Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boring promote their film Lady Ballers, a satire on transgender sports featuring Ted Cruz and Matt Walsh, before analyzing Elon Musk's visit to Israel where he endorsed Netanyahu's strategy of killing terrorists and re-education. Shapiro critiques Western media's lack of moral clarity regarding Hamas's October 7th attacks and Greta Thunberg's anti-Zionism, contrasting this with Montana Tucker's argument that denying Jewish suffering mirrors historical propaganda. Ultimately, the episode asserts that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic, warning that social media narratives are increasingly prioritizing ideology over factual realities of hostage beheadings and Holocaust denial. [Automatically generated summary]
So, I want to show the trailer, we're going to watch the trailer, then we're going to react to the trailer, and then we're going to talk about how this movie came to be, because it's absurd on every possible level.
So, let's play this thing.
unidentified
In a world where women's sports is being transformed, The Daily Wire calls foul with the most triggering comedy
Okay, so let's go back to the inception of this idea.
So you approached me and you said we should make a fictional film about this topic.
Now to be fair, I think I'd actually suggest to the Crane Boys that they do this as a doc.
Yes.
I originally went to them and I said, you guys should like go try out for a bunch of ladies leagues.
And that became not possible because, as it turns out, most ladies leagues don't allow in actual men.
And they weren't willing to go the full distance in terms of what it would require in order to, you know, the actual hormone treatments and everything to play in some of the ladies leagues.
Well, I think the thing that you have to understand is that I was getting ready to leave the country to go make our Pendragon series on July 9th, and somewhere about mid-March, I thought, wouldn't it be great if between today and July 9th, we wrote and produced an entire feature film?
And so, yeah, the Crane Boys mentioned the idea that you had given them, and it had been in the back of my mind that, you know, We really should be making the movies that only we can make.
In fact, I think that's a line that you had come up with.
What are the things that only we can do?
And so I thought, well, obviously, there has not been a true comedy made since Barack Obama became president.
I mean, Barack Obama destroyed three things.
Rock and roll, comedy, and America.
Other than that, he was a perfectly average president, you know?
It became impossible to tell a joke during the Obama administration because Obama made this sort of pact with culture shapers that they should change their fundamental understanding of themselves.
In the case of comedians, they should no longer mock the absurd, but they should be agents for social change.
The head writer of SNL famously said that they would make no jokes about Barack Obama.
There's literally nothing funny about this man.
It is as though he is carved from a single piece of pure obsidian, which in itself is one of the funniest things that anyone has ever said, because if anything, it was, you know, half of a slab of pure obsidian and the other was snow white marble.
You go back to the early 2000s, you have some of the great comedies, you know, probably ends, culminates with Tropic Thunder, starts with Dodgeball, ends with Tropic Thunder.
I miss those movies.
You miss those movies.
I think our audience misses those movies.
And there's never been anything funnier or more mockable or more laughably absurd in the mainstream part of our culture than letting grown-ass dudes beat up women by calling themselves chicks.
I mean, it's patently absurd.
And so, yeah, it was like, well, there's a joke that needs to be told that only we can tell.
So let's try to do it somehow in the next 90 days.
We'll get to more with Jeremy in just one second first.
PureTalk has you covered for the holidays with a free Moto G 5G phone.
No gimmicks, no trading necessary.
Just sign up for PureTalk's unlimited talk, unlimited text, and 15 gigs of data.
You can get all of that for just $35.
You'll get the Moto G 5G phone for free.
But here's the deal.
You need to move fast because these phones are almost gone.
So if your current phone is on life support, upgrade for free with PureTalk.
The new Moto G 5G boasts a two-day battery life, an exceptional quad pixel camera, and a whole lot more.
Pure Talk will give you America's most dependable 5G network at half the price.
So, go ahead and make that switch today.
Go to puretalk.com slash Shapiro, get this exclusive offer, select the plan that's right for your family.
Remember, Pure Talk gives you America's most dependable 5G network at half the price.
So, make that switch today.
That's puretalk.com slash Shapiro.
Claim your free Moto G 5G phone with a qualifying plan.
Again, that's puretalk.com.
Pure Talk is simply smarter wireless.
I've been using them for my own coverage for years at this point.
Go check them out.
PureTalk.com slash Shapiro.
Tis the season of giving and what better way to express love and appreciation than by presenting the timeless and exquisite gift of fine pearl jewelry.
At the Pearl Source, you get the highest quality pearl jewelry at up to 70% off retail prices.
The Pearl Source cuts out the middleman by eliminating those crazy markups by jewelry stores and selling directly to you, the consumer.
