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Jan. 31, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show

46:29

How Elmo Unleashed Emotional Hell

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	Well, folks, Elmo did it.
	He opened the can of worms.
	Elmo, you may know as the red furry muppet from Sesame Street, made a big boo-boo yesterday.
	He went on the X, he went on Twitter's X space, and he promptly tweeted, Elmo is just checking in.
	How is everybody doing?
	Oh no.
	The world unleashed its hellfire on Elmo with users from all across the political spectrum immediately unloading on Elmo to tell him how disappointed, upset, and depressed they were.
	One user replied, Elmo, I'm suffering from existential dread over here.
	Another replied, every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep.
	Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come.
	Every single day and every single week for life.
	Rachel Zegler, who you'll recall is the actress from Snow White, they had to reshoot it because she made obnoxious comments about how terrible Snow White was, she tweeted that she was, quote, resisting the urge to tell Elmo that I am kinda sad.
	Okay, so, it was really funny, right?
	This was the thing that was going on all over X yesterday, and it's a funny joke.
	It's a funny joke because a Muppet asking how everybody is doing, and then everybody responding that they are experiencing existential angst and upset is really funny.
	So Elmo then, Okay, well, okay.
	quote, Wow, Elmo is glad he asked.
	Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.
	Elmo will check again soon, friends.
	Elmo loves you.
	Hashtag emotional well-being.
	Okay, well, okay, that's kind of a funny kind of not joke anymore.
	And then Joe Biden comes in from the wings with a chainsaw to massacre the joke.
	So Joe Biden tweets out, quote, I know how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away
	and get to sunnier days.
	Our friend Elmo is right.
	We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need,
	and above all, ask for help when we need it.
	Even though it's hard, you're never alone.
	So here's my question today.
	What the hell happened to our sense of humor?
	Why can't we just laugh at this?
	It's really funny.
	Why can't we just laugh when Elmo asks Twitter how everyone is doing and people are answering with their suicidal thoughts?
	That's funny.
	Okay?
	It's just funny.
	It's okay for us to laugh at things.
	But it seems as though in the country, it's not okay to laugh at pretty much anything anymore.
	Comedy, I believe, really died during the Obama administration when pretty much all of our comedic leaders decided that they were actually politicians and Barack Obama was actually a celebrity.
	The complete merger of celebrity and politics that occurred when Barack Obama became president totally ate comedy because comedians decided that they were going to effectively become spokespeople for Barack Obama's administration.
	You'll recall Chris Rock suggesting that Barack Obama was Like his father.
	He was like a father figure to all of us.
	You'll recall that there were comedians who were suggesting that it was impossible to make fun of Barack Obama because he just there was nothing funny about the man which of course is in and of itself pretty funny.
	Barack Obama was a highly mockable character.
	He thought that he was a transformative figure when in fact he was just kind of a corrupt Chicago politician with delusions of grandeur.
	But because Comedy decided that it could not stay separate from politics.
	What that did is it totally undermined one of the common spaces that we have as a society.
	Comedy is a space that we used to share as a society.
	No matter where you were politically, funny was funny.
	And that was the basic idea for decades in American life.
	It didn't matter where you were on the political spectrum.
	Richard Pryor was funny.
	It didn't matter where you were on the political spectrum.
	George Carlin was funny.
	Johnny Carson was funny.
	Jay Leno was funny.
	And then it turns out that as the social fabric breaks down, it is very difficult to laugh.
	Laughter becomes incredibly difficult because if you believe that the person who is making the joke is laughing at you, you are no longer laughing along.
	And if you believe that the person who is making the joke is actually not joking, that underneath that joke is That's not funny either.
	Sadness, depression, anger, these are not emotions that can coexist with laughing at things.
	And we as a society, we're having kind of a mental breakdown.
	That's actually what's happening right here, because we should all be able to laugh at this thing.
	And this is one of the things that I found so kind of hilarious about the rap song that Tom McDonald and I released, which is now number one worldwide on the iTunes charts, the number one song on the planet.
	That's hilarious.
	I mean, that's like the best cultural troll of all time.
	I don't mean to explain the joke, guys, but look at me.
	I am not a rapper.
	I have no ambitions to be a rapper.
	In fact, if two weeks ago you had done a poll of people who knew even my name and asked, what is the thing Ben Shapiro is least likely to do?
	It would probably be that song.
	That's why it's funny.
	And yet you're already starting to see people who are getting angry at the song.
	People who can't laugh at the very idea.
	Like, it's a joke.
	It's funny.
	Again, I'm going to chalk that up to the fact that social fabric is breaking down.
	And that's having some really deleterious effects on all sides of the political aisle.
	Like across the political aisle.
	For example, the weird cultural breakdown that we are having now over like Taylor Swift.
	What the hell?
	Okay, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, their romance basically being a plant by the NFL or by her stage managers or whatever is a funny idea.
	It's funny.
	Okay, it's a joke.
