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Dec. 1, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
55:53
The Debate America Deserves
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At the end of The Dark Knight, probably the best movie of the last 20 years, Commissioner Gordon describes why Batman has to go into hiding and wrongly take the blame for Harvey Dent's death.
He's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now, says Commissioner Gordon.
Well folks, there's the debate America deserves, and then there's the debate America needs right now.
Last night, Fox News held a debate between Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and Governor Gavin Newsom of California.
It was a stark contrast in visions.
DeSantis laid out his record plainly.
He criticized California's shortcomings accurately.
Newsom obfuscated his own record and that of his opponent, but it was, all things told, a relatively normal political debate.
A debate in which both sides came with their information and points and then argued over that information and those points and those policy positions.
It was, in short, the debate America deserves.
It was not, in fact, the debate America needs right now.
Here was DeSantis' generalized take on California's failures.
So I was talking to a fella who had made the move from California to Florida, and he was telling me that Florida is much better governed, safer, better budget, lower taxes, all this stuff, and he's really happy with the quality of life.
And then he paused and he said, you know, by the way, I'm Gavin Newsom's father-in-law.
So we do count Gavin's in-laws as some of the people that have fled California.
They understand that Florida's doing it right, and I can tell you the numbers speak for themselves.
We have way more people moving to this state than leaving.
Gavin can't say the opposite.
More people are leaving California than are moving into California.
But the reality is they have failed because of his leftist ideology.
And the choice for America is this.
What Biden and Harris and Newsom want to do is take the California model and do that nationally.
In Florida, we showed that conservative principles work.
This country must choose freedom over failure.
This is what a good conservative candidate looks like.
And here was Gavin Newsom on the other side going after Ron DeSantis, suggesting falsely that he was banning books.
1,406 books have been banned just last year under Ron DeSantis' leadership.
I love that he keeps pulling this out.
I've seen this.
He's been doing this all over the campaign trail.
What's wrong with Toni Morrison's books?
It's not banned.
What's wrong?
It's not true.
It's not.
What's wrong with Amanda Gorman's?
It's not banned.
In the poetry?
1,406.
Those are false narratives.
1,406 books have been banned on your banning bench in the state of Florida.
That, of course, is not true.
Books have not been banned in the state of Florida.
The only question is whether there are books that are inappropriate for, say, 5th or 6th graders that don't belong in junior high libraries.
DeSantis responded by actually pulling out a sheet of a book called Genderqueer and showing what it looks like in a public school.
Obviously, Newsom can't defend that.
Here was DeSantis doing just that.
What is the role?
The role of the school is to educate kids, not indoctrinate kids.
It's not to impose an agenda.
It's to do the basics.
And what we've said in Florida is it's inappropriate to tell a kindergartner that their gender is a choice.
It's inappropriate to tell a second grader that they may have been born in the wrong body.
Now, California has that.
They want to have that injected into the elementary school.
My wife and I have a seven, five, and a three-year-old.
We don't think that that's appropriate.
And I know most parents do not think it's appropriate.
It's also important to respect parental rights to know what curriculum is being used in the classroom, and everything should be age-appropriate.
I actually have something that I brought that some parents have objected to.
So this is a book that's in some of the schools in California.
Florida, this is not consistent with our standards, called Genderqueer.
Some of it's blocked out.
You would not probably be able to put this on air.
This is pornography.
It's cartoons.
It's aimed at children.
And it's wrong.
So this should not be in schools.
Uh, when people like on the left say that somehow you're banning books by removing this from a young kid's classroom.
No, this is not age appropriate.
And so we're going to stand for the rights of parents.
I think we need to do that nationwide.
I don't think you can have a situation where some states just trample on the rights of parents.
Parents have a fundamental right to direct the education and upbringing of their kids.
Again, that is excellent stuff there from Ron DeSantis.
Newsom also tried to go after DeSantis by claiming that DeSantis locked down Florida.
Also, simultaneously claiming, by the way, that he was far too loose in his COVID policies.
He was taking the sort of Donald Trump view of Ron DeSantis, that he was simultaneously too harsh and too loose on COVID.
Let's talk about your record on COVID.
You passed an emergency declaration before the state of California did.
You closed down your beaches, your bars, your restaurants.
False.
It's a fact.
You had quarantines.
False.
You had quarantines.
You had checkpoints all over the state of Florida.
By the way, I didn't say that.
Donald Trump laid you out on this, dead to right.
You did that.
You followed science.
You followed Fauci.
He followed science.
He followed Fauci.
Hold on.
You were promoting vaccines.
You were promoting vaccines.
You even wore a mask in September.
If it's okay with you, we'll do this.
Why don't we do this in a way where we both can have an opportunity?
You wore a mask with Donald Trump outside in September 2020.
He did all of that until...
He decided to fall prey to the fringe of his party.
And as a consequence of that, Ron, tens of thousands of people lost their lives.
Not true.
The equivalent, if I had your policies, the equivalent of ten 9-11s.
Tens of thousands of people lost their lives.
And for what, Ron?
So in the same line of attack, Newsom is suggesting that DeSantis locked down the state, and then he's suggesting that he should not have locked it down, but also he should have locked it down.
DeSantis responded by clocking Newsom on his own record on COVID.
On a per capita age-adjusted basis, California and Florida are basically the same.
