter in this case would have qualified.
	In the end, the arguments for and against gun control aren't generally about the efficacy of any particular policy, at least not when it comes to mass shootings.
	Mass shootings are statistical outliers.
	The vast majority of homicides involving firearms in the United States are committed with handguns, not long guns.
	Active shooter events constitute a very small percentage of overall homicides.
	While the media tend to cover large-scale mass shootings like the Lewiston shooting, they tend to ignore mass shootings in cities like Chicago, despite the fact that firearms homicide rate for black Americans is some 14 times higher than that for white Americans.
	Now, the arguments for gun control tend to centralize around one particular argument, the argument that no one, quote unquote, needs an AR-15 or any gun for that matter.
	That's the argument that President Biden routinely makes.
	For those brave right wing Americans who say it's all about keeping America, keeping America's independent and safe.
	If you want to fight against the country, you need an F-15.
	You need something a little more than a gun.
	The idea The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick.
	It's just sick.
	It has no, no social redeeming value.
	Zero.
	None.
	Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturer.
	If you want to protect yourself, get a double barrel shotgun.
	Have the shells of a 12-gauge shotgun.
	I promise you, whoever's coming in is not going to... You don't need an AR-15.
	It's harder to aim, it's harder to use, and in fact, you don't need 30 rounds to protect yourself.
	Buy a shotgun!
	None of that is true.
	None of that is true.
	Also, notice his language there.
	When he says no one needs a semi-automatic weapon, that's like a normal handgun.
	That is a normal rifle.
	A semi-automatic weapon just means that every time you pull the trigger, the gun shoots.
	That's all.
	And then it reloads.
	That's what a semi-auto is.
	But is Biden right on principle?
	I spent part of my day yesterday with my wife and some friends at a gun range.
	While we were there, we worked with my Smith & Wesson M&P Shield 9mm, my Mossberg 500 shotgun, and yes, my AR-15.
	Why, precisely, were we at the gun range?
	Well, it's not because I love the gun range.
	It's because, since the October 7th terror assault on the Gaza envelope, antisemitism across the West has skyrocketed.
	I currently have full-time security on myself, on my family, probably going to have to have that level of security the rest of our lives.
	But it's not just me.
	Pretty much every Jew I know who can obtain a weapon is now attempting to do so.
	And they should, as all law-abiding and responsible adults should.
	Owning a weapon is, in the end, the only protection against the darkness.
	The Jews who were murdered, raped, and kidnapped in the Gaza envelope were largely unarmed.
	Israel has extremely strict gun control laws.
	In the wake of the massacre, tens of thousands of Israelis are now seeking to arm themselves as they should.
	Over 100,000 Israelis have reportedly submitted gun license applications.
	Closer to home, the story is the same.
	There are evil people who seek to do harm to innocent people.
	On Wednesday morning, for example, a man was arrested in Studio City, California, after breaking into a home with a mezuzah, that is a scroll on the doorpost of Jewish homes, marking it as a Jewish home.
	The man was screaming, free Palestine and kill Jews, and trying to kick in a door.
	Now New York Jews are being told to stay indoors by security sources over Shabbat, because pro-Hamas protesters decided to descend on Brooklyn on Shabbat afternoon, according to colive.com.
	Jews should avoid walking around Crown Heights, a heavily Orthodox neighborhood.
	According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents have increased by 388% this month, year over year.
	Why wouldn't every Jew want to carry under these circumstances?
	People of decency on all sides do want the same thing here.
	Innocents protected, and the dangerous disarmed.
	The question is, how best to achieve that goal?
	Simple-minded statements about blanket weapons bans are not the answer, and those answers make even less sense, coming from many of the same people who see the police as the problem.
	So no, I'm not going to be giving up my AR-15 because a mentally ill person who never should have had weapons committed a heinous act of evil.
	In fact, that is precisely why I keep my weapons, because evil people doing evil things are not stopped by parchment barriers.
	In just a second, we'll get to the political response to the mass shooting in Maine, which of course has followed all the traditional hallmarks of the debate.
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	Okay, so as per our usual arrangement, These shootings, almost invariably, involve somebody with obvious red flags.
	Like obvious, obvious red flags.
	And then the media decides to ignore all the red flags in favor of the idea that a hundred million goners ought to give up their guns.
	Because in the end, the idea is that you should trust the government to protect you.
	Now, I don't trust the government for a couple of reasons.
	One, I don't think that they can protect me in the first instance.
	So where I live, great sheriff's department, excellent police department.
	Everybody, law enforcement is excellent.
	And you know what?
	It's going to take them a little while to respond to an actual bad thing happening.
	It doesn't matter how good they are.
	It will take them, at the very least, a few minutes to get to a place.
	And that is too late for the people who are in that place.
	And this is all very speculative until it happens in a place where you are.
	Which is why, at my synagogue, half the guys are carrying.
	We have security and we have half the guys carrying.
	That is a good thing.
	That is a worthwhile thing.
	Whenever somebody says, well, good guys with guns don't stop bad guys with guns.
	No, the answer is they do.
