Texas Gov. Abbot Mandates “Safe Space” Exception for Jewish Students. Ben Shapiro’s Mental Gymnastics to Justify Candace Owens’ Firing
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Safe Spaces Mandatory in Texas (5:55)
Justifying the Unjustifiable (48:32)
Outro (1:16:09)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, There are very few ideas that have been mocked more viciously over the last decade than the notion of safe spaces.
Whenever various minority groups, marginalized groups as they're now called, have justified the need for censorship or speech codes on college campuses, that phrase is invariably invoked.
The argument goes that unless college students, vulnerable college students who are adults, are protected from ideas that upset them or make them feel threatened, then they won't be safe.
Not just conservative pundits, but also a lot of self-styled free speech champions have created a virtual cottage industry, a very lucrative one at that, of mocking the idea that college students, in particular certain minority groups, need safe spaces.
Yesterday, though, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the Republican, issued an executive order that applies to all universities in his state.
What did he say was the purpose of this executive order?
He said it was to create, quote, safe spaces.
Not for all students on Texas campuses, but only for one minority group in particular, namely Texas's Jewish students.
This is merely the latest in a long line of legal measures and other forms of special privileges created largely by red states and Republican governors in the name of fighting bigotry and racism and other forms of prejudice by protecting members of a minority group From hearing certain views that upset them.
Now, if this sounds exactly like the left liberal culture war mindset that conservatives generally mock rather than embrace, you would be exactly correct.
With the only difference being which groups are protected by each side using this mentality.
Now, all this points to the lurking contradictions that have long plagued conservative politics.
Because of how their claim principles and the willingness of many of them to abandon those claim principles in the name of protecting Israel have finally emerged in plain daylight since October 7th.
We'll examine this new executive order issued yesterday by Governor Abbott as well as the rationale for it and the reaction to it.
Then, speaking of the irreconcilable inconsistencies in certain factions of right-wing politics when it comes to Israel, Ben Shapiro yesterday sat down to speak with Dave Rubin.
These two have a lot in common.
They have both become extremely wealthy men by championing the cause of free speech and free discourse and opposing cancel culture.
They are both among the nation's most fanatical supporters of a foreign country, Israel, and they each embody exactly the burning, consuming contradictions I just described when it comes to their claim principles on their one hand and their willingness to do anything to protect the country of Israel on the other.
One of the topics both of them discussed is why it is that The Daily Wire, the very popular right-wing free speech outlet founded by Ben Shapiro in 2015 along with the filmmaker Jeremy Boren, parted ways recently with its very popular host Candace Owens, due almost entirely to her views about Israel.
Within this discussion that they have resides a great deal of insight about the way in which many conservatives have been struggling with issues of free speech and other basic civil liberties since October 7th, but also well before that as well.
The discussion is really worth examining for that reason.
Before we get to all that, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Republican Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has long been popular among conservatives, and that's what makes it so bizarre that yesterday he issued an executive order, and when and that's what makes it so bizarre that yesterday he issued an executive order, and when doing so, he invoked a phrase to justify that executive order that is probably the single most mocked
And he didn't invoke this phrase ironically.
or as a way of making some kind of point, he invoked it earnestly.
And the way that I know that is because he has a long history of embracing measures very similar to the one that he embraced yesterday and has done so repeatedly for the same objective.
And it's not just Greg Abbott, but red state legislatures and Republican governors throughout the country have also embraced similar measures for similar reasons.
And so before we comment on that, let me just show you exactly what it is that he said.
Here from the office of the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, on March 27th, 2024, you see the headline, Governor Abbott fights anti-Semitic acts at Texas colleges and universities.
And he's touting a executive order that he issued and it says the following, quote, the governor's executive order requires that all higher education institutions in Texas review their free speech policies to establish appropriate punishments for antisemitic rhetoric, which is another word for speech, on college and university campuses.
Ensure that policies that address the sharp rise of antisemitic acts are enforced.
Now, note here, among other things, that he is not protecting all Texas students from being attacked for their views, or for their religious beliefs, or for their identity.
He's issuing an executive order that is designed to protect one group of students, and only one group of students, Mainly Jewish students from only one type of bigotry, namely anti-Semitism.
He's not protecting students from anti-black racism or anti-white racism or Islamophobia or transphobia or xenophobia or any other kind of bigotry.
This is a measure that is designed to protect one particular group of people in the society identified by a demographic characteristic and is designed to require that universities enact Measures to combat a certain kind of rhetoric aimed at a certain kind of group.
Not hateful rhetoric in general, just rhetoric that he deems to be hateful in particular toward this group in particular.
The executive order that he signed is here, and it went on, quote, it cites the following, incidents of anti-Semitism have increased since Hamas's attack and the proliferation of anti-Semitism at public universities is particularly concerning.
Multiple protests and walkouts have been staged by university student organizations with students chanting anti-Semitic phrases such as, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
There again, he's explicitly stating that the motivation for adopting this measure is not that students are being violently attacked, but that instead they're hearing political phrases that upset them, like Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.
I thought that it was pretty much of a consensus among conservatives and Republicans and people on the right that words are not violence.
And yet, again, over and over this executive order cites things like speech and rhetoric and political phrases.
It then goes on, section 519315C2 of the Texas Education Code provides that students should not participate in and higher education institutions should not allow expression that is unlawful or disrupts the operations and of the institution.
And whereas anti-Semitism and the harassment of Jewish students have no place on Texas University campuses and will not be tolerated by my administration, therefore I, Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, by virtue of the power and authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the state of Texas, hereby direct all Texas higher education institutions to do the following.
One, review and update free speech policies.
This is a Republican governor, a conservative governor.
Part of a political movement in the United States that has spent years objecting to attacks on free speech on college campuses, speech codes on college campuses, in the name of protecting certain minority groups from bigoted speech, and this is exactly what this order is designed to do.
He is directing that Texas universities, colleges, update their free speech policies to address the sharp rise in anti-Semitic speech And then he adds on, and acts, but the only acts, kinds of acts cited on university campuses are things like chanting.
Obviously, if somebody attacks Jewish students or threatens Jewish students with violence, it's already a crime.
It's already a violation of campus code, but it's also a crime.
In society, you can't physically attack people or threaten to attack people with violence anywhere in the United States without committing a crime.
You don't need to change free speech codes at Texas campuses to address that.