You can order from the comfort of your own home.
You'll find the largest selection of pearls available anywhere.
Each jewelry piece is custom-made specifically for you.
At the Pearl Source, let me choose.
I'm a custom set of pearls for my wife, and let me just tell you, she loves the pearls.
All the time.
It's some of the best jewelry she has in her collection.
They make stellar stuff.
It's time to start shopping for the holiday season.
Don't wait until it's too late.
The Pearl Source offers fast and free two-day shipping on every order.
And if you're not sure if she's gonna love the gift, the Pearl Source comes with a no-hassle 60-day money-back guarantee with free return shipping.
So again, it's risk-free.
Give a gift that can be passed down for generations for a limited time.
Listeners to my show can take 20% off your entire order.
Do not wait until it's too late to do that holiday shopping.
Go to ThePearlSource.com.
Enter promo code Ben and check out for 20% off your entire order.
If you want fine pearl jewelry at the best prices online, go straight to the source with The Pearl Source.
That's ThePearlSource.com.
Enter promo code Ben and check out.
That's ThePearlSource.com.
Promo code Ben.
That's the craziest part of this, is that basically there was a script, you ended up going through and rewriting a lot of the script, you ended up directing the film, you ended up being the star of the film, and that was basically demanded by circumstance, because there are more actors who are willing to be in the film because of all of what you're doing.
I suppose it shouldn't have been, but to hear these already canceled conservative actors who've wanted to do things with us, just unwilling to touch the material.
And that's when sort of the idea of, well, what if it was just us?
What if The Daily Wire truly made the movie that only The Daily Wire could make?
And we all had some trepidation about that going in.
I can't imagine any better way that it could have gone, because if we had gotten any of those actors, yes, they would have had skills that we don't have.
They wouldn't have taken the jokes as far as we took them.
They wouldn't have been willing to go the distance.
And our guys, particularly Crane and Co., Jake Crane, Blaine Crane, and David Cohn, they committed themselves so completely to this process.
And I was telling you in the makeup chair before we started, like, The physical stuff they subjected themselves to, you know, both from, like, body transformation, losing weight, gaining muscle, all of that piece of it, but then just also all the stunts, the hard days we were working.
We had an 18-hour day our last day, and these guys, you know, they were elite athletes before they moved into the sports commentary space, and you see it when you work with them, just absolute dedication and completely hilarious.
It is, it is exactly what, anyone who knows that you're funny, which is apparently no one on the left who never understand when you're making a joke, but anyone who actually watches your show will be like, there goes Ben.
I mean, like, Ted has been itching for this all his life, since he was doing high school drama, and then somehow ended up in the United States Senate and also running for president.
What he actually wanted.
Of course.
If he had gotten this when he was 20, he never would have been in politics.
And there are cameos that we haven't announced yet.
Some other people who show up and get some laughs for us, which, you know, as the days draw toward the actual premiere, we'll release some of that info.
Also, we talk about this as though it's a controversial issue because the left pretends that it's a controversial issue.
Virtually every human being alive today, and every human being alive until today, has known that men should not compete against women in women's sports.
Yeah, and I knew that it was there, but it had not occurred to me that people would see the similarity, because, I mean, frankly, it's transphobic to see the similarity.
So Juana Mann is the tragic tale of a basketball player in the UBA, not the NBA, the UBA.
And he ends up being expelled from the UBA, and it's basically Tootsie, but basketball.
And bad.
And he ends up going to the WUBA, and playing in the WUBA, and falling in love with his roommate, but of course he's supposed to be a girl, and this creates all sorts of... It's exactly, it's the plot of Tootsie, but with lowbrow and basketball.
But, to compare that to this is just sick.
I'm sorry, as I say, how dare you compare Lady Ballers, a movie about beautiful trans women, with Juana Man, a movie about a man pretending to be a woman.
Your bigotry is horrifying.
And it's so true.
It's so true.
By the way, it is kind of amazing, though.
So all these people on the left were blithely comparing our film to Juana Man, which shows that they know the thing, right?
Because Juana Man is about a man.
He doesn't pretend that he's actually a woman.
He's a man pretending to be a woman.
He doesn't say, I am a woman, therefore I get to play in the WUBA.
He's a man pretending to be a woman for advantage.
Okay, this, what he's saying right there, that's an excellent three-pronged plan for destroying Hamas and other radical terrorist groups.
You kill the people who murder the civilians, that means Hamas and its allies, you overhaul the education system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which are run by parties who hate Jews and seek the destruction of Israel, and you bring economic prosperity.
