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Feb. 8, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show

48:08

When In Trouble, Cry Racism

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	Well, folks, we have now reached the point in American life where, in our racially divided society, there is a quick get-out-of-jail-free card.
	So long as you are a member of an intersectional group, if you've done something wrong, if you are accused of corruption, if you are accused of some sort of malfeasance, the get-out-of-jail-free card is, you're attacking me because I'm black.
	And this has significant Ramifications for American public life.
	Because the simple fact of the matter is that in a meritocracy, we should be able to point out when you are corrupt, when you have failed.
	And if every defense to failure is that the system itself is biased against you, well that means that you're going to get more failure system-wide.
	This is true everywhere from politics to administration.
	It's true everywhere from the business world to the educational world.
	If, when Claudine Gay gets fired from Harvard University, the basic idea is that it must be a racist system that got her fired, there's no way to hold people accountable if they are of minority race.
	If, for example, you're a politician, and it turns out that you're deeply corrupt, and your first move is to claim that America is racist, and that's why you're being targeted, and if that's believed, then there's no way to get rid of corrupt officials so long as they are of minority status.
	And once that standard is created, Once the basic idea is that certain people in our society have that get-out-of-jail-free card and others do not, then all standards collapse because a double standard is no standard at all.
	The latest iteration of this particular foolish defense, divisive defense, comes courtesy of a person named Tiffany Henyard.
	You might not have heard of Tiffany Henyard, but this is a burgeoning story about a small-town mayor who's been alleged to have engaged in significant corruption on a vast scale.
	According to the UK Daily Mail, the first female mayor of a tiny Illinois village has been slammed for, quote, living like a royal at taxpayer expense by taking a $300,000 salary and racking up huge expenses.
	Glamorous Tiffany Henyard was elected leader of Dalton.
	It's a village of 20,000 people in 2021.
	She has since come under fire for what many see as her excessive spending.
	She regularly engages the services of a professional hair and makeup team and stylist before public appearances and photo shoots for the county's taxpayer-funded billboards.
	Those often feature her in what some people say is shameless self-promotion.
	She also attempted to propose a new law that would cap the next mayor's salary at $25,000 unless the next mayor is her, in which case she gets to keep her gigantic salary.
	This has been deemed illegal by many people.
	That is just the latest scandal to hit her.
	She was slammed for hiring her former campaign worker as the town's code enforcement officer, despite the fact that he is a convicted child rapist.
	She also raised eyebrows after spending hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on security details, including one for an event with senior citizens and another occasion where she pulled cops off the street to perform a protection outfit for her.
	She also racked up a trip to Las Vegas where she spent some $3,000 on airfare.
	And so she is now being investigated for all of this.
	And here is her defense, a defense that has become the all-purpose defense for an enormous number of people in our post-George Floyd society.
	Here she was yesterday talking about her alleged corruption and the reasons why she's being targeted.
	Y'all should be ashamed of y'allself.
	Y'all are black.
	Y'all are black.
	And y'all sitting up here beating and attacking on a black woman that's in power.
	Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves.
	Again, the basic idea here is that even if a black person is asking this particular mayor about her corruption, it must be because they're a race traitor of some sort.
	Again, if basic standards of meritocracy and decency are to be put aside in favor of claims that any critique is rooted in race, that means there can't be any meritocracy anymore, which of course is the basic idea that social justice can only be established by getting rid of baseline standards of competency.
	And again, we see this across the board in the United States in a wide variety of places.
	Just yesterday, we played a clip of Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago being questioned over his handling of the huge migrant crisis that has hit the city of Chicago, along with the crime crisis, along with the issues of economic problems in the city.
	And his answer was, I'm a black man with a black wife and black kids.
	How dare you attack me?
	This mentality is actually horrifyingly bad for the country.
	Here was Brandon Johnson just a couple of days ago.
	I have children who attend schools who have soccer games, y'all.
	You know, you all are asking me as if I'm not a parent in this city.
	I get it, I'm mayor.
	I get it.
	But you're asking me to give you a date, and I have to court... Do you understand that you have not had a mayor like me?
	I get that.
	I have a wife, I have children, they have schedules.
	And plus, we still have public safety debt we have to address.
	We still have the unhoused that we have to address.
	I still have a budget that I have to address.
	And I'm doing all of that with a black wife raising three black children on the west side of the city of Chicago.
	I am going to the border as soon as possible.
	What does the race of his wife and his children have to do with anything?
	The answer is you can't critique me because he is citing his race.
	Of course, he is following the footsteps of Lori Lightfoot, who was recently ousted as mayor of Chicago after one short term because she was a terrible mayor, but she also happened to be a black lesbian, and therefore, she also claimed that she had been ousted not because she was terrible at her job, but because she was black.
	When asked after the election if she had lost because of her race in a city like Chicago, which is heavily minority, she said, I'm a black woman in America, of course.
	She had said in an interview with the New Yorker prior to the election, quote, I'm a black woman, let's not forget.
	Certain folks, frankly, don't support us in leadership roles.
	The same forces that didn't want Harold Washington to succeed, they're still here.
	That's referring to these cities.
	First, black mayor.
	And this sort of excuse making is a way of lowering standards of performance for everyone.