	We can all laugh at that because Taylor Swift has spent her entire life in music doing songs about how she has a horrible history with men and breaking up with very famous people.
	And so, if she really is in a sincere romance at this point, and we all wish the best for her, and that's fine.
	And by the way, if Taylor Swift actually does marry Travis Kelce, and they end up having babies, there will be a Taylor Swift baby boom, because that's how stupid our culture is, and we all take pop culture too seriously.
	So there'll be a bunch of 30-year-old women who suddenly decide that it's okay to put their feminist bona fides on the shelf, and get married to a man, and then have babies, if Taylor Swift decides that it's okay to do so.
	And she stops acting like a 17-year-old girl in a 34-year-old woman's body.
	In any case, The whole shtick is really funny.
	That's why I've been making jokes about it.
	I've been making jokes about it since the NFL started showing her up in the skybox and she was like, Oh my God, I love football now.
	And it's just all ridiculous.
	It's super silly.
	But the joke can never just stay the joke because people hate each other too much.
	And so you can't even joke about like Taylor Swift.
	And so the politicization of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey is immense.
	So I'll make a joke about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey.
	Or you will.
	Or someone else on the right will.
	And left will.
	Because you hate them, right?
	Because you hate them and think they're bad.
	No!
	Because they're celebrities.
	And celebrities are funny.
	And the whole thing seems really stagey.
	And maybe it's real.
	And again, if it is, good for them.
	But I'm allowed to make a joke about Roger Goodell assassinating Lamar Jackson to make sure that Travis Kelce gets into the Super Bowl so they can get really high ratings as he proposes to Taylor Swift on one knee and then she rejects him and writes a breakup song.
	Like, that's okay!
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	And then in response to people having no sense of humor, other people have no sense of humor.
	In response to that, we now have members of like the Trump campaign who are reportedly angry about Taylor Swift.
	Because they're suggesting that Taylor Swift is like a plant.
	Like the CIA, 20 years ago, was like, we're gonna make Taylor Swift a star.
	And you know what else we're gonna do?
	We're gonna craft an entire, an entire football league.
	And then we are going to, from youth, breed an incredibly talented tight end.
	And then we are going to fix up these two in perfect alignment, just in time, to re-elect a doddering old man Roomba.
	That is what we are going to do.
	Like, What?
	Why?
	Why can't we?
	Guys, let's just laugh.
	It's okay.
	It's okay to just laugh.
	Everything is funny.
	Hey, yes, politics.
	And life in general is tragic comedy.
	Politics is hysterically funny when viewed from one lens and then deeply tragic when viewed from another because politics can have such an impact on all of our lives.
	But if you lose the comedy, that really is not because this isn't funny stuff.
	You're losing the comedy because you don't like the people who are around you.
	You don't like the country you're in.
	You don't like the people who are existing.
	Like this may be the funniest time in the history of American politics, just on a raw level.
	This thing is freaking hysterical.
	I'm sorry.
	It's all very serious, and we're going to get to the serious issues in a moment, but I'd like to say that it's okay for everybody to lighten up and laugh a little bit, okay?
	We have Donald Trump, who's a real estate magnate, who's president of the United States once, and is a stand-up insult comic running against a vegetable.
	And in the middle of this, we have projected all of this onto a football star dating a pop star in the middle of the NFL playoffs and pretending this has world historical importance.
	Which it does not.
	The New York Times, by the way, jumping all over this.
	The fulmination surrounding the world's biggest pop icon and girlfriend of Travis Kelce, the Chiefs' star-tied end, reached the stratosphere after Kansas City made it to the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years and the first time since Ms.
	Swift joined the team's entourage.
	The conspiracy theories coming out of the Make America Great Again contingent were already legion that Ms.
	Swift is a secret agent of the Pentagon and she's bolstering her fan base in preparation for endorsement of President Biden's reelect, or that she and Mr. Kelce are a contrived couple assembled to boost the NFL or COVID vaccines or Democrats or whatever.
	Okay, that last one I kind of... That might be right.
	The contrived couple part?
	Because again, Taylor Swift has sort of a history with this stuff.
	Apparently, this has now taken the form... Again, you always have to doubt these sort of anonymous reports, especially from Rolling Stone, which is not a credible source.
	But again, for the humor effect of it, I'm just going to read it because it's kind of hysterically funny.
	According to three people familiar with the matter, Trump loyalists working on or close to the former president's campaign, longtime Trump allies in right-wing media, and an array of outside advisors to the ex-president have long taken it as a given that Swift will eventually endorse Biden.
	But apparently, members of Magellan's upper crust are plotting to declare a holy war on the pop megastar, especially if she ends up publicly backing the Democrats in the 2024 election.
	Behind the scenes, Trump has reacted to the possibility of Biden and Swift teaming up against him this year, not with alarm, but with an instant projection of ego.
	In recent weeks, the former president has told people in his orbit that no amount of A-list celebrity endorsements will save Biden.