	It's always such a weird argument.
	They'll say things like, well, you know what really stops the bad guy with the gun is either he commits suicide or the cops stop him.
	You know why that is?
	Because there was no one on scene who had a gun.
	So they had to wait until a guy was done shooting a bunch of people for the cops to get there and shoot the guy.
	Or, what, are you going to wait there for the guy to commit suicide?
	Like, out of the kindness of his heart, you think that that's what's going to stop this thing?
	The reality is, once again, that every one of these situations involving a mass shooter is a situation in which the person has all sorts of indicators that they should not have had a gun in the first place and somebody dropped the ball somewhere along the way, which really speaks to a lack of belief In the actual social fabric.
	Because if you see somebody around you who should not have a gun, somebody around you who has severe mental illness, you have an obligation, a moral obligation, to report that to the authorities and the authorities have a moral obligation to try to get that person the care they need and remove from them the ability to have access to a weapon.
	That is your moral obligation.
	It is a thing that you should do.
	By the same token, it is immoral to remove from a law-abiding citizen who knows how to use a gun his means of self-defense.
	That is immoral.
	The first right any of us have is the right to self-defense and defense of others, obviously.
	Well, whenever one of these shootings happens, obviously emotions run really high, and you see some politicians who decide that they're going to shift their opinions on the political issue, not because new evidence has emerged, but because they are now emotionally struck by the issue.
	I'm not a big fan of this type of politics.
	If your position's changed radically, not because new evidence emerged that debunked your prior position, but because you are just responding more emotionally to the issue, that's not a good reason to shift your opinion on an issue.
	It isn't.
	Evidence is supposed to decide your positions on the issues.
	Well, there was a congressperson yesterday named Jerry Golden, Democrat from Maine, who reversed course on gun control.
	Now, Maine is a Democrat-dominated state.
	It has a Democratic governor, it has one Democratic senator, one Republican senator, and it has a Democratic legislature.
	So, here is Jared Golden, who is a main congressperson, who represents Lewiston, now coming out in favor of gun control, which is a politically safe thing to do after a mass shooting, obviously.
	But again, there's no new evidence that's been provided that this would've, that, what form of gun control would've stopped this from happening?
	Seriously, what form of gun control?
	Guy apparently already had guns, we don't know how he obtained the guns, and we do know that he was literally institutionalized just a couple of months ago, and somehow still had access to the weapons.
	What laws on the books would've changed this?
	Here's Jared Golden, advocating for moral laws anyway.
	The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the United States Congress to ban assault rifles like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.
	For the good of my community, I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.
	I don't really understand why he's saying it's his responsibility.
	What is the law that he failed to pass that would have prevented this?
	Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
	Senator, long time advocate for gun control.
	He then actually stomped on this guy.
	Because that's also the way politics works.
	Even if you reverse position, then the people who reflect your new position will stomp on you.
	Here's Chris Murphy going after him yesterday.
	I don't know Representative Golden personally.
	I know that he's a pretty conservative member of the House of Representatives, and he's coming to the same reality that many others have, which is that these weapons don't deserve to be on the streets of America.
	You can protect people's Second Amendment rights, but just make sure that folks don't have access to the weapons of war.
	But I wish it didn't take members of Congress To have to experience a mass shooting in their own congressional district to come to this reality.
	I'm glad that Representative Golden has made this decision, but why does it have to happen over and over and over again?
	I mean, does he have a solution that would stop this from happening over and over and over again?
	There's some 50 people who were shot in Chicago over the weekend.
	No big news story about it because it's not as spectacular.
	It doesn't grab the headlines in the same way.
	Those were almost invariably with handguns.
	You don't see Chris Murphy talking about any of that.
	And again, this is the easy liar's way out of the dilemma.
	The real argument that people on the left, if they are honest, want to have is that no one should have a gun.
	That's the argument that they really want to have.
	They don't want to make that argument because they understand that it's a losing argument.
	But that is the argument that they actually do want to make.
	So instead, they decide that they are going to sort of reverse engineer an argument where the greatest danger to your life today is an AR-15.
	Well, if the greatest danger to my life is an AR-15 in the hands of a crazy person, you know what the greatest defense to my life is?
	An AR-15 in my hand so I can stop the crazy person.
	Senator Tim Kaine, he's doing the same sort of thing from Virginia.
	He says, we have a sickness in this country.
	It doesn't happen anywhere else.
	We have a sickness in this country.
	First of all, it's not true.
	It doesn't happen anywhere else.
	There are mass shootings.
	There are terror assaults.
	This sort of stuff does happen in other countries.
	But if there is a sickness in this country, part of that sickness involves denying sickness, denying mental illness, pretending that mental illness is just different brain orientation, as opposed to what it really is in many cases, a danger to self or others.
	Here is Senator Kaine.
	Anything like this just reopens a wound that never heals for all Virginians.
	When we see a report of this kind of shooting tragedy, we all remember that tragedy at Virginia Tech and so many since then.
	And it just sickens your soul.
	I mean, we have a sickness in this country around gun violence.
	And it's a uniquely American problem.