	We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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	And again, we see it across the board.
	Fannie Willis, who's the DA who's currently going after Donald Trump in Atlanta.
	And by all accounts, doing a pretty terrible job of it.
	A person who apparently hired her lover as a prosecutor despite his lack of prosecutorial experience, and did it using taxpayer dollars, and then took cruises with this guy, and now is admitting to being in a sexual relationship with the person she hired with taxpayer dollars as a prosecutor with no prosecutorial background, she's doing the same routine.
	All the critiques of her must, of course, be based on race.
	Here was Fannie Willis, not all that long ago, talking about how racism was behind all the accusations targeting her.
	I appointed three special counselors.
	Is my right to do?
	Paid them all the same hourly rate?
	They only attacked one.
	Isn't it them playing the race card when they constantly think, I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I've been doing almost 30 years.
	Why am I surprised that a diverse team that I assembled, your child, can accomplish extraordinary things?
	How come, God, the same black man I hired was acceptable when a Republican in another county hired him and paid him twice the rate?
	Why is the white male Republican's judgment good enough, but the black female Democrat's not?
	Well, I mean, because the white male Republican wasn't f***ing the guy.
	That would be the answer to that particular question.
	I assume.
	But again, the answer to every question about impropriety is now race in America, so long as you are able to play that card.
	And it's a dangerous card to play.
	It undermines standards of stability and decency and performance in literally every industry.
	This is why you see people ranging from Bill Ackman to Elon Musk going after diversity, equity, and inclusion.
	Let's be very frank about this.
	Affirmative action, as a practice, is a zero-sum game.
	Meritocracy is the only form of measurement of performance that is not a zero-sum game because it creates positive externalities.
	Externalities are the consequences that accrue to outside people that are not involved in a transaction.
	So, you and I, we have a transaction.
	The transaction presumably benefits both of us, but If we live in a meritocracy, and I'm good at my job and you're good at your job, and then we exchange goods and services, then presumably there are positive externalities to people who are not us.
	I'm good at my job, which means I'm highly productive.
	You're good at your job.
	You're highly productive.
	And now we produce products at a cheaper and better rate for people outside of that particular situation.
	That is the beauty of the meritocracy is that it benefits everyone.
	Merit helps everyone.
	When the best people do the best job at the best time for the best price, that is great for everyone.
	However, when you instead are stacking employment, for example, on the basis of race, you are taking people who are less meritorious and you are forcing the public to essentially pay a subsidy to employ that person.
	That is the problem with DEI.
	Not just that it's discriminatory, but that it costs everyone.
	Now you can make the argument that since the costs are diffuse, meaning that they accrue to a huge variety of citizens, and the benefits are incredibly acute, meaning they accrue to one person who gets to benefit off of this, no big deal.
	But the problem is when you keep doing that over and over and over again, the costs to the society start to grow and grow and grow again.
	And that's what you're starting to see in agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration.
	So my friend and colleague Matt Walsh, He released a Twitter thread today talking about internal footage of senior officials at the FAA's Flight Program Operations Division, which he says is responsible for all aspects of aircraft operations, workshopping a plan to reduce the number of white males in aviation.
	Now, why would that be a useful thing?
	You want to talk about a situation where you need positive externalities?
	How about being good at your job when you are directing aircraft how to land, for example?
	And putting a less qualified person in place Well, there, the costs are not diffused.
	There, the costs are incredibly acute.
	If you're on the plane that gets misdirected into the ground because a less qualified person for any reason is put into a particular position, then the costs really, really are high for you.
	When you're talking about high-cost industries like, for example, aviation, you need a meritocracy even more than you would in, say, a low-cost industry like stocking a grocery shelf or something.
	Well, Matt got footage of the FAA Acting Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Angela McCullough, saying that more workers need to go from ramp to cockpit, meaning she wants to see more baggage handlers become airline pilots.
	And then, as the meeting continues, she declares it's important to, quote, get a little uncomfortable.
	Get a little uncomfortable is always, quote, is always a euphemism for, I'm going to say something super racist right now, but if you're white, just take it on the chin and accept it.
	She apparently complains that flight operations is, quote, white male dominated and tells the managers that, quote, need to talk about what the future could look like Here she was.
	Yeah, we need to be willing to have a conversation about kind of what's standing in our way from approaching some of these things, um, uh, differently than we have historically approached them.
	And just even the internal bias, I mean, particularly in flight ops, if this—your whole program is very heavily male-dominated.
	Well, male-dominated.
	It just is.
	And really, it is white male-dominated.
	Oh, white male.
	Even worse.
	You know what I mean?
	Let's just say what it is.
	And so let's be willing—that is today.
	I don't care about the representational level of the Federal Aviation Administration.
	That's absurd!
	if you really had this program that was representative of the whole country, right?
	Of the whole world.
	I just have a question.
	A representative, I don't care about the representational level of the Federal Aviation Administration.
	It's absurd.
	Why should I possibly care about whether the demographic of the FAA is representative in any way
	of the broader demographic?
	Do we have to have like a heavy share of Hispanic females in order for the FAA to be good at its job?
	I mean, first of all, you have a huge selection bias problem.
	I'd love to see what the applicant pool looks like for the FAA.