You just need to change Texas free speech codes to constrict the kinds of views that people are permitted to express about a foreign country, Israel, if you want to make Jewish students feel more comfortable, which is exactly what Greg Abbott, when justifying this executive order, said was his goal.
It went on.
Two, ensure that these policies are being enforced on campuses and that groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies.
He does not say that pro-Israel student groups should be punished in any way if they violate these policies or any other group for that matter.
He's singling out One group of students that he wants to protect, Jewish students.
One type of speech that he wants to constrict, which is criticism of Israel or pro-Palestinian speech.
And one type of student group that he wants to target and punish, which are pro-Palestinian groups.
Now all of these Measures are completely in line with Greg Abbott's own personal political views.
He's a fanatical supporter of Israel.
Greg Abbott's not Jewish.
He's an evangelical Christian and he has talked about the importance of Israel to him personally and to his religion and to his culture.
And he has every right to be a fanatical supporter of Israel if he wants for whatever reasons, religious, political, ideological, that's of course within his rights.
But to trifle with speech codes on college campuses in Texas by tightening the permissive range of speech to prevent people from expressing views that Greg Abbott finds offensive, to protect a particular cause that is important to Greg Abbott, and to punish student groups whose cause and whose views are antithetical to his,
Is the exact kind of tyranny that conservatives have been denouncing, rightfully so, when it has come from the liberal left in multiple ways, including on college campuses over the last decade.
He goes on, quote, number three, include the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the state of Texas in section 448.001 of the Texas government code in university free speech policies to guide university personnel and students on what constitutes anti-Semitic speech.
Now, I believe that we have the tweet, and if we don't, we should get it, where Governor Abbott explains the reason for this executive order and specifically says that he wants to create safe spaces for Jewish students.
So I don't see that tweet here, so we're going to get that tweet, though.
But when Greg Abbott announced his executive order, He explicitly said that the reason for this executive order was that he wants to create what he explicitly called safe spaces on Texas's campus.
We're going to pull up that tweet right now because... All right, I'm just going to point out, I think you have to find the right The right Twitter account?
Anyway, we're going to get that tweet for you.
But for now, take my word that when he announced it on Twitter, he specifically said Jewish students on Texas campuses need, quote, a safe space, safe spaces.
Now, this is not been, as I said, the first time something like this has happened.
There has been a long line of Republican governors who have done similar things.
We have reported extensively, for example, on how Governor Ron DeSantis, in order to kick off his presidential campaign, flew to Israel.
And in Israel, in a foreign country, he signed into law a hate speech law similar to the one that Governor Abbott just implemented by executive order designed to tighten
The range of permissible speech on Florida college campuses concerning Israel and how anti-Semitism is now going to have an expanded definition to include within it a lot more statements about the foreign country called Israel and its actions and policies that are now punishable by law.
We also have reported on how since October 7th, Governor DeSantis, again as part of his presidential campaign, actually banned a pro-Palestinian group.
Students for Justice in Palestine, by claiming that their speech somehow constitutes material support for terrorism, not because they're providing bombs or money to terrorist groups, but simply because their speech, their criticism of Israel, said Governor DeSantis, actually promotes the cause of terrorism and therefore ought to be banned.
On Florida campuses, a move that was so offensive to core constitutional rights that the free speech group Fire.org that has spent the last decade gaining a lot of credibility with conservative activists and conservative politicians because of their ardent defense of right-wing speech on college campus condemned Governor DeSantis in the most vehement ways and said that his attempt to constrict
The ability to criticize Israel or to engage in student activism against the Israeli government on Florida campuses in the name of stopping anti-Semitism is such a grave assault on the First Amendment free speech right that they were actually encouraging college administrators to defy the order because it's so blatantly anti-Semitic.
Just last month, the Republican governor in South Dakota, who's a potential vice presidential pick for Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, introduced a similar executive order, again, purporting to create safe zones, not for all students in South Dakota, not for all students and all marginalized or minority groups, but solely for Jewish students in South Dakota.
I never realized that anti-Semitism was such a grave problem in South Dakota before.
And the reason for this is because pro-Israel sentiment is a very vehemently held view within Republican politics.
And again, that's fine.
Republican governors have every right to devote themselves with great vigor and enthusiasm, if they want, to the interests of this foreign government, to Israel.
But what they don't have the right to do is exactly what they're doing, which is using the force of law to try and constrict the range of views that can be expressed on college campuses in the name of fighting bigotry.
This is what the liberal left has been doing for the last 10 years that conservatives claim they are so opposed to.
Now, I am happy about the fact that there are some conservatives, prominent conservatives, who have been objecting to this.
Tucker Carlson from the very beginning.
Almost immediately after October 7th began speaking out about his concern about the way in which so many conservatives seem eager to cheer censorship on college campus and elsewhere in the name of protecting Israel.
I did an interview with him and he said my big concern is given that by a A whole bunch of bizarre circumstances.
It's not the American right that has largely defended free speech and opposed censorship.
If conservatives are now going to embrace censorship and abandon free speech in the name of protecting Israel, who would be left to defend free speech?
And Candace Owens, of course, has also spoken out to the point that she got fired from the Daily Wire.
We're going to cover that in our next segment because Ben Shapiro, the founder of Daily Wire, talked for the first time About why Candace Owen's views on Israel, and her comments more generally, forced her to leave the Daily Wire.
And the explanation that he gave, I think, was very telling.
One of the most influential conservative activists, arguably the most effective conservative activist on the American right in many years, is Christopher Rufo.
I was happy to see that he condemned Governor Abbott.
Before we get to that, let me just show you the tweet that Governor Abbott posted when he announced the executive order.
There you see it on the screen.
He said, this is Governor Abbott yesterday, quote, anti-Semitism will not be tolerated in Texas.
Today, I issued an executive order to fight the increase in acts of anti-Semitism at Texas college and universities.
Texas stands with our Jewish students.
We will ensure our college campuses are safe spaces for the Jewish community.
Now, just imagine, had this been about any other group, imagine if Governor Abbott had said anti-Black racism, can we put that tweet back on the screen, please?
Anti-Black racism will not be tolerated in Texas.
Today, I'm issuing an executive order to fight the increase in acts of racism At Texas colleges, Texas stands with our black students.
We will ensure our college campuses are safe spaces for the black community.
Imagine the anger and mockery that would have provoked among almost every conservative I can think of.