Now why is that important?
Because Gavin Newsom did huge damage to people in California.
He ruined livelihoods.
We reopened the state very quickly.
We saved thousands of jobs.
We saved hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Thousands of businesses.
We had our kids in school.
He had the kids locked out of school because of the teachers' union.
That is having a generational impact.
California has one of the lowest literacy rates in the country.
In the most recent NAEP exam, Florida came in number three for fourth grade reading.
California was far, far behind.
So you should apologize for not getting your kids in school.
Why didn't you get the kids in school in the summer of 2020 like we did?
We vowed to the teachers' union.
You didn't do the job you should have done.
DeSantis went on to roast Gavin Newsom over going to the French Laundry unmasked while everybody else was locked down and couldn't go to a restaurant.
I remember, because at that time I was still living in California.
The Martha's Vineyard transport, Martha's Vineyard said it was a sanctuary jurisdiction.
Kind of reminds me about Gavin Newsom, when he restricted Californians, then he went to the French Laundry.
These liberal elites, they like to impose burdens on you, they don't want to have to face the consequences of their actions.
So we've got a lot of elites who want open borders, who lecture everybody else about it, and the minute they have to deal with any of the consequences, oh man, all hell breaks loose.
Okay, correction.
I had already moved from California to Florida, like tens of thousands of other people.
DeSantis also added that Newsom's home city of San Francisco, where Newsom was mayor, and he had pledged to clean up San Francisco, he pointed out that it was covered in human poop, and he brought the receipts to show it.
Well, I'm looking at total time.
Governor DeSantis has about two minutes.
He needs it.
This is a map of San Francisco.
There's a lot of plots on that.
You may be asking, what is that plotting?
Well, this is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco.
And you see how almost the whole thing is covered, because that is what has happened in one of the previous greatest cities this country's ever had.
Human feces is now a fact of life, except When a communist dictator comes to town, then they cleaned up the streets.
They lined the streets with Chinese flags.
That is absolutely correct.
San Francisco is full of crap, and so is Gavin Newsom.
Perhaps DeSantis' finest moment is when he called out Newsom's vision of liberty, noting that by liberty, Gavin Newsom generally meant taking power away from parents, especially in the area of gender and sexuality.
In California, if you're a parent in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, your minor child can go to California without your knowledge or without your consent and get hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and a sex change operation all without you knowing or consenting.
How in the heck is that honoring parents' rights when you're bringing people from out of state to go around their parents' backs and getting life-altering surgeries?
Okay, all of this right here is the debate America deserves.
You know, a debate over serious policy differences and governance styles, a debate about California versus Florida, a debate over the future of the country.
But it isn't the debate America needs right now.
The debate America needs right now is a debate over one simple topic.
Why are we going to get Biden versus Trump in all likelihood?
Why should America be faced with the prospect of an election in which both candidates are elderly and fading, in which both candidates are wildly unpopular with the American electorate, Joe Biden's approval rating is currently 40.6% in the RealClearPolitics polling average, Donald Trump's is at 41.1%, and in which both candidates can only serve one more term in office?
Why is that the fate of America?
The answer is actually pretty simple.
For the Democrats, the party bosses remain in control of the levers of power.
For the Republicans, the party bosses aren't in control of the levers of power.
Democrats right now are cramming down Joe Biden on their own base.
But they also control the power, which means that candidates like Newsom won't admit to running, even though Newsom is pretty obviously running.
I mean, he's simultaneously running just in case Joe Biden should keel over or fall down the stairs too hard.
DeSantis pointed that out last night.
Let me ask that question.
On with the question of jobs.
I think it's important.
You know what?
Why? Because it's a command and control economy.
They have a political agenda that they're pursuing.
Let me ask that question.
People.
On with the question of jobs.
I think it's important.
You know what?
That affects that.
By the way, that affects everybody in administration.
You just won't admit it.
Joe Biden, Joe Biden, three point nine percent.
I thought this was state versus state.
But it's about the United States of America.
I thought this guy was running for president, the United States.
If you are running for this one, are you running for a third?
You just won't admit it.
You will not admit it.
Why don't I tell you that you're right?
We can't.
OK, so that's true.
But, on the other hand, you've got the Republican Party, where Donald Trump leads in the RealClearPox polling average by leaps and bounds in every primary.
Trump is, as always, on nearly every side of every issue.
This is his stock in trade.
He's pro-life.
He's responsible for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
And he's pro-choice.
He doesn't want to talk about abortion.
We should come to some sort of generalized consensus.
He's pro-BLM.
He literally championed a BLM endorsement two days ago.
And he's anti-BLM.
He's pro-isolationism and he's pro-interventionism.
He's pro-entitlements and he's anti-deficits.
None of that really seems to matter.
That is why Newsom was slamming DeSantis during the debate by suggesting that Trump's nomination is a foregone conclusion.
There are profound differences tonight, and I look forward to engaging them.
But there's one thing in closing that we have in common is neither of us will be the nominee for our party in 2024.
There he is doing the work of Joe Biden.
Now, listen, maybe Newsom is wrong.
Maybe DeSantis pulls off a late run.
Maybe he wins Iowa and he switches the momentum.
Maybe Nikki Haley pulls it off.
The odds right now are not in their favor.