	Many other nations don't have the problem that we have.
	States, including Virginia, have finally taken meaningful steps to deal with it, but Congress thus far has generally been unwilling to.
	Again, many of these mass shootings have occurred in California, which has extraordinarily strong gun laws.
	I used to live there.
	Meanwhile, Karine Jean-Pierre on the federal level, she's doing the same thing.
	She says, let's work to ban assault weapons.
	Again, the weapon is not the problem.
	The person who's carrying the weapon is the problem.
	Everyone knows this.
	Let's work together to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
	Let's work together to enact universal background checks, require safe storage of guns, and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous individuals who have no business being armed with a weapon of war.
	Okay, but those people have no business being armed at all!
	At all!
	The weapon is not the... The person, as always, is the issue.
	And again, there is a counterside to this, which is that law-abiding people who are legitimately afraid and should be legitimately afraid of bad people in the night need to own weapons.
	I am one of those people.
	My wife is one of those people.
	My wife is, by nature, a very gentle person.
	She is not somebody who's particularly comfortable around firearms.
	She's learning to use a firearm.
	She's buying a firearm because she wants to be more comfortable so she feels safer.
	And she is not wrong.
	We get a lot of threats.
	She's not wrong.
	We'll get to more on this momentarily first.
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	So again, the case that very often is just made pretty openly by members of the left is that we don't like guns, guns are bad.
	Or that no one needs a gun.
	That is the case made by a person named Tyler Austin Harper over at The Atlantic today.
	The title of the piece is How Much Blood Is Your Fun Worth?
	I saw the gun violence epidemic and my relation to it as a gun owner as an abstraction.
	Then a mass shooting happened in the little city where I work.
	This is a person who is from Lewiston, Maine.
	The entire article is about how this person is a gun owner and how he was always in favor of gun control, but now he's really strongly in favor of gun control.
	choices, the honest truth is that I've always viewed the gun violence epidemic
	as an abstraction remote from my own life choices. Like many gun owners, I had
	always supported stronger gun control. If it requires written and practical exams
	and dozens of hours of training to earn the right to drive a motor vehicle, I've
	never understood why the same it should not apply to firearms. But my views on gun
	control have also been wonkish, academic in nature.
	It's something I care about and have written about but have never felt deeply.
	That changed yesterday.
	Okay, so he has stronger feelings right now.
	And then he gets to this.
	If you had asked me before yesterday why I own guns, I would have fed you the same line I'd fed my liberal friends and my wife, and above all, myself, for years.
	I would have told you I own guns for hunting, for protection, for blasting clay pigeons out of cloudless October skies.
	I have told you I own guns because I come from a gun family, and guns are some of the only things I have left from the people I love.
	I would have told you about the rifle my holler-born, Great Depression-surviving grandmother kept under the bed, the 20-gauge my grandfather used to bring home at Thanksgiving turkeys.
	I would have told you I own guns because I'm a hunter, and I own guns because I write things that sometimes make people angry.
	But it is only now that gun violence has visited my little corner of the world that I have been forced to confront reality, a truth that has been there all along but that I have refused to admit.
	I own guns because I like them, and because I'm an American, and I'm allowed to, and no one stops me.
	I own guns because gun violence was something that happened anywhere else and not somewhere close to me.
	He says that he is responsible.
	And he says yesterday's events haven't made me change my mind about being a gun owner.
	The reasons that motivated me to own guns in the first place are no different than yesterday.
	The shooting in Lewiston changed my mind about being a quiet gun owner.
	I've spent years of my life making apologies on behalf of my gun nut acquaintances.
	So I just have a question.
	He's not giving up his guns.
	Right?
	I mean, in the end, this guy is not going to give up his guns, but he is going to lecture you about your guns.
	That is the idea here.
	He says the reason that people own AR-15s is because they are fun or because they are a toy.
	For some people, maybe that's true.
	But here's the bottom line.
	I have a right to own an AR-15.
	My reason happens to be a pretty good reason, which is self-defense and defense of others.
	But that right is broader than that.
	And the reason it's broader than that is because I can't prove to the authorities that my need outweighs their need to take away my gun.
	I know this because I know this for a fact.
	When I lived in Los Angeles, I was one of the top targets of anti-Semitic death threats in 2015, 2016.
	I used to get death threats all the time.
	I knew fairly intimately the people at the FBI in Los Angeles because they'd been to my house more than once in order to pick up, at least one time, powder from my house.
	Other times to investigate other mail that had come to the house.
	I know the FBI agents where I live here too.
	But the difference is that in Florida, I can get my gun, I can go out, I can train with it, I can get good at it, And I can carry it because it turns out that the threat is not just to me and my home.
	When I was in Los Angeles, let me tell you the process that I had to go through.
	This is why the right is broader than just my need because it turns out that when the authorities define the need, very often it just obliterates the right.
	When I was in Los Angeles, I literally went to the LAPD and I applied for a concealed carry permit.
	Concealed carry permits in Los Angeles are almost impossible to get.
	Really, really difficult to get.
	You have to demonstrate a need.
	What does that mean?