Or imagine if he had said, transphobia will not be tolerated in Texas.
Today, I issued an executive order to fight the increase in acts of transphobia on Texas campuses.
Texas stands with our trans students.
We will ensure our college campuses are safe spaces for the LGBT community.
That would have probably led to his impeachment.
Why is this any different?
Why is this any better?
To constrict speech, to direct administrators, to trifle with free speech codes, to more broadly define anti-Semitism?
To punish the expression of political phrases that make Jewish students feel unsafe, to turn college campuses into safe spaces, not for everybody, but solely for Jewish students, who, according to Governor Abbott, and if you look at the executive order as we just did, he's not claiming there's an epidemic of violence against Jewish students.
He's claiming that there's a expression of views against Israel that's making them feel uncomfortable.
And the argument has always been, I've been a big supporter of this argument, that college students are adults.
And if there's any place in the country where free speech should reign, where dissent should reign, where even taboos should be able to be permitted to be expressed, where orthodoxies have to be challenged without constraints, it's an academia, that's what academia is for.
And one of the things you send your adult children to college in order to do is learn how to hear arguments that make them uncomfortable and to engage with them and to think critically, not to be shielded and protected by them.
And yet here you have a Republican governor doing exactly that, which conservatives have said for years they find reprehensible and dangerous.
And again, he's not doing it as tit for tat or ironically because he's been doing it for many years, long before October 7th, as we'll show you.
Now, one of the people, as I was saying, who, in addition to Candace Owen and Tucker Carlson and several others who is objecting, and I think this is the first time he stood up and spoke out on this in response to Governor Abbott, is Christopher Ruffo, who has been working with Governor DeSantis on the Florida educational system and in particular trying to remove notions that any particular group of people will be discriminated against by who has been working with Governor DeSantis on the Florida educational system and in particular Remove notions that any particular group of people will be discriminated against by dogma or by university policy.
And Christopher Rufo, in response to Governor Abbott's executive order, said the following, quote, I am committed to the fight against anti-Semitism on campus, but I am concerned about the highlighted provisions in Governor Abbott's executive order, which instructs universities to, quote, update free speech policies.
To prohibit, quote, anti-Semitic speech, how is such a policy different from DEI programs, which are diversity, equity and inclusion programs that conservatives have begun to focus on, in a very negative way?
He says, how is such a policy different from DEI programs promising to prohibit, quote, anti-black speech?
And why not include anti-white speech, which, as I have shown in my reporting, is institutionalized at the University of Texas?
What is the rationale for one but not the other?
Or the others?
He goes on, the problem to me seems to be conduct rather than speech.
Shutting down speakers, threatening students, mobilizing mobs, calling for violence.
All of which can be regulated as prohibited conduct with a universal rather than particular policy.
Exactly.
If you really want to limit conduct, and I think you need to be very careful that you're not limiting legitimate political protest, the idea that you're going to enact special rules for special groups is madness.
And that you're going to single out particular student groups that have a policy view and an ideology that differ from the Republican governor is so blatantly tyrannical.
Why would these rules not apply to every single student equally?
He goes on, quote, there is a better solution, provide simple, clear general rules that apply equally to all groups, a universal standard.
It will solve the immediate problem of rising anti-Semitism while providing a long-term framework that respects the right to free speech and equal protection.
Now, this idea that there's an epidemic of anti-Semitism that's unique and singular in the United States is something that we have very critically examined in the past.
I think it's very, very, very, very difficult to argue that American Jews are some uniquely marginalized and vulnerable and endangered group.
Every metric suggests otherwise.
And if you look at things like Racist massacres.
There has been a terrible racist massacre that was carried out against Jewish people in a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
There have been more than one, many, many more than one carried against against black people in the United States.
If you look at hate crime, Self-reporting, it's true, there's an increase in anti-Semitism, self-reporting incidents.
There's also a significant increase in anti-Black incidents since the George Floyd riots and anti-LGBT hate crimes in the last several years as well.
It's almost impossible to argue that anti-Semitism is some epidemic and the fact that, as we said, it's making the cover of every major magazine.
Time Magazine, as we went over yesterday, we covered the article published by The Atlantic.
Think shows that There's a lot of very influential people who stand perfectly ready and not just ready, but very able to combat anti-Semitism if in fact it takes place.
I think American Jews are doing pretty well in the United States and don't need special privileges and rules, especially when it comes to trifling with free speech on college campuses.
But this is something that has been going on for a long, long time in the United States, namely
That although there's a lot of attention paid to censorship of conservative speech on social media and on college campuses, and that has been something that we have covered and denounced, one of the most frequent forms of censorship in the United States, and especially on college campuses and through state power, is censorship aimed not at conservative speech, but at critics of the state of Israel.
And Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been one of the people responsible for some of the most aggressively anti-free speech measures long before October 7th.
Here from the Jerusalem Post in May of 2017 is an article.
Texas governor signs an anti-BDS bill on Israel's Independence Day.
BDS stands for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions measure that is called for by some pro-Palestinian activists to boycott Israel, to divest from Israel, to sanction Israel.
As a way of ending the illegal occupation of the West Bank, similar to what was done, modeled after what was done in the 1980s against the apartheid government of South Africa.
Now, you don't have to like the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement, but obviously organizing a nonviolent boycott against Israel is something that is perfectly within the rights of the United States, every United States citizen to do.
And yet, red states and red state governors like Texas and Governor Abbott actually enacted laws That stated that if you want to have contracts with the state, with Texas, you have to sign a vow, an oath, a pledge that you will not participate in the boycott of Israel.
You're permitted to boycott any other country in the world that you want.
You can boycott Iran or Russia or France or Canada, whoever, Peru, Korea.
Boycott whatever country you want.
If you want a contract with the state of Texas, you cannot boycott Israel and you have to sign an oath vowing that you don't.
You're even allowed to boycott other American states.
There was a boycott of Indiana.
There was a boycott of North Carolina in the past decade over protest of their trans bills, trans bathroom bills.
There was a protest against or boycott of the state of Georgia because of voting rights laws.
You're absolutely permitted to boycott American states.
The one thing you cannot do under this law, enacted by the state legislature of Texas and signed into law by Governor Abbott, is participate in the boycott of Israel.
And if you don't sign an oath vowing that you will not do that, you cannot get contracts in Israel.