	That, of course, is true.
	Trump has also privately claimed he's more popular than Taylor Swift.
	Okay, that part might be true.
	And if so, that's really funny.
	That's, like, super funny.
	So again, guys, maybe the predicate to us rebuilding a social fabric in this country is to be able to laugh at funny things.
	But here's the thing.
	Nobody's laughing, and that, by the way, is one of the reasons why Joe Biden is down in the dumps.
	As the social fabric breaks down, Joe Biden doing the trust me routine when it comes to politics no longer helps.
	It no longer helps.
	Comedy requires trust, and so does political success.
	And Joe Biden does not have trust right now, so comedy is dying.
	And so, by the way, Our Joe Biden's 2024 prospects.
	There's a tough new swing state poll out for Joe Biden from Business Insider or Bloomberg Business rather and Morning Consult that shows in the swing states Donald Trump is now up 48 to 42.
	48 to 42.
	That is a big lead.
	The percentage of voters saying that immigration is their top issue went up in six of the seven states.
	61% of voters blame Joe Biden for the border crisis.
	Only 38% say Republicans in Congress.
	These are bad numbers for Joe Biden, like truly bad numbers.
	That same poll.
	Again, this is a swing state poll.
	These are the states that matter, because who cares what people in California think?
	That state's already a foregone conclusion.
	Who cares what Alabama thinks?
	Already a foregone conclusion.
	It's the swing states that matter.
	Basically, this election is going to come down to three states, as it usually does.
	Those three states, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania.
	That's what it's going to come down to.
	Donald Trump is going to win Arizona.
	Donald Trump is going to win Georgia.
	The other states, Michigan right now, he's in the lead.
	Pennsylvania, he is trailing.
	Wisconsin, it's a dead die.
	So this is gonna be a very tight election.
	Anybody who thinks there's gonna be a blowout right now, the evidence is just not there for it.
	But the fact that it's tight is almost solely due to the fact that Joe Biden is a deeply unpopular president who has breached trust with Americans.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	Right now, this poll shows that in the swing states, would you say the economy is going in the right direction or going in the wrong direction?
	For the country, wrong track.
	71%.
	Only 29% think the economy is going in the right direction.
	Generally speaking, would you say the economy in each of the following places is going in the right direction?
	Or in the wrong direction?
	Your city or town?
	Right direction, 52%.
	Wrong track, 48%.
	So what does that mean?
	That means that people kind of are okay with their local governance, but they're really unhappy with the national governance.
	Joe Biden's favorability rating in this poll, in the swing states, is currently at 38%.
	That is not a re-elect number.
	That is not even remotely a re-elect number.
	Donald Trump, by the way, is currently at a 46% approval rating, which is higher than Joe Biden in these swing states.
	So, Joe Biden has a lot of problems, and he's exacerbating those problems with bad governance, which of course is why the border continues to matter.
	Joe Biden continues to try it out there and suggest that the border crisis, which continues to simmer, that that border crisis is about him not being given enough power, which of course is not true, because that border crisis did not exist while Donald Trump was president.
	And then Joe Biden came in, as we've explained many times, and as we explain in our new border documentary available over at Daily Wire+, Joe Biden has the executive authority to basically prevent the border from collapsing the way that it has.
	But Joe Biden is still trying to blame it on Republicans as though he needs to be given legislative power in order to do things.
	By the way, it's an amazing statement coming from the same president who has declared the unilateral executive ability to relieve student loan debt and force you to get a vaccine.
	Those are all things that Joe Biden says he can do with presidential power.
	But the one thing he can't do, apparently, is close the border, which is a specifically delegated power that he already has legal authority, nay, legal obligation to fulfill.
	Here is Joe Biden telling a lie.
	Have you done everything you can do with executive authority?
	Or is there more you could do?
	I've done all I can do.
	Just give me the power.
	I've asked for the very day I got it off.
	Give me the border patrol.
	Give me the people.
	Give me the people to judge.
	Give me the people who can stop this and make it worse for us.
	OK, that that is not true.
	He has the power.
	He could do it literally right now, but he's not.
	And everyone knows it, which is why his border numbers are absolutely horrifying.
	Now, Democrats are trying to make the claim that it's Republicans who are holding up more border power for Joe Biden.
	And it's not working particularly well.
	They're attempting to blame Donald Trump for it.
	They're trying to say that Trump is scuttling what would be an amazing border deal.
	Now, here's the thing.
	I can't analyze the border deal because I haven't seen the border deal.
	Have you?
	You haven't, correct?
	Because no one has.
	So how do you expect me to say whether the border deal is good or bad?
	It could be worse than the status quo.
	If Joe Biden would just enforce the law.
	Perhaps the proper Republican play in the face of a bad deal is to walk away from the table and say that Joe Biden needs to enforce the laws that are currently on the books.
	That seems to be the current Republican play.
	Democrats are trying to claim that that's a Trump thing.
	That is not a Trump thing.