	I promise you, it's male-dominated.
	Just start with that.
	But beyond that, what in the hell is she talking about?
	Why in the world would I?
	If you're talking about a job where your personal life experience means literally nothing, making sure a plane goes where it is supposed to go is not one where it's like, well, I grew up in a diverse neighborhood and I had a bunch of friends of diverse backgrounds, and that's really informed how I do my job as a person who makes sure the plane lands on time where it's supposed to land.
	That's the dumbest thing I ever heard.
	You're not even talking about like English literature or something subjective like that.
	You're talking about making a plane land in a place without hitting another plane.
	That's what you're talking about.
	I don't care if you grow up poor or rich.
	You have one job and one job only.
	And all I care about is that you're good at that job.
	I don't care about any of the other things.
	But as Matt points out, this actually is a problem in aviation.
	Just as it would be in any other job, when you lower the standards for the job so as to achieve a quote-unquote diverse workforce, what you are actively doing is making the employment base worse at their job.
	That is what it is.
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	As Matt points out, he apparently got information from another source, a pilot who works at Delta.
	Matt says that this pilot says that Delta has recently promoted a trans-identifying pilot who repeatedly received bad reviews from captains.
	According to the source, this pilot quote, would likely not have survived probation if he were not trans.
	The source also notes that Delta routinely makes exceptions for trans-identifying pilots concerning grooming and behavioral standards.
	Internally, Delta has even published a lengthy guide for pilots who believe they were born in the wrong body.
	It is titled, Helpful Steps for Transitioning at Delta, and shows a person carrying a Pride Progress flag in front of a Delta plane.
	Matt says this industry-wide embrace of overt mental illness deflects every aspect of aviation.
	Another source told me his job is to design advanced military systems, but he's constantly sidetracked by DEI proposals like gender-inclusive seatbelts.
	This is a quote from the person, quote, For context, I work in a field where my job is to design military systems for the warfighter, and I have to deal with new hires pitching me ideas about gender-inclusive seatbelts.
	Companies are made up of two types of individuals, those who eat, sleep, and breathe, DEI, ESG, the people who put the pronoun in their email signature, and those who keep their mouths shut and do the work.
	We have affirmation groups, protections, and heritage months for every single type of person except white men.
	If I don't have at least two DEI, ESG meetings or trainings per week on my calendar, then the all-hands town hall meetings have some sort of DEI baked into the agenda.
	Several sources have also informed Matt about something, it's an FAA program, it's called E-FAST, which prioritizes quote, Indian tribal owned corporations and socially and economically disadvantaged businesses for billions of dollars in critical grant funding.
	I mean, again, bottom line here is competence and meritocracy are good for everyone.
	And the predictable result of all this, by the way, in the employment market is it actually makes it harder for private employers to employ people who are qualified of minority groups.
	Because when you as an employer are deciding, and we here at Daily Wire obviously abide by all federal laws and regulations.
	I have to say that because otherwise the NLRB sends me an angry note for using my free speech.
	They've done it before.
	We abide by all federal and state and local regulations and laws.
	Okay, we've said it.
	Now, here is the reality about hiring in the United States as a broad trend.
	As a broad trend, when you consider whether to hire somebody, one of the things you are considering is the possibility of liability down the line.
	Legal liability down the line.
	And the more we create a system in which we say that if you're a member of an intersectional group, Not only am I supposed to hire you if you are less meritorious than the white guy next to you, but also if I decide that you're not good at the job and I fire you, I now may face a discrimination lawsuit.
	Why would I hire you in the first place?
	It actually makes it less likely that a qualified minority candidate will get the job because of the risk of liability that is now attached.
	All of this is devastating to American public life, especially because it also results in a misread of situations.
	When someone is incompetent and they happen to be a minority, it makes it easy for people to actually say, oh, it must be they're incompetent because they're a minority.
	When that isn't true, incompetence exists all over the spectrum.
	The beauty, again, of a meritocracy is if somebody doesn't make the standard, it's clear they didn't make the standard because they didn't make the standard because we all know what the standard is.
	But if the standard no longer applies and you're being hired based on your race or based on your ability to do as these mayors are doing and simply blame the man for your own problems, when that happens and then the person fails, Then it's easy for people to misattribute that to race as opposed to properly attributing it to the general sinfulness and failure of mankind.
	All this stuff is deep and it's dark and it's a huge problem for the United States of America.
	It's why DEI has to go.
	DEI is terrible for the United States.
	And every vestige of this argument that incompetence can be covered for by claims about American racism, that crime rates can be covered for by claims about American racism, that educational underperformance Okay, meanwhile, the media are doing their best to go after their presumed opponent.
	Insane story from NBC News targeting another one of my friends, Chaya Raychik.
	the ability of smart, capable people of all races to get ahead and make the world a better place
	for everyone who surrounds them, the entire society writ large.
	Okay, meanwhile, the media are doing their best to go after their presumed opponents.
	Insane story from NBC News targeting another one of my friends, Chaya Raychik.
	She's the creator of Libs of TikTok.
	The rip on Chaya apparently is that because she is posting true stories,
	there are a bunch of people who read her stories and then they send death threats.
	This is not called a news story.