Quote, as Israel's number one trading partner in the United States, said Governor Abbott, Texas is proud to affirm its support For the people of Israel, and we will continue to build on our historic partnership, anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies.
Anti-Israel policies, said Governor Abbott, are anti-Texas policies.
And we will not tolerate actions against an important ally, stated the governor at the signing ceremony.
Now that was 2017.
That was seven years ago.
Many, many, many Years before October 7th, where Governor Abbott enacted into law a piece of legislation that punished residents of Texas, American citizens, who exercised their constitutional right to boycott the state of Israel as a means of nonviolent political protest against that foreign government By barring them from receiving contracts from the state.
This is a law that I reported on extensively at the time.
Here is the video of the Republican Texas governor in May of 2017 signing the law and announcing its implementation.
Between Israel, between the United States, as well as the state of Texas.
Israel is one of Texas' largest trading partners.
And then, of course, there is the issue about the essential international ally that Israel places for both the United States and the state of Texas.
As a result, any anti-Israel policy is an anti-Texas policy.
Now, these are all Texas governor, Texas Republican state legislatures and pro-Israel activists standing behind him.
Thank you.
And they're applauding the enactment in this bill that's only aimed at punishing speech against Israel, not anything else.
Any boycott...
Now, as I said, it is your right as an American citizen to boycott any country that you want.
You're allowed to boycott Israel.
Now, as I said, it is your right as an American citizen to boycott any country that you want.
You're allowed to boycott Israel.
Israel is a foreign country.
States don't have the right to punish you or to restrict who can get contracts to the state, to people who sign a loyalty oath to Israel vowing not to boycott Israel, and yet that's exactly what the state of Texas did along with many other red and yet that's exactly what the state of Texas did along And it wasn't just Republican governors, I should point out.
The amazing thing was, and I've pointed out this before, is that at the time, the governor of New York, obviously a blue state, was Andrew Cuomo.
Andrew Cuomo didn't just enact the same measure by executive order saying that if you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you.
He actually wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post.
The headline of it was, if you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you.
Meaning, if you're part of the movement to boycott Israel, you are barred from receiving contracts from the state of New York.
You can't work for the state of New York.
And yet, Governor Cuomo actually, by executive order, also ordered New York State employees to boycott the states of North Carolina and Indiana in protest over the bills that they passed requiring people to use the bathrooms that correspond to their biological sex, which he said was transphobic.
So Governor Cuomo thinks it's perfectly fine to harm the economies of American states.
What you can't do is boycott one foreign country, Israel.
Now, fortunately, I...
Almost every federal court that has looked at laws like this have concluded the obvious, which is that the First Amendment free speech clause and the right of political protest and petition is violated by such laws.
Here from the Texas Tribune in January of 2022, Texas law barring state contractors from boycotting Israel violates the firm's free speech federal judge rules.
Quote, Texas is one of more than two dozen states with laws that seek to limit boycotts of investments and sanctions of Israel over its treatment of Palestine.
One of the people who I profiled When I was doing reporting on this at the Intercept was a woman.
She was a speech pathologist.
She worked.
She's an American citizen.
She has four children, all of whom are born in the United States.
She's a speech pathologist who works in the school district in Austin, working with young children who have speech deficiencies.
And she had worked for the Texas School District as a contractor for many years, working with young children to help them overcome their speech deficiencies.
She had nothing but positive performance reviews and then when it came time to renew her contract in 2018 she got her contract like she does every year except this time there was an appendix to the contract that she was required to sign That she vowed that she would not participate in a boycott of Israel.
The problem is, is that she believes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is illegal, which is her absolute right to believe as an American citizen.
And as a result, she does participate in the boycott of Israel.
She doesn't buy products that come from Israel.
And therefore she couldn't sign this appendix.
And as a result, she lost her job.
They fired her.
They wouldn't renew her contract because of this law barring anybody from getting contracts.
Who refuses to certify that they don't boycott, that they don't participate in the boycott of Israel.
Here you can see the article that we wrote at the Intercept.
We actually produced a video profiling her.
Are we able to show this video?
We're going to try and put this on the screen because I found this to be such an amazing case of just to show how extreme these kinds of laws can be.
I'm trying to...are we able to show this video?
So there you see the headline.
This is the article that we wrote where we profiled her just to illustrate how repressive these laws are.
Schools speech pathologists in Texas terminated for refusing to sign an Israel oath.
A children's speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told she can no longer work with the public school district after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she quote does not and quote will not engage in a boycott of Israel.
Why is there such an effort on the part of so many Republican office holders to issue executive orders and to pass laws restricting the speech of American citizens in order to protect the state of Israel?
And an even better question is why does the conservative movement that has embraced and marched under the banner of free speech and in opposition to Centerhip of any kind?
Why has it tolerated these sorts of measures for so long?
My guess is that it's because support for Israel has become a centerpiece of Republican Party politics, just like it is for Democratic Party politics, although there's a greater fervor on the Republican side for Israel.
Polling data shows that.
And again, I have no problem with that.
Republicans are totally permitted to build their entire political careers around serving the interests of Israel they want, if they want.
What they can't do is restrict The free speech rights on college campuses or in the states in order to make it somehow prohibited or punishable to criticize the state of Israel and yet there are a lot of Republican office holders doing exactly that.
And I think a lot of these tensions that have emerged in the wake of October 7th are finally ones that are now emerging.
Let me just show you this because it's kind of amazing.
Just to give you a sense for how much this contradiction in right-wing politics has been bubbling over for so long.
Here's CNN in June of 2023, less than a year ago, nine months ago, ten months ago, the very same Texas governor, Greg Abbott, he signed a bill To ban DEI offices at state public colleges, that's diversity, equity, and inclusion, saying, we don't want our college students being divided by demographic groups or being treated unequally because of who they are.
Quote, SB 17 prohibits higher education institutions from establishing or maintaining a DEI office and bans mandatory diversity training for students and employees.
The legislation adds that institutions can't, quote, endorse an ideology that promotes the differential treatment of an individual or group of individuals based on race, color, or ethnicity, or require students and employees disclose their, quote, race, color, ethnicity, or national origin unless necessary for demographic information.
So the state of Texas Under Greg Abbott, just nine months ago, said, we're not going to allow any more dividing up of college students based on their identity and giving them special rights or punishing them in any way based on who they are.
And then nine months later, Governor Abbott goes and does exactly that to protect one particular group, a group that he's long tried to protect, which have been Jewish students.