But if the election does end up being Trump versus Biden, rather than, say, DeSantis versus Newsom, maybe we need to go back to our original question and ask, what is the debate America deserves?
And what is the debate America needs?
The debate America needs is a debate over whether we even have a debate at all in this country anymore.
Whether we're even capable of doing normal debate in this country anymore.
Whether we are so polarized that debates on policy don't actually matter.
The only thing that matters is how we manage our divorce.
Sure, maybe we don't deserve a serious political debate because we're an unserious people in a very serious time.
Maybe we don't deserve a real debate on policy because we've given up on such debates altogether in favor of knee-jerk sentiments about our fellow Americans.
Or maybe, just maybe, the problem goes even deeper than that.
Maybe the problem is that after decades of radicalism from the American left, usurpation of institutional power by that left in corporate America, on the courts, in the media, It's too late for any compromise to be brooked or any truce to be brokered.
Maybe it's not about policy.
Maybe both sides just have a mutual **** you in mind.
If that is the case, that should be the debate.
What exactly do we have in common?
What can bring us together?
What is America really all about?
What maintains America?
We have to answer that question before we get to the policy questions.
Until we answer that question, the DeSantis-Newsom debate will not be the debate we need.
And it certainly won't be the debate we actually deserve.
In just one second, we'll get to Elon Musk because Elon did a fascinating interview on Wednesday.
Really interesting stuff.
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Also, I gotta be honest with you, it's been a really rough time in the last few weeks.
And that means that I'm taking some pretty strenuous measures to reconnect with God.
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Okay.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Elon Musk tore into what he termed people who care about looking good while doing evil.
He was specifically referring to major corporate leaders who spend their days virtue signaling while cracking down on dissenting opinions and promoting harmful material.
Here's what he had to say.
Tesla currently sells two, twice as much in terms of electric vehicles as the rest of electric car makers in the United States combined.
Tesla has done more to help the environment than all other companies combined.
It would be fair to say that, therefore, as a leader of the company, I've done more for the environment than any single human on Earth.
How do you feel about that?
How do I feel about that?
Yeah, no, I'm asking you personally how you feel about that because this goes- we're talking about power and influence and- I'm saying- I'm saying what I- what I care about is the reality of goodness, not the perception of it.
And what I see all over the place is people who care about looking good while doing evil.
Musk here was explicitly talking about companies like Disney, whose CEO Bob Iger had announced earlier in the month that the male's house would stop advertising on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Iger explained that decision to Andrew Ross Sorkin.
You stopped advertising on X. We did.
Tell us about that decision.
Um...
I have a lot of respect for Elon and what he's accomplished.
Not just one business, but a few businesses.
And we know Elon is larger than life in many respects.
And that his name is very much tied to the companies he either has founded or he owns.
Whether it's Tesla, Or SpaceX.
SpaceX?
SpaceX.
Or now X. And by him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position and Elon Musk and X was not necessarily a positive one for us, and we decided we would pull our advertising.
This is ridiculous, of course.
Disney is not pulling its advertising on X because of one of Elon Musk's tweets.
A tweet he then explained and apologized for.
They're pulling their advertising because they are part of an advertiser cascade that is designed to pressure Elon Musk into doing their bidding.
Now, it's one thing for an advertiser to decline to be associated with any outlet or product.
That happens all the time.
Happens on this show.
Happens on other shows.
That's their right.
We live in a free market.
But when companies make public announcements that they are withdrawing their money, that is obviously designed to create public pressure.
And the pressure in this case is for Elon Musk and Axe to do the bidding of groups like Media Matters, the far-left censorship group that seeks to destroy political opponents through, in some cases, outright slander.
Media Matters wants Musk to censor those it doesn't like, and they are willing to astroturf secondary boycotts against advertisers to achieve that.
That's why Musk is currently suing Media Matters.
Disney and others pulling their money from X are doubling down on their own catastrophic woke strategies.
Disney has essentially destroyed its own stock value over the past few years by going woke.
These companies continue to tell the world how proud they are to be woke.
They really don't like free speech, and they especially hate any company or platform that can break their stranglehold on the media.
The same media that has never been willing to say, go f*** yourself to the likes of Disney.
It's a true clash of the titans.
Now, while the Daily Wire doesn't have Disney money yet, we see what Elon is doing with X as one of the most important things actually happening in the culture today when it comes to preserving free speech, which is why today we've secured a $250,000 spend for a takeover on X to promote our new feature-length comedy, Ladyballers.
We made Ladyballers because Hollywood, aided and abetted by big tech censorship, will not make a movie about how ridiculously absurd it is that we now pretend that men can be women and allow grown men to call themselves women and then dominate women's sports.
X drives the conversations in a way no other social media outlet does, and provides a space to freely mock absurdities like we do in Lady Ballers, in ways that other outlets won't.
In other words, X is the only social media platform that allows, and is attempting to even preserve, free speech.
Who wouldn't want to invest in that?
Well, the answer, apparently, is Disney.
Will our $250,000 cut into X's loss of revenue thanks to virtue signaling?
Not much, but every little bit does help.
And if we want to keep X a free speech space, it's important everyone continue to subsidize the businesses they like.
As Elon so aptly put it, if Disney and others are successful in their advertising boycott, it will kill free speech.
