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New Tape Reveals Predty's Actions
00:11:02
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| New tape emerges of Alex Predi, the man shot by Border Patrol. | ||
| This tape is from a few days before the shooting, and it does shed some light on what exactly went down just a few days later. | ||
| Plus, Marco Rubio goes in front of the Senate and speaks with a bunch of people who aren't particularly intelligent. | ||
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| Well, folks, if you listen to this show regularly, you know that one phrase that comes up pretty often is two things can be true at once. | ||
| So, for example, ICU nurse Alex Predty could have been an agitator, a person who obstructed federal law enforcement, and also his shooting could have come under disputed circumstances and then been mischaracterized by both sides. | ||
| All that can be true all at once, but people have a very, very tough time with cognitive dissonance. | ||
| And so, what you end up with is two competing narratives. | ||
| On the right, you end up with the narrative that Alex Predty was a thoroughly bad person who totally deserved what happened to him. | ||
| And on the left, you end up with the narrative that Alex Predty was a saint of a human being and was totally innocent in his own demise. | ||
| Those are the two narratives. | ||
| They are the competing narratives. | ||
| And the problem is that reality is ugly and reality is messy. | ||
| And in reality, of course, Alex Predty was an agitator who routinely attempted to thwart law enforcement on the federal level from doing its job and ended up in an altercation with Border Patrol officers while attempting to obstruct the performance of federal law, resisted arrest, happened to be carrying a gun at the time, which obviously is going to raise the chances of a violent incident and ended up dead. | ||
| Those are the facts as we see them. | ||
| And because there is this lack of cognitive dissonance, because people can't stand it, that all these things are true, they end up in one of the two competing camps and the left camp, which is that Alex Predty was a sainted figure in the same way that George Floyd had to be a sainted figure, in the same way that Trayvon Martin had to be a sainted figure. | ||
| It can't just be that reality is ugly and messy and bad things happen, and then we have to apportion blame based on who actually is responsible for the actions. | ||
| Because we can't do that anymore, instead, there's this rush to turn Alex Predty into a person who is never a threat to law enforcement at any point. | ||
| And that gets messy when, again, it runs up against reality. | ||
| So just to take an example, Ana Navarro over on The View. | ||
| It's not enough for her to suggest that Alex Predi's shooting may have been unjustified on either a moral or illegal level. | ||
| Ana Navarro goes on CNN and she then says that everyone would want their daughter to date somebody like Alex Predty. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| They chose to, they killed the wrong guy, right? | ||
| Because this is like the perfect guy. | ||
| Alex Predi is the guy you would want to date your daughter. | ||
| The guy you would want your son to grow up to be a decent human being who was serving humanity, serving sick veterans who is, you know, there is nothing that has been said about that man that isn't wonderful. | ||
| And so they can't malign him. | ||
| They can't malign him because we have the videos. | ||
| Now, again, it's not about maligning Alex Predi. | ||
| It's about telling the truth about the circumstances that ICE is facing on the ground. | ||
| So, new tape has now emerged that makes Anna Navarro not look particularly intelligent, which, again, is not a very difficult thing to do. | ||
| This is Alex Predty, January 13th. | ||
| So, a week and a half before he was shot to death by Border Patrol agents. | ||
| And here he was. | ||
| This is not a protest. | ||
| This is an attempt to obstruct federal law enforcement. | ||
| It is him assaulting officers. | ||
| It is him kicking an ICE vehicle and knocking out the taillights. | ||
| Here is the video, again, confirmed by the BBC. | ||
| This is a moment the news movement filmed on January 13th in Minneapolis, showing a man who appears to be Alex Predty interacting with federal immigration agents 11. | ||
| Yelling at maybe spinning at the border patrol shot and killed him. | ||
| Our footage was analyzed by BBC, whose facial red tail lights technology confirmed his identity to a 97% degree of accuracy. | ||
| And again, this incident, when you first look at it, it looks almost exactly like the later incident. | ||
| We arrived around 10:15 a.m. | ||
| We saw observers shouting at the agents as they walked back to their vehicles when they started driving away. | ||
| An agent then got out of the vehicle, grabbed him, and pushed him to the ground. | ||
| Okay, and as you can see, there are actually multiple agents who come over to secure him. | ||
| He's trying to resist arrest again during the altercation. | ||
| So this is a person. | ||
| So during this altercation, he does have a gun in his waistband and he doesn't end up shot. | ||
| He does not end up shot in this particular circumstance. | ||
| Okay, so what does this tape tell us? | ||
| It tells us a few things. | ||
| One, there's some information that ICE may have been aware of Alex Predi before he was shot on January 24th, as in he had a history with law enforcement. | ||
| The question should be raised here. | ||
| The man damaged federal property. | ||
| He was resisting arrest. | ||
| Why was he still out on the streets such that a few days later he was being shot to death? | ||
| Why? | ||
| That is a failure of local law enforcement. | ||
| That is, by the way, a failure of federal engagement with local law enforcement. | ||
| Why was Alex Predi out doing the exact same thing a few days later, obstructing federal officers from doing their job? | ||
| Okay, so again, reality is messy. | ||
| This was not a person who just spontaneously decided one day that he was going to go to a protest and then something terrible happened. | ||
| This is a person who's routinely going to altercations with federal officers. | ||
| I mean, the report was that apparently his rib was broken during this encounter. | ||
| So he had made a habit out of going to these altercations and obstructing federal law enforcement and carrying a gun while doing it. | ||
| And so that does change the ICE officer's perception of the situation. | ||
| Now, does that mean that Alex Predty was a terribly evil human being or that he quote unquote deserved what he got? | ||
| Put aside the moral for a second. | ||
| There's going to be a full legal investigation by the federal government about what agents knew, when they knew it, how that shooting unfolded. | ||
| But the point is this: life is a lot more complex and nuanced than people would like it to be. | ||
| So why does the left have to make it not nuanced? | ||
| Why couldn't they just say everything that I've just said? | ||
| Yeah, Alex Predty was a person who routinely was agitating, who is apparently pretty frequently going to ICE operations in an attempt to obstruct them, and he was also wrongfully shot. | ||
| Why couldn't they say that? | ||
| That could be the left case. | ||
| But the answer is that if that's the left case, then that makes ICE's actions at least understandable, even if the left believes they're not justifiable. | ||
| And if that's the case, then you can't do what you really want to do, which is portray ICE as a bunch of Nazis. | ||
| In order to portray ICE as a bunch of Nazis, you have to portray everyone that ICE is seeking as an innocent victim. | ||
| You have to portray illegal immigrants as innocent victims, criminal illegal immigrants as victims, innocent victims, people who are obstructing federal law enforcement as innocent victims, people who assault federal officers as innocent victims. | ||
| You have to do all of that specifically in order to demonize ICE. | ||
| That is the goal. | ||
| You valorize one side in order to demonize the other. | ||
| That is the game that is currently being played by the left. | ||
| And that is how you end up with Stephen Colbert on national television contending that ICE is worse than the Nazis, worse than the Nazis. | ||
| This is insane, patently insane. | ||