	It means you have to demonstrate a need that is beyond the response time of the LAPD.
	So, I set up a meeting with LAPD.
	I go in.
	I bring in a binder.
	I'm talking a binder this thick of death threats.
	A thick binder of death threats.
	I sit down with somebody working for the LAPD and I start walking through the death threats.
	They say, okay, we'll get back to you.
	A couple weeks later, they deny me the permit.
	Why?
	Because they say, That all those death threats, well, they haven't actually acted on them yet.
	And I said, right, that's the entire point.
	They have not.
	But when they do, I want to be ready.
	In fact, I pointed out to them that the FBI had arrested a person who was sending death threats to me and Donald Trump Jr., among other people.
	They'd arrested that person.
	That person had a picture of Mein Kampf in their home.
	That person had body armor and a map of the general area where we lived.
	And he was pretty much ready to go.
	And the LAPD said, yes, but he was arrested.
	Which is a full catch-22.
	We catch the guy, that means you're safe.
	We don't catch the guy, well, you shouldn't have a gun because, after all, we could have caught the guy.
	This is why the Second Amendment exists.
	And in an increasingly violent world, particularly for people like me, you wanna talk about things getting personal?
	Gun ownership is personal to me.
	This person says gun violence is personal to him because it racked the community where he lived.
	Because gun violence is personal, because violence and threats are personal, gun ownership is personal to me.
	And I don't believe I'm the only one in America who feels that way.
	I think the founders felt the same thing.
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	So, when I talk about the threats and the reason that we own guns, the reason why everybody in my neighborhood who didn't already own a gun has bought a gun, why people are buying additional guns, why everybody's getting trained.
	Jon Podhoretz has a piece in the New York Post talking about the situation in New York.
	Quote, a pro-Palestinian protest is scheduled for 3 p.m.
	Saturday in front of the Brooklyn Museum.
	That's a mile from 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the largest ultra-Orthodox
	sect in the world, the Lubavitch Hasidim. Roughly 20,000 observant Jews live around
	770 in the neighborhood called Crown Heights. Jews should definitely avoid the area,
	says an Orthodox site called COL Live.
	They say a security source told them, quote, there's no intel at this time in which direction the protest will lead.
	Locals should definitely stay away from Eastern Parkway in that area.
	The Jews of Brooklyn feel they are at risk and obviously they feel that they cannot be protected.
	That is not a shock either, considering what has happened over the course of the past week or so.
	We saw a bunch of students at Cooper Union in Greenwich Village who were barricaded inside the library as a bunch of pro-Hamas protesters were outside banging on the doors.
	You've seen this sort of stuff, this sort of threatening stuff happening routinely around the nation, unfortunately.
	In Tulane yesterday, Tulane University in New Orleans, which is a lot of Jews go to Tulane, including my old friend Andrew Breitbart went to Tulane.
	At Tulane, violence broke out.
	It broke out because somebody decided to basically dress up like a terrorist and then drive through the campus.
	There's a person who decided to wear the keffiyeh around the face, looking as though they are a terror threat, and then attempted to start burning an Israeli flag.
	And a Jewish student presumably tried to take the Israeli flag away from him and got beaten up by the crowd.
	Here's what that looked like.
	You can see the, for those who can't watch video, you're seeing, you can see the part
	where this guy drove up looking like a terrorist, but he drove up looking like something directly
	out of the Gaza Strip and tried to burn an Israeli flag.
	Somebody tried to stop him, and then this student ended up having to go to the hospital.
	We've been seeing these massive marches all over the United States in favor of Hamas.
	If that doesn't scare the hell out of Jews, I'm not sure exactly what will.
	It doesn't mean the Jews are going to become shy about it.
	Certainly, I haven't become shy about it.
	But it does mean that things are pretty scary out there and everybody is taking precautions.
	Meanwhile, the good news is that the hard left is coming to the defense of Hamas.
	Harvard has now created a task force to support students experiencing doxing, harassment, and online security issues following backlash against students allegedly affiliated with a statement that held Israel entirely responsible for violence in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
	The new task force will be in operation until November 3rd.
	So, basically, there are a bunch of students who decided to sign a statement in favor of Hamas.
	There's a truck that went around Harvard with their faces on it, showing exactly who had signed this.
	And Harvard, to make sure that everybody's feelings are protected, they created an entire task force to help the students who signed a statement in favor of Hamas.
	According to an email, the Dean of Students Office will lead the task force alongside the Harvard University Information Technology, Harvard University PD, Counseling and Mental Health Service, Office of General Counsel, Mignon Center for Career Services, Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowship, and the Office of Undergraduate Education.
	So that's very encouraging stuff.
	Jews are being threatened all over the world, but we've got to make sure that the people who join the threats, those are the people who are protected.
	On Monday, the so-called PSC, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, posted a letter from alumni to Harvard administration on their Instagram page, saying, quote, And then they call for Harvard to make an apology.
	this writing the Harvard administration has yet to meaningfully criticize or
	condemn the public doxing campaigns threatening students primarily targeting
	marginalized students who are Palestinian, black, Arab, South Asian, Muslim,
	undocumented and or international and then they call for Harvard to make an
	apology so instead they set up a task force in favor of these folks. Yes it is
	indeed a threatening time.
