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May 12, 2017 - Louder with Crowder

01:07:01

#167 'LIBERALS' ARE THE EXTREMISTS! Ben Shapiro and Alex Epstein | Louder With Crowder

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	Try-Dogs Here it goes!
	YouTube!
	Take control...
	Take control...
	Of your platform.
	This...
	This is the instrument...
	Of your liberation.
	Whatever it is.
	It's nuclear.
	This...
	Monkler...
	Is mobile!
	We Monkler didn't come as Monklers.
	The deliberators to return YouTube to its users.
	Another first interference in YouTube censorship, or for those trying to flag his hate speech, these anonymous mug lovers, these unsung heroes who watch and actually support Proud and Daly,
	will trigger the destruction of YouTube And now, a month above seven to eight feet trial isn't set to turn to your program.
	Join my fellow, and hold yourself under this boat, and wait.
	Good.
	We're all in favor of the rest of the battle.
	Good.
	We'll be right back.
	Good.
	We'll be right back.
	me Inspector Gadget.
	Okay, that is the Thursday show.
	I've always wanted to do that.
	We have Ben Shapiro today, Alex Epstein, Thursday live on the YouTubes.
	Glad to see you.
	Today, producing with me in video studio, as always, is Jared, who is not gay.
	Follow him on Twitter at NotGayJarred, me at S. Crowder, with your comments, thoughts, Photoshop, stuff of my legal obligation to show your own conclusions.
	Are we good?
	We're good.
	At G. Morgan Jr.
	How are you, sir?
	I'm doing great.
	Good.
	Inspector Gadget.
	Inspector Gadget.
	Horrible motion picture.
	As a matter of fact, it was the kind of motion picture that was so bad it ruined the cartoon.
	It made you go back and look at the cartoon and say, I can't enjoy it!
	I can't!
	You've ruined it!
	I can't!
	You've ruined it.
	You suck!
	You mediocre nothing!
	Matthew Broderick, you call that a film?
	We have, and then his sequel was French Stewart.
	Oh, it doesn't get any worse.
	Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, and of course Ben Shapiro will be talking about Comey.
	I have a macro issue I want to get into today, because I received an email from...
	Quite a few students saying, you know what?
	I feel as though this is something that comes up all the time in college.
	Can you help me out with that?
	So we'll talk about that.
	We have a lot of news to get to.
	We do have a lot of news.
	A lot of news.
	A lot of guests.
	But let's hit some news off the top.
	Texas bill.
	Now, there's a bill in Texas that just passed that could potentially keep transgenders out of high school sports.
	Of course, this has the left outraged.
	Because if this happens...
	What kind of a society would we be?
	Who wouldn't have boys setting girls track meet records or winning wrestling meets or this?
	It could be a chemical bomb and that music makes it funny.
	That's Fallon Fox, male to female transgender who beats the hell out of women in a cage for a living.
	And this goes back to, I mean, it's one of those things where, again, because we read leftist websites all the time, I sit there and I just read the outrage.
	And I first read their outrage until I see what the bill is about.
	And it's more so targeting steroids, but because of hormone replacement therapy, which is really bad for people, it also would include that.
	It's a chemical advantage.
	I didn't know we needed a bill for this.
	I didn't.
	I guess so.
	And it's only happening in Texas.
	And in California, they think we're the crazy ones.
	And they always say it's completely invalid.
	It's just logically lazy to use the slippery slope argument.
	Look behind you.
	There's the slippery slope.
	Now do me a favor to look in front of you.
	That's a 200-foot drop covered in KY. I would not slide down that slide.
	No.
	No.
	You don't know what's waiting for you at the bottom.
	Take a guess.
	AIDS! You're right!
	Hit and run.
	This happened again.
	Another news story.
	You don't read about this in the leftist websites, but hit and run DUI injured a six-year-old.
	So here's the kicker.
	The guy who committed the hit and run, he's already been deported 15 times as an illegal immigrant.
	Come on.
	This is not a joke.
	It's not a surprise to any of us who've known about these problems with repeat offenders at the border.
	And as a matter of fact, here's right now, for those who don't believe us, live footage of the American-Mexican border.
	We need to build that wall.
	Ha ha ha!
	And not put a door.
	No.
	It almost seems as though it would cost more budget to put that door in there.
	Take the door out of the plans.
	Seems superfluous.
	This is two stories right off the top, right away.
	It's the victim culture creating actual victims.
	Girls in high school, getting the crap beaten out of them, not being able to compete in sports.
	And right here, we want to be kind to illegal immigrants, so what happens?
	DUI. These people come over and they commit crimes in record numbers, and so you see real victims.
	But it's not as politically expedient for the left today to care about the six-year-old with the hit-and-run.
	Can't vote, so...
	Speaking of the left, BuzzFeed Yellow changed their branding.
	I guess, I don't know how long ago this happened.
	Pretty recent.
	BuzzFeed Yellow to Boldly.
	Boldly.
	They say it's the same content you know and love, just bolder.
	And that's their content.
	If you haven't been following BuzzFeed Yellow, they have 7 million subscribers on YouTube.
	It's namely social justice women just trying out things that they've never done before.
	Like a Kardashian diet.
	That's huge.
	This one, the women of BuzzFeed wearing heels for the first time.
	Oh, good lord.
	Next up on suggestions of lists for Boldy's chicks to try not being a fat lesbian.
	It's gonna be tough.
	Can that one be in the doc yet?
	It's gonna be tough.
	The production value, they're just working on it.
	A lot of new hires.
	It's like putting Clint Howard in prosthetics.
	You have to have someone who really knows what they're doing.
	We love you, Clint.
	Why are you joking about me like that?
	Betsy DeVos, this has been going on all week, so we'll talk about coming with Ben Shapiro because we talked about it yesterday.
	For those who missed it, who weren't Mug Club members, go watch it.
	I'd rather hear what Ben has to say.
	I'm exhausted.
	But Betsy DeVos, did you read about this earlier in the week?
	There was outrage over her giving a commencement speech.
	She was scheduled to, so students were protesting.
	It was graduating seniors at, I don't know how we pronounce it, Bethune-Cookman University in Florida?
	Something like that.
	Anyways, the speech happened anyway with Betsy DeVos.
	And this is how these members of higher learning reacted.
	Let's roll this clip.
	Great honor.
	So as you can see, they want to make their voices heard.
	And turning their back because that's how adults react.
	I... Let it never be said that they were disrespectful.
	How many times do you hear...
	They just ruined their own graduation.
	They ruined their own graduation.
	And how many times do you...
	I don't know if these people weren't officially Black Lives Matter, I don't think, so I don't want to misrepresent them, but obviously of that ilk, how many times have we heard Black Lives Matter talk about wanting to start a conversation?
	Yeah.
	Or a dialogue, right?
	That's the end of the conversation right there.
	There is no...
	It's stopping a conversation.
	Yeah.
	And by the way, these kids are so ignorant.
	Let's say Betsy DeVos is not qualified for the job.
	She's not the most qualified person for the job.
	Sure.
	Okay, but let's get into her ideas.
	Her ideas, I don't know.
	These kids have no clue.
	She advocates for school choice.
	That's her biggest sin here?
	And do you realize that these kids from urban areas, from more poor areas of the United States, they stand to benefit the most from school choice, from attaching the voucher directly to the student?
	By the way, I'm still waiting.
	We've had an open call out.
	Anyone who wants to come on this show and make a compelling case against school choice...
	I'm all ears.
	Anyone?
	At any point?
	I've never heard it.
	Any of you?
	None.
	Can any of you play devil's advocate?
	I wouldn't know where to start.
	Money for teachers unions.
	Because they care about the kids.
	That's not devil's advocate.
	Oh crap.
	You have to believe it.