| Stephen Colbert is a dullard. | ||
| There's a reason that his ratings are not particularly good. | ||
| He stopped telling jokes a long time ago and instead went for the claptor, meaning the applause of people who are like-minded. | ||
| And here he is, free to say exactly what he wants to say on a national network carried by hundreds of affiliates all around the country. | ||
| He is free to say exactly, you know, it's a thing that didn't happen in Nazi Germany that. | ||
| And here he is comparing ICE agents, the people who are charged with enforcing immigration law and keeping our streets safe from criminality. | ||
| Here he is calling them worse than the Nazis. | ||
| But Vino went on complaining. | ||
| Look, Dana, they're trying to portray Border Patrol agents and ICE agents as Gestapo, Nazi, and many other words. | ||
| Yes, do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis. | ||
| That's an unfair comparison. | ||
| The Nazis were willing to show their faces. | ||
| Okay, that's insane. | ||
| That is an insane, insane statement by Stephen Colbert. | ||
| And honestly, whatever Jimmy Kimmel said that got him thrown off the air by affiliates, what Stephen Colbert said there is a thousand times worse, truly much, much worse than what Jimmy Kimmel said. | ||
| Okay, Stephen Colbert suggesting that ICE is worse than the Nazis not only degrades what the Nazis actually did, but also it turns our ICE agents into targets. | ||
| Because they're not just Nazis, they're worse than the Nazis. | ||
| And if you spot a person who is worse than the Nazis with guns in your neighborhood attempting to effectuate the unlawful detention or arrest of innocent people, what are you supposed to do? | ||
| That's why this language is really ugly and dangerous. | ||
| It's why when you have members of the Democratic Party calling ICE gestapo-like, when you suggest, as Tim Walz did, that illegal immigrants are basically like Ann Frank in Minneapolis right now, when you do that sort of thing, you are ramping up the temperature. | ||
| Now, again, acts of violence are on those who perform them, not people who say dumb things. | ||
| But saying dumb things ramps up the temperature and pretending that it has no impact on our public discourse or the actions of people like in Alex Preddy, who goes out and leaves his job as an ICU nurse that day in order to go and agitate and kick in the lights on vehicles or to quote unquote monitor federal agents and obstruct their operations and then resist arrest. | ||
| If you don't want those violent incidents to happen, perhaps you should stop lying to the American people about what ICE is doing and who they are. | ||
| And I understand the necessity for virtue signaling on the part of our celebrity class, but it's really damaging. | ||
| It is a massive problem because people imbibe this nonsense. | ||
|
Acts of Violence Impact Public Discourse
00:02:10
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| Coming up, Bruce Springsteen has a brand new song about ICE, and it is somehow worse than vanilla ice somehow, I know. | ||
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| Bruce Springsteen, who hasn't written a great song in several decades at this point, actually released a new song about ICE and Minneapolis called Streets of Minneapolis. | ||
| It is not good. | ||
| Here's what it sounds like: King Trump's private army from the DHS, guns belted to the coast, came to Minneapolis to enforce the law. | ||
| Or so their story goes. | ||
| And there were bloody footprints where mercy should have stood. | ||
| And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets. | ||
| Alex Pretty and Renee could hear the bloody mist. | ||
|
Fry's Call for Revolution
00:15:49
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| We'll take our stand. | ||
| This is really bad. | ||
| This land and the strands. | ||
| I'm sorry, wow. | ||
| Bloodiness. | ||
| Rhymeski. | ||
| I can't feel it for the words. | ||
| Also, it's oh, man. | ||
| Man, some artists are past their prime. | ||
| Bruce Springsteen is not just past his prime. | ||
| If he were a carton of milk, Bruce Springsteen would be fossilized cottage cheese at this point. | ||
| My goodness, he has past his expiration date. | ||
| But that sort of narrative that essentially have occupation armies that have settled on Minneapolis streets with the bloodied snow and their guns belted to their coats. | ||
| First of all, you don't belt a gun to your coat. | ||
| That would be a weird thing to do. | ||
| Why would you belt a gun to your coat? | ||
| Anyway, it's like that. | ||
| That sort of narrative is really, it does bleed down into the body politic. | ||
| And it leads to lines like this from Giancarlo Esposito, best known as Gus from Breaking Bad, suggesting that it's time for a revolution. | ||
| By the way, the revolution will not be led by people who wear glasses like this. | ||
| I'm just going to point out: if you're wearing these bizarro world glasses from the Incredibles, then I, and a scarf and a hat that looks like you picked it up in a blues club in 1962, if you're wearing Edna Modes glasses from the Incredibles, you're not going to be leading the revolution. | ||
| This is time for a revolution. | ||
| It's time for it. | ||
| And they don't even know that's what they're starting. | ||
| You know, some very rich old white men are exerting their power to suppress our own people, thus creating a feeling of civil war in the streets, preparing the hate, the haters to hate, teaching them how to shoot. | ||
| They're not even trained right to kill. | ||
| This is all a preparation for a very insidious problem that's happening in our world. | ||
| And for me, I have to speak out that we will not be iced out. | ||
| This is not going to happen. | ||
| They can't take us all down. | ||
| If the whole world showed up on Putin's doorstep or on the Iranian doorship or in Washington, it would stop. | ||
| They'll kill a 550 million or however, but the rest of us would survive with a new we have. | ||
| This is time for a revolution. | ||
| It's time for it. | ||
| And they don't even know that's what they're starting. | ||
| I noticed he's not leading a violent revolution himself. | ||
| He's standing in Hollywood at some sort of premiere, again, wearing Edna Modes glasses and a hat that he took off of a hipster in 1962 and telling us that it's white men at the head of ICEC. | ||
| By the way, we should note at this point that Border Patrol and ICE are disproportionately Hispanic, just in terms of the actual agents. | ||
| Approximately 50 to 54% of Border Patrol agents are Hispanic, and at least 30% of ICE agents are Hispanic. | ||
| And another 15 to 17% are black. | ||
| So you picked the wrong agencies, my friend. | ||
| I also love the logic from people who will not actually do the hard work of starting the revolution. | ||
| Well, if all of us charge Putin all at once, it was not this kind of strategy that led to Gus Fring being good at his job and breaking bad. | ||
| If we all charge Putin's palace at once, it would probably be fine, is a hell of a take. | ||
| That is one hell of a take. | ||
| Okay, then. | ||
| But again, in order to drive this sort of stupidity, you have to have this binary narrative where everyone who's being sought by ICE is good. | ||
| Everyone who obstructs ICE is not just good and innocent, but a martyr to the cause. | ||
| And ICE agents then become Nazis. | ||
| Well, the Trump administration has been shifting tactics. | ||
| And so they sent Tom Homan from the Department of Homeland Security to the borders ours. | ||
| He doesn't actually have a secretariat. | ||
| He should. | ||
| It is my informed opinion that Christine Noam should go and Tom Homan should take her place. | ||
| In any case, Tom Homan was sent to Minneapolis to try to broker with the Minneapolis city government. | ||
| And he's attempting to reach some sort of agreement with the casually nutty Jacob Fry, the Minneapolis mayor. | ||
| He seems to have come to some sort of soft agreement on a couple of key terms. | ||
| Sanctuary cities are sanctuaries for criminals and endangers the residents of the community. | ||
| To be clear, we did not agree with Minnesota state and local officials that they would be involved in immigration enforcement. | ||
| I didn't ask them to be immigration officers. | ||
| I'm asking them to be cops working with the cops to help us take criminal aliens off the street. | ||
