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Feb. 5, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show
56:52
‘Free The Nipple’ Grammys and Open Borders
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So last night, two disappointing things happened.
One, of course, was the release of a Senate-compromised border security bill.
We're going to go through all the details of that momentarily.
The other was the Grammys.
And I'm going to start with the Grammys mainly because, frankly, Tom McDonnell and I If we had performed fact at the Grammys, it would have been at least 10 times better because that was a terrible show.
Can I just point out at this point that Trevor Noah is truly an awful host?
Trevor Noah is legitimately the most boring host in the history of the Grammys because he has basically decided that his job at the Grammys is to simply flatter the celebrities around him as opposed to, you know, doing the Ricky Gervais where you go in and you insult all of the celebrities, which is Way more entertaining for everybody else.
Trevor Noah goes in and he tells a bunch of jokes about how Taylor Swift helps the local economy.
And everyone is so beautiful.
And Billy Joel is so successful.
Oh, yeah, it was terrible.
Also, Stevie Wonder can no longer sing.
And I say this as a longtime Stevie Wonder fan.
But the only reason to point all of this out is because culture is upstream of politics.
And as much as we're going to talk about the Senate border bill in just a moment, the reality is that there are maybe 7 to 10 million people in the United States aren't even going to have any idea that a border bill is even on the table or being contemplated.
Whereas there will be hundreds of millions of people who will listen to all the garbage music that emerges from the Grammys and the messaging put out from the Grammys.
It doesn't mean that everybody listens to what all these dolts in Hollywood have to say about politics.
It does mean that they do have some impact.
So, we begin with a brief review of the Grammys.
We'll start with this.
The fashion at the Grammys, these people are not like you.
They're not connected to lives that you lead.
They do not follow your moral strictures.
They're not interested in promoting the morality that you wish to teach your children.
And yet, if you leave them with access to your kids via YouTube or via iTunes or anything else, it will in fact have an impact on your kids.
So, this is a human.
This human is called Doja Cat, which I don't understand because she is not a cat.
Apparently, I have been informed by reliable sources that she literally named herself after pot and a cat.
Not kidding you, because she didn't come out of her mom and her mom was like, behold, I shall name her Doja Cat.
She obviously is not only a class act in every way, she also is just wearing a sheer bodysuit that does not even attempt to cover her nipples.
Because this is where we are right now.
Now, I assume she can afford the entire dress.
If not, then we should, you know, see if we can start a fund to actually buy the extra two inches of cloth that it would take to cover her entire nipple.
But apparently not.
Because free the nipple, because liberation, because this is what Hollywood wants.
And it wasn't, of course, just Doja Cat, the idiocy.
Lenny Kravitz showed up.
I don't understand why people bother to wear clothes that are not clothes.
Again, this looks as though he got into some sort of Mad Max world strange bordello fight.
I don't, yeah, this is full Hunger Games kind of stuff.
I always enjoy it when people like Lenny Kravitz wear giant crosses.
Surely Jesus would approve of this outfit.
He probably figured out how to dress like this in church.
For those who cannot see, he is wearing what appears to be leather pants and then a leather shirt, but most of the shirt is missing.
So he's got full-on sleeves, but it's not covering anything below maybe, like, his breastbone.
And, you know, I feel like we should redistribute.
In the name of social justice, his sleeve material to his chest, just for the safety of all involved.
Lenny Kravitz.
Again, these are the people who make the culture that your children imbibe.
And then, of course, we have Billie Eilish, who apparently is dressed like the goth pot-smoking girl from Hogwarts.
I don't know what exactly is happening here.
Her hair used to be green.
Now her hair, now that she's declared herself queer, her hair is red.
I don't know what the correlation is right there.
Wearing some of the most deliberately ugly clothes you will ever see.
Okay, so these are the people who have decided to beautify America with their art.
We'll get to more on this in one second.
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And then, of course, the Grammys brings forward its version of morality, and its version of morality is all, heal the world, make it a better place, except that there's no actual healing of the world.
It's mostly just absolute cowardice and foolishness.
So, Annie Lennox, she was supposed to pay tribute to people who had passed away during the last year.
And they did a bit in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.
So I need to hear Annie Lennox on a ceasefire in Gaza.
Well, by the way, 140 hostages or so are still being held by Hamas.
This is what I need to hear from our cultural betters here.
She's an artist for ceasefire peace and raises her fist.
I mean, first of all, this is the In Memoriam segment, lady.
Like, this is a Wendy's.
Like, this is where you're supposed to be paying tribute to all the people who died.
And, um, she is calling for a ceasefire in Go- Annie Lennox.
Yeah, good.
We're all gonna listen to Annie Lennox now.
And then of course you had the same sort of idiocy coming out of the Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr.
He did an entire shtick where he proclaimed that the Nova Music Festival Massacre, in which Hamas slaughtered hundreds of people at a music festival in southern Israel, They did it because they were Jews, okay?
But instead, because the music industry is all about watering morality down to the point where it makes no sense, effectively he makes the case that people were slaughtered because they were at a music festival as opposed to because they were Jews.
Which is weird, since this didn't happen in like the middle of, say, Montana.
It happened in the Jewish state, In antisemitic fashion, that's what it was about.
For all of the white supremacist, alt-right conspiracists who think that Hollywood is quote-unquote run by the Jews, I'll just point out here that Hollywood can't even say that attacks on Jews are attacks on Jews.
They instead have to make it about attacks on music lovers.
Every one of us, no matter where we're from, is united by the shared experience of music.
It brings us together like nothing else can.
And that's why music must always be our safe space.
When that's violated, it strikes at the very core of who we are.
We felt that at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris.
We felt that at the Manchester Arena in England.
We felt that at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas.
And on October 7th, we felt that again when we heard the tragic news from the Supernova Music Festival for Love that over 360 music fans lost their lives and another 40 were kidnapped.