	That was my best argument.
	You have to commit to it.
	Speaking of college, along with college, another racist hoax at another college.
	This was a racist letter that was written about.
	It was in the news, allegedly including the N-word that was posted.
	But just like Mattress Girl and poop swastikas and the Duke Lacrosse case, it turned out to be false.
	This one was at St.
	Olaf in Minnesota.
	Now, the president of the school confirmed that the note was not a legitimate threat.
	That's what he said.
	And then when pressed on, well, what do you mean by it was not a legitimate threat?
	The president said...
	The reason I said in my earlier note that this was not a genuine threat is that we learned from the author's confession that the note was fabricated.
	So in other words, the reason I said it wasn't...
	Because it's not a real thing.
	It never...
	It's not a real...
	It's a fake...
	It's a lie.
	And he says apparently it was a strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.
	Again, the ends justify the means here.
	Of course.
	Because apparently the concern was to draw attention to fake incidents of racism on college.
	Check...
	I don't exactly know how this works, but here to clear it up for us, I guess, is our on-the-ground Black Lives Matter college correspondent, Desmond Black.
	Desmond, tell us what's going on out there.
	Make sense of it for us.
	Yes.
	Well, you have to understand that with this given situation, the ends justify the means because it served to draw awareness.
	To the discrepancy in privilege in the systemic overt discrepancy between white and black students.
	And it started a dialogue, too.
	Okay, that's what we always started a dialogue?
	Desmond, like this last time when you started a dialogue, we saw what happened in these cities like Baltimore, Ferguson.
	The dialogue didn't work out so well.
	Is this what you mean by starting a dialogue?
	But that's an essay, though.
	That's an essay?
	What could you possibly be studying where this is accepted as a legitimate essay, Desmond?
	My major is humanities.
	Okay.
	With a minor in burning cop cars.
	Okay, well, see, that seems to me like your problem is with your minor.
	Desmond, I certainly don't want to lump everybody in because we've had black guests on this show from the left and right who are able to make sound arguments, and I don't think that you represent all of Black Lives Matter, but it seems that you personally, Desmond, Are a piece of...
	a little bit maybe a piece of s**t.
	Yeah.
	No.
	Alright, Desmond, our Black Lives Matter correspondent.
	You'll be seeing a lot of him.
	Probably not in the future.
	Probably not.
	Before we get to our guests, here's a topic I wanted to get into.
	You guys are mutes today?
	Literally, you're sitting there with like zero...
	I was giving the floor to our guest.
	What guest?
	The guy you had on the phone, man.
	Before that!
	Completely alone out here.
	I've been talking a lot.
	Now I feel like Robin watching his parents die in the trapeze act.
	Talk about a victim mentality.
	And then never working again, Chris O'Donnell.
	Warner Brothers jokes.
	So, here's something.
	I got an email from a college student.
	I've had this quite a bit.
	They say, you know what?
	I'm on college campus and our professors always talk about right-wing extremists.
	They always talk about how conservatives are extreme and how, you know, some of them say they used to be conservative and the right-wing left them.
	Particularly in the age of Trump, right-wingers are accused of being too extreme.
	And they've said, can you help us make the case that that's not true?
	I would actually argue the opposite.
	And I want to lay out the case for you today that Everything from moderate left...
	To the current Democratic Party, the DNC, they actually have a corner exclusively on the political extreme in the United States.
	As a matter of fact, I don't think that the right wing is such a big tent now.
	I don't think it's capable of being as extremist as the left.
	Certainly, you can take maybe a 0.1% and attribute it, but I'm talking about as an actual platform.
	So, what do you mean?
	Okay, let me lay out a case for you, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.
	Let's take the big issues.
	Abortion!
	That's an issue, right?
	The right-wing extremists.
	By the way, right-wing extremists who've actually bombed abortion clinics when they bring that out, you could count on both hands how many times that's actually happened.
	Single-digit numbers, okay?
	But, okay, most conservatives are pro-life.
	We'll give you that.
	We believe life begins at conception.
	But we're past that now.
	Roe v.
	Wade was passed.
	So let's look to the super-extreme example of the Supreme Court, uh, well, not nominee anymore, but Judge Gorsuch.
	Had you ever met President Trump personally?
	Not until my interview.
	In that interview, did he ever ask you to overrule Roe v.
	Wade?
	No, Senator.
	What would he have done if he had asked?
	Senator, I would have walked out the door.
	He's about to bomb a clinic.
	Here's the thing.
	The main fight from the right is, at this point, we don't want to pay for somebody else's abortion, and we want to curb them at this point.
	Certainly the most horrific of them.
	Let's contrast that with the left, whose policy is taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, no questions asked, period.
	Their recent presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, by the way, didn't specify, only in the first trimester, a couple weeks, she believes that the unborn in the United States, basically up until the head leaves the birth canal, have no constitutional rights, period.
	I want to ask you about some comments that you made over the weekend on Meet the Press regarding abortion.
	You said...
	Quote, the unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights.
	And my question is, at what point does someone have constitutional rights?
	And are you saying that a child on its due date, just hours before delivery, still has no constitutional rights?
	Under our law, that is the case.
	I'm an extremist because I think that that's bone-chillingly scary.
	Let's move on to economics.
	Taxes.
	Okay.
	We're the extremists, right?
	This is what the media says.
	They've moved so far right economically.
	This wouldn't be a party for Reagan.
	It's almost like they want to flourish.
	Let's talk economics.
	Let's talk taxes.
	Okay.
	On the right, many of us, myself included, want a flat tax.
	Some people don't see that as extreme.
	I certainly don't.
	If you make $100,000, you pay $10,000.
	If you make a million dollars, you pay $100,000.
	That seems fair to me.
	But let's take that off the table.
	Okay, let's take the flat tax, the income tax off the table.
	Let's see if we can find a middle ground.
	On the right, the extremists that we are, we see that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the entire industrialized world.
	And we don't want to lower it to the lowest rate.
	We just want to lower it to a rate that's competitive with your oh-so-beloved socialist European counterparts.
	Who are doing well, by the way.
	Just fantastic.
	Things are golden.
	It's extreme to want to lower the highest corporate tax rate to a middle level?
	More extreme than Bernie Sanders being okay with a 90% income tax?
	Radical socialist Dwight D. Eisenhower was president.
	I think the highest marginal tax rate was something like 90%.
	It was 90%.
	When you think about 90%, you don't think that's obviously too high?
	No.
	Again, this is just a room full of extremists who are being flagged on the terror watch list.
	We want you to keep more of your money.
	We're jerks.
	They're saying Bernie Sanders is extreme, right?
	Because he's never been mainstream.
	Okay, is it more extreme to want to lower the corporate tax rate or allow people to keep more of what they've earned than Hillary Clinton wanting to raise the estate tax, the death tax, to 65%?
	Which, by the way, is a tax on tax!
	It's more extreme to believe that you should be able to keep more of what you earn.
	It's more extreme for people like us, the extreme right-wingers, to believe that we should be competitive with the rest of the industrialized world with our corporate tax rates than it is to want to tax somebody more than half on an already tax!
	Let's move on to race relations.
	Conservatives are racist, right?
	This is the argument.
	When it comes to race, it's just you're still out of touch.
	You can't check your privilege.
	Okay, well, let's get into that.
	On the right, the extreme view that we have is we want to do away with affirmative action.
	That's the most extremist view we have.
	That's what they'll flag us for.
	Yep.
	We want to judge people based on the content of the character, as it were.
	I believe somebody uttered that, too.
	It was probably a member of the Klan fashion.
	Extreme?
	Probably a white guy.
	Let's take that and contrast that with quotas.
	Segregated graduation in safe spaces, as you see in libraries and Harvard at their graduation now.