Only after those steps are fulfilled can there be talk of some sort of peaceful settlement of the conflict, because only at that point will there be partners willing to make peace.
This also happens to be the only strategy that has ever worked.
Counterinsurgency strategies directed at hostile populations can only be successful over time.
If the most militant members, the terrorists, are killed, the population is re-educated away from hatred, and economic prosperity becomes possible.
And make no mistake, the population of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is indeed wildly hostile to Israel and deeply anti-Semitic.
The population, not just Hamas.
That is not a slur, that is simply a reality.
Here is video from yesterday of the Gazan population harassing Red Cross vehicles carrying Israeli hostages.
Hamas could have cleared the streets, but what do you see here?
What do you see here?
You see young children following the Red Cross van, mocking people inside.
These are the Gazan civilians cheering because they know that this has bought them time.
Hamas.
Mocking the hostages who were taken.
This is a triumphant parade of Hamas family members and friends.
Again, look how many children are in the crowd here.
Look how many kids here are mocking outside these Red Cross vans, civilian children who are inside the Red Cross vans being returned to their families.
I mean, this is sick.
This is a sickness.
is a sick mentality that would lead anybody to do something remotely like this.
Again, those are civilians, including children, mocking Israeli hostages, also including children.
These are the wages of educating an entire population in pure hatred.
Here, for example, is video of a kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza.
Doesn't look quite like your kid's graduation ceremony from kindergarten.
And here's some video from Memory TV.
And what you see are kids who are at a graduation ceremony.
They are acting as though they are terrorists.
Performing quote-unquote military operations.
These kids are five.
Planting fake gas canister bombs underneath fake tanks.
Flanking doorways.
Performing actions that include kidnapping and killing quote-unquote enemy soldiers at a graduation ceremony for five-year-olds.
For five-year-olds at a kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza.
Lawrence, that'd be Lawrence of Arabia, once compared making war on insurgents to, quote, eating soup with a knife.
He said it was messy and slow.
That, of course, is right.
The model for such counterinsurgency tactics is the British counterinsurgency against communist revolutionaries in Malaya from 1948 to 1960.
By the time that counterinsurgency had started, the British had already had forces in country for about a century.
According to historian Andrew Roberts and General David Petraeus in their new book, Conflict, the Malayan campaign was a mixture of stick and carrot, quote, Providing people with electricity, drinking water, schools, clinics, and property rights proved a powerful disincentive for them to support Maoism.
But a heady enticement of security had a dialectical partner.
Firm discipline for those who disobeyed.
This, by the way, included, in some cases, strictly rationing diets to, like, half daily calorie count.
The British leadership also knew this strategy would take a very long time.
The general in charge of the operation said he would, quote, shoot the bastard who says this emergency is over.
Eventually, after more than a decade, the British did win.
Israel can secure its future too, but only if it takes the time and effort necessary to do so.
And this means ignoring the stupidity of those who want a quick ending to what will be a long struggle.
The first step in that struggle, destroying Hamas, what Elon Musk said, is what Israel is going to have to do.
That's what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu makes clear.
If you want a better life for the Palestinians in Gaza who have been hijacked by Hamas, destroy Hamas.
All of that is a precursor to the question that you asked.
You first have to get rid of the poisonous regime as you did in Germany, as you did in Japan in World War II.
There's no choice.
That's a prerequisite.
But then look at what happened.
What you had in Germany was denazification and what you had in Japan under Douglas MacArthur was a cultural reformation.
And Japan that you visit today is so different from Japan of the 1930s.
Germany that you visit today is so different from Germany of the 1930s.
Well, is that possible in the Arab world?
And I categorically say, of course it is, because we've seen it already.
In two places.
We've seen it in the Gulf states, and we see that when you visit Dubai, or when you visit Abu Dhabi, or when you visit Bahrain, you see something entirely different.
In fact, Hamas apparently just transferred control of the entire Bibas family, which includes a four-year-old and a 10-month-old, to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another terrorist group, apparently for money.
Hamas military leader, Yahya Sinwar, apparently appeared personally to the hostages in the tunnels to show them his power.
One hostage was forced to write a ridiculous letter before her release, talking about how Hamas had, quote, treated her daughter like a queen while in captivity.
I'm not kidding.
Hamas is evil, full stop.
This is why early calls for Israel to stop its operations against Hamas aren't just foolish, they're dangerous.
When Bernie Sanders jabbers about Israel's cruelty towards civilians, he is not protecting civilians.
He is making their lives more dangerous.
Since if he had his way, they would end up under Hamas's tender protections, presumably forever.