That day and all the tragic days that have followed have been awful for the world to bear as we mourn the loss of all innocent lives.
We live in a world- I just said the moral equivalence.
Ugh, it's so disgusting.
Okay, stop.
Stop this fool.
Stop him.
I mean, again, the lack of moral clarity is just insane right here.
So first of all, I should point out that three of the attacks that he talked about, three of the four attacks are Islamic terror attacks.
In Manchester, concert explosion was an Islamic terror suicide bombing in May of 2017.
The Bataclan terror attack was in fact an Islamic terror attack.
And of course, what just happened in Southern Israel is a terror attack.
And what happened in Southern Israel is a specifically anti-Semitic terror attack.
And then this idea is like there's the whole world, and then linking that with what happened in Las Vegas, where we still don't have a motive, by the way, and the weirdest mass shooting in the history of the United States, is super strange, and every day we mourn the life of an, or you could, you know, take a moral stand against the people who murdered music-goers who happened to be Jewish, because they were Jewish, in Southern Israel, but we can't even do that.
Again, no moral clarity whatsoever from the recording artist's shocker.
Okay, then you had the obnoxious.
So, one of the most obnoxious things about the artists at the Grammys, So, we begin with Miley Cyrus.
So, Miley Cyrus has an awful song called Flowers.
She had two songs last year that were both big hits.
One was called Flowers, and this was all about how independent ladies don't need no man.
And then the other song that Miley Cyrus had last year was one called Used To Be Young, which is actually a more interesting song because it's all about how basically she blew her youth.
So of course the one that makes her more famous and the one they give an award to is Flowers, which is a really, really garbage song.
My favorite part of this is where she assumes everyone in the concert hall knows her lyrics because she's just so famous.
Everyone knows the words.
These people, they're so tiresome.
Also, I don't know, she hijacked her hair from like a 1980s mannequin.
Last night.
Very weird look for Miley Cyrus.
Why are you acting like you don't know this song?
Because no one... Because we don't know your song.
And then there was Jay-Z, who decided to do a full Kanye and show up on stage.
He was giving some sort of lifetime achievement award, I suppose.
And he decided to talk about how the Academy was not paying enough attention to Beyoncé.
Yes, you're right.
Beyoncé has not gotten enough attention in her life.
Clearly, the lack of attention on Beyoncé is destroying her career.
What can we do to help Beyoncé?
Here we go.
I don't want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won Album of the Year.
So even by your own metrics, that doesn't work.
Think about that.
Most Grammys, never won Album of the Year.
That doesn't work.
Oh, Michael.
Yeah, that's, yeah.
Yeah, it's true.
We have to, yes.
Beyonce, the great victim of our time.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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Meanwhile, speaking of people who are absolutely self-obsessed and self-centered, Taylor Swift!
So, I know that we're all supposed to, you know, take sides in the Taylor Swift war, and a few things can be true at once.
One is, I don't believe her in anything that she does.
I find her entirely inauthentic.
Like, literally everything she does feels like it has been scripted down to the minutest detail.
Including last night.
Second, I don't care whether she's dating Travis Kelce, and I hope that for the sake of the country, they get married and have babies so that all these 31-year-old feminists with seven cats can decide that marriage is actually good for them.
And we can have the Taylor Swift baby boom.
That would be good for America.
I also don't believe that she's some sort of deep state psy-op.
If she's a deep state psy-op, they need to pick somebody who can act.
Because Taylor Swi- In the most awkward moment last night, she wins Album of the Year, and she gets up and then promotes her next album, and she so- she so clearly does not care about being there.
She so clearly does not even want to be there.
Whenever they cut to her and she's like dancing in the audience, she's dancing like I would dance in the audience, which is to say awkwardly and with a sense of rage about having to be in this place at this time.
She gets up on stage and she basically is like, okay, I'm here to pick up another trophy.
I have 12 of these already or 13 of these, whatever, man.
And I just put this one in the garage with all the rest of them.
Also, I have a new album.
I'll be releasing the cover later.
Bye.
I want to say thank you to the fans.
Bye.
Telling you a secret that I've been keeping from you for the last two years.
Which is that my brand new album comes out April 19th.
Wow, you're a musician.
It's called the Tortured Poets Department.
I'm gonna go and post the cover right now backstage.
Thank you, I love you!
Thank you!
She doesn't love you.
She doesn't care about you.
She doesn't know you.
I love every, my favorite cutaway actually here was Miley Cyrus.
The cutaway to Miley Cyrus in the audience was really, really funny.
The cutaway to Miley, Miley was like, oh my God, I can't believe this lady.
And honestly, points to Miley Cyrus for that.
Then she released the actual cover and the cover is, of course, a lady half clad in bed because this is Hollywood.
And it's called the Tortured Poets Department, All's Fair in Love and Poetry, new album, the Tortured Poets Department, out April.
19th.
11.8 million likes.
Like, almost immediately.
On the instas.
Oh.
Oh.
Okay, these are some of her brilliant lyrics.
Some of her brilliant lyrics.
Quote, and so I enter into evidence my tarnished coat of arms, my muses acquired like bruises, my talismans and charms, the tick tick tick of love bombs, my veins of pitch black ink.
All's fair in love and poetry.
Sincerely, the chairman of the tortured poets department.
Oh, she's a 10th grade girl.
And she's 34.
And again, I hope she gets married to Travis Kelsey and has babies and grows the F up.
Because I can't stand anymore of reading the lyrics of her albums that read like a 17-year-old girl made another album about how tortured she is and how sad she is but really inside she's deeply happy but she's really sad.
Don't care!
It's stupid.
Okay, so that is your music industry.
That's your Grammys update.
Now, on to more serious matters.
So, The Biden administration is in a bind.
The bind that they are in is that Americans do not trust them on immigration.
The reason Americans do not trust them on immigration is because they've basically declared that they are in favor of open borders.