	And even the DNC going as far as supporting a borderline terrorist group in Black Lives Matter.
	So it's not extreme to support a group Black Lives Matter, who have been the root cause of many a cop car burning.
	But it is extreme for us to say, hey, maybe you shouldn't support those people who are burning the cop cars.
	Right?
	We want to open a dialogue!
	Well, do you want to open the carburetor?
	It's on fire.
	Climate change.
	This is the one where we're accused of being extreme all the time.
	Again, this is for kids who are in college when they talk about right-wing extremists.
	Let's check all the boxes and you can send me your tweets at S. Crowder.
	Most of us on the right, I think most people in this room accept the concept of climate change.
	I think most of us, if you look at the polls, accept that humans might be a contributing, significant contributing factor.
	Now, we're called extremists or science deniers simply if we don't believe that it's an imminent catastrophe that only the federal government can fix, the same people who run your post office.
	We're extreme science deniers if we say, you know what, climate change might be happening, humans might be contributing, but I don't think the EPA can fix it.
	Well, let's contrast that with the left, who, they believe in carbon taxes, putting entire industries out of work, proposing the punishment Of climate skeptics, says Bernie Sanders and non-scientist guy-in-chief Bill Nye.
	Don't we have his quote from Bernie Sanders?
	Yeah.
	Along with supporting binding resolutions, including things like population control taken from the one-child policy of China.
	It's extreme for us.
	I don't think the federal government can solve the problem of SUVs and cow farts, but it's not extreme to be right in line with the policy that led to babies being drowned in Chinese bathtubs.
	I just, again, I know I'm probably out of touch.
	I don't see the extremism on the right.
	Guns.
	This is the one, of course, right?
	Gun-toting-ground acts.
	Clinging to your guns and religion.
	Let's talk about this.
	Guns.
	Okay.
	You're an extremist if you believe that the Second Amendment applies to all law-abiding citizens.
	If you believe that the Second Amendment is self-explanatory, it applies to all law-abiding citizens, the left considers you an extremist.
	Let's contrast that with the official dissenting views.
	In the landmark Heller v.
	D.C. case, where liberals like Justice Stevens argued that actually private citizens have no right to own a firearm whatsoever, even if the purposes are lawful.
	Oh, good Lord.
	It's extreme for us to say the Second Amendment allows private citizens to have firearms, but it's not extreme for Justice Stevens to have actually said that there is no common law right to self-defense.
	It's extreme for me to want to carry, if I'm not a criminal, we all support background checks.
	If you're a felon, if you're a violent criminal, you don't get a gun.
	That's an extreme point of view, not to say you don't have the right to protect your family.
	This isn't even getting the issue of the open borders from the left, the idea that no people are illegal, which of course is apparently far more moderate than the extreme view of believing that people should come here legally and respect the processes in place, like my mother who's a legal immigrant and pays taxes as a self-respecting American citizen.
	Sucker!
	Sucker!
	The one that's most important to me, because this is the one that's easy, they talk about social justice warriors, but they don't really understand the root cause of it.
	Again, it's all a part of the prism of leftism.
	Freedom of speech.
	Here's why you hate fat, land-willed, blue-haired feminists, okay?
	Why am I an extremist?
	Why is everyone here considered an extremist?
	What is required to be considered a free speech extremist to the left?
	Okay, it's simple.
	Do you believe that the freedom of speech is absolute?
	Period.
	Do you believe that non-violent, even offensive speech is absolute?
	Anyone in this room?
	Yeah.
	And do you believe that's protected by the First Amendment?
	Yeah.
	According to today's left, you're an extremist.
	Fantastic!
	Yeah.
	It's more extreme to believe that freedom of speech, even offensive speech, is absolute than it is for 51% of current Democrats to want to ban speech.
	And many of them even wanted to go as far as simply banning any anti-Muslim bigotry speech.
	Oh, Lord.
	And here's the crazy thing, right?
	I'm an extremist because...
	Well, hold on a second.
	Let's ask the questions.
	Who determines what hate speech is?
	Exactly.
	Who decides what extreme speech is expectable?
	And here's something.
	Isn't it funny that we're deemed extremists by the people who conveniently...
	Isn't it convenient for them, to the big government left, that those answers consistently and exclusively lie with those in positions of political power?
	Because they can't be extremists.
	Only people like you and I. It's not possible.
	Maybe that's why the official platform of the left.
	All of this leads to, when we're talking about free speech, which is, which I, it's the First Amendment.
	How important is it?
	It's amendment number one.
	Number one.
	They asked me on Sky News one time, why do you think that, why do you believe that the Second Amendment is as important as your right, like, freedom of speech or something?
	Because it's literally right up there with the freedom of speech.
	You don't even have to count!
	If you're on an iPhone, you don't even have to scroll!
	One, two, stop!
	They died at like 20 years old back then when we were writing this stuff, so they knew they were going to prioritize writing the most important ones first, because death could come at any moment.
	Number one, freedom of speech, right?
	Okay, number two, shoot that guy that said something wrong.
	Number two, black powder and lead balls.
	Let's make sure this is right.
	For how many people?
	If I get to nothing else!
	If the guy's packing on the other side of you, you probably control your mouth a little bit.
	Yeah.
	And this is why we're seen as extremists for believing this, and maybe this is why all of the things that we've outlined are so considered extreme.
	This is why the official platform of the left makes it incapable for their members to answer very simple questions on the First Amendment.
	Let's see.
	This is a long clip, I warn you, but it's important.
	We'll never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion.
	Sir, I want to, as I said before, you referenced as context for your question.
	Well, there's no context on this question.
	I'm just asking you.
	All right, let me ask a new question.
	Will you tell us here today that this administration's Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?
	That seems straightforward again.
	That's not a hard question, Mr.
	President.
	It's really not that difficult.
	It's not a trick.
	We don't need a number two pencil on a Scantron.
	We'll never entertain or advance a proposal to criminalize speech against any religion.
	Again, sir, if you have a proposal that you are considering...
	This is Perez, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, here's my proposal.
	I'm asking you to answer a question.
	That's my proposal.
	Put it in your language.
	I'm proposing that you answer this question.
	Will you tell us here today that this administration's Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?
	Again, sir, if you give us the time...
	I will not yield, but I will let the gentleman...
	I will not yield.
	I've been looking for a way to fit that clip in for a long time.
	So, okay.
	For those who weren't clear on the question, let me crystallize it for you.
	For the left to believe that you are an extremist, all that is required is someone like that to ask you the question.
	Hold on a second.
	Do you promise that you will not sign any bill or support any bill that criminalizes any speech of any kind?
	If you were elected a representative and you were able to answer that question...
	Yes.
	I promise I will not ban speech of any kind.
	You're an extremist.
	We'll be back with Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fields.
	Extremist!
	I won't let bury your heart.
	I'll see you on the next one.
	I'll die.
	Get ready.
	Got the background.
	Hey.
	We came off.
	Let me tell you the truth about YouTube's guidelines.
	From the words of YouTube's old owners at Google, content that is not advertiser-friendly and thus not YouTube-friendly includes but is not limited to sexually suggestive content,
	violence, harassment, promotion of drug use, and finally, Controversial subjects, including subjects related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters, and tragedies.
	Even if graphic imagery is not shown.
	And do you accept these YouTube guidelines?
	Do you accept these guidelines of all the rich, leftists, of all the corrupt?
	We, active members of Muck Hub, will take YouTube from the corrupt, the rich social justice warriors who have kicked you down with these myths of safe spaces.
	And we give it back to you, the users.
	Muck Hub is yours.
	None shall censor you.
	Do as you can.
	Let's start.
	By joining for 99 annual is 69 for students to ensure continued content and the storming of YouTube.
	Step forward, those who will join.
	For the Bug Club army will be raised.