	Meanwhile, sitting members of Congress with links to Hamas continue to defend their radical Jew hatred.
	So, Rashida Tlaib yesterday She was hit with a censor resolution sponsored by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	Obviously, she should be censored.
	The truth is, she should be expelled, considering her support for terrorist organizations.
	But she released a statement, quote, Marjorie Taylor Greene's unhinged resolution is deeply Islamophobic and attacks peaceful Jewish anti-war advocates.
	I am proud to stand in solidarity with Jewish peace advocates calling for a ceasefire and an end to the violence.
	Okay, by Jewish peace advocates, she means radical left-wingers who wear their titular Judaism as a badge to protect them from the fact that they are standing for Hamas.
	She says, I will not be bullied.
	I will not be dehumanized.
	I will not be silenced.
	I will continue to call for ceasefire, for the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid, for the release of hostages and those arbitrarily detained, and for every American to be brought home.
	I will continue to work for a just and lasting peace.
	Yada, yada, yada.
	Okay, she is a liar, obviously.
	Not only is she a liar, she continues to maintain that Israel hit that hospital.
	She's never gonna forgive Israel, as they say online, for not hitting the hospital.
	Ilhan Omar immediately came out in support of Rashida Tlaib, quote, Asterisk of Hamas.
	She shows humanity to colleagues who constantly dehumanize her and those who share our faith.
	Yeah, if there's one person who shows humanity to others, it's Rashida Tlaib.
	She loves the people.
	She represents regardless of who they are.
	Well, I mean, I assume she does love Hamas fans, because she definitely represents them well.
	I am my sister's keeper, says Ilhan Omar.
	I will walk through fire for her.
	I admire her leadership and conviction.
	People can harass or try to censure her.
	She will never be forced into submission.
	None of us will.
	Oh, such heroism.
	Meanwhile, Ayanna Pressley.
	Another adjunct member of the squad, the Ringo star of the squad, she also put out a statement saying Rashida Tlaib is doing what her district elected her to do, advocate for a better, safer, more just world by lying repeatedly about Israel and being a radical anti-Semite, of course.
	Now, here's the thing.
	Rashida Tlaib has alleged links to the Hamas terror organization.
	According to Canary Mission, they put out a report just this week pointing out that Tlaib has extensive funds tied to the Hamas terrorist group.
	The group says that Tlaib used her Facebook group, PAC-USA, Palestinian American Congress USA, for her congressional campaign.
	That group shared pro-terrorism, anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda content.
	It had 12,000 members in June 2020.
	She also hired the founder of the group as chairman of her campaign's finance committee.
	That person is said to have enabled the founder to promote 12 fundraisers across eight states.
	Additionally, according to Canary Mission, Tlaib founded the group Black for Palestine, an organization they describe as the anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-terror hate group.
	The group allegedly works alongside the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is a foreign terrorist organization in the United States.
	That group has apparently posted in support of registered terrorist organizations more than 100 times.
	Tlaib has links to at least three Hamas-linked activists, whom she employed to fundraise for her 2018 election campaign.
	Those would be Salah Sarsour, Rafik Jaber, and Abdelbaset Hamayel.
	Sarsour is actually jailed for being connected with Hamas in 1995.
	She co-hosted an event with Tlaib in 2018.
	Jaber has apparently admitted to helping distribute Hamas' propaganda in the United States.
	In 2003, he testified he directed two Hamas front groups to promote the Holy Land Foundation in every way we can and admitting to distributing, quote, pro-martyrdom materials that celebrated the killing of Jews.
	Khamayel has worked for multiple Hamas-linked organizations in the United States.
	So that is Rashida Tlaib, your sitting Congresswoman.
	And meanwhile, the Biden administration is attempting to grasp its way forward with regard to the situation in the Middle East.
	Again, they're sending some mixed signals.
	Some of those signals are very good.
	Some of those signals are less good.
	So John Kirby yesterday, to his credit, the national security spokesperson, to his credit, yesterday he was asked about casualty numbers in the Gaza Strip.
	And he gave one of the strongest answers actually I've ever seen anyone, Republican or Democrat, give from the podium on the lies told by Hamas and its allies.
	The president went further to say that innocents will die and that this is the price of the war.
	You also said that.
	I have indeed.
	Don't you think this is insensitive?
	There have been very harsh criticisms about it.
	For example, the Council of American Islamic Relations said it was deeply disturbed and called on the president to apologize.
	Would the president apologize and does he regret saying something like that?
	No.
	What's harsh?
	What's harsh?
	is the way Hamas is using people as human shields.
	What's harsh is taking a couple of hundred hostages and leaving families anxious, waiting and worrying to figure out where their loved ones are.
	What's harsh is dropping in on a music festival and slaughtering a bunch of young people just trying to enjoy an afternoon.
	I could go on and on.
	That's what's harsh.
	That is what's harsh.
	He happens to be correct about all of that.