Joe Biden is currently polling at, I kid you not, 37%.
He has a 37% approval rating.
That is not a reelect rating.
Not remotely.
On immigration, he is deeply underwhelmed.
It's an NBC poll, by the way.
That same NBC poll has him losing to Donald Trump by five points, 47 to 42, and it has Republicans ahead on the generic ballot by four points.
Right now.
These are very bad numbers for Joe Biden.
Not only that, again, on immigration, the American people don't trust Joe Biden.
And they think that he has the unilateral ability to actually stop the massive wave of illegal immigration that we have been seeing.
Because, in fact, he does.
And so what they believe, correctly, is that the Biden administration has made an overt decision that they wish the border to remain open.
And so when he protests and he says that he doesn't actually have the ability to shut the border, no one believes him.
Especially when you have Alejandro Mayorkas, The head of the Department of Homeland Security, who is currently theoretically going to be impeached by the House, suggesting that we actually need more migrants in the United States.
He actually said this during an interview with the New York Times, quote,
wouldn't it be more orderly? Wouldn't it be responsible governance to be able to deliver
a lawful pathway to fill what we have, which is a labor need and cut the exploitative smugglers
out and give the individuals a path to arrive lawfully, safely in an orderly way to perform
labor that we need. They can send remittances home. They can return home when their work is done.
Isn't that an element of a workable immigration system?
And when asked, quote, what I'm hearing you say is you'd like to expand legal pathways in order
to relieve some of the pressure on the southern border where people come in illegally.
And he said, yes, and to fulfill one of the goals of our immigration system.
So, yeah, that'd be yes to more migration, according to Alejandro Mayorkas.
And so he doesn't really care whether it's legal or illegal.
It ends up being basically the same thing.
This is why, presumably, Joe Biden continues to keep the border open.
Now, the game that Democrats are playing is they're trying to get Republicans to take ownership of the open border.
The way they get Republicans to take ownership of the open border is to craft a quote-unquote bipartisan immigration bill so that when things continue to suck, they can then say Republicans helped craft the bill.
It's their fault.
Now, all the political dynamics are moving against Democrats.
Democratic Representative Rob Menendez of New Jersey, he says that support for mass deportations has now doubled,
which of course is true because this is what happens when you decide to let in literally six to seven million
illegal immigrants over the course of the last three and a half years, minimum.
The new CNN pullout this morning, 31% of Americans support prioritizing mass deportations
of all people living in this country illegally.
That's up from 15% in 2019.
The language is tougher, from President Biden all the way on down.
Is that more about polling and politics, or do you believe it's actually language about policy?
I think it's a lot of the politics that have gone on the last several years.
People see the situation at the border and they're responding to the Republican narrative around what's happening at the border.
Listen, there is a global migration challenge between global climate change, between failed governments in our hemisphere.
There's a challenge that we have to address at the root cause and also how it's appearing at our border.
But when you look at what Republicans What Republicans talk about, when you talk about a mass invasion, like you hear Texas Republicans talking about, when you talk about things like replacement theory, these are things that have gained hold in our electorate because that's what Republicans are talking about.
Because they think it's, if they can come up with a conspiracy theory that's dangerous enough, that Americans will trust them.
So when you see the rise in support for mass deportations, it's in response to a dangerous Republican narrative.
Oh, it's the dangerous Republican narrative that's the problem.
Okay, not the gigantic wave of illegal immigration.
By the way, everyone knows who it is that's facilitating the illegal immigration.
We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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Perhaps the funniest media moment of the last 72 hours was CNN was talking to experts on immigration, and they were talking about the fact that some of the illegal immigrants who beat up cops last week actually would go and commit crimes in New York, and then they would go spend the money in Florida, and then they would come back to New York.
And so the question was asked by CNN anchors, why are they coming back to New York?
Why don't they just stay down in Florida?
And the illegal immigration expert, John Miller, who's the chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst for CNN, he says the reason they come back to New York is because they won't be deported if they're in New York.
And the CNN anchors are like, oh, oh, that's awkward.
These individuals, I went over their rap sheets yesterday, multiple charges, grand larceny, robbery, attempted robbery, grand larceny, grand larceny.
This particular crew operated on mopeds and scooters, they were doing organized retail theft, they were doing snatches on the street, iPhones, iPads, clothing, so on and so forth.
One of them that they are still seeking has ten charges on one day because he's part of a pattern that's been going on and I'm looking at the dates that their arrest started, which is probably close to when they got here.
They've only been here a couple of months.
So what the detectives are telling me is they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money, and then come back.
And I'm like, well, why don't they just stay and steal in Florida?
And they said, because there you go to jail.
Oh.
They're like, oh.
And then the teenager's like, oh, you mean being loose on immigration means that migrants take advantage of that?
No, that's totally crazy.
Oh, wow, that's super awkward.
Well, Hakeem Jeffries is, of course, attempting to get Republicans to take ownership of this.
The House Minority Leader, he wants the Republicans to take this up in the House because he realizes he'll get probably half of Republicans and all Democrats to vote in favor of this.
And so Jeffries was asked, why don't you just disaggregate what's in this bill?
So this giant border bill is not actually a border bill.
It contains about $60 billion in aid to Ukraine.
It contains $14 billion in aid to Israel.
It contains, as we will see, $3 billion in aid to Gaza, which presumably will go directly into terrorist pockets, because that's how it works when you send aid to places that are governed by terrorists.
And it gives money for the border, like $20 billion for various border priorities, including, by the way, a bunch of money to quote-unquote non-profit groups to facilitate illegal immigration services.
Now, we were down at the border, and let me just tell you, these non-profit groups are literally facilitating illegal immigration down at the border.
They have signs at the border saying, like, go this way to avoid border patrol.
Come over to us.
They basically are creating sanctuary pathways into the United States.
In any case, here is Hakeem Jeffries trying to make the claim that we need to pass all this as a package.