| What we did agree upon is not to release public safety respect in the community when they could be lawfully transferred to ICE. | ||
| I'll speak more about that. | ||
| I will highlight that the Minnesota state prison system under the Department of Corrections have been honoring ICE detainers. | ||
| And we appreciate that important collaboration, and we're going to expand upon that. | ||
| Okay, so number one, I just wanted to point out Tom Homan's affect because it's actually how law enforcement should typically approach their jobs in PR positions. | ||
| They shouldn't be out there making inflammatory statements. | ||
| They shouldn't be wearing costumes. | ||
| They should just walk out and they should casually explain how they are going to enforce the law. | ||
| Tom Homan is good at this. | ||
| Some of the other people who have been trotted out by the Trump administration are not. | ||
| And that does make a difference in ensuring public trust. | ||
| What he is saying there seems to be that they can agree with county officials, not local officials, but county officials, that if somebody is arrested on a state-level crime and goes to county jail, that those people at county will now inform ICE. | ||
| So that is a difference typically from sanctuary state policies in which county jails very often do not inform ICE, or they only inform ICE after the person has not only been arrested and jailed, but convicted and goes to prison. | ||
| That's what Homan is talking about at the end there, where he says that state prisons do coordinate with ICE, that if somebody serves out a sentence for, that at the end of that sentence, ICE is informed and the person is taken and then deported. | ||
| He's saying that now needs to be expanded to people presumably who are arrested and put in county jail awaiting trial. | ||
| Homan also went out of his way to suggest that actually the discussions are worthwhile, that when you have sides that are at odds, the best thing to do is to at least talk about it. | ||
| Here he was. | ||
| In my meetings with folks so far, and most importantly, the governor and the AG to Mayor Fry, we didn't agree on everything. | ||
| I didn't expect to agree on anything. | ||
| I've heard many people want to know why we're talking to people who they don't consider friends to administration. | ||
| Bottom line is you can't fix problems if you don't have discussions. | ||
| I didn't come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines. | ||
| You haven't seen me. | ||
| I came here to seek solutions, and that's what we're going to do. | ||
| And we've come a long way, and we got some good wins for the people of Minnesota, I think, and for the administration and for the safety, security of this city. | ||
| I mean, slow clap for the professional in the room. | ||
| How about some more adults in the room? | ||
| That would be good on all sides of the aisle. | ||
| More adults in the room like Tom Holman would be a very, very good thing. | ||
| President Trump, for his part, suggested that Jacob Fry is playing with fire because the performance artist Minneapolis mayor, who spends all day trying to find protesters to whom to bow the continues to make a mockery of law and order in his own city. | ||
| President Trump put out a statement. | ||
| Surprisingly, Macob J.R. Fry just stated that Minneapolis does not and will not enforce federal immigration laws. | ||
| This is after having had a very good conversation with him. | ||
| Could somebody in his inner sanctum please explain that this statement is a very serious violation of the law and that he is playing with fire. | ||
| Now, again, Fry can say that it's not his job to enforce federal law because, of course, local and state authorities do not enforce federal law. | ||
| But that is not what Fry is doing. | ||
| What he is saying is that if somebody is arrested at the local level, they will not inform ICE. | ||
| Fry then came back at President Trump, quote, the job of our police is to keep people safe, not enforce Fed immigration laws. | ||
| I want them preventing homicides, not hunting down a working dad who contributes to MPLS and is from Ecuador. | ||
| It's similar to the policy your guy Rudy had in New York City. | ||
| Everyone should feel safe calling 911. | ||
| Now, again, Fry's statement there, which is that they shouldn't be enforcing immigration. | ||
| No one is calling on them to actually go out and arrest illegal immigrants. | ||
| That is ICE's job. | ||
| What they are saying is that if you arrest somebody in Minneapolis and they end up in the local jail, then somebody from the Huscow should call ICE and say, hey, this guy's an illegal immigrant. | ||
| Maybe you want to deport him. | ||
| So, by the way, his reference to Rudy Giuliani's policy is a little different. | ||
| Rudy Giuliani wanted there not to be reports from law enforcement to the feds if somebody had an interaction that was non-criminal in nature. | ||
| So they got pulled over for a speeding offense or something, or they reported a crime. | ||
| That was sort of the idea. | ||
| Not that somebody gets arrested for rape and now you just don't call the ICE. | ||
| Again, Giuliani allowed reporting to ICE if an individual was suspected of criminal activity, including misdemeanors. | ||
| So which will win out, the performative or the real? | ||
| That is the big question. | ||
| Now, in other localities, the performative seems to be winning out. | ||
| That is true, apparently, in New York as well as in Chicago. | ||
| So in New York, Mayor Zorhan Mamdani, who is here to take all of your money and also release all your criminals, and he's running out of money. | ||
| He says that ICE does nothing to serve the public interest. | ||
| We keep making the case directly, directly to the president, directly to New Yorkers, to Americans, that these kinds of actions, they are the actions of a reckless agency that is operating with impunity, one that deserves to be abolished, frankly, and that they do nothing to actually serve public interest. | ||
| And that is, they do nothing, like literally nothing to serve. | ||
| I mean, I can think of somebody who does nothing to serve the public interest. | ||
| It might be the guy who's been mooching his entire life and somehow got elected mayor of New York, thereby to undermine every aspect of a working city. | ||
| Speaking of mayors who are doing that, Mayor Brandon Johnson in Chicago, who has an approval rating lower than colon cancer, he's out there praising Walls and Fry for disobeying federal law or failing to work with ICE. | ||
| The way the governor, the Attorney General, and the mayor have handled this situation and this brutality and cruelty is just absolutely remarkable. | ||
| And I know it's not easy for them. | ||
| You know, A.G. Ellis and Governor Walls and Mayor Fry, they have been firm in their position and their standing, and that's critical. | ||
| Speaking of which, he, like Anna Navarro, or like Stephen Colbert, or like half the rest of the Democratic Party, is now comparing Gregory Bovino of Border Patrol to Adolf Hitler. | ||
| As it relates to Gregory Bovino, we've seen examples of other forms of tyranny that have led to concentration camps and the annihilation or the attempt annihilation of people groups. | ||
| I only elevate that because I don't want my next response to not be associated with the severity of who he is. | ||
| And that's why, whether it's litigation, whether it's press conferences, whether it's legislation, the next step that we're going to have to try, and I'm committed to doing this, of how to set up a pathway for someone like Gregory Bovino to be prosecuted. | ||
| He said he wants Bovino prosecuted, wants everybody prosecuted. | ||
| By the way, you know who he doesn't want prosecuted? | ||
| Illegal immigrants. | ||
| He doesn't want them to be ejected at all. | ||
| In fact, he says the city of Chicago will go out of its way to protect illegal immigrants. | ||
| I leaned heavily on other cities' responses, like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass shared her experience governing while the city was in Trump's crosshairs. | ||
| We've been in regular communication, both at the executive level and the staff level, with cities like Minneapolis and Portland, Oakland, Boston, and Denver and Baltimore to learn from each other's experiences and develop strategies to protect our constituents. | ||