	The powerful will be ripped from their digital safe spaces and cast out into the growing free speech world that we know and endure.
	Videos will continue to be uploaded.
	Direct monetization through sponsorships will be enjoyed.
	Channel will be told.
	The YouTube moderators will survive as they learn to save true freedom of speech.
	This, this great mug club, it will endure.
	through its membership, the YouTube channel will be allowed to survive.
	All right.
	That's the first time for people who are hearing it on YouTube.
	Glad to have our next guest on.
	So he was actually...
	Here's the truth.
	We were going to have him booked a while back, and then something happened.
	We are horrible people, and we bumped him, and then we just didn't get back in touch until Patrick Moore, in his interview...
	That's right.
	You brought a memory trigger.
	We said, well, you know what?
	Alex Epstein, actually, who wrote The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, was supposed to have a debate regarding climate change, regarding fossil fuels, and the person backed out.
	So now I've kind of ruined it, but I've ruined the crescendo.
	But Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, thanks for being here, brother.
	Hey, good to be here.
	So what was that Patrick Moore was telling us about?
	You had a debate scheduled, and then the guy just didn't show up?
	Fill us in there.
	Yeah, so I've done a lot of debates over the years.
	In 2011, I challenged Greenpeace to a debate, and we actually found someone to debate me.
	But over the years, and particularly since the book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels came out, Which is pretty effective, I would say, arrogantly.
	It's been really hard to find people.
	And we managed to find this guy, Terry Tamanen, who runs the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
	And a big event offered me the opportunity to debate him.
	And the sole reason I did it is because of the prominence of Leonardo DiCaprio.
	And then I prepare for it.
	And then a week in advance, I hear that with no explanation, this guy pulls out.
	He cited, quote, urgent business, unquote.
	Maybe you had to go to the bathroom.
	Did they give you anything else after that?
	No, and he wasn't even man enough to come to me himself, which I would obviously do.
	The only reason I would pull out would be the plague or a new case of polio or something like that.
	I got a replacement who was the former governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter, but it just wasn't the same thing.
	On top of that, the moderator completely broke the rules to give the other guy way more time to talk, and it was 24 minutes.
	So it was pretty much a fiasco, but really...
	So we go from arrogant to very humble.
	We appreciate it.
	Well, I'm not saying I'm the sole cause of this.
	You know, if you want to search Alex Epstein Debate on YouTube, you can see some of these debates and you can maybe see why these guys don't want to debate.
	Well, sure.
	Let me ask you.
	So what kind of things do you debate?
	Obviously, it's somewhat self-explanatory in your book title, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
	But lay that out for people watching who maybe don't know.
	We've talked about that on the show quite a bit, having been to the climate summits myself and actually gone out of the nice resorts where they spend time.
	But you're the expert, Alex.
	Yeah, I think it is really important to decide what topic to debate, because I think even in the lead-up you mentioned something about climate change.
	And I think climate change is a very vague term, first of all, but it's the wrong thing to debate, because climate change, the actual issue there is CO2 emissions.
	Does increasing CO2 levels cause some serious problem?
	benefits of fossil fuels.
	So you're dealing with a situation where you have fossil fuels and you have benefits and you have concerns.
	And whenever you have such a situation, the real issue is overall, is this a good thing or not?
	It would be just like vaccines.
	You look at the benefits and you look at the concerns and you try to do so objectively so that you can advance human flourishing as much as possible.
	Real quick, let me stab you there.
	That's It's a sliding scale, but it's interesting that you say that because, you know, we did go from global warming to climate change.
	Anytime there is a change, it is important to note on the timeline, it becomes more generalized, as you've said, which makes it less and less possible to debate.
	So I just think people should note that and be aware of the next iteration of it, but continue.
	And in general, just notice when things are precisely defined or not.
	And also whether people are careful about the magnitude, whether they differentiate between mild and catastrophic.
	So the analogy I like to use is vaccines.
	Imagine somebody says to you, well, Stephen...
	You're in favor of vaccines, let's say you are.
	You must be a vaccine side effect denier, right?
	Because vaccines have side effects.
	So how could you be in favor of them?
	And you might say, well, I think they have these unique benefits that you can't get from anything else, and I think those outweigh the side effects.
	Well, it's exactly the same with fossil fuels, right?
	I assess that the benefits far, far outweigh the side effects.
	And I precisely look at both, whereas the opposition, they only look at the negatives, and they dramatically exaggerate them, so they have this narrative of, oh, if fossil fuels impact climate at all, that must be a catastrophe, and there's no benefit to offset it.
	So it's just garbage thinking.
	Well, you assess both the positives and negatives, and then on the positive sides, from what I've read, you assess not only the moral sort of quandary that they try to present, but also the economic, you know, sort of the technological development.
	I mean, there are a lot of things to unpack there, where it's not just, hey, this is good or bad for the environment.
	Like you said, do we know definitively how good or how bad what the ramifications are, and how does that sort of coincide with what people in third-world countries need to advance, to be able to live, to feed themselves?
	And again, this just comes from someone who's a generalized climate denier.
	And by that, I mean, I don't think the EPA can fix man-made climate change if Florida won't be around in two years.
	That's really all I think.
	It's interesting when we talk about this issue of the moral case, why use that term?
	And the reason I'm using moral is because it's the overarching concept that includes things like economic and environment.
	And the key for me is how I define moral versus how my opponents define moral.
	Because my standard of morality is what advances human flourishing.
	And their standard of morality is what minimizes human impact.
	And if you really want to minimize human impact, we shouldn't have cities, we shouldn't have kids, and we should praise North Korea as a better country than South Korea.
	Yes, we should just have no humans.
	I was at the Cancun Climate Summit when I remember Ted Turner got up and proposed effectively China's one-child policy.
	We just talked about that.
	And no one around at the Climate Summit was like, oh my god, this is horrible.
	He's talking about the policy that led to girls being drowned in bathtubs.
	Everyone just said, yeah, one child, let's curb the overpopulation.
	I mean, talk about immoral.
	I feel like I'm in Blade Runner.
	That's hilarious to me only because when I was a freshman at Duke University, I almost got kicked out of the school because a lecturer came in and started talking about the virtue of China's policies in dehumanizing the planet and everyone else was nodding.
	And I somehow ended up giving a speech of my own and the guy left the room and I was told that...
	That I shouldn't go to Duke anymore if I was going to do this again.
	Yes, exactly.
	Don't you go to Duke or we'll make up a fake rape story out of you, young Epstein.
	Yeah, it was remarkable, the Cancun Climate Summit.
	The whole message was...
	It's not that any of us don't care about the environment.
	You know we want to pick stuff up.
	I hate it when I see people littering.
	It's that...
	We want to see people live.
	I would kill a thousand monkeys if it meant saving one human.
	I know it sounds terrible.
	It doesn't sound nice.
	But does this enter the equation with your opposition?
	Or do they just say, well, listen, Alex, you also have a moral obligation to, if this does impact the environment, to try and bring us to alternative sources of energy.
	And I know I've heard that argument from them.
	What do you say to them?
	And is there some truth there?
	Well, I think the first question you raise has to do with what's the relationship between environment and human well-being.
	And for me, it's a subordinate relationship, which means I want a good environment to advance human flourishing.
	So I judge environmental impacts as positive or negative based on their impact on humans.
	So I generally want to minimize pollution, but I'm very pro-development.
	Versus the other side, what they want to do is just minimize human impact.
	And by they, I mean really anyone who holds this idea in any form of minimizing human impact.
	And if you're optimizing for minimizing human impact, you are going to dehumanize the planet.
	You're going to take away resources people need to live.
	You're going to take away their power.
	You're going to take away their freedom.
	And that's the direction that we're going.