	If the border bill that's on the table is bad, then it's bad.
	And you can't expect... There are a bunch of senators who, frankly, I kind of like.
	Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, for example.
	Good senator.
	Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, good senator on many issues.
	They keep saying things like, well, we need this border deal.
	I don't know whether we need it until I see it.
	I can't.
	Again, trust has been violated.
	Trust has been broken.
	I have no clue whether the border deal that you want Joe Biden to sign is good or whether it is bad.
	So, Republicans out there trying to stump for a border deal that no one has seen, that's not going to make a lot of headway.
	Which is why, presumably, Speaker Mike Johnson is saying, listen, we're not stopping the border deal to help Trump.
	I have a majority in the House of, like, three seats.
	That Republican majority is extremely slim.
	And he says, I'm not going to bring a bill up that is going to get immediately rejected.
	We already proposed one.
	It's called H.R.
	2.
	It's a good bill.
	Just pass it.
	Here's the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
	The former president has made it clear that he doesn't want you guys to move forward on this, and judging by his comments, he clearly wants to campaign on this issue.
	Have you spoken to him about the Senate proposal, and are you simply trying to kill this to help him out in the campaign?
	No, Manu, that's absurd.
	We have a responsibility here to do our duty.
	Our duty is to do right by the American people, to protect the people.
	The first and most important job of the federal government is to protect its citizens.
	We're not doing that under President Biden.
	We have only a tiny, as you know, razor-thin, actually a one-vote majority right now in the House.
	Our majority is small.
	We only have it in one chamber, but we're trying to use every ounce of leverage that we have to make sure that this issue
	is addressed.
	I have talked to former President Trump about this issue at length and he understands that.
	He understands that we have a responsibility to do here.
	The President, of course, President Trump, wants to secure the country.
	The polls are against Joe Biden here, which is why you're not seeing Republicans give
	ground to Joe Biden and they should not give ground to Joe Biden.
	Meanwhile, Democrats are busy in the House trying to defend Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who keeps declaring that the border is in fact secure and is not in fact open, when in reality, the catch and release policy pursued by this administration means that the border is effectively open.
	So Republicans have been pursuing an impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas.
	Here was Representative Mark Green saying that Mayorkas has no respect for the law. Now,
	does that amount to a high crime or misdemeanor? I mean, no crime is really alleged. My general
	view of impeachment is that you should allege a crime.
	However, Democrats did impeach Donald Trump twice without actively alleging a crime. So there is that.
	So if we're just going to use impeachment as a political tool, it's good for the goose, it's good for
	the yander. And Alejandro Mayorkas is absolutely not fulfilling his constitutional oath to
	uphold the law. Today is a grave day.
	We have not approached this day or this process lightly.
	Secretary Mayorkas's actions have forced our hand.
	We cannot allow this border crisis to continue.
	We cannot allow fentanyl to flood across our border or criminals to waltz in undeterred.
	And we cannot allow a Cabinet Secretary with no regard for the separation of powers of the rule of law to remain in office.
	That is why today we present this committee with the articles of impeachment against Secretary Alejandro
	Mayorkas.
	Meanwhile, you have Representative Dan Goldman, who was first and foremost on the Trump impeachment
	train. This guy actively participated in the Trump impeachment, both of them, actually.
	And he says it's demeaning to the institution to impeach Mayorkas. I'm sorry. I think we're well
	beyond the demeaning of Congress. What you are upset about is that Secretary Mayorkas
	rescinded prior executive orders that were working. And you have a right to be upset about that.
	And you have a right to talk about that.
	And you have a right to express your dissatisfaction in any way you choose.
	And you have a right to make that case to the American people so that they vote Secretary Mayorkas and this president out of office in November if that's ultimately what the people believe.
	But you do not have a right To demean this institution, to bastardize the impeachment clause of the Constitution, to belittle the standard of constitutional impeachment to such a degree that you can't even produce a legal memo in support of your articles of impeachment that do not exist in history and do not exist in the law.
	Okay, again, you invoking the law when you literally did not even allege crimes against Donald Trump before impeaching him twice is a pretty astonishing display of hypocrisy.
	The border issue is cutting against Joe Biden.
	Bottom line.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	The other issues are also cutting against Joe Biden.
	The situation in Iran continues to bubble.
	It continues to be really bad.
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	The other issues are also cutting against Joe Biden.
	The situation in Iran continues to bubble.
	It continues to be really bad.
	There have been 165 attacks on American troops between October 17th and January 29th, ranging
	from Syria to Iraq to Jordan to the Red Sea, obviously.
	And Joe Biden really has no plans to do anything about it.
	Now, you want to make the case that we don't need forward deployment of all of these troops in these places.
	That's fine.
	I'm open to that argument.
	I'm open to the idea that we don't actually need as many bases as we have currently in, for example, Syria.
	And we don't need as many bases as we currently have in Iraq.
	But, if you are going to have troops on the ground, you defend the troops that you have on the ground.