| One common thread is the importance of spreading know-your rights and family preparedness information so that communities understand what their legal rights are under the law regardless of their immigration status. | ||
| Now, again, if you wonder why places like New York City, places like Chicago, places like Minneapolis are going to have more confrontations with ICE, that's because if ICE just tries to do its job in these places, it is very likely there will be more confrontations. | ||
| Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are laying out their demand for an overhaul of immigration enforcement, including mandating the use of body cameras and ending roving patrols, according to the Wall Street Journal, days ahead of a deadline to pass a $1.3 trillion package of spending bills that would avert a partial government shutdown. | ||
| Democrats say they are willing to provide the votes needed to pass five of the six bills included in the package, but only if Republicans rework DHS funding. | ||
| They want these new restrictions in law. | ||
| Chuck Schumer is spelling out what he wants. | ||
| He says that he's perfectly willing to shut down the government overfunding for DHS here as the Senate Minority Leader. | ||
| Until ICE is properly reined in and overhauled, the DHS funding bill doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate. | ||
| Let me say that again so the White House hears it. | ||
| Until ICE is properly reined in and overhauled, legislatively, the DHS funding bill doesn't have the votes to pass the Senate. | ||
| Now, Leader Thune knows that. | ||
| And so I urge Leader Thune not to put all six bills, including DHS, on the floor, but rather split them so we can focus on what we can pass right now. | ||
| Time is short. | ||
| We shouldn't waste time on failed votes right now or else the government will shut down. | ||
| I know both sides recognize we need to act in response to the awful tragedies that have taken place in Minneapolis. | ||
| And senators, Democrat and Republican, are talking and sharing ideas. | ||
| But given how little time we have left before the funding deadline, the first right step for the Senate is for Leader Thune to split the funding bills and put the five bills on the floor, 96% of federal funding that can pass. | ||
| So again, their demands, apparently, are they want to end roving patrols, meaning ICE goes around, they see somebody who looks like an illegal immigrant, they're in a place where illegal immigrants congregate or whatever. | ||
| They want ICE not to be able to do that. | ||
| They want to tighten the rules governing warrants. | ||
| That's going to be a big one. | ||
| As we discussed, if their claim is that they are going to make it, so you can only arrest someone on the basis of a judicial warrant. | ||
| Basically, ICE actions all over the country come to a halt. | ||
| So we need serious clarification on that. | ||
| And they want to require that ICE coordinate with state and local law enforcement. | ||
| Well, I mean, the problem with ICE being forced to coordinate with state and local law enforcement is just as state and local law enforcement cannot be cudgeled into doing the work of ICE, ICE cannot be cudgeled into not doing its work because state and local law enforcement don't want them to do so. | ||
|
Act Of War?
00:14:39
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||
| They want federal agents to be held to the same use of force policies applying to other police forces and be held accountable through violations. | ||
| Now, again, that seems relatively benign. | ||
| And then they want agents to be prohibited from wearing masks. | ||
| Well, again, the reason that they're wearing masks is because of the targeting of the agents by the online mob right now. | ||
| Democrats really, again, this is performative. | ||
| In the NTHS, we'll be funded, but they want to score some points by yelling at ICE. | ||
| Elizabeth Warren, it is amazing how Elizabeth Warren morphed from a relatively interesting person back in the early 2000s when I knew her. | ||
| I was at Harvard Law School at the same time that she was. | ||
| And she was writing books that had kind of interesting takes. | ||
| And now she is just a rote left-wing radical. | ||
| And here she is saying, hell no on ICE funding. | ||
| This invasion by ICE is not making anyone in America safer. | ||
| And if we don't put a stop to it, these masked agents are going to kill more people. | ||
| Donald Trump wants us to write another check, hand it over to ICE, and let them keep rolling in the dough. | ||
| But here is my view. | ||
| I am a no. | ||
| I am a hell no. | ||
| We cannot give one more penny to Trump's ICE while its masked, poorly trained agents terrorize people all across this country. | ||
| Meanwhile, Raphael Warnock, senator from Georgia, he's openly telling protesters to keep it up. | ||
| And again, the line between the protesters and the agitators has blurred pretty significantly here. | ||
| They are shifting the narrative by continuing to stand day in and day out. | ||
| They are using the instruments of democracy, the voices of people. | ||
| They are bearing witness with cell phone cameras. | ||
| And it is making a difference. | ||
| Now, I'm not naive about what the Trump vans regime is up to. | ||
| They would like to make a small change here or gesture there, and they're hoping that the people will let up. | ||
| Well, I'm saying to the folks not only there, but all across the country, we cannot afford to let up. | ||
| We need the voices of the people now more than ever to pull us back from the brink and to make sure that we have a democracy here for our children. | ||
| I mean, again, this is Democrats ramping it up. | ||
| They're constantly ramping it up. | ||
| Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, might be Speaker of the House after the next midterm if those elections go the wrong way. | ||
| He says that even if Christy Noam at DHS is fired, that won't stop a shutdown. | ||
| Christy Noam being fired or removed from office is, of course, not enough. | ||
| It's a start. | ||
| Well, there's a variety of different things that have been put on the table. | ||
| First of all, there's the basic value and principle that taxpayer dollars can't be used to kill American citizens. | ||
| Taxpayer dollars are not being used to kill American citizens. | ||
| When there's a disputed circumstance in which someone obstructs federal law enforcement, that is not taxpayer dollars being used to subsidize pure murder. | ||
| Pure murder is prosecuted in this country. | ||
| Again, the only sane Democrat seems to be, as always, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. | ||
| Here he was yesterday saying, hey, you know, maybe we should stop comparing ICE agents to Nazis. | ||
| That's gross. | ||
| And I absolutely condemn that. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Do not compare anyone, anyone, to Nazis. | ||
| Don't use that kind of rhetoric. | ||
| You know, that could incite violence. | ||
| And now that's, I strongly reject that and condemn that kind of language in the strongest terms. | ||
| You know, members of ICE are not Nazis. | ||
| I don't compare anyone to Gestapo and those things. | ||
| You know, this is one of the reasons why I think we should stand down in what's happening in Minneapolis. | ||
| You know, we all have to reduce the temperature. | ||
| We have to turn it down. | ||
| And using that kinds of rhetoric, you know, again, I can't ever support that. | ||
| And I have a basic rule in politics: don't compare anyone to Nazis. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| You just don't do that. | ||
| These are not Nazis. | ||
| Why this basic rational perspective is now being ignored by wide swaths of people is absolutely beyond me, except for, again, people require their black and white political narratives. | ||
| And anything that messes with that makes them very, very uncomfortable. | ||
| Well, speaking of stupid people in the Senate, many of them decided to make a spectacle of themselves yesterday when they had Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Hill. | ||
| So he's giving congressional testimony about Venezuela before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. | ||
| Secretary Rubio is very, very good at his job. | ||
| So many of the senators are not. | ||