	It's not.
	It is not.
	If I cover the news, and then, because I have a very large audience, there are some nuts who go and do nuts things, that is not my fault!
	That is the fault of the nuts.
	And yet that is presumably what NBC News is basically saying, that we need to shut down free speech in order, presumably, to prevent crazy people from doing crazy things.
	They have an entire piece from NBC News titled, after libs of TikTok posted, at least 21 bomb threats followed.
	Now, many of these bomb threats turn out to be hoaxes.
	It's unclear who even sent many of these bomb threats.
	Some of these people may not even be followers of Chaya.
	But the goal here is to suggest that social media ought to shut her down based on the activities of her followers.
	Now, this is a super dangerous precedent.
	And it's amazing that a free press is attempting to push that forward.
	The free press of all people in America should be really careful about what they wish for here.
	If we are talking about the idea that bad coverage of issues is now to blame for the bad actions of people who cover those issues, then the media is going to have a lot to answer for in America.
	It is perfectly easy to say the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020 can be laid almost entirely at the feet of the American media, if that's the case.
	That's a really easy argument to make.
	But they're going after Chaya because, again, this is what the media do.
	The media have decided that freedom of the press only applies to people who agree with them.
	So according to NBC News, Raychick is not accused of making any bomb threats in Iowa or anywhere else, which means that it's not a story.
	See, normally, when I don't make a bomb threat, There's no story about me.
	If somebody who listens to my show makes a bomb threat, also not a story about me.
	It's a story about the person who made the bomb threat.
	We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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	But, according to NBC News, about a day and a half before authorities responded to a threat at Coralville's Northwest Junior High, Raychick posted that the school offers a pornographic book in its library that teaches kids about gay sex.
	Now, there's no argument that, um, it's false, that her story was false.
	The story was true.
	But that doesn't matter.
	NBC News is more concerned with trying to smear Chaya by association with people she doesn't even know.
	Quote, NBC News identified 33 instances starting in November 2020 when people or institutions singled out by Libs of TikTok later reported bomb threats or other violence intimidation.
	The threats, which on average came several days after tweets from Libs of TikTok targeted schools, libraries, hospitals, small businesses, and elected officials in 16 states, 21 of the 33 threats were bomb threats, which most commonly targeted schools and were made via email.
	Absolute insanity that NBC News would, and this piece goes on and on and on and on.
	Again, the goal of it is to somehow smear reporters for reporting so long as the people who follow the reporters, a small cadre of whom do bad things, can somehow be blamed on the reporter.
	That's the goal here.
	And this now merges with the blowback that Tucker Carlson is receiving for doing an interview with Vladimir Putin.
	Now, I haven't seen the interview with Vladimir Putin.
	You haven't seen the interview with Vladimir Putin.
	No one has seen the interview with Vladimir Putin.
	That interview is supposed to hit the airwaves tonight on X. And as I've said, I'm not going to prejudge the interview.
	The question is whether Tucker asked him any hard questions or whether it was sort of a massage.
	I don't know because I haven't seen it.
	It would be a bad act of journalism if Tucker does not ask him some questions about, say, Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter who's being held by Vladimir Putin as effectively a hostage, or if it doesn't ask him about what the end of the war looks like, or if it doesn't push him on his murderous record, or his abuse of human rights, and his targeting of civilians in Ukraine, and all the rest, right?
	There are a bunch of questions that Tucker ought to ask, but Tucker hasn't asked any of those questions publicly yet, so I have no idea what he asked.
	The simple fact that Tucker is Tucker and went to Russia is now causing, apparently, some people in the EU to think about sanctioning him.
	But again, this is the unbelievable stupidity of politics.
	People who claim that they have any sort of principle abandon those principles at the first sign that those principles might be harmful to their political interests.
	It truly is an amazing thing.
	According to Newsweek, Tucker Carlson's interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin could see the conservative pundit targeted by EU lawmakers, current and former members of the European Parliament, have told Newsweek.
	Carlson visited Russia this week.
	On Tuesday, he revealed that he would soon be releasing an interview with Putin.
	Carlson's work in Russia could see the former Fox News host in hot water with the EU, according to Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian Prime Minister and current member of the European Parliament.
	The lawmaker described Carlson as a mouthpiece for former President Trump and Putin as well, adding, quote, as Putin is a war criminal and the EU sanctions all who assist him in that effort, it seems logical the External Action Service examine his case as well.
	Now, honestly, this is like the best thing that, in terms of media, could happen to Tucker.
	Having the EU target Tucker for doing an interview with Vladimir Putin makes Tucker's case for him.
	Tucker's entire case with regards to Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky has essentially been that the attempts by the media to draw a stark division Between Vladimir Zelensky's administration in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's administration in Russia is misbegotten.
	That Zelensky is engaged in corruption, that he's engaged in dictatorial behavior.
	By the way, there's some truth to a lot of what Tucker is saying about that.
	In my opinion, that still does not justify a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine or suggest that it's in America's interest to see Ukraine fully ingested by Russia.
	Nor do I believe that Vladimir Putin somehow has Ukraine's best interests at heart.
	All these things can be true at once, but if the case that Tucker is making is that the EU is perfectly happy to shut down freedom of speech, but then they complain when Vladimir Putin does it, they're making Tucker's case for him when they say this.