	That's the way that it works.
	And then, the other half of that equation is, you allow America's allies to do the work that you are not capable of doing because you don't have the boots on the ground.
	The intelligence gathering.
	The terrorist fighting.
	You allow Saudi to go after the Houthis in Yemen.
	You allow Israel to go after Hezbollah.
	You take the chains off of all of your allies and allow them to do the dirty work that you yourself do not want to do.
	That would be a rational foreign policy.
	Joe Biden has decided to do the opposite of both of those.
	We're going to forward deploy a bunch of troops, but not defend them.
	And we're going to hamstring our allies in their pursuit of terrorism.
	That's apparently Joe Biden's plan.
	Now, he just keeps over and over and over kind of telegraphing exactly what he says he's going to do.
	So yesterday he said, I've decided what I'm going to do.
	Why don't you just do it?
	I don't understand.
	Do you get points for calling your shot?
	This is Babe Ruth at the World Series?
	I don't know what I'm gonna do now.
	Good for you, dude.
	Maybe you should just do it and not tell anyone.
	Are there any more punches that you'd love to telegraph?
	Apparently, he told the press that he holds Iran responsible in the sense that they're supplying the weapons to the people who did it.
	Okay, thank you for that vague formulation, President Biden.
	Here we go.
	I'm responsible for the death of those three Americans.
	I do hold them responsible in the sense that they're supplying the weapons to the people who did it.
	Alrighty, well, um, I'm just going to point out right now that your sense of responsibility has amounted to nothing so far.
	All you have done is exacerbated the problems with Iran.
	They continue to get more aggressive because you're doing nothing.
	Senator Tom Cotton, who of course is a former member of the military from Arkansas, he says that the way you actually do deterrence is through, you know, deterring people.
	I know it's super complicated.
	I've laid out the scenarios.
	Which option do we choose?
	Bill, you laid out four options for how we could retaliate against Iran.
	I'd add a fifth, which is all of the above.
	There has to be devastating military retaliation for the targeting of American troops in Jordan, a friendly nation across international borders, leaving three dead Americans and more than three dozen wounded.
	And some of those, Bill, are in grave, critical condition as well.
	This is not an anomaly for Iran.
	This is what they've been doing for 45 years, but they have amped it up under Joe Biden and before him, Barack Obama, because the Obama-Biden foreign policy has been one of appeasement and conciliation.
	We have to totally reverse that policy, starting with retaliatory strikes right now and continuing beyond that to ensure that we're no longer trying to bribe the Ayatollahs with billions of dollars.
	We're not looking the other way.
	And by the way, I agree, and so does Tom Cotton, with Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump's policy was that after a U.S.
	our troops in the Middle East.
	Anything else will simply invite more attacks.
	And by the way, I agree, and so does Tom Cotton, with Donald Trump.
	Donald Trump's policy was that after a US air base in Iraq was attacked by Iranian proxy forces in late 2019,
	early 2020, Donald Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, the top Quds Force Iranian terror official.
	He killed him while he was in Iraq.
	And Iran vowed massive retaliation and did nothing.
	Because it turns out, you know what?
	Iran doesn't like getting punched directly in the face.
	They do not like it at all.
	As I've been saying for quite a while here, it turns out that deterrence requires you to deter.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden is resting his campaign on the supposed evils of Donald Trump.
	And a lot of that is predicated on the legal charges.
	And honestly, the more the headlines appear about Donald Trump's legal charges, the less effect they're going to have.
	Say, well, he's facing four cases with 91 charges.
	That looks like political prosecution.
	I'm sorry, that is what it looks like.
	And it looks particularly like political prosecution when several of these cases are clearly trumped up or falling apart.
	The January 6th case in Washington, D.C.
	is a stretch of the law every which way.
	The Fannie Willis case in Georgia is an attention-seeking ploy by Fannie Willis in a legal stretch of RICO that doesn't even really allege the underlying organization to do the criming, which is what you require for a RICO charge.
	Not only that, Fannie Willis is now caught up in her own scandal because it turns out that she hired as a prosecutor a person with no prosecutorial experience who she happens to be schtuping right now.
	So that turns out to be... and then paid him a bunch of taxpayer dollars and went on cruises with him.
	So that happens to be really awkward.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	The only case that has any sort of merit at all is the classified docs case down in Florida.
	In that case, Donald Trump can just point at Hillary Clinton politically speaking.
	All this looks like political persecution.
	Not only that, it looks thoroughly like this DOJ is a political tool of the Biden administration.
	The most obvious and insane case of this is the charging of pro-life demonstrators Over their blocking of an entry to a Tennessee abortion facility in 2021.
	So here is film of what it looked like when these supposedly evil, violent, terrible people were outside an abortion facility in Tennessee in 2021.
	They're being charged with charges that would give them up to 11 years in prison.
	They were accused by the Department of Justice of violating the so-called F.A.C.E.