The reason he wants that, of course, is because the goal here is to get Republicans to sign off on a bad border bill so that they can't run on it in the 2024 election.
Here he was saying we need a comprehensive bill.
You saw the Speaker yesterday say that he's going to bring a stand-alone Israel bill to the floor of the House.
Your response?
Well, we'll evaluate that legislation over the next few days.
And then on Tuesday morning, House Democrats will meet as a caucus.
So you might be open to it?
to decide the way forward as it relates to America's national security priorities.
Clearly, we've got to support Israel's ability to defend itself against Hamas and to defeat Hamas.
We also need to make sure that we're doing everything possible to bring the hostages home, including American citizens, and to be able to surge humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians who are in harm's way in Gaza through no fault of their own.
Beyond that, we also have to address the national security priorities of the American people in other parts of the world.
First and foremost, certainly to support Ukraine's effort to push back against Russian aggression.
Also to support our allies in the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea.
The legislation being put forth by House Republicans does none of that.
The responsible approach is a comprehensive one to address America's national security priorities.
Of course, the opposite.
The actual responsible approach would be to approach each one of these bills as a separate giant bill.
These are big bills.
And in fact, that is something that Republicans are currently pursuing.
So Republicans, very early on in this process, tried to pass a $14 billion aid to Israel bill.
They did so by having IRS tax offsets.
The goal was to cut in one place in order to spend in another.
And that was a responsible bill, but Democrats rejected it.
And they did so on the basis that they didn't like the offsetting stuff.
So now the Republicans are like, OK, we'll call your bluff.
We will put forward a bill in the House that just passes the aid to Israel.
Reject that at your own peril, which seems to me smart politics, because, you know, again, if Democrats are going to claim that they actually support Israel in the face of genocidal terrorism, then presumably they should be able to do that without any preconditions.
Just pass the clean bill.
Just do it.
If Democrats won't, that suggests that perhaps they have another set of priorities.
Okay, so what exactly is in this border bill?
You're being told a pack of lies about this border bill.
You're being told, for example, that it ends catch and release.
I've read the bill.
It's like 370 pages long.
There's maybe 40 or 50 relevant pages.
A lot of it is about Ukraine aid.
A lot of it is about Crackdowns on drug cartels that are trafficking fentanyl and all the rest.
But the key border provisions do not, in fact, end catch and release.
There's nothing in there that, for example, requires detention of everybody until they can be fully adjudicated in a court.
And there is no building of giant facilities that would allow for the mass detention of people.
Plus, it also leaves in place the so-called Flores Settlement, which suggests that children cannot actively be detained with parents, which means the children get released into the country, and then in order to reconnect the parents, you actually end up releasing the parents into the country as well.
So.
We're going to go through some of the provisions in this bill.
The bill is not good.
The bill may be slightly better than the way that Joe Biden is currently practicing, but it certainly does not mandate anything from Joe Biden that he isn't already able to do under current law.
So let's go through it right now because, again, most of the people who are going to be commenting on the bill have not actually read the bill.
I spent this morning reading the bill.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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So, here's where it begins.
One, it first has $2.3 billion for refugee and entrance assistance activities.
Okay, that are currently legal.
That would be a $2.3 billion giveaway to many of the non-profit organizations that I was talking about.
And by the way, down at the border, some of these non-profit organizations are actively facilitating illegal immigration, not just people who cross the border and then they want to disappear into the interior.
And so these non-profits literally just bring them food, bring them water, shuttle them into the interior of the country.
And there have been pretty serious allegations that some of these non-profits are outright engaged in illegal activities, like helping to break down the border wall when border patrol isn't actually present.
There is about $3 billion for USAID in Gaza.
So as I said, it's not just aid for Israel, it's also aid for Gaza.
There's a provision in there that requires USAID to give a report to Congress about how much of that aid is being redirected and stolen by Hamas or other terrorist groups.
There's nothing there that mandates a cutoff in funds if a certain percentage of those funds end up being handled by terrorists.
It has $3.4 billion in hiring and associated costs for U.S.
citizenship and immigration services, including $112 million for non-personnel operations, including transcription services, so presumably for all the judicial hearings, and $500 million for facilities, and $49 million for training-related expenses.
What exactly would those training-related expenses be?
Well, for Border Patrol, they would have to be trained to include de-escalation strategies and methods, Identifying, screening, and responding to vulnerable populations.
The impact of border security operations on natural resources.
So we're going to get some environmentalist lectures to the Border Patrol.
And they have to be lectured on quote relevant cultural, societal, racial, and religious training.
So we have diversity training for the Border Patrol officers.
Very, very interesting stuff.
Now, the core of the border provisions of this bill This is the part where I read it and I said, I don't understand.
a sort of mandatory quote unquote shutdown, but they don't actually shut down
the shuttling into the country. They just shuttle everybody over to ports of entry.
So here is what it says, and a lot of this is the direct text of the bill. Section 235B
under the bill, quote, noncustodial proceedings. This is the part where I read it and I said,
I don't understand. I'm hearing from various senators, including Kyrsten Sinema,
that this ends catch and release.
I don't understand how.
Under Section 235B, quote, the secretary, based upon operational circumstances, may refer an alien
applicant for admission for proceedings described in the section if the alien indicates an intention
to apply for protection determination or expresses a credible fear of persecution or torture.
Okay, now again, these would be non-custodial proceedings.
As you may understand the language of English, custodial proceedings would be where you get
held.
Non-custodial proceedings are where you get released into the interior of the United States.
In fact, it says that clearly.
Aliens referred for proceedings under this section shall be released from physical custody, not may be released, shall be released from physical custody and processed in accordance with the procedures described in the section.
An adult alien, including a head of household who has been referred for a proceeding under this section, shall be supervised under the Alternatives to Detention Program of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately upon release from physical custody and continuing for the duration of such proceeding.