	And yet, at the same time, the media continue to parrot the lies that Hamas tells.
	And they are liars.
	I mean, it is amazing.
	It is truly amazing to watch the PR battle that has erupted on social media.
	First of all, there's no question that, algorithmically, Hamas supporters are getting a giant boost right now.
	There's just no question that that's happening on a wide variety of platforms.
	Unfortunately, I think including X, but certainly including TikTok.
	Beyond that, Hamas, I mean, they just openly lie about things, so much so that yesterday, a Hamas spokesperson was on the BBC.
	The BBC, of course, is a Hamas-friendly outlet.
	They're perfectly willing to run with nearly anything Hamas says.
	But even the BBC was like, um, what?
	So here's what happened.
	The Hamas spokesperson tries to claim that they didn't kill civilians.
	The BBC points out, um, you did, you killed 1,500 civilians.
	And the Hamas guy gets up and walks out.
	It was a military operation.
	It was directed for military purposes.
	For the military sites.
	Hundreds of civilians were killed.
	Sorry.
	And for the military soldiers who imposed sanctions and collective punishment against our people.
	And I think from the first moment we declared that this operation was not directed to the civilians.
	But I can ...confirmed and assured again and again that there was no command to kill any civilians.
	How do you justify killing people as they sleep, you know, families?
	How do you justify killing hundreds of people?
	I want to stop this interview.
	Of course he wants to stop the interview, because that's the most obvious question in the entire world.
	By the way, they found materials literally on the bodies of Hamas terrorists, telling them to rape, telling them to murder.
	I mean, this is like, they're liars, they're liars.
	And the fact there's so many people who are willing to parrot the lies is the full-scale anti-Semitism.
	So, at the same exact time that these lies are being told, the Biden administration, again, there's a lot of mixed signals.
	Joe Biden is meeting with American Muslim leaders to try to placate their fury over the Gaza war.
	That is according to the Times of Israel.
	He held an unpublicized meeting with Muslim American community leaders.
	The move comes amid growing fury among Arab and Muslim Americans over Biden's support for
	Israel's military response to the Hamas onslaught.
	The president came under particular fire yesterday for saying he has no confidence
	in the death tally from Hamas.
	Okay, the fact that Biden is meeting with all of these supposedly angry leaders is totally crazy.
	If you're angry about Israel responding to Hamas, I have a solution for you.
	Call for Hamas to surrender.
	Hamas surrenders, it's over today.
	Today.
	It all ends right now.
	All Hamas' leadership have to do, come out with your hands up.
	That's all.
	And then this is all over.
	The hostages go free.
	The electricity gets turned back on.
	That's the next thing that happens.
	Everyone knows this.
	But instead, Joe Biden is meeting with these American Muslim leaders, and he's also promulgating, again, the entire left continues to promulgate the lie that the only way out of this in the end is going to be a two-state solution, that there are actually millions in the West Bank, in Gaza Strip, in Judea and Samaria, that there are millions of Palestinians who are just itching for peace, that every government they've ever had actually has betrayed them, every single one of them.
	Which is a weird take because, you know, we have tape from places like Ramallah.
	Here is a protest yesterday in Ramallah.
	Ramallah is in the West Bank.
	Ramallah is not in the Gaza Strip.
	It is the capital of the Palestinian Authority.
	There was a massive protest yesterday in Ramallah.
	You can see it's all young men.
	Literally all young men.
	Zero females.
	All young men.
	And they are chanting, quote, if you have a rifle, you should either kill a Jew or give it to Hamas.
	That's what they're chanting in Arabic.
	If you have a rifle, you should either kill a Jew or give it to Hamas.
	These are the so-called peace partners.
	The West can keep lying to itself, but they are, in fact, lying.
	In action, the West is going to have to respond.
	In action, the West is going to have to respond because, again, you can pretend it away, but then reality hits you square in the face.
	That's what's happening to the Biden administration with regard to Iran right now.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the United States, again, they continue, the Biden administration continues to play this dumb double game where they pretend a thing that is happening is not happening.
	So yesterday, the Biden administration, for some unknown reason, decided to allow the Iranian foreign minister to arrive on American shores and then threaten the United States from the United Nations.
	An institution that should go the way of the dodo bird.
	We should blow up the building.
	We should salt the earth.
	The UN is a garbage organization.
	It's been a garbage organization for decades.
	It's a mouthpiece for third world dictatorships.
	In any case, Here was Iran's foreign minister yesterday warning the United States that if Israel goes into the Gaza Strip, the fire will spread.
	Well, by the way, if they really want to threaten the United States, listen, we don't want war with Iran because it costs time and resources and money and people.
	We don't want any of that.
	But let's just be clear about this.
	If Iran started up with the United States, that war would be over in about a millisecond.
	The United States military is not to be trifled with and the fact that you have these tinpot morons who are out there threatening the United States is deeply insulting and speaks to the weakness that they perceive in the American body politic and among our political class.
	Here's Iran's foreign minister.
	Today in New York and the United Nations, I say frankly to the American statesmen, who are now managing the genocide in Palestine that we do not welcome to expansion of the war in the region.