Large swaths of the Democratic Party seem determined to prevent Israel from doing what they actually need to do to secure their future.
This is why Senator Chris Murphy is calling for conditions on aid to Israel, which, by the way, is totally fine.
We're America.
We can put conditions on aid.
But the conditions that he seeks to place on Israel are things like compliance with international law.
Israel is already complying with international law.
That's the whole point.
But the idea here is to create a vague definition that leaves open the possibility of withdrawing aid based on Israel's current Gaza actions.
On Friday, President Biden said conditioning aid would be a, quote, worthwhile thought.
Yesterday, National Security Advisor Spokesperson John Kirby wouldn't rule it out either.
unidentified
So the approach that we're taking with Israel and, quite frankly, with our partners in the region is working.
It's getting aid into people that need it.
It's getting a pause in the fighting.
It's getting hostages out.
It's getting Americans out.
And quite frankly, we continue to urge, and will continue to urge, the Israelis as they conduct military operations to do so with the utmost care for innocent civilian life.
I think he would say exactly what he said to y'all yesterday when he got asked this question.
It's a worthwhile thought, but the approach that I'm taking now is working.
The idea that you handcuff the party that is attempting to protect itself, the democracy, the democratic ally, in the face of a giant terror group is ridiculous.
It's also foolishness for people to treat the quote-unquote two-state solution as though that idiotic nostrum represents a true solution.
It doesn't, and it hasn't.
It instead holds out the hope that the more pressure is applied to Israel, the more death brought to Israel's citizenry by terrorists, the more international pressure put on Israel, The more Israel will then concede to those very terrorists, which of course prolongs the conflict.
I have a question.
Does anyone really want a terrorist state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip?
Because that's exactly what would exist if Palestinian statehood were declared today.
As apparently the ridiculous government of Spain would wish.
Hamas would end up the governing party in a new state with control over its border and its weaponry.
Do you think the possibility of global conflict is larger or smaller under those circumstances?
Now, President Biden has been more stalwart than I would have expected so far, but his language on this matter is insipid.
Here's what he tweeted, quote, A two-state solution is the only way to guarantee the long-term security of both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.
To make sure Israelis and Palestinians alike live in equal measure of freedom and dignity, we will not give up on working towards that goal.
Can you imagine in the middle of World War II, if the President of the United States had tweeted out, what we really need is a peace agreement between America and Japan in order to end this terrible bloodshed and leave the Japanese fascists in charge of Japan.
Listen, the two-state solution may eventually, down the line, become a possibility.
But ironically, talk about it, prematurely prevents that possibility from ever materializing because every incentivization of terrorism increases terrorism, thus making such a solution absolutely impossible.
How do we know this?
Because what happened on October 7th was the culmination of three decades of large-scale terrorism pursued by the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, So what needs to happen?
And that, of course, is precisely what's missing these days from a disconnected West.
In just one second, we'll get to that disconnected West.
First, for most homeowners, window replacement is not something that they've done before.
For many others, it's not something you want to do, but you actually have to do.
If your windows are cracking or warping or your house is too hot or too cold, you need to call Renewal by Anderson.
Have you put off replacing the windows in your home because it's too expensive?
Well, I have great news.
You can get a free in-home window consultation and a free quote from Renewal by Anderson.
Renewal by Anderson's signature service is committed to giving you the best customer service experience possible, supported by the best people in the industry.
Right now, Renewal by Anderson is offering a free in-home or virtual consultation on durable quality, affordable windows or patio doors for zero dollars down, zero payments, zero interest for one year.
Text Shapiro to 200-300 for your free consultation.
Save $375 off every window and $750 off every door.
These savings won't last long.
Be sure to check it out.
Text Shapiro to 200-300.
That's Shapiro to 200-300.
Texting privacy policy and terms and conditions posted to textplan.us.
Texting enrolls for recurring automated text marketing messages.
Message and data rates may apply.
Reply stop to opt out.
Go to windowappointmentnow.com for full offer details.
Also, As you know, we are celebrating the release of The Daily Wire's first ever full-length feature comedy, Lady Ballers, with a deal just for you.
New Daily Wire Plus annual memberships are 50 bucks off.
You need to hustle.
This deal is available for a limited time only.
So what exactly do you get with that Daily Wire Plus annual membership?
I'm so glad you asked.
You get exclusive, ad-free, uncensored content from your favorite DailyWire hosts.
You know, me.
Plus, on-demand access to all of our groundbreaking entertainment and documentaries that are making an enormous impact on culture.