If that happens, everybody is going to know who actually killed it.
Okay, in just one second, we'll get to all the updates from the Middle East.
Israel has now resumed its offensives in the Gaza Strip after Hamas broke the ceasefire and fired a bunch of rockets into Israel and committed a terror attack on a street corner in Jerusalem against people who are just standing at a bus stop.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
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Well, folks, we do have an exclusive clip from Lady Ballers, again, that is available tonight at Daily Wire Plus only.
You have to be a subscriber in order to see that 8 p.m.
Eastern tonight.
50% off deal, by the way, for today, so you can see the movie.
Here's a clip.
I just need you to be a winner, Coach.
Okay?
I know, I'm sorry.
It's this divorce.
I think it's really starting to affect my daughter.
Seriously?
Of course your divorce is affecting your daughter.
70% of all people in prison come from broken families.
She's twice as likely to do drugs, twice as likely to drop out of school, four times as likely to have trouble fitting in, three times as likely to end up in therapy, twice as likely to commit suicide, 50% more likely to have health problems.
Do people not even do a freaking Google search before you decide to blow up the planet your kids live on?
Readers.
Look, Winnie's going to be fine.
Just keep fighting with her mom and get her into a school journalism program.
She could end up like me.
Oh, God.
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Folks, only the Daily Wire will make this sort of movie.
Why?
Well, not just because it actually laughs at the things that you're supposed to laugh at, you know, like boys being girls and such, because that's ridiculous and silly and really damaging.
But also, no one is going to message against divorce in modern society.
No one does it.
The fact that there's actually, you know, lines in the script where an actress says the thing that we all know, which is that divorce is extraordinarily damaging to children.
That is something that Hollywood has pushed against for literally decades, claiming that divorce might in fact be good for kids.
The best thing for kids is when the parents selfishly decide to part ways and leave the kid with their planet exploded, as said in the movie.
Now, Hollywood has helped facilitate the breakup of families in American society with exactly that sort of messaging.
Marriage is just about love.
The children are ancillary to the marriage.
And we don't agree with that here at Daily Wire, which is why we make movies that actually take on issues while doing so in the guise of a comedy, which is exactly what is happening here in Lady Ballers.
This is why you should subscribe.
Really, not just because the movie is fun, although the movie is really fun.
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Get your DailyWirePlus membership right now.
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Eastern at DailyWirePlus.
So the IDF is bombing the Gaza Strip again.
The reason they are bombing the Gaza Strip again is because the Gaza Strip was firing rockets at them again.
So over the course of the last 24 hours, Hamas took credit for a shooting in Jerusalem, in which at least four people were killed, 16 people were wounded.
It was two brothers from East Jerusalem, who are claimed as devotees by Hamas, who got out of their car and literally just opened fire with M16s on a bunch of people who were standing there.
Now remember, according to the mainstream media, Israel bombing military targets and accidentally killing civilians is exactly the same thing as terrorists getting out at a bus stop, like a bus stop in your neighborhood, and just shooting people.
Which is precisely what happened in Jerusalem.
So that was a violation of the ceasefire, number one.
And then, last night, Hamas began firing rockets again at Israel because, effectively, they have run out of hostages that they are willing to hand over to Israel to buy time.
Because the hostages who are left are Israeli military, or women or children who are either dead, and they're just bodies at this point, or have been raped, mutilated, or whatever the story may be.
I mean, Hamas is making very clear what they are.
And once again, the world is trying to pretend that Hamas is not what it is.
According to the uncle of a couple of the hostages, Orr, who is 16, and Yigal Yakov, who is 12, quote, So that's what they did.
of each child taken hostage and burned them with the exhaust of a motorcycle to mark them
in case they ran away so they could find them.
They were drugged.
So that's what they did.
I mean, this is like at Auschwitz, people were tattooed in order to make sure that the
Nazis knew who people were.
When Hamas kidnapped children, they immediately burned them with the exhaust pipe of motorcycles in order to brand them so if they ran away, they could be quickly identified and recaptured by Hamas.
Meanwhile, we are being treated to hostage videos of Yardin Bibas.
Yardin is the father of a family that was slaughtered by Hamas.
They were kidnapped.
We played the video yesterday of their kidnapping.
It was a mom and two young children.
We're talking about like a four-year-old and a ten-month-old.
Hamas now says that they're dead.
Hamas is claiming that they were killed in an Israeli airstrike,
which may very well be true because Hamas took them to the Gaza Strip
and there would have been no airstrikes in the Gaza Strip if Hamas had not taken them in the first place.
And then they released a hostage video of Dad who has just been told that his family are all dead.
This is what Hamas is.
Truly evil human pieces of debris, garbage human beings.
Here was a little bit of the hostage video, which is Hamas propaganda, of course.
My family is dead.
I'm leaving my children behind.
He says, you destroyed my family and my children, everything
I had in my life.
I'm a fighter. She can move me.
That you can bring me and them home, but they will be buried in Israel.
I'm begging you, bring me and my wife and my children home.
He's talking about their bodies at this point.
This is who Hamas is.
And these are apparently the people that the American left and much of the international left wants to protect as a power in the Gaza Strip.
An aunt of Avigali Dan, a dual American-Israeli citizen who was taken hostage and who turned four days a few days before being released, said her niece shared one piece of pita bread per day with four other captives, did not have a shower or bath for 50 days.