Now, the reason they say that I do not want people on the right to think That this is just being done as tit for tat against the left and to say, oh, well, the left is going to protect their groups, we have to protect ours, is because it's completely untrue.
We actually devoted an entire show to documenting that this kind of censorship aimed at Israel critics on college campuses in the United States is one of the longest and most frequent forms of censorship in the United States.
And so is this rationale that comes not only from the left, but also from the right, that the groups they want to protect with censorship are groups that need safe spaces.
Here is just one example is from the New York Times in September of 2014.
So basically 10 years ago, a decade ago.
And there you see the title, a professor's angry tweets on Gaza cost him a job.
This is about a professor At the University of Illinois named Steve Salacia, who was offered a contract for a tenured position.
And before it was implemented, they found tweets of his.
Where he was harshly critical of the state of Israel when it was bombing Gaza back in 2014.
Israel has bombed Gaza many, many times.
Not quite as much as they're bombing it now, but many, many times.
And these were very aggressive and vicious.
I would say very vitriolic tweets about Israel.
You could even say vicious if you want.
Which is the right of a professor to express.
You can express your political views, your academic views, whatever views you want, as aggressively as you want.
That's what academic freedom is for.
And yet a consortium of donors to the University of Illinois and Jewish student groups at the University of Illinois began agitating for his firing.
And the University of Illinois actually rescinded his contract.
And here in the New York Times is the rationale that the student group used to demand his firing.
Quote, it's about feeling safe on campus.
It's about feeling safe on campus.
That's what.
It's about feeling safe on campus, said Noah Feingold, a member of a pro-Israel student group, told The Forward.
Quote, this is a professor who tweeted that if you support Israel, you're an awful person.
So this kind of safe space language that conservatives love to mock the left for invoking has actually also been coming from the right for a long time, but in defense of Israel.
Back in Just last month, rather, the House Republicans convened a committee hearing on the Education and the Workforce Committee to present Jewish students at some of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the United States, Penn, Harvard, Princeton, Yale.
To claim that they were unsafe, not because any of them had been physically attacked or threatened with violence, but because of political views and chants that they were hearing of the kind that Governor Abbott just tried to prohibit.
That they can't police free speech.
But this is not about free speech.
And I think that's one thing that we've noticed is that there are actual threats.
There are people's offices who have been attacked.
People have banged on office doors, tried to unlock office doors.
And that has nothing to do with free speech.
That is people's lives at risk.
That is people fearing physical violence.
There have been people calling for physical violence on our campus and literally nothing has been done.
No, as I said, if you're somebody who's in an office and someone's banging on your door, threatening violence against you, you should call the police.
That's a crime.
But overwhelmingly, this hearing was about people complaining about the kinds of political statements of the sort that Governor Abbott just cited as the reason for his executive order, naming that people are chanting pro-Palestinian phrases on campus.
It's making Jewish students uncomfortable.
I think the point Chris Rufa made is actually the important one, which is under the Constitution, In just basic human decency and core civil liberties in the United States, you cannot single out particular individuals or particular political views and privilege them over others by making it prohibited to express those views on college campuses.
And while a lot of that is coming from the left, a lot of it is coming from conservatives and from Republicans and from people on the right.
And almost always when it comes from that direction, it's being done in the name of shielding a foreign country from criticism.
On the grounds that it makes supporters of Israel uncomfortable or unsafe and that is every bit as much of a free speech assault on basic free speech as when it comes from the left as well.
well.
It just gets much less attention and much less objection as well from a lot of the free speech champions who just coincidentally often are also ardent supporters of Israel.
If you're a parent, you know that one of the biggest challenges is how to make sure that your kids are using their time productively, that they're not just sitting online, wasting their time watching YouTube videos that aren't wasting their time watching YouTube videos that aren't very nourishing.
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So speaking of the glaring contradictions in a lot of conservative politics that have become very visible since October 7th, but which have been lurking for a long time.
There are things we have been covering for a long time before October 7th, but the reality is before October 7th, the ways in which the conservative politics was trying to reconcile these contradictions internally really weren't that Visible because of the fact that Israel, the issue that provokes these inconsistencies, wasn't really on the front burner for most people, but now has become on the front burner obviously ever since not just October 7th, but the U.S.
involvement Heavy involvement in the war by Israel and Gaza.
And over the past couple of weeks, there has been an explosion, a major controversy, in one of the biggest and most influential conservative media outlets, the Daily Wire.
And we covered this several times on the show, where Candace Owens, the highly popular right-wing commentator and pundit and activist, was First out of her job at the Daily Wire, largely because of her views on Israel, which in turn then led to all kinds of attacks on her by Jewish groups like the ADL, by various prominent rabbis,
And then that led to a discussion, including by her, on how people who are supporters of Israel weaponize anti-Semitism.
And the criticisms of that faction by Candace Owens became more vocal, and obviously that created a lot of tension inside the daily wire.
A media outlet created by Ben Shapiro, who's still the public face of the Daily Wire, even though he doesn't run it.
And he is, of course, one of the most fanatical supporters of Israel in the country.
Now, when this conflict first emerged after October 7th, when Candace was criticizing, she wasn't really even criticizing Israel's.
She was saying things like, no state has the right to commit genocide.
And then she said, I think it's extremely sad to watch innocent babies being killed.
And then Ben Shapiro was appearing at a college event and called Candace a moral idiot.
And then Jeremy Boring, the CEO of The Daily Wire, intervened and said, look, We're not going to fire Candace Owens.
She has every right to express the views she believes.
We're not a media outlet that requires adherence to a certain ideology about Israel or anything else.
Turned out that wasn't quite true because five months later, Candace Owens is now no longer with The Daily Wire.
She was, I don't want to characterize it as being fired, but it wasn't voluntary either.
Her leaving.
And although if you ask Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, they would say it was about more than her comments on Israel.
It was about her comments on Israel, which they interpret as anti-Semitic.
So they would say, oh, it wasn't her views on Israel.
It was the fact that her views crossed over into anti-Semitism.
Now, of course, anybody who's a critic of Israel will always be accused of anti-Semitism.
Now, until today, Nobody at The Daily Wire had commented on Candace Owens' departure from The Daily Wire.
Ben Shapiro went on Piers Morgan's show where he was asked and he said, I'm not going to talk about it.
Candace Owens hasn't publicly talked about it.