And yes, your DailyWirePlus membership gets you access to Ladyballers streaming exclusively on DailyWirePlus Friday night, December 1st, 8 p.m.
Eastern.
You get everything I talked about and more with your DailyWirePlus annual membership.
And you can have it all for 50 bucks off right now.
Don't miss out.
Grab this incredible deal right now at DailyWire.com slash subscribe before it disappears So when it comes to lack of moral clarity in the West, that is pretty much everywhere.
If there is one face of lack of moral clarity of the next generation of idiots that we have created through the toxic combination of legacy media attention, social media, and wokest philosophy, that face is the ridiculously dumb face of Greta Thunberg.
Who continues to be treated as though she has something worthy to say.
She never had anything worthy to say.
She was always a foolish child who's running around the globe saying dumb things to adults who wanted to feel better about themselves by allowing a foolish child to yell at them for the cameras.
And she's a very privileged person, this Greta Thunberg.
She grew up in a very rich family.
And so that gave her the ability to basically drop out of school and go to a bunch of adult symposiums and yell at them about how the next generation demands of you.
Random things.
Those random things include degrowth, deindustrialization, and all the rest.
Well, it turns out that that radically anti-Western viewpoint isn't confined to her environmentalism, which of course is just part and parcel of a broader intellectual rubric.
The idea that you want to stop global warming doesn't have to be connected with degrowth.
It doesn't have to be connected with a belief in the innate evils of the West, but it virtually always is.
And Greta Thunberg is just a symptom of this.
So, she was caught on tape just last week in Stockholm shouting about anti-Zionism.
What the hell does Greta Thunberg have to say about Israel?
What exactly?
I didn't notice, for example, that the people of Gaza and the Arab-Palestinians living In the West Bank are particularly concerned with environmental issues.
What exactly?
In fact, Israel is one of the greenest places on Earth in terms of highly industrialized countries.
What the hell she taught?
Again, it is all part and parcel of hatred for the West.
That's all this is.
She is so emblematic of what the West has become.
A suicidal death cult of stupidity.
Here is Greta Thunberg.
Again, the fact that this was ever.
She was like Time Magazine person of the year a few years ago for being a stupid child who ran around yelling at adults.
I am still devastated where two months since this war has been underway by the silence from women's group in this country about the rape being used as an act of war in this attack.
The fact that sexual violence was used against Israeli women in the major women's groups in this country have not come out and denounced it.
This weekend Sheryl Sandberg put out a gripping video calling for it.
That violates every rule of warfare.
It is the height of immorality and the fact that the United Nations Perhaps the reason they've been silenced is for the same reason that you just described.
The UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has been silent, and the international
Me Too movement hasn't said a thing.
unidentified
Perhaps the reason they've been silent is for the same reason that you just described.
They don't want to exacerbate.
Well, they don't want to exacerbate.
You know, listen, I know that this is really hard for people to sit still with.
You know why Whoopi Goldberg is so silent on all of this?
Because Whoopi Goldberg believes that Jews are just white people and white people are bad.
That's why Whoopi Goldberg says this kind of stuff.
This is the same idiot woman who suggested that Hitler killing Jews was white on white violence and was not in fact a form of racial discrimination.
That's literally what she said.
And then, she was suspended, and she tried to walk it back, but didn't really walk it back.
That's what she believes.
The reason she apparently is totally fine with people- This is silence is violence, Whoopi Goldberg, going out there and suggesting that if you didn't put the black square on your Facebook page in the middle of Black Lives Matter, it's because you hated black people, according to Whoopi Goldberg.
Not because you disagreed with the basic premise, which is that black people are widely victimized in the United States, but because you hate black people.
When Jews are actually victimized, when Jews are actually raped, Whoopi Goldberg's like, well, we do have to be, we have to keep quiet about that.
Well, you know, we wouldn't want to exacerbate the conflict.
We wouldn't want to make it worse.
You're right.
Condemning rape would make it worse, Whoopi Goldberg.
Nailed it.
Nailed it.
Again, there's only one reason Whoopi Goldberg is happy to say that about this particular population, and that's because they're Jews.
That is the only reason that Whoopi Goldberg is willing to, well, you know, we just have to end this.
We have to end this.
Really?
Not mentioning their rape ends this?
The only way this ends is when Hamas is under the ground.
And I don't mean in the tunnels.
I mean dead.
Just to clarify.
But the reason Whoopi Goldberg believes all this is because, again, she buys into this oppressor-oppressor-racialist matrix, and that is an evil matrix.
It is a very, very evil matrix.
That way of thinking.
It's pathetic and disgusting.