	According to Newsweek, The EU's external action service is the bloc's diplomatic arm responsible for foreign policy.
	For an individual to be added to the EU sanctions list, evidence must be presented to the EAS for review.
	If deemed sufficient, the EAS can then present that case to the European Council, which is the body made up of EU national leaders, which takes the final decision on whether to impose sanctions or not.
	Now again, highly unlikely, but there are some who are saying that they agree with the stance that Tucker should basically be treated as a propagandist on behalf of the Kremlin.
	Yeah, I think highly unlikely that that is what's going to take place, but it demonstrates once again, in the same way the media targeting Khayratchik shows, it just shows that if you violate certain taboos, or if you stand on one side of the political aisle and not another side of the political aisle, all principles with regard to, say, free speech, go by the wayside.
	Now, as I say, none of that answers the question as to whether Tucker's general perspective on Ukraine is right.
	I happen to think that his general perspective on Ukraine is shortsighted and wrong.
	I do not think the world is a better place if Vladimir Putin waltzes into Kiev and simply takes it over at this point.
	There is a growing Trendline on the right, that is a problem.
	One of the big divisions between right and left in the United States, historically speaking, has been that people on the right tend to think that America kicks ass and people on the left tend to think not.
	That is by polling data.
	Here, for example, is some of the polling data from Pew Research Center.
	The question was whether the U.S.
	stands above all other countries in the world, meaning like we're the best, whether the U.S.
	is one of the greatest countries along with others, or whether other countries are better than the U.S.
	And what you can see is that over the course of the time period, 2011 to 2023, Democrats have basically decided en masse that no one among the Democrats believes that the United States is the greatest country in the world.
	Extremely low number.
	In 2011, 31% of Democrats said that the United States stood above all other countries in the world.
	As of 2023, that number was 9%.
	9%.
	So fewer than 1 in 10 Democrats, or those who lean Democrat, believes that America is better than all the other countries in the world.
	When it comes to whether people believe that other countries are better than the United States, in 2011, only 8% of Democrats said that other countries are better than the United States.
	As of 2023, That number is now 36%.
	36% of Democrats believe, over 1 in 3, that other countries are better than the United States.
	Which does raise the question as to why don't you then go to one of those countries?
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	But if you look at the Republican side of the aisle, Republicans have been pretty consistent until the very recent past, until basically Joe Biden took office.
	Republicans have been very consistent in their belief that America is in fact the best country in the world.
	In 2011, 47% of Americans believed that America was the best country in the world.
	Only 5% of Americans believed other countries were better than the United States.
	Fast forward to 2019, same numbers.
	46% of Republicans believed that America was the best country in the world and only 5% of Americans believed that other countries were better than the United States.
	But if you fast forward to 2023, that number has now dropped 15%.
	Only 31% of Republicans believe that America is better than all the other countries in the world.
	And now 17% or just under 1 in 5 Republicans believe that other countries are better than the United States.
	There is a growing sense, and it's connected to Joe Biden being elected, but it's not totally due to Joe Biden being elected.
	There's a growing sense that things are falling apart in the United States, and this is playing out in some strange foreign policy terms.
	And there's always been sort of this underlying idea on the paleocon right that virtually everything goes wrong in the world is due to American overextension.
	That it's American foreign policy in the post-war era that has created all problems.
	Now this neglects the fact that it was American foreign policy that defeated legitimately the greatest threat of the 20th century, which was not Nazi Germany.
	The greatest threat of the 20th century was the Soviet Union.
	Because that threat lasted literally from the Soviet revolution of 1918 all the way forward until 1990.
	It was a four generation threat.
	And the United States defeated that.
	So that makes for a pretty good foreign policy.
	That's a pretty good foreign policy record.
	And when you point to the shortcomings of American foreign policy since then, those are very real.
	But American hegemony has created freedom of the seas.
	American hegemony has created freedom of trade.
	American hegemony has ensured a huge percentage of the globe has risen from poverty.
	And yes, it has ensured the prosperity of American citizens.
	I understand that there is this bizarre notion that Americans now are living worse than they did in 1980.
	There is no data to support this.
	The notion that Americans were living better in 1980, I promise, just an easy question for anyone who believes that.
	Would you wish to go back and live in 1980, materially speaking, not spiritually speaking, materially speaking?
	Just in terms of the stuff you have, the answer is no.
	No one would.
	Because the way that you actually measure whether an economy has moved forward is the kinds of products, goods, and services you can now obtain for your time in the workforce.
	Again, I'll refer to a book called Superabundance here by Marion Toopey, among others.
	It's really good.
	It kind of breaks down just how economic progress has worked in the United States.
	The reason that I point this out...
	Is because when it comes to things like Russia versus Ukraine, the question of whether America is a positive force in the world is very much getting telescoped into a narrative about Russia and Ukraine.
	So as I said before, you don't have to be a great Vladimir Zelensky lover to agree that it is not in America's interest for Russia to widen its direct sphere of governance into Ukraine.
	Ukraine is an incredibly large territory.
	It has significant wheat resources.
	It does have ports that are very important to maintain for the West.