	Act and Civil Rights Conspiracy, violation of people's civil rights, for a protest that took place in a hallway outside of a Mount Juliet abortion provider March 5th, 2021.
	As you will see, this group of demonstrators gathered on the second floor of an office building in the hallway outside the Caraphim Health Center Clinic.
	The group prayed and sang hymns and urged women showing up to the clinic not to get abortions.
	Here's what that looked like.
	Oh man, this is so threatening and violent.
	Wow.
	Wow!
	Frightening.
	Terrifying stuff here.
	Absolutely terrifying.
	The verdict was delivered on the fifth day of the trial, which took place in Nashville.
	One of the government's key witnesses was Caroline Davis, a woman who was arrested with the group at CARE-FM during her testimony.
	Davis claimed she had a change of heart about attending the protest, and that her rational side was in the toilet at the time of her participation.
	She said that she changed her mind over time, and that being indicted by the federal government terrified her.
	Apparently, some people talked to the police.
	One video showed one participant telling another to speak in love to a man with his girlfriend who'd shown up, and that someone's baby was a gift from God.
	And so now these people are going to face 11 years in prison for all of this.
	For this brutal, violent, terrible activity.
	Steve Crampton, who's Thomas More Society Senior Counsel and attorney for one of the people charged
	said quote, we're disappointed with the outcome. This is a peaceful demonstration by entirely
	peaceful citizens filled with prayer, hymn singing and worship oriented toward persuading expecting
	mothers not to abort their babies. Unfortunately, the Biden Department of Justice decided to
	characterize these peaceful actions as a felony conspiracy against rights to intimidate and punish
	the people charged and other pro-life people and people of faith.
	Crampton suggested the Biden's DOJ's pattern of arresting and prosecuting peaceful pro-life
	advocates is disturbing.
	And of course, that's true.
	Remember, this is the same administration.
	That basically decided not to charge huge numbers of people who were involved in the Black Lives Matter riots that did $2 billion in damage in 2020.
	This is the same administration that has basically decided to facilitate shutting down of highways.
	I mean, the Democratic Party has absolutely, in a major city, facilitated the shutdown of airports, the shutdown of highways by protesters who then sometimes assault the police.
	But these anti-abortion protesters sitting in a hallway and singing, that's the violent stuff, that's the truly threatening, horrifying, terrible stuff.
	You wonder why so many Republicans and so many people generally are like, this Biden DOJ, like, if they're indicting Trump, okay, like, are we supposed to take that super seriously?
	This DOJ?
	The same DOJ that says that this sort of activity, i.e.
	standing outside an abortion clinic, And non-violently singing hymns.
	That deserves 11 years in prison.
	Or, if you're Grandma, and you walked through the Capitol building on January 6th, you're not one of the people who was violent, you're not one of the people assaulting a police officer, you're just Grandma, and you're stupidly walking through the Capitol building on January 6th, we will track you down, and we will put you in jail.
	And we'll put you in jail for as long as humanly possible, because obviously, you're an insurrectionist.
	Like, this DOJ is the one that ought to be trusted?
	In going after Donald Trump?
	I think not.
	Meanwhile, speaking of people who ought to be prosecuted, it turns out that the squad, the Hamas squad, you know, the radicals in Congress, we're talking about all the best people, the people the media love, the people they put on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with Nancy Pelosi.
	It turns out that pretty much all of them have now been embroiled by either controversy, Or, or actual outright criminal activity.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the Hamas squad, the radicals in Congress, they are having themselves quite a week here.
	So, it now emerges that Congresswoman Cori Bush is under investigation for alleged misuse of security funds.
	You'll remember Cori Bush from pretty much every radical rally, claiming America's a deeply racist, terrible place, that we ought to defund the police, well, simultaneously, by the way, she was claiming that pretty much Everybody needed to pay for her security.
	Well now, the DOJ is investigating Cori Bush.
	This is maybe the only good thing the DOJ is doing right now.
	For allegedly misusing money intended for members of Congress and candidates to spend on private security.
	The scope of the investigation and allegations of wrongdoing were not immediately known, but in recent months, investigators have contacted multiple current and former staffers, according to the Washington Post, inquiring about the Congresswoman's campaign spending.
	Apparently, this has to do with her paying all of her friends and calling them security.
	She came under fire for using campaign money to hire her husband, Courtney Merritt, as her security.
	But the Office of Congressional Ethics dismissed a complaint filed against Bush last fall alleging that her campaign's employment of Merritt was a violation of federal election law.
	She paid him over $100,000 between 2022 and 2023, despite the fact that Merritt had no private security license in either St.
	Louis or Washington, D.C.
	And that, of course, is not the only member of security that she has put on payroll who really has very little to do with security.
	As Andrew Kerr of the Washington Free Beacon reported back in March of last year, one of the people working for her, her close friend and highest paid private security guard, is a guy named Nathaniel Davis III, who claims he can summon tornadoes at will, cause earthquakes with his hate, and conduct blood rituals to bring ruin upon his enemies.