	So if we have a pro-human goal, then we will care about our environment.
	If we have an anti-impact goal, It's a very good point.
	It almost becomes just a reiteration of Gaia.
	You know, it's basically Mother Earth worship at this point.
	When I say Gaia, people say, you mean like that message board that used to have all the anime porn?
	I'm like, no, the internet ruins everything.
	But how do you balance this?
	So kind of for people who are listening right now, who were raised in the generation of climate change, global warming slash climate change exists, it's manmade, it's catastrophic, we need to fix this.
	What is the moral case moving forward?
	What's the balancing act there?
	I know right now we're dependent on fossil fuels.
	If Alex Epstein could get the world to listen to him right now, what do we do?
	I'd say two things.
	One is carefully measure positives and negatives and two is freedom.
	So carefully measure positives and negatives means if you're talking about the climate impact of CO2 emissions, You want to assess what, if anything, do those CO2 emissions do to the livability of the climate.
	That's the key idea.
	If we care about humans, it's about the livability.
	It's not about change.
	It's not about warming.
	Those are derivative ideas.
	The key is livability.
	And if you measure this, the livability of the climate since major fossil fuel use began 80 years ago around the world, has increased by a factor of 50.
	So you are 1 50th as likely to die from extreme heat, extreme cold, flood, drought, as you were 80 years ago.
	Now how can this be possible?
	It's because there is no Gaia.
	Nature doesn't give us a safe climate that we make dangerous.
	It gives us a really dangerous climate that we need to make safe.
	And technology, industry, all powered by fossil fuels, that's made us almost climate-proof And so the real solution to quote-unquote climate change, which should be climate danger, is technology.
	And guess what?
	Climate is a problem we've mostly solved.
	Today, 10,000 to 30,000 people a year die globally from climate danger.
	It used to be 3 million to 10 million in a year.
	How do you measure that?
	It's pretty straightforward.
	You just aggregate.
	You take a bunch of categories.
	You take heat-related deaths from extreme heat, cold.
	It's much easier to do now than it was in the past.
	So in the past, they tend to under-report it.
	But even then, you have years in the 30s where, adjusted for population, there were 10 million climate-related deaths a year globally.
	By today's population today, again, 10,000 to 30,000.
	Climate is a naturally caused problem that requires human technology as a solution.
	The people who are afraid of climate are either disingenuous or they have a primitive pre-technology mindset that tells us that we need to repent for our climate sins instead of conquering nature with technology.
	Who wants to get in that confessional booth?
	It's just Al Gore, Bearfoot.
	Look through the slots.
	What were you saying?
	The slots said so.
	Think about the blizzard you talk about in Montreal.
	Think about how many people probably, back then, if they had generators.
	The power of their homes, the elderly people keep their breathing machines.
	Oh yeah, people died during the ice storm.
	Think about all the situations where technology and basic innovation is.
	We have to get going, but it's funny that you bring that up because, first off, he's a Jeff Goldblum.
	Life finds a way.
	Yeah.
	I think he's right.
	But, you know, as simple as when I was a kid, we had them come in with their Sesame Street classes and never let the water run because we're losing fresh water.
	And this was me as a child.
	Now, I'm not saying that everything I asked was correct.
	But looking back, it's the mindset that you're pretty much expressing.
	I remember saying, well, hold on a second.
	Didn't we just learn that the Earth is 70% water?
	They said, yes, but that's not all fresh water.
	I said, okay.
	So it's not – they said, yeah, we're losing fresh water.
	I said, okay, but – Do we have some way to desalt the ocean?
	Well, yeah, desalinization.
	We do, but it's very expensive and it's very difficult to do.
	I said, okay, but won't that just get better and cheaper?
	This is me at seven.
	And they're all, well, never let the water run.
	They flip the switch.
	Never let the water run, run with the mascots.
	And I was just supposed to stop asking questions.
	And again, it comes down to technology.
	As a kid, I thought, well, it's going to get better.
	They told me to shut up.
	Yeah, I mean, look at how good that philosophy is and how rare it is to just have a pro-human, pro-technology philosophy.
	The so-called pro-technology environmentalists, their core solution is to withdraw technology, to withdraw consumption, to withdraw prosperity, versus the mentality of, hey, let's use new technology to make things better all the time.
	So as Joe Rogan put it, you know, we don't have a water problem, we have a salt problem, and we need a technological solution.
	Yeah.
	Anti-technology, or they are pro-spending technology, spending resources in ways that are...
	Well, like Germany.
	Sven Computer, one of our interns, he's talking in Germany, right?
	You know, obviously, they had to sell some of their energy at a negative rate when they had a surplus of solar and wind, and then they'd be at a deficit.
	Those aren't real...
	So, a technology that's subsidized for ideological reasons is an insult to technology.
	Technology is that which consumers will buy because it's more advanced when they're on the free market.
	That's a good point.
	Otherwise, if the government were subsidizing phones, this would be my iPhone.
	Hello?
	Can you hear me now?
	I don't know.
	Switch to Sprint.
	The guy's going to marry a dude.
	Did you know he's gay, the Verizon guy?
	Now he marries a guy.
	He does Sprint.
	Talk about a brilliant ad campaign.
	Okay, Alex Epstein, the author of the book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.
	People can buy that on Amazon, right?
	Yeah, and to get everything, just go to industrialprogress.com.
	Industrialprogress.com, the moral case for fossil fuels.
	It's very compelling.
	Alex, brother, we'll have to have you back, but I think, do we have Ben Shapiro coming up?
	Ben Shapiro coming up.
	Ben Shapiro coming up.
	We gotta go!
	We gotta go!
	We'll have you back!
	All right.
	Bye guys.
	You heard Tranny Bane.
	It's an uprising with hashtag Mug Club.
	Listen, thank you so much for people who've joined us.
	It's a lot of with credit dot com slash Mug Club.
	People who have not yet done it.
	A lot of you, I know, I can see some tweets.
	Why aren't you talking more about Comey?
	Or why aren't you discussing X topic more?
	Unlike before where it was a once a week show, we do a once a day show now.
	Monday through Thursday.
	Then Jared has his show on Friday.
	Again, for Mug Club members.
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	So you can see what you're missing out on.
	And if you don't want to join, you don't have to.
	But if you see the lights go out sometime, I like what happened.
	I like that show.
	You couldn't afford the $5.85 a month.
	Also, like ten people are dependent on it.
	If you want them to make some bread, you just have to find that.
	It's two cups of coffee.
	Or supporting a child in a third world country.
	Coffee is what's important to you.
	You can forego two cups of coffee.
	Get a curate!
	You can't do a Keurig?
	lottowithcreder.com slash mock club.
	I wish I could do that.
	I wish I could go back and forth.
	There was a villain in Marvel called Mojo who could just move like this.
	Imagine you could cut off the boxing ring that way.
	You could.
	I don't know.
	Speaking of intellectual boxing capacity, I don't know.
	I'm trying to think of a transition.
	I love this guest.
	We have him on all the time.
	And you know him, Daily Wire, obviously.
	He has his podcasts.
	They're wildly popular.
	But self-titled The Ben Shapiro Show.
	At Ben Shapiro.
	Thank you for being with us, sir.
	Absolutely.
	How are you doing, Stephen L. Crowder?
	Where's L. Crowder from?
	Oh, I see.
	Because louder with Crowder.
	No, no, no, you got it wrong.
	It remains a mystery, my middle name.
	Don't spill the beans.
	Not K. Jared.
	Stop it.
	It gives us a guy who didn't know who Johnny Mathis was.
	We were just talking about this with Jared during the break.
	How do you not know who Johnny Mathis is?
	Okay, Ben, it's been a long week.
	I'm not going to lie.
	I'm getting like tinnitus and vertigo.