In just one second, we'll get to lack of moral clarity from our friends in the media.
First, The Ben Shapiro Show is supported by Grand Canyon University, an affordable private Christian university with a vibrant campus in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona.
Ranked top 20 in the country by niche.com, GCU is a missional, Christ-centered university
that strives to foster a culture of community, giving and impact.
GCU's goal is to help you develop into a servant leader who makes a difference through finding your purpose.
With 330 academic programs and over 270 online as of June, 2023, GCU integrates the free market system
with a welcoming Christian worldview into your bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree.
You'll have support from your own university counselor who takes a personalized approach
to helping you achieve your goals.
Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University, private, Christian, affordable, visit gcu.edu today.
Also, let's say that you're a business owner Well, you need to hire the best people.
We're very lucky here at Daily Wire.
We have a bunch of wonderful people who work here with us.
We got a lot of those people by working with ZipRecruiter.
Right now, ZipRecruiter is giving you the ability to check this out for free at ziprecruiter.com slash dailywire.
Now, you might be asking how ZipRecruiter is a gift to those who are hiring.
ZipRecruiter uses smart matching technology to identify the most qualified people for a wide variety of roles.
ZipRecruiter lets top candidates know when they're a great match for your job to encourage them to apply.
The bow on top?
If you see a candidate who is a great match for your job, ZipRecruiter makes it easy to send them a personal invite so they are more likely to apply.
Get your hiring wrapped up quickly with ZipRecruiter.
4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter will get a quality candidate within day 1.
Just go to this exclusive web address right now.
Try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash DailyWire.
I mean, first of all, I don't think the peers or many in the media understand what proportionality means.
Proportionality does not mean that the original atrocity has to be responded to, quote-unquote, proportionately.
That's not what proportionality means.
If you murder my child, I don't then get to murder your child.
That's not proportionality.
Proportion means that the means used to achieve a military end must be proportional to the military end.
In other words, if I want to kill one bad guy, I can't just drop an A-bomb, right? That's what that means.
But again, this idea that Israel has to be hampered in its military aims or that Israel
has magical weapons where you wave the magic Harry Potter wand and all the bad guys disappear,
but all the civilians are left over. That's not true. By the way, Piers was wrong in 2014.
The fact of the matter is that in 2014, by the generalized statistics
of the people who were killed in that particular conflict, about two...
About 2,100 people were killed in that particular conflict by Israel in the Gaza Strip, and that was prompted by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, as well as a series of rockets fired into Israel, as per Hamas's usual arrangement.
In that conflict, according to the measurements available from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is significantly more reliable than the UN or the Gaza Health Ministry, 36% killed were civilians, 44% were members of Hamas or other terrorist groups, and 20% were quote-unquote uncategorized males between the ages of 16 and 50, which typically means civilians who are associated with Hamas or one of the other terrorist groups.
This sort of moral lack of clarity, of course, means that no one can win a war under these circumstances.
Let's be clear about this.
There is no war that can be won by a Western power against a terrorist group embedded in a civilian population under the circumstances that Piers is describing as quote-unquote terrorism.
It is not terrorism to try to kill people in the opposing terrorist group and they are hiding among civilians.
That's not terrorism.
Terrorism is when you go in and you slaughter civilians purposefully, not as collateral damage, purposefully as the goal of your attack, which is what Hamas did.
Piers tried to extend this to questions that he was asking of Elon Levy, who's the spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister.
By your admission, just a few moments ago, you said that they make it incredibly difficult for you to work out who is a Hamas terrorist and who is a civilian.
That seems to me part of the problem that you have with the optics of this to the wider world, is that they're seeing horrible imagery.
All day long.
I mean it's just the worst thing I've ever seen all over social media.
unidentified
The worst thing we've ever seen were the atrocities that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th.
I've not seen, thankfully, I've not seen what many journalists have seen which is the 45-minute film of that and I understand it's absolutely horrific and I'm not making any comparison.
I would not say anything is worse than that so for the record.
But The horrible imagery all day long, it is suggesting to people that there are thousands and thousands of thousands of women and a lot of children, maybe as many as five, six thousand children now, have been killed by these airstrikes and now the ground attack.
And I think the problem that you have, and I say this respectfully, the problem you have is that you don't actually know how many Hamas terrorists you're killing.
Okay, well, I mean, under those circumstances, who would?
I mean, the answer is a lot, by the way.
They do know, in approximate numbers, how many Hamas terrorists they have killed.