	But, I warn, if the genocide in Gaza continues, they will not be spared from this fire.
	It is our home, and West Asia is our region.
	West Asia is their region.
	They own it.
	Leave it alone.
	By that, they mean presumably they also want the destruction of the state of Israel.
	Well, as it turns out, Iran has now been targeting Americans throughout the Middle East.
	In fact, over the course of the last few weeks, there have been double-digit strikes on American facilities by Iranian proxy groups.
	John Kirby was asked about that yesterday.
	He said, how exactly is Joe Biden pushing back on Iran?
	First, Kirby admitted that U.S.
	troops have actually sustained serious brain damage from these particular strikes.
	Here he was yesterday admitting the situation.
	The president said that if Iran or its proxies attacked U.S.
	troops that we would respond.
	What is he waiting for exactly?
	He did say that.
	Where's the response?
	He said that.
	And he said that we will... Repeating the warning is the response?
	Jack, come on now.
	It's not a question.
	I'm not going to telegraph punches here from the podium.
	We have responded and retaliated in the past, quite aggressively.
	In fact, back in March, and as the President said, we will not hesitate to protect our troops and our facilities, but we're going to do it at a time of our choosing and a manner of our choosing.
	And the decision to do it, if we do it, is his as Commander-in-Chief and his alone.
	Okay, so what exactly is that response?
	Well, yesterday we found out a little bit.
	The U.S.
	carried out airstrikes, according to CNN, targeting two facilities linked to Iranian-backed militias in eastern Syria on Thursday, according to a statement from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
	Following a series of drone and rocket attacks against U.S.
	forces in the region, the statement said the facilities have been used by the IRCG, that would be the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard, and affiliated groups.
	The strikes were carried out by a pair of F-16 fighter jets using precision-guided munitions.
	They targeted a weapons and ammo storage facility in Abu Kamal near the border between Syria and Iraq.
	Now, Austin is attempting to downplay the conflict because he doesn't want to be drawn into an open conflict here that would cost, as we say, time, money, and blood.
	Austin described the strikes as narrowly tailored in self-defense.
	He said they were different from the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which, of course, is a lie.
	I mean, what's happening right now is that Iran is prodding at Americans in an attempt to get America to tell Israel to stop in the Gaza Strip, which is not going to happen.
	He directly accused Iran, then, of having a role in the attacks on U.S.
	U.S. forces and quote, Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its roles in these attacks against
	our forces.
	We will not let them.
	So again, the Biden administration overall doing the right thing, pushing Iran off the
	ball, telling them do not do not screw.
	But when the rubber is going to meet the road, that's going to be if Israel goes into Gaza, which presumably will happen over the course of the next week or so by all available information.
	When Israel goes into the Gaza Strip, if Hezbollah opens up a second front on the Israeli border, will the United States stop Hezbollah from doing that?
	Because Hezbollah is an existential danger to the state of Israel.
	It's not just that they have 200,000 rockets pointed at various sites around Israel, threatening tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Israeli lives.
	They also have terror tunnels that presumably strike into Israel as well.
	They have sleeper cells that they've been working with in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank.
	If the United States wishes to keep that conflict contained, the United States is going to have to get directly involved, probably, at that point.
	Because if they don't, then Israel is going to go whole hog.
	It's either going to be the United States containing the thing, or it's going to be Israel just devastating its opposition and maybe bringing in Iran, which then may go regional.
	That right there is the biggest problem.
	So, the Biden administration needs to continue to demonstrate a stiff upper lip and a stiff spine.
	If they do, this thing will remain contained, which is in the best interest, certainly, of the United States.
	And meanwhile, Mike Johnson is the new Speaker of the House.
	Democrats are moving to try to undercut him as Speaker, suggesting that he is an extremist, of course.
	This is their next move.
	I think they're gonna have a tough time with this because Mike Johnson is a very personable fellow.
	Jamie Raskin, Democrat from Maryland, he is now accusing Johnson of opposing democracy and suggesting at the same time he wants to ban the regulatory state.
	By the way, those two things are in conflict.
	Banning the regulatory state means, in a republic, it means upholding democracy.
	The regulatory state is not elected, it is appointed.
	So, he doesn't even understand the contradiction of what he's saying here.
	New Speaker Mike Johnson, your thoughts.
	Well, you cannot get to the right of Mike Johnson in the MAGA caucus.
	It's inconceivable that you could get to the right of him.
	There are people who are definitely more lunatic than he is, and he's got very good manners, and he's an able lawyer.
	When we say he opposed democracy, we know that from his giving a legal gloss and finish to all of Donald Trump's arguments about electoral fraud and making the independent state legislature doctrine argument, which the Supreme Court fortunately did not bite on.
	Good luck with this argument that Johnson is a wild extremist, but this is the line the media are going to take.
	I don't think that it's going to have very much play.
	Meanwhile, in other stupid Congress news, again, our Congress is filled with dullards, Jamal Bowman has now pled guilty to pulling a fire alarm.