| One of the amazing things about American politics is how many Americans believe that there are true conspiracies operating at a high level in American politics on the regular. | ||
| All you have to do is meet our senators and congresspeople on the regular in order to know how dumb this is. | ||
| The reason being politics is significantly more like VEEP than it is like House of Cards. | ||
| The notion that there are people behind closed doors pulling off sophisticated plans, pretty rare, pretty rare, because most people are not particularly smart. | ||
| And that apparently is even more true in the United States Senate. | ||
| Well, the hearing kicked off with the usual round of protesting and screaming. | ||
| Here is one protester getting up and yelling at Marco Rubio and then being escorted from the room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, here we go. | |
| You know the drill. | ||
| Off to jail. | ||
| Anyone who is a persistent violator will be banned for three years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I don't know whether the guy falls in that category. | |
| Looks like it. | ||
| I hope after three years, he'll find a more productive means for corner. | ||
| And by the way, I do have to enjoy that there is a protester who's saying hands off Venezuela, hands off Cuba. | ||
| I mean, man, you have lost your mind when you are protesting in favor of the Venezuelan communist regime and the Cuban communist regime, which have reduced literally tens of millions of people to penury, poverty, and death. | ||
| Just genius level stuff right there. | ||
| Well, Tammy Duckworth, who is not one of the sharper tools in the drawer over in the Senate, she had a bit of a tete-a-tete with Secretary of State Rubio on whether war needed to be declared in order to perform strikes on drug boats in the Caribbean. | ||
| These non-state actors who possess state-like capabilities in terms of their weaponry pose a grave danger to the United States. | ||
| I don't think any American would be all of the other laws when it comes to warfare. | ||
| I mean, you're saying that he can invoke this wartime power. | ||
| No, I'm saying, you're asking me, I'm here to discuss foreign policy and what's in the realm of the Department of State. | ||
| I think your question is better directed at the Department of Justice. | ||
| You don't think we're invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which is a wartime, which is something that... | ||
| Yeah, but you're asking me questions that can be invoked during wartime. | ||
| It's only been invoked during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. | ||
| You're asking me. | ||
| It's been invoked three times, and this president is invoking it. | ||
| Okay, you're asking me a question about the domestic application of a law that's best directed at the Department of Justice. | ||
| No, it is because you're asking me something to opine on something that's in the realm of the Department of Justice in terms of its domestic application. | ||
| I can tell you that the United States is most certainly confronting terrorist and criminal organizations operating in our hemisphere that pose a grave danger to the United States. | ||
| Anyone who believes that gangs that flood our country with fentanyl or cocaine are not threats to the United States is not living in reality and certainly does not reflect the opinion of most Americans. | ||
| Man, owned, owned, Tammy Duckworth trying to go after him with domestic application of law. | ||
| He's the Secretary of State, clearly. | ||
| Again, not the brightest contingent over in the Senate. | ||
| Meanwhile, Senator Chris Van Holland, who is just a mockery. | ||
| And every time you see him, you're like, this guy, it's not possible for him to become more of a cucumber with eyeballs. | ||
| And yet there he is becoming more of a cucumber with eyeballs straight from the garden. | ||
| Senator Chris Van Holland of Maryland, who when he is not spending his free time hanging out with alleged domestic abusers in El Salvador, is in the Senate asking dumb questions. | ||
| Here he was suggesting that it was oil executives pushing the change in Venezuela. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, simple yes or no question. | ||
| Were you with President Trump during any of those conversations he had with people with oil interests in Venezuela about the possibility of deposing Maduro? | ||
| That's not a simple yes or no question, but I can answer it quickly. | ||
| And that is the president always elicits opinions from all sorts of people, including, for example, Chevron has an act of license in Venezuela. | ||
| They operate in Venezuela. | ||
| They've been doing so even when the sanctions were in place. | ||
| So of course you would ask Chevron, what is your opinion of Del Codriguez? | ||
| What are your opinions of their economy and of their prospects? | ||
| But the notion that somehow the president authorized this challenge at the urging of oil executives is absurd. | ||
| That never happened. | ||
| Mr. Secretary, I'm asking whether you were with the president. | ||
| That never happened. | ||
| I couldn't be with him because it never happened. | ||
| The oil executives were not involved whatsoever in any of the planning on this matter. | ||
| And there he is being a cucumber, Senator Chris Van Holland. | ||
| Again, if you're going to ask a question to which you don't already know the answer, you're doing it wrong. | ||
| That is the first rule of lawyering. | ||
| Don't ask questions which you don't already know the answer. | ||
| Secretary of State Rubio went on to make clear that criminal organizations are endemic to the Caribbean, Central America, South America. | ||
| We have a real reality in our region of these transnational criminal terrorist organizations that in many cases possess weapons that you ascribe to a nation state, not to a gang, who pose a grave threat to the national security of the United States, but also to the stability of the region. | ||
| If you walk through the region, what is the primary threat in Colombia? | ||
| Transnational criminal organizations. | ||
| What is the threat to Mexico? | ||
| What is the threat to the Caribbean basin? | ||
| These groups have to be confronted. | ||
| They have to be confronted forcefully. | ||
| What's the threat in Haiti to systemic collapse? | ||
| And that is these criminal gangs that basically control territory and threaten the ability to even form a government there in that regard. | ||
| So it's endemic throughout the region, and it ultimately impacts the United States through mass migration, through drug trafficking, and other related criminal organizations. | ||
| And so we need to have a force posture that can confront that. | ||
| Senator Rand Paul, on the Republican side of the aisle, he is a thoroughgoing isolationist, and he went after Marco Rubio over the Venezuela operation, calling it unconstitutional. | ||
| And Secretary of State Rubio rebuffed him pretty strongly. | ||
| If a foreign country bombed our air defense missiles, captured and removed our president, and blockaded our country, would that be considered an act of war? | ||
| Well, I think your question is about the, and I will acknowledge you've been very consistent on all these points the entire career. | ||
| So let me, let me, no matter who the, who's in charge. | ||
| So I will point to two things. | ||
| The first is it's hard for us to conceive that an operation that lasted about four and a half hours and was a law enforcement operation to capture someone we don't recognize as a head of state, indicted in the United States, wanted with a $50 million bench. | ||
| The question would be if it only took four hours to take our president, very short, nobody dies on the other side, nobody dies on our side. | ||
| It's perfect. | ||
| Would it be an act of war? | ||
| We just don't believe that this operation comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war. | ||
| But would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? | ||
| Nobody dies, few casualties, they're in and out. | ||
| Boom, it's a perfect military operation. | ||
| Would that be an act of war? | ||
| Of course it would be an act of war. | ||
| I'm probably the most anti-war person in the Senate, and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president. | ||
| So I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument. | ||