According to the aunt, the five hostages were kept in above-ground apartments, changing locations at least once.
Apparently, her hair was cut off.
She was covered completely in lice.
One of the hostages was held in the attic of a member of the UNRWA.
This is who Hamas are.
This is who Hamas are.
Plus, we now have video of Hamas and tape of Hamas stealing humanitarian aid.
Here's a picture from one of the Hamas tunnels and as you will see it is completely filled with humanitarian aid
That is UNRWA bags Fuel canisters in the Hamas tunnel.
Where do you think that stuff is coming from?
Meanwhile, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who is a person who was released in the last hostage exchange that Israel did for Gilad Shalit.
They released 1,027 prisoners.
And he was released as one of those prisoners.
He is now the head of military operations of Hamas.
Israel saved his life.
He had brain cancer.
And then they released him and he unleashed this hell upon them.
So he now says, quote, the leaders of the occupation should know October 7th was just a rehearsal.
Meanwhile, a Hamas official was on with a TikTok YouTube personality named Bel Mubashar and explaining that Hamas is going to launch more attacks against Israel.
This is the interviewer saying, if you could go back in time to October 6th, would you still do what you did on October 7th?
This is Osama Hamdan, Hamas political bureau.
Why do some people assume we would go back on our acts of resistance?
So you have no regrets?
Regret for shattering an entire division of the occupation army?
You said that if the Israelis would make new arrests, after all the prisoners are released from Israeli prisons, you'd carry out another operation.
Can you promise another October 7th?
I can promise that a war of liberation is coming, not just another October 7th.
So you're saying clearly, out loud, that this is going to continue.
You said, I don't think it's far off.
Meanwhile, Hamas put out a statement.
This is before they broke the ceasefire.
A worldwide call to mobilize in support of Gaza this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Quote, we call on them to mobilize all their popular means to reject and denounce the crimes and massacres committed by the Nazi occupation, to call for an end to its barbaric aggression and decades-long occupation.
We urge them to be emboldened by the strength of Palestinian rights and the justice and legitimacy of our struggle.
We also appeal to them to maintain all forms of solidarity and support.
All forms, which presumably would include violence.
So, again, Hamas's intentions are clear.
They violated the ceasefire, and so Israel has now resumed its campaign in the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to want to have it both ways.
Because, again, this is a weak administration, and they continue to make signals to the world's worst people that maybe if they continue to hide behind civilians, Israel will stop.
So, Antony Blinken decided to go back to Jerusalem to lecture the Israeli government on how to conduct a war.
He said, quote, you can't operate in Southern Gaza in the way you did in the North.
There are two million Palestinians there.
You need to evacuate fewer people from their homes, be more accurate in the attacks.
And if not, then not to attack where there is a civilian population.
What is your system of operation?
The IDF chief, whose name is Kharti Halevi, he said, we follow a number of principles, proportionality, distinction, the wars, the laws of war.
There were instances where we attacked on the basis of those principles and instances where we decided not to attack because we waited for a better opportunity.
This all led to this astonishing interchange.
So Defense Minister Yoav Galan said, quote, The entire Israeli society is united behind the goal of dismantling Hamas, even if it takes months.
And Blinken supposedly said, quote, I don't think you have the credit for that.
What the hell is that supposed to mean?
You don't have the credit?
Are we talking about like international moral credit?
Is that what we're talking about right here?
What sort of credit does a nation require in order to destroy a terrorist enemy bent on its own annihilation?
We have kidnapped and killed babies.
What precisely is the moral credit required in order to do what is necessary to protect your own citizens?
That's an absurdity from Antony Blinken.
And again, it's all these mixed signals that are being sent.
Antony Blinken, simultaneously yesterday, he went and he visited with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier and garbage human being.
In Ramallah.
And he tweeted out, quote, I reiterated the U.S.
commitment to advancing the establishment of the Palestinian state.
So just to get this correct, Hamas attacks and slaughters 1200 people and takes another 240 hostage.
Half those people will end up dead.
And the reaction of Tony Blinken and Joe Biden is maybe Palestinians deserve a state?
I'm just wondering how that incentive structure is supposed to work.
So in other words, the more terrorist violence you create, the more pressure on Israel to make concessions to you and your allies.
Because make no mistake, in this particular effort, the PA is Hamas's ally.
The PA has never condemned October 7th.
The PA, in fact, tried to claim that it was Israel that was responsible for deaths on October 7th.
And meanwhile, you got Tony Blinken making overtures to Mahmood Abbas.
It's ridiculous.
Here is Blinken yesterday saying there can't be any more massive loss of civilian life.
Again, if somebody could provide some sort of magic wand that Israel could use to distinguish Hamas from the civilians surrounding them, or Hamas, by the way, from like the 18-year-old guys who claim not to be members of Hamas, but who are carrying guns and just not wearing uniforms, I am sure that Israel would be happy to hear about this magic wand.
Otherwise, this is just empty verbiage designed at, what, reducing tensions?
But ironically, it increases tensions.
It's the same exact thing you see in Britain, where Britain will take down a menorah in the name of reducing community tensions.
That doesn't reduce community tensions, it just gives strength to a radical enemy.