But if the idea is that the only way that you can fight a terrorist group is presumably by knowing exactly, exactly how many terrorists you are killing, and only killing those terrorists, no one will ever win a war against a terror group again.
It's not possible.
It's just not possible to do that.
By the way, when we talk about the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, it's very difficult to separate who is a civilian from who is not when you're talking about a 17-year-old male who is hanging out with Hamas.
This also happens to ring true with regard to the statistics about quote-unquote children.
You've heard that Israel is keeping women and children in prison.
That many of the prisoners being released are women and children.
In the same way you're hearing that described in the Gaza Strip.
I mean, they are technically women and minors that are being held in prison for terrorist activity.
So it depends who's being killed.
Again, we don't have great statistics on any of that because since when have you in real time been able to count the exact number of people who are dying in a war?
That you can't win a war under those circumstances.
If the idea, again, is that immunity is bought by simply hiding among civilians, that means terrorists win every war from now until the end of time, and you have now created a massive incentive structure for them to hide among civilians in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
So, in other words, the punishment for violation of the Geneva Conventions, according to Piers and many in the media, is immunity.
Nothing happens to you.
You sit there and everybody just lives with it.
It's totally great.
By the way, even when Piers says he's not equating what happened on October 7th to what happened inside Gaza, he literally did so in his monologue.
He literally said that this is now tipping over into the terrorism that Israel saw on October 7th.
So that's not even true.
And that lack of moral clarity is what means that the West loses wars.
Forget about Israel.
The West in general loses wars on this basis.
And that is a serious, serious problem.
And meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to trail in the polls.
There's a new article out at RealClearPolitics from Sean Trent today.
And he points out that right now, if you had to put betting money on it, Trump is the favorite.
He says, in 2016, Trump led Hillary Clinton for all of five days in the national RealClearPolitics polling average, each of those days in the immediate aftermath of the Republican convention.
He led in 29 polls taken over the course of the entire campaign.
In 2020, Trump never led Biden in the national RCP average.
So, counting the LA Times tracker as a single poll, Trump led in a total of 24 national polls in January of 2020.
This cycle, he has led in that many since mid-September.
He's led in more polls in the past three weeks than he did against Biden in the entirety of the 2020 campaign.
If you look at the state-level polling, Trump is currently up in virtually every battleground state.
Mitt Romney never led Barack Obama in the RCP average in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Ohio.
So, where is it today?
Trump is leading in the RealClearPolitics polling average in Michigan.
He is leading in Pennsylvania.
He is narrowly trailing in Wisconsin, but he's led in some of the polls.
In Florida, he's way ahead.
In Arizona, he leads.
In Georgia, he leads.
In Ohio, he leads.
So here's what Sean Trent says, quote, In other words, analyzing this election correctly isn't just a matter of giving lip service to the notion that Trump can win this election.
The correct position right now is that Trump is better positioned in the polls to win this election than any GOP nominee since at least 2004.
Not only that, he habitually overperforms his polls.
Frankly, if you're willing to set favorites this far out, you should almost certainly declare Donald Trump the favorite.
Does this mean that Trump will win the presidency?
There are good arguments why perceptions of the economy will improve between now and then, although maybe they won't.
Perhaps Trump will underperform his polling this time, as the GOP did in 2022, although maybe he won't.
There are good arguments Trump's criminal trials will erode his standing in the polls, although having watched Trump's scandals unfold for the better part of four decades, maybe they won't.
This all makes for fun speculation, but when the conversation returns to what we do know, there's only one correct answer.
Trump can win this election, and right now is well positioned to do so.
And Joe Biden is struggling, man.
He's having a tough time.
Again, he's contending not only with fires on the foreign front, but also he's contending with the fact that people just don't think the economy is very good.
There's an entire New York Times article titled, even most Biden voters don't see a thriving economy.
Quote, a majority of those who backed President Biden in 2020 say today's economy is fair or poor, ordinarily a bad omen for incumbents seeking reelection.
By swing state?
In the swing states, the percentage of Joe Biden's 2020 supporters who say the economy is excellent or good?
30% under 50k by income.
37% if you're from 50k to 100k.
And 42% say the economy is excellent or good if you're over $100,000.
from 50k to 100k and 42% say the economy is excellent or good if you're over $100,000.
Meanwhile, if you say the economy is poor or only fair, 70% of people making under 50
grand, 61% of people making from 50 to 100 grand, and 57% say the economy is only poor
or only fair if you're making over $100,000.
And by age, 89% of people aged 18 to 29 say the economy is poor or only fair.
We're talking about Joe Biden's 2020 supporters.
We're not talking about the entire broad electorate.