| One-way arguments that don't rebound, that you can't apply to yourselves, that cannot be universally applicable are bad arguments. | ||
| Okay, well, the reason that his argument is bad is because who cares whether Venezuela considers it an act of war? | ||
| The question is whether constitutionally you require a declaration of war in order to do this thing. | ||
| Is it a war for the United States to perform a law enforcement grab and snatch of a person we do not recognize as the legitimate rightful leader of a country? | ||
| Do we need to declare war in America? | ||
| Who cares what Venezuelans think about it? | ||
| I don't care what Nigerians think about it. | ||
| I don't care what Israelis think about it. | ||
| I don't care what anybody thinks about it. | ||
| We're Americans. | ||
| The American Constitution applies. | ||
| So the question that ought to be asked is not whether we would consider it an act of war if somebody did it to us. | ||
| If we did, by the way, we would then have to wait for it, go through the constitutional mechanisms of declaring war, right? | ||
| That's what the question is about, is not whether what we just did to Venezuela is an adversarial action. | ||
| Of course, it's an adversarial action. | ||
| The question is, constitutionally speaking, do you have to declare war in order to do this thing? | ||
| Not whether in some random platonic universe, this is considered a definitional, quote-unquote, act of war. | ||
| And that's the point Rubio is making. | ||
| Make me the case that that operation constitutes a war under the definition of war in the Constitution, as opposed to a policing action or a law enforcement action. | ||
| It's a cheap rhetorical trick, what Senator Paul is doing there. | ||
| And meanwhile, Rubio is asked about Cuba. | ||
| And he says they're not going to involve themselves in sort of an act of change in Cuba, but they would, of course, love to see the regime fall. | ||
| Will you make a public commitment today to rule out U.S. regime change in Cuba? | ||
| Regime change? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Oh, no. | ||
| I think we would love to see the regime there change. | ||
| We would like to, that doesn't mean that we're going to make a change, but we would love to see a change. | ||
| There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime. | ||
| But you know what we mean by regime change? | ||
| We don't mean I wish someone else were in charge. | ||
| When we talk about regime change, we're talking about using the power of the United States, usually kinetic power, but often other kinds of coercion. | ||
| And I'm not even saying that that's always not in our interest. | ||
| I'm just saying I'm not asking you whether we would prefer a different kind of government. | ||
| I'm asking whether you are trying to precipitate the fall of the current regime. | ||
| Yeah, but that's statutory. | ||
| The Helms-Burton Act, the U.S. embargo on Cuba is codified. | ||
| It was codified in law, and it requires regime change in order for us to lift the embargo. | ||
| And, you know, again, correct. | ||
|
Nikki Minaj Lyrics Debate
00:12:10
|
||
| Well, Senator Tim Kaine and the long-forgotten vice presidential candidate for Hillary Clinton, he went after Secretary of State Rubio because Donald Trump supposedly said Iceland and not Greenland in his Davos speech. | ||
| And somehow this is a criminal offense in some way. | ||
| We're not mad at Iceland. | ||
| They haven't cost us any money. | ||
| The president just mistook the two countries for each other, correct? | ||
| Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we're all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles. | ||
| We've had presidents like that before. | ||
| Some made a lot more than this one. | ||
| Nice try. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I thought he did well. | ||
| Ond, ouch, odu. | ||
| Secretary of State Rubio has also asked about Iran and again pointed out that the people of Iran deserve better than current leadership. | ||
| And the core problem they face, unlike the protests you saw in the past on some other topics, is that they don't have a way to address the core complaints of the protesters, which is that their economy is in collapse. | ||
| And the reason why there's economies in collapse is because they spend all their money and all their resources building weapons and sponsoring terrorist groups around the world instead of reinvesting it back into their society. | ||
| And as a result, have taken on massive global sanctions, which has isolated their economy and their country. | ||
| And so that's what the Iranian people are demanding, is that they stop doing that and start caring about them and get these sanctions off them. | ||
| And this regime is unwilling to do it. | ||
| So the core challenges, the protests may have ebbed, but they will spark up again in the future because this regime, unless they are willing to change and or leave, have no way of addressing the legitimate and consistent complaints of the people of Iran who deserve better. | ||
| And again, we'll keep an eye on what the Trump administration intends to do with Iran. | ||
| The United States has put forward a number of demands of Iran, including denuclearization, as well as shutting down their ballistic missile program and ceasing to support terror groups across the region and the globe. | ||
| Iran's not going to do any of that. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see what happens with regard to Iran. | ||
| Meanwhile, the big economic story of the day is the Trump administration announcing the launch of so-called Trump accounts. | ||
| These are accounts that are open to anybody up to the age of 18. | ||
| Essentially, they are tax-deferred accounts where you can take some money, you can put it in, it's capped every year, you can put that money in, and then you can invest it in the stock market. | ||
| That's the goal of the Trump account is to get Americans invested in the stock market, building wealth that way. | ||
| This is sort of what George W. Bush had tried to support in 2005 when he was talking about privatizing Social Security, although the Trump accounts are not connected to Social Security. | ||
| And the idea here is if you have the American people investing in the markets, that is a better thing than simply taking their money in a pyramid scheme. | ||
| And it's also an antidote to the idea that government is supposed to support you as opposed to being reliant on free markets that become more efficient and more productive over time. | ||
| Brad Gerstner, the investor extraordinaire, was one of the moving forces behind all this. | ||
| He was at the White House championing this. | ||
| But the most important and transformational part about the idea is I said, Michael, this isn't a government program. | ||
| This isn't coming to bended knee to the government where the government controls the account and then we're dependent, increased dependency on government. | ||
| It's the exact opposite of UBI. | ||
| This is the antidote to socialism. | ||
| The antidote to socialism is more capitalism. | ||
| And I said, Michael, This is a direct giving platform. | ||
| Michael Dell, of course, another massively successful investor, he says this could change the face of the country because the goal is to engage people in the markets in a way they might not otherwise. | ||
| And in not too many years, essentially every child in America will have savings invested in the greatest companies in this country. | ||
| And that will change the face of this country over the next 10, 20, 30 years. | ||
| We couldn't be more excited about this and the opportunity to make a difference. | ||
| You know, the best investment a country can make is in its people, especially in its children. | ||
| And this creates an incredible platform for that to occur at enormous scale. | ||
| And we're excited to see it all come together. | ||
| Now, again, these new $1,000 tax advantaged investments accounts, they're $1,000 for newborns. | ||
| Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, says 25 million Americans could be opening these accounts. | ||
| You can open the Trump account and then contribute to that up to $5,000 from family and friends. | ||
| Then employers can also contribute. | ||
| We're going to have many great American philanthropists who are contributing, Michael and Susan Dell, an astounding $6.25 billion. | ||