	Ukraine also happens to be the border into virtually all of Europe.
	It's a huge country.
	I mean, to understand how vitally important Ukraine is to the European map, you have to look at a map of Europe and look at Ukraine's borders.
	So here is a picture of what Europe looked like when the Soviets were dominating the Eastern Bloc.
	The Warsaw Pact, it's the countries in pink here, these were essentially countries that were ruled indirectly by the Soviet Union.
	And as you can see, when the Soviet Union was around, the borders of the Soviet Union went all the way up to Greece in the south, They went all the way West to Austria and West Germany, in the West, and Denmark.
	They included Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria.
	And that meant, as everyone sort of knew, that the possibility of a serious world war was pretty high.
	Because you walk across that border from East-West Germany with some tanks, and suddenly you're in World War III.
	In the post-war era, that map changes.
	And now what you see is a bunch of newly independent countries that have been broken away from the Warsaw Pact.
	They're no longer part of the Warsaw Pact.
	These are independent countries with independent governances.
	And history didn't stop for these people.
	I was just in Poland.
	Okay, the Polish people do not wish to be dominated again by the Russians.
	They don't.
	If you know anything about Polish history, what you'll realize is that for a very long time, for about a century and a half before the reconstitution of Poland in the aftermath of World War I, there was no Poland.
	It was basically divided up between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Russians.
	And the Polish people have no desire to be dominated by the Russians again.
	And again, if you look at that old map, the Russians did run Poland.
	And that is why the Solidarity Movement was created, it's why Poland sought to break free of Soviet
	domination.
	And so when you go to the new map, what you see is a bunch of countries that do not wish to be
	dominated by the Russians, ranging from Finland and Sweden in the north to Estonia, Latvia,
	Lithuania, the Baltic states. Those include, of course, Poland.
	So, if, for example, Russia were to take Ukraine, so the way that this map works, Belarus is on the border of Russia.
	Belarus is effectively a Russian client state.
	Belarus was used as a staging point for the invasion of Ukraine in the first place back in 2022.
	If Ukraine were to be taken over, what you would now see is the Russians butting up against Poland, butting up against Hungary, butting up against Romania.
	Butting up against much more of Western Europe.
	It is not in America's interest to facilitate Russia's ownership of the resources in Ukraine, nor is it in America's interest for Russia to now be on the borders of a bunch of other countries that they would then try to break.
	One of the other things that you can see from this map is that the Baltic states are in serious danger, like every day of every year.
	Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, it is only the security guarantees of NATO that ensure that Russia does not walk over the borders into the Baltic states.
	How easy would it be for Russia to simply take Lithuania?
	The answer is really, really easy.
	They already run Kaliningrad.
	Kaliningrad is actually a Russian territory that exists on the borders of Poland and Lithuania, even though it's not territorially contiguous with Russia.
	So how easy would it be?
	Why is Lithuania freaking out?
	You know why Lithuania is freaking out.
	And again, Russia has invaded many of these countries before.
	Russia already took over Crimea, which you can see on this map in the south of Ukraine.
	Russia has already taken over parts of Georgia, as you can see on this map.
	Russia has threatened Kazakhstan, which is also in its south.
	So, checking a Russian territorial expansion is in America's interest, especially if it's not going to cost us actual blood.
	If we're just spending money on it.
	So, all these things can be true at once, because foreign policy is really complex.
	I'll be fascinated to see what Tucker actually asks Putin about.
	I will.
	But again, the basic idea that America has no interest in what Russia does in Ukraine, even to the extent of spending some money, is pretty wild to me.
	I'll also point out that many of the people, there are some people who are pretty consistent about not spending money widely.
	People like Thomas Massey, he's consistent.
	We don't want to spend a lot of money on anything, including For example, social welfare programs.
	Thomas Massey is an actual fiscal conservative.
	I disagree with him about foreign policy, but at least he's consistent.
	The problem I have with a lot of the people who are complaining about spending on Ukraine, for example, is that they are perfectly fine with expanding Social Security benefits, Medicare benefits, Medicaid benefits that are bankrupting the United States.
	In fact, the Congressional Budget Office just released a report that federal interest payments now exceed defense spending for the first time, which is an insane statistic.
	We are now paying more on our federal debt, just the interest, than we spend on our military budget every year.
	And that's only going to continue for the rest of time.
	That effectively, by the way, means that we're actually giving money to China to pay off our interest in order so that we can then spend money on our military, which is really bad.
	So, we're spending too much money.
	Argument doesn't work if you're also a person who's in favor of six, seven trillion dollar budgets and is unwilling to talk about the restructuring of America's national debt.
	In just one second, we'll get to the situation on America's southern border, which of course is of more interest to I think vastly more Americans than what happens in Ukraine.
	I care about foreign policy too, but obviously the southern border I think matters a lot more.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the situation on the southern border continues to just be a complete mess.
	Amazing story out of Fox News last night.
	And here's what it says.
	The White House on Thursday announced that U.S.
	Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon be forced to reduce operations at the southern border due to lack of funds.
	So the White House is now threatening that unless they get the border bill that they want, they're going to make it worse at the border.
	Now, let's be clear about this.
	There's plenty of funding at the border.