I've done some reporting on it.
I've spoken to people who are familiar with what happened, very familiar firsthand.
I've seen some things, so that's why I feel comfortable saying what I'm saying about what actually happened.
But Ben Shapiro went on the podcast of Dave Rubin.
As I said, both of them are Two people who have gotten very, very rich in right-wing politics in the last six or seven years by opposing cancel culture and defending free speech.
And yet they're also very ardent supporters of Israel.
And they both have on occasion in the last several months, and we've reported this before, Violated principles they believed in in the name of supporting and defending Israel.
Here, for example, was one of the more amazing examples, which was on October 12th, when Dave Rubin, who has spent years saying that the West is collapsing because of its abandonment of the free speech values, responded to news that France had banned pro-Palestinian protests, had made it illegal to go out into the street and protest in favor of the Palestinians.
You were allowed in France to go and protest in favor of Israel, you just couldn't go and protest in favor of Palestinians.
Instead of saying what he would have said if he were being consistent with everything he said over the last six years that made him very rich, Which was, censorship is wrong.
We need free discourse in the West.
Instead, he said the opposite.
He said, maybe the West has a chance.
Maybe, meaning, although I've been saying for seven years that the West is collapsing because of a lack of free speech, now I'm going to say, now that the censorship is aimed at people I disagree with, the salvation of the West lies in censorship.
a complete abandonment of his principles in defense of this foreign country to which he is so passionately devoted.
I invited Dave Rubin on my show about my criticism of that statement.
He had several reasons why he couldn't come on and just has never made it on.
Now Ben Shapiro did something quite similar The military intelligence company, the contractor Palantir, announced on December 5th, and Palantir's CEO is a fanatical Israel supporter, that they were setting aside 180 jobs solely for Jewish students who believe that they are being targeted or feeling uncomfortable by anti-Semitism on college campuses.
These are jobs Not available to Muslims, not available to any other religion, to Christians, only to Jews.
This is the kind of set aside that obviously people like Ben Shapiro have been ranting and raving against as evil.
And yet, because in this particular case, Palantir was setting aside jobs for people in Ben Shapiro's group, not in other groups, Ben Shapiro went on to Twitter and in response said two words.
Love this.
And then, even Ben Shapiro's most ardent followers spent the whole day saying, what do you mean?
How do you love a set-aside reserved only for Jews?
You've been arguing for more than a decade that these kind of set-asides are illegal and immoral.
And then Ben Shapiro had to go back on to Twitter and very reluctantly say, oh, I guess all these jobs should be available for everybody.
But then why did he comment on it at all?
If they were available for anybody, it would have just been the creation of 180 jobs.
That's the abandonment of principle in defense of Israel that we're seeing constantly on the right.
That was what the first segment was about as well.
So these two got together and Dave Rubin questioned Ben Shapiro and tried to extract an answer about why it is that Candace Owens no longer works at The Daily Wire.
And Ben Shapiro ended up saying some very interesting things in explaining why that was justified.
All right, so let's do the elephant in the room for just a moment because I saw you this week on Piers Morgan.
He asked you repeatedly about Candace.
You repeatedly basically said... I won't talk about that.
You don't want to talk about it?
I'll say that here too.
Yeah, and that's fine.
And, you know, it's interesting because we all sort of came up together to different extents and we've all done a million things together and public events and networks and all those things.
It seems to me that at this moment, she's now a free agent.
She happened to end up on Locals, which I created, and we were a platform, not a publisher that you guys are.
Can you at least talk to just sort of where it's at now?
She's not with you?
She's free?
She's free to do whatever she wants to do, to be wherever she wants to be.
The difference between a publisher like The Daily Wire and a platform like Locals is obviously that a platform should have a very broad range of speech that it allows, including speech that maybe even the creators don't believe is inside what they would consider to be the Overton window.
That's a very different thing than direct subsidization of particular opinions.
The Daily Wire would not have A host would not pay a host who was staunchly pro-abortion.
They have no obligation to pay a host who is staunchly pro-abortion.
Okay, now, that distinction is one I think is valid.
One of the places where Candace Owens decided she was going to go after getting pushed out of The Daily Wire as a result of commentary on Israel and the influence of pro-Israel activists in the United States was to locals.
Which is, as I've said many times, part of the Rumble platform.
It was actually co-founded by Dave Rubin as a free speech platform.
It is a free speech platform.
It accommodates a very wide range of views, including, just like Rumble, Views that might get censored on big tech platforms, that have been censored on big tech platforms.
It's basically the written version of Rumble.
It's kind of like the substack of Rumble.
It's the place where we publish our original written journalism, where our community exists.
That's one of the places where Candace Owens went.
So the distinction Ben Shapiro is drawing, which is, look, a media outlet like the Daily Wire Doesn't have the obligation to employ everybody.
If people have views that we don't agree with or that we're not comfortable with being associated with, we have every right to fire them.
That's different than, say, Twitter or Facebook or Google or Rumble, which should accommodate a wide range of views.
I agree with that.
The problem, though, is that we just got done with this major controversy where NBC News had hired the former Republican chair, Ronna McDaniel, And then MSNBC host objected to her hiring on exactly the same grounds that Ben Shapiro just said, which is, we're not saying we think Ronna McDaniel should be barred from being heard on Facebook or Google or anywhere else.
We just don't think that because of her views on election denialism that she challenged her, suggested that there was fraud in the 2020 election.
We don't think that's a view with which NBC News should be associated.
And we have every right as NBC News to decide, well, we don't want to be associated with this particular view and therefore we think Rhonda McDaniel should be fired.
And that's what happened.
NBC fired her.
They withdrew the contract.
And almost everybody I know on the right said this was an act of grave repression, including me.
It meant that within the media, you will be fired or you cannot be heard if you express certain views that are held by a large number of people.
So how can it be the case that Daily Wire has the right to just fire even its most popular host the minute they step over some line that the Daily Wire draws on Israel?
And that's perfectly fine for the Daily Wire to do, but somehow NBC News is acting repressively or immorally if its line is election denialism.
And it says, you know what, we don't want anybody on our airways who questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Why are those acts different?
But here's the real meat of the matter when Ben Shapiro tries to explain what line it is that Candace Owens crossed.
And so when it comes to the hosts on The Daily Wire, obviously everyone is able to say what they want.
Nobody ever comes to me and says, you can't say X. Nobody ever says that to Walsh.