What would that amount to?
It could be house arrest.
It could be that we put an ankle bracelet on you.
It could be that we just release you into the interior and we're like, come back at a certain date.
The secretary shall ensure to the greatest extent practicable that the referral of a family unit for proceedings under this section includes all members of such family who are traveling together.
So if one person claims asylum, you're going to treat them all as if they've been claimed asylum, and then you're going to release them into the interior.
Again, none of this applies to unaccompanied minors.
If an alien receives a positive protection determination, they're immediately issued employment authorization.
So if they're adjudicated that they have refugee status, immediate, like before they leave the building, they get a card that effectively says they can work in the United States.
And of course, Reno versus Flores, which says that there can't be any family separations, that remains in place as well.
Now, section 3202 of the bill actually loosens The definition of what it means to claim asylum.
There's been some talk about the strengthening the definition of what it means to claim asylum.
We'll talk about that provision in one second.
But the baseline claim of asylum actually gets loosened here by definition.
Section 3202 says, you have to declare a credible fear, right?
The original definition that gets changed, it used to say that there had to be a significant possibility That the alien could establish eligibility for asylum.
Okay, that was changed to a reasonable possibility.
So now in order to claim asylum, you just have to show a reasonable possibility that you could establish eligibility for asylum.
So this bill actually loosens the definition of a credible fear.
It actually makes it easier to claim asylum, not harder.
Now, the alien does have to show, to receive actual asylum, that there are no reasonable grounds for concluding the alien could relocate to another location in the alien's country of nationality, or, in the case of an alien having no nationality, another location in the alien's country of last habitual residence.
What does that mean?
That means that if you travel up from Honduras to the United States, you have to show, number one, if you want actual legal asylum, you have to show that you couldn't have just relocated inside Honduras, and two, that you couldn't have relocated in Mexico as you were passing through Mexico.
That would be the definition of asylum.
But that doesn't solve the problem.
Because, of course, the vast majority of people who are claiming asylum are not doing so legally.
Even the definition of asylum is somewhat irrelevant if people are simply coming, claiming that they have a reasonable possibility of establishing asylum, and then released into the interior.
And all of this, of course, depends on the actual implementation.
Because if you have a bunch of Border Patrol officials who have been instructed by the administration to be really loose about how they apply these rules, it doesn't matter what the law says.
They will just allow people through.
And then those people will never show up again.
So, people who are saying this is a strict border bill are focusing in on the redefinition of reasonable grounds Right, so that if you actually claim asylum and then you show up for your secondary date, or you show up and you say, I have a credible fear of returning to my home country, that you have to make a reasonable showing, not a, again, a significant possibility, a reasonable possibility that you can't relocate in your country of origin, or that you can't stay in Mexico.
You know, all you would have to say, presumably, is, I can't stay in my country of origin because I have a credible fear that in my country of origin, anywhere I go, they'll track me down and kill me.
How exactly are you going to adjudicate that?
Is the asylum officer going to say, I don't believe you?
How does that work?
And if you say, okay, well, you could theoretically stay in Mexico, and they say, no, no, no, the drug cartel is going to follow me to Mexico.
Is that enough?
Or are we just shifting around definitions so that people can continue to escape into the interior?
Bottom line is this.
If you want to shut the border, you need to do one of two things or both.
One, remain in Mexico.
No one crosses the border until they have been effectively adjudicated as a true refugee.
You stay in Mexico until you get your court date.
That's what Donald Trump had in place, and Joe Biden abrogated it.
Two, if you show up on the border, and we're not going to remain in Mexico, we have vast detention facilities, and you stay in the detention facilities until you are admitted or ejected.
But so long as we are not doing either of those first two, the definition of asylum becomes almost irrelevant.
And herein lies the problem.
We're gonna get to the quote-unquote emergency provisions of the bill that people are hanging their hats on to claim this is strong on the border in one second.
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Okay, meanwhile.
The other element of this border bill, this so-called border security bill, that is supposed to make conservatives feel more comfortable, is what's called Border Emergency Authority.
So, here is how the system works.
And you're hearing a lot about this particular system in the media today.
So, I'm going to actually read you the sections from the bill that are relevant, so you know exactly what's going on.
First, the Secretary, this is of Homeland Security, may activate the Border Emergency Authority if, during a period of seven consecutive days, there's an average of 4,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.
Okay, so just to get that straight, you're talking about a seven-day period in which you average 4,000 border encounters a day.
That, by the way, is actually an undercount because, as we'll discuss in one second, the way that you actually do the border count does not apply to children from non-contiguous countries, i.e., Mexico or Canada.
So, that border count does not include kids who are arriving from Honduras or El Salvador, for example.
It does not apply to aliens not from Mexico or Canada, and it doesn't count gataways.
So people who simply rush across the border and we don't actually arrest them at the border, the border patrol doesn't actually encounter them, that doesn't count.
So if you have a thousand people, two thousand people, who are entering between ports of entry, and they are just escaping into the interior, and we know they're there because we have cameras all along the border.
I've been down to the southern border, as you can see over at Daily Wire, we did a whole documentary on this.
Those people don't count toward the count.
So, this is a wild undercount, but if you're at 4,000 a day, right, which, again, is going to amount to, over the course of a year, 1.46 million people entering the country.
If you're at 4,000 a day, then the Secretary is allowed to activate this Border Emergency Authority.
The Secretary must activate the Border Emergency Authority if, during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, there's an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered every day.
That would be 1.825 million people per year.
So that is the cutoff point where the Secretary must activate emergency authority.
What does that mean, that emergency authority?
Well, right now, if you arrive at, say, the San Miguel Gate, which is where I was in that video down in Arizona, that is not a port of entry.
If you arrive at the port of entry, Border Patrol will still pick you up and there's like a detention center a mile away.
You're processed within 72 hours you're in the country.