	All the White House has to do is put back in place Romania, Mexico, and all these problems go away.
	All they have to do is reallocate border patrol officers away from the processing of illegal immigrants into the American interior and go back to, you know, policing illegal immigrants and then quickly deporting them.
	That's all they have to do.
	Joe Biden can do it right now.
	But instead, he's basically threatening to make the problem worse.
	Because he's somebody who deeply cares about the border, you see.
	Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that because Republicans have not passed the bipartisan border security agreement with funding for Israel and Ukraine, the administration is left with no choice but to pull back.
	She said during a gaggle on Air Force One yesterday, quote, because congressional Republicans are choosing partisan politics over our national security and refusing to pass the bipartisan national security agreement that includes significant border reforms and funding over the coming weeks, ICE will be forced to reduce operations because of budget shortfalls.
	Oh, is that what's what's happening right now?
	So in the middle of the biggest immigration wave in American history, you're gonna have to reduce operations because you don't have enough money.
	You're only spending $7 trillion a year.
	I believe you.
	I don't believe this is just a gambit in order to make the problem worse as a threat.
	I mean, you want to talk about people who do not like America?
	It's hard to argue love America when you're basically threatening that unless you get a bill that lets you off the hook for your own border malfeasance, you're going to make the border worse.
	That's an amazing, amazing statement.
	It also points out why, politically, it is so foolish for Republicans in the Senate to be talking about how it's time to get something done.
	Now, listen, there are things that the Senate could do that would be truly worthwhile, like really tie Joe Biden's hands.
	If they really tied Joe Biden's hands, that would be worthwhile.
	But again, I've read the border bill.
	It does not tie Joe Biden's hands in any serious way.
	When it comes to implementation of the border bill, the executive branch is still going to be using prosecutorial discretion.
	The executive branch is still going to be directing asylum officers to let people into the country on their own recognizance.
	The change in the asylum definition would have to be strictly and coherently applied, which is something Joe Biden has really shown little interest in doing.
	Remember, the current asylum standard is that you have to show a real fear of going back to your home country to claim asylum.
	And that has now turned, in implementation under Joe Biden, into just saying the magic words.
	Now normally, if there's a legal burden on me to show, for example, that I have a credible fear of going back to my home country, I'd have to show you a policy procedure, a set of death threats, that would make it impossible for me to go back to my home country.
	Like you're trying to escape Bolivia because you're the target of an actual drug cartel, and you can show them documentation that this is the case.
	That'd be a good case, but that's not what's happening.
	People are showing up in the borders saying the magic words and being released into the interior.
	So now all that will happen is they'll say new magic words and be released into the interior.
	Listen, I understand that senators want to get things done.
	I understand that they feel like they can get nothing done in the Senate under these polarized circumstances.
	The polarization is being exacerbated by the executive branch.
	So that means one of two things.
	Either the legislative branch has to act in tandem, not to work against one another, but to tie the executive's hands.
	Either the members of the legislative have to be oriented against the executive branch and tie the executive branch's hands, or there won't be any common ground that is worth fighting for.
	So yesterday, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, he tweeted out a speech by Senator James Lankford, who's the Oklahoma senator who's been pushing forward the border bill, in which Lankford talks about how problems aren't being solved in the Senate.
	In order for a problem to be solved in the Senate, the question is, who are you orienting against?
	You're not orienting against the problem of an open border.
	That's not what you're orienting against.
	You're orienting against the problem of an executive branch that does not care about the law, which means that unless you are actively forcing the executive branch into the corner, your bill doesn't do squat.
	That's the problem.
	Here was Lankford yesterday.
	Madam President, I'm going to vote yes to be able to move on to this bill.
	So we need a change in the law.
	I understand we have differences.
	But we've got to sit down together, figure out how we're going to solve problems, because the American people sent us here to do that.
	Well, again, the American people sent you to solve the border problem.
	That problem is not solvable unless you tie the executive's hands.
	The Democrats aren't going to do it, so no deal.
	That's effectively what we're talking about right here.
	Now, meanwhile, the Senate is moving on to its next priority, which was always really the foreign aid.
	All this stuff got tied together despite the fact that it should have been disaggregated from the start.
	And it got tied together for a variety of reasons.
	It started off as just a series of standalone bills.
	One for aid to Ukraine, one for aid to Israel, one for aid to Taiwan, and a border bill.
	And then what happened is that Joe Biden tied together Ukraine and Israel.
	And Republicans, who are kind of dicey on the Ukraine aid because we've already spent an extraordinary amount of money in Ukraine, plus there's in fact a wing of the Republican Party, that doesn't really care what happens in Kiev, And so because of that, Democrats tied the two together.
	They understand Republicans want the Israel aid, and they understand Democrats want the Ukraine aid.
	And then Republicans in the Senate said, okay, well, if you're tying that together, then we're going to tie in something you don't like, a border bill.
	And then Republicans in the Senate proceeded to write a pretty bad border bill.
	So now that's being stripped out.
	And so now there's going to be an attempt to, again, tie together the Ukraine aid and the Israel aid.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Senate Democrats tried on Wednesday to pin down more GOP support for a bill that would provide military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and other allies.
	The broader measure was the product of four months of bipartisan negotiations, but Republicans made it clear that the one including the border bill had no path forward.