Here's Tony Blinken doing just that.
In my meetings today with the Prime Minister and senior Israeli officials, I made clear that before Israel resumes major military operations, it must put in place humanitarian civilian protection plans that minimize further casualties of innocent Palestinians.
That means taking more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians, including by clearly and precisely designating areas and places in southern and central Gaza where they can be safe and out of the line of fire.
It means avoiding further significant displacement of civilians inside of Gaza.
It means avoiding damage to life-critical infrastructure, like hospitals, like power stations, like water facilities.
And it means giving civilians who've been displaced to southern Gaza the choice to return to the north as soon as conditions permit.
There must be no enduring internal displacement.
No enduring internal displacement.
Okay, all ideas welcome.
All ideas welcome.
Except the idea that Mahmoud Abbas is going to be able to run this thing, by the way.
Arab diplomats are like, are you kidding me?
Here's an article in Times of Israel today.
Arab diplomats from Saudi, UAE, Egypt, everywhere else are like, um, Mahmoud Abbas can't even control the West Bank.
What the hell are you talking about?
Mahmoud Abbas is going to control Gaza after this is all over.
That's ridiculous.
Also, when he says you have to prevent more internal displacement, then how does he expect civilians to be protected?
If you can't tell a civilian to move from one area to another so you can hit the target, how exactly are you going to hit the target?
Unless the idea is that Israel is not supposed to hit the target.
All of this is just ridiculous and it's going to contribute to a lengthening of the war.
It's going to contribute to more Hamas.
Attacks, more Hamas rocket fire, more Hamas embedding among civilians.
And all of this is because there is just a failure of imagination on the left when it comes to foreign policy.
We'll get to that momentarily first.
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Okay, meanwhile, the vacillation and cowardice that you're seeing by the political left in the United States when it comes to Israel versus Hamas, It's mirrored by that same sort of confusion and cowardice when it comes to foreign policy more generally.
This is why there's an entire piece by Ben Rhodes today, the former Deputy National Security Advisor, whose nickname, I'm not kidding you, there's a book by Tevye Troy where he talks about this, apparently his nickname in the White House because he was so anti-Israel was Hamas.
Not a joke, that's a serious thing.
He wrote a piece in the New York Times.
in which he goes after Henry Kissinger.
Now, as I said yesterday about Henry Kissinger's death, there are a lot of things to criticize Henry Kissinger over.
You can say that he made short-term plays at the expense of long-term interests, say, with regard to China.
You can say that he greenlit regimes that would commit human rights atrocities, but only because the alternative was a Soviet takeover of that particular area.
Now, you can make all of these claims, but what Ben Rhodes does is something deeper.
He critiques Kissinger's general foreign policy understanding.
On the basis of the fact that he used to write novels about his cat from a Brooklyn apartment and knows nothing.
And Ben Rhodes is sick.
He's one of the dumbest people in American politics and has been for years.
So what exactly is Ben Rhodes' foreign policy vision?
He says that the conduct of global affairs has to be about maintaining image.
He says, quote, you can choose to see unexploded bombs as the inevitable tragedy of the conduct of global affairs.
From a strategic standpoint, Mr. Kissinger surely knew that being a superpower carried with it a cavernous margin of error that can be forgiven by history.
Superpowers do what they must.
The wheel of history turns.
When and where you live determines whether you get crushed or lifted by it.
But that worldview mistakes cynicism or realism for wisdom.
The story, what it's all about, matters.
Ultimately, the Berlin Wall came down not because of chess moves made on a board of a great game, but rather because people in the East wanted to live like people in the West.
Economics, popular culture, social movements mattered.
Despite all our flaws, We had a better system in story.
So in other words, the reason that the Berlin Wall fell, according to moron Ben Rhodes, is that we had TV and jeans, and that no foreign policy moves we made anywhere in here made any difference at all.
Which is weird, because depriving the Soviet Union of nearly all foreign policy resources, as well as bankrupting their economy with our defense spending, is what actually brought down the Berlin Wall.
It was, in fact, a pro-Western foreign policy that existed in many parts of the Earth that helped bring down the Soviet Union.
But according to Ben Rhodes, it's all about credibility.
He says, credibility is not just about whether you punish an adversary to send a message to another.
It's also about whether you are what you say you are.
No one can expect perfection in the affairs of state any more than in relations among human beings.
But the United States has paid a price for its hypocrisy.
So what exactly is that price?
Here's where Ben Rhodes goes.
It's amazing.
He says, around the world, we see a resurgence of autocracy and ethno-nationalism, most acutely in Russia's war against Ukraine.
Now, you might say to yourself, wait a second.
Russia didn't invade Ukraine while Donald Trump was president.
Russia invaded Ukraine while Joe Biden was president.
And Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbass while Barack Obama was president.
And it turns out that American credibility on foreign policy matters a lot more than the virtue signaling of people like Ben Rhodes.
You might say that.
But according to Ben Rhodes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
It's only because people like Donald Trump in the United States that Russia invaded Ukraine.
Weird take.
He says, quote, Oh yeah, that's why the Middle East is filled with people who hate the United States.
It must be because Israel is being too unbridled in its use of military power.
Because until October 7th, everything was hunky-dory in the Middle East, actually.
That's why the Middle East is filled with people who hate the United States.