The Border Emergency Authority would allow the Secretary of Homeland Security, if there are 4,000, and mandate that the Secretary of Homeland Security, if there are 5,000, tell everybody you can't be processed here.
You have to be processed at a local point of entry.
You have to go to a port of entry in order to be processed.
Now, it's unclear whether if you show up at the border, Border Patrol simply drives you there.
Maybe.
Maybe that now you're on American soil?
Are you pushed back across the border?
They just drop you back across the other side of the gate?
Or do they now put you in a bus, and instead of them busing you like a mile away, they simply bus you to the local port of entry?
When it comes to the port of entry, during any activation of the Border Emergency Authority, the Secretary shall maintain the capacity to process and continue processing a minimum of 1,400 inadmissible aliens each calendar day.
So he can't shut down the ports of entry.
He has to actually continue, at a minimum, to allow 1,400 people a day into the country via these ports of entry.
Does that solve the problem somehow?
I'm failing to see how it does, if so.
And then, as it turns out, they poke a bunch of holes in this supposed emergency authority.
So, for example, the Secretary shall not activate the Border Emergency Authority during the first calendar year for more than 270 calendar days, during the second calendar year for more than 225 calendar days, during the third calendar year for more than 180 calendar days.
So even if they're getting 15,000 people a day, In year two, you can only activate it for 225 days.
During year three, for 180 calendar days.
So half the year, it simply doesn't apply.
There's no way to actually maintain this.
It's not like an open-ended border authority to shut it down if you have 5,000 a day.
Even today, that only applies for 270 calendar days.
So why precisely... Let's say that you're the drug cartels.
Why not facilitate?
These people won't be processed, right?
They're not processed.
Because it'll literally stop from processing if the border security... if it's shut and if the ports of entry can't process everybody.
So let's say you're the drug cartels.
Why not now bring 10,000 people a day Do it.
For 270 days.
And they can do this.
Just do it.
Every day.
5,000, 6,000 people a day.
They get rejected for 270 days.
Now it's exhausted the border authority.
Now he can't use his emergency authority anymore.
So he still has to process everybody who shows up.
Or keep it at 5,001.
And if you keep it at 5,001 for 270 straight days, then on day 271 of the year, you flood the border with 20,000 people.
The drug cartels are capable of doing this.
They run the border.
I've been down at the border.
They have literal drug cartel drones that are flying over the American side of the border and monitoring every specific border patrol agent.
According to this bill, the Secretary shall suspend activation of the Border Emergency Authority not later than 14 calendar days after the date on which there is, during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, an average of less than 75% of the encounter level used for activation.
So, in other words, the Border Emergency Authority has to be then revoked within 14 days of the number going down to 1,250 border encounters per day.
That is by law.
What's more, there's another hole that's poked in this, which is, if the President finds it is in the national interest to temporarily suspend the Border Emergency Authority, the President may direct the Secretary to suspend the use of the Border Emergency Authority on an emergency basis.
So Joe Biden, let's say that Mayorkas is mandated, there are 5,000 a day for 7 days, he's mandated to kick in the Emergency Authority.
Biden can suspend it.
Biden can say, nah, don't want you to do it.
Now, the Secretary shall suspend the Border Emergency Authority for not more than 45 calendar days within a calendar year, notwithstanding any limitations on the use of authority.
So, that means that the Secretary can then overrule the President after 45 days.
So when you talk about 270 days, what you really mean is if the President uses his authority, you're already down to 225 days.
In year two, you are already down to 180 days.
And in year three, you're already down to 135 days that Border Emergency Authority could even be used even if they wanted to.
Oh, by the way, all border cases, all cases under this bill can now no longer be resolved by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is a much more conservative circuit court.
Instead, it kicks all of them over to the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals.
Why?
You know why.
Because the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals is a left-wing court, and so they will do exactly what Democrats want them to do.
Does this thing shut the border in any serious way?
There are a lot of people claiming this is a very harsh border control method.
It doesn't mandate nearly anything.
The thing that it mandates is not an end to catch and release.
The thing that it mandates is not, in fact, a lower... I mean, it basically makes the new supposed cap $1.8 million, and it really is not $1.8 million.
It's well in excess of $2 million.
It doesn't count any of the gotaways.
Basically, the new normal is 1.8 million.
People are saying, well, you know, but that's a shall.
That's where the Secretary of Homeland Security must do the thing.
But he can do it under, yes, but are you gonna rely on Secretary Mayorkas to kick this thing in at 4,999?
I'm not.
I see no evidence that he will.
More than that, he can poke holes in this every which way.
The goal here for Democrats is very clear.
Get Republicans to sign onto the bill so they can then claim that anything that happens after this is somehow also Republicans' fault.
That's the goal.
And does it create any long-standing serious changes to the system?
The only long-standing serious change to the system that would be a positive, and it would, would be the changes to the actual standard for asylum.
That would actually be a good change to the system.
But is that worth buying into Joe Biden simply applying the law as he sees fit here anyway?
Again, political ownership of the issue versus a change to law.
Joe Biden is bucking the law as it currently stands.
He has an affirmative obligation as President of the United States to enforce border law.
He is not doing it.
Passing more law is not going to change that fact.
It's simply going to make Republicans politically complicit in whatever Joe Biden does with the border.
Okay, so the reason that Joe Biden is doing all this is because he feels the threat from his left.
He feels the threat.
So he's trying to basically have the baby with this border bill that's going nowhere.
By the way, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson says this thing isn't even coming up for a vote.
Steve Scalise is like, no, we're not even bringing this up for a vote.
It's a bad bill.
We're not doing it.
The reason that Joe Biden is pushing so far to the left on things like immigration is because he truly believes the only way he's going to win is to get out the left-wing base.
This is a wrong calculation by him.
The way that he's going to win, if he does win, is by winning a few rural white votes and winning over suburban women.
That's the actual way that he wins.
The problem for Joe Biden is that he's a bad candidate.