No one ever said that to Candace.
But the reality is that there is an Overton window at The Daily Wire.
Obviously there was a non-meeting of the minds.
That's pretty much all I can say on this.
And you know, a lot of this has happened publicly.
But to the extent that the Daily Wire is in fact not a publisher, that is in fact not a platform, it is a publisher, that means that there is no moral obligation for the Daily, and there's no free speech problem with the Daily Wire saying we don't wish to pay a particular host or that host saying I don't wish to work here anymore.
Because again, there's a parting of the ways that I'm, that, you know, is not really open for discussion at this point.
Does it surprise you that so?
Okay, so let's hear this question.
So many people, even on our side of this, are confused about that as it relates to free speech and quote-unquote Like, severing a business tie, as long as you're not throwing someone in jail and they're able to be everywhere else, is not cancel culture.
Okay, these people, honestly, if I'm being totally honest, they make me sick.
They cannot think in any form of principle whatsoever.
One of the biggest media controversies in the last five years Was that the New York Times had published an op-ed by Tom Cotton during the Black Lives Matter movement in which Tom Cotton advocated that the U.S.
military should be deployed onto the streets of the United States to crush the Black Lives Matter movement on the grounds that that movement had become systemically violent.
And many, many journalists inside the New York Times said that is outside of our Overton window, as Ben Shapiro put it.
Overton window.
Ben Shapiro's really not using that phrase correctly.
The Overton Window really is a theory that says you want to create as broad of a range of political views as possible.
You want to widen the Overton Window if you're a radical so that views that have been deemed way far outside of the mainstream get closer and closer to the mainstream.
Ben Shapiro, when he says Overton Window, is saying there's a range of views that I may not agree with, but these are the acceptable views.
within our media outlet.
And you can't cross the line here, and you can't cross the line here because then you're outside of the Overton window.
And he's saying we as a media outlet have every right to set the boundaries of what we consider to be acceptable views.
And if you go outside of those boundaries, we have the right to fire you.
And free speech is not implicated by that.
Okay, so if that's the case, why was there so much uproar when the New York Times decided to fire two of its editors for publishing Tom Cotton's op-ed that called for the deployment of American military to quell the Black Lives Matter movement?
The New York Times editors were simply saying what Ben Shapiro was saying.
We have an Overton window and that op-ed was outside of our Overton window.
We don't want to be associated with views that call for the U.S.
military to crush a Social justice movement against racism.
That was their perspective.
And we don't want to be associated with that view.
We're not saying these editors should be put in prison.
We're not saying Tom Cotton should be put in prison for that view.
We just don't want to host this view.
We don't want to subsidize editors who would publish this sort of thing.
I don't know a single person on the right who defended the New York Times there.
Just like I don't know of a single person on the right who defended NBC News from getting rid of Ronald McDaniel, it was presented as a kind of crisis in free discourse that within major media outlets, you cannot express certain political views that are within the mainstream without getting fired.
And yet here's Ben Shapiro trying to justify why Candace Owens is gone from the Daily Wire, not because of a business reason.
Outside of Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens is the biggest name at The Daily Wire.
She has the biggest audience.
They're probably comparable in terms of the number of people who watch their show, who listen to their podcast.
Maybe Ben Shapiro's bigger, but Candace Owens is in that same category.
There's nobody else at The Daily Wire who competes with Candace Owens.
I guess Justin Peterson if you want, but the point I'm making is that Candace Owens is a huge draw.
That's not, it's not for that business reason.
But what is true is that The Daily Wire was started with investment from a right-wing billionaire, millions of dollars, a pro-Israel billionaire, and Ben Shapiro is essentially saying that we have limits on what you can say about Israel, and Candace Owens went outside of that.
Now, if you're comfortable with that, and you think that's fine to fire journalists because they express political views outside of some line, Then how can you criticize NBC News for doing the same with Ronald McDaniel or the New York Times for doing the same when deciding they don't want any Trump supporters there?
Now let's listen to the rest of Ben Shapiro's answer to this next question because this too is extremely illuminating.
Honestly because to a certain extent I think that there's been a reaction on the right to the excesses of the left.
So because what the left did is they said that the Overton window ought to be closed so tight that no one can get inside the Overton window.
Basically if you're to the right of Hillary Clinton You can't be allowed inside.
Welcome to my world, brother.
Yes, exactly.
And not just with regard to platforms, but with regard to publishers.
So, for example, this week, NBC News deciding that Ronald McDaniel was too much for them.
Ronald McDaniel can't work at NBC News.
The sacred halls of NBC News must not be sullied by the former head of the RNC, Jen Psaki, however, can have a show on MSNBC, despite being the press secretary for the White House five seconds ago.
The right's response to that is, I think, Alright, so, I mean, do you see what he's saying?
the overton window too tight but i think some elements of the right have basically said there is no overton window the overton window should be completely exploded with regard not just to platforms with which i kind of agree but with regard to publishers so all right so i mean do you do you see what he's saying he's saying we're all drawing overton windows meaning and again he's misusing this term but what he really means is we all have limits on uh
lines that you cannot cross on certain issues.
And the reason I'm angry about what NBC News did, even though it's exactly the same as what The Daily Wire did, is just because their line is wrong and mine is right.
Except, you can go to the, you can go to NBC News.
They have a lot of Israel supporters at NBC News and you can support Israel there, but then you can also criticize Israel.
They have a lot of Israel critics at NBC News, or at least at MSNBC as well, and they have debates about this topic.
Apparently you can't have that debate though at the Daily Wire, because...
You're about to hear Ben Shapiro describe what the line is that Canada's on across, specifically when it came to Israel.
NBC News not only has an obligation to hire Ronna McDaniel, NBC News has the obligation to hire Alex Jones, for example.
Right.
Which just makes no sense at a business level, beyond free speech.
I mean, there's a reason that networks exist.
Right, they have editorial positions.
Daily Wire has a very strong editorial position on a wide variety of issues.
And by the way, I should say that, you know, there are a lot of people who are suggesting this is about disagreements over Israel.
I mean, I can simply say it is not about disagreements over Israel to the extent that...
Without reference to Candace at all here, Matt Walsh has taken the position that America ought not be involved in the Middle East at all.
Matt Walsh's position, so far as I understand it, and I've talked to him about it, is that in a conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israel is obviously a more moral party than the genocidal terrorist group Hamas, but also it's very far away, he doesn't care, and it doesn't involve America.