	With the broader measure dead, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer moved to schedule a procedural vote to advance a narrower $95 billion version of the package that would fund Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan but exclude border security provisions.
	There are still hurdles that are emerging on all of this.
	Asked in the early evening if Republicans could guarantee the votes for a slimmed down foreign aid package if they got the border-related amendment votes that some wanted, Senate Minority Whip John Thune said, those are good questions and we don't have any answers at the moment.
	So unclear what's gonna happen with any aid bill moving forward.
	Meanwhile, what is truly amazing is that, again, the more controversial provision, the one that obviously has a lot of debate attached to it, is the far larger aid package directed at Ukraine.
	There is significant bipartisan support for actual support for Israel.
	In fact, the House attempted to move an Israel aid bill on Tuesday for about $17.6 billion.
	And they got 250 votes for it.
	Which, again, count those votes, that's including dozens of Democrats.
	So a bunch of Democrats voted against that bill.
	Many of those Democrats voted against the bill because they wanted it paired with Ukraine or whatever.
	But that is an overwhelmingly popular bill.
	That's a bipartisan bill.
	In the Senate, will Majority Leader Schumer even bring that up?
	Joe Biden has pledged to veto it, by the way, which demonstrates, once again, that Democrats are so scared of their wild left-wing base.
	They're so scared of the Rashida Tlaib AOC wing of the Democratic Party, which, by the way, those people are nuts.
	They're nuts.
	Rashida Tlaib is a nutjob.
	She is a terror-supporting nutjob.
	Rashida Tlaib, the Congresswoman from Dearborn, Michigan.
	Here she was yesterday on the floor, suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, is a genocidal maniac, which is an amazing thing to suggest From a lady who has never had a bad word to say about the October 7th genocidal massacre attempt against Jews in southern Israel.
	Also, I am really enjoying the spectacle of Democrat morons and their lackeys in the media pretending that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, is like the sole power in Israel right now.
	He's part of a unity, for the thousandth time, a unity government involving his political opposition.
	The people of Israel and their political representatives are so united at this point that Bibi's even talking about bringing Yair Lapid, who is his chief political opposition, to some sort of unity government.
	He already has his biggest opponent, Benny Gantz, already part of the war cabinet.
	But again, this is all a bunch of... It's just a clown show for people who are very, very friendly toward terrorists, people like Rashida Tlaib.
	Here she was yesterday.
	I oppose Netanyahu's war crimes and want him gone too.
	But many of my colleagues have continued to tell me that they do not want a condition to aid.
	They give it to a genocidal maniac.
	My message to my colleagues is simple.
	If you don't support Netanyahu, if you're disgusted by the countless videos of lifeless children pulled out of the rubble, if you actually believe in upholding human rights and international law, vote no on a blank check to Netanyahu's genocide.
	By the way, she wants Hamas refunded.
	That's what she would like.
	Meanwhile, AOC, who again has the brainpower of a kumquat, she was out there doing the same thing.
	She suggests that what's going on in the Gaza Strip isn't war, it's slaughter.
	So first of all, someone should inform her what war actually is.
	Generally, a lot of people will get hurt and die.
	That's why war is bad.
	That's why war is bad.
	It is, in fact, a war.
	You know how I know?
	Because if it weren't a war, one side would have surrendered already.
	And Hamas refuses to surrender.
	In fact, Hamas came out yesterday and said no to a deal on hostages.
	What were their demands for some sort of hostage deal?
	Their hostage deal was that they wanted Israel to stop all operations in Gaza and leave them in place in the Gaza Strip after the worst terror attack on Jews since World War II.
	A thing that is certainly not going to happen.
	That's what they actually want.
	They want Israel to turn over pretty much every murderer that it has in custody back to Hamas, leave Hamas in place, and maybe then they'll get some hostages back.
	By the way, intelligence reports suggest that a huge number of the hostages who were held are already dead.
	You're talking at least 30 hostages dead, probably another 20 who are dead as well.
	But here is AOC complaining about the situation in the Gaza Strip, which of course would be over literally tomorrow if Hamas surrendered.
	More than 1,200 Israelis were killed on October 7th, and 136 remain hostage.
	In response, 27,478 Palestinians have been killed, 70% of whom are women and children.
	And most Gazans today cannot reach a fully functioning hospital.
	This is not war.
	27,478 Palestinians have been killed, 70% of whom are women and children.
	And most Gazans today cannot reach a fully functioning hospital.
	This is not war.
	This is slaughter.
	Okay, so let's point out at this point that 20,000 Hamas fighters have either been wounded
	or killed in this war.
	So the number she's citing includes probably 10,000 terrorists.
	When she says women and children, we should also recognize that many of the people who are classified as quote-unquote children are 16-year-old boys who work with Hamas.
	It's just a reality.
	I wish it weren't the reality.
	It is, in fact, the reality of the situation.
	And again, Hamas rejected a ceasefire this week.
	This week.
	It's these delusional Democrats to whom Joe Biden seems to want to cave, which is, of course, is absolutely pathetic.
	All right, you guys, the rest of the show continues right now.
	We'll be joined by Montana Tucker to discuss her controversial appearance at the Grammys.
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