Joe Biden yesterday, he suggests this is the weirdest race that he has ever been in.
Well, yeah, I know.
Join the club, dude.
But look, I'm feeling good about where we are.
I really am.
You know, folks are starting to focus in.
And the guy we're running against, he's not for anything.
He's against everything.
No, I mean, it's the weirdest campaign I've ever been engaged in.
It's even worse in terms of his behavior than the last time in 2020.
Um, so, um, this is this is the weirdest race he's ever been in.
I mean, I'll give him that.
This is a super weird race.
But Donald Trump is, by the way, up right now.
I mean, the polls are what the polls are.
And again, Donald Trump's sort of like weird, distractible nature is one of the reasons that I think people at this point are like, OK, I like the distracted guy rather than the guy who's laser focused on doing dumb crap.
I mean, Donald Trump spent the weekend Actively telling people that he looks like Elvis Presley.
I'm not kidding.
He actively did that.
He went on his Truth Social page and he put out an actual image of himself in which he is mashed up with Elvis.
And he says, some people have been telling me I look like Elvis.
And most Americans are like, okay fine, I'd still rather have that than what we have currently.
MSNBC did a very uncomfortable interview with a black voter, where the black voter was like, uh, the economy is good under Trump, and I don't like the economy right now, so, uh, no.
You're hearing that, too, that there are some people in your orbit who are either voting for Donald Trump or considering it?
For sure.
A lot of my friends are, obviously, my age, so we're a little younger.
We've only voted once, you know, for a president, and Trump is kinda all we know, and they're kinda, Trump and Biden, they're like, well, We were broke with Biden.
We weren't with Trump.
And that's kind of the only thing that I'm hearing over and over again, over and over again, is that with Trump, we had money.
By the way, many of the issues that have been raised against Donald Trump, including the classified documents stuff, the problem is that Joe Biden has done the same sort of stuff.
According to Axios, President Biden's team is now concerned that special counsel Robert Herr's investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents will hurt his re-elect campaign.
Biden aides don't expect criminal charges, but they believe that Herr's report will include embarrassing details, possibly with photos, on how Biden stored documents.
Because, again, classified documents were in his garage and also in a private office that he used.
So if the entire rip on Donald Trump is that he was very careless with classified documents because he put boxes on the stage at Mar-a-Lago, well, I mean, that's awkward for Joe Biden.
According to Axios, Anthony Coley, a former senior advisor to Merrick Garland, caught the Biden's team attention recently when he wrote that Biden and those in his orbit had no one to blame but themselves for Garland appointing a special counsel.
Coley said Biden's team was not initially transparent about the documents and put Garland in a no-win situation.
So this could certainly hurt.
Joe Biden's real life campaign, because again, one of the points he's using against Trump is he's irresponsible.
The adults are back in the room and then it turns out he's done a lot of the same stuff that Donald Trump has done.
And this is why he keeps doubling down on the on the wild left wing policy.
So he is now pandering.
To.
The worst parts of his base.
A piece that received enormous blowback over the weekend, but happens to be true, is by a person named Stephen Stilinski over at the Wall Street Journal talking about Dearborn, Michigan.
So the Biden team has now been deploying its resources to Dearborn, Michigan to try to win over Arab-American voters in Dearborn.
Dearborn, of course, is part of the congressional district of Rashida Tlaib, which tells you where they are politically.
A lot of people who are very pro-terror in that particular region of Michigan.
And this piece is titled, Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital.
And this, of course, receives all... How could you say...
Here's what the piece says, quote, thousands march in support of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
Protesters, many with keffiyehs covering their faces, shout intifada, intifada.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free and America is a terrorist state.
Local imams give fiery anti-Semitic sermons.
This isn't the Middle East.
It's the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan.
Almost immediately after October 7th, long before Israel began its ground offensive in Gaza, people were celebrating the horrific events of that day in pro-Hamas rallies and marches throughout Dearborn.
Local enthusiasm for Jihad against Israel and the West extends beyond celebration of Hamas.
The Islamic Center of America, a leading Dearborn mosque, held a memorial service December 30th for a Hezbollah operative killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The Hadi Institute, which runs an Islamic matessori school and bills itself as a youth community center, held a commemoration of the martyrs on January 5th, honoring Qasem Soleimani.
And Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, leader of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.
Both were terrorists when they were killed in a U.S.
airstrike January 3, 2020.
Support for terrorism in Southern Michigan has long been a concern for U.S.
counterterrorism officials.
A 2001 Michigan State Police assessment submitted to the Justice Department after 9-11 called Dearborn a major financial support center and a recruiting area and potential support base for international terror groups.
So who exactly is Joe Biden pandering to?
The answer is a lot of the people in Dearborn, Michigan, because he believes that if he doesn't get their votes, he's going to lose Michigan and therefore lose the election.
And all he needs is cover from the media, which he is getting.
The entire New York Times now dedicated to the proposition that the crisis in the Middle East was not caused by Hamas actively attacking and murdering some 1,200 Jews.
And kidnapping 240 others.
That the Christ in the Middle East is Israel fighting back against Hamas.
And so literally every day they're just plastering on the front pages the suffering of the poor people of Gaza.
All of which, by the way, could be ended right now.
All Hamas has to do is walk out of the tunnels with their hands up and with the hostages in tow, release the hostages, go into exile, and all of the violence stops tomorrow.
That's the end of the violence.
And then we're in rebuilding phase.
But the New York Times is not calling for that.
They want Israel to agree to a ceasefire leaving Hamas in place.
Leaving them alive.
Which is insane.
Which is why the New York Times is putting out pieces about suffering in Gaza with all sorts of the pictures and the hospitals and all the rest of this sort of stuff.
Again, the people responsible for this are Hamas.
All this is terrible.
I wish it weren't happening.
You know who else wishes it weren't happening?
The Israeli population.
The Israeli government.