	Remember that time when he claimed that he didn't know a fire alarm was a fire alarm?
	He thought it was going to open the doors?
	Well, now we actually have tape of what he did.
	He didn't even try to walk out the doors.
	Remember, he said he thought that if he pulled the fire alarm, it wouldn't delay the congressional voting or anything, that it would allow him to walk out these doors.
	Here's Jamal Bowman.
	He walks up to the doors.
	He removes signs saying not to, and then he pulls the fire alarm, and then he walks away.
	He hasn't even tried to get out the doors.
	So that means that Jamal Bowman lied to all of you, and he is a disgrace to his office.
	But we knew that already, simply from many of the positions that he has taken.
	In just a second, we are going to get to the latest on the economy, plus an amazing story out of New York City.
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	Meanwhile, Joe Biden's approval ratings continue to absolutely tank.
	His approval ratings are down at 37%, 59% disapproval.
	Independents have them at 35% approval rating.
	These are terrible numbers, really bad numbers.
	In fact, even among Democrats, his approval numbers are down 11% month over month.
	He's at 75% in the approval ratings among Democrats.
	Part of that is the continuing failure of the economy.
	So the economy came in hot last quarter, 5% GDP growth, 4.9% GDP growth.
	The problem is there's a reason why it's at 5% GDP growth, and it's not particularly good.
	I'm gonna go through some of this for a second.
	So E.J.
	Antoni is an economist for the Heritage Foundation.
	He has a good breakdown of this.
	Here's what he says.
	He says, real GDP jumped 4.9% in the third quarter.
	What's fueling the rise versus what's not speaks volumes about the economy's trajectory.
	The key driver of normal economic growth, which is real private fixed investment, meaning I invest in a business, it's flat since quarter one of 2022.
	The residential side is even worse because real private investment there is below pre-pandemic levels because the housing market shortages are continuing because of the incredibly high mortgage interest rates right now.
	So where exactly is the investment surge coming from?
	Inventory.
	So firms see inflation continuing and they're stocking up right now because they don't want to pay twice what they're paying now a month from now.
	So basically you're front-loading all the economic growth into this quarter in expectation that the prices are going to continue to go up going into Q4.
	So again, that adds to today's GDP, but it subtracts from tomorrow's GDP.
	How about consumer spending?
	Well, it turns out that the rise in real spending is being driven by debt.
	Real disposable income actually fell again last quarter.
	Inflation continues to truck along.
	The price index for GDP doubled from the previous quarter, 3.5% versus 1.7%.
	3.5% versus 1.7%.
	That is the highest rate since 2007, pre-pandemic.
	So again, this is what you call an unsustainable burst in growth,
	a short-term burst at the expense of future growth.
	Everybody can feel it.
	Everybody knows that, which is why nobody's buying the numbers that are coming out right now.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to pretend that Bidenomics is working out amazingly well.
	Top Joe Biden economic advisor, Lael Brainard, she continues to trot out the old saws here.
	That strong economy is a testament to the resilience of American consumers and American workers supported by President Biden's plan to grow the economy by growing the middle class.
	And real wages are up over the last year.
	Well, I mean, nobody feels that, so there's that.
	Like, no one feels it.
	Trying to talk people out of the thing is not going to make them feel any better about it.
	Meanwhile, in terms of failed policies that are hilariously coming home to root, so Joe Biden's immigration policy has driven a lot of blue state mayors, governors to actually start adopting right-wing policies.
	Remember that time it was really, really terrible because Ron DeSantis actually just gave flights for illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard and this was like the end of the world?
	Politico, today, quote, here's one approach to discourage migrants from settling in New York City.
	Give them a free one-way plane ticket out of town.
	Oh, so it's okay when Eric Adams does it, but it's super bad when Ron DeSantis does it.
	Mayor Eric Adams is ramping up efforts to fly migrants to the destination of their choice, figuring it's cheaper than sheltering them for months on end.
	Remember, when Republicans do this, it's a human rights violation.
	When Eric Adams does it, it's a clever solution.
	He's simultaneously warning those opting to stay in New York may be in for a winter of sleeping outside with shelters full.
	Adam said, well, you're out of room.
	You're out of room.
	Every year, my relatives show up for Thanksgiving.
	They all want to sleep at my house.
	There's no more room.
	That's where we are right now.
	Hilariously, he's now meeting opposition from his own party.
	City Council Member Shahana Hanif said, quote, What we've witnessed from this administration is that they've
	consistently created hysteria and chaos and confusion. They're not using a tone of inclusivity
	and welcome.
	Oh, well, I mean, if they're not using a tone of inclusivity and welcome,
	what what is anyone going to do?
	It's just hilarious now that all the Democrats are adopting all of the Trumpian immigration policies, but pretending that it's totally fine when they do it.
	Already, guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be joined by Gidon Hazoni.
	Gidon is the co-founder of an organization called Soldiers Save Lives, an organization in honor of his best friend, David Newman, who was killed in the Hamas massacre.
	They are raising money and resources for people in need in Israel.
	You can go check out their website right now.
	Over at SoldiersSaveLives.org.
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