	Which, by the way, awesome set of skills.
	First of all, you should get paid way more than you're getting paid if you can actually do those things.
	That is some awesome stuff right there.
	By the way, anybody who can prove that they can do these things, we have a slot open for you right here at The Daily Wire.
	Perfectly happy to carve out a salaried position for anyone who can summon tornadoes at will, cause earthquakes with your hate, and conduct blood rituals to bring ruin upon your enemies.
	Apparently he's an intergalactic master of psychic self-defense born 109 trillion years ago, which is wild.
	So he is older than the universe by like an order of magnitude.
	His days, he says, are now spent tending to his crops and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracies.
	Which, I guess that makes sense.
	I mean, that is a dude that you should pay for your security if you're Cori Bush.
	So, she then claims, obviously, that it's because Republicans are racist that she's being targeted.
	The beautiful thing about being a member of the Diverse Squad is that you basically get to claim that everything is about racism.
	Since before I was sworn into office, I have endured relentless threats to my physical safety and life.
	As a rank-and-file member of Congress, I am not entitled to personal protection by the House and instead have used campaign funds as permissible to retain security services.
	I have not used any federal tax dollars for personal security services.
	Any reporting that I have used funds for personal security is simply false.
	In recent months, right-wing organizations have lodged baseless complaints against me, peddling notions that I have misused campaign funds to pay for personal security services.
	That simply is not true.
	Oh, right-wing forces.
	It's always the right-wing forces.
	A flashback to when Cori Bush suggested that nobody should be defended except for Cori Bush.
	Here she was talking about how she pays for private security, but you should not have police to defend you.
	I'm going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life and I have too much work to do.
	There are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that.
	So if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend $10 more on it, you know what?
	I get to be here to do the work.
	So suck it up and defunding the police has to happen.
	Oh my gosh.
	How'd that lady made it into Congress?
	And we only get the representatives we deserve.
	When I said before that Politics is high comedy.
	It really, really is.
	Now, that is only one member of the squad having a really bad week.
	Another member of the squad having a super bad week is Ilhan Omar.
	So Ilhan Omar apparently was giving a speech at some sort of event for local Somalis.
	And during the speech, she said some things.
	I'm gonna play a little bit of the clip.
	It's in Somali.
	I don't speak Somali, obviously.
	She claimed that the transcription of the speech, the translation here, in the clip that went viral was off.
	So we here at Daily Wire, we actually went to a translation service and paid ourselves to have it translated.
	And I'm going to read you the transcript of the relevant portion of what she said, because it's absolutely wild and pretty certainly violates her oath of office.
	Here is Ilhan Omar, the worst person in the American Congress.
	I'm from Somalia.
	I'm from Israel.
	I don't know why I'm speaking like this.
	I'm from Rwanda.
	I'm from Uzbekistan.
	I'm from Walala.
	Okay, so I'm going to read you our transcript that we got from an actual translation service because, again, I want to make sure that we're accurate in our representation of what Ilhan Omar actually said here.
	Here is the full translation of the segment of the clip that has been going viral on Axe.
	Quote, We are Somalis.
	We are people who love each other.
	We might talk behind each other's backs at times, but we are people who count on each other
	as brothers or sisters and know that they are Muslims and Somalis.
	We are people who help each other and others as well and take sides with each other.
	A few days ago, we heard the news about some people claiming to be Somalis
	getting into an agreement with Ethiopia.
	Here she's talking about a breakaway portion of Somalia that is called Somaliland.
	It's effectively been for the last 30 years a self-governing entity because Somalia is a disaster zone.
	And Somaliland is actually pretty pro-Western.
	Somaliland happens to be democratic.
	It's kind of free market oriented.
	And there's been a lot of talk for a long time about Somaliland actually declaring independence and being given breakaway status.
	The U.S.
	government so far has not done that.
	There's a strong case to be made that that actually should happen.
	She, of course, opposes because, as we will see, she describes her own allegiance to Somalia.
	She says, I'm embracing the fact that Mohammed Noor knows more Somali than I do.
	I got calls from a lot of people saying, Ilhan, you need to talk to the U.S.
	government.
	What is the government of the U.S.
	doing?
	My answer to their question was that the U.S.
	government will do what we tell them to do about it.
	Um, what now?
	The U.S.
	government will do what we tell them to do?
	That would be like the plural we of what she has already described.
	I mean, this is her words, right?
	Somalis and Muslims, the U.S.
	government will do what we tell them to do about it.
	I mean, like whatever conspiratorial nightmare bait she has put out there about Jews, she obviously engages in exactly that same kind of language with regard to her areas of orientation.
	And she says, oh, the Jews are like a hardcore group of people who control the American government.
	Also, we control the American government.
	Okay, lady.
	She says, we need to be confident in ourselves.
	We live in this country.
	It is the country we pay tax to.
	It is the country that one of your daughters is in.
	As long as I'm in the U.S.