It must be because Israel is being too unbridled in its use of military power.
Because until October 7th, everything was hunky dory in the Middle East, actually.
It was amazing in the Middle East.
And in fact, more pressure on Israel, it's not as though more pressure on Israel
incentivized Hamas under Joe Biden.
It's not as though more pressure on Israel via Iran, incentivized by the Biden administration, had any impact.
Again, this comes from a perverse view of how the world works.
So, the foreign policy world.
How should we view foreign policy?
Very simple principle.
If you want to view foreign policy in one sentence, you have to decide, do you think the world on a foreign policy level is a prison yard or is it a playground?
Is it a prison yard or is it a playground?
If you think, as I do, that it's a prison yard, that means a few things.
First, the world is a violent and contentious place.
It is lawless.
It is governed by both interest and ideology.
And really, in the end, it's governed by raw power, economic power, military power.
These things actually matter because it's a prison yard and it's filled with a lot of bad people.
There are some people who are in that prison yard who are there through no fault of their own.
There are some people who are actually good in this particular prison yard, but It's a prison yard.
It's a lot of bad people who hate each other and want to fight each other and have very, very adversarial interests.
Second, foreign policy is a series of bad choices between awful alternatives.
There are very few amazing choices in foreign policy.
It turns out that very often you have a choice between allying with the Soviets and losing to Hitler, for example.
That sort of stuff happens in foreign policy all the time.
And to pretend otherwise is to be ignorant of how foreign policy actually works.
Third, foreign countries and adversaries have their own math.
They have their own interests and their own priorities.
It's not as though they have no agency and that the United States does a thing and then it's all blowback.
Maybe the United States has its interests and maybe the Saudis have their own interests.
Maybe the Israelis have their own interests.
Maybe the British have their own interests.
Maybe the Russians have their own interests.
Maybe the Chileans have their own interests.
And maybe they pursue those interests regardless of what the United States is doing or not doing.
That would be a much more accurate description of how you work in your everyday life.
Why do we always assume, if you're on the left, that only American exam- like, everyone is sitting around thinking about what Barack Obama thinks about the world, as opposed to what they want to do today.
And finally, refusing to engage with the world is not a real possibility.
The United States was lulled into that false sense of security because for the first half of the United States' existence, Britain was the global hegemon, not the United States.
And that guaranteed freedom of the seas, for example.
And we benefited from Britain's ownership of the seas through free trade, through British domination of a lot of foreign areas, through British calming influence in a lot of its colonial holdings.
And then Britain started to collapse.
Britain gave up a lot of those colonial holdings.
The world became a more dangerous place.
And the United States filled the gap.
And now people are like, well, what if we just stopped filling the gap?
Well, then you would get chaos.
Because remember, the only reason that the gap was filled before is because there was another global hegemon.
If the United States doesn't do it right now, who do you think is going to do it?
Do you think that just becomes a power vacuum?
Who do you think is going to fill that power vacuum?
You all know the answer.
It's China.
It's not Britain.
It's not France.
Not Germany.
It'd be China.
And you all know it.
But according to Ben Rhodes, again, the basic idea here is the reverse.
Foreign policy, the world, it's a playground filled with wonderful children who just want to make friends with you.
And if you hand out enough chocolate and candies, and if you make friends with them, and if you put a rainbow sticker on your backpack, they will love you so, so, so much.
They're just good people like you, deep down at heart.
And what they really need is jobs and friendship.
And that's going to woo people who have a completely obverse worldview to yours.
In this particular view, America is the only actor in the world.
You're the only one who matters.
And if America shows its example by just being super nice all the time, and never engaging in foreign policy, and never making hard decisions, and never building up its own power, and never doing that stuff, everyone will look at the United States, they'll say, what a nice person, what a great place the United States is.
I wish we were like them.
And then they'll just voluntarily give up their power.
It'll be amazing.
If you believe this, it's because you're a stupid person.
But the basic idea from Ben Rhodes, and many, ironically, on the sort of isolationist right, is that no one else on planet Earth has agency.
Every discussion you will hear from isolationists is about how no one has agency except the United States.
America did a thing, therefore, another country did the thing.
Never, the other country did the thing, and maybe we reacted to them.
Or that country was allying with a country that we don't like very much, and growing in power, and threatening our interests, so maybe we had to react.
The Blame America First crowd exists on both sides of the aisle, and it's all based, again, on that centralized principle, which is that America could withdraw from the world and just be a light unto the nations, a sort of example, without ever engaging in world politics.
That is not true.
It is ridiculous.
It assumes, number one, the world is a playground, and number two, even if the world isn't a playground, that the United States has the option of withdrawing within our own borders, that there'll be no impact on the United States.
Which, I'm sorry to say, is not true.
I wish it were true.
It happens not to be true.
In this view, the West has to play dead in order to make room for everybody else.
Now, there are a bunch of people who hold this particular worldview, and they range from the radical left, as I say, to the sort of isolationist right.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Unfortunately, this pathetic view of the world, this wrong view of the world, the world's just a family of nations where we're all best friends and all it requires is for us to access the best angels of our nature in order to operate in this prison yard and everyone, roses will bloom everywhere.
One of the people who pushes this all the time is the Pope, okay?
As everyone knows at this point, I am not a fan of Pope Francis.