You know how I know that?
Because they weren't doing this from 2005 to 2023.
None of these pictures were available in 2005 to 2023.
Why?
Because there wasn't a mass bombardment of military areas of Gaza.
Because Gaza, despite the fact that they were in fact Hamas was firing rockets into Israel, had not slaughtered 1,200 Jews.
Meanwhile, Nicholas Kristof doing his usual routine.
What can we possibly say to the children of Gaza?
That's literally the title of a piece from the excribable Nick Kristof over at the New York Times.
What can we possibly say to the children of Gaza?
I mean, the thing that you can say to the children of Gaza is maybe your parents should not have supported a terror group, and maybe your parents right now should expel that terror group from their leadership.
Maybe that would be the solution.
Nick Kristof says, my government is on the side engaged in what President Biden has referred to as indiscriminate bombing.
This is not the same as deliberately targeting civilians, but this time, as a taxpayer, I'm helping to pay for those bombs.
No, you've been paying for bombs of indiscriminate bombing for a while because you've been sending aid.
As an American taxpayer, I have too.
We've been sending aid to the Gaza Strip via Hamas and all that aid went to building terror tunnels and rockets.
So we've been paying actually for truly indiscriminate bombing for quite a while.
But this, of course, is the idea here is that Israel is supposed to essentially preemptively stop its war against Hamas.
Which, of course, is ridiculous.
So the Democratic Party is caught between a rock and a hard place, because on the one hand, there are still some Democrats who realize that, hey, Hamas should be defeated.
On the other hand, they are wedded to this peculiar idea that unless Israel is forced into concessions to terrorists, the Middle Eastern conflict becomes more broad and inevitable, which, of course, is a lie.
It's a lie.
You know what creates Middle Eastern conflict?
Weakness.
As always, perceptions of weakness are death in the Middle East.
And it's the United States attempting to make Israel weaker by restricting their activities against Gaza.
That is the entire thing.
You cannot hold these two thoughts at once.
You cannot say that you wish terrorism to lose and also that you wish Israel to negotiate with terrorists.
You can't do those two things.
But that's exactly what the Biden administration is doing.
So on the one hand, you have Hakeem Jeffries correctly saying that the United States should not put conditions on allies defending themselves.
That's correct.
How about on the aid to Israel?
Several members, progressive members of your caucus have said that they want some conditions now on aid to Israel, including your fellow New York Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
What do you say to them?
Well, Israel has a right to defend itself and also, of course, a responsibility to conduct its war in a manner consistent with the international rules of conflict.
We shouldn't put conditions on the ability of any of our allies to defend themselves, particularly against a brutal, terrorist regime like Hamas.
He is right about that, but at the same time, you have Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, saying, we need a two-state solution.
And they keep saying this over and over, as though you can just wish-cast states into existence, which is totally crazy.
With whom?
With whom?
There's no government that ought to be a government of any self-respecting state.
There is no de-radicalized population.
The de-radicalized population in places like the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is like 20% of the population maximum.
Maximum.
What the hell is he talking about?
Do you see any prospect at all, he seems to have been ruling it out, Prime Minister Netanyahu, of some kind of a long-term deal that leads to a Palestinian state?
Well, the U.S.
position on this is very straightforward.
The only long-term answer to peace in the region, to Israel's security in the region, is a two-state solution with Israel's security guaranteed.
A Palestinian state that also has security guarantees for Israel.
That's what we're going to keep working for.
We were doing that before October 7th.
I think since October 7th, the need to work on that has only increased, and we would like to deliver an outcome over time.
That's so crazy!
That's so crazy.
I'm sorry.
That's so crazy.
We can stop him there.
That's so nuts.
When he says that since October 7th, we need to give more concessions to the people who actively did the terror attack.
That is preemptive surrender.
That's crazy.
It's like Al Qaeda attacks the United States on 9-11.
And the U.S.
government immediately says, what can we do for you, Osama?
Like, what are your demands?
You want our bases out of Saudi?
Okay.
You know what?
Maybe we can do that.
We need to accelerate that.
We need to make that happen.
For you.
Like, this is... What in the actual... What in the... And the answer is because they don't actually have a plan in the Middle East.
They don't.
Their plan in the Middle East is to futz around nonsensically because they do not understand the Middle East in any real way, shape, or form.
And what that amounts to is randomly lashing out at empty buildings and occasionally hitting a camel in the ass, yelling at the Israelis that they probably should kill fewer Hamas members, or that urban war is really bad and war is bad.
Yeah, everyone knows.
And then making weird concession signals to Iran.
Like, this is their actual plan.
Dana Bash called Jake Sullivan on this.
She's like, you know, you keep saying that you don't want to enter into a regional conflict.
Isn't this already a regional conflict?
Iran's terror arms extend to Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen.
Like, they're all over the place.
Just yesterday, the U.S.
and U.K.
responded to Houthi rebels in Yemen.
They're engaging in routine attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
There are near daily strikes between Israel and Hezbollah, and much of this is rooted in the war between Israel and Hamas.
My colleague, Peter Bergen, smartly pointed out that this conflict involves ten countries, at least, four major terrorist groups.
So, isn't this already a regional conflict?
Well, Dana, what I would say is that these are distinct but related challenges.
For example, what's happening in the Red Sea is obviously, to a certain extent, triggered by what's happening in Gaza, but it's not the same thing.
The Houthis aren't just hitting ships related to Israel, they're hitting a lot of different ships from a lot of different countries.
And so we are trying to deal with the challenge to freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.
That is a distinct challenge.
It's always fun when they pretend that it's a distinct challenge when the same exact group is sponsoring all of this, namely the government of Iran.
But again, refusal to acknowledge reality ends in more conflict and ends in more war and it ends in more death.
Okay, in just a second, we are going to get to Tucker Carlson.
He is going to Russia to interview Vladimir Putin.
We'll talk about that.
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