| Many employers who are going to announce today are contributing. | ||
| And then we think we're going to have up to 20 states. | ||
| So everyone with a child who is under 18 should open an account. | ||
| We think that there will be 25 million accounts. | ||
| We already had about 600,000 families sign up for them. | ||
| So again, a pretty major initiative here from the Trump administration. | ||
| There will be a $1,000 seed account that is set up for newborns by the Treasury. | ||
| But there are also matching accounts that are coming from places like JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Nikki Minaj, who announced yesterday that not only is she a Trump supporter, but also that she is going to be helping her Barbs, those are her fans, to actually co-invest. | ||
| Apparently, according to the New York Post, it could mean investments between $150,000 and $300,000 to her fans to help set up baby Barbs accounts. | ||
| The final number is currently in flux. | ||
| Here was Nicki Minaj, and obviously the Trump loves this kind of stuff. | ||
| So Nikki Minaj showing up at the White House in order to tout this is one of his jams. | ||
| He loves this kind of stuff. | ||
| I don't know what to say, but I will say that I am probably the president's number one fan. | ||
| And that's not going to change. | ||
| And the hate, well, what people have to say, it does not affect me at all. | ||
| It actually motivates me to support him more. | ||
| And it's going to motivate all of us to support him more. | ||
| We're not going to let them get away with bullying him and, you know, the smear campaigns. | ||
| It's not going to work. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| He has a lot of force behind him and God is protecting him. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| Okay, so I will say that I was, I was, as a fellow rapper, I was first on the Nikki Minaj bandwagon here in her rap battles with fellow artists like Cardi B. | ||
| And Nicki Minaj, I know, shares respect for those in the industry. | ||
| I know. | ||
| But listen, it's pretty wonderful for President Trump. | ||
| And again, there is a cultural change that's happening in the country, which is you're allowed to now say that actually you like President Trump or that you vote Republican or that you don't agree with the Democrats' agenda. | ||
| That's something President Trump really has changed in a way that it has never changed in my lifetime. | ||
| And that's an amazing thing. | ||
| Joining us on the line to discuss all of this is Isabel Brown, who was actually at the White House for the reveal of the Trump accounts yesterday. | ||
| Isabel, great to see you. | ||
| How was it? | ||
| It was fantastic, Ben. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| And what an amazing initiative from our government. | ||
| I said this six or seven times to the media yesterday, but what we're watching through this is not just an investment into our future. | ||
| That's important, certainly, for our children, but it's also a huge paradigm shift in Washington. | ||
| I think very few people are talking about. | ||
| Typically, the financial status quo in this town is that you borrow from the financial future and sell them out from every next generation to keep lining the pockets of those who have been here in this town longer than twice the time my generation has been alive. | ||
| And now you're watching that script be flipped and literally placing money into the hands of babies the day they are born. | ||
| And I could not be more excited about it. | ||
| So the way the Trump accounts work is that if you are a newborn, Treasury puts $1,000 into an account for you, but that's obviously not the extent of it. | ||
| It's also essentially a tax-free account for investment that can be invested in by family, by your company, correct? | ||
| Yep, that's exactly correct. | ||
| If you have a baby that was born between January 1st of last year, 2025, and the end of 2028, so during Trump's term in office, you have basically a free deposit of $1,000 that goes into an investment account that you can choose to put further contributions into as that child's parents or even as an employer. | ||
| Many, many companies around the country, from Visa to Uber to so many others, announced they were going to be teaming up with this initiative and matching employee contributions and that $1,000 investment from the Treasury Department into baby accounts. | ||
| In the conservative movement, in particular, Turning Point USA, under the leadership of Erica Kirk, announced that every employee who has a newborn baby will receive an additional $1,000 into that account from the company, not just the Treasury Department. | ||
| So really interesting incentive from the employer side as well. | ||
| But the biggest contribution comes from parents, which you can deposit up to $5,000 into this account annually that then is deducted out of your taxes. | ||
| And if you look at the maximum contributions into the account and stock market averages over the past several decades, if you contribute the maximum amount every year, by the time your child turns 28 years old, they will have over a million dollars sitting in this account, which is absolutely incredible. | ||
| So obviously it was sort of a star-studded event. | ||
| Nikki Minaj made a big appearance wearing a shockingly amazing coat, apparently. | ||
| And she had the nails in the whole thing. | ||
| What was the mood in the room like when Nikki Minaj came in? | ||
| You know, it was incredible, Ben. | ||
| I was backstage for most of the event. | ||
| And when she came in, you're right, she was wearing an absolutely incredible coat. | ||
| But it was this excited, giggly feeling that you saw among the White House staff knowing that the America First MAGA coalition really is growing to this big tent that we never expected over the past couple of years, right down to Nikki Minaj, who is now not just the singer of Super Bass, she is super based. | ||
| And you saw her join the president on stage yesterday and even hold hands for a few minutes, which was so touching. | ||
| So obviously, the sort of big ideological pusher actually came from the capitalist community. | ||
| This is not a government sort of led initiative. | ||
| It is in the sense that obviously the government is going to deposit what is a fairly de minimis amount for babies when they are born. | ||
| But at the same time, it really is a bunch of capitalists who are matching, who are really pushing this forward because their general idea, and I've talked to Brad Gerstner, who's one of the people who was behind this initiative, their general idea is you get people either invested in capitalism or they find themselves invested in government handouts and government welfare. | ||
| And so this really is an Uber capitalist move to try and get people involved in the markets. | ||
| I could not have said that better myself. | ||
| In fact, many of the speakers were saying on stage yesterday that we are creating an entire generation of capitalists through this program. | ||
| And I know that's generally one of the pushback comments I'm hearing in the media that this is just another handout program or it's really rife for potential for fraud. | ||
| Certainly the Trump administration is doing everything they can to combat against fraud in some of these programs across the spectrum in the executive branch. | ||
| But what's interesting to me is what these accounts can be used for as soon as your child turns 18 years old, kind of similar to a 529 plan or a college savings account. | ||
| There are approved expenses that you can access the minute you turn 18, buying a home, for example, which I know the president touched on quite extensively in his speech, going to college and college tuition money, or even starting your own business. | ||
| And many of the people in attendance yesterday said they have children who are so excited, not just to go to college, but to become entrepreneurs and know that this is going to set up their capacity to do so once they become an adult. | ||
| Well, that's Isabel Brown. | ||
| Go check out her show, The Isabel Brown Show. | ||
| And Isabel, glad you had a good time and that you know all the names of Nicki Minaj's songs, which is, of course, the most important thing. | ||
|
Approved Expenses for Adults
00:02:57
|
||
| I've been listening a lot the last few weeks, as you should too, Ben. | ||