Those are amazing numbers, by the way.
That is a serious problem for Joe Biden.
Naturally, he's trying to teach people that they're just wrong about the economy.
Actually, things are going swimmingly.
Here was Joe Biden yesterday explaining that Thanksgiving actually was cheap.
On Thanksgiving two years ago, 100 container ships were waiting to dock in the ports.
They were lined up, 100 long, out into the ocean.
This year, there were less than 10, meaning that today, as folks start their holiday shopping, shelves are stocked, meaning that if major appliances like a stove or a fridge broke down over Thanksgiving, you can replace it faster and 9 percent cheaper than you did two years ago.
I mean, I think the actual statistic is 400%, they say.
But what is happening online is something that anti-Semitism has always been here, right?
It's always been around.
But now with the power of social media, it's been taken to a whole new level.
And what's happening on social media is now going into the college campuses, is going into high schools even.
There was a high school teacher that the other day had to be locked in her room because there were protests.
In high schools.
So I'm seeing it directly to myself on social media, but every day we're hearing about news stories now, what is happening in schools and on the streets, at restaurants.
People are boycotting restaurants because they support Israel.
Yeah, so I've been, you know, going to, you know, whether it's political, going to the White House and speaking about it there, or going to different schools, or going, you know, I just spoke at the rally in D.C., which was 300,000 people, which is an insane number of people to come together to support Israel and to combat anti-Semitism.
And, you know, my following on social media was not built from my activism.
It was built from my dancing, from my singing.
You know, I've collaborated with people of all walks of life, all ethnicities, all races.
So to use my social media to be posting about Israel, you know, was risky, some may say,
but I felt that if I have the voice and I have the power to maybe educate someone,
to share what's going on, I know that's what my grandparents would want me to do.
What they, I wish they had a voice back then and wish the Jewish people had a voice back then
to be able to voice what was going on.
So I feel like it's our responsibility now with these platforms to make sure we use them and educate.
I mean, it definitely is a brave thing to take a social media following
that is on a completely different topic and swivel it over to something that's insanely serious
and really threatening in the world right now.
I mean, I'm lucky.
I do a political show, which means that I can just talk about what's going on politically pretty easily and my audience can move with me.
It's stuff happening in the world.
But for you to take a complete image that has been built from doing fun stuff, the singing and the dancing, and shift that over to something deeply serious, how have fans reacted to that?
You know, when I first did the Holocaust series a year ago, I was nervous.
I was definitely very nervous.
I was like, people follow me to see me be happy, to see me dancing in the streets of Hollywood Boulevard, you know, to see me collaborate with Terry Crews.
Like, no one's going to want me to sit here and do something very dark, very serious.
So after doing that series about the Holocaust, and obviously you mentioned growing up in a home with Holocaust survivor grandparents, where do you think we stand with anti-Semitism in the world right now?
It's crazy that it's 2023, almost 2024, and we are still here.
And we are here, actually, not still here.
We are in a place that we've, I don't think we've been since the Holocaust, you know?
So people need to take this more seriously.
I think that, this is why I keep saying this is how the Holocaust began, because people aren't taking this seriously enough.
and to understand people think, oh, the Holocaust could never happen again, you know.
But that's why Israel is so important.
My Zayde would always tell me how important the state of Israel was
because he felt if Israel was around that the Holocaust would have never happened.
And that's why it's so important that we protect Israel and we stand for Israel
during this time more than ever.
And people saying anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
It is.
And it's really a scary time that we're in right now.
And I can't believe that we have to prove ourselves again.
Back in the day, my Zady would tell me stories that he would have friends his entire life.
And then all of a sudden, when all the announcements came out about how terrible the Jews were and all the propaganda, friends turned on him, started spitting on him in the street, started beating him up and saying, you dirty Jew.
I mean, that's what's happening on social media, and you're having conversations with friends that you can't even imagine having.
Like, a year ago, you would have never imagined having these types of conversations with them.
So it's a really scary time we're in, and that's why it needs to be taken seriously, and to make sure that the never forget, never again doesn't happen again.
I mean, when you look at the amount on social media of people who are just saying, none of this ever occurred, or Israel's exaggerating what happened, or the 40 beheaded babies, therefore all the babies are alive, or Israel's lying, or all of this, it is boggling to the mind, because for those who actually think that truth matters and that facts matter, it's pretty evident that for a huge percentage of the population, that just is not true.
If you want to cut through the madness of all the top stories in politics, culture, and even religion, which is the foundation of politics and culture, then come check out The Michael Knowles Show, where you can join me for an authentically conservative perspective.