I think that he is a disgrace to his position, to be perfectly frank with you.
I think that he says things that are anti-biblical on the regular.
And I'm not talking about anti-biblical from like a Jewish point of view, I'm not a Catholic, obviously.
I disagree with Catholicism, otherwise I would be a Catholic.
But...
I'm not the only one who believes this.
I would say a vast majority of conservative Catholics believe that Pope Francis has abandoned many of the Church's crucial missions, including baseline morality in favor of a globalist view of the world that is all about environmentalism and left-wing redistributionism over actual eternal meaning things.
And Pope Francis, what that means is that very often he's engaging in exactly the kinds of moral equivalence that you would see from the radical left.
So, you saw that yesterday.
Apparently, as bombs fell and tanks penetrated deep into Gaza in late October, Israeli President Isaac Herzog held a call with Pope Francis.
Apparently, Herzog was describing his nation's horror over October 7th, and Francis said, quote, Which is just the grossest thing ever.
I mean, that is super gross.
Because Israel was not responding to terror with terror.
If Israel wanted to wipe every civilian in Gaza off the planet, it certainly has the military power to do so.
It did not, and it wasn't seeking to.
Herzog said, hold up.
What we're doing is trying to defend our own people.
The Pope said, those responsible should be held accountable, but not civilians.
That, of course, is ridiculous because Hamas is hiding among civilians.
If Israel could distinguish between the two, well, that would make everybody's life super easy.
But that's why Hamas is not allowing them to do so.
Apparently, according to the Washington Post, that private call would inform Israeli interpretations of France's polemic statement at his November 22nd general audience in St.
Peter's Square that the conflict had gone, quote, gone beyond war.
This is terrorism.
The senior official from Israel said the Pope was calling the campaign an act of terrorism.
How else could it be interpreted?
And then the Vatican declined to clarify what they meant, which is again, the way that Francis works.
He will say something radically left.
And then when called upon to clarify what he's saying, he'll be like, I don't need to clarify.
There's no need to clarify.
And this stems from a perverse worldview in which apparently just surrendering to evil makes evil likely to become good.
That is a lie and it's not true.
And there are people who use that.
There are people who are perfectly willing to use that mentality.
The radical Islamists use this all the time.
Rashid Khalidi, for example, good friend of Barack Obama.
You remember that time that Barack Obama and Rashid Khalidi did an event together leading up to 2008 and it was on tape and the media completely buried it.
The LA Times had the tape.
They refused to release it because they wanted Barack Obama to be president.
And Rashid Khalidi is a spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization at one point.
Well, Khalidi apparently declined to say on Thursday that Israel had either a legal or a moral right to respond militarily to the Hamas terror attack.
Khalidi said, the question is it's framing.
That's the problem.
Gaza's been under siege for 16 years and he goes on and on and on about how basically Israel does not have the ability to respond to a terror attack.
Again, not a shock coming from radical Islamists and the left sides with that because the left is either foolish or corrupt.
Meanwhile, there are people on the right who are simultaneously doing much the same thing.
Like a group on the libertarian right who sound very much like Noam Chomsky on the left, who sound very much like Bernie Sanders on foreign policy.
I don't know what to make of that other than they're just wrong.
So Tucker Carlson, yesterday, he did a show with a comedian, and this comedian I guess is a libertarian, and Tucker Carlson was talking with this guy and this guy started ripping into William F. Buckley and it led to this kind of odd exchange.
Whatever this atrophy in the intelligence of the American people, I think it's accelerating.
And again, just like you said, I'll disclaimer as well, I'm talking about people who I don't necessarily like.
I view Bill Buckley as one of the great villains of the 20th century.
I couldn't agree more!
But he was a clearly very, also CIA by the way, but he was also a very intelligent guy and witty and was not speaking down to his audience and- Again, Tucker's a super talented broadcaster and I think Tucker's a smart guy.
I'm just wondering why, like, I would love for him to explicate why he thinks Bill Buckley was one of the worst forces of the 20th century.
That'd be good to know.
I mean, Bill Buckley was the most prominent conservative of the 20th century.
Now, Tucker may not like National Review right now.
He certainly liked writing for them back in the 90s sometimes, but he may not like them right now.
That's fine.
He doesn't have to agree with the editors over at National Review.
I'm just wondering, why Buckley?
Why Buckley?
Because what Buckley was mostly famous for was forging the famous three-legged stool of conservatism.
Social conservatism, which I assume Tucker agrees with.
In fact, I know Tucker agrees with it.
Fiscal conservatism, which is about free markets, where Tucker's pretty dicey, and foreign policy, where Buckley's position was a sort of realist anti-Soviet position.
Which parts does Tucker disagree with?
I'd be very curious to know.
I'd be very curious to know.
Because, from the libertarian right, the disagreement with Buckley is on social conservatism, where Tucker, I believe, agrees with Buckley, and on foreign policy.
Which is largely, again, the sort of, America is to blame for every war that has ever been happening on planet Earth position since World War II.
Maybe including World War II.
So, I'd just be curious to know where Tucker is on this sort of stuff, because I actually, it's unclear at this point.
I'm curious.
Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be getting into a shocking report from the New York Times about the failure of imagination in Israel about what Hamas was capable of prior to October 7th.
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