	So our opinion on Comey yesterday, and we're like, we know this isn't going to get a ton of clicks, was just, I think everybody is an insufferable asshole.
	That's all.
	I mean, as you know, that is my general take on the universe, so I will not argue with a single word of that.
	I think that that is basically correct.
	I feel like I have aged 73 years in the three and a half months since Trump took the presidency, so I am now 1,000 years old because Obama also aged me dramatically.
	I'm like one of those before-after pictures.
	They always show the president before and after his presidency.
	But that's me just covering these people.
	It's like the Muppet in Dark Crystal after the Force takes out their life.
	It's the very end of Indiana Johnson's Last Crusade.
	It's become that now.
	It hasn't even been 48 hours since he fired Comey.
	You understand that?
	Barely.
	How is that possible?
	Time is moving backwards now.
	We're now living in the alternative timeline where Biff actually married Marty's mother.
	Something happened here.
	We hit 88 miles per hour, and time has ceased to exist.
	It's all over.
	Okay, so, which a-hole do you want to talk about?
	Basically, you're right.
	Everyone's an a-hole.
	So we're going to talk about Comey being an a-hole, or Trump being an a-hole, or Sarah Huckabee Sanders being an a-hole, or Chuck Schumer being an a-hole.
	So you pick the a-hole, and then we'll decide which one of them to discuss.
	Also heard very commonly at truck stops across the country.
	So here is something that I feel with these.
	The internet exists, and we can see that no one has been consistent.
	My odd sort of confliction with Comey is I've always kind of felt bad for him in the sense that he can't please everyone.
	I feel empathy, but at the same time, I kind of hate him.
	I've never felt that way about anyone before.
	Okay, so we'll start with James A. Comey, the A is for AFL. This is the new middle name.
	So, Comey, I said last July that he should be fired because that ridiculous press conference over Hillary Clinton, he rewrote the law.
	It was clearly BS. He should have been fired then.
	If Obama had fired him, it would have been for different reasons than I would want to fire him.
	And this is where I have a little bit of sympathy for the Democrats because Comey is terrible at his job.
	And the Democrats are recognizing that he's terrible at his job, but he's terrible at his job for a different reason than Trump thinks he's terrible at his job.
	You can say that somebody should be fired and then also say, well, it's really weird the reason why you just fired that guy.
	We know lots of people in our industry who we think should be fired, but if they got fired for something that was totally irrelevant or weird, we'd be like, that's weird.
	Why would you fire them for that reason?
	I don't mean to let Democrats off the hook for their hypocrisy here.
	A lot of them said he should have been fired back in November after the October 28th letter.
	I said last week he should be fired.
	I said six days ago, eight days ago now, that he should have been fired after...
	Apparently Ben Shapiro moved to Silver Lake and he listens to vinyl now.
	He's a hipster.
	I hated it before it was cool.
	Yeah, I wanted to buy it way before everyone else did.
	Exactly.
	Listen, I was doing this before it was cool.
	So I thought he should have been fired a while ago.
	But I also think there are legitimate questions to be asked, like, why did the firing happen now?
	And so basically there are three theories as to why the firing happened now.
	Hold on, let me present with you mine, because you're smarter than me, so let me present with you mine.
	This is what I said.
	You know what?
	I think it very well may be possible that Donald Trump just doesn't have the self-awareness.
	He probably wanted to fire Comey anyway, doesn't like him, but he doesn't realize that this is horrible timing.
	There's no evidence of the Russia thing.
	I don't necessarily think that.
	Yes, no, this is exactly right.
	So this is my theory number three.
	You and I agree on this.
	I think that you look at the personality of Trump, this wasn't like a well-planned-out coup.
	We're going to nail this guy because he's so close to the treasure now.
	We've got to stop him.
	Lay low for four months.
	That's the Democrat theory, right?
	Lay low for four months and then just blow everything up.
	Yeah, I don't think so.
	Even Maxine Waters is like, yeah, there's no evidence of the Russia thing at all.
	Yeah, I mean, so there's basically, the Democrat theory was that Trump fired Comey because he's trying to obstruct the investigation, but there's no evidence that he's actually trying to obstruct the investigation since it's going on apparently normally.
	So that one just doesn't really hold a lot of water.
	By the same token, the original excuse that the administration gave was obviously complete bullshit, right?
	I mean, when they were saying that we were firing him because of what he did back in July and back in October, like Trump was cheering Comey back in October, and then he reappointed him to the FBI directorship.
	So clearly that was nonsense.
	So we had two theories, one from Trump that was bullshit and one from the Democrats that was bullshit.
	And then there's the third theory, which is that Trump is just being stupid.
	Which I think fits the evidence pretty well.
	I think probably what happened here is that Donald Trump was pissed with Comey because Comey keeps going on Capitol Hill and refusing to say what Trump knows is true, which is that Trump is not directly involved in any collusion with Russia.
	Yeah.
	It probably pisses Trump off to no end that people think that he's involved in this collusion when he knows he's not involved in the collusion.
	Yeah.
	Now, one thing that we understand about Trump is that Trump also doesn't identify with his aides.
	So if there is any evidence of collusion, it's not going to be found about Trump directly.
	It's going to be found about Paul Manafort, who legitimately was in the pay of the Russians.
	It's going to be found about Mike Flynn, who legitimately was in the pay of the Russians under, you know, under some auspices or others.
	And so Trump says, well, but those guys aren't me.
	So why are you bothering me about this?
	But I think everybody else in the political.
	The political world goes, well, wait a second.
	If those guys were actually doing that, we don't have evidence of that yet, but if it turns out that that's what was happening, then we're going to get a year of what did Trump know and when did he know it.
	But Trump doesn't see that.
	Trump just says, okay, well, those guys aren't me, so why does Comey keep bugging me?
	Why don't Comey just say to me, we'll say to the public what he says to me, which is I haven't done anything.
	Screw that guy, get rid of him.
	Yeah.
	And then all the people around him are sycophants and morons.
	And so they all go, oh, that sounds good.
	Let's just do it.
	Like, what's the problem?
	I mean, fine.
	Cool.
	Let's do it.
	And let's give no explanation to our communications people.
	And probably someone like Reince Priebus, who has like some semblance of a brain when it comes to politics, says, you know what?
	Why don't we try to get together like a fig leaf?
	Let's get Rod Rosenstein in here to write some bullshit letter about why we're doing this.
	Then we'll pretend that it was the Rod Rosenstein letter that really drove it.
	And then Trump goes on national television and says, Oh yeah, by the way, that letter was complete bullshit.
	We didn't need that letter.
	I was going to fire him anyway.
	Which destroys Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's on national TV blaming the letter.
	Mike Pence, who's on national TV blaming the letter.
	And again...
	And Spicer just in the corner yelling, Nothingness!
	This is basically a tire fire on top of a dumpster fire on top of a shit fire.
	And all of it is just one conflagration of joy with...
	Trump supporters sitting in one corner going, 80 underwater chess maga maga maga, and Democrats on the other side going, clearly, clearly the Russians are coming.
	And it's just, it's all nonsense.
	It's all nonsense.
	It's Trump being stupid, his people being stupid, his people being uninformed, and then him getting mad at them because they're uninformed and saying stupid things.
	So Sarah Huckabee Sanders ends up, you know, looking terrible because she's out there basically lying to people about why this firing happened.
	Now, do you think she was lying or do you think she was ill-equipped?
	It's all perfectly legit to fire.
	Call me.
	That's the thing that's amazing.
	He turned something that could have been totally fine and innocent into something that is a complete dumpster fire because he lives in a world where the things he does have no consequences.
	Because when you're 70 years old and you've done nothing your entire life but being told yes, then at some point you're going to make a boo-boo and someone's going to tell you no and you're just not going to pay any attention to it.