That's just a pure isolationist position.
I disagree with it.
I think it's wrong.
I think that it's short-sighted.
But, again, he's on our platform.
That is well within the range of acceptable discourse at The Daily Wire.
Okay, so that's the line at The Daily Wire.
You're allowed to take Matt Walsh's position.
Matt Walsh is safe, I guess, for now.
He's allowed to work at The Daily Wire even though he doesn't support the United States financing Israel's military and Israel's wars.
On the ground said, it's not our business.
You're allowed to say that.
Why?
Because, explained Ben Shapiro, at the end of the day, Matt Walsh does affirm the moral superiority of Israel.
He says, look, I don't want the U.S.
financing Israel, but of course Israel is morally superior to its enemies.
And as long as you say that, as long as you pay that kind of homage to Israel, then you're on the right side of the line.
You're permitted to say, I don't think the U.S.
should finance Israel, but notice too that Matt Walsh, though I guess he has said this before, he barely ever talks about it.
And I really wonder what would happen if he actually went on a crusade about it.
If that was a primary focus of Matt Walsh's commentary instead of what it is, which is Trans issues and LGBT issues and the culture war.
It's one thing for Matt Walsh once every four months to say, I don't think the U.S.
has any business caring about Israel and Hamas.
That's not my war.
I wonder what would happen, though, if he really went on a crusade about it.
I don't think the U.S.
should be financing Israel.
I wonder if he'd be within the Overton window at the Daily Wire.
But in any event, we don't know that because Matt Walsh barely talks about Israel.
And what Ben Shapiro is saying is that's acceptable because, at the end of the day, Matt Walsh affirms that Israel is the superior party.
And as long as you affirm Israel's superiority, its moral superiority, We'll let you occasionally, as an aside, question whether the U.S.
should be financing it from an isolationist perspective.
But what you cannot do is make the sort of commentary that Candace Owens made.
Such as implying, but not stating, that Israel was committing a genocide.
One of the tweets that really angered Ben Shapiro at the start was when Candace Owens said, I think no country has the right to commit genocide.
And she was very purposeful about not identifying any country.
But it was clear the context was Israel.
She had talked before about the sadness she feels watching Palestinian children die.
That too was one of the tweets that generated anger.
And then more recently, she's been into these Arguments with the ADL and with rabbis accusing her of anti-semitism.
And that was the claim.
That's always the claim.
That is, in every case, when Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, as we discussed in our first segment, is trying to force Texas universities to constrain the range of free speech.
Of course, what he's arguing is not, I'm censoring dissent on Israel.
He's saying this kind of criticism of Israel or this kind of advocacy for pro-Palestinians Crosses into racism, into anti-Semitism, and that's why it needs to be censored.
That's the left liberal view for censorship as well.
Nobody on the left ever says, I'm censoring dissent.
They say, these views that we dislike cross over into bigotry.
Exactly the same thing that Ben Shapiro is saying.
Oh no, it's not about Israel, it's about anti-Semitism.
But of course, those two things get conflated.
Now, let's look at the last part of this video, just so we can hear the final part of it.
...within the range of acceptable discourse at the Daily Wire.
So, you know, the notion that you have to mirror my exact perspectives on what Israel is doing in Gaza is obviously not true, based on the roster of hosts that we currently have.
There are a lot of other factors, obviously, at play.
Right.
So, actually, let's connect that to something else going on.
Alright, so, look, you know, five months ago, when this first happened, Jeremy Boren came out and said, Candace Owens is not going to be fired from the Daily Wire.
She is more than welcome to stay at the Daily Wire.
We don't have litmus tests for our hosts.
She's free to disagree vehemently with Ben Shapiro, even on the views that he most closely, most passionately believed in.
He also said within the last three or four months, Candace Owens is one of the most important voices of this generation, heaping the most intense praise on her.
There has not been a decline in Candace Owens' audience.
Quite the contrary.
If anything, Candace Owens' audience has increased.
Certainly, it's maintained.
So, if you really want to believe that Candace Owens, as recently as five months ago, was beloved at the Daily Wire,
To the point where they were saying she's one of the most important voices of the generation, she's one of the most popular and influential and therefore profitable voices in conservative politics, has a place forever at The Daily Wire, never going to be fired because of her views, and then suddenly five months later the ADL denounces her as an anti-Semite because of her Israel views, and various influential rabbis do too, and now she's gone from The Daily Wire and it's not because of her views on Israel.
I guess you're willing to believe anything But even Ben Shapiro, though he started off saying, I don't really want to comment on it, commented on it quite a bit on it, and said, there's a line at the daily wire that you cannot cross.
If you want to stay on the right side of the line, and you want to keep your job, you'll do what Matt Walsh does.
Occasionally if you feel like a little bit of dissent on Israel is Something you need to express, go ahead as long as it's just very occasional and it's accompanied by your affirmation of Israel's superiority.
But if you're not willing to do that, if you're willing to say, I believe Palestinian lives are of equal value, that the Israelis are not morally superior in what they're doing in Gaza, that's when you cross the line and that's when you're no longer at the daily wire.
And if you're somebody who thinks like it's fine to fire journalists because of their views, then you have to let NBC and the New York Times do that also.
And again, I think the through line of all of this, and we've been seeing this since October 7th, is that for a lot of people in the United States, Who claim to be devoted so passionately to free speech to the point where they built their very lucrative media brands around that and other principles as well.
There are views and issues and causes not only more important than that, but that can Cause the suppression of those principles very quickly and a devotion to Israel is one of them.
And it's not just people like Ben Shapiro and Barry Weiss and Dave Rubin, who obviously care a great deal about Israel because they're Jewish and they've been inculcated since birth to love and protect Israel.
But it's also people like Governor Greg Abbott and a lot of other Republican governors who either cynically are serving the pro-Israel sentiment within their own party or because of their own religious views that are not about Judaism.
Are also deeply supportive of the state of Israel.
And again, that's their absolute right to do so, provided that speech rights are not being eroded in the name of that cause.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what is happening and what has been happening for quite a long time in the United States in the name of protecting this foreign country.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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And we hope to see you back tomorrow night.
Actually, tomorrow night we're going to be off for the holidays.
I'm glad I remembered to mention that.
But we will be back Monday night, so I hope to see you back on Monday night and every night at 7 p.m.