| We should see a Ben Shapiro reacts to Nicki Minaj's lyrics episode here pretty soon. | ||
| Nicki Minaj and I, we are fellow, Nicki Minaj, we are in the same industry. | ||
| I've pointed this out. | ||
| We are in the same industry and we have traded some good-natured compliments with one another. | ||
| She does appreciate the verbal fluency of my rapping skill. | ||
| Isabel, appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks, Ben. | ||
| Well, folks, it's time for our first ever mailbag audio segment brought to you by Pure Talk because, of course, we want a clear connection with our fans. | ||
| Brian has the first question. | ||
| What is one story or book in the Bible that people overlook that they should study? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hmm. | |
| Okay. | ||
| A story that people overlook in the Bible that they should study. | ||
| Trying to think of some of the more obscure stories in the Bible that people tend to overlook. | ||
| The truth is, I feel like there are a lot of people who are not engaged enough. | ||
| You know, as a Jew, obviously, I'm going to say are not engaged enough with the Old Testament. | ||
| But there are a lot of sort of biblical stories that people ignore. | ||
| It seems to me that the story that doesn't get enough play in the Bible is what happens after Moses splits the tablets, right? | ||
| He brings the tablets down from Mount Sinai. | ||
| He sees that everybody is engaging in the golden calf. | ||
| And as a sort of shock tactic, he takes it and he shatters that stuff. | ||
| And then he goes back up the mountain. | ||
| And there's this unbelievably beautiful section of the book of Exodus where Moses asks God if he can see his face. | ||
| And God says, you can't see my face and live. | ||
| And then he hides him in a cleft of the rock. | ||
| And then it says that Moses is able to see God's back. | ||
| And it's this unbelievably beautifully written section of Exodus that, at least in Jewish tradition, is the closest that man pretty much ever gets to God himself. | ||
| And the question, of course, is why is it that human beings aren't capable of seeing God face to face and living? | ||
| And the answer is because obviously, if you were able to understand all of the necessities of the universe and how everything worked, then you wouldn't be human, right? | ||
| It's our human limitations that allow us the free will to operate in ignorance in the world. | ||
| But there's something else. | ||
| Why does God show him his back? | ||
| Why doesn't God just say no? | ||
| In the book of Job, the end of the book of Job, God says to Job, you don't understand anything. | ||
| And that's the end of the book. | ||
| But in this one, God says to Moses, you can see my back. | ||
| What does that mean? | ||
| Well, there are certain commentaries, and I've always thought that what it means is that it's very difficult to see God's presence in your life in any given moment. | ||
| When something is happening right in the moment, unless it's the birth of a child or something, very, very difficult to see God in your life. | ||
| It's only in the aftermath, right? | ||
| As God is walking away from you that you can see how God walked through your life. | ||
| You can look back over the course of your life and you can see how one thing that may have been bad led to another thing that ended up being tremendously transformational for you or how one choice that you made led to an entirely different strand of your life that may never have been accessed. | ||
| And you can see God in that decision making. | ||
| And so I think that that's an incredibly beautiful part of the Bible that I think people don't pay enough attention to. | ||
|
Decisions and Trade-Offs
00:04:00
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| Okay, next question is from Sarah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hey, Ben. | |
| Love your show. | ||
|
unidentified
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Quick question. | |
| I was wondering what advice do you have for moms who want to work, but also want to be very involved in their kids' lives. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| So, there's a phrase that I heard attributed to Midge Dector in which she said that women can have everything, but they can't have everything all at once. | ||
| Time is limited. | ||
| That's true for men too. | ||
| Time is limited. | ||
| You have to make decisions as to how you wish to spend your time. | ||
| The studies that I've seen tend to suggest that most women, particularly mothers, want to work part-time and spend time with their kids. | ||
| And so they just have to recognize that if you work part-time, the chances that you're going to make vice president of Chase Manhattan are far lower than they would be if you worked full-time. | ||
| And those are decisions that you're going to have to make based on finances and personal desire and all the rest. | ||
| Obviously, for moms and for dads, the kids come first, more important than your career, more important than your job. | ||
| But making sure that you have realistic and relevant expectations for what you want from a career, what's doable and where your priorities lie is going to lead you to be realistic so you don't feel dissatisfied with both. | ||
| Because very often, you have people who feel like I should be at home full-time with my kid. | ||
| And if I'm not, I'm disappointing them and myself. | ||
| Or I ought to be at work full-time. | ||
| And if I'm not, I'm disappointing myself and my employer. | ||
| Just be realistic about the fact that time is not infinite and that every hour of the day is the same for everybody. | ||
| And that means that you really have to decide in advance what kind of time you wish to spend where. | ||
| You know, for my wife, that meant that she was in medical school full-time for several years. | ||
| And then over the past couple of years, since we had our last baby, she's been at home with the kids and she's really been enjoying it. | ||
| And she may go back to work part-time afterward, but that's going to be a decision that she makes largely based on the schedule of our kids. | ||
| She's going to try and go during the hours that our kids are in school and be home by the time they're in school. | ||
| But that's a decision that you have to make. | ||
| Every decision, in other words, is an opportunity cost. | ||
| There are trade-offs to everything. | ||
| All righty, folks, the show is continuing for our members right now. | ||
| We'll get to the latest from Zoro and Momdani. | ||
| He has never lacked for excuses for why he wants your money. | ||
| And now he's got some new ones. | ||
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| Click that link in the description and join us. | ||
| What was it like, Myland, to be alone with God? | ||
| Is that who you think I was alone with? | ||
|
unidentified
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Maradin, I knew your father. | |
| I am yet convinced that he was not of this world. | ||
| All men know of the great Taliesin. | ||
|
unidentified
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You are my father. | |
| The gods should war for my soul. | ||
| Princess Garris, savior of our people. | ||
| I know what the bull got offered you. | ||
| I was offered the same. | ||
| And there is a new pirate work in the world. | ||
| I've seen it. | ||
| A god who sacrifices all he loves for us. | ||
| We are each given only one life, singer. | ||
| No, we're given another. | ||
| I learned of Yezu the Christ, and I have become his follower. | ||
| He's waiting on a miracle, and I think you can give him one. | ||
| Trust in Yezu. | ||
| He is the only hope for men like us. | ||
| Fate of Britain never rests in the hands of the Great Light. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great light, great darkness. | |
| Such things mattered to me then. | ||
| What matters to you now, Mistress of Lies? | ||
|
unidentified
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You, nephew. | |
| The sword of the high king. | ||
| How many lives must be lost before you accept the power you were born to wield? | ||
|
unidentified
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Still clinging to the promises of a god who has abandoned you. | |
| I cannot take up that sword again. | ||
| You know what you must do. | ||
| Great life, forgive me. | ||