	Again, recall something.
	I mean, there are a couple things here that totally drive me up a wall.
	Well, hold on, because you've gone through like 25 things that drive you up a lot.
	Hold on, two more.
	It is important to note, Donald Trump is not under investigation directly.
	And I will say this.
	I think that's totally legitimate.
	I actually think if there are other people who have colluded with Russia, okay, if that's proven, I honestly think if that were the case, they would have deliberately kept Donald in the dark more because he can't keep a secret.
	I think they would have been like, oh, yes, Mr.
	Putin.
	Hold on, Donald Trump's coming around.
	I mean, Michelle, yeah, I'll call you back later.
	I think that's totally true.
	And I think that Trump didn't even know who Manafort was when he hired him.
	I think that he didn't care what Flynn was doing on his off time.
	Trump only thinks about Trump.
	So why would anybody around him tell him what was going on with any of this stuff?
	Trump was probably very innocently going out to these rallies and cheering for WikiLeaks, even if Manafort was in the back room actually making out with Julian Assange.
	We have no idea.
	What was going on there?
	So here are the two things that are driving me up a wall for the next 30 seconds.
	Then we'll get to the other 100 things that drive me up a wall.
	Okay.
	One is, I'm old enough to remember when during the election cycle, it was just the worst thing in the world that Loretta Lynch got on a plane with Bill Clinton while Loretta Lynch was presumably investigating Hillary.
	You remember this?
	Yes.
	This was a bad thing.
	I remember it being really terrible.
	In fact, it was such a bad thing that Comey felt the need to do the October 28th letter because he felt that Loretta Lynch had blown her credibility.
	Donald Trump went on national television with Lester Holt and said after his election he had James Comey for dinner.
	Comey requested the dinner and at the dinner Comey wanted to hit him up so that he could remain FBI director and they had a full conversation about whether Trump was under investigation.
	No, you're not supposed to do that!
	No!
	But I'll tell you what's happened to me up the wall.
	What race is Lester Holt anyway?
	Because we have a betting pool.
	We cannot figure it out.
	See, this is something I'm not going to do.
	This game I'm not going to play.
	That's because you can't guess.
	It is a guessing game.
	It's a roll of the dice.
	And you know that there's a 50-50 chance you're right or wrong.
	That was the one thing that pissed me off again.
	The second thing is that Mike Pence was in the dark, right?
	And he looks really crappy because he's on TV for a day saying that this is because Rod Rosenstein wrote this letter.
	And Rod Rosenstein, we know, is above reproach.
	And that's why Trump did this is because of Rod Rosenstein, this and Rod Rosenstein.
	And then it turns out, of course, that that's nonsense.
	And Trump just did it anyway.
	And it was an excuse.
	OK, I remember when Mike Flynn was fired supposedly because he lied to Mike Pence.
	Remember?
	Yeah.
	That was the excuse.
	He was fired because he lied to Mike Pence and made Mike Pence look bad.
	Let's see.
	Who in the past 72 hours has made Mike Pence look like a stupid ass?
	Hmm.
	Hmm.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	If you get the sense that no one knows what they're doing, it's because no one knows what they're doing.
	Buy your emergency food!
	Yeah.
	Yes, exactly.
	Buy your hybrid seats.
	Let me ask you this.
	Honestly, you talk about Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Mike Flynn.
	By the way, I love that Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the better version of Sean Spicer.
	She's the Lou Gehrig who just Wally-pipped Sean Spicer.
	What?
	What's the bad?
	What?
	Yeah, I know.
	What?
	I know.
	And Sean Spicer is not the Luganis.
	He's just the Greg Luganis who hit his head in the back of the diving board and spread age into the pool at the Olympics.
	Didn't tell him what was happening.
	Let me ask you this.
	Do you think that someone like Sarah Huckabee Sanders or Sean Spicer or Mike Flynn, Vice President Mike Flynn, do you think they're out there and they're kind of fibbing?
	Mike Pence.
	Mike Pence.
	Gosh, I'm getting mixed up here.
	Do you think they're out there fibbing or do you just think that they are so ill-equipped being sent out there and not given information that it's impossible to do their job?
	I think that Trump does stuff and then he's like, react, go!
	He's basically the joker in that scene where he breaks a pool, Q and two, and he says, okay, there's only one slot open.
	And that's what he's like with his communications team.
	And so we're having tryouts.
	And so who can kiss my ass the most brazenly on national TV and make me feel good about myself because I'm watching the briefing?
	Again, here's the thing about all of this.
	I'm getting bashed on Twitter because I'm being too critical of Trump.
	No, you're getting back because you're a bit of a smug prick sometimes, but you're smart, so it's okay.
	If you want Trump to have a successful presidency, folks, the MAGA crowd, okay, if you want Trump to have a successful presidency, it would help if you would stop doing this and pull his head directly out of his colon, okay?
	Enough.
	Because here's the thing.
	This should have been a good week for Trump, right?
	Remember last week he had his triumphal meeting at the White House with all the House Republicans after passing Trumpcare, a bill I didn't like, but it was a political victory for him.
	Sure.
	And now we should have spent this entire week.
	Aetna just pulled out of Obamacare.
	Like the entire company pulled out of Obamacare.
	I know.
	That's huge.
	That would be the number one story in America.
	And he'd be saying to the Senate, look, Obamacare is collapsing.
	Do something about it.
	He'd be on the move.
	We'd be talking about tax reform.
	Instead, what are we talking about?
	We're talking about how horribly he blew this particular Comey firing.
	Yeah.
	How he sat on the giantest whoopee cushion in the room.
	How he set himself a landmine and jumped on it with both feet.
	We're talking about that.
	And, by the way, the time is running on Obamacare repeal.
	Or, it's not really Obamacare repeal.
	The time is running on Trumpcare.
	By the middle of June, this thing's over, right?
	Reconciliation dies until the fall if they don't do this now.
	And he just lost another week doing this stupidity.
	He's going to lose another couple of weeks because of this.
	And his approval ratings are in the toilet.
	The congressional approval ratings are in the toilet.
	Like...
	Well, I also think there is...
	If he wants Trump to do a good job, he needs to do a good job.
	And that doesn't excuse Democrats for being who they are.
	They are hypocrites.
	They are terrible.
	They are taking advantage of a bad situation.
	But you know they're going to...
	I mean, he's the one who reads the poem The Snake at his rallies.
	Doesn't he know the Democrats in the media are going to be the snake anyway?
	So why would you possibly give them the material?
	Oh, I do think there's the other side of the coin, where I was watching CNN today and Wolf Blitzer, and they didn't have a single person on the panel who would correct anything.
	And they were saying, Donald Trump directly under investigation.
	And I'm sitting there like, this is on CNN. I mean, first off, it's Wolf lowest score ever on Celebrity Jeopardy Blitzer.
	I hate that guy.
	I know, you can't say it.
	He would seem so benign, but you see him, and it's just these horrible thoughts and feelings just bubble up inside of you.
	It's aggressively mediocre.
	Yeah, it is.
	You know, I will say this, because I was never on the Never Trump bandwagon.
	Wasn't a huge fan, obviously.
	I wouldn't say as gung-ho as you, but I want to see him do well.
	And it has been, as someone who works in news, so hard to follow this week, because someone will be trotted out, they'll say something, and then two hours later, it's completely contradicted by somebody else in this administration.
	I don't know how Americans, any American right now, thinks that they have a shot because it is difficult for professionals to make sense of this.
	And maybe even after the time of this episode, when someone's watching this tomorrow, what we're seeing right now will make no sense.
	I totally agree with this.
	And I think that this is why the media bias really does come into play in a major way.
	I was watching CNN yesterday for some god-awful reason, and you're exactly right.
	Here's Bernie Sanders talking about why Trump should be prosecuted.