	Congress, no one will take a way in the Somali sea or water.
	And I will not support the U.S.
	government in supporting other people who rob us.
	Again, the first person plural here is pretty wild, right?
	The U.S.
	government, as opposed to us, rob us.
	Now, she's a naturalized citizen of the United States.
	She's a member of Congress.
	Like, she's not a member of the Somali political regime, but she talks like she is.
	She says the lady you sent to Congress knows about you and she feels our interest like you all do.
	To President Hassan Sheikh, we are happy about you and the good job you have done.
	Thank you, Mr. President, for reminding everyone that even if Somalia is in crisis, we are a people of talent who know their country and whose country cannot be put in danger.
	I want to congratulate the Somalis in Minnesota and the Somalis everywhere on how you are all united and how you supported our president who needs our support.
	Um, the president of the United States is Joe Biden.
	I'm just going to point that out.
	As a Republican, the president of the United States is, in fact, Joe Biden.
	He is my president, because he's the president of the United States, and I'm an American.
	Like, that's an amazing statement from Ilhan Omar.
	So people have talked about denaturalizing, deporting, and all the rest.
	That's a pretty hard thing to do in the United States.
	There's a lot of free speech rights that attach to being an American citizen, even if you're saying a bunch of nonsense and bad garbage.
	However, the oath of office does in fact require you to solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, to take the obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.
	Does this violate the oath of office?
	I think it's a pretty strong case this violates the oath of office.
	So bad week for Ilhan Omar, who continues to be just the worst person in Congress.
	That's not the end of the story, by the way.
	There's more from the squad.
	In the bad week for the Hamas squad continues Jamal Bowman, who is a man so intelligent he once mistook a fire alarm for a door opening apparatus.
	Apparently, way back when, he was promoting conspiracy theories about 9-11.
	Not a shock, conspiratorialism on the left and on the right has been growing in recent years.
	There are plenty of conspiracy theorists in Congress, unfortunately.
	On Tuesday, the Daily Beast published a report about a blog that Bowman maintained during his days in education.
	This is where he was a principal of an actual public middle school.
	He published poems and brief essays there on personal political and pedagogical concerns through 2014.
	They found a May 2011 post titled, Recapitulate.
	It is a 137-line free-verse poem, sounds terrible, which starts as a recollection of world events before transitioning heavily into meditations on various 9-11 conspiracy theories, generally focused on claiming that they were not terrorist attacks, rather planned by some other entities to precipitate the War on Terror.
	So Bowman has now made a statement.
	He says, well over a decade ago as I was debating diving into a doctoral degree, I explored a wide range of books, films, and articles across a wide swath of the political spectrum and processed my thoughts in a personal blog that few people ever read.
	Here is some of what he suggested.
	He said, 2001, planes used as missiles.
	Target, the Twin Towers.
	30 minutes later, both buildings collapsed onto themselves.
	Later in the day, building seven also collapsed.
	Hmm.
	Multiple explosions heard before and during the collapse.
	Hmm.
	Allegedly, two other planes, the Pentagon, Pennsylvania, hijacked by terrorists.
	Minimal damage done, minimal debris found.
	Hmm.
	Watch loose change and zeitgeist, then share your thoughts.
	We blamed Osama.
	We went to war in Iraq, captured Saddam, killed him.
	Bin Laden is Afghan, so we went to war there too.
	Wow.
	That is amazing, amazing deep thoughts there from Jamal Bowman.
	So again, the squad having a bad week, but again, I don't blame the squad for their own stupidity, malice, and corruption.
	I blame the people who voted for them.
	It's their fault they shouldn't have voted for them in the first place.
	And meanwhile, In the least shocking news of the day, it turns out that Harvard's diversity chief is also guilty of plagiarism.
	So remember that time that the Harvard president, Claudine Gay, was guilty of lots and lots of plagiarism and then ended up losing her job?
	Well, it turns out now, according to the New York Post, Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer has been hit with dozens of plagiarism allegations tied to her academic work, including one claim that she failed to properly cite her husband's study.
	She's plagiarizing her own husband.
	Oh no.
	The Ivy League school was handed an anonymous complaint on Monday listing at least 40 examples of alleged plagiarism by Sherry Ann Charleston dating back to 2009 according to the Washington Free Beacon.
	According to the Beacon, Charleston allegedly quoted or paraphrased a dozen scholars without attribution in her 2009 dissertation at the University of Michigan and actually took credit for a study that her husband wrote in 2012.
	So, well done to Harvard, which, again, if you're making the case that diversity is our strength, you need to actually hire people who don't plagiarize.
	That would be like the first barrier to overcome.
	The diversity is not our strength argument would be to hire people who are competent and non-plagiarist.
	That would be like the place that you start.
	But apparently that was too heavy a lift.
	Alrighty, folks.
	Coming up, we're going to jump into insane comments from the Foreign Secretary for the UK about what he plans to do vis-a-vis Hamas.
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