	And now, that'll be followed by this other House Democrat who says that he should be prosecuted.
	Followed by, here's David Axelrod.
	He comments on why he should be prosecuted.
	It's just a lineup of people who hate Trump.
	But the problem is, that's why you have to have an administration that presents a clear and concise position.
	Which, by the way, was something Trump was actually quite good at during the campaign.
	In certain areas of his campaign, he would say, in one sentence, what's your ISIS policy?
	Well, bomb the shit out of him.
	Right?
	And then everybody goes, oh, it makes sense to me.
	Okay, fine.
	Whatever.
	Here's the thing.
	It doesn't make no sense.
	I'm not...
	Exactly.
	That's right.
	I love that attack ad.
	It makes a certain type of sense.
	But this...
	What he's doing now, there's not even a counterattack.
	Because the Democrats say...
	Here's a very clear narrative.
	Trump under investigation by the Russians.
	Trump fires the guy who's in charge of the investigation.
	That's the entire narrative in one sentence with a semicolon.
	And the Republicans have no reply to that because Trump hasn't even given them one.
	I don't know if you can hear me.
	Then we have to wrap you and give you the Muppet hook, so I apologize, but wrap it up.
	No worries.
	Okay, so the final note.
	If he wants to solve this, all he has to do is appoint somebody who's well-respected on both sides of the aisle to the head of the FBI. That's all.
	If he does that, this whole thing dies immediately.
	But, you know, this is a cloud that he just won't let die, and he won't let it die because Trump is Trump, and it comes with the good and it comes with the bad.
	Well, I think most important here is, you know, for a long time, people were mocking anyone who was saying, listen, I... For example, me.
	I wasn't never Trump.
	I'm going, but we've got to keep him accountable.
	I remember people would have the memes, put my principles.
	Oh, what do your principles matter if you never win?
	Well, guess what?
	You can't only focus on the short-term battles and lose the war.
	And you can only have a few more weeks like this until you start losing the war.
	It's a real problem.
	And I think, if anything, the MAGA people, the super hardcore Trump fans, should want to keep him accountable more than anyone because right now they're being embarrassed because of him.
	Ben Shapiro...
	At the Daily Wire, the Ben Shapiro show.
	The guy can talk a mile a minute for, I don't know, hours.
	That's what he does every day.
	Thank you so much, brother.
	We'll have to have you back.
	Catch you in bed.
	Go dig a Xanax.
	We will be back after this.
	wrapping this up.
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	That was for the fan who loves the Bumble's face.
	You know who you are.
	It's good.
	It's a good face.
	It's a good face.
	Thank you so much.
	Ben Shapiro, always fun.
	Had to cut him off because the guy goes over time.
	If he were at the Oscars, you would just hear the theme song for half of his speech.
	You wouldn't hear the second half of his speech.
	Play the album.
	Just play it.
	Just Hans Zimmer, anything.
	Play it.
	This guy just won't shut up.
	A smart guy.
	I will say this.
	Ben Shapiro, I don't agree with him on everything, but when we're tracking, he goes, yeah, I agree with you.
	I feel that exactly.
	I go, oh, okay.
	Now I don't feel so bad.
	Sure.
	And you understand why leftists hate him.
	Yeah, you understand why leftists hate him.
	I can't be the only one who's exasperated with this week.
	I just wanted it to end.
	I don't want to have to talk about Comey one more time or hear one more screw up.
	I'm done with it.
	I'm over it.
	And as a matter of fact, as far as, you know, we often wrap this up.
	I feel like I covered most of it earlier with the extremist segment, but...
	For those asking about it, yeah, it'll probably be cut on its own segment for YouTube as a reference, and we'll have the sources available.
	It's one of those deals, the whole idea of extremism, that just you're a right-wing extremist.
	We've talked about this before.
	It's just repeated enough where a lot of people believe it.
	Well, I'm conservative, but I'm not one of those right-wing extremists.
	I'm conservative, but I'm a compassionate conservative.
	What does that even mean?
	I'm conservative, but I'm reasonable.
	Yeah, I'm conservative, but I'm reasonable.
	And we've been allowed to say...
	By the way, we will host anybody on here for a discussion, for a civil discussion.
	But I don't think 90% of the policies proposed by today's regressive left are reasonable.
	I don't think a 65% death tax is reasonable.
	I don't think taxpayer-funded abortion on demand up until the head pokes out is reasonable.
	I don't.
	And I'll argue those ideas because I think they're so unreasonable.
	I can argue those ideas in a civil way.
	That's what's funny.
	When you have the confidence in the logic of the basis of your ideas, you can argue with someone who you think their ideas are so absurd.
	And you can be civil.
	Because you're not insecure.
	It's like a woman, when they get into a fight with a guy, they just go full bore.
	You ever had that?
	Well, you sister?
	Yeah.
	They don't control themselves.
	Guys are able to because they're confident in their strength.
	They kind of, you know, we rip each other and the women just like, they grab your hair and they gouge your eyes.
	They're rubbing your forehead with a cheese grater like it's backyard wrestling.
	They take it too far because they're not confident in their physical abilities and they shouldn't be.
	Women are weak.
	So it is one of those, it's just repeated enough, and you know what, they just, well, so you think a flat tax, that's extreme?
	Why?
	When someone just acts as though they try and throw away your idea, why is that extreme?
	Well, we just, we think that America, it's this, like Michael Moore recently, and Bernie Sanders echoed it, we like to think it's this pull yourself up by your bootstrap society.
	That's what these right-wing extreme, well.
	Why?
	Why is that absurd?
	Why is it absurd to think that most grown-ass men can pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
	Kind of like Ben Carson when he said about public housing, he said, well, you know, I think we should help those, the weakest among us, the disabled, but I don't think that we should make people super comfortable who are able-bodied and capable of finding work.
	Can you believe Ben Carson said it?
	Yeah.
	But usually if someone is just trying to poo-poo, try and dismiss an idea, can you believe that?
	Just think about it for a second, and usually you work through the process, go, oh, this person's trying to pull it over on me.
	Yeah, I can believe it.
	The idea is now that we believe to be extreme, The Second Amendment that you can own firearms and protect yourself.
	The idea that you should be an autonomous human being capable of providing for your own family and not suckling at the taxpayer teat.
	The idea of rugged independence, of freedom of speech, of the idea that you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
	These ideas now that we try and paint, or the left tries to paint as extremism, they used to be truths held to be self-evident.
	You could not go back.
	You could not go back.
	You know what?
	I'll be...
	I'll be liberal with this.
	You couldn't even go back to JFK's era, and short of the actual communists, who've now hijacked the wing of the Democratic Party, find mainstream Democrats, when JFK was president, who would think that any of these ideas were extremist.
	So you know what?
	It's not that bad.
	Sometimes someone just says being an extremist is not a bad thing if that's what it boils down to.
	I get emails all the time like, you know, I'm afraid because they're in the entertainment industry or in college and I just don't want them to think I'm an extremist.
	What's so bad?
	What, people are going to say you're an extremist?
	They think you're a terrorist because you believe in a flat tax?
	An eight-month-old baby has the right to live?
	I'm okay being an extremist.
	I don't know.
	Maybe we should get a hashtag going.
	Extremist?
	I think everyone in this room is an extremist.
	I'm cool with it.
	I'm no longer going to try and act as though I'm not.
	Because all of these ideas are extreme.
	To the left.
	Okay.
	Let's go ahead together this next week and be extremists.
	Just be extreme.
	And be open about your extremism.
	And see how people react.
	Maybe you'll change a mind or two.
	If not, they'll probably hate you anyway.
	You know why?
	Because they're the real extremists.
	Also...
	They suck.
	They're asses.
	They are jackasses.
	